A Dark Evolution (Book 2): Deranged (22 page)

“Mae, can you drive?” Kala asked hopefully.

“Yes,” the girl answered softly. James was packing gear and Kala had asked Mae to help her with the SUV.

“You understand that we cannot give Andrea and Tom weapons right? That means James and I will be our only offensive shooters, and I can’t drive and shoot at the same time.”

“I understand.”

“It’s going to be difficult driving,” she continued as she clipped the thin wire connected to the SUV’s running lights. She walked back to the cab and flicked on the headlights. They came on with no hesitation and when she flipped them off and started the engine the running lights remained dark. “Good. We’ll be nearly invisible in the dark, but once we get close we’ll need the lights again to guide us into the city.”

“I can do it Kala,” Mae said, and placed a soft hand on Kala’s arm. Kala was warm from exertion and the girl’s hand felt cool against her. “I think we should leave Tom and Andrea’s family here. We can’t trust them Kala.” Mae’s cloudy eyes held Kala with intensity.

“I - they’ll be defenseless if we do.”

“They’ll stand the same chance we would have if they had been able to abandon us this morning.”

“You’re right, I know you are. I’ll talk to James, okay? It just feels...wrong.”

“My Aunt Stephanie always told me, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them.’ We know who they are now Kala, believe it.”

Kala let the girl’s unexpected wisdom sink down through her. It was unsettling, and her stomach turned at the decisions she knew must be made.

“We are with you, Kala,” Mae said, and wandered off away from the truck.

“And I have to take care of you,” Kala murmured, already knowing what must be done.

The truck was packed long before sundown. Tents were lashed to the rails at the top, and all of their food and water went into the trunk. Kala laid out their rifles. It wasn’t an impressive assortment, but it was all she had to work with. The AR-15 and AK-47 were their primary assault weapons, with the shotgun as a backup. She couldn’t stop playing the possible outcomes of tonight in her head. It was buzzing, filled with anxiety. Mae and James milled around the small fire they had begun, and Andrea and Tom were sequestered in their tent with Devon. Devon, that was the hardest part of this whole thing. Tears began to well in her eyes and she couldn’t shake them away. Then James shouted.

“Incoming!” he cried, and Kala turned.

Two of the infected were racing toward them from the tree line on the south side of their little tract of clearing. It was a man and a woman. They covered the distance with surprising speed, and their howls of rage echoed through the space, making Kala’s skin crawl. They were in the camp in seconds, running straight for Mae and James, who were unarmed. The woman was in front. Her face was loose on her skull, drooping like leather that had been stretched beyond its tensile strength. There was dark dried blood all over her front, and her hands were caked with dirt and what Kala assumed was more blood. She howled with her mouth wide open as she sprinted at the two teens.

Kala reached down and scooped the first weapon she could grab hold of from the pile, then leapt toward James. She raised the weapon then cringed as she realized she had picked up the muzzleloader pistol. The fifty caliber round would put down a bear. But there was only one of them. Kala jumped between Mae and the approaching zombie, holding the big pistol steady with both hands. It was hard to aim, as she was bobbing around so much. When she was only three yards away, Kala pulled the trigger and the infected woman’s haggard face exploded in a cloud of chunky red. Her body tumbled to their feet, then the male was on them.

Kala sidestepped as he charged her with arms outstretched. She battered the man’s head with the steel pistol, but barely slowed him. He was fueled by the white hot rage that flowed through each of these monsters and the loud boom of the gunshot only further enraged him. He swung at Kala, batting the pistol from her grip, then dove on top of her. He wasn’t a big man, but big enough to take her down. Kala hit the ground hard and felt a rib crack. She cried out, then the man jumped on top of her, reaching for her neck with grimy, blood-soaked hands. She screamed out and then his weight was lifted off her. James wrestled him back and threw him down with all his might. The infected man hit the ground and bounced back up before Kala could even regain her feet, but now his focus was on James. His mouth hung open and Kala saw broken teeth with bits of flesh hanging from them. The beast howled again and lunged at James. Kala could not stop him as he tackled James to the ground. Kala ran to help, but knew she would not be able pull the man’s bulk off of him. Then she heard Mae scream wildly behind her.

It caught the beast’s attention just for a moment, loud noises seemed to enrage them more than anything. In the second it took for him to look up, Mae had tossed the shotgun to Kala. She must have run to retrieve it from the truck. Kala swung it around, flipping off the safety as she did, then pumped a round of hot lead into the creature’s skull. He fell sideways off James, a giant hole through his face. James pushed him the rest of the way off, and crawled over to Kala. His foot was twisted at an awkward angle, but he had a smile on his face. “Holy shit girls, I really thought that was it!”

“Then why the hell are you smiling?”

He laughed. “I have no idea!”

“Jesus,” Kala murmured as Mae rushed by to help James up.

“Is it broken?”

James rotated his foot. “Nah, just strained. Hurt like a beast though.”

“Is it okay now?” she heard Sophie’s little voice call from the back seat of the SUV, where she had been napping with Dylan.

