Author: W.J. Lundy
Date: 2018-06-29 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror; Post Apocalyptic; Fiction; Apocalyptic; Science Fiction
Description: From the best story tellers of Phalanx Press comes a frightening tale of Armageddon. It spread fast- no time to understand it- let alone learn how to fight it. Once it reached you, it was too late. All you could do is run. Rumored safe zones and potential for a cure drifted across the populace, forcing tough decisions to be made. They say only the strong survive. Well they forgot about the smart, the inventive and the lucky. Follow five different groups from across the U.S.A. as they make their way to what could be America’s last stand in the Lone Star State.
Publisher: Phalanx Press
Rights: Copyright 2018 WJ Lundy. All rights reserved.

Five Roads to Texas

WJ Lundy

Rich Baker

Brian Parker

Allen Gamboa

Joseph Hansen

Illustrated by AJ Powers

Edited by Sara Jones

Contents

FIVE ROADS TO TEXAS

DISCLAIMER

FOREWORD

Prologue

1. Georgetown, Washington, DC

2. Georgetown, Washington, DC

3. GNN Broadcast Center, Atlanta, Georgia

4. National Harbor, Washington, DC

5. Gulf of Mexico

6. Near Gallaudet University, Washington, DC

7. Georgetown, Washington, DC

8. Highway 101, Eureka, California

9. Eureka, California

10. Near Klamath, California

11. Sheldon Lake, Michigan

12. Sheldon Lake, Michigan

13. Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

14. Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

15. Denver, Colorado

16. Near Klamath, California

17. Near Klamath, California

18. Denver, Colorado

19. Longmont, Colorado

20. Denver, Colorado

21. Longmont, Colorado

22. Sheldon Lake, Michigan

23. Crescent City, California

24. Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

25. Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

26. Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

27. Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

28. Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

29. Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

30. Sheldon Lake, Michigan

31. Lake Michigan

32. Lake Michigan

33. Lake Michigan

34. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan City, Indiana

35. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan City, Indiana

36. Near Aspen, Colorado

37. Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

38. Near Hope, Missouri

39. Near Cooper Hill, Missouri

40. Atlanta, Georgia

41. Mountain Grove, Missouri

42. Colorado’s Powderhorn Wilderness

43. Outside Cuchillo, New Mexico

44. Joshua W. Soto Physical Fitness Center, Fort Bliss, Texas.

45. Near Edwardsville, Alabama

46. Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

47. Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

48. Austin High School, El Paso, Texas

49. Georgetown, Washington, DC

50. Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

51. Blacksburg, Virginia

52. Kilgore, Texas

53. El Paso, Texas

54. Outside El Paso, Texas

55. Fort Bliss, Texas

56. Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

57. El Paso, Texas

Epilogue

_________________________________

Sixth Cycle

The Invasion Trilogy

Dead Island: Operation Zulu

INVASION OF THE DEAD SERIES

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Zombie Rush

Zed’s World

Grudge

The Path of Ashes

As the Ash Fell

Human Element

This book was formatted by

FIVE ROADS TO TEXAS

a Phalanx Press Collaboration

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Notice: The views expressed herein are NOT endorsed by the United States Government, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or the Department of the Army.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2018 by Phalanx Press

All rights reserved. Published by Phalanx Press.

www.PhalanxPress.com

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

FOREWORD

JL Bourne, author of the Day by Day Armageddon & Tomorrow War series

“You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your city.” ~ Phillip II of Macedon

The Spartans’ response was, “If.”

Welcome to Phalanx Press. We’re a small guild of authors that still believe in free expression, an increasingly rare mind space, independent of the winds of so-called social justice or the constraints of draconian corporate control. Phalanx authors are businessmen, truck drivers, military officers and NCOs, cubical warriors, troublemakers, Lincoln republicans, libertarians, Kennedy democrats, thought criminals, and sometimes, gentlemen.

We are the Phalanx. Our shields overlap, like the words in this tome, forming a compelling tale of danger and adventure.

Zombies? Texas? I’ve been there before, and I know what you’re thinking. What could Phalanx possibly bring to the table to keep this genre alive?

The zombie pop culture craze died with George Romero, may he rest in peace.

We didn’t write this because it’s popular or unpopular. We wrote it because we still love the genre and know that there are still exciting stories to be told in the bleak post-apocalyptic landscapes of Texas and beyond.

If you turn the page, we will frighten and entertain you. We will drop you into gripping scenes of action and heartache, while introducing you to unforgettable characters, and keeping you up way past your bedtime.

“If.”

Keep your doors locked—

J.L. Bourne

Author of Day by Day Armageddon and Tomorrow War

Pensacola, Florida-2018

Prologue

Brazilian Highlands Rainforest, March 25th

As the helicopter orbited the remote village, Riley Erickson could see fires burning on the ground. Smoke billowed, forming thick black clouds that blocked out the sunlight. She glanced at the file in her hand and opened it, once again examining the photos of mangled bodies and faces frozen in rage. She looked up, startled when a man in a khaki jacket to her front touched her arm. He smiled at her and pointed at his wrist.

“We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes,” he said. “What exactly are we after here, Doc?”

She pursed her lips and put away the folder. “I’m not sure. A few days ago, reports started coming in that people in this village were acting erratically. The government thought it might be another rebellion or something to do with the drug trade, so they sent in teams. It took them a day to regain control of the village. After they did, they noticed some of the survivors continued to get ill, and violent.”

He looked up at her suspiciously. The man, Johnathan Reid, wasn’t a doctor or any sort of medical professional; he was part of a State Department Personal Security Detail. Riley had tried to refuse the extra baggage, but at the last minute before her flight, her superiors had insisted the man tag along. And now, looking at the updated file information she’d received on the ground at the Nova Republica Airfield, she knew why. Whatever was happening deep in the Brazilian rainforest was getting worse. It was her job to find out what it was.

“Is it a new drug?” Reid asked.

She shrugged and looked at him. “Could be, or an infectious disease, maybe just another uprising. It’s too early to say.”

Riley reached down for her medical bag and removed a paper mask that she snapped over her mouth and passed an identical one to Johnathan. The bodyguard held the mask like it was a tissue and looked at her. “Is this really necessary?”

Riley nodded. “Until we’re sure it’s not infectious, we should be cautious.”

Johnathon shrugged and put the mask on but let it hang around his neck. The helicopter was on the final approach, and he readied himself next to the door. Seconds after the landing gear made contact with the ground, the door slid open and Johnathan stepped outside. He turned back to face her. “Get your sample and we get out.”

She nodded, but Johnathan kept his eyes on her. “I have to know that you understand,” he said. “This bird will stay running. Meet your contact, get the blood samples, and we go. It isn’t safe here—and I’m not just talking about whatever it is making these people nuts. There are over a hundred flavors of criminals in this jungle, and I’m not eager to meet any of them.”

Losing patience at being spoken to like a child, Riley moved up in the seat and pushed past him. She stepped into the humid air and walked away from the landing pad, carrying her backpack over her left arm. As she walked, she searched the surroundings. She saw men in olive-green uniforms setting fire to buildings while people were herded together in small, confined crowds under armed guard. She’d seen similar overreactions in the Congo. Government forces there quelled entire villages to put down some perceived outbreak. Easily treated things like Cholera were mistaken for Ebola, and hundreds of lives were lost in the ensuing panic.

At the end of one of the masses she saw the man she was looking for: a Brazilian medical chief. Paulo Aguirre was tall and middle-aged, and his silver hair hung down over dark-brown skin. He was standing near the edge of the civilians, speaking into a cell phone, but as he saw Riley approach, he ended the call and hastily approached her. “Doctor Erickson, I hope the trip was kind to you,” he said.

Riley looked past the man, to the rounded-up villagers. “What’s going on here?” she asked. “Why are you holding them like that?”

Paulo frowned. “We’ve failed to contain it. These people will be moved to quarantine, but until we have transportation, we have to keep them in small, manageable groups in case one is infected. We can’t risk one infecting all of them.”

Turning her head, she pointed to the burning homes. “And the fire?”

“The military has ordered the entire village be burned, even the dead.”

“What exactly is it you are trying to prevent the spread of?” she asked, growing frustrated at the treatment of innocent people. “Where are the samples?”

Paulo looked around him then stepped closer to her. “There is more you should know. Please, follow me.” The doctor turned and quickly stepped away, toward a row of covered bodies near the edge of the village. Apprehensive now, Riley looked back to make sure Johnathan was close by. The large bodyguard hadn’t spoken, but he was shadowing her, sticking close behind, his eyes scanning for threats. She could see he was nervous about being on the ground, and now having seen the danger firsthand, she was feeling guilty for blowing off his warning. He looked down at her and nodded, okaying her to follow the doctor.

The man was kneeling over the row of bodies, and he pulled back a long white sheet, revealing the faces of four men, all of them clearly not native to the village. The bodies had blood seeping from the eyes and ears, gunshot wounds to their heads. “Who are they?” Riley asked.

Paulo shook his head. “I don’t know, but these two are Korean, and the other men are Iranian—all of their papers say they are Lebanese.”

“Why would you think they were Iranian?”

Pointing to one of the dead men, Paulo said, “Because he told me before the soldiers killed him. He was early symptomatic when we arrived, but soon his behavior changed and he attacked my staff.”

Riley pointed at the bodies. “It doesn’t look like any disease killed these men. It looks like your soldiers did the killing.”

Paulo clenched his jaw, causing Johnathan to move closer. “You don’t understand; they were dangerous.”

She shook off his comment and looked around the nearby area. “Where are the rest of your people, the rest of your staff?” Riley asked.

Paulo shook his head and looked away. “Doctor Erickson, why are these men in Central Brazil? Why were they here?” he asked, ignoring the question and pointing to the bodies of the dead foreigners.

A scream, followed by several gunshots, erupted on the far side of the village. Riley turned to move toward it, but Johnathan stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “It’s okay,” Paulo said. “It’s one of the containment groups.”

“How is that okay?” Riley asked, her tone turning harsh as more gunfire filled the air.

“If anyone in one of the groups shows signs of violence, the soldiers will shoot them.”

Disgusted, Riley tried to move toward the shooting. “You’re executing people for being sick?” she shouted.

Johnathan reached out and stopped her. “Doctor, the sample. Please, we need to go.”

Paulo, overhearing the large man, moved quickly to a set of boxes on the ground near the bodies. “Yes, of course, the samples. And you should take this too,” he said, retuning and handing Riley an olive-green case.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s filled with notes, things these men had in their possession. I don’t know the language, but perhaps you can get help with it.”

A woman in a nearby group screamed and attacked another civilian next to her. A soldier raised his rifle to take the pair out as more people rose from the group and overwhelmed him. Other nearby soldiers panicked and fired into the group. Small clusters of villagers began to scream and broke up as the soldiers fired at the fleeing people. No longer debating, Johnathan grabbed Riley by the arm and turned her toward the helicopter, pushing her ahead. She began to protest that she needed to get more information from Paulo but was cut short.

Riley screamed as a round zipped past her and hit the Brazilian doctor just above the right eye. Johnathan pushed her into a crouch and rushed her toward the waiting helicopter. As they ran, she could see that a mob of people were chasing after them. Riley sprinted and reached the open door just as she heard Johnathan’s weapon fire. Turning back, she realized her bodyguard had turned and was firing at the attackers.

The villagers were moving quickly, some of them running directly at Johnathan, trying to tackle him to the ground. He fought hard, swinging with his left hand as he fired into their bodies point-blank with the handgun. He continued moving backward as he fought, until he was in the opening of the door, screaming at the pilots to take off. He reloaded his weapon and continued firing as the helicopter left the ground and circled over the village. Looking down, Riley could see that the place was lost. There were no more neatly arranged groups of villagers waiting to be quarantined. Instead, she saw masses of bodies pouncing and chasing after panicked soldiers.

Johnathan slammed the cabin door shut and fell back into his seat. “What the hell was that?” he shouted.

“I don’t know. You saw what they were doing, they were executing the infected. What would you do if you saw your family members and neighbors murdered?”

Johnathan let out a sadistic laugh and holstered his pistol. “I think we saw two different things, Doc. I saw some rabid-ass people with bloodlust. They were out-of-their-bodies crazy.” He stopped and adjusted his shirt then looked back at her. “Did you get what you needed?”

She nodded, then looked at his arm. There was a trickle of blood moving down his elbow. “You’re hurt,” she stated.

Johnathan straightened his arm, looking at the cut on his right bicep. He removed a bandana from his pocket and tied it around the wound. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll get it looked at when we get back to DC.”

1

Georgetown, Washington, DC

March 26th

“Ugh,” Lincoln groaned, scratching idly at his crotch. His fingers brushed against something waxy, and he felt along the strange object. Flakes of dried material fell off onto his thighs as he searched for the end of the offending object. When he reached the end, his nose crinkled in disgust; it was filled with a squishy fluid.

“The fuck?” he muttered, pushing the cover away from his body to examine his dick. Sure enough, he’d passed out with a condom on.

Again.

He gripped the base of the prophylactic and slid it up and off of himself, ensuring that he squeezed the base as it came off so the end results of last night’s escapade didn’t spill out onto his legs or stomach. Not like it wouldn’t have been the first time that happened, but he really didn’t want to deal with that right now because he didn’t remember shit about the night before.

A bit of movement to his left made him aware that whomever he’d brought home with him from the bar had stayed the night. Lincoln adjusted the elbow on his non-condom-holding arm and lifted himself up slightly to see if he could figure out who the hell was in his house.

The person lay on their stomach, facing away from him. Pale skin, thin body, a full-sleeve tattoo of skulls and flowers—were they roses?—short black hair, cropped close…

Fuck! Lincoln screamed in his mind, fighting to keep quiet. He didn’t know what the fuck had happened, but somehow he’d brought home a guy. From the bar. And he had a condom on his dick.

He jumped out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, closing the door lightly behind him. He took a few more giant steps across the open space and into the small room that held the toilet. He closed the door and locked it.

Lincoln flung the full condom into the toilet, something he normally would have never done, and sat down on the seat. He crossed one arm over his stomach and brought his other hand up to his mouth, holding his chin in horror. Too late, he realized it was the hand that’d held the condom, and he tore it away from his face, retching in disgust.

“How the fuck did I bring home a dude?” he whispered to himself as he rocked back and forth. “I’m not gay. I’ve never even had any real gay thoughts, except maybe a threesome or something…Fuck!” He continued to chastise himself in a harsh, barely audible whisper for fear of waking up the guy in his bedroom.

He thought about what to do. He could stay on the toilet until the guy left. Yeah, that’s a good plan, he thought. He’d stay in this tiny room, without water—his mouth tasted like he’d been licking cat balls. Goddamn it! He probably had been licking balls. What was wrong with him?

What the fuck did Carlos give me? he wondered, silently this time. He remembered drinking with Kurt, Jimmie, and Kevin, aka “The Crew.” They’d been friends since freshman year at Georgetown, where they were on the same rowing crew—well, Kurt hadn’t joined their team until sophomore year, but that wasn’t really the point. It was about—

Focus, goddamn it!

He’d been drinking with The Crew down at the 1776 Tavern, and Carlos, the bartender, was pouring heavy-handed drinks for his four regulars. They were having a great time, celebrating the announcement that Kevin had just found out his wife, Juanita, was pregnant with a boy. Sure, they’d been happy for him when they first found out that she was pregnant, but now that she was having a boy? Kevin couldn’t be happier. Lincoln remembered alternating between tequila and whiskey, but—

The sound of his shower turning on in the next room made him pause. Actually, it made him freak the fuck out. “What the fuck, man?” he whispered, opening the door a crack.

The dude’s back was to him, his long, slender arm testing the water temperature. His naked ass pointed right at him, which reminded him of the full condom he’d found dried to his dick a few minutes ago. Lincoln retched again and forced himself to look at the guy in his bathroom. He looked awful feminine from behind, standing up and leaning into the shower. Maybe he’d thought it was a woman at the bar, and then came back home with him.

That had to be it. He’d been tricked by a transvestite or something. The Lord knows there’s a lot of them in DC.

Lincoln closed the door quietly. What the fuck was he supposed to do with this? If the guys from The Crew knew about this, they’d never let him live it down. Jimmie especially.

Jimmie was gay, and totally cool, but if he found out that Lincoln had drunken homosexual sex with some stranger, he would tease him relentlessly. Lincoln was by far the most masculine out of the four of them. He was a simple man’s man—or so he thought until he woke up next to a guy this morning.

“Fuck me,” he mumbled. “Does that mean I’m… I’m…” He couldn’t even complete the sentence.

No, surely not, he told himself. It was a mistake of some kind. Maybe the two of them had just passed out together. Naked. With a full condom on Lincoln’s dick.

“Goddamn it!” Lincoln screamed in frustration.

“Everything okay in there?” the guy asked in a higher-pitched voice than Lincoln was expecting.

“Uh, yeah, sure, dude,” he replied. “My stomach just hurts.”

“Probably all that street meat you were eating at four this morning,” he countered.

Fuck you, Lincoln mouthed. Was “street meat” that guy’s euphemism for alleyway blowjobs? Seriously, what did I drink? Did I get roofied?

That had to be it. Lincoln got roofied at the bar by that dude out there and was sexually assaulted. He thought about trying to call the police, but he’d come into the bathroom naked as a jay bird. His phone was…somewhere. Hopefully somewhere in the house.

“Damn,” he mumbled.

“Seriously,” the guy said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I can’t wait to try that brunch restaurant on the Washington Harbor you said you’d take me to. That Irish-sounding place.”

“Uh…”

“You said they have the biggest shrimp in the city,” he continued. “Reminds me of something big I got to eat last night.”

“Oookay,” Lincoln said, standing up and pushing the door to the toilet room open violently. “I don’t know what happened last night, but this isn’t what—”

A thin girl stood under the showerhead’s running water. Her breasts were smallish, maybe a very small B-cup if he was being generous, with dull-pink nipples, and even without flexing, she had a firm, flat stomach with the upper set of abs showing. Her hips only had a slight curve to them, which had helped to fuel Lincoln’s belief that she was a guy when he saw her from behind. The distinct lack of male genitalia down south made him breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

“Get an eyeful, lover boy?”

“Huh?”

“I see you watching me,” she replied. “You certainly didn’t seem so shy last night.”

“I, uh…” He couldn’t remember what he’d wanted to say as he stared at her hairless nether regions.

“Okay, you’ve had your fill,” the woman said, splashing water at the shower door. “Quit staring. It’s kind of creeping me out, Linc.”

“Huh? Oh! Sorry.” He coughed and turned around quickly without realizing she’d used a shortened form of his name until he was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. He actually liked it; the name reminded him of the conquering explorer from his favorite video game as a kid. Then he felt stupid for standing there naked with his back to her. “I’m just gonna go out there.”

“Mmm hmm.”

Lincoln went into his bedroom and examined the floor. A pair of pink panties with black polka dots rested on the carpet on the side of the bed where the girl had slept. Her bra was sitting atop a crumpled pair of jeans in the doorway. There wasn’t any sight of her shoes or shirt. He walked out into the living room and saw the shirt on the arm of his couch, and her shoes, a pair of simple white sandals with a few sparkly jewel things on the straps, sat near the front door.

He found his phone on the coffee table and sat down heavily on the couch.

Thumbing his way through the text messages, he realized that Kevin had to leave around one o’clock in the morning, and the rest of The Crew decided to call it a night as well. He apparently hadn’t wanted to go because of his newfound Georgetown buddy, so they left him in the capable hands of “Sidney.”

“Huh,” he grunted, this time in an acknowledgement of the odd night instead of the questioning huh he’d given the girl—Sidney?—a few moments earlier.

“You always sit on your couch butt-assed naked?” the girl asked as she came into the room with a towel wrapped around her body. Upon further investigation, her hair, which had seemed so damning when they were in bed together, was cut short on the sides until a few inches above her ears, then it was about five or six inches long. Lincoln thought it would’ve been nice to have seen that before he went through ten minutes of a serious freak-out session on the toilet.

“Uh, no. Not normally,” he said, grabbing a cushion and placing it over his lap. “I was just trying to give you a little privacy…”

“Oh. Okay, thanks. The shower’s open if you want to hop in,” she offered cheerfully.

“Yeah, I need to.”

She reached out and tousled his hair. “Yeah you do, Tiger. Go get cleaned up. I mean it, you promised me an absolutely fabulous brunch, and I’m going to collect on it.”

“’Kay. The kitchen’s in there. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“All right. I’m just gonna watch TV. Where’s your remote?”

“Ahh…” He searched between the couch cushions until his fingers wrapped around the hard, oblong surface of the remote control. “Here you go,” he said, standing and then handing her the remote.

For some reason, he became self-conscious and covered his dick with the cushion as she slid between him and the couch. She plopped down and leaned back, the towel dangerously close to exposing her crotch. “Hope you don’t mind, but I used some of your toothpaste—don’t worry! I used my finger, not your toothbrush. That’s gross.”

“No, I don’t mind,” he replied truthfully. “I’ll, ah, only be a few minutes.” He tossed the cushion over her, to the corner, before rushing back into his bedroom.

Lincoln showered quickly and dried off with a hand towel. He only had one towel and “Sidney” was using it. He finished by brushing his teeth and putting on deodorant. He considered cologne, put it back in the cabinet, and then took it out again. “Why not?” he muttered and splashed a little onto his chest.

A few moments later, he was dressed in a pair of shorts, a respectable polo shirt, and a pair of flip-flops, which Jimmie told him were horrifically out of style and that he should be wearing a boat shoe—preferably Sperry.

He walked out of the bedroom and saw Sidney leaning forward, watching the television intently. “What’s up?”

She clicked it off and stood up, tucking the edge of the towel back into the top, near her cleavage. “Some weird shit out in California and up north, in Michigan and Wisconsin,” she said. “The news doesn’t really know what’s going on, but they think there might be a solar flare blotting out the satellite and cell phone coverage everywhere except the East Coast.”

“Hmph,” he grunted. Lincoln was a simple mid-level manager at a tech startup. He didn’t know anything about solar flares or how any of that shit worked. He just knew that when he placed a call, it worked, and when he watched TV, it worked. The technical stuff had always bored him to tears—which is why he managed the engineers and wasn’t one of them.

“That’s so far away,” he stated. “It shouldn’t mess up our brunch plans.”

She glanced at the television’s blank screen, then back at him. He saw her chew absently, and endearingly, on her lower lip.

“You’re right.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Let me get dressed. If brunch is as good as you promised, maybe you’ll get a chance at Round Three afterwards.”

Round Three? he mused, careful to keep his thoughts hidden as he smiled warmly. I don’t even remember Round One, let alone Round Two.

For the tenth time that morning, he wondered just what in the hell he’d been drinking last night.

2

Georgetown, Washington, DC

March 26th

Georgetown was far enough away from the nonstop hustle and bustle of the District to seem like a different city entirely, especially given the steep hills of the neighborhood. Sidney enjoyed walking around the area and often made the short journey from where she lived in neighboring Dupont Circle. She glanced furtively at Lincoln beside her. Maybe I can come over here more often now.

She lived in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment about a mile from here with her cat, Rick James, and went to school full-time at Georgetown Law. At thirty-one, she’d been an attorney for a little over four years, all of them at Refugee Assistance International, a nonprofit that helped international refugees find housing, food, and employment when they were brought to the United States. She’d been hired on at RAI after a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, where she’d spent a year in Senegal and a year in Bangladesh, learning to survive on her meager earnings. RAI was rewarding work, but she’d begun to want a little more out of life than simply earning enough money to pay her rent and buy food, which is why she was back at school, earning her LLM in Healthcare Law. She hoped to use that degree as a springboard into a new position somewhere that would pay a little more, while still allowing her to help those in need.

It was, in her mind, a novel idea to earn money doing what she loved while helping others. The few law school classmates that she still maintained contact with were earning six figures, had nice homes, and didn’t worry about money as far as she knew. Why shouldn’t she be able to expand her lifestyle just a teensy bit?

“So, this is the Castle,” Lincoln said, gesturing around them at the older, but grand-scale buildings.

Georgetown Law’s campus was separate from the main campus, downtown near Union Station, so while she’d been in the neighborhood often enough, this was the first time Sidney had been here on the main Georgetown campus. She dutifully looked around, impressed by the small campus, but not really caring about the architecture, which Lincoln seemed to enjoy. She didn’t mind though; it was a beautiful spring day, and she loved being outside after the long, dreary DC winter. The sun was shining, and she thought she might actually like this guy, even if she had met him at a bar when he was already well on his way to being hammered—usually a warning indicator in men who are in the second half of their thirties.

She’d talked extensively with his friend Jimmie and found out that they were celebrating the married one’s wife having a baby. She didn’t remember his name; they’d barely spoken to one another, like he was afraid of his dick accidentally falling into another woman if they had a conversation. Jimmie said that Lincoln was a casual drinker and rarely took it to excess. Hell, she’d been piss drunk just last weekend, so she couldn’t fault the guy for letting loose once in a while.

They left the campus and started down 36th. It was yet another of the Georgetown neighborhood’s famously steep hills, stretching away in front of her toward the waterfront, which she couldn’t see because of the buildings and trees blocking her view.

When they got to the end of the street, they took a set of stairs that ran between an old red brick building on one side and a massive stone wall on the other. High above them, an archway supporting a sidewalk ran across the gap. People stood, taking selfies at different points along the stairs. The closeness of the creepy, open-roofed stairwell probably looks wicked in selfies, she thought, resisting the urge to pull her cell phone from her back pocket.

The stairs, oddly, fed them out into a gas station parking lot alongside a busy intersection. Lincoln reached out and grabbed her hand at the bottom. “I’m not going to step into traffic,” she laughed.

He laughed too. “That’s not it. You said you don’t really walk around the lower part of Georgetown very often, so I just wanted to see if you know where you are.”

She looked at the intersection near the gas station’s entrance. “Um…we’re on M Street,” she said, reading the sign.

“Yeah, but where on M Street?”

Sidney looked at the road but didn’t get anything else, so she looked right. A big stone wall towered above them and wasn’t recognizable, so she spun around, looking up the stairs they’d just come down.

“No way,” she muttered.

Lincoln smiled. “Yup. See, here’s the plaque marking the spot,” he said, releasing her hand and taking a few steps toward the red building.

She read the bronze plate aloud. “The Exorcist Steps. These iconic steps were featured in William Friedkin’s 1973 Warner Bros. classic motion picture, based on the novel and screenplay by William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist. In the film’s climactic ending, Father Karras (actor Jason Miller) plummets the seventy-five steps to his death. Commemorated on this day, October 30, 2015.”

Sidney turned and looked back up the stairs. “This is so cool.”

“I know. We used to have to run these damn steps for cardio conditioning back when I was on crew at Georgetown. Up and down the stairs, ten or fifteen times, depending on how the coach felt that morning. Luckily, it was at five in the morning, so there weren’t very many tourists out at that time of day.”

Sidney pulled out her cell phone and called out to an older lady taking a selfie at the base of the stairs. “Do you want me to take your picture?”

“Uh, sure.” The woman handed her phone to Sidney, who took a couple of pics and handed the phone back.

“Can you take one of us?” she asked hopefully.

“Of course,” the woman replied with a drawl, indicating she was from the Midwest or Deep South. She took the phone, and as she was counting, “One…two…three.” Sidney stood on her tiptoes and kissed Lincoln on the cheek. The woman made comments about them being a cute couple as she handed the phone back before walking up the stairs.

Of course, the picture was blurry, so they had to wait until the woman cleared the stairs and ended up taking a selfie anyway. Oh well.

The remainder of the walk down to the Washington Harbor was pleasant as the two of them talked about themselves to try to get to know each other better. Somewhere along the way, it came out that Lincoln had been extremely drunk the night before and, well, he didn’t remember much of it. The knowledge irked Sidney quite a bit because she thought they had a connection—enough that she’d let him fuck her a couple of times—but she didn’t let him know. She’d done some pretty amazing things last night, and he didn’t even remember them. She’d have to keep that in mind if she let him back in her pants.

The Sunday brunch at Fiola Mare, the Italian seafood restaurant that Lincoln suggested, was amazing. He’d slurred the name last night, so Sidney thought it was an Irish place but was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t. The wild tiger shrimp and grits were to die for, as was her pirandello, which was a special brunch cocktail made with vodka, spicy syrup, and prosecco.

The cocktail was so good, she had a second and was running the top of her foot up Lincoln’s calf muscle seductively by the time she’d finished it.

Lincoln was a perfect dining partner. His table manners were impeccable, from knowing what fork to use, to asking all the important questions about the seafood catch. He used a napkin and never talked with food in his mouth. When he took a sip of his cocktail, he didn’t smack his lips annoyingly or get rude with the server when she brought out the wrong appetizer. He was a perfect gentleman—much better than the usual slobs she ended up going on dates with—without feeling like the clone of a thousand suit-and-tie-wearing pretty boys in DC.

“So, what have you got planned for today?” she asked, wondering if she should push her luck with staying around, or if she should go back to her place and give the poor guy some space.

“Not much,” he answered. “I’ve got to go grocery shopping. I don’t know if you looked in my fridge or in the pantry, but I’d be pretty screwed if the apocalypse were to happen today.”

“Oh no,” she groaned.

“What?”

“I knew it. I knew there had to be something wrong with you.”

“Huh?”

“You’re one of those weirdos who think the zombie apocalypse is a real event, aren’t you?”

“No,” he laughed. “It’s just a saying, y’know? I don’t really think it’s going to happen. Like I said, I don’t even have any food in the house.”

Sidney nodded. She was intimately familiar with disaster preparedness. Growing up in a little town near Myrtle Beach, she’d evacuated her home several times over the years. Each and every time a storm was on the horizon, the grocery stores were cleaned out of can goods, bottled water, and bread—which always seemed odd to her since bread was extremely perishable. If her town’s residents had kept their pantries filled year-round, it would have created a whole lot less panic each time.

“Okay,” she mumbled. “So, what is it then?”

“What’s what?”

She pointed across the table at him, quickly trailing her finger from his head to the tabletop where his body disappeared. “Look at you. You’re what…thirty-five?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Good looking—”

“Thanks.”

“Have all your hair—I think.”

“All me.”

“You’re athletic, still trim after playing collegiate sports, and have a steady job—that’s HUGE, by the way. You’ve got a great sense of humor, not in a derogatory way or anything bad that I can tell. You dress mostly normal, or at least acceptably.” She grinned. “So what gives?”

“You mean, why am I single?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. “Um…sorry, I wasn’t expecting that question.”

“It’s okay. Take a moment to think about it, and categorize all of your faults into a coherent statement. I’ll give you a moment of privacy while I go to the restroom. Excuse me.”

Sidney stood, and a hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth as he rose up slightly. She pushed gently down on his shoulder and squeezed slightly. “Can you order me another cocktail?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replied.

She added a little bit of a sway to her hips as she walked to the restroom. The great thing about living in a walking city like DC was that she could have three damn drinks with brunch if she wanted to; she wasn’t driving.

By the time she returned to the table, there were two more drinks and a fresh bowl of fruit. She sat and popped a raspberry into her mouth. “So, what’d you come up with?”

He shrugged. “To be honest, I think it must be that I’m not ready for marriage or children yet.”

“Oh?” She arched her eyebrow. This was going to be interesting.

“Yeah. I’ve dated a lot of women who—”

“A lot?”

“Well, not a lot, but several,” he corrected himself quickly. “Anyways…after a few months, the talk inevitably turns to marriage and children. I’ve liked the women, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have been in a relationship with them, but I didn’t want to start a family with any of them. Is that weird?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. I’ve stayed in relationships before, simply because it was easier than the alternative. Someone to talk to or go to dinner with, have se—to be intimate—with,” she amended. “Life is just easier sometimes when you have someone there, even if they’re not there for you. But I’m the same way. I’ve dated and been in relationships that I was comfortable with and had no desire to take it to the next step with marriage or, heaven forbid, bringing children into this world.”

He took a sip, and she felt self-conscious about her answer, so she blurted out, “I mean, I want kids eventually, but I’m still young and have plenty of time.”

“Exactly,” he sighed. “So many people don’t seem to get that. They want to ‘get started with the rest of their lives, today’,” he said, making air quotes with his fingers. “It’s exhausting.”

“So, we agree then. We’re never getting married,” Sidney quipped.

He laughed uncomfortably.

“I’m kidding, Linc,” she clarified. “We’re on our first date. I’m not a psycho or something—although, that’s another great classic movie.”

Lincoln’s face got deadly serious. “Which version?”

“Are you seriously asking me which version?”

“Yup. Everything depends on your answer. Get it right, and you’ll be showered with affection. Maybe I’ll even let you come back to my place for a repeat of last night. Get it wrong, and I’ll call you an Uber.”

“Oooh,” she drew out her words. “Were you a film student or something?”

“I am a film student—but not that bullshit they try to force-feed undergrads at liberal arts colleges. I absolutely enjoy a good movie, not just watching it, but reveling in it. The symbolism. The hidden messages. The Easter eggs that a masterful filmmaker sprinkles throughout the story. The agendas—even when I don’t agree with them. In my opinion, directors today don’t do nearly as good of a job about layering meanings to their films like they did in the old days.”

Oh God, she thought. There it is. He’s a movie nerd. Aloud, she replied, “Well, I love watching movies too, but I try not to read too much into them. Just like a book, sometimes the writer just means the sky is blue, not that it’s a symbolism for a deep sadness or something like that.”

She took a sip of her drink, which she’d left sitting on the table since she returned from the restroom. “To answer your question. The 1960 Psycho is the only one that counts. That cobbled-together abomination from the late nineties or early two thousands is just—ugh. I hate it when Hollywood does remakes. Most of the time they suck hairy balls.”

He choked on his drink. “Excuse me?”

“What? That I don’t like remakes or that I don’t like hairy balls?”

Lincoln glanced around the restaurant. “Ah…the second one.”

“Oh!” she said. His shyness was cute, in a way. “We’re in a nice restaurant, and you don’t think I should be talking about my preferences in human anatomy.”

She’d purposefully said the second part of that last sentence louder than the first part. Lincoln’s face was beginning to redden, which made her grin. She tipped her cocktail up and drained the entire thing. It went down way too smoothly for a fifteen-dollar drink.

She pushed back from the table. “Come on, champ. Let’s go back to your place and” —she bent down and whispered in his ear— “screw.”

She bit his earlobe and continued, “Maybe I’ll even let you do me from behind in the alley, like a dirty girl. That’s what you said you’d do to me last night—but you failed to deliver.”

Maybe that last part was over-the-top for a first date, but she liked the guy, and she was feeling the drinks. She needed to know he could roll with her playful jabs, and if this went anywhere, it was essential that he could keep up with her kinky side.

“But, I, ah…I haven’t paid yet.”

“Well, chop-chop.” She patted his shoulder as she said it. “The day is young, and this place sure as heck lived up to what you said it would.”

“Yeah. I—”

She cut him off. “I’ll be at the bar to see what the update is on that stuff out west. I know a ton of people out in Portland and Seattle. I hope they’re okay.”

She didn’t wait for him to reply. Again, she exaggerated the back-and-forth motion of her hips as she weaved her way through the tables to the bar and took a seat.

Besides a couple sitting across from her, she was alone at the bar. The bartender wasn’t there, so she busied herself with the television. Black boxes of white text scrolled past as the anchors talked about the terrible violence spreading across areas of the country.

Frustrated with the misspellings of words that changed the meaning of the newscast, she stood on the barstool’s crossbeam to see behind the bar. The remote control sat on top of a few glasses, elevated to keep it from getting wet.

Sidney picked up the remote and pressed the volume button several times until she could hear what the anchors were saying.

3

GNN Broadcast Center, Atlanta, Georgia

March 26th

The studio lights darkened as the anchor shuffled the papers nervously in front of him. He’d reported on wars, riots, natural disasters, and that damn presidential election, but none of those events were as creepy as the two stories he’d be discussing this morning—if they were real.

The floor manager gave him a countdown, silently holding up three fingers and mouthing the words. He’d be live in three…two…one…

“Good morning,” he said stoically. “I’m Chet Davidson, reporting to you from the GNN Broadcast Center in Atlanta, Georgia. GNN has recently learned of a new, deadly disease that the US Government is trying to keep the world from discovering—and it may already be on our shores.

“These unconfirmed reports say the disease has appeared in parts of California and Oregon, and possibly in Michigan. The reports are unconfirmed because of the widespread disruption of cell phone service, Internet service, even telephone service in these areas. GNN’s own, normally reliable satellite connections with our affiliates in the affected areas are inoperable as well.

“We’ll discuss the reports of the disease with one of the nation’s leading biomedical scientists later on in our show. But first, GNN has obtained exclusive video of a military quarantine that’s possibly occurring in Sacramento, California. The video, taken on a helmet-mounted GoPro camera, was smuggled across the northern part of the state to our affiliate in Redding, California, by a dirt bike rider who said he was chased by helicopters and military vehicles for several hours. GNN affiliate KRED-TV has the story.”

Chet stared dutifully at the camera until the ON AIR light turned off. He’d seen the interview with the stoner three times and had no interest in trying to decipher his stupid lingo a fourth time. As the kid’s face appeared in the “Live Feed” monitor facing him, Chet stood, sipping sparkling water while the makeup assistant materialized at his elbow.

“It’s only been one minute, Kimmie,” he grumbled.

“That’s about your average, isn’t it?” she muttered, patting his forehead with a small powder applicator.

Chet had fucked the blonde bimbo a few times over the winter, and he regretted it every day. She was the daughter of James Abington, the Executive Vice President of Programming at GNN US. As such, Chet didn’t have any type of pull to get her fired or moved to a different broadcast; his three-hour GNN Morning Headlines show was the only broadcast that fit her college schedule. So, he had to endure her constant reminders of his inadequacies in the bedroom—although truthfully, he’d been sloppy drunk each time, and his performance had been hindered. Whiskey dick was a real problem in Chet’s world.

He wisely kept his mouth shut and waited for Kimmie to finish her touch-ups. When she was done, she left with a smile, making it appear to everyone else in the room that nothing was amiss.

The interview portion of the video was winding down. Chet knew this because a gust of wind blew the kid’s flat-billed hat off, and he chased after it comically for a moment, recovering it quickly. The editors at KRED-TV had inexplicably decided to leave that part instead of splicing the video. Chet could only imagine they left the footage unedited to appear more authentic since the alleged GoPro footage would be labeled a fake by the authorities as soon as it aired.

The anchor sat back down at his chair to watch the video footage that the young idiot had captured. This part of KRED-TV’s broadcast was captivating.

The GoPro footage showed waving green grasses, already beginning the transition to the summer brown, and several varieties of trees, stunted from the long-term lack of meaningful rain in the region. Sacramento was right on the edge between the northern part of the state, which got plenty of precipitation, and Central California, notorious for suffering through extended periods of drought. Dust swirled around the rider as he made his way along a dirt path.

He stopped and his hand came away from the throttle, pointing toward a long line of tan military vehicles. They ran from right to left across his field of view as far as he could see in either direction, appearing to support the boy’s claim that the city was completely encircled. The rider said he was outside of Sacramento, but the weather and distance had obscured any recognizable landmarks or buildings downtown, so in truth, it could have been anywhere out west.

In the distance, a large mob of men, women, and children ran toward the line of soldiers and, in a scene that Chet had watched several times, the soldiers raised their rifles. Muffled shouts could be heard from where the rider sat recording the interaction. The crowd did not slow, and the first few shots rang out clearly, then the entire line began to fire into the oncoming crowd. People collapsed and were trampled underfoot by the press of bodies. Several large explosions punctuated the small arms fire, making the rider jerk his head back and forth between the gunfire and the billowing clouds of dust that the explosions created. Then, the big guns on the trucks got into the fray. The rhythmic chugging of the bigger weapons filled the speakers, and sound engineers adjusted the volume so as not to drown out every other noise. Even from the dirt bike rider’s distance, the camera was able to pick up bright splashes of red against the dun-colored background.

The video lurched sideways when the rider looked skyward. A rakish military helicopter flew toward him. He focused ahead once more, and his right hand twisted the throttle, shooting the bike forward. The shot was jumpy for several seconds, and another helicopter swooped across the front, low to the ground and kicking up dust. The bike took a hard left and went into a stretch of the stunted trees. He killed the bike and looked around wildly. Through the leaves of a few oak trees and needles of the pines, two helicopters could be seen circling overhead as their rotors spun noisily, searching for the rider.

Chet took that as his cue to lead back in. “As you can see, the young man was chased away from the scene outside of Sacramento. In his interview, he stated that he was harassed by helicopters and military vehicles for more than two hours as he headed northwest, before finally losing them in the darkness and making his way to Redding, where he gave our affiliate station the camera footage of the event.”

The anchor’s eyes focused on the monitor in front of him, seeing that he’d gone into a split screen with an older man in a dark-blue suit and yellow tie. Nice combination, he thought before saying, “Joining me this morning is GNN Military Analyst, US Marine Corps, Retired, Colonel Steven Walsh. Colonel, good morning, and thank you for coming on our show this morning.”

“Thank you, Chet. Always a pleasure to be here.”

“Were you watching the helmet cam video from Sacramento?”

“Yeah, I watched it.”

“So, what do you make of it?” Chet asked. “Do you think the footage is real, or do you believe that it’s faked, doctored somehow?”

The colonel shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I’m not a video analyst, so you’d have to rely on your own techs to determine that. The immediate concern that comes to mind for me is that the video appears to show American soldiers or Marines—couldn’t discern which from the distance—firing on unarmed civilians. My contacts at the Pentagon aren’t acknowledging anything of the sort, and my calls to the California Adjutant General’s office have gone unanswered.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. The Adjutant General’s office?” Chet asked for clarification. He knew what it was, but some of his viewers may not.

“The Adjutant General is the commander of the state’s National Guard,” Colonel Walsh replied. “Each state has a TAG. They’re responsible for coordinating any type of response from the National Guard. No one’s answering on any of the numbers publicly available at the California National Guard Headquarters.”

“Is the office you’ve been trying to contact in Sacramento?” Chet pressed, sensing his opportunity to hammer at another issue.

“Yes. They’re headquartered in the state capital.”

“So then you shouldn’t be surprised that no one is answering since we’ve lost all communications with Sacramento. That’s more than just a coincidence, don’t you think, Colonel? The alleged ring of troops around the city and the complete loss of communications with anyone there seem to be related.”

“If it’s truly a military operation, then no, I wouldn’t be surprised,” his guest replied. “We can cut off satellite feeds pretty easily, but a complete communications blackout takes a major cyber effort, from jamming cell phone signals and Internet feeds, to blocking radio frequencies. It’s a lot of work—not impossible, but it seems like much more trouble than it’d be worth if there wasn’t something very important happening.”

“Like the reports of this new disease?”

“I’m sorry,” the colonel said. “I’m not privy to any information about a new type of disease or the US Government’s response to any such claims.”

“You’re right, Colonel. We’ll get back to the disease in a few moments with my next guest,” Chet replied. “You’ve mentioned that we have the capability to completely isolate a city like Sacramento.”

“Yes, but there would be a capacity issue. We can do that sort of thing, but we’re talking about Sacramento here, a city of roughly five hundred thousand people. To suppress something that big would take a major effort. In conjunction with the several other places where the same thing is happening, I’m not convinced that it isn’t something else causing the interference.”

Chet ignored the colonel’s attempt to shift blame. “Would it be something that our government would be willing to do in order to suppress information that could cause a nationwide—or global—panic?”

The colonel adjusted himself in his chair slightly. Chet noticed it and filed it away for later in the conversation.

“If there were information—and this is a big if,” the colonel said. “If there were information that could initiate a widespread, legitimate panic in the general population, then yes, our government would absolutely suppress that information for the short term until they can come up with a response and a plan of action.” He paused and continued, “No politician wants to go on air and say, ‘Here’s the problem and we don’t know what to do.’ Instead, they want to go out, present the facts and let the country know that they have a solution and a plan for implementing that solution. A well-organized response will help alleviate potential panic.”

“Good point, Colonel,” Chet conceded. “We’ve already established that neither of us are video experts, but do you believe this young man’s story about being chased?”

“Not particularly.”

“No?”

“No,” his guest affirmed. “The reason I say that is because this guy says he was finally able to evade the massive search net by using the cover of darkness. The US military has the best night vision equipment in the world. We own the night. The darkness is no more of an impediment to us than a speedbump is to a monster truck.”

“So you don’t think the video is real?”

“Again, I’m not a video expert, Chet. I’m just pointing out that the young man’s claims to have ‘lost them in the dark’ are bologna. We don’t lose people in the dark. If he went into a building or into a cave—like in North Korea or Afghanistan—then sure, our optics could lose sight of him. But we can see someone moving by dirt bike through heavy foliage. If this really happened, he’s either leaving out part of his escape route or they let him go. More likely, the latter. The resources that he described, and those we were able to see in the video, are not designed to go after one person. Do you know how many thousands of dollars that would be?”

“No.”

“It’s a lot. Besides, the video allegedly shows the military shooting civilians. If this guy was really a threat, they would have lit him up with the Apache’s 30-millimeter and been done with it.”

“The Apache is the name of the helicopters in the video?” Chet clarified for his viewers.

“Yeah. The US Army uses them—and about ten other foreign governments.”

“Are you suggesting this was an act by a foreign government on our soil?”

“No, but if the video is real, how do we even know that is Sacramento? It looks a lot like Israel, Egypt, parts of Saudi Arabia—all of those nations have the Apache gunship as well.”

“Hmm…” Chet hadn’t planned for that particular twist. “Okay, so the area looks like the outskirts of any other semi-arid city. Let’s assume the video is from the United States and that he was able to escape from—”

“Evade. It’s an evasion of capture. An escape would mean that he was a prisoner and then got away.”

“Thank you,” Chet replied, annoyed. “Let’s assume that he did actually start out near Sacramento, somehow managed to evade capture, and made it all the way to Redding on his dirt bike. Why would the military be trying to stop him in the first place? He’s just some kid out for a joyride.”

“Assuming all that,” Colonel Walsh said, “it means that the military is trying to keep any information on their local activities from getting leaked to the news—like it has been—and like we discussed, until we’ve devised a proper response plan. Now that this is out there, it’ll get shared hundreds of thousands of times. Even if it is fake, it’ll be just as good as the truth to millions of Americans who are already looking for any proof that the government is out to get them.”

The floor manager got Chet’s attention. It was time to move to the next segment. “I’m being told that we’re out of time, sir. You’ve brought some interesting insight into this developing story. Colonel Steven Walsh, as always, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Until next time.”

“Thank you for having me,” the colonel replied.

Chet saw his full-sized image resume in the monitor. He affected a concerned look and said, “Something is going on in Sacramento, and you can bet that GNN will get to the bottom of it.

“As I mentioned at the top of the hour, there are reports of a strange new disease that the CDC is warning about. We’ll get to that, and other important stories, after a quick word from our sponsors.”

The camera’s ON AIR light dimmed once more, and Chet hopped up from his seat, rushing off the stage.

“Hey, where are you going?” the floor manager, Chris, called out.

Chet ignored him and went through the sound stage’s doors to the next studio, where Colonel Walsh stood, assisted by a sound tech taking off his microphone.

“Ah… Chet. This is a little unusual,” the colonel said.

“Cut the crap, Steve. What do you know about the shooting of those civilians? I didn’t press you about it on air; I gave you that courtesy. Your body language says you know something, and I want to know the truth. Is the military shooting civilians?”

“I’m being honest with you, Chet. I don’t know. The video appears to be legitimate, and the response is spot-on if those soldiers were threatened in some way.”

“Threatened?” Chet scoffed. “How can an unarmed mob threaten an armored soldier?”

“We don’t know that the people in the video were unarmed, for one. For another, I’ve personally witnessed an unarmed mob tear a woman apart, limb-from-limb, in Iraq because she was accused of adultery. Quantity has a quality all its own.”

He paused for a moment as the wire was unwrapped from around his midsection. “Did you know that the standard American infantry rifle was designed to kill the enemy, whereas the Russian rifle was designed to injure?”

“Huh?” Chet asked in confusion.

“Yeah. The 5.56-milimeter round doesn’t have enough power to make it completely through the human body at two hundred meters. Since it has a smaller caliber than the Russian rifle, the round yaws inside the fleshy parts of a body.”

“Which means…” Chet rolled his hand. He needed to get back to the studio quickly.

“Since it doesn’t have a ton of power behind it, the bullet takes all sorts of weird angles inside the body cavity, producing a kill due to massive internal injuries. The Russian—and Chinese—7.62-millimeter bullet will usually punch a hole straight through a person’s body. It was designed that way to take out two soldiers in a firefight, the one who got hit and the medic to take care of them. It reduces their enemy’s fighting capability.”

“What does any of that fascinating trivia have to do with the current situation, Colonel?”

“Watch the video again. The M16, or M4—which is the replacement for the M16—fires a 5.56-millimeter bullet. The weapons in those gun trucks in the video are M240s—7.62 millimeters. Think about it.”

Chet did think about the old Marine’s words, and a light went off in his head. When the soldiers were firing their smaller rifles, people collapsed from the gunfire, but it was relatively mundane—from a Hollywood special effects sense. There were no massive fountains of blood or dramatic explosions with big gouts of flame. However, when the trucks opened up with their large caliber weapons, there was all sorts of blood and body parts that were clearly visible in the footage. That meant that unless someone was very attention-oriented, they probably wouldn’t have put that sort of detail into the video, which meant—

“Son of a bitch,” Chet muttered. “That video is real.”

“Exactly,” Colonel Walsh replied. “I don’t know why those soldiers were shooting American citizens, but something majorly fucked up is going on out in California. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make a few phone calls. My daughter is a sophomore at USC, and she’s scheduled for a midday flight outta that state.”

“Chet!” Chris yelled from the doorway. “We just had to run an extra set of commercials. We need you back at the desk.”

He glanced back at the alternate sound stage. The assistant was already beginning to mic-up his next guest, a biomedical engineering professor from Georgia Tech. He wanted to find out if the colonel knew anything else, but the man had his cell phone up to his ear, walking through a set of doors that led to the guest waiting area.

“Chet!”

“Welcome to the show, Dr. Sanjay,” Chet said. “I’ll speak with you live in a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” the scientist of Indian descent replied, without even the hint of an accent.

Chet walked back to the main sound stage rapidly. Kimmie stopped him at the step leading to his desk and threw a towel around his neck to keep makeup from getting on his suit. She patted his forehead with a soft cloth.

“You’re sweating,” she mumbled as she reapplied a small amount of base around his hairline, then used a brush to apply a layer of powder on his forehead and cheeks. “This’ll only last for a few minutes. You need to stop sweating or this will run and be visible on camera.”

“Turn down the air four or five degrees,” Chris called out to the technician monitoring everything from the booth. “We need to make this place an icebox.”

Chet felt the cool air begin to circulate immediately. He wasn’t sweating because of the temperature in the studio. The colonel’s observations had terrified him.

If the US military was firing on its own citizens, did that mean the reports of the disease were true also?

* * *

“Welcome back and good morning,” the thin, blond anchor stated. “I’m Chet Davidson, and you’re watching GNN Morning Headlines. Before the break, we talked to GNN Military Analyst Colonel Steven Walsh about a developing story out of Sacramento, California.

“Now we’re going to transition to the next big story making headlines this morning. There are reports from Michigan, Colorado, and yes, California, of a new disease that is ravaging the population. GNN has obtained exclusive video footage from an Army unit allegedly responding to the epidemic in Colorado.” Chet held up his hands theatrically for the cameras. “Keep in mind, we want to emphasize that the validity of the video footage has not been verified yet, and that there has been no official statement from the Centers for Disease Control or any other agency regarding a new outbreak of any type. Although, interestingly, the President Tweeted a cryptic statement at five this morning, saying:

‘The US is the greatest nation on Earth. Like a prizefighter on the ropes, we’ll bounce back and knock this thing out. #MAGA’

“As you know, the President doesn’t often tell us plainly what his Tweets are referencing. Until about an hour ago, our analysts said they thought his message was about the recent downturn of US investments in the European stock market. You may remember our story from yesterday regarding the losses of virtually every American-owned company in the European markets.

“However, with the developing story out of Sacramento and new information that GNN received less than an hour ago, we feel the president’s Tweet may have been referencing something else entirely.

“Joining me this morning is one of the nation’s leading biomedical researchers, Dr. Aarav Sanjay.” Chet’s monitor went to a split-screen view with him on the left and the doctor on the right. “He is a biomedical engineering professor at Georgia Tech University right up the road from the GNN Worldwide Headquarters here in Atlanta. Dr. Sanjay, welcome.”

“Good morning, Mr. Davidson,” the professor replied crisply.

“Please, call me Chet. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us this morning on such a short notice.”

“Of course. I knew right away when your producer contacted me to verify the authenticity of the drone footage and the accompanying email that I needed to come on and discuss this with you and your viewers.”

Chet nodded, acknowledging the statement without replying. Instead, he dove right into the first of his prepared questions. “Doctor, Georgia Tech does a lot of work for the US Government, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, we do—especially the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, where I work.”

“Forgive me, Dr. Sanjay. Doesn’t the government have their own biomedical centers?” More clarification for the viewers.

“Certainly. Chief among them are the CDC laboratories, like those here in Atlanta, Birmingham, Austin, Baltimore, and Seattle. However, they send out specimens all the time for the verification of their work. Sometimes, they’re swamped and need a little extra manpower, so they’ll sub that research out as well. Additionally, my office works closely with the US military and their various research arms across the country in the development of vaccines and researching cures for diseases that their forces may one day come in contact with.”

Chet smirked at the camera, which he knew the doctor could see in his own studio. “So you’ve seen a thing or two when it comes to creepy diseases?”

Dr. Sanjay laughed genuinely for a moment before clearing his throat. “Yes, you could say that, Mr.—ah, Chet,” he amended. “The bacterial and viral world is rife with terrors that are held at bay simply by environmental or locational factors.”

“Locational factors, Doctor?” Chet asked. He could understand how diseases, especially seasonal ones like the flu, could be limited by environmental factors, but it wasn’t as easy of a connection with the second factor. “Is that a different way of saying environmental factors?”

“It could be viewed that way in a generic sense,” the doctor conceded. “However, what I’m referring to is an actual physical barrier to the movement of a bacterium or virus. Take, for example, the Native American population before the colonists, priests, and conquistadors arrived. They had never been exposed to smallpox, the flu, or measles because those only occurred in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Yet their environmental factors were advantageous for the diseases to spread rapidly. It’s estimated that around ninety percent of the native population of the Americas was killed by disease. So, in that example, their location had served as an effective barrier until the fifteen and sixteen hundreds.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Chet stated, hoping his own confusion didn’t come across onscreen. “Sorry to have taken us off topic, Doctor.”

“Actually, you haven’t taken us off topic. The video and email certainly seem to point to a virus or bacteria of some type that is now suddenly appearing everywhere. If it’s a naturally occurring disease and not something that’s been bioengineered in a laboratory, it would fit one of my discriminating factors of either environmental or locational—maybe both.”

“So you think—Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Sanjay.” Chet smiled with embarrassment. “My producer is telling me that we’ve forgotten to show the video that we’re discussing with our viewers. We’ll need to put a pause on our discussion for a moment while we show that video.”

“Certainly, Chet. I thought the video had already been shown.”

“That mistake is on us, Doctor, not you. Do we have that—Yes, here’s the video that we will be discussing with Dr. Sanjay.”

The split screen went away, replaced by a dark-gray one. It rapidly faded from the shadowed gray to tan, and then became the hood of a military Humvee, the simple troop-carrying vehicles that every military unit seemed to have. Next, a soldier came into view. He held a remote control device and watched the camera as it flew skyward.

“Our researchers say that based on the controller, the drone the soldier is flying is likely a DJI Phantom Five Professional series,” Chet stated as the video continued to progress, showing the Humvee getting smaller. Then the drone shot forward, passing over what appeared to be several rows of hastily-erected barbed wire fences. “The Phantom Five is a quadcopter with an HD camera and range of approximately five miles. It’s a commercial, off-the-shelf option that a lot of military units have procured with their own funds to give them an aerial view of their operating area. Procuring quadcopters on their own has significantly helped units in the field, since the military’s only UAV option for small units are an airplane body style, which is much harder to fly without extensive training.”

The drone passed over a tree line and the camera zoomed in on several soldiers lying on the ground with their weapons pointed toward an unknown enemy. Small puffs of displaced dirt appeared in front of each soldier as they fired. “This video, and an accompanying email, was delivered to GNN by an anonymous source less than three hours ago,” Chet continued. “The email stated that the video was taken by soldiers from the Second Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado.

“GNN wants to caution our viewers that the validity of this video has not been verified. It appears like a training video at first; the soldiers could be firing at any target on a rifle range. Then, watch this part right here.”

The drone flew past the soldiers and passed several more lines of the coiled barbed wire. The first row of wire was empty, but the next row held what appeared to be several lifeless bodies. The drone continued without slowing until it came to a third row of wire. A lot of bodies were snagged on the barbs, their clothing keeping them secured firmly in place. Some were thrashing, trying to move forward, others lay unmoving. The camera zoomed in on the line, and it was evident that the people were heedless of the wire that held them. It was as if they didn’t realize why they couldn’t move.

The camera panned along the wire, and a woman looked up at the drone, screaming. The operator paused and then slowly zoomed in on her face. Streaks of dried blood covered her cheeks and chin where it still poured from her eyes, nose, and mouth. Her lips stretched back from bloody teeth, and she reached in vain for the drone hovering somewhere overhead. Then the area around her head pixelated as GNN’s video editors blurred out the moment when one of the soldiers shot her in the face. Her body collapsed instantly and another took her place, bellowing rage.

Chet had seen the unedited version. The entire back of the woman’s head had been blown open, her brain oozing out the hole. The moment the skull was penetrated and the pressure inside relieved, everything spewed out of the exit wound. Bright reds, oranges, and pink froth matted in her light-brown hair and spilled down onto her blouse. Chet had been so unsettled by the sight that he’d been unable to eat the egg white, cheddar cheese, and tomato panini that his assistant brought him—the colors were simply too close to what he’d witnessed.

The drone’s camera zoomed out and then refocused on the next row of barbed wire beyond the one the woman had been tangled in. This one was almost completely flattened down by writhing bodies as more people trampled across them to get tangled in the successive rows of wire.

The video lasted a full two minutes and forty-seven seconds, then the drone returned to the group of soldiers situated at the Humvees.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen,” Chet stated, “is what has us here at GNN worried about what the US Government is not telling us.”

His image was replaced by text on the monitor and he continued, “This is the email that our anonymous source sent along with the drone footage. It reads:

‘We’re from the Second Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado, and we’re deployed a few miles south of the 470 Loop in Denver. These people are infected with some type of virus. They scream and appear insane. They tear at their own flesh, digging into their face and eyes, like they’re trying to get to their own brain.

We’ve been here for three days, killed hundreds, maybe thousands of infected. They can be shot several times, and they’ll keep coming, unless we shoot them in the head. I know what you’re thinking: that we’re spoofing some stupid zombie movie. I wish that were the case. The infected can take a lot of damage—they don’t seem to feel pain—but even without headshots, they will eventually bleed to death or succumb to other injuries.

We’ve captured a few of them alive, and the Army’s doctors have tried to cure them, but all that happens is our medical personnel end up getting bitten or scratched. If saliva or blood from an infected gets into a cut or scratch, the virus is passed to a new victim. Best we can tell, it takes about twenty-four hours from infection to going full-on crazy.

All of this has been learned through trial and error. I’ve lost more than half of my battalion, including my commander, to this disease. We’re doing our best, but they have numbers on their side. For every one we kill, the virus is transmitted to three more.

I hope your viewers see this video. It is not a joke. I can’t stress how important it is to be prepared for what’s coming. There is no helping these people. Everyone who tries to help them becomes infected. The only way we can help them is to end their suffering and misery before they kill more of us.

Signed, Major [REDACTED]’

“Whew,” Chet said when he finished reading the email aloud. “That’s a lot to process. Dr. Sanjay, what do you make of this claim?”

Chet Davidson adjusted in his seat. He was nervous. All of this was freaking him the fuck out and his body was reacting. He was sweating all over, and the trickle of sweat going down the middle of his back and into his butt crack was uncomfortable as hell. Worse, his makeup was probably going to run soon if he didn’t wrap up this interview.

“It’s either an extremely elaborate hoax, for which the prankster will never be credited for their work…” the doctor stated. “Or it’s real. The transmission methods described remind me of how some parasites control their hosts, particularly in the insect world. These parasites manipulate their host until a series of set conditions are met and then the offspring of the parasite infects other insects, thus the parasite’s life cycle begins anew.”

“A parasite?” Chet asked incredulously.

“It’s not my area of expertise, but sure. I’ve read studies of several different types of parasites that take over their host’s brain, all for the express purpose of completing their life cycles. From parasitic worms that live inside crickets until it’s time to procreate and then cause the cricket to jump into water, effectively committing suicide, to fungi that infect an ant’s brain and cause it to travel to the underside of a leaf and clamp down with its jaws until it dies and the fungus can prosper in the shade, eventually growing out of the ant’s head to drop spores on unsuspecting ants below. There are tons of parasites across several different domains, kingdoms, and phylum that perform similar actions…and it usually doesn’t end well for the host.”

“Don’t make me break out my biology textbook, Doc,” Chet said, grinning for the camera, trying his best to ignore the trickle of sweat running down the side of his face. “What exactly are you talking about?”

“Well, the easiest way to think about it is that parasitic lifeforms exist in all environments and in all forms, including animal, plant, and bacteria.”

“Okay, that’s a lot easier to understand. Thank you,” the anchor replied, squinting at the monitor to see if Kimmie’s makeup job was holding up to the obvious sweat pouring from his hairline. “And given what you’ve seen in the video and what the Army major’s email said, you think the people in Colorado are infected with a parasite?”

The doctor chuckled softly. “To be honest, I have no idea what they’re infected with without examining blood and tissue samples. It could be a new, more virulent type of a hemorrhagic fever like Ebola, Marburg, Hantavirus; those all cause bleeding from soft tissue areas and body orifices… Hell—excuse me.”

“That’s okay, Doctor.”

Dr. Sanjay coughed softly before continuing. “The victims could be suffering from some type of illness caused by prions such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease or from eating infected meat—that’s the proverbial Mad Cow Disease scenario. That could account for the lack of response to external stimuli, altered mental state, and poor coordination. The spontaneous bleeding wouldn’t be present with those illnesses, but it could be self-inflicted, as the email stated some of it is.

“They may even have a form of mass hysteria. There are a multitude of well-documented cases of mass hysteria throughout history that make you wonder what was going on in those people’s minds. Examples of that could be the Salem Witch Trials here in the United States, or the laughter epidemic in Tanzania in the 1960s.”

Dr. Sanjay paused to think for a moment before continuing. It was enough time for Chet to notice a dark streak beside his right ear, where the sweat was running along the side of his face and collecting makeup as it went.

“The victims could also be suffering from the effects of some type of toxin in the air or water,” the doctor continued. “Or possibly a drug that they’d been introduced to somehow… There are simply too many variables that I can’t identify by sitting here in Atlanta, watching a television screen. If I could get out there to do some field research, I might be able to give you a solid hypothesis based on my observations. As it is, though, I’m just guessing.”

“Thank you for your honesty, Doctor,” Chet replied. His earpiece buzzed in his ear, telling him that he needed to wrap it up. Two fucking guests, and all we have is guesswork, he groaned internally. He needed an answer as much as he needed a blow job and an ice bath to relax him.

“So, in your scientific opinion, do you believe the footage from Colorado is real?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, I do, Chet. It would take a master makeup artist to accomplish the multiple layers of hemorrhaging—the different layers of dried and fresh blood—on just one of those victims. The video appears to show hundreds of people in all manner of dress, but mostly spring and early summer attire, which means to me the timeframe roughly correlates to the last few days in Colorado. Additionally, the barbed wire looked very real as it ripped into flesh. Again, that could be faked, but it would take an entire Hollywood production crew to simulate that on such a grand scale—”

The studio lighting dimmed, and Chet’s GNN Morning Headlines theme song began playing over the speakers. “Ah… I guess that means we’re going to break?” Chet mumbled.

His headphone crackled, and he blurted out quickly, before he realized what he was doing, “We’re being cut off! They’re cutting the broadcast feed! Get out of Colorado!”

Chet saw the ON AIR light turn off before he finished his last sentence. “Who the hell shut us down?”

“The FCC jerked GNN’s broadcast license,” Chris, the floor manager, shouted. “The entire network is shut down.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t give us a reason. Everything just got turned off.”

Chet knew the reason. The goddamned government was trying to keep this thing under wraps and GNN had been given exclusive video and a first-hand account of the action on the front lines.

“What the fuck did we just uncover?” he asked aloud to everyone in the sound stage.

The only sound was the wet plop of a glob of makeup as it fell from his jaw and landed three inches above the pocket of his suit.

4

National Harbor, Washington, DC

March 26th

“Holy shit,” Lincoln mumbled when the television went dark for a moment before the vertical multicolored stripes appeared, accompanied by a soft buzzing sound. He hadn’t seen those stripes in ten or fifteen years. The invention of twenty-four-hour programming had made them virtually obsolete.

Sidney turned toward him with wide eyes. He’d wandered up behind her at the bar after paying the bill for brunch back at their table. “Is all that really happening, or do you think it’s a ratings grab?”

“They wouldn’t…”

“I’m a liberal, Lincoln, through and through, but I’m not one of those stupid idiots who gets led around by my clit ring. I don’t believe everything I’m told,” she stated. “GNN has staged fake news stories for ratings before.”

He thought about it for a moment, and then pointed at the lines on the screen. “What kind of ratings are they getting from that?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” Sidney turned back to the bar and asked the bartender if they could try a different station.

All of the news stations were out, but there were plenty of channels playing reality television, sports replays, and movies. America loves to be distracted from real life, Lincoln thought.

Sidney pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her small purse and dropped it on the counter. “Here, take a few sips,” she ordered, holding her drink out to Lincoln.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Does it matter?” she smirked. “This might be the last drink we get at a bar for a long time. Maybe even forever.”

“What?” Lincoln coughed as the whiskey burned his throat.

“This is bad, dude. Like, real bad,” she replied. “I’m no expert at any of this, but one of my classes last semester was about international responses to pandemics and the legality of using military forces and other non-governmental agencies as a response force. Remember when we sent the Army to Africa to deal with that big Ebola outbreak a few years ago? They were there, officially, to secure the camps and keep the doctors safe, but they were also there to put a stop to anyone trying to leave, which could potentially infect more people and begin the cycle again. They were authorized to stop trespassers by any means necessary.”

She took the drink back from him and took a long pull. Her lips thinned and then she smiled. “I love bourbon.” She held the glass out for him once more and said, “You go ahead and finish it.”

He reluctantly took the glass and swallowed the amber liquid, then set it down on the bar. “So,” he said hoarsely, “what did you mean about the last time going to a bar?”

Sidney stood up and grabbed his hand, leading him toward the door. When they got outside, she pulled out her phone and tapped on an app to call a car service. “All those places are just the beginning, Lincoln. You need go to the grocery store and stock up on food before everyone gets the same idea.”

“So that’s it then?” he asked in mild confusion. Everything had been going so well. He’d all but guaranteed himself an afternoon of sex and debauchery—he didn’t even remember that she had a clit ring, dammit. Now he’d be taking the proverbial cold shower. What a stupid saying, he thought. Nobody actually does that crap.

Sidney grimaced, then her expression softened. “Yeah, Lincoln. This is some serious shit. We’re talking, like, extinction-of-humanity-level stuff, if even half of what was on those videos is true and if what that doctor said is remotely accurate.”

He stepped close to her and slid a hand around her waist. “That means we should be together, then. We could be the ones to save our race.” Wow, did I really just say that skeevy shit?

“Holy fuck,” Sidney laughed. “That’s the most pathetic example of someone begging for sex that I’ve ever heard.”

Lincoln shrugged. “Ain’t no shame in my game,” he said, mimicking the Nineties rapper who made the line famous.

She turned into him. “I just met you, Lincoln.”

“And we’re pretty great together,” he answered.

“Well, not that great,” she teased. “I’ve had better.”

“Uh.”

“Just last week.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“Oh, shut up, idiot.” She grinned. “I’m messing with you.”

Lincoln grinned back. He wasn’t used to women who were so incredibly comfortable with themselves that they would dare to mention their sordid sexual history, jokingly or not, on the first date. It was kind of refreshing, not having to tiptoe around issues and feel things out.

“So does that mean you’re coming back to my place?” he asked.

She pushed him away playfully. “No. Not right now, anyway. I’ve got to take care of Rick James.”

“Rick James?”

“My cat.”

“Oh. That’s an interesting name for a cat.”

Before she could reply, Sidney’s phone beeped from inside her pocket. She pulled it out and brought the screen up to her face. “The car’s a block away,” she stated. “I’ve decided that I’m not going to class tomorrow, so maybe you have a shot at getting in my pants later today. But first, I’m going to go home and stock up on canned goods and all that, just in case.”

“All right, so should I order Chinese or something?”

She shot him a withering look before turning back to watch for the car. “Uh, maybe you’re not the right person to try to ride out an apocalyptic situation with.”

“Huh?”

The car pulled up, and she talked to the driver for a moment before stepping toward the back of the vehicle. She turned to him. “Lincoln, do me a favor; research ‘disaster preparedness’ on the web and then try to follow as many of those guidelines as you can in the next few hours.”

“Yeah, okay. I saw a bunch of things like that the last hurricane season.”

“Good idea.” She jumped up the curb, back to where he stood watching her. She kissed him quickly on the lips. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Lincoln watched her get in the car and waved awkwardly as they drove away. He started walking before the vehicle turned onto K Street.

He had a few bags of chips and some random shit in his pantry, plus a lot of bottled water, but practically nothing else for an extended interruption of restaurant service. There was a Safeway a few blocks from his house. He’d been in there a couple of times, primarily for the occasional steak to grill during football season, but he usually went to the little mom-and-pop market that was on his way home from work. He thought he’d have better luck getting all sorts of groceries from the larger store and decided to go there instead.

On the way to the grocery store, Lincoln looked up a few emergency preparedness tips on his phone. Canned goods and bottled water were the top priorities, as well as extra batteries for flashlights—which he made a note to himself to buy in the hardware aisle—medications and first aid supplies, coffee, and the like. He had a pretty good idea about everything else, but the last item surprised him: Cash. He would have never thought about having cash on hand in case the situation took more than a few days to resolve. He made a note to stop by an ATM as well.

As he walked, a text message from an unknown number came in to his cell phone. “Having car take me to REI by Gallaudet U. for camping gear. Hope I never have to pay off THIS credit card bill!” It was from Sidney, which was odd since he didn’t remember giving her his number.

He nodded his head in approval. That was smart. He had blankets and coolers for beer, but he didn’t have a tent or sleeping bags—not that they’d need them in his house. He wasn’t a big believer in the whole apocalypse thing, but certainly, this situation warranted a little bit of precaution. There was no telling what would happen if the Army didn’t put a stop to whatever was happening out west—and up north, he amended.

What was really going on for all of those places to go dark at the same time? It stank of a government cover-up, and he was in the heart of that same government here in DC. Maybe he should leave.

He replied to Sidney, then sent a group message to The Crew that they should prepare for some bad shit. Kevin replied immediately that he and Juanita had already booked a flight to Puerto Rico, where her family still lived, and were leaving in three hours. Of course, he apologized for not sending out a text, warning everyone as soon as he saw the morning news, but that was how Kevin rolled. Lincoln was used to his mildly self-centered nature. Kurt replied tersely that he was in church and would read up about whatever cockamamie story Lincoln sent him after Mass was over. Jimmie didn’t respond, but that was typical for him, so it didn’t surprise Lincoln in the least.

It took a few more minutes of walking before he was standing in front of the Safeway. Lincoln grabbed a cart and went inside, expecting to have to fight for every scrap of food.

When he passed through the doors, he was shocked to see that the place was mostly empty. No arguments over the last can of corn or fighting in the meat aisle. It looked like any other lazy Sunday morning.

He walked over to the ATM and put his card into the reader. After a few prompts for English—duh, this is America—and to input his PIN, he decided to take out as much cash as the machine would allow. He ended up getting eight hundred dollars that he folded and put into his front pocket.

Within seconds, a text from his bank arrived on his phone, asking him if he’d authorized an unusually large transaction at an ATM in the 20007 zip code. He replied with a Y, as directed, and put his phone in the opposite pocket from all the cash.

Lincoln casually pushed his cart to the canned goods aisle and loaded the entire bottom with soup, chili, and canned vegetables. Then he got all the packets of dehydrated soup and tossed them on top of the cans before he was hit with a pang of guilt and put back more than half of them; it wasn’t right for him to take all the resources when others didn’t even know there was a problem yet. Besides, he could always come back later if he needed to.

Next, he got several bags of ground coffee and even a couple of the cans. The article he’d read on the way from brunch said the cans were useful for all sorts of stuff. He added a few boxes of granola bars, several bags of dried pasta, and a few boxes of macaroni and cheese, along with more ramen noodles than he’d seen since he was a sophomore at Georgetown, that semester when money got really tight. Twelve one-gallon jugs of water fit nicely on the cart’s bottom rack, and he put a few plastic cans of Gatorade powder down with them for good measure. Finally, he couldn’t resist adding two bags of potato chips, and even a couple of steaks, several packages of ground beef, and a bunch of hot dogs. “I have a grill, and I know how to use it,” he sang softly to himself in the tune of Legs by ZZ Top.

He avoided picking up any chicken in case the power went out. His coolers would be fine for a few days for the beef and whatever the fuck hot dogs were made from, but chicken scared him. Too much risk of the shit going bad and then ruining everything else in a cooler.

He almost forgot about the first aid kit and the flashlight with spare batteries but remembered right before he went to the checkout line. On his way to the hardware aisle, he added three entire boxes of meal replacement protein bars. You never knew when you’d need to get an entire meal’s worth of calories in just a few bites.

With those last few items in the cart, he slowed down near the bread aisle and eyed it thoughtfully. Every news video of an approaching hurricane that he’d ever seen showed empty shelves where the bread used to be. What the hell? he thought. Obviously, all those people must know something that he didn’t, so he added two loaves of bread and some hot dog rolls to his cart. The damn thing was about as full as it could get.

He had a pang of regret at the register as the poor kid was forced to go through his cart to get to all of the items buried under each other, and then an even bigger pang of panic when he saw that his bill was close to six hundred dollars. That sort of grocery expense was not in his monthly budget since he usually ate lunch and dinner out or ordered something for delivery on the few occasions when he was home. He cringed when he handed over his credit card, hoping it would go through.

When he pushed the cart full of bagged groceries through the doors to the parking lot behind the building, he realized that he’d been walking when he came here. There was no way he’d be able to carry all the bags to his house. It was about four or five blocks, and the bags would likely rip over that distance—never mind that he wasn’t quite the strapping young rower he’d been thirteen years ago at graduation.

He’d probably get a hernia from all the canned goods.

Lincoln weighed his options. He could call a car service and wait twenty minutes for them to show up, or he could just take the cart to his house. He decided on the latter. He’d return it, he promised no one, but there was simply no way in hell he could make it without borrowing the cart for a few hours.

Georgetown’s residents only gave him a few nasty glances as he walked through their neighborhoods, pushing the cart. He probably would have had the cops called on him if he’d been wearing shabbier clothes, but as it was, he’d been wearing what about everyone his age wore on lazy Sundays.

He was a block from his house when his cell phone started ringing. The only people who ever called him instead of texting were telemarketers and those damn robo-calls that everyone complained about. He almost didn’t answer it, but this time he recognized the unnamed phone number.

“Hello?”

“Lincoln! Fuck!” Sidney’s voice rang out. She sounded out of breath.

“Sidney? Is that you?”

“Yeah. Keep up,” she said. “Shit’s going down in DC. I’m on my way to your house now.”

“What kind of shit?”

“The shit that the doctor was talking about on TV this morning.”

“What do you—Oh, shit! Uh… What do you need me to do?”

“Fill your bathtub with water, lock your doors, and close all your curtains. I have to get Rick James, so I’ll be there in about an hour. Oh! And charge your cell phone and laptop before the power goes out.”

“Power?”

“Dammit, Lincoln. I don’t have time to explain. We can talk about this when I get there. Just… If you see anyone acting weird, run. Don’t worry about your supplies, just run.”

“What’s that—” He looked at his phone. She’d hung up on him.

