“Wow! Thanks, ma’am.”
Ma’am?
Isabel felt pleased with herself. Rick seemed less pleased. Despite muscles deadened to numbness, Isabel increased her pace. As the sun rose, so did the first people. Men relieved themselves in bushes. Children gathered sticks for fires. One couple even called out to Rick, “Like some coffee, soldier?”
To Isabel’s surprise, he accepted their offer, which she politely declined. Rick downed the metal cup filled with jet black coffee in two long swigs. He thanked the rough looking pair, both of whom were missing teeth but seemed to be adapting better to life alongside the freeway than most. He then spent the next half mile spitting stray grounds of coffee from his mouth.
“You know,” he said, more talkative after the caffeine, “I was about half a day away from suggesting that we were never going to find your family, and figured maybe two days away from convincing you.”
“O ye of little faith.”
“And I assume you wanta press on straight through the daylight?”
“You assume correctly. I do.”
The sun was visible through the treetops. Rick stopped, fastened the flexible solar panel atop his enormous backpack, and plugged in the portable battery, then hoisted the entire load onto his back with a grunt. He seemed utterly spent, and she began to worry about him for the first time. She had always just assumed he had no practical limits and could endure anything she could times two, or ten. But he barely slept during most of their daytime rests, which she had just cancelled, in between his patrols of their campsite’s perimeter. The limits of his physical endurance were now plainly within sight. There was no telling how long his emotional stamina would hold after all the stress he had endured in monitoring the approach of the pandemic first in Asia and then with her in the Northeastern U.S. And he was presumably worried about his family in Wisconsin. Rick wasn’t exactly the brooding sort, but he wasn’t brooding’s opposite either.
She vowed to keep him under a more watchful eye even as his attention darted from thick tree trunks, to abandoned vehicles, to highway overpasses, to pillaged gas stations. His eyes, she noticed, had grown red and bleary.
After several hours on the road, Rick said, “Let’s spread out.” Isabel tried to find the reason for his anxiety, but saw nothing. The road ahead was empty. The cars on either side abandoned. On closer inspection, however, she noted one troubling fact. Every car they passed was peppered with bullet holes. “Off the road,” came Rick’s curt command.
They proceeded slowly along the ditch beside the highway. Rick held his M4 to his shoulder about ten meters in front of her, crouching slightly, swinging his carbine left and right as his attention switched from the shot up cars to the dominating hillside above them. Isabel raised her carbine also, but all seemed still.
Rick raised his right hand, sank to a knee, and peered through his binoculars. Isabel knelt with difficulty beside a bullet riddled car and scanned the woods above through her M4’s sight. They resumed their march but halted again on finding two bodies in the ditch. The man had a bald spot splattered with blood. The woman, with stringy gray hair, also matted with blood, wore a green U.S. Army fatigues blouse. Rick pulled a driver’s license from the man’s mouth.
He looked up at Isabel. “Andrew Potter,” is all he said before returning the license to the dead man’s mouth.
“Why are you doing that?”
“GIs started putting dog tags in casualties’ mouths in Vietnam. Napalm melts ’em if they aren’t protected. It makes IDing the body easier.”
“Gross. That kid who’s with Noah’s family is in the army or reserves or whatever. Do you think maybe he put the driver’s license there?”
“Maybe.”
Isabel was uneasy. “Do you think they killed them? That boy’s parents? Caught ’em trying to steal food or something?”
“I doubt it. They were both shot execution style—in the back of the head.”
“We need to go back for that boy,” Isabel said. “He’s all alone…for good, now. He’ll never know what happened to his parents unless we tell him.”
Rick didn’t say anything for a long while. “It’s daylight,” he finally noted. “Your family is presumably up and moving south. Right now, we’re maybe a half day’s march behind ’em. We go four hours back for that boy, then four hours to return here, we’re a day and a half behind your family, and physically spent.”
She knew what the only right answer was. But as she knelt over that boy’s dead parents, she felt an obligation.
