by Ricky Sides
“Just name it, man. If I can do it, you know I will.”
“I need you to lead the others to the vehicle when the rescue team arrives. And then make certain they all board the transport.”
“I will. You can count on me.”
“Good. Now, I think I’m going to slip out the side door and go scouting. I’ve done all I can for you people. Remaining among you at this point puts you at risk of becoming contaminated by me. It’s time for me to go, Jesse,” Hernando said as he stared into the eyes of a man he had only known a few months, but had come to consider the best friend he’d ever had.
Jesse nodded his head sadly in understanding. Then he reached out his hand to shake, but Hernando put his hand behind his back. “No unnecessary contact, my friend. You know the rules. We worked them out together, you and me.”
Jesse frowned and said, “I don’t care about that.”
“I care. I won’t risk contaminating you. That’s why I need to go now,” Hernando countered, and without another word, he turned and walked away.
Jesse followed him out of the dispatcher’s office, where they had found enough batteries and wiring for him to jerry rig a power system for their radio by running smaller batteries in series to increase the voltage, or in parallel to increase the amperage. The two men made their way back through the building and stopped at the door they had used to gain entry.
“You’re not going to say goodbye to the others?” Jesse asked.
“I’m burning up with fever, Jesse,” Hernando responded. He took a dark brown rag from his back pocket and wiped sweat from his face. “It’s too late for that. I may already be contagious. I hope to God I haven’t contaminated you.” Pausing a moment, he added, “I’d better go now. Your ride will be here soon.”
Without another word, Hernando turned to the door and opened it a crack. Once he was satisfied that it was safe to exit, he slipped out the door and moved away. He heard the door shut and lock behind him. At that moment, he felt more alone than he had ever felt in his entire life. He tucked the end of the rag back inside his back pocket, but as he stepped down off the curb, the impact jarred the sweaty cloth and it fell out and landed on the edge of the street.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department was across the street from the Newport Police Station. He shrugged and headed toward it, stopping at the corner to check in all directions for any lurking zombies. That struck him as funny and he chuckled because there had been a time when the only thing you had to worry about when crossing a street was oncoming traffic. Then he sobered as he remembered that there was nothing even remotely funny about his situation. “I guess it’s the fever making me think oddly,” he muttered to himself as he crossed the street and headed for the front entrance to the sheriff’s department.
***
“God, look at the bodies,” Ed murmured as the bus drove along the street heading for the rendezvous with the survivors. He looked back in Robert’s direction and saw that the young man was asleep. “At least the boy’s not seeing this,” he whispered to Jason.
“Yeah, I guess he is wiped out. None of us got much sleep last night,” Jason responded as he looked back at their passenger.
Herb drove along the street carefully. He was doing his best to avoid running over any of the bodies that littered the roadway in this section of town. As he drove, he wondered what had driven so many people out into the street in this area. He also wondered why so many had failed to rise again as zombies. Or were the bodies that of zombies that had been killed in some great battle as the defenders of the town had tried to repulse them. He realized that he might never know the answers to those questions, unless the survivors they were here to rescue knew the truth.
Herb cursed under his breath as his passenger side front wheel ran over one of the bodies he had been trying so hard to miss. It was possible that some of the bodies were carrying equipment or gear that could puncture a tire and that was a problem that they did not need in their current situation.
“Oh, that’s going to smell something fierce,” Randy quipped. Then he broached the subject that Herb had been pondering when he suggested that they stop near some of the bodies so he could investigate what had happened here.
“Let’s just stay focused on the mission. Maybe the people we’re picking up can shed some light on what happened here,” Herb responded. “Besides, for all we know, the bodies we are seeing are here because it’s a natural choke point for people entering and leaving the town. Marauders who took all their possession may have killed them, or the zombies may have been drawn to the area because of constant activity here. Either way, it would be best for us to stay on track, get the people we came to rescue, and then get the hell out of this town.”
“I second that,” Jason said quietly. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this area. I think stopping for anything would be a big mistake.”
“Maybe I should get topside,” Randy volunteered.
“No, at least not yet. If human marauders are responsible for this, then you’d be a sitting duck up there,” Herb said.
“We all are,” Randy countered. “At least with me up top, we have a chance to return fire if they attack.”
“Not if they kill you with the first shot, dummy,” Herb said irritably.
“He’s right there,” Jason interjected. “That’s exactly what I’d do if I were in their shoes. I’d just take out the gunner first, and then I’d try for the driver.”
“Ed, if this turns ugly, you get the boy on the floor where a stray bullet is less likely to hit him,” Herb instructed.
“Will do,” Ed replied tensely. He didn’t know if it had been Jason’s softly spoken words of warning or if it was just the presence of so many bodies, but he felt a growing sense of anxiety.
