The Salvation Plague | Book 2 | The Mutation

by Masters, A. L.

  “We can heat up some of your kidney beans,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

  ◆◆◆

  After they had cooked some beans and rice, which turned out to be really excellent after a steady diet of cold food, Jared spoke up.

  “I want to go see Harry.”

  “What? Why?” Anna said.

  “We need to talk about how we’re going to deal with this. With the regulars we probably would have been fine, even a larger group like we had earlier. But with the muties…we can’t deal with another attack like that. Even if we survive the next one, the odds get worse with each attack. Eventually, we’ll be wiped out.”

  “He’s right. The enemy has overwhelming numbers. Our only hope is to join a larger band of survivors. At the very least, we need to find out if they’d be willing to send out a squad if we ever need help, and we can provide the same for them.” Bradley looked around. “Well, a small squad anyway.”

  “What about Sten’s people?” Anna asked.

  “They didn’t strike me as the type of people who form alliances,” Jared said.

  “We could try,” Bradley said. “From what I saw, they had their place blockaded pretty well, and from what you told me they seem pretty savvy.”

  “And violent,” Jared muttered.

  “You just blew off a mutie’s head in the kitchen, Jared. You don’t consider that violent?”

  “You might have a point, babe.”

  “Violent is what we want these days,” Fletch said.

  “Okay, so we go see Harry and work something out, then go parlay with Sten,” Jared reiterated. “Should we take some goods for trade along? Silk? Spices? Perfumes? Perhaps some soap?”

  “You’re taking things too far again,” she told him.

  “What do you think Stewart?” Bradley called. “Should we find allies?”

  “Ahhhhhhhh,” came a throaty growl from the laundry room.

  Jared had conceded and let Stewart have the storage room slash laundry room for himself. It’s not like they could wash clothes in there anyway. It was still going to freak her out a bit, but she thought maybe she could get used to it. Eventually.

  “Guess we’ve got a plan,” Hank said from the couch. “When will you go?”

  Jared looked at his watch. “How about now?”

  Chapter Nine

  Harry Anderson and the News

  Jared

  “Shouldn’t we think about this a little longer?” Juan said.

  “What’s to think about? We need to get this done before another herd moves through.”

  “Jared’s right. We have daylight right now and we should move on this as soon as possible. I also think we should take Stewart along,” Bradley said.

  “Uhhhhh, you sure?” Jared asked. “I mean, they may not understand.”

  “They need to know what happened to him. He may be an anomaly, but what if he isn’t? What if there are others like him?” Bradley said.

  “That’s a good point.” Anna said. “Stewart may be one of the first. He’s important.”

  “He certainly thinks so,” Juan broke in, gesturing toward the doorway.

  Stewart was nodding emphatically, the best way he could. Was he getting better at this communication thing?

  "Maybe he can find a mate and make a bunch of little Stewarts," Jared said.

  "That's not..." Anna started.

  Jared grabbed her cheeks in both hands and squished them together slightly. "Anything is possible, if you just...believe," he said, smooshing her face more at the end. She didn't look amused.

  He sighed and pecked her smushed lips.

  “All right. We’ll need to explain before they see him. Harry doesn’t seem like the type to jump the gun…but he does tend to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “You do realize that you just contradicted yourself with two different shooting idioms, right?” Anna brought up, rubbing her cheeks.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You know what I mean.”

  “Let’s load up,” Bradley said, slapping the table.

  “Shotgun,” Anna called and Fletch groaned with a surreptitious look at Stewart.

  ◆◆◆

  “We really need more vehicles,” Fletch said from the back seat. He was uncomfortable sitting near Stewart, who was hanging out in the cargo area.

  He stopped the SUV at the end of his road and looked carefully down the highway on both sides. He could see a good distance each way and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Actually, it was all out of the ordinary, but he saw nothing that would kill them. He picked up the radio. They would need to charge the battery soon or replace it.

  “Captain Anderson, this is Apollo. Over,” he tried. Someday a name would stick, and he wanted it to be a badass one.

  “This is Alpha One. Over,” came the reply.

  “Harry? Over.”

  “Alpha One, Jared. Over.”

  He sighed.

  “What’s my callsign? Over,” Jared asked.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Anna hissed.

  “Badger. Over.”

  Badger? Badger?!

  “What do you want, Badger? Over,” Harry asked.

  “Meet us at your gate in five. Over.”

  “Roger that. Over.”

  “Badger out,” he said sarcastically.

  “You were asking for that one, man,” Bradley said.

  “Whatever.” He drove them down the road a couple of miles to the entrance to Rolling Hills. The holey delivery truck was still parked in front of the entrance. The piles of corpses had been moved down the road a bit. They had been burned. It must have been nasty work, because those were regulars and they just decayed after they were killed. They didn’t blacken.

  “I’m glad to see you decided not to bring along a trail of followers this time,” Harry said, coming through the gate and squeezing around the truck.

  “Maybe next time,” Jared said. “Badger, really? What the hell?”

  “Well, you badger the hell out of me at the worst times. You don’t like it? I can think of something else…” Harry said, cradling his rifle.

