by Evans, Mike
Phelps was staring at the axe and saw the blood on it already. “You already needed to use that thing today?”
“When we went down the hill I had to save Tina and Ellie. The guy who owned the hardware store, Steven Bynum, had already turned. He had thrown me like a rag doll and I lost my rifle. It took everything I had to make it there in time, and this was the first thing I could grab on the way there.”
Phelps nodded his head and pulled out the same looking fact sheet that Clare had used and looked at the names on it from the report and then back up. He pointed at Ellie, asking, “So you’re Ellie? What’s your last name, Ellie?”
“Why?”
Phelps leaned in with his large frame toward her thirteen-year-old one, which was quite intimidating. “Because I asked you what it was, Ellie.”
Shaun stepped between them and said, “Her last name is Randall. Can you back up a foot or two, sir? You don’t exactly scream ‘friendly’.”
Phelps could see this wasn't going how he wanted it to. He did back up a few feet and went back to trying to be nice over scary. “Well, the report I have said that the next of kin for patient zero, Karen Randall, is Ellie Randall, her teenage daughter. And I can only imagine there aren’t too many teenagers with the name Ellie in town who are also your age. What do you have to say about that?”
Tears started welling up in her eyes and her lip started to quiver. Shaun looked at her, and she buried her head on his shoulder. “Nice, sir. Way to go. Did you accomplish something there? I’m confused.”
Ellie wiped at her face and screamed, “It wasn’t her fault she was at the hospital. She was comatose already; she didn’t have any idea what someone had given her. It isn’t her fault. You guys can’t blame her for any of this. She was dying, damn it!”
Phelps said, “We're just trying to track down Frank Fox, and if your mom was dating him, then I would say you are my new best friend until I find someone closer to him than you.”
Shaun had been trying his best to keep who he was a secret from the men, as he was unsure what they were going to do to him once they found out. There was a good chance, he felt, that they wouldn’t just let him go off on his merry way with his gang of teenagers. “Leave her alone, all right? My name is Shaun.”
Phelps said, “Nice to meet you, Shaun, now get out of the way. We need to ask Ellie some questions, and then we can get out of this field, which sounds like a great idea if there is going to be more of those things coming this way.”
Shaun yelled, “You might want to listen to me. You guys aren't real good about that. You seem to underestimate us just because you think we are just a bunch of kids.”
McClellan said, “You are just a bunch of kids, aren’t you?”
Shaun looked at him with steel and determination in his eyes. “Yeah, we are kids, but we are the ones still alive. We made it through day one, we kept your boy here from getting killed, and if you want to know the truth, my name is Shaun Fox. My dad was Frank Fox. If you want us to take you to his lab, we can. I’m sure everything is still there that he’d been using, or it could be at the office. Just pray that he didn’t store the information in his head, because he was one smart son of a bitch and didn’t need to keep a bunch of stuff around to look over again and again.”
Phelps said, “Was your dad… he didn’t make it through yesterday?”
Shaun kicked at some hay in the field, thinking about his dad and taking some long deep breaths to fight back the feelings that were pouring through him. “He didn’t make it. We got stuck in a firefight yesterday when we were trying to get to the cabin, and he saved us and got bitten himself.”
The look of being let down was painted on their faces. “Sorry if we don’t believe you, but I’m going to have to see the body. I can’t go back on a kid’s hearsay.”
Shaun said, “You’ve got to be shitting me! Why would I lie about something like that? Hell, I didn’t even want to tell you who I was or that I was his son. I want as few people to know about me as possible, if we can keep it that way. I don’t think many people are going to be very friendly with me for… well… ever if it gets out about my father and what he did.”
Phelps said, “Sorry. I don’t know why you would lie, but I do know that if, by some weird chain of events, I was the one who set loose a world of hell on America, I might not be raising my hand to claim responsibility.”
Shaun shrugged. “We can go up there. We can waste time if you want, but I’m guessing that your mission at hand is somewhat time sensitive.”
