by Howard, Bob
Just as he expected, the door flew open, and the kid hit the ground running. Jed smiled because he had been right, plus the kid was running straight at him. He was still a long way from him, but it meant the three infected on the other side of the car would chase the kid and be easier to hit. He dropped the first one before they reached the rear of the car. Then he checked on the progress of the kid and could see that there were no more infected waiting for the child to come their way. Not that the infected were capable of setting a trap by hiding, but the kid could always accidentally run into an infected that was following the sound of the honking horn. Not to mention the sound of his AR-15.
Jed sighted in on the last two as fast as possible and made it look easy. He climbed down as quickly as he could so he could intercept the child. He had just reached the bottom of the tree when he saw the brown mop of hair disappear into the ditch on the side of the road.
“Hey, kid.”
Jed managed to call out to the child without making it sound like he was shouting at him. The last thing he wanted to do was chase him now that the infected were all down. He waited a moment before calling again, and for good measure he checked the surrounding area to be sure nothing else had arrived. He almost missed the child taking a peek at him from the tall grass by the ditch.
“It’s okay. I heard the horn. You were smart to honk it like that.”
Jed really hadn’t thought it was a very smart person to be honking the horn, but now that it was done it wasn’t going to help the kid to criticize.
He saw the head rise up just a little higher. More suddenly than he expected, the child bolted from the ditch and ran with spindly legs straight at him. It wasn’t until the skinny little body collided with him that he saw the big wet eyes and knew that the child was crying. It was also a little girl.
She couldn’t have been much more than six years old, and that meant she was born right about the time the infection started. Her pale white skin was such a contrast to Jed’s own bare arms, but it somehow made her look that much more fragile against his brown muscles. Jed held her while she cried and was surprised to find that he was crying too. It was the release he had denied himself when he had felt nothing but anger.
They could have stayed like that for an hour. There was so much to let go. As the sobbing finally subsided and the tears dried up, Jed gently peeled her arms from his neck. He held her at arms length so he could take stock, and sadly to see if she had any bites.
“Did they hurt you, sweetie?”
She sniffed and ran the back of a shirt sleeve across her nose. Jed regretted that he didn’t have a handkerchief or napkin. He hadn’t ever carried a handkerchief that he could recall, but he had an all-purpose rag in his back pocket. It wasn’t fit for a child’s face, though. He had used it to wipe off too many things that he didn’t want to think about. As a matter of fact he wondered for a moment why he was keeping it in his pocket. It had to smell ripe by now.
She shook her head from side to side, and Jed took that to mean she hadn’t been bitten because that would have qualified as being hurt.
The little girl was wearing a pair of blue jeans that was a couple sizes too large and a faded, red plaid shirt. He was amazed at how quickly he was thinking like a parent because his first thought about the shirt was that he would have to replace it. For some reason he couldn’t stand plaid. Her shoes were no-name sneakers that had worn thin a long time ago.
Her legs were as straight as two perfectly matched sticks, but Jed didn’t think she was malnourished. Maybe a little underfed, but everyone was these days. Jed remembered the last of the candy bars in his backpack and knew beyond a doubt that it would be a hit. He let go of her shoulders, and she instinctively reached for him again.
“It’s okay, sweetie. Jed has something he knows you’re gonna like.”
He peeled back the wrapper, and she eyed the chocolate suspiciously. She had never had a candy bar. He could tell by the way she regarded it as nothing more than something in a wrapper. It was hard to believe that a few years ago everything was made out of plastic, and his parents told him that candy bar wrappers had been made out of paper and wax paper when they were kids. Now a plastic wrapper was making a six year old cautious.
Jed knew just what to do. He held it out to her and smiled as big as he could.
“If you think this smells funny, I’ll eat it.”
She sniffed at it, ready to reject it, but her eyes got really wide. Her small hands came up together, slowly as if she thought he might pull it away at the last second, and she gratefully took a bite. Jed didn’t bother to tell her to slow down. He was enjoying watching her eat it as fast as she could.
When she swallowed the last time, he saw her eyes dart toward the backpack, hoping there was another treat in there.
“Sorry, kid. That was the last one, but I would say it was almost as much fun watching you eat it as it would have been if I had eaten it myself.”
That earned him a smile, and Jed felt like he had also earned a measure of trust. He hated to bring it up, but he needed to know what had happened to her parents just in case they were nearby.
“What’s your name, young lady?”
“Matilda, but that’s not what mommy and daddy call me. My mommy calls me Mattie, and my daddy calls me Squirt.”
That caught Jed off guard, and he snorted. That seemed to be funny to Mattie, and Jed knew that kids liked to make big people laugh.
He hated to put a stop to her laughing, but maybe it was best to ask while she was happy.
“Where are your mommy and daddy, Squirt?”
Mattie turned to look in the direction of the car and pointed.
“Over there.”
Jed saw that Mattie was already aware of people becoming infected. It was sad to think they could lose their innocence so young. It was even sadder that they could accept that a stranger just shot mommy and daddy, but the stranger wasn’t a bad guy.
