by Doug Goodman
“Exterminate?”
He pointed to another compartment, this one locked.
“Glock is in there,” Ernest said.
“What if you can’t catch him and the zombie attacks you?”
“I’ve caught every zombie I’ve chased.”
Ernest’s confidence wasn’t as reassuring as Angie wanted it to be.
“Have you ever not captured one?”
“I’ve seen video. When a wasp gets separated from its corpse, the wasp goes crazy, completely unleashed, like a mother bear without its cubs.”
Angie thought of the wasp Dr. Saracen had showed her at the lab, and how it had remained with the skull even after the head had been removed from the body. The thought of that alien-like body attached to her head made her shudder.
By the time they finished, the sun was descending into a red horizon like a pilgrim entering an unholy land. Ernest called in to Animal Control again, as he did every hour since they lost radio communication. He wanted to tell Dave McAuliffe that they were re-starting, but he had to leave a message and hope it got through because of the bad connection.
Just then, a drone buzzed over the trees and above them. As the drone circled, the Wolf began downloading information. A video connection came through. It was Dave McAuliffe. The man had lost his normal starchy appearance. He looked like a crushed cigarette.
“Angela, Ernest, and Rawls, I need you to cease search efforts,” he said, his voice gargled like he was talking through curdled milk.
“Like hell,” Angie snapped.
Dave glared at her with his bleary eyes and blinked away the reaction he obviously wanted to give. “Angela, Animal Control appreciates your support. The fact is, however, that we have new evidence that the child may not have been abducted by a zombie, and the credibility of the story that put you there is in doubt. And I have two officers and one dog handler out in wildfire country. Keeping you all safe is more important than anything else.”
“We are experienced professionals doing our job. There is still a zombie out there. My dog and the Wolf are on it.”
As McAuliffe opened his mouth to respond, the screen went blank.
“What happened?” Angie asked.
“I don’t know.” Rawls checked the connectivity status. Angie checked the skies. The drone was nowhere to be seen.
“Our connection’s been lost,” Rawls said. “I’m not sure why.”
“It could be the fires or the mountains. This is Colorado,” Angie said.
“Well, what do we do now?” Rawls sighed. “We have orders to stop the search.”
“And go where?” Angie said. “There is no rendezvous point. Our only option is to press on.”
Ernest sent a voice-to-text transmission from the Wolf.
“We have traveled 13.8 kilometers from the point last seen. I am sending you a way point to mark tonight’s starting location. We lost contact with Incident Command, so we will continue the search. We anticipate taking the zombie tonight.”
Angie was excited to have point with Murder. As Murder led them through the trees, Angie thought of The Most Dangerous Game. She remembered the hunter in that book talking about how hunting humans was so thrilling because they could hunt you back. Or maybe it was that hunting lions and tigers was thrilling for that reason. Stalking through the trees, knowing that there was a zombie out there somewhere and that it could kill her filled Angie with an excitement she never found during her day-to-day.
She was embarrassed by her excitement. It made no sense. You have to be out of your mind to enjoy this, she told herself. But there it was welling up inside her like a derrick: the hunt thrilled her.
Murder led them to the top of the pass. As they climbed, Angie found it interesting how the scent was pooling at the top of the mountain. The scent was not on the sides of the pink granite facing the sun, but in the shadows between the rocks, in the tiny crevices. Murder found little cities of scent there that he could visit.
From atop its bald face, the search party could see the vastness of the Rockies partly hidden underneath giant black clouds that sometimes flashed red like a thunderstorm from hell. Angie imagined if the fires spread out of control, the mountains could end up looking like waves of lava spreading across the continent.
She removed her hat and wiped the sweat from her brow.
“We’ve been lucky,” Angie said. “The mountains and the wind have kept the smoke away from us so far. It changes from here on out.”
Ernest made the sign of the cross, then raised up his tablet to take a photo. “Some people call zombies damned things. Maybe it’s going home.”
“Abandon all hope,” Rawls added. He, too, was wiping sweat from his forehead.
The thought of them descending like Dante into hell killed the thrill Angie had felt earlier as they headed up the pass. She wanted to get away from this hell, but first she wanted to find the missing girl.
The descending face of the pass was a rockslide. For at least a hundred yards, the pass was full of small granite rocks the size of footballs.
“Okay, this will be new,” Rawls said, thinking of the robot.
“That’s a pretty steep incline,” Angie said. “I’d guess thirty degrees on loose rocks. Do you think that thing can make it?”
“In theory,” Ernest said. “The Wolf is supposed to have a pretty robust balancing system tested in lab and field trials. That being said, I don’t think it’s ever gone down a rockslide down the side of a mountain. I think this will be a first.”
“Well, good luck. I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for losing a ten-million-dollar piece of equipment on a rockslide.”
“What choice do we have?” Ernest replied.
Angie shrugged. She didn’t have a solution. In her experience, sometimes you encountered new and strange obstacles in the wilderness, obstacles that would test you. For millions of people, it was part of the appeal of hiking the backcountry. If you didn’t like those tests, you shouldn’t be out there.
Knowing there would be little scent on the rockslide, Angie breaked Murder and released him from his job. Murder nimbly trotted down the rocks, barely spilling a single rock.
