Breathless Bodies

by Brigit Levois

  "Look, you can mourn for Steven later but I swear if you get any of us killed, I will throw you to them myself!" I hissed at her, trying to be as silent as possible. She got the message and quieted down. "There are too many to fight, but if one of us can make it to the truck then we can use it to batter our way out of here. Anyone have a better plan?" I looked around hoping one of them might. I didn't want to have to build another camp. "Okay, so who wants to run for the truck?" Niobe stepped forward.

  "I will." I didn't expect that of her, but it was welcome.

  "Alright," I said. "Let's do this." We all started to take the window coverings off while Niobe left. She slid out the driver's window and got to the truck with no problems. I got into the driver's seat of the RV and we started our engines at the same time. I was drawing in the pop outs when we started forward, Niobe leading the way. It wasn't too much of a problem to leave the camp with the cow catcher on the truck. What Niobe didn't kill, we ran over.

  The sun had started to come up as we headed down the side of the hill, making things a little easier to see. I looked over to where my mom sat in the shotgun seat. She looked tired, gripping a cup of instant coffee. How did she find time to make that? I wanted to ask her but when I looked forward, Niobe had stopped the truck in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. I hit the breaks to try and avoid hitting her, but they locked up sending us sliding. I saw her step out of the truck with a grin on her face. What did I ever do to her? That was my last clear thought before the tire blew on the passenger side, catching on a large rock and sending us rolling.

  Chapter 2

  Before the flesh eating creeps took over the world, I was the typical single mom, aside from the bikini dancing to get myself through college. The Lion Lounge was the Valley's best bikini bar. Yeah, there was a place where the girls went topless, but the girls at the Lion use to joke that if you didn't have stretch marks or cigarette burns, you couldn't work there.

  Within my first week working there, I met him. You know how they say that a stranger is a friend you haven't met yet? Well, Sean would be more than a friend. He came in with a group of his co-workers, all looking for a good time. When I first saw him, I thought he was the goofiest looking guy in the group. Scruffy facial hair, bright pink shirt, and a flaming skull cap. The first thing he said to me was so sweet though. He walked up to me, grabbed my hand and said, "You are very pretty, do you want a drink and a dance?" I hadn't been offered a drink all night and this group of rowdy truck drivers looked like they were good for some fun. Well, to make a long story short, I don't remember getting home. But I did wake up with dollar bills covering my floor and his number in my phone.

  A few weeks later he came in, fresh shaven, clean smelling, and a whole lot of handsome. I'm not going to bore you with the rest of the details but Sean and I saw each other quite a bit and ended up falling in love. I quit working at the Lion, finished college, and took care of the house. Sean traveled for work and eventually we had two beautiful children. Our daughter Kaylin took after the french in Sean with a fiery attitude and dark looks. Her eyes could see into your soul and leave you feeling revealed. Then our baby boy Kendrick. With dusty blond hair and blue-green eyes that could bring anyone a smile, he was a complete baby cliché. He was a year old when things started to go weird.

  Sean was doing a delivery job in Wyoming. We tried to talk almost every day but his job was making it hard. I had just dropped the kids off at my mother's house for the weekend when it happened. My mother lived at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, the northern side overlooking the edge of the Mojave Desert.

  "Hey there kiddo. I want to see my grand babies. Are you busy today?"

  "I have an appointment with my mattress in about a half an hour. Want to watch them for a bit?" She agreed and I headed over. Once I got there we had a quick cup of coffee before I left.

  I was about to hop on the 14 freeway when I saw a flash out by Edwards Air Force Base. It was quick, like a gleam off of someone's windshield. At first that's what I thought it was, but then I saw the dust cloud. Me, being the paranoid person I am, thought something had gone nuclear and we were all going to die. I got on the freeway going south-bound so I could get to the top of the hill. There was a vista point that overlooked the entire valley off the 14 freeway. As I pulled my truck to a stop, I could see the dust cloud getting bigger. I got onto the roof of my truck and watched. From there I noticed there was red in the cloud, like a dusty fire. I thought it was going to envelop the entire valley, but almost as soon as it hit Rosamond, it stopped and settled.

