by Joe McKinney
“Reggie?”
“I can’t,” he began, then broke off into a coughing fit. The coughing went on and on. Then, when it stopped, he said, “I want to find someplace safe for you, Kyra. If I can leave you with somebody we trust, somebody who’ll take care of you, that’d be…”
“Reggie, please. Pull over. Let me help you.”
“I can’t pull over, Kyra. They’re everywhere. And besides, you can’t do nothin’ for me. Just sit still a bit and—Holy shit!”
There was a loud crash against Reggie’s side of the truck and the vehicle swerved to the right, out of control. They hit a parked car on Kyra’s side of the road and she was thrown forward against the dashboard.
“What is it?” she screamed. “What’s going on?”
“Fucking zombie,” Reggie muttered. “Came out of nowhere. The damn idiot ran right into the truck. Didn’t even see him.”
Kyra listened as he worked the gearshift between them, grinding the transmission as he tried to get the truck back into gear. She could hear him pumping his foot on the clutch.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can’t get it in gear. I think it’s the clutch or something. It’s slipped.”
From behind them, Kyra could hear shouts and the sounds of glass breaking. Off in the distance, she heard shots, but just a few. Over all the rest of the rioting, she could hear the moans of the infected, getting closer.
“Reggie.”
More grinding gears, more clutch pumping.
“Reggie.”
“It’s not working,” he said.
He threw open his door.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“Give me the gun,” he shouted at her.
She fumbled with the shotgun, pushing it awkwardly in his direction. He yanked it out of her hand. She heard his footsteps going away, toward the back of the truck, and then two blasts from the shotgun.
The next moment, he was back at the truck. She listened as he dumped a box of shells onto the seat beside her and worked them into the Mossberg’s magazine.
“Reggie, what’s going on?”
“We’re gonna have to make it on foot,” he said. “Can you come on out?”
She scrambled over the seats and he helped her down to the pavement. Kyra heard the moans of the infected all around her.
Reggie put one of her hands on the side of the truck and told her to stand still. He took a few steps from her and fired. He racked the shotgun and fired again. She could smell the gun smoke in the air mixed with the greasy, black smoke of a propane fire nearby.
Something thudded against the driver’s-side door and she screamed.
“Motherfucker,” Reggie hissed. There was a dull slap, like a hammer hitting a steak, and then the sound of a body falling to the pavement.
A hand gripped her around the bicep.
“Come on,” Reggie said.
He pulled her into the street, turned her ninety degrees, and gave her a push.
“Go,” he shouted.
She fell forward, but kept her feet.
She turned back, confused. “What? Reggie?”
Once again, he grabbed her by the arm, turned her around, and shoved. “Go,” he yelled. “Hurry. I can’t hold them off for long.”
And then it dawned on her what he expected her to do. “No,” she said. “Uncle Reggie, no. I can’t. Please. Come with me.”
“Go,” he said. “Get out of here.”
He fired three more times. She could hear him struggling, grunting as he wrestled with one of the infected.
“Go, Kyra. Hurry.”
She took three steps, then stopped. She couldn’t. Not alone.
Reggie was still fighting. She heard his boots scuffing on the pavement. He grunted as he fought hand to hand with the zombies, pushing them back, buying time for her.
“Kyra!” he shouted. “Go, hurry. Please. Go.”
It was the last sound she heard from him. Crying, shaking so badly she thought she might rattle herself to bits, she turned and walked into the desert with only the padded thud of her shoes on the pavement to tell her she was still on the road.
CHAPTER 22
Aaron Roberts stood next to Jasper Sewell on the roof of one of their buses looking out across the wide grassy common area of an abandoned Katrina evacuation village, one of many of FEMA’s day-late-and-a-dollar-short approaches to disaster management. There were people everywhere, at least a thousand, possibly more. They had come here, to this vast collection of small, unpainted wood-framed houses, many of them by accident, and found themselves trapped. At least, that had been the case before Jasper saw the confusion from the bus and ordered his driver to pull into the parking lot. Now things were running smoothly.
The first thing he did was to tell Aaron and his other lieutenants to go forth into the mass of people and organize them into stations. Several members of the Family had medical training, and they set up a mobile hospital. The crowd was marched through and inspected for signs of the infection. Once they were cleared, they were asked about their medical needs by several of the registered nurses who were members of the Family. Those with special conditions, such as a need for insulin or antibiotics, were taken care of from the Family’s medical stores. All others were moved forward to the next station, where their names were taken down and any special skills they had, like carpentry or plumbing, were recorded.
Aaron was stunned at how easy Jasper made it look.
The greatest moment of the day had come just an hour earlier. Aaron and a few of the other lieutenants had gone to Jasper and asked if he didn’t think it was time for them to leave. There was not enough food to feed all these people, they said.
“How much do we have?” Jasper asked Aaron.
“Just what we brought with us,” he said. “Five crates of military MREs and two crates of bread. There’s barely enough for the Family, much less all these people.”
Jasper studied the crowd, his eyes lost behind the dark, rounded lenses of his sunglasses. His broad, strong jawline was beaming with a gracious, easy confidence.
