by Frank Tayell
“Thank you,” he said. “I… I wasn’t expecting anyone to help.”
“Well, that’s what we’ve got to do now,” the civilian said. “Help each other. You can’t cross to the other side and leave it for someone else. Not now. Not any more. Where are you from?”
“Originally? New York,” Helena said. “But most recently from over there.” She gestured toward the pillar of smoke.
“Was that zombies?” the woman asked.
“At least a hundred of them,” Helena said. “We thought we could make a stand there. That we could fortify the motel, make it a refuge for others. But a truck came in, and the zombies followed it.”
“A refuge?” The woman gave a nod of approval. “That’s the right idea, but I guess that was the wrong place to do it. We keep hearing of strongholds and sanctuaries, but it’s always rumors. Always a place just over the next hill or at the end of the next road. Never seem to find it. Did you hear about Washington?”
“We saw the president’s broadcast on television,” Tom said. “But I don’t know what happened after.”
“We got it on the radio,” the woman said. “Heard that zombies killed the president.”
“From what we saw, he got away,” Tom said.
“Good luck to him if he did,” the woman said, “but everyone else is trying to do the same. The roads were empty this morning. For the last couple of hours, they’ve been filling up. Where were you heading?”
“South,” Tom said. “To Maryland.”
“I wouldn’t. The radio said that Washington’s gone, and everyone’s leaving the city. Go north. Get as far as you can, and far away from people. We’ve got to help everyone we can, but we can’t help everyone. There’re tens of millions leaving the cities. That’s tens of millions of zombies in waiting.”
“Zombie!” the soldier called out. Her voice was calm, but clear. “Four hundred yards.” She raised an arm, pointing toward a distant figure staggering out of the woods, about thirty degrees from the plume of smoke.
“You sure it’s one of them?” the civilian called back.
The soldier peered through the scope. “I’m sure.”
“Watch for the wind,” the civilian said.
The soldier muttered something under her breath and took aim. The shot echoed across the landscape, and the distant zombie collapsed.
“Time to go,” the civilian said. “Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, again,” Helena said. “We’re—”
“Just repay the favor,” the woman said hurrying back to the RV. “The government might be gone, but America isn’t. Not yet.”
Tom watched the woman get back into the RV, and then headed to the truck.
“That zombie didn’t come from the motel,” Helena said, climbing into the driver seat. “So, north or south?”
South was Washington. That had been his plan. To go to the capital and find Max. “The president won’t be in D.C. anymore. He’ll be in a bunker.” If he was still alive.
“So, not south?” she asked.
Saying no would be tantamount to giving up. He wasn’t ready to do that, not if the cabal hadn’t. “For now, we go north,” he said. “For now.”
The truck roared. The engine sounded happier now the tires had a firmer surface to bite.
“And where do we go later?” Helena asked. “North is a big place.”
He guessed what she was hinting at. “Maine is the obvious answer,” he said. “To my cottage there. I have supplies, and a computer with all the evidence on it. That was my original plan. Well, no, my original plan was to get out of America, but then the outbreak hit. I wanted to find somewhere to hide out for a few days, somewhere safe enough I could go through all the files I’ve gathered, find out how the outbreak began, and maybe find a way of stopping it.”
“Not much chance of that now,” she said.
“No, but I might be able to find where the cabal are based.” It was unlikely. He peered at the dash. “That settles it,” he said. “Look at the fuel gauge. We’ve got half a tank left. Follow the RV. When the tank runs dry, we’ll hope they stop and offer us a ride.” It was only delaying a decision in which there were no good choices, but after the shock and violence of the morning, he welcomed a few minutes without the need for constant planning.
The RV was already far ahead. As the road dipped and curved, they occasionally lost sight of it. Helena pushed down on the gas. The speedometer edged upwards.
“It’s getting away,” Tom said.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Helena said. “Heap of junk, it’s topping out at forty miles an hour.”
