Season of Rot (14 page)

Amy fished around in her jacket pockets and
retrieved half of a candy bar she’d looted the one time they had
stopped earlier that day. The boy watched her hungrily but said
nothing. She broke off a large chunk and offered it to him. He
snatched it from her and sat back, chewing it and smacking his
lips. Katherine watched but showed no signs of caring.
She must
be hungry too
, Amy thought,
but she doesn’t show it like we
do
.

“We’ll be there soon,” Dan muttered, more to
himself than to his passengers. “We’ll get help. You’ll see.
Everything will be fine.”

Amy hoped he was right. She knew that Dan was
on the verge of a breakdown and wasn’t at all lucid, but
nonetheless she hoped.

8

President Clark stood on the White House
lawn. He could hear the howls of the poor souls outside the massive
walls encircling the yard. General Wiggins’s soldiers lined the
barrier, shooting any of the things that were smart enough to
devise a way over.

Early last night, people had begun to flock
to the walls, seeking entrance and refuge. They were all long dead
or changed by now, no longer human at all by his definition. They
were monsters, soulless automatons who wanted nothing more than to
rip his throat open with their bare hands. He could no longer force
himself to feel pity for these creatures, but he did mourn for the
people they once were. They had been
his
people after all,
his nation, and they had trusted him. This is where he had led
them.

He had refused Wiggins’s pleas to leave the
night before, hoping that his permanent post would give people hope
and help calm the rioting and looting. At least in D.C. He’d been
wrong—he saw that now. The city was dead, his presence
pointless.

He wondered if he had waited too long to take
Wiggins’s advice. The White House walls were surrounded by the
creatures, six or seven rows deep, pushing and clawing to get
inside. Hundreds had been crushed in the stampede, too many to
count. It was as if all of Washington was out there.

Some of Wiggins’s men were working around the
clock to convert the vehicles inside the interior parking area into
an armored motorcade, a convoy capable of piercing the ranks
outside the wall.

Def-con installation IV was where Wiggins
intended to head. Originally built to provide shelter from a
nuclear holocaust, it was the closest functioning base, set deep in
the mountains of North Carolina. Perhaps there they could find the
answers to this mess and end the nightmare. With luck, they could
build a new start for the world.

Clark jumped as a firm hand grasped his
shoulder from behind.

“Everything is ready, sir,” said General
Wiggins. “We’re just waiting for you.”

Clark nodded absently. “What the hell are we
going to do, General?”

“Survive, Mr. President. My job is to get you
out of here to Def-Con IV, and I’m going to do it.”

Wiggins led Clark to where the convoy had
assembled just inside the southern gate. Five cars and two trucks
comprised the fleet, civilian but covered in makeshift armor. Three
of the cars no longer had roofs. They had been cut off to
accommodate large .50 caliber emplacements, the kind normally
mounted on the rear of army jeeps equipped for field duty. Bulky
wedges of steel, shaped like battering rams, were welded onto the
grilles of both trucks. The whole convoy looked like something out
of that Mel Gibson flick about desert dwellers fighting for gas
after the collapse of society. Clark didn’t know whether to break
into tears or roll on the grass laughing.

“You ready, sir?” Wiggins asked, escorting
the president to the second truck in the line. “It could get a bit
hairy out there.”

“I am as ready as I will ever be,
General.”

“Then let’s get the show on the road,”
Wiggins said, laughing. He opened the door for the president, then
walked off toward the lead truck.

As Clark watched him go, he couldn’t help but
think of the people they were leaving behind: Dr. Buchanan, most of
the civilian staff. The convoy could only hold so many people, and
Wiggins had allotted most of the space to military and security
personnel. Clark gritted his teeth; Wiggins had no right to
jeopardize so many lives just to protect him, but to the general
and his soldiers, it was their duty. The United States lived on as
long as the president was alive, and in a way Clark was forced to
admit they were right.

