“Why?” Ein asked, perplexed.
“Because I promised you.” Teddy smiled faintly. “I couldn’t keep my promise to them, but, at least with you, I…” His voice trailed off and he wiped a tear from his cheek. “Get some sleep, kid. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Okay…” Ein looked up at him and grinned. “You better tell me that long story you kept referring too.”
Teddy laughed quietly. “Yeah, I will… We’ll have nothing but time on our hands soon enough.”
CHAPTER 22
DECEMBER 21st
1:27 PM
The train sat motionless with its emergency brakes engaged some hundred miles north of Jackson, Tennessee. It blocked off a desolate county road where a small Phillips gas station stood surrounded by frosty fields. The traffic blockage didn’t matter since the only vehicle around for miles was a stalled Ford sedan that was parked on the shoulder and was occupied by two frozen corpses, a couple of suitcases, and wads of crusty tissues. There was no snow on the ground, but winter’s chill hung thick in the air and the high-noon sun only brought limited warmth.
Inside of the train’s cockpit, a blood-stained pocketknife sat on the console next to a first aid kit that had been rummaged through with its contents spread across the cabin. On the floor, amongst tatters of cotton gauze and used antiseptic wipes, lay two RFID trackers that were the size of two grains of rice. Small droplets of crimson led outside of the train and disappeared on the asphalt.
Further down the road, hazy in the sun’s quicksilver reflection, two silhouetted figures walked side by side as they headed east towards I-24.
There was a sound echoing across the frozen land that hadn’t been heard for a very long time in those forgotten parts – it was the sound of laughter.
BOOK THREE
Pilgrimage
PROLOGUE
DECEMBER 25th
12:27 PM
Riding a USAF HH-60W “Whiskey” halfway across the county certainly wasn’t the way General Glenn Fox had imagined spending his Christmas. Still, life had given him many unpleasant surprises in the past year.
Fox sat on the craft’s gunmetal bench and stared wearily out of the helicopter’s window at the frozen Tennessee plains down below. It was unbearably cold inside the aircraft—he sat bundled up in a parka, but the bitter air still managed to stiffen his arthritic joints. His back ached, his legs were numb, and his stomach felt sour from airsickness.
Across from him, two FEMA officers sat with their backs facing each other and operated the craft’s mounted machine guns. One of the officers looked over at him, smiled, and gave him a thumbs-up.
Fox begrudgingly returned the gesture with a forced smile that looked more like a scowl and then turned his attention back towards the window. The other two officers didn’t seem to have any problem with the ride or the cold. Why would they? Unlike himself, they had youth on their side. He was nearly fifty and had been a career soldier before the plague struck—why did he have to leave so urgently to head an investigation? He had a specialized division to command, and he didn’t have time to help some inexperienced officers get their shit together. Why Cheyenne had sent him instead of a lesser-ranking officer, God only knew.
The pilot’s voice floated through Fox’s headset: Sir, we’re approaching the site now—prepare for landing.
“Finally,” he grumbled. He grabbed his harness with both hands and stared outside.
Part of an Amtrak train blocked off some desolate country road next to an old gas station. Black FEMA police SUVs, and a small battalion of officers surrounded the train. The officers turned their attention up towards the helicopter as it approached.
Fox stared at the train and felt a little disappointed at just how underwhelming it appeared. During the past few intelligence briefings, the train robbery, and the events that unfolded at Camp Jayhawk had become everyone’s main topic of conversation. Sure, there were problems at many of the other camps, but Camp Jayhawk’s spectacular failure as an institution was astounding. Their administrator had committed suicide, and the camp was razed to the ground—all within a matter of weeks. It was an absolute embarrassment to the administration. Then, as if to rub salt into Cheyenne’s wounds, some of the detainees dared to hijack a goddamn train.
Still, despite the hype and all the hue and cry during the video conferences, Fox didn’t think the train looked particularly valuable or worth his time.
The helicopter landed in the field across the gas station. One of the officers opened the door for the general and snapped a salute.
Fox got out of the craft with a hand on the small of his back. He grimaced in pain and limped towards the asphalt.
A young lieutenant wearing a peacoat and jackboots stood to wait for him with a manila folder tucked under his arm. Two officers wearing riot armor, helmets, and wool balaclavas stood next to him. He saluted as the general approached. “Sir—it’s an honor. I’m Lieutenant Harrison from the Memphis Safe Zone.”
Fox returned a half-hearted salute. “Have there been any issues?”
“None at all, sir,” Harrison said. “My men traced the distress beacon and secured the area two days ago without incident.”
“Why are there so many men out here then?”
“Vigilance, sir—militiamen have been encroaching out west from Knoxville and Nashville.”
“In that case, I suppose the sooner this mess gets cleaned up, the better it will be for all of us.”
“I agree, sir.”
Fox finally managed to work most of the knots out of his lower back and started to walk towards the train. Corpses inside body bags had been lined up and placed on the side of the road; officers unzipped the bags one at a time and took the corpse’s picture as well as their identification badges. “Tell me something, lieutenant… Your team was assigned to retrieve the train, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then why in the hell was my presence requested for a simple recovery operation? Christ, son, if you can’t figure out what to do here, then at least contact your zone’s commander!”
