Orpheus

by DeWitt, Dan

  He left the other two men in his wake and paced absentmindedly around the floor. He composed himself and headed to Mutt's room. He need someone to talk to. He normally would go to Lena, but she spent way too much time babying him earlier, and he decided to give her a break. He figured his best friend in this new world could sacrifice some sleep for him. He knocked repeatedly on the door and announced himself several times before he walked in uninvited.

  Mutt wasn't there.

  He tried Sam's next door and got the same result.

  More out of curiosity than out of a desire to talk anymore, he tried Fish's and, lastly, Tim's.

  Now he was getting annoyed, and just a little bit worried. He couldn't remember the last time none of them were in their rooms. Typically, if one of the rooms was vacant it was because its occupant was drinking in another's.

  He decided that he was going to bother Lena after all. She'd be up coordinating the reap anyway.

  She was, and she answered the door shortly after his second angry knock. “Hey, Cam. What's up?'

  He pushed past her. “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “Cut the shit, Lena, and tell me where they are.”

  Lena tried to remember the cover story they came up with. At the time, she was confident that he would buy it for at least a little while, and when he eventually figured that something was up, they'd be back with enough info to go to him. But the look in his eyes made every bit of her confidence crumble away, and she had no idea what to say.

  “Lena, I'm not playing around.”

  “I wanted to tell you, but I didn't want to get your hopes up until we had a chance to find out for sure!”

  “Tell me about what?”

  She couldn't find the words, so she simply turned the laptop monitor towards Holt, found the file, and played it.

  “What am I watching?”

  “Just wait.” She'd watched it dozens of times, so she kept her attention focused on Holt's face. Even before Ethan appeared, she could tell that his father knew what was going to happen. It didn't make it any easier for him, and when Ethan finally did make his brief appearance, Holt's face lit up and sank at the same time. He reached for the touch pad and rewound it several times, before he raised his eyes from the monitor.

  “How long have you known about this?”

  “Only a few hours, Cameron. You grabbed this particular phone last night.”

  “And where is my team?”

  “They, um, look at this.” She showed him on the map. “Last you knew, your wife was here. Ethan was here, and headed in this direction. He had to pass these cameras here and here. The guys are getting a look at that video.” Holt said nothing, and Lena tried to fill the uncomfortable silence. “I just wanted to be sure, that's all.”

  Lena could see him trying to retain his composure. “You should have told me about this.”

  “I know, Cameron, I know. I just...you know.” She reached across the desk and put her hand on top of his.

  “Don't fucking touch me! This wasn't your call! It's my team! IT'S MY SON!!!” He pounded his fist against the desk and the laptop jumped several inches. She recoiled as if he'd slapped her. She knew then that his hurt and rage had barely been contained for the entire time that she'd known him. She couldn't imagine how difficult it must have been for him to maintain control on the surface while in such turmoil. She only now began to understand the magnitude of her mistake.

  Holt kicked over his chair and walked to the window. It faced the opposite direction of where the team should be (and, she wondered, why weren't they back by now?), but she didn't think that was his intention. He started to breathe deeply and slowly, fists clenching and unclenching.

  Did I go too far? she thought.

  After what seemed like hours to Lena, he said, “Get them back. Right now.”

  She didn't hesitate. “Scalpel 2, this is HQ.”

  She got a response, but it wasn't from who she expected. “Lena, it's Sam.”

  “Hey, Sam. The jig is up, so bring it on back.”

  “Um, we would if we could.”

  Holt heard the tension in the other man's voice and moved closer. He grabbed the radio and said, “That's an order, Sam.”

  “Oh, hi, boss. Like I said, we would if we could, but we're kind of delayed.”

  “Delayed?”

  “Trapped.”

  “What?”

  “And Mutt's been bitten.”

  Lena gasped.

  “WHAT?!?”

  “Sorry, boss. We fucked up.”

  “Don't move. I'll be right there.”

  “That's a bad idea, Orpheus.” Holt ignored it and scratched his temple with the antenna. “Orpheus?” Sam repeated. Holt tossed the radio back to Lena.

  “Find out where they are and let me know!” He ran out of her quarters.

  “For Christ's sake, Lena, stop him!”

  She ran after him, her slippers flying off in opposite directions. “But what are you doing? Wait!” She ran to the hallway, but he had already disappeared into the stairwell.

  Lena was unable to prevent Holt from doing something stupid, so she could at least help him as much as she could. “Sam, where are you?”

  * * *

  Holt sprinted up the stairs and back into the labs. He didn't have an access card. He didn't care much for subtlety at the moment, so he put a few rounds into the glass door and crashed through it. He suffered some minor cuts but barely noticed.

  The gunshots startled Dr. Vincent, who always slept in his lab. He put his glasses on with trembling hands. He saw the cause of the commotion.

  Of course it was him.

  “Holt! What are you doing?!?”

  “Where's the serum?” Holt demanded.

  “I've only manufactured a small amount, and I need it for my research. You can't have it!”

  Holt grabbed Dr. Vincent by his loosened necktie and pressed the gun barrel to his forehead. “Try again.”

