by Cronan, Matt
When they had reached the desert, their luck had run out. They had resorted to extreme rationing over the last week and the inside of Sam's mouth felt like sandpaper. She let Cole's words resonate in her mind.
"How much more can we cut back?" Sam asked after a long moment.
Cole didn't answer.
"What about ammo?"
"Got a full clip in my sack. Three rounds left in the rifle."
"Next time we make camp, I want you to switch clips. We need to hold on to those three rounds, just in case."
"In case of what?" Cole asked.
"You know what," Sam answered. "One of us gets bit and turns…" Sam hesitated trying to keep the image of Nick or Alex as a halfway far away from her mind's eye. "If push comes to shove, do you think you can bash one of their brains in?"
"Naw," Cole said. "Don't reckon I could. But I don't reckon I could shoot 'em neither."
"Let's hope it never comes to that," Sam said.
Sam returned the makeshift telescope to the pant-leg of her cargos and ran her bandaged hand through her thick matted hair. It was dry and gritty and she had contemplated hacking it off with one of the knives about 12 times a day since leaving Lost Angel. She would give anything for a shower.
"Where's Concordia from here?"
"If I remember the maps Deckard showed me," Cole said and looked at the sun hanging low in the hazy sky, "should be due east. Little ways to the North. Middle of the country."
"If you remember?"
"Been a long time," Cole said. "Been over a month since we left New Hope. Even longer since he showed me. But I suppose I still remember them pretty good."
Sam sighed. "We passed another big roadway a couple miles back. Looked like it was heading east. I say we head that way."
"Okay," Cole said and scratched his bushy beard. "What about food?"
"We'll keep scavenging. Maybe once we get out of the desert we can hunt."
"Desert's a big place. We're gonna need food before—"
"What do you suggest?" Sam interrupted. "I'm doing my best here."
Cole looked to the ground. "I know ya are. It's just—"
"It's just what?"
"I'm worried about the boy. He didn't have a lot of meat on his bones to start. He's not doing good."
Sam turned back to Nick. His face was gray and sunken and blood stained his lips. "I know," she said.
They started back toward Alex and Nick but Cole stopped her before they got within earshot. "Miss Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"You've been looking in that book of yours every night," Cole said. "The one you found in Doc's bag."
"Yeah," Sam said. She looked away, afraid to meet his gaze, and out toward the sky. The sun stagnated just below the horizon, not yet ready to stretch out and brighten the day. Instead, the eastern skyline was pink with large purple clouds hanging low in the air. To the west, the darkness kept its stranglehold on the forthcoming morning.
"You ain't found anything that talks about what this thing is they put in my head, have you?" Cole wrung his hands together and frowned. "Or how to take it out? Or what the other two buttons do on the remote—"
"No," Sam interrupted. She looked at him and prayed he couldn't see through her lies. His face twisted in disappointment and Sam looked away again. It hurt to lie to him. "I promise," she continued, "if I find something, you'll be the first to know."
Cole ran a giant hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his scalp. After a long moment, he said, "Okay, Miss Sam."
They resumed walking until they reached Nick and Alex. As they neared, the children clambered to their feet, an unwarranted optimism coating each of their faces. A pang of guilt shot through Sam's heart.
"Any luck?" Alex asked.
Sam shook her head. "City's crawling with halfways."
"Goddammit," Nick said. He started to say something else but broke into another coughing fit. Sam cringed as more red spittle flew from his lips. The episodes were getting worse. It wouldn't be much longer.
Alex tried to speak but her words caught and instead she burst into silent sobs and collapsed back to the asphalt. The small-framed girl had already lost ten pounds and Sam wondered how much more she could stand to lose. Tears streaked down her soiled cheeks and Nick knelt down and wrapped a stick-thin arm around her.
"So what do we do?" Nick asked.
"Concordia is east of here," Sam said. "We head that way and pray for water. Pray for food."
