“They took the mayo and forgot the bacon.” I accept the plates, hand one to Bethany, and lay the other at Mommas feet.
He laughs at my observation. “I know, people and their priorities.”
“Well, thanks, this beats the hell out of what we’ve been eating.”
Bethany is already two bites in. “Yeah, thank you.” She sprays white crumbs.
“Don’t mention it,” He motions to Momma. “What’s wrong with her? She got a bite we missed?” She sits back against a darkened storefront, her eyes rattling open and closed, her cheeks pale and clammy.
“No, nothing like that, she’s just running low on her meds.”
“Which meds?”
“Xanax, Ambien, and Klonopin,” I clip off a piece of bacon. It tastes like heaven.
“Oh wow, big hitters.” He strokes his chin. “Well, I’ve got some Ambien for sure, and I may be able to scrape together a few Xanax.”
“Seriously?”
“Kid, you ever try sleeping in the belly of a C-130? Ambien is the Tylenol of special forces.”
“Well, it’d be much appreciated, especially by her.” Momma rolls her head from side to side, seemingly oblivious to our conversation. “So why Dallas, of all places?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean why set up shop in a city that’s overrun like this? Why risk it?”
He shrugs as if the answer should be apparent. “Big city means big resources. We were coming up from the south, the General was moving down from the North, so he chose Dallas as a standing ground, a place to circle the wagons for a while.”
“Who’s the VIP?” The bespectacled man has finished his food and now appears to be attempting to shift into a position of comfort against the splintering hardwood.
“That I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
“Well, why not fly him in? Why go through the theatrics and risk being overrun?”
“Do you know how many choppers we’ve lost so far since this all started?”
I shake my head. “We haven’t had cable in quite some time.”
“Over a dozen. We were hitting LZ’s, and even under the cover of fire, getting pulled right out of the air by the bastards. We can’t risk anymore swarms, so we’re moving by convoy, it’s harder to stop a moving vehicle. It’s times like these when we become the most vulnerable.”
I nod, images of transport choppers smashing blade first into the earth prancing through my mind.
Bethany finishes her sandwich and crumples the plate.
“I’ll take that for you, ma’am.” Stiles winks and accepts the warped Styrofoam.
“So ya’ll really don’t know anything?”
“Probably nothing you don’t already know. We think maybe it’s a virus, a blood born pathogen, it spreads quicker than we can contain it, it’s transported from person to person through saliva, it grants its host particular strengths such as speed and pain resistance, they also seem to be attracted to sound, and the only way to kill the infected is by destroying the brain.” He throws his hands up. “It’s pretty obvious stuff if you step outside for five minutes.”
“What about animals?”
“Not that we’ve seen. The Rabid don’t seem to have a taste for animal flesh.”
“Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?”
“Kid, this whole thing is kind of strange.”
I nod my head towards the VIP. “That’s what he’s for isn’t it? Answers? He looks like the science type, he knows something, and it’s something the guys above you want to know.”
“Like I said, kid, I’m not at liberty to discuss that. You and your people rest up, I’ll see about your mom’s meds.” He slaps me on the arm and is gone before I can say anything else.
***
An hour passed and the makeshift camp went quiet.
Stiles kept his promise and delivered Momma a few pills to tide her over, allowing her to go from being partially, to fully comatose in a matter of minutes. Bethany is curled in behind her, snoring lightly, her eyelids twitching with whatever dreams or nightmares her brain is currently concocting.
There’s no watch for me to stand. The soldiers manning the heavy artillery are filling the gap. Yet, even so, sleep isn’t hasty in finding me. Perhaps it’s sleeping outdoors, under the sky, naked to the elements that’s keeping me awake. Then again, the blacktop isn’t eager to offer comfort, sleeping pack or no sleeping pack. I twist and turn, give up, and just shut my eyes. If it happens it happens, either way, at least I’ll get a little bit of rest.
Two knees drop to the ground beside my face. Two hands shake me by the shoulders violently. I startle. There is a handcuff chain dangling across my eyes. The prisoner. The VIP.
I inhale to shout but he cuts me off.
“Don’t, please, I’m not dangerous. I need your help.” He’s shaking like a leaf.
“I can’t help you. You need to go back over there before one of them notices and we both get in trouble.” The watchmen are still scrolling the darkness with their spotlights and their mounted machine guns, oblivious to our illicit conversation, for now.
He sets a hand on either side of my face, the chain from his cuffs falling across my lips like an upside down moustache. “Child, you can, you can help me. You listen now, please, will you listen now?”
“You’ve got seconds, and then I’m yelling. Now take your hands off my face.” He hears me draw the hammer back on my pistol and looks down to find the barrel level with his belly.
He scoots away softly sitting back on his heels. “I need you to take this from me, and keep it well.” His hands go to his throat, fiddling with something beneath his collar. He comes back with a leather necklace; there is a small cross dangling in the middle. “You keep this for me, and they will find you.”
“Hold up, who will find me? Who are you?”
“The answers will find you, you just need this. Hold on to it, keep it safe and they will find you.”
“Who are you?” I sit upright, dropping the gun next to my thigh.
