“Mike, Isaac, come look!” Grace called.
Your bacon just got saved! Mike said to himself, then moved to the window.
“What’s happening?”
Flannel Shirt was now gasping desperately for air. Both his hands were around his neck and his tongue hung from his bottom lip. He staggered on his knees before falling and then forced himself up again. The shotgun now lay on the road, abandoned by its former owner.
“I think we can now say he’s infected,” Grace gave her prognosis for everyone to hear.
“When you popped those few in the stairway to the hospital roof. Did they die easy or…” Mike allowed his question to trail off, he figured the doctor would know his meaning.
“They didn’t keep coming after me, if that’s what you mean by easy.”
“I want to be sure this nine-mill will take him out. I don’t want him coming at me with his blood spilling everywhere.”
“I understand. A good, clean headshot will do it,” Grace said.
“And I’d take the opportunity to do that now before the virus has taken full control,” Tilford added.
Mike Weaver, former chopper pilot for a local TV station, stepped out onto the street in suburban Avon—just a stone’s throw from the barricades around Des Moines. He was as tough as his prominent jawline, poker face, and piercing eyes attested. He was Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, and Clint Eastwood all rolled into one. But if asked, he would have said he felt more like Yul Brynner as the killer robot-cowboy in Westworld.
Walking down the driveway, Mike casually glanced around him. The obvious danger of the moment presented itself in the shape of the man in the flannel shirt in the center of the street. But what danger couldn’t he see? Flannel Shirt hadn’t been shooting into the air. And what of the occupants of the houses next door, across the road, and down the street? If he, Grace, and the others watched what had taken place, he was certain others had too. Others that might be armed. Or worse, infected with the flu.
“Help, please. Oh please, someone help me…” Flannel Shirt cried out, now almost delirious.
Mike realized the man was completely gone as he paid no attention to the sound of his heavy-heeled Dan Post boots on the asphalt. Mike didn’t worry about making a noise as he moved closer—he was about to pop two slugs into the guy’s brain, why worry about the sound of his footsteps?
There was a definite feeling of being watched. Mike sensed that, and surrounded by houses, it wasn’t an unrealistic sensation. But no one else ventured outside… Now that was bad.
Mike pulled the 9mm pistol from the top of his jeans where he’d tucked it in. Pulling the slide back, he checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber. As he raised his arm to take aim, he looked at the shotgun on the ground.
I could just take it and leave him, couldn’t I?
Of course, he could. But could he leave the man in the throes of such unbearable pain? No, Mike Weaver realized, he couldn’t let him suffer.
“Sorry, pal.”
“Wha…is somebody—”
Two rapid shots from the pistol entered Flannel Shirt’s forehead just above his eyebrows preventing him from completing his question. He fell to the road, jiggled like a fish out of water before finally becoming calm–his torment was over.
Mike didn’t waste time pondering what had just transpired. He grabbed the shotgun—a Browning A5—and checked the chamber right away. There was a round in there, and another could be seen in the tubular magazine. The shotgun had a butt-stock cartridge holder with a capacity of five. That gave a minimum of seven shells.
“Nowhere near enough if the shit hits,” Mike said out loud while scanning the nearby houses.
This guy just appeared, so he couldn’t have come far.
There!
Mike spotted an open front door on a house three down from where they had moved in. It made sense. If he had shot his family when they became symptomatic, then panicked and ran out into the street, he most likely wouldn’t bother to close the door behind him.
“That’s where the extra ammo will be.”
Mike started off in that direction, then looked back at Flannel Shirt. His chalky, white complexion, dry-blue lips and the horrid blood-filled eyes of the dead man gave him second thoughts.
He would check with Grace, but he needed the ammunition—they needed the ammunition.
If they were to have a chance.
In the house opposite from where Mike weaver stood, Robert Gersen turned and said to his wife, “My God, did you see that?”
“Yes, yes, I did…oh…” She dropped her head into her hands and cried.
“He just shot him, Mandy—without warning.”
“I know, but Mr. Tisdell was shooting at something—or someone—before. Maybe it was that man?”
“I don’t think so. Tisdell came from his house and the shooter came out the house for sale over that way.” Robert pointed across the street and to his right.
“Wait, where are you going.”
“Getting my gun, Mandy. If he comes this way, I wanna stop him before he gets to the front door.”
“Robert! Hurry back!” Mandy called.
As Robert grabbed his Beretta 92 9mm, he cursed his wife’s lack of common sense.
“Damn you, keep it down!” he muttered under his breath before rushing back to the front of the house where he knelt beside his wife. “What is it?”
“He picked up the other gun and went back to the house that’s for sale. Do you think he’s just a squatter?”
Robert watched as the man in the street with shotgun in one hand walked calmly back to where he came. There was an air of control about him—not desperation.
“With the curfew and this flu about, he might just be trying to get away from the danger zone. But to kill a man just for his shotgun? That don’t seem right.”
“I don’t see that he’s ‘getting away,’ we’re just a mile or so from the first barriers.”
