by Ricky Sides
A committee made up of Herb, Erma, Randy, Amy, Henry and Martha, the original six inhabitants of Herb’s property, ruled the refuge. Herb got two votes because he was the owner who had invited the others to live there. Everyone else got one vote. Therefore, there could never be a tie, not that it had ever mattered. Almost all decisions the committee handled were unanimous.
The missions the team undertook were a different matter. Herb gave the orders and Randy was his second-in-command. He had offered to yield the leadership to one of the men who outranked him and had seen active service in warzones in the past, but they had declined his offer, pointing out that fighting humans wasn’t even close to the same as fighting zombies. Herb was the most experienced man when it came to fighting both zombies and anizombies, and Randy was a close second.
***
Herb turned the bus north onto US 49. The team had left the refuge on schedule to begin their rescue mission. The first leg of their journey was uneventful because they were traveling through areas that they had cleared in the months since the collapse of the nation. He knew that would probably change now that they were heading into an area where they hadn’t been in the past. That meant that little to no effort would have been made to control the zombie population.
As if he were reading his friend’s mind, Randy said, “We’re going to be passing through a lot of small communities this trip. Fargo is just a few minutes north on 49. It has 41 households with a population of 93.”
“You mean it had 93 people,” Herb countered automatically.
“Yeah, most are probably zombies now, but there may be survivors. What we are going to do if we spot some? Do we rescue them and take them back to the refuge, then start over with our trip?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but offhand, I’d say it depends on how many people we’d be dealing with and their condition,” Herb responded as he maneuvered the Mercedes minibus around an abandoned car that had been left where it stopped in the middle of the northbound lane.
“You’d think the driver would have pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road,” Jason observed from his seat, which was beside Randy’s gunner seat. During a fight in which Randy was firing his weapon, Jason would assist him by handing him loaded magazines when he ran out of those attached to his tactical vest. Ed was seated behind the two men in the next row.
Herb shrugged at Jason’s comment and said, “They should have, and that’s a fact, but we’ll probably never know why they didn’t pull it off the road.” Then he asked, “How many towns will we be passing through on the way to Newport?”
“Five,” Randy answered. “We’ll come to one every few miles. First, there’s Fargo, then Hunter, which had a population of 103. Then we’ll come to Fair Oaks. That’s not even really a town since it was unincorporated, but it had a small population. All of those are on US 49. The town of McCrory is on US 64. They had a population of 1850. Then there is Tupelo. That little town had 180 people. It’s on state road 17 heading north.”
“Wow, now that is a lot of potential zombie locations to pass through in one day,” Herb said, hoping that he hadn’t made a mistake promising to attempt to rescue the group.
“We should be okay, as long as we stay on the highway and stay in the bus,” Randy observed.
“We’ll soon find out,” Herb responded. He could see the outskirts of Fargo up ahead.
“Do you want me topside?” Randy asked.
“No, you guys keep a sharp eye out as we pass through and let me know if you see any humans. I’m going to slow down a bit, but not too much. I do want to try to get to Newport in time to make the return trip this afternoon. I’ll stop if you see anyone, but other than that, we keep moving.”
“Okay, we’ll let you know if we spot someone,” Randy promised.
Herb had to keep most of his attention on the highway because there were a few cars left on the side of the road and one had been abandoned in the southbound lane. Even so, he saw more than enough of the devastated community to realize that it wasn’t likely that any survivors had remained there.
“God, it looks like they burned most of the homes,” Randy stated. He added, “Some were probably accidents when people tried to cook without electricity and use candles to provide light.”
Herb nodded his agreement, but remained silent. They’d seen such destruction before, and had investigated it. He knew that Randy was most likely right. Some of the homes would have burned accidently, but not this many. Something else had happened here. Something bad. If they had the time, he would investigate the death of the little town because what had happened to it could always happen to the refuge too. However, the fact was, they didn’t have the time, so as they passed the northern outskirts of Fargo, he asked, “What was the name of the next town again?”
“Hunter,” Randy replied. “They had a population of about 100 with 58 households. We should be there in a few minutes.”
Herb concentrated on the road. They drove for several miles without seeing a single vehicle, but then they came upon what appeared to be an abandoned convoy. Herb slowed as he approached the vehicles that had been left in the southbound lane. “I count six vehicles, guys.” He informed his team. Staring through the wire mesh that covered his windshield wasn’t the easiest way to examine the abandoned vehicles if you were looking for things like bullet holes, so he decided to let Randy get into firing position so that he could get a better look at the convoy. “Okay, Randy, get topside with your weapon and try to see if you can spot any obvious reason that these vehicles are all parked here,” he instructed his friend.
“You’ve got it,” Randy responded, and then he opened the overhead sliding glass and used the hydraulic chair to elevate his upper body through the roof. “Can you slow down a little more?” Randy asked.
Herb frowned as he noted they were only traveling twenty miles per hour, but he backed off the accelerator a bit and their speed slowed to half that. “That’s as slow as I care to go,” he replied.
