Black Tide Rising - eARC

by John Ringo

  Solly stopped in his tracks. Colleen looked up. For at least a block in every direction, there were groups of infected. They were congregating around the edge of the memorial.

  She jerked reflexively. Solly’s grip on her arm tightened.

  “C’mon, turn around!” she whispered urgently.

  Too late. Loud growls rose from the groups nearest them, not even a hundred meters away.

  Solly turned to her. “Sorry boss. One of us is going to make it.” He shot her leg, making her drop into a shallow hole at the edge of the Greenway construction. Colleen could see him as Solly turned and half jogged away as the growling grew in volume.

  Motherfucker…thought Colleen.

  A bright neon green shape drove Solly to his side. The pistol sounded, futilely. Solly screamed briefly.

  The growling was closer and Colleen looked up.

  She did like that green dress.

  The Road to Good Intentions

  Tedd Roberts

  “TURN THAT OFF.” Sally Metzger reached over and turned off the radio before the preacher got fully warmed up in his warnings about the apocalypse and end times. Leonard Morris barely managed to keep from slapping her hand away from the dial. The mood in the house was tense enough as it was, with the reports coming in about folks going nuts and biting people! The President had made some announcement about a new viral disease, but none of that made sense.

  “Sweetie, we should keep it on for the news. I can turn it to another station.”

  Len turned the radio back on, volume low at first, then started hunting for other stations. The emergency radio could bring in multiple bands, and could even be operated by a hand crank in the event of electrical failure. He had deliberately stocked the “mountain retreat” with low-technology items—both to compensate for being up in the mountains, and as a deliberate respite from their usual habits. There were still stations that didn’t carry constant news reports, so he selected one playing classical music in hopes that it would calm the tension.

  “I still don’t understand. Why can’t we just go online? At least I could Skype with my friends,” Sally pouted.

  She hadn’t been too pleased about their sudden departure from the city, nor the prospect of an extended stay in their “weekend getaway cabin.” Len knew that he would lose the argument, no matter what his justification, and frankly, he didn’t want to argue with her. She started warming to her usual litany of complaints: “When you said you wanted a mountain home, I figured you meant one like you see on cable—sweeping vistas, hardwood floors, and a hot tub on the deck! I am so bored of seeing nothing but trees and cooking on a wood stove!”

  That wasn’t entirely fair, he thought. He’d bought the house to get away from the city, and had selected a lot with a decent slope and elevation. It was just that Sally had been set on one of the much more expensive homes and vistas up on the Blue Ridge. In truth, the house had central heating and a satellite dish for TV and computer—it’s just that Len liked getting away from the electronic intrusions that ruined his normal working day. A log fire and lanterns were much more relaxing. Speaking of which, this would be a good time to go chop more wood; it would give him something to do that would get him out of the house and he could just take the radio outside with him. Sally had her phone and could text all her friends about what an idiot he was. She’d be happy and he’d be able to stop thinking and just lose himself in the exertion.

  After an hour of chopping and stacking cordwood, he heard sounds of a vehicle on the road beyond his driveway. There was a gate at the end of the drive, but it was downhill and around a bend so that it was out of view from the house. Unfortunately, that also meant that he couldn’t see the road from his current location.

  Now he heard the sound of breaking glass and bending metal. That could not be good. Hmm, I need a better view. He hurried down the drive and around the slight bend. Right, there it is, opposite side of the road, bumper crunched against a tree.

  Is that…the driver, slumped over the wheel? There’s blood…is he dead?

  Len still had the axe in hand, his subconscious thinking that he might need it to break a window or pry open a door. There was a locked metal bar across the driveway, but a smaller gate was located to one side. He opened the gate and went across to the car to check on the driver. The window was down, but he hesitated to touch the driver, even to see if he was alive. There was a lot of blood, and many cuts around his face and neck. That doesn’t make sense, there’s not that much broken glass or metal. The man wasn’t moving, so Len finally steeled himself to check him for a pulse—there was none.

