by Frank Tayell
“They must have been giving food and water to the refugees. That’s good,” Helena said.
“Probably. Wave so they know we’re not zombies.”
One of the two figures climbed down. The other stayed on the container. He held a hunting rifle so the barrel wasn’t quite pointing at them, but at the same time wasn’t quite pointing away.
“Morning,” Helena called out.
“Morning,” the woman who’d climbed down from the container replied. Her tone was civil though not friendly. “Where are you from?”
“New York,” Helena said. “But that was a week and a lifetime ago.”
“Don’t suppose this town has a bus service?” Tom called.
“There’s a refugee center five miles down that road,” the woman said, ignoring his weak joke. “You might find transport there.”
“We’re running low on water,” Tom said. “Can you spare some?”
The woman unclipped the canteen from her belt and placed it on the table. She stepped back a pace. “Take it.”
“Thank you,” Helena said. “I guess a lot of people have come this way?”
“Some,” the woman said.
There was a whistle from above. The sentry on the container was pointing toward the town. The woman nodded. “You two should go. Get ahead of the other refugees.”
“Any chance of a car, or just a few gallons of gasoline?” Tom asked.
“No,” the woman said. “Just water, and we can barely spare that. We can’t offer you shelter. We’re already full. You’ll have to take your chances on the road, and those odds will be better if you get moving.”
“What about a military base?” Helena asked. “Is there one around here?”
“Out here?” The woman shook her head.
Three more figures came out from behind the containers, an older man and woman in hunting gear, and a young boy. The adults were armed, though their weapons were slung. The boy carried a pot of paint and a brush.
“First refugees of the day?” the man said. His tone was affable, but there was a steely resolve in his eyes.
“And not looking to stay,” Tom said.
“Do you know of any military bases around here?” Helena asked.
“Nope,” the man said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re tracking the people responsible for the outbreak,” she said. “We know they’re around here somewhere. It would be a group decked out like soldiers, but small in number. Under a hundred, with light arms.”
Tom frowned, but watched their expressions. No one seemed surprised.
“You can try in Providence. Ask them there,” the older woman said.
That wasn’t the response Tom had expected. “A lot of people have said something similar?” he guessed.
“In the hope of getting a bed,” the older woman said. “We have none left to offer, and no more help we can spare. You should get moving.”
“Five miles, this way?” Tom asked.
The group nodded.
“You didn’t say there is no Providence,” Helena said, when they were out of earshot.
“Nor did you.”
“There didn’t seem like much point.”
When he looked back, he saw the boy painting a sign on the containers: Warning. Quarantine Zone. Do Not Enter. That might help keep the town safe. It might not, and it wouldn’t help them.
“Why did you ask them about the cabal?” he asked.
“Because it seemed like the obvious way to find where Powell came from is to ask. A hundred heavily armed people are hard to hide, particularly when everyone would want the military to help protect them.”
“And what if Powell had come from that town?”
“Then we’d have found them, wouldn’t we?” she said.
The razor wire came to a ragged end at the edge of a paddock. Beyond was a burned-out brick building. The windows were sealed with heavy-duty sheet metal. The door was padlocked.
“What is it?” Helena asked, as Tom tried to find a gap through which he could see inside.
“Nothing,” he said, not wanting to speak the thought out loud. They continued walking. After a mile, they came to a car that had been driven into a ditch. There were no occupants, but a little way beyond was a sign: Providence Four Miles.
“What’s wrong?” Helena asked, as Tom glanced back toward the now-hidden town. “Tell me.”
“It’s nothing. Just the absence of people. Of zombies. It’s getting to me.”
“You’re bothered by the lack of imminent danger?” She laughed.
He forced a smile, but as they continued, his mind went back to the presidential campaign.
Their opponent in the general election, Clancy Sterling, had gone to college in Pennsylvania. He’d met his wife there. She was a local, and they had long ties to the state. It had made it a real battleground. Where Tom had focused on the media strategy, Claire Maxwell had organized an aggressive ground campaign, breaking the state down into towns, and the towns into streets. In a few instances, she’d even broken the streets down into houses. It was Sterling’s own fault, launching a string of degrading personal attacks on her, their children, and their quality as parents. Winning Pennsylvania had become a mission for Claire. They’d had giant maps covering their war-room, with pins, labels, and great swathes of colored cloth. Now, he was trying to recall those maps, and the section of them that dealt with this part of the state. He was certain there wasn’t a town called Providence.
“Three miles,” Helena said, pointing at the crude sign. In the ground behind it were the uprights for a more official sign, but that had been removed.
“We should have seen people,” Tom said, looking back the way they’d come.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s nowhere around here with two towns so close together. I’m certain of it. There’s no Providence.”
“So it was a scam to get people away from that town,” she said, gesturing down the road.
“Except it’s the kind of trick that’ll work for a few hours, but not any longer. Sure, people will walk for five miles in pursuit of safety, perhaps six or seven. When they found nothing, they’d turn back. Others, following behind, would meet them, and be informed that Providence doesn’t exist. They’d return to the town. So where are they? Where are the people?”
“Ah. What you mean is, where are the bodies?”
