“This is Bishop.” Savannah half turned to indicate him approaching. “As you can see, he’s the muscle of the place.”
“My wife calls me a big teddy bear,” his smile grew, “so don’t be too intimidated.”
“I’m Jack Stapleton, and this is my wife, Sue.” The man gestured to the woman. “We work on the power crew. You know, fixing the lines and battery banks. We keep the lights on, I guess you could say.”
“That sounds interesting,” Bishop arched an eyebrow. “What does this place run on, anyway? Solar? Wind?”
“Something like that.” Jack glanced at his wife.
“It’s a combination of things,” Sue said, crossing her arms. “Are you military?”
“Not really,” Bishop chuckled. “I’m husband to the woman working on the Asphyxia cure.”
“We heard that’s what you call it,” Sue said. “Is that because it...” She made a strangling gesture with her hand on her throat.
“That’s exactly why we call it that,” he confirmed. “You definitely don’t want to breathe it in.”
“We saw some news reports when it first broke,” Jack said. “It looked ugly out there.”
“Try being one of three people with air filtration masks in a sea of thousands of infected and fighting your way to safety. That’s what it was like for me and my kids in Ft. Collins.”
The Stapleton’s eyes grew wide, and Sue put her hand over her heart with a gasp. “That sounds like a nightmare.”
Bishop’s expression sobered. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to sound so dark.”
“That’s okay,” Jack spoke with a grimace. “I’m sure you did what you had to do to get your kids out of there. We’d do the same for ours.”
“You have children here?” Bishop’s eyes ticked to each of them in turn. “Are they over in your wing?”
“Our kids aren’t here,” Jack admitted with another uncertain glance at his wife.
“They out there somewhere?” Bishop gestured with his coffee cup in a vague direction.
“With family,” Sue confirmed with a hopeful smile. “Safe and sound. I think everyone’s been waiting for a miracle cure from a good bunch like you. How long will it take?”
Nice change of topic, Bishop mentally noted.
“Honestly, I have no clue,” he said. “We’ve already got a serum, but it must be perfected and then mass-produced. And the vaccine still needs to be fully developed.”
“Plus, they’ll have to test it, right?” Jack asked. “I mean, they can’t just start vaccinating people without a year of trials.”
“From what my wife tells me, the Branch software here at Redpine can develop something that requires little testing.” Bishop chuckled. “I don’t understand it myself. In any case, there’s not much time. The world is dying, and we need to save as many people as we can. Thousands are out there struggling.”
“It’s really that bad?” Sue shook her head and then sputtered an explanation. “See, we’ve been in the dark since the news agencies went down. And they don’t let us call out from here.”
“You never thought about leaving, or at least exploring the city?”
“Captain Mueller sent out expeditionary crews, but the general populace can’t leave.” Sue lowered her voice as if telling a secret. “We heard you have Burke tied up somewhere on this wing. Is that true?”
“It’s true.”
“But why?”
He started to say more but held back. “Look, the Brewers know why we have Burke and why we can’t set him free. You may want to take it up with them.”
Sue glanced behind Bishop with a skeptical eye. “Well, it’s good seeing all these kids.”
“Did you bring the board games?”
“We did,” Jack replied. “We like to play them to pass the time. Beats going cross-eyed looking at those video screens.” He pshawed. “I don’t know how a kid can sit there and do that for hours. My eyes would bug out of my head.”
“Me, too,” Bishop chuckled.
“Well, if you folks need anything,” Sue pointed behind them. “We’re just right there in Wing 2, Room 23. But I’m sure you’ve met Nancy, and she’s a real whiz.”
“She’s been great,” Savannah said, her voice still gruff and slightly muffled through her mask. “Really helpful. And thank you for the offer. If we need anything, we’ll be sure to come ask.”
They exchanged handshakes and friendly smiles. Then the couple turned and walked away, leaving Bishop and Savannah to watch them go.
“They seem nice,” he said.
“Nice, but not nice.”