“No time to explain, take this, take it now.”
A sphere of white light bursts from the darkness, washing across us. “Prisoner, stand up now with your hands above your head!”
He drops the cross in my lap. I wrap a hand over it and shuffle it beneath my shirt.
“Remember what I said.” He whispers before complying with the orders.
Stiles emerges from the sphere of light like some visitor from another planet, his hand is on his holster. “What is going on over here? Just what do you think you’re doing?”
The VIP remains silent, his hands raised tightly above his head.
“Did he say something to you?”
The cuffed man with his hands outstretched towards the sky looks to me, his eyes pleading. “No, just woke me up asking for help.”
“He asked you for help? What kind of help?”
“We didn’t get that far, he just asked for help, and then you guys interrupted.”
Stiles lingers on me, searching my words for truth. “Alright then,” he grabs the man by an elbow and marches him back towards the utility pole. He re-cuffs his hands behind his back and forces him down. “You move again and you’ll catch a bullet. I’ll tell the General it happened in a skirmish, an unfortunate accident, are we clear?”
The man nods and arches his back, trying to stretch his arms and grow accustomed to the new position.
Stiles comes back to me. “So he didn’t tell you anything? You didn’t ask anything?”
“No, like I said, he just asked for my help. All I said was that he needed to get away from me before he gets us both in trouble.”
“Why didn’t you cry out? Call for someone?”
“I don’t know, I guess I was scared.”
“Of him? You’ve faced down how many Rabid and you’re scared of a toothpick in handcuffs? Come on, tell me the truth, you asked him something, he told you something.”
“I’m telling the tru
th. What do you want me to say?”
“This isn’t something you want to get involved with, kid; are we clear on that?” He lowers his gaze; the gun on his hip suddenly seems much larger than before.
“Yeah, we’re clear.”
“Alright then, you enjoy the rest of your night. Get some sleep. We roll in two hours.”
41
We wobble along, Momma, Bethany, and me, cramped into the back of the first Humvee in the two vehicle caravan. An unnamed soldier, his hindquarters inches from our faces, mans the machine gun above us. His knees bend and his waist shifts with every turn and stop, like a surfer navigating choppy waters on a freshly waxed board. Stiles is in the passenger seat staring out the window, grim faced. There is a large array of screens, dials, and radio hookups separating him from the driver, Tores is his name. I only know this because Stiles has been playing the role of navigator for the past fifteen minutes, “Left here, Tores”, “Right here, Tores.” Our pack is fastened against the back end of the vehicle, our weapons securely zipped away. Stiles disarmed us before we left, citing the General and his orders that no armed civilians are to be allowed within the perimeter of the HQ. I didn’t protest, much, after Stiles informed us we’d get our gear back without issue once we were sent on our way.
“Everyone alright back there?” Stiles asks, giving us a quick once over in the rear-view.
Momma is in and out, Bethany sits between us, her elbow cramming into my side. “We’re a little packed, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“These babies weren’t built for comfort.” He almost sounds proud.
“Your people really did a number on this place.”
“Son, the Air Force is not my people.” Tores laughs along with him. “But, that aside, maximum damage was the intention. You want to burn out an ant hill you don’t sprinkle it in gasoline, you soak it through and light it up.”
“Seems to have worked, for now.” There doesn’t appear to be a building left unmarred. Most of them are rubble, many still burn, all of them still hiss and pop while releasing grey smoke into a darkened sky. There are dismembered and decimated Rabid at every turn, their bodies turned inside out by shockwaves and shrapnel. They are piled atop one another, three and four deep, as if they’d been seeking solace in their final moments. I know this isn’t true. I know they are incapable of such human emotion, that their current state of rest is nothing more than a matter of physics and dumb luck. But, my mind still runs away with the scene, creating within me the tiniest speck of pity for my enemies.
We mount a downed section of a four-lane interstate, moving at a crawl, clawing over each cement block and each piece of exposed rebar. We reach the other side and turn left, the entire cabin lurching as we once more begin to pick up speed.
“So what’s going to happen to him?” I ask, staring at the back of Stiles head. He’s got a prominent scar eating into the bottom of his hairline, puckered and faded, an old story no doubt.
“Who’s him?” He feigns ignorance.
“Your prisoner, your VIP.”
“You really don’t understand when something is none of your business; you got spanked a lot, didn’t you?”
“My folks didn’t believe in spanking, and it is my business. I’m here, I’m witness to it, so it’s my business.”
“You’re here as a courtesy, as a favor. The military reached out a helping hand to you in your time of need; don’t make us turn that hand into a fist, you understanding what I’m saying?”
“Why don’t you elaborate?”
He turns suddenly in his seat, eyebrows raised. “It means we got a good thing going, you and me. Don’t turn me into a bad guy.”
“Are you going to hurt him?”
No reply.
“Come on, the guy is what, a lab rat, a techno geek? What’s the point?”
“So people have to look a certain way in order to get hurt?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But it’s what you said.”
“What I meant was that surely you can get whatever you need from him without having to hurt him. He doesn’t strike me as someone that’s going to hold out under abuse.”
