by Matt Ryan
He pulled himself up to get a line of sight over the bed. Mustache man stood over his dad and fired a shot into him. Hank screamed and fired, striking him in the neck and then several more shots to the head.
He searched for the fourth man, but he fled in their truck.
Hank jumped around the bed and next to his dad. “No, no, Dad! What do I do?”
Blood oozed from his gut and Trip blinked and held his hands. “I can’t see.” The flash grenade had been much closer to Trip and he’d taken the brunt of it.
Gretchen rolled over and pulled up Trip’s shirt. “You are such a fool. Why did you do that?”
“I had to protect you,” he said.
Hank felt the blood leave his face, seeing the bullet hole in his gut. “What do I do, Gretchen?” He moved his hands close to the wound and then Trip groaned. Hank pulled his hands back.
“Hospitals are full. I think you know what you need to do, Hank. Take him to Vanar.”
Grabbing the radio from Trip’s pocket, he called for help. “Trip’s been shot!” He stammered over the words and pressed the button again. “I need help, my dad’s been shot. We’re at Gretchen’s!”
“I’m coming right now,” Minter answered.
Trip coughed and looked at Hank. “Son, don’t worry about me. I’m ready for her, I’m ready to join her.”
“Don’t talk like that.” He glared at the dead guys on Gretchen’s family room floor—all this over being greedy and stupid. Trip was right, they should have shot them first. Then his dad wouldn’t be laying on the floor, bleeding out. Over the next few minutes, Gretchen and Hank formed a tourniquet with her first aid kit.
Minter ran into the house and slid to a stop next to Trip. He held a gun in one hand and glanced around.
“The last one ran off.”
Minter nodded. “Trip, you hear me?” He coughed and nodded his head. “I’m grabbing the quad out of Gretchen’s garage. We’ll be able to drive you right to the stone with it. I’ll be right back.”
Hank sat next to his dad and watched his rapid breathing. He heard a quad rev up and Minter drove it next to the front door. He ran into the house and looked to Hank. “Do you know the code for Harris?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Take your dad to the stone right now. It’s his only chance.”
Determined, Hank grabbed his dad with Minter’s help and sat him on the quad. His arms hung over the handle bars. Hank got up and sat behind him.
“Go, Hank, and don’t stop for nothing,” Minter said, and patted him on the back.
Hank pushed his thumb on the gas and steered the quad onto the dirt road, picking up speed; his dad slumped on the handlebars. “Hang in there, Dad. I’m getting help.” He glanced back to make sure no one was following him. Shifting into fifth gear, he passed Joey’s house. Not much further.
A CONVOY OF BIG RIGS had been deployed well ahead of Samantha’s arrival. Per Zach, they would be all set up and waiting. She took off the headphones and listened to the roar of the engines. The sound was almost relaxing now, a mixture of blades chopping the air and a large motor bellowing its constant grind.
She glanced at her phone, no new messages from Zach. He was somewhere in Europe, setting up distribution channels. She was so proud of him for breaking down the walls of bureaucracy and getting the medicine to the people.
Marge sat across from her, staring at her hands.
“Marge,” Samantha said. When she didn’t look up, she put on her headset. “Marge.”
She gazed up. “Yes, Miss Samantha?”
“Who told you to address me as Miss Samantha?”
Marge’s gaze widened and she shook her head. “I—I thought you wanted to be called that.”
“So, Zach doesn’t have some rule about it?”
“No, Miss Samantha.”
“Is there a rule about not telling me about the rules?” Samantha felt like it was a long shot, but they had time to kill.
“No, not at all.” Marge looked like she wanted to jump from the helicopter. How she must have loathed being forced into the position of Samantha’s assistant.
Not able to decide if she believed Marge, she gave up for the time being. “It’s going to be okay. We’re about to save a city.”
“Have you seen LA on the news? It doesn’t look like a safe place.”
“Don’t worry, me and my men will be there,” the man holding a machine gun interrupted.
Samantha recognized him from the trip to Preston. Kind of cute, actually. He caught her looking at him and he studied his boots. “What’s your name?” She found it amusing when people were nervous around her. Power was a strange feeling, like a drug pumping into your veins. The more you had, the more you took. The strange thing was, power was given to you by the very people you controlled.
“Derek.”
“Well, thanks for not calling me Miss Samantha.”
Derek winced at the comment and gripped his gun.
“Five minutes until we land,” the pilot announced.
One of the largest cities in the nation spread in every direction. Plumes of smoke lifted from several areas. It was technically her first trip to LA, but they’d all escaped from LA on Ryjack last year. She squinted at the people below, surrounding an area blocked with big rigs parked in a circle.
“Don’t tell me we’re landing in that.”
“Yes, Miss Samantha.”
“You all need to stop that, for real. I’d rather you call me turd lady or something.”
Marge looked up with a smile and she saw Derek smirking. They were keeping a secret.
The pilot spoke over the airwaves. “One minute, we’re setting down.”
The helicopter lowered to the middle of the big rig circle on a soccer field. The crowd moved like an ocean against the rigs. There must be tens of thousands—nothing like the crowds in Preston.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s be safe and get in and out quickly.”
