Swarm (Dead Ends) (13 page)

I hunched over and put my hands on my knees for support, my sour stomach ready to purge all of the adrenaline that sprinted through my nervous system as it searched for an unknown exit. I attempted to steady my breathing and find a focal point on the ground. It seemed to work and as my breathing slowed, I noticed something out of place on the ground, hidden below a layer of forest sediment. I cleared the dirt and debris away and grabbed what looked like a cable that had been spray painted to blend in with its environment. At first I thought it was some sort of jury-rigged trap but upon further inspection, I could tell is was a satellite cable. I followed it to a nearby tree being sure not to tug it too much and when I looked up, sure enough, attached to the tree was a satellite dish, no different from the ones that litter apartment buildings all over the country.
Where the hell was this thing plugged into?
I followed the cable back the other way, slowly letting it slither through my hand until I reached… nothing. It just ended. I pulled the cable a little bit and the leaves and sediment gave way to what looked like some kind of hastily made underground lair. Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about not telling Doc about the other people in my party. He was holding back an even more valuable piece of information.

I stepped down into a rather large bunker that could comfortably house 2 or 3 people. A small LED lantern lit up the space just enough for me to see enough food stacked on various shelves to last one person at least 6 months, a carved out bedroom in the back, various pieces of camping equipment, and the owner of the other end of that cable: a small flat screen television attached to some kind of power supply like you’d find hooked up to a computer to protect against power outages or fluctuations. As much as I wanted to turn that thing on and start getting answers to the unending questions rattling around in my head, I knew I had to get back to the girls. We’d been gone too long and I wouldn’t blame Jane for wanting to come looking for us especially if she heard the gunshot that took Ricky’s life. God, Ricky. The speed of everything that had happened was catching up to me now. Our group is now down to three. And I wasn’t anywhere near as capable as Ricky of protecting us from danger. Ricky could plan and adjust to whatever happened – aside from a shot gun shell shredding his head apart at point blank range of course. I was simply reacting. Shooting from the hip until I found something that stuck. Not exactly a recipe for long term survival.

I used the walk back to the Jeep to come up with a way to tell Jane and Zoe that Ricky was no longer in our future plans but there seemed to be a void where my thoughts should be. I couldn’t get away with just saying he died. There are always questions after a statement like that. I’d have to explain things.
How? Why? Who?
All things I no longer felt the desire to dwell on. I wanted to look forward, not back. But the blanket hum of some undead army filled the air once again, leaving me no choice but to think about what has been and what is still to come. And none of it looks pretty. Not even through the most rose-colored pair of glasses.

Walking through the woods alone definitely gives you a chance to do a lot of thinking. I remember a documentary I watched about life during and after the Civil War. In those days, the ability to fashion a livable shelter or cross a shallow river with all of your belongings could mean the difference between survival and death. Now, some 150 years later we’re back in the muck just like our ancestors. I recall a history teacher I had in high school who always repeated the mantra “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” I’m not sure this is what he had in mind but the result is the same. Our way of life is unrecognizable to those who lived and died during the shaping of our country. We’re soft. Comfortable. Vulnerable. If this thing is spread beyond our little corner of the world, most of us don’t have a chance.

I got back to the Jeep to see Jane leaning against it, acknowledging me but instantly looking past me for Ricky. She looked back at me confused. I shook my head quickly, the look on my face relaying the message that needed to be sent. The look on her face confirmed she knew what I meant. We never talked about it again.

Chapter 12

Zoe was definitely running a fever now. Jane had been having a hard time getting her to drink fluids and when she did she just threw them back up. If we didn’t get her fever down, nothing short of an IV drip was going to save her. I brought them back to the bunker I’d found, telling Jane about Doc as we walked. Zoe hung limply in my arms barely aware of what was going on. All color had left her face and her whole body felt clammy and unusually warm, even for a fever. Survival was going to be hard enough without Ricky to turn to. Throwing a sick and defenseless kid into the mix didn’t exactly tilt the scales in our direction. I put Zoe down in the bed in the back of the shelter and covered her with what looked like a military issue wool blanket.

