9.0 - Sanctum (17 page)

After I stepped out of the door to meet the helicopter that morning, I spent the next two days wondering if I'd somehow popped through a portal into a world where nearly everything went as expected—for better or worse—and the only surprises were innocuous.  It was safe, and it was boring.

It started with the helicopter’s arrival.  Martin piloted it down to the roof and picked up Grace and me.  We weren’t attacked.  The Black Hawk didn’t crash.  No Whites showed up, pushing us to board in a hazardous hurry.  Nobody shot anybody.  The only surprise—innocuous—had to do with the number of occupants in the helicopter when Grace and I got in: only Martin, Fritz, and Eve, the doctor who seemed to have an affinity for firearms, especially the machine gun mounted in the door behind Martin’s seat.  The other people we’d rescued the day before had opted to stay in Martin’s hideout at Fort Hood.  Safe and boring.

I explained the plan to Martin and his passengers—we’d infected the professors, we were going to babysit them for two days hoping a few survived, then Martin would come back with the Black Hawk and ferry us all out to Balmorhea for a deserved dose of happily ever after.  And maybe one day the professors would develop their vaccine.  Except for the part about exterminating the professors who turned into crazy Whites, it was a happy-ass plan.

Fritz and Eve were in.  Martin was enamored with the idea of a place where he'd not have to worry about running to save his life—maybe I'd oversold the positive qualities of Balmorhea.  Martin's only reservation was that once there, we were stuck, or, at least, the helicopter would be stuck.  After refueling at Fort Hood before the trip to pick us up, a hundred mile hop to College Station followed by a five-hundred-mile flight west across the wide part of Texas—or only part of the wide part—would leave the Black Hawk with enough fuel for only another hundred miles of flying.

We talked, not pointlessly, but near so, about loading one of the huge fuel trucks at Fort Hood with J8—the Black Hawk fuel—and driving it across Texas and keeping it in Balmorhea.  Then we'd be able to use the Black Hawk for whatever we needed.  That was a tempting idea, but it was something that needed to be done another day.  Maybe six months or a year in the future, after more of the Whites had cannibalized themselves or died of natural causes.  Then a fuel run to Fort Hood might work.

At the end of our discussion, Martin dropped Grace and me in a field not too far from the campus commissary.  Fritz and Eve spent an hour shooting nearby Whites and then the helicopter flew away once again. 

Later that day, after Grace and I returned to the commissary kitchen, Dr. Oaks awoke from his fever.  He was feeble but anxious to feed on warm flesh.  He was a brain-fried White.  Jazz killed him just like she'd killed other Whites, without emotion or hesitation.

Through the night and into the next day we killed them one by one when their fevers settled down to whatever their permanent temperature was going to be and they came out of their comas.  That was the expected outcome. 

The pleasant surprise was our plan to hole up in the commissary kitchen worked.  None of the naked horde ever attempted to enter the building.  Maybe the vast numbers of their dead all over campus kept their bellies full.  Maybe it was the cold weather keeping them indoors. 

An Indian grad student named Javendra awoke just before sundown on the second day.  Grace stayed close by his side, ready with her knife.  It was her turn to do the deed.  I squatted in front of him, getting his attention, urging him to say something intelligible.  To everyone’s pleasant surprise, he looked at me and said, “Dude, may I please have some water?” He wasn’t a Slow Burn like us, but he was a survivor with normal skin, and perhaps, a normal mind.

The last of them, a woman, couldn’t handle the fever and died in her sleep. 

Out of the forty-some professors, grad students, and assistants working on the vaccine, most had been slaughtered when the Whites breached their building.  Of the remaining dozen, one survived, and he wasn't a medical doctor.  He was a post-doc veterinary student who'd been doing work on anthrax before the virus hit.

After our brutal process to weed out the Whites, he was the residue on the bottom of the glass after the rest of our hope evaporated.

Better than nothing? Who’s to say? Time will tell.  We’ll see.  Fingers crossed.  Hope for the best. 

Yeah, that’s what it felt like.  Clichés to plug into the gaps where I wasn’t able to rationalize a way to feel good about the mess.  I decided to tell myself that every doctor, professor, and researcher had died and leave it at that.  Nothing against Javendra, he just didn’t inspire much confidence. 

