The Apocalypse Crusade 2 (10 page)

Deckard matched his cool demeanor, but his was a charade. Most federal agents he’d run into had been A1 assholes and that had been under normal circumstances. Who knows what kind of power-trips they’d be on now that they were acting under a true emergency?

Worse than the agents were the National Guard boys. Just a glance told him they weren’t infantry. The soldiers working on the rolls of concertina wire looked to be having fits, as the razor-sharp wire tangled on everything, including their clothes; most had ruined the integrity of the MOPP4 gear and didn’t seem to realize it. The men putting up the tents acted as though they were attempting some sort of alien architectural puzzle; they bitched and snapped at each other in frustration. The men unloading crates of ammo from five-ton trucks were intermingling them with boxes of MREs.

Worst of all were the men on the line, a hundred yards away. They smoked cigarette after cigarette in nervous anticipation of what was to come. Quite a few held their M4s as though they were holding a stranger’s baby—awkwardly and afraid to drop them. Even from this distance, Deckard knew they were not 11Bravos. These were cooks and dental technicians, clerks and laundry specialists; there were even members of the 42
nd
marching band who had been pressed into service on the line where the pucker factor would peg at its highest reading.

That they were here at all told the four of them that things around Walton had escalated into nightmare status. None of them had the first inkling that things had gotten so bad and yet there was gunfire in the distance and of course the, quarantine tent. The Feds gestured with their guns for the four of them to go to it.

Stephanie eyed the duct tape, nervously. “Will that hold back the germs?”

“Ah think it’s suppose-ta hold
in
the germs,” Chuck said in his slow Oklahoma drawl. He spoke as though his day held thirty hours instead of the usual twenty-four. “Ah just hope it’s empty. Ain’t no way they’ll get me in there if it’s all germed up.”

That had also been Deckard’s big worry and now that it had been spoken aloud, it was all of theirs as well. Stephanie actually glanced back at the once hated ambulance, looking as though she wanted to climb back in and shut the door behind her.

“Get moving,” one of the feds demanded when the four came to a stop a few feet from the zippered tent door. “We have orders to shoot anyone resisting arrest.”

“We aren’t resisting arrest,” Dr. Lee stated. “We are resisting the possibility of spreading the pathogens further. Are there infected persons in that tent?”

“There wasn’t the last time I checked.”

It was, at least, an honest answer. One of the feds pulled off a strip of duct tape to expose the zipper. “Go on!” he growled. At first, no one moved. Chuck looked ready to fight and Deckard’s insides were spooling up. Thuy was calm. With a sigh of defeat, she went to the zipper and drew it down.

Inside the gloom, sitting on a wood bench that had once belonged with a picnic table, were two men she recognized.

“Doctor Wilson, Mister Burke, it’s good to see you alive. Is it safe to come in?”

Both men were red-eyed and bleary. Burke’s hair stuck up at sharp angles and Wilson’s afro was indented on one side. There was a strange pattern to it as though someone had used his head as a stepstool. They blinked against the sudden infusion of bright sunshine. Wilson brought his soft, brown hand up to shade his eyes and said: “We are not infected, if that’s what you mean. Who are you?”

“Doctor Lee.”

“Ah, sum-bitch,” Burke said, shaking his head.

Seeing as the tent wasn’t infected, Thuy stepped in, followed by the others. “I’m not here in a medical capacity, Mr. Burke. I’m no longer in the business of cures or diseases, so you have little to fear from me.”

“I don’t think he was worried about that,” Wilson said, after clearing his throat. Like Burke, he had trouble looking her in the eye. “Tell her, John.”

“Oh hell! I didn’t think nothing would happen to you, but when we was captured, they asked who else made it out alive. We’s tole them y’all’s names. I never did think they’d go and hunt y’all down.”

Thuy was actually relieved by the explanation. “You couldn’t have known, Mister Burke. Your ignorance is forgiven.”

John Burke frowned at the word “ignorance”, not liking the sound of it at all. In his mind, he equated it with stupid, which he sure he was compared to the other people in the tent, all save Chuck Singleton. Because of his accent, John assumed a sort of kinship with him that extended to a mental equivalence.

