Eaters (42 page)

Hoping to calm him down, she told him that there was a computer room with public access, so he could check for himself on all those conspiracy theories.

“I’ve been in there. They’ve got so many controls on what sites you can see, it’s damn near useless. I asked about it, and they said that some sites are blocked to prevent people from panicking due to false information. How about that, hunh? So much for the freedom of speech.”

Cheryl couldn’t argue with that, but her intuition told her that the people running this fort weren’t bad or doing something shady. They had just perfected and adapted their disaster procedures to make survival as efficient as possible, given the number of refugees in their care. “So, maybe they had some head’s up about this. So what?”

“I’m telling you, somebody knew this epidemic was a possibility and had preparations in place, from how to kill off the infected to how to control the survivors. How could they have possibly known this was coming? It all happened so fast.”

A hunchbacked man with ragged grayish skin limped towards their table. Cheryl was so alarmed that she nearly upset her tray. “Jesus, what happened to him?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Aidan said, also staring at the man.

A young man at the table across from them leaned over. “Keep it down,” he whispered. “There’s some who got the vaccine in time after they were infected, but their skin still got messed up pretty good. I heard they had to peel off their dead flesh.”

“Ugh,” Cheryl winced. “That’s awful.”

“Better ugly than dead, right?” the man laughed.

“From the looks of him, that’s a coin toss.”

The man hobbled past their table, carrying his tray, piled with apple and melon slices.

“Fresh fruit?”

“I heard that the survivors can’t stomach any cooked food, anything dead. They’re letting them have the fresh fruit rations.”

Cheryl wondered how far the disease had progressed before his miraculous recovery. Had he eaten garbage, human flesh? She supposed it might be hard to eat anything at all with those memories in his head.

Aidan continued with his rant, and she had to stop him to ask him why he was so adamant the government had not only known but had some hand in whatever had caused the event.

“Could be a number of reasons. Economy was tanking. No more jobs, because they’ve all gone overseas. We were headed towards a collapse of the free market, so to prevent widespread riots, it was either take complete control or risk anarchy. They decided to thin out the population by turning the dead against the living. Put the survivors in concentration camps. Maybe that’s why we saw so few people while we were on the road. Those that weren’t dead or in hiding had already been killed or removed.”

“I don’t buy it,” Cheryl said, fighting the almost uncontrollable urge to double over in laughter. “That’s so far-fetched. I don’t think the government would set brain-eating zombies loose on the population. It’s absurd.”

“Yeah, well, they didn’t warn anybody about the virus—but they had a vaccine. In the time it took them to build this place, they could have mass produced it.”

Cheryl stood up and held her hands out in front of her face like two brakes to stop his tirade. “I’m sorry. I gotta go. My duty starts in ten minutes.”

She started to walk away, and he yelled after her. “Look at you in your fancy uniform! You used to own your life. Now, they tell you when and what you can eat, when you can take a piss. We’ve even got goddamn numbers stamped on our hands!”

* * *

Later that evening, towards the end of her shift, the sun blazed a fiery orange, and a trio of dark clouds drifted across it, making it look like a giant jack-o’-lantern. She was in the lookout tower with a pair of binoculars, squinting against the harsh light. Unable to see clearly towards the west, she swung around to the opposite direction and noticed a dust cloud moving away from the building.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing, and handed the binoculars to Corporal Stinton, her trainer.

He took them from her and studied the moving dust for a second before handing them back. “That there is what we call a Suicider. Some people just can’t make it here. It’s just not their cup of tea. He won’t get very far. He’s headed towards a baiting station. Not too smart. I heard the incoming head of cattle is pretty thick today.”

She lifted the binoculars up for another look at the poor chap who’d given up and gone AWOL. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t heard any details yet about the scuffle at one of the guard stations; she saw the tip of a rifle poking up and the back wheel of a Harley Electra Glide Classic during a peek through the dust.

God Speed
, she thought.
Wherever you’re headed.

Chapter Twenty Five

There was little time to mourn Aidan’s departure and probable death. She had a patrol shift six days a week from four p.m. until midnight. Patrols had been ramped up due to reports of Eaters bypassing the baiting station and wandering towards the fort. Even on days that were relatively calm, news reports from cities around the world played constantly on the flat screen televisions that dotted the walls in the communal areas. As Cheryl passed by them, it was hard to tear away from the horrifying images of Eaters descending on hapless victims being attacked as cameras panned across the bloody battlefields from the safety of helicopters perched in the sky.

She was told that she had to complete another week of duty before she’d be allowed to go on a detail into Tucson where she could check out her father’s house. Another week was a long time to worry about his fate, but she’d heard enough terrifying reports about the city to know that she’d better be patient and wait until she could go in with some serious firepower behind her. She held on to her hope of his survival on days that were tough on patrol duty, especially when she had a close call helping with body removal from the barbed wire or spikes. Corpses sometimes popped back to life, lunging at her with gnashing teeth.

Her uniform was a tan camouflage set of shorts with a matching button-down shirt. The bicycle helmet looked like a hat from an African safari, but it had a solid steel plate underneath and extensions that could be pulled down on the sides and back to protect the neck. The holster around her hips had a loaded revolver on each side, and a third pocket held a twelve-inch piece of iron that looked like a mini crowbar. It was a back up to the guns. If they jammed or she ran out of ammo, it could inflict a fatal blow to a skull and slide out easily to hit another. There was other equipment too: a hand held radio, binoculars, and a special canister. It was no bigger than an old plastic film case, and was only to be used as a last resort. In an unfortunate situation where she was surrounded by too many of the infected, she was told that she could pull off the cap and throw it towards them. The canister contained a concentrated scent, a distillation of the foulest garbage and muck from decomposing corpses. The horde of infected would be temporarily drawn to it, allowing a short window of opportunity for escape. For a truly hopeless situation, they taught her to use the gun on herself, reminding her and the trainees that taking your own life was preferable to being eaten alive.

