Last Man Standing (Book 2): Cordyceps (4 page)

Eight Days Earlier

Warren pushes his meal around the tray with a look of disgust, as if it could possibly taste any worse than the average meal he'd been eating every day since he enlisted. "This food is shit."

Vee looks up from her notebook. "Yeah, I think you mentioned that once or twice, Warren."

He drops his fork in the tray and puts it on the dash. "No, I mean
really
shit. Even worse than usual. Like... I don't know, I think it's off." He scoops up a forkful and holds it out. "Here, try it."

"I don't want to try your food, Warren."

"Just
try
it."

She snaps her notebook closed and glowers at him. "Warren, it's the end of the fucking world. Get used to bad food or go hang yourself with your belt. I don't really care which, but if you keep complaining I'm going to feed you that whole fucking tray."

Warren sulks at his fork. "Hey, I was just trying to make conversation."

"Well don't.” She opens her book again and pretends to read the handwritten scrawl for a minute, painfully aware of Warren's downhearted look. "Sorry," she reluctantly mutters. "I'm just worried about Karl. He should have been back ten minutes ago."

Warren tosses his tray out the window and winds it back up, licking his fingers. "You got nothing to worry about, Vee. Karl could take down a rhino. He'll be fine."

Vee plays with her radio for a second, checking she's receiving properly. "If you loved anything other than that damned rifle you'd understand, Warren. You never stop worrying. Not for a single minute."

Warren gently pats the rifle wrapped in its soft case on his lap. "Yup, well I guess I'll never find out. Old Nadine would never let me take up with another woman." He smiles. "See, me and her? We have this bond you just don't get with regular love. We're always there for each other, come hell or high water. She's never let me down as long as she's been with me. That's real love, Vee. It's simpler than your human love. Beautifully uncomplicated." He strokes the case lovingly, and pauses for a moment. "I have to admit, though, as a relationship it's lacking a little in the sex department."

Vee laughs. "Come on, Warren. Don't try to tell me you've never—" Her thought is cut off by a hiss from the radio, followed by a voice.

"You've got infected incoming on your six, guys." Vee visibly relaxes at the sound of her husband's voice. "I'm coming in fast, and I wouldn't say no to a little backup. Over."

Vee grabs her M16 as Warren slips his rifle from its case, and within moments they're in position, Warren standing through the sunroof with his gun mounted on a bipod and Vee racing back along the sidewalk to find herself a solid firing position to cover Karl's approach.

He comes around the corner at a sprint, in one hand his Beretta and in the other a grenade, the pin pulled. Moments after he appears a flock of infected come racing after him, appearing around the corner in a closely packed group.

"Grenade, five o'clock, twenty yards," instructs Vee into her radio. She watches as Karl tosses it back and slightly to the right without looking. It lands just ahead of the pack and explodes as they pass over, sending three of them straight to the ground and leaving two more running at half speed, their legs damaged. Still seven more are in pursuit, at least until Vee and Warren open fire.

Warren takes out three in quick succession, calmly firing as if he's under no pressure at all, counting out his breaths and squeezing the trigger like he's playing a video game. Two head shots and one in the chest, a lucky shot that takes out the spinal cord on the way out.

Now the flock is down to four, and they enter Vee's firing range as Karl moves aside to give her a clear angle. She rests her elbow on the trunk of the car in front of her, carefully takes aim and squeezes off a few rounds from her M16. Three more infected go down one after the other as they're hit in rapid, controlled sprays.

Karl is just a couple of car lengths away now, with a single chaser remaining along with two more limping far behind. Warren takes out the two injured almost as an afterthought, while Vee allows Karl the pleasure of whipping around and taking out the final one, a skinny woman in a dirty pink t-shirt, with his Beretta. A single shot to the head is all it takes to put her on the ground.

Karl turns back to Vee and smiles, relieved. "If you guys didn't save me any of that shitty casserole there'll be hell to pay. I haven't eaten a thing since this morning. Hey Warren, can you fetch me some of that swill?"

