Scavengers (13 page)

A government trailer served as the main clinic in the new quarantine camp near the shoreline of Lake Tawakoni. Dr. Josh Gutierrez leaned against the rail of rickety stairs leading to its front door and gazed across the lake. The reflection of the moon was a mirage-like shimmer on the surface of the waves. The night wind was crisp.

He lit a cigarette and deeply inhaled, letting the head rush come over him. Dr. Robbins would have his ass if he knew he was smoking in the camp, but Dr. Robbins wasn’t here. He was safe and warm back in his hospital lab working on an antidote for Toxin RE68. Gutierrez was the unfortunate sucker who got “promoted” to head the quarantine camp out here near H-Systems.

Colonel Weir had trucked in Army surplus tents and a few FEMA type trailers for use as hospital wards and clinics out here on some rambling forested cattle farm owned by one of the hospital board members. The tents were already packed with patients. Ambulance workers were bringing in a handful of infected people as Gutierrez smoked his frowned-upon cigarette. It was a bad habit, he’d give Robbins that, but he’d been smoking since he was an undergrad and it was hard to quit. It was especially hard to quit
now
.

Not that there was ever a good time to quit smoking.

His phone rang. Gutierrez fumbled in his pockets for a moment, then palmed it to his ear. “Gutierrez.”

“Josh, glad I caught you.” It was Robbins.

“Did Weir manage to get any additional shipments of sedatives sent?”

“That’s why I’m calling—” His tone didn’t sound promising.

“Dr. Robbins, our supply is extremely low. Too low to give the entire camp their next dosage.”

“I’m aware of —”

“No.” Gutierrez cut him off. “I don’t think you
are
. I’ve got a couple hundred people — more now, the nurses can’t keep up with the influx of new infected patients arriving daily – who, unless they get another round of benzodiazepines soon, they’re going to come out of the stupors we’ve kept them in. Now, you might not be too concerned about this little catastrophe in the making, but I sure the hell am. There are thirty nurses, doctors, technicians and volunteers here — all of which will end up dinner entrees unless you or
someone
manages to get some shipments out here.”

“Josh, calm down for a moment and listen to me,” Robbins began.

“Calm down?” Gutierrez heard his own voice raise a couple octaves. “Have you
really
thought about what’s going to happen out here when the sedation wears off of all of these infected people?”

“I’m not going to bullshit you, Josh. I’m not getting any help from the government. Colonel Weir has done everything he can, but basically, we’re all being hung out to dry. This infection is bigger than Texas, but to hear him tell it, Weir’s superiors are cutting him off from information as well. It’s like the goddamn government is trying to contain the spread of Toxin RE68 by quarantining infected states and leaving them to their own ends.”

“So, that’s it?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m working non-stop to break this — to develop some sort of antidote — but I’m only one man. I don’t have a research lab and our Internet access is down, too. Frankly, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think we were being isolated on purpose.”

“You think they’re cutting us off?”

“I can’t say for sure, Josh.  But I can tell you I’ve got a damn bad feeling that gets worse every time I talk to Weir. We’re really on our own.”

“What about the phones?”

“I’m surprised I was able to get through to you. I’ve been trying for a day now.”

Gutierrez sighed. “I’m telling the staff they can leave whenever they want.”

Robbins was quiet. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“What the hell, Robbins? If they stay, it’s suicide. I know your tests at the hospital were pretty successful, but we’ve discovered that some of the infected are still violent even when sedated. They’re strapped to cots that they flip over regularly. Some bust through the straps and we’ve resorted to physical force to contain them. This infection advances at different rates in different patients. Some of these people look like someone went and dug their stinking corpses from a grave. Their flesh is deteriorating before our eyes. Without the sedatives there’s no telling what exactly will happen and when. I’m not asking anyone to stay here if we can’t sedate these monsters!”

“Okay.”

“I’m not asking for your goddamn permission.”

The phone began to cut out. “Josh?”

“You’re cutting out—” Gutierrez spoke louder, as if that would somehow help Robbins hear him over the jumbled airwaves. The phone went dead. “Fanfuckingtastic.” He returned the phone to his pocket.

He walked across the pasture to the check-in table. Nurse Ford was busy typing social security numbers, dates of birth, and names on a laptop that glowed across her features. One man didn’t look infected at all. He stood at the check in table with a young girl by his side, expectantly watching the doctor’s approach.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Gutierrez. Can I help you?”

“Oh, hello, doctor. Name’s Thomas Corliss, this is my daughter, Selah.” Thomas’s hand rested protectively on his daughter’s shoulder. The little girl had a face mask on, elastic cord knotted on the back of her head to make it smaller. It was a shop mask used for the reduction of paint fumes, but it was probably all they had.  The little girl’s eyes were big and shone with fear.  She watched him closely.  She was an intense little girl, but she didn’t look infected.

