Wormwood Dawn (Episode VIII) (11 page)

Dan nodded. That was true. “Still, whatever it is, it’s spotty.”

The Jeep went over something large, and Dan and Gena were nudged together as the vehicle lurched.

“What the hell was that?” Dan asked, leaning down into the cab.

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “But it felt like it was the size of a body.”

Dan glanced at Gena, who raised an eyebrow. Nothing was really surprising anymore, but then again if there were a body under the snow, then why hadn’t it been eaten before the storm. Surely out here in the middle of the forest there were scavengers—mutated or otherwise—that would have cleaned up the mess.

Unless…

“Stop,” Dan said.

Eric rolled to a stop, looking at Dan in the rear-view mirror. “What?” he asked.

“I wanna check and make sure.”

Dan got out, stepping down into the deep snow. Gena followed him, and he made his way back along the tracks to where the bump was located. Dan used the butt of his rifle to scrape the flattened snow off of the lump. Underneath was cloth; denim, possibly. He poked it with his foot, feeling that it was soft, not frozen solid as he would expect.

“What is it?” Gena asked.

“I think it
is
a body,” Dan replied. “But if it is, it should be frozen.”

He flicked on his IR scope, sweeping across the lump. Though there wasn’t much of a heat signature along its length. There was an obvious glob of heat at one end—presumably the head.

“Heat,” he said.

He dug some more, making his way up. When he felt hair, he stopped. “Yep.” He said. “It’s a body alright.”

“It should be ice cold,” Gena said. “Frozen solid.”

Dan stood, scratching his chin. “The head is still generating some heat,” he said. “Not much, but a little.”

He drew his knife then, bending down to place the tip against the head. He jabbed it through, feeling it sink to the hilt.

“Why did you do that?” Gena asked.

Dan shook his head. “Just to make sure, I guess.”

He turned and went back to the Jeep, letting Gena climb in first. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

“What was it?” Toni asked.

“Corpse. It’s dead now.”

Eric was silent, but glanced at Toni before putting the Jeep in gear. Dan spun around and watched the road behind him, his mind going back to the giant horde of the dead. Once again, he wondered why the corpses had risen. Surely they would have been too decomposed to be of any use. But there they were, walking and drooling, looking for flesh to eat.

Was this corpse one of them? Had it just not woken up yet? If so, what woke them up? It was a mystery. Maybe the comet’s return had prompted some sort of change in the brain. Travis had said that the basic, most primitive areas of the brain were still viable. That would be why it was still generating heat. But if so, then why had the billions and billions of people who had died overnight not been resurrected immediately?

Something had caused them to rise from the dead, but not this one. This one was still dead, but its brain was active. It was almost as if it were… waiting for something.

Chapter Eleven

Jake sat on the floor in front of the couch sharpening his machete. He occasionally glanced up at the monitors, seeing nothing more than the skeletal tower of the windmill and the occasional drifting snow. Behind him, Max was lounged near the arm of the couch, reading some entries in the Apocalypse Compendium.

Travis snored nearby, wrapped up in a sleeping bag behind the couch. Drew was snoozing head down at the table, and Grace was at the other end of the couch, curled up into a little ball of blankets. Cliff was in the storeroom, singing away as he organized the firearms. Fucking military guys.

“Where did you get this diagram of the cesspit?” Max asked him.

“Mother Earth News, I think,” Jake said.

Max grunted. “Never heard of it,” he said. “But I think this could be improved on so we can make it more usable. It looks like it was designed without keeping the ground water in mind.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“Well first, any liquid that spills into it will simply carry its deposits right into the ground where it’s filtered by the dirt.”

“Right.”

“But I think the well itself could be designed to filter it before it reaches the dirt, thus making it less likely that the ground water will be polluted.”

“So, are you a tree hugger now?”

Max was quiet for a moment, then snickered. “I can honestly say that I have never hugged a tree. But what we have to think about is that we get our water from a well, which gets its water from the ground. The current septic field, I imagine, is somewhere on the opposite side of the building from the well, but it all mixes in eventually. If we need to confine the effluent to a smaller space for safety’s sake, this pit would be a good idea. It just needs some tweaking to make it more efficient.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “How do we tweak it?”

“Yeah,” Grace said, sitting up then. “How do we tweak it?”

“Well, good morning princess,” Jake said smiling. Grace patted him on the head.

“We dig the pit,” Max began. “Six feet, maybe. Then we gather up about fifty pounds of charcoal briquettes, crush those up into a fine powder and mix it with water. We now have a carbon paste. We line the sides of the pit with landscaping cloth, then pour the paste in and let it dry and harden. Boom. Instant carbon filter. On top of that, we add about another foot of fine sand, then top that off with gravel up to about two foot from the top of the pit. The effluent pipe is led into the pit, then we put an elbow on the end of it, fit that into the bottom of a five gallon bucket with a hole cut out, then set that bucket on top of the gravel. The rest of the space is filled in with more gravel, then the last few inches are filled with top soil and maybe some grass.”

