by Jones, K. J.
“Here?” Phebe asked.
“N-no. South Carolina. The islands. USAMRIID came in.” He pronounced it as you-sam-rid.
Matt said under his breath, “The Army’s defensive research into countermeasures against biological warfare.”
“We wanted to tell the public,” the man continued. “Warn them. That’s what we do!”
“Shh,” Matt said. “It’s okay. Calm down, sir.”
“The director resigned in protest. DHS replaced her with Harris.” DHS stood for Department of Homeland Security. “He’d play ball, Harris, you know. DHS said the panic would be worse than the virus. No. No. Nothing’s worse than the virus. The public had the right to know.”
Peter said, “Is the virus bioterrorism? If USAMRIID’s involved, then it’s bioterrorism, right?”
Matt gave him a hand signal to make his tone calmer.
The man said, “No one knows.”
“How can no one know?” Peter demanded.
“No one can find patient zero. Gotta find patient zero. But everyone got attacked. No one’s prepared for this. Army came in to lock down the island. Blow up the bridge. Burn the ground to kill the mammals. But but but… it didn’t work. It was already out, you see.”
“When did this occur?” Phebe asked.
“S-summer.”
“Last summer?”
“Y-yes.”
Matt said, “During the hurricane?”
The other two looked at him. Matt said, “National Guard was sent to an island off the coast of South Carolina, just south of us. Claiming it was hit so bad by the hurricane that the Guard was necessary.” He turned to the man. “Was that the cover story?”
“Y-yes.” He jumped at a sound only he heard.
“It’s okay,” said Peter. “My people won’t let the zoms near you.”
His gaze moved to Peter. “You have to shoot me.” His shaking hand pointed to the back of his head. “R-right here. The brainstem. Y-you have to put me down before I d-develop s-symptoms.”
“You didn’t explain,” said Peter, “why are you in that suit.”
“I ran. They came in. They were hideous. I ran.” His voice grew plaintive. “I-I left them, the others. I panicked and ran.” He pointed down the road. “The car ran out of gas.”
“So no one knows where this is coming from?”
“N-no. It’s chaos. No one knows what to do.”
“No one is claiming it, a terrorist group claiming to have done this to America?”
“N-not that I-I know. Oh. It’s out of America. I-It’s in other countries. Lock down too late. They sh-should’ve closed the airports. Quarantine the-the country. That’s what we’d have done. But DHS said no. It’s out. They-they don’t even know what-what they’re in for, these-these other countries. Not yet. World-world Health Organization, th-they got ‘em to be quiet too. ‘Cause if-if some other countries knew, they-they’d want to nuke our hot zone here. Eliminate global threat. Yeah. That-that’s what we were told. It-it’s a mess. It’s all a mess.” He suddenly looked at them like he just noticed them standing there. “You need to get to the historic area. They won’t blow it up. Not historic. They’ll just gas it. But nothing protecting everywhere else.”
“Are they planning on bombing us?” Peter demanded.
“You n-need to run.”
“Holy shit,” Matt uttered.
Peter looked at them and gave them the crazy hand sign, finger swirling side of head. “Any more questions?” Matt and Phebe shook their heads. “Okay. Get back in the Jimmy, professor.”
“Why?” Phebe asked.
“I’m gonna do what he asked me to do.”
“What? You’re going to kill him?”
“Lower your volume.”
“You can’t kill him. It’s murder,” she said.
“No, it’s not.”
“You can’t kill him.”
“Can you cure him?”
“Of course not.”
Matt pulled at her arm. “Come on, Pheebs.”
“No. Are you condoning this, Matt?”
He sighed. “It’s one of those things that’s, I don’t know, an evil necessity. You condoned my giving Syanna morphine, risking her life.”
“That was different. This is cold bloody murder.”
“No,” Matt said. “It’s not, Phebe. It’s a mercy killing. So leave it.”
“No –”
“Get her outta here,” Peter ordered, cutting off her further protest.
“Come on.” Matt pulled at her arm.
