“Y’all ok?” he asked.
That was something she could answer. “Yes.” Stephanie smiled and he smiled back.
The smile made the rest of the hour-long ride tolerable. What became intolerable was when the ambulance came to a standstill. The engine was shut off but no one came to retrieve them. The air grew stifling and a choking sensation came to wrap itself around Stephanie’s neck like a Ball Python. She tried her best to be brave, to hold back any useless complaints. She didn’t want to be seen as a whiner, however she couldn’t help but breathe as though she were gasping in the last of the oxygen.
“One sec,” Chuck said, easing her head out of his lap. He squatted in the low interior next to the wall dividing the cab from the back. With a meaty thump of his hand, he banged the wall. “Get us some damned air back here!” he bellowed.
The request was ignored.
Thuy glanced around as if the yell had woken her. She’d been awake, but was apathetic to her fate, however she did care for the others. Two had been her patients, people who had looked to her for help and the other was the man who had saved her life.
“Try hitting the back door. I doubt it was constructed to withstand blows from this direction.”
She was incorrect. The door withstood the hammer-like blows Chuck dealt it with his size 13 “shit-kickers.” When he lay back, dripping sweat, and panting the smothering air in and out, she appraised the situation, coolly. “Try the windows.” Each door had a small square of wire-crossed safety glass set in its middle. They crumpled outward, each taking three blows only.
Like a dog, Stephanie stuck her head out into the world and chugged the air as though she’d been holding her breath for the entire ride. Thuy had a little more decorum. She knelt a few feet back, sharing the left hand one with Deckard. The cool morning air didn’t seem to lift either of their spirits. She kept her face turned down and he scowled.
Chuck grinned, easily. “Looks like it’s gonna be a beauty of a day.”
“If we get to see it,” Deckard said, jutting his chin toward the one tent that stood apart from the rest. The ambulance was parked well away from where a large number of soldiers were toiling away, stringing rolls of concertina wire, digging foxholes, and setting up very large army tents. One of the latter sat all by itself fifty yards away from the rest. Just like the ambulance, it had an extra layer of protection to ward it from the Com-cells; its edges were grey with duct tape. A guard with an M16A2 stood outside of it—he was the only one, besides the feds who wore a protective mask.
“Quarantine tent,” Deckard explained.
“What is everyone wearing?” Stephanie asked. The soldiers worked in uniforms that weren’t the usual swirled, camouflaged green, but were olive drab in color and seemed extra thick, and on their hands were heavy rubber gloves.
“That’s MOPP4 gear,” Deckard said. “It’s supposed to protect against chemical and biological attacks. These guys must be National Guard by the looks of it. That gear is a little out of date.”
“It looks hot,” Stephanie said.
“Oh, yeah, it’s a bitch to do anything in, especially to fight in. Once, when I was…” Deckard stopped as the Feds came back. They were still masked and brandished the same pistols.
“Move to the back of the vehicle,” one of the men said in a hoarse shout. “And don’t try anything stupid.” When they were as far back as possible, one of the government men opened the ambulance doors and used his gun to indicate they were to get out.
“Mighty fine of you,” Chuck said, as he unfolded his long frame, stepping out into the morning. He acted as if the pistols weren’t even there, as he held his hand out to help Stephanie step down, he looked to Deckard, as though he was out on a date.
Deckard matched his cool demeanor, but his was a charade. Most federal agents he’d run into had been A1 assholes and that had been under normal circumstances. Who knows what kind of power-trips they’d be on now that they were acting under a true emergency?
Worse than the agents were the National Guard boys. Just a glance told him they weren’t infantry. The soldiers working on the rolls of concertina wire looked to be having fits, as the razor-sharp wire tangled on everything, including their clothes; most had ruined the integrity of the MOPP4 gear and didn’t seem to realize it. The men putting up the tents acted as though they were attempting some sort of alien architectural puzzle; they bitched and snapped at each other in frustration. The men unloading crates of ammo from five-ton trucks were intermingling them with boxes of MREs.