The RV was making about sixty, and soon it was lost to the horizon.
“I guess we need a new plan,” Helena said.
Going to Maine felt like a surrender. It was familiar, but that didn’t mean it was secure.
“No helicopters,” he finally said. “If we’d seen one, or even heard one, then I’d say we should find a military unit and try to make our way up the chain of command until we reached Max. But there’s no helicopter. Someone at the White House intercepted that message and sent Powell to the motel.”
“So we can’t reach the president? You’re accepting that?” she asked.
“I am.”
He looked at the sky, this time imagining the satellites looking down on them. “I’m thinking like it was two weeks ago,” he said. “I’m used to hiding in plain sight, among a population of millions, where you can bug and surveil, hack and bribe.”
“Right. So what answers would you find on those files you have in Maine? How many years did you spend searching for the cabal? How many names did you discover? And even if you found the names, even found a confession, what would you do then? What court would you take it to?”
“Yeah. There’s no justice, just us.”
“Sad to think that might be true,” she said, “but if so, then we need to find Farley, not the president. So where did he live?”
“Virginia and Washington,” Tom said. “But maybe that’s not where we have to search. Dr Ayers’s home was only forty miles from the motel. Powell drove there, and to the motel. Wherever he came from has to be near. Find that, and we might find Farley. At the very least, we’d find a clue as to where he is.” Probably.
“We’ll be out of gas in an hour,” she said. “And out of food and water by nightfall. We’ll find some more, but if what that woman said she heard on the radio is true, and everyone is now fleeing the cities, then within a week we’ll be fighting for survival. I want to stop Farley, but I don’t want to kill someone over the last bottle of water. I say we have one shot at taking out the cabal. We have to be realistic. It won’t change much. It won’t turn back the clock, but it might mean that that whoever survives this year doesn’t have to face something even worse in the next. One week, one shot. There’s a turning coming up. We could head back toward the motel?”
“We won’t find them driving randomly along the roads,” Tom said. “Keep going.”
“I was thinking we could search the BearCat they drove there,” she said.
“Ah. No, keep going. There’ll be too many zombies. It’s too great a risk for the chance that they had a map that wasn’t destroyed by the fire.”
She was right, though. Realistically, there was just one chance at stopping Farley. But if they were being realistic, it was his chance, not hers. She was a schoolteacher. Farley had heavily armed mercenaries. Yes, Helena had proven she could hold her own in a fight with the undead, and had helped him escape the motel, but it would be a very different situation without surprise on their side. Particularly when they only had a handful of rounds for a pair of handguns. Of course, it was all academic unless they found the cabal’s base.
An eighteen-wheeled rig barreled past. The driver gave a long blast from the horn. Tom was uncertain whether it was a greeting or a warning. He watched the rig as it disappeared along the road and found he was looking at the sky. It was far preferable to watchin
g the land on either side of the road. There were figures lurching toward them. Not many, and never more than a couple were in sight at any one time, but they were there.
The clouds were thinning, but perhaps the cabal didn’t have access to a helicopter. Or their pilot was dead. Or… and then it came to him.
He took out the sat-phone. “Back before the outbreak,” he said, “I was going to drive from New York to an airstrip. I was going to fly to Canada, drive to the coast, and be picked up by a fishing trawler. Last I heard, the trawler was stuck in the middle of a flotilla of refugees out in the Atlantic, but you can’t move an airfield. It’s a couple of hundred miles from here, but that’s closer than Maine.” He dialed the number. It rang. And rang. Tom was about to hang up when it was answered.
“Si?”
“Julio?”
“Who else? You’re alive. Ha! I should have known it would take more than the end of the world to kill you.”
“Are you still at home, at the airfield?” Tom asked.
“I am,” Julio said. “We are.”
“Do you have a plane?”
“I have many planes,” Julio gave a weary sigh. “None are for hire. I know I made you a promise, but that was at a different time, when the world was a very different place. Even if I wanted, the military have taken over.”
