The Zone (21 page)

India was still around, but China was having real problems; the news wasn’t clear because there weren’t enough reporters to cover all the hot spots, but it looked as much political as anything. Japan was finished, over-run from end to end, and Taiwan wasn’t doing well either. Both Koreas were all right, although there were military clashes that suggested a resumption of active war was far from impossible.

I didn’t bother to see about Central and South America because I didn’t expect good news. I watched talking heads argue about the origins of the virus and the only point they seemed to agree upon was that the outbreak started in Turkey and was taken around the world by the airlines. Bio-weapons were doubtful because no one was benefiting, and nobody had ever heard of a weapon this effective. Most bio-weapon research had been halted by treaty decades before, and the heads of several intelligence agencies confirmed that little offensive work had been done since.

They skirted the actual effects and the projected staying power of the virus, but they were finally confirming that head or spine hits were needed for a fast take-down, and they added that the virus was remarkably stable, so the risk of mutation into something even more dangerous was nil.

An hour of news was all I could take; I flipped around and found myself watching a very trim and augmented naked blond girl riding a guy like she was trying to beat the clock. I watched for a few minutes before
cutting it off; it reminded me that by horror movie standards I was due to rescue or otherwise encounter a model-quality love interest soon, one highly trained in combat techniques or key survival skills but oddly without romantic ties.

At least I had that to look forward to.

I hadn’t been on the Net in a year but very little had changed; Charlie had written the specs down and affixed them to the back of the
phone with clear packing tape, and our account as well. The phone was dead, but my charger fit so I got it going.

They had separate
forum sites for each Zone across the country,and also for some regions, moderated by FEMA employees. It had a deep brown background with some faint texture-brick-work, maybe, with bright gold framework and text, and a business-like font. There was a home page, and then a page with buttons, one for each team, which connected to a team page where you could post data on your team and operations, sort of a blog/album set-up. A lot of the teams posted their pictures, advice, pictures of their vehicle and weapon modifications.

There were one hundred five Rescue Teams listed in our Zone and over a third of the buttons were purple with Extracted on them, a few had gone red with KIA or Disbanded, and a bunch had glowing blue MIAs. Team 71 still had a glowing green Active button, but that wasn’t going to stay long unless I hooked up with more people.

Using the password on the back of the phone I accessed our account and removed the Wheel as our point of contact; the site had assigned us an e-mail account, so I posted that. I found out how to change our status marker to a glowing yellow Re-Forming button tone, and the color bothered me a bit. Out of 105 teams only about forty had green buttons, and some of those undoubtedly were dead or had pulled up stakes. I’m guessing the military might be conducting some rescue efforts, but probably not many, as the perimeter would require every man they had.

Other than the e-mail address, I just put down the dates of our operations, and after some consideration, I listed details of Mick and Bob, and described their passing because it ought to be written down somewhere. The only other thing on our team page was pictures of Mick’s modifications to the bus.

The site had a bulletin board/forum; Charlie had set up names for us, just ‘Team 71’ and a Letter, C for him, M1 for Mick, M2 for Miguel, M3 for me, B for Bob. It stabbed me a little to deactivate Mick and Bob’s accounts, but at least it gave me their full names so I could post it on the team page. I found a gif of the US flag and put it over their names.

The section of the board for n
eeding help was heart-breaking as there were literally thousands of people cut off, mostly in upper story apartments. Worst were the infirm and elderly who need oxygen refills or medication re-stocking in addition to extraction; getting people out was tough enough if they were mobile, much less if they needed carrying.

There was a section on survival tips, and a guy whose handle was Ergo posted a simple method to operate gas pumps using car batteries; I carefully copied down the information, which would save me the trouble of storing fuel.

There was a section on recruiting, both teams looking for extra hands or solo survivors looking to hook up with a group. Some of the posts were pretty solid, and some sounded like complete fakes. I typed up a request for more bodies, but hesitated with the cursor on the ‘Post Thread’ button. This might be too quick-I closed the window without posting and started examining the threads, trying for a feel of things. Most of those posting in the main areas were team members, but there were a lot a solos, too, guys holed up without a vehicle, or looking to join up into a team. Scared003, blackmoon, Ergo, SpecOp6, and dozens more talking about operating alone and trying to help while looking for a crew to hook up with.