"No offense," Nick said, "but I stopped praying a long time ago. What if we go around the city and try to sneak in through a rear entrance."
Sam shook her head. "We'll scavenge anything and everything on the way, but we need to keep heading toward Concordia. It's the best course of action."
"How do you know that?" the boy asked. "How do you even know Concordia is real?"
"It's real," Sam affirmed.
"And so what if it is," Nick sputtered. "What's the point if we all die trying to get there?"
Sam didn't answer.
Nick kissed his sister atop of her head and then coughed again, this time into his hands. When the coughing subsided, he wiped his palms onto the legs of his jeans leaving two faint trails of blood behind.
"We need to keep moving," Sam said. She lifted the doctor's handbag from the broken pavement. "It'll be noon in a few hours. If it's as hot as it was yesterday then we'll need to set up camp and wait until nightfall to resume travel." Neither Nick nor Alex protested. Instead, they gathered the rest of the gear they had pieced together throughout the trip and turned back in the direction they had come.
A half-mile from the entrance to the city they passed a broken-down slot machine slumbering on its back in the center of the road. The words and paint were faded to the point of transparency from decades, or perhaps centuries, of living under the cruel desert sun. Sam felt as faded and far removed from reality as the broken-down machine.
The group slowed as they passed the charred frame a vehicle. A skeleton slouched against the car door and stared back at her from the driver's seat. There was another in the passenger seat and two smaller ones in the rear. Sam wanted to feel sorry for them but she couldn't. They had been lucky the ones.
Cole grabbed her by the arm and Sam nearly screamed aloud.
"What?" Sam whispered.
"Halfway," Cole whispered back.
She signaled for Nick and Alex to stop and then eyed the stretch of road ahead. Standing next to the concrete divider, 200 yards away, was a person. Sam pulled the telescope from her pocket and looked through it.
"It's a woman—" Sam said, and then corrected herself, "was a woman." The decayed flesh was a sickly gray color and pocked with open sores that oozed black pus. The woman looked down between her knees and then back to the horizon.
"Is it alone?" Cole asked.
She glassed the area but saw no one else.
"Looks that way." She dropped the looking glass into her pocket and unsheathed the chef's knife from her waistband. "It wasn't here when we passed the first time. We'll need to be on the lookout for others."
The knife's stainless steel blade had rusted from years of being exposed to the environment and the tip was dull, but it was a quiet alternative to the rifle. She could sever the halfway's spinal cord without drawing attention from others in the area.
"You want me to handle it?" Cole asked.
Sam shook her head. "No. Stay with the children."
"You want the gun?"
"No," Sam said. She grasped the handle of the knife and started toward the creature.
She measured each step and moved silently across the broken blacktop using the cars as cover. The halfway continued to stare at the ground as she moved within striking distance. She raised the knife above her head and prepared to jab it into the back of the dead woman's neck. And then she saw what had captured the halfway's attention. Lying in-between the decomposing legs of the woman was an infant—a rotten, leathery cord tethering the child to its mother.
>
Sam gasped and fell backward. She stumbled over a piece of debris and dropped the knife. The halfway looked up at her and screamed, and Sam had to cover her mouth to stifle a whimper. The woman's glassy eyes darted back and forth from the child to Sam. It yelled something inaudible and then took a step toward her. Sam grabbed blindly for the knife afraid to take her eyes from the dead woman. The halfway took another step closer, but the umbilical cord pulled taught. It had caught on a piece of rebar jutting from the divider. The dead woman screamed once more at Sam and then returned to the child.
Sam picked herself up from the pavement and took a tentative step forward. She couldn't take her watery eyes off of the child. It too was crying. Its skin was the same ashen color as its mother and pocked with the same infectious sores and gaping wounds of exposed muscle and tissue. The dead woman growled and shrieked as Sam took another step closer, but it didn't leave the child's side.
"Good god," Cole whispered.
Sam's heart leapt into her throat. She wheeled around to see he had left the children and was now standing by her side.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to scare ya."
