by David Peters
Cool air washed over them as they made their way to the radio room. Bill was sitting by the radio listening to frantic conversations. It sounded as if all hell had broken loose, and Bill was getting a play by play.
“They move so fast, harder than hell to stop!” one voice lamented.
“I swear I saw a group of them talking. The Guardies blew the group up, and then got pounded by a mass of ‘em, the damn things would run up and explode!” another echoed.
“Downtown Spokane is lost at this point. We tried to quarantine but we have no way of knowing if someone is in the early stages or if one of the refugees walking by is actually an infected, faking it.”
The voices continued as various others added their observations and experiences. Dylan was starting to build a picture of the current situation.
Dylan touched Bill on the shoulder to get his attention. Bill turned in a flash and violently pushed Dylan away. Dylan tumbled over one of the office chairs and crashed to the floor. He looked up and into the barrel of Bills service revolver. It was shaking.
“Bill! It’s me, Dylan!” Dylan held is hands high in the air as he looked up at Bill.
Niccole slowly moved and helped Dylan back to his feet.
“Sorry Dylan, just a little jumpy,” Bill was obviously exhausted, but had yet to lower the weapon. “Shit has hit the fan this time folks. Not sure we are getting out of this one.”
“Can you point that somewhere else please?” Dylan said as Niccole helped him stand.
“What brings you two here? Where are you coming from?” Bill questioned the two like they were bad news from out of town, never pointing his service revolver anywhere but at Dylan’s head and looking them over from head to toe.
Niccole was giving concerned glances to Dylan.
“Bill, something happened out at Randy Hofstadter’s place. Something bad, and something I can’t explain,” said Dylan nervously.
“He bite you? You get cut at all? How close did you get? What about you Niccole?” Bill was nervously moving the pistol from Dylan to Niccole and back again.
Dylan looked at Niccole as if to silently say “What the hell is he talking about?” He moved a step to his left in order to put himself between the gun and Niccole.
“No Bill, he was dead. His sister was, hell, I don’t know what she was, but I had to put her down like some kind of animal. It was self defense man, I didn’t have a choice. She was eating hi…”
Bill cut him off. “Don’t worry about it Dylan. The old world is gone. In another week there won’t be a jury to try you with. Let me smell your breath.”
Dylan was caught off guard by the last question “Bill, what the hell man, are you feeling ok?”
The gun steadied in Bill’s hand, “I’m only going to ask one more time. Let...me…smell…your…breath.” He enunciated every word making it more than clear he was not playing games. There was a moment of silence while Dylan and Niccole stood bewildered and scared of where this was going. Bill made their choice clear by pulling the hammer back on his revolver.
Dylan leaned forward enough for Bill to smell him.
“Alright.” Bill shifted his aim to Niccole, “Now you.”
Niccole took a cautious step forward, nervously exhaling for Bill.
Bill looked satisfied and holstered his side arm. He brushed past the couple and walked to the front entrance of the station and pushed the door open. He took a long look around the parking lot up into the hillsides surrounding the small town and then back down the length of Main Street. “Ok, you don’t have the stink. Infected people always get the stink, really fast too.” He pulled the doors closed again and locked them. He sighed heavily and walked back to the radio room.
Dylan looked at Bill like he was no longer speaking English, “Bill, I’m really trying to follow you here, but I think I speak for both of us when I say, what the hell, man.”
“Ok, let me back up just a bit. Bad things are happening, really bad. There is a bunch of us still on the radio, but most have gone off the air. I dragged the shortwave up from the basement and have been listening in on that. Spokane is gone, sounds like Seattle too. National Guard put up quite a fight, sounds like they left most of downtown a smoldering ruin and still didn’t stop them.”
Niccole gasped quietly, “My parents were in Seattle!”
Bill tried to calm her, “They may still be. Even so, you can’t get through the passes. Either they are locked down tight by some random agency, some small town militia, or The Corrupted have control and no one comes back. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to find out.”
Dylan gestured to slow Bill down, “Bill, slow down, I don’t understand. Did we get invaded? What is going on, where did they come from? What the hell is the ‘Corrupted’?”
“Ok, let me bring you up to speed with what I know.” Bill walked over to the gun locker “I have been on the radio with other folks from as far away as Helena since yesterday afternoon.” Bill continued to talk as he opened the locker and began pulling things out. “So I’m a little sleep deprived and a shit-ton scared.”
Dylan and Niccole stood silently while they listened to Bill explain the situation as best he knew it. Bill was stacking rifle magazines on the table after verifying they were full.
“We can’t put together exactly what happened, but we know for sure that at least three main cities, Spokane, Seattle and Portland have all been infected by something. Something bad, it corrupts humans on a cellular level. It changes ‘em. Changes people into something else. Something no longer human. How much, we don’t know.” He punctuated his word by locking a magazine into an automatic rifle. “We know other cities were hit too. But the information there is beyond spotty. If I had to take a guess I would say they are in the same tub of shit we are, maybe worse.”
