by Adrian Birch
At what felt like twenty-four hour intervals, two men in combat gear—kids, really—opened the U-Haul’s door. One always kept his rifle aimed at my chest. The other would set vacuum-packed military rations and a gallon of water on the cargo space’s floor. Then they slammed the door back down and locked it. They must have been given orders not to speak to me, because I couldn’t ever get either of them to say a word.
Sitting there in the dark, I mostly thought about Morgan. I’d promised her that I’d come right back to the hayloft, but I’d never returned. I wondered if she was still waiting there or if someone had found her. I tried not to think about what Jason had said about a “mass grave,” or what the workers who had locked us into the coffin had said. It sounded like they’d been burying other people who’d cried out from inside. A couple of times I tried calling out to Bryce as loud as I could, but I never heard any response.
I started fantasizing that the next time someone opened the cargo door, it would be Ian. But, of course, it never was.
* * *
The fifth time the door rolled up, not only was it not Ian, but it wasn’t two men with food, either. It was Jason.
“We’re official!” He ducked into the cargo space and flashed me a bright grin. He was in the same combat gear as before. “We got warrants now! And our people sure do want to talk to you.”
He grabbed me by the handcuffs and painfully threw me into the military vehicle he’d been driving before. Bryce was in the backseat. He tried to give me an embrace, relieved to see me, but his handcuffs got in the way. He eyed the armed squad warily—the same men as before—and settled for putting his hand on my knee and squeezing it.
Shawn sat still as stone in the front seat. He didn’t even turn around to look at me.
* * *
Downtown Muldoon was completely deserted.
When Jason drove through on the highway, there were cars parked everywhere, but all of them had been abandoned. I didn’t see a soul. Another military vehicle passed going in the opposite direction, but that was it. The carnival rides, still standing at the fairgrounds, were darkly motionless. The diner and supermarket were closed. The post office had a notice posted on its door, but I couldn’t see what it said. Some of the shops still had their “OPEN” signs up, but they were obviously totally empty. Only the pharmacy’s lights were on, and some kind of electronic steel door had been put up at its entrance.
One of the men raised his rifle as we approached the Burger Shack.
“Sergeant, we got something.”
“I see it.” Jason slowed. “Good fucking eyes, Corporal!”
Shawn gestured at Bryce and me. “Let’s just get these two to the center,” he said to Jason. “We don’t have enough room. Let’s skip this one.”
Jason shook his head. “We won’t need room.”
He pulled into the Burger Shack drive-through lane. An empty car was parked at the order kiosk.
Even after being locked inside a coffin and then a U-Haul, I was feeling constricted in the handcuffs. I worried that if something happened, I wouldn’t be able to move or defend myself. I glanced at Bryce, but he shook his head and shrugged helplessly.
One of the men pointed his gun through the window at the parked car. “Right there.”
I couldn’t tell what they were looking at. Then I noticed that the car was moving very slightly. It was rocking back and forth.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” another of rangers whispered, disgusted. “They’re in there all right.”
Two of the men stayed to guard Bryce and me while the rest got out of the vehicle. Jason, Shawn, and another ranger, the corporal, approached the car. I wasn’t sure what I was about to see—something told me I’d regret watching it, but I couldn’t look away.
The corporal positioned himself at one side of the car, and Jason, the other.
Jason gave a silent count. Then they whipped open one door each.
Someone screamed.
Jason dragged a girl from the car by her ankle, and the corporal dragged out another person—a guy—by the collar.
“Wait! Wait!” the guy shouted, covering his head with his arms. “We were just sleeping!”
I recognized him. I’d gone to high school with him. He’d been a couple of years ahead of me. His name was…Patrick something. He’d played something like the trombone in the band, and now he stocked shelves at the supermarket. He was wearing a green T-shirt and his pants were unbuttoned.
“Like hell you were sleeping,” Jason said.
