A Dark Evolution (Book 2): Deranged (16 page)

Dylan didn’t hesitate, slamming back the clear alcohol. He coughed several times, then laid his head back against the seat.

“Okay, we’re going to get the kids out and hunker down behind the car until we figure out what’s going on. Dylan, lay down and close your eyes, just try to keep breathing as steady as possible.” Dylan nodded weakly and lowered himself down in the seat while Kala pulled Sophie out. She was thankful for the SUV’s great size; it did a good job of hiding them. Even with the dense trees all around, she was nervous. Who the hell was taking potshots at cars driving down the road?
Plenty of people really,
she thought. They had encountered their share of militants on their journey north. Kala sat with her back against the car, holding Sophie on her lap. Andrea was standing, holding Devon against her legs while he tried to squirm away.

Kala caught Andrea’s attention and spoke. “ylanDay eedsnay a ospitalhay.”

Kala watched Andrea’s confusion turn to concentration as she waded through the pig Latin. Kala didn’t want to scare Sophie.

“illWay, ehay ieday?” Andrea asked.

Kala nodded. “If ehay urvivessay the ockshay, ehay illway etgay a atalfay infectionyay ithoutway ongstray antibioticsyay.”

Andrea’s face paled. They had been together for weeks now, and while Dylan had never really warmed up to anyone but Kala and Devon, they were still a team. Andrea was now more like an aunt to the younger members of the party. She cared, that much was evident.

“owHay onglay?” Andrea asked.

“A oupleCay aysday at ostmay,” Kala responded somberly.

Andrea shivered.

“Why are you talking like that?” Devon asked her, looking at them curiously.

“We’re just being silly,” Andrea told him, hugging him against her.

“Who do you think is out there, Kala?”

Kala shook her head. “It could be anybody. The road ahead clears out beyond these trees and then it's just a lot of open hills going into Kentucky…” She trailed off as she spoke, getting lost in her thoughts. They were almost to the border, the border…

“What are you thinking?” Andrea asked, having learned weeks ago to trust in Kala’s near-genius intuition.

“That someone’s protecting the border.” The quiet voice was so unexpected that Kala jumped a little, rousing Sophie from the exhausted slumber she had fallen into. Mae was sitting near the front of the SUV on the ground, so silent that she had been forgotten. Mae met their eyes for a moment and then went back to looking at the gravelly ground beneath them.

“Oh god,” Andrea said.

“Yeah, I hope you’re wrong, Mae,” Kala said softly.

Mae shrugged but didn’t look up.

They heard crunching footsteps approaching from the other side of the SUV and Tom and James came creeping around to their side. They were out of breath and plopped to the ground. Kala handed James her water bottle and he drank a gulp before tossing it to Tom. James plopped down next to Mae.

“Well girls,” Tom began, wiping a hand over the bald crown of his head. “We’ve got a big problem. There’s a construction crew up there, they're building a fence.”

“What?” Andrea gasped.

Kala’s head drooped.

“And there are U.S. military soldiers spanning as far out as we can see to the east and west. They’ve got little watchtowers set up; they look like miniature water towers without the tanks.” James stared hard at Kala. The defeat was evident in his sunken features.

“They’re building a border Kala, they’re cutting off the south,” James continued.

“They’re going to leave us?” Andrea’s voice was rising with panic. “They’re just going to let everyone out here die?” She started breathing rapidly and Kala could tell she was close to slipping into hysteria.

“Andrea, we aren’t going to die; we’re going to find a way to communicate with them, let them know that we’re not sick,” Tom hugged her against him, but she didn’t seem to be comforted. “It’s going to be okay baby, I promise.”

Andrea nodded but Kala knew the woman was a breath away from a complete meltdown. Then a roar of rotors sounded from overhead and Kala saw an AH-6 attack helicopter scream over the trees they were hiding behind. Tom pointed his AR-15 into the sky but Kala jumped up and knocked it out of his hands, dumping Sophie, who protested loudly, onto the ground at the same time.

