Season of Rot (18 page)

“I think that does it. Anyone on this side of
the country with so much as a handset should be able to hear us
now.”

Jeremy grinned and pointed at the top of the
console. “So this little red light is supposed to be on and
flickering this way?”

“What?” Toni pulled herself up and looked at
the light. Her whole body tensed up and she barely seemed to
breathe.

“Was it something I said? I’m sorry
if...”

She whirled on him and threw her arms about
his neck as he stood there, totally dumbfounded.

“Someone out there is trying to reach us!”
She half giggled, half screamed as she slammed a finger down to
transfer the incoming transmission to the room’s speakers.

The broadcast was garbled by terrible static
and interference, but they managed to understand a few words.
“This... Freedom Station... Anyone... us?”

Toni held a hand over her mouth.

“Freedom Station,” Jeremy repeated. “Holy
shit.”

Toni had already opened the channel and was
responding. “We copy that, Freedom. This is Def Con, and you have
no idea how happy we are to hear you.”

“Repeat... Couldn’t...” the voice
replied.

“Go tell the others!” Toni told Jeremy. “I’ll
try to clean this up some and keep the channel open... Go!”

Jeremy dropped his toolbox and darted off,
yelling down the corridors.

15

The woods were quiet and a gentle rain began
to fall as Amy made her way up the mountainside. The night had
given way to a gray sky full of clouds. The rain was a warm one,
however, and she welcomed it. She fished around in her pockets and
brought out the last of the berries she had found during the night,
plopping the whole handful into her mouth. They were wonderful, the
food of the gods, but she longed for more and hoped she would come
across another patch soon. She wasn’t a nature person, having grown
up in New York, but she knew some berries were poisonous and had to
be careful what she picked.

Briefly, she entertained the notion of trying
to shoot or catch one of the rabbits that ran rampant in the woods,
but she had no idea how to hunt them. If it came down to it, she
swore she would eat grass rather than waste the last five rounds in
her weapon. She couldn’t risk being defenseless if one or more of
the creatures crossed her path.

Amy reached the top of the large hill, which,
to a city dweller like her, was considered a mountain, and she
looked down at the town below. The instant she saw it, she ducked
into the foliage out of instinct. She cursed herself for being
foolish. It was miles away. Nothing could see her... unless the
creatures down there were the smart kind, keeping a watch with
binoculars.

There didn’t appear to be any kind of road or
trail leading from her position to the town. It looked as if the
forest stretched all the way to the city limits. The town’s
proximity meant she was much more likely to come across the
creatures than she had thought, even if she kept to the woods and
tried to cut around it. She took a moment to steel herself before
heading straight for the town. She was going there, and she was
going to find the things she needed. Maybe, if it was mostly
deserted, she could find a home or some kind of building to hole up
in and finally get some rest.

As the sun began to sink from the sky, she
made it to the edge of the town. She hadn’t bumped into any
creatures, and that was a good sign. She didn’t see any in the
parking lot of the gas station either. It was the town’s most
outlying building. It was damaged a bit on the outside, a few
bullet holes and shattered windows, but from what she could tell it
hadn’t been ransacked. It called to her with the promise of food
and other wonders.

For over forty minutes she stayed hidden,
watching for any sign of trouble or movement before finally
creeping out of the trees. The sound of her own footfalls on the
pavement unnerved her. She glanced around, making sure she was
still alone.

As Amy approached the glass doors of the
station, she breathed a sigh of relief. Not only did there appear
to be no one inside, but its aisles hadn’t been trashed. She
started to open the door when she heard a gun being cocked behind
her.

“You can put your weapon down now, ma’am,” a
voice with a heavy Southern accent ordered. She dropped the .45 to
the pavement and turned to see a very large gun pointed in her
face. She guessed it might be a Magnum like Dirty Harry used in the
movies, but wasn’t sure. The man who held it was young, much
younger than she was. He barely looked out of his teens. A mess of
thick blond hair covered the top of his head and he wore a pair of
filthy overalls over a white T-shirt that had seen better days. His
appearance would have been comical if not for the way his deep-blue
eyes watched her with such dead seriousness.

