Black Tide Rising - eARC (16 page)

“Salaam wa alaykum,” a voice called out of the shadows. Without thinking, Mia had the .45 up, pointing at the voice and the figure that emerged from the shadows. “Qaf!” she shouted.

“Mia, my friend, It is me,” Hashim said, his hands up as he walked closer. Mia lowered her weapon and let out an explosive breath.

“Hashumi!” she said, walking forward to hug the wiry microbiologist. He might have hesitated for just a moment, but he’d been in the US long enough that he hugged her back. “You idiot, I could have shot you!”

“That is why I called out,” he said reasonably. She gave him a Look.

“Hashim, you called out in arabic. This has been a very weird day. I like arabic, but it doesn’t exactly calm me down.”

Hashim laughed. Mia shook her head, but eventually she gave up and chuckled with him. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked. “I told you guys to go on ahead.”

Hashim abruptly sobered. “I came to help you. You are one adult with twelve teenagers. It will be hard for you to keep them all safe alone. And if any are infected…Well. I may be able to make a vaccine.”

“Vaccine?” she asked, her voice rising, her eyes widening. “You can cure this?”

“Not cure, vaccinate,” Hashim said. “We were working on something at the lab this week, when the first rumors started. UCLA sent us some samples and some protocols…It isn’t hard, and it works. I have been vaccinated. But…this will be hard for you, I am afraid.”

Mia took a long look at her old friend. On the surface, Hashim looked like any other professor of vaguely middle-eastern descent. He wasn’t particularly big, and his wiry frame sometimes looked as if a stiff wind would blow him over. However, Mia knew him, she knew his history. She knew that he’d been hunted by Al Qaida since he was younger than her cheerleaders. She knew that he’d been shot, that his brother had died in his arms. She knew that he’d killed in his own defense before. He’d stood shoulder to shoulder with her brothers in arms, and that had earned him a ticket here, to the so-called promised land.

Hashim was hard. He would do whatever it took. He loved her like a sister, but she had no doubts that he’d shoot her between the eyes if she turned, in order to keep himself and others safe. And that was just what she wanted.

“Tell me,” she said, her eyes going flat as they hadn’t been for years since she got back from Iraq.

“The vaccine must be made from infected spinal tissue,” he said softly.

Mia closed her eyes momentarily while she absorbed this bit of information. Then she nodded, shoved the moral implications away in the back with the picture of the four dead cops and opened her eyes.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s take you to meet my team.”

* * *

“Coyotes,” Mia called in to the van. “Come out here. Time for a team meeting.”

One by one, the cheerleaders filed out of the van. True to New Mexico form, the temperature had dropped rapidly as the sun went down, and a few of the freshmen were shivering in their warm-ups. Mia hefted the duffel bag that Hashim had carried and opened it up. Inside were several sweatshirts and jackets. It looked like Allison had raided their camping gear and left it for them.

Mia let a smile cross her lips as she passed out the warmer clothing. Allison and Evan Dwyer were good friends. Evan had been a flight engineer in Mia’s last squadron. The families had bonded over camping and shooting excursions, and Allison was one of the kindest people Mia’d ever met.

She was also a damn good shot with rifle, pistol and compound bow. And Evan had an arsenal that a gun dealer would envy. They were exactly who Mia would have picked for her zombie survival team. If she would have had time to pick a team, that is. She could think of no one better to help Max protect her girls, as well as their own baby girl, Kimber.

“All right, Coyotes,” Mia said, bringing herself forcibly back to the present. The cheerleaders had distributed the warmer clothing and stood in a rough circle in front of her and Hashim.

“I promised I’d tell you what was going on, and I thank you for being patient while I figured it all out. Basically, here’s the deal: the shit has well and truly hit the fan. Jessa, you want to brief us on what you found from the news sites?”

Jessa looked a bit startled, but she stepped right up. There was a reason she was the team captain. “Um, there’s been an outbreak. Most people think it’s a biological terror attack. People get sick, like the flu, and then they go crazy and strip, like those cops back on the highway. And then they act like zombies. They’ll try to bite people…and if they do, then those people turn into zombies, too. That’s about all I’ve got. The news sites are talking about a vaccine and a government response, but everyone’s saying something different.”

