Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2) (31 page)

Garza slid into the driver’s seat and reached for the keys. After two tries, the engine sparked to life with a deafening roar. As he shifted the truck into drive, Garza prayed the armored personnel carrier proved worth the effort—and the smell.

“I’m gonna pull forward. Tell me when the rope becomes taut,” Garza said. Anthony nodded his head in understanding.

Slowly, Garza pressed the accelerator and the truck began inching forward. They felt the subtle rise and fall of the truck’s tires as they rolled over several infected bodies surrounding the vehicle. All the
pops
and
crunches
coming from under the vehicle made it sound like they were driving over downed limbs and debris after a thunderstorm.

“Okay! It’s tight,” Anthony said.

Continuing forward, Garza looked over his shoulder at the rope straining against the heavy load. After driving another foot, the huge officer’s body still had not moved. He wondered if the rope would simply snap under the tension. Just as he was about to stop the truck and rethink his plan, the corpse began to slide ever so slowly toward the rear door as though it were on a conveyor belt. Not wanting to lose the momentum or risk breaking the rope, he kept a steady pace.

“It’s working!” Anthony shouted.

Charon growled menacingly at the sight of the lifeless thing’s movement. Several feet later, the officer flopped out the back door.

“Let’s get back to the others. Better fasten your seatbelt, it might be a bumpy ride,” Garza said, as he steered the Bearcat back toward the grocery store.

22

October 6, 2015

Fulton County, GA

Garza and Anthony found the Bearcat about two miles from hideout atop the little grocery. For the most part, Garza managed to steer the big truck around the crashed and stalled cars without much trouble. That changed when they approached a particularly congested intersection, and someone opened up on them with small arms fire, sending several rounds ricocheting off the truck’s armor plating. Garza wondered if the shooters were part of the group that attempted to ambush them the day before. Despite the fact that the truck was armored and had ballistic glass capable of stopping a .50 caliber projectile, he was a little nervous about not knowing who was firing on them, or what kind of firepower they possessed. Given what he and Anthony went through to acquire the Bearcat, he was unwilling to risk losing it to anybody.

Aside from the obvious protection the Bearcat afforded them, it also had many other features he knew would prove to be invaluable. The massive three hundred horsepower turbo diesel engine had enough power to get them just about anywhere they needed to go, and the forty-gallon fuel tank was three quarters of the way full. That amount of fuel would provide more than enough range for them to make it to the CDC lab even if they were forced to make multiple detours. He was giddy when he looked over the on-board electrical displays and discovered that the truck was outfitted with both thermal and night vision camera systems.

Now with bullets plinking off the back of the truck, and the intersection ahead blocked by a two-car collision, Garza decided to see just what the heavy steel grill guard could handle. Gunning the engine, he steered the truck toward the rear quarter panel of the smaller of the two vehicles. “Hold on tight, boys! Things are about to get a little hairy,” Garza said.

WHAAAAAAMMMM!

The back half of the Toyota Camry virtually disintegrated as the Bearcat barreled through it without so much as slowing down. The impact felt about like the time he hit a dog in the old Nissan Maxima he used to drive.
This truck is awesome! From now on, it’s Bearcat or bust for me!

Straight ahead the road was blocked yet again, this time by an overturned tractor-trailer. Despite Garza’s newfound confidence in the impressive truck, the fact that he was unable to see what was on the other side of the obstruction gave him serious reservations about trying the same stunt.

“Mr. Garza, turn left here!” Anthony shouted. He sounded confident, and Garza complied without hesitation. The boy quickly directed him down another side street and through an alley, and they were once again headed toward the grocery. “Anthony! Can you see anyone following us?” Garza asked.

Scooting back to the rear door, the boy scanned the road behind them through one of the gun ports. “I don’t see anyone back there!” Anthony yelled over the noise of the truck.

Garza waved a hand over his shoulder in acknowledgement.

For his part, Charon remained sprawled out on the floor of the passenger compartment as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. He had barely stirred when they plowed through the Camry. Anthony shot the dog an incredulous look, and shook his head in astonishment.

“Anthony! Which way is the grocery?” Garza asked.

