Tammy and Ringo (11 page)

“I know how that can be,” Tammy nodded absently, placing the last glass in the drainer.

“I know, dear,” Helen said easily. “Hiram lied about his age and joined the Army at sixteen, I think. He was almost twenty when I met him and already too old for his years. I'm afraid he's been to a lot of bad places. He never speaks of it, though, and I don't either. I pretend I don't know anything about the nightmares he has or the distant look he gets once in a while and he can believe he's 'protecting' me from his past. He needs that,” she finished from where she was looking at a hand-written list for the garden.

Tammy marveled at Helen and her casual acceptance of the trouble Hiram had. Would her mother have been like that for her dad? Probably, she decided. Lucinda had known her mother and had always praised her.

Tammy looked out the window once more and sighed. No word had come from Ringo last night. She found herself fighting not to worry that he was hurt or worse. There was no profit in it, nothing to be gained.

“Stop thinking about it, dear,” Helen said absently. “He'll call when he can and thinks of it.”

“Thinks of it?” Tammy blurted, too surprised by that statement to claim she hadn't been thinking about it.

“Sometimes you forget simple things, dear,” Helen nodded, finally looking up from her list. “He's in danger, Tammy, and has no one to depend on but himself. I'm fairly certain he's also not accustomed to having to answer to anyone or account to anyone else for his whereabouts or his actions. That takes getting used to. Give him time.”

“It's not like he answers to me,” Tammy objected slightly. “Or that he owes me a phone call.”

“I'm glad you can still say that,” Helen smiled faintly, once more perusing her list. “You can fight it all you want child, but you're worried over him, though I daresay you haven't figured out why just yet.”

Tammy had to work to hide her shock. It was like the older woman could read her mind!

“You aren't the first young woman to fall for a man who seems to seek out danger, Tammy,” Helen smiled warmly, looking up again. “And probably not the last. I was young once, you know,” she added impishly. “There was something dark and dangerous about Hiram the first time I saw him. I didn't know what it was, but I could see it even then. And I'll admit, here in private, that it drew me like a flame draws a moth.” She got a faraway look in her eyes then, like she was seeing something else. Something that was somewhere Tammy couldn't see.

“I've never regretted it, either,” she said at last, turning her refocused gaze upon the younger woman. “So it's okay for you to be worried. Just don't let it rule you. What will be, will be.”

With that Helen fell silent, rising to go and get her straw hat and gloves. Tammy followed her. It was time to work in the garden. That would distract her…for a while anyway.

*****

It was worse than Ringo had imagined and that was saying something.

He was lying in thick woods about one hundred yards north of the bridge and the interstate. The line of cars in the east-bound lane extended up the hill and out of sight to the west, while the west-bound lane was practically empty, of cars.

Hundreds of infected roamed the highway. There were groups and gaggles of infected in some places while others roamed alone. He noted that a few of them fought between themselves and wondered what about. Realizing he should be taping, he quickly removed the small recorder from its protective case, set it on its stand and turned it on. He whispered briefly into the camera recording the date, time and location, then set the camera up where it would capture as much of what was happening as possible.

That done, he took his binoculars and began looking over the scene once more. He was farther away than he wanted to be, but couldn't see much of a way to get closer without risking detection. He still wasn't sure how sharp their hearing or their eyesight was. Yesterday's experiments were far from conclusive. He spent about thirty minutes lying in watch, panning and zooming the camera to capture anything that seemed like different behavior from the bulk of the infected.

Why don't they leave here? he couldn't help but wonder. Why bother staying around here? Is something attracting them to this place?

He kept the camera moving. He passed by one infected then pulled the camera back to her. There on the highway was a woman, obviously infected, the bite wound in her shoulder still bleeding just a little. That wasn't what caught Ringo's attention, though. While most of the others were just ambling around aimlessly, this one was trying to open a car door. Ringo recorded her actions for a two full minutes, then spent the next fifteen examining the roadway looking for others who were doing the same thing or anything that remotely resembled a coherent action.

Two others were also trying to gain entry to a vehicle, including one with keys in hand. Ringo made sure to record that one for a full five minutes though he watched the battery meter carefully. After a few more minutes of looking he discovered an infected man trying to open what looked like a bag of some kind of chips and got three minutes of his behavior. Another was trying to open a trunk and at least one was trying to have sex.

Oh, I did not need that image in my head, Ringo thought to himself, closing his eyes and trying to erase the scene. He wasn't sure the selected partner was a willing participant and preferred not to think about it too much. Still, it was behavior, so he recorded it even though it made him feel dirty.

Finally he shut the camera off, saving the rest of the battery in case he saw anything else interesting. Returning the camera to its bag, Ringo prepared for the next phase of his job. He needed to take blood and tissue samples…and a head.

Slipping behind a tree Ringo got to his feet and began to make his way closer to the road. He had seen a bit of movement further up the road. He knew that there was a fence along the interstate that kept traffic access controlled to the exit and entrance ramps and hoped that it was keeping the woods clear. He planned to use that same fence to break contact once his grisly job here was done.

He moved west through the woods following the interstate, watching the roadway. When he'd moved perhaps a half mile from his original position he found what he was hoping to see. Three infected, pretty much alone, along a partially open area of the road. There were cars he could use for cover and he was fairly sure he could take three without raising an alarm.

He found a good hiding place and shrugged out of his pack. It was too bulky and heavy to try and take over the fence so he would leave it here. He also left the shotgun. He kept the suppressed pistol that Hiram had given him, his sword and his knives. He donned the protective gear he'd been given and then gathered the sample containers. Once he was sure he had everything he headed for the fence line. He would leave the containers at the fence until the job was done, then retrieve them as quickly as he could, get what he'd came for and make himself scarce.

