Season of Rot (19 page)

“Get out of here, Ian,” Sheena ordered. “Go
back to your damn coffin in the armory!”

Ian nodded and walked toward the control
room’s exit. “Just promise me one thing,” he said. “Do not give
them our location until you’ve had more time to study the
transmission and its origins.”

“You’re too late on that one, Ian,” Toni
called after him as he disappeared around the corner. “I already
did.”

After a moment of silence, Jeremy said, “What
if he’s right?” Suddenly he felt everyone’s eyes on him. “No, I
mean it. He’s damn weird, I’ll give you that, but he was CIA. Toni,
can’t we trace the source of the transmission? Find out where it
came from?”

“Yeah,” she answered quietly. “We can, but
it’ll take a lot of work.”

“It would go a lot faster if we had your
help, Nathanial.” Jeremy glanced at the computer tech.

Nathanial shrugged. “Sure. Okay.”

“In the meantime, I think all the rest of us
have stuff to be working on, right?” Geoff said. “Dr. Leigh, why
don’t you continue your study of the wave; the rest of you, suit
up. We’re going up top. There are about forty more of those things
at the fence again and I, for one, want them gone.”

#

Troy shielded his eyes as he stepped out of
the shed onto the main grounds of the base. The cacophony of the
maddened creatures washed over him like a tide. “Jeez, Geoff, where
the hell did you learn how to count?”

Geoff stepped out behind him and followed
Troy’s gaze. There weren’t forty creatures outside the fence. They
numbered closer to a hundred or more. The heavy, reinforced poles
that held the fence in place swayed under the massive force.

“Got some gas no one seems to be usin’ over
in the garage,” Wade offered.

Within minutes, Wade had a jury-rigged hose
running from the large fuel tanks. Troy and Geoff helped him drag
it out and turn it on.

“Yee-freakin’-hah!” Troy bellowed as he held
the hose’s nozzle, spraying down the creatures and the fence alike.
“Anybody got a match?”

Wade shook his head and held up a silver
Zippo. “This was my favorite lighter,” he said, looking at it
sadly. Then he lit it with a flick and tossed it at the fence.

Howls and screams rose up as a burst of blue
flame swept through the ranks of the infected. Geoff shut off the
hose, and the three of them stood in silence. Black smoke drifted
into the heavens, and it was all Troy could do not to vomit from
the odor of burning flesh.

#

“I don’t believe it.” Nathanial slumped over
his computer screen. “What the hell does it mean?”

He and Toni had been able to trace the source
of the message supposedly from Freedom II. It hadn’t come from
orbit at all but rather somewhere in South Carolina—only a few
hundred miles away from the complex.

“It means Ian was right,” Jeremy said.
“Someone out there, whether it’s those creatures or not, knows
we’re here now. They know we’re alive and sane. Worse, they know
how many of us there are.”

“Oh God,” Toni said, suddenly sobbing, “I am
so sorry.”

“Hey.” Jeremy took her in his arms, and she
nestled her face deeper into his shoulder, wetting his shirt. “It’s
all right. You didn’t know.”

“So what do we do now?” Nathanial asked.

Jeremy gritted his teeth. “We get ready. We
get ready for whoever or whatever’s coming.”

17

The doors of the lift opened onto the armory
level. Jeremy had never been to this part of the base before and
was taken aback by the condition of the hallway. Unlike the rest of
Def Con, this area hadn’t been repaired since the battle after the
wave. The lighting was poor, as many of the lights had been shot
out or were flickering badly, casting eerie strobes along the
corridor. The metal walls themselves were scarred by some kind of
explosion, as if someone had set off a grenade. Spent shell casings
littered the floor as Jeremy made his way to the end of the hall.
The entrance to the armory was open. Ian emerged from an unnoticed
side corridor behind Jeremy.

“How the mighty have fallen,” said the
agent.

Jeremy whirled around at the sound of his
voice.

“Calm down, young man. I’m not some monster
come to end your life.”

“Ian, you were right about the Freedom
II.”

“I know.” He walked past Jeremy into the
armory. “Would you care for some music? I find Wagner particularly
relaxing in times like these.”