“Turn right on the next street, then go about five blocks. We should be able to cut through the alley and end up right behind the store,” Anthony replied.

Smiling, Garza made a mental note to make sure to tell the boy how crucial he had been in their finding transportation and getting it back to Dr. San. Sure, he had killed the infected giant and saved the boy from the thing with the broken ankle, but Charon led dozens of infected away from the truck and Anthony was navigating the city like a cab driver.
Those two are something else, which is why they are still alive, I suppose.

A few moments later, they pulled up right behind the little corner grocery just as Anthony said they would. Garza had worried the truck they fought so hard to obtain was going to be stuck in the narrow alleyway immediately behind the store. He envisioned them escaping through the roof hatch, only to go tell the General what they had found—and promptly lost. Fortunately, the truck literally scraped through, trailing a shower of sparks where its side grated against the adjacent brick wall.

Garza shifted the truck into park and turned off the ignition. He and Anthony were momentarily transfixed by the silence that filled the truck’s interior. The quiet popping and clicking of the warm engine and Charon’s shallow breathing were the only sounds they heard. The silence stood in stark contrast to the chaos and mayhem of the last thirty minutes of their lives. Garza finally turned to Anthony, and said, “Come on. Let’s go get the General and the good doctor.”

23

October 6, 2015

Fulton County, GA

General Montes stood atop the stairs behind the small grocery, his mouth agape in disbelief. After a moment during which the older man took in the reality of what they had acquired, he turned to Garza and Anthony, and said, “Unbelievable. I can’t even imagine how you two managed to find a vehicle like this, much less bring it back here in one piece.”

“More or less. One piece, that is,” Garza said. Turning to the boy, he added, “There is absolutely no way it could have been done without Anthony and Charon. These two are nothing short of phenomenal.”

Anthony beamed with pride at the soldier’s compliment, while Charon merely stared into the distance—thick slaver dripping off his tongue as he panted lightly. “But I should warn you about the truck’s interior before you get too excited,” Garza said.

Lin walked up behind them, and said, “What’s wrong with the inside?”

“Let’s just say it’s gently used,” he said, forming a wry smile.

They spent the next forty minutes removing the chunkier parts of the carnage still inside the truck, and loading some of the remaining supplies from the storeroom. Anthony discovered two small cases stowed under one of the bench seats. He pointed them out to Garza, who breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing the ammunition they contained. He was down to the last full magazine for his rifle.

As the truck was designed to transport about ten police officers and their gear, there was plenty of room in the passenger compartment for nearly everything of value left in the storeroom. Every empty space was filled with food, water, and other supplies. They intentionally left enough food and water for five people to last three days in the event they ever needed to use the hideout in the future. When they were finished, Anthony locked the door and replaced the key in its hiding spot.

Per Anthony’s suggestion, Garza procured a city map from the grocery store. Once again, the engine fired up without hesitation.

As they prepared to head out, General Montes sat in the passenger seat marking out various routes to the CDC facilities. Anthony sat next to Charon staring out the rear window at what had been his home for the last couple of weeks. Lin watched the young boy as he absently rubbed the dog’s head. She knew he was strong; if he weren’t, he would not have survived this long. Still, she couldn’t help feeling sorry that he had been forced to grow up so quickly, and in such a harsh manner. Her thoughts were interrupted when the truck lurched forward.

Turning to peer through the front window, Lin was struck by the feeling that they had started this
final leg
of their journey at least a half dozen times already. She wondered if they would ever really get to where they were going. Granted, they got a little closer each time, but still she wondered if this would be yet another
last start
in an unending line of
last starts
.

The more she thought about it, she was unsure if her question was intended to be literal or figurative. After the events of the preceding days, she did not know if it even mattered anymore. Her tired brain felt brutalized, and she could not begin to string together a coherent thought about the virus she was supposed to destroy. Feeling in her pocket, her fingers wrapped around the tiny object she had been protecting for the last five thousand miles. She held it in the light and marveled at the thought that the little USB drive, made in some overcrowded factory by someone who was most assuredly dead, might hold the secret to saving what was left of mankind.

