Outbreak: Tales from the Quarantine Zone

by Robert Van Dusen

  “Sure thing, sweetie.” Mariana nearly shouted over the noise. In addition to the scars and burns on her daughter’s upper body the IED had badly broken her right arm and leg. According to the doctors it was a miracle that she was not walking on a prosthetic right now. “I’ll wait here and come find you when they find us a table.” The older Rodriguez swallowed hard, wiping away a tear as she watched her baby limp over to the bar. A man with an American flag on the back of his shirt stood up and gave Frannie his seat at the bar.

  “Rodriguez!” called the man behind the podium. “Mariana Rodriguez!” Mari darted over to the guy and let him know that she was indeed here. They had been waiting for over an hour and she was starving.

  This place had better have the best burgers ever made! Mari thought with a hint of frustration. “My daughter’s over at the bar. Let me go get her.” She started to go back through the crowd but the waiter tapped her on the shoulder and picked up the phone.

  Mari frowned slightly at her daughter when she made her way through the waiting area and to the podium. It was plain to see that Frannie had a few while she was waiting for the server to find them a table. The younger Rodriguez waved goodbye to the few friends she had apparently made as well. Mariana bit her tongue. It’s her day she reminded herself. She’s been away a long time and she’s been through a lot. If she wants a beer or two so what?

  Frannie could not help but notice the way a lot of people looked at her as the waiter showed them to their table. First people noticed her cane. Then their eyes went straight to the words ‘US Army’ on her tee shirt. Then…then their eyes went wide when they saw the angry red scars on her face and they looked away shamefaced studying their menus or food until she was well past their table. She just wanted to go crawl in a hole and die but this whole thing was her idea and besides Mom had waited for like a whole fucking hour…

  “Oh my fuckin’ God…” Frannie moaned around her first bite of the bacon cheeseburger. The woman’s cheeks turned red and she looked at the table suddenly embarrassed as all hell. “Sorry, Mom.”

  Mari laughed at the mortified expression on her daughter’s face. For a brief moment Frannie was ten and Mariana had caught her standing on a chair in the kitchen so that she could get at the box of cookies on the top shelf of the cabinet next to the stove. Frannie started laughing too, giggling at first but growing in intensity. The two of them laughed and laughed until tears streamed down their faces.

  “God, this is so good!” Frannie said once she could catch her breath. After years of MREs, craptacular chow hall food and even worse hospital food the burger and fries tasted like fucking ambrosia and the beer was goddamn amazing. However after all that time without any booze and the pain pills made the three beers go straight to her head.

  After that the waiter took her order for dessert and came back with another beer and a gigantor slab of chocolate cake covered with chocolate chips. “Oh sweet Jesus!” Frannie gasped after trying a bite of the fudgy deliciousness. She giggled more than a little inebriated at this point. Thankfully their hotel room was right across the street so they would not have to go far.

  When the check came Mom looked like she was going to cry. “Mom, what’s wrong?” Frannie asked as she started tried to get out of her chair. Her stupid legs were not exactly cooperating and she bit back a shouted curse when her cane fell to the floor with a clatter. Mari held a hand up motioning for her daughter to stay where she was.

  “Somebody paid for our food.” Mariana said at last. Frannie finally stood up and came around the table to her mother’s side. She held her tight, her mother’s tears soaking into the fabric of her shirt.

  Birthday

  21 October 2007 02:11 hours 90 Rockwell Ave Apt. 3F Boston, Massachusetts

  Private Adam Lacey woke with a start. The short, wiry man burst into the bedroom half awake and moving on instinct. “Call the ambulance, Adam!” Laura shouted and squeezed her eyes shut as a contraction ripped through her abdomen. “They’re coming, baby!”

  “Oh holy fuck shit!” Lacey screamed as he tore around the room frantically gathering the bags at the foot of the bed. “Phone! Laura, where’s the goddamn phone?” Adam felt around in his pockets, in the pockets of the jacket hanging on the doorknob. Where the hell was it?

