Hissers II: Death March (2 page)

With a gulp, Connor took his underwear off, goose pimples blooming as his nakedness went on display for this stranger. No girl had seen him naked since hitting puberty. Not even his mother. He’d figured one day soon in high school he might have this kind of a moment, be he’d hoped it would have been with a girlfriend, at least someone else his age. But of course the one girl he’d suspected this might happen with was dead, and dating was not on his calendar anytime soon.

Quickly, he stood up hunched over in the truck cab and spun around.

“Okay,” the woman said. “Get dressed. You’re clean.”

As quickly as he could muster,
and now mildly embarrassed, Connor put his clothes back on.

The truck continued down the dirt road as the sun rose fully in the sky now, almost blinding them. “You from Castor?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m Conn—”

“Shit. Hang on.” The woman pulled the wheel to the right, spun around two hissers standing in the middle of the road. As soon as the truck was past
them they began to give chase, sprinting like marathon runners near the finish line. “Take the wheel,” the woman ordered.

Connor leaned over and tried to keep the truck steady on the dirt, but it swayed a lot and
it wasn’t easy. The woman leaned her whole body out her window and fired off six rounds.

“Got ’em,” she said, taking the wheel again. “My trailer is up here a bit. We’ll stop in and assess the situation. I got more ammo there as well. I can probably find you a dry shirt too. You look like hell, kid. Your leg hurt?”

“It’s getting better. It was worse but the army patched it up a bit.”

“Were you a DP at that encampment near Victorville?
You must be.”

“DP?”

“Did you get out before they nuked Castor?”

Connor starte
d. “What? Nuked? I didn’t know—”

“Figure of speech, sport. They bombed the living shit out of it though. I had a gig there on Saturdays a few years ago, bartending. Place called The Saloon Door.”

“Oh yeah, I know that. Knew it, anyway. I heard Maynard Drake used to drink there with his fake ID.”

“Yeah well it’s gone now. Them planes came in and shat fire all over it. Just as well, the
owner was a dick. Where’s your family?”

“Dead,” Connor replied
.

“Sorry to hear it, kid. I really am.” She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

He liked the feel of her hand on him, liked to know someone, even a stranger, cared about him right now. He’d been alone these past several days and wasn’t sure there was even a normal person left in the world. Tears welled up in his eyes but he knuckled them away.

“Thanks,” he said. “And my name’s Connor. Not Kid.”

She smiled at him. “Okay. Connor it is. How old are you anyway?”

“I’m fourteen.”

“Connor who is fourteen.” She said it like she was practicing for a test.

“
What’s your name, miss?”

“
Miss?” She laughed out load. “No no no. None of that old lady shit. Name’s Olivia. My friends call me Olive.”

“Like Popeye’s girlfriend? Wasn’
t that her name?”

She chuckled. “
Yeah. Olive Oyl. Bane of my existence when I was your age. All my friends called me Olive Oyl. But I got over it. Now I kind of like it. Or maybe I’m just used to it. At least the Olive part. Not the Oyl. Who knows. Of course, I haven’t heard from my friends in days. Not sure who’s alive and who ain’t. Not even sure what’s left out there. TVs and Internet stopped a while back. No cell phone service now. Nothing. We watched Castor go up in flames on the news—Internet news at least—right before the rest of the country’s communications were cut. End of the world they were sayin’. Well, the nutjobs were saying it, anyway.”

They drove in silenc
e for another mile or two before Olive spoke up. “You know how to shoot?”

“Yeah. I got a couple of them between the eyes already. I know what to do.”

“Good. Take this. Keep it close and don’t fucking shoot me.” She handed him the .45. “You shoot me, I
will
come back and eat you. Got me, kid?”

“
Got you, miss.”

She smiled. “Wise ass.”

Tuesday, 9:11 AM

Another field in another town
, another military quarantine area filled with canvas tents and wandering displaced people. Trucks by the dozen were rolling in with survivors. They stumbled out bruised and tired, some crying, others wearing the now common million-yard stare of disbelief.  Men in MARPATS carrying M-16s did their best to corral them, but they were clearly distracted, their attention drawn outside the compound, across the flat no man’s land that just a few days ago had been a barren clearing. They looked up every few seconds to scan the tree line where the flat earth met the dense woods. Everyone was in shock.

Amanita sat
on a picnic bench next to her mother and father, eating stale crackers and sipping water from a paper cup. Despite autumn looming, the heat was still obnoxious and so she fanned herself with her hand, all the while cussing. “This is bullshit.”

“Amanita, watch your language.” Her mother reached out to stroke her hair.

“Like manners even matter now.” She let her mother push hear bangs out of her eyes. It almost made her cry. Her mother hadn’t paid this much attention to her in years. It was what she’d wanted to feel for so long, what she’d secretly yearned for behind her mask of obstinate independence. She didn’t really know how to deal with the emotion, and so tears began to well up but she fought them back. Why, she didn’t really know.

Somehow all the death and mayhem ha
d brought their family closer together. Deep down she still resented them for their years of neglect, and she wanted to yell at them, but she’d done too much yelling and crying the last couple weeks to muster the strength. Besides, it felt good to have her mother caress her. It felt like home should feel, even if they were sitting on a picnic bench in a make-shift community of gray tents and green trucks.

Her dad lit up a cigarette
and stared silently at the scene of misery surrounding them. The military had made sure to acquire certain amenities when they’d gotten far enough from Castor. Toothpaste, deodorant, shaving supplies, tampons, shampoos, batteries, aspirin, coffee, and other little things that drove the masses crazy should they disappear. Cigarettes were a big one.