Around sixteen hundred I climbed back onto the roof with my phone book and a GPS unit I had liberated; running down the locations of a chain of pharmacies for whom I had done security work in the past, I plugged the nearest three locations into the unit. Besides being familiar with their security set-up, the chain was all single buildings rather than strip malls, with a full-service pharmacy section as well.

During this time the only aircraft I saw were one remote drone and a couple civilian helicopters; either the military birds had been pulled back or they were operating exclusively at night. It was possible that this region was no longer a priority, a possibility I did not care for.

I cleaned the M-4, re-stocked my magazines, did some research with a Physician’s Desk Reference I had in my patrol gear, and gimped out the door. My knee felt a little better, but it was still not back to what was normal these days. I stashed the propane in the dumpster, and hauled the trash to another dumpster down the street, using the truck so I wouldn’t get caught afoot.

The first pharmacy had busted doors so I shined it on: the risk of running into infected wasn’t worth it. The streets with abandoned or over-run vehicles, the scattered clusters of dead infected and their victims, and the debris of panic were really wearing on my nerves this time out; I guess I had gotten more used to being with people than I had realized.

The second store was intact, and didn’t have any cars in the parking lot, possibly because it had closed early on and never tried to re-open. I circled it twice looking for signs of break-ins and then pulled alongside the alarm box, not the clearly-marked dummy unit, but the one inside a locked phone router box next to the real phone boxes. I cut the lock with bolt cutters and checked the board-all dark. Either they hadn’t set them or the alarm company had shut down the system, but either way was good as I didn’t know how to defeat the system and the last thing I wanted was a siren and strobe lights drawing every infected for a mile in every direction.

Backing up to the front doors, I spent half an hour picking the lock; it was a bitch, but time wasn’t an issue, and I really did not want to draw attention to myself. The alarms were off, but the windows were heavy-duty industrial safety glass, tough to break and nearly impossible to break quietly.

When the triple-plate high-carbon-steel locking hook-latch finally snapped up, releasing the door, I was soaked in sweat; trying to pick a lock and listen for trouble was a bitch.

I slipped in and locked the door behind me. The overhead lights were off but there were security lights on and quite a bit of light coming through the glass. I swept the building, moving as fa
st as I felt safe, checking to ensure I was alone, and also getting a feel for what was on hand. Satisfied, I grabbed a couple brightly-colored backpacks from the school supply section and hit the pharmacy, trying not to look at the crayons in the next aisle as I passed. I didn’t bother with lock picks; I had a two-foot pry bar from Home Depot which sufficed for the locks at hand. I took every anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxer they had, plus five hundred units each of pain killers, burn salves, antibiotics, and the like from the PDA research I had done. I grabbed a full range of diabetic supplies and a couple oxygen bottles in case I ran across anyone who might need them, and then moved on to the over-the-counter section, where I filled up three back packs with every sort of medicine I might possibly need, from athlete’s foot to  sinus, and a dozen economy bottles of aspirin. I also took every first aid kit they had.

The full bags I stacked at the door; I took enough toiletries to last me a year, dragged six economy packs of toilet paper to the door, and took every sort of heating and cooling crème, rub, and pad they had in stock, as well as every knee brace or support in my size in the store. Band-aids, gauze, and all the bandaging material they had filled a couple bags.

Unlocking the door, I shifted my acquisitions, which had taken every backpack the school supply section had, into the truck, grabbed the dolly, and loaded up the store’s entire stock of bottled water. Locking the door again, I grabbed three athletic bags and roved the aisles, taking every battery and candle in stock, some office supplies, bug repellant, disposable lighters, lighter fluid, a couple genuine Zippo lighters, spare flints, all the jerky, nuts, and crackers. It was actually a lot of fun roving around taking what I wanted and dropping the rest; the really rich must feel like this, just taking whatever they wanted because they knew they could afford it. I filled the three bags I had grabbed and three more by the time I was done; I took the rest of the athletic bags as well because a good bag was important when looting was being done. I took two pairs of crutches and some other long-shot medical items at the last minute, figuring that it was better to have them and not need them than the other way around.