He pushed the cart toward his house a little faster. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wanted to ask her how she knew so much about this stuff, but that was for another time. Now, he just had to trust that she knew what she was doing.

Because one thing was certain, Lincoln didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

5

Gulf of Mexico

March 26th

The Gulfstream V dropped and banked hard. Riley bounced in her seat, forcing her to reach out for the armrest with her right hand, cautiously holding her laptop with her left. Next to her, the green Pelican case bounced in the seat. She looked up as a member of the flight crew approached her. A gold nameplate displayed the name “Nixon” over his right breast pocket. “It’s okay, ma’am, just a bit of turbulence. There’s a storm over the Gulf, but the pilots are trying to steer us around it.”

Riley nodded and looked back to the green case beside her. Slightly smaller than an average briefcase, she’d avoided it until now, instead trying to prepare her own after-action brief, describing the details of their investigation. She tried to elaborate on her concerns that the local military forces were attempting to quell some sort of outbreak through eradication of civilian populations. She had to pause several times, considering the ramifications of such an indictment. But there was no other explanation. She had personally witnessed the population of the village revolt against their executioners, and she still couldn’t believe it.

She shook away her doubts and tried to move on to the technical aspects of whatever the Brazilian military was after and, of course, to the foreigners they’d found there on the ground. That’s what brought her attention back to the green case. It was still locked, and she debated just leaving it alone. Riley had her own samples, the ones that she was sent for, safely tucked away in a heavy silicone case. She looked at the case again, debating the purpose for opening it. What good would it do her to find out why the other men were in the village? It would only complicate her own investigation; maybe she should leave it to another division.

“What harm is there in taking a look?” she muttered softly.

She closed and put away the laptop, exchanging it for the green case. Turning it in her hands, she examined the scratched sides. The front had a small powder-black twist lock with a butterfly-shaped lever. She held the lever in her fingers, paused, then finally gave in to her curiosity.

Fumbling with the latch, she discovered it wasn’t a lock at all, but rather a twist-tight lever to prevent air and water from penetrating the seal of the box. Pressing the butterfly and turning the latch, the box clicked open.

Inside, she revealed a black leather notebook wrapped shut with a single rubber band. She removed the notebook and opened to a serialized list of page numbers as a sort of table of contents. Flipping through the pages, she found small, passport-sized photographs stapled to each page, along with paragraphs of foreign writing that she couldn’t understand. At the bottom of each person’s page was a number and the names of American cities: Sacramento, Denver, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, DC.

She set the notebook aside and lifted a black foam block that fit precisely in the case. It was less than eight inches long and four inches wide and held six glass vials. She removed one, finding it empty. Upon careful inspection of the bottle, she found that it was labeled with a series of numbers. She remembered the pattern and went back to the notebook.

“Yes, of course,” she whispered. Each vial held a set of numbers that corresponded to a person’s page. She replaced the block and flipped through the pages of the notebook, looking closer at each photo. “Who are they? What were they given?”

“Doctor Erickson!” the attendant shouted, walking toward her. “We need you up front.”

She looked away from the notebook and up toward Nixon. “Is everything okay?”

The man shook his head. “I’m not sure. It’s Mr. Reid; he’s not feeling well.”

Riley could see the pained expression on the man’s face. She quickly unbuckled her lap belt and followed him toward the front of the aircraft. The Gulfstream was divided into multiple compartments. Jonathan Reid had stayed up front to sleep, while Riley had chosen to sit in the far back where she could focus on her report. She followed the attendant forward and through an open curtain. Reid sat in a rear-facing seat with his head against the fuselage. His face was pale and glistening with sweat while his hands twitched.

She quickened her pace and looked at the others in the compartment. “My God, how long has he been like this?” she asked, reaching for the man’s wrist to take his pulse. It was very fast and erratic.

The attendant shook his head. “I don’t know… He was asleep, then he woke up and began moaning something. He hasn’t made any sense.”

Riley took her focus away from Reid’s wrist and looked at the bandaged arm where he’d been scratched during their escape. Carefully, she pulled back the medical tape and found the scratch had turned a deep red and was oozing clear liquid. It appeared severely infected, but it had only been hours; it wasn’t possible. As she replaced the bandage, Reid began to kick his feet and convulse, pink froth pouring from the corners of his mouth.

“He’s seizing!” Riley shouted, reaching for Reid’s belt. “Quick, help me get him out of this seat and get him flat on his back.”

As she undid the belt, Nixon reached under the unconscious man’s armpits and lifted him out of the seat, bringing him into the aisle. Reid continued to kick and convulse as his arm flung violently, striking the side of Riley’s head and tossing her into a row of seats, where she fell hard. Through her daze, she heard Nixon’s screams behind her then a guttural moan. She struggled to her hands and knees, trying to fight her way to her feet. When she turned back, her body grew weak with fear. Reid was holding the attendant tight by the shoulders, trying to pull him down as the attendant fought back, pushing him away. Reid’s head twisted, violently biting and chewing on the screaming man’s wrists as he struggled to escape his attacker’s grasp.

Reid pulled the man down and rolled atop him. Still snarling, he pulled back. He momentarily locked eyes with Riley. She could see blood pouring from the corners of his eyes and nose, his teeth now coated in frothy blood. On the ground, Nixon cried and kicked his feet, still trying to escape. Reid’s back arched as he coughed then vomited frothy pink foam over his victim. The agent snarled again and reeled back, turning his attention to Riley.

He’d gone completely mad. The frenzied man clenched his teeth, seething as foam dripped from his jaw. He lurched forward before a man in a white flight-crew shirt shouted from up the aisle. Riley recognized him from when she boarded. She couldn’t remember his name but knew that he was the co-pilot. Reid’s head snapped away from Riley and twisted toward the man behind him. Without any hesitation, Reid launched back, running at the pilot, whose eyes showed fear.

Riley watched the impact as Reid slammed into the co-pilot then heard the men fight as they fell out of her view. She crawled forward to find Nixon lying unconscious, his arms and body covered in blood and frothy vomit. She could see Nixon’s chest rising in deep pants.

More screams caused her to look back toward the struggling men. Reid stood and charged in the direction of the cockpit, leaving the co-pilot battered and bloodied. She wanted nothing more than to find a place to hide and not come out, but she knew she had to stop him or he’d bring down the plane. Riley buried her fear and chased after Reid.

She heard the pilot’s scream just as the plane dove, taking her feet out from under her. Instead of running, she felt herself floating, and then flying toward the cockpit. Her body collided with Reid’s, throwing him forward into the co-pilot’s seat. She heard a loud crack as the bodyguard’s neck broke against the cockpit window. Then she struggled away from Reid’s convulsing body and dropped to her knees behind the co-pilot’s seat.

The pilot grunted, ignoring his torn shirt and bleeding shoulder as he leveled the plane. He looked to Reid, whose body had stopped moving and then down at Riley. “You going to tell me what in the hell just happened?” he barked.

Riley shook her head. “I don’t know.” She looked behind her and could see Nixon and the co-pilot moving. “I have to help them.”

“Go. I’m setting this thing down as soon as we cross the border.”

6

Near Gallaudet University, Washington, DC

March 26th

“You know what?” Sidney told the driver after checking her cell phone. “Can you take me to REI instead?”

“REI? I no know where that is,” the man replied. He had a heavy accent and his deep skin tone told her he was likely from a western African nation.

“Uh…” She referenced her cell phone again and gave him the address.

The driver pulled up to a red light and said, “Hold on.” Tapping a few keys on his cell phone that he used for navigation and to calculate the fare, he turned to her and said, “Twelve dollars, thirty-three cents more. This good?”

“Yeah sure, man,” Sidney answered. “Just take me to REI; my app will do all the math for me about cost.”

The car started up again. “You buy many items at the store?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I don’t know how long I’ll be, so I don’t need you to wait for me. I can just get another car when I’m ready.”

“Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure,” the driver replied, flicking his turn signal on as he changed lanes, then turned.

She sent a quick text message to Lincoln that she was going to REI, then sat in silence, thinking about the mess out west and about the man she’d somehow ended up shackling herself to for the next few days.

Sidney knew that Jimmie had wanted it to seem like a random encounter at the bar, but in truth, he’d set her and Lincoln up. He’d known Sidney for years. They’d met at a kickboxing class and hit it off instantly—the manly gay guy and the lanky, tattooed human rights activist. Over the years, Jimmie had tried to set her up with his friend Lincoln, but she’d always politely refused, citing current boyfriends or menstruation—sometimes the two were interchangeable, unfortunately. That was until yesterday. She’d been eating a hamburger at Bareburger, an organic burger joint near her home in Dupont Circle, when Jimmie appeared out of nowhere like he always seemed to do. After a few minutes of small talk, she agreed to meet his friend at the bar that night.

Little did she know that Lincoln had no clue Jimmie was matchmaking behind the scenes and had even conspired to get him really drunk before Sidney arrived. When questioned about it, he told her that if she could handle Lincoln at his worst, then he’d be her angel when he was sober.

So far, Jimmie had been right. Lincoln was incredibly polite, good looking, had a nice body, and was a great conversationalist—even if he was a little dumb in the street-smart and survival skills department, but that could be learned. Plus, the guy was decent in the sack, better than most she’d been with, so that was definitely a point in his favor.

The car pulled up in front of REI, and she tipped the driver on her app. “Thank you,” she said as she stepped out onto the curb. The car drove away as she tried finishing her thoughts on the whole Lincoln situation.

Of course, it made sense to have someone else around if things went bad. And she was sure things were going to go bad. Not one, but two videos showed the military firing on scores of people, or at least what used to be people. She’d been watching zombie movies since she was a kid, often wondering if she would have the intestinal fortitude to survive if something crazy like that were to happen. Now it looked like the damn outbreak was actually happening.

So, for now, she’d stick with Lincoln. If something better came along, then she’d move on to that. As an added benefit, she wasn’t attached to him, so if something bad were to happen, it wouldn’t really tear her up emotionally. It was callous, sure, but Sidney was also a realist. If shit went down like it looked like it would, then her number-one priority was saving herself.

The inside of REI was just like every other outdoor supply store that she’d ever been in…nothing special, other than the increased number of people inside. She grabbed a cart and went quickly to the camping section. The rest of that shit would be useless—except for the bicycle chain locks, which she grabbed two of as she walked by and tossed them into her cart.

She had to edge her way into the camping section. There were at least ten people, all poring over the equipment diligently, but they were civil for now. Sidney wasn’t a dummy, so she used her sexuality to her advantage, sliding seductively between men, rubbing lower backs gently, and smiling freely to get to the area she wanted to go to. Of course, the men parted ways and stared at her openly.

Two sleeping bags and a small tent were at the top of her list. The sleeping bags were already picked over for the ones that could withstand the coldest temperatures, so she settled on two that the packaging stated were good to eighteen degrees. Those went into her cart. As she was making her move toward the tents, she had to pass the picnic and camp cooking accessories. She haphazardly grabbed a box of cooking pans and a set of camping tableware that included a plate, a shallow bowl, a fork, and a spoon. The tableware went into her cart, and she pushed her way toward the end of the aisle. Then she remembered that she needed two sets of the tableware and went back to grab another before making her way to the tent section.

This area was mostly empty, since everyone knew that the smartest thing to do was to shelter in place. Sidney selected an expensive, lightweight, four-person backpacking tent and tossed it into the cart.

“That’s eight hundred and ninety-nine bucks the credit card company won’t ever see,” she mumbled.

Turning around, she noticed the first aid section and pushed her way into there as well. The men weren’t quite as willing to allow her passage in this aisle like they had been in the other one. She grabbed a full-sized first aid kit—they could pare it down as needed—some magnesium matches, several long-handled lighters, two small squares that opened up to be limited-use rain ponchos, a crank flashlight, and a camp shower.

The final items she wanted to get were two solid hiking backpacks that could hold all their gear. If shit went really bad, they’d need to be marginally comfortable in case they had to walk with everything they owned on their backs. She avoided the brightly colored pinks, oranges, and reds that were in fashion this year. Instead, she examined two dark-tan backpacks that said they were MILSPEC, whatever that meant. They weren’t quite as big as the others, but the numerous pockets on the outside of the bags where items could be reached without searching through the entire thing were beneficial in her mind, so she chose them.

Sidney made her way up front, grabbing two Gerber multi-tools and two folding pocketknives with three-inch blades. She wanted longer ones, but a sign said that three inches was the legal limit in DC. She frowned and decided that they’d just have to make do with what was available.

Once in line, she stood there for twenty-five minutes, adding a couple pairs of heavy-duty pants, a jacket, and a package of paracord, all of which were within arm’s reach of where she stood. Finally, she made it to the register, and while the frazzled employee rang up her purchases, she used the app on her cell phone to summon a car.

The car and her exit from the store coincided almost perfectly, and she threw the four bags of gear into the seat beside her.

“How do you feel about cats in your car?” she asked the driver.

“Cats? You have a cat in the car?”

“Not yet. I have a cat at my apartment. I can put him in a carrier and bring him down.”

“Well, it’s not really my—”

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks cash, plus the amount for the fare that’ll go on the app, if you wait for me for ten minutes outside my apartment while I pack a few things in a bag and grab my cat.”

The driver stared at her in the rearview mirror, considering her offer. “Two hundred,” he countered, obviously sensing her urgent need.

“Really, you greedy bastard? What if I was running from an abusive boyfriend?”

“Then I’d say three hundred. I don’t need to get shot by a crazy man,” the driver replied. “Two hundred, and I’ll wait for you and your cat for ten minutes, but no more. Today’s been crazy-busy, and I’m not going to call myself out for much longer than that.”

“Fine,” Sidney relented. “Just take me home and I’ll hurry.”

The trip over took several minutes longer than it normally would have due to an unusually high volume of traffic for a Sunday afternoon. “What is this?” the driver shouted, honking his horn repeatedly.

“Could you please stop doing that?”

“What? It helps.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Sidney replied. “All it does is make other drivers get more frustrated.”

“I think—” He stopped himself. “You know what I think? I think you are the customer, so we’ll take whatever time is needed.”

They finally reached her apartment, and she grabbed her bags, then decided to set them down. She’d need both hands if she was going to get everything she needed as quickly as possible. “You’re not going to leave with my stuff, are you?”

“No. I would never do that.”

“Give me your keys then.”

“What? No. You cannot have my keys.”

“Deal’s off then,” Sidney hissed. “I don’t need you leaving with the stuff I just bought.”

The driver rocked back and forth for a moment, then said. “Fine. I give you my keys, you give me your cell phone. We both have something of the other’s, and we won’t abandon each other.”

“All right,” Sidney said, locking her phone and handing it to the driver. “It’s password protected. Won’t do you any good to try and unlock it.”

“No problem. I know a guy…”

“Give me your keys.”

He handed them between the seats, and she accepted them. “I’ll only be ten minutes. Promise.”

Sidney dashed inside and up the stairs to her second-floor apartment. Rick James went crazy when she opened the door. He wasn’t used to being left alone overnight.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” she cooed as she rushed to her room and pulled down the comically oversized duffel bag that her gym gave her when she joined.

From her closet, she threw in underwear and socks, jeans, practical t-shirts without a lot of sequins and shit on them, a few pairs of yoga pants, some tank tops, a zip-up jacket, two sweatshirts, and a pair of tennis shoes. From the bathroom, all the tampons and pads that she had went into the bag, along with several bars of soap, an unopened bottle of shampoo, her brush, deodorant, and her toothbrush. Finally, she dumped her jewelry box into one of the bag’s side pockets. She crammed the bag closed, working the zipper back and forth until it remained shut.

Then she changed out of the tight jeans and flats that she’d worn the night before. She stripped naked, put on clean undergarments and a pair of cargo pants with dried paint on them from the few times she’d gone paintballing as part of a team-building exercise at work. She finished off the ensemble with a pair of hiking boots and a t-shirt. She considered the weather and put a light jacket over the top of everything. Out of habit, she reached toward her dresser for her cell phone but remembered that the driver had it downstairs. Instead, she pushed his car keys deep down into her front pocket, where the metal pushed uncomfortably into her thigh.

Next, she dug around in the back of her closet until she found her pet carrier, which looked like a smaller version of the bigger duffel bag. Rick James, who’d jumped onto the bed to watch what she was doing, hissed and ran into the next room. He didn’t like the carrier. Inside was a pair of thick gardening gloves left over from the last time she had to put her cat in the carrier. She wisely slipped those on and went hunting for the beast.

Sidney set her duffel bag down on the living room floor and closed the door behind her. That’s all she needed, was for the cat to get under the bed. “Come on, Ricky,” she cooed. “You want a treat-treat?”

The cat mewled piteously, seemingly torn between getting a treat and getting in the carrier. Sidney tossed one of his treats in the carrier and set it on the kitchen floor. She busied herself with grabbing a few food items from the pantry and putting them in the reusable grocery bag that she took to the market at the end of her block.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rick James enter the carrier. She crouched down and zipped up the opening, locking the cat inside. Then she picked up her oversized duffel and slung it across her body. She grabbed the carrier in one hand, the bag of food in the other, and left her apartment behind.

The street was a scene of pandemonium. By the sights, the sounds, even the smells, Sidney knew immediately what had happened, and she ducked back inside the glass doorway of her apartment building. She shouted for the desk employee to lock the doors, and the man came around, fussing about being quiet in the lobby. But when he saw what was happening, his hands fumbled with the keys, and he locked the doors as she’d directed.

Outside, people ran in every direction, fleeing from others covered in blood and screaming their hatred of everyone who wasn’t already bloodied and, presumably, infected with the virus that had struck out west. It was horrible to see in real life.

All across her line of view, the infected weaved around obstacles, some careening off of cars that sped away from the Circle. Several of them were dragged underneath the vehicles. Others leapt onto the hoods, trying to reach the occupants.

The situation was much more horrifying for the pedestrians as the infected tackled their prey, biting and tearing at their flesh. They ripped open great gashes in the flesh, vomiting a pink, frothy mixture of bile and blood into the wounds. Then they would rise and seek another victim, leaving the injured to suffer their fate.

Transmission, Sidney thought. “It’s blood borne, like Ebola or Marburg,” she murmured aloud. “That doctor was right.”

“What?” the dark man beside her hissed. “Ebola?”

She tore her eyes away from the events outside. The desk attendant was African. Ivory Coast, if she remembered right. She’d talked to him occasionally about her time in the Peace Corps in Senegal. He’d actually been a refugee that her old non-profit had assisted in immigrating to America after the last major Senegalese revolution had forced out Christians.

“The disease,” she said, pointing to the street. “It’s passed by whatever they’re throwing up.”

One of the infected slammed into the glass, leaving a smear of blood and filth along its surface. The man outside, if he could still be called that, bellowed in rage, slamming his hands into the glass and biting ineffectually at the smooth surface. Deep, red blood completely obscured the whites of his eyes and his gums bled profusely, covering his teeth with a mixture of bodily fluids. Then he began to head-butt the windows. A thin spider web of cracks appeared after the third time he rammed his head into the doors.

“Quick!” Sidney shouted. “Pull those potted plants in front of the door.” She had an idea.

“What?”

“Just do it! I don’t think he can see very well.”

They maneuvered the four big plants in front of the doors as the man continued to batter them with his forehead, which was now split open, revealing the mottled skull beneath.

“Now, hide,” Sidney ordered.

The attendant complied, crouching behind his desk. Sidney went around the corner and peeked at the door. After a moment, the man stopped head-butting the failing glass and stared at the plants inside. Then he turned and stumbled away.

“Son of a bitch,” she exhaled. “It worked.”

“Lady, what do you know?” the attendant demanded loudly.

“Nothing,” she replied. “I just had a hunch that he couldn’t see very well. His eyes were covered in blood, but they look like they hunt by sight. Now be quiet. We don’t know how well they can hear.”

She slid down the wall, sitting on her duffel bag, and positioned the cat carrier in front of her. Rick James seemed unconcerned with the action. “Good boy,” she whispered. “Good boy.”

Her position allowed her to see between the bases of the potted plants. For several minutes, the chaos outside continued unabated, then it began to ebb. As she observed, she thought about the direction of travel the mob had taken. They seemed to be coming from the south, from the direction of the White House and the…the airport.

No, that didn’t make sense, she decided. Reagan was several miles away and across the Potomac. If they’d somehow sprouted at the airport, they would have probably gone more into Virginia than up into the District. But there were several hospitals just a few blocks to the south of Dupont Circle. Her eyes drifted to the street again, where people lay in various states of injury. Some of them appeared dead, while others held cell phones to their ears in shaky hands. Not many people appeared to be trying to help one another.

And she had her answer. The first group had been in the hospital. There were probably a few victims of a similar attack somewhere else out west who returned home to DC, then were taken to the hospital by friends or family. Given what she’d witnessed, a couple of infected could tear through a closed hospital ward quickly, creating dozens more infected. Of course, that begged the question of the disease’s incubation period, but if it were several hours, that would have been sufficient time for additional medical personnel and patients to filter into the hospital, where the newly infected were undergoing treatment.

Then, with a few dozen infected, they could decimate an entire hospital.

She cursed under her breath at the government’s stupidity for keeping the information about the disease secret. There could have been security measures in place if the hospital knew what to look for. Instead, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of infected in the city now. Those people outside would likely turn and begin another wave.

“Shit!” Sidney coughed. This was her small window of opportunity to get out of here. She stood and walked quickly to the doors. Peering down the block to where the car was supposed to be waiting for her, she saw the open driver’s door and no sign of the man behind the wheel.

Just to be sure, she watched for a few more moments, looking up and down the street to ensure that there weren’t any mobile infected, then she called to the attendant. “Can you unlock the door for me? My car is right there. I’m going to try to get out.”

“No way,” he replied. “I ain’t unlocking those doors.”

“They’re all gone,” she offered. “All of them went north. This is probably my only chance to get to my car before the police block off the street.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie. It could have been the truth; she didn’t know.

His head popped up over the desk. “Why are you trying to leave? Shouldn’t you stay as a witness for the police?”

She pointed back at her duffel bag. “I’m heading back to Africa this morning for a few months. I’m supposed to go out there to help with another Ebola crisis.” That was definitely a lie.

The man gestured with his head toward the street. “Is that what this is? Is that Ebola?”

“No,” Sidney answered. “To be honest, I don’t know what that is out there, but if it is related to Ebola, the research team I’m on is the best chance of finding a cure.”

He considered her words for a moment and then nodded. “You go quick,” he directed. “As soon as you’re out of here, I’m locking the doors and not opening them again.”

“Deal,” she replied as she rushed back to the bags and picked up Rick James.

The attendant pulled one of the plants away from the door and put his key into the lock. “You ready?” he asked, looking back at her.

She walked up behind him, pulled the handles of the fabric grocery bag over her shoulder, and fished the keys from her pocket. She selected the car key from the ring and held that between her thumb and forefinger as she closed her fist around the remainder of the keys.

Sidney glanced back at the car. The driver had been stuck because of her, but she hadn’t made him open the car door. Had he fled ahead of the mob? she wondered. Worse, if she took the car, would she leave him stranded here in Dupont Circle, where the infected would surely rise again soon?

“Yeah, I’m ready,” she answered the attendant with a curt nod. There wasn’t anything she could do about the driver. If he took off, that wasn’t her fault.

The attendant twisted the key in the lock and pulled the door inward. As Sidney rushed out, her duffel bag hit the doorframe, and she spun wildly in almost a full one-eighty before catching herself. She turned around and ran at a crouch toward the car. The lock slammed home behind her.

Outside, the sounds of the injured were everywhere. It took a considerable effort to pass by the battered and bleeding victims. They were goners at this point, and there was nothing she could do, she told herself. Emergency response sirens wailed from every direction in the city, as well as some type of announcement system blaring out incomprehensible instructions from somewhere in the direction of the National Mall down south.

She ignored it all and ran. Then, she was at the Toyota and she rounded the bumper to the driver’s side, where the door sat open. Blood covered the fabric near the armrest, and she stepped softly up to the door. The driver lay slumped over the center console, bleeding from a bite wound near where his shoulder met his neck. Blood and other ichor covered his entire upper body, where the infected had vomited its fluids on him after the bite.

He wasn’t moving, so she pulled her sleeve down over her hands and gripped his wrist. With a heave, she pulled his body toward her, stepping back while still pulling on his arm. His upper body flopped listlessly to the ground, while his legs remained inside.

“Ugh…” he groaned.

Sidney dropped his hand and jumped back. He was still alive.

“Help…” His breath came out in a wheeze.

She looked inside the car. There was blood on the passenger seat where he’d been slumped over and on the door where he’d gone back inside, plus a little on the steering wheel. Everything else seemed all right, so she opened the back door and put her duffel and the cat carrier in the seat. She put the grocery bag on the floorboard.

“Help,” the man begged again.

She ignored him and grabbed his pant leg. With another pull, she dislodged his legs, dumping him onto the pavement. She sat down in the driver’s seat and put the key into the ignition. Then she made sure her sleeve was covering her bare skin and reached out for the door, pulling it closed.

The car choked to life, and a head lifted from the roadway. She put the car into reverse as the infected woman in the street struggled to rise. Her lower half was twisted at an angle that meant her spine was broken, probably from a speeding car.

Sidney slammed into the car behind her, and she screamed. She’d been busy watching the woman try to sit up and hadn’t been paying attention to what she was doing. It was a stupid, momentary lapse in her attention span that could have stranded her. She would have to remember to remain situationally aware at all times.

She laughed bitterly at the term while she put the car into drive. Her kickboxing instructor had always used the phrase “situationally aware” during the self-defense portion of class. He was right, Sidney thought. She hoped that he’d been situationally aware when the outbreak began. He had a family to look after.

Once she was on the road, she cautiously drove south toward the first westbound road, weaving around the debris in the street left from the mob’s passing. Her cell phone slid across the dashboard and slammed into the windshield in front of her, causing her to jump. She’d forgotten about the phone she’d given the driver.

Sidney grabbed it and dialed Lincoln’s number, pressing the speaker button so she didn’t have to hold it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Lincoln! Fuck!” Sidney cried breathlessly.

“Sidney? Is that you?” he asked.

“Yeah. Keep up,” she said. “Shit’s going down in DC. I’m on my way to your house now.”

7

Georgetown, Washington, DC

March 26th

Sidney pulled up to Lincoln’s house and grabbed the cat carrier, then dashed up to the porch. She pounded on the door, each rap of her palm echoing dully across the quiet, tree-lined street.

She heard the locks disengage before the door opened, so she knew to step back. When the door swung inward, she thrust the carrier at Lincoln. “Linc, this is Rick James,” she said. “He won’t like you at first. Just deal with it.”

Then she turned and jogged back down to the street, leaving Lincoln standing in his doorway. She’d already devised a plan of action, so it all made sense to her, even if he was left wondering what in the hell she was doing.

On the way back to the car, Sidney tore off her jacket, exposing her toned upper arms. Before she dropped the jacket, she used it to open the car’s back door then picked up the duffel bag and one of the sleeping bags.

“No, just stay in the house,” she replied to Lincoln’s unasked questions.

She tossed the bags inside his house then rushed to the open car. She picked up her grocery bag and the two backpacks full of supplies she’d bought from REI, then she kicked the door closed. Finally, she returned to his house and threw the rest of her bags through the open door.

“Uh, do you need—”

She cut him off by kicking her boots off on the porch then pulling her socks off by stepping on the toes. Next, she unbuttoned her pants and dropped them out in the open for anyone to see. Off went her shirt and, with a pang of regret, her bra and panties were left on the porch as well. She’d really liked the bra. It was a pretty seafoam green, edged with pink flowers along the top and a big purple flower in the center, where the two cups met. But she couldn’t risk any of the blood or bodily fluids getting inside the house, so it had to go. Oh well.

She walked into Lincoln’s house naked as a newborn baby.

“Hey,” he said. “Want to tell me—”

“I need to shower,” she replied, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “Lock the door.”

Before he could answer—or worse, try to grope her exposed breasts—Sidney walked back to his room and turned on the shower. Careful to avoid touching anything that she couldn’t disinfect in a few minutes, she stepped under the hot shower and scrubbed her body viciously. As she scrubbed at her hands, their cleanliness reminded of the scene in Macbeth where the Lady Macbeth was hallucinating, washing her hands to remove the unseen blood upon them.

Okay, that’s enough, she goaded herself and turned off the water. She allowed herself a moment to drip dry in the shower before stepping out. Lincoln stood there, holding a towel.

“Here you go,” he said.

“Thanks.” She accepted it without trying to cover herself up. She’d already had sex with the guy a few times, so he knew what she looked like, up close and personal. No sense in making their new arrangement awkward.

“So, are you gonna tell me what that was about?” he asked.

“I—” She stopped, trying to think of what to tell him. In the end, she decided to tell him everything. The packed store, the appearance of the infected mob and how she’d been able to hide from them using her apartment lobby’s greenery, even how she’d condemned that poor driver to his death, first by taking his keys, and then by leaving his bloody body in the street. She also told him about her hypothesis of how the virus passed from one person to another, and her belief that the large group had likely come from one of the hospitals near Dupont Circle.

Lincoln didn’t judge her openly; in fact, he wrapped her in an embrace that was meant to let her know everything would be okay. She accepted the warmth of his body against hers and rested her head against the crook of his neck.

From the next room, Rick James mewled hideously, reminding her that she needed to take him out of the carrier.

Sidney laughed and rushed into the living room, where her cat paced inside the carrier. She tucked the top of her towel in around her modest breasts and bent down to unzip the opening. She almost reached inside, but Rick James shot out, dashing behind the couch.

It was probably for the better. The stupid cat probably would have torn up her arm if Lincoln came near while she was holding him.

“So what now?” Lincoln asked.

“What’s the television say?”

“I, uh…I hadn’t thought to check,” he admitted. “I’ve only been home for a few minutes and wanted to get everything put away.”

Sidney nodded, understanding why he hadn’t had time to check the news but didn’t approve of his lackadaisical attitude. People were dying out there. “Let’s turn it on,” she suggested, burying her frustration.

Lincoln clicked the television on, and she sat down beside him. The news was discussing the events out west; there was nothing about what was happening in DC. After a few minutes, it was apparent that there wasn’t anything new available yet, so Sidney unwrapped her towel and tossed it on the floor then threw the blanket that Lincoln had on the back of the couch around herself, leaving just enough room for him to maneuver, if he decided to. God knows I could use the intimacy and the warmth of a human body right now, she thought longingly.

They watched the talking heads debating about what the media and signal outages in several states could mean, and still Lincoln didn’t make a move. Either he was an exquisite Southern gentleman who simply forgot his manners after a few tequila and whiskey shots, or he was trying to show her that his presence was comforting. Either way, she wasn’t having it.

She reached across, grabbing him above the fabric at first, then unbuttoning his pants when he still refused to do anything. “So, I’m horny and a little freaked out by everything,” she said.

“That’s an odd combination,” he replied. “I mean, I get being freaked out, but horny?”

She pushed the blanket back to expose her breasts. “Seriously, dude. Don’t try to psychoanalyze me. You won’t like what you learn. Let’s just go with it and act in the moment.”

That did it. Guess he’s a breast man, she thought with a smile.

* * *

An hour later, Sidney felt better. The stress of facing down the infected at the doors of her apartment and of abandoning that poor driver to whatever fate had in store for him had been wearing on her psyche; the sex made it better.

True, she’d probably be categorized as some type of deviant in normal circles, but it was her way of coping. Physically, the release of endorphins made her body relax without the use of drugs and, mentally, the closeness of another human being made her unease diminish.

Lincoln lay dozing with his head against the arm of the couch. She pushed herself up gently so as not to wake him and stepped lightly into the bathroom to relieve herself. He was still asleep when she came back, so she slipped on a t-shirt she found in his top drawer and tiptoed to the kitchen to assess their supply situation.

She counted sixty-three cans of stuff. She didn’t bother to categorize it as soup or vegetables; it was simply a can of food, regardless of what it was. He had a few perishable things in the pantry—that would have to go first in case the power went out, so it looked like grilled cheese for dinner, maybe pan-seared steak. It was too risky to go outside to use the grill.

A few quick calculations with rationing, and she estimated they could survive on the food that was in the house for about forty or forty-five days. It wasn’t a lot, but they were better off than they’d been this morning.

As far as Sidney could tell, their biggest shortcoming was not having any candles or a lantern. They had flashlights, and even the crank flashlight she’d picked up, but not getting a lantern from REI had been a major fail on her part. If the power stayed on, it wasn’t really a big deal, but if it went out, the lantern would have been clutch.

The noise of rustling fabric from the other room told her that Lincoln was waking up. She edged around the doorway so he could see her.

“Morning,” he said with a goofy grin.

“Don’t give yourself that much credit. It’s only been a couple of hours.”

“Oh? You didn’t seem to complain while we were…Well, you know.”

She slid across the floor and straddled him on the couch. “Fucking?” she purred.

“Uh, yeah.”

“You’re right. It was good. Exactly what I needed.”

“What we needed,” he corrected her.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” That was annoying, she thought. “If I had a little gold star sticker, I’d put it in your homework folder.”

She lifted her leg and fell beside him on the couch. “I was just checking our supplies. We have enough food for about a month and a half, if we ration smartly and use up the perishable stuff first.”

Several gunshots rang out nearby. They looked at each other silently then stood, creeping toward the front windows. The sounds of screaming echoed across the early evening stillness. It was the same primal, rage-filled howls of hatred that Sidney had heard earlier in Dupont Circle. She threw her finger to her lips, telling Lincoln to be quiet, and continued to the curtains.

Stomping and grunts answered her silent footsteps. Sidney carefully lifted the curtain away a half inch from the corner of the window and saw several of the infected on the front porch, staring intently at the door. Another was in the yard, holding the jacket she’d discarded.

THUD!

A loud bang on the front door made her jump and drop the curtain. She cursed inwardly at her stupidity. The things on the front porch could have seen that little bit of movement and have a reason to stick around now.

Screech.

The sound of fingernails running down the screen right in front of her startled her. She had been seen. Sidney stepped back and looked for a weapon of any kind, but nothing presented itself. How had she been so foolish? Instead of satisfying her body’s desires, she should have been preparing. And the first goddamned thing she should have done was place a weapon at every entrance.

The scratching came again, then the sound of the screen ripping echoed across the living room, followed quickly by the sound of fingernails on the glass. They scrabbled for a moment until another gunshot rang out. The noises against the window stopped, but the grunts and screeches did not as the group got excited and stomped off the porch.

Sidney stepped lightly to another window and risked a quick glance behind the curtain. A female in a cream-colored dress with a bandaged wound on her right arm stood at the window she’d just been stationed in front of. It turned its head to the side, then back again, clawing at the window with an alarming purpose.

Then the infected woman turned, taking half the screen with her, and ran down the steps toward the sound of the gunfire.

“What the fuck?” Lincoln mouthed.

She shook her head. The woman hadn’t been entirely mindless like the others had seemed. Was that normal?

How was any of this normal?

8

Highway 101, Eureka, California

March 27th

“…riots near the Capital continue…”

“You don’t mind if I switch the channel, do you?” Rick “Ram” Ramacher asked as he reached over to change the radio’s controls. “These riots or protests—or whatever the hell they are—are just pissing me off.”

“Go for it. I get tired of all that talk radio.” Jesse Moreno covered her mouth as she let out a quick yawn from behind the wheel of the big Crown Victoria. Ram tried unsuccessfully to stifle his own yawn as he jabbed the channel controls, looking for a music station.

“Now you’ve done it,” Ram yawned.

“Sorry.” Jesse returned the yawn, and the whole damned thing went full circle again until Ram found a music station and looked away. “At least we know we’re both not sociopaths.”

“That’s what my wife always says,” Ram chuckled. They were part of a two-vehicle Corrections Transport Team. Jesse drove the chase car while Sergeant Moore and Officer Avila were up ahead in the lead vehicle that contained Inmate Edwards, a two-time murderer and sex offender who was being transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Eureka for a teeth cleaning.

Ram pulled his cell phone out of his jumpsuit pocket and glanced down at the time. It was 1530. He was in the middle of a sixteen-hour overtime shift. Just seeing the time made him want to yawn again.

“You on overtime, Ram?”

“Yeah. Watch office caught me at the sally port.” He gave Jesse a sad grin. “I was the only one that hadn’t been held over twice.”

“Damn, an old timer like you. That must really suck.”

“Six more days, Jesse, and I’ll be outta here.” Ram flipped the cell around in his hands. “No more holdovers and no more bullshit.”

“You retiring, Ram?” Jesse asked as she watched the lead car and road ahead of her. The young officer had been in the California Department of Corrections for a little over two years. She’d worked with the older officer a few times and had always found he was willing to help and answer any questions he could. Ram had never once perved on her like some of the other officers she’d worked with or treated her less than equal. Jesse liked that and was happy to hear he’d be her partner this trip.

“Well, kiddo,” Ram said, glancing out his window into the usual midday gray of the North Coast 101. A light fog covered the road. Not enough to slow the vehicles down, but enough to give it an eerie feel. Ram noticed there was hardly any traffic on the road this afternoon. Odd. Maybe it was an offshoot of all those virus rumors coming out of Sacramento. The old guard chuckled to himself. Nothing good ever came from Sac. “I always told myself when I hit fifty, I was out. Done.”

“How does Louise feel about you pulling the plug?” Jesse took her right hand off the Crown Vic’s steering wheel and smoothed her clip-on tie. She was dressed in crisp Class As for the transport, unlike Ram, who was still in his olive-drab jumpsuit from the shift before.

“She’s good with it. Hell, she’s only got five more years to do, herself.” Ram smiled at the thought of Louise and him sitting on a beach in Maui, just soaking in the sun. His bride of twenty-two years worked third watch, and they usually only had one day off together. When he retired, he was looking forward to spending more time with her, whether she liked it or not.

“Five more years.” Jesse shook her head. “That’s more time than I’ve got in.”

“It’ll go by fast.” Ram smirked and then shook his head as well. “No, it won’t.”

“Thanks, ya ass.” Jesse slid her right hand down to where her Glock sat in her holster and adjusted it. “Damn holsters are a cheap piece of shit.”

Ram shook his head as he patted the old .38 that sat snugly in his. The transport crews got the new Glock pistols, while the overtimers and reliefs were issued the well-used six-shot revolvers. That was the CDC, always looking out for their people.

“Nothing but the best.” Ram glanced down at the cell in his left hand. He left Louise a message that he was working overtime and figured she’d be up in a couple hours. This shouldn’t be too bad of a run. Another ward of the state getting free health care. No biggie.

“Golf Two, Golf One,” Sergeant Moore’s voice crackled over the handheld radio. Ram grabbed up the mic and clicked it on.

“Go ahead, Golf One.”

“Yeah. Hey, Ram, we just got word on the radio from the Eureka PD that there’s some kind of disturbance down Fourth Street. Protestors or some shit, so we’re gonna have to take a detour.”

“That’s just swell,” Ram said into the mic. “Maybe they should drop some job applications on the crowd. That’ll scare them off.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry, old man. We’ll get you to St. Joe’s before you have to take a pee break. Just make sure Moreno doesn’t lose us.” The radio clicked off.

“Moore.” Ram clipped the mic onto the side of the handheld. “I remember when he would hide in the bathroom every time an alarm went off. What a dick.”

“I’m just glad I’m riding with you and not him. Poor Avila.”

“Avila is probably stewing, riding with him,” Ram replied with a grin as he watched US-101 turn into Fourth Street. He could see the parking lot of the local Target to his right. It was crammed full of cars, and people were in a frenzy, running to and from the store, arms and carts loaded with groceries and other stuff. “That’s kinda odd,” he muttered.

“I noticed that too,” Jesse nodded toward the Target. “No traffic headed into town either.”

“Maybe whatever protest they have going on scared folks off?” Ram suggested with a shrug, the Kevlar vest under his jumpsuit moving up and down. The old prison guard hated wearing the damn things.

“Maybe,” Jesse said halfheartedly. As she watched ahead of them, she noticed smoke billowing up from several blocks away. “You see that, Ram?”

“Damn.” Ram leaned forward. He could see the thick black smoke rising from the where the courthouse and police station should be.

“Golf Two, Golf One!” The radio crackled with Moore’s panicked voice. It made the already spooked Ram jump.

“Go ahead,” Ram said into the mic.

“We just got a call from the watch. There’s a full-blown riot on A Yard—Code Three.” Ram gave Jesse a quick look and shook his head. Code Three was bad. “They want us to return. Now!”

“Damn, anybody hurt?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to take the next two-way street.”

“Ten-four,” Ram said, hanging the mic back up.

“Yard’s been normal all week,” Jesse said, watching the street ahead of them.

“That doesn’t mean anything, Jesse.” Ram glanced over his shoulder at the Target store as it grew smaller in the distance. “What the hell is going on?”

“Ram!”

The officer quickly turned back to see a big Ford F-150 speeding the wrong way down Fourth Street. People clung to the truck, insanely trying to get inside the vehicle’s cab. The F-150 drove wildly and veered toward the lead transport vehicle. Ram saw Moore try to swerve out of the truck’s path, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Ford smashed head-on with the Crown Victoria. The impact flung the people clinging to the outside of the truck to the road; bodies flew in all directions. Some were splattered against the local storefronts, while others were smashed into the asphalt of Fourth Street. The Crown Victoria erupted into a ball of flame as the Ford pushed it into the side of an insurance building.

“Holee shit!” Ram gripped the dashboard tightly with his right hand. He glanced over at Jesse. She’d brought their Crown Vic to a screeching halt and was just staring at the burning vehicles. All of the color had drained from her face.

“Oh my…”

“It’s okay, kid!” Ram grabbed her gently on the shoulder. “Call it in. I’m going see if I can help!” He reached down and grabbed the mini extinguisher, knowing that they were probably all dead, anyway. He jumped out of the car and sprinted toward the wreckage. As he ran past the dozen or so bodies spread out on the roadway, he knew he should stop to check them, but the men trapped in the burning vehicles needed help now.

“Fuck me.” Ram stopped outside the burning building. The truck and the Crown Victoria were wedged deeply inside and flames covered both vehicles. Feeling the heat from the fires, Ram could clearly see that there’d be no survivors. Dropping the extinguisher to his side, he ran his left hand across his face. Rick Avila had been a good guy. Ram had known the older guard since the academy. His family would be devastated. Moore, on the other hand, had been a coward and a prick his whole career, but he sure didn’t deserve to be burned alive.

Ram took a deep breath, still not sure what the hell had just happened or how to deal with it. He’d been one of those guys who had slept through transportation classes, figuring someone else would be there to help. Well, hopefully Jesse was that someone who would help with all the protocols he didn’t know. “Fuck.”

Ram started to turn back to the Crown Victoria when he heard a deep moaning sound. Turning to his right, he saw one of the people who’d been thrown from the Ford struggle to his feet. The man was dressed in the torn remains of a Eureka Police Department uniform. His duty belt hung loosely from his waist, the handheld radio dangling from its holster. As the officer staggered toward him, Ram could see he was bleeding from his eyes and ears. The man let out a feral groan and jumped at him, tearing at his cheek. Ram instinctively brought the fire extinguisher up and slammed the crazed officer in the side of the head with it, knocking him to the ground. Momentarily dazed, the officer struggled to his feet once more.

“Hey buddy…”

The policeman leapt at Ram again. This time, Ram used all his strength to slam the officer in the head with the fire extinguisher. The man collapsed heavily onto the street, unmoving. Ram, worn out from the brief fight, tossed the extinguisher to the ground and slumped back, overwhelmed. He really needed to start working out again.

“Ram!” Jesse shouted from outside the driver’s side of the Crown Vic. Her Glock was drawn and held close into her chest. “We need to go, now!”

Ram looked back to where his partner was, noticing that the civilians who had been thrown from the Ford and should have been dead, were now starting to get to their feet. All of them seemed focused on him.

“Ah, fuck!”

9

Eureka, California

March 27th

“What the fuck was that?” Ram gripped the dashboard of the Crown Vic tightly with his left hand while he held the .38 in his trembling right. “Jesse, what the fuck just happened?”

The other guard made no attempt at a reply as she gunned the big V8 engine and stared straight ahead at the highway in front of them. Looking behind them, Ram saw that the crowd of mad men and women had finally ended their insane foot pursuit of the fleeing car. The older guard turned back around in his seat and ran a hand across his bleeding right cheek. The crazed policeman had made a pretty deep tear in Ram’s face.

“Jesse…” Ram noticed that she was staring intently straight ahead, not focused on the freeway in front of them. She’d fallen into some kind of shock.

“Jesse!” Ram grabbed her shoulder and gave her a hard shake. The younger guard suddenly snapped out of her stupor and relaxed the pressure on the gas pedal.

“Sorry, Ram.” Jesse exhaled quickly and eased up on her steering wheel death-grip. “I lost it for a moment. Won’t happen again.” The speedometer quickly dropped down to fifty-five.

“No worries, Jesse.” Ram tried to give her a reassuring smile as he reached for the car’s radio mic. “I lost it for a second back there too. What was that?”

“Madness. Pure Madness.” Jesse’s voice was calm and almost monotone.

“I won’t argue with you there.”

“I was a corpsman in the Navy,” Jesse stated. “I saw something similar to this in southern Africa. Only it wasn’t Ebola or any known virus.”

Ram held the mic absently in his hands as he listened to Jesse ramble on. She’d told him about her time in the Navy on a few prior occasions, but he’d never heard her talk like this. Her demeanor sent a cold chill down his spine. Jesse had always spoke about the humanitarian efforts they did while she was a corpsman. Never once did she mention this spooky shit.

“Those people were just angry.” Ram tried to keep his voice from cracking. “What do you mean ‘virus’?” he asked, his voice finally betraying him.

“Didn’t you see their eyes?” she said, not taking hers off the road. “They were bleeding from them.”

Ram clearly remembered the face of the police officer who had attacked him. It was something he’d never forget. The officer’s eyes were definitely bleeding. Ram still couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put it together. “What kinda virus was it?”

“They never figured it out. The powers that be firebombed the whole village. Cleansed it.” Jesse gave him a weird smirk. “That was some serious classified information I just shared.” She gave Ram a dead-eyed stare he’d never seen from her before. The younger guard tried to keep her eyes from focusing on the fresh wound on her partner’s face. That was bad news for him. “I swear that was the same shit I witnessed in Africa.”

“You’re scaring the fuck out of me, Jesse.”

“That’s two of us.” She nodded at the forgotten mic in his hand. “You going to call this in?”

Ram nodded as he quickly brought the mic to his lips and clicked the talk button. He called in the accident to the prison and got no response. After his third attempt, he dropped the mic into his lap.

“They’re not answering,” he said, pulling his cell phone out of his jumpsuit pocket. “Let me try the watch office.” Jesse continued to steer the Crown Vic north on the unusually vacant highway as Ram found the number in his contacts. The younger officer knew exactly what had affected those people in Eureka. She didn’t know its name, but she knew it was deadly and it was here.

“Cell’s not connecting. I just get that damned recording saying they are unavailable.” He punched in his home number and got the same recording. Frustrated, he dropped the phone into his lap. “Cell towers must be down.”

Jesse tossed him a worried look, and he noticed that they’d picked up speed. Now, concerned for his family, he paid closer attention to the road. A couple of cars sped by in the opposite lanes, heading toward Eureka. Other than that, there were no other vehicles on the road. While he’d been busy calling for help, Jesse sped by Humboldt State University and several off-ramps with access to services. Both of them had been too wrapped in their own thoughts and fears to notice the clouds of black smoke wafting up from the university—or the line of Blackhawk helicopters in the distance.

“Take the first McKinleyville exit. There’s a sheriff’s station there. If not, there’s the Highway Patrol offices out by the airport. Maybe we can get some help from one of them.”

“Okay.” Jesse nodded, glancing at the rapidly approaching exit sign. “About a mile up.”

Ram just nodded in response. His thoughts had gone from his survival to the welfare of his wife and daughter. The bloody eyes of the crazed policeman kept replaying in his mind as did Jesse’s story about the deadly virus. Wouldn’t they have heard about that outbreak in Africa? He was sure neither thing had anything to do with the other. But, damned if…

“Here’s the first McKinleyville exit!” Jesse’s voice cracked as she started to turn the cruiser off the highway. The exit was blocked by two desert-camouflaged Stryker vehicles, causing Jesse to bring the speeding Crown Vic to a sliding halt.

“ATTENTION IN THE VEHICLE, THIS IS A QUARANTINE AREA!” a voice boomed through a loudspeaker. “YOU MUST TURN AROUND AND EXIT THE AREA IMMEDIATELY BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN THE USE OF DEADLY FORCE. I REPEAT…”

“Jesse?” Ram could see the big weapons on the armored vehicles pointed directly at them. He felt the sudden urge to empty his bladder, but held it in. Ram didn’t feel like humiliating himself any more than he already had.

“They mean business, Ram. We need to turn back to the highway.”

“Jesse…” The senior officer thought maybe they should inform the soldiers of their incident in Eureka.

“Don’t fuck around on this, Ram!” the other officer said in a no-nonsense tone. “They’ll shoot us, no shitting!” She quickly spun the wheel around and turned the cruiser back toward the highway. Ram glanced over his shoulder as they swiftly pulled out of the off-ramp. He could see several soldiers running about, setting up more barricades, automatic weapons slung across their chest.

Yeah, he thought to himself as he wiped the cold sweat from his face. Maybe it would’ve been a bad idea to stop and try to chat. Ram slumped heavily down in his seat. Everything seemed to be falling apart. He needed to get to his family.

“Jesse, what the hell?”

“I think it’s best we head back to Crescent City,” she said, watching the road. “All the exits into McKinleyville have to be secured. Soldiers are probably all over the place. Those guys didn’t look like National Guard either. If we’d hung around that exit much longer, they would have opened fire.”

“Crap!” He picked up his cell and tried his wife’s number. Nothing.

Ram suddenly felt like the dynamic between the two officers had changed. Jesse was now the one with most of the experience with whatever was going on. “You think they killed the cell towers too?” Jesse gave him a quick nod. “Fuck me. Okay, let’s get our asses back home. This shit can’t be all over, can it?”

Jesse’s silence was all the answer he needed. Whatever this shit storm was that they were in, they were all in extreme danger.

10

Near Klamath, California

March 27th

“Can you tell it’s there?” Ram turned his left cheek so Jesse could see the big bandage he covered the bleeding scratch with.

“Tell what’s there?” Jesse gave him a quick look as she continued to steer the big Crown Vic through the curvy road toward Crescent City.

“Nice.” Ram shut the first aid kit and quickly shoved it down under the seat. “I’m lucky that dipfuck didn’t get my eye.”

“Lucky,” Jesse replied in that creepy monotone voice she’d used earlier. Ram had a gut feeling that she knew more than she’d shared about what was going on.

“I’m okay, right?”

“Yeah, Ram.” Jesse smiled, and she almost sounded oddly normal when she said that. “It’s just a flesh wound,” she added in a mock English accent.

“Just a flesh wound?” Ram frowned. “Damn Monty Python. Fucker stings like a bitch for a flesh wound.”

“Quit being a BITCH, Ram. I’ve had worse cuts shaving my legs.” Jesse gave the older guard a quick sideways glance. She could see the red of infection outside the edges of the bandage. Not a good sign for her partner. Ram hadn’t shown any other obvious outward indicators of the viral outbreak she’d encountered in Africa all those years ago. Maybe that was a good thing. Still, the younger guard had slyly popped the snap off her holster so she’d be able to quickly draw her handgun if need be.

“You’re not shaving your legs with crazed lunatics’ fingernails, Jesse.” He winced in pain. Ram could feel the infection attacking his body from the inside. He hoped against hope that it was just an infection from the cop’s dirty hands and not some virus that would turn him into a rage-filled freak like the others. He glanced up at the passing road signs and realized they weren’t far from the bridge that crossed the Klamath River and would lead them past the small town of the same name, and then eventually into Crescent City. Ram tried his cell phone again with no luck. The older guard cursed as he shoved the phone into his jumpsuit pocket.

“Ram?”

“Still no service.” He absently rubbed at his bandaged wound, worried that the worst had happened to his family.

“Shit!” Jesse cursed as the Crown Vic rounded the last curve before the bridge. Slamming on the cruiser’s brakes, the big vehicle slid sideways across both lanes and came to an abrupt stop several dozen feet before the entrance to the bridge.

“Holee crap!” Ram sat up in his seat and pulled the .38 from his holster.

“This can’t be good,” Jesse said, glancing over at her partner.

“No shit,” Ram grumbled under his breath. He opened the passenger’s door quickly and climbed out, the pistol firmly in his right hand and close into his chest like they’d recently started teaching at the range. “Jesse?”

“Regular Army,” she said, pulling the Mini 14 from its rack between the seats and joining Ram outside the cruiser.

A row of concrete barriers blocked the entrance to the bridge. On top of the barricade was haphazardly strung concertina wire. Back several more feet were two desert-camouflage Humvees parked end-to-end. Both guards noticed the sky above was filled with carrion birds circling the area.

Jesse gave Ram a hand signal to follow her closer to the barrier. The older guard guessed that’s what she meant and fell in behind her, pistol at the ready. As they moved in, both of them could see the dozens of bodies scattered around the bridge and Humvees. Ram ran his left hand across his face. He’d seen a lot of blood and guts spilled before, but nothing like this. Jesse squeezed his shoulder, causing him to jump a little.

“It’s okay,” she said in a low tone while she scanned the area over the Mini 14’s iron sights. Seeing no movement, she dropped the weapon to a combat rest position. “Looks like they were overrun.”

“Fuck!” Ram cursed a little too loudly and was answered by the squawks of the hungry crows. “Whatever happened in Eureka is here.”

“We need to get across the bridge.” Jesse gave the scene of carnage another quick scan then hurried over to the back of their Crown Victoria to open the trunk. Ram walked backward slowly to the rear of the cruiser, keeping his eyes on the bridge.

“Here.” Jesse handed him the Remington 870 shotgun, the old staple of transport teams, and a box of shells. Ram shoved the .38 into his holster and grabbed the Remington from her. As he fumbled around trying to remember how to load it, Jesse filled a small canvas bag with the extra three magazines for the Mini, two water bottles, and a handful of zip ties. There was also another first aid kit, which she quickly shoved into the bag. Zipping it up, she glanced back up at Ram. The older guard had finished loading the shotgun and was jamming the rest of the shells into his jumpsuit’s pockets.

“You ready, Ram?”

“No.” He gave her an uneasy smile. “But what the fuck.”

“What the fuck.” She nodded. “Let’s go.”

11

Sheldon Lake, Michigan

March 27th

A slow breeze blew across the flat water, causing the boat to slowly turn. The old man had fished the lakeshore his entire life. The lake was a vast body of water surrounded by heavy trees, and only the southern shore was occupied by homes. These days, after retiring from the electric company, fishing was all he did, and there wasn’t much else to do. He cast his Zebco out and watched as the bobber plopped into the water. It drifted slowly away from the boat, caught up in the gentle breeze. Clay leaned back into his swivel chair and used an old floppy hat to shield his eyes from the midday sun. He leaned to the side and fished through a Styrofoam cooler, removing a chilled can of beer. Popping the top, he took a long sip, keeping his eyes on the red-striped bobber.

The lake was deserted this time of year. Most of the other homeowners on this side were seasonal yuppies, up from Chicago. They rarely visited until the peak summer months. Then, they came in droves and held late-night parties. He hated the summers. That’s when they came out in force in their jet skis and pontoon boats. They made wakes that ruined fishing, and their gas left an oily sheen on the pristine water. More than once Clay had sat on his own deck and pondered setting fire to the row of fancy homes on the far side of the lake.

He’d inherited the cottage from his father, who got it from his before that. Clay used it for hunting and some fishing in his younger days, and when retirement came he decided to move there full time. Clay had been married a few times, but they always seemed to run off or die on him. Now, other than a leather-eared dog, he was alone and had no energy to find a new woman. His friends down at the VFW tried to hook him up with the occasional lady, but he had no time for them. They were full of it. These were his years, and he saw no reason to share them with some woman looking to start over. Fishing and drinking beer occupied his time now, and he was fine with that.

Clay stretched and let out a long, exaggerated yawn, which caused his dog to turn and give him a sideways glance. “What are you looking at, Rufous?” he asked the dog as he reached into his cooler and popped the top off another Pabst Blue Ribbon. Clay took a long swig then reached for his pole and began to reel the line back in. His dog ran to the front of the boat and looked intently at the homes in the distance, taking Clay’s attention from the line.

He followed the dog’s stare to the shore. “What do you see out there, boy?”

The dog began to growl softly, and then barked. Clay reached into the seat pocket behind him and pulled out an old pair of binoculars. He searched the shoreline in the direction the dog was staring. On the dock of a shuttered luxury beach home stood a woman. On closer examination, Clay could see that she was naked from head to toe and extremely fit. “What in the world is she doing at the Henry place?” he asked aloud. “It’s a bit early to be boozed up.”

Clay had seen his share of naked floozies along the lakeshore; the parties in mid-July tended to require it, but it was early spring now and he knew the Henrys. It was still far too early in the season for the rich lawyer and his wife to be up here, and they weren’t the type to allow friends to use their place. Clay watched the woman walk drunkenly along a boardwalk, and then turn toward a plank dock. “What in the hell is she doing?” he asked, still watching her through the binoculars. The woman staggered forward and stopped to look behind her. Clay caught a look in the woman’s eyes during the swift movement of her head. She wasn’t drunk or stoned—no, she was afraid. But what was she afraid of?

“Let’s go have us a closer look, boy.” Clay got to his feet, stepped to the small captain’s chair, and started the outboard engine. As he turned the boat and headed toward the dock, the dog became more agitated. Clay lost sight of the woman, but he could see a large cover swaying in the wind over a moored boat. He knew the woman must have crawled beneath the cover to hide.

“Calm down boy, we’ll sort this all out in a minute,” he said over the gurgling engine.

The dog began yelping, whining, and tipping its head back, barking. Clay cut the throttle and let the boat glide toward the dock. He could see the boat cover flapping where the woman released bungees to slip underneath it. “You okay in there?” Clay called out.

Rufous shot to the edge of the bow, his bark now feverish and alarming. Clay had never seen the dog act this way. “What in the hell has gotten into you? Come here, boy. Stop that.” The dog ignored him, its chest heaving. The hound’s head was locked on the distant tree line now, and hair stood up on the dog’s neck, its lips curling back to reveal yellow, stained fangs.

The boat glided forward, and just feet from the dock, he spotted them. Whoever the hell they were, they were mad, and they were moving fast, sprinting down Lakeview Drive, running along the lake’s southern shore. Many of them were screaming, others just came through the thin wood line with barred teeth. Clay caught movement from the left and spied the woman’s pale face peeking from beneath the canvas cover. She appeared to be crying tears of blood. The woman spoke, her words overshadowed by the barking of the dog and the screaming of the crowd.

The mass was on the boardwalk now. Clay backed away, pressing into the seat, fumbling with the controls. He knew every movement he needed to make to turn the boat, but somehow his hands and arms were not cooperating. His wrist shook as he worked the throttle to reverse, pleading and willing the boat back as the mob neared the dock. They were fixed on him now, and the woman was no longer hiding. The fear he’d seen on her face had transformed into rage as her frail and naked body crawled from under the cover and spilled off onto the dock.

She forced herself up and ran at him, leaping into the air, falling short and smacking the cold water hard. He pulled back on the throttle and the boat pulled away. Bubbles in the water were the only indication where the woman had gone down.

Looking up, he saw the mob was now at the narrow dock. The men and women ran toward him, with ripped clothing and blood pouring from their eyes and scalps. The crowd spilled over, knocking others into the lake as more charged at him, performing the same leap as the woman. They dove into the water, one after another, dropping below the surface with no attempts to swim.

12

Sheldon Lake, Michigan

March 27th

Their screams still echoed in the distance behind him. He fought the temptation to look back as his boat glided across the water, the engine maxed out. Rufous stood beside him, the dog’s nose into the wind, its ears flapping wildly. He looked down and could see his hands shaking on the controls and willed himself to breathe deeply and relax.

His cabin was just ahead, beyond the next point and set back into the woods, hidden from the crowds. He spotted the long wooden dock, and the home atop a steep hill. Because of the odd-shaped and rolling hill, the home wasn’t the most sought-after spot on the lake. Families that moved here wanted long, flat lawns and sandy beaches for entertaining guests, but the seclusion of his father’s cabin suited him just fine. Clay cut the engine as the boat neared the dock. It glided in faster than he’d intended, and he scrambled forward to catch a vertical post, tossing his line over it just as the boat moved past.

The boat jerked and came back as the rope reached its limit. Rufous scrambled to the bow, his tail wagging as if the previous ten minutes never happened. Clay followed him forward and sat on the edge of the boat, his legs shaking as the adrenaline left his body. He focused on the wind, listening intently. The sounds of the mob were gone. He shook his head and looked into the distance. He could see nothing, nobody. “Maybe it never happened at all, boy,” he said, looking down at the dog. “Maybe I’m losing my mind.”

He put his still-shaking hand on the burly dog’s neck and felt its tense muscles. Rufous was still on alert. “No such luck, aye, boy?”

Clay turned and stepped onto the dock, the dog jumping out of the boat and landing behind him. He walked the path to the wooden steps leading up the old cabin. There were no neighbors in this thick patch of woods, and for the most part, he liked it that way. But now, reaching the top of the hill and looking back across the lake to the distant shoreline, he wished he had someone to go to. Anyone that he could talk to. He wended his way up the steps to the covered porch and pulled back the wooden screen door to step inside. He moved to the front door before stopping.

He looked back at the flimsy screen door and flipped a peg, securing it. He shook his head and looked down at the dog. “I can’t even remember the last time that door’s been locked.”

Rufous whined and paced toward the cabin’s entrance. Clay nodded to him and stepped inside, closing and bolting the heavier plank door behind him. Without debate, he moved through the house, bolting windows and closing heavy drapes to block out the light. Then, he passed through the kitchen and grabbed a can of beer from the refrigerator before moving back into the great room and dropping into a plaid easy chair. Rufous quickly ran to the opposite corner and leapt into a chair of his own that was covered with a flannel blanket.

Clay leaned back and closed his eyes. He popped the top on the beer and drank down half the can before setting it on an end table and lifting a cordless phone. “I’ll give the sheriff a call and find out exactly what the hell is going on over there,” he scoffed.

“I told that fool plenty a times that one of these days them city folks and their drugs was going to get outta control,” Clay said, looking down at the phone. He tried to remember the number to the local sheriff’s office, but finally just shook his head in frustration and dialed 9-1-1.

The phone rang twice before switching to a fast busy signal, and then clicking dead. “Damn county,” Clay cussed. “They take my taxes but can’t even answer a damn phone.” He pressed the call button, powering off the phone, and dropped it to the table to retrieve his beer. “Better off without ’em. I don’t feel like answering all their damn questions anyhow. Let the city folks deal with those raving meth heads. Not my problem as long as they keep that trouble on their side of the lake.”

Clay looked across the room and could see that the dog’s face was buried in the old blanket, not paying any attention to the old man. He drank the rest of his beer, and then pushed away an old book, searching the table for the TV remote. He wasn’t one for TV and didn’t even know why he kept the thing at all. Aside from an old war movie or a western on occasion, he didn’t have much use for it.

The news was rarely that anymore. It was more a battle of wits, broadcasters telling folks what to think, not giving people a chance to think for themselves. Clay didn’t have time for such things. He’d rather focus on himself and fishing. He couldn’t care less what some folks on the West Coast were worried about. Self-thought was dead. He realized that the last time he went into the city for a part to the water heater. He’d stopped for a coffee on his way home and caught an earful from a pimple-faced kid working the counter. Apparently, his NRA hat was offensive, and the kid asked him if he’d mind removing it.

Clay laughed to himself as he recalled the look on the kid’s face when he’d offered to run the hat up the young man’s tail pipe. He shook his head. “I’ll never understand them city folk.” He chuckled again, stretching out his arm and pressing the well-worn buttons, powering on the old TV. The set came on with a pop, which caused the dog’s ears to perk up. It was still on some over-the-air station, an episode of Bonanza. Ben was chewing out the boys for getting in some sorta trouble. Clay laughed, watching the sons dip their heads in shame at the scolding. “That Ben Cartwright, he ain’t one to tolerate any nonsense,” he said, pointing his empty beer can at the TV.

Almost forgetting why he turned on the set in the first place, he heard a series of booms from outside. He was certain they were gunshots, long and spaced out. Rufous heard it too, and the dog’s ears pointed up sharply. Clay stayed in his seat. The shaking returned to his hands, and he flipped through the stations, landing on a news broadcast. An anchor that he recognized from the city was sitting behind a desk. Instead of the customary suit, the man was wearing a button-down shirt with the tie missing.

“Folks, we’ve just received this broadcast from our Denver affiliates. Even though it’s unconfirmed, it does match up with what’s being reported locally. Now, as we play this video, I want to warn you that this is graphic, and you may want to move younger viewers out of the room.”

The picture flipped to a high-altitude image. The broadcaster continued speaking, “As you can see, this was taken from some sort of recreational drone. This video, from Colorado, was sent to our national affiliate, GNN, which got shut down by the FCC just a couple of hours ago. Our producers decided that this station would risk the government’s censure as long as we reported the truth.”

The drone flew over what Clay thought looked like a prison or maybe some sort of military base. For the most part, nothing seemed unusual. There were soldiers and long wire barriers. The video continued until the screen was filled with bodies mangled and wrapped in the wire.

Clay reeled back, immediately recognizing the look of those he’d seen on the lakeshore less than an hour earlier. He held his breath as he continued watching. The camera zoomed in to a woman’s face, twisted in a bloody rage just moments before she was shot. Clay lurched as he felt the beer in his belly become unsettled, and he took in several deep breaths to try to calm himself. He blinked his eyes and coughed into his hand as the broadcaster’s voice returned.

“Now folks, I must caution you, the events in Colorado may be completely unrelated to the outbreaks of violence we are witnessing here near the interstate, outside of Madison and north of Chicago. But for the time being, the State Police and Governor’s office are recommending all residents remain indoors. Do not travel unless absolutely necessary. Do not attempt to make contact or apprehend anyone exhibiting violent behavior.” The broadcaster’s image flickered and a countdown timer appeared on the screen, and for the first time, Clay realized he’d been watching a recording.

He sat, staring at the screen until it popped back to life with the same anchor, sitting behind the same desk with the open-collared shirt and missing tie. “Well, what the hell? How old is this recording?” Clay cursed at the TV. He looked at the timestamp on the corner of the screen; it was from well over a day ago. Clay took the remote and flipped through channels. Most of the other local stations were showing the same recording. He finally stopped on his second pass through the dial and muted the volume.

He grabbed the armrest and squeezed the fabric. “So, what’s happening out there, boy?” he whispered, pulling himself back to his feet. He walked slowly through the great room and back into the kitchen, grabbing another beer and standing behind the sink looking out into the front yard. He could see down his driveway and into the empty street. There was no traffic. Even after waiting for long, agonizing minutes, he didn’t see a single car pass down the usually busy Lakeview Drive.

He felt movement against his leg and looked down to the see the dog beside him. Clay reached up, closed the curtains over the sink, and moved into the spare bedroom, where he unlocked a closet door. Inside, under a clothing rack, was a dusty and well-worn army footlocker with his father’s name on it. He pulled the box out and hoisted it onto the bed.

He already knew what was inside, even though he hadn’t been in the locker in over two decades. He grabbed the M1 Carbine rifle wrapped in green oil cloth and set it on the bed, then did the same with a 1911 pistol cased in a leather holster. He removed the drawer that divided the top of the locker from the bottom and lifted out several boxes of pistol and rifle ammunition.

Clay unwrapped the rifle from the cloth and pulled back the bolt, checking the action before inserting a magazine of .30-caliber rounds. He let the bolt go forward, hearing the familiar clack of the round seating in the chamber. Reaching back into the footlocker, he fumbled around, removing a bayonet. Just as he attached it the front lug of the carbine, the dog began to growl. Clay turned and heard a knock at the front door.

13

Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

March 27th

“How many of these drops are we going to have to make?” Deena asked her grandpa.

“Does it matter? You’ve proven to be a troublemaker when you’re not tended to, so you’re stuck with me for the entire summer,” Sam said to his granddaughter and decided to push it a little further in the hope that she got the message.

“I was a bad kid, I tell you what. Back in the day, I raised quite a ruckus, but I was never a thief. Take that as your lesson for life. Hang out with anybody you like, but if they’re a junkie, a rapist, or a thief, then they’re not worth your time and can never be trusted.” He paused dramatically. “I can’t fricking believe that my only granddaughter is a thief.” Sam ranted because that was his way. He didn’t spank, and he didn’t even scold…he ranted until people were so annoyed by him that they just stopped doing what bothered him.

“Well, at least these runs bring us out to the wilderness, and we get to see some wildlife instead of dirty city streets. What do they need all of this gas for?” Deena asked innocently, trying to distract the old man from his current line of thought.

“Why, you planning on stealing it?” Sam asked, eliciting a punch in his arm in response, to which he laughed. “First off, it is not gas; it’s fuel. All kinds of fuel, and I don’t know why they’re collecting it out there in the middle of nowhere. It’s not my business. Turn on NPR and let’s see what’s going on in the world. I heard there’s some kind of flu or syphilis outbreak not too far from here.”

“Syphilis, Grandpa? Really? Don’t be gr—STOP!” Deena shouted as she reached for the radio, but instead put her hand on the dash. People were rushing the road from the tree line, screaming. Their faces were twisted into masks of tormented rage as red fluid that she guessed was blood seeped from their eyes and noses.

Sam slammed on the brake, hearing the familiar hiss of air and the shudder from the anti-locks working overtime to stop the fully loaded tanker. Tires shuddered and smoked, as did the brakes since they weren’t designed to withstand such a hard stop. It still wasn’t enough, as three of the screaming people were slammed hard to the ground and the big rig passed over them.

“FUCK!” Sam looked at his granddaughter, who stared back at him, speechless. He popped the door open as he watched more people rushing toward them, screaming. He knew he should get out and check on the three that he’d hit, but something stopped him. Something told him to wait, so he closed the door and locked it. Deena copied his actions.

“Go, Grandpa. We gotta go,” the fifteen-year-old pleaded.

“I can’t, Deena. I just hit some people. This could cost me my license. Grab your .22 out of the glove box, and put that box of shells in your pocket,” he directed, watching the first of the crazed people jump on his truck like a rock star on a mosh pit.

“They’re attacking us! Why are they attacking us?”

“I don’t know, sweetie,” he said, pulling his 1911 out from the console. He loosened the strap over the pistol’s butt and popped the snap on the holster compartment that held his extra magazines before staring dumbly out the window at the scene before him. The people didn’t have weapons, but they were all crazed like his friends got after smoking angel dust back in the seventies. They looked the same, except for the blood streaming from their orifices.

Now it was meth.

Is that what this is? he wondered. Were these just meth heads trying to rob them? Did they want the fuel? He would take his granddaughter and just walk away if they did, but somehow, he knew that wasn’t it.

A man jumped up and banged on the window next to Deena’s head, and two more climbed up onto the hood. When a fist slammed into his own window, cracking it, Sam got the hint and pushed his thirteen speed into low third gear, taking off with as much authority as he could muster.

The C15 shuddered, and the front end rose as the eighteen-wheeler rolled over bodies and pushed the crowd around them. The people outside seemed to have no compassion for their fallen comrades, only the incessant need to get into to the cab. They started to gain speed, and Sam smiled at the calm demeanor of his granddaughter as she sat quietly, holding her gun in two hands, her trigger finger on safe-ready. He wondered if the jujitsu training she’d been through for most of her life was helping to keep her calm. She might have panicked when they were sitting there under attack, but as soon as they moved, she focused on what was happening.

Deena jumped a little when the woman on the hood slid off, then she smiled when the man who’d been next to the woman soon followed. Her grandfather was an excellent driver, and she knew he could get them through this if anybody could, although, she would feel better if the guy on her running board fell off.

“When I tell you to, open your door as wide as you can,” Sam said. “Can you do that, sweetie? Okay, in three…two…one…Now!” He took a hard left-hand curve heavy on the shoulder.

Deena pushed on the door hard enough that she almost followed it out with the man. She pulled herself back just in time to avoid the door, which was suddenly slammed shut by a road sign. The man was gone. So were the mirror and the window, but the man was gone.

The shattering of glass caused her to turn her head. A large woman and a man had come through Sam’s window at him, scratching and biting. Sam fought back, trying to push them away, but they were too frantic, too vicious, and too…rabid. Deena screamed when she saw them trying to pull her grandfather out of the truck through the driver’s window, his lower half barely keeping him inside. Deena jumped up on the console and pointed her gun outside the window, where she hoped it wouldn’t hit her grandpa.

Two short reports from the .22, and the woman fell away, allowing Sam to drop back into his seat. Then the second fiend redoubled its efforts, tugging on him harder. “Take the wheel!” Sam shouted.

Deena slid in between the shift and console to stand next to him, trying to steer the giant machine. Sam had both hands on the man now, and he pushed out from the window, holding him in the path of a group of signs. Deena tried to steer away from the signs, but Sam needed them, so he stretched farther.

It happened so quickly that he didn’t even realize it had happened. A quick jerk, and he was looking at the stub of his left arm that now ended at the elbow. His blood spurted out with the pounding of his heart, twice, before he felt the pain, but it didn’t matter. In just minutes he wouldn’t have enough blood in him to sustain life.

All that mattered was Deena.

“Deena, get your pack out of the back. Be quick, girl!” he snapped when she hesitated. “Throw the food in and come back here.”

She did as instructed and gasped at her grandfather’s pale coloring. “Grandpa, your arm.”

“I know, dear. They’re still chasing us, and I only have a couple minutes left. Shh, shh, shh,” he hushed her. “Now listen to me. There isn’t much we can do. I’ll get you as far as I can, but then you’re going to have to run and leave me.”

“No.”

“Yes, take both guns and your pack, and run. There’s a lake over there; go hide on a boat or…shh,” he said, suddenly only having eyes for the road.

The engine was winding out at around forty-five, so Deena figured he was stuck in eighth, but his eyes were locked on the road. His one remaining hand was clamped on the one o’clock position, unable to leave the wheel. She saw the stump of his left arm and wanted to scream but knew it would only incite more panic within herself. She had to be cool and react when needed. Her grandpa still breathed, but his reactions to the road were sluggish, as his energy was focused toward the front.

Deena thought they were going off the road until she saw it—a small, twin-tire track road that was likely meant for logging trucks. They were usually soft sand and not accessible to highway trucks. They left the road at forty-five, barely maintaining their upright position.

The bounce forced Sam’s foot off the accelerator, and the soft sand slowed them to a stop. His head lolled toward her. “Go!” was all he managed, his eyes already glazed with death.

Deena grabbed her pack and ran. Behind them, she heard the raging screams coming for her, overwhelming her tears. She ran through the canopy of trees, listening to the furious shrieks that spurred her legs to do more than she could imagined them capable of.

Something shimmered in the distance, water… A lake? Did Grandpa know there was a lake back here? Yes, he said so.

The sound intensified as the crazies cleared the truck with only a few slowing to check the body in the driver’s seat. She could hear them gaining on her with every step, and she felt like the sole rabbit being chased by hundreds of hounds.

There, a man in a boat—or was it two people?

“Help! Help me!” she screamed through her sobs and ran toward the shore, hoping there was a dock—and that he’d hear her.

Even more, she hoped that he’d be willing to help.

14

Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

March 27th

She exited the trees at the end of the logging road, into the clearing along a small beach with several cabins stretching ahead of her in a line that mirrored the shore. She was going to yell to the men in the boat but thought they were too far away and could never get to her in time, anyway. The freaks pursuing her were manic—a term her friends used, but she never knew the full meaning of until this moment.

In a sudden inspiration, she turned and ran behind the cabins instead of onto the beach as she’d originally planned. The people behind her were faster and stronger than she was, and she knew they wanted to kill her. Having something between them, like a cabin for instance, was in her best interest.

Deena heard a screen door slam, and she froze in place as a man spied her between the houses.

“Hey! What are you doing back there?” he shouted.

“Run! Hide!” Deena screamed before she continued to run toward the opposite end of the row.

Over there. Lattice filling the gap between the cabin floor and the ground was broken just enough that she felt she could fit through. A quick look behind told her they hadn’t broken into line of sight behind the building yet. She hoped she had enough time.

Holding her pack in front with both hands, as well as her .22, she crouch-ran toward the opening.

It’s big enough. It has to be big enough…it has to be. She put her feet through the opening and turned to face out before she completely disappeared under the structure.

