by Ricky Sides
“Thank God,” the old woman said. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to walk all the way to the hospital, and Jeremy is tired.”
“What happened to you, Ma’am?” Herb asked.
“One of those things broke into my house and I fought it off, but it bit me. Jeremy, my grandson, hit it in the head with his baseball bat and we set out for town,” she explained.
“You’ve been bitten?” Herb asked for clarification, even though he knew that was what she had just said.
“Yes, and I know what that means. I saw it on the news,” she responded in a quiet tone of voice. Then she looked at her grandson who had stepped around the Humvee to join them. “Jeremy, these men will take you to a safe place, and then they will come back for me. You be a good boy and don’t give them any trouble.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the boy responded.
The child started toward his grandmother, but she yelled, “Stop! I told you not to come near me. That thing that bit me carries a disease and I’m contaminated with its germs. I don’t want you to catch it.”
The boy stopped and frowned. “I forgot that part,” he said.
“It’s okay. You go with the nice men. They’ll come back for me soon.”
“I love you, Grams,” the boy said.
“I love you too, boy. You’re the light of my life.”
Jeremy turned to get into the Humvee. Randy opened the door and let him in the back seat.
“Don’t let him hear the shot,” she requested.
Herb swallowed hard and said, “I’ll be back soon. Do you need any water? Are you thirsty or hungry?”
“Some water would be wonderful, but don’t come close. Leave it on the ground and I’ll get it when you leave.”
Herb and Randy took the boy back to the police roadblock. Herb spoke to an officer and explained the situation. The police would try to learn where the child’s parents were. Meanwhile, they were taking him away from the area, so that he wouldn’t hear the gunfire when Herb did what had to be done.
Herb returned to the old woman, who was sitting on the side of the road.
“Did he give you any trouble?” she asked.
“No, he did just as you asked him,” Herb responded. “The police took him away from this area. They’ll try to find out if he has any relatives.”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t. His dad ran off with another woman when he was a year old, and my granddaughter died when he was three. He is actually my great grandson. I’m all he has left, and soon I’ll be gone.”
An awkward silence settled between the woman and Herb for a few moments. Then she said, “My name is Mary Joe Withers. His full name is Jeremy Steven Alders. He is seven years old. His birthday is April seventeenth. Would you write all that down?”
When Herb finished noting the information, she added her name, address, and banking information. “I own the house, free and clear. The deed is in my safe deposit box at the bank. My bank account is his now, and so is the house.”
Herb and Randy spent almost an hour with the woman on the side of the road. Herb had no intentions of shooting her while she was still human. He had been forced to do that once already that day, and wasn’t prepared to do it again.
Mary sipped her water as she talked to the two men and told them of her life as a young woman. She spoke fondly of her life in the Church and her relationship with God. At one point, she said she could feel herself growing closer to the time that she would meet God, and explained that she wasn’t frightened.
Seeing the troubled expressions on the faces of Herb and Randy, she sought to ease their minds by telling them that she understood what they had to do. It was necessary to protect Steven and others like him. She added that he was a brave boy who had run to get his bat, instead of fleeing to safety as she had told him to do while she fought with the zombie. “That fight did scare me,” she admitted. “And it hurt so much, but then Steven was there with his bat. He hit that thing in the head again and again.”
The woman paused briefly and seemed to gasp for breath, as if she had just finished a grueling long distance run, or maybe refought her life and death struggle with the zombie. “I thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” she said. “I wish I...”
Herb would never know what the woman wanted to say. Her body snapped backwards on the ground and she began to thrash around in convulsions. Whitish foam emerged from her mouth and ran down the left side of her face as her feet pounded against the surface of the road. Then she grew still and lay struggling for air.
Randy started to go to the woman, but Herb grabbed his arm and made him stay away from her. “When she comes out of this, she won’t be human,” he cautioned his friend. “Get in the vehicle and keep watch to our south, so we don’t get surprised by any of the stray zombies. You don’t have to watch this,” he added.
Randy stared at the suffering woman a moment longer, but then he did as Herb instructed and climbed inside the Humvee where he watched the area to their south.
On the ground, the old woman whispered a few words that Herb recognized as The Lord’s Prayer. He recited it with her in a loud clear voice, so that she would know he was still with her. When he completed the prayer, a tear rolled down the old woman’s cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She was silent after that, having barely enough air to keep her alive, and none to spare for talking as her respiratory system failed. Finally, there came a time when she exhaled, but after that, she didn’t draw another breath.
Herb walked closer, but stopped well shy of the woman. He aimed his M4 at her head and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the weapon discharging seemed abnormally loud to Herb. He noted then that the streetlights were on and that it was growing darker by the moment. He could see that the old woman’s dress was now high on her thighs. Much higher than she would have felt decent. He wanted to pull the garment back down into place, but didn’t dare touch it because of the blood stains from the zombie inflicted wounds on her leg. “Is this what we are coming to?” he asked himself. “We can’t even treat our dead with decency anymore?”