Jason struggled with the girl, who was pulling her skirt down from around her waist and trying to stand up. He put his knee on her chest, pinning her to the pavement. She slapped at his knee, flinging her bleached hair, but otherwise stayed silent.
“Get off her!” Patrick yelled, his voice cracking. He struggled as the corporal pinned him against the car’s trunk.
Then the corporal took something that looked like a home pregnancy test from his flak jacket’s pocket and jabbed it into Patrick’s lower abdomen.
Patrick screamed out in what seemed like intense pain and collapsed onto the ground.
Jason held back the girl’s hands and stabbed a similar white plastic applicator into her stomach, just above her pubic bone. She writhed in agony, but still didn’t make a sound.
“What’s yours?” Jason stood, shaking his applicator. “Stage one? Bet it’s stage one.”
I had no idea what just happened or what Jason was talking about. The whole time, Shawn kept quiet. He just shifted his gun back and forth between Patrick and the girl.
The corporal looked closely at his applicator. “Stage one!” He smiled. “Bingo! What’s yours? Stage two, I bet. Look at her. Gotta be stage two.”
“Hold on, it’s coming.” Jason shook his applicator and looked at it again. “Stage two!” He yelled. “Corporal, we got ourselves a couple of officially confirmed sickos!”
Jason held up his white plastic applicator and tapped it against the corporal’s like they were clinking glasses for a toast.
“We’re already almost out of these.” The corporal tossed his applicator into the bushes beside the Burger Shack.
“Next shipment’s supposed to be in soon.” Jason shrugged. “Not like we really need these things anyway. Waste of time, if you ask me. I mean, big fucking surprise these two are sick, right?” He drew a handgun. “Are you ready?”
Patrick was trying to stand, clutching his abdomen. The girl was still writhing on the ground.
The corporal drew his own handgun. “Ready.” He took a deep breath.
Jason nodded. He placed his gun against the girl’s head. The corporal placed his against Patrick’s.
They both immediately fired, almost exactly at the same time.
Patrick collapsed. The girl shuddered, then went still.
“What the fuck!” I yelled out, mindlessly banging my cuffed hands against the seat in front of me. “What the fuck are you doing?” I was suddenly sobbing. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. I never thought that Jason could do anything like this.
Patrick and the girl lay dead in gathering pools of blood at the rangers’ feet.
“Your turn, this time,” Jason said to the corporal. “Bag ‘em and bury ‘em.”
* * *
The corporal stayed behind with a pair of body bags. Jason drove out of town, following the highway west, toward the mountains.
I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like I was going to break in half. I’d been through more than I could handle. Bryce was silent, riding with his head pressed against the window. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It looked like he’d kind of shut down. Shawn sat beside Jason with his gaze fixed forward. If it weren’t for his combat helmet and the setting, it would have looked like he was just working some desk job.
I kept wondering where Ian was. I knew he wouldn’t put up with any of this new Home Guard ranger cowboy shit, and I was worried about what they’d done with him.
There were only four
men now that the corporal had stayed behind. I decided that if I got another chance, I’d run.
“Holy fuck.” Jason was driving us past a dairy farm in the middle of a broad hay field and craning his neck to look out the window. He pulled onto the side of the road, exclaiming, “Ladies and gentlemen! I do believe we have a clusterfuck.”
“Clusterfuck? Where?” One of the rangers, the youngest of them, peered out the window. “I haven’t seen one yet. Where is it?”
“Out past that tree, private. Right there.” Jason brought the still-slowly moving vehicle to a stop. “See it?”
There was a mass of…something in the field just beyond the dairy barn, but it was partially obscured by an idle swather.
Jason pulled the military vehicle into the field. As we moved closer, I could see that the mass was actually thirty or forty people. They had gathered in a tight circle. Most of them were sitting or lying in the dirt, almost as if they were having a group picnic. But it was definitely no picnic.
“Holy fuck.” Shawn opened the door as Jason brought the vehicle to a stop.