She yanked it away.
Matt said to her face, “Do. Not. Make me strong arm you.”
His gaze stared into her eyes, unflinching. His jaw tight. He was dead serious. She stepped back, looking at him as if she did not know him at all.
“Now.” Matt took her arm, rougher than before, and pulled.
She relented and went with him. A glance back at the man in white, who was busy looking around.
“Stay with her,” Peter called after him.
“Copy that,” Matt said. He escorted her to the Jimmy.
“What’s going on?” Mullen asked.
Phebe sat down in the far back, amongst Matt’s duffel bags. Matt closed the gate and window, then stood there, looking outward. She stared at his back, this man she had thought was her gentlemanly friend.
A shot rang out.
“What was that?” Syanna asked in alarm.
“Whoa,” said Mullen. “Sullivan just shot that man. Execution style.”
“What? Why? Is he going to shoot all of us?”
“I think the guy was bitten. Now, Sullivan and the big redneck are carrying the body to the side of the road.”
Phebe said, “Thanks for the narration, Mullen.”
“Geez. What’s with you?”
Syanna said, “Northerners are like that. You get used to it.”
Phebe responded, “Syanna, sometimes you can be such a bitch.”
“See what I mean?” Syanna said to Mullen. “They’re all so moody.”
Matt walked around to the driver’s side and got in behind the wheel. He sighed so loud she heard in the far back. “I’m sorry, Phebe.”
She didn’t respond.
“It’s orders. You follow orders. That’s the way things are and need to be.”
“You blindly follow anything he says?” she demanded.
“It’s not like that.”
“Sure seems to be. Would you have killed that man?”
It took Matt a moment to respond. “Honesty, yes. It’s what’s necessary. I’m grateful it’s Sully doing it, so I didn’t have to.”
“What happened to being the devote Presbyterian? Isn’t murder against that?”
“Don’t do that to me. Please.”
“Hey,” Syanna chastised. “Leave him alone.”
“You don’t even know what’s going on,” Phebe said.
“I know you’re being a bitch to my boyfriend.”
Mazy got in. Phebe was grateful for the deviation. Getting into an argument with Syanna Lynn was the verbal version of being attacked by an infected—nothing made any logical sense, but you only defended against being bit.
The convoy resumed. Phebe saw the white-clad body laid out on the road’s shoulder. It grew smaller the further away they drove.
2.
The back road converged with Carolina Beach Road, Route 421, a few miles before Snow Cut’s Bridge.
In the front passenger seat of the Beast, Peter said, “This was where I hit that ridiculous bumper-to-bumper, up here.”
Upon reaching it, the number of cars dramatically decreased from this morning. The vehicles must have followed the fleeing police cars by driving up the wrong side of the road. Only the vehicles of the dead remained.
The pair of SUVs crept through, trying to avoid running over bodies. Carrion birds feasted.
In the far back of the Jimmy, Phebe could see the birds feeding. Eyes pecked out. Strips of flesh tugged free. She
watched in numbness. It was nature, what vultures and crows did to all species. Seagulls swooped in to check things out for a free meal. The carrion birds tried to fight them off. But seagulls were tenacious.
She thought of the process taking place in the corpses. Science was easy to wrap her head around, a good anchor to the normal, requiring no emotions. Figuring out what had happened to dead human beings would be her career. Who were they. Did they die of natural causes or were they murdered. The skeletons would tell the tale. The families needed to know.
But would the families of these people ever know?
Would one day the government come in to collect the remains of people? The decomposed corpses. Or skeletonized corpses. Would a forensic anthropologist from a university far away examine their remains? Forensic technicians autopsy their possession. Geneticists run what DNA they could find. Would relatives in other states receive official notification telling someone was identified, perhaps a whole family found?
And what about the infected? Would anyone identify them and inform next of kin. Or would their corpses be incinerated. Burning the dead had been protocol with contagious viruses since the discovery of microorganisms.
