Apocalypse Atlanta (85 page)

“Doc, I gotta tell you, I’d have to try and keep that from happening.”

“You just remember who’ll patch you back together if you screw yourself up.” Dennis snorted.  “And make yourself useful, go get me a container.  I’m going to need something to drain all this into.”

“How big?” Austin asked agreeably.

“Big.”

Austin left, and Dennis sighed.  “Jessica, why didn’t you call again?”

Jessica blinked up at him.  She heard and understood everything that was going on, but when she tried to formulate an answer it seemed to take her considerable effort to find the words.  “The phone broke.  I don’t know, something happened to it.”

“You couldn’t find another one?”

“The closest buildings didn’t have any power.”

“Damnit, that’s right.” Dennis grimaced.  “Power’s out all over the city.”

“Not here.”

He shook his head.  “No, here too.  But there are two big generators running in the garage.  Tyler’s people set them up before they began leaving.”

“What’s wrong?” Jessica asked.  “Why are people leaving?”

“It’s . . . complicated.” Dennis sighed.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Jessica murmured.

Dennis smiled.  “Yeah, not on that leg you aren’t.  How far did you have to walk?”

“From Peachtree Industrial.”

“You came down Abbotts Bridge on foot?” his eyebrows were raised, and his eyes wide.

“We came through the woods.” Candice said.  Jessica turned her head and saw her daughter was looking up at Dennis calmly.  She reached out a hand, which Candice took immediately.  Her little face looked, well not content, but far more at ease than it had since . . . well since dinner time.  Since before everything had gone to hell.

“You’re damn lucky.” Dennis breathed.  “You have no idea.”

“Why?  It was that or stay where we were, and I didn’t know if anyone was coming for us.”

“That was sort of the last straw for when Tyler’s people started leaving.  They were already on edge about the announcement about the bombing runs, and when hordes started appearing out here, they said all bets were off.”

Jessica frowned.  “I don’t know what that means.”

Dennis grimaced.  “I don’t want to get into it right now, not with you all hopped up on morphine, but the short version is we had maybe fifty or sixty people here, and now we’re down to fourteen.”

“Sixteen, counting you and your daughter.” a female voice said.  Jessica turned her head and saw a red haired woman standing in the doorway.  Austin loomed behind her, though to be fair he was just standing there.  Jessica supposed it took work to avoid the appearance of being threatening and dangerous when you were as big as he was.

“Vanessa Morris.” she said, moving forward with a deep porcelain bowl that had an intricate design of flowers encircling it just below the rim.  “Dennis says you’re the heart and soul of his office.”

“I just keep it running.” Jessica shrugged.  “The rest of us are out of work without him there.”

Vanessa wore a skirt suit and a polite expression of attention as she handed the bowl to Dennis.  “I want to apologize for the mix up that resulted in you getting stranded out there.”

Jessica frowned slightly.  “I wrecked my car when a zombie stepped out in front of me.  I don’t see how that’s your fault.”

“Yes, but you did manage to call in with your location.” Vanessa said, stepping back and standing next to the door.  Austin had taken up a position in the doorway, his hands hooked on his belt casually.  “The person who took your call was one of those who left, and he neglected to do so in an orderly fashion.  Your information was lost in the transition.”

“Jessica, this is probably going to feel a little weird, but don’t move, okay?” Dennis said.

Jessica looked down and saw Dennis had the syringe in his hand again, along with another alcohol pad.  “I’m fine.” she assured her boss.  “Or, I guess the morphine is.”

“Okay.”  He swabbed her knee gently with the pad, leaving it tingling and cold.  “You might not want to watch this, it could get a little gross.”  He paused for a few moments, as if waiting for her to look away, then just shrugged slightly and dropped the pad.

Setting the needle against the side of the big bubble of swelling on the front of her knee, he pushed it in, then started pulling the plunger back.  Fluid, yellow but with a red tinge to it, began filling the syringe.  Jessica took one look at it, realized that was inside her, and hastily averted her eyes.

Vanessa had crossed her arms, and she smiled when Jessica looked around at her.  “So anyway, like I was saying, I’m glad you made it here, and I’m sorry you had to go though so much to do so.”

“We’re here now.” Jessica said.  Dennis was right.  It did feel extremely odd as he drained her knee.  Not painful.  More like there was pressure that was being released.  She felt the needle leave her flesh, an odd sensation that also didn’t hurt, then heard something splattering against porcelain.  She had to suppress a shudder when she realized that was probably the drained fluid being emptied into the bowl.

“I’m also sorry, but after Dennis gets done treating your knee we’re going to need to examine you.”

“What?” Jessica blinked.

