Dale spent his idle time dry shaving with disposable razors and rubbing his face looking for the spot he might have missed. It was an obsession. Every reflective surface became a means to gaze at himself. He was the only man in camp who openly boasted of getting laid on a regular basis without visiting the leisure tents.
Poppy wandered out behind Vanderhoft, giving Berkley a sleepy-eyed smile and then blinked drowsily. He’d spent the night with the men on watch.
“Go to bed, Poppy,” Berkley told the boy. The tone of his voice was affectionate in a way that a father might speak to a son.
“Bedtime,” Poppy said and wandered out into the late morning.
Three men remained inside the tent — Lieutenant Nathan Samuels, Ezekiel Franklin and Joseph Torres. These men were as different as night and day.
Zeek, as his so-called-friends referred to him, was a thirty-year-old retired Russian Spetznaz. He fled his homeland before charges could be leveled against him that had ranged from murder and torture to kidnapping and rape. He had spent the last two years hiding in his cousin’s basement under a deli in the city when the outbreak occurred. He referred to it as his “exodus.”
Zeek saw the world through the tainted lens of a zealot who believed that humanity would only be purged of their sin through suffering. Only those who have suffered sufficiently would pass into life everlasting. He believed that the more a person suffered, the greater the reward in heaven. This belief affected everything he did. He slept on hard surfaces, inflicted pain on his own body, and saw the suffering he caused others as helping them obtain redemption from their sins. The more pain he personally endured, the more he inflicted on others. Ultimately, Zeek saw himself as the faithful standard to be followed and he secretly despised his comrades who he saw as soft and faithless.
Joseph Torres couldn’t be more different. This former Mexican mafia assassin joined up with Berkley and managed to make himself invaluable to the team. He spoke choppy English (nearly as bad as Zeek), but earned the respect of the soldiers around him by his capacity for controlled violence. He killed only those he was told to kill and took no pleasure in it. It was a job to him and part of that job was to survive. He didn’t care much for those who hurt others for pleasure.
In his late forties, Torres was the oldest among military personnel in the camp. As such, he saw The Band as a bunch of rowdy children in need of a good example. He was determined to be that example.
“Reesky,” Torres offered Berkley in a nasally accent when the Colonel stepped back in the tent. He shook his head and added, “Berry Reesky.”
Berkley closed the tent flap and said, “I know, but think of it like this . . .”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Friday, October 15th, 2017
J ack sputtered, shivered, and dripped. When he discovered that the water in the building was still running, he jumped at the opportunity to shave and take a shower, albeit a cold one. The small shower was located in an executive office that doubled as his bedroom. Randi’s room was one office down from his. It was his first shower since his release over a month ago. The shower was really Randi’s idea. Apparently, she was getting tired of holding her breath when he was near.
“I found some clothes you can wear until we find some to replace the one’s you were wearing,” Randi said from the other side of the bathroom door.
“What do you mean? What’s wrong with what I was wearing?” Jack yelled back.
“Er . . . I’m afraid your smelly clothes accidentally flew off the top of the building,” she said and then added, “The good news is that even the walking dead won’t go near them. I think we should have kept them as a repellant.”
“Very funny,” Jack said. “I liked those clothes.” When Jack finally finished his very cold shower, he found a pair of grey pinstriped dress slacks, a white button down dress shirt, a pair of argyle socks and penny loafers resting neatly on a desk in the office. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
Randi stuck her head into the room from the outer office and said, “Put them on, stupid.”
“I’m not going to a funeral, am I?”
“No, but it’s all I could scrounge up at the moment.”
Surprisingly, everything fit except the shirt. Jack had to tear the sleeves off so that he could button it across his wide chest, even then the fabric pulled at the buttons. The top button popped off when he flexed his chest.
The two had been holed up waiting for Jack’s arm and shoulder to heal fully. They managed to clear the top floor of the building of its resident dead and dumped the bodies down the elevator shaft. Randi scavenged, to Jack’s distress, but overall Jack was glad to have the company.
Randi was staring out the window when Jack stepped into the room from the back office. Her baggy jeans were heaped on her bare feet and her white T-shirt was large enough to fit Jack. It hung like a dress around her kneecaps. She smiled over her shoulder at Jack’s Rambo-in-dress-slacks look, but the smile didn’t hold.
“Thinking about your mother?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. How you feelin’?”
“I’m a hundred and ten percent. I think its time we get moving, don’t you?” Jack said as he rolled his shoulder. “It’s been a week since . . . you found me.”
“Yeah,” was all Randi managed.
Jack looked about the room and realized that he was behind the game. Leaned against the wall next to the window were two large backpacks stuffed and filled with who knows what. The weapons he’d thrown off the roof a week earlier were lying next to the packs.
“Looks like were leaving today, huh?”
“I’ve got to find my mother, Jack,” Randi said as she turned from the window. She looked as if she was on the verge of crying. Her dark brown eyes watered and she ran a hand under her nose. “It’s been hard sitting here doing nothing.”