It was too late. One of them had seen her, and he rushed toward the cabin where she crawled. There was a loud scream from out front, followed by the slamming of doors and shoed feet running inside. She heard the splintering of wood from several buildings and more screams as the crazed lunatics broke into the vacationers’ homes.

Deena ducked inside and crawled deeper, knowing she had to keep moving. She’d barely gotten to the other side of the cabin before she heard her pursuer hit the lattice, practically tearing the ages-old dry wood from its fasteners in one surge with the force of his arrival.

She saw another opening that looked as if the homeowner had simply run out of lattice six inches from the stairs, leaving a flimsy piece swaying in the breeze. The obstruction didn’t slow her as she broke out into the yard and made a beeline for the trees.

Something hit her hard from behind, rolling her over. She came up, holding her gun in a shaky grasp, pointing at whatever was behind her.

She saw a face, a man’s face, enraged with adrenaline. She fired, and he pulled his head to the side as part of his ear flew off to his left.

“Jesus, kid! What are you doing?” the man screamed in panic as he pressed his hand up to his mangled ear. Deena realized her mistake, but there was no time to apologize or talk. They were coming. They were still coming. She could hear them and the screams of the dying all around her.

“What were you doing under my house, and why do you have a gun?” he screamed, as his fear morphed into rage when he realized it was just a scared, stupid kid facing him.

Deena turned and ran. He made as if he was going to follow but stopped. He never had the chance to scream as he was overwhelmed from behind. She kept running, knowing the result. Then she suddenly stopped.

My pack!

It’d been knocked from her hands when the man tackled her. She turned, seeing the man on the ground with several of the bloodied humans sinking their teeth into his shoulders and neck, clawing at him with their nails. He was the gnu on the nature program struggling for one more step as lions attacked it, wanting just one more step to keep death at bay long enough to grasp another breath before succumbing to the pride. His eyes looked at her, pleading for help, and all Deena could see was the bloodied ear on the left side of his head that she’d created with her pistol.

At the feet of the man’s attackers lay the pack, which they stumbled over as if it didn’t exist. There was nothing in it to interest them; it might as well have been dirt, something to collect the blood that they spilled and whatever fluids drained from them.

Deena needed that pack. The clean gear, food, and her grandfather’s gun could mean her survival. She had to get it… But how? One of the slayers pulled his head from the dying man’s body and locked his bloody eyes on hers.

He screamed at her. It was the same one who’d seen her crawl under the cabin. She turned and ran, knowing it would follow. The pack being gone lessened her burden, resulting in her easily outdistancing him by running a zig-zag pattern between the trees. She knew she couldn’t keep it up, though, and she had to find something soon.

As if summoned from the gods above, it appeared within her view.

A tiny shack sat high up in a tree, but she had to get to it. It was across a clearing, which would expose her to her pursuer before she could get there. That didn’t matter, though. She had to go for it. Her breathing was already becoming labored, and she could hear the man crashing through the brush behind her in frustration. She ran.

There has to be a way up there. Please, please let there be a way up there, she pleaded. She was just beginning to think her prayers had been answered as the tree line loomed larger on the approach, when distant grunts of excitement behind her said that she’d been spotted again.

She stuck out an arm to slow her speed against the tree, only to have a rusty nail catch her sleeve and stop her dead, swinging her around face-first into the trunk. She poked her head out from behind the tree to see the creature less than a hundred yards away and approaching fast. She looked up the tree to the tiny shack just above her. Wooden crosspieces had been nailed into the tree as some sort of makeshift ladder, the first being just a couple of feet above her.

She tucked the pistol into her waistband in back and jumped as high as she could to grab the first rung. The wood was old and dry, and the nails were rusty with some starting to come out of the board, but it held, and she pulled herself up.

Deena wanted to peek around the tree again but knew that would expose her, so she climbed two more rungs. She was above his head now but still within his jumping range, so she needed more. Four at least would see her into a safe range. The thing broke through the tree line and froze. So did Deena.

He looked around, not knowing where she’d run, and she held perfectly still, not even daring to breathe. His head surveyed the scene, not picking up on anything. Then he stopped moving as if to listen. Nothing. He sniffed the air before starting to search more frantically, as if he smelled something. A quick glance at the back of the tree would expose the teen to the blood-crazed fiend. He looked at the tree, but he never looked up. It seemed like the concept had never occurred to him, and he simply continued to scan the ground and brush around him.

When his eyes grazed over the base of the trunk, Deena felt like she was going to wet her pants, and she struggled to stay still, restraining her breath as much as she could. It trotted into the trees behind her, searching. Deena turned her head in that direction, and she waited.

With distance came perspective, and she knew he would eventually spot her. And she was right. Deena watched the man struggle to focus as he stared at her back, possibly unable to decipher what he was looking at. She held on, staying perfectly still. Suddenly, it shrieked and started to run. She could hear its motion and the ferocity with which it lunged toward her. She screamed and started to scramble up, managing to maneuver two more ladder slats before the man reached her.

She panicked and screamed again just before a wet, meaty slap hit the tree beneath her. A hand swung out, knocking a foot from the rungs, but her other foot remained secured. Deena heard a sickly scraping sound as he slid down the trunk along his belly, disintegrating the wooden ladder slats to leave only the remnants of rusty nails behind.

Deena kept climbing with only a quick glance down to see the man trying to shimmy up the tree trunk like it was a pole, only to get caught on the nails. She reached the opening in the shack’s floor and noticed the smell of gunpowder mixed with the stench of strange animal piss. She sat on the edge then swung her legs up before she peered back down the hole.

He can’t climb. Hopefully none of them can climb. He can’t seem to do much of anything other than chase and bite. What’s going on? Her panicked mind searched for an answer as her hands reached behind her to her waistband. With her .22 in hand, she looked back at the insane man who’d torn into a living person with his teeth. He was an animal, and if she left him down there, he would find a way to get to her; she knew it.

He’ll bring more. Oh, Grandpa…what should I do? She pleaded with the unseen entity that she knew was dead, killed only minutes ago. Are you here? Are you watching out for me? Please, Grandpa, tell me what to do. All of these things raced through her mind at once. She slowed her thoughts and calmed her breathing, trying to listen to what was in the air. A feeling of resolve came over her.

“Well, if you’re here, then you’re telling me to kill that fucker, because that’s what I want to do,” she said to the empty shack and didn’t hear any argument. Hooking her shins under a secured bench, she folded herself backward and upside down out of the hole in the floor.

She extended her pistol in a two-handed grip and pointed it toward the base of the trunk, waiting. The mindless thing was trying to run up the tree trunk like a sprinter, with a final lunge upward that always sent him right back to the ground. His chest and stomach were torn open from the rusty nails. The deep gashes created a vertical pattern down to a waterfall of blood coating his pants, and, still, he relentlessly lunged at her.

“You can’t jump, you stupid S.O.B. Come over here and talk to me,” Deena coaxed in a sweet, singsong voice, hoping he would hold still.

He stopped and looked at her hanging upside down from the deer shack’s floor. She imagined that he cocked his head like a dog, but he hadn’t. Instead, he stood there silent. His muscles tensed as his body quivered with rage.

“That’s it, come a little closer,” she said, expecting him to slowly approach.

He didn’t. She started, almost dropping her gun as his body slammed against the trunk like a slab of meat, and he stood there leering up at her, his teeth exposed in some sort of grimace.

Deena had to reach up and grab the edge of the hole to steady herself and readjust her shins on the bench inside. She stretched out again with her hands extended above her head in a double-fisted hold on the pistol.

Something was wrong. He’d gotten closer to her somehow.

He pulled his right hand off the nails in the tree much like you’d pull a chunk of meat off a fork. Stretching it up, he slammed it on the next grouping of nails to pull himself closer to her. He was close, way too close, and she fired.

A red entry wound appeared right next to his nose and under his eye. His head lolled back for a second, only to snap into focus upon her even more fiercely than before.

Deena became unhinged and emptied her small gun into the face of this thing that came for her. It still stared at her after four rounds, but five and six sent it crashing to the ground, where she kept firing until her slide locked back.

She pulled herself into the deer stand, sitting where she could see the dead body on the ground. It would be several hours before she would believe it was actually dead. Maybe even days.

15

Denver, Colorado

March 27th

“Are you sure you can’t come home?”

Jack shook his head. “No. Half the office is out, including Farrelly. I’m the only one who knows enough about his deal to talk to the clients.”

“Farrelly is a pederast.”

He stifled a laugh and stole a glance at the office door to make sure no one could hear her. Sarah saw his eyes leave the screen.

“Oh, relax, Jack. You just said he’s out of the office today.”

“Yeah, but Johnson’s not. You know he has no sense of humor.”

“Right,” she said. “Just get your stuff done and get home, will you? All this crap going on lately has me nervous. First, there was that video GNN showed this morning, and then there’s all of these random attacks going on.”

“That video was probably a hoax,” Jack replied, even though he hadn’t taken the time to watch it. “And all the attacks are just being hyped by the media. There’s no connection, I’m sure. You know the old news axiom: if it bleeds, it leads.”

“Jack, there was an attack in front of Cheep’s Chicken today. It was pretty savage, from what I heard.”

Christ, that’s just a mile from the house, he thought.

“Were you there?” he asked aloud.

“No, but Bonnie was. She had the kids with her, and they’re freaked out. Of course, she said that health care cuts are causing it. Mental health issues aren’t getting the attention they need. The Republicans want the working class to die. Blah, blah, you know how she is.” Sarah had no love lost for their wannabe political activist neighbor.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Don’t worry, next week it will be something else. She’s a total cause-head.”

“Well, we’re not gonna protest.”

He loved that Sarah ran with his PCU reference. Her ability to relate to his constant movie references was one of the things that attracted him to her when they first met. She could quote The Godfather better than he could. He often told people they were a match made in Heaven Can Wait. Not many people got that joke, but he thought it was damn funny.

“We’re not gonna protest,” he replied, continuing the scene from the final act of the movie. “Jeremy Piven at his Piven-iest.”

Sarah chuckled. “Now I need to watch that stupid movie. I love you. Get your ass home, please.”

“Will do, as soon as I get off with the Australians.”

“Jesus, you’ll do anything win that account.”

“I meant get off of the telecon with them, smartass.”

“My way would probably work better,” she teased. “Just sayin’.”

“If things don’t go well, I’ll give it a try. See you tonight.”

He pressed the end button, and her smiling face disappeared from the screen. He noted the time on his phone. It was three forty-five.

At five o’clock he was supposed to have a teleconference with the execs at Royal Gaming. They were an up-and-coming gaming machine company based out of Australia, looking to get a foothold in the United States. Jack’s firm would be building five new casinos over the next eighteen months, and Kurt Farrelly had been working a deal to get Royal’s machines at a price twenty percent under that of their current supplier. It would be a pretty big coup, and in the view of everyone at Jack’s firm, one of those win-win situations for both companies. With Farrelly out and this virus going around, however, it was up to Jack to convince the Royal CFO, a man with whom he didn’t have a relationship, why selling ten thousand machines at break-even pricing was the right move for them.

Jack’s boss, Gil Johnson, stuck his head in Jack’s office at a quarter ’til five.

“You ready for this, Jack?” he asked, scratching his head.

“Yeah, I’m good to go. Connie has the video link set up, and I’m headed to the telepresence room in a minute to get plugged in.”

“Good. Are you sure you don’t want my help in there?”

Johnson’s name might be on the marquee, but he was out of his depth talking to client executives, so the last thing Jack wanted was Johnson helping him pitch a deal. Well, a blistering case of anal herpes would probably be after that, but not by much.

“Nope, I’m good, Gil. I’ll lock them down today, and we can start drawing up papers for signature tomorrow.”

Gil continued scratching his head. “That’s what I want to hear. Pop by my office when you’re done and let me know how it went.”

He turned and headed down the hallway, his left hand persistently scratching at his scalp.

Get some Head and Shoulders, big guy, Jack thought wryly. He closed the lid on his laptop and headed to the telepresence room. He got everything plugged into the system so he could share his screen with the Australians and got connected to the conference with two minutes to spare.

The meeting went better than Jack could have expected. Royal’s executive team was excited about the prospective deal. They listened intently, followed the numbers, shared their projections with him, and smiled through it all. After forty-five minutes, they made a commitment for the ten thousand machines on the condition they got guaranteed exclusivity to the casino floors for five years, and pricing more favorable to their side on the next batch of machines. Jack agreed. They turned off the camera at the end of the meeting, but before the audio cut out, Jack heard cheers from the room in Melbourne.

He smiled too. He’d just secured an eighteen-million-dollar discount on gaming machines for the next eighteen months.

A million a month ain’t bad, he thought. He packed up his stuff and headed to Johnson’s office to tell him the good news.

There was no answer when he rapped on the door. He waited a minute, then knocked harder.

That humorless bastard had better not have gone home, not when I stayed here late to cover Farrelly’s ass. And I’d better get the bonus from this deal. If he wants to cut Farrelly in, fine, but I better get paid. I just padded his bottom line by eighteen million.

“Gil?” Jack said as he knocked on the door one more time. This time, there was a thump from the other side of the two-inch-thick oak door. It sounded exactly like a person falling out of their office chair and landing hard on the floor.

Jack opened the door and found Gil on the floor, his high-backed leather chair tipped over.

“Holy shit, Gil! What happened?” Jack took a couple of cautious steps forward.

Gil raised his head, staring at Jack with malevolent eyes. There were streaks of blood down his cheeks, and it looked like blood was coming from his eyes and ears. His white shirt was streaked with red.

“Jachs smarlu washsnins!” Johnson screamed.

“What? Gil, what the fuck is wrong? What happened to your head? Should I call an ambulance?”

Johnson responded with more nonsense. He sat up and shook his head, flinging blood around the office. A piece of bloody scalp landed on Jack’s laptop with a faint splop sound.

“Jesus Christ! Gil, I’ll get help!” He took a step back, and Gil hopped into a crouch. He snarled, and the blood from his eyes ran into his mouth, so when he breathed out, he spit blood droplets all over the desk. His teeth were smeared with the red fluid, making him look even more demented.

Jack took another step backward, holding his laptop and notebook out in front of him.

“Gil, take it easy. I’ll go get help.”

Johnson snarled again and launched into a sprint. It caught Jack off guard, and he turned to run but slammed into the edge of the open door. His head smacked the corner of it, making him see stars. He stumbled sideways just as Johnson slammed into the door at full speed, banging it shut. Gil’s head made a cartoonish hollow coconut sound as it smacked the door. He staggered backward, stumbling, but caught his balance and renewed his focus on Jack.

Jack put his hand to his head, feeling a knot already growing, but thankfully there was no blood. His eyes came back into focus, and he realized that he was now trapped in the office with a bleeding, snarling lunatic. He shook his head, trying to clear the spider webs that formed when he hit his head on the door. The movement seemed to enrage Gil Johnson, who screamed and charged at Jack.

16

Near Klamath, California

March 27th

“I thought regular Army wasn’t supposed to run operations on US soil?” Ram said quietly as they moved across the bridge, toward the Humvees. Bodies of bullet-ridden civilians and mutilated soldiers lay scattered about. Here and there were a few small piles of both soldiers and civilians, dead where they’d struggled with one another. The smell of battle and death filled the air as crows picked at the exposed flesh of the dead. The birds clearly enjoyed the feast before them. Ram kicked at the nearest feeding carrion birds, sending them flying and squawking over to another corpse.

Jesse knelt beside the body of a desert-camouflage-clad soldier. The man had been wearing a biohazard suit over his uniform, but most of that had been ripped off. His throat had been shredded into fleshy strips by human hands, and most of his tactical vest was torn and ripped. Wearing latex gloves she’d gotten from the first aid kit, Jesse reached into the remains of the dead man’s shirt and found his military ID.

“Sergeant Alden Loftin,” she read, and then placed the ID respectively back on his chest. “Military Police—Active Duty.” Jesse looked up at Ram, who had his back to her, shotgun out, watching the bridge for any movement. “To answer your question, no. The Guard should be handling this…whatever this is.”

“So, what is this, Jesse? Why are they wearing those suits?”

“What this is, is the biggest crap sandwich you and I have ever eaten.” She stood up and studied the massacre before them. The younger guard had definitely switched over to soldier mode.

“Not my sandwich of choice,” Ram replied, stepping over to one of the Humvees and opening the passenger side door. The interior was a mess. Gear covered in blood was scattered all about. Expended shell casings lay in pools of blood on the vehicle’s floor. The driver’s door had been thrown wide open during the quick and devastating battle, and the ravenous crowd had obviously torn their way inside and pulled the crew and gunner out. What a fucking mess.

Ram saw the vehicle’s radio had been destroyed in the fight, just another fucking layer in this crap sandwich. Cursing under his breath, he started to back away, when he noticed what looked like a map case with a bunch of papers shoved inside. Curious, Ram grabbed the case and snatched out the papers. The old guard started to read through them. After a quick scan of the pages, he hurried over to where Jesse stood, still gazing at the bodies spread out on the bridge.

“Jesse, you gotta read this shit!” he said, shoving the thin stack of papers at her.

“What is it?” She frowned as she secured the Mini 14 across her chest sling and took the crumpled papers from his shaky hands.

“Just read it.” Ram wiped the cold sweat from his face as Jesse read the documents quickly. A deep, dark pit of despair was forming in his stomach. He had to get to his family.

“These are orders,” Jesse said, still reading the pages Ram had handed her. “Some kind of virus is loose in the area. They aren’t clear about what virus it is, but one of the symptoms seems to be uncontrollable rage.”

“No fuck,” Ram replied, gesturing at the bodies around them.

“They had orders to contain or terminate.” She dropped her hands to her sides and glanced over at one of the biohazard-suited corpses. “We need to get as far away from here as possible.”

“Jesse.” Ram tapped the scratch on his face. “Am I infected? Am I going to end up like these fucks?” His voice was deep with worry, and his eyes darted around the carnage, desperately searching for a spare bio suit or unused MOPP gear.

“Ram,” she paused to jam the papers into her canvas bag, “from everything we’ve seen and from what I know—from before—you would have turned already. Either you have the constitution of a fucking ox or you’re the luckiest son of a bitch ever.”

“Lucky?” He glanced around at the surrounding mountains and the river below. Normally he’d be happy to be enveloped by God’s natural beauty, but today he only saw sorrow and death. A little relieved that he probably wasn’t infected, he relaxed the shotgun in his hands. “Lucky is a relative term today.”

She motioned toward the dead. “If those soldiers could talk, I’m sure they’d say you were lucky. Pull it together, Ram. We’re not done yet.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled without a hint of humor in his voice. “When we started the day, I was the old hand. Now look at you calling the shots.”

“Does it fucking matter right now, Ram? We’re on a bridge filled with dead military and civilians, with a rage-inducing virus floating around us. Does it really matter if it’s you or me calling the shots?”

“Yeah, it does. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. You seem to have some kinda idea, so yeah, it matters.” Ram patted her on the shoulder. “I need to get to my family.”

She nodded. “I get that.” Jesse had no family; she’d been passed from one foster home to another until she was old enough to join ROTC, and then the Navy. The military had been her family for six years. Now it was the California Department of Corrections. She’d traded one uniformed family for another.

“Let’s clean out one of these Hummers and head into town. The other side of the bridge isn’t blocked.” She pointed past the two blood-smeared, gold-painted bears that lined each side of the bridge.

“Yeah, I bet that hotel and casino are crawling with these nut jobs.” Ram set the Remington down on the hood of the Humvee and began tossing out the useless and soiled gear from inside.

“Infected,” Jesse corrected him as she strode over to the driver’s side and pulled a torn, blood-soaked bio suit off the front seat. With a gloved hand, she tossed the canvas bag inside. Careful not to sit in any blood spots, she climbed inside and placed the Mini 14 down next to her left knee to keep it away from her right foot. Ram quickly followed suit. Jesse flipped the vehicle’s ignition switch to WAIT, allowing the diesel engine’s glow plugs time to warm up, and then rotated the switch to RUN. The engine smoothly rumbled to life. Thankfully, some motor pool grunt took very good care of his transports.

The groan of the Humvee’s motor pierced the silence and drew the unwanted attention of the infected. A crowd of them had started to mass at the other end of the bridge.

“Ah shit!” Ram grabbed up the shotgun as Jesse gripped his shoulder and pointed upwards to the machine gun in the Humvee’s turret. “Hell, I don’t know how to shoot it!”

“You drive then!” Jesse shouted as she pushed past Ram and climbed up into the turret. The older guard sat there for a few seconds, a little dumbstruck, until the growls of the advancing group of infected brought him back to reality.

“Fuck me!” Ram groaned as he slid into the driver’s seat. Above him he could hear Jesse slamming the charging handle on the big gun. “This is more than a fucking shit sandwich!”

As he slammed the Humvee into reverse and tried to make a thirty-point turn into five quick moves, Jesse unloaded on the ravenous crowd with the big gun.

17

Near Klamath, California

March 27th

As a wave of the infected charged the Humvee, Jesse mowed them down with the vehicle’s automatic weapon. Blood and body parts flew in all directions, the crowd collapsing under her heavy gunfire. Cursing while his ears rang from the burst of the weapon above him, Ram stepped on the gas pedal and quickly drove over the crawling remnants of the bloodthirsty crowd. The big vehicle shuddered as it crushed the infected beneath it and moved on.

Ram felt a little sick to his stomach as he felt the crunch of the bodies underneath the military vehicle’s tires. Shaking his head, he continued to steer the Humvee away from the thinning crowd. More of the infected continued to pour out of the casino and mini mart. Their only choice for escape would be to barrel through them. The other side of the bridge was blocked by the Army barricade. He hoped Jesse would be able to knock most of the crazies back with the machine gun, giving them some kind of opening. Ram didn’t think he could drive over another group of bodies without throwing up. The machine gun roared to life once more, and then when silent.

“I’m out!” Jesse shouted from above.

“Fuck me!” Ram slammed the steering wheel with an open hand. Steeling himself, he aimed the Humvee at the oncoming crowd. “Hold on, Jesse!”

“Aw, shit!” Jesse quickly dropped back into the vehicle and grabbed the back of the passenger seat.

Before the vehicle could be caught in a brutal roll over, the sound of heavy machine gun fire erupted from outside the Humvee. Jesse was flung forward into the back of the passenger seat as Ram brought the vehicle to a sudden, dead stop.

“What the hell, Ram?” Jesse grabbed at her bruised cheek.

“Stay down!” he shouted, dropping behind the steering wheel.

Jesse looked puzzled until she heard the familiar sounds of helicopter gunships firing overhead. The vehicle rocked from the nearby machine gun strikes. After a long, mad minute, the gunfire was replaced by the louder sound of helicopters descending. As if on cue, both Ram and Jesse slowly rose to glance out the front windshield.

“Holee crap,” Ram whispered, more to himself than Jesse. Both of them watched as an Army Blackhawk and a big Chinook helicopter set down near the entrance of the bridge. A dozen heavily armed soldiers exited from the rear of the Chinook and quickly formed a perimeter around both aircraft.

Jesse climbed over the passenger seat. “You okay, Ram?”

The older officer just nodded as he stared out over the mass of dead bodies that were spread around the Humvee.

“Looks like we might be saved,” Jesse said.

“Hopefully,” Ram said, watching more soldiers hurry out of the helicopters.

There was sporadic gunfire as the soldiers shot any of the infected that still moved. Once they were sure it was clear, one of the troops waved over to the Blackhawk. Seconds later, a tall blond-haired man dismounted, followed by four more heavily armed soldiers. The trooper that had signaled to the smaller helicopter now pointed at the Humvee. The tall man nodded and waved at the four men who had disembarked the helicopter with him.

“Shit, that’s not good.” Ram glanced over at Jesse, who was slowly sliding her rifle up into her lap.

“No, it’s not.”

“You in the Humvee!” the tall man shouted as the soldiers raised their weapons into firing positions. “I’m Major Barraza, US Army. Step out of the Humvee with your hands up, and my Rangers won’t shoot you!”

“What do you think, Jesse?” Ram whispered.

“I think we are screwed,” she said, scanning the superior force that was now before them. “Do as he says, Ram. We can’t outshoot a Blackhawk and a platoon of Rangers.”

“No.” He chuckled uneasily, remembering all the times he’d had to requalify at the range. “I guess you’re right.” He nodded at his partner then shouted out the window. “Okay! We’re coming out!”

“Here we go,” Jesse said, dropping the M4 to the floor slowly.

“Here we go.”

18

Denver, Colorado

March 27th

The familiar ringtone worked its way into Jack’s subconscious, making him snap his eyes open. He looked around Gil Johnson’s office, aghast at what had become a scene from a horror movie.

Blood soaked into the industrial carpet that lined the office floor, oozing from Gil’s smashed skull. Jack’s laptop had left pieces of plastic and metal sticking out of the back of Gil’s head. A shard of the plastic cut Jack’s arm, leaving a six-inch gash and a lot of blood all over his shirt and pants.

The ringtone stopped as Jack found his phone in his shirt pocket. He flipped it over. The alert message read, “Missed FaceTime call.” He clicked through and saw a red number 4 next to the application’s icon on the screen. Sarah was trying to get in touch. He would get back to her in a minute, but first, he wanted to get some help to come to the building. Jack tried dialing 9-1-1, but the All circuits are busy message played. He thumbed through the contacts, looking for the building’s security. Instead, he found “Trade Center – Front Desk.” He decided that would have to do and tapped the number but got the same message as when he tried to call the police: All circuits are busy.

“Fuck,” he said out loud.

He shook his head, trying to clear some of the cobwebs, then stood up on uneasy legs. Everything had happened so fast, it was hard for him to piece it all together.

After Gil slammed the door shut—right after Jack ran headfirst into it—he sprang at Jack, who’d held the laptop up to block the attack. Gil swatted at it, knocking one of Jack’s hands free. He must have swung the improvised weapon back at his boss because he remembered teeth flying, then Gil crashing into him, grabbing at him and trying to choke him. Holding Gil at arm’s length with his free hand on the man’s throat, Jack had brought the laptop down on his head again and again, until Gil’s skull gave way and the laptop was a shattered mess. Then he collapsed against the wall and must have passed out.

The throbbing in his arm brought him back from his mental replay. He weaved his unsteady way to the bathroom, where he caught his first glimpse of himself in the mirror. He was a bloody mess. He grabbed the counter to steady himself as he tilted his head to examine his neck. Telltale finger-shaped bruises gave away the spot where Gil had gotten ahold of him.

He turned on the water and grabbed a handful of soap from the automatic dispenser. When he washed his hands and face, the water turned pink from the blood. Then, he soaped up the cut on his arm and yelped in pain as the foam hit the wound. He rinsed it out a couple of times, but it kept seeping fresh blood.

Jack returned to his office and sat in his chair with a heavy plop. He needed to call Sarah, but he didn’t want her to see him this way. It would send her into a full-fledged panic. He reached into the third drawer on the right side of the desk and retrieved the duffel bag with the spare clothes he kept at the office in case he spilled food on himself during the day.

Jack stood and fumbled with the buttons of his bloodied shirt then removed it, along with his undershirt. He replaced his ruined shirt with the fresh one from the bag, then he stripped to his boxers and changed into clean pants as well. He cut the spare, clean undershirt into strips and wrapped the cut on his arm. Once he tucked the end of the last strip under the wrap, he topped it off with a few layers of scotch tape. He hoped it would hold.

Feeling better, he grabbed the phone and went to hit the FaceTime icon but thought twice and opened the mail app instead. He scrolled until he found Sarah’s note from this morning and opened it, then clicked on the link she’d sent. It opened a video from GNN, featuring that pompous twat, Chet Davidson.

He’s probably one of those pricks that bangs the interns, Jack thought. He pushed that aside and focused on the video. Once the footage from Fort Carson began to roll, he felt his hair stand on end, and he almost dropped the phone. The people in the video looked just like Gil did before Jack smashed his skull in with a laptop. He knew he should be alarmed that the Army was shooting American citizens—if the video was real—but, based on what just happened in Gil’s office, Jack didn’t doubt the video’s authenticity, and he wasn’t upset that the crazies were being shot.

“The proper perspective will change opinions,” he said out loud. He closed the browser, opened the FaceTime application, and pressed his wife’s name, hoping that the Internet connection would work where the phone lines were tied up. A few seconds later, she answered.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded as soon as the connection completed. “I’ve been worried to death!”

“I had some trouble down here with Gil.”

“Jesus, I hope you got it worked out. You need to leave now.”

“Yeah, um, we got everything sorted. I’m leaving in a couple of minutes.”

“Jack, have you looked outside?”

He walked over to the window and looked down. From the twenty-ninth floor of Denver’s World Trade Complex, he could see several blocks down the pedestrian mall on Sixteenth Street. Emergency vehicles lit up the whole area. From his vantage point, he could see police and paramedics fighting with civilians. He even saw policemen fighting each other.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“Holy shit is right, Jack. Come home, now. The country is going insane.”

Jack’s brow furrowed while the wheels turned in his head. The worst place they could be during a civil unrest would be a place with a dense population.

“Sarah, do you remember how to hook the trailer to the SUV?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You need to load it with all the food we have; everything, even perishable stuff. Just put it in a cooler and throw ice on it. Then head to my dad’s cabin. I’ll try to meet you at the fairgrounds on the west side of town, and we’ll go from there.”

“Try? There’s no try, Jack. You get there,” she told him. “And hurry. I don’t think there’s any time to waste.”

“Okay. I’ll figure out a way. Oh, and Sarah? Get my gun case and a bunch of the ammo.”

She nodded her head. “Okay, Jack. I love you, you know.”

“I love you too. I’ll see you soon.” He pressed the red END button and sat back in his chair, wondering how the hell he was going to get away from downtown.

19

Longmont, Colorado

March 27th

Sarah sat in the chair in the family room for a few minutes after she hung up the FaceTime call with her husband. She needed to collect her thoughts. She tried to push dark images from her mind, but it seemed like a siren wailed past on the main road every thirty seconds. None of them had turned into their neighborhood, which was good, but every time, it was a reminder that things were going downhill quickly. Every time, it made her think that she may never see Jack again.

Stop being preposterous, she chided herself. Focus on getting ready to leave.

She knew what Jack was getting after when he asked her to pack the trailer. They were going to get the hell out of Dodge before the crazies got them, and they weren’t coming back until it was over. Or at least, she hoped that’s what he meant.

After filling a box with a variety of canned food, she went into the garage and flicked on the light. She’d been pestering Jack to have a company replace the top panel of the garage door with one that had windows in it, and she was glad, now, that he’d dragged his feet on it. For once his procrastination was a fortunate bit of circumstance. The fewer outward signs of activity, the better.

She let the door shut behind her and went over to the tandem side of the garage, with Jack’s old Isuzu Axiom in the front section and the small teardrop-shaped trailer in the rear. In another example of fortunate circumstance, they’d bought the house with the three-car tandem garage with nothing to put in the third stall. The trailer came later. She didn’t think about the unfortunate circumstance—that Jack had taken the bus downtown instead of driving, which would make his exodus that much harder. She had to focus.

She set the box next to the rear tire of the Axiom and approached the trailer. After kicking the tire chocks out of the way, she lifted the tongue of the trailer and wheeled it over to the SUV. It only took a few minutes for her to drop the socket over the ball, lock it down, connect the power cables and safety chains, and retract the jack. She hoped she did everything right.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” she said aloud, hands on her hips as she admired her handiwork. She stashed the box of food in the trailer, then filled several more boxes, putting some in it and others in the rear of the SUV. She didn’t want all their supplies in one vehicle in case something went wrong.

Perishable foods she put in the trailer, leaving room in the Axiom for their backpacks, which had enough gear in them that they could last a few days on foot if they had to. She stuck a few bottles of water in each of them and put them behind the seats.

Finally, she went to the safe in their closet and opened it. Inside, she found the waterproof plastic box with the guns in it. She flipped the latches and opened the lid, seeing the two pistols inside. One was a 9mm semi-automatic, the other was a .40-caliber. She unzipped a large duffel bag, and inside she found what Murphy’s Sporting Goods had labeled a “duty belt,” and she put it through her belt loops, adding the plastic holster for the 9mm. She checked the magazine for the pistol, found it was full, and inserted it into the gun, then racked the slide to load it. With a heavy sigh, she slid it into the holster.

She wasn’t a huge fan of guns, but Jack wanted to ensure they had protection when they went camping. Aside from random people in the wilderness, Colorado had mountain lions and bears with which to contend.

“Better to have it and not need it than the other way around,” he’d said. She made him attend classes with her at a range just outside of town. After several weeks, and several hundred rounds downrange—as the instructor called it—she was pronounced capable of handling the gun. She even went so far as getting a concealed carry permit, though she’d never carried it other than camping.

She also hadn’t fired it since the classes.

And hopefully, tonight is no different.

She closed and latched the case then double-checked the contents of the heavy duffel bag. Inside, she saw several boxes of ammunition for both pistols, the duty belt for Jack’s holster, and the holster itself. Satisfied that she had what she needed, she took the case and the bag and put them on the passenger side floorboard of the Axiom.

She breathed another heavy sigh and looked at her watch. She’d been packing their stuff for almost forty minutes. It would take another fifteen for her to get to the fairgrounds. By the time she got there, it will have been fifty-five minutes since she’d spoken to Jack. Under normal circumstances, that would be more than enough time for him to get back from Denver, but things were decidedly not normal. Still, she needed to go now, just in case he was waiting for her.

20

Denver, Colorado

March 27th

Jack saw that things were getting bad in the streets below the building. Several fires were burning, and he’d heard gunshots just a couple of minutes ago. Today was a horrible day to take the bus, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. He had to find a way to beg, borrow, or steal a ride north.

“Of course!” he said out loud. “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

He grabbed his jacket off the rack behind his office door and crept down the hall. He stopped at Gil’s office and took a deep breath before entering.

The coppery smell of blood was thick in the air, and as he approached Gil’s body, the odor of other bodily fluids joined the mix. He fought back the urge to vomit, instead focusing on his need to get back to his wife. Stepping over the body, he knelt down and carefully slipped a hand inside the right pants’ pocket. His fingers found the fob, and he pulled it out. Glancing at the silver Mercedes symbol, he stood and looked outside. From his view out the penthouse window, he could see over the hotel to the southwest to the parking garage beyond. He didn’t have Gil’s binoculars, but he knew the silver, boxy SUV visible on the rooftop level was the man’s one-hundred-forty-five-thousand-dollar Mercedes M63 AMG. Gil had sent everyone about a thousand video links to “the most badass vehicle on the planet,” so Jack was pretty sure he knew the vehicle as well as anyone who hadn’t driven one could.

Another thought popped into Jack’s head, so he knelt down and removed Gil’s wallet from his back pocket. Inside he found more than six hundred dollars, which Jack pocketed. Who knew when it might come in handy?

He flipped through the credit cards. Gil had the company-issued American Express card and an executives-only Diamond Visa. Jack was going to take them out but thought better of it and put the whole wallet in his jacket pocket. Again, one never knew when one might need a little something extra.

Next, he went to Gil’s desk and opened the drawers then closed them, one after another. At last, in the bottom right-hand drawer, he found the box he was looking for. He pulled it out and set it on the desk. The plaque on the lid read Official Military Issue on one line and then Authorized Personnel Only underneath.

Jack held his breath and opened it.

“Yes!” he said, smiling at Gil’s worst purchase among many bad ones. The inside of the lid had a picture of John Wayne from the Sands of Iwo Jima on one side, and on the other a quote, in gold leaf:

“I define manhood simply; men should be tough, fair, and courageous, never petty, never looking for a fight, but never backing down from one.” – John Wayne

In the body of the box, on a bed of blue velvet, rested a Colt 1911, black, embossed with a gold eagle with wings spread on the slide, gold sights, and pearl grips with the words Semper Fidelis inscribed on them, separated by the Marine Corps insignia. Beneath the pistol, a thin slot in the velvet bed held a magazine, and seven rounds stuck out of seven holes next to it. At the bottom was another gold plaque, this one inscribed with John Wayne’s Marine Corps Sidearm.

Despite it being common knowledge that John Wayne did not serve in the military, Gil was convinced that he did, saying more than once he had it “on good authority” that he was a Marine Corps officer working with the OSS, producing propaganda films for the war effort. Everyone laughed behind his back, as if Gil could have known someone who had details about secret military operations in World War II.

“Why else would I have spent thirteen thousand dollars on this?” he demanded one day and showed the box to Jack. “If he didn’t serve, that would make me a pretty big dumbass, wouldn’t it?”

“It sure would,” Jack answered.

“Well, I’m glad you agree,” Gil said and declared himself the winner of the debate. Jack just let it ride.

Now, with a hostile city outside the building and a short but precarious journey to get to that Mercedes, and then to his wife, Jack was grateful for Gil’s gullibility.

He pulled the pistol out of the box, loaded the magazine, inserted it, and racked the slide.

Jack put the pistol in his waistband and pulled his jacket on, zipping it just enough to cover the gun. He walked out to the hall and stood in front of the elevators for a minute, debating about the safety of the power supply versus the prospect of walking down twenty-nine flights of stairs. He decided on the elevator, climbed aboard, and pressed the L button.

As the car descended toward the lobby, Jack’s stomach tensed up, almost bringing him to his knees. He worried about what he was going to find when the doors opened in a few seconds, and suddenly, seven bullets in a gun he’d never shot didn’t seem like enough protection. He touched the handle of the pistol, wondering for the first time if it even worked.

It chambered a round well enough. Nothing you can do about it now but trust it, he consoled himself.

He felt his knees protest as the car slowed down on approach to the lobby. It settled and stopped, and a second later the doors slid open. Jack drew the gun and held it ready as he peeked out of the elevator. There was no one in sight.

He crept out of the car and turned right, heading toward the West Lobby. The overhead lights were off, with just the accent lights around the periphery providing illumination in the waning daylight. The big plasma TV mounted high on the wall behind the security desk was tuned to Fox Business, but Shepard Smith was on the screen instead of the usual financial wonks. According to the closed captions, he was warning everyone the video they were getting ready to show contained graphic violence and appeared to be authentic. Viewer discretion was advised.

The screen cut to the video that Jack had watched earlier.

He scanned the lobby but saw no sign of security or any other people from the building. He guessed that everyone had already fled, leaving to get home before things got bad.

As if on cue, something slammed into the glass panel next to the revolving entry door. Jack jumped and fumbled with the .45 in his waistband, finally drawing it, and getting it aimed in the general direction of the noise. Over his shaking hands, he saw a bloody-faced woman watching him through the glass. He took a couple of steps to the side, and she reacted by running headfirst into the glass again. She left a splat of blood running down the pane where she impacted. This time she wobbled on her feet and fell over backward, landing hard on her backside and hitting the back of her head on the concrete. Jack watched as she tried to get to her feet and failed, flopping on her side. She pulled her knees under her, and weaved her way into an upright stance, with a hard list to the left. She wandered off, limping, seemingly having forgotten about trying to get into the building.

Jack watched her stagger away until she disappeared around the side of the next building, and then he renewed his focus on getting to the parking garage. It was only one block over and one block down. On a typical day, it would be a five-minute walk, but this was no typical day. He decided to take Court Place over to Fifteenth Street, then Fifteenth to Tremont. He felt like Court usually had fewer people on it, so maybe it would tonight as well. His other option was to go down the Sixteenth Street Mall to Tremont, and the mall was always packed with people.

You’re wasting time, overthinking this thing. Get moving and get to Sarah, he scolded himself. He took a deep breath, pushed through the revolving door, and stepped into the plaza between the twin twenty-nine-story buildings.

The first thing to strike him was the smell. Smoke mostly, but underneath it, a mélange of odors. The coppery scent of blood, the tang of gunpowder, a whiff of pepper spray. The haze floating through the downtown area was thick enough that it left an acrid taste in his mouth. He spit, trying to clear it away, and started walking to the corner.

He looked westward down the length of the pedestrian mall. He was right—it was packed with people, but most of them were in some state of distress. Dozens of people were busily attacking hundreds of others. He checked the other compass points, up and down Court Place and up Sixteenth Street to the east. The situations were similar, but with far fewer people.

He heard something pounding on the glass to his right. Inside the restaurant that only served pasta-based dishes, several people beckoned him to join them inside. He waved them off and set out across the street.

He made it to the opposite sidewalk, partway past the Irish pub where he usually ate lunch, before one of the crazed people noticed him. The man screamed and ran at Jack. He drew the .45, lined up the sights, and squeezed the trigger. The gun required more pull than his .40 at home did, and when it fired he’d pulled too hard. The shot went wide right, shattering a car window.

Heads popped up all over the area. More crazies were now alerted to Jack’s presence.

At least we know it works, he thought.

Now that he knew how hard he needed to pull the trigger, he shot again, hitting the man in the chest. He tumbled to the street, blood spilling out of the wound. He kept crawling, trying to get to Jack, but it was clear he was losing his strength.

The twenty other crazies now running his way were not running out of strength, however. Jack turned and began running toward Fifteenth Street, hoping he could stay ahead of the crowd. As he ran, he passed more crazies, who seemed surprised by his passing, but quickly joined the pursuit. By the time he neared Fifteenth Street, more than fifty people were chasing him. As he angled to make the turn to the west, he saw a massive green garbage truck approaching from the east. The driver honked, causing the crazies to look his way. He slowed down, and waved at Jack, telling him to get across the street. Jack sped up a little.

The diesel engine rumbled, and as the stream of crazed people got to the street, the truck mowed through them, sending them tumbling, or crushing them under the massive wheels. As he passed Jack, the driver honked again.

A quick glance over his shoulder told him that he only had about a dozen lunatics after him now, and they were farther back than before. The truck had taken out the leading eighty percent of the horde.

The truck driver was keeping his speed to about twenty miles per hour, steadily pulling away from Jack. He honked every fifteen seconds or so, and crazies from all directions began running after him. Jack realized that, except for the ones following him, the rest of the people would think he was chasing the truck just like they were.

Assuming they DO think, old boy. The thought rattled in his head, distracting him for a moment from the burning in his lungs.

He was running so hard he almost passed the entrance to the parking garage. He braked hard, but his dress shoes provided less than ideal traction, and his right foot slid out from under him. He teetered for a second, but he kept his balance. He made the turn into the garage entrance and ran past the empty toll booth. A few of the people chasing him went straight, following the still-honking garbage truck, but enough of them turned into the garage to be a problem. He thought about the woman who’d run headfirst into the glass back at the office building.

Good thing they’re not so hot with doors, he thought.

He passed the elevator, dismissing it because it would take too long to open, and would keep opening every time a crazy stuck an arm or leg between the doors. No, the stairs would be the way to go.

He found the stairwell entrance, just past the elevator, and pulled on the door handle. It wouldn’t budge.

“Shit!” he said aloud, still pulling on the door. Footsteps behind told him he was running out of time.

He turned around and raised the gun, firing quickly. The first crazy’s face disappeared in a spray of blood. The man fell to the concrete, and the next three tripped on the body. The rest trampled them en route to Jack.

He fired again, this time missing them altogether—or, at least, there were no visible signs of damage. He fired again, hitting a woman in the shoulder. She kept coming. His next two shots were similarly ineffective, and the slide locked back, the magazine empty. The man in the lead launched into him.

Jack turned at the last second and flipped the pistol around in his hand, using it as a hammer, beating on the man’s head. It was marginally effective, for it stunned the man, and he fell backward into the others. He pushed at Jack as he fell, knocking him into the wall next to the door. He felt something poke him in the ribs and heard a click.

He glanced down and saw that a green light had come on in a plastic casing. It was an electronic badge reader. Jack remembered he had Gil’s wallet in his jacket pocket.

Of course! Gil’s access card unlocked the door. Get moving!

Spurred on by his internal dialog, he pulled on the door handle, and this time the door opened. He slipped through as the remaining horde recovered their balance and charged, but they only impacted with the door, forcing it to shut. They pounded it at, trying to break through, but it didn’t budge. Jack leaned over, putting his hands on his knees, and threw up.

He felt light-headed, so he kept his hands on his knees and focused on his breathing, taking deep breaths and exhaling quickly. After a minute he felt better, and though he hadn’t completely recovered from his run, he felt good enough to climb the stairs to the second floor of the garage. When he reached the door, he pushed it open a crack but pulled it shut when he heard an all too familiar growl on the other side. More crazies.

Jack kept climbing the stairs, spiraling his way up, floor after floor, until he reached the tenth level. He cracked the door open and waited a few seconds. He didn’t see or hear any signs of life, so he pushed his way through the doorway. Straight ahead, he saw Gil’s Mercedes. Jack glanced up, and over the rooftops, he could see the penthouse offices of his company, the lights still on. So close, but so very, very far.

He climbed in the SUV and pressed the start button. The engine rumbled to life.

“Okay, Gil,” he said out loud. “You may be an annoying, humorless ass, but this is a seriously nice car.”

He put it in gear and pulled forward, winding down the ramps and attracting a few crazies along the way. One slammed into the side of the vehicle, startling Jack, but he kept his focus on the narrow path to the exit. At the first floor, he glanced back and saw the crowd that’d been chasing him still pounding away at the door.

There must have been a transponder in the car, because as he approached the booth at the exit, the black-and-yellow arm lifted on its own, and Jack pulled out on to Tremont and turned right. He was a little disappointed about the gate. This may have been his only chance to blast through one of those things.

Oh well, he thought. Maybe you’ll get to run over some people. There’s always that.

He chuckled at his macabre joke as he approached the intersection where Tremont met Thirteenth Street and Colfax Avenue in a three-way clusterfuck of traffic. Tonight was no different, except the cars were all abandoned. He avoided the whole mess, using the SUV’s ground clearance to hop the curb. Dodging around the trees that lined the storefronts on the corner, Jack made his way onto westbound Colfax.

He was on his way to Sarah.

21

Longmont, Colorado

March 27th

Sarah checked her watch again. She’d gotten to the fairgrounds in just under twenty minutes. It was an eternity for the normally short cross-town trip, but she’d made it without major incident. A car ran the light at County Line Road, and as it wove around the traffic, it barely clipped the front of the Axiom, but there wasn’t any significant damage. Besides, there was no way she was going to stop and exchange information, not with the lunatics from the new hospital running around attacking people. She almost hit one of them when she made the turn onto Highway 119.

In any case, she made it to the rendezvous spot unharmed, with the vehicle and trailer intact, and she’d been sitting here for another twenty minutes. She had her hand on her phone the second after she put the Axiom in park and got the All circuits are busy message for the one hundredth time. It’d been an hour and fifteen minutes since she talked to Jack, and she was getting worried.

“Oh, shit!” she said aloud and grabbed her phone again, unlocking it with her thumb, then started flipping through several pages of apps. She’d never cleaned out the ones that she didn’t use, even though she’d thought about it several times. She reached the last page, sighed, and started working her way back.

There! She spotted it on the next page and tapped the icon. The “Find Friends” app opened, and after a few seconds, filled in the map with a blue dot—her location—in the middle of the empty lot on the south side of the county fairgrounds. Under the map was a circle with Jack’s picture in it, and underneath that, it said, “Locating…”

What the? It said Jack was in the same parking lot.

She looked around and didn’t see anyone, and then a man got out of a big, boxy SUV that she somehow missed when it pulled into the lot. She didn’t know how long it’d been there, but the man was walking her way. He drew a little nearer, and…

“Jack!” she screamed and threw the door open. She tried hopping out before she undid her seatbelt. She growled in frustration and pressed the release to break free from the vehicle. She ran at Jack; never in her life had she been as glad as she was now to see her husband.

As she reached out to throw her arms around him, he put his arms straight out and stepped backward, keeping her at arm’s length.

“Jack, what’s wrong?”

“I think I’m infected, Sarah.”

“What? No way. You can’t be.”

“I can. Gil was infected, and when I…well, when I took care of him, some of his blood got on me. In a wound. I’ve been listening to the radio on the way up here, and that’s how it spreads. Bodily fluids. Blood. Saliva.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’re infected, right? I mean…”

“We can’t take any chances. I bandaged everything as best as I can, but I don’t want to risk infecting you.”

“So, what are you saying? What do we do now?”

“We go to Dad’s cabin like we talked about, only we do it in two cars. I’ll lead the way in Gil’s beast, and you follow in the Axiom. By this time tomorrow, we’ll know whether I have this…whatever it is, or not.”

“And what if you do, Jack? How are we going to get you help if we’re at your dad’s cabin?”

“Haven’t you been listening to the news? There is no help. If you’re infected, you go crazy.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know everything about it. I mean, people with fevers get crazy too. They don’t know enough about this to know it can’t be treated.”

“Let’s just get up there and take what comes next when it comes, okay? The longer we stay down here, the worse it’s going to get, and more likely we both get infected.”

Sarah looked over at Gil’s Mercedes. The wraparound push bar bumper was bent on the driver’s side. The passenger side mirror was broken off, and the hood and passenger side of the car was streaked with what looked like blood.

“You had to kill Gil?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jack said. He could see her wince when he confirmed it. “It was him or me. You have no idea what it he was like.”

“I’ve seen more videos. It just seems too surreal. How was it getting out of Denver?”

“It was rough, at first. It took a while to get to the interstate, and that was bad for a while too, but I got into the HOV lanes, and it was a little better. I will say this about Gil; he picked a helluva vehicle. This thing has a lot of power, and it’s tough. I had to move some cars out of my way, and this did it no problem. Plus, it’s insanely quick. I don’t think the Axiom would have gotten me out of there.”

“Well, if he infected you, giving you his car is the least he could do.”

He smiled at her. He was about to tell her he loved her, but screams from the parking lot of the strip mall across the street interrupted his thoughts.

“Let’s get going,” he said. “I’ll lead, but you should hang back a bit in case I have to smash through something. We don’t need you rear-ending me.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

Sarah suddenly remembered the bag with his gun in it.

“Oh! Hey, hold on a minute!” she called out. She ran to the Axiom and retrieved his gun, duty belt, extra magazines, and extra ammo.

More people were shouting across the street. Sarah looked toward the shops, her hand on the butt of her pistol, while Jack put his on. He racked the slide to load the .40-caliber and put the extra magazines in the carrier attached to his belt.

“Thanks,” he said. “Okay, now let’s get going.”

They climbed into their respective SUVs, and Sarah waited as Jack turned the Mercedes around. Then she hit the gas and followed him out of the parking lot, making a right on Nelson Road, headed west toward the mountains. She glanced to her right as they passed the strip mall. At the corner was a block of shops—a pizza joint, a cell phone store, a Chinese restaurant—with several people crowded around a fight. One man had someone on the ground and was savagely tearing at them. Sarah saw blood flying through the air as his arms flailed at the body on the ground. The crowd was giving the assailant a wide berth. A man in a cowboy hat ran over with a baseball bat and swung on the run, connecting with the assailant’s head. Sarah fought back vomit as the head rocked back at an impossible angle, blood spraying all over a half dozen of the bystanders.

She turned her attention back to the road, lest she crash into something and end this escape. Her thoughts returned to what Jack had told her about bodily fluids being the vector for transmission. If it was bodily fluids, then it wasn’t an airborne virus like the one that caused the flu. Maybe it was like the virus that caused hepatitis, which could live for weeks outside the body but also had to be transmitted by blood. Or it could be a bacterium, like the one that caused tuberculosis, or a parasite, like the one that caused malaria. Whatever it was, she wondered how many of those bystanders were just infected.

She frowned as she followed the road west, Jack’s taillights a few hundred feet ahead of her.

What if Jack is infected? If he is, I have what—twelve hours? Maybe fifteen?—before the symptoms start to show. And once they get bad enough…

She didn’t want to think about that. The images from the video, with the Army shooting into a crowd of people without regard for whether or not there were any uninfected people among them, were resting uncomfortably in the back of her mind.

If Jack was infected, there were only two outcomes.

She killed him, or he killed her.

22

Sheldon Lake, Michigan

March 27th

The pounding was persistent. Clay dropped low to the floor and huddled next to Rufous, holding a hand over the dog’s muzzle to silence him. “It’s okay, boy,” he whispered.

The hammering at the door softened, and he heard a whisper. Clay couldn’t make out the words, so he crept out of the back bedroom and into the hallway, trying to focus.

“Come on, Mr. Clay. I know you’re in there. I heard the boat.”

Clay recognized the voice, and Rufous did too, by the way the dog’s ears perked up. It was Andrew, a boy from two houses down in one of the lake community’s few year-round residences. The boy’s father, a caretaker who provided maintenance and upkeep to homes on the lake and assisted with some of the rental properties during busy times of the year, was a good man and a hard worker. Andrew, on the other hand, was a pain in the ass ninety percent of the time. But, there were a few times when the kid was useful. For starters, he loved stacking firewood and shoveling snow, and wasn’t half bad at raking leaves either.

The only relationship Clay had with the kid was as a paid hand. He looked down at Rufous and could see that the dog was desperate for attention. He reached back and took the rifle in his hands, and then he stood tall, sidestepping toward the doorway. The knocking had all but stopped now, but he could hear the creaking of the floorboards on the front porch. “Please, Clay, open the door. Something’s out here. I know it is. Please, open up.”

Clay stepped closer and looked back down at the dog that kept close to his heels. His ears were still up and his tail wagged. Clay shook his head. “If this is a mistake, I’m blaming you,” he whispered.

The old man put his hand on the heavy door and turned the bolt lock until it clunked into its housing. The boy on the outside was silent. Clay turned the handle and saw the young man with his torn and bloodied shirt. The kid’s face was pale in the fading sunlight. Without speaking, he grabbed Andrew by the arm and pulled him into the room, quickly reclosing and bolting the door. The boy moved past him and dropped to the floor with his back against the wall, his hands covering his face. The dog was quickly at his side, sniffing his mud-splattered jeans.

“What are you doing here, Andrew?” Clay asked after ensuring the door was locked and there was no one else outside.

“I heard your boat,” Andrew whispered back, his voice sounding hoarse.

Clay shook off the comment and moved into the kitchen, grabbing a pair of beers before returning. He popped the top on one and stuck it in Andrew’s face. “Here take this.”

Andrew looked up at him with wide eyes and shook his head no. “I ain’t old enough to drink,” he stuttered.

“Well, how old are ya then?” Clay asked, still holding out the can.

“Seventeen,” Andrew said just above a whisper.

“Huh,” Clay grunted. “Then I reckon you’re old enough. Take the can, it’ll calm your ass down.”

The boy looked up at Clay nervously and accepted the beer. He put it to his lips and gulped thirstily. “Too young to drink, my ass,” Clay guffawed. “You just put that back like a lush.”

The boy pulled the can away from his lips and took a deep breath. Clay noticed the dried blood on his hands and the dark streaks of dirt around his eyes. “What did you get into, Andrew?”

The kid bit at his lower lip and pulled in his knees. He looked away before speaking. “They’re dead,” he whispered before putting his hand back up to cover his eyes.

“Who’s dead?” Clay asked.

The boy took another sip from the can and looked Clay in the eye. “My mom and dad, both of ’em—and more people. I saw a lot of dead people outside.”

Clay looked at the boy, suspecting he already knew what had happened, based on his experience across the lake, but he needed more information. And the kid had to know more than what was reported on the looping broadcast. “What do you mean ‘dead’? Who killed them?”

Andrew took another gulp of his beer and set it by his leg. He reached out a hand to touch the dog, drawing it in closer to him. He stroked the top of its head before saying, “My dad, he got a call about one of the rentals yesterday. Something about a silent alarm going off. The owner thought maybe a tree fell close to the house, or maybe a stiff wind tripped a censor. That tends to happen sometimes.”

“And it was your dad’s job to attend to those things?” Clay asked.

Andrew shook his head. “No, Dad never did stuff like that. Usually the police would go check it out. I guess they had trouble reaching the sheriff so the homeowners asked if Dad would go. He figured all the police were too busy—you know, with the cops being so busy with everything going on in the city.”

Clay pursed his lips and shook his head. “Sorry kid, I hadn’t been following the news.” He turned and pointed to the TV in the other room still looping the day-old broadcast. “That there, and a few crazies I bumped into across the lake this afternoon, is all I know.”

“You’re serious?” Andrew asked with surprise in his voice. He looked hard at Clay and could tell the man was unaware. “Lots of bad stuff’s been happening. Riots, attacks… Some was saying civil war, but it’s all been close to the city. Or it was until yesterday.”

Clay put up his hand. “So, your dad, he went out to check on this house. Then what?”

“We went,” Andrew corrected. “Dad ain’t no cop, so he figured it might be nice to have me ride along with him. He thought with all the crime on the TV, maybe it was a break-in, you know robbers or something. So he grabbed his shotgun and asked me to ride along.”

“Where was the house?”

Andrew pointed out through the back of Clay’s cabin. “The Robinson place—far side of the lake. We took the truck and pulled in the driveway. Everything seemed normal until we got to the front of the house.”

Clay clenched his fist. “What did you see?”

Andrew closed his eyes and continued. “It was broken, all of it. The windows, the door…everything was broken. Not like a robbery. No, this was like people just wanted to wreck the place. Dad told me to stay in the truck, and he took the shotgun and got out. I told him we should go. I mean, we found out why the alarm was going off. Dad wasn’t no cop; it wasn’t his job to go investigating.”

“He went anyway?”

The boy nodded his head and rubbed the dog’s neck. “Yeah, he went inside. I heard the scream and then the gunshots. I ran in after him. There was just two of them. Dad killed one, but he was fighting with the other one. I kicked the thing off Dad and hit him good. But he wouldn’t stop screaming at me—he just wouldn’t stop until, well, until Dad killed it.”

“He shot them both?”

“He had no choice, Clay. Honest, he didn’t. They were crazy out of their minds.” The boy drained the last of his can and looked back at the old man. “Could I have another, please?”

Clay got to his feet and moved to the kitchen. Looking over his shoulder, he asked, “Did you call the sheriff?”

“They didn’t answer,” Andrew said, staring at his boots. “Dad thought of driving into town, but we didn’t want to leave Mom out here alone. Not if there were more of them like that out by the lake, and besides, Dad was cut pretty bad.”

Nodding, Clay returned and handed the boy a fresh beer. He passed by the window and peeked between the curtains. The sun was going down, and the street was still empty. He backed away and pulled up a chair. “So, you go back to the house. Then what?” he asked.

Andrew’s eyes began to water. He wiped the tears away with his sleeve and gulped at the beer.

“I see,” Clay said softly. “It’s okay. I think I get it—how many of them were there?”

“I don’t think you do,” Andrew sobbed. “It was Pa, he got sick and he, he—”

“He what?” Clay prodded.

“He turned on Momma, and then, well…” Andrew’s eyes drifted to the shotgun, then back to Clay. The boy sighed and buried his face back in his hands.

“Well hell,” Clay muttered. He got to his feet and returned to the living room, leaving the boy in the kitchen. He saw an orange glow around the edges of the curtains and moved close to pull back the edges. A home across the lake burned brightly. There were no emergency vehicles working on the flames, but he could see dancing silhouettes of people on the shoreline and more moving higher on the lakeshore road. Following the shoreline east and west, he could see more of them moving on the road that led from the city. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands, more that he couldn’t see.

Clay looked at a clock on the wall; it was just past six. In the matter of a few hours, he’d gone from seeing a few to seeing hundreds. Clay knew the road looped the lake and it would only be a matter of time before they found his place. He eyed the walls of his cabin. It was sturdy enough, but if someone wanted it, it wouldn’t be a mighty task to take it from him. Looking back to the bedroom and the foot locker, he tried to size up his situation. He could probably hide during the attack; he had canned goods for a week or so.

He shook his head. “I’d lose my damn mind hiding during an attack with a dog and that kid,” he grumbled aloud.

An explosion echoed across the lake, and he looked back out of the window. The flames had jumped from one luxury home to another. The garage windows of a Cape Cod had blown out, probably from a burning car inside. “Well, on the plus side, all those ugly McMansions will finally be gone,” Clay snickered. “On the down side, I’m thinking I need to get the hell out of here, before I burn with them.”

He considered the Suburban out in the detached garage. They could be on US31 headed south in thirty minutes, but not if the roads were full of those things. And what if the kid was right when he said the city was infested? What good would it do getting surrounded in town? Well hell.

Clay moved back to the bedroom and opened a closet, dropping a pair of canvas seabags from the top of a stack of boxes inside. They were stuffed with old tarps and hunting clothes he hadn’t worn in years. Clay unbuckled the tops, then dumped the contents into a pile. He heard movement behind him and saw Andrew staring at him.

“Here, make yourself useful,” he said, tossing a seabag to the boy. “Go in the kitchen, and stuff it full of anything that won’t spoil.”

“Why?” the kid asked. Clay could tell the boy was tired and his nerves on the last frazzled line of sanity.

“Just do it. Get it as full as you can. Meet me back in the living room when you’re finished.” Turning back to his own sack, Clay dumped all the ammo from the locker into it. Next, he hurried through the house to an old dresser, pulling open drawers to retrieve several flashlights and batteries. He pulled open other junk drawers, shaking his head. “Can’t believe this is all I got. A bunch of junk.” His bag was only half full when he stuffed in a pair of old sleeping bags and buckled the top.

Andrew returned to the living room. He had the bag hanging across his back and the shotgun under one arm. Clay looked him up and down. “You said those things cut your dad, then he got sick?”

Andrew nodded, not speaking.

Clay moved to a hall closet and dumped out jackets until he found an old canvas Carhart, which he tossed to the kid. He found an olive-green army field jacket for himself, then went back to the living room and dropped his feet into a pair of heavy boots. Andrew watched him as he laced them tight. He finished his preparations by strapping the holstered 1911 to his hip.

Clay let his eyes sweep the house a last time, trying to find what he was missing. He sighed, catching the glow still cutting through the curtains. “Maybe it’s temporary. We’ll just head out for a bit and come back in a few days,” he mumbled.

“We can’t take the road,” Andrew insisted. “Those things will be all over the street.”

“Don’t sweat it, kid, we’re taking the boat.”

23

Crescent City, California

March 27th

“So you were attacked in Eureka and made your way back here?” Major Barraza crossed his arms and stared across the table at Jesse and Ram. Both of them had their hands zip-tied to the front and were seated at the small table with the Army officer.

“We were trying to get back to the prison,” Jesse told him.

“I was trying to get back to my family,” Ram amended angrily as he tried to snap his restraints. One of the three soldiers standing behind the two corrections officers stepped forward to stop him. The major raised a hand for the trooper to hold up.

“We are here to help, Mr. Ramacher. The restraints are just a safety precaution. You’ve seen what’s going on out there.”

“Just what the hell is going on out there?” Jesse asked.

Major Barraza glanced toward one of the mobile building’s windows then back at Jesse and Ram. The soldiers had taken up command of a small Coast Guard station on the Crescent City Harbor. Scores of troops and military vehicles cordoned off the area from any attack from the infected.

“I understand Mr. Ramacher was scratched when you were attacked,” Barraza said, ignoring Jesse’s question.

“Look, General…” Ram squirmed in his zip ties.

“It’s Major.” Barraza pointed at the gold oak leaf on his chest.

“Whatever.” He shook his head. “My family is just a few miles from here. Can you send someone to get them or, fuck, let me go get them!” Ram pulled his arms apart in a vain attempt to snap the ties. It killed him that he was so close to home and could do nothing to help them.

“I’m sorry. Right now that’s not possible.”

“At least let me call and see if they are all right. Please.”

“I’m sorry. I really am, but I can’t breach security.” Barraza stood up. “I’m waiting on a response from Command right now. You work with us, and we’ll work with you.” There was the sound of small arms fire in the distance. Both corrections officers glanced over to the windows.

“You’re safe here. Don’t worry about the outside. We have plenty of men and guns to hold back the infected.”

“Infected?” Jesse sat back in the cheap plastic chair. “Infected with what?”

“You were scratched, Mr. Ramacher?” Barraza asked again as he leaned across the table, ignoring Jesse’s question once more.

“Yeah.” Ram reached up with his zip-tied hands and pulled the bandage off his cheek, exposing the deep scratch he’d gotten from the crazy in Eureka. “Jesse patched me up. Now can I at least call my wife?”

“Not yet.” The Major sat back down and looked over at Jesse, who was clearly annoyed by his actions. “Miss Moreno, you did that?”

“I was a nurse in the Navy,” she said in a monotone voice.

“Aw, good.” The Major clasped his hands together. “Then you understand…”

“I understand you are illegally detaining us!” Jesse leaned forward, cutting him off. “You are active military and have no right to detain US citizens!”

“Easy, Miss Moreno!” The Major held up a well-manicured hand. “We have a crisis situation here and we have every right to detain American citizens. Now, Mr. Ramacher, you were scratched by an infected over five hours ago, and you haven’t felt any effects. Is that true?”

“Other than being fucking pissed off? No! Now let me call my wife!”

“I can’t do that right now.”

“What can you do?” Jesse grumbled.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“How about taking off these zip ties?” Ram smiled, no humor in his eyes. The door to the mobile suddenly swung open and four heavily armed men dressed in black fatigues stepped inside.

“Major Barraza?” the shorter of the four men asked. The officer frowned as he stood up, and his soldiers raised their rifles. The short man in black waved a hand at them. “Relax. I have orders.” He reached into his tac vest and handed a paper to the Major. Barraza quickly scanned it then looked down at the other man.

“Looks in order.” He glanced over at his men. “These two aren’t our problem anymore.”

“Thanks, Major.” The short man smiled and signaled for his men to grab Jesse and Ram. “Good luck with your mission.”

“Yeah.” Barraza nodded. “Good luck with yours.”

“Come on!” one of the men in black said, grabbing Ram under the arm.

“Where the hell are you taking us? I need to talk to my wife!” Ram struggled with the two men who’d yanked him from his chair. “Major!”

“Sorry, you’re no longer my concern,” the soldier said, turning away.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Ram pulled away from one of the men. Another grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed him to the table.

“Quit resisting or it’s going to get real ugly,” the leader of the group said, leaning down to whisper in Ram’s ear. He was still face-down on the table. “Any more shit from you, and we’ll start hurting your buddy. Get me?”

“I get you!” Ram spat.

“Good.” The short man stood up. “We’re all going for a long helicopter ride. Fun.” He smiled and glanced down at Jesse, who was still seated. “And you can sit next to me the whole flight. Lucky girl.”

“You…” Jesse went to swing her arms up to strike the man, when one of the others stopped her.

“No heroes, Miss Moreno,” the short man chuckled. “We need to get moving. Mr. Ramacher, you have some important people to meet!”

24

Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

March 27th

Sarah followed Jack for thirty minutes without incident as they wound their way up the canyon, toward his dad’s cabin. She’d never driven there at night, so she was glad to have Jack as her guide. Without the familiar landmarks, she would never find her way there.

Ahead, Jack’s brake lights flashed, then came on solid. It seemed odd to be slowing down on a straight stretch of road, but then Sarah saw the trucks blocking their path. Just as she saw them, the headlights in both vehicles came on, the high beams blindingly brilliant in the night. The one on the right had an LED light bar on the roof, and it was especially bright.

She watched as two men emerged into the light from behind the trucks. One had a gun trained on Jack. The other pointed at Sarah and gestured for her to pull forward. She complied, pulling within a few feet of the Mercedes.

“Turn off the engine and get out, now!” the man shouted.

She slipped the transmission into park and switched the ignition off. She also slid her pistol out of its holster and put it in the narrow storage bay in the door.

“Hands where I can see them!” he shouted as she opened the door and stepped out.

She kept her hands up, even with her face, and used her hip to bump the door closed.

“Now, put your hands on the hood and spread your legs.”

She did as she was told. The man came over and frisked her, feeling under her arms, running his hands down each arm to the wrist, cupping each breast and digging his fingers through the periphery of her bra. She felt her face turn red, and he must have felt her tense up.

“Don’t worry, I’m just looking for weapons,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many women hide things in their bras.”

Sarah remained mute as he continued his search. He ran a finger all around her waistband and paused when he found the empty holster.

“Where’s the gun?” he asked.

“I left it in the car. Figured you’d consider it a threat.”

“Smart girl.”

She bristled at the way he said “girl” but said nothing. He continued his search, feeling up and down each leg. He even checked inside each calf-length boot.

“Come on,” the man said, satisfied that she was unarmed. He led her over to the area next to the Mercedes.

“She’s clean,” he said to the man who still had his rifle trained on Jack.

“Good. On your knees, miss, and clasp your hands behind your back please,” the other man said. She knelt down and reached behind her back, interlocking her fingers. She liked “miss” better than “girl.”

Focus. These creeps are a threat.

“Cover me,” the other man said. He lowered his rifle and approached the Mercedes. “Engine off, and step out, please! Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Jack stepped out and complied when asked to put his hands on the hood. Sarah kept an eye on the man guarding her and covering the other guy. Her fingers slipped into the tactical belt she wore.

She watched while the other man searched Jack in a fashion similar to what she’d just endured. Jack hadn’t left his pistol in the car, so when the man found it, he tossed to the side, toward Sarah and her guard. Jack turned his head and started to protest as the gun clattered on the gravel. The man put the barrel of his rifle under Jack’s chin.

“Eyes front, fuckhead,” he said. Jack turned his head forward. Once he was done searching him, the man pulled Jack’s wallet from his coat pocket and told him to get on his knees. He flipped the wallet open.

“Mr. Gilroy Johnson,” he said as he looked at the driver’s license. “Osage Street, Denver, Colorado. You’re a long way from home, Gilroy. Where are you going?”

“None of your business,” Jack replied.

The man looked past Sarah, just over her head at her guard.

“You believe this, Jimmy? On the very night when the world is going to shit, this urban ass wipe says it’s none of my business where he’s going in my valley!”

“Hard to believe,” Jimmy replied.

The man leaned over Jack. “It is my business, fuckhead, because I don’t want any of you flatlanders bringing that fucking zombie, mad cow bullshit into the valley I call home. That puts me and mine at risk, and that makes it very much my fucking business, Gilroy. So I’ll ask you again, where you going?”

“My father’s cabin.”

“Was that so fucking hard, Gilroy? Was it so goddamned fucking hard to answer a simple question?”

Jack bristled for a minute, and the man poked him in the temple with the barrel of his rifle.

“Huh? Gilroy?”

“No,” Jack said. Sarah could tell he was pissed. “It wasn’t so goddamned fucking hard to answer your simple question.”

“Oooooh, Jimmy. Gilroy here has an attitude. Did you hear the bass he had in his voice just now?”

“I sure did,” Jimmy said. “He sounded like he’d like to take a shot at you.”

“That true, Gilroy? You want to take a poke at me?”

“I would just like to go to my cabin. That’s all,” Jack answered.

“Uh huh,” the man said. He turned his attention to Sarah. “What’s your story, miss? You and Gilroy here an item? You his missus?”

“I’m his wife, yes.” Sarah no longer liked the way he said “miss.” She preferred Jimmy’s “girl.” It was condescending, but not menacing.

“You always travel in separate cars? Kinda odd, ain’t it?” he asked.

Jack started to say something, but the man put the rifle barrel up to Jack’s lips.

“Shh, Gilroy, the missus and I are talkin’. Don’t be rude.”

“We came from different places,” Sarah said. “We met on the way up here.”

“All right, that seems honest. Here, Gilroy, here’s your wallet.”

The man held the wallet out to Jack. He reached for it, and the bloody bandage on his arm stuck out from the sleeve of his jacket. Sarah could hear Jimmy gasp.

“Leland, he’s been bit!” Jimmy screamed and pointed at Jack’s arm.

Leland turned his head to look at Jack. Sarah watched as he dropped the wallet and started to bring the rifle barrel around, and she knew that she had to act. Now.

She removed the two-inch plastic knife from the back of the belt and thrust it up into Jimmy’s groin. He screamed a high-pitched wail that echoed in the air. She pulled the blade back and thrust it again. This time she lost her grip on it as Jimmy’s blood spilled through the holes in his jeans and covered her hand.

Leland turned his gaze back to Sarah and Jimmy, his eyes going wide as he saw her stabbing his partner in the balls. He raised the rifle, stepping back from Jack as he did so. He started firing, the rounds exploding from the barrel of the gun as fast as he could pull the trigger.

Jack sprang from his kneeling position and put a shoulder into Leland’s stomach, knocking the wind from him and sending him to the dirt.

Sarah felt her right arm burning but dove past Jimmy to retrieve Jack’s pistol. She grabbed it and rolled over just as Leland sat up.

She set her sights on Leland and pulled the trigger, the shot going wide and breaking one of the headlights on the truck behind him. He looked over at her, rage seething behind his eyes, just as Jack kicked him in the side of the head. Leland slumped over.

“Sarah, let’s go!” Jack yelled.

She ran over to him and handed him the pistol, and then headed for the Axiom.

“You fucking bitch!” Jimmy screamed.

Sarah looked back at him and saw him raise his rifle. A gunshot blasted into the air. She expected to feel a bullet tear through her. Instead, she reached the Axiom’s driver’s side door.

She turned and looked back. Jimmy lay slumped back, bleeding from his groin and his shoulder. Jack still had his pistol pointed at Jimmy. With no response from the man, he holstered the gun and climbed into the Mercedes.

She heard Gilroy’s SUV roar to life as she turned the key and got the Axiom started.

Jack rolled forward in the Mercedes until the pushbar touched the front of the truck on the right. He hit the gas, the tires spinning for a moment and sending a spray of gravel back at Sarah. Then, the older vehicle began to move, its tires losing their traction and sliding off of the road. As the back end dropped over the edge, the front end rose in the air, then the whole vehicle rolled sideways, tumbling down the embankment. The lights alternated illuminating the upper reaches of the trees, and the pine-needle-covered forest floor as it somersaulted, finally coming to rest against the trunk of a large tree.

Jack hit the gas once he was past the roadblock, then slowed down, waiting to be sure Sarah got through with the camper. As she moved forward, she saw Leland stir, and start to sit up. She retrieved her pistol from the door and pressed the button to roll down the window. Leland was on his knees, trying to get his rifle up.

Sarah fired a passing shot at Leland as she drove by him and saw him dive toward the other truck. She fired a few more shots in his direction, hearing a couple of pings as the rounds hit the hood and grill.

Then she was past them. The two SUVs went around a curve, and Jimmy and Leland disappeared.

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, and then the pain in her arm returned. She touched it, and she could see fluid on her fingers that looked black in the dim light of the dashboard. Blood. She’d been shot. It scared her, and she fought the urge to cry. Instead, she got angry about the damage to her wardrobe.

I love this jacket! I can’t believe that asshole put a hole in it!

25

Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

March 27th

Sarah kept a nervous eye on her side mirrors, watching for a hint that the men from the roadblock were following them, but she didn’t see so much as the glint of headlights for the remainder of the trip.

Ahead, Jack put on his right turn signal and slowed down, easing the Mercedes off of the main road and onto the much narrower trail that led to his father’s cabin. She followed Jack around several switchbacks that the Axiom and the trailer barely made it around. In a few places, snow still covered the road, and even though the Axiom had four-wheel-drive capability, she was glad Jack blazed the trail with the bigger SUV. After ten minutes, they rounded the final curve and entered the wide-open area in front of the cabin.

Jack wheeled the Mercedes past the cabin from right to left, then stopped and backed it up so the rear end of the SUV was even with the porch. Sarah drove past him and then backed up so the rear end of the trailer was even with the front of the Mercedes.

Jack was pulling her door open before she even had the engine turned off. He grabbed her and pulled her into a fierce hug, and when she yelped, he stepped back, looking at her in the dim glow of the car’s overhead light.

“Oh, shit! Sarah, are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yes, but I don’t know how bad. I don’t think it’s serious because I can still use my arm.” She moved her right arm around to illustrate the point.

“Was it the guy who searched you? I wanted so badly just to shoot those guys right when I saw them, but I had no idea how many there were or where they were, and I didn’t want to risk you getting hurt.”

“No, it wasn’t him,” she replied, deciding to leave out the degree to which the man felt her up. “The other guy, the one who searched you, when he started shooting—”

“Shit, you got shot? Let me see it!”

“Jack, stop, settle down. I’m okay, and remember, you said you might have gotten infected? It’s probably best if you aren’t poking around in any open wounds just yet.”

He looked crestfallen for a moment but knew she was right.

She unzipped her jacket and wiggled out of it then grabbed a flashlight from the center console and held it out to him. “Here, come hold this and let’s have a look.”

He grabbed the light and clicked it on while Sarah pulled up her blood-soaked sleeve. The bullet had ripped a gash across the outside of her arm. The wound was crusted over with dried blood but didn’t look like it had hit any arteries or nerves.

