ROT Series (Book 1): The Smell

by Hunter, Damon

  “You won’t get any argument from me,” Lumpy told them.

  Everyone but Ana looked at Deke.

  Deke spit in an empty energy drink can before saying, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  CHAPTER 26

  South of San Francisco

  With no stops to make, Dr. Talbot and his convoy hit the interstate and opened up to full speed. The big vehicle could cruise on a reasonably open road at over a hundred miles per hour. They had been this way before collecting samples and had already cleared a path. The transports could refuel on the move, and with the plow cutting through anything they might have missed on the way he felt they could make the nearly five-hundred-mile trip in just about five hours.

  Talbot had a complete file on both Holiday and Eric Vance. With the transponder heading south, it seemed clear Vance was heading for Oceanside. He had a daughter and an ex-wife there. Talbot had checked if they made it out of the new QZ. No one had any record of it.

  The area was to be evacuated and after the evac quarantined, but things had gotten out of control. Most of the evacuation was cancelled and the timetable for quarantine moved up considerably. It made sense he would go this way.

  Since they had a good idea where he was headed, they went inland to take the much faster Interstate Five all the way into Oceanside instead of winding along the slower coastal roads. He knew they could be wrong about his destination, but with the transponder letting them track him they could adjust if they changed course.

  Dr. Talbot had used his power as a high up in the TMRT to get trackers put on the phones of Vance’s wife and daughter. Fact was, with the rot spreading, Talbot could get whatever he wanted. At this point if he asked for a nuclear strike chances were good he would get it.

  If they turned on their phones he could get a bead on them. If they used them he could nail their exact location. Vance, as a TMRT himself, knew enough about what the government could do. He had installed anti-tracking software on his phone. It was standard for special forces soldiers these days anyway since the United States was not alone in being able to track cell phones.

  He checked his monitors. Neither the mom or daughter had turned them on for awhile. Talbot was confident if they were alive and infection free, at some point they would go to the phone.

  CHAPTER 27

  Oceanside, CA

  “I can’t believe I ever thought this was a good idea,” Lumpy said from the front passenger seat. The adrenaline rush of battling for his life had ebbed, and the pain in his damaged leg was coming in full force.

  Ana kept her eyes on the road as she told Katelin, “There’s a bottle of Advil in my bag.”

  Katelin reached into her bag and found the bottle. She gave four of them to Lumpy. Bar, who had somehow retained his bottle of beer through the whole thing, handed it forward so Lumpy had something to wash it down with.

  “My leg is messed up good,” he said after downing the pills.

  Deke, who was seated next to Donna, pulled back his pant leg to show the metal from his knee down. “At least you still have yours. You’re doing better than Trey.”

  “Better than Dino and Jo too,” Ana said.

  “Gee, telling me three of my best friends are dead sure makes me feel better.”

  “Get used to it, kid,” Deke told him.

  “No. I don’t think I will. I don’t think I want to.”

  Deke nodded. He looked at the teenager sitting in the back with him and saw she was sobbing softly. He did his best to ignore her; comforting people was never his strength. Instead, he pointed at the Gore camera strapped to Lumpy’s chest.

  “Tell me you at least got some good footage.”

  “I’m having trouble giving a damn about that right now,” Lumpy told him.

  “Maybe he got a good shot of me murdering a father in front of his wife and kid,” Katelin said.

  Lumpy did not answer. He had a bad feeling he did have video of the whole incident in the liquor store.

  “You didn’t murder anyone,” Ana told her.

  Katelin did not seem to be buying it. Donna started to say something, but knowing her daughter, decided to wait. If they made it out, there would be plenty of time for therapy.

  Ana steered the Urban Assault Wagon into a yard and pulled around another abandoned accident in the middle of the road. Another evacuation bus had gone down. Other than some luggage spread on the road, there was no sign of the passengers. Because of the mess the roads had become, they had avoided main roads, winding through neighborhoods under the direction of Donna and Kate, who were the only real locals.

