Orbital Decay

by A. G. Claymore

  “You trust him?”

  “Hell, he’s still a risk,” Ben said mildly, “but we’ve all had to redefine what constitutes a risk, haven’t we?” A sleeping bag tumbled past, looking like a giant caterpillar, complete with many pairs of tiny legs. Ben sighed, patting Lise’s knee. “We need to get everyone together, give out the shots and then get back to the shuttle.”

  “I can’t leave,” she answered indignantly. “These people took us in; saved our lives.”

  “And we’ll give them five shots,” Ben answered reasonably, “and they’ll pass it on until everybody’s immune. But we’ve got an entire planet of people out there that needs this stuff.” He lifted her left hand, the vial still clasped in her fingers. “I’ve got the researchers that made this waiting over by Wampum lake, along with Abe’s shuttle. We need to get back to them and get them to somewhere they can work without getting overrun, and we need to start getting this out to any living humans we can find.”

  Five shots later, they were saying their goodbyes. Once the five had survived the two-day incubation period, they would pass it on to the rest of the refugees. The pastor had already organized five armed parties to escort the ‘Five’ once they were ready to go out into Chicago, carrying hope in their veins for all who wanted it.

  “Thank you, Detective Marks.” The pastor shook his hand. “Giving that last shot to Michael was the right thing to do. He’s the only other doctor we have, now that Lise is going to be leaving us.” Michael was the man who had started to show symptoms earlier. His poor family was even more distraught, pulled back from the thin comfort of certain despair, but teetering now on the brink.

  “We were getting pretty low on hope around here until you boys showed up,” the big man went on. “Heck, son, we were running on fumes. But now…” He looked around the room, nodding at a young man sitting with his wife. “Now we’re gonna send out our ‘Blood Missionaries’, just as soon as we can. An hour ago, we were wondering if any of us would get through this. Now we’re planning to take our city back, and after that…” he looked at Ben. “We can send out teams to other cities.”

  “Well, thanks for taking my family in,” Ben flexed his right hand to restore circulation. Does he shake everyone’s hand after Sunday service? “I never would have found them, if not for you.”

  “And yet, folk still say the Good Lord doesn’t work miracles anymore.” The pastor chuckled. We’ll draw attention to the rear,” he offered, nodding toward the back door that Ben and Abe had come in through. “You folks should be able to get out the front door without too much trouble.” He turned and led them down the hall to the sanctuary, stopping to pop his head in an office.

  “Edna, could you put something on the back speaker, please?” He resumed course for the front door, Ben’s party in tow. “They’re drawn to any man-made noises. Music pulls them in like flies on honey, poor souls.” He took a quick look through a side window and then pulled the door open. “God be with you,” he said simply.

  And they were outside in the cool air.

  A scratchy song was playing in the distance. “I think that’s ‘Falling in Love Again’, in German,” Abe said. “Sounds like an old copy from the ‘30s.”

  “If this day gets any weirder,” Ben muttered, shaking his head. “I suppose this is the new normal, now.” He unslung his G-19. “Alright, we probably drew most of them out of the main street already, so we’ll head back the same way. Nothing fancy, just straight down the middle and shoot anything that isn’t human… anymore.”

  They moved over to the corner. It looked quiet. They set off at a brisk walk. Lise had to carry Brendan, so running wasn’t really an option. Halfway to the creek, they stopped for a short rest next to a midsize sedan that was pushed up against a streetlight. Its taillights gleamed dully in the gathering dusk.

  They all jumped as a car horn sounded. There was a driver in the sedan, though he was in no shape to drive anymore, and he was leaning on the horn with his elbow as he scratched at the window.

  “Shit!” Ben’s heart was racing. “We’ve gotta get moving.” He moved to pick up Brendan, but Lise stopped him.

  “I’ve got him,” she said firmly. “You need both hands to deal with the results of all this noise.” She nodded over at the car with its grisly occupant, the horn still blaring.

