by Mark Tufo
“If you don’t mind, we’d like to spend a few minutes with Marion and Bobby,” I said, addressing the crowd of approximately twenty-five. “Only because they’re military trained. Not to say there aren’t others of you, but for now we’ll go over some things with them and they can pass it along to you.”
Everyone nodded tiredly, and Bobby and Marion stepped outside the cooler with us. “Look, we don’t want to stay out here too long. Smells, you know. But there are some things you need to know to make it.”
“First off,” Gem said, “get more guns. You’ll need as many as you can all carry and handle. Next, head shots. In the brain. It’s the only thing that will kill them.”
I nodded as Gem shared information. “Headaches. It seems to either come on with a massive headache, like a migraine, or how I just saw it happen. Upon the death of the uninfected.”
Bobby and Marion stared at us. Bobby spoke. “When they . . . die?”
Gem nodded. “Within ten or fifteen minutes they’re back. But not the same. Not at all the same.”
“And the heads can live without the bodies, so we can’t stress enough to inflict massive trauma on the brain. Cutting off the head just makes a dangerous bowling ball with teeth. You get bit, you become one. Scratched, we’re pretty sure you become one. There’s a lot we don’t know, but just act like what we’re telling you is gospel, and you should live to tell your grandkids about this.”
“Where are you going?” Marion asked. “Can we come with you?”
I shook my head. “Guys, I’m just like you are. I’m not suited to be part of a big group. I don’t have big plans at this point, and for Christ’s sake, I don’t want to be a leader. I think we’d like to remain a foursome. Well, plus our dog.”
Gem stared at me. “They need help, Flex.”
I stood at looked into Gem’s eyes, saw the concern there. I looked back at the sunken eyes of Bobby, a short but solid, stocky man with a round face and dark hair parted at the side with his share of cowlicks. Marion stared back, her wire-rimmed glasses askew, hair pulled back in a pony. She was about 6’3” and towered over all of us by at least three inches. She scratched her freckled nose.
“Okay, look. What we’ve just shared with you will help you a lot. Get food, water, medicine whatever you can and stock up on non-perishables. I’m going to leave you with the Hummer we brought. It’s set up with dual machine guns and should give you a hell of a fighting chance to get wherever you’re going. But you – as a group – need to decide where that is. You must understand that we haven’t got a clue where we’re headed, much less where our next stop will be.”
“And get some of these,” Gem said, unclipping the radio from her belt. “Cell phones, as you already likely know, don’t work anymore. Use channel 19. It’s what we normally broadcast and listen on. Alternate is 16. These claim to have a range of thirty to thirty-five miles, but that’s only if I’m standing on a mountain looking at you down in the valley. Otherwise, 1-3 miles on a good day. But on that good day, if you pick up any other groups in the area you can play it by ear.”
“Find out the talents of the people in your group,” I said. “Engineers, scientists, teachers, police, military. It’ll tell you how to organize them. They’re understandably traumatized, and right now they just have an overwhelming need to be back with their families, to rejoin their old lives. But those lives are history. They’re gone forever. They have to realize it, or they’ll die, and you might, too.”
“Any questions?” Gem asked.
Bobby shook his head, then nodded. “Too many, I guess,” he said. “You guys saved us back there. I don’t even remember how I got in that house, but I remember everything from the moment you woke us up.”
“We’ll add that to the mystery of this whole, horrible thing,” Gem said. “We’re working with a pretty smart scientist, and the more information we gather about what and how these infecteds work, the more likely he’ll develop a way to cure them or a way to destroy them. But at least you can know we’re doing all we can, for what it’s worth.”
We finished our explanations and shook hands with them. Before they went back inside, I pulled Marion aside.
“Marion, would you be able to go in there and see if you have a Lillian Middleton with you? Taylor’s her granddaughter, and we found her mother back at the CDC.”
Her face became hopeful. “Are there others there? Do they have a plan for this . . . this situation?”