“I reckon you ain’t one of
them
,” he
said, “but you sure as heck ain’t from around here neither.
Everybody here is dead or crazy. I ain’t seen anyone else alive for
a while now, so just where did you come from? Who in the heck are
you, lady?”

“Amy. My name is Amy... I’m from New York,”
she added hastily.

The man laughed. “New York? You’re a long way
from home.” He lowered the huge pistol and nodded, as if to
himself. “Welcome to Virginia, Amy. We’d best get inside. Most of
them things are gone from ‘round here, but there are still a few
stragglers left, I think. Best not to take chances, ya know?”

He reached past and opened the glass door for
her. She started to head inside again, but he stopped her. “Don’t
forget your gun,” he said, grinning and pointing at the weapon
she’d dropped. “You may need it.”

She retrieved the pistol and followed him to
the back of the station, where he unlocked a massive metal door and
ushered her inside.

“Place used to be a restaurant or something,”
he said, closing the door behind them. “When Pop and I bought the
place, we turned the freezer into a backroom of sorts. We kept the
door though. It’s solid steel. Nice place for an office if you get
robbed or the world suddenly goes F-ing bananas.”

Amy didn’t laugh at his joke. She was busy
eyeing the room. It was small and furnished with a singular desk
and what appeared to be a makeshift bunk; food and other supplies
were stacked all around the space and packed in the corners.

“You’ve been living here... since the wave, I
mean?”

“Yeah,” he said. “No place else to go.” He
sat on the bunk and stared at her. “Guess we have a lot to talk
about, huh, Amy?”

Hundreds of questions flooded her head, but
the first one she asked was, “You said most of the creatures are
gone from this town. Where did they go?”

“You mean the crazy people? Don’t know. A
group of guys drove into town and rounded them up—only the guys
weren’t normal either. The crazies didn’t attack them. It was
pretty messed up. I hid and stayed out of their way. Didn’t see
much. All I can tell you is that they went south, all together in
one big group with the weird guys leading them.”

“What’s your name?” Amy suddenly blurted; it
had just sunk in that she was safe, at least for the moment, and in
the company of another real human being.

“My real name’s Joseph Hunter, but I prefer
Joe.” He stood up from the bunk, and from one of the boxes that
littered the room, he produced a bottle of water. “I’m sorry, Amy.
I bet you’re awfully hungry and tired from the look of you. Why
don’t you help yourself to some food and get some sleep. I’ll keep
watch outside. I have some things to tend to anyway. We can talk
later, okay?”

He held out the water and Amy accepted it,
drank most of it in a single gulp. “Thank you, Joe.”

He nodded and shut the huge door on his way
out.

Amy ate a meal of Vienna sausages, Pringles
and crackers, then stretched out on the bunk. A smile lingered on
her lips even as she slept.

As the days passed, Joe told her the story of
the town of Bloomington. Like everywhere else, it had been plunged
into darkness and chaos the night the wave struck the earth. Joe
and his pop made their way to the church that night with the other
survivors, but the holy place hadn’t offered them any protection.
The crazies outside attacked it time and time again, whittling down
its defenders and their stockpile of ammunition. Then people inside
began to change, and the pastor ordered that they be shot.

Finally Joe and his pop got of the church
while they still could and made it here to their place of business.
As far as they knew, by that time the entire town was crazy except
for them. He and his pop had taken shelter here in this backroom,
listening to the changed ones pounding on the metal door and
howling for their blood. Eventually the crazies must have realized
they couldn’t get inside, so they left the station. After that,
there had been a few close calls, a few firefights with the
mindless kind that couldn’t shoot back, a few narrow escapes when
they ventured into town for things that weren’t kept on hand. But
they managed, Joe informed her.

