The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (10 page)

I looked out through the shades in the front.
Dawn was just breaking, but darkness still permeated the yard. I
couldn’t see any movement on the street. I checked a few more
windows on the four corners of the house and when I was fairly
confident that there were no surprises waiting for me I slipped
quietly out the front door. I unclipped the front strap of the
rifle sling, turning it into a single point sling. Keeping the
rifle at the ready, I cautiously walked the perimeter of the house,
but nothing stirred.

I walked out to the street and stood where
normally the streetlight would be enveloping me in its bubble of
warm light, that was, if the grid had been up. I looked up and down
the brightening street, there was no movement. The body of the dead
Loony still lay in a heap where it had fallen on the asphalt. I
retraced my path to the house and went inside.

Downstairs, Holly had her hair braided back
and had cooked a light breakfast of oatmeal, eggs and coffee on the
small gas stove. The odor of the hot food made my mouth water.

“I wanted to use the last of our fresh eggs.
After this it’s powdered for awhile,” she said, handing me a cup of
steaming black coffee.

I had to smile lovingly at Holly. She was the
spitting image of Angelina Jolie as her Lara Croft character from
the movie Tomb Raider, complete with leg holsters strapped to each
leg. The white tee-shirt she had on hugged the lines of her firm,
rounded breasts while her clingy slacks accented her thin waist and
long, sexy legs. All of which made me long for an hour alone with
her. Who am I kidding, give me just three minutes. My wife was most
definitely a knockout!

I set the rifle down on an end table and
hugged her tightly to me, feeling the curves of her body melt into
mine. Even with all this shit going to hell around us, I still
wanted her. We kissed deeply, tasting each other’s mouth and
lingering together. We looked deeply into each other’s eyes, not
having to express verbally the feelings for each other that were so
obvious.

We pulled apart, slightly embarrassed when
Jeremy came out of the bedroom dressed nearly identical to me. He
had wanted to wear shorts, nonetheless I had insisted that we all
wear long pants to help protect against bites. He carried the Sig
P556 in his hand. We had attached a forward grip to its picatinny
rail system last night for better control. I don’t think we had to
worry about BATF rules anymore. The P556 was basically an M4
carbine without a stock. It was shorter, lighter, and easier for
Jeremy to handle.

“Were there any of those things outside,
Papa?” he asked.

“No, so far we’re in the clear. Let’s eat and
then get the truck loaded up.”

We sat down at the card table Holly had put
together on the first day and ate quietly, each lost in our own
thoughts of what lay ahead. I looked at my boy. His hair has a
darker shade of copper than his mother’s, straight and nearly long
enough to cover his ears. It needed a cut. He was big for his age,
just two inches shy of five feet in height and an athletic 85
pounds. He was growing up fast, but was still a child in many of
his actions.

He was well versed in firearms, getting his
first .22 at four years of age. He was planning on getting into
competitive shooting and was good enough with rifle and pistol to
do both. He loved soccer, football, baseball, skiing and hunting.
The kid just couldn’t get enough of the outdoors. What was his
future now? Would it be just an interminable fight for survival for
the rest of his days? He looked up and smiled at me when he saw me
watching him. I smiled back holding a forkful of scrambled eggs to
my lips.

And then there was Holly, my beautiful,
talented wife. She was my pillar in life. At 32 she looked no older
than when I had met her a little over eleven years back while I was
in grad school. I had been on temporary assignment at Walter Reed
while I worked on my PhD. I was a 25-year-old first lieutenant in
the Army at the time going to school on their dime when I first
spied this beautiful, lithe med student in my Advanced Biochemistry
Class at Georgetown. It took me nearly three weeks to get up the
courage to ask her out and when I approached her I could have sworn
that the butterflies were going to fly from my stomach and burst
out my mouth when I opened it. She stood five and a half feet to my
six. When I looked down into those bright liquid green eyes
everything just clicked. I found my tongue and my courage and she
said ‘yes’ to coffee. It was a whirlwind romance that survived the
pressures of both of our academic aspirations and burgeoning
careers.

