The Zombie Letters (23 page)

              It seemed that Doctor Miles put two-and-two together in assuming whoever took the Archie bulbs was military. No one knew what those plants were and exactly what they did aside from the staff at the Locke facilities and the Pentagon. Someone
involved
had to have taken them. They were useless to anyone else. Alexander Powers sat back in the APV and considered it. They were both looking for each other. God knew how far away they were from each other at any given point, but their destinies were linked. They’d find him. Yes, they would. He’d been told that the place was clear. All was square. It was his turn to work now. Sergeant Major Powers hopped out of the armored vehicle before they left and wired the place with motion-activated cameras. The whole outer grounds were done, too. When Powers was done, he noticed General William Teel sitting in the APV cockpit. He was on one of the closed phone lines with the President. Teel stared Alexander down like he was a slug and handed him a large flight case by the handle. Powers walked inside and to the area where the NORAD main control room was. The solar-generated emergency lighting made it to where one could see in there barely enough to work. Most bases didn’t have solar-powered emergency lighting. Mostly all of them had become big, black and empty tombs. Powers took the large flight case his officer gave him and placed it on the main console’s desk. It had a big white sticker on the front with Darin Miles’ name stencilled on it. A case like this was left at every base. It contained pertinent phone numbers that still ran on cell towers reactivated by the military, coordinates to the bunker in Virginia, some food, flares, a couple of hand grenades, pillows, blankets, toilet paper, cigarettes, a few bottles of water and a letter explaining how Miles was to contact them.

              A lot of men had been lost, injured or mentally fucked up searching for Doctor Miles. Even with the new prototype incinerators that could melt a zed into pudding, it was still practically suicide to drive across the country and leaving little care packages. The brass back at the bunker, as well as the President would be thrilled to see Miles, but as far as Teel and the men felt, they weren’t too fond of the man. Starting the whole outbreak aside. They had seen a lot of friends die for the goose-chase. Some of the guys talked about the doctor as if he were an animal that needed trapped instead of a human being. He was a prize to them. He was something they’d stick antlers on and tie to the hood of the Armored Personnel Vehicle if they could.

              There were three separate teams on for this week-long excursion. One APV left out North and headed to New York, Philly and Maine. Another hit West to deliver a care package to a large base in Brant, Missouri. Miss Grantham said that the doctor only visited larger bases first, so that’s where the search parties went. One went to NORAD in Colorado Springs and one had just radioed the moment Powers finished leaving the care package. A voice blasted through the large speakers installed on the inside of the APV doors. “Team Charlie? Anyone there?” the static-laced, tinny voice said.

              Teel, who had just walked into the control room with Powers, hauled ass back to the APV and shouted into a handheld receiver. “I hear ya loud and clear, boys. Have you reached your destination?”

              “Yes, sir,” the static-man said. “We have reached destination. 109
th
airborne infantry base . . . Mayfield, Kentucky. It’s gettin’ dark, so the dicks are sleeping with the gear in the APV tonight. Then it’s off to the lakebed areas to place some additional cameras and look for survivors.”

              “Good man. Keep us posted. Over.”

              “Yes, sir.”

              The radio clocked off and General William Teel leaned against the cool rock face of the NORAD hangar tunnel. He whistled softly and smoked his first cigarette in fifteen years.

CHAPTER 9

I

             
D
ennis came to, lying on the couch with a wet rag on his forehead. He felt sloshy and his legs ached as if he’d run a couple miles with weights on his ankles. The baby, Jason, was in his playpen babbling to his little stuffed duck. Happily bopping the duck up and down and giggling every time he watched it plop into his lap, he looked at his father with a smile. Through the screen of the bright, stinging headache that intensified every time he breathed in, he could hear Ryan in the kitchen putting dishes away. He and his mama were talking low under the sound of running water from the sink. Voices, even the baby’s, were warbly . . . like a warped record with the treble turned all the way down.

              They’d had Jason one week before everything happened. Thank God they lived where they did or there’s no way they would have survived. The way Dennis insisted they stock up on diapers and formula paid off in spades. Jason was eleven months old now and as healthy as can be. So happy, too. Dennis sat up and leaned over the couch. Jason smiled and put his arms up to his daddy. Dennis smiled and picked him up, laying back down on the couch with the baby on his chest. Jason seemed to sense his loving father’s condition and lie there silently, his chubby little hands gently kneading Dennis’ short, curly hair. His little blue eyes fluttered for a moment and he fell asleep. Amanda walked out of the kitchen and smiled sweetly as she looked at them. Dennis smiled back and kissed little Jason’s head. Mandi looked radiant, but a little worried. Her dark red hair hung loosely to her shoulders. She re-knotted the bath robe she had on . . . the thinner velvet-looking one he liked. It hugged her body so well. She was short . . . about five feet-two. Dennis was a foot taller, but he always loved shorter women for some reason. They seemed more feminine to him. They were once an average couple that worked in IT together on separate floors; went to yoga classes and movies together. They enjoyed jogging at the lake. They liked comic book conventions and Star Wars marathons. Dennis Jackson loved the cute redhead in the small, round glasses the moment he’d met her when they both worked in retail years ago. She could talk video games as well as the next guy . . . the first date they went on, she wore a T-shirt with the Konami code on it. Already a keeper in his book.

              “What happened out there, Dennis?” she said, leaning herself against the kitchen doorframe.

              He stopped for a moment, giving the sleeping little one on his chest another kiss. “You ever notice how babies smell . . . like nothing in the world has ever touched them?”

              Amanda wanted to press it, but she didn’t. She simply watched Dennis’ eyes close, giving her two men way to sleep.

