Decimation Series (Book 1): Contagion

by Lorch, Jeff

  “Thank goodness you’re okay,” he said, panting, wincing in pain from his mangled arm.

  I told him my plan for getting out of here. He nodded, agreeing it was likely our best chance.

  “Come with us,” I pleaded to him. “You can’t help anyone here,” I said before he could reply, knowing that abandoning his post would go against everything he believed in.

  He looked at me and smiled, kind of a sideways smile. I could see that’s where Glen had likely picked up his crooked smile from, modeling it after this man.

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” he said quietly, “and besides, that’s not really the point, is it?”

  He stepped back and looked into the darkness behind us where the fence had been blasted away.

  “Will you go to Cold Lake for me?” he asked, even though that wasn’t what he was really asking.

  Unable to speak, I nodded my reply, my eyes blurring with tears.

  He nodded back to me once.

  Then he turned and ran into the darkness behind us, his face pinched against the pain of his arm, and started firing at any infected he saw. He met their shrieks of fury with a scream of defiance. All the infected that I saw between us and the fence were turning and running towards him.

  Wiping my eyes, I refused to be weak; determined to use the break that our friend had given us, I pointed to Jamie where to head.

  He turned the SUV around and we drove west, as fast as we dared in the darkness, toward the fence. Behind us I heard Kelley scream out his own challenge, his pistol barking again and again until it, and he, were silenced.

  Through the tears pouring down my face, I saw the gap in the fence we were hoping for; we drove past a tangle of twisted and torn fencing and out into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Day 11

  Once past the wreckage of the chain fence, we slowed. To the north the fence came too close to the ditch to drive safely, so I had Jamie turn left and head south, paralleling the ditch. He drove slowly, looking for where the gravel road that led up from the south joined with the road we had driven in on from the east earlier that morning. He drove cautiously, worried about driving into an obstacle, or worse, into the ditch.

  There was no sign of any infected out here, they all had been drawn to the light and the noise of the fighting behind us. Right now, I was more worried about running into the people who had led the infected here in the first place.

  I forced myself to think of how we were going to get out of here, and I pushed aside thoughts of our friends, of Cpl. Kelley and of Pvt. Reed.

  I motioned to Jamie to follow the fence line and keep it in sight off to the left, that should guarantee we wouldn’t wind up in the ditch in the darkness. As we came around to the south side of the camp, there were buildings closer up to the fence, so the camp lights were enough to illuminate the area in front of us, allowing us to speed up a bit.

  Just ahead, we could see the gravel road that led south away from the camp. As we drove up the side of the embankment onto the road itself, we paused.

  From here we could see the main gate of the army camp. The two trucks that had been parked nose-to-nose across the road were both burning fiercely. The gates had been blown open, blasted by the explosions, the sandbagged guard stations burned and destroyed.

  Hundreds of infected lay dead outside the gate and the walls, and along the road leading into the camp; but among them also were bodies of young men and women in camouflage, some likely killed by gunfire or explosions, others obviously dead at the hands of the infected.

  We headed south, away from the flames and smoke of the burning camp, away from the howls of the infected. The sporadic sound of gunfire, becoming less frequent, was dying off behind us.

  After a kilometre or so driving south and following a couple turns of the road, I had Jamie pull the SUV over to the side of the gravel road. Before the vehicle had come to a stop, I had the door open and was in the ditch, throwing up. My hands were shaking, my breath coming in sobs.

  Before I knew it, Karen was beside me, holding me, crying with me.

  David came and sat beside me solemnly. He handed me a water bottle, which I took gratefully. I drank some and washed my face with the rest. I looked at my children; they looked shell shocked, no more than I did too I was sure.

  How could I explain to them what was happening to the world around them when I didn’t understand it myself? How could I explain the insanity our world had become?

  Taking a deep breath, I stood and walked back to the SUV. The others were standing around the vehicles, guns at the ready, protecting me. No, I corrected myself, we were all protecting each other.