The fence was sturdy along this section of road, he was glad to see. That should slow down any infected who might give chase should he be discovered. He'd take any advantage he could get today. He made his way over the fence without noise and placed the containers on the ground, careful not to let them rattle against one another.

There were two women and a man wandering along the roadway in front of him, maybe fifty yards away. He watched them for five minutes, looking for any sign of a pattern or that he'd been noticed. Satisfied that they were unaware of his presence, he rose to a crouch and made his way to an abandoned SUV sitting on the side of the road.

As he reached the truck he had a horrifying thought. One it was too late to act on. What if there were infected inside some of the cars? If the ones outside couldn't get in, then maybe they couldn't get out. But they would probably make noise and noise was death. Why hadn't he thought about that before?

Because you've never had to think about it before, he answered himself mentally. This waking nightmare was one that no one had ever dealt with before. It wasn't like there was a training manual for how to move in zombie country. He grimaced at the thought of the word 'zombie'. Some of the behavior he'd seen today had disturbed him. These poor people weren't 'undead' or any other kind of crap. They were sick and that sickness made them violent and dangerous, but it was obvious that at least some of them still recognized or remembered certain actions and behaviors from before their infection.

He thought back to what Baxter had said and decided that maybe those clamoring for 'fair treatment' of the infected were not completely wrong in their assumptions. That didn't change the facts, however. Right now, regardless of their attempts to carry out basic functions, the people on this stretch of interstate were violent, dangerous and beyond reasoning with. There was no 'talking' to them. Every time he'd seen infected react, it was violent. There had been no other response. Maybe if he did his job right then Baxter and her colleagues could find a way to fix them.

He put those thoughts aside. It was unprofitable, especially since he was about to kill three more of them. He eased his sword from its sheath and rose slightly to peer through the glass of the SUV. His targets were directly in front of him, one just on the other side of the Suburban. Nice.

Ringo moved to the rear of the vehicle, forcing himself to breathe slowly and deeply several times. His mind cleared, he exhaled the last breath and walked around the vehicle to where the infected stood milling about the other vehicles. The first female never saw him coming and died when his sword decapitated her. Unfortunately that made noise.

The male turned to look for the source of the sound he'd heard and saw Ringo immediately. He crossed the twenty feet between them faster than Ringo had expected and the teen was forced to roll away from the larger infected man, regaining his feet with a smoothness that would have made any street-dancer proud.

Even so, it almost wasn't enough. The enraged male recovered much faster than Ringo had anticipated but Ringo's own movements were faster. As the man reached for him Ringo's sword sliced through both arms. The creature roared in rage and Ringo realized that the infected could feel pain. He hadn't thought about that before. Another thing he'd overlooked. Ringo spun away from the man who was still reaching for him despite the loss of his hands. Continuing his spin, Ringo transferred his weight to his front foot as he turned back to the larger man. Using his weight and momentum for added power to his next swing, he once again decapitated an infected.

Ringo was hit hard from behind before he could recover and lost his grip on his sword hilt as the weight of the final infected, the other female, bore him to the ground. Though caught by surprise, Ringo managed to twist himself around enough to take the fall on his right shoulder and at least partially face his attacker.

The image he saw was one that would haunt him for a very long time. Until now he'd never been that close with one of them. It was clean and clinical to strike with the sword and keep moving. Now he was truly up close and personal with an infected.

The gaping maw of blood and teeth didn't look human. It looked like the mouth of a shark at feeding time. And right now it was planning to feed on him. He managed to get his left arm from between himself and his attacker, forcing his forearm beneath her jaw and then pushing her face, and that mouth, away from him. The infected woman continued to shriek in what Ringo could only recognize as rage; pure, unadulterated, primal rage.

Trying to keep the pressure on with his left arm, Ringo managed to remove a steel spike from his web gear. It wasn't the ideal weapon but it was all he could reach with the weight still on him. The woman was strong with her insanity and it was all he could do to move. In the back of his mind was the fact that her constant screeching had to be alerting others of his presence. Before he could worry about that though, he had to survive here.

Still holding his attacker at bay with his left arm, Ringo reversed his grip on the spike in his right hand so that the point extended below his hand rather than above it. Turning as much as he could while still in her grip, Ringo raised his shoulder as much as possible and then slammed the point of the spike into her left eye.

Ringo hadn't known what to expect but the sudden silence hadn't really been it. One second the infected woman is screaming at the top of her lungs, the next she's dead quiet. Because she was dead, period.

Her weight fell on him partially as her body collapsed. Ringo managed to shove the falling body with his left arm so that he wasn't directly beneath her, but blood from the eye socket shot over him.

Ringo shoved her the rest of the way off him and scrambled to his feet, noticing as he did that his right arm didn't want to obey him fully. Leaving the spike where it was, Ringo retrieved his sword before he bothered to look down the road.

Nothing. He hurriedly scanned the area around him expecting to see infected any and everywhere he looked. Despite his fear, he could neither see nor hear any sign that other infected were close by or even cared to investigate the noise. Maybe they hadn't heard it at all. Ringo didn't know and had other problems to concentrate on anyway.

Realizing that his shirt was covered in infected blood as was his webbing, Ringo was close to panic.

Don't let their blood or other bodily fluids get on you. Was that what he'd been told? Or was he okay so long as it didn't get into his blood? He was wearing the goggles so his eyes were protected. What about his arms? Had any of the blood gotten into his mouth? He didn't taste anything, but would he? There was too much he didn't know.