Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (37 page)

They ate by candlelight in the living room, exchanging a few
pleasantries more out of habit than need. Andy spun a few tales of his
adventures when he was younger, and Thompson told us a little about his family.
After that, they piled the dishes on the kitchen countertop and returned to the
living room. Michelle absent-mindedly grabbed the remote and tried to turn the
TV on. Thompson watched her with a grin that said, “Are you really a blond?”
but she felt vindicated at the same time because they both caught Andy turning
toward the TV, waiting to see what came on. A few minutes of laughter ensued before
everybody settled and got down to business.

“OK,” Michelle started, “first on the agenda is baths. Being
that I thought of it, I’m going first. I’ve got a washing machine, but with no
power that’s not going to help either of you. I’d be more than willing to loan
you some towels to wear while we washed your clothes in the sink, but that
means you’d be stuck wearing towels and blankets until your clothes dry.”

“I’m good to go with what I’ve got on,” Thompson said.

“Yeah, me too,” Andy added, “besides, I hear they won’t let
you into Heaven if you get killed by a zombie with your dork hanging out of a
towel.”

It ended up taking until after midnight to get the baths out
of the way. Most of that was due to the length of time it took the water to
heat up on the stove. By 12:30 AM, they were once again seated in the living
room. A cup of tea was in Michelle’s hand—the boys each had a beer.

April 23
^rd
, Michelle part 1

“What’s the plan?” Thompson asked.

“Well, Michelle and I need to get back east with the radios
sooner rather than later, but we can’t cross the bridge until it’s daylight,”
Andy said.

“What do you mean you can’t cross a bridge until daylight?”
Thompson replied.

Andy looked at Michelle and said, “I think an exchange of
information is called for.” She nodded her agreement as he continued. “Thompson,
let me bring you up to date with what we’ve been through in the last, oh . . . week
or so. And then if you don’t mind we’d kind of like a heads up with what’s
going on here, OK?”

“OK.”

It took Andy about ten minutes to give Thompson a “Readers
Digest” version. He kept it pretty straightforward—not going into any “need to
know” information, but rather a general overview of everything from the run on
Sheldon’s store to the blond stripper. Michelle took over from there and told
him about Ravenwood campground, and their journey here . . . including the
bridge blocked by railroad ties. Thompson asked a few questions, mostly for
clarification on what they had already told him. After they were done, he
finished the last of his beer and stood up—slowly pacing back and forth across
the room.

“Yeah, that kinda makes sense. Wow, the world really is
turning to shit. Um . . . Let’s see . . . hey—before I forget, thanks for
getting me out of that office. I’m pretty sure I’d have been smoked if you two
hadn’t shown up. And sorry again about shootn’ at you through the door. Where
was I?  Oh yeah . . . I guess about a week ago I was underneath a Camaro in the
garage where I worked, and my boss leans down and hands me the phone. So I
wiped the grease off my fingers and grabbed it from him. It was some captain in
the guard; I can’t remember who it was. Anyhow, she starts telling me that my
unit is being activated by the DES, that’s North Dakota’s Department of Emergency
Services. I had twenty-four hours to report to base with all my gear. My boss
was pissed. My unit had been deployed for several months last year during all
those floods we had, and he had to hold my position open until I got back. Man,
I was getting a little tired of all this full time bullshit too. You know it
was supposed to be one weekend a month and one month a year, but in the two
years I’ve been in its . . .” Thompson stopped and looked at Andy and Michelle .
. . “Sorry, didn’t mean to bitch. So anyhow I reported in. But by the end of
the twenty-four hours, less than half of my unit was there.”

