Snareville (16 page)

In the bed of the dump truck, we loaded thirty gallons of diesel in five-gallon jugs and strapped them down. We took twenty gallons of gas for the truck that would follow us. Boss Connie and Bill Yoder from Plow Ridge would bring one of the armored pickups along. Tony and Catfish Cori would accompany us as well. We all went armed, all wearing our new BDUs. Tony wore his old deputy's badge around his neck. We each carried our own rifle, along with a full ditty bag of magazines. Our pistols hung in our belts, and our pockets bulged with ammunition. Even with the Zeds frozen stiff, I didn’t like the thought of going cross-country unarmed.

Under the locking bed cover of the pickup, we packed the carcasses of a deer and two feral hogs. Up in the cities, Boss Connie told us, folks were living on canned hash and rat.

“
Get home safe,” Jenny told me as we stood next to the idling diesel.

I hugged her. “I will.”

She turned to Pepper. The two shared a small kiss between them, then a hug, and we loaded into the cab. I waved goodbye to Jenny as I dropped the truck into gear, and she waved back as I headed for the gate. We left town the back way to avoid Princeton and its clogged streets. I hoped we wouldn’t run into a lot of dead traffic. We'd received assurances that the streets were pretty open to Northwestern Illinois University, where the CDC had set up shop.

I dropped the plow as we left the city limits behind us. With a path there, I shouldn’t have to plow the road to get back. The ride was rough. I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard on Pepper. She insisted on coming as much as we both insisted Jenny stayed at home.

Four hours later, we rolled into the secure zone around Northwestern. We showed the guards our IDs, and they let us in. At first, they insisted we leave our guns with them. Following a quick argument and our agreement that we wouldn’t go walking down the street with our ARs, and they relented. Good thing.

One of the guards asked if we were the Raiders from downstate they'd heard so much about. I told them we were and watched the guy’s mouth drop open. After that, they were much more accommodating. I thanked them and pulled into the campus town.

We found the right building, stopped in the parking lot, fueled the vehicles for the run home, locked them, and went inside. Doctor O’Shea met us. Huge man. He was the biggest paddy I’d ever seen. Six and a half feet tall and broad across the beams, as my dad would have said. He probably earned his ride to college on a football scholarship. With a big smile on his mustached face, he shook our hands all around.

“
I’m so glad you all made it up," he said. "I was worried. Normally, it’s not much of a trip, but these days…"

“
Pretty smooth, Doc,” I said. “Only a few cars still left on the road. Interstate’s been cleared off pretty good.”

“
The snow?”

“
One of the advantages to coming from a small town. We borrowed one of the city trucks and plowed our way here.”

O'Shea laughed. “Smart man. But you didn’t come here to discuss the weather.”

He filled us in on the progress with the vaccine and the anti-virus. Both were now proven effective, but still not readily available in large quantities. Several facilities scattered around were hard at work to produce small batches, but the big drug companies weren’t in business anymore to speed things along. Plus, no one knew how many uninfected people were left.

“
There were over three hundred and fifty million people in this country when the outbreak occurred," O'Shea told us. "This virus is an Ebola-Zaire-based infection. The Ebola alone has a ninety percent fatality rate. Combine that with a synthetic virus we’ve never seen before—one that reanimates dead tissue—and you have one nasty super bug on your hands.”

“
How did you figure all of this out, Doctor?” Pepper asked carefully, squinting sideways at O'Shea. “Doesn't it normally take a long time to develop a vaccine?”

He eyed her. “How much training do you have, young lady?”

Pepper smiled. “Ten years as a trauma nurse at Saint Francis in Peoria.”

I stared at her. She’d never mentioned that before.

“
Excellent hospital," O'Shea noted. "One of the best in the state. I’m surprised you made it past the initial outbreak. You must not have been on duty.”

“
God had a hand in it," Pepper said. "I took a dive through a second-floor window to get out.”