Laying the first rifle on the radio table he began loading another as he continued “Whatever this is, it spreads quickly. In Spokane they thought it was a riot but it was an ever growing group of these things. They were mostly centered in the city park at the time. Down by the new coliseum.” Bill finished loading a second rifle. He pulled the charging handle back slightly and could see a round was in the chamber. Flipping the safety on with his thumb he handed the weapon to Dylan.
Niccole interrupted, “Last night I heard about similar things happening on the East Coast, could it be the same infection?”
Dylan took the offered weapon without comment while Bill began loading a third weapon. “I wouldn’t rule out anything Niccole. It is certainly possible from what we have seen. In talking with the on scene folks in Spokane, the first three units sent in didn’t come back out, so they sent in the riot squad. Some of them came back out looking like they had been chewed up and spit out.”
“Command on the scene decided at that point to lock the park up tight, nothing in, nothing out. A few hours later, they got their first clue as to what was really going on.”
He gave the third rifle the same checks he had done to Dylan’s and handed it to Niccole. She took the rifle without comment and slung it over her back.
Bill began loading the stack of empty rifle magazines from a large box of ammunition as he continued to tell what he knew. Dylan and Niccole stood by mesmerized as he spoke, “The first group of officers that had come back began to drop. They would usually complain of chest pains or extreme headaches. All of them complained of burning sensations throughout their body. The medical personnel onsite said it was caused by the crowd control pepper spray they were using or possibly after effects of their new microwave pain generators. Of the six that came out, four were sent down to Spokane General. The two that remained at the command post were sent to the aid station. All of them looked like they had been chewed on.”
“Here is where it starts to get strange. At some point, someone noticed the smell of decay coming from the aid tent. It’s the only way to describe the smell.” Bill stopped loading the last magazine and looked at Dylan, “both officers appeared to have died; only they were sti
ll moving, skin looked like it was in the early stages of rot, parts bloating, nasty shit. Not much is known from that point on, except that both officers walked out of the tent as something else and wound up, well, extremely dead a few minutes later. It wasn’t too long after that when the command post went off the air. The mayor came on the air and declared martial law. It was pretty much downhill from there.”
“Randy’s sister smelled like that. Worst thing I have ever smelled,” added Dylan
Niccole glanced at Dylan then to Bill, “What about the four that went to the hospital? Weren’t they infected too?”
Bill sighed, “Don’t know for sure but you can probably guess. I couldn’t raise anyone there a few hours after they had arrived.”
Handing three magazines to Dylan, Bill continued “Here, put a few of these in your pockets. Anyway, at this point, the National Guard was called up and stuff got noisy fast. I don’t know what happened but I do know they ultimately pulled back out of what was left of town. At least those few that were still alive were.”
“So where are we currently? Command has pretty much fallen apart. The things are as smart as they are fast and they work together. People don’t always turn the same way either. Sometimes you will see them as almost completely black. Other times they will look blue. The really bad ones look almost like a person from far away, there seems to be different things that can happen to you.”
“Does anyone know where they came from? How this started?” Niccole asked.
“Not that I have talked to. There has been lots of speculation, but at this point it has been more about survival and less about source. They keep trying to treat it like chemical contamination or a virus out break but the things just walk past the barriers. We have seen two different types of these Corrupted things. The darker, almost black ones are called Hunters; they tend to move like a cat or a dog, fast as hell and strong. The second type tends to move in packs, slow, walk upright, mottled grey in color. Haven’t heard a name for them, they aren’t common from what we have seen. We also don’t know how much of a change there will be in the end, we are just seeing what has happened in the first twenty four hours or less.”
Dylan looked at the rifle than up at Bill, “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“If I were you, I’d get as far away from population centers as I could. Maybe head south, doesn’t your brother live in some village or some such in Oregon?”
“You don’t think we’re safe here?” Niccole leaned closer to Dylan.
“Honestly? I don’t think you are safe anywhere anymore Niccole. I think the world as we know it is completely gone, over. We lost and it’s someone else’s turn. We are in the way.”
As if on cue several muffled gun shots could be heard from outside.
--7--
The trio stepped out front and could see a police cruiser with its flashing lights in the grocery parking lot at the far end of Main Street.
“And so it begins. Get your truck and meet me down the street. You are officially deputized Dylan. Niccole, welcome to street duty. There ain’t no pay increase, sorry.” Bill gave them the first smile they had seen then headed to his cruiser without waiting for an answer. He was finally doing something more than sitting by a radio and that suited him fine.
“Honey, I don’t like this, what about my parents? What about your brother? What do we do? Should we really leave?” Niccole asked rapidly.
