9.0 - Sanctum

by Bobby Adair

  A phlegm-choked cough came from down the hall. I tensed and hefted my machete.

  “Dr. Oaks,” said Grace. “He went down there to use the restroom.”

  “It was clear?” Dammit. Another mistake. I didn’t check the restrooms when we’d arrived. I didn’t think to tell anyone to. All the sleep deprivation and skipped meals were catching up with me.

  “We checked them last night.”

  “Thanks.” I relaxed and looked back in the kitchen at the storeroom door. “I’ll tell Murphy and Jazz. Then let’s check that stockroom. After that, we need to figure out what we’re going to do about meeting the helicopter.” I discreetly pointed at the professors. “And we need to decide what to do about them.”

  Chapter 36

  It turned out that the storeroom was empty of everything except a case of packing tape, enough boxes of napkins to overflow a pickup, cases of plastic straws, and disposable sporks. No food. No water. But no Whites either. The good with the bad.

  When Grace and I came out of the storeroom, she walked down the length of the wall that held the refrigerator and freezer. Four metal doors opened into the refrigerated section of the building, each wide enough to roll a pallet through. Black tracks on the floor, ground into the concrete through years of traffic, showed the paths from each of the loading dock doors on the back of the building to the refrigerator doors and the stockroom.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” she said as she came to a stop, looking one of the refrigerator doors up and down. “It’s going to stink.”

  "Yeah.” I walked over and stopped behind her, but not too close, hoping the smell of the opening door would diffuse before reaching me.

  "But I wonder if they stored bottled water and sodas in here.” Grace looked at me hopefully. "Makes sense, right? If this is the commissary for the dining halls on campus, then maybe the dining halls might not have the room to store bottled water on site. And students would want it cold when they bought it, right?"

  "Sure.” Why not? It made sense, but a hundred other things could make sense too. "Just open the door. You don't need to sell me on it. I need to bounce out of here pretty soon and go wait for the helicopter, but for the next ten minutes, I've got no plans."

  “It’s not just the stink.” Grace turned serious. “Every door is a risk, right? The walk-in might be full of infected.”

  She was right. I stepped up to a spot on the floor where I could get a look inside before the door was fully open, right in the path of the tsunami of stink that was going to flow out, right where any White inside would come running by. I raised my blade and looked at Grace. “Open it just a little at first. If I don’t see anything, then we’ll open it all the way.”

  Grace put a hand on the handle and braced herself to pull the heavy door. She paused. “You know what?”

  “I’ll know when you tell me.”

  “That packing tape in the storeroom.”

  “Yeah?” I had no idea where she was going with that.

  “We can twist it into ropes. Not good ropes, but functional enough to…you know…” She looked over at the infected academics who were starting to spread out in the kitchen, some looking for scraps of food or something to drink. “Good enough to restrain them before they start to turn.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I nodded at the door. “Let’s get this done first.”

  Grace braced herself again and pulled the handle.

  Rotten fruit. Rotten milk. Mold. For those of us who’d become connoisseurs of all the variations of rot, the smells weren’t too hard to distinguish. No feces or urine smells. That was good. No feces meant no Whites. And the smell was all I had to go on because I saw very little inside, just what the light coming in through the open door exposed. Back in the depths of the walk-in refrigerator, I only saw pitch black.

  Grace looked at me with a question on her face, ready to push the door shut.

  I held up a hand for her to wait a moment.

  I stepped up and peeked in. No White was hiding just inside the door. Good. “Hey, anybody in here?”

  Not a sound came from inside.

  “Hey.” It was my personal protocol. Ask them at least twice, maybe thrice. “Anybody?”

  Nothing.

  “Sounds empty.” Grace swung the door wide, freeing the stench and letting light inside.

  We stood for a few moments, staring into the dark, both of us reluctant to venture in.

  One of the nearby academics gagged. I guess life sequestered in their research facility hadn’t forced them to develop a resistance to the overpowering stenches of the new world. Oh well. It was likely to be a short-lived problem for them.

  “You ready?” Grace asked.

  I motioned for her to go first. “I’m a gentleman.”

  At first, the floor was dry and mostly clear. The walk-in had gotten little attention during the looting. I guess the looters knew that they wouldn't be able to preserve anything taken that needed refrigeration.

  The walk-in was pretty large, maybe half the size of a tennis court, with rows of shelves and lines painted on the floor to mark the spaces where pallets needed to be parked. It was the pallets of dairy products and the pallets of vegetables that proved problematic. The cartons of milk had rotted and burst. The tomatoes had decayed and released fetid liquids into the boxes that held them. The saturated boxes collapsed, leaving a pallet-sized, misshapen mound covered in blackish-green mold with a river of ooze flowing across the floor toward a drain. The dairy pallets had formed their own stinking, slippery river.

  Grace didn’t comment on the smell once we got inside. She was all business, methodical, scanning the shelves, top to bottom, one by one, looking for anything that might have survived.

  I walked along a row of pallets, trying to read the labels on boxes in the dim light. I came to one containing plastic-wrapped flats of plastic bottles, all clear except for the labeling. Bottled water. Literally a ton of it. “There is a God.”

