9.0 - Sanctum (20 page)

Murphy and Jazz bounced out of the kitchen with grins, paper towels, and a gallon-sized can of cheese sauce.

Murphy dropped the can on the bar and pushed it hard enough to slide down the smooth surface until it came to a stop in front of Fritz, Grace, and me.  The viscous cheese sauce inside flowed up into a wave but settled back into the can before spilling over the edge.

Jazz placed a good-sized cardboard box in front of us and quickly opened it up, exposing a plastic bag full of tortilla chips.  As an apology, she said, "They're stale."

We all reached in.  Nobody cared about the loss of crunch or the slightly rancid taste.

Murphy came around behind the bar and opened a jar of sliced jalapeños he’d also found in the kitchen.  He sat a few more bottles on the counter.  Grace pulled some plates out from beneath the bar and spread them out for us.

“Hey you guys,” Murphy called, not too loudly, to Javendra and Eve.  “We got nachos.”

I stuffed my mouth with chips and yellow cheese-like goo while I picked up one of the bottles Murphy had placed on the counter with a label that read, IRN-BRU.  I looked up at him and asked, “What’s this?”

Murphy took the cap off the other bottle.  "Man, I loved these when I was in Scotland."

“Scotland?” I asked.  “When were you in Scotland?”

"You say that like it's a big surprise,” said Murphy.  "Why wouldn't I go to Scotland if I wanted to?"

I started, “I just never thought—”

Fritz laughed and elbowed me.  “Pissing off everybody, aren’t you?”

“Whatever.”  Murphy put the open bottle down in front of me.  “Try it.”

I picked it up, sniffed it, and examined the liquid through the clear plastic.  “Looks like rust juice.  Did it go bad?”

“Man,” said Murphy, as he opened the other bottle, “just try it.”  He took a long drink from his bottle.

I tentatively put it to my lips.

“Try it,” he persisted.

I rolled my eyes and took a drink.

“Well?”

“It’s okay.”

Murphy shook his head.

Grace reached over.  “You mind?”

I handed her the bottle.  She drank and seemed to like it.  “Not bad.”

Fritz reached out.  “I’ll give it a shot.”

She passed the bottle to him.

“See?” Murphy taunted me.  “Everybody likes it but you.”

Fritz drank and smiled.  “Cold, I think I’d like it a lot.”

I glared at Fritz.  “You’re just saying that because you’re in the mood to fuck with me.”

Fritz shook his head as he went to work piling chips on a plate and scooping out cheese with a big spoon.  Eve took the plate when it was finished and turned back to the front.  “C’mon Javendra, we’re still on duty.” 

We ate for a while, letting the high-calorie food fill our stomachs while sugar or beer put us all on a nice buzz.  We talked.  We relaxed.  We let some of the day’s tension unwind.

Eventually, Fritz got Murphy’s and my attention and said, “Sorry about Martin.”

"Yeah.”  I put another cheese-drenched chip in my mouth and didn't want to think about the loss of another new friend—I was reluctant to call him a friend, but I suppose he was.  "He was alright.  But that's the way it goes, right?"

Murphy nodded and raised a bottle.  The rest of us silently toasted Martin.  All the others who’d died along the way weren’t mentioned.  Was it that they’d died more than a day ago, ancient history in the post-virus world? Was the act of forgetting the dead and forgetting the grief one of the tricks of keeping one’s sanity? Whatever it was, it wasn’t fair, and nobody gave a shit about that either.  We were breathing.  They weren’t.

And that’s the way it goes.

“So what’s the plan?” Murphy asked.  “Stay here until dark, then get out of town? We’re only a couple hundred miles from Balmorhea, right?”

I shook my head.

"Oh no.”  Grace wasn't pleased.  "I'm no expert in Zed body language, but I'd say one of the gerbils in his head is giving him bad ideas."

Fritz pretended to look closely at me.  “Yes, Grace.  You’re right.”

Murphy laughed.

“Look,” I started, “we can’t just leave town.”

Murphy sighed loudly.  “Oh, no.  Here it comes.”