If one day way out in desolate West Texas he finds a way—with no support, no equipment, no reference material, and no samples—to surprise everybody by suddenly revealing he'd bloomed as the Isaac Newton of virology and that he'd formulated the elusive vaccine, I'd be happily surprised then.

In the meantime, I’d settled for being happy we’d stayed safe for two straight days.

The next morning, the five of us—Grace, Jazz, Murphy, Javendra, and me—left the commissary and marched to the pharmacy building.  We let ourselves in the usual way and climbed the stairs to the roof where we waited just inside the door at the top of the stairwell.

I was thinking of Balmorhea, thinking it’d be nice to see gruff Dalhover again.  And as I tried to recall all the other names on the list of people I wanted to see, it occurred to me that everybody else I knew from back in the first few weeks of the outbreak was dead.

When the helicopter descended, close enough to the roof for all of us to climb in, I was immediately pissed.  Martin was flying.  Fritz and Eve were on the door guns.  A few boxes of supplies were loaded in the rear, but the other passengers were missing.  Had I not been clear in my instructions? Did they not realize a trip back to Killeen might add enough miles to put us in jeopardy on the flight to Balmorhea?

Or was Killeen on our flight path? Maybe I was overreacting.  Events had been cruising along with no major surprises for two days.  Maybe I was already spoiled. 

As the Black Hawk ascended with all of us on board, I got on the intercom and asked, “Where is everybody?”

“Gone,” Martin answered flatly.

I was sitting in a jump seat facing forward beside Fritz, so I bumped him on the shoulder and asked, “What does that mean? Did they get killed?”

“Don’t know.”  Fritz gave me his attention now that we were high enough to be out of danger from Whites below.  “We couldn’t find them.”

“They were in Martin’s hideout, right?”

“Of course,” Martin told me.

“When we got back after seeing you two days ago,” said Fritz, “they were gone.”

“Whites didn’t get them?” I asked.  It was a universal cause for missing companions.

Fritz shook his head.  “Everything was in its place.  No blood on the floor.  No bodies.”

“Did they say anything when you left that day?” I was sure an answer had to be right there under the surface.

“Not a word,” answered Fritz.  “Nothing out of the ordinary.  We were as surprised as you.”

“Did you look for them?”

“Of course.”  It was Eve who answered.  She was getting irritated with my questioning.

“We looked,” Fritz told me, “for two days.”  He shook his head and shrugged.  “Either they ran off, or, I don’t know.  They’re just gone.”

More dead.

“Are there still a lot of the infected at Fort Hood?” I asked.

“Most of ‘em cleared out,” said Martin.  “Looked that way to me.”

Fritz confirmed.  “Plenty of them still around, but most of them disappeared along with our friends by the time we got back.”

I sat down and shook my head.  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nope,” said Fritz.  “It frustrated us, too.  We’ve been dealing with this for two days.  We looked everywhere.  We flew over the base a few times.  Nothing.  Maybe they got tired of trying to save the world and decided to save themselves.”  He looked into the back, and his eyes settled on Javendra.  “Is he the only one who made it?”

“The odds weren’t in favor of even one surviving,” I told him.  “I guess we’re lucky.”

Fritz smiled grimly.  “Lucky.  Yeah.”

Martin cut in, “We done with that, then?”

“I suppose so.”  I didn’t have any more questions and apparently there weren’t any more answers.  In the end, it was curiosity driving my questions more than anything.  I had no attachment to the missing people.  I didn’t even know their names.  “What’s on your mind?”

“I had an idea about our fuel dilemma,” said Martin.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“San Angelo,” Martin went on.  “It’s a little over halfway to Balmorhea and a little out of the way.”

“How far out of the way?” I asked.  “And why are we talking about San Angelo?”

“It might add thirty or forty miles to the trip,” he said.  “Goodfellow Air Force Base is there.  If we stop, and things look safe, maybe we can top off our fuel tanks.  Then when we land at Balmorhea, we’ll have six hours of fuel left.  Plenty to use the helicopter if we need it.  Plenty to get back and forth to Goodfellow to fill up.”

