Mellors shook his head in annoyance, rolling his eyes. “I stand corrected.”
Slocum could be a prig sometimes, he decided. An M4 was an M4 as far as Mellors was concerned.
“Those aren’t soldiers,” said Slocum. “They’re scientists.”
“Shouldn’t soldiers be doing the shooting?”
“What soldiers? We don’t have any soldiers here at Mount Weather. There’s no room for them. There’s only room for panjandrums and button pushers.”
“And scientists.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Great. Where are the soldiers?”
“We have no idea if there are any soldiers left.”
“What do we do if we’re attacked by the infected here?”
“There’s no way they can get in here. It’s an airtight fortress able to withstand nuclear bombs.”
Mellors looked puzzled. “If we don’t have any soldiers, how do we expect to take back the country from the infected?”
Slocum took that moment to inspect his fingernails. “With the button pushers.”
The other shoe dropped for Mellors. He smiled. “We wage a videogame war with drones and missiles.”
“It’s the nature of modern warfare.”
“As long as we have WMD we have the whip hand against the creatures.” Mellors paused a beat. “What about any survivors out there?”
“We’re doing everything in our power to contact any survivors before the president issues the order to implement WMD.”
“And if we can’t contact all of them?”
Slocum said nothing, his face unreadable.
CHAPTER 14
Southern California
Halverson rode his horse warily toward the guy mounted on the idling motorcycle. The guy had a gun, Halverson could see, but he wasn’t pointing it at Halverson and his group. The guy was holding his motorcycle’s handlebars while gripping an automatic and bracing its butt on top of the handlebars.
It was a Harley-Davidson the guy had under him, Halverson could make out now. Dark complected, twentysomething, the guy had long black hair that trailed over his ears. He had a big head with a prominent nose. He wore a black leather bomber jacket, stonewashed jeans, and snakeskin boots that had black-and-white diamond patterns.
“How’s it going?” said Halverson.
“OK,” said the guy.
Halverson introduced himself, Victoria, and Emma.
“I’m Chogan,” said the guy.
“That’s an interesting name,” said Emma.
“I’m a Blackfoot Native American. Chogan means blackbird. The day I was born, my mother saw a flock of blackbirds fly over our house. She told me it was the biggest flock of blackbirds she ever saw. She said it was a sign that I’m blessed.”
“I have no idea what Emma means. My mom just liked the sound of it, I think.”
“Are any of the infected around here, Chogan?” asked Halverson.
“The flesh eaters?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t seen any around here.”
“Well, they’re coming this way. We got a bunch of them on our tail. Where are you going?”
“I’m looking for my wife Maria. We got separated after the flesh eaters attacked us while we were sacked out in a hotel about ten miles from here. Have you seen any women where you came from?”
“No. Why do you think she’s around here?”
“I don’t know where she is. The flesh eaters attacked in the dark when I was asleep. When they woke me up I found out Maria had left me.”
“Why did she leave you?” said Emma.
“I don’t know.” Chogan racked his brains, trying to remember what he and Maria had been talking about before she had left him. “She was saying something about trying to find her mother, I remember.”
“What did you do before the plague?” asked Halverson.
“I was a marine stationed at Twentynine Palms. I want to be a commercial pilot when I get out of the marines.”
Halverson nodded. “We need shooters.”
“Shouldn’t you be in the air force if you want to be a pilot?” asked Emma.
“Things don’t always work out the way you want,” answered Chogan.
“We don’t need pilots,” said Halverson. “We need shooters.”
“What about you? What did you used to do?”
“I’m a journalist,” Halverson lied. “Victoria’s a dress designer.”
“I’m a waitress,” said Emma.
“We can’t stand around chitchatting,” said Halverson. “The things know we’re here. We have to beat it.”
“Where you headed?” asked Chogan.
“We’re headed east through Vegas.”
“Are you taking the 15 through Barstow?”
“Is there any other way?”
“Wanna come along?” asked Emma. “Millie likes you.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Don’t you, Millie?”
Chogan did a double take. “Who’s Millie?”
“My baby.”
Confusion swept over Chogan’s face. He was about to speak when Victoria cut him off with a frown.
“You’re welcome to come with us, Chogan,” said Emma.
Chogan knit his brow. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to abandon Maria.”
“Maybe she headed east.”
Chogan thought about it. “I have no idea where she went.”
“Where did her mother live? Maybe Maria went there.”
“Doesn’t matter. Her mother left her house. We already looked there.”
Halverson was on the verge of saying the plague might have infected Maria, but thought better of it. He held his tongue. Chogan had enough worries.
“Giddyap,” Halverson told his horse. “If we see Maria, we’ll tell her you’re looking for her, Chogan.”
Halverson trotted his horse away, as a mob of the walking dead made their way down the sidewalk toward them, jerking and jostling each other like marionettes. Victoria and Emma caught up to him on horseback.
Chogan sat astride his Harley, watching them ride off, trying to dope out what to do. It didn’t take him long to reach a decision.
