Infected Planet

by Dennis Yates

  "Where?"

  "You know what I'm talking about. On the other side of the McCarthy."

  Jade frowned. "That desert isn't passable on foot. We'd be lucky if we lasted a couple days out there."

  "That's why when we get to Cranston we’re going to look for transportation. Unless of course we find the President's son and everyone goes home."

  "Cutting across the McCarthy is still a long shot."

  "Got a better idea?"

  "Yeah. We find a place to ambush the next truck that comes through here. Take their wheels and weapons and be on our way."

  I smiled. I liked the way Jade thought. "If we don't find anything in town it might come to that."

  ****

  Ramos passed back the rifle scope and scratched nervously at his dark beard. "I don't like this, Brand. It's too damn quiet.”

  The three of us lay on our bellies on a dune just outside of Cranston. We'd been watching the town for two hours and had seen no signs of life.

  Back when the first solar storms fried out everyone's electronics and caused widespread havoc, Cranston had survived mostly intact. Dusters, the first settlers on Lazarus, had chosen to live a simpler way from day one. They'd created tools that didn't rely on computer chips and networks, and they'd figured out how to grow their own food.

  William Cranston, the founder and spiritual leader of the town, had also been responsible for giving the unforgiving planet its name. Most people back then had written off the place as too much trouble to try and make a life on.

  When it was discovered that valuable minerals lay below the planet's surface, Pilgrim drillers came in hordes and soon built sprawling domed cities that pushed early Dusters deep into the harsh desert.

  As the three of us made our way through town, we were further convinced there were no survivors. Whatever had happened here had swept through and taken all life with it.

  Sun bleached skeletons lay scattered in the road, mostly headless and half buried. Fleshless arms jutted from the red sand and grazed our legs with their bony fingers. Even with the respirator on as a precaution, I found myself holding my breath, fearing I'd soon be joining my distant kin where they lay.

  I motioned to the others to split up. It would be better, I thought, to make our sweep as fast as we could before we hunkered down for a while. Something in my gut told me danger wasn't far away. Just because everyone in town was dead didn't mean scavengers from outside wouldn't be coming to see what they could take. We'd already seen enough tire tracks in the sand to cause us worry.

  There weren't any saloons in Cranston, so I didn't bother thinking about abandoned tequila. I passed the darkened windows of blacksmiths and tool stores, a bank, a solar and robotic repair shop. I remembered the bustling boardwalk from a long time ago and the faces of pretty girls watching me from windows while father guided our horse-drawn wagon down Main Street.

  Father never let us stay around for long after we packed up our supplies. We were not welcome but tolerated if we had business. Ever since grandfather had been kicked out of Cranston for wanting to recruit others to join him and fight off the encroaching Federation, our family never found a place to call home. Over time we'd joined with a caravan of desert nomads and lived a life of constant travel and deep poverty. It was there that I met a fellow Duster interested in forming a gang. Ramos and I were like brothers now.

  I was startled by movement to my right and took the safety off the pea shooter the Federation called a rifle. Squatting between a post office and a jail was a paint stripped house with its door hanging loosely by a hinge.

  My eyes were drawn toward two slouching figures sitting in rocking chairs on the porch. I couldn't tell if it was the wind playing tricks on me or if the chair's occupants were actually causing the movement themselves.

  I walked faster with my rifle half raised. But as I got closer, I realized the rockers were two skeletons with holes blown out of their skulls. My heart sank. While I stared at them a breeze kicked through and caused sand to dribble from their gaping jaws. My eyes followed one of the skeleton's arms drooped over the armrest. Its clawed hand hovered above a dark object resting on the heat-splintered porch.

  I hopped up for a better look. When I recognized it was a pistol my heart thudded with excitement. I bent between my silent hosts and retrieved it from the floor. It had been ages since I'd held a real gun. I quickly slipped it into my belt and moved through the doorway.