Jake thought for a moment. Though Max had kind of lost him, he could follow for the most part. He liked the idea of making a carbon filter out of pulverized charcoal. That was brilliant. But would that last layer be enough to completely cleanse the water? Should they just continue to use the septic field?

“Why even worry about it?” Grace asked. “Is there something wrong with the current system?”

“Probably not,” Max said. “However, this was an office, not a residence. Whatever is installed was probably not designed for heavy use. There are what, ten of us? With all of us flushing waste down the toilet all day long, a private business type septic system is bound to fail in no time.”

Jake looked over at Grace, who seemed to agree. “You’re a microbiologist,” he said. “Would a carbon filter work?”

Grace nodded. “Of course,” she said. “That’s a great idea.”

“That reminds me,” Max said. “You said you and your escort were heading to Arkansas to study the impact. Are you still planning on going?”

“I’m not sure, Max. There doesn’t really seem to be any point. More fragments are coming, from what I know, and those could hit anywhere.”

“More fragments?” Max said, his face serious.

“A friend of mine who works for the JPL has been tracking the comet. When it neared the sun, it broke into two pieces, and one piece retained an elliptical orbit around Earth. It broke into seven fragments, and they’re all following us around.”

“Seven fragments?” Jake said, thinking of the seven seals of Revelations. It was the preacher in him.

Grace chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking, and I thought it, too. But they might not all hit. Let’s hope not anyway.”

Jake went back to sharpening his blade, drowning out Max and Grace with his own thoughts. It was a rather bizarre coincidence that the comet was in seven fragments, each one possibly bringing with it a different disaster. But then, the third seal spoke of Wormwood. They hadn’t even gotten to the third impact yet, but the comet itself was called Wormwood by the scientists.

Fucking science.

A flash of movement crossed the middle monitor, causing him to stop and look up. Max must have seen it, too, as he spun around to plant his feet on the floor and leaned forward.

“Did you see that?” Jake asked.

“I saw that,” Max replied.

Grace leaned in, too, and Jake could tell she was freaked out. They all watched the monitors, frozen in place. Nothing was there but the drifting snow, quickly blowing across their view as if driven by heavy winds. The wind was picking up, Jake realized, and that meant it would be even colder outside. If anyone was out there, they had to be fucking crazy.

Another dark shape popped up in the corner for a brief second. Max stood, frozen in a “spidey-sense-tingling” pose, his mouth hanging open.

“Shit,” Grace said.

Jake jumped up, immediately going to the store room. “Cliff,” he whispered. “There are people outside.”

“What the fuck?” Cliff said, grabbing his rifle. “Are you sure?”

Jake led him back to the main room, where Cliff knelt down to watch the monitor. Drew had gotten up by then, and had wandered over. Jake pointed to the screen, and Drew gawked like everyone else, waiting for something to happen.

Another dark shape moved across the bottom of the screen. It was clearly man-shaped, and dressed in heavy outdoor gear, and old fashioned goggles to protect their eyes from the wind. They looked like Antarctic explorers.

“Holy shit,” Drew said. “They’re not even armed.”

Another shadow appeared among them. He carried what looked like an ax. He raised the weapon above his head and began rushing toward the building, disappearing from the camera’s view. A sudden impact on the wooden barrier startled them.

“They’re trying to chop their way in,” Grace said. Her voice was trembling and she stood and hid behind the couch, nudging Travis out of his coma.

“What the hell, man?” he asked as he sat up.

Jake turned and put a finger to his lips to shush him. Cliff went to grab his coat and boots. Drew joined him.

“Don’t let them get in,” Cliff whispered. “We’ll go out and take care of it.”

Jake nodded, holding up his machete. “Nobody’s getting’ in.”

When Cliff and Drew were dressed, they went to the back door, opening it slowly and peeking out. Then, they stepped out, gently closing the door behind them. Jake returned to the monitor just as the chopping began again.

“Fuckers,” he said, going to the wooden barricades.

He leaned against the door, listening to the people outside. He could hear muffled voices, all men, whispering harshly over the bitter wind. Max moved to the opposite end of the barricade, staring at Jake as he too listened.

One of the boards began to splinter as it was chopped again, and Jake could feel the rush of cold air coming in. He peeked through the tiny gap, seeing movement, but no details. He leaned back as the ax came chopping down again. Then, when he peeked, he saw a head lean in from the outside. He immediately stuck his machete in the gap, thrusting it through with all the force he could give it.