I grabbed her hand and gave it a loving
squeeze. “We’ll be okay,” I said, holding on to her hand. “We’re
going to make it.”

“I know,” she replied, smiling at me.

We hurriedly packed the truck with all our
supplies, topped off the fuel and went over our kits one more time.
Holly had the Para in her right leg holster and the Beretta from
the lab on her left leg. She would carry the other short barreled
Colt M4 in the truck next to her with a quick release sling
attached to it. She had thrown on a black shooting vest over her
white tee-shirt. She still looked sexy as hell.

Jeremy sat in the back seat of the cab
cradling his P556 on his lap. He had a Sig mosquito .22 semi-auto
pistol with the suppressor in a waist pouch and his Springfield XDM
Compact 9mm on his hip. We all had plenty of spare mags in holders
and pockets for all our weapons plus a bunch loaded up in a box in
the back. All the rest of our guns were in a duffle in the truck
bed, along with the cans of ammo, food, medicine,
etc.
We also
packed our backpacks and threw them in just in case we had to hoof
it anywhere. Holly and I threw a tarp over the stacked supplies in
the bed and secured it with an elastic cargo net. We had a one day
supply of water and food in the cab with us along with a couple
spare cans of ammo. We were ready.

So far during the loading process we had seen
none of the infected on our street. The sun was up and shining
brightly as we finished our preparations, which we accomplished
with minimal noise so as not to attract any unwanted attention. I
had cleaned all of the blood off of the windows, doors and seat
with a bleach solution. Even though my research had shown that the
Zombie Virus quickly became inactive when exposed to air, we
couldn’t take any chances.

Turkey vultures descended on the corpse lying
in our street and we did our best to ignore them while they fed. It
got me thinking though, about birds as a vector for the virus. I
would have to keep that in the back of my mind. By 0715 hours we
were all piled in the truck and ready to leave. We programmed our
GPS for our farm. It showed six hours and five minutes of travel
time and I nearly laughed at that estimate.

I started up the truck and headed off up the
street, scattering the vultures when we went by. We cleared the
neighborhood without any problems. The few infected that we saw
were easily avoided and we were soon pulling onto the main road.
The horde that I had led away yesterday was nowhere in sight. I
would hate to be on that dirt track in the woods right now.

Our route would take us back across the
bridge from yesterday. I dreaded the thought of retracing my way
through the horrors again. This time I knew the path was clear and
we wouldn’t have to stop.

“Why are there so many abandoned cars on the
road?” Holly inquired as we turned southbound on State Route 4.

“I guess many people tried to ignore their
illnesses and go to work or to wherever their plans for that day
were taking them. This disease hits fast and hard, and by the time
they realized just how bad they really were it was likely too late.
I believe many just couldn’t drive any further.”

I weaved past several abandoned cars. “Some
must have passed out while they were driving and caused some of the
accidents that you see. It was rush hour on the East Coast so even
with the pandemic there were still a lot of people on the
road.”

We reached the area approaching the bridge.
In the northbound lane I could see the scattered bodies that I had
left behind yesterday. Here too, vultures and crows were feasting.
We watched in awe as a Loony sped out from behind an SUV and jumped
one of the vultures, biting its neck when it landed on it. Several
more came running and tore the bird apart. One of the feasters had
become the feast.

Further down the road, crowds of infected
were milling about, their heads rising and their pace picking up
when they heard us go by. I avoided hitting the few that were on
the road.

“That’s your car, Papa, isn’t it?” Jeremy
said excitedly as we drove by in the other lane. The wrecked
carcass of what had been my Jetta sat where I left it. I shuddered
at the memory.

“Yeah, son. That’s it.”

“Wow, you sure tore it up!” he said
wide-eyed. We squeezed by the two cars I had pushed aside yesterday
then we were up and over the bridge. So far so good.

“They’ll die soon if they don’t eat and
drink,” Holly said to no one in particular. “And what will they do
come winter?”