“Jesus, who was this guy?” Jane said, looking around in awe at everything that was stashed in the bunker.

“A survivalist from the looks of it” I responded, “these guys stay up here for months to protect the crops and make sure they’re healthy. They’re used to going without for long periods of time.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like this guy was going without much of anything” Jane said, running a finger across the top edge of the television. “Does this thing work?”

“Not sure, haven’t tried it yet. It’s hooked up to a satellite though. Tripping over the cord was what helped me discover this place.”

Jane grabbed the power cord of the television and followed it back to where it was plugged in. She pulled away a burlap sack to reveal a small generator that was hooked up to what looked like a series of car batteries and a row of something else I didn’t recognize.

“Please tell me those aren’t some kind of explosives” I whispered, not wanting to wake Zoe.

Jane responded with a laugh, “No, they’re lithium ion batteries. A bunch of ‘em too.” She looked comfortable, almost as if she were in her element for the first time since this all started. It dawned on me that I had never asked her what she did for a living. Not that it mattered anymore.

“What are they used for?”

“Mostly to charge laptops and cell phones but this guy knew what he was doing” she said, inspecting the wiring. “He wired the generator to the lithium batteries so he could run things off of those, which would be way quieter than running a generator all day.”

“Smart” I said, a flashing vision of Doc’s final moments catching me off guard for a few moments before I pushed the emotion down into some unimaginably dark cavern in my mind, hoping it would never find its way out.

“And you see these?” she said her, fingertip resting on the car batteries. “These are marine batteries. You can use them to run a cook top or operate a radio.”

I was only half-listening, my eyes glazing over as I fixated on the rows of canned food and bottled water. We could probably survive here for months if we needed to. It was the safest I had felt since all of this started. I felt like I took my first deep breath in days. Just as I let all of the air out of my lungs, Zoe began moaning in the bed. Jane and I looked at each other with a sort of quizzical horror on our face as I instinctually grabbed for the handle of my machete.

“My head hurts” Zoe whined, turning around in the bed to look at us. We both let out a breath and Jane hurried over to check on her. A pang of guilt reverberated through my body upon the realization that the first thing I should have done when I found the bunker was search for medicine for Zoe. I pulled back a curtain near the entrance to reveal what looked like a chemical toilet and small medicine cabinet carved into the earth. It looked to be stocked with every medication one might need when disengaging from civilization for months at a time. I kept searching until I found something that worked for fever. I handed it to Jane who gave me a confused look.

“Tylenol with Codeine? I think that’s a little strong for a kid” she responded.

“Just give her a half a dose. She’s burning up. Maybe then we can all get some sleep tonight.”

A half hour later, Zoe was comfortably asleep, the slightest snore emanating from her mouth. Hopefully her fever would improve with rest. In the span of that same half hour, Jane and I had paced around looking at the flat screen and looking at one another, both of us seemingly afraid to see what might happen if we turned it on. A part of me hoped it didn’t work but another part of me wanted to know where we stood. If we had any shot at survival it would be kind of nice to know how much of a shot it was. We looked at each other once more and a kind of silent agreement was reached as Jane reached down to turn on the bank of batteries and I picked up the remote control.

The screen flickered to life, filling the bunker with warm light. It wasn’t satellite television like I had first thought. The dish I had seen was some sort of high definition receiver that grabbed all of the free over-the-air broadcasts from every local TV station. I was relieved in a way. I’m not sure I’m ready to see the sort of world-wide carnage that might be awaiting us if we turned to CNN or Fox News. I instinctually turned it to KOMO News channel 4 because their weatherman went to the same high school as me so I always felt some sense of responsibility toward my fellow alum. The channel was blank at first but then the newscast came to life in full high definition. And sure enough there was trusty old Steve Poole in front of the green screen as he always was.