“Ok, slow down.” Dylan said as he grabbed her by the shoulders, “One thing at a time, let’s see what is going on down the street, and then we will talk about what to do next.”
Bill sped off down the street as Dylan climbed into the cab of his truck and started the engine.
They pulled off the street and parked next to Bill’s cruiser. Bill was already standing outside of his cruiser behind the door. He was aiming his rifle at what appeared to be a private tour bus parked square in the middle of the parking lot.
They followed Bill’s lead and stepped out behind the door of the pick-up truck. He could see that Jeb Jones, otherwise known as JJ to his friends, had lined up six people against the purple tour bus, a seventh lay dead on the ground.
“JJ, what’s going on son?” Bill had his rifle pointed at the group with the same level of mistrust that he had used on Dylan and Niccole.
JJ was obviously more than a little nervous. His voice was shaking and he didn’t seem quite sure where to point his gun. “One of ‘em had the stink Bill, had it bad. I’m still not sure about these others. They say they are coming from Spokane and heading south.” JJ was the only other full time officer in Colfax. “He wouldn’t listen and I wasn’t going to take the chance. I had to do it Bill, you know that.”
The oldest looking member of the group spoke up, “The driver is still inside. He wasn’t feeling well and collapsed a short while ago. We have a number of sick onboard, most have been sleeping for some time. We were told there was help to the south. We just needed some supplies for the trip. We have money, we weren’t going to loot.” The old man had a sound of desperation to his voice.
“You brought sick people here? Are you crazy?” Bill looked alarmed. “How many do you have left in the bus?”
At that point, the one standing next to the self designated leader collapsed.
“Help me get her into the bus. We can lay her down with the others.”
JJ was startled by the quick movement and nearly shot the man.
“Don’t do anything,” Bill had settled his sites on the leader. “JJ, check them out. Don’t any of you move.”
JJ took a step forward and smelled the old man’s breath. He turned and nodded to Bill. He moved in a wide arc around the body on the ground and approached the next person. He looked to be in his mid twenties and was wearing a business suit. As JJ leaned in to smell his breath the suited man pushed him backwards.
“I know my rights. You have no reason to stop and search me. I’m going to sue this little bum-fuck town into the Stone Age. You’re all a bunch of freakin’ hillbillies.”
JJ had his revolver pointed at the man’s chest. He was quickly looking over his shoulder at Bill and back to the man in the suit hoping for some direction from his superior.
Bill stepped around the door and took careful aim with his assault rifle, “I’m only going to tell you this one time pal. You are going to let my partner here smell your breath. No comments, no questions, no demands.”
JJ nodded to Bill and spoke confidently to the young man again, “Step towards me, away from your group. Everyone else stay where you are and don’t make any sudden moves.”
“Fuck all of you. I’m…” He was cut off mid sentence by the loud crack of Bill’s rifle.
Bill had fired one round, parting the man’s hair and leaving a perfectly round hole in the side of the bus, “We aren’t here to ask your permission for anything. You might want to clean up the language while you’re at it, there are ladies present.”
“What the fuck is up with this town? You are all insane!” the man turned to walk away.
Another single gunshot sounded and the man dropped to the pavement. Bill adjusted his aim to the next person in line, “Next.”
The parking lot became extremely quiet as the small group looked from one face to another. They realized there were no options but to comply.
The next person in line, a young woman in a postal clerk’s uniform, hurried forward and exhaled into JJ’s face. “She’s good, go stand over by the red pickup truck.”
JJ worked through the remaining people, “They’re good, or at least they don’t have the stink yet. What about the people inside the bus?”
As JJ turned to face Bill, a figure vaulted from the open door of the tour bus, easily clearing the dozen feet of open space in one long jump. The blackened body slammed JJ solidly to the ground. As they tumbled, the Corrupted tore savagely at JJ’s uniform, finally sinking its yellow overgrown fangs into his shoulder, sending a fountain of foaming blood around the mouth of the Hunter.
Bill and Dylan fired at the same instant, detonating the Corrupted’s head like an overly ripe melon, the force of the expended energy throwing the mangled Hunters corpse against the front tire of the tour bus where it continued to spasm and claw blindly at the air for several seconds before finally falling motionless.
Bill rushed to JJ while Dylan continued to cover the only exit from the bus with his weapon. He was unsure what was happening but he knew anything that came out of that tour bus was getting shot more than a few times for good measure.
“Do what you gotta Bill. God it burns! I feel like my blood is on fire. I can’t see, the damn daylight is burning my eyes,” The bleeding from JJ’s shoulder was steady but not terribly heavy. Bill could already smell the hint of road kill on JJ’s breath.
“I always loved workin’ with you JJ, you were like a son to me,” In one smooth motion Bill stood up, drew his service revolver and fired the round that truly ended JJ’s life.