by Matt Handle
Angel rushed out of the restroom, her shorts unbuttoned and her gun held unsteadily in front of her as she took in the scene.
“What the hell happened?” she asked in alarm as she ran toward the Humvee and the still screeching Jenny.
“I just smoked Lynch before he could take a bite out of Jenny,” Sawyer replied with an eerie calmness in his voice. “Why don’t you see if you can get her out of there and quiet her down while I clean up the mess?”
“Jesus, he turned! I warned you he was turning,” Angel yelled hysterically.
“Just do it,” Sawyer ordered. “Sit her down over there in the shade by the pump,” he said, pointing a finger toward the gas pumps in front of the building. “You need to get her away from him.”
Angel nodded dumbly and stumbled to the Humvee, her body trying to follow Sawyer’s order even while her mind was still in shock. She opened Jenny’s door and gently but firmly pulled the shaking girl out of the truck, her arms wrapped around Jenny’s shoulders. As the pair shuffled away from the vehicle, Sawyer walked around to the opposite door and yanked it open. Grabbing the ankles of Lynch’s corpse, he dragged it out of the vehicle and out to the far corner of the parking lot, as far away from the fuel pumps as possible.
Sawyer then trudged back to the Humvee and pulled one of the remaining fuel canisters off the rack on the back before returning to the priest’s corpse. Without a word, he doused the body in diesel, slipped a book of matches out of his pants pocket, and struck one against the sole of his boot. He dropped the match onto Lynch’s chest and stepped back as the corpse lit up in flames.
The intense heat from the blaze burned his face and made his eyes water but Sawyer refused to look away. Behind him, both Angel and Jenny looked on as well. The younger girl’s sobs continued but they were quieter now than they’d been minutes earlier. Wispy, white smoke rose from the fire, floating away into the clear blue sky.
“The smoke will probably attract more of the Afflicted,” Sawyer said loud enough to be heard over the crackle and pop of the flames. “I’m gonna clean up the back seat a little bit and then we need to get moving. We can mourn later. Right now we need to put some distance between us and this.”
As they drove away, Jenny sat facing the back of the vehicle, watching the pillar of smoke fade into the distance against the bright orange sun as it dipped toward the tree line. Tears still streaked her face, but she’d stopped sobbing. She swiped at her eyes and sniffled, still in shock over Father Lynch’s horrific transformation and violent death. She reached down to stroke one of Luna’s ears as she pondered the priest’s fate. She hadn’t gotten close to him the way Sawyer had, but she’d thought of him as a good man. Now he was dead, just like her mother and father. All she could think of was the terrible worry that one of the three of them in the Humvee might be next.
Angel glanced back at the girl and then looked at Sawyer as he focused stonily on the road ahead. They were back on the highway and had put a couple miles between themselves and the scene of Lynch’s demise, but the big soldier hadn’t said a word since they left.
“How do you think it happened?” Angel asked. “Why now after so much time?”
Sawyer shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving the road. “Got me,” he answered morosely. “Maybe it’s like one of those infections that takes different times to incubate. Maybe we all got it and don’t even know it yet.”
Sawyer glanced at Angel and saw that she was scared and he knew he wasn’t helping. Shooting the old man had been hard, harder than he could have imagined a few days ago. He’d done it instinctively, his combat training taking over, but Lynch had been his friend. The old man had helped give him a new purpose and a dark, but unmistakable sense of hope. Before he’d sat in the priest’s shuttered church and talked to him on those pews about faith, he’d forgotten that he had any. He’d been living day to day, merely trying to survive in this desolate world. Now he had company, friends that were counting on him. And he had a mission. One way or another, someone was going to pay for what had become of the country and his friend. Sawyer would see to it.
Angel looked at Sawyer earnestly and whispered “Whatever happens, don’t let me turn into one of those things. Don’t let me hurt Jenny.”
