by Rob Horner
“I—” she tried. Her voice was soft and scratchy, barely louder than a whisper.
“Ma’am?”
“I…can talk,” she managed. The movement of air to create vibration and produce intelligible sound had never seemed complicated, but now it took a conscious effort.
Why hadn’t the man shot her? That’s what he’d been doing. Going door to door, finding the become, and killing them.
Her people.
“Are you all right?” he asked, moving to the bedside. Again his eyes looked her over; his hands reached out to take hers and rotate the wrists within the restraints, checking for hidden wounds.
“I think I was sick,” she answered. “But I feel better now.”
The soldier reached up to his shoulder, where a small radio transmitter hung from a twisting cord. “Sarge, this is Rico.”
He had an earpiece in the right ear, so whatever came back on the radio could be heard only by him.
“I’ve got a live one in the ER. She’s in four-points.” A pause. “No sir, no lines. And she’s talking to me.” Another pause. Then, “What’s your name, ma’am?”
The question meant something, but the meaning applied to the her which existed before she became. Still, like opening a folder and searching for an old file, she was able to find the answer.
“It’s Kim…um…Kimberly Duchess. I—” She searched for meaning. A whirling tempest of words flooded her thoughts, a dozen ways to ask the same question or impart the same concept.
And none of it was necessary.
She was become. A universe of shared thought existed just out of sight, like the shimmer of movement seen at the corner of the eye when an errant breeze makes a curtain shiver.
The man with the gun didn’t seem to realize her state.
“Don’t worry, Ma’am,” the soldier said. “You’re safe. We’re going to get you out of here.”
* * * * *
Greenwood, Mississippi was a hotbed of chaos.
The Guardsmen likened it to the war-torn villages of Iraq and Afghanistan, except the insanity progressed in relative quiet. No beat-to-shit Jeeps and stolen Humvees rocketed along the streets, machine guns zip-tied and duct-taped to the frames, firing indiscriminately.
This was scarier, more insidious.
People of all ages, races, and genders rampaged silently through the streets. They raced through neighborhoods, climbing fences and trampling through yards as often as they ran along a sidewalk. Some wore the uniforms of paramedics or police officers, while others were dressed in nurses’ scrubs or doctor’s lab coats. They were in night clothes and street clothes, refugees from the airport or transplants out of their own homes. They walked from one place to the other, moving in random directions.
Until they saw another person.
Then the shamble stuttered into a run, if they were capable of it. And the run didn’t end until they caught their prey, or another victim distracted them.
Their injuries were the worst aspect, and what made more than one responding Guardsman draw comparisons to the recent spate of zombie-inspired fiction littering bookshelves and DVD rental kiosks. A lot of the wandering attackers appeared to be injured, some of them badly enough to require hospitalization. Judging from the open-back gowns more than a few wore, it seemed likely a hospital was exactly where they’d escaped from.
The soldiers were formed up along the highways into and out of the small community. Their orders were clear. No one entered Greenwood, and no one left.
As night shrouded the land, the first wave of people approached.
Connected to them in much the same way a queen bee was aware of her hive, Bitsy waited to see what the Guard’s response would be.
* * * * *
“Stand down! This is your final warning!”
The amplified voice of Sergeant Hicks blasted out of the truck-mounted loudspeaker.
“They’re not stopping,” Private Bale said, turning and whisper-shouting the words to her.
Sophia nodded but didn’t bother to reply. They had their orders. They were to hold this stretch of Route 82 against anyone trying to pass.
She hadn’t understood the orders at first.
When the call came in at five in the afternoon, she didn’t question. She’d just finished a full workday in the law offices of Bendem, Over, & Dickum (as the other paralegals called it) and was looking forward to a hot bath and a cold beer, but the chance to do something with the Guard, really do something, had her high as a kite and ready to fly. She’d joined three years ago as a way to defray some of the cost of college. It was fun, she supposed, serving one weekend a month and two weeks a year. She’d learned a lot and made some amazing friends, especially during Boot Camp, but she wanted to do more. Not so badly that she ever contemplated going full active, of course. Her mother’d about had a fit when told her little girl was joining the National Guard; she couldn’t imagine what the reaction would be if she went full-time and got deployed to Afghanistan.
But not this. This didn’t make any sense.
Why was she manning a roadblock at the ass end of nowhere, three miles east of BFE and about as far from civilization as it was possible to be in the continental forty-eight? Why had they been here more than twenty-four hours, and how long were they going to have to stay? Why were they given orders to hold the road and not allow anyone to pass? And why did those orders come with a stamp for full lethal?
“Webster?” Bale said.
“I heard ya,” Sophia replied, sighting along the barrel of her M4A1. She checked the selector switch, ensuring it was in semi-automatic fire mode. No sense wasting ammunition.
Along the road to the west, a scattered group of a couple dozen men and women made their way toward the roadblock. They were too far away to make out any details, even with the high-powered spots shining in their faces.