Phelps motioned for the men to get in the back of the truck, and they did as ordered. “We need to verify it. I’m sorry that were going to have to put you through it, but we need visual confirmation about it, and that’s really all there is to it.”
Tina walked back to take the driver’s seat again, and Phelps whistled. “You can sit in the back of the cab with the other girls. We’re going to be doing the driving for a while; seems like we might have a bit more experience than you.”
Tina shrugged, opened her door, and brushed at the broken shards of glass from the seat. “Good. I’m over this driving thing, anyway.”
Phelps tapped Shaun on the shoulder. “You get up front with me and ride shotgun. I’m going to need some directions, obviously.”
He looked at his group, not liking having to waste the time but realizing these guys weren’t going to take the word of any kid. Greg said, “Go ahead Shaun it’s okay. We can get up and back. It won’t take more than a couple hours right? I can handle these guys.” He grabbed Patrick around the neck, pulling him off balance. “Besides, I got Patrick, here. We can handle some SEALs.”
Clary walked up next to him. His barrel chest and midsection was as large as Greg’s and Patrick’s combined. He crossed his arms, still chewing on the cigar. He looked down at Greg, who was tall but nowhere near his size, and said, “You, uh, want to say that again, smart ass?”
Greg let go of Patrick, who put some distance between himself and Greg, not wanting to be thought of in the same light as him when pissing off a bunch of guys with much larger guns than his own. Greg smiled uneasily. “I’m kidding. Christ, don’t you guys have a sense of humor?”
McClellan said, “This is serious shit, kid. We don’t joke around; we are SEALs. Get in the truck. Now.”
Greg jumped into the bed, helping pull up Patrick. Clare climbed in, and the girls piled into the back of the truck. As McClellan was climbing into the back, Clary placed an iron grip on his shoulder and leaned in close. “You have got to be kidding me. Did you just tell that kid that SEALs don’t joke around and managed to keep a straight face?”
McClellan laughed shrugging. “He doesn’t know me from anyone else. It’s not my fault they don’t know me from any other complete stranger. If they want to take me seriously, probably best, right?”
They climbed up, pulling the tailgate shut. Phelps started the truck and drove back toward the tree line. Shaun said, “We need to go back toward the road. You’ll never get there trying to go up these hills; turn around.”
Phelps kept driving until they got up close to the tree line, where he could see why Phelps was driving that way. Aslin came out of the woods with a rifle on his shoulder that looked as long as Ellie. He was dressed in a suit made entirely of leaves, twigs, and what looked like hay from the field. Shaun had to keep focus on him to not lose him in the woods. “That suit is effing great. How do I get one of those things?”
“You go to the military and you learn how to do camouflage, kid.”
Shaun was nodding his head, thinking that the chances of anyone going into the military after yesterday were slim and that those currently in it were going to be stuck in it until death. He didn’t see how there would be enough resources available to be able to provide any decent soldiers.
“I bet they got something like that at the sporting goods store that is probably going for the low price of free right now. To bad it won’t keep you safe forever.”
Phelps pu
lled alongside Aslin, who climbed up on the truck tire and into the back of the now very full truck bed. Greg looked at the gun and at Aslin’s suit. “You look badass, man.”
Aslin nodded his head, shaking loose a smoke from a pack. “I am badass, kid. It’s a lifestyle.”
Clary pulled down his sunglasses, unable to deal with the bullshit he was capable of producing out of his mouth.
Shaun said, “You ready for directions yet?”
Phelps nodded, turning the truck around and heading back toward the road.
Shaun pointed the direction back to the cabin and looked over his shoulder at Ellie and the girls. Shaun laid his head back, closing his eyes for a second. He took a long deep breath and tried to relax himself. Phelps looked over, seeing this and couldn't help himself. “You look a little nervous, Shaun. Something wrong?”