  “Turn here and I think we can get going east. Maybe the Seventy-Eight is clear,” Donna told Ana.

  They had raised the metal screens. With the vehicle moving, they decided seeing where they were going trumped any protection the screens provided.

  “I doubt it,” Bar said, “that road was a mess even before a damn apocalypse started.”

  “It’s worth a look,” Donna replied. “With all the wrecks and blocked roads, it seems like no one got this far.”

  Ana took the turns as instructed. They found the freeway was not completely clear but the wreckage and abandoned vehicles were scattered. They saw another car in front of them maneuvering through. They figured they could do it too.

  “How far does the quarantine go?” Lumpy asked.

  “Last I heard, Escondido,” Donna said.

  “How far is that?” Ana asked.

  “Less than twenty miles from here.”

  Ana checked her speed. With the road the way it was, she hadn’t been able to get up over thirty miles per hour, but had hopes the road might clear some as they moved forward away from the madness.

  “Less than an hour then,” she said.

  “Sounds good to me,” Bar said. “After all that shit I’m going to start drinking again.”

  Donna looked at him.

  “That was just beer, I meant real drinking.”

  Donna nodded. “I may join you.”

  Katelin had gotten out her phone. She and Donna had turned them off back at the hotel, figuring they needed to conserve the battery as best as they could.

  “What are you doing?” Donna asked.

  “Going to check if all my friends are dead yet.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  Katelin ignored her and kept her face buried in the screen, checking social media for any indication of life among her friends who may or may not have gotten out.

  Donna decided checking the phone was not such as bad idea and powered hers up.

  She found the messages from Vance. She was especially intrigued by the last one he sent.

  She checked the time the message had been sent. The hour he was talking about had gone by a long time ago. Donna looked up to see Ana steer around a mass of smoking metal. The road was clearing. She began to speed up.

  “Looks like that one drove over an IED,” Deke said, looking back at the wreckage.

  “Stop the car,” Donna yelled.

  “Why? We’re almost home free,” Ana said.

  “No. we’re not. That was not an IED or a wreck. It was a drone strike,” Donna said, handing her phone to Lumpy.

  Another mass of smoking metal was ahead of them. Donna pointed at it, saying, “You think that thing just spontaneously combusted?”

  “I think she may have a point,” Lumpy said after reading the message.

  Ana stopped the Urban Assault Wagon. She pointed at the car ahead of them. It was barely in sight but still moving east.

  “They seem to be fine,” she said, “We don’t know what happened here.”

  “Eric knows, he’s TMRT,” Donna said.

  “He ain’t here either,” Deke said. “They’ll know we aren’t infected. People with the rot don’t drive. I say we go.”

  “No,” Donna said.

  “You want to go back?” Deke asked.

  “No, but I like my chances better with the infected than Hellfire missiles launch
ed by killer robots in the sky.”

  “I think she has a point,” Lumpy said.

  “Who gives a shit?” Deke said. “Last I checked this is a SWARC vehicle in a SWARC operation and she ain’t SWARC.”

  “Seriously…” Donna began, but Deke cut her off.

  “I say we put it to a vote.”

  “I say we—” Bar began but Deke cut him off too.

  “I mean a vote among the remaining members of SWARC. Sorry old man, but you ain’t SWARC. I vote we keep going.”

  “I vote we go back,” Lumpy said. “Her husband said he’s coming by water. I like my chances better with a TMRT dude leading us out.”

  They all looked at Ana. “I love you Lump, but I’ve had enough of this shit. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Don’t,” Bar said.

  Deke started to say something, but Bar had his pistol pressed against Deke’s forehead.

  Donna grabbed one of her daughter’s guns and pointed it at Ana.

  “What the fuck?” Deke said.

  “I don’t know what the hell SWARC is, but I’m officially making myself a member,” Bar told them. “I vote we listen to Donna’s husband.”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” Deke said.

