The Regulators - 02 (4 page)

As soon as I took my first step, Mr. Rock-thrower himself
called to me through the window.

I almost shot him in the face.

“Are they gone? Did you get them?”

As soon as my heart stopped trying to jump out of my throat
I answered.

“Yeah, it’s cool.”

“One of them actually managed to turn the doorknob on the
back door. Fortunately, I had already taken my family to the roof before they came
inside.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“My name’s Adam,” he answered. “You’re not the General,
where’s the General?”

It was a pretty fuckin good question. I was curious about
the answer myself.

“Well Mr. Dipshit, since you decided to let the entire neighborhood
of shamblers know our position, he thought it would be a good idea to lead them
away from here.”

“I’m sorry. Those things were in the house. I couldn’t go
down and meet you…and earlier today, I saw one of them moving in the house
across the street…so I hid.”

“Why didn’t you just throw another rock at us?” Georgie
asked.

“I was out of rocks. I couldn’t find anymore.”

“Why are you still outside on the balcony. Why don’t you
come in?” I asked.

“It’s my family; they’re still on the roof. I need help bringing
them down.”

“Why do you need help bringing them down?” Georgie asked.
The distrust was damn near dripping from his mouth.

“They’re hurt.”

Georgie let out a long breath. Javie was quiet; he doesn’t
really talk much during tense situations. Kingsley slumped against the wall. We
all had an idea why he needed help with his family. We just didn’t have Jaxon
here to handle it for us.

“
His family had been
bitten
.”

Yup, we learned since the Safe Zone that a person won’t tell
you that they have a contaminated family member. Instead, they tell you they
have an injured family member. It’s hard for them to face the truth…and the
truth is their family member needs to be put down. I think that they’re hoping
the loved one will recover, and they need to protect them from people like us
until they do.

A lot of people have died believing that. It’s unfortunate,
but they always turn. There is no cure; it’s a death sentence, unless of course
you’re a Regulator.

Don’t think we’re lucky though. Lucky would be living up in Alaska,
far away from this shit and watching it on the TV.

“Let’s take a look,” I said.

I climbed out the window after him. Georgie went with me.
Javie and Kingsley stayed by the stairwell to make sure nothing snuck up on us.
If they were turned, I was hoping Georgie would put them down instead of me. I
didn’t want that on my conscience.

Once on the balcony, we had to shimmy up the chimney to get
to the roof. It wasn’t too difficult, but I put some scratches on my mp7.
Georgie, being the gun nut that he is, looked at me like I was an idiot.

There was an indention on the roof between two skylights.
Two figures were there covered in blankets. One of them was moaning and
twisting around. I approached her and saw that it was a little girl. She was as
white as a ghost even in the dark of night. She had a bandage on her arm from
where she was probably bitten and had a gag in her mouth to keep her from
screaming. It looked like she had died just a few hours ago.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I tied her up. I don’t think
she’s gone all the way. Sometimes she stares at me like she remembers who I
am.”

For a second, I almost lost my emotions. This scene was
playing very close to my not so distant past. A scared to death little girl and
Jaxon, Kingsley and I just praying that she wouldn’t turn from her bite. I was
carrying her when she turned. I haven’t forgotten that one. Maybe I won’t ever
forget any of them, but that one really bothered me. I was carrying her when
she died, and I didn’t even notice until my uncle shot her in the head.

Georgie put his hand on the man’s shoulder. The poor guy
started to cry. He did it quietly, but I could see his shoulders bobbing up and
down as Georgie hugged him.

“You’re not the General,” said the woman next to the child.

“No,” I answered. “The General would know what to do.”

“Adam won’t let her go,” she said. “But I don’t want this
for her. I can’t even hold her anymore. My baby is gone.”

The woman was damn near as pale as the child, but even
though she looked pretty weak, she was still all there.

“Were you bitten?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“When?” I asked.

