The Zone (28 page)

“I’ve done a preliminary study of the notes in the folio,” he ignored my humor. I don’t doubt he hated my guts, but I couldn’t care less. “There is some very exciting data in it regarding other sources which should uncover the entire matter much quicker than I had expected.”

“Wonderful. Let me know how it comes out.”

“Wait-you wanted proof that this can help, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“There are two points I have found in this new material which should help convince you: first, according to the information, the dead formed into ‘rivers’ and attacked the lands of the living.”

“Like human wave attacks? They’re already doing that.”

“Not exactly-the use of ‘river’ is rather clear, suggesting a column movement. Second, the king had his men coat their javelins in rock salt so they would slay the dead. Can’t you use rock salt in firearms?”

“Yeah…no real range, and zero stopping power,” I said slowly. “I can’t see how it would help.”

“I do not believe the use of the salt was a metaphor. Can you try it?”

“Maybe. Look, if what you have is so compelling, why not tell the Feds? Why bother with me?”

“The CDC is the primary agency in this matter, and a theory based on other than medical science is not welcome. Believe me, I have tried. I have even contacted other rescue teams within the Zone; sadly, you are the most responsive of the few who are left.”

“Why this city?” I asked. “You said this guy was obscure.”

“He is. Its not commonly known outside academic circles, but the University there has one of the premier collections of Sumerian artifacts and material available, and the teaching staff included several of the top scholars in the field in the USA. Admittedly, it’s a small sub-field. The safety deposit box Tanner’s team located belonged to a retired professor.”

“You would think this sort of thing would be in books and pictures all over the place.”

“Books, yes, but books which do not focus on this king’s exploit save as legend, filtered through the opinions and beliefs of the author. What I need is raw data from the source material. Photos of most of the University’s collection were on display on their website, but the site went down on Friday, and as I’ve said, the matter is obscure. By the time I had a focus to my theory and had been rebuffed by the government, too many sources of data had been lost to me, which is why I sent Tanner into the Zone. I expected he would take a day or two, but he spent two days setting up a base, and you know the rest.”

“So what you need is photos of Sumerian stuff, mostly at the University if its still standing, some in private collections?”

“Yes, specific items. And some books which are out of print and not available in my location.”

“I’ve got a rescue op in the morning, thirty-odd people we need to extract. I’ll call you when we’re done, and see what else you’ve gotten from the folio. “

Dropping the whole matter seemed like the most logical thing to do: Ted was probably a crank. But what he wanted wasn’t all that complicated. If it turned out we had to extract gold antiques, well, that would be something else. Maybe.

“Who was on the phone?” Key asked, handing me a cold soda.

“The mad doctor. He liked the folio you guys got him. If you two are up for it, let’s do some shopping before we knock off for the day.”

Chapter Twelve

The neighborhood was still largely clear-two blocks from my place an office strip-mall had burned down; I guessed a vehicle had crashed into it and started the fire, but it was just a guess. The fire was out now, anyway.

I stowed the full propane cylinders in my dumpster and put the empties next to it before pulling around to the front door and unloading my stuff. The truck parked, I cleaned the AK and my gear, showered, and washed clothes, my standard routine. The power and lights were still working, so life was good.

My share of the fruits of our last minute shopping expedition were about forty pounds of meat, an equal amount of deli cheese, a lot of high-end plastic wrap (because I promptly froze most of the meat), one loaf of somewhat stale bread, a half-dozen cases of canned goods, ten cases of bottled water, a five pound sack of rock salt, three one-pound boxes of sea salt, a couple blue cardboard containers of table salt, a selection of cans of pepper and spices, a top-end loading press, sacks of shotgun shell wads, boxes of shotgun shell primers, and ten pounds of gunpowder. Plus a couple books on reloading and some odds and ends of reloading tools. Jake and Key had gotten more food out of the trip and their own loading gear. I had recovered a dozen empty shotgun shells amongst the goods stacked atop the truck, legacy of the earlier operations.

I set up the loading press and examined the books only to find they didn’t have load recipes for rock salt, so I started experimenting. When I had loaded up the handful of hulls I had I went outside with the cardboard box from a twelve-pack of sodas and tested my efforts. I ended up reloading each hull two or three times, but after two hours I had worked out loads for rock or sea salt, although either only had a range of about twenty feet. The table salt was completely useless-the granules were too small. I loaded six each of rock and sea salt, marking the bases of the rock salt with a wet erase marker.

It was probably a complete waste of time, but it was entertaining, and I had also picked up two twenty pound bags of buckshot, so the reloading set-up wasn’t going to be a waste. Expanding my reloading capability was definitely something I needed to look into in the future. Today, though, I was tired. At least my knee wasn’t hurting any worse. It might be a little better even-I had cooling gel slathered on and a hard brace giving it extra support, and had popped an anti-inflammatory

Tomorrow we would get those people out of the mall, and then shoot some salt into infected, and then I would likely tell Ted to
go to hell. And then we would cruise around the Zone and get some more people out, and shoot infected with stuff that would work. Saturday, more of the same. Maybe we would take a break and snipe off some bunches of infected-we were out of audio bait, even the sensors I had gotten from Home Depot, but there were certainly more to be looted out there.

The change still nagged at me: the infected had changed tactics. That meant that there was an aspect of the virus that we did not understand, which meant that we could get hit with a sudden change of tactics. In the spring of 1940 the Germans had roughly the same amount men, aircraft, and artillery as the Allies; the Allied tanks were better armored and had better guns. But in a matter of weeks the Germans had won a complete victory because they employed a new doctrine. They couldn’t beat the Allies in a stand-up fight, but they didn’t need to. The same thing could happen to my team: the rules could change and catch us unawares.

