by D C P Fox
“Yes,” Marty answered, “he’s alive—for now . . . Are you going to be okay?”
She turned and smiled at him.
There was nothing Jocelyn could do for Alexander or Clarence (or Marty, who didn’t look so hot), but she could assess how difficult it would be to retrieve her sword. She Willed her projection to appear near it, but instead of finding herself in the store’s break room, she saw Brooke, speed-walking by the river behind the strip mall, carrying the sword behind her back in its shoulder holster.
Jocelyn followed her cord back to her body.
Marty unholstered the assault weapon, still intact, despite being struck by the heavy beam, and handed it to her apparition. Marty realized that the guns may have distributed and cushioned the blow to his back.
“Huh?”
“Oh, I see. But what do you—”
Marty, bewildered by this development, trusted Jocelyn that she knew what she was doing. He placed his M4 in her hands, one hand on the magazine, the other on the trigger, with the barrel pointed upwards. The M4 appeared in the hands of her projection, as Jocelyn said it might.
“Is that good enough?”
Jocelyn nodded.
Her apparition disappeared.
Jocelyn Willed herself fifty feet to the south of the sword, and as expected, Brooke was carrying it and walking fast toward Jocelyn on a trail by the river.
Brooke’s eyes got wide as she beheld Jocelyn.
“Oh, my god, you’re alive!” Brooke regarded her for a few seconds. “Burned all over but still in front of me.” She looked around. “Were you waiting for me behind that tree? How did you find me?”
Brooke sighed. “I suppose you want your sword back.”
Brooke complied. “Your lips are moving, but I can’t hear you. Well, I can hear you in my head, sort of. What kinda trick are you pulling?”
“Sheesh, you got that right. So, what now, you gonna kill me? A cat playing with the mouse?”
“You’re lying.”
Brooke scowled. “Those men are a lot of things, but they are not rapists.”
“Like using zombies to attack us.”
Jocelyn was starting to feel sorry for Brooke, despite the fact that Brooke had killed her. Jocelyn believed her when she said she knew nothing about the attempted rape. Perhaps Ollie had protected her from the others? It made sense since he was the leader and she was his lover.
“I hadn’t figured that out yet. I can go back to our ranch; we were here on assignment, but the ranch is far away, and the town is now crawling with zombies. I don’t believe I can survive the trip all by myself. Even if you let me keep the assault rifle, which doesn’t work by the way, it’s useless against them.”
Jocelyn considered this. They weren’t very far from the store; a walk back to her body would take five minutes, tops.
“The military?”
“So you’re just going to leave the sword behind? On the ground?”
The smoke billowed into the sky, drifting with the wind, as the Beaver Park Market burned. Close to the building, out on the asphalt, Captain Francis Davies and the other soldiers continued to give Clarence CPR, and Jocelyn felt weaker, magically, as time wore on. Her instincts told her that both healing and astral projection drained her of magical energy—energy she was running out of, and she needed some reserve to complete the healing. Being in her Inner Temple, seeing outside her body, also required energy.
It was agonizing to witness Clarence being worked on without being able to lift a finger to help. She felt as helpless as when she had witnessed her grandfather dying. She would relive that all over again unless Clarence pulled through.
A soldier with a name tag that read “CORPORAL TERRY DORMAN” filled Jocelyn in on the fate of the other survivalists.
“I don’t believe we can. I’d be afraid of another zombie attack. Hell, I’m afraid . . . well, let’s just say I’d pack up and leave right now if we weren’t trying to save Clarence’s life.”
Francis looked skeptical. “Okay. If he convinces me, we’ll try, but I’m not making any promises. Any hint of zombies and we’re out of here.” Francis ceased his round of CPR and gave way to Corporal Dorman. Jocelyn’s apparition approached Francis as he kneeled on the ground and took a deep breath.
“Before we give up?” Francis looked weary.
Another deep breath. “About another half hour. The new guidelines say there’s no real hope for recovery after forty-five minutes. But we’ll give it an hour. The guidelines have been wrong before.”