“
Then you
are
blessed," O'Shea said, sighing, "as we have been. Not long after the outbreak, two of the test subjects used to develop the virus walked right through our front door. We were also fortunate enough to have snatched Patient Two off the University of Illinois campus before our former government nuked it.”

“
Test subjects?” Connie asked.

“
Yes. Two former med-school students were abducted from the U of I campus when it was discovered they each have a unique blood chemistry that makes them immune to the Ebola virus. They escaped and came here. One was pregnant. Her son is immune to both viruses.”

“
So you’ve used them all as lab rats?” Catfish asked.

O'Shea frowned. “No. They're free to come and go as they please. They live here on campus. Both volunteered to help. We used stem cells from the infant's umbilical cord to develop the anti-virus, and now Patient Two is non-symptomatic. She’s a carrier, like the other two, but she was infected too long to be entirely cured.”

We were all duly impressed. Before long, O’Shea gave us enough vaccine to cover all of Snareville, plus some. He explained to Pepper how to use it—the doses and such. Pepper slipped the precious parcel into the pack she wore on her back. The anti-virus came to us in a smaller batch. O’Shea warned us it was only good within the first twelve hours of infection. After that, breakdown set in, thanks to the Ebola. I still thought it was a better early-response measure than blowing someone’s head off.

“
Now, I understand some of you Snareville ladies are pregnant,” O'Shea said at last.

Catfish chuckled. She was well into her second trimester. “Is it that obvious, Doc?”

O’Shea smiled. “Would you like pre-natal exams while you're here? Just to see how things are going?”

Catfish looked at Pepper. They both nodded.

“
Good. We’ve got time and rooms available. Follow me.”

Boss Connie shot Bill Yoder a glance and blushed bright red. Bill stared hard at the floor.

“
Do you have time to do three, Doctor?” he mumbled into his beard.

The rest of us stared at the two of them.

“
Bill, you old dog!" I cried with a laugh. "At your age?”

“
You English must put something in the water,” Bill tried, grinning in spite of himself.

Together, the three ladies went off for their exams. All the babies were healthy. They jumped and rolled when the wand passed over them. I didn’t want to know the sex of our baby, but Tony’s child was pretty obviously a boy when he rolled over. Connie and Bill’s baby was just a dot yet, but it was in there. We all received our vaccinations during our visit.

Later, as O'Shea walked us out, I asked where we could do some trading. He called a young med student over and volunteered him to take us to the local market. Finally, we said our goodbyes and stepped back out into the cold.

“
What’s with all the black smoke?” Catfish asked.

I’d noticed it on the way in, but I had other things on my mind then.

“
Burning Zeds,” the student replied. “They have teams out searching for frozen zombies. We throw the corpses into the power plants with the coal. Twofer deal.”

“
We’ve just been burning them in piles,” Tony said.

“
We do that, too, when we have to. We’ve got two thirds of the population of the state up here, and we have to gain an edge somehow. Best way to do it as far as I can see.”

We nodded as we loaded up in the trucks. Bernie, as the med student on loan was named, climbed into the plow truck with us. After a few minutes' travel, we reached a street converted into an open market. We parked. This time, we took our rifles, which Bernie informed us were illegal.

"You wanna take 'em from us?" I inquired.

No answer.

The market was a madhouse. People crammed in shoulder to shoulder. They parted for us, though. People sold anything and everything they had on them. I saw radios, TVs, and all sorts of electronic gear on the market. Some tables held up a few wilted vegetables, and some boasted cans of fruit with hundred-dollar price tags. Five-gallon cans of gas were priced at three hundred. One woman offered up herself and her twelve-year-old daughter in exchange for canned goods. Catfish produced a case of MREs and handed it to the woman. The woman cried. I think we all felt the same.

Bernie led us to a grocery store. The glass doors had been shattered and replaced with heavy plywood. Two armed guards stood to either side of the entrance. They held up their hands when they spotted us.

