“How did you end up here?” he asked, sipping the hot dark brew he loved.
She smiled sadly. “It’s a long story. It was awful, and I was terrified.”
“I understand.”
“I couldn’t have made it without Ahmed and Lindsay,” she said. “I’m lucky we all found each other.”
He thought about the friends he had lost: Mauser, Jarl and Wheeler. With no idea whether they were alive or dead, he feared the worst.
Steele sat up as Gwen recounted her journey from Foggy Bottom to Fairfax, and took his turn taking care of her. He inspected her bruised and lacerated feet and finding no major damage he bandaged them with gentle care.
“Ow,” she said as he rubbed ointment on the bottom of her foot.
“You will live,” he said with a smile. He shook his head in wonderment at her resilience. He knew what he was capable of, but throughout his struggle he had relied on firearms and brute force to win the day. She, on the other hand, had run, fought and snuck her way home.
“How did we miss you when we first came in?” he interjected.
“We were in here hiding. We didn’t want to out ourselves in case you meant us harm,” she said. “We just weren’t sure what was going on.”
“Who was the dead woman in our room?” he asked. Her blonde hair waved back and forth in a tactical ponytail.
“I don’t know. She must have been a looter or something, because I left that necklace on the dresser when I went to work the other day. I wore my pearls the day the outbreak started.” The pearls had vanished from her attire.
He shook his head. “I honestly thought you were dead,” he said, emotion rising in his voice. He looked down, uncomfortable at his display of feelings. It wasn’t common that he made himself emotionally vulnerable. “Mauser and Jarl were with me, and I quit on them.”
She took his hand. Warmth radiated from her. “We’ve all been through a lot, baby. No one blames you for anything. You made it all the way here, and now we’re together again.” Sticking out her bottom lip she smiled at him.
Steele averted his gaze. “People died because of me. I chose not to help them, and they died,” he said, picking up his tactical badge from the bedside table next to him. It felt heavy to him as if it repelled him. He didn’t know if he still wanted it. He didn’t know if he deserved to carry it. He felt a thousand times its weight in shame. His fingers examined it, running them over the large shield with U.S. Counterterrorism Division scrawled on the front, and over the emblazoned seal of the federal government raised up in gold. Blood had filled the grooves from top to bottom, making the American bald eagle a mixture of gold and dark red. Am I defender of the weak when I let them die? How can I ever wear this again knowing I failed them?
Gwen sat beside him, knowing his thoughts were weighing him down. “You saved many people, and you did what you had to do to get back home. You can’t save everyone. You aren’t superhuman.”
I could have saved the father and son. I could have done more.
“I’m scared, Mark. Where do we go now?” she asked.
So am I.
He looked directly at her. “I don’t know.”
“What are we going to do?” she rested her coffee on her lap.
What options do we have?
“I don’t know,” he responded again.
An uncertainty filled the room, creating an air of uneasiness between them. He didn’t have all the answers. How can she expect me to always know what to do? His brow clouded over with the stress and confusion of not knowing the best path to take, not seeing any suitable path at all.
“We need you to get us out of here,” she stammered. Tears welled up in her eyes, her lip trembling. “I need you. Those people downstairs need you. You can keep us safe.”
Can I? He inwardly doubted himself.
He focused his eyes on her, taking her in. She had always given him something to believe in. She represented the good in people; a compassion and empathy for others. She spread the warmth of her goodwill to him. The world needed them.
This compassion could only thrive if men like him protected it, shielded it from the refuse of society, and stood the lonely watch in the night, facing the evil and turning their backs to the good in the process. How long can you face the evil before you mirror it?
She leaned in, her eyes dropping tears as he embraced her. “Shh, we’re going to be fine. I promise,” he whispered in her ear. I hope.
“I, I was so scared. All these people were trying to kill us and I shot Janine and Mr. Wilson, and Timmy and Jessica were turned,” she said, struggling to get the words out.
He held her, letting her overwhelming emotions release from the spot in her soul where it had been repressed. She always tempered his wariness with compassion. He gave her the tools to protect while she engendered in him the necessity to compromise. Her words drove out in him the protecting instinct of the sheepdog; the will to fight for those who could not defend themselves against the wolves in the night. He had betrayed that trust to protect. Is there a way back?
The world was changing. He had to make tough decisions to survive, but he would have to live with the decisions he made. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t crawl into a shell and hide away with her. Hiding away isn’t the right thing to do. But how can we balance survival and justice?
He released her and put his head in his hands. Even if he brought about just a little order and justice it would temper some of the chaos and maybe give people some hope. Gwen leaned back on the bed, and sat in the corner of the room watching him.
Glistening eyes watched him, and her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, pulled up close to her chest. Some people had the need to bring order to chaos. It was ingrained in Steele, even the chaos couldn’t change it.
Steele ground his thumb into the grooves of his badge and rubbed hard on the metal, chipping the blood off with his fingernail. Pain perforated in his fingertip as he pushed down harder to remove the blood from the deepest grooves. As clean as I can get it, but it will always be stained. He would have to live with that. He put the badge around his neck and tucked it into his undershirt, if only to keep it out of the way.