  The smell of the recently-fired gun made Dr. Vincent want to vomit. Worse, Holt looked like he had gone a little insane. Any resistance that he may have put up melted right away. The doctor was no hero. “Fridge. Second shelf. Syringes in the drawer next to it.”

  Holt glared at him, but believed that it was the truth. “Stay.” He motioned for the doctor to sit back down, then grabbed the single bottle of serum from the fridge. The syringes were exactly where he was told, so he grabbed a handful of those, as well.

  “Cameron!”

  Holt shoved everything into his pockets and answered. “What?”

  “They're at the high school. The baseball field.”

  He looked at his radio as if it were crazy. “Say that again? It sounded like you said 'baseball field'.”

  “In the press box. Sam said there's no way to get to them.”

  “So I heard.”

  * * *

  It was Lena's turn to misunderstand what came out of the radio. “Cameron, I didn't copy that. What did you say?”

  Either he was ignoring her or his radio was turned off. The result was the same: utter confusion on her part. She repeated her question and was answered with loud footfalls on the stairwell. She expected the feet that caused them to come through the door so they could go over some last-minute strategy, but they just kept going down, down, away from her, until they faded entirely.

  She stood motionless. What he was doing didn't register for a few seconds.

  He can't be.

  She ran down the hall and into an empty room. This office had a window facing the front, and she prayed to anyone and anything that would listen that she would not see what she expected to see.

  But there it was. A figure burst from the building into the street, and dozens of shapes were suddenly motivated to follow it. She pressed her forehead to the glass to keep him in sight as long as possible, but he disappeared into the night after a few seconds.

  Her fingers acted of their own volition keyed the mike. Her brain caught up short
ly, followed by her mouth. “Sam? Cameron's coming to you.”

  “Thank God. We'll prepare for the chopper extraction.”

  “Negative.” She couldn't believe what she was about to say. “He's on foot. I repeat, he's on foot.”

  * * *

  He knew what he was doing was crazy, probably even suicidal. But, and he tried to think as objectively as possible about this, he didn't really see another choice.

  His men were trapped. They may have information regarding the location of his son, and he couldn't let that die with them. One of them was infected. Holt happened to have the one thing that Mutt needed to, hopefully, stay alive long enough for a more permanent treatment to be discovered. If Vincent was right, every second counted.

  There was just no time to waste.

  A helicopter was useless. By the time he woke the pilot and he, in turn, prepped the helicopter (assuming he would agree to do it at all) his men would probably be dead. The sewers, probably the safest, sanest path, would have been far too slow. Navigating down there required caution, and that was something he couldn't afford to waste time on.

  So he ran in as straight a line as possible.

  But he didn't run alone. The zombies were on him immediately; they seemed to materialize out of thin air. He had no idea that there were still so many left. They were great motivators, though. He ran for all he was worth, fists pumping, legs taking great strides. If he started to flag, all he had to do was look behind him. If anyone had asked, it was the best he felt in a long time.

  His only regret was not putting on his running shoes.

  Chapter 8: The Sewers

  The expedition through the sewers went pretty well, for the most part.

  Mutt cautioned them, "We better be careful. We always thought that the sewers would be the last place on the island that we cleared, because we'd have multiple safe exits if things got rough. If it goes south now, we have no place to go.”

  “Makes sense,” Tim said.

  “Well, let's pick it up then.”

  Mutt took the lead, followed by Sam, Tim, and Fish in the rear.

  “Wait a sec. Look at this.” Sam had his flashlight focused on some writing on the wall. It appeared to be written in blood, but it didn't strike them as creepy. Blood had simply been the most convenient thing to write with at the time.

  1930230809ECHOHOTEL+15.

  “Phone number?”

  “I don't think so. What date did this whole thing kick off?”

  “Um, late August. 22nd, I think.”

  “Yep, that's what I thought. Fish, you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “It's a note.” Mutt pointed to each individual number. “Follow the bouncing ball. 1930 equals 7:30 pm. Then, the 22nd of August, 2009. Then the author and a head count.”

  “Who?” Tim had followed along, but now he was confused.

  “Jesus, I keep forgetting that you guys were never military. ECHO-HOTEL equals E-H.”

  “Ethan Holt?”

  “Plus fifteen more people.”

  “The kid wasn't military.”

  “But his dad was. And let me tell you from experience, military fathers like to pass a lot of what they know on to their kids.”

  Sam gave a slow clap. “Fish, you're a genius. Whatever 'feelings' you get, be sure to share them.”

  “You know it.”

  They felt reenergized and continued to move in the same direction. Because they were moving so cautiously, they didn't see anything noteworthy for almost a half-hour, though they'd only traveled about a mile. They passed the corpses of what appeared to be tunnel workers. They'd quite clearly been beaten to death. There were other superficial wounds, but Mutt's guess was that whoever put these two down learned pretty quickly that only serious head trauma could kill them for real.

  Their faces were unrecognizable. Mutt's heart sank, thinking that one of them might be Ethan, but he saw another note scrawled in the same handwriting. Time, date, initials, and, this time, “+13.”