“I see bullet holes in a couple of the windows,” Randy reported. “And several have been broken out.”
“Get back inside,” Herb ordered.
“Okay. I guess I may as well. I don’t see any people, and whatever occurred here happened a long time ago.”
“You sure of that?” Herb asked.
“Pretty sure, yeah,” Randy responded.
“He’s right,” Jason interjected. “I saw blood on the side of a car door that had dried and has begun to flake off the vehicle. That would take a good bit of weathering as dry as it has been the past few weeks.”
“Well, I guess that’s just another little mystery we’ll have to try to figure out one of these days,” Herb said.
“Yeah, we’re too close to the refuge for comfort,” said Randy.
“Exactly. If someone is attacking convoys around here, we need to know about it,” Herb agreed. Then he asked, “Are you sure you secured that window properly?”
“Yep. It sealed just fine. I wouldn’t forget something like that.”
“That’s good, because I see smoke up ahead,” Herb stated tensely. “You guys get ready. This could be nothing, but it could also be some sort of trap for the unwary.”
“That must be Hunter,” Randy speculated.
“It is, and I see the source of the fire,” Herb said as he brought the bus to a smooth stop two hundred yards from the burning home. “Weapon’s ready, team. Randy, be prepared to get topside at a moment’s notice.”
A group of three men stood in the front yard of the house and watched as the attached carport burned. Two of the men were aiming rifles at the front door and bay window of the structure. Two, red, one gallon, fuel cans sat on the ground near them. It was obvious to Herb that they had started the fire.
“Are we going to stop?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Herb replied. He took his foot off the brake and the bus began to roll toward the conflagration. “They may just be burning out an
infestation.”
Herb had just finished making his comment when one of the front windows broke and a long stick with a white rag attached to it was thrust out the broken window. “Zombies don’t surrender,” Jason observed.
“No, they don’t,” Herb responded. Then he said, “Randy, you can get topside, but be careful.”
“You’ve got it,” Randy replied and then he opened the overhead window and elevated his chair.
Herb eased the vehicle to a stop about forty feet from the three men, whose attention was focused on the house. As of yet, they were unaware of the presence of the bus and his team, but Herb knew that could, and probably would, change at any moment. He was close enough to hear what the men outside, were shouting, and he didn’t like what he was hearing. “Hand me my rifle, Jason,” he said.
In front of the burning home, one of the men, acting as spokesperson for the group, said, “You may as well come on out. We’ll spare your wife if you do, but if you don’t, she’ll burn with you.”
“Why did you set fire to our house?” a male voice shouted by way of reply.
“Tommy Gunn, you know damned well why we’re here. You got bit by a zombie while we were foraging this morning. Now, we gave you the chance to say your goodbyes to your wife and kid, but you know the rules. If one of us is bitten, we get one hour to see our family. After that, we turn ourselves in to the other men. You’ve had an hour. It’s time.”
“You set fire to my place. Now where will my wife and daughter live?” Tommy yelled back.
“You three can come live with us,” Herb said, surprising the three men who were standing in the yard. They spun around to see Herb standing at the front of the bus with his M4 rifle. He had it pointed at the ground at the moment, but it was clear to the three men that he was prepared to tilt it up and open fire if necessary.
“We’re coming out!” the man in the house shouted. “Don’t shoot! My wife and daughter are coming out first!”
One of the men armed with a rifle moved as if to turn his weapon on the front of the house. A gunshot rang out. The bullet ploughed a trench in the dirt at that man’s feet. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Herb warned. “Randy just might put the next bullet through your head.”
“You don’t know what’s going on here, mister!” the group’s spokesperson said angrily.
“Oh, I think I do,” Herb responded calmly.
“We’ve kept the zombies away from here, and managed to feed our families, but only by enforcing the rules we set up when we got to this town. We’ve kept these local people alive.”
The front door to the house opened and a young woman walked out the door carrying a little girl that Herb guessed might be two or three years old. The child and its mother were both crying. “Please don’t kill Tommy,” she pleaded as she walked toward Herb and the sanctuary he had promised.
“You’re not going with them,” the spokesperson said.
Herb’s eyes narrowed and he yelled, “Jason, Ed, do you two have these guys in your sights?!”
“We do!” a male voice yelled back as two M4 barrels slipped through firing slits beneath two of the windows on the side of the bus.
“I’m coming out!” Tommy yelled from inside the house.
Herb risked a glance at the home and saw that the fire had spread to the point that the man must be feeling the heat by now. “We’ll cover you!” he promised. “When you get out, you need to come straight to the bus, but don’t come between the men in your yard and us!”
The door opened again and a man in his early to mid-twenties walked out coughing from smoke inhalation. Herb noted that he was wearing a pistol on his right side and carrying a bolt-action rifle. Herb was concerned that the man might use his weapons on the men who had attacked his home, but he needn’t have worried. The young man was well aware that his wife and daughter were in harm’s way. He followed Herb’s instructions to the letter and circumnavigated the three men. He came to a stop beside Herb.
“We’ll be leaving now. You men don’t do anything stupid and we’ll all live to see another day,” Herb said.
