Nikki spotted the cop on the roof, waving his radio over his head and she switched on the police scanner.
Immediately a voice came over the other end - “listening…? Folks, this is Officer Frank Gifford. You just escaped with one of our cruisers. You listening? This is Officer Gifford, You folks listening?”
Nikki picked up the mike, “Yes officer, what can we do to help you now?”
“You can keep driving. There’s no way to safely come back for us.”
“Sir, you know they’re bombing bigger towns tonight?”
“We’re probably too small, but just in case, we’ve got a sealed room anyway. Don’t worry about us. The bastards aren’t getting inside. We’re going to stay up here to be sure. If we see the bombers, we’ll get the bastards nice and clustered around us. The important thing is for you folks to keep going north. It’s about three hours to Montreal at… What? What is that? What’s that buzzing? What is that?” They heard him call out to the others on the roof. "You guys feel that?" Then Gifford took his thumb off the mic. Nikki tried to raise him again, but no luck. The gunfire suddenly stopped.
Jon slumped down in the car so he could just peer out the window and said, "Fuck. Keep your head down."
They sat in stony silence as Jon drove. After ten minutes or so, he wiped the cooling sweat off his face, “We need the GPS, I know I’m driving north but I don’t really know where or how to get to the border.”
“Well, that’s a drag, cuz we left the backpacks back in the parking lot.”
Jon sighed and shook his head.
“Maybe there’s a map.”
“Kind of a basic cop car. Not even one of those computer thingies.”
Nikki looked through the glove box and the center console. “Some helpful gear here but no map.” She pulled out a fifth of whiskey and held it up with a smirk. “I wonder if anybody gets a DUI in that town.”
Jon fumbled with the key fob and unsnapped the other keys. “See if one of these releases that shotgun.”
Nikki found the key and unlocked the gun. There were shells in the center console so she loaded it, racked it and made sure the safety was on.
They drove in silence for several miles. Occasionally a Fiend would run out at them like a car-chasing dog, but Jon would just step on the gas and leave it behind.
“This is my second borrowed cop car in a week,” said Jon.
“You drive it pretty well.”
“Thanks.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Northbound
Just outside of the town of Conway they saw a gas station with a bed sheet made into a banner hanging from the price sign: TAKE WHAT YOU NEED. PUMPS WILL WORK UNTIL THE GENERATOR RUNS OUT. GOD BLESS AMERICA. A pitched battle had taken place here - dead Fiends and half eaten humans littered the area around the gas pumps. A car had crashed through the front window of the attached convenience store.
Jon slowed down to a crawl, “It wouldn’t hurt to top off the tank. Maybe there’s a map and some food and water left. I say we risk it.”
“Fine. You go in with the shotgun. I’ll cover you.”
Jon pulled up to the pumps, trying to avoid running over any bodies, and put the cruiser in park, leaving the engine running. He slapped on his helmet and they both stepped out to listen. No birds. No generator. Just a grunting coming from inside the store.
Jon said, “That doesn’t sound good.” He took the safety off the shotgun.
Nikki shouldered her M16 scanning past the sight into the store. There was another grunt that turned into a moan. “Let’s not be heroes. We’ll find something farther along.”
“I think I see one of those map carousels. We need a map.” He kept the shotgun leveled and stepped to the doorway.
The car had smashed through a good portion of the store. The passenger's lifeless body hung through the front windshield. The driver was a woman, still seated, her head pinned against the steering wheel by a heavy looking suitcase that had been launched from the back seat when they smashed to a halt. The blood had only just congealed.
A live male Fiend was trapped between the front bumper and the store’s mangled checkout counter. Despite the blood trickling from its mouth and legs twisted into an impossible shape, it feebly growled while trying to reach for Jon.
Nikki stepped up to the smashed window and surveyed the scene. “That’s fucked up.”
“Shouldn’t you be watching the outside?”
