LZR-1143: Infection (26 page)

KAMP LILLIKANDA 100 FEET AHEAD!

WHERE KIDS CAN BE KIDS!

Fall Semester Now Open!

The sounds of pursuit from behind us had faded, our sprint having temporarily outdistanced our slower moving assailants. I slowed to a brisk walk, still searching the trees to either side.

“Corporal, I think we’re in the clear for the moment. I would suggest we hole up in a solid building in the camp until those things are off our…” I was going to say scent, but it didn’t seem possible that this virus would improve any of the normal human senses. They must track and hunt using the same faculties that we did: sight and sound. So if we hid well, they’d no more be able to track us than would any normal human.

“Mike?” Kate asked, looking for the end of the sentence.

“Let’s get inside and keep our heads down until they pass. They must hunt and track the same way we do - so if they can’t see us or hear us, they won’t know that we’re here. Even if they come through the camp, they won’t know we’re there unless we tell them.”

“Fuck that, man. We need to keep going to your facility. If it’s just ahead, we can get there now, before those creepy bitches can catch up.” Lansing was calm, and his idea had merit, but we needed to be cautious.

“We have no way of knowing what condition it’s in. It had a large, electrified fence and was heavily guarded. If it’s still in business, we may have to talk our way in. If it’s not, we may still run into the fence or a bunch of those things. We need to start off fresh and that means not being chased by fifty zombies, savvy?”

He looked back over my shoulder then back to the camp and nodded. “Yeah man, whatever. Let’s just get inside nice and quick. I’d rather not be standing here waiting for them when they come around that bend.”

We moved quickly but carefully into the camp, underneath the large wooden gateway, and past a totem pole, brightly colored in oranges and blues. A camp bus stood empty next to a small administration building to our right, dormitories in front of us set back against the lake. To our left, a cantina and a large cinder block building with a curved roof, probably the gym.

“What the hell kind of camp is this?” asked Sam, looking around. “It’s early September-past time for kids to be in school.”

“From what I remember Maria telling me, it’s a ‘study outdoors’ kind of place. Parents from the city pay top dollar to send their kids to the mountains for a semester.”

Sam just looked at me and scowled. I shrugged. Why the fuck’d she ask, then?

A soft, slightly high-pitched sound caught on the wind as we made our way toward the gym, made our destination by an unspoken agreement that it was likely the strongest choice of redoubt if we were discovered. We crossed the open space between the gate and building warily, eyes darting to windows and doors, every slight change of light or movement of shadow a potential threat. As we moved, the sound seemed to get louder, and I strode forward faster, thinking it to be the sounds of our pursuers, amplified and twisted by the wind.

From the lake, the solitary sound of a water bird echoed between the branches of the trees. A small animal, most likely a squirrel, darted up a tree to my right, causing my finger to tighten involuntarily on the trigger of my drawn pistol before I exhaled in relief.

As we reached the door to the gym, Lansing held up his hand. “Anybody else hear that, or am I fucking crazy?”

“Yeah, I think it’s those things behind us,” Anaru said, looking instinctively over his shoulder. “But it seems louder here than it was on the road.” He shrugged. “Probably the wind.”

“Maybe not,” said Kate, moving toward the door, where Lansing stood, hand on the steel bar that bisected the double doors leading inside. She held her finger to her mouth in a hushing gesture, and pushed softly and slowly against the steel bar. It didn’t budge. She squatted in front of the bar and looked closer.

“This is locked from the outside,” she said, standing up. As she did so, the noise seemed to crescendo, a chorus of high notes joining in a mockery of the moans we had been listening to for days. A horrid thought occurred to me, and my heart thumped in my chest as I backed up, turning to the side of the building where I had seen a door with windows on our approach. From behind me, I heard Sam’s voice ask where I thought I was going, but I didn’t hear, hoping and praying in my hasty walk that I was wrong.

The doors were painted a garish purple, the kind of color people paint for kids under the belief that youth automatically equates with poor taste. A large red ladybug adorned the one on the right; a yellow butterfly to the left. I approached the window with dread as Anaru appeared on my right. I peered through, stomach in my throat.