Jack looked around at all the supplies she had gathered over the week and realized that she was merely expressing her pain. The girl had been so busy all week that he would have been surprised if she’d had time to think about anything. “So where we going?” he asked, figuring she probably had a plan.
“I don’t know. The military could be anywhere. What do we do? Pick a direction and hope it’s the right one?” Her voice faltered and her lips pressed together. She had all the information she needed about what they needed, but was at a loss as to where to start looking for what she needed. The hopelessness of the situation was weighing down on her. She turned back to the window to hide her tears.
Jack walked over to stand beside her and looked out the window. Two stories down, the street was a buzz of activity, if you call dozens of clumsy zombies buzzing. The afternoon was overcast, painting the city in a dismal gray. Light raindrops began to tap on the windowpane in front of their noses. “I have an idea about where to find your mother,” he said softly allowing his breath to fog the window.
Randi turned her head just enough to look sideways at him. He was making a smiley face in the moisture left on the window by his breath. “Yeah?” she said, her voice tinged with hope.
“I’ve been thinking about it. When I was hiding out over my friend’s garage, I heard the military group that took your mother say that they were less than ten miles from the hospital outside of town. If they are still there, then we are just over ten miles from your mother.”
“Oh, Jack! You’re right! They would have to be close, wouldn’t they?” Randi giggled and threw her arms around Jack’s neck.
“Eck!” he said as he fell over pretending to be strangled. When she loosened her grip, he poked her in the rib.
“Yipe!” she exclaimed.
After a minute or so of tickling, laughing and then panting from the exertion, Jack leaned over and said, “What do you say we get outta here?”
“Sounds good to me.”
It took the two of them about a half hour to get packed up and ready to leave. As it turned out, the dress clothes were not the only clothes she had scavenged. She simply wanted
to see him dressed up. Jack donned the jeans, Metallica T-shirt and grey hoody, and the two gathered their packs. Their first stop was the roof. It was the same roof where they’d met and where he’d began to learn the truth about the lurching dead in the streets below. His shotgun protruded from above his right shoulder and his pistol was in its holster on his side. Randi carried her AK-47 slung over her shoulder with her skateboard under her right arm.
Jack looked out through his binoculars one last time. The hospital was quiet — quiet meaning that there were no living persons about. It seemed strange now that he thought about it. With so many moving bodies around, you could be tricked into thinking that you weren’t alone. Yet, there were no people in those bodies. They were hollow, organic machines functioning without a governing soul.
The binoculars lowered slowly as he looked to the south. Somewhere out there his daughter may be struggling to stay alive — just like her father. He had grandchildren out there and a son-in-law. What was his name? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember his grandchildren’s names either. The only one that he could hold on to was Susan’s name. It was probably because he’d given it to her.
In that moment, he found himself torn between helping Randi find her mother and going in search of his own family. How could he not help his own family in a moment like this? Jack turned his eyes on Randi. Her hair was soaking in the rain. She was a sixteen-year-old going on thirty, he thought to himself. Yet, she needed him. She stood there with her skateboard as if the world wasn’t full of monsters. To abandon her now would be no different than shooting her dead on the spot. No. He would not be responsible for the death of another child.
“Which way is west?” he said though he knew the answer.
“Main Street runs north and south. That way is west.” She pointed.
“Then, that’s the way we’re headed. Come on.” Jack took Randi by the hand and the two walked over to the edge of the building where the fire escape descended. The street below was littered with moving and unmoving dead bodies. It was less obstructed than it had been in days. “Maybe we’ll catch a break, huh?” Jack said as he stepped up on the red creaking ladder.
“Yeah,” Randi offered as she tied her wet hair back from in front of her face.
Jack had just disappeared from the edge of the roof when a familiar sound assaulted their ears. It was coming from the west and moving fast. It sounded like a helicopter. “You hear that!” he yelled.
Randi turned to see a black military helicopter buzzing the rooftops of the buildings some distance away. It was moving south. Wasp-like, it leaned forward as if looking for something. There was no doubt that it was heading toward a specific destination. Randi jumped up and down waving her arms. “Over here! Over here!” she screamed, but the chopper never wavered from its course. Soon it disappeared across town.
Jack had climbed back up the fire escape and was standing on the top rung. “Didn’t see us?”
“No,” she said, pushing out her lips.
Somehow, Jack felt good about that fact. So far, his experience with the military wasn’t that great. Yet, there had to be other military and paramilitary groups out there. They surely weren’t all as bad as The Band.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Randi asked.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that with a little help, we might be able to mount a better rescue operation.”
“So then it’s south, not west?” Jack asked raising his eyebrows.
“We need the help, I think. What will the two of us be able to do against an organized military operation like the one that kidnapped my mom?”
Jack looked off toward the south. They needed more information. “Let’s look at the map.”
