Torn Apart (2 page)

Jack had once said, “Walking across the desert
in the midst of a zombie apocalypse is not something to be taken
lightly.”

He was so right.

Eventually we came to a crossroad. Sort of. The
tank tracks we had been following branched off. One set continued
north. One set headed west.

"What do you think?" Maria asked.

“
Doesn't look like a tank,” I
answered.

“
What?”

“
These tracks don't look like tank
tracks. They're tire tracks. Like a jeep. Or a Humvee or
something.”

“
So?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“
Why do you think they turned off?”
Maria asked.

“
Don't know.”

I looked through the scope on our one and only
rifle that Maria had taken from Daniel’s camp. I saw something on
the horizon. Black. Elongated.

It could’ve been a building.

It could’ve been a mirage.

I pointed to the horizon. “There’s something
out there.”

“
Something?”

“
A building. I think.”

“
Out here?”

“
Could be a mirage,” I
said.

“
You think they went to check it
out?” she asked.

“
Maybe.”

“
Should we check it out?”

“
I think we should stay with the
tank tracks.”

“
Could be food. Water.”

“
Might be something else,” I
said.

“
What do you mean?”

“
Well, I don't see any tracks coming
back.”

“
But who knows how much further we
have to walk,” Maria said. “We're running low on water. We can’t
afford to pass this up.”

It was simple really. There might be water.
There might be food. Or there might be death.

We had a choice to make. If we made the wrong
choice, we would die.

“
How far do you think that is?”
Maria asked.

“
A mile? Two?”

“
Won't take long,” Maria said. “We
go and check it out and come straight back.”

I nodded. “OK.”

“
We can't afford to pass it up,” she
repeated.

She was right.

We had been walking about twenty miles a night, and to pass the
time we had been playing a couple of games to lift our spirits and
boost morale.

My favorite game was ‘Life BZ’. BZ stood for
‘Before Zombies’.

“
OK, tell me something about Kenji,”
Maria said.

“
Like what?”

“
Anything.”

I thought about it for a second. “Kenji went to
Japan with his parents this one time when he was younger,” I said
after awhile. “He told me that they went to an ‘all you can eat’
restaurant. A self-serve ‘all you can eat’ restaurant.”

“
You mean like a buffet?” Maria
said. “Like Sizzler?”

“
Better. Each table had its own,
built-in deep-fryer.”

“
What? A deep-fryer?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Built into the table?”

“
Yep.”

“
Like, right in the
table?”

“
Yes.”

“
No way.”

“
Yes way.”

Maria was shaking her head. She didn’t believe
me. “Like, with the hot oil and everything?”

“
Yeah. So basically you would load
up your plate with food. Anything from meat, chicken, fish, shrimp,
vegetables. Whatever. Everything was on skewers. Then you would dip
your food in egg yolk, and then bread crumbs. And then you would
dip the skewer in the deep-fryer. Leave it in there for a minute or
two, and voila. Your food would be deep fried to a perfect golden
crisp.”

“
Wow,” Maria said. “That sounds
awesome. And kind of dangerous.”

“
Yeah, no kidding. I don’t know how
they make it work without people hurting themselves.”

“
It’s like a major lawsuit waiting
to happen,” Maria agreed.

“
OK, your turn,” I said.

“
I can’t. I’m still thinking about
the deep-fryer in the table.”

“
You have to. It’s your turn. And
the thought of deep-fried food is making me hungry. Please talk
about anything but food.”

“
All right, let me
think,”

She paused, trying to think of something. “OK,
I got one.”

“
Lay it on me.”

“
I remember Jack’s first ever
surfing tournament. It was a couple of years ago now. This guy
dropped in on his wave. Stole Jack’s wave. Which is against the
rules. The guy was penalized and deducted points and everything.
But that wasn’t enough for Jack. He swam over to the guy and
punched him in the head. Nearly knocked him out. Of course, then
Jack was disqualified from the tournament. But he didn’t care. He
was there for the waves. For the love of it. And that guy stole his
wave, a really, really good wave. That’s all that Jack cared
about.”

Maria trailed off lost in her own thoughts. She
was smiling.

“
He apologized to me the next day,”
she continued. “He swore that he wasn’t normally a violent person.
But I didn’t care. He’s just so damn passionate, you
know?”

I nodded. This is why Jack had run off into the
desert to find his sister. He wasn’t thinking about his own safety.
I don’t think he ever did. He was thinking with his heart. Screw
the danger.

Maria was about to say something else but she
stopped.

“
What is it?” I asked.

She pointed to the overcast sky, to birds
circling off in the distance. Vultures maybe. Or eagles.

“
What the hell are those?” Maria
asked.

I looked closer and realized they weren’t
birds.

“
They’re aircraft,” I said.
“Predator drones.”

“
Like the one from the airport?”
Maria said.

“
Yeah. I guess this means we’re on
the right track.”

“
Should we hide from it?”

“
Where would we hide?”

We looked around lazily. We were both so weak.
There was nowhere to hide.

“
I guess we could dig a hole to hide
in,” I said. “Cover ourselves in dirt?”

