Plague of the Dead (42 page)

    “Looks like it, sir. What are we doing about the warehouse folks?”

    “We’ll find side roads that lead us around the town, not through it. The building’s right outside the town proper. Shouldn’t be much trouble. We’ll send a crew in Mbutu’s truck, fully armed, and the utility truck behind it, with the bed empty to load ’em up in. Stow the gear wherever you can-we can tie some on top of that piece of crap you got at the filling station.”

    Sherman paused a moment, regarding Thomas’ new car.

    “Out of curiosity, Sergeant… why’d you pick such a junker? Nothing better there?”

    “It was the only one left without half a body stinking it up, sir,” Thomas said bluntly. “It runs. That’s all that matters, really.”

    “Guess you’re right. Alright, men,” Sherman said, turning to the group. “A few of you go unload that truck of the gear inside. Stack it by the road for now. Volunteers for our warehouse rescue?”

    If finding a volunteer for the first rescue was hard, this time it was at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Almost every hand shot up, save for the unarmed civilians. Mbutu’s hand wasn’t up, but he was already clambering into the driver’s seat of the truck he’d driven.

    “I have a feel for this truck, now,” Ngasy said, leaning his head out of the half-lowered window. “I better drive. Can someone loan me a pistol?”

    One of the soldiers pulled his sidearm and passed it in the window to Mbutu. He was already carrying one of the high-priced showroom-quality hunting rifles they’d pulled from the store, and figured the pistol wasn’t a huge loss.

    “Alright, since we’re all so eager, the first six in Mbutu’s truck bed go-and I want them all to be carrying rifles,” Sherman said. There was a bit of a scramble among those carrying long arms, and when they’d settled in, Brewster, Jack, the two soldiers who’d guarded the alley, Thomas, and Krueger were all in the truck. Thomas had calmly climbed in the passenger side while the other enlisted men pushed and shoved at the tailgate. He had no rifle, but had a look of determination on his face that told Sherman not to say a word. He was probably pissed he missed the rescue mission while looking for gas. Krueger had traded his.357 for a pump-action shotgun on the promise they’d trade back once he returned. He wanted some more action, too.

    After they’d fueled up the trucks with some of the gas from the car, they rumbled off down the side road Thomas and Krueger had used to approach. Sherman watched the tail lights until they disappeared around a bend, then turned, sat down on the rear trunk of the blue Topaz, and heaved a sigh. He suddenly realized he was utterly exhausted. There was little for him to do at the moment, and his brain was sending him signals he couldn’t deny.

    Rebecca was watching him from the group of unarmed refugees. She walked over and sat down next to the older man, eyeing him closely. She was either clairvoyant or an excellent medic, because she idly asked him if he’d like to take a short nap.

    “You do look tired, you know. You’ve been a couple days without sleep,” she added.

    “I’ve gone longer without sleep-or
food
, for that matter,” Sherman told her. It was true. You never knew when you’d have a moment of peace in the middle of war, and Sherman had been on more than his fair share of long campaigns.

    “All the same, you should catch a rest. If anything comes through on the radio, I’ll wake you,” Rebecca said, reaching out and plucking the radio from Sherman’s shoulder before he could reach his hand up to stop her. He
was
tired. Usually his reflexes were much better than that. “You can trust me. I’ll wake you the moment we hear something new.”

    “I know I can trust you. I just don’t feel like I want to sleep-let my guard down, I mean,” he said. Despite his words, he felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier.

    “You’re surrounded by people who’d probably die to keep you alive, you know,” Rebecca said suddenly and bluntly.

    It was the truth. Sherman had kept the group together so far. Without him, they wouldn’t know who to turn to. Thomas? Probably. He had just as much experience as the General, but lacked his charisma. He could issue orders, and they’d be followed, but fights would certainly pop up. Who else? Denton? He had the charisma and some experience, but didn’t seem the leader type.

    At any rate, Sherman seemed to take her words to heart. He leaned back slowly, resting his head and shoulders against the rear window of the car, and closed his eyes. Rebecca sat next to the Lieutenant General for a few minutes until she was certain he had fallen asleep, then eased off the trunk and wandered over to the pile of gear the soldiers had unloaded from the utility truck. She picked up a few plastic-covered items and walked into the darkness of the woods, staying in sight of the group, but hidden from their view.

    She stripped down, removing the dirty, stained clothes she’d been wearing for weeks now, and shivered as her body was exposed to the cold, northwestern winter air. She quickly tore open the packages she’d taken from the pile, pulling a set of camouflaged boxer shorts from one, wondering inwardly as she pulled them on why in the hell anyone would need camouflaged underpants. The next item she pulled free from its plastic wrap was a medium-thick hunting jacket, also in woodland camouflage. She had abandoned her bra, but the jacket would do the same job nicely once she buttoned and zippered it up. Woodland camouflage trousers came next, almost exact duplicates of what the soldiers were wearing, except theirs were still desert camouflage, tan and brown. Hers were dark brown, black, and evergreen. Fully-clothed once more in clean, warmer gear, she squatted next to the other boxes and plastic-wrapped items she’d snagged and began rummaging through them.

    Fifteen minutes later, she re-emerged from the bushes wearing a pistol belt that sported a brand-new fabric holster for her pistol, the same one she’d taken from Sherman when she’d shot Decker. The pistol was a kind of comfort item for her after that incident-she’d killed someone she could have possibly been deeply involved with by now, shot him right between the eyes. The memory made her simultaneously want to vomit and jump for joy at her own primal reflex when she’d pulled the pistol and fired. She’d saved at least one life with that shot. And-as she thought about it-Decker was already dead in a way. He had been infected.

