The Lazarus Impact (24 page)

Cough Drop signals over his shoulder. There’s a fading buzz noise, and a moment later he unlocks the gate and lets them in. He closes it behind them once everyone is in, and signals again. After another buzz sound the electrified fence is powered back up.

“Come on. Let’s get them inside and see what we can do. And get a mask on him,” he points to Marcus.

“Thank you Cough Drop,” Wolf says.

“Name’s John Reynolds.” They shake hands.

CHAPTER 47

Dr. Vogel is with Michael in another room, tending to Amy and Marcus. Sheryl, Wolf and Brandon sit around a table inside the home with their masks off, breathing freely for the first time in days. Their senses of smell seem to overwhelm them. The oddly familiar scents of a stranger’s home fill their noses; the lingering farm fresh food from this morning’s breakfast, the sweet pine sap oozing from the wood paneling on the walls, the mustiness of old fabric covered furniture draped with grandma’s quilts... And they can smell themselves, badly in need of bathing; almost as pungent as the wretched dead, whose odors were so potent that they even managed to traverse the filters on their gas masks at times.

“Jilly will be around in a few minutes. She’s feeding the chickens and rabbits in the back barn,” John says to Brandon while pouring hot coffee for Sheryl and Wolf.

“I’ll go help her out,” he says, excited to finally meet his internet girlfriend in person. He bolts out the door so fast he almost forgets to put his mask on. Visions of double-D tits dance in his head.

“Is the air bad here?” Sheryl asks.

“I wouldn’t take any chances after hearing that old hick coughing,” John says.

“I mean
you
were wearing a mask out there,” she points out. “I thought it was safe to breathe out here.”

“I wear one for the same reason you all do I suppose. Better safe than sorry,” he explains. “Only a matter of time before it spreads, or there’s word of more meteor impacts in the US. Already hearing rumors of that, matter of fact. Could be raining down all over the world and we wouldn’t know it, just pelting different parts of the globe as we spin through our days. No telling how big that cluster of meteors was.”

“What else have you heard? Anything more from Spider?” Wolf asks.

Just then Dr. Vogel and Michael walk in. Sheryl immediately stands up. “Is he okay?” she asks about Marcus. “Are they alright?”

“I think Amy’s going to pull through. No vital organ damage. I stopped the bleeding on both of their gunshot wounds and removed the bullets, but Marcus is in bad shape. He’s still unconscious. I don’t know if he’s going to make it. Right now it’s just a wait-and-see thing with him. Good news is he can’t get much worse. And he’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that,” Dr. Vogel explains.

“Can I see him? Sit with him?” she asks.

“Sure, go right ahead,” Dr. Vogel says. He sits down to a cup of coffee with Michael, Wolf, and John. “Now let’s talk about this trip to the CDC,” he looks over at Wolf.

“Boy you don’t waste any time, do you? Mate, whatever is in me is gone, dead,” Wolf says.

“You don’t know that. We need to get under a microscope to know that,” Dr. Vogel explains. “Besides we don’t necessarily need the parasite. I’m sure the government has samples of it if they were sending scientists into the infected zone. What we need is you, what’s in your body; whatever it is in you that fought back and won.
That’s
the key.”

“There’s an old hospital close by,” John offers. “I’m sure they have microscopes somewhere, some lab equipment. Could try to see if they’re up and running on generators before you go all the way to the CDC.”

“Maybe. But most hospitals don’t have the sort of things I need, or the safety equipment to properly study something of this virility,” Dr. Vogel says. “Besides Sheryl was right; hospitals are probably the most unsafe places right now. People get infected and rush to the ER, then the ER becomes hell on Earth.”

“You’re dead serious about this, ain’t you mate?” Wolf asks. “We’ve got a safe place to crash and you’re gung-ho to leave already?”

“I left my wife and kids at home in the middle of this to fend for themselves, and I set out for the CDC with your samples. That’s how determined I am. That’s how serious this is, and that’s how strongly I believe in you. We
need
to get you to the CDC, otherwise this thing might never stop,” Dr. Vogel argues.

“You realize what you’re asking me to do? They might lock me up once we get there! You’re asking me to give up my freedom, possibly my life, everything, for this cure,” Wolf says.

“Willy gave his life for us. Now maybe Marcus too. It’s the least we can do. We’ll all go. All of us. It’s too important,” Michael says.

“No, no, no,” Dr. Vogel says. “You need to stay here with Amy. She’ll need you during her recovery. And I’m sure Sheryl will want to stay with Brandon and Marcus. It’ll just be Wolf and me.”