  Behind us, the lights of the camp were barely visible through the trees.

  “We need to get to the base at Cold Lake,” I said, making a decision that needed to be made. “We need to let them know what happened here. They need to know what they’re up against.”

  “And what exactly is it you think they’re up against?” came a man’s voice from out of the darkness.

  Everyone turned immediately to the south to where the voice came from, swinging their guns up, ready for anything.

  In the silence, with only the sound of distant screams drifting to us from the camp, we heard the gravel crunching under someone’s feet as they walked towards us.

  A man’s form slowly appeared. He was quite tall, likely as tall as Kevin had been, but he was lean where Kevin had been husky, and he walked with an easy, relaxed gait that was at odds with the situation; despite having a half-dozen guns pointed at him, he walked as if he felt he was in complete control.

  He had short dark hair and a couple days’ worth of dark stubble on his jaw. He wore a jean jacket with a sheepskin lining against the cool night air. At his belt he carried a large revolver in a holster, but he kept his hands clear of it.

  I moved to stand in front of my kids, to protect them from this new threat, but he motioned to me with his palms out in a ‘calm down’ gesture.

  “Relax, we’re all friends here,” he said easily, his voice smooth and deep. “No one’s going to get hurt.”

  He came to a stop maybe ten feet away from the front of our SUV and put his hands in his back pockets.

  “My name is Trey Paterson,” he said. In the dark I couldn’t place his age, but I was guessing around my age, just north of forty, maybe a bit older. “I’m afraid I’m going to need you all to come with me, just for a short while. There are some things we need to discuss; a debriefing, in the parlance of our camo-clad friends back there, following which you’ll all be free to continue along your way.”

  “We’re not going anywhere with you,” I said. “Not if you’re responsible for all this,” I said, waving my hand back towards the camp.

  He didn’t look at the camp, he just stared at me with an easy gaze.

  “I’m no more responsible for this than you are,” he said. “But there are things happening here that I think you’ll want to know about, and since it sounds like you’re headed north to the camp at Cold Lake, there are things I know you’ll want to tell them when you get there. I have a temporary spot set up just a couple of minutes away; you have my word you won’t be harmed, and you’ll be free to leave afterwards.”

  I looked back at the others, but it was clear they were waiting for me to decide.

  “All right,” I said, motioning for everyone to lower their guns, “where are we going?”

  ♦♦♦

  When we agreed to go along with him, he turned into the darkness behind him and signaled with a flashlight. We heard a vehicle engine start up, and an army jeep pulled ahead out of the darkness, its lights off.

  He told us where we were headed and asked us to follow him. We backtracked north but turned east along another gravel road, skirting the camp. Trey’s jeep drove ahead of us for several minutes and we followed him into town, turning into the parking lot of the hockey rink.

  He pulled up to the building entrance and climbed out, turni
ng to us expectantly as we pulled up behind him. The driver’s door of his jeep opened, and a huge monster of a man stepped out and walked around the vehicle to stand behind Trey. He was at least four or five inches taller, so that put him at around six-foot-six or so, and likely outweighed the man by well over a hundred pounds. From where I sat, it looked like he had been carved from a giant tree.

  Using the radio, I told everyone to wait where they were while I climbed out of the SUV.

  “Be ready to go, just in case,” I said, turning to look at Jamie. He nodded to me, a look of concern on his face.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, looking nervously at the two men standing by the door to the rink.

  “No, but I think he meant it when he said he just wanted to talk,” I replied. “If they had wanted to hurt us, they could have done it back on the road; we were sitting ducks there, they could have picked us off from out in the darkness.”

  I looked around the parking lot, and from what I could see it looked like it was deserted, the same as when we had driven by this morning.

  He and his mountain walked to the front door and waved me ahead.

  “After you,” I said, keeping my eyes on them and my hand near my gun, and I walked behind them into the front lobby.

  Inside the building, it was pitch black, and Trey led us through to a back room using his flashlight. As he came near a door, I could see a person sitting in the darkness, leaning back up against the wall, a rifle in their hands. He ignored the guard and opened the door, leading into a locker room.