Good news.  Not counting the missing three or all of the dead professors, the last few days had given us a long string of wins.  Maybe things were starting to go our way.  “Sounds good to me.”

College Station disappeared behind us as Martin flew the Black Hawk to an altitude he felt comfortable cruising at.  Those of us who were naked sorted out our clothes and got dressed.  Mine and Murphy’s were on the helicopter from when we’d stripped down a few days ago.  The others got what Fritz and Eve guessed would fit, mostly military gear.  I had to admit, I was disappointed when Grace got dressed, and Jazz draped clothing over her collection of tattoos.

At first, everyone talked, sharing stories of the past few days, asking if we’d come across any other survivors of the attack on campus.  Of course, we hadn’t.  Everybody knew we hadn’t.  But sometimes words helped ease frayed emotions no matter what’s being talked about.  Eventually, the conversation died down, and everyone settled in for the trip, parked in their seats, heads bobbing every time the helicopter bounced through some turbulence, eyes closed, or staring at the passing landscape below.

I was in the staring club, watching the ground change as it moved past.  First, forests of oak and cedar, or tall pines.  Formerly cultivated fields—mostly brown, some bare with smatterings of weeds—patterned acres and acres between thin gray roads.  Little towns and farmhouses came into view and went past beneath us perhaps never to be seen from the air again.

When we neared I-35, the main north-south highway running up from San Antonio to Austin, to Dallas, and on to Oklahoma, the land below turned mostly to farms and field.  Whites moved around below, some in small groups, some in herds, but I didn’t spot any significant remnant of the naked horde.  That worried me. 

I didn’t see a single moving vehicle, not on the highways, not in the towns, and not on the country roads.  We saw plenty of destruction though, of course.  It was surprising how many houses and whole neighborhoods had burned.  Fire had blackened wide swaths of farmland as well, but all that barren ground was starting to turn green with native plants that thrived in Texas’ mild winters.

Eventually, most signs of civilization disappeared behind us, and though I saw thin roads, barns, and lonely houses, each seemingly miles from their neighbors.  The ground below turned hilly and rocky.  The pine forests didn’t grow so far west, and the number of oaks declined the farther we flew.  Only scrubby forests of cedar, huisache, and mesquite were left.

Murphy leaned close to me, and over the noise asked, “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.  I’m just staring.”

“What are we gonna do if we get out to Balmorhea and nobody’s there?”

I looked at Murphy, thinking he was asking if I thought Rachel was alive.  “I’m sure she’s fine.” 

Murphy shook his head and turned to look at the ground slowly passing below.  “There’s a smart person word for that.” 

“What?”

“I’m not a kid whose goldfish died,” he told me. 

He was right.  I’d been trying too hard to wrap an ugly possibility in syrupy sweetness.  “Sorry.”

Murphy raised a single finger.  “Maybe they made it to Balmorhea, and they’re all fine.”  He raised a second finger.  “They made it, but now they’re dead.”  He raised a third finger.  “Or we get there and find out they never made it.  No sign of ‘em.”

I didn’t say anything, not sure where Murphy was going.

Murphy stared out the window as he said, “Seems to me the most unlikely situation is them being there and being alive.”

I opened my mouth to disagree, but Murphy raised a big palm to hush me.

“Don’t.”  He drilled me with a hard stare.  “We’ve been through too much together.  Okay?”

I searched around for the right way to voice my thoughts.  It took a minute, but it all distilled down to me confronting a truth I’d been avoiding.  They were probably all dead.  “Back when they left to go out there, I truly thought it was the safest thing and I—”

“I know,” said Murphy.  “I thought the same thing, they’d get there.  They might have some trouble along the way, but they were driving armored Humvees with Fifties mounted on the roofs.  They had a ton of supplies in that trailer.”  Murphy pointed a finger across the landscape below us.  “All they needed to do was get out of town.  Hell from where they left, there wasn’t a whole lot of town to get out of, just mansions on hills and condos by the lake.  Once they got out this way,” Murphy looked down for emphasis, “there’s just not a lot out here.  Trees.  Hills.  Dirt.  But not a lot of people to turn into Whites.  They could have made it.  They should have made it.”

“But,” I said.

