Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (49 page)

Andy, Thompson, and Michelle exchanged glances with each
other before turning their attention back to Sam.

“I take it,” Sam said, “that this is not news to you.”

“No,” Michelle said.

“We’ve had a couple run in’s with what we’ve been calling ‘ferals’.
Yellow eyes, bad attitudes, faster than greased lightning. Hard to put down,” Andy
said.

“Yeah, those bastards,” Sam replied. “And according to some
of the scuttlebutt I picked up at the school, there are other kinds as well. Do
you remember back when I was telling you about the fax from USAMRIID?”

They nodded.

“Well if I remember right, there was something about sub-variants
in it. Just what we need, more problems. Anyway, we stomped and whooped on top
of the semi for a bit more, but nothing came up to the ladder. I’m telling you
though, my gut was doing jumping jacks. I knew that there were more of those
things down there. Somewhere. I also knew that I was going to freeze to death
if I didn’t get off of the roof. I scooted over to the ladder and looked down. Well
let me tell you, there was no way I was going to climb down a slippery, blood
spattered metal ladder only to end up in a pile of seven infected corpses who I
hoped were really dead. And the girl, she was beyond useless. Switching between
catatonia and bawling her eyes out any time I wasn’t personally holding her
hand. It didn’t matter though, we had to get off of the truck. The only other
real option was to jump from the cargo box onto the cab roof and then down
across the windshield to the hood. From there it would be fairly easy to get to
the ground without breaking an ankle. Don’t get me wrong, I know that I could
have hung from my fingertips off the roof and dropped to the ground fairly
safely, but the girl would have never done that, and in any case it’s hard to
hang from your fingertips and keep control of a shotgun.”

“What was her name . . . the girl on the roof with you?”
Michelle asked.

Sam gave half shrug and a quick shake of his head. “I don’t
know. Never got it. Kinda glad about that.”

“Why? . . . Crap. Never mind, I’m sure I know why,” Michelle
said.

“Yeah. Anyway, I went up to her and told her that we needed
to get to my cruiser. She was nodding like she understood but I had to almost
yell at her to get her to focus on me. I topped off the shotgun ammo and pulled
her over toward the edge by the cab. I looked all around with my flashlight but
I couldn’t see anything moving besides the cars on the highway. I put my
flashlight back through the belt ring and grabbed her hand. It was now or never,
so we backed up and got a little running start and jumped onto the cab roof. I
managed to stay on my feet, but whatever flat soled shoes the girl was wearing
turned into a pair of ice skates and she went down. Hard. She almost pulled me
down with her. I managed to stop her slide quick enough that she didn’t go over
the edge by the passenger door, but it put me out of balance and I half
stumbled down the windshield and landed flat on my back on the hood, pulling
her with me. She was scrambling on the slick windshield, almost tap dancing on
me trying to regain her balance. That’s when the windshield exploded outward,
covering me with little fragments of safety glass as I rolled off the front of
the hood and crashed onto the ground. I lost my grip on the shotgun, I heard it
clatter somewhere but things were happening so fast I just . . .”

Sam was looking down, shaking his head with the memories. He
took another sip of his tea and chased it with a deep sigh of resignation
before continuing. “I just . . . I just couldn’t do anything. When I got to my
feet I drew my SIG. Luckily I still had the flashlight on my belt, so I grabbed
it and shined it up towards the windshield and I saw her . . . get . . . folded
in half and pulled through the shattered windshield into the cab. I was so, I
don’t know, pissed . . . scared . . . probably both I guess . . . that I just
emptied my 45 into the cab. I hope I hit her . . . in time.” Sam took a couple
of deep breaths before continuing. “Cars were whizzing past me about ten feet
away, and I finally snapped out of it enough to get my shit together. I dropped
the used magazine out, but my hands were so numb that it fell to the ground. I
managed to get a new magazine in the SIG but I couldn’t find the one that had
dropped. Anyhow, it was time to get out of Dodge. My car was maybe one hundred
feet away, and I started trotting toward it. About halfway there I saw . . . her.”