Thompson paced back and forth as he continued. “The next day
was the typical ‘hurry up and wait’ crap. It didn’t seem like anybody knew what
was going on, or what our detail was going to be. Scuttlebutt was flipping between
security and crowd control, or medical evacuations. The word finally came down
that we were going to assist the governor’s task force on medical quarantine
zones. My unit was out of Bismarck, and the city was starting to go ape shit by
then. Stores were being looted, half the people were trying to get out of the
city and half the people who lived outside of the city were trying to get in. I
got shot at twice within the first hour we were stationed at the checkpoint. Some
prick in command decided not to issue us any ammo either. I don’t know, maybe
that was a good call . . . I’d probably have shot back. Anyhow, our checkpoints
were a joke. People just drove right through them . . . didn’t even slow down. Nothing
we could really do other than use harsh language. They kept us there for two days.
Day three was when I saw my first red eye. It was this tall skinny kid . . . still
holding a skateboard under his arm as he walked up to us. He gets closer and
Carney—he was my second at our checkpoint—anyhow Carney goes through the usual ‘this
is a quarantine zone’ speech but the dude keeps walking towards us. No surprise
there, everybody else did. Then some guy pulls up in a car, cuts right between
the dude with a skateboard and us and starts asking us where our commander is,
like we should feel personally obligated to escort his fat ass anywhere he
wanted to go. Carney looks at me and I can see he’s getting ready to unload
some choice vocabulary on the driver when the dude with a skateboard leans his
head through the window and starts going to town on the guy’s face. I heard a
bunch of screaming and the guy must have mashed his foot on the accelerator
because his car shot forward. He didn’t make it too far though . . . ended up
smashing into the concrete barrier after about fifty feet. The other guy, the
kid with the skateboard, he got thrown about twenty feet after the car smashed
into the barrier. Carney and I are picking ourselves up off the ground from
where we jumped when the car took off . . . just kinda stunned I guess. Anyhow,
we start walking over there, but before we take five steps here comes another
car—stereo blasting with the base thumping so loud you could actually see the
windshield vibrate. Anyhow this new car pulls right up to us and the driver
cuts the music down enough for us to hear him and says, ‘Yo, you see that shit? 
Punk ass skateboard hippie gotta pay.’ Then he takes off down the road, cuts a one-eighty
after a few hundred meters and punches it. The skateboard dude had landed in the
grass median and had gotten up . . . just kinda standing there when the guy
with a stereo rams him like he was a three dollar whore. I swear it must have
launched him at least fifteen feet in the air. Then the car beeps its horn
twice like it was saying ‘Bye’ to us before it heads down the road back into
Bismarck. So me and Carney are walking to our hummer to call in and I hear
Carney say, “Hey Thompson, you ain’t gonna believe this . . .” I turned to look
where he was pointing, and I see the skateboard dude getting up again. He was a
freaking bloody mess, looked to me like both legs were broke too—one of them
with the thigh bone sticking right through his jeans—and the dude is walking. Toward
us. Ten feet away I got a look at his eyes. Just then our radio came alive with
a bunch of chatter. All of our units had been ordered back to the staging area.
They didn’t have to ask me twice. So anyhow, me and Carney hopped in the Hummer
and RTB’d.”

Thompson looked at the empty beer in his hand, turned to Andy
and asked “Ready for a refill?” Andy shook his head and replied, “One’s my
limit, being that I’m an old fat guy. The rest are all yours.”

Michelle knew for a fact that one was definitely not Andy’s
limit, and almost called him out on it before she realized what he was doing. Alcohol
. . . one of nature’s oldest truth serums. Thompson looked at Michelle for
confirmation, and she reinforced Andy’s statement about the rest being his.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Thompson said as he walked into the
kitchen to get another beer from the six pack outside. He was back a few
seconds later and continued. “We got back to the staging area . . . it was at
the guard armory on the northwest side of Bismarck. Shoot, it looked like a war
zone there. They had two IFV’s—infantry fighting vehicles—Bradleys . . . out
front, and they were hot and ready to go. Everywhere I looked it seemed like
some dude was mounting a 50 cal to a Hummer or carrying crates of ammo. There
were even four Black Hawks that were still powering down out on the parade
field. Anyhow they stopped us, and I mean at gunpoint stopped us . . . had us
get out of our vehicle and some corpsman shined a light in our eyes and used
one of those ear thermometers on us. Then they asked us a bunch of questions—where
we were, what did we see, did we have any contact with infected people—a whole
bunch more too. After that they gave us each a coded plastic wristband to put
on. We got shuffled toward a big tent that they must have recently set up; it
wasn’t there a few days ago. Anyway, there was a line outside the tent and a
bunch more guys were pulling security and watching the line. They had a Hummer
parked nearby and some cold-eyed regular army mo’fo was staring down a 240 at
us. Carney looked at me and said, ‘How much you want to bet that they gave
these guys ammo?’ It might’ve been funny at another time but we weren’t
laughing then.”

