Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  There were no sounds of crazed people here. Distantly, he could still hear the fireman banging on the door, eager to kill and eat Andrew. He chuckled, then stopped. There was dark humor, then there was this.

  The blood-smeared locker room tiles ended with a clear drag mark. There was a lot of dried and partially-dried blood, as in enough to fill a man. He searched ahead with the Maglite’s power beam. The drag marks led through a tiled and open doorway, into the showers. The food in his stomach felt like lead as he slowly stepped around the blood and through the doorway. He found out why there were no other firemen.

  The chicken wraps and orange juice hit the tile in a chunky, technicolor stream as Andrew emptied his stomach. In one corner of the shower was a scene from a horror movie—a pile of bodies, many disemboweled and some with their throats ripped out. There were gouts of blood dripping from the walls and the ceiling of the human slaughterhouse. The fireman he’d locked out had apparently ambushed his fellows one by one, then dragged them into the shower. He could see chunks of their flesh torn out. The attacker had been eating them. “Oh, my fucking God,” Andrew said as he heaved what little remained in his stomach onto the floor.

  Andrew went around the corner and dropped to the floor, rolling back onto his rear against the locker room wall separating him from the murder scene. At least nine bodies were in there. His breath was coming in short gasps, and he realized he was about to pass out; he was hyperventilating.

  Putting his head between his knees, he got his breathing under control through sheer force of will. You didn’t get to be a fighter pilot by freaking out and huffing yourself unconscious. “You just pulled off a fucking dead-stick in a jumbo jet,” he admonished himself. “You’ve played plenty of crazy video games. What’s a few zombies?”

  He sat up, the tiles cool against the back of his neck. Zombies? Could he be in the middle of a damned zombie apocalypse? He almost laughed again, but he was afraid if he started, he’d never stop. He’d spent his life in the United States military, defending his nation from her enemies. The thought that zombies existed and were turning people by biting them was worse than ludicrous, and he suddenly wished he was back in his bunk at Riyadh.

  Whatever the fuck was going on, he needed to keep his shit together and work the problem. He finished searching the fire station, finding two more caches of bodies just like the one in the shower. One was in the Chief’s office, the other in a bathroom. By the time he found the one in the bathroom, he’d grown accustomed enough to the horrific scenes that he could stop and wash his mouth out, and throw some water on his face. He began to develop a plan.

  He needed to deal with the possibility that fallout covered him. As the water was working, he returned to the showers, ignored the slaughter, and went to the far end. The hot water came out more warm than hot, but he didn’t care. He stripped out of his Nomex flight suit and rinsed it thoroughly, watching gray dirt flow out of it. Then he washed himself head to toe, scrubbing every nook and cranny with the soap and shampoo he found in the shower. He washed three times before the water began to turn completely cold. He washed his suit a second time, then wrung it out as best he could before putting it back on.

  Still wet, he returned to the kitchen and fished through the room-temperature fridge. He found a casserole in the back and gave it the sniff test. It was a pasta salad, and it smelled okay. He found a spoon and tried it. There was no meat, but it did have beans. It tasted fine, so he ate a bowl of it, then went back to work.

  Retrieving his crowbar, he went to the bathroom. Of the four bodies there, two hadn’t been firemen, but they did wear uniforms. He used the bar to flip one of the bodies off the pile. As the man rolled away, intestines spilled out like a bowl of noodles. He felt the casserole threatening to come back up, and clamped down on his self-control. “That’s about enough of that, Mister!” he growled at himself.

  The body out of the way, he saw that the other two were police, and they were in combat uniforms. “Bingo,” he said, pulling the first one out of the pile. The officer’s equipment belt was around his waist, service weapon still in place. A Beretta 92F, pretty much identical to the U.S. military standard issue. It was no surprise, since the U.S. supplied much of the Mexican military with equipment. A magazine pouch held four extra mags. He checked them (all full) and the gun (same), then removed the belt.

