Rotter Apocalypse (19 page)

Denning sat at the end of the kitchen table while the woman and her two children devoured their meals. Between the three of them, they had eaten a dozen scrambled eggs and drank almost a gallon of cold water. No one had spoken much since the incident on the access road, the newcomers being too shaken too talk, and him and Windows agreeing to give them a chance to calm down. Cindy sat across from the little girl, studying her intently. Windows leaned against the sink. The only information Denning had gotten out of the woman was that her name was Miriam and her kids were Rebecca, age eleven, and Philip, age seven.

Fortunately the kids’ clothes were in pretty good shape other than being slightly worn and dirty, nothing a good washing wouldn’t fix. The same couldn’t be said of Miriam’s outfit. By protecting Philip, her blouse and slacks had been splattered with blood, making them impossible to clean. Like with Windows, Denning had lent Miriam a pair of jeans and a sweater from his wife’s closet. The clothes fit her better than they had Windows. In fact, Denning noticed that Miriam and her kids looked to be in pretty decent physical shape.

When their guests had finished eating, Windows collected the dishes and placed them in the sink. As she took Miriam’s plate, the woman placed her right hand on top of Windows’ wrist and squeezed. Her eyes shifted between Windows and Denning. “Thank you both so much for taking us in.”

Windows patted her hand and continued clearing the table. “No need to thank us.”

“We’re glad we could be of help,” Denning said warmly.

“You have no idea how grateful I am. We wouldn’t have lasted much longer. We’d been on the run for a full day.”

“Cindy and I can relate. We were on the road for days before we came across this farm.”

Miriam shook her head. “No, I mean
literally
we were on the run since yesterday morning. Those things were right behind us the whole time. We tried outrunning them, and when we stopped to rest they’d catch up. Finally we kept on walking, always trying to be a little faster. We haven’t slept, we haven’t rested, and we haven’t even stopped to pee for over a day. We pissed our pants on the run if we had to go. I’d been dragging the kids along with me for the past few miles. If we hadn’t come across….” Miriam broke down in tears.

Windows stepped back over to the table. She placed her hands on the Miriam’s shoulders and squeezed sympathetically. Miriam reached up and clasped the hands.

“Can you tell us what happened?” asked Denning.

Miriam nodded. She snorted back her tears and ran the back of her hand across her nose and eyes. “We lived in the LaSalle neighborhood of Montreal north of the Saint Laurent River in a townhouse complex. When the outbreak occurred, most of the others fled the city. We stayed holed up in our townhouse because we had several months of food and water, and my husband Paul thought we could wait it out.”

“Was he a survivalist?” Denning asked.

“No, just cautious. During that last Ebola scare he began storing food, canned goods, and medicine in the basement in case the virus reached Montreal and officials placed the city under lockdown. He wanted to be able to ride out a three-month crisis, so he bought a solar-powered generator and learned how to purify rainwater. When the Zombie Virus reached Montreal, he figured we’d be safer staying put. And he was right. Hundreds of thousands died trying to get out. While the city fell apart around us, we remained safe. We were even lucky enough that when the living dead took over, there were practically none in our neighborhood. We weren’t doing too bad, at least compared to what we heard was going on elsewhere.”

“What you heard?”

“Paul had a ham radio. He kept in touch with others who had survived. They all compared notes. About a month ago, rumors started surfacing that the Canadian and American governments were getting ready to wage war on the revenants. Apparently a vaccine was being prepared that would make people immune from a bite. We didn’t put much stock in them until a few days ago when the Canadian army began pushing its way into northern Montreal. Paul and I were happy. We thought we’d be rescued. That didn’t happen. As far as I can tell, one of the military units used flamethrowers against the revenants and wound up setting fire to one of the neighborhoods. Without a fire department to contain it, the flames spread through the entire city. We barely made it out and to the Mercer Bridge. That was yesterday morning, and we’ve been on the run ever since.”

“I would have thought the rotters would be attracted to the flames,” said Windows.

“Most were. Thousands of those things walked right into the fire. The problem was, any that saw survivors trying to escape went after them. At one point we had fifteen people with us. A few broke off and went on their own, hoping the swarm would follow the larger group. Revenants took down the rest.”

“What happened to your husband?” Denning asked.

Miriam lowered her head. “Early last night we stopped to rest. We were concentrating on the ones following us and didn’t see the group approaching from out of a side street. They would have gotten all of us if Paul hadn’t dove into them, sacrificing himself so we could escape. After that, fear and instinct kept me going, and the need to keep Rebecca and Philip alive. I got off the main road and came this way hoping to find a stream or something where I could lose those things. It’s a miracle I found you.”

“You did,” said Windows, patting Miriam on the shoulders. “And you’re safe now.”

Miriam fought back her tears. “All I ask is that you let us stay here a few days to rest up, and then we’ll be on our way.”

Denning shook his head. “You and the kids are welcome to stay until the military gets this far south.”

Miriam’s face showed signs of hope. “Are you sure?”

“The only rule is that everyone pulls their weight, so you and the kids will have to help out with the chores.”

“What type of… chores?” A note of apprehension seeped into Miriam’s voice.

“They’re not that bad,” Windows reassured her.

“I’ll teach you how to feed the chickens and Walther,” Cindy said to Rebecca.

“Who’s Walther?” the little girl asked.

“He’s Mr. Denning’s bull.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Miriam asked.

“Not at all,” answered Cindy. She looked at Rebecca. “Walther loves it when you scratch behind his ears.”

“Enough of that, girls,” said Denning. “Right now Rebecca needs her sleep.”

Miriam sighed. “That sounds so good.”