Harrison cleared his throat and tugged at his uniform’s collar. “I, uh, did contact her, sir—she’s the ones who contacted your division.”
Fox paused and looked over at the young man. “Why?”
Harrison’s eyes darted from one side of the road to the other. “Your division is in charge of medical research, right?” he asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
“Yes… but what does that have to do with a train?”
“I think it’s best if you see for yourself,” Harrison said as he pointed at the carriage connected to the locomotive.
Fox, intrigued, momentary forgot about his arthritic knees and quickened his pace as towards the train. Ten body bags had been lined up and placed on the side of the road. He ascended the steps and peered inside the carriage. His eyes widened. “Dear God…”
Multiple rows of refrigerated crates marked with the universal biohazard symbol were secured to the floor by nylon straps. Puddles of water had formed around the bottom of the containers, and condensation covered all of them.
Harrison walked in behind him. “The power was out by the time my men arrived. The viral and blood samples had already defrosted. They’re unsalvageable.”
“This is from the…” Fox’s voice trailed off, and he looked over at the lieutenant with alarm. “Were any of the container’s seals breached?!”
“No, sir,” Harrison said. “Just to be safe, we already had a decontamination team sterilize the area.”
“Good… Good…” Fox shook his head, turned, and stepped back outside. It infuriated him that nobody had bothered to inform him that the stolen train was carrying research samples. He wondered what else the train was carrying—scientists, perhaps—and then stared at the body bags with some apprehension. “Who is deceased?”
“Jayhawk’s command staff,” Harrison said. “Their bodies were found in the first-class cabin. It appears that the
re was a shootout.” The lieutenant started prattling off the names and ranks of the deceased.
Fox tuned the man out—the information was insignificant. The scientists were the only ones who mattered to him. He wondered how many months or even years Jayhawk’s uprising would end up costing his project. Suddenly, instead of annoyance over the whole ordeal that he had experienced on the flight, he felt anger towards whoever was responsible.
“Have Memphis track down any rogue RFID signals within range,” Fox ordered. “I want whoever did this apprehended immediately!”
Harrison looked down and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “That’s not necessary, sir.”
Fox’s usually pallid cheeks went scarlet with rage. “Don’t tell me what’s necessary! Follow my goddamn orders!”
“Sir, it’s just that we don’t have to do that—we already know their identities!” Harrison held his palms up and took a step backward.
Fox’s anger quickly subsided. “You captured them?”
“No, sir…” Harrison lowered his hands, and anxiously wrung them together. “There were two men, but they had the foresight to remove their RFID implants before they left the train behind… We have conducted multiple scans and cannot locate any other rogue signals.”
“Two men!?” Fox was surprised. “Two men managed to do this?” He gestured at the train. “They took down an entire security detail…?”
“It… would appear so, sir. We found their implants in the locomotive’s cockpit along with bloody gauze and the knife they had used to dig it out of their forearms.” Harrison cleared his throat and frowned. “I’m afraid it gets worse…”
“Worse?” Fox asked. He cupped his forehead with a hand. He suddenly felt very ill. “Frankly, lieutenant, I fail to see how that’s possible.”
“We scanned their chips and managed to pull up their identities from the database.” Harrison handed over the manila folder that was tucked away under his arm.
Fox took the folder, flipped it open, and scanned the papers inside.
“One of the individuals, Ein Becker, was a test subject in the research program and was designated as a possible asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen,” Harrison said. “The other individual, Teddy Sanders, was flagged by Jayhawk’s chief researcher, Doctor Melvin Gatsby, deceased, like a—”
“I can read, lieutenant,” Fox interrupted. He took a hard swallow, and his hands started trembling as his eyes continued to scan the paper. If he didn’t turn things around quickly, he’d be the one forced to fall on the sword. He snapped the folder shut, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. He felt very sick, indeed.
“Sir, how should we proceed?” Harrison asked.
“Get their pictures out to every safe zone within three-hundred miles and upload their images into the drone’s facial recognition system,” Fox said as he handed the folder back to the lieutenant. “I want helicopters in the air until we find them, lieutenant—I want them brought in alive. I will be overseeing this operation personally, do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t know if we can have our helicopters operating for an extended amount of time… Our fuel allotment will not allow it.”
“Fuck your fuel allotment!” Fox shouted. “I’ll make a call to Cheyenne and get you whatever you need—just make it happen, lieutenant.”
“Will do, sir. What do we do about the train, though?”
Fox thought it over for a moment and then waved dismissively at it. “Get it off of the road and then burn the fucking thing—leave no trace of the project behind. We don’t need those militiamen nutjobs turning our good work into some biological weapon or spreading conspiracy theories. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” Harrison snapped a salute once again.