“See,” she said. “It’s not that bad. Once we get everything unloaded, we can wash it out and patch it up.”

“You mean you can. You’re right; I shouldn’t get near that wound until we know for sure whether or not I’m infected.”

“How are you feeling? I mean, the symptoms they described in the news segments seem pretty specific. Have you been scratching at your scalp, losing focus, any of that?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But that’s part of it, isn’t it? You’re not aware that you’re doing it. Gil was scratching his head like crazy when he stopped by before the meeting today, and looking back on it, I don’t think he knew he was doing it. And later, when I went to his office, and he attacked me…well, he’d scratched it so hard there were large chunks of his scalp missing.”

“Jesus. He scalped himself?”

“Pretty much. It was gruesome, Sarah. This sounds like a cliché from a horror movie, but don’t let me get like that. He was a monster at the end. He couldn’t speak, had torn himself to pieces, and wanted nothing more than to take me down with him. If I start heading that way, please, end it before I hurt someone.”

His words hung heavy in the air as both of them contemplated the worst-case scenario and what it meant to them.

“Why did he call you Gilroy?”

Jack looked surprised for a second, then connected the dots to the man at the roadblock.

“He found Gil’s wallet in my jacket pocket and assumed that I was Gil. I have no idea why he didn’t notice that I had another wallet in the back pocket of my pants. I hope I don’t look enough like him to fool people!”

“I never knew his name was Gilroy.”

He chuckled. “Neither did I, actually.”

“Why do you have Gil’s wallet?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you after we get everything unloaded, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed and dangled a keychain in front of him. “I remembered the keys. Wouldn’t that have sucked, getting all the way up here, me getting shot, and then when we finally arrive we didn’t have the keys?”

“That would have been the worst,” Jack replied. He walked over to the cabin and unscrewed the bolt from the barn-style door that covered the entrance. After a bear broke in a few years ago, Jack’s father installed the heavy four-inch-thick slider to keep any future ursine visitors at bay. Similar covers were in place over the windows. He finally pulled the bolt free and slid the door to the side, the wheels rumbling in the track and exposing the regular door, which he unlocked using the key that Sarah gave him.

Inside, he flicked on the switch, illuminating the interior in a pale yellow light. Putting his hand on his pistol, Jack walked through the cabin, checking the bedrooms and bathroom for any unwanted visitors. Finding none, he went back out to help Sarah unload the Axiom and the trailer.

She passed him, carrying a box full of food, as he left the cabin.

“I split the food between the Axiom and the trailer,” she told him. “I say we leave some of the boxes in the back of the Axiom, in case we need to leave in a hurry. There’s some perishables in the back seat you can grab.”

“Got it.”

Jack opened the back door on the Isuzu and found the insulated bag with the perishables inside. He grabbed it, and a duffel with clothes and toiletries in it, and headed into the house. They ferried things in for a few minutes, setting the food in the kitchen area, and duffels in the second bedroom. When he went out for one last load, he found Sarah with her hands in the air. Three men stood facing the cabin with rifles aimed at her.

“Hey Gilroy, fancy meeting you here, you son of a bitch!”

Jack turned to see where the voice came from but felt something smash into his head. His vision went fuzzy, the color draining from everything. He saw the ground rushing up at him but was powerless to stop himself from falling. He hit the ground face-first, splitting his lip and biting his tongue. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth, and he heard Sarah scream, “Stop it!”

A man’s voice said, “We’ll get to you in a minute, bitch! You stabbed Jimmy through the nutsack! What kind of person does that? All we wanted to do was ensure that no one came into our valley with that zombie disease, or whatever the fuck it is, and you had to go and neuter a man!”

Jack’s vision began to come back. He turned his head toward Sarah.

“You were going to shoot my husband!” she shouted. “We were just defending ourselves!”

The man closest to her turned his rifle around and drove the butt into her forehead. Her head snapped back and her legs went limp. She collapsed in a heap to the gravel drive.

Jack tried to get up to go to her, but the man who’d hit him in the head kicked him in the stomach. Jack coughed violently as the kick forced the air from his lungs. A spray of blood and spittle flew through the air, getting on the man and the one closest to them.

“You want to stay down, Gilroy,” he said as he wiped the blood from his face. “You try and get up, I’ll put you down for good, you understand?”

Jack tried to tell the man to go fuck himself, but all that came out was a gurgling wheeze. Great, Leland is back, he thought.

“Good dog,” Leland said, and laughed.

The man who hit Sarah with his rifle poked her with the barrel.

“Fuck, man, she went down hard,” he said, and nodded toward the cabin. “Hey Nick, let’s take her inside and show her what a man’s nutsack is for!”

Another man, who Jack assumed was Nick, giggled but said, “Jesus, Tim, you know rape is still illegal, right?”

“So is stabbing a man’s jewels, but that didn’t stop her, did it?”

“I suppose that’s true. And it’s not like ol’ Jimmy can take care of her, can he?”

Jack writhed on the ground, furious, but still unable to talk. Roadblock kept looking from the others and down to Jack, not taking his eyes off of him for more than a few seconds. Over by the trailer, two of the three men lifted Sarah by her arms and dragged her toward the cabin.

“You hear that, Gilroy? Sounds like your wife is about to be shared around,” Leland taunted him. “Maybe you’ll think twice next time you try to shit in someone else’s sandbox.”

He raised his foot to kick him again, but Jack grabbed it and twisted, causing the man to yelp and spin away from him. He took the pistol from his holster, aimed up at Leland’s back and pulled the trigger twice. He rolled over to his stomach and saw the other three men staring at him. Tim and Nick dropped Sarah, and Jack fired the .40 at the one on the right, hitting him in the hip. The man—Tim or Nick, he didn’t know which—screamed as he fell.

Jack kept firing, hitting the trailer twice before getting whichever of the Tim/Nick duo was still standing in the chest. He fell to the dirt next to Sarah.

The third man, much younger than the others, fumbled with his rifle, and as he watched Jack swing the barrel of the pistol toward him, he dropped the gun and put his hands up. With his left hand, he gestured toward Sarah and the two men lying on the ground.

“Mister, I wasn’t in on that! Please don’t shoot!”

Jack grunted as he brought himself to his feet, his stomach cramping from the kick. He spat a mouthful of blood on the ground. To his left, he heard Leland whimpering. A quick glance told Jack he’d shot him once on the left side of the back, about a foot below the shoulder, and once in the center at about the same height.

He looked back to the young man, who was still holding his hands up, before looking over to the other two. The one hit in the chest wasn’t moving. The other one had his rifle in his hands, and Jack jumped to the right just as the man fired. Wood from the porch’s support post splintered as the bullet hit inches from Jack’s head. Bits of wood peppered his face and hit him in the eye.

He kept moving sideways, wiping at his eye, as the man fired several more shots. The man yelled at the young kid.

“Dammit, TJ! Pick up your damn rifle and get to work!”

“Fuck you, Nick! I’m not killing these people! And I told you a million times not to call me that!”

“Kid, you don’t get that rifle, these assholes will kill us all.”

A gunshot echoed through the valley, and blood and bone sprayed from a fresh hole in Nick’s head.

“No, just you,” Sarah said. She held her 9mm pistol in her right hand while she rested on her left elbow.

She turned her gaze to young man Nick referred to as TJ.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry about this. I didn’t want to come here.”

“How about you take a few steps away from the rifle. Where’s my husband?”

The kid stepped away from the gun, and with his right hand, he pointed at the porch.

“He’s over there on the porch. I don’t think he’s hurt too bad.”

“Jack,” she called out. “You okay?”

“Yeah! How about you?”

“My head hurts like hell, but other than that, I’m good.”

She looked at the other man lying on the ground beside her. His eyes were open, but they were dull and lifeless. His skin was pale, and he wasn’t breathing.

“I can’t say the same for these two. They’re both dead,” she informed him.

Jack walked over to the edge of the porch, his left eye squinted shut. He glanced at Nick, who had a chunk of his skull missing. Blood and gore drained from the hole. Sarah had dragged herself to a sitting position, still holding her pistol in her hand. The kid remained where he was with his hands up.

“How many more are there?” Jack asked, waving the pistol at him.

“N-none, mister. Swear! And I didn’t want any part of this! Please don’t shoot me,” the kid said again.

“Put your hands down,” Jack said, gesturing with his pistol again as he did so.

The kid lowered his arms and let out a sigh. Sarah climbed to her feet and got her bearings. She holstered her pistol and took a couple of wobbly steps toward the cabin.

“Thanks, mister,” the kid said. “I want to repeat, this wasn’t my deal, you know?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me who you all are?”

The kid took a deep breath and then started talking. “Okay, my name’s Roland, but my friends call me Rollie. These assholes,” he said, gesturing at the dead men, “are Nick and Tim. Tim is my stepdad—or was, I guess. Him and Nick called me TJ, for ‘Tim Junior.’ As if that prick was my real dad or something. They knew it pissed me off, so they did all the time.”

He paused and looked back and forth between Jack and Sarah. Neither of them said anything, so he kept going. “Anyway, Leland—he’s the one you shot in the back…not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, you did what you had to do to survive, right? Anyway, him and this other guy named Jimmy were the ones who had that roadblock set up to keep infected people out of the valley. Tim and Nick didn’t go because they said that they weren’t the police, and who gives a shit if the world is ending. It’s not like they can stop it, that’s what Tim said. Really, I think that they just wanted to keep drinking and watching that stupid fucking movie Showgirls. Tim had a thing for that actress, Elizabeth whatever-her-name-is.”

“Berkeley,” Jack said. He looked at Sarah and shrugged. “Continue.”

“Anyway, a couple hours later, they show back up in Jimmy’s truck, Jimmy bleeding all over the place, with this wild story about two crazies from the city coming up and stabbing Jimmy’s nuts and shooting him in the shoulder and crashing Leland’s truck. They made it sound like you was like the infected people on the TV. Well, that got Tim and Nick up real quick, and they made me come with them.”

“And the plan was, what? Kill Jack and rape me in the cabin?” Sarah said, an angry edge to her voice.

“No, that was never discussed. Swear,” Rollie said, turning his head toward Sarah. “They just said they was going to make you guys pay.”

“How’d they know we were here?”

Rollie turned his head back to Jack. “They followed you up the canyon with their headlights off, saw you make the turn on your road, and then they came to our trailer, where they got us. I mean it, I don’t want nothing to do with any of this, you have to believe me.”

Jack took a minute to ponder the kid’s story, when a man’s voice startled everyone.

“He’s a good kid, and his old man was an asshole, all true enough. Still, people get funny about family when they’ve been murdered.”

Jack whipped around with his good eye open to confirm what his ears told him.

“Dad!” he shouted.

26

Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

March 27th

“Hello, boy. Glad to see you made it out of the city.”

Jack’s father leaned around him and continued, “Hello, Sarah. Good to see you too. Let’s get inside and sort all of this out. Sarah, do me a favor and grab Rollie’s gun, would you?”

“Hi, Charlie. Yeah, I’ll grab it.”

She picked up the rifle from the gravel and followed the three men into the cabin. Once they were inside, Sarah took Jack to the sink and flushed out his eye while the elder Washburn slid the heavy barn door over the entry. He pushed the bolt through the hole in the doorframe and into the threaded spot on the big door, securing it in place. Then he closed and locked the entry door.

“There, now we can talk without worrying about anyone else getting itchy trigger fingers.”

Jack stood at the sink, using a dish towel to dry his face. He blinked rapidly for a few seconds, making sure there was nothing else in his eye that shouldn’t be. Finally, he turned to his father. “Dad, I didn’t know you were up here! It didn’t look like anyone’s been here in a while.”

“I’ve been up here for a few weeks, but I spend most of my time at the Gateway.”

The Gateway Pub in the nearby town of Hobb’s Valley was a haven for the locals. Out of towners, mostly people touring for hunting or fishing, got charged double for drinks and food, and never even blinked at the prices. Six dollars for a bottle of beer was a bargain to city folk, but an insult to the locals.

“What about the house in Grand Lake?” Jack asked.

“Sold it. I have all I need right here.”

“You sold it? Without telling me?”

“Before we get into a sentimental hoedown, let’s talk about the fact that there are three dead men in my front yard. What the hell is going on?” He held up his hand, stopping the interruption from Jack before it started. “I suspect it’s got something to do with the civil unrest that’s sweeping the nation, but fill in the blanks for me. Start at the beginning.”

Jack told his father about the violence in Denver, his fight with Gil and subsequent exodus in the man’s SUV, the roadblock, and finally, the gunfight in the yard.

“So, you might be infected with this…whatever it is?” Charlie asked. “How contagious is it?”

“My guess is…very. But I’m not showing any symptoms, so maybe I got lucky.”

“Maybe,” Charlie replied, more than a little dubious.

“Everything I’ve heard says the symptoms start to show about twelve hours after exposure,” Jack said. “So I assume if I haven’t pulled my hair out by morning, I’m not going to. I plan on sleeping in the Axiom tonight so I don’t put you all at risk.”

“You’re kind of glib about this, aren’t you?”

“What choice do I have? I barely got out of Denver alive after killing my boss with a laptop, we got out of town one step ahead of the apocalypse, and I was almost killed—twice—by hillbillies. No offense.”

“None took. Tim was a hillbilly,” Rollie replied.

“…and then survived the OK Corral in your front yard. So yeah, I’m a little bemused by the concept of turning into a zombie. Or whatever they are.”

Charlie turned to Sarah. “You’re taking this well.”

“Am I? I feel like I’m freaking out. Nothing about any of this is okay. I’m pretty sure once the adrenaline and shock fade that I’m going to be a mess.”

“Yeah, well, you’re taking it well, anyway. You did what you had to do,” Charlie reassured her. “Don’t forget that.”

“That’s what I said,” Rollie interjected. “Nobody can blame them for that.”

“But others might say the same thing about Leland and the boys, too. Especially if my boy is infected. They were trying to keep that infection from getting into the valley.”

“You’re not defending them!” Sarah protested. “They were going to execute Jack because he might be infected. You don’t kill people who haven’t done anything yet. That’s called murder!”

“No, I’m not defending them. But that’s the way a lot of people up here will see it. Mountain folk are tightknit, Sarah. They stay away from the cities because they don’t like people. And you two are the people they don’t like.”

“So what do we do?” Jack asked. “We can’t go back to the city.”

“I’ll vouch for you,” Rollie said.

Charlie looked at the kid. “It’ll take more than a teenager who hated his stepdad to convince people. First thing we’d better do is alert the police. The more we try to hide things, the worse it’ll be.”

He walked to the old wall-mounted phone and dialed a local number. No one said anything as he waited for the line to connect. Finally, he spoke. “Paul, it’s Charlie Washburn. Give me a call back. I’ve got a serious situation to discuss up here at the cabin. It’s an emergency, Paul.”

He set the handset in the cradle and turned back to the three of them. “Voicemail. He’s probably at the Gateway. Some of the guys were getting a little rowdy when I was there earlier, and he usually comes by to peek in a couple times a night anyway.”

Jack and Sarah looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “I’d avoid going back to the Gateway for a bit, Dad.”

Charlie got up and went to a closet. He grabbed a wheeled table and pulled it out, sliding it over to the wall by the couch. A ham radio sat atop the table. Charlie plugged it in, made some adjustments, and listened. Silence. He grabbed the mic.

“KN0WHOW to Hobb’s Valley Police. Do you copy? Repeat. KN0WHOW to Hobb’s Valley Police, do you copy?”

Silence. No response.

“That means there’s no one at the station either,” Charlie said. “This could be bad.”

“Look, Dad, it is bad. When we left town to come up here, people were fighting the infected all over the place. It’s not like we’re in Siberia up here. They’re bound to get up here sooner or later. We need to plan for what to do next…and what to do if I’m not able to be part of it.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I need to see what’s happening in town.” Without saying anything else, Charlie got up and went to the farthest bedroom. He came back a few minutes later, wearing boots and a heavy denim coat. In his hand was a lever-action rifle. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said while removing the bolt from the sliding barn door. “You’d better get the trailer secured, and then keep this closed. But only have the bolt in a couple of turns, in case I have anything hot on my tail.”

“Dad, is this really the best thing to do right now?”

“Well, it’s what I’m doing. Best or not.”

With that, he left.

“No offense, Jack, but your dad’s gone a little crazy,” Sarah said.

“Since Mom died, he’s been…more distant. Isolated. I can’t believe he sold the house without telling me!”

“At least you didn’t have to deal with it. Count your blessings.”

“I suppose. It’s not like I’d have to deal with it now, anyway. It’s just hard to process everything that’s happened today.”

“I know what you mean. I’m sure it’s going to hit me at some point, but every time I think about it, the alternative pops into my head, and I can’t feel bad about it. Option B was that you were dead, and Rollie’s stepdad and his friends would have had a party with me as their special guest.” Jack winced as she said it. He didn’t like the imagery it forced into his head.

“They made their choices,” Sarah continued. “I’m not sorry for what I did. They forced my hand… I just have to keep repeating that until I believe it.”

They both looked at Rollie, who was washing his face in the kitchen sink, removing dirt, grime, and Jack’s bloody spittle. Their stares made him uncomfortable as he dried off with a kitchen towel.

“What?” he asked. “You two never seen a person clean up before?”

“It’s not that, Rollie,” Sarah said. “How are you doing with all of this?”

“It’s been a crazy night, but I’m not gonna lie. My life got a little better tonight. My asshole stepdad is gone, and I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t even have to confront him or move out. I don’t have to deal with him constantly running me down in front of his friends or making me do weird shit like rubbing his stinky, gross, yellow toenail-having feet. I guess this isn’t how I would have chosen for it to happen, but it works, I guess. I’m good.”

* * *

An hour later, Charlie knocked on the door. Sarah pulled the bolt, and the massive door slid aside, allowing the older man to enter his home.

He closed the door behind him and said, “They’re all gone. Whatever this shit is, someone brought it to the Gateway. They were tearing each other apart in there, and from what I could tell, by the time Paul got there, there were too many of them. They overwhelmed him. His holster was empty, so I think he may have at least gotten a few shots off. A few people were down for good…Nancy, Martin, Jerry. The rest were all torn up and bloody, but upright. Deputy Dodd was there, covered in blood, half her face was missing. It was gruesome.”

“It was the same in Denver, Dad. Only with a few million people at risk. I barely got out of downtown, and it was growing worse by the minute. You’re lucky none of them saw you, or they’d all be ripping this place apart to get at you. At us.”

“Speaking of barely escaping, any symptoms yet?”

“None.”

“Good. You can sleep in here tonight, but I think it would be best to put you in the attic by yourself. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning.” He turned his gaze to the teenager. “Rollie, you have the couch. You’re not going out again tonight either.”

“No argument here,” the boy said.

After they’d gone through their pre-bed routines, Sarah noticed Jack standing in the doorway to the bedroom. He smiled sadly. “I’d give you a kiss, but I don’t want to risk it just in case.”

Sarah leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. “See you in the morning,” she said.

27

Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

March 28th

Jack awoke to screams and things smashing in the cabin below him. He sprang off the cot where he’d tossed and turned all night, dreaming horrible dreams of monsters and madmen, only to remember that he was locked away from the rest of the house. Below, he heard his wife’s voice and his father’s voice shouting, but not at each other. There was a great crash, followed by Sarah screaming again. Finally, a gunshot. And another.

He pounded on the floor, banging the fold-down ladder against the door.

“Sarah! Dad! Let me out! What’s happening down there?”

He could hear mumbles below.

“Guys! Let me out! What the hell’s going on down there?”

More mumbling. Finally, his dad’s voice, muffled as it made its way through the attic floor.

“Jack, are you showing any symptoms?”

“No, I’m not. Nothing at all! What’s going on down there?”

“Stay clear of the door; I’m opening it up.”

Jack stepped back to ensure that he didn’t fall through the opening and crush his dad when the stairs started to descend. He heard the cordless drill running, removing the screws from one side of the two-by-four his dad had used to seal the stairs in the closed position. Vibrations from the side opposite him told him that he was unscrewing the other end of the board. A few seconds later, the platform descended, the steps unfolding as it went.

He scurried down the steps and saw blood all over the living room and kitchen, and Rollie’s lifeless body lying on the floor. A harsh smell of chemicals struck his nose and made him wince.

“What the—” he started.

“Kid turned sometime during the night,” Charlie said. “Sarah found him out here this morning, and he attacked her.”

“Shit, where is she?” Jack asked, panic in his voice.

“She’s in the shower,” Charlie said, pulling back on Jack’s arm. “Leave her be for a minute, Jack. She’s not bit, and there’s no new scratches that we could find. Her flesh wound is bandaged, and I didn’t see any fresh blood on it, though he did get his blood on her. I poured some bleach on her to rinse it off, and she’s scrubbing clean now.”

Jack relaxed a little, but he still needed to get to the bathroom and see his wife.

“Dad, let go,” he said.

“Jack, listen for a minute. I think this confirms our worst fears, son. You are infected. For whatever reason, you aren’t going crazy like the others. But to the best of my knowledge, and Sarah agrees, the only exposure Rollie had was when your blood got on him yesterday during the fight. It hit him in the face, near his eyes and mouth—easy ways for this infection to get into the body.”

Jack took this all in at once, feeling a heavy weight settle on him. He could be a danger to everyone he came in contact with, including his father and his wife. He pulled his arm away from his dad’s grip.

“We don’t know that, though, for sure,” he said. “I mean, this kid could have been in contact with anyone yesterday. Everything we’ve seen and heard says infection to symptoms is about twelve hours, but it’s not like there’s an egg timer waiting to go off. Everyone is different. He’s young, healthy; maybe it took longer with him.”

“Son, that kid hardly ever left this mountain. You’re the only people he’s had contact with other than his no-good stepdad and his buddies. And I don’t think any of them were infected. I think it’s best that we assume you’re at least a carrier for whatever this is, even if you don’t go crazy with it.”

“Okay, so then what do we do?”

Charlie looked around the cabin. “Well, I think Sarah and I will bunk in your trailer while we try to sort out our next move. It will be easier than trying to sanitize this place. You stay in here, and we try to get more information.”

A noise from behind Charlie made them both turn toward the hallway. Sarah stood in the doorway, dressed in fresh clothes, her hair wet and hanging loosely around her face. She had a white trash bag in her hands.

“My clothes,” she said, handing them to Charlie. He took the bag and set it down by the rear door.

“Sarah, I’m so sorry,” Jack said. “I had no idea this would happen.”

“We should have isolated him same as we did with you, just to be safe. It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, but he could have killed you!”

“But he didn’t. And you’re still alive, so there’s two things to be grateful for. But we have to be careful going forward. Unfortunately, no snuggling for a while.”

“Yeah, no necking at the drive-in for you two,” Charlie interjected. “Look, I’m going to go outside and move some dead bodies. Sarah, please toss me the work boots from my bedroom; I’m leaving my shoes in the trash bag. I’m headed out the back door. Jack, you move the kid outside, sop up as much of the blood as you can, and then get that bleach bottle and scrub down the floor in the kitchen and push it out the back door. Once you’re outside, Sarah and I can pack up what we need to, and we’ll head out the front and set up shop in the trailer. Once we get all this shit cleaned up and we’re sure that she and I aren’t infected, we’ll sort out what comes next. Okay?”

Jack nodded. Charlie looked at Sarah.

“Okay?” he asked her.

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

“All right, let’s get it done.”

Sarah crossed back into the bathroom, and Jack heard the blow dryer fire up. He stepped carefully to avoid the blood on the floor, grabbed another trash bag from the sink, and shook it open. He lifted the kid’s torso by the collar of his coat and slipped the bag over his head, the bullet wound immediately draining blood into it. He rolled the body over, away from the existing pools of blood, and with his arms under the kid’s armpits, he dragged it outside. He stopped when he was about twenty-five feet away from the cabin and adjusted the trash bag, pulling it lower, over the kid’s shoulders and down to about his elbows, then he laid the body down in the dirt.

He looked over to see his father dragging Leland’s body to a clearing and laying it down next to Nick’s body. Crows were following him closely. They settled down on the body and started picking at it as soon as Charlie stepped away.

“The crows love these guys,” Charlie said when he saw Jack looking at them. “Can’t get enough. They’re all over Tim too. Other scavengers got at them overnight. They ain’t a pretty sight, that’s for sure.”

A few crows circled close to Rollie’s body, one even landing on his chest and inspecting the dead teenager, then they all flew over to the other dead men and joined in the scavenging. Even the birds knew there was something wrong with Rollie.

Jack went back in and filled the sink with hot water, and then poured in a lot more bleach than the manufacturer recommended for cleaning. He soaked up as much of the blood as he could with paper towels, discarding them in the bag with Sarah’s clothes and his dad’s shoes. Then he took a mop, soaked it in the sink and swabbed up the remainder. The blood disappeared as the caustic liquid split the cells, draining them of their red color. He wrung the mop out in a bucket, and since he wanted to avoid getting the contaminated mop in the sink, he used a large plastic cup to spread more water on the floor and continued mopping.

Confident that nothing could survive the extra strong bleach mixture, he decided to do some additional cleaning. He found an empty spray bottle under the sink and filled it with the liquid, topping it off with a little extra bleach. He sprayed the bottoms of his shoes, grabbed yet another trash bag, and moved into the living room. He took the bloody linens and pillow from the couch and stuffed them in the bag, then sprayed and wiped down every surface he could think of that the kid may have touched. He dumped the trash bag by the body, grabbed another clean rag, and wiped everything down again.

Satisfied he’d made everything as sterile as possible, he called Sarah out of the bedroom.

“Okay, I think I’ve done all I can do out here. You should be good to go.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she said. He could tell by her face that she’d been crying. It was the same look he saw when her parents were killed in a car crash a few years earlier. She’d put on a strong façade, but just under the surface, she was grieving.

“We’ll sort this out,” he said. “One way or another, we’ll fix this.”

She gave him a grim smile. “I want nothing more than just to grab you and never let go,” she said. “To hell with the consequences.”

“I know, babe, I do too. But this is the right thing to do. If I did infect Rollie, any contact with me is potentially dangerous. Hell, just breathing around me might be deadly.”

“No, your dad and I talked about that. We’d all be infected already if that was the case. It must be contact with fluids.”

“Good point. Well, let me get out of here so you can get your stuff moved.”

Jack stepped out the back door and looked over at the body of the teenager that he’d inadvertently killed. It was still undisturbed, the crows still giving it a wide berth.

28

Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

March 28th

Deena didn’t have to peek over the wall of the deer stand; she only had to wait for the screams to stop. She’d seen a lot of zombie films and had even read some indie authors who wrote about them, so she knew, or at least suspected, that once you were bitten, it was only a matter of time. She didn’t want to be alone and would welcome almost anyone to ride this out with. However, she wasn’t willing to take the risk of them being infected or being seen by the infected.

She would have to do this alone, but first she had to get her pack. It didn’t take long for her to slip down, retrieve her pack, and rush back to the tree stand.

She pulled her pack in front of her and started to organize what she had. Being on the road with Grandpa meant that she’d spent a lot of nights out under the stars. She had a good fixed-blade knife as well as fishing line, hooks, and rubber worms, so she knew that she wouldn’t starve after her energy bars ran out. She also had two changes of clothes that, luckily, were just washed, as well as a light jacket. The only thing she was remiss on would be her hiking boots, which she could see in her mind’s eye in the semi’s sleeper cab. It was too risky to go back to the rig to hide. The only place she knew around here was their destination, the newly created tanker farm three miles up the road. It was fenced with two small buildings, one an office/guard shack and, the other, a small maintenance shed in the center. The rest was nothing but fuel tankers and reefer units that somebody suddenly decided to collect and store just over a week ago.

Deena didn’t know who or why; all she knew was that there was safety and possibly someone who she could get help from. She cursed herself again for getting caught stealing. The punishment wasn’t having to spend the summer with her grandpa. That was fun and something she loved to do. The real punishment was having her phone taken away for the summer, which left her with no way to talk to any of her friends or call for help for at least another month. They probably think that I’m dead.

A scream from a newly captured person ripped through the air, and she couldn’t help but wonder if any of her friends were still alive.

She waited until there hadn’t been a scream or any other unnatural sound for over a half hour before she peeked over the edge again. She didn’t want to spend the night up here, and it was going to take a couple of hours to get where she needed to be. That meant she had to get moving now.

It looked clear from every angle, so she crept over to the opening alongside the tree trunk and put her feet on the ladder before she paused. Once she started down, she was committed. If they saw her, then going back up would be suicide when they surrounded the base and kept her trapped until she starved to death.

Worse yet, they might know how to climb ladders—of course, she didn’t know how that could be since they seemed to run at full speed toward everything. Rushing down the ladder would make too much noise and attract attention. Going too slow would leave her exposed up high for too long. She had to make her descent slow, purposeful, and steady. Smooth and quiet; her life depended on it. She thought about her grandpa and wondered if he was one of them now. Or, was he simply…dead after losing all of his blood?

Dang it, I can’t think about it. Just move. She wiped the water from her eyes and pinched some snot from her nose before giving a halfhearted snort at how disgusting she was. For some reason, it made her smirk and she flicked it off her fingers, wiping the hand on her jeans before taking one final breath and heading down the tree.

She swept her head back and forth, scanning the underbrush between the trees. The distant sounds of screaming sounded from across the lake, so she went in the opposite direction, which was where the highway curved around the lake. Her feet met the ground, and she dropped into a crouch before heading toward a narrow deer path. Ten feet in, and she paused to listen, just like Grandpa taught her when they hunted. Fifteen feet, thirty…at fifty she pulled into the brush and scanned both directions.

She heard movement, so she dropped down, keeping a layer of brush between her and the path. She felt trapped with the brush surrounding her, but the movement sounded too close to reposition.

The sound of running feet suddenly pounded the ground around her. There was a pack of them, and they slapped the dirt as if they were attempting to drive their feet right through the ground following her path from the deer stand.

She flinched when a half-naked man pounded past her hiding spot on the trail, quickly followed by two more. They didn’t make a sound other than the slap, slap, slap of their feet and the heavy panting of their stressed lungs. Whether they took the path by chance or they were tracking her, she didn’t know. They didn’t seem to be taking time to sniff the ground or look for footprints; they were moving too fast.

She froze. Breathing… They’re still alive. What that implied, other than the fact that they weren’t zombies, she didn’t know, but it sucked the strength right out of her knees. Maybe they can think?

I can’t worry about that now; I have to get away.

She started down the path, following the creatures that she’d thought were pursuing her, keeping her ears and eyes tuned for any disturbances. She could see a band of sunlight ahead and knew it was the two-lane highway that she and Grandpa had followed to get to the tanker farm. The highway would stick mainly to the woods from here on, with the exception of the Lakeview Drive Bridge that spanned over the northern end of Watauga Lake. A mile and a half north of the lake, and almost a mile off the highway, was the tanker farm. She could make it; she knew it, even if she had to swim to get around the bridge.

She hugged the tree line as tightly as she could and stopped every twenty yards or so to listen and search with her eyes. At first she was getting tired of being so cautious, but then she saw a couple of groups early enough to step into the woods to avoid being spotted. The only exception was the one time they suddenly appeared from around a bend, but she was able to drop into the grass before they noticed her. She doubted there would have been another deer stand to save her butt this time around.

She saw that she’d been right about the bridge upon her arrival. There seemed to be a constant flow of infected around the area. Everyone who had fled on foot from the cabins would have had to cross here, and it looked like they paid for that commonality with their lives. She was wrong on having to swim, though. The steel work under the structure looked like it could be navigated pretty easily, and there was thick brush, with the exception of one small area right up to the abutment.

She was starting to get a feel for these creatures or people.

People. Were they really still people? They were alive, so maybe that meant they still had rights. She almost chuckled. That would be just like us, to worry about the rights of things that want nothing more than to kill and infect us.

Some of the infected ran all the time, with blood and puss seeping from their eyes and a frothy pinkish vomit on their chin and down their fronts. The others just wandered aimlessly, as if they were waiting for something to spur them into action. Sadly, Deena knew what that something was, and she wasn’t a bit happy with it.

She skirted the small clearing when she spotted an opportune moment and huddled down next to the bridge abutment. When the right time came, she made her move and slipped under the bridge and up into the lattice work.

It was cool and dark under the paved path above, which only allowed the sounds of scraping feet to reach her ears now and again. She’d reached the halfway point without any issues, and then she heard the sound of a small motor from underneath her.

“Pssst. Girly, down here. Drop down into the boat, and I’ll take you back to my cabin. They haven’t found it yet,” a man said in an almost pleading voice.

The sound of it made her blood freeze before she even looked at him. He was just a little too eager to get a teenage girl into his boat, and she didn’t trust it. This was the kind of man she’d been warned about.

“Shhhh,” Deena said. “I’ll be fine. Just go, or they’ll see me.”

“That’s why you should come with me, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe.” It wasn’t the words as much as how he said them, but they made Deena feel as if she might be safer with the infected.

She thought about her options, Grandpa’s 1911 being one of them; however, she was in no position to go digging in her pack. She still had the .22 semi-auto clipped to her waistband, but her grandpa’s warning about how that might not kill a determined man without a lot of shots rang through her head. The last thing she needed was every infected from the lake cabins coming down on her while she was trapped under a bridge. When she weighed her options, she’d actually prefer it over crawling into the boat with this creep.

Deena looked up and saw shadows of heads trying to peer over the sides. Suddenly, one of them plunged with a splash into the lake below. Soon, another body fell, and another. All of them sank, except for one who managed to grab the edge of the boat. More started to fall. She turned back to the man and saw that he had an oar and was trying to hit her with it to knock her out from under the bridge.

She wrapped her legs and an arm tight around one of the supports and pulled out her gun, showing it to the man, who didn’t seem too concerned about the infected that were surrounding his boat.

“Good, you got a gun. I need a gun,” he said as the oar struck her on her knee, almost causing her to fall. She couldn’t wait any longer. This man had his chance to leave her alone, and in spite of her refusal and the infected, he just wouldn’t. He swung again with the oar, and she flinched away to avoid another strike, the pain in her knee still fresh in her mind.

In one smooth motion, she turned and fired toward the back of the boat, hitting the plastic gas can. Except for the man whose ear she blew off earlier that day, she’d never shot an actual person and didn’t know if she could. But she could shoot a boat. She fired off six more rounds, knowing that the smaller bullets allowed her magazine to hold many more rounds than the 1911 did.

The man glared at her and dropped the oar.

“You little bitch, I was going to help you,” he spat at her.

“I don’t think so, mister. Just go away and leave me be,” she said as the stench of gasoline hit her nose. She could see water starting to fill the boat from the tiny bullet holes that the .22 made. She was surprised and hadn’t thought her gun powerful enough to penetrate aluminum, which is why she had aimed for the gas can. She was aware that the fireball it could have created was more for movies than real life, but she’d been ready for it.

The man swore at her a few more times before he grabbed the throttle and headed back out into the lake with more than one hand clutching on to the side of the boat that was slowly filling with water.

Deena took a moment and reevaluated her situation. Dozens of shadows from the infected displayed upon the lake’s surface, and they all seemed to be frozen in place and looking over the side. None of the ones in the water were swimming and had sunk. She could see the legs of a couple more on the opposite bank, coming to see the commotion the man in the boat had created. Those were the ones that had her concerned. If they saw her and started moaning, then she could be trapped here for a long time.

She’d fired her pistol, and they saw the man in the boat, so they knew some uninfected had been there, but they hadn’t seen her yet. If she could keep it that way, she might be able to get out of her predicament. As quietly as she could manage, she climbed back to one of the pilings and slipped behind it before sitting down. She hadn’t gone far, a mile or a mile and a half, but she was still tired and hungry, so she pulled an energy bar out of her pack as well as a bottle of juice.

She sat for over an hour, constantly checking on four of them that searched under the bridge and along the shoreline. Their moans and screams made her feel as if she’d appeared in an alien world, where everything wanted to eat her. Suddenly, one or two of the infected would burst into a full-speed run alongside the lake, only to return with their blood-filled eyes scanning everything. Deena didn’t know why they did it; she only knew that there was no way she could outrun one of them. One was an old woman and even she ran faster and farther than a marathoner could. Deena didn’t understand how that could even be possible. Waiting until they were gone or it was dark was her only option.

She missed her grandpa and knew that he might be one of the creatures above, waiting to take a chunk out of her. Her world had changed in a matter of hours. The sense that the change was permanent and total threatened to overwhelm her. She put her face into her hands, trying to stifle the sobs that kept escaping. Silence was key to her survival. Any sound or sight of her would keep them here forever…waiting.

A sound off in the distance caught her ear. As she listened, she could tell that it was coming closer. It was a truck. It was more than just a truck; it was a rig, and it was picking up speed as it approached the bridge.

Deena peeked around the piling and saw the creatures on the bank scramble up to the road to meet the semi that barreled toward the bridge at top speed. She hoped it was equipped with a heavy herd defender on the front end, which, of course, it was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have survived this long. There were too many deer in this area not to run heavy grill guards. It protected your investment, as her grandpa used to say.

Bodies were thrown far out into the lake from the sheer velocity of the heavy truck. They were miniature pins being struck by a giant bowling ball that sent them airborne in a mist of spraying blood.

Deena made her move. She would never catch the truck and wouldn’t be able to make them stop anyway, not with so many infected around. They wouldn’t know that she wasn’t one of the creatures and would run her down too. The far bank was her goal, and then the woods beyond. She’d mentally mapped her path through the lattice work and made the abutment in record time. There was no time to check out the scene; one of the creepers coming up the bank after having survived being knocked into the next time zone by the semi, was all it would take to end her flight.

She dropped down and made for the closest grouping of trees fifty yards away. She stayed low and tried to make her motions smooth. Jerky movements attract the human eye, where smooth blends in, she told herself as she wove between some scattered brush before the wood line. She stopped at the trees and ducked low to look back at the bridge. It was empty; the truck had cleared it completely of infected. She glanced down at the lake and saw several coming out of the water slowly, looking stunned—with one exception.

He wore a uniform of some sort, maybe military, but also possibly Fed Ex—it was hard to tell in the dimming light. He lumbered as if one leg wasn’t working right, probably the leg that connected with the semi. He moved jerkily, as though half his body wanted to run but the other half couldn’t. Blood seeping from his eyes splayed across his face erratically, staining his chin with red vomitus goo. Pink foam covered the front of his uniform. But that wasn’t what made him special. What made him different was that his eyes were locked on hers and his jerky, lumbering gait carried him directly toward her position.

She never hesitated as she turned to run, trying to keep the road in sight. There was only a half hour until sunset, and she wanted to be at the tank farm before full dark. Looking back, she saw that her pursuer had separated from the herd, and a satchel bounced from his right hip. A gun maybe, supplies, or first aide… Deena didn’t know, but she couldn’t help but wonder.

There were more infected along the side of the road who’d obviously tangled with the rig, but they were crippled from the semi, and she kept herself back in the trees. Luckily, the deer path seemed to mirror the road at this point, so the going was easy. Deena heard when the man on her trail broke through the trees, and she realized that she was still in his line of sight.

Typically, she would have run, but his body was mangled by the impact, so she could stay ahead of him by keeping a fast trot. She’d had some trouble in school with the stealing and all, but she wasn’t a drug addict. She didn’t smoke either, so keeping up that pace wasn’t going to be much of an issue for her.

The sun was getting lower, and she still hadn’t found the turnoff for the compound. It should cross right in front of her, providing that the road was still off to her left. She couldn’t seem to shake her pursuer. It seemed that every time she went around a small bend, he came out behind her a little closer.

Fifteen minutes later, and it was getting darker. She couldn’t always make him out, and she was coming into the darkest part of the night: the time before the moon rose and the sky wasn’t dark enough for the stars’ brilliance to shine through. Grandpa always hated driving at dusk.

The man’s sounds were getting louder, and she knew that she had to end him before it became too dark to see. At a point where the path widened slightly, she stepped to the side behind a tree and readied her .22 semi-automatic. She had a double-stacked magazine, which meant she had at least ten shots left and a second magazine in her pocket. Deena didn’t think she had time to dig the 1911 out from the bottom of her pack. Plus, the smaller gun would be quieter. She waited and listened.

The stomping down the trail got louder, and then suddenly stopped. The creature froze in place as if trying to hear something.

Is that it? Is he tracking me by sound? Deena wondered, knowing that all she would have had to do was stop and hide. Then she heard it sniffing, and she realized the path was a lot closer than she thought; the gloom of evening had betrayed her.

The brush came alive with the sounds of snapping branches as he lunged for her. She fired into what she thought was his body. He kept coming.

His strong hands wrapped around her throat, fingernails gouging into her flesh. Blood pooled in the space along her collar bone and ran down inside her shirt. Deena screamed and started pulling the trigger at pointblank range, stitching a sporadic line up the man’s torso until her barrel came up under his chin, where she sent her last three shots.

The man fell stiffly to the side, and Deena collapsed next to him, breathing hard.

Bit; bit, bit… He didn’t bite me. I should be good. He sure tore the crap out of my neck though. Deena checked herself and wanted to take time to wrap the wounds on her neck with a t-shirt, but she was afraid of what her shots attracted.

First aid kit. I don’t have anything in mine other than Ibuprofen and Band-Aids. His satchel… It’s probably a first aid kit, her mind screamed, and she snatched it with a hard tug from his shoulder before she got up and started to move down the path once again, hoping that she’d be able to find the tanker farm in the dark.

Deena walked now; running had only caused her to bump into trees, so she decided to risk the road. Her fears of the infected were somewhat lessened for some reason. A part of her knew she should stop and rest, but her legs wouldn’t let her, so she walked. The wounds on her neck started to itch.

She stopped and checked the satchel for a first aid kit. The zipper to the main compartment had a lock on it like the kind used on a bank bag. The outside pockets carried some kind of credentials with official stamps on papers, but no first aid. She stuffed the papers back into the pack, never thinking to discard it.

Deena was losing her capacity for rational thought. She was tired and hungry, not to mention very cold. With the exception of the wounds on her neck, which felt like they were on fire, the skin around them was icy cold. She’d been wandering for hours and still hadn’t found the tanker farm. Though she didn’t feel like crying, she could feel the warm liquid on her cheeks and her eyes were starting to burn. More than likely, it was due to her not having enough sleep over the last day.

She wiped her cheek and was surprised to feel that her tears were sticky and shined dark on her fingertips in the moon’s light. It looked like…blood. She was instantly nauseated and heaved whatever was left in her stomach onto the road. Her vomit was also dark and glistened in haunting, reddish ripples. She heaved again.

Deena had to get to that tanker farm soon, or she was going to be sick again. She started to run. She ran slowly at first and then faster. She increased her pace again, and then a fourth time until she was running faster than she ever had. Her breathing was hard, but easy, and she felt as if she could run all night. Hell, she could probably run forever if it wasn’t for the incessant hunger twisting her stomach into knots. She was hungry, and she screamed it out into the night, hoping someone would hear, but her words didn’t sound right. She vomited again, the spew coating the front of her shirt, but she didn’t care because she could run.

She ran for hours, screaming her pains into the night. Still, nothing sounded like the words that she was trying to say. The sun rose and she screamed again, ravenous! The words, more like an enraged growl than what she had actually yelled, were a guttural sound coming from the pit of her empty stomach.

Her hunger grew to proportions that she’d never imagined. It was a pain deep within her that stretched up through her throat, enveloping her tongue and mouth. She dreamed of something thick and hot filling her mouth and running down her chin. She would swallow it and trace every inch of its path down inside until it splashed within her empty belly, and then she would be satisfied, finally satisfied. Dreams of cheese burgers vanished to be replaced with the vision of fresh, tender flesh and hot blood that she could savor during its inward journey to sate her appetite.

She found herself on a dirt road, finally staring at the fenced tanker farm shining like a beacon in the sun’s rays, not a hundred yards away. There was a man there, walking by the fence, carrying a stick or a leg of meat. Meat, he had to be carrying meat because she was so hungry.

“So hungry!” she screamed.

Without fear of the infected all around, she turned and ran toward the man, screaming for help and food. Delicious, hot food combined with blood and flesh. Flesh that would revitalize her and give her what she desperately needed and finally stop the howls coming from her stomach. She no longer noticed that her words never came out as words, and her blood-filled eyes never registered the rifle that was leveled at her by the man who had turned at the sound of her screams.

A single shot stopped her run, and she collapsed in a heap just feet from the fence.

“Poor kid,” another man who’d come upon the scene stated. “Hey, isn’t she that trucker’s granddaughter who was here yesterday morning? I think we were expecting another delivery from him.”

“I don’t think it’s coming now. Poor bastard,” the other man replied, shaking his head at just one more of the infected that he’d had to put down. “Hey, is that a courier pouch on her shoulder?”

“Yeah, it looks like one. You don’t think it could be the one the big boys were waiting on, do ya?”

29

Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

March 28th

“How do you think she got it?” one of the truckers asked the guard, Toby.

Toby shrugged. “How would I know? We don’t even know what it is.”

The conversation between the two men tapered off as another man approached. “What are you shooting at, Tobes?” the man asked.

“One of the infected charged the gate, Ian, and I put her down,” Toby said.

Ian tried to contain himself. He’d ordered no unsuppressed shots, especially since there were several hundred of the infected gravitating in their direction. The bastards didn’t have a direct bead on their site—yet—but their drones had identified groups, or pods as some were calling them, spiraling away from the lakes as if searching for the chance to feed.

Ian wanted to shout at Toby, but he never reprimanded his men publicly; it was simply bad business. Instead, Ian guided Toby between the trucker and himself before saying quietly, “All right, where’s your suppressor?” The trucker leaned in slightly to try to listen, but there was nothing Ian could do about that.

Toby hesitated for a minute before answering. He’d been issued a suppressor, but they were all made for the larger Special Operations Combat Assault Rifles, known as SCARs, that he didn’t like. He used his personal M4 with extended magazines so he could put more rounds down range. He liked his rifle, and they were in the middle of nowhere, so using the SCAR didn’t seem like a good option to him. As a result, he’d ignored the directive. “I couldn’t get it to fit,” he stammered.

Ian glanced down at Toby’s M4 and shook his head. The first distant screams of the infected sounded in the distance. “Well, you might have just fucked us all, Tobes.”

“The girl he put down has a courier’s satchel with her,” Ernie, the trucker, said earnestly and pointed at the dead infected who lay just outside of the fence, fifteen yards from the gate.

Ian stepped closer to the fence to get a better look. After a moment of thought he said, “Set your rifle down, Tobes. You have to go and get it.”

“I’m not going out there for a satchel that we don’t even know is worth a shit.”

“We all know that they were waiting on correspondence. Why would a courier’s satchel be in this area unless it was for here? I’ll cover you, now move.”

“I didn’t want you to take this contract to begin with,” he protested.

Ian remembered Toby’s whining at the time. He didn’t blame him, but they needed the revenue.

“Look,” Ian whispered sternly, not wanting the trucker involved, but knowing that he was too close to avoid overhearing. “This contract is the only reason we aren’t out there with them, Toby, so move!”

A quarter mile down the road, the three men saw the first of the infected break the tree line, running toward them at an unnatural speed.

Toby didn’t want to leave the security of the fence, but he also recognized the look on Ian’s face. This wasn’t an option. It may have been a private security company, but Ian ran it with the same guidelines as the military. This meant when an order was given, that order was to be followed.

“Come on, man. I’ll go with you if we move now,” Ernie said.

“You man the gate. The last thing I need is a truck driver getting in my way,” Toby said, resigned to his fate.

It was only a smallish horde of ten to fifteen infected rushing toward the gate, for now. Those few, however, would be enough to infect everyone within the fence, so Toby moved with an urgency that bordered on panic, though he kept his movements deliberate and focused. In seconds, he was outside the gate and running the fifteen yards toward the girl’s body. The approaching infected were spurred to greater speed now, having an accessible target in sight. Their screams increased, as did the sounds of their pounding feet, until he could feel the ground vibrating. More came from the surrounding woods even closer to the body that Toby raced toward. He increased his speed.

Toby did his best to keep his wits about him, dreading the moment when he would have to stop and undo the satchel. He could see that it was hooked awkwardly around the girl’s neck and one arm. He flinched slightly when he heard the plunk, plunk, plunk of suppressed SCAR fire coming from behind the fence but didn’t look at the source. He stayed focused on his target, not wanting to get caught flat-footed outside the gate.

From where he stood, Ian watched as Toby approached the body like a relay runner. But instead of snatching up a dropped baton, the man reached for the two straps of the girl’s backpack with one hand and pulled, only to struggle with the competing resistance of the body’s deadweight.

“Leave the pack! Just grab the satchel!” Ian shouted, knowing they were running out of time. She’d been a small girl, but even still, that left her at over ninety pounds, which was more weight than a typical man can pick up like a duffel bag, as he’d attempted to do.

Toby turned back to grab her again and flinched when he saw two infected bearing down on him. Their screams echoed across the clearing, but he didn’t stop. Ian took one of them out, only to have his space filled by a third.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Toby blurted over and over as he watched them approach. They were too close for him to turn and run, even if he abandoned his task and returned empty-handed back to the gate.

“Use the girl’s body as a shield,” Ian shouted, lining up on the second one.

The head of the closest infected exploded into a mass of bone, flesh, and brains. That pushed the falling body into the second one, which caused it to stumble. Ian thanked the gods that these things were moving so spastically fast because what could have been a nudge or stumble turned into a full-on face plant for the infected, slowing the others behind.

Toby grabbed the straps with both hands and lifted the girl up then started to struggle with the weight in front of him, toward the open gate. Brandt and Erik had joined Ian and John, making a defensive wall of lead behind Toby to take down the infected that were an immediate threat.

Ian felt bad about sending him out there, but he did need to see what was in the satchel. He felt justified doing so because Toby had disobeyed a direct order to use the suppressed SCARs that their employer had provided for them, in turn creating this mess. It was a needed lesson. Toby had a history of doing things his own way, and Ian couldn’t have that. But risking someone’s life never seemed like a good way to teach a lesson. Ian felt it was a step he had to take because Toby had never had any formal military training, having been kicked out of boot camp for failing a drug test just a week into Basic. Despite this dark spot on Toby’s record, he was one of the brightest and most reliable of his operators, albeit a bit more cynical. Ian had hired him on a hunch in spite of the failed drug test, and as of yet, hadn’t regret it. Until today.

Ian dropped three more infected before Toby reached the gate and stopped. The infected seemed to be coming out of the forest from every angle, and the growing number at the end of the road made up Ian’s mind; it was time to ex-fil. The fence was designed to keep a few people out for a limited amount of time, but it wasn’t electrified, nor was it set in concrete, so the idea of it being a secure facility against that type of horde was fantasy, at best.

Ian slowed his breathing and refocused on the scene to heighten situational awareness before he leaned back into the optic. He scanned one to the right and two behind before swinging back to the right for a fourth target, which fell from Brandt’s rifle before Ian could shoot. He pulled up and surveyed again. Toby was inside the wire, and the closest runners were fifteen yards away and closing fast. The driver slammed the gate and struggled with the latch as they began to pile up on the other side, shaking the entire structure.

The tankers and their cargo inside the facility wouldn’t allow for a lot of bullets to be flung around. A round could penetrate the thin sides of the reefers, but the tankers were impervious due to their shape and thickness of steel. It would likely repel most projectiles.

Likely didn’t cut it in Ian’s opinion.

“Lock the gate!” Ian shouted, already worried about the fence holding against the thirty infected that were in sight. If reports from the other sites held true, more would arrive soon. Chain link was more of a visual deterrent than anything else—unless, of course, it had one hundred thousand volts running through it, or if the posts were set in concrete, and very few were, due to a time crunch while setting it up.

“Get your ‘bug-outs’ to the motor pool. And change your shorts if you need to.” With a smile, Ian addressed that last bit to Toby, who literally growled back. “Shut her down, Sparky. We move out in fifteen,” he said into his headset.

As Ian unhooked the satchel from the girl’s shoulder, he saw the empty holster on her hip and was impressed with the young woman. She must have been healthy and fighting back during the first twenty-four hours of the outbreak.

He wondered if she’d come from the resort area on the lake, and if so, whether she was the only survivor from there. He figured he was probably reading too much into it, but he respected her nonetheless and became determined to find out who she was. Ian turned the body over and opened her backpack. He threw her clothes out, looking for some kind of identification, which he found on a see-through placard attached to an inside zipper. He slipped his fingers in and slid out the paper with her name and address on it then shoved it into his pocket for later. Just as the evacuation siren started blaring, he noticed how heavy the bag was. He pulled out a couple of paperbacks that looked like YA novels and tossed them aside, as well as a notebook, slippers, and other miscellaneous items. He shoved a water bottle and some energy bars into his back pocket before looking into the bottom to see what was adding so much weight.

A box of one hundred .22 long rounds shined up at him, but they were useless; nobody carried small-caliber weapons on these forays. However, next to the rounds were two magazines that held something much larger than a .22.

“Holy crap, Deena, you were prepared. I wonder how they got you,” Ian muttered and pulled a beautiful Remington 1911 out of the backpack. It was Spartan in appearance, well-used, and completely utilitarian. He dropped the bag and carried the 1911 and extra magazines into his Quonset, where he traded out his Glock in the holster for the 1911. He stuffed the Glock and magazines into his bug-out bag. Ian loaded the side pockets with cold bottled water from the fridge, which was now off due to the encampment’s central electricity switch being pulled. He grabbed some hummus and crackers for the road since there was no telling when they would eat anything other than tepid meals from here on out. It’d been a long time since he’d survived on MREs, the military ration designed to be shelf-stable for years, but he suspected he would be doing so again soon.

Ian waited, knowing that he hadn’t seen all his boys come through the motor pool gate, which was substantially better installed than the main fence system. He looked at the trucks, trying to take a headcount while watching the yard, but there was too much movement and jostling to get into vehicles. Ian had taken the time to assign drivers with a wingman, but not seating for the others, and he regretted it now. It looked as if they were down a couple of bodies.

It was Ernie, the truck driver, who spotted them first from where he stood in the back of a deuce and a half. He pointed behind Ian with a look of horror. When he turned, he saw that a horde of infected was on the heels of Jean and Brian, who’d just rushed out of the coms shack. Jean had her bug-out, but Brian was empty-handed and running like he wasn’t thirty pounds overweight, which he was, if not more.

His shaggy red mop bounced atop his head as he ran, and the paleness of his skin pronounced the freckles in a way that seemed unrealistic. The infected were mere feet behind them and closing fast. One slip or fall and it was over for them. Ian stepped to the side and took a knee to stabilize his shot.

Swerve right so I can get the ones behind, Ian thought. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be able to take out the closest ones directly behind, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

“Toby, Jose, on me!”

“I got the gate!” Ernie said.

Ian cleared out two behind them, but that left two more right on their tails and four that were a little farther back, but blocked by the angle of the runners. Jose set up on the far side of the gate to take those out, which still left the two directly behind.

Toby went completely out of protocol and left the security of the gate and right toward the running pair with his unsuppressed AR tight to his shoulder. One of the infected lunged and wrapped his arms tight around Brian’s legs, causing him to face plant into the dirt before sliding for a few feet. Jean kept pumping, knowing there was nothing she could do for him.

Ian looked at Brian on the ground, his features a mask of absolute horror as a familiar-looking infected crawled up on his back like a wanton whore, screaming and salivating, leaving puddles of drool and goo on his back.

John? Ian recognized the guard who had been helping him outside the fence when Toby got the satchel. Can it turn you that quickly, or was he already bitten?

Toby took advantage and pumped three rounds into the head of the one behind Jean and then two into John’s head before rolling him off of Brian and pulling the terrified man to his feet. Then Toby half-lifted and half-threw him into the fenced area of the motor pool.

Ernie slammed the gate home and set the latch just as eight twisted, screaming faces crashed into it. He jumped back and slid under one of Brian’s arms in order to help him over to the deuce and a half.

Ian looked at the mass of infected for a moment, almost recognizing the lost humanity within them. It was hard to see behind the vomit-stained chins and mucus that oozed from nostrils and mouths, as well as open wounds. With ashen-gray skin taking on the implant of chain link, he watched for a minute longer as their need escalated to a thunderous howl as more joined them. The fence started to bow inward from the weight. The stench was overwhelming, and Ian suddenly wanted to piss his pants as he saw urine and fecal matter falling from misshapen bodies. Their eyes were so bloodshot as to lock the iris in a sea of red. It seemed as if they pleaded with him to help them, feed them…that Ian alone could help them—but all he wanted to do was kill them.

As Ian and his group were on the move toward the tanker farm exit, he thought again how conveniently designed the facility was, almost as if they knew what they would be up against. Ian was grateful that it was; it meant that most of them got out, including Ernie. Of course, John was not one of them, nor, it seemed, was the man he attacked; Brian’s leg was bleeding, and they all knew what that meant. He would have to be isolated and watched.

Ian turned his attention to the deuce and a half in front of his Humvee, where the injured man tried to tend to his wound. How soon would he turn? Does everybody turn? Brian stared back at his boss, catching his eye. Jean, Ernie, and Toby were with him in the bed. They looked at him, not wanting to say what was on their collective mind.

Brian looked down at his leg and sobbed. Then, he pulled something out of his back pocket that looked like his billfold and tossed it to Jean. He didn’t have his bug-out bag or his rifle, both violations of protocol. He pulled more things out of his pocket and laid them on the bench next to him and then caught Ian’s eyes again; Ian saw resolution as the man held his small M&P 9mm in his right hand.

As the trucks started to slow for the last gate, Brian shouted, “I got it!” He hopped out to run around the sides and up to the sliding chain link gate. The dead weren’t there yet, but they were close and moving in at a heated pace.

Brian slid the gate open before dropping one of the infected with a bullet to the brain from his compact pistol. Two more reached the gate, and Brian took them down as the trucks passed through. The crew looked at the man, never expecting the chubby Army brat to display such heroism in the face of death. On a normal day, he avoided maneuvers and absolutely sucked on the range, yet there he was, guarding proven soldiers with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel and an eight-round magazine.

He fired again, the round sounding more like a pop than a bang and another infected dropped. He closed the gate behind the last of the vehicles and made as if to run to catch up, but then stopped. The look on his face was one of resignation. Brian knew what was coming next, and he could either prolong it or make it quick.

He put the gun up under his chin, but at the last minute, he pulled his hand down and shot at an infected that leapt for the back of the deuce. He missed and shot twice more before putting the gun under his chin again.

The vehicles were a good twenty-five yards away when Ian heard him shout.

“Empty! It’s fucking empty!”

The crisp ring of a NATO 5.56 round rang out, and Brian fell dead.

Toby pulled the rifle away from his shoulder and wiped some snot from his nose before he sat back down. Ian knew the man felt partly responsible for Brian getting bit, though it was his own fault for failing to respond to the warning sirens.

Ian read Toby’s lips as he spoke to Jean, who patted him on the shoulder. “Stupid kid didn’t start with one in the chamber.”

Then he looked at Ian, holding his gaze for a moment, before hanging his head for some shut-eye as the vehicle put more distance between them and the facility they left behind.

30

Sheldon Lake, Michigan

March 28th

Clay stood by the back door, looking out onto the covered porch. It was quiet, the fires across the lake casting long shadows. The black smoke hanging over the water nearly blocked out the bright stars above. He placed his hand on the knob and looked back to Andrew, who was still close behind him with Rufous by his side. The dog now wore a leather collar and leash. “Stay close to me, okay?” he whispered.

Andrew nodded and clenched the shotgun tightly to his chest. Clay tried to force a smile before turning the knob. The latch clunked, and he slowly let it open out into the cool night air. Unobstructed, he could hear the roaring fires across the lake, and a light breeze clacked nearby tree limbs together. Clay took a smooth step onto the worn porch floorboards. He stood silently, scanning the area. The scent of the burning homes was strong in the air. Looking down the sloping backyard, he could see his boat floating lazily, just where he’d left it.

Keeping the carbine in his right hand, he raised his left and waved for Andrew to follow him. They moved across the porch, down the steps, and into the damp grass. His side of the lake was still dark, the homes silent and the streetlights blackened. He moved quickly, willing himself not to run for the boat. He heard a low, throaty growl from the dog. Andrew tried to shoosh him, but Clay didn’t bother, instead increasing his pace. He knew if Rufous was agitated, there was a reason for it.

Another step, and he heard the sounds of breaking branches and crunching leaves. A scream broke the silence the same time as the dog’s growl turned to a vicious snarl. On instinct, Clay stopped and turned back, shouting for Andrew to get to the boat.

“What are you doing?” the boy protested.

“Untie the damn boat—I’ll be right behind you.” Clay didn’t wait to see if the boy had followed his instructions; there was no time. The shadows bounced out of the neighbor’s hedges, and green eyes reflected the flames of the burning homes. He brought up his carbine and aimed center mass at a hulking figure bearing down on him. He pulled the trigger, and the muzzle flash revealed a blood-covered face with gnashing teeth. Clay let out a shriek of his own as he took another step back and fired again.

Moving backward and downhill, he nearly stumbled. The first charging figure fell into a low fence, with more of them screaming and fighting through the hedges. They got tangled in the same fence as Clay fired blindly into them. When his rifle ran dry on an empty chamber, he turned and ran for the dock.

He sprinted toward the sounds of the barking dog as fast as his old legs would carry him. He landed on the wooden planks and could hear a scattering of footfalls following close behind. Clay spotted the boat at the end of the dock. Andrew had his shotgun up, aimed directly at him. Clay yelped and dove for the bow of the boat as the boy pulled the trigger. There was a bright flash, and pellets launched from the barrel, cutting down his pursuers. Before Clay could roll to his back, Andrew fired the other barrel. With a boom and a click, two empty shell casings landed near Clay’s feet as the boy reloaded.

Clay’s dive into the boat had pushed them into the water, causing it to drift away from the dock, but the creatures kept charging, splashing into the water and disappearing into the blackened depths. Andrew continued to fire. Two more booms and a clack, then shell casings bounced off the boat’s deck. The dog barked and howled as Clay crawled for the stern. He dropped the outboard into the water and started the engine.

The gurgling noise of the Evinrude engine enraged the creatures on the shore, pushing more of them into the dark waters. Clay let the boat pull away from them before he grabbed a light and shined it back toward his dock. His backyard was full of the creatures, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, screaming at him. They filled the waterline, pushing out into the depths until their heads went under the surface. Andrew pointed a shaking finger at hundreds of the things floating dead on the surface.

“Well, they ain’t swimmers,” Clay stuttered, knowing the words didn’t need to be said.

Andrew reloaded the shotgun and raised the barrel again. Clay put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Save it,” he said. “They can’t get to us now.”

Clay cut the wheel, steering them into deeper water, and then aimed toward the channel.

Andrew looked over the bow then back at Clay. “You can’t be thinking of taking us down that,” he gasped. “It’s too narrow. They’ll be able to get to us.”

Clay put a finger to his lips. “If we’re quiet, maybe they’ll slip back into the trees.” He could see by the shock on Andrew’s face that the kid wasn’t buying it. Looking at his shaking hands on the steering wheel, he wasn’t so sure he was buying it himself.

As the boat pulled further toward the center of the lake, he cut the engine again and let them bob in the water. From this vantage point, he could see that the fires had bounced house to house and were now circling a third of the lake. If the breeze stayed steady, the entire shoreline would be engulfed by morning.

He reached into the Styrofoam cooler and pulled out a beer, offering one to Andrew, who shook his head no. “Suit yourself, kid,” he said, popping the top and draining the can before tossing it over the side.

He looked ahead; it was a thousand yards to the southwest corner of the lake. He could see the clearly marked channel that would take them from Bass Lake out onto Lake Michigan. The marina was well-lit, but the piers and moorings were empty. He’d love to stop in and trade out his old bass boat for something better equipped for the blue waters of Lake Michigan, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen without drawing attention.

He set the boat on a heading that would take them directly into the channel. Andrew glared back at him, shaking his head. “What’s the alternative, kid? You want to go back on shore, with them things?”

Andrew didn’t respond; instead, he moved to the bow and knelt with the shotgun across his knees. Rufous moved up by his side, whining. He put a hand on the dog’s head and pulled him close.

“I’ll bring us right down the center, nice and slow. We’ll keep the motor just above a hum. They won’t bother us, okay? No shooting—and you keep old Rufous from barking, you got it?”

The boy didn’t look back, but Clay watched his head bob in response.

“Okay then, here we go.”

The old man nosed the bass boat around and headed for the channel, watching as they passed the large marina on the starboard side. As they drew closer, Clay could see it wasn’t as quiet as he’d originally thought. The glass widows of the marina clubhouse were broken. A large cabin cruiser drifted at the end of a mooring line, the sides of the bright-white hull streaked with blood. Clay gripped the wheel with white knuckles, keeping his distance. He steered his way into the channel, which was hardly fifty yards wide. Boats lined the edges. Some raised out of the water, while others were covered for the season. Street lamps lit a boardwalk that, at first, appeared empty, but as they glided past, Clay could see the outlines of figures waiting just inside the shadows, looking for an opportunity to attack them.

There was a thump against the boat, and Clay flinched back. They’d bumped against a body floating facedown in the water. Soon they hit another, and he turned on the navigation lights. To his horror, Clay saw that the channel was filled with floating corpses.

Andrew turned to him, his face ice white. “Turn back.”

“Hold it together, boy. We’re almost there,” Clay said, his voice cracking with his own fear.

Andrew tucked his head, pressing it against the dog’s back. From his seat at the controls, Clay could see the two of them trembling. As the boat impacted with the floating dead, the bodies pushed out of the way, forming a V-shaped wake behind them. Clay tried to focus straight ahead and not let the bobbing dead distract him. He could hear shuffling feet on the boardwalks to his left and right. He knew they were there, but he didn’t want to do anything to antagonize them.

The swells in the water grew higher as they navigated a corner and the channel widened toward Lake Michigan. He could see the navigation beacons off the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. The channel continued to widen as the water grew choppy. The light aluminum boat rocked with the swells, and Clay increased the throttle. Soon they were past the breakwaters, moving into open water, the sounds of the crazies far behind them.

He moved a half mile out into the lake before killing the engine again. The boat rose and fell on the swells of the bigger lake. The sky was clear, away from the burning homes of Bass Lake, and he could once again see the stars. Clay reached down into the cooler and found a can. He looked to the bow and saw that the kid still had his head buried in the dog’s side.

“It’s okay, son. We’re clear,” he said, opening the can.

He spun his seat so that it faced back toward Bass Lake Channel. The only things visible were the flashing navigation lights and the orange glow of the burning fires. As his head panned south along the coastline, he could see that his community was not in a unique situation. Cities all down the horizon were burning.

He dropped a panel under the wheel and flicked on an AM/FM radio. Flipping through stations, he picked up static on every channel except for one, which broadcast a Seek shelter warning on a loop. The message was so generic that he couldn’t tell if the warning was for a tornado or a nuclear missile launch.

“What are we going to do?” Andrew whispered.

Clay turned and saw the boy had moved up beside him.

“Nothing tonight,” Clay said. He set his beer on the console and fished a jug filled with cement from beside his seat. He let it drop into the water and counted knots as it sank below the surface then impacted the bottom below. “Get some sleep. We’ll travel south along the shoreline in the morning. Someone’s bound to see us.”

31

Lake Michigan

March 28th

Water slapping against the side of the boat woke him. Clay lifted his head and looked up into the bright sun, and then looked at his watch. It was nearly eight o’clock in the morning. In the bow of the boat, the boy was still asleep, curled up next to Rufous.

Clay stretched and forced himself into a seated position. When he looked toward the shore, it looked like it was gone. He checked the anchor line, fearing it’d broken, but instead found the rope hanging straight, disappearing into the water. They must have drifted away from the sandbar during the night and dragged the anchor into deeper water. That was fine by Clay; the further from those crazies the better.

Andrew grunted from the front of the boat, and his eyes scanned the horizon. He panicked when he wasn’t able to find the shore. “Oh no, we’re lost,” he gasped then fixed his eyes on Clay.

Clay shook his head and pulled a bottle of water from his pack. He took a long drink before tossing the rest of the bottle to Andrew. “We ain’t lost. We’ve just drifted away from the shore. We go west, and we’ll run right back into it.”

“What if we don’t have enough gas to get back?”

“The lake ain’t but a hundred miles wide. We got fuel to do that, so stop worrying about it,” Clay said, spinning in his seat while using his binoculars to look out in a 360-degree circle.

“Yeah sure—if we don’t starve first.”

Clay sighed and stowed the binos. “Boy, we got fishing gear and we’re surrounded by fresh water. Nobody’s going to starve. You’re making me second-guess bringing you with me.”

Andrew nodded his head and drank down the rest of the bottle. He went to toss it over the side, when Clay stopped him. “Save the bottles; we might need to refill them.”

The old man pulled open the pack once again and grabbed a Ziploc bag filled with jerky. He took a piece and handed the rest to Andrew. “Give Rufous a bit too.” The boy nodded, accepting the bag.

Clay went back to the console and turned on the radio. He hit the scan button and watched the numbers scroll until it locked on a signal that squelched alarm tones. After a series of beeps, they heard a recorded message. “We interrupt our programming at the request of the White House. This is the Emergency Alert System. All normal programming has been discontinued during this emergency.”

“Wait—what is that?” Andrew said with his mouth full of jerky.

Clay held up a fist, silencing the boy as the radio message continued. “During this emergency, most stations will remain on the air, providing news and information to the public in designated areas. This is QZ109FM of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We will continue to serve the Milwaukee area. If you are not in this local area, you should tune to stations providing news and information for your local area. You are listening to the Emergency Alert System serving the Milwaukee area.”

“Milwaukee!” Andrew gasped.

“Hush, boy. It’s just on the other side of the lake, now listen.”

“Do not use your telephone. The telephone lines should be kept open for emergency use only.”

“No problem there. Your old ass ain’t even got a cell phone,” Andrew said under his breath, causing Clay to shoot him another stern look.

“All individuals are urged to remain in place. Emergency crews are working urgently to respond to all calls. Please do not request assistance unless it is a dire emergency. Once again, remain in place, do not attempt to render assistance, do not open your doors to anyone not recognized as rescue personnel. Do not leave your home. Emergency Action Personnel, please stay tuned for an important message.”

“Hey, they said don’t leave your home!” Andrew exclaimed.

“They also said don’t let in strays,” Clay rebuffed.

“With the loss of the DC Metro Area, government operations have been moved to St. Louis, Missouri. All rescue operations and coordinated efforts will now be sourced from Region TWO ALPHA. For all designated Emergency Action Personnel, repeat: All rescue operations and coordinated efforts will now be sourced from Region TWO ALPHA. Emergency Action Personnel, please respond as appropriate, according to your group leaders. Unassigned or undesignated individuals, please report to Region TWO ALPHA for mission orders.”

“Two Alpha? What does that mean?” Andrew asked.

Clay scratched his head as the radio signal turned to static again. “I imagine it’s some sort of government speak for a rallying point. Maybe one of them rescue camps where they deliver food and water.”

“You think we should go there?” Andrew asked. “To St. Louis, I mean?”

Clay turned off the radio and shut the console. He looked off into the distance, seeing the darkening clouds. The waters were calm for the moment, but a storm and rough seas would make things bad for them, cruising in a bass boat designed for inland lakes. He exhaled and looked down at his boots, contemplating their situation. A breeze was blowing in at them, bringing on a chill.

“It’s a long way to St. Louis, boy. And it’s not like we have a truck waiting for us on shore,” Clay said, pulling his pack closer and opening the mouth so he could dig deeper into it.

“Hey, Clay?” Andrew said, his voice low. “Clay—”

He ignored the boy and was pulling a jacket from the bag, straightening it out on his lap when he heard the dog growl. He lifted his head and saw Andrew looking bug-eyed over his shoulder. Clay spun to see a large cabin cruiser bearing down on them.

“What in the hell!” Clay shouted, fumbling with the keys to get the smaller boat started. He turned the ignition, and the boat cranked to life. He shoved the throttle forward and blasted the small boat’s horn at the same time. He had the throttle maxed, but the Evinrude seemed to tread water, like it was churning, not wanting to propel the boat out of the way.

The old man put the jacket over his face, clenching his fist as he braced for the impact. Instead, he felt the jolt of the wake as the big boat passed dangerously close, spraying them with water. Clay’s thumb was still on the horn button when he pulled the jacket away from his face and looked toward the cabin cruiser, which was now slowing. On the dive deck, he spotted a skinny young man with a bearded face pointing at him. Soon after, the larger boat cut back. Clay realized he was still maxed on the throttle of the bass boat. He squeezed the lock button and pulled it all the way back.

“Grab that scatter gun, boy. I’m not sure who these folks are,” Clay shouted as he readied his own carbine. For a second, he considered getting back on the throttle and making a run for it. He quickly changed his mind; this wasn’t the open ocean, and a cabin cruiser wasn’t a pirate ship. Things couldn’t have gone to hell this quickly.

He lost sight of the man as the big boat made a 180-degree turn, coming back at them, this time much more slowly. Clay shielded his eyes off the reflection of a glassed-in main cabin. The boat edged closer, and then stopped hard. The pilot reversed the big props to match the speed of the drifting bass boat. As the boat slowly passed, Clay spotted the bearded man again on the dive deck. The man caught a glimpse of their weapons and flinched back.

Clay did a quick assessment and could see that the man was unarmed. “Ease that barrel down, Andy. Let’s see what the folks have to say,” he shouted loud enough for the people on the other vessel to hear.

“You all okay over there? We’re very sorry for nearly killing you,” the bearded man called out.

Nodding his head, Clay relaxed the grip on his own rifle and waved a hand. “We’re fine. I guess this old fishing boat does cut a low profile. I’ll write it up as an accident,” he shouted. “But tell me, where are you all off to so fast.”

The man gave Clay a sour expression. Another man who could have been his brother closed in behind him. The man had a nearly identically groomed beard. Both were young with their dark hair feathered back, and they wore thick-rimmed glasses. The only way Clay could tell them apart was their clothing. The late arrival wore a tight, button-down shirt, while the other one had on a tight V-neck. The two men exchanged glances before the buttoned-down beard stepped onto the dive deck and waved. “We’re running, everyone is running,” he shouted, his voice high-pitched and broken.

Clay played dumb for a moment. “Running from what?” he said. As the words came out, he saw the looks on the beards’ faces. Clay realized how stupid it must sound to anyone hearing the radio broadcast, or anyone who’d seen the crazies face-to-face.

Andrew spun and looked at him. “Seriously, Clay?”

He waved off the boy with his left hand and considered the other two men. Clay shook his head and knew it wasn’t a good time to play poker. “Yeah, I know what you’re running from. We’re running from it too. I’m Clay; this is my friend Andrew.”

The buttoned shirt exhaled a sign of relief. “Oh thank goodness. When you said that, I thought we might have been going mad.”

“You two brothers?” Clay asked.

“Oh, gosh no,” V-neck said, laughing. “I’m Miguel and this is my fiancé, Nikolai.”

“Fiancé?” Clay repeated. “Well, all right then. It’s good to meet you. Now, you all said you was running, anywhere in particular you all is running to?”

Miguel grimaced and looked to Nikolai. The second man nodded and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, we can’t say where we’re headed, but you should come with us.”

“Really. Why’s that?” Clay asked with a smirk.

Miguel frowned and pointed a hand to the dark storm clouds on the horizon. “There’s a major cell moving this way, and you won’t want to be out here in that.” Miguel’s arm shifted toward where the Michigan shoreline would be. “And you really don’t want to go back over there.”

Andrew looked at Clay and whispered, “He’s right, Clay. We should go with them.”

Rubbing his head, he looked over the boat, knowing the boy was right. “All right, give us a minute to gather our gear and we’ll be right over.”

32

Lake Michigan

March 28th

“I’m sorry there isn’t more,” Miguel said, handing Clay a cup of coffee. “This wasn’t a planned voyage, and we didn’t have time to go to the market.”

They sat in a small cabin aboard the large craft. Rufous, exhausted from the excitement, was passed out on the deck. From what Clay knew of boats, he thought this might be more of a yacht than any weekender’s toy. The boat was at least sixty feet long and boasted three decks that he knew of. They were currently somewhere on the second deck, in a type of galley. Clay and Andrew sat at a corner sofa, with a small table bolted to the floor in front of them.

Clay nodded his understanding, taking the cup and sliding his pack away with his feet. They still had their weapons; his 1911 was on his hip, while the pair of long guns sat on the floor near a footlocker. “I understand. I don’t even know if my home is still back there. What’s in these two bags is about all I’ve got to my name right now. And the kid there, he’s lost even more, so I won’t go complaining about hot coffee.”