Mia nodded. That had been about what she expected. “Thank you, Jessa. I had you all text your parents and give them the coordinates of a town in Utah near a safe place. My family is headed to that place now. We’ve got supplies there. We can wait this out and survive there…but there’s a problem.

“I won’t lie to you guys. There’s a good chance we’ve all been exposed. If we have, then we’ll turn, like those cops.”

The shocked looks travelled around the circle. Elia, a sophomore, stumbled and sat down, hard, on the ground. Tears began to stream down her face, and she wasn’t the only one. Danny, a junior and her only other male cheerleader bent down and put his arms around her, whispering in her ear.

“Listen to me,” Mia said. “Listen!” When she had their attention, she took a deep breath and went on. “I can’t promise you won’t get sick. But I promise you this. If you do get sick, I can promise you that I won’t let you become like those things back at the highway. I won’t let you hurt anyone.”

She looked over at Hashim. He nodded slightly.

“This is Dr. Noori. He is a very good friend of mine. Dr. Noori has been vaccinated. He knows how to make more vaccine. But in order to do that, we have to use spinal tissue from infected people. I know that’s horrible. I know it is, but that’s the reality we have to deal with.” Mia kept going, relentlessly driving the point home. They are adults now, she reminded herself. Their childhood ended two hours ago.

Elia raised her tear-wet eyes. “Coach?” she asked tremulously.

“Yes, Elia?”

“If I…If I get sick, can I…can Dr. Noori use me? Because I don’t want to die for nothing.”

The tears came hard and fast to Mia’s eyes. She swiped savagely at her face and nodded, not trusting herself to speak as each of the cheerleaders, her cheerleaders, murmured their agreement with Elia. Even her two freshmen, Sonia and Dawn. Even at fourteen fucking years old, they were nodding vehemently. Mia waved them all in, and she subsequently found herself mobbed by twelve cheerleaders all trying to hug her and each other, all at once.

“I promise you,” Mia said, her voice ragged and tear-soaked. “No one dies for nothing.”

* * *

They stayed there for another hour or so while Mia handed out weapons and explained the basics of shooting to those who hadn’t done so before. Both of the boys had been hunting, so they got the rifles that Allison had packed. Jessa got a shotgun, as did Cassidy, another senior. Yolanda and Bella, both seniors, got two of the cops’ .9mm pistols, as did Gina and Mackayla, juniors. The younger girls were instructed to partner up with the seniors and stay with them. Mia distributed the body armor as best she could, but she kept most of it for herself and Sam. It was too big for pretty much everyone else.

When she was at least confident that no one would shoot themselves by accident, they piled back in the van and continued on down the road. Mia broke into the cops’ Sugar Free Red Bull and savored the kick of the caffeine.

“Going to need to stop for fuel and supplies before too long,” she said. They were still at over half a tank, but it didn’t hurt to start making plans.

“How do you want to do that?” Hashim asked.

Mia pursed her lips. “I don’t know yet,” she confessed. “I suppose something will come to me. Ideally, we’d just walk in and pay for it as usual, but I don’t know how ideal this situation’s going to be.”

“Coach?” Danny, the junior asked. Mia looked up and looked at him in the rear view mirror. He sat, his face illuminated by a phone, Elia resting on his shoulder, eyes closed.

“What, Danny?”

“I used to work at the Circle K on Alameda. Last summer. I know how to turn the pumps on from behind the counter. If it’s not ideal, I mean.”

Mia exchanged Looks with Hashim in the passenger seat. Taking one of her cheerleaders in to a potential deathtrap like a gas station was pretty high on her list of things she really didn’t want to do…but no other option seemed to present itself.

“Okay,” Mia said as they drove. “Here’s what we’ll do. Hashumi, I’ll give you my card. You hop out and start pumping. If that doesn’t work, Danny and I will go in and authorize the pumps. We’ll need to find a gas station that still has its lights on, though.”

* * *

“Kill the lights!” Allison screamed, pulling the trigger of her 20-gauge and pumping another round into the chamber. “Kill the fucking headlights, Evan! They’re attracted to the lights!”

