by Horner, Rob
“What about them?” Greg said, pointing.
Shading his eyes, the driver squinted along the line of sight drawn by Dr. Lowman’s finger.
Just ahead of the wall of stopped vehicles were numerous figures, made small by distance, moving in and among the cars.
“Looks like that sedan and the pickup started it. See them at the front? One zigged and the other zagged, and their front fenders stuck together like a couple of wild dogs in rut.”
Greg wasn’t particularly interested in either the driver’s take on what caused the accident or his colorful analogy regarding how the lead cars were interlocked. There was something about those figures, how one might stagger like a drunkard between two cars until he came upon a vehicle with an open window, or with the driver standing half-in and half-out. There would be a collision of bodies, of a sort, and then the figure would wander in another direction. It wasn’t just one, either. It looked like five discrete individuals weaving up and down, left and right, crossing all three lanes of stopped traffic like a troupe of enterprising panhandlers working a crowd.
There was enough general noise—from the car engines and their horns—that any shouts of alarm were indiscernible from this distance. But as the strange people worked their way closer, seeming to target those standing outside their cars, an air of incipient panic began to descend on the crowd. Murmurs became shouts as some people jumped back into their vehicles, slamming the doors shut and no doubt clicking their automatic locks in place. Others saw the futility of boxing themselves in and began moving, ducking and dodging sideview mirrors and other drivers, pushing back along the crowded freeway. The flow of people acted like a magnet on the wanderers. They came on faster, no longer seeking rubberneckers but actively chasing the panicked runners.
A massive screeching of brakes called the eye to the oncoming lanes, where a tanker truck sent plumes of gray-white smoke up from locked wheels, the driver no doubt standing with both feet pressed to clutch and brake. Other darting figures were briefly visible in those lanes, scampering from guardrail to median, about to descend on the stopped traffic on this side. The tanker skewed sideways.
A strong hand grabbed Greg’s upper arm, making him jump. But it was just the driver, pulling, yelling over the screaming tires of the tanker.
“We’ve got to move!”
And Greg was pulled back down the on-ramp while inertia won out over mass as the tanker went perpendicular to the roadway and the cab lost its battle to stay grounded. The tanker toppled, a slow-motion ballet of a roll that looked graceful for the half-second that it was visible. Then the driver was leaning onto Greg’s shoulders, pushing him down to the tarmac and flattening himself over him while the world around him lit up with heat and noise and a tremendous air pressure that popped his ears and pressed him even farther into the concrete. The driver issued a wrenching scream that shot through Greg’s head like a knife yet was barely audible over the roar of fire, flame, and death that consumed everything. Other sounds like the pops of a cap gun after the deafening fusillade of a firing squad reached him, cars with immolated drivers running into the flaming wreckage and becoming secondary explosions, vehicles farther back creating a second record-setting pile up and for once not caring about front end damage or insurance premiums in an effort to avoid the flames.
People ran. People yelled. People tripped over Greg and his driver, many of them probably aflame somewhere, what they used to call “screaming alphas” back in the service. And finally, Greg tried to rise, only to find his driver a dead weight pushing him down.
“Let me up!” he shouted. Or tried to. Either his voice wasn’t working, or his hearing was diminished because all that he heard was the echo of his voice in his head. He pushed again, and the weight remained, but without any of the sensation of active resistance. The driver wasn’t trying to hold him down; he was unconscious or…
Suddenly frantic at the idea of a dead man lying on top of him, Greg pushed and struggled, and then he was free.
The driver, a thirty-something guy who’d just been doing his job, lay dead, his body pushed onto the side by Greg’s struggles. A shard of metal like a four-foot tent spike had pierced him sideways, impossible to tell which way it went in and which way it exited and doubtful it mattered. That scream had been his last sound, pain and terror combined in a deafening roar.
The trees that sided the on-ramp had been blown bare, skeletal branches scraping the sky. The oncoming lanes were a mass of roaring flame and billowing, dark, thick, greasy, black smoke, rising and staining the clouds, turning the sun into a bronze disk. There wasn’t an untouched vehicle within sight. If not likewise aflame from proximity to the explosion, they were uniformly charred and blackened. A chorus of agonized moans and wails floated on the winds, coming from all directions, though they seemed faint and disconnected from the carnage, a product of his muted hearing and the thick fog clouding his thoughts.
Stunned, Greg reached up a hand to his ear and wasn’t surprised to see bright red blood staining his fingers.
Both blown, he thought.
There was no movement on the Interstate. The cars around him were largely undamaged except for their windows. Everywhere safety glass sparkled on the ground or glistened in spider-webbed whole sheets on the seats inside the vehicles. There were some bodies in the cars, people likely just rendered unconscious by the blast or perhaps fainted from the shock. More were empty, drivers and passengers staggering and scrambling down the ramp and back to the street, some limping, some leaning on and supporting one another, most looking like they fled from the general chaos than for any specific reason.
I should stay here, try to give a report, he thought, and it would be the responsible thing to do. The immediate danger was past and being able to inform someone how the accident started seemed important.