“You and your daughter look well, Mr. Corliss, this is a camp for infected people. We have limited space and limited capabilities.”

“Yes, I know. I’m bringing my mother, Lily. My father died of the infection this morning. I … can’t leave my mother.” His tone of voice was edged with resolve.

“You stay at your own risk, Mr. Corliss. And I don’t mind telling you, the risk is getting greater. We do have some family members of the infected here, but we have separate tents to house non-infected people that absolutely insist upon staying.” Dr. Gutierrez said. “But really, if I were you,” the doctor’s eyes flashed to the girl, Selah. “I would not stay.”

“But my mother—”

“If it were me, I’d take your mother, sick or not, and your girl here, and go back home. Things are only getting worse.” Gutierrez saw no point in mincing words, but he stopped just short of dooming the man and his daughter to a certain death. After tonight, he wasn’t sure if he was even staying.

The nurse gave Gutierrez a fearful, questioning look. “Doris, you’re free to leave at any time. I’m not sugar-coating the state of things for anyone any longer.”  Nurse Ford, whose trembling was barely perceptible in the deep shadows of the tent, continued to type.

“All the same, doctor,” said Thomas stubbornly. “I think we’ll stay here. My mother is seriously ill and she needs medical treatment.”

“Suit yourself. Roger will show you to the tents for the non-infected. You’ll find them unpleasant at best, I’m afraid. There are only a few portable toilets and the water is delivered through hoses rigged up to temporary showers and sinks. The only food available is provided in the form of Army MREs and those are in short supply. Here comes Roger now.” Dr. Gutierrez pointed to a man in dirty green scrubs.

“Thank you, doctor,” Thomas held onto his daughter’s shoulder and steered her toward the orderly, Roger.

Gutierrez watched them go and then tapped on the table in front of Doris Ford. “I meant what I said, Doris. There’s an ambulance leaving in about fifteen minutes, if I were you, I’d be on it. The benzo’s in low supply and Robbins says we aren’t getting any more.”

“But what about you, doctor?” Her fear for him was evident in her face.  Her large eyes panned back and forth
,
searching his face, looking for some sign that he might go with her.  He knew she’d begun to show signs of having a thing for him, but so far he’d refused to acknowledge it.  Still, it was nice to know that someone cared.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

An Army reservist and a Greenville police officer approached from the left. A mixture of able-bodied police and military patrolled the camp.

“Dr. Gutierrez?” the middle-aged police officer said. He had an air of authority that came from more than his uniform and badge. It was clear by his stance that he’d been doing his job for a while and was confident in his abilities. “Can we have a moment of your time?”

Gutierrez shrugged. “Sure, what is it?”

“Are you able to send any email out? We aren’t picking anything up on the wireless. We knew the clinic had a landline.”

“It comes and goes. Mostly goes. You can give it a try if you want.”  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and noticed a low signal.  Possibly he could access the Web from his phone if necessary. “What’s up?” Gutierrez walked with the two men through the tall grass toward the clinic.

The police officer cleared his throat. He walked with one hand hitched high on the butt of his revolver. “We believe we’ve positively identified a wanted fugitive and terrorist Bal Shem. Man’s in Tent B2.”

There was a pause as the doctor absorbed the information. “Is he sedated?”

The men nodded in unison. “But, we need to see if we can download a better photo than the one we have here—” The Army reservist unfolded a worn, computer-printed, fuzzy black and white image of the suspected terrorist. “I’ve had this since the beginning of the lockdown. Everyone was given one and told to keep an eye out for him.”

Gutierrez ran his hands through his unwashed hair and over his face. He rubbed his eyes and smoothed his wiry, unshaven beard. “How certain are you that the guy in Tent B2 is this Bal Shem person?”

“Pretty damn sure, doc,” said the cop.

“That’s not good.” Gutierrez stood on the metal steps of the trailer, looking out over the camp.
Damn. What the hell else could go wrong?
In about four hours, they would have over 200 raging, infected zombie lunatics on their hands, and now they also had the mastermind behind the fucking terrorist attack doped up in one of the tents?
Fucking A.

“No sir, it’s not good at all,” the Army reservist said, fear quaking in his voice.

“It’s a fuckin’ nightmare, is what it is, doc. That’s one bad son of a bitch in there. Throw him and his fucked up ideology in with the rest of this hornet’s nest, and we’ve got nothin’ but bad shit fixin’ to erupt.” The police officer spat a wad of pulpy, black tobacco and juice onto the grassy ground. “But, like we said, we need that 100 percent positive ID to confirm he’s Bal Shem. Don’t want to be doin’ anything too hasty.”

