The Living Saga (Book 2): Enduring

by McFall, Jaron

“The killing has to end,” Sherry said.

  “I’m not going to kill anyone,” Hank lied.

  Sherry pursed her lips. “Charlie once said you were special ops back in the day Hank. I’m no expert, but I’m guessing killing isn’t new to you.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she started to close the door.

  Hank pushed the door open and stepped inside. He quickly looked around the room as the dog growled at him.

  He saw the small piece of plastic he needed. Hank grabbed the CB from the table and left.

  As he walked out of the room and down the stairs, Hank pressed the side button on the CB and said, “What price would you pay for three girls and a dog?”

  Chapter Seventeen:

  THE END OF A BAD THING

  Despite his weariness, Cedric had been unable to sleep the night before. He kept replaying the scene of the infected woman in his head. He looked to the mattress they’d found in a storage unit and saw that both Steph and Karli were asleep. Ross, Davis, and Cedric had all stayed in sleeping bags on the concrete floor. Not only was the memory keeping Cedric awake, but Blitzstark had decided to sleep in Cedric’s sleeping bag buried in his leg crook making any sleep at all impossible.

  The night before, Clarke had used a crowbar to bust a few bricks out of the upper portion of the wall for ventilation. Morning light shown through the small ventilation hole. Cedric glanced at his watch. “Come on,” he said nudging Ross with his shoe. “It’s nearly seven. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  Ross started to roll in his sleeping bag to escape the shoe. In the corner of his eye, Cedric caught movement. The noises had woken Karli.

  She yawned and stretched out. When she fully sat up and saw Cedric, she said, “I mean this the best way possible, Ced. You look like crap.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he responded.

  Karli pointed at Steph and shrugged with her eyebrows as she mouthed the word ‘snores.’

  Cedric just chuckled. He knew that Karli had tossed and turned most of the night because of Steph’s snoring.

  Cedric leaned over and poked Steph in the forehead trying to wake her.

  “I’m already awake,” she mumbled. “Do that again, and I’ll bite your finger off.”

  Cedric stood up and pulled the maps from the cardboard box he was using as a nightstand. “Let’s go get the Marines up,” he said. “We need to plot the course to the lab.”

  Ten minutes later, they were all outside near the SUVs. Cedric and Pearson were looking over the maps spread out on the hoods of the vehicles while the others walked around, stretched out, and talked. Cedric saw Stewart teaching Karli how to properly hold and aim a rifle. He wasn’t sure if he liked that or not.

  “Here,” Pearson said poking a red dot with a permanent marker. “This is the field we were supposed to land in.”

  Cedric looked closely at the printed satellite image. “That’s only on the edge of Houston,” Cedric remarked. He looked at the area and said, “we can drive the entire width and avoid going through the bulk of the city. If we try to get to the Nassau Bay area going through the city, we’d be overrun by infected.”

  “Agreed,” Pearson said. “But we can’t drive to it anyway.”

  Cedric raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

  “They threw roadblocks all over the city and county, remember?”

  Cedric thought back to the YouTube videos he’d watched. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but he said, “Yeah. I remember. But you don’t honestly expect to walk it, do you?”

  Pearson shook his head as he uncapped the black, fine-tipped permanent marker. He drew a line through Clear Lake and into Trinity Bay. Cedric watched as the line ended on a small strip of land labeled ‘Bolivar Peninsula.’

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Hummer’s can’t do water more than a foot deep or so,” Cedric remarked.

  “There is an entire beachline here,” Pearson said. “There’s gotta be a boat somewhere. Places like this, there’s always ten marinas.”

  “But, I’m sure most of those are abandoned,” Cedric said.

  “Doubtful.” Pearson pulled a half-smoked cigar from his pocket and lit it with a wooden match. “You’ve gotta remember, this whole area was on lockdown quarantine. By the time these folks realized the bad news, it was too late.”

  Cedric shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “something just feels off.”

