Man Eaters (9 page)

“Wait. I came for food.”

“You and everyone else. There’s a couple boxes of patties to your left.” The woman shined a flashlight at the boxes, which were already opened. There were a dozen or so patties in it and Roper took them all.

“Okay, I’m good.”

The woman shined the flashlight up and down Roper’s body, stopping at her gun. “Can you shoot that thing?”

She put her hand on the grip. “Like you read about.”

“Excellent. Ready to blow this pop stand?”

“I was ready an hour ago.”

“We’ll go out the way you came in. Head for the back of the store. There’s a parking lot there. Stay low. We have to get out of this fucking town before people start losing it. It’s been compromised in some way.”

“Compro—? Are you a soldier?”

“Was. Ready?”

Before Roper could answer, the woman cracked open the door. Not only light streamed in, but smoke as well.

The restaurant was on fire.

****

Dallas

“If I’m not back by nine—”

“Don’t even go there. You’ll be back.”

Roper looked Dallas in the eyes, her gaze intent. “Shit happens.”

The conversation she’d had with Roper just before she left did laps in her mind. Now, as Einstein and Dallas stood watching the flames burn the town to the ground, those last two words echoed loudly.

“Why are we just standing here? We have to do something!” Einstein cried, turning to Dallas, fear etched on his face.

Dallas watched as his fear quickly transformed to panic. “Einstein, get a grip, okay? We don’t know if she’s even in all that. We can’t blindly run into a town burning to the ground. We have to have some faith in her.”

“She was going to Burger King! For me! She put her life on the line because I couldn’t just suck it up...and now—”

Taking him into her arms, Dallas held him as he sobbed. She wanted to cry as well, but she would have to put those tears in reserve in the event they didn’t get Roper back.

But Dallas was a long way from allowing those thoughts to plague her mind. Roper was smart. She was analytical. She could problem-solve with rapidity. Dallas wasn’t going to sign off a death certificate until she was certain Roper didn’t make it back to them.

“It’s not your fault, Einstein. We’re all hungry. She volunteered to go. Besides,” Dallas pulled away and brushed his hair off his forehead, “she’d be really pissed if she knew how easily you’d given up on her.”

“I...I didn’t mean—” he stood up a little straighter. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“No sorries. We are all doing our best. We need to keep that in mind. You keep the fire going. I’m going to keep watching the activities of the town, and together, we are going to go about as if we expect her back at any time.”

Any time dragged along, with every minute feeling like an hour. The town was almost completely engulfed in flames, and by the time the little black dot of the Hummer rolled out of sight, the town had been completely razed.

Dallas just stared at the black smoke rising from the many buildings caught in the conflagration. The idea that Roper was down in that somewhere hurt her heart. She’d never felt so helpless in her life and only staying calm for Einstein kept her from freaking out.

And she wanted to freak out. She wanted to scream, to rant, to curse the heavens. What could she do to help? How could she get down there to get Roper out?

As if reading her mind, Einstein’s fingers slowly found hers and he held her hand like a little boy. “Isn’t there anything we can do? Anything at all?”

“Our only option is to wait.”

“For how long?”

That was a question Dallas had asked herself over and over. If Roper was caught in that...if something horrible happened, what then? She couldn’t just leave without knowing what happened to her. She would not leave her behind, regardless of whether she was a...was...regardless.

“We wait until nightfall.”

Einstein’s eyes held fresh tears. “That’s a long time away.”

She didn’t know if that was good or bad. “Yes, it is, but we’ll just have to wait it out.”

“I wish I’d brought a book to read, or something to do. This waiting around is going to kill me.”

Dallas pulled her iPhone out. It had sixty one percent power left. “I’ve got a few books on here.”

Einstein stared at it. “You don’t have much power left.”

Dallas shrugged. “No cell service and no electricity, it’s already antiquated, right? Go on. Stay in the cover. Read. You read and then we can get the horses some water.”

Einstein backed up against a tree and quietly read while Dallas kept her eyes glued to the burning buildings, now barely visible beneath the black and gray towers of smoke. The military had burned the entire town to the ground.