As the others spoke, Deckard walked the perimeter of the twenty-by-twelve foot tent. It was well sealed and staked, and yet, it was still just a tent. Escape would be simple…if it wasn’t for the guard out front and the place crawling with soldiers.

“Has anyone been in to talk to you?” he asked Dr. Wilson.

“An FBI agent named Meeks. He acted as though we were criminals.”

“And do you know where we are?”

Wilson sighed, his shoulders drooping. “About twenty miles from Walton, so we’re safe. Out there is the command post for the army or the National Guard or whoever it is in charge. It seemed like they started building it around us about an hour ago.”

“How did you get caught?” Deckard asked. “Were there a lot of road blocks?”

“I don’t know if there’s a lot. We only ran into the one. I tried to talk our way around it but,” he paused to sigh again, “but they wouldn’t listen, so I tried to get past them on the shoulder of the road.”

Burke, who had been absently scratching his head, became animated at the memory and grunted out a laugh. “Y’all shoulda seen the ol’ Doc. A gangster he is not! He tries to go around the poh-lice all nice like so they don’t arrest his ass. He even put on his blinker all nice and tidy like.”

“So what happened?’ Stephanie asked.

Wilson made a face as if he were sucking on a lemon. “They shot out my tires and they were new, too!”

Another laugh came from Burke. He nudged Chuck who was sitting beside him with an arm around Stephanie, and said, “When they shot, he yelped like a dog what had his tail stomped on. I swear to gawd he did!” Burke continued to chuckle for a few seconds but when no one joined him he sighed as if the memory had been a pleasant one for him.

Thuy was the furthest from laughter than any of them; she felt the weight of guilt on her like a thousand gravestones piled on her shoulders. She couldn’t take a full breath because of it and she couldn’t think. All she could do was picture Dr. Riggs lying in the haze of smoke on the fourth floor while the elevator struck his ankles over and over again.

Stephanie was in the same boat in that she couldn’t think straight, either. Questions went round and round: why had she and Chuck been arrested when they had done nothing wrong? And what would happen to them? Would they go to jail? Or would they be forced to sit there until someone truly infected was shoved through the zippered flap? What would they do then?

Deckard had the same question, only he had an answer. The one thing that made sense to him was to kill anyone who came through the door with even a hint of black to their eyes. Kill them and then throw them back out through the tent flap. There seemed to be some sort of incubation time before the victims became the monsters and he didn’t think they could wait for that to happen, even if it felt like murder.

Chuck was the only one there who didn’t worry much for the future. He had a bit of a headache and his many cuts zinged irritably when he moved and his lungs made gurglily noises when he breathed. Whether that was from all the smoke he’d sucked down, or from the cancer eating him alive, didn’t much matter to him. He was content to just sit in silence, holding Stephanie and listening to the army do its thing.

Outside the tent, the sounds were many and confusing: the blatt of trucks was constant, the bark of sergeants yelling orders was like the scream of gulls, the distant rifle fire kept up a fine tempo. All this made it seem like
something
was being done to fix the problem.

The sounds and the growing heat of the morning lulled them almost into sleep until a helicopter’s rotors could be heard beating the air. Each of them was sure that it was there for them in one capacity or another. The zipper coming down a few minutes later confirmed this.

Soldiers in MOPP4 gear came in first; their guns were leveled. Behind them came a man named Major Haskins; his name was taped to the outside of a voluminous plastic biohazard suit. His eyes were blue and angry but beyond that, he was a nondescript entity because of the heavy mask he wore. There were two others with him dressed in the same manner and  both were equally angry.

“Dr. Thuy, I’m Colonel Jeffery Haskins Ph.D. I am the facility director of the US Army’s bio-weapons response team. This is Dr. Tanis of the CDC, and Special Agent Meeks of the FBI.”

“Hello,” Thuy said, not getting up. Suddenly, there was a spark to her, as bright and hard as one struck from steel and flint. Despite everything that had occurred, in her mind, there was no need for the FBI to be there. It was almost offensive, especially when he was brought by two Ph.Ds. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked, with an eyebrow raised.

