by Justin Bell
Or like a child.
His eyes widened. It was her. He could see it now, the small figure taking a few more unsteady steps backwards, out in the middle of the row, bathed in the faint light.
“It’s her!” shouted Davis, spotting the child as well. “We need her!”
“Don’t scare her!” Irkus said.
“Hey!” Davis screamed, charging toward the shadowed figure. The small form was in a full sprint now, breaking away and running down the middle of the road, small legs pumping along with narrow arms. “Stop!” Davis screamed, his voice echoing along the walls of the alley.
“Calm down,” Broderick hissed, “you’re just scaring her.”
Davis planted his feet and lifted his weapon, cradling the stock of the M4 in his shoulder, his left hand clasping the tactical grip.
“What are you doing?” Broderick yelled.
“We need to do genetic analysis on her! See why she didn’t get infected!”
“Don’t do it!” Broderick yelled again, sensing what Davis was going to do next. The sergeant had steadied himself, locking his legs and arm, his entire body tensed and still like carved stone.
“She doesn’t need to be alive to get her genetic material,” Davis said. His finger twitched from the trigger guard to the curled metal of the trigger itself.
“Dammit, no!” Broderick charged forward, throwing his hand out, slapping the side of the tactical rifle. Davis shifted left, the weapon firing, a loud bark, the muzzle flash illuminating the alley ahead. Several yards ahead, the sound of the 5.56-millimeter whine of ricochet off of brick signaled a clean miss. The shadowed figure lurched right and was swallowed by darkness.
“What was that about?” Davis shouted, turning toward Broderick. “What did you do?”
“I saved a child’s life!” Broderick shouted back.
“And you may have doomed the human race!”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” Broderick replied. “We don’t know anything about any of this. The only thing we do know was that you almost gunned down a kid. An American citizen. A child. Think about that for a second, Sergeant Davis. Think about that, and then you tell me how you’re going to sleep tonight!”
“I’d have slept a whole lot better knowing we had a possible cure for whatever the devil is going on here.”
“We don’t know if she’d given us that.”
“We don’t know that she wouldn’t.”
Broderick turned from him, shaking his head, glancing at the rest of Team Ten.
“Tell me you all understand where I’m coming from. Tell me you don’t actually think putting a bullet in the back of a little girl was the right move.”
Team Ten’s silence spoke for them.
Broderick stood there, glaring at all of them, his eyes moving from one to another, soaking in what he was seeing and hearing. Trying to measure his own outrage. He wondered what Major Chaboth would have thought. He’d like to think she’d be on his side, but for that moment, when he stared down the rest of the team, he honestly wondered if she would, or if she would have let Davis take the shot.
Take the shot. At a little girl.
What had this world become? Right around twelve hours since the crisis began, and what had the world already become?
***
The low rumble of motorcycles rattled through the narrow valleys between buildings within the downtown area of Boston.
Ricky Brooks strode across the lawn, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps as he glanced back toward the darkness, then looked back over at the slumped corpses on the grass.
“Those dudes were quick,” he huffed. “I thought for sure we’d catch the old fat guy.”
“You see the way he put two caps in Tony?” said Dave Anders in response. He was breathing just as hard, coming up in an uneven limp behind Ricky. The two men stood in the shadow of Jackson Block’s apartment building, both of them now looking at the bodies on the grass outside, bodies that Jackson had seen earlier, but they hadn’t paid much attention to.
“Javitz is gonna be pissed,” Dave continued, shaking his head.
“Why?” Ricky asked. “Sure, they popped Tony, but all he wanted was a place with some lights on.” He looked back over at the apartment building. Sure enough, scattered windows were still lit, though the light was fading slowly, as if the building itself was dying, and he wasn’t sure how long those lights would last.
Across the narrow street running parallel to the apartment, he looked at the three motorcycles, leaning on kickstands. His eyes narrowed on the large Harley Davidson in the middle of the trio, the 2015 Fat Bob with the nicely polished cherry red trim. It had been Tony’s bike, but the way Ricky figured it, Tony wouldn’t be needing it any more.
He looked over at Dave, who was hunched over, his pant leg hiked up to his knee.
“You all right?”
“Got some freaking buckshot in my leg, man. That dude with the shotgun was crazed.”
Ricky rotated his shoulder and flexed his arm at the elbow, pulling up his own sleeve. “Yeah, I think I got some in the arm. Crap scattered all over the hallway, probably could have been a lot worse.”
“Yeah at least the old man wasn’t poppin’ at us with his nine. Neither one of us would probably be standing right now.”
The motorcycle engines grew louder and closer, both men standing on the grass, waiting for the inevitable storm. A column of headlights rounded a corner two blocks away and slowly the small parade of bikes worked its way down the street, coasting to a halt in front of them and the apartment. With a quick rev and groan, the motors cranked back to silence and the man at the head of the parade fingered his helmet off, swinging his leg off the wide frame of his Honda Gold Wing.
With his motorcycle helmet off, Dave and Ricky could see the full length of his dark hair, sprouting from his head like long, thick weeds, draping down over the slope of his neck. His eyes narrowed, looking up at the place and he touched a hand to an ornate calligraphy of decorative tattoos etched across his neck and upper chest.