“No! They’ll shoot us!” Kala shouted over the sound. The helicopter flew past them, then banked hard and came around until it was hovering a hundred feet over their heads, buffeting them with rotor wash.
They call it the killer egg.

“Helicopter!” Devon shouted excitedly. Sophie joined them and they both pointed upward, jumping around and waving at the bird. They did not wave back. Kala saw a stone-faced pilot with a black visor over his face, and sitting on a door-side bench was another helmeted man, this one holding an M4 assault rifle. On the chin of the tiny black helicopter was an m230 chain gun, a massive cannon that could send three hundred 30mil rounds at a target each second.
Oh what fresh hell is this?
she wondered. Then she was answered.

A huge voice boomed down at them from a giant megaphone.

“You are approaching the borderlands. Turn back now. Do not approach the border, or you will be neutralized.”

“We are not sick!” Andrea screamed up at the chopper. “We need help!”

Kala let her scream even though she knew no one could hear the woman up there. The ominous message from the helicopter repeated once more and then the black bird soared off, back into Kentucky.

Andrea slumped to the ground, crying at Tom’s feet. He tried to console her, but Kala could see that he was barely keeping it together. Sophie and Devon danced around together, watching the receding chopper with amazement. Mae leaned against James’s shoulder. Kala looked into the SUV. Dylan’s eyes were closed, but his chest was heaving and his face was still twisted in pain. She knew he had heard as well. Kala walked away from them, away from the SUV.

What the hell am I going to do now? S
he didn’t know, but wanted to see for herself. Kala picked up the binoculars from the hood of their truck and walked off into the woods. She didn’t try to stay hidden as she picked her way through the tangles of wild blackberries and thistle. It was a dense stand of trees, big pines. Before long daylight grew brighter on the other side of the trees and she approached the clearing. She leaned on a tree and gazed out at the Tennessee-Kentucky border. She saw now that it had been cleared. The landscape here was not naturally free of vegetation, but there were long stretches of black scorched earth where trees had once stood.
Jesus,
she thought,
they burned it out.

Less than a half mile in the distance was the
border
. She saw the construction crews working on a tall fence. It must have been ten or twelve feet tall topped with some type of razor wire, she presumed. Supervising the construction and guarding this new border, was a long line of soldiers. They wore white protective suits.
Tyvek
she thought,
to protect against mosquitoes and other biting disease vectors, smart.
Watching through the binoculars, she examined the soldiers. With the white suits on she couldn’t tell if they were regular army or National Guard, but they looked disciplined. No one was just chatting idly and they kept their heads on a swivel. Kala’s gaze moved up to the closest watchtower. It was constructed of steel girders and a ladder that rose perhaps twenty feet into the air. There were two soldiers in the tower, one holding an M1-A1 assault rifle, the other holding a pair of binoculars. He was looking right at her. As Kala watched herself being watched, the man holding the binoculars lowered them, then held up one hand and flipped her off.

Goddammit.

*****

The road on either side was lined with trees. Where Kala pulled off was really a cleared out ditch used by utility workers to access the long row of electrical towers that ran through the countryside like tall skeletal transformers. They steered the big SUV farther from the road, far enough that any passersby might not be able to see them.

“What are we going to do?” James asked.

“For now we are setting up camp here. The sun will be down in an hour or so and then we’ll be able to see what kind of patrol they have going on up there.” She motioned toward the thick trees to the north. Just on the other side was the cleared out borderlands, lined with fencing and military troops.

“You think the patrols will dwindle at night?”

“Not really, but I want to get my facts in order before we make any decisions. Hey, come over here a minute,” Kala walked around the other side of the SUV and then out a few yards. She turned to face James.

“I know,” he said, before she even spoke. “He needs a hospital. But Kala, that’s the U.S. military out there, if they don’t want to let us in…”

Kala blew out a breath. “Yes, it’s the military, that’s bad. But, the U.S. military has never had to set up an intracontinental border in the modern age, which is what I’m assuming they're doing. The powers that be are trying to contain the infection to the south - which they should have done immediately when the outbreak in Florida broke out.”