Much of her training was reinforcement for what she had learned by the seat of her pants during her journey from Colorado to Arizona. Nevertheless, she reminded herself to never let her guard down. Just because she was in what seemed to be the safest possible place at the moment, didn’t mean there was any less danger. The residents of the fort took the ongoing risk very seriously, and she intended to help them keep it as secure as possible.

* * *

It took longer than a week for her to be called up to join a detail into Tucson. The day finally came on August 4th, almost a month after the apocalypse began. Cheryl dismally packed her gear. It seemed sure that she was just going to find her father’s remains, or his empty house, where there would be no clues as to his fate.

The group’s mission on this day was to go to St. Joseph’s Hospital to pick up some medical supplies, but she had gotten special permission to detach with a couple of soldiers to go to her father’s house.

Before they departed, they had to sit through an hour-long security briefing that included an outline of their mission and its timeline. One of the rules was that no one was allowed to go it alone. Everyone had to stay in groups of at least three. Cheryl hung on every word, fully intending to get in and out alive—with her father, if she found him.

After the briefing, she was informed that new members of the team were required to wear the maximum security gear. Compared to her patrol duds, the uniform was unbearably heavy and hot. It had long pants and long sleeves, and the thick cotton had three layers, including a steel mesh woven inside that made penetration by teeth nearly impossible. A collar flap of the same fabric connected to the steel helmet and protected the neck. She also had to wear gloves, the same kind that divers used to protect their hands from sharks.

All were issued weapons that included steel pikes that dangled from holsters at their sides and semi-automatic rifles with special hollow point bullets that increased brain tissue damage, thus reducing the need for a double tap.

They rode in a caravan of Hummers and Jeeps with lattices of metal caging across the windshield and windows that were custom made to keep hands and teeth from reaching them and still allow guns to shoot in a three hundred sixty degree arc around the vehicle.

Her companions were Private First Class Jameson and Corporal Specialist Reiser. They were quiet as they departed from the fort and didn’t seem very friendly during the ride.

Jameson, the driver, was the first one to speak to her. “Who’d you blow to get this excursion?”

She didn’t dignify the accusation with a response. She knew they probably disliked her because she was both a woman and a civilian. And if she’d gotten lucky enough to score a field trip, well, that was her business.

“Musta been some top brass. Was it the old Pump and Dump?”

Reiser chuckled.

They ignored her after that, bantering back and forth about everything from encounters with N.E.U.s to their latest score in the sack. She tuned them out as they got closer to town.

Since she and Aidan had skirted around Flagstaff and Phoenix, this was the largest city she’d encountered since the epidemic began. The first visuals were not promising.

Trash and tumbleweeds blew across the roads. Stores and office buildings had smashed windows and doors dangling from their hinges. She could see bloody handprints and streaks on the walls. The only sign of life she saw were vultures and the random hunchbacked Eater shuffling down a sidewalk. For a few minutes, she thought she was going to be sick. It seemed far too late in the game for her to have any hope of finding her father alive. As it looked worse and worse, it seemed futile to hold on to any optimism.

It’ll be okay, Cheryl.

Mark’s voice echoed in her head. It didn’t give her any comfort.
Please stop hovering over me. You’re a false prophet and I’m so tired of hearing that everything is going to be okay…

The caravan stopped and gunfire sounded from the vehicle in the lead. A minute later, she and the two soldiers with her were also shooting out the Jeep windows at the monsters lumbering by them.

Once things calmed down, the caravan started moving again. They were about five miles away from the hospital when Jameson stopped on East Speedway Boulevard and let the other vehicles pass them.

“Right on Pentaño?”

“Yes.” Numbness overcame her entire body.

They drove north into a residential area, and it was apparent that the plague did not have any sort of urban boundary. The houses were just as forlorn as the office buildings, stores, and restaurants they had passed in the city. And, they had to drive around objects in the road—things like backpacks, televisions, and lumps of bloody clothing. Every few seconds, there was the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire coming from random directions.

Reiser tapped Cheryl’s shoulder from behind. “You’re looking for your dad, right?”

She looked back at him and nodded.

“Which house?”

She realized that Jameson had come to a stop. They were on Mission Street.

It wasn’t possible. This wasn’t her dad’s street. It couldn’t be…

She’d been here less than a year ago for Christmas. During that holiday, just as on many others, Jack Malone’s humor had come out to play in full force. He’d decorated the cacti in his front yard to look like spiky snowmen, complete with Santa caps and carrots for noses. The neighbors had followed suit, and it became a festive competition.

Now, the street looked like a bomb had gone off.

There was green cactus pulp everywhere. Windows were smashed and doors hung from hinges. A suitcase lay open in the middle of the road with clothes scattered around it.

“Third one on the left…” she choked, barely able to breathe.

They passed by Mrs. Higgins’ house. She was the neighbor Cheryl had always heard was stealing her dad’s figs and his Sunday newspaper. Next to the chiminea in her front yard, there was a fluff of white and red, the remains of her yippy poodle, Poquito.