by A. R. Wise
He put his arm out for Hero to help. "I need you to wrap one of those strips around my elbow. Then slide this rubber band up over it. Billy, look for some sort of soft material. Something I can put on the bite."
There was a round, plastic cup next to the cash register that had a pink sponge in it. The clerks that worked at this shop used it to wet their fingers when counting money and I thought it would be perfect. "There's this," I showed it to him.
"I can't use that, they put their fingers all over that. I need something sterile."
Under the counter was another one of the pink sponges, but it was still in a wrapper. I showed it to him and said, "There's another sponge, but it's hard as a rock."
"That'll be fine," said Reagan. "The blood will soften it up."
Reagan set the sponge over the bite mark and then Hero went to use a strip of white fabric to wrap it. The old Captain took the strip away from him before he could get started. "Watch out. Don't get any blood on you."
Hero stepped back and we watched Reagan bandage himself. He grunted as the cloth strip wound tighter and he efficiently used both his left hand and his teeth to do a better job wrapping than either of us could have. Within minutes he was finished and ready to go.
"How many times have you done that?" I asked. "You look like a pro."
Reagan stood up and smiled at me. "I look like a pro doing just about anything." He laughed at his own joke, but we took him seriously.
"You guys want some water?" asked Hero. "There's a fridge filled with bottled water in the break room."
"Yeah, that'd be great," I said. Hero headed into the back and I took advantage of my time alone with Reagan. "Thanks, by the way, for saving me."
"You owe me one." Reagan set his right arm on top of his head and leaned against the wall. I assumed he was trying to keep his wound elevated.
"Why'd you do it? Why'd you save me?"
"Would you prefer I hadn't?"
"Of course not. I just figured you were waiting for a chance to take me out. That would've been a pretty good time for it."
"You still haven't told me where my boys are at. If you really want to pay me back for saving your life you can use my earpiece, the one in your pocket, and radio their location over to my team. How's that sound?"
I looked down and recalled the image of William's death at my hands. "Maybe. Not yet, though. Not until we're safe."
We heard a commotion from the back of the shop. It sounded like water bottles smashing against the floor and we both ran to see what had happened.
The back room was littered with coat racks and fabric. There was a small table and chairs set against the far wall with a fridge beside it. Next to that was a threshold to another room and Hero stood within it, staring away from us. Bottles of water rolled around at his feet.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He backed away from the office and gazed at me. His face had a frightened pallor and his eyes darted from me to the room and back again. He mouthed a few words, but none of them came out loud enough to understand.
I cautiously advanced, with a tight grip on my pistol, and peered into the room. A man in a suit dangled by an electrical cord tied to the ceiling. There was a sign on his chest printed in thick black letters that read, "The military did this. I have proof."
Below the sign, taped to the man's stomach, was a camera.
I almost moved into the room to get the camera when Hero stopped me. "Look at his eyes," he said and pointed at the dead man's face.
It looked back at us. The man was a zombie, but the noose hampered his movement somehow. Only its face was animated as the rest of him hung motionless.
"He must have broken his neck or something," said Hero as we examined the corpse.
"Not from that height," said Reagan. "Maybe it has something to do with oxygen flow or he has swelling on his spine. I think we proved, in the alley, that these things die when you snap their necks." He picked up the creature's arm and then let go to watch it flop back down.
"Don't touch it," I said.
Reagan shrugged and showed us his bandaged arm. "What's it going to do? Infect me?"
"Look at its eyes, man," said Hero. He was transfixed. "That shit is freaky." He quivered comically. "Gives me the creeps."
"Get me a knife or something," said Reagan as he inspected the small, white camera taped to the zombie's chest. It was a Flip Camera, about the size of a large candy bar, and the lens pointed out at us.
"Get the fuck outta here," said Hero. "You're the last person I'm giving a knife to. Back up." He pulled out the blade we'd taken from Reagan earlier and cut the camera off the corpse.
I couldn't look away from the creature's eyes as they darted back and forth, watching us. Its mouth opened and closed slightly, like a hungry dog told to stay while staring at a bowl of meat. The man had been wearing a suit when he died and I tried to imagine what he looked like when alive. I didn't have to wait long to find out.
Hero turned the camera on and started to play the most recent video. The first face we saw on the tiny screen belonged to the man that dangled beside us. He was young, handsome, and well groomed. I compared the man on the screen to the dead one above me and was shocked at how dramatic the decay had ravaged him.
"I want you to see this," said the panicked clerk. He spoke to the camera as he recorded himself. He was in the tuxedo shop and there was a myriad of loud sounds that drowned out his words. It sounded like the mall was being attacked as thunderous crashes caused him to flinch again and again. "People need to see this."
He pointed the camera away from himself and to the vestibule of the mall that we'd entered moments before. It was intact, as opposed to the bombed entrance that it was now, but there was activity outside. It was hard to see what was happening other than that the doors had been propped open and figures in black were moving around outside. Reagan leaned in to get a closer look.
