The red headed guardsman ponders this for a moment and apparently agrees, because he lowers his weapon until the business end points harmlessly at the ground.
“Is that your ride out front?” Max slowly lowers his weapon as well.
“That ‘ride’ is the property of the United States National Guard, and definitely ain’t for civilian use. Besides only a fool would step foot out there.” Gilly’s southern drawl is thicker than molasses.
Brooke speaks up, “We just came from out there and it looked a whole sight better than it does in here.”
The young soldier, dressed in blood spattered full desert camouflage, a flack jacket and boots, adjusts his hat and shakes his head slightly, “You idiots, you’re in here ‘cause they let ya’ll in. See, this is their icebox and they’re saving our asses for dessert. Anyway, since we all goin’ die together ya’ll might as well know who you’re dieing with. My name is Gilly.”
Brooke answers, “I’m Brooke, and this is Vinny and Max.”
Max interrupts, “Now that we’re all acquainted you should know that one of those things is in here. It’s just a kid but he’s faster than anything I’ve seen. I took a shot at him but I’m pretty sure I didn’t hit anything.”
“Yeah, I’ve been huntin’ that little shit. He got bit when they overran us and it didn’t take long for him to change on account he was so small. He’s been running around here and suckin’ on anybody he can find with a drop of blood left in their veins. Where’d that little bugger get off to now?”
“He disappeared into the ceiling after I sprayed him with pepper spray.” Brooke answers.
“Wow, that actually worked huh? Well, don’t count on that working again. The longer they been infected and the more they drink, the stronger they get. Pretty soon he won’t remember what pain is.”
“So what happened here?” Vinny asks the question to which nobody really wants to hear the answer.
Gilly removes his hat, folds it and pushes it under a M.O.L.L.E. strap on his vest, “Well, officially our job is to keep the peace and defend places like this; hospitals, clinics, anyplace that folks might still be gathering for medical help. Most public places have been closed down since last night but with the virus going around we been trying to keep the hospitals open. Now unofficially, we been sent out here to round up as many of these fuckers as we can, so the pinheads at the CDC can use ‘em as lab rats. Me and my boys were handling both those duties when suddenly we got swarmed by a bunch of them things. I don’t know if it was all the folks in one place, the smell of blood here or what that brought them down on us, but once they started coming there weren’t no stoppin’ ‘em. We shot ‘em all up and they just kept coming like a bull with a foxtail up his ass. They’re faster than hell and stronger than any five men. These people here didn’t have a chance. Some, they carried off with ‘em, I guess to save for later. When I realized there weren’t no fighting ‘em I hunkered down in a closet and waited it out. I think with all the blood in the air they couldn’t smell me. I pulled a body in there with me to hide behind and maybe that helped too. Anyway, once it quieted down I came out and found that kid bitten but still live’n. I didn’t have the heart to put a bullet in him. Sure wish I had though. Now that he’s turned, I can’t seem to catch his little ass. Gotta keep lookin’ over my shoulder for that tiny bastard. To add another pile on top of that one, the only working radio is in the Hummvy so I’m kind of stuck.”
With the understanding that everyone Gilly had come with is dead, everyone stands in silence for a moment not knowing what to say.
Max finally speaks up with a nod in Vinny’s direction, “Is there anyplace a little safer that we can tend to my boy here?”
Vinny chimes in, “Yeah we don’t want to get caught with our dicks in our hands should your little friend return.”
Gilly shoots Vinny a sideways glance and the look lingers a little as he appears to study his face. He looks back at Max and then on to Brooke with a touch of concern in his eyes before saying, “This way.”
Max, Brooke and Vinny follow Gilly down the hall to its end and pass through a door to a room filled with large medical equipment, an ultrasound, EKG, defibrillator and oxygen tanks. The room has no working light source of its own but is intermittently lit by the flickering light from the hall. Several camouflage-clad bodies litter the floor like the castoff sacrifices of an Incan ritual. One of them lays half in half out of a small closet on the wall opposite the main door to the room.
