Oliver looked at the picture very carefully. He did that with his food too, committing it to memory before he ate. “That’s funny. He has a little of your smile somehow.” Austin examined the photo in a new and delighted light. Then Oliver said, “I have a girlfriend picture for when I need it, too.”
“It’s not okay to be out here,” Austin said, although it was a question.
“It’s easier to be out and proud in the Army when you have a higher rank. But I’m in the trenches, so this is my girl back home. Leila. Hot, huh?” He proffered an imaginary picture.
“She’s pretty,” Austin agreed. “Who is she really?”
“Just a girl that I went to high school with. I had the picture around because I was on the Yearbook Committee all four years.”
They talked a little more, about what it was like to be in the Army and have Sombra C, and then a creaking interrupted them. It was the other soldier with the ladder. Oliver quickly went back to picking up wax. His face was red again as he mumbled, “Let’s talk one more time before the base breaks up. I’ve got information about the harbor.” They could have talked about it with the third guy there, the harbor wasn’t anything gay, but Oliver’s fear of being suspected as homosexual was palpable.
They didn’t get a chance for that talk in the following days because the chow hall was always too busy and both of them had so much to do. Oliver wasn’t even on the base some days. But God answered a measure of Austin’s prayers. He was delirious when Manzer said one morning that he’d just seen an Asian guy and short white chick heading over to the hospital. He couldn’t be sure with his wonky vision and was warning not to get too excited when Austin flew out the chow hall doors with his apron still on.
They were dirty and worn out, but they were alive. Zaley’s positive test was a sword in his heart. He didn’t want her to have a stamp. The base couldn’t give her one, but now she’d have to wear a red necklace. It bothered him all through the rest of the day, so he threw himself into his work and tried not to think about it too much. After all, he had two of his friends back. People all over the base would kill to have some of those lost people on the wall walk in alive and whole.
The day of Corbin and Zaley’s arrival, Oliver mouthed chapel at dinner over the serving counter and Austin nodded. But first he went to the hospital once the day’s work was done. His shirt was saturated in sweat and food stains and he couldn’t stand to wear it one more second. As he headed for the stairs, a nurse gave him a red necklace to pass on to Zaley. Exhausted from their efforts to get here, she and Corbin were passed out in a bed together. It was smaller than a twin. If either rolled over, they’d wake up on the floor.
Zaley’s neck was bare and it would stay that way. That would be good for when they went to the harbor. He still didn’t want to see her with the necklace on. For people to avoid her. He was used to it by now, but she wasn’t. Her forehead was a little crumpled up in her sleep. Like she suspected the shunning that was going to come. But she still had Corbin and Austin at her sides. It was worse to be alone in this and she wasn’t. He set the necklace on the bedside table.
When he looked out the window after changing his shirt, Oliver was going by. Austin crept out of the room and ran downstairs. They stood in the chapel and waited for a third person to leave, Austin pushing him mentally out into the night. It worked after a few minutes, the guy saying, “Qual,” as a goodbye, and then they were alone. That wasn’t likely to last long, nor should it. This wasn’t Austin’s personal place to loiter.
While they had waited for the guy to leave, Oliver looked at one particular picture. It was of the woman who died in the battle outside the harbor. “Did you know her?” Austin asked.
“Yeah.”
“Is it okay if I ask what happened?” Austin held his breath that it might not be okay. Manzer had mentioned that he hated it when his two younger cousins asked how many kills he’d scored over his service. They thought it was cool. Soldiers didn’t brag about that kind of thing. Not the normal ones, at any rate.
Silence stretched out in the chapel, Austin writhing in it and wishing he hadn’t asked. Then Oliver said, “You can’t get around a Sanya Smart Shield. The wall around a harbor looks mostly like a regular old wall, but it’s not. That technology is a leap ahead. Nanotech or something, I don’t know what it is.”
“You’re not telling me classified stuff, are you?” Austin asked worriedly.