Then the camera swung back around to stare at the clerk. "They've closed off all the exits. They shot my boss." Again, the camera swirled to look at something else. The jarring movement of his nervous grip on the camera made it hard to focus on anything, but he let the scene sit on a crumpled mass of clothes on the floor near a bench. "There he is. They shot him. He went out to ask for help and they shot him."
I realized that the mass of cloth on the floor was a body. The sight didn't register for me until he explained what it was, and then it became all too clear. The camera swung back around to look into the sweating clerk's pale face as he stammered.
"It's the military. They're killing people. They're just fucking shooting us. Doesn't matter who we are, or anything. They're just shooting you the second they see you."
A woman's voice called out from the hallway and the clerk looked away from the camera to see what was happening. He turned the camera around and we saw a woman in a dress leading a little boy, no older than five, toward the exit. She waved her hand in the air as she spoke to the soldiers outside.
"We've been hiding in the restroom. Please help us."
"No!" said the clerk. The camera wobbled as he tried to call out to the woman. "Don't go out there. Don't go…"
The woman heard him and turned to look into the tuxedo shop. Then the microphone of the camera struggled to capture the sound of a rifle shot. The sudden blast startled Hero and me.
When the camera settled again we saw the child standing alone in the vestibule. He glanced down to his right at his dead mother, but he didn't move. Then there was a second gunshot and I had to stop watching.
I turned away from the camera's grisly display and locked eyes with the old Captain. His face bore a sadness that revealed his defeat. Reagan had been a beacon of assurance and determination until now. He had accepted the duty of a soldier with the understanding that the horrors he inflicted were meant to serve the greater good. His resilience had been shattered.
"Who's the good guy now?" I asked.
Reagan didn't answer me. He just stared down in contempla
tion as he grinded some of the white powder between his fingers.
CHAPTER EIGHT - CHANGING ROLES
"They must've had a reason," said Reagan.
"Fuck that," said Hero as he stopped the video and put the camera in his pocket. We didn't have the stomach to watch any more even though the video went on for several more minutes. "Ain't no way you can tell me that little kid was a threat. I just watched your goons put a bullet in a little boy's head."
"The mall was probably infected. They must have found results that showed it couldn't be saved."
"That was the strike team though," I said. "They were supposed to clear the streets. That's what you told us."
Reagan was quick to respond as the conversation grew tense. "The streets and any buildings that were lost causes."
"What about the camps?" asked Hero. "Why didn't they take that kid and his mom to a camp? Isn't that what they were supposed to be doing?"
"Yes," said Reagan. His response came out weak, nearly a whisper.
Hero pushed the butt of his gun against Reagan's right shoulder in an aggressive move as he shouted, "Isn't that what they were supposed to do?"
"Yes." Reagan said louder and slapped the gun away.
"Well, looks to me like they took that kid to camp Bullet-In-The-Head. What's that about, Cap? Huh? What the fuck did your guys do that for?"
"I don't have to explain this to you."
Hero took a step back and pointed the shotgun at Reagan. "Bullshit. I'm exactly the mother fucker you need to explain this shit to."
"Let's calm down." I tried to control the situation, but the argument had escalated into a shouting match that I couldn't stop.
"Think about what happened the last time you pointed that gun at me," said Reagan.
Hero took another step back and bumped into the corpse strung up in the center of the room. The collision startled Hero, but he was able to keep his gun pointed at Reagan without wavering. He was far more scared of the Captain than any zombie. "Go ahead and try something, old man," said Hero. "I'll gladly put my last buckshot in your ugly ass face."
"Do you honestly think I like seeing that video?" asked Reagan. His voice took on a more sympathetic tone. "I hate that as much as you do. More, probably. God damn it. I don't know what that was about. I don't know."
I could see the Captain struggle to make sense of what we'd seen. It affected him deeply, and I knew it was hard for him to watch.
"Maybe you need to accept what's going on here," said Hero. "Time to wake the fuck up and take a look around. This isn't a standard response to a virus or something. This is genocide. They're wiping us out."
Reagan fished a necklace out from under his shirt. It was a silver cross on a thin rope chain. He kissed the top and held it up to show us. "See this? It's a cross that was given to me by General Richard J. Covington. Do you know who that is?"
I shook my head and Hero said dismissively, "Nope."
"General Covington is one of the greatest men in this country and he's the one heading this operation up. There's no one in the world I respect more than that man. So, if you're trying to convince me that Covington, my good, personal friend, has ordered the wholesale slaughter of millions of people for, from what I've been able to gather from you, no good reason at all. Well, son, you're talking pure nonsense."
"What more proof do you need?" asked Hero as he pat his pocket where the camera was. "You need him to call you up and say that he did it?"
"I have faith in that man," said Reagan. "Nothing you can say will change that. There must've been a reason for what they did here. I know it's hard for you to believe, but that's the truth."
Hero gave up and left the back room after cursing a few more times. Reagan and I didn't say anything as we grabbed a couple of the bottles of water that Hero had dropped.
I expected Hero to be gone when we came back to the front of the shop, but he was waiting for us. His shotgun rested over his right shoulder as he walked over the debris in the hall in front of the tuxedo shop. He stopped in the spot where the boy and his mother had been shot, but there were no bodies there now. The white powder was missing from the place that they had died. There were footsteps leading away from the bare spot they left behind.