  The room was well lit with lanterns and had a dozen or more people inside. Several tables had been arrayed around the room, with maps, radio equipment, firearms and flashlights scattered about haphazardly on their surfaces. As we walked in, everyone stopped talking and turned to look at us.

  “Back at it, people,” said Trey casually, leading us past the organized chaos in the room to a back corner where a desk and several chairs had been dragged in. Everyone slowly went back to whatever they had been doing before we walked in, but I could tell they were keeping an eye on me.

  Trey pulled the chair out from behind the desk and draped his jean jacket over the back of it. He asked the behemoth beside him, his bodyguard I was guessing, to go and track down a couple of coffees for us.

  “Should I have Brett take some coffees out to your people in the trucks?” he asked. “Or they’re more than welcome to come inside.” He spoke like a courteous host offering drinks to a friend stopping by for an afternoon visit.

  “Unless he wants to get shot, he should stay clear of my people,” I said with more than a touch of frost.

  He laughed at that and leaned back in his chair.

  “That’s good,” he said, “I think we’re going to get along.”

  When I didn’t reply to him, he asked my name, so at least he knew what to call me; I gave it to him.

  In the light of the lanterns I could see my guess of his age had been about right, likely in his mid-forties, but he seemed to be in very good shape. He had the lanky build of a runner, or maybe a swimmer. Whereas his bodyguard, Brett, looked like a pro-wrestler who could bench-press a small car, Trey moved like a coiled spring, smooth and relaxed; but I had no doubt he could snap into movement in the blink of an eye.

  “I’m glad you and your people made it out of the camp,” he said. “We watched you drive up there earlier this morning. I didn’t think they would let you in, they’ve been turning away all the other civilians we’ve seen pull up to their gates seeking shelter. But for some reason they let you in,” he said, obviously curious. “Did you have family in there? You’re not military, that’s for sure, otherwise you’d still be back at the camp.”

  I didn’t answer him; I was paying more attention to the people in the room behind us. I could hear them talking to each other, and to others on the radios. It sounded like they were getting reports called in from others out in the field. I was trying to keep track of all the different voices and call-signs I was hearing, but there was too much.

  It was immediately obvious to me that this was a big organization, and I remembered what Glenn had said back in the mess hall, that this wasn’t any ragtag group of raiders; he had been right.

  As if reading my mind, Trey spoke up.

  “We have just over three hundred of us in the area tonight for this operation,” Trey said, answering my unasked question. I obviously hadn’t been as subtle as I thought I was.

  “Most of us are out along the roads and in the fields,” he continued, “out there to make sure no-one gets out of the camp alive, especially not if they’re trying to drive away with any of the ordnance they had stored there. If a few stragglers get away on foot, so be it, but so far it sounds like the operation has been a complete success. No-one has made it out alive, and I fully expect that no-one will. Except for you.”

  I heard the threat unspoken in his statement. He said everything except adding “for now”, but it was there. I decided to not let him off the hook.

  “And why are we so lucky?” I asked.

  He sat forward in his chair, bringing his hands up and threading his fingers together in front of him.

  “Look, Stephanie, I’m not going to sit here and blow smoke up your ass,” he said, staring me straight in the eyes. “The only reason you and your people are still alive is because we saw you drive in there this morning. I’m not sure why they let you in when they’ve turned everyone else away, but I know you’re not military; if you were, you’d be dead back there at the camp with your brothers-in-arms, or you’d be dead on the road where we found you.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I replied, trying to sound smug, wanting to knock that self-assured smile off his face. “There were seven of us there, and five of us were armed. The two of you might have been the ones to wind up dead on the side of the road.”

  He leaned back again tilting his chair, smiling.

  “You thought it was just me and Brett out there?” he asked with a laugh. “I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but there were thirty-eight of us in nine different vehicles around that checkpoint, all within fifty feet of you, all well-armed, with well over three thousand rounds of ammunition between us.”

