Contagion On The World

by J. B. Beatty

  The trees are so thick overhead that the truck cannot be seen by passing planes. “Get out and reconnoiter the area. We don’t want any surprises.” We fan out with rifles ready and we find nothing but mosquitoes.

  “What now?” I say.

  “We wait, we listen.”

  “I’m changing my vote,” says Carrie.

  “What’s that?”

  “That was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done. We got zero from that guy, and we exposed ourselves in so many ways. We are so incredibly lucky to still be alive at this point. That cleanup was plain stupid. That whole thing was plain stupid. Bombs are loud. If this is how we’re going to be operating from now on, we’re only going to last a few days. Everyone is going to be looking for us now.”

  Justin hears her out. He’s steaming. “Fine, so what do you plan?” says Justin. He’s ticked and probably as frustrated as we are.

  “I don’t know, but the only way we’re going to stay alive is through stealth. No one can see us, no one can hear us, ever again. We cannot move in daylight, period. We cannot do explosions, period.”

  “We still have one bomb,” I offer.

  “Maybe we can use it some other time, but if you think you want to set it off soon, you’re just sentencing us all to death. Don’t you guys get it? There are way more of them and they are way more heavily armed. This is David versus Goliath x1000. Any honest, realistic person would say that we don’t stand a chance.”

  “We probably don’t,” I say.

  “Right. So we should probably quit acting like this is going to be easy. We need to start treating ourselves like the endangered species we are.”

  Justin holds up his hands. “I get it. I hear you. If you’re looking for a fight from me, you’re not going to get one. I’m sorry. You guys are right. But what do we do now?”

  “Stay low,” I say, pointing to the sky.

  Helicopters in the distance.

  Besieged by mosquitos, we stay in the truck the rest of the night. We may be hearing early spring thunderstorms. We may be hearing explosions.

  31→EVERYTHING SMILING IN THE SUN AND THE SONG-BIRDS JUST GOING IT!

  The next morning, we climb out of the car, anxious to relieve ourselves and get away from the stench of each other. When we reconvene in front of the truck, Carrie twirls around, saying, “I love the spring. Life, rebirth, all that. Oh my gosh…. Do you hear that song?”

  We don’t.

  She points. “There. In the distance. Seep-seep-seep-seep-bababababa. That’s a Yellow-rumped Warbler. It’s the first of the warblers to come back after winter. That’s what this is all about.”

  Justin looks at me. I shrug.

  Then, “Behind you!” Justin says.

  Carrie does a half-twirl and sees the girl we do, a young one, maybe a teenager. Only she’s filthy and naked and running toward us growling.

  “She’s got the crazy fever,” says Justin.

  “No guns,” I say.

  “Fine,” says Carrie. She holds her ground until the girl is a step away, then hauls off with a punch in the face. The child goes down, apparently unconscious.

  “Ouch,” says Carrie, clutching her hand. “Son-of-a… that hurt.”

  “Hurt her worse.”

  “Yeah.” She shakes out her hand.

  “Finish it,” says Justin. He turns away.

  I don’t want to watch either, but I can’t turn away.

  Carrie exhales. “This is the part I’m talking about where I say I’m going to hell.” She reaches down for her knife, the scabbard strapped to her leg. Then she runs it deeply across the girl’s throat.

  I step away so I can throw up in some semblance of privacy.

  “Where do you think she came from?” says Carrie.

  “I’m not sure it matters.” I wipe my mouth.

  “It just seems kind of weird for her to be out here in the middle of nowhere. And she doesn’t look that bad.”

  “I’m not sure the evidence agrees with you there.”

  “No, I mean, she doesn’t look like she’s been out here since last fall killing prey and surviving all her own. She looks so fresh and young.” Carrie pushes her arm with her outstretched foot.

  “Hmmm. I see what you’re saying. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s any way we can know.”

  “You know what I wish?” Justin says. “I wish that we had the facilities and the means to catch one of these zombies and nurse them back to health. Maybe it is just a sickness. Maybe it’s curable. As far as we know, it might be. As far as we know, people might snap out of it after a few days.”

  “If they did, we would have met some of them. Right? But it’s not like we’re running into a lot of people our age who are healthy. I think just based on that, it’s extremely doubtful there’s any natural recovery from the virus.”

  Justin leans back against a tree and swats a mosquito. “Maybe with meds, though. That’s the part we don’t know. I just think it would be great if one of us were a virologist.”

  “If this were a movie…”

  “Exactly.”

  As we turn away, I see Carrie kick the corpse, hard.

  32→AWAY IN THE NIGHT AND STORMY

  The decision is made: we need to get the truck back to the garage near our bunker. Then we’re done with the truck for a while. We’re done with motors. The only reason we have to save the truck is for those you-never-know-moments.

  We’ll be on foot for the rest of our missions. Which is going to be pretty damn hard. Especially since it looks like we’ll need to be heading north to the fence.

  “Remember the Prius idea,” I say.

  “Prius?”

  “Yeah, the early model Prius’s were almost completely silent. It would be the perfect zombie apocalypse vehicle.”