    She’d also gotten a backpack from the stack of items, as well as a few MREs. She’d eaten her share on the
Ramage
on their trip across the Pacific. They weren’t as bad as people made out. Some of the entrees were actually decent. And some tasted and smelled like cat food-but she’d sorted through the box and picked out a few of her favorites and stuffed them in the pack before returning the rest to the pile, which was slowly being loaded into the Topaz. She saw Sherman was still asleep on the back trunk. A pair of soldiers were quietly arguing over whether they should wake the General so they could get into the trunk.

    “I ain’t doin’ it,” said one, with a heavy rural West Virginian accent. “I reckon he’s beat. Best to let the guy get some sack time.”

    “Hell, man, let’s just get him to move to the front seat. He can even recline it a bit. Better than laying on the trunk,” said the other, this one with a touch of New York in his voice.

    “Like I said, I ain’t doin’ it. You wake him up.”

    “I’m not waking him up. What if I piss him off? I could get picked for some shitty detail because I interrupted a good dream,” said the other soldier.

    Rebecca pushed her way through the two arguing men, walking straight for Sherman.

    “I’ll do it,” she said, then turned her head and grinned at the two men. “
Pussies
.”

    If the soldiers were angry, they didn’t show it. More likely they were relieved someone else was crazy enough to wake a sleeping General. Rebecca climbed onto the trunk, squatting down on her knees, and reached a hand out to Sherman’s shoulder. The moment she touched him, his eyes snapped open and his hand grabbed her wrist.

    “
Whazzit?”
he slurred, still confused and half-asleep-though his reflexes had obviously improved after the short nap.

    “The men want to get into the trunk, Frank,” Rebecca said, throwing a thumb over her shoulder at the two nervous-looking Privates.

    “Oh. Oh, I see. No problem,” Sherman said, sitting up with a slight groan and sliding off the trunk. “I’ll sleep in the front seat.”

    “See? I told you that would be a good place,” said the soldier with the New York accent.

    “Shove it,” said his companion.

    Sherman settled into the car and was asleep again the moment his head hit the seat. He had definitely pushed himself to the limit since they’d made landfall. Even with all the bumping and swaying from the soldiers shoving in boxes of food and gear, he didn’t crack an eyelid or so much as stir. Rebecca looked in at him with an expression on her face that was a mix of pity and admiration. She felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to face a girl about her own age, maybe a year older. She didn’t know her, and guessed she must have been one of the folks in the theater.

    “I’m Katie,” said the girl, extending a hand. “You’re, like, the only other woman here that’s my age. Figure I should make some contacts. Network. That sort of thing.”

    “Rebecca. You can call me Becky, if you want. Medic with the Red Cross. What do you do?”

    “I worked at a restaurant in town. Waitress. Until this shitstorm happened, of course-then me and Ron ran to the theater,” Katie replied. “Red Cross, eh? Must have been exciting.”

    “You could say that,” Rebecca said, expressionless, reliving the hell of Cairo on fire, the dead children she’d seen, the blood on the walls in the corridors of the
Ramage
-shooting Decker in the face, watching his brains…

    She cut herself off in mid-thought.

    Katie sensed she’d said something wrong, and changed the subject adeptly.

    “You’ve got a good leader, I see,” she said. “Almost everyone in infected areas just breaks and runs. No organization. Half the military bases on the West Coast had to deal with hundreds of deserters-least, that’s what we heard on the radio. But you guys-you work like a real team. And you’re still alive. I’m glad we’ve run into you all.”

    Rebecca smiled as a reply, but said nothing.

    Katie kept going, “Where’d you get those clothes? Did the Red Cross issue them? I’d love to change out of this stuff.” She picked at her dirty long-sleeved shirt with a pair of fingers, quite gingerly, treating the fabric like it was crawling with spiders. Rebecca knew how she felt. None of the survivors had had a shower since they left the
Ramage,
and there was no shower room in a theater, either-Katie and Ron had probably gone without a decent bath since they holed up there-possibly weeks.

    Rebecca grinned again. She said, “I can help you in that department. The Cross lets you wear whatever you want, but we just got an entire load of winter gear from that sporting goods store you guys tipped us off about. Let’s go get you some new duds.”

    Katie had just vanished into the woods to change into her new woodland camouflage clothes when the rumble of engines alerted the group. They weren’t coming from the back road-they were coming from the town. They must have hit trouble and had to take a more direct route.

    “Soldiers! Get ready to bug out, pronto!” shouted a corporal, the ranking soldier at the moment. Rather, he was the ranking
awake
soldier.

    Rebecca sprinted away from the shrubs, where she’d been standing guard to make sure no one disturbed Katie while she changed, and knocked on the Topaz’s window. Sherman didn’t wake. She opened the door and gingerly touched his shoulder. He awoke as fast as before, this time more alert.

    “What’s happening?” he asked.

    “They’re back-but it looks like they’ve got company,” Rebecca said, talking fast. The trucks were about twenty seconds out, and closing at high speed. As they rounded the last bend, Sherman reached out his leg and tapped the brake on the Topaz, and at the same time flicking on the flashers. He didn’t want a truck barreling into any of the survivors. It was a good decision-the lead truck immediately slowed. Mbutu had apparently thought he’d had further to go. He could have accidentally rammed the car or one of the refugees.

    The trucks pulled to a sharp halt, and none of the soldiers got out. Mbutu rolled down his window.

    “Medical! We need medical here!” he shouted. Apparently his otherwise excellent grasp of English didn’t extend to the word ‘
medic
.’

    Rebecca was ready. She’d already grabbed up her bag of supplies after she woke Sherman. It was bulging since she’d raided the
Ramage
’s sickbay. She unslung it from her shoulder and dashed over to the truck.

    “Who’s bit? And where?” she curtly asked Mbutu.

    He managed a small smile and replied, “
Me
. I’m not bitten, though. I’ve been shot-an accident.”