Besides, he almost thought Dr. Buchanan
preferred being left behind. The scientist had claimed the energy
field trapped in Earth’s atmosphere was changing. Apparently, the
aspects of the energy that had crippled mankind’s technology would
soon pass—”Two to four days, tops,” Buchanan had said—but that was
the only ray of hope; the energy field showed no other signs of
decay. Buchanan surmised that the energy was permanent, or close
enough not to matter.

And worse, his most recent data showed that
only eight percent of the world population was immune to the
biological effects of the field. When Clark asked why most of the
White House staff was as of yet unaffected, Buchanan answered that
some humans possessed a greater tolerance than others and that the
bulk of the White House personnel had been sheltered inside during
the wave. He guessed they would be normal until they were outside
long enough to absorb the same amount of radiation as those who’d
been openly exposed to the light. That was why he seldom came out
of the underground bunker; that was why he wanted to stay behind.
The good doctor didn’t want to find out whether or not he was
immune. He just wanted to stay sane for as long as he possibly
could.

A contingent of Wiggins’s men still guarded
the fences, and Clark watched from inside the second truck of the
convoy as they opened fire into the creatures outside the southern
gate. The things dropped in waves, but others moved up to take
their place. The guards were sure to run out of ammo before the
city ran out of creatures, but Wiggins would’ve known this and
would have planned for it. Surely enough, within seconds Clark
heard the thumping sound of grenade launchers being fired from the
lawn. Explosions sounded outside the gate, and the lead truck shot
forward, crashing its way into the mob. It plowed through the
creatures, crunching some under its wheels and bouncing others off
its armored plating.

Then the whole convoy was moving outside the
gates. The M-60s mounted in the open cars blazed, and small-arms
fire crackled over the howling creatures. Clark’s truck bounced as
the driver turned out of the yard too quickly, hitting the curb as
he swung around to follow the other vehicles.

Inside the cab of the lead truck, Wiggins
smiled. Everything was going as planned. The convoy cleared the
horde, and the open road lay before them.

“Sir, what’s that?” his driver asked.

Wiggins squinted. A lone creature had walked
out of a building and was crouching in the road ahead as if waiting
for them.

The damn thing had a rocket launcher held
firmly against its shoulder.

“Oh shit!” Wiggins screamed, reaching over to
claw at the wheel, the driver too stunned to react in time.

Light flashed from the launcher’s barrel and
the rocket streaked into the cab where Wiggins sat.

Clark heard the explosion as he watched the
lead truck erupt into a ball of fire. Adrenaline surged through his
body, and his knuckles went white from his grip on the armrest.

The car immediately behind Wiggins’s truck
crashed into the flaming wreckage so fast it overturned. Like a
chain of falling dominoes, the convoy grinded to a halt. The
creatures behind them were catching up, and more poured out of the
side streets and alleys. They were everywhere.

One soldier manning a M-60 in the car behind
Clark was torn in half as a dozen psychos attempted to pull him
from the vehicle. His intestines left a trail of red on the car’s
paint as the upper part of his torso disappeared into the angry
horde.

“Mr. President!” the soldier beside him
shouted as a grotesque, drooling face pressed against Clark’s
window.

“Jesus!” Clark threw his arm against the
inside of the glass to lend it extra support, hoping it would hold.
“Take us back! Take us back now!”

The driver threw the truck into reverse and
gunned the engine, backing straight into the brick wall of an
apartment building. Clark was thrown forward from the impact, and
his window shattered. Hands pulled him through the small opening
into the street, dirty, bloody hands with jagged fingernails. He
swam in a sea of biting teeth as his flesh was ripped and shredded,
and in the distance black smoke rose from behind the White House’s
open gates.

9

As Jeremy drove through the streets of
Canton, he stared in shock at the mayhem around him. The whole town
looked as if a war had been fought there. The Pigeon Center Market
was a mess, its doors broken open, glass shards glittering
everywhere. Other places were burnt to black rubble. Here and there
cars were stranded in the road, some wrecked, others abandoned,
their doors left open from when their occupants had fled. Some of
them, unfortunately, hadn’t fled far.