When Amy asked where his pop was now, Joe
lowered his face into his hands and quietly told her that the old
man had changed. “I got him with his own damn shotgun,” Joe told
her. “Buried him out behind the station.” It was the hardest thing
he had ever done in his life, and it troubled him still.

Joe imagined before he met Amy that he, too,
would go insane, if not from the wave’s effects then from just the
pain of being alone. He’d been extremely happy to find Amy on his
doorstep. He believed she saved his life by showing up when she
did.

She was grateful for him too, and she was
happy in this place. In a matter of days, she had invited Joe to
share the bunk with her instead of making him sleep on the floor.
They needed each other desperately to feel alive, to feel hopeful
when they looked in each other’s eyes. Joe wrapped his arms around
her after they made love at night, made her feel safe and allowed
her to think that someday things would be okay again.

What Joe had said about most of the creatures
leaving town had proved true as well. As long as they were careful,
he and Amy could venture almost anywhere they wanted, for supplies
or to just get some fresh air and stretch their legs for a while.
Well armed as they were, they never encountered more crazies than
the two of them could handle. All they needed was each other, and
together they could rebuild a little piece of the world they had
lost to the wave.

16

The conversation with the Freedom had been
cut short when its orbit had taken it out of range, but the
survivors of Def Con had learned a lot during the brief
communication. It wasn’t the real Freedom Station they were
speaking to, at least not the one known to the public. The station
identified itself as the Freedom II, a military-oriented prototype
based on the original Freedom’s design; it had still been under
construction when the wave hit. Hank, the astronaut with whom they
spoke, explained that the original Freedom had been destroyed by
the energy blast and that only the experimental shielding of the
Freedom II had kept the station functional enough to save the crew
and allow them the necessary time to make repairs. Still, only Hank
and one other member of the eight-man crew were left alive, and
they wouldn’t last long: they were quickly running out of supplies
and were down to one-quarter power. Hank and Toni arranged a time
to talk again when the station’s orbit brought it back into range,
and they traded downloads of information regarding what they knew
of the post-wave world.

Sheena was beside herself. Now she could
finally get the data she needed firsthand to see whether the wave’s
worst damage was over with. Nathanial, Geoff, Wade and Troy were
howling for a celebration. Only Ian seemed reserved.

“It’s a lie,” he informed the crowd gathered
in the control room. “There is no Freedom II.” His words cut their
excitement like a knife.

“How could you possibly know that?” Sheena
asked as Nathanial clinched his fists and almost charged the CIA
man.

“Lies and cover-ups used to be how I made a
living, my dear, or have you forgotten? I know more truth about
what America has and hasn’t done in the last five years than all of
you put together. Trust me. There is no Freedom II, nor will there
ever be.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, Ian, if I don’t
take the word of a self-professed liar over what my own ears just
heard,” Geoff remarked.

“I’m inclined to agree with Geoff,” Nathanial
said. “If Hank isn’t on the Freedom II, where is he? Who is he? It
just doesn’t make sense for it not to be true.”

Ian sighed as if confronting a group of
school children. “He’s one of them, the infected.”

“Oh, now that’s just bullshit!” Troy roared.
“Those creatures up there can’t tell their asses from a hole in the
ground. Have you ever seen one, just one of them, try to climb the
fence? They could, you know, if they could think to do it.”

Ian sighed again. “Before we lost D.C., I
received a packet of downloaded data on the infected from a doctor
named Buchanan. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He was the chief
science advisor to the president. His reports in the packet
disputed his earlier conclusions about the radiation and its
effects. Yes, it turns some people into monsters, the majority
actually, while some like us, for whatever reason, remain sane.
Buchanan believed the possibility of a third group to emerge, a
thinking, reasoning breed of those snarling killers up there...” He
pointed at the ceiling.

“Fuck off, Ian,” Wade said. “You never told
us this before.”

Ian ignored the mechanic and added, “You all
heard what you wanted to hear just now, not what you actually did.
Hope can be a powerful weapon if wielded correctly.”