He revved his Harley’s throttle and peeled off after them. Without Maria he didn’t know what to do with himself. He preferred company to solitude to help keep his mind off Maria. Whenever he thought about her disappearing, he got depressed. When he got depressed, he couldn’t function. It was like he was carrying a giant boulder around on his back. Every little task seemed difficult.
He had no idea where to look for her. Maybe she had headed east, he decided. He had to keep moving.
Halverson heard Chogan’s chopper rev behind him and knew Chogan was joining them. Halverson also knew the odds were stacked against his band’s ever passing through three thousand miles of zombie-infested territory to reach Washington. He could only hope that some of the territory wasn’t infested. There might be pockets of contagion-free zones out there somewhere.
He picked up on a drone flying overhead. He ducked under the awning of a hardware store.
Chogan saw the drone, stopped his bike, and commenced waving frantically at the aircraft.
“Don’t let them know we’re here,” said Halverson.
“Why not?” said Chogan and kept on waving. “Maybe they can help us out of this mess.”
“It’s just a drone. There’s nobody in it.”
“I know a Predator drone when I see one. They have cameras on them. The people guiding the drone will see the pictures of us and send help.”
“They shot a missile at us last time,” said Victoria.
Chogan stopped waving and gazed at Victoria. “What are you talking about?”
“A drone fired a Hellfire missile at us in Santa Monica,” said Halverson. “We’re lucky to be alive.”
“That makes no sense,” said Chogan.
Halverson knew the drone had fired at him and not at Victoria, but he didn’t go into
that. If he told them the truth that the government wanted him dead, he would have to blow his cover.
“Maybe it does if you think about it,” said Victoria. “We don’t know who’s flying that drone. What if it’s some rogue militia trying to take over the country taking advantage of the epidemic?”
“Damn,” muttered Chogan. He watched the drone fly away, hands at his sides. “Do you think it saw me?”
CHAPTER 15
After they resumed their trek, Halverson, Victoria, Emma, and Chogan made it through the scorched rubble of Los Angeles toward I-15 without another confrontation with the ghouls. When they saw stray ghouls, the four survivors went out of their way to avoid them.
Most of the burning of LA had stopped by now. Despite the wildfires, many edifices remained intact. A few new fires flared up now and then, fanned by the winds. With nobody to put them out, the fires raged on. The sky had a smoggy sallow tinge to it that mirrored the survivors’ emotional state.
Halverson and his group met no other survivors of the plague in LA and its environs. The only two-legged figures they laid eyes on were ghouls stumbling through the city’s wreckage and debris searching for their next meal.
It wasn’t until Halverson and his band reached the outskirts of LA that they encountered a threat—but it wasn’t from the walking dead.
They were riding past a junkyard when they ran into a pack of wild dogs with matted fur and salivating tongues. The dogs were skulking around the dump casting around for food. Their ham pink tongues lolling out of their mouths, their ribs showing through their chests, a motley crew of some thirty half-starved mongrels picked up the scent of Halverson’s band. The lead dog of the pack raised its hackles at the sight of the humans, exposing its fangs, salivating, and growling. Then it howled.
An unearthly quiet prevailed over the desolate cityscape when the dog stopped howling.
“What’s that all about?” asked Victoria as her horse whickered nervously.
“Is he telling us this is his territory?” said Emma.
The dog and his pack launched forward and bayed the humans.
“He’s telling us to run like hell,” said Chogan, who burned rubber on his motorcycle as he fled, his tires screeching.
Halverson could not risk having the wild dogs attack the horses and cripple them with their teeth. He, Victoria, and Emma galloped away from the pursuing dogs. Chogan easily outstripped the dogs on his bike.
The horses on account of their large size had more difficulty escaping because they had to negotiate the cluttered sidewalks and couldn’t get up a full head of steam without a straightaway in front of them. The smaller dogs had an easier time of it careening around obstructions such as wastebaskets, abandoned strollers, and overturned bus benches on the sidewalk and, as a result, managed to stay on the heels of the horses.
“What’s with those dogs?” asked Victoria, trying to coax more speed out of her horse. “Are they rabid?”
“Maybe they have the plague,” answered Emma riding behind her.
“Is the plague transmitted between species?”
“I don’t think so,” said Halverson. “Maybe these dogs are just hungry.”
“Or rabid,” said Victoria.
“A lot of diseases could be rampant now on account of the polluted water and unsanitary conditions caused by the devastation of the city.”
Chogan was the first to see the rats up ahead.
An undulating ocean of scampering rats inundated the sidewalk and swept toward him with the irresistible force of a flood. Chogan shivered. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. He hated rats.
Ever since he had gone to a supermarket as a child and spotted a rat scurrying under a stand of fresh produce he had developed a phobia of rats. Even now he could recall the big rat skulking under the produce stand until a grocer clad in black trousers and black shoes stomped the rat to death. Chogan ran in terror to his mother, clung to her dress, and told her about the rat. She didn’t believe him, smiled at him, told him to calm down, and continued shopping.
But the image of the grocer’s black clodhopper crushing the rat’s back never left Chogan’s mind. To this day he could see the image as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
The rats up ahead looked big, hungry, and frenzied as they poured toward him.
