He reached the area where the vehicles sat parked and got a better look. There were three jeeps, one larger truck, and an armored vehicle. Like many of the cars and trucks in the streets, their doors hung open and a half dozen soldiers lay dead nearby.
Bishop couldn’t fathom why they weren’t wearing proper respiratory gear, but a further inspection of the truck cabs showed several military-grade respirators inside. One man slumped back in the seat of a jeep with his mask half on. The spore cloud must have hit too fast, and he couldn’t don his mask fast enough to keep from dying.
Bishop placed all the masks he found into his backpack along with two sidearms, their ammo, and eight sets of keys. He hit a big score with a military-style rifle and two magazines lying beneath a dead soldier. There was more, but he figured on getting the rest later. Radios and other equipment would claim his backpack space as soon as he found some.
Shouldering the rifle, Bishop produced his cell phone, stepped back, and started taking pictures of the vehicles to show his son. He’d rely on Trevor to tell him which vehicle would suit them best should they leave the area. Gas mileage and maneuverability would determine which one they would take. Maybe they’d take them all and park them at the house. What else did they have to do?
Bishop lowered his cell phone with the realization he couldn’t take a picture without a dead body in it. He placed his rifle and backpack on the ground and tucked his pistol into his belt. Then he started moving bodies out of the way. It was a nasty job, and he wondered if it was worth it. The dead lay everywhere, and his kids had already seen their fair share of it. Still, the father in him dreaded showing his son pictures of the cool vehicles with corpses of soldiers in the background.
With one side of the vehicles clear, Bishop took ten or fifteen pictures, careful to crop the images in tight. Then he circled around to the other side and clicked more.
A low growl sent a sinking feeling through his guts, and movement caught his eye on the right. Bishop stepped back and grabbed his pistol from his belt. He swung his weapon at a small pack of dogs tearing into a corpse with their bloodstained muzzles. Fungus patches marked their fur, and their bellies bulged with human flesh. The largest of the animals, a ragged-looking German Shepherd, bared its teeth and glared at him.
A moment passed before he realized the dogs were not a threat to him as long as he didn’t step any closer. The football field swelled with ready-to-eat doggie meals, so they wouldn’t bother with Bishop. With a glance up the path between the tents, Bishop spied daylight through a tunnel to the street. The soldiers had used it to enter and exit the football field, and Bishop would do the same. He might even move the vehicles to the street and spare the kids from coming inside.
Chore accomplished, he took up his backpack and rifle and made his way between the tents to the center of the field. He glanced up at the dish, certain it was a satellite dish by the way it faced the sky.
Coming around to one of the FEMA tents, Bishop scrutinized the command center. The prefabricated building was a sharp gun metal color covered in streaks of crimson and black mold. Soldiers lay dead, defending the front door from a dozen or more citizens. Some citizens had torn off the soldiers’ respirator masks while others lay shot to pieces.
Bishop’s eyes lifted to the front door with a tinge of excitement. It lay open, and with a little luck, he’d find a functional satellite phone inside. Bishop stepped over corpses and ascended three stairs to a small deck, tilting his head to listen.
When no sounds greeted his ears, he edged across the threshold and took in what appeared to be a communication center. Computer monitors hung on the walls. Some of them flashed or buzzed with white noise, and “disconnected” messages blinked in green along the bottom.
A short section of cubicles ran down the center of the room with military personnel slumped in their chairs after suffocating on spores. Some lay in the aisles or near the door, as if they’d tried to keep people from getting in. Fungus reached into the room several feet, though it hadn’t cocooned everything like out in the field.
With a sigh, Bishop made his way around the room, checking each soldier for helpful items. The dead personnel neither wore sidearms nor carried radios, though they still wore their headsets. On the near side of the room, a computer remained on, cursor blinking in the dark. Easing aside the soldier stationed there, he reached out and moved the computer mouse. The computer woke up from hibernation, and the screen flickered to life. He blinked at a prompt requesting a password to login to the FEMA Integrated System, or FIS.