“It’s a safety precaution.” Dennis said.  He jabbed the needle back in her.  Jessica did not look down again.  He knew what he was doing, and she didn’t need to see the details.  “Vanessa, I guess that’s why you’re in here?”

The woman nodded.  “It occurred to me you might not want to disrobe for Dennis, even though he is a doctor.  So I’m your other option.”

“I’m not following you.” Jessica said slowly, feeling like maybe she should be alarmed or something.  The morphine was still working though, stealing away all the sharp edges and heaviest parts of her emotions.  She felt nice and relaxed.

“You’ve been out there, on foot from what I heard.” Vanessa said briskly.  “Did you encounter any zombies?”

“Yes, we had to run from . . . well many I guess.” Jessica said.  “Do you need a count or something?”

“No, but we need to be sure your only injury is that knee.  By the way, Dennis, I assume it’s just a bruise or something?”

“Probably a very bad sprain.” Dennis said.  “I can’t know for sure without a scan, or until she’s had a few weeks to fully heal so I can see how it reacts, but I think it’s just a sprain.”

“But no broken skin?”

“No, not until I started poking needles into her.”

“Right.” Vanessa nodded.  “But we need to be sure.” she repeated, looking at Jessica.  “I hope you understand.  It’s just a quick peek, and we’re done.”

“Peek at what?”

Vanessa sighed, looking a bit frustrated, but Dennis spoke up.  “Ease up Vanessa.  She’s had a rough night, and I just gave her a big dose of morphine.  Exercise a little patience.”

“I – you’re right, of course.” Vanessa said, her expression smoothing over contritely.  “My apologies.  Jessica, you need to be examined to make sure you don’t have any bites on you.  Everyone here who’s left the house and returned has been examined, and if you’re going to stay you and your daughter need to be as well.”

Jessica blinked, then nodded slowly.  “I suppose that makes sense.”

“I’m glad you agree.  Like I said, it’s just a precaution, but it’s an important one.  I doubt you’ll have to go through it again, since your injury and your daughter’s age make it unlikely we’ll need to have you do anything outside a secured area.”

“I won’t mind if you want her to do the exam.” Dennis said.  Jessica heard him emptying the syringe again, and she risked a look down.  The big bubble on the front of her knee was already half the size it had been, and the pressure was lower.  The morphine was working beautifully to kill the pain, but she knew even without it her knee would be hurting less.  All that pressure that wasn’t there anymore had to mean less pain.

“Uh . . . nothing personal Dennis, but you’re married.” she said, summoning a grin.

* * * * *

Darryl flicked his Zippo, but the wheel only threw sparks that didn’t catch.  Frowning, he flicked again, then held the lighter up next to his ear and shook it.  “Fuck.”

“Here bro.”

He looked up in time to see something small arcing towards him, barely visible in the moonlight.  His hand came up just in time to almost catch it, but when he missed he managed to pop it up into the air, which gave him a chance to snag it with a second effort.  When his hand closed on it he found it was an oval Bic lighter.

“Thanks man.” he told Tiny before putting flame on the end of his cigarette and inhaling the smoke.  He loved the rush of the smoke into his lungs.  It was an easy luxury, and was a very good way to pass the time when you were stuck watching over something.  He smoked to pass the time on his Oasis shifts, and now he was finding it was just as diverting when he was sitting on the roof with a rifle at the ready.

He made to throw the lighter back to Tiny, but the big biker shook his head.  “Naw, I got another.  That one almost empty anyway.”

“You know if they remembered to get any lighter fluid?” Darryl asked, sticking the currently useless Zippo and the useful Bic in his pocket.

“I think there a few cans in the barn, maybe.” EZ offered.

“Hmm.” Darryl grunted, taking the smoke out of his mouth and tapping ash off to one side.  “Guess I gotta go digging through there tomorrow.”

The thing Darryl had noticed about being out here, something he’d never really been aware of before now, was how quiet it was.  To be fair, normally the clubhouse was jumping with tunes and partying.  If he wasn’t chilling with his fellow Dogz while he was out here it usually was because he’d partied himself into a drunken stupor and passed out.  The next day he’d always be awakened by the resumption, or continuing, of the party.

And even when things had been a little more sedate, there was also a little bit of something going on in the background.  Highway 78 was only about a mile to the northwest, even if it was screened by heavy carpet of trees.  Even in the dead of night, or perhaps especially then, cars and trucks could be heard headed west towards Atlanta or east towards Athens.

Not now though.  Darryl had been on watch for about ninety minutes, and he was still trying to get used to how fucking quiet it was.  There was no distant hum of engines and tires.  No overhead drone of aircraft.  No music thumping below him from the clubhouse.  And the sky, that was also a real eye opener.  In Atlanta the night sky was really more of a dark haze lit from below by the city it was draped over.  Out here, it was a velvet blanket with hundreds and hundreds of individual jewels of light that shone down clearly.

