Race the Dead (Book 1): The Last Flag

by Cavanagh, Wren

  The Army had come in strong, not taking the breach lightly. The production area had been surrounded and cordoned off by late afternoon. Traffic was being re-routed up to ten miles away from Prideful and armed soldiers were guarding its perimeter. Tents and olive drab trailers were set up for personnel and administrative use, the hospital tent was the largest construction on the ground, but not by much — the mess tent was close behind.

  In the Combat Surgical Hospital, only two patients currently kept the staff busy, as its size was to accommodate possible casualties and for a quarantine event. Anyone visiting would have to pass through three self-contained, closed, concentric levels, the worst or quarantined patients at its center. Armed guards were present at each level.

  They were alert and nervous since the arrival of the black kid and the ex-vet with the limp. Tom and the Captain didn’t go past the first level of admission. The guards snapped to attention and saluted. The rest of the personnel were a bit more relaxed, but saluted as well. Protocol was protocol. Everyone was professional, but they were resentful, something Tom was too drunk to notice. Angry that something as fucking dumb as a TV show was placing their lives in danger. Tom fell on a nearby stool, rubbing his hands over his face like a man that had just woken from a nightmare, his skin was cold and numb, but he didn’t notice that either. He was tired, his eyes stung like fire, and his mouth felt like a sand pit. Right then, he was ready to beg for a glass of water. His escort hailed a nurse with a raised hand and then pointed to Tom.

  “Nurse Osceola, this gentleman here has had one too many. Get him hydrated, medicated, and rested. I'll be back in an hour.”

  “Yes, sir.” The nurse took Tom from the Captain and helped him to a cot. “Just lay back and rest. You're going to be okay. Just fine. We take good care of people here.” He reassured his patient as he set up an IV stand at the side of the cot. Years of experience and skill gave his movements speed and precision; in a few minutes he had the saline solution hooked up and an IV needle in Tom’s arm. “I’m going to give you something to help you sleep. For just a bit, okay? You gotta get up in an hour.” From the medicine cabinet he retrieved a syringe and filled it from an ampule. When he returned to his patient he saw that the man was already out. Waste not, want not, thought Osceola with a shrug, then plunged the syringe needle into the IV port and pushed the plunger.

  At the center of the CSH, Ty briefly opened his eyes and grimaced in pain, he squinted at the light that shone brightly above him, it felt like it was stabbing trough his eye right into his brain. He opened his mouth to speak, but it felt like some joker had filled his mouth with wood glue while he was out cold. He tried to gesture for help, but that hurt too, and he found himself unable to move much at all. But he wasn’t alone or unnoticed. Under the gaze of two doctors, a nurse approached and lifted a cup to his chin. The straw touched his lips and Ty latched onto it. He drank what tasted like apple juice until there was no more of it, then leaned his head back with a sigh and felt a bit of energy return.

  He squinted and blinked until finally his caregivers came into focus. The nurse was blonde woman, young, and she wore an Army field uniform with a name tag that said Nox. There were two other people with her: one in medical garb and a man in camo.

  “How are you feeling?” The voice of the man in scrubs came from behind a protective mask, the top of his face obscured by a plastic shield. Ty looked at their gloved hands, his eyes followed the double layers of latex over gray Kevlar chain-mail that went up to their shoulders. Oh God, I fucked up, he thought, fucked up real bad this time.

  The juice had helped loosen his tongue and he croaked a response, “Hurts.”

  “The painkillers should have been enough, but we can up the dose, hold on.” The woman disappeared from his view and a familiar voice called his name.

  “Hey, Tyshon.”

  Slowly he turned to the voice: Joe, the bullshit bull rider. He looks okay, Ty thought resentfully and managed to whisper his reply. “You don’t look hurt.”

  “Broken ankle.”

  “Lucky.”

  Joe nodded. “Very.”

  “We out of the game.”

  Joe looked at the two guards at the door. “Yeah.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Some mobile hospital tent — Army. They set up outside the fence. When they brought us in, it looked like the whole production had joined Uncle Sam. Last time I saw this many trench monkeys in Scorpion W2, I was stationed in Afghanistan.” Silence, nothing but minutes passed. Joe broke it again. “Saw them bring Tom in.”

  “Fuck Tom too, then.” Ty closed his eyes again and retreated into semi consciousness.

  Joe grabbed a couple of pillows off of the empty stretchers nearby and made himself comfortable in his own assigned cot. He checked out his keepers: guards and personnel. The hospital people were army professional, tried and true. Some of the guards…not so much. They were young — real young — and they looked like National Guard newbies. Locals, bored and nervous at the same time.

