Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (26 page)

“You can’t possibly think—”

“No, that’s not what I’m telling you. What
I’m telling you is that the man who owns this apartment is named
George Zaragosa. I was just with him.”

“
With
him?”

“That’s not the point!”

This was the first time she had actually
raised her voice, but she caught herself. She put her head down,
breathed deep. She saw she was pressing her fingernails into her
palms.

She walked out of the bathroom and down the
hallway.

Mike went after her, and spun her around by
the shoulder.

“So you’re saying you’re creeped out?” he
asked, trying to understand. “Is that it?”

She sighed. “I was just with him right before
I came here.
That’s
what I’m saying. How did I end up at his
home?”

“I don’t know,” Mike replied. “But I’m
telling you the truth. I’ve never met him. After that car hit me I
just happened to wind up here.”

She looked him in the eyes, searching for
even a hint of a lie.

She couldn’t find one.

“So I end up here,” she began, looking away,
“and I find the first legitimately nice guy I’ve ever met, and he
says he just happened to end up here too. And he’s good-looking.
And the world’s ending. Brilliant.”

She walked away and sat down on the sofa. She
held her forehead with her palms, loose strands of hair slipping
through her fingers.

“Hey, maybe it’s...” Mike started to say, but
didn’t finish.

He eased himself onto the cushion next to
her. He thought about putting his arm around her, but wasn’t sure
if she was sobbing and needing comforting. The way she was sitting,
she could be sad, or she could still be really irritated. He was
never sure about women.

“Well, how about you tell
me
something,” he finally said. “How does a girl like you know how to
fire a shotgun?”

She tilted her face over to gawk at him. She
said, “
Of course
I know how to fire a shotgun. I live in
Texas, too, you know.”

* * *

The swift creation and utilization of South
Point Apartments as a FEMA camp had surprised Mike Runyard,
considering the bad reputation the government had in regards to
getting things done in a timely and efficient manner.

That most apartment complexes in Austin were
gated communities made South Point Apartments one of a set of
buildings the city manager had assigned as a location the Federal
Emergency Management Agency could exploit. About a year after the
debacle of Hurricane Amanda, many advantageous locations in cities
across the nation were pre-assigned for use as rescue stations and
refugee camps in case something even more terrible came down the
line.

The zombie apocalypse counted as one of these
situations.

So it was with a swift efficiency that FEMA
turned South Point Apartments into a FEMA camp. Blockades, barbed
wire, and even four towers at the four corners of the complex had
been erected. Fortunately, no one from 1930’s Europe was around to
criticize how it appeared eerily similar to internment camps that
had dotted the European countryside. At around 1130 hours, soldiers
began securing apartments in order to create housing for the
refugees being shipped in. Compliant residents were disarmed and
ordered to a tent near the rear of the complex where they were
photographed and thumb-scanned into a computer and provided an ID
card. Non-compliant residents had their doors busted down, were
ziptied, and then scanned and ID’d with a red square near their
name. This was to identify them as potential terrorists, per the
Patriot Act, and enter their name on a list to be disposed of first
if the population within the facility became overcrowded. People
that were not wearing their badges were reassigned badges with red
squares. It was considered civil disobedience whether it was an
accident or not.

A soldier repeated over a loudspeaker near
the tent the words, “Attention, attention, attention. FEMA is here
to help. Remain calm. We will not tolerate civil disobedience.” The
soldier also chanted the rules of the ID badges, like some kind of
police-state shaman.

At half past noon a knock came at the door of
Mike and Keri’s apartment, and it was their turn to get tagged. The
soldiers were courteous. After asking the duo if either had been
bitten, they assisted Mike down the stairs. He was able to walk by
himself, albeit with a limp and only for brief jaunts before
needing to sit and take the pressure off his ankles again, but with
the soldiers being so helpful he didn’t want to risk insulting them
by refusing their aid. Keri walked alongside him.

On the way, they had a chance to eavesdrop on
the some of the soldiers’ conversation.