“I’m still out here. Just want to make sure the bogeyman doesn’t jump you from behind some shelf.”
Jon spun a rack of maps mixed with post cards and grabbed a local and a Greater New England one. The food had mostly been picked clean, but there were some bags of snacks still scattered around. The only liquid was Yoo Hoo chocolate drink and a can of Monster energy. He grabbed both.
The sound of an approaching car grabbed their attention. A big Hummer SUV was screaming down the road. The front was covered in gore from running down Fiends. The truck slowed and a rough looking man in bright orange hunting cap yelled from the passenger seat, “You got about sixty-seconds before a wall of them things come running up this road. You need a ride?”
Nikki looked to Jon, “What do you think?”
Jon flipped up his visor and said, “I think we’re good with the cop car.”
Nikki turned back to the guy, “We’re good, thanks.”
“Suit yourselves!” The SUV peeled out.
A gathering sound of screaming, gnashing humans could be heard. Nikki turned and looked down the road. It was turning black with a running mass of Fiends.
She said, “We’ve got twenty-seconds to get in the car.”
Jon grabbed what he could carry, stopped for a hidden liter of A&W root beer and ran back to the car, tossing the food in back as he jumped in and put the pedal to the floor just as they were about to be surrounded.
Nikki put her hand on his thigh and squeezed, “Not too fast. We’ve gotten away. Don’t need to run off the road.”
Jon took the pressure off the accelerator and looked in the rearview mirror. Most people would stop running if their quarry got away. The infected didn’t even slow down.
Nikki opened the New Hampshire map and scanned it. “Okay, we’re going to be passing through the White Mountains, Mount Washington and whatnot. We keep taking Route 16 past Gorham to where it hits Route 26. We have to kind of zigzag up to Quebec from there. It looks like there’s a border crossing at a village called Canaan. We could try angling over to Interstate 91 instead, but word was...”
“I know how bad the Interstates are. Total carnage. Let’s definitely stay with the smaller roads.”
They drove in silence for a while, Jon occasionally taking a glance at Nikki. She had a strong jaw line, definitely pretty, short-cropped dark hair, sharp nose with full lips. She felt his gaze but chose not to return it. She’d had men stare at her since she was a young girl, worse when she became a Marine.
Jon said, "I’m from Connecticut originally. Been living in Atlanta since –"
“Listen. It’s Washington, right?” she asked without meeting his eyes. “I don’t want to be rude, but I’d rather not get to know you more than I do right now. You’re a reporter dumb enough to still be on this side of the wall. Maybe I’ll hear your story in Canada, but until we get there, you’re as good as dead.”
Jon offered a condescending smile. “I’m not going to say you’re dumb, but you’re down here too.”
“Very true. No point in getting to know me either.”
He shut up and drove. The countryside was magnificent, tall snow capped mountains, thick forests, babbling brooks. He figured he might as well enjoy the scenery. It’s not like he was really interested in her story, it was just the trained reporter in him. He couldn’t help but ask questions. If he survived this, he would put it all down in a book, a small personal history, from start to finish. Whenever that was. Anyway, she was good looking.
As the miles went by, they’d pass abandoned cars, some
times piled up enough to create tough obstacle courses. There weren’t a lot of dead people though. For the ones who had been stranded, someone else had either given them a lift or they had walked – or maybe they had been dragged off by the infected to be fed upon in the nearby woods.
When they got to the outskirts of Gorham, they steeled themselves for attack and weren’t disappointed. By the time they got to the main intersection of town, Fiends seemed to come running out of every building, every front yard.
Jon’s feet danced back and forth from gas pedal to brake, swerving around most of them, hitting a few until they broke through the gauntlet on the far side of town. In Berlin they were greeted by a town on fire. At times there was only twenty feet of visibility. Jon turned on the headlights and Nikki flicked the vent to re-circulate the air. Bodies lined the road. A few Fiends crawled on hands and knees gasping. Others stayed low to the ground below most of the smoke where they could continue to feed on corpses.