  He had to swallow and grit his teeth, reaching through the cold intestines to undo the belt. Then he had to wipe away gore to get it out of the belt loops. Breathing hard, he retreated to the shower and washed off his prize, keeping the gun clear of the water.

  He adjusted the belt and strapped it on. The weight of the gun and magazines felt good around his waist. Crazies, sick nut jobs, whatever, he was the guy with the gun. Going back once more to the shower, he examined the other officer. His belt was similar, and thankfully, gore-free. He’d had half his neck chewed off. Unfortunately, he had no gun. Andrew took the four backup mags, and wondered where the gun might be. Come to think of it, he’d only found one scene of bloody ambush. Where were all these people killed? And, how had one fireman managed to carry out a rampage of this magnitude?

  Most of the station was as dark as a tomb. If he was going to play zombie hunter in the dark, he was using his flashlight. He didn’t like the grip where he held the gun with one hand and the flashlight underneath with the other. It never felt natural to him. Instead, he scrounged around in the equipment room until he found some duct tape and improvised a mount. It probably wouldn’t work for more than a few shots, but it was better than nothing. With the light pointing where he aimed, Andrew went back to searching with more confidence.

  He quickly found the main attack point and more. He came to a closed door, and pulled it open. A police officer spun around, eyes wide in the light of Andrew’s gun. “Graaaah!” he yelled, and lunged for Andrew.

  “Shit!” Andrew barked and pulled the trigger. The muzzle blast was a cannon’s roar in the confined space of the firehouse’s entry foyer. It was a perfect ambush point for anyone showing up for duty. The round caught the cop in the upper left shoulder, rocking him back and spraying the already blood-soaked walls with a fresh coat.

  “Get on the ground!” Andrew yelled, his training taking control. The cop shook his head, seemingly oblivious to the trauma, and lunged, grabbing Andrew with his still-working right hand. The cop pulled him closer, jaws snapping. Andrew backpedaled, the gun pinned between him and the cop, and came up hard against the back wall of the hallway, his head smacking brick and setting off lights in the back of his eyes. The teeth were reaching for his face. Andrew pulled the trigger.

  The hollow-point round entered the officer’s chest just under the sternum, traveled upwards as it expanded, blew out his back just between his second and third thoracic vertebrae, and took most of his heart with it. The officer grunted and let go, falling to the ground.

  “Switches and timers,” Andrew panted as he aimed the gun at the obviously dead cop. The brain and the heart were switches. Hit them and you turned the guy off. Other vital organs like large arteries were timers. Hitting them would kill, but it took time.

  Andrew covered him with his gun for a minute as he stopped twitching, then gave him a kick in the head. When he was sure the guy was dead, he went around and looked at where he’d been hiding. It was a perfect ambush spot. He put the scenario together in his head. The room was maybe four meters by three, with a small window on one side where a receptionist would sign you in. The cop had been standing to the side of the front door, waiting for fresh meat.

  First the fireman had turned, or whatever you called it. Then this cop showed up. Looking at his body, Andrew could see several wounds, including bites on his arms. He’d fought off the fireman and hid, then he turned. As more firemen arrived, they ambushed them and dragged them away for…what? Safekeeping? Then the two cops he’d found in the shower showed up. One of them had gotten his gun out. It was lying on the floor in the blood. Andrew picked it up and checked.
The officer had fired three rounds. Must have all been misses. The foyer was even more of a bloodbath than the shower had been. Strangely, it didn’t bother him nearly as much.

  It was what the cop carried on his back that interested Andrew the most. He rolled the body over, still leery of those teeth; it was a U.S.-manufactured M16. He pulled the sling off the officer and examined the old A1 model with the handle on top and the fixed rear stock. It was not nearly as versatile as the A3, but still had some serious firepower. The officer’s vest held six 20-round magazines, and there was one in the gun. All were completely full.

