by JE Gurley
She knew Elliot was right. She had dreaded the possibility of another helicopter swooping down on their little hideaway, or a convoy of troops appearing at their front door. Such nightmares had kept her awake at night. If they discovered the solution to the problem first, they would be in a position of strength. If they found a vaccine, they would need the military to distribute it.
“So you think we should tell everyone?”
“Yes, but a day or two won’t matter.”
Erin nodded. “We hope.”
8
The Gray Man stared at the two men sitting beside him in the five-ton army truck and grimaced in disgust. He could barely make out their faces in the pre-dawn light, but he could smell them well enough. Leopold Atkins, the driver, stank of sweat and death. His favorite pastime was hunting down zombies and removing their heads with the ceremonial saber he had found at an abandoned army base. Atkins had never served in the military; he was too undisciplined for that. In fact, during the plague, he had been in prison for murder and rape, languishing in a jail cell where the Gray Man had found him. His companion, Jacob Ahiga, a tall, thin full-blooded Navajo with a crew cut and an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap, reeked of tobacco. He never spoke of his origins. He had waved down the truck one day from the side of the road and remained. Where he was perpetually silent, Atkins never shut up, constantly regaling them with tales of his latest kill or lurid details of his latest rape. Even with the window rolled down, the stench was almost too overpowering for the Gray Man to endure.
The Gray Man had a name but seldom used it. It was a lost part of his past, as much faded memory as his wife and children. His habitual gray attire suited both his outlook on life and his taste in clothing. Being mostly colorblind made color coordination the least of his worries. The sobriquet ‘The Gray Man’ allowed him to keep his distance from his companions of necessity, not choice. The vivid scar running from the bridge of his nose to his right ear pulled his face into a perpetual grin but no one ever mistook that grin for a display of mirth. There was no mirth in the Gray Man.
Ahiga exhaled a cloud of smoke that whipped out the widow past the Gray Man’s face, stinging his eyes. His jaws clenched tightly as he ripped the cigarette from Ahiga’s mouth and tossed it out the window.
“Enough!” he bellowed.
Ahiga glared at him but remained silent. Atkins laughed.
“And you,” the Gray man said to Atkins cutting short his laughter. “When we drop this lot of fresh munies off, you take a bath. You smell worse than a damn zom.”
“Sure, boss.” Atkins jerked his head toward the rear of the truck where another of their companions, Stu Linn, kept guard over the six munies they had rounded up. “That blonde bitch is really something else. She’s got a set of tits on her that could smother a man like a pillow.”
“She’s money in the bank,” the Gray Man reminded him. He didn’t tolerate abuse of his prisoners, though he knew other Hunters did. Keeping Atkins under control around a good-looking woman, any woman was next to impossible.
“Sure thing, boss.” He frowned. “Yeah, it’s almost time for another shot of Blue Juice. I get a little leery that the science boys might not have it just right.”
Ahiga broke his silence. He pulled a bone-handled hunting knife with a seven-inch blade from his boot and allowed the sun to glint off the blade. “Don’t worry, biligana. If you turn zom, I’ll fix you.”
“Fuck you,” Atkins replied. “And don’t call me biligana. It’s like me calling you redskin. It ain’t polite.”
“Both of you shut up,” the Gray Man snapped.
Like the others, he needed periodic booster shots of the zombie vaccine, called Blue Juice by most. His sole reason for becoming a Hunter, for associating with such low-life trash as his present companions was the Blue Juice. Unlike the others, he did not enjoy his work; take delight in the capture, torture and enslavement of others for their precious immune blood. It was a means to an end, a safeguard for man’s survival.
His mind was not on Blue Juice or blondes. He had witnessed firsthand the end of mankind hopes and dreams as his friends and family succumbed first to the avian flu, then the zombie plague it produced. He had seen people come back to life as flesh-eating zombies, marauding through the cities, killing everyone. He had observed the futility of the military as it struggled to combat a menace against which it had no experience. Cities had burned. The survivors had starved or died from the harsh winter that followed.