Would she become one of them, she thought. Her mom never receiving her remains, nothing to bury. A mother never knowing what had happened to her child — her daughter that disappeared into the R140 Carolinas catastrophe. Her mom’s priest would give special prayers for her at the church, saying her name from the pulpit. Would Father John think to himself, ‘If only Phebe remained a good Catholic, she wouldn’t be of the disappeared’?
She decided that if she was infected, now or in the future, she wanted a bullet to the head. Just as the CDC man demanded. End it fast, without harming others. It was the right thing to do.
What happened to their consciousness? Was the soul trapped in the infected. The carnage carried with them to the afterlife, or the next incarnation? Did they see what they were doing, trapped in a body they no longer controlled? She didn’t believe an omnipotent god, unlike her mother, but she knew there was something more happening than the physical world.
Syanna’s whimpering broke her contemplation.
“Are you in pain, Sye?” Matt asked.
“Yes, but more than that.”
“Hold on and I’ll get you a pain pill as soon as possible.”
She wept.
“Shh,” Mullen comforted. “It’ll be all right. We’re almost there.”
“No,” Syanna Lynn protested. “It’s not all right. It’ll never be all right again. Nothing will ever be the same again.” She reached her hand to the top of the backseat. Phebe took it. “We will never be the same.” Syanna squeezed her hand.
Tears welled in Phebe’s eyes. Rebecca was dead. Her professors probably were, too. Her friends at school. And the students she taught. Her campus destroyed.
She had started this week obsessing over getting her PhD as the most important thing in the world. Nothing mattered more than her career. She felt like she had aged years in a day. Nothing that mattered before mattered now. She wanted most to see her mom again. To hear her voice. To feel her arms holding her and make all the monsters go away.
“Heads up,” said Matt. “We got something up ahead.”
In the Beast, Peter ranted, “A check point. Are you kidding me? What is this, Iraq? Are they looking for insurgence? Maybe a zom is driving through. Goddamn this bullshit. I hate the government.”
“Right on, brother,” Chris said from the backseat. “Fuck the government.”
Ben, beside Chris, was busy peering forward, trying to see what was happening at the check point.
“They’re checking IDs,” Julio informed.
A National Guardswoman hand signaled a car to pull over to the side.
As they watched, a man got out of this car. His body language pissed off. The Guard aimed weapons at him. He approached the Guardswoman. She pointed her rifle at him.
Julio and Peter rolled down their windows to listen.
The man yelled, “I will get over that bridge. Don’t tell me if I am not a resident, I can’t cross the bridge!”
“Get down on your knees,” Guardswoman ordered.
An upset woman’s voice yelled, “Henry, do as they tell you.” Kids screamed from the car for their daddy.
Henry wasn’t calming down. “My boat is down there and I am taking my family outta here. Get that goddamn arm up now.”
Peter asked, “How many Guardsmen do you count?”
“Just two on this side,” Julio answered.
“I got two and an officer on this side. Only M4s and the L-T’s sidearms.”
Ben said, “Check out the bumper sticker of the car in front of us.”
It was a Marine Corps bumper sticker. A tattooed arm hung out the driver’s side window.
“Hopefully an ally.” Peter took up the radio. “Matt, Sul, we may have to kill these Guardsmen to get across the bridge. Over.”
“We’re game with that. Over.”
Chris said, “Best thing when you lose your people is killing other people. Makes you feel better.”
“Spoken like a true psychopath,” said Ben. “The Army must be proud.”
Julio said, “Could we try not to kill these people.”
“You are such a liberal,” Chris chastised.
“Yes, Ben, we really are this insane,” Peter said.
Up ahead, Henry made one false, stupid move, and the Guardsmen opened fire. They blew him away. In front of his family. The wife and kids screamed.
Julio muttered, “Holy shit.”
“There’s your tax dollars at work,” said Chris.
“Glad I don’t pay those,” said Peter. “Now, let’s kill ‘em.”
The inked man with the Marine Corps bumper sticker got out. His body language showed he was angry. He yelled, “What did you just do? What’s wrong with you?”