  I felt a cold blade of fear run down my back, suddenly realizing how vulnerable we must have been outlined in the dark against the light of the camp behind us.

  I leaned forward, the fear I felt curdling in my stomach and making me suddenly furious.

  “You insufferable, arrogant little prick!” I said to him, not shouting but loud enough to quiet every voice in the room. “There are men and women back at that camp that are dead or dying right now, good people, some of whom were my friends, all because you and these assholes around you decided you wanted their fucking guns.”

  I sat back, my hands shaking, my heart thumping in my chest. Silently I congratulated myself on my restraint; I had wanted to spit in his face, but I didn’t. Yay me.

  The smile slowly dissolved from his face. He looked around the room and stared daggers at everyone who was standing silently, looking at us. Immediately they returned to what they had been doing.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” he said quietly, his voice like cold, wet steel. “Those people back there dying in that camp are the reason that the world is as fucked up as it is right now, including the world that you and I are living in. Yesterday those people might have been in Afghanistan murdering husbands and wives and sons and daughters, innocent men and women and children who were guilty of nothing other than being born brown. The day before that it may have been Sarajevo. Tomorrow others like them might be kowtowing to orders coming from Saudi Arabia, or China, or the USA or some other fucking country that’s writing a big-enough cheque.

  “They’ll pull the trigger on whoever their guns are pointed at, man woman or child, all in the name of ‘duty’ or ‘responsibility’ or, here’s my favourite, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, ‘I was only following orders.’” />
  He leaned into the table, bringing himself closer to me. He lowered his voice.

  “Those people are guilty of murder, each and every one of them. They’ve murdered brown people and black people and red people and yellow people and white people in every country on every continent around the world, including our own. The land you’re sitting on right now has been stolen ten times over, and the deeds have been written in blood

  “It’s not just our government either; every government in the world today is as guilty as the next one. They’ve all got their dirty little back rooms where dirty little secret deals are made behind the scenes. Canada puts out a Tweet condemning Saudi Arabia for human rights violations while out the back door they’re handing out billions every year for Saudi oil, all while Alberta loses hundreds of thousands of jobs in the oil sector because Quebec doesn’t want a pipeline, and yet those hypocrites are funneling millions of gallons of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River.

  “Those people at that camp behind us were the muscle behind the hand holding the tire iron, lady; they’ve been the crowbar that’s been beating the rest of us into the ground for generations. Every family who has ever lost their farm to the bank, every businessman who has had to put up a ‘For Sale’ sign after getting a CRA audit, one way or the other those assholes were the cracking knuckles behind the slimy smile.

  “You actually think you’re free, don’t you?” he grinned at me, his smile sour like he had taken a bite from a lemon. “You think you live in a free country? You’re a fucking hamster who’s free to choose between the wheel or the water bottle. You wake up in the morning and you’re free to eat, drink or shit, and that’s it. If you think you’re free, next time you’re in the mall, try to light up a smoke. Or maybe try to drive down the street without your seatbelt on. You want to get married? Get a licence. You want to drive a car? Same thing. You want to own a gun? Ditto.

  “There are literally four things you can do each day without permission from the government, Stephanie, and that’s wake up, rub one out, take a shit, and go back to sleep. Everything else, you need the government’s permission for. You want to have a morning shower? The government sells you the water. You want a morning coffee? The government had their hand in putting that bean on the shelf in the store, same as the food you might pull out of the fridge to make breakfast. You want to turn on a lightbulb? The government sells you the electricity. You’re going to go to work? Government has one hairy fucking eyeball on every aspect of that shit, I can tell you; from business licences to workers’ compensation, from unions to occupational health and safety, there isn’t one minute of each day of your fucking life that the government doesn’t have their finger on, and if you don’t believe me, you’re asleep. There is absolutely nothing in your life that’s of your own free will and by your own choice other than to breathe and masturbate in the privacy of your own bedroom, and yet you people think you’re free.