“The military?”
“The Air Force. They took over the airstrip, but people saw the planes. They came here. Hundreds of them. Now there are more than we have seats for. When the exodus begins, it will be the children who go, the rest will have to stay behind.”
“The exodus? When are you leaving?” Tom asked.
“I do not know. Captain Jenson has lost contact with her command. Did you hear about the president? Washington has fallen. The captain has taken her fighter up to find a safe landing site within range of our planes. Until she finds somewhere, we stay here, unless the zombies make a flight into the unknown our only chance of survival.”
“So you’ve no immediate plans to leave? What about gasoline, can you spare that?”
“I think so. We don’t need it for the planes,” Julio said.
“And weapons? Can you put some guns and ammo aside?”
“Si. I will leave you some gasoline, and some weapons, but I can’t promise anything else,” Julio said. “I can’t even promise that we will be here. The undead come. We kill them, but there are always more.”
Military personnel, that was what Tom needed. A plane that could survey the area, find from where Powell had come, and then help him end the cabal for once and for all.
“We’re on our way,” Tom said, and hung up.
“He has an airfield?” Helena asked.
“It’s a flight school,” Tom said. “He was a commercial pilot for whom I got a new identity after he saw something that no one should ever have to see. He turned witness and needed a new life. It’s a farm, really, with an airstrip behind it.”
“And how far is it?”
“About a hundred miles, give or take.”
She tapped the fuel gauge. “Eyes open for stopped cars. I guess we’ll be syphoning fuel again.”
She sounded relaxed now that they had a plan. Tom felt the same. He did have a plan. He’d get Helena onto a plane and enlist the help of the Air Force personnel to destroy the cabal.
“Tom, look!” Helena stabbed a finger at the grime-covered windshield. Half a mile ahead, the RV had come to a halt just beyond a car that had driven into a ditch. There was a figure on the RV’s roof. In one hand was a rifle. Helena pumped the gas, trying to coax a few more miles per hour out of the truck’s rattling engine.
“We have to stop,” she said.
“I know.”
Between the car and the RV were two shambling figures. He knew they were undead. There was just something about the uncoordinated motion of the arms and legs that was utterly inhuman. He took out the revolver and checked it was still loaded.
“It’s not the soldier,” Helena said. The figure on the roof of the RV wasn’t wearing fatigues. She was holding the rifle one-handed. She fired and spun around, falling to her knees with the recoil. She was clearly injured, but what was of greatest concern to Tom was that she’d been aiming at the far side of the RV.
Even before Helena slammed on the brakes, Tom knew they were too late. He threw open the door and jumped out before the truck had come to a complete halt. He staggered three paces across the asphalt before he found his balance. He raised the revolver as the two necrotic heads turned toward him. One was the soldier who’d been in the RV. The other was a man he’d not seen before, though by his almost normal appearance, only marred by red blood dripping from his gaping maw, he’d been recently alive. Tom aimed. Fired. The man went down. He aimed at the soldier. She took a lurching step toward him. Her mouth opened, and a ragged gasp came out.
“She’s dead.” He glanced up at the top of the RV. The woman wasn’t in sight. The soldier was getting nearer. “She’s dead,” he repeated, and fired. She fell, and he felt a surge of anger at such a pointless death.
“Hey! Hey,” he called, and he realized that he didn’t know the woman’s name, nor that of the soldier, nor even whether the undead man had been the driver or a passenger in the RV. “Are you okay?” he yelled. There was no answer from the roof of the vehicle. He opened the revolver and replaced the two spent rounds with the last cartridges from his pocket. He glanced behind. Helena had the 9mm raised and was edging toward the rear of the RV. It had stopped parallel to the road, with the front near the verge. Tom inched toward the cab. He passed the stalled car. There was a motionless figure inside, and four corpses lying between it and the RV. All four were undead. Three had been shot. The fourth, an overweight man wearing enough plaid to decorate a barn, had a machete embedded in his skull.