“How long you think it gonna be like this?” Mad asked.

Darryl continued smoking for a few moments, then felt eyes on him and glanced around.  Tiny and EZ were still sitting in their lawn chairs, facing off in the directions they were supposed to be watching, but Mad and Psycho had turned their heads to look at him.  “What, you asking me?”

“I guess.” Mad shrugged.   “I mean, it sort of a philosophical question.”

“Bro, like you know anything about philosophy.” EZ said in a tone calculated to wiggle a verbal knife into Mad’s skin.

“Hey fuck you EZ.” Mad said, his tone proving the blade had struck home.  “I just sitting here thinking and–”

“Yeah, that’s what I smelled.” Tiny chuckled.

“Why y’all gotta go an be like that?”

“Well, what else is there to do?” Psycho said.  “I mean, it boring as fuck up here.”

“We keeping watch.” Tiny replied.

“Yeah, well, it boring.”

“It important.” Darryl said mildly, turning back to gaze across the lake.

“It can be important and boring at the same time.” Mad pointed out.

“Yeah, well . . . it still important.” Darryl shrugged.

“So I thinking, cause it a good way to stay awake.” Mad said, clearly trying to haul the thread of the conversation back on what he saw as the track.  “How long things gonna stay like this?”

“Like what?” Darryl asked after a moment, after he made sure no one else was going to volunteer to offer an opinion.

“You know, with zombies and shit walking around.”

“How the fuck I supposed to know?” Darryl asked, not entirely unreasonably in his opinion.

“Well, you a smart Dog, right?”

“Bro, just ‘cause Bobo gone and made me his bitch don’t make me smart.”

“Yeah, well at least you know that’s how it is.” Psycho laughed.

Darryl shrugged again.  Bobo had called everyone briefly to order just before people started bunking down to get some sleep and made his delegation announcements.  Darryl had been braced for complaints or argument, especially over his part in Bobo’s system, but no objections had been raised.  That had surprised him.

“They gonna figure shit out, sooner or later.” EZ said.

“Who?” Mad asked.

“Who what?”

“Who gonna figure shit out?”

“Oh.” EZ said.  “You know, the government.”

“What if there ain’t no more government?”

“Bro, you need to chill.” EZ said.

“I bored, so I thinking about stuff.” Mad protested.  “What you want me to do?”

“I don’t fucking know.  Have a smoke or something.”

“Dog, it ain’t like I’m asking some far out shit.  This applicable to us.”

“Oh Christ.” Tiny muttered, though his voice was clearly pitched to carry.

“Now what?”

“What you been doing, reading a dictionary?” Tiny asked.

“Just cause you can’t handle no words longer than two syllables don’t mean we all idiots.”

Darryl heard Tiny’s chair creak, and turned to see the big man turning to glare at Madman.  “Alright Dogz, dial it the fuck back a bit.” Darryl said calmly, really hoping that would be enough to prevent further friction.

Tiny raised a finger at Mad briefly, then turned back to face the trees to the north.

“Ain’t no one gonna say something?” Mad asked after a few seconds.

“About what?” Psycho asked.

“Fuck!” Mad said loudly.  “About the shit we done fucking stuck in the middle of.”

“I don’t know, okay?” Darryl said quickly, trying to head off a repeat of the same argument.  “Don’t no one know how it gonna be.”

“Well, what happen if there ain’t no more government?”

“There always a government.” Darryl said, thinking to the history classes he’d barely managed to not sleep through at UGA.

“There ain’t no more President, no Congress, no damn military–”

“There a Congress an military.” EZ said.

“No there ain’t.” Mad replied.  “Teevee done said they cleared out of Washington.  And Atlanta ain’t the only city that done been turned into a fucking zombie buffet.”

“Teevee said the government was evacuating Washington.” EZ pointed out.  “And if there ain’t no military, who you think gonna be dropping them bombs tomorrow?”

“Today.” Psycho said.

“Naw, tomorrow.” Tiny said with a grunt of laughter.  “It ain’t tomorrow until you done slept.”

“Whatever, sometime before it get dark again, they supposed to be bombing the shit out of a lot of cities.” EZ said, his tone making it clear he didn’t care about the semantics of when today became tomorrow.  “If there ain’t no more military, where they getting the bombs from, and who dropping them?”

“Okay, but if there no more power, and if all the big cities done been nuked, then where that leave us?”

“Mad, you need to chill the fuck out.” Tiny said warningly.

“It leave us here.” Darryl said.  “Maybe it might not be so bad.”

