The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here (30 page)

Chad knew this side of Mary, but thankfully didn’t see it often. She often told stories of a time before her parents passed away when they told her about Ireland. Her grandfather had been a bootlegger in prohibition and his father had been in the IRA. Both had killed men to protect their families and their way of life without remorse.

There was a black anger that the Irish mostly kept secret, covering it with poetry, whiskey, and song, but when you finally tormented them long enough, the blood of Brian Boru came to the surface and woe be unto the cause of that change.

Mary had been a happy housewife, mother, and had a fine job serving people good food and good wine, but that life was now behind her. What remained was a warrior queen.

In due course, the hole was judged deep enough and Mary climbed out. She was physically spent but still as determined. They had wrapped Clinton’s body in an old sheet and had gently lowered him into the ground. Then they stood there, not really knowing what to do. None of them had much religion but still it seemed not right somehow that they should just shovel the dirt back in without saying something.

In the end, it was Fiona that broke the silence. In a high, clear soprano, she began singing “Amazing Grace”. The song grew in strength as the others joined in. Fiona knew five verses and though the rest didn’t, they hummed the tune until it was done. In the setting sun, there didn’t seem to be anything they could say that could enhance or explain what they were feeling so in the end, most of the family filed away. Chad and Chris stayed only long enough to shovel the dirt back into the hole. It was amazing that something that had taken four hours to dig could be filled in so quickly and when they were done, all that remained to remember Clinton by was a small mound of earth and a rugged wooden cross.

May 30
th
, Saturday, 8:02 pm PDT.

Macklin was in back of the biker bar called Roban’s in Kennewick. He had a table but was sitting uncomfortably, as the .380 slug from Clinton’s Pico hand passed through both cheeks of his rear end and was painful although not life threatening. Not as painful as he would have thought, given what he had heard from others with bullet wounds.

The bar itself was in surprisingly good shape. It had always been ‘biker friendly’ and as the infection progressed and more of the habitués of the bar were thrown out of their various living arrangements, they congregated here. There was a supplier of ‘Slash,’ of course. Carlos, Macklin’s business associate, had kept them all well supplied so while they got sick, they were able to remain lucid and continued to pretty much the same as they always had. At some point, the owner of the bar realized that things were completely out of control and slipped out one evening, leaving the keys on the bar. The bikers stayed.

When Macklin rolled up with his armored van filled with weapons and body armor, not to mention a goodly supply of ‘Slash,’ he was welcomed as a returning hero. He was able to educate them about ‘Slash’ and the Plague and set up a controlled regime of ‘Slash’ use so that they weren’t always blasted on the drug and could be useful.

They were able to scavenge beer from a local distributor and they weren’t terribly picky about their food so life rolled on much as it always had for the bikers, save that they worked, when they felt like it, for Macklin. He was feeling a bit sorry for himself when his ‘special phone’ rang.

“Macklin,” he said into his phone.

“We saw the feed,” said a familiar disembodied voice. “How did he get that gun?

“Well, offhand,” said Macklin sarcastically, “I would say that he had it on him. The cretin you hired to run things around here supposedly patted him down but missed it, which is a shame since it was working according to my plan.”

“Taking the Chosen is becoming harder and harder,” said the voice. “We have made an arrangement to get you some better quality employees.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Macklin. “They shot me, remember?”

“You may be moving higher in the ranks,” said the voice, “but do not forget who your betters are. One of the side benefits of your infection is that you will heal quickly. It didn’t kill you and you obviously aren’t in much pain so you will be fine by tomorrow. I have been shot many times. If you stay focused, that long life could be yours too.”

“What you don’t seem to realize,” said Macklin, “is that I have a truckload of ‘Slash’ which is your kindly provided magic bullet for this disease. It’s not a cure, mind you, but it will keep me going for quite a while. Why should I listen to you?”

“My, my,” said the voice on the phone. “I had no idea you enjoyed the biker life so much. Is it the all night drinking? How about the sloppy sex with drunk, infected women? Come tell me, what is it?

“There are two reasons that even you should listen to before you decide to go set yourself up as a post apocalypse king. The first is elementary; your supply is not endless and you will live much longer than you think.

“Eventually you will need more and your current associates will hardly let you leave quietly, so that date is coming rather sooner than you think. Secondly, not everyone who works for you is a cretin. You have a watcher. One who will kill you when you when you aren’t looking if I say so. Consider him your apprentice. So if you behave and if you keep doing as we desire, the ‘Slash’ will keep coming; cross us and the word will get out before you can blink and your ‘employees’ will kill you just as soon as look at you.”

“So what do you want?” said Macklin with a more subdued voice.

“That’s better,” said the voice. “As I said, you have reinforcements coming. We don’t have nearly as many targets as we once did so we can consolidate our assets. Expect them before midnight.”

May 30
th
, Saturday, 9:17 pm PDT.

Everyone was sitting in Dave’s living room as no one really wanted to go to bed or be alone with their thoughts. The lights were out, both for security and to save the generator and fuel for when they needed it most. The knock on the door startled everyone.