“
This is bullshit, man.”

“
Shut up, Burbank. The people are going to
hear.”

“
You know, if these people decided to
revolt, I wouldn’t fight them. I’d run.”

“
I’m not running.”

“
Some of the guys, they’re thinking of
running. If they do, I’m there.”

“
Don’t be an asshole, Burbank. Do your
fuckin’ job and quit bitchin’.”

Mike and Keri exchanged troubled glances as
they pretended they weren’t listening.

The soldiers put them in a line to get their
special ID cards. The line was currently about ten people long, and
two tents were set up at the end. A soldier with a clipboard stood
between the two tents and every few minutes shouted, “Next!”

Standing in front of Mike and Keri was the
downstairs neighbor, Theresa. It took Mike a few minutes to
recognize her. When he did, he tried to get her attention.

“Hey.”

She didn’t turn around.

“Ma’am?”

He took a more assertive approach and tapped
her on the shoulder.

“Ma’am?”

For a second, he thought it was not Theresa
at all. But when she turned around, he knew it was. Her face was
stern, but slowly warmed as she recognized her savior.

“Oh, hey.”

“Hey. How are you?”

“I’m fine. You know, I don’t know how to
thank you for helping me out yesterday.”

“It wasn’t a problem, ma’am.”

“Next,” the soldier with the clipboard
said.

“That’s us. We’ll talk later, okay?” Theresa
said. Then she sighed, “
Why’d they have to disable all the
phones?
”

Mike had wondered about that himself. He
shrugged.

A soldier appeared and tugged at Theresa’s
daughter, Laura Jane.

“Wait,” Theresa said, “Where is she
going?”

“Are you her mother?” the soldier asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh. Then you’re allowed to join her,” the
soldier said.

Allowed to join her?
Mike and Keri
both thought, as if a mother needed to be given permission to be
with her daughter.

The soldier escorted Theresa and Laura Jane
to the tent on the right.

Mike took a moment to let his eyes wander,
looking for a distraction from all the muttered conversations and
the stubborn pain below his knees. He set his eyes toward the
fenceline of the camp, where a new interior fence had been erected
by the military that formed an additional division between the
apartments and the road.

There were zombies along the exterior
fenceline. They were grumbling and groaning and restlessly shaking
the fence in a futile effort to penetrate. Looking past their
heads, Mike could see more zombies shuffling down the road on their
way to the apartment complex, eventually absorbing into the numbers
already at the fence and uniting their efforts. He seriously
doubted they could bring it down no matter how many piled against
it, but the safety of his room had separated him from the reality
of the world and this had become yet another thing to be unnerved
about.

Keri noticed him uneasily shift his
weight.

“You okay?” she whispered. “You can lean on
me to take some pressure off.”

Before he could answer, the soldier with the
clipboard said, “Next.”

Mike gave Keri a smile to show he appreciated
the gesture, and kept the smile as he said, “Gee, is it my turn
already?”

Keri took a step forward. “Can I come with
him?” she asked. “He can’t walk too well on his own right now.”

“No, only one at a time,” the soldier said.
“Don’t worry, we’re here to assist anyone who needs it.”

Keri nodded slightly.

The soldier took Mike under the armpit and
aided him into the tent on the left.

After his eyes adjusted from the sun to the
shadows, Mike noticed rows of partitions on both sides of the tent,
the same privacy curtains found in hospitals. He was moved behind
one of them. Another soldier stood there waiting for him.

Mike expected a doctor to show up, as if he
was suddenly on the set of M*A*S*H*. Hawkeye or “Hot Lips” Houlihan
would certainly appear and give a punchline.

But the purpose of a soldier instead of a
doctor would soon become clear.

He did not introduce himself. Instead he said
in a cold and rehearsed way, “Sir, in order to be sure no one
within the perimeter has been infected, we need to check you for
bites. Please remove all your clothes.”

For a moment Mike couldn’t move, standing
there like a crippled mannequin in front of the two soldiers and
their spotlights.

