by John Ringo
Burning. He was burning up. Cleansing fire.
* * *
It was dark and damp. Len felt like he hurt all over. The darkness was because his eyed felt glued shut. He tried to raise his left hand to wipe his eyes and felt some sort of resistance. Aside from that, he couldn’t feel his hand at all. He tried to raise his right hand—after all, he could feel that one—but it seemed to be tied down.
“Easy there, Brother Leonard.”
The voice came from the side of the bed. A hand reached out with a damp cloth and wiped his face. Opening his eyes, he could see a low ceiling of the type of tiles often seen in classrooms and public buildings. Turning his head, he saw that the room was rather large and filled with cots. Only about half the cots were occupied, but all appeared to be equipped with ropes to tie down the patients. He started to protest, but his mouth was dry and easily as stuck as his eyelids had been.
“Be calm, my son.”
There still wasn’t a face to go with the voice, but someone held up a cup and straw. They first dribbled some water on his lips, then put the straw in his mouth.
“Moderation, Brother Leonard. Just a few sips at first.”
Len recognized the voice now, and turned his head—wincing at a tender spot on his scalp. Nevertheless, it was enough to see a smooth, round face with twinkling blue eyes. From what he knew, the man had to be over seventy, but you would never know it to look at his face.
“Pastor…” Len paused and coughed. “Pastor Garber.” More coughing, and he was in danger of either spitting up the water, or choking on it. “Sir,” he managed, “May I sit up?”
The cleric nodded and motioned to someone out of sight. Someone Len couldn’t quite see came over and untied the straps holding his arms. Pastor Garber helped him sit up and placed some pillows behind his back for support. Len tried to reach for the water cup, but the motion made him dizzy, and he almost knocked it out of the Pastor’s hand.
The slight motion made his head spin, and the older man gently pushed the hand away and held the cup up for Len to drink, all while supporting his back with the other hand.
“How? How long?” Len managed without coughing this time, although his voice was low and hoarse.
“You’ve been very sick, my son. You have had a fever and convulsions for almost a week. There were fears that you would be Lost and go to the Other Side.”
The Pastor’s gentle tone and manner surprised him. He didn’t know Garber well, being only a part-time resident despite the years he’d been coming to the area. Once or twice he had tuned past the low-power radio program for the outlying mountain communities. For Len, that all added up to the type of hellfire-and-brimstone radio preacher that Sally had been complaining about. This aspect of the man didn’t seem to fit the image.
Sally. Tears came to Len’s eyes, and he started to cough again.
“Easy, my son, you had the fever, but you came through. The doctor says perhaps one in one hundred survive the fever. You are the first, here in town, although he has had two patients over at the Camp. I call that a miracle.”
Garber helped Len into a better sitting position and allowed him to hold the cup. As Len continued to sip…and think…the Pastor retrieved the damp cloth and went back to wiping Len’s face, neck and arms.
Len looked down at the bandages on his left arm. It didn’t hurt, but he couldn’t feel anything, either. He amputated. That son-of-a-bitch shot my wife then cut my hand off. Probably used my own axe to do it! It didn’t matter that the action might have saved his life, all Len could remember was seeing the hole in Sally’s head and her blood on his hands.
Garber must have noticed the grimace. He certainly couldn’t have missed Len staring at the bandages. It didn’t take much to figure out the direction of his thoughts.
“No, it wasn’t amputated. You still have your hand, but it was badly cut. Brother Donald says you poured most of a bottle of whisky over it right away. He had to stop you from trying to cut it off or burn it.”
Huh. I don’t remember any of that. Why don’t I remember? People aren’t supposed to get sick that fast. Len turned to Garber and finally asked the question. “What happened?”
“You broke a glass and cut your hand. Your wife was Lost, and Brother Donald had to deliver the Final Grace. Her blood got on your hand and you panicked, started trying to clean the blood off, then insisted that you needed to amputate your hand. You were making the cuts worse, so Brother Donald hit you over the head with the flat of your axe.”