“Come on, Roper. You have to be okay. You have to.” Dallas wished she believed in some higher power so she could pray to it, but she didn’t. All she could do was sit against the tree trunk and wait.

Instead of waiting, she fell asleep, and when her head jerked up, she blinked rapidly and turned to say something to Einstein, who wasn’t there.

Jumping to her feet, she checked her watch.

“It’s only been thirty minutes,” Einstein said from the shadow of the rocks. He was repacking the supplies. They didn’t need to be repacked, but it was something to do. “Nothing happened down there. The flames are still licking the sky. No sign of her. No sign of anyone.”

“Just the same—” Dallas didn’t bother finishing. They both knew that every hour that went by, they inched closer to never seeing Roper again.

Dallas couldn’t believe how that thought punched her in the stomach. “Come on, Roper. Come back, please.” She murmured, feeling her gut wrench.

Another hour dragged on by. Dallas was beginning to feel the pain of loss and had to struggle to keep it at bay. She would not give up on Roper. She was a smart woman, a capable woman. Surely she’d found some way of getting out of there.

“Dallas…what if—”

“Uh uh. No what ifs. No doing outcome. We stay until nightfall.” She checked her watch. It was nearing noon. “After that, we’ll see where we stand.”

As Einstein watched the town burn, he shaded his eyes. “Is that another Hummer?”

Pointing with his other hand, he located the vehicle on the outskirts of town.

Dallas squinted to see it. “It sure is. What is it doing?”

The answer came five minutes later when gunfire rang out.

“They’re shooting at someone.”

Einstein shook his head. “This is containment protocol. In the video games and movies, it’s too hard to contain larger cities, so the military destroys the food supply surrounding those infected cities so the eaters have no place to go and will stay within the city boundaries. That’s why they are taking out these small cities.”

“You know, that makes total sense, but what happens once they cut off the city from the small, dead towns?”

Einstein looked at her as though that should be obvious. “They nuke the city.”

Dallas felt the blood drain from her face. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. There’s no other way to completely eradicate them. The living and the dead must go. Survival by attrition. You know…the needs of the many and all that.”

“So, no evacuation.”

“Nope.”

“No isolation.”

“Nope. Complete obliteration. After a certain number of days, they will operate on that “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” premise. If they can’t stop it here, they, if they haven’t already done so, try to control it at the borders.”

Dallas watched as the sun bounced off his red hair. She really liked this kid. Just the word kid made her long for Roper. She missed her more than she’d ever missed any girlfriend who’d been gone from her. How dumb was that? She didn’t even really know this woman.

Or did she?

Any woman who can walk across the center girder on the Bay Bridge was someone worth caring about and she cared about Roper. A lot. She was brave and smart, witty and resourceful. She seemed to have a good heart. What wasn’t to like about her?

“The Hummer is picking off anyone trying to escape.”

“But that’s impossible. They could just go out the other three directions. They need a helicopter.”

“Oh, believe me. It’s coming. I imagine our troops are spread pretty thin by now. One chopper out here will have to cover a lot of the smaller towns, but it’ll be here.”

And again, he was correct.

Fifteen minutes later, the Hummer pulled out and the chopper hovered, snipers on either side, picking off those who were fleeing on foot. Two trucks tried peeling out, but they, too, were fired upon and blown to bits. It was hard to watch.

Even harder to think of Roper being down there.

“This is awful. It makes me sick to my stomach.”

Einstein pointed to the small alcove. “I’ve moved our stuff into the shade of that tree and gave the horses three bottles of our water. I know it’s a precious resource, but without them, we’re pretty much screwed.”

Another hour went by, and Dallas felt her hope waning. It wasn’t until the chopper took off that she could look at something else.

“It’s not looking good,” Einstein said softly.

“No...it isn’t.” Tears sprang to her eyes before she could stop them. “We aren’t leaving until dark. We’ll saddle up then and go get Merlin, if he’s still alive.”

Einstein stood next to her and looked around for any signs of movement. “You got attached,” he said quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“Attached. Bonded. The first rule of survival in any zombie apocalypse movie is to never bond with other survivors. The ones who make it are those whose lives they deem are more important than everyone else’s. You got attached to her.”

