by S. B. Poe
“Hey, what the hell is going on?” Bridger and the girl looked back towards the road to see her husband stumbling up towards them.
She stood and walked towards him motioning for him to stay where he was. He stopped. Bridger took one more look at the scene in front of him. Two people had died right here. Apparently one of them, twice. He turned to join the couple by the road.
JW stood with his back to the cul-de-sac watching Kate get out of the bus she had just parked. It was parked nose to tail from the one JW had just parked. JW had pulled his into the woods just a little bit and Kate had parallel parked between the end of JW’s bus and the woods behind her. She had to run over a few of the smaller pine trees to wedge it in tight.
“OK, I think that will do what we need.” JW said.
Josh and Scott were already back inside the house and had gone to Scott’s room to try and see if there was any more information. Scott clicked on the FEMA website. The normal splash page had been changed.
***
A SHELTER IN PLACE ORDER IS IN EFFECT
“FEMA is now being directed at the state level. The Federal Emergency System has been fully activated. All coordination for assistance and evacuations should be directed to the respective state emergency management systems.
***
He clicked on the CNN link and it was completely down. As he started looking through all the news links he would find some down, probably overwhelmed, and some had quit updating their content. Information, it seemed, was becoming the latest victim of Marionette. He began looking at social media. There was a lot more information but he had always viewed it as mostly made up crap. He decided that under the circumstances he would be more open-minded. He found a lot of videos of folks seemingly infected by Marionette, and he also found a lot of conspiracy theories. Some said it was an attack by aliens, some by Bigfoot and an interesting one about global warming releasing ancient bacteria. The one video that got his attention showed a girl on the ground with someone biting her leg. She was screaming and when they finally got the biter off her she scrambled back away. As the camera turned from the biter, lying on the ground dead after being hit in the head with a shovel, to the girl it shows her face and as you watch, her eyes go opaque and she bites the arm of the guy who is carrying her. The person operating the camera screams and takes off but as they put the phone to their side to run, you can see the girl continuing to bite (eat) the guy’s arm.
Josh looked away from the monitor briefly to see JW standing in the doorway.
His mouth was open and Josh thought he saw, for the first time ever, fear wash over his Dad’s face. It was almost immediately replaced with a face Josh had seen all his life. The face he had seen when he and Josh were on the way to the hospital when Josh broke his leg. The face he had seen when Scott had that incident with the butcher knife that cost Scott the tip of his pinky. The face he had seen his dad make to his mother when they were struggling with money. The face that said, don’t worry, I will take care of it. Josh began to wonder if that face he had always seen as reassuring was just a mask. In that moment, he looked just a little smaller to Josh.
Scott turned around and asked.
“What do you think, Josh?” he asked, seeing his father standing in the doorway.
“Hey Dad, did you see that?” Scott asked.
JW answered.
“I saw it, I think we need to start thinking about what we do next.” he said.
“JOHN get out here now.” Kate yelled.
All three ran out the front door, half expecting to see her down on the ground being attacked just like the girl in the video. Instead, Kate was standing in the street pointing back up towards the top of the hill where they had just parked the buses.
“There is someone up there walking around the buses.” Kate said.
From their angle looking back up towards the buses, which were about 100 yards away, they could see a set of legs walking on the other side. It looked like dark pants with dark shoes.
“I bet it’s the deputy. I better go up there.” JW started walking. Josh fell in beside him.
Kate and Scott waited. JW and Josh wedged themselves between the buses but when they got through they didn’t see anyone at first, then they saw the deputy standing up the road. They walked a few steps towards the deputy and called out but the deputy was focused on the house up the road and had started walking towards it. Josh ran on ahead a few steps. JW thought to himself that the deputy was being really cautious about where he was looking. The deputy was bent over a little as he walked forward and JW thought it made the deputy looked like he was shuffling. Josh was reaching out to get the deputies attention. Shuffling, shuffling. JW quit thinking. The gun was out and the round had already slammed into the back of the deputy’s head before Josh ever touched him. JW stood there, wisps of smoke coming from the end of the Ruger, and started shaking. He managed to thumb the safety back on and holster the gun before he threw up. Barely.
“Jesus Dad, Jesus. You just killed him. You just killed a cop. Are you out of your mind?” Josh was screaming at JW. JW, for his part, was doubled over trying to figure out why lunch came before breakfast. Josh kept yelling and backing up towards the buses. Kate pushed through just as Josh reached the bus.
“What happened, are you ok, where is your father, was that a gunshot?” Kate fired questions at Josh, who was still yelling towards back towards his father. She could see JW up the road a little doubled over.
“He just shot him. He just blew his head off. He’s crazy mom. I think he snapped. He just shot him.” Josh finally answered her.
Kate started walking towards JW. He glanced up and saw her coming and stood. She raised her arms up slightly, palms down, letting JW know to just calm down. He got the message. She walked up to him and hugged him. She wasn’t quite sure what happened, but she had actually seen him snap once. This wasn’t what it looked like. At least not the vomit.