The back of the truck was full so I used bungee cords to hang the crutches from the roof rail and then headed back in to find the spare keys to the front door in case I needed anything else in the future. A display of digital watches caught my eye, and I grabbed a couple twelve packs of sodas on the way out.

I was stowing the sodas in the cab on the passenger side when I heard footsteps behind me; I came around with the Glock out and the laser on, badly startling the young man a dozen feet away.

“Easy, guy, easy,” he held out open hands. He was average height, husky, in brand-new high-dollar sneakers, grimy jeans that had seen a lot of active service, and a new Raiders jersey; he had a semi-auto under the shirt in the sagging waistband of the jeans, and a blue bandana peeking out under the tail of the jersey. I put him about twenty, latino or light-skinned black with a kinda-afro in a light brown halo around his head; he had earrings and a spike in his left nostril and tats showing on both arms.  Behind him I saw the nose of a shiny SUV parked at the side of the building halfway between the building and the parking blocks. A little Asian girl, maybe five feet and ninety pounds was standing by its front bumper wearing a black XXX tee that reached her knees and black leggings; she had a lot of makeup and even more jewelry, and a folding-stock Remington 870 shotgun. The stock was folded, at least.

I glanced up at the roof and back to him, trying to make it look reflexive. I saw his eyes narrow slightly, and twitch, so I knew he had at least one buddy I couldn’t see and now wondered if I had one as well. “Look, man, I just wanted to ask for some help. You the police, right?” He nodded towards my sleeves.

“Yeah, more or less. We’re sort of retired,” I admitted. “Tell your other buddy to stand by the girl.”

He gave me a look for a second, not sure if I was bullshitting or not. He wasn’t new to dealing with the man, that was certain. “Phil.”

A younger version of the talker came out from behind the truck, likewise clad in jeans and jersey, with a Raiders cap three-quarters askew on his shaved noggin and his jeans bunching over new motorcycle boots because he was fully sagging and ragging. He had the gang waddle down to perfection, and was carrying a Tec-9, this one chrome-plated.

I holstered the Glock, glancing up at the roof again. “So, what do you need?”

“Boss ride, man. You must go through the bugs like thunder,” the kid nodded at the truck, giving me a grin and jive look such as I had seen a thousand times. Shining on the Man.

“Yeah. You need directions from the Zone?”

“No, see, we got a couple things to put right before we depart. Things to do. Anyhow, my brother Phil, he’s sick, needs his meds. I see you got the keys to this place, you could fix us up. He really needs his stuff.”

“No doubt. What’s he need?”

“Its for his back, he fell off a roof a while ago, in constant pain.”

“Ah. Well, bad news then: I flushed the pain killers, Xanex, all the stuff on the controlled list as per Directive Twelve dash four. You probably heard about the policy on the news. Its why we got the keys to this place; we’re doing the entire chain. Took like twenty flushes to get it all.”

His face was interesting: disappointment, suspicion, calculation. “I dunno. Why they got time for that?”

“Policy, slick: it doesn’t have to make sense.”

“And you do it ‘cause they say so. Bein’ retired and all.”

“Yep.” There was no way I was handing over the keys, not even in this time and place where my past career was largely meaningless-there was no way I was going to help this asshole loot the drugs of his choice. He could bust a window like everyone else. “Best try another pharmacy; we haven’t got to more’n a fraction of them.”

If he backed off, fine and good, but if not, then it wasn’t just the dope he was interested in. As he had noticed, I had a very nice ride for these times. This was different than the infected, which were very much like shooting pit bulls: necessary, violent, but largely an unemotional act. Dirtbag or not, this was a human being.