Apocalypse Of The Dead (29 page)

Aaron arrived at Jasper’s quarters and climbed the stairs to the front porch. The front door was open behind the screen door.

“Jasper?” he called into the house.

There was no answer.

Inside, the house was hot and dusty. A white ceiling fan spun slowly in the living room, and the remnants of the late-afternoon sun shone through the windows.

He heard moaning and the sounds of a bed creaking from a back room and turned down the hallway.

“Jasper?”

He rounded the corner and stopped in the doorway of Jasper’s bedroom. A young married couple was in bed with Jasper. Aaron tried to remember their names, but couldn’t. The man was facedown on the bed, Jasper mounting him from behind, while the wife knelt beside Jasper, licking his chest, her hand running through his black hair.

Aaron nodded and left the room. He went out to the porch and sat in a lawn chair and waited.

Jasper appeared thirty minutes later, his arms around the couple. They exchanged a few pleasantries, then Jasper wished them both a good night and sent them back to their cottages.

Aaron watched them link hands, smiling at each other as they walked back up the hill to the communal center of the Grasslands.

Jasper sat in the lawn chair next to Aaron and sighed.

“I despise engaging in homosexual activity,” he said, and sighed. “But, regrettably, it is necessary so that I can connect to our younger male Family members.”

Aaron nodded. He knew this. It had been long ago, nearly fifteen years now, since he and Kate had shared Jasper’s bed. But there was no latent jealousy there. Aaron understood that it wasn’t about sexual gratification. Rather, it was a necessary stage in a Family member’s development. All members of the Family had to connect with Jasper symbolically, and sexual activity was an important part of that process. Of course, it was no longer necessary for Aaron and Kate. They were well beyond that phase now.

“How was the trip into Bismarck?” Jasper asked.

“Fine,” Aaron said. “Went off without a hitch.”

“Got everything on the list?”

“Down to the last bolt. We raided Lowe’s and the Ace Hardware. I think they have a few more hardware stores in town, but we’ve nearly cleaned Bismarck out.”

Jasper nodded.

The two men sat in silence for a good long while, comfortable with each other’s presence. Out beyond the fence, the prairie stretched into darkness. The sun had turned the sky a stunning flood of crimson and bronze and yellow, and the land beneath it was black. Aaron felt immensely happy.

Jasper said, “And Thomas? How did he do?”

Aaron smiled. “Ah, Jasper, you should have seen him. He made me proud.”

“I’m glad. A son should be a father’s joy.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Tell me,” Jasper said, after another long pause. “Has young Thomas found a lady friend among our Family?”

“Not yet,” Aaron admitted. “Though Kate has tried to introduce him to a few.”

“Well, he’s young. Still, it would be nice for him to set an example for the other youngsters in the Family. Nothing says a new beginning quite so well as a wedding.”

“I agree,” said Aaron. “And I know Kate would agree.”

“Yes, I think she would,” Jasper said. He breathed in deeply, obviously pleased with the smell of grass in the air. “Tell young Thomas I am looking forward to welcoming him and whatever wife he chooses to the Family.”

Aaron smiled.

“I will, Jasper. Thank you. I know he will be honored.”

Jasper nodded, and they watched the sun sink into the prairie. Jasper removed a tangerine from his pocket and slowly peeled the rind away, tossing the bits into the grass.

He offered a segment to Aaron and Aaron took it.

“I was listening to the radio today,” Jasper said. He was talking slowly, pausing to eat sections of the tangerine as he tore them loose. “There is bad news out of China. They still refuse to acknowledge that they’ve had any outbreaks within their borders, and yet CNN reported that their military has bombed at least thirty of their own cities.”

“Disgusting,” Aaron said.

He knew government lying was a sore spot with Jasper. Close as their home in Jackson was to New Orleans, they were able to witness the complete, epic failure of the American government to protect its citizens in the time of a natural disaster.

