Rachel nodded. “I can go with that. Still pisses me off, they act like we’re being paid.”
James, the father who was holding his three year old at the table, looked up. “You’re not?”
“In a sense we are,” Rigs said. “Food, weapons, a vehicle.”
“Still,” said James, “That’s not pay. I mean, what about money or gold?”
Rachel shook her head. “Um, we’re like in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and I don’t think things are coming back.”
“Rach,” Rigs said. “Don’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“What you just said.”
“About us not coming back?” Rachel asked.
“No the other thing. What you called it.”
“The zombie apocalypse.”
Rigs cringed.
“Oh my God, talk about denial.”
“I’m not in denial, I’m just …” Rigs grunted. “You’ve been hanging around Kasper too much. Let’s just go.”
James asked. “We’re going to Franklin? Nice little town.”
“Oh, cool, you know the way. Yes,” Rachel replied “I guess they already swept through there and we just go in and pick off the remaining …” She looked at Rigs. “Zombies.”
“Barry,” Rigs said. “Can you drive?”
“Sure.” Barry walked to the front.
Rigs walked to the open side door. “Gentlemen,” he called to Kasper and Charles. “We’re rolling. Let’s go.” He turned to Rachel. “As soon as they are in. Hunker down.”
“How did you find us?” James asked.
“We aren’t from this area,” Rachel said. “No GPS, and we just got lost. It was by accident, all of the roads were closed and we were trying to find I-79.”
“And thank God you found us.” James leaned down and kissed his daughter. “It was unbelievable what you guys did.”
“It’s what we do. None of us have anyone left to fight for,” Rachel told him. “So we do what needs to be done.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
Rachel nodded sadly then perked up a bit when Kasper and Charles walked in. “All done?” she asked.
“Yep, me and Mr. Katniss got it loaded and secured,” Kasper replied.
“Why …” Charles faced him. “Do you insist on calling me that?”
“Because you rocked that bow and arrow.”
“Does she have a song, too?” Charles asked.
Kasper laughed. “No, but I can sing the Charles in Charge song.”
“No. Just no.” Charles shook his head. He pumped a few times on the hand sanitizer and then held for a second as the RV started to move. “Are we doing lunch here or waiting for Franklin?”
“If you’re hungry, eat,” Rachel told him. “By all means don’t wait for us. We eat at weird times.”
“How so?” Charles asked.
“Late at night, it just works out that way,” Rachel shrugged.
“I’m in the mood for Ramen.” Charles opened up the cupboard. “James. Can I make you and your children something?”
“Maybe my daughter. I’m good.”
Rachel felt the RV slow down. “Rigs, what’s going on? Why are we stopping? Is there trouble?”
“Not for us,” he replied.
“What does that mean?” Kasper questioned.
Curious, Rachel along with Kasper walked to the front as the RV stopped. When she arrived Rigs had opened the door.
“I have to see this,” Barry said and stepped out.
Rachel followed. The front doors didn’t have steps and it was a slight drop. She waited for Kasper but as soon as he emerged, she saw that Rigs and Barry had walked to the driver’s side of the RV.
Just as she joined them, a jet flew over.
“What the hell?” she shielded her eyes and looked up. When she lowered her head she saw what drew Rigs and Barry’s attention.
The city of Pittsburgh, skyline in the distance. Thick plumes of smoke billowed into the sky and as the jet flew over, it fired a missile causing an explosion.
“Jesus,” Rachel gasped then turned her head to a ‘click’ sound.
Kasper lowered his phone.
“Are you … are you taking a picture?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, it’s historic. That Liz lady told us to document everything.”
“Kasper,” Rigs said. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean pictures.”
Barry tilted his head. “I don’t see why not. You don’t get more documented than that.”
“Thank you, Big Boss man,” Kasper said.
They stood only for a few more moments watching, until they heard yelling from the RV. It was James. His voice loud and emotional.
“No. No, no, no.”
“James,” Rachel cried. “Stop.”
“I did this!” The side door to the RV opened and James flew out. He raced to the side of the road, hands on his knees half bent over.
“What’s going on?” Rigs asked.
“I did this. It’s my fault. I couldn’t protect my own.”
Rachel immediately flew inside the RV. Steph held the baby and stood there with Sandy.
“What happened?” Rachel asked. She looked at a concerned Sandy and a crying Steph.
Sandy pursed her lips before answering. “I didn’t see it at first. Not until I was examining Steph. The baby … the baby’s been scratched.”
<><><><>
“I cleaned it,” Sandy explained as they sat in the main area of the moving RV. “I gave her a dose of antiviral according to her weight.”
“We don’t know,” Charles said. “Not for sure that a scratch carries the virus.”
His hands were pressed tight to the side of his face as his elbows rested on the table, James was distraught. “We have seen a scratch turn people.”
“What about amputating?” Charles asked.
James, Steph and Sandy seemed shocked at that suggestion.
“What?” Sandy asked.
“It’s the hand,” Charles said. “You have an hour to amputate. It’s not been an hour. That scratch is small.”
