by Bobby Adair
We passed some maintenance buildings where Air Force guys did whatever they did when they were at work. We ran past several blocks of two- and three-story apartment buildings, coming in close enough to glance in windows and through open doors, looking for any signs of life. We saw nothing but a few cats and some dogs. It made me wonder how the Air Force had been able to clear the base of the infected so thoroughly. It also made me wonder, in the demonstrable presence of their success, why none of them seemed to have survived.
We passed by the Base Exchange and commissary, seeing signs posted for several familiar fast-food operations. Across the vast parking lot and across another that lay on the other side of a road, I spotted the complex of dorms that were my objective—dark, without the slightest hint of life. But that was okay. It didn’t diminish my resolve. Anybody holed up for the night these days had the good sense not to broadcast their location. I was still certain I was right.
I looked over my shoulder, got Grace’s attention, and pointed at the buildings. She said nothing—of course we couldn’t speak with so many Whites on our heels. Her face showed her concern. She wasn’t as confident as I was.
We crossed the street, weaved our way through stray cars in the parking lots, and crossed another road onto an overly large, dead lawn surrounding the complex of dorms. Past them, I saw the end of one of the runways. In the distance to my left, I saw the silhouettes of hangars that stood at the intersection of the base's two runways. On the other side of those hangars were parked the Survivor Army's helicopters.
Once at the building, I scanned the shadows meticulously, looking for a sign of the assholes. We ran down the side of one building, peeking in the windows with no luck. I led the Whites around two more, and I started to worry. I looked several times back at Grace, who responded with a silent question on her face.
After running around all the buildings in the complex and feeling frustration worm its way into my plan, I decided I needed to check inside a building and took the risky move of running up to a door, flinging it open and jogging into the dark inside.
For my risk, I was rewarded with nothing but a messy building, some rotten bodies, and open-door apartments, but not one hint that anyone had been alive inside for months.
Damn. Where the hell were they?
We passed out the other end of the building. The frustrated part of my brain insisted that we run a thorough check of the apartments on the upper floors, but the rational side of my mind told me it was more than a waste of time. The more time I spent inside the building, the more of my Whites I'd lose as they spotted things interesting enough to distract them and pull them out of line.
We needed to do the hard work of checking the whole base.
Chapter 48
I led the Whites to run in several big circles out in the fields beside the runway to get them out of the abandoned apartment buildings and to get them all rounded up and following again. While I jogged, I thought about where to go next as the thought that nagged me the most was the exercise had been a waste of time. What if the Survivor Army had flown away in their helicopters instead of returning to the base after they shot Martin's helicopter out of the sky.
It was possible.
We hadn’t seen a single one of them since coming to the base. I hadn’t gone to the other side of the base to confirm the helicopters were still there.
Frustration grew, but I still had a few hundred Whites behind me, ready for mayhem, I hoped. We were certainly building up an appetite.
I crossed the road and jogged behind the commissary complex and checked the perimeter of a building whose purpose I had no guess for. We came out onto a wide, north-south road that we followed past some small office buildings the size of houses and we crossed another intersection. From there I saw a set of buildings that looked enough like apartments that I knew they needed to be checked.
We ran onto a sidewalk and started into a mostly empty parking lot when I got excited because I thought I saw shadows moving on the upper floors. In the next breath, my excitement poofed into scared shitless as dozens of muzzles flashed along the second-floor balconies and the crack of gunshots pounded my eardrums like a slap in the head.
Whites howled.
Instinctually, I cut hard left and sprinted for the cover of a pavilion at the formal entrance of the complex. I glanced back to make sure Grace was coming and was surprised as she ran up beside me, just as anxious to get out of the hail of bullets.
Whites were following us, but mostly the train disintegrated and ran in all directions.
Wait. What?
A few of them ran toward the buildings. Many of them cowered behind abandoned cars. Some simply stopped and stared at the source of the gunfire. Others squatted beside downed comrades.