Gutierrez nodded, haunted by Robbins’s suspicions that the government was cutting them off from the rest of the world. “Of course. The computer’s in the first room to the left. Use it as long as you need.”

He held the door open for the men as they entered the clinic trailer.  His head snapped toward the road as another ambulance pulled to the front gate. They just kept coming.

The echo of crunching metal and wrenching car frames died in the night with a skittering of broken glass. The Hummer came to a stop upside down, rocking on its top.  Frank and Dejah hung from their seat belts. Shaun moaned from where he’d ended up on the Hummer’s ceiling. No sooner had their vehicle come to a rest than each of them scrambled to free themselves. The windshield was a webbed mess of safety glass, and most of the other windows were completely broken. As long as they were strapped into the vehicle, they were sitting ducks.

They heard the shuffling footsteps of Sickies coming nearer the vehicle.

Dejah, dazed and dizzy from the sudden lurching of the accident, tried to get her bearings and worked to free her latch.

Frank freed himself first. His latch came loose and the belt slid back into the seat. He turned to help Dejah just as she managed to gets hers loose. She fell on top of him. He grunted with the impact.

“Hurry!” he whispered. “Get the boy.” Dejah saw a blue flash of gunmetal in the old man’s hand as he slid his way out the broken window like he was twenty years younger and did this seven days a week. Gunshots rang in the confines of the vehicle like snapping M-80’s in a tin can. The sound of gunfire had made her momentarily deaf, and that made her more anxious; with ringing ears she couldn’t hear how close they were.

“Shaun,” she whispered urgently. “Shaun!”

His head lolled. He was only half conscious. A gash beneath his hair was bleeding a lot. A thick stream of blood ran into his hair and dripped on the inside roof below.

“Jesus.” Dejah ripped off a shred of her shirt and pressed it against his forehead with his hand. “Hold this there, Shaun. Apply pressure. There you go.” She looked nervously through the broken window.

Two more gunshots rang out.

A fire-blackened arm, cracked and oozing with pus, jammed through one of the open windows. It latched onto Dejah’s ankle. She screamed.

Too late, she saw the creamy white eyes of a badly burned man, bloated and flesh oozing with infection, slip into the Hummer. He had her leg.

“Go!” Dejah yelled at Shaun and pushed him through the window where Frank stood, firing off shots. No sooner had Shaun climbed free of the cab than she felt grinding teeth dig deep into the flesh of her calf.

She screamed, enraged and in pain as she twisted.  She grasped a nearby tire iron that must have shaken loose from the back of the truck in the accident. Dejah wielded it like a morning star. She bashed the iron repeatedly, rapidly, into her attacker’s face. 

Skull bones crunched. The face was a ruin. With each new impact, a wet smacking sound filled the cab. Black ichor, maybe something that once was blood, splattered from the groaning skull.  Repeated blows to the thing’s head caved it in like a rotted squash, yielding a pulpy mess of diseased brain, cracked bone, and flaps of oozing skin. She destroyed the skull completely before the fiend relaxed its grip on her bleeding leg.

“Dejah,” Shaun grasped her arm from where he stood and pulled her across the shards of broken glass to get her out as soon as possible.

“I’m low on ammo and they ain’t slowing down folks,” Frank said. “We’ve gotta find a new ride fast.”

Dejah tried to stand but screamed with pain and collapsed again.  Her new wound was vicious. Draping Dejah between them, the men, young and old, ran as fast as they could manage. With her between them, going was slow.

“There,” Frank nodded toward a red Dodge Ram in good shape expect for a fender rammed into the guardrail. They made a beeline for it. Cars were in their way. Sickies shifted through the wreckage behind them.

Hunting them.

“Oh, God, please,” Shaun gave a small earnest prayer.

“Up!” Frank said. They needed to heave Dejah over the hood of a Toyota Camry to get to the Dodge truck. They had good momentum and if only the move would’ve been in tandem, if only one of the men had been a little stronger, they might have made it. Instead, they couldn’t lift Dejah high enough. Her knees bashed the side of the car. The jarring motion caused Frank and Dejah to cry out. 

Dejah slipped from Shaun’s hands. “No,” he yelled.

She reached for them. She heard the sound of footsteps behind her,
right
behind her. And she knew it was over.

Again.

Oh God, not again…

And then came the pain.

*       *       *

“Oh, hell no, you mother fucking Sickies!” Frank laid down a spray of bullets fast as he could pull the trigger, but they’d begun to ravage Dejah.  Frank charged into the crowd and fired at them, point blank, shoving them back with fists and kicks. He reached into the crowd swarming atop Dejah like hungry ants and fought them off.

