The Beginning of the End (Book 2): Toward the Brink II

by Craig A. McDonough

  Mulhaven was interested in how the Shoshone group had managed to survive out here, just the three of them.

  “When did you lose power?” he asked the moment he entered the house and saw the candles and kerosene lanterns.

  “Actually, we haven’t,” David Grigsby said. “We support ourselves with solar and wind power. The town lost power about a day or so ago. We keep the lights low or off altogether when it’s dark…. The light attracts them.”

  “Them?” Allan asked. A sliver of ice ran down his back.

  “You know who he means, son,” Mulhaven answered.

  Allan nodded. He knew, but wished he didn’t.

  “What are your plans now?” David asked his guests as he brought a pot of coffee to the table, where everyone gathered.

  “We plan to head to Canada, British Columbia, to be exact. I have an aunt we can stay with…. Well, if she’s still there,” Elliot said.

  “Why did you stop here?” Margaret Grigsby asked as she brought extra coffee mugs over.

  “We were forced to leave Twin Falls faster than we’d planned. Allan told me Roger lived here now, so we thought we’d see if he wanted to come along.” Elliot had heard the fear in the voice of Roger’s aunt and added, “You and Mr. Grigsby are more than welcome to join us.”

  Margaret couldn’t hold back her elation. She emptied her arms of the mugs she carried and hugged Elliot. In the candlelight, tears could be seen running down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Elliot, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you. Roger told stories about you and how you were so concerned for others.” She kissed him several times on the forehead and hugged him again.

  Margaret hadn’t had the nerve to tell her husband or Roger she was afraid. She had put on a brave face, but the thought that she might be left alone, or become a victim of the disease, gnawed at her insides. Most of all, she was afraid of those creatures.

  “I appreciate your offer, Elliot. We’re the last three left around here …” David looked at Margaret, then to his nephew, Roger, and a tear welled up in his eye. “Alive, anyway. We didn’t know what to do, and we’re glad for your help. We’ll do whatever we can. You know, we started to think we wouldn’t make it and we’d have no choice but to … to …”

  “It’s all right, David, it’s all right.” The Tall Man placed an arm around the shoulder of the organic farmer. “As long as you can make coffee this good, we’d take you anywhere!”

  The tiny piece of good-natured banter brought some laughter right when it was needed. Mulhaven’s regard for the Tall Man grew higher. He had agency or black ops written all over him, but his real skill was in his ability to lift the spirits of those around him. A natural skill few people had.

  “When do we leave?” asked David, renewed hope in his voice.

  “First light. We don’t move at night unless we have to, but I’m sure you know that, Mr. Grigsby.”

  “I suggest we get some rest before then, and …” David put up a hand. “Margaret, kill the lights,” he whispered. “They’re back.”

  Margaret quickly doused the kerosene lantern on the kitchen counter then blew out the candles on the table. Darkness filled the inside of the farmhouse. Starlight filtered through the windows, just enough to see as eyes became accustomed to the dark.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have left our guns behind!” Cindy echoed what the others thought.

  Elliot crawled over to her and put his arm around her. “It’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She clung to Elliot, and in the dark, they kissed. Brief though it was, there was passion, warmth, and a touch of desperation in the kiss.

  “Get down! Down on the floor,” David hissed at the others. “Don’t let them see us!”

  Firm footsteps plodded on the gravel outside, a few feet from the front door.

  “Looks to be at about twenty, in front of the van.” Roger relayed the information from his position by the front window.

  “Foamers, all right.” The Tall Man swept across the carpet and moved into position next to Roger.

  “Foamers?”

  “That’s what they’re called, Margaret. Because of the green bile they throw up,” Cindy whispered.

  “I’ve seen it on some of them, through binoculars,” Roger confirmed.

  “Have any of you come in contact with that green bile?” Mulhaven asked Roger. It wasn’t an easy question to ask, but one that was needed.

  “No, I haven’t—none of us have—but I’ve seen them retching at night when they’ve come, and some of the townspeople vomited like this before it took them over.”

  “We have foamer, all right, near the front steps,” the Tall Man warned in a hushed tone.

  “We need to get to the van,” Cindy whispered to Elliot.

  “If we keep quiet we’ll be all right,” he reassured her, or tried.

  “If they smell us, we’re in for it. They go into a frenzy when they get a whiff of the living,” David whispered.

  The Tall Man had taken note of the cloves of garlic spread over the front porch. Now he knew why they were there.

  It wasn’t to keep vampires away … but to keep the foamers at bay.

  “Shit, I’m a poet and I just don’t know it,” he chuckled to himself.

  “You say something, Chuck?”

  “Clearing my throat, Riley … clearing my throat.”

  “Wait, he’s stopped. Looks like he’s lost interest and the others have drifted off.” Roger gave an update.

  “Okay, good. But let’s keep the lights off, we don’t want them coming back.”

  “That was close.” David stood and peeked through the window.

  “They come around every night?” Elliot asked.

  “Yeah, we don’t always see them, but we hear them.”

  “Have you recognized any?” Mulhaven asked David.