  Sure enough, the street was coming to life, or a grotesque facsimile of it. They hadn’t cleared out this street after all. Far from it. There were at least ten shuffling revenants moving into the street ahead of them.

  “Daddy, I need my costume too!” Brendan chided.

  “Oh God,” Lise muttered. “He thinks it’s Halloween.”

  “Let him,” Ben answered quietly. He brought the weapon up and started firing as he moved forward. “Abe, take the left side. I’ll take the right.”

  No longer caring about noise, they moved down the street at a fast walk, shooting everything that moved. Lise followed with a very confused little boy. They reached the end of the street and crossed into the back yard of the house with the pool. Ben rounded the corner and found himself face to face with a man who must have been the owner… once. He fired into the man’s rotting head at point-blank range and gagged as some of the spatter hit his open mouth.

  They pushed the canoe down the bank and into the river, Abe holding the bow while Lise put Brendan in the middle before taking the rear seat.

  “Abe, sit in front of Brendan and keep an eye out,” Ben said, still trying to work up enough saliva to spit out the taste of rot. Thank God I got that shot last night. “Lise is better with a paddle than both of us put together so I’ll take the front and she’ll steer.”

  The trip back was slower – they had more weight and they were travelling against the current. It seemed to take forever to reach the rail bridge and then they came to the camp. Two of the infected who hadn’t come after the canoe the first time were still there, feeding on the remains of a dog.

  “Daddy, what are they doing?” Brendan’s three-year-old mind had no context to put this into and he was mystified, wondering if this was normal behavior.

  It was Abe who answered. “Little buddy, I need you to watch the woods on that side of the canoe.” He pointed away from the scene. “Can you do that for me?”

  “Okay.”

  Ben turned to find his son earnestly searching the woods on the right hand side of the boat. Little Brendan seemed to be accepting the new reality better than some adults – so far. Will he ever remember what life was like before today? He caught Abe’s eye and gave him a quick nod of thanks, before turning back to his efforts. On her own, Lise was barely keeping up with the current.

  They rounded the last bend and the highway was there, but now a smoking Humvee lay on its side at the bottom of the embankment, and an angry scar in the grass led up to the new hole in the railing. The roof had torn loose and lay half in the water.

  “That’s new,” Ben commented as they drew even with the scene. “Must have been a patrol vehicle. Oh Hell!” He stared in horror as the driver, still strapped into his seat, tried to get at the body on the passenger side. The driver had succumbed to the infection and lost control. The Army wouldn’t be able to stop this if they were already infected. “Abe…”

  Two three-round bursts hit the driver and he stopped moving.

  “Daddy!” Brendan’s little voice was showing the strain. Lise must have kept him from seeing the shooting during their run to the boat but he had been looking straight at the driver when Abe shot him. “I want to go home now!” A whine was creeping into his voice. This was no longer an adventure. He was reaching his limits.

  “Hold on, little buddy,” Ben grunted as he drove his paddle through the water as hard as he could, driving them into the dark beneath the bridge. His son started to cry openly now and the sound was torture for Ben. This was no scary movie, accidentally found on the TV, this was reality and Ben desperately wished he could just change the channel.

  They finally reached sunlight
on the far side and Lise angled them toward the bank.

  “Other bank,” Ben wheezed as he pushed the nose back over. The nose ground into the weeds and he hopped out, pulling the bow up, Abe stepping out to join him. He reached in and picked up Brendan, tiny arms nearly choking the life out of him.

  “It’s ok, little buddy,” Ben spoke softly into his ear. “We’re safe now.” Lise stepped out of the boat and gently stroked the back of his head.

  “That might be a bit premature,” Abe said quietly.

  Ben followed his gaze and saw a handful of dead people moving between the shedding trees. They were heading toward them.

  “Must have heard the Humvee crash,” Abe speculated as he started to put them down with his G-19. “But then…” He looked over at Ben. “Better get moving. The sound of weapons fire will probably bring more of ‘em.”

