Man Eaters (38 page)

“Well, when you consider it’s the state with the most guns, you’re bound to have more deaths. It’s probably easier to get trigger happy during an epidemic and there isn’t anyone more trigger happy than a Texan.”

Butcher’s words proved to be prophetic, as they would soon find themselves shot at seven times throughout the course of the day.

“Don’t take it personally, Dallas. They either want what we have or are afraid of what we have. It’s typical war mentality.”

“I find it interesting that so few of the license plates are from Texas,” Cassidy said, looking up from the book she was reading.

“Not me. These people will fight to the death for their property and their homes. They aren’t going anywhere.”

“That’s an interesting thought. What will happen to all the property people once owned?”

“You mean, after the government takes its share?”

“Yeah.”

“We get it, I suppose. If we live through it all.”

Cassidy lowered her book. “Will we?”

Roper nodded. “That’s the plan. We just can’t expect this thing to turn around overnight. We need to get to the bayou and plan on hunkering down for six or seven months, like Luke said. Start a new life where those things can’t get us.”   

“What the government will have to do is set up a huge quarantine facility—maybe more than one—and then, one by one, allow the survivors into the safe zone in New England while they continue to bomb the remaining cities and to re-secure the country. That is, of course, as long as this thing was contained in the U.S.”

“That doesn’t seem possible. Not with two of the longest borders in the world.”

“Maybe not, but you heard those Oregonians say the French, Germans, Italians, and so on had sent thousands of troops to help defend the borders. If this remains contained, then our military will have its hands full eradicating the man eaters. The only good thing...” Einstein stopped, puzzling out something in his head. “Oh wow. I never thought of that.”

“What?”

“Well...you know how Butcher explained their horde mentality and how they act like white blood cells? Maybe that was part of the terrorist’s retrieval and clean up plan. If the undead migrate to each other—”

“Then the military can wipe out more at one time.”

Einstein waited to see who would be the first to get it. It surprised him that it was Roper.

“Wait. If that is true and our military has the means to kill them—” she couldn’t finish her sentence, so Einstein did for her.

“That means our own government is responsible for this epidemic.”

The interior of the Fuchs went silent as everyone wrestled with the notion that the American government was responsible for the outbreak.

“Oh hell no,” Safety piped in. “You’re saying our own government caused this?”

Einstein shook his head. “No. I don’t think they caused the epidemic, but I think they knew about the virus.”

“Roper, remember how quickly those military choppers arrived on the bridge? It’s like they knew they needed to cut the city off from everyone else. There had been no time for our military or our government to even know what they were facing, yet they immediately rendered San Francisco into an island and began killing civilians.”

Roper nodded. “I never really gave it that much thought, but yeah, those choppers were there almost instantaneously and they immediately started killing survivors.”

The Fuchs went silent again.

“So, what does this mean?”

All eyes were back on Einstein, who shrugged. “Obviously, something went awry and this got well out of their hands. I don’t think we attacked ourselves, but something happened. Now, they’re cleaning up their mess using whatever biochemical warfare they have at their disposal.”

They all waited for more.

“Which is why I wouldn’t trust anything coming from our government or the military at all. At. All.” Einstein pulled a small notepad from his back pocket. “Luke gave this to me before he left. It has all his notes and ideas about what he thought was going on. Said he thought I would know when the time was right to share it.” He consulted the notepad. “While he’s just barely off-track for parts of it, one thing he was right about: There are only two places that can be considered safe—underground and on the water.”

“The compound,” Cassidy murmured. “So that crazy bastard was right all along.”

Einstein nodded as he handed the notebook to Roper. “It took me a few days to decode his writing, and when I did, I realized Luke had the same thoughts about this attack that I’ve been having.”

Roper flipped through the book before handing it to Butcher. “You’ve put a lot of thought into it, haven’t you?”

Einstein frowned in thought. “Too many pieces didn’t fall into place. At first, we were too busy trying to stay alive, but as time wore on I realized we were facing a three-front war: Zombies, outlaws, and the military. Think about it. At first, they were pretending to give vaccines which actually killed people. Then they began collecting and experimenting on us. Does that sound like a government we can trust? Does it sound like a government that is protecting us? They had an antidote they tried and it failed.”