  Chapter 37

  We needed to divvy up again. Some of us had to stay with the infected academics, some of us had to meet the helicopter. Jazz wanted to stay. Murphy wanted to stay with Jazz but was reluctant to remain with the professors. He knew what was coming—we all did. Nevertheless, there were no hunky-dory choices in our daily planner. No surprise.

  Jazz remained. So, Murphy stayed. The scientists got sicker. Grace and I left the commissary kitchen before the morning got too late and before the dirty work started. And it was going to start.

  In the time between when I awoke and when Grace and I were preparing to leave, all but two of the formerly healthy professors had turned feverish. Dr. Oaks was among them. Another anti-surprise. I figured some of them might turn before lunch. Others before sundown. For nearly all, the disease would run its course within the next forty-eight hours, and we'd be lucky if any of them survived.

  Grace and I left the building and walked up the street into a brisk northerly wind. I was armed with my machete and knife, of course, along with a couple of empty grocery bags over my shoulder. Not a lot of Whites were out. The weather was keeping them in. It was not pleasant, even with attenuated sensations of pain. By the time we were halfway to the pharmacy building, we started to jog, both to warm up and to get us out of the cold a little faster.

  Just as we’d done the night before, we slipped behind the bushes and looked back out to see if any Whites were following. We then made our way around the building and into the stairwell. On the way to the top floor, we stopped on three to scrounge some blankets from one of the classrooms that until just a few days ago was being used as a barrack. Grace grabbed a few pillows as well.

  When we reached the roof of the pharmacy building, we decided not to sit outside while waiting. The wind was blowing too hard so high up, and we figured the chill would lead to hypothermia. So, after dragging White bodies out of the way, we bundled on the landing at the top of the stairs just inside the door that opened to the roof.

  All we neede
d to do then was wait and listen for the approaching helicopter. That, and periodically check outside just in case the noise of the rotors got lost in the wind.

  “What’s the plan then?” Grace asked as we each sat against a wall, looking at one another.

  The nice thing about not being tied to others was that nobody expected you to share with them plans that you know weren’t going to work out. But I wasn’t alone. “I have some thoughts.”

  “How about the helicopter?” she asked. “What do we do when they get here? Obviously, we can't all go. Or is that what you're thinking?"

  I laughed—but not too loudly—and then peeked down the stairwell. I hadn’t heard one of the doors open down below since we settled in. Still, Whites could be sneaky when they wanted to be. “Where would we go?” I asked. “Back to Fort Hood? It’s not safe there either.”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  "We need to check in with Martin and Fritz,” I said. "When the helicopter gets here, it'll come down to the roof, we'll hop on. Martin can fly around campus or whatever while we talk. My vote is that we have them drop us off at the drill field like they did yesterday with Murphy and me, hover for a bit after, and shoot as many Whites as are dumb enough to come see what all the noise is about."

  “The field might be full of the infected feeding on the dead from yesterday,” said Grace.

  “I don’t care,” I told her. “Martin can drop us anywhere on campus. Just so long as we don’t have to go too far to get back to the commissary.”

  Grace pointed at my grocery bags. “And those?”

  “Guns. Ammunition. Grenades.” I thought for a second whether I could figure a way to sneak Murphy’s M4 but knew I couldn’t conceal it. “The Whites let us get away with carrying around these bags yesterday.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Well these are just my ideas,” I said. “I don’t know what everybody wants to do. You know?”

  She shook her head and looked at me like a slow high school student. “Are you purposefully avoiding the responsibility or do you truly not get that everybody looks to you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You act like you know what you’re doing. You always have an answer.” Grace’s face soured. “That appeals to people.”

  “I’m appealing?”

  "No,” Grace told me. "You're charismatic and self-centered, and you think you're always right. You're no Abraham Lincoln if you think that's what I'm saying, but you're the best we've got at the moment."

  My mouth opened up to retort, but I got lost between the compliment and the insult and came up with nothing.

  “The point is, Zed, they’ll do whatever you tell them. That’s it.”

  “What about you? What about Fritz?”

  “She shook her head. Maybe after you get killed. I’m probably the next choice. I don’t mind being in charge. I’m used to it. I don’t have the kind of presence you have, though.”

  "You mean I'm a two-year-old who demands everybody's attention and has to have things my way. That's what you're saying, right?"

  Grace shook her head. "You can take it that way if you need to but I'd say you're more like twelve or thirteen. That doesn't matter, though. You keep getting yourself into bad situations, and you come out fine. That means something to people."

  I sighed and thought about sulking, but chose instead to open the door to check on the helicopter.

  “What about after we get the guns and are dropped back off?” Grace asked.

  “I think we tell Martin to fly back to Fort Hood and to come back in two days to pick us up.”

  “As a first step,” said Grace, “that sounds good. We’ll know by then how many of the professors make it. You think that’s enough time?”

  I nodded. “Do you?”

  “Maybe a few of the professors will make it,” said Grace, more to herself than to me. “I’m with you so far. Good decisions.”

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s the petulance again,” Grace told me. “Learn to take others’ opinions at face value, Zed. You don’t need to wrap everything in sarcasm to keep your feelings protected.”