“Holy shit,” Anaru said from my side, his massive form doubling over and retching next to me, vomit spraying onto the door and oozing down to the dirty concrete walk. Some of it got on my boots, some covering the rotting stump of the hand still attached to my right foot. But neither of us cared.

I had been right.

God help me, I had been right.

Chapter 24

There were maybe a hundred of them, most clustered around the far doorway, pawing at the steel panels. They were between 6 and 10, but it was hard to tell. So many faces and bodies were mutilated or defaced that apart from size, clues as to age were difficult to come by.

It appeared that the only adult in the room had been too badly ravaged to reanimate, its bloody misshapen form lying prone against the far wall. Tatters of clothing lay strewn about and around the corpse as if tossed in frenzy by a pack of wild, hungry dogs.

Almost all of them wore the uniform apparently imposed by the camp, a khaki shirt bearing the logo of the place, as well as khaki shorts and tennis shoes of different makes and brands. Breaking my concentration, Lansing came around the corner, followed by the two women.

“What the hell, man? We gotta get inside…” he stopped talking as his eyes focused in on the window and his face changed slowly from irritation to dismay.

“Daaaaaaamn,” he drew it out softly and slowly, like a long drag from a cigarette. As Kate and Sam took turns at the window, both silent in the face of the unspeakable, I scanned the road behind us, which remained clear. But only for so long.

Trying to put the scene behind me, I spoke as I put the window out of sight. “Let’s get to the dorms. We can shut the doors, hunker down, and wait for them to wander past.” I stepped forward and away from the doors as Sam spoke up.

“What about them?” she said, her thumb jerking over her shoulder toward the pack of zombie children now moving toward the window, where our peering faces had been spotted.

“What about them?” asked Lansing before I could answer.

“We can’t just leave them,” said Sam, incredulous. “They’re children.”

His eyes widened in shock at realizing her lack of comprehension. “Yeah, fucking cannibal campers from hell, man. They ain’t normal no more-they’re monsters. We’re leaving their rottin’ asses here, end of story.” Her facial expressions changed rapidly in response, from sadness to anger to despair and back to indignation. As she looked at each of us, it finally shifted to acceptance as she turned away and cradled her injured arm.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s go then.”

We moved quickly across the grounds toward the furthest dorm. They were low, long buildings, with dark roofs. Brown cedar siding covered the exterior walls, there was one door on each end, both doorways bearing a screen door backed by a solid wood interior door.

Lansing reached the closest entrance and pulled the screen back, signaling for silence as he moved in, rifle held at the ready. Moments later, he reappeared.

“We’re clear-in a manner of speaking,” he said, waving us in as he watched behind us for any signal of pursuit.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Anaru as he passed from daylight to the dark confines of the room. As our eyes adjusted to the dark interior, we understood.

A teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen, hung suspended from the ceiling by a lanyard of belts and sheets. Bulging eyes searched the room, moaning made impossible by the constriction of the voice box by the attached belts around its crimson and gray neck. His feet kicked in a crude imitation of perambulation as its arms stretched forward, hands opening and closing in unrequited hungry desire. Sandals lay below a overturned chair below the moving legs, and a piece of paper lay folded neatly under a blue Nalgene bottle at the foot of a nearby bed.

“This place is a damn freak show,” I said, raising my pistol toward its head.

“Wait,” said Anaru, grabbing my wrist and looking out one of the dorm’s two windows that faced the road into camp.

“Shit! Everyone down!” whispered Kate, hunching and moving to the side of the window, pulling the ratty, dust covered curtains slowly shut. “Anaru, help me with these bunks,” she said, skittering under the window toward the door and grabbing a nearby bunk bed by the post. She and Anaru dragged it slowly and quietly in front of the door as Lansing and I did likewise on the opposite end of the room, taking careful steps not to be seen from outside through the narrow slit between the two pieces of fabric.