“Hey, hey. It’s ok. What happened?” she asked.
“I shot him. I think he was one of those things. He wouldn’t answer, he just kept walking. Josh was reaching for him. I…I…” he trailed off.
“John, was he one of those things? Was he?” she begged
JW looked at her, eyes red rimmed and bloodshot and tears slowly coming down his cheek.
“I don’t know” he collapsed to his knees. She went down with him.
Bridger knelt down beside the couple as they sat down on one of the logs scattered across the road. Cars pulled up to the wreck but they were all hesitant to try and get around it. As they quickly u-turned to find another route Bridger could see the faces in the cars. It was panic.
“Listen, I don’t know what is going on, but I don’t think any help is coming.” He started.
“I think we all are going to be on our own for a while. My name is Bridger, Bridger Preston.” He extended his hand towards the couple. The man took his hand off his head and shook it.
“Raj Varma. This is my wife, Tilly.” He said. Nodding towards the girl Bridger had just (saved?) helped.
“We were trying to get back to South Carolina.” Raj continued.
“And now our car is a fucking pancake.” Tilly chimed in.
Bridger didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t about turn around and head back north but he didn’t want to just leave these folks on the side of the road.
“Listen, I can’t help you get to Carolina but I have a friend a little ways south of here that will let you stay with him until we can figure it out. I don't know if that would help or not but I am offering to let you go with me to South Springs.”
The two looked at each other. Tilly spoke.
“Mister”
“Bridger” he interrupted
“Bridger, mister, whatever. After what the fuck I just saw back there I don’t give a rats ass if you are going to Eastbumfuck Egypt, just take us the fuck with you.” She said.
“She gets going when she gets nervous.” Raj said.
“Yeah, I cau
ght that.” He said
“Fuck you both.” Tilly stood.
“Are you sure we’ll be safe going to South Springs.” He asked
“Raj, I don’t know if we’ll be safe walking over there and getting your stuff out of your car, but I guess we’ll find out.” He said.
They all stood and walked over to the crushed car. They could get to the back seat, which allowed them to pull some of their things from the trunk. Raj and Tilly were on a belated honeymoon in New Orleans so they had a few suitcases of clothes and not much else. They hadn’t exactly planned for the end of the world. They loaded the things they had into the trunk of Bridger’s car. Tilly got in the front seat so Raj could lie down in the back. They slowly wound their way around the scattered logs and came out the other side heading south on 44 again. It had started to get dark. Bridger could see the lights from a gas station. Raj was resting across the back seat. As they passed the station, the lights flickered out and back on again. They kept driving. Raj started talking.
“Back there, at the wreck, we had left New Orleans this morning trying to get back home. The interstate was very busy and we got caught in a traffic jam. We got off the interstate and had started going on the back roads. The phones quit working and we had pulled over to try and figure out which way to go. The truck just came around the corner and turned over on us. We were just sitting there.” He trailed off.
“Do you know what is happening?” Tilly asked.
Bridger was caught off guard because she hadn’t used fuck every third word.
“Not sure, but I have seen a lot of the same kind of things from video’s of this Marionette virus going around.”
“Yeah, you already said that, but I asked if you knew what the fuck is happening” There she was. “I mean why the fuck is the radio only playing that stupid FEMA warning and nothing else? Why don’t our phones work? Why are the lights flickering? I mean a fucking virus doesn’t make the fucking phones quit working? It’s obviously not a fucking computer virus, so I’ll ask you again, do you know what the fuck is happening?” she spoke the last line somewhat mockingly for someone who had just been saved by the guy she was mocking, Bridger thought.
“No. I don’t know for sure but I can make a guess, that’s what I do for a living, make guesses. My guess is that this virus is making people panic, and possibly for good reason, and when people panic accidents happen. If those accidents affect the right power distribution sources, like say, a transmission line to a cell tower or twenty, then you have outages. If the folks who are supposed to fix those power disruptions and outages are also panicking, they aren’t working. Things begin to break down. If the crisis passes, things get fixed. We are right now at the finding out if the crisis is going to pass stage. But that is just a guess.” Bridger finished.
“Well that’s fucking great.” Tilly said as they drove into the growing darkness.
Kate had managed to get JW back in the house. He was sitting in the living room leaned forward in his chair, hands crossed against his forehead like he was praying. Kate was trying to finish cooking, even though she knew nobody felt like eating. Josh had gone into Scott’s room. Kate walked to the door.
“Josh, can we go outside and talk for a minute.” Just as she said that the lights flickered.
“Crap.” Scott said, as his monitors blinked and everything started rebooting.
“Sure, nothing to see here anyway.” Josh said and followed her out.
They walked out onto the front porch, the sun was finishing its day and the sky had turned purple, Kate motioned for Josh to sit down in the swing with her. He sat.
“Josh, I don’t know what you think happened up there.” Kate started
“I know exactly what happened up there, Mom. He freaked. He shot the guy.” Josh interrupted.
“He thought he was going to hurt you, he thought he was infected with this virus.” Kate said
“So because he thought the guy was infected, he shot him. What if he thinks I am infected or you or Scott, does he just shoot us?” Josh asked.