“Yes, Miss Sam—”
Samantha held up a finger and Marge stopped.
The helicopter landed and Derek ushered her to a staircase leading to the top of a big rig. The metal on top crinkled under her heels and she tiptoed to the podium.
The crowd roared at her presence. They might have seen her on TV from Preston. It had already reached a billion views on YouTube. If power was a drug, she was an addict.
“Hello, LA!” Samantha yelled, opening her arms in greeting. She felt comfortable this time, behind the mic. The crowd roared. She heard them yelling for the cure and as she gazed at all the people below her, she paused to take in their horrifying appearance. Many were coughing, some were even being held up by others. They were dirty, greasy, and her heart went out to them. This was only one of twenty such circle rigs set up around the city. The others were projecting her image onto the sides of the rigs.
“Do you have the cure?” A woman yelled.
Samantha tried to find the owner of the voice but gave up and addressed the crowd as a whole. “Yes, we have the cure and you will be one of the first cities to receive it. You can look at the success at Preston, where there was a hundred percent recovery rate. It is safe and it is free. Courtesy of ZRB.”
The crowd cheered and pushed against her rig. The podium jostled and shook in front of her. She gripped the sides of it to steady herself.
“We’re dying out here!”
More people yelled out obscenities. She felt the shock of the moment and steadied herself. They weren’t giving her power, they wanted to take from her and the shift in the crowd’s energy was startling. Her lips moved close to the microphone. “We’re losing the world. We’re losing everything we have held dear: our jobs, our food, our loved ones. We’re losing, aren’t we?”
The crowd silenced and stopped moving. They were listening, but she only had them for the second. She would have to earn their trust, her next words were vital. All eyes gazed up at her, waiting.
“We at ZRB are
going to stop the losses, starting with you.” She pointed down at the crowd and went back on script. “We want to bring the world together, united, to end the Cough. I don’t want to lose another friend. I don’t want to see children going hungry. I’ve personally endured loss over the past year, and it almost crushed my spirit. I almost gave into it all...”
She veered off script and looked away from the prompter. “I want you to look to the people around you. They have families, dreams, dads, and moms, they are as human as you are, and I expect you to treat them as such. We have enough cure for everyone, but if you try and ransack us, we all lose again. I’m not sick, but I am sick of losing to this illness. Now, please, people of LA, let’s kick this cough in the balls and take a win.”
The crowd roared and cheered. Some yelled her name and applauded.
Samantha waved to the crowd and then waited for them to quiet down. “I have a message for the rest of the world. Keep the hope, we’re coming to you soon.”
The crowd’s noise diminished as she stepped down the ladder on the inside of the big rig circle.
“That was pretty good,” Marge said, keeping pace with her to the helicopter.
She glanced at Marge for a second. If she believed it, maybe they would as well. The truth was, Samantha didn’t know how to get it to the rest of the world in time. She had no real idea of how many vials they had. The big rigs today carried about twenty million. They went double of the city’s population to accommodate the floods of people from the other surrounding cities.
She was sure the government would be taking samples from their stock, probably to dissect it and replicate it. Zach thought the whole idea amusing and said no one would be able to duplicate it for years. So, it was on their shoulders to do the job.
She put on her headphones as the helicopter lifted off the grassy field and over the circle of big rigs.
“Incoming,” was blurted through her headphones.
She saw bright lights shooting out the sides of the helicopter like a hundred flares. The helicopter leaned hard to one side as the motor roared in fury, the maneuver pushing it to its limits. She held onto her seatbelt and heard a whistling sound, then an explosion shook the helicopter.
Alarms blared into her headphone and she felt the copter spinning in a circle. The buildings and sky spun around with increasing speed. Her butt lifted off the seat.
“Brace, brace, brace,” the pilot screamed.
Marge’s hair raised up around her ears as she screamed.
They impacted on the ground and Marge collapsed into her chair. Pain shot through Samantha’s body and smoke flooded the helicopter. She heard the crackling of fire, but her arms and legs wouldn’t work the way she wanted them to. Screaming as smoke filled the cabin, she breathed it in. Samantha tried to cough it out. She had to pull herself together; she couldn’t die like this.
JOEY STARED AT THE BIG rigs lined up like some old west wagon circle. Men and women in white moved around on the inside of the circle. He also spotted the many armed men around the trucks. He couldn’t believe how much Marcus accomplished in one year. He already had an army and a company to hide behind.
“You think this is where she’ll land?” Poly asked.
“Everything pointed to this one area,” Julie said. While scanning the ZRB servers for information, she’d found the shipment schedule and this location was marked with Samantha’s name. At that point, they’d changed direction and went straight to LA in time for the shipment to arrive.
“You’re sure Marcus is in Europe?” Joey asked.
“If this Zach guy is Marcus, then yes. I’m sure.”
“Who else could he be?”
“Look.” Poly pointed to a brigade of helicopters moving over the city.
Joey followed the pack as it approached. One broke off from the pack and landed in the middle of the circle of rigs.
The people around them coughed and pushed forward. A man with a black hat and black clothes moved closer to the podium rising from the top of a big rig. They were at the right place. They pushed forward, but the crowd pushed them back, not letting them get closer. Between the coughs and conversations he doubted he could have gotten Samantha’s attention anyway.
