Death and The Divide (20 page)

Min nodded.

“Then let’s go.” Ria motioned them forward.

When they reached the hill overlooking the greenhouse, Min reported the drones hadn’t moved.

“What the hell is going on?” Linc mused.

“I don’t know, but as long as they stay away from us, I don’t care,” Ria muttered. “Are we going to do this or not?”

Linc held up a hand, not ready to rush into any situation too quickly. Reconnoitering was important. “Let me go to the van first. I’ll unhook the connector and see if I can get it running. You guys stay up here. That way if I’m caught, you can escape.”

“But…” She shook her head.

“Min, keep an eye on those drones for me, okay?” He didn’t wait. Ria always wanted to be in the thick of things, but she was more important than him to the project. She had to stay mobile and reach Manson.

He trotted down the hill. Dusk had closed in and, fortunately, the rear of the greenhouse lacked the kind of lighting that lit the front area. He unplugged the cord and wound it as he returned to the van. The door opened easier this time and slid with only a few squeaks of protest.

He had to hope the ignition would start without a key device, but when he hit the ignition button, nothing happened. Slashed hope cut him like a knife. Had the charge not worked? Maybe there was another reason. His despair faded a bit when he found a slot beside it for a pass-card. That could very well be the problem. It was a glitch, but not insurmountable. Oh, well. He’d learned how to jimmy an ignition as a teenager. Granted he’d learned on a gas-powered car, but an electric system didn’t have much difference in the starter.

After pushing the front seat to the rear as far as it would go, he twisted on his back and pointed his light up under the dash of the control panel. He tugged on some wires and circuit packs until he found the one for the ignition. A couple swaps on the wires would enable him to bypass the need for a card.

A scream made him rise and bump his head. “Damnation!”

He wiggled from under the dash and scrambled out the side door. His heart nearly burst from his chest. Through the gathering darkness, Ria and Min ran down the hill. Tattered, bloody figures gave chase, their arms outstretched and red mouths gaping. A gush of fear and revulsion set his pulse afire with adrenaline.

Cannibals!

Chapter Twenty

Ria screamed, running as fast as she could. Her thighs burned, and her heart pounded as gruesome, once human creatures chased them. They moved fast, too. She and Min would be dead by now if one hadn’t snapped a twig some distance away.

Min screamed with her, his face whiter than paper and his long, lanky legs pumping. She bet he’d rather see a snake than these horrifying creatures. At least she’d seen them before, this was his first experience. That had to make it more terrifying for him.

They scampered down the hill, and Linc came out of the van. He paused a second with his jaw dropped. He picked up a piece of wood and ran forward, brandishing it.

“Get in the van,” he yelled. “Get in!”

The lead cannibal closed on her and grabbed her ankle before she reached Linc. She went down, rolling and kicking with the snarling woman on top of her. She held the creature by the shoulders as it struggled to bite her throat. Its foul breath stank of rotten flesh and blood. “Linc, help!”

He swung the wood, hitting the woman on the side of her head and knocking her off. “Come on. Hurry!”

She grabbed his hand, and he half-dragged, half-lifted her to the side doorway with Min already leaping in.

A man lunged toward Linc’s back, and she cried, “Behind you!”

He spun and lifted the wood with both hands, blocking the creature in the throat as it clawed to get him. He lifted his knee and kicked the guy in the gut, sending him backward, arms flailing.

“Get in, get in!” Ria leaned out the edge of the door.

“Come on,” Min called from beside her. “The others are right behind you.”

He hit the guy in the head and rushed for the side door.

She and Min slid it shut once he’d made it inside, and he hit the lock. Linc clambered through the opening to the cockpit. Hands pounded on the side of the van and picked at the handle. She thought her heart would jump out of her chest. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.

A buzz continued then stopped as Linc tried to start the engine.
Zzz, zzz, zzz
.

“Oh, God, please, please let it start.” She put her arms around Min, and he hugged her tightly.

The pounding grew louder, and she feared they would break through the truck’s shell.

Zzz, zzz
.

The door rattled.

Zzz, whizz.
The engine started. Linc took off, the van fishtailing with the sudden acceleration like a thoroughbred out of the gate.

She fell to the floor with Min, both of them shaking and panting, clinging to each other. She grabbed onto one of the shelves as the shaking vehicle bumped over uneven yard.

“Are you guys okay?” Linc called back to them.

“Yes, yes, just go.” She detached from Minlo and made her way through the mess of plastic trays to the back window. At least twenty cannibals raced after them in the growing gloom. “They’re still coming. Go!”