Now, the zoms were mutating. They weren’t really dead, he knew. They had died clinically, but their hearts had resumed beating, their lungs breathing. Only their minds were gone, or so everyone had assumed. As their dead skin sloughed away, thick, olive-hued skin replaced it. Muscles enlarged. Sternum and ribs fused into one massive bony plate. Their stamina increased and their body’s ability to heal wounds became almost miraculous. A few, Alphas, more cunning most, gathered groups of zombies into hunting packs, gathered harems. Then, to everyone’s horror, zoms began to reproduce.
One of the scientists at the base called it adaptive radiation, a species mutating to fill niches in the ecological balance of life, like finches in the Galapagos Islands, except in his opinion, zoms were a damn site more dangerous than finches. Crazy quasi-religious orders like the New Apostles called it Judgment Day and believed zoms were God’s new Adam and Eve. He called it another of man’s stupid follies, a case of having the toys but no place to play with them. Somewhere, someone’s man-made virus got loose or was released and mutated the avian flu virus into the zombie plague. He hoped whoever had decided to play God had died a horrible death.
“You two give me a headache. If you weren’t so good at what you do, I’d shoot you myself.”
Ahiga grunted.
Stu Linn the former UCLA quarterback had been listening. “I’ll hold the fuckers while you pull the trigger,” he yelled through the closed canvas cover.
Atkins silently shot him the bird.
Linn, 23, intelligent, with classical jock good looks, was the only one of the three that the Gray Man could tolerate, but he trusted him no more than he did the others. Linn was quiet, calculating and absolutely merciless in dealing with the munies. To him, they were cattle he could exchange for Blue Juice, booze and food. The Gray Man had found him trapped in a college classroom with dozens of zombies filling the corridor outside. He had gone without food for seven days and water for three. Starved, exhausted, and half out of his mind when rescued, with no other place to go, he become a Hunter.
They were on the southeastern outskirts of Phoenix, driving along state highway 60, Superstition Highway, from Superior, Arizona trying to make it through the city before the zoms started prowling. It had been a long, arduous trek, hardly worth the distance for six munies, but they had made the mistake of attempting to contact the authorities using a Ham radio. It had been a simple matter to triangulate their location using a helicopter with radio detection gear. The new Cardinal Rule for the new world was no radios. Radios kept people in communication. People who communicated might get together and resist the military. There wasn’t time to fight the zombies and an enraged local populace of survivors, especially survivors immune to the plague. Their blood was too valuable to spill uselessly.
Atkins leered at each cluster of zombies they passed, resisting the urge to smash them with the truck. The Gray Man merely stared. He hated them, both for what they were and for what they represented, but he had no time to deal with them now. He was running late and holing up the day in some burned out building did not appeal to him. His cargo was precious and with it, he hoped to make a difference. With a permanent vaccine, he could break free of his role as mercenary Hunter for the military and find some place to start over, maybe a small island in one of the Great Lakes, Superior or Michigan. He could build a cabin by hand. He knew how to shape wood. He knew how to be alone, preferred it to most of the company he had been forced to keep.
He glanced at his hands. They were rough and cal
loused from years of carpentry, building houses and making furniture. He had found a niche in life where the problems that tainted most people did not touch him or his family. He was his own boss and did not allow his work to interfere with time with his wife and child. He rubbed the pale band of flesh circling his finger where he had worn his wedding ring for twelve years. Now, it too was gone.
The Gray Man was deep in thought when the truck suddenly swerved, throwing him hard into the door with Ahiga on top of him. He tried to push Ahiga off him with one hand while gripping the door with the other. He could hear Atkin’s colorful curses over the squeal of the tires as the truck balanced precariously on its right side for several seconds. He thought Atkins, a superb driver, might be able to right the behemoth vehicle, but gravity and inertia doomed them. The truck smashed into a wrecked automobile blocking one lane and rolled onto its side. Dirt and gravel poured through the open window, pelting the Gray Man’s head and shoulder. The odor of hot asphalt and crankcase oil from wrecked automobiles assaulted his nostrils. Finally, the truck slid to a stop, creaking ominously as tortured metal settled.