This was our only option. But at that moment,
we both knew there was no point in digging a hole and hiding from
the drone. The drone had already seen us. So there was nothing to
do but keep walking and just hope and pray that the damn thing
wasn’t armed with missiles, and that it wasn’t going to blow us
up.

We kept walking at a brisk pace, keeping one
eye on the tire tracks and one eye on the sky. But the closer we
got to the building, the more cautious we became. It appeared to be
a barn of some sort. We crouched down to study the building and see
if it was safe.

We both agreed that we needed to get back to
the tank tracks before night fall. If we weren’t back by the time
the sun went down, we would lose our way and get lost, especially
if the cloud cover remained. So far on our journey, the moonlight
and the starlight had been bright enough to travel by. But on a
dark night, with plenty of cloud cover, we would be lost within
minutes.

“
What do you think?” I
asked.

“
Looks like a regular old
barn.”

Maria was right. It looked like the tire tracks
had led us to a barn full of hay and grain. I guess it was once
used for feeding cattle. Must’ve been an important barn because it
was absolutely packed full with hay, and there was a fuel pump out
the front. Maybe the farmers or whoever used this place would fill
up their vehicles here as well. And I guess that’s why the soldiers
had deviated off course and broken away from the main
convoy.

Fuel.

I was starting to learn that a commodity like
fuel was quickly becoming one of the most valuable things in this
new world. It was right up there with food and water. It was worth
dying for.

I looked through the scope on my rifle again. I
noticed that the ground surrounding the barn was absolutely covered
in spears.

I blinked. Looked again.

They weren’t spears.

They were harpoons. Fired from a launcher, an
experimental weapon. One that set up an Electromagnetic pulse
field. The weapon was designed to trap and disable rogue
nano-swarms inside the EMP field.

A nano-swarm was made up of microscopic robots,
or nano-bots, that were originally designed to fight the Oz virus.
They were released into the atmosphere by the military in an
operation called, ‘Project Salvation’. But something had gone
horribly wrong. The nano-bots had done little to stop the Oz virus,
and now the nano-bots were acting outside of their original
programming. They were forming rogue nano-swarms. These swarms were
becoming aggressive. Deadly. Top of the food chain type predators.
And the only way to stop them was with an Electromagnetic
Pulse.

There were hundreds of harpoons. They stuck
into the desert ground like some sort of weird piece of art. And
the fact that there were hundreds of these harpoons, meant the
soldiers here had come under attack by a very aggressive swarm. Or
maybe multiple swarms.

There were two abandoned Humvees parked out the
front of the barn. Satellite dishes mounted on the roof. Another
EMP weapon.

The Humvees were covered in black dust and
there were holes in their armor, like Swiss cheese, like the metal
had been eaten by moths or caterpillars.

“
What do you think happened here?”
Maria asked.

“
Looks like these guys were low on
fuel,” I said. “Or maybe they had been charged with loading up for
the rest of the vehicles. They must’ve come under attack by a
nano-swarm.”

“
Looks like it was a suicide
mission,” Maria said.

We quickly realized this might not be a safe
place. We moved ahead and then crouched down again, behind one of
the Humvees.

Watching. Listening.

“
Oh my god,” Maria said. “What is
that?”

She pointed to the ground, under the front tire
of the Humvee.

It was a wild dog. Mutated.

The legs and its claws were enlarged and
covered in blood. Its whole body was extremely muscular. The snout
was also enlarged and the teeth had grown almost right through the
gums and jawbone, giving the impression that it was always growling
and snarling. Ready to bite and eat and kill.

Maria was terrified of this thing and I
couldn’t blame her. The thing was a nightmare.

She eventually grabbed my arm, pulled me away
from it. I must’ve been lost for a moment, in my own world,
remembering that night at Daniel’s camp, when we had been attacked
by a whole pack of these monsters. We were nearly overrun. Luckily,
the security of the camp, the sentry guns and the electrical fence
were enough to protect us. But if they had broken through they
would’ve killed us. Eaten us alive.

We moved closer to the barn.

“
Keep your eyes out for a water
source,” I said.

Maria nodded.

On the side of the barn was a message, a note
written in blood and maybe charcoal.

I had a dream about freedom. About a world on
fire.

I’m not sure what that meant.

We walked through the harpoons. We had to
squeeze through in some parts because they were so close together.
Whoever had fired these harpoons had done so in a panic.

We peered through the barn door. Apart from the
hay, it was empty.

Suddenly we heard voices. They sounded
desperate.

The voices were coming from the
attic.

As far as I could tell, the voices belonged to two men. They were
talking to each other. We couldn’t make out what they were
saying.

“
There’s someone up there,” I said,
pointing to the barn attic.

“
Alive?”

“
I think so.”

“
Infected?”

“
Maybe. What do you
think?”

“
They could have information,” Maria
said. “They could have answers.”

“
Only one way to find
out.”

I made sure my rifle was loaded. Made sure the
safety was off. We made our way inside the barn and we slowly
climbed up the ladder that led to the attic. Not surprisingly, the
attic was also full of hay.

Sitting amongst the hay, were two men. I
couldn’t tell if they were soldiers or civilians. They were covered
in blood and black dust and red dust. They were both sitting down.
They were sitting directly across from each other.

They were barely alive.

One of them was holding a hand gun.