“Yes,” Agent Meeks said. “You can explain yourself. You can start by telling us what the hell you did. And know this, you are already culpable for the deaths of thousands, any dissembling on your part will be considered obstruction of justice.”

“In that case, I think I will need a lawyer.”

Behind his mask, the agent’s eyes went to squints. “Oh, Dr. Thuy, there’ll be no lawyers for you. Count on it.”

Compared to what was happening in and around Poughkeepsie, the outbreak in Hartford took place in slow motion. It was two days before anyone even knew there were zombies in their midst.

The day after Walton went up in flames, six-year-old Jaimee Lynn Burke woke up in an old Lincoln Continental. Its roomy back seat had been ripped or torn a dozen times over in its long life and now the duct tape holding it together was splitting and in need of being repaired itself.

Stuffed under the driver’s seat were the remains of a McDonald’s fillet-o-fish sandwich. It let off an eye-watering stink, only the little girl couldn’t smell anything but the human. It was close. It was a man, she knew because to her their privates had a different odor, like warmed over spam.

Jaimee Lee sat up, feeling a spike of hunger in her guts. It was a need akin to lust and yet it was beyond any normal human desire. It drove her to fumble for the door before her eyes were even opened. They were gummed shut and she raked at the black goo covering them with one hand, smearing a three-fingered streak across her pale face. Now she was able to see the handle.

“There’s the darned...” she started to say, but stopped at the sound of her own voice. She sounded phlegmy and growly, like a tubercular truck driver with a two-pack a day habit.

She coughed and swallowed, wondering what was wrong with her however, the question was dismissed in a flash as the door came open and the full smell of the man struck her. Just like that, nothing else mattered to her but her hunger; not the rain running in a slant, or the cold that tented up her skin with a million goosebumps, nor the fact that she was shoeless.

Her hunger was everything. Even the strange anger roiling inside her was a distant second to the hunger. She splashed out into the rain, making a bee-line for the man. He was tall and broad with a back the size of a billboard. He wore a hard hat, a coat, and heavy boots; across his waist was a belt of tools. Jaimee categorized him as a “worker” but did not bother to narrow the description down beyond that. What did it matter? Only hunger mattered, and eating. She went right for the man and only paused long enough to find the flesh.

Beneath the helmet and above the collar of the coat was a strip of hot meat. The man had his back to her and had no idea she was even there. His first indication of trouble was when he felt something on his back— and then there came the wicked teeth.

The pain was sharp. “Ho—fuck! What the fuck?” he cried, twisting and doing an odd, spinning dance as he tried to dislodge the creature on him. He was sure it was a rat and his belly crawled in disgust. But it wasn’t a rat. He caught hold of one of Jaimee Lynn’s scrawny arms and threw her off of him, still cursing.

“Fuck,” he said, in a breathy whisper when he saw what had attacked him: it was a little girl with mud in her eyes and red on her lips. “What the fuck do you…”

She scrambled up, stopping him in midsentence. She hadn’t heard a word he was saying; her eyes were focused entirely on the soft skin beneath his stubbly jaw line. That was where the good blood was, and the tender meat. Her body quivered in anticipation.

“Back off!” the man yelled. His name was McMillan and he was having trouble piecing things together. Who was this girl? She was feral and looked like she had crawled out of a cave or perhaps had crawled out of a distant time when humans were mere savages. She was like a wild animal, a wild rabid animal. She was panting and licking her red lips, savoring the blood.

He had never seen anything like Jaimee Lynn and, although her appearance was unnerving, he certainly wasn’t scared in the least. McMillan stood two feet taller and outweighed the girl by two hundred pounds. He could crush her like a bug with one of his size thirteen, steel-toed work boots. If he had a worry it was the fact that it looked like he would have to use force to restrain her.

“Hey, look, settle down,” he urged, putting his callused hands out to the tiny slip of a thing. It was a waste of breath. He could see her gather her legs beneath her, preparing to spring at him again, and yet, despite being forewarned, he was almost bitten a second time. She was fearsomely fast and her aggression wasn’t animalistic, it was demonic.