  The group continued for a few more paces before they realized that Tim wasn't with them. Fish shined a flashlight on him. Tim stood, arms folded and jaw set. “Mutt, Orpheus has got to know about this. We know for a fact that his son survived the first wave. It's not fair to him to keep him in the dark.”

  Mutt was losing his patience. “Okay, Tim. Call it in to him. And then, if we find his kid dead or infected ten minutes from now, you can call that in, too.” He waited to be challenged. “We put off good news until we're sure that it's really good news. He's already buried his son in his head. Your heart's in the right place, but I'm not going to get his hopes up only to crush them again. So stop asking.”

  “All right, all right. Forget it.”

  They followed the tunnel until the inevitable happened: it branched off in two directions.

  “Of course it does,” Sam sighed. “Are we splitting up?”

  “Wow, that's a great idea,” Fish said.

  Mutt said, “Tim, you're with me. We'll go right, you two go left. Sound travels for a long time down here, so yell if you have something.”

  “Guys, he went left.”

  “How do you know that, bait?”

  “Because he says so right here.” Tim pointed his flashlight at the current notation from Ethan. This one had been marked with grime, as their ink supply was a few hundred yards behind them. “We're not tracking a tiger through the jungle. He's leaving us bread crumbs to follow, because he wanted, maybe even still wants, his father to find him.”

  They went left, and found another corpse. This one had been covered with care and an expensive-looking silk shirt.

  * * *

  They found what they believed to be his exit point. The notation was written right next to the ladder and several feet higher up than normal. It looked like he wrote it while climbing so his followers would know that he went up. Mutt consulted the map. Moonlight shone through the opening where the manhole cover should be.

  Sam said, “Huh. Full moon. That figures.”

  “That's not quite full. It's a waxing gibbous moon. Common mistake.”

  Fish's companions forgot their mission for a moment and stared at him.

  “What? I dated an astronomy major. Sooooo...we going up?”

  “No need to. We were already pretty sure that he's not up there. Let's say you're a nineteen-year-old-kid on the run from zombies and looking for your mom. You head up and find that she's dead, or one of those things. What do you do then?”

  “Freak out?”

  “Well, yeah, that, Fish, but after that? What does a mini-Cameron Holt who has thirteen people in tow do?”

  “Takes care of whoever is counting on him to help them?”

  “Exactly. My guess is he came back down not just because of survival instinct, but out of responsibility. Look for another note.”

  They couldn't find one, but were unfazed when Tim surmised that the most logical reason that the manhole cover had not been replaced was because some zombies followed the survivors down. If they were pursued, there would be no time to leave the impromptu notes. They all agreed that they'd assume the resourceful young man was still alive until they found his body.

  Mutt unfolded the map again. “Give me some light over here. Let's see where he's headed.” The four of them tried to figure out the most likely destination. There were several likely possibilities, but one stood out from the rest.

  “The high school?”

  “Yes. Tell me why, Tim.”

  “Oooh, pop quiz,” Fish teased. Sam shushed him.

  “Well, it's close, for one. It's brick, which means it's solidly built and defensible. It would have a lot of supplies: food, clothes, electronics, even some stuff that could be used as weapons. And he'd know it like the back of his hand. I mean, I graduated from there six years ago, and I could still lose someone who was on my tail in no time.”

  “And that's why you'll be taking point when we get there.”

  Tim raised up to
his full height to indicate that he was ready for the challenge. “One question, though. Didn't you guys clear it a while ago? If Ethan was there, he'd be dead for sure.”

  “It was the weekend. It should have been empty. That was the one place where Holt was sure his son wouldn't be, so we never cleared it by hand. We always focused mostly on downtown. Looks like we may have guessed wrong.”

  “And the reap?”

  “There shouldn't have been one. There may be a janitor zombie or two waiting for us, I don't know. But we're going to find out soon.” Mutt figured that they could be at the school in twenty minutes if they hustled a bit.

  As they walked, Mutt whispered with a delivery that reminded Tim of Orpheus, “By the way...A-plus.”

  Chapter 9: The School

  Mutt popped his head out of the manhole on the street next to the high school, weapon ready. For once, force was unnecessary. He saw nothing and no things anywhere around them. Not trusting their luck, he remained cautious, but try as he might he couldn't find a threat.

  Unless they've learned how to set up an ambush, we're alone

  He motioned for the rest of his men to join him, and they were similarly surprised by the circumstances. The lack of life, along with the high school's relatively remote location, made it something akin to a ghost town.

  “This is weird, Mutt. Even with buildings that we clear, there's still always a bunch of those things wandering around. Where'd they all go?”

  “Good question, Sam. Let's go find out. Stay on your toes, everybody.”

  They approached the front door. Tim checked; it was unlocked, so they went in. They swept their lights across the great entry hall. A row of lockers ran down either side, occasionally interrupted by classroom or office doors. Tim said, “The school is two floors. The hallways are just a big rectangle, and the gymnasium is attached to the building on the west side. It looked deserted, but if Ethan was here, he should be easy enough to find.