  I’m gonna need me some luck to get out of here, he thought, as he scratched his elbow and twisted his arm to look at the bruise. That’s all it is, he thought. The skin had barely broken, while the fabric on the jacket hadn’t. I saw no blood; no one saw any blood. Some skin got scraped off, that’s all. Did that thing’s saliva penetrate through the fabric? No sir. Since when did dead people have saliva, anyway? Did the doctors notice the scrape? Not even a wound, mind you. A scrape! Yes! The doctors and nurses, my friends, noticed the scrape. Christ, they practically body-searched him while they looked for wounds and bite marks.

  He thought he had convinced them that the scrape predated the show, and they had no evidence to the contrary. They had put his foot in a cast, stitched his split lips, and taped his broken nose. And finally gave him some very welcome and very strong painkillers. But they still wanted to hold on to him for the couple of months, why? Because of that scrape, they were playing it safe and getting his paperwork ready. Just be patient and understand the situation, said his very good-natured nurse.

  “Nah...Deal breaker. I got done with the Army telling me what to do.” Joe whispered and looked at the kids guarding the doors: six of them, two per level with side arm and rifle. There might be later depending on what happens, but he saw only six now. One stealing some shuteye and two had their noses in a tablet and one was looking in on his Facebook posts. All he’d need was a distraction and timing.

  ----------

  Miles away, Cheryl drove on through the busy L.A. streets and highways. It took her an hour before she finally parked her BMW at her immodest home that rested on a hill and had a spectacular view of the city, it was an exquisite example of modern architecture and had come with a staggering mortgage, and it was sheltered in a even more expensive gated community. She got out of the car, slamming its door behind her, on high heels she tottered up the graveled path to the main entrance. Along the way she snapped a bloom from one of the many rose bushes decorating the front of the house.

  She touched it, caressed it, brought it to her nose, and inhaled deeply, slowly. Nothing, she thought, resigned. I can’t smell anything anymore.

  Angry, she pushed the thorns into the palm of her hand, then crushed the rose in her fist as a grimace of fear made itself at home on her face. Cheryl threw the crushed rose to the ground and let herself inside.

  “Hoooney, I'm hooome.”

  The house was warm, clean and welcoming, it soothed her, with taste — her own and that of expensive decorators and architects — she had, over the years, turned it into a stylish refuge from the daily grind, a refuge from days such as today. Unsteady and stiff-gaited, she walked slowly through the empty rooms and hallways until she reached her bedroom.

  Her companion with the chiseled features and the chiseled body stood in front of the wall-sized window that overlooked L.A. He
turned to look at her when she entered the room, but didn’t bother to greet her and returned to look at the landscape, ignoring her altogether.

  “Are you pouting? Pout away, I don’t care.”

  She walked past him and moved on to her special desk, it was a piece of art, custom made wood-work, as was all of her gear since she started bringing in some real money. It was not a wide desk; of average height, it was a stylish work of classic modern woodcraft. Handmade, hewn from birch and oak, with copper and agate insets. The craftsman hadn’t used a single nail. She caressed its surface, ran her fingertips along the insets and edges before lifting the hinged top and taking out her objects of worship. She had stocked up considering the recent events.

  She began her ritual, created by a daily habit and reinforced by need and emotion. She retrieved a gold tray that held a gold box filled with cocaine for her immediate use, a delicate flat mirror with beveled edges and gold trim, and a custom made, artfully engraved gold straw. She closed the hinged top of the desk and carefully set her kit on the table top. Some people went to church for rich rituals; she had her desk and her gear. From the gold box she took enough cocaine to allow for four fat white lines and partitioned them on the mirror. She inhaled them as fast as she could, took a brief break, then added two more for good measure, and snorted them. Finally she felt alive and alert again. She sighed and wiped her nose with the heel of her hand.

  “Four...I only needed two this morning.” She turned to look at Rod, and briefly wondered what his real name was. “Two also worked yesterday, for the entire day.” He ignored her and she didn’t care. “Are you sulking? You're sulking. Well, I still don’t care. I'm going to do it tonight; I don’t know if I’ll be up to it tomorrow. And you’ll be coming with me. You hear me?” She turned to look at him. “No arguments.”

  Cheryl stood up and turned to the younger man. “Can’t go to sleep — would love to but I don’t think I’d wake up… alive. Of course, right now I couldn’t sleep if tried.” Rod turned and they briefly locked eyes. She grimaced. “I hate you; I really hate you, you stupid careless shit. Why did you do this to me? Why?”

