Earth's Survivors, page 147
They left early on the first morning of the second week, Billy and Pearl on foot, Rob and Lisa, two of the newcomers, in a truck to cruise the fields outside of town looking for deer, or cows which seemed to be everywhere you looked, at least until you wanted one Lisa had joked.
Gina, another newcomer they had become close to, had stayed to keep things going at the cave which was close to fifty people now. Gina had been one of the first to come along. Tall, young, a shock of red hair that hung well below her waist, but was usually tied back into a ponytail and wrapped around her forehead. “Happy hunting,” Gina had called as they left.
Billy remembered that aloud as they walked, startling a small herd of goats that had been browsing the inside of a gas station as they passed. They let them go without a shot. Shots sometimes bought the dead. For some reason they didn't understand, the dead seemed to be changing. Less fearful of humans: Faster; out in the daylight. And their use of tools was becoming alarming. More than once they had seen evidence of tool usage by the dead. So this herd of goats were some that they couldn't hunt. He only hoped things were better for the others.
There was a police precinct seven blocks over where they hoped there would be a stash of weapons and ammunition, and That was Billy's real goal. They had no idea how many dangerous people were still in Watertown but he doubted all the bad had left and only the good remained. The police precinct should have plenty in the way of rifles and ammunition both. No way to know until they got there, but they had passed it a few times and it appeared closed up, like the cops had seen the end coming and locked it all up before they had left. Billy hoped so. They had plenty of ammunition but more was a no-brainer.
The Police station took half the day to break into. The cops had never left, they had simply become the dead in a prison of their own making.
It had been close at first. They had expected a few dead, but not dozens. They had all seemed to be blind though, as if the months in absolute darkness had stolen sight from their arsenal. They more than made up for that with speed and ferocity though. It was late afternoon before they had what they had come for, which turned out to be no more than a few hundred rounds of ammunition Billy wasn't even sure they could use.
They had gone floor to floor, window to window, and it was the same story at every stop. Brass casings piled in mounds. They had fought until they could no longer fight and then they had starved to death or succumbed to their wounds. Something. It was hard to tell. The basement level showed the end results of some sort of huge gun fight. There were blocks of cells down here, Billy saw. All standing open and shell casings everywhere. Maybe that was their answer. At least the only answer they were likely to get.
The trip back to the cave where they had been staying was tough. The light was seeping from the sky and Billy had opted for a small pawn shop they had passed a few times before to spend the night. The shutters were intact. They had shot the lock off the outside, but there were hooks on the inside to lock it from there. He and Pearl fit snugly inside. They pulled down the shutters and ran a padlock through the latches that Billy carried in his pocket for just that purpose.
The panels where heavy stainless steel. It would take more than a few dead to get through them. They had sat out the long night, listening to the dead smash and beat themselves against the panels, waiting for sunrise. Somewhere in the night Billy pulled Pearl close to him and they both drifted off into sleep despite the racket and stench from the dead.
~
The door slammed and the footsteps faded. He had lost track of the schedule as he had been in Weston's office, but he was fairly certain that he had not missed the most recent check on.
He had taken a hard look at the door and walls as they had come back. There was nothing at all. He could conceive of no reason why they stopped, waited and moved on. That may well have remained his only information except the soldier received some sort of call on the way back. He wore what had appeared to be an ordinary radio at his side. It burred several times, the soldier retrieved it from his belt and a small screen had come to life before the soldier had turned far enough away to hide it. Bear purposely forced himself to look elsewhere so that the soldier wouldn't suspect he had seen it. It answered many of his questions. Most likely there were cameras in the room. They could access them for the radio or whatever the device was. They had to be accessing some sort of signal feed to do it. Checking on them, logging off the feed and moving on.
He stood in the room now and waited for the footfalls. He had no doubt now that Weston intended to kill them. He had just decided that maybe he was incorrect, maybe the guards had already passed by on their check, when he heard a commotion in the hallway.
At first he couldn't place the noise in context but a second later a deep rattle of gunfire filled the air and he could feel as well as hear the running in the hallway along with the gunfire. He watched as a hole suddenly appeared in the door. One second the door had been smooth and whole, the next there was a ragged hole, torn metal at its edges. He followed the hole to the wall where another less ragged hole had been punched through into whatever was behind that wall, probably the next room/cell down, he told himself.
The noise flashed by, moved off. A few screams in the distance. More gunfire, and then silence returned and settled over him like a blanket. He couldn't stand it and dropping quickly to the floor he called out to Beth. No answer came. He cried out again, louder, panic raking his voice, hoarseness creeping in from yelling so loudly, but there remained no answer.
~
The duct work was dark and the footing slippery. One soldier had Beth by the back of her jacket and kept forcing her forward when she didn't move fast enough. Her hands were zip tied and already painful. She was pretty sure that complaining about that would get her nowhere. These five didn't seem the compassionate type. She stumbled along as she was pushed, slowing down purposely, hoping against hope that Bear would somehow find her.