Francis looked at her like he didn’t want to deal with her anymore. But he did.
“I’ll need a statement from you before you go.”
He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. He wasn’t convincing, probably too tired to fake emotions. Instead, he crossed his arms and stared downwards, averting his eyes.
Was he scared of her?
The soldiers stood upwind from the burning pyre of dead bodies. She was grateful she had no sense of smell in her current state. Some men were staring at her, bug-eyed and pale. Others kept looking at her briefly, then nervously looking away. She believed they were all scared of her. Could she blame them?
“I just need your side of the story.”
“It’s a formality, I assure you. I need to have it for when I take you into Peterson Air Force Base.”
You mean if you take me to Peterson Air Force Base. He wasn’t reassuring at all, but she understood his consternation. She had attacked the survivalists with draugar. One had said he would rape her, but he hadn’t tried very hard, had he? And the survivalists could spin it that she attacked them with draugar twice.
Add in her capabilities, and, to Francis, she must seem downright dangerous. Thank the Lord he was not aware of her psychosis. Or was he? What had Alexander and Marty told him? They had had enough sense to not tell the others in their group before, but had they told him?
And how long had it been since she last
took some haloperidol?
She realized she had so much to tell him, but she had precious little time.
“Oh? Did anyone see the attempt?”
“You know the other survivalists will claim they knew nothing about it, that they would have stopped and condemned such an attack if they had been there and if it occurred. Survivalists, in general, aren’t evil. Some people are, some people aren’t, regardless of what group they belong to. You can’t paint all survivalists, even those in the same group, equivalent to the evil ones.”
Jocelyn looked over at Ollie, still held at gunpoint with no restraints. She reasoned they didn’t have any with them, that they weren’t planning on being on a mission where they would take prisoners.
“So you admit attacking them?”
That conversation disturbed Jocelyn. She wished she could have explained more to Francis, but she needed time to talk with Marty to make sure he defended her.
Marty jumped, startled. “Jesus, Jocelyn, you scared the crap out of me.”
Marty shook his head. “I’ll do what I can before I leave here. I wasn’t planning to go back with the others to Peterson Air Force Base. Corporal Dorman and I always planned to stay outside the base and search for my son and his family. His family lives in Beaver Park, so we expect to find them nearby. We were given tranquilizer guns, hoping to subdue my son or his family, if they are zombies.” Marty pointed at the SUV parked on the other side of the pyre. “The tranquilizer we planned to use is in the other SUV. We can’t stay unless they allow us to go back there. So I’m not sure what we’ll do.”
“They’ve said they won’t, but I’m hoping they will reconsider once we show up on their doorstep.”
Marty nodded. “Right. That was how you attacked the survivalists.”
He nodded. “The way things are now, I don’t see how anyone can. Okay, I’ll hang around enough to fill Francis in on how important you are.”
“And the sword.”
“The honor and pleasure are all mine, Jocelyn Radomski.”
And with that, Jocelyn retired back to her body, hoping they would return her sword to her, wondering if she would wake up to a new world, or not wake up at all.
Chapter Fifty-One
Day Twelve
Jocelyn awakened looking up at a gray cement ceiling, below which hung ductwork, pipes, and fluorescent lighting. She wore an air mask, and she sat up and took off the sheet and blanket that covered her body—a body naked and healed.
“Hello,” said a male voice. Embarrassed, she put the sheet back over her body and saw Francis sitting in a chair in the corner, her sword, in its scabbard on her shoulder holster, propped up against the wall next to him.
“I’m sorry to intrude on your sleep, and I’m sorry we didn’t clothe you, but we wanted to make sure it didn’t interfere with your healing process. We worried bits of you might flake off when putting them on. I hope you understand. You should be able to take off the mask.”
She nodded and took it off with one hand, the other holding onto the sheet. It was now hissing, and she hit a button she guessed would stop that. It did.
She sighed. Francis was putting her at ease.
“How long?”
He looked at his watch. “Around twenty-four hours since you got here, and it took several hours to get you here.”
“How’s Alexander?”