  Now thoroughly confused, I called Sean.

  "How's it going?" He asked. I told him what I had seen.

  "What should I do Sean? The kids are at mom's."

  "I don't know, go to uncle Tony's I guess. He might know what's going on. I've got to get back to work now, I'll call you when I'm on my way back to the hotel room. Be safe."

  "Alright, you too." We hadn't said 'I love you' to each other since the baby was born. But I suppose there is a certain amount of love lost when you don't show for the birth.

  I got back in the truck and headed towards Littlerock. It was a tiny town full of tweakers and crazy people. My uncle was one of the crazies. Three tours of Nam will do that to you though. He was a mountain of a man with silver grey hair that he never brushed. More paranoid than I, he was always thinking someone was out for him. And of course, no decent paranoid nut case cliché is complete without a hideout of some sort. His was a bunker about 8 feet underground and encased with 6 inches of lead. That was just the first level. I had never been past there, but I was hoping he wouldn't have to show me today.

  On the drive there, I started thinking about the first time he had taken me to his bunker. I was with my best friend at the time, Andria. She was a well-endowed woman, beautiful in the face, but sometimes quite ditzy. I was living with my ex-boyfriend when we met Tony. He liked that I played bass, like him, and my brother Ragnar told him I was a cold hearted bitch with a passion for pain. Well, I guess Tony took a shine to me as a daughter of sorts and wanted to make sure that, and I quote, "When those commie bastards try and round us up for slaughter, you best be doin the killin!"

  Ragnar took us to his house about noon, dropping us off and saying he'll be back in six hours. Tony met us and led us to the back of the property. As we walked, I noticed a chicken coop to beat all coops in the back of his yard. It was built it to look like a stalag, with watch towers at each corner of the pen.

  "Hehehe. Go on and step on that patch of grass right there, girl." Tony pointed to the ground. I looked at him questioningly.

  "Don't worry, just step back really quick after you do." Great, that made me feel better. I stepped forward onto the patch and felt the ground sink slightly. I hopped backwards as quick as I could.

  "Now watch the tower girls!" We looked at one of the coup towers. There was a panel sliding up at the bottom, revealing a small rocket. It fired and sailed right to where I had been standing. When it hit the ground, it exploded in a neon green spray that covered the ground. I was laughing along with Tony.

  "It also glows in the dark!" We went farther back into the property. There was a garage there with a wood burning stove in the middle of the room so I figured he was in there more than his actual house. Along the ceiling was a track for a toy train and when it passed by, it's little containers carried bullets instead of plastic coal. One even held a hand grenade. In the back of the garage was a bed with no frame and this is where he led us. At this point, I had all sorts of SVU scenarios running through my head. He pulled a rope that was attached to the wall and his bed lifted clear off the floor by a unique system of pulleys and anchors hidden under the bed. It had revealed a hatch that he then opened. There was a ladder that went down into the dark. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and all he did was grin.

  He went down first, Andria followed, I brought up the rear. We dropped into
a cluttered area with guns, bullet presses, and gadgets I had never seen before. At the end of the room, well more of a hall, was a small raised range in the left hand wall. There were hand and foot-holds placed into the wall so you could make the four-foot ascent with ease. The first two feet were a nice fit as long as you were sitting. The beginning of the range was just big enough to set up a large gun, cut at a 90-degree angle to the left so it paralleled the room and then went on for about 30 yards farther. It was encased in red brick and concrete with about two feet of sand on the floor to catch the shells. About a foot from the end of the range, there was a wire that had clips on it to hold a target. There was already one there, along with uncle Tony's modified M-16

  "Now," Uncle Tony exclaimed, "I want you both to promise me something. This is the first time I have ever brought anyone to A deck. I have two other decks. Before I trust you to go any farther than this, I want you both to promise me something. Promise me that what you see, you will never talk about. Not even amongst yourselves." Andria and I looked at each other and agreed.