There were almost a dozen soldiers in her squad. Some, like Sophia, had barely held their rifles except at target practice and inspection, while others were combat veterans, either from volunteering for deployment or actual Army who’d “retired” to the Guard to finish out their time. It was the way of the National Guard, to build small units with a mixed bag of experience.
Sergeant Grace, for instance, manned one of the roof-mounted twenty Cals, callused hands keeping the large barrel steady as he aimed into the street. She couldn’t smell anything from where she stood, of course, but she knew he’d have one of those peppermint tobacco pouches in his mouth, worrying it like a kid with a sore tooth and swallowing every drop of the noxious spit it generated.
PFC Logan, on the other hand, stood just on the other side of Private Bale. He was the youngest member of the squad and fresh out of Boot. His rifle was butt-grounded by his boots in order to keep everyone from seeing how much the barrel shook when he held it.
“Stand ready,” Hicks said, looking left and right from his position in the center of the blockade. “I’m going to fire off two rounds, one high and one low. No one else fires.”
“Shit,” Bale muttered.
The people coming up the road were easier to see now, drawing closer, but still fifty or more feet away. A loud clattering indicated Sergeant Grace priming the .20-cal.
There was something off about the approaching crowd, but Sophia Webster couldn’t figure it out at first. Though the closest was fifty feet, the farthest was almost indiscernible at eighty or ninety. The rest were scattered here and there between the extremes, twenty or so men and women heading toward them, giving no indication they’d even heard the warning of the man with the megaphone. Maybe that was the problem. Here they were, protecting a stretch of road from God knows what and for God knows what reason, and here comes a bunch of people looking for all the world like they just woke up and decided to take a stroll. They weren’t in formation, weren’t coming on in an aggressive manner. They were twenty strangers who happened to all be walking in the same direction.
At midnight.
And with at least one woman in
a nightgown.
The sharp crack of Sergeant Hicks’ rifle shattered the morning stillness, making her jump. Thankfully, she’d had her finger resting on the trigger guard, rather than the trigger.
The sound galvanized the oncoming pedestrians. The nearest man and woman broke into a run.
But they didn’t break for the sides or turn around.
No, they were racing right at the Guard!
The second pair tried to run, but something was off about their gait, like a pair of oldsters with creaky joints who can’t remember how to make the motion look smooth.
“Shit!” Bale said again, firming the butt of his service rifle to his shoulder.
The second shot came with a ringing whistle as Hicks fired at the concrete between the nearest people. It was a dangerous shot; no one could predict if a grounded bullet would ricochet or, if it did, which way it would go.
“Stand down!” Hicks repeated, his words followed by an amplified clatter and piercing whine as he dropped the megaphone to ready his weapon.
The lead runners were twenty feet away now. What Sophia originally thought of as a splash of color on the neck of an otherwise plain shirt now looked like something else. The color wasn’t uniform and didn’t run in straight lines. It varied in shades of red, mostly dark, and looked more like something poured on the fabric than woven in. It looked like…
Blood. That’s blood around her neck!
And on her throat. And was that a wound in the soft flesh under her neck?
The man looked no better. His head and neck were unblemished, and there were no visible wounds on his arms. But a dark stain marred the fabric of his shirt, encircling his waist like a belt. Except it was too high, well above the waistline of his jeans. The shirt, which flowed loosely around his pumping arms, adhered to the skin of his stomach, shiny in the spotlight.
“What the fuck is wrong with them?” Bale asked.
“Ready!” Hicks shouted. “Pick your targets, conserve ammo.”
A flood of saliva filled Sophia’s mouth.
God no! I can’t get sick now! I won’t!
She clenched her teeth and tightened her grip on the rifle.
“Aim!”
“Maybe we should aim for the legs, or something,” Bale whispered.
The woman with the torn throat was ten feet away, arms out and reaching. There was something wrong with her face!
Are those black snakes under her skin?
Her mouth opened wide, teeth barred in a silent scream. Her eyes were open but…dead…pupils full and dark, most of the white gone.
The two oldsters hobbled and lurched behind them, and she could see more of those strange dark lines on the exposed skin of a man’s arm, twining like a lovers’ knot from wrist to elbow, then disappearing into the sleeve of a dirty wife-beater T-shirt.
“Remember your training,” Hicks said a second before adding, “Fire!”
Sophia hadn’t yet pulled the trigger when the crazy dead-not dead woman went down. The man beside her fell at the same time. The next pair, the oldsters, kept coming, squashing the small but unvoiced hope she’d harbored that they’d stop once they saw the Guard meant business.
After a second short burst of semi-automatic fire, they fell as well.
She swallowed, and found her nausea gone. She could do this.
More were coming and…
…and the first four were still moving. The woman with the torn throat crawled, unable to stand on shattered legs, yet she’d managed to close within a few feet. It appeared Private Bale wasn’t the only one to think of trying for the legs first.
Sophia looked down, rifle aimed at the woman’s head. Craning her neck, the woman looked up.
Sophia screamed and pulled the trigger.
The woman’s head…fell apart, and now the nausea returned, immediate and demanding.