“Who, the girl that was on the truck with you?” Andy asked.

Sam shook his head. “No. An older lady, and by older I mean
maybe thirty. Drop dead gorgeous in the face. Long dark hair all matted down
from the rain. She was wearing this sheer white sleeveless dress that was so
wet it was practically invisible all clinging to her skin. But that wasn’t all.
Her arms were covered, I mean really covered with bite marks and actual ragged
holes where chunks of flesh had been torn off. And her eyes, man, her eyes were
coal black. All of her eyes, not just the iris.”

“Black?  So far we’ve seen red and that sickly yellow amber,”
Andy said.

“Well this chick had eyes blacker than the ace of spades. She
was less than twenty feet away from me and my flashlight was full on her face. It
was like, I don’t know, evil. Like I was expecting her head to do a 360. And
she was looking right at me, right into me . . . and those soulless eyes kept
staring at me as she slowly raised her arm and took another bite, literally
ripping off a golf ball sized chunk of her forearm. She freakin’ chewed up and
swallowed a piece of her own arm.”

“Damn!” Thompson said. “What did you do?”

“I turned her head into an ‘effin’ canoe is what I did,” Sam’s
voice was raised in agitation as he answered.

“Oh snap, that shit is extreme,” Thompson replied.

“Yeah well, it gets worse. Because as soon as I dropped the
exorcist chick, I hear this hissing behind me and I spun just in time to dodge a
bear hug from some fat biker type. Most of his face was already gone and I
think his leg was broken, but that didn’t stop him from going for me again. And
I was backpedaling, trying to put some distance between us because I didn’t
want to take a chance on catching some splatter when I shot. I managed to get
about a car length from him before I pulled the trigger three or four times. I’m
not exactly sure where I hit, somewhere in the face or neck I imagine because
he dropped like a bag of hammers. I sprinted the rest of the way to the cruiser.
When I got there the guy in the back seat, your guy, was gone. No blood or
broken glass, just gone. Maybe somebody found the second set of keys in the
front and sprung him, I don’t know. Don’t really care either. All I know is
that I fired that puppy up and shot out into traffic.”

Sam stood up and stretched for a moment before upending the
remaining tea into his mouth. He gave a quick shudder before saying, “I don’t
suppose there’s an extra blanket around here anywhere, is there?”

“I’m sorry Sam, I should have asked you earlier. I’ve got
plenty, be right back,” Michelle said.

“Thanks.”

Thompson and Andy put on more water to boil as Michelle went
to retrieve some blankets.

“Pressure is dropping off even more.” Andy indicated with a
nod toward the noticeably smaller stream coming out of the faucet.

“We should fill every single pot, kettle and pan that we can
find,” Thompson said.

“Good thinking, private. Someday you’ll make general.”

“Not hardly.”

After the water had been heated up to sufficient scalding
temperatures for a new batch of tea, the four of them reassembled by the
flickering light of the single pumpkin scented candle. Andy, Thompson, and
Michelle all had their coats on, and Sam was buried under several additional
layers of blankets.

“What do you think, trooper, is spring here or are we going
to have a few more weeks of winter?” Andy asked.

“Huh . . . why are you asking me?

“Because all I can see is your head poking out from the pile
of blankets you’re under, and it reminds me of that groundhog up in
Pennsylvania that predicts the weather.” Andy chuckled.

“You want a forecast?  OK, here it is. We’re all about to get
butt hurt really bad. Everybody. As in everybody in the world. And I’ll tell
you why, because that black eyed lady, the one biting chunks of ‘fillet de’
arm’ from herself, she was setting me up. As in . . . there was a malevolent
thought process to her actions. She knew that biker guy was coming up behind me.
And I swear she purposely tried to draw my attention. These aren’t just people
who are sick. I mean get real. I can understand that a physical sickness with
high temperatures could affect the brain in a way that you might get
delusional, even violent. But this lady, what she was doing was planned. It was
intentional. And there’s something else. You remember the old guy with the
canon?  Well as I was pulling out into traffic I swear that I saw him standing
next to the semi. And if I’m right, then it means this infection—whatever it is—can
spread really, really fast.”