  “Okay, just hold that thought,” Pearson said. He pulled a blue, fine-tipped marker out and drew a new line out from the red dot. This one followed Linkage Road to Space Center Boulevard. From there, it quickly went onto Broadlawn. Pearson dropped another big red dot on a set of houses.

  Cedric said, “What’s this?”

  “That’s the location of Black Bio,” Pearson explained.

  “Black bio?” Cedric repeated with a question in his tone.

  “Officially, the site doesn’t actually have a name. All of the employees were technically employed by NASA,” Pearson continued. “But, since the incident came to light in the military, we’ve been referring to it as Biology Black Site One. Black Bio for short.”

  Cedric scrunched his eyes slightly and said, “But, those are houses.”

  “Not exactly,” Pearson said. “They look like houses. They’re designed to look like all the other houses in the subdivision. But, this entire block is actually a set of labs connected with underground tunnels.”

  Cedric shook his head. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “Like, for real? An underground government biology lab, hidden from the public in the middle of a neighborhood? Wasn’t that the plot of like ten movies?”

  “Hollywood messed up some of the details,” Pearson said. “The site isn’t underground at all. It’s just connected underground. The labs are actually the individual houses.”

  “Sure,” Cedric said with a scoff. “I’ve seen stranger things, I guess.”

  Pearson took a long puff of his cigar. As he exhaled the smoke, he said, “We don’t have a pilot. We can’t drive. A boat is our best chance. When we make landfall, we hoof it. It’s only four klicks.”

  Cedric raised his eyebrows again and said, “Sure, but what’s a klick?”

  “Kilometer,” Steph said from right behind him.

  Cedric jumped slightly. He hadn’t heard her approach because he was so invested in the plan.

  “I think that is our best plan,” she said. “Ready to roll?”

  Cedric rolled up the map and called everyone over. “I think it’s about time we left,” he said.

  “Hold up,” Karli said. “I know, it may not be the time or place…” she added holding up her hands.

  Cedric wasn’t sure what she was doing, but it slightly unnerved him by the odd way she was acting.

  Karli took a step forward and said, “You forget things sometimes.”

  Cedric turned and looked. Nope, he had his map. He patted his belt. Everything’s there, he thought. He looked around, confused.

  “My point exactly,” Karli said. “Happy Birthday.”

  Hank turned the CB off and dropped it in his pocket. Without wasting a second, he ran to the armory doors and quickly chained them shut. After that, he ran the few feet down the hall to the council room and left from the back exit.

  Hank quietly circled the building, staying in the blind spots. Within a few minutes, he was in a position where he could see the covered walkway. He watched as a small group ran down the sidewalk to the building. He saw Ben in the lead. The person he did not see was Bennet.

  Hank left his hiding spot and crept through the shadows to get close to the main door of the vocational building. He could feel the arthritis like sand in his knees the longer he stayed crouched. I’m getting too old for this, he thought when he was finally able to stand up. Too old and too out of practice.

  Once he was at the door, he pulled a bike chain from his knee pocket in his pants and wrapped it around the door handles. It wasn’t his original plan, but i
t was close enough.

  Hank turned and saw a new figure running down the sidewalk. He recognized the man. But, he didn’t have the element of surprise like he knew he needed. This guy was trained, younger, and currently in shape. Hank only had one of those, though, his training was much more than this guy had. Either way, Hank knew he couldn’t take on Bennet at that moment. Instead, he turned and ran back in the direction he’d come.

  When he looked over his shoulder, he saw Bennet in pursuit. Hank took a chance and ran through the parking lot. In the confusion of the moment, the roof watchmen didn’t notice him at first. By the time they opened fire, Hank was already behind the church van.

  He turned and saw Bennet was hot on his heels. He was fine with this. He knew what was next.

  Hank waited. As Bennet reached the church van, a shot rang out. Hank turned and saw blood spurting from Bennet’s shoulder. His rifle on the ground. Hank pulled his own sidearm out.

  “I don’t know why you did it,” he said checking the bullet in his chamber, “but, you killed my boy.”