A dozen shouts went up, men and woman exclaiming in disbelief or outright horror. Sophia turned and spewed hot bile, thankful she’d been a line anchor and not sandwiched between two soldiers.
Her eyes were pools of black, not just dead-looking but dead, probably already dead but somehow not. Her face hadn’t shown pain or anger, just an unrelenting determination to reach her, to bite, to…
Sobbing, Sophia retched again as the early morning air filled with the intermittent chatter of rifles, and more bodies twitched and fell.
* * * * *
The night of day one, as the National Guard opened fire on become seeking to leave Greenwood, and many hours after Kim’s CT results were flown out of Jackson, Bitsy and her mother-become were on the move. She’d tried calling out to the wandering become, wanting to draw them to her and be their guide around the traps set by the humans. But like a German Shepherd on the scent of prey, the become weren’t easy to control, not with fresh victims standing all in a row, waiting for them.
If there were more like her, they could act more intelligently.
But there weren’t. Only she was more.
Those few become still meandering among the residential areas off highway 82 were a different matter. Having feasted the night before and grown their numbers, they responded to her summons.
It was a paltry force, only thirty strong, and certainly not a match for any platoon of well-armed Guardsmen. But they were hers, heeding her instructions. The men and women with rifles were set up just outside of a place called Valley Hill. If she could get her people behind them, they’d be free to continue east.
So, they skulked along the highway edge, in the deep grass and trees. Few vehicles traveled the road, and most of those that did had large profiles and spotlights on their roofs.
More military. Were they expanding their hunt, or setting up a safe area they believed scoured clean of become?
Bitsy didn’t know. But the more they traveled, the greater her curiosity grew.
Was it enough to slip by them? Or was there another option?
Only an hour after they set out, with the moon not far above the horizon, a new light became visible. Stark and white, the light grew brighter as they continued to close.
Strange shapes lined the road, humped one atop the other like sandbags in a flood zone. They were the bodies of become, those she hadn’t been able to reach. This stretch of road was a killing field.
Though she didn’t understand how, Bitsy sent mental suggestions, pulling her force away from the road and farther into the scrub and scraggly trees. Occasional side roads beckoned, houses with porch lights glowing invitingly. She couldn’t sense any other become; all those who’d headed this direction were either with her, or dead on the road below. No, these were new residential areas full of families untouched by the change in the world.
They needed to become. And perhaps they would soon, but only if Bitsy could neutralize the human threat. The desire to pass without confrontation ebbed and faded. A new desire to cleanse the way of the murderous humans came to prominence. They had to become or die.
The lights brightened further, resolving into large banks of spotlights raised on collapsible poles, most pointing her direction, though enough bathed the surrounding hillsides to make sneaking up on them difficult.
Of course, the humans had no idea of her cunning. They couldn’t know there were some who had become more. They assumed all her people were mindless killing machines, unable to discern when a straightforward path wasn’t the most likely to succeed.
She would show them. She was different.
Some of her become wanted to charge the lights. They could sense the human life below. But she kept them in check.
Higher up the embankment they walked, now above the line of lights, and still she kept them moving forward, squelching any hint of disobedience. The become weren’t unruly; they were made to serve the greater community, just as she was made to lead it. But they had a hunger and a drive to spread their change, something primal and instinctive, and it took concentration to keep those instincts at bay.
The embankment leveled off at an eleva
tion of thirty feet, well above the squad of soldiers. Up here, they were shadows moving outside the sphere of light, a night-cloaked flock of birds about to descend upon a ripe carcass.
Bitsy held them in check as they moved beyond the reach of the bright lights. When the raised ground began to trend down, she allowed them to follow it, keeping her eyes always forward, trying to find the quietest way. It took them the better part of another half hour to return to street level, now a quarter mile behind the checkpoint, and here her resolve faltered.
Her father was to the east, already become though not yet aware of his difference. He would know, soon. He would call to her as she ached to call to him.
She could force her flock onward, moving ever away from the men with their guns.
But what if they caught wind of her force and moved up behind them?
She could travel overland, rather than along the roads, but that would greatly increase her travel time. It would also give the humans more time to prepare for them.
No, better to deal with the threat now than have it looming at her back.
The thought brought a renewal of her commitment, as though working toward it was the correct way to strengthen it.
Was that to be the way of her existence now? Logical thought to logical conclusion, and increased resolve once other options were logically eliminated? She was six. What did she know of logic and reason?
No. She had been six. Now, she was become. For her, age really wasn’t anything more than a number.
Bitsy brought her force back to street level. She sent half across the four lanes to the other side. Then, smiling grimly, she ordered them to turn around.
* * * * *
The National Guardsmen didn’t have a bad setup, for a dozen or so men and women tasked with preventing a shambling horde of dead people from leaving a specified area. They didn’t anticipate any of the become taking to the grassy land off the road, because they hadn’t experienced any become with the capacity to understand such a simple tactic. Most of the become were like Carolyn, a ready fighter, a plague carrier, a willing follower.