I shook my head. “There’s only one man that we found alive there. The others are turned or dead. Listen, I have to ask you something, because the basis for my question is probably the most important first step you could take. And I apologize for being a bit scattered here, but our friend is at the CDC and hasn’t heard from us in around two hours. He’s going to be worried.”
“I understand,” she said, bumping her glasses back up her nose with one finger. “What is it?”
“Has anyone complained about headaches since you all got here?”
“No, but what you said about the migraines – I knew it already. It’s how – well, it’s how my husband’s began.” Her eyes began to tear up. “I didn’t make a connection.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nobody it’s not going to touch.”
“It’s beginning to sink in,” she said, fidgeting with the AK-47’s strap.
Gem came out of the cooler and stood there listening to me, leaning against the wall as Taylor leaned against her legs. Her hands rested on the girl’s shoulders. Her Uzi hung off the side of her body, the barrel angled toward the floor. There was a thoughtful expression on her face. I smiled at her briefly but continued with my conversation.
“Marion, you need to quietly determine with absolute certainty whether any of your people here have headaches. Or head pain of any kind. I’m not saying you have to take any action, but you’ll want to keep an eye on them. A close eye. Someone should stand watch – probably more than one – through the night anyway, but monitor them, too. And you’re going to want to get more weapons soon. We hit the evidence locker at the Tallahassee PD, but any large department should do it if you don’t come across a gun store.”
“How can we find you?”
“I don’t know where we’re going to be, but like I said, get either a ham radio, CB, or the handhelds. The range varies, but put them on scan and just listen. Ultimately, I think all three will be in use”
Gem chimed in. “He’s right, Marion. The best way to survive is with numbers and firepower. Build your group as quickly as you can, and you and Bobby and whomever else you deem qualified should start working on a plan.”
At that moment, a loud noise came from outside, like a freight train in the stillness of the new world day. Gem gave Taylor’s hand quickly over to Marion, and we ran to the front door of the convenience store and unlocked it. Nobody was visible, but a lumbering, gleaming bus came charging up the street, then attempted to slow suddenly as it turned into the store parking lot. A heavy layer of gravel lay over the asphalt, and the multi-ton motor home could not decelerate fast enough for its sudden right turn. The driver whipped the wheel back to the left when the traction broke. But it was all too fast.
The Class A behemoth was at least forty feet long. It started sliding sideways through the gravel, its huge rear end careening toward the front of the store. The rear half of the monster slid at four times the speed of the rest of the bus, as though it were cracked like a whip.
Gem and I tucked and covered our faces as the gravel shot into the air in dusty clouds, peppering every glass and metal surface with tiny rocks and sand as it finally came to rest about a foot from the expansive glass panels of the 7-Eleven.
We fanned our hands in front of us to clear the dust. Hemp sat in the driver’s seat, smiling broadly.
“Bloody fuck what a ride!” he yelled, sticking his head out of the window. “I didn’t have any damned way to get hold of you, and you’d been gone over two hours! When I saw your cars I cranked th
e wheel!”
“And almost flipped this sucker over,” said Gem.
“Isn’t it fabulous?” Hemp beamed.
I looked at the gun turrets he’d engineered in the sides. Four of them, just awaiting firearms from our collection. I didn’t have much doubt that Hemp had used his recollection of what guns remained in our arsenal to determine spacing, size and placement of the turrets.
I laughed, and the sound seemed oddly out of place. “Well, Hemp. I’m sure glad you came. But we were just leaving.”
“We’ve found a bunch of uninfecteds, Hemp. Do you think you might have any questions for them?”
He shrugged from the motor home’s cockpit. “I can think of something, I’m sure,” he said. “Let me at them.”
As Gem and I gathered up some food and medical items from the store shelves, we let Hemp go in the cooler and probe around a bit. He had a nice, gentle demeanor, and we knew he’d be the perfect debriefer. He spent about fifteen minutes asking various questions. From inside the cooler we’d hear his muffled British accent, then a muffled response. Of course if he learned anything he’d fill us in later.