  The house looked like it hadn't yet been looted. Except for what damage the elements had inflicted inside, it appeared to be virtually undisturbed. I didn't waste any time and headed straight for the kitchen. Blew dust off cans of food I found on a shelf and stuffed them in my rucksack. I noticed an empty chili can in the sink. The dark red sauce along the edge still looked wet.

  Better get moving, I thought. Find the others before there's trouble.

  I stopped mid-stride. Hanging on the wall was a photograph I believed to be of the dead people outside. A middle-aged couple sitting on the porch smiling. A scruffy puppy at their feet chewing on a bone bigger than itself.

  I removed the picture and buffed the glass clean with my shirtsleeve. I couldn't stop staring at the woman's haunting green eyes, wondered where I'd seen her before. Had we met in the past?

  I heard a loud thump come from the single bedroom and dropped the picture on the floor. A sickening crunch of glass followed.

  "Who's there?" I shouted, fumbling with the unfamiliar weapon in my hands.

  A screaming bear-sized man shot out of the bedroom and knocked me to the floor. Before I could stop him, he snatched the rifle from my hands and tossed it across the room. The respirator was ripped from my face and also thrown. I barely caught my breath before fists started raining down on me.

  My attacker outweighed me by least a hundred pounds. Dressed in overalls without a shirt underneath and muscled like a Duster. Late teens or early twenties, hard to tell with the bushy red beard. When it occurred to him I'd given up resisting, he stopped to gulp air.

  "What do you want?" I slurped. My tongue was swimming in a mouth brimming with blood. The pain this big kid had delivered made me wish I was back in the cottony darkness of my deep freeze chamber. Painless, eternal sleep sounded much better all of a sudden...

  "You're with the Federation," he spat. "Why didn't you come sooner to help? Why did you leave us here to die?"

  "I'm not Federation," I said.

  The boy stabbed the insignia patch on my jacket with a filthy finger and grunted. I glanced down at it and then back up to meet his smoldering gaze.

  "Believe me or not, I was a prisoner. Still am, I guess is the truth. They killed me, put me on ice, then brought me back a long time after. I can't help what they dressed me in. They wouldn't give me my old clothes back."

  "Then what are you doing here?"

  "I should ask you the same thing," I said, wiping blood from my lips. My head was still feeling woozy after the beating it had taken. "I have to find the President’s son. Before whoever is left alive on this planet is fried to hell."

  "Why does the Federation want to destroy us? We’ve done nothing to provoke them. They were the ones who fled because they couldn’t adapt.”

  "Because they can't afford a ground campaign to wipe the rest of the slate clean. The Pilgrims are desperate for fresh resources. They think dropping a payload of bombs is the answer.”

  "And what about you? I suppose you'll get a ticket out of here along with a big bonus?

  "Only if I find what they want. Most likely I'll be toasted here with the rest of you unlucky bastards."

  "So, you don't trust them?"

  I shook my head. "Of course, I don't. But the alternative to coming here was to end up back in the organ bank."

  The boy's face softened as he mulled over what I'd said. He stood and pulled me up. I walked over and grabbed the respirator, saw that it was cracked beyond repair.

  I muttered curses under my breath. If the kid had heard me, he pretended n
ot to. "What's your name?" I asked.

  "Trevor."

  "It's nice to meet you, Trevor. Name's Brand."

  I watched him hang the picture back on the wall. He picked the broken shards out of the frame and let them tinkle against the floor.

  "I used to know these people. They were good to my family."

  "Do you know why they're dead?"

  When he turned, I saw his face had given way to sadness. I wanted to ask him why he was still alive and everyone else we'd seen were skeletons. It wasn't going to be an easy task. His gaze first went a thousand yards past me before drifting back to my face.

  "Everyone knew it was coming."

  "What?"

  "The evil wind. It's what brought the plague..."

  "So they got infected?"

  "No. They never even got a chance to get sick. It was the fear of getting it that killed them. When shit the fan, they saw no other way except to check out before it happened. There were mass suicides for a solid week.”

  "But you chose to live," I said.