They came to the first, just after the sign announcing Providence was two miles ahead. It was a zombie with a split-open skull. Helena drew her pistol. Two hundred yards further, they came to another. It had been shot. He could see another supine figure lying on the road ahead of them, and more after that.
The bodies lay increasingly close together until they reached a spot where they’d fallen in a great ring of twisted, twice-dead limbs. At the center was a uniformed soldier. On his leg was a bandage. Next to his body was a discarded rifle. In his hand was an automatic pistol, and in his brain was a bullet from that gun.
“Looks like he was infected,” Helena said. “So, he… what? He stayed behind the others, holding off the zombies, killing them one by one until they were dead, he was dying, and he had only one bullet left?”
“Looks like it.” Or he could have been on his own, a solitary man trying to escape a hideous death that his injuries wouldn’t allow him to outpace. Tom shifted his grip on the rifle, looking and listening for the undead.
“It doesn’t seem right to leave him,” Helena said.
“There’s no time to bury him, and we don’t have the tools.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Helena said. “I mean that he’ll lie here, forgotten.”
“Are you going to forget the scene?” he asked.
“I might,” Helena said, continuing down the road. “After all I’ve seen, and all I’m going to see, I might.”
They saw Providence long before they reached it.
“You were right,” Helena said. “It isn’t a town.”
It was
a military camp, built on the highway. Or it had been. Walking sticks, bicycles, bags, and other litter formed an obstacle course as they climbed the on-ramp. The road to their left was clear. To their right were a cluster of vehicles. Not all were military. A few police cruisers and motorbikes were parked next to a very civilian tanker-truck. Beyond the off-ramp, on the far side of the highway, were tents. Monstrous things, twenty feet across, with their flaps down. Some were marked with red crosses, others decorated in a variety of camouflage patterns. What was missing were people.
“We’re too late,” Helena whispered.
Tom understood her disappointment. He could almost see the helicopters that had used the highway as a helipad. Where the refugees had gone, he’d never know, but they could only have missed them by a few hours.
“Maybe they left fuel,” Tom said, walking toward the tanker. They had. The gauge read empty, but next to it were dozens of fuel cans. A few had spilled over, giving a filling station smell to the morning air. He picked up one that gave a pleasing slosh and made it halfway toward the police vehicles before being overcome by a wave of exhausted depression. He sat down on a stack of crates.
“The airfield lies fifty miles that way,” he said gesturing down the road. “Not in a straight line, of course, but where is, these days.” The fuel can gonged as he gave it a kick. “That should get one of the bikes there.” He took out the sat-phone. It had enough battery left to make a call. He dialed Julio’s number. “No answer,” he said, putting it away. “Figures.”
“What are you thinking?” she asked, sitting down next to him.
“That there’s fuel here, probably more than we’d get at the airfield. There’s weapons, too,” he added rapping his knuckles against the case.
Helena glanced down and then jumped up. “Explosives! You’re sitting on a crate of explosives!”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like a dangerous thing to do these days.”
“What’s wrong? Are you wondering how you’ll find Farley?”
“No. Not quite. So we drive to the airfield, but then what? I’d hoped that I could enlist the military personnel there into helping find this base that Powell used, but is that realistic? Yesterday, we managed to drive for less than an hour before being forced to abandon the vehicle. Why should today or tomorrow be any different? I had half an idea that one of those planes might spot their base from the air, but how? What exactly would I be looking for? We’ve spent the better part of a week driving and walking in Pennsylvania, and we know we can’t be more than a hundred miles from where Powell came from, but we’ve not found him. Realistically, are we going to? And what if Powell came from an airstrip? What if the reason he drove that BearCat to abduct Ayers, and to the motel, was because that was the only vehicle by the landing pad? Farley might have been there, but what if he’s gone?”
“Okay.” She sat down again. “So what are the alternatives? Go back to that town, try to get them to help?”
“I don’t know. Farley has to be stopped. Did I do all I could to stop him? No, that’s the truth, and this is the result. We’re dying. The nation, the world, our species. Person by person, day by day, we’re using up the supplies that are left. Soon they’ll be gone, and soon after that, so will we.”
“Self-pity’s a luxury we don’t have time for,” she said. “If you want to hold yourself responsible for the outbreak, and for the cabal, fine. It doesn’t change what happened, or where we are. None of us get the future we want, but the one in front of us is a choice between giving up or going on, just as it’s always been. But the choice immediately in front of us is to continue to the airfield, or go back to that town and tell them that whoever was here last night has gone. Personally, I’d say the airfield because it’s odd that those people didn’t know that the military had left this place.”
“Maybe they did, and just wanted to push the problem further down the road.”
“Right, so you’re voting for the airfield, too? Good. Even if the planes are gone, maybe there’s some other people, or at least a proper bed and some decent food. We can get a few hours’ rest and—” She stopped.
Tom had heard it, too. He stood. The sound came from the nearest tent at the base of the off-ramp. The flaps were closed, though he now wondered if sealed would be a more accurate description. The walls bulged as if someone was trying to push through them. He raised the rifle. The canvas undulated as the bulge moved toward the doors.
“Shout something,” he said. “We need to know it’s undead.”