  “Yeah, do that,” Jared said. He saw snipers in some windows and the community seemed to be building guard posts along the wall. They were making upgrades.

  “Have you guys had issues with the muties lately?” Jared asked.

  Harry nodded. “The hybrids? Yeah, a bit. A group ran past the wall here a couple of days ago. They didn’t attempt to climb the fence, but we’ve decided to add on to it anyway.”

  “Good idea. Listen, we’ve had a bit of a…snafu, you might say,” Jared said. Bradley got out of the truck and walked over. He held out his hand and Harry shook.

  “Welcome. I’m Harry.”

  “Bradley.”

  “Now what about that snafu you mentioned?” Harry asked, turning back to Jared. Jared opened his mouth to answer, but Bradley interrupted.

  “What do you call the sick ones? The ones that haven’t mutated.”

  “Biters, now. Why?” Harry answered.

  “We’ve discovered a new type. A friendly type,” Bradley emphasized.

  “The hell!”

  “It’s true.” Jared added. “Several weeks ago, when we were at Thompsonville, one of our friends was bitten. He got sick shortly after. We don’t know if the bite caused it or if he was already getting sick anyway.”

  “He changed?” Harry asked.

  “Yes. Several nights ago. We woke up in the middle of the night and he had changed suddenly. We tied him up for a while. Anyway, he actually started to communicate using hand signals. He’s gotten better over the last few days. We let him run loose and he hasn’t attacked any of us. In fact, he actually warned us this morning. He saved our lives.”

  Harry looked dubious, but at least he was listening. “Go on.”

  “A small platoon of muties came out of the treeline behind my house, they rushed us. We couldn’t take them all down, a few got in. We had some inj
uries, but no fatalities. Stewart warned us they were coming. He saved our lives for sure.”

  “Stewart?”

  “That’s his name. He was in my Guard unit. We’ve been friends for a long time,” Bradley said.

  Harry nodded, but furrowed his brow. “I’ve seen some things these last couple of months that I never thought I’d see, never even dreamed of. I expect I’ll be seeing a lot more too, if I live long enough.”

  “We brought him with us,” Jared blurted out.

  Harry’s eyes widened. “Let’s have a look.”

  They went around to the back of the SUV and Bradley opened one door. “Stew, say hi to Harry,” he said.

  Jared watched as Harry walked forward, brushing past him on the way.

  “Aaahhhh,” came Stewart’s greeting.

  “He said hi,” Jared informed him.

  “I’m not deaf!” Harry snapped. “Hi, Stewart. Nice to meet you. You forgive me if I don’t shake hands,” Harry said with a little goofy, nervous chuckle.

  Stewart raised his hands up to show his somewhat uncontrollable fingers. He gave a slight twitch of his shoulders.

  “He’s not quite mastered hand control yet,” Bradley said.

  Harry’s face was a bit pale, but he was taking it well.

  “He wanted us to give him a pistol the other day,” Jared added.

  “Really?” Harry asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I’m glad you folks showed me this. This changes everything on how we’ve been planning to deal with anyone changing inside the walls.”

  “If you can subdue them for a few days and watch them, you might be able to tell if they’ll be like Stewart, or like the others.”

  “There’s something else we wanted to discuss with you, but it might be better if we could come in where it’s safer. Do you have a place inside the walls where we can talk?” Jared asked.

  “Depends,” Harry said cryptically.

  “On what?”

  “You planning on leading trouble inside my walls like you have every other time you come by here? I’m just about flabbergasted that there isn’t a herd of biters on your tail right now,” Harry said.

  “Well, I mean, there could be,” Jared said, looking down the road both ways.

  “Not helping, Jared,” Bradley said.

  Harry sighed. “Come on in. Go back to Elm Street and wait at the ice cream truck. We’ll move it and you can drive in. There is something we need to tell you about too.”

  “Cool beans,” Jared said.

  Harry rolled his eyes and walked back inside his walls.

  ◆◆◆

  “I guess this is the place,” Jared said to Anna as they pulled up next to an extremely creepy ice cream truck.

  “You think kids ever actually chased this thing down for ice cream?” Anna asked doubtfully.

  “I’m thinking no. This thing looks like it chased kids down…for their souls.”

  The ice cream truck was old, maybe thirty years or more, though he wasn’t exactly an expert on ice cream truck models. Its paint was a rusty off-white. A large ice cream cone graced the top. It was cracked and falling apart, and the two large eyes and the smiling mouth didn’t help it look any friendlier. Especially since it was showing all its teeth.

  “Who puts angry eyebrows on an ice cream cone?” he asked them.

  “This thing gives me pedophile vibes, for real,” Fletch said.

  A man came out and waved before jumping in the ice cream truck. He started it up with a loud roar. The engine squealed loudly, and black smoke poured from the exhaust pipe as he pulled forward enough to let them drive through. Jared noticed some bloody handprints on the back door.

  They definitely fit with the overall theme of the truck.

  He pulled inside the opened gate and stopped at the first stop sign. He watched in the rearview mirror as the man moved the truck back and closed the large gate behind them. They were now effectively trapped, and even though Harry seemed like a good guy, he didn’t like the feeling.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Too late now,” Anna said, looking over at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You were thinking that you didn’t like being trapped in here.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” he asked.