“That’s different Josh, your father did what he did to protect you. Don’t you see that?” Kate said.
“No mom, I don’t see…what the hell?” Josh was looking past his mother.
There was a woman just squeezing through the buses and as Josh looked past her he could see someone else trying to follow her. They both stood. The woman fell down. They took off running towards the top of the road. The woman was screaming and trying to get up. The other person had made in through and just as Josh and Kate were approaching he fell on top of the woman. She screamed in pain. Kate and Josh stopped. They could see the man taking bites of skin off the woman’s face. Every time it’s head lifted up a gush of blood would fill the hole it had made with its teeth. The woman was taking deep breaths and screaming and trying to get free but with every move the gnashing jaws of her attacker would clamp down and she would scream again, it's hand digging into the flesh of her stomach and coming up bloody.
Josh looked down at his mother’s hip and saw the gun she had been wearing since they stole the buses. He grabbed it out of the holster before Kate could stop him. He thumbed the safety and fired. The round hit it in the back. It looked up. The woman screamed and it went back to biting her in the chest. He fired again and it turned to look at Josh and Kate. They were standing about fifteen feet away. It bit into the woman again. She had stopped moving. Josh fired once more into it’s back. It stood walked towards them. He fired three more rounds haphazardly at it. The first shot hit its throat. The second shot hit it just under the eye and it went down. The third shot missed entirely. They stood there.
Kate slid past the body on the ground and went to the woman. She was dead. Kate closed the woman’s eyes and walked back over to Josh. He was still pointing the gun at the pile in front of him. His eyes were wide.
“Hey, hey. You ok?” Kate asked a stupid question and knew it. “It’s ok, honey. Just let me take the gun.” He handed it over without a thought.
“Shit, mom. What was that?” Josh was starting to shake a little.
“I don’t know son. I don’t know” She turned to hug him.
As she did she could hear…something. She looked back. The woman had raised her head. Kate stepped back, pulling Josh with her. He reached out and steadied her. The woman was now raising herself up onto her elbows, trying to sit up. Her abdomen had been torn and eaten and she didn’t have the muscle left to sit up. The signals still went to her legs and they started drawing up and twisting. When she rolled to one side what guts were left inside her spilled out on the road. She managed to get her arms under her as she rolled over and she raised her face to them. Her eyes were opaque and her face was dripping blood out of each bite the thing had made. She looked at Kate and Josh, and screeched.
Kate’s face had contorted into a mix of fear and pity. The last expression was resolution. She raised the pistol she had taken from Josh. She shot the woman in the forehead. They stumbled back towards the house. Kate stopped.
“What?” Josh sounded exasperated.
“If those two can get through, others can too. We have to move the bus a little. Just a little. Just enough to close that gap.” She said.
Her and Josh started back to the buses. They carefully walked around the two bodies now lying in the street. She climbed into the bus and put it in neutral. There was enough downhill slope that it rolled forward on its own until it touched the back of the other bus. She climbed back out. They stood for a second. They were both trying to process what had just happened. Josh was wondering what they were going to do next. Kate was wondering what it was like on the other side of those buses. Evening had given way to the streetlamp. It flickered. They ran back to the house.
4
The dying fire
They had made good time down 44 and they were about forty miles from South Springs. Bridger had noticed that the traffic was starting to get a little heavier coming from the direction they were going. Most of the
houses and businesses they passed had no lights. They hadn’t passed anything in a while except pine trees and power poles.
“I have to pee.” Tilly said, breaking the silence.
“I don’t think there are any service stations nearby.” Bridger said.
“I don’t give a shit. Just stop the car and I can go on the side of the road. I am about to burst.” She said.
Bridger saw a mailbox ahead and saw that the mail truck had created place to pull over. He used it. He couldn’t see any lights up the dirt road from the mailbox.
“I think I’ll go too while we are stopped.” Raj said, sitting up in the back seat now.
They had been listening to the radio in the silence and the reporting had gone from FEMA emergency broadcasts to individuals at local stations reporting about local instances of the virus. They had not picked up any stations from South Springs yet but everything everywhere else was sounding real bad. People attacking people, police and military beginning to be overwhelmed. Shelter location reports and emergency contact information to help find missing people.
Bridger got out and walked out into the road. He scanned both directions and couldn’t see any other cars coming. Tilly had stepped out and was crouching down just outside the car with one hand on the handle for support. Raj walked to the nearest tree just off the road. He was looking back over his shoulder.
“How much longer until we get where we are going?” he asked.
“Maybe another hour or so.” Bridger replied.
Tilly and Raj were finished with their business and leaned against the back of the car. Tilly pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. Raj looked at her disapprovingly.
“Oh fuck off.” She said, as she lit the smoke.
Bridger walked to the back of the car. Pulled out a cigarette of his own and lit it.
“Where are we going?” Raj asked.
Bridger turned to answer him but his attention was drawn up the dirt road they were currently blocking. Someone was running towards them.