"It's okay," Sam said and pressed away the tears that had formed in the corner of her eyes with her palms.
"You think they've been here this whole time?" Cole asked.
"No," Sam said.
"Where'd they come from then?"
Sam said nothing. Instead, she wiped the tears from her eyes, but the effort was futile. The tears continued to fall and soon Cole wrapped her in his arms and she sobbed heavily into his chest.
"It's not right," she said between tearful breaths.
"No, Miss Sam." Cole squeezed her tightly. "No it's not."
He held her until Sam stopped crying. She pulled away and wiped her eyes. Something had happened to her brain in the General's dining hall. Something unexplainable. She had transformed into some sort of killing machine, and after they left the bunker, the skills seemed to carry over to survival. But she wasn't prepared for this.
"You sure you don't want me to handle this?" Cole asked.
"I'm sure," Sam said and swallowed hard.
"We could leave them here," Cole offered.
"No," Sam said. "We can't."
Cole nodded.
She took a step forward and picked the knife off the cement but that was as far as she could make herself go. The dead woman looked up at her and then back to the child, but it didn't advance again. Instead, the corpse knelt down beside the infant and put a rotten hand atop it.
Cole put a hand on Sam's shoulder and whispered for her to look away. Sam did as he asked and looked back toward Las Vegas. A gunshot ripped through the air and the woman collapsed onto the blacktop with a thud. Frantic screams from the child cause Sam's skin to turn to gooseflesh…another gunshot…silence.
2
The sun broke from its slumber and clambered through the sky as the foursome journeyed back toward the intersection. An hour after sunrise, Sam had already broken into a sweat. It would be unbearable by midday. She glanced back toward the children who hobbled behind. An uneasiness overtook her when she saw how gray Nick looked.
"Let's take five," Sam said as she waited for Nick and Alex to catch up. "Hydrate and rest your legs." The refugees from Lost Angel half sat/half collapsed onto the blacktop. Nick broke into another coughing fit, spewing the asphalt with crimson.
"This ain't good," Cole said.
"You and Alex take a few sips and give him the rest," Sam said. "Make him drink."
"What about you?"
"I'm fine."
"The hell you are," Cole scoffed. He pulled the water jugs from around his neck and forced one of the bottles into her hands. "At least take a swallow."
Sam lifted the dirty plastic to her lips and took the tiniest of sips. She sloshed the warm gritty water around in her mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. It was one of the greatest things she had ever tasted. Her body yearned for more, but she handed the jug back to Cole.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Cole nodded and walked over to the children. Sam removed the binocular from her pants and searched the horizon for any sign of life. She listened as Nick protested and then gave in to Cole's wishes.
When the jugs were empty, the group set out again. They moved even slower than before through the sweltering temperatures and down the sand-strewn highway. They slid past the scorched shells of ash and bone until they reached a massive fork in the road.
"This is it," Cole said as they approached a metal overhang. Pieces of a smashed, faded green sign covered the ground below the broken metal scaffolding. "We can go east here until we get around the city. Then we head north and catch back up with I-15."
The intersection was three miles from the city gates but it had taken the withered and battered group almost two and a half hours to reach it. They shambled down the off-ramp and started east on the low road.
The sun's brutal rays hammered them as they continued to march forward. Sam's mouth felt like sandpaper and she regretted letting Nick drink the rest of the water. Then she caught a glimpse of him in the corner of her eye. His blood-red lips shone in the sunlight and the bright color of them made his skin look impossibly paler. She made the right decision.
"What's that?" Alex said and pointed toward the horizon.
A large metal object had appeared on the skyline. The sun gleamed off it creating bright orbs of reflective light. Whatever it was, it didn't belong in the middle of the road. Sam removed the telescope from her pocket and eyed the distant object.
"What is it?" Alex asked.
"A plane," Sam said. She glassed over the mangled fuselage. The debris covered the width of the road. "What's left of a plane, anyway." She handed the glass-piece to Cole who surveyed the object.