“This the place?” he asked.
“Yeah, this is the place, Javitz,” Ricky replied. “Generator looks like it may be gettin’ ready to wind down, but it’s a building with power. We cleared out a few apartments. Some of ‘em were already empty.”
Javitz nodded, his hair bobbing over his sloped shoulders, then looked at the two men, one at a time, his eyes squinting. “Where’s Tony?”
Ricky glanced at Dave, who kept his lips clamped shut, then he turned and looked at Javitz again. “Uhhh, well, the last place we cleared… had some guys in it. One of ‘em had a gun… and…”
“Spit it out, Ricky.”
“Tony’s dead. They killed him, then took a shot at us with a shotgun.” He showed him his exposed arm, a purple welt forming at the triceps. Some blood had run from the split skin there, twisting down the contours of his limb.
Javitz looked at him, then looked back at the parade of motorcycle riders he’d come in with. There were six of them altogether, a fraction of their whole squad. Still, he’d been impressed that six of them came together that quickly after things went down in Boston. Nine of them if you counted Ricky, Dave, and Tony.
“That’s too bad,” Javitz said after a moment. “We’re running pretty thin on numbers right now. Need every extra warm body we can get.”
“I get it,” Ricky replied. “Came out of nowhere. I didn’t realize old security guards were typically packin’ heat.”
Javitz crossed his arms, his unzipped jacket fluttering back behind him. Ricky could see the Steyr L-A1 semi-automatic pistol in a holster at his hip and was fairly certain that Javitz had moved that way simply to reveal it. To remind him who was boss, and what mistakes might cost him if there were too many.
“Where did these guys go off to? This old security guard and whoever his friend is?”
Dave pointed across the street into the dark maze of alleys pressing onward into the growing clutch of buildings south of where
they stood.
“You guys went after them?” Javitz asked, not looking back.
“Yeah,” Ricky replied. “Lost ‘em somewhere near Dorchester. Decided to come back before some jerk wanted to make off with our bikes.”
“They’re on foot then?”
“Yeah.”
Javitz stood for a long moment, uncrossing his arms and letting the jacket drape back down. On the back of the windbreaker style coat the emblem of the Steelworkers Union glared wide and proud at Ricky and Dave. They were familiar with it; after all they were members, too. All of the men in the parade of motorcycles were, some of them rookies, most of them long time, established members. Skilled laborers, hard workers. As much faith in their brothers as they didn’t have in the local government.
As he glared at the back of Javitz’ head, Ricky remembered their first meeting, the poker game at Tony’s house, a month after he was hired. He’d been ecstatic to see so many motorcycle enthusiasts at the plant and looked forward to their poker games every two weeks, but something about Javitz had always rubbed him the wrong way. There was a dark side to him. A sinister side, and it wasn’t even that deep. His disdain for leadership and for everything related to the government was clear and transparent to anyone who spoke to him for more than five minutes, and when he’d reached out to Ricky while the fires in Boston were still burning, Ricky had been hesitant to even answer the phone.
But he had answered. And he’d done what Javitz asked, because he was too afraid to do otherwise. Now Tony was dead, and he and Dave had buckshot buried in their flesh.
By the looks of Javitz, he wasn’t anywhere close to finished.
“So what’s the endgame here, Jav?” Ricky asked as the man looked out into the shadows.
At first Javitz didn’t turn around. “Survival,” he said plainly. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “You think this is just about Boston? You think this is the only place things are going down?”
Ricky wasn’t even sure how to answer.
“It’s the beginning of the end, boys. We have to make sure we’re positioned to survive. All of us.”
“What about our families?” Dave asked.
Ricky didn’t say anything, but he thought it. He had a wife at home. A son in high school. He was betting a lot of these other guys did, too.
Javitz turned all the way around this time, planting his fists on his hips, swooshing his jacket back, revealing the holster. Power play.
“You wanna go home to your family? Go right ahead, Dave. You can lay down in that nice double bed next to Kelly and be dead by this time tomorrow right along with the rest of ‘em. That’s what you wanna do, I’m not stopping you.”
“So what are we going to do?” asked Ricky. “You didn’t answer that, Jav.”
Javitz looked up into the smoke-soaked sky, the dark night made darker by the thickening cloud cover of sour smelling vapor.
“It’s a brave new world, gentlemen. We’ve got a unique skill set. We can bend the frame of this new world into whatever the hell we want to. We’re steelworkers. We’re scavengers. We can pick up the pieces and make something better.”
Behind him the squat parade of men on motorcycles shouted in unison, supporting this mindset. Two of them even pumped their fists in the air.
“And you decided all of this? In the last five hours?” Ricky remained on the lawn, keeping a cautious distance.
“Oh, I decided all of this a long time ago, boys,” Javitz replied. “I just didn’t think things would fall apart this quickly.”
“So what’s next then?” Dave asked.
Javitz smirked a crooked smirk. “First priority is finding the boys who took down Tony. Give them a little payback. After that, we play things by ear.”
Dave and Ricky looked at each other uncertainly.