~
Bear fished the fingernail clippers form his pocket. He had palmed them when he had leaned across the desk toward Weston. He went to work on the door, first prying of the chrome retainer ring on the inside of the door that covered the handsets mounting screws. He had been sure that once he got it pried off that the screws would be security screws, but they were not. A few more minutes and he had the screws out. The handle set pushed through and fell out onto the carpet. It took a second or two to figure out how the mechanism worked but once he did he had the door opened. He ran to a room three doors down where the door had been opened. It was empty, but the unmade bed told him someone had been there and who else was there besides himself and Beth? He questioned.
He stood in the hallway only a few seconds before he ran off in the direction he hoped would take him toward her and those who had taken her. Less than fifty feet down the hallway curved and two bodies lay sprawled in blood on the white tile flooring. The walls were blood splattered like a slaughter house. Bear slowed, hoping that he would not find Beth among the bodies. He bent and turned a woman over; not Beth. Just a young woman he remembered from earlier. She had fallen forward onto her rifle. Bear snatched it up quickly, ripped an extra clip from her belt and sprinted down the hallway.
~
She stumbled and fell, crying out as she did. Something, some piece of debris had cut her. Nothing serious. She saw that quickly, but it looked bad. Maybe it could buy time.
“Get up bitch, get up,” The one that had been prodding her told her.
“I can't.” She tried hard to catch her breath. It was no act. He meant to kill her if she got up or didn't get up and that had caused fear to settle in, her heart to race, her breathing to become ragged. One would just be a short while later. “Broke it... Feels like I broke it,” she said between pulls of the musty air from the duct work.
The man bent down and stopped just inches away from her face. His fingers curled into her jacket pulling her toward him roughly. “Get up or I will kill you right now. I won't ask again. I don't give a fuck.” He held her eyes briefly but they slipped away when someone else spoke.
“Shoot her and I'll shoot you next,“ a soldier that had been behind them said calmly. His rifle rose from the floor and settled on the man in front of her.
He shoved her away and tried to shoot and turn at the same time. Not a word was spoken, no retaliatory words, nothing. He just started to turn and fire at the same time. A bad mistake apparently, as the other man had also not been joking: The duct work lit up brightly with the flashes of rifle fire that punched the air and felt as though it would puncture her eardrums.
The other three standing close by had frozen. The rifle fire lasted seconds only and both men were dead when it finished. She couldn't hear right. Sounds seemed coated in cotton, far away, muffled, nonsensical. She didn't know Bear was there until her eyes rose as a boot stepped into her vision and continued to rise until they found his profile. A rifle in his hands, turned toward the remaining three. She rose slowly to her feet, pulling a knife free from the dead soldier next to her. She could hear nothing that made sense, but she could tell there was anger and urgency in the words she couldn't understand. She reversed the knife in her hand and cut through one of the zip ties in a split second.
Her hands were numbed from the ties, but she let the knife fall and immediately squatted and picked up a discarded rifle. In the space of two seconds the entire situation had changed. She longed to turn and look at Bear. Maybe he had tried to say something to her, but the cottony silence held her. She watched as one of the men started to raise his rifle. She wondered after what he had intended: To throw it down? Toss it away? She didn't know. Self preservation kicked in and she opened up on the three of them. She heard Bear shoot too. None of the three fired back. They had no time to do so. They crumbled where she had stood. A split second more and she was looking at Bear as he quickly picked up the knife and cut the remaining zip tie free. He spoke, but she got nothing from it. Muffled static. She started to move forward and Bear stopped her, pointing back the way they had come. She knew why. She nodded and followed him as he made his way back through the red tinged water back toward the facility.
The Nation:
Jessie and Sandy
It was late. Jessie had walked back up with Brad. Brad had left to help Bob with something, and Jessie had found herself sitting with Sandy.
Sandy spoke first. “What have you decided to do, Jessie, if you leave next spring there are a few hundred of us that will go with you. Even Bob and Jan...” Her face was red, and her voice a low whisper. “I feel like I am pressuring you to do something you don't want to do, but you have people that believe in you, and the Fold could grow into something that could rival The Nation. Easily rival the Nation.”
“I know that, Sandy. It isn't that. I.” She stared at Sandy hard. “Between you and me for now.” She thought a second. “You, me, Bob, Brad, Jan a few others. Don't tell anyone that you don't trust. Can you promise me that?”
“I can,” Sandy said. There was relief in her voice. It was obvious to Jessie she had been concerned that maybe Jessie had abandoned her ideas for recognition of the Fold. “I haven't decided to give up. I've decided... I've decided, why give this up? I mean, it was Bob's idea first, wasn't it? Wouldn't Bob have a say so in what it is? How it runs? I want those of us that have been excluded to get together. Have a meeting of our own. I don't want to leave though, Sandy. I want to stay.” She finished and leaned back away from Sandy.
“They will never let you rename it,” Sandy told her quietly.
“I know that. But we won't ask permission, we'll just do it,” Jessie said every bit as quietly. “We have the winter to work it out, but by next spring I intend for us to be in charge, not them. If anyone leaves it will be them, not us.” Jessie leaned back and looked around the mostly empty cave area.