  The passenger door was open, and Len started around to check beside the car for another injured person when he heard rustling in the trees to his right, he spun, axe in hand to confront a woman struggling through the brush. She was naked, scratched and bloody; there was a large gash on her forehead. Len’s first thought was that she had also been hurt in the accident—that is, until she snarled and lunged at him.

  For a moment, Len froze.

  This isn’t real. She’s dazed, injured, and maybe amnesiac.

  He’d heard the news reports, seen the videos, but it was all far away. After news of the airplane crash in Pennsylvania last week, he’d packed up and brought Sally to the cabin, but that still didn’t quite make it real.

  She’s…she’s one of the INFECTED, finally registered in his brain.

  He was numb, his brain sluggish, despite the self defense training when he was younger and bi-monthly trips to the gun range the past few years. Time slowed, and he felt like he was moving in slow motion as he raised the axe, gripping it in with a hand at each end of the wooden handle—it was all that he could think to do in his sluggish state.

  The woman came at him, growling, and working her jaw as if to bite him. One arm was torn and bloody, the other hung at an odd angle, so she didn’t try to grab him, just lunge and bite. He managed to keep the axe handle in her face, practically in her jaws, but she kept pushing, and he could feel himself losing his balance. The world was still in slow motion, and he saw her finally raise the bloody arm to reach for him at the same time he felt an obstruction behind his left foot. He was going down, and she would be on him immediately.

  As he lost his balance and began to fall backward, there was a shot from behind him and to the side. The woman was knocked back, and turned to look at the shooter, but quickly turned back to Len despite the new hole and spurt of blood from her chest. The first shot hadn’t stopped her, but the next shot took her in the forehead and knocked her back and away from Len. He lay on the ground a moment, feeling dirt, gravel and rocks around and under him, but nothing appeared to be broken or lacerated. He looked up as the approaching man slung a shotgun across his back.

  “You get any blood on you?”

  Len looked down at his hands, arms, and torso. “No…no, I don’t think so.”

  He looked up at Donald Collingsworth, his next door neighbor—“next door” being a relative term in an area where the houses were a half mile apart.

  Don reached out a hand to help him up. “Good, I won’t have to shoot you, too.”

  He wasn’t joking, Len realized. Suspicions were high in this small community; there had already been rumors of folks shooting strangers.

  “Don,” Len said, “Thanks, I don’t know what I’d…well…I don’t know.” He looked down at the axe he’d dropped in the brief encounter; picked it up, swung it a few times. “I never even thought to use this, just didn’t seem like enough time.”

  “‘Ya train and train, but ya never kin train for surprise.’ It’s like huntin’, when a big ol’ buck jumps out of the brush smack dab at you and you just sit there.” Don’s hill country accent was usually pretty thick when he tried not to show his own nerves. He pointed to Len’s belt, then to the holster on his own. “You need to carry, Len. Open carry is legal up here, and ’tween the bears, snakes and the Zee’s, you need t’be able to react fast and pump out lead.”

 
; “I know, but Sally hates it.” He stopped and worked his jaw a few times. “Damn, now I’ve got drymouth something fierce. Come up to the house for some iced tea?” He cocked his head in the direction of the driveway, and Don nodded agreement.

  The two passed through the small gate, and Len swung it closed without latching it.”Best lock that, and you might want to add some fencing to the driveway instead of that bar, too.” Len looked quizzically at Don’s remark, and Don answered. “You and me kin climb fences; I hear tell Zee’s can’t.”

  “You coming from the ‘city’?” Len asked as they walked up the driveway. The small town of Lowgap was about two miles away in straight distance, but double that following the mountain lanes. Don grinned in return, it was a common joke between them—the recently incorporated “City of Lowgap” claimed a bare ten thousand residents, mostly due to extending the city limits five miles out from town to include the Cumberland Knob area of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Boy Scout camp just south of town. They’d met at the university where they both worked, and Don was one of the reasons he’d bought this land and built the cabin. Don had lived up here most of his life, while Len was a relative newcomer, despite spending many summers at the camp, and spring-fall weekends at the hunting club to the west.

