by Citroner, GW
Maggie Beardsley shook her finger at the pair, but fixed her eyes on Billy. “Nancy’s right, after all the crazy we’ve been through, you boys need to tell us what you’ve got planned.” Grabbing her son, Maggie excused herself. “I’ll see you at dinner, Nancy.”
“When’s dinner? I’m starving!”
“It’s no wonder, running all over this place with your friends. We’ve got a couple of hours to go yet, but I’m sure we can scare up some canned peaches in the cafeteria.”
Walking down the narrow metal stairs, Jesse looked up at his mother. “Do you think Daddy’s coming Mom?”
“He’s a tough man, sweety. I’m sure he’s doing his best.” She couldn’t admit to him that she’d given Dan up for dead weeks ago. While Jesse believed it, he could still hope that everything would be fine.
“Do you think he’ll find the letter you left at Grandma’s house?”
“It’s the first place he’ll try, I’m sure he’ll get it.” A single tear rolled down her cheek.
“Don’t cry, mom – he’s coming soon. I just know it.”
Night was coming.
Dan and Ty had been making good time until they reached the John James Audubon Bridge. It was a big suspension bridge crossing the Mississippi; the other side put them a scant 30 miles from their goal and it was blocked by a massive traffic jam. Hundreds of stopped vehicles stretched as far as they could see.
“We could drive around.”
“Nights a couple of hours away and we’d be driving along the river. Remember that super gator that almost bit your dick off? Any one of his friends would swallow this rig whole.”
“Then what? Go back and find someplace to hold up for the night?”
“We can get out and walk across.”
“Danny, we don’t know why those cars are stopped here. Something happened, and it may be waiting to happen again.”
Dan’s face reddened in anger. He spoke in measured tones, but his knuckles went white on the steering wheel. “I’m almost there. A bunch of dead cars won’t stop me. If you’re too scared to come with, that’s fine. You stay here then, but I’m not stopping now.”
“How’re you going to make it thirty miles without a car?”
“There’s a shit ton of them straight ahead. You staying or coming with?”
Ty carefully considered their situation and then laughed loudly. “You can’t hotwire a car to save your life. Yeah, I’m coming you crazy bastard.”
Lieutenant Harry Riley was the only surviving officer from Camp Beauregard and the defacto commander of the dozen so soldiers left after the mad exodus to their current quarters. He stood on a table in the cafeteria and interrupted dinner for the hundred or so sheltering in the prison.
“Everybody, I want your attention.” The room quieted down. “We lost a lot of people when Beauregard fell. My men were decimated, and the survivors aren’t enough to keep our present accommodations secure. I am asking volunteers to man the guard towers and patrol the walls. You will be in no danger; I’m asking civilians, men and women, to be my eyes and ears so the soldiers who defend you can take a break.” The silence after he spoke was deafening.
An old man shouted. “I’ll do it! Come on people, I’m an old man, but I’m willing to my part. Who’s with me?” Low voices muttered over the long prison tables. “I’m gonna stand next to Lieutenant Riley – everybody willing can line up next to me.” He walked to Riley’s table and stood proudly, glaring at the crowd. First one, and the another the shamed men and women rose to join him.
“Maggie, can you take Jesse tonight?”
“You gonna join them?”
“Yes. My husband, Maggie; if he makes it overnight…”
“You poor girl.” Maggie knew, although she claimed to have given up hope. Without seeing the man’s body, she could never be sure. “I think that’s a great idea. If he makes it tonight you can vouch for him right away.”
The bridge was a charnel house of rotting flesh. Initially, the vehicles they walked around were all empty; the occupants having obviously abandoned them. But farther across, it was a different situation altogether.
“It had to be an attack of some sort. Many of them must have locked themselves in hoping to wait it out.”
“Look at them, Ty. These corpses were all old people and this one,” he pointed to a four door sedan, “see the wheel chair in the back? There was no way she was running anywhere. They died of dehydration, heart attacks, you name it.”
“That’s still better than being eaten alive.”
“Sucks either way.”
Minutes later, they reached the end of the bridge. “I like that Caddilac, all the windows are tinted except the windshield.”
“Good idea. Let me do what I do best.” He dug into his backpack and brought out his tools. Moments later, he opened the door. “Fucking hell!”
A cloud of flies burst from the vehicle revealing a twisted, rotting corpse. The body was welded to the driver’s seat by wetly rotting flesh. The smell was worse than anything they had ever encountered.
Ty gagged and coughed. “Forget the caddie.”
“There! The police car; think you can crack that one?”
“Watch me.”
Leaving Jesse to pass the night watching old VHS movies with Maggie and her son, Nancy sat in the guard tower watching the sun go down and thinking of Dan. Searchlights would go on soon, illuminating the area immediately outside the prison walls. She settled in for a long night with only her regrets and worries to keep her company. She was surprised to see headlights in the distance, rapidly approaching the high walls. She called it in. “Hi anybody, this is Nancy Foster. I see a car approaching the walls. What should I do?” A sharp burst of static, then six words that sent her into hysterics.
“It’s me baby. I made it!”
She keyed the microphone and screamed, “Danny!”
Lieutenant Riley’s voice cut in. “Uh, misses Foster. I take it you’ve positively identified the occupant of that vehicle.”
“Yes! It’s my husband, let him in!”
“Mister Foster, this is Corporal Robert Leland. Please drive up to the gates for a health check before coming in. My apologies for the delay, but I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes corporal, I understand completely. But it’ll have to be quick.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
Lieutenant Riley spoke to Nancy again. “Misses Foster, I’m sending someone to relieve you now.” Nancy never got the message, she’d already dropped the radio and run to the gate to greet her husband.
Epilogue
Ty sat with Lieutenant Riley in the facility’s guardroom.
“I know about the bridge, we took the long way around to get everybody here.”
“They were attacked on the bridge; we found people who’d died locked in their cars. Thing is, we couldn’t figure out how the windows weren’t smashed in.”
“What do you mean?”
“A little thing like glass isn’t going to stop any of the infected. Animal or human, they’ll smash themselves against any barrier between them and a meal.”
“So what’s that to us? They can’t get through the wall and we’ve got the gate heavily guarded.”
“What if they could get over the wall?’
“You mean climb?”
“I mean fly.”
“I’ve seen infected birds, they’re pitiful. They can’t fly without feathers.”
“They’re not the only things that fly. Like I said, Dan and I were stumped by what happened on the bridge. So we looked around a bit. We found the answer hanging under the bridge.”
“You found what?”
“Bats. Fucking enormous, infected bats. Goddamned dino-bats. I don’t think they could smash open a car without breaking delicate bones in their wings.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“What did you find when you got here, lieutenant? Anything unus
ual on the ground?”
Riley thought back. The exercise yard had been covered in some grainy substance that stank of ammonia and rat shit. He couldn’t identify it at the time, but now he recalled a memory from his childhood. His father used to check the attic all the time for bat guano. It looked and smelled the same as what they’d found.
“Yes, batshit, I didn’t make the connection until you mentioned it. We found enormous piles of it in the exercise yard, but we’ve been here a good while now and we haven’t seen one yet.”
“Maybe they attacked this place before and figured there was nothing left to eat, but that may change tonight. What happened is that we shot the few we could see under the bridge, but that roused loads we hadn’t seen. The underside of the bridge was covered in them. A bunch followed us most of the way here. Dan drove while I shot at them from a window. We left a bloody trail of them most of the way here; a trail they can follow.”
From The Author
Thank you for reading Things Change. I hope you enjoyed this novel as much as I did writing it. There is much more to come and I look forward to continuing the adventures of Dan, Ty, and friends.
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