Season of Rot (27 page)

“Good.” She tried to sound cheerful. “Then
maybe I won’t have to eat your burnt oatmeal anymore.”

Benji shot her a playful injured look. “Just
get some rest, okay? We’ll be moving soon.”

She promised she would, and he scurried off
to where the others were. Michelle closed her eyes and tried to
think of the future, but all she could see were the flames of the
convoy burning in the night.

Hours later, the convoy ventured on toward
the base. Michelle found herself riding shotgun next to Warren in
one of the combat jeeps, with Benji in the seat behind them. She
understood why Warren had knocked her out and she tried to forgive
him for it. Benji wasn’t happy about sharing a jeep with the guy
who had punched out his sister, and he wasn’t happy about being
separated from Mike either, but he’d promised to stay with Michelle
this time.

Their jeep was in the lead, followed by the
pickup and the van, both crammed full of the remaining survivors.
The tanker truck was next in line, with Daniel and Jenkins’s jeep
bringing up the rear.

The scenery left much to be desired. Barren
sand sprawled out around them on all sides.

“We’ll be there soon,” Benji tried to assure
Michelle. She wondered if he was actually trying to convince
himself.

“Has Mike told you what this base is?” Warren
asked, taking them both off-guard.

“It’s a bomb shelter,” Benji answered. “Like
the kind they took the President to when all this started
happening.”

“No. No it’s not,” Warren said. “But you’re
right, they did take the President to a place like what you’re
talking about. Him, the other VIPs, and the men assigned to protect
them all died horribly. The rats were waiting for them
underground.”

“Warren, stop it. There’s no way you could
know that,” Michelle said.

Warren ignored her. “Where we’re going isn’t
a bomb shelter or some kind of bunker, though they did gut one and
build the base inside of it. It’s a research facility, a
state-of-the-art, self-contained place of nightmares. It’s one of
the most sterile and impenetrable places on Earth. The base was
designed to keep the government’s worst experiments contained
should something go wrong, but I think it will keep the rats out as
well... As long as it hasn’t been breached by someone else before
we get there.”

“What were they working on in the base?”
Benji asked, hating himself for believing Warren but realizing it
was just the kind of place Mike would lead them to.

“Bio-weapons, viruses, new types of killer
radiation—how the hell should I know? I doubt if Mike even knows
for sure. Regardless, it will keep us alive and we’ll be a hell of
a lot better off than we are outside.”

After that, the three of them rode on in
silence. Benji leaned into his seat and stared up at the sky. He
knew Mike had been some sort of high-ranking scientist before the
world ended. Everything Warren had just told them made perfect
sense, but what bothered Benji was how much Warren knew. Why hadn’t
Mike told him more about the base if he’d shared this much with
Warren? And was what Warren said about the President true? Warren
didn’t come across as a guy who made shit up, so just who the hell
was he? Benji promised himself to confront Mike about Warren when
they were all safe.

He closed his eyes, tired of staring at the
clouds and the sand, and dozed off to sleep.

#

The small chain of vehicles came to a stop
outside the massive steel fence encircling the base.

The group got out of their vehicles like
expectant kids on Christmas morning and gathered at the gate,
filled with new hope and relief to have finally arrived. A sign
hung on the fence, proclaiming that this place was government
property and off-limits to the public. It warned civilians to stay
away and also boasted that intruders would be shot, but Mike
explained that it was just a ruse to help keep the base secret.

“The gate’s locked. That’s a good sign,”
Warren said to Mike. “But how do we open it?”

“Just shoot the lock off. The defenses up top
don’t really matter. It’s what’s under the sand that’s going to
keep us alive.” Mike could see Warren’s military mind unwilling to
sacrifice something as small in the grand scheme of things as a
locked gate, so he added, “We can use one of the cars to brace it
or maybe find a way to chain it back ourselves if we need to.”

Warren called for Daniel to bring him his
weapon and used the high-powered rifle to destroy the lock. A cheer
rose from the survivors of the convoy and people rushed through the
gate as it swung open.