“Exactly, we’re screwed,” James said, and kicked a clod of dry earth by his feet.

“So that leads me to believe that there’s still a government infrastructure in place in the north. Infrastructure means police, safety, and a hospital. Dylan needs help, I’m not going to let him die out here.”

James scratched at his head. “I feel like you’re not getting this. Infrastructure is what's keeping us out, Kala.”

“Oh yeah, sorry, I jumped around a little there. Our military has never had to maintain a hard border within the states. The closest thing is Mexico, and they do a piss poor job with that. There’s going to be weak points, and we are going to exploit them. I know it's not ideal, and it falls a little low on the probability of success, but we will get through. They simply don’t have the kind of experience they need to deal with this kind of thing. James, I am NOT going to let Dylan die,” her look was hard as she stared down the young man. James was a year older than her, and smart, but Kala had guts. She would lead them to whatever salvation she could find.

James sighed, “All right boss lady, but I don’t want to survive the zombie apocalypse only to be gunned down by our own troops.”

“Me neither, James.”

Tom was coming around the SUV toward them. “Everything okay?”

“Everything is good. We’re going to set up real camp here for tonight.” Tom looked neither shocked nor excited, he simply nodded. “First I want to chop down some branches and camouflage the SUV from the road a little better. Then let's set up the tents on the other side. We’ll let the kids run around a little before we turn in.”

“Should I make a fire?” he asked hopefully. Tom had been honing his fire building skills while they were on the road. He could now get one started with just the little flint and steel in their survival pack.

Kala contemplated this. A fire was easily seen, but it also bolstered moral. People love sitting by a fire, watching a fire. It provides warmth and comfort, and also gives people a sense of power over their surroundings.

“Yes, a small one, but I want to burn it down before darkness completely sets in. We don’t want any unwanted visitors stumbling into our camp.”

Tom nodded and walked off, to be replaced by Mae, who quietly took one of James’s arms and stood next to him, looking down.

“It’s going to be all right, James, trust in me, okay?”

“We’ll trust you, Kala. Hey, how much worse can it really get?”

Robert didn’t do a lot of shooting anymore, so his equipment was a little outdated. Of all his firearms, only one had a decent scope, the rest were twenty dollar throwaways from the bait store. Even in his prime, Robert had preferred to hunt pheasant and partridge, and while hunting those game birds he used birdshot and a barrel-sighted shotgun, no real need for a precision scope. Now he wished he had been a whitetail hunter, or at least more serious about his gear. He had always been too busy with work though, and with the exception of raccoons, foxes, and coyotes trying to get into his hives, he really didn’t have a reason to shoot anything.

“All right, boys,” Robert said to the small group of men gathered around him - and Mary. Jackson, Mark, Jonas and Manuel were all in a semicircle around the old bee farmer. “I’m sending Mary up to the roof of the barn. She’s a great shot, and we only have one scope with good magnification.”

The group nodded. Mary looked nonplussed about her role. She was all business, a hard case, Robert had called her in high school.
Pain in the ass is more like it
, he thought, but anyhow.

“We know from the news that these things are drawn to sound, so we’re going to keep real quiet. The kids are in the basement with the other women. I locked up the den, so they should be safe there. Once we shoot at one of them, they’re all going to hear it, and we could have a stampede. That’s the worst thing that could happen right now. The fence will stop a few at a time, but if a big group presses on it - well, the wire is only so strong.”

“Do they work together like that?” Mark asked.

“They don’t really work together, but when I was in the city, I saw them moving near one another, not interacting mind you, but coexisting without attacking. Whereas they attack uninfected people as soon as they hear or smell them.”

“Any idea what drives them to attack like that? I mean, they don’t eat the bodies like the zombies in movies, right?” Jonas asked.