He glanced down at the woman, trying to read her expression. She had small ears, a sharp nose, and a pointed chin with high cheek bones. Her choppy red hair made her look like a teenager. “Still have to wear that?”
She stopped staring after the Stapletons and turned her eyes up to him.
“When can you take it off?”
“Kim is going to give me a check up and take a blood sample.” Savannah gave the briefest hint of a smile. “If she clears me, it’s coming off.”
“I hope so,” he said. “You’ve been eating and drinking in your room?”
She nodded. “Jessie checks the spore count on her little device before she lets me back outside.”
Bishop shook his head. “What a way to live.”
Chapter 21
Corporal Max Parma, Washington DC
“I got nothing out here. It’s a dead zone.” That was private Donner walking next to the Humvee as Parma drove slowly through downtown DC, looking for survivors. They cruised past abandoned buildings that crawled with the grayish mold. A thick, natural fog lay over everything, mingled with dark spore clouds.
“I doubt it’s a dead zone,” Parma scoffed. “Especially after that last patrol. Who’d have thought the gymnasium would be full of cocoons? Eighty bodies laying in a neat row beneath the basketball hoop.”
“Yeah, friggin’ biological nightmares.”
Parma shuddered at the recollection of the husks, tendrils weaving through flesh to feed on the corpses’ nutrients. They’d found the athletic director in his office with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. From that evidence, the soldiers pieced together that the spores had hit during some gym event. The adults, including the athletic director, had done all they could to seal up the doors and windows with tape and foam padding from the drill pads in the storage room.
Nothing they’d done had helped.
Parma recalled the garbage cans at the back of the gym overflowing with vegetable cans and pudding containers. He figured the survivors had raided the school cafeteria and used all the food supplies before the spores got them. Gym mats and pads served as bedding in the adjacent classrooms. Empty candy bar wrappers, fruit cups, and milk cartons lay everywhere.
Donner’s helmet shook in grim reverence. “I never want to see anything like that again.”
Parma coughed into his air filtration mask, leaving a slimy trail of dark mucous dangling from his chin. He couldn’t clear it without taking the mask off, but the camp doctors had warned about that. They said every second breathing the spores took five minutes off a soldier’s life. So, they’d simply learned to keep them on and live with the discomfort.
“Please just cremate me when I go,” Donner said. “I don’t want to end up like one of them, all weird and fuzzy. Like something out of a sci-fi movie.”
Parma wordlessly squinted through the windshield, eyes glancing over the sidewalks littered with cocoons and garbage. Charred bricks and wood lay scattered everywhere as the structures smoldered. They cruised past the burned-out CDC office with its stripped facade and drooping girders. It had fallen apart little-by-little over the days, and it seemed Parma always found something new broken off every time they passed it.
The husk of a building remained a stark omen for the survivors. It reminded them that there was no cure on the way. No salvation from the inevitable spore death and the deterioration of humank
ind back to the Stone Age.
“But, I gotta admit,” Parma said. “I’m trying to decide if it would be better living in that gym or back at camp.”
“No kidding,” Donner scoffed. “Trapped in Miller’s rat maze sucks. Hey, at least in the gym we could shoot basketball while our lungs rotted.”
“You got that right,” Parma nodded.
“Miller’s doing his best.” Lieutenant Pratt, walking on the other side of the Humvee and speaking through their comm system, came to the general’s defense. “You think it’s easy dealing with turds like you?”
Parma laughed rough and gravelly.
“Yeah, he’s doing great keeping down the assaults,” Donner quipped. “And the defections, too. What, we have one or two a day now?”
“People just want to get home to their families,” Parma sobered with sympathy. “If I had a family to go home to, I’d probably do it, too.”
“Watch it,” Donner scoffed. “That’s treasonous talk right there.”
“I promise not to turn you in,” Pratt sighed, helmet swiveling.
“Go ahead. What’s Miller going to do? Kill me?”