"Looks military," Cole said.
"C-7 Galaxy cargo plane. There's an airbase on the opposite side of the city," Sam said.
"How do you know?"
Sam shrugged. The flood of information had ebbed since the dining room incident but it was still there. "Same way I know how to harvest mesquite pods. Same way I know how to filter water or shoot a gun."
"The data stream?"
"Yeah."
Cole handed the telescope back to Sam and rubbed the back of his neck. "You think we should head back. Find another way around the city?"
"No," Sam said and studied the area again. "Nothing seems to be moving. Let's check it out. We can camp there if it's safe. It's getting too hot to be out here."
It took half an hour to reach the wreckage. When they neared, Sam and Cole readied their weapons and the children stood back at a safe distance. The center of the fuselage angled upward and had split into two halves. The front of the mangled plane was beyond recognition, but the rear remained largely intact.
"How do ya want to do this?" Cole asked.
Sam pointed her knife toward the rear of the plane and started to speak, but a loud scratching noise from inside the plane interrupted her.
"Get back," she hissed, spinning on her heel to face the teens. They were already retreating. The sound of claws screeching against metal blasted through the air again and Sam whirred back to the plane. The noise stopped, but her heartbeat continued to race.
"Go back?" Cole whispered after a long moment.
Sam focused all of her attention on the plane. The rest of her senses seemed to fade away. She heard Cole's steady breaths in stereo. Nick anxiously tapped his foot and Alexandria whispered prayers to whatever god she thought might save them. And then she heard the scratching again. Sam's mind flashed on the long claws of the midnight runners scratching against the rock floor of Lost Angel. The rational part of her brain took over as she concentrated on the sound.
"Rats," Sam said. "It sounds like rats. It's just amplified because there's nothing else out here."
Cole took a deep breath and took a step forward. Sam grabbed his arm.
"If it's not rats," Sam whispered. "If it's s
omething bigger, you let me deal with it. You go back and get Nick and Alex out of here."
"Miss Sam, I don't think…" Cole's voice faded, and he frowned. "If something were to happen, do you really want me watching over them? I don't know nothing about caring for any kids."
Sam's blood turned cold. She stared at him for a long moment and sighed. "I trust you, Cole. If something happens you get them to a safe place…" she paused and looked into his eyes. "Promise me."
"I'll do the best I can—"
"Promise me you won't hurt them."
Cole gave her a long searching look. "Why would I hurt them?"
"Promise me," Sam said.
Cole's eyes darted to the ground as if he was embarrassed, but nodded his confirmation. There wasn't time to dwell on the moment. Another screech burst from the plane and Sam unsheathed her knife. "Let's go."
Sam's heartbeat quickened as they crept through the field of debris. The cargo bay door was missing, and they entered through the large opening. Sam gripped the chef's knife in her hand and then let out a low whistle. Nothing inside moved.
She took a tentative step inside and found two large steel crates against the interior wall of the plane. At one time they were ratcheted against the wall with cargo straps but the fabric of the straps had deteriorated, leaving two buckles lying on the floor next to the cases.
On the opposite side of the plane two Humvees slouched against the wall lined up behind one another. The harnesses holding the trucks in place had held firm, leaving the vehicles in relatively good condition. The tires were flat and the synthetic rubber had started to deteriorate, but other than that Sam couldn't see any discernible damage. If only they still had gas, she thought. Sam inched forward and the metal grating creaked under her weight.
Something flashed in the corner of her eye and Sam screamed as something bolted from under the rear vehicle and ran toward her. She cocked the knife back, and just as she released, she caught a true glimpse of the animal. She made a last second adjustment to the blade's trajectory, and it struck a bare spot on the floor. Sparks flew as metal collided with metal and the knife clanked across the grated floor. The creature yelped, changed direction and ducked behind one of the crates. Cole emerged at her side, his finger on the trigger and the barrel of the gun aimed in the creature's direction.