Mandy was right there, Robert admitted. If you were trying to get as far from the infection as possible, there were better places than Avon.
“So, what’s he doing here?” Robert whispered, then stood abruptly.
“What did you—” Mandy started to say, but changed her question when she saw her husband head to the front door. “Robert, where the hell are you going? Robert, answer me!”
Robert ran out the front door down his driveway and into the street. Luckily, he kept his pistol tucked away and out of sight in his black cargo pants.
“You there!” he called authoritatively. He surprised not only his wife with his bravado, but also himself. He was scared, there was no denying. Scared of the barriers, the quarantine, the military presence, the Baltic flu and now a gunman on the loose in his street. But he made the decision he wasn’t going to cower behind the walls of his home any longer. Besides, walls wouldn’t prevent infection from deadly bacteria and wouldn’t hold back the cops or the military—but he might stop this guy from shooting any more people.
“What do you think you’re doing?” It was a dumb question, but the best he could think of.
Stay calm, stay calm, he told himself as he started hyperventilating.
Mike spun around, raising his pistol as he did. He was shocked at being confronted. He had the feeling of being watched all along, but that was before the confrontation with Flannel Shirt.
A man of early to-mid-forties approached Mike, who could see he was determined—but scared. He wore black pants and a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’d obviously come from one of the nearby houses, because it wasn’t warm enough for that kind of dress.
“Are you going to shoot me too?” he asked.
“That’s close enough,” Mike said. This guy wasn’t infected either, he gathered. Not based on what the two doctors had told him. But neither was the guy with the shotgun when they first saw him.
“Why did you shoot him?”
“I saved him from an agony no one ever needs to go through
.”
Mike watched as the expression changed on his challenger’s face. Now he felt like Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. Perhaps the other guy was the Michael Moriarty character, questioning his brutal methods.
“So, you’re a saint, are you? Delivering us from evil…” the man in the black pants turned and looked at the body in the street once more, “with a bullet to the head!”
“What’s your name?”
“Robert, Robert Gersen.”
“Well, Mr. Gersen, I really don’t have time to debate this, but you do know why there’s a quarantine around the city?” Mike waited until he received an answer. It came in the shape a short nod. “The man I shot was suffering from just that very flu. The symptoms are worse than death itself and the sufferers have been known to attack others passing on the deadly virus. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy or even a socialist.”
Mike had no idea how long it would take to perish from the virus. No one had discussed that at all, so he made it up.
“Do you have a gun, Robert?” Mike asked, quickly.
“Err… yeah, I do. Why—”
“Get it and what family you have here with you and get to the far ends of the country. Better still, go to Canada or Mexico—just get out.” With that said, Mike turned and walked away. He knew it was possible his accuser might shoot him in the back—Mike noticed the bulge in Robert’s black cargo pants…and knew it wasn’t his dick.
“And you,” Robert called after him, “where will you go?”
“Australia,” Mike said without turning.
“What was that all about? Who was he and where—” Grace started the moment Mike came back in the door.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. One at a time. I gather he was a neighbor and he’d heard the shots like we did, then saw me shoot the guy.”
“What did he say?
“It’s not important now, but I have a question for you.”
“Okay,”
“I got the shotgun, but we really need would be more ammo. I’m assuming by the open door, the guy I shot came from three houses down. I started toward there, but thought against it. If his family are infected, there’s blood all over and—”
“If you’ve got a question, I’d like to hear it before the end of the world, if possible.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m a little jumpy after the confrontation.”
“You, jumpy? You shoot people without a—”
Grace cut Steve off. “I’d keep my mouth shut, you might be next.”
“I figured he’d have more ammunition inside. But would I be exposing myself if I went in?”
“I’m glad you stopped yourself when you did. Damn right you’d be exposing yourself. You could only go in there with a Level 4 hazmat or bio-suit.” Grace knew the names meant the same thing, to her, but others called them differently so she gave both the most common name for the protective suits.
“So, we can’t go in there?”
“Not unless you want to end up with the Baltic flu and a hunger for human blood.”
“Err… I think I’ll pass for now.” Mike forced a smile.
Grace could tell Mike wasn’t pleased about the lack of ammunition. Not being able to go back to check obviously irked him. But he was sensible, she was sure. He wouldn’t jeopardize his health or that of the others—she hoped.
“Hey, hey, hey. Come, lookie here!” Richard had remained at the front window since Mike’s return. “Now we have a problem!”
A police patrol car led two Army Humvees up the center of the street and stopped as they came across the body of the man in the street.
“Oh man, this isn’t good,” Steve cursed.
“No shit, Einstein,” Grace replied fast. She wasn’t going to give Steve Donalds the time to get all negative and cause problems. They had more important things to concern themselves with than him.
The five of them watched from the dark insides of the house as the two cops exited their vehicle and walked over to the body.
“Oh shit.” Steve stood up sharply.
Robert Gersen emerged from his house on the other side of the street and approached the two officers.
The back doors of the two Humvees flew open along with the passenger door of the first one a moment later.
