She almost wished that her father had succumbed to the disease and had been put down quickly. Wouldn't that have been preferable to such prolonged suffering?
After pausing at the foot of his bed, she said, "I'll be back soon."
She walked out of the ICU and stood for a moment in the hallway, wondering where Frank had gone. She took in a deep breath of air, then immediately regretted it because of the foulness in the air that had followed her out.
She jumped when a gunshot rang out behind her.
Another one had turned.
Her steps quickened as she hurried away.
Chapter 2
Cheryl detoured through the market hall, because a little shopping always took her mind off of more serious things. With any luck, she hoped to find something suitable for a birthday gift for Mark, her fiancé. Though, she didn't have her hopes up. Some days there were big hauls of loot from Tucson, and occasionally Phoenix, but most of the time, it was random sundries and mundane paraphernalia like clothing, linens, toiletries, books, and toys. She'd given up on finding a new pair of combat boots in Mark's size or a hunting knife like the one he brought back from Afghanistan and used to take camping. There were just two days left before his birthday, so she was running out of time to be picky. A few weeks ago, he'd have been thrilled to receive something as simple as a carton of cigarettes, but he'd quit after an Eater nearly caught him during a perimeter patrol. He said that if he couldn't outrun a dead piece of meat, it was time to give up the cancer sticks. So, maybe a Grisham novel or a couple bottles of Corona would have to do.
She passed by a new shop that sold baby clothes and formula, and another with kitschy décor to make rooms look less dormitory-like: paintings, faux window scenes, battery-operated candles, and all sorts of knick-knacks. Then, she slowed at a sight of another new store that sold towels, blankets, and comforters. She and Mark were still using the gray flannel bed spread that had been in his room when she'd moved in—it was itchy and still had burn holes from previous smoking accidents. This place was worth a look because she knew there were nicer quilts to be had for a gift to herself if not to Mark who could probably care less about sprucing up their living quarters.
"Hi there."
Cheryl nodded hello to the clerk who had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, wispy bangs covering one eye, and a narrow head that looked like it had been squeezed between two metal plates.
"Looking for something?" he said, glancing at her with slanted eyes like a wolf ogling prey.
"New comforter."
"Twin?"
"Full," she said, knowing that saying you slept in a full-sized bed meant that you were either high-ranking enough to deserve one or had a significant other that you bunked with. It was as good as flashing a not-good-enough-for-you sign or her engagement ring.
His gaze tore away from her and went straight to a stack of bedding on a folding table. "What about this?" he asked, holding up a peach blanket with a floral print.
She shook her head. Too girly.
"This?"
She nixed that one too. It was masculine enough, but with its blue camouflage print, it looked like something for an eight year old's room.
"No thanks," she said, starting to walk away.
"Wait! I got more in this morning. Haven't unpacked yet."
She stopped, though she figured she was wasting her time.
The man stooped below the makeshift counter made out of particle board and cinder blocks and pulled out a black plastic trash bag. She shook her head as he showed her two more comforters then stepped back into the crowded hallway.
"There's one more," he called after her. "What about this?"
A glance back made her pause. The quilt was a patchwork of bright-colored fabrics and cream-colored burlap sacks that said, Costa Rica Coffee Haus. It was gaudy as hell, but it looked familiar. She'd seen it before in her Aunt Donna's house in Tucson. Her aunt had gone to Costa Rica on her honeymoon in 1999 and come back with hundreds of photos of palm trees, parrots, giant spiders, monkeys, and a fifty pound sack of java beans. That sack had become part of the memory quilt she'd made to commemorate the trip. Cheryl saw her name on the deceased list shortly after arriving at the fort. She never found out exactly how she'd died.
"Where did you get that?" she asked, walking back into the shop.
He shrugged. "Where we get most of them. Probably some abandoned old lady's house. The broad who quilted it must've bit it just like the rest of them losers who didn't bail out of town when the shit hit the fan."
It took major restraint for Cheryl to keep from punching him in the jaw and refrain from saying, "That old lady was my aunt, you bastard." Getting sent to the pokey and losing work credits just wasn't worth it.
"How much?"
"Eighty credits."
"Will you take sixty-five?"
"Seventy."
"Fine," she said, handing him her ration card and at least feeling better that she hadn't paid him full price for something that was worth less to anyone else but priceless to her.
After he completed the transaction and rolled up the quilt, she cradled it under arm and left without bothering to thank him. Clutching what felt like a piece of her aunt, Cheryl put mental blinders on through the rest of the market area and made a beeline for her quarters. She couldn't wait to tell Mark about her find.
When she opened the door to their shared room, she found it empty.
"Uggh…Mark…" she said out loud. "You're supposed to be here."
She laid the quilt down on the bed and looked around the room, hoping that he'd somehow shrunk his six-foot frame and was hiding somewhere, waiting to jump out and surprise her. It was truly a fantasy, given the dimensions of this jail cell mostly filled by the bed. The place was nothing like her old apartment in Golden, Colorado where she'd had a fireplace, a queen-sized bed, and a balcony with spectacular view of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. She'd done her best to make this place seem like some sort of home, though. She'd put curtains on the brick wall to mimic the concept of having a window, hung up a drawing of purple and yellow flowers that she'd purchased from a child in the fort, and even decorated for Christmas a few months ago by decorating a small cactus with red buttons and strands of silver tinsel.