Ouch. Perhaps that explained the tender spot on his head.
“He wanted to take you to the hospital, but the Sheriff has been blocking roads into Mt. Airy. There was a large disturbance that day, and they were overloaded from an explosion south of town. He took you to the Camp instead. Fortunately, the Doctor had already come in for the summer. This is the New Covenant Fellowship Hall, by the way. You were treated at the camp, stitched and bandaged. Since you are a resident, we moved you back here when the fever took hold.”
“So.” Len coughed again, but his throat was beginning to feel the effects of the water. “So, you tie people up in case they…turn?”
“Regrettably, yes. Most die when the fever peaks. A few become…something else. Lost. But you are a miracle, young man, A Rainbow After The Flood. God has not forgotten us…or you.” The conversation made Len uncomfortable. He was waiting for the Bible zealot of his recollection to emerge, but this gentle man continued defy his prejudice.
“I’d like to go home.” Len put the cup aside and tried to rise, discovering that his legs were still secured to the cot.
“Alas, my son, that is unwise. Here, I’ll untie those.” Garber reached down and quickly released the bonds. It was a simple slip knot, but Len supposed it was more skill than an…infected would have. “You are still weak, and your house is a bit of a mess. You were quite—adamant—about injuring yourself, and fought with Brother Donald. He would be pleased to see you, by the way, now that you are awake.”
“No. I…can’t. I can’t see him. He shot…no, I realize he had to, but I just can’t.”
“You must forgive him, my son. He administered Grace, nothing more. Your wife was already Lost. At any rate, because he brought you for medical care and you have been at the Camp or here, no one went back to your house for several days. It is not pleasant.” Len started to protest, but Garber held firm. “We will have someone fetch what you need, but you should not go back there, at least until you are much better recovered. There is a guest room in the parsonage and you should stay there. Now rest, my son, we will all need our strength in the days to come.”
* * *
Len was moved out of the “ward” and into one of the parsonage guest rooms the evening after his fever broke. The doctor had come by and changed the bandages and checked his temperature, heart, lungs and reflexes. Len was the third patient in the small community that had survived the disease so far, although the other two were still coming out of the fever and their long-term survival was not guaranteed.
New Covenant was typical of small country churches, with a sanctuary upstairs, large hall downstairs and a two-story parsonage next door. Built to serve the needs of the Church as well as the Pastor, family rooms were upstairs, with two guest rooms downstairs to serve visiting clergy, church administrators or persons in need of temporary shelter. Len had one of those rooms and shared a bathroom with the other guest—Tracey Harris, a local woman who had grown up in the town before leaving to become a missionary to Indonesia. She had surprised the townsfolk when she arrived inquiring after friends and family after having walked all the way from Charlotte.
It took several days to regain his strength, but once Len was able to move around on his own, Pastor Garber insisted that he come visit the patients in the makeshift ward in the church basement. Just seeing a survivor seemed to give some hope, but Len noticed that he was still eyed with some suspicion by the large men with rifles and pistols that stood guard around the room. Each after
noon, the Pastor and Tracey would travel out to the other homes, farms, checkpoints and roadblocks. Len would accompany them for as long as he had the stamina, and the more he saw, the more he realized that Garber played an important role in encouraging and uniting the community.
In the evening, the three residents would sit in the parsonage and listen to the radio news. The minister had insisted that Len call him Dwight, or even Brother Dwight, but Len could not bring himself to do so. He still struggled with the reality of the kind, concerned clergyman compared to the mental image of the Bible-thumper that Len could still not quite shake.
There was no longer any coherent programing on the television. Some satellite stations still had pre-recorded broadcasts, but gradually they were all being replaced by static. The Pastor had a ham radio that had belonged to his son, but it hadn’t been used since before that young man had failed to return from Afghanistan. Tracey had tinkered with it, but the base station’s aerial had been damaged several winters ago. One of the locals had brought Len’s multi-band radio from his house—along with clothes, toiletries and other personal items—so the three sat at the kitchen table each evening to listen to reports from the outside world:
A science fiction convention in Charlotte had dissolved in chaos when locals shot and killed several attendees who’d dressed in “zombie” costumes.