He reached the paved street and turned left, nearly spinning out. The old van jerked and coughed a few times, making her fear it would stop. Then it gained power and sped down the street. The running forms behind them grew smaller and smaller. She pressed her hands to her cheeks and hurried to the front.

“Linc, did they hurt you?” She maneuvered into the passenger seat, scanning him for signs of injury.

“No, I’m okay.” He gave her sideways glance then focused on the road. “You weren’t bitten were you?”

“No. No. Thank God. That woman grabbed my ankle and I thought that was it for me. Thank you for coming to my rescue.”

“Good. Min, we need information. What’s happening? Where are the troops and the drones?”

“I’m hacking into the military sites now.” The younger man sat cross-legged in the space between the seats. “Now I see why those drones were hovering earlier. They had spotted the cannibals and were providing surveillance. But that wasn’t the only group. There are mondo others being reported all over the area.”

“How are we going to make it to Kansas City then?” Ria asked, frantic, her panic rising. The recent rush of adrenalin left her nauseated and lightheaded. Avoiding the new military forces had proven difficult, but unpredictable cannibal hordes made their chance of arriving unscathed in Kansas City seem impossible. If this ancient van stopped, they were screwed.

“First, let’s stay off the main road,” Linc said. “Min, plot us a course off the grid.”

“Okay, then what?” the young man asked. “What if K.C. is overrun with these freaky monsters?”

Ria pressed her fingertips to her temples. Unbelievable. A month ago, she processed boring scans through laboratory equipment and plugged away at her PhD program. Now she ran from a government coup and a horde of cannibals, bumping along in a broken down food-vending van. She shook her head, hoping the nightmare would go away. When she looked up, nothing had changed. The pavement stretched before them through the side streets of a small town.

Then her comm beeped. An unknown link.

In case Manson called, she had to answer. “Hello?”

“Ria? Where are you?”

She slumped in the seat, relieved to hear the big man’s grumpy voice. “Louis, we’re on the road to Kansas City, but this area is overrun with cannibals. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“Listen to me and calm down.” His deep voice softened. “Is Linc with you?”

“Yes, he’s here. We escaped together.”

“Good. I’m going to download the coordinates of my location to your comm. Forget the city. Reports say it’s placed under strict military control to drive out the infected. I only mentioned it as a meeting place because I didn’t want to give my exact location. There’s no helping that now. We have to take the chance no one will intercept this transmission. Keep going no matter what. Is that clear?”

“Yes, we’ll follow the coordinates.”

“Excellent. Now hurry. We have to put a stop to this.”

When the link ended, her GPS program popped up with the location he’d sent her. “What the hell? This isn’t another city.”

“Let me see.” Min held out a hand.

She removed her wristband and gave it to him.

“Yeah, this is in the middle of one of the worst scorched areas. There’s nothing there. Is this guy crazy?” He handed it to her. “I’m telling you, I’m not sleeping in another wormy shed again. We should look for a safe place to spend the night.”

“No. We have to do what he says. It’s our only hope, not to mention humanity’s only hope.” She pointed. “Take that road to the right.”

Linc gave her a quick look then turned the wheel. “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

A couple of cannibals lurched into the road, barely visible in the dwindling light. Linc swerved but still managed to wing one of them. She looked in the side mirror as it went spinning into the roadside ditch. The other one helped it up, and Ria gasped. “Linc, they’re cooperating. That one you hit? The other one just helped it out of the ditch. This is horrible.”

“What does that mean?” Minlo asked. “Maybe they’re turning nice.”

“Stick to computers, Min. It means they’re developing community. They have ways of communicating and they’re not attacking each other, anymore,” Linc said. “Now we’re fighting against an organized front, not a bunch of individual monsters. Instead of lunching on each other for food, they’ll find non-infected humans to eat.”

“That’s fucking bullshit,” Min muttered. “Maybe we should have stayed behind the shield. They can’t get in there.”

“No,” Ria said forcefully. “We have to reach Dr. Manson and help him find a way to stop the spread and kill the parasite.”

“Where to next?” Linc asked.

“Ten miles then turn right.” She checked her comm. “We have about seventy miles to go.”

“I hope there’s something there when we arrive.” Min shook his head.

***

“Hey, listen to this,” Min said, working at his small computer. Darkness had fully set in and they hadn’t seen a cannibal in quite a while. “The populace in the North is protesting the takeover by RD, and the people in the South are protesting the coup by this IPP group. Meanwhile, the cannibals are trying to eat everybody. The international community is calling on both countries to put aside their political differences and work together for a cure. That’s some crazy shit.”