It was a simple room, but it was functional. In addition to the bed, there was a laptop computer and other basic necessities. A wood dowel hanging from two large hooks held their clothes which consisted of little more than their work uniforms, a couple of t-shirts and jeans, and one dressier outfit for each of them. They did laundry infrequently, waiting for a turn at the sink in the communal bathroom then letting them drip dry.
She rubbed her eyes, looking at her reflection in the cracked hand mirror hanging on the wall. Then, she ran her fingers through her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair, wondering if her comb had really been stolen a couple of days ago or if she'd just misplaced it. Staring at her mussed-up hair, she considered if she should chop it all off again like she'd done before arriving here, because she'd found out the hard way that long hair was a hazard around the grubby fingers of hungry Eaters.
"Don't cut it again."
She whipped around and saw Mark just as he slipped his arms around her.
"How did you—" Of course he knew what she was thinking. He'd had some sort of strange sporadic mind meld with her ever since he'd been infected with the virus and had miraculously recovered. It was weird and downright uncomfortable sometimes to have his voice talking inside her head, but if it wasn't for his encouraging words in her ears all along her perilous route down here, she didn't know if she'd have had the strength to keep going.
He leaned his head on her shoulder. "Are you okay? That attack this morning—"
"You were working during the attack?" she asked, wondering why he had on his tan ACU. It was rare to see him in anything else but his tan army combat uniform, but today was supposed to be his day off from duty. "I figured you were here, sleeping through the whole thing."
Her voice squeaked up an octave. "You were at a baiting station?" Cheryl closed her eyes for a second, remembering her first mandatory visit to one after her stint in quarantine was up. Knowing that the scent of human flesh would lure the infected towards the fort, the builders had established baiting stations at every cardinal point. Loud rock music blared from speakers on the top corners of the building and corpses dangled from tall wooden crosses in the open center of the building. From a distance, the place looked like some grotesque Golgotha, buzzing with vultures and flies.
Lately, a lot of the Eaters had been bypassing the stations and heading straight for the fort instead. So, two weeks ago, those in charge tried substituting live goats and cows, hoping that live bait would be a more enticing lure. It helped for a few days, but word got out at the fort that the animals were suspended in cages in the hot sun, bleating and moaning in agony. Protests were staged in the cafeteria, so the practice of using live bait was abandoned.
There was only one entry point to each station, and once inside, the Eaters were herded like cattle into narrow passageways where steel bolts shot out of the walls, puncturing their skulls. 'Stickers' were ready to dispatch any Eaters that managed to wander through with their diseased brains still intact. Thankfully, Mark had never worked as a Sticker, but guarding a baiting station was dangerous too. The stations were on the outskirts of the compound and not as well fortified as the fort. From rooftop positions, sharpshooters worked as guards, ready to thin the numbers if they entered the station in herds too thick to dispatch in an orderly fashion inside. There was always a chance that a baiting station could be overwhelmed and guards on top could be trapped with no way to get down and escape.
"The load was thick. They needed the help."
Cheryl un-wrapped his scarred hands from her waist and turned around to face him looking past the craggy scars on his face and up into his blue eyes. "Every time you do a shift at a station, I never know if you're coming back."
"I could say the same for you, at least today. I heard it got pretty hairy in the moat."
She flashed back to her last minutes of the battle. Bodies piled upon bodies, and the bloody, snarling faces and clawing fingers just inches away from her ledge—if they had breached it, she couldn't say for sure if she'd have been able to get back inside the building fast enough to prevent getting eaten alive. "Yeah, it did. I've never seen so many incoming at once. There were hundreds of them."
"I'm going to a meeting tomorrow about how to fortify the building better."
"What else can they do? They thought this place was impenetrable, but after today…"
"They're talking about building more baiting stations, adding bayonets to the rifles, making the moat deeper, or surrounding the entire fort with thicker rolls of razor wire to slow them down."
"Slow them down? That won't help much if the bullets run out. They're giving me less and less ammo each week. I was down to my last magazine today."
"You should go to a Combatives refresher. You haven't been to one in a couple of months."
"It definitely wouldn’t hurt."
New recruits to the patrol units were taught Combatives before they were allowed to move on to rifle training. She'd been through the program twice. In each class they had to master submission techniques such as chokeholds, preventing and escaping mounts, and most importantly—how to avoid getting bitten. That sort of muscle memory could be critical if a weapon failed. Like all patrol volunteers she'd received a rationed vaccine dose before training commenced, but it wasn't one hundred percent effective, and it was useless once an Eater latched on to you and started gnawing off parts of your body. Mark hadn't taken the vaccine back in Afghanistan when it was offered to him in the experimental stage, and after he'd contracted the virus, he'd gotten it too late to prevent the necrotizing effects on his skin. She still loved him though, pockmarks and all, and remembered daily how lucky she was that he was still alive.