Steph stuttered through emotional words. “We don’t know for sure it was an infected that scratched her.”
“You wanna take that chance?” Charles asked.
James sighed out. “It was the infected, Steph. She was in my grip. They were reaching for us. I felt their hands.”
“Then take it off,” Charles said. “Sandy, I’m not kidding. You have the tools. Cut off the hand. Hell, I’d cut off from the elbow.”
“What is wrong with you?” Steph asked. “You want to just cut my child’s arm off?”
“What’s the alternative?” Rachel asked. “If it’s a scratch from the dead, the antiviral will not work alone.”
“We don’t know that,” said Sandy. “Maybe on a child it reacts differently.”
“Seriously!” Charles blasted. “What the hell? It’s just a hand.”
“Just a hand?” Steph asked with disbelief.
“Just a hand,” Charles stated. “If I would have known what a bite would do when my daughter was bit, hell, I would have chopped off her leg myself, instead of waiting, instead of watching the fever ravage her, then turn her. It may be too late already, but why take that chance. Amputate the hand, do it. Try like hell to save your child.”
“I have to agree,” said Rachel. “I’m not a doctor. Sandy is. It’s your call. I can only tell you what I would have done.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” Sandy told them.
“James?” Steph looked to her husband,
Slowly James ran his hands down his face. “Can you do it, doctor?”
“I have been given the tools,” Sandy replied. “I have everything that is needed. I have never performed an amputation, but I have assisted on three. All infants.”
James nodded to his wife.
Steph turned to Sandy. “Let’s do it.”
<><><><>
They had to stop again. Sandy did
n’t want to do the amputation in a moving vehicle.
They parked smack in the middle of Interstate Seventy-nine on a barren section. While she performed the surgery, with Charles volunteering to assist. Rigs took a roof position on top of the RV to keep watch.
Kasper knew Rigs debated on calling Command again and opted against it. It was only an hour or so and they’d be able to get moving.
Sandy was confident. The child was healthy and children were resilient.
Barry stood at the front of the RV, his back against the front grill, rifle in his arms, staring out to the highway ahead. They really were less than an hour out from their destination.
“You good?” Kasper asked. “Need anything?”
“No. No, I’m fine,” Barry answered. “How are the parents?”
“The mom is inside, waiting. The bigger tot is napping and the dad … not so good.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t blame him. I would be kicking myself as well. Hell, I do kick myself. I wasn’t fast enough to help Ann. I couldn’t help my son.”
“I can’t … I can’t pretend to know what you guys, all of you guys, are feeling and going through,” Kasper said. “All I can say is …” He paused.
Barry waited.
Kasper said nothing.
“Kasper, finish. All you can say is … what?”
“I totally lost my train of thought,” Kasper said.
Barry grunted. “Go check on the others. And no yelling, be quiet, we don’t want any disturbances for Sandy.”
“I’m quiet as a mouse. Let me know if you need anything.”
Kasper wanted to go back in the RV, but he didn’t want to open doors or shut them. Like Barry had said, they had to be quiet. Sandy needed to focus.
Outside of the RV, Rachel stood by the side door. She wasn’t keeping watch like Barry or Rigs, she was watching James.
James sat on the concrete of the highway. Legs bent up, arms resting on them as he held a burning cigarette. He seemed to stare at the smoke.
“Hearing anything?” Kasper asked her.
“Huh?”
“You’re standing by the door. I thought it was to listen.”
“No. I’m just standing here. A part of me feels like I should talk to him.” She nodded a point at James.
“About?”
“Everything that’s happening.”
“You gonna let him know it’s gonna be okay?”
“I can’t do that. No one knows if things will be okay. We can only hope. And …” Rachel took a step forward. “Maybe that’s what he needs to know.”
“What? That we can only hope.”
“Yes.”
“That’s kinda lame.”
Rachel shook her head with a sharp exhale and walked over to James. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You … you have another?” Rachel pointed to his cigarette.
He lifted a pack and a lighter from the ground next to him and handed them to her.
After lighting the cigarette, she handed him back the items and sat down on the ground. “How are you?”
“Kicking myself.”
“I know that.”
“If something happens to her …”
“You can’t think that way,” Rachel told. “Trust me you can’t.”
“I’m not so self-absorbed that I don’t recognize all of you have been right where I am. But I just … do any of you blame yourselves?”
“James, we all blame ourselves. What you’re feeling is natural and I can’t say whether it goes away or not, I just … I’m still dealing. I just found a way to work through it.”
“By killing the things that … that …”
“Killed my family, yes.”
“I had her,” James said. “I had her in my arms as best as I could. I swore I covered her. Why didn’t they just get me?”
“I don’t have an answer.” Rachel took a hit of the cigarette. “My son died of the virus. Barry’s son died trying to help my son. Like you, I had my daughter, too. Sami was twelve. I had her in my arms, embracing her, protecting her when those things reached in and grabbed her legs and pulled her down and out of my arms. I still can see her face when they got her. My husband, I want to say he tried to save her, but I truly believe with everything I am, that Cliff just didn’t want her to die alone. So he sacrificed himself.”