“But.”  Murphy nodded, stopped, and nodded again.  “But you see how things go.  Everybody’s plans go to shit.  Everybody dies.”

“Not everybody.”

“Everybody.”

“We’re still alive.”  I thumbed at the others in the helicopter.  “Jazz.  Grace.  Fritz.  Eve.  Hell, even Martin is still alive, and he couldn’t outrun a legless frog.”

Shaking his head and looking disappointed, Murphy said, “Maybe we’re the all-stars of the apocalypse.  Maybe we’re the best.”  He looked over his shoulder at the others.  “Maybe we were all cut out for this shit from the get-go.  We never fit into the old life.  It wasn’t until the virus ruined the world that we turned spectacular.”

“And?” I asked.  “Where are you going with this?”

“Maybe everybody else dies because they’re not like us.  Maybe regular people who fit in well with the way things used to be all died.  Most of ‘em, anyway.  And the rest of ‘em,” Murphy hung his head and looked down at the ground, “they’re just not dead yet.”

“I disagree.”  At least, I mostly did.  I did believe that Murphy and me were made to order for the way the world was now.  I just didn’t believe everybody needed a special talent to survive, though I may have made the argument in the past.

“Either talent or luck,” said Murphy.  “And I don’t like to think it’s all luck.  Because that means we can’t do anything about it.”

“Fine.”  I sat up straight.  “Say you’re right, then you have to believe that Dalhover and Rachel are both talented.  You know what they’ve been through.  A lot of the same stuff we have.  And some worse shit, too.  You can’t argue with that.”

“Maybe.”  Murphy sighed.  “It still doesn’t answer the question—what are we going to do if we get to Balmorhea, and they’re not there, or they’re dead?”

“And that’s the real question isn’t it?”

Murphy nodded.

I wished I could help Murphy find his missing optimism.  He was a lot easier to be around when he was positive.  I didn’t linger on the thought long enough to apply it to myself.  Thoughts for another day, is what those were.  “If we get to Balmorhea, and it isn’t what we hoped for, we’ll go on to the next place.”

“When?”

“When we’re ready.”

“Where?” Murphy asked. 

I shrugged.  “Wherever we find food, water, and Whites to kill.”  Those words just slipped out. 
Whites to kill?
Was that really it? Was it a Freudian slip, my truest goal coming to the surface, unmasking itself?

“I think we need to plan ahead.”

“Okay,” I said.  “What do you have in mind?”

“I think we need to go north.  Way up in the mountains.  Not Colorado.  Not even Montana.  Up in Canada where it gets cold as hell in the winter and the snow stays for six months.”

I grimaced.  “Sounds like heaven.”

“In its way, probably no worse than Balmorhea.”

I laughed.  Southwest Texas was dry and desolate.  “Why Canada?”

“These Whites don’t have any sense.  They’ve got to be getting trapped out in the snow up there and dying.  They have to be.  They’re people just like us.  They’ve got to be freezing to death this winter.”

“Going up there in the winter with no supplies and no warm place to stay might be just as dangerous for us.”  I looked at Murphy, hoping for some agreement on that point.  “If you’re convinced on this idea, maybe we head north in the spring and try to find a place this summer.  That’ll give us a chance to stock up on food and enough wood for a fire to keep us warm before the snows come again next winter.”

Murphy nodded, seemingly satisfied to be taking a role in planning our future.  “For the rest of the winter, I think we need to do what Martin suggested.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“If there’s nobody in Balmorhea, I say we let him fly all of us to an oil rig in the Gulf.  Find one that’s deserted and ride out the rest of the winter there, safe as can be.”

“As long as it’s just for a few months,” I told him.  “As great as that idea seems, I think it’s a death warrant.  All you’ve got to do is lose your helicopter in a storm, or your boat if you’ve got one, and then you’re stranded on a steel island with no fresh water and no way to grow food.  You’ll starve to death or die of thirst.  It’s inevitable.”

“I’d go nuts being on a rig too long anyway,” Murphy told me.  “I need more room.  Know what I mean?”

“I do.”  I put a hand on Murphy’s shoulder and lied.  “Let’s not write off Dalhover and Rachel just yet.  I’m sure they’re out there in Balmorhea and they’re okay.”