by Lundy, W. J.
Inside the door and along the near wall was a table with food items scattered along it. At the end was a cast iron kettle filled with a mixture of what looked like beans and bits of beef jerky. Next to that, a stack of water bottles. He shook his head and loaded a plastic bowl. Taking a small taste, he found it was cold, but it didn’t force a gag reflex, so he filled his bowl to the top and dropped a handful of crackers into the mix. He snatched a bottle of water.
“How’s the headache?”
Gyles looked over his shoulder and saw his medic, Rodriguez, sitting at a table with Doctor Howard. He tried to hold back a scowl, not excited to have one of his junior troops being influenced by the man. He sighed and moved to the table, leaning his rifle against the wall behind him and sat across from the two medical men. “It’s better, thanks for asking, Doc.”
He saw Howard roll his eyes at Gyles calling the junior medic a doc. Gyles smiled and took a spoonful of the cold bean soup. He looked toward the back of the room and could see cots set up and tables converted to beds. Even though he’d only been away from the camp a few hours, they’d made many improvements to the place. It looked like the entire group could sleep in here if they had to. Men were already asleep in several of the racks.
Rodriguez noticed him inspecting. “Luke moved all the bunks in here, he says it’s better if we’re all in one place if we have to move fast or barricade inside. The cabin on the right is a store room and the one on the left a sort of HQ.”
Gyles nodded. “I heard kids in there.”
Laughing, Rodriguez nodded. “We let them play in there, keeps them out of trouble—and out of here so the night guards can get their sleep during the day.”
“They shouldn’t even be here,” Howard grunted. “You should take them someplace; we don’t have the means to be caring for children.”
Surprised by the comment, Gyles looked at the man. “Where exactly do we do that?”
“They should have landed that helicopter and not been turned around again.” The doctor shook his head. “What the hell are we doing out here, anyway? Camping? Do you plan to keep us here?”
Gyles flashed a bright smile and shoveled in another spoonful of the grub, staring down Howard as he slowly chewed. He heard the door behind him open as more men entered the room and loaded more bowls. He picked up on their conversations. The men were talking about the skirmish at the military roadblock. Word was traveling fast, not hard when Mega didn’t know how to whisper. One of the National Guard soldiers noticed Gyles at the table and moved closer. Gyles could tell the man had something to say.
“Get on with it,” Gyles said, looking at the trooper.
The man shrugged and shook his head. “It’s nothing, Sergeant.”
Gyles softened his expression. “Really, it’s okay.”
The man looked down at his bowl and said, “I was just wondering if we could try and go back to Vines.”
Not expecting that question, he looked up at the man. “You want to go back?”
“Well, I was just thinking, if all those people—” he stopped and looked back down at his bowl. “Well, if all those things were out on the highway, they had to come from someplace. Maybe Vines is cleared out now.”
Howard cleared his throat and spoke up in a different tone, sounding more like a college professor, than the whining he’d done earlier. “It would be logical to assume that the infected would move toward populated areas. Depending on the behavior of the infected, of course.”
“Behavior?” Gyles asked, “We’ve seen the behavior; they kill everything in sight.”
“Behavior may be a simplistic way to say it. Let’s say characteristics… or motivations,” Howard said.
Rodriguez raised his eyebrows. “Motivations… like what do they need?”
Howard smiled and looked at the medic like a star pupil. “Precisely. What is it they need.”
Gyles pursed his lips. He wasn’t liking the impact the doctor was having on his only medic; it could be troublesome. He could see that the table’s occupants had all changed focus and were now looking at the doctor with interest. He would have to deal with Howard’s fraternization with the men later. He grunted. “Needs.” Gyles lifted a spoon full of the beans and showed it for effect. “They need to eat.”
“That’s one thing, but there may be others,” Howard said. “We do know that this disease shares traits with the rabies virus that attacks the central nervous system. Originally, we assumed these things would behave as rabid creatures. Often predators with rabies will not feed. The disease progresses and attacks the brain. Eventually the infected wither and die.
“We already know from observations that these creatures do in fact feed. But they have another motivation. They are not just mad in a mental sense. We do know from—” Howard stopped speaking. He seemed to realize he was talking to a table full of soldiers and not colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control.
Gyles put up his hand. “We do know what?”
Howard looked away. “It’s still highly classified; the research and clinical studies haven’t been released. I probably shouldn’t.”
Laughing, Gyles said, “I would say we are in the center of a clinical study, Doctor, and if you ever want to be able to release your findings, you should start sharing your information.”
Howard looked at Gyles. “Most of this is just conjecture, as the European offices went dark before they could present their findings.”
“If it can help us, we need to know,” Gyles said. He wished Luke and the others were here, but he didn’t want to risk the man shutting up.
Howard looked at the others at the table, stopping at Rodriquez, who stared back as if the doctor was an all-knowing professor. The looks of the men were enough to stoke his ego into continuing. “Patients captured in the field showed early signs of needing to spread the virus. It appeared to be the primary motivation. They would bypass obvious food sources to get at the uninfected. They had some need to completely occupy a region. During this process they grouped together and swarmed over their regions, trying to infect everything within their bubble. Once they went a period of hours without contact with the uninfected, their mentality adjusted—adjusted quite rapidly, in fact.