  The boy laughed. “Yeah... Lucky me.”

  Chapter 3

  "You never told me what you were hiding from," I said.

  Trevor had been busy shoving jerky into his mouth. He hadn't offered me any. He stopped chewing and stared up at me in disbelief. My gut told me I could trust him, although I couldn’t name a reason why.

  "You haven't seen them yet?" Trevor asked.

  "Seen what?"

  "The ones that changed."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Trevor looked incredulous. "They really did keep you out of the loop, didn't they?"

  "I was told there'd been a civil war and many people had died. I was never told anything about people getting sick and changing."

  "You won't believe it at first. But when people die from the virus they come back."

  "From the dead? How could that happen?"

  "I was hoping you came here to tell me."

  "I have no idea. Besides, we haven't seen any of them."

  "Don't worry,” Trevor grinned thinly. “It'll be soon enough... and when you do see them you'll think you're going mad. Always remember the only way you can stop them is by destroying their brains. Otherwise they’ll keep coming to eat you."

  "Sounds like fun," I said with a weak smile. “As if Lazarus didn’t already have enough hazards to worry about.”

  "Are there others with you?" Trevor asked.

  "Yes. We split up to cover more ground."

  "Then where are your vehicles? I didn't hear a sound when you came into town."

  "We don't have any. We think the sandstorm last night slammed our transport pod into a cliff. Its beacon must have been burned up with the rest of it because we haven't heard scratch. Do you know of any wheels we could use? There must be some around that haven’t been stolen or turned to scrap."

  Trevor shook his head. "I know of a place. But what's there is only junk. It's more like a graveyard than anything else."

  "Will you take me there?"

  "I guess so. But I warn you it will be a waste of time."

  "We'll have to see what Ramos thinks."

  "Ramos?"

  "A friend of mine. He has an uncanny gift with anything mechanical. I’ve seen him rebuild truck engines and give spacecraft tune-ups.”

  "And if he's able to make something run? Then what?”

  "We're going to cross the McCarthy.”

  Trevor’s face went several shades paler. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Why would you even think about messing with the McCarthy?”

  “I don’t have the luxury of avoiding it, that’s why. Time is running out and we need to get some decent weapons and finish what we came here to do."

  "I'd like to tag along with you guys if it's okay."

  "Maybe you should meet them first," I said, wiping blood from the corners of my mouth. Despite beating me to a pulp, the big kid was starting to grow on me. He’d reminded me of my younger self. Spontaneous and rarely level headed. Yet despite all the stuff he’d been through, he still possessed a trace of humanity.

  Trevor studied me carefully. "I'm willing to put up with just about anyone's company right now, so long as they're not dead."

  "Sounds reasonable to me.”

  ****

  The kid only had a crowbar and I was thankful he hadn't used it on me. There was nothing better I could lend him. All I had was the rifle. As for the pistol I'd found on the porch, I left it on the fireplace mantle. Upon closer inspection, it had turned out to be nearly rusted into one piece and hopelessly beyond repair. Besides, it belonged here with its owners. I had no right to it.

  We decided before we left to bring in the couple from the porch and give them a more decent place to rest. It was the least we could do in return for the canned food and bottle of powdery aspirin I planned to take for my aching head.

  Trevor and I wrapped the corpses in blankets and carried their brittle remains into the small bedroom and lay them side by side like it was their wedding night. When we finished, I closed the door quietly as though not to disturb them any further and we headed back outside. The sun was hotter than ever now and felt as if it had cut a hole into my skull and was directly cooking my brain.

  "Are you going to tell me what happened?" I asked as we walked. I looked over and saw a wave of emotion disturb the boy's face like a rock thrown into a still pond. He waited until the ripples passed before answering me.

  "I wasn't here."

  "What?"

  "I was down in a mine when shit happened."

  "But I figured you for a farmer," I said, surprised.

  Trevor's eyes darkened. "Was a farmer. Never liked it very much though. After my folks and I had a big fight about it, I left and started working for some Pilgrim miners. I knew they were crooked but the pay was good. I'd heard if I saved enough money I might be able to afford a ride off this damn rock."