His reverie broken, Sawyer clenched his jaw and responded “If it comes to that, I’ll do you just like I did Lynch.” He glanced down at the gun in her lap and then looked Angel in the eyes. “But it’s not going to. We’re going to survive this thing. And we’re going to catch whoever started it.”
They drove for the next hour in silence, each of the remaining three lost in their own thoughts. The road had gotten bad again, the pavement clogged with the oxidizing wreckage of former tourists that now only wandered the Orlando highways as ghosts or worse still, rabid monsters. Sawyer guided their Humvee in and out of the resulting maze of rubber and steel, leaving the tough military vehicle scratched and dirty, but inexorably moving toward their destination. Along the way, faded and ragged billboards still advertised smiling parents and children enjoying the rides at long-gone amusement parks like Disney World and Sea World, while others trumpeted the wonderful life awaiting the snow birds ready for retirement in luxurious golf communities now rotting back into the fetid swamps from whence they were originally built.
Jenny was lost in the memory of her family’s last vacation to this area, her recollection of her parent’s voices as they discussed the comedic stylings of Mickey Mouse verses Bugs Bunny in the front seat so clear that when she closed her eyes, she could almost convince herself that they were indeed still sitting in front of her rather than Sawyer and Angel. Her father’s distinct New York accent contrasted with that of her native Floridian mother, the pair of them laughing together, hamming it up for their sweet five-year-old daughter’s amusement. Jenny had been a difficult pregnancy and a sickly child, her first epileptic seizure hitting her at age two, but her mommy and daddy had loved her with all their hearts and she had loved them back, loved them still, even though they were gone.
As Jenny’s heart ached for her dead parents, Angel’s mind harkened back to her own childhood. As a young girl growing up in the poorer section of Miami, living in government housing and shopping with food stamps in the neighborhood Latin grocery, her single mother used to take Angel and her two siblings to church every Sunday. No matter how poor they were, her mother had always insisted on tithing when the plate came around, teaching her children that God was good. He watched over and took care of practicing Catholics and that’s just what she raised her children to be. Her mother died of breast cancer at the tender age of 35 and even then, Angel had questioned whether the beliefs her mother had tried to instill in her were true. How could God take away her mother when she was so young and still so needed? Look at our country now, Angel thought as she gazed out the window at the desolation and destruction, nature slowly gobbling up the world she used to live in. What would mi mami think if she were still alive today, she wondered. Did God abandon me because of how I’ve lived my life since and if so, what’s his excuse for abandoning so many others like Father Lynch?
Sawyer’s thoughts were less about the past and more about the immediate future. They needed to find another place to hunker down for the night now that the sun was almost set. With any luck, they could avoid any more lurking monsters, but now he worried that they might have to be wary of each other as well. The priest had been old and infirm, but just like them, he’d managed to avoid being turned for years. What had changed in the past few days? Were the symptoms of Lynch’s illness warning signs Sawyer could count on, or might one of the girls turn from seemingly healthy and normal to inhuman in minutes the way he’d seen others do in years past when the plague was first beginning to spread? Could he still trust Angel to take watch and if not, how long could he last without sleep? How long before it caused him to slip up and make a fatal mistake?
As he was contemplating these questions, he steered the Humvee onto an exit ramp that sported a ruste
d sign displaying a trio of faded hotel chain logos. Hoping his voice didn’t give away any of the misgivings he was having, he told the girls they’d stop for the night and get some rest before pushing for the Georgia border tomorrow.
The small motel they chose looked like it was probably a bit of a dump even before the plague, but after the day they’d been through, Sawyer wasn’t in the mood to sweep anything bigger for danger even if it might offer them more comfortable sleeping quarters. He left the girls inside the Humvee armed and idling in the deserted parking lot as he pried open the sliding glass doors of the lobby and made his way through the dingy interior and then the even shabbier kitchen. The cupboards were bare, not even a package of stale saltines to be found, and their generator had died at some point too. The stale air and heat were stifling. Grabbing a master key from the tiny office situated behind the front desk, Sawyer began opening hallway doors and inspecting the guest rooms.