“But containment—”

“Is necessary, yes, but what they were going to do to Safety and Roper? That smacked of Nazism in its extremist form, don’t you think? Experimenting on the living is ghastly and ghoulish.”

“And now, survivors are being told to head east...for what purpose?”

“Well, on the back of the Nazism, I think we can safely assume there will be camps called safe zones, which will be nothing more than quarantine areas. You know, we have no idea what the true extent of the epidemic is. We only know what we’ve seen, and we’d be foolish to believe anything other than what we know for certain.”

“This hurts my head,” Cassidy said. “I’m with Safety, hon. This theory of yours is a stretch.”

Einstein turned to her. “It is? If we had honestly suffered a terrorist attack, where are our allies? Have any of us seen one British plane? One French soldier? Think about it.”

“The intel says they are guarding the borders with—” Dallas paused, her lightbulbs popping. “With the rest of the world.”

“Exactly! No one is helping us stay alive. They are, however, making sure we stay contained.” Einstein leaned back. “Knowing any of this means nothing to us unless we intend on following the survivors east, and that, I’m not willing to do. Whatever is there, believe me, isn’t a safe zone.”

They rode for nearly four more hours in complete silence. The road became easier to travel the further south they went, but Butcher was careful not to go near the Kill Zone of the border.

As they drove through desolate countryside filled with thinning cows and mangy dog packs of once domesticated pets, Roper noted there were fewer and fewer isolated eaters; that they did, in fact, roam in packs that became swarms, that became hordes. More than once, Butcher plowed right through a horde, knocking back some, running over others. As she was just getting ready to pull over to let Dallas drive, she spotted a roadblock ahead.

“Roadblock ahead.”

“What the fuck?”

Butcher looked over at Roper, who already had her hand on the joystick. The mechanized buzz of the turret as she swung the forty toward the roadblock filled the Beast.

Dallas grabbed the microphone and waited.

“We can ram their cars. Blast them to smithereens, or see what they want.”

“They want the Beast.”

“Can’t have it.”

“Then you want me to shoot away?”

Dallas put the mic to her mouth. “You have ten seconds to move your vehicles or we will render them inoperable.”

Roper smiled over at her. “Render them inoperable? Who are you? You couldn’t have gone with ‘we’ll blast your fucking heads off’?”

Dallas rolled her eyes.

Suddenly, coming from every side were Hummers, Jeeps, and SUVs of all kinds, surrounding them.

“Go!” Safety yelled from the back.

Butcher started to gun it, when a Hummer clipped her from the left, pushing them only slightly off the road, but engaging them nonetheless.

Roper took hold of the joystick and shot everything that moved. She pummeled the Hummer that careened off them, and the Jeep to her right, but as she swung the turret toward the roadblock, it jammed.

“Fuck! It jammed!”

Safety looked out the back window at a Jeep behind them and realized they had a hand-held rocket launcher. If they fired off that rocket they were all as good as dead. Grabbing a rifle and two grenades, he turned to Einstein and said, “Take good care of these gals or I’ll come back and haunt you.”

Pushing the back door open, Safety hit the ground running, shooting his rifle at the driver of the Jeep and the man aiming the rocket launcher.

One, two, three bullets hit the massive football player, but he kept going.

“No! Safety, come back!” Cassidy cried. “What the fuck?”

“Shut the doors! Shut the doors!”

Einstein closed the doors as Roper scurried up to the turret to unjam the forty.

Butcher regained momentum toward the roadblock, and the last thing she saw before they hit it was Safety running and shooting, even as he continued taking fire.

“No,” Cassidy said softly, watching the man stagger but never leave his feet. “Oh no, no, no.”

Just before the man depressed the button on the rocket launcher, Safety tossed one of the grenades under the vehicle and laid down a constant stream of bullets, one of which smashed into the shooter’s collarbone causing the rocket to shoot high and go up and over the Fuchs. When Safety stopped moving to watch the rocket narrowly miss the Beast, his body was riddled with bullets from all sides until, at last, he fell to the ground. As he fell, the grenade blew the SUV ten feet off the ground, killing everyone inside.