What the hell? They weren’t attacking.
The bullets still poured off the second-floor balconies.
Some Whites—the aggressive, nasty ones—were at the sides of the building, busting out windows and pounding on doors, but it wasn’t many, maybe twenty or thirty. The others were apparently fucked in the head a different way. They seemed to have no interest in the fight. By the number of bodies I saw in the parking lot and on the lawn, I guessed that a third were already down.
“We need to go.” Grace tugged on my arm to pull me in a direction she figured was safe.
I stood my ground. My plan was turning into a disaster as I watched and I was tying to think of some way to salvage it.
"C'mon, Zed. These infected are different than the ones in Austin. This isn't going to work. The Survivor Army saw us coming. They ambushed us."
I shook my head. The plan had to work.
I looked toward the nearest building. I knew I could run there, get through a door, get inside, and kill. I had my machete.
“Don’t,” Grace told me, as though she was reading my mind. “They’ll shoot you. There’s nothing you can do.”
I snapped around to look at her. “Wait here a second, I’ll be right back.” I sprinted toward the building.
As I passed Whites running in every direction, I called to them, asking them to follow, knowing the words were unintelligible except that it got their attention, and made them chase me. And that was fine for the moment. I ran down the front of the building, just below the balconies the helicopter assholes were shooting from, but just past the windows and patio doors, the craziest of the Whites were trying to break in. I asked them to follow as well.
At the end of the building, with a few dozen aggressive Whites and more following too closely now that my status had changed from follow-the-leader boss to running food, I hoped the doorway I came to was not locked. I slammed it with my full body weight, flinging it open and tumbling inside. It took a half second for me to get my bearings as I jumped back to my feet. I found a door to a stairwell, flung it open, and jumped behind the door before the first of my following Whites ran in through the outer door.
The first one arrived with a howl as the sound of the gunshots from the second floor echoed down the stairs. He ran up, more of the crazy ones followed.
Minor success. I hoped.
Once the last of the Whites had passed, I leaped out of the stairwell and sprinted down an interior hall, running for a door I figured would put me outside again but close to the pavilion where I’d left Grace.
People started screaming upstairs. The battle had moved inside.
I hit the door at full speed, flinging it open as I ran through. I crossed the gap between the building and the pavilion before anyone on an upper floor had a hope of bringing his aim around to shoot me.
Grace waited anxiously by a post at the far side, ready to run. “You okay?”
I nodded as I paused to catch my breath.
She pointed and said, “That way. If we run, I think we’ll be safe.”
“Lead the way.”
She took off. I followed. Just as we crossed the street, a huge explosion from the other side of the base shook the night. A fireball rose up from the
other side of the hangars, out where the Survivor Army’s helicopters were parked. Another explosion followed and then two more detonations sent more fire into the sky.
Grace led me past a brick-walled warehouse, and we were out of sight for any shooters in the apartment building. The helicopters had been taken care of by Fritz and Murphy. At least four had exploded. At least, I hoped that's what blew up.
“Slow down,” I told Grace. “Let’s take a block or two and catch our breath.” It had been a long night with a lot of running.
“Don’t be a pussy,” she told me. “We’re running as fast as we can until we get back through the fence. Come on, or from now on, I’m going to call you The Walking Zed.”
Chapter 49
Murphy and Fritz were already at the pub when the rest of us arrived. We took a moment to compare notes—all of the Black Hawks were destroyed. I had no way of knowing how many of the Survivor Army's soldiers had died, but at least our objective was met. Without helicopters, the remnants of the Survivor Army were just another bunch of assholes slugging it out in the dirt with the Whites and the rest of us.
It was time to plan, time to move. Staying so close to our helicopter's crash site wasn't a good idea in the realm of worst-case scenarios. For all we knew, the Survivor Army had another dozen helicopters and a thousand assholes in armored Humvees parked just outside of town, pissed-off about their buddies and ready to charge into San Angelo and root us out. It wasn't far-fetched considering what had happened in Austin the night we sprang Fritz and Gabriel, from Judge What's-his-fuck's prison.