“The less people we have with us the better,” Wolf says. His survivalist brain already mulls over scenarios and situations, calculating the best way to go about taking the journey. “More bodies to feed will only slow us down. Wait, what the hell am I saying? I didn’t even agree to this yet!”

“Neither did I,” John jumps in. “Tell you what. I’ll make it easy for you, Wolf. I’ll let everyone stay here if you agree to help Dr. Vogel. You just have to do what you do best. Get yourself and Dr. Vogel down to the CDC with your survival skills. Seems like everyone sacrificed something just to get here. I’ll tell you right now; this place ain’t no paradise. It’s hard work. Everything we do, all day, is aimed just at surviving, making it to the next day, preparing for the one after, and so on. I don’t know what the hell that boy told you to get you all to follow him here, but you seem like good enough people. And Wolf, this isn’t just some favor you’d be doing for Dr. Vogel. This is a service to humanity. If you think about it like that, the decision you have to make might start looking pretty clear, regardless of whether they lock you up.”

Wolf runs his hand through his hair in thought.
Maybe I should’ve just stayed in the woods
.
Now look what I’ve gotten myself into
. “Bullocks. Alright. But do we have to go right now?”

“No. Of course not. We’ll need to plan a route, gear up, all that. I’m sure you need time to figure out the best course of action,” Dr. Vogel says. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, then.” Wolf nods his head. “There’s always tomorrow.”

EPILOGUE

PFC James Reynolds is on his first tour in Afghanistan. A country boy, his home is in central Ohio; a small town with one street light in front of the general store, and great pride in their local high school football team. Everyone knows each other. He met Jennie Linker when they were both six, and he’s had a crush on her ever since. They write each other every day, the old fashioned way. They vowed to stay together, and give their relationship a shot at long distance. He was deployed three months ago.

A bad dream wakes him early in the morning; Jennie left him for someone else. The day before was another nightmare too; she was sick and dying. He hasn’t heard from her, and worries if everything’s alright. He steps out of his bunk and into the frosty morning air. The sun is already starting to burn away the dead chill that lingers from the night as it rises over the rocky ridge in the east. He shakes the nightmares from his mind, and reaches up for the orange ball just beginning to peek over the mountains in the blue-grey sky. He stretches his entire body as he yawns.

“That ain’t gonna make you any taller, Junior,” Bucky, one of Reynolds’ bunk mates, jokes with a light slap to the shoulder. Reynolds laughs it off. He’s short, and his initials are JR. Naturally he became Junior to the guys. He would’ve been a real junior too if his parents named him John, after his father.

Bucky, a ginger with big buck teeth, got his name because all the guys used to say “What’s up, Buck?” to him in basic training, in reference to the old cartoon character Bucky Rabbit, who had huge front teeth. Rabbit is even thrown about sometimes as a nickname too.

“Let’s go, short stack. We got good government work to do today!” Junior’s buddy Vice joins in, having faintly heard Rabbit’s comment. Donny Johnson, or Florida Vice, as he’s called, is a Florida native, always tan, and always wearing frog sunglasses pulled right out of the 1980s. Usually it’s just Florida, or just Vice, for short. Fitting too, because all he talks about are the hot chicks and beaches back home.

Reynolds gives some sarcasm back to Bucky and Vice. “Wow. Two short guy jokes in one minute! You guys deserve a medal of some kind.”

They’re part of a small team with orders for a humanitarian mission. The plan is to bring supplies to villagers who might have been cut off due to recent violence, skirmishes on the roads, and security lockdowns in the area. Traveling by road is dangerous, but it’s the only way now. Choppers aren’t being used. They load two humvees with essentials like sacks of rice, bottled water, and gas masks.

“Aight, let’s move ‘em out!” Captain Davies shouts from the lead vehicle, and a moment later they’re off.

#

They’re on a dusty and rocky dirt road, 50 klicks north of base in southern Zabul province, Afghanistan. Reynolds is in the rear vehicle with four of his brothers. Florida drives. Then there’s Celery sitting shotgun, who got that name because he’s tall, skinny and green – green as in a total clueless newbie. Reynolds gets a reprieve from short jokes when Celery is around. Rabbit sits bitch in the back seat. Behind Celery is Tackleson. He got that name because he’s a hair trigger, blast happy, wild-eyed lunatic hick, just like the character from a 1980s police comedy movie franchise. Reynolds is positioned behind the driver’s seat.

“What are all the gas masks for? Usually see a couple on these kinds of missions, but not this many,” says Celery.