Lin overheard General Montes speaking to Garza from the front seat, “According to this map, we are less than eight miles away as the crow flies. Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the city from here. The most direct route would be to follow I-75 south, and then head east near the I-85 interchange. That would keep us from passing through the city center where at least three PAT centers are located, maybe more. The PAT center at Chastain Park is located just north of that route. There’s also the Buckhead quarantine zone to consider.”

“So we either go south of the Chastain Park PAT center and skirt along just north of the Buckhead Q.Z., or head east just north of Chastain Park and then turn south after we pass the Georgia 400. Sounds like we need to pick the best of two bad choices,” Garza said as he slowly maneuvered the truck through the barren streets. While he found the lack of people to be both welcomed and disconcerting, he knew they were out there. If he had learned anything since the start of the plague, it was that it was always just a matter of time.

Tapping his finger on the map thoughtfully, General Montes said, “Since we don’t have any information about Perimeter Center or the surrounding areas to the north of the city, I think we should head between Chastain and Buckhead. Better to have some idea of what we’re up against than to go blazing off into the unknown.”

Thoughts of Saturday mornings in front of the television popped into Garza’s head, and he said, “Knowing is half of the battle.”

“Sun Tzu?” Montes asked.

With a laugh, Garza said, “G.I. Joe.”

They made their way through the streets of Atlanta, keeping close tabs on their surroundings at all times. General Montes tried to keep at least two potential alternate routes in mind in the event they needed to detour around any obstructions or threats.

Garza began to worry when they were nearly halfway there and had not encountered any major issues. It was as though the universe recognized they were transporting precious cargo and finally decided to cut them some slack. In the short length of time he had been with the General and Dr. San, that was never the case. He took a steadying breath and hoped this was not just the eye in the storm.

From the passenger compartment, Lin and Anthony kept a constant lookout as they drove. On several occasions, they were forced to backtrack and detour around snarls of abandoned vehicles or traffic accidents. As they moved farther into the city, they saw an increasing number of infected shambling in the streets. For the most part, they were in small clusters that were easy to drive past or through. Lin cringed every time the massive truck bumped over an infected body, a dull
thud
followed by a sickening
crunch
. She could not help but think of a cockroach being crushed underfoot—only amplified a thousand-fold. The first large group they saw was comprised of at least five hundred infected that had been drawn into an underpass. Whether something down there continued to attract them or they were simply unable to figure out how to escape from the shallow gully, they did not know. Either way, the deadly horde posed little threat to them as they passed over the road above.

After driving several miles, Garza pulled the Bearcat to a stop at the edge of a hastily constructed hurricane fence they assumed to be part of the initial effort to quarantine Buckhead. As he had been to this area on several occasions prior to the outbreak, Garza could not shake the strange feeling that they had passed through a wrinkle in the space-time continuum somewhere along the way. It was simply inconceivable that what he was staring at was the same part of North Atlanta he had visited only months before. Nearly everything on the other side of the fence was burned or gutted. From where he sat there was not a single intact structure in sight; only the charred husks of buildings remained. It was eerily reminiscent of footage he had seen of London after the blitzkrieg bombings during World War II.

“My God,” Lin gasped, as she stared wide-eyed through one of the passenger compartment’s side ports. “What happened here?”

“The quarantine failed,” Garza stated flatly, as he shifted the truck into drive.

Although she could not see his face, she saw the tension in his body and heard the emotion in his voice. “What do you mean? Of course quarantine failed,” Lin said in confusion.

Shaking his head, Garza replied in a slow, measured tone, “No.
This
quarantine failed. I heard one of the pilots back at Dobbins talking about something called
Option Clean Slate
. He was hard to understand and wasn’t making a lot of sense at the time. His words were garbled by tears and mucous as he cried uncontrollably. That alone was disturbing. Those pilots are as tough as nails. Nothing ever gets to them.” After a pause, Garza continued, “He was screaming things like ‘
those incompetent, murdering bastards’
and ‘
we’re all going to hell’
—crazy stuff like that. Stuff you might expect from someone that finally cracked under the pressure of it all. A couple of M.P.s and a medic came and hauled him off pretty quickly so he didn’t say much more.”

“I think he might have been part of Option Clean Slate,” Garza added. His voice was little more than a whisper, and Lin sensed he was struggling even to get that out. “I’m not sure what kind of ordnance they dropped here, but it must have been some pretty heavy shit.”