“In the absence of threats, or the uninfected, they developed a hive mentality. Their physical activity dropped, almost completely stopping during daylight hours. This is when the first transition occurred. They grouped together and the motivations switched to feeding, then when they did feed it was like pack hunters. They would kill and return the kills to their hives.”
“Pack hunters?” Gyles asked “Like wolves?”
“The European researchers compared them to predatory birds. They flock together and hunt in massive waves, in mobbing attacks. But yes, wolves would be the same. They will bunch up and hunt at night; most daytime attacks will be chance encounters.”
Gyles raised his eyebrows. At the laboratory, the attack was in the dark. At the armory, the attack was at sundown. “Why hunt at night?”
“Their eyes,” Howard said. “These things have suffered severe brain damage. Part of what we have observed is a lack of pupillary response. They are nearly blind in bright light.” The doctor looked down the table at confused faces. He smiled. “The light is too bright for their eyes; they can’t adjust to it. They will spend a lot of the daytime hiding or staying in the shadows. But at night, yes they will hunt and attack under the cover of darkness.”
“They are smart? They can hunt us?” one of the soldiers asked.
Howard shook his head. “It’s hard to say; we never got that far. With the early understanding of the disease, there is nothing to say that the infected cannot continue to evolve. There is nothing in the Primalis Rabia virus itself to cause death to the host. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Once the infected body adjusts to the virus it becomes stronger and harder to kill. It was far too early in our research to see the full effects on the brain and what these things may eventually become.”
>
Gyles put up his finger. “Then let me ask. Vines—today would the city be empty? Or would they be hiving there?”
Howard grimaced and looked toward the men at the table. “Early evidence would suggest that once the population was completely infected, they would hive. The city will never be safe again, unless we moved in and killed them all.”
Chapter Twenty
Day of Infection Plus Eleven, 0230 Hours
GW National Forest, Virginia.
“Sergeant Gyles.” A light shone down brightly into his face. His hand reached for this sidearm tucked against his hip. Gyles blinked away the blindness, and the soldier pulled the light away. “Sergeant, they need you next door.”
Grunting, Gyles pulled himself up and threw his legs over the side of the cot. He squinted again and strained his eyes, considering the face of a National Guard private—the man was holding a spear, his rifle slung across his back. Then he looked down at his wristwatch. “Damn, son, this better be good.”
The private nodded. “Sergeant Weaver said to wake you up right away.”
“Where is he?” he asked, leaning down to strap on his boots.
“Next door in HQ cabin.”
Gyles stood and looked around the cabin. A low light glowed from the front. Men snored in cots along the walls and sides, while family members and children were clustered in the center of the floor at the back of the cabin. He holstered his sidearm and reached for his rifle then waved his hand for the private to lead the way. The man darted off ahead, seemingly relieved to be away from him. Gyles followed and exited through the front door.
The air was cold and damp, a heavy fog hung thick on the ground. He felt the chill on his neck and back and pulled the collar closed on his jacket. He looked out into the fog, seeing nothing but the thick drifting mist, the light of the moon causing it to glow. He could see men positioned in the turrets of the Humvees at the corners of the perimeter. They wore night vision devices that were flipped up on top of their heads. He heard the door open to the cabin next door and turned to enter it.
As he wearily walked inside, a solider handed him a cup of coffee with steam coming off the top. He went to blow on the hot cup and froze when he spotted the couple sitting on folding metal chairs in the corner. A man in mud-stained blue jeans and a puffy blue jacket. A female wearing a hip-length wool coat and tight-fitting khaki pants. On the ground at their feet was a small navy-blue knapsack and a large carryall bag. Gyles raised his eyebrows and pointed at the couple sitting in the corner, staring at him with sheepishly large eyes.
Weaver was standing near a table, looking over a large tactical map of the area. Gyles looked around the room. Luke wasn’t there and neither were Rose or the pilots. He moved closer to Weaver and tipped his head toward the strangers. “That why you woke me?”
Weaver nodded, continuing his stare toward the map for a second longer before he looked up. “Meet Nicole and Kyle,” he said, turning toward the pair.
The woman’s eyes stayed wide, unresponsive to the words. The man leaned forward. His face was covered with dirty black streaks around his eyes and under his nose. He wore a days’ old beard, and his cheeks were gaunt. Gyles took a step toward the man and the man flinched back, leaning into his chair. Gyles stopped and stepped away, leaning against the table instead, giving the couple plenty of room. “And where exactly did Nicole and Kyle come from?”
Kyle put his hands over his face and rubbed at his eyes. “We need to leave, why did your people take us here?” the man said, mumbling. The woman beside him cowered at the sound of his voice, not in a way that she feared him, but that she feared everything.
Weaver moved closer and handed the man an already open bottle of water. “Our soldiers took you here because they found you wandering alone on the trail. You know we’ve been killing infected on that trail all night.”