  “Look,” Bar said as he pulled back the hammer on the Berretta he had pulled from one of the bags, “I appreciate your service and all, and Ana, you seem like a good kid, misguided maybe, but who am I to criticize that? But I’m not getting killed because you are failing to see the obvious.”

  “You’d kill us?” Ana asked, looking at Donna. She did not like what she saw.

  “We keep going, we are all dead. How is dying getting blown up by a drone different than a bullet behind the ear? It may not seem like it, but I want us all to live.”

  Ana looked at Lumpy. “You going to let them do this?”

  “Sorry,” Lumpy said, “Bar is right. As much as I want to get out of here, those cars are proof ex-hubby up north knows what he is talking about. We don’t know shit about shit, he does.”

  “We are a team.”

  “Without Donna, Katelin and Bar, we’re dead before we get out of the hotel and Deke is still sitting in this car surrounded by infected. Let’s face it, none of us has had a good idea yet.”

  “I think what he’s trying to say is turn this bus around. And old people rule,” Bar told them.

  As they were sitting there, another car wound its way around them and kept going east.

  “He has the right idea,” Deke said.

  “Mom, put down the gun,” Kate said as she swung her other gun on her mother.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I can’t stay here anymore, I just can’t.”

  “You’d kill your own mother?”

  Katelin moved the gun so it pointed at Donna’s thigh. “No. But I could give her a limp.”

  “Your father…”

  “You mean Eric? Fuck him.”

  Donna lowered her weapon and Ana spun to point her gun at Bar.

  “Drop it,” she said.

  Before Bar could respond, the ground shook and everyone noticed smoke rising in the distance. A second later, the car that had just passed them exploded for no good reason.

  “Think we might be next?” Donna said.

  Ana and Katelin lowered their guns. Ana put the Urban Assault Wagon in reverse and got them turned the other way. She put it in drive and stomped on the gas.

  They all looked at the burned-out heap they had passed by, now a mile or two ahead of them instead of behind them.

  “Give it all you got,” Donna told her. “If we aren’t on the other side of that wreck before the drone makes another pass we are toast.”

  Ana said nothing, just concentrated on putting all her weight into pressing on the gas pedal.

  CHAPTER 28

  Interstate Five

  When Ashley had gone to board the lead transport, she remembered seeing the open third car. She got a look inside and saw nothing but stacks of stainless steel boxes. Something was written on them, but she couldn’t make it out.

  A TMRT member in full gear guided her to take a seat in the transport. This one was full of other soldiers, which made sense. The third car was samples collected; she could tell part of it was refrigerated to keep whatever they collected fresh. This also made sense. If Dr. Talbot’s questions about Vance had not struck her as odd, she may have not given the situation any thought, but there was something wrong going on.

  A man with stripes on his shoulder sat down next to her. She knew he was the highest-ranking officer, other than Dr. Talbot; in this army not much was higher than doctor as far as rank went. He was sitting down to debrief her.

  He introduced himself as Major Cook, but got no farther as she decided to start asking questions first.

  “Am I your first pick-up?” she asked.

  “No, far from it.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “What others?”

  “You came all this way and we are the only survivors?”

  “I need to ask you some questions. After that, you can ask me all you want.”

  “Took you a long time if you just came for us.”

  “My questions first.”

  “Left us hanging for a long time for no good reason. That your idea or Talbot’s?”

  “I told you, you were not the first stop.”

  “Then are are the others?”

  “What others? Everyone is here.”

  “The only survivors were TMRT?” she asked, motioning to all the men in battle gear.

  “Yes,” he told her, but he was too slow getting to it. Even if his answer had been plausible, she knew he was lying.

  “Why did Dr. Talbot ask if Vance ‘knew’? Knew about what?”

  Again, he was too slow and his eyes moved too much when he said, “I don’t know what Dr. Talbot did or did not say to you. You have to take that up with him.”