Vee slings her gun over her shoulder and turns back towards the car just as a warning cry rings out from Warren. She turns back to Karl and watches in horror as the world slips into slow motion.

Karl's head shot wasn't accurate enough. It only grazed the woman, sending her to the ground without finishing her off. Even as Vee starts to swing her M16 back down she knows she can't move quickly enough. Karl's gun is already holstered at his hip, and Warren has begun to lower his rifle back into the car.

She catches Karl on his bare arm in mid-turn. It doesn't even look as if she's going for the bite. She just happens to catch him with her teeth as she lunges forward, and the infected will never pass up an opportunity. She bites down hard and tries to twist her neck to tear away a chunk of flesh.

Karl's closed fist comes down hard on her shoulder, sending her sprawling to the ground. A kick with a heavy boot spins her onto her back. He slides his Beretta from the holster and puts three shots between her eyes.

Vee can't speak. She can barely move. She didn't have a clear view but she only has to look at Karl's slumped shoulders to know what happened, and when he turns around and she sees his face her worst fears are confirmed.

He looks down at his bloodied arm. Pin pricks of blood blossom on the bite mark a couple of inches beneath his rolled up sleeve. Karl wipes them away, and moments later they appear again. It's only a tiny bite, barely more than a graze. It wouldn't even need stitches, but Vee knows that's not the point.

"We have orders," Karl mutters, tugging a crumpled envelope from his pants pocket. He sets it down on the asphalt in front of him, smiles at Vee and whispers, "I love you."

She doesn't try to stop him. They both know what needs to be done. They both made a pact back at the beginning, and she knows he's even more stubborn than her.
Never infected
. That was the deal. When the time came they'd die the right way, on their own terms. Clean. Quick.

She doesn't speak as he raises the Beretta to his mouth. She holds her closed fist over her heart and closes her eyes until she hears the shot, and doesn't open them again until she hears the body of her husband hit the ground.

She promised him she wouldn't cry.

It's a couple of hours before Vee manages to speak. She sits in silence in the driver's seat of the car as Warren takes watch through the sunroof, guarding the perimeter with his rifle. No infected come.

He almost wished they would. Maybe it would be a little easier if Vee had something to take out her anger on. Something she could beat with the butt of her gun until she stopped seeing Karl's face. Until she could stop thinking about his body bundled up in a tarp in the trunk of the car.

The sun is almost setting when Warren feels a tug on his leg. He looks down through the sunroof and sees Vee's red-rimmed eyes looking up at him, holding a blood stained sheet of paper in her hand.

"Our orders," she croaks, her voice dry and and scratchy. "We're just Lassiter's private army now." Her lip curls with hate. "That's what Karl died for."

Warren takes the paper from her loose grip, pulls it up and smooths it out on the roof of the car.

Supply of test subjects at Camp One critical. Round up any remaining residents of Zone Fourteen for delivery to Major Armitage. All constitutional rights suspended. Priority One.

It may have seemed fairly innocent had they not already heard the rumors about Camp One. They'd been circulating through the east coast ranks for a couple of weeks now, and while at first they'd sounded crazy it now seemed like they couldn't be anything but completely true.

Camp One had begun as a simple temporary refugee camp, a place where the survivors of New York could be housed while the military swept the outskirts of the city and ensured the outbreak had been contained. Vee herself had delivered survivors to the camp in the first few days. She'd felt proud with every truckload that she'd done her part to save the lives of innocents.

Then the news of Lassiter's accession broke, and the orders began to change. The military proper was pulled out of the camp, replaced by a few high ranking officials supported by private security forces. Vee received orders to accompany a resupply convoy that seemed more suited to a prison or a biotech lab than a refugee camp. Hundreds of secure prefab cells outfitted with electromagnetic locks. Medical equipment that seemed designed more for experimentation than for treating the wounded. Shackles. Secure beds. Absurd volumes of anesthesia

Outside the camp the tone of the orders began to change. In the beginning their orders were simply to assist survivors and to help them reach the camp if they didn't feel safe in their homes. Now the orders became more explicit, and much more worrying. They were ordered to compel survivors to the camp. They were even issued tranquilizer guns, and authorized to use them against anyone unwilling to go voluntarily.