“Come show me, Mattie.”
Jed didn’t look forward to digging seven graves, but he didn’t want her last memory of her parents to be the way they were. She could remember the grave instead of the snarling faces pushed up against the windows of the car.
He took her small hand in his and walked to the car. As soon as she pointed out her parents, he went over to cover their faces. The rag in his back pocket finally served a purpose. He thought maybe that was why he had carried it for so long.
Jed showed Mattie how to use his binoculars and gave her the job as lookout while he found a spot to dig that would have fewer tree roots. He was sweating and bone tired by the time he finished, but as he was throwing the last bit of dirt on the graves, he thought maybe this was what God had in mind for him. He had been so angry that he was going to run himself into the ground finding whoever was behind the sound that was calling the infected. If they were far enough away, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything to punish them because he would have been dragging his rifle behind him. Mattie had been put in his path to slow him down and to make him think before he did something stupid.
When he finished, Jed brought Mattie over to the graves. He put wildflowers on four of them and gave two bundles to Mattie.
“Here, kid. This is how you can say goodbye to mommy and daddy. They loved you, and this is how you can tell them you understand that it was just the sickness that made them act like that toward you.”
“I know about the ‘fection,” she said. “It makes people do bad things.”
“That’s right, Squirt. They were just sick.”
Mattie put the flowers on each grave, and Jed asked her if she knew any prayers. He thought it was pretty appropriate when she began.
“Now I lay me down to sleep……”
******
Chief Joshua Barnes had never been the kind of man to just quit. If there was a way to do the impossible, he was determined to find it. Sometimes there wasn’t a way, like the night Allison had died. That still haunted him, but surviving a bite fro
m the infected was beyond impossible. This time there was only one way for him to keep from losing his friends.
When the pair of BATT-T armored personnel carriers pulled away from the bottom of the steps, the layout of the parking area flashed through his mind. He had been knocked out and maybe had a concussion, but before the helicopter crashed, he had scanned the parking areas around the stadium in search of the best place to crash. That was why they were at least alive. One of the places his mind had ruled out was the parking area on the side of the ballpark. It was far too congested, and there wasn’t a straight path from the steps to the street. If he timed it just right, he could catch up with the personnel carriers.
It was a full sprint from the steps to the concourse that would take him to another exit from the ballpark, but it was also an obstacle course. The overturned vendor carts, the beer kegs, and the mountains of garbage meant he was facing the same challenges as the vehicles navigating the congested parking areas. It was only his determination that caused him to erase the advantage they already had on him.
When the Chief made the turn that put him at the top of a handicap ramp, he saw that he wasn’t going to catch the first of the two personnel carriers, but it was the second one he was interested in. If the second one was full of soldiers, it might not be a good idea to jump onto the first one as it went by.
The ramp gave him even more speed, and he was able to approach the second vehicle without slowing down. It had to cross his path, and his only worry was that the driver or passenger in the front seat would see him coming. It was completely dark, and he could see the silhouette of the lumbering personnel carrier, but he was running through nothing but shadows. He had to take the risk, or he might never see his friends again.
The first carrier passed through the parking lot entrance and turned left, away from the Chief. Its headlights flooded the street but didn’t reach the Chief. The lights were blinding and were likely to be just as bright to the people driving. They were having a hard enough time focusing their attention on the debris in the street, so they didn’t pay attention to the sidewalks. If they did see him, there was at least a chance that they would think he was an infected, unless they saw enough of him to see he was running.
The second vehicle crossed the sidewalk, and the Chief felt the passenger’s eyes as the man tried to focus them on the darkness. Maybe he had made the mistake of looking at the headlights of the vehicle in front as it made the left turn. The man’s face stayed aimed at the sidewalk longer than the Chief wanted, and he was sure that he would react at any moment. Just as it seemed like the man saw him, an infected stepped in front of the personnel carrier from the other side. Its arms were stretched outward and upward as if it could grab the living people in the front. The huge vehicle rolled forward, and there was only a slight bump upward on the front left side, but the reaction of the driver was all the Chief needed to take the passenger’s eyes off of him for a moment. By the time the man looked again, the Chief was behind the vehicle.
One good thing about BATT-T armored personnel carriers that made the Chief give a silent thanks was the handholds. They were all over the back of the vehicle, and he was able to get a good grip before it got up to speed. He took care to make sure he wasn’t going to be bounced from the back and surveyed the rear door for portals. He saw there were several gun ports, but he didn’t see any cameras. If there had been one, they would already be stopping.
The Chief tried to remember the configuration of the BATT-T armored personnel carriers. He couldn’t remember if the back was a separate cabin from the driver seat or if it was open all the way to the front. If he opened the rear door and the configuration was all one cabin, they could shoot him from the driver seat. Worse, he could cause his friends to be shot. He had to accept the fact that he was going for a ride, and rescuing the others would have to be put on hold until he was sure he could do it without risking their lives. At least he wasn’t helplessly standing on the steps of the ballpark watching as the taillights faded into the darkness.