  Don looked grim in response. “It’s getting bad in town. Refugees from the cities. I guess we’re lucky that few of them know we’re here. Oh, and Pastor Garber has been asking for you.”

  Len made a face at that. Pastor Dwight Garber of the New Covenant Church of Lowgap, had somehow gotten it stuck in his head that Len was an electrical engineer. It was well known in town that the Pastor wanted to extend the reach of his radio program.

  “Aw, come on, I don’t have time for his nonsense. Can’t someone convince him I’m not that kind of engineer?” He shook his head. “You know Sally doesn’t care for him, so I’ve tried to avoid him as much as I can.”

  Len was most comfortable with religion at arm’s length. The…zeal of the local preacher was just a bit too much for him. “Changing the subject, what else is going on?”

  “Well word is, Mount Airy’s had some trouble with gangs,” Don continued. “Chief Griffith has instituted a curfew there and put up roadblocks. Folks in town are talking about blasting State Road 89 and putting our own roadblock on Hidden Valley.” The state highway was the main road into town; with State Road 1338—Hidden Valley Road—it was the only way into town that didn’t involve the mountain lanes.

  “Oh, crap.” They’d reached the house by now. “Come on in and sit, we need to talk about this. Where are they planning on putting the roadblock?” It was a question that was quite relevant to both Len and Don, since Hidden Valley was also their own route into town. If there was going to be a roadblock, it would affect them and their immediate neighbors.

  They went into the house and Len waved Don over to sit at the kitchen table while he grabbed a couple of glasses, a few ice cubes, and poured them both some iced tea, the standard drink for this part of North Carolina. The glasses had been another argument with Sally and their sons when they visited. Len had insisted that they use—and wash—dishes and glasses, instead of plastic cups and paper plates. There was no sign of Sally, so that probably meant she had gone back to the bedroom with a “headache.” Len knew there was a big argument coming, but he’d deal with that when he had to. Right now, he and Don needed to discuss the roadblock.

  Sitting down at his own chair, Len returned to the previous conversation.

  “So, just where are they planning to block the roads? Clearly if they want a roadblock on Hidden Valley, they’re not blocking 89 that close to town.”

  “Jesse Branch was talking about dropping trees and bulldozing the embankment at the Buck Mountain trail and dropping the bridge at Camp Branch Creek with a roadblock across the road between Mt. Vernon Baptist Church and Skull Camp Fire Station.”

  Don pulled a map out of his backpack and pointed to a spot about a mile from a point where the road cut a pass through the hills surrounding the town. He took a sip of the sweet beverage.

  “They both figures that anyone caught on the other side will know the mountain trails.”

  “Like the camp road?” Len asked. He and hundreds, even thousands, of youth had spent one or more weeks of their summer each year at the Scout camp. It was a well-known and marked road, although it would still be a fair distance to town via that round-about routing.

  “There was talk of a roadblock on Old Lowgap Road and another at the Hidden Valley crossroads, just below the camp entrance. Clay Davis says we can use granite blocks from the quarry over in Mt. Airy and block ’em good and solid.”

  Those two roads were the only other paved roads into town. Aside from the Camp access, there would be no reason for anyone to travel those roads if they didn’t live in the area. Even refugees would be unlikely to find their way to the narrow, hilly roads by accident. “For the crossroads, they’re talking about setting up right at that hairpin turn on Eagle Point Camp Road. The corner is pretty blind, and they can set up a roadblock with clear line of sight from there to the camp entrance. With control of the bridge and crossroads, they can shunt people into the camp or turn them away back to the Interstate.

  Actually, that wasn’t a bad plan…except for one detail.

  “What about the kids? Aren’t the Scouts supposed to start arriving on Sunday?” With the end of the school year across most of the state last week, the summer camp should be starting up soon.