“In the back of the Humvee there’s a wooden dowel that we use to string the tent,” Randy said. Herb glanced at his friend and saw that he had gotten out of the vehicle. “I’ll get it for you.”
Using the four foot long half inch diameter wooden dowel, Herb straightened the old woman’s dress. He tossed the stick down on the ground beside her. Randy handed him a large kerchief he took out of a cargo pocket and Herb draped that over the woman’s face. He stood up and removed his hat. He began reciting The Lord’s Prayer again. Randy belatedly snatched the hat from his own head as his friend prayed.
Herb wiped tears from his face on the sleeve of his uniform shirt. “God, Randy. I don’t think I’m strong enough to keep doing this,” he said.
Randy patted him on the shoulder. “I hope we don’t have to do it again, but I’m afraid we will.”
By the time the two men returned to their duty station, full darkness had descended. They had left the woman’s body on the road. Cleanup crews, dressed in hazmat gear, would begin dealing with the bodies the next morning.
It was a little after 9:00 P.M. that night when Herb was shaken awake by one of the men. He had managed to sleep about twenty minutes and his mind was sluggish when he first woke up. “What did you say?” he asked the man to repeat himself.
“We’ve got several people walking toward us. You wanted to know if anything was happening, so I’m here to let you know. There’s something else. I think at least a couple of them aren’t zombies. They seem to be trying to keep their distance from the others,” reported Private Yancey Sutton.
“Okay, I’ll be right there,” Herb responded.
The corporal got to his feet and stretched to alleviate the painful cramp in his shoulder that had developed due to him sleeping on the hard asphalt.
“You’d better hurry!” Herb heard Randy shout.
He scooped his rifle off the ground and
rushed over to the center of the overpass where Randy was standing watch with Private Sutton. “Private Sutton, join the weak side,” Herb instructed as he arrived.
“Both sides are down one man. Do you want me to wake Hubert?” asked the private.
“You haven’t done that yet?” Herb asked with a frown.
“No, sir,” admitted the private sheepishly.
“Do it now. Send him to the east side. You take the west. And hurry it up.”
“Yes, sir!” the nervous private said.
“I’m sorry. I thought he woke you both,” Randy said.
“He’s fresh out of boot camp, and bound to make some mistakes. We need to watch over him,” Herb said.
Herb stared out into the night, but couldn’t see the approaching people. “Where are they?” he finally asked.
“You’ll need to look through the scope. They are a little this side of the old woman we met today.”
“They are in the northbound lane then?” Herb inquired.
“Yeah, they are. I’m sorry. I should have said that.”
Herb leaned down behind the spotter scope and looked through it. Randy had the magnification backed off enough that the people were still visible, but they were about to move out of the field of view.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that kid,” Randy said as Herb adjusted the spotter scope to bring the group of people back into a better field of view.
“What kid?” Herb asked absently as he fine-tuned the focus. He could see a man and a woman walking fast. They were about twenty yards ahead of a group of three men who could have been pursuing them, but they weren’t running. The man and woman both glanced back over their shoulders as he watched them, as if to check on the distance between them and the men behind them.
“Mary’s grandson,” Randy responded to Herb’s question.
“What about him?” Herb asked as he moved the zoom in and focused his attention on the three men in apparent pursuit of the couple.
“He’s all alone. Maybe we should take him with us,” Randy responded. “You know, if we leave.”
“We’ll discuss that later. The three in the back are zombies. See if you can get a sight picture on them. The range is 211 yards, so aim accordingly.”
Randy looked through the scope of his M4. “This lighting sucks, and they are about to enter a dark zone,” he complained, but he continued to aim his rifle. His first shot took Herb by surprise because his friend gave no warning that he was about to fire. Through the spotter’s scope, he saw one of the zombies shake, and then it collapsed on the road. “Got it,” Randy said needlessly as he shifted to cover another of the targets.
His second shot hit the zombie just a little low and to the right, blowing a large chunk of bone and flesh out of the left side of the creature’s jaw. “Inches low and right,” Herb informed the shooter.
Randy adjusted his aim slightly and fired again. This time, the target fell to the ground.
“The last one is about to go into one of the dark zones,” Herb warned.
“I know. I’m trying to get a shot, but... Damn, it’s too late. I can’t see it now,” Randy said.
“It was closing on that couple too, so when it emerges, be careful. It will probably be right behind them,” Herb cautioned his friend.
“Then you had better take this shot. I’m not confident I can do it with the zombie right on top of them. I might hit one of the people.”
“We can’t swap positions now. I’d be too slow to locate the aim point.
Randy tracked his rifle downward slightly until it moved past the dark zone, stopping it at the edge of the pool of illumination generated by the streetlight above Highway 31.
The woman emerged into the light first, followed by her companion who seemed to be struggling to move. A second later, Randy could see why.
“Oh hell,” Herb muttered beside Randy. It looks like the zombie has a hand on the man and is trying to stop him.”
“I see. I’m trying to get a clear shot,” Randy explained. “They are too close together. I can’t get the shot,” he added.