Safety was dead before it returned to land.

“Mother fuckers!” Roper yelled, grasping the forty and shaking it before spraying bullets at every vehicle behind them. “God damned sons of bitches!” Swinging the gun around, she fired at the barricade just moments before Butcher plowed into and over it.

As they passed armed men, Roper continued cutting them down with the forty. Man after man, she tore apart with one of the enormous rounds, and she would have continued shooting like a woman possessed had Dallas not joined her and pulled her back into the Fuchs.

“We have to go back!” Roper cried as Dallas gathered her in her arms. “We can’t just leave him.”

“He’s gone, baby. He’s gone.”

“No!” Roper struggled, but Dallas held on and continued to hold on until Roper stopped struggling.

“We could have gotten away…we could have...why...why did he do that?”

“Because that’s what he was in life. He was the Safety. The last guy between a team and the goal. He went out of this life on his own terms and in his own way.”

“That was amazing,” Cassidy said softly. “He just...took it to them.”

“He saved our lives,” whispered Dallas. “What a selfless, courageous thing to do.”

Butcher bowed her head a moment. “That rocket would have killed us all, you know. He truly saved our asses.” Turning back around, Butcher maneuvered through the freeway in virtual silence, their loss a wound that would never truly heal.

“I have to stop,” Butcher said, driving over a barbed wire fence and right into the middle of a desert-like prairie. Cows scattered and prairie dogs ran back into their holes when the Beast came to a halt.

“What are you doing?”

Turning in her seat, Butcher had tears in her eyes. “We run and run and fight and fight, and when we’ve lost one of us, we’ve just pressed on. Well, I for one need a fucking moment to salute those who are no longer with us.”

Dallas grabbed her rifle and nodded for Roper to do the same. “I couldn’t agree more.” Pressing the ramp, Dallas waited for it to go all the way to the ground before stepping out. “Anyone who wishes to say a word, feel free to join us.”

It was no surprise that everyone exited the vehicle. Then all joined hands and waited for Dallas to start.

“This is for Peanut, who never got a chance to attend her prom or kiss her first boy. She was a sweet, dog loving little girl who deserved better than the end she had.” Dallas held her rifle and shot into the air.

Einstein squeezed his eyes closed as he spoke. “She was like a little sister to me, and…and…” he could not go on, so Roper spoke for him.

“And you will always remember her.”

Dallas looked around the small circle and continued. “This is for Safety, who, until the bitter end, was who he was, never allowing anything or anyone to dictate how he would die.” She fired another shot into the air.

“To Safety, for giving us the gift of our lives,” Cassidy said.

“To Safety…for having a heart bigger than he was.”

Standing with their hands locked together, everyone in the little group felt the loss and released it, knowing they had to move forward and not look back. Never look back.

“We’ve been blessed with good people,” Dallas continued. “Some rotten apples, but for the most part, really solid people. The first chance we have to do a proper memorial, we will, but for now, it is enough that we say goodbye and move forward to our unknown future. Everyone ready?”

To a one, they were.

Butcher drove throughout the day until long after dusk. They were almost out of Texas by the time Dallas had her stop. “You must be exhausted,” Dallas said as Butcher climbed out of the driver’s seat. She had pulled into a large cattle ranch and parked smack dab in the middle of a corral.

“This way, we can see ‘em coming,” Butcher mumbled.

“Them?”

Butcher nodded as she lay down next to Roper. “All of ‘em. Any of ‘em. We can’t trust anyone, Dallas. Not...anyone…but us…”

Butcher was asleep before she finished her sentence.

“How are you two doing?” Dallas asked.

Einstein and Cassidy both shrugged and Dallas felt a huge tug on her heart. She vowed to get all of them to safety from here on out, and then felt tears fall as she finally allowed herself to feel the enormous hole left by a giant man.

“Don’t cry, Dallas. He went out a hero. He went out doing what he knew and loved. We should all be that lucky,” Einstein comforted her.