  "I promise Uncle Tony." Andria didn't say anything, merely nodded. I knew right then that she was probably going to be the first to die when everything went down. I loved her like a sister, but I couldn't protect her from herself. I had thought that was why Tony took us down there, to see who was willing to fight and who was going to die.

  "Alex, get up there, girl and I'll hand you the clip." Now, I hadn't had much experience with guns at this point, only handguns and a couple of shottys.

  "Um, okay." I climbed up and crawled into the tunnel. I lay awkwardly on my belly, trying to put the clip in. I finally found the right angle and it slid in with relative ease.

  "Now, I want you to breath with the gun. Feel your heart and time your shots in between beats. Exhale, then shoot." I could hear him then whispering with Andria. I couldn't make him out clear; heard something about 'swabber bousten'. Eh, that's Tony for ya. I looked at my target and did exactly as I was told. The first shot caught me totally by surprise and if I hadn't been lying down, I would have fallen flat on my back side. I heard Andria laughing and that made me more determined to get this right. It was difficult at first, but I eventually got the pattern down.

  As I crawled to get my target, I heard Andria giggle. Well, I thought, she's having fun. I wasn't expecting to have a great bullet pattern, but as I got closer to the target, I realized that I had made one shot in the 10, three in the 9, and the other 18 rounds had been in the other rings.

  I hopped down from the range just in time to see her pulling her shirt down. Great, she showed him her boobs. Yup, she's dead. I handed Tony my target and he looked at me with a strange gleam in his eye, like I had just sprouted wings or something.

  "Well now," he said in a slow tone, "that's what I'm talkin about right there. Andria, get up there and take some shots." He handed her a clip and she passed me with a sly smile on her face. What was going on in her brain?

  As she ascended into the range, Tony placed a gun in my hand. It was a small handgun with an extended clip. I looked at him confused, waiting for an explanation. He turned and then handed me a gun case with its twin inside, then a 1500 round box of ammo.

  "Whenever you come over, I'll teach you more and more. These are the guns you'll use. Learn to care for them like they're your children cause one day, they might save your hide. When you can take them apart and put them back together blindfolded, you'll take them home." As he finished speaking, Andria started cussing at the gun.

  "God damn it, Tony! This thing is jammed!" He sighed and went to help her fix it.

  We were there for quite some time, taking turns shooting the gun and the breeze. Finally, around 3am Ragnar came to get us. He had a smug grin so I knew he had either seen his lady friend or found some really good BBQ. As soon as we were at our house, Andria started talking.

  "Can you believe the size of that gun? It was huge! And I did a good job with my shooting, didn't I? Man, I hope he takes us down there again. I want to shoot some more." She wandered off into the kitchen. I followed her to make myself a cup of tea.

  "Andrea, we're not supposed to talk about it. Besides, it's not like it'll ever happen again." I set the kettle on the stove and sat down at the table.

  "Oh please, it's not like he'll find out. What, did he bug the house? Is he watching our every move?" As amusing as the thought was, we both went quiet and glanced around the house. The sound of the kettle whistling made us both jump and darn near wet ourselves. Laughing, we made tea and sat at the table for another hour before we headed off to bed. As I lay there thinking about the night, I couldn't help but smile as I thought of my shooting. I just might be a bad ass. I was grinning as I fell asleep.

  Chapter 3

  As I pulled into my uncle's driveway, he was sitting on the front porch smoking a rolled cigarette.

  "Come on girl," He said as he stepped off the porch. "We don't have a lot of time." He hopped in the truck and told me to drive into the back. I parked next to the chicken coup and got out. As soon as my feet hit the ground, his Rottweiler, Kane, came sniffing my feet. She was blind now but she knew the property like no one else. As usual, I gave Kane a scratch behind the ears and a pat on the head.