Kala scanned the surroundings, seeing no more infected. “Everything’s going to be okay really soon, honey.”

“Yeah, as long as no more of those things come in here,” James added.

Kala nodded. The sun would be down soon, now. “I think we should get loaded up and wait.”

“Okay,” James responded. “And what about them?” he asked, motioning to Tom and Andrea’s tent.

Kala locked eyes with Mae for a moment.

“They aren’t coming with us,” she said, with a little bit of a hitch in her voice.

James also looked over at Mae, who nodded softly. “Okay then, let’s load up.”

Jason listened in horror as Dr. Schwartz spoke. It was a brief meeting of all the analysts and scientists here. Schwartz was the only one who spoke. When the briefing ended, Jason stood, then collapsed back down into his seat. His legs shook and a nervous tremble was settling into his chest. He tried to take calming breaths, slow and deep, but it wasn’t helping. Next to him, Pam, from the DHS office, was crying softly. Jason reached a hand over to the older woman. She took it, and they shared a clammy comfort.

Jason saw Bruce Dempsey, the biologist with whom he’d had a tumultuous working relationship here, rise from his seat and shuffle blankly out of the room. They had been blindsided, worse, purposefully kept ignorant, and now all the horror imaginable was about to be unleashed.

“Will it be painful?” Pam asked. “For the people, the uninfected ones?”

Jason’s eyes brimmed with tears. He tried to lie, but instead his head bobbed up and down. “It will be painful.”

Pam looked down and more tears leaked from her face. “When will it begin?”

“Knowing our government, or as much as I thought I did, the jets are probably already fueling up.” Jason watched Pam’s stricken face for a moment longer before he finally attempted to stand again. He kept her hand in his, “Come on, come with me.”

Pam nodded and let Jason help her stand. He walked her out of the conference room and through the maze of open cubicles. Through a gray hallway, they passed the shower rooms and entered the dormitories. Pam’s room was the first on the left. Jason pushed through the door and led her over to the bed. She sat and didn’t move.

“Try to get a little sleep, Pam.” Jason drew a glass of water from her small in-room sink and handed it to her. She held the glass without moving. Jason knelt down by her and put a hand on her knee. “All we can do now is pray for peace, for everyone.” Pam nodded weakly and Jason left, leaving her to mourn alone.

Jason left and walked back to the conference room, where a lone man was standing in front of the wide flat screen monitor on the wall. The last graphic Dr. Schwartz had used was still on the screen. The man turned when Jason entered. It was Clint, the military commando who had driven Jason, Noland, and Schwartz out to the research compound deep in the woods of the U.P.

Clint nodded when Jason approached.

“What do you think about this?” Jason asked the military man.

“It is not my job to think, Dr. Carpenter, I’m here to protect you all. The thinking belongs to wiser men than me.”

“I’m asking your opinion,” Jason said, locking eyes with the hard-faced man. His face betrayed a slight twitch and he turned back to look at the screen. It showed a satellite map of the United States, which had been overlaid with a map showing the progression of the zombie parasite. Jason had hoped to contain the infection in the south while they manufactured medicine to inoculate as much of the population as they could. That wasn’t happening. The map showed bright orange blobs of infection saturating the southern states, from Florida all the way into northern Mexico. It was impassible.

In the far west, the infection began to travel northward, past their ineffective border there, and curved up like a hook, sweeping over northern California, Oregon, and the state of Washington. They were all glowing orange now. Spidery veins of orange crept over into Idaho, and then faded into the Grand Teton mountains. Larger veins of infection spread over Nevada and into Utah, heading toward Colorado. Even in the east, the border was not solid, and little fingers of infection peeked over his border, creeping into the north. It was a colossal failure.

Rosa was shipping vaccines across the eastern states and Midwest as fast as possible. Given another month or two, enough of the population would be immune to start a kind of “herd immunity,” a thing that happens when enough of the population has been vaccinated against a disease that the vaccinated actually act as a shield for the unvaccinated, not letting the pathogens in. It's similar to what happens in schools where most of the kids have been vaccinated against the flu. The virus doesn’t have enough hosts to hop between so it never really takes hold, and flare-ups die off before they can even get started. They didn’t have months though, they didn’t have time.

Clint said something and Jason shook himself free of his thoughts. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said, it’s a horrible way to die. I took an oath to protect my country from all terrors, foreign and domestic. And here I am, about to witness an atrocity magnitudes greater than what was done by the Nazis during the holocaust.”

“That’s a fairly nasty way to think of it.”

Clint shot him a look. “Is it inaccurate?”

“No, just commenting is all. Do you think it will work? I mean, will it stop the infection?”

“It will work, Dr. Carpenter, it will kill everything it contacts. Nerve agents are damn good at their job, too damn good if you ask me. Anything it contacts, even the tiniest of creatures, will perish.”

“What will they use?”

“VX nerve gas. It’s the most powerful thing we’ve got, and we have an absolute shit-ton of it stockpiled.”

Jason shook his head. “I’ve seen a movie where they used VX; it looked horrible.”