  “Jesus, were you a psychologist too? Or do you like fucking with people.”

  “I was a guidance counselor for a long time. I’ve dealt with lots of kids with problems. Some talented, most not. Sorry if I sound too much like—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m trying to help,” said Grace. “I’m on the team. Let me help. Or don’t, it’s up to you.”

  “That’s not what I want.” I heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’m sorry. I appreciate your input. Half the time—hell most of the time—I’m just guessing and hoping things work out. I don’t understand why I’m even alive.”

  “It’s called intuition, Zed. You’ve got good instincts for this life. Learn to trust yourself.”

  “I will.”

  “You frowned when you said that. Why?”

  I looked down the stairs for no reason except to turn away. "Maybe I do have good instincts for this life, but I don't know anymore if keeping all this up is worth it."

  “What do you mean?”

  “Running around, trying to do…whatever I’m trying to do half the time. It seems like I keep running after a goal that keeps moving.”

  “Chasing a carrot?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s just life,” she told me. “It was like that before the virus. It’s like that now.”

  “But the stakes are different now.”

  “Sure,” said Grace, “but what do we do if we don’t keep moving? What’s the alternative?”

  “The next hope, I guess.”

  “And what’s that?”

  It took a minute for me to dredge through all the memories of all the bad choices and ugly images until I came to the last hopeful goal I’d believed in. “I think we need to go to Balmorhea.”

  Grace was puzzled. “What’s there?”

  I sat up straight and told her about Dalhover and Rachel and the others. I told her why I thought it would be safe. I told her I thought Murphy was hitting his limit. He needed some downtime.

  “What about you?” Grace asked. “You and Murphy have been through the same things. Are you at your limit? After we get to Balmorhea, are you going to stay?”

  Damn, she was insightful. “Sometimes I want to.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know if I can.” I looked uncomfortably down the empty stairs again, at the bodies of the Whites I’d killed the day before. “I don’t know if I’m wired for happily ever after. I don’t know if I can sit in the middle of nowhere tending my pecan orchard and watching sunsets for the rest of my life.”

  “After all this,” Grace laughed, “that sounds pretty good to me.”

  “Sometimes it sounds pretty good to me, too.”

  Grace froze.

  “What?” I had my machete and knife in hand. I jumped to my feet, ready.

  “I think I heard the helicopter.”

  "Good.” I opened the door, and we went outside to see Martin's Black Hawk coming toward us from the west.

  Chapter 38

  After I stepped out of the door to meet the helicopter that morning, I spent the next two days wondering if I'd somehow popped through a portal into a world where nearly everything went as expected—for better or worse—and the only surprises were innocuous. It was safe, and it was boring.

  It started with the helicopter’s arrival. Martin piloted it down to the roof and picked up Grace and me. We weren’t attacked. The Black Hawk didn’t crash. No Whites showed up, pushing us to board in a hazardous hurry. Nobody shot anybody. The only surprise—innocuous—had to do with the number of occupants in the helicopter when Grace and I got in: only Martin, Fritz, and Eve, the doctor who seemed to have an affinity for firearms, especially the machine gun mounted in the door behind Martin’s seat. The other people we’d rescued the day before had opted to st
ay in Martin’s hideout at Fort Hood. Safe and boring.

  I explained the plan to Martin and his passengers—we’d infected the professors, we were going to babysit them for two days hoping a few survived, then Martin would come back with the Black Hawk and ferry us all out to Balmorhea for a deserved dose of happily ever after. And maybe one day the professors would develop their vaccine. Except for the part about exterminating the professors who turned into crazy Whites, it was a happy-ass plan.

  Fritz and Eve were in. Martin was enamored with the idea of a place where he'd not have to worry about running to save his life—maybe I'd oversold the positive qualities of Balmorhea. Martin's only reservation was that once there, we were stuck, or, at least, the helicopter would be stuck. After refueling at Fort Hood before the trip to pick us up, a hundred mile hop to College Station followed by a five-hundred-mile flight west across the wide part of Texas—or only part of the wide part—would leave the Black Hawk with enough fuel for only another hundred miles of flying.

  We talked, not pointlessly, but near so, about loading one of the huge fuel trucks at Fort Hood with J8—the Black Hawk fuel—and driving it across Texas and keeping it in Balmorhea. Then we'd be able to use the Black Hawk for whatever we needed. That was a tempting idea, but it was something that needed to be done another day. Maybe six months or a year in the future, after more of the Whites had cannibalized themselves or died of natural causes. Then a fuel run to Fort Hood might work.

  At the end of our discussion, Martin dropped Grace and me in a field not too far from the campus commissary. Fritz and Eve spent an hour shooting nearby Whites and then the helicopter flew away once again.

  Later that day, after Grace and I returned to the commissary kitchen, Dr. Oaks awoke from his fever. He was feeble but anxious to feed on warm flesh. He was a brain-fried White. Jazz killed him just like she'd killed other Whites, without emotion or hesitation.

  Through the night and into the next day we killed them one by one when their fevers settled down to whatever their permanent temperature was going to be and they came out of their comas. That was the expected outcome.