“Check weapons,” Randy said. He recognized the mounting tension and knew that doing something constructive would alleviate it to a degree.
“Jason, you take my rifle,” Herb instructed. He then drew his Beretta M9 and held it up in his right hand. “It’s loaded with all hollow points. Change it to alternating ball ammo and hollow point, just in case this is marauders and we have to penetrate vehicles.”
“I’m on it,” Jason said as he took hold of the pistol.
Herb yanked hard on the steering wheel in order to avoid two bodies.
“Stop!” Jason shouted in a loud and alarmed tone of voice. Then he began to curse more virulently than the team had ever heard the man swear in the past.
Herb had been traveling at a snail’s pace because of all of the bodies, so he was able to stop the bus quickly. “What is it?” he asked.
“I think that’s an IED on the left,” he said pointing to a suspicious metal box sitting beside an automobile on the left. “I saw shit like this in Iraq. They funnel traffic right up beside the improvised explosive device and detonate it themselves or have it set so the target vehicle sets it off,” Jason explained.
“Are you sure?” Herb asked.
“I can’t be certain, but I think so,” Jason said. “And if I’m right, then that means marauders may have done this. I doubt law enforcement people would have, and there is no evidence that the military ever entered this town.”
“Okay, so what do we do?” Herb asked.
“I doubt they trapped the bodies. They’d be afraid of contamination,” Jason said.
“So you think we should take our chances and just run over the dead?”
“Do you know how many zombies might converge on us after an IED disables the bus and draws them to our area?” Jason asked. He shook his head in anger. “Those that died in the blast might be envied by the survivors.”
“All right, I get your point. I just hope they weren’t carrying anything that can flatten our tires.”
“At this point, I’d settle for a flat tire,” Jason quipped. “If we make it out of this with nothing worse, we can count ourselves lucky.”
“Who would have done something like this?” Ed asked.
“Who
knows?” Ed said. “Hell, they may not even be in the area anymore. For all we know, this trap could be several months old. Or they could be waiting on the other side of town. They’d hear the explosion and could come gather the supplies and gear once the zombies finish off any survivors and disperse.”
“Okay, we’ll do it your way,” Herb said. He put the bus in reverse and backed up a good twenty feet. He then put the gearshift lever back in drive, and said, “This is going to be a rough ride.”
“Here’s your pistol,” Jason said. “Alternating rounds with ball ammo chambered, just like you wanted.”
“Thanks,” Herb said. He holstered his pistol and then let off the brake to get the bus moving once more. The ride was every bit as rough as Herb had warned.
“What’s happening?” asked Robert, who had awoken to the lurching of the bus as it ran over body after body.
“There are a bunch of dead zombies on the road,” Ed said, seeking to reassure the boy, although he was far from certain that they were all zombies. “We can’t miss them all.”
“You better watch for bad guys then,” Robert warned.
“Oh?” asked Ed. “Why’s that?”
“Dad traded food to a guy once for information about the road ahead of us. The man was so grateful he told dad a lot about what had been happening. He said some bad people are putting bodies in the street to slow travelers. Then they attack them.”
“Did the man say where those people were operating?” Jason asked.
“No. He just said the northern part of Arkansas, and that he’d heard they move around a lot.”
Jason made eye contact with Herb in the rearview mirror but said nothing. He didn’t need to say anything. It was clear to Herb that he felt vindicated in his suspicion about the roadside package.
“How much further do we have to go?” Herb asked Jason.
“It’s hard to tell from the directions he gave us, but I think it’s about six or seven blocks. We’ll know it when we see it because he said it was a big red brick structure and there’s nothing else like it near the police station,” Jason said, refreshing Herb’s memory of the details the man had given.
There was a violent jarring as the passenger side of the bus lurched upward and then back down twice in rapid succession. When the vehicle stabilized, Herb said, “Sorry about that. I thought I could miss that one or I’d have given a warning. The good news is, it looks like the bodies are starting to taper off, so we may be in the clear in another block. I think I can get past the rest of the bodies without hitting one.”
***
“Where’s Hernando?” one of the women asked Jesse as they waited by the door.
“He went scouting,” Jesse replied, using the excuse for his absence that their leader had recommended.
“Why would he do something that dumb when we’re about to be rescued?” asked Jesse’s wife, Ursula.
Jesse remained quiet, hoping to avoid answering his wife’s question because he didn’t want to lie to her. His silence prompted her to turn on her flashlight and direct it toward the ceiling so that she could use the ambient light to see his face without aiming it at him and blinding him. The expression of sorrow she saw on his face warned her that he was concealing bad news about Hernando. “All right, Jesse, out with it,” she said in a tone of voice that told her husband she would brook no evasiveness on his part.
“He won’t be coming with us,” Jesse informed his wife.