“Wait!” Warren screamed, but no one
listened.

Mike put a hand on his shoulder. “Let them
have this moment. I doubt there’s any need to worry until we
actually get inside the complex proper. If there was still a
military presence here, we’d already be dead or under fire. We’ll
take it slower then. I promise.”

Warren reluctantly agreed, but moved the
lever of the rifle to load another round into the chamber.

Three

Mike sipped at his cup of coffee, savoring
the flavor as he flipped through the stack of paperwork on his
desk. He and the others had been living in the base for a week and
it still seemed like a dream. They were as safe as they could be in
a world gone to hell. They had food, running water, electricity—he
even had a damn office again.

There was so much to do ahead of them. They
had yet to finish a full inventory of the base’s massive
stockpiles, and they hadn’t even begun to explore the research that
had been conducted there before the rats came. Maybe there was
something they could use as a weapon against the creatures.
Anything seemed possible.

The first things they had done after moving
in were simply the basics: getting the place as operational as they
could, assigning everyone living quarters, and setting up a watch
shift for the base’s security room; they had also assigned a team
to make contact with other survivors via the base’s communications
array.

Everyone was happy and finding a way to
contribute—everyone except Warren. The man had become withdrawn now
that he had accomplished his mission. He was a soldier by blood,
and damn good at his job too, but it appeared that after he’d
gotten everyone to the base, his job was at an end, at least for
the foreseeable future; while Mike hated to think that the man felt
useless, he had to confess he was thankful they had no reason for
his protection.

The base also had an armory, so he’d assigned
Warren the task of inventorying the weaponry and devising the best
plan to defend the base, should the rats breach the compound. He
knew Warren took the task seriously, but he also understood it
wasn’t what Warren was really trained to do.

Someone knocked on the door to his office.
Mike placed his coffee beside the paperwork on his desk as Benji
let himself in. Mike instantly saw the mischievous look on Benji’s
face and knew that his plans of working through the morning were
pretty much shot to hell. He smiled as the younger man entered and
shut the door behind him.

#

A classic Beach Boys tune echoed in the
hallway as Brent sped along on a skateboard. He let out a scream of
pure joy as he reached the hall’s end and jumped into the air,
pulling off a Tony Hawk-style stunt. He landed and, keeping his
momentum, turned to head back the way he’d come.

He nearly lost his balance and barely managed
to stop when he saw Warren standing in his path. He grabbed up the
board and snapped to attention. “Sir,” he bellowed over the Beach
Boys.

“Music’s a bit loud, isn’t it, Private?”

Brent rushed over to the portable stereo he’d
looted from one of the base’s work areas and shut off the song
halfway through. “Sorry, sir, won’t happen again.”

Warren hid a smile. He wondered if he was
ever as young as Brent was. “It’s okay, Private, and please stop
calling me
sir
.” Warren nodded at the skateboard. “Looks
like fun.”

“Yes...” Brent caught himself before he ended
with the word
sir
. “It is.”

“At ease, soldier. I didn’t come by to give
you hell. I’m working on a list of the stuff in the armory for Mike
and just thought you might want to help me finish it.”

Brent visibly relaxed. “Love to, sir.”

Warren shot him a look. “Call me Warren, damn
it, or I will end up kicking your ass after all, got it?”

Brent nodded and started to collect his stuff
from the hallway.

“Leave it,” Warren ordered. “It shouldn’t
take us long. You’ll be surfing the corridors again before you know
it.”

The base consisted of four levels. The top
held the administrative areas, and the second floor housed a
mixture of supply storage, generators, the armory, and things of
that nature. Both the third and fourth story contained a mixture of
quarters, labs and the like, but unique to the third were the
communications room and security area.

Warren and Brent got into the elevator, and
Warren hit the button for the second floor. As the doors closed, he
spoke up. “I’ve been meaning to ask how you got out of the attack
on the convoy alive. Most everyone credits you with saving their
lives, but I wanted to hear from you what really went down out
there.”

