The Zone (15 page)

Elsewhere things were pretty poor; Turkey was gone, Japan was going fast, and countries were clamping down on borders with varying degrees of success. Nobody was sure if the virus had hit sub-Sahara Africa yet because the already thin pool of actual on-the-ground journalists had been decimated covering the collapsing hot zones. They said something like fifty journalists and their TV crews were missing or dead. They had plenty of stuffed suits to read teleprompters, but not many people on the ground getting data.

“So what you have planned for an encore?” Charlie asked.

“Dunno. I figure the CB or Net would let us find somebody who needs a hand getting out. There’s got to be pockets of healthy people holed up all over town. My schedule’s wide open.”

The burly musician nodded thoughtfully. “OK.” He looked over at the TV, where footage of infected raging through the night-time streets in some city in India was playing. “How do you see this playing out?”

“If it can be contained, it’ll run its course like any disease. The infected are getting sicker, we can see that. Sooner or later the virus will kill them, and the problem solves itself.”

“I think they’re dead,” Miguel observed.

That startled me; he had said it calmly to the room at large before taking a bite of his second bacon cheeseburger. “You mean like ‘dead man walking’, doomed sort of thing?”

He swallowed and took a pull off his beer. “No. I think they are dead right now. Like, before we shot them.”

“How do you figure?” Charlie asked, scratching his cheek.

“They look dead, like when a body comes out of rigor. Their blood doesn’t look alive, it looks like mud, barely liquid, and you can see patches of rot on their face and hands where the flesh is the thinnest.”

The table was silent for a bit. “Look, I’ve been up close to them,” I said slowly. “The first one I shot. He was breathing. Real labored, but he was breathing. And they yell, that cry they make when they see you.”

“They need air. The virus needs air,” Miguel shrugged. “But I think its hard to get in. I think they have to work at it, which is why they don’t move much if they don’t have to, they store air. Oxygen. I think they stay in the shade because the heat makes them rot faster.”

I ate a French fry, looking for a hole in his theory. “But…no, wait. OK, so you’re saying the virus kills them and what, animates their body?”

“Creates a favorable environment,” Charlie said. “That’s what a virus does: it invades a host and attempts to alter the host body into an environment suitable for the virus. Quit looking at me like that, I watch the Nat Geo channel.”

“So you think they’re dead and the virus is, what, driving them like a stolen car?” I was having trouble getting past that point.

“Human body’s meant to move and stuff,” Mick observed. “You ever shock a dead frog in school? It’ll jump.”

“I think the virus gets in while you are alive, and it takes over. The environment thing. You go brain dead, and the virus makes you move. A virus, all it wants to do is eat and make more viruses.” Miguel took another bite of his burger.

“Sounds like most guys I know,” Charlie observed.

“Like a computer virus? Hack in and take over?” I couldn’t really see it.

“A computer virus can do a couple things, but not everything a computer does. But it creates a favorable environment for itself. Its why they used that term when they were inventing computer terminology.” Charlie was warming to the subject.

“But…wait, I had it and I lost it. OK, the virus gets in, it takes over. Slowly, fever, that sort of thing. You die, your body…wait, the body can’t be dead. I’ve seen blood flow, and for that, you need a working pump.” I tapped the table. “Plus you would need lubricants for joints to work; I know because my knee is why I’m retired.”

“Brain dead,” Miguel shrugged. “The virus gets in, kicks your immune system’s butt, and your brain shuts down, mostly, anyhow. You’re dead. The virus can affect the motor control parts of the brain.”

“Brain stem and spine,” Charlie, the Nat Geo expert, weighed in. “That’s where most of the auto systems are.”

“Brain dead,” I mumbled, turning the fry basket slowly. “The virus has control of, what’s the word, lower order functions? It has a genetic imperative to spread to new hosts.” I was looking for a hole in the theory. “So as a human being, a person, a personality, they are dead, but as a physical body, they’re alive?”