“Get me out of this thing!” Atkins yelled.
He hung suspended like a side of beef from his seat belt. Ahiga whipped out his knife and sliced through the fabric with one swift motion. He fell onto Ahiga and the Gray Man, pressing the Gray Man deeper into the soft dirt blocking the window.
“Both of you get off me,” he ordered. “Check the back.” If the cargo escaped, the entire journey would be a waste.
He felt the pressure on his chest lessen as Atkins, followed by the more nimble Ahiga, clambered from of the truck through the smashed windshield. He unsnapped his own seat belt, spit the dirt from his mouth and joined them.
Linn was unconscious. Worse, one of the munies, the blonde, was dead, her skull crushed by a spare tire. Atkins would be disappointed. The Gray Man cursed silently.
“See to Linn,” he told Atkins. To Ahiga, he said, “Drag the others out. Get the weapons.” He glanced around to the empty buildings. “Zoms will be here soon.”
“What about the dead one?” Ahiga asked.
The Gray Man rolled his eyes. “Unless Atkins still wants her as a plaything, leave her. She’s no good to us now.”
He quickly examined the remaining munies as Ahiga herded them from the back of the truck. Shaken, bruised and bleeding from a few minor cuts, none was badly injured. At least they could walk. There was no time for treating wounds. Triage would be a bullet in the head if they couldn’t keep up. By the time they unloaded the truck of munies and what supplies they could carry, Linn was moaning and coming around.
“Boss, we got a problem.”
Expecting to see zoms approaching, the Gray Man turned to see Atkins pointing down to Linn. He followed Atkins’ finger to the shattered bone protruding through the skin just above Linn’s ankle.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Linn looked up, fear in his eyes. “I can make it,” he cried. “Just give me something to use as a crutch.”
“We can have the munies carry him,” Atkins suggested.
The Gray Man knew that in spite of all their bickering, Atkins was fond of the young athlete. He glanced east at the first rosy fingers of dawn spilling over the tops of the Superstition Mountains and shook his head. “No time. We have to move fast and find another ride.”
Hearing this, Linn screamed, “Don’t leave me here!”
“We won’t.” He nodded to Ahiga, who pulled out his pistol. The Gray Man held out his hand. “No, it might draw zoms,” he cautioned.
The taciturn Dine` reached into his boots. When Linn caught sight of the tall Indian’s knife, he began to whimper. Atkins leaned over him and clamped a beefy hand over his mouth. “Shhh! It’ll be alright kid,” he whispered. “It’ll be over in a second.” Atkins’ voice was surprisingly gentle.
Linn struggled, but Atkins was a strong man. Ahiga made a quick swipe with the blade across Linn’s jugular vein and Linn’s movements slowed, then stilled. One of the munie women started to scream at the sight of so much blood. The Gray Man reached out and backhanded her across the mouth without looking. He then picked up his M16.
“Come on. We have to move.”
Since the plague and the fires, most of the zombies had left the cities and wandered into the desert for food or eaten one another, but packs still roamed the city. People still inhabited the city. Arizona winters were far less harsh than winters in the north or east, but the survivors kept a low profile from both zombie packs and Hunters. Dusk and dawn were the zombie’s hours. As the sun rose, they spread out from their dens and began their daily search for food. Almost anything living would suffice – humans, animals, scavenged goods they could rip into, and of course the weakest of their own kind.
Ahiga took the lead, his finely honed sense of hearing tuned for small sounds that meant zombies. He and Atkins followed with the five remaining munies between them. Their eyes darted from shadow to shadow, gravely aware that in an emergency, their captors would save themselves first, and leave them to fend for themselves. They kept to the highway where they would at least see zombies coming. Of course, that meant that zombies could see them. Hear them too. The Gray Man swore to himself that if the fat male munie stumbled one more time, he would have Ahiga slice his throat.
