CANNIBAL KINGDOM

by John L. Campbell

  There were tears in Devon’s eyes, and he didn’t bother to wipe them away. Marcus had said he was in remission, not fully immune like Devon and the First Family, but that his body was successfully fighting the Trident infection and that he would be fine. Had he lied? Was his body now losing that fight? Or was what Devon was seeing just part of the battle? And was it like this for everyone supposedly in remission? He didn’t know, and wondered if anyone did.

  Would Marcus turn, and then turn on him? The agent’s pistol was heavy in his hand. Protector. Friend. Big brother. Could he do it, shoot the man who had saved his life numerous times?

  You’re holding his gun. The answer must be yes.

  He didn’t want the answer to be yes, didn’t want to hurt his friend. A tear fell from his cheek, landing on the black steel of the automatic. Out here on this country road, with a magnificent, late fall sky above, Devon had never felt so alone.

  Pull him out of the truck and leave him on the side of the road.

  Devon shook his head in disgust at even having had the thought.

  That’s what Marcus would tell you to do. Avoid the risk that he might turn, and spare yourself the grief of having to kill him.

  The boy looked at himself in the rearview. That was the coward’s way out, and he was no coward. If Marcus Handelman turned into a monster and he had to shoot him, then he would do it. But he’d be damned if he’d just abandon the man. Devon wanted to be a Marine, and they didn’t leave their people behind.

  A hundred miles. I can do this.

  Devon was too young for a driver’s license, hadn’t even started Driver’s Education yet, but that didn’t mean he was helpless. He’d driven go-carts, and at Camp David his dad had allowed him to drive the golf carts everyone used to get around. The prep school maintenance truck was bigger, heavier and could go much faster, but the principles of driving were the same; gas, brakes, steering. And besides, it wasn’t like he had to worry about other traffic.

  From the roadmap it was clear where he needed to go, and Devon was sure there would be a doctor once they got there. Of course there would be; they would have the best available because that was where his father would go. He put the pistol on the bench seat beside him, started the engine and pulled back onto the road, going slow until he got a feel for it. It was easy, and he smiled as he headed west.

  In less than an hour, Devon would be fighting for his life.

  One was a small town banker, a wide, fleshy man with thinning hair and wearing a short-sleeve Yankees jersey that revealed thick, hairy forearms. The other was a soccer mom in her late thirties dressed in a blood-splattered sweater. A woman who’d never had so much as a parking ticket, was now a cop-killer. Both were covered in scratches from their run through the woods. The banker’s face bloomed like a cherry from the effort, and the soccer mom had dead leaves in her hair.

  They had just emerged from the trees and stepped onto the asphalt. Not far away, an eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed and tipped over, but not before it had slammed into a red Hyundai Santa Fe, wrapping the economy SUV around a tree and killing everyone inside. The air smelled of oil, spilled gas and radiator coolant. A sign off to one side of the road, covered in the seals of the Kiwanis, Lions and Chamber of Commerce, welcomed travelers to the town of Wellsville.

  “He deserved it,” the soccer mom said. It was the only thing she had said since they ran from the soccer field, and she had already repeated it a dozen times.

  The banker’s eyes were glazed with shock. “Should have canceled practice. Coaches should have canceled.” His voice was dreamy and distant, and he wasn’t talking to the soccer mom.

  “He deserved it,” the woman replied as they stood staring at the fatal traffic accident that completely blocked the road.

  “Mary…” the banker whispered. It wasn’t the soccer mom’s name, but she wasn’t listening anyway. Her head was full of screaming.

  The craziness occurring around the country was something happening in other places, not here in sleepy Wellsville. Weekend girl’s soccer practice for the ten-to-twelve-year-olds had gone on as usual, the only exception being that a sheriff’s deputy had parked his patrol car on the grass next to the white sideline, and stood leaning against a fender watching the girls play. Also, about a quarter of the families had kept their daughters home. But not the banker, and not the soccer mom.

  “He deserved it,” soccer mom said, staring at the overturned tractor-trailer and still gripping the bloody, short-handled landscaping shovel she’d used not long ago.

