“Then why the hell is he a prisoner?” exploded Reno.
“You need to settle down,” said Bascomb in a steady voice that brooked no debate. “I don’t appreciate being yelled at.”
“I don’t appreciate having my chain jerked.”
Reno took a menacing step toward Bascomb.
Halverson intervened by grabbing Reno’s forearm and pulling him away from Bascomb. Halverson figured this wasn’t the time or the place for an argument when Bascomb had the whip hand.
Bascomb’s dark eyes looked flat like stones as he considered Reno. “I’m only going to say this once. You don’t have to be infected to be arrested and brought to trial and convicted if you’re found guilty. Everyone has to obey the law. That includes the healthy as well as the infected.”
Reno was too miffed to respond.
“What’s this guy accused of?” asked Halverson.
“He’s been accused of looting,” answered Bascomb.
As he looked down the row of cells, Halverson could now see that several of the other cells were populated with living persons.
“You know what I’m guilty of?” said the prisoner, rising from his bunk in his cell.
“Nobody asked you,” said Bascomb.
“I’m guilty of taking a loaf of bread from a supermarket.”
“Silence!”
“It’s the same thing you do when you send out raiding parties to San Francisco,” the prisoner told Bascomb.
Bascomb nodded to a burly guard.
The guard stepped up to the jail cell and banged his AK-47’s muzzle repeatedly between two steel bars.
The prisoner shied away from the bars.
“You’re gonna end up throwing everybody in jail,” said Reno. “Everybody’s a looter nowadays. How else can you get supplies?”
“The point is, he took the bread for himself,” said Bascomb. “He didn’t do it for the good of the community like we do in our foraging parties.”
“In other words, I didn’t do it for you,” said the prisoner.
Bascomb glowered at him for a moment then turned to Halverson. “Let’s move on.”
Bascomb led the group back to the main gate.
“Welcome to paradise!” called out the prisoner with a lopsided grin as they left.
“This guy’s all about power,” Reno muttered to Halverson out of Bascomb’s earshot. “When he says the community he means him.”
Halverson heard him, but kept his own counsel and turned to Bascomb. “How do we get on one of these raiding parties?”
Bascomb smiled. “We’re always happy to have volunteers. The first thing you learn here is that everyone pulls his own weight on behalf of the community. There are no free rides.”
“I want in on one of these raiding parties.”
“Count me in, too,” said Reno.
“Excellent,” said Bascomb. “We need as many able-bodied men as we can get to gather supplies on the mainland. You should fit in well here in our community.”
“I don’t think so,” Reno said under his breath to Halverson.
Bascomb turned right and swept down the main aisle of the cell house. “Say hello to Broadway.”
“You got a funny sense of humor,” said Reno, surveying long rows of prison cells on either side of him.
“The original convicts here used to call it Broadway. Cell Block B is on your right and Block C is on your left. At the other end of the aisle is Times Square.”
Halverson noticed that inmates resided in the cells and had their doors open. “Why aren’t the cells closed? What’s to prevent the inmates from escaping?”
Halverson, Reno, Victoria, Parnell, and Brittany looked edgy.
Bascomb smiled. “This is where we live. These aren’t prisoners. These are the inhabitants of the island.”
A middle-aged woman with blue rinse hair who was reading a book on her bunk put the book down and approached Halverson. “Are you the new members here?”
“Yes,” answered Halverson. “How do you like it here?”
She averted her eyes. “It’s safe. The infected can’t get us.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
“They can’t get past the bay to get here. This island’s free of the plague.”
“Why is that?”
“We rounded up and locked up any infected that were roaming the island when we got here,” Bascomb answered for the woman.
“I used to live in San Francisco,” she said. “We had to live in fear for our lives every day after the plague hit. We had to keep moving to avoid the infected. No place was safe.”
“Until we found her and her friends,” Bascomb told Halverson, “and brought them here.”
“All the comforts of home,” said Reno tongue in cheek.
“At least we can sleep soundly and not worry about being attacked by the infected,” said the woman.
“Speaking of sleep,” piped up Victoria, “I’m exhausted. Is there somewhere we can crash?”
“Sure,” said Bascomb. “You can bunk down in any cell that’s not occupied.”
“I’m dead on my feet.”
She entered an open cell, plunked down on the bunk, and stretched out on her back.
No sooner had her back hit the bunk than the strident blare of a klaxon sounded. She jackknifed up in bed, eyes wide.
“What the hell is that?” said Reno, his eyes flitting around the prison.
“Follow me outside,” said Bascomb.
Chapter 30
Bascomb led the way out of the prison. Emerging from its entrance he gazed up into the sky as if expecting to see something.
Halverson followed Bascomb’s gaze. He wondered what he was looking for. Sunlight filtered through the gossamer smoky sky, highlighting wind-borne floating ashes.
Then Halverson saw it.