A few minutes later, Samantha appeared. She looked good, in designer clothes and all done up. Sharp and professional. It only served to further his anger. What kind of pressure did Marcus have on her to make her do this?
Samantha never looked in their direction, even as they yelled her name. She went through a rousing speech that felt genuine, and he felt the shot she threw at him. The crowd cheered and chanted her name. Then she descended into the big rig. The people with those vial guns, like Poly had, begun to inject people at a rapid pace. It was hard to argue with it, but Marcus was providing a service, he was saving a city and many lives. Too bad they didn’t know he was the one who started the virus to begin with.
What quicker way to gain power over a new world than to become its hero? But no one had even seen this Zach guy yet, the only face of ZRB had been Samantha. He needed to get Samantha out.
“You guys ready?” Joey asked.
They nodded their heads. It wouldn’t be easy to get past the guards, but every second he waited felt as if he was that much closer to losing Samantha. He pushed through the crowd, not getting anywhere fast.
“No cutting you stupid kids.”
Frustrated, Joey stopped and looked across the crowd, trying to find a spot where he could get to Samantha.
“Look.” Lucas tugged on Joey’s jacket and pointed. “The helicopter’s taking off.”
He watched the helicopters hover above the big rigs. They were too late, they didn’t even get close. He cursed himself for his stupid plan. Did he really think he could get to Samantha so easily?
Scanning the city skyline, he tried to come up with some way to get a message to Samantha. A motion on top of the building next to them grabbed his attention. Maybe ten stories high, he saw a man on the edge with a gun, dressed in all black. Joey searched the area around them and found more men lingering in the background. One had a rifle poking out of the bottom of his jacket.
“They’re going to attack,” Joey said. “We’ve got to stop them!”
His friends look confused and before he could explain, a missile streaked toward the helicopter. The pilot made a sharp turn and deployed a massive burst of flares from its side, but the missile struck the back end of the copter and it went into a tailspin.
“Samantha’s in there!” Joey screamed and he formed a new path toward the falling helicopter. It crashed inside the big rig circle. He couldn’t see anything but a plume of smoke billowing up.
The soldiers in black descended on the crowd, heading for the crash site. The ZRB security guards opened fire on the assault, but the snipers on top of the buildings plucked them off one at a time. The sounds of gunfire stopped. The crowd surged against the big rigs. They didn’t run away from the assault, they needed the cure.
Joey held Poly’s hand and pulled her toward the action. He unbuttoned his jacket to get access to his guns if needed. The men in black climbed over the trucks and landed on the inside of the circle. Joey lost any courtesies as he plowed sick people to the ground in his pursuit.
A large black helicopter appeared and hovered. Smoke from Samantha’s craft swirled around it. A basket dropped and then moments later he saw her . . . Samantha stuffed in the basket, hanging from the helicopter in midair.
The crowd exploded in anger, many taking videos with their cell phones. A person in the crowd fired his gun at the helicopter taking Samantha, until his head exploded. Joey stopped and glanced at the snipers on top of the building. He stopped Poly from advancing and just shook his head. She fumed and pulled at him, but he wasn’t going to let them die. Julie and Lucas saw the same thing and stopped next to them. Whatever was going to happen to Samantha, had already happened.
They were too late and he felt his chin trembling as he watched her being dragged behind th
e copter. They had her. Someone else had done what they’d hoped to do; someone with a lot more resources and manpower.
“They took her.” Julie held her hand over her mouth and watched the blank sky, maybe hoping the copter would return and drop their friend in their lap.
A woman in white was flung out of a big rig and a man in black stepped the open door and slammed it shut. This repeated at all the big rigs and Joey stepped back, watching the crowd going into crazy mode. They pounded on the doors and screamed. A few men in black jumped to the top of the rigs and threw objects into the crowd. They exploded in a bright flash and soon, the need for a cure and the need to live to get a cure was crossed. People turned and ran from the rigs.
“We need to get out of here,” Joey said.
The big rigs started up and the first one pulled ahead. People dodged the rig and it moved closer to the road.
The rig sat its front tires on the asphalt road when it exploded. The cab engulfed into flames and then the next rig and the one after that, soon all the rigs that formed the circle were flaming balls of fire. Many of the men in black never got out and some burned on the ground just outside of the door.
“What the hell?” Lucas said. “He was just giving it to everyone. Why steal it?”
“Why steal Samantha?” Julie asked. “Something bigger is going on here.”
People pushed against them, running for their lives. Joey held Poly’s hand and jogged to the center of the street. The crowd thinned and he spotted a McDonalds and pointed at it. The crowd thinned as they approached the establishment. The glass front door lay open and shattered.
Lucas stepped over the glass and into the shell of a restaurant. “Guess they’re open.”
The store looked as if someone had ransacked the whole thing. Even the napkins and ketchup buckets were ripped out. They cleared a booth and sat. Poly and Joey faced Julie and Lucas. Tears welled up in Julie’s eyes and she wiped them with her sleeve.
“We couldn’t do a damned thing out there. This sucks,” Poly said.