All the infected travelers stood by reverently, and Matt soon discovered why. The back panel of the truck was halfway up—must’ve come loose in the crash—and whatever was in there was pulsing a deep green light every few seconds, and it was toasty. Had to be close to ninety degrees back there. It had melted all the snow in a ten-yard radius.
George called up to Matt, “It’s them, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He stepped over to the cab.
The driver’s door was open but impossibly heavy. Luke must’ve opened it and tried to climb out, but then it had slammed on him halfway through, crushing him around the midsection. Internal bleeding, in addition to the scratches he’d received in the wreck itself, yet he’d still had the strength to drag himself to the rest area. Shit. Matt was able to slide inside and drop down. It was a bit crowded, but he knelt down and picked up some items that had fallen—a clipboard with the invoice for the load, the keys, Luke’s name badge with a radiation tag hanging from it.
Radiation tag? Matt had seen these before. For anyone who worked in high-radiation environments, this was a necessity. It turned darker as it absorbed more radiation, and when it turned black, it meant you’d had enough for the day. He shined his flashlight at the tag. Full black. At least that explained a lot.
But if it was radiation as they knew it, Matt was fried down to the marrow and so was everyone there. He had a feeling—no, more like a fervent hope—that it had to be a different kind of radiation, or a toned-down variety.
Not so much nuclear as…viral.
It looked like a tough climb back up, and that door was heavy. The windshield was already mostly shattered, so it took only a few kicks to pop it out so Matt could duck through. He found George again, warming himself with the zombies behind the truck, and showed him the badge and clipboard.
George took his time reading.
Matt was beginning to get the gist of it, but he was no scientist.
He thought back to the Fire and Ice mixture at the chemical plant down in Florida. What a mess. But this wasn’t about mixing two unstable liquids. This was some serious genetic engineering. Some nasty government stuff.
While George read, Matt stepped closer to the truck, the heat growing exponentially, and looked inside.
There were several steel crates, a couple of which had come open, spilling out vials that had shattered, spreading something frothy, like marshmallows, only green and glowing. Not only was there a biohazard warning stenciled on the side of the crate, but right next to it was the ominous symbol for radioactive material.
By the time George looked up, jaw hanging and face pale, Matt had figured it out on his own.
“Let me guess,” Matt said. “Some kind of weapon, maybe, made up of two parts: the virus and the radiation.”
“Just think about it. A handful of dirty bombs dropped over an area, and then this, spreading faster and faster, immobilizing—”
“Sons of bitches. Making this thing took some fucking balls.”
“And look at the result.” George waved his arm at the crowd of poor souls clambering to get as close as they could to the truck. “Doesn’t matter who you are. It just plows right through. Only stopped by freezing it, and that just slows it down.”
But Matt’s mind was making other connections. “Sure, slows it down enough for someone to cure the radiation sickness, and then the virus hides out in the bloodstream, biding its time. And…it stops him. This is it. He can’t beat this thing.”
“Who’s ‘him’? What are you talking about?”
“Just…don’t you know…? Never mind. Hang on a minute.” Matt squatted and crept into the truck, careful not to touch the glowing froth as he looked for some unbroken vials. It was like an oven inside. Sweat pouring off him, sizzling as it touched the sheet metal. He reached for a tube still resting in its slot within the crate. Got his mitten on it, began to pull it out—
Shit, that burned. He snapped his fingers back, and the vial flipped through the air and cracked open on the ground, the clear liquid inside instantly turning green and frothy.
“What are you doing?” George shouted from outside. “You’re going to kill yourself with radiation.”
“I need this. I can do it.” He pulled off one sweat-soaked mitten, then tried to pull it on top of the other one. A tight fit. He had to push his fingers together until the bones were straining against each other, but he did it.
He needed it. He needed the answer to his wildest dreams—this was the cure for evil, nothing less.
With a double mitten like a lobster claw, he reached for another vial. Clamped on. Still very hot, the skin on his fingertips blistering and the wool of his mittens smoking. But he almost had it. Cleared the crate. Carefully stepped backward through the opening. Then he stood and let the vial lie in his hand. He pulled both mittens inside out, the way a surgeon would his glove, so that the vial was cushioned inside. His hands shook. He felt sick to his stomach. He dropped to his hands and knees and hacked up slime, wheezed, but he felt good.
George hovered over his shoulder. “What are you going to do with that?”
Matt cleared his throat and said, “I’m going to save the world.”
The next problem was how to save the traffic-jam zombies. Matt guessed that in a real-world situation—you know, with actual bombs killing actual people—the infected survivors wouldn’t die from the radiation. It would fade away when the virus had worked its way into a cozy hiding place. But here, now, where all of these precious bags of blood and warmth were freezing their asses off, standing as close to the source of the fallout as possible would, yes, make them all dead within hours.
Matt paced around the truck, arms crossed. The vial in his pocket warmed him all over, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the radiation got to him, too.
He wondered if his body could take it.
