Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (23 page)

A sweep
through the rest of the warehouse came up uneventful, so after checking in on
the radio, they spent a few extra minutes moving pallets to partially cover
some potential entry points on the back wall. It wasn’t perfect, and certainly
wouldn’t keep out anything that was determined to get in, but at least they’d
be able to tell if something had disturbed their impromptu barricade. For a
final touch—temporary at least—Michelle and Sam kept guard while Eric backed
the forklift out and then repositioned it against the sliding door, wedging it
shut. The missing radio had been brought out, but for now, the three bodies
were left inside.

“OK, I think
we’re done here.”

Sam looked
around, searching through the long shadows brought to life with his flashlight.
“I hope so. What now?”

“Let’s head
back to the store. I’d like to do a couple more laps around the area in my
truck, and then I suppose were going to have to sit down with everybody from
the campground and figure out our next move.”

The quick journey back to Eric’s truck, followed by
several more laps around the marina brought no encounters, and the three of
them got out and leaned wearily against the closed tailgate as the adrenaline
high began to wear off.

“Walter, Amy . . . as far as we can tell, we’re clear
of any immediate threats. We took care of the feral and . . . other things . .
. so if we’re going to have our meeting with everybody, I’d suggest we do it
now while the window is open.”

“I heard a lot of shootin’ down there, is everybody
OK?”
Walter’s gruff voice came back
immediately.

“Yeah, we’re all OK,”
Eric returned,
“but I imagine the boat warehouse
is going to need a lot of holes patched so it doesn’t leak.”

“I don’t care about that, as long as we don’t have to
patch any holes in one of you.”
After
a brief pause, Walter continued,
“I think that we’re pretty much ready to go
up here . . . Amy, are you ready?”

Amy’s voice came over the radio, almost overwhelmed by
the chatter in the background. It was an affirmative ‘
Yes
’ with an
unspoken but easily discernible ‘
thank goodness
.’

“All right then. Eric, will you have somebody drive my
truck up here? I don’t think all of us can’t fit in the Mule.”

Eric swiveled his head and flashlight toward the lake.
Barely visible was the top six inches of Walter’s new truck poking out from its
aquatic resting place. After a brief moment’s contemplation, Eric handed his
radio to Sam. “You borrowed it, you tell him.”

Dehydrated flakes of coconut avalanched down the sides
of the muffin-like, cellophane wrapped dessert that was serving as Eric’s
supper. The needed distraction of mental arithmetic brought the conclusion that
only about thirty percent of the tiny flakes actually made it into his mouth.
The rest decorated his shirt, lap, and the floor in front of him. They were
surprisingly slippery, and Eric’s boot slid in a haphazard figure eight pattern
as Sam, Amy, and Doc Collins finished up getting the crowd settled and ready.
An impromptu head table had been set up along the back edge of the store, and
the crowd, most of them seated on the floor due to lack of chairs, jostled
nervously. Thirty-seven faces—some of which he recognized—waited with a mixture
of impatience, sorrow, or fear in the dim light cast by the solitary camping
lantern. The low
hiss
from the pressurized gas in the lantern reminded
Eric of a distant, hidden snake.

Scott and Thompson had volunteered to stay on the roof
as guards, and Bernice, Rebecca, and the older couple—Bucky and Frederica—were
still up at the house. Both locations had been given a GMRS walkie-talkie that
was set on monitor so they could follow the meeting. A third radio locked in
broadcast mode sat on the head table.

Thirty-seven faces. There were more—just a few though—on
the other side of the makeshift cloth divider that separated the bait and
tackle wing from the grocery wing. Those missing from the visible crowd were a
pair of sleeping children, and four traumatized parents who had opted out of
the meeting, lost in grief or despair over missing loved ones. Something in
that thought bothered Eric, although he couldn’t seem to put his finger on it
at the moment.

Shifting from coconut flake math to real numbers
brought Eric back to reality. Thirty-seven people on the floor, plus another
half dozen behind the divider brought it to forty-three. Add that to what . . .
another dozen? Thirteen? No, there was more than that, and he began a mental
checklist as Walter scooted past, grumbling as he made notes in a dog-eared
tablet. Another moment of concentration, aided by several finger counts brought
Eric’s total to seventeen additional people. With a frown, he flipped two more
fingers upright—Uncle Andy and Emily. Nineteen. That brought their grand total
up to sixty-two people.