Dallas shook her head. “I guess you didn’t read The Hunger Games.”

Einstein shook his head. “Saw the movie. This isn’t that, Dallas. You bonded with her and that puts your life more at risk. It’s simple arithmetic.”

She chuffed. “More at risk? It couldn’t be any more at risk. Besides, saving people is what I do…what I did for a living.” She turned to him. “I’ve bonded with you, too, ya know?”

He looked down and shook his head. “That means you’re twice as willing to take unnecessary risks...like Roper did for us.”

“It wasn’t unnecessary. We need to eat.”

He said nothing else for a long, long time, and as dusk slowly crept in around them, neither felt the need to state the obvious.

Roper was dead.

****

They spoke very little as they sadly saddled the horses and cleared up the camp area. Einstein ate an energy bar along with some vitamins. Dallas couldn’t find her appetite and didn’t want to waste food.

When they were both astride the horses, Dallas quietly took the lead toward town. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get Merlin. I told you. I’m not leaving her horse to starve.”

As per their agreement, Roper was supposed to leave Merlin in the same place they’d left the horses the first time—only when they got there, Merlin was not there.

“Damn it,” Dallas growled, flicking the switch in her flashlight. It had taken them longer to reach town than she realized and it was getting dark now. “She must have left him someplace else.” Dallas looked all around the immediate area. There was no sign of the horse. “God. Damn. It!”

“Are you trying to flag the bad guys over to us or is that your Luke Skywalker light saber?” came Roper’s voice from the shadows.

Whirling around, Dallas shined the light on a face...that wasn’t Roper’s.

“Roper?”

Roper stepped out of the darkness, a big smile lighting up her face.

“Thank God!” Running to her, Dallas threw her arms around her and hugged her so tightly Roper’s breath was squeezed from her. “We thought—we waited—”

Roper held Dallas to her for a long time before easing away. “I know and I’m so sorry for worrying you. If I could have gotten out of there sooner, I—we—would have.”

Einstein quietly joined them, hugging Roper to him and trying, unsuccessfully, not to cry. The three of them stood in a group hug for several moments.

“You’re alive,” Einstein said softly. “You’re really alive. She said you were, but I didn’t believe her.”

Roper pulled away and ran her hand over his hair. “I am and you can thank Butcher over there. She saved my life.”

Dallas turned in the direction of the woman, who walked into the waning light. Although it was difficult to tell for sure, Dallas thought she was a forty-something woman with salt and pepper hair, about Dallas’s height but with a thicker frame.

“You saved her? Thank you. Thank you so much.” Dallas shook Butcher’s hand. “I’m Dallas. This is Einstein.”

“Butcher, and trust me, she repaid the favor.”

Dallas turned her attention back to Roper. “Are you okay? We saw the flames. Heard the gunfire. A whole lotta bad shit went on down here.”

“I’m fine. A little singed around the edges is all.” Roper kept her arm around Einstein’s shoulders. “I apologize for scaring you. There were several men who—”

Dallas waved her off. “It’s not important. What’s important is you’re safe. You’re safe.”

Roper locked eyes with Dallas as if trying to read between her words before walking over to Merlin, who was virtually impossible to see in the darkness. Pulling a package from the saddlebag, she handed it to Dallas. “How about we move back into the hills, make ourselves a fire, and barbecue up some burgers?”

Dallas was too stunned to reply, but Einstein wasn’t.

“No way. You actually got patties?”

Roper laughed. “Way. Come on. Let’s make us something to eat and I’ll tell you all about it.”

After Butcher hopped on behind Roper, the four took to the hills, where they made a fire and cooked the hamburgers using a stretch of foil. As everyone ate, Roper told the story of their escape.

“So we realized we were better off staying in the freezer until the flames died down in the restaurant.”

Einstein was riveted. “Oh man, weren’t you scared?”

“To death, but we knew running through the flames might kill us anyway and even if we’d made it, we might have run right into gunfire. So, we took a chance that the building would burn down before the heat became too unbearable. As it was, we waited just long enough, so when the fire was burning itself out, we made a run for it.”