“God, that’s horrible.”
“Yeah.”
“So, if this was your baby, would you have done the same thing?” James asked.
“Absolutely.”
“And if it doesn’t work. I pray it does, but if it doesn’t. What do I do? I mean, what would you have done if your daughter turned or did she?”
“I don’t know. She was with Cliff. But if I had a baby as young as yours, and she had the infection. I would make her as comfortable as possible until she passed, and then when she turned, I would do nothing until I was ready to let go. That’s just me.”
James glanced up at her, then his eyes shifted.
Rachel turned around. Sandy stepped from the RV.
He stood up first, then Rachel followed.
“Well?” James asked.
“I think … I think she handled the operation well,” Sandy replied. “She’s resting. Her vitals are good. I have another dose of the antiviral along with antibiotics for infection so it’s just a matter of waiting.”
“We have company.” Rigs called from the roof.
Rachel heard the engines and then looked. Pulling up behind the RV was a military Humvee. Out of it stepped two soldiers, both men in similar uniforms to the Eliminators, only their patch had an ‘R’, Rachel figured for Retrieval Team.
“You guys are Eliminators,” the soldier said. “Are you the team headed to Franklin?”
“We are,” Rachel answered.
“We’re looking for Sergeant Rigs.”
Rigs climbed down the exterior RV ladder. “I’m Rigs.”
“You maybe have saved us a trip to Franklin. Are your survivors here?”
“They are,” answered Rigs. “This is our doctor.” He indicated to Sandy. “She just performed surgery on the baby.”
“How bad is the child?” the soldier asked.
“She’s stable. She was scratched and we amputated. If you can wait another hour, she can be moved. Can I ask how far you’re taking her?” Sandy questioned.
“A hundred miles. East of Youngstown. We have a good medical unit there.”
“Then I’ll set up everything for transport.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Well,” the soldier exhaled. “We’ll hang out with you guys and wait. No rush.”
The two temporary newcomers made themselves at home. They were nowhere near as agitated as Rachel expected them to be, especially after the chastising Rigs received on the field phone.
They stayed a little over an hour, and Sandy made sure everything was in order to transport the baby.
When the child was placed in the back of the Humvee with her mother, the baby was awake and smiled.
Rachel loved that.
They said goodbye to the family they barely got to know. She supposed that would happen a lot. She wished them well, and truly believed everything would work out with the baby. She would go on to lead a healthy life in a screwed-up world. Sadly, Rachel and the other Eliminators would probably never know what became of the family or the baby. They only could hope for the best.
NINE – SMILING FACES
Franklin, PA
Driving through the residential section of town, they saw the markings of the Sweep team. Three horizontal red lines were left on buildings. The back of the letter E would be finished by the Eliminators when they checked the building.
The markings were to signify it was suspected that there were dead in there.
While Rigs had never seen a sweep team in action, he was told how they operated. Making as much noise as possible, drawing out as many as they could. Bullet holes marked many of the homes, doors
were open and windows busted. The streets were painted with smeared blood and a stench filled the town so bad it seeped into the RV.
Their instructions were to drive to Liberty Street and to a Knights of Columbus Hall located just after the residential area and before the strip of restaurants.
That was the designated information center.
The parking lot was large and Rigs stepped out first, looking and not seeing any dead. Charles followed him.
The door to the club was closed and Rigs opened it. He whistled once, waited, then banged on the archway to draw any out. None came.
“Hey,” Charles said and pointed to the interior of the door. “Is that it?”
A clipboard hung there and Rigs lifted it, stepping into the sun to see what it said. He lifted a few pages. “Yep. Every street, number of dead they took down, number of survivors …”
“There were survivors?”
“Oh, yeah. Population six thousand; four hundred seventy-two survivors; three thousand nine hundred dead removed … sixteen hundred unaccounted for.”
“Think they’re in this town?”
“I doubt it. Some probably. A lot of people may have left.”
“That’s a lot unaccounted for.”
“They told us about this,” Rigs said. “We walk the town. It will take up to three weeks. The original Eliminator team never really took out more than a couple hundred, even in towns were thousands were unaccounted for.”
“You know how you want to do this?” Charles asked.
Under the paper on the clipboard Rigs pulled out a folded map. “They have it marked in sectors. First order of business is to find a safe place to set up camp. A house in fair condition. We may find it in this area …” Rigs pointed to the map. “It’s just at the end of the strip of businesses. You and I can take that. Park the RV in the middle of Liberty, have Kasper, Rachel and Barry sweep those stores.”
“Will Sandy be alright?”
“She’ll be fine if the RV is in view of them.” Rigs took the clipboard and started walking back to the RV. “Might as well get started.”
Charles nodded. “It’s quiet. Almost too quiet. Eerie, you know?”
“Tell me about it, but …” Rigs sighed. “We’re here now. That silence will end shortly.”
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