Oliver smiled. “No. You could have read that off the Internet. I did read some of it last year, and I didn’t understand a thing. I’m not much good at science. There used to be guards posted on the outside of the wall to keep people from hanging around to picket and cause trouble, but they were murdered. Shepherds threw everything they could at the wall after that. But you can’t beat it down; you can’t set fire to it; you can ram a truck into it all day long and not make a dent. A Sanya Smart Shield will withstand pretty much anything. Try to launch something over it, even at a distance, and the guards posted on the top will shoot you down. So Shepherds blocked the east and north roads leading into the harbor, and the south path, to keep them from getting supplies. We fought hard at all three locations for access.” He motioned to the picture. “East road. She got shot.”
“And they’re still hanging around out there? Those Shepherds?”
“Yeah, but not like before. Died, went home, got infected, ran out of ammo, the last convoy only had potshots taken at them. There weren’t a thousand, two thousand guys standing on the roads anymore. It went down to hundreds, and now it’s more in the range of dozens. Hopefully, that number will dwindle to nothing. The harbor guards can’t waste their ammunition shooting at them and can’t spare any people to walk around outside, so they only open fire when provoked, or to protect people who want to get in.” His beautiful eyes touched Austin’s and returned to the pictures. “There were a few times that Shepherds pretended to have Sombra C. They put on fake stamps to get in and planned to sabotage from the inside, but anyone going in there is taken straight to quarantine and locked in for ten days. They don’t want illness going around. No one is let in and allowed to just roam around in there. If you say that you have Sombra C and you don’t, if you can’t prove that you have infected family in there, you get kicked right back out. One man was shot to death when he got in that way twice. They dumped his body over the wall to send a message to the Shepherds. The only people permitted to live in there without Sombra C are families of infected, whether the infected person is with them or attempting to reach them. And you’d better have evidence of that.” That was like Elania and her family.
The woman in the picture was at a party, a pink streamer frozen in a flutter behind her head. She didn’t know how soon she’d be dead. Or maybe she had, like the guy with the feeling that he was next. “The country’s gone crazy,” Austin said. “You must think that all the time.”
“No. I see people out there all day long and they just want this to be over,” Oliver said. “Go back to school, to work. They aren’t shooting at me. They want to know when the Internet is going to be back.”
“Do you know when?”
“As soon as Prime gets run down, that’s what people say. Prime is scared. Their people are deserting fast and they won’t have any legs to stand on in time. Some of their leaders and the higher-ups in their organization have fled the country. We’re dealing more with crackpots now.”
“Well, they were all crackpots.”
“Lone crackpots. A handful of squads banded together at most, those kinds of crackpots. The way it was in the beginning. The regular police forces have to be mobilized and they can beat the militias back down into the gangs they were, take care of the shaggies and the last Shepherds. But that police force has to be fed and paid. We need communications for that to happen.”
A person came in to look at the wall and they fell silent. Oliver crooked his head when the guy knelt down to light a candle and Austin followed him out into the night. As they walked to the hospital,
Oliver said, “We’re about to leave. I just wanted to give you a head’s-up about the harbor. I’m really sorry that you couldn’t catch a ride in.”
“I would have missed my friends if I’d gone with that last convoy.” The tension of Zaley’s diagnosis had faded. Zyllevir would work for her and the necklace was only going to be around her neck until the soldiers moved out. It wasn’t going to help her feel good about herself if Austin was freaking out on her behalf.
They stood outside the doors to the foyer. Oliver ran his hand through his short hair and said, “Don’t go to Sonoma directly. The roads are hell. People hide along them to shake down travelers. You don’t generally see shaggies going that way, most of them are much farther north and south of here, but there are loads of thieves. Then you got Shepherds at the roads closest to the harbor itself. They know why people are coming that way. You might see trappers, too. You know about them?”
“Yeah. Trapping Sombra Cs to fight at stadiums.”
“Outside a harbor is a great place to find them. Travel off the main roads and always be careful of ferals. They’re everywhere. Volunteer police in Petaluma are good about getting the newly infected some medicine, running down the ferals within city bounds, but it’s crazy outside it.”