It belonged with him; he knew that now. It was a part of him that would never die. People need me, and I will do my best to help them. It is the only way. I have to do my duty and stand up for what is right. Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.
MAUSER
Northern Virginia countryside
The people mover chugged along, black diesel smoke pumping out of the top exhaust pipe. The behemoth hadn’t run into any obstacle it couldn’t traverse, except fuel; its lifeblood; the only thing it couldn’t live without. The fuel gauge needle wavered near half a tank. We should be able to make it.
They had filled it up to the max. It was unsurprising to Mauser that the hulking train-car on giant wheels took more than a hundred gallons of diesel. Jarl and Eddie had acted as lookouts while he fed the diesel-starved machine at a small countryside convenience store that doubled as a gas station.
Mauser laughed to himself when he remembered the look on the gas station owner’s face when Jarl had given him his government credit card and told him to charge the three hundred and fifty dollar bill on it.
“I, uh, cash only,” the owner had said. Jarl had flashed the owner his badge and brandished his carbine, and the man had suddenly thought better of it. Jarl had grinned through his blond beard and grabbed a big bag of beef jerky on the way out.
“Keep the change,” Jarl said, leaving his government card behind. Their bosses would have flipped if they had known what they had been charging to the G-Card. Jarl would have been handed at least a week ‘on the beach’; an agent term for a seven-day suspension.
Turning the mobile lounge sharply, he struck an infected man and crushed him beneath his vehicle. It made him feel a little better. All the drama surrounding Steele made him want to scream in frustration, and mowing down some of the infected eased his
pain. He tried to push his anger toward Steele from his mind, but it lingered, nagging at him. The guilt hid just beneath the surface, torturing him about abandoning his close friend. He couldn’t will the man to live or fight to live in this madness. How can I expect that of anyone?
Mauser tried to come to terms with his decision by rationalizing it as his way of granting his best friend’s last request: to be left alone to die; to join his dead lover in heaven. He grimaced as he thought about Gwen’s mutilated corpse sitting up and tearing Steele apart while he simply sat there, love-stricken: an undead Tristan and Isolde. The idiocy of the whole situation disgusted him.
Twisting the steering wheel to the left, he avoided a mass of ensnared car wreckage. A few people struggled through the countryside, and signs of violence decorated their bodies, marking them as infected. He weaved in and out of traffic, finally deciding the grassy median was best for him. He had avoided major roadways like Interstate 66 and Route 50. The mobile lounge could roll over just about anything, but he didn’t push it, driving around the larger pileups.
After hours of internal anguish, Mauser’s guilt turned sour. Steele was such an idiot. Screw him for quitting on us. Steele is just young. Just couldn’t hack it. Lacked that mental fortitude. Must be some sort of generational gap. I can do this. Mauser swung the mover around an abandoned vehicle on the roadway. That’s the first one I’ve seen in a few miles. Infection must not be as bad out here. A glimmer of hope burned inside him, at the very least, the will to move on.
On a map, his route would seem erratic with no obvious purpose, but in reality, he was just avoiding any routes that went directly west. Cars littered the road outside Fairfax, abandoned by people attempting to flee. As people fled west, the infected were following suit.
Mauser figured it would only be a matter of time before the infected from the D.C. area arrived en masse, infecting anyone who got in their way. They would be a brood of jungle army ants consuming anything in their path. A scorched earth policy that applied only to humans. But for now, the infection was still light, and that was just the way he liked it.
Beautiful green rolling hills surrounded the more urban capital, where D.C.’s wealthy elite had taken up residence. He drove past mansions that sat atop acres of historic horse breeding farmland; prime real estate. Mauser could never have dreamt of residing there, not on his pittance of a salary. On the low end, the houses cost millions of dollars and on the high end, tens of millions. I suppose I am getting the last laugh though. Without the warrior caste to keep them alive I wouldn’t expect them to be around for long. Rich or not.
Mauser realized that the funny thing about the disease was that it didn’t matter how much money people had, what race or how old they were. Everyone was the same in the disease’s eyes, a great viral equalizer. All you were was a cellular host for the transmission of the disease. If a person was unfortunate enough to be bitten, he or she would succumb to the virus and try to bite anyone who wasn’t already an undead asshole. Mauser let out a gruff laugh at the irony. He might have figured they would eat each other, but so far they only seemed interested in him and the remainder of the living.
There had been only one place on his mind as all this went bad. A facility that was specifically designed to withstand a disaster of this magnitude. He had spoken about it with Jarl, who seemed to think it was a good idea. Jarl was the only family he had left. The only person in this group he could truly count on in a scrap and trust not to stab him in the back. He was a true warrior. No way in hell he would quit on us.
Somewhere between Fairfax and Aldie they stopped and picked up a young Hispanic family whose car had run out of gas. The Ramirez family sat quietly in the corner of the lounge, having only whispered a meager ‘thank you’ when Mauser and company stopped to pick them up. They seemed to have had a rough go of it. They were cautious about the agents and spoke to no one. Probably think we are going to arrest them or something.
