“If you don’t mind, we’d like to spend a few minutes with Marion and Bobby,” I said, addressing the crowd of approximately twenty-five. “Only because they’re military trained. Not to say there aren’t others of you, but for now we’ll go over some things with them and they can pass it along to you.”
Everyone nodded tiredly, and Bobby and Marion stepped outside the cooler with us. “Look, we don’t want to stay out here too long. Smells, you know. But there are some things you need to know to make it.”
“First off,” Gem said, “get more guns. You’ll need as many as you can all carry and handle. Next, head shots. In the brain. It’s the only thing that will kill them.”
I nodded as Gem shared information. “Headaches. It seems to either come on with a massive headache, like a migraine, or how I just saw it happen. Upon the death of the uninfected.”
Bobby and Marion stared at us. Bobby spoke. “When they . . . die?”
Gem nodded. “Within ten or fifteen minutes they’re back. But not the same. Not at all the same.”
“And the heads can live without the bodies, so we can’t stress enough to inflict massive trauma on the brain. Cutting off he head just makes a dangerous bowling ball with teeth. You get bit, you become one. Scratched, we’re pretty sure you become one. There’s a lot we don’t know, but just act like what we’re telling you is gospel, and you should live to tell your grandkids about this.”
“Where are you going?” Marion asked. “Can we come with you?”
I shook my head. “Guys, I’m just like you are. I’m not suited to be part of a big group. I don’t have big plans at this point, and for Christ’s sake, I don’t want to be a leader. I think we’d like to remain a foursome. Well, plus our dog.”
Gem stared at me. “They need help, Flex.”
I stood at looked at Gem’s eyes, the concern there. I looked back at the sunken eyes of Bobby, a short but solid, stocky man with a round face and dark hair parted at the side with his share of cowlicks. Marion stared back, her wire-rimmed glasses askew, hair pulled back in a pony. She was about 6’3” and towered over all of us by at least three inches. She scratched her freckled nose.
“Okay, look. What we’ve just shared with you will help you a lot. Get food, water, medicine whatever you can and stock up on non-perishables. I’m going to leave you with the Hummer we brought. It’s set up with dual machine guns and should give you a hell of a fighting chance to get wherever you’re going. But you – as a group – need to decide where that is. You must understand that we haven’t got a clue where we’re headed, much less where our next stop will be.”
“And get some of these,” Gem said, unclipping the radio from her belt. “Cell phones, as you already likely know, don’t work anymore. Use channel 19. It’s what we normally broadcast and listen on. Alternate is 16. These claim to have a range of thirty to thirty-five miles, but that’s only if I’m standing on a mountain looking at you down in the valley. Otherwise, 1-3 miles on a good day. But on that good day, if you pick up any other groups in the area you can play it by ear.”
“Find out the talents of the people in your group,” I said. “Engineers, scientists, teachers, police, military. It’ll tell you how to organize them. They’re understandably traumatized, and right now they just have an overwhelming need to be back with their families, to rejoin their old lives. But those lives are history. They’re gone forever. They have to realize it, or they’ll die, and you might, too.”
“Any questions?” Gem asked.
Bobby shook his head, then nodded. “Too many, I guess,” he said. “You guys saved us back there. I don’t even remember how I got in that house, but I remember everything from the moment you woke us up.”
“We’ll add that to the mystery of this whole, horrible thing,” Gem said. “We’re working with a pretty smart scientist, and the more information we gather about what and how these infecteds work, the more likely he’ll develop a way to cure them or a way to destroy them. But know this: we’re working on it.”
We finished our explanations and shook hands with them. Before they went back inside, I pulled Marion aside.
“Marion, would you be able to go in there and see if you have a Lillian Middleton with you? Taylor’s her granddaughter, and we found her mother back at the CDC.”
Her face became hopeful. “Are there others there? Do they have a plan for this . . . this situation?”
I shook my head. “There’s only one man that we found alive there. The others are turned or dead. Listen, I have to ask you something, because the basis for my question is probably the most important first step you could take. And I apologize for being a bit scattered here, but our friend is at the CDC and hasn’t heard from us in around two hours. He’s going to be worried.”
“I understand,” she said, bumping her glasses back up her nose with one finger. “What is it?”
“Has anyone complained about headaches since you all got here?”
“No, but what you said about the migraines – I knew it already. It’s how – well, it’s how my husband’s began.” Her eyes began to tear up. “I didn’t make a connection.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nobody it’s not going to touch.”
“It’s beginning to sink in,” she said, fidgeting with the AK-47’s strap.