“What’s it like at the harbor? Have you seen it yourself?”
“Only a little bit. That day.” He meant the day that Tanya had been shot on the east road. “It’s a big place, got about three to four thousand Sombra Cs and their families living there. Tons of modular shelters laid out in rows and gardens everywhere. We just drove into facilities. Those are the warehouses where they keep food and Zyllevir and ammunition, things like that.”
“It’ll explode without you guys there to protect the harbor. Everyone will descend on it.”
Oliver disagreed. “It might flare up some. But they’re stocked to the brim on meds, they’re okay on food and ammo, so relief doesn’t have to risk the fight for the time being. The militias haven’t shown any interest in the harbor. It’s easier to climb over a fence into a pasture and shoot sheep than waste time on the Sanya Smart Shield. The interest comes from Shepherds, and they aren’t what they used to be. Still, watch out for them when you get over there. If they’re standing around the roads like they usually are, try the south path to a side entrance. They don’t always bother with that one since most people trying to get inside the harbor don’t know it’s there. Or just head for the harbor in Humboldt. That one hasn’t seen the same level of attacks, at least that’s the latest I heard.”
People came by, their destination the chapel, and Oliver bid Austin a hasty good night. Austin watched him walk away until he remembered that that wasn’t going to pass the straight filter. He stretched casually and went inside. He wasn’t attracted to Oliver, but he liked to look at those eyes. And there was no way in hell Austin was walking to Humboldt. That was two hundred and fifty miles to the north. They couldn’t walk from Sausalito to Petaluma without meeting disaster at every turn, so it was Sonoma or bust.
Something twitched in his mind. Maybe that was the nudge from his sixth sense, warning that bust lay in wait for him in Sonoma. Or it was just his imagination working overtime.
In the morning, Corbin swallowed his antibiotics and stayed in bed at the nurse’s order. Zaley put on the red necklace without trouble and came to work in the chow hall. She apologized preemptively for her arm, which would keep her from moving tables or overloaded wash bins. Betsy welcomed Zaley to the misfits. They were all compensating for something in the Sombra C chow hall.
The day passed in a flurry of clashing plates and steam, the door closing on one meal and opening on another. The newly infected guy wasn’t crying anymore when Austin spotted him at lunch. He was sitting with everyone and laughing like they had always been the best of friends. Zaley asked Betsy and Manzer about the three Sombra Cs in Sausalito who had been headed here. Austin hadn’t even thought to ask about the people who gave them the information about Arquin.
After hearing physical descriptions, Betsy nodded in recognition. “Didn’t speak too much English, Jingwei, but she understood a lot more. They lost the man on the way. Hector. A Shepherd shot him and the woman named Kelly. She made it here with Jingwei, but died in the hospital of her injuries. Jingwei was transferred to the harbor.”
Limping in at dinner, Corbin was greeted by hey, Chinaman, you ri-kee some food? It was Hooter, who after all this time still felt the need to diddle at the counter between fag cereal and fag toast. Nonplussed, Corbin answered in rapid German. Hooter went away in confusion. He was such a prize of a human being.
“What did you say to him, Corbin?” Austin whispered in a quiet moment as the meal was ending.
“I wished him a merry Christmas and asked where the bathroom was,” Corbin said. “I don’t know how to say too much more than that in German. Who the hell was that guy?”
“His last name is Hooter. No lie.” When Austin told him the fate of the Sombra Cs from the grove in Sausalito, Corbin’s face sank.
Someone leaned through the doors and yelled, “Hey, Mom! Special Forces brought down Fredrick Kosmas overseas!” Betsy cheered at the counter as she lifted a dirty pan to take into the kitchen.
“Who is that?” Austin asked as he brought in another one. Being with the Army was great for news.