Chad grabbed his pistol and looked around. Connor still carried Chris’s M-1 and everyone else was armed and ready. With a nod from Dave who was still in his easy chair but with his .44 in his hand, Chad went to the door.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s me, Matt Williams from down the street.”

“You alone?” asked Chad worried that Macklin might try the same thing with some of their neighbors.

“Just me and Mitch Davis,” said the voice. “We wanted to talk to you.”

Chad opened the door and invited his two neighbors in.

“What can we do for you guys?” asked Dave easily.

“We heard the gun fight,” said Mitch. “We couldn’t get together in time to help but we did chase them for a ways. I am also grateful for the weapons. I didn’t believe in this sort of thing much before … well before.”

“You cleaned them right?” asked Dave.

“Just the way we saw you clean those others,” said Matt. “But, it was those bikers again, wasn’t it?’

“Seems like it,” said Chris.

“Are they coming back?” asked Matt uneasily.

“I suppose as long as they think we have food and such, maybe,” said Dave.

“It’s gotta stop,” said Mitch. “They are going to kill someone before too long.”

“Very likely,” said Chad.

“Well, someone has to say it,” said Matt after an embarrassingly long silence. “Maybe you folks should move on. Nobody else is getting attacked like this. There have been a few infected drifting up from downtown but nothing this organized. Maybe if you folks, you know, moved on, things would get quiet again.”

“Is that all you have to say?” said Dave as he stood. He was not a tall man but he was menacing all the same, his limp temporarily gone.

“Look, don’t take it like that,” said Mitch worriedly. “We will help. We have some gas stored away, and well, maybe some other stuff. We just don’t want any trouble.”

“So to do that, you are going to throw me out of my own home just because you feel threatened!?” said Dave. His voice was quiet now, almost too soft to hear, but scary at the same time.

“Get out,” said Dave, “and if I see either one of you again, I’ll send you home in a body bag.”

At that last, the two men hustled out the door, ashamed at what they had done but not knowing any other way to improve things. As soon as the door slammed shut Chad spoke.

“Now what?!”

“Well at the risk of ruining everyone’s upbeat mood, we have another problem,” said Dave. “We are running out of ammo. We have a fair amount of the pistol ammo, but things like .556 and 12 gauge are getting scarce and I only had a hundred .338 shells to begin with. I should have thought of this before but between us, we have eleven different calibers of hand gun ammunition alone.”

“What about all the brass the kids collected?” said Heather unbelievingly, “and what about the reloading equipment we got from Chris’s place?”

“Well, it helped a lot,” said Dave. “Amy and Jason have been downstairs working very hard measuring and seating primers and all the other little tasks you have to do to reload competently. Since I have been stove up here, I showed them what they needed to do and then supervised them until I was sure what they were reloading was sound. But the fact is, we have run through just about all the primers and powder that Chris had laid aside. Some shells got lost in the heat of battle, heck, I was in a prepared position on the roof with the .338 and I lost three shells.

“Now I have some other ideas for defense but we all have to be in agreement before I use them. The Marine Corps sent me through a little course that taught me how to improvise explosives from common household items. I can build mines to sow in the yard with household chemicals. I can take the same mine and with the addition of some nuts and bolts and a frame built from a tire rim, make a pretty effective claymore. They won’t be pretty and they will be more indiscriminant than the weapons we are using now. We will chew up the front of virtually every house on the other side of the street and that’s not the only downside. Our neighbors don’t like us now, imagine how they would feel if these bikers came by and we set off mines and blew up the street, ripped the front of most of the houses across the street to shreds, and left another pile of bodies? Only this time we would have to gather them up with a rake because they mostly wouldn’t be in one piece.”

“That’s … graphic …” said Mary after a pause, “and they are coming again, aren’t they?”

“This time they came with an armored van, probably lifted from some police force SWAT team. They knew enough to capture and infect poor Clinton, and Macklin is still alive,” said Chad, “so yeah they are coming.”

“Then show me how to make the bombs,” said Mary quietly. “I want there to be no doubt that we mean to stay and mean them harm.”

“We are not completely without help,” said Chad. “I had an idea today about getting some secure comm. I hope Fort Lewis is still functioning and if they are, maybe they can help.

“Chris, are you up for another road trip?”

May 31
st
, Sunday, 6:45 am PDT.

Chad and Chris sat in the cab of Dave’s truck while Dave drove to their destination. Dave was driving because Amber would not leave the house. She was willing to defend folks and had no problem with it, but was very afraid to be left alone. Chris didn’t understand and he worried about her as the nightmares she had gotten much worse after their trip to his old apartment. That left Dave who promised Heather that he would move around as little as possible and just guard the truck.

“So where is it we are going again?” asked Chris for the third time.

“Phil Laumer was the chief IT for our group,” said Chad. “He and his rather small staff maintained all of our computers, the network, secure communications to Washington DC and a bunch of other stuff I wasn’t privy to. If anyone in town has a secure communications, he does.”