“No,” Mary answered. “The last release from the CDC said that they are ‘filled with an inconsolable rage caused by a parasitic infection in the brain,’ which I take to mean that they have no idea what these things’ motivations might be, but that they attack anything that moves or makes a sound.”

“It doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t attack each other then,” Jonas murmured.

“I agree, and I don’t have an answer for you, but for our purposes, knowing that they will kill all of us, brutally and without mercy, is all we need to know.”

“Right,” Robert intoned. “We will position ourselves between the buildings here. I want to be out of sight from the driveway, but positioned in such a way that we can fire on anyone who might break through. If they get through the fence, we open fire. But remember, if we fire, more will come.”

“I’m not really liking the sound of this,” Mark said dourly. “This seems like it’s going to end up getting us all killed.”

“Look Mark, we’re going to sit quiet and hope we get passed by. Maybe the electric fence will be enough to turn away any curious zombies, but if it’s not, we have to be ready to defend this place.”

“We should be holed up in the basement with the kids,” Mark argued. “We should wait it out.”

Robert had considered this. It was tempting, but in the end, they could not simply wait it out forever. They needed their crop of young corn in the field, they needed the water pump and the generator. They couldn’t simply live in a bomb shelter indefinitely. They had to defend their home. “Mark, I respect your opinion,” Robert said, then turned to Mary. “Mary, the ladder is set, head up to the roof.”

Mark sighed.

“Jonas and Manuel, can one of you watch from the front of the barn and one from the rear door?”

The father and son nodded then walked off.

“Jackson, I want you to make up a shooter’s nest behind the stack of empty hive boxes. Make it so you have a clear line of sight into the driveway. That will be the easiest way for any of those things to approach; the fields to the north and the south of us both have barbed wire around them, and I’d imagine they’d get tripped up in it.”

Jackson walked over to the stack of empty hives that used to house Robert’s livelihood. Robert took stock of their arrangement. The driveway entered the property to the west, and that was where the fence crossed over it. Just inside the fence, on either side of the driveway, were the barn and the bunkhouse. Further up the curving driveway, the house sat on the southeast side of the dirt drive, and beyond that, to the east, was their new cornfield. The entire area was surrounded by their electric fence, and god willing, it would hold.

“Mark, go into the house. Stay in the kitchen behind the island. If anything gets through, you are our last line of defense. You got that Mark?”

Mark agreed, and looked happy to be going back into the house.

An hour went by before Robert’s phone buzzed with a text message from Mary, who was up on the roof of the barn, lying flat on her stomach atop a thin blanket. Even with the cushion, he knew the tin roof must be hot, and he again thanked her for her fortitude. Mary was a strong person. She had been dealt a lot of shit in her life, but she rose from it all. Her husband had died young, leaving Mary to raise her two daughters on her own, all while operating a family medical practice, ensuring her children would have a comfortable life. At least we are together, Robert thought, as he looked down at the tiny letters on his phone.

“They are coming up the road now.”

Jackson was watching him, so Robert signaled with his hands. Jackson nodded and waved from his hidden sniper’s nest to Manuel, at the entrance to the barn. Then Jackson looked back at Robert and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Robert dialed his granddaughter's phone number. Jane picked up on the first ring.

“Janie, there are some coming down our road. You and Elizabeth keep everyone as quiet as you can.”

“Okay, Grandpa,” she answered nervously.

Robert hung up and glanced down curiously at the full bars on his phone. With all that was happening, how did he still have cell service? “I guess Verizon really is the best, like Mary said,” he muttered. One minute later, Robert heard a cry, but it didn’t come from the direction of the driveway. Robert looked out from the cab of the big orange tractor where he was hiding. The scream had come from behind them, from the cornfield.

