The Darkest Place: A Surviving the Dead Novel (39 page)

Not wasting any time, Mike dropped the .380 and snatched up his rifle, then sprinted to the back of the truck. Crouching behind one of the axles, he sighted in on the man holding Sophia.

“Let her go,” he shouted, “and I’ll let you walk out of here.”

“Fuck you!” the man yelled back, pressing his revolver harder into Sophia’s temple. “Drop that gun or I’ll blow her fucking brains out.”

“You do that and I’ll kill you where you stand.”

I keyed my radio. “Mike, do what he says, but stay behind the truck. Ease to your left slowly, try to get him to point the gun away from Sophia. Don’t worry, I’ve got a clean shot.”

Mike nodded once, not looking over his shoulder. The last gunman shouted, “Do it now, fucker, or the bitch dies.”

“Okay, okay. Just don’t shoot, all right?” Mike made a show of holding up his rifle, switching it to safe, and tossing it aside. “I’m coming out now. Just don’t shoot.”

He was wasting his breath. Hostage situations are not like they make them out to be in the movies. If someone has a human shield, even an expert marksman would be hard pressed to shoot them without running a serious risk of hitting the hostage. Which is why, in real life, cops almost never try it. Furthermore, if you step out of cover to confront a hostage-taker, you are at the disadvantage of having to aim carefully. The other guy has no such problem. All he has to do is point the gun at you and fire until you go down. And it’s not like television where the bad guy just shoots one time. In real life, they spray bullets at you rapid fire, figuring at least one of them will hit you.

Consequently, Mike stayed behind cover as he stood up and raised his hands. “Okay, I’m coming out.”

He had taken no more than four steps toward the end of the truck’s bare chassis before the gunman pointed his revolver. Mike must have been watching the man’s shoulder because as soon as he twitched, Mike hit the ground.

My first shot hit him in the shoulder, the same one attached to the arm holding the gun. He cried out and fired wildly, the bullet bashing through the wall of the barn beneath me. By its report it was powerful, maybe a .357.

Sophia, clever girl, used the distraction to snap her head savagely backward into the gunman’s nose. From where I stood near the window, it sounded like someone hitting a melon with brick. The gunman cried out in pain, loosening his grip enough for Sophia to fall down and roll away.

I fired seven more times.

The first six riddled the man’s torso, causing him to drop his weapon so he could clutch at his ruined insides. He stumbled backward and fell, a ragged scream escaping his lips.

Once again, I thought of the difference between movies and reality. In the movies, when the hero shoots the bad guy, he jerks to the side and falls down dead. In reality, people rarely die instantly from gunshot wounds. Even with a direct shot to the heart, it takes a few seconds to lose consciousness. During that time, the victim is awake and relatively alert, and can feel the pain of the wound.

I had deliberately missed his heart.

He lay on his side, feet kicking uselessly, mewling, mouth stretched in agony. I watched him suffer for a few seconds, jaw set, a cold flower of hate blooming in my chest. I knew I should feel sorry for him—that would have been the human thing to do—but at the moment, I felt nothing. Just a grim, distant satisfaction he was no longer a threat.

“Caleb,” Mike shouted, looking at me through the window. “What are you waiting for? Finish him off.”

I didn’t want to. I wanted to stand there and listen to him scream, to hear the terror in his voice, to watch the blood pour out, to see the look on his face when the cold grip of oblivion closed around him and squeezed. After what he had done to Sophia, and what he would have done if I hadn’t stopped him, he deserved no better.

“Caleb!”

“All right!”

With my seventh shot, I put him out of his misery.

A search of the semi found the tanks empty, so after dragging the marauders’ dead bodies out of sight, we scoured the rest of the property. The four-car garage attached to the mansion yielded diesel pickup with a full tank, which I assumed belonged to our attackers. Mike volunteered to siphon the fuel and asked me to go check on Sophia.

I found her standing on the metal steps attached to the passenger’s side of the semi, staring at her reflection in the mirror, fingers gently probing her swollen eye. “Those assholes leave us any fuel?”

“Yeah, they did.”

She stepped down and came to me, arms slipping around my waist. I held her gently, careful not to touch her face. “I can’t believe I let that son of a bitch get the drop on me,” she said.

“How did it happen?”

“I turned to look for Dad, just for a few seconds. Next thing I know my rifle is on the ground, there’s an arm around my throat, and everything went black. I woke up while he was tying my hands and tried to scream, but he hit me. That’s all I remember until I saw you shoot from the barn.”

“You remember head-butting the fucker?”

“Yeah. I remember that part. But it shouldn’t have come to that, Caleb. If I had kept my eyes on the house like you told me to, I would have seen him coming.”

Her voice began to break as she spoke, so I held her tighter and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay now, Sophia. They’re all dead. They won’t be hurting anyone ever again.”

“I could have gotten us all killed.”