“How did you know so quickly about the
Freedom, I mean?”

Ian took a seat in a folding chair between
the racks of weapons, which lined the walls of the vault-like room.
“Their shielding,” Ian said. He picked up a cold cup of tea sitting
beside the chair and sipped at it. “There was a project like what
they described, but it never got off the ground. The energy
expenditure to generate the kind of field they mentioned was
impossible. The project was scrapped because of it.”

Jeremy took a seat on the floor in front of
Ian. “Why do you stay down here so much?”

Ian laughed. “I’m not immune to the radiation
like the rest of you seem to be.”

Jeremy’s mouth dropped open.

“This is the most shielded part of the
complex. I choose to stay here because I value my life. Even so, I
am finding it harder each day to resist the urges rising inside of
me. Very soon I think you may find yourself in a position where my
disposal will become vital to your own survival.”

Jeremy shifted uncomfortably.

“I assure you,” Ian said, “you will have to
do it. None of the others, not even our good doctor, even suspect
that I am unwell.”

He paused and set down his tea. “I don’t have
any magical answers about who the people onboard the fictional
Freedom II might be. I’m not God, Jeremy. But whether they are
looters, survivors like us, or reasoning versions of the creatures
outside, they will be coming. Will they bring death or hope? I
don’t know. Personally, I believe hope died the second the wave
touched our world.”

“Will you help us get ready for them?”

“There’s nothing I can do, Jeremy. I’m
certainly not about to go up top again, and I don’t think you can
really ask that of me. Geoff is the military expert. He can handle
it.”

“And that’s it? That’s all you have to
offer?” Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t you care about anyone?”

“Yes,” Ian answered, “I care about me, and
either way, I am dying. Now good day.”

Ian picked up a book and opened it to the
chapter marked with a piece of ribbon. Jeremy didn’t argue. He got
to his feet and went in search of Geoff.

Something had to be done, and it looked like
it was up to them to do it. His life and the world he knew had been
taken from him once; he wasn’t going to give up this place too—not
without a fight.

18

“It can’t be done,” Geoff slurred, dropping
the empty jug to the garage floor. “This base was never designed to
be a defensible position out here. It’s a damn bomb shelter, kid, a
really high-tech one, but still just a shelter.”

Jeremy grabbed Geoff by the front of his
uniform and tried to yank him to his feet. As drunk as Geoff was,
he pulled Jeremy’s arm behind his back with incredible ease as he
stood. “Kid, it’s all open space and fields up here. The fence is
the only real obstacle to anyone who wants onto the grounds. If
these things show up with welding torches and burn through the
perimeter and the outer seal in the shed, then maybe they deserve
to have us for dinner.” Geoff released his hold on Jeremy and
staggered out into the sunlight. “Jesus, kid, I just roasted a mob
of people alive to save your ass. What more do you want from
me?”

“Where are Troy and Wade? Maybe they’ll
listen to reason.”

“Reason!” Geoff spun around to face Jeremy.
“There ain’t no reason left anymore, kid. Just death, death and the
dying.”

Jeremy drew the .45 from the holster on his
belt and leveled it at Geoff. “Do you want to die so badly, Geoff?”
He shook the gun. “I can make it happen, right here, right
now.”

Geoff’s eyes narrowed, and he finally nodded.
“Okay. We’ll play it your way, Jeremy. We might as well go out
fighting.” He stumbled over and threw an arm around Jeremy’s
shoulders. “I just hope to God you or Wade can come up with a way
to make a stand up here. I’m shit out of ideas.”

Outside the fence, three new infected knelt,
gnawing on the charred remains of their less fortunate
brethren.

#

Nathanial Richards sat alone in the control
room. He looked at his watch; two hours until the next message from
the Freedom was due. It was far more than enough time for what he
had in mind. His fingers danced over the keys of his computer and
the complex was his.

He was not a man given to worry. Born to the
CEO of one of America’s leading pharmaceutical corporations and to
a mother whose life revolved around him due to the constant absence
of his father, he considered himself blessed. Nathanial never
wanted for anything. Even in college, when the police had raided
his dorm room and found his stash of narcotics, his father had
swept in and made it all go away. What was a petty possession
charge to a man who carried senators, bought and paid for, in his
pocket? His parents had always been there to save him, and he had
never doubted that they would come. But they were gone now. No more
bailouts. Political power and money meant nothing these days.