  He had refrained from saying it, but Brendan’s crying was almost certainly an irresistible lure. They jogged through the trees, feet shuffling through the fresh orange carpet. A new scent of rot mingled with the distinctive tang of autumn. Ben could see the shuttle and a small handful of forms were moving around it.

  He felt his service revolver being yanked out of his holster. Lise hated guns, but she would have no qualms using one to protect her child. Ben took a closer look at the figures near the shuttle. They were in a rough line facing the trees, carrying shotguns. “Lise, those are the researchers; don’t shoot them.”

  “Oh, those are the guys that turned this loose on us?” she asked. “Can’t I just kneecap ‘em?”

  “Get aboard!” Abe yelled at the four scientists. “We got rot-monkeys right behind us!”

  They scrambled aboard and Abe initiated the engine startup before coming aft again to find the headset that he had thrown in the back a few hours earlier.

  “You must be Lise,” Dwight began. “My name is…”

  “Dumbass!” She cut him off coldly before turning to press her cheek against the top of Brendan’s head. Ben dropped down on his son’s other side and strapped in as the aircraft lifted off. He pulled down a headset from a panel behind them. “Abe, take us south. I’ll come up later and let you know the details in a little while.”

  He pulled the headset off and worked an arm around his small family.

  “Are you taking us to that R&D station that got you fired from the NSA?” She looked up at him. “What makes you think they’ll even let us land?”

  Ben took a deep breath. “They’ll need what we have, and hopefully Abe’s credentials will help…” He wasn’t really sure who Abe worked for, but he belonged to one of the many shadowy arms of the government and he had to hope it would be enough to get them on the ground at their destination.

  Hope was pretty much all they had left.

  An Exerpt from Kill or Cure

  Book 2 in the Orbital Decay Series

  Grounded

  Near Belton, South Carolina

  Ben eased his foot off the gas. He squinted out the windshield of the borrowed SUV. Something didn’t add up. The wounded man waving them down seemed… wrong.

  Lise, sitting beside him, turned to pull a med kit from the space between Brendan and Dwight’s seats. “Pull over, Hon. I’ll take a look at him.” She lurched sideways into her seatback as her husband hit the gas. “Ben!”

  He had acted on instinct, but he knew he was right. The reasoning found form as he pushed harder on the pedal. “That bastard’s not hurt, Lise. He has blood on his right leg but he’s favoring his left?” He accelerated straight at the man in the middle of the road and, sure enough, he skipped out of the way, nimble as a monkey.

  “Down!” Ben screamed as he aimed for the weakest-looking spot in the roadblock. Heads began to pop up from behind it, weapons in their hands. His blood tingled in his veins, every breath feeling like hot lead. He spared a quick glance behind him, seeing that Dwight had pushed little Brendan’s head down.

  Behind them, the supposedly wounded man was running back onto the shoulder of the road to aim a revolver at them. He’d obviously forgotten the second vehicle in Ben’s little convoy because Abe slammed him down to the pavement, rolling over the body with the heavy off-road tires, still accelerating to close up with the lead vehicle.

  The people behind the barricade stared in shock as twelve thousand pounds of steel and sixteen screaming cylinders bore down on them. Abe had the presence of mind to use his horn. The effect was almost comical as the ambushers broke, running for either side of the barricade. It would have been comical if his wife and little boy weren’t at risk of being killed by scavengers.

  Ben struck the folding tables in the center of the obstruction and they smashed apart. He flinched as a heavy fragment of plywood hit the middle of the windshield, leaving a spider’s web of cracks.

  Riggs had crawled into the cargo well at the back and pushed the rear window open. After a couple of failed tries, he managed to get his G-20 into action, and the researcher poured a hail of fire on the largest of the two scattered groups of attackers. His aim was terrible, but he made up for it with his complete lack of fire discipline.

  Rather than controlled bursts, he simply held the trigger down, hitting nobody but scaring the hell out of them all the same. He emptied the top magazine in less than two seconds. He began to fiddle with the weapon, trying to figure out how to bring the bottom mag into play, but they were already clear of the ambush.