A nuclear power plant in South Carolina had to shut down when one of the operators “turned” on her shift in the control room. Protesters at the gates had been severely injured when several Infected fell upon the crowd.
A concert in New York had ended in hundreds of deaths when they were attacked by Infected drawn to the light and sound.
All airline flights were grounded, passenger trans were cancelled and countless thousands died in the panic to evacuate the larger cities.
Cellular and wired telephone services were failing as the ground stations and control centers no longer had anyone to service and maintain the systems.
Every night, Len tried to dial three phone numbers: his sons, Garrett and Sean, and his mother. His parents lived in Ohio, and there had been no word from them since before Sally…turned. Garrett lived near Washington, D.C. and worked for a federal agency as an analyst. He seldom spoke of his work, but in their last phone call he confided that he was working with a team trying to trace the source of the “Z-disease.” Sean was a student in Wilmington, and was supposed to have come up to the mountain cabin, but after hearing about his mother, had announced intentions to get on a boat and head offshore. The last contact with any of his family had been early-June, but he tried nonetheless.
One week later, the lights went out.
* * *
The town had been prepared for the loss of power. Most households had candles, lanterns and wood stoves as well as emergency generators. There was water from wells, but also from spring-fed cisterns up in the mountains. Lowgap received its power from an fuel oil-fired power plant near Dobson, but in recent years, the county electric co-op had been encouraging the installation of windmills and solar panels. As families fell sick and homes were abandoned, the townspeople, under Pastor Garber’s encouragement, began to salvage individual installations and move or connect them to key buildings in town. A several-acre solar-cell test facility had been installed at a state agricultural facility between Lowgap and Mt. Airy. It, too, was salvaged and installed on a south-facing hillside near the Scout Camp. The power had to be severely rationed and at times it was barely enough to keep the lights on at the church. More severe shortages were certain to come.
The night was dark and cloudy. Len considered the fact that in the past, such low clouds would have reflected light from Mount Airy to the north, and more distant Winston-Salem to the south. Now the dark night was lit only by the lanterns the small group had brought with them.
It was a risk coming so close to the highway, but one of the Lowgap residents had driven for the company for several years and convinced Pastor Garber that it would be worth it if they could salvage some of the tanks and one or more of the propane-fueled company vehicles. Having fuel to cook and run the occasional generator meant that they could save gasoline and diesel for the vehicles. Preserving the ability to transport food and supplies could be the difference between life and death for Lowgap.
Len sat behind the wheel of a pickup truck that had carried men and women to the job, frustrated that lingering weakness and stiffness in his left arm consigned him to be driver and lookout. Should the Zee’s appear, it would be his job to draw them away from the site with lights and noise—and hopefully get away himself. Blackened trucks, and buildings told the tale of an explosion some weeks ago. Fear of leakage and damaged propane tanks scattered over the fifty-acre facility had kept scavengers away, but he could see the dim red lights of his fellows over next to a building that looked mostly intact.
The CB radio crackled with static. “Pete, we got something here. Three tanker trucks, doesn’t look like the fire got here.”
More voices joined the conversation.
“Pete, I’ve got a truck of them little tanks you see at the gas stations.”
“There’s lots of the big tanks, but they’re all empty.”
“There’s a few cars and a pickup over here. How do I tell if they run on propane?”
“This tanker’s almost empty, that one’s better than half full, the other is full.”
“Listen up, every one.” That was Pete Long, the person responsible for this salvage party. “The little tanks are good, we can use them for cooking if they are full. Pick them up, it they weigh more than five pounds, they’re probably fresh, shine a light on the tank, if it looks freshly painted, it should be full. Take only full tanks, we can refill what we’ve got but don’t need any empties.
