by Joe Hart
After the man passed out, Quinn had seen he’d been holding a makeshift tourniquet with his free hand, and without the pressure, the stump began to bleed freely again. He’d retied the bootlace the man had used, staunching the flow to almost nothing, before running outside to direct Alice to the rear loading dock. Once they were all inside, they’d repositioned the injured man and poured a small amount of water in his mouth that he managed to swallow. After that, he’d become completely unresponsive, the rising and falling of his chest the only movement.
They’d found a stockpile of food, weapons, and ammunition in one of the offices along with a meager first aid kit that had already been pilfered of anything useful. A hiking backpack leaned against one wall near the food and weapons, its many pouches bulging with enough supplies to keep a single person going for more than two weeks.
Alice drained the last of her beer and set the can aside before motioning to the man. “What do you think happened to his foot?”
Quinn glanced at Ty and then back to her, lowering his voice. “I think it was bitten off.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah. Looked like teeth marks in the flesh around the wound. Not that you can really tell since infection’s already setting in.”
“He’s not going to make it,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
They cleaned up their wrappers and cans and checked on the man again. His face was pale and dry, but when Quinn put a hand to the man’s forehead, he nearly yanked it back with shock.
“He’s burning up.”
They tried drizzling more water in the man’s mouth, but he merely coughed it back out. His breathing began to take on a liquid wheezing, so they let him be and made their own beds up for the night.
“You think one of us has to keep watch?” Alice said, tucking Ty into a sleeping bag.
“I think it’s okay if we all sleep tonight. This place is locked down really well. Any problems and we can scoot right out the door and into the car.”
They were quiet for a time as they lay down on their own blankets. The darkness around them was complete.
“Wonder what he was doing here,” Alice said finally.
“Surviving, like the rest of us.”
“Almost looks like he was planning something.”
“Like what?” Quinn asked.
“Like a trip.”
He listened to the man’s labored breathing a dozen yards away. That could be any of them lying there, wounded, dying. How would it feel to know beyond any doubt that you were going to die? The idea was one thing, but the fear, the fear was all encompassing.
“This fort-bed thing is getting kind of old,” Alice said, breaking the silence.
Quinn chuckled, and she laughed too after a moment.
“I can’t believe we made it,” Alice said.
“Me neither.”
“Not really what you would’ve picked for your first road trip, huh?”
He smiled. “It’s not what I had in mind, no.”
She was quiet for a long time. “Thank you for everything you did to get us here.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks for saving my life a hundred times.”
“Ditto.” Her blankets rustled, and he imagined her turning toward him in the dark. “What if there’s no army there tomorrow?”
The question caught him off guard. Not because he’d never thought it but because he’d been thinking it for days.
“Then we find a safe place somewhere else.”
She settled again with more shushing of blankets.
“Goodnight, Quinn.”
“Goodnight.”
Sleep eluded him like a beggar with a stolen scrap of bread. He would begin to drift off then the steel loading doors would shift in the wind letting out unfamiliar clanks and clicks. Each time he would bring his hand to the butt of the revolver before relaxing again. Much later, when he’d finally found a position that was partially comfortable, another sound roused him. It was reedy and low, as if it were coming from the bottom of some pit. He sat up, images of a thousand stilts surrounding the building filling his head. Instead, he slowly made out words filtering through the darkness.
“I Royal.”
Quinn rolled to his feet and found the rifle. He flicked the light on, and it brightened enough of the space for him to move without the fear of sprawling over a low crate. He walked to the man’s side and saw that his eyes were open, the irises obscured by a thin membrane, like a fog hanging over a valley.
“Here, have some water,” Quinn said, picking up the bottle sitting nearby on the concrete. He tried to bring it to the man’s cracked lips, but he turned his head away, refusing.
“I Royal,” he breathed again, and tried to raise one of his arms.
“Your name is Royal?” Quinn asked leaning closer.
“Royal.”
The man opened his mouth wide and took in a long shuddering breath before letting it wheeze out. He spasmed several times as if trying to cure a case of hiccups, and then fell still, the last of his air leaking from between his teeth.
“Damn it,” Quinn said, checking his pulse. Nothing. He put his hands on the man’s chest in the CPR position but then sat back. He was resting now. How cruel would it be to bring him back?
He stood and found a dusty sheet draped over a stack of whisky cases. He shook it out and gently spread it over the man’s body.
Royal.
Quinn retrieved the rifle and moved past Ty and Alice toward the front offices. Denver’s dark head rose, and after a moment, the Shepherd padded silently after him.
In the office with the supplies, Quinn sat down and began to open the heavy pack leaning against the wall. There were fire-starting materials, extra clothes, emergency blankets, spare magazines for the two pistols and four rifles that sat on the floor, along with a bladder filled with water. All of the pockets contained similar survival items, except for the topmost. When he opened it, he first thought that the man had packed sheaves of paper for more fire-starting fuel, but after a moment of inspecting them, he saw he was wrong.