I leaned forward and looked around to see all eyes on me.  "These helicopter assholes keep fucking with us, probably like they fuck with everybody they see.  If all of today's crap happened when we were back at Fort Hood, and we were heading out to West Texas, I'd say, who cares?"

"No, you wouldn't,” Murphy interrupted.

“I’m with Murphy on this,” Grace added.

“It’s true,” said Fritz.

Jazz stayed out of it.

“Balmorhea is an hour away by helicopter,” I pointed in the direction I thought it laid.  “With these assholes here, it’s only a matter of time before they come out there to do whatever they do.”

“Kill people for no reason,” said Grace, empty-eyed, recalling what had happened to the people at the Capitol, the ones who’d saved her life back at the beginning of it all.  “That’s what they do.”

“When it gets dark,” I announced, “I’m going to go back to the base and fix this shit once and for all.”

Murphy shook his head.  “No sleep again tonight.”

“I’ll help,” said Grace as she looked at Jazz, who nodded and shrugged. 

"We should just go,” said Fritz.  "These guys don't deserve to live, but they're trouble.  They've got us outnumbered, and they're armed."

I shrugged.  “Makes no difference to me.”

Murphy said, “He’s not lyin’, Fritz.”  He cocked his head at me.  “You know how he is.”

“I’m not recruiting anybody,” I told them.  “I’ve got an idea.  I don’t need any help.”

“He always says something stupid just like this.”  Murphy laughed.  “It always starts this way.”

It wasn’t a complicated plan.  It wasn’t even original.  I had a problem that required a straightforward solution—kill the fuckers.  By the number of Black Hawks we’d seen, I guessed there could be as many as seventy or eighty helicopter assholes on the base, and that’s if all their helicopters were packed when they escaped from Fort Hood.  I knew I couldn’t kill them all by myself.  I knew my band of survivors couldn’t do it either.  I needed to outsource some manpower.  That meant Whites.

We spent the rest of the day in the bar, eating, napping, and talking through what needed to be done.  And second-guessing.  Was this something that needed to be done? I was adamant.  I was doing it, alone or with help.  I didn’t see it as a choice.  It was a preemptive necessity.  I’d learned too many lessons the hard way and the hard way always cost the life of somebody I was attached to.

I was done paying the price.  It was time to start charging.

We left the bar at midnight.

I jogged on a slow serpentine path down the street with Grace behind me.  No surprise, we started collecting a following, but way too slowly for our purposes.  Still, not many Whites seemed to be in San Angelo.  Of those, I guessed many had bedded down for the night.  So, I started to make noise—I banged car fenders with my machete and circled individual blocks, coming back around to collect any Whites who woke up and came out to see what the noise was about.  Some fell into line, and others watched us go by, not reacting at all.

Persistence paid. 

Grace and I spent nearly two hours collecting a troop of a few hundred Whites as we worked our way through the dark streets, over the bridges, out of the center of town toward the Air Force base.  I’d wanted twice that many in my line but the longer the night wore on, the more I rationalized that I had enough to do the job—I hoped.

We were heading to the southwest corner of the small base, where a complex of buildings I’d spotted on our way into Goodfellow looked like dorms or barracks.  But that wasn’t a linchpin in the plan.  I didn’t need to be right about where the helicopter assholes were bedding down for the night.  I only needed a starting place.  The base wasn’t large.  We could search all the buildings before sunup. 

Of course, there was the risk that grew the longer we searched—that we'd be found out and would lose the opportunity to surprise the assholes in their sleep.  Things would get dicey then, but Grace and I had already decided that if the shooting started, we'd scrape our Whites off near the Survivor Army barracks, just as the Smart Ones liked to do, and let nature take its course.  I didn't need for the Survivor Army dudes to die, though it would be nice if they all did.  What I needed was for my Whites to distract them enough with saving their lives that Murphy and Fritz could handle their part of the plan.

I only hoped once the bullets started flying, my well-laid plan didn't go too far to shit.