Brooke, obviously taken aback by the lack of attention paid to his brethren, asks Gilly, “You’ve been hiding in here with them just lain out like that.” She struggles through emotional and physical disgust to complete the sentence.
Gilly scratches his chin before he replies, “They’re already dead, so probably don’t give a shit one way or the other. Fact is, the smell throws them things off for a little while, and if I stacked ‘em up all pretty it would be obvious someone was still in here wouldn’t it. Although, they have been dead for a while now, and I imagine they probably ain’t smelling so fresh to those things out there no more. Before long they’ll be able to smell us, and then sure as shit they’ll be back.”
“Then let’s be ready for them. Brooke, take what you need for Vinny out of the bag and toss me the rest. I’ve got an idea.” Max turns his attention from Brooke to Gilly, “Couldn’t help but notice that your friends over there were pretty well armed. Any objections to us borrowing a few of those M4s and any extra 5.56 ammo you might have laying around?”
Brooke glances at the soldier to see if any of that ‘M4, 5.56’ business made any more sense to him than it did to her.
Gilly smiles and gives Brooke a wink, pausing to notice how easy she is on the eyes before turning back to Max, “A man that knows his weapons. Well you and me gonna get along just fine.”
Max and Gilly immediately get busy releasing the assault rifles from the single point slings that still tether them to their former owners. Next, they undergo the gruesome task of patting down their torn and broken bodies for additional magazines of 5.56 ammunition. Max finds a bowie knife on one of the bodies; he tucks it into his waistband and continues the pat-downs. While doing so he pauses to check for pulse on each soldier and he is relieved to find none. A lack of a pulse not only meant that the soldiers’ suffering was over; it also meant that none of them had -or could still- turn. He wants to be sure that they will have no more surprises from within the semi-secure walls of the clinic.
Max glances over at Brooke, who is carefully tending to Vinny’s injuries and wishes he hadn’t been such a fool for so long. Now, with everything that’s happened, it appears as though he truly has missed that bus. In a world where every moment is a battle for survival, surely there is no room for romance. Would there ever again be a time? He hopes so, with all of his heart. One thing he knows for sure is that before they could ever be together, she would have to know the truth about his past. She was so tender and forgiving; perhaps she could find a way to love someone like him.
***
Across the room, Vinny stares at the gentle lines of Brooke’s face as she swabs away Lisa’s blood and tends to his mangled shoulder. Her dark lush brows and impossibly long lashes, her full lips and the curve of her waist all stir such desire within him. He wonders if she knows how he truly feels about her or what he would give to be with her. He doubts that she is aware. It seems that all she could ever see was Max, ‘poor Max’, who had come from the wrong side of the tracks to start anew, after committing an unspeakable act. Vinny has spent years trying to break free from Max’s great shadow, and oh how long that shadow is in Brooke’s eyes. He loves Max like a brother, but even a brother’s love has its limits. For so long, he’s had to play the fool just to get noticed and the charade was beginning to wear thin. If only he could get Brooke to stop and take a look at him, the real ‘Vincent’ beneath the persona she knows as ‘Vinny’, then perhaps she would understand what they could be together. But, those blinders she i
s wearing only allow her to see Max. Vinny often wonders if she would still feel the same about Max if she knew the truth about him… if she knew he was a murderer.
***
Brooke tends to Vinny’s shoulder and pretends not to notice his staring. He’s pined for her so long and even pretended to be a fool, like a child acting out in class and not knowing the difference between good attention and bad. The truth is, if Vinny had more confidence in himself then he wouldn’t be afraid to let the world see who he really is. How could she ever love someone who has no love for himself? Granted, physically he was no match for Max’s rugged good looks, but he did have plenty to offer the right woman. The sooner he realized that that woman was not she, the better off he would be.
Brooke clears the last of the blood from Vinny’s face and shoulder and is pleased to find his skin unbroken.
“See, I told you I was fine. You’ve been standing here looking like you were afraid I was going to bite your neck.” Vinny manages a reassuring smile.