  “Mary,” the banker sobbed, tears rolling down his round cheeks.

  It had been fast and confusing. A few girls sitting on the sidelines because they weren’t feeling well suddenly ran onto the field, bearing several of their teammates to the ground before beginning to claw and bite. Some parents had done the same, attacking kids and startled adults alike. Then a pack of snarling, silver-eyed Wellsville residents charged in from across the street, running between the parked minivans and SUVs and immediately joining in the slaughter. There was screaming and snarling. Blood. Cries of the dying.

  Soccer mom’s daughter Mackenzie was taken down and savaged, but soccer mom had lost sight of her in the madness and hadn’t seen her go down. When she did see Mackenzie again, the girl was back on her feet, teeth bared, growling as she clawed the eyes out of a cowering girl in a soccer uniform before biting out her throat. Now standing only ten feet away and too stunned to scream or even move, soccer mom had been frozen in place, then roughly shoved aside. The sheriff’s deputy was there, firing his gun.

  Firing at Mackenzie.

  Killing Mackenzie.

  Some municipal worker had left his spade planted in the mulch of a sapling over the weekend, and without conscious thought soccer mom seized it and hit the deputy in the side of the head with the blade-like edge. There had been a red explosion and the man fell with a grunt, but soccer mom kept hitting, straddling the fallen deputy and swinging again and again, screaming her daughter’s name, turning the thing beneath her into something that looked like a man’s body with a big lump of raw, ground beef sticking out of a uniform shirt.

  Then the others had come, adults and children with bloody hands and faces, many of them with bright, luminescent eyes. Soccer mom ran, fled for the nearby trees and was quickly joined by the stout, wheezing banker, both of them driven by primal fear, their daughters forgotten for the moment.

  The others had chased them, but lost contact in the trees.

  The banker sagged to his knees on the asphalt now, and buried his face in his hands, his big body wracked with sobs. Soccer mom didn’t notice.

  “He deserved it,” she muttered, brushing a clump of bloody hair out of her eyes. She left a crimson smear across her forehead.

  From the other side of the overturned truck came a loud, SCREEE…SCREE-SCREEE, and soccer mom’s head snapped up at the familiar noise. Behind her, a handful of children burst from the trees, howling as soon as they saw the two people on the road, rushing toward them.

  Soccer mom ran, leaving the kneeling, sobbing banker behind as she headed for the other side of the jackknifed tractor-trailer.

  Devon decided he liked driving, as he’d known he would. It was fun, especially on an empty road, the maintenance truck climbing up and down the rolling terrain without the worry of traffic. He kept it at a steady fifty-miles-per-hour, aching to go faster but smart enough to recognize that he was too inexperienced a driver to handle a sudden obstacle or situation at speeds any higher than that. The only other vehicle he’d seen was a silver four-door headed the other way at nearly twice his speed. As it passed, he caught a glimpse of a frightened-looking grandfather at the wheel and kids in the back with their faces pressed against the side window, looking at him.

  In the passenger seat of the truck, Marcus slept. He didn’t seem to be sweating as much, or at least not tossing and turning as he had been a short while ago, and Devon decided he’d take that as a good sign. He didn’t want to th
ink about the alternatives.

  His pleasure at driving his first real vehicle abruptly evaporated when he came over a hill and saw what was in the field off to his right. A commercial airliner had gone down, its wreckage strewn for hundreds of yards across scorched earth, but some of the fuselage still recognizable, as well as a high tail bearing the American Airlines logo. People stumbled around the crash site, but whether they were shell-shocked survivors or cannibals looking to feed on the dead Devon couldn’t say, and wasn’t sticking around to find out. He went a little faster, and was glad when he could no longer see the crash in his rearview mirrors. Seeing it in his head however, was something the speed of the truck couldn’t put behind.

  Open farmland passed into wooded areas, where the hills were steeper and the road curvier. A sign read, 30 MPH AHEAD – REDUCE SPEED. He did, dropping to thirty, and that was what saved him from dying on impact. The maintenance truck came around a sharp curve to find an overturned tractor-trailer blocking the road, its wheels and dark chassis like a mouth about to swallow Devon as he rushed toward it.