Miguel smiled and looked at Andrew, who held the cup of coffee, but hadn’t drunk any of it. “Are you okay, hun?” he asked.

Shrugging, Andrew leaned forward and set the white porcelain cup on a small end table. “I just don’t like coffee, is all.”

Shaking his head, Clay reached for the cup and poured its contents into his own. “Beggars can’t be choosers, boy—guess that’s something you’ll learn the hard way. There’s still water in the bag if that suits you better.”

“Nonsense,” Miguel scoffed, rounding the table and taking back the now empty cup. “I bet a hot chocolate is what you’d like,” he said, smiling at Andrew. “Don’t tell Nikolai, but I know where he keeps his secret stash. You just sit right there, and I’ll get you a hot cup.” Miguel turned to return to the small galley.

Clay leaned close to Andrew and whispered, “I think that fella is sweet on you.”

“No. He’s just not an asshole like you,” Andrew fired back.

The old man snorted, not expecting a comeback. He tried to hold back a laugh but instead spilt hot coffee onto his shirt. “Well, I’ll give you that one, son. Can’t fault a man for standing up for himself.”

There were footsteps in the ladder well, and they spotted Nikolai moving into the space. “Who’s driving the boat?” Clay asked, suspecting there may be others on board.

“Auto pilot and GPS are set. We’re moving very slowly; she’ll drive herself and not stray from course,” the man answered. He turned on his feet and saw Miguel in the galley over a hot kettle. “I’ll take a tea if you’re serving, dear,” he called out before moving across the space to a bench seat on the opposite bulkhead.

“So, tell me, Mr. Clay, where was it you were headed?” Nikolai asked.

For the first time, Clay picked up on the man’s accent, but he couldn’t place it. It sounded almost European, but not any like he’d heard before. “Where is it you’re from?” Clay asked, ignoring the man’s question.

“We’re from Oak Creek, just south of the big city on the other side of the lake,” Nikolai answered.

“Huh,” Clay said, tightening his brow.

Miguel moved back into the room, holding two cups. He handed one to Andrew and the other to Nikolai. He’d overheard the previous question and turned toward Clay with a smile. “It’s his accent, right?” He laughed. “We’re both born and raised in Milwaukee, but Nikolai has Polish parents. He doesn’t speak a word of Polish, but he picked up an inflection from them.”

“Nonsense,” Nikolai protested with just the hint of a Polish accent ringing through.

Miguel pointed at Clay, laughing. “See, there it is.”

Waving a hand, Nikolai shook his head and sipped at his tea. When he lowered the cup, he looked Clay in the eye. “Seriously now, Mr. Clay, where were you headed?”

Not wanting to tell the strangers too much, he looked to Andrew for support but could see that the boy was completely uninterested in the conversation and was fixated on the hot chocolate. Clay took another sip of his coffee and placed the cup on the table. “Can’t say for sure. Guess I figured we’d bob around for a bit, then bring the boat in closer. Look for a quiet spot where we could hide out, or maybe run into the Coast Guard. Maybe go in near one of the state parks where there aren’t many people.”

Nodding his approval, Nikolai frowned. “And the infected people, have you seen them?”

“Yeah, and I killed a few,” Clay replied, dipping his head to Nikolai. “What about you?”

The man bit at his lower lip. “We had encounters, but no, I don’t think we have killed any—”

“Except those ones you hit with the Range Rover,” Miguel added.

Nikolai’s face reddened, and he nodded in agreement as Miguel moved across the room and sat on the bench next to him. “Yes, there was an incident with my Range Rover. I hit a couple of them leaving our parking garage. They very well could have been killed.” He shook his head and looked at his balled fists. “I loved that automobile.”

“I feel your pain. I had some deep affection for that bass boat we just left behind,” Clay muttered. “But, I guess it got you this far, so you should be pleased with that. So where is it you two are headed now?”

Nikolai looked to Miguel and then back to Clay. “This morning we attempted to make it to the train station. We’d heard reports that the government was evacuating people to St. Louis.”

“A train? Then why are you on a boat on the far side of Lake Michigan?”

Nikolai turned his head to the side and shrugged. “There were difficulties on the road to the station. Many people were trying to get out of town, and there were so many infected in the streets. I didn’t want to risk being caught in traffic—or worse.”

“So you went for a boat instead?” Clay asked.

“Not much choice, really.” Nikolai pushed back against the bulkhead and rested his head. “We heard there was a problem in Chicago. They talked about these things moving north. You know, the stuff that was on the TV and radio about attacks on pedestrians. Riots in the city, that sort of thing.”

Clay showed embarrassment and looked away. “Yeah, I kind of missed out on any early warning. I keep to myself mostly, and I don’t watch a great deal of TV.”

“Really?” Miguel said, looking up like he was fascinated by Clay’s lack of connection. “You just ignore everything? Are you one of those off-the-grid prepper guys?” he asked.

Clay was about to respond, but before he could speak, Andrew let out a laugh. “No way—Clay? More like hermit. He just doesn’t like anyone, so he stays locked up in that shack of his, yelling at tourists to keep off his lawn.”

The old man shot Andrew a cold stare that quickly shut down the boy’s taunts. Andrew returned to his nearly empty cup. Nikolai grinned and looked back at Clay. “I can respect a man who wants to be left alone.”

“You can?” Miguel protested.

Nikolai held up a hand. “I’m just saying…sometimes the world can get crazy. Sometimes a man just needs a break.”

Miguel sighed and left his seat, moving back to the galley with the empty glasses. “Oh, so now you need a break?” he said over his shoulder jokingly.

Shaking his head and holding back a smile, Nikolai continued his story. “We’d been out to dinner a few nights ago, you know before things went crazy. Back in Oak Creek, everything was completely normal. There was talk of violence in the city. But come on, it’s Chicago. When isn’t there talk of violence or demonstrations, you know? When we got home that evening, we turned on the eleven o’clock news. Yes, we began to realize something was different. People, our friends and neighbors, were starting to see it. They were talking about problems in Washington, in California—every big city in the country, really.

“The next day, I made a phone call to my parents, who live in Madison now. My father is politically connected, and he knew more than what was being put out on the news. He said we should lock up and stay in the house, and then travel to their home first thing the next morning.”

Miguel came back into the room. “And that’s exactly what we were planning to do,” he said, moving back to the bench seat by Nikolai.

“By morning those things were in the street. They were being seen all over Oak Creek and even as far north as Green Bay. When I called my father again he told me to stay away. Madison was already infested. But he said they were being evacuated to St. Louis, where the government was setting up a safe zone for government officials. He told us about a train that would be taking people through the infected zones. He told us he could ensure we had seats on the train, but we had to be there at six o’clock sharp.”

Miguel sighed. “We shouldn’t have waited.”

Wiping sweat from his forehead, Nikolai dipped his chin in agreement. “By noon, they were in the yard and pounding on the house. We moved to the lower level of our home and barricaded ourselves in the garage.” Nikolai paused and looked at Miguel, taking his hand. “We were lucky to get out. When I opened the garage door, the street was full of them. We tried to drive through, but the Range Rover took a beating. When we got to the highway, the entrances were blocked. There were cars burning in the streets and police at barricades, turning people around. Even shooting at cars that got too close to the barriers.

“The marina was our only chance. We raced for the shoreline and fortunately we found it nearly deserted. This boat belongs to Miguel’s boss. We traveled on it frequently, so we knew where the key box was hidden, and we knew how to get it going. We stayed overnight, anchored just off the city. The news hadn’t improved by morning, so we decided to cross the lake, and, well, that’s when we ran into—I’m sorry, that’s when we almost ran into you.”

Clay waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. What’s done is done,” he said. “So where to now?”

“I contacted my father this morning before the cell phones went down,” Nikolai said. “He told us to head for the Dunes south of Michigan City.”

“Dunes? And how is that going to help us? You planning to stick your heads in that sand and hope this all blows over?”

Miguel shook his head and looked at Andrew. “Is he always like this?” he asked.

“Sometimes he’s worse,” Andrew responded.

Clay waved them off with his hand. “I just don’t understand. Do you all have a plan, or not?”

Nodding, Nikolai continued. “There’s an airfield just inland from the Dunes. My father says there are several light aircraft there.”

“And you can fly?” Clay asked.

“No, I cannot,” Nikolai said. “But Miguel can.”

“I see…” Clay trailed off for a moment. “So what then? Today, tomorrow maybe, you and Miguel go off into the Dunes and hop a ride on a plane?”

“No,” Nikolai replied abruptly. “We will reach the Dunes tonight. Tomorrow we’ll scout out the aircraft. Then, all of us will fly to St. Louis together.”

33

Lake Michigan

March 28th

Clay sat up sharply in the cabin’s bed. Sweating for a moment, he’d forgotten where he was and could have sworn he was back in his cabin, surrounded by the infected. He could hear footfalls and voices on the deck above him. He scanned the small space; it was lit by sunlight spilling through a small porthole. Across from him, the boy was asleep on another rack, with Rufous curled up into a ball at his feet.

“Traitor,” Clay whispered to the dog that hardly budged at the sound of his master’s voice.

He spun out of the bed and found his trousers and boots, pulling them on quickly. He stood and rolled the aches from his shoulders. Considering being in a strange place, and tossing and turning with nightmares, he felt oddly well rested. He grabbed his gun belt and strapped it on over his hips then took the rifle and slung it across his back.

The old man moved through the boat, making his way to a ladder and open hatch to the top deck. He emerged into a pilothouse. Nikolai was at the controls, with Miguel holding a pair of binoculars behind him. Miguel smiled at him and said, “Oh, you’re awake. You were sleeping so hard, I didn’t want to disturb you or that young man. There is some breakfast in the galley; feel free to help yourself.”

Clay smiled and pointed to a stainless-steel pot. “I’ll pass on the grub, but if that’s coffee, I’ll take some.” Miguel pointed to a hook with several mugs hanging on it. Clay stepped to the side and saw they were no longer in the middle of the lake. Looking into the bright sunrise, he could see the Michigan coastline. He didn’t recognize the terrain, but when he looked closely, he could see people walking on the beach. “Hey, there’s someone out there,” Clay said, pointing at the distant shoreline.

Miguel frowned and passed Clay the binoculars. When he looked through them he could see why there was no need for excitement. The tourists on the beach were bloodied, hardly covered with tattered clothing; some of them were barefoot, but others wore tennis shoes and boots. Clay sighed and pulled the binoculars away from his eyes, not speaking. He passed them back to Miguel before turning to Nikolai, who was stern-faced at the controls.

“They’re all infected?” Clay asked, knowing the answer.

Miguel nodded. “Yes, this is the third time this morning that I have moved closer to shore. Each time we were greeted with those things. I don’t know how there can be so many of them. It’s only been days since they reported the outbreaks in Chicago.”

“Huh,” Clay grunted. “And how much further do we have to travel before we reach the plane?”

Looking at a flat-panel display, Nikolai pressed a soft rubber button then looked back. “We’ll be there in a couple hours. It’s further from cities, on the back side of the Dunes, so I’m hoping the beach is deserted there.”

“No,” Clay said. “Those things are all moving north along the beach. They’re probably coming up from the cities and following the path of least resistance. I imagine everywhere we go, we’ll find them marching north. We’ll have to make some sort of distraction to the south, something to hold them back long enough for us to get inland.”

“A distraction?” Miguel repeated. “What do you have in mind?”

“How sure are you that this plane is going to be there, and that you’re going to be able to fly it?”

Miguel shrugged and looked at Nikolai before turning back to Clay. “It’ll be there, and it’ll fly. Nikolai’s father guaranteed it.”

“Okay then. I suggest we set the autopilot on this thing to cruise south along the shore with the loud speakers blasting. If it does what I think it will, that’ll turn most of those things around to follow it.”

“Well, if they are all following us, how will that help us get to shore?”

Clay looked over the windshield and onto the covered bow of the boat. “The dingy,” he said. “We’ll drop into that and wait off shore just long enough for the decoy to take effect. Then we get ashore, cross that dune line, and find your plane.”

“And if you’re wrong, we’re stuck out here in a dingy?” Nikolai asked suspiciously.

“Trust me, when they see this boat within their grasp, they’ll come a running. Do a practice run, if you like.”

Disengaging the autopilot and easing the throttle forward, Nikolai grinned. “I think I just might do that.”

Clay turned his head to sweep the pilothouse. “Do you have any weapons onboard?”

Miguel pointed to a red canvas bag attached to the bulkhead. “Only a flare pistol and a fire axe.”

“Flare pistol, yeah, that might come in handy. Make sure we take it tonight when we depart.”

“Tonight?” Miguel said, his voice rising.

Throwing up the palm of his hand and looking to Nikolai for support, Clay said, “Well, yeah. You expect us to rush up a beachhead in broad daylight? Even with a major distraction, we’re likely to be spotted.”

“No way,” Miguel said, shaking his head. “We have to go in the daylight. I can’t take off and navigate an aircraft in the dark. It’s not happening.”

“I agree, we go in daylight,” Nikolai said, nodding.

“Nope,” Clay hammered back. “We won’t make it off the beach if we go in daylight. You can see those things up and down the horizon, and only one has to spot us. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Once they start screaming they’ll swarm on us.”

Miguel balled his fist and moved to the doorway, his face turning red. “I cannot fly at night. If we must leave at night, we may just as well stay here.”

Rubbing his beard, Clay watched the frustration on the younger man’s face. “You really can’t fly at night?”

“No, and it would be madness scrambling around an unknown airfield, trying to secure an aircraft, and don’t even talk about trying to take off on a small field with no runway lights.”

“Pre-dawn then?” Clay said.

“I told you—” Miguel said, but stopped when Clay raised his index finger.

“How far is the hike to the airfield?” he asked.

Opening a small binder on the dash to his front, Nikolai removed a map neatly folded and wrapped in plastic. Clay was impressed to see that the man had already drawn a route in grease pencil and had notes written on the side. “I think if we push through, we can do it in under an hour. It’s uneven terrain, considering it is the Dunes, but we are only talking a bit over three miles. We must hustle, but it can be done.”

“Okay, then we set out two hours before sunrise. By the time we hit the airfield, the sun will be showing its pretty face,” Clay said as he turned and looked at his pilot. “Does that work for you, Miguel?”

The bearded man smiled and nodded his head. “That works for me. Thank you, Clay.”

“Look!” Nikolai shouted, pointing toward the shoreline.

Clay spun his head. Just as he’d predicted, the things had taken notice of the boat running parallel to the beach. The nearby infected had stopped and were turning toward it, some even wading out into the water with arms reaching for them. Clay tried to hide the horror on his face and saw the same reflected in the eyes of the two men in the pilothouse with him. He shook off a chill, knowing that by the next morning he’d be on that sand, trekking with those things close by. No, he said to himself, the distraction will work.

“That settles that then. The boat diversion works, and tonight with the running lights on, I suspect it will work even better. Captain, might you take us back out of sight until the sun goes down? No need to gather a party on the beach,” Clay said before shifting his shoulders like he had when he first woke. He retrieved a cup from the hook and filled it with coffee.

Clay sat in an empty chair and watched as Miguel followed the instructions, moving them east away from the coastline. The old man sipped his coffee and looked at his unlikely travel companions. And then he laughed to himself, wondering if he’d just taken command of this crew.

34

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan City, Indiana

March 30th

They powered off the motor, letting the boat drift freely in the water. They’d cut every light to make the ship invisible on the dark waters of Lake Michigan. Clay looked up in the cloud-covered sky and could barely see the moon trying to shine through.

Nikolai had been right about the location of the airfield. They’d been observing the beach from afar since the sun went down. There were still mass populations migrating north, but the numbers of homes and people beyond the beach had all but disappeared.

“By my phone, it’ll be sunrise in two hours,” Nikolai whispered. The man was standing in the pilothouse behind the controls. Miguel was on the dive deck with Andrew, readying the dinghy.

“We need to go then,” Clay said, nodding his approval. “As long as you’re sure about the plane. If you have any doubts, now is the time to change plans. We could turn and head for an island up north.”

Nikolai shook his head. “No, my father says the plane will be there, so it will be there.”

“Who is he?” Clay asked. “Why are you so confident?”

The younger man smiled and shook his head. “He’s no secret agent or super connected politician, if that’s what you’re asking. He has a lot of real estate holdings. He buys and sells property, and my father knows of this private field. He was able to make a few phone calls before things collapsed, and a friend confirmed that a plane would be there waiting for us.”

“How do we know someone didn’t have the same idea and it’s already gone?”

“I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but this place is off the road. It’s a secluded field, and with the speed of what happened, it’s unlikely that anyone else who knows of the fields would think to go there. If they did, then—I.D.K., Clay,” Nikolai said, spelling out the abbreviation for “I Don’t Know.”

Clay looked down to the dive deck and could see that Andrew and Miguel had the dinghy loaded with their bags, and Rufous was already seated in the boat, ready to go. He unslung his rifle and checked that the magazine was firmly seated. He went to take a step, but before he did, he stopped and looked at Nikolai again. “How are you with a handgun?”

“I can shoot,” the man replied.

“Good enough for zombies, I reckon,” Clay said. He undid his gun belt and passed it off to Nikolai. “I’ll be wanting that back, but I imagine if we get into trouble, the more guns in the fight the better.”

Nikolai held the belt and adjusted it so that it would fit his slim waist. “Thank you, Clay,” he said before looking at the console. “I’m going to start powering up the boat now. I’ll turn on all the cabin lights, including the spotlight, and I’ll lock the horn. That should be enough to get some attention. I have the GPS path already set. The boat will be trolling slowly along the coastline. It won’t be a hard tug, but you’ll want to be in the dinghy before I hit the throttle. As soon as I join you, we can cut free and watch her go.”

Clay gave a mock salute and turned to climb the stairs down to the dive deck. Before he was halfway there, he heard the throaty growl of the engines coming to life. At the dinghy he could see that the bags were piled in the center. There were his two olive seabags and two fancy red backpacks. Miguel was in the back with his hand on the controls of a small electric motor. Andrew was in the bow with Rufous on his lap.

The yacht lit up. Bright running lights and a pair of spotlights shined into the night, directed up into the sky. Then, the external speakers kicked on. They blared a disco tune that Clay didn’t recognize. Regardless of all that, the most obnoxious sound was the blow horn that had been forced into the ON position. Soon afterward, the boat began to crawl forward in the water. Clay moved quickly, jumping into the dinghy and climbing over the gear to find a spot next to Miguel. A dragline tightened, and Andrew kept a hold of it to keep the boat close to the dive deck.

Nikolai came running down the steps and found the back deck. He looked over a rail then back at the dinghy. “It’s working! They’re already changing direction.”

“Get your sweet ass on the boat, Nikolai!” Miguel called out.

Nikolai nodded his head feverishly, and then made an unnecessary and sloppy dive for the dinghy, which was only a foot behind the dive deck. As soon as the man was in the small boat, Andrew let the slack out of the line. Once it was tight, he pulled a quick-release to disconnect the tether from the mothership.

Clay watched as the large cabin cruiser moved away from them at under five knots with the music blasting and lights flashing. As the boat created distance, they could pick up the screaming sounds from the shoreline. Miguel went to start the tiny motor, and Clay put a hand on the controls with a finger over his lips. “Let’s let this diversion work a minute or two longer.”

Miguel smiled nervously and mouthed, “Okay.”

It didn’t take long, and the boat became nothing more than a flashing beacon that got smaller in the darkness. The sounds of the infected on the beach had faded, becoming distant. Clay lifted his rifle and could see that Nikolai had the pistol in his hands. “Remember, we can’t shoot unless it’s life or death. One shot and this distraction was for nothing,” he said, pausing before dipping his chin toward Miguel. “Okay, son, bring us in.”

Nodding, Miguel rolled the throttle in his hand. The engine emitted a tiny whirring sound, and the dinghy crept forward across the lake swells. Clay squinted, focusing on the shore, but was unable to see anything in the dark. Only the frothy white of the breaking waves was visible in the dim moonlight. He knew the others in the bow were doing the same, straining to see anything. Rufous leaned forward, his mouth open, catching the air with his ears. “Don’t let go of the dog, Andy. Hold tight on that leash.”

“Won’t he bark?” Miguel asked.

“Not with the leash on,” Clay replied. “He’s a bird dog. He knows when to bark and when not to. Now is a ‘not to’ time.”

As they moved closer, the boat shook under the swells and breaking waves. Just before hitting the beach, Miguel cut the dinghy forty-five degrees and Nikolai dropped into the cold water, steadying the boat as the others got out and gathered their gear. Andrew strapped on one of the green bags and grabbed a handle, prepared to drag the boat in. Clay shook his head and whispered, “Let it go, we can’t afford to make any noise.” He then stepped forward and put a hand on Nikolai’s back. “You know where you’re going, right? Then lead us out.”

Nikolai didn’t respond. Instead, he moved forward toward the beach. Andrew fell in behind him with the dog. Miguel looked back at Clay, who motioned for him to follow the others. The old man let them get a few paces ahead and then stepped off after them. They cleared the beach, and then moved parallel to it along a high bed of thick-bladed grass before Nikolai found the mouth of a trail.

He turned the party onto the trail then stopped, waiting for everyone to bunch up behind him before he stepped off again. Clay held back a smile, entertained at how the two men tried to walk tactically while their bright-red backpacks practically glowed in the thin moonlight. It’d been a long time since the old man had been on any sort of patrol, but he still knew they were far from doing it right. The trail wound over a small rise then leveled out atop a high berm that overlooked the lake. In the distance, he could still see the bright glow of the boat’s spotlight.

Nikolai followed his gaze. “It looks like it might have run aground on a sandbar.”

Shaking his head in agreement, Clay said, “Just as well. That keeps everything that was close by moving that way. How much further to your airfield?”

“Just the other side of those trees. We should be able to see the hangars soon.”

Clay waved him forward with a hand. “Beauty before age.”

Nikolai turned and took a step when Clay heard a low growl, and the hair along the dog’s back bristled. He nearly leapt at the sound, scrambling forward and whispering for them to stop. He moved close to Rufous and knelt with an arm around the dog’s neck. The other men spread out and lay prone in the sand. “Shhh… It’s okay, boy.”

The dog went silent, his tail and back still rigid. Clay picked up on the sounds of grinding footfalls. He was stumped until he realized he was hearing the sound of bare feet swishing through the sand. He crouched lower, still holding the dog, as a pair of infected moved past them and faded toward the beach, headed directly toward the stranded boat.

The dog relaxed, and Clay let out a sigh of relief. “Good boy,” he whispered and handed the leash back to Andrew. He turned to Nikolai and pointed at the western horizon. “It’ll be getting daylight soon. Let’s find that plane.”

35

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan City, Indiana

March 30th

Nikolai led them through the thick underbrush climbing up a sand-covered slope. Miguel and Andrew followed close behind, while Clay lagged back to watch the rear for movement. Shadows were everywhere, and each dark spot made him think it was an enemy—or the infected in this case. Ahead, he could see the silhouette of Nikolai as he trekked across the top of the hill.

The sun was beginning to shine, lighting the way as it turned the sky from black to gray and then a contrast of purple. The ground ahead began gently sloping downhill. Nikolai took a knee and called the others in close. He pointed out the long, high grass and a spot where it was mowed short. The steel-sided hangar was at the end of the clearing. “That’s the spot,” said Nikolai.

Miguel nodded in agreement. “The plane will be in the hangar bay. We can go now.”

Clay put up his own hand, halting them. “You go ahead. I’ll cover you from here. If anything comes out of those trees, I’ll have a better vantage point from up here.”

Nikolai looked concerned but agreed. He stepped off, with Miguel and Andrew close behind. The dog stayed back, not wanting to leave Clay, but eventually moved on, sniffing at the tall grass. Clay held his carbine at the ready and swept the tree line, seeing nothing. The sun rose higher, and bright rays of light broke through the trees.

Clay was concerned as he watched Nikolai stop near the hangar. The man had his arms outstretched with the 1911 in his grip. He cut in left and right, clearing the space. For only a moment, Miguel stepped aside, looking back. He waved a hand at the old man.

Clay took one more look at his surroundings then walked down the hill, following the trampled path through the grass to where the others waited inside the hangar. They’d found the plane.

He didn’t know much about aircraft, but he could tell that it was small. “Are you sure we’re all going to fit in here?” Clay asked.

Miguel nodded. “It’s plenty. Even with the four of us, the dog, and the gear, we are way under max weight. We’ll be fine.” The man hustled, walking around the plane with a checklist, his eyes moving swiftly over the skin of the aircraft. “There’s plenty of fuel here. I already checked and can see that it’s topped off.”

“Is that normal?” Clay asked.

Miguel stopped and pointed to a second bay, where tie-down lines and a toolbox lay on the ground. “Nikolai’s father came through for us. Someone prepped this plane so it’s all ready to go. All we have to do is drag it onto the runway. Normally there’s a tow vehicle…but I don’t see any. Yeah, we’ll have to push.”

Clay looked out onto the airstrip; the sun had it well-lit now. “Can’t you start in here then drive it out? I think once that engine is going, we’ll have company.”

Miguel shook his head yes. “I can do that. To hell with the rules.”

Clay moved tight against the door and looked onto the field. “Then light the fires and kick the tires. I’ll stand watch. You guys get the plane ready and call me when it’s time to roll.”

Miguel frowned and turned away. Clay could tell he wasn’t used to having orders barked at him. The dog moved back and forth near the plane, pacing nervously. They opened the doors and threw cargo into the back. Nikolai moved around to the other side and opened another door. He was discussing something with Miguel, but Clay couldn’t make out distinct words.

Watching the rise that they descended earlier, Clay saw two silhouettes at the top of the ridge. He stared at them, wondering if his mind was playing tricks. Then, one of the shadows moved and his fears were confirmed. “Hey, fellas. We got company.”

Nikolai turned and walked back to the door, kneeling beside him. Clay pointed up at the infected, “Still three hundred yards out,” Clay whispered.

Shaking his head, Nikolai said, “The plane can’t run over those things.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Clay responded. A third shadow came into view at the top of the hill. “Get the plane ready. I’ll stay back and punch their meal tickets. I’m no sharpshooter, but this won’t be a problem.” Clay smiled.

Nikolai didn’t want to argue with the man, so he nodded and slapped Clay on the shoulder. He ran back to the plane. Miguel pulled a cart with a battery box mounted to it over to the side of the plane and uncoiled some wires as he called out that they were ready to go. Clay ignored him, more concerned that the infected on the hill had now turned toward their direction. They were heading straight for the hangar. Still not running, the three moved slowly toward them.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Clay whispered, observing them. “How do they know?” He saw the bright light reflecting off one of the creature’s eyes. “They don’t know… They’re moving toward the sun.” He raised his rifle.

Miguel called out that he was starting the plane. Clay stood and leaned against the building, resting his rifle’s barrel against the side. Even with iron sights, he knew he could make the easy shot.

The things stopped and began to run as the engine popped and came to life. Clay took aim at the lead infected and fired. Rufous ran closer to him and started barking. He looked at the dog then yelled for Andrew get him on the plane. Miguel eased the plane forward.

Clay fired again; his shot went low and left. The creature started to sprint, so Clay adjusted his aim and fired again. The infected bucked as the round struck it in the knee. A second shot cut through its hip. Clay adjusted off that and fired another round. This time the creature dropped, spilling forward. The fall caused the next infected to trip. It got up and screamed before sprinting forward. Clay raised his rifle, aiming center mass, and bled off the rest of the magazine before watching the infected man topple into the ground.

He pulled away from the door and put the rifle against his chest. Miguel steered the plane to the center of the narrow runway, and he turned it for takeoff. Clay ran for the open door and climbed inside as Miguel pushed forward on the throttle.

Racing down the runway, they were only ten feet off the ground when Clay looked to the right. He could see a battalion of infected moving back toward them from the beach. The distraction of the boat must’ve stopped once the first gunshots rang out. Or was it the bright ball in the sky that called to them?

Miguel pulled up on the aircraft to circle back around, cutting across the beach. Nikolai looked at him. “Don’t waste time here. We need to get to St. Louis.” His partner nodded and cut back left, flying over the lake this time, and then angling south.

“We’ll just miss Chicago,” Miguel said. “I’ll bring us close for a look. Then we’ll fly southwest to St. Louis.”

Clay looked at him and said, “Just get us there.”

“This isn’t rocket science,” the pilot laughed.

Falling back into the seat, Clay looked around the small plane. The dog ran up and down the center aisle while Andrew sat slumped in a seat. He turned and could see that their gear was stacked in the back. The boy’s shotgun sat behind the seats, so Clay laid his rifle alongside it.

Then he rested, looking out of the window to his left. He could see the smoke-filled sky up ahead and glanced up to the cockpit’s open door. The two men up front exchanged words and pointed out the windows. Clay leaned forward to see that it was Chicago. The city was engulfed in flame, and black clouds of smoke drifted along the horizon.

Miguel looked back. “Chicago is gone,” he said.

Clay nodded somberly. How would St. Louis fare any better? he thought as the plane dipped in elevation and cut left, Miguel moving the plane to avoid the big plumes of blowing smoke.

The aircraft leveled out and the pilot found a highway along the ground that he followed. Clay could see the roadway was congested with people and cars in a massive traffic jam, but there were no police lights, no military convoys. Burning houses lined the sides of the road with fire. He knew the people he saw weren’t human, not anymore. They were infected. People didn’t walk through cornfields or wheat fields, they didn’t slog through mud, or stare up at you from a highway, reaching up at the sight of low-flying planes.

The aircraft cut right, heading west. He could hear Miguel on the radio, attempting calls. Nobody responded. He flipped frequencies and looked at the dash before staring pointedly at Nikolai. Clay could that see Andrew was asleep and dog was now relaxed, lying at the boy’s feet. He thought it was a good idea and turned his own head to the left, watching the clouds in an effort to keep his eyes off the ground below…

He woke up with the shudder of the plane. The flaps on the wings were up and they were in some sort of high bank, circling the earth. He looked up and Nikolai glanced back at him, frowning. They were orbiting something. Nikolai looked at him and shouted, “There’s a FEMA camp below. St. Louis is gone. It’s burning the same as Chicago.” The man’s eyes were wide. “I can see where the rails came in, and we can see the FEMA tents. There are people on the ground, but nobody is answering the radios.”

Clay looked to where Nikolai pointed. “Those are infected,” he said. “They’re massing and they got it surrounded.”

Nikolai looked back at him. His face was flushed. Clay remembered the man’s family was there—his parents. That’s why he was so scared. Miguel looked stone-faced as he said, “We don’t have unlimited fuel.”

Clay dipped his chin. “We’re in Missouri. Keep going west, go until you find a large cornfield, something wide enough we can land on and close to a highway. Something flat,” he added.

Miguel looked over his shoulder and scowled. “No shit. You want me to land on something flat. Really, you don’t want me to land in the trees, or maybe a lake?”

Clay didn’t answer. He could tell that the two men were at their wits’ end. They’d been expecting refuge, expecting to land in a safe area and see familiar faces, and now they were all in an aircraft with the infected all over the ground below.

Clay clenched his fist. He had to stay calm for them. “Boys, we’re going to be fine. The further west we get from cities, these things will thin out. There’s a lot of dead trees in Missouri, lots of open space; we’ll find something that works. Now tell me, what do we know is running outside of St. Louis?”

Nikolai looked up from the floor. “My dad said something about Texas.”

“What about Texas?” Clay asked.

“He said there was a research center. And something about they were working on a cure there. How far they’ve gotten, I don’t know. He just said Texas.”

Clay smiled. “Well, there you go. Miguel, can you get us to Texas?”

Miguel shook his head. “We don’t have the fuel. If we find a field, I can try to set down and top off. But it would be risky.”

Andrew stirred, slowly at first, but then jerked awake when Miguel mentioned landing in a field. The boy’s face was white with fear.

“Well, take us toward Texas then,” Clay said. “If we see something on the way, we’ll land. Just point the compass in that direction, and we’ll go as far as we can get. How’s that sound?”

Miguel looked over his shoulder again. “I don’t think we have much choice, Clay. Straight toward Texas until we run out of fuel and then crash. Is that the plan?”

Clay shrugged. “Well, I guess we don’t have to crash. If you find a good spot, set us down. Okay?”

The old man lay back in the seat and checked his seatbelt. Nikolai turned back around and pulled a map book from his pants pocket. He punched coordinates into the GPS as he read the map.

Clay looked away and at the terrain below. “Oh boy,” he whispered, looking down at the highway. A horde of people moved along its length. It was a literal highway of death. “This is a going to be a fun trip,” he muttered to himself.

36

Near Aspen, Colorado

March 30th

Once the man and woman finished inspecting the old Ford truck, the woman walked over to the driver, who was on his knees with his hands on his head, and said something to him. He stood up, shook her hand, and headed toward the truck. The third man in their group, the one who’d been holding a rifle on the driver, climbed into a full-sized Blazer. The big Chevy backed up, opening a gap in the roadblock that the Ford drove through. The driver stuck his hand out the window and waved at the people as he drove away. The woman waved back while the Blazer pulled forward, blocking the road once more.

Charlie slid back from the edge of the roadway, ensuring that he was far enough back that the people below couldn’t see him before he stood up. He turned and trotted over to the two SUVs, where Sarah and Jack waited. He tossed the binoculars into the front seat of the black Isuzu and then walked back to them to tell him what he saw.

“Well, it doesn’t look like they’re going to be a problem. They talked to the driver, looked through his truck, and let him pass. Even waved to him as he left. I think we’ll be all right.”

“You don’t think they’ll ask about our cuts and bruises? They’re apt to be suspicious of anyone with an open wound,” Jack said.

“With all the shit going on, I bet there aren’t many who don’t have some scars, Jack. Just be honest about everything. Everything is a couple of days old, we fought our way out of the eastern side of the hills, and we’re making our way to the safe zone in Texas. We’ll be fine. Just don’t tell them you may have a deadly and contagious disease circulating in your veins.”

“If they were waving at each other, they probably knew him, Charlie,” Sarah said. “Are you sure there’s no way around this?”

“Sure, if we backtrack twenty miles, then take a longer route. And even then there’s no guarantee that we won’t hit another roadblock. People are on alert, and I get that,” Charlie said. “Look, they had this driver on his knees with a rifle on him while they searched his truck. I don’t think you’d do that to someone you knew. Guys, we do what they ask, let them inspect the rigs, and we’re on our way. Easy peasy.”

“All right, let’s get on with it,” Sarah replied. “I’m not exactly thrilled to be facing another roadblock. Things didn’t go so well last time.”

Charlie laughed. “For who? Everyone who was a part of that one is dead now, except you two. You just keep that belt knife of yours handy, just in case.”

She gave him a withering sneer and turned to Jack. “You okay taking the lead?”

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

He started the Mercedes, put it in gear, and started down the road, going slow and making sure the Axiom pulled in behind him. He coasted down the hill, letting the transmission control the speed of the descent, and thought back to the last few days’ activities.

* * *

After they’d moved all the bodies away from the cabin, Charlie wanted to go into town to check things out. He said there were only forty or so people in the area, with others not returning to the hillsides until closer to summer, when Arizona got too hot to bear and the snowbirds came back to the Rockies.

“But first, we need weapons. We need more than my rifle, my couple of pistols, and your pistols,” Charlie said. “We’ve got the four AR-15s from Leland and the boys, but I don’t have any ammo for them.”

Sarah looked at the rifle that had belonged to Tim. It had a suppressor on it and had BAMF, short for Bad Ass Motherfucker, laser-etched into the magazine well.

Sarah raised her eyebrows at that. “Seriously?” she asked. “I feel less guilty the more I learn about these guys.” She looked at the two men, who just stared back at her. “It’s called ‘gallows humor,’ guys. Jeez, make it awkward. So, for ammo, what if we go to the source? Do you know where Tim lived? Wouldn’t he have some ammo there?”

“Good idea,” Charlie said.

“Rollie said they parked their truck down the drive,” Jack said. “We could take it, and I’ll ride in the back. You know, keep my germs away from you guys. Besides, if it’s blocking the drive, we’ll need to move it anyway.”

“Another good idea,” Charlie said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out three sets of keys. “Took ’em off the, ah…bodies. One of these should start it.”

They packed some food and walked down the road to the truck that Rollie had told them would be just out of sight of the cabin.

Sarah looked warily at the filthy interior of the truck, the passenger seat covered in what she guessed was dried blood.

“Most likely from Jimmy’s nutsack,” Jack said, following her gaze into the cab. She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. When she opened her mouth to say something, he cut her off. “Gallows humor.”

He smirked and stepped on the rear wheel of the truck, using it to climb into the bed. Charlie got the door open with the second set of keys, leaned over to unlock Sarah’s door, and a minute later they were on the road to Tim’s place.

After ten minutes and several miles of poorly maintained road, Charlie stopped the truck in front of a dirty trailer home. Trash and broken furniture littered the area in front of the trailer. The remnants of a children’s wading pool sat in front of a few old, folding lawn chairs. Only the massive propane tank behind the shack and the satellite dish on the roof looked new.

Charlie and Sarah climbed out of the cab and looked at the trailer.

“Okay, Rollie said that Jimmy came in all bloody, and they left him here to come after you two,” Charlie stated. “So he’s probably still in there. I don’t think this place has a back door, so we’ll have to go in the front. He could be waiting for us, so move fast and if he makes a move, shoot to kill. Pistols only, you know those better than the rifles.”

Sarah looked at Jack for a couple of seconds before she said, “You should wait out here. You know, if Jimmy starts shooting, God forbid, and he hits you, um, your blood will, you know…”

“I got it,” Jack replied. “And you’re right. It would put you two in even more danger.”

Charlie and Sarah crept up on the door, walking softly up the three steps. Charlie gave the knob a turn to see if it was locked. It turned, and he leaned away from it, expecting a gunshot any second. Nothing happened.

“On three,” he whispered to Sarah. “One…two…three!”

He threw the door open and rushed in, scanning the area to the right of the door. Sarah was right behind him, looking to the left. Two seconds later, she rushed out, stumbled down the stairs, and threw up on the ground.

Charlie was a few steps behind her, wearing a sour face. “It’s clear,” he said. “The ol’ fella’s dead.”

“I can taste it,” Sarah said, retching again, and spitting to clear the bile from her mouth.

“His bowels must have let go,” Charlie offered, looking at Jack. “Feel like searching the place with me?”

“You make it sound so appealing, how can I refuse?” He looked down at Sarah, who was wiping tears from her eyes. “Your turn to wait out here, I guess.”

“Ugh, thanks. That was nasty.”

Jack climbed the steps and entered the trailer. The day was warm—maybe sixty degrees—but with no air conditioning, it was hot inside. Jimmy’s body lay on the couch to the left of the entry. His bloody jeans were on the floor, and blood-soaked gauze and linen packed against his groin. The overpowering stench of feces filled Jack’s nostrils, even though he was trying not to breathe through his nose. Flies already buzzed around, landing on Jimmy’s partially open eyes, crawling in his nostrils and walking along the edge of his lips. Jack felt the bile rise in his throat, so he rushed past the body and into the bedroom.

He could breathe a little better in the room, taking deep breaths through his mouth to gain control over his urge to vomit. He was afraid he would hyperventilate, but as his stomach settled, he was able to slow his respiration rate down.

He looked around the room, his eyes settling on a massive gun safe. It took up a third of the closet, and the door hung wide open. Inside, was a treasure trove.

“Dad,” he called out. “In here!”

Heavy footsteps thundered toward the bedroom then Charlie burst into the room. “Holy shit, that’s gross,” he said. “I almost blew chunks just walking past him. So much grosser than the other guys.”

Jack pointed at the gun safe, and Charlie’s mouth went slack for a minute. In the closet were several boxes of .223 ammunition, one thousand rounds per box.

Charlie was counting the boxes. He smiled at Jack. “Six thousand rounds. I think that’ll carry us a long way. Let’s see what else he’s got.”

They started ferrying the loot out to the truck. In addition to the ammunition, they retrieved another AR-15 with a suppressor attached to it, another 9mm pistol and a few hundred rounds of matching ammunition, a tactical vest with pockets for multiple magazines for the rifle, and twenty thirty-round magazines.

Charlie closed the door to the trailer on their way out but didn’t lock it, deciding that some unfortunate soul may need the shelter at some point.

The older man took Jack and Sarah through a quick tutorial on the use of the AR-15s, showing them how to change magazines, how to clear a jam, and had them practice swapping magazines for a few minutes.

After they were comfortable with the gun’s operation, Charlie smiled once again. “Okay. Let’s go to town!”

* * *

As Jack rounded the last curve, the roadblock came into view and brought him back to the present. The woman Charlie had seen earlier walked to the middle of the road and motioned for him to pull to the side and stop the car. Jack slowed to a stop and rolled the window down, keeping his other hand on the wheel.

“Hello!” Jack called out.

She didn’t react. Instead, she waited for the two men to catch up to her. Behind him, Sarah and his dad slowed the Isuzu to a stop.

“Please keep your hands where I can see them,” the woman called out. “Reach out with your left hand and open the door, then climb out with your hands up.”

Jack did as the woman asked and could see Sarah doing the same thing.

“Gun!” one of the men called out. The woman nodded to the man, and he moved forward, explaining to Jack what he was doing. “I’m taking the pistol from your holster. I’m going to clear it and put it on the hood of your vehicle.”

“I have one too,” Sarah said, angling her hip toward the trio. The man collected Sarah’s gun, removing the magazine and ejecting the round from the chamber, placing them all on the hood of the Isuzu. He looked Charlie up and down.

“I’m not carrying anything,” Charlie said.

“Frisk them,” the woman directed.

Once they were patted down to the woman’s satisfaction, she directed them to line up twenty feet from the vehicles and ordered them to get on their knees and place their hands on their heads.

“Have you all been through this elsewhere?” she asked.

“Something like this, yes,” Sarah said. She had a bit of an edge to her voice.

“Well, this should be pretty simple. I’ll ask you a few questions, you answer them honestly, we’ll verify your answers, and if everything checks out, you can go on your way.”

“Easy peasy,” Charlie said.

The woman smiled. “Yeah, easy peasy.”

“I’m Charlie.” He nodded toward Jack. “My son, Jack, and his wife, Sarah.”

The woman tilted her head slightly.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m Robin Mitico, Pitkin County Sheriff’s Deputy. Apologies for my lack of a uniform. From the looks of you all, I think you can understand, things have been, ah, messy I guess is a good word for it.” She nodded at the man who’d disarmed and frisked them. “That’s Marcus. He’s just a good friend, and the other guy is Sebastian. He helped us out of a jam a couple of days ago, and he’s stayed with us ever since. He’s going to keep that rifle pointed in your direction, and if you drop your hands or make a move toward us, he’ll drop you. Just nod if you understand.”

All three nodded their heads.

“Good. Let’s start with the basics,” the deputy said. “Where are you all going?”

“Texas. El Paso,” Charlie replied.

“Why El Paso?”

“I have a radio in the trailer, and I’ve been in contact with several different people—one in New Mexico, one in Arkansas—who told me there’s a safe zone there.”

“Fort Bliss?”

“Yes. That’s what they said.”

“Where are you coming from?” she asked.

“The front range. A wide spot in the road called Hobb’s Valley.”

“Near Nederland?”

Charlie nodded.

“I’ve heard of it,” she said. “Why’d you leave?”

“It’s not safe there. It was a hard fight to get clear in one piece.”

“I can see that. Were any of you bitten or scratched by the screechers?”

“Screechers?”

“Yeah. The people infected with the virus,” Robin said, her tone indicating she thought Charlie was dense.

“We’ve been calling them crazies. No, none of us were bitten or scratched.”

“When did you leave?”

“Two days ago.”

She looked at Marcus, a silent communication passing between them.

“Why’d it take two days to get here? It’s just a few hours’ drive.”

“We’ve been taking back roads. A lot of them, as you’re probably aware, are still snowbound, so we had to double back several times. Got stuck in a few places and had to dig out. It ain’t easy turning that trailer around on some of these logging trails. We’ve just been going slow and careful.”

Robin nodded, considering Charlie’s answer. “Okay, Sarah, let’s hear from you for a minute. What are we going to find in the vehicles?”

“Supplies. Food, some clothes, camping gear, a few more guns, some ammo. Things you’d expect to find in someone’s car when the world is ending.” The last sentence sounded snippy.

“That’s twice you’ve given me that tone. Take the edge outta your voice for me, or I’m going think you don’t like me.”

Sarah was reminded of dead Leland telling Jack to take the “bass” out of his voice at the first roadblock. She stifled a comment, deciding silence was the better option. Marcus walked over to the Isuzu and started looking through it.

“You, sonny boy,” Robin continued. “Are we going to find any other people in that trailer? Anyone we should know about, someone maybe who got a bite or a scratch, or a weapon ready to use?”

“No, ma’am,” Jack responded. “It’s just us three.”

“Why are you in two vehicles?”

“Insurance,” he said. “Never hurts to have a back up when your life is on the line, you know?”

“And you don’t want to ride with your wife? Seems odd.”

“I’m not a good driver,” Charlie interjected. “It’s safer this way.”

Marcus opened the door on the teardrop trailer. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

“Sebastian, watch them!” Robin ordered. She ran to Marcus, and he pointed inside the trailer. Robin whistled and came back to the group.

“You guys are a rolling armory, aren’t you? Where’d you come up with all that ammo?”

“A friend,” Charlie said. “He was a prepper.”

“He was a prepper. Past tense.”

“I’m afraid so. Everyone in Hobb’s Valley is past tense now.”

“Except you three.”

“Yes, except for us.”

Marcus walked past the group, taking a position behind them. He nodded at Robin as he passed.

Sarah could see Marcus out of the corner of her eye. She saw him doing something but wasn’t sure what it was. Was he drawing his pistol?

“Eyes up here, sweetie,” Robin said. “Don’t worry about Marcus; he’s just fine back there.”

Sarah focused her eyes on Robin but had fleeting thoughts that were clouding her judgement. Were they going to execute them to take their ammo? How far could she get if she tried to get to Robin? Could she get to her belt knife before they shot her down? If they were going to execute them anyway, wouldn’t it be better to go out swinging?

“Here’s the deal, folks,” Robin said. “Everything you said checked out, right down to the ham radio in the trailer. I can tell by your wounds and bruises they’re a couple of days old—believe me, I’ve seen a few scrapes and bruises run their course in my time—so I think you’re telling the truth about having been on the road for a couple of days. Our task here is to try and keep any more screechers—crazies—from getting beyond this point. I’m sure you can understand, especially being the lone survivors of Hobb’s Valley.”

They all nodded, except Sarah. Her mind was whirling, trying to develop a plan. “Honey, you look like you’re about to burst,” Robin said to her. “What’s the matter? You need to tell me something? Need to get something off your chest?”

“We barely escaped a roadblock back in Hobb’s Valley, run by some…less official, less savory characters,” Jack said. “They put a rifle butt to the back of my head, knocked her out, and were planning to, uh…”

“They were going to rape me,” Sarah said.

“Oh,” Robin replied, taken aback. “Oh, my. I’m sorry, honey. Nothing like that’s happening here, I assure you. Marcus, come around the front here. Put her mind at ease.”

Marcus walked around them, taking a long drink from a canteen before putting it back in a pouch on his belt. Sarah felt her breath slow down.

“So, that’s where you got some of your bruises and scrapes, then,” Robin stated. “Good for you.”

Sarah started to shake, and Robin waved Sebastian off. He lowered his rifle, letting it hang from a sling. “Put your hands down. You two,” she pointed at Jack and Charlie. “Stay here. Sarah, come with me, please.”

The two women walked over to the Isuzu.

“You have some water or something in there?” Robin asked.

“Yeah, in the center console.”

Robin opened the door and grabbed the bottle, then handed it to Sarah.

“Take a drink, dear. Settle your nerves. Let me ask, did they, uh…”

“No, they never touched me. They’re dead. A few days ago my biggest worry was planning a summer vacation, and now we’ve fled our home, and I’ve killed two men.” Her eyes were welling up, and her voice quivered. Robin put a hand on her shoulder.

“Honey, you did what you had to do. I understand why this made you so nervous. I’m sorry I did that to you, but it’s habit. As a peace officer, you have to control people, or they’ll take advantage, and right now I have to assume anyone is capable of anything. You probably have some PTSD, and if we were in normal times, I’d suggest you see someone, get some counseling. As it is, you need to push that all down and focus on getting to El Paso. You’re a fighter, and that’s good. You’ll need that in the days ahead, I’m sure. For the record, we’ve heard the same things about the safe zone, so I think it’s legit. Hell, we should just go with you.” She looked over Sarah’s shoulder at the roadblock. “But we can’t. We have to hold this spot. Get back in your car, honey. Relax.”

Robin walked back to Jack and Charlie. “I’m letting you guys through. But, I’m taking two boxes of that ammunition. We’re low, and we don’t have any we can get to. Before you protest, you should know that martial law has been declared, and in theory, I can take it all. I’m not going to, but I could.”

“Fair enough,” Charlie said. “I hope you guys stay safe out here.”

“Me too,” she replied. “Me too.”

Marcus grabbed two of the thirty-pound boxes and carried them over to the Blazer while Charlie grabbed Sarah’s gun off of the hood of the Isuzu and climbed in the passenger side. Jack reassembled his pistol and started the engine. The Blazer, with Sebastian behind the wheel, backed out of the way, opening a gap between the other two vehicles. Robin walked over to Jack.

“Whatever you do, don’t go toward Aspen,” she said. “It’s gone. There’s only five thousand screechers in town now.”

“Wasn’t there, like, seven thousand people in Aspen?”

“Was. Past tense, like your Hobb’s Valley, I guess. Anyone not dead is a screecher now. Why do you think we’re low on ammo? You guys be safe.”

She slapped the fender a couple times and stepped back, out of the way.

Jack eased the Mercedes and the trailer through the gap, and Sarah followed in the Isuzu. The Blazer pulled forward, closing the gap once more, blocking them all from view.

A few miles down the road, Jack passed a sign pointing to the right that read ASPEN: 59 MILES. He kept the SUV aimed south, winding through the mountain road, every mile getting them closer to the safety of Texas.

37

Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

March 30th

For the first time in a long time, Ian wished that he had a dial-up phone to slam the receiver down. Instead, he turned the satellite phone off and tossed it on top of his pack with the rest of the crap he didn’t want to deal with.

“You don’t look happy, chief,” Jose said as they continued down the highway.

Ian looked at all the cars left abandoned, some even still running. It made him wonder how long it would take for a tank of fuel to run out at idle, a day…two or possibly three? He didn’t have a clue and doubted that it would be valuable intel at this stage of the game.

“I just talked to our benefactor, and our contract is going downhill.”

“Downhill? What do you mean? We did as instructed at the supply drop. All but one truck made it to us, and that certainly wasn’t our fault.”

“Oh, he’s not disappointed,” Ian replied. “He simply has nothing for us to do other than run and hide like everyone else, so he sold our contract to a doctor named Sanjay. We are supposed to bring our resources and the courier satchel to him in Atlanta, where he will give us our new directive.”

Jose glanced out the window and said, “I thought our contracts were nontransferable.”

“They aren’t, or they weren’t, anyways. However, we have to turn in all of this equipment or buy it, and DC is a mess. Totally inaccessible, so I hear. I guess this doctor fellow has requisitioned us and the whole lot that we have with us.”

“So we have to finish out the deal, then? Some of the group is going to be anxious about DC. Most of us have family there.”

“I know, Jose. I wish we would have known a little more about what was happening so we could have safeguarded some of our assets,” Ian said to the person he considered his second-in-command, due strictly to the amount of time they had worked together.

“Well, it’s not like you can plan on a zombie apocalypse,” Jose grunted sarcastically.

“They’re not zombies, or at least that’s what I’m being told.” Ian paused to gather his thoughts. “Somebody knew, Jose. Why do you think we were stockpiling resources here? If you knew the amount of infrastructure that I had to install out there to accommodate running tankers for six months, regardless of weather, you would shit your pants. No, somebody knew, and our employer was very close to the source,” Ian said as he thought through the situation. Their employer was out of reach, but Sanjay…he had to know something, and they had a lot of questions.

In twenty-four hours, the world has changed. Infected now rule and hunt relentlessly. There are no sanctuary cities or safe places; there is only run, hide, and kill. Yet we still have our jobs. Man, what a fucked-up planet we live on.

“Oh, so do you think this Dr. Sanjay might know something about what’s going on?” Jose asked.

“Couldn’t tell ya, but we’re gonna to find out. There’s a safe house about ten miles up the road; let’s pull in there and plan the next leg.”

The safe house turned out to be a pole barn well off the road accessed by a barely visible goat path and equipped with a thumbprint security system. It responded to Ian’s print immediately. Once he got the doors open, they could fit both deuces and the Humvee inside comfortably. There were stocks of weapons, food, and fuel with a large table in the center where they could gather.

The road on the way had been rough, even though they never had to leave the vehicles. To be honest, it would take a lot to get the crew separated from their vehicles. It’s bad business in their line of work.

The countryside was swarming with infected who rushed the vehicles as soon as they heard them. No doubt there were still some on the trail. A lot of them had followed behind at a sprint, but there was nothing the crew could do about them. Even the old ones ran as if they were tireless kids in the schoolyard. They had to take them out when their mobs were small, but when the groups got big enough to overwhelm, the best they could do was out-distance them.

Needless to say, they burned through a lot of rounds. The only plus side was that they’d resupplied the 7.62s and provided zero 5.56 ammo for Toby, who should have left his personal rifle at home. Ian tossed him one of the replacement SCARs and grinned. Forever dedicated and stubborn, Toby instantly started switching out butt stocks and pistol grips. Ian knew that when he was done, it would look like he never even switched, except his new rifle would fit the suppressors they’d been supplied.

“We got us a situation, folks,” Ian told the assembled group around the table. “We can’t go any further without a little bit of correspondence between us. First matter of business is that our contract has been sold.” He paused as they griped and moaned, much as he had predicted.

“We all know that we don’t have transferable contracts, so if we want to blow this one off we can, but we still have to return the equipment to get paid. Of course, when the contract was sold, the equipment went with it, so if we are not sticking with the gig, we still have to bring our gear to some guy named Dr. Aarav Sanjay in Atlanta.”

“Sanjay? I’ve heard that name before,” Trish said. “He’s some kind of genetic chemist or something.” She, of all the people saying this, made Ian nervous. Trish had served in Iraq and the ’Stan until she retired and took on a supervisory security position in the Pentagon. A sexual harassment situation had left a congressman with a broken knee and Trish out of a job. It’s not safe to try to take liberties with girls like Trish. Ian scooped her up, knowing her talents.

“I don’t know what he is, and I don’t care,” Ian said, taking the conversation back. “What I do care about is him being our next assignment if we choose to go on. Now wait a minute, I’m not done yet.” Ian tried calming the group; they could sense that something more was up.

“Boss, we have some stragglers coming up the drive,” Jose said from the window, referring to infected that had hung on their trail.

“They’ll wait until I’m done here if everybody keeps their mouths shut.” The group quieted, and Ian continued. “DC is toast, so is most—if not all—of the Eastern Seaboard.” He paused to let that sink in.

Ian’s people were independent contractors, modern day mercenaries. Though they were soldiers at heart, they were also husbands and wives, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. They had homes and vehicles, and now it was probably all gone. Ian knew that he wasn’t going to be able to keep the whole crew. Trish and Brahler would certainly want to head home, and he was prepared to cut them a check and see them on their way. Ian was not, however, expecting all of them to bug out and that’s what almost happened.

* * *

In the end, only Toby, Jose, and Kinsey—along with a shit pile of ammo—remained with Ian in the Humvee. The rest of the crew took the two deuce and a half trucks, along with a fresh check for half wages in each of their pockets and enough ammo to see them home. Ian had a terrible feeling those checks would never get to the bank. Hell, it was worse than that. He had a feeling there were no more banks.

Sweet! My business is paid for and I own my house free and clear. What could be better than that, right? Enter the apocalypse, fuck me running.

“It looks like I-75 will take us right into the city,” Toby said.

“I think we crossed the 75 yesterday about twenty miles back,” Kinsey added and her phone verified.

“There are a lot of towns that way. I want to avoid populated areas if we can. We have to get down to 68 and take that to 60, and then find this Steve Tate Road. Keep to the lesser populated areas and stay away from main highways.”

“That’ll take a lot longer,” Kinsey added.

“Will it? I think hitting a horde of these things that’s too big will slow us down permanently.”

“No argument there, boss. I’m paid by the hour, so lead on.” She smiled as she locked in a magazine and stood to grab her bug-out bag, which is all any of them were working with as far as changes of clothes. Ian fought to have uniforms supplied at the safe houses but was vetoed in the final signing of the contract.

The two big trucks had left a couple hours earlier with hopes of clearing the way for the smaller Humvee. It worked. They traveled the first twenty miles without seeing one infected, which just reinforced in Ian’s mind that they had to kill any of them that they saw, otherwise they’d dog their trail incessantly.

Twenty miles down, and just over two hundred to go. With a full tank plus two jerry cans of diesel, they should be able to make it there without any issues, providing they weren’t swallowed by a horde. Ian was grateful for the military version of the Hummer, but it did make the journey more ponderous, and the low rumble of the diesel engine carried for a long way.

The deep woods and hills they needed to travel through reduced any transient noise and they traveled easy for thirty or forty minutes. To expect a full hour comfortably away from infected in this new world was ludicrous.

Ian had Kinsey stop a half mile out from a massive vehicle pile-up that still showed wisps of smoke drifting in the windless sky. Nothing else moved on the road or in the trees that bordered the section ahead. The sides of the road next to the vehicle were fields, allowing a good range of sight. Ian wasn’t a farmer, but he thought it might be tobacco, based on the smell and the open-slat drying houses scattered here and there. Nothing moved, not even birds.

“It looks like we can skirt around the mess on the left-hand side if we take it slow,” Ian said to Kinsey, who sat behind the wheel.

“Ten-four.” She gently slid the vehicle into gear before easing onto the road with a smooth release of the brake. She was good and knew that the fast, jerky motion would have attracted more attention than smooth and easy.

They approached the wreck slowly, keeping eyes glued to the woods and road beyond. Still nothing. Ian was tempted to roll down his window to listen but preferred having reinforced glass between him and whatever may pop up. Kinsey pulled off the road and well onto the shoulder to get around the burned husks of vehicles. At some point, they’d struck hard enough to embed themselves into the opposing bank. The bank joined a steep, thickly wooded slope that allowed only one path through.

It was the perfect scenario for an ambush.

Then he remembered, gratefully, that the infected did not have the mental fortitude to comprehend what an ambush was. He kept his eyes open anyway and trusted the nasty feeling that was coming over him.

Ian heard it before he saw the gouge appear in the hood.

“Getting shot at, boss.” Kinsley remained calm, knowing that the ballistic glass in the Humvee should hold for a while against anything smaller than a fifty-caliber.

“As if a world full of fricking infected isn’t enough,” Ian grumbled as he considered their options. “Back up behind the burned cars,” he said, noticing they hadn’t been taking fire until they’d reached the point where the hood was exposed. Ian did some quick assessments and decided there had to be more than one person, and they probably didn’t all have guns. If there had been a mess of them out there, they would be getting peppered from both sides. Instead, it was just one shot, aimed near Kinsey.

As they got behind the bulk of wrecked cars, Toby opened his door and rolled out of the truck, keeping low ready. Anybody else, and Ian would worry. But Toby wasn’t just anybody else.

“Window, Jose,” Ian ordered. “Getting up in the turret will expose you to that sniper.”

Jose spread out on the back seat, making a small firing platform using the now opened window to direct his trajectory toward the suspected shooter’s location. Typically, Ian would roll out like Toby had, but his door was blocked by the wrecked cars, so he readied the 1911 that he’d acquired from the kid’s backpack.

“I have a visual: a hundred and fifty yards out, twenty meters from the crest at two o’clock,” Jose said into his coms from the back seat.

“Mark,” Toby replied. “He has two with him, one with a semi-auto pistol; the other appears unarmed.”

This blew Ian’s mind. Why would they attack a military vehicle while so undermanned and under armed? It just didn’t make sense. Even the most illiterate idiot would know better than that.

Suddenly they were firing steadily with what sounded like a deer rifle, pacing in a way that made Ian think they were using a bolt-action and a semi-auto handgun. But why? It wasn’t until he heard Toby and Jose returning fire that it came to him, and Ian instantly felt like bait in a trap.

“Ex-fil!” Ian shouted. Much to Toby’s credit, he responded immediately by crawling back into the truck.

“Infected on our six,” Kinsey said, her eyes locked on the rear view mirror.

“Infected in the east woods at nine o’clock and at twelve o’clock,” Ian replied. This wasn’t a robbery by two-bit bandits; they were creating a diversion. They played us like a fifty-dollar fiddle and are using us to escape.

Ian watched as five people climbed quietly over the crest of the hill. They wore no smiles as they glanced back at the Humvee. The ironic thing was that if they’d asked for help, Ian’s group might have helped. Based on the bullet marks on the hood, they had made no attempt to kill anyone.

“You had better floor it, Kinsey. We’re not going to be able to finesse our way out of this one,” Ian said and was surprised to see her smile.

“Back in my neighborhood, my brothers and I called this the Red Owl, which means cover your noggin and run,” she said as she shifted into low lock and floored it. She was never going to get high speeds in low lock, but her traction would turn the infected to mush. She swerved around the ones that were coming out of the woods on her right, clipping two with her front end. This Humvee came complete with cattle guards and wings, so it could go through several of these things without even slowing.

The infected were headed straight for them like an arrow, with the thickest portion being in the center, which was right where Kinsey aimed. Ian had to trust her judgement because while he was looking for threats, she’d been scoping the road.

Both shoulders narrowed and dropped off steeply, one of which seemed to be the beginnings of a ridge. A massive press of bodies could potentially push them over. They braced for the impact and smiled as the vehicle hardly slowed as it hit, crushing and battering away any of the infected that stood in their path. They were through the mass in a five-count. No doubt the vehicle would not have held up if the situation had been prolonged, but for the little bit it did have to go through, it had performed nicely. Kinsey shifted into high range and turned sharply around the base of the hill, where the shooters had been, and followed the road that had become somewhat U-shaped as it traversed the terrain.

“Well, lookie there,” Toby said as he pointed out the group of seven, two more than they had originally seen. They were headed toward a ravine with two young children struggling to keep up with the longer legs of the adults.

“Catch them, Kinsey. I need to have words with them,” Ian said and reached into his bug-out for the Glock and extra magazines. They were sitting ducks, and Ian was acting out of character, but this situation was different. He caught confused looks from Toby and Kinsey, but he didn’t care. These people had shot at them for a reason, and Ian needed them to know that he knew it. Ian looked out the back window and saw the infected rounding the hill.

The tall man with the rifle slowed and held his gun in the low ready position but didn’t point it at anyone. Ian would bet money that he was out of ammo, and his shots were out of desperation to keep the horde off his people. Kinsey stopped in a cloud of dust from the gravel road, and Ian rolled down his window.

“I know why you did it, bro. But that is still not an excuse for sacrificing the living. Take this and get into that ravine before they see you,” Ian said and held out the Glock and magazines.

“I’m sorry, mister. I was out of options.”

“I get it. There’s a safe zone set up near the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta if you can get there. Good luck,” Ian said, to the shock of the man who’d shot at them.

“Thanks, I… I don’t know what else to say.”

“You have women and children with you. Keep them safe and we’re square.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said and turned to run but stopped when Jose opened his window and gave a quick whistle. The man turned and looked at Jose, who threw him a small bag.

“Two days’ food and water; it’s all we can spare, now go!” Jose said.

Kinsey waited to block the view of the infected until the man was behind the berm before she took off. Ian didn’t say anything to the rest of the crew. They knew the score, and if the benevolence of giving away a weapon surprised them, his crew didn’t show it.

That was day one. It took them three more days to even get near Atlanta. Two hundred miles as the crow flies, and they barely made fifty miles a day.

The world had become a giant vat of shit soup, and they held the wooden spoon.

38

Near Hope, Missouri

March 30th

Miguel landed the plane on a narrow country road. It wasn’t an easy landing. He’d avoided power lines and trees, paying close attention to a stalled car on the side of the road, before stopping and turning the plane at a right angle. The group quickly exited the aircraft and pushed it off the road, alongside a hedgerow, and covered the plane with dead tree limbs.

Clay readied his rifle then moved into the center of the road. He looked north and south. There were no signs of movement. To the south was an old farmhouse with faded wood siding. He turned back to the tree line and told the others that they should wait with the plane.

“Let me scout ahead with the dog, just to make sure it’s clear.”

“And if it’s not clear?” Nikolai snapped back.

Clay pursed his lips. “If it’s not clear, you should take off again. If I have to fire a shot, you know what’ll happen.” He used a finger to cut at his throat.

“No,” Miguel said. “We aren’t taking off again. The plane was on fumes as it is. If that house isn’t clear, then we will clear it. We’ll have to make a stand there until it is safe to move again.”

Grinning, Clay considered the man’s words. He was right; there was nowhere else to go. “Okay, let’s get the bags. We bet it all on this house.”

Clay moved ahead. Walking alone along the roadside ditch, his bag was slung over his shoulder. He would create distance from the group, then pause and wait for the others to catch up before moving out again. A hundred yards from the house, he looked back at them. “Let me get out ahead of you here. Give me some space, in case… Well, you know.”

Moving out again, he looked down and saw Rufous by his side. The dog panted like he did on a bird hunt. This trip didn’t remind Clay of any wars he’d seen; it should, but it didn’t. Like the dog, he felt like he was hunting, but not deer or ’yotes. Coyotes never came back and tried to kill him. Rufous was a good hunter, and Clay let him move out to lead the way. The dog’s tail was wagging, and his ears were down as he paced back and forth in front of him, sometimes slipping to the side of the road, stopping often to investigate clumps of grass or an old fence post.

Soon, they were at the end of a long gravel driveway. Set back from the road was a collapsed barn. The doors had fallen off and bales of hay rotted in the loft. Clay moved past it, still watching the dog for signs of agitation. Just before they reached the front porch of the old farmhouse, Rufous turned back and looked at him. Clay paused and checked on the others behind him.

Nikolai had the pistol out while Miguel and Andrew lagged further back. Clay made a clicking sound with his mouth, and the dog walked up the porch, with Clay close behind. He reached out for the door and wiggled the handle.

It was locked.

Looking right, Clay could see that the sidelight window was broken. “Great. This should be a fun place,” he said, shifting his stance to peer inside the house.

The furniture was gone. The weathered floorboards, insulation dripping from the ceilings, and animal droppings told him that the local wildlife were having a good time here. Clay could tell the home had been vacant for years. He stepped through the broken window slowly and quickly moved to the door, where Rufous was outside, whining for his master. As soon as the door was open, the dog came in sniffing madly at the animal smells. Clay watched his tail wag and could see no sign of trouble.

He took a quick walk along the first floor of the house. It wrapped around like a big U. The leg to the right was a large living room, and toward the back was a small hall bathroom. On the other leg was a dining room, stairs that led to a basement, and a farmhouse kitchen. Near the back door was a stairway that led up to the second floor. Clay put off that search for now and headed back to the porch, where he waved the others in.

When they’d gathered in the living room, he asked them to wait while he inspected the rest of the house.

Clay moved back to the stairs with the dog and made his way to the top. It was musty and dark. The windows were still intact but overgrown with so much dust and mildew that it was impossible to see out of them. He walked along empty rooms, finding nothing but a stained mattress and empty beer bottles. Must’ve been the hangout for kids at one time—or worse, he thought.

In the master bathroom he found a large pile of cardboard that looked like it had been laid on the floor like a carpet. He shook his head, trying to imagine why. Clay folded the cardboard sheets and brought them downstairs. Tossing them on the floor, he explained to the others that they could cover the windows with the cardboard so they could burn a fire in the stone fireplace.

“Are you sure?” Nikolai asked. “Won’t the smoke attract them?”

Clay shrugged. “I don’t know. But with St. Louis and Chicago burning, and the other few dozen houses I saw that are burning, I doubt that one small campfire would attract much attention.”

Nikolai nodded. “You’re probably right.”

Clay dug through his bag and pulled out two cans of beef stew. “We’ll have this tonight. I’ll share mine with the boy, and you can share this one with your fiancé,” Clay said, smiling to Miguel as he tossed over the two cans.

“Now wait,” Miguel said. “So now I’m the pilot and the cook.”

Clay grinned. “Well, no. I don’t see a plane anymore, so I guess it just makes you the cook.”

Miguel pretended to be offended, but took the cans and moved into the kitchen with Andrew following close behind. Clay passed into the living room and helped Nikolai hang the cardboard over the big window.

“What’s next then?” Nikolai asked.

“I don’t know… I guess we just keep going until we reach Texas. There’s no vehicles here, so we’ll be walking until we find one. The alternative is barricade this place and try to hide out until someone finds us.”

Nikolai scanned the dirty house and looked back at Clay. “No, we can’t stay here,” he stated.

“I agree. We keep moving.” Clay finished hanging the cardboard, and then he built a small fire. Miguel walked out of the kitchen, holding a pot. It was dirty, so Clay spared enough of the water to wipe it clean. Afterward, Miguel opened the cans and dumped both of them into the pot together.

Clay lifted his rifle and moved to a corner. Finding a spot where he could see through a window, he sat down and began cleaning his rifle. Nikolai saw what he was doing and went to do the same with the 1911. Clay shook his head no. “We need at least one weapon up; wait until I finish.”

“Oh. That’s smart,” Nikolai said.

As nightfall approached, they started hearing noises outside. Clay went to the window covered with cardboard. He didn’t want to disturb it and risk it falling down, so he moved into the dining room and knelt down by the window, looking out. They were on the road, dark shadows moving slowly, walking the blacktop surface. None of them even spared a glance toward the farmhouse.

Clay started to second-guess the wood fire, but watching them parade past, they didn’t seem a bit concerned with it. Nikolai moved behind him and gasped at the sight. “Where are they all going?” he whispered.

Clay shook his head. “Must be a town that way. There are probably people there, or something that attracted them.”

“These things are sick,” Nikolai said. “They want to spread the sickness, like a parasite.”

“What, like worms?” Clay asked.

“My father said some sort of new parasite. And yes, it’s something like a brain worm, not a virus, but a creature’s only purpose is to spread. Like head lice, they infect the host and move on.”

Clay shuddered at the thought of a disgusting lice-brain-worm controlling his body. “Well, I don’t want anything to do with that,” Clay whispered. “Look, I’m comfy here for a while. Why don’t you try and get some sleep. I slept a lot on the plane, anyway, so I’ll wake you in a couple hours. Let Miguel rest; and you too. Okay?”

“Thank you, Clay,” Nikolai whispered. “We wouldn’t have made it here without you.”

“Nahh,” Clay said, looking out the window. “I’d be floating on Lake Michigan in a bass boat without you boys. We’re a team now.”

39

Near Cooper Hill, Missouri

March 31st

Morning came fast. Unfortunately, it didn’t come warm. Clay woke stiff and sore. He’d been cramped into a corner with his green army jacket pulled over his shoulders all night. He pushed himself up and took the rifle. The other men stood near the fire that had gone out during the night, but the coals still radiated heat.

Andrew had found a ball and bounced it on the floor in the kitchen with the dog. Clay got to his feet and peeked out the window. The road was clear. Whatever the things were outside the night before, they were gone now. He walked into the living room and saw that Miguel had cooked some meat over the remaining hot coals. It looked like canned ham. He didn’t remember packing any, so it must’ve been from the guys’ packs. Miguel cut off a chunk and handed it to Clay on the end of a fork.

Clay nodded his head, smiling. “Thank you for that.”

Together, they walked out of the room and into the kitchen. A window over the sink looked out across a field. Clay scratched the stubble on his chin that was quickly turning into a beard. “I think we should just go south. We’ll follow the road and stay on the shoulder. If something comes up behind us or we see one of the infected ahead of us, we jump into the ditch and make for the trees.”

Nikolai shrugged. “So that’s it; we just move south?”

“What else is there?” Clay responded.

They gathered their things. There was no water for bathing or a toilet in the old farmhouse, so they relieved themselves in the backyard, before meeting again in the front. The way was clear, so once again, Clay stepped off with Rufous at his side. They moved onto the road, walking slowly, and Clay let his rifle hang from the sling over his shoulder. They spaced out naturally and moved quietly. Just behind him were Miguel and Nikolai, with Andrew farther in the rear.

Walking slowly and keeping the sun to their left, they followed the shoulder southward all morning and into the afternoon. They went over rises and back down. For a while they followed an old faded fencerow. Eventually, Clay saw powerlines and knew they had to be nearing a house. They turned a corner and crossed a low, narrow bridge over stream, where they filled their empty containers. It probably wasn’t safe to drink the untreated water, but they could boil it later.

After another hour, they spotted a pair of houses. The smaller of the two houses was a white single-story with blue shutters. Across the road from it sat a longer two-story brown house with a double-car garage door. Neither home showed signs of life.

The larger home had broken windows and a knocked over mailbox. The front door was open, but there was nothing else showing. Clay put his hand out to hold the men back as he approached the structure. He moved in quietly. Unlike the last house, which was old and worn down, this house had been lived in recently. He stepped up to the front door. A bloodied handprint decorated the knob. He carefully eased the door open and stepped into the living room.

The furniture had been overturned, and the television lay on the floor where it had gotten knocked off an old TV stand. In the kitchen, a blood-crusted knife was on the floor. The back door was broken inward; the screen lay across the kitchen floor.

Clay carried his rifle close. Rufous came into the room, sniffing, his tail wagging. The dog ran back and forth and then looked up at the stairs, growling.

“Oh boy,” Clay whispered checking the slide of his M1 Carbine and ensuring that the attached bayonet was secure on the lug. He didn’t want to fire a shot if he could help it. He slowly moved up the stairs, looking left and right, pausing at the top in a wide-open space. There was a door to his front and one to each side.

All were closed.

He turned right to open the first door. Inside was a child’s bedroom with pink carpet and a softer shade of pink on the walls. The room was empty. He turned and went quickly to the door directly at the top of the stairs. Opening the door quietly, he saw that it was a small bathroom. Stepping in, then crouching low, he saw a dead woman in the tub. Her hands were tied, and her mouth gagged. Clay could see visible bite wounds on her neck and arms. He backed out of the room quickly and closed the door.

He looked down at Rufous, who stared at the last door, growling, his tail rigid. Clay put his hand on the doorknob, steadying the rifle with his right hand. Ready to pull the door shut again in an instant, he slowly opened it. Inside, he came face-to-face with the infected man, but he didn’t scream in rage at the old vet. The man’s face was blue as his body swung from a rope.

He’d tried to hang himself and die before he turned, but it didn’t work. He was still alive, even though his neck was broken and tied to a rafter. Clay reeled back, choking on the bile in his mouth as he tried not to vomit. He steadied the bayonet and lunged forward, stabbing the man through the eye. Then he pushed against the body and pulled the blade free. As the corpse swung away noiselessly, Clay identified similar bites and scratch wounds on the man, although the ones around his legs and ankles looked much smaller than those on his upper body.

Clay cleaned the blade on a bedspread and left the room. He walked downstairs to find the men already there. “Don’t go upstairs,” he said. “There’s nothing but death up there.” The younger men looked at him, and all nodded in agreement.

Miguel and Andrew set their bags on the counter to search the kitchen. Clay moved back to the doorway with Nikolai and said, “I’m going to check the other house.”

“I should go with, you know,” Nikoali replied.

“I have Rufous. You need to protect and cover them while they search.”

Clay didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted his rifle, checked the street again, and moved outside. Standing on the stoop, he knelt down and patted his dog’s side before moving across the street.

Peering inside, he could see that this home was just like the one across the street with clear signs of a struggle. The furniture was tossed over, and the dining table’s legs were broken off. Most of the chairs were destroyed as well. Clay walked past them to a small kitchen, where a body on the floor greeted him. It had one leg twisted to the side and a knife sticking from its back. Clay didn’t check it; he just didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

He turned around and walked down a narrow hallway with three doors. He assumed there would be a bathroom and two bedrooms. Each door was open. In the one at the end, there was a deep, bloodied gouge through the wood. Clay moved closer and looked at a body on the toilet with a massive gunshot wound to its stomach. A shotgun lay on the tile floor, where it had fallen after delivering the deadly blow. In the first bedroom, a middle-aged man lay on the floor, his neck shot open. Clay saw blood on the carpet and a child’s hand at the foot of the bed. He backed out of the room and closed the door.