That reminded him. He had left four people behind. He had the satisfaction of knowing they were capable of taking care of themselves, but he was worried that they would try too hard to find him. He didn’t want to think about them taking risks and searching the bowels of the rooms under the seats of the stadium. Iris would forgive him because she knew him, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t worry.
The Chief shook off the thoughts about the others because he had bigger things to worry about. Iris and Jean were a force to be reckoned with, and Captain Miller would have his birds in the air searching for them at sunrise. The Sikorsky crash site was going to be easy to spot from the air. For now, the Chief knew he had to focus on where he was going, and what he was going to do when he got there.
He suspected that the captors driving the two vehicles were from Patriots Point. It wasn’t likely that there was a third militia in the area. The biggest question on his mind was how the people planned to get from Charleston to Mt. Pleasant. The last time he saw the Arthur Ravenel Bridge over the Cooper River it was increasing its population of infected dead by hundreds of thousands. There was no way to drive there. The Don Holt Bridge over the Cooper River in North Charleston was probably wide open, but getting there from Charleston would be next to impossible for at least a few days because I-26 was packed with the biggest horde in the southeast and probably the world.
The Chief didn’t have to wait long to find out. The personnel carriers navigated through the clogged streets but generally seemed to be finding their way to the Ashley River. Less than thirty minutes after leaving the ballpark, the vehicles both turned off their headlights. A quick glance around the side was all the Chief needed. They were at the city marina on Lockwood Blvd. Fort Sumter was visible in the distance, and if they were watching the dark city, they were sure to see headlights even from that far away.
He heard a boat engine start, and he knew they would be taking their prisoners away by boat in a couple of minutes. The Chief hated to do it, but if he weighed the odds against him, he knew someone he cared for would die if he tried to rescue them now. He had to be patient. At least they were taking his friends as prisoners. That was a good sign.
The Chief let go of the back of the vehicle and ran a short distance in a straight line before ducking under the cover of a boat on a trailer. There were plenty of boats for him to take, but the likelihood of one being able to start after so many years was zero. All he could do was watch as the back of the BATT-T was opened, and his friends were dragged out. He wished he could at least let them know they hadn’t been abandoned.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Green Zone
Contagion Extinction Level Event - Day Two
Something didn’t make sense to either of the Corrigans. Grace acted like she had been expecting someone all along. As a matter of fact she was calm, and there was something about the way everyone showed her respect…or was it deference? It was like she was the boss.
“Before we move, someone get the medics in here to check Alex out. Those civilians worked him over pretty hard,” said Dr. Williams.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
The uniformed men made room for a man with a Red Cross patch on his sleeve, but it had some letters around it in a circle that Phillip couldn’t quite read. Something told him the man wasn’t really from the Red Cross.
Alex protested the extra precautions, but Dr. Williams held up a hand.
“What if you have an internal injury and die while we’re on the road? By the time we get there, you’ll turn. We’ll have to move you straight to the lab, where you’ll be a useful subject, but I need you for other things.”
Her tone made it sound like his health was only important to her if he didn’t become an inconvenience.
Dr. Williams saw the way Alex glanced at the Corrigans. It was an unspoken warning not to say too much in front of them. She gave him a slight nod that let him know she understood, but she was also irritated.
Phillip caught the gesture and averted his eyes as if he didn’t see anything. If they had secrets, it might be a good idea to act like he didn’t notice. If he had heard her correctly, he was still stunned by the comment about Alex being taken to the lab.
The medic finished his examination and pronounced Alex fit to travel, but two of his fingers were broken by the kicks when he had covered his head. His ribs were going to be really sore, but none were broken.
“I guess I won’t be playing the piano again,” said Alex, holding up a hand and studying the splint applied by the medic.
“Can you pull a trigger?” asked one of the uniformed men. He was already holding out an automatic pistol.
As soon as Alex took the gun from him, he produced another and offered it to Phillip. Denise didn’t seem like the kind of woman who could shoot anyone except for the unfortunate person standing too close to her when the gun went off. Phillip had some experience with a few different guns, and the first thing he did was check to see if there was a round in the chamber.
He faced Dr. Williams, but his eyes moved from her to Alex as he asked, “Is there something we should know before we go out that door? Not that we mind, but it appears that you two have some information about what’s happening that you could share with us. I mean, those others that left here already didn’t do so well.”
“We’ll tell you more later,” she answered, “but for now, I’ll tell you this much. Don’t get bitten. If someone bites you, the best thing you can do is put a bullet in your own head. Don’t even think about it or hope to live.”
The medic was helping Alex up from the floor despite his protests that he could do it on his own. He felt like there was something else he should tell Phillip and Denise, but he didn’t want to give away something that Marshall Sayer or Dr. Williams wanted to be kept under wraps for a bit longer.