  “And where are you going to find that? We’re nowhere near Ann Arbor.”

  “Yeah,” piles on Carrie. “And it’s hard to find a good mechanic who knows how to fix a Prius unless you go to the dealer, and that’s going to cost you an arm and a leg.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry for the moronic suggestion. If I find a Prius, you’ll be walking. And… Carrie… I don’t know where to begin. All the mechanics are dead. The dealer is dead. The arms and legs have all been eaten.”

  She makes a taunting face at me; sticks out her tongue.

  The sunny skies that lit up our patch of wetland earlier have been draped over by dark clouds. The wind has turned cold and blustery. A storm approaches.

  “Bad weather is probably good for us,” says Justin, watching the fast-moving clouds. “I can’t imagine better cover to drive in if we’re worried about GAC coming at us from the air.”

  We wait till about an hour after dark before we leave our hiding place. Branches lash at us as we drive through the forest, and once on the road, we have to move slowly. Visibility is difficult to begin with, trying to drive without the lights on while wearing night-vision goggles. Throw a storm into the mix, with branches coming down and it’s close to impossible to go much faster than 30.

  Sticking to back roads, we still get back to the garage well before midnight. I cover the truck with a tarp and the others push one of the junkers in front of it. We don’t want to leave it looking like it’s gassed up and ready to go.

  It takes effort to be alert for human danger as we trudge up the hillside in the raging storm. A limb cracks and we all end up on the ground, pointing our rifles in different directions until we realize it was just the wind. By the time we make it to the hatch, we are soaked, shivering and paranoid.

  Hot showers, food. And though we are all exhausted, none of us are relaxed enough to go to sleep. We stay up for hours talking, making plans, drinking beer.

  33→JUST KEEP A TIGHT TONGUE IN YOUR HEAD AND MOVE RIGHT ALONG

  The plans came easy the next day when we decided on a course of action. In the end, it is simple. Keeping our existence a secret means that we cannot make contact with any other groups out there. That means no on
e’s going to be telling us any intelligence about the movements and habits of the GAC. We will have to do our own observing and to do that we will need mobility. We will need to move faster and much farther. And we would need to do it silently.

  That’s what brings us back to Dawn Meadows. The empty houses that we had visited time and again harbor the bicycles that we will need for our next operation.

  A night later, Carrie and I keep watch outside as Justin hits the garages. At each one he wheels out bikes only to have them vetoed.

  “No kids bikes.”

  “Nothing over 100 years old.”

  “No mountain bikes. A road bike will ride more quietly.”

  “We’re going to be on dirt roads much of the time. Mountain bikes.”

  It goes on forever, it seems. Finally, he does turn up a solid road bike with a carbon fiber frame. Also, tubes, a couple tire repair kits, etc.

  Carrie says, “Who gets it?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “We’re all going to get a bike.”

  “I need a comfortable seat,” Carrie says. “That little seat is going to neuter whoever ends up riding on it.”

  I look at the seat. It’s the shape and size of a hard, cold fist that exists only to do damage to internal organs.

  “You know,” says Justin heatedly, “I have already shown you about 10 bikes with different kinds of seats. Did anyone say, ‘I like that seat’?”

  I back up and say, ‘Fine. We’ll shop for seats separately. Do you have a…”

  The air slams out of me as my face hits the lawn. Hands grab at my neck and I feel hot breath. Then we roll. More weight atop me. I urgently need to fight back but all of the action is behind me. I only thrash.

  Then I am released. I push myself up and see Justin chasing after my assailant. The chase doesn’t last long. Justin slows and stops as the figure disappears into the darkness.

  “Zombie?” I ask.

  “Or a great imitation,” says Carrie.

  “Where the hell did he come from?”

  “I didn’t even see him coming. I’m sorry, Arvy. Did you get bit or anything?”

  I feel the back of my neck. “No, I’m fine. Though I’m probably going to die from his breath.”

  “Let’s just get these bikes and get the hell out of here,” he says. “We keep standing around bullshitting, one of us is going to get killed by one of those guys.”

  “Go on, say it. ‘Zombies.’ ”

  “Pump up the damn tires.”

  We roll towards town on our bikes, and conversation dries up as we start passing buildings. We need to pass through a portion of the town controlled by the boy gang, but our target, the local bicycle shop, is on the girl side of town.

  The ride is not bad; a hell of a lot better than walking. But going a few hundred miles is going to be impossible. The phrase “It’s just like riding a bike” only conveys the image of how easy it is to pick up a bike after a few years and ride around the block. It says nothing about what it would be like to ride on hilly dirt roads for several hundred miles.

  No boys to be seen tonight. We don’t even find a guard at the border they share with the girls’ side. A few times I see—or sense—figures running in the distance. In the darkness, I can only assume they are zombies.

  The bike store is actually in an old house on the edge of the business district. We see no sign of life there, though we saw movement in a liquor store a block away. We stash our bikes behind it. Justin watches the front, Carrie the back. I break in the back door because I am the one who came up with the idea.

  Inside I find one decayed corpse and no signs of violence. I also find a decent haul: better mountain bikes, excellent bike repair tools, a large supply of replacement tubes.