“My plan is to follow him,” Angie said while pointing at Murder. “You can try following us, but I don’t know how the Wolf will fare in this.”
She watched the trail Murder took to solid ground, then made sure to only step where he stepped. By following Murder, Angie was using a common technique used by handlers in the wild. Dogs had an innate sense of maneuvering within brush, fallen trees, rockslides, and whatever else Mother Nature threw at them. Murder would always find solid ground better than Angie.
She took it slow climbing down the mountain face, carefully placing each boot where she remembered Murder stepping. While she was confident the path worked for her dog, she kept in mind that Murder weighed much less than her, had a lower center of gravity, and of course two additional legs. Angie slipped only once. She kept her eyes focused on the rocks in front of her and tried to ignore the echoes of the ones rolling for fifty feet down the incline. She took a deep breath, secured her footing, then eased off the rockslide.
The thought of a wasp navigating down the same rockslide, child in tow, sent a chill down her spine. She wondered how it could be done. It would take skill, precision, and concentration, three things she did not associate with the wasp/corpse relationship. Was it really a wasp that was responsible for the abduction? Or were zombies much more coordinated than she gave them credit for?
Ernest and Rawls were still conferring on the plan of attack when she got to level ground. Both were punching ideas into their tablets. Angie guessed they had come to a decision because suddenly the Wolf stood up. A moment later, it walked down the loose rocks. Angie was impressed with how well the Wolf handled the rubble they were climbing down. It was dangerous footing, but the Wolf adjusted to the change in decline, testing its feet before putting them down.
Murder watched everyone escape the
rock slide, his head cocked to one side as if he were seeing monkeys try to build an airplane.
“Oh, shut up,” Angie said. She took one of his paws and checked his pads for signs of scratches. They weren’t cracked, but they were dusty. Angie wished she had some water to wipe the dust off. She also wished she had some water for her throat, which felt like it was covered in dust. She guessed that the smoke in the air was compounding the problem, but there was nothing she could do about it on the top of a mountain pass. Maybe if they passed a mountain stream, or more likely, old water bottles or coke cans. In the wild, even crossing backcountry, she knew she was more likely to find liquid from trash than from a pond or stream. Millions of backpackers tended to leave their mark.
As soon as the others got off the rock slide, Murder’s tail began wagging eagerly with anticipation of continuing the hunt. She gave him the command, and he ran off into the underbrush. Then he came back and showed them the trail.
Murder turned to his right, coming down the near side of the pass. Farther down the mountain, like ghosts in the dark, Angie saw signs of civilization. Little lights like will-o’-the-wisps appeared in the darkness below them. The going down was much easier at this point because the ground was soft, but this didn’t comfort Angie much. Every step brought her closer to the zombie.
“Oh, thank God,” Ernest said when they came out onto macadam, the first tangible mark of civilization in more than a day. Ernest kneeled down and kissed the little two-lane highway. “Now I just need a hotel and a double cheeseburger and I will never complain about anything again.”
“I think this is where the Wolf should take over,” Angie said. “Murder had issues with roads the last time I ran him.”
Ernest nodded and turned on the Wolf’s Active Tracking System. The robot spun around in circles for a minute (long enough for Angie to briefly question whether or not Murder had taken them off the trail).
“Why do they call it the Wolf?” Angie asked Rawls. “Does it stand for something?”
Rawls shrugged. “They stopped using acronyms about ten or twenty years ago. I think they call it the Wolf because of its tracking capabilities and people say it looks kind of like a wolf, but if you ask me, it looks like a big headless donkey.”
Angie chuckled as the robot walked down the road. For the first time, she realized she was thankful for the damn thing. It handled the road much better than Murder. As a team, they worked well together. If the rest of the world could be convinced of that, maybe there was something to the teams working in tandem rather than against each other; they might have a good solution to the zombie problem. The search party followed the robot around a bend and came across a convenience store with a gas station.
Ernest handed the tablet to Rawls and jogged to the store. Fire trucks and 4x4s were the only vehicles in the parking lot. A few wildland firefighters stood around eating sandwiches and drinking water. They were covered in sweat and soot and red Rockies dust.
As Rawls and Angie and Murder walked up to the store with the Wolf, the crew stopped lunching to watch the strange party. It wasn’t every day you saw three people followed by a dog holding a stuffed chicken in its mouth, followed by a robot. Angie could care less. She had not realized how parched her throat was until she saw the water bottles in the hands of the firefighters. Her throat constricted reactively and her whole body begged for water. When they walked inside, they found Ernest already sucking down a bottle of H2O. Beef jerky and a fried pie were stuffed in his pockets.
Before the store clerk could say “Dogs aren’t allowed here,” Angie barked, “Service dog.” The clerk didn’t question her anymore. He had the dreary, hazy look of a man who was just waiting for the late shift to be done or his job to be evacuated. Angie grabbed a couple of water bottles and a honey bun and met Rawls and Ernest.
“The readings were really strong,” Rawls said. “I think we may be close.”
“Did you check the fluctuations, though?” Ernest said. “I saw what you saw, but the levels are all over the place. Up high, down low. I think something is screwing with it.”