“They are all my family, Aaron,” he said. “We are going to provide for them.”
And with that, Jasper had taken his cell phone from his pocket and placed a call. Aaron listened to Jasper talking, and he heard the man making arrangements, but he didn’t understand what it meant. He felt confused. Jasper was a great man, a good man, and it was in his nature to help anyone he could. He used his pulpit to talk about corruption in politics, about racial injustice, about the homeless, about children dying of hunger right here in Jackson. If there was an issue that needed to be brought to the public’s attention, be it something as big as racism in the criminal courts or as small as a school board trying to drop the free breakfast program in an underprivileged elementary school, Jasper would bring five hundred members of his church and pack the meeting hall, every member demanding to be heard. That was the kind of socially conscious message that had attracted Aaron and Kate to the New Life Bible Church in the first place. Jasper was a powerful voice for change in Jackson politics, but did he really believe he could feed a thousand hungry people with five crates of military rations and two crates of bread?
“Where are you?” Jasper said into the phone. He waited. “That close?” Jasper nodded to himself, sunlight flashing off the lenses of his sunglasses. “Fantastic, Mr. Porter. Yes. Okay. We’ll see you soon.”
He pocketed the phone and put a hand on Aaron’s shoulder.
Speaking so that the other lieutenants could hear, he said, “My friends, you are about to witness something wonderful. A miracle. Go through the crowd. Tell them to sit down on the ground and wait, for they shall be fed, each and every one of them.”
Aaron wrinkled his brow at Jasper. “But Jasper—”
Jasper held up a slender finger and wagged it in the air. “No questions, my friend. Just do as I ask. Go now. Tell the people they shall be fed.”
Aaron and the other lieute
nants did as Jasper asked. Using the loudspeakers and their own voices, shouting themselves hoarse, they managed to get the crowd assembled on the ground near the buses.
Within minutes, Jasper appeared before the crowd, and speaking over a bullhorn, said a prayer for them. And as he spoke, reciting from memory Psalm 130, a caravan of mismatched eighteen-wheelers pulled into the lot behind him, each one laden with food collected from the city’s grocery stores.
Aaron, with his arm around Kate, had laughed in triumph.
Jasper turned to Aaron and said, “I don’t intend for us to stay here.”
“But where will we go?”
“North. A long ways.”
Aaron nodded.
Jasper said, “I’ve spent the last thirty minutes in meditation, Aaron, thinking on a place I went to as a boy. Tell me, have you ever been to North Dakota?”
“Jasper, I ain’t never left Mississippi.”
Jasper smiled at that. “North Dakota’s a beautiful place. My parents took me there one summer when I was twelve. I remember we made our campsite in the Cedar River National Grasslands, on the bank of a river. I can still picture it, Aaron. I climbed out of the backseat of my parent’s car and I saw grass stretching off into the distance in every direction. The sky was like the color of an old weathered photograph. You know how they get all yellow?”
“It sounds beautiful, Jasper.”
“Oh, it was. Very. It was the first place I ever truly felt the presence of God. It changed me.”
Jasper paused there, his gaze directed far away, beyond the crowd and the rows of unpainted houses. The sky was still overcast and gray. It hadn’t rained at all, though it had certainly seemed like it would. Off in the distance, they could see a few tall columns of black smoke.
Jasper went on. “I knew that one day I would return to that place. God talked to me there for a reason. Now, he’s calling me back there. That’s where we’re going to go, Aaron, the Grasslands.”
“Will all these people come with us?” Aaron asked.
Jasper turned his sunglasses on Aaron and regarded him for a long while before answering.
“Would you have us leave them?”
“No, of course not. I just…I don’t see…”
“What?”
“Jasper, I don’t see how we’re going to transport them all. We have only three buses.”
A lemony glare flashed on the lenses of Jasper’s sunglasses. His lips pulled down at the corners into a solemn, sad expression.
“Aaron,” he said. “You are my most resourceful lieutenant, and yet you have doubted me twice today. Why is that?”
“I…I’m sorry, Jasper.”
“Haven’t you seen what I did for them? Didn’t we feed them all, every single one?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And have food left over?”
Aaron nodded.
“Then why do you still wonder if it’s possible to take these people with us?”
“Jasper,” Aaron said. But he faltered and broke off.
“Why do you suppose I brought you up here?”
“I…I don’t know, Jasper.”
“I wanted you to see the people, Aaron. Our Family.” He motioned to the crowds below them. “And I wanted you to see where we are going. But most of all, I wanted you to be the first to see that.”
He pointed over Aaron’s left shoulder.
Aaron turned, and right away he saw the surprise Jasper had coming for them. It was a line of yellow school buses, at least sixty of them, maybe more.
“Oh, my,” Aaron said. “How did you…”
“Some miracles you create for yourself,” Jasper said. “Now, I want to leave here by nightfall. Go down into the crowds and tell them to gather themselves together. Anybody who wishes to join us can come along. All are welcome.”
Aaron nodded.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”
Jasper smiled. “I believe you, Aaron. Go now, tell the people to get ready. Spread the word.”