The people in the field—all thirty or forty of them—were having sex. It was some kind of…orgy. Many of them were completely naked. Some of the men’s pants were around their ankles while they thrusted and licked their way from one partner to the next. Some of the women had two guys between their legs with their own faces planted in someone else’s groin. When Jason cut the engine, I could hear a chorus of quivering moans. Everyone was filthy, covered in dust and dry alfalfa. I’d never, ever seen anything like it.
“Watch this,” Jason said.
He gave the horn a long honk. It was deafening. He flicked the siren on and off, which was even louder.
No one in the field stopped having sex. Not one of them even paused or looked up. If anything, the moaning grew more intense. It was like they were all lost in a trance of carnal insatiability.
“Why do they do that?” asked the younger private. “Why don’t they run?”
“Because they’re fuckin’ sickos,” Jason said. “Just look at them. Shameless.”
“But we only have, like, three test kits left.”
Jason laughed. He banged on the horn again. None of the people in the field responded.
“There’s your test. Every fuckin’ one of them is stage three. I guarantee it.” Jason looked into the rearview mirror. “Anyone disagree with that assessment?”
Shawn said, “Fuck protocol.” He shouldered his rifle.
All the rangers got out of the vehicle.
“Remember,” Jason warned. “The closer we get, sick as it is, you’ll probably get an urge to join in. It’s a trap. Fight the urge. That’s what you’ve been trained to do. ”
“Yes, sir,” the men replied all at once.
They approached the massive orgy, guns raised, and began to make their way around the idle swather.
“Hold up,” Jason said. “Don’t waste your ammo.”
He climbed into the swather.
“Keys are here!” He called out, jangling a set out the door.
“Oh shit.” The private grinned.
A swather is basically a giant lawn mower that cuts a twenty-foot-wide swath of hay and spits it out the back into a neat row. They’re hard to maneuver, and Jason wasn’t nearly as good a driver as my dad was. He started the engine and struggled to steer the swather toward the orgy that was playing out in the field. The other Home Guard rangers chuckled and clapped, including Shawn, who goaded Jason on.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t let it happen. I stumbled out of the military vehicle and ran awkwardly toward the swather, my hands still in theircuffs.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Jason! Stop!”
The men laughed at me. There was nothing I could do. I was a small woman in handcuffs, and Jason was driving a giant hydraulic machine with churning blades.
“Get the fuck back, Ashley!” Shawn yelled.
I collapsed in the field.
Jason maneuvered around me, then steered directly toward the mass of people still obliviously fucking on the ground. As the swather approached, one guy and two women got up and ran. It was futile—the rangers shot them before they got far. They twisted to the ground like hunted geese, and then the rangers shot them each again in the head.
Jason drove directly into the cluster of bodies who hadn’t run. There was a nightmarish sound of chopped flesh and the sudden scent of exposed bowels as the swather churned into the cluster of human beings. Most of the people didn’t even stop having sex until the moment they died. The swather deposited a trail of chopped limbs and viscera in its wake.
Shawn was smiling and nodding while the two other privates cheered triumphantly and slapped hands. Then the younger private, who’d been looking on squeamishly, suddenly threw up. The others laughed at him, including Shawn.
This was too much.
I’m sure I must have known at least some of those people before they’d contracted whatever hellishly bizarre plague was spreading through Muldoon.
I vomited. And then I stood and ran.
I sprinted as fast as I could through the stubble in my handcuffs before I tripped over a tangle of dried alfalfa, pitched forward, and fell. I got up and ran again. I was heading for the dairy barn, but it was at least a hundred yards away. I waited for a bullet to tear into my back. Any second now I would feel lead ripping through my flesh, I was sure of it.
Instead, someone pulled me down by the hair.
It was one of the privates. He started dragging me back to the military vehicle, still clutching my hair. I thought he would rip it out by the roots in a clump. I grasped for his wrists to hold up my weight as he dragged me.