“
Uh-uh. No way. You people ain’t gettin' in. You get rid of those guns before we call the cops,
then
you can come in.”

“
I don’t think so, bub,” I said. “You let us in before we shoot you, and we won’t have an issue.”

“
Who da fuck you think
you
are, you li'l shit?” the second one—the bigger and, apparently, dumber one—demanded.

“
We’re Raiders,” Tony answered.

For a moment, nothing at all happened. Then the guards backed away from the door. Word about us must have reached Chicago.

Inside, Bernie led us to a little guy with long, black hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“
Hey, you can’t have those guns in here. Where’s Tommy and Frank?”

“
We need supplies,” Boss Connie said, skipping the niceties. “Flour, rice, beans. Milk would be nice.”

“
It’ll cost ya. I ain’t no charity.”

“
Ed, these people are Raiders, from downstate," Bernie said. "They’ve been out to the hospital and need some supplies.”

“
Yeah? They look like hillbillies. I don’t take paper money. Gold, silver, or bullets. Something with value.”

Already, I didn’t like the guy. “You got a loading dock?”

“
Around back. Why?”

“
Because what we’ve got to trade, I don’t want to drag through that mob out there.”

“
Yeah, okay. Bernie, show ‘em where it’s at. I’ll meet you out there.”

Tony went to fetch the truck. The rest of us followed Ed, and he raised a door for the truck to back in. Tony came around, slid the key into the lock on the cover, and flipped it open.

Ed stared, speechless.

“
We even gutted ‘em for you," I said. "What're they worth?”

“
Get what ya want,” Ed whispered, then shouted toward the front, “Tommy, Frank, get back here! We got work to do!”

The women passed the guards as they headed opposite directions. Tony, Bill, and I lifted the carcasses from the truck and hauled them to Ed's cooler. It still worked. We hung the meat on the hooks. Tommy, the bigger and dumber of Ed's guys, started skinning the deer immediately.

"They used to be meat cutters for the store, before the outbreak," Ed mentioned, eyes shining.

The girls came back with three shopping carts full of supplies. They picked up bulk bags and several gallons of milk. We had the pickup loaded in no time and paused on the dock to talk business with Ed. That was when I heard something rattle, like a chain being tugged. Then I head a Zed moan from somewhere in the back of Ed's shop.

We went into reflexive combat mode. Our rifles came out. I pulled my pistol. Pepper and I flattened to one side of the wall, and the others took the opposite side.

“
Wait, wait!” Ed urged, waving his hands in the air. “It’s just gettin' close to feeding time… that's all. The girls're gettin' hungry. Tommy, cut me off a couple pieces of that meat.”

Tommy complied. Ed waved us down the hall. None of us put our guns away.

“
I provide more'n groceries, see?" Ed explained as he led us back. "Some of my suppliers're the biggest freaks in the city. I just provide for their needs.”

We turned a corner into a storage area. To the right opened a small room with the door gone. Inside, I saw a few girls chained to the walls. My eyes darted past them. Farther back, chained to the concrete-block wall, I saw the two Zed women. Hands cuffed behind their backs, ball gags in their mouths, the two wore tattered stockings, grungy bras, and scuffed stiletto heels. They moaned and snarled behind their gags. Black slime dribbled out around the rubber balls. Dead-white eyes stared through us. I spotted a big box of rubbers on a shelf.

“
Like I say… some people're freaks,” Ed said. He didn't sound too bothered about it.

I gazed at one of the deaders—a blonde with her tangled hair cut in a bob. She'd been slender in life. Skinny, even.

I looked in her face. I looked into her eyes. She looked back at me and stopped snarling for a moment. She stood still. Something flickered across her face.

A lot of things raced through my head. Hate, rage, sorrow… I raised my pistol and put a round through the Zed's face. She slumped in her chains. I turned to the other deader. She'd been a young black girl, maybe high-school aged. With another bullet, she drooped still, too.