“Hold it right there, don’t move!” soldiers with M4s leveled yelled excitedly.
“Oh, my God!” Grace said, putting a hand to her brow. She could see what was about to unfold.
“What, what’s wrong?” Though Steve saw the same as everyone else, he didn’t comprehend the outcome.
“What’s wrong? Are you fucking blind as well as stupid? Those are regular army and those cops have probably been on the barriers. They are not going to risk themselves—know what I’m saying?” Mike was quick to point out.
“You mean they’re—”
“That’s exactly what he means!” Grace jumped in and answered.
“What’s going on, look!” Richard called.
All ten soldiers had turned and faced the opposite way. The two cops kept an eye on Robert Gersen, who had wisely raised his hands above his head.
From their position at the front window, Grace and her colleagues were unable to see what was unfolding due to the two Humvees blocking their view.
“What the hell’s going on that could—”
Tilford’s question was answered with a sharp volley of full-auto fire from the soldiers’ carbines.
“Down, get down!” Mike ordered.
“What are they shooting at, rioters?”
“I think it might be worse than that—look!” Grace pointed.
The two cops lost interest in the nosey neighbor the moment the gunshots rang out. However, instead of assisting the soldiers, they ran for their squad car, jumped in, and spun the wheels in their haste to get out of the area.
“Oh shit!” Robert Gersen was heard to scream before he ran back to his house.
“We gotta get the pickup started!” Grace yelled out to the others, but her eyes never left the street.
Just moments after the two Des Moines cops got out of the squad car to investigate the dead body on the road, the situation changed. First, Robert Gersen came out from his house in too quick of an approach, which alerted the soldiers in the Humvees who responded in a manner in which soldiers do—with guns drawn. The two Humvees were deployed from Fort Des Moines and had just taken position at the barrier when a call came in to the police about a shooting in a nearby street involving possible “infected parties” A squad car was dispatched along with the two army vehicles. The cops in the squad car had manned the barriers for most of the night and though the incidents they faced at the blockade were mild in comparison to others. Nonetheless, they were more distraught than at any other time in their combined fifteen years of service. The soldiers had received orders not to let anyone behind the barriers escape, or allow anyone suspected of suffering from the flu to remain alive. So when Robert Gersen stepped out of his house after they had received a domestic violence call which may include “infected person or persons,” the attitude was already one of shoot first.
The soldiers immediately brought their weapons to bear on the approaching civilian as the law officers ordered Gersen to raise his hands. As he began, the pounding of what sounded like hundreds of feet running on the asphalt road behind their position—from the direction of the city—was heard.
The soldiers instantly switched from the lone civilian to the rampaging mob of infected “persons” descending upon them.
“Fire, fire, fire!” Corporal Higgins—in charge of this detail—urgently yelled.
A force of several hundred former residents of Des Moines—all with a sickly pigmentation to their skin and eyes and covered in red blood—had broken through the barriers or found a way through the many weak links in the barricaded areas.
The last the soldiers heard of the cops was when they spun their wheels, exiting the scene.
They left them for dead—literally.
T
he firing intensified outside, from full automatic burst to one long, continuous stream.
But then the shooting stopped.
“What happened? Why did they stop shooting?” Tilford asked.
“By the sounds of it, they were all on full-auto. They ran dry at the same time,” Mike answered.
“Ran dry?”
“The magazines in their rifles ran dry. They’re probably changing right now.”
As Mike said that, shooting started up once more. But not as loud, and not as many rifles.
Grace looked hard at Mike, her fellow doctor, and then at the troublesome TV reporter. She knew now it wasn’t a rioting mob, there were no sounds of any other firearms except those used by the soldiers. And their number had been reduced. It meant only one thing in her mind.
“Infected! They’re here!”
The pickup engine roared to life, telling everyone Richard had it started and was ready.
“Let’s go!” Mike said, picking up the shotgun. “Here, take this.” He said, handing Grace the 9mm.
“Someone has to get the door,” Richard called from the driver’s seat.
“All right, I can do that,” Steve said.
Mike gave Grace look that told her he wasn’t too keen on the idea, but she nodded. It’s just the garage door.
“Now, Steve, now!” Richard yelled out the window once the others were inside the candy-apple-red Dodge 2500.
The garage door was an electric tilt door and began to open the instant Steve pushed the button. But after three feet or so of daylight became visible, the door shuddered, made a creaking noise, and came to a sudden halt.
“Oh shit, what the…”
Grace turned and looked behind the moment Richard spoke. She could see Steve pushing on the door to open in.
“Get out of the way, I’ll ram it,” Richard called.
“No, don’t do that. If you damage the back end, we might be stuck here,” Grace pointed out, then opened the front passenger window. “Something’s blocking it from the outside. Roll under the door and see if you can pry it loose.”
She jumped back in the car and paused for a moment of reflection. No one else had noticed, or if they did, weren’t saying anything, but all firing out on the street had ceased.
Pestilence Boxed Set [Books 1 & 2] Page 27