“And Tony had a nice Harley. You two get to decide who keeps it. I’ll give you five minutes, then we’re rolling out, with or without you.”
Ricky’s mouth split into a wide grin and Dave knew already who was going to get Tony’s cherry red Harley. But that was okay. He liked his own bike anyway, and a nagging feeling inside told him none of them would be riding these bikes for much longer anyway. Javitz had an agenda, and that agenda wasn’t healthy for anyone.
***
“This place is a war zone,” whispered Clark as he crept across the street, moving from alley to alley. Jackson didn’t want to buy it, but as a former Marine, Clark knew what war zones were like, and if he was calling Boston one, Jackson felt like he had to believe him. Besides, as he moved in behind him and looked to his right, he could see the scattered fires along the edges of the row of tenement buildings several yards away, he could still smell the stale smoke, and though they were trending further outside the central area of the city, he could hear faint sirens and the occasional shout or scream.
The issue he’d been battling with, as they made their way slowly south through the outskirts of the city, was why were things still falling apart? Planes hadn’t plummeted into skyscrapers out here south of Dorchester. Why were the streets still empty, the lights still out, and the world still feeling one step closer to the finish line? There was something bigger here. Something bigger than a few scattered disasters.
Something bigger than this mythical “super flu.”
The dull roar of motorcycle engines rolled through the darkened night, echoing from building to building and Jackson whirled around, pushing himself back against the brick, willing himself invisible. Not too far away, he could see Clark repeating the motion, slipping his pistol from his holster and holding it two-handed in front of himself as he did.
“I keep hearing those,” Jackson whispered, turning toward Clark. “What’s up with the bikes?”
Clark shrugged. “Never saw many motorcycles in our neighborhood before. But yeah, I’ve been hearing them off and on tonight.”
As they finished their short conversation, the engines faded again, passing west and lowering to a minor din in the background.
“All right, let’s keep moving,” Clark said, and lowered his weapon, breaking left, crouch-walking alongside the rows of buildings. Jackson lowered himself and followed. Up ahead, a car sat in the road askew, flames crawling up from underneath the buckled hood. He could see the shrouded shape of a figure behind the steering wheel, keeled over, forehead resting on the dashboard.
He jerked, as if he might head across the street and check the person out, but Clark moved in and wrapped a tight hand over his shoulder.
“Don’t,” he whispered. Jackson halted, and looked more closely, seeing the rumpled form of a body on the sidewalk next to the car as well. From this angle it looked as if the passenger door was ajar, as if someone had spilled out in desperation, then simply fallen to the pavement and lay still.
“We can’t help everyone,” Clark said. “We probably don’t even want to try.”
“You think they’re sick?”
Clark shrugged. “I think they’re dead. Whether they’re sick or shot, doesn’t make much difference. Either way, you go over there, you’re just opening up Pandora’s box. Let’s focus on getting out of the city.”
Jackson looked back over his shoulders. The looming buildings of downtown Boston were far away, barely visible against the night sky and rising smoke.
“I thought we were out of the city.”
Clark looked over at the car and the corpses. “Apparently not quite far enough.”
“Connecticut never sounded so good.”
As they continued along forward, pressing into the darkness, the underlying throttle of motorcycle engines once again grew louder and closer.
Chapter Seven
Team Ten was moving fast and careful, not quite running, but close to it, as they moved north from Quincy, struggling to get a radio signal to Butch and the Blackhawk UH-60 helicopter. Every once in a while they heard the low thumping of helicopter rotors and angled their path toward the sound, and every once in a while, Corporal Felding dropped aw
ay, lifting the radio from her vest to try to get a signal through. So far, it was no use.
Quincy now stood a couple miles south as the group made their way north toward a more populated city center, hoping they could find some kind of open radio frequency to bounce a call off of.
Sergeant Davis led the way, his M4 carbine lifted out ahead of him, swaying rhythmically back and forth, covering the area ahead of him in a wide arc as he moved.
“Let’s keep moving, Team Ten, let’s go let’s go!” he barked as he ran.
“Take it easy, Davis!” Irkus shouted, lugging the thick metal case in one gloved hand.
Davis turned, pulling his rifle in close. “Look, this city is a powder keg right now. A powder keg with who knows how many people running around with genetically engineered viruses just waiting to explode. Every time we meet one of ‘em, our fearless leader here lets them go, so now we’re screwed.”
“There’s no call for that, Davis,” growled Broderick.
“He’s kind of got a point,” Smith said, and to Broderick’s surprise, several others nodded around the group.
Broderick shook his head. “Are all of you really saying you’re fine with gunning down a child for research purposes? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Putting down one child to save millions?” Irkus asked.
“There’s no proof that—”
“It was a bad call, Broderick,” Felding interjected, clipping her useless radio back on her vest.
“Unbelievable.”
“Look,” started Davis, “I know you’re new to this leadership position. And you’re a scientist first, soldier second.”
“I’m a human being, Sergeant. Apparently that’s my fallacy.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” interrupted Provlov. “Look, nerves are frayed. Things are in bad shape. Let’s not blame ourselves. Our first priority needs to be to get out of the city and start working through a potential cure to whatever this thing is!”