“I told you, Isabel, I’m not gonna keep being the bad guy. But do you know how many millions of orphans there must be right now? A lot of ’em younger and less capable of taking care of themselves than that boy?”
“But he’s….” She stopped herself. It wasn’t fair to count on Rick to make the hard but correct decisions. “No. You’re right. Let’s go.” She rose and took off.
Rick waited beside the bodies. “We could bury them.”
“No. Then, if the boy comes looking, he’ll never find them.”
“I could tack his driver’s license to a grave marker.”
“No. Let’s go. We’re close. And, obviously, it’s dangerous here. My brother may have survived this, but every minute counts. They could get in big trouble at any time.”
Rick surprised Isabel again when, still on one knee, he closed his eyes and moved his lips in silent prayer, which had never occurred to her to do. She briefly shut her own eyes and thought, God, please take care of that boy. And all the other orphans. Thank you. Oh, it’s Isabel. Isabel Miller. Goodbye. Amen.
Chapter 13
ROANOKE, VIRGINIA
Infection Date 74, 0035 GMT (6:45 a.m. Local)
The representative of the Uninfecteds at the first meeting of Emma’s council, who wore a blue mask and gloves, clear plastic goggles, and an impermeable white one piece suit with a hood, stared back with an inscrutable expression as the other members of Emma’s advisory board, all infected, gathered around the conference table. He was the picture of an outsider.
“Reports?” Emma said, turning first, as always, to Dwayne and Sheriff Walcott.
“I’ll handle the external,” Dwayne said. Walcott nodded. “There’s still a lot of military traffic to our east, mostly heading south along I-95. None of it threatens us directly, but it could if the order was given. The Marine and naval bases around Norfolk are still active. Shipping arrives and departs without difficulty. The USS George H.W. Bush and Gerald R. Ford and their air wings are fully operational along the coast. Their two battle groups are ranging up and down the Atlantic seaboard, but sorties only rarely come this far inland.”
Samantha asked, “What are all those planes we keep seeing up in the sky doing?”
“They look mainly to be military transport aircraft shuttling equipment and personnel between Naval Station Norfolk and points west, presumably Texas, and south, down to Florida and Guantanamo Bay. I did get a cell phone picture,” he walked around the table to show Emma, “of what looks to me like a high altitude drone that was orbiting I-81, presumably monitoring the progress of refugees heading south to warn towns and cities in their line of advance what’s coming.”
Emma asked, “How should we handle those refugees? Most are stuck where they are with no fuel and declining stocks of supplies. I keep hearing that violence is rising.”
“They’re almost all Uninfecteds,” Walcott said. “The people I’ve sent out that way—should they be called deputies…?”
Emma shook her head. “No. We’ll come up with something else to call them.”
“And what should we call you?” asked the Uninfecteds’ representative out of nowhere. “People have been asking, ya know. President? Governor? What?”
Emma shrugged. “Chief…Epidemiologist.”
The man stared back at her, but any expression was hidden by
his mask and goggles. Not that it would’ve communicated much to Emma, although she was getting better at reading the highly expressive faces of Uninfecteds.
Walcott waited patiently. No, Emma decided. Walcott wasn’t patient; he wasn’t even there until Emma turned to and prompted him. “You were saying?”
Walcott continued as if there had been no interruption. He could, Emma knew, have sat there for hours awaiting his cue. “The men I sent out to the Interstate yesterday evenin’ started takin’ fire as soon as the refugees saw they were infected.”
“Did you lose people?” Dwayne asked.
“Not many. I got on the radio and ordered ’em back.”
Emma asked, “Are those people able to keep moving? Or are we stuck with them?”
“They’re flat outta gas,” Walcott said. “They ain’t goin’ nowhere ’cept on foot.”
Emma turned to the uninfected council member. “Why don’t you send out feelers? Explain to those people on the highway the benefits of joining us and make the offer?”
“The offer…or else?” He was shaking his hooded, goggled, masked head. “I didn’t sign up for that. And the or else part would better come from one of you, wouldn’t it?”