The silence in the room was oppressive, and everybody
shivered a little to fend off the chill that descended with Sam’s words. Another
hundred or so faint clicks from the wall clock in the kitchen passed before
Michelle spoke. “Andy, what were you thinking earlier?  I know you had
something on your mind, you want to share?”

“It’s not a lot really, just some suspicions and observations
really, but if you all don’t mind I’d like to hear how Sam got from there to
the school first.

“There’s not a whole lot more to tell actually,” Sam replied.
“I kept driving north, got maybe twelve or thirteen miles from the border
before I started hitting gridlock. I was able to use the lights and siren to
get another couple miles up the road, but after that traffic just stopped. I
don’t know how far ahead the holdup was. If you can believe what I learned
later, then it was like that all the way up to the border. Anyhow, I knew that
sitting in traffic was not going to help anybody, so I cut across to the median
and headed south. It took me about an hour to go a mile, and then it sped up a
little bit after I passed a long line of buses sitting on the edge of the road.
There was another one laying on its side blocking a lot of traffic, and the only
way through was barely wide enough for one car at a time. Another couple miles
down the road and I came to a detour that wasn’t there on the way up. It was
being garrisoned by the military, our military, if that makes any difference. They
had the southbound lanes completely shut and were funneling all the traffic
onto a double wide county road that was heading west. I really didn’t know
where I was headed, but Fort Hammer was the closest place where I thought I
might be able to contact somebody, anybody . . . who might have a clue what was
really going on. Amazingly, they let me through the roadblock and I drove on
down to the town. It was still raining when I got there about, I don’t know,
maybe 10:00 PM. Anyway, they still had power then, and I could see auxiliary
lights set up at what turned out to be the school. Well, long story short, I
ended up at the school working with the people . . . the mayor and a couple of
the council members, local emergency services like the volunteer fire
department guys, and a bunch of farmers and such. Let me tell you, things would
have been a lot better if those guys would’ve stayed in charge. It wasn’t
perfect, but it was functional and smooth and basically organized. They were
very grateful for my presence, and my presents—remember the trunk full of
guns?  And like I said they were getting their shit together. That is until the
first Humvees showed up. In less than a day there were about one hundred-odd
military and support personnel there repeating the phrase ‘national security
emergency’ every two seconds. Oh, they were all nice about it at first, you
know the old ‘we’re here to help’ bullshit, but by day two the first of many ‘executive
orders’ came down the pike. Things like mandatory quarantine, centralized population,
and the ever popular ‘no civilian firearms.’ Then they started refusing entry
to the townspeople who were looking for safety. It wasn’t long after that when
the first ‘decontamination units’ started shooting anything that moved. Now
don’t get me wrong, I don’t have the answers. Hell, I don’t even know what the
questions should be. But I watched these pricks gun down a family of seven who
were begging to be let through the fence. That didn’t sit well with me and I
let the colonel and those two DHS assholes hear about it. Well the next thing
you know ol’ Jed’s a millionaire, and they kindly removed my gun from me, and
by kindly I mean with that big douche bag Weaver holding his rifle about an
inch from my forehead. I got put in the cafeteria with the rest of the
townspeople, and that’s where we stayed. We tried to come up with a plan, some
way to maybe talk some sense into Colonel Jordan, but we weren’t having a lot
of luck. And then there were the ‘security screenings’ that Weaver and his
buddies had with some of the locals. It wasn’t too rough at first, but then
they start getting out of hand. People would come back with their eyes swollen
shut, parents were being told that if they didn’t cooperate their children
would be put outside the fence, and there was just no way to address it. I mean
really, cooperate with what?  Just what in the hell kind of classified
information did they think a forty-seven year old divorced schoolteacher would
be hiding from them. Anybody who left the cafeteria, or as they called it, the ‘civilian
protection range’ would be shot. I saw it happen twice with people who got
tired of the BS and took off. Anyhow, the mayor and one of the firemen were
convinced that we needed to do this as by the book as possible, the old ‘let’s not
sink to their level’ speech. So they formed a ‘committee’ to present their
grievances. Sometime in the middle of the night, I don’t know, it had to be
after 3:00 AM—did I mention that they took our watches from us?  They also took
down the clock in the gym, anything that had a time capability on it, like
Ipods, kid’s video games, everything. Still not sure why though. Anyway, most
of us were still up, and here comes Colonel Jordan and his posse of flunkies
into the cafeteria. He was pretending to care, you know, asking people how they
were, if there was anything they needed, that sort of stuff. But I got a good
look into his eyes and I swear it was like we were a bunch of cattle to him,
just standing by until he decided which one he wanted to slaughter. Well, the
mayor wakes up all of his committee members and they start hounding the colonel
about their rights, but he’s not listening to a word of it. They even followed
him out to the hallway a bit. So did I. Things turned into a screaming match
from there and, well, it wasn’t looking good until that National Guard captain,
Walker I think his name was, starts sticking up for us. I take it that Thompson
has filled you in on how that ended?”