Before his mind dropped into logistics mode, he was
nudged from the side. “What was it, just a few days ago that you were crouched
down right about there, searching for your baby bottle pacifier of hot sauce?”

He smiled at Michelle and nodded, “And then you showed
up, and the world got turned upside down.”

Eric watched as Michelle gave a short laugh and ran
her fingers through her hair. “Leave it to a redhead to wreck your world.”

“Wreck . . . or rock?” he shot back with a smirk.

“You know what they say,” she beamed, “you can sleep
with a blond, and you can sleep with a brunette, but you’ll never get any sleep
with a redhead.” A not so subtle wink followed.

A rapid series of taps drew their attention to the
table. “OK people,” Walter said, “let’s get this started.” He turned toward
Michelle and Eric, “You ready?”

Eric nodded, and then turned to Michelle, “You’re up
first, go get em’ tiger.” He heard her sigh in response as he turned and walked
over to the door, positioning himself as a guard.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, “I think I’ve
introduced myself to most of you at some point over the past few days, but for
those of you who might have missed it, I am Officer Owens . . . Michelle . . .”

“An officer of what?” The voice cut in from one of the
groups that they had already pegged as potential trouble.

“I’m a Federal agent with the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service.”

“Why are you here? It’s not like we’re being attacked
by a school of trout.”

Michelle ignored the man and continued with re-introductions
of Walter, Eric, and the others. Turning back to the crowd, she said, “Let me
start this meeting by asking Dave Fischer to say a prayer.”

Preacher Dave stood and bowed his head. “Heavenly
Father, we come to You again in our hour of need, trusting You to guide us with
wisdom and courage in the times to come. Our world is suffering a great loss,
and Your people are crying out for deliverance. Our hearts are heavy, Lord,
with the pain of missing loved ones, and an uncertain future. Father, I humbly
ask for Your reassurance and strength to settle on each person here. Please
surround us with Your mighty hand and shelter us with Your presence. Let Your
light shine in the darkness, and let us be a people guided by Your Holy Spirit.
In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, I ask this. Amen.”

Several echoes of “Amen” rebounded from the crowd.

Michelle’s face took on a serious, no nonsense
expression as she recapped what had happened earlier that evening, and then she
turned the table over to Doc Collins.

Doc finished up a round of paper shuffling with Callie
before addressing the audience. “First things first. Many of you from the
campground have already gone through a round of filling out paperwork on your
medical history in case something happens to you. Most of that paperwork is
back at the campground. Please humor me and take just a minute to fill out this
much abbreviated form. My assistant will collect them when you’re done, and
then I will give you, to the best of my medical knowledge, a rundown of what we
might be facing . . . although I’ll warn you that we don’t have much to go on.”

Several sets of eyes rolled at the announcement of
more paperwork, but in a short time it had been distributed, completed, and
collected. Eric watched as Callie retreated to the table’s edge and began to
sort the forms. As she did, Doc stepped to the front of the crowd.

“Let me first give you a general rundown of what we
suspect. Medically speaking, I cannot give you the answers that many of you are
seeking. I can’t give you them, because I’m still seeking them as well. But
here is what I can tell you . . . first off, I have no clue whether this is
caused by a bacteria, a virus, or something else entirely. I don’t even know
what ‘this’ is. I can only speak semi-intelligently on the symptoms and
progression of the sickness, and even then it comes from our limited resources
and observations.” He took a deep breath and continued as Callie began entering
the form data into her tablet.

“Contrary to many of the rumors floating around,
infected people are not ‘zombies.’ They are not dead. They still have a
heartbeat, and obviously, mobility and some semblance of thought processing and
reasoning. Some observations seem to indicate that many of the infected are
functioning at more of a base level drive. Other infected, however, seem to
retain a higher level of cognitive function. It also appears that this pathogen
affects different people in different ways. Before I delve into that area, let me
clarify this—and please listen carefully—we have absolutely zero, repeat, zero
reason to think, based on our observations so far, that infected people have
any control over their actions. As far as we can tell, they exhibit no
pre-infection moral restraint. And before you ask, no one that we have seen, or
heard about, or in any way have any knowledge of, has exhibited a reversal of
symptoms. In other words, once somebody is infected, there is no cure or help
that we know of.”

Several hands went in the air, and Doc pointed at one
of them, a dark haired lady sitting alone near the edge of the crowd. “What did
you mean about moral restraint?” she asked.