"You know what I wish?"
"What?" she asked as he pulled her down to the bed.
"I wish you'd get off of patrol duty all together and find a job inside. You could teach or work in one of the shops…"
"Boring."
"Full time in the garden?"
She shook her head. "They don't need as much help in the gardens now, because they've had to scale back the crops due to the water shortage."
"What about working in the kitchen? You always were a good cook."
"Thanks. But actually…I'm thinking about keeping my current job and going on another safari."
"What? He said, running his fingers through her hair. "Why?"
"A safari pays a thousand work credits, and it beats sitting around between patrol shifts.
"Jeez…Cheryl. I don't want you to go into town. It's too dangerous."
"My decision."
"I think you've got a death wish."
"No." Her bottom lip quivered as she buried her face in her hands. "I really don't. I just want—"
"Oh…here we go." A spark seemed to flare up in his eyes. "You're one woman. You can't change the state of the world. So, it's about time you stopped trying!"
"I know," she whined. "I just don't want to sit on my butt around here, waiting for the worst. When I go on a raid, it's helping. And let's just say it's fulfilling my female scavenging instinct, kind of like going to the grocery store…like in the old days." And if…in the process… she could do her part to clean up a part of the city and work towards her dream of living in a house, raising a family, living a normal life…
"What if they raid an occupied house again?"
Cheryl's teeth clenched, remembering the time some yahoos from her unit had burst into a boarded-up home, waving guns and demanding any food the terrified family had stashed away. They had a toddler-aged girl and a mangy dog, both starved so thin they seemed like paper cutouts. She'd returned with another unit two days later to find the family and give them some food, but they had disappeared. "That won't happen again. It's against policy. Those guys got banned from future safaris."
"I guess I can't stop you, but you know how I feel about it."
"And you know how I feel about you taking shifts in baiting stations."
"Touché," Mark said as he stretched out on the bed, his fee dangling off the bottom edge. "Come here." He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him.
She pulled back, holding him off so she could remove her tactical vest. Then, feeling hot and sweaty, and a bit naughty, she unbuttoned her shirt too. He watched with an amused smile as she also removed her bra, straddled his legs, and let her breasts dangle over him.
"You're an evil temptress," he said, reaching up with both hands.
"I'd prefer irresistible temptress."
"That too."
She leaned down and gave him a soft, wet kiss on his salty neck. "Sure we have enough time?"
"Before what?"
"I thought there was supposed to be an evacuation drill this afternoon," she said, running her fingers through the tangle of hair his chest.
"It was cancelled, because of the attack."
Evacuation. The word itself was ominous, because Cheryl couldn't imagine where so many people would go…or how they could get there—wherever there was. Life at Fort San Manuel was no Shangri-La, but being cocooned in this isolated community was a vacation compared to the horrors that awaited them in the outside world.
She tried to put her fears out of her mind and refocus her mind on Mark's stirring body underneath her. Still half-dressed, they began the passionate melding of their bodies, mingling their sweat, the soot of gunpowder, and the acrid scent of adrenaline that still oozed out of their pores from the day's earlier events. When it got too hot to bear being a scrap of fabric coming between them, she began to peel her cargo shorts off. Then, one glance down at the long scar running up her right thigh ruined her mood.
"Still bothers you, doesn'
t it?" Mark asked, leaning up on an elbow.
"It looks like hell."
"It might…if it was on someone else's leg." He sat up and fluttered a line of kisses down the thin reddish crevice, twelve inches long. "To me, that scar means you survived. Without reaching the top of that fence, you might not be here."
Cheryl closed her eyes, trying to focus on the sensation of Mark's warm lips working on other parts of her leg, but every time she saw the scar, it made her shudder as she remembered how she'd gotten it.
It had happened on her last day of bike patrol around the perimeter of the fort. On that afternoon, over three weeks ago, her unit was on their fourth circle of the fort underneath a blazing hot sun when she decided to take a drink out of her canteen. She dropped back and let the other two riders go on ahead, figuring that the day had been quiet so far and knowing she'd only be a second. As she took a swig, she spotted a scorpion on a rock just a few inches from her foot. Having endured an incredibly painful and incapacitating sting from one during her journey south to Tucson, she instantly yelped and jumped away. Her feet tangled up in the pedals of her bike and she tumbled over. When she tried to right herself, something clamped around her right ankle.
She looked down and saw a hand sticking out of the sand. It had thin, birdlike bones covered with papery, brown skin. Trying to yank her leg back, she slipped and fell again. As she pulled away and kicked at the hand still firmly clinging to her, a body began to emerge from the sand: first an arm, then a shoulder and an eyeless skull with wispy strands of long whitish hair, then an emaciated torso that only had one partial leg attached. It writhed towards her with the black cave of its mouth open wide.
She reached for her gun, but in the scramble to get a hold of it while keeping the monster's teeth away from her calf, she dropped it in the sand. Still kicking at the skull, she screamed and craned her neck just in time to see the double silhouette of Private Bernard and Don Milton disappearing over a dune. Like her, they had helmets on that covered their ears and muffled sound.
Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance Page 2