“Yeah, they know,” Thompson said.

“Well, then you know that after I thumped the suit, the rest
of his buddies thumped me. Then they threw me in the cage with the mayor where
they spend some quality time with us. And then, just when our hero was about to
make a daring escape, he was shot in the back of the head and thrown into a
body bag by the fair princess and her valiant champion.”

“Your daring escape?” Michelle snickered.

“Yep,” Sam replied, “I was just waiting patiently for that
radioactive spider to bite me so I could develop superpowers and bust out of
the chains.”

Everybody chuckled at Sam’s joke, and then the room fell
silent again as the information was processed in the semi-darkness. Thompson
was the first to speak.

“So what now?” he said.

“Andy?” Michelle asked.

After another pause Andy shook his head, saying, “There’s
just too much information we don’t have. And what we do have, minuscule as it
is, doesn’t really add up.”

Sam piped up from underneath his self-mummification of
blankets. “You want to start by telling me how you saved my ass?”

Andy looked at Michelle and said, “Why don’t you tell him,
you’re much more eloquent and charming.”

“Damn straight,” Thompson echoed.

Michelle smiled at Thompson as she stood. It took about ten
minutes to fill in Sam about what had transpired between the time he had left
them all the way up until they had found out that Sam was a prisoner. Taking a
brief pause, Michelle made a trip to the kitchen and scooped out a large glass
of water from one of the filled pots. She had drank so much tea in the past few
hours that it was turning her stomach acidic. Water would help. A brief
question around the room confirmed that everybody else would stay with the hot
beverage. She returned to the living room and continued.

“So once Thompson told us about you, and we were really just
making an educated guess, but who else could it be?  Anyhow, Andy came up with
this plan that he seemed to think would have a pretty good chance of working .
. . provided that is, that we would be able to pull off a couple props. He
grilled Thompson, nonstop it seemed like, on as many details as he could
remember about the colonel, his command staff, and the school layout—everything.”

“Yeah, I thought he was going to waterboard me next,”
Thompson added.

“We didn’t have enough water for that,” Andy laughed, “and I feel
I should point out that we currently have zero water pressure at Casa de’
Michelle.”

“So don’t flush the toilet if you pee. Got it,” Sam added.