They had nearly made it out when a lumberjack sized, bloody faced madman charged around a corner and landed on the hood of the car. He held a tire iron and immediately began smashing it against the windshield. Jon and Nikki screamed an involuntary curse.
Jon floored the car, zigzagging back and forth, but the thing held on. The first couple of swings with the tire iron spider webbed the already fractured windshield. The third blow made a hand sized hole. The snarling creature dropped the tire iron and shoved its whole arm inside, grabbing at Jon’s throat. It reeked of body odor, blood and feces. Jon ducked and weaved and held his head back as far as he could while still reaching the gas pedal.
Nikki pulled her hunting knife out of the scabbard on her leg.
“Jesus, don’t stab it, you’ll get infected blood all over us! Lean out the window and shoot it in the head”!
Nikki unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled out the Beretta. She dropped the window and half leaned out of the car. Just then another Fiend launched itself at the side of the car, grabbing her arm, causing her to drop the gun. “Fuck!” It bit down on the sleeve of her jacket, but only got a mouthful of leather, it’s hands grabbing and pulling as it held on.
The Fiend on the hood gnashed its teeth while its bulging eyes scanned all over Jon for a place to grab some flesh. Jon suddenly made a hard left and then jerked right, nearly throwing Nikki out of the window. The maneuver threw the windshield grabber’s lower body off the left side of the hood allowing Jon to scrape it off along a telephone pole.
Nikki's attacker continued to hold on and she yelled in agony as her arm was bent back while the Fiend dragged along the ground. Jon unholstered his Colt, cocked it while driving with his knees, and slapped it into her flailing left hand. She turned and fired a round point blank into the Fiend’s head and it fell away, rolling like a wet rag doll into the gutter. She pulled herself back inside, closed the window, buckling back up.
Jon glanced at her, “You all right? It bite you?”
Nikki opened the glove box, removed a pair of latex examination gloves and slapped them on. She then pulled up her sleeve and checked her arm. “No bite, but the fucking thing nearly pulled my arm out of the socket.” She massaged her shoulder and reached back into the glove box, pulling out the whiskey and pouring it on her jacket where the Fiend had bit. She snapped off the gloves, tossed them out the window and then doused her hands with the whiskey as well. She tipped some more down her throat and then offered a swig to Jon. “Man, what I’d do for an LAV right now.”
He took a gulp and handed it back. “Lav? Like a toilet?”
“L.A.V. – Like a light armored vehicle.”
"Oh. Right." He glanced at her again. “Still, I’d be happy with the toilet– in a high rise condo… in Paris.”
She gave a light chuckle.
“Sorry I nearly tossed you.”
“I lost my pistol.”
“At least you didn’t get bit.”
“The son-of-a-bitch’s claws felt like a vise grip.”
“If we stop again, we’ll check the trunk. There’s usually a lot of gear in a cop car. Maybe there’s a vest or something for you. Another gun.”
“Let’s just not stop.”
“That’s a good plan too.”
The air howled through the hole in the windshield and Jon found himself ducking to his right to keep it from hitting him directly in the face.
Nikki kept her head turned away from him and he could see her try to shrug off a sob.
Jon tried to soften his voice. “It’s all right to be freaked. I’ve seen the toughest soldiers cry like babies during this thing. You okay?”
She turned, wiping snot from her nose with the back of her hand, “Marines aren’t soldiers, we’re Marines. You one of those dumb question reporters?”
Jon gave her a wry smile and turned back to his driving.
“That’s the closest call I’ve had.”
“Welcome to the saliva club.”
“Thanks. How can I get my membership revoked?”
Nikki tried the AM and FM radio, but could only find static. As they drove into deeper forest, the carnage thinned out and the countryside became peaceful looking again. A beautiful river flowed past them on the right and they both relaxed a little until they noticed the bodies floating along, others tangled in branches or caught on boulders. That’s when Jon’s hands started shaking. It was just a tremor at first and he shook them out over the steering wheel.
