by J N Wood
The staff sergeant’s new calm tone settled me down. I was able to move my legs again. I lowered one of my trembling hands and opened the door. Jack also opened his, and we stepped out of the truck in unison.
Both soldiers backed away from us another three or four steps.
The staff sergeant continued to shout his orders, but still in the calming tone. ‘Lay face down on the floor and place your hands behind your head!’
I didn’t want to make any sudden movements and risk getting shot, so I gently lowered myself onto my knees, and then down onto my chest.
‘I am not infected. This is just blood from hitting my head this morning. I haven't had time to clean it yet,’ I said, trying to speak as slowly and as clearly as possible.
‘What are we doing here Staff Sergeant?’ The corporal was still keeping his distance, but he was almost bouncing around me. He sounded nervous, which made me feel even more afraid.
‘Give it a rest Moberg,’ the staff sergeant said.
The staff sergeant was inspecting Jack’s face. He pointed at me. ‘Look at the guy’s face. Does he look infected?’
The corporal took a few hesitant steps closer. ‘Lift your face up!’ he barked.
I lifted my head up off the floor, and tried to open my eyes as wide as I could, until I realised I must look crazy. I attempted to look as normal as possible.
‘I don’t know Staff Sergeant, he looks…’ He continued to inspect my face through the plastic visor on his gas mask. ‘His eyes don’t look infected, and he does have a wound on his head that could account for the blood.’
‘Do you have any weapons on you? Firearms, knives, anything?’ the staff sergeant asked.
My gun was in the truck so I said no. Jack also said no, and went on to explain we had two handguns in the truck. This information didn’t seem to bother the soldier.
‘Okay, in a moment I’m going to ask you to stand up, but before that we have some rules,’ the staff sergeant informed us. ‘There is to be absolutely no physical contact, if you come within ten feet of us we will be forced to fire upon you. Do you understand?’
We both nodded and said yes.
He asked us to stand, and they lowered their weapons slightly, not as much as I wanted though. We leaned against our truck, while the staff sergeant called out two more soldiers from the Humvee. The other two joined them and they stood in a line facing us, making sure they were at least ten feet away.
The staff sergeant introduced himself as Abel. He pointed at the one he’d already separately referred to as Corporal and Moberg. ‘You can call this one Mo, and this is Hunter and Lassie.’
He didn’t specify which was Hunter and which was Lassie, he just pointed in their general direction. They all looked almost identical in their camouflage uniforms and gas masks. They just varied in height very slightly.
We introduced ourselves, and Abel asked us where we were going. Jack told them about our last three days, and then described our plan to pick up Beth before heading north. They didn’t believe us when we told them about getting drunk and missing the beginning of it all, and how we’d gone for a walk the next day oblivious to the end of the world happening. We had to insist we were telling the truth a few times before they finally appeared to believe us.
Abel told us they were from the Fourth Infantry Division, stationed at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs. They’d been called out to help guard the temporary medical tents that were hastily set up in Denver. Eventually there wasn’t anyone left alive, so they decided to leave.
‘These three are all I have left of my squad, two went A.W.O.L. and I lost three men to fucking stupidity.’ Abel shook his head.
Hunter spoke up, or maybe it was Lassie. ‘We were all told only to help medical personnel, and to avoid all contact with the infected. They didn’t listen.’
‘We went back to Fort Carson, but there was nobody there,’ Abel continued. ‘Some of the other guys in our company had been sent south, but there’s no point in going that way. Some had been sent to Salt Lake City, so we figured we’d try and catch up with them.’
The staff sergeant paused for a moment before adding, ‘Do you want to tag along for a while? You should really avoid Salt Lake City, but we can take you that far at least. It’s in the direction you guys are heading.’
Jack and I looked at each other, both nodding.
‘Might as well, an armed escort always comes in handy,’ I said.
Jack agreed, and Abel instructed us to follow them in our truck. He told us they would be stopping in an hour to eat something, and as long as we stuck to the rules we were welcome to join them. We accepted his offer and climbed into Blue.
