Hissers (34 page)

He was up before she was, hauling her to her feet. She rose into hot air and smoke, the crackling of burning trees and bushes filling her ears. She looked down and saw she was knee deep in a water-filled hole. Leaves floated on the surface, camouflaging it. No wonder they hadn’t seen it until they fell in.

“What the…?”

“Some kind of ditch,” Connor said, brushing his wet hair out of his eyes. “Thank God for the rains last night. You okay?”

All around them, the forest burned. Behind them, the hissing screams of the burning undead played like the soundtrack of hell.

She nodded yes, saw her own current condition reflected on Conner, who was soaking wet and red with burns.

“They’re burning it down,” Connor said. “They’re burning Castor to the ground.”

Up through the flaming trees, in between the clouds of smoke, they could see more planes, maybe twenty in all, circling their hometown like vultures.

Connor held up the flash drive. “Let’s go. Before they drop more on us.”

As they jogged through the woods, wet shirts over their mouths to filter smoke, they heard more missiles and fire bombs falling behind them, razing their homes, killing everyone they’d ever known.

Erasing a mistake.

Sunday, 10:47am

General Ryan scratched his chin as he watched the monitors in front of him. Cameras mounted under the various jets showed artillery falling to the earth. The chatter coming over the radios filled him in on the rest: “That’s a direct hit.” “Target acquired.” “Got a group near the high school, coming back to clean house.” “That river gorge is still crawling, making another pass.”

Ryan sat back and told himself this was the right thing to do. The orders had come down from higher up, but he couldn’t say he didn’t agree with them. In war, there were casualties, and he doubted that every living thing in Castor was infected. But this was no ordinary outbreak. This was not SARS or Bubonic Plague or Cholera, this was potential Armageddon. If everything in that town was not contained and destroyed, then life on earth might never be the same.

Hell if he even understood how it happened, or what this wonder drug was they’d created, but it didn’t matter anymore. Kill the virus, kill anything that moved, and hopefully, in the destruction, he’d destroy any data left behind.

That was the part he’d amended on his own. Special Projects Division was calling for retrieval of anything on the crashed plane, but he was in charge here and he knew how bad it was, so they’d have to deal with his final results. He’d allowed his men the initial try, but the hissers had cut them off. Perfect, the data was better off destroyed. God forbid anyone on this planet got their hands on such a deadly chemical equation ever again.

During his time in the military men had feared him, liberals had protested him, he’d ordered the deaths of thousands, and did his best to fall asleep at night. But always he kept his love of this country close to his heart. If killing this town would save the rest of the country then he was going to do it, if destroying that precious data would keep such a horrible incident from ever being repeated, then he was going to act first and deal with the nightmares later.

After all, it was himself he had to face every morning in the mirror while he shaved. It would be God whom he would face at the very end. He simply did not believe this was God’s plan. This was human error, and he was going to set it right.

Please God
, he thought as he watched the high school go up in a massive fireball,
let that evil data fry in this cleansing.

Sunday, 11:02am

Never in Connor’s life had his body hurt so badly. His bones creaked with every step, his skin—blistered and red—burned under the weakest breeze, his eyes itched and his head throbbed. Beside him, Amanita shuffled along like a zombie in an old B-movie. There were no smiles shared between them. Neither spoke a word.

Connor held the flash drive tightly in his clenched fist, trying hard to remember what Nicole’s lips had felt like. It was no use, all he could taste was soot and mud from the watery ditch.

The woods grew denser, darker, the bugs grew hungrier. He didn’t know how long they’d been walking for, but the sounds of explosions grew weaker and the earth didn’t rattle so much.

They took a break and sat on a large stone covered in moss. Amanita sat next to him, then slowly lowered her head to his lap and rested there. She let out a single sigh and then closed her eyes and remained silent. He stroked her hair, but could find no words to comfort her.

There were no words for any of this.

How would the government explain this,
he wondered.
You can’t just destroy a town. There are going to be too many questions and accusations. There are going to be mass sympathizers and angry elected officials.

Aren’t there?

He gazed down at his leg and saw the skin turning gray. It no longer itched but it was certainly numb. Would he ever run again?

“I’m thirsty,” Amanita said.

“Me too. We should keep moving. They might have food at the base.”

“Don’t want food. Don’t want to eat ever again. Just want some water and maybe a coffin to take a long sleep in.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Well, that’s how I feel. I can’t stop seeing Nicole getting bit when I close my eyes. I loved her. We were like sisters.”

“Seth was like my brother. I don’t know that it’s hit me yet. I don’t feel much of anything. Is that wrong?”

She lifted her head out of his lap. “Everything is wrong, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

She’s got a point, he thought, taking in the trees and briar bushes surrounding them. We shouldn’t be sitting in the middle of the forest while planes blow up our homes. If there was ever anything more wrong, he couldn’t think of it.

Then he remembered the flash drive in his fist and realized there was one thing that could make this wrong a right. He could honor Nicole’s wish and see to it the correct people got their hands on this data, could make sure this sort of thing never happened again.

Together they dozed and let their bodies recharge. The birds sang lullabies to them as the occasional fighter jet flew overhead making its way toward Castor. At some point they awoke, the woods had grown darker.

Connor shook Amanita. “Okay, let’s get going and get this over with. It’s gonna be a while still before we make it all the way around.”

They stood and resumed their trek through the dark green wilderness toward Victorville. Their pace was slow but they settled into a rhythm that was hypnotic. It was as if their bodies moved separate from their minds.