He studied the pages after settling to the floor, Denver dropping onto his side next to him. Absently, he scratched the dog’s ears as he read, page after page of information, facts, numbers, first-hand accounts, surveys, and data. As he unfolded another page, a plastic ID card slid free and fell to the floor. He picked it up, studying the dead man’s face along with the words beneath it. He frowned, flipping the card over, but there was nothing on the back except an imbedded row of numbers with a bar code below them. He set the ID aside and scanned the folded document, eyes flickering across meaningless tangles of numbers and terms. At the very bottom were two signatures. The first was strangely familiar, as if it were the name of a character from a book he’d read years ago.
The other signature stopped his heart between beats.
He stared at the name, and time seemed to slow. Denver grunted beside him, and the page began to tremble in his hand. It couldn’t be. There was no possible way.
Footsteps came from the warehouse and neared the office as Alice materialized out of the darkness and stopped in the doorway, her eyes still bleary with sleep.
“What are you doing?”
Quinn folded the paper, tucking the ID card inside it once again.
“Going through his things,” he said, his voice hoarse and shaky. “He’s—”
“Dead. I saw.”
Quinn gathered up the rest of the papers, replacing all of them in the pack, save for the one holding the ID, which he jammed in his pocket.
“Did you sleep at all?” she asked as he rose and stretched his aching spine.
“A little. Not much. Is it daylight yet?”
“Just before dawn.”
“We need to go. We need to find the army, now.” He grabbed the pack and the rifle, handing the latter to Alice as he moved past her into the dark of the warehouse.
“Okay. Any reason you’re so raring to go?”
&
nbsp; “We just need to get there,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way through the sections of alcohol.
“Quinn, slow down. Let’s take a second—”
“No, damnit! We’re going now!” His voice rang throughout the open space and came back to him. Hearing the frantic sound of his words along with the stricken look on Alice’s face was enough to sober the racing anxiety burning a hole in his chest.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You’re starting to scare me.” Ty sat up from his bed and called to Denver quietly before walking beside the dog to stand near his mother.
Quinn’s legs grew weaker and weaker as he pulled the paper from his pocket and flipped it open, catching the ID as it slid out. He held it before him as if it were something foul that he couldn’t stand to touch.
“We need to find the army because my father’s signature is on this piece of paper the dead man was carrying.”
Chapter 25
The Army
They drove through the gray dawn, its light choked with bruised clouds that hung low and heavy with rain.
They’d spent an hour packing the Challenger with supplies that the man in the warehouse had accumulated, their talk limited to the necessities since Quinn had shown Alice the signed page. There was no mistaking his father’s writing, the loop of his e’s and the long tail of the y were all Quinn needed to know it wasn’t simply someone with the same name or an attempt at a forgery. The paragraphs above his father’s hand gave them no clues as to what the document signified. The language was unmistakably medical in origin, but other than that, the page was a shard of a sculpture without any definable shape.
“Do you think he was sick before he caught the plague?” Alice asked as the last buildings of Fort Dodge passed by on their left. “You said he came home from a business trip right before everything happened, right?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, prying his vision from the road ahead.
“Maybe it wasn’t a business trip at all. Maybe he was getting treatment.”
“I don’t think so. He never had more than a cold all my life. He wasn’t sick; he would’ve told me.”
“Parents don’t tell their kids everything.”
“I know, you never tell me anything,” Ty muttered from the backseat.
“Oh stop it, Tyrus. You’re the most informed six year old I know.”
“I’m almost seven!”
“You won’t be seven for another nine months.”
“That’s pretty close, though. Right, Denver?”
The dog woofed once.
“See?” Ty said, crossing his arms.
Alice rolled her eyes. “Now I have to argue with a dog too.”
“Take this next right coming up,” Quinn said, studying the smart phone’s display. Alice turned the car onto a beaten county road, its surface pockmarked with attempted patches of potholes and frost heaves.
“But the guy, Harold Roman, was definitely military, right? I mean, that ID had nothing but his photo, his name, and clearance number,” Alice said.
“If I had to guess, I’d say military, but who knows,” Quinn said. “Turn left on the next road.”
The landscape around them was featureless grasslands only beginning to green. The sky continued to descend, the clouds churning above the treetops. In the distance, the land humped into a broad hill, and dots of abandoned vehicles began to appear. They weaved in and around them, doors yawning open, windows broken, a sprawled and bloated body on a tailgate.
“What’s that smell?” Ty asked, covering his nose.
The air thickened with each mile they drove, the stench of the plague’s rapid decomposition like a clinging curtain hovering above the land. Ahead, the line of vehicles became a mass that choked the road as well as the dirt track snaking around the base of the broad hill. A business sign had been knocked down and a torn banner waved in its place, only a handful of words discernable on its flaccid surface.