We followed the Humvee through the small town of Walden. It seemed like it was empty of people, but I was pretty sure I saw someone try to commit suicide. Jack was still driving, and as we passed a hotel I heard the shattering of glass. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shape falling in front of the hotel and hit the ground. I spun around and saw someone dragging itself along the floor using its arms. The fall must have broken its legs. We turned left and the disturbing sight slipped out of view.
The Humvee didn’t slow down its blistering pace so the soldiers can’t have seen it happen. Jack heard the glass smashing and he saw me spin around in my seat. He asked what I’d been looking at.
‘I think it was a suicide attempt, someone jumped out of a first floor window. It wasn’t that high though, so they survived it.’
Jack screwed up his face in disgust. ‘Fuck, that’s horrible, should we tell the soldiers?’
‘No,’ I quickly answered. ‘They’ll have been sick, hopefully for their sake, they don’t have long left.’
I imagined Jack must have thought I was being completely heartless. We could have put them out of their misery or something. I was basically being selfish. I didn’t want us anywhere near an infected person.
About half an hour later, the road started to lead us through another wooded area. According to the map, it was the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests. With the trees also came elevation, and more snow. If we hadn’t been following the Humvee, which didn’t seem to pay any attention to the change in weather, we would have taken hours to get through. But, as we weren’t setting the pace, we were through it in about forty minutes. I could tell Jack hadn’t enjoyed it. He looked like he was gripping onto the steering wheel like his life depended on it.
Which I suppose in a way, it did.
The Humvee’s break lights came on, and its left indicator started to flash. A few seconds later it turned off the road and stopped. We pulled up behind it. The views of the valley below were very pleasant. The soldiers had chosen an excellent spot for lunch.
We climbed out of our truck, as one of the soldiers walked over to us. It turned out to be Mo.
‘We are obviously gonna have to take our masks off to eat, so remember the rules.’ He moved his hand in a wide circle in front of him. ‘We all keep our distance. Okay?’
We agreed, and satisfied with our acceptance of the rules, he turned and walked back to the Humvee.
We opened the back doors, and searched through the shopping bags to see if there was anything we fancied. The pre-made sandwiches from the Whole Foods shop still looked kind of fresh, so I grabbed one of them. I turned around and the four soldiers were sat in a semi-circle next to their Humvee.
One of the soldiers gestured to the space in front of them. I walked over and sat on the floor, a few seconds later, Jack was sat cross legged next to me. He also had one of the sandwiches and a can of Diet Pepsi in his hands.
The soldiers were sat on little collapsible stools. They each had some kind of ration pack. They were a lot more organised than us, but they were in the army after all.
The guy that gestured to us was Staff Sergeant Abel. Once I got closer, I recognised his dark eyes and heavy set brow. The other three still looked almost identical even without the masks. I’d have guessed they were all in their early twenties. They were
clean shaven, and had very closely cropped blond hair.
Mo spoke first. I’m pretty bad at placing people’s accents, but I thought he had a southern drawl, so I guessed Texas. I was probably wrong.
He asked Jack how long he’d been working in America, and Jack filled them in on the brief history of his and Beth’s time here.
Abel looked to his left. ‘Hey Mo, you got that first aid kit?’
Mo answered with his mouth full of food. ‘Oh yeah Staff, I do.’ He reached behind him and grabbed for something. He threw me a little brown canvas bag.
‘Just…’ He paused and raised his finger into the air before swallowing. ‘Just clean the wound with some water, and wrap a bandage around it as best you can. I’d help, but I don’t wanna catch nothing. No offence. How’d it happen?’ He shovelled more food into his mouth.
‘Big bear man,’ I said, to four confused looks.
I thanked him for the kit, and doused the back of my head with a bottle of water, rubbing the wound with my other hand. Hopefully it didn’t look as bad as it felt.