  “I can read your face like a book.”

  Not fair.

  Harry came around the corner of a nearby house and motioned him to follow. He let off the gas and turned down the street.

  The houses here were nice, larger than his mom’s. The lots were smaller. The grass and landscaping were way overgrown and he suspected that if the yards looked like this before, their owners would have gotten a hefty warning from the Homeowner’s Association.

  He saw people out on the sidewalks as he drove. They looked at him suspiciously and didn’t wave. He understood that. Besides, they probably wouldn’t have waved at him even in normal times.

  He pulled into a parking lot of a small neighborhood community center. It was heavily guarded by a variety of men, most of whom had some variation of camouflage gear. They looked to be in decent shape, and he was relieved they weren’t armchair warriors.

  Those kinds of people likely wouldn’t last long these days.

  “Ready?” he asked them all. “Fletch, I want you to stay behind and guard the truck and make sure Stewart doesn’t get upset.”

  “You mean make sure Stewart doesn’t start killing the locals.”

  Stewart growled in the back.

  “Damn it, Fletch,” Bradley said. “Just shut up and watch the truck and keep Stewart company. I don’t want any of these people accidentally shooting him.”

  Jared got out and slung his rifle on his back. He wouldn’t go anywhere unarmed these days, not even into seemingly friendly compound. Anna did the same, though she slung her bat instead. Bradley murmured something to Stewart and then joined them.

  “Let’s go,” Jared said and took the lead.

  The men around the door and patrolling the playground watched them suspiciously. It kind of relieved him, knowing that they were alert to possible danger. He hoped this meeting turned out well for both of their groups.

  “Come on in,” Harry said, pushing the door open for them. Inside the room was dim and he realized the large windows had been reinforced somehow. It looked like sheets of tinted fiberglass, but he didn’t know for sure. Maybe they should get some of that for the house.

  Around the walls, large wheeled boxed were stacked six feet high. Shelving took up one side of the large space, and white food grade buckets—much like his basement— filled every available space. It seemed they were pretty well set for this whole ordeal. He wondered if they had done this even before D-Day hit. It seemed likely.

  “We used to rent out this place for birthday parties and reunions and the like,” Harry said, leading them into a large conference room. “It paid for itself over time.”

  “Take a seat,” he told them. He turned to the guard at the door, “Bring in Alpha team and some coffee.”

  Jared sat with Anna to his right, and Bradley to his left.

  “Can I get you folks some water while we wait for the others?” he offered.

  Jared looked at Anna and Bradley; they both shook their heads. “No thanks.”

  “So, you were in the military?” Harry asked Bradley.

  “Yes, Stewart and I were in together. I was only a few years from retirement when this hit.”

  “What rank?”

  “E-7. Sergeant First Class. Stewart was an E-5.”

  “Deployments?” Harry questioned.

  “A few,” Bradley said cryptically.

  “What’s with the interrogation?” Jared asked Harry.

  “I just like to know who I’m dealing with,” Harry said. “I don’t like surprises.”

  “Smart,” Bradley said.

  Alpha team came in then. They were a random assortment of men of all types. They wer
e stern-faced. Jared noticed Cary, the medic, and nodded at him.

  “How’re the scratches?” he asked Anna.

  “They healed well. Not nearly as painful as the gunshot,” she joked.

  “You got shot?!” he said, looking toward his team members.

  She nodded. “There was a sniper at the Dollar Store. It happened right after Jimmy Don Booth helped us out with that herd.”

  Harry gave Alpha team a look and then looked back at them. “That’s kind of what we wanted to speak to you all about. Can I assume that you’re the leader of your group?”

  Jared looked at Anna and Bradley. “I wouldn’t really say that. I mean, Bradley has more leadership experience than I do. I just provide the house,” he joked.

  “Well, for simplicity’s sake, let’s just call you the leader and Bradley your advisor.”

  "What about co-regents? It sounds much cooler."

  "No," Harry said.

  Jared sighed in disappointment and Harry continued. "Your house, your group...Bradley is your second in command."

  Bradley looked skeptical— which he totally understood— but nodded anyway.

  “We’ve gotten word of several threats. I don’t know just how accurate the reports are or even if they’re true, but I figured you needed to know.”

  “What threats?” Bradley asked immediately.

  “You want the bad news first or the worst news first?” Harry asked.

  “Worst,” Jared answered.

  “We’ve gotten reports from various radio operators that there are massive herds moving into more rural areas. Many of them are the ones you call muties. I reckon the attack you had earlier today was one of the first waves. The vanguard, if you will.”

  “Shit,” Jared said, and rubbed his head. “And what’s the better news?”

  “I didn’t say it was better. It’s just as bad, only in a different way.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “There are gangs springing up. Bad ones. They are taking over roadways and some communities. They move in, hit hard, take what they want…men, women, children, supplies. They are ruthless. Most of them are far enough off that we don’t need to worry too much yet, but one is close enough that I think we need to consider it a threat and form some kind of plan soon.”