The floor was tiled. Several closed doors lined the walls. Top stopped and turned around, facing them. The soldiers came in behind them, and the door closed with a slight hiss. Unseen, a fan kicked on somewhere.
“You two, in there. It’s a decontamination room. Strip off everything and follow directions,” Top said. “We go through a different procedure. When you are done, a door will open onto another room. Go in there and wait for us.”
Chase and Sonya walked through the door and it closed behind them. The sound of machinery in the walls again, and a thud that Chase guessed was a lock on the door. This room was tiled as well, and there were drains in the floor. “Strip,” said a voice from a speaker in the ceiling. “Everything goes in the opening in the wall to your right.”
“Strip?” Chase said. “Both of us? In here? Together?” The voice didn’t reply.
Chase looked at Sonya. He could see that she was scared, but as scared as she was, she was laughing at him. She smiled at him, and then turned her back and pulled her shirt over her head. He turned his back to her immediately, feeling the heat in his face. He began taking his clothes off, hesitating when he was down to his boxers. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Sonya as she walked to the opening and dropped in her clothes. He looked away immediately. When he was sure she was done, he stripped off his boxers, bundled his clothes, and dropped his in as well. Then he stood with his back to her, hands crossed over his front. “First we irradiate the spores,” said the voice. “Might be better if you closed your eyes.” There was a shift in the light. Chase thought it might be ultra-violet light, just like in the pool filter at home. He closed his eyes and his skin began to warm.
“Shower time,” announced disembodied voice. Chase opened his eyes, flashing momentarily on things he had read about the Holocaust. Then the jets of water began from the ceiling, the walls, and even the floor. The water was cold and seemed to come from everywhere. The jets were powerful, knocking him off balance, but he recovered. He heard Sonya cry out as she fell. Not thinking, he turned and helped her up. With everything going on, seeing each other naked was the least of his worries. Still, when he was sure she was okay he turned his back to her again.
“Raise your arms, turn, bend over,” said the voice blandly. He did as he was ordered. The jets of water developed a chemical smell. At first, there was a heavy smell of chlorine, like when the pool at home had been over chlorinated. Then another chemical odor he couldn’t identify, but it was harsh, irritating his throat and lungs. He started coughing and heard Sonya doing the same. Then the smell seemed to be just plain old soap and the water foamed. Finally, the odors started to fade and the foam dissipated. They were being rinsed. At last, the jets were turned off. The floor was ankle deep in water, but he could hear it draining away.
“Close your eyes again. More lights.” The ultra-violet lights again, but with more heat. He was grateful, but he didn’t think it was for his comfort. He could hear Sonya’s teeth chattering behind him. “Okay, you’re done. Exit through the door.”
A door opened, but it wasn’t the one they came in. He grabbed Sonya’s hand and walked through the door. She squeezed tightly. They walked into a small anteroom. There were folded towels on one recessed shelf in the wall and beneath them were folded cloths that turned out to be hospital gowns. Chase was grateful. He dried and pulled on a gown quickly. After Sonya had done the same, he was finally able to look at her. He could see that she was afraid, but she was still smiling at him. He was annoyed. “What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“You.” She said. “All Galahad and stuff.”
“How did that not bother you?” he found himself asking. “Is that like an everyday thing for you, to be naked in front of a guy?”
“Hardly,” she answered. “But I knew it bothered you enough for both of us.” Chase shook his head, but he saw her point. They walked out of the small anteroom through the door opposite of the one containing the decontamination room and into a larger space.
He looked around at what looked like a waiting room for a doctor’s office or something. The chairs were covered in some kind of faux leather, but they were in a row along the wall. There were tables, and even magazines and some games on the tables. There was the door they had come in, another door on the opposite wall, and a third open door to their left which revealed a small bathroom. Next to that door was a water cooler, one of the ones with a big upside down plastic jug. A cup dispenser was mounted on the wall next to it. The wall across from the bathroom had a window, but he couldn’t see anything through it. If it opened onto another room, that room was pitch dark. He looked at the ceiling, trying to find a speaker. “Hello? What now?” he called.
A light came on in the window, showing a young guy in a lab coat. Because of the reflection of the light, Chase had a hard time seeing him. The only feature Chase was sure of was his bright red hair. “Waiting time,” the young guy said, his voice coming from a speaker under the window Chase had somehow failed to notice. “We need to wait for the toxins to clear your system. Please, drink a lot of water. I mean a lot. We’d like for you to urinate at least three times before we can let you out.”
“Three times?” Chase asked.
“Three times,” the man answered. “The spores die quickly and the toxins they secrete flush out quickly for immunes, but we like to be sure. For those of us without the immunity, the toxins alone aren’t enough to infect us, but they have a more serious effect, so we’re pretty careful.”
“Might as well get started,” Sonya said, pulling cups from the dispenser and holding them up beside her face. “I’ll get the refreshments. I think I saw a deck of cards on one of those tables. You deal. I play a mean game of slapjack, Captain America.”
“As long as it’s not strip poker,” Chase said. He was rewarded with an eye-roll, but he thought she almost laughed.