Shaun smiled, still with his eyes closed. “Why would I be nervous? I’m about to watch my father be unburied by five complete strangers who are armed to the teeth and want to find all of his research in town—where there are a freaking ton of those things absolutely everywhere.”
Phelps nodded and tried to think of what he should be asking the kid and realized he probably didn’t know anything useful. “You think you guys are going to be able to survive up wherever this cabin is that you have? It seems like the population is going down like wildfire, at least the alive portion of it.”
Shaun opened his eyes and looked at the man with an angry stare. “That’s kind of a dumb question to ask, isn’t it?”
Phelps didn’t like being addressed this way when he knew it was meant to be full of disrespect. “What do you mean it’s a dumb question?”
Ellie couldn’t help herself. “Well, right before you got on the plane to get flown in and dropped off in the middle of a field, did your general… or major… or whoever it is who tells you to do things say, ‘Oh, by the way, boys, do you think you have a rat’s ass chance of making it out alive? Or do you think those crazy zombie-creature-people who are super strong and fast are going to eat you and then make you one of them?’”
Shaun said, “Yeah, that’s pretty much what you sound like. We don’t know if we’re going to make it. We are going to do what we can though, to try. We aren't going to give up, if that’s what you mean; I will die before I give up.”
“Yeah? What makes you think you are so tough, kid? You’ve probably never had one hard day in your life.”
“You don’t know me, and I don’t have to know that I’m tough. It’s in my DNA; I get it from my dad. He might have done something horrible, yeah, he probably ruined the world, but he did it because he was trying to save the woman he loved. He wasn’t a terrorist, he wasn’t trying to make money from it, or be famous. He did it because he lost my mom when he was in the Army the first time doing something to help people. And then love struck him a second time and he was obviously past the point of thinking it was acceptable that he had to go through with something like that again.”
“So, as long as it’s for love, the fate of the world being on fire is something you can sleep with at night?”
“What should I do? We were coming down the hill to find the things you got dropped off to come for. I was risking everyone's life to get that one thing, but you don’t seem to give a shit what we were doing. You’re more worried about seeing a corpse than going to get the damn formula that he made this from.”
“I know my superiors, kid. They are going to ask, and they are going to want confirmation of some sort. I’m not saying you should lose sleep every night because of what he did. I just don’t think it’s all that high and mighty. God doesn’t pick and choose who gets a disease. It just happens. Unfortunately for your friend’s mom, it happened to her.”
Ellie raised a fist to strike him in the back of the head, and Tina gripped her arm. “Ellie, don’t. You aren’t going to do anything good if you do that; it won’t make you feel any better.”
“The hell it won’t.”
Shaun turned around and yelled, “Ellie, it’s not going to help anything. Let’s get them to the cabin, get them their notes, and get them the hell out of our lives. We don’t need any help, not that they were about to offer any to us anyways; we’re just a bunch of dumb kids, and the son of someone they have a great deal of contempt for. He’s already written us off as dead, anyway.”
Phelps opened his mouth to try to say something, but he wasn’t one for bullshitting people. He could tell if he tried with this group of kids, they’d see right through it.
Shaun pointed to the last road on the left. “Turn here and take it to where the road ends.”
****
Greg looked back at the road, seeing that they were headed toward the cabin. He shook his head and looked at Patrick, who shrugged. McClellan looked at them and said, “You got a problem, kids?”
Greg smiled, shrugging. “Hey, I got all the time in the world. It just seems like you guys have probably done something like this before, haven’t you?”
McClellan laughed, elbowing Aslin in the arm. “Have we done this before? You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Of course we have… why?”
Greg looked up, trying to think of a way he could say it that might not get him shot or thrown out of the back of the truck by men who didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. “We are on our way back to see a dead guy, right? Like, that’s the whole point of us going all the way back to the damn cabin, right?”