Even if they had been prepared to talk, Mauser didn’t speak Mexican. He paid them little regard because soon they would be out of his hair. That way he wouldn’t have to carry the weight of their deaths on his conscience when they got themselves killed. Cautiously, he gave them a rearward glance. The mother clutched her infant to her chest, her timid dark eyes fearful. The sooner we get our ass up there the better. I will not be held responsible for anything that happens to them.
An inconspicuous reflective green sign that read Exit 37 took them to the foot of a wooded mountain. The Blue Ridge Mountains were much softer and rounder than its Rocky cousins in the West.
This is it. What if they don’t let us in? Then we will deal with that when it comes. He turned the hulking vehicle down the two-lane road and it inclined rapidly.
The mobile lounge meandered slowly up the twisting two-laner, curving back and forth as if the road builders hadn’t been able to decide which way they wanted it to go. The mobile lounge was a bit top heavy so taking the turns fast was not an option. However, at the same time, he edged the accelerator down with his foot afraid that if he slowed down too much the people mover would stall out. Rolling backward down a mountain surrounded by trees would not be ideal. No cars passed him on the other side of the road. Is that a good or bad sign? He decided it didn’t matter, the die was cast.
Nice and easy, Lunchbox. That’s what he had named the mobile lounge, because that’s what they were sitting in: a human lunchbox. The Ramirez family would be tacos, Kim would be sweet and sour chicken, and Eddie would be slow-cooked BBQ ribs. Mauser would be a cheeseburger and Jarl a giant steak. The infected could take their pick should they crack them open.
He imagined everyone in the mover running around in their respective food costumes, which made him feel even hungrier. Maybe I caught the virus? No. You’re just hungry you stupid son of a bitch. What I wouldn’t give for a big greasy cheeseburger with bacon and cheddar cheese right now. And a large side of salted French fries with chili and cheese sauce. Extra cheese sauce. Mmmm. When was the last time I ate something? Yesterday? The day before? He couldn’t remember.
“Jarl, you got any of that jerky left?” Mauser called back.
“Ate it all,” he hollered to the front.
“Damn it,” Mauser cursed. Never mind. This place better be well supplied. Fingers crossed.
Thick woods full of large maples and oaks covered with green leaves surrounded them on either side of the two-lane road. The trees covered the mountain like a thick fog blocking all lines of sight to what lay on the other side.
Only a few desolate houses and several small weathered summer cabins decorated the green landscape carving little alcoves of humanity inside the overgrown nature. A man in a red flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, jeans and a baseball cap with a hunting rifle on his back, eyed them closely as he unloaded boxes from the bed of a pickup.
Virginia was an unusual animal. A few minutes from the rich aristocratic mansions were small country homes, and twenty minutes from there, brand new townhouse subdivisions. IT analysts to truck drivers they all lived here.
Mauser ignored the man with the hunting rifle. He didn’t know if the man stared because he wasn’t used to seeing new people in his area, or because Mauser drove a giant mobile lounge that looked like a NASA space lander. Most likely, he was suspicious because of the outbreak. Mauser didn’t give zero shits what the man thought, as long as he didn’t get in the way.
Mauser leaned forward on the wheel, trying to urge the mover forward by repositioning his weight. He could probably browbeat the man about being on official government duty, but he didn’t know whether that would hold any sway. This guy probably had the news on non-stop making him suspicious of anyone new in his neighborhood.
The news could set off a national panic on a mere whim. An impending snowstorm sent everyone in the National Capital Region running to the store to clean out everything from food to ice salt.
Shit, practically every day there is the ‘storm of the century’ or ‘protestors protes
t something,’ or somebody is declared a hero. In today’s world, everything is exceptional, sensational, shocking or downright amazing, which made everything they jabbered on about exactly the opposite: regular, normal and average. It is as if the news fed everyone a perpetual dose of clickbait, hoping that something it gave you is offending, hair-raising or galvanizing. Anything to keep you hooked on it for just a little bit longer.
How could people differentiate from the extraordinary and the norm? Maybe it was just a storm or a protest, or perhaps some unlucky sap stepped the wrong way when someone slung a round in his direction. Maybe being a hero was just somebody doing his or her job well. Does doing your job make you a hero? Possibly. No job description ever mentioned heroism in the list of desired skills and if it did, it lied to you. Being a hero isn’t a skill. It is a selfless act in the face of danger.
The ironic part is that the news is probably right this time. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and all hands point to end time. I just have to keep moving forward, he told himself. A tall, barb-wired top steel chain-link fence ran along the road, announcing that they had crested the mountain top and were close. So close.
Jarl clapped him on the shoulder, jolting him. “We made it,” he said with a laugh.
“Not quite,” Mauser said, pointing at the gate.
A platoon of brown and gray camouflaged soldiers at the entrance peered out over concrete barricades, their M4 carbines pointed at him. Behind them, a couple of High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, or Humvees with .50 caliber machine guns swiveled, turrets pointed in their direction.
“They don’t look too friendly,” Jarl said.
“I’m banking on them not turning us into swiss cheese.” Mauser inched the Lunchbox closer and closer. He only stopped the vehicle when a loud, booming voice sounded over a megaphone.
“Turn off your engine. Throw your weapons down. Step forward with your hands in the air.”
End Time Page 28