“Who would chose to enact a coup during a major crisis?” Ria asked. “I think both sides are nuts.”

“I agree,” Linc said. Even though he’d spent a lot of his adulthood working with the IPP to bring this about, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Plus, the wrong people had taken control. Who knew what had happened to Jack by now.

Linc was stuck in the North, unable to help his fellow countrymen and running from guns and cannibals instead of solving the problem. A rising frustration lit inside him. Could they really help Manson? What if they couldn’t stop the cannibal spread?

He glanced at Ria’s determined face. She had so much faith in the famous parasitologist. He hoped it wasn’t misplaced. Although if Manson couldn’t come up with a solution, who could? And if he did, what would they do with the solution? If they gave it to the RD, they wouldn’t share with the South. Of course the South was in such turmoil with the political fighting, how would they deploy an organized cure? What a horrendous mess.

He said over his shoulder to Minlo, “What do you see about the international community? Are they working on a cure, too? Any progress?”

“Not much on that,” Min replied. “A multi-national conference met in Paris yesterday to set up parameters for study and dissemination of findings.”

“What are you thinking?” Ria asked.

He let out a deep breath. “About how stupid political shit has put the research in an untenable position. Even if we can isolate a cure, how can these defunct governments distribute it? You heard what that Boston guy said. They won’t share with the South, and the South is up to its armpits with this blasted revolution started by a bunch of dumb asses.”

“Yeah.” She sat in silence for a while, staring through the windshield. “I don’t have an answer, but we can at least try to solve the parasite issue. If we give it to both sides, then it’s up to them to make it work. That’s all we can do.”

“Bunch a retardos,” Min said. “If I get out of this, I’m moving to Norway.”

Ria gave a snort of laughter, and he had to smile. He might be right, though. Like him, she became disenchanted with both sides of The Divide. Didn’t any of them understand they needed to move the countries forward, not drag them down?

“Oh, turn here.” Ria leaned forward and pointed.

The headlights bounced off brush and a tumbled stone wall that was more stones than wall. He squinted through the darkness. “Where? I don’t see a road.”

“Slow down,” she said. “There.”

“It’s a dirt road,” Min said. “That can’t be right.”

She stared at her wrist unit. “That’s it.”

“I do see some tread marks, so it’s been used lately,” Linc said, turning the wheel. “We’ll give it a try.”

“This is just the sort of deserted place you see in movies, right before the zombies get you,” Min muttered.

“A few more miles,” said Ria, ignoring the comment.

The van slowed, and Linc lifted the speed lever. Nothing happened. Uh, oh. “Well, shit. The power supply is out.”

Min hummed a creepy tune. “See, I told you.”

“For God’s sake, stop it, Min,” Ria ordered. “Now what?”

The van issued a warning beep, slowly rolled another fifty feet, and came to a standstill.

“We walk,” Linc said. “But first, let’s see what we can take as weapons in case we run into Binky’s zombies.”

“That’s not funny,” the young man said as he uncurled from his seated position and moved aside for them.

Linc inspected the metal racks. “I might be able to break this apart. It’s not very sturdy.”

“I’ll help,” Ria said, taking one side of the structure in her hands.

They pulled and, after a few tugs, the side piece came loose. Min rummaged under the shelving and found what resembled a small pitchfork. Likely some gardening implement left over from the good ole days. Linc and Ria managed to reduce the shelving to a few two- and three-foot pieces, the best size to wield as a weapon.

“All right. Ready?” Linc asked.

“Maybe we should stay in here until it’s light,” Min suggested.

“It’s only a few more miles,” Ria said. “I don’t want to waste any more time. Let’s go.” She unlocked the door and slid it open.

Cool night air rushed in with a scent of pine. Linc filled his lungs with the welcome freshness. The old van had reeked of mold and decayed lettuce. He turned on his handheld light and stepped to the ground, scanning the area. A few thin pine trees lined the dirt track, and the weeds in the center of it were flattened. Another sign a vehicle had come through lately.

“Everyone keep a lookout,” he said.

They started down the road, Ria with her light in front, and Linc bringing up the rear. Occasionally, he swung the light behind him, but those few hours before dawn when even the nocturnal creatures settled their activities sent the world into quiet. Their boots crunching the ground created the only sounds. Not even a buzz from a drone interrupted the night.