Outside of his family, the only true friends
Nathanial had ever known were computers. From the time he could
type, machines were a part of his life. They gave him his own power
and control, but the wave had taken even them from him. Oh sure,
there were computers all over Def Con, but the web and cyberspace
no longer existed. He’d lost everything. Nathanial was alone, and
death was coming for him. The transmission from the Freedom II had
fired his hopes that the old world would return, but now he knew
deep in his heart that the people on the other end of the
transmission were evil incarnate, and he wasn’t going to let them
take the last thing he had left: his soul.

Weeks ago, he had been forced to disable the
base’s self-destruct system to save himself and everyone trapped
with him. The codes had been easy to break for someone like him,
and they were even easier to manipulate now. Def Con itself would
be his shield when the darkness came, a shield of fire and
retribution.

His soul would remain his own.

#

Wade finished covering the last mine as yet
another one of the infected emerged from the trees. He didn’t waste
the time or the ammo to dispose of it. Instead he broke into a run
for the gates. As he passed through, Troy and Jeremy slammed them
shut behind him. The psycho threw itself against the barbed wire,
clawing at the fence and foaming pink at the mouth.

“That does it.” Wade collapsed to the earth,
out of breath. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be.”

They had spent the last few hours littering
the area outside of the fence with mines and barricading the doors
of the garage. “As long as those things out there don’t trip all
the mines before our company shows, we should at least have a
chance,” Geoff said. He had drunk cup after cup of black coffee,
trying to sober up while supervising the others.

“Don’t worry,” Troy said, patting his
.30-.06, which was equipped with a sniper scope. “Me and my friend
here won’t let them.”

“Guess all we can do is wait,” Jeremy said.
“It’s almost time for the Freedom II to make contact again.”

“You go on and be there with the rest of them
when it happens,” Geoff urged as Troy climbed to his position atop
the garage. “Us three pretty much got things covered up here.”

Jeremy nodded. He took one last glance at
their work and then headed for the shed and the outer seal leading
into the complex.

19

Toni was the first to join Nathanial in the
control room. He looked haggard, as if he’d never left his station
since the Freedom’s first transmission. Jeremy and Sheena came in
minutes later. No one asked where Ian was and Jeremy was thankful
for it. He hadn’t decided what to do about the former CIA agent’s
condition and didn’t see any reason at this point to add the worry
to the rest of their collective woes. “Everything ready?” he
asked.

“We’re set up to trace them the second they
make contact,” Nathanial assured him. They all watched the
communications console as the figures on the time display flashed
and changed to the appointed hour.

“Come in, Def Con. This is Freedom II. Do you
copy us? Over.”

“Go!” Jeremy shouted at Nathanial, and the
computer engineer began the trace.

Toni hesitantly opened a response channel.
“This is Def Con. We copy you, Freedom II.”

Seconds ticked by in silence. No reply.
Nathanial indicated that he’d managed to get a fix on the origins
of the transmission. All the color had bled from his face. “It’s
coming from a point just two miles south of here and closing
slowly... Sweet Jesus. They really are coming for us.”

#

Troy saw the convoy first from his spot atop
the garage. A line of pickups, four-wheel drives and jeeps bounced
up the winding gravel road, growing ever closer. Troy counted
thirteen vehicles in all, and numerous men and women on foot jogged
along at their sides. The thing that bothered him, though, was the
infected’s lack of interest in the convoy. He knew for a fact that
there were packs of the creatures still out there in the woods, but
for whatever reason they were not attacking. It could only mean one
of two things: either these people knew a way to control or ward
off the creatures, or they themselves were so poisoned by the
radiation in the atmosphere that the infected didn’t recognize them
as human.

Using hand signs, Troy gestured what he saw
to Geoff and Wade, who were concealed in the remaining bushes just
inside the fence. Then he said a prayer for them all and checked
the chamber of his rifle to make sure it was ready.