“Mostly.” Miguel apparently had given this some thought. “I figure it can’t really control the body, not the way its supposed to be run. That’s why you see hair falling out, the eyes drying, skin decay: they’re dying from the outside in. The cells, I mean.”

“Cut the glandular business a bunch and slow blood flow, say reduce blood pressure, and it explains why they are immune to shock,” I admitted. “Head or spine hits would destroy the virus’ control, which drops a body operating on a marginal level anyway. Man, I hope you’re wrong.”

“Why? Sounds like a good theory,” Charlie observed.

“Because I was figuring the infected were just people deranged by disease; with a high fever, they couldn’t last more’n what, a couple days? But if Miguel is right, and what we have is a bunch of brain-dead bodies being hijacked by a virus, then I bet they last a lot longer. The body is mostly water, and with a lot of body functions shut down, lower blood pressure, that sort of thing, life could go a lot further than in a real person.”

We were silent for a bit. I finished my wings while I thought about it.

“It would explain why the bugs and birds don’t get after the infected corpses,” Mick suggested. “You go with the Miguel Principle, they must be a mass of bad viral mojo.”

  “The Miguel Principle, I like that,” Charlie grinned. “Named for the noted squeegee expert and bowling champion who developed it.”

Miguel gave him the finger. “What I think, anyway.”

“I hate to say it, but it fits,” I admitted. “It really sucks for us. I wish it was July; the extra fifteen degrees would be in our favor.”

“Up north its getting cold at night,” Charlie shook his head. “I bet moderate cold is good for these things. Not real blizzard cold, but say, forties or so, let them last longer, like veggies inna fridge.”

“So where did this come from?” Mick asked. “There’s no zombie monkeys so it wasn’t some drunk bastard humpin’ a primate like how we got emboli.”

“Bio weapon? It started in Turkey, and they have problems with the Kurds.”

“Everybody has problems with the Kurds,” Charlie opened a fresh beer. “But neither side has got the capability to do anything like this. The Turks can’t figure out indoor plumbing, and they’re oppressing the Kurds, so I would say the technical base is not available in the region.”

“End of times.”

Mick glared at Miguel. “You hadda say it, didn’t you. Bad enough the radio’s full of doom and gloom, you hadda say it too. Look, it’s a
virus
, not flame ‘n sulfur from the skies.”

“Bible doesn’t say God won’t use a virus,” Miguel pointed out. “Could be the flame and such is air strikes.”

“If this is the end of times, why are we still moving around?” Charlie asked. “I know you two, and I’m getting a feel for Martin, so my point is that this ain’t a quorum of righteous men and the truly chosen.”

“You sayin’ I’m not right with the Lord?” Mick turned to Charlie. “I’m a church-goin’ man, raised Baptist.”

“Divorced and an evil-eyed little pussy hunter of a Saturday night, too,” Charlie pointed out. “I figure the Lord could find some cleaner souls even in this town, is all. I figure this is a run-of-the-mill natural disaster, like Katrina or the one that hit Haiti or rap music.” He pulled his phone out of his vest and answered it. “OK, put him on.”

I finished my fries and soda, thinking about it. It made a lot of sense, much as anything made sense. It also made for very gloomy thinking.

“All right, that was Bob,” Charlie announced, stowing his phone. “Well, Bob and some Colonel in the National Guard. The bus got through without a problem and everybody is handed over; Bob’s bringing it back, but the other two guys opted to depart; Bob says he’ll bring the bus back and leave with the next  load, he’s done. The Colonel, he took down our names and says we’re deputized, drawing pay, that sort of thing. We’re a Rescue Team, number seventy-one, code name Remote Control Halo.”

“Code name?” I raised my eyebrows.

Charlie grinned. “OK, I told him it was our name. First band I had. Anyhow, we’re official heroes.”

“Great. How about some guns and helicopters and stuff?” Mick asked.