It was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that Jasper began using his pulpit to condemn the government’s policies on disaster readiness. He studied public documents and FEMA policy and procedures and researched the backgrounds of various leaders within Homeland Security and FEMA, and what he discovered was a dizzying web of corruption and ineptitude that amounted to a racially motivated conspiracy. More and more, his sermons began to zero in on the range of this conspiracy. Hurricanes Rita and Ike only served to reinforce his suspicions and strengthen the arguments he made from the pulpit. People began to take notice. FBI agents showed up at their church and tried to pose as new members. Aaron himself had seen them following him in the grocery store, watching him from cars parked across the street from the church.

And then, when Hurricane Mardell had struck Houston, Jasper’s warnings began to receive national media attention. The quarantine zone around the Gulf Coast and South Texas was the final step in the government’s campaign against blacks and Hispanics and the southern whites, whom the government considered as tainted because they lived with them. The necrosis filovirus was not a naturally occurring disease, Jasper said. It was bioterrorism. It was the government’s final solution.

And now, it seemed, the conspiracy had spread worldwide. China and India were fighting an undeclared war against each other’s refugees. The Middle East had retreated completely into Islamic fundamentalism, with the wholesale slaughter of Americans within their various borders hailed as the fulfillment of Allah’s will. Europe was reduced to a gigantic street brawl from Madrid to Moscow. Africa, it was said, was already dead. The world was flaming out.

Aaron took another tangerine slice from Jasper and said, “I heard the same broadcast today on the radio. Things are not looking good. It’s no wonder they’ve made us a target.”

“They’ve had us in their sights for a long time, Aaron. This is nothing new. Only the scope of their attack has changed.”

Aaron nodded.

“I’ve been thinking,” Jasper said. He was looking toward the large cluster of vehicles they’d collected since their arrival. All in all, they had roughly three hundred and eighty cars and vans parked in a wide, flat, grassy area west of Jasper’s cottage. They’d removed some one hundred and twenty heavy-duty and light trucks from the west lot, and those were parked up along the main road, near the north entrance, where they were being used as work trucks to help build and supply the Grasslands.

“Yes?”

“All those vehicles have radios. My guess is a great many of the people in our community have radios as well. Possibly TVs, too. I want all of that confiscated, Aaron. I want anything that can be used to acquire lies spread by our government confiscated. Can you handle that for me?”

“Absolutely,” Aaron said. “I’ll have it done tonight.”

“Excellent. Shall we go up together? I’d like to address the Family now that we’ve got our new public address speakers installed.”

Aaron nodded happily, and together, they made their way up to the Pavilion.

They were in the back of the bus, all of them huddled around a map of West Texas they’d laid out on a card table.

Kyra and Robin were on Jeff’s left. Kyra was looking better. Her lips had some color, and her eyes didn’t look as rheumy as they had before, but she had gotten a lot of sun, and the burn was starting to show in her cheeks and on her forehead. To Jeff, it looked like she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Jeff said, “I say we head over here, to Van Horn.”

“No,” Kyra said quickly. It was the first time she had spoken since they’d all gathered around the map and her voice was little more than a croak. “No,” she said again. “You can’t go there. That’s where I came from. The infected, they were all over the place.”

“Well, yeah,” Colin said, “but you got out, and you’re…Well, you know.”

The others looked at him.

“I’m just saying,” he added quickly, showing them his palms. “I mean, we’ve got to go somewhere, right? It’s here, in this little town, or it’s to one of these other places where they have thirty or forty thousand people.”

Kyra was quiet for a long time. Colin looked at Robin, then at Jeff, and shrugged.

He said, “I mean, right? If she got out, there can’t be that many of them in town.”

Robin had her arm over Kyra’s shoulder. Kyra shook herself free and turned toward Colin. Only then did they see that she was crying.

“My uncle died getting me out of town,” she said. If she’d enough strength to scream she probably would have. As it was, she managed only a harsh-sounding bark before collapsing back in on herself.

Robin put an arm around her and whispered her name.

Kyra let herself be taken in and held.

“You can’t,” she said from under Robin’s arm. “Please. Don’t go back there.”

Kyra tried to rise to her feet and couldn’t. Robin rose and grabbed her under her arms and tried to lift her. Jeff said, “Here, let me help,” and took Kyra’s other arm.

Together, they walked her to a bed in the back and made her comfortable.