“Let me see if I can put this in a way you’ll understand. You can stay the fuck out of our affairs. Or, we can stop this vehicle right now and you and your ladies can get walking.”
I hold his glare with one of my own. Not responding. My adrenaline pumping. My tolerance for threats against my family has grown thin.
“That’s not a rhetorical statement. Pick one or I’ll pick for you.” Stiles signals Tores to slow down. “Any time now, we’ve got a schedule.”
“Just let it go, Tim.” Bethany grabs my hand.
“We’ll be staying, for now.” I refuse to give him the full satisfaction he’s looking for.
“Stick your nose in again and you’re done.” He turns back around in his seat, presenting me with a view of his scar once more.
We ride the rest of the way in silence.
42
The HQ is situated inside the main parking lot of a nearby DART station. They’ve wrapped the perimeter in razor wire and have placed guard posts along each expanse; sandbags and mounted machine guns not unlike the one currently attached to the top of our Humvee. There are three long green half-tube shaped tents in the middle of it all, their flaps bustling with men in uniform trotting in and out, talking into radios, and flipping through manila folders. Two soldiers wearing exterior body armor, khaki fatigues, and low riding boonie hats across black Oakley’s, grant us access through a cattle gate. They give a cursory glance through the windows before waving us on, their modified rifles sitting tight against their chest.
“Delta boys,” Tores mumbles.
“Pain in my ass is what they are.” Stiles responds.
Caddy cornered to the HQ, is the smoldering ruins of the Dallas World Aquarium. Visible to the north on the others side of a mostly intact freeway is the bombed out structure of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Two city landmarks reduced to their foundations in a single night. I remember viewing the skyline from the balcony of our motel, I remember the towers glimmering in the sunlight, rising like giants, and now they are gone. The landscape now rests as flat and gloomy as a North Dakota winter.
We pull up behind a row of jeeps and other military transports.
“Honey, we’re home.” Stiles chimes, kicking open his door with a grunt.
“Ya’ll go on first.” The gunner instructs us.
Bethany nudges Momma. “Hey, we’re here.”
We file out onto the blacktop, stretching our legs and popping our backs, and squinting against the sunlight. The air smells of gasoline and rubber. If I didn’t know better, from the sights and sounds, I’d think we were inside some military base on some distant Asian peninsula hashing out a conflict over radar blips and oil prices.
But, we’re not.
This is America, stripped down to the bones.
“Tores, take our guests to the mess hall.”
“Yes sir. Folks, if you will, follow me.”
I usher Momma and Bethany ahead of me, looking back over my shoulder as we move towards the small tent village. They’re pulling the man in the cuffs from the backseat of the second Humvee. They jerk him by his collar and twist him around violently; planting him face forward across the hood, while Stiles speaks something into his shoulder mounted radio. I finger the cross necklace in my pocket, the curiosity rustling around inside my belly like hunger pains, only to satisfy these I’d have to risk my safety and the safety of my family. I can’t justify that. It’s an itch that’s going to have to remain unscratched, no matter how crazy it threatens to drive me.
The answers will find you.
“Come on, Tim,” Bethany notices my point of focus and pulls me along. “Not our business. Let’s just eat and get out of here, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
The mess hall is three picnic tables with fold out chairs and a cafeteria style se
rving area. On the other side of the mess line stands a Hispanic man in a white chef’s coat with a military insignia made up of spears and swords stitched across his left pec. Above that is his name badge, and a brass button that I assume signifies some sort of excellence in service on his part.
“Hey, Ruiz, take care of these folks.” Tores shouts before patting me on the shoulder and making a hasty retreat.
“Aye aye,” Ruiz drones with a mock salute, not even bothering to look up from the tins of food sitting before him. “So what’ll you have?” He twirls a spatula through a sea of pale meat and sauce. There’s a tin of stale looking biscuits, one of green beans (more juice than beans), another of soggy fried okra, and a salad made up of nothing more than iceberg lettuce and pitiful shreds of carrot.
“I guess a little of everything.” Despite the sad presentation, the prospect of a four-course meal whets my pallet.
Bethany and Momma order the same thing. We shuffle down the line. Ruiz moves the plates along in a neat little line, throwing rough estimates of meat, veggies, and carbs alongside one another with the same worn spatula. He unceremoniously hands off our food and goes about his business, leaving us to find our way.
“We just sit anywhere?” Bethany asks me as we step away from the line.
“Guess so.” I turn back to Ruiz. “Hey, can we get some water too please?”
Ruiz sighs and drops the spatula back into the meat. He goes to a table behind him and fills three paper cups with a half empty pitcher and sets them on top of the glass. I retrieve them for us, pinching them together with my thumb, middle, and index fingers.
The room is mostly empty aside from a soldier sipping coffee in one of the far corners, while scribbling something on a legal pad. A large radio rests on the table beside his hand.
We scoot our chairs out and plop down. Bethany and I dig in immediately, attacking our plates with animalistic ferocity. Momma stabs aimlessly at her food, nibbling and releasing various morsels.
“Come on, Momma, eat.” I prod, scarfing down a mixture of mystery meat and green beans.
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 25