“Too bad I don’t know the password,” he mumbled to himself, straightening, eyes searching the other three doors in the room.
More lights flickered from the room opposite him, glinting off his visor, so Bishop circled the row of cubicles and approached the open door. A peek inside revealed a smaller room with a tighter cluster of buzzing monitors and computers, though it was hard to see due to the paltry light inside the room.
Bishop shrugged off his backpack and rifle and placed them on the floor. He removed a flashlight from the pack and clicked it on. The light hit the ceiling, and he adjusted his grip and guided it down into the room. A soldier lay dead across a large console with an officer lying to the side against the desk. Bishop noted the officer’s hair tangled with mold that dripped down like moss.
The console drew his eye. It appeared to be a communication set with blinking buttons and four small screens. A large cell phone with a thick antenna rested above a row of buttons. The buttons on the phone blinked, and a power cable stretched from the phone into a power port in the wall.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Bishop said, eager to have the device in his hand, certain it was a satellite phone.
He stepped into the room, eyes focused on the phone until crunching and slobbering sounds stopped him. His shoulders clenched as a low growl rose from whatever it feasted on, and an instinctual fear gripped his chest.
Bishop turned in place, a slow maneuver that caused his flashlight beam to trace along the wall until it fell upon a massive dog slavering over the corpse of a soldier. It was an enormous beast. A Rottweiler, if he could peg the thing. Fungus ate into the beast’s flesh and covered its bloody muzzle. Lips drew back from inch-long fangs as a deep chest growl vibrated the room.
The beast raised its fungus-flecked eyes to Bishop and lunged.
Chapter 2
Bishop, Ft. Collins, Colorado
Bishop fired a single shot before the dog was on him. Its hundred- and twenty-pound frame slammed him against the wall, jaws snarling and snapping, saliva splattering his respirator mask.
Holding it away from him with his left hand, Bishop raised the gun and brought the butt down on the beast’s head. The jaws snapped over his wrist and clamped down tight, forcing his hand to open and his weapon to clatter to the floor. With a tremendous heave, he lifted the beast and tossed it into the control room.
The dog hit the floor and skidded into one of the office chairs, spilling a dead soldier on top of it. Bishop snatched the satellite phone off the desk and went for his gun, but the dog wormed from beneath the corpse and charged.
Pain lancing from his wrist to his elbow, Bishop dropped the phone and crouched in a tackling position. He caught the dog in mid-leap, spun, and threw the beast into the wall like he’d thrown ball carriers a thousand times before. The Rottweiler slammed into the prefabricated wall, busting it out and flying into the next room in a crash of slavering dog and flimsy metal.
Bishop found the satellite phone and pistol, where he’d dropped them on the floor, and scrambled back into the control room. He stuffed the phone into his backpack and shouldered the pack and his rifle, heading for the door. The Rottweiler’s claws scrambled on the slick floor as it struggled to leap back through the hole in the wall.
He didn’t wait around to see if it made it through.
Right wrist held away from him, Bishop leapt from the stairs and ran toward the military vehicles. He spared
several glances behind him until the massive Rottweiler scrambled from the building and rushed down the stairs. Its sides heaved as it huffed and growled, barreled after him with glaring black eyes.
Realizing he couldn’t outrun the beast, Bishop turned and raised his pistol in his left hand. He fired one round as a warning shot, and the dog snapped to a stop thirty yards away.
“Stay away!” he shouted, jaw clenched against the pain in his wrist. He didn’t need to look at the wound to know the fangs had bitten clean through, and his coveralls were stained with blood.
The dog lowered its head and growled, and Bishop retreated with his wounded wrist pulled in close and his pistol raised. He glanced to his right at the small pack of dogs that had been feasting. The gunshot had scattered some toward the exit, though they’d stopped and looked back at him with their ears raised.
The ratty German Shepherd remained by its food, eyes on Bishop with one ear up and the other flopped over to the side.
“I know when I’m not wanted,” he winced through the pain as he continued to back up.