He was about halfway through when he found the mother and her two small children. The smell hit him as soon as he opened the door. Three corpses were lying on the bloodstained bed. The children were arranged neatly, their heads on the pillows, their arms by their sides. The mother was lying sprawled over the foot of the mattress, her gun a few feet away on the thinly carpeted floor. The bodies were old enough that much of their features were on longer discernible, but the children had been a tow-headed boy and curly-haired girl, and based on their size, Sawyer doubted either had been more than eight or nine years old. Each had a neat little bullet hole in their forehead.
The mother was wearing a pair of jeans and what had once been a white button-down blouse. She’d put the bullet through the roof of her mouth, leaving a good bit of her brains and pieces of her skull splattered on the carpet and wall behind her. Her rotting flesh had turned the blouse to a putrid yellow color and maggots squirmed in what was left of her torn face.
Sawyer had seen even worse during his tour of Afghanistan, but he still had to put a hand to his mouth and physically will himself not to vomit. Once his stomach started to settle again, he plucked up the revolver and emptied it of the remaining three bullets, pocketing them before putting the weapon back where he’d found it. He backed out of the room and closed the door shut, double-checking it to make sure it was secure before moving on to the rest of the rooms.
The rest were empty, nothing but litter and scuttling cockroaches. He chose what seemed like the cleanest of the rooms, which conveniently was on the opposite end of the building from the room occupied by the dead family, and went back out to collect the girls. An hour later, they’d eaten a small dinner of canned tuna and Del Monte peaches and were settled in for the night. Jenny had fallen asleep again almost immediately.
Sawyer didn’t tell Angel or Jenny about what he’d found in the other room. When Angel asked him how his sweep went, he’d simply told her the place was empty of anything alive or edible. Technically, he’d told her the truth. He’d just held out some detail. This detail weighed on him however, his mind turning it over and over as he lounged on the floor near the door, a throw pillow under his elbow.
The woman had clearly taken her own life and Sawyer assumed she’d killed the children too. Had they been hers? Was she afraid of them being infected? Of infection herself? Perhaps she was terrified of them being eaten by the monsters and had decided if they were going to die, they’d die cleanly and by her own hand instead. Just contemplating the horror he’d seen in the room made his head ache, the familiar throb starting beneath the scar on the right side of his skull and inching its way behind his eyes.
From her spot sitting propped up in an arm chair beside the long-deceased television set, Angel noticed him wincing.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Sawyer glanced up at her and nodded his head. “Fine,” he replied. “Just a little headache.”
“Why don’t you let me clean that shoulder again?” she offered. “We’ve still got some clean gauze in the duffle. We’ve got aspirin too if you want it.”
Sawyer nodded again and tried to smile at her. He peeled off his shirt while she rummaged through the bag. His wound looked a lot better and as Angel daubed at it with a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol, she remarked that it was healing nicely.
“I got lucky,” Sawyer replied. “If that thing hadn’t been damaged already, I might not be sitting here with you.”
Angel smiled and wrapped the fresh bandage around the clean flesh. “But you are,” she remarked. “And I’m glad.”
Sawyer reached over to his duffle and extracted a bottle of scotch, a good one. Angel raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I found it back at SOUTHCOM,” Sawyer told her. “Thought we might drink it on a special occasion. We got any cups over there by the sink?”
Angel got up and found a few cups that had probably been sitting on the sink counter for years, but they were still wrapped in plastic so she figured they were clean enough. After tossing the plastic in the waste basket, she sat back down beside Sawyer and handed them to him.
“What are we drinking to?” she asked.
Sawyer poured three fingers of scotch into each cup and then gave her one as he raised the other.
“To Father Lynch and fallen friends,” he toasted quietly. “May they rest in peace.”
The scotch was smooth, but Angel still choked a bit as she emptied her cup.
“First time I’ve ever tried it,” she explained sheepishly.
“This is the good stuff,” Sawyer replied.
Angel smiled and said “I’ll take your word for it. You want me to take first watch? I can wake you in a few hours.”