They nodded, waiting for him to continue. “Okay, then, so if we are on our way back up this big ass mountain of a hill so that we can show you his dad, who mind you, is dead. What the fuck is the rush when he’s still going to be dead after you get his notes, and email them or whatever you’re going to do with them. I mean, isn’t time somewhat of the essence here, guys?”
Aslin leaned forward. “So, what? You think it’s going to matter if we let a half hour go by?”
Greg shook his hands in the air. “Okay, I don’t know about science… I really don’t, but I’m smart enough to know that the minute they get that information, they are going to look down a big ass list somewhere for scientists who are able to do something with the information they get, and who aren’t dead. Now stay with me here, SEAL boys, the longer we wait to get that information, the longer until we can get a list of these uber smart people who probably have really crappy zombie survival skills, right?”
McClellan thought about saying some of this to Phelps in the front, but as he started thinking it, they were already at the end of the road. It would be pointless to try to explain to him that they weren’t thinking rationally. He just said, “Whatever you say, kid. You let us do our job, and then we will get out of your life.”
Greg gave two big enthusiastic thumbs up and grabbed his rifle, jumping out of the back of the truck, not waiting for orders to do it. He took Patrick’s shotgun from him and gave him a hand out of the truck. He looked at him, noticing he was a little bit on the pale side and asked, “Hey, do you need to take a shot anytime soon? You're looking like crap again, and we don’t have time for you to be passing out all over again.”
“Yeah, it’s about time I take something. Maybe if we have a minute, I can check my blood before we head back up the hill. I’ve got everything with me; figured if we got stuck—even though we didn’t want to talk about getting stuck somewhere—I took it as a good idea to have what I needed with me.”
“You mind if I watch what you do with all that crap in case you do something dumb and pass out again, so we can keep you alive for a while? I figure you know you’re the slowest one here, and I need to have someone around to trip in case we’re being chased.”
Patrick’s face went blank, and Greg punched him on the shoulder. “I’m just bustin’ your balls, man… that’s what Mike’s for.”
Greg and Patrick sat on a downed tree, and Greg got a one-on-one lesson in how to measure his blood with the glucose reader. He had everything from his supply bag packed carefully and with great care. Shaun saw the
scene and walked over, checking out what they were doing. “Patrick, you okay? You can stay here if you want. You don’t need to hike up that hill if you don’t have it in you.”
“Nah, I wanna check on Mike and make sure he's doing all right. He was pretty worked up when we left. I don’t want him doing anything stupid.”
Greg said, “He shouldn’t do anything too bad. He’s locked outside; he didn’t even have the key.”
All of the men but Phelps and Clare were walking around, staring at the field and the trees in front of them. McClellan yelled to Shaun, “Christ, who the hell was the genius that put the cabin at the top of a damn mountain?”
Shaun looked up the hill and said confidently, “My grandpa Fox did, and I’d say given the current circumstances, some people might say he is a damn prepper genius.”
McClellan looked around and nodded. “You got a point, kid. How long till we get up to the cabin?”
Shaun said, “We’re going to where my dad is, not the cabin.”
“Wait, you didn’t bury him by the house?”
“No, that would be stupid, McClellan. Nothing like passing dear old Dad every single time I go outside of the cabin.”
“How long is it then?”
“Half hour if you can keep up with us.”
“We can keep up. Are you guys ready to start hiking up?”
Clary yelled, “Hold off; we aren’t ready yet.”
McClellan dropped a smoke and ground it out into the dirt with his boot. “What do you mean? What are we waiting for? That smartass kid made a good point that time is of the essence here and we don’t have time to waste.”
Clary pointed to Phelps, who was in the middle of the field far from earshot. He was walking around impatiently while Clare was on the ground working on something that was in his bag while Phelps held a satellite phone. Phelps walked around, not wanting to waste time but under orders to report anything new that arose. He patted at his pockets out of habit looking for a smoke and coming up empty. He looked at Clare with a bit of contempt because he knew the young man wouldn’t have one he could bum, as Clare was a nonsmoker.