Worst of all were the men on the line, a hundred yards away. They smoked cigarette after cigarette in nervous anticipation of what was to come. Quite a few held their M4s as though they were holding a stranger’s baby—awkwardly and afraid to drop them. Even from this distance, Deckard knew they were not 11Bravos. These were cooks and dental technicians, clerks and laundry specialists; there were even members of the 42nd marching band who had been pressed into service on the line where the pucker factor would peg at its highest reading.
That they were here at all told the four of them that things around Walton had escalated into nightmare status. None of them had the first inkling that things had gotten so bad and yet there was gunfire in the distance and of course the, quarantine tent. The Feds gestured with their guns for the four of them to go to it.
Stephanie eyed the duct tape, nervously. “Will that hold back the germs?”
“Ah think it’s suppose-ta hold in the germs,” Chuck said in his slow Oklahoma drawl. He spoke as though his day held thirty hours instead of the usual twenty-four. “Ah just hope it’s empty. Ain’t no way they’ll get me in there if it’s all germed up.”
That had also been Deckard’s big worry and now that it had been spoken aloud, it was all of theirs as well. Stephanie actually glanced back at the once hated ambulance, looking as though she wanted to climb back in and shut the door behind her.
“Get moving,” one of the feds demanded when the four came to a stop a few feet from the zippered tent door. “We have orders to shoot anyone resisting arrest.”
“We aren’t resisting arrest,” Dr. Lee stated. “We are resisting the possibility of spreading the pathogens further. Are there infected persons in that tent?”
“There wasn’t the last time I checked.”
It was, at least, an honest answer. One of the feds pulled off a strip of duct tape to expose the zipper. “Go on!” he growled. At first, no one moved. Chuck looked ready to fight and Deckard’s insides were spooling up. Thuy was calm. With a sigh of defeat, she went to the zipper and drew it down.
Inside the gloom, sitting on a wood bench that had once belonged with a picnic table, were two men she recognized.
“Doctor Wilson, Mister Burke, it’s good to see you alive. Is it safe to come in?”
Both men were red-eyed and bleary. Burke’s hair stuck up at sharp angles and Wilson’s afro was indented on one side. There was a strange pattern to it as though someone had used his head as a stepstool. They blinked against the sudden infusion of bright sunshine. Wilson brought his soft, brown hand up to shade his eyes and said: “We are not infected, if that’s what you mean. Who are you?”
“Doctor Lee.”
“Ah, sum-bitch,” Burke said, shaking his head.
Seeing as the tent wasn’t infected, Thuy stepped in, followed by the others. “I’m not here in a medical capacity, Mr. Burke. I’m no longer in the business of cures or diseases, so you have little to fear from me.”
“I don’t think he was worried about that,” Wilson said, after clearing his throat. Like Burke, he had trouble looking her in the eye. “Tell her, John.”
“Oh hell! I didn’t think nothing would happen to you, but when we was captured, they asked who else made it out alive. We’s tole them y’all’s names. I never did think they’d go and hunt y’all down.”
Thuy was actually relieved by the explanation. “You couldn’t have known, Mister Burke. Your ignorance is forgiven.”
; John Burke frowned at the word “ignorance”, not liking the sound of it at all. In his mind, he equated it with stupid, which he sure he was compared to the other people in the tent, all save Chuck Singleton. Because of his accent, John assumed a sort of kinship with him that extended to a mental equivalence.
As the others spoke, Deckard walked the perimeter of the twenty-by-twelve foot tent. It was well sealed and staked, and yet, it was still just a tent. Escape would be simple…if it wasn’t for the guard out front and the place crawling with soldiers.
“Has anyone been in to talk to you?” he asked Dr. Wilson.
“An FBI agent named Meeks. He acted as though we were criminals.”
“And do you know where we are?”
Wilson sighed, his shoulders drooping. “About twenty miles from Walton, so we’re safe. Out there is the command post for the army or the National Guard or whoever it is in charge. It seemed like they started building it around us about an hour ago.”