There weren’t many of them—Jeremy could go
for minutes at a time without spotting one—but when he did, he
always looked away. The bodies were horribly mutilated, torn or
hacked to pieces. Some even appeared as if they were partially
eaten by a pack of animals.

Jeremy had seen only three survivors since
he’d driven into town. Two of those had been crazy like old Luke,
and he’d avoided them as best he could. The third, he thought, may
have been normal, but as Jeremy’s truck approached, the man ran
into the depths of the paper mill. Jeremy got out and called after
him, but didn’t dare go into the dark, winding corridors alone,
even with the rifle and handgun.

The Ford’s radio was broken, and everywhere
Jeremy went, the power remained off. He knew little more than he
had back at Luke’s.

On the edge of town, he pulled the truck to a
stop at the Exxon station and killed the engine. The sun was
setting, and long shadows stretched across the pavement from the
pumps. He climbed out of the Ford, leaving the .30-.06 in the seat,
but he pulled out the .38 and didn’t bother to conceal it. He knew
better than to try the pumps themselves, so he walked towards the
station.

The place was eerily silent. Like at the
Center Pigeon Market, the doors were shattered, and Jeremy’s boots
crunched on glass as he entered. The smell of rotten meat made him
gag.

In front of the first aisle, the cashier lay
on the floor with a gaping hole in her chest; it looked as if
someone had shot her point-blank with a shotgun. Urine, tinted red,
pooled around her corpse, and the summer insects buzzed about her,
laying their eggs in her gray flesh.

Jeremy covered his mouth as he moved deeper
inside the station. Displays were overturned; coolers were left
open or shattered, the aisles ransacked, and about the only thing
left untouched was the cash register. Money had become just green
paper again, useless. From what he’d seen in town so far, people
took what they wanted or died trying.

Jeremy searched the store and loaded a bag
with everything useful he could find: a jar of peanut butter, a
lighter, a few warm beers and some bottled water, a crushed loaf of
bread. There wasn’t much left in the store, and it took a lot of
effort to find even those few things. He also managed to find the
store’s first-aid kit, buried under a pile of junk behind the main
checkout counter. All in all, he considered himself very
blessed.

He unloaded his treasure into the truck and
went back to the storage shed behind the station. He shot the lock
off the door and took a jug and a siphon cable from inside. Maybe
he couldn’t get gas from the pumps, but there were more than enough
vehicles waiting out there; it wouldn’t be a problem.

As he returned to the truck this time, he saw
them coming down the road: five men and three women in tattered
clothing. Their eyes seemed to glow yellow in the fading
sunlight.

Jeremy threw the siphon and jug into the
truck’s bed and leapt inside the cab. As he locked his door and
cranked the engine, the people broke into a run. He floored the gas
pedal and squealed out of the parking lot without looking back. He
drove for over ten miles before he stopped to get gas from a Buick,
which lay stuck in a ditch by the roadside.

As he waited for the jug to fill with gas, he
wondered where he would go. If Canton was like this, he couldn’t
imagine what Sylva must be like, much less Asheville. He thought
hard about where he might be able to find help. Where the hell was
a close enough place that might still be normal? He slumped against
the side of the Buick in defeat, watching the road and tree line
for any sign of movement.

It popped into his head then like a bomb
going off. All his life in Canton, he heard stories about a
military base up in the mountains. For the life of him, he couldn’t
remember what it was called. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was
real, but he knew roughly where it was supposed to be, and if
anyone could get through this mess okay it would be the army.

He snatched up the jug and yanked the siphon
cable free of the Buick as he ran for the truck.

10

New York was a distant memory, something from
a previous lifetime. Amy shook her head to clear her thoughts. In
her sweaty palms, she clutched a M-16 rifle she had stolen from a
long-dead looter; she and Katherine were hiding behind a stack of
crates on the dock.

Dan, God rest his soul, had driven them
through the worst of it before he’d finally flipped out; Katherine
had put a bullet in his skull. The boy, Jake, had died too.
Apparently he suffered from some kind of asthma, and without his
meds neither Amy nor Katherine had been able to help him. But all
of that was the past now, clouded and murky like a fading
dream.