  “I have.” He paused for a long moment. “My brother. He has the farm next to us. I always told him not to eat that fast food shit. I told him … I … I …” David covered his face.

  “Oh, honey, don’t do this to yourself!” Margaret said as she shuffled around in the dark to find her husband.

  While she did her best to soothe her husband, Mulhaven, Elliot, and the Tall Man gathered to plan their next move.

  “We can’t stay here much longer, they’ll eventually find us,” Elliot insisted.

  “Let’s ride this out to daylight. Remember your theory, that they aren’t active in the daylight. The Grigsby’s confirmed it, so we should be okay as long as we don’t attract attention.”

  “Chuck’s right. Those foamers outside have gone. We’ll give them another ten minutes, gather our weapons and then grab a few hours’ sleep. Then we’re out of here.”

  “And,” the Tall Man was firm, “no one goes outside alone, okay?”

  Elliot and Mulhaven both agreed and were glad to have this mysterious Tall Man with them.

  “The rock.”

  “What did you say, Riley?”

  “The Rock of Gibraltar … that’s our Chuck.”

  Elliot understood what Mulhaven meant. He also looked upon the Tall Man in such a fashion, though he hadn’t come up with a tag for him.

  “Yeah,” Elliot said. “Exactly!”

  Eight

  While political leaders across the country received information as to the true nature of the crisis and planned their response, and the survivors in Shoshone at the Grigsby farm prepared for their flight to Canada, a long-forgotten piece of the nightmare returned.

  The mutant children.

  Stomach upsets and uncontrolled vomiting weren’t all that swept through the medical facilities of Idaho after the release of the miracle potato, as it was called by farmers and the press in the beginning. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women across Idaho gave birth four or five months prematurely, to children who weighed three or four times what a normal full-term child did. Born with the black eyes of a shark and repulsive facial deformities, these “mutant babies”
were otherwise healthy. It was the mothers who perished in most cases. There was no mention in any medical manual of an affliction like this.

  The upper echelons of the Chamber were shocked by these events. The thousands of affected patients could be explained—even the few deaths—but deformed children with a resemblance to the spawn of the devil were hard to accept. The Tall Man and his boss, Langlie, weren’t informed of the mutant children. Baer biochemist Paul Dennard knew different and wasn’t that surprised. He kept the grim details from Mr. Baer, however. The upper echelon of the CDC was well aware of the situation and was complicit in the removal and subsequent isolation of the children. Should knowledge of these children become public, it could well have jeopardized the whole scheme.

  The Chamber had invested a lot of time and money into this operation to ensure its success. Rumors suggested the plan went back to the early part of the twentieth century, when European royalty and powerful bankers, along with their American counterparts, plotted the downfall of the human race in Vienna in 1928. The event was the first meeting of this international cabal of the wealthy. The finest food and wine were on offer as chamber music played throughout—hence the unofficial name of the group. Not all of humanity had been selected for decimation, however, just those who were no longer of any use to the elite—about ninety-nine percent of the population. It had taken many years for the Chamber to establish itself. It had infiltrated every corner of society—politics, the military, arts and entertainment (including the wonderful invention for mind control: the television), and, of course finance. Especially finance. It was far easier to win over someone with fine words and a bag of money than with fine words alone.

  It was the Chamber that had come to Baer Industries’ rescue, via their surreptitiously planted agents within the Centers for Disease Control, and hid the mutant children from view. All records were destroyed, and the mothers, the ones who lived, were paid off and relocated as if it had never happened.

  But it did.

  * * *

  “Sir, we’ve got movement in the field ahead,” the lead Humvee reported over the radio.

  “Movement where?” Captain MacGill said into his helmet mouthpiece.

  “On our left, nine o’clock, sir. Look!”

  MacGill climbed up to the turret of his command vehicle, rested one hand on the M2 Browning, and looked toward the lead vehicle. The soldier up front pointed to the left side of the highway.

  The 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team of the Idaho Army National Guard, or what remained of them, had been sent from their base at Gowen Field, Boise, to back up other units in the Twin Falls area but had received orders over secure military comms to pull out and head toward Salt Lake City and take up defensive positions around Ogden, Utah. They were approaching the Utah border on the 81 when a strange movement among the sparse growth at the side of the road alerted them. The sun had risen hours ago, so this left foamers out of the question. With half the company lost to the undead bastards, they were on constant alert for another attack. The captain didn’t see the need to call a stand to, as foamers only came out at night. The question remained, then, who the hell would be all the way out here, and on foot?

  “Hold up,” MacGill called over the radio. The convoy of six Humvees, one LAV-C2, two M35 cargo trucks, and just under sixty men in total—all that remained of the once full-sized company—came to a stop in the middle of the road. There was no traffic to be concerned about anymore. The corporal in the forward Humvee stood on top of his vehicle and raised 10x30 Steiner binoculars to his eyes.

  “Sir, they look like children,” the corporal said over the radio.

  “Whataya mean, children? I can tell from here they’re too tall for children!”