United States Ar
Zon
Only nec belongin
Milit guiden
Stay inside your ve
Alice pulled to the side of the road, and they stared at the lane strangled with hundreds of cars and trucks all parked at different angles like a portion of rush hour traffic had detoured here and then fallen still indefinitely.
“Holy shit,” Alice said. She sighed and let her face drop into one hand before rubbing her temple. “If they’re—”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Quinn said. “We need to check out the compound before we make any decisions.”
“You ever see that movie where the family drives all the way across the country to go to an amusement park but when they get there, it’s closed?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not like this at all,” Alice said, climbing out.
They armed themselves, and Quinn strapped Roman’s pack on. They left the rest of the supplies with the car, locking it before moving along the ditch lining the dirt drive. They walked past car after car. Many were intact, their windows rolled tight as if the occupants had merely paused here to get out and sightsee. There were no bodies visible, inside or out, along the road. Only the chirp of insects and the sounds of their passage accompanied them. The stagnant line of vehicles curved, and they followed their arc, stopping as one as the scene opened before them.
“What is it?” Ty asked, gripping Denver’s collar.
It was a warzone.
The vehicles past the point where they stood were torn masses of steel and shattered glass. The road became a battered field, studded with debris and cratered to a lunar quality. A chain link fence had been erected beyond the devastation, topped with spools of razor wire, but it too lay mashed to the ground in countless places, support posts leaning like weary soldiers. Past the fence was a five-foot concrete barricade made of interconnected pieces like those separating the center of a four-lane highway. It’s top was painted a bronze that shone in the cool light of the day. Many of the sections were tipped over or crumbling, cracks spanning from bullet holes like eggs ready to break. Beyond the first ring of concrete, a second much higher barrier stood, interspersed by vacant, steel guard towers and scaffolding.
Everything was silent and still. Unmoving.
“Damnit,” Alice swore, sweeping the entire area with her rifle. Quinn took several steps forward and cupped a hand to his mouth.
“Hello!”
His call echoed across the grassland and returned to them. A crow called from a solitary tree at the base of the hill, its voice mocking.
They waited and then picked their way forward through the divots and piles of blasted steel that they realized had been cars and pickups. Strands of clothing were buried beneath tossed sand, a child’s backpack hung from a twisted fender by one frayed strap. They stopped at the first concrete barrier, and Quinn saw that the top wasn’t painted bronze as he’d first thought.
It was covered in brass shell casings.
They were everywhere. They littered the ground outside the barrier, and inside, they rose like miniature sand dunes. Every ten paces there was a semi-bare spot on the ground, and he realized this was where the shooters had been standing.
“What happened here?” Quinn said, brushing the shells with his palm. They tinkled like steel rain as they dropped to the dirt.
“I don’t want to know,” Alice said, reaching out to grasp Ty’s free hand.
“Let’s go this way,” Quinn said, motioning to the east side of the barriers.
They crossed over a collapsed portion of concrete and walked between the two perimeters. The ground was covered with spent ammunition. Here and there were dried mats of blood turned black with time. Similar stains splashed the higher concrete walls as well. Flies carried on a continuous humming all around them.
The barriers curved and then straightened in a corridor that stretched away and over a short rise. The piles of shells continued out of sight. They stopped near a toppled section as the first drops of rain bega
n to fall. Quinn glanced at Alice who stared back at him, her mouth a pale gash.
“They’re not here, are they?” Ty said. Denver sat on his haunches, his eyes watching the top of the nearest barricade. Alice knelt beside Ty, still holding his hand. She brushed his hair away from his brow and opened her mouth to reply when Denver began to growl.
“Put your hands in the air! Do it, now!” A deep voice yelled from somewhere nearby.
Quinn flinched and instinctually brought his rifle up as he ducked. A shot ricocheted off the pillar next to him.
“I will not ask again! Put your hands up!”
Quinn let the rifle hang from the strap draped around his shoulders and slowly brought his hands over his head. Alice and Ty did the same beside him. There was a scraping rasp and a door painted the exact same color as the concrete, opened in the barricade fifty yards away. A soldier dressed in full military fatigues and boots sidled into the channel, a short-barreled rifle centered on them. Another soldier emerged behind him, his weapon sweeping the area around the barriers and then back to their position. Quinn eased himself around and stood to his full height.
“Don’t fucking move!” the closest soldier said. The man was near enough now Quinn could see hard, green eyes beneath the helmet he wore. A rash of brown stubble covered a handsome face, and when he moved, it was with practiced fluidity and confidence.
“Thomas, got anything in the area?” the nearest soldier said, never turning his head away from them. The voice from above called out a moment later.
“Negative. All clear.”
“Is there anyone else with you?” the soldier asked.
“No, it’s just us,” Alice said.
The soldier scanned them all again, his eyes flitting to Quinn’s face and holding there for a long time before looking down at Ty and Denver who’s fangs were bared white beneath peeled lips.