“Forget the empty tanker, same reason. We’ll take what we’ve got, it’s not worth turning on the transfer compressors and attracting the Zee’s. As for or the vehicles—look at the gas filler cap—if it looks funny, it’s for propane, not gasoline. Take the pickup, but we’re only interested in a car if it has high clearance or four-wheel drive.”
“How about a station wagon?” asked the voice that had inquired about the vehicles.
“Sure, good. We can use it to haul stuff.”
Len waited for the click that meant Pete had released his microphone. “Pete, it’s Len. What if you pumped propane until any Zee’s show up, then you shut down, I draw them off, and y’all go the other way back to town?”
“Too risky, we have no idea how many will show up and there’s no guarantee you can draw enough off.”
Len was preparing a retort when Pastor Garber opened the passenger door and slid into the pickup. “No, he’s right. I know you want to contribute, but your time will come. You are our miracle, and just being here gives us hope.” The dome lights had been switched so that they didn’t turn on when a door was opened, and attract…unwanted visitors. Len could see the Pastor’s face, and it was obvious from his words that the Pastor could see Len’s. “I know you don’t believe in miracles, but these people need to believe. It may be the only thing that keeps them together.”
The two waited in silence, until they heard low engine sounds and six vehicles approached out of the dark—two propane tankers, a stake-bed truck filled with cylinders, a pickup and a car that looked like a cross between an SUV and a station wagon. The sixth vehicle, Len would later learn was a half-full fuel truck that had been delivering diesel and gasoline for operating the compressors and delivery fleet.
The drive back to Lowgap was harrowing. The direct way back would have been I-74 to NC89, then the detour through the Hidden Valley checkpoint. Unfortunately, the Interstate was blocked by wrecked and abandoned cars, and it ran too close to Mount Airy for comfort. The back roads would take them through Ararat and around Dobson, turning a thirty minute trip into nearly three hours at night with no lights. The older boys that had come early and been stuck at the Scout Camp had been put to work hiking around the small towns
and back roads throughout the region to gather information on the neighboring communities. Dobson was large enough to have a sizeable population of Infected, but the Scout reports said that the old Prison Camp Road would skirt the city and avoid most of the Zee’s.
The convoy mostly encountered isolated Zee’s on the road, easily outrun, or dispatched by men armed with hunting rifles that rode in the back of the pickups. Maneuvering trucks along the twisting country roads was a constant worry, but the only incident occurred around the half-way point near Dobson. The back road joined Old US-601 at an acute angle, and the fuel truck nearly jack-knifed on the turn. The lights and noise necessary to get the truck unstuck attracted a mob of Zee’s out of the town of White Plains. Len had to drive his truck—with most of the shooters—closer to the mob to keep them away from the men struggling with the tanker. By the time the word came over the radio that the convoy was ready to move, Zee’s were grabbing onto the tailgate. Fortunately, they had about three miles of good road on 601 to get up to speed and lose the Zee’s before turning on the Prison Camp road toward home.
The sky was beginning to lighten as the convoy returned to Lowgap. The propane, like the food supplies that had been obtained in other “salvaging” expeditions (Pastor Garber refused to allow them to be called “raids”) was delivered to the Lowgap Grocery where they had a tank that could be filled from the trucks and a compressor for refilling the small cylinders. Last night’s haul should suffice until winter, and surely the disease would run its course and allow recovery efforts by then.
* * *
He dreamed that night that he was back on the road. Len was driving the truck and being chased by Zee’s. He tried to step on the gas, but the truck just wouldn’t go any faster. The Zee’s were gaining on them while Pastor Garber and Don Collingsworth stood in the bed of the pickup throwing things at the approaching mob.
The pastor was throwing some sort of liquid that burned the Zee’s when it touched. Garber turned and grinned at him. “Holy water,” he said, “They need to be cleansed…”