  He waited for a second to see if Bennet would deny it or mount a statement in his defense. Instead, Bennet just stared at Hank. Then it clicked for him.

  “Yeah, I do know why you did,” Hank said. He raised his handgun and fired.

  Once Bennet was on the ground, Hank picked up his rifle. He slowly eased out from behind the van and fired an experimental shot at the roof of the vocational building.

  He quickly ducked back down as the two shooters on the roof opened fire at him. In the dark, Hank knew their muzzle flashes would show their location.

  From his tree line cover, Eric opened fire again. He saw through his scope when the first gunman went down. He’d taken the rear gunman first so the front gunman would never see it. Eric knew it was a clean shot.

  He racked the bolt of the rifle and found the muzzle flashes of the front gunman. He lined up his shot and took it. When the man went down, he whistled.

  Hank stood back up when he heard Eric’s whistle. He held the rifle up and slowly approached the vocational building. Within moments, he saw the front door, the one that he noticed had been chained from the inside, begin to open. He held his rifle ready.

  Three men walked out with their guns raised. Hank opened fire. All three were down before they even knew Hank was there.

  As he approached, Hank recognized all three as men he’d worked patrol with one time or another: Julian, Daniel, and Frank.

  Hank knew that two more men remained inside. He knew one of them was Ben. He grabbed the handle of the door and pulled. It opened easily. When Hank entered, he saw the chain from the door on the ground.

  Hank raised his gun and looked both left and right as he entered the hallway. Seeing nothing, he turned left to head up the stairs back toward Ben’s room.

  As he reached the top step, he heard an engine roar to life and he knew someone had just started the dirt bike. Hank ignored it and pulled the door at the top of the steps open. He saw a bulky form standing in the hallway. He immediately opened fire. The man fell, dead.

  When Hank got closer, he rolled the man over and peered into the dead eyes of Robert Shephard.

  Hank turned and began to run down the stairs as fast as he could. He closed the distance to the council room faster than he’d thought he could. When he slung the door open, the room was empty. Even the dirt bike was gone. Hank ran out of the door and into the parking lot. He saw the dirt bike racing through the field, zigzagging around the solar panels. Hank raised his rifle, but he knew his opportunity to take Ben out had passed.

  Hank dropped his rifle in disgust.

  By daybreak, everyone in the facility was aware of the entire situation. Everyone was fed since Ben had been withholding food from everyone except his men.

  Once the sun rose, Hank and Eric drove the church van back to the FRA headquarters to collect their remaining people. When they did, Hank made an offer to Qualls. “Why don’t we join forces? Your entire encampment can move in with us. We have the space. We have resources.”

  Qualls hesitated as he looked around.

  “Ben is out there, somewhere. He made a play for our facility and it costed us a dozen or more lives. If we combine forces, we can keep it from happening again. Plus, we found out yesterday that your people are starving. Don’t let your pride hold you back.”

  Qualls looked out of his office into the hanger. He saw the men and women who were barely scraping by with scraps of food.

  “It will take us some time to move everything, but I think we can make it work,” Qualls said, finally relenting.

  Hank smiled as he clapped him on the shoulder. “We need a strong department head of logistics,” he added. “Ross can fill you in on the job when he gets back.”

  Qualls nodded. “I don’t know that I want to lead anything anymore,” he said.

  Hank smiled and said, “Good. That’s the kind of leaders we need.”

  Cedric drove his Hummer along the path indicated on the map. He was still unsettled by the plan, but he continued it, nonetheless. The drive from Liberty City to the Bolivar Peninsula had taken just over an hour.

  Finding a boat had been just as easy as Pearson had promised. They had to pull a concrete barrier out of their way to get past the barricades, but after that, Pearson took the first right turn he saw. At the end of the road, past an RV park, was a small dock.

  It took Steph just under ten minutes to hotwire a pontoon and they were off. Cedric had driven boats for years in the summers, but he was so sick of driving, he let someone else do it. Clarke was more than happy to take the helm.