“All right,” Emma replied. “I’ll go.” She and Samantha turned to Dwayne. But, as high functioning as even he was, no ideas occurred to him. “Will you get together the show of force to go with me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Samantha shot Emma a look—lips pinched, eyes wide—but that expression was either too complex or too muddled to decipher. Most likely, it was some form of commiseration with Emma at Dwayne’s lack of initiative. Or it could just be Samantha’s failed attempt at some other meaningful look. “So,” Emma wrapped up, “lots of forces along the coast; none up this way?”
Dwayne bobbed his head in confirmation.
Emma turned to Walcott. “What about internal security?” When he seemed unable to formulate an answer to such a general question, she rephrased it. “Have we had any crowd control issues?”
“Yes.” After that appeared to be the end of his answer, she asked him for details. “When the—whatever we’re gonna call the deputies—approached Lynchburg on 460, they ran into a mob and some heavy fighting in a suburb called Montview. And up at the old River Ridge Mall, there was a crowd of a couple of thousand fully charged up Infecteds facing off against thirty or so well armed Uninfecteds. One of my men got sucked into the crowd and had to be dragged away and slapped out of it. We gotta warn people about the dangers of even straying close to a crowd. They left there before the crowd tipped over, but when that happened there was gonna be a whole lotta violence.”
“And those poor Uninfecteds….” the PPE-clad Uninfected began, but didn’t finish.
“Is that all you have to say?” Emma asked. The man nodded with a rustling of disposable suit fabric, but seemed confused. “In the future,” she explained, “please speak in complete sentences so we know what you mean.” Another rustling nod. Emma turned back to Walcott. “Let’s set those southwestern suburbs of Lynchburg as the northeastern limits of our Community for the time being.”
No one said a word even though Emma and Samantha scanned the faces of the men and women gathered around the table. “Does that make sense?” Emma asked Dwayne.
“Yes. We shouldn’t get any closer to Norfolk. They’re bombing Richmond and Virginia Beach around the clock. They may move on to Hampden Sydney, which is getting close to Lynchburg and possible contact with their long range patrols.”
“But we need more resources,” Samantha said. “We’ve only got the southern Shenandoah Valley down to Blacksburg. We need factories, farms, mines, and people.”
Again, Emma and Samantha scanned the table for suggestions. Again, there were none. And again, Samantha gave Emma a look. Emma needed to get together with the girl to agree upon a common interpretation of all her attempted expressions. “Don’t we have an offer expiring down at the college?” Emma asked Walcott.
The sheriff said, “Technically. But we sent Uninfecteds down to Radford University to extend the offer, and the people we sent went over to the other side.”
No one even glanced at the uninfected representative, but the man said, “Don’t look at me. I had nothing to do with them. It just proves my point. You shouldn’t send us out to…to extend any offers.”
The words he used were correct. But his intonation suggested a subtly altered interpretation that, when Emma checked, was also lost on Samantha, who shrugged.
Emma turned to Walcott. “When are we supposed to hear back from the college?”
“Dwayne’s still gatherin’ up batshit crazies, so they were s’posed to give ’em four more days. But we ain’t heard a peep out of ’em and they stepped up work on their defenses after the Uninfecteds went over to ’em.”
“Dwayne, if they say no, what should we do?” Dwayne gazed back at Emma blankly. “Are they a threat to us if they just stay holed up on their campus?”
“Yes. They’re on this side of the New River, and the orders were to secure everything to the river.” It seemed not to occur to him that those were Emma’s orders, which Emma could change as the situation warranted.
“They’ve got supplies,” said the uninfected man from the far end of the table. “They’re not roaming around. They’re just hunkering down where they are.”
“But supplies run out.” It was Samantha. Good point, noted Emma’s inner advisor.
Emma turned to Dwayne. “Prepare to…what would you call it in military terms?”
“Reduce their lodgment?”