He had had to perform body searches back at
the station, and though his dead partner Derek had often taken some
sadistic pleasure in it, he never did. The shoe was now on the
other foot. But it was another memory that made him hate the
situation he was in even more.

It was a Thursday night several years before.
He remembered it was a Thursday because he was going to miss the
finale of
Survivor: Samoa
. The day did not start on the
right foot to begin with. A fender-bender on the way to work was a
subtle portent of what was to come. The strip-search of the elderly
cripple later that evening was much worse than he could have ever
imagined.

The man was a decorated veteran from World
War II. He was arrested as a passenger in his own vehicle. His
young grandson had taken advantage of his kindness and had been
using the car. They were pulled over for speeding, and Mike and
Derek found a large stash of pot in the back seat, drugs the boy
was running for a local dealer.

The boy was unemotional and cold. He did not
change his disposition at all when his grandfather, humiliated,
crushed and disheartened in his grandson, threw a fit over the
arrest. The fit was not necessarily over his grandson’s arrest, (he
was fully supportive once he realized what was going on,) but that
he was implicated as well.

Mike was sympathetic to the old man’s plight.
But Derek did not take well to the disruption, and threw the old
man to the ground before cuffing him and arresting him for assault.
Derek made sure the cuffs were on tight, and the steel cut into the
old man’s wrists, cutting them, blood surfacing.

After taking the old man back to the station,
there was no more fight in him. Derek asked his superiors for
permission to conduct a body search “for the suspected concealment
of heroin.” Officials granted the request. And his partner, Mike,
was expected to help.

The old man submitted way before the arrival
at the station, and was totally compliant. As Derek took advantage
of the old man, Mike groaned in disgust. The poor old man had
already been taken advantage of by his grandson. His legacy. Mike
remembered how the man stood in the police

room. He somehow looked like the creatures
that were now walking around in mass. Sunken face, sad eyes, cruel
scowls.

It was the same cruel, ashamed scowl that
Mike now wore, standing awkwardly in total nakedness in front of
the soldiers who examined every inch of his body for bites. They
had him bend over. Spread his legs. Lift his arms. Lift his
scrotum.

“What happened to your ankles?” one of the
soldiers asked.

“Was hit by a car on the way over here.”

They were satisfied by the answers. “All
right. Thank you, officer,” the soldier said.

In intense pain, Mike began to put his A.P.D.
uniform back on.

—Humiliated and violated for his
protection.

1:07 PM

Lopez Auto Repair and Custom Cars

The crowd outside had grown significantly yet
again. At each chain-link gate, large groups of twenty to thirty
zombies had amassed, and shambling around the cinderblock walls on
each side were probably twice that number. Their moans of infinite
pain basked the hot spring air with woe. Their death funk drifted
like a poison gas that would not dissipate. Every living person in
the facility would be hit in the face by a gust of wind carrying
the stench of the dead. Some would vomit. In the least, everyone
gagged. Many wore their bandanas over their noses and mouths,
making the facility resemble even more the bandit hideout that it
was.

The special mission banditos had a very
difficult time dropping off their prisoners. The new congestion was
tough to work through, but they did it. They passed the captured
American soldiers on to Sleepy before taking off to resume their
mission.

Sleepy ordered the soldiers be taken to one
of the garages and prepared in a very particular way.

Then Sleepy ate a leisurely lunch and
swallowed it down with a Pepsi.

After lunch, Tiny accompanied Sleepy to the
makeshift prison. Both men were anxious, filled with the evil
anticipatory glee of participating in something that no one should
even consider doing, but were about to anyway. For Tiny, it was
much more frightening. But even though Sleepy was anxious about it,
it was nothing new. What he was about to do was standard fare
against those that exposed drug running lines or botched deals.
Today’s atrocity was going to be much easier. In the old world,
after you maimed and/or decapitated someone and threw them in a
ditch somewhere in Mexico, you would have to worry about
authorities. At least the ones who cared. Today, with the rule
change, no one cared anymore. Today was going to be easy.