“That means that if your great grandmother who loves
you dearly, or your best friend, or spouse, or a child that you gave birth to
becomes infected, by every account and observation we have, they will in no way
recognize you. They will not reason with you. They will not listen to you. What
they will do, however, is not pretty. We have all seen the results of that.”
Several more hands went up, but Doc shook his head, “Let me finish what little
I have before I take any questions.”

Eric shifted his gaze around the room, partially
amazed how quiet the crowd had remained so far. He watched as Callie stood up
with several papers in her hand, and in the moment of silence before Doc
continued, she called out several names. Skipping through the crowded floor
brought her over to several people that had raised their hand when their name
had been called. Eric watched as she pointed to a space or spaces on the
medical form, and then saw her jot down a sentence or two in response to what
ever had been left blank. She circulated throughout the crowd as Doc continued.

“The progression of this infection . . . no wait, let
me back up.” He took a deep breath and looked around the room. “We are not sure
how this infection is spread for certain. We can make some fairly logical
conclusions, however. Direct contact with infected tissue or substances seems
to be likely, at least if they are somehow introduced into the body—a bite for
example. One of those we lost from the campground, a lady named Brenda, had a
copious amount of infected blood sprayed in her face, eyes, and mouth as she
battled to help save the children on their bicycles. You’ve already heard that
story. Are there other ways the sickness can pass from one person to another?
Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. And the million dollar question—is it airborne?
Another doctor that Officer Owens encountered over at Fort Hammer seemed to
think that it was airborne. Again, we just don’t know for sure.” Doc cleared
his throat and took a sip of water from a clear plastic cup before continuing.

“Regardless of how it is actually spread, we do seem
to have a slightly better understanding of the progression that follows when
the pathogen is introduced. I need to clarify this, however. What I’m about to
tell you is based primarily on our personal observations. We could be totally
wrong.”

“Doctor Collins,” a heavyset man near the front
interjected, “I don’t want to come across like a jerk, but we’re tired. All of
us—bone tired, scared, worried—so can you just get to the point without all of
the weasel words and disclaimers? I mean, most of us have already figured out
that nobody really knows anything for sure, so just tell us what you can. No
sugar coating, OK?”

Doc nodded. “When someone is exposed and infected,
they seem to develop a high fever. Our very limited observation opportunities
have put this initial stage running the gamut anywhere from about thirty
minutes to upwards of ten hours. There are further reasons to believe that this
‘incubation period’ could last substantially longer, or in some cases,
substantially shorter, before fever sets in. Once someone shows evidence of a
high, or rapidly spiking temperature, the next stage approaches quickly—usually
within an hour. This second stage seems to be fatal to roughly twenty to forty
percent of the infected. We’ve observed in almost all cases a muting, or
graying, of the skin tone. Our experience, limited as it is so far, has also
encountered a brief period of weak, rapid heartbeats and further spiking of
body temperatures. Stage three, or maybe the end stage of two, results in what
is apparently an influx of ruptured blood vessels in the victim’s eye. Stage
four and beyond is where the infected person becomes . . . like those people
lying out there.” He indicated toward the door near Eric, and the bodies that
everybody knew were sprawled beyond.

Another clearing of his throat followed. “Stage four,
as far as we know, seems to be characterized by the infected person losing all
control of rational, ethical, or moral self-control. They also exhibit a high
resistance to bodily injury—check that—they exhibit a high resistance to the
typical effects of bodily injury. For instance, a non-infected person might
fall and break their leg. For a lot of people, that type of injury might
rapidly progress to shock. Once someone becomes infected, it doesn’t seem like
their body reacts the same way. They still would have a broken leg, but they
either don’t feel the discomfort of that injury, or their body or mind somehow
ignores the typical effects associated with it. So, to sum it up, stage one,
the initial infection and beginning of the fever symptom. Stage two is the
high, spiking fever, followed by paling of the skin. If the victim survives the
‘system shock’ if you will, of stage two, then stage three seems to be
characterized by blood pooling in the eyes and most probably other systemic
changes that we cannot visibly observe. Stage four is when they become active
‘infected.’ We have also noted a distinct lack of bowel control in stage four
victims. They appear to be continually processing waste material through their
digestive system, but conscious control of the sphincter muscle seems to be
absent. I’m sorry, but that’s all we really have to go on. Questions?”