They were within sight of the Banner Desert Medical Center, just a few miles from 101, the Price Freeway. The medical center had served as a FEMA center until zombies breached the perimeter fence, killing thousands of civilians and the entire medical staff. Its shattered gates and sections of smashed fence still littered the parking lot. The windows of the top three floors were gaping blackened holes. He imagined that if it were lighter out, he would be able to pick out the sun-bleached bones of the dead. If they could reach I-10, they could rest up with the New Apostles, maybe even radio for a helicopter pick up.
When Ahiga raised his hand to motion them to halt, the Gray Man tightened his grip on his weapon. He forced the munies to sit on the asphalt while Ahiga came trotting back.
“Zombies,” he whispered.
“Damn. How many?”
“Twenty, twenty-five, led by an Alpha.”
The Gray Man swore again. All they needed was to run across a hunter pack with a purpose. Killing off groups of individual zombies fending for themselves was one thing; facing a cunning group of merciless hunters was another.
“Can we go around?”
Ahiga glanced at the munies. “We could.”
One of the munies understood what Ahiga meant and whimpered. The Indian kicked him in the back, eliciting a loud whoof and a grunt of pain. The Gray Man said nothing. Atkins sidled over.
“We could try the sewers.”
The Gray Man shook his head. He had used sewers in the past to evade zombies, but it was not a pleasant trip. All the trash of the city wound up in the sewers, and even a dead city produced a lot of filth the infrequent rains could not wash away.
“Too far and too many blind spots,” he answered. He looked at the fat man whose chest was heaving from the exertion of walking. “You. It’s your lucky day. I’ll give you a chance. Run back to the medical center. If you make it, you might find a place to hide.”
The man cringed in fear. “N-n-no,” he stammered.
The Gray Man jabbed the rifle in his ribs. He winced in pain. “If you don’t, you’ll surely die here.”
The fat man looked at him defiantly. “You won’t shoot. It will bring them here.”
“They’re headed this way anyway. One bullet won’t matter much. Now. Run or die.”
The fat man looked at the others for support but they glanced away. All except the black woman, the Gray Man noted. She met the fat man’s eyes with sympathy; then turned to stare at him with contempt. The fat man rose from the pavement slowly. He looked across the expressway at the medical center building so tantalizingly near.
“I’ll never make it,” he said calmly. He understood he was going to die.
The fat man started out at a slow trot, but he quickly picked up speed as his fear spread to his legs.
The Gray Man motioned to the others. “The rest of you. Move quietly or join him.”
They continued down the expressway, keeping as much rubble and as many wrecked vehicles between them and the zombies as possible. A section of irrigation canal crossed under the road. He hoped the canal would force the fat munie to run all the way to the next intersection to cross over to the medical center and draw the zombies farther away. He made certain he and his companions did not leave the canal’s protection until the pack was after the fat man.
Less than two minutes later, the howls began, distant at first but rapidly growing closer. No matter how many times he heard them, the Gray Man shuddered at the animal sounds emerging from human throats. It was not simply inhuman; it was unnatural. He thought this more than anything else indicated just how different this new species was from the humans from which they had spawned. He wondered if apes looked at man the same way he was looking at zombies.
“Everybody down,” he cautioned.
The Alpha male suddenly appeared on the overpass ahead of them, head held high in the air as he caught scent of humans. His head jerked when he spotted the decoy, the fat man, lumbering toward the side of the freeway. The Alpha threw his head back and howled. He raced across the overpass, his pack close on his heels. The zombies moved in a leisurely manner that would insure they intersected the munie before he reached safety. The Gray Man noted there was as much play as hunt in their actions. As soon as they had moved far enough away, he pushed the others into action.
They had gone less than half a mile when the first blood curdling screams ripped through the quiet, early morning air. The screams and howls continued for a long time as the pack toyed with their prey. The African-American woman glared at him with contempt through bloodshot eyes. He knew she would have gladly killed him at that moment had their roles been reversed. He didn’t blame her, but he was in charge and intended to remain so. The world had turned upside down, and one more death didn’t bother him anymore. Angered by her silent reproach, the Gray Man shoved her with the butt of his rifle.