LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (20 page)

“Needless to say, I’m not a fan of fortress theories. I figure movement is key. And look,” she plucked at the front of her uniform. “Not dead yet, so I guess that counts for something.”
 

“And how are you able to make it out here? It can’t be easy to find gas for all these cars, right?” Ky asked.

Starr nodded once, and tapped a single gloved finger to her head.
 

“The U.S. Army was kind enough to bless me with the fortunate knowledge of fuel depots and reserve tanks for government usage in the state. When we’re running low, we make our way to one of those and top off. It’s a pain in the ass, but we have enough of them spread out around the state that we haven’t had an issue.” She looked outside and squinted up at the gray sky, sunlight blotted out by the steady fall of ash outside. “Not yet, at least. I guess if we’re cut off from the south side of the river, we might have a problem. Half of our reserves are on that side.”

This statement seemed to jog her memory and she turned to the front, grabbing her radio and issuing a curt command.
 

Kate’s stomach churned. Nothing about this felt right. She had seen people like this—different causes and different symptoms, but she could be sure that this woman had some form of post-traumatic stress. It wasn’t just the change in her tone when she mentioned her C.O. There was the tick above one eye. The constant strumming of the fingers against the seat back. The rapid eye movements and reactions to noise. The mercurial personality. No, there was something wrong here, and that wasn’t even counting the bizarre lack of men.
 

This group wasn’t one they needed to be joining for the long term. They needed to disengage and make their own way. But something told Kate that Starr wasn’t going to be easy about letting go of new recruits. The bottom line was that she couldn’t trust this woman to get them safely to where they needed to be. To where Kate so very desperately needed to be.
 

Outside, the ash was still falling, coating the ground in inches of pasty powder, casting the world in grayscale. Beyond the torn road, fields stretched to the north and west, while mountains were still stark against the eastern skyline. They had to be approaching the valley again, and soon they’d hit the new coastline.
 

Starr was giving a quiet order to the driver as Kate spoke.

“So listen, Captain, we appreciate the ride out of there—we were in a bad way, no doubt—but we don’t want to be a burden. We’re fine to be put out anywhere along this route. Truth be told, we’re anxious to head back the way we came. Had a theory about a quiet route that might still be true if we can get around that herd back there.” She tried to sound innocent and sincere.

Beside her Ky glanced over, her look slightly confused, as if not understanding why Kate was offering to leave the protection of a moving vehicle twenty miles from where they started.
 

“Not sure that’s the best idea,” said the Captain curtly, turning back to look at Kate again. “And I wouldn’t say you’re a burden.” Kate flinched as Starr’s eyes darted quickly—so quickly as to be almost imperceptible to someone who wasn’t trained to read human body language—to Kate’s chest. “We’re not in the business of putting women on the road in dangerous country to fend for themselves. When we make camp tonight, we can discuss it further.”

Kate couldn’t help but catch the emphasis on ‘women.’

There was something definitely wrong here.
 

Ky made a noise beside her and Kate looked over, following the girl’s gaze and outstretched finger. To the left of the convoy, a crude curtain erected over a large picture window in an isolated gas station twitched as a small boy disappeared behind the cover. The filth on the window and the glare from the weak sunlight almost hid the furtive motions, but Ky and Kate—both with better visual acuity than their companions—caught the movement.
 

“There are people in that gas station,” Kate said, pointing. Starr rounded on her, hand stretching behind the driver’s seat as she lowered her head and peered out the window.

“Where? I don’t see anything,” she said doubtfully, one hand absently scratching her face.
 

“There, the Jiffy Pump station—front window.” Ky’s voice was excited, eager to help. But Kate didn’t like the look on Starr’s face. She had seen that look before.
 

“Little boy behind the glass,” Ky continued. “Look, you can see that someone’s been holing up there—the curtains, the wood on the window. There’s even a trail through the ash on the side of the building.”
 