“How did you get caught?” Deckard asked. “Were there a lot of road blocks?”
“I don’t know if there’s a lot. We only ran into the one. I tried to talk our way around it but,” he paused to sigh again, “but they wouldn’t listen, so I tried to get past them on the shoulder of the road.”
Burke, who had been absently scratching his head, became animated at the memory and grunted out a laugh. “Y’all shoulda seen the ol’ Doc. A gangster he is not! He tries to go around the poh-lice all nice like so they don’t arrest his ass. He even put on his blinker all nice and tidy like.”
“So what happened?’ Stephanie asked.
Wilson made a face as if he were sucking on a lemon. “They shot out my tires and they were new, too!”
Another laugh came from Burke. He nudged Chuck who was sitting beside him with an arm around Stephanie, and said, “When they shot, he yelped like a dog what had his tail stomped on. I swear to gawd he did!” Burke continued to chuckle for a few seconds but when no one joined him he sighed as if the memory had been a pleasant one for him.
Thuy was the furthest from laughter than any of them; she felt the weight of guilt on her like a thousand gravestones piled on her shoulders. She couldn’t take a full breath because of it and she couldn’t think. All she could do was picture Dr. Riggs lying in the haze of smoke on the fourth floor while the elevator struck his ankles over and over again.
Stephanie was in the same boat in that she couldn’t think straight, either. Questions went round and round: why had she and Chuck been arrested when they had done nothing wrong? And what would happen to them? Would they go to jail? Or would they be forced to sit there until someone truly infected was shoved through the zippered flap? What would they do then?
Deckard had the same question, only he had an answer. The one thing that made sense to him was to kill anyone who came through the door with even a hint of black to their eyes. Kill them and then throw them back out through the tent flap. There seemed to be some sort of incubation time before the victims became the monsters and he didn’t think they could wait for that to happen, even if it felt like murder.
Chuck was the only one there who didn’t worry much for the future. He had a bit of a headache and his many cuts zinged irritably when he moved and his lungs made gurglily noises when he breathed. Whether that was from all the smoke he’d sucked down, or from the cancer eating him alive, didn’t much matter to him. He was content to just sit in silence, holding Stephanie and listening to the army do its thing.
Outside the tent, the sounds were many and confusing: the blatt of trucks was constant, the bark of sergeants yelling orders was like the scream of gulls, the distant rifle fire kept up a fine tempo. All this made it seem like something was being done to fix the problem.
The sounds and the growing heat of the morning lulled them almost into sleep until a helicopter’s rotors could be heard beating the air. Each of them was sure that it was there for them in one capacity or another. The zipper coming down a few minutes later confirmed this.
Soldiers in MOPP4 gear came in first; their guns were leveled. Behind them came a man named Major Haskins; his name was taped to the outside of a voluminous plastic biohazard suit. His eyes were blue and angry but beyond that, he was a nondescript entity because of the heavy mask he wore. There were two others with him dressed in the same manner and both were equally angry.
“Dr. Thuy, I’m Colonel Jeffery Haskins Ph.D. I am the facility director of the US Army’s bio-weapons response team. This is Dr. Tanis of the CDC, and Special Agent Meeks of the FBI.”
“Hello,” Thuy said, not getting up. Suddenly, there was a spark to her, as bright and hard as one struck from steel and flint. Despite everything that had occurred, in her mind, there was no need for the FBI to be there. It was almost offensive, especially when he was brought by two Ph.Ds. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked, with an eyebrow raised.
“Yes,” Agent Meeks said. “You can explain yourself. You can start by telling us what the hell you did. And know this, you are already culpable for the deaths of thousands, any dissembling on your part will be considered obstruction of justice.”
“In that case, I think I will need a lawyer.”
Behind his mask, the agent’s eyes went to squints. “Oh, Dr. Thuy, there’ll be no lawyers for you. Count on it.”
Chapter 9
A Hungry Child
8:39 a.m.