How it started…
It started with strangers, perhaps inebriated or under the influence of some drug, walking across an Interstate like they hadn’t the decency to show a modicum of common sense. Those people needed to be called to account, placed under arrest, and forced to answer for all the damage they’d caused.
A breeze began to blow, tearing away the highest portions of the thick smoke, cooling Greg’s face. The volume of the noises around him, the rippling/flapping noise of the continued blaze, the screams of the injured, grew steadily as whatever the concussive blast had done to his hearing began to wear off.
There was no way anyone survived in the vicinity of the tanker explosion. A quick glance in that direction confirmed the assumption. Nothing moved over there except the air as it shimmied in the heat.
But what about the original five who turned 395 South into a parking lot, who turned the lot of them into sitting ducks for an oil-tanker campfire?
Turning, Greg was almost bowled over by an oncoming tidal wave of humanity, whose shouts for him to move out of the way had fallen—literally—on deaf ears until that moment. Dozens of people pushed, shoved, shoulder-checked aside, or blatantly knocked down and ran over each other. And behind them came…
Yelling, Greg spun away from the approaching nightmare, adding his body to the throng as he raced down the on-ramp, desperate to escape, to hide. Gone were the ideas of staying put until help arrived. What could anyone do against that, except be overrun and absorbed?
The original five might still be back there, but they’d been joined by an army of others, people from all walks of life and in every shape and size. Many were dressed in hospital gowns, tails flapping and bare bottoms no doubt exposed to the north-bound traffic, while others were in hospital scrubs, the staff surging side by side with the patients. They were close and coming closer, the front-runners grabbing anyone not already a part of the throng, grabbing and…and biting, scratching, clawing, falling over their victims like vampires in a horror movie, except these weren’t vampires, these were just crazy people, right? Just some kind of mass psychosis, a mob mentality overtaking everyone.
Some of the attackers
sported wounds that should have made such a mad flight impossible. In just a few seconds, Greg saw torn throats and bloody smocks, what looked like bullet holes and one person who ran off-center with one arm pumping and the other ending in a ragged, dripping stump, ripped off at the elbow.
The people who fell rose behind them like a game of leapfrog in hell, the mob swarming, biting, crushing, killing, only to be reinforced by the victim rising to his or her feet and joining the back of the line.
And the mob was almost upon them.
Greg ran like he hadn’t since he wore a uniform and had to qualify for the physical readiness test every six months. Within ten strides he was the one elbowing people aside, racing for the front of the line, desperate to get away. What he’d seen was important. What he’d put together mattered.
He had to get to the White House.
And he had to do it before the mob got to him.
Desperate, he raced up Capitol Street, heading back toward where he’d seen the first roadblock and the Humvee manned by soldiers. Beside and behind him, the mob of panicked motorists began to break up. Some stopped simply because their bodies couldn’t maintain a run, older men and overweight women bent at the waist, hands on their knees, sucking in air like it was all they had strength to do. Those were the first to see their pursuers still coming, tireless legs eating up ground, only stopping long enough to add another person to their ranks. People screamed, tried to run, and were swarmed.
Those in better shape maintained their run, dispersing, taking different turns, scattering to opposite sides of the street. The horde behind them scattered as well, most appearing to fixate on a specific target and continuing the chase. Some ambled off on side paths, perhaps seeking prey that didn’t run quite so fast.
By the time Greg reached New York Avenue NW, he was out of breath and blowing like a racehorse after the Derby. His professional shirt with the pinstripe tie was untucked and sweat stained, the double-Windsor knot at his throat yanked down and hanging on his breastbone. One of his loafers had developed a sliding feel every time the heel came down, like the sole had separated and was only staying attached out of loyalty to the brand.
There were other footsteps behind him, some that sounded like shoes or boots, while others slapped like bare feet on concrete. Not stopping to look, because every time you did that you allowed the pursuer to get closer, he kept running, spotting the jutting front end of the desert-brown military vehicle. Hope surging, he increased his pace, waving his arms frantically.
The soldiers were still there!
“CDC!” he tried to yell, but something, the harsh breathing of his run, the acrid smoke of the fire, seemed to have frozen his vocal cords shut. It came out a whisper that he outran instead of a shout for help.
The soldiers saw him. There were four, two on either side of the Humvee, all dressed in brown camo. One raised a megaphone to his lips.
“Halt! You are approaching a military blockade. Halt and submit to search. This is not a request.”
“I’m okay!” Greg yelled, this time forcing his voice to strain, making some noise but nothing that would be recognizable as words. He was still twenty feet away.
Four rifles rose to four shoulders as four soldiers took aim.
Arms pumping, Greg thought that he’d never considered before how frightening those weapons were until one was pointed at him.
Not daring to slow, he tried one last time to identify himself.
“CDC!” he yelled. “I’m with…CDC! Help!”
And the soldiers opened fire.
Miraculously, Greg wasn’t hit.
The shots were measured and controlled, one or two at a time. They weren’t spraying; they were picking their targets.