  “Here!” Laura found their cell phone on the nightstand and tossed it to her husband. She had woken up a few moments before because the bed was soaked. The woman had thought that she had wet the bed before the first contraction hit her like a freight train trying to tear its way out of her vagina.

  “Oh, come the fuck on!” Adam shouted into the phone. There was a polite voice telling him that his call was important and would be answered in the order it was received. With a roar of frustration Adam stuffed the phone into his pocket then rushed over and grabbed his keys and wallet off of the nightstand. “C’mon, honey. We gotta go.”

  Lacey tossed his wife’s overnight bag over his shoulder and helped his wife out of bed. “Oh shit I made a mess.” Laura groaned disgustedly. The sheets and comforter were sodden with amniotic fluid. Adam chuckled as he slammed the apartment door behind them and paused to make sure the door was locked.

  The two of them hurried down the hall to the elevator. Adam frantically mashed the button to take them down to the ground floor multiple times even as he tried to keep his face calm in front of Laura. “C’mon…c’mon…” he grumbled while smiling nervously at his wife.

  He was just about to suggest they try the stairs when the metal doors slid open in front of them with a little metallic ding. Adam practically shoved Laura into the elevator and hit the close door button before pressing the one for the ground floor. The two of them exchanged nervous glances. Laura groaned and nearly doubled over.

  “Call the police!” Adam shouted as he and Laura burst into the lobby clearly scaring the shit out of the pale flabby guy in the security guard uniform sitting behind the desk. Lacey juggled his keys and nearly dropped them, the bag slipping off of his shoulder. “My wife’s having twins. I’m driving her to Mercy General. Tell them to look out for a gray Dodge Caravan!”

  Adam left Laura with the security guard and sprinted outside rushing headlong into the parking lot and skidding to a halt beside a half dead looking Dodge minivan. He tried to jam the key into the lock on the driver’s side door but they slipped from his fingers where they hit the blacktop with a metallic jingle. “FUCKIN’ PIECE OF SHIT MOTHERFUCK GODDAMN!!” he roared at them then scooped them up, got the door open and started the van after slinging Laura’s bag into the back seat.

  The tires squealed as he backed out of his space and sped up to the front door of the apartment complex. He leaned across the cab and unlocked the passenger side door as Laura was coming outside. “C’mon! C’mon, babe! Hurry!”

  “Don’t worry, Mister Lacey.” the fat guard said breathlessly. He put a hand on the side of the vehicle and leaned against it as if he had just run a great distance. “I called the cops. They’re sending a squad car to escort you on the way.”

  Adam nodded thanks and took off like a shot as soon as Laura was in the truck. “Don’t worry, babe.” he said, hoping he sounded reassuring as they pulled out of the lot and onto the street. About five seconds later a Boston City Police cruiser pulled behind him and flashed its lights at him.

  The cops pulled alongside and rolled down their window. “You called?” one of the cops shouted as Adam steered his van towards the curb. Lacey nodded furiously and the cops hit the siren. “FOLLOW US, SIR!” The cruiser took off wailing like a banshee into the night.

  Ten minutes later Laura was in a birthing suite at Mercy General Hospital. All in all, Adam reflected that the birth was not so terribly different from the conception: lots of screaming and sweating. A bunch of EMTs shouting medical jargon at each other pushed a gurney down the hall. A fat hairy looking one almost knocked Adam on his ass when he tried to get by to the nurse’s station down the way.

  Later that morning Adam stood there watching
his son and daughter breastfeeding with a grin ten feet wide slapped all over his face. Laura was soaked with sweat and looked just as happy as he did. “God look what we did, baby.” Adam said quietly as he bent and kissed first her then the tops of his children’s heads. “Look what we did!”

  A nurse stuck her head in the door. She was a skinny little thing with black hair. “Hi folks!” she said with a big grin as she wheeled a pair of cribs into the room. “Sorry, but I gotta take the kids for a little bit. Don’t worry they’ll be fine.” The nurse cooed and gently rocked first the boy and then the girl before putting them in the cribs. “They’re so cute! Given any thoughts to names for these little sweethearts?”