Lin stared at the ruined city with the painful understanding of what had occurred. Realizing that there was no hope of containing this small pocket of infection, but unaware that the proverbial cat was out of the bag on a global scale, the United States had turned its guns on itself with the hope that the death of the few would ensure the lives of the many. The scorched earth and decimated landscape were testaments to their resolve, but in the end it proved to be little more than mercy killing.

Lin wondered whether the people that had been incinerated inside the quarantine zone were the lucky ones. They would never have to face the horror of watching one of their loved ones morph into an unspeakable monster, or have to spend every conceivable moment fighting tooth and nail just to survive. They would never have to roam the land aimlessly looking for uninfected humans to devour. All of their cares, concerns, hopes, and dreams disintegrated in a flash of fire and light. Lin did not think it sounded all that bad by comparison, until she glanced over to where Anthony sat.

Despite all the horrors in the world around them and the destruction plainly visible right outside the window, he smiled broadly as he tussled Charon’s hair. In that instant, Lin saw a perfect example of why the people inside the bombed out quarantine zone were not better off than the lucky few that still remained on this side of the grave.

Anthony looked at her, and she gave him a smile and a reassuring nod. Her eyes glistened, and she knew he had no idea of what his simple gesture had just done for her. This time when she turned back to look through the window, she did so with hope-filled eyes.

When Garza drove around a bend in the road moments later, he stopped the truck and stared straight ahead in disbelief. As far as he could see, the entire scorched landscape appeared charged—writhing with almost imperceptible electricity as though it were a living organism in the midst of hibernation. Its constituents, the seared remains of scores of infected, protruded from the ground and most other surfaces in view, like some chargrilled version of Whack-A-Mole on pause. No hair, clothes, or eyes remained, and they all wore the same suits of blackened charcoal—their flesh reduced to a hard, leathery shrink-wrap stuck to the skeleton underneath. Ears, nose, lips, and cheeks were all burned through completely leaving little more than the skull. If they had teeth, they stood out like ivory Chiclets against the singed background.

Melted and fused with the ground by the intense heat of the incendiary weapon dropped on the quarantine zone, the infected were rooted to the spot—now just as much a part of the earth as the trees and plants that had been there before them. Several appeared to have their legs buried, as though they were in the process of exhuming themselves from the grave. One such miscreant, perhaps the most animated of the lot, also had one of its hands stuck to the ground. The other moved through the air in a slow arc as if trying to flag someone down to come scrape it off the asphalt.

Garza climbed out of the driver’s seat and moved to the roof hatch. When he poked his head out to get an unobstructed view of the field of horror sprawled out ahead of them, the acrid stench of burnt flesh and plastic wafted into the confines of the truck.

As Lin stared at the molten minefield of barely animate bodies, the addition of the pungent odor proved to be almost more than her stomach could handle.

Staring at the smoking ruins, Garza covered his mouth and nose with an extra shirt, and tried to look beyond the hundreds of smoldering bodies. It appeared as if a twenty-foot section of the flimsy hurricane fence had collapsed, presumably under the weight of hundreds, if not thousands, of infected. Perhaps they had been in pursuit of the uninfected that remained outside the Q.Z., or perhaps they were simply fleeing from the fiery inferno bearing down upon them. Regardless, the fence was breeched and countless infected poured out of the Q.Z. into the surrounding area to no avail. Everything was burned and charred beyond recognition. It was as though a hurricane of pure fire tore through the area. No plant life could be seen anywhere. The melted and gutted husks of buildings and automobiles dotted the area. He wondered if this might be the edge of the blast zone and thus the tremendous heat did not get hot enough for long enough to completely cook the brains of the infected.

“Garza, I think we should keep moving. I can drive if you want to keep watch up there,” General Montes said.

Without a word, Garza assented by rapping his hand on the Bearcat’s roof. The truck moved forward before Garza had a chance to consider what was coming next. His knees went weak momentarily when he heard the first crunch of brittle, fire-dried bones being crushed under the ten-ton truck. The bodies were so thick in places that it sounded as though they were driving through a gravel parking lot.