There was a moment of silence, then Psycho spoke.  “How it not gonna be so bad?”

“Well, fuck, think about it.  Who honestly like the fucking retards we got in government anyway?” Darryl pointed out.  “And the cops?  And the banks?  Shit, maybe it good zombies running around cleaning house.”

“Harsh.” EZ said.  “That harsh DJ.”

Darryl shrugged.  “I ain’t saying I glad people getting eaten and shit, but it ain’t my fault, or your fault, or any of our fault it happening, right?  So since we stuck here, maybe it not gonna be so bad?”

“So this gonna be paradise?” Mad asked.

Darryl now knew how Tiny was feeling, as he had to suppress a strong urge to turn around and smack Mad upside the head.  “I didn’t say nothing about no paradise.”

“But you say maybe it a good thing?”

“I didn’t say that neither.” Darryl said carefully, trying not to yell.

“Then what you saying?”

“I’m saying, since you fucking asking, that if there ain’t no more Man or governor or president or anybody, that things still could be worse.  We got food, we got a place to live, and we got a lot of Dogz here to get through this shit with.” Darryl said, flicking his spent cigarette away towards the barn side of the roof.  “I think we got a chance of making out okay.”

“Man, but what if more people start turning into zombies?” Mad asked.

There was a long scrape of aluminum against the concrete roof as Tiny stood up.  “Alright, that’s at least a slap on your damn fool head you got coming.”

“What the hell for?” Mad said, standing up and immediately backing away from Tiny.

“For being a fucking retard.” Tiny growled.

“That ain’t right bro.”

“Yeah, keep on.” Tiny said.  “I can turn the slap into a full-on ass whipping if you want.”

Darryl heard them talking, and knew he should say something to keep them from getting into it like they were about to, but he was distracted by movement on the road.  He squinted through the moonlit night as Mad told Tiny to calm down.  There was a light moving along the road at the southeast corner of the lake.  It was almost to where the road curved around to start coming up the northwestern edge.

“Hey, can it.” Darryl said, remembering he had a hunting rifle in his hands that had a scope on it.  The light was moving in a particular way, up and down, as it traced along the road.  Just like a flashlight in someone’s hands.  And from the motion of the light, it didn’t look like whoever was over there was simply walking through the night; the violent bobbing and swinging of the light looked a lot like someone running.  He abruptly wanted, needed, to get a better look at what was going on over there.

“DJ, it ain’t right he gonna lay hands on me just cause his head too small–”

“Mad, you digging deeper with every word.” Tiny said warningly.

“Shut the fuck up!” Darryl said as he settled the rifle against his shoulder and tried to line the scope up on the light.  He’d never hunted, and he’d never really gotten into long gun shooting.  And he for sure had never been in the military or done any shooting from long range.  As a result, the scope was an unfamiliar object to him.

“DJ, what you doing?” he heard EZ ask.

“There someone over there.” Darryl said as he tried to get the scope centered properly.  “I think they coming this way.”

There was a rustle of shuffling feet and surprised murmurs from the others on the roof with him as they turned to look where he was pointing the rifle.  Darryl looked over the scope and moved the rifle until it was generally lined up with the light, then carefully dropped his eye back to it.

All he could see was a magnified view of the lakeshore.  “Damnit.” Darryl muttered, glancing up and adjusting the rifle again, then peering back through the scope once more.  More lakeshore.  He scowled and drew his view through the scope ‘down’ until he found the road, then swept right slowly.  After a few seconds of not finding what he was looking for he looked up over the scope again.

“Mother fuc–” Darryl cursed.  He was moving his view away from the light, having started from behind it.  He looked back through the scope and went through the process again.  Lakeside, then find the road, then move to the left this time.  He was so surprised when he finally got the target into view of his scope that he almost lost it immediately.

“What is it?” Psycho asked curiously.

“Not sure yet.” Darryl said, his voice almost absently flat as he got more used to how little movement was needed to alter where the scope was looking.  The moon was bright tonight, full but for a slight sliver, but even with that he couldn’t make out fine details.  It was a person, that much he was sure of.

White, obvious from the way the skin of their face and arms picked up the scattering of faint light coming down from above.  Or, maybe, they were just wearing white clothing.  He couldn’t be sure.  Well, he was sure they were wearing white clothes.  He just wasn’t sure about their skin color.  They were definitely running though, the flashlight clutched in their left hand only intermittently illuminating the road ahead of them.

Darryl pondered.  Running and holding a flashlight had to rule out zombie.  According to the news they didn’t move faster than a staggering walk, and they seemed to lose most of their motor control.  He couldn’t remember any reports of zombies using tools or devices of any kind . . . hell they apparently couldn’t even turn a door knob.