Running along the base's western perimeter fence, Grace and I found a hole that had been cut with the chain-link pulled wide to allow us to pass through with our Whites in tow.  Eve, Jazz, and Javendra had cut the hole while Grace and I were rounding up our minions.  That was their part in the night's mission.  All Eve and Jazz had left to do was to get our great hope, Javendra, back to the pub and keep him safe while the rest of us did our parts.

Once on the base, I led the train of compliant Whites between buildings, working my way to the collection of dorms I just knew had to be the place where the Survivor Army was sleeping.  I only wish I had been less certain and perhaps had allowed Eve and Jazz to reconnoiter the base after they cut the fence rather than retreat to the pub.  But there's an arrogance that comes from guessing right too frequently—it made me blind to planning for contingencies I should have considered.

We passed some maintenance buildings where Air Force guys did whatever they did when they were at work.  We ran past several blocks of two- and three-story apartment buildings, coming in close enough to glance in windows and through open doors, looking for any signs of life.  We saw nothing but a few cats and some dogs.  It made me wonder how the Air Force had been able to clear the base of the infected so thoroughly.  It also made me wonder, in the demonstrable presence of their success, why none of them seemed to have survived.

We passed by the Base Exchange and commissary, seeing signs posted for several familiar fast-food operations.  Across the vast parking lot and across another that lay on the other side of a road, I spotted the complex of dorms that were my objective—dark, without the slightest hint of life.  But that was okay.  It didn’t diminish my resolve.  Anybody holed up for the night these days had the good sense not to broadcast their location.  I was still certain I was right. 

I looked over my shoulder, got Grace’s attention, and pointed at the buildings.  She said nothing—of course we couldn’t speak with so many Whites on our heels.  Her face showed her concern.  She wasn’t as confident as I was.

We crossed the street, weaved our way through stray cars in the parking lots, and crossed another road onto an overly large, dead lawn surrounding the complex of dorms.  Past them, I saw the end of one of the runways.  In the distance to my left, I saw the silhouettes of hangars that stood at the intersection of the base's two runways.  On the other side of those hangars were parked the Survivor Army's helicopters.

Once at the building, I scanned the shadows meticulously, looking for a sign of the assholes.  We ran down the side of one building, peeking in the windows with no luck.  I led the Whites around two more, and I started to worry.  I looked several times back at Grace, who responded with a silent question on her face.

After running around all the buildings in the complex and feeling frustration worm its way into my plan, I decided I needed to check inside a building and took the risky move of running up to a door, flinging it open and jogging into the dark inside.

For my risk, I was rewarded with nothing but a messy building, some rotten bodies, and open-door apartments, but not one hint that anyone had been alive inside for months.

Damn.  Where the hell were they?

We passed out the other end of the building.  The frustrated part of my brain insisted that we run a thorough check of the apartments on the upper floors, but the rational side of my mind told me it was more than a waste of time.  The more time I spent inside the building, the more of my Whites I'd lose as they spotted things interesting enough to distract them and pull them out of line.

We needed to do the hard work of checking the whole base.

I led the Whites to run in several big circles out in the fields beside the runway to get them out of the abandoned apartment buildings and to get them all rounded up and following again.  While I jogged, I thought about where to go next as the thought that nagged me the most was the exercise had been a waste of time.  What if the Survivor Army had flown away in their helicopters instead of returning to the base after they shot Martin's helicopter out of the sky.

It was possible. 

We hadn’t seen a single one of them since coming to the base.  I hadn’t gone to the other side of the base to confirm the helicopters were still there. 

Frustration grew, but I still had a few hundred Whites behind me, ready for mayhem, I hoped.  We were certainly building up an appetite.

I crossed the road and jogged behind the commissary complex and checked the perimeter of a building whose purpose I had no guess for.  We came out onto a wide, north-south road that we followed past some small office buildings the size of houses and we crossed another intersection.  From there I saw a set of buildings that looked enough like apartments that I knew they needed to be checked. 