Ursula stared at her husband in disbelief, but then comprehension dawned on her face and her eyes teared up. “Oh, Jesse,” she said as she lowered the flashlight and leaned against her husband. “It was during that last fight, wasn’t it?” she asked in a soft tone of voice.
“Yeah, that thing clawed him. It broke the skin. He said he could feel it burning right off, and before he left he said he had a fever,” Jesse explained.
“Hernando is infected?” asked one of the other women.
“I’m afraid so,” Jesse confirmed.
“That’s so unfair,” another woman said angrily. “None of us would have made it if it weren’t for him.”
“What is he going to do? We can’t just leave him behind,” Ursula said.
“It’s the way he wants it,” Jesse said. “He’ll wait until we are safe inside the transport and on our way to the refuge, and then he’ll see to it that he doesn’t become a zombie and hurt people.”
“We didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye,” another of the women said.
“I know how you feel,” Jesse said miserably.
“No you don’t,” the woman retorted. “You had a chance to say goodbye.”
“He wouldn’t even let me shake his hand. He was too afraid he’d contaminate me,” Jesse responded.
“Then his last act among us was to continue to protect us,” one of the youngest women said thoughtfully. “In a way, I guess that’s a fitting way for him to leave us.”
***
Hernando had managed to get inside the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office with surprising ease. He had found the front entry unlocked and simply walked in the front door. The power was off there, just as it was in the rest of the city. A quick search of the building proved that he was the only living person inside it. He could smell the cloying stench of death in the air and he suspected that at least some prisoners had died in their cells. Yet, he didn’t take the time to investigate that because he wanted to be in position to observe the arrival of the team from the refuge.
Hernando frowned in consternation. He would be able to see the vehicle when it arrived, but it would be out of sight when they turned the corner and drove to the entrance where his people were waiting. He was thinking about going outside and finding another place from which to observe the rescue when he saw the bus driving past going the wrong way on 2nd Street, which was a one way street.
The grey Mercedes Sprinter minibus took him by surprise, but he nodded in approval when he saw the cowcatcher mounted to the front and the steel mesh covering the windows. He was also impressed when he noted a man with his upper body protruding from the roof of the vehicle. It was obvious to him that the man was acting as a gunner to provide security for the occupants of the bus.
Hernando was pleased. He had seen enough to know that the people from the refuge were well organized and seemed to be equipped to deal with the dangers of traveling in post zombie America. “They’ve got a good chance of making it,” he said to himself, and then he settled down to wait for them to leave. He was hungry, so he opened his pack and took out a can of soup. It was the last of his rations. They had all been on a starvation diet the past two weeks. At first, food had been easy to find for the hundred or so survivors he estimated had made it through the first week after the fall of the city, but that hadn’t lasted. The arrival of the outlaws had changed that. They had systematically searched the majority of the homes and stores and taken away everything edible they found. They had also killed and captured most of the survivors and taken their captives with them when they left.
When the outlaws had arrived, many of the townspeople had mistakenly believed that they were there to help them. Some of his people had argued that they should approach the armed men, who were killing zombies and piling their bodies here and there. Yet, Hernando had been wary of approaching them. He had argued that they should wait and see what happened to any of the others who might try to do so. His group observed what was happening from a distance, and they were glad they had heeded his advice when the first group that approached the newcomers was slaughtered in the street where they stood.
After that incident, Hernando took his people into hiding, where they remained until the outlaws had left Newport. When they emerged from their seclusion, his people found that all of the other survivors were either dead or missing. They also learned that there was very little in the way of food remaining in Newport.
That had been three weeks ago. Since then, the group had survived as best they could, but they were all malnourished. Now,
as Hernando stared at his last can of food, he wondered why he should even bother. After all, he planned to kill himself as soon as his group departed. He shrugged his shoulders and opened the soup. “A condemned man has a right to a last meal,” he said to himself as he pushed a spoon into the cold soup. He was so hungry that his mouth was salivating at the mere thought of food.
Chapter 16
Ox helps.
Herb saw the District Court sign, just as Hernando had said he would. He stopped the bus in the road and opened the door for Jason and Ed to exit. The two men stepped off the bus and made their way to the door while Randy kept watch topside.
Ox came forward and stared out the door for a second, and then he turned to look at Herb. “Guard the door, boy,” Herb instructed the animal, causing Ox to again turn to face the open door. Herb smiled in satisfaction and turned his attention back to the rescue in progress.
Jason stopped near the door and tapped on it gently, so as not to make much noise. As a precaution, he wasn’t standing in front of the door. Instead, he was standing off to the side so that any bullets fired through the door wouldn’t hit him. Beside him, Ed waited with his weapon at the ready but pointed away from the door.
“You from the refuge?” a male voice asked through the door.
“We are,” Jason responded. “Are you people ready to go?”