Thompson stopped and took a few swigs of his beer, still
pacing as he continued. “Yeah, so we’re in this line and I notice that the
security detail watching us are all wearing masks. Not like NBC gear, just like
those ones they wear at the hospital, ‘cept these were OD green. We got
shuffled through, then into a tent where they had us strip down. Then they
sprayed us with some foul smelling shit—made us stand there with our arms up
for a few minutes, and then hosed us down. And it wasn’t just us; it was like a
whole line of people. Guys, girls, adults . . . kids too. Everybody just
standing there naked. Anyway, they moved us forward where they gave us a paper
towel, and I mean that literally, it was like a beach towel only made of paper.
I think it was just a section of one of those disposable table runners they use
at banquets. So we dried ourselves and they gave us this . . . I don’t know . .
. like one of those hospital-type gowns to wear. The lines split from there,
and me and Carney got separated for a while. So I moved forward and the next area
they scanned my wrist band, took my temperature again, and looked in my eyes. Again.
After that I got hustled into another section where some guy asked me a bunch
of the same questions I answered before. Keep in mind the whole time I was
moving forward to these different sections of the tent; there were armed guards
all around. So finally they escorted a group of us into another tent, scanned
our wristband as we entered and told us to have a seat. It was heated, barely,
and there were a few porta-potties for us to use. But nothing else, no food,
water . . . nothing but the toilets and the guards.

Thompson finished his beer and retrieved another. “We were
there a few hours when some lady came in, regular army, and announced something
like, ‘Look at your wrist band, you will find a color code at the end. This has
nothing to do with your medical status. It only relates to the initial time you
were processed. We will be calling you one color group at a time for further
processing. Please follow the instructions of all medical and security
personnel without question. Failure to comply with directions may result in
immediate detainment, arrest, or the use of force. Please be aware that
security personnel are authorized to use deadly force.’ So she leaves, and a
few minutes later they called for the red group. Me and Carney were green. About
an hour later they called us—scanned our wrist band as we left the tent—scanned
it again when we entered another one about a hundred feet away. Someone had
painted a big green circle above the doorway of that tent. More of the same
shit followed—questions, eyes and temperature. Only thing that was different
was one of the people in the green group apparently failed one of the checks. The
next thing I know they cuffed him, shot him full of some drug and carried him
out the door. A few minutes later we heard gunshots from somewhere outside . .
. somewhere close by. It happened a few times.” Michelle watched as Thompson
bowed his head a little, gave it a little shake, and took a deep breath before
he continued.

“We were in there for at least twelve hours, and every hour
it was the same crap—questions, eyes and temperature. Two more people were
removed from the green group during that time. But hell, almost every hour
you’d hear gunshots. I don’t know what color group they were from. So finally
some guy comes in with a clipboard and starts calling off names. Me and Carney
were some of the first to get called. They scanned our wristbands again as we
left, and we ended up following some corporal to another tent where they
reissued us this fine desert camo you see. New weapons too. Anyhow, from there
it was straight into a truck. It was a little after midnight by then. There
were thirty of us packed in that truck, about half the guys were from my
original unit. That truck sat there idling with us in the back until dawn. At
dawn we pulled into a line of other trucks, refueled, and hit the road. The
word was we were heading towards Canada to reinforce the border. All I know is
that I slept. When I woke up I found myself in the quaint little vacation town
of Fort Hammer. That was yesterday. I think. Well maybe the day before since it’s
after midnight now.”