We ran onto a sidewalk and started into a mostly empty parking lot when I got excited because I thought I saw shadows moving on the upper floors.  In the next breath, my excitement poofed into scared shitless as dozens of muzzles flashed along the second-floor balconies and the crack of gunshots pounded my eardrums like a slap in the head.

Whites howled.

Instinctually, I cut hard left and sprinted for the cover of a pavilion at the formal entrance of the complex.  I glanced back to make sure Grace was coming and was surprised as she ran up beside me, just as anxious to get out of the hail of bullets.

Whites were following us, but mostly the train disintegrated and ran in all directions.

Wait.  What?

A few of them ran toward the buildings.  Many of them cowered behind abandoned cars.  Some simply stopped and stared at the source of the gunfire.  Others squatted beside downed comrades.

What the hell? They weren’t attacking.

The bullets still poured off the second-floor balconies.

Some Whites—the aggressive, nasty ones—were at the sides of the building, busting out windows and pounding on doors, but it wasn’t many, maybe twenty or thirty.  The others were apparently fucked in the head a different way.  They seemed to have no interest in the fight.  By the number of bodies I saw in the parking lot and on the lawn, I guessed that a third were already down.

“We need to go.”  Grace tugged on my arm to pull me in a direction she figured was safe.

I stood my ground.  My plan was turning into a disaster as I watched and I was tying to think of some way to salvage it.

"C'mon, Zed.  These infected are different than the ones in Austin.  This isn't going to work.  The Survivor Army saw us coming.  They ambushed us."

I shook my head.  The plan had to work. 

I looked toward the nearest building.  I knew I could run there, get through a door, get inside, and kill.  I had my machete. 

“Don’t,” Grace told me, as though she was reading my mind.  “They’ll shoot you.  There’s nothing you can do.”

I snapped around to look at her.  “Wait here a second, I’ll be right back.”  I sprinted toward the building. 

As I passed Whites running in every direction, I called to them, asking them to follow, knowing the words were unintelligible except that it got their attention, and made them chase me.  And that was fine for the moment.  I ran down the front of the building, just below the balconies the helicopter assholes were shooting from, but just past the windows and patio doors, the craziest of the Whites were trying to break in.  I asked them to follow as well.

At the end of the building, with a few dozen aggressive Whites and more following too closely now that my status had changed from follow-the-leader boss to running food, I hoped the doorway I came to was not locked.  I slammed it with my full body weight, flinging it open and tumbling inside.  It took a half second for me to get my bearings as I jumped back to my feet.  I found a door to a stairwell, flung it open, and jumped behind the door before the first of my following Whites ran in through the outer door.

The first one arrived with a howl as the sound of the gunshots from the second floor echoed down the stairs.  He ran up, more of the crazy ones followed.

Minor success.  I hoped.

Once the last of the Whites had passed, I leaped out of the stairwell and sprinted down an interior hall, running for a door I figured would put me outside again but close to the pavilion where I’d left Grace.

People started screaming upstairs.  The battle had moved inside.

I hit the door at full speed, flinging it open as I ran through.  I crossed the gap between the building and the pavilion before anyone on an upper floor had a hope of bringing his aim around to shoot me.

Grace waited anxiously by a post at the far side, ready to run.  “You okay?”

I nodded as I paused to catch my breath.

She pointed and said, “That way.  If we run, I think we’ll be safe.”

“Lead the way.” 

She took off.  I followed.  Just as we crossed the street, a huge explosion from the other side of the base shook the night.  A fireball rose up from the other side of the hangars, out where the Survivor Army’s helicopters were parked.  Another explosion followed and then two more detonations sent more fire into the sky. 

Grace led me past a brick-walled warehouse, and we were out of sight for any shooters in the apartment building.  The helicopters had been taken care of by Fritz and Murphy.  At least four had exploded.  At least, I
hoped
that's what blew up.

“Slow down,” I told Grace.  “Let’s take a block or two and catch our breath.”  It had been a long night with a lot of running.

“Don’t be a pussy,” she told me.  “We’re running as fast as we can until we get back through the fence.  Come on, or from now on, I’m going to call you The Walking Zed.”