Chapter 23 – Marilyn
The trucks in front of her were different from the ones that had taken Chase and Sonya. They were all four Humvees, and they all had mounted guns on top. She didn’t know her military weapons well, but she knew real firepower when she saw it. Several shots from a lighter weapon rang out and she flinched. Honey shivered under her hand. Standing in the gun turret of one of the Humvees, a soldier was picking off the nearest creepers one by one with a rifle. A soldier stood in each turret, but only one was firing. When the area nearest the Humvees was cleared, several of the men climbed out. They called to one another, but Marilyn was only able to pick out a few words here and there, not enough to make sense. As four stood guard, two soldiers unloaded equipment from the back of a Humvee. One pulled out a spool and ran wires. The other struggled to set up tripod looking things, each about as tall as he was. He acted as though they were heavy. When he set them down, she heard the solid metallic sound they made when they hit the pavement. She wondered what they were for. Some kind of camera? Motion detector? Why would they have to be so heavy? He adjusted them, setting each to about head high on him, some slightly lower, some slightly higher. Then he attached a rod to the top, a rod long enough to extend back and down to the ground several feet behind the tripod. When he let these go, they rang out metallically on the roadway as well. The one who had been stringing wire finished, and they both started driving heavy spikes into the asphalt with sledgehammers, basically nailing the tripods to the road.
As she lay there, she felt something crawl on her leg. Some kind of bug. None of the soldiers seemed to be looking in her direction. If they had really been looking for her, there was a chance they might see her or Honey, although Honey lay completely still. The cover just wasn’t as good as she would have wished. She bit her lip and fought the urge to slap at whatever was crawling on her. The surest way to get spotted was to move.
She watched as the two soldiers doing all the work pulled a packing case from the back of one of the Humvees. They carefully opened it and took out several flat, square objects. She couldn’t see them real well. They started attac
hing them to the tripods and putting something in them she couldn’t see very well. It looked sort of like they were putting pencils in them. Then they began connecting the wire to them. At last they seemed to be done. One climbed into a Humvee while the other unspooled enough wire to reach back to the Humvee closest to Sonya. He cut the wire and Sonya watched as he stripped the ends. He climbed inside the Humvee and she couldn’t see what he was doing any more.
The soldier standing in the turret of the Humvee continued to take potshots at creepers as they drew near. He shouted numbers as he shot each one, “Three for three! Four for four!” Marilyn realized he had made a game of it and grew a little sickened. She considered putting creepers down a necessary evil, but she couldn’t imagine taking pleasure in it. She couldn’t tell how much time passed. Enough that whatever had crawled on her had left and two more had come to take its place and the soldier was up to twelve-for-twelve. Finally, a larger movement from down the road caught her eye. She turned her head slowly and tried to make out what it was, but she couldn’t quite see from her angle. Just that something was coming from the south, from the direction the soldiers had come, the direction the objects on the tripods faced. The soldier with the rifle called out, “Here they come!”
Sonya continued watching back down the road. At last she was able to make out what was coming: a horde of creepers. She couldn’t see how many, but they stretched from one side of the road to the other and she couldn’t see where the horde ended. They trudged along, dragging limbs and staggering, but they seemed to have a destination: the group of trucks ahead of them. Soldiers rose from all four vehicles, standing in the turrets. They began to fire with the heavier guns. Marilyn thought it was pointless. There were too many. Why didn’t they just take off? But then she noticed what they were doing. They fired at creepers on the edges, forcing the ones behind them to funnel inward, to tighten up on the roadway. They selectively took out a few leaders, slowing them down, causing them to bunch up. Then, when the horde was close to the set of tripods, the soldiers quit firing and ducked back down into the vehicles. Then all hell broke loose.
Marilyn screamed and curled into a ball as an explosion ripped the air. Honey jumped up and ran off a short distance. When Marilyn realized that she was okay, she rolled back onto her stomach and peered outward. About half of the horde remained standing on the roadway. The other half lay on the asphalt. Some of them were moving, but most were not. Despite the ringing in her ears, she still jumped again when the heavier caliber guns on top of the Hummers started firing, mowing down the standing creepers. When the last one dropped, the guns fell silent, and then the doors on the Hummers opened. Four soldiers piled out of each vehicle, and they all carried long poles. Marilyn watched as they walked among the mangled creepers on the road, occasionally jabbing sharply downward. When there was no more movement, they stopped and returned to the group of vehicles. One of the soldiers pulled an ancient looking walkie-talkie thing from the open door of one of the Hummers and spoke into it loudly.
“Clean-up two to base, over,” he said. A staticky voice replied immediately.
“Go ahead, clean-up two, over.”
“Group of Subjects down, two hundred or more, need the shovel, over,” the soldier said.
“Present location? Over.”
The soldier said something to one of the others standing near him, but Marilyn couldn’t hear. Then he spoke into the radio again. “Uh, ten miles northeast of Hernando on 200. Can’t miss ‘em. Over.”
“Shovel en route from Brooksville. No more large groups apparent on designated northwest route between you and Lakeland. Return to base via northwest route. Over.”