Rifles turned towards him.
“That would be our que,” said Peter.
Doors opened. All four men poured out.
From the Jimmy, Matt and Mazy hurried forward, rifles raised.
The tattooed man turned and saw all of them. “Oh, hell yes.” He ducked into his car and grabbed a handgun. “I’m with you. Oorah.”
Ben and Mazy responded with the Marine Corps Oorah call. The man knew he was with his fellow Marines.
The Guardsmen saw the assault team coming up both sides of the vehicle line. People in the cars ducked down in their seats. Guardsmen yelled to each other. They opened fire.
They were no match for Rangers and Marines.
Closing the distance fast, keeping low, the Rangers and Marines opened fire, hitting the National Guardsmen with precision. Since the Guardsman had the decency to drop when they were shot, and wail in pain if not fatally hit, it was a nice change from the infected.
The Guardswoman was hit in the right shoulder.
Peter stood over her. “You will get in this car and drive this family and their dead father to where they need to go. Or we’ll kill you. Understood?”
“Who are you?”
“Medically discharged war vets.”
“But you’re on our side.”
“Not today. Get up and go. Now.”
She got herself up and, using only one arm, pulled dead Henry into the car with the upset family. She got into the driver’s seat. The family fell silent.
The inked ex-Marine raised the check point arm. “Semper fi,” he yelled.
“Semper fi, brother,” Mazy yelled.
He waved cars through.
The guys and Mazy returned to the SUVs.
People from cars in front dashed out. They grabbed dead Guardsmen’s weapons, then scurried back to their cars.
Julio, behind the wheel, crossed himself.
“Aw, c’mon,” said Peter.
“These soldiers could have families.”
“They’d die anyway from the zoms.”
“That’s not better.”
�
�Well, when we get back to the boat, I’ll get in the closet with you and pretend I’m a priest and you can confess to me.”
“That’s not funny, Pete.”
“What?” Peter laughed as he said, “I promise not to bad touch you.”
Julio’s voice stayed serious, “I worry for your soul, hombre.”
“It’s okay. I have plans to beat up Hitler once I’m in Hell. And Himmler. And Stalin. Oh, God, there’s so many. I’ll be busy.”
Julio responded with a worry-laden sigh.
They crossed Snow’s Cut Bridge behind the ex-Marine. He honked and waved his arm out his window when he turned off in the opposite direction.
The main strip of road—the supermarket complex to the right, the family owned restaurants, the rental offices, and the side of the road decorated with pampas grass and fuzzy tops swaying in the breeze. Everything looked normal.
The SUV’s turned left and rolled through the grid of neighborhood streets of houses on stilts. Everything normal and quiet. No destruction. No signs of fires or bullet holes in walls. The Beast stopped at the marina gate. Peter got out and manually rolled the gate open, since there was no electricity. The Jimmy followed the Beast into the parking lot.
Peter’s Jeep sat parked next to the beat-up Toyota pickup, just as he had left it this morning. They parked nearby and began to disembark into this surreal world of normalcy. Stretching backs. Bending knees. Each one of them dirty and smelling of sweat and body order. Ripped clothes. Bruised faces. And heavily armed.
Bubba came out of his office shack, wearing a fisherman’s boonie cap over his white hair and a sweater pulled tightly over his big belly. Blue eyes and rosy pink cheeks made him resemble Santa Claus. Except he spat out chew.
Bubba looked them all over.
“Hi, Bubba,” said Peter.
Matt lifted Syanna out of the Jimmy. Everyone grabbed bags and gear. They started their exhausted shuffle towards the dock.
“How ya doing, Sully?”
“Hard day,” Peter responded.
“Yeah. Looks it. You been in that shit up in Wilmington I been hearing talk about?”
“We sure were.”
“It bad?”
“Wilmington’s gone, Bubba.”
Bubba’s face grew grave. “Gone?”
“Gone, brother. Pack your shit, old man. We need to leave here, ASAP.”