“You take my room tonight,” said Windows. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“I can’t do that. We’ll—”

“I insist. Tomorrow we’ll work out better sleeping arrangements. Cindy, will you show our guests to their room?”

Cindy sprang from her chair. “I’d love to. Come on, Rebecca.”

Windows waited until the others had reached the second floor before saying to Denning, “That was good of you, letting them stay.”

“Well, I couldn’t turn them away, now could I?”

Windows stepped up to him, leaned forward, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“I am concerned about one thing,” he said.

“What?”

“Miriam said there were other survivors who had fled Montreal, and revenants that followed them.”

“You’re thinking there may be more heading this way?”

“Exactly.”

“So what do you want to do?”

Denning moved to the kitchen door to make sure no one else could hear, and then faced Windows. “We should take turns staying up at night to make sure no one or nothing shows up here without us knowing about it. You take the first shift until midnight, and I’ll take over until dawn. Keep your radio with you at all times, even when you’re sleeping.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Hopefully I’m being paranoid.” Denning headed for upstairs. “I’m going to go take a nap. I’ll spot you at midnight.”

Natalie fidgeted with the M50 general purpose gas mask, adjusting it so the fit would be more comfortable, and sending the half dozen flies resting on the faceplate into flight. By doing so, she inadvertently moved her headphones, pushing off the one covering her right ear, and something flew into the canal. Natalie shook her head to dislodge it and dropped the headphone back before another insect took its place.

“Is everything okay?” Sergeant North, the leader of their twelve-man squad, asked over the headphone.

“Yes,” she responded. She gestured toward the gas mask. “I’m not used to wearing one of these things.”

“You never will be. It’s better than the alternative.”

“That’s for damn sure.” Natalie had thought the most disgusting thing she would endure during the rotter apocalypse would be the drive through San Francisco in the Abrams, crushing tens of thousands of the living dead and wallowing in their stench and gore. This was far worse, because at least then she was inside a steel fortress that isolated her from the majority of the sights and smells. When she had signed up as part of the security detail for the clean-up crew policing San Francisco International Airport, she assumed she would walk the perimeter and provide fire support for any stray rotters that had survived the firebombing. She had no idea what special hell she had volunteered for.

The liquid-gel air-fueled explosive dropped yesterday afternoon had incinerated the estimated eighty-three thousand revenants in and around the airport and its runways. Except for a few hundred of the living dead inside the terminal that had been protected by the blast, all the others had their skin and muscles either seared off or burned to the point that the bodies could not move, leaving behind piles of charred skeletons. The runways around the airport had been turned into a killing field littered with bodies that stank like barbecued decayed meat, and the security detail stood on the outer fringes. The gas masks and headphones had been provided to the crews not to prevent infection, but for their comfort.

Natalie ignored the scorched sea of living dead that stretched around her and concentrated on the construction equipment that went about the mundane task of clearing the runway. The clean-up crew had been following the same routine since half a dozen Chinooks had airlifted in four front loaders and two dump trucks after dawn. The front loaders scraped up bones and ash and placed them into the bed of one of the dump trucks. When full, the truck would drive to the southeast end of one of the runways and unload the remains onto a barge moored on shore. Here, a second crew distributed the debris around the barge until it was full, covered the mound with a tarpaulin, and towed it to a tugboat anchored four hundred feet off shore. An empty barge would take its place and the process would continue. Once the airport was cleared, the barges would be towed to the commercial docks where they would be loaded into a derelict supertanker that would be taken fifty miles off shore and sunk. Natalie knew similar operations were proceeding in the other RCZs. Working this way over the past eight hours, the clean-up crews had managed to clear a thousand-foot section of the twin runways they had been working on. The seventh barge had pulled away from shore when Natalie heard a helicopter approaching from the north, a Sikorsky UH-60 making its way across the bay and heading for the cleared section. It swung around and came in from the southeast, setting down between the shore and the construction equipment. The backwash from the propellers blew a cloud of ash down the runway. By the time the engine had shut down and the blades had slowed to a stop, all the crews had gathered around the UH-60.

A tall Asian man in a well-starched ACU stepped out of the rear compartment. He wore the eagles of a colonel and had the name NAKAJIMA embroidered in the nameplate on his chest. He didn’t wear a gas mask. If the stench bothered him, he never showed it. “Who’s in charge of this detail?”

“That would be me,” the man to Natalie’s right mumbled through his gas mask.

“What’s the revenant situation like here? Can you spare your security team?”

“For the rest of the day?”

“Permanently.”

“I guess so,” the clean-up foreman hesitated. “There are a few hundred revenants held up inside the terminal, but we’ve seen nothing out here in hours. What’s up?”

“We’ve run into heavier than expected revenant activity near San Jose. Secretary Fogel wants to send in reinforcements.”

“Are we in danger of being swarmed?” someone asked off to the right.

“The Apaches and the napalm are keeping them at bay. However, there are so many that the going has been slower than anticipated and the troops on the line are getting tired. We’re looking for relief who can spot those on the front and get the advance moving again. The Secretary is pulling troops from those sectors in San Francisco where revenant activity is light and shifting them south.”

“I can spare my security team,” said the clean-up foreman.

“Thanks.” Nakajima nodded. “Don’t take any chances. If you see revenants, abandon your equipment, take a barge over to the tug, and call for backup.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your relief chopper should be here in about an hour.” Nakajima climbed back into the UH-60. “What are you waiting for? We’re heading for the fighting. Come on.”

Natalie and the others climbed on board. Five minutes later, the Sikorsky was airborne and heading south for San Jose.