“Something to do with meteors that hit back home. Rumor is that no one’s been able to make contact with anyone from back home for a while,” Reynolds answers him.

“Where do you get this shit? No one tells me nothing,” Celery asks.

“I don’t know. Just hearing things,” says Reynolds.

“We should’ve been in a chopper. The roads are too fucked,” Tackleson adds.

“The last contact our high-ups got from home was to ground all air transportation. That’s why,” Vice tells him. “Ain’t heard from the old Commander in Chief since.”

“So communication sats are down? But not ours?” Celery asks again.

“Don’t know. We have radio though. Also heard that it’s poisonous to breathe the dust from the meteors. Guessin’ that’s what the masks are for,” Vice responds.

“So what about us?” Celery continues.

“We got our standard issue masks, and there’s a bunch more in crates at base just in case. It was the last supply shipment we received. Davies told us to bring ‘em if things get crazy,” Bucky explains to a dumbfounded Celery while holding up his own mask. “You brought yours, right?” There’s a long pause of silence. “You stupid, goony-ass bastard. Celery, you forgot it didn’t you?”

“Fuck you, Rabbit. You guys don’t tell me shit,” Celery whines.

The other guys laugh.

“Now now, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Buck’s just nibblin’ on your celery stalk a little bit. Ain’t you Rabbit?” Florida looks over the top of his shades in the rearview mirror with a grin fixed on Bucky. Bucky flings an extra gas mask in Celery’s direction.

“That’s fuckin’ gay, Vice. You must’ve spent too much time down in faggy ass Miami Beach watchin’ homos nibble on each other’s celery stalks.” Tackleson laughs.

“Man, oh man. What I wouldn’t give to be back home on the beach in Miami right now.”

“Gaybot!” Tackleson cuts him off, earning laughs from the others.

“Nah man, I’m telling you. The chicks down in Miami are like nothin’ you’ve ever seen. Think of it like spring break every day, man,” Florida explains.

Tackleson moans. “Here we go again. Should we pull over so you can jerk off?”

“Sounds nice. Why’d you leave?” Reynolds asks.

“That’s a good question Junior. One whose answer I’ve totally forgotten. Tell you what... my new year’s resolution... go back home and bang as many of those sexy ladies in bikinis as I can while I’m still young enough to pop wood.”

The guys laugh.

“What about you, Buck? What’s your resolution?” Celery asks.

“Shit, I don’t know. Quit smokin’ I guess,” he says.

“Oh come on man. You gotta make it something good. All of us, you know, we risk our lives out here... and your resolution is to quit smoking? Pick something better than that Bucky. Pick something like ‘have a three way’ or ‘blow coke off a hooker’s tits’ or something,” Florida suggests.

“What about Tack?” Celery asks.

“Two thousand confirmed kills,” Florida answers in his best Tackleson impersonation, which is a cross between an Austrian body-building robot and a toothless hillbilly. Everyone laughs but Tackleson.

“I can make that happen,” Tackleson says, all straight faced and serious.

“What about you, Junior?” Celery asks.

He thinks for a moment. “I’m gonna ask Jennie to marry me.”

“Oh that’s just precious,” Florida says though a laugh.

“What can I say, I’m in love. Being apart just makes me want it more,” Reynolds says.

“I’m in love too. And being apart from all my Florida ladies makes me want them even more too. Variety is the spice of life, my man. One day you’ll remember me when you’re sick and tired of Jennie’s saggy tits and cottage cheese ass.” Vice looks at Junior, fixing his eyes on him in the rearview mirror, not watching the road ahead. “You’ll be thinkin’ of old Vice, sittin’ on the beach with one lady bringing him drinks, two ladies rubbing his feet, and three ladies...”

A deafening explosion outside cuts Vice off mid-sentence. Captain Davies’ hummer jolts up into the air and lands on its side, as if it were bounced by a boy with a toy car. The ground thunders all around them. A short, angry rain of dirt and rocks pours down onto the hummer, nicking and cracking the windshield. Vice slams the brakes, but their vehicle slides and slams into the rear end of Captain Davies’ hummer. Smoke pours from Davies’ hummer across to theirs, and they can’t see shit.

“What the fuck, dude?” Rabbit complains. He struggles to sit himself up, having been thrown into the front of the vehicle.

Celery puts his gas mask on immediately. He shakes his head nervously and the loose rubber straps fling around the side of his face like streamers dangling off a balloon. “Was that rocket fire?” he asks. No one answers.

Vice opens the door cautiously with his weapon in his hand. He steps out to get a better look at Davies’ humvee. “Holy fuck,” he says. Reynolds opens his door too, and a moment later they all step out of the vehicle.