Compared to what was happening in and around Poughkeepsie, the outbreak in Hartford took place in slow motion. It was two days before anyone even knew there were zombies in their midst.
The day after Walton went up in flames, six-year-old Jaimee Lynn Burke woke up in an old Lincoln Continental. Its roomy back seat had been ripped or torn a dozen times over in its long life and now the duct tape holding it together was splitting and in need of being repaired itself.
Stuffed under the driver’s seat were the remains of a McDonald’s fillet-o-fish sandwich. It let off an eye-watering stink, only the little girl couldn’t smell anything but the human. It was close. It was a man, she knew because to her their privates had a different odor, like warmed over spam.
Jaimee Lee sat up, feeling a spike of hunger in her guts. It was a need akin to lust and yet it was beyond any normal human desire. It drove her to fumble for the door before her eyes were even opened. They were gummed shut and she raked at the black goo covering them with one hand, smearing a three-fingered streak across her pale face. Now she was able to see the handle.
“There’s the darned...” she started to say, but stopped at the sound of her own voice. She sounded phlegmy and growly, like a tubercular truck driver with a two-pack a day habit.
She coughed and swallowed, wondering what was wrong with her however, the question was dismissed in a flash as the door came open and the full smell of the man struck her. Just like that, nothing else mattered to her but her hunger; not the rain running in a slant, or the cold that tented up her skin with a million goosebumps, nor the fact that she was shoeless.
Her hunger was everything. Even the strange anger roiling inside her was a distant second to the hunger. She splashed out into the rain, making a bee-line for the man. He was tall and broad with a back the size of a billboard. He wore a hard hat, a coat, and heavy boots; across his waist was a belt of tools. Jaimee categorized him as a “worker” but did not bother to narrow the description down beyond that. What did it matter? Only hunger mattered, and eating. She went right for the man and only paused long enough to find the flesh.
Beneath the helmet and above the collar of the coat was a strip of hot meat. The man had his back to her and had no idea she was even there. His first indication of trouble was when he felt something on his back— and then there came the wicked teeth.
The pain was sharp. “Ho—fuck! What the fuck?” he cried, twisting and doing an odd, spinning dance as he tried to dislodge the creature on him. He was sure it was a rat and his belly crawled in disgust. But it wasn’t a rat. He caught hold of one of
Jaimee Lynn’s scrawny arms and threw her off of him, still cursing.
“Fuck,” he said, in a breathy whisper when he saw what had attacked him: it was a little girl with mud in her eyes and red on her lips. “What the fuck do you…”
She scrambled up, stopping him in midsentence. She hadn’t heard a word he was saying; her eyes were focused entirely on the soft skin beneath his stubbly jaw line. That was where the good blood was, and the tender meat. Her body quivered in anticipation.
“Back off!” the man yelled. His name was McMillan and he was having trouble piecing things together. Who was this girl? She was feral and looked like she had crawled out of a cave or perhaps had crawled out of a distant time when humans were mere savages. She was like a wild animal, a wild rabid animal. She was panting and licking her red lips, savoring the blood.
He had never seen anything like Jaimee Lynn and, although her appearance was unnerving, he certainly wasn’t scared in the least. McMillan stood two feet taller and outweighed the girl by two hundred pounds. He could crush her like a bug with one of his size thirteen, steel-toed work boots. If he had a worry it was the fact that it looked like he would have to use force to restrain her.
“Hey, look, settle down,” he urged, putting his callused hands out to the tiny slip of a thing. It was a waste of breath. He could see her gather her legs beneath her, preparing to spring at him again, and yet, despite being forewarned, he was almost bitten a second time. She was fearsomely fast and her aggression wasn’t animalistic, it was demonic.
She flew at him, hands like claws and her mouth open to bite. Just before her teeth latched onto his neck, he managed to catch her by her pale yellow hair and held her out at arms-length like a bedraggled cat and, like one, she hissed, spat, and tried to claw at his arm. “Relax, damn it!” he yelled. “Now, tell me where you live.”
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