He moved past the bathroom and thought better of it. Returning, he retrieved the Mossberg pump shotgun from the floor. He didn’t want anything else from this place. He turned around and walked out, closing the door behind him.

Back across the street, he found the men had loaded their bags. He handed Miguel the shotgun. The man looked at it like it was some kind of mythical object. “If you’re confused, Andrew will show you how to use it,” Clay said.

Nikolai came from a hallway and held up a set of car keys, shaking them.

“What did you find?” Clay asked.

“There’s an SUV in the garage,” he said.

They moved to the garage. While it wasn’t much to look at, Clay could tell that the old, rusted Jeep Cherokee they found was a daily driver. He wasn’t sure how far the small SUV would make it, but anything was better and faster than walking. Nikolai walked around to the other side and opened the driver’s door. He sat in the seat and turned the key. The Jeep came to life. Quickly, they loaded up their gear and got onboard.

“Where to?” Nikolai asked.

“Go south… We aren’t staying in this house.”

Nikolai backed the Jeep out of the driveway and into the street. The way was clear, so he put the vehicle in gear and continued their journey south toward Texas.

40

Atlanta, Georgia

March 31st

“Take the 400, you said. It’ll be less traveled, you said.” Kinsey sneered as they scanned over the sea of cars that completely blocked the expressway. Ian looked back at the Perimeter Center, where the 285 intersected the 19, and the 19 turned into the 400. Both were nothing but vehicles end-to-end with a few scared people staring at them; he kept his eye on them. It wouldn’t be the first time the uninfected tried to swarm them, thinking they could help because of the desert-camo, military-style Humvee.

“I don’t think we want to take the 400,” Ian said sarcastically. “Head back the way we came and take the dirt tracks we’ve been following.”

The dirt roads had served them well up to this point, with the exception of when they needed to find a bridge over an interstate or body of water. None of the interstates had looked like this, though. The closer they got to Atlanta, the worse it got. Ian was beginning to think there wasn’t going to be a way into the city, and none of them welcomed the thought of heading in on foot.

There were still a lot of survivors out there from what they could see, but they were stragglers, and their time was limited. You could see it on their faces, with their features stressed beyond fear. Desperation ruled their world, and the slim opportunity that they might grasp one more breath as a normal human being beckoned them like a lost song upon the edge of memory. Yet, they knew that their future would play a much different song, a dirge they’d already witnessed as their loved ones became infected and changed before their eyes. More than a few kept the last bullet for something other than infected, and more than a few used it.

Ian shook his head, grateful when they pulled away from the uninfected, who stayed silent, knowing what unwanted sound or movement brought. Less and less, they heard gunshots, especially from those on foot. Instead, people carried pikes and bats, as well as other assorted melee weapons. Gunshots attracted the infected, and if you wanted to survive on foot, you learned to be silent and stick to the shadows. The deeper the shadows, the better.

A subtle beep on the sat phone chimed.

“Yes?” Ian said, knowing that pleasantries were not acceptable with clients—especially new clients. “Yes, Dr. Sanjay, we were informed,” Ian said when the caller mentioned having bought the contract. Ian had actually expected to hear from him long before this.

“We’re trying to circumnavigate the blocked roads up by Perimeter Center right now and should be to your location at the university by tomorrow, I’d guess. The situation has escalated, and there seems to have been a mad rush both in and out of the city.”

Ian glanced out the window as he listened. After a moment, he replied, “El Paso?” This was followed by another moment of silence on Ian’s end. Then he responded, “Yes, sir. It’s a day’s drive in the old world, but it might take as much as two weeks now. We only seem to be making thirty to fifty miles a day, and we need supplies.”

More chatter from Dr. Sanjay. “No, sir,” Ian replied. “Only four of us in the Humvee, the rest headed back to DC with the deuces.”

Ian frowned at Kinsey as he took the brunt of the doctor’s wrath, and then turned back toward the window. “I didn’t have much say in it, and there weren’t any authorities to turn them in to. If you wish to cancel the contract, I understand—”

He stopped as if cut off, and when Ian pulled the phone away from his ear, obscenities screeched from the receiver for several seconds. When Dr. Sanjay calmed down, he asked about the courier bag. “Yes, we have the satchel.” Then Ian shook his head in frustration before saying, “As soon as we can, sir. We need a safe house for resupply. Are there any available?”

As Ian listened, he wrote on the windshield in black permanent marker. “Talladega and Shreveport, security code 31470 US SANJAY. Got it. Yes, sir, all capitals. Thank you, sir. I look forwards to meeting you—” The phone clicked dead.

“Well, isn’t that some shit?” Toby said from the back seat.

“Yeah, are you sure we want to keep this job?” Jose added.

“Let’s get resupplied in Talladega, and we’ll talk it out there. If we want to split up, then we can at least go on a full belly,” Ian said to the crew.

“I don’t think splitting up is a smart option. Not right now, anyway,” Kinsey said, throwing in her two cents. “Together, we have security, and the contract gives us a direction, so I say we keep going.”

Ian smiled as they moved out, sticking to the back roads.

“Talladega is about a hundred and fifty miles. We might have to find some diesel before then,” Kinsey stated, tapping the fuel gauge in the instrument cluster.

“With all of these semis left abandoned, we shouldn’t have a problem with that,” Jose said.

“Jose, open up your phone and lend me a Wi-Fi signal,” Toby said as he dragged a laptop out of his sack.

Ian watched him over the back seat until Toby suddenly smiled.

“Quit with the porn, Toby. Next thing I know, you’ll be jerking it in front of all of us,” Ian said half-joking while secretly hoping he hadn’t tapped into Pornhub or xHamster.

“Better than porn, sir. What is straighter than an interstate and has virtually no traffic?” Toby asked with a smile. Jose looked over his shoulder at the screen and shrugged as if he didn’t see what Toby was so excited about.

“I don’t know, Toby. Just spit it out,” Ian said, not having the tolerance for games at the moment.

“Utility access,” he said, handing his boss the laptop displaying Google Earth. He pointed to a solid, straight line through the woods and hills that was unmarred by a road’s surface. A body slammed into the side of the truck, almost causing Ian to lose grip on the laptop, followed by two more.

“Sorry, they sprang out of the ditch.”

“I didn’t know these fuckers could hide,” Ian shouted, but calmed quickly as he noticed the vehicle hadn’t taken any damage.

“There will be spots like rivers and cliffs or whatever,” Toby said, unfazed by the interruption. “We’ll have to work around those, but then there are miles in between those points that look like easy travel.” He pointed at a route that was wide and clear by Google Map standards and straighter than Interstate 20, which it mirrored.

“It’s all off road, though,” Ian protested.

“I would take off road any day over that interstate we just looked at, especially in this beast,” Kinsey said.

“No shit,” Jose huffed, probably just so he could say that he added something to the conversation.

“I’m game if you are. Where do I pick it up?” Kinsey asked, still driving toward the dirt roads per Ian’s last instructions.

He didn’t want to get into to the whole switching drivers thing. She was the professional, and her observation skills had saved them many times already, so he figured it was best to keep her focused on it. When she got tired, they rested, but she seemed to be solid for at least twelve-hour stretches, and during one particularly hairy stretch, she drove for eighteen hours until they found a safe spot to crash for a few hours.

Unlike the rest of society, Ian’s crew had a saving grace. They had established safe houses to resupply. The stores and malls that carried noteworthy goods were always swarmed with infected. They had accidentally driven too close to one, causing the people trapped inside to think that they had a chance, if they could only get to the Humvee. It didn’t work.

They all remembered the two men who’d burst out of the door, clearing the way for three women and a child. And the mass of loosely packed, wandering bodies turned into a focused mob. One of the men had a shotgun, and he started putting rounds in the chests of the closest ones. It only slowed the infected down, which made Ian think he was shooting birdshot; without a headshot, the man was unlikely to stop the things.

“Hold your fire,” Ian had said to Toby, who’d started to aim toward the horde. “It’s too late.” The horde tore into them. Kinsey stared at the scene with steel in her eyes, no emotion. She couldn’t allow herself to feel anything for those people; none of them could.

The powerline tower access clearings appeared ahead and roused Ian from his melancholic memories. The utility access paths turned out to be a clear run for most of the way and brought them through uninhabited areas, where the infection level was currently at a minimum. Others had the same idea, and they passed cars that had pulled off along the sides of the clearing as people rested, most setting out some sort of guard. This wasn’t like the highways or towns, where predators awaited around every corner. These were the workers of the world, the linemen who knew the routes, and truckers or highway workers who saw them and remembered. Ian saw a lot of AR-15s, as well as beautifully designed—yet very serviceable—lever-actions. They seemed to prefer to display them as a deterrent as opposed to using them on anyone.

They came up toward a ridge where trucks and SUVs waited in line to take a goat path down and into the next stretch, so they followed suit. Ian got out and walked, unarmed, to the pickup in front of them. It was a four-door with all the seats full and gear piled haphazardly in the bed. The two windows on the passenger side rolled down and rifle barrels were displayed.

Ian held his hands out to placate and caught up to the rear window, where a large man with a full beard looked at him with humorless eyes.

An attractive blonde woman in the front seat spoke. “There ain’t nothin for us to talk about, mister. We all knows the score, so you go your way and we’ll go ours.”

The bearded man in the back lined his sights up on Ian’s chest.

“All right, I can take a hint,” Ian said, and the man relaxed the grip on his rifle.

“Sorry, it’s just how it is now,” the bearded man said.

“Don’t you try to follow us, neither,” the blonde threw in for good measure.

“I won’t. Good luck,” Ian said. They didn’t reply; instead, they powered up their windows and sped up a bit to get away.

“Nobody wants to talk,” he stated when he got back to the Hummer.

“I don’t know why you wanted to fuggin’ talk to them, anyways,” Toby said.

“Intel, dude, intel.”

“We got all the intel we’re going to get or need. El Paso or bust,” Kinsey said.

The ridge felt like they were driving off the end of a cliff until the Humvee got over the lip. Then they could see the meandering trail that switch-backed down the slope until it broke into multiple goat tracks to where it flattened out below.

Ian could see the interstate off to the south for the first few minutes of the downward trek, but it disappeared behind the trees quickly. It wasn’t soon enough to avoid seeing all of the infected roving the asphalt. It was a huge horde, and it was starting to flow toward the sound of all the trucks on the access trail. There were two vehicles behind them and more ahead of them in the distance, including the truck he’d tried to talk to.

“Toby, head up top and scan the flats to see where we gotta go,” Ian directed, pointing at the portal to the machine gunner nest. Being a civilian company, they didn’t have access to a 30mm machine gun, but they did have a Barret .50 if they needed. It was designed for single-shot precision distance work, and they were set up with the SCARs, which were more than adequate, considering the enemy wouldn’t be shooting back.

“We have a large mass coming from the south at eleven o’clock, followed by another mob at ten and nine-thirty,” Toby yelled down through the hole. “This path comes to a three-way split a half mile up. I strongly recommend that you take the right-hand split. A red Durango is getting swarmed five trucks up on the left split and another just fucked himself by trying to go around. Holy shit!” Toby exclaimed and paused just long enough to make Ian want to punch him in the nuts.

“The woods are starting to bleed with infected.” He plopped back into his seat. “Stay right and get across these flats ASAP, or we are screwed. I’m not kidding. There’s a whole city of people about to cut us off. About a mile and a half ahead, we hit steep grade that will bring us up into clear fields for a ways. It’s going to be tight, though, and the last half mile is going to be touch and go.”

“Okay, you two decide which one is going up top fully loaded,” Ian said. They were all smart enough to know that there would be very little shooting from inside the cab. The reports were too damaging, and their aim too inaccurate to be effective. Jose decided to take the portal, so Toby would hand him magazines and switch his rifle when Jose’s got too hot. Ian approved of their decision. Toby was the bruiser who could shoot well, but Jose was a shooter through-and-through. He would kill more with fewer rounds, and his target choices would be more beneficial.

They hit the flats and Kinsey took the far-right trail with the four-door pickup ahead. Ian could see the bearded man glaring at them for not following their instructions about following them. They had no choice; infected were already starting to bleed into the lane ahead. The truck in front took an impact on their unprotected grill, and Ian saw one of their headlight shields shatter, skewing the halogen bulb and causing it to shine off at an odd angle. Jose started to fire rapidly at the ones coming in from the south.

The things were running now, charging at a full sprint, screaming with a delighted howl that sent shivers down Ian’s spine. These were not the undead. These weren’t sluggish zombies stumbling toward them with rotted flesh and bones that you saw in the movies. These were living, breathing people who maintained all their flexibility and strength, but whose minds were gone. They lived to spread their disease, their ability to pursue their prey and tenacity was relentless.

“I got to get around this truck or we’re going to get swarmed when they break down,” Kinsey said.

“All they have is a factory grill, and it ain’t going to hold up long against so many,” Ian observed and unlatched the weapon’s port in the up-armored Humvee’s window. He stuck his hand through, making hand signals that clearly said he wanted the truck to pull over. To his surprise, they did almost immediately, and Kinsey hit the hole on their driver side, wiping out two infected on the way. And then they were in front, the road ahead becoming darker with running bodies every second.

* * *

Jose had been thinning the herd with his 7.62 rounds, grateful that he only had three-round burst action or he would have been tempted to spray and pray. After his third magazine, the horde was getting too close for the smaller bore rifle, and he dropped it down to Toby, who instantly tried to pass a fully loaded rifle up to him.

Jose ignored the rifle. What he needed was a little bit less precise but held more impact.

A large man and two women latched onto the truck, and Jose pulled the Mossberg 500 off his left shoulder like an old-school stagecoach guard and blasted one woman’s face apart with a three-inch round of 12-gauge, double-aught buckshot. He aimed at the man, knowing that his next load was a critical defense round, containing a slug and four 30mm BBs, specifically designed to permanently stop a threat.

Having had to swing his trajectory in a complete one-eighty, he barely got the barrel up high enough for a low gut shot, or so he thought. His motion must have put too much pressure on the trigger—a rookie mistake—because the one place he didn’t want to think about erupted in a mass of blood and bile, folding the man in half and slamming his face onto the roof of the Humvee, spreading whatever was in his guts and intestines all over the driver’s side hood. With a quick shove from Jose, the man slid off the side, clearing Kinsey’s vision, who was slowing with everybody that she hit due to trying to look around the infected legs and torsos.

Jose got the shotgun across himself in time before a forty- or fifty-year-old woman wearing a motorcycle helmet fell on him. She gripped the shotgun, fiercely attempting to tug it from his grip while trying to bite him. The solid chin guard of her helmet hit his hands and face shield. Jose kept his arms tight, watching where her teeth and nails were and trusting his equipment to keep him safe, for now.

He pulled the gun closer and pushed out as he twisted it, forcing the infected’s arms to cross. This would’ve been the perfect time to try to wrest it from her grasp, but instead he let the barrel fall almost casually down and under her chin. The thumb on his right hand pulled the trigger. The hollow of his hip took the recoil, but it was his face that felt the muzzle flash.

He flinched back as the tactical round went up under her chin, severing the back of her tongue and breaking her jawbone on both sides. The barrel, having been at least six inches from her chin, made this a dangerous shot for Jose. Any spray getting into his orifices or a BB hitting him after passing through the infected, and it was game over. Worse, the barrel could have strayed off course, blowing his own head off by accident.

Through his face shield, he watched as the woman’s head started expanding to an additional quarter of its original size before settling down to a sagging version of what was once a human face. The helmet showed stress fractures in a spider webbed pattern, suffering the brunt of the twelve-gauge’s blast. Blood trickled from her ears, nose, and lips as well as under the lower rim of her helmet in a solid sheet of red. Jose wondered what a scrambled mess her brain must be with all of that lead bouncing around inside.

* * *

All Ian could see of Jose was his lower half as he stood in the cupola, but it looked like things were pretty heated up there. If anyone could handle it, Jose could. He dropped his rifle inside and Ian was tempted to grab hold and drag the man in, but then he heard the telltale booms of Jose’s beloved Mossberg as he started to clear the deck.

“Jose, goddammit! Get back inside and let our beefcake clean house!” Ian shouted, hoping it wasn’t too late.

41

Mountain Grove, Missouri

March 31st

Driving for hours, the group passed plenty of homes and abandoned cars. Some houses looked as pristine as they would any other day of the week, while others were burnt out and hardly recognizable as a dwelling. Clay’s mind wandered as he watched a doublewide trailer from his passenger window. It was new with bushes and flowers planted along a step-stone walkway. “What if they’re alive inside?” he whispered to himself. “Or maybe it’s just another infected cage, full of the dead, or another body hanging from a noose.”

Beyond the trailer, they found a field full of dead cows, interspersed with mangled and trampled infected. The terrifying scene played out in Clay’s head. What it must have been like, the horde of infected stumbling through the wire fence, and then attacking and devouring the cows one at a time, surrounding them. Some cows probably fought back, a bull would for sure. He couldn’t look anymore and peeled his eyes from the carnage to focus on the road straight ahead of them.

Nikolai slowed the Jeep to maneuver around an abandoned charter bus. As they rolled past, infected inside began beating on the windows, screaming. The drive remained calm, navigating through the traffic jam and eventually moving to the center of the road to drive down the median. Miles ahead, a pair of cars was stopped together, one smashed into the back of the other. The trailing car boasted a bloodied and broken windshield, but there were no bodies.

Andrew leaned forward, looking at the wreckage as they passed. “Maybe they’re hurt, just out there in the woods somewhere, looking for help,” he said to no one.

Nikolai raised his hand, silencing the boy, and then said, “Do you hear that?”

Clay shook his head no.

Nikolai cut him off. “No, I hear it. Like popcorn popping.” He shut off the Jeep and rolled down his window.

Clay squinted, focusing. His eyes went wide with the recognition of distant gunfire—a lot of it. Someplace ahead of them, an active gunfight was taking place. Moments later, there was the deep rumble of an explosion.

“Someone’s fighting out there,” Nikolai said.

“What do we do?” Miguel asked, leaning forward. “If there’s shooting, it means the infected are already here. We have to turn back, right?”

Clay grimaced, looking out the window, then back at the others. “The fighting—that’s where the people are at. If someone is fighting them, then we should be there too.” He looked around the interior of the small SUV at his companions before continuing. “It also explains where all of the infected are. They’re moving toward the sound of the battle.”

“And you expect us to do the same?” Miguel asked.

Nikolai unholstered the 1911 and set it in the console for easy access. Then he looked back at Miguel. “Clay’s right. We’ll die out here alone. We need to get to whoever that is.”

Rolling down his window, Clay pointed his carbine out and said, “Do the same with them scatterguns, boys. It’s time for us to roll up on those infected like a bunch of outlaws.” He laughed with a tinge of insanity, then dialed it back when he saw the scared faces of Miguel and Andrew looking back at him. “Come on now, fellas. We get through this, and we’ll have soft beds and hot chow waiting on us.”

Reluctantly, the pair rolled down their windows and readied their shotguns. Clay shot Nikolai a thumbs up, and the driver started the engine, rolling forward slowly. The gunfire grew louder as they made their way over a large rise, and they started to see the telltale signs of fighting. Smoke, dead bodies, and lots of spent brass on the ground told them they were in the right place.

Miguel spotted three floating dots on the horizon and called them out, pointing at the sky. Leaning forward over the console, Clay focused on the specks as they grew larger, materializing into helicopter gunships. The helicopters flew over them, slow and fast, orbited, then shot back in the direction they’d come from.

“Well, they know we’re coming, boys,” Clay said.

“But who are they?” Miguel asked.

Nikolai shook his head and increased his speed. “Doesn’t matter. They’re killing the things that want to kill us, so I’ll call them friends.”

They started to make out pockets of infected. They staggered alone in twos and threes at first, but eventually the pockets grew into the tens and close to the hundreds. They began spotting destroyed military vehicles and abandoned checkpoints. At one spot, Clay had to hustle out of the Jeep to remove a long coil of barbed wire blocking their path.

They weaved through a path of concrete barriers and roughly shaped earthen berms and saw a trio of armored vehicles ahead of them. Just as Clay was wondering if the vehicles were occupied, a copula-mounted heavy machine gun belched and tore apart a group of infected. The other vehicles joined in briefly before the guns went silent again. Overhead, a fighter aircraft swooped in low and dropped a firebomb over the field. Even though it was far away, they could feel the heat from the blast through the Jeep’s windshield.

A hatch on one of the armored vehicles opened and a uniformed soldier waved them forward.

Clay pulled his carbine into the window and told the others to do the same, then Nikolai pulled the old Cherokee up alongside them. “Take it slow,” Clay warned. “They might be jumpy. Let’s let them know that we’re friends.”

He pulled his knife and cut away the belly of his white t-shirt, and then he reached out the window, waving the scrap of cloth as they neared the vehicles. As they approached, a band of infected ran out from behind a disabled semi-truck. The guns on the armored vehicles opened up and made short work of the things. “Keep your speed steady, son,” Clay said, noticing Nikolai’s hands shake as rounds tore past them, close enough that chips of concrete pelted off the fenders.

When they were within shouting range, the man in the hatch leaned out and shouted. “Where you all coming from?”

“Michigan,” Clay yelled back.

“Michigan? How the hell did you get from Michigan?” the soldier replied, not convinced.

“Boats, planes, a Jeep… It wasn’t easy,” Clay stated.

The soldier laughed. “I hear ya. Looks like you got here just in time. We’re prepping to fall back—and there ain’t nothing friendly north of this checkpoint.”

“Just tell us what to do,” Clay said.

The soldier grinned and turned south, pointing. “Stay on this road. You hear me? I don’t care if you see the Virgin Mary herself screaming for help. Don’t leave the damn blacktop. There are helicopter gunships and fighters providing close air support. They’ve been firing rockets, Napalm, and sub munitions all over the place. You stay on the road, and the birds will escort you back to our lines.”

Clay nodded okay. The soldier wasn’t convinced and shouted back at him. “Now, what is it you are going to do?”

Clay nodded again as all of them responded with, “Stay on the road.”

The soldier flashed a thumbs up. “All right, move out then. The birds know you’re coming, and we’ll be right behind you.”

Nikolai hit the gas, and the vehicle raced forward. Just as the soldier had said, the helicopters buzzed up and down the road, killing anything that moved in the fields. In the distance, they began to make out another checkpoint, this one made up of double-stacked shipping containers. Men at the top fired heavy machine guns and grenade launchers at masses of infected to the east. Jets swarmed in low, dropping bombs.

Closer to the checkpoint, a soldier looked at them and spun his arms, waving them past. “Don’t stop until you hit the gates,” he yelled.

Ahead was a long wall of shipping containers. Fighters lined the top of the containers, which formed a zig-zag maze. Nikolai drove until the path stopped and a pair of doors opened in the wall. Soldiers rushed out with weapons up, telling them to exit the vehicle.

Clay stepped out with his hands up as the soldiers surrounded the vehicle with their guns pointed out. A second group of soldiers ran to Clay, and the others escorted them through the wall of containers. Before they could register what was happening, they were all inside with the doors sealed shut.

Clay looked to one of the men and extended a hand. The soldier looked at him and pursed his lips. “No offense, old timer, but let’s wait until you pass inspection before we become pals.”

The group of soldiers broke up and climbed ladders to the top of the double-stack, leaving Clay and his small group with only a pair of men to watch over them. Soon, a different group of soldiers passed through a door cut in the side of the container. The soldiers looked the men up and down and passed a flashlight over them. The oldest of the soldiers wore an officer’s insignia. He signaled them to follow as he moved back through the door. They passed through what Clay assumed was the wall of the compound, going through several sets of doors that segmented the pathway.

Finally, they reached a door that had a phone next to it, attached to the wall. The officer picked up the phone and spoke into it. Soon after, the heavy steel doors squeaked open to reveal a brightly lit room. Inside were men in white gowns, and armed soldiers stood in the corners.

One of the men in white stepped forward and handed each of them a trash bag. “All right, gentlemen, strip down to your skivvies. Everything goes in the bag.”

Once Clay was nearly naked, the men called him forward. One held a blue light that he waved over his body, inspecting every blemish and scratch, looking for bite marks or any sign of infection. The man nodded at Clay then pointed to a large shelf on the back wall. “You’re clean, go grab some new clothes.”

Clay stepped to the shelf, where a woman stood with a clipboard. She looked him up and down before handing him a pair of blue trousers and a long-sleeve canvas shirt. “These should fit you,” she said tonelessly.

“What about the dog?” Clay asked, motioning to Rufous, who hadn’t left his side.

“It doesn’t affect animals.”

He watched her make a check on the clipboard. Clay pulled on the pants then stopped to ask, “What is it? What are they checking us for?”

She looked at him absently. “We aren’t exactly sure, yet. We’ve been told it’s a parasite, of sorts. It’s spread through direct contact.” She handed stacks of clothing to Nikolai and the others and waited for them to dress before passing them off to a pair of escorts.

“Wait,” Clay said. “Where are we going now?”

“To Texas. There’s a survivors’ camp there. We’ve been evacuating all day; this facility will be closing soon—not very many survivors are coming in now. At the rate we’re going through ammo, we probably have less than a day left here,” she said. “Now please, you must hurry.”

The door behind her opened, and they walked into a large tent city filled with bustling people. A man handed them each tags and pointed them to the transportation zone. The four of them stood looking at each other in their new clothes. Their bags and weapons were all gone. They had nothing left.

“So what now, fellas?” Clay asked.

Nikolai shrugged. “I’m going to try and find my parents. I think they might be here.”

Miguel put his arm around Nikolai and pulled him close. “They will be.”

“And what about you, Clay?” Nikolai asked.

“Well, I guess I’ll try and catch that ride. I hear Texas is nice, as long as we’re not talking the Alamo.” Clay laughed and turned to Andrew. “What about you, kid?”

Andrew looked around at the three of them, and then back at Clay. “Can I go with you?”

“Yeah, sure, why not? Another gunfighter won’t hurt, right?”

42

Colorado’s Powderhorn Wilderness

April 1st

The cold wind rustled the edges of the map that Charlie spread on the hood of the Isuzu. He grabbed a couple more rocks and set them on the sides to secure the big sheet of paper to the makeshift table.

“The road turns east after Piedra,” he said. “Then we can cut back south past Chimney Rock and follow this twisty, turny road down to Arboles and cross into New Mexico. This’ll take us west of both Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and we can avoid the population centers. We can pick up I-10 outside Las Cruces, and roll into El Paso. Easy peasy.”

He looked up at Jack and Sarah, both hunched up in their jackets, teeth chattering against the cold morning air of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

“Okay,” Sarah said. “I’ll agree to anything if we can get back in the trailer, out of this wind. I’m freezing!”

“Sound good to you, Jack?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, it does. I think the more we can stay away from the interstates and bigger cities, the better. Let’s do it.”

“Great, then let’s grab a quick bite and get back on the road,” Charlie said, tossing the rocks to the side of the car and folding the map before he walked over to the teardrop trailer and climbed in. Jack and Sarah followed him, the latter climbing in first.

Inside the trailer, the electric heater was turned up, keeping the interior a balmy sixty-five degrees, as opposed to the twenty-five degrees outside.

Charlie dug through a cooler and pulled out some strawberry jelly, while Sarah produced a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter from a box she’d packed the night of their escape from the city.

“Anyone tired of PB&Js yet?” she asked. “Tough shit, because it’s all we have left.”

“A PB&J would be lovely, thank you,” Jack replied. He looked at the big radio strapped to the table. It took up half the surface area, crowding the small trailer even more. “Any more info from your radio contacts, Dad?”

“Nope. Not a word. All I’ve found in the last day and a half is the repeating message from Fort Bliss for anyone coming in from the north or west to use I-10, and we’ll get directions on the way once we make contact with their people.”

“You think it’s still there?”

“The safe zone?” Charlie asked. “No reason to think otherwise. It takes people to keep the power on, to keep that thing broadcasting. No matter how automated things get, without people, this stuff always shuts down eventually. Now, the people that I’ve been talking to elsewhere, I have no idea if they’re still there. More likely than not they’ve just lost power.”

“When did you become an optimist?” Sarah joked.

“I’m a realist, honey. The power grid is shit in a lot of the country, especially out in the sticks. It’s usually just a step or two ahead of an outage, but the military has generators and backups. Hell, some of them wheel diesel locomotives in and plug into them when they have an emergency. They produce something like three million watts, enough juice for a small town. The point is, they have power, but it takes people to keep it running, and if they’re keeping the lights on, they aren’t overrun. Which is why I say that they’re still there.”

“I was just busting your balls, Charlie. I didn’t need a tutorial on emergency power supply technology.”

Charlie tapped his groin. “Unbustable,” he said.

Jack laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Charlie asked.

“I remember Odie busting them a few times,” the younger Washburn chuckled.

Charlie started laughing too. “That damn dog hit everyone in the nuts. No matter how tall someone was, he’d jump up and tag people right in the jewels. If he wasn’t such a dummy, I’d think he did it on purpose.”

“That one time, at Gramp's birthday party, he got you so bad that you threw up on the patio! And Grandpa got mad at you because he said you wasted a hamburger!”

Charlie started laughing harder, his bite of peanut butter and jelly sandwich visible in his mouth. Sarah was giggling, too. Charlie swallowed his food and turned toward Sarah.

“And then,” he said, taking a breath between laughs. “That dog ate up all the puke, and we’re all grossed out by it, but your husband here, with the wisdom of a ten-year-old, says, ‘See Grandpa, it wasn’t wasted. Odie got it!’ Well, that broke us all apart. About two minutes later, just when we’d stopped laughing, Mom—my mom, Jack’s grandma—comes out to the patio and sits down. Ol’ Odie jumps up and gives her a big kiss. A full, dopey, yellow lab tongue right across her face, and she says, ‘Odie, your breath is so fresh! What have you been eating?’ and we all fell out laughing again. Dad laughed so hard his dentures fell out, and the damn dog took off with them too.”

Sarah snorted, and Jack laughed so hard that he started coughing. His face turned red, and just as Sarah was getting worried, he coughed up a hunk of sandwich covered in blood. The laughter stopped.

“That’s new,” he said, wiping it up with a napkin and then dropping it into a bag that served as their trash can. Charlie put the second half of his sandwich into the bag, then grabbed Sarah’s and tossed it in too. Sarah grabbed a packet of bleach wipes and cleaned the table.

“I don’t think anything got on your sandwiches, Dad.”

“We can’t take that chance,” Charlie said. “And this changes things. We need to get to El Paso ASAP. You’re starting to show symptoms. We’ve got to get you some help.”

“Granted, that looked bad, but I feel fine. I’m not scratching my head or anything else.”

“Still, we need to get moving.”

Everyone was quiet for a minute, then Sarah broke the silence. “What happened to the dentures?”

“What?” Charlie asked, then remembered the story. “Oh, yeah. Dad got them back, rinsed them under the spigot, and put them back in his mouth. Mom said that was gross, and he said, ‘Not as gross as you liking his puke breath.’”

Sarah smiled, but the laughter of moments ago was gone. “Well,” Charlie continued. “I guess we’d better get on the road.”

Jack went out first and headed toward the Mercedes, while Charlie and Sarah turned toward the Isuzu. “We’ll lead,” Charlie called out.

The black Isuzu wove its way down the hillside, away from the secluded campsite where they’d spent the night. Jack followed, pulling the trailer behind the Mercedes.

In the Isuzu, Charle broached an uncomfortable topic. “Have you thought about what we might have to do?”

“It’s all I’ve been thinking about, Charlie. Ever since he told me about it, it’s never been far from my mind.”

“Have you thought about how…”

“I’ll do it,” she said, interrupting him. “If it comes to that. I’ll do it.”

Charlie let it go. They rode in silence for a few minutes with Charlie only speaking up when they needed to turn from Highway 160 onto Highway 151. It wasn’t long after they made the turn that another roadblock stopped their progress.

“Fuck,” Charlie said. “This is getting old.”

“At least this time you guys hid most of the ammo,” Sarah said.

The Reservation Police vehicle, a big Yukon or Suburban, sat in the road with its overhead lights running. The Southern Ute Indian Police seal displayed on the door told them it was Indian Police, not State or Municipal. A middle-aged man in uniform approached the Isuzu and Sarah rolled the window down.

“Hi, folks,” the man said. “How are you all doing today?”

“We’ve been better, to be honest,” Sarah replied.

The man chuckled. “That’s true enough for everyone, I guess. Let me ask you, where are you going?”

Sarah sighed. This line of questioning was getting old. “We’re headed to the safe zone in El Paso.”

“Okay, here’s the deal. I need to check you guys over, make sure no one in your group is infected.” He looked back at the Mercedes. “Is he with you?”

“Yes. That’s my husband.”

“Okay, what I need you all to do for me is get out of the vehicles.” He gestured to the SUIP vehicle and waved someone over. A heavyset woman climbed out of the passenger side and started walking their direction.

“Ma’am, you’ll need to go with Susan. She’s going to search you for bites, scratches, and any signs of infection. Sir,” he pointed at Charlie, “come with me please.”

He led Charlie back to the Mercedes, where he asked Jack to get out and join them.

“What I need you guys to do for me is strip down to your skivvies. If you want, I can have a privacy curtain brought over, but it will be faster if you just do it here.”

“Where is my wife going?” Jack asked.

“A female officer is going to conduct her search.”

The two men stripped down to their underwear, shivering even though the temperature had risen to fifty degrees. The officer had them turn around while he looked over their bruises and scrapes. After looking them over, he told them to get dressed.

“The only thing I need you to do now is to remove the bandage from your arm,” he said to Jack.

Jack looked at Charlie, who gave such a slight nod that Jack wasn’t sure he actually saw it. He peeled the tape back from the top edge of the bandage, wincing as it pulled hair from his arm. The gash from his fight with his infected boss in Denver several nights ago was red and inflamed around the edges, with pus seeping from the cut itself.

“That doesn’t look good,” the officer said.

“He has the sickness,” a voice behind them agreed.

Charlie and Jack were startled by the voice. An older, shorter version of the officer had appeared behind them, seemingly by magic.

“Dad, I told you to wait in the car,” the officer said.

“You can’t see it,” the older man said. “Your eyes are modern eyes. You see with your phone and your camera. You don’t see with your eyes.”

“You have the latest iPhone and satellite TV, Dad. You’re not exactly living like our forefathers,” the officer said, but then asked for verification. “You’re sure it’s the same infection?”

“I see it in him. His spirit is gray and has no feathers. It is plain as the sun.”

“What does that mean?” Charlie asked.

“Your spirit is the same as that of all men, of the colorful men. It is red and yellow and black and blue and white, the same as all men with life in them, the men who have the feathers of the great spirit,” the old man said and nodded at Sarah as she approached the group with the female officer in tow. “Her spirit is colorful too. But his spirit is dying. None of the colors of the rainbow live in him now.”

The policeman frowned. “I can’t let you on the reservation.”

“What?” Charlie exclaimed. “Yes, the cut is infected. But otherwise, he has no symptoms of this disease. He’s no risk to anyone; he just needs antibiotics.”

“My responsibility is to the people on the reservation. We’ve already had to deal with too many of the infected. We don’t need to lose any more of our people to this outbreak.”

“Give him an escort,” the older man said. “I see in him a purpose. His spirit is dying, but he can still do good. You can lead him through our lands and send him to El Paso.”

The policeman sighed. He seemed frustrated with his father interfering in the inspection process, but at the same time, he didn’t argue with him. He turned to the female officer. “Susan, get a hold of Leonard. He can guide them through the Res.”

Jack and Charlie exchanged glances with Sarah. The policeman continued, “I’ll need to finish checking your vehicles and trailer. My son will be here soon, and assuming I don’t find anything bad in the vehicles, he’ll take you through the reservation. You won’t stop, you won’t deviate from the course he leads you on. If you do, well, you won’t live long enough to regret it. Do you agree to this?”

“Do we have a choice?” Jack asked.

The policeman smiled. “Of course you do! You can go back to Highway 160 and head east. Go around my reservation. Your choice.”

Before Jack could respond, Sarah said, “We’ll take the escort. Thank you.”

The police finished searching the vehicles and the trailer, and while they waited, Sarah put more antiseptic and a fresh bandage on Jack’s cut. A few minutes later, an old orange Ford pickup with patches of primer scattered around it rumbled up the road and stopped behind the police SUV. A tall, thin, dark-skinned boy got out of the truck and walked toward them. His close-cut hair and wiry build made it hard to determine his age. He could have been fifteen or twenty-five.

“Hi, Grandpa! Hi, Susan. Hey, Dad!”

The policeman walked to the boy and pulled him aside. They talked in hushed tones for a minute. The policeman shook his head, and Sarah heard him say, “No, it’s too dangerous.”

The boy kept speaking and finally wore his father down. They walked back to the group together. “This is my son, Leonard. He will escort you through the reservation. But he wants to do more than that.”

“I want to come with you,” Leonard said. “We haven’t been able to get new information for a few days now, and if I go with you, I can get some intel from people in El Paso and bring it back here. Plus, I can get you there without ever going through a big city. And in some areas, you’ll need someone like me to vouch for you palefaces, especially now. No one in the sticks trusted any outsiders before. It’s even worse now.”

The three Washburns traded glances and then nods of agreement. “Sounds good to us, Leonard,” Charlie answered for the group.

“I’m against this,” the policeman stated. “But we need information, and I know he’s been itching to go. Fact is, he’d probably run off on his own anyway.” He raised a finger. “If you put him in danger and get him hurt, I’ll find you, and you’ll pay. You understand me?”

“As one father to another, I understand,” Charlie said. “Not that I think your boy needs protecting, but if it’s in our power to do so, we will.” He stuck out his hand. “Promise.”

The policeman took his hand and shook it. “Okay, Leonard. Get them out of here.”

The boy smiled a broad, toothy grin, and ran to his truck. He grabbed a backpack from the bed and an AR-15 from the cab. On the way back to the group he handed the keys to his grandfather. “You remember how to drive it, Grandpa?” he asked.

“It was my truck once. It will remember me,” the old man said.

“Great! Thanks, Gramps,” Leonard said. “All right, guys. Let’s go. I’m with you in the Isuzu, I guess?”

Sarah seemed confused for a second. “Aren’t we just going to follow you?”

“Nah, it will be easier with fewer cars.”

“How will you get back here once you get your intel?” she persisted.

“I’ll sort that out later. Let’s roll before my dad changes his mind.”

She shrugged and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Shotgun!” Leonard called out and ran around to the passenger side. He looked at Charlie for approval. The old man just smiled, and Leonard climbed in.

“Hey, Jack,” Charlie called out and walked over to his son. Jack stopped and waited for him to draw near.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“Are you doing okay? You good to keep driving? I can drive the Mercedes if you want.”

Jack waved him off. “I’m fine. Still no zombie urges. Let’s stick to the plan.”

“All right. You let us know if you need help, though. We’re almost there; you just have to hang in there a little longer.”

Jack gave him a thumbs-up and walked back to the other SUV. Charlie climbed into the back seat of the Isuzu, and Sarah pulled onto the road.

The female officer backed the police SUV up enough for the vehicles to squeeze through, then pulled it forward after they passed. Leonard was beaming in the passenger’s seat, excited to be off on an adventure and away from the reservation.

43

Outside Cuchillo, New Mexico

April 3rd

The Washburns made it south and east with little trouble. After passing Cuchillo, New Mexico, they got onto I-25 toward El Paso. With around one hundred miles to go, using the interstates was unavoidable. They had to weave through several wrecks, sometimes using the push-bar bumper on the Mercedes to move cars out of the way. Bodies were lying on the road and in the median. Some looked like they’d been hit by cars, others had been shot. Everyone avoided looking at them, but it wasn’t always possible.

While Jack was clearing the cars at one spot, Charlie grabbed a hose and a couple of gas cans from the trailer and siphoned ten gallons of fuel from the wrecks, stepping over bodies as he went. He topped off the tanks on both vehicles and refilled the five-gallon jugs before they got moving again.

“Did you see all the brass lying around?” Leonard asked. “Lots of fighting to get south.”

“Yeah,” Charlie replied. “Makes me glad we went around Albuquerque. I bet it was a lot worse there.”

Sarah and Leonard nodded, silently wondering if they were going to have to fight their way through something soon. The youth checked his rifle to make sure it was ready to go.

Soon, they passed an orange electronic construction sign near the exit to the oddly-named New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences. The sign read:

MOVE CARS FROM ROAD

OR ELSE!

Charlie pointed to the antenna that stuck up from the back of the sign. “Remote access. Good sign someone up the road is alive!”

“Or else what, I wonder?” Sarah asked.

Leonard pointed to a car on its side just off the road. It looked like a bulldozer had shoved it violently from the roadway. “Or else it will get moved for you,” he said.

As they headed south, they saw more of the cars tossed casually aside. With the road clear, they sped up to seventy miles per hour. North of Radium Springs, they saw what was clearing the highway of stalled or abandoned cars. A snow plow led a convoy, with a line of military supply trucks following it. They heard a massive crash, and the plow sent an old Chevy Chevette flying off to the side of the road. The large plow barely shuddered and kept rolling down the road. They slowed their speed to fifty miles an hour to match the other vehicles and stayed in line behind the procession. A few minutes later they saw another programmable hazard sign.

This one read:

MILITARY CHECKPOINT

50 miles

It then cycled to say:

BE

PREPARED

TO STOP

“Well, I guess it’s going to get fun soon,” Charlie said.

They rode in silence for a while, each person lost in their thoughts. As they passed through Las Cruces, New Mexico, the snow plow pulled off at an exit and turned to head back north. The military trucks peeled off and went right, toward a Walmart Supercenter. Several other, similar vehicles were already lined up at the dock, loading supplies into the cargo compartments. The military presence was getting more pronounced the farther south they drove.

They passed the rest of the way through Las Cruces, following directions to stay to the left to merge with I-10 East to go to El Paso. They were getting close. Two miles over the Texas border the traffic slowed down to thirty, then twenty.

They passed another sign, this one larger and more foreboding:

Slow Down And Prepare For Inspection

VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

All traffic was being diverted at Exit 3, by an outlet mall. They slowed to ten miles an hour; then it was stop-and-go, then it was a dead stop for a few minutes at a time. Off to the right, they saw a Discount Tire with a long line of cars waiting for service.

“This is why I always told Jack to take care of his cars, to never let the tires get down to nothing. Get the brakes done before they need it. Fill the tank at half, never let it get down to empty,” Charlie said.

“You always told him to keep good tires on his car in case a zombie apocalypse broke out?” Leonard asked.

“No, smart ass, it was so he’d be ready for anything. An early snowstorm. A tornado. Whatever emergency might come along.”

“He hates it when I let the tank go down to E,” Sarah said. “Every time I do it he says, ‘One day this is going to bite you in the ass.’”

“Holy shit,” Charlie replied. “He actually listened to me. That’s exactly what I would say to him. I told him that if he ever ran out of gas that I’d…”

“Not come running to the rescue,” Sarah said, completing the sentence for Charlie. “He says that to me all the time too.”

“Will wonders never cease? It warms my heart to know he paid attention and carried it forward.”

“Why did you guys become so distant?” Sarah asked.

Charlie gave her a dirty look and stole a glance at the back seat. “Not in front of the kids.”

“I’m serious, Charlie. Jack won’t tell me, and I’d like to know.”

“I’m serious too. I won’t go into this stuff right now. Let’s just get through this checkpoint.”

Sarah looked in the mirror and saw Leonard, who mouthed the word “Awkward” to her. At least, that’s what she thought he said. In any case, she smiled at the comic relief.

While they waited for the vehicles ahead of them to move, four soldiers came walking down the line, two on each side of the cars. On each side, one soldier used a mirror on a pole to check the underside of the vehicles while the other one watched the occupants of each car, rifle at the ready.

“What are they looking for?” Sarah asked.

“Robert De Niro,” Charlie replied and chuckled. Leonard and Sarah just stared at him. “You know, Cape Fear? No? Never mind then.”

“If you’re going to use Cape Fear you should use Robert Mitchum,” Sarah said. “Always go with the original.”

“Who’s Robert Mitchum?” Leonard asked from the back seat.

Charlie jerked a thumb toward Leonard. “You see?” he asked Sarah. “You have to know your audience. I figured Lenny here would be clueless about ol’ Mitch.”

Leonard persisted, “So, he’s an actor?”

“Yeah, he’s famous for playing drunken tough guys in westerns in the sixties,” Sarah said.

“I thought that was Dean Martin.”

“Well, yeah, he did that, too. In fact, I think most of the guys back then were drunk for their movies.”

Charlie scoffed. “That was back when being a functioning alcoholic didn’t make you a pariah. Now you have to beg everyone to forgive you for all the shit you can’t remember.”

“It’s called atonement, Charlie. It’s one of the twelve steps,” Sarah said.

“It’s bullshit,” he said, all the humor gone from his voice.

Gunshots from behind them made them jump in their seats. All three craned their heads to see what was happening, but the trailer blocked their view. Sarah got a glimpse in the side view mirror as a woman ran away from one of the cars farther back in the line. She fired a pistol blindly behind her as she ran, just coming into view for the other two to see. A three-round burst from one of the soldiers’ guns put her onto the ground. She tried to crawl to the edge of the off-ramp, but the soldier walked over and knocked her from her knees to her belly with his boot. He stood over her and fired one round into her head. Her legs twitched, and she lay still.

“Violators will be shot. No questions asked,” Charlie mumbled.

“Shit,” Leonard said, dragging the word out to a few seconds in length.

“You got that right,” Sarah replied.

She considered getting out and checking on Jack in the Mercedes in front of them but thought better of it as she saw the woman’s body in the mirror, lying in a pool of blood on the off-ramp. She didn’t want anyone getting a twitchy trigger finger.

They pulled forward a few feet at a time every five minutes or so. After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the front of the line. A soldier walked up to Jack’s window. He hit the button to roll it down as the man approached.

“How many in your group?” he asked.

“Four,” Jack replied. “Me, and the three people in the car behind me.”

The soldier looked back at the Isuzu. “Pull forward, to the left,” he instructed Jack. He waved Sarah forward, motioning for her to stop when she pulled even with him. She rolled down her window.

“Put it park and turn off the motor. Leave any weapons in the vehicle, dismount and come with me please,” the man said, and turned and walked up to Jack, repeating the same thing.

Several other soldiers walked around the vehicles, inspecting them again, looking inside this time. One raised his rifle at the door of the trailer while another pulled it open. They did a quick sweep of the interior, then walked back to the group.

“All clear, Lieutenant,” one of the men said.

“Good,” the lieutenant said. He turned to the Washburns. “I’m Lieutenant Gordon. Welcome to the first checkpoint for the greater El Paso Safe Zone. Let me tell you what happens next. If you’ll follow me…” He turned without waiting for a response and walked into a collapsible canvas structure, twelve feet square. It was not quite a tent, but more than a canopy. Two large flaps were tied open. He walked through the opening, not bothering to see if the group followed.

Leonard looked around. There was a similar structure on the other side of the off-ramp, and another set of soldiers led a group from a minivan into it. He scurried after the rest of his group, not wanting to miss any instructions. Inside they found a bank of LED work lights focused on one area. A soldier stood by a table with a clipboard; another had a tray of devices on a big, folding plastic table, while a third was messing around with colored cards and stacks of paper at another table.

“This is the entry team,” the lieutenant said. “They will inspect each of you, looking for bites and signs of infection. If we clear you, you pass to Inspection Point Two. If we don’t, you turn around and go back to where you’re from. Am I clear?”

“Yes—” Sarah started to say.

“Good. I’ll see you outside when you’re done.”

The lieutenant left them with Sarah’s mouth hanging open. Another uniformed man walked over to her. “Name?” he asked.

“Sarah Washburn.”

A second man pressed a probe against her head in several places. “Hold still,” he directed. “I’m just getting your temperature.” A few seconds passed, and he said, “Temp normal.”

The first man made notes on the paper on the clipboard.

“Come over to the lights please,” Clipboard said, holding his arm out and directing her to the far side of the enclosure. “Strip,” he said.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “You don’t get past this exit unless you complete the inspection. Your choice.”

“All the way?” she asked.

“All the way.”

She bristled at the violation but kicked her shoes off and started pulling her shirt over her head so the inspector could do his thing.

Charlie turned his back to the scene. He jabbed Leonard in the ribs. “Turn around, Lenny.”

Leonard blushed and turned to face the entrance with Charlie.

“Hold your arms to the side and spread your legs just past shoulder width, please,” the inspector directed as he put on a pair of black latex gloves. He returned the electronic thermometer to the tray and grabbed a UV cob light. Clicking it on, he scanned her with it, running his hands over her skin, starting with her scalp and face, checking every inch of her body. Jack clenched his jaw, but the soldier was clinical in his approach, not lingering longer than was necessary at any spot. Sarah locked eyes with Jack, and he held them there, trying to tell her she wasn’t alone.

“You can lower your arms,” the soldier said, transitioning to her back. She covered her breasts with her left arm and her pubic area with her right hand.

The inspector finished at the base of her legs. “Feet together,” he ordered, grabbing her right ankle. “Lift your foot, please.” He scanned the sole of her foot and released it. He grabbed the left ankle, and she lifted it before he asked. He stood up. “Go ahead and get dressed.”

He turned to Clipboard while Sarah hurriedly pulled her underwear on. “She’s clean. No bites. No photoreaction.”

Clipboard made several notes on the paper and handed the clipboard off to the third soldier, who handed another one back to him with a clean sheet on it.

“Who’s next?” he called out.

“I am,” Charlie said.

Clipboard turned around to find Charlie standing naked in front of him. Despite his serious demeanor, he broke out laughing. “Jesus, old man, buy me a drink first, all right? Why don’t you give me your name?”

“Charles Washburn. But you can call me Charlie.” He wore an exaggerated grin.

“Don’t make this weird, all right Charlie? I’ve seen enough old-man sack to last for the rest of my life.”

The soldiers repeated the inspection procedure with Charlie while the one with Sarah’s clipboard pulled her aside and handed her the form and an orange card with C117 written on it.

“This is your inspection report and ID number. Do not lose these or the next inspection station will make you come back here and go through this again. At the next station, they’ll inspect you the same way, to make sure we didn’t miss anything and to ensure you didn’t get into trouble between here and there. Just so you know, there are four more inspection points. At the final one, you’re going to have to decide between service or citizen.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you choose service, you’ll be taken inside the base, billeted and given a work assignment. You’ll get food and water, but you’ll be put to work helping to secure the city. If you want to chill and ride this out, you’ll go to refugee camps. They have them all over, mostly in city parks, also at the UTEP campus. FEMA is overseeing those. Think about it. Service would be what I’d recommend. Those FEMA camps will be death zones when the infection breaks through.”

“You sound like it’s a foregone conclusion that it will,” she said.

“This shit never stays contained. How do you think we wound up with Ebola in the US a few years ago?” The soldier turned back to the table with the forms and cards on them, placing a blank sheet on the clipboard from which he’d just taken Sarah’s form.

Jack walked over to Sarah. “You okay?” he asked. “I hate that every time we turn around, someone’s prodding you.”

“Step away from the Cleared Citizen!” a soldier shouted, raising his weapon up to his shoulder as he advanced rapidly from the edge of the tent. The barrel was only inches from Jack’s temple.

He held up his hands and stepped back. “I’m fine,” Sarah replied, giving the soldier a stare that would melt ice. “I get it. It should make us feel better, right? That they're thorough?” The soldier lowered the rifle and edged backward, maintaining eye contact with Jack.

Sarah lowered her voice to a whisper that only Jack could hear. “Let’s just get you through this, okay?”

He nodded, then looked over her shoulder. Charlie’s inspection was complete, and he was walking their way in his shirt and boxers shorts, his pants in one hand and his inspection form and an orange card in the other.

“Easy peasy,” he said.

“Don’t you think you should put on your pants?” Jack asked.

“I’m just gonna have to take them off a couple miles up the road. It’s a time saver.”

The trio waited, backs turned, for Leonard to get through the process, and then it was Jack’s turn.

Clipboard waited while the inspector took Jack’s temperature. “One hundred,” he stated.

Clipboard raised his eyes and made a note on the paper. The inspector directed Jack over to the lights, where he stripped, putting his clothes on the nearby table.

The inspector clicked on the UV light and began his scan. “Hit!” he called out as he ran the light over Jack’s eyes. The soldiers in the room all jumped. A pair of armed men outside the entrance rushed in to join the ones already inside.

“Whoa!” Jack put his arms in front of him. “Whoa! I have an infected cut! That’s all!”

Clipboard looked around for a moment. “Stand down,” he said. The armed soldiers lowered their rifles, but did not leave the enclosure. Clipboard nodded at the soldier filling the clipboards with blank forms. “Go get the LT,” he said. He turned to the inspector. “Finish up.”

The inspection was complete, and Jack was tying his shoes when the lieutenant returned to the tent. “What’s the situation?” he asked.

“Positive UV test, sir,” Clipboard said. “Eyes and mouth. He has an infected wound on his arm that lights up.”

“Impossible,” the lieutenant protested. “He barely looks sick.”

“Temp is only one hundred, too.”

The lieutenant tilted his head a few degrees. “One-oh-two?” he asked.

“His temperature is only one hundred,” the inspector clarified.

“Odd,” the lieutenant said. “They’re normally boiling alive.” He turned to Jack. “When were you exposed?”

Jack did some mental math. “Seven days ago. On the twenty-seventh.”

The inspector looked at the lieutenant. “Do you think he’s immune? There’s no way he would take this long to turn. His temperature is nowhere near the limit. He’s got no other signs, aside from the UV hits.”

The lieutenant turned to the man at the table. “Yellow card. Take him to staging. They’ll decide if he should go on to Beaumont.” He turned and walked out.

“What does that mean?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, what does that mean?” Jack seconded.

“Here’s the deal,” Clipboard said. “You’re infected. I think you knew that already. Since you’re not pulling your hair out, I can forgive you for thinking it was just an infected cut. But it’s not, and you can’t go on.”

“So, we’ll go back,” Sarah said. “We’ll take our chances back in the, whatever, where we came from.”

“I’m afraid not,” Clipboard said. “Well, you three can. Your companion here might have an immunity to this thing. That makes him a valuable medical asset, and as of now, he’s the property of the US Government.”

“You can’t do this,” Jack said. “We’re leaving.”

The two armed soldiers stepped forward, menacing the group.

“Look, folks, here’s the deal. There’s a hospital a klick to the east that we’re using as a staging hospital. We’re sending other people there—people who need medical attention we can’t provide here. They have different tests they’ll run, and if it’s some kind of false positive, they’ll send you back here. If you’re really infected, you’ll be sent on to Beaumont Medical Center, where one of the scientists working to develop a cure will meet you for treatment.”

“What can they do?” Jack asked. “Is there a cure?”

“Not that I know of, but maybe you’re it, sir. That’s why you’re not leaving. We have a truck about to go to the staging hospital, so you all say your goodbyes. You have five minutes.”

44

Joshua W. Soto Physical Fitness Center, Fort Bliss, Texas.

April 5th

The Washburns made it south and east with little trouble. After passing Cuchillo, New Mexico, they got onto I-25 toward El Paso. With around one hundred miles to go, using the interstates was unavoidable. They had to weave through several wrecks, sometimes using the push-bar bumper on the Mercedes to move cars out of the way. Bodies were lying on the road and in the median. Some looked like they’d been hit by cars, others had been shot. Everyone avoided looking at them, but it wasn’t always possible.

While Jack was clearing the cars at one spot, Charlie grabbed a hose and a couple of gas cans from the trailer and siphoned ten gallons of fuel from the wrecks, stepping over bodies as he went. He topped off the tanks on both vehicles and refilled the five-gallon jugs before they got moving again.

“Did you see all the brass lying around?” Leonard asked. “Lots of fighting to get south.”

“Yeah,” Charlie replied. “Makes me glad we went around Albuquerque. I bet it was a lot worse there.”

Sarah and Leonard nodded, silently wondering if they were going to have to fight their way through something soon. The youth checked his rifle to make sure it was ready to go.

Soon, they passed an orange electronic construction sign near the exit to the oddly-named New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences. The sign read:

MOVE CARS FROM ROAD

OR ELSE!

Charlie pointed to the antenna that stuck up from the back of the sign. “Remote access. Good sign someone up the road is alive!”

“Or else what, I wonder?” Sarah asked.

Leonard pointed to a car on its side just off the road. It looked like a bulldozer had shoved it violently from the roadway. “Or else it will get moved for you,” he said.

As they headed south, they saw more of the cars tossed casually aside. With the road clear, they sped up to seventy miles per hour. North of Radium Springs, they saw what was clearing the highway of stalled or abandoned cars. A snow plow led a convoy, with a line of military supply trucks following it. They heard a massive crash, and the plow sent an old Chevy Chevette flying off to the side of the road. The large plow barely shuddered and kept rolling down the road. They slowed their speed to fifty miles an hour to match the other vehicles and stayed in line behind the procession. A few minutes later they saw another programmable hazard sign.

This one read:

MILITARY CHECKPOINT

50 miles

It then cycled to say:

BE

PREPARED

TO STOP

“Well, I guess it’s going to get fun soon,” Charlie said.

They rode in silence for a while, each person lost in their thoughts. As they passed through Las Cruces, New Mexico, the snow plow pulled off at an exit and turned to head back north. The military trucks peeled off and went right, toward a Walmart Supercenter. Several other, similar vehicles were already lined up at the dock, loading supplies into the cargo compartments. The military presence was getting more pronounced the farther south they drove.

They passed the rest of the way through Las Cruces, following directions to stay to the left to merge with I-10 East to go to El Paso. They were getting close. Two miles over the Texas border the traffic slowed down to thirty, then twenty.

They passed another sign, this one larger and more foreboding:

Slow Down And Prepare For Inspection

VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

All traffic was being diverted at Exit 3, by an outlet mall. They slowed to ten miles an hour; then it was stop-and-go, then it was a dead stop for a few minutes at a time. Off to the right, they saw a Discount Tire with a long line of cars waiting for service.

“This is why I always told Jack to take care of his cars, to never let the tires get down to nothing. Get the brakes done before they need it. Fill the tank at half, never let it get down to empty,” Charlie said.

“You always told him to keep good tires on his car in case a zombie apocalypse broke out?” Leonard asked.

“No, smart ass, it was so he’d be ready for anything. An early snowstorm. A tornado. Whatever emergency might come along.”

“He hates it when I let the tank go down to E,” Sarah said. “Every time I do it he says, ‘One day this is going to bite you in the ass.’”

“Holy shit,” Charlie replied. “He actually listened to me. That’s exactly what I would say to him. I told him that if he ever ran out of gas that I’d…”

“Not come running to the rescue,” Sarah said, completing the sentence for Charlie. “He says that to me all the time too.”

“Will wonders never cease? It warms my heart to know he paid attention and carried it forward.”

“Why did you guys become so distant?” Sarah asked.

Charlie gave her a dirty look and stole a glance at the back seat. “Not in front of the kids.”

“I’m serious, Charlie. Jack won’t tell me, and I’d like to know.”

“I’m serious too. I won’t go into this stuff right now. Let’s just get through this checkpoint.”

Sarah looked in the mirror and saw Leonard, who mouthed the word “Awkward” to her. At least, that’s what she thought he said. In any case, she smiled at the comic relief.

While they waited for the vehicles ahead of them to move, four soldiers came walking down the line, two on each side of the cars. On each side, one soldier used a mirror on a pole to check the underside of the vehicles while the other one watched the occupants of each car, rifle at the ready.

“What are they looking for?” Sarah asked.

“Robert De Niro,” Charlie replied and chuckled. Leonard and Sarah just stared at him. “You know, Cape Fear? No? Never mind then.”

“If you’re going to use Cape Fear you should use Robert Mitchum,” Sarah said. “Always go with the original.”

“Who’s Robert Mitchum?” Leonard asked from the back seat.

Charlie jerked a thumb toward Leonard. “You see?” he asked Sarah. “You have to know your audience. I figured Lenny here would be clueless about ol’ Mitch.”

Leonard persisted, “So, he’s an actor?”

“Yeah, he’s famous for playing drunken tough guys in westerns in the sixties,” Sarah said.

“I thought that was Dean Martin.”

“Well, yeah, he did that, too. In fact, I think most of the guys back then were drunk for their movies.”

Charlie scoffed. “That was back when being a functioning alcoholic didn’t make you a pariah. Now you have to beg everyone to forgive you for all the shit you can’t remember.”

“It’s called atonement, Charlie. It’s one of the twelve steps,” Sarah said.

“It’s bullshit,” he said, all the humor gone from his voice.

Gunshots from behind them made them jump in their seats. All three craned their heads to see what was happening, but the trailer blocked their view. Sarah got a glimpse in the side view mirror as a woman ran away from one of the cars farther back in the line. She fired a pistol blindly behind her as she ran, just coming into view for the other two to see. A three-round burst from one of the soldiers’ guns put her onto the ground. She tried to crawl to the edge of the off-ramp, but the soldier walked over and knocked her from her knees to her belly with his boot. He stood over her and fired one round into her head. Her legs twitched, and she lay still.

“Violators will be shot. No questions asked,” Charlie mumbled.

“Shit,” Leonard said, dragging the word out to a few seconds in length.

“You got that right,” Sarah replied.

She considered getting out and checking on Jack in the Mercedes in front of them but thought better of it as she saw the woman’s body in the mirror, lying in a pool of blood on the off-ramp. She didn’t want anyone getting a twitchy trigger finger.

They pulled forward a few feet at a time every five minutes or so. After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the front of the line. A soldier walked up to Jack’s window. He hit the button to roll it down as the man approached.

“How many in your group?” he asked.

“Four,” Jack replied. “Me, and the three people in the car behind me.”

The soldier looked back at the Isuzu. “Pull forward, to the left,” he instructed Jack. He waved Sarah forward, motioning for her to stop when she pulled even with him. She rolled down her window.

“Put it park and turn off the motor. Leave any weapons in the vehicle, dismount and come with me please,” the man said, and turned and walked up to Jack, repeating the same thing.

Several other soldiers walked around the vehicles, inspecting them again, looking inside this time. One raised his rifle at the door of the trailer while another pulled it open. They did a quick sweep of the interior, then walked back to the group.

“All clear, Lieutenant,” one of the men said.

“Good,” the lieutenant said. He turned to the Washburns. “I’m Lieutenant Gordon. Welcome to the first checkpoint for the greater El Paso Safe Zone. Let me tell you what happens next. If you’ll follow me…” He turned without waiting for a response and walked into a collapsible canvas structure, twelve feet square. It was not quite a tent, but more than a canopy. Two large flaps were tied open. He walked through the opening, not bothering to see if the group followed.

Leonard looked around. There was a similar structure on the other side of the off-ramp, and another set of soldiers led a group from a minivan into it. He scurried after the rest of his group, not wanting to miss any instructions. Inside they found a bank of LED work lights focused on one area. A soldier stood by a table with a clipboard; another had a tray of devices on a big, folding plastic table, while a third was messing around with colored cards and stacks of paper at another table.

“This is the entry team,” the lieutenant said. “They will inspect each of you, looking for bites and signs of infection. If we clear you, you pass to Inspection Point Two. If we don’t, you turn around and go back to where you’re from. Am I clear?”

“Yes—” Sarah started to say.

“Good. I’ll see you outside when you’re done.”

The lieutenant left them with Sarah’s mouth hanging open. Another uniformed man walked over to her. “Name?” he asked.

“Sarah Washburn.”

A second man pressed a probe against her head in several places. “Hold still,” he directed. “I’m just getting your temperature.” A few seconds passed, and he said, “Temp normal.”

The first man made notes on the paper on the clipboard.

“Come over to the lights please,” Clipboard said, holding his arm out and directing her to the far side of the enclosure. “Strip,” he said.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “You don’t get past this exit unless you complete the inspection. Your choice.”

“All the way?” she asked.

“All the way.”

She bristled at the violation but kicked her shoes off and started pulling her shirt over her head so the inspector could do his thing.

Charlie turned his back to the scene. He jabbed Leonard in the ribs. “Turn around, Lenny.”

Leonard blushed and turned to face the entrance with Charlie.

“Hold your arms to the side and spread your legs just past shoulder width, please,” the inspector directed as he put on a pair of black latex gloves. He returned the electronic thermometer to the tray and grabbed a UV cob light. Clicking it on, he scanned her with it, running his hands over her skin, starting with her scalp and face, checking every inch of her body. Jack clenched his jaw, but the soldier was clinical in his approach, not lingering longer than was necessary at any spot. Sarah locked eyes with Jack, and he held them there, trying to tell her she wasn’t alone.

“You can lower your arms,” the soldier said, transitioning to her back. She covered her breasts with her left arm and her pubic area with her right hand.

The inspector finished at the base of her legs. “Feet together,” he ordered, grabbing her right ankle. “Lift your foot, please.” He scanned the sole of her foot and released it. He grabbed the left ankle, and she lifted it before he asked. He stood up. “Go ahead and get dressed.”

He turned to Clipboard while Sarah hurriedly pulled her underwear on. “She’s clean. No bites. No photoreaction.”

Clipboard made several notes on the paper and handed the clipboard off to the third soldier, who handed another one back to him with a clean sheet on it.

“Who’s next?” he called out.

“I am,” Charlie said.

Clipboard turned around to find Charlie standing naked in front of him. Despite his serious demeanor, he broke out laughing. “Jesus, old man, buy me a drink first, all right? Why don’t you give me your name?”

“Charles Washburn. But you can call me Charlie.” He wore an exaggerated grin.

“Don’t make this weird, all right Charlie? I’ve seen enough old-man sack to last for the rest of my life.”

The soldiers repeated the inspection procedure with Charlie while the one with Sarah’s clipboard pulled her aside and handed her the form and an orange card with C117 written on it.

“This is your inspection report and ID number. Do not lose these or the next inspection station will make you come back here and go through this again. At the next station, they’ll inspect you the same way, to make sure we didn’t miss anything and to ensure you didn’t get into trouble between here and there. Just so you know, there are four more inspection points. At the final one, you’re going to have to decide between service or citizen.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you choose service, you’ll be taken inside the base, billeted and given a work assignment. You’ll get food and water, but you’ll be put to work helping to secure the city. If you want to chill and ride this out, you’ll go to refugee camps. They have them all over, mostly in city parks, also at the UTEP campus. FEMA is overseeing those. Think about it. Service would be what I’d recommend. Those FEMA camps will be death zones when the infection breaks through.”

“You sound like it’s a foregone conclusion that it will,” she said.

“This shit never stays contained. How do you think we wound up with Ebola in the US a few years ago?” The soldier turned back to the table with the forms and cards on them, placing a blank sheet on the clipboard from which he’d just taken Sarah’s form.

Jack walked over to Sarah. “You okay?” he asked. “I hate that every time we turn around, someone’s prodding you.”

“Step away from the Cleared Citizen!” a soldier shouted, raising his weapon up to his shoulder as he advanced rapidly from the edge of the tent. The barrel was only inches from Jack’s temple.

He held up his hands and stepped back. “I’m fine,” Sarah replied, giving the soldier a stare that would melt ice. “I get it. It should make us feel better, right? That they're thorough?” The soldier lowered the rifle and edged backward, maintaining eye contact with Jack.

Sarah lowered her voice to a whisper that only Jack could hear. “Let’s just get you through this, okay?”

He nodded, then looked over her shoulder. Charlie’s inspection was complete, and he was walking their way in his shirt and boxers shorts, his pants in one hand and his inspection form and an orange card in the other.

“Easy peasy,” he said.

“Don’t you think you should put on your pants?” Jack asked.

“I’m just gonna have to take them off a couple miles up the road. It’s a time saver.”

The trio waited, backs turned, for Leonard to get through the process, and then it was Jack’s turn.

Clipboard waited while the inspector took Jack’s temperature. “One hundred,” he stated.

Clipboard raised his eyes and made a note on the paper. The inspector directed Jack over to the lights, where he stripped, putting his clothes on the nearby table.

The inspector clicked on the UV light and began his scan. “Hit!” he called out as he ran the light over Jack’s eyes. The soldiers in the room all jumped. A pair of armed men outside the entrance rushed in to join the ones already inside.

“Whoa!” Jack put his arms in front of him. “Whoa! I have an infected cut! That’s all!”

Clipboard looked around for a moment. “Stand down,” he said. The armed soldiers lowered their rifles, but did not leave the enclosure. Clipboard nodded at the soldier filling the clipboards with blank forms. “Go get the LT,” he said. He turned to the inspector. “Finish up.”

The inspection was complete, and Jack was tying his shoes when the lieutenant returned to the tent. “What’s the situation?” he asked.

“Positive UV test, sir,” Clipboard said. “Eyes and mouth. He has an infected wound on his arm that lights up.”

“Impossible,” the lieutenant protested. “He barely looks sick.”

“Temp is only one hundred, too.”

The lieutenant tilted his head a few degrees. “One-oh-two?” he asked.

“His temperature is only one hundred,” the inspector clarified.

“Odd,” the lieutenant said. “They’re normally boiling alive.” He turned to Jack. “When were you exposed?”

Jack did some mental math. “Seven days ago. On the twenty-seventh.”

The inspector looked at the lieutenant. “Do you think he’s immune? There’s no way he would take this long to turn. His temperature is nowhere near the limit. He’s got no other signs, aside from the UV hits.”

The lieutenant turned to the man at the table. “Yellow card. Take him to staging. They’ll decide if he should go on to Beaumont.” He turned and walked out.

“What does that mean?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, what does that mean?” Jack seconded.

“Here’s the deal,” Clipboard said. “You’re infected. I think you knew that already. Since you’re not pulling your hair out, I can forgive you for thinking it was just an infected cut. But it’s not, and you can’t go on.”

“So, we’ll go back,” Sarah said. “We’ll take our chances back in the, whatever, where we came from.”

“I’m afraid not,” Clipboard said. “Well, you three can. Your companion here might have an immunity to this thing. That makes him a valuable medical asset, and as of now, he’s the property of the US Government.”

“You can’t do this,” Jack said. “We’re leaving.”

The two armed soldiers stepped forward, menacing the group.

“Look, folks, here’s the deal. There’s a hospital a klick to the east that we’re using as a staging hospital. We’re sending other people there—people who need medical attention we can’t provide here. They have different tests they’ll run, and if it’s some kind of false positive, they’ll send you back here. If you’re really infected, you’ll be sent on to Beaumont Medical Center, where one of the scientists working to develop a cure will meet you for treatment.”

“What can they do?” Jack asked. “Is there a cure?”

“Not that I know of, but maybe you’re it, sir. That’s why you’re not leaving. We have a truck about to go to the staging hospital, so you all say your goodbyes. You have five minutes.”

45

Near Edwardsville, Alabama

April 8th

“Switch! Switch!” Toby’s shout blasted, exceeding the sounds of the road and screaming infected. Ian secured his lanyard to a ring on the ceiling and hooked it down on the belly of his tactical vest so he could swing out the door and over the roof to clear the way. The only problem would be if the door hit something, he’d be dissected into three sections. Not a situation he wanted to be in. Plus, he didn’t want to discard the door, they had a lot of miles yet to go.

Jose was more than happy to drop back down into the cabin. Toby leapt halfway out the hole, letting Jose lock him in while swinging an extendable baton into the face of an infected who was trying to follow Jose in. Then he was through the hatch, using his armored body and sheer strength to swing his baton in one hand and his other blasting all fourteen rounds of his 1911’s magazine. There was a slight pause for the magazine switch and then more firing.

Ian smiled as he saw the magazine drop in the hole and knew that Toby was in his zone. He was their brawler, and when on fire, his blocky form flowed like fresh cream over hot peach pie and everything clicked. He was the guy who showed up late to the fight and cleaned house after you got your ass kicked, and then thanked you for wearing them down for him. In seconds, the roof was clear and he was picking them off before they blocked the Hummer.

“Holy crap, I didn’t see that one,” Jose said between gasps. “This brawler shit is more for guys like Tobes and you than for people like me.” He paused and then exclaimed, “Oh! I gotta tell you what I saw. About a hundred yards further on the right is a goat path going up and to the right. It goes over that hill there… There, you can just see it at the crest at one o’clock.” Jose pointed.

Kinsey slammed another body and swerved around a second one before she risked a glance toward where he pointed. “I see it.”

“Good, it just gradually Ys off the road right…over, there,” he said, still pointing as the hundred yards had passed and they were almost already past it. What he could see up higher in open air was much different from what they could see from inside behind the vehicle’s tinted glass.

“Close it up, Toby,” Ian said into his helmet com, and he responded immediately by falling into his seat and slamming the hatch shut.

“Buckle in!” Kinsey shouted. “It’s my turn. L-O-fucking-L!”

“You know, in real life you are just supposed to laugh out loud instead abbreviating laugh out loud,” Ian teased, smiling at the freak named Kinsey.

“Yeah, but I am living the best fucking video game ever right now, so we’re playin’ by my rules.”

“Kinsey! People are dying out there, for Christ’s sake; show some compassion.”

“Can’t,” she shook her head. “I… ca—I mean, I won’t. Not yet,” she replied and Ian nodded. They had all put up a shield for sanity’s sake. Without it, they might as well have joined the infected outside.

The trail was old and nobody else had spotted it, which was evidenced by the small saplings they had to mow down in the center of the wheel ruts. It got steeper, but the surface was solid and straight.

The Hummer popped through a line of trees at the crest of the hill and out onto the utility easement. The way was clear. Kinsey motioned to the side view mirror. “Four vehicles on our six,” she stated. “Following our lead.”

Ian glanced into the mirrors outside his small window and saw the trucks. He was hopeful that they’d make it, but now, the fewer trucks around them the better. Kinsey slowed down and let the vehicles pass. Every car waved as they flew by, knowing that it was their maneuver that granted them a couple more minutes of life.

“Need to release, boss,” Toby said. He opened the door, and the rest of the group followed. The woods looked clear and quiet as, one by one, they satisfied their natural functions. Ian looked back at the flats and noticed that no other trucks had made it up the slope, other than the four they had let pass. That probably meant…

“Load up!” Ian shouted when he heard the first screams of infected that had followed the trail of the escaping trucks. The twenty feet that he’d wandered to smoke a cigarette suddenly seemed too far from the safety of the truck as the sounds of pounding feet caused him to bolt like a rabbit.

Ian expected one or two to come over the hill, but en masse like that was too much. If they tried to fight, they’d be swarmed under a pile of teeth and nails, of course so would slowing down. He jumped into the passenger seat as Kinsey took off. Only a couple pairs of hands slapped the sides of the Humvee before they pulled out of range. They drove for an hour before they got to finish their piss break.

Man, did I need that cigarette, Ian said to himself.

* * *

It took until the next afternoon to get all the way to Talladega. The safe house was remote, secure, and unbreached. Showers and deep sleeps were in order before they planned their next steps.

The bunker was huge and appeared to have been built by a distributor of some sort with large, open spaces containing forklifts, as well as full-sized loading bays that were currently empty of trucks.

It was also big enough to have its own motor pool area, which they had to check out. While their own rig was still solid, it had been put through a lot, especially the tires. There was a shimmy in the front end that implied they were running on the run-flat portion of the tire or that the Hummer had a broken strut. Thankfully, they never had the opportunity to run at highway speeds or they’d have known for sure.

The lights revealed a large concrete garage, one wall lined with vehicles. The far wall was solid, with the exception of one massive overhead door.

“What the?” Kinsey asked.

“Pretty great isn’t it? I saw this last night when we got here,” Ian said and saw that Kinsey was drawn toward a uniquely large truck that sported eleven-thousand-pound axels. It was a four-wheel drive with four twenty-two-inch wheels surrounded by puncture-resistant tires.

“It’s a little big, don’t you think?” Ian asked, making a joke like she was actually thinking of taking the monster. Then she surprised him again.

“It’s exactly big enough. Look down here.” She pointed at the extendable armature, which had steel wheels designed to drop down and ride the rails. “This beast, this beautiful beast, is our best chance at making it the next ten miles, let alone all the way to El Paso.”

“I don’t think so, Kinsey. It doesn’t look mobile enough to me,” Ian said, trying to imagine this monster going off road.

“Oh, it’s mobile enough and can go places that other vehicles can’t go.” She looked at her boss and smiled. “I’ll start hauling gear from the other truck. Look where the air intake is on this muffer,” which was Kinsey’s version of “motherfucker.” It wasn’t the F-Bomb as much as the “mother” portion that bothered her. “We could go through five feet of water without stalling. This is way better than the Hummer, and you can take that to the bank.”

“You’re sure about this?” Ian asked, still uncertain about taking the behemoth.