“It is,” Clint sighed. “There are carrier groups positioning themselves around the country. I didn’t know why until this latest meeting. There’s one on the east coast, off South Carolina, there's one in the gulf, just outside a Louisiana harbor, and two making their way to the California coastline. They’ll launch long-range Navy bombers from all sides. I’m guessing they’ll drop the nerve gas about two to three miles from the edge of where the infection has spread. It doesn’t matter, once that stuff is detonated, depending on the wind, it could drift for many miles.”

“Creating a chemical border of death.”

“I wish your plan had worked, Jason, I really do. Because they won’t stop there. Once they bomb the borderlands, they’ll redouble their efforts on the south. They’ll kill every living thing, whether infected or not, and I suspect there are still millions of uninfected people in the south.”

“Yes, I suspect you are right.”

Jason walked back to his desk area, leaving Clint to his thoughts. His attention was broken by someone yelling in the next room. Jason rushed to find out what was happening. It was Bruce, he was shouting at Schwartz.

“You bastard! You lying bastard! This is what it’s about, not the damn infection!” Bruce was holding a computer printed paper, waving it at Schwartz. The biologist’s face was bright red underneath the thick scruff that covered his unshaved face.

“Bruce!” Jason shouted, “Bruce what the hell is going on here? Calm down!”

“I will
not
calm down!” Bruce shouted at him, sending little droplets of spit flying out of his mouth toward the entomologist. “Look at this!” He thrust the paper into Jason’s face.

Just then, Clint stormed into the room with his hand on the butt of his gun. Clint looked from Jason to the other two men. Schwartz wasn’t saying anything. “What’s happening here?” Clint asked.

“Ask the mad doctor,” Bruce snapped back, starting to finally gulp down breaths so that the redness in his face faded.

Clint’s gaze flicked up to Schwartz. The old doctor shrugged. “I only do what I have been asked to do. It is what is necessary for our survival. If you don’t like it, you may take your issues up with your president.”

Jason was reading through the crumpled paper quickly, and having a tough time digesting the words. It was research, a first draft of a copy that was sent to the president. This one had a few spelling errors, Bruce must have pulled it out of Schwartz's wastebasket.

“What is it, Jason?” Clint asked him.

“It is a projection of the loss of life resulting from a global food shortage. It contains a prediction of how many deaths it will take to reduce the American population enough that our food stores could sustain those who were still alive. Then there are estimations of the potential yield for chemical weapons dispersal within the country.”

“I don’t understand,” Clint said, his brow furrowed.

Jason folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Clint, they’re trying to kill off enough of our people that the rest of them don’t starve when the food runs out.” Jason turned to Schwartz. “Is that about it?”

“The core of our society must be protected. The greatest minds must be saved if we are ever to rebuild.”

“Jesus,” Clint gasped.

“So all the fat cats, the illuminati, they’ll all be holed up in a bunker somewhere up north while the Navy gasses the rest of the population. They can’t fight for food if they’re already dead.”

“We will be a castle under siege, and we have to prepare,” Schwartz said again, unapologetically. “The food stores will not last long, and the president has decided that sacrifices must be made. We cannot doom our entire way of life to save the sick masses. If we do, we will all share the same fate.”

Jason took off at a run. “Nolan, Nolan!” he shouted, looking for Peterman. He found the ecologist packing things from his desk. “We have to get on the air right now!”

“There’s no point, Jason, it’s over,” Nolan said, his shoulders sagging with defeat.

“Dammit! They’re gassing everyone just so they have enough food for the upper class! We have to stop this!”

Nolan sighed, “There’s nothing we can do.”

Jason ran to the broadcast room, hauling in the press secretary as he did. “Get me on the air right now!”

The woman hesitated, “We’re supposed to be in a media blackout.”

“I’m trying to save lives here,” Jason growled. “Help me, please.”

She nodded softly. “Sure, what the hell do I care anymore.” She flipped some switches in the room and the lights came on. The automated cameras whirred to life. Jason stood over the red X marking the ideal spot for a speaker to stand.

“Gimme just a minute, I have to patch into the networks.”

“Just hurry,” he said, he had a feeling there wasn’t much time left. Suddenly the ‘on air’ light flipped on and he was live.

“America, you must take shelter now,” he said without preamble. “There is a massive air attack imminent, and everyone in the open or above ground will be killed. Take cover immediately, do not leave your homes!”

The lights powered down. “What happened?” Jason asked.

“You’ve been shut down,” Clint said, walking in slowly, his gun drawn and pointed at Jason.

“Clint-”

“Don’t,” he said. “This is out of your hands. Come with me to the dormitory immediately.”

Jason looked back over to the power panel. He could see the main power button Clint had flipped off. “We can’t just let them kill all these people, Clint,” he said, edging his way over to the console. “It isn’t right.”

“Stop where you are,” Clint said, his voice cold, deadly.

“I have to do this, Clint, I have to help them.”

Jason took another step toward the control panel. Clint fired, the gunshot roaring in the small room.