  "We don't have time for that." Tony talked as he walked to the back shed that held the entrance to his 'Wonderland'.

  "I take it you saw what happened at Edwards."

  "All I saw was a flash and a dust cloud." I answered. knowing he would explain the rest.

  "That was an attempt to clean the base of the virus that's been spread, or at least that's the story. Our own government dropped some Napalm on Edwards." I stopped and stared at him in utter disbelief. "Don't look so shocked, I've been telling you they're crazy!" We started walking again.

  "No one really knows how or where it started. There are reports coming in from almost every country so far. Our boys aren't even sure that Edwards is the only place here that was infected. Well, the story is that one feller showed up out in the desert, some boys in a base rover found him, couldn't rightly tell what was wrong with him. They thought it was just dehydration so they called for medics to get him back to base and halfway there, he woke up. From what my source said, he bit a finger off a soldier so they strapped him down pretty good. When they got there they put him in a holding cell and that's when all hell broke loose. He tried to use his head as a battering ram to get through the bars. Didn't work though, ended up spilling his own damn brains all over." He pulled the rope to lift the bed and started climbing down the ladder, throwing his smoke at the stove.

  "A doctor went into the room to get some samples and slipped on the solder's blood, falling face first and cracking his nose. Damn fool was in such a rush he didn't even notice he had been hurt. He got some of the soldier's blood on him." He paused to look for something so I asked him,

  "What happened to the doctor?" Tony threw me a glance and continued.

  "Well, doc was fine for a few minutes. Then the same thing happened to him as the good old boy, except this time he was in the lab with a few staff members looking at the soldier's blood. Doc went nuts, ate his assistance face, and then turned on the other doctors. Luckily the guards saw what was happening and locked down the lab, trapping them in there. Unluckily, they forgot about the guy that got his finger bit off and he went nuts. Half the base was infected in an hour." I looked at him with a growing sense of disbelief.

  "Tony, what are you saying?" The only thing I could think of it being was outlandishly impossible.

  "What I'm saying' is the soldiers on that base aren't human anymore. They want to eat your pretty little ass, and not in the good way!" That last part made me stumble. Dirty old man.

  "So what are you telling me, that they turned into zombies? That shit isn't real, it's all fake. There is no way for it to be physically possible." As I finished my sentence, he grabbed another smoke.

  "Girl, haven
't I always told you that anything is possible? I'm telling you right now, Mother Nature isn't happy with us messing up the planet, so she's going to ram us in the ass! The radiation that's in Chernobyl, Agent Orange in Korea, and what's leaking over from Japan, did you think that nothing would happen from all that? We think that we can play God and nothing will happen. After all, we're humans, the most advanced species on the planet right? Well, pretty soon it will be a planet full of humans eating each other."

  It was still a bit hard to believe. Especially the part of Tony blaming Mother Nature. I'd have figured he would blame the government.

  "So what happens, how does it work?" I asked him

  "Well after you're bit, you're fine for a few minutes. Then your heart rate drops, start to feel woozy, and ya fall over and die. Well, ya don't actually die. This thing slows your heart and such to a point so slow, it causes severe brain damage. It takes over everything until only your most basic needs are left. I haven't figured out quite how it works past that, but I'll get to it." At this point, we reach the opening for his B deck. It seemed feasible enough to me. But I'm not a scientist.

  As I climbed down the stairs, I was surprised by what I saw. It was an open area, about 15' by 20', the walls lined with radios and scanners, radar and CB's, control monitors and computers. There were filing cabinets, cork boards, and file folders all marked with things like "CIA" and "NSA". He sat at a desk in the corner with an accordion file on it. He opened it and told me to look through it.

  "In this folder is everything you will need to get through the first part of this. It has marked points on maps that will provide you with shelter or supplies." As he spoke, he got up and went to a closet and pulled out a ruck sack. I was skimming the maps; there were lines and routes planned out. Where did he get all this?