“Hello!” Helena called. The material tore with a rip that seemed louder than her uncertain yell. A head appeared. Even from that distance, Tom knew it was dead. Tattered skin hung from ragged muscle on a face missing nose, lips, and cheeks. He fired. The shot set off a cacophony as birds erupted from nearby trees. Beating wings drowned out the sound of the tent collapsing as the twice-dead creature disappeared from view.
“Ugh!” Helena shuddered. “Feel better? Because I don’t.” She picked up the fuel can. “And I won’t until we’re at least a hundred miles from—”
The sound came again. It was the same as before; the whispering of cloth, the expulsion of rank air from dead lungs, the snapping of metal supports as the tents collapsed. And it was tents, plural. Unlike before, this wasn’t just one solitary creature. The sound came from every tent as hundreds of undead limbs pushed and tore their way out into the daylight. Tom shifted the rifle from target to target, but there were too many.
“We need to go,” he said, but Helena was already halfway toward the row of vehicles. Tom backed away, unable to tear his eyes from the zombies bursting from the collapsing tents. Some wore uniforms, but most didn’t. The young, the old, men, women, and children, they turned their sightless toward him.
“No keys! No keys! No keys!” Helena yelled. The words cut through the horror. He turned and ran. She was dashing between the vehicles, trying car doors, peering at the ignition on the motorbikes.
“This one,” she said. Gasoline spilled around its tires as she sloshed fuel into a bike’s tank.
“Slow down. We’ve got time,” Tom said, forcing calm into his voice. “There are too many to fight, but they move slow.”
She gritted her teeth, but poured more slowly, until the fuel can was empty. “Now can we go?”
He climbed on behind her. “Drive slowly,” he said. “We can lure the zombies away from that town.”
Even as he said it, he knew how futile it was. They might draw some of the zombies away, but not all, and there had to be thousands in those tents. If the people in that town legitimately believed that a military evacuation center existed five miles from them, then someone would come and look. They would drive to the highway, see the zombies, and drive back. The zombies would follow. Luring a few away was a gesture, and nothing more, yet it was all they could do.
After a mile, Helena began to ease the throttle. The bike sped up. Tom didn’t stop her.
Chapter 4 - Airlift
Mifflin County, Pennsylvania
They were only a few miles from the airfield when they ran out of fuel. Tom knew it was only a few miles by the twin-engine jet that soared up into the sky at the same time as the motorbike’s engine died. Tom squinted at the plane as it banked to the west. He’d seen that make of aircraft at a dozen regional airports over the years, but couldn’t even guess at its capacity. All that mattered now was that it was lost to the skies.
“Looks like we’ve missed our flight,” Helena said, giving the throttle another twist.
Tom climbed off the bike and gave the tires a vindictive kick. “At least it’s not far to the airfield. Julio said he’d leave some fuel for us, and he’s a stubbornly reliable man.”
“But we can’t rest there,” she said. As one, they both found themselves looking back the way they’d come.
The road was deserted, but they’d passed a small pack of the undead barely ten miles before. Those lumpen creatures had been squatting motionless outside a burned-out
store. He could only guess at what had once been sold there, but the zombies had been woken by the sound of the motorbike’s passing. The sound of the jet engines would be another siren, luring them in this direction.
“The airfield can’t be far,” Tom said, unslinging his rifle. He started walking.
Another plane emerged above the trees. This was a prop that fought valiantly to get into the sky. It jerked up, and dropped down, disappearing behind a clump of red pines. Tom expected an explosion, but instead the plane reared up, clearing the trees. He raised a hand in greeting as it buzzed a wide circle, coming close to where they stood. The wings didn’t waggle, so perhaps the pilot hadn’t seen them. Or perhaps it was too great an effort keeping the cumbersome craft in the air to waste time on such niceties.
“Where are the fighter planes?” Helena asked, when the plane was nothing but a swiftly receding speck.
“Already gone, or being saved for last,” he said. “There’s only one very short runway.”
“But if the planes are still taking off, then there are people still at the airfield, right?”
He didn’t reply, but started walking more quickly. Soon, they were both jogging along the road. The jog had almost turned into a run when a background sound resolved into gunfire.
The airfield was attached to a farm. If flying was Julio’s passion, farming was his tradition. Circumstance might prevent him from ever returning to his ancestral home, but the small farm allowed him to stay spiritually connected to the soil. Not quite a ranch, yet too well managed to be called a hobby, it occupied fifty acres north of the airfield. The livestock were gone.
Another overloaded plane staggered into the sky.
They jogged past the fields. The stubby control tower got larger far too slowly. Ahead lay a barn that dwarfed the single-level house. With his family thinking him dead, Julio had always said it was larger than he needed. Beyond the house was the double-height chain-link fence separating the airfield from the farm. Access to the airfield was through a gate two hundred yards further down the road. Barrels, tables, and other easily moved furniture added weight to the trucks parked in front of it. Compared to the barricade at the town they’d seen earlier that day, it was truly a flimsy construct. It could have been made of cement and steel and it wouldn’t have mattered. The chain-link fence was broken in three places that he could see. No doubt it was breached in other places currently out of sight.