  He liberated the man of his vest. There were a couple of holes in it as well as some blood on it, so he returned to the shower, removed the mags, and gave it the treatment. It seemed to him the water pressure was decreasing. Cleaned and wrung out, he donned the vest and adjusted it for size. Even with the multiple punctures, it remained serviceable. He loaded the rifle, locked it, and slung it. He’d have to look for a one-point harness instead of the shoulder sling.

  Next, he went back and examined the 92F he’d seen in the blood on the floor, weighing his options. He decided to use tongs from the kitchen to get it and carry it to the sink. The dish soap worked just fine. He found some light machine oil in the equipment room, stripped the gun, oiled it, then reassembled it. The gun had four extra mags.

  “Okay,” he said, after he found a backpack in the equipment room and loaded all but four of the pistol mags into it, along with two extra pistols. He stopped in the kitchen and threw in some nonperishable food items, including several cans of red beans and rice, chicken, tuna, three packs of instant taco mix, and a can opener. The pack weighed about twenty-five pounds. If he’d had a MOLLE pack he would have taken double that, but this was a simple nylon job, so he stopped there.

  Returning to the bay, he searched until he found the locker that held all the trucks’ keys. He went down the line of vehicles, weighing options, until he settled on a utility truck that resembled a Humvee. “Stick with the familiar,” he said to the empty bay, his voice echoing eerily. The firefighter heard him, and banged on the door some more.

  Andrew went to the truck, #002, and jumped in. North American trucks were all pretty much the same. He put the key in the ignition, turned it to start, and the truck roared to life with a belch of diesel fumes. Then he remembered the door. “It’s always something,” he said.

  There had to be a manual release, he figured. There was no way the powered door would open. He leaned his head out and examined it. Several placards, all in Spanish, explained what he needed to do. He rolled his eyes, got back in, closed the door, dropped it into drive, and stomped on the gas.

  The truck roared and, in a squeal of tires on polished concrete, leaped forward. He braced against the steering wheel, ready for a monumental impact. He figured, ‘what the fuck?’ If the door messed up the truck, there were three more fire trucks and an ambulance he could choose from. He was getting out of there one way or another. The three-ton truck got up to fifteen miles per hour before hitting the door which was one-sixteenth inch corrugated steel. After the barest hesitation, the door tore free from its wheeled track, and peeled away like an orange skin.

  “That was entirely too much fun,” he said as the truck roared down the short driveway to the tarmac. Now, where to?

  * * * * *

  Chapter 18

  Sunday, April 22, Afternoon

  Kathy Clifford tried to tag along with the military in their westward retreat for a time. But after the soldiers on foot, their trucks out of fuel, tried to appropriate her ATV for the third time, she abandoned that plan. Besides, when she’d last stopped to refuel, and looked back to the east, there was a dust cloud from north to south as far as she could see. She didn’t know what it was, only that the military was running from it. When soldiers ran, you ran too.

  Afraid she might lose her ATV and trailer to some over-eager military, she turned north at the first opportunity she found. She knew from her GPS she was many miles from where she’d originally come south. It didn’t matter; time was running out. The road was dirt but seemed well worn. A truck full of soldiers passed, its engine sounding rough. They looked at her with forlorn expressions on their faces. One was screaming and thrashing, restrained on the floor between them.

  The area was a collection of washed-out streambeds and intermittent low hills, so common for this area it was impossible to tell one hill from another. It was like an old John Wayne movie cut into a continuous loop. She hoped she never saw a desert again, for the rest of her life. As the sun climbed to its apex, the gas gauge hit bottom, and she stopped. She emptied the second-to-last can into the ATV and put it in the trailer. She drank a warm sports drink and examined the eastern horizon. The dust cloud was closer, but she was exhausted. She felt like someone had beaten her arms with rebar, and she’d developed a cough from all the dust.

  After driving for an hour, she passed an old farmhouse. It was weather-beaten, all the windows were gone, and one corner of the roof was missing. It was obvious no one had lived there for years, so she only stopped for a moment. As she went around it, following the now much less used road, the skull of a long dead cow watched her. She wondered if that was all they’d find of her someday.