The zombies must have been gathered around the car. The people in the RV had seen it. They’d stopped, but they’d been overwhelmed. Precisely how didn’t matter right now. Tom remembered the shot that the woman on the roof had fired at the far side of the vehicle. The other zombies would have to be dealt with before they could check whether she was still alive. As he edged around the cab, he saw that he was correct. There were other zombies. Eight of them.
His first shot was rushed. It missed, but got the creatures’ attention. They turned their vacant expressions toward him. He fired again. A zombie fell. He shifted aim, trying to ignore the expression, the clothes, the elaborate butterfly tattoo on its neck. He fired. He aimed, trying not to look in those vacant eyes as his bullet smashed straight through the left, blowing away the back of its head. He had to take a step back, and around the engine. They were getting closer. Their heads bobbed up and down. He fired, missed, and was reminded just how small a target a head was. He fired again. The bullet caught the creature a glancing blow, tearing off a chunk of its rotting scalp. It spun around, and its flailing arms spun the zombie behind it backward. Tom backed up another step and fired, knowing that the hammer would hit a spent round. Click. He ran back a few steps. Looked around. Saw the machete. He grabbed at it, but it was stuck fast. He stamped down on the dead zombie’s face, pulling it clear with a wet, sucking crack.
There was a shot. Helena had fired. He couldn’t see what she was aiming at, and when he looked for her, realized he couldn’t see her, either. She fired again. And again, and now she was out of ammunition, and the zombies would be heading toward her. She backed away from the rear of the RV, toward the truck, the empty gun still raised. Tom ran along the side of the vehicle.
“No!” she yelled. “Watch out!”
He stopped just as a zombie staggered round the back of the vehicle. He swung low as the monstrous creature threw its pendulous arms at his face. The machete slammed into its knee, neatly slicing through tendon and muscle. He ripped the blade free, and as the zombie staggered forward, it fell, toppling almost on top of him. Holding his breath against the rank expulsion of infected air, he threw the creature to one side. Unable to support its
own weight, it fell. The zombie’s arms beat the ground as it tried to push itself onto a leg oozing gore from where it had been nearly sliced through.
Before there was time for revulsion to sweep over him, another creature staggered around the edge of the RV. More tattered than the rest, its face was smeared with mud. Tom raised the machete, but before he could strike, Helena ran forward. She held a metal bar above her head and swung it down on the creature’s crown. Bone broke with a resounding crack that almost drowned out her feral scream. She swung again, and again, before he grabbed her arm and dragged her back.
“It’s dead,” he said. “Dead.”
She sobbed. Not with fear, but with absolute rage.
“It’s dead,” Tom repeated. As if to give the lie to that statement, there was a guttural hiss from the zombie he’d crippled. He stalked over to the creature and hacked the machete down on its skull.
“Now they’re both dead.” He walked around the vehicle, machete raised, but there were no more moving zombies. Nor were there any signs of survivors.
“The woman,” Helena said. “Hey! Can you hear me? Are you alive?” she called out. There was a moment of silence, then a faint knocking from inside the vehicle. Hope flared, but was almost immediately extinguished when the knocking grew erratic.
“She’s turned,” Helena whispered.
Tom walked over to the car. “The driver’s dead,” he said. “Long dead. At least a few days. There’s an empty pill bottle on the seat next to her.”
“The RV, Tom,” Helena said. “We need to… to do something about the woman. We can’t just leave her.”
“I know. I know,” Tom sighed. “I was looking for weapons.” He looked at the machete. Gore covered its handle. He wiped his palm against his leg and thought about how many zombies he’d come in close proximity to. He remembered what Dr Ayers had written on the whiteboard in her home: It’s not a virus. Did that mean that blood and brain matter weren’t always infectious?
The knocking grew louder.
Or did it just mean that he’d been lucky? No matter how good a streak was, luck always ran out.