An MQ-1 Predator drone was flying overhead. He would have heard it before seeing it, if it wasn’t for the racket of the klaxon reverberating in and around the prison. Wincing thanks to the alarm’s cacophony he squinted at the drone.
Shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, Bascomb watched the drone with concern.
At last the klaxon stopped.
“You got those here, too, huh?” said Halverson.
“Drones?” said Bascomb.
“Yeah.”
Bascomb faced Halverson. “Have you seen drones elsewhere?”
Halverson nodded. “They have them in LA.”
“I believe the government’s sending them to spy on us.”
“It’s gotta be the government,” said Reno. “They’re the only ones with the resources to operate drones.”
“The government hates us. If they find out we’re here, they’ll do everything they can to close us down.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s simple logic. They don’t want any communities forming that would challenge their leadership. Any successful community is a threat to their precarious existence, as they see it.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“You can never overestimate the power of paranoia when it comes to survival.”
“Can I quote you in my next article?” asked Reno.
Bascomb cocked one eyebrow and squinted with his other eye at Reno. “What article?”
“I’m a journalist. I write news reports.”
“Where do you plan on getting it published? The papers aren’t printing.”
“There’s always the Internet.”
Bascomb shook his head. “My IT boys haven’t had any luck at all with the Internet. And we have bleeding-edge computers in the prison IT room.”
“You have computers here?”
“All bleeding-edge, like I said. My computer geeks are convinced somebody’s jamming the Internet.”
“Somebody, meaning the government,” said Halverson.
“Who else?”
“Why?”
“They don’t want any existing communities to link up and become organized against them.”
>
“Maybe all the landlines and cell towers were knocked out of commission in the fires, and the government had no part in it,” said Reno.
“My IT boys say it’s virtually impossible that every single landline is out. A lot of landlines are underground where fire can’t reach them.”
“I didn’t know landlines could be jammed.”
“If they can be tapped, they can be jammed. That’s what my IT boys say.”
“I still say you’re paranoid. You’re overestimating your importance as a threat to the government. That’s what a paranoid schizophrenic would do. Delusions of grandeur and all that.”
“I’m not the one sending drones around to spy on people. The government’s the one that’s paranoid. And they’ve got the resources to destroy us if they find out we’re here.”
“What makes you think they haven’t spotted you already?”
“The drones’ cameras don’t work too well in smoke, is what my tech geeks tell me. As long as the skies stay smoky, I think we’re OK.”
Head aching, eyes smarting, Halverson was spent, and the smoky air didn’t help matters any.
“The skies aren’t gonna stay smoky forever,” he said. “Then what?”
“We’ll have to shoot the drones down. I don’t want to do that till we absolutely have to. Once we start shooting them down, the government will know we’re here. Then it’s boots-on-the-ground time here on the island and we’re history.”
“What makes you think they want to destroy you? Maybe they’re trying to make contact with you so they can link up with you.”
“If you swallow that hokum, you don’t have any idea how governments operate.”
Parnell put in his two cents. “The immediate problem isn’t the government. It’s the plague. We need to find out what causes it, so we can cure the infected.”
“How can you cure walking corpses of death?” said Reno.
“They’re not dead. They’re infected,” insisted Bascomb. “If we had a doctor here, maybe we could make progress finding out the cause of the pandemic.”
“I’m a doctor,” said Parnell.
Bascomb eyeballed Parnell. “You don’t say? We can definitely use you here. You can help out in our infirmary.”
“Be glad to.”
Not only did Halverson’s head ache, his throat felt raspy, too. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. All of a sudden he felt alarmed. What if he was coming down with the zombie virus?
He wondered if that was possible. He thought the contagious airborne phase of the virus had passed. That explained why he and the others on the island had not contracted the plague. But maybe not. Maybe there were still germs out there that could cause the disease. What if the disease was, in fact, still airborne or on fomites, or both?
“How do we know this zombie virus isn’t still airborne and contagious?” he asked.
The silence cast a nerve-racking pall.
At last Bascomb answered, “If it’s still contagious via the air, why don’t any of us have it?”
“Maybe it takes longer to spread in certain people.”
Parnell scoffed. “This is all speculation. We don’t know anything until we start studying the pathogen responsible for the plague.”
“You’re not cheering me up, Doc,” said Reno. “If we don’t know anything, that means we all could have the plague even as we speak.”
Halverson coughed.
Reno flinched. “That’s not funny.”
Chapter 31
“Keep washing your hands whenever you have a chance,” said Parnell. “Until we know otherwise, we have to assume the plague can be spread via physical contact and by air.”
“I once saw someone come down with the disease,” said Halverson.
“How did he contract it?”
“He was bitten by a ghoul.”
“That’s definitely one way it’s transmitted, but there could be a host of other ways. In fact, there has to be at least one other way, or how else did people become infected in the first place?”
“One thing’s for sure,” said Bascomb. “None of the infected are getting on this island unless we bring them here under restraint.”
“I think we should shoot first and ask questions later,” said Reno. “I see no point in bringing any of them back here.”