“Shit!” he cursed as he saw the infected man writhing against the electric fence. It looked like a cartoon, the way he shook. Only a few moments passed before he let out a strangled cry, then gravity claimed the zombie’s body and he fell to the ground, motionless. Robert stared at the body, thinking he could see little tendrils of smoke rising up from its electrocuted hair. Then he heard a clucking noise, the sound he and Jackson had agreed on to communicate. Jackson was looking back at him, and pointed his fingers at his own eyes, then out toward the driveway. Robert nodded; Jackson had seen another one approaching. Robert’s heart was beginning to race, and he trembled just a little.
Calm down,
he told himself,
now is not the time for a heart attack.

His wrinkled fingers curled around the barrel of his shotgun, the metal now warm from his body heat.
Please God, help us out here
. There was another cluck from Jackson, and Robert heard a wail coming from the driveway. He couldn’t see past Jackson’s stack of empty bee hives, but he knew another one must have hit the fence. The wails grew louder and Robert had a terrible thought.
The sounds of those things dying are going to draw more to us
.

Jackson held his hand back with a thumbs-up to Robert but didn’t turn around.
Another one down
. Robert blew out a hot breath, but his heart did not calm. Two more clucks sounded from Jackson, two more zombies approaching. They were coming faster than he expected.

Then Robert heard a sound behind him, and turned to the cornfield once more. His heart sank. In a rough line, three more of the dead ones were approaching. The first one hit the fence and jerked, his body stiffening for a moment before stumbling back. Robert watched as it cocked its head, then rushed toward the fence once more, only to be held by the current until it died.

A second zombie hit the fence, this one was a tall, blonde-haired woman, with a pretty face covered in dried blood.
She would have been quite a looker in life
, he thought, then she grabbed the top wire of the electric fence. Her body spasmed hard and Robert winced as her pretty, bloodstained face stretched into an ugly howl.

It was a tragedy that all of the beauty in this world was dying. The woman jerked and jumped against the fence in a sickening dance of death. Robert could hear more zombies hitting the fence near the driveway, some howling, some crying out. He watched as the female zombie died painfully against the electric fence. The last of the three zombies he’d seen approaching from the cornfield was standing near the electrocuted female, watching with what looked like curiosity, but Robert was sure they did not possess such an emotion.

“Come on, hit the fence,” he murmured as the male zombie shuffled past the frying woman, walking further down the fence, out of Robert’s line of sight.

“Shit,” Robert cursed. He knew the fence wrapped around the back of the house too, but he didn’t like not being able to see it. Then a bright flash drew his attention back to the woman. She was dead now, and he was sure this time he could see smoke wafting up from her head. In fact, her fair hair was actually starting to blacken in spots as the current jolted through her. There was a problem though. In death, gravity had been unable to pull her from the magnetic grasp of the electrical current coursing through the lines and now she had fallen on top of the electric fence’s top strand. She was near a post, and a bright spark of electricity was being emitted by the connector where the wire crossed over the post.

“Oh no, oh no!” he whispered, and watched in horror as her body weight leaning on the wire broke the thin plastic insulator that kept the wire suspended on the pole. His mouth went dry and his eyes widened as she fell, taking the top strand with her. A moment later, the dead woman and the top line of fencing crashed into the bottom electrified strand and a great shower of sparks ignited, almost as bright as the mid-morning sun. Robert began clucking his tongue madly, trying to alert Jackson, then a loud
sizzle
filled the air. The zombie woman burst into flames, scorching the grass around her, while still sending a shower of hot, sparking electricity all around. Only a moment passed before the dry California scrub grass caught fire.

Robert was petrified, shocked at what he was watching and he could not move or speak until the third zombie, the male, came back into view and crashed into the damaged fence not far from the flaming body. His legs spasmed as he hit the still live bottom wire, then he burst through, tearing the fence as he did so. With no continuity from one side to the next, the current immediately dissipated, and the sparks stopped flying.

“Jackson!” Robert screamed as the monster wandered into their yard. “The fence is down!” There was no more clucking; the screams of the undead filled the air instead. The male zombie charged at Robert. His heart hurt as it beat within him.

“Don’t fail me now, ticker,” he whispered, bringing the shotgun to his shoulder.