“Oh yeah. We’re going to set a new post-apocalyptic trend, I guarantee. We’ll be the Joneses, and everybody will be in a hurry to catch up. Look, it even has a cow catcher on the front and extra fuel tanks in back. There are dirt bikes over there we could hoist in the back with the crane arm for recon or exfil, if things get really desperate. This truck has fucking apocalypse written all over it.”

Ian sighed, allowing her enthusiasm to make his decision. The idea of riding the rest of the way in that truck brought a smile to his lips.

Before they did anything, though, they all needed to shower and get a few hours of deep sleep. Then, they could lay out their way ahead. The next safe house was in Shreveport, and bypassing it was not an option. El Paso was simply too far to go, and the road was a lot rougher than it used to be.

* * *

The next morning Ian had to admit that it was nice riding so high in an air-conditioned, four-door semi cab. By sticking to the rails, they only came across small groups of both infected and uninfected. It still took them three days to reach Shreveport, where they took advantage of the safe house with a full twenty-four hours off-duty. There were still some news sources out there, though most of them seemed to be independent or pirate bands. The shortwave picked up a guy in Ohio who kept screaming about this being the end of the world, as if nobody had actually noticed.

“Brilliant observation, dickhead, now shut the fuck up,” Toby said on the mic. The man did quiet, but only long enough for a man in Minnesota to claim this was God’s beautiful vindication and the beginning of new life on Earth. That caught Ian’s attention for a minute until he keyed his mic so they could hear him taking a bong hit.

“Is that what’s left in the world, a bunch of idiots?” Kinsey spat.

“It’s pretty much all we had before, so why would it be any different?” Jose replied sarcastically.

After a few hours of rest, the sat phone buzzed and Ian picked it up. “Yes, it’s us in the Shreveport safe house,” he replied to the doctor’s demands on the phone. “Yes, I still have my crew.” Ian wondered why the doctor was so concerned about the crew, unless it was his way of ensuring the satchel was still with them—the stupid satchel that Toby picked off the shoulder of a dead girl by accident.

“I would be uncomfortable telling you we could make it in less than a week, sir,” Ian said, answering his client’s question about their arrival time. “The situation out here is extreme, to say the least. If it’s urgent we could possibly meet up with a helicopter or a plane if you—Yes, sir. I will, sir.”

Ian hung up the phone, knowing that his new boss was an asshole and their contract was tenuous.

46

Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

April 12th

Ram hated needles with a passion. He’d always worried about getting diabetes because his dad was diabetic. He remembered his father having to inject himself with insulin, and he knew if it came down to it and he was diabetic, he’d probably die before willfully sticking himself every day. Needles. He rather have a colonoscopy than stick himself.

Ram shook his head, what a dumb fucking thing to worry about right now. He sat up in the hospital bed. All kinds of tubes were attached to his left arm, which resembled a pin cushion.

“Fuck!” He ran a hand through his dark hair. It was already longer than he’d let it grow in years. Since the rent-a-soldiers had dropped him off at this hospital—or whatever the hell it was—he’d been constantly poked and prodded. Not an inch of him had been untouched by biohazard-suited hands. Now he knew how those poor fucks that claimed to be abducted and probed by aliens felt.

“Fuck!” Ram growled again, to no one in particular. His body was sore. Who knew what kind of shit they injected in him, trying to find a cure for this virus that was raging across the world. The door to his room opened, and a soldier in a biohazard suit stepped inside followed by a nurse, also wearing a bio suit, who carried a tray of food. Breakfast.

“Feeding time at the zoo,” Ram smirked. His right hand and left leg were cuffed to the bed with leather restraints. He’d seen this too many times on hospital overtimes. Now he was the prisoner. It sucked.

“How are you feeling today, Ram?” the nurse asked as she set the tray down on a small bedside table and rolled it across his lap.

“Like shit, Chloe,” Ram said, staring down at the food on the tray. The breakfasts were always great. Steak, eggs, potatoes, and orange juice and milk. They had to keep him healthy so they could continue to suck his blood. “How are things outside?”

“Same,” the nurse replied quietly.

“Hmmm…” Ram looked over at the big soldier, who carried an M4 across his chest. “Any word on my family? It’s been weeks.”

“Nothing yet,” the soldier said. “The doctor told me to tell you they have a squad out looking for them.”

“The doctor.” Ram picked up the dull butter knife from his tray and made a clumsy attempt to cut the steak. He was denied real cutlery after he tried to escape his first day there. “The doctor says a lot of things.” He eventually cut a piece of steak and shoved it in his mouth. Not bad. “What about my partner?”

“She’s fine,” the soldier, a sergeant by the name of Duckett, said curtly. “They have her working in another area.”

“Working?” Ram took a quick swig of the orange juice.

“She was a nurse before all this,” Chloe answered as she checked the machines monitoring his vitals.

“Oh yeah.” Ram took another drink. “She was a Navy medic.”

“Corpsman,” the sergeant corrected him.

“Can I see her?” Ram shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Please.”

“I’ll ask the doctor.”

“You do that. Ask ol’ Doc Subway.”

“Sanjay,” Sergeant Duckett corrected him again.

“Doc Sanjay,” Ram nodded. “Please.”

“I’ll run it by him,” the soldier said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

“Right.” Ram took another drink from the orange juice. “Do I get exercise time today?”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant glanced at his watch. Ram was allowed an hour of exercise a day. He guessed the powers that be wanted him in shape as they drained his blood. The stress of not being able to get to his family or know their fate had caused him to lose weight. Plus, he figured it wouldn’t do his family any good if he pitied himself and just wasted away. He started eating and working out during the allotted hour. If they weren’t studying him for a cure to whatever was turning people into rage-infected maniacs, Ram swore he was an inmate in some kind of black ops prison.

“Exercise time is at thirteen-hundred hours.”

“Swell.” Ram finished his breakfast and lay back in his bed. “I’m full. Give my regards to the kitchen staff.”

The nurse quickly finished checking Ram’s vitals and scooped up his tray.

“How am I, Chloe?”

“You’re doing good, Ram.” She gave him a weak smile and turned toward the door. The sergeant opened it for her, and then followed the nurse out. Ram heard the lock on the other side of the door slide into place with a loud click. The correctional officer slumped back in the hospital bed and tried to get comfortable. Bored, he grabbed the remote for the wall-mounted TV off the side table that held his plastic urinal. Every time he pissed in the damn plastic tube a nurse would come in and take it away to be analyzed. Same with his bed pan. Ram had been deemed too much of an escape risk to be escorted to the restroom every time he had to go. It was his fault. He’d tried to escape on more than one trip to the toilet. Now it was just easier to let him shit and piss in tubes and bedpans.

Flipping through the channels, he found the stations were just prerecorded programming that whoever ran this facility replayed. He dropped the remote back on the table as a rerun of Judge Judy played on the wall screen. Some dickhead had let his Rottweiler out and it bit some other dickhead on a scooter. Ram had seen this episode at least three times this week. He knew he really was in hell right now. Glancing over to the camera that hung above the doorway, he flipped it the bird. Even though it seemed to the staff that he was finally broken and going along with their plan, Ram was still trying to figure another way to escape and find his family. He hoped that Jesse was still nearby and okay. Maybe he could somehow get to her, and they both could make their way back home.

47

Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

April 12th

Unlike Ram, Jesse hadn’t tried to escape when the military contractors brought them to the medical facility. She wanted to let her captors, for lack of a better word, think she was compliant and possibly gain some of their trust. Even after Dr. Sanjay’s very invasive examination, she still kept to her charade of being just another sheep. After the first week of pointless exams and blood tests, she was deemed free of infection, but of no real medical value to Sanjay and his team. Seeing they were about to release her, and knowing it wouldn’t be good, Jesse told one of the other doctors that she’d been a nurse on a biohazard team in the Navy. This seemed to impress the doctor, a woman by the name of Wallace, who then passed the information on to Dr. Sanjay. A nerve-wracking hour later, Wallace returned to the small room where they kept Jesse and made her an offer.

The correctional officer just nodded as the blonde-haired doctor told her she could stay at the facility and work in the lower levels with the infected patients. Any problems, Wallace nodded at the two soldiers in MOPP gear that stood on either side of the door, holding M4 rifles, and she would be dealt with. The doctor didn’t explain how; she didn’t need to. Jesse smiled to herself, hoping that her plan to find Ram and escape this shithole would work.

It had been at least three weeks since soldiers on the bridge had captured them. They were lucky enough to remain together when Sanjay’s people vacated the CDC in Atlanta and moved to a secured facility in El Paso. It was almost as if they’d forgotten that they’d come in together, and she was simply another team member.

Jesse had been put to work helping take blood samples from the restrained infected. It was a horrible and physically demanding job. Several of the doctors, nurses, and soldiers had been attacked while trying to draw blood from the infected. They were starting to lose people every day to the virus—or parasite, or whatever the hell it was. More soldiers would come in and put down the newly infected. As the world collapsed around them, so did the medical staffing. Soon, Jesse found herself promoted to the other areas of the facility. Her plan, although not quite what she had imagined, was working. Jesse only hoped Ram was still alive.

“Moreno,” a physician’s assistant named Dawkins stopped at her table in the almost vacant staff cafeteria. Jesse glanced up at the frazzled man from her plastic tray of microwave lasagna. Without uttering a word she took a small forkful of her lunch and offered it to him. Dawkins waved her off. “No thanks.” The PA had been attracted to the dark-haired Jesse and she felt she could use that in her favor. Right now, it looked like Dawkins had other urgent things on his mind.

“Your loss,” she said, chewing on the tasteless processed lasagna.

“I just came down to tell you that you’ve been assigned to Alpha Wing.”

“Alpha Wing?” Jesse set her fork down. A-Wing was where they kept Ram. She’d found that out by carefully asking the right staff members.

“Yeah. We lost a couple of staff this morning.” Dawkins ran a hand through his mop of uncombed hair. “Redenour wants you there, STAT.”

“What about Dr. Wallace she—”

“Wallace was one of those we lost.” He stared down at her tray of cold lasagna. “STAT.”

“Okay.” Jesse grinned internally. “Tell Doc Redenour I’ll be right there.” She quickly finished the lasagna, not really tasting it, but knowing it was always good to eat when you could. The way things were going, who knew when the food would run out.

48

Austin High School, El Paso, Texas

April 14th

“He’s definitely been bitten, Sergeant,” the medic said to Sergeant Wilson.

“I can see that. Shit.”

The FEMA camp at Austin High School had an outbreak earlier that day, in the morning. The infected descended on people while they were sleeping, killing hundreds, and the ensuing panic injured hundreds more.

They called in soldiers from Fort Bliss to put down the outbreak; they’d been going through the surrounding neighborhoods, looking for survivors and infected. The process was complicated by those survivors hiding until they succumbed to their wounds and then went mad themselves.

While searching a tool shed, a child hiding under a table saw bit one of Sergeant Wilson’s civvies on the calf. The civilian, a CPA from Albuquerque named Ramsey, was about to run out of time. The medic patched the wound, but the infection would take him soon.

“He has to go to Beaumont,” the medic said. “All bite survivors go there. They’re equipped to deal with it.”

Sarah’s ears perked up. “I’ll escort him up there,” she said.

Wilson looked at her for a minute. “All right. You go, get him checked in, or whatever, and hitch a ride back with one of the medics. Don’t stay out here any longer than you have to.”

“Roger.”

She climbed into the ambulance with the injured man. The EMT looked at her rifle and returned to checking Ramsey’s vital signs.

“Ramsey, how you doing?” she asked.

“The fuck you think I’m doing? I’m a dead man walking. You should just put a bullet in me now.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not? Because he’s here?” Ramsey asked, pointing angrily at Sergeant Wilson. “He knows I’m a goner. Twelve hours, maybe less, no one will have an issue popping me. Should just get it over now.”

“No one is shooting anyone in my bus,” the EMT interjected. “Besides, they’re working on this at Beaumont. I hear they can slow the progression, that they’re close to a cure.”

“Hear that, Ramsey? Don’t be so quick to give up,” Sarah said.

Ramsey laid his head back on the gurney. “Fuck me.”

The trip took less than ten minutes. They rolled the gurney out of the ambulance, dropped the legs, and wheeled Ramsey inside, where a man in a white coat, but with Army ACUs underneath, met him and spoke with the EMT. “East wing, containment unit!” the man shouted, and orderlies in scrubs whisked Ramsey away. Sarah knew she’d never see him again.

She walked over to the front desk and approached a soldier who was busy typing. “Hi,” she said. “Is Leonard Naranjo here? I have a message I’m supposed to give him.”

“He’s on break,” the woman replied, her eyes narrowing in a suspicious glare. “What is it? I can pass it on to him.”

Sarah scrambled for a response, falling back on movie jargon. “It’s eyes-only. I give it to him directly or not at all.”

The woman studied Sarah for a moment and then picked up the phone, speaking quickly and quietly. She made eye contact with Sarah again and asked, “Who are you?”

Sarah almost said “Washburn” but didn’t want to chance the woman making the connection to Jack. “Tell him Charlie sent me.”

“Charlie sent her,” she said into the phone. “Okay.” She hung up, looked up at Sarah again, and passed a clipboard to her. “He’ll be down in a minute. Sign in please.”

Sarah wrote Melanie Gibson on the paper and signed illegibly. “Thank you,” she said, passing the clipboard back.

“Mmm hmm.” The woman had resumed typing, ignoring Sarah.

A few minutes passed before the elevator dinged and Leonard came out. His face lit up when he saw Sarah. “Hey, Sarah!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been out to see you a couple of times, but you guys are never there.”

Sarah rushed over to him. “I know. They’re walling off Fort Bliss with cargo containers, but you’ve probably seen that. We’re working on that day and night—unless they deploy us out to the city to fight an outbreak, like today.”

“Wow,” Leonard whistled. “What’s up with Charlie? Is he okay? Sergeant Shultz said you have a message for me from him?”

“Not here,” she answered. She grabbed Leonard by the arm and pulled him away from the front desk. “Can you get me in to see Jack?”

His face grew serious. “I don’t think so. They brought another guy in. Big guy, older, named Ram or something like that. He’s tried to escape a couple of times, so they’ve upped security in Alpha Wing. One of the nurses was complaining they won’t even let him go to the bathroom, so he’s shitting in a bedpan.”

“Gross. Is there a way up there, though? I mean, we can try, can’t we? I don’t know when the next time I’ll be able to get up here will be. Things are starting to get bad in the city.”

Leonard sighed. “I know, it sucks. A bunch of people are talking about leaving. I’ve been calling my dad, passing on info to him whenever I can get through. He wants me to come home.”

“I can’t blame you if you leave, Leonard. You came here to get information, and you’ve done that. You should leave when you get the chance.”

“Not without you and Charlie.”

“No, Leonard. When you have a chance to leave, you go. Don’t worry about us.”

“Okay,” he agreed. Changing the subject, he asked, “If I send you up to Alpha, do you have a plan?”

“I’ll figure one out. You’re not coming with me?”

“If I do, they’ll lock down my access if they get pissed off. You might need me to break you out.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Leonard.”

He led her to a staff elevator and swiped his card. The door opened, and they stepped in. He swiped his card through another reader and pressed two buttons. The doors slid shut, and they rode up to the third floor.

“Here’s where I get out,” Leonard said. “Good luck.”

He stepped out of the elevator, and the doors slid shut again. The elevator continued its upward journey and Sarah felt butterflies in her stomach, and not only from the motion of the lift.

The doors opened on a sterile white hallway. Sarah walked out and looked left and right. To the right, she saw a central desk and several soldiers around it. Beyond that, she saw a pair of soldiers guarding a room, one standing on either side of the doorway.

“What are you doing on my floor?”

She turned to face a soldier with the name “Duckett” on his uniform. The insignia on his shoulder told her he was a sergeant.

You’re getting better with this Army stuff, she thought.

“Sergeant Duckett, I need to see a patient named Washburn. I have information about his family, and the Brass wants to make sure he gets it. They think it’ll help with his morale and all that.”

Duckett squinted at her. “What Brass?”

She bluffed, “I don’t know, could be MacFarlane for all I know. My NCO told me to deliver a message. He didn’t tell me who ordered him to deliver it.”

“Give me the message. I’ll see he gets it.”

“Negative. I have to report back on this. Can’t do that if I don’t deliver the message myself.”

“And you are?”

She searched her memory for the name she used on the sign in sheet downstairs. “Melanie Gibson, First Civilian Division.”

“Must be an important message if they’re sending civvies,” he said, the sarcasm heavy in his voice.

“I’m used to it, Sergeant. We do a lot of the running around while you regulars run the show. It’s the order of things these days.”

“That so?”

“Yeah. Look, can I just get this done? It’s not like he’s a flight risk like that Ram guy. I want to get back to base.”

Duckett looked taken aback that she knew details about the other patients in Alpha Wing. “How’d you know about Ram?”

She gambled and nodded toward the guarded room. “You have him under guard. He’s shitting in a bedpan from what I hear, because you won’t even let him up to use the bathroom. Do you think Command isn’t getting updates on what’s going on here?”

“Dr. Sanjay must be updating them,” he mused.

“I suppose so. I’ve heard that name tossed around a lot lately, but I’m not in the room all the time, you know? Can I go?”

Duckett relented. “Yeah, come with me.”

He led her down the hall to a room a few doors down from the one Ram, the escape artist, was staying behind.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me this is for his ears only,” Duckett grunted.

“You’d suppose right.”

“Okay. Five minutes, no more. And then I want you off my floor, you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant. Thank you.”

He opened the door and walked into the room in front of Sarah. “Hey, Jack, you have a visitor. Melanie Gibson. She’s got info about your family. I’ll give you guys five minutes, okay?”

Jack looked confused, but responded with “Yeah, Duckett. Thanks.”

Sarah waited until Duckett left the room before she rushed to Jack’s side. She was shocked to see a plastic barrier surrounding his bed. Hazmat suits hung in the corner.

Jack saw her eying the suits. “Don’t bother. By the time you get it on, Duckett will be in here to escort you out. It’s so good to see you, Sarah—I mean, Melanie. Gibson was it? Mel Gibson? Nice one. I thought I’d never get to see you again.”

She shrugged. “No one gets my movie-based jokes around here. How are you doing? Do they think they can cure you?”

“I’m not convinced they’re trying. They’ve drawn more blood than I think is safe to take in two weeks. They feed me well so that I can make more for them, and I get some exercise time. Honestly, it feels like I’m in prison.”

She noticed for the first time that restraints held his wrists to the bed rails. “Why are you restrained?”

“I, um, started scratching at my scalp. I think it was just nervous behavior, but because of everything, they didn’t want to take chances. It’s frustrating because I can’t change the channel on the TV, and they’re playing this stuff on a loop. This is like the fifth time I’ve seen this stupid Judge Judy episode about this STUPID ROTTWEILER!” Jack shouted the last part, more than spoke it. He leaned forward and wrestled his hands against the restraints. The pillow behind his head was streaked with blood.

The sight of the blood shook Sarah, but she still tried to calm him down. “Easy, Jack. I don’t like that show either, but don’t hurt yourself over it.”

“I’m sorry. I get angry really easy lately.” He seemed genuinely puzzled by that behavior change. “I don’t know whether it’s the stuff they’ve been injecting me with, or if I’m going stir crazy, but everything seems to be on my last nerve all of a sudden.”

“What are they injecting you with?” Sarah asked. “You said they weren’t trying to cure you; they were taking blood, not injecting you with anything.”

“Maybe it’s both? They won’t tell me what it is. They just say it will help with the urges.”

“What urges?”

Jacks face grew sad. “It’s so good to see you, Sarah. I thought I’d never get to see you again.”

“Jack, I…” she started, but a knock at the door stopped her. Duckett stuck his head in the room.

“Time’s up, Gibson. Let’s go,” he commanded.

Jack smiled again. “Gibson,” he said. “I like that name.”

“You take care, Jack,” Sarah replied, not wanting to say anything more familiar with Duckett listening from the doorway.

As she left the room and followed Duckett back to the elevator, her emotions were roiling inside. Jack was slipping away. Right after his outburst, he seemed…different. And he wasn’t acting. The bloody streaks, the anger, the restraints, it could only mean one thing. The disease was progressing. She mumbled some words of thanks to Duckett before getting on the elevator and riding back to the lobby level.

She replayed that last part in her head, the part when he repeated that it was good to see her. He said it when she asked about the “urges” he was having. He was changing the subject. Was he saying goodbye? She wasn’t sure, but she had a good idea what urges he was having, and it broke her heart.

Sarah found a medic that was going back to Fort Bliss and caught a ride with him. She held herself together until she got back to her bunk, and then she lay down and cried.

49

Georgetown, Washington, DC

April 15th

“Washington, DC is under a mandatory evacuation order,” the mayor’s voice intoned from the blank television screen.

The networks had stopped broadcasting live video coverage two weeks ago. Then, for the next two days, it was a live voice, but no video—only a picture of the DC Metro area with concentric rings of red emanating from just south of Dupont Circle. Sidney had determined, more or less, that her hypothesis of the hospitals being ground zero in the capital was correct.

Finally, last night, a twenty-minute recorded message replaced the reporters’ voices. The mayor’s message had not deviated from the original one they’d heard when the broadcast first downgraded. Everyone was ordered out of DC, to go south to Atlanta, if possible, or north to New York City. Assurances were made that proper safeguards would be taken to keep the infection quarantined, but it was up to the individual citizens to make it to the quarantine zones. No mention was ever made of the military or of their response. It was as if they didn’t even exist.

Outside, the infected continued to roam the streets. It wasn’t the large mob that Sidney had seen at her apartment building, but there were enough of them that she and Lincoln didn’t feel like risking an escape at the moment, so they decided to wait things out at his place for a couple of weeks. They had enough food, and two weeks would allow enough time for the quarantine zones to be established and hopefully free up some of the traffic on the roads.

The power was still on, for now, so they could get Internet access and watch movies. They spent a lot of time having sex, whether it was from boredom, frustration, or some other reason, Sidney didn’t know. Her overwhelming desire for physical intimacy on the day she’d faced the infected had faded away, but she still felt the urge, so she usually initiated things with her partner, who, she’d determined, was not as smart and funny as she’d initially thought him to be.

Sure, he could carry on a conversation if she led it, so Lincoln wasn’t an absolute blockhead, but if he’d ever had an original idea, he sure as hell didn’t share it with her.

She glanced up from the notebook that she was scribbling on, using her cell phone to map their route to Atlanta. Lincoln sat on the couch, checking news websites like she’d directed him to do. She felt bad that she’d just thought of him as an idiot; that wasn’t fair to the guy. He’d accepted her into his home and was sharing his food with her—food that he wouldn’t have had if she hadn’t devised a plan for him to go get food while she went for the survival supplies, but the point was moot.

On a positive note, Rick James had actually taken a liking to Lincoln. The cat followed him everywhere he went and preferred to sit with him on the couch than with her at the table, which was understandable since his chairs were hardwood.

She returned to her mapping project and after a few more minutes, she stood and carried the notebook over to where Lincoln sat. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of how we should go to get down to Atlanta,” she said. “It’s not the most direct route and will add about two or three hours if we’re driving, probably a couple of days if we’re unlucky enough to be walking.”

He looked at her scribbled notes, then back at her. “Why isn’t it the most direct route? Wouldn’t that be the safest?”

Sidney shrugged. “Maybe?” she said questioningly. “But it will probably be the most congested too. The most direct route from DC—and don’t forget about the rest of the East Coast south of the capital—is 95 south to Richmond and then take 85 southwest all the way into Atlanta.” She flipped the notebook page back to the previous page, pointing at that information.

“It’s the most direct route, with almost no chance of getting lost,” she continued. “But it goes through Richmond, the Raleigh-Durham area, Charlotte, and a bunch of other medium-to-large towns along the way. There could be groups of infected, criminals, gangs, thieves.” She pointed to the large frowny-face she’d drawn in the upper corner of the page along with the short list of negatives to the route. “I think the odds of us running into some bad shit are much less if we stay clear of cities with large hospitals and big airports.”

Before it became a recorded message, the news had confirmed her earlier fears about the infected traveling around the country by air before they got sick. They hid their symptoms and injuries, and then traveled all over the place, only to succumb to the illness anyway. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the big airports.

Except that Atlanta has one of the biggest airports in the world, a little voice in the back of her mind kept saying.

“Okay, so what’s the other way?” Lincoln asked.

She turned back to the page she’d been working on moments before. “We head west on 66, out to 81, then take that south. We’ll be between substantial mountains, following the natural flow of the land. Then, in Knoxville—which is the only big town along this route—81 becomes 40, so we stay on the same road until the highway splits about fifteen miles out of Knoxville and then we take 75 South. About twenty-five miles after that, we go due south on Tennessee-30. We’ll go into the Chattahoochee National Forest and approach Atlanta from the north.”

She tapped the page once more to her rapid sketch of Atlanta and the ring road around it. “As an added benefit, the airport is way over here on the other side of the city.”

“Okay, so how long are we talking about here?” Lincoln asked.

“It’s only about twelve hours of driving—if there’s no congestion.”

“And if we run out of gas or the roads are impassable?”

Sidney sighed and said, “The app says it’s two hundred and forty-six hours by foot.”

“So, what is that?” he said. “Ten or eleven days? That’s not too bad.”

She shook her head. “That’s straight through. It doesn’t include rest breaks or sleep, so you could easily double that, and it gets pretty steep in the Chattahoochee.”

He smiled at her and scratched her cat’s head. “Yeah, but we’re not going to run out of gas; and if we do, there will be somebody who can offer us a ride.”

“Ass, gas, or grass. Nobody rides for free,” Sidney murmured, repeating a line she’d heard many times during her years in the Peace Corps.

“What’s that?”

“It means that nobody is gonna do something for us out of the kindness of their hearts. They’re going to want gas or supplies, or sexual favors, for their help.”

“No. This is America. We—”

She laughed at him. “I know life over here in Georgetown was different than over where I live—and I’m not even in a bad part of DC—but come on. You can’t be that sheltered, Linc.”

“I’m not sheltered.”

“You just tried to say that people would help us because Americans are inherently altruistic. That’s pretty naïve.”

“I didn’t—” He stopped. “Dammit, do they train you at law school to catalogue on every detail in a conversation and pick apart the bit that you don’t agree with?”

Sidney laughed. “No. Actually, they don’t train you to that. I’m just a good listener, and I call bullshit when something doesn’t make sense.”

She turned sideways on the couch, crossing her legs underneath her. “So it’s agreed that we’ll go the back route?”

“Agreed? We didn’t even discuss it. You came over here and told me your plan,” he replied.

“Yeah. So we agree, right?” she continued.

“Uh, I guess? I mean, I’m not happy about taking the longer route, but if you think it may be safer, then why not? It’s only a couple of extra hours.”

Sidney nodded, not bothering to correct him. It could easily stretch into several extra days if the car she’d taken from the dead man ran out of gas. With everyone from the East Coast south of DC on the road to Atlanta at the same time, the gas stations would quickly run out of fuel. Once that happened, they were on their own.

* * *

The next two weeks went by without much excitement, except for two minor incidents that happened on the same day.

The eighth day after Lincoln and Sidney had holed up at his house, the trash was overflowing and beginning to smell, what with the wrappers the steak had been in and all the empty cans, so Lincoln had decided to take it out. Neither of them thought it was a particularly good thing to do, but they couldn’t stand the smell anymore. Every time Sidney went near the bags tied up at the back door, she wanted to vomit.

There were three bags of garbage. Lincoln was going to sneak them out into the front yard, drop them by the fence and be back inside within two minutes. It didn’t go as planned.

The front yard was empty, and there wasn’t any sight of the infected anywhere nearby. When Lincoln opened the door, he rushed out and caught the trash bag on a corner of the porch railing. The bag ripped, sending cans clattering loudly to the wooden porch and the cement walkway below.

Screams of rage began almost immediately, and Lincoln dropped the other bag, scrambling up the steps, over more of the cans. Much to Sidney’s dismay, he slammed the door and locked it.

The infected swarmed the house—or at least it felt that way to Sidney as she stood huddled in the bathroom with a kitchen knife for protection. In reality, it was probably only a few of them, beating on the side of the house and doors. One of them managed to break a window that was six feet off the ground.

To both of their credit, neither of them uttered a sound when the window broke. If they had, that probably would have been the end of them. Instead, they ended up staying in the bathroom for several hours until darkness fell.

Then the power went out, and the little nightlight that they’d had for illumination went dark. The infected outside howled in rage and confusion as the streets went completely dark.

Not long after that, the things outside left, but Lincoln and Sydney stayed in the bathroom, taking turns alternating between sleeping in the bathtub and staying awake, listening for the sounds of something inside the house.

The next morning, they cleared the house carefully. The broken window in the spare bedroom had dried blood pooled in the windowsill where the infected had obviously cut itself deeply. Sidney cautioned Lincoln not to touch the blood as he lifted the mattress off the room’s small twin bed and placed it against the window. Then he maneuvered the bedframe behind the mattress to keep it in place. The last thing they did was lock the bedroom door handle before closing it behind themselves. It wouldn’t stop a determined insane person, but it would give them a little more time to formulate their defense.

That was nine days ago. They’d gone through all of the fresh food within a few days of the power going out and were through about a third of their canned and shelf-stable foods. Sidney stood in the kitchen on weak legs as she surveyed the pantry. She’d been sick this morning, thankfully just throwing up mostly water since she hadn’t eaten anything for more than twelve hours. They couldn’t afford for her to throw up the food.

On one hand, a few days of being sick would prolong our food supply, she mused.

She decided that the best thing to do would be to put everything on the counter and see what they had, so for ten minutes she moved cans from the pantry to the counter. Once she was done with this, she wanted to put everything in the backpacks in case they had to leave in a hurry. It was too much before, but the entirety of their food stocks would likely now fit in the two big backpacks she’d purchased—with room to spare.

The water was a different story. Lincoln’s house was on the city’s sewer system, so his water still worked, even with the power out. They still had most of the bottled water he’d purchased on day one and boiled the water from the tap on his little tailgating grill out back before drinking it. They had plenty of water, but if they had to go on foot, Sidney wasn’t sure just how much canned food and bottled water they could carry in their backpacks. Good thing boy-o was a rower with a strong, wide back, she thought.

“Okay,” she said to a bleary-eyed Lincoln as he came in, scratching the layer of growth on his neck. Without power, he’d been unwilling to shave with cold water. In any case, the new beard suited him. “We need to really look at our supplies and decide when we’re going to Atlanta. I don’t want to wait too long and then not have enough food to make it to the quarantine zone.”

He surveyed her work, taking in the different stacks that were separated from one another. “These represent a week’s worth of food?”

“Yeah,” she replied, thankful that he understood her methodology. She wasn’t in the mood to explain things to him in detail.

Sidney was sure that if things hadn’t gone to shit, she and Lincoln would have made a great couple, but as it was, she was absolutely sick of him. Moving in with a person only a few hours after you met them and then not being able to leave their presence was not how humans had evolved. He was fiercely stubborn for no reason, couldn’t follow elaborate plans more than a few steps in detail, and worse, he’d become annoying just by sitting near her. About the only thing that wasn’t annoying about him was his dick. They’d run out of condoms after a couple of days but still had sex two or three times a day to help ease the tension and pass the time…

“Son of a bitch!” Sidney hissed, louder than either of them had dared to speak since the trash bag incident.

“What?” Lincoln asked in alarm, likely wondering what he’d done to annoy her this time.

“I—” She stopped, feeling silly for her outburst. She could have been sick this morning for any number of reasons, not only that reason. “Nothing.”

Sidney pointed at the stacks of food and said, “So you can see, we have about four weeks of food left. That frozen stuff you had pushed us about a week further along.”

He grinned. “Good thing I suggested we eat that first, huh? With the power out, those frozen chicken nuggets would have been awful hard to gnaw on.”

“Yeah, that was good thinking,” she admitted before returning to the matter at hand. “We think it’ll take anywhere from twelve hours to twelve days to make it to Atlanta, right?”

“That’s what all that scribbling in your notebook says, sure.”

“Right. And we haven’t seen any of the infected for about a week.”

“We hadn’t really seen them for a few days before the trash bag incident,” he reminded her. “And look at how many of them came out of nowhere for that.”

“True,” she muttered. “But we need to make it to the quarantine zone, so we’re going to have to go outside at some point.”

He pointed at the back door. “We go outside all the time.”

“Not what I meant, and you know it,” she sighed. It was the same argument they’d had for weeks. Lincoln was happy to stay in his home, with its fenced-in backyard and running water. Lincoln’s two main—and correct—points were that they’d lose all security and ready access to fresh water the moment they left his house. Her points were that they’d gain safety and fresh water once they made it to the quarantine zone.

She arranged her thoughts for a moment. If there was even the remotest chance that she was pregnant, with no ability to get to a clinic to have it taken care of, Sidney didn’t want to stay in DC any longer than she had to. Maybe she’d try a new tactic with him.

“You ever wonder why we were ordered to evacuate?”

Lincoln shrugged. “To save as many people as possible, I guess.”

“That’s right. I think the military is going to start clearing the area between the quarantine zones.”

“Clearing… You think the Army is going to shoot everybody?”

“The Army, the Air Force, a bunch of deputized rednecks with guns, whoever, Linc. My point is that before too long, somebody is gonna start a house-to-house search. I’d bet that they’re going to shoot first and not bother asking any questions. We need to leave.”

As he worked through her words, Sidney could practically see the hamster spinning the wheel in his brain, revving up his thought processes. Finally, he said, “You really think the president would allow the Army to kill people?”

“It’s kinda the reason we have the military. They’re trained to kill our enemies, and I doubt there’s ever been a greater threat to the US than this virus and the people who carry it.” She paused long enough to let that sink in, but not long enough to make him think it was his turn to talk. “Anyone who didn’t listen to the evacuation order is potentially a carrier of the disease. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot them, just to be safe.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Remember the videos that came out of California?” she interrupted. “That was only in the first couple of days, back when the government was trying to keep this thing a secret. It’s out in the open now. They wouldn’t hesitate to put us down.”

He grimaced. “You’re right. I just don’t want to think about it. We’re comfortable here, and we could wait it out, y’know?”

“No, I don’t know. You don’t know either. This thing could take years to put down—or worse, they just decide to bomb the shit out of the places that have heavy concentrations of the infected.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Lincoln said.

“Yeah, they would. We need to leave on our own terms. Not on those of the infected, and sure as hell not on the military’s.”

“But didn’t the government tell us to go? Doesn’t that mean the military is on our side?”

Shit, he had a point. “Dammit, Linc. You know what I mean. We need to get out of DC, but we need to be able to leave when we want to, not running blindly from a bunch of soldiers or crazies.”

“I guess I don’t really see the difference.”

Sidney wanted to fire back at him, to yell about his incompetence and misguided beliefs that the federal government was looking out for his best interests, anything to keep the argument about leaving the city going, but at the same time, she was just tired of it. Tired of the arguing. Tired of the feeling of being trapped. Tired of it all.

“Look, Lincoln,” she said. “I’m not going to stay in this house any longer than I have to. I brought that car here, so it’s mine, and I’ll leave when I want.”

“Whoa!” he replied, holding up his hands. “That’s not what I—that’s not how this was supposed to go. I just wanted to talk about it, and you brought up the soldiers slaughtering our neighbors.”

She nodded. “I’m going to go check out the backyard and look over the fences again. Then I’m going to make a bunch of noise by throwing shit at one of the other houses to see if anything comes. I’m going to do the same thing for a couple of days, and if nothing happens on any of those times, I’m leaving—with or without you.”

Sidney didn’t wait for his response. Instead, she grabbed several empty cans out of the trash and walked to the back door.

50

Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

April 15th

It’d been a few days since Jesse had started working on the floor where she suspected Ram was being held. Most of the nurses and soldiers were tight lipped on who the patients were behind the guarded and locked doors. None of the staff seemed to trust her since, at first, she was a prisoner in their facility before taking on the nursing duties. Jesse had been allowed into all the patient rooms but one. When she had tried to enter, Sergeant Duckett suddenly appeared and told her to move on. Right then and there, she knew her old partner was behind the thick steel door.

Jesse had watched as the number of staff quickly dwindled through attrition. Infected patients had killed or infected many of the nurses and soldiers who’d been there when she first arrived. It was common now to hear the blare of alarms followed by screams and the sound of suppressed weapons fire. If it was bad inside this “secure” facility, she wondered how it was outside.

“Still here?” Calvin, another nurse on her shift, asked rhetorically as he sat down at the table next to her. Jesse noticed he was still in his biohazard suit, minus the gloves and hood. This carelessness was becoming the norm among the remaining staff.

“Can’t pass up the fine cuisine,” Jesse said, pushing her spoon around in her bowl of thick stew. “Swear I had this two days ago.”

“You’re probably right.” He took a swallow of powdered orange juice from his glass. “I thought you would have split by now.”

“Oh yeah?” Jesse gave him a sideways glance. “Why would I do that?”

“You’re not a Fed like the rest of us. You split and they won’t shoot you,” Calvin said, glancing at his stale sandwich.

“Shoot me?” Jesse frowned and dropped the spoon back into the brown slop. “You can’t be serious?”

“This place is done for,” he whispered, leaning forward to angle his face away from the cameras in the corner of the cafeteria. “The Chief of Staff is bailing out. Our research is at a dead end here. The doctor is waiting on some important message of some kind, or his research is done. There ain’t no courier who’s going to get through that mess out there. If I were you I wouldn’t wait too long to make a break.”

“This place seems pretty secure.”

Calvin just shrugged and took a bite from his tasteless sandwich. After chewing it in silence he leaned back over. “I hear Briggs Field is a safe zone. A group of us are going to make a run for it. Try to blend in with the refugees.” He smiled. “You’re welcome to come along if you want.”

“Briggs Field?” Jesse ran a hand through her long, black hair. The hard water here had really done a number on it. “So, we’re in Texas?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin replied in a bad fake Texas drawl. “You didn’t know that?”

Jesse frowned and shook her head. “What do you mean by Safe Zone?”

“They really have kept you in the dark about what’s going on out there, haven’t they?” he asked, reaching for his sandwich. Jesse’s hand snaked out, quickly securing his wrist.

“What do you mean by Safe Zone?”

“Easy there,” Calvin said, pulling his arm free. “Most of the big cities have fallen to the infected. The military has pulled back to protect certain strategic areas.”

“And Briggs is one of them?”

“I guess.” Calvin rubbed his wrist where she’d gripped it. Suddenly an alarm sounded from down the hall. Jesse jumped to her feet and sprinted out of the cafeteria, followed by Calvin.

“We have a loose infected!” a nurse in a torn biohazard suit screamed as she stumbled out of the open doorway of a patient room.

“Shit!” Jesse, dressed just in scrubs, bolted past the nurse into the room. Calvin stopped outside and watched as two soldiers wrestled with an infected patient. The man was screaming and growling as he shoved one of the soldiers hard against the wall and then jumped on the other’s back. The soldier he shoved slammed his head against the wall and slumped to the floor, unconscious.

“Get him off me!” the other soldier shouted as he tried to pull the crazed attacker off his back. The man viciously bit and clawed at the biohazard suit, trying to get to the soldier’s flesh. Jesse swiftly reached down and pulled the downed soldier’s 9mm pistol from his belt. Flipping off the safety, she chambered a round and jammed the barrel into the back of the infected man’s head. Squeezing the trigger, she turned away as blood and brain matter splashed across the soldier’s back.

The infected patient’s body slid limply off the biohazard-suited trooper and fell to the floor. The alarm was still squealing as Sergeant Duckett stormed into the room, followed by a handful of other soldiers. Seeing the cavalry had finally arrived, Jesse spun the 9mm around in her hand and gave the butt end to Duckett. Smiling, shaking a bit, she stepped over the unconscious soldier and walked out of the room. The sergeant shook his head and handed the handgun to another of his men.

“Will somebody please shut off the fucking alarm?” he shouted above the shrill, irritating claxon.

Jesse walked down to the lobby, hoping to step outside for some fresh air, but stopped as four armed newcomers turned their guns in at the front desk. She had caught the eyes of the one woman in the group, and she knew instantly that their agenda was much different than what the doctor’s would be. She watched as the desk guards singled out the female for a search and shook her head at the lame slap-and-tickle tactics for such a cheap thrill. She almost laughed when two of her friends stepped forward, stopping that bullshit instantly. This was going to require a little surveillance.

Our chance is coming, Ram. Something is going down today, and I aim to exploit it.

51

Blacksburg, Virginia

April 21st

“Hey! Hey! Look what I just found!” Lincoln shouted excitedly.

“I can’t look. I’m driving,” Sidney replied angrily. She knew she was being a grouch. They were six hours into this trip, already running low on gas without any options short of siphoning gas from cars in parking lots, and the morning sickness was kicking her ass. If it got any worse before they got to the safe area so she could take care of it, she’d punch herself repeatedly in the stomach until the little clinger broke loose.

When they left DC that morning, they’d only run into one of the infected. Oddly enough, it was the same woman in the cream dress that’d ripped the window screen on the day she ran to Lincoln’s house from the dangers of Dupont Circle. She was much worse for the wear than the last time Sidney had seen her on the front porch a month prior. Besides a lot of damage and staining on the dress, she was skin and bones, her body somehow still managing to function, even with obvious starvation taking its toll on her.

The woman stumbled around from the side of the house, where Sidney thought she’d been trying to get in the fence, but the gate was on the opposite side. She tried to scream at Sidney and Lincoln as they threw their belongings into the back seat of the car, but it came out as a hoarse wheeze. They left her behind, still struggling to reach the people that she’d known were inside the house all along.

Sidney glanced at her passenger quickly, asking, “What does it say?”

He held up his cell phone with the screen facing her. A long power cord led from the phone to a USB jack in the car’s radio. It was the first time they’d had power for the phones since they used up all the juice when the power died, and Sidney had him searching the Internet for updates. “It says Atlanta has fallen.”

Sidney slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a halt in the middle of the road. She wasn’t worried about another vehicle coming along any time soon; they hadn’t seen anything in hours.

“What do you mean by ‘Atlanta has fallen’?” she demanded.

“It’s the headline right here. It says—”

“Here, just let me read it,” she said, taking the phone from him to avoid the annoying game of question and answer. “You keep an eye out for any of the infected.”

He threw his hands in the air and said, “I’ve gotta pee anyways.”

“Hold on. Don’t go out there while I’m looking at the article.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Sidney stated, shaking her head that he still just didn’t get it. “If I’m distracted by the phone, I can’t keep an eye on our surroundings while you go to the bathroom.” It was classic Horror Movie 101. She remembered thinking how awesome he was when he took her to the Exorcist Stairs; turns out that to him, it was just a tourist site. He wasn’t really into scary movies, preferring comedies and action flicks over intrigue and suspense. So much for being a student of film like he’d told her that morning in the restaurant. He did like old movies, but not the kinds that she liked.

“Eh, I guess that makes sense,” he admitted, fumbling with the small folding knife she’d given him. It wasn’t much due to the blade length restrictions in DC, but it was better than nothing.

Sidney skimmed the article on Lincoln’s phone. Basically, the infected hordes had followed the people fleeing southward. Atlanta was too spread out to effectively keep them all out, and when they made it into the refugee camps, all hell broke loose. Atlanta was just like everywhere on the East Coast that people had been trying to get to.

That was yesterday.

The CDC had been relocated weeks before to the relatively isolated city of El Paso in far western Texas. The article stated that the military there had erected massive obstacle belts to hinder the movement of the infected and were winning the battle against the brainless hordes. Propaganda bullshit, she groaned internally.

Citizens were encouraged to try to stay ahead of the creatures, the large groups of which were limited by the speed they could travel on foot—although it was at a full-on sprint when they saw prey. There was a side note saying the Mexican government wished support for the United States and had moved military and police units to secure the Border Wall. No help would come from the south.

New York City, on the other hand, appeared to be intact. After attempts to barricade the bridges leading to Staten and Long Island failed, they’d dropped entire sections of them, effectively creating an impassable obstacle that could be rebuilt later—the infected didn’t maintain the ability to swim and drowned by the thousands trying to get into the city. The military had also dropped sections of the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and barricaded the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels that connected the island with New Jersey. The decision was made to completely destroy the eleven bridges leading out of Manhattan to Yonkers and the Bronx, although further land-based barricades near the New York – Connecticut border had proven effective to date.

“That’s…” Sidney stopped and set the phone down. “That’s a ton of shit packed into a short article.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we’re fucked,” she yelled. All the frustration of the past few weeks, the trip, and now this; it was too much. “We’re, what, six, maybe seven hours into this trip? We have less than a quarter tank of gas left, there’s no place that we know of to sleep for the night, there’s no way to replenish our food or water supply, our destination just got extended by another fifteen hundred miles… Let’s see, how many other ways do you want me to say we’re fucked? Oh, I know!” her voice cracked. “Like the fact that I’m fucking pregnant and nowhere near a doctor so I can get a goddamned abortion. How’s that for fucked, Lincoln?”

“I—I didn’t know you were pregnant,” he stammered.

“Of course you didn’t. You just kept getting your fucking dick wet and went on having a grand old time while I was struggling with this bullshit.”

“What? You’re saying it’s mine? It’s only been four weeks.”

“Of course it’s yours, asshole. That’s how shit works. You cum inside my vagina three or four times a day, it’s gonna end up growing a fucking baby in there.”

He was silent for a moment before saying, “You never said anything.”

“Would it have made a bit of damned difference? You’d have just doted over me like some idiot boy who doesn’t understand anything about what a woman can do. I don’t need your sympathy or your assistance. I don’t need a goddamned thing except a doctor.”

He leaned back against the car door. “I don’t know where this is all coming from, Sidney. I thought things were great between us. I mean, the pregnancy is an unwanted surprise, but—”

“Pfsh. You think?”

Suddenly, the car seemed too small, too close for comfort. The air was stifling, and Sidney had to get out, to get some fresh air, or else she’d throw up. Her fingers brushed weakly at the handle. Bile began leaping into her throat, making her mouth taste bitter. Then, the telltale drool began, unbidden.

“Are you okay?” Lincoln asked.

“Sick,” she managed to say, then threw the door wide and vomited onto the pavement.

Behind her, she heard Lincoln say something, but she couldn’t make out what he’d said. Her blood pounded through her ears and they felt stuffed up like she had a cold. He got out of the car, yelling something. She turned her head to see him running around the car, so she sat up.

That’s when the car door was yanked violently away from her hand.

She recoiled in horror as an infected man came around the side of the door. His face was a bloodied mask of missing flesh and exposed bone. By his clothing, she assumed he’d been a hunter, what with the camouflage pants and shirt he wore. He made wheezing sounds instead of the screaming she’d seen in the people in DC. It reminded her of the lady who’d stayed near Lincoln’s house.

Sidney instinctively lifted her left leg out of the car, placing her boot against the man’s chest, and pushed. His fingers raked across the pants she wore, digging so hard into her legs that she knew she’d be bruised, even through the fabric.

“Ahh!” she screamed, pushing harder against him as her hands fumbled for any type of weapon in the console. There was nothing.

Then Lincoln joined the fray. He wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and jerked him backward, lifting him off his feet and around.

The infected scratched at his arms tearing deep, jagged lines into Lincoln’s forearms. He quickly switched his hold on the man into a full-nelson, his hands pressing the hunter’s head down toward his chest. It kicked and let out ragged screeches while reaching back to try to grab Lincoln.

Sidney twisted around to look at the passenger seat where Lincoln had been playing with his knife. She saw it sitting uselessly on the floorboard. She grabbed it with shaking fingers and opened the piteously small blade.

“Hold it,” she hissed.

“I’m trying,” Lincoln replied through clenched teeth.

Sidney stabbed the creature—for that is what it truly was at this point—in the stomach, her arm thrusting in and out several times. It had no effect on the thing’s movement.

“Head,” Lincoln panted. He was tiring. If that thing got loose, they were done for.

She turned the knife over and jabbed it straight down into the infected’s forehead. The blade turned on its skull, sliding down over the creature’s eyebrow and then down along the cheek.

“I…” She was confused. The zombie television show she watched religiously every week featured hundreds of kills with a simple knife through the skull. Why hadn’t it worked? Was there some technique she didn’t understand?

“Eye! Get…the eye,” Lincoln demanded.

The creature’s jaws rattled open and closed, snapping together with a horrible clicking sound as it alternatively tried to reach Lincoln with its hands and bite at her with its mouth.

Sidney stepped closer and tried to stab its eye quickly, but it turned away, trying to twist its lower jaw enough that it could grab a chunk of her approaching hand. The blade skidded along the cheekbone and gashed a piece out of what remained of the infected’s ear.

“Dammit! Hold still, you fucker,” she ordered, pulling her arm away quickly.

“Hurry,” Lincoln begged.

She chose to go in slowly, to ensure that her aim was true. The tip of blade penetrated the thing’s eyeball and she shuddered in revulsion. A milky, jelly-like substance oozed out along the length of the blade. It’s the only way, she told herself and shoved hard.

The little blade went all the way to the handle before the creature stopped struggling against Lincoln’s grasp.

She pulled her hand away, flipping her wrist to fling away the gore that had gotten on her. Lincoln dropped the body heavily to the pavement and lurched sideways.

“Did you… Did you get bit?” Sidney asked him.

He looked over his hands and arms, wincing at the ragged scrapes where the creature’s fingernails had clawed at him. “No. No, I didn’t get bitten. You?”

“No. I’m okay.” She glanced past Lincoln to the tree line where the infected man must have come from, wondering how many more of them were hidden by the trees. Too many, she told herself.

Aloud, she said, “We need to get going. That thing may have some friends nearby.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” Lincoln agreed, visibly shaken by the ordeal.

“Linc, I’m—I’m sorry I acted like such a bitch to you. I… I didn’t mean that stuff I said.”

“It’s okay,” he replied. “You’ve got a whole hell of a lot on your mind, things I didn’t even know about.”

She wanted to get in the car and drive, just keep on going forever, but she knew that she had responsibilities. Lincoln wasn’t a complete idiot like she’d said, but he wouldn’t be any good at planning their route from where they were, just south of Blacksburg, Virginia, to make it out to El Paso. Somehow, they had to find fuel and avoid more of the creatures. But first, she needed to clean his wounds so they didn’t get infected.

“Here, let me look at your arms,” she ordered, turning back to the car and grabbing one of the first aid kits from the top of her bag. They’d both ended up getting one on the day they went shopping. Hers was quite a bit more extensive than the one he’d picked up at the grocery store, but every bandage and package of gauze was important.

“Shouldn’t we get going?” he protested.

“Sure, in a minute. We have time to clean those scratches real quick. I don’t need you getting sick on me.”

Lincoln inhaled sharply when she poured a small stream of hydrogen peroxide on the lacerations. They bubbled ferociously, telling her that the wounds were dirty. There was no telling how much crud had been under that guy’s fingernails. She dumped half a bottle of water on his forearms to wash away the antiseptic, then she repeated the process two more times until the hydrogen peroxide barely bubbled on the third application. Next, she wrapped a wide strip of gauze around each of his arms and secured it with surgical tape.

“All done,” Sidney announced, surveying her handiwork. It looked worse than one of those toilet paper wedding gowns that she’d been forced to make for friends at a few bridal showers over the years, but she figured it’d get the job done and keep the wounds clean.

“Thanks.”

“No sweat,” she replied. “Let’s get in the car and get going. We’ll figure out where we’re going in a few miles.”

“How are we on gas?”

She looked at him incredulously. I just told this stupid motherfucker how much gas we have, she swore to herself. A quick, deep breath, and then she said, “We’re down to a little less than a quarter of a tank. This car sips gas slowly, but unless we find an open gas station, we aren’t going to make it more than a couple of hours.”

“Okay, so are we totally skipping Atlanta and just heading to El Paso?” he asked, walking around the back of the car to the passenger seat.

“Yeah. That article made it seem clear that Atlanta was pretty much overran. I don’t want to try to deal with that.”

“Westward, ho!” he said loudly, pointing down the road they were already on.

Sidney grinned in spite of the stupidity of shouting in an area where they’d already encountered one of the infected. The guy was a goofball, and not incredibly book smart, and he had a few annoying habits, but all of that could be overlooked. Lincoln had a great sense of humor, he was extremely loyal, and he genuinely seemed to want to help, even when he was clueless as to what to do.

She smiled at her reflection in the rearview mirror before putting the car in drive. He’d risked his life to save hers. He didn’t even hesitate to put himself in harm’s way, and she was genuinely appreciative of it—of him. All the faults that she’d heaped upon him over the past month fell away, and her heart skipped a little inside her chest. Out of all the labels she’d put on him, the most important one was that he was her guy.

52

Kilgore, Texas

April 22nd

The Toyota’s old wipers did little to clear away the massive amount of water pounding against the windshield as Sidney raced down I-20. She was having a hard time seeing the road and was afraid she’d wreck. She knew that she needed to slow down, but she didn’t want to.

She glanced at the empty passenger seat and the tears began anew, further hindering her ability to see in the torrential downpour. She was exhausted and had been driving for almost twenty-two hours, but she wanted to put more distance between her and what happened back there.

“God dammit!” she yelled, pounding on the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. Rick James mewled piteously from his carrier in the back seat.

They’d been traveling westward, about an hour east of Meridian, Mississippi, when Lincoln finally succumbed to the raging fever he’d developed overnight. At first, they didn’t know what it was, why he’d gotten such a high fever, but a search of the Internet gave them plenty of first-hand accounts of interactions with the infected. Apparently, all it took for the virus or whatever—they still didn’t know—to spread was blood or saliva contact with broken skin. The hunter must have had infected blood on his hands when he scraped his fingernails across Lincoln’s skin.

They’d stopped at a gas station they found that was still open and only charging twenty dollars a gallon. They were filling up when he first started to feel ill. He went to the restroom and said he got sick and felt much better afterward, and then the fever began within an hour. It spiked so high that she thought he was actually burning up, not just some overused figure of speech. Of course, she didn’t have a way to check his fever; a thermometer hadn’t been on her list of supplies.

As the fever raged, Lincoln had drifted in and out of consciousness, raving incoherently at times while talking rationally at others. Finally, after four or five hours of the fever, he fell asleep and didn’t feel as blindingly hot as he had before.

When Sidney pulled into a large fuel center on the west side of Monroe, Louisiana, her travel companion moaned pitifully, so she didn’t want to wake him. Instead, she filled the tank and went inside, past the small, private militia guarding the place, to get a coffee and use the restroom.

When she returned, the car rocked violently on its axles, and she could see Lincoln trying to reach her cat in the back seat. Thankfully, the seatbelt restrained him. She’d opened the door, intent on scolding him for scaring Rick James. That’s when Lincoln—or, more disturbingly, not Lincoln—whipped his head around and lunged toward her.

Once again, the seatbelt proved to be too much for him, and he fell, half in and half out of the car. She screamed and a man wearing a greasy baseball cap ran over from the men standing guard at the station’s entrance. Lincoln thrashed, screaming his hatred for the both of them as he reached above his head in an attempt to grab them.

The man didn’t hesitate. Stepping close to the car, he pulled a pistol from his belt and pressed it against the side of Lincoln’s head, pushing downward. Then he squeezed the trigger, splattering the pavement with gore. Her lover’s body slumped sideways limply as an impossible amount of blood poured from the exit wound.

He’d seen plenty of their kind back home in Alabama before taking to the road with his family for the quarantine zone, the man told her. When their fuel ran out, he took the job here, hoping to earn enough to pay for gas all the way to El Paso. After giving her his quick life story while Lincoln’s heart continued to pump blood out of his head, the man put on a pair of gloves and reached across the corpse, unbuckling the seatbelt. Lincoln fell unceremoniously to the ground beside the car. The redneck examined the inside quickly and told her that she was lucky none of the creature’s blood had gotten in the driver’s seat, so she’d be able to keep using the car. He wished her good luck before strolling casually back to his post, as if murdering someone was an everyday occurrence.

It wasn’t really murder, she chastised herself, wiping tears and snot away on the sleeve of her sweater. Lincoln was gone before that man put a gun to his head.

Sidney had stared in shock at the body for a full minute. She stood there dumbly, trying to determine what to do. She couldn’t bury him, she didn’t have a shovel or even a blanket to cover him up with. She’d called over to the redneck, asking if he could help her drag Lincoln’s corpse to the dumpster, and he agreed. They each grabbed a foot and pulled him through the parking lot, leaving a smeared trail of infected blood in their wake. When they got behind the building, the man said he wasn’t about to pick the body up and risk getting the blood on him, so they settled on placing him beside the dumpster. In a final act of defiling Lincoln’s body, Sidney rifled through his pockets, taking his wallet and putting it in her front pocket.

She sobbed, thinking about the poor man whom she’d treated like shit for the past few weeks, even if they had made up earlier in the day. He’d done nothing wrong to her, and she’d been an incredible bitch, declaring that she would abort his unborn child the moment she made it back to civilization.

Who does that? she asked herself. Who threatens someone with something like that? I’m a terrible person for saying that to him.

The tears flowed uncontrollably, and she was forced to slow the car or risk wrecking it. The rain and the tears were too much for her tortured soul and exhausted body. Lights on the horizon told her she was coming up on a hotel, so she wiped her eyes and willed the car to make it to the parking lot.

When she arrived, she weaved through several big shipping containers where platoons of soldiers stood guard, ready to kill anything not human. Apparently, the hotel was a sanctioned rest area for refugees traveling to El Paso.

Inside the perimeter, she saw that the building was a standard roadside motel, the kind with the doors on the outside of the building. She frowned. They usually weren’t the cleanest places since people who used them weren’t required to walk by a front desk each and every time they went to their car. These types of places were known to be frequented by prostitutes, drug dealers, and murderers.

“Great,” Sidney muttered, wishing for a different option. A quick scan of the surrounding area showed nothing nearby and absolutely nothing else with a military presence, so she pulled up under an overhang to the front entrance and parked the car. She grabbed the cat carrier and dragged a hissing Rick James out of the back seat. If things went to hell, she didn’t want to leave her poor kitty stranded.

A man met her at the glass doors with a double-barreled shotgun pointed at her midsection. “You bit?” he asked with a Southern drawl.

“No, sir,” Sidney replied dutifully. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to answer that question since being on the road—although it was the first having a gun pointed at her instead of simply being nearby.

“Pull up your sleeves,” he ordered.

“No, I’m not—”

“Then you ain’t stayin’ in my hotel, and you can get your ass outside that perimeter.”

“Ugh,” she replied, pulling up her sleeves one arm at a time. “There, you satisfied?”

He twitched the gun toward her legs. “Now the ankles. Let me make sure you ain’t bit down there too.”

She complied with that request as well. “You ask me to show you any more skin and you’re gonna have to start slipping bills into my underwear.”

The motel attendant lowered his shotgun. “Oh, now it wasn’t like that, ma’am,” he said. “I just have a responsibility to keep my other customers safe.”

“Mmm hmm,” she answered, frowning. “I need a room for the night.”

“Credit card reader’s down,” he stated.

“That’s fine. I have a little cash left.”

“How much?”

“How ’bout you mind your own damn business. I asked you how much it was to rent a room for the night.”

He chuckled. “Good lord, you’ve got some spunk, missy. I got one room on the bottom floor for ninety-nine dollars and a room on the second floor for three hundred. Take your pick.”

She smirked. The sonofabitch was charging triple for a room on the second story, which would theoretically be safer than the room on the first floor if a mob of the infected made it through the perimeter in the middle of the night. “I don’t have three hundred,” she lied, trying to get a discount.

He subtly gestured at his crotch, enough so that he could deny her accusation if it came to it. “I’m sure we could work something out.”

She scowled at his audacity. “Yeah, not happening. I have two hundred cash. You’re already charging more than your sign out front advertises,” Sidney said, pointing out the window to the sign stating rooms were forty-nine dollars a night, plus tax.

“Well now, you can go on down the road a bit if you don’t like the prices, ma’am. The next hotel is only twenty-five miles west of here, but there ain’t nobody home.”

“I’ll take the one upstairs, but I’m only giving you two hundred,” she said.

He thought about it for a moment and then said, “All right. Two hundred, plus thirty for the state occupancy tax.”

“I just told you that I only have two hundred.”

He shrugged. “Uncle Sugar’s gotta get his, sweetheart.”

She sighed and pulled out Lincoln’s wallet from her front pocket, holding it so the man couldn’t see how much money she really had. His toothy grin as she reluctantly handed him the money made her want to kick him in the jaw and knock a few more of his teeth out. She took the key from him and walked stiffly to her car, setting the cat carrier in the back seat once again.

“Check out’s at ten!” the attendant called softly from inside the lobby.

“Fuck off,” Sidney muttered under her breath and sat down into the Toyota. It took her a minute to find the section of the building the attendant had shown her on the map, but she found it and backed into a parking spot nearby.

The parking lot was near capacity, no doubt lining that man’s pockets with plenty of money. It took her three trips to get everything up the stairs and into her room for the night. She didn’t want to risk leaving anything of value in the car, so she took both hers and Lincoln’s packs, carrying a sleeping bag and whatever else she could hold each time. The third trip consisted of the cooking gear, still in its box. The only thing left visible in the car were two cases of bottled water, but she wasn’t about to lug that up the stairs. The trunk had a spare bag of cat litter and food, but that should be fine, she decided.

By the time she was finished, she was soaked through and through, and was weary to the bone. She’d been on the road entirely too long and watched a friend—no, the father of her child—die in front of her. Somewhere along the road between Monroe, Louisiana and Kilgore, Texas, where she was now, she’d stopped thinking of the thing growing in her abdomen as a burden to be discarded at the first opportunity and began to think of it as a child. It was the result of her relationship with Lincoln Bannister, the man who’d died of wounds he received while saving her life.

And, somewhere else along that same road, she’d decided to keep the baby.

Sidney bolted the door and placed both packs against the bottom to add a small amount of security to the room then let Rick James out of his carrier. Looking around the room, she suppressed a shudder of disgust. It was like every seedy motel room she’d seen in horror movies and the occasional drama. A stain on the floor near the window could have been rust damage from a leaking window or where a prostitute’s lifeblood was spilled onto the carpet. Really, did it make any difference which one it truly was?

She poured a small bit of litter into the collapsible box she had for Rick James to do his business and set it beside the television, a twenty-four-inch Zenith cathode ray tube that was probably purchased in the mid-1980s. A little bit of food and water went into two more travel containers for the cat, and then she was finally ready to shower.

She stripped off her wet clothes and placed them on the counter; she’d hang them over the shower curtain bar when she finished showering. The hot water helped to ease her chattering teeth, and she began to warm up slowly, first on her upper body, then her legs. It took several minutes longer for her fingers to not feel like she’d had her hands in a bucket of iced water.

Sidney placed her forearm on the shower wall, resting her head on the arm. She stayed that way for several more minutes, enjoying the hot water as it washed over her. It’d been weeks since she had a hot shower, and the temperature of the liquid made her feel like she’d be cleaner than she had been in a long time.

Finally, when the skin on her fingertips began to wrinkle, Sidney started to scrub. It was gentle at first, using the cheap hotel washcloth to wash her body, but then she began to rub harder, pressing the cloth deep into her skin to remove dirt, real and imagined. As she scrubbed, the image of Lincoln’s lifeless body popped into her mind. There’d been so much blood. She scrubbed at her fingernails, only stopping when she worried that she’d tear her skin—something that she’d discovered could be fatal if an infected’s blood mingled with hers.

Satisfied that she was clean, or at least no longer filthy, she used the motel shampoo and conditioner, leaving the conditioner in her hair while she shaved her legs and trimmed everything up—something she hadn’t been able to do for a while. When she washed out the conditioner, she was amazed at how much better she felt after going through her normal bathing ritual. Things were far from perfect, but she could relax for the evening.

She turned off the water and wrapped one of the two towels around her head, then opened the shower curtain. To her surprise, an unfamiliar figure stared back at her in the mirror. She’d always been on the thin side, but she could see the rib cage of the woman in the mirror without sucking in her stomach. Her hips were much slimmer and her small B cup breasts had shrunk to a solid A cup. The sleeve tattoos on both arms seemed smaller, more compact as the skin tightened there as well.

She realized that she’d lost weight—the fit of her clothes had told her that much—but she didn’t know how much until that moment. The showers at Lincoln’s house were purely to wash away grime and clean up after sex. They hadn’t been pleasant, so she’d not stayed in the bathroom long and hadn’t noticed how her lack of exercise and severely restricted diet had decimated her body.

She didn’t really like what she saw and vowed to begin some type of prison routine that could be done anywhere, consisting of push-ups, jumping jacks, burpees, crunches, and whatever else she had room to do when she reached her next destination. She’d also increase her rations, both to better take care of herself, but also to get the baby growing inside her the nutrition it needed.

Sidney wrapped the second towel around her body, wincing when it almost reached completely around her twice, and then left the bathroom. She dug around in Lincoln’s pack and pulled out a can of chili, which she opened and ate cold. Since he wasn’t around to share the can anymore, she ate the entire thing, effectively doubling the size of dinner that she’d been restricted to for the last month.

She threw the can away, burped a foul chili-flavored burp, and then chugged a bottle of water before returning to the bathroom to brush her teeth and hair.

With her nighttime routine complete, she put on one of Lincoln’s shirts from his backpack and curled up with her cell phone to read the news. It was all depressing, but El Paso seemed to be standing tall, so she turned off the light and curled up with Rick James for a long, restless night.

Outside, the distant sound of gunfire and an explosion disrupted the night’s silence. She turned onto her side, bringing one of the pillows up over her ear to clamp out the noise.

* * *

Sidney’s eyes flew open. Rick James was near her feet, his back arched and hissing at something out of her line of sight. Her hands felt along the unfamiliar sheets until the tip of her index finger jammed into a wooden nightstand. It took her a moment, but then she remembered where she was. Hotel, Texas… Lincoln dead.

The soft, almost imperceptible rattle on the doorknob across the room told her what the cat was upset about. She threw the covers off, wincing that she’d forgone putting on a pair of underwear or pants before she’d gone to bed. The only thing she wore was Lincoln’s t-shirt.

She landed on tiptoes, shushing Rick James as quietly and as firmly as she could while digging into the backpack for the large kitchen knife she’d stashed there, handle up. It snagged on something inside the pack, and she had to twist it free. Fabric ripped and she knew whatever it had caught on was probably ruined.

The sound of a key sliding into place startled her more than the thought of some infected asshole trying impotently to open the door. She pressed against the wall and peeked around the corner. The handle angled downward and the door pushed inward, only to be stopped by the slide lock up high.

It thudded loudly in the relative calm of the night.

Sidney watched in horror as a long, two-pronged metal rod of some kind hooked around the lock, and whoever was outside pulled the door back toward them. “Shit!” she shouted, realizing what the intruder intended.

She rushed around the corner, knife in hand. Maybe she’d seen too many movies, but there wasn’t any way she was going to become some post-apocalyptic sex slave.

Sidney almost made it in time to stop the door from opening before it burst inward, knocking her back. She fell, arms flailing wildly and hit the back of her head on—the dresser? She didn’t know what it was.

Her vision swam through tears and a swirl of lightheadedness as the door closed and locked behind the intruder. She kicked her legs feebly, trying to push away from the nightmare, to escape into the corner of the room and curl up into a ball.

It didn’t work. The man practically jumped across the distance separating them—or had she passed out?

When her vision cleared slightly, she saw the hotel attendant standing over her menacingly, smiling a crooked smile.

“We coulda worked out a deal and not gone to all this trouble,” he said, unbuttoning his pants and letting them fall around his ankles. “But you’re a special snowflake, aren’t you?” He pointed at her exposed crotch. “I see you’re already ready for me, baby.”

The attendant stroked his dick, making himself hard. Sidney kicked his shin weakly, still dazed from the blow to the head.

“Guess we’re gonna have a little fun, then send you on your way.”

She reached out, grasping the underside of the bed, and pulled, inching away from her attacker. He grabbed her ankle and yanked her viciously toward him. “Oh, no you don’t, bitch.”

The attendant fell to his knees and pulled her closer. “Yeah, you’re gonna enjoy this.”

Sidney turned her face away from the impending horror. Something metallic shone only inches from her outstretched hand. The knife! If she could only grab—

He fell on top of her and crushed her as he slid along her body. His hand trailed along her arm, and she whimpered when his fingers wrapped around the knife’s handle. He lifted himself slightly and held the knife in front of her face. “Was this what you were looking for? That’s not very hospitable, miss.”

“Just leave me alone,” she pleaded.

“Be good and this won’t take too lo—nngh. Aiyeee!”

He sat upright on her pelvis, screaming in pain as Rick James launched himself from the bed, digging his claws into the man’s face. The knife fell, the tip embedding into Sidney’s chest.

She ignored the pain and grasped the handle as the man struggled with the fifteen pounds of teeth and claws tearing into his skin. She pulled the knife from her own body and thrust outward, blindly, into the man’s stomach. He grunted and hunched his back, pulling the knife free with his movement.

Sidney stabbed him again in the stomach and felt the blade sink all the way into him until hot liquid poured over her fingers. She twisted the knife and pulled it free once more, then plunged it into him again.

The attendant fell backward, away from her, begging for her to stop.

She used her free hand to push herself upright. The edges of her vision began to go dark, and she lowered her upper body a few inches.

By the time Sidney’s head felt like it wouldn’t explode if she sat up further, her would-be attacker had pushed his feet against the cheap motel carpet, gaining enough traction to separate the two of them by a yard.

“You sick, pathetic fuck,” she spat. He groaned incoherently in response.

Sidney attempted to stand, but settled for crawling instead. She crawled toward the man, retching as the carpet squished wetly underneath her hands and knees. When she was beside him, a rage, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, filled her. It came from deep inside, burning with an intensity that surprised her.

Without thinking, she grasped his flaccid penis and nutsack and began sawing with the kitchen knife’s serrated edge. Her attacker tried unsuccessfully to pull away, but his blood loss made him weak, and his moans of pain were muted garbles.

When the flesh separated in her hand, she realized why people did this to rapists. It had been like this for thousands of years, the practice only stopped in the last couple of hundred years. She crawled toward his head and jammed everything she held in to his mouth.

“Be good, and this won’t take too long,” she hissed, repeating the words he’d said to her.

And then she slid the knife across his throat, shielding her eyes against the expected geyser of blood. Instead, it dribbled out weakly onto the carpet, the man’s heart long since stopped.

She spat on his corpse and then cried.

She sobbed uncontrollably for what seemed like hours. Finally, Rick James came to her and licked her face with his rough tongue.

“Ugh, stop it,” she groaned, realizing that the cat was licking the man’s blood from her face.

She pushed herself to her feet, testing her legs unsteadily. When it seemed like she had enough strength to stand unsupported, she did so, and examined the room. Minus the floor, the room looked more or less like it had before.

Sidney debated dragging the body outside and flinging it over the railing. She didn’t have the strength to do that, so instead, she dragged it to the closet and closed the door.

She thought about it for a moment. She didn’t know what the fuck the creatures on the East Coast were, but she’d seen thousands of horror movies and knew it was better to be safe than sorry. She opened the door once more, stabbed the corpse through the eye to destroy the brain, and then closed it again.

“Just to be safe,” she muttered aloud before lurching toward the bathroom for another shower.

53

El Paso, Texas

April 24th

The rest of the Ian’s journey to the Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, where their new employer had set up shop, was more of the same: Run; hide, avoid infected, avoid people…don’t get trapped in clusters of people or vehicles because infected will soon show up if they’re not already there.

Thankfully, Kinsey was right about the truck they took from the Talladega safe house. They could pile four times the supplies into the back, and it had a five-hundred-gallon tank for diesel in the bed. They filled all the tanks on the outskirts of El Paso when they found a tanker train stalled on the tracks.

The last thing they needed was to be trapped in the city without fuel.

They got smarter and learned how to mobilize through this new world, but it was slow and cautious instead of the mad dash that it started out as. It took two weeks instead of one and three thousand on the odometer from Talladega, which was right around a thousand highway miles, typically. They had to take a large detour to the north to avoid a solid wall of bodies headed right toward El Paso about a hundred miles west of Dallas near a town named Abilene.

They approached the city slowly from the northwest and watched over the open plains of sand dunes as F-16s and Apache helicopters flew toward the east to drop ordinance. The sounds of their constant barrage in the distance filled the days and nights, but they knew it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough; there were just too many.

Semi-trucks, as well as other vehicles, took any road they could find to get into the downtown area, which seemed to be the only safe zone left, based on the amount of traffic. To Ian, it looked like a Sunday buffet for the infected. He couldn’t even imagine what all of these people would look like stumbling around once they were infected. Then Ian had an interesting thought…how long could an entire society of these things actually live? They were supposed to be alive, so wouldn’t they starve to death, or better yet, die in three days from dehydration?

“Boss. Boss! Ian!” Kinsey shouted.

“Yeah, what?” Ian replied, startled from his speculation.

“The roads are cleared of stalled vehicles. Tells me that there’s some organizing going on down here. Somebody’s gotta be in charge.”

“Yeah, but how many are in charge, is the question,” Ian said then added with a look of disdain at the scene before them, “What a fucking mess.”

Overhead, a sortie of four mismatched jets and fifteen or sixteen Black Hawk and Apache helicopters flew by. “They’re running combined, hodgepodge operations from three branches of the military,” Toby said, pointing at the aircraft. “And those old Hueys we saw earlier? It looked like some collector or something pulled those things out of mothballs for transports. This is a war zone where only one side needs bullets… Fuck me running,” he grunted.

That other side of the war, the mass of infected traveling westward, was just starting to show itself to the naked eye along the horizon. It looked like a tiny, dark mountain range that was slowly growing larger.

“How long are we going to stay here?” Jose asked, not bothering to keep the discomfort from his tone.

“Just until we get paid, bro. Just until we get paid,” Ian replied.

“Ah, you know that money ain’t worth a shit anymore, right?” Kinsey asked.

“Yep, been thinking about that.”

“We can’t stay here,” Kinsey said with a look of disgust upon her face.

“I know.”

* * *

The medical center was guarded by one man at the apron of the parking lot, wearing olive-drab fatigues in full battle-rattle. Ian didn’t recognize the branch, as the man bore no insignia, but he seemed attentive enough. At the main door, there were two guards who looked a lot less soldierly than the first one, telling the team that they, too, were contractors… of a sort. Local mercs brought in for basic security reasons. Otherwise, the building could have been abandoned. Dark windows and an overall lack of activity gave it an eerie vibe.

They had parked the post-apocalyptic beast across the street and around the corner, behind an apartment building that had been gutted by fire inside, leaving a hollow, black, brick shell. It wasn’t the first building they saw like that. In fact, they were in an entire community of them. They deemed burnt-out buildings as the safest place to hide, since having their wheels trapped behind a mile of concertina wire and chain link was not in the plan, nor was having it confiscated or reclaimed. That vehicle was their salvation; losing it would put them on the same level as the rest of the world, and Ian didn’t think their chances were good there. As they walked up to the gate, the guard in the cheap fatigues watched them closely but didn’t stop them. His eyes were locked on the satchel over Ian’s shoulder. It acted like a free pass for him, however that was not the case when it came to the rest of the crew.

“Whoa, bro. My crew stays with me.”

“Sorry, merc, but they’re not on the menu,” the guard stated, showing his disdain for other contractors.

“Not a problem. We’ll just take this satchel that Dr. Sanjay has been waiting on over to Briggs Field and see if the commander there has a use for it,” Ian replied.

The guard glared at him, but not enough that Ian couldn’t see his tiny mind cranking through his options. “All right,” he finally said. “But they stay out of the building.”

“No go. My people stay with me, and that’s your final option.” Ian paused and watched the man try to douse his fuse.

Ian had dealt with chumps like him all of his life. They’re nothing but piss ants with a gun, and all that much more volatile because they knew it. The guy in front of him probably did two or three years in the military and got out so he could brag about his illustrious career—during which he never saw combat. Sure, he might have done a stint in the Sandbox, but it was probably guarding munitions or watching a gate to the motor pool. Not all private hires were that way, but there was a large number who were, and this dude was a perfect example of one.

To his credit, he made a phone call.

“All right, they can go in as far as the lobby, but only Ian McCollister can go upstairs to the third floor. Once you get up there, you’ll wait for Dr. Sanjay.”

“Fair enough,” Ian said and started through the gate. There were actual MPs at the desk where they checked their guns. The guards didn’t bother to search them, which informed Ian of their professional level. Granted, they too were contractors, but a person could do just as much damage with a 1911 as they could with a SCAR. For a moment, it looked as if the MPs were going to search Kinsey, and they all knew what that was about.