Evan, on the other side of the camper, would have loved to have killed the headlights. Unfortunately, he was a little busy holding off a naked adolescent girl who was doing her ever-loving best to get her teeth into his neck. He got his feet planted under him and spun, smashing her head into the steel I-beam that flanked the gas pumps at the Circle K in Farmington, NM. The infected girl’s skull caved in, and blood and other fluids leaked out of her ears and eyes. Evan threw her body away from himself as quickly as he could, and then reached for his Kimber 1911 as the sound of Allison’s shotgun came around from the other side.

Suddenly, tires squealed, and a gunmetal grey Nissan plowed through the wall of naked bodies that streamed toward the beleaguered camper. Just as quickly as he’d arrived, Max threw the truck into reverse and backed back the way he’d come, running back over bursting rib cages, tires slipping on the blood and entrails in his wake. Several of the infected turned away from the camper, toward this new source of food and noise, and Allison, at least, was able to get her door open, throw in the bag of groceries she’d gotten, and climb into the passenger seat. Another blast from her 20-gauge rang out as she shot through the open door, severing the arm of the closest infected. She kicked the severed arm out of the car and slammed the door shut. “EVAN!” she screamed as she leaned over and turned the key, starting the camper’s powerful engine.

Evan shot one, then another as they came at him. He fumbled at the door handle, his hand slick with sweat. Eventually, he got it open, but not before one of the infected managed to squeeze between the gas pump and the supporting I-beam and sink his teeth into Evan’s calf. Evan howled and shot the attacker in the head, but the sting in his calf said that he was already too late. He’d broken the skin. He was infected.

“Allison,” he said.

“Evan, no,” Allison said. “Get in. Please.”

“No. I’m hit. Slide over and drive. Stay with Max. Get Kimber to safety. I love you.”

“Evan!”

“I love you, Allison,” he said again, as he reached across the seat for the shiny red plastic two-way radio he’d been using to talk to Max in the grey truck. Allison, sobbing, did as he bid, sliding over the center console into the driver’s seat while he turned and shot at another infected reaching for them. Evan Dwyer kissed his wife, one last hard, long kiss on the mouth, and then slammed the door.

Allison could barely see through her tears, but she slammed the camper into reverse and gunned the engine, her tires squealing on the concrete as she backed out rather than attempt to plow through the crowd that never seemed to end.

“Max, Evan.”

“Evan, buddy, you guys out?”

“Negative. Allison’s out. I’m hit.”

Long pause. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Got an idea,” Evan said as he shot another one off of him. He had three bullets left in this eight-round mag. He’d left his spare mags in the camper. Good thing, too. Allison or Max could use the .45 ammo.

“Go with idea.” Max said. He could see the camper approaching now. He could see Allison’s face. Shit.

Evan lifted the hose of the gas pump and began spraying fuel. He wasn’t sure if this would work as well as it always seemed to do in the movies, but he did know that gasoline atomized fairly well, especially when you held your finger over the hose in order to make it spray into the air. He mentally thanked Allison for jamming the shutoff mechanism when she’d gone inside. That had been a bit of genius.

The infected seemed to be thrown off by the smell of the gasoline filling the air. Evan found that incredibly funny as the first shiver of fever started to race through him.

“Evan?”

“Yeah. So. I’ve soaked this place down well with gas. You still got those .762 tracers that I don’t have and neither of us knows where I got?”

Despite himself, Max smiled. “Yeah.”

“What say I draw a big crowd into my little gasoline shower and you light this fucking place up?”

“You got it, buddy,” Max said as he wheeled the truck around. He had Evan’s AK-47 in his lap.

“Max.”

“Yeah,”

“Take care of my girls.”

“Like they were my own, man. I give you my word.”

“Ha! A gunner’s word,” Evan said, jokingly. Before he’d qualified as a flight engineer, he’d been an aerial gunner once, just like Max. “The fuck’s that worth?”

Max laughed, blinking the tears aside as he pulled up to within the AK’s range. He could see Evan there, on the radio, standing in the midst of a puddle of gas, spraying the shit out of the place.

“Evan,” Max said over the radio, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Yeah.”

“In place.”

“Roger. Here’s to gunpowder and pussy, man.” Evan said, shooting one of the slowly approaching infected. The rest of the infected turned toward him and began to gather faster, lunging at him. He fired another bullet. “Live by one…”

“Die by the other,” Max whispered. He braced the AK on the door frame and took aim at the puddle at Evan’s feet.