  “There’s a few boys here already, but Dave says the camp is considering sending them home.” David Wright was one of the year-round camp staffers, and lived on the other side of Don’s property from Len. Don would have gotten his information from Dave, who got it directly from the camp administration.

  “With the news and the tone of the President’s weekly radio speech, I hear tell the staff’s mighty nervous about having an incident in a camp full of teenage boys. You heard about that airliner crash—where was that, Beaufort?”

  “Bellefonte. Little town in Pennsylvania, practically a suburb of State College and Penn State.” Len made a face.

  “You know the place?” Don was surprised.

  “Yeah, my grandparents used to live there. Nice town, but small and pretty bad economy for a while. I still have an aunt there.”

  “Any word from her?”

  “No, I talked to Mom a couple of days ago. No word, and she’s pretty worried. She’s been calling the town hall, county seat, state police, and even tried to get my cousin to drive there from Philly.” Len got rather quiet, and looked down at his tea for several minutes before standing up.

  “Y’know, I think I need something stronger.”

  He went to the cabinet for another glass as Don continued.

  “Well, anyway, Dave says they’re still going to enforce a strict ‘no firearms’ policy in the camp proper, but the camp staff and adults in town are expected to carry at all times.” Don caught Len’s eye and made a stern face. “That means you too. If you don’t have a good holster, I’m taking some guys on a run into Mount Airy for supplies, and I can get you one. Also, you need something with a substantial magazine, not that six-shot hand cannon you favor.”

  Len turned away and was reaching under the counter for a bottle. “It has stopping power and is accurate.”

  “It’s a hundred-year old design that only gives you six shots, seven if you carry it loaded—which you should, anyway. But if you hadn’t noticed earlier, center of mass shots don’t stop Zee’s. Head shots only…and under stress, you tend to miss…a lot. So get something you can shoot a lot, and keep shooting. Oh, and you don’t want to be fumbling with safeties or clothing. Get a belt holster, not one of those tucked-in ones.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Don laughed in response to his comment, but now Len was starting to remember the woman at the road. His hands started to shake as he poured whiskey into a glass. He gulped the first drink as they stared to hear thumping sounds from the back of the ho
use. “Oh great, now Sally’s packing. That means she’s planning to head back home. I don’t need this argument right now.”

  He started to pour another drink as a howl and scream sounded from the bedroom. He dropped bottle and glass in the sink, and barely noticed the sounds of breaking glass and the pain in his hand as he heard Sally’s scream “No, get it off, get them off of me! Ahhh!”

  Len barely registered that Don was reaching for his pistol as Sally ran out of the bedroom, eyes wild, clothes ripped and falling off. With a scream that sounded more like an animal than a human, she lunged toward Len, mouth open, teeth bared. Don raised his pistol as Len put his hands up defensively. “No! Stop! Sally! Don, no! Don’t do it!”

  The pistol shot was loud inside the house. Len’s ears were ringing as Sally crashed into his outstretched hands. He couldn’t hear Don shout “No, don’t touch her!” All he could see was Sally falling toward him, and Don shoving him out of the way such that she crashed into the floor.

  Len whirled on Don. “Why did you do that? You didn’t have to!” He put out his fists to pound some sense into his friend, but Don backed away, now pointing the gun at Len.

  “Step back, Len, you’ve got blood on you.” The cold voice shocked Len, and he looked down at his left hand, cut by the broken glass, and covered with blood…his own and Sally’s.

  “Oh, shit.”

  * * *

  He dreamed of light and noise. There was a struggle, shouting and loud arguments. Sally was there, so were Garrett and Sean even though they should have both been away. He was in pain and his hand was burning. Fire, he needed fire. Fire would burn it all away.

  He dreamed of fire—felt the heat and the smell of sulfur. In the fire was the face of a preacher he’d seen as a child, laughing at him and telling him that he was one of the damned. Now it was Sally’s face and she blamed him for taking her to the mountains and away from their home where it was safe. Now his sons stood accusing, pointing at him, telling him that he would burn.