Sunday, 6:48pm

Soon the sun was setting, and the woods became so dark they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces. Amanita slipped her arm around Connor’s and together they trudged forward over boulders, logs, stumps, thorn bushes and more.

The mosquitoes came out, and like a miniature army, swarmed the two teen’s ears and stabbed their proboscises into red, welted flesh. It would have bothered any one in a normal state of mind, but Connor and Amanita were beyond caring about their bodies. All they wanted was to see…

…
lights.
There, through the trees, massive spotlights illuminated the flattened cornfield of a farm. In the center of the lights were two large tents made of canvas and steel. Military vehicles were spread across the field, men running to and fro among them.

Connor and Amanita stepped out of the tree line and shambled toward the vehicles.

A gun popped. A bullet whizzed by Connor’s left ear, striking the tree behind him.

“Perimeter breach!” yelled some young private from his lookout station in the field. “Perimeter breach!”

“Wait!” Connor yelled as another bullet zinged by his shoulder. He fell to the ground, his arms around Amanita, thinking it couldn’t be real. They’d made it all the way here and were going to get shot now. Of course they must look like the living dead, so it was understandable, but it was also infuriating.

“Don’t shoot!” Amanita yelled.

Two more bullets struck the ground near their feet. They scrambled back behind the nearest tree and plastered their backs against it. A bullet hit the tree on the other side and spit bark into the woods.

Connor peeked out and saw a line of five or six Marines charging toward them.

“Perimeter breach! Shoot the fuckers!”

“We’re human!” Connor shouted, trying in vain to yell over the startled men and popping gunfire. He turned to Amanita and saw the anger in her eyes. They were going to get shot, there was no doubt about it.

Then Amanita was up, rounding the tree, tugging at her shirt. Connor was screaming for her to stop but she kept walking. Bullets zipped by her head. Connor closed his eyes, not wanting to see her brains explode out the back of her skull.

The shooting stopped. A southern accent spoke: “Hold up, boys!”

Connor leaned out again and saw Amanita standing there with her shirt and bra up, exposing her chest. He couldn’t see the expression on her face but he’d be afraid to right now. The men before her stared at her, perplexed, but also aroused.

One of the men lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Well dang, that is a nice pair of titties. Sorry, miss, we thought you was…”

Connor stepped from behind the tree and raised his hands up in surrender. “We’re human, you jackasses.”

“Well, we can see that now,” the head-scratching idiot said. “Those things don’t normally flash titties at people. We almost shot this fine young thing here. What a waste that would have been.”

Amanita put her shirt down, stepped forward and slapped the man in the face. “Scumbag!”

Sunday, 7:00pm

General Ryan met them at his makeshift desk, a large table covered in maps and manila folders. He sipped his coffee one more time and thanked the young squad of officers for bringing him the two children.

They looked like hell. The boy would need medical attention on his leg. It was a wonder he could even walk. Both he and the girl had blistered, superficial burns.

“We have no reports of violence in Victorville. You’re sure you didn’t just come from Castor?”

“We already told you…” Amanita began. She gave up and just raised her hands to show she didn’t want to go over the questions again.

Ryan played with the handle on his coffee mug. “I don’t need to tell you I don’t buy your story. I can see plain as day where you came from.”

“So, then what?” Connor asked. “You kill us? Quarantine us?”

“Kill? No. Quarantine, absolutely. I’ll need you to be examined. You have no idea what we’re dealing with here. I don’t know what you’ve been exposed to.”

“Trust me,” Amanita said. “I know damn well what we’re dealing with. We just lost our friends to it, and our families. And you assholes didn’t even try to save us.”

“Save you? Little girl, I lost four squads of men in that town in the last twelve hours. There is no saving it or anyone in it. Anyone steps foot in that town they might as well be a steak in a lion’s cage. I’ve never seen anything like this and I’m not letting it get out. You’re too young to understand.”

“Eat shit,” she said.

“Nice mouth. You’ll go far with that attitude.”

“Don’t you see that if we could get out there may be others?”

“I’m aware of that, little girl. I’m aware of much more than you concerning this whole situation and I will not be questioned by someone who hasn’t even gotten a high school diploma.”

“So you’d have shot us coming over the bridge?” Connor asked, no longer trying to hide the fact they weren’t from Victorville. The cat was obviously out of the bag.

“Son, my men have orders. The rest is classified and I will not discuss it with you. Look, kids, you’re lucky I don’t have you tied down to metal tables with needles poking in and out of every pore of your body. For all we know you’re contaminated and you’re contaminating this entire camp. But since little miss nudist here and her big mouth have proven there’s still a trace of human insolence in you, which those things couldn’t care less about, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, despite your lies and tricks. Now, go with Lieutenant James here, he will show you to your new quarters until we get you all checked out. Don’t make problems or I assure you it will not go well for you. I don’t give a shit how young you are. You are considered tainted until I’m told otherwise.”

Sunday, 7:15pm

Behind the bivouac were two white domes under which men and women in HAZMAT suits studied tissue samples under microscopes. Beyond that was a series of smaller tents ringed by a six-foot fence.

Lieutenant James led them through the gate and into the small camp. Four guards on heavy machine guns flanked the gate. Several more walked around the perimeter.

Inside men and women, children and even dogs, milled about. They all looked as if they had not slept in days. Bulletin boards had been erected in the middle of the tents, on which were posted hundreds of wallet-sized photos of people of all ages. Even now people were standing by it crying.