My agitated mind imagined what would happen next: Steve would show us the map of our beautiful Puget Sound but instead of storm fronts and happy pictures of sunshine, he would be plotting the movement of the undead hordes as they took over the city; storm clouds of death and destruction would pepper the map. But trusty old Steve would still keep his composure, even as his eyes burned with just the right amount of crazy. A sort of manic solitude would wash over him as he calmly pronounced the city of Seattle, the city I loved, the city I grew up in, was swiftly and unwaveringly turning to shit. I could almost hear him saying “An undead horde is making its way north from Lake Washington, cutting a swathe through our fine city and with no amount of luck whatsoever, half the population will be achin’ for human bacon by sundown!” He’d smile that great big smile and then promptly rip his clothes off and go running off the set, looking for a ledge to jump from as reality fully set in.

Only that’s not what happened. What we were seeing was a totally normal weather forecast. Partly sunny with a chance of rain. The same forecast as it is for 10 months out of the year. There was no fear in his eyes, no amount of uncertainty. And for a few blissful seconds I allowed myself to believe that it wasn’t as bad as I had made it out to be. That maybe this thing would just blow over by the weekend and life would go on. God, those few seconds were beautiful. Jane and I both looked at one another with confusion and a bit of hope. But the confusion was swiftly cleared up and the hope destroyed by what happened next.

All of the sudden the camera faltered slightly then switched to the newscasters at the desk who were both pinning a hand to one of their ears, listening intently to whoever was on the other end of their earpiece. A new woman I’d never seen before took the reins, telling of breaking news near Pioneer Square. The picture switched to a helicopter shot looking down onto what looked like a disorganized parade that quickly devolved into a riot, only these people weren’t protesting or breaking store windows. They were eating or being eaten by one another. The “Haves” and “Have-Nots” settling things the old fashioned way. The newscaster’s words faded in and out, something about a similar outbreak in the University District, but I’m certain the images on the screen were all that anyone would be paying attention to. I could hear the helicopter pilot yelling “What is that? What the hell is that?” as the cameraman struggled to focus in on the shot. Then the camera jumped a little bit and suddenly faced down towards the floor of the helicopter as it made a strange whirling sound. Someone, I’m assuming the cameraman, yelled “Whoa! Be careful man, you almost hit that building!” But the pilot wasn’t listening. He kept trying to get lower, to confirm the madness that he was seeing, to make his mind believe what his eyes would not.

The cameraman steadied the camera once again. The helicopter was now below the roofline of the buildings, floating precariously above the uncontrolled carnage taking place beneath. The expletives flowed like rain in April. The cameraman attempted to readjust the camera and when he did it panned over to the roof of one of the buildings just in time to see a man screaming and yelling as he approached the ledge of the building in a full sprint. A small group of the undead quickly gained ground in back of him and not knowing what to do, the man panicked and jumped, perhaps hoping the helicopter would save him. Instead, he jumped before the pilot knew what was happening and was sheared into nothing by the blades of the helicopter. Blood and bone fragments rained down over the helicopter for all of Seattle to see, clouding the camera lens slightly with blood. The pilot attempted to right the craft but before he could a few of the undead, still freakishly mobile, jumped off the building after the man, sending the helicopter flailing as the blades filleted a couple more corpses before clumsily fading off toward the building on the other side of the street.

The camera jerked around as the cameraman screamed for his life. The pilot could be heard shouting “Come on! Come on!” over and over again but the damage had already been done. He never should have been flying that low. Everything that happened after that looked like a video game. The sound of metal first bending and finally breaking under the stress was almost deafening. The helicopter listed violently towards one side and ricocheted off the building, crumbling towards the undead masses below. All the while, the cameraman, no doubt aware of his imminent demise, holding steady, the camera creating a kaleidoscopic view of the carnage, each second bringing us closer and closer until just before impact you can see one of the undead, seemingly unaware that he is about to be crushed by a helicopter, take a gigantic bite out of some woman’s shoulder as she tries to protect her child from harm. Sinew and blood were exposed in high definition glory as the creature pulled its head back and went in for more. A second later they were all crushed and the feed went blank. A second after that, it cut back to the studio where one reporter sat catatonic at her desk, unable to respond to anything while the other reporter was in the process of throwing up his lunch directly onto the news desk. A voice could be heard off-screen saying “We’re live! Keep rolling” but they didn’t respond. Then, like a boss, trusty old Steve Poole walked in front of the news desk and began to lay out the scene, no doubt visions of daytime Emmy awards flickering in his eyes.