Gem came out of the cooler and stood there listening to me, leaning against the wall as Taylor leaned against her legs. Her hands rested on the girl’s shoulders. Her Uzi hung off the side of her body, the barrel angled toward the floor. There was a thoughtful expression on her face. I smiled at her briefly but continued with my conversation.
“Marion, you need to quietly determine with absolute certainty whether any of your people here have headaches. Or head pain of any kind. I’m not saying you have to take any action, but you’ll want to keep an eye on them. A close eye. Someone should stand watch – probably more than one – through the night anyway, but monitor them, too. And you’re going to want to get more weapons soon. We hit the evidence locker at the Tallahassee PD, but any large department should do it.”
“How can we find you?”
“I don’t know where we’re going to be, but like I said, get either a ham radio, CB, or the handhelds. The range varies, but put them on scan and just listen. Ultimately, I think all three will be in use”
Gem chimed in. “He’s right, Marion. The best way to survive is with numbers and firepower. Build your group as quickly as you can, and you and Bobby and whomever else you deem qualified should start working on a plan.”
At that moment, a loud noise came from outside, like a freight train in the stillness of the new world day. Gem gave Taylor’s hand quickly over to Marion, and we ran to the front door of the convenience store and unlocked it. Nobody was visible, but a lumbering, gleaming bus came charging up the street, then attempted to slow suddenly as it turned into the store parking lot. A heavy layer of gravel lay over the asphalt, and the multi-ton motor home could not decelerate fast enough for its sudden right turn. The driver whipped the wheel back to the left when the traction broke. But it was all too fast.
The Class A behemoth was at least forty feet long. It started sliding sideways through the gravel, its huge rear end careening toward the front of the store. The rear half of the monster slid at four times the speed of the rest of the bus, as though it were cracked like a whip.
Gem and I tucked and covered our faces as the gravel shot into the air in dusty clouds, peppering every glass and metal surface with tiny rocks and sand as it finally came to rest about a foot from the expansive glass panels of the 7-Eleven.
We fanned our hands in front of us to clear the dust. Hemp sat in the driver’s seat, smiling broadly.
“Bloody fuck what a ride!” he yelled, sticking his head out of the window. “I didn’t have any damned way to get hold of you, and you’d been gone over two hours! When I saw your cars I cranked the
wheel!”
“And almost flipped this sucker over,” said Gem.
“Isn’t it fabulous?” Hemp beamed.
I looked at the gun turrets he’d engineered in the sides. Four of them, just awaiting firearms from our collection. I didn’t have much doubt that Hemp had used his recollection of what guns remained in our arsenal to determine spacing, size and placement of the turrets.
I laughed, and the sound seemed oddly out of place. “Well, Hemp. I’m sure glad you came. But we were just leaving.”
“We’ve found a bunch of uninfecteds, Hemp. Do you think you might have any questions for them?”
He shrugged from the motor home’s cockpit. “I can think of something, I’m sure,” he said. “Let me at them.”
As Gem and I gathered up some food and medical items from the store shelves, we let Hemp go in the cooler and probe around a bit. He had a nice, gentle demeanor, and we knew he’d be the perfect debriefer. He spent about fifteen minutes asking various questions. From inside the cooler we’d hear his muffled British accent, then a muffled response. Of course if he learned anything he’d fill us in later.
Taylor’s grandmother wasn’t present in the room, which meant that she was one of the dead, the turned, or the burned. We did not mention her again.
When Hemp finished, he told them there were several buses at the CDC, and any one of them would carry them all. They had bars on the windows, so were somewhat fortified. They’d have that and the Hummer.
For us, the Suburban would be fitted with machine guns before long, too, so we’d still have a pretty well-protected rolling convoy of vehicles. Overall, everyone was in good shape.
I wanted to get to my house. I wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like a good place to hole up and make a plan. Figure out what we would be doing for the foreseeable future. Train. Whatever. I just knew I wanted to get my ragtag group – my new family – to my house as soon as possible.
As Hemp came out, I touched his arm. “Hemp, how’s that gas line coming?”
“I finished that. Straight shot, just six 20-foot lengths, some couplings, a couple of 90-degree elbows, a union, and some pipe dope. Done deal.”
“And now you want me to ask what you did with the next hour and fifty minutes, right?
“Spent that on the gun turrets.”
“On that motor home there,” I confirmed.
“Not a motor home, chap. Mobile Lab.” He grinned. “And I started playing with another vehicle after that. So there’s some stuff to go over before we head out. We need some versatility in transportation, I think.”
I returned the smile on Hemp’s face that was so wide it threatened to split his head in two.
“First things first,” I said. “Let’s get this girl to her mother.”
“I get to drive something with guns,” Gem said.
I smiled. “Baby, that goes without saying. When mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.”
CHAPTER TEN