  He let out a cry, straight-armed the steering wheel and stomped the brakes. The tires made a SCREEE…SCREE-SCREEE sound as the rubber slid across the asphalt, coming to a stop a mere five feet from the jackknifed truck.

  “Holy shit,” Devon whispered, gripping the wheel hard enough to make his knuckles turn white. And then he saw her, a woman who appeared to be wearing a fright wig of dried leaves and blood, coming around the cab of the eighteen-wheeler, a short, bloody shovel in one hand. Her eyes locked on Devon and she shouted “Get-out-get-out-GET-OUT!” as she ran.

  In the space of a half-second, Devon told himself that the eyes of the infected he’d seen had either been dark and malignant or silvery and utterly alien, just what he would expect from monsters. What he was seeing in this woman’s glare was different. It was pure, human crazy.

  He froze, and she reached the truck, grabbing his school sport jacket through the broken side window. She pulled with surprising strength, as if she intended to drag him out through the opening.

  “Get out!” she shrieked.

  Devon jerked back. “Go away!” he shouted, too frightened to come up with anything else.

  The soccer mom made a growl deep in her throat, let go of his jacket and swung the shovel. Devon flinched away, the blade barely missing his face but slamming into his left shoulder. The pain was explosive, and bright little starbursts erupted before his eyes. They both screamed.

  “Get out!” She gripped the shovel handle with both hands, raising it and pointing the blade right at his face like it was a spear. Devon’s right hand found the Sig-Saur on the seat beside him, his thumb flicking the safety off with a reflex ingrained in him by his father, the weapon coming up even as she thrust.

  The pistol roared, ten inches from her breastbone, close enough for the muzzle flash to set a circle of her sweater on fire. The soccer mom staggered back, the shovel clattering to the pavement, and then she dropped as if her legs had suddenly been cut from beneath her. Devon heard her head smack the asphalt with a sickening thud.

  Devon’s heart was racing as he shoved the hot muzzle of the pistol into the split between the bench seat and the back, dropping the transmission into reverse and hitting the gas. The tires squealed, the truck swayed violently and for an instant he thought he was going to lose control. Then he hit the brakes, jerked the transmission lever and accelerated, avoiding the body in the road and moving forward around the nose of the tractor-trailer. He scraped the right fender and clipped off the passenger mirror, but then he was clear.

  On the other side, a dozen girls in some kind of uniform were crouched and kneeling around a big, red lump in the road, cramming meat and organs into their mouths. A few looked up. Devon looked away and gunned it, ignoring the thirty-mile-per-hour limit and leaving the horrible feeding behind.

  A few minutes later, Marcus stirred in the passenger side. “You okay?” he asked, his eyes still closed and his voice weak.

  Devon, tears running down his face, said nothing and kept driving.

  -34-

  DEVIL DOG

  Eastern Ohio – October 29

  Garrison Fox wasn’t as lucky as his son. On a back road approaching the Pennsylvania border, the Hummer Agent King was driving came over a rise at just under sixty-five and there it was; a jam of stopped, eastbound traffic filling both lanes, a beige Tioga motorhome right in front of them. King jammed the brakes and tried to swerve as Garrison braced himself. The vehicle’s big tires left black marks on the road as it slid forward, and then there was a tremendous CRUNCH.

  Both men were thrown forward, but they’d been smart enough to wear their shoulder belts and it saved them.

  “You okay,” Garrison asked, massaging his neck and wincing.

  King nodded, unsnapping his seatbelt. “Are you hurt, sir?”

  “No.” Garrison unbuckled and got out, bringing his rifle with him as he moved off to the right to get a wider view of the traffic jam. Agent King grabbed a handful of red flare sticks from a box behind the driver’s seat, lighting and tossing them onto the road and out over the crest of the hill from where they’d come. He didn’t want someone else doing the same thing and ramming into them. Then he went forward to inspect the damage.

  Out on the gravel shoulder, the President stood and stared. A quarter mile-long, double row of vehicles was backed up from a point where a short, concrete bridge crossed a stream. It formed a natural choke-point for the road, and blocking the bridge was a cluster of trucks and Humvees in Army camouflage patterns. Hundreds of people were gathered at this end of the bridge and milling among the stopped vehicles along the length of the back-up.