The man took the bottle and drank from it. “We can’t stay here; it isn’t safe,” he said. He turned and grabbed the woman’s arm then eased the bottle into her hands. She looked up at him with glassed-over eyes and put the bottle to her lips.
“Is she okay?” Gyles asked.
The man glared back at him. “Are any of us okay?”
Gyles turned back to the private. “Go get Doctor Howard,” he said. The private turned and left the room. He looked back at the man. “Now listen… Kyle, right? I don’t know what you think of us, but we aren’t the bad guys here. We just want to know who you are. If, after that, you still feel the need to get back on the road, we’ll put you right back where we found you.” Gyles looked up and could see frustration on Weaver’s face.
Kyle reached into a small pocket on the sleeve of his jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “We were going here,” he said and handed it to Gyles.
The paper was printed in black ink and held both Red Cross and FEMA symbols on the bottom. There was a list of city names that Gyles recognized in Georgia. But it was Atlanta at the top that was circled in blue ink. It said that shelter, food, and security were available and encouraged anyone not able to shelter at home to go there.
“You went to Atlanta?” he asked.
“We tried. Others like you stopped us, told us to go west. Then they shot and bombed us anyway,” Kyle said. “We had to leave our car on the interstate and take to the forest. But—” The man set his jaw and looked toward the entrance. “Listen, we can’t stay here. Please let us go.”
“You said ‘but.’ What were you going to say?” Gyles asked.
Kyle looked at the woman next to him; her head was pressed into his shoulder now, her eyes closed and her breathing heavy. He seemed relieved that the woman was resting. He closed his own eyes and sighed before slowly opening them again. “It’s just—it’s just been so much and so fast. I don’t even know what day it is.”
Weaver moved a chair closer and held a cup of coffee in his hands. With his voice calm he asked, “How long have you been on the road?”
Exhaling through pursed lips, the man closed his eyes. He opened them and looked up toward the ceiling. “Three days… wait, no four days. We were with friends, we tried for Atlanta, but the highway was backed up. People slept in their cars, and finally the soldiers came. They walked right down the interstate, telling us we needed to turn around and go west, that everything east of the Appalachians wasn’t safe.”
“The Appalachians, that’s the entire East Coast,” Gyles said. “Are you sure?”
Kyle nodded. “I didn’t believe it either. Nobody did.” He drank from his bottle of water again. “The soldier told us the only camps holding were in Texas and Colorado. There is something going on up North by Michigan, but it’s cut off by the fighting. Most of the Army is still in the Capital, trying to fight it out, and it’s drawing in more of the infected. They said the Army was still holding at Fort Knox, Kentucky, if we could get there.”
“Did you leave?”
“We stayed. Lots of us did. The soldiers patrolled the line of cars every morning, handing out food and water, telling us every time that we needed to move west. But on the third morning… Yesterday morning they didn’t. That’s when it started. There were no soldiers that morning.”
“The infected?” Gyles asked.
“I didn’t see any infected at first. It was in the afternoon. We could hear the fighting far away. Then people began to panic. They ran from the north, moving down the highway, carrying everything they had.” He stopped and took in a breath. “Then the helicopters—more helicopters than I have seen in my life—they flew directly north and then the sky turned black with smoke.
“It got quiet; we thought maybe it was over. People left their cars and started to walk south. We waited; I didn’t know what else to do. I thought maybe the soldiers would come back.”
Gyles leaned in. “Did they?”
Kyle shook his head no. “The sun went down and then it happened. The people outside the cars were no longer walking; they were running, and then the screams came. The screams were so lou
d, you couldn’t hear the gunfire.” Kyle froze, his hand squeezing the bottle. “I was able to get Nicole from the car. People were running at us… the crowds and the screaming… People were being attacked by the infected. People were trying to fight them. Some just froze. We got separated from our friends. I pulled her up the embankment toward the tree line. Then the real killing started; the infected mixed with the rest of us. The soldiers had finally arrived.
“There was no relief. They opened fire from armored vehicles. I couldn’t believe it, they just shot into the crowds. I grabbed Nicole and I ran. I ran and didn’t look back. Even when we heard the explosions, I didn’t look.” He closed his eyes and let his head slump.
“Maybe that’s enough,” Gyles said. “Let’s give him some space until the doctor has a look at them.”
“No,” Kyle said, his head coming back up. “They are close—we don’t have time for that. We weren’t alone in the woods. The infected followed us. There were a lot of us in the woods last night. I hid Nicole the best I could, but I heard them attacking and killing all night. When the sun came up, we ran for the hills. Literally. We just kept running for the high ground. That was when we bumped into your men.”
The door opened and Doctor Howard entered, pausing when he saw the strangers. He went to speak but stopped when Gyles held up his hand.
“How many?”
“Infected?” Kyle said. “Too many; you can’t count that many. And every time we stopped, we heard them. They are close.”
Gyles stood and turned to Weaver. “Wake Luke and the others. We’re bugging out.”