“You got the title-that ought to motivate you to adapt, improvise, and overcome. Although anything we do in the Zone is official business, so maybe we could hit a bank or something. The Feds have a web site up and a phone line to a recorder for people needing extraction in the city, I got the details,” he held up a napkin with notes and grease spots.

“Damn, man couldn’t you use a clean one?”

“I’m the commander of this unit, so bite me, Mick.” Charlie checked his napkin. “OK, they’re pulling back to open country, give them the edge when the infected try to get out. Seems to me that increases the size of the perimeter, but there you are. Anyway, I got the locations where we bring the people whom we heroically rescue, roll credits and theme song. I’ll copy this onto real paper and give one to each of you.”

“What I want to know, is how you got to be commander,” Mick cracked another beer. “Seems to me it ought to be a vote.”

“Yeah? You wanna talk about your tab while we’re at it?”

“Ok, Ok, you’re in command,” Mick grinned. “What’s your plan?”

“Wait here until the bus gets here, then go rove around being heroic. The truck can’t carry many, so we’ll have to grab, deposit in the bus, and go out again. When the bus is full or sort of full, or its close to dark, we’ll deliver the people we saved and shut down for the night. Bob does TV hookups, so I figure he knows how to fix us up with some wireless Internet. We can check the help site on the move.”

“Efficient
and
heroic,” Miguel observed.

“You got an idea in your bean, put it on the table; its your ass, too,” Charlie shrugged. “We ain’t exactly going up against the SAS. The infected are dangerous but not too smart. If the Miguel Principle holds true, they aren’t going to start using weapons or stuff.”

“You haven’t said anything,” Mick pointed to me.

I shrugged. “Its pretty well been said; I think Miguel is onto something with his principle. We keep a barrier between us and the infected, they’re not terribly tough. The problem is when they catch you on the ground. So we work it to bring the people to us like we did at the projects, and everything should work all right.”

I didn’t believe it, though. I thought Miguel was right, or so close to being right that it didn’t matter; it all fit. And that meant that the infected would stay active a lot longer than I expected, a time extension that meant that the danger of the Exclusion Zone being breached and the infected spilling out into the countryside would be increased. There was a lot of ground to encircle the many urban sprawls, and the US military wasn’t very large, even assuming that everyone stayed at their posts and didn’t desert to look after their own families. If the virus got loose, really unchecked, then it really was the End.

Chapter Seven

I managed a half-hour doze before the bus returned. Bob was a chunky young guy in his twenties with a pigtail and one of those extended ear hole things where you could stick your finger through the opening. He had a phone for Charlie and some printed guidelines and rules. With both vehicles we headed to a storage unit his outfit used where he hooked up a little dish to the increasingly cluttered roof of the truck, and another to the bus. He grabbed a spare sat set-up and activated the cards for me; with the instructions and notes he gave me, I would be able to get both satellite TV and high-speed Net at my place for a few weeks, or at least until they cut off the service entirely.

From there we located a Radio Shack with intact windows. The city was largely deserted, just stray animals, abandoned cars, a few corpses drawing buzzards, and the odd infected standing watch for brethren cloistered in cooler shadows. It made for eerie driving, like one of those old Twilight Zone episodes, or that movie where a guy wakes up in the hospital and everyone is gone.

Charlie came over as I was cramming a laptop into my gear bag, which was pretty full of other loot. “You like to gear up, don’t you?”

“I’m here for the duration; never know what will come in handy. Sooner or later you guys will come to your senses.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “What did your wife mean when she mentioned picking your place?”

“To make a stand, last bullet stuff. She did it with my son, spent every dime trying to save him.”

“The one in the joint.”

“Yeah. She was trying to tell me I’m going to get myself killed.”

“She could be right.”

“Probably is.” I glanced around, but the others were at the front of the truck bolting something to the bus’ bumper. “Look, I’m retired early on disability. This is the first time I’ve felt useful since I got shot. I take the bus out, they’ll confiscate most or all my guns and treat me like I’m helpless. I would rather stay here and take my chances.”