  More refugees, Garrison thought. Why aren’t they being allowed through?

  He looked again at the roadblock. The men moving around the vehicles there, and in particular one man standing behind a thirty-caliber machinegun mounted atop a Humvee, were in civilian clothing, not military uniforms. A sudden chill ran through him.

  “What’s our status, Mr. King?” he called.

  A curse came from the front of their own Hummer. “No real front-end damage that I can see,” David said, “and the engine still sounds good. Our bumper is locked up with the RV, though. Lots of twisted steel.”

  Up near the bridge, Garrison saw what looked like a fight breaking out among the refugees. A moment later, a little farther back, he saw several more civilians rush from between the stopped cars and plunge into a knot of people who had been standing just off the shoulder, watching and waiting. Bodies went to the ground, and the pop-pop of pistol fire came from somewhere within the traffic jam.

  “We’re about to run out of time,” The President said, bringing his M4 to his shoulder and resting his index finger along the trigger guard.

  David barely heard him. He was already back in the driver’s seat, putting the Hummer in reverse and trying to back it out of its entanglement with the motor home. The engine revved, the tires spun and smoked and both vehicles rocked, but the Hummer remained stuck.

  From where he stood, Garrison could see more and more attacks breaking out up the line. It’s spreading. Then quick motion in his left peripheral made him turn. A middle-aged man and a boy with outstretched arms and grayish drool spilling from their lips were rushing at the Humvee, almost to the open driver’s door where David King was still wrestling with the stuck vehicle.

  Garrison had no time for thoughts of innocent, sick civilians or the American people he’d sworn to protect. A combat Marine’s instinct kicked in and the M4 stuttered twice, a pair of three-round bursts hitting center mass. Man and boy collapsed only a yard from the Hummer.

  “Thank you!” David shouted over the sound of the gunning engine.

  “Isn’t this your job?” Garrison shouted back. Movement on his right made him turn again. A trio of the infected was running toward him up the right shoulder. He dropped to one knee, braced his forward elbow against it in a compact shooting position dr
illed into him first during boot camp and AIT, advanced infantry training, then throughout his career as an infantry officer, and fired again, five quick squeezes, the muzzle ticking left and right. Three raving cannibals went down.

  About half a magazine left. “Reloading,” he yelled, not to inform any particular teammates that his firing was temporarily down as he switched to a full magazine, but again out of deeply ingrained habit. A moment later he was looking for targets again.

  From up at the bridge he heard the long chatter of the thirty-caliber, and saw the gunner in civilian clothes sweeping his deadly machine back and forth across the crowd of refugees gathered in front of the roadblock. Dear God! Garrison’s stomach twisted with nausea as he saw bodies falling, those not killed in the initial sweep scattering in all directions, parents picking up small children and running. The gunner began hunting their fleeing backs with bursts of automatic fire.

  President Fox’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a bestial snarl. He put the combat optics to his eye and thumbed the assault rifle’s selector switch to single-shot. Son-of-a-bitch living out some sick fantasy…

  The M4 kicked.

  A wet, pink puff appeared behind the gunner’s head and he dropped from sight, his murderous weapon falling silent.

  “You good?” Agent King called, climbing out of the Humvee.

  “Five-by-five,” the President responded.

  “Good, because I need you over here, sir. I’m going to stand on the bumper and bounce it. I need you gunning it in reverse every time I do, okay?”

  Garrison swept the area again with his weapon. The only people close to them were refugees running into the fields and away from the slaughter. The screaming was louder now, more constant, and the gunfire from motorists was down to a few random pops. That told him all he needed to know about which way this battle was going.

  Sudden movement in the big, rear window of the motor home above them made the President stop and swing his rifle up. A teenage girl had just hurled herself against the glass, palms slapping at in in panic and her face contorted into a terrified, muffled scream. A moment later a shadowy figure appeared behind her, and Garrison saw hands reach around her head, fingers hooking into her mouth and eyes and dragging her back out of sight.