  Ben kept up the pace for the better part of two miles before easing off on the pedal. He pulled over – a habit he expected would die soon enough – and stopped the vehicle. There was nothing but harvested fields in every direction.

  He was still coursing with adrenaline. He felt the urge to go back and fight, or to keep running, but he had to stop and make sure everyone was all right.

  Lise was out of her seatbelt as soon as the tires touched the gravel shoulder and she climbed into the second row.

  Ben shut off the ignition, turning to see Brendan’s little arms wrapped around his mother’s neck. It’s OK, Mommy,” the little boy soothed. “Daddy told me he has collision through work.”

  The four adults in the vehicle cracked up, releasing the tension of the encounter. Brendan frowned for a second, then, deciding the laugh wasn’t at his expense, joined them.

  Ben saw Abe climb down from his vehicle so he opened his door and slid down to the asphalt, still chuckling. He shrugged at the curiosity on Abe’s face. “Brendan’s telling us not to worry, we’ve got good insurance…”

  A snort escaped from the pilot. “Kids,” he shook his head.

  “Everyone’s OK back there?” Ben looked past him to the second vehicle.

  A nod. “Whoever fired from your truck damn near shot our tires out, but he kept the bastards down.” He grinned. “They started to get back up but, soon as Sarah opened our back window, they decided they liked the taste of dirt.”

  “That was Riggs,” Ben sighed, looking around for any sign of life, or otherwise… “You saved us back there when you took out the gunman in the road.” It wasn’t the first time Abe had proven his worth.

  He had thrown his lot in with Ben on Tartarus station, the site where the plague had originated. He’d been a backup co-pilot on the shuttle carrying the euphemistically named containment team sent to eliminate the researchers and Chicago Detective Sergeant Ben Marks.

  In light of the breakout that had circled the globe in a matter of days, obeying old orders had seemed counter-productive. Ben had the researchers who caused the plague. Dwight Young and Alan Riggs rode in the lead vehicle with Ben and his family while Sarah Mendel and Tim Brown rode with Abe. They were the only people left who understood the disease.

  And they had a cure.

  The cure conveyed immunity, along with a complete re-programming of the genetic clock. The inoculated would live for centuries, depending on their age at the time of the shot. Their descendants would live for millennia.

  Assuming, of course, that you survived the shot.

  Th
ere was a chance – somewhere in the two-percent neighborhood – that the shot would give you the plague instead of the cure. Then your body would turn into a walking incubator.

  Any tissues not needed for that new role were broken down to refuel the essential systems. Skin, fatty tissue and higher brain functions were the first to go.

  After helping to rescue Lise and Brendan from the quarantine zone in Chicago, Abe had agreed to get them to a government research station on Petite Tortue Island. They had just flown past Spartanburg, South Carolina, when the EMP hit.

  “Too bad your shuttle wasn’t a diesel.” Ben patted the side of the black SUV.

  The military had decided to shut down transportation networks in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of the disease. A series of nukes in low orbit had generated massive electromagnetic pulses across the continental United States. It was a case of too little too late.

  For Ben’s small group, it seemed more like too much too soon.

  The pulse had killed aircraft and many ground vehicles. Abe’s shuttle, hardened to survive solar flares during operations outside of the ionosphere, had not lived up to the manufacturer’s hype. They crash-landed on battery backup, barely surviving the rapid descent into the middle of Sumter National Forest.

  Before the crash, Ben had thought the ordeal was largely over. They would land at the research station and work on producing more vaccine. They were only hours from safety.

  Now they were on the ground, nowhere near their destination, and everyone was looking to him for the next move. Abe had found a military beacon on his shuttle’s mapping system, but it was in Anderson – still in South Carolina, but far beyond the forest. First, they would have to reach Clinton.

  It had taken the better part of a week to hike the twenty kilometers out to civilization. By the time they emerged from the forest, the town of Clinton was completely deserted by the living. Only the dead walked its streets now. Leaving the rest of the group at the forest’s edge, Ben and Abe had snuck into town, where an abandoned dealership gave them the deal of a lifetime.