“Rats!” he cried back to Halverson and the others.
In fear and anger, Chogan whipped out his pistol and began firing at the rats, knowing full well that he could never kill all of them. He couldn’t help himself. The sight of them drove him into a frenzy. Gritting his teeth he kept shooting till his pistol’s slide locked back.
Wide-eyed, Halverson picked up on the army of rats scurrying toward them. They could be rabid like the pack of wild dogs, for all he knew. Maybe it was the rats that had infected the dogs with rabies in the first place.
Trapped between the two fronts of onrushing rats and charging dogs, Halverson had to make a detour.
Chogan was a step ahead of him. Chogan turned his bike right at the upcoming intersection. It was either that or ride straight into the swarm of rats. There seemed to be millions of the rodents as they charged as one down the sidewalks and down the street under the abandoned cars.
Halverson, Victoria, and Emma followed Chogan’s lead. A dog was already nipping at the heels of Emma’s horse as she brought up the rear of their entourage.
The vast majority of the rats kept right on going straight—right into the pack of dogs.
The dogs howled and yelped in terror as the sea of rats surged into them, biting their legs and crippling them. Their legs torn to shreds by the rats’ teeth, the dogs fell to the ground, whimpering.
Once fallen, they became easy prey for the rats. The rats chewed on their throats, stomachs, and legs. Arterial blood from fallen, mortally wounded dogs fountained up and rained down on the backs of the charging rats, inciting the rats into an even wilder delirium.
Crippled by the rats’ teeth, one after another of the dogs fell, puling, and were disemboweled and consumed by the starving rats.
The sight of the sea of carnage sickened Halverson. He turned away, not before seeing that many of the rats were still pursuing his group.
Victoria and Emma never dared peek back at the slaughterhouse. Even so, the bloodcurdling sounds alone of the yelps and whines of the dogs being torn apart by the rats were enough to sicken them, as well.
“Uh-oh,” said Chogan. “Here comes the Seventh Cavalry to the rescue.”
Puzzled at Chogan’s words, Halverson turned his head toward Chogan, who was riding point and nearing the end of the block.
Three of the walking dead were scrabbling into view, cutting off Halverson’s escape route.
“Let’s move it!” cried Halverson.
Where there were three, there were probably more of the creatures close behind, Halverson knew. Like dogs, the ghouls roamed in packs.
Chogan zoomed past the staggering creatures.
Halverson put on speed. His horse galloped toward the stumblebum creatures and knocked one of them over before it could take a bite out of his horse. Their horses in full stride, Victoria and Emma charged after Halverson.
As he traversed the intersection, Halverson could see he was right about the three ghouls. They were not alone. About two dozen more of the creatures were limping toward the intersection, following them.
On a fifty-inch high-definition flat-panel TV set in a TV appliance store’s window at the corner of the street, the face of President Cole was speaking as ghouls shuffled past the store on the sidewalk.
“My fellow Americans, let me reassure you there is nothing to fear,” said the image of Cole’s face. “Everything is under control. We have conquered the plague. We have found the vaccine and will be administering it to all of you as soon as possible.
“No doubt you’ve been hearing rumors to the effect that people are turning into cannibals and eating each other. These rumors are unfounded. However, be warned to
stay away from any person exhibiting plague symptoms, such as spastic movements. Such people are infected and they are extremely contagious. Stay away from them. But, whatever you do, do not panic. I’ll say that again. Do. Not. Panic. The vaccine is a hundred percent effective and will be available to everybody shortly.”
One of the walking dead halted in front of the TV store’s plate-glass window and scoped out the president’s image that was being broadcast on all of the TV sets on display. Not smelling food, the creature lurched away.
“The best thing all of you can do at this point is to be patient,” Cole went on. “All things come to those who wait. Keep checking your TV sets and radios to find out the location of the shelter nearest you. The vaccine will be provided at these shelters. You are all in my prayers during this time of crisis.
“Remember, we will never give up until this plague is eradicated from our great country. Rest easy, my fellow Americans. Rest easy. Help is on the way.”
One of the ghouls bowed in front of the TV store, snagged a rat by its tail from the sidewalk, stood straight, dangled the rat in front of his open mouth, and bit the rat’s head off. Blood splattered the ghoul’s mouth and chest, as well as the display window. The ghoul bent over to snatch another rat from the sidewalk.
CHAPTER 16
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
“Is any of what he said true?” asked Mellors, standing beside Slocum behind the television camera watching the president give his speech.
“We haven’t found a vaccine for the plague yet, if that’s what you mean,” answered Slocum.
“Then there’s no vaccine to be provided to the shelters.”
“There is no vaccine—yet.”
Mellors studied the president’s telegenic face that urged calm and restraint in front of the camera lens. “When will we have one?”
“We have no idea,” said Slocum. “This is a new, particularly virulent strain of H5N1. The CDC have virologists working on it 24/7. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Won’t the people waiting at the shelters become angry if the vaccines never arrive?”
“Better angry than panic-stricken.”
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