“A few days ago, we were hiding in a house a few streets
over. I was in the kitchen by the window when something broke through the glass
and dragged me out. It pulled me up on the roof and started biting me.”

Now that was odd. A bite to the neck should have turned her
pretty quickly.

“Let me see the bite,” I said.

She obliged by turning her head, moving her hair and showing
me the bandage.

“If you get the sudden urge to eat me, give me a warning,” I
said as I pulled back the bandage.

Underneath, was a nasty ass bite, but it didn’t look
infected. Zombie bites normally fill up with pus and turn all sorts of nasty
colors within about twenty minutes after the attack. This bite just looked like
an injury.

“Were you attacked at the same time as your daughter?” I
asked.

“No, my daughter was attacked today. We left our last hiding
place because we kept hearing footsteps on the roof. We thought it might be the
same zombie that had bitten me. After I was attacked, Adam boarded up all the
windows. The thing on the roof seemed like it was looking for a way in. After a
couple nights of it returning over and over again, we decided to find a safer
place. Adam carried me the entire way. We only wanted to keep our little girl
safe.”

“Of course,” I said. “What else could you do? It’s not your
fault, so don’t ever go and start thinking that way.”

She started crying.

“I’m not sure what to do, let me talk to my teammate,” I
said. When in doubt, I figured that I might as well be honest.

The Regulators have a strict policy when someone gets
bitten. We absolutely do not put them down until they turn. I had no problems
pulling out the father, but there was unfortunately nothing I could do for the
mother and daughter because we also had a strict policy about not extracting
infected people. Well, I take it back. There was something I could do for them.
It just wasn’t going to be easy.

I pulled Georgie into a brief conference. He agreed with me
about evacuating the father and putting down the daughter. However, he
absolutely did not want to be the one to do it. He had a daughter of his own
and the very thought of shooting a child was too disturbing for him. As far as
the mother was concerned, we were gonna wait for her to turn and put her down
as well.

We gave them some space to say their goodbyes, but we kept
our eyes on them all the same in case they did something foolish in their
grief. It was a pretty emotional scene, I don’t really want to get into it, but
it deeply affected both Georgie and I.

After their farewells were said, Georgie helped Adam move
his wife back inside the house where Kingsley and Javie were waiting. Though
she seemed rather weak, she had none of the joint pains that other infected
people seemed to acquire very shortly after being bitten. I had no idea what to
make of the situation.

Finally, I was left alone on the roof with their child. I
wanted to do it quickly and be done with it. I rushed towards her and raised my
rifle, but I couldn’t fire. It was a child. I didn’t want to shoot a child.
Yet, I had to do it. I had to do the right thing by that little girl and her
parents.

It took a while, but I finally mustered up enough courage
and put her out of her misery. There was no loud bang, just a muffled thump as
the bullet traveled through the rifles silencer. Her life was over.

“
Her life was over
when she was bitten
.”

Yeah, that’s what Jax always tells us.

Anyway, I was a little sullen after that. I needed a moment
by myself before I rejoined the team, so I just sort of sat there on the roof
for awhile and waited for the sun to start trying to peak out over the
mountains.

It wasn’t long before Hardin was talking in my ear.

“Dudley, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“I saw everything. You did the right thing.”

I always forget that our ear pieces also have small cameras.
I made a mental note to remember that the next time I had to pee.

Then all of a sudden it hit me.

“Where’s Jaxon?” I asked.

“We lost contact with him as soon as he charged the horde.
We have air support tracking the mass right now.”

That’s when I realized that I completely forgot about my ear
piece radio. I hadn’t tried contacting my uncle since we first entered the
house. I needed to quit making mistakes, people were depending on me.

“Why don’t you have the choppers open fire on the horde?” I
asked.

“Because we aren’t exactly sure where Jaxon is in the mass,
it’s jumbled and chaotic; they are moving fast and traveling through alleys,
backyards and homes. We could end up hitting Jaxon by mistake.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“We are hoping that he will lose his pursuers and find a way
to contact us.”