Starr’s eyes followed Ky’s finger and Kate watched her calculate, watched her face change to something much harder. A stone facade.

“Or maybe we didn’t see anything,” Kate said, shrugging and trying to catch Ky’s eye. “Maybe just the wind.”
 

“No, we’ll check it out,” said Starr, fixing Kate with a blank stare before speaking into her radio. “Six-Five, turn back. We have a possible contact in the Jiffy Pump a klick back from your twenty. We’re going to stand by here. Take Rodriguez and Jen from car two and check it out. Clear it well, copy?”
 

The radio hissed during the slight pause, then the faceless voice responded, the roar of a loud engine behind it.
 

“Copy that, on it. One mike. Six-Five out.”

Kate watched as the lead humvee’s brake lights flashed and the convoy slowed. Through the thickening ashfall, she saw the large vehicle turn ponderously around and head back to the station, trailed by the next car in line—a smallish SUV with a large gear carrier strapped to the top. It was the type of carrier you’d expect on a family vehicle on its way to Disney, and it caught Kate by surprise for some reason. It was discordant. Out of place.
 

“Jolly Roger, this is Six-Five,” the radio spat again. Two troops had exited the hummer and were stalking toward the front door, scanning the sides of the building with their carbines up. In the turret atop the vehicle, the gunner pivoted, eyes sharp. In the small SUV, two more women dismounted, also armed with rifles and also moving forward as if they knew how to use the weapons. They approached the front door cautiously.
 

The curtain flicked again and Kate grimaced.

“It’s just a kid,” she said to Starr, sensing something was wrong about the soldiers’ posture.
 

“I heard you the first time,” she said, her tone devoid of emotion.

“Six-Five, engage. We have unconfirmed reports—one small boy, possibly others inside. Clear the building, retain any civilians for extraction.”
 

“Copy that, hold one.”

The soldier to the left of the door motioned forward to the two women from the SUV. Together, they used their rifles to fire a short burst into the door handle and kick the door in. A cloud of dust exploded into the air as they ducked through the entry.

Even through the thick glass of the door, Kate could hear the screams.

“Captain, they …”

She held up a hand.

“But if …” Kate’s hand strayed to the door handle.

Starr turned and glared at her, eyes flicking to Kate’s hand on the handle, then back to her eyes. Her face was cold and unfeeling, countenance demanding compliance.
 

“My people have this. Stand. Down.”

Her hand had disappeared and Kate knew where it was. Resting on her pistol. She knew this type. This was a dangerous woman.

Kate felt an urge to say fuck it and take her chances—if she were shot, she’d heal. At least, if it weren’t a head shot or a shot to the chest or … well, she didn’t know how that would go down, did she? She suppressed the dangerous impulse—barely.

The gunfire ripped her gaze back to the gas station window as the bullets popped through the glass, shards falling to the ground like rain. More screams, then silence.
 

“Six-Five, report,” Starr said emotionlessly into her mic, eyes not leaving Kate’s face.
 

The radio was silent for several very pregnant moments while Kate listened to her heart in her chest.
 

Finally a tired voice came back to Starr’s hail.
 

“Uh, we’ve got no civilian survivors, Jolly Roger. Only hostiles. We were fired on as we entered. Permission to egress?”
 

Starr stared out the front window briefly before nodding.

“Copy that. Permission granted. Let’s get on the road.”

Beside her, Kate saw Ky reach for the door hand, and she slapped it away as the vehicle lurched forward, ready to move with the convoy. The soldiers remounted their vehicles and turned again, regaining their positions in the front of the convoy. She shook her head at Ky as a single tear ran down the girl’s face.
 

That little boy.
 

She knew what she had seen.

She was responsible.
 

They had killed the people in that building.
 

But why? Obviously, there were many reasons a small group of survivors might try to fend off others. Why they would try to keep their group small. Certainly why they would refuse new additions. But they hadn’t blinked at accepting Ky and Kate.
 