Taylor’s grandmother wasn’t present in the room, which meant that she was one of the dead, the turned, or the burned. We did not mention her again.
When Hemp finished, he told them there were several buses at the CDC, and any one of them would carry them all. They had bars on the windows, so were somewhat fortified. They’d have that and the Hummer.
For us, the Suburban would be fitted with machine guns before long, too, so we’d still have a pretty well-protected rolling convoy of vehicles. Overall, everyone was in good shape.
I wanted to get to my house. I wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like a good place to hole up and make a plan. Figure out what we would be doing for the foreseeable future. Train. Whatever. I just knew I wanted to get my ragtag group – my new family – to my house as soon as possible.
As Hemp came out, I touched his arm. “Hemp, how’s that gas line coming?”
“I finished that. Straight shot, just six 20-foot lengths, some couplings, a couple of 90-degree elbows, a union, and some pipe dope. Done deal.”
“And now you want me to ask what you did with the next hour and fifty minutes, right?
“Spent that on the gun turrets.”
“On that motor home there,” I confirmed.
“Not a motor home, chap. Mobile Lab.” He grinned. “And I started playing with another vehicle after that. So there’s some stuff to go over before we head out. We need some versatility in transportation, I think.”
I returned the smile on Hemp’s face that was so wide it threatened to split his head in two.
“First things first,” I said. “Let’s get this girl to her mother.”
“I get to drive something with guns,” Gem said.
I smiled. “Baby, that goes without saying. When mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.”
Chapter 225
We got back to the CDC garage without incident and pulled the Suburban and the mobile lab into the garage, rolling the door closed. It was now going on 4:00 in the afternoon. I wanted to get the hell out of here before nightfall. With the speed at which Hemp was capable of designing, fabricating and working, it wouldn’t be a problem. The summer days were long, with daylight sticking around until near 8:30 PM. I figured we could be out of here by 6:00 or so, and Lula was only about 60 miles from the CDC.
We had only to hop on the I85 to the I985 to get there in just over an hour and a half – if all was clear on the road, and we didn’t expect that. No more exits if we could avoid it, though. We didn’t need a repeat of that offramp debacle.
The gas line that Hemp had run was expertly done, held off the ground by several makeshift support platforms placed at strategic locations to relieve stress on the long pipe run. We could rest assured that Max would have with a long-lasting supply of fuel for the generator. He might have to come down and service it a few times, and try to keep his power draw to a minimum, but he should be good for a month or more. There’s no telling what the military might organize before that, or if this thing would run its course, which was my great hope.
We weren’t bad at this, but we didn’t want to do it for the rest of time.
We did our best to keep Taylor completely away from the gory remnants of the massive zombie kill we engaged in at the service elevator, so we took her into an interior hallway and we went up on the passenger elevator. When we arrived at Max’s enclave, all was well.
It was extraordinarily well when Cynthia saw her daughter. She leapt out of her chair and ran to the door, falling down on her knees. She scooped Taylor into her arms and kissed her neck, face, lips and the top of her head. She felt her all over to make sure nothing was broken or hurt, and she pulled her to her again, and wrapped her arms around her in an embrace that I did not believe would end. I didn’t blame her for a moment. This was her little girl.
Not a word was exchanged between them. The child’s eyes were squeezed closed as though the nightmare was over and the good dream from which she did not want to awaken had begun. Over Taylor’s head, Cynthia looked into our smiling faces; Gem, Hemp and I must have looked like three morons, our smiles fixed, our expressions tender.
“Thank you all so much,” she mouthed. Her eyes said enough.
As though on queue, we all nodded and turned to head back downstairs. Before I left the room I said, “Max, I had to give away the Hummer. Found a bunch of uninfecteds about a mile and a half from here.”
“That’s good news,” he said. “A good sign. Did you tell them I’m here?”
“It’s great news, and yes, we did. They might contact you, so keep your radios on scan.” I said. “But I’m going to need another vehicle, if you think you can spare it.”