She flew at him, hands like claws and her mouth open to bite. Just before her teeth latched onto his neck, he managed to catch her by her pale yellow hair and held her out at arms-length like a bedraggled cat and, like one, she hissed, spat, and tried to claw at his arm. “Relax, damn it!” he yelled. “Now, tell me where you live.”

The blood lust was too strong for her to understand a single word; all she cared about was getting to that throat and chewing through the salty skin. She could see blood pulse beneath that soft covering of flesh. It made her stomach feel like an empty fifty-gallon drum.

“Can you hear me?” McMillan asked, giving her another shake. When all he got was the same inhuman growling, he decided that the police would have to deal with the little psycho. He turned Jaimee Lynn around and tried to walk her to his truck. It was impossible. The girl acted as though she would rather rip her own hair out by the roots than get in the truck. He was compelled to take her by the back of the filmy hospital gown she wore and lift her bodily in. The girl spazzed like a demon-possessed cat, making McMillan curse, spittle flying from his lips as he forced her into his truck.

In order to shut the door behind him, he had to let go of her with one of his hands. Wet and sleek and adder-like, she spun in his grip and sunk her teeth into his wrist. It hurt like bloody-hell, making his lips twist. He tried to pry her off only she had latched on and began to make dreadful sucking noises as she drank his blood. This, more than the pain, overcame what little compassion he had for the waif.

In order to get her off of him, he punched her twice in the temple. He pulled the first blow because she was so small and frail, but when that didn’t work to get her teeth out of his flesh, he gave her a proper thump using all his strength. Her eyes went in two different directions and her jaw went slack.

She looked at him dully.

“I’m sorry,” he said defensively. All he could think about was that no one would believe that he had to hit her. What would his wife have to say about it? Or his friends? Shit, what would the police think? “I’m sorry, but you made me hit you. It’s your fault.”

Jaimee Lynn began blinking as if waking from a deep dream. The punches had shaken her and for some reason it made her hunger less, which allowed her to think with a little clarity. This was a man next to her and a big one at that. She could never eat him because he was too strong.

“I need a small one,” she said, in a raspy voice, picturing a child in her mind. It was a girl child with yellow hair, a gap-toothed smile, and a pointy chin. She was familiar, only Jaimee Lynn couldn’t put a name to the girl, not realizing that she was picturing herself—the Jaimee Lynn she was used to seeing in the mirror.

“You can talk?” McMillan asked, surprised. “Well, good. You can explain to the police why you bit me.”

“Because I’m hungry, very hungry,” she said, rubbing her stomach. She began to feel the hunger start to override her thinking again. It was his blood, she realized. She couldn’t be that near so much clean blood without it overcoming her.

McMillan leaned away from the girl, disgusted by her answer. It had been a frightfully honest answer. “You should tell that to the police. Say it just like that.” He reached into his pocket for his keys just as she reached for the door handle.

“Bye,” she said, as she pushed the passenger door open and fled into the rain.

“Hey!” McMillan yelled after her. He jumped out of the truck but she was running like a rabbit and he didn’t even take a step. “Fuck,” he grumbled, standing in the slanting rain, feeling it wash away the blood that leaked from his wounds. They ached, dully. A check of the side mirror showed him that he would probably need stitches in his neck. “What a pain in the ass,” he mumbled, knowing that his day was shot.

Once he had called his boss and explained that he’d been attacked by some drugged-up “guy”—there wasn’t any way he was going to say it had been a little girl—he went to the emergency room where he waited, along with thirty others, to be seen by a doctor. Soon a headache began to throb behind his eyes, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the hospital staff seemed to be moving in slow motion.

After an hour, the pain was so bad that he was rolling on the floor, practically in tears. This bumped him up in priority and very soon, he found himself on a gurney with a sheet drawn around it as its only privacy. Everything was too bright and too loud. It made him want to puke.