“Actually, I had a clean shot at him the whole time.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know.” I put my hands on her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Look at it this way, it’s a lesson learned. Next time, you’ll be more careful.”

She reached up and thumbed a tear out of her good eye. “Yes, I will.”

I heard footsteps approach and turned my head to see Mike rounding the corner, shoulders bent under the weight of two sloshing gerry cans. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “If there are any walkers close by they probably heard the commotion.”

Mike refueled the Humvee, climbed in the driver’s seat, and we got under way. I sat in the back with Sophia, her head in my lap, carefully stroking her soft blond hair. The stress of the last half-hour took its toll and she was soon snoring gently, a small trickle of drool expanding in a warm wet spot on my thigh. I smiled, deciding not to say anything to her about it. She’d been through enough lately.

Leaning back in my seat, I fought against the lead weights pulling down on my eyelids. Sleep had been a bit of a problem lately. Most of my downtime was spent wide-awake, mind racing, hands never far from a weapon. When I did manage to drift off, nightmares I could not remember were never long in waking me up.

I told myself I was going to relax a little while, just long enough to clear my head. The road drifted by outside the window, grassy plains reflecting pale silver under a full moon. Both front windows were down, letting a cool wind dry the sweat on my skin. I closed my eyes, head rocking back and forth as we rode over bumps in the pavement, concentrating on the steady hum of tires speeding over asphalt.

At some point while I was drifting, I heard the sound of gravel crunching and looked out my window. Mike had pulled the Humvee to the side of the road and got out. I opened my door and said, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it. Get some sleep. We’ll talk when you wake up.”

That sounded like the best advice ever given. I did as he suggested, closing my eyes and letting sleep claim me. Approximately four seconds later, a hand grabbed my arm and shook me.

“Caleb, wake up.” It was Sophia’s voice.

I blinked rapidly and sat up straight, eyes stinging from the bright sunlight streaming in through the windows. “I was barely asleep,” I said. But even to my own ears, my voice sounded groggy.

“Kid, you’ve been out for almost two hours,” Mike said.

I rubbed my eyes and looked around blearily. “Where are we?”

“Where do you think?” Mike turned in the driver’s seat, eyes red with exhaustion but smiling nonetheless. “We made it. Welcome to Colorado Springs.”

*****

It was just after six in the morning.

From the heat of the sun on my back, I knew we were facing west. Ahead of us, a line of vehicles—mostly military by the look of them, but a few civilian ones as well—rose toward a heavily guarded checkpoint at the intersection of highways 24 and 94.

In the distance, the sawblade peaks of the Rocky Mountains soared over hazy rooftops, the city squat and puny by comparison. Smoke from hundreds of fires plumed toward the sky, forming an oblong cloud that stretched flat and gray under a southerly wind. The smell of burning wood stung my nose, along with the scent of diesel fumes and my own unwashed body.

Looking left and right, I saw heavy equipment and construction workers crawling like ants across the landscape, busily erecting a fence with steel I-beam posts and pre-formed slabs of concrete. I had seen a fence like it before and stared, puzzled, until memory pierced the fog of sleep.

“It’s a sound barrier,” I said.

Sophia turned her head, the swollen eye surrounded by an angry purple bruise. “What’s that?”

I pointed. “That fence they’re building. It’s just like the barriers you see along interstates and bypasses near residential neighborhoods. They work like baffles, supposed to reduce road noise.”  

Sophia peered out the window. “Looks like they’re building it to keep the infected out.”

“That would be my guess too.”

We made slow progress toward the checkpoint, rolling a few feet at a time as guards in Army ACUs either waved vehicles through the gate or directed them to park in the open stretches of field lining the highway. As we drew closer, I saw there was a chain-link fence topped with razor wire stretching north to south that curved along the outskirts of town. Across the field to my right, the peaked roofs of suburban homes poked their heads over a low brick wall. To my left, signs welcomed visitors and service members to Peterson Air Force Base.

From the south, the rapid thrum of spinning rotors grew steadily louder until a Blackhawk passed lazily over the checkpoint, a minigun manned on the starboard side. Moments later, an Apache gunship armed with two canisters of Hydra 70 rockets and a chain-gun drifted by, the long barrel of the gun swiveling in tandem with the pilot’s line of sight. My heart caught in my chest as the cannon seemed to point right at me for a moment, then moved on.

“Security looks pretty tight,” Mike said, squinting through the windshield. “Guess that’s a good thing.”

I watched the helicopters float away and said nothing.

An hour later, we reached the checkpoint. A harried-looking sergeant waved us forward to a painted red line and signaled for us to stop. He approached the window, rifle slung across his chest, sweat pouring down from under his helmet. “What are you doing out of uniform?” he demanded.

Mike blinked. “Excuse me?”

The sergeant narrowed his eyes. “You’re not military.” A statement, not a question.

“Not for about ten years now,” Mike replied. “If you’re wondering where we got the Humvee, I have papers for it.”