The three soldiers laughed with grim humor. Regardless of what Lieutenant Pratt said, Parma knew Miller’s tenuous hold on the place was slipping. Not even the threat of incarceration or execution held much weight anymore. He coughed again and focused on his work. It was the only thing that kept him sane.
“Hey, Pratt.” Parma stopped the Humvee at a corner, his eyes drawn to something across the street to his right. “Look, um, to my three o’clock. I thought I caught movement at the entrance to that building. See where that awning hangs over the stone archway? It looks like a courtyard back there.”
“Got it.” The lieutenant’s tone was clipped and professional. “Parma, park. Donner, with me.”
The pair of soldiers gathered at the front of the armored vehicle and jogged off toward the five-story building. They crossed a wide, tree-lined median, lowering their weapons as they approached the awning.
“What do you think you saw?” Pratt asked.
“Looked like two figures watching us,” Parma squinted. “I thought I caught a flashlight halo.”
“Roger that.”
Parma watched them as they sprinted to the entrance and threw their backs against the wall. They nodded to one another, then Donner spun and entered the courtyard with Pratt on his heels. They passed out of sight, and he leaned on the steering wheel as he listened to their breathing in his earpiece.
Twenty seconds went by before the lieutenant spoke again with clipped, hushed tones. “The courtyard is clear, but we’ve got two entrances here. I see fungal disturbance around the stairwell to the east. We’ll give that one a try.”
“Standing by,” Parma said. “Let me know if you need help.”
“Just stay in there, wheezy,” Donner goofed on him. “Save your strength.”
“Thanks, jerk,” Parma grinned. For all the bleakness of their situation, they tried to keep a sense of humor.
“We’re now in a hallway.” Pratt said. “There’s a stairwell to the right. Hallway ahead.”
“It’s dark as hell,” Donner added.
“Switching to mounted lights.” Pratt ordered. “Let’s move upstairs.”
Parma caught the distant sound of a door squeaking open and closing with a hollow thump. He heard the scuffle of boots on the stairs. A grunt. The soft clack of weapons and utility belts.
“We’re on the second floor now,” Pratt continued a moment later, “and entering the hallway.”
More footsteps followed another soft creaking, drawing Parma into the eerie silence as if listening to a radio broadcast. Ten seconds passed before he raised his eyes, remembering where he still needed to keep lookout. He searched the street and its scattering of debris. He looked up at the dead streetlamps on every corner. No crosswalk signals blinked. No people stood waiting.
Parma’s eyes scanned up across the broken, blackened windows.
The city was dead.
Right after the spores hit, Parma had felt heroic weeding through the wreckage and saving survivors. But frustration amongst the other soldiers turned them brutal toward regular folk. People stopped coming to the camp. Instead, they formed sects outside Miller’s control. Hostile sects.
“Looks like office space. Wait...”
There came a louder clacking sound, and a heavy steel door opened and shut. More footfalls and Donner clicking his tongue. “Jeez, would you look at this place?”
“What are you seeing?” Parma asked.
“It looks like a broadcasting studio,” Donner went on. “I mean, there're cameras and a big news desk and all sorts of stuff. Man, I’ll bet this equipment is worth a fortune.”
“Maybe in another lifetime,” Parma said, scratching at his sore throat. “It’s not worth crap now.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Pratt warned.
“I’m not. Jeez, lieutenant.”
Back when everything first started, Miller’s troops had learned the folly of leaving vehicles parked on the road. It provided hostile forces a place to hide and ambush the soldiers. That’s why the general had ordered the cars and trucks on the major downtown streets to be towed to the airport lot. It kept patrols safer and gave the mechanics at the motor pool plenty of spare parts.
Parma’s eyes lingered on a spot across the street, about halfway down the block, where a single white SUV sat parked. He didn’t remember it from his last patrol. It shouldn’t be there at all.
“Guys, I’ve got a white Lincoln SUV about halfway down the block next to your building. Want me to check it out?”