Shaun watched, reeling in horror, as Frank beat them back with hand-to-hand combat. They chomped the old man’s arm, his neck, his shoulder. They dug ragged fingernails into his thighs and the soft flesh of his torso. When he pulled Dejah from the ground, she was a soaked mess of blood, grease, and road dirt. Her clothes were ripped, her flesh in tatters. The old man would not let them take her. 

He fired another round into a fat woman who’d reached them late but pressed her weight against the others, threatening to pin them. A skinny black woman made a terrible screeching sound and launched herself into the air like a wingless bat, claws and teeth bared.

Frank fired. 

The shot caught the woman between the eyes. Her brains made a fine spray in the moonlight. She halted in midflight and spun backwards like a trapeze artist whose strings were cut.

“Come on, damn it!” Shaun rushed to Frank’s side and helped him heave Dejah’s blood slicked body the rest of the way to the truck. Just as they got the driver’s door open and heaved her broken body inside, Frank turned and shot his last round into the head of an approaching Sickie.  It spun on one foot and fell, half its head blown away. The slide of the semi-automatic pistol stayed in the open position. The gun was empty.

As Shaun slid into the seat, he felt a hard protrusion against the small of his back. In his daze from the wreck and the ensuing frenzy, he’d completely forgotten he had a pistol.
Damn it!

“Come on, Frank, I’ve got you covered.” Shaun finished tucking Dejah’s broken form into the far seat of the cab and turned to help the old man.

He froze, gun in his hand, as he saw the sheer wall of Sickies rushing toward them in a hungry wave. One look at Frank — too far from the truck, too near the Sickies — and Shaun knew he was in a bad way.

His heart lurched. Tears blurred his vision. He gritted his teeth and reached out for the old man.

“Frank!”

“No kid! Go on, close the door or you’re finished.” His voice was strained with pain and exhaustion. “Save yourselves.”

“I’m coming for you.”

“Don’t be stupid, kid!”

“No—” Shaun’s protests were silenced. Frank twisted as two Sickies yanked him onto the hood of the Camry. The old man slipped and Shaun’s throat tightened. His heart gave a kick when he heard Frank shout two dreaded words: “Kill me.”

And then again: “Kill me!” Frank had mustered his strength to make his request in a voice so full of authority that Shaun couldn’t refuse to comply with the directive.

He had the gun in his hand, palm sweaty on the grip. The truck’s door was still open.  They were swarming over the hood of the Camry, dragging Frank down to their wicked hell.  Shaun raised his arms, both hands on the pistol to steady it. An aching lump formed in his throat and tears filled his eyes, but he held the weapon firm. He had an agonizing glimpse of Frank, wincing now, screaming in pain.

The gunshot racked Frank’s body. Gun smoke poured from the barrel.

Shaun fired again. This time he saw the bullet make a perfect round hole, bloody, just left of the center of Frank’s deep-lined face. His eyes went blank with blessed death. Then the old man was gone under the gnashing teeth and ripping claws of the infected.

Shaun gritted his teeth. He fired one more shot at a Sickie that leapt over the hood of the Ram and thrust its arm into the cab. Shaun’s shot exploded through the back of his skull. The infected man went limp, arm stuck in the door, keeping it from closing. The truck was swarmed like a kicked anthill. Shaun shouted, as much to expel his growing feelings of terror as to give him the boost he needed to wrench the dead man’s arm free of the door and slam it closed.

The shut door sealed them against the darkness of the morning’s early hours. Against the darkness of the world gone insane.

The Sickies, faces of all sizes and shapes, whites of eyes bloodshot, other eyes just milky white orbs, teeth broken and tongues swollen, wet and black with rot, smeared skin that had broken open and was oozing with the disease…the miasma pressed around the vehicle. Their claws scraped. They groaned. Moaning echoed through the vents. The windows were covered with the infected, scrambling over one another in their desperation to reach them.

Shaun sniffed back shudders of fear and looked over at Dejah.

She was a mess. Worse than when they’d first met at the tollbooth.

After all they’d been through, seeing her like this was the worst thing ever. He’d seen her regenerate from gruesome wounds, but this…she was covered head-to-toe with blood. Whole sections of her left arm were eaten away, along with the majority of her left thigh — eaten down to the bone in some places. Sinew, gristle and vein hung in tattered shreds of grue. Her abdomen was ripped open, a flap of skin hanging like wet tissue paper dyed purple. From the opening shone her innards: unrecognizable. Her face was clawed. Patches of her hair were ripped out in the tug of war fight with Frank to save her life.  One eye was closed, one eye, half-open, shone white, as if it had rolled back into her head.

Somehow, she still breathed. Perhaps it was the last ebb of life leaving her now, but while she breathed, Shaun dared hope. Miracles could happen. He had to believe it.

He looked around the windows again. The creatures swarmed.

He had to believe.