  I stick my head out the door.

  “Helmets?”

  “What?” whispers Justin.

  “Do you want a helmet?”

  “What? No!”

  Call me a safety freak, but I can see a good argument for helmets. We ride at dark. Branches are down all over. Zombies might attack without warning. We could very easily be shot at. A helmet will not necessarily protect us from any of those things, but any of those things could easily cause us to crash our bikes. And hitting our heads in a bike crash could very easily impair our ability to handle the attacking zombie/GAC/nutcase situation.

  I grab three. I also grab two of those bike trailers, which will help us in lugging gear and food. Finally, bingo! I find what I really want. The only reason I picked out this store was that their website said they sold electric bike conversion kits.

  Hundreds of miles? Hills? All will go a bit easier with an electric engine on the bike. At least until the electricity dies. But solar! I’m just full of practical ideas tonight.

  Outside, I hook up the trailers and start loading up the new bikes. Justin keeps checking out my progress over his shoulder. When I finish, I say I’ll get Carrie, and I walk around the front. She has her rifle pointed at a young girl, who likewise has a rifle pointed at her. On the surface, that would seem to be an adversarial situation, but they are having a civil conversation.

  “Ahem,” I clear my throat, hoping to avert a sudden firefight.

  “Arvy,” says Carrie hesitantly.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “I remember you,” says the girl.

  In the darkness, I can’t see her hair, which is surely red, but I recognize the voice.

  “Artemis?” I say.

  “She’s just catching me up on the latest town gossip.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Nothing good,” says Artemis. She stands.

  “What are you guarding tonight?” I ask.

  “The booze store. It’s stupid. But the boys keep trying to steal booze and our old people want us to guard it. I saw you guys moving around over here so I thought I’d check it out.” She looks down and scuffs her shoe. “I need to get going,” she says to Carrie. “If you want to, you know where to leave a message. The special place.”

  The child walks back into the night.

  “Weird,” says Carrie.

  “What part of that? Or all of it?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Are we ready to go?”

  Before we pull out I use black spray paint to obliterate all of the reflectors on the bikes, as well as anything else shiny. “That bike had some nice chrome going before you ruined it,” says Carrie. I also paint the bike trailers, because neon orange just isn’t a look that goes with stealth. Hopefully it will all dry on the ride back to the bunker.

  Once we pedal our way there, we breathe relieved when we find we can get the bikes and trailers into the hatch. It’s tight, we knew it would be. And they can’t get past the second hatch. But if we lower the seats, it can be done. The trailers too, though they have to be unloaded and folded down.

  “This is a pain in the ass,” says Justin.

  “We need a Bat Cave,” I say. “Seriously.”

  “This is not a perfect world. There is no Bat Cave happening.”

  “If this were a movie…” I say.

  34→DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS

  “S

  o Artemis wants out.”

  “What do you mean, she wants out? What all do you talk about in your heart-to-heart?”

  “Mostly kid stuff,” replies Carrie. “Her life is balanced between boredom and scariness…”

  “Much like ours.”

  “I told her that. But she has some legitimate fears.”

  “Zombies?”

  “Of course. But also, some of their ‘old people’ as she calls them, have been doing some molesting…”

  “Not good. Have they gone after her?”

  “Not yet. But she worries it’s going to happen. However, that’s not the worst of it.”

  “Okay,” says Justin, leaning back in the kitchen chair. “I’m waiting to hear what’s worse than child rape.”

  “She says that two of the older kids in her gang have turned into zombies rec
ently. And they heard rumors that it happened to a boy, too.”

  “How?” I sit up.

  Carrie shrugs. “They were fine, then they got sick and that same day they started attacking. One of them killed a couple of little girls before they shot her. The other one they killed right away.”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” says Justin. “How old were they?”

  “She said they were two of the older girls, 12 or 13.”

  “Maybe they hit puberty, and then bam!” I say.

  “Still,” said Justin. “If the Zombie Flu is a virus—as we all thought it was, how is it still out there? I mean, I can see that these kids suddenly hit the target age, but how are they coming in contact with the virus?”

  “Could it be in the air or water supply?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I think,” he says, “it would more likely be carried in a human or animal host.”

  “I thought we established that zombie bites aren’t a thing.”

  “Oh, they definitely bite,” says Carrie.

  “I mean, zombie bites transmitting the virus.”

  “Were the girls bitten?” Justin asks her.

  “She didn’t give any indication of that. She just said they got sick.”

  “Maybe bites do transmit the virus, only that wasn’t really a noticeable vector because the flu was a much more effective mechanism. And these girls definitely caught the flu. But who’s the carrier?”

  I stand. Not for dramatic emphasis but it works out that way. Actually, a thought hits me, and I realize I want to have a drink in my hand in order to process this thought. So, I stand to get a beer and before I know it I am uttering the thought aloud.

  “We’re the carriers. Everyone on earth.” Carrie leans back. Justin stares at me with his mouth open. The effect of my standing pronouncement is, indeed, dramatic. Though I still grab a beer from the fridge.