The guard looked the Humvee over, noticing its modifications. “Civilian owned?”

“That’s right.”

His eyes drifted up to the turret, and for a moment, I was worried what he would think of the M-249 mounted there. But when I looked up, the gun was gone. I almost asked Mike where it was, but stopped myself when I remembered Mike pulling over by the side of the road the night before. It was not hard to put two and two together.

“Do you have any weapons?” the sergeant asked. I caught a glimpse of his nametag: Dillon, it read.

“Three carbines, three pistols, a hunting rifle, and a few boxes of ammo.”

“Anything else? Bombs, grenades, rocket launchers, nuclear warheads?”

Mike chuckled. “No, nothing like that.”

Sergeant Dillon’s comment had not been a mere passing jest. I had heard of cops using the same tactic, making a joke to see how a person reacted. If they laughed, it usually meant the person in question was nothing to worry about. If they didn’t, it meant they were nervous, which was always a bad thing during a traffic stop.

“This your first time in Colorado Springs?” Sergeant Dillon asked.

“Yes it is.”

“We’re going to have to search your vehicle.”

“Not a problem,” Mike said. “You do it here, or should I pull over somewhere?”

“Follow that young lady over there,” said Dillon. “She’ll direct you where to go.”

A private, who could not have been a day over twenty but had the eyes of a much older woman, waved us off the road and pointed to another uniformed soldier standing in a field. He motioned us closer, then had us turn left along a line of cars parked outside the fence. We drove to the end of the line where another soldier pointed us to our parking spot. The troop made a cutting motion across his throat. Mike killed the engine.

“Wait here,” the soldier said. “Stay in your vehicle until one of us tells you to get out.”

We all acknowledged politely and made ourselves comfortable.

The air warmed as the sun rose, forcing us to open the windows to stay cool. While we waited, teams of soldiers worked their way through the lines of parked cars, trucks, and SUVs, each receiving a thorough search.

ATVs towing plastic carts followed each team, the carts filled with dirty bandages, bloody strips of cloth, used diapers, and a variety of other unappetizing things. It occurred to me after several carts trundled by that the contents all had something in common—bodily fluids. The guards were looking for anything that might transmit blood-borne pathogens. I also noticed the guards all wore rubber gloves and cotton masks, and made it a point not to touch their faces.

Several times, soldiers found people with illegal drugs in their possession. Rather than make arrests, they simply confiscated the drugs and warned the offenders if the police caught them holding in the city proper they would be arrested and prosecuted. I got the distinct impression it was more of an annoyance than anything else. The troops had bigger problems to deal with. 

Behind us, an argument broke out between two soldiers and a middle-aged woman. The shouting was close enough I could make out what they said.

“I will
not
take this bandage off,” the old woman yelled, red-faced with indignation. “And you have no right to ask me to.”

“Ma’am, we have every right,” a soldier told her patiently. “This town is under martial law. We have to check everyone who shows up for signs of infection. All we need to do is examine the wound. That’s all.”

“I said no, and that’s final. Wait … what are you doing? Get your hands off me!”

The woman tried to fight, but it was no use. Her cries became panicked as two brawny young troops wrestled her to the ground and cut the bandage from her forearm. One of the troops, the one in charge I was guessing, shot the other a meaningful look.

“Ma’am, this is a bite wound,” he said, looking calmly down at the still struggling woman. “What happened? How did you get this?”

As quickly as the fight started, it ended. The woman went limp and began sobbing, begging the soldiers not to kill her. She offered no resistance as they cuffed her with zip ties and radioed for one of the transports. A short time later, a Colorado Department of Corrections truck pulled up and the soldiers loaded her inside.

“What’s going to happen to her?” Sophia asked as the truck pulled away.

I said, “What do you think?”

She was quiet for a few seconds. “That’s horrible.”

“What are they supposed to do?” Mike asked from the front seat. “If she’s infected, she’s a danger to everyone. They can’t just let her wander around until she turns.”

“I know that,” Sophia snapped. “But still, it’s an awful way to go.”

No one spoke again until a team of soldiers surrounded our Humvee and ordered us to step out. We complied, following a woman in civilian clothes carrying a medical kit, and stood waiting while they rooted through our belongings.

The woman with the medic’s kit looked us over, checking our skin for bites. She noticed Sophia’s black eye, frowned at Mike and me, and asked if she could speak to Sophia alone.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Sophia said irritably. “This is my father, and this is my boyfriend. Neither of them have ever raised a hand to me.”

“Then what happened to your face?” the medic asked.

“We stopped to siphon some gas last night. A guy came out of nowhere and hit me, tried to drag me away. These two stopped him.”

The medic gave us both a skeptical glance. “And where is this individual now, the one who attacked you?”

“Dead,” Mike said flatly.

The medic stared. “Dead?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“So you killed him?”

Mike’s expression turned to granite. “He hit my daughter and tried to kidnap her. Of course I fucking killed him.”