  Ashley nodded, sensing a chill in the room. Looking around, she saw several armed men looking at her with bad intent. She decided it might be time to drop the subject. She’d found out most of what she wanted anyway. While she didn’t know what it was, she knew something was going on, and whatever it was wasn’t good.

  CHAPTER 29

  Oceanside, CA

  Even though they passed the burning car they figured marked the beginning of the dead zone between the QZ and the still-open Escondido, no one felt safe until they exited the freeway and were back on the side roads of Oceanside.

  “I think we’re clear,” Ana said. “If they were going to blow us up, they would have done it already.”

  “I agree, the killer robots in the sky are no longer a threat, we just have to worry about hordes of rabid rotters. I feel much better,” Lumpy said.

  “I know you’re not being serious,” Donna said, “but I do feel better. I like our chances with them better than the drones.”

  “Get back to me when one of those green things is sinking his fangs into you and tell me if you feel the same way,” Deke said. “We might have made it.”

  “You really think so?” Lumpy asked.

  “They were just getting set up. The quarantine started, what? Like ten hours early, no way they had everything in place. Our best chance of getting through is right now.”

  “They looked pretty efficient from where I was sitting,” Donna told him.

  “Maybe, but if you think they’re deadly now just wait to see how good they’ll be in a few hours. I’m not saying it’s a guarantee, but the odds are better right now than they will be later.”

  “I’m sorry, Deke,” Ana said, “I’m with them. We wouldn’t have made it.”

  “And we’ll make it now?” Deke asked. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we got our butts kicked pretty thoroughly back there. We’re already getting low on ammunition and we haven’t even been here a whole day. How long do you think we’re going to last? Even if they had fragged us it would have been better. At worst we just traded a qui
ck, painless death for a long, slow one.”

  “Eric will get us out. He said to meet him at the water,” Donna told him.

  “Sorry if my faith in this Eric dude I’ve never met is not as high as yours.”

  “Maybe you shut up for awhile, kid,” Bar said.

  Deke looked back at Bar. “If you think I’m going to forget how you put that gun on me you are stupider than you look.”

  Bar met Deke’s mad-dog stare. “Tell me something. Do I looked scared?”

  Deke didn’t answer. He turned around and stared straight ahead.

  “So, where do we go?” Ana asked.

  “He said he was coming by water, so west,” Donna told her.

  “Yeah, I’m sure there are no infected on the beach,” Deke said with a sneer. “No one ever goes there.”

  “He could be right, the beach might be a slaughterhouse right now,” Ana said.

  “He said water, not beach,” Bar said.

  “They kind of go together,” Deke replied.

  “I’m going to give you a pass since you weren’t there, and I suppose in the short time a lot of shit has gone down so maybe the rest of you have an excuse, but does anyone remember what I told you I did when we first met?”

  Katelin was the first to speak. “You said you were a sailor.”

  “Damn right, why do you think they called me Barnacle Bill?”

  “So what?” Deke said.

  “He’s coming by water, well, I figure we should meet him in the water.”

  Everyone, including Deke, thought this might be a good idea.

  Donna began telling Ana how to get to the harbor.

  CHAPTER 30

  Interstate Five, Los Angeles, CA

  Dr. Talbot saw the screen light up on his monitor as Donna and Katelin turned on their phones. They were making good time, nearing Los Angeles. Before the rot, traffic in the City of Angels would make it slow going, but that was not going to be a problem today with the plow clearing all that remained on the freeway.

  He watched as they headed for the edge of the QZ, knowing they would not make it past the drones. Even if they did, the soldiers manning the roadblock would not hesitate to fill them with bullets. He considered testing the limits of his power as a doctor in the TMRT and seeing if he could order them let through safely. With the daughter and mother, he was sure he could get Vance, even if he knew what was going to happen to him, to come in peacefully.