by Brown, TW
One of those warehouses was in flames and the fire had jumped to another nearby. A strand of tanker cars was the obvious source of the explosions. Several of the tanker cars had been tossed off the tracks by the initial blasts. A huge, dark stain radiated out from many of the cars. Flames seemed to dance across the snow. The cloud rising from the conflagration was an oily black laced with more flames that reached hundreds of feet into the sky and was currently drifting in the general direction of the hospital.
“The wind is blowing away from camp, but I want to head out,” Sergeant Sieber announced. “I have no idea what is burning down there, but that smell can’t be good. Plus, any zombie for miles will be coming to that dinner bell. We got lucky coming in, but I don’t want to chance it on the way out.”
“We’re still gonna at least hit the pharmacy, right?” Aleah blurted.
“Did you hear the part about heading out?” the sergeant turned on Aleah with a glare.
“But we are standing a hundred feet away!”
“And looking at several minutes to grab what we can. By then, this place could be crawling with the undead.”
A moan got everybody’s attention, but it was only Angel. She was leaning against an abandoned car with her head down. Catie was closest and reached for her until the sergeant barked.
“Don’t touch her! Henderson…lift your head so I can see your face!” The sergeant was already drawing her curved blade and approaching Angel.
“She isn’t bit,” Aleah said. “She fell coming down the stairs. I think her left arm is busted.”
“That true, Henderson?” the sergeant asked.
Angel Henderson raised her head to reveal very red and bloodshot eyes. Tears were streaming down her face and her lower lip was bleeding from where she was biting it so hard.
“It hurts so bad,” she managed before stifling another sob of pain by biting into her lip again.
“Crap,” the sergeant cursed under her breath. Turning to the others, she began issuing orders.
“Rose, you and Yost get Henderson’s jacket off. See if there is anything that can be done right now and then stabilize it for the trip. Eder, you, Ramsey and the NUB will come with me inside to secure as much medication from the pharmacy as we are able. My timer will start the moment we breach the door and we leave when it goes off. Ross, you stand watch and use the noisemaker if trouble is headed our way. Any questions?”
Sergeant Sieber did not wait to see if there might actually be any and headed back inside the hospital at a jog with her blade in one hand and a hand ax in the other. Aleah followed, glancing back just as Catie had cut and peeled away the sleeve of Angel Henderson’s coat and shirt. She almost sprained her neck whipping her head back around. The unnatural bend in the woman’s arm between the elbow and wrist was visible even from a distance. Just as she ducked into the hospital behind the others, she heard a scream of pain.
The route to the pharmacy was easy, straight down the hall from the emergency room’s waiting area and just past the first intersection would be another smaller waiting room according to the map. That was the pharmacy’s waiting area. They reached it and were greeted by a half dozen undead. Some had actually been sitting in the cloth-backed chairs and made a hideous ripping sound as they peeled away from their seats.
“NUB, you’re with me! Eder and Ramsey, secure the area,” Sergeant Sieber ordered.
There was a narrow corridor that came to a dead end just about ten feet inside. At the end was a door on the left. Aleah followed the sergeant to the door and stood back as the woman lined up and brought the blunt side of her hand axe down on the door knob. After three good whacks, it snapped off. Seconds later they were inside.
“Clock is running, NUB! Grab anything you have on your list. Try to keep a bottle of pain killers out for Henderson.” For emphasis, the sergeant held up her wrist and clicked a button on her watch.
The pair went to work. Most of it was simply a matter of grabbing everything in sight. They had already been told to ignore any bottles of liquid medication and focus on pills and tubes of creams and ointments.
In what seemed to Aleah like next to no time at all, the beeper on the sergeant’s watch sounded. There would be no bargaining for extra time; she already counted her blessings that the sergeant had even agreed to this at all. She stuffed the list in her pocket that she had made separate from the one the doctor had given. She had hoped that she remembered correctly. A few had been easy finds, some she had figured either were not correct, or maybe they were just not in stock. However, she was certain that Kevin would be very happy with her when she told him what she had done.
She followed the sergeant out and had to step over a couple of downed bodies right at the entrance of the little entry hall that had led to the pharmacy door. Once again she could not help but be impressed with the routineness and professionalism that these soldiers operated under.
Together they ran to the exit. Another explosion shook the ground beneath their feet. As they reached the exit, the chemical taste of the air was thick and bitter, causing a slight burning in their eyes, nose, and throat.
“Assemble on me!” the sergeant called.
“Nothing moving in the area,” the watch—the soldier named Ross—announced. “This is too weird for words, sarge.”
“Zoms should be crawling all over this place,” Sergeant Seiber muttered. “Well let’s not go looking a gift horse in the mouth. NUB, give some of them pills to Henderson and let’s roll.”
Aleah went over to where Angel was leaning on Catie’s shoulder. She popped the cap on the tiny brown bottle and dumped two pills into her hand.
Angel looked up with a grimace and accepted them. After a drink of water, she had Catie help her to her feet. They took a few steps towards where the sergeant was issuing orders.