“Keep trying,” Herb instructed his friend.
Herb saw the man, who was struggling to escape the clutches of the zombie, give a violent jerk of his right arm, which freed him from its grasp. The man then lurched forward with a burst of adrenaline induced speed. Randy’s rifle cracked a moment later and the exposed zombie fell to the asphalt.
The police at the barricade below met the man and woman. The woman was unharmed, so she was permitted to pass through, but the man had bloody scratches on his arm from his struggle with the zombie. He was taken into custody and would be put in quarantine in a jail cell until it was verified that he hadn’t become infested with the deadly parasites. It was possible that he had been because the zombies often crammed meat in their mouths with their hands. Doing so would bring their fingers into contact with their saliva, which was known to contain the organisms.
There were two other incidents of zombies approaching the barricade before the midnight change of the guardsmen, but they were put down without incident. It was so quiet that Herb and his group went back to the armory to sleep for the rest of the night.
Herb and Randy drove to the armory with the group, but then left to go feed Ox, promising to return as soon as he had tended to his dog. Ox was still guarding the house when they arrived. He seemed happy to see the men and tried to lick Herb, but the guardsman told the dog to sit. He was tired and all he wanted to do was feed the animal and get back to the armory for some much needed rest.
As they drove back to the armory, the two friends once more discussed their plans, but decided that they were making a positive difference for people at the moment, and that the situation didn’t seem hopeless. Not with the military attacking and wiping out the zombies by the thousands. They decided to stay with their unit for the time being.
Chapter 9
Cleanup detail
Someone was shaking Herb’s foot when he awoke in the armory the next day. It seemed to him that he hadn’t enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep in ages.
“You need to report to the sergeant,” Randy said as his friend sat up in his sleeping bag. “He wants to brief you on the mission today.”
“All right,” Herb responded.
“Corporal Bennett,” Sergeant Shannon said when Herb entered his office. “I wanted to tell you that I read the report on yesterday’s activity at the overpass. You handled things well. That business with the old lady and the boy must have been difficult for you.”
Herb nodded his head, but withheld comment on the emotional toll of the incident. Instead, he said, “Randy and I are interested in the welfare of the child. Have you heard anything about the matter?”
“Actually, yes I have. He’s in quarantine at the jail.”
“What?! Why?!” Herb demanded.
“Calm down, Corporal, and I’ll explain,” the sergeant said in a calm, but firm, tone of voice.
“Sorry, Sergeant, but that woman went through hell to get that boy to town.”
“I know. As I said, I read the report.” Sergeant Shannon frowned. “You men didn’t check the kid for wounds.” The NCO held up his hands to forestall Herb’s anticipated defense and added, “I understand the situation was fluid and you needed to get him away from the woman for obvious reasons, not the least of which was keeping him from seeing his grandmother suffer. But the thing is the boy had a small scrape on his ankle, and more blood on his pant leg in that region than could be accounted for by the scrape. A lot more.”
Herb stood in stunned silence.
“The blood had to have come from his grandmother or the zombie,” Sergeant Shannon continued. “Let’s hope it came from the grandmother and not the zombie. Either would be a threat, but I’d tend to think the grandmother would be a lesser threat, because she had just been bitten and hadn’t turned yet. The zombie’s blood would have been swarming with the parasites.”
“Yes, I think you’re r
ight,” Herb acknowledged, but he was worried. Mary had gone to great lengths to keep the boy away from her. She had done the same with him. That knowledge made him fear the worst.
“Now about your mission today,” Sergeant Shannon said, effectively changing the subject. “You’ll be escorting workers wearing safety gear. They will be recovering bodies. Your task is to maintain a security stance, but in this case, there’s more to it than just watching out for zombies. You’ll also need to watch the workers. They are working under contract. They are being paid well to do this job, but there are rules that must be obeyed. Part of your job is to enforce those rules.”
“It’s critical that you understand that these rules are being set forth by the government at the insistence of the CDC. They are not the local government’s rules. The contractors know this, and have agreed to the terms of the employment.”
“Now, here are the rules. These workers are volunteers, and they can quit any time they like, but they have to go into a quarantine camp, where they will have to stay for forty-eight hours. At that point, they will be given a blood test to check for the presence of the parasites. If they test clean, then they will be free to go. If they don’t, then they will be tested again. If they fail a second test, then they go into long-term quarantine.”
Sergeant Shannon paused, and then he asked, “Are you following me so far, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sergeant. That seems a sane precaution under the circumstances, but I do have a question.”
Sergeant Shannon nodded his head. “Go ahead and ask.”
“Why the hell would anyone want this job?”
“Money. They’ll be paid $1,000.00 a day because this is hazardous duty.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense, though I wouldn’t do it,” Herb countered.
“No. You just get standard pay,” Sergeant Shannon agreed with a grin. “But then, you won’t be handling the dead zombies like they will. They are taking an enormous risk. No one knows for certain just how tough these parasites are. The scientists think they won’t last long after the zombies are killed. The numbers vary from a few hours to seventy-two.”