  Laura grinned deliriously still more than a little high from the epidural. “What did we say, honey?” she asked and giggled. The woman poked her spongy belly and scowled. “Ugh, that’s disgusting! So gross!”

  Adam laughed and took his wife’s hand so that she would stop prodding herself. He found himself wondering, just for a moment, how long it would take her stomach to tighten back up. The woman had a metabolism like a hummingbird on meth so he did not think it would be pretty quick. “Remember, baby?” Adam said as he held her hand so tight. “Paul for a boy and Rebecca for a girl.”

  “Oh yeah!” Laura nearly shouted and stifled a giggle. “Good thing we ended up with one of each then, huh?”

  The Gift

  20 April 2012 06:32 hours Little Orleans Lodge Little Orleans, MD

  The morning was warm and muggy with low wisps of fog rising out of the grass around the two story house. The building was surrounded by a small sea of grass though it had been awhile since anybody had been around to cut the lawn. There was a garden in the back that showed signs of recent expansion filled with rows established for corn, radishes, beans and other various kinds of vegetables. The grounds were hemmed in by a makeshift fence made out of timbers cut from some of the trees that surrounded the house on three sides.

  A few macabre decorations dotted the fence as it was made of four foot long stakes braced with a crosspiece and bound with wire. Once you got a little closer in the fog you could see these shapes were humans who reached out with thrashing arms like impaled insects. A tall wiry man with long brown hair that hung almost to his shoulders and bushy beard walked along the barricade.

  He wore a leather apron over his jeans and flannel shirt. All in all he looked like he could either be a malnourished lumberjack or the lead singer of a Seattle Grunge band. His hands were protected by heavy workman's gloves and he had a long hafted roofing hammer in his right hand. The man walked along at a leisurely pace and came up to the first humanoid form.

  The person stuck to the fence had sallow skin with lanky black hair his skin shrunken around his skull. Without preamble he grasped the impaled man's arm held it aside and smashed the impaled man's head with the hammer. The impaled man twitched a few times and went limp his weight supported by the spike through his chest. The man inside the perimeter nodded satisfactorily then did the same to a teenage blond in a jogging outfit. This time the man frowned. She must have been cute when she was alive... the man thought bitterly. He shook his head then wiped the hammer on the grass to try and clean the bits of skull and brain tissue off it.

  “Hey Brian.” a quiet feminine voice called out of the fog. A woman of average height with close cropped brown hair walked slowly towards Brian. She was of average height with green eyes and a spattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. The black tee shirt and khaki cargo pants gave the woman a vaguely military appearance never mind the butt of the Glock 21 sticking out of her waistband. The woman's tan army boots made almost no sound as she came closer. If you looked close you could see brown stains dappled across the rough tan leather. “About finished here?”

  Brian looked at the two zombies he had just bashed in the head. “Just about, Doc.” he said quietly. The man grabbed the fence and put one work booted foot on the chest of the male corpse and pushed it off the spike causing it to land on the ground with a wet thump. “Just gotta walk the back part of the yard and get rid of these two plus the one I found out front.”

  She joined him as he finished his rounds. “We going to make that run today?” Doc asked, her voice just above a whisper. There had been bold talk last night that since the weather was getting better they should start going out scrounging again. In an hour or two the fog would get burned off when the sun finally made its way into the valley and they could see where they were going.

  “Yep.” Brian said as they approached the corner and started walking the last bit of the fence. “Any idea where we're going to go?” The man glanced at the pistol in the woman's waistband “How many bullets you got left?”

  Doc shrugged. “I think we're going south first.” she said and frowned at a tall scarecrow of a creature stuck on the fence a few feet ahead of them. Its spaghetti noodle arms waved like one of those inflatable men that they used to set up outside car dealerships. Doc smiled a little at the comparison as she caught one arm while Brian grabbed the other. In a few moments the thing ended up another corpse on the ground with its head bashed in.

  Once the morning perimeter check Brian went to the back of the house and pushed over a big handcart mounted on bicycle tires. Doc walked alongside the man and lent him a hand getting the three bodies on the cart then dumping them into a low pit. At Doc's suggestion they had dug this pit to burn the zombies to reduce the chances of disease spreading. There were blacked remains of the last few corpses in the bottom of the hole and they'd probably burn these three new ones once they had a few more to throw on the pile.