Brent shifted uncomfortably. “I just did what
I had to do.”

“I know that, soldier. I’m not looking to
place judgment. It’s a miracle any of you got out. I just want to
hear how you pulled it off.”

Brent took in a deep breath and started his
explanation. “We were all tired and hungry. You know how tough life
on the road could be, and that was an especially bad day after you
guys left. We had a hell of time getting to the rally point. Gerald
was raging worse than usual, and we were forced several times to
stop just so he and his crew could jury-rig some of the vehicles to
keep them rolling. When we finally made it there, all anyone wanted
to do was rest. There were more of the wandering dead around than
usual, so Mike ordered me to round up some volunteers to help deal
with them. None of us were concerned... well, not really. We just
figured the slightly higher number of the dead came from being
closer to a formerly populated area. I sent the regulars to their
posts and was still trying to get some people to help us out when
all hell broke loose.

“Suddenly the dead were pouring like rivers
out of the hills all around us. I’d never seen anything like it.
They just kept coming, wave after wave of them, staggering towards
the convoy. I rushed to the perimeter to try to take command of the
convoy’s watchers, but the panic in the camp was too great. Almost
everybody with a gun started shooting. We started having our own
people caught in the crossfire...” Brent paused;
crossfire
wasn’t the correct word, but he couldn’t think of another one.
“Some idiots were trying to shoot at the dead all the way on the
other side of the camp from them. Then things got worse.

“The rats came in, using the dead as cover. I
saw Mike on top of the command car with that little guy he spends
so much time with. Mike himself was using the car’s mounted weapon.
I knew I couldn’t reach them, so I couldn’t ask him what to do.
Rationally I guess I knew we couldn’t use the flamethrowers against
the rats with so many of the dead around, but I went for them
anyway. My mind kept screaming that they were our only hope against
the rats. Even an automatic rifle is nearly useless if you’re
facing a swarm of them.

“I made it to the supply truck, grabbed the
closest flamethrower and lit it up. Something must have snapped in
me because I just let go with it. I started torching everything
that moved. The rats began to keep away from the area I was in, and
I realized most of the camp was already on fire. Somehow the tank
had exploded.”

“The tank exploded?” Warren asked.

“Yeah, it was a nightmare. Anyway, a few
others flocked to my position to keep the dead off me, and suddenly
my little burning patch of the camp became an island of safety from
the rats. We held off the dead long enough to load up anyone we
could in the closest vehicles that weren’t on fire, and then we
rolled out. We had to leave the truck with the flamethrowers, and
it blew just as we made it out. We lost a car from the blast. I
will never forget seeing those poor people being burnt alive, but I
think it’s what saved us and let us get away. We tore a streak out
of there and just kept running until Mike’s little buddy heard you
on the radio and we were able to meet up.”

“Stop blaming yourself,” Warren told him. “It
sounds to me like you’re the only reason anyone’s alive from the
convoy. I would have done the same things you did. Guess I should
be glad I left you behind.”

Brent tried to smile.

“Well, soldier, let’s go see what we’ve got
on hand in case the rats come calling.”

“Yes, sir,” Brent said, and Warren let the
“S” word slide as they entered the armory.

#

At 1600 hours on their seventh day at the
base, the survivors assembled for the first time to discuss their
plans for the future. Mike had organized the meeting and had chosen
the mess hall for the location.

By the time he and Benji entered the room,
everyone except for Darren, who was working on the base’s systems
while on watch in the command room, were already waiting on them.
Benji broke away from Mike’s side and took a seat at the front of
the small group near Michelle, Warren, and Brent.

“Good afternoon,” Mike began, looking out
into the faces before him. “I know you’re all as glad to be here as
I am, so let’s start with a bit about where we’re staying. Long
before the world fell apart, the government and the military were
experimenting with ways of waging war that, if unleashed, could
have brought about a hell similar to what we live in today. There
are bases like this scattered across the U.S., but
this
base... this base isn’t like any of the others. It’s beyond
them.