It only took a few minutes for the two to determine that their best course of action was to head south past the downtown area following the direction the chopper disappeared. Once the two were on the street, they moved at a fairly quick pace. The walking dead were spread out enough that avoiding them was pretty easy. When they came to a large group of them, it was simple enough to kick them over or crush their heads with a pipe. It wasn’t until they began to approach downtown that something occurred to Randi.
“Is it just me, or do they seem to be moving slower?” Randi asked as she walked up to one of the shamblers and pushed it over.
“I think you’re right,” Jack said. “This could be a good thing.”
“Maybe dad was right. If the virus is mutating, it could be that it might end itself.”
Jack looked around at the piles of debris from the buildings that had fallen during the conflagration downtown. It seemed worse than the pictures he’d seen of the rubble left by the destruction of the twin towers seventeen years ago. They were two of the tallest buildings in the world, yet, this downtown area had lost its entire skyline to the explosions.
Randi climbed a pile of rubble to get a better look at the devastation. “We thought it was an earthquake.”
“It felt like it.” Jack shivered as he considered that fact that he’d nearly been a victim of the trap. He could tell that some of the buildings that hadn’t been destroyed by the initial blast had fallen since he was here last. He could smell drywall and the metallic scent of copper in the air. “I think we’d better get moving.”
The two companions circled the wreckage downtown like tourists on vacation for the first time, pointing out certain monuments jutting from the rubble or stopping so the Randi could skateboard a particularly long stretch of fallen wall. Occasionally, they would hear gunfire in the distance or an explosion that was far enough away to sound more like distant thunder.
Walking up Alabama avenue, they past several abandoned military vehicles. The vehicles were parked sideways blocking the street. Their tires were flat. The hood was open on each of them like gaping mouths, revealing motors stripped of wiring.
They were in a residential neighborhood not far from Willow Street. Burned bodies and opened doors reminded Jack of the horrors he’d seen not more than a few weeks ago. Bodies lay strewn about the street like discarded dolls. It didn’t seem real, well, except for the stink of decay.
“What happened here?” Randi asked, thinking aloud. She covered her nose with a hand.
“It was horrible . . . whatever it was,” Jack said. He really didn’t want to go into detail, especially since Jack believed that the same group of soldiers was responsible for her mother’s predicament.
It was nearing lunchtime when the gray sky finally darkened and poured a cold bone chilling rain on the two. Jack pointed to a white two-story house that had a narrow alley beside it. A long, covered porch spanned its front and the two ran for it. There were very few dead people walking around and the rain seemed to disorient them so that all they did was stand in place and stare at the ground.
“Stay here. I’ll check it out,” Jack said and pulled the screen door open. The house smelled of neglect. “Anyone home?” he asked the interior.
“Really?” Randi asked, shaking her head. “Don’t expect an invite.”
“Funny. Wait here.”
Jack let the screen door squeak closed behind him. He was standing in a long rectangular living room. The room felt comfortable overall and he suddenly felt home sick for the home he never had. The sofa was a long black L-shaped sectional. There was a matching chair and love seat. The coffee table and end tables were faux stone that aged the room a bit. The television was a fifty-five inch LG that took up more space than the television he’d had in the late eighties. He’d seen them in commercials but had never seen one up front. Too bad the power was out, he thought to himself.
To his left, the beige, carpeted steps led to the upper story and were followed by an oak stained banister. Ahead of him was the kitchen. The cabinets, appliances and ceiling fan contrasted nicely with blue ceramic tiles on the floor. The family that lived here surely wasn’t poor, he thought. The screen door opened behind him.
“Jack, something’
s coming,” Randi whispered.
Back on the porch, Jack could hear the sound of gravel crunching under tires. It was coming from the alleyway. Someone was driving very slowly next to the house.
“Get inside,” he told Randi and then added, “Don’t go exploring yet. We don’t know if it’s safe in there.”
Randi frowned and pulled the AK-47 from off her shoulder. Jack nodded as if he’d forgotten that he’d been travelling with G. I. Jane and then motioned for them to duck beneath the slatted rail of the porch. It would be just enough to hide them from view as long as no one was actively looking for them.
A pale, green Subaru Forester crept into view. It was so close to the house that Jack and Randi could have reached out and touched it if they’d been on the ground. The motor barely made a sound. The windows were fogged and someone was moving around inside. The movements were quick. He could see someone wearing red in the front seat wrestling with the passenger. Someone in blue was in the back seat.
A scream came from the car. It was a child’s scream, high-pitched and blood curdling. Randi leapt from the porch over the rail before Jack could grab her. Reaching the driver’s side door, she pulled but it was locked. She tried the back door. Locked. The car was still creeping along and was now past the house. Another scream erupted from the back seat. It was a different child, maybe a little older.
“Forget this,” Randi said. She raised the butt of her gun as the car bumped into one of the shamblers in the street. The creature was knocked to the ground and the vehicle came to a stop when its wheel came against its leg. Randi busted the driver’s side window on her second try. From the ground, the dead man in gray overalls moaned and reached out with his nearest hand to swipe at her. Another hand, at the end of a red ski jacket, extended out the broken window and pulled her against the car.
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