The convoy accelerated quickly, and she stared out the window, trying to come up with an answer. Her hand was on Ky’s for reassurance, but Kate didn’t feel very reassured for herself.
 

They had killed that boy. And whatever adults were in that building with him. Then they had lied about it. These were not acts of sane people.
 

Fields streamed by outside, the number of buildings increasing slightly. They were approaching another town.

Her thoughts were interrupted by an explosion of gunfire from the lead vehicle. Starr bolted upright and her hand flew to her radio. Before she could transmit, the lead humvee pulled from the group to the shoulder of the road ahead, fifty cal blazing.

“All stop!” a woman’s voice screamed over the radio, and I peered forward, trying to see past the larger truck ahead.
 

In the thickening ash fall, which had been getting steadily worse as the column moved west and north, visibility was low, and the vehicle slowed. In the shadows ahead, the lead humvee continued to spit fire at a target beyond the column.
 

“Contact!”
 

“Contact!”

“Shit, they’re everywhere!”
 

The radio exploded with transmissions as guns erupted from the front vehicles of the convoy.

Starr cursed, grabbing her carbine and glancing back at Kate.

“You still want out?” she snarled, and opened her door into the madness. “‘Cause you’re free to leave now!”

***

Their battle had begun on the outskirts of a
 
small town. A dilapidated road sign had fallen to the ground outside their truck, and as Kate stepped onto the running board, she saw the scratched “Route 20” markings through the ash.
 

On the right side of the roadway, a large industrial compound lurked like a monster emerging from a snowfall, huge cranes and conveyor belts and other machinery covered in ash and standing silently behind six feet of chain link fencing. On the left side of the road, a field of vines—likely grape for industrial wine production—had grown thick and tangled, obscuring visibility for more than ten feet into the large field. Ash complicated the group’s ability to see clearly the threat that they had come upon.
 

Before the infection hit, this small town had been built around a single winery that produced a mildly disgusting, but extremely popular brand of boxed white wine. The winery employed nearly five hundred people in a normal week, out of the town’s total population of approximately eight hundred. During the first week of the infection, the notoriously harsh management of the company—all of whom were convinced that the coverage of the spreading madness was simply one more Ebola scare by a ratings-hungry
 
liberal media—issued an edict—no one would be excused from regularly scheduled shift work. All would report for work or be fired.
 

Because the infection hadn’t yet reached the many far-flung small towns and cities of the state, nearly a week went by before anyone had reason to question this order. Then, the arrival of refugees from the cities began. Several workers showed up late one Tuesday, complaining of crazy people on the street. Several didn’t show up at all. And even more problematic, many people showed up for work as scheduled—but clearly ill.

Within one work day, the compound’s machinery was unattended. Vats of grapes were left to rot in the coming weeks. Blood covered the floor of the winery, adding its own coppery smell to the aromas of fermenting fruit.
 

By the end of the day, management—sealed up tightly in their offices above the fray—realized their mistake. Belatedly, some semblance of humanity and thoughtfulness occurred to the manager on duty that day.
 

That manager, Evan, wasn’t a smart man. He wasn’t particularly talented. He had earned his job the old-fashioned way. He had married the owner’s daughter, and promptly got her knocked up, paving the way for a necessary income-earning handout from his new father-in-law.
 

Evan realized that there were now hundreds of those things inside the compound, but that the winery was more than half the town’s population. Staring at a small framed picture of his family sitting on his sad little metal desk, he made the decision to try to salvage what he could of this day.

He moved stealthily to where his old Toyota sedan sat parked in the management parking lot, and slammed the accelerator to the floor, blasting through the open front gate and screeching to a halt. As the creatures inside followed the noise and movement, he pulled the large wire fence gate on its rollers, slamming it home against its locking mechanism. As several creatures approached from the road—wayward souls that had already wandered into the street from the winery—Evan found his large keyring and worked slowly through the assembled metal tabs until he found the large key that would lock the gate closed, sealing in the assembled creatures.