Stunned, he turned to look behind him, saw one pursuer with his stomach opened and his entrails flapping like tied bratwurst at the butcher shop take a high-powered slug in the center of his chest. The force of the shot threw the man backward to the ground. And an instant later he struggled back to his feet.
There was color on the man, on several of the men and women, red and blue lines that followed arms and legs like artery and vein patterns. But no normal arteries rose that far out of the skin. Was it a sign of the infection? Was it, perhaps, a visible way to tell those affected from those who weren’t?
Taking a few more steps, still terrified of feeling a rifle slug pounding into him, Greg yelled once more. “I’m CDC. Please let me through.”
More gunshots sounded. More bullets whined by his ears and pinged off the concrete or thudded into flesh like a meat tenderizer hitting a thick steak.
And then they stopped.
“CDC!” he said into the silence. “I’m CDC.”
The one with the megaphone said, “Are you Dr. Greg Lowman?”
Mutely, unsure if he should approach or stay put, Greg nodded.
“You may approach. We’ve been expecting you.”
Chapter 28
The three with guns crowded through the double doors leading out of the emergency department, fingers on triggers, ready to fire.
The dark corridors were empty.
Like the ED behind them, only the emergency lights were on, battery-operated, low-wattage units mounted near the ceilings and spaced far apart. They provided a diffuse light that seemed sufficient only when standing directly beneath them. At more than four or five feet away, the light became less an illumination and more a lightening of the general darkness, so the corridors seemed steeped in deep twilight. There was a crossroads of hallways only a few feet from the doors, where a right turn would lead to the radiology department and most of the administrative offices, a left turn to the conference rooms and hallways that snaked back around and continuing straight would lead deeper into the heart of the hospital. There were two other crossing corridors past the lab and doctor’s offices that kept all three of the long hallways connected.
“Where does this hall lead?” the police officer asked.
“Not where we’re going,” Brandon said. “It’s kind of a loop though. A lot of offices, around to the front and back, and then it crosses again at the other side of the hospital.”
“So, we can get where we’re going by going straight or by taking one of these turns?”
“Yeah, but it’s the long way around,” Brandon answered.
Dr. Crews knew what the officer was going to say. It might be faster for all of them to rush up the middle and split at the end, but that would be leaving both sides of the hospital unchecked.
“We’ll split here, then,” Tim said. “I can’t abide having both sides open and available to come up on our six.”
“Do what?” Grace asked.
“What about a six-pack?” Rose added.
Adam smiled. “He means we can’t leave it to chance that some of those…things might come up behind us.”
“It makes sense,” Karen said. “Plus, there could be people hiding in some of these offices, afraid to come out.”
“That, too,” Tim said.
“Med-Surg is around to the right, and the cafeteria and old Maternity wing are to the left,” Brandon said. “ICU is straight ahead at the end, but if you take a right, there’s a small hallway that leads to the morgue, about halfway between the ICU and Med-Surg.”
“I know where it is,” Josh replied, though not angrily.
Brandon flashed a toothy grin at the nurse. “Just filling in the blanks for the officer. Since he’s letting me play with his hard stick and all.”
“Thanks,” Officer Tim said. Even in the dim light, his face flushed noticeably.
“My group will go right,” Dr. Crews announced, slipping through the crowd and approaching the right-side crossing.”
“We’ll go left,” Brandon said.
“And we get to charge up the gut,” Josh said. “Always wanted to say that.”
“Too bad we aren’t wearing pads,” Billy added.
“Check your surroundings when you get out,” Tim cautioned. “If you think
you can get to a car, do it. But nothing stupid. If it’s safer to run, then run and don’t look back.”
They were coming.
He didn’t know which ones would come directly to him, though a nagging memory said one of his become had been a police officer, and the other officer might want to check on him.
That was for the good.
The other police officer needed to become, and then perhaps become something more.
A few of his become were back with him, two waiting in the dark room with the body of another become. The doctor stood beside him, quiet, awaiting orders.
The Austin of the past might have quailed at the notion of wearing a dead man’s clothes, but the new Austin had no such compunctions. The tall immune nurse lay naked and discarded in the back corner of the morgue, useless flesh and bones tumbled like so much detritus. The only shame was that he could not become.
All those who could not would end up the same way. They had no place in the changing world.
“Not so fast, Josh,” Tim cautioned, closing his eyes and trying to fight back a rolling wave of nausea.
“Sorry.”
“We don’t want to run straight into trouble.”
“Or miss something from the sides,” Billy added, walking on the right of the wheelchair.
They were only a dozen feet from the crossing where the large group split into three. The next crossing was invisible in the dimness, though Tim thought he could identify it by the pair of emergency lights set at angles to each other, very unlike their normal spacing. “What are these doors?” he asked. There were two wooden doors on the right, neither of which required an ID scan, and one on the left that did.
“Bathroom and main lab entrance on the right,” Billy said. “Doctor’s lounge on the left.”
“Let’s hold here a second and just listen,” Tim said.
They stopped, and the darkness closed around them, somehow worse without motion, as if waiting for any reason meant waiting to be attacked. Silence descended.