Everyone got something quick to eat. Nachos swimming in room-temperature cheese-goo with enough jalapeños to make the flavor irrelevant was the top choice. Bottles of beer and warm soda washed it all down. We loaded what we could into our bags, checked that the street was empty, the sky was clear, and headed down a dark street toward the west side of town, looking for a place to bed down for the night.
Chapter 50
I had the last watch of the night, so I was already awake when gray, early-morning light exposed the street outside to be just as lifeless as it had probably been before the virus came. Little San Angelo out in West Texas was such a backwater compared to Austin. But people in Dallas probably thought the same thing about where I'd lived. And New Yorkers probably thought Dallas was full of hillbillies. The people in San Angelo probably felt sorry for New Yorkers being trapped in a noisy maze of tall buildings hiding the sky.
The circle of life.
Cars were parked in driveways, all fading to the sandy color of the dust settling in layers over their fenders, hoods, and windows. In the street and in the yards, few cars were abandoned. Just like the houses, few windows were broken, few doors open. Not a lot of clutter had been dragged into the grass by brain-fried scavengers or looters.
Even the house we’d spent the night in was in a state of absence, as though the owners simply forgot to come home from work one day or were raptured up to heaven. All their food was in the pantry. Their fridge was full of moldering vegetables and rotting meats. The litter box still held turds though the cat was long gone, escaped through the kitty door when the free food and water stopped appearing in its bowl.
And no human or White moved out in the street. No voices howled. No gunshots rang.
A pack of dogs trotted up the street, sniffing apathetically at upturned garbage cans they’d dug through months ago.
Dogs?
I’d seen almost no dogs in Austin and few anywhere since the virus arrived.
Murphy shuffled into the living room, rubbing his eyes. "Man, it's good to sleep in a real bed, but I think my body was so not used to it, it woke me up early.” He grinned. "Maybe I should have slept on the floor."
I didn’t turn away from the window I was looking through. “I’m sure somebody would have traded their spot on the floor with you.”
Murphy crossed the living room into the kitchen. “Anybody else up yet?”
"I heard somebody go out back earlier for a whiz in the bushes—Javendra, I think. He went back to bed, though."
“I’m awake,” said Javendra, quietly coming down the hall.
“You see anything out there?” Murphy called from the kitchen as he dug in the pantry.
“Korean food,” I answered.
Javendra looked at me like I might be a little bit crazy as he crossed the living room.
Murphy came out of the kitchen and looked at me from the doorway. “You look like you’re over there thinking about that professor shit again, Zed. What’s up?”
"San Angelo,” I said. "It's different here."
“What?” Murphy asked. “You still pissed because those Whites you gathered up last night didn’t attack the Survivor Army assholes like you wanted.”
"There's that.” I looked up and down the street before turning around to face Murphy and Javendra, who'd come to a stop to include himself in our conversation. "I've never seen Whites not go after the guys shooting the guns before. And this whole place, I mean, besides those Whites in the hospital, we haven't been attacked at all."
“What about the parking lot when we were running away?” Murphy asked.
"I killed that one,” I agreed, "but she wasn't being aggressive, she just happened to be there."
“It doesn’t matter,” argued Murphy. “I think you’re starting to spin up a different memory for whatever theory you’re mushing together in that golf ball head of yours. Man, you don’t wait to see if they’re going to bite you before you put ‘em down.” Murphy looked at Javendra for support. “You know what I mean?”
Javendra, uncomfortable to be put on the spot, nodded.
“You don’t know dick,” Murphy told Javendra. “You’ve been hiding in a castle this whole time.”
“It was a science building,” Javendra shot back though Murphy was already ignoring him and looking at me.