“Roger that,” Pratt said. “Take a look. If it’s got the keys and enough gas, we’ll drive it home ourselves. Otherwise, we’ll call the tow truck.”
Nodding to no one but himself, Parma popped his door and stepped out. Standing on the pavement, he held his weapon casually, taking a moment to look around for any threats.
He coughed lightly again, grimacing at the pain in his chest. His head grew woozy, and he held his hand against the Humvee to steady himself. The antibiotics the doctors gave him hadn’t helped much, and he was getting worse by the day. The stomach and chest pains nagged at him, and the headaches and confusion came and went.
The mucus was the worst, though. The nasty stuff leaked from his mouth and nose, smelling every bit like rotten plants and blood. He wished a symptom of the infection was the loss of scent, but he wasn’t so fortunate. No, he tasted his own lungs rotting away.
He was still coming to grips with his own mortality. With no family to go home to, all that remained was his duty. Then he’d die like a good soldier and maybe get to Heaven. Anyplace was better than the hell he was living.
Parma slammed the Humvee door shut. He looked both ways out of habit before crossing the street. On the other corner, he stopped and studied the SUV, still some distance away. It appeared empty from what he could see, yet he kept his rifle barrel up in a relaxed position as he approached.
“Oh, hey. I think I found the dressing room,” Donner piped through his earpiece. “They must have had a special guest planned when the spores hit. Boom! I’ve got an unopened bottle of wine here with a plate of moldy snacks.”
“I’m in the control room,” Pratt murmured. “Nobody home. No emergency power. I’ve got two cocoons, but they died in their chairs. I wonder if they were trying to broadcast something before they kicked it?”
“Nothing they could have told us we don’t already know.” Donner sounded like he was shuffling around before he let out another excited whoop. “And, as a bonus, we’ve got a six-pack of beer in the mini fridge.”
“It’s probably skunked,” Parma said as he stopped thirty yards in front of the truck and snapped on his mounted light. He directed the beam at the vehicle but saw no one in the front seats. They could be hiding or sleeping.
“Leave everything where it is, Donner,” Pratt commanded.
“C’mon, Lieut
enant. Parma’s probably right about the beer, but we gotta at least take the wine.”
There was a pause before Pratt spoke. “Okay, take the wine. But you’re saving me some.”
“Yes!”
Parma shined his light through the windshield and poked it into the shadows. He worked his way around the driver’s side to get an angle on the floorboards. Both were empty except a pair of boots and some gloves sitting in the center console.
“The front of the SUV is clear,” he reported, then he stepped to the back window and continued his investigation, moving the light up and down to illuminate every nook and cranny. “Same with the back seat. Jeez, this thing is big.”
“I might have to claim that one,” Donner said. “That a Lincoln, you say?”
“That’s right,” Parma replied.
“You aren’t claiming anything,” Pratt admonished the private again.
“Come on, Lieutenant. I heard Miller is giving away confiscated vehicles as rewards.”
“It goes to the motor pool, soldier. Any reward you might receive has to go through me.”
“Put in a good word, then?”
Parma let the barrel of his weapon droop and scratched at his throat again, swallowing dry and gritty. He moved to the rear of the vehicle and shined the light into the cargo area. The black tinting blocked his view. Cursing, he reached down to open the back door, hands lingering on the handle just above the license plate.
He gave a silent count and popped it, retreating to cover himself. His eyes snapped over the contents of the cargo area in three seconds, mouth falling open as the pieces connected in his head.
“Lieutenant, I’m standing at the back of the Lincoln. I see small sections of piping, unmarked liquid bottles, cloth wicks, and two Jerry cans of what might be fuel.”
“Bomb making material,” Pratt said in a flat tone
“Right. Be careful.”
“Roger that. Thanks, Corporal Parma. Donner, it’s time to say goodbye. Bring your ass and the wine out here. We’ll come back with some of our bomb guys and...”
Spore Series | Book 5 | Torch Page 18