  He chose to take the small channel instead of going directly into the bay. He wanted to stick to the shoreline as much as possible.

  It was during this time that Cedric realized why he dreaded this part of the mission so much. He couldn’t figure out why before, but he’d been dreading it anyway.

  After twenty minutes of cruising, Cedric heard a noise over the roar of the engine. He stood up from his seat and peered into the distance. Blitzstark’s hackles rose and he began to growl a low, menacing growl.

  “Did anyone grab the binoculars?” he asked loud enough to be heard.

  Stewart reached into a bag and pulled a small pair out. Cedric gazed through them in the direction the sounds were coming from.

  “Good Lord,” he muttered once his brain caught up with his eyes.

  The binoculars fell from his hands and clattered to the deck. Stewart reached down and grabbed them. She stood and looked in the direction Cedric had saying, “What’s the issue?”

  As soon as she found the issue, she muttered a curse under her breath. “They’re all like the one,” she said louder than her expletive.

  “What?” Pearson said trying to figure out Stewart’s convoluted statement.

  “There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of infected on the peninsula,” Cedric explained. “And they’re old. Deep green skin.”

  Steph stood and took the binoculars. “Looks like the woman we saw,” she said handing them to Pearson.

  As they got closer and closer, Cedric noticed a pattern to the noise. He couldn’t quite make it out over the roar of the engine, though.

  “Hey,” he said looking at Clarke, “turn the engines off for a second.”

  Clarke pulled the throttle down to idle but didn’t shut them off completely.

  When he did, a chill went down Cedric’s spine.

  Karli was the second one to notice. When she did, she gasped in horror.

  “What’s the issue, now?” Pearson said.

  “Can’t you hear it?” Cedric asked.

  Pearson listened intently, as did the others. Cedric saw recognition begin to dawn for some of them.

  “They’re speaking,” Steph said.

  “No,” Cedric said in a shaky voice. “They’re chanting.”

  Chapter Eighteen:

  THE END OF A GOOD THING

  “Off! Off! Off!” The chorus of infected rang out.r />
  As the pontoon passed near the group of infected, they could see they had all gathered on the marina.

  “It’s like they know that boats can take them away,” Cedric said.

  “I can’t believe this,” Steph said. “That woman at the store, she did say no, didn’t she?”

  Karli asked what they were talking about, so Cedric quickly explained the behavior of the woman from their map mission the night before.

  “Do you think the infection is leaving their bodies?” Stewart asked.

  “It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Pearson said. “Either way, we have a mission.”

  “But,” Ross said. “Why are they all still here? I mean, why didn’t they just leave?”

  They all thought for a moment before Stewart said, “The barricade we busted down. We pulled that concrete barrier out of the way. It must have been holding them in.”

  “So, they think they’re still trapped,” Pearson said. “How intelligent do you think they are?”

  Curiosity got Cedric. He knew he shouldn’t tempt it, but he didn’t want them following the boat on their return trip. He quickly explained his plan to the others and why he wanted to do it. If the crew didn’t do this now, then the infected may track the boat back to the dock and wait for them at the Hummers. Then, they’d be stuck.

  Once he convinced the others, an easy task in itself, Clarke slowed the engines to idle again.

  Cedric walked to the bow of the pontoon and stopped. They were less than a hundred yards from the marina now. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Hey!”

  The nearest infected people stopped their chanting and stared at him. Cedric yelled again, more stopped. After his third yell, all of the infected were silent.

  “Creepy,” Steph whispers. “You’re the ghost whisperer.”

  “They aren’t actually dead,” Pearson said not getting the pop culture reference.

  Once the infected were silent, Cedric yelled, “The barrier is gone! You can leave!”

  He wasn’t sure that they’d understood him. In fact, part of him sincerely hoped they hadn’t. But then, the rearmost infected turned and began to run toward the exit of the island. As they left, more followed until there were less than a dozen infected left on the marina.