“Prepare to reduce their lodgment,” she reiterated with the correct vocabulary. “No more extensions of the deadline.”
“They’re not bothering anybody!” said the uninfected rep. “They’re mostly college kids who couldn’t make it home.”
Emma polled the faces around the table. No one seemed the least bit persuaded by the uninfected man’s argument. Samantha, who was the only person Emma really trusted to think issues through, noted, “They’ll keep attracting Uninfecteds. They’ll be an example to everyone who’s considering our offer. And they’ll be a threat when they run out of food.”
“An attack could attract the military,” the uninfected man said, but in a quiet, tired sounding voice. “If they call Norfolk and say they’re under attack by an organized force of Infecteds, the navy and Marines might send troops. Or at least bombers.”
“Could they make it there?” Emma asked Dwayne, who nodded. She waited for more, to no avail. “Will they send help?”
“No. It’s too far to keep them resupplied, so they won’t have much staying power. And they’re busy much closer to home, particularly in Richmond and along the roads out of D.C.”
“The Uninfecteds could, you know,” interrupted their representative, “help you out. Not immediately, but eventually. If…if you’ll allow us to be armed.”
“No,” Emma replied. “Your people already ignored all our demands that they turn over their personal weapons, and we haven’t forced the issue. Yet. And just in the last twenty-four hours, there’ve been…how many killings?”
Walcott said, “By Uninfecteds? They killed thirty-seven Infecteds, and six Uninfecteds, not counting what’s going on along I-81.”
“But most of those killed,” Samantha reasoned, “were out of control crazies or people breaching the peace. Those killings were justified, and kinda did your job for you.”
Walcott did not disagree. And the uninfected man, for some reason, said, “Thank you, little girl.” Samantha again tried her smile, but it was toothy and the man for whom it was intended looked down at his lap, ending Sam’s latest effort at body language.
There being no more discussion around the table, Emma repeated to Dwayne, “Get ready to reduce the lodgment at Radford University.”
Chapter 14
&nb
sp; OUTSIDE BRISTOL, TENNESSEE
Infection Date 76, 2030 GMT (4:30 p.m. Local)
The first sign of trouble ahead that Noah noted was the Interstate contraflow. A moving vehicle always attracted attention. One heading the wrong way—toward the north and the virus, in the opposite direction of the slow river of humanity—redoubled Noah’s scrutiny. Then came more, eventually clearing the two northbound lanes of semi resident pedestrians and their refuse. Half an hour later came people on foot, clutching weapons and shouting at anyone who strayed too close. Little, terror stricken groups of families or bands of strangers, who knotted up in circles and raised weapons whenever approached.
“Just tell us what’s happening down there?” Noah heard a girl ask.
“Stay the fuck back!” was shouted from a tight cluster of three, who raised masks and long guns, back-to-back like in some gladiatorial game. “One more step and I shoot.”
Everyone scurried off the highway when another car raced north, engine revving.
Who had that much gasoline? They weren’t government, or some well provisioned local warlord’s militia. They must be using some precious last drops of fuel to flee something…terrifying. And another curious fact: the people on foot looked far more jumpy and less talkative even than the southbound mainstream refugees fleeing the Northeast.
A car stopped fifty yards ahead for its occupants’ bathroom break. A woman with a shotgun escorted three little kids into the woods. A man and a boy with rifles stood outside the car’s doors. A small crowd was gathering.
Noah, at the front of his family of four plus Margus, quickened his pace.
“…are killin’ the Infecteds, and the Infecteds are killin’ the Uninfecteds,” was the first thing Noah heard the driver say. “So far, the Tennessee National Guard is winnin’, but you know how this goes. There’s no way to get through the fightin’, and it’s blowin’ back up the highway in this direction.”
Upon the return of the women and kids, the driver and the boy took their rifles to the woods for their own relief. The children returned to their accustomed spots in back without instruction, and the woman sat behind the wheel with her shotgun in the passenger seat and an automatic in her lap. “That’s close enough!” she warned, flashing the pistol.
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 9