  "Did anyone else in Cranston know about the illegal mine?" I asked.

  The boy nodded. "Let's just say there were many silent backers who helped keep other people from finding out."

  "So where are these miners now?"

  "A day after the viral wind came through, a ship arrived and got the remaining crew out."

  "Were they sick?"

  "Not then. People don’t start showing signs until about ten days after they’re infected."

  "Then there's a good chance those miners got it before they left," I said.

  "I guess so," the boy shrugged. "Bastards deserved it for leaving me in that mine shaft to die. Do you think the virus has already spread beyond Lazarus?"

  "Anything's possible. But if the Federation finds out about the infected miners, they might be willing to torch Lazarus without the President’s son safely returned. Now where were you again when all this happened?"

  "Underground. There'd been an accident in the mine. A group of us were coming up when our cable snapped. I never hit bottom thanks to some fallen beams that caught me on the way down, but the other guys kept going. I never thought I'd be able to climb out but I did."

  "Makes you one lucky son of a bitch," I said.

  "If you say so. Sometimes I wish I'd ended up like the others.”

  “You don’t want to say that,” I replied.

  “This place isn’t at all what it used to be. It’s changed, Brand. In terrible ways.”

  “Everything goes to hell eventually.”

  “You don’t understand... I thought things were bad when dead people started changing and killing the living. But when the remaining living ones started killing other living ones, I knew hell had arrived."

  "What did you do?"

  "The only thing I could think of. I got out of town and hid in a stocked cave I knew of and waited until I thought it was safe to come back. Boy was I a fool.”

  "How long have you been back in Cranston?"

  "A month or so. Enough to sort of learn my way around this mess. We've got two different ki
nds of dangers you need to be aware of now. The living and the living dead."

  ****

  I spent the next several minutes mulling over what the boy had said as we walked through Cranston. I wondered if anyone I knew had escaped the sickness like he had. I thought about my younger brother and sister. I hadn't seen them since the time I'd stopped by in the middle of the night over thirteen years ago. I was a wanted man and I couldn't stay for long for fear of putting them in danger.

  Could they still be alive on the other side of the McCarthy?

  Dirty liar. You know the truth.

  "Brand, look!" shouted the Trevor.

  The sun must have been melting my brain because I'd slipped deep into the past without even realizing it. At the sound of Trevor's voice, the ghosts of my siblings waved solemn goodbyes. When I refocused, I saw the boy pointing up the street with his crowbar.

  My heart knocked in my chest when I recognized my crew hurrying toward us.

  "It's okay," I said. "They're with me."

  As soon as they were close enough I saw the fear in their eyes. A cloud of red dust trailed in their wake, and for a moment I thought I was only imagining the horde lurching behind them.

  "We need to get out of here," Trevor insisted. "They might be slow, but it doesn't mean they can’t catch you if you act like an idiot."

  His warning had no effect. I could do nothing but stand in the middle of the road, transfixed by the scene before me -- an approaching tsunami of deceased human beings covered in flies. I thought I heard the distant sound of hooves kicking up sand, but saw no horses navigating the wave.

  We all knew about the rotter virus that once swept across Earth and brought the human race to its knees. But to actually see it in person was more horrifying than I could have imagined. The sounds the dead made was nothing I’d ever heard before, and the experience clutched at my insides with a mixture of revulsion and sadness. A feeling, I knew, that tequila could never erase.

  Many of the dead looked like they'd been going for a while. Some had ragged chunks missing from them that exposed bones and gaping organ cavities. I saw a woman walking with a metal rod protruding from her belly and a boy riddled with puss-weeping gunshot wounds in his chest and throat. Fattened buzzards hopped from corpse to corpse, tearing away whatever flesh remained from the heads, faces and arms. Sometimes the birds would bloody each other for the tastier scraps and I’d seen ripped scalps in their claws as they flew.