Jack and I both took turns in recounting our meeting with the big bear man. By the end of the story, I didn’t think their opinions on us had improved at all. Especially when Jack told them about me being sick.
I’d been planning on leaving that part out.
‘Cleaning it out is probably gonna start the bleeding again,’ Lassie said. ‘So just hold one of the gauze pads on there until it stops,’ he advised.
He was right, and the cold water hitting it was fucking agonising. I tried not to show any pain in front of the tough army men.
After much persuasion, I managed to enlist Jacks help in bandaging my head up. Luckily Lassie knew what he was doing, and instructed Jack on how to do it properly.
I looked at my reflection in the truck’s wing mirror. Yep, I looked like a fucking idiot. My hair was sticking up through the gaps in the bandage.
‘It’s a good look, thanks Jack,’ I said dryly.
‘Lassie told me what to do, blame him if it looks shit.’
I sat back down on the floor next to Jack. ‘I’ll wipe your kit down so you can have it back, cheers Mo.’
‘No need to clean it, just throw me it back. As long as it’s not completely covered in blood.’ Mo held out his hand.
‘What about the virus?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Abel answered. ‘The docs told us that it can only survive on living flesh, so it either dies almost immediately, or just can’t be transmitted that way.’
Jack and I exchanged looks, frustrated ones. We had spent a lot of time cleaning things for no reason.
I resumed eating and swallowed a mouthful of my sandwich. ‘So, can you tell us about what happened in Denver? You know, at the end of it all.’
Abel kept his eyes on his ration pack, while Mo sighed. Hunter and Lassie exchanged very brief looks, and then carried on eating.
‘Yeah I don’t mind telling you,’ Mo Said. ‘It’s okay ain’t it Staff?’
Abel shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of course, what does it matter now?’
Mo placed his empty food container on the floor. ‘So, on Thursday… what time was it Staff? About zero eight hundred?’
Abel nodded and carried on eating.
‘So yeah, Staff comes over and tells us we’re gonna be deployed in Denver to help with the med tents. Some shit about the hospitals being overrun. We were going to help set up triage, and then patrol the area, keep the peace kind of. We were fitted up with gas masks, and one of our docs gave us all a briefing on what we should or shouldn’t do.’
‘That was the first we’d heard of the virus,’ Abel said. ‘They don’t tell us shit.’
‘The docs told us no skin on skin contact with anyone, not even med staff,’ Hunter added.
‘Yeah that kind of shit,’ Mo said. ‘Especially not the med staff, they were the first of us to catch it. So, we get to Denver and it’s fucking chaos, thousands of sick being turned away from the hospitals. We helped set up a perimeter, while some other squads from our company put the tents up. Because we were on the ground the whole time, we were in a similar situation to you two.’ He pointed in our general direction. ‘In that we didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world. Know what I mean?’
Jack and I certainly knew what he meant, we both nodded.
Mo continued. ‘That first day I lost count of the dead that were removed, we weren’t on body removal. I think that’s why we’re still alive, pretty sure those guys are all dead now.’
‘Can’t not be dead, no way,’ Lassie said.
‘Yep,’ Mo said, slowly nodding his head. ‘First night we slept in the Humvee, I think we hit the sack about zero two thirty. What did we get, about two hours sleep?’ he asked, looking at Hunter and Lassie. They both nodded, and he continued. ‘We got back to work, and it was the same again, but with a lot less people.’
Abel added. ‘While these three and another of my guys, Aldo, were asleep, Willis and Davison vanished. They had family in Denver so I assumed they left to find them.’
‘That was when Watson died wasn’t it, when we were asleep?’ Hunter asked.
Abel sighed. ‘Yeah, he didn’t tell us he was feeling sick, he went pretty quick. That was when we found out the virus could kill within a matter of hours. At the very end, he told me that he’d been to take a leak and forgotten to put his gloves back on. A young girl asked him for help, and he carried her to the med tent. Fucking idiot.’