CHAPTER 23
They weren’t moaning anymore. At least there was that.
In the shed, Nate Royal listened to the low, peaceful sizzle of a light rain falling on the metal roof. He had no idea how long he had been in the shed. Several hours at least. He could still see daylight through the cracks in the door, but it was growing darker, and he didn’t want to get stuck in here all night.
He rocked forward onto his knees and put a hand on the shed door, but then the image of Jessica Metcalfe getting torn to bits rose up in his mind, and a shudder went through him.
He sank back against the wall and rubbed his wounded shoulder meditatively.
Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt.
He leaned forward again and peeled his shirtsleeve up and studied the wound in the waning light.
It didn’t look any worse than the time Georgiana Meyers’s dog had tried to chew his hand off when he was six. His shoulder wound was a little white around the edges, like the foam on a glass of beer, and that didn’t look right, but it wasn’t a scary wound. He’d seen worse.
He thought he remembered something about how the zombie bites were supposed to turn black, and how they were supposed to smell like rotting meat.
He sniffed his shoulder.
Nothing.
And he felt fine. More or less. On TV, they said people who got bit acted like they had the flu. They were dizzy and pale and achy and sweated a lot. He didn’t feel any of those things.
“Huh,” he said. “Maybe I got a break.” God knows he was due for one.
And then he thought, Well, fuck it. I got lucky once. Maybe I’ll get lucky again.
He stood up, leaned an ear against the crack at the edge of the door, and listened to the rain pattering down on the grass outside.
Nothing.
He pushed the door open, wincing as it creaked, but he kept on pushing.
The sky was washed out and gray, a watercolor smear over the row of houses. Rain puddles dotted the yard. But he was alone. He listened, and when he didn’t hear anything, he took off running toward his house. He rounded the corner of the alley and heard somebody shooting.
He ducked behind some bushes.
Lucky thing, too.
Three of those zombie things were shambling down the side street to his right, dragging half-eaten legs, trying to grasp with hands that were too mangled to work.
Nate looked over to his left and saw two guys in white plastic suits, like something out of a science-fiction movie, gas masks over their faces. They had military-looking machine guns.
The lead white suit called out, “Police officers. Stop moving. Put your hands over your head.”
The zombies lumbered closer, like they didn’t hear.
“Stop where you’re at or we’ll fire.”
The second white suit had a radio in his hand. He said, “Team Seven-Alpha. Evans and Avenue G, three confirmed. Request permission to fire.”
Whomever he was talking to must have given him the okay, because a moment later a three-round burst of gunfire slammed into the lead zombie and nearly took his head off. The body went tumbling backward.
The other two zombies kept shambling toward the white suits. They didn’t even flinch at the gunfire, just kept right on coming.
Two more bursts took them out.
Nate’s eyes went wide.
He jumped to his feet and ran the other way. His feet slid out from under him on the wet road and he probably looked like a tangle of arms and legs, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get away from there.
“Hey,” one of the white suits yelled. “Hey, stop. Stop!”
Nate put his head down and ran.
But he didn’t even make it across the street before the demon in his knee raised its ugly head and down he went.
He looked back just as the white suits closed on him.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” the first one said. He sounded winded and
angry. “We’re trying to help you. Didn’t you hear the warnings on TV?”
Nate was confused. He looked from one white suit to the other. They knew what he’d done to Jessica Metcalfe. That’s why they were here, fucking cops. Why were they fucking with him like this? Just knock his dick in the dirt and be done with it.
“Where have you been all day?” the other white suit said. “The evacuation is mandatory. Everybody’s gotta go.”
“I—,” Nate said, and had nothing beyond that. He shrugged.
“What’s wrong with your knee?” one of the suits said. He wasn’t pointing his machine gun at Nate, but he still looked ready to use it.
“I hurt it a few years back,” Nate said.
The white suits relaxed a little. The one closest to Nate slung his rifle over his shoulder and held out his hand and said, “Can you stand? You need a hand up?”
“Thanks.”
Nate took the man’s gloved hand, and the plastic crinkled in his grip. The man started to pull him to his feet, then suddenly let go of Nate’s hand and backed away. Both soldiers brought their machine guns up.
“Hey, you’ve been bit,” the first white suit said. “Your shoulder.”
“What are you trying to pull?” the second white suit said. “You didn’t think we’d notice?”
The first white suit took out his radio and keyed it up. “Team Seven-Alpha, send us the wagon to Evans and Avenue G. We got one injured that hasn’t turned yet.”
“Team Seven-Alpha, ten-four,” came a man’s bored voice on the other end. “Is he secured?”
“Ten-four. He’s compliant.”
Nate covered his face with his hands and groaned at his bad luck. He heard a faint clattering of metal, and then, before he knew what was happening, one of the white suits was slapping him into handcuffs.
Nate looked at the cuffs and then up at the suits.
“What are you going to do to me?” he said.
Neither suit answered.
“Can’t you just let me go home? Just let me go home?”
But there was no answer.
A white police van pulled up to the curb.