  She checked her GoPro camera, and swapped out the SD card. Unlike her other supplies, she had tons of those. Even running a continuous recording at 1080p, she hadn’t gone through half her cards. It was going to be a joy editing them. There was maybe a half hour of footage worth keeping. A lot of that was from the gas station, though she’d missed most of the incident involving the crazy Mexican officer.

  Just to be safe, she switched batteries as well, then ate a protein bar, some jerky, and a bag of potato crisps, washing it all down with water. She glanced at her GPS and tried to figure out how far it was to the United States. It looked to be 75 miles. A glance at the fuel gauge and her single five-gallon can of gas made her swallow nervously. With nothing more to do there, she got on the bike, her thighs feeling like tenderized steak, and hit the starter. The engine cranked and coughed, but didn’t start.

  “Oh no,” she whispered, and tried again. This time, it started for a second, labored, and died. She opened the gas tank and verified there was still fuel. Once the gauge had stuck, and the tank had run dry. There was still gas. She tried again. This time it didn’t even start. She got off and knelt in the dirt, examining the engine. It might as well have been an electron microscope; she would have known just as much about it. She reached out, touched a part, and burned her fingers.

  “Fuck me!” she cried out and danced around, sucking her fingertips and wiping away tears. “What the fuck was I thinking?!” she yelled to the desert afternoon. With two angry blisters on her fingertips, she squatted again, and examined the contraption. There was a cylinder under the back seat with a cap on it. Checking carefully that it wasn’t hot, she unscrewed the cap. Inside was a rolled-up piece of leather and a book. The leather contained tools, and the book was the manual. “Bingo!”

  She scanned the book and quickly found what she wanted. “Troubleshooting.” She found the section titled, “Bike won’t start,” and went down the list. Gas? Yep. Key in ignition? Yep. Kill switch to run? How fucking stupid did they think people were? Check fuel filter. She made a face and passed that one. It looked more complicated than she was prepared to tackle. Check air filter. Possible, she thought, then checked to see where it was. There was a little lever under the seat; when she activated it, the seat conveniently opened like the lid on a box, revealing more machinery. “Oh, my God,” she moaned, and returned to the manual.

  She eventually figured out where the filter was, released its latches, and removed it. She looked at the boxy thing made of cardboard and plastic. “Seems fine to me,” she said, then examined its construction. It looked like one piece. She looked down at the hole it was in, and could see the pipe the book called the carburetor feed. It looked clean. Out of curiosity she reached over and hit the starte
r. The bike roared to life instantly. “Hey, yeah!” she cheered at her inventiveness. “Problem solved.”

  She glanced at the thing in her hand, then back at the compartment, shrugged, and tossed it over her shoulder. She locked the seat back in place, hopped on, and drove off. An hour later she stopped to refill the tank with her last can of fuel. The engine was sputtering a bit, and she thought back to the air filter she’d tossed into the desert. She lifted the seat to find the carburetor opening full of dust. “Oh,” she said, and made a face. Fishing into her bag she found a light scarf, wadded it up and stuffed it in the hole. It would have to do. She was about fifty miles from the border.

  As she rode, the engine continued to get rougher. The little road she followed meandered east and west, dodging arroyos and dry washes. The worst part was she couldn’t go as fast as before. When she opened the throttle past a certain point, the engine started to miss and stall. She realized she’d made a critical mistake in pitching the air filter.

  As she forded a dry stream and came up the other side, she saw smoke ahead. It was black and lazily climbing into the sky. She continued on and realized the fire was going to be to the east of her path. As she drew abreast of it, she stopped to think. The smoke column was consistent, slipping side to side, and occasionally surging, then reducing to a trickle. It was the same sooty black smoke you saw from a car fire.

  “Damn it,” she grumbled, considering her options. She could investigate or keep going; that was pretty much it. She put the bike in gear to drive away, but she turned to the east, instead.