Mo carried on. ‘Eventually the majority of the med staff were dead, dying or just fucking hiding, and the sick people stopped showing up. Staff said we should head back to base so that’s what we did. Matthews and Aldo died on the way back.’
‘I don’t understand how they caught it.’ Hunter said. ‘We all knew what to do, especially after what happened to Watson.’
‘They might have caught it before Watson, it’s different with everyone,’ Abel responded. ‘So anyway, the whole thing was a mess from start to finish. Command couldn’t keep up with the infection because it all happened too quickly.’
Abel stood and folded away his stool. ‘Last thing we heard on the radio, some of our guys were still in Salt Lake City, and had hit some kind of opposition. Apparently shots had been fired. We don’t know the exact situation.’
The other three soldiers stood up and started to pack up their stuff. I guessed it was time to leave.
‘Hey,’ Mo said. ‘Y’all from London? Always wanted to visit there.’
‘Nope, I’m from Norwich,’ Jack replied. ‘Chris is from Middlesbrough.’
This received blank looks from all four of the soldiers.
Before climbing in to the Humvee, Abel turned back to us.
‘We should make it to Salt Lake by this evening,’ he said. ‘We’ll probably make another stop in about two hours, so try to keep up. Signal us if you have any issues. You got plenty of gas?’
I told him we had enough, and climbed aboard the truck. Lassie had advised me not to drive, just in case I did have concussion.
‘Awww, big baby got a sore head?’ Jack said, in his annoying baby voice impression.
I stuck my tongue out and gave him the middle finger.
I was more than happy not to drive. My headache was back with a vengeance. I did a quick search on the back seats for some more ibuprofen. Two more were quickly swallowed, and the rest shoved in my pocket.
Half an hour later, I spotted some houses up ahead. I opened up the map and started looking for the right page. Before I found it we drove past a sign, it read, Welcome to Steamboat Springs.
Movement from a window in one of the houses caught my attention. ‘I think there are people here,’ I said, pointing to the house. ‘I definitely just saw curtains moving, suppose it could have just been the wind.’
‘I imagine there are loads of people hiding still. At least I hope there is. They can’t all be dead. If we didn’t have to be somewhere I’d be hiding,’ Jack said, and
then pointed to the left. ‘Yep, just seen movement over there.’
I followed his finger and saw two people in the upstairs window of the Hampton Inn Hotel. They were waving at us, so I waved back.
‘Are they just saying hello or are they saying please come and help us?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got no idea Chris. For all we know, they could be saying, stay out of our plague ridden town. It’s full of death here. Let’s just keep going. Okay?’ There was a slight pleading tone to his voice.
‘Okay,’ I replied soberly.
A bit further up from the hotel we drove around a bend, and found ourselves at the beginning of what looked like the main street of the town. I could see a Wells Fargo Bank and a couple of pubs. We would have probably had a drink or five if this was still our normal holiday.
Jack was concentrating on something to his left and said, ‘I’m sure I just saw some—.’
His words were cut off by my shout of, ‘Jack!’
Jack slammed on the breaks and we stopped a few feet from the back of the army vehicle.
I’d been following his gaze, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the Humvee had come to a complete stop directly in front of us.
My heart felt like it was trying to crawl up through my throat.
‘Fucking hell, what the fuck are they doing?’ I asked, just as all four of the soldiers climbed out of their vehicle.
Staff Sergeant Abel ran back to us while the others stood guard, their rifles up and aimed at something in front of them.
I lowered my window as Abel neared us. ‘Masks and gloves on,’ he barked. ‘Stay in the truck, there’s a large group of people about three hundred feet up ahead.’
Before I had time to respond, he turned and ran back to the others. I unclipped my seat belt and leaned out of the window, just far enough to see around the Humvee, when a mass of people came into view. The road we were on was really wide, with five lanes including the middle turning lane. It was difficult to tell how many people there were, but there must have been maybe seventy five to one hundred of them. We’d stopped right in the middle of a junction, and the group were just crossing the next junction along. For some reason they were all walking down the centre of the road, all huddled up together.