Once he’d gotten fifty yards away, Bishop turned and jogged to the stairs, climbing them until he reached the top and stood on the street in relative safety, breathing heavy, his mask fogging up around the bottom. He lifted his wrist and watched as a small amount of blood showed through the ripped coveralls, his skin torn beneath the material. As he trudged hurriedly around the stadium, Bishop wondered about the implications of the spores getting into an open wound.
He didn’t want to press his wound to his side, because the spores were all over him. The wound might stay clean if he allowed it to bleed out. Leaving a trail of blood behind, eyes pinned forward without concern for danger, he made his way back to his SUV.
He popped the hatchback and placed the rifle and backpack inside before opening a plastic bin where they kept some emergency supplies. Bishop removed a spray bottle filled with disinfectant and sprayed it on his wrist. Then, taking a clean bandage, he wrapped it around the wound to keep any additional spores out. He would do a more thorough job at home.
Slamming the hatchback shut, he got in the vehicle, started it up, and traveled south on State Route 287 until he reached his neighborhood. He guided the vehicle around turns at a feverish pace, eyes pinned to the road as he swerved around bodies and wrecks.
Bishop pulled the Lincoln into the driveway, slammed it into park, and shut it off. He got out of the truck, happy to hear the home generator still going strong. Francis had done a number on the machine with his hammer, and Bishop doubted his ability to fix it. After a cursory inspection, he only needed to repair two smashed wires with electrical tape and unjam some buttons on the control panel. The generator had started up after that, providing his family with much needed electricity.
Bishop retrieved his backpack and rifle from the back of the Lincoln and circled to the back of the house. He stepped inside, placing his goods just inside the door before he removed his coveralls, careful not to brush anything against his wrist while he scrubbed himself with disinfectant.
The dog had torn his skin along the bottom edge of his wrist, missing the vital tendons and veins. It was bleeding enough to soak through the material, but not enough to require stitches. He sprayed cleaner into the wound, hissing through his teeth as the chemicals inflamed the nerves.
Bishop shoved his clothes into the bleach sink to soak and passed through their decontamination areas, where he scrubbed up, removed his mask, and declared himself clean. He found the first aid kit hanging on the wall near the exit and grabbed a tube of Neosporin. He squirted some antiseptic into the wound and rubbed it in with a Q-Tip before placing a bandage over it.
Bishop stepped between the plastic flaps and past the air filtration units to a table with fresh clothing. He put on a pair of jeans and sat in a chair to pull on some fresh cotton socks.
The basement door opened, and Riley called down. “Are you okay, Dad?”
Trevor added. “Did you get the satellite phone?”
“I got the phone, and I’m fine,” Bishop replied, then he remembered to be more truthful with the kids. “Actually, I got bit by a dog.”
“What?” Riley exclaimed, followed by two pairs of feet flying down the stairs.
“Hey, wait a minute!” he boomed in his deep voice. The kids screeched to a halt at the bottom of the stairs after coming around the corner into view. Bishop held up his bandaged wrist for them to see. “I disinfected it right away, but I could be contagious.”
Riley’s eyes watered, and her head shook from side to side. “No.”
“You might have rabies, too,” Trevor added with concern.
“Don’t worry, kids,” he assured them. “I’m probably fine. The wound isn’t deep, and it missed anything vital. It looks worse than it is. I need to stay down here for a day or two to ensure I don’t show any symptoms.”
“What symptoms?”
“I don’t know,” Bishop admitted. “I mean, I didn’t breathe it in, so maybe I’m one hundred percent fine.”
Riley’s bottom lip started to pout, though she drew it in. “You better be okay.”
“It’s just a precaution,” he said with a comforting smile. “Can you bring me the bed pad off our bed? I’ll sleep on it until I’m out of quarantine.”
“Okay,” Riley replied, and the girl dashed up the stairs to do his bidding.