Fox turned and hurried towards the waiting helicopter. What a beautiful pile of shit I’ve stepped in. As he neared the craft, he thought about how he would have to spend the next few weeks living at a subpar safe zone in an undesirable region plagued with violence—his mood soured even more. “Merry fucking Christmas…”
CHAPTER 1
DECEMBER 26th
12:17 PM
Teddy Sanders had been walking for five days, but it felt more like a month. Oozing blisters on his feet served to not only slow his pace but also gave him a pronounced limp. His age had never been a noticeable factor in his daily life, but the longer he walked, the more his joints felt like unoiled gears that threatened to lock at any moment. A bushy, unkempt beard covered his face and made him look like a deranged wandering vagrant.
Ein kept a comfortable pace, but, like Teddy, he was starting to acquire a limp, and his grimaces of pain weren’t unnoticeable. His face had grown a patchy beard of its own, and the harsh country sun bleached out the purple dye from his long stringy hair.
Together they had trekked over one hundred miles across Tennessee farmland. The country roads and state highways they traveled had been surprisingly empty. They had passed a few abandoned cars and pickups. Some vehicles still had their decaying occupants sitting inside, but none of them would start—their batteries had dried up weeks ago.
Teddy suggested hunting for a vehicle with a manual transmission, but neither one of them knew how to pop a clutch. What a sorry couple of survivalists we’re turning out to be, he had remarked.
Daytime highs hung in the high fifties, but nights had become bitterly cold.
They took shelter in old farmhouses that had drawn curtains—provided that the ripe aroma of decay wasn’t too disgusting—and ate whatever canned goods they managed to find in the country stores and the two-pump gas stations. They wrapped themselves up in blankets to keep warm—yet their teeth chattered away throughout the night.
Once, Ein attempted to light a fire in one of the houses that had an old-fashioned wood-burning fireplace, but that went south quickly—the house burnt down to the foundation, and they were forced to walk another twenty miles to find another place to sleep.
During their first day of travel, their spirits were high, and the conversation lively.
Just as Teddy had promised he would, he had shared his long story with Ein and told him everything from his time back in Texas up until the death of Roger at the camp.
Ein shared some stories of his own. He told Teddy about his alcoholic, abusive father and told him about how much of a pain in the ass Arizona State University was. He even told Teddy about the combination of alcohol, marijuana, and a late-night dare with some of his friends that had resulted in his purple locks right before the flu closed down the campus. It turned out that Ein was only twenty years old—and Teddy had felt another twinge of pity for the kid. His best guess for Ein would have been mid-to-late twenties—he supposed the last year had been pretty rough on the kid.
However, as the days became longer and their hopes of finding a working vehicle faded, the conversations dried up, and their communication devolved into nothing more than a few hand gestures and grunts of aggravation.
Both of them operated on the same unspoken routine. Every day they’d travel until sunset, find some shelter, eat, sleep, and repeat.
When they first started their journey, Ein had mentioned how nice it would be to find another community, but that was beginning to seem more and more unlikely every day—they hadn’t passed through a single town that had more than one stoplight. More alarmingly, they hadn’t come across a single living person.
Two nights ago, on Christmas Eve, in an old county auction house that had been mothballed long before the flu struck, Teddy was awoken by what he thought was the sound a helicopter passing overhead, but by the time he hobbled towards the window, he couldn’t see a thing. He reasoned that he had imagined it, yet it took him over two hours to fall back asleep.
Christmas, just like Thanksgiving Day before it, came and went without either one of them even realizing that it had passed—holidays had little meaning when all you were doing was marching ahead like automatons.
Teddy caught Ein staring at him in his perip
heral from time to time, but the two never said a word. The look in the kid’s eyes was almost hopeful as if he wanted to know where they were going and how long it would take to get there.
Unfortunately, Teddy didn’t have a fucking clue.
A strange form of unspoken agitation and uneasiness formed between them, the longer they traveled.
Teddy wasn’t sure where the friction came from, but he suspected that it hinged on one simple fact: neither of them knew where they were going. The same uncertainty that unsettled Ein also terrified him. Was he going to walk to the Atlantic Ocean, turn around, and do the whole thing over again?
He supposed it didn’t matter in the end—if Ein wanted to go his own way, he wouldn’t stop him.
In fact, on most nights when Teddy went to sleep, he no longer expected Ein to be there in the morning.
Yet, when morning came, Ein was still present, and so was that friction.
On December 26th, they had been walking since dawn.
Their meager breakfast of canned sausages had become a fast-fading memory almost as soon as they had started walking.
Teddy’s feet ached terribly, and his stomach growled with hunger. He looked up at the sky. Since the sun was right on top of them, he figured it was close to noon and close enough to start lunch.
“Look!” Ein exclaimed.
Teddy jumped at the sound of his voice and looked over at him. “What is it?”
Ein pointed ahead at a green highway sign that the sunlight reflected off of it read: Dickson—5mi Nashville—30mi.
Teddy squinted to read the sign and then cracked a smile. “Dickson… Holy shit, kid, I think that’s an actual town…”
“Yeah,” Ein said excitedly. “And I know Nashville. I hate country music, but at least it’s a real city!”
“It’s about damn time.” Teddy laughed. “We might get to sleep in a comfortable bed tonight.”
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