“Don’t shoot her!” Shawn yelled. “I wish like hell we could, but they’re wanted for questioning!”
“I know, I know,” said the private, still dragging me.
Jason jogged over, waving his hand at the private. “Hey man, hold up. Hold up.”
The private let go of my hair and Jason helped me stand. The private obediently walked ahead.
Jason put his arm around me. “I’m watching out for you, Ash,” he whispered. “Don’t forget that. I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you. We’ll just get you all checked out— make sure you’re clean. I know you’ve been through a hell of a lot. But I’m here for you. I can help you take the edge off.” As he guided me toward the military vehicle, he pressed a couple of round pills into my palm. “These’ll make you feel better. Remember, Ash, I’m here to help you take the edge off, in any way you want.” He squeezed my shoulders.
He didn’t release his firm grip as he lead me all the way back to the vehicle.
I didn’t think I could be any more sickened by Jason after what he’d just done with the swather, but I was. I was so distraught and angry, I thought I’d collapse again. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by take the edge off, but I got the gist. I knew he’d do anything to take advantage of me if given the chance. I held onto the pills he gave me only to avoid pissing him off. I would rather die than be held captive by Jason Gibbs, but that was exactly what was happening.
Gunshots rang out—a burst of rapid fire.
The rangers lifted their weapons, startled. I ducked down.
I thought someone was shooting at us, but when I glanced up I saw a man approaching us from a dark military SUV. He was dressed in a black version of the combat uniforms the rangers were wearing and was shooting up into the air.
“Stop,” he called out, firing his rifle again.
The rangers lowered their weapons.
“What is it?” Jason yelled back.
“What is it, sir,” the man barked as he approached.
“What is it, sir,” Jason mumbled.
“I’m taking these two off your hands.”
It was only now that I realized the man approaching was Ian.
I didn’t know whether to cry out in relief at seeing him, or to be terrified that he was one of them.
> Ian held out a wad of documents in his free hand. “I’ve got clearance papers,” he said. “They’ve been cleared.”
Jason shook his head in frustrated disbelief. “But we’re taking them in! They’re wanted for questioning!”
“Not anymore, they’re not.” Ian gently put his hand on my shoulder and nodded at Bryce. “Get in the car. Right now.” Bryce and I both hurried toward his SUV.
Behind me, I heard Ian yell at Shawn, “How dare you!”
“Fuck you, Ian,” Shawn called back.
By then Bryce and I had climbed into Ian’s SUV. Ian jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. He handed me a set of handcuff keys and started the ignition.
“What’s going on?” I was sobbing. “Tell me what’s going on. I need somebody to tell me what’s going on!”
Ian sped through the field toward the highway. “They think you’ve been harboring infected fugitives,” he said.
I looked back. Jason, Shawn, and the other rangers were still milling around the mass of tangled limbs. They weren’t following us.
We reached the highway. I was still too terrified to fully let my guard down, but I let out a huge sob of relief.
Ian put his hand on my shoulder and I pressed my cheek against it.
“I know what happened to you guys,” Ian said quietly, glancing also at Bryce in the backseat. “I’m so sorry, Ash.” He squeezed my shoulder very softly. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”
Bryce said, “Thank you.” It sounded like he was trying not to cry, too. “Jesus, buddy,” he said to Ian. “Thank you.”
I could barely unlock the handcuffs because my fingers were trembling so badly. I passed the keys back to Bryce.
I realized I was still clutching the pills Jason had given me. I stared at them dumbly.
Ian grabbed them from my palm, rolled down the window, and threw them outside.
“Jason gave those to you?”
I nodded.
“Jesus Christ.” Ian shook his head, disgusted. “He’s a little piece of shit.”
“What were they?”
“Sedatives, tranquilizers. Who knows? He’s got access to the pharmacy and he already thinks he’s some kind of drug kingpin.”