“Hey,” Bishop said to the sullen boy. “Besides the phone, I got some great pictures of military vehicles parked down at the stadium. I was thinking we can pick one up, or all of them.”
“Awesome.” Trevor’s face lit up. “Can you share them with me from your phone?”
“You bet. Give me a few minutes to disinfect all the gear.”
“All right,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”
“Nope. Hey, you and your sister will have to run things while I’m out. Work on a shift schedule, check the windows twice an hour, and make sure you’re finding things to do.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Great.”
His son climbed the stairs, leaving Bishop alone in their half-finished basement. Half-finished wasn’t the right word for it; barely finished fit better. Some furniture sat in storage on the far side, along with several boxes of old books.
Without his computer, Bishop planned on browsing through the boxes of books to keep himself entertained. He recalled having some Stephen King hardbacks and some epic fantasy selections.
“That ought to keep me busy. But first...”
Bishop stood and entered the decontamination area, spraying down the plastic walls. Donning his filtration mask, he sprayed down his backpack and removed and cleaned all the items inside: the keys, the guns, and the satellite phone.
He cleaned the phone last, staring at the display with the full power bar. The connection bars at the top remained strong, too, and his hopes rose with the possibility of finally reaching the outside world. Bishop exited the decontamination area and placed the weapons on a row of shelves against the wall.
Bishop sat down and stared at the display for a long time before he bucked up the courage to try a number. With a hopeful sigh, he dialed Kim’s cell phone, clicked the call button, and put it to his ear.
Chapter 3
Kim Shields, Yellow Springs, Ohio
“All systems go,” Kim said as she pulled out of Yellow Springs and got on I-70.
“I read you loud and clear,” Bryant said through Mobile Unit XI’s cabin speakers. We’ll stay in constant satellite contact, so you can raise us quick if you run into any problems. We’ll try to have someone on the line at all times.”
“Thanks,” Kim grinned. “And take it easy on that hip. You look sad, hobbling around like an old man.”
Bryant chuckled. “I’m definitely not in fighting shape. You say your husband is an athlete? Maybe he’ll work with me after you bring them back.”
“He was an athlete.” A smile creased her lips as she glanced down at the picture on
the bus’s dashboard. It was Bishop, Trevor, and Riley slammed together on the couch during a movie spree, grinning like fools after spotting Kim taking their picture.
She’d printed the image out at the CDC facility and kept it in her back pocket. “He’s not so athletic anymore, since he spends most of his time behind a computer screen. Still, he’s a huge guy. He’s my teddy bear.” She spoke that last part squeamishly, blushing at sharing a part of her private life with the Lieutenant Colonel.
“Ew, that’s mushy,” a girl’s voice squeaked over the speakers.
“Fiona!” Kim cried, slapping the steering wheel. “You’re not supposed to be listening!”
Bryant chuckled doubly hard, and the little girl giggled wildly. Kim laughed along with them, filling her heart with hope. She’d made a good friend in Bryant, and Fiona continued to be the perfect angel. Paul had taken several vials of the girl’s blood, so they didn’t need her for the cure. She could get back to being a little girl again.
“I’m sure you’ll get along great,” she smiled. “Bishop, Riley, Trevor, and you goofballs.”
With a glance down at the picture again, she focused on her children. Trevor was a clever kid, and he’d be as tall as his father one day. Riley’s hair lay thick and curly on her shoulders, dyed with shocks of gold. “They’re super smart kids. And friendly, too.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he spoke with quiet respect. “You’re their mom.”
“Jeesh, you sure know how to make a lady blush,” Kim shot.
“You started it,” Bryant fired back playfully, then he got down to business. “So, it’s a straight shot to Denver down I-70, right? You’ll pass through Indianapolis and Kansas City. Now, we have some military forces in both towns, so if you run into any trouble, let me know.”
“I don’t plan on stopping.” Kim’s eyes flicked to a monitor on the dashboard and traced their location along I-70. “And Mobile Unit XI has GPS, so I can’t get lost.”
Spore Series | Book 3 | Fight Page 2