The Com-cells were replicating with unbelievable quickness, making his nerves feel like there were live wires attached to each. When he started to scream, an IV was hooked into his arm. In a minute, the fire in his mind was doused so that it was only a pile of smoking embers. “Ah, better,” he sighed.

“It’s better for us, too,” someone on the other side of the sheet muttered just loud enough to be heard.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” McMillan growled. He wasn’t in any mood to take crap from anyone.

“Nothing,” a second voice answered. This one was female. She began whispering. The nearly inaudible hissing bothered McMillan. What was she saying? Was she saying something about him? Something about why his head was pounding and his eyes were going blurry? What did she know and why didn’t she speak up? Was that on purpose? Was she trying to tease him with her secret knowledge?

The very questions bothered him as well. He was very confused and he wasn’t one who was normally confused about anything. Generally, he was sure of his facts. For instance, he knew he was supposed to be here for some stitches, yes, that was a real fact, but where had the headache come from? Were they releasing something into the hospital air? Some sort of poisonous gas? But if so, why was he the only one affected? No one else had complained about headaches. Maybe it was something they fed him or it maybe it was in…”

McMillan eyed the IV bag with sudden fear. It was half-empty. How did it get so empty, so quickly? How long had it been in his arm? Certainly minutes only.

His watch would verify that, only the numbers were twisted tick marks, and the hands jumped about on the face, appearing here and there without rhyme or reason. Tapping it didn’t help either; everything blurred so that it didn’t look as though he was even wearing a watch; it looked like a leather strap that would hold him down and keep him there forever.

“They drugged me,” he whispered, in dread.

The IV came out with a firm tug and blood oozed from the wound—it was darker than it should have been but not yet black. Next, the blood pressure cuff made a sound like a roar in his ears as he tore away the Velcro and, finally, the monitors let out piercing tones when he pulled off all the wires that had been attached to him at some point.

McMillan tore aside the curtain to face his enemies. There were many of them, dressed in blue or green. One came up to him. “What are you doing out of bed?” She had the creaky voice of a witch and the cruel glint to her eyes to match it. McMillan knew her. She was the one who had stuck the IV in his arm. She was the chief poisoner.

He answered her question by punching her flush in the face. There was a hue and cry as she fell to the ground, her nose bent and gushing blood. For all of a second, McMillan stared at the blood; it was so cherry-red that he had to wonder if it was sweet.

Then men were charging him. McMillan was a big man and just then, against his enemies, he felt bigger still. And stronger, too. He flung people about as if they were made of paper. They were powerless against him, and the Emergency Room ran red with blood as he swung his heavy fists as though they were sledgehammers. People screamed in terror and their fear goaded him to more violence. Mercilessly, he stomped the ones who fell until their features were mush. Quickly, the ER emptied of people— all save for one individual. This one wore a shiny badge that sent shards of light burning into McMillan’s eyes and in his hands was a gun.

The gun fired three times before McMillan fell.

He had devastated the Emergency Room, leaving three dead in his wake, and yet it could have been worse. McMillan wasn’t yet contagious. The Com-cells had been fast getting to that stage, but now, as if directed by some unseen force they began to heal their carrier. For two hours, McMillan laid there as investigators took statements and wrote reports and photographed the chaos. Had it taken them two hours and ten minutes they would have been in for a rude surprise when McMillan opened his eyes.

Luckily, for them, the coroner had bagged the body before that could happen. McMillan was put on a slab and then slid into one of the “chillers” as the morgue technicians called the refrigeration units. This didn’t kill the Com-cells. No, they were far from dead. The only effect the below freezing temperatures had on the disease was that it multiplied at a more leisurely rate instead of the frantic pace that was usual.

Still, when the coroner slid open the slab the next day he was in for of a hell of a surprise. McMillan was covered in what looked like moss that was the color of ink as black as night. It was so dark that when he opened his black eyes the coroner didn’t even notice.

Three hours after running from McMillan, Jaimee Lynn had forgotten all about him. She was too busy eating the third child she had caught. The small humans were so much easier to catch than the big ones, and they were tastier, too. But they didn’t have much blood to them which meant they died quick and came back just as quick.