Nikki hardly took notice, her head buried in the map. “There’s a town coming up when this road comes to a T. The shortest distance is to break left, but it eventually takes us closer to the Interstate and bigger population centers. If we go right, it takes us into Maine. It’s more rural, definitely farther, maybe fewer obstacles though. I vote right.”
Jon tried slapping one of his hands on the dashboard.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not sure. Nervous tick, I guess.”
“Combat shakes. Happens all the time. Better pull over and let me drive while your nervous system sorts itself out.”
“Just a moment ago you were having your own mini-meltdown. And what happened to not stopping?”
“I’m fine now. You’re exhausted. You might stop us with a tree.”
Jon considered this. He was certainly exhausted. “Maybe I’ll shut my eyes for a few. If I think about it, I haven’t really done anything but run and fight for three months now.”
He pulled the car over to the shoulder. “Let’s not open the doors.”
“Why don’t you climb in back. Lay down. See if you can catch a few Z’s. You can spell me afterwards. The next town is Errols. One street. We’ll be in and out in two minutes. I’ll wake you only if I have to.”
“Okay. That sounds good. Thanks”
Jon climbed in back and Nikki slid over. He was halfway out by the time she pushed down on the accelerator.
PART TWO
The Search For A Cure
CHAPTER NINE
Tran
Dr. Robert Tran lay in bed, frustrated that his tiny opportunity to catch up on sleep was once again spoiled by his nagging subconscious. His brain had been tickling the back of his head for days. The researcher for the Centers for Disease Control knew the signs and it kept him awake with annoyed anticipation. The scientist in him suggested that he take a sleeping pill - a sleep-deprived brain being useless for dealing with a national pandemic. The holy-shit-we’re-all-going-to-die-a-horrible-death normal human side of him said, “Sleeping pill? Are you nuts? You’ve almost got it.”
A songbird began singing outside the window of his trailer. It was still dark out, but the bird didn’t care and then another one joined it. Tran pulled his pillow over his head to block them out. He’d been crashing in this FEMA trailer outside the now Relocated-to-Ottawa CDC headquarters for three months. Ever since Atlanta was overrun, the race against time had taken up residence in a research park in the Ottawa suburbs. Tran was a member of the Bacterial Zoonoses Branch, which was charged among other t
hings with scientific support for CDC’s terrorism preparedness and emergency response. In reality his job was (to use the CDC’s words) Pathogen discovery and characterization of unusual bacterial pathogens and novel causes of critical illness and unexplained death. Currently, the critical illness department was overwhelmed. No one was really sleeping, and to make matters worse, as the now partnered Canadian/American Government declared martial law, a food rationing system had just been brought into effect. Tran’s stomach gurgled at the thought and he sat up to get a drink of water while cursing the chirpy birds outside.
The trailer’s potable waterlines had been hooked up to an old galvanized pipe system and much to everyone’s annoyance there was no filter and no home filters to be had. The result was rusty water. To minimize some of the metal, he held a handkerchief over the glass and let the water slowly filter through - and that’s when he had it - the tickle in the back of his head turned into a eureka moment: The birds, the dirty water, the bacteria that riddled the brain of the infected, it all came together like the last successful turn of a Rubik’s Cube.
Turning on a light, he threw his glasses on and flipped open his laptop. First he brought up a map of the initial spread of FND-z. For each date that the infection jumped north, it showed a different color swath over the Southern Continental US. Somehow, the disease had overcome every quarantine effort the government, and even panicked but still organized citizens, had set up. Of course, now the thing was a self-perpetuating killing machine, wrecking any computer modeling that showed predictive behavior. In April the population density of infected had reached a tipping point beyond quarantine within the continental US. It was literally the last hope of North America that the final barrier, the Saint Lawrence Wall as it was now called, would hold.
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