The
smoke drifted lazily in front of Amanita. She longed for a drag, but decided against it. Despite her last year of purchasing smokes at the 7-Eleven, or asking grown men to buy them for her at the liquor store, she’d never really been that into the taste, rather just the attitude it afforded her. Truth is it often upset her stomach and since there was no need for the bad girl routine anymore, what was the point. She no longer cared about getting that kind of attention from anyone. Besides, running from those monsters had been a wakeup call for her health. Bottom line: cigarettes were a huge detriment, not to mention they stank and she didn’t have any perfume with her.

“Manners still matter,” her mother finally said. “No sense in humanity losing its grip on love and respect. We need each other more now than ever.”

Amanita huffed. “Hippie bullshit, Mom. If there was respect left in the world our home wouldn’t have been blown up. My friends would be alive.”

“She’s got a point,” her father added.

“You’re not helping,” he mother replied.

“I’
m going to get something better to eat,” Amanita said, “these crackers taste like ass.” With that she left the picnic table, wandered through the throng of people crying and asking the Marines when the hissers would be killed. One lady demanded that the government owed her a new house. Another man was yelling at the sky about how he’d get retribution on the military for his daughter’s death. A small boy of about six or seven cried miserably in the arms of a woman that was not his mother. At least she didn’t look like his mother, nor did she know his name. “It’ll be okay, little one,” she said repeatedly. But no one, not even Amanita, needed to tell that little boy it would not be alright. Not ever.

She passed by the screaming man. Two Marines were watching him intently, sizing him
up, deciding whether they should restrain him now or wait for him to actually attack. “I’ll kill you bastards for taking her!” he wailed.

Good luck, Amanita thought. She remembered General Winston Davis lying in the field, begging Connor to kill him. She remembered how the man couldn’t care less about what his precious military had created. He’d offered no solution, just a willingness to check out and avoid the mess.
Such a coward. She remembered leaving him there to rot, and hearing his screams as the undead came and claimed him. Still, she felt no remorse. She felt little of anything anymore, except fear for Connor. Where was he? Was he even alive? She couldn’t bear the the thought that he might have been attacked and killed, or worse, turned into one of those things. She missed him, more than she missed Seth and Nicole. Because at least she knew Seth and Nicole were not coming back. They were dead. But Connor, he was still out there, alone, on his mission to take what may or may not be pertinent data to someone not wearing green and carrying a gun.

“Excuse me, miss, you can’t be in here.”

She looked up and saw a young enlisted Marine staring her down. His gun was pointed at the ground, but it was still frightening the way his finger was outstretched along the trigger guard, poised to shoot. These guys had itchy trigger fingers of late. The last few nights she’d listened to distant gunfire as she lay in bed, trying not to think about all this death. Trying not to see Seth’s body torn to shreds before her eyes. How she’d wandered into one of the command tents now was beyond her. Daydreaming and walking: two things that did not work well together during the apocalypse.

The young Marine
looked her up and down, lingered on her chest, then her face, sizing up her age perhaps, a reaction from these young soldiers she was used to by now. Boys and men alike typically looked at her like an object, and at one time it was a device she could bend to her will, but this time she didn’t like it. She no longer wore revealing clothes like she had back in

Castor. Since finding her parents and transitioning to life inside barbed wire, she preferred to go unnoticed
, while away the boredom in the shadows. Jeans and a long sleeved shirt offered by the military was her garb. “Take your eyes off my tits,” she said.

Th
e young man started. “I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were. I saw you. I always see you guys looking at me like that. It’s fucking gross and perverted.
I’m not even old enough to drive.”

“Trust me, miss, I wasn’t—”

She waved him off dismissively. “Whatever. I was looking for a candy bar. Wrong tent is all.”

“I wasn’t st
aring at you like that. I just—”

“What?”

“I recognized you is all. You were one of them kids made it out of Castor, huh? The ones that came out of the woods?”

“We came from Victorville. We already said this.”

“Sure you did. I know. But hey, between you and me, I just wanted to say what you did was brave.”

She almost smiled at this, but instead rolled her eyes. “Wasn’t me. Gotta go.”

Of course it had been her. She and Connor had made it through the military’s cordon into their original encampment outside the boundary of Castor, but had lied about their entry point since the word was anyone coming from inside the town was to be shot on site. The military wasn’t risking the virus getting out.

Which, of course, had been for naught, because that first encampment had fallen to the hissers, and now
the gunfire at night spoke of the virus spreading beyond anyone’s control.

She turned back to the young officer, asked, “How come you guys haven’t bombed everywhere else
, like you did to my home?”

“I’m not allowed to
discuss tactics.”

“Just tell me. Are you guys going to nuke the whole country or something?”

The Marine hesitated, looked around for a moment, back over his shoulder to the inside of the tent where his superiors spoke rapidly on radios and SATphones, then back at her. “I truly don’t know. They don’t tell us anything except our immediate orders. But from what I hear, this situation has gotten a bit out of control, and they’re not risking any more mass bombings for fear of a civilian uprising. Can’t be fighting two wars at once on our home soil.”

“Great. So you guys just leveled our homes and
then
decided it was a bad idea. Way to go.”

“It wasn’t me, miss.
Those decisions are way above my pay grade. I just monitor satellite links….when they’re working.”

“And what if I wanted to leave? Just walk out beyond the fence?”

“Again, I’m sorry but I have my orders. Nobody leaves the compound. You can’t leave.”

“Why? We’re not infected.
Obviously.”