He’d handled death, sure, but not the nightmare of the modern age. Thinking about how even Mr. Dark had a fatal flaw, he wondered about himself. Could this vial give him cancer? Worse?
It didn’t matter. As soon as he’d helped these people, he would need a ride to Minneapolis. He would find a way to get in at Pavlov & Kirk, maybe hire on as a driver, now that there was an opening, and hope to high hell that he could find out as much as he could about what they were planning.
“Can’t flip it upright.”
George shook his head. “Why not just go find another truck? There should be plenty of them out there. Why not the police van?”
No, not the van. They might not be in the best condition in there, but at least Jimmy, Rhonda, and the others were safe. Sort of. “I don’t want to risk it. The road is jam-packed, both directions.”
“Can we bury it?”
That could be it. Yeah. Bury it, but then again… “It’s melting all the snow.”
“If we dig deep enough—”
“Then it’ll be a pond of melted snow.” Wait, that sounded better than it should’ve. “But can the water keep it cold enough?”
“That’s how they do it in nuclear power plants. Submerge the rods in cold water. I think it would work for this, too.”
Not the way George was thinking, no. Close, though. It wasn’t the best option, but it would do until spring. He’d worry about that later. “I need a sled.”
It was right under their noses. It just took a half hour to figure it out. The sliding panel on the back of the truck required tools to take it off, so that was out of the question. Cardboard? No, the weight of the load would rip it apart, and the snow would turn the rest into mush.
But the boarded-up rest-area door? The one that kept banging open? It was solid, a tough hunk of wood.
Matt freed it from its hinges with a couple of hard ax strikes. He found some rope in the maintenance closet, then bashed a couple of holes in the plywood, tied each end of the rope through. They dragged it back to the truck, and together George and Matt carried the steel crates from the truck to the sled.
Each one wa
s more than a hundred pounds, and there were five of them. George could barely get the first one up to waist level, so it was slow going. None of the zombies offered to help, although Matt kept egging them on.
The sun was beginning to set, and Matt wondered where all of the police and ambulances were.
Didn’t they usually come out to help in situations like these? So why were they all alone out here?
Wishful thinking. Matt had to focus on the sled, the crates, and the next move.
“So are you up for this?”
George nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“We’ve got to find another pond. Let’s just head back in the direction of the other one and hope we stumble across some ice.”
One last look at the zombies, at the truck, the back now filled with as much snow as they could shovel inside with their hands to cover the broken vials and green froth. Most had melted almost immediately, but the glow had dimmed. It was enough for now.
Matt slipped the rope over his shoulder, then George slipped an end over his, and they began to pull the sled. Barely. All the strain they could muster helped propel them only a few feet with each attempt. Matt could tell this was going to be a long haul, if they could make it at all.
“Let’s go again.” It came out as a whisper. Not enough air in his lungs.
George was heaving, hands on his knees. “I…I can’t… Minute, please. Wait…”
“Maybe I can push.”
“Wouldn’t matter.”
“Come on, damn it! There’s got to be something.”
“I’ll pull again. Slow and steady. Let’s do it.”
One more hard pull, the rope burning as it ripped into Matt’s shoulder. Another step. His feet slipped and he tried hard to hold on, but then he was on his ass, tangled in the rope, looking at the sky. Behind the sled, which had traveled all of ten feet now, the zombies had lined up in rows of three and were following along. They walked when the sled moved, stopped when it stopped.
“I don’t get it.”
George said, “Remember, close to the source. The warmth helps them multiply.”
“But they don’t know what our plan is, do they? They just go where the stuff goes.”
Matt got up and pulled the warm bundle of mittens from his pocket. He stepped over to one of the zombies and held out the sample.
The man turned his head. He was a younger guy, maybe in his early twenties. Pretty tough customer, Matt guessed from the haircut. He moved the sample back and forth in front of the guy’s eyes like a cop field-testing a drunk driver. Sure enough, his eyes followed back and forth, back and forth, up and down.
Matt took a few steps back, and the zombie took a few forward, with a couple of friends following, too.
Matt grinned. “I’ve got an idea.”
He handpicked the strongest of the zombies—seven was all he could fit under the rope—and led them across the snow, walking backward with the ball of mittens, now dry in his hand and growing hotter. The zombies followed, back toward the interstate with all of its roadside ponds. Even the tiniest bit of warmth was enough to keep them chasing the vial. The rest stumbled along after the sled, mindless. More than a mile of them. Occasionally, some would fall face-first into the snow long enough for the cold to shock them awake, resulting in screams, shouts for help, and crying. But it wasn’t long before the others had gathered them up and returned them to the march.
He asked George, “Why can’t they stay awake? What’s the problem?”
“Here’s my guess. The internal body temperature is ninety-eight point six degrees, and that’s enough to keep the blood warm. It would take a massive sudden drop to shock this thing. Like in the pond, when you pushed me under and I nearly died—”
“Wait a minute.” Matt held up his hand, stopped the march. He tried to listen over the mumbling laughs of the zombies. “Do you hear that? Sirens?”