“You know he’s going to die and turn, don’t you?” asked the man who had done all the talking during the encounter.
“That will be our problem,” Herb said. His team had established rules concerning the dissemination of information regarding the immunization shots. They had agreed never to reveal the information to anyone endangering innocent lives. If these men would threaten to kill innocent people to get to one man who had been bitten, it was possible that they would do almost anything to get their hands on the nanobot injections, and the small group at the refuge couldn’t afford to take on groups of men determined to take them at any cost.
“You’re welcome to stay with us, Ellen,” the man said, trying one last time to get her to stay. “I’ll take care of you and your girl.”
Herb saw Tommy tighten his grip on the rifle and was afraid he was about to open fire on the man, starting a gunfight in the process.
“You burned us out, Raman. You could have killed us all. No, I won’t stay with you. It’s better to trust these men not to mistreat us than to stay with you,” the woman responded angrily.
“Go ahead and get your family in the bus,” Herb instructed Tommy. He didn’t like the fact that the man was armed, but now wasn’t the time to deal with that issue.
“Let’s go, Ellen,” Tommy said. He winced in pain and Herb noted the bandage on his right forearm. Blood was leaking through it. His wife noted the pained expression on her husband’s face and hurried to his side with her little girl in her arms. The child had stopped crying and seemed to be interested in the bus. She was staring at it and reaching toward the vehicle with her right hand.
As the young man led his wife around the bus to board it, Herb concentrated his attention on the three men. “How many other people are in this area?” he asked.
“That’s none of your damned business,” Raman replied with open hostility.
Herb backed away, keeping his eyes on the men as he did so. He shrugged and said, “I was just wondering if you people needed help.”
“We take care of these people, mister,” Raman said. “We don’t need strangers coming in here confusing things.”
Herb stepped around the front of the bus and got aboard. He took his seat and put the vehicle in reverse, backing it away from the burning home and the three men who had torched it. He backed the ungainly bus about fifty feet, and then he slowed and turned it around in the road. That required several maneuvers, alternating between drive and reverse, but soon he had the bus headed back toward Fargo.
“Are we heading back to the refuge?” Jason asked.
“Yes, I think we have to go back. His arm needs serious medical attention. You’d better go ahead and give him the shot.”
“You’re not going to give me any shots,” Tommy said. He held out the rifle to Jason, who took it without comment. “Just stop the bus and I’ll get out. You can take Ellen and Ruth back to your place with you. I know what’s going to happen to me, and I won’t be a threat to my family.”
“Calm down, Tommy,” Herb said in a quiet and soothing tone of voice. “We have a cure. You’re going to go with your family to our refuge where you three will begin a new life, free from the fear of ever becoming a zombie.”
“There is no cure,” Tommy said bitterly.
“You’re wrong and I’m living proof. I was bitten by an anizombie months ago.”
“An ani what?”
“An anizombie. That’s what I call an animal zombie. In my case, it was a big German Shepherd that had been turned.”
“And you say that was months ago?” Tommy asked.
“It was.”
“Well, your cure might not work on people bitten by human zombies, and that’s what got me.”
“It works. There are several people living at the refuge who have suffered bites. My wife is one of them,” Randy said. He had lowered his seat and was watching Tommy to
make certain the man didn’t do anything stupid with his pistol. Finally, he said, “Tommy, you need to trust us. We help people all the time. Right now, you’re not thinking right. Frankly, I’d consider it a favor if you gave Jason your pistol for now, and let him give you the injection that will cure you.”
“Please, Tommy. These men don’t seem to mean us any harm.”
“But, what if they’re wrong. I’ll be a threat to Ruth.”
“That’s not going to happen. If it would make you feel any better to know how this works, I can explain,” Randy offered.
“I’d like to hear what he has to say,” Ellen said.
“First things first,” Randy said. “Let’s get our priorities straight. First, you need to hand over that pistol. Then we can give you your injection that will cure you and immunize you. We should also give your wife and daughter their injections. It’s possible that you may have passed the parasites on to them.”
Tommy paled at that thought. He looked to his wife one more time and she nodded her head. “We need to trust them. What choice do we have?”
Tommy turned to Jason and raised both hands. “Take the pistol,” he said.
Jason unsnapped the retaining strap and pulled the pistol from its holster. He recognized it as an old Smith and Wesson 9mm. “I’ll take care of this for you until we reach the refuge. You’ll get it back, once you come out of quarantine. Now, let’s get those shots administered.”
Tommy didn’t object when first he, and then his wife Ellen were injected with the nanobots, but when Jason prepared a third syringe for his daughter, the man said, “Wait a second. Are you sure this stuff is safe for our little girl? I mean, shouldn’t you at least lower the dosage or something?”
“It’s safe,” Ed assured Tommy. “The liquid is just a suspension agent. It’s harmless. The cure is the nanobots that seek out and destroy the parasites. The same dosage works regardless of weight.”
“But what if she doesn’t have any parasites?” Ellen asked, indicating that she too had some concerns.