“Roger that. Clean-up two returning to base. Over and out.”
Sonya watched as they all worked to take down the tripods and load them. They were quickly finished, loaded, and in the Humvees. The motors started, and she watched as they drove over the mangled corpses in the road on their way back south and west. When they were gone from sight she stood and looked around for Honey. The dog was at the other side of the clearing behind her in the tree line. Marilyn called for the dog to come, and Honey trotted over, looking slightly ashamed. “Don’t worry, girl. I was scared, too.” She hugged the dog, then stood and started walking again, avoiding looking at the corpses.
They had only walked for a couple of hours when it was time to start thinking about where to spend the night. The roadway was mostly clear of creepers, but she still kept to the edge of the road or even off of the road as much as possible. About an hour after the soldiers had left she had again heard an approaching vehicle. A large one. She had taken to the trees near the road again just before a truck pulling a flatbed passed by her hiding place. On the flatbed was a backhoe, the “shovel” the soldier had called for she had guessed, probably going to move the corpses from the road. She had wondered if the corpses would be buried or just pushed to the side.
Now, an hour after seeing that truck, the sun was slipping closer to the horizon, and even as badly as she wanted to continue trying to follow the group that had taken Sonya and Chase, she knew that continuing in the dark wasn’t an option. There were still creepers around. Most were easy enough to avoid, but they wouldn’t be in the darkness. The road had turned and she was now going due south, and there were more houses closer to the road. She picked one, not because it looked the nicest, but because it looked the most rundown. A rusting “For Sale by Owner” sign was nailed to a tree next to the driveway. She hoped it had been abandoned, and when she peered through the windows, there was no furniture. The door was locked, of course, but she didn’t hesitate to break the pane nearest the lock and let herself into the bare living room. The house was stifling hot and the air was stale, but otherwise it was perfect. After inspecting the rest of the house and trying the tap to see if there was water (none), she called Honey in, locked the door behind her, and pulled out a can of green beans and a can of tuna and made a rough dinner. She shared a little with Honey, but made a mental note to see if she could stop someplace with real dog food soon. Midway through her dinner, the truck with the backhoe passed by again, heading south.
The soldier had said Lakeland. That gave her a destination, anyway. She pulled out a map and studied it. She found Hernando, which she also remembered the soldier saying something about. She was almost there. She thought about what she had heard. The backhoe had come from Brooksville. That was quite a ways out of line on the way to Lakeland. She tried to think why they would go there, but couldn’t come up with anything. She needed a more direct route. She studied the map further, and then noticed something. There was a trail. It was called the Withlacoochee State Trail, and there was a small picture of a hiker next to it at one point. There was also a picture of a bicycle. The map she had was a Florida state map, and there was an index with touristy things to do around the state. She found the entry for the trail which described the natural wonders along the way. It went through state forests. She was willing to bet she wouldn’t see many creepers there. She turned back to the map and traced the faint blue line of the trail with her finger to its southern end. A much more direct route and it put her pretty close to Lakeland. Satisfied, she folded her map.
She rolled out the blanket she had brought and lay down on it. Honey lay down beside her an immediately dropped into a nap. The sun was still coming in the front window, though, so there was no sleeping for Marilyn. She was tired from a day of walking, but the sense of urgency she couldn’t put away kept her eyes from closing. She decided to meditate for the first time since leaving the camp. She didn’t know if she’d be able to reach the deepest state of meditation, but at the very least it should relax her enough to sleep. Lying on her back with folded hands on her stomach, she closed her eyes and evened out her breathing, becoming aware of each breath.
She cleared her mind and listened, not with her ears, but with another part of her. The silence she heard was comforting, a good silence, a peaceful silence. There was a presence in this silence, a la
rge and wonderful presence. At the edges of her consciousness she could feel the hardness of the floor, the heat, the sweat trickling, but that was secondary to the peace. As she went deeper, she became aware of other discomfort, a more distant discomfort. Not physical, but spiritual. She felt the creepers, moving around the countryside. They were a wrongness, but no more important than the trickles of sweat down the sides of her face. She traced them, became more aware of them. Then: a stream, a river, a cascade of wrongness to the east. A thought surfaced: the interstate. And further still, to the south, a white hot area of disturbance. She frowned, felt herself surfacing, rising toward full consciousness. She tried to go back, tried to understand, but she was rising against her will. And just before opening her eyes, just before reaching full awareness of her surroundings, a single word came to her, not really a word, but an idea or concept that seemed to come from somewhere else, someone else: Patience.
She opened her eyes to full darkness. She lay there, heart racing. She usually came out of meditation relaxed, but this time she was fully alert. Honey was whining beside her. Marilyn wasn’t panicked. She wasn’t even really scared. The presence she had first felt kept fear in check, but she wasn’t satisfied, either. There was more to know. Somehow she knew she would not be able to meditate again and gain more understanding, though. It just didn’t seem to be a possibility. Instead, she closed her eyes again and concentrated on that one idea, that one word: patience. Eventually, she slept.
After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation Page 16