The numbers kept adding up. In the first two weeks following the attacks Vee personally delivered several hundred civilians to Camp One, and she knew her truck had been just one of dozens working in the area. Thousands were delivered, and none had ever been seen to leave. The rumors shifted and morphed like a game of Telephone, but when a guard finally contacted a friend outside the camp the truth became clear.

Lassiter was trying to weaponize the contagion. He wasn't trying to cure it. Wasn't trying to find a vaccine. He was simply trying to find a way to use the infection for his own purposes.

And he was using civilians as test subjects.

He'd always seemed like the kind of guy who'd want to ride alongside the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Even before the attacks it had been an open secret in Washington that Lassiter was a religious zealot of the worst kind, a man who'd spent his life just waiting for the opportunity to score a decisive victory over his enemies. He was the sort of guy who believed -
truly
believed, with every ounce of his being - that he was God's messenger. It was a poisonous belief that excused any amount of evil carried out in his name.

He'd been dug into the capital ecosystem like a tick for decades, but both his allies and opponents had always managed to find ways to keep anything really dangerous far from his desk, in the same way that Supreme Court Justices delay the important decisions when it looks like one of their number might have started on the long road towards senility. He just couldn't be trusted.

And now there was nobody left to hold him back. He'd found himself at the top of the pile, and everybody who knew him - hell, anybody who even had the slightest interest in politics - knew what that meant. It meant he was free to be the dictator he'd always dreamed of becoming.

Warren reads the order a second time, then a third. He lifts his rifle from the roof and slips down to the front passenger seat. Vee still stares out the front window at something that isn't there, and never will be again.

"What do you wanna do?" he asks quietly. He's already decided to follow Vee's lead. He trusts her with his life, and she's already proved she's good for it many times over. Whatever she decides will be the right call.

She stays silent for a long moment, turning her head from the window down to the bloody paper in his hands.

"Did I ever tell you how Karl and I met?" she asks, almost in a whisper.

Warren shakes his head. "No, I don't think so."

She smiles as she remembers. "We were stationed together in Zeraa, a nothin' little smudge on the map about twenty clicks south of Aleppo. This was a couple of years ago, right at the start of the ground assaults. Not sure if you were on active duty back then.

"We had intel that ISIL were transporting chemical weapons along the back roads to try to take back the city. Really nasty shit. The intel seemed pretty solid. Enough to authorize a strike, anyhow, but I wasn't so sure. Something about it just didn't feel right to me, but it wasn't my call. I could make a recommendation but... well, you know how that shit works." She lights a cigarette and take a long, slow drag. "Karl was my new CO, just arrived that week. He had his orders and I had mine, but I argued with him. Flat out refused to lead the strike. He could have had me court-martialled, but instead he reported that an equipment failure on one of the support drones forced a delay.

"Turns out it was a wedding party. Ground forces stopped the motorcade and checked the vehicles before they reached the city. There were fourteen kids. Two pregnant women. About a dozen elderly people, and they weren't carrying so much as a peashooter between them." She flicks the ash from her cigarette and takes a drag, making the embers glow bright red.

"I disobeyed the first order he ever gave me. I'll disobey the last." She takes the paper from Warren's hand and holds the cigarette to it until the flame catches. "He wouldn't want this. He wouldn't want us helping some lunatic President spread this shit to his enemies. That's not the country he signed up to serve. That's not the country I want this to become.

"Now, Warren, you can come with me or I can drop you off close to the base. It's up to you, but if you come with me I need you to know something." She winds down the window and tosses out the burning paper, throwing her cigarette after it.

"I intend to misbehave."