Davies’ body is hanging halfway out of his windshield. His right arm is a burnt stump sheared off just below the shoulder. A hole is ripped through the hummer, with seared, charred edges. A small flame flickers within a crater on the dirt road, and smoke rises up from the hole. There’s screaming from inside the vehicle, along with the sounds of vomiting and coughing.

Vice and Reynolds run over to Davies to check his vitals, but it’s obvious he’s dead. They open the rear door and drag the other men out from the back seat. Two are dead, and the other is coughing and throwing up like crazy.

“Can you stand up, Ghost?” Vice asks the guy between his vomiting. He notices a pretty bad gash on his side too; it’s not mortal, but it certainly inhibits Ghost’s breathing. Vice applies pressure to the wound. But when Ghost winces in pain and gasps several short, ineffective breaths, Vice thinks there might be some broken ribs or a collapsed lung.

Ghost is so white that he’s almost clear. That’s how he got his name. But now it’s worse. He’s lost some blood, and he’s so sick that he’s turning yellow in the face. Even his eyes look a little yellow. Reynolds gives him his mask, and he begins to breathe a bit easier. Eventually he stands.

The last guy in the front seat won’t stop screaming. Bucky and Tackleson pull him out of the wreckage. It’s Peters. He never really got a nickname because he was just too normal. They tried calling him Average or Regular for a while, but neither stuck for too long. His left hand is missing. They try to calm him down, but he’s bleeding out. Rabbit ties a tourniquet around his arm, just below the elbow. That’s when Bucky notices the hole in Peters’ stomach, ripped clean through his body and cauterized the entire way, like a smaller version of the hole through the hummer. Peters flops to the ground and dies moments later.

Celery stands in the road confused and scared, trembling like a frightened mouse. He creeps close to the rubble and looks down at the steaming, flaming crater beside the vehicle. A piss yellow smoke curls up from the hole, and a greenish glowing rock sits in the center; a burning pitch, an ember of space rock. Celery smells a faint scent of burning plastic and sulfur coming through the mask.

The radio inside their hummer is rattling off like crazy, but the voices are either inaudible or muffled and distorted by static. Tackleson tries to communicate back to base on several channels, but there’s no coherent response; only panic, distress, and confusion.

“Look, out across the hills,” Reynolds points. A flaming shower of debris falls from above. The glowing orange hail is trailed by emerald-tinted black soot and accompanied by a distant but descending whistle sound. Then more fireballs sail overhead, this time much closer, right on top of them. Flames streak across the sky, ripping through the morning air with ear piercing shrieks. The ground shakes when they hit the dusty earth, nearly knocking the men down. The debris continues to pelt down on them, and they take shelter in the hummer.

“Holy shit! They’re coming down all over the place!” A hail of flaming rocks rains down on the desert all around them.

When the barrage of brimstone and hellfire settles, they step back out into the sun. In the windless dead calm of the desert, a strange, thick, piss-milk smoke snakes its way up from each impact, all around them and in the distance. Just like the smoke coming from the busted hummer and the crater in the road. Behind them, far in the distance, a small mushroom cloud lingers out in the desert.

“Looks like base was destroyed. Gotta be. Ain’t nothing else that close by,” Bucky says.

“Try the radio again,” Vice suggests.

“I did. It’s dead air. Nothing,” says Tackleson as he steps away from the hummer.

“Could it be missiles? Rocket fire?” Celery asks.

“No those are meteors you damn fool! Or debris from one,” Vice explains.

“But what kind of explosion makes a cloud like that? Could it be an attack?” Celery continues, pointing to base.

“I don’t know. I doubt it though. Meteors could’ve hit the fuel supply, generators, or munitions storage.” Vice eyes Celery for a moment. “Everyone, do like Celery and put your masks on.”

“I gave mine to Ghost. I’m taking one from the supplies in back,” Reynolds says as he runs.

“You know the Bible says God will bring the end of days upon us,” Tackleson muses as he stares off into the distance.

“Yeah but ain’t that a flood or something?” Celery asks.

“No. He already flooded us once. The next time he promised fire from above.” Tackleson begins to quote. “I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs on Earth below. Blood and fire and vapor of smoke...”

“You actually believe that bullshit?” Rabbit jumps in.

“That ‘bullshit’ is believed by lots of people. And not all of ‘em ignorant hayseeds like Tack,” Reynolds adds.

“Thanks, I guess?” Tackleson responds.

“You too, Reynolds? And that still don’t mean it ain’t bullshit,” Bucky presses.