“I want you to keep me informed on this. In the meantime, I
have an extraction. It’s a man and woman, the woman is infected, so we’ll wait
that out and take care of it. It probably shouldn’t take too long.”

“Right, we’re on top of it, we’ve already located the
nearest extraction point.”

I forgot about the damn cameras again.

“Alright, we’re going to stay here until tomorrow evening,
just in case Jax makes his way back.”

I finally went back inside the house as the sun rose in the
sky and had everyone gather up in the living room. The poor girl’s parents were
filled with grief. I had Kingsley and Javie move all the corpses we’d shot up
to the front and back exit of the house in an attempt to mask the smell of the
living people inside. I wasn’t sure it would work, but they smelled pretty bad
to me. Hopefully if a shambler happened to walk by, they wouldn’t be able to
sniff us out.

Those things have some serious nose power.

When all was said and done, we all settled down to rest. The
team took turns on guard duty. Fortunately, nothing exciting came our way, and
we were able to relax a bit. I was even able to get some food and liquids into
Michelle.

“
Michelle is the
girl’s mother
?”

Yeah, Adam’s wife, I finally got her name. She was actually
starting to look a lot better. I couldn’t explain it; I thought for sure she
was a dead woman. I was seriously out of my depth here, so after examining her
wound again and applying some antibiotic, I gave my earpiece a tap.

“This is Miriam.”

I was expecting Hardin. To be honest, I really didn’t know
Miriam all that well and I’m not sure if we had ever even spoken.

Dudley is well known
to be very quiet around people he doesn’t know. However, that all changes once
he becomes used to them. When that happens, well, everyone tells me that they
need some earplugs if they expect to get any sleep
.

“I was looking for Hardin,” I said.

“He’s taking a break. Is this about Jaxon?”

I had been pestering them all morning for information about
my uncle. They were probably getting pretty tired of me, and I was getting
pretty sick of them not having anything new to tell. That last decent bit I
heard came shortly after sunup and all they knew for certain was that the large
group of undead in pursuit of my uncle had broken up and begun to disperse.

“
There was no sign of
the General
?”

None. He seemed to have vanished, and the zombies were going
back to doing whatever it is that zombies like to do when they aren’t chasing
and eating people. On the plus side, when the sun came up enough to see
clearly, the helicopter was able to fire into the remaining groups of shamblers
and start dwindling down their numbers.

“
Were you worried
?”

A little bit, but I knew he got away. If he got caught, they
would have seen that massive horde come to an abrupt stop while they ripped
into him. They don’t need to positively identify someone to know whether or not
they are being devoured.

My worry was how he was going to find his way back in
hostile territory. When the horde finally began to disperse, they were miles
and miles away on the opposite side of Mesa towards the Sunland Park Mall. Go
ahead and feel free to insert a number of mall related zombie jokes.

I’m
sure everyone will
get his reference, so I’m not going to explain it
.

“
It wouldn’t be very
original if he hid inside a mall would it
?”

Absolutely not, and if Jaxon is anything, he’s original.

This, however, wasn’t about Jaxon. This was about Michelle
and me being out of my depth.

“No, it’s about this woman with the bite,” I told Miriam
over the radio.

“Is she getting worse?” Miriam asked.

“No, it’s the opposite. She seems to be getting better.”

“Dudley, there is no getting better from a zombie bite. The
onset of symptoms varies depending on the severity of the bite, but the
conditions will only worsen.”

“Okay, well what about some kind of remission?”

“No such things with a zombie bite, things just go from bad
to worse.”

Now, just to give you a little back story, Miriam knows what
she’s talking about. She works with our team in a sort of advisory capacity.

“
I’ve certainly heard
of her, yet I’ve never met her or even seen her. If I remember correctly, Skie
told me that she’s a three hundred year old witch. Can you tell me in what sort
of way she advises the team
?”