“It looks like Max already set your shoulder better than I could, so I guess I’m done here once I wrap it. Now, you have a choice, you can either take a Vicodin for the pain or I can give you a shot of this morphine I found in the supply room. From the looks of your shoulder I would recommend the morphine.”
Vinny tilts his head back and opens his mouth.
“Look, don’t try to be all macho and pretend like it doesn’t hurt. Nobody here will think any less of you if you stay doped up on this morphine until we get back to Chatsworth.”
“Like I said, I’m fine.” Vinny says while flashing that reassuring smile again, and then he tilts his head back and opens his mouth once more.
Brooke tosses in two Vicodin and then adds one more for good measure. Vinny closes his eyes, chews the pills and swallows. Brooke spins to grab the thin-ladies bag and retrieve an ace bandage, but she is halted by a strong grip on her wrist. She turns back to see Vinny gazing at her and on the verge of saying something.
He hesitates and then appears to change his mind, “Thank you,” is all he manages to say and slowly releases her wrist.
Brooke decides it’s best not to pursue Vinny’s unexpressed thought and proceeds with wrapping his shoulder.
***
While Brooke is tending to Vinny, across the room Max and Gilly take stock in what they’ve collected.
“There should be more than enough guns and ammunition here to hold these things off.” Max says to Gilly while divvying up the magazines into three piles.
“Yeah that’s pretty much what we thought before we literally had our asses handed to us. I mean these guys here were trained soldiers. Now maybe you know your way around one of these here rifles but your two friends over there look about as green as a Saint Patty’s Day parade.”
“You’re right, but I have an idea that should tip the scales in our favor. Have you ever made a Molotov cocktail?”
“Now I enjoy a cold one from time to time just like the next feller, but I can’t see what a drink goin’ do for us now?”
“It’s not a drink; just pass me a bottle of that alcohol and a pair of those scrubs.”
With a look of confusion, Gilly complies. Over the next several minutes, he and Max shred the scrubs into thin strips until they have the same number of strips as bottles of alcohol.
Gilly, still a tad confused asks, “Are you gonna fill me in on what all this is for? I hate to seem slow but I ain’t seeing the big picture here.”
“You said that the bullets were ineffective, what about fire?”
“Well, yeah those things will burn up just like you and me. As a matter of fact I heard them boys over in Chatsworth were using flame throwers on ’em on account there were so many.”
This statement stops Max cold, and if his skin could have gone pale than he would be white as a sheet.
“Have you heard anything else about Chatsworth? Is everybody infected? Are there survivors? What are they doing with the survivors?”
“Hell, ain’t you seen no news boy? Chatsworth is ground zero for this shit. That virus came down out the air and started infecting anybody that had an open cut or even so much as a sore on their lip. Then those sons of bitches started biting and infecting everything else in sight. The shit spread like wild fire before anybody knew what hit ‘em. The folks that got infected early on was the lucky ones. At least they didn’t get all smashed up before they turned.” Gilly notices that the more he says the more ill Max appears to become.
“Say boy, you alright? You ain’t been bit has you?”
“No, my grandmother…” Max trails off, unable to put his greatest fear into words and thus make it a reality. “Let’s just get back to this.”
Max removes the lid from a bottle of alcohol and fully submerses a strip of the scrubs into it. He’s careful to soak every part of the rag. He then hangs the rag halfway out of the bottle and screws the lid back on as tight as he can.
“Do you have a lighter?” Max asks.
Gilly reaches into a pocket and produces a silver Zippo, “Only decent thing my Daddy ever gave me.”
Max continues, “When the time comes we light the rag and toss this at a biter, the bottle breaks on contact and the rag sets the alcohol on fire. Simple but affective.”
“Well if that ain’t slicker than snail jizz. I guess that beats this here grenade I been holdin’ onto.” Gilly produces a hand grenade and flicks the pull pin with his pointer finger.
“Be careful with that thing,” Max admonishes him, “this room is full of oxygen tanks. That thing goes off in here and it’s lights out for all of us.”