  The captain lifted his own set of binoculars to his eyes to double-check. It wasn’t that he doubted the corporal—he was one of the best soldiers left under the captain’s command. But the “green meanie” disease had spread like an uncontrolled grass fire and had infected many in the company. He needed to be on guard for the slightest sign that another of his soldiers might be infected. He would have to make a quick decision if it became necessary. Better to put a bullet in the head of a single man before he turned into one of those creatures than to have to fight off five or six of them.

  “Well, I’ll be … They do look like kids. Big-ass fuckin’ kids!” MacGill muttered into his microphone. “There’s something else about them, too…. It don’t seem right.”

  It was more than their size that unsettled the captain. Kids, no matter how big, don’t run around in the middle of nowhere in boxer shorts.

  “The faces, Captain. Look at their faces.” The corporal sounded unsteady.

  MacGill adjusted the zoom on his binoculars and followed his corporal’s advice. What had seemed abnormal at first became diabolical.

  “Are they wearing masks, Corporal?” MacGill asked.

  MacGill tried hard to convince himself it was just teenagers playing pranks. Nobody had a nose like a pig or the lifeless black eyes of a shark, but when he knew otherwise, he felt his skin crawl.

  “Sir, they’re headed our way, what are your orders?” The corporal’s voice trembled over the radio.

  The rest of the company were out of their vehicles. They’d heard the chatter on the radio and wanted to see these big kids in their boxers. No one thought it necessary to take their weapons with them. Not for a bunch of kids.

  “Fire, fire!” MacGill yelled at his men, but when he realized no one was armed, he panicked and reached into the turret of his Humvee. “Gimme my rifle. Pass my fuckin’ rifle!”

  Inside, the private reacted as one does when a CO yells at him—he grabbed the M4 carbine and passed it up to his CO without thinking, muzzle first. MacGill snatched it from the private’s hands. A finger brushed past the trigger guard and tapped the trigger once … just once.

  The soldiers on the road spun around the instant they heard the gunshot. They watched with horror as their captain buckled over the top of the Humvee and his helmet bounced across the turret to the ground, his blond hair now streaked red.

  “Captain, Captain … oh shit!” was the cry from some as they ran to the the aid of their fallen CO, no longer interested in the five-foot-tall kids.

  “Get back. Get back to your vehicles!” screamed the corporal, who had checked on the mutant children after the shot went off. They’d picked up the rate of travel and were at the edge of the road, less than ten yards from the soldiers gathered around their fallen leader.

  The mutant children, an unplanned byproduct of the Chamber’s scheme to wipe out the unwanted of the Earth, assailed the unaware part-time soldiers. A flurry of arms, dust, blood, and screams followed. A lot of screams. The drivers of the vehicles jumped out and fired wildly into the melee before them. Incensed, angered, and scared, they fired and fired and didn’t stop. Mutants and fellow soldiers died from the unrestrained volley.

  “Your fire. Watch your fire!” the corporal screamed into the comms. The situation was out of control. In the midst of all the carnage, the small hairs on the back of his neck stood. He was no longer alone. Beside his vehicle, staring up with blackest eyes, was a three-armed mutant. The creature stared at the corporal, its sharp, canine -like teeth glistening in the sun from saliva and blood. The beast gurgled and its eyes rolled back into its head, only the whites visible, before it launched itself through the air at the panicked corporal.

  A routine deployment a few days ago to help local law enforcement “quell some civil unrest” ended with an entire company from the 116th butchered.

  The blood-stained mutant children raised their arms and gave a victorious chant like prehistoric cavemen after a successful hunt while a reconnaissance drone flew overhead. It captured all the gory details and relayed the pictures to the Pentagon via satellite (one of the last in service) in real time—further evidence of the impending holocaust.

  Nine

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we just got these pictures off the sate
llite.” Tom Transky stormed into the Oval Office. There was no time for protocol.

  “It’s okay, Tom, I’ve informed the attorney general of the entire situation. He’s on board.”

  The president sat at the Resolute desk. He looked like a new man after his victory against Shaun Hadlee earlier in the day. Still, it was no time to gloat. He had renewed hope based on CDC Director Higgins’s assessments. He had invited Raymond Astor, the attorney general, into the Oval Office to discuss the provisions which gave executive power to Hadlee. Astor, to the president’s delight, had informed him that unless the US was under a direct nuclear attack, “then no one but the elected president retains full executive power.” Good news indeed, but it would have to wait. There were more pressing matters at hand. He believed Idaho and nearby states were a lost cause, but the chance to halt the disease with the potential of a serum to reverse or prevent the contagion gave him new hope. He was ready to grab the bull by the horns.

  “Sir.” Tom greeted the attorney general.

  “What have you got there, Tom?” The president stood and reached out.

  Transky took a moment to look around. Hadlee was nowhere to be seen.

  “He sulked off somewhere with his tail between his legs, Tom.”

  Relief swept across the face of the White House chief of staff like a cool breeze on a hot day.

  “These were taken about an hour ago, sir. It’s believed to be a National Guard unit from Idaho, short of the Utah border.”