“Could be the road. Roads can eat up scent in some areas and soak it in others,” Angie suggested while she twisted open a squeeze bottle and squirted water into her hand for Murder to drink. He lapped up the liquid until a small puddle formed on the laminate. He sat down in the water, but continued to nudge Angie for more.
“I’m sorry you had to get this thirsty, boy,” Angie said and opened another bottle and squeezed it into her hand. While she watered her dog, she half-listened to Rawls and Ernest talk shop about the robot. She’d never understood electronics and schematics and things like that.
Once Murder finished drinking, she emptied another bottle down her throat, too. Angie handed the clerk some cash, and they walked outside. Firefighters sat on the ground or leaned against the store with their weary legs relaxed and dirty hands holding sandwiches and water bottles.
One of the firefighters raised his hand to them. The wrinkles in his long fingers stood out because of the soot and grime worked into them. To Angie, he looked like the human doppelganger to a Muppet band member, the one with the shaggy moustache and big eyebrows.
“Y’all searching for that girl, aintcha?” he asked in the loose drawl of a man from the deep South. Angie thought of Southern rock bands from the 70s, and again of that one Muppet. What was his name? Bopper? Bipper? She realized she had to stop drilling down that well when it dawned on her that she hadn’t answered him yet.
“We were,” Ernest said for her, “but the search was called off for up here.”
“That’s old news, brother,” the firefighter said. “We were just watching that report. The one about the ongoing search for the little girl abducted by a zombie. That girl’s mama’s been all over television pleadin’ for somebody to find her. They said the search was now up here, too. That’s y’all, I’m guessin’.”
Ernest nodded. “Not three hours ago we were told to cease operations.”
The man smiled. His skin crinkled like wrapping paper. “The communications mill goes around and around, don’t it? It’s always like that at an incident. Who said this, who said that.”
The firefighter brushed his hands off on his pants, then Ernest and Rawls helped the man to his feet. His brush coat was tied around his waist. He collected his gloves and hard hat, and held his hand out to Angie’s dog.
From behind his chicken, Murder sniffed the firefighter’s fingers for any leftover sandwich.
“Nice dog. What breed is he?”
“Awesomeness.”
“I used to have one of them, too.” He laughed. “Let me show you where we’re operating.”
He took them to the fire truck, a modified Freightliner, and pulled up an electronic map on the slide-out monitor on the side of the truck. He showed them the escape routes and camps being used to fight fires in the area.
“Shit,” Angie said. “The zombie’s taking us down into the fire.”
“Well then, be careful. You may have hunted lots of things, but you ain’t never tangled with a beast until you’ve tangled with a wildfire. Always keep three corners of escape around you. If you get too close, pull out. Don’t worry about the zombie. That damned thing won’t stick around there much longer. Even hell’s too hot for it.”
“Not unless it’s already buried the girl and is leading us away from the lair.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand,” the firefighter said.
“There is a theory that abductees are being used as food for larvae of the crimson wasp.”
The firefighter took a minute to absorb the blow Angie had dealt him. He was a hardened firefighter, a man who had fought hundreds, if not thousands of battles with the red-bellied beast. He had probably seen animals trapped and incinerated, the suffering of people who had lost their homes to the fires. He might have seen people die in the flames, even wildland firefighters. But he‘d surely never heard anything like this before.
Erne
st was getting that sickened look again. “It’s just a theory,” Angie told them. “It hasn’t been proven.”
“That’s one fucked up theory,” Rawls said.
The firefighter made a choking sound in his throat, then walked to the other side of the truck, wiggling his finger at them to follow him. He opened a compartment on the side of the truck and handed each one of them a firefighter’s outfit with brush coat, pants, goggles, and hard hat. He put water bottles in their packs then handed Angie a radio as he took her hat, “for safekeeping.”
“We don’t need one, actually,” Ernest said. “The radios we’ve been using aren’t functioning properly out here.”
“These are better. We’re on channel 58.2. You find that little girl, and you call us. My name is Lloyd. We’ll come get you wherever you are. Just bring that little girl back, though.”
Angie nodded and shook the man’s hand.
“You need to go now. If the zombie is heading toward the fire, it may have dropped the girl already.”
As they left the safety of the convenience store with its nest of firefighters, Angie couldn’t help but notice the smoke thickening in the air. She could smell the heat and ash on her tongue. She wondered how long ago Murder had first begun to taste it.
As the Wolf led them along the winding mountain road, Angie scratched her head (the hard hat felt uncomfortable and awkward, and she wished they could develop a more-hat-like version of a hard hat). She thought about her dog’s nose. It was being used much more than she ever intended this early in Murder’s career. She had found that most dogs had a limited optimum working time before their affectivity tapered off, much like people. This was one area where the Wolf had a definite advantage over Murder, she hated to concede.
She also wondered about the dryness of the air and its effect on the scent. Right now, the smoke was keeping the scent low to the ground, like a lid on a giant pan. With nowhere to go, it stayed in place. But at a certain point, the heat would burn the scent as easily as it burned everything else. She didn’t want to think what she’d have to tell people like Lloyd when that happened.