Sawyer hesitated. Sitting as close as they were, Angel read the look of doubt that momentarily crossed his face.
“Don’t even think about it, Sawyer.” she stated firmly. “If we start doubting each other now, where does that leave us?”
Angel placed a hand on his bare chest and looked him in the eyes.
“You take care of us and we take care of you,” she said quietly. “That’s the deal.”
Sawyer smiled and put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze.
“That’s the deal, huh?” he answered.
“Family,” Angel whispered. Then, with the pleasant buzz of the scotch running through her head, she leaned in to place her lips on his. Sawyer kissed her back for the briefest of moments, his body reacting instinctively before he gently pushed her away and turned his head toward where Jenny lay sleeping.
“Not here,” he said softly. “No matter how much I might want to. Not with that last image of Father Lynch appearing every time I close my eyes.”
Angel nodded reluctantly. “I understand,” she replied. “Just don’t say I never offered.”
She got up and walked over to the bed to check on Jenny, brushing a lock of hair off the child’s face. “Go to sleep,” she said over her shoulder without looking at Sawyer. “Maybe you’ll dream about me.”
Sawyer grinned despite himself and put his head on the pillow, turning his back to the girls as he tried to fall asleep on his good side.
Lacking anything else to keep her awake, Angel opened the nightstand drawer and found the hotel’s copy of the Bible inside. Moving close to the window, she sat down cross-legged on the floor in a pool of moonlight and opened the dog-eared book and began to read. The sound of the thin pages turning one by one as she made her way through the beginning of the Old Testament was joined only by Sawyer’s snoring as she stood watch, exhausted but strangely fulfilled. Father Lynch’s death had been horrific, but somehow, she felt even closer to Sawyer and Jenny now. No matter what the next day might bring, they had each other. That was something she could believe in.
Sawyer woke around 3 AM and took over, letting Angel join Jenny on the bed for some much needed rest. He allowed them to sleep in as well, the pair not rising until almost 10 in the morning. After a brief breakfast, they returned to the Humvee and were back on the highway heading north at a steady clip.<
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They’d made it almost 50 miles when a huge explosion suddenly lit up the sky to the northeast, the fireball rising over the treetops and momentarily causing Sawyer to swerve across the road, nearly swiping an old black Camry baking itself gray in the breakdown lane.
Sawyer exclaimed “What the hell?”
Jenny’s head popped up as she snapped out of a daydream and Angel stared as huge clouds of black smoke started to billow from the fire, spreading across the horizon like locusts.
Sawyer managed to get the Humvee back under control and then accelerated as much as he deemed safe as he steered them toward the next exit.
“It looks like we’re not the only ones starting fires,” Angel observed, biting her lip in anticipation of what they might find when they reached the source.
“Given the size of that explosion, there might not be much left by the time we get there,” Sawyer replied. Then he pushed just a little harder on the pedal.
Chapter 9
The Humvee was doing almost 60 MPH by the time it hit the top of the exit ramp and Sawyer yanked it hard to the right, the vehicle skidding across the intersection as the tires complained loudly but managed to hold their ground.
Jenny let out a little squeal, but was now leaning forward in her seat as she anxiously tried to look through the windshield at what lay ahead.
“Do you think someone like us might have done that?” she asked her two older companions. “Maybe there are other survivors!”
“Only one way to find out,” Sawyer answered as he glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Sit tight. We’ll be there in a minute. And it might be dangerous.”
He nodded at Angel before refocusing on the road. “Be ready to start shooting,” he told her. “For all we know, the Afflicted might have set it off by accident.”
They barreled down the crumbling two-lane road, the Humvee bouncing over potholes and dodging the occasional abandoned vehicle as Sawyer steered them toward the bright yellow and orange blaze that was still growing in the distance. As they rounded a bend, they got their first look at the fire itself. It was raging through a rundown factory that sat behind a ten-foot high chain-link fence in the middle of several acres of tall grass.