“Andy’s plan required us to impersonate somebody from DHS,
and that made it essential that we have three things. The first was a suit. Easy
enough thanks to my neighbor and a pack of printer paper that Andy swiped from
my home office. The other two things were not quite as easy. We needed a black
SUV with government plates and a DHS name tag, or a reasonable facsimile
thereof. Fortunately, we had a good idea where they could be located. Unfortunately
we had to go back into town to get them. We didn’t know what we’d run in to,
but it was the only way that we could think of. Our plan at first was to haul
ass downtown, pulling up as close as we could to where Thompson said the SUV
was parked, which was also near where we hoped the bodies of the DHS guys would
be, which coincidentally should be where the keys for the truck and the ID
badges were. Once we got there we’d assess the situation, and if it looked safe
enough then Andy and Thompson would get out of the truck and grab the name tags
and keys. Then one of them would drive the SUV out of town. We’d meet back at
my house and get everything ready to go. If we ran into any resistance
downtown, we’d fight it out if possible, but if there were too many we’d bail
and try to think of another plan. Or maybe forget about the whole thing. That
was our first plan. And it was actually the plan we went with. Until we got to
town. I drove Andy’s truck since I was a lot more familiar with the layout of the
streets. That left Andy and Thompson as our primary shooters. We came in some
side roads and finally edged out onto the main highway about one hundred yards
south of the strip mall where my office was, also where the two guys and the
SUV should be. It was really kind of eerie, not that waiting for some zombie to
jump out of the darkness and pull your legs off was an everyday occurrence. But
the smoldering fires and wrecked cars, and all the buildings with broken
windows made it look like a war zone to me. Not that I’ve seen that personally
except on television. It was just kind of surreal. I had managed to drive there
with just the running lights, no headlights, and as soon as we hit the main
drag Thompson says, ‘There’s the truck. One of the guys should be laying right
next to it and the other should be on the sidewalk about twenty feet away.’
There was enough light for me to navigate, so I killed the running lights and
turned right. Part of our plan was to not draw attention to ourselves if at all
possible. You could still hear the occasional blast of gunfire from scattered
locations, but we wanted to be as unobtrusive as we could. I pulled up right behind
the SUV and we sat there idling, looking in all directions. All we saw at that
point though were fires, smoke, and bodies. Thompson and Andy opened their
doors and ran to the body by the truck.”

Thompson jumped in. “No keys, and the ID badge had a bullet
hole right in the middle. But we grabbed it anyway. Andy kept guard while I
opened the door of the black truck. Just our luck, no freaking keys there
either. I’m looking under the mat, above the visor-nothing. Then I hear this
little
clack . . . clack-clack
.”

Michelle said, “Yeah, I’m in Andy’s truck trying to look in
every direction at once, still remembering the feral that clawed down the
hallway of my office toward me, and I see Andy raise his shotgun and point it
toward the street, kind of over the bed of his pickup. I was waiting for the
blast, but a few seconds later he leans the gun against the truck and pulls out
the little silenced 22—no laser this time—and he starts popping rounds at
something I couldn’t see.”

Andy cut in. “It was definitely an infected . . . thing. I
saw her, a lady that is, shuffling towards us. She walked right through the
edge of a little fire. I figured I’d try the noiseless way at first. The third
shot put her down.”

“I knew what he was doing, but I couldn’t see what he shot at
and that freaked me out,” Michelle said. “Then I saw Thompson come out of the
SUV and say something to Andy. Thompson then took off towards the sidewalk
where I could see there were a couple of bodies. A few seconds later he came
back over and hops in the SUV and starts it up. As soon as that happened I saw
movement, shadows really, in the little strip mall office right in front of us.
I yelled at Andy and he grabbed the shotgun and jumped in the passenger side of
his truck. Well the next thing I saw was Dr. Sarovol, the chiropractor from the
office near mine. He was walking down the sidewalk, still dressed in his blue
scrubs. He had a gun in his hand, some type of little revolver I think. Anyway,
he stepped over the bodies on the sidewalk where Thompson just was, and then he
stops. He just freezes for a few seconds and looks up, like straight up at the
sky. And then he takes a little gun and puts the barrel right against his chest
and pulls the trigger. It was muffled, but obviously small caliber, probably a
22. But he didn’t go down, he just half crumples over and drops the gun. And
then the shadows that I saw before in the office right in front of us came
crashing through the window. There were three of them . . . a skinny guy and
two kids. They started lurching after the Doc—who’s still stumbling around
holding his chest—and I’m just sitting there staring at the scene in front of
me. The Doc managed to push the skinny guy away for a moment, but then he
tripped over one of the bodies on the sidewalk and went down. The little kids
were on him in a heartbeat.”