I took another glance up and down the street before looking back at Murphy. “Hardly anything’s been looted. It looks like everybody just left. There aren’t corpses everywhere. Things are different here. Why?”
“There were plenty at the hospital and in that church,” Murphy argued.
“But they hadn’t been grazed on by the Whites,” I told him. “Everywhere else, the Whites eat their own when they’re hungry. I think the disease was different here. Maybe another strain. Again.” I turned to Javendra. “You’re the scientist. What do you think?”
“I…” Javendra looked at Murphy, uncomfortably.
I pointed at Murphy. “Don’t mind him.”
“Whatever.” Murphy went back to the pantry.
I refocused on Javendra. “Tell me what you think.”
Javendra moved over in front of the couch. “Mind if I sit?”
“You don’t have to ask for permission.”
“Nobody else was sitting. I thought there might be a rule.” Touché. Javendra had a sarcastic streak. He smiled and sat down. “The virus mutates quickly. It creates new strains all the time. Most of them die in the host. Some of them are viable and go on to infect other hosts.”
“Other people,” I clarified. “That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“Of course.” Javendra shuffled around in his seat. “That was the point of our work at A&M. We were trying to develop a vaccine that would be effective for all the strains, not just one.”
“Because a vaccine for only one is nearly useless,” I confirmed.
Javendra nodded.
“And what we’re seeing here in San Angelo?”
"Based on what you're saying,” said Javendra, "because I haven't been outside seeing all you've seen, but I have read and heard about how the disease has affected different parts of the country and different cities around the world, at least, when we had some communications, and—"
“Yeah,” I interrupted, “get to the point.”
“I was saying, it seems that the mortality rate of the strain that affected San Angelo was much higher than in most places. And if
what you say is true about the aggressiveness of the survivors, perhaps the negative effects on the brain weren’t as severe as in most cases. In one way, a worse virus, in another way, a better strain of the virus, but a strain that we could potentially learn a lot from.”
“Hear that Murphy?” I called across the living room. “I’m right. The doc here says so.”
Murphy stopped what he was doing with a can in the kitchen and said, "I don't think he said that exactly. I think he's humoring you so you'll think you're right, and you'll shut up. Maybe somebody told him how you are.” Murphy laughed.
I said, “You seem like you’re back to your usual self.”
Murphy stuck his head out of the kitchen and looked at Javendra. “Now he’s changing the subject because he knows I’m right. Pay attention and you’ll learn how to deal with him.”
I rolled my eyes and went back to looking out the front window.
Chapter 51
Most of us were sitting around the breakfast table late that morning. We’d all eaten. We were all rested at least a little. Jazz was keeping watch through the front windows. Murphy was keeping watch on her and trying to chat her up with all the entertaining nothing-talk Murphy was good at. Fritz was trying to be discreet at keeping an eye on them while he, Grace, and Eve talked through a wish list of supplies we might gather before proceeding the final two hundred miles to Balmorhea.
We were going to be loading up two long-bed pickups for the trip. We’d have no trouble finding them. In fact, probably half the vehicles in town were pickups. Hell, maybe more. We’d have to be picky and find the four-wheel-drive models with brush guards and crew cabs—room in the back seat for passengers. Even at that, there were plenty around. This was West Texas.
It didn't seem like we'd have any trouble collecting food. It seemed most of the residents had died so quickly that few had time or need to loot and hoard. Guns and ammunition were on the list. We didn't anticipate a big problem there either—again, the West Texas thing. Most houses had, at least, a hunting rifle. It was the medical supplies that Eve requested and Javendra's wish list I didn't think we'd be able to fill. Judging by all the dead we'd seen at the hospital, I figured most medical supplies in town got used. As far as equipment for setting up a lab for Javendra, the hospital was the best place to scavenge, and none of us wanted to venture back over there. The Survivor Army remnants might be lying in wait to see if we had any inclination to revisit the crash site of our helicopter. It wasn't a chance worth taking.