They both stood still, trying to locate the sound. “Maybe, but it could be…wait, over there.” George pointed farther down the road.
Through the fog of the falling snow, there was a red pulsing light. Then another, getting brighter. The pulse began to shrink, and they could finally hear the sirens. The lights were attached to ambulances, three of them, headed down the shoulder of the interstate, stopping not even one hundred yards from their procession.
Matt let out a sigh and closed his eyes for a moment. He needed to get the crates into the water, but first he could tell the paramedics to keep these people colder. Had to convince them somehow that heat wasn’t the answer.
And what about George? Wouldn’t they be on the hunt for him? Was this going to end badly?
He was about to turn and tell George to hide in the crowd of zombies when the back doors on the ambulances swung open and a whole bunch of paramedics streamed out of each one at a dead run straight for them.
A whole bunch of rotting, stinking paramedics.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Matt barely had time to get his ax ready before the first one lunged for him.
Matt took him out with a chop to the stomach.
Then he whirled and caught the next one right in the face.
He lost count of how many there were, stopped at twenty, and ran over to help George, who’d been besieged by the paramedics. They pulled his arms from both ends, George screaming. Matt took the ax to the paramedic, a gruesome thud that went right through to the backs of Matt’s elbows, but it was too late. They had already stretched George to the breaking point, both arms tearing off before Matt could slice all the way through. The other paramedic was beating George with his own arm when Matt split his spinal cord in two.
George fell, bleeding profusely. Matt knelt beside him but knew the little guy had only a few minutes left.
Still he said, “It’s going to be okay.”
George smiled. “More than you know. Thank you, Matt. Really, you saved me. You did.”
“Look, we can pack the wounds with snow. Your arms are right here. We can do this.”
“Don’t, please. They would just send me back to jail.” He winced and spasmed, than went slack in Matt’s arms. His voice was strained now. “Please don’t let him win, okay?”
“Don’t let who win?”
“Exactly. Just…I tried. You know I tried.”
Matt felt his stomach sink as George breathed one more time and let it vaporize into the air. Matt laid him down carefully. He could afford to. Dark’s pack of EMTs was too busy with the zombies. A standoff. The minions seemed afraid to touch the infected people. Matt watched, out of the way, as they growled and lunged, but none of them dared take down a zombie.
One of them, a big fat guy, turned and gave Matt a nasty glare. Then he called out to the others, who also turned to face Matt. Bloody eyes, eye sockets, an unnerving pack of medical professionals. Matt stood, readied the ax for another round. Way outnumbered. But he’d been outnumbered before. In all this time, Mr. Dark could have stomped him out of existence. He’d had so many chances that Matt began to believe that the evil bastard didn’t want him dead after all.
Until now.
Then they all turned away, walked over to the sled, grabbed the rope, and took off. They were running with the crates in tow as if they weighed nothing at all.
Matt ran hard, trying to catch up. The snow was too deep. There were too many of them. He was dead tired, and his feet were going numb. He had done his best, but, goddamn it, he fell face-first into the next snow dune, and he was out of it. No más.
He even had to laugh as the zombies raced by, hot on the trail. Good for them, he thought. Good for them.
Then he passed out.
Cold.
Dark.
A face, coming closer, out of focus but growing clearer.
Close-up.
Mr. Dark’s face.
“Wake up, Matty boy! You’ve got work to do!”
He woke with a start, no longer lying in the snow. The ambulance siren was screaming in his ears. Worse, there were p
aramedics hovering over him.
Freaked. Out.
The two paramedics grabbed his arms and held him down. “Mister, please, you’re okay, it’s okay!”
It took Matt a minute to realize these weren’t the evil EMTs. He was in the back of an ambulance. Safe and warm.
“What’s going on?”
“You tell me. People went bat-shit crazy out there. We found all sorts of people half-frozen in the snow, cars packed with people we thought had the flu or something.”
Matt blinked. Thought about George. “There was a man with me. Lost his arms.”
“Who?”
“What about the virus? The vial in my pocket? The mittens?”
The EMT shook his head. “No idea. I think you may have been hallucinating.”
“Did they find the truck? The overturned truck behind the rest area?”
The paramedics stared at each other, shrugging. Forget it. They were clueless. Matt would figure it out later.
“Where’s my ax?”
“Oh yeah, no problem. You were still holding on to that, Paul Bunyan.” The EMT kicked something with his shoe. “You some kind of lumberjack?”
Matt dropped his hand to the floor of the ambulance, felt the familiar grain of the wood handle. “Something like that.”
In the Fargo ER, the nurses were surprised that there was nothing wrong with Matt that a quilt and a cup of hot coffee couldn’t fix. Surprised, because it certainly wasn’t working for anyone else they brought in from the road. He had snooped around, listened to some of the conversations between doctors and nurses, and they were discovering what Matt already knew—warmth made it worse, but the colder they were, the better. In fact, they had started dunking some of the most comatose of them into an ice bath for an almost-instant cure.
Colder than Hell Page 8