Hero shook his head and said, "Fuck it. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of this God damn city."
We stayed quiet as we left the mall. The knowledge of what happened here, less than a day ago, disturbed me as we made our way down the avenue toward Venture Street. I heard noises from far off, probably made by Bravo Team as they cleared the streets north of us, and every crash sounded like a gunshot to me now. I cringed after every one.
"Let's go through the back," said Hero as we neared his building. "I don't want to go up on Venture. They might see us. Be quiet."
Hero and his brother lived in a corner building that housed a liquor store and a health food shop on street level. The apartments above stretched for six stories and we were able to get into the building from a rear entrance that had been propped open with a brick. Hero guided us in and then kicked the brick away to let the door shut and lock behind us.
The entrance opened into a hallway and a staircase that led to the apartments above. It was eerily similar to the hallway where I'd choked Williams to death an hour ago.
Hero ascended the stairs two at a time with a graceful, quick stride. He called down to us to hurry as Reagan and I ascended slowly. The rickety wooden stairwell groaned beneath us and the railing wiggled in my grip. The stairs were dark except for the glow of the exit signs that were lit by the building's back-up power.
The brothers' apartment was on the fourth floor, near the stairwell. Hero knocked on the door in three quick taps followed by a short pause and then two taps. We waited for a minute before he tried the knock again.
"Mother fucker, come on," said Hero. He slammed the door with the side of his fist and then did the special knock again. "I did the fucking knock. Let me in, Mark."
A stern voice came from the other side, "That wasn't the knock, idiot. It's four, wait, two."
"You can hear it's me," said Hero. "Open up."
The mail slot on the front of the door opened and I saw a pair of eyes staring through. It snapped back shut. "Who's with you?"
"They're cool," said Hero. "They're with me. Come on, Mark, open the fucking door."
"One of them has a hazmat suit on," said Mark. He spoke with such a drastically different inflection from Hero that I wondered if this was someone other than his brother.
"He's cool. That's Billy. He killed a dude and stole his suit."
"I didn't kill anyone," I said for Reagan's benefit.
"Damn it, Levon," said Mark. "Why are you bringing them here?"
"I came to get you, dumb ass," said Hero. "Were getting the fuck out of the city before they blow it to hell. Now let us in."
"Where's Aunt Dee?"
"She was gone. Now let us in."
Mark yelled at Hero as we listened to the locks on the other side of the door unlatch. Finally, the door opened and a katana burst out, pointed at my face. Hero slapped the sword aside and chastised his brother for having it.
Mark was a young, black man in a wheelchair. His head was shaved and he wore a thin t-shirt that showed off his muscular upper frame. He had multiple piercings on his face and rings in his ear that stretched the hole in his lobe wide enough to fit a finger through. Despite the startling differences between the two men's personalities, it was clear they were identical twins.
"Guys, this is my bro," said Hero. "Mark, this is Billy and Reagan. Stop giving Billy the evil eyes, save those for the old fuck. He's one of the douchebags. He's the one shooting kids."
Mark spun the wheels on his chair so that he rolled back and to the side. His wheelchair was an impressive piece of machinery. It was taller than most I'd seen and had a subwoofer under the seat. There were speakers soldered to the frame near the handles and a dock for an mp3 player on the armrest beside a joystick that controlled
the chair's movement. I guessed that the battery on the chair was dead or he was saving energy as he manually rolled around the small loft.
"Why the hell did you bring him here?" asked Mark.
"Long story, man," said Hero. "Let's just get our shit and get out of here."
"Do you have some clothes I could wear?" I asked. "This suit is hot as hell. I'm drenched in sweat."
"Yeah, no problem."
"Thanks, Hero," I said.
Mark started to laugh and Hero shot him a dirty glance. "You got them to call you that?"
"That's my name, asshole," said Hero.
"No it isn't. You're name's Levon." He turned to me and said again, "His name's Levon. He used to try to get everyone to call him Hero, but no one ever did."
"Bullshit," said Levon. "Lots of people call me Hero."
"Like who?" asked Mark.
"Plenty of folks."
"Yeah right."
Levon threw me a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt that he took from a dresser against the wall. I happily unzipped the cumbersome suit and climbed out of it. My clothes were soaked with sweat and I had to worm my way out of them. I held on to the pistol as I changed, just in case Reagan decided to take advantage of the situation in some way.
"You want that hammer?" asked Reagan as he picked up the pants I'd been wearing. I'd slid the hammer through one of the belt loops and there was a screwdriver poking out from one of the pockets.
"What do you guys think?" I asked Levon and Mark. "I grabbed a screwdriver and a hammer earlier. Can I put them in your chair for the time being?"
"If you can find room," said Mark. "The sub I've got hooked up down there and the battery take up a lot of space. You don't have to worry about the sword here though, I got the scabbard sewn into the back of the chair for it."
"That's a hell of a rig you've got set up," I said as Reagan took the tools over to the chair and searched for space to put them.
"He's a mobile party ninja," said Levon as he gathered pictures and other trinkets from his dresser to take with us. "Shame all he listens to is that metal shit."