“Hey?” Henderson stopped and glanced over at Aleah.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for going in there…for…” her voice trailed off and she nudged Catie forward.
“I didn’t really do anything,” Aleah said as she jogged to come up beside them.
“You went in there, didn’t you?” Henderson asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well every time you go in where those things are, you run the chance of not coming back out,” Henderson said.
Aleah just nodded and kept at the soldier’s side. She hadn’t really thought about it. The truth was, she had gone into much worse situations. However, it had always been something that she had to do at the time.
Then it struck her. That was what Kevin had been doing from the start. She let her mind wander over all the trips and runs he had made—some with her, some not—and realized that he was doing what he saw to be the best thing to give them a chance at survival.
“Everybody follow me! Now!” the sergeant hissed and suddenly cut down a side street that led to a definite low rent district back when the neighborhood was still in existence.
Aleah stuck beside Angel and Catie as they cut across a ramshackle apartment complex. From the outside, it looked as if the tenants had decided to go out with one big party. Slogans were painted everywhere that announced “party till we drop” and “if we gonna die…we gonna die wasted”. The upper level walkway was a row of four apartments. None of which still had doors.
“Everybody up the stairs, the place looks clean, but be careful going in. Take the far left unit. Move!”
Aleah looked all around but didn’t see anything. She kept close to Angel and, as they reached the stairs, she helped the other woman up the stairs while Catie covered them from the parking lot.
The unit was empty of any undead. However, there were more than a few corpses in varying states of decomposition. They would not last through the next summer by the looks of them. The only reason they were still even remotely identifiable was because they were all frozen solid.
Aleah’s eyes were drawn to one female corpse in particular. She could not have been any older than sixteen. She was wea
ring the tattered remains of what was probably a very pretty floral sun dress. A piece of rubber tubing was still clutched in one hand that had become more of a claw. A syringe was hanging from her left arm just at the crook of the elbow. Despite the partial decay and the fact that she was now little more than a chunk of frozen meat, the telltale sores on her face announced her addiction to crystal meth. Aleah had seen one friend go down that road never to return. Still, to see it in somebody so young was just as heartbreaking now as it would have been before the world died.
Snapping back to reality, Aleah looked around to see the hive of activity swirling around her. Everybody seemed to be busy with one task or another.
“…Yost, that doorway leads to a bedroom. Post up at that window. Ross, you take the kitchen window,” the sergeant was whispering, but the intensity in her voice was as present as if she had been shouting in a field of battle.
Aleah looked around and noticed that she was the only one not doing anything. Well, with the exception of Angel who had slumped over a bit and almost looked to be asleep on her feet.
“What about me?” Aleah asked Sergeant Seiber.
“You just get over behind that couch with Angel and keep your head down.”
The sergeant didn’t even look her way. That bothered Aleah a little. But being shoved aside and told to keep down like she was in some way unable to offer any help was much more of an insult to her pride.
Aleah helped Angel over behind the couch. She had to actually brace her back against the wall and use her legs to break a body free from where it had frozen to the floor. Once she moved it out of the way, she situated Angel in a corner so that she wouldn’t fall over. She had just jammed hers and Angel’s packs in beside the drug-groggy soldier who was now starting to snore softly when an amplified voice cut through the muffled sounds of the soldiers setting themselves up in whatever position that the sergeant had ordered.
“There is no use hiding…we saw you duck into that apartment complex. Best thing for everybody is that you just come out peaceful. That way, nobody gets hurt. We just want to talk,” the voice said through an amplified bullhorn.
“I got something you can talk to,” a voice said beside Aleah.
She had to actually look to confirm that it was Catie. All of a sudden, that sweet girl with the East Texas accent had vanished. The sparkle in the eyes and the curve of the lips that hinted at a smile were replaced by two cold orbs and a mouth pressed so tight that the lips were nothing more than a line indicating where a mouth should be.
“Look,” Catie shot a glance at Aleah over her shoulder as she duck-walked along behind the couch and took a position on the right side of the long-since busted out living room window, “stay ready. No idea what we are facing. If they rush the place and have the numbers…we have a standing rule.”
Aleah felt like she was listening to an entirely different person. It was more than just this new, serious demeanor. There was almost a complete disconnection of emotion.
“We will not be prisoners for anybody. Angel has a tablet in her vest pocket. You get that out and if we are going to be overrun, you give it to her.”
Aleah was confused. Surely this girl was not implying—
“Oh…” She reached in her own vest pocket and produced a clear Ziploc baggie. Inside it was one non-descript white pill. “This is yours. Can’t make you take it, but trust me when I tell you…there are some people out there that are sick and wrong. With nobody telling them what they can and can’t do…well, just take my word that you would be better off taking this than if you get snagged by some of these freaks.”
Aleah reached out and took the baggie. She had heard about what Heather experienced at the hands of just such a person. As hard as it was to believe, she had come to the realization that, while it was certainly not everybody, there were some sick and twisted people running around in the world now with nobody to stop them.