On impulse I called Ted. “I thought I would let you know I’m set up to test both rock salt and sea salt on the infected tomorrow. Even if they work it still won’t be much of an advantage.”

He sounded tired. “I suppose not, but if it works it will provide substantial support for my theory.”

“I just can’t see what his big weapon could be. He didn’t have a lot to work with, technology-wise.”

“Perhaps that was an advantage, in this age its not uncommon to over-think a problem. Our state of technology means that a single organization can be swamped with data and options.”

“Possible. Anyway, we’ll know tomorrow. If the salt doesn’t pan out for you, what then?”

“Then I shall start anew with the material I have. Perhaps it was an error in context or translation.”

“You’re not going to give up?”

“You are staying in a Zone, and you sound surprised?”

“Good point,” I conceded.

“Besides, it’s the only theory I can apply to my field. If I am to make a contribution, this will be it.”

“Why did the virus appear now? Its been centuries since the mound builders went under.”

“That I do not know. There are no connections between the three outbreaks I have tentatively identified, and none between those and this crisis. There’s just too little data.” He paused, hesitant, and then plunged ahead. “I would like to send you copies of all my material. Redundancy is crucial.”

“OK.” I didn’t see any harm. “Not that I could get anything from it. Aren’t you in contact with your colleagues?”

“Not many, and not recently. They scattered at the onset, and few have surfaced on the Net since.”

That hit an odd note with me. “Where exactly are you?”

“In a library annex in Portland, Maine. Inside a Zone, I’m afraid. I have power and water and supplies for some time.”

“Ted, is your building secure?”

“Reasonably so, although since I never leave there is no fear of an infected assault. The building is wheelchair-friendly, so I can continue my work.”

“Shit, I thought you were in a secure area.”

“There wasn’t time; this annex is the best source of material for my theory in the Portland area.”

“You’re alone?”

“Yes.”

Crippled and alone, and still fighting back-I was feeling like a heel. “Look, I’m sorry I put you through the hoops earlier.”

“These are trying times,” he said, rather diplomatically.

I wondered if he was lying to me, working on a sympathy angle to keep me working for him. “Have you got a target list for your materials?”

“I have the next items plotted. Shall I send the information?”

“Yeah, do it. I’m not committing to the op, but I can be mulling over the tactical considerations.” My phone beeped. “My battery is dying. I’ll call you tomorrow after I’ve tested the salt.”

I’m no ace at the Net, but Ted, if that was who I was talking to, was indeed a crippled professor from Portland-he had a picture and brief bio on the school’s site; his e-mail address and phone area code checked out, too. I decided to take him at face value until I knew more. So far all he wanted was information and a field test of rock salt-I couldn’t see any basis for a scam.

But I kept in mind that Tanner had trusted this guy, and Tanner was now dead.

I watched some HBO before I went to bed; they were running marathons of their series. What channels were still up were running shows without ads or news, just entertainment, even old sporting events. The horror channel was off, though.

It was pretty good, about a bunch of dysfunctional police officers in Baltimore. I enjoyed it-they didn’t shoot anyone, just slogged through paperwork, bitched about overtime and funding, and couldn’t find a witness anywhere. It was like being back at work.

Friday morning I dug out the entry gun holster from my Patrol gear and clipped it to the back of my vest; it held the cut-down well enough. Yesterday I had picked up a six-round shell-carrier made of ballistic plastic that clipped to the side of the receiver; the cut-down held five shells, so I dropped the last rock salt into a vest pocket. It was a lot of weight to add for an experiment, but I was pretty confident that it would just be a temporary measure.

Jake and Key had a surprise when I arrived: Jake had welded together strap iron into ‘Team 71, Remote Control Halo’, or rather three of them, and Key had stripped them to bare metal and painted them in vivid green and black. “We can put them on the sides and grill of the armored truck,” Jake grinned.

“Nice. Put one on the grill and one on the cab roof; on the sides they could serve as hand-holds for climbing-that’s why we didn’t replace the concertina wire. On the cab roof it will ID us to drones and choppers.”

“Cool.”

When he was done I outlined a modification to our plan. “Instead of the bus we’re taking your two trucks into the mall; in a pinch one person can defend a pickup cab, but if a bus interior is breached you are completely screwed. Plus I’m not a hundred percent sure of the passenger door on the bus being able to resist the infected-with a second shooter on board it would be different. This is a shoestring operation, and what I want to emphasize the most to the two of you is that risks are out of the question-if you see your piece of the op going south, haul ass. This team can rescue more people in one day than there are in that mall. That’s cold, but there it is. From what I can see there’s probably twenty thousand people cornered within the Zone and the same number who can get out with a little nerve and some luck. There’s maybe fifty teams of amateurs trying to get them out. Its simple math: without help twenty thousand will die. With a full-out effort our team can help maybe fifty a day, so the smart thing to do is to keep this team operating for as many days as we can.”

“How many infected do you think there are left?” Jake asked.

“Dunno; I would guess a couple hundred thousand, but that’s just a number out of the air. Fewer than there were three days ago, besides the rescue teams there’s looters and solo operators in town killing them, and they’re not hard if you know what you’re doing; the morning I got you guys I dusted well over a hundred by sniping.”

“Speaking of which, I still want to do some of that,” Key reminded me.

“Blood-thirsty little vamp, isn’t she?” Jake gave her a wet smack on the cheek. She grinned, but her eyes didn’t.

“OK, consider it on the ‘to-do’ list. We’ll at least get set up for it today, and try to put in an hour or so daily from now on.”