“We obey the letter of the law here. Without law, society cannot function.”
“So what’s the law say about these ghouls?”
“It says you can kill the infected only in self-defense. They are protected by the law like everybody else here.”
“The only thing those creatures understand is a bullet in the brain.”
“You’re talking murder.”
“I’m talking about eliminating creatures that want to eat us.”
“None of this matters,” said Parnell. “What matters is, this plague has got be stopped. We have to find the cure or we’re all dead.”
“So what else is new?” said Reno. “We’re all screwed. We’re all dead. Business as usual.”
“We’re not all screwed,” burst Brittany, who had held her tongue till this point. She commenced laughing wildly.
“What’s with her?” asked Bascomb.
“She’s nineteen,” answered Reno.
“What kind of an explanation is that?”
Parnell angled over to her. “She’s in a state of shock. Her boyfriend was killed not long ago.”
Bascomb approached her and scrutinized her face. “She does look pale. She probably needs something to eat.”
The idea of food made Brittany stop laughing as suddenly as she had started. Now she wanted to wretch. After all this talk about plague, she felt nauseous. Her legs felt like rubber. She wondered what was keeping her up. She closed her eyes and massaged her forehead.
“The problem with this plague is it’s a two-edged sword,” said Parnell. “It can attack us from the inside if we become infected with the pathogen, and it can attack us from the outside in the form of the already-infected flesh-eating victims.”
“In other words, wash your hands and shoot to kill,” said Reno.
Parnell gave him a look. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”
Brittany kept rubbing her forehead. She felt cold and hot at the same time. One minute she was hot, the next she was shivering.
“Are you OK, Brittany?” asked Parnell.
“Not really.”
“What you need is some food,” said Reno.
He dug a Three Musketeers chocolate candy bar out of his trouser pocket. He unwrapped half of the candy bar and handed it to her.
She accepted it. Maybe he was right, she decided. Maybe she just needed food in her stomach. The problem was, she didn’t feel hungry.
She indolently took a bite out of the candy bar. She munched on it. If it was any blander, it wouldn’t even have tasted like cardboard. Maybe there was something wrong with her taste buds, she decided. In any case, the candy bar held no interest for her. She handed it back to Reno.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“It has no taste.”
Reno took a huge bite of it, almost putting all of what remained of the candy bar into his mouth. He chewed the chocolate with relish.
“Tastes fine to me,” he said.
“I don’t have any appetite.”
“Like I said before, she’s in shock,” said Parnell. “The best thing for her now is rest.”
Reno polished off the candy bar then licked the chocolate off his fingers.
“You shouldn’t do that,” said Parnell.
“Do what? Eat?”
“Lick your fingers. They’re covered with germs. The plague virus could be on them, too.”
“Now you tell me.”
“You obviously haven’t been listening to what I’ve been saying.”
“Pardon me while I regurgitate my candy bar.” Reno commenced hawking.
Brittany felt nauseous as she listened to him. “Can we talk about som
ething else, please?”
“In the world of pathogens, what you don’t see can kill you,” said Parnell.
“And I thought you were the optimist among us,” said Reno.
“I am. I believe we can defeat this plague by studying it and finding a cure and a vaccine for it.”
“If there is a cure and a vaccine.”
“Of course there is. It’s just a matter of finding them.”
“I hate to tell you, but we still haven’t found the cure for cancer, and we’ve been looking for that for ages. If it takes that long to find the cure for this plague, the zombies will have wiped us out beforehand.”
“What zombies?” said Bascomb. “There are no such thing as zombies.”
“OK, the infected. Whatever you want to call them, they’re our enemy. They’ll kill us, if we give them half a chance.”
“They’re not gonna kill us on the Rock. There’s no way they can get over here to get us. They can’t swim, and their minds don’t work. They can’t even figure out how to tie their shoelaces.”
Brittany picked a gunky yellow particulate out of her tear duct.
“Don’t touch your eyes,” said Parnell, watching her. “Diseases spread via the mucous membranes.”
Brittany jerked her hand away from her eye. “This is insane.”
“I’m with her,” Reno told Parnell. “According to you, we’ll all have to hide in hermetically sealed rooms to avoid catching this plague. I’m not gonna hide like a scaredy-cat.”
“We need to take precautions,” said Parnell. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“No matter what you say,” said Halverson, “finding the cure for this plague isn’t enough. We also have to eliminate the ghouls, which are the prime carriers of the disease. All ghouls must be destroyed.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Reno. “Let’s wipe those things out.”
“We’re not killing the infected unless it’s in self-defense,” said Bascomb. “That’s the law in our social contract. They have as much right to live as the rest of us.”
“But they’re not alive,” said Halverson. “That’s the point. They’re not human anymore.”
Reno paced back and forth restlessly. “I want to see the mainland. Let’s go on a raid. I’m going stir-crazy and I haven’t even been on this island very long.”
Zombie Apocalypse Page 66