Chapter Fifteen
Author's Note: So it's official, one of my short stories is going to be published next year in Permuted Press' anthology of zombie fiction, "The Undead". Permuted Press interviewed me after my story was accepted--some of you may wish to click here to read what I had to say. Some others may wish to just go straight to the anthology's home page (and then click on "Author Interviews"). Others can just read today's chapter--it's a real corker. Part three starts on Friday!
--David Wellington
There are too many of them, Archie. No, I don’t mean… there are more of them than we thought, than our, our models showed. I’m talking about your computer model, the one you… it’s like they’re multiplying, reproducing but… Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean. It’s time for Warlock Green to come out of the closet. [Telephone conversation between the Adjutant General of the Colorado National Guard and an undisclosed second party, 4/4/05]
A hazy cobweb of vapor trails filled the big sky over Cherry Creek, left behind by planes and helicopters full of refugees headed in every possible direction. The aircraft were all gone but they left their tracks behind.
There were more infected coming up Third Avenue from the country club. Maybe two dozen. Clark gestured for the nearest squad to handle them, then spun around when someone behind him shouted “Target spotted, in that window!”
“Somebody kill that motherfucker for me already!” Horrocks screamed, his eyes huge and white. A squad of soldiers carrying M4s broke off to assault the entrance to a copy shop with wide windows overlooking Fillmore Street. A young man in a blue apron was in there pressed up against the glass, his hands white blobs against the window, the muscles of his face completely slack. Like something stuck to the wall of an aquarium. One of his cheeks was dark with torn skin and dried blood.
Clark backed up against the side of the HEMTT and reloaded his sidearm. It had been a long, haunting night and it just kept getting worse. He thought about countermanding the order—the infected boy wasn’t a danger to anybody stuck inside that store. It would demoralize the troops though to leave even one of the cannibals standing.
Keeping morale alive was pretty much all Clark could hope to accomplish. For every one of the infected they cut down ten more seemed to appear out of thin air. They were making no progress at all toward their stated objectives.
“Come on, come on, let’s not lose the operational tempo here,” Horrocks insisted.
The soldiers were still crisp, still professional. Maybe it was only Clark who was wilting after a night of violence and cold food and no sleep. They kicked the boy away from the window and butchered him and were back to the HEMTT inside of sixty seconds. On the roof of the big truck a crew-served M249 kept them covered the whole time.
The HEMTT was full of scared survivors, people they’d picked up along the way. Every time one of the troops discharged a weapon a collective moan of shock billowed out of the back. The sound got on Clark’s nerves—he felt guilty enough already, he didn’t need the infernal howling of the survivors to remind him he was slaughtering innocent civilians.
“Comms,” Clark called out and a specialist with a satellite cell phone came duck-walking up to him. Keeping low, just like she’d been trained—it made it less easy for a sniper to hit her. Nobody was shooting at them in Denver but she’d had proper cover procedure drilled into her so hard it stuck. She knelt down by the side of the truck with Clark and threw him a salute. “What do we have?” he asked. “Did you get through to the Adjutant General?”
“Sir, no, sir, nothing since the last transmission.” That had been half an hour before. A column of light armor (Hum-Vees with mounted weaponry) was supposed to come down Speer Boulevard any minute and relieve the platoon. Clark wasn’t holding his breath. The AG wasn’t responding to his calls, which couldn’t mean anything good. “Alright, get back to the vehicle,” he told her. He called for Horrocks and the sergeant appeared instantly. “It’s time to break contact. We’re holding our ground here but that’s not exactly the same as making progress. I want squad three on rear security.”
The sergeant set about making it happen while Clark hauled himself up into the cab of the HEMTT. A laptop on the dashboard showed a GPS map of the neighborhood. It showed the country club and the Cherry Creek shopping center tinged in red. Clark had to zoom out to see any blue at all—a Stryker group sitting tight on a stretch of Federal Boulevard. “How old is this product?” he asked.
“Sir, about thirty minutes,” the comms specialist replied. She was blushing under her helmet. The best data she had must have come in with the last download from command.
“Alright,” he said, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What is CNN saying?”
She played with the laptop for a while, collating text reports from the news channel’s website with the map’s imaging software. When she showed it to him again the Strykers were missing and whole districts of the city had turned red. The Epidemic was spreading, far faster than any infectious disease had a right to. And where did those Strykers go? He couldn’t find them anywhere on the map at all. Had they retreated?