“Is she going to be okay, you think?” Jeff asked.

Robin nodded. She pulled a blanket up under Kyra’s chin and waited silently.

Kyra fell asleep almost immediately.

Robin and Jeff stood there side by side, watching her sleep. Jeff could feel the heat coming off Robin next to him. Her arms and face were glistening with sweat, and her bangs were soaked. She had picked up some sun also over the last few days, and her cheeks were glowing with it.

She caught him looking at her and took his hand and held it as they walked back to the map table.

Colin was saying, “I don’t see that we’ve got any other choice. We need supplies. That means groceries, bottled water, medical supplies, even a few more guns and some ammunition. Where else are we gonna get that stuff?”

“He’s right,” Robin said.

Katrina looked troubled. She had her hand on top of Colin’s and she turned and looked at him. “But what about what Kyra said?”

“What else are we going to do?” he countered. “We need those supplies if we’re going to wait all this out.”

“Maybe we can park the bus outside of town, and one or two of us can go in on foot,” Jeff said. “You know, sort of a scouting party.”

“That’s a good idea,” Robin said.

There was a lull in the conversation as they sat and stared at the map. Jeff took a bottled water from one of their coolers and drank from it. They still had water and a decent amount of food, but he knew that it wouldn’t last forever.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Robin said.

They all looked up, listening. It was a deep but distant rumbling, and at first Jeff wasn’t sure what it was. But as the sound got closer, he knew.

“Motorcycles,” Colin said.

“Yeah,” Jeff agreed. “Sounds like a lot of them.”

He went to the front of the bus and peered out the windshield. A few hundred yards away, but closing fast, was a team of motorcycles and two pickups. They were trailing a long cloud of yellow dust, and it was hard to get an accurate count, but he saw at least eighteen of them.

As the convoy got closer, he could see the men were armed.

He ran back to the others and said, “Okay, we need to hide the girls.”

“What?” Robin said.

He told them what he had seen. By the time he was done, the motorcycles had surrounded the bus and they could hear voices outside. Somebody was banging on the door.

“We have to hide them,” Jeff said to Colin. He turned to Robin. “Those guys, if they recognize you…I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

He was hoping she wouldn’t argue, and she didn’t. She seemed to grasp his point immediately, and she turned to find a hiding spot with the others without another word.

More pounding on the door.

They heard voices outside, yelling.

The bus had hidden luggage bins along the driver’s side under the seats. The girls climbed into the bins, and Jeff, as an afterthought right before he closed the bin door, tossed in an armful of bottled waters for them.

The riders were kicking open the door now. Another moment and they’d be inside.

Jeff kneeled down and smiled at Robin. “You guys be quiet in there, okay.”

Robin didn’t speak. She rose up and kissed him on the mouth.

Then she slipped back inside.

When he stood up and turned around, there were men coming through the black partition.

They all had guns.

One of the men pushed his way past Jeff and went back to the bar, where he stopped and looked around.

“Just you guys?” he said.

“That’s right,” Jeff said.

The biker stared at him. “Bullshit,” he said. “What’s with all these chick clothes you got?”

“We had our girlfriends with us when we left L.A. They didn’t make it.”

The biker reached down and picked up a black lacy thong. “Huh, too bad. Where’re you guys headed?”

“Van Horn,” Jeff answered. “We were gonna get some supplies and then try to make our way north to the Colorado safe zone.”

The biker nodded. “Ain’t nothing much left of Van Horn. Pretty much the whole town’s been killed or turned into one of them fucking zombies.”

He went to the bar and held up a bottle of Grey Goose vodka. He seemed impressed.

“You boys are traveling in style,” he said. He poured himself a glass of vodka and took a drink, grimaced, then smiled. “Yes, sir, in style.” He put the cap on the bottle and tossed it forward to one of the other bikers. “Me and my friends here, we were down around Acuna when all this shit happened. Man, you should have seen Mexico. We watched it from across the river, and I ain’t never seen anarchy like that. Anyway, we made it as far as Van Horn and realized that most normal folks pretty much done bugged out. Ain’t nothing around here but them fucking zombies, and we took care of that.”