              It took another week for Mandi to be convinced enough to let Dennis head out again. There was no denying the fact that despite the danger, he had to do it. Her husband wasn’t a foolish or careless man by any means. The man was nothing if not meticulous, thoughtful and well-respected. Just had a bad day, that’s all. Just one bad day. Made a mistake. He should never have walked into that farmer’s market. He’d boxed himself in and had to detonate a dangerous explosive indoors just to escape with his life. That’s all it took, anyway. No one, no matter how expertly trained in survival, is perfect. Sooner or later, even the greatest of us will slip.

He had left over two hours ago. Needed to stock up on some more of those winter clothes for Ryan. Winter in the bottoms is hell.

              Amanda wished she could go with him, or at least go in his place. She had a genuine interest about the survivalist hobby even back when they first started hanging out. Now as she sat in Ryan’s room upstairs, making repairs to their homemade radio antenna, her thoughts drifted to him. Nothing had come through the radio in over nine weeks. Even then, the signal broke up so badly out in the bottoms, it was useless to try and decipher what the hell anyone was saying. That’s why the antenna was built. Maybe there was some kind of military presence somewhere . . . maybe a safe place where they were rounding up people. After the antenna could finally be used, the broadcasts had stopped. This was around the time the running water and electricity had stopped. It didn’t hurt them much. Dennis had taken measures to make sure that they still had those comforts after shit hit the fan. It seemed that the only life in existence was what was hunkered inside the house. Even the buzzing of insects and rustling in the trees seemed to be silenced. All of the death in the world had done something remarkable. Mother Nature seemed to take herself back from mankind. These were the caretakers of nature . . . human beings . . . perhaps their misuse and rape of the planet for so long caused Her to throw a punch of her own.

              Amanda stood at the front door looking down at a lonely stretch of road, nursing a cup of coffee. Just standing there, watching the remaining sunlight fade over the horizon. It made the once blue sky a dull grey-color. Every time like this was hell. There was always the fear that this was the time her husband would never come back. She caressed the ceramic mug in her hands, willing herself to God. She willed herself to feel the last time they made love, the last time they lied down on the sofa on a hot night with her on top of him, shirtless in the light of the night’s plutonium shore. One hand was linked to her man’s and the other on his clean-shaven face. The light outside was fading. It was almost night now.                    
Please, God. Let him come back safe.

              The silent visage of worry was broken by the sight of him running up the hill.

              “Dennis?”

              He had leapt off the bike and let it clatter to the ground at his feet. She saw him rip his mask off his face and weakly run toward the house. He was screaming something, but he was too far away to hear. He was covered in blood . . . his clothes tattered. Dennis seemed to run with a dreadful gait, favoring his right leg. The deepest fears in her heart were realized. It wasn’t her husband anymore. He’d become one of them. The stabbing fear was the flash of a mere moment, though. All she could think now was what they decided together. The children. They were the most important. Amanda knew what she had to do. She opened her mouth to yell back at him, when she was pulled away from behind. A strong hand clamped down over her mouth and another was at her waist, yanking her back down the hall quicker than she could react.

II

              The wash of the amber midday sun re-ignited Dennis Jackson’s growing sense of worry. He’d left too late and stayed out too long. He had to get back. Now. It wasn’t the tracks, though . . . the wet shoe tracks in the fresh mud that dotted the fairgrounds. Dennis could tell they were less than a day old because it had only rained that morning. There hadn’t been any rain in two weeks. The muddy shoeprints were not two weeks old at all. Dennis had followed them from the unpaved fairgrounds to the church across the street, where they simply disappeared in the middle of the sidewalk. The mud that was all over the fairgrounds was thick as hell and would have shown up on the steps of the church. The church, only built five years ago, looked ancient now. All churches did. Dennis Jackson wondered why for a time, but he realized that places of worship represented a different human age. It was an age that had long passed now. Maybe forever. They were once temples of worship. Now, they were catacombs. When the outbreak happened, people flooded to churches . . . even people within their communities that never attended on even a casual basis. Churches were so full of massacred people that one couldn’t even see the floor anymore. Dennis took a deep breath and left the bike on the sidewalk. He walked up the church, staring at the, stone steps and stopped cold at the shattered glass doors.

              “Nice bike.”

              Dennis turned around to see a younger man in his early twenties. He looked half-starved. His shirtless torso showed off his ribs and sunken sack for a stomach. Dennis had seen him around before. He was a full-blooded Cherokee that lived at the Vineyard Cherokee Settlement on highway forty-five . . . about ten miles from Mayfield. The guy could be seen in town from time to time. Oddly enough, one would guaranteed catch him at the farmer’s market. He often took odd carpentry jobs around town, too. The young man was always patching roofs, installing vinyl siding, paving driveways and replacing storm windows. The stick-thin Cherokee was instantly recognizable by his hair. Long, straight black hair that hung down to the small of his back. He’d never cut it. Some kind of religious thing. Even on the windiest of days, he never tied his hair back . . . the same hair than hung on him now in greasy tangles. Dennis looked him up and down. All he was wearing was a mud-caked pair of track pants. That was it. Not even shoes. How the hell he was able to make it so far like that without tearing his skin to rags was anyone’s guess. There was glass everywhere.

              “Oh, hey,” Dennis said, trying his best to mask the concern he was feeling. This guy . . . Elijiah-something, was kind of known around town as a pretty strange guy. Always very reserved and quiet, he wouldn’t normally speak to anyone. Even the people he did jobs for. He’d been arrested about two years prior for what happened at Mayfield High School. Elijiah sat in his car and waited for school to let out so he could harass the young girls. He even got the shit beaten out of him at the settlement for attempting to rape a fifteen year-old. He would holler at the high school girls or make disgusting comments about how they were dressed. Pretty strange guy. Always walking around town, standing outside and staring into boutique windows until someone shooed him off.