“We already worked it out, Flex,” said Hemp. “You’ve got to check out the Crown Vic I got you.”
“A fucking Ford?” I asked, incredulous.
“I guess you might describe it in those disparaging terms, but it’s a rolling fortress. We need something kind of nimble and quick, but tough. The cops drive these things for a reason.”
“Okay. You can convince me when we get back down there.”
We waved to Max and Cynthia, who still held Taylor in her arms.
“It’s armored,” Hemp said, smiling. He walked to the tool box and grabbed a small sledge hammer.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gem asked.
Hemp ignored her and raised his arm, slamming the six pound sledge into the windshield glass.
Nothing.
“Jesus,” I said. “Airplane glass?”
Hemp nodded. “Exactly. Tested with frozen chickens fired at it at high speed.”
“Fuck off,” I said.
“True. It’s called a Chicken Gun, but it’s really sort of a cannon. Airplanes are only likely to hit birds in flight, so that’s how they test the most vulnerable part, the cockpit windshield.”
“Cool,” Gem said. She took the sledge from Hemp and gave it a try. The windshield shuddered, but sounded with a dull thud and did not give or shatter.
“No guns,” said Gem. “I’m driving the Suburban.”
“I’ll fix that,” Hemp said. “Of course, but I think we’d feel better that of the three vehicles, you drive this and take Trina. Nothing can get in or penetrate the car, at all. Period.”
“But you’re gonna mount a nice big gun on it, right?” Gem was serious.
“Well, we’re limited right now on what we can mount because of what we have, but I think we’ve got enough to make you feel safe in this car.”
Hemp walked to a work bench on the east side of the room and carried back what appeared to be a compact machine gun. “AK-47,” he said. “The most widely produced assault rifle in the world. I’ve got a ball bearing mount planned, kind of like a Lazy Susan. This will allow the machine gun to sit directly center above the front cockpit area. It’ll lock firmly into place when in the forward position,
and that lines up the magazine for easy replacement. I’ll cut a slot in the roof for the magazine to travel in as it turns. You see? I’ve already figured all this out.”
I watched the expression on Gem’s face. It was awesome to see her so interested in this. “Tell us about the engine, Hemp. Anything special?”
“It’s got all you need under the hood. A 4.6 liter V8 delivering around 240 horsepower. But the door panels are lined with B6 ballistic steel. Plus, there’s B4 steel on the roof, which will make it harder for me to –”
“But how do I fire the AK, and how do I know I’m aimed at what I want to kill?” Gem was back to the gun. One track mind.
“Really? You don’t think I’ve thought this through? How long have we known one another?” Hemp laughed.
Gem looked at her watch. “About 20 hours,” she said. “Okay, go on.”
“Alright. I’ve wired up a video sight that I’ll mount to the gun. It’s basically a camera. We’ll essentially have an A/B switch on the dashboard here, and when you hit B, the GPS monitor screen will turn into your gun sight. This gun, on the ball bearing ring mount, will spin all the way around and stay stable in any position.”
“And I fire it how?”
“You pull a handle. Just like an old time toilet flush or calling the porter on the Orient Express.”
“And this will be completed when?”
Hemp stuck a mask on his head and picked up the cutting torch and clipped it to his belt. With both hands, he hefted a circular steel plate about fifteen inches in diameter from the bench and climbed up on top of the car, walking on his knees up the hood, not leaving even the slightest impressions in the heavy duty exterior. He rested his steel plate in the center of the forward cockpit roof and used his striker to light the torch. Lowering his face shield, he said, “Believe it or not, a little more than half an hour.”
He started to cut with a shower of sparks.
Gem was having some fun with the 360 degree submachine gun welded to the top of her Crown Victoria.
At first I had no idea how she was spotting the infecteds in the fading twilight; the trip had taken longer than we’d planned due to road blockages and alternate routes, so day had begun to melt into night, and there was no moon.