He felt the impact of the blade’s tip hit something, and heard someone cry out in pain. He chuckled, looking at Max, who was wide-eyed.

“That’ll learn ‘im,” Jake said.

Cliff and Drew snuck through the path between sheds toward the gate. They went slowly, so as not to crunch the ice. Though the wind was almost deafening, they weren’t taking any chances.

“The gate’s squeaky,” Drew reminded him.

Shit,
Cliff thought. He stopped near it, trying to think of another way through.

“Maybe we can climb over it,” Drew said.

“If that were possible, they would have done it.”

“Wait,” Drew said, shouldering his rifle. “I got an idea.”

He waved Cliff after him and ran to the shed closest to the building, looking up. “Give me a boost,” he said.

Cliff clasped his hands together, kneeling down so Drew could climb up. Drew was heavy, but Cliff managed to raise him up far enough for him to reach the shed’s roof. When he was clear, he reached down. Cliff grabbed his hand and struggled to walk up the side with Drew’s help.

“Jesus Christ you’re fucking heavy,” Drew said, straining against his weight.

“That’s all muscle, baby,” Cliff said, pulling himself over the edge.

They mounted the slope and went over, carefully sliding down the other side and jumping onto the metal roof of the office building. It was slippery, but they managed to reach the peak. Cliff raised his IR scope up to his eye and swept the area all around the camp. There were no heat signatures around, expect for what looked like a vehicle parked down the road.

“Truck,” Cliff said. “Empty.”

Drew went over first, laying face down toward the other side. Cliff followed, and they carefully crawled down toward the gutter. The snow was thick on the roof, and they had to be careful not to knock any over the edge.

“If we slip, we’re fucking screwed,” Drew said.

There were shouts below, and they could hear someone crying out in pain. They looked at each other, then continued sliding down as slowly as they could. Then, one of the intruders began running toward their truck. Cliff raised his rifle and followed him with the scope.

“He must be going to get a weapon or something,” Drew said.

“I’ll get him,” Cliff said.

He followed the man until he was well out of the sight of the others. He judged the man’s speed and direction, adjusted for the heavy wind, and centered on that ghostly, imaginary reticle that snipers had in their mind’s eye.

He fired.

The clank of the bolt was covered by the sound of the wind, and the silenced round hit its mark. The man tumbled forward and slid to a stop near the front of the truck.

“Did you get him?” Drew asked.

“Spot on,” Cliff said, turning his sights to the area in front of them. “Let me know if you can see them.”

A few bright spots occasionally appeared in his view, as if the men were backing away from the building just far enough and long enough for the tops of their heads to appear. He curled his fingers in anticipation, and despite the fact that they were about frozen solid, they still obeyed his commands.

He suddenly had a flashback. He remembered being in this same situation; lying on top of a roof, waiting for a target to appear over the edge. It was the exact same situation, except during a sand storm. No matter. He wouldn’t freak out over it. This was what he lived for. This was what he trained for.

A bright spot.

Pew!

Another shout as one of their own was dropped like a sack of shit.

“Jesus, man,” Drew said. “I guess they know we’re here now.”

Cliff adjusted his weight to get a better angle. The men below were beginning to panic, and were shouting in some unknown language. It sounded familiar to Cliff, as if he had heard it during a sortie in Iraq.

Arabic maybe? No. Couldn’t be.

Suddenly, Cliff began sliding. He felt Drew grab his leg, but his grip slipped and Cliff went sledding down the roof like a kid on Christmas morning. He lost his grip on the rifle as he hit the gutter, and he could see it tumble through the air as he flipped over the edge.

He impacted roughly behind the group of men, slamming down into the hard-packed snow. He immediately hopped to his feet to search for his rifle, but it was nowhere to be found. The men rushed him, their strange goggles and clothing reminding him of an attacking horde of Sandpeople on Tattoine.

He reached around to the small of his back to grab his machete. It was gone. The first attacker reached him on his right, swinging an ax horizontally. Cliff ducked and charged him, impacting him in the ribs and throwing him backward. Cliff turned just as another blade swept down at him. He dodged it, retrieving the ax that the other man had dropped.

He heard Drew fire from above, and another man fell bleeding to the snow. Cliff swung the ax over his head, chopping into another man’s shoulder. His victim cried out in agony as the ax split him in two.

There were four more left.

Cliff ran toward the windmill to draw them out into the open. They gave chase, none of them realizing that they were putting themselves in harm’s way. One fell to Drew’s bullets, and the other three closed in on Cliff. He tripped over something as he backed away, falling into the snow. One more attacker fell to Drew’s bullets.