“Look,” the voice on the bullhorn spoke again, “we don’t want any trouble. We just want to talk.”
“Eder, with me,” the sergeant said.
“You aren’t seriously going out there!” Ross said from her position wedged between a shelf and the wall where she could peer out the gaping hole that would have been the kitchen window.
“I am going out on the landing,” Sergeant Seiber said. “You will have me covered. They know where we are and can wait us out. No harm in at least opening a dialog.”
Aleah stuffed the baggie in her pocket. As soon as the sergeant and Eder exited, she drew her handheld crossbow, cocked it and slipped a small bolt in place. Staying low, she moved up beside Catie.
“You might as well put that thing away,” Catie said, nodding to the pistol sized weapon.
“I won’t just sit and hide behind a couch. If something is going to go down, I can help. I’m not entirely useless, you know.”
Catie flashed a peculiar smile and shook her head. “Never said that you were. But you should know that, while those little crossbows are good for a zombie a few feet away, they really suck at distance. If this turns into a fight, you would be better off having that sword over your shoulder at the ready.”
“Hey there,” a voice called out. It was the same voice from before minus the bullhorn.
“Perhaps you and your friends can all just move along and let us go about our business,” Sergeant Seiber replied.
“Not much on being friendly, are ya?” the stranger said with a chuckle in his voice.
“These aren’t times for making friends.”
“Look, me and my people don’t want any trouble…honest.”
“You want honest?” the sergeant shot back. “Then let me put out my honest words. We came in for some supplies, got what we needed and then a bunch of explosions happened. That ended our trip. Now we just want to return to our people and be done with it. You can move along and let us go in peace or we can see about upping the body count in the area.”
“Man…you really aren’t friendly,” the man said with considerably less humor in his voice. “Look, lady, my people and I don’t want any trouble. We were coming through with the same idea as you. Thing is, we were actually cutting southwest using Highway 62. We came up on the largest herd of those things that any of us had ever seen. Ain’t nothing left in their path but body parts and destruction. That group is almost a mile wide and about twice that in length.
“We didn’t expect to see anybody on the other side of something like that. When our scouts saw you coming out of the hospital…we got excited. Nobody goes into buildings that big any more. Not if they want to come out. But from what my guy saw, you all went in like nobody’s business and came out with full packs.”
“And if you plan on liberating them from us…well, just don’t expect it to go well,” the sergeant snapped.
“Jesus, lady,” the guy said with obvious disbelief in his voice. “We don’t want your crap. We was just hoping that you could give us a heads-up. We can make our own run inside…but never mind.”
There was a lingering silence. Aleah peeked out and could see a few dozen figures huddled together on the street below. They were in some sort of conference. A couple were throwing their arms in the air, but most just stood with their heads down. A moment later, the group headed back the way that Aleah and the soldiers had come from. A few cast looks over their shoulder.
Once they were out of sight, the sergeant came back inside. “Everybody load up. We need to put this place behind us before the wind decides to change direction and come this way.”
“Why couldn’t we tell those people anything?” Aleah blurted. “They didn’t want any trouble. The least we could have done was tell them—”
“Tell them what, NUB?” Sergeant Seiber cut Aleah off. “If they go there, they will see the same things we saw…and can hit the place for whatever it is they are looking for.”
“But what about that horde they were talking about?”
“What about it?”
“Just seems lik
e something we should know about,” Aleah said with a shrug.
She understood treating people with a certain degree of caution. But, not only did these people not look dangerous, they offered up information that might be good to have more details on. For the umpteenth time, she missed having Kevin on hand. Ever since falling in with these soldiers, she had been treated like a second-class citizen. It was frustrating. Especially since she was pretty sure that she had at least as much experience dealing with zombies as they did.
“We will be heading out…unless the NUB has anything else to offer.” The sergeant went to her pack and began to put it on.
“Actually…I do.”
Every head turned her way. A few faces held no sign of emotion, but a couple—Catie primarily—were shooting her looks of warning. Aleah chose to ignore them.
“If we are heading out, then somebody better make a travois for Henderson. She isn’t going anywhere at the moment. The painkillers have her pretty much out of it.” She tilted her head to where the woman was propped in the corner, chin down on her chest.
Sergeant Seiber walked over and crouched in front of Henderson. She brought the sleeping soldier’s chin up and then eased her back in a gesture of tenderness that had Aleah scratching her head, she dropped her pack and pulled her sleeping bag free and draped it over Angel Henderson.
“Looks like we will be staying for a little while until Henderson wakes up. Yost, take watch out back, Ross, you have the front. Everybody else take the time to grab a few winks,” the sergeant said in a voice that was barely even a whisper.
Aleah went over and sat beside Catie who was already climbing into her sleeping bag. She looked around the room and saw everybody else doing the same thing with the exception of the sergeant who had produced a ragged-looking book and was writing in it with the tip of her tongue poking out one side of her mouth.