The HEMTT started up with a roar and got under way. The driver kept it to a crawl—the cargo unit in back was stuffed full with the survivors so the soldiers had to run alongside carrying all their equipment with them.
The infected seemed to sense that Clark was withdrawing. Congress Park was crawling with them and they stretched out bloody arms to try to grab the truck as it went past. They came out of every street the HEMTT passed, streamed out of half the buildings. The soldiers wanted to aggress on the enemy but Horrocks kept a tight rein on them—fighting would just slow them down. Clark wanted to get back to command and find out what the hell was going on before he committed to another combat effort.
On Colfax somebody had opened up a dumpster and spread trash across half the street. It looked like some of the bags had been torn open by animals. Clark buckled and unbuckled the holster of his sidearm for something to do with his hands.
The driver took them straight up the Esplanade, crushing the grass and bushes there in the interest of speed. “Try the AG again,” Clark told the comms specialist and she dutifully dialed the number but got no response. Maybe the Joint Tactical Radio System was down again—it had a bad reputation. As the driver brought them into the school’s parking lot Clark leapt down from the cabin before the vehicle had even stopped.
There was no one around.
Nobody guarded the rear entrance. Nobody staffed the motor pool. The big TROJAN SPIRIT II vans on the playing fields were standing vacated and alone. Clark told Horrocks to send two squads into the school and report back at once but he already knew what they would find, and he was pretty sure he knew where the Stryker group went, too.
More red dots on the screen. There was no way to save Denver, Clark realized. It just couldn’t be done. There were too many infected, and not enough bullets.
The Pentagon is dispatching troops to help us right now—units of the 82nd Airborne Division, ah, you may have heard of them and also the 10th Mountain Division, they’re trained in high altitude work. Whether they can get here in time we don’t know… wait, what? No, we’ll stay on the air until we’re ordered to leave. Well, I don’t care, Marty. I don’t care, you can go, that’s fine. Just leave the camera running. [Denver’s 7, Emergency Bulletin 4/4/05]
Nilla wanted to laugh, to whoop for joy at their escape. Except that in her hand the bundle of napkins was already soaking through, a spreading red stain growing in the center of the makeshift bandage.
“Shar,” she said. The girl kept staring straight ahead. The car jounced through a pothole and Nilla’s hand flew free. Blood sloshed out of Charles’ neck. “Shar,” she said again. “Look, we need to get Charles some help now or he’s going to die.”
Shar sped up, the mountains falling away on either side, dead and barren desert consuming the view through the windshield. The Toyota screamed with heat prostration and stripped gears. Through the broken window a gritty wind battered Nilla’s face and rattled the napkins in her hand. There was glass everywhere but she couldn’t spare a hand to brush it away—her free hand was needed just for holding on.
“If he dies—I know you don’t want to hear this—but if he dies on us he’s going to come back. He’s going to come back hungry.”
WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY. The sign whipped past them, almost too fast to read. Through the rear window Nilla saw nothing but their own plume of dust.
“You have to accept this, Shar. There may be no way to save him. I know what I’m talking about. Would you just say something, please? Shar—if he dies, and comes back, he’ll be as dangerous as the armless guy back there. He won’t hesitate to, to attack you. Shar, can you even hear me?”
The girl stepped on the brake and the car shuddered as it decelerated, throwing Nilla against the seat back in front of her. When it came to a complete stop dust surrounded them like a brownish fog. It came in through the shattered window and filled Nilla’s already dry mouth, making her gag.
“I’m so sorry.”
Shar’s voice was tiny in the car, almost lost in the sound of the engine pinging and the chiming cascade of glass spilling off the backseat. “What was that? I don’t understand,” Nilla said.
“I’ll take care of him. Look, I am so, so sorry.” Shar was weeping. She reached up and smeared the back of one hand across her nose. “Please, Nilla. You were really nice to me. I want you to know I feel bad about this.”
Nilla stared at the back of the girl’s head as it shook with emotion. She made no attempt to start the car back up again. Nilla understood, of course. She pushed the napkins into Charles’ wound as best she could and fastened the seat belt across both of his arms, just in case. Then she pushed open the door and stepped out onto the fractured surface of the desert. The car pulled away from her as soon as she had closed the door, Charles and Shar heading east without her. In a minute they were lost to the heat shimmers coming off the burning sand.
END OF PART TWO OF MONSTER NATION