In satisfaction, Betsy said, “He was exposed as a secret, major benefactor of Prime, a real dick who throws his millions of bucks at every ass-backwards piece of legislation we’ve had for decades. Against solar power. Against safety regulations. Against harbors. Anything halfway sensible, he’s against it. He’s been hiding for over a month now somewhere in Europe-”
“Should have hid better,” Manzer grunted.
“Not in the cabinet, but writing the checks,” Betsy said. “I’m sure he was smart enough to go somewhere that won’t extradite him, but this will throw a wrench in that old fart’s covert operations.”
If only Micah and Mars had come with Corbin and Zaley . . . Austin slept and worked and prayed over the next days for them to show at the base. Everything was getting packed up, dollies rolling around on the sidewalks and equipment strapped into vehicles. After the Coast Guard had relocated to another training facility two years ago, the place sat empty. Red tape held it up from being demolished. Now it would be empty again.
Some of the pictures and trinkets vanished from the chapel, people wanting to take their mementos along. Austin helped himself to the leftover paper, so he could write out messages for Micah that everyone was alive and headed for the harbor, and to be careful when approaching it. He would put one in the tollbooth at the gate, another one in the chapel, and tape the rest all over the base. When she came to this empty place, she was sure to poke around. That was pure Micah. He just hoped that she did her poking around before a militia came sniffing by, or people wanting to see if something good had gotten left behind. Lots of stuff was getting left behind: furniture and busted trucks stripped down of anything salvageable, things that were a pain to move and weren’t needed. Betsy and Manzer were laying bets on how long it would take before the base was looted, although neither had anything to bet and they’d never know the answer to collect. Back when America had fought in Iraq, the bases were looted only hours after the Americans cleared out. Austin, Corbin, and Zaley could not wait for Micah and Mars at the base for weeks, or even around it. It was too risky. That was killing him.
On the day of the move, the kitchen was packed up at lightning speed. Guys were sent in to get it done. Austin was allowed to fill up a bag with food to take along to the harbor. He and Zaley did it swiftly and took the bag to the hospital so it didn’t get packed up by mistake. Then they went back outside, Betsy giving them a hug goodbye and loading up. Manzer got in after her, one eye winked shut as always and his voice trembling on his goodbye.
“He’s too hurt to do what he does,” Zaley whispered as the first vehicles drove to the gate. “I feel sorry for him. He belongs in a hospital.”
“Sitting in a bed would just make him feel sorry for himself,” Austin said. His side wasn’t hurting too much today, and the doctor had taken one last look at the injury and brushed it off. You’ll be fine, Bell. He fixed up holes in people on a daily basis, and Austin’s wasn’t anything to get excited about. It was just going to be sore for a bit and he should do some stretches. His innards were intact.
Someone yelled at people to go faster, every other word a curse. Austin couldn’t see the person in the crowds, but assumed it was the same guy who had yelled at him in the chow hall. One vehicle after another turned out of the base, some going slowly because they were carrying so much weight. That made all of the man’s yelling useless, since there was no point to people loading up just to sit and wait. They obeyed though.
“I think that guy is waving to you,” Zaley said. Oliver’s hand was raised as guys climbed into another truck. Austin returned the wave. They weren’t ever going to see each other again, but it had been nice to not be alone in that way. One day there could be sparks with a guy out there, and Austin had to be comfortable saying he was gay or else pine away forever at an unhappy distance.
Then it was silent. The three of them were the only ones left. Militia didn’t turn right in to loot, and they looked at one another questioningly. “When should we go?” Corbin asked. He had been given his bow and quiver back, as well as the knives that belonged to him and Zaley. The stick she used on wild dogs had gotten tossed accidentally. “Tonight? Tomorrow? Right now?”
“I’ve got to put up messages for Micah first,” Austin said.
“Petaluma didn’t seem that dangerous when we came in,” Zaley said. “Unfriendly to militia and Shepherds. We could risk walking through it in daylight.” Austin took off her red necklace and threw it to the ground. Now he could pretend that she wasn’t infected, and would only be reminded when she swallowed her Zyllevir.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 156