Neither Toby nor Jose would allow that shit to fly, and Kinsey knew it. They stepped between her and the two soldiers, who quickly backed down and waved them on inside.

* * *

“Mr. McCollister, I presume?”

“Yes sir.” Ian stood.

The man, whom Ian assumed was Dr. Sanjay, reached out his hand. He shook the doctor’s limp grip for a moment until he realized that he hadn’t reached out to take his hand; he wanted the satchel. Ian withdrew his hand and gave the bag to him. It wasn’t lost on him that the doctor wiped his palm on the leg of his pants.

“It must be getting pretty bad out there if it took you this long to get here,” Dr. Sanjay said. “Did the Hummer break down?” Apparently, he didn’t know about the switch in vehicles.

“No sir. We abandoned the Humvee a ways back and requisitioned a four-door pickup, which made it to the outskirts of El Paso before it took a crap on us,” Ian lied, giving him the description of the pickup truck that they’d followed along the utility access route outside of Atlanta.

“I see; too bad. We could have used that here,” Dr. Sanjay said as he fished a small key out of his pocket. He inserted the key into the bag’s locking mechanism and twisted it.

Ian waited silently for further instructions, but the man turned and walked away, ignoring him as if he’d never existed. Ian didn’t have a good feeling about this, and the place had the decomp stench that permeated the rest of the city, which was odd, as the mechanical and HVAC systems seemed to be working fine. Ian sat down and waited, then waited some more.

* * *

Three hours later Dr. Sanjay came back down the hallway from whatever lab he’d been stashed away in. When he saw Ian still sitting in the lobby, he frowned. Ian stood awkwardly, knowing for sure now that the doctor had forgotten all about him.

“Mister… McCrowsky?”

“McCollister,” Ian replied.

“Yes, well…what are you still doing here?”

“Our business is not concluded, sir. I require final payment, and I would like to see if you have anything else for us.”

“For you?”

“Yes, as in work, sir.”

“Oh. Oh yes, yes, yes. Ah… No, I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything for you. You know, with the military pitching in and all.”

“Not a problem, sir. Then there’s only the matter of compensation.”

“Yes, let me contact my secretary, and I’ll forward the amount to your account. With bonuses, of course,” he added, thinking that would be the end of the story.

“I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not acceptable. You’re aware that the banking system as a whole took a crap a couple of weeks ago, are you not?” He shook his head. “Yes, sir. It’s not good out there, and that complicates things.” Ian wanted to take it out of his hide for making him wait for three hours, not to mention that he just didn’t like the muffer as Kinsey would call him.

“I guess I don’t have a solution, Mr. McClosky.”

“It’s McCollister, sir. Please try and remember.”

“I don’t think I like your attitude,” Dr. Sanjay said belligerently, not realizing that Ian saw him press what he assumed was a panic button on his sleeve.

Ian pressed the phone-to-radio setting in response and said, “Yellow.”

The code word alerted the crew that something was going down. Ian slid the phone back into his breast pocket and pulled his 9mm out of the back of his waistband.

“I assure you that there is no need for this type of behavior, McClosky.”

“I don’t know if you noticed this, Doctor, but the world’s gone to shit, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s due to people like you.” Ian based that belief on how early they’d started hoarding resources at his facility.

Ian let that sink in a second, noticing that though he didn’t flinch or look fearful, Dr. Sanjay didn’t bother to deny the outlandish accusation. Why? And what was a doctor like him doing in a hospital protected by the military? Not protected very well, but protected nonetheless.

Ian saw a look of relief on the doctor’s face when the elevator door opened to allow two MPs to step out, but that relief vanished when Ian put the pistol barrel up hard under the man’s chin.

They leveled their M4s, but a female voice from behind stopped them.

“Be good now and set those trinkets down, gentlemen,” Kinsey said as she leveled her 1911 on the two men, the suppressor extending the barrel to an intimidating length. Their rifles held more rounds, but the .45’s bullets were bigger, and the handgun was better in tight spaces like the hallway. But more importantly, she had the drop. They lowered their weapons and slowly set them on the floor.

“Sidearms too, please. Thank you. Now face the wall, and please, let’s not interrupt the gentlemen during their negotiations.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. McCollister. I paid your past employer for your contract.”

“That’s a lie, Doctor. He confirmed that you were responsible for interaction from that point forward, and you confirmed it when you mentioned that bogus money transfer. So…since banks no longer exist, and money is no longer worth the paper that it’s printed on, we need to establish some sort of monetary compensation that we can both live with—live being the operative word here.”

“Surely you wouldn’t actually kill me with all of these soldiers around.”

“Soldiers? They are MPs mixed with second-rate contractors, Dr. Sanjay, not operatives. There’s a huge difference. However, we need not talk about such severe action at this point, as I’m sure there’s something on site with which we can reach equitable compensation. Maybe back in your laboratory, perhaps?”

“No! No, there is nothing back there for you. What do you suggest, Mr. McCollister?”

“Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to remember a person’s name when they have a gun pointed to your head?” Ian said and looked at the greasy little man, knowing that they were more than compensated with the truck and supplies stashed just two blocks away. Ian was not a thief, but this chump had really pissed him off in the few short weeks he’d known him, so he would make sure he paid for his transgression. There was also something suspicious about him that got under Ian’s skin. He didn’t turncoat on clients as a rule, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil, especially when the evil is theirs.

“What was in the satchel?” Ian asked and grabbed his lab coat so he could shove the barrel up tight against the underside of his jaw again.

“Tha…that’s not your business,” he gasped.

“Usually you’re right, but the world has taken a bit of a turn.” Ian angled his elbow up. “If I shoot like this, I sever your spine and paralyze you for life—if it doesn’t kill you.” Ian leaned in and whispered into his face, “I call it the Stephen Hawking.”

Yeah, it was a terrible thing to say, but this guy was dirty, he could feel it.

Ian angled his elbow way down to his torso, bringing the barrel up straighter. “This will blow your face off; literally run a blast pattern up the front of your face. It probably won’t kill you, but it will stop you from visiting McDonalds for a while.” The stairway doors opened in front of him, and he saw Jose and Toby with their rifles.

Ian’s back was now covered, and there was no way the building held a garrison. From what they had seen on the east side of the city, he knew there was no one to call to for help. A mass of thousands of infected were rushing breakneck across the desert, devouring everything in their path, and Ian knew they were not ready for something that size, regardless of the military’s perimeter.

“Okay, okay. It’s a formula to start fighting this…thing,” the doctor said as he cowered under his grasp. Ian doubted Sanjay had been exposed to a physical threat since high school.

“That is very interesting, Mr. Sangay.”

“It’s Doctor Sanjay,” he moaned.

“We’ll worry about your name later. The result of this conversation might render the point of your name moot.” Ian paused for dramatic effect; he wanted to see if the man would piss himself or start to whimper. He didn’t, but he was close.

“Sorry, ah… Yes, it does concern the virus and yes, it is interesting,” he started hesitantly, his ploy obvious. He would now start to act super intelligent and try to turn Ian’s own thought patterns against him.

“I’ll tell you why it’s interesting, Dr. Sanguay,” Ian said, stopping Sanjay’s attempt to correct him with a glare. This was his way of saying that bullheadedness would beat the crap out of the doctor’s intellect any day of the week.

“You see, that satchel came to us on the second day of the outbreak in a facility I spent six weeks putting together specifically for this purpose. It was found wrapped around the shoulder of a teenage girl who had no business whatsoever being a bonded courier.” Ian noted the quick look of confusion at the mention of the girl who had been shot at the gate.

“It’s simple deduction, which, of course is all that someone of my limited intellect is capable of,” Ian continued. “I’ve come to see a discrepancy within the timeline to the point where I feel that you knew about this virus thing—if it really is a virus—before it happened. In fact, I believe you knew about it for quite some time before it happened. How?”

“No, no… That’s nonsense. Nobody could have known.”

“You’re not convincing me, Doctor!” Ian scowled, making sure his coffee-tinged travel breath washed across his face.

“No, I didn’t know anything unti…”

“Until when?”

He wilted and replied, “Until it was already…”

54

Outside El Paso, Texas

April 24th

Sidney looked in the rearview mirror for the thousandth time—five thousandth time. It was still there, and off to her front as well. It was like the city was in a giant bowl, the skies above clear except for all the planes and helicopters.

Two days of hard travel since the incident at the hotel had put her only a few miles outside of the city of El Paso and the Army base there, which the Internet said was designated as the closest, and only, reachable safe zone since New York City was besieged from land.

All the gas stations were closed down now, so she’d had to resort to siphoning gas from the many abandoned cars along the way, most of which were the scene of terrible carnage. She figured that staying in DC had been both a blessing and a curse. The crazy, awful first days of madness had passed by while they were hidden away safely, but it also meant that she was behind the leading edge of the infected. Of course, she wasn’t really sure if there was a “front line” in all of this since there’d been reports of infection all over the US at roughly the same time.

What the hell was this thing? It had to be terrorists. There was no way a virus would spontaneously mutate several places at once. Although, if it happened in an airport and passengers were infected without even knowing it… She’d probably never know the truth, but with no radio and hours upon hours of nonstop driving, it gave her something to think about.

The rain had died down after she left the hotel, replaced by a weird, giant dust storm in the east and west. She tried to find information about the storm when she took breaks to stretch her legs and pee, but nothing came up—not that even that was out of the ordinary, as more and more Internet sites were going down or only displayed cached pages with no new content.

“What is that, Rickie?” she asked the cat. He mewled at the mention of his name, and she glanced over to the passenger seat where she’d strapped his carrier. Technically, it wasn’t the safest spot for him if the airbag deployed, but she figured if she got into an accident, the cat being stuck in its car carrier, safe and secure in the back seat, just waiting for one of those infected fuckers to come and eat him wasn’t the best option either.

The car bucked wildly as she hit something. Instinctively, she pressed her foot on the brake, but thought better of it and took her foot off. She didn’t put it on the gas pedal either, which allowed the car to travel forward at a much slower rate than she’d been going.

In the rearview, she saw a thick, rubber mound that stretched from one side of the road to the other and off into the sandy scrub brush alongside the road. “Whoa,” she whistled and pressed the brake, pulling over onto the shoulder.

She checked the surrounding area. It was wide open in this part of western Texas. She didn’t see anything, so she opened the car door to get a better look at the glinting object off the side of the road. A massive line of barbed wire stretched as far as she could see toward the south. It blended in with the sand and pitiful brown brush dotting the countryside, which is why she hadn’t seen it when she was driving at sixty miles an hour. The barbed wire was that curly kind that the military used—concert-something or other—but it was only one row high. The stuff she saw on television was usually two or three high.

“Huh,” Sidney grunted, absently rubbing her flat stomach where the baby was probably the size of a pea inside of her. “I guess they’re only using one row because they’re gonna make a big circle around El Paso…”

She trailed off as a line of cars appeared over a small rise from the east. She’d seen a ton of cars and trucks on her trip, all headed west, until this morning when she had to stop to pee again. It’d been at least two hours since she saw any since then. She just figured she’d gotten into a set speed with everyone trying to conserve fuel and make it as far as they could before they had to walk. To see—she counted quickly—twelve cars all traveling together was strange after all that time.

The first car slowed down as it neared her, and Sidney suddenly felt very stupid—and very exposed—for being out on the open road, all alone, and without any weapons.

Weapons, her mind repeated the word. She’d needed weapons on several occasions since this started and hadn’t had one except for the kitchen knife. She needed something with a little more reach-out-and-touch-someone range, like a gun preferably, but at the very least a baseball bat. That way she didn’t have to be within the grasp of someone to defend herself.

The car, a newer Toyota Camry with dents and dings along the front bumper and a spider webbed windshield, stopped and the passenger side window slid down as the rest of the vehicles stopped as well. “Hey, everything all right?” a dark-haired woman asked with a thick Spanish accent.

“Yeah,” Sidney replied. “I just stopped to go to the bathroom and stretch my legs.”

“That’s not too smart, you know,” the woman chided her.

“I can’t pee in my car.”

She nodded in agreement and pointed behind the car with her thumb. “We make our kids pee in cups and then just toss it out the window. A few days ago, we were attacked by those crazies and almost didn’t get away. Some of us didn’t…” she trailed off.

Sidney glanced apprehensively at the other cars. “Is one of you bitten?”

The woman looked toward the driver, who said something that Sidney couldn’t hear, and then looked back at her. “You’re welcome to join our little group. It doesn’t look like the horde is too far behind, maybe forty or fifty miles.”

“Horde? I—” She clamped her mouth shut and rearranged her thoughts. “Is that what the big dust cloud is?”

The lady nodded enthusiastically. “We seen it up close this morning. We had to camp out to take care of our wounded, and they came across the plains just west of Fort Worth. Millions of ’em.”

Sidney’s eyes drifted above the car to the south, where the dust cloud began, and traced it northward where the wall of dust rose hundreds of feet into the air. She pointed at the cloud, and said, “That’s from them? From the infected, I mean.”

“Yeah, we think so.”

“Why? I mean, how?” Sidney asked.

“They’re chasing after us, sweetie.”

“You?”

The woman cackled loudly. “No, not us,” she gestured to the people in her car. “Us.” She pointed at Sidney, then back at herself.

“Oh. Well, that’s depressing.”

“We stayed way too long in Florida. I told Ramón that we needed to go weeks ago, but we stayed to ‘let it pass by us.’ You can see where that got us.” She held up a pistol that must have been in her lap. “We almost didn’t make it past New Orleans, but I shot our way out. Cabrón.”

“You guys headed to El Paso?” Sidney asked as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah. The Internet said that was the place to be, so that’s where I’m headed.”

“The Army has the city completely protected,” the woman stated matter-of-factly. “The CDC moved there when things got bad in Atlanta—but you know, there wasn’t much military in Atlanta, just the National Guard. There’s a big Army base in El Paso, so they’re gonna hold this time.”

“Mmm…” Sidney answered, not really listening. There was some type of commotion coming from one of the vehicles farther back in the line of cars.

“They say there’s a cure already,” Ramón’s wife continued. “All they have to do is field test it and then mass-produce it.”

“Huh? How would they cure—hey, there’s something going on back there.” She pointed to the Jeep with its top down and the two passengers who jumped away from it.

“What?” the woman asked and turned in the car.

“Shit, that’s Jimmie,” Ramón said, looking into his car’s side view mirrors. “Stay here, Connie.”

Ramón opened the driver’s side door and walked quickly back toward the Wrangler, where shouts of alarm were now beginning to spread along the column. He held a pistol as well, carrying it pointed low to the ground. It looked to Sidney like he knew what he was doing with firearms, not like some of the others she’d seen along her trip.

Someone, Sidney couldn’t tell who, gunned their engine and then a silver minivan jerked out of the line to the left and sped down the road alongside the column. It reached thirty or forty miles an hour and then the screech of brakes echoed across the open desert as a plume of white smoke billowed out from underneath the vehicle.

Sidney cringed when she heard the wet thump of the van hitting flesh, and a body flew through the air.

Connie screamed and threw open her door. She ran around the car and had to press up against the side as the van resumed its flight, passing dangerously close to her. The older woman shouted obscenities for a moment before remembering why she was in the road in the first place.

Sidney watched, only mildly interested in the misfortune of the woman. She’d seen so much sick and depraved shit since leaving DC that nothing surprised her anymore, and a wife losing her husband to a simple hit-and-run was nothing to bat an eye at. Connie’s deep, guttural wails of agony spurred the younger woman into action; she had to get away from here.

On cue, the woman’s cries were joined by shouts. Sidney slipped into the driver’s seat of her car and started the engine, pulling off the shoulder and onto the road slowly. A dark form flashed in her periphery and the little car rocked hard as something slammed into the side of it.

Sidney gunned the engine, shooting the car forward. In her rearview, she saw a man stagger to his feet, his shoulder clearly dislocated. And then he began to run toward her, his screams of rage reaching her over the sounds of the car’s engine. She pressed the pedal down further until it wouldn’t go any more.

The infected man faded quickly in her rearview, and she chastised herself for letting anyone distract her. After a mile, she eased up on the gas, and on her self-berating.

“It was a lesson,” Sidney told herself as her eyes darted rapidly back and forth between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. “Don’t allow others to get you killed. All it takes is for one person to hide a bite and then Bam! Game over, man. Game over.”

She smirked at her inadvertent Aliens reference and focused on the road ahead, driving for several more miles. She wasn’t too far outside the city now. There must be—

The silver minivan lay on its side as she crested a hill. It had made it to within a football field of a line of four tanks on the next hilltop. Several other cars and trucks were pulled well off the road in various places, parked haphazardly. She slowed down, noticing the signs along the shoulder that warned her to do so.

SLOW DOWN AND PREPARE FOR INSPECTION

VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

“Well, that’s pretty fucking clear, huh, Rick James?” she mumbled.

Her butthole felt like she was squeezing it tighter than gnat’s ass as she eased her car slowly past the minivan and the point where it’d wrecked. The windshield was shattered and the hood was pockmarked with bullet holes. The driver sat, unmoving, in her seat, kept in place by the seatbelt across her chest. The back half of her head was missing.

She rolled forward at five miles per hour until one of the tanks—or maybe it was a truck with a gun, she didn’t know the jargon—moved out of line, driving toward her. The massive eight-wheeled vehicle turned to block both lanes about fifty feet in front of the main line, and several soldiers climbed out of the back.

One guy walked to the centerline and waved her forward slowly. Sidney couldn’t help but stare at the six other soldiers, who had their weapons aimed at her head. She crept forward and stopped less than ten feet from the tank-thing.

“I’m gonna need you to step out of the car, sir,” the soldier who’d directed her stated loudly when she was fully stopped.

“I don’t have any weapons,” she answered, holding up her hands.

“Oh! Uh, I’m sorry, ma’am.” He pointed at her hair. “I didn’t realize you were a woman.”

She smirked. “I get that a lot.”

“I don’t care about your weapons,” the soldier continued. “There are civilians running around here with .50-cals. I need to verify that you aren’t infected.”

“I’m not.”

“Ma’am, step out of the vehicle.”

“I—” She began to panic as another soldier appeared beside the passenger window and pointed his rifle at her head.

“Ma’am, this is just the first checkpoint out of six,” the soldier stated. “You need to calm down and step out of the vehicle. If you’re clear, then you can go on down this road to the next checkpoint, where they’ll do the exact same thing to you.”

“What happens if—”

“Get out of the car!” He jerked the handle and the door swung open.

“Okay!” Sidney yelled, hands up once again. “I’m sorry. This is all so new to me.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about as long as you’re not infected.”

She reached slowly across her body, unlatched the seatbelt, and pushed herself out of the car. The soldier motioned her forward to where another waited with a strange handheld device. It looked like an old-school walkie-talkie with a metal rod sticking out of the end of it. On the end of the rod, a bulbous piece of white rubber or plastic looked like a marshmallow stuck on the end of a stick.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Thermometer,” the new soldier replied. This one had a red cross on a white band around the shoulder of his body armor. “Don’t worry, I’m just going to place the read probe against your forehead, and it’ll give me your temperature within a few seconds.”

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out, worried about her body being out of whack from the pregnancy.

“Congratulations,” the medic said. “Once you make it through all of the checkpoints, you can be seen by a doctor.” He glanced at her car and then back at the readout. “Did your, uh… Did the father not make it?”

“No,” she answered. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the medic said as the machine beeped.

“What? What’s that mean?” She pointed at the thermometer.

“Huh? Oh, this? Your temp is normal. I meant that I was sorry that your friend didn’t make it.”

“So am I free to go?”

Car doors opened behind her and Rick James hissed. She turned to see the soldiers searching inside her car and the trunk very briefly while another ran around the vehicle with a large round mirror mounted on a pole.

“Car’s clear,” a soldier yelled. “Nothing’s hitching a ride with her.”

The medic smiled and said, “Okay, take your clothes off, ma’am. Just down to the underwear.”

“What?” It reminded her of the creepy motel attendant back in Kilgore.

“We have to make sure you aren’t bitten.”

“I want a female search,” she replied.

“We ain’t the goddamn TSA, ma’am,” the first soldier barked. “My platoon doesn’t have any females. You can request that shit a few checkpoints in, but for now, you’re gonna get checked out or you’re turning around and—”

A rumble echoed across the desert, causing the man in charge to stop and look eastward. A massive dark cloud erupted and began to billow skyward slowly. Then several more appeared as more booming sounds reached the checkpoint. The soldiers cheered.

“What? What is that?” she asked.

“The Air Force is bombing those fuckers about fifty miles from here,” the leader replied. “They’re putting up a wall of lead between us and them.”

“Bombing? You mean the giant horde of infected?” she asked, using the word that Connie had used a little while earlier.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s the only way this is gonna end. We’ve got to stop them out there,” he pointed to the desert, “before they get to us here. My platoon is damn good, but my UBL for the Strykers would only get maybe ten or fifteen thousand of them. That horde is supposed to be millions strong. We’d be overrun in minutes.”

“Strykers? Is that what you call these tanks?”

He laughed at her naivety. “These aren’t tanks, ma’am. You’ll see those when you get closer to the city. They use up too much fuel to be this far out. These are Stryker Infantry Fighting Vehicles.”

“So…tanks with wheels?” she clarified.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Hey, LT!”

The soldier looked over at a man holding a little black handset out the top of one of the Strykers. “What is it, Corporal?”

“The CO is on the horn. Says we need to collapse the perimeter and reestablish Checkpoint Foxtrot one mile from our current position. The Air Force is gonna bring in a couple of Bones to really fuck some shit up.”

“Okay. Time hack?”

“They’re inbound,” the man holding the handset replied. “We’ve got about thirty minutes until they start droppin’ bombs all over the fucking place.”

“Send up an ack. We’ll move as soon as we finish processing this refugee.” The soldier nodded and dropped back down inside the vehicle. “So, let’s finish up, ma’am. I believe you were about to strip down to your underwear.”

“Is this really—”

“Yes. Unless my medic checks every inch of you, you aren’t making it past my checkpoint.”

Sidney sighed and slipped her shirt over her head, then she untied her tennis shoes and started to step out of them.

“Oh, hold on,” the medic said as he unrolled a small mat on the pavement. “It gets hot; step onto this.”

“Thanks,” she answered, genuinely appreciative of the young soldier’s thoughtfulness. She stepped out of her shoes and pulled off her socks as more booms echoed in the distance.

“Is that the Bone?” someone asked.

“No, those are still the fighters. You’ll know when the B-1 drops its ordnance.”

She glanced back at the soldier in charge. He had a black stripe beside his name. “So, uh, Murphy, what does that black line mean beside your name?”

He looked down at his body armor and pointed to the bar. “This?”

“Yeah,” she said, unbuttoning her blue jeans.

“It’s my rank. I’m a first lieutenant.”

“Oh. Is that high up there?” She shimmied out of the jeans and kicked them off of her foot. “You’re in charge of all these guys, right?”

“Spread your legs and open your arms out to your side, ma’am,” the medic stated.

She opened her legs and held her arms out at shoulder height while the medic passed an odd blue light close to her skin, examining every inch. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing at the inch-wide scab below her bra where the knife had stabbed her.

“I got into a fight with a wannabe rapist and my knife fell. Stabbed me in the chest.” She glared over at the lieutenant, who’d squared up with his hand resting on the pistol at his waist. “Then I pulled it out and killed the fucker.”

“Doc?” the lieutenant asked.

Sidney’s head whipped around when she felt hands on her ribcage. “What are you—”

“Just doing my job, ma’am,” the medic said, leaning closer to her as he probed the wound with his thumbs. “It’s not a bite or a scratch, sir, and the UV doesn’t register a hit. I think she’s telling the truth about getting stabbed.”

The lieutenant relaxed and continued, answering her question, “No, a first lieutenant is pretty low in the officer ranks, but I am the highest ranking man here.”

“Oh,” she replied, watching the top of the medic’s helmet as he knelt in front of her. She could feel his hot breath along her panty line. “So, uh, what’s a B-1?” she asked, trying to ignore the invasion of privacy.

“A B-1 Bomber. We call ’em ‘Bone’ because, well, if one was spelled out…”

“I get it. So what does a Bone do?” She felt utterly stupid and had no clue about any of the military stuff that she was surely going to have to deal with all the time in the safe zone.

“It’s a giant plane with a lot of bombs. The bombers are going to try to put a serious dent in that horde, give us guys on the ground a chance.”

“I saw a bunch of wire,” she said as the medic lifted her ass cheeks. “Hey! My ass is little; you don’t need to move it out of the way.”

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m— It’s just easier, and faster, this way.”

“So, all those bombs,” she gestured with her head until the medic’s fingers started touching her scalp gently.

“Looking for wounds in your hairline,” he told her.

“Those bombs,” she continued. “There isn’t a cure, is there?”

“No, ma’am,” the lieutenant replied. “The only thing that cures them is death.”

“Hmpf,” she huffed. “I met a woman a few miles back that said they had a cure in El Paso— Oh! There’s a bunch of cars coming. I forgot to mention them.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. I think there should be ten? There were twelve, but it looked like one of them had an infected person in it, and they had to abandon it. That van right there was with them, but took off.”

Lieutenant Murphy pointed down the road. “You mean there are infected only a couple of miles away?”

Sidney nodded. “She’s good to go, sir,” the medic stated.

“Okay. You can put your clothes back on, but I’d recommend keeping them loose because they’re gonna make you take them off again at Checkpoint Echo, five miles from here.”

She started to put her pants on and then muttered, “Fuck it,” before simply slipping her feet into the sneakers without tying them.

The lieutenant shouted something about “First Squad” and pointed eastward. “Eleven vehicles. Clear it, and return to the new checkpoint site, one mile west of here.”

An older man tossed a lit cigarette to the ground and began barking orders. Several soldiers hopped into the back of a Stryker, and it tore off down the road.

“Are they going back to where I left those cars?” Sidney asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Staff Sergeant Gallegos will figure out what’s going on and take care of the situation.”

Sidney watched the back of the vehicle for a moment before Lieutenant Murphy said, “Ma’am? It’s time for you to get moving. Remember, approach all the checkpoints slowly and follow their directions exactly, okay?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just stay safe, and protect that baby once it’s born, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, bending down to pick up her discarded clothing. “What am I gonna find in the city?”

“A mother fucking headache,” the lieutenant replied.

“What’s that mean?”

“You’ll see.”

The sound of automatic gunfire reached her ears as she walked toward the little Toyota. She stopped and stared at the top of the rise where the road disappeared to the east. She knew instinctively that a just few miles past the hill was where Connie, her husband Ramón, and about thirty other people had just met their end when the sergeant took care of the situation.

55

Fort Bliss, Texas

April 24th

Sarah told Charlie what happened at the Beaumont Medical Center. If it affected him, he didn’t show much of a reaction. She suggested that they go back and break Jack out, but Charlie talked her down from that idea. His point, and she conceded it was a good one, was that not only would they not get far with armed guards everywhere, but they’d also likely get captured and end up as lab rats too.

Leonard had come to see her twice in the last nine days, with updates. Jack was still in Alpha Wing. They were working on infected people in the East Wing—doing what, he didn’t know—and they’d lost several doctors and other medical staff to the infection. Even Dr. Wallace, who’d been overseeing the work in Alpha Wing, had been killed. Most of the non-federal personnel had run off.

Her motivation to do the hard work on the perimeter defenses was gone. One of the men had gotten hurt a week ago, and he was on kitchen duty while he recovered. He was ready to go back to the wall, so she swapped with him and was spending her days prepping meals and cleaning up after her fellow recruits.

Her heart skipped when she saw Leonard walk in. “Leonard!” she hissed as she hustled toward him. “I keep telling you to go home! It’s not safe for you to be running back and forth like this. I won’t have your death on my conscience.”

“And I won’t have Jack’s on mine. They moved him to the East Wing early this morning.”

“But you said East Wing is for the…”

“Infected. Yeah. He’s not all the way gone—at least, wasn’t this morning. There’s this nurse who kinda digs me, and she and I were in this supply closet, making out…”

“Leonard! Focus! What about Jack?”

“Sorry. Anyway, she tells me the doctors moved one of the ‘immune’ people to East Wing. She said he scared the crap out of her because right in the middle of the move, he started talking normally. He asked to see Sarah and wanted to tell her goodbye. It has to be Jack.”

Sarah felt tears running down her cheeks but didn’t wipe them away. This was it. He was going to turn. She realized Leonard was talking to her, but she hadn’t heard the last part. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I said, if you want to go see him, now is the time. Things are getting crazy there, and we may not have another shot.”

“I need to find Charlie to tell him what’s going on.”

“I brought the nurse with me, and I gave her instructions to find Charlie and tell him. Let’s go if that’s what you want to do.”

“Okay, let me get my things.”

She ran to her bunk and opened her footlocker. She had her pistol and extra magazines on her at all times, but she grabbed her rifle and few extra magazines for it, too. She met Leonard outside, and he led her to a military ambulance. Sarah gave him a funny look, and he shrugged.

“Easiest way in and out. Communications are all fucked up,” he said as they got in. “No one wants to be on the hook for someone dying because they held up an ambulance at the gate. They’re way more focused on checking the refugees flooding in from the east.”

He drove out the same gate through which he’d entered, waving at the crew as they went through, and then flipping on the siren for effect once they hit the street.

The main roads were being kept clear by the Army, so they had an easy path back to the medical center. Leonard drove the ambulance right up to the entry. Sarah climbed out, and the guard at the door made a motion to stop her, but Leonard rushed around the front of the ambulance.

“She’s with me. We have a situation,” he said.

The guard started to say something, then thought better of it and just waved them through.

Once inside, they went farther down the hall than they had when Sarah was here before. She calculated they were two-thirds of the way through the building before they stopped at a staff elevator. Following the same procedure as before, Leonard scanned his card to open the doors, then again to access the floor where they were holding Jack.

Sarah turned to Leonard. “Listen to me. I want you to leave. Go home to your father and your grandpa and your orange truck and Officer Susan and all of that. I’m afraid if you don’t go, you won’t get out of here. El Paso isn’t what we thought it was.”

“I’m not leaving you, Sarah. You need me to get into the secure areas.”

The doors opened. Sarah pressed L and grabbed the security card from his hand as she stepped out. He took a step forward, but she pointed her pistol at his face. She held up the security card. “Access problem solved. Go home, Leonard.”

The doors closed and the elevator began its trip to the ground floor.

She turned around, realizing that she didn’t know exactly where Jack was. She spied a sign over a door that said Biohazard Safety Level 4, and there was a similar card scanner next to the door. She ran Leonard’s card through the scanner. Nothing happened. She reran it. Nothing happened.

“Leonard doesn’t have access to that room, Sarah.”

She spun around, startled by the familiar voice. She had the drop on him; her pistol was leveled at his chest.

“Hello, Duckett,” she said.

“You know, something was bothering me after you left the other day. Your whole demeanor changed after you talked to Jack. And, boy was I slow on this one. Melanie Gibson? That was cute.”

“Thanks. Are you going to let me in here, or do I have to shoot you?”

“I checked the DMV record for Jack’s wife, Sarah, and damned if it wasn’t your face staring back at me. Why’d you lie?”

“I assumed you guys would have grabbed me too, wanting to know how I traveled with him for a week without getting infected.”

He considered this for a minute. “You’re probably right. That was then. You want to see him? Fine.”

He held out his security card and walked toward the reader. Sarah stepped away from him and let him pass. He swiped it, and she heard a beep and a click.

“Sarah,” he said. “I want you to know that I don’t know what’s happening here. I’m no scientist, not by a long shot. I know now that they weren’t trying to cure any of these people. I feel like shit for helping them do whatever they’ve done. It won’t mean much to you once you get in there, but I’m sorry.”

“Is the other guy, what was his name, the one who tried to escape? Ram? Is he in here too?”

Duckett shook his head. “No. He’s in Alpha Wing. He’s still not showing any symptoms.”

“Is he a good man?”

“I think so. He’s always been nice to me and had no reason to be. He’s worried about his family more than himself, so yeah, I think he’s a good man.”

Sarah smiled weakly. “Let him go. That will help balance the scales.”

“I might do that. I just might. I’ll tell everyone that we’ve lost this wing to the infected. That should buy you some time. Are you planning on leaving, or are you going to…you know,” he mimed shooting himself in the head, “in there?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t planned that far ahead.”

“Well, you should have a biohazard suit on if you plan to live, but at least put on a gown and a mask, would you? I’ll feel better.”

“Thanks, Duckett.”

He walked away without saying anything else, and Sarah pushed the door open.

She felt the whoosh of air as the negative pressure kept any air from inside the room going out. The doors closed, and the pressure equalized. She realized she was in an airlock of sorts. There were several blue gowns in the room. Following Duckett’s advice, she put one on, followed by a surgical cap that she took from a box and a mask from another. She found rubber gloves as well and pulled them on, snapping the fingers to get them tight. She held her breath and pushed open the next door. Another whoosh of air and she was in the room where the staff put on their biohazard suits. She passed them and went into a third room. This one had a showerhead in the ceiling and big ring on a chain to activate it. This was the decontamination room. One more door, one more whoosh, and she was between two rows of the infected, all chained to their beds, restrained at the hands, feet, and by a strap across the forehead.

She heard them snarling, snapping their teeth, and struggling against the restraints. Walking down the row, she looked back and forth, alternating sides to look for Jack. Finally, she found him third from the end on the back row.

At first, she didn’t recognize him. He’d bitten through his bottom lip, and blood covered the lower half of his face and neck.

“Oh, my God! Jack! What have they done to you?” She didn’t expect an answer, so she was startled when he rolled his eyes in her direction and spoke, spitting blood on himself.

“Injescted with varchus.”

“What?” she asked.

His eyes rolled back and forth a couple of times. He squeezed his lids shut, and drops of blood oozed from the corners. He snapped them open, making Sarah start. He focused on her, and his mouth snapped at the air a couple of times. She took an involuntary step backward. He struggled to speak clearly enough for Sarah to understand him. “No cure. Virus. Injections of virus. Heard doctors. Talking. Testing limits. Of immune.”

His eyes rolled back, and he thrashed against the restraints. His breathing became rapid, and the other infected patients around him became more agitated.

Sarah tried to process it. Could it be true? Could this have been done to him on purpose? If that were the case, did that mean that this whole outbreak was engineered? And by who? Was it terrorism? Something more sinister? Could the government be involved? The Army? Her head was swimming. Jack brought her back to the present.

“You. Understand?” he asked, trying hard to control his voice.

“I think so. You heard the doctors talking, and they have been injecting you with the virus to test the limits of your immunity. Is that right?

He smiled, exposing bloody teeth. “You. Smarter. Than. I look.”

She laughed despite the situation, and the laugh transformed into a sob. She was close to losing it.

“No,” Jack said. “No. Sad. You go. Fight. Tell Dad. Sorry.”

He coughed a glob of thick, bloody mucus onto his chest. Sarah could smell it, even through the mask. She was glad it hid her expression from him.

“I love you, Jack,” she said.

“Love. You.” He coughed again but didn’t spit anything up this time. “Favor.”

“You want a favor?” she asked.

“Yes. Two. Untie hand. Then, go.”

“You want me to untie your hands and go?”

“Yes. One hand. Then leave.”

She sobbed openly now. Even through the mask, Jack could see she was in anguish. She reached down and unfastened the manacle that held his left arm to the railing on the bed. He wanted so much. He wanted to hold her one more time. He wanted to stroke her hair, to tell her everything was going to be all right. He wanted to tell her not to cry. He wanted to kiss her, to taste her, to bite her, and feel her blood flowing, and chew on her flesh and…

“GO!” he shouted. “GO NOW!”

Sarah jumped back, shocked by the outburst. She took a step toward the door.

Keep going, he thought. He focused his mind on undoing the other manacle. It was getting harder to think, to keep his thoughts lined up. Biting. He wanted to bite. He was so hungry.

“GO!” he shouted again. His right hand was free, and he unfastened the head strap, then leaned forward to free his feet. “I’m. Surprise. Doctors.”

Sarah got it. He wanted to be freed so he could surprise the doctors when they came back. And he wanted her gone so he couldn’t hurt her.

“I love you, Jack!” she called out again. She saw him look up and for a moment, he smiled. In that instant, despite the blood and the torn lip and the bloody eyes, she saw him. Jack. He heard her, understood her. Then his smile turned into a snarl, and he was gone. He had one foot free and was working on the other. She spun away from him and hustled to the entrance to the decontamination room, hitting the red button to release the doors. She didn’t know what was in the shower, but she grabbed the ring and pulled the chain. Cold liquid cascaded down over her. She could smell bleach and held her breath as the fluid soaked her cap and mask and gown. Finally, she released the handle.

The disinfectant stopped. She stole another glance at the lab room. Jack was free, and working on turning another patient loose.

She gasped. The other patient was Ramsey, the man she’d brought here more than a week ago.

Jack paused for a second, his body shuddering in another spasm. He looked in Sarah’s direction, and snarled, taking a step toward her. She felt a shudder of her own, but stayed where she was and kept watching him. He stopped moving and smacked his head a few times. He violently scratched at his scalp for a couple of seconds, then turned back to Ramsey and renewed his efforts to untie him.

“Keep fighting it, Jack,” she said out loud. “Give ’em hell when they come for you.”

She passed through the room with the biohazard suits. In the last room, she ditched the surgical gown and cap, but stuffed the mask in her pocket. She paused and looked at the box where she had gotten the mask. She reached in and grabbed a few more of them on the way out.

Never know when you might need one, she thought.

She left the lab and scanned Leonard’s card on the staff elevator. She heard howls of rage coming from the lab and thought for a second that the infected were coming for her. She readied her rifle, but none of them came.

“Probably can’t open the door,” she said aloud. “Jack will show them how.”

The elevator doors opened and several doctors stared at her, surprised to see a soldier on the infected floor.

“You can’t be here,” one of them said. “The Army’s been ordered to evacuate the building.”

A man in a black tactical outfit stepped forward. He carried a compact rifle with a skinny magazine. Sarah thought it was an MP4. Or was it MP5? It didn’t matter.

“Yeah,” the man said. “Homeland is taking over. You can run along now.”

She held her tongue and stepped aside, letting them pass. They went straight toward the Level Four lab.

In the elevator she pressed L, and just as the doors started to close, she heard a burst of gunfire, and screams. The last thing she saw before the doors shut was the man in black getting tackled by one of the infected. She couldn’t see who it was, but she hoped it was Jack.

The screams faded as the elevator descended to the lobby.

She walked toward the front doors, expecting to see Leonard, but the lobby was empty. Even the guard had left. She searched the parking area, looking for a car that she might be able to steal, wishing the ambulance that Leonard used to bring her here was still parked there with the keys in it.

She heard a familiar engine, and scanned left and right, but could not tell from where it was coming. She thought she might be hallucinating, just hearing what she wanted to hear. Maybe the strain of seeing Jack had caused her to crack.

And there it was! Emerging from behind a massive truck with those descending railroad wheels on it, was the Mercedes SUV, pulling the teardrop trailer. Charlie was behind the wheel, and he maneuvered it to pull up alongside her.

“Hey, Sarah. Need a lift?” He acted casual, but she could tell he was excited to see her.

“Yeah, I do. Uber’s not responding.”

“Jesus. I don’t miss all that yuppie crap.”

“How’d you know I was here?” she asked.

“Leonard’s girl told me. I loaded this thing up as fast as I could and headed over.”

“He’s a good kid. I shouldn’t have sent him away like I did. I wish I could tell him I’m sorry.”

“You can. He’s in the trailer with the girl. Now you want to go, or what?”

Sarah ran around the front of the SUV and climbed in the passenger side.

“Are we going back to base?” she asked.

“Nope. I heard there’s more than a million of the infected coming at this place from the east. They’re bombing the shit out of them, but still, I don’t want to be here when they show up.”

“So where then?”

“Back to the Reservation. Leonard said we’d be welcome there while we figure out what’s next.”

Charlie made the turn onto Highway 54 North. From their different excursions to set up defenses, Sarah knew they’d hit Highway 375 and connect with I-10. Conditions had undoubtedly gotten worse since they made the reverse trip three weeks ago, but they’d figure it out.

“Charlie?” she asked after a couple of minutes of silence.

“Yeah?”

“You haven’t asked about Jack.”

“The girl told me. There’s no coming back from that. I know it.”

“He was still himself, sort of, for a few minutes,” she said. “The doctors there were injecting him with the virus to test the limits of his immunity. They weren’t trying to cure him at all.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Charlie exclaimed. “That’s murder! What the fuck?” He took a second to calm down. “Did you, you know, take care of him?”

“Yeah. I set him loose, at his request, so he could get revenge on the assholes that did it to him.”

Charlie laughed. “That’s great! I wish I could see how that played out.”

“From the screams I heard as I was leaving, I think it went to plan.”

“Good,” Charlie said. “Good for him. Go out with your boots on. A hero’s death.”

“He also said, ‘Tell Dad I’m sorry.’ He didn’t say for what.”

Charlie sighed, letting his breath whoosh out for several seconds.

“I’m sorry, too, boy.”

They rode on in silence. As they made the turn to Highway 375, Sarah looked in the side mirror and saw a massive dark cloud of dust looming over El Paso. Could a million infected running toward the city create a cloud like that? It looked like videos she’d seen of sandstorms.

Silently, she made a vow to Jack. She’d find out what happened. She’d find out who was responsible. And if it were in her power, she’d make them pay.

56

Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

April 24th

They were in a stalemate. Ian needed to come up with a course of action quickly. A movement from the corner of his eye caused him to pull back, but he kept his gun up tight under Dr. Sanjay’s chin.

“Don’t hide behind that corner, sweetheart; you’re making me nervous,” Ian called out.

A woman stepped out from behind the corner and met Ian’s eye. “Jose, isn’t that the girl you were trying to make nice with down in the lobby?” Kinsey asked.

“Yeah, she must not have been able to resist my charms,” Jose replied. The woman, who was actually pretty hot, gave Jose a pathetic look, causing Ian to instantly like her. She wasn’t a fool, and guns didn’t make her nervous.

“Are you up here to rescue your boss or just be a pain in my ass?” Ian asked.

“Well, he’s not my boss, so it must be to just be a pain in your ass,” she quipped.

“It’s not fun time, lady, so just go about your business, and we won’t bother you.”

“I know. I’m coming with you… As soon as I grab my partner, that is.”

“No freeloaders, baby. Go on about your business,” Ian said, knowing somehow that whatever he said wasn’t going to matter to this woman.

“I wasn’t asking,” she said, which caused all three of his backups to look her way for a second, mildly shocked at her audacity.

“Give me a fucking break. Toby, zip-tie the guards while Kinsey and I take the doctor to his office. Where is your office, big boy?”

“My office…” he stammered. “It’s down on main floor by the lobby.”

Another motion pulled at his eye. The girl who was crashing the party shook her head and pointed toward a door with a name plaque on it.

“Really! I think we should try this door with your name on it first.” Ian peeled the ID card lanyard from around Sanjay’s neck and slid the card through the reader. The lock clicked open, and they walked through the door into an immaculate, spacious, air-conditioned office.

“All right, everybody, bring it in here. Yes, you too,” Ian said to the woman, who smiled. He saw why Jose was trying to make time with her. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“It’s definitely not sweetheart. You can just keep that cheesy Hannibal impersonation to yourself. My name’s Jesse, and my partner’s name is Ram. He’ll be coming with us.”

“You’re not coming with us,” Kinsey said, causing Ian to smile. This new girl, Jesse, was like his sister all over again; she was going to get her way, regardless. It made him a little nostalgic for simpler times.

“You need us. Seriously. If there are two people in this city who need to go with you, wherever it is you’re going, then it is us,” Jesse said in a factual tone, as opposed to the pleading one that Ian had expected.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why do we need you, Jess?” Ian asked, noticing that something he said pissed her off again.

“It’s Jess-e, mister no-name hot shot with a gun.”

“Call me Ian. Sorry to cut this short, but spit out your value to us or walk away. We don’t have time for any more bullshit.”

“I’m an excellent shot and a registered nurse. We need to take Ram with us because he is immune—the only one who is immune, as far I can tell, and the good doctor here is sucking on his blood like a fucking vampire.”

Ian had to admit, the thought of someone being immune and in their company intrigued him.

“Kinsey, go with the little lady and get her boyfriend,” Ian said, knowing that the little lady comment would piss her off. To Ian’s surprise, she was smiling. She was already on to his game.

She reached out and grabbed Sanjay’s ID from his hand. “With this, we’ll be right back.”

“What are you really doing here, Dr. Sanjay?” Ian asked, shoving him down into the chair.

“I already told you, I am trying to find a cure.”

“I don’t think so. In fact, I would bet that you had a cure the whole time, but we’ll know for sure in a matter of seconds, won’t we?”

* * *

Kinsey followed Jesse out of the crowded corridor and into one of the big staff elevators. The mercenary kept her weapon at a combat rest position, but still exuded the threat of violence. Jesse pressed the floor they needed, and then turned to a face the other woman as the doors slid shut.

“There are usually MPs guarding Ram’s room. They all have M4s and pistols. The sergeant is only armed with a pistol, but with all this shit going on…” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Is this guy your boyfriend, or something?” Kinsey asked as she impatiently drummed her fingers across the stock of her rifle.

“No,” Jesse frowned. “He’s freaking older than shit. He’s a friend. Ram may be the cure to this whole damn thing.” She chuckled to herself, thinking how crazy it was that the crotchety old prison guard could be the answer to this mess.

“You prior service?” Kinsey asked.

“Navy.” Jesse nodded. “You?”

“Marines.”

“I can see that. Look, we don’t want any trouble. We just want out of this zoo. They flew us to Atlanta at first, and then evacuated us here. We haven’t seen a lawyer or anything resembling personal rights.”

When the elevator reached its destination, Jesse said, “Let me handle this. Hopefully we can avoid any shootouts.”

Stone-faced, Kinsey bent her knees slightly and pulled the rifle into a ready position. She leaned forward slightly as Jesse leaned forward and glanced outside the open elevator. The annoying whine of an alarm and flashing red lights filled the hallway.

“They’ve been having a lot of infected patients attacking staff,” Jesse said quietly over her shoulder. “I don’t see anyone outside of Ram’s door, so it must be an alarm on this floor.”

Kinsey nodded, scanning their surroundings. Jesse waved her companion out of the elevator, and both women stepped into the empty corridor. The mercenary, weapon tucked into her shoulder, swept the area around them.

The alarm was starting to give Jesse a headache.

“Let’s move,” Kinsey goaded the other woman. “We’re running short on time. My boss isn’t the patient type.”

“Hold on,” Jesse replied, glancing around the abandoned hallway. She figured most of the medical staff had split, along with the soldiers. Pointing to a closet, she ran over to it and pulled open the door. Jesse leaned in and started rifling through folded stacks of clothing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kinsey asked as she watched Jesse and the hallway simultaneously.

“Clothes. We don’t need Ram running around with his ass hanging out!” She grabbed a pair of black scrubs and a pair of flip-flops, and then shut the door. “Trust me when I say that no one wants to see that!”

“No, I do not.” The corners of Kinsey’s mouth crinkled upward, finding herself warming to this pushy woman who weaseled her way into their group.

Jesse thought the mercenary’s face was going to crack. “No one likes old-man ass,” Jesse chuckled, then carefully sprinted the few feet to Ram’s door. Kinsey followed, still watching for any soldiers or other hired guns. Jesse swiped Sanjay’s key card, unlocking the door. Looking around once more, she pushed it open.

“Hey,” Ram said, pushing his food tray to the side. “This tuna sandwich tastes like shit!”

“That’s because it’s not tuna!” Jesse said, stepping into the room. Ram’s eyes grew wide as he realized it wasn’t one of the regular medical staff, but his young partner.

“Jesse?”

“No shit, Ram,” she said, tossing the scrubs and flip-flops onto his blanket-covered lap.

Kinsey gave Ram a once-over as she stood in the open doorway then returned to watching the corridor for any threats as Jesse started to remove the IV from his arm.

“It’s been so long that I thought you were dead.” Ram smiled as Jesse reached into her own scrubs’ pocket and pulled out a small cuff key.

“No such luck, Ram.” Jesse quickly unlocked his restraints and patted the stack of scrubs on his lap. “Get dressed; we don’t have a whole lotta time.”

Ram slid off the hospital bed and waved Jesse off. “Turn around. I don’t need you getting an eyeful.”

“Trust me; you don’t have anything we haven’t seen before,” Kinsey said, smirking as she glanced over her shoulder at Jesse, who seemed to be enjoying the exchange. “Besides, we don’t have a magnifying glass with us.”

“Who’s Miss Sunshine?” Ram asked as he quickly pulled on the scrubs.

“Kinsey,” Jesse said with her back to him. “She’s a mercenary. And our ticket out of here.”

“This just gets more fucked up by the minute.” Ram finished dressing, then picked up the flip-flops and tapped Jesse on the back. “What the hell am I going to do with these?”

“Put them on,” Jesse said, turning around. The scrubs practically dropped off the older prison guard. “Man you’ve really lost weight.”

“Yeah.” Ram slipped the cheap flip-flops on. “They had me on some kinda low-carb diet, and they uncuffed me to work out every day. I can’t walk in these,” Ram said, glancing down at his feet.

“Did they take a lot of blood?” Jesse asked as he was trying to step into the shoes.

“Blood, no. They were trying to infect me, I think. They kept injecting shit into me,” Ram said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“You’re going to have to step it up a bit, Big Boy,” Kinsey said as she watched the corridor. “You two done catching up so we can get out of here?” Without waiting for an answer, she stepped into the hallway and signaled for them to follow. Once out of the room, they headed toward the elevator, the mercenary in the lead.

“Hold it!” Sergeant Duckett shouted from the far end of the hallway. He held his 9mm at chest level, aimed at Kinsey. “Drop your rifle,” he said to the mercenary.

“I can’t do that,” Kinsey replied, finger resting on her rifle’s trigger. “Just let us go, and there won’t be any need for bloodshed.”

Duckett glanced uneasily from Kinsey to Jesse, then at Ram. He let out a deep breath and slowly dropped the pistol to his side, carefully slipping it into his holster. Raising his empty hands so Kinsey could see them, he quickly spoke. “We have orders to abandon this post. Homeland is taking over whatever is left of this fucking place in one hour. The rest of my unit is moving out right now. I was coming over to let you go anyway.”

“Let me go?” Ram frowned.

“Yes.” Duckett glanced back over his shoulder then back at the three. “We lost the East Wing to infected. This place is no good anymore. You’ve always been pretty square with me, Ram, in spite of your situation, so I thought I’d do you a solid and give you a chance to get to your family. I really don’t know what the fuck they’re doing to you here.”

“Where’s my family?”

“I don’t know, dude. Wherever you left them, I guess—if they made it this long.”

“Thanks, Duckett. I owe ya one.”

“No, man, we’re square,” he said, fading back into the stairway.

Kinsey’s group took the elevator to the third floor, and she heard her mic click four times. She motioned Jesse and Ram into the corner, behind the control panel and took a knee right in front of the door. She didn’t fear MPs or discount mercs anymore, but Homeland guys played dirty.

The door opened, and Kinsey was firing before she knew if she had a target.

* * *

“Toby, come over here and show the good doctor some of that Gitmo training that you had. The one with the fingernails—yeah, that’s one of my favorites,” Ian said casually, knowing that Toby had no special training, but the mere suggestion would hopefully be enough to push the cowardly doctor over the edge. Toby moved in and Ian grabbed the keys from the Sanjay’s pocket and started to rummage through his desk.

“Yes, sir. Let me make sure that I have everything I need. I can use his paper clips and…” He looked under the desk’s edge and grabbed an intercom wire that he yanked out and stripped the insulator off. He held the wire up so all could see. “I should be able to get some use out of this before it melts, then I need a pair of pliers and a thin needle. I have pliers on my Leatherman, but the needle… I don’t have a needle.” He pulled the huge KA-BAR knife from his belt sheath and laid it on the desk corner in front of the doctor. “I’ll use this.”

Sanjay started to whimper. His previous arrogance appeared to have come from another life, a life where he retained some semblance of dignity. A life that allowed him to look down at the heart of society and scorn them due to the exemplary education he had earned with the help of daddy’s bank account.

“What do you want? Killing me won’t help you.”

“Kill you? No, Doc, we’re going to peel you like a grape,” Toby said with the barest hint of joy to his tone.

“What do you want? Just tell me!” He was starting to panic, and Ian knew it was time to strike.

“Where are the other safe houses?”

“The what? Safe houses? They’re not safe—”

“We have a pretty good idea what they are, Sangy, but that’ll be a good start. Tell me that, and if you’re honest, we can talk about what it will take to ensure that you survive the day.” Ian glared at the doctor, whose attention was torn between him and Toby, the latter fiddling with his mock Gitmo tools.

“There is a folder in a file sleeve taped to the bottom of the center drawer,” he said, barley able to keep from shaking.

Ian reached under the desk and tore away the file sleeve. “Hey, you told the truth. How’s it feel? Be careful now, too much honesty can be addictive,” he said, not really knowing what he could get from him now. What held value in this world? By glancing at his file, Ian could tell that they had everything that they could use from this worm, but they just couldn’t let him go free. He was sure this creep had something to do with all this shit.

“Can I go now? I mean, will you let…”

“Hell no! I need to know why you were taking blood out of Jesse’s boyfriend,” Ian said and was surprised to see the doctor freeze up, his terror level increasing tenfold.

“Oooo, it looks like you just struck a nerve, boss,” Toby said.

Jose peeked outside the door toward a sound that’d caught his attention. “Hey, you boys have anybody wearing black uniforms?” Jose asked one of the bound guards. They all shook their heads.

“Looks like Homeland’s here, boss,” Jose shouted. “Three in the hall and two lined up on the elevator. Five total, from what I can see.”

Ian saw the doctor smile at his inevitable release. At least he thought it was his release, but unfortunately for him, he didn’t know Ian’s crew. Toby stomped on Sanjay’s chest, using the wall to brace the chair from tipping over, and the doctor started to gasp for breath. Ian moved next to Jose, who’d just coded Kinsey. Hopefully, she was on her way back. Ian signaled for them to get low in case they just started shooting through the door.

“On Kinsey’s first and a two-count,” Ian said, and Jose gave a nod. He checked Toby, who now had the doctor zip-tied to the chair and was behind him, crouched down and using the man’s shoulder to stabilize his barrel.

Six quick reports sounded from the hall. “Now!” They burst out of the office door. Both Ian and Jose took down two and finished off the third as Kinsey and her stragglers came from around the same corner where they’d first seen Jesse. They all piled into the office, except for Jose, who stepped into an alcove across the hall.

Ram, Ian guessed his name was, instantly went for Toby’s KA-BAR. Ian thought the man was going to stick it right in the doctor’s throat, and he wasn’t going to stop him, but to his surprise, he bent down and sliced the bonds on the guards, then stood over them.

“Infected are in the East Wing, boys. Get your guns and go without issues, all right?”

“Yeah, Ram, we’ll go. We’re tired of hanging around this sick fuck anyway,” one of them said, and Ram nodded.

Kinsey whispered something in Ian’s ear. He heard her but couldn’t believe what she was saying.

“What? No, I heard you. Toby, he wasn’t drawing blood from our new friend here.”

“Oh, I have a feeling that I am not going to like what you’re going to say, Ian,” Toby replied.

“No, you’re not,” Ian said and watched as Toby’s huge hands and arms grabbed the skinny intellectual’s head and spun it so hard to the right that the snapping of his neck sounded more like a squish from wringing out a towel than a snap. His body went limp.

“Tell me later,” Toby said and positioned himself by the door.

“Good riddance to that sick fuck,” Ian grunted. “You two, you’re on my team now, so follow orders, everyone downstairs and directly to the truck. We’re moving out.”

“You’re not going to stay and fight?” Jesse asked, seemingly disappointed.

“No, Jesse, we’re not. Chances are, we’ll kill more infected just trying to escape than anyone on the front line will.”

“That bad, huh?” Ram asked.

“You’ll see when we get outside that this situation is completely unfuckable. Grab what Homeland gear you can on the way out.”

The lobby was empty, and the discount mercs at the gate had also disappeared. People ran back and forth in panic, and not all of them were healthy. A scream from behind sounded, but Ian ignored it as Kinsey and Jesse brought down four of the infected that had slipped in from the East Wing.

“Keep your magazines ready, people. We’re going to need a wall of lead to get back to the truck. On three. One…two…”

57

El Paso, Texas

April 24th

“Move it, asshole!” Sidney shouted, pressing the center of the steering wheel for a full five seconds. The driver of the car blocking the intersection flipped her the bird and shouted something back at her in Spanish. She returned the gesture, continuing to berate the woman until the MP directing traffic could clear the intersection, allowing her to continue traveling toward the Army base.

“Damned lunatics,” Sidney mumbled. “You’d think there was a giant mob of infected people coming this way, or something.”

She made it another three blocks before a soldier waved her toward a parking lot. Rolling down her window, she asked, “Hey, what’s the deal? I’m trying to make it to the hospital. That’s the safe zone, right?”

The soldier nodded. “Yes, ma’am. All the FEMA camps in the city are full, so we’re diverting to Fort Bliss itself. The base has almost a forty-five-mile circle of shipping containers surrounding it, and the engineers are working on a second level now. You’ll be safe there.”

She looked in her rearview mirror at the line of cars behind her then thought about what the soldier said. “The FEMA camps are full?”

“Yes, ma’am. There’s an estimated ten million additional people in the city.”

She thought back to her years overseas. “How will you feed us all?”

“Don’t you worry about it, ma’am. They’re working on a plan. For now, you just need to clear the streets. There’s no room for your vehicle on post, so you’ll have to walk from here.”

“From here?” she asked, momentarily forgetting that the soldier had casually waved off her question of whether there was enough food for that many people. She glanced out her windshield in the direction of traffic. “Why are all those people driving?” she inquired, pointing at the cars inching forward along the I-10 access road.

“Commander’s orders, ma’am. No more cars inside the walls. All those cars are just gonna get abandoned along the way and clog up the streets even more. We need to have open avenues of approach for military vehicles, so the engineers are using bulldozers to push abandoned cars off into the ditch or onto the sidewalk, depending on where they are. The commander wants that to stop, so he’s having people leave their cars in parking lots further away then walk the rest of the way in.”

She glanced at the Home Depot parking lot where the soldier directed her. “How far to the base?”

“It’s about four, four and a half miles, give or take.”

“Four miles?” she choked. “Is that safe?”

He shrugged. “It’s as safe as we can make it, ma’am. There are soldiers posted along the route. Look, I’ve got to get this parking lot filled and then move down the road to the next one, so can you please just park and let me do my job?”

Sidney started to say something, but thought better of it. The soldier was not much more than a kid, just following orders. She eased her foot off the brake and turned into the parking lot, taking a space near the exit. She didn’t like the idea of being on foot for four miles when she’d seen how fast those things could run, but what could she do?

Logically, she knew that everyone from across the entire southeast of the country—the ones who were alive anyway—were either already inside the safe zone or they were on their way. All those cars would never fit inside a forty-five-mile perimeter.

“Wait.” The realization that there could be millions of people crammed into that small area hit her like a ton of bricks. How have I not thought about that?

She’d seen it time and time again in the Peace Corps. When a lot of people were crammed into a confined area, nothing good ever came of it. Murder, rape, and theft were usually rampant, not to mention the spread of disease and lack of food.

“What is the government thinking?” she asked the cat as she went through the car’s interior to ensure she had everything she’d need—maybe for the rest of her life.

She felt a moment of panic. Inside the safe zone she’d be defenseless and trapped. What if someone had hidden a bite? If somebody turned inside the perimeter, everyone was as good as dead.

Can I make it away from the city before they get here?

She glanced off to the east. The airplanes and helicopters continued to fly back and forth, dropping bombs on the horde. They were still too far away to tell how far they went, but she thought the explosions were louder than they had been four or five hours ago, when she hit the first Army checkpoint. That meant the mass of infected was getting closer.

Cars quickly filed into the parking lot. People got out and began taking inventory of their things, seemingly much more organized than Sidney was. They looked like they knew exactly what to do, whereas she was lost.

“This was a mistake,” she mumbled. “I can’t do this.”

She sat heavily in the driver’s seat and edged the keys back toward the ignition. She could just leave, and go…where? All those people were coming here because there wasn’t anything left out there.

The rumble of a big engine passing by made her look up. A massive four-door armored truck rumbled by, headed away from Fort Bliss. It wasn’t a military vehicle—or at least Sidney didn’t think it was. The truck had a second set of wheels that could drop down, allowing it to travel along railroad tracks. She’d seen similar vehicles before, but nothing so big as the thing that drove by. The tires had to be over three feet in diameter, and there were dirt bikes in the back, along with what looked like extra fuel tanks, and a…crane? Is that a freakin’ crane? she wondered.

While the truck didn’t look military, the man sitting on one of the fuel tanks in the back definitely did. He had a crew cut and bulging arms sticking out of an olive green t-shirt. Over the top of everything, he wore a bulletproof vest with all sorts of gear strapped to it, and a massive gun of some type rested across the knee of his camouflaged pants.

“I have got to get me one of those,” she said aloud.

The soldier, or whatever the hell he was, must have seen her watching him because he smiled and waved in her direction. She grinned, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. And then the asshole ruined it by standing and air-humping his gun.

“Dickhole,” she said, still grinning slightly.

While the guy’s gesture may have been obscene, his confidence seemed to strengthen her resolve. He was a fighter and didn’t appear worried about the situation. She was a fighter too. She’d survived a trip across the country, on her own for more than half of it. She’d killed that would-be rapist fuck, hit infected with her car, and learned how to avoid the crazies by hiding and staying quiet, first at her apartment building and then for almost a month at Lincoln’s house. She’d even dumped the body of the father of her child, leaving him by a dumpster to rot so she could keep traveling to where she was now.

More explosions rumbled across the desert. This latest group rattled the Toyota’s windows. They were getting closer. Her opportunity to go it alone outside of the city was gone.

“I can do this,” she said, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “I can take care of myself. I’ll make it to that refugee camp because I’m a survivor.” She patted her stomach softly. “And you’re a survivor, Little One. We’ll make it through this.”

Her pep talk spurred her to action. She got out of the car and jogged over to the cart return, where she grabbed one of the bright-orange shopping carts. Pushing it to her car, she saw others running to the cart corral to follow her lead. Maybe they weren’t as organized as they’d seemed to be. Maybe she was the one who had her shit together.

Sidney put the case of water in the bottom of the cart. In the main compartment, she placed both hers and Lincoln’s backpacks, then Rick James’ food, and the bag of litter that was slowly dwindling away. Finally, she took the cat carrier out of the car and placed it on top of everything.

Closing and locking the car doors, Sidney hid the keys deep inside an outside pocket on her bag in case she needed the vehicle later on. Then she pushed her cart toward the exit. With any luck, she’d be inside the walls in time for dinner. She was starving.

Epilogue

Pyongyang, North Korea. April 25th

Nampoo Yi looked across the broad plaza toward the open-air expanse of the Victorious Fatherland Liberation Museum and waited for the satellite phone he kept with him to beep. Their suite encompassed the entire top floor of the pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, one of the most luxurious in Pyongyang, and it was very comfortable, but they had been here for too long; tempers were wearing thin.

He looked at the Western calendar, taking note of the glorious date of March twenty-fifth, and smiled. What he and a few hundred people had accomplished couldn’t have been done by the strength of ten countries combined. Yet here they were, the whole of Western civilization was on its knees.

His phone chirped, and he looked to see it was the only person that he wanted to hear from.

“Dr. Sanjay, I trust that you have good news for me,” Yi said in heavily accented English.

“I’ve been working diligently, Mr. Yi,” Sanjay said. “I want to speak to my family.”

“I am a man of my word, Doctor. If I say that they are fine, then you have to simply trust that I have done no harm to your family,” Yi said nobly while keeping the mental image of his bed chambers this morning and the good doctor’s eldest daughter chained to his bed, nude. He didn’t typically like them young, however, the mother…she didn’t hold up under stress well.

“I have the final components to the formula and should have the first batch completed shortly.”

“That is fine,” he answered. “I need you to start mixing right away and send transcripts to…

Three minutes later, Yi was walking down the hallway to the suite’s main meeting room, where everyone had assembled to hear about the phone call. At one time, Nampoo Yi used to dread these meetings with everybody vying for power and position. However, with only the four of them left, the meeting had become more controllable.

He entered the room, seeing the other three already seated. He walked to his chair and rendered a slight courtesy bow to the facilitator, Hamid Abdullah Sari, though everyone knew that the real brains and power came from the slutty-looking woman on his left, Kasra Amol.

Her gaze was that of a leopard on the prowl, visually stripping the clothing from men and women to savor their discomfort and their knowing they could never touch something so sweet. Puppets…“Cease with the formalities and speak,” the woman ordered.

“Yes, Kasra. Sanjay has the formula and is fabricating doses of the block as we speak.”

“Isn’t it too early to release the antivirus in the United States?” Kim Pujon Hi said, knowing that the results relied upon too many factors for him to be comfortable.

“The American populace, for all practical purposes, is dead,” Hamid Abdullah Sari replied with a gruff smirk. He reveled in the satellite feeds he’d received that showed the millions of people tearing each other apart. It is fitting, he thought, knowing that lust feeds upon itself and there was no lust greater than that of Western civilization. So much money; so much time, they couldn’t help but rot from within and consume themselves. It is poetic justice.

“There are still factions that could turn out to be a problem, Facilitator,” Nampoo Yi interjected.

“Give us a full report upon your speculations, Yi,” Kasra Amol purred as if she had just playfully slapped his ass through the sheets and begged for another hot, fleshy moment.

He snapped back from wherever the bitch’s games had brought his mind and spoke. “I do not think there will be a problem in El Paso. There are too many of the infected converging there. The plan states that the deserts of Texas would be a good location to thin the herd before we release the blocking agents that Sanjay will provide. We’ll inoculate the population north of the Yucatan Peninsula in order to protect any potential allies we may have there when this is all said and done.”

“We can’t have any more of what happened in Brazil,” Kim remarked.

“Remember that Brazil was the staging area. We had planned on there being complications,” Nampoo Yi replied.

“The annihilation of an entire country’s real estate is hardly a simple complication. Do not forget who we work for as well as our ultimate goal. Everyone is aware of that complication.”

“I’m sorry, Facilitator, but I had no choice,” Nampoo Yi protested.

“We all know the rules, Nampoo Yi. Eliminate the people, but leave the real estate and infrastructure intact. What are these groups you mentioned, and how do they concern us?” Facilitator Sari asked.

“There have been certain private militias that survived quite well in the mountain states in both the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains,” Yi replied, half expecting their response. They didn’t disappoint.

“Redneck cowboys? You want us to worry about a bunch of cockgobblers with AR-15s and camouflage? Get a grip, little Nampoo,” Kasra sneered.

“I am aware that they were below the radar when we were dealing with the US Military, but now that they are all but destroyed, these privateers are bringing people in, and they could be a threat,” Yi protested.

“People? What people are they bringing in?” the Facilitator asked with alarm.

“They are gathering them up twenty and thirty at a time. They are ragged at first, but there is still a lot of food around, and if they have safe shelter, which a lot of them seem to, then they thrive.”

“Once again, Yi, I feel that we are operating on different wavelengths. You say they are getting people, and I worry that Poland or Turkey has sent troops, but no. Instead, you are talking about the general population, which has no training and has been run ragged. Please try to get on the same page as the rest of us, Nampoo Yi,” the Facilitator admonished.

“Yes, Facilitator.”

“So, keeping on track, now that we have the formula to the vaccination, it is imperative that we stop this virus a hundred miles from the Russian border. They have repositioned their arsenal upon our countries, and they will not understand any mistakes on our part. They know where we are, and they are close enough to both of our countries to make life uncomfortable. We also have to stop the spread in South America. There are a lot of valuable workers down there that we will need to reestablish control in the north,” the Facilitator stated their objectives.

“What about Australia and New Zealand?” Pujon Kim asked.

“We are sending a salvo over to Australia that will ensure it will burn for a thousand years, and—”

“And nobody gives a fuck about New Zealand,” Kasra interrupted just as the satellite phone in Nampoo Yi’s pocket chirped. Everyone fell silent so he could answer.

“Yes,” he said, not recognizing the caller. His face drained of color, and his eyes grew wide. Sweat began to form all along his hairline. Without a word, he hung up. It took him several seconds before he could meet their eyes.

“Dr. Sanjay is dead.”

“What about the formula?” Kasra demanded.

Yi typed his twenty-four-letter password into the phone’s keypad to access his email program. “It’s not here. He didn’t send it.”

The small Asian jumped at the sound of Kasra Amol’s unearthly screech of rage. It sounded much too similar to the screams of the infected.

This is the end of the Phalanx Press collaborative effort Five Roads to Texas. Look for the stories to continue on their own as each author tells their characters’ stories.

_________________________________

Sixth Cycle

Carl Sinclair & Darren Wearmouth

Nuclear war has destroyed human civilization.

Captain Jake Phillips wakes into a dangerous new world, where he finds the remaining fragments of the population living in a series of strongholds, connected across the country. Uneasy alliances have maintained their safety, but things are about to change. -- Discovery leads to danger. -- Skye Reed, a tracker from the Omega stronghold, uncovers a threat that could spell the end for their fragile society. With friends and enemies revealing truths about the past, she will need to decide who to trust. -- Sixth Cycle is a gritty post-apocalyptic story of survival and adventure.

The Invasion Trilogy

Darren Wearmouth

Aliens have planned against us for centuries... And now the attack is ready.

Charlie Jackson's archaeological team find advanced technology in an undisturbed 16th Century graves. While investigating the discovery, giant sinkholes appear across planet, marking the start of Earth's colonization and the descent of civilization.

Charlie and the rest of humanity will have to fight for survival, sacrificing the life they’ve known to protect themselves from an ancient and previously dormant enemy. Even that might not be enough as aliens exact a plan that will change the course of history.

Dead Island: Operation Zulu

Allen Gamboa

DEAD ISLAND: Operation Zulu

Ten years after the world was nearly brought to its knees by a zombie Armageddon, there is a race for the antidote! On a remote Caribbean island, surrounded by a horde of hungry living dead, a team of American and Australian commandos must rescue the Antidotes' scientist. Filled with zombies, guns, Russian bad guys, shady government types, serial killers and elevator muzak. Dead Island is an action packed blood soaked horror adventure.

Dead Island: Dos and Dead Island: Ravenous are available now!

INVASION OF THE DEAD SERIES

Owen Baillie

INVASION OF THE DEAD SERIES

This is the first book in a series of nine, about an ordinary bunch of friends, and their plight to survive an apocalypse in Australia. -- Deep beneath defense headquarters in the Australian Capital Territory, the last ranking Army chief and a brilliant scientist struggle with answers to the collapse of the world, and the aftermath of an unprecedented virus. Is it a natural mutation, or does the infection contain -- more sinister roots? -- One hundred and fifty miles away, five friends returning from a month-long camping trip slowly discover that death has swept through the country. What greets them in a gradual revelation is an enemy beyond compare. -- Armed with dwindling ammunition, the friends must overcome their disagreements, utilize their individual skills, and face unimaginable horrors as they battle to reach their hometown...

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

W.J Lundy

Alone in a foreign land. The radio goes quiet while on convoy in Afghanistan, a lost patrol alone in the desert. With his unit and his home base destroyed, Staff Sergeant Brad Thompson suddenly finds himself isolated and in command of a small group of men trying to survive in the Afghan wasteland. Every turn leads to danger.

The local population has been afflicted with an illness that turns them into rabid animals. They pursue him and his men at every corner and stop. Struggling to hold his team together and unite survivors, he must fight and evade his way to safety. A fast paced zombie war story like no other.

Zombie Rush

Joseph Hansen

ZOMBIE RUSH

New to the Hot Springs PD Lisa Reynolds was not all that welcomed by her coworkers especially those who were passed over for the position. It didn’t matter, her thirty days probation ended on the same day of the Z-poc’s arrival. Overnight the world goes from bad to worse as thousands die in the initial onslaught. National Guard and regular military unit deployed the day before to the north leaves the city in mayhem. All directions lead to death until one unlikely candidate steps forward with a plan. A plan that became an avalanche raging down the mountain culminating in the salvation or destruction of them all.

Zed’s World

Rich Baker

BOOK ONE: THE GATHERING HORDE

The most ambitious terrorist plot ever undertaken is about to be put into motion, releasing an unstoppable force against humanity. Ordinary people – A group of students celebrating the end of the semester, suburban and rural families – are about to themselves in the center of something that threatens the survival of the human species. As they battle the dead – and the living – it’s going to take every bit of skill, knowledge and luck for them to survive in Zed’s World.

BOOK TWO: ROADS LESS TRAVELED

A terrible plague has been loosed upon the earth. In the course of one night, mankind teeters on the brink of extinction. Fighting through gathering hordes of undead, a group of friends brave military checkpoints, armed civilians, and forced allegiances in an attempt to reach loved ones. Thwarted at every turn, they press forward. But taking roads less traveled, could cost them everything.

BOOK THREE: NO WAY OUT

For Kyle Puckett, Earth has become a savage place. As the world continues to decay, the survivors of the viral plague have started choosing sides. With each encounter the stakes - and the body count - continue to rise. With the skies growing darker and the dead pressing in, both sides may soon find out that there is No Way Out.

Grudge

Brian Parker

The United States Navy led an expedition to Antarctica in December 1946, called Operation Highjump. Officially, the men were tasked with evaluating the effect of cold weather on US equipment; secretly their mission was to investigate reports of a hidden Nazi base buried beneath the ice. After engaging unknown forces in aerial combat, weather forced the Navy to abandon operations. Undeterred, the US returned every Antarctic summer until finally the government detonated three nuclear missiles over the atmosphere in 1958. Unfortunately, the desperate gamble to rid the world of the Nazi scourge failed. The enemy burrowed deeper into the ice, using alien technologies for cryogenic freezing to amass a genetically superior army, indoctrinated from birth to hate Americans. Now they’ve returned, intent on exacting revenge for the destruction of their homeland and banishment to the icy wastes.

The Path of Ashes

Brian Parker

Evil doesn’t become extinct, it evolves. Our world is a violent place. Murder, terrorism, racism and social inequality, these are some of the forces that attempt to destroy our society while the State is forced to increase its response to these actions. Our own annihilation is barely held at bay by the belief that we’ve somehow evolved beyond our ancestors’ base desires.

From this cesspool of emotions emerges a madman, intent on leading the world into anarchy. When his group of computer hackers infiltrate the Department of Defense network, they initiate a nuclear war that will irrevocably alter our world.

Aeric Gaines and his roommate, Tyler, survive the devastation of the war, only to find that the politically correct world where they’d been raised was a lie. All humans have basic needs such as food, water and shelter…but we will fight for what we desire.

A Path of Ashes is a three-book series about life in post-apocalyptic America, a nation devoid of leadership, electricity and human rights. The world as we know it may have burned, but humanity found a way to survive and this is their story.

As the Ash Fell

AJ Powers

Life in the frozen wastelands of Texas is anything but easy, but for Clay Whitaker there is always more at stake than mere survival.

It's been seven years since the ash billowed into the atmosphere, triggering some of the harshest winters in recorded history. Populations are thinning. Food is scarce. Despair overwhelming. With no way to sustain order, societies collapsed, leaving people to fend for themselves.

Clay and his sister Megan have taken a handful of orphaned children into their home--a home soaring sixteen stories into the sky. With roughly six short months a year to gather enough food and supplies to last the long, brutal winter, Clay must spend most of his time away from his family to scavenge, hunt, and barter.

When Clay rescues a young woman named Kelsey from a group of Screamers, his life is catapulted into a new direction, forcing him to make decisions he never thought he would have to make.

Now, with winter rolling in earlier than ever, Clay's divided attention is putting him, and his family, at risk.

Human Element

AJ Powers

Human Element

The Neuroweb began as the greatest invention since written language. A simple brain implant that allowed the user to access information, entertainment, and even pain relief. The Neuroweb was the beginning of a golden age for mankind...

Until it was compromised.

Everyone with the implant lost their most important commodity: their free will. The collective human consciousness was hacked, and now directed by artificial intelligence. Only those without the Neuroweb have a chance of resisting...If they dare.

Aaran has legitimate reason to believe he's the last free-thinking human alive. After his family was killed in the purge, he fled for his life. Now, he aimlessly wanders through the suburbs of Cincinnati alone, desperate to find a reason to live.

When he meets a girl like him - another free thinker - they search together for a cause worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

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