“Hopefully freeze to death,” I spat out
coldly. “As far as food and drink, they’re like wild animals,
they’ll make do,” I added glumly.

We were on a short rural stretch of road
between major road crossings and didn’t see very many of the
Loonies.

At certain points along the drive the going
was slow, especially around concentrations of civilization where
there were many deserted vehicles or roaming Loonies that had to be
avoided. Once we were into Maryland’s rural area approaching the
Potomac River we made better time. The few cars scattered here and
there had mainly drifted off the road before being abandoned.

We didn’t see any signs of anyone who wasn’t
infected, although flying by in a truck I wouldn’t expect to see
any survivors.

“There have to be others like us,” I told my
wife. “Holed up in their homes or trying to get out of Dodge like
us.”

“I’m sure there are some,” Holly said,
looking out the window at the passing trees and farms, “but how
many families possessed this mutated gene that gave them all
immunity from the virus? How many had one infected member in their
family that in turn infected the others?” She looked over at me.
“I’m sure there are others like us out there, but I think we are
the exception, not the rule.”

I nodded in agreement. The human species was
in piss poor shape right now.

Jeremy was, to my amazement, drifting off in
the back seat, something he was a pro at when we were on trips.
Holly turned on the radio and scanned through the different
stations, none were broadcasting. She flicked off the radio in
anger.

“How are we going to live like this?” she
cried. “Just the three of us fighting those… those things!” Tears
spilled down her cheeks. “What kind of existence are we going to
have?”

Jeremy was awake again in the back, trying to
tune into the conversation.

Holly hung her head and whispered “I want to
talk to my mom so bad.”

She sobbed quietly. She had tried calling
both of our parents repeatedly for the first few days until the
power loss had halted her efforts. She had never reached them. Her
parents were in St. Petersburg Florida. With its huge population it
would be a hellhole by now.

“They’re smart people, Holly,” I said
consolingly. “With any luck they both carry the mutated gene and
survived the initial infection. Your dad would have realized what
was happening and gotten your mother the hell out of there and
someplace safe.”

My parents lived in western North Carolina
about two hundred miles from where our farm lay in Virginia. We
hadn’t been able to reach them either.

“They would have called me,” she replied
sullenly, her eyes still heavy with tears. I had no reply for
that.

“Maybe Grandma and Grandpa are on their way
to the farm,” Jeremy said brightly.

“Yeah, son, maybe.”

We turned south onto U.S. Route 301, a larger
thoroughfare than the small country road we had been on for the
last hour. We were five miles from the Potomac River bridge and
toll station. Already the number of discarded or wrecked cars was
on the increase, along with the meandering infected that tried to
chase after us when we drove by. Twice I had to drive into the
median to avoid large pileups or groups of Loonies. I knew the kind
of traffic conditions that usually existed at the toll plaza and
was not relishing the thought of having to take my family through
there. There just weren’t any other viable options.

We came over the rise that looked down into
the Potomac River basin and the toll plaza before the venerable old
steel two-lane bridge that spanned it. I drove down the hill and
stopped the truck within sight of the bridge and plaza. Cars and
semis were lined up before the toll booths completely blocking the
southbound egress. Milling about the stalled cars and trucks were
dozens of infected. I looked up at the bridge; something seemed out
of place.

“Jeremy, hand me your binoculars.”

He removed a small set of Nikon binoculars
from his hip pouch and handed them to me. I focused them on the
large steel span.

Near the peak of the bridge a semi had
stalled with several cars lined up behind it. The bridge was
twisted oddly in front of the truck. The roadbed canted at least
twenty five degrees and dipped down near the center span. Parts of
the steel girder suspension of the span were missing and many of
the rest were blackened and malformed. Debris lay scattered about
the roadbed. I looked in horror near the shore where the remains of
a large commercial airliner lay scattered on the surface and flung
along the property of a large power plant.

My heart sank. I handed the binoculars to
Holly.