Gilly nods, “Good point,” and replaces the grenade in his pocket.
Max tips his head toward Vinny and Brooke, “I think I better give my friends over there a crash course on these weapons before that kid decides to drop in on us.”
Max grabs an empty rifle and a full magazine and heads across the sporadically lit room. Gilly stays behind and busies himself with the completion of the remaining Molotovs. When Max is about halfway to reaching his friends, the door to the hall suddenly slams shut and in an instant, all light is extinguished. A scuttling sound can be heard as a small body moves across the room with alarming speed. Its direction is apparent.
“Gilly!” is all Max can manage before a cry of agony shatters the dark.
Max fumbles for the tactical light on the rifle in his hands and flicks it on with his thumb in time enough to see the small boy sinking his teeth into Gilly’s throat. Max has raised the rifle and pulled the trigger several times before he remembers the impotence of the weapon in his hand. His intention had been to load it in front of his friends so they could learn the steps.
The abbreviated monster sucks upon Gilly’s neck like an oversized leach, clinging to him with arms and legs. Gilly suddenly stops screaming and begins to grope at his hip in search of his sidearm. As soon as he finds it, he rips the nine-millimeter from its holster and places it flush against the belly of his attacker. Several muffled wet snaps can be heard in rapid succession, and are accompanied by an equal number of dull flashes. The shots send the boy careening backward and sliding in Brooke’s direction. In Max’s scramble to load his weapon, he temporarily loses sight of the child whose agonizing screech fills the room with a disorienting echo that makes him hard to track by sound alone.
Brooke stands unarmed and prepares herself for the worst, as the small brute’s slide toward her becomes a four-legged pursuit. She can see in her mind’s eye, the outline of the creature as it prepares to pounce.
Max’s gun is now loaded but he dare not shoot blindly for fear of hitting an oxygen tank and killing not only the biter but he and his friends as well. He swings it up and begins a frantic search with the rifles light. His search is interrupted by the sound of splintering wood, followed by the door to the hallway soaring through the room and taking out random medical equipment in its path.
Standing in the doorway and backlit by the increasingly frustrating str
obe lights is a battered looking figure, covered in blood with a partially caved-in face freckled with what appears to be bone fragments. Max instantly recognized the clothes on the figure. It is the biter he had thrown off the overpass hours earlier. It seemed impossible that even an infected could survive such a fall, but yet and still, here he stands before them, and he presents a much more imposing figure than the small child does. They had only narrowly escaped their previous meeting the freeway-man and Max still has the bruises to prove it.
Now that light has returned to the room, Brooke can clearly see the boy’s yellow eyes zeroing in on her as it races for her throbbing neck. Just as she steels herself for the pounce, something bizarre happens.
The freeway-man covers the distance between the door and Brooke’s attacker in what seems like less than a millisecond. The boy leaps toward Brooke, and the man snatches him out of midair by the back of the neck. He holds the boy -with feet dangling- several feet off of the ground. The boy kicks and screeches and claws, still attempting to reach his prey.
A wretched bone-chilling voice overshadows the boy’s screech, “These three are spoken for,” the freeway-man says simply and calmly before slowly and deliberately pushing two fingers of his free hand into the boy’s eyes until he grips his head like a human bowling ball. He then proceeds to straighten the arm that holds his neck, while pulling back toward himself with the other. The result was a string of audible cracks as the child’s spinal column stretches and separates. The freeway-man continues to pull until finally tendons and skin give way to a torrent of blood and spinal fluid. He releases the boy’s head, which falls to the floor with a solid thud and spins a bit before landing semi-upright with the empty black soulless eye sockets staring back at Brooke.
The next sound heard is a solid booming from Vinny’s magnum, followed by two more in rapid succession. The flash produced by the muzzle-flare in the dimly lit room causes temporary flash blindness for Max, Vinny and Brooke. As soon as their collective visions have returned, it is apparent that the freeway-man has retreated as abruptly as he had entered, leaving only the broken body of the small boy as evidence that he had actually been there and they had in fact seen what they’d seen.
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