  Their morning chores done Doc and Brian returned the cart and went inside. The rest of the group was either in the kitchen getting breakfast ready or setting the table in the dining room. “Hey guys.” Doc called as she picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer and squirted a generous gob of the clear goo into the palm of her hand. “What's for breakfast?” she asked as she rubbed her hands together. Since the snows had gone away they had started running short of water. It wouldn't be long before they had to take another trip to the Potomac River about a quarter mile away and fill their jugs again.

  Judy, a short woman with a crown of curly silver hair, scowled at the younger woman. “Oatmeal. The same damn thing we've had every day for the past four months.” Judy grumbled as she filled a kettle and set it on the stove. Luckily the cozy little bed and breakfast had its own natural gas tank so the stove and the furnace worked.

  “Well maybe we'll get lucky today.” Terrance said pointedly. It had been a long winter cooped up in the house and he was more than ready to go...just about anywhere, really. Brian clapped the taller man no the shoulder as he walked into dining room. He liked the tall black man but he could sometimes couldn't help but needle Judy when she was in a mood.

  Brian grinned when he entered the dining room. Danny was finishing setting the table with Karen the two of them arranging white Styrofoam bowls and plastic spoons on the scratched up wooden table. The redhead, already pale before spending the entire winter indoors, was almost translucent now. Her skin contrasted sharply with the dark blue tee shirt, jeans and denim jacket she wore. The boy was brown haired like his father though he was almost frightfully thin. His third hand sweatshirt and blue jeans hung on him like a scarecrow. The winter had been hard on all of them but...since his mother had died and come back Danny had been a constant secret worry to his father. The boy rushed over and wrapped his arms around his father's leg. Karen settled into a chair as the people in the kitchen brought out the hot water and the plastic container of oatmeal out to the table.

  The group tucked into their meal with a morose intensity as the oatmeal was bland and had the consistency of rubber cement but it beat starving. “So Brian and I are going out to see what we can find today like we talked about.” Doc said around a mouthful of tarry oatmeal. Danny gave his father a frightened look but Doc ignored it. “Anybody need anything specific?”

  “Last time to ask.�
�� Brian added with a small grin. There was the list written on the piece of scrap paper folded up in his pocket but there was the chance that somebody had thought of something they needed during the night. In truth he was more than a little nervous but he had to keep a brave face on for Danny's sake. Besides he and Doc had gone scrounging for supplies before the snow started to fly and everything had come out alright.

  They finished eating and tossed the disposable dinnerware into a trashcan in the kitchen. Doc and Brian each went upstairs to their rooms to collect what they might need for their trip. In a short amount of time Brian came back down with a knapsack over his shoulder and a duffel bag in his hand. He had an Ithaca Model 37 12 gauge shotgun slung over his shoulder loaded with the last five precious buckshot cartridges they had. Danny was waiting for his father at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Hey buddy.” Brian said as he said as he put a hand on the boy's head and pressed it against his side. “Don't worry little man. You and Terrance keep things tight around here, alright?” He let the boy go and the two of them walked outside towards a white Ford F-150 that had obviously seen better days. He balled up the bag and tossed it into the bed of the truck.

  Doc came out onto the porch and looked around until she located Brian and his son standing by the truck. She had a New York Yankees cap pulled low over her eyes and what had earned the woman her moniker in a backpack. Doc had also added a small machete in a nylon sheath to her belt opposite the Glock. The woman tossed her medical kit through the open window of the truck and went to Brian. The two of them helped each other secure thick piles of newspaper around their forearms with duct tape. The two of them made one last check of their gear and weapons, gave Danny a hug then got in the truck and pulled to the section in the fence blocking the driveway.

  They had made a pretty thorough search of the houses and other buildings in the immediate area so they were now heading into unknown territory. Brian looked at the woman sitting on the truck's bench seat opposite him. He noticed her jaw working as she chewed on something. “Hey! You got gum?!” he asked arching an eyebrow at the woman.