The first of the group from the road had appeared at the main entrance, shuffling slowly and mindlessly forward, apparently simply following the road into the camp. Others passed by the entrance, walking slowly up the hill to the facility.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their shambling other than the vague notion of feeding, and the memory of their meals having moved this way. Though their steps were shambling and seemingly directionless, their unblinking collective gazes were searching, eyes within rotting, lifeless heads constantly moving from side to side. Their food was out here, somewhere. It was just a matter of finding it.

I crouched down, out of sight. I saw Anaru carefully approach the hanging teenager from behind, knife in hand.

You know, if you were a nice guy, you’d let them know where you are. You’re not being a good host sitting here, fondling your big gun, hoping they just walk on by. After all, they’ve gotta eat too. At least throw’em a power bar or something. Maybe a box of raisins?

It laughed suddenly, wildly, as if it had said something far more witty.

I had never spoken back to the voice before, but I didn’t have time to bend over for its abuse right now. I needed to have control of something, especially right now.

Shut the fuck up. I don’t need your bullshit right now, I thought back.

The laughter stopped suddenly, as if a door had been shut or a light had been turned out. My mind was silent, but for the lingering echoes of the laughter. Just for the record, hearing nothing but the disembodied laughter of an internal, unknown voice bouncing around between your ears while the living dead linger outside your door does not a fun time make.

Then, suddenly: You don’t know what you need, you crazy bastard!

It had clearly been affronted by my belligerence.

What the hell are you doing here anyway? Trying to save the world? Dumb shit. What makes you think the world is worth saving? That you, of all people, are worth saving?

I didn’t have an answer to that, I just knew that I had to try. As I finished the thought, I realized that had been my answer.

Not good enough!!, it yelled, reading my thought, Not nearly fucking good enough! This shit happened for a reason, and you have no right to interfere.

The tone changed from animated disdain to outright anger.

You don’t even deserve to be alive. You should have died back there in King’s Park! You never should have made it out, and you know it!

I brought my hands to my head, squeezing my temples, trying unsuccessfully to disagree with that sentiment and quell the distempered voice, even as a whisper from my side caught my ear.

“Mike,” it was Kate. From behind her, a heavy thump and a lighter one, in immediate succession.

I opened my eyes to find the body of the zombie on the floor, the head having rolled back underneath a far bunk. A dreadfully rotten, coppery smell permeated the dark room as I involuntarily wrinkled my nose in response.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to suppress my gag reflex. The smell was getting worse. It must have come from the inside the body. The damn organs must rot inside the body, even as the nervous system and brain keep functioning. What a way to go.

“What do you think happened here?” she asked. Her eyes were red, and her whispered voice was unusually hoarse. I elected not to ask about it as I shrugged in response.

“No clue.” I watched as Anaru dragged the body underneath a bunk and carefully extracted the head from the far side of the room, grabbing it by the hair and rolling it slowly under the bed like a bowling ball.

From beside me, the sound of someone sitting against the wall. “Looks like this guy,” Lansing gestured at the teen with his rifle as he slid slowly to the floor, “locked the little ones in the gym and then took care of himself. Must’ve been bitten or something.”

“We could just read this,” said Anaru, holding up the piece of paper he had extracted from beneath the water bottle and handed it to Kate. “It looks like he left it behind.” His loud whisper carried just as far as it needed to chill us at the thought.

I wasn’t inclined to intrude on this poor bastard’s last thoughts, especially since this note was addressed to people that were likely already dead as well. It seemed doubly wrong to read a note left by a dead man for dead people. But we were alive, and it might give us information on the camp up the road or shed light on how the infection made it here. I nodded.

Kate read slowly to herself, tears welling in her eyes, emotion torturing an already reddened face. Her mouth moved slowly with the words as she read, as if giving verbal shape to the written word paid it homage that it was sorely due. When she was finished, she handed it to me silently, looking away as she did and wiping a tear from her cheek.

“Lansing was right,” is all she said before getting up and moving to a bunk across the room.