He frowned. “Still in a coma, I’m afraid. We’re giving him oxygen, but we have nothing like a hyperbaric chamber to put him in. We do not know when or if he’ll ever recover. I’m sorry to give you the bad news.”
“I appreciate your candor, Francis.” That he could die, or worse, become a brain-dead vegetable, was horrifying as she considered herself responsible for his condition. She reflected on their encounter in the pharmacy and wondered if there was any chance for any type of relationship with him. But first he would have to wake up. And then forgive her. And then come to terms with the fate of his wife. It seemed like a long shot.
She would just be happy if he woke up. Maybe Saint Michael could do something about that. Or she might beg Metatron.
“And Clarence?” she asked.
He was stoic. “I’m sorry, but he didn’t make it.”
Another death she was responsible for. Her heart broke, and her eyes became moist. She started to weep at the thought of how much he had done for her, how much he had risked his life.
Jocelyn wiped away the tears and pulled herself together. He hadn’t said another word, waiting patiently. Surrounding her were a free-standing toilet, a small sink, a shower and drain in the center of the room, and medical equipment. It looked like she was in a prison cell with the walls a drab beige, and a mirror on the wall next to a door—probably a two-way, she surmised.
“Did anyone retrieve Vin’s body?” she asked.
“Who’s that?”
“Didn’t Marty and Alexander tell you?”
“Oh, the other person left for dead. We rushed to get you here and didn’t look for him. Is he dead?”
Jocelyn nodded.
“Then I can’t spare anyone. I’m sorry.”
“And Janice and Emily?”
“They’re in a quarantine cell, much like this one—we assume both are infected.”
“What do you plan to do with them if they become zombies?”
He winced.
“There’s an alternative. I can control them.”
“I sure hope so.”
Jocelyn looked around at her surroundings. “So I’m in quarantine, too?”
“Yes. I’ve been asked to watch your monitors. You realize your pulse was almost non-existent when we brought you in? You also had little skin to speak of.”
“But why am I in quarantine? I’m immune.”
“You don’t know that for sure, and the commander is being very cautious. In her mind, she doesn’t understand the full nature of your illness.”
She contemplated this. She didn’t like the idea of postponing her quest for a week or so just because some military officer was skittish. But she decided to drop the matter for now. “So we’re on Peterson Air Force Base?”
“Under it, actually, in a nuclear fallout bunker.”
“Can anyone study me here? While in quarantine?” The quarantine would be fine, she realized, i
f she could be studied here.
He shook his head. “We’re not equipped to experiment on you, but we hope the federal government knows where. Maybe the CDC in Atlanta, but who knows?”
“So where is the federal government these days?”
“In a bunker underneath the White House.
“So the White House is not overrun with zombies? That makes sense given the radio broadcast I heard.”
“Oh, so you heard our broadcast. At least someone did. That’s good to know.”
“I only heard bits of it. I pieced enough together to know where to go.”
“Well, we don’t know the current status of the White House itself, but last we heard, the office of the president is being run from a bunker underneath it with a new president—the old one is now a zombie.”
“Last you heard?”
“Our communications with all the bunkers spread throughout the US have gone dark. The only place we can communicate with is Cheyenne Mountain, the alternate NORAD. They can only contact us as well, since it appears that a hurricane wiped out the satellite equipment at the White House. It wasn’t long after that we lost contact with the other bunkers and the White House.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” she said.
“No, it’s not.”
Jocelyn became sick to her stomach. “How do we expect to learn from the government where I can be studied, if you lost contact with them?”
“We will need to repair the communications, but our test equipment shows that the problem may be at the next bunker to the east. Our best shot may be to simply get you to that bunker where the communication can be repaired, or if that’s not possible, to get you to a bunker that has communication with the government, even as far as the White House bunker, if necessary.”
“Is there a plan for how to do that? Sounds like a dangerous mission.”
He left her side and walked around the room. It was weird, as he had no place to go, it would seem. “Many of these bunkers are interconnected through tunnels running underground. We should be able to travel even to the White House bunker without ever going up to the surface.”