The plan was coming together in her head. It didn't have to be hard. It didn't have to be complex, it just needed a little push in the right direction. She looked back at Sandy and spoke. “Get the ones you trust together, after the snow fall. We'll all plan an outing, an invited only outing. It doesn't have to be far, just somewhere where we can hash it out. Make sure we're all on the same page.” She hesitated briefly. “Can you do that for me Sandy?”
“Yes... You really think we can take over this place?” She asked.
“I really do,” Jessie said as she rose. “Let me know when you have the meeting ready and we'll all sit down together.” Jessie waited for Sandy's nod and then turned and walked away from the table. She stepped out into the long passage way and began to walk toward the other side of the cave system
Watertown:
Bear and Beth
The facility was silent. Bear lead the way to the corridor that held Weston's office, but he was long gone. The desk drawer was empty. They ransacked the office, but it was hard to know where exactly what they were looking for was. Probably with Weston, where ever he was. It was clear that there must be more of the antidotes here somewhere in the facility, but where? They could search for days and never find it.
They walked back into the hallway.
“I think he didn't get into that tunnel,” Bear said decisively.
Beth agreed. “I didn't see him. It looked like those guys were trying to get away too, so it made me think he had to still be back here somewhere calling the shots and they were just...” She shrugged. “Running away, breaking out.”
Bear nodded. “Makes sense.” He looked up and down the hallway. “Has to be that way then. The other way leads out. There is no place else he could have gone.”
A few seconds later they were both moving down the corridor, spread out, watching the doors, searching.
Watertown
Billy and Pearl
The cave was silent as they approached it, but at first it didn't register for Billy. His mind was on Pearl and her silence. She had awakened silent and she had said little. She was still fragile from the attack, and so he worried over her.
He had stepped into a browned smear of blood, and printed his boot track across the entryway before it dawned on him that something wasn't right. His boot made an odd sucking sound as it came up from the worn rock and Billy looked at it. A sound like tape pulling away from your skin, something like that, he thought. The coppery smell of blood hit him, and something else. The stench of death floated out of the cave, slipping under the canvas. He had back tracked a hundred feet in what seemed like seconds, coming to stop next to one of the trucks, leaning against the fender, his breath ragged and rushed.
“Pearl.” Billy raised his eyes to the front seat of the pickup truck, and then across the open bed. Empty. His eyes shot back to the bed. Wet, pink puddles. A familiar smell he didn't have time to place. It didn't matter though, the cab was empty, safety for Pearl while he figured out what had happened. He levered the door open and Pearl jumped willingly inside with no resistance.
“Honey... Listen... Pearl... If you can't see me, don't open the door... Don't open it... Stay in there.” She nodded, her eyes frightened.
He wore a pair of 9 mm guns with over-sized clips. He had taken them from a dead man a few weeks back on their way north. He had replaced the heavier .45's he carried with them. That man had been shot through the head. He had wondered about that, but not for long. There were a lot of ways to get dead in this world, he didn't need to think about that, it was a fact. Whatever this man had done had been bad enough that another living being had decided to end his life. Or maybe he had been just another guy trying to survive and some bad men had found him. He doubted that though. They would have taken the guns had that been the case. What really bothered him was the way he began to work the explanation over in his head. No thought for the body that lay in the street. The violence no longer seemed to bother him. How long before he too was just another statistic? Or an anti statistic? One of the ones who simply shot first and never bothered to ask questions? He didn't know the answer. And although that should have bothered him as well it didn't.
The ammunition had been getting harder to find for the .45, but the 9 mm stuff was everywhere it seemed. He supposed some day that would run out too, but for now it was plentiful and he did not relish running out of ammunition. He took both guns out, flicked off the safeties and walked slowly to the cave entrance.
The stench was nearly overpowering as he toed the canvas aside and stepped partly inside. The fire was out, and so there was little light to see by. Even so he could see the remains of two bodies that lay close by the entrance way. He stood for what seemed like minutes looking down at the bodies, but there was no way to know who they had been. He might have gone on staring, lost in thought, but the nearest one lifted her upper body from the floor with her arms. Gina, Billy saw. The eyes were not the same, but there was something in the face that was still her own.
The eyes were red chips set in a sea of black. Her legs were gone, ripped from the hip sockets it seemed to Billy, yet she struggled to lift her entire body, her stomach convulsing, the muscles contracting, trying to lift her. Her mouth opened and clumps of black blood fell as her teeth gnashed. Billy lowered one gun and shot her between the eyes. Jelled brain splattered to the floor behind her and she lost her animation, slowly sagging back down to the floor.
The sound of the gunshot woke up something or someone else in the farther reaches of the cave. The odd whining sounds the dead produced leapt out at him and the sound of feet dragging against the concrete. Billy stepped back and let the curtain of canvas fall back in place. A second later he was back at the truck where he had left Pearl. She reached over and unlocked the door, Billy ripped the door open, glancing at the ignition as he did. No keys.
He shut the door and ran for the other truck. He could see the keys dangled from the ignition through the glass. He turned and raced around the edge of the first truck and yanked the door open. A second later he had pulled Pearl out when she had seemed to be hesitating, looking toward the cave.