  Her erstwhile dear: a twenty-four year old with the body of an Olympian, the mind of, well—the mind of an eighteen year old with dreams of movie stardom. They had met at her gym, where he was one of the personal trainers. He was fun, could fuck like a god and made for great company. Soon enough, she had him move in and they had played together well. She paid for his acting classes and for a while, had herself a nice boy toy. She had no doubts that he was unfaithful at times, but then, she had never actually asked for that, had she? She had been too busy and uninterested to really care, or was she too scared? After all, she had her pride.

  They got laid a lot and there were lots of fluids—no biting necessary, not even a nibble. Three weeks ago he had started to get sick…flu or cold symptoms, of course. Does anything ever start without flu or cold symptoms? She wondered. The regular over-the-counters remedies, along with cocaine and whatever else they were in the mood for, had seemed to help. He got better and for a week he had seemed just fine. Then one morning he barely made it out of bed, and since that day he had gotten sicker and sicker. Inconveniently, before she could kick him out, he died.

  She had come back from work that day and found him glassy-eyed and unable to get out of the bathroom, lucky in that he had forgotten how to turn the damn door handle. In shock, she had sat on the bed, listening to him claw at the bathroom door, thinking about her own cold and flu symptoms that had started that very morning. It took her a couple of hours and several stiff drinks before she could function again, and decided that it would do her no good to let this unfortunate turn of events become public. A quick shopping trip to two different stores saw to her needs.

  She had come home, returned to the bedroom, and closed the door; it wouldn’t do to have him wandering about the house. She opened the door to the bathroom and threw a heavy sack over Rod’s head as he came out and tripped him to the floor and got on his back. She placed a collar and chain around his neck and then allowed him to get up. While he stumbled about the room, bouncing off the walls and bumping into the furniture, she went about installing a bolt in the wall and padlocked the chain to it. Satisfied, she affixed the other hand to the collar.

  It had been quick and well-executed. She had admired her handiwork, proud of herself. Fuck, I can handle anything, she had thought. Exhausted, she fell into bed and slept like the dead were supposed to have done. In the morning she woke and called in to work to tell everyone that she needed a couple of days off. Then in angry privacy, she set about deciding the trajectory of her now much shorter lifespan. Finally, course set, she began her last act.

  And now here she was. This was most likely her last conscious night as she knew consciousness. For a brief moment, seeing the talking dead woman in Prideful had given her hope. Now she believed that she had just seen someone in the same conditions as her own: a woman in the later stages of a sickness that gave no reprieve. Too late to think otherwise, too late to allow herself the delusion of hope or change her plans. She sighed. It used to be so nice when Jesus was the only one that came back from the dead. Nowadays it seemed like everyone was doing it, and doing it wrong.

  Cheryl took a key from her bedside table and opened the padlock that secured the chain to the wall. Rod turned to her without hesitation. A reminder that zombie-fast was still fast enough, especially in close quarters. Not that it mattered now, not to her. He no longer tried to bite her, but bumped into her, touched her haltingly, confused. Sometimes he ran his fingers over her face. She thought that now in his own way, he was trying to understand who and what she was to him. That she was dead — deadish, he had already picked up on that. She took out her smartphone and dialed her source. He picked up.

  “Did you get them for me?”

  “Like you asked.”

  “You are waiting for me?”

  “Like you asked.” The man sounded bored, uninterested. “When you showing up?”

  “About an hour.”

  “See you soon.” He ended the call.

  Cheryl set her house in order. Not much to do really. She had been getting ready for this moment for weeks.

  ----------

  The two remaining members of the Fat Cobras patched up the hole in the door made by Theo. They barricaded it with furniture, then went off to huddle in the smallest, most defensible space at the back of the tavern, where they covered up with whatever they found along the way. Theo tried to stay awake but fell asleep anyway, his head resting on Alvin’s thigh. Eliza placed her camera down on a table and powered it off to save batteries.

  “Didn’t think you’d ever turn that off.”

  “Saving batteries. I have some spares, but with this storm I don’t know when I’ll get replacements. Also, we lost our WiFi connection. Probably the storm. The network will be running segments and fillers until it goes back up again. Haven’t heard from Tom since they picked up Ty.” She reached in her jacket and from an inside pocket took out a smartphone.

  Alvin looked at her with new appreciation. “Nobody was supposed to have a phone.”

  “Yeah, because I always do what people tell me to,” Eliza replied while she checked the screen. “No connection either, none.” Drained, she fell back against the wall and slid down until she was seated on the floor. She looked at Alvin. “How long you guys known each other?”

  “Year.”

  “You boys are really young. How’d you get into this production?”

  Alvin shrugged. He was as spent, but the very real horror of his future kept him from the mercy of any sleep. “Young is a relative term. I'm nineteen.”

  “And Theo?”

  “You can ask him yourself.”

  “If he's eighteen I’ll eat my camera.”