“So why haven’t you looked him up before?” asked Dave.

“Like I said, I was afraid they would try to order me to Fort Lewis and they might not understand when I said I wouldn’t go unless they took our whole entourage of what, six adults and six kids?”

“Why are you risking it now?” asked Chris.

“Honestly? Because we are running out of ammo and options. This thing with Amber is concerning me. There is no infection but there is … something going on here that I can’t figure out. I want to see if they know more about this because maybe next time the bad guys will show up with a tank or something.”

Thankfully, Phil lived in a residential neighborhood similar to Chad and Dave’s and so the specter of a fighting entry into an infested complex was not as big a concern. They simply pulled up to Phil’s house, which was in a nice residential neighborhood.  While they hadn’t had aw many gun fights as Chad and his family had suffered, there was evidence of the Plague here as well. The garbage was stacked quite high and probably a third of the houses were boarded up.  People had either moved in together for protection or moved out. Many of the occupied homes had some form of fortification, plywood and non-running cars being the most prevalent.

Phil’s house appeared intact and the front yard was roughly fenced with pallets. There appeared to be no one out front so Chad walked up to the door but he almost fouled himself when a clearly infected woman, complete with skin lesions and bite marks, darted out from the hedge by the front door and headed for the backyard. Chad drew his pistol but held the shot. The woman looked familiar.

“Jesus, don’t shoot!” said Phil as he opened the door. “That’s my wife!”

“But Phil, she is infected!” blurted out Chad before he could think.

“That fact has not escaped me,” said Phil, “but please, don’t shoot her, you don’t know everything.”

Chad waved back at the truck and Chris, who was riding shotgun with, surprisingly enough, a shotgun, waved back but kept the weapon trained on the gate were Phil’s wife had run to. After a big gulp, Chad holstered is side arm.

“Look, don’t take this wrong,” said Phil, “But why did you come here? My neighbors are all up in arms because of Margaret and it’s all I can do to keep them from shooting her. The last thing I need is attention.”

“Phil,” said Chad searching where to start, “I need to see if there is some way to get secure communications to Fort Lewis, especially, Dr. Grieb. It is actually work related, sorta.”

“That ‘sorta’ hides a lot,” said Phil as he removed a Taurus .45 automatic from behind his back, decocked and holstered it. “You can come in; invite your friends in too if you like.”

“But the truck …” said Chad as he walked in.

“Don’t worry, Margaret will watch it,” said Phil. “Like I said, you don’t know everything.”

Chad turned and beckoned them in. Dave came but he locked the truck. Phil ushered them into the house. There were four other people in the living room trying to look casual but clearly holding weapons preparing to back Phil’s play.

“I’d like to introduce by old college roommate Dan and his wife Faith,” said Phil indicating a couple in their early thirties, “and my brother Matt and his wife Priscilla.”

“Folks call me Pris,” said an engaging young, blond lady who didn’t look old enough to buy a drink.

“I used to work with Chad here and he needs to use some of my computer stuff,” said Phil.

“We moved in together to pool resources and such,” said Matt uneasily.

“We did the same,” said Chris. His police training took over and he, almost automatically started to draw folks into the conversation to learn what he could about them.

“Chad is the brains of the outfit and they use me for grunt labor,” said Chris with a smile.

“Yeah,” said Matt. “Phil has always been pretty smart but sometimes otherworldly. On the other hand, he has always had a good job and so had the biggest house. This is where we congregated. It’s up to me, the older brother, to keep him organized and we let Dan fix the plumbing.”

“You are too kind,” was Dan with only a little sarcasm in his voice.

The awkward moment that occurs right after you are introduced to someone was broken by the sound of a baby crying and Pris jumped up and ran to the back room.

“That’s one of the reason’s Margaret is still out there,” said Phil as he ushered Chad and his friends down a four stairs to the study. Phil’s house was clearly of recent construction and a split level. The bedrooms and a bathroom were upstairs, living room, kitchen, and bathroom, on the main level and a family room and Phil’s ‘hobby room’ in the daylight basement.

“The baby is ours,” said Phil.

I remember the announcement at work,” said Chad.

“Well anyway,” said Phil, “Margaret came down with the ‘Plague’ pretty early. She was an Emergency Room nurse. She felt it was her duty to turn herself in rather than take a chance infecting the baby. They picked her up in an ambulance when they were still doing that sort of thing. I tried visiting her there, but it was hard to go.”

“I was there too,” said Chris, lost in his own thoughts.

“After a while she told me to stop coming,” said Phil in a small voice, “that the high school was dangerous and going to get worse real soon. Three days later there was the breakout from the high school that was in the news. She showed up here that afternoon.

“Here is the thing though, she never went full psycho like pretty much everyone else. She had some episodes, but was in control most of the time. I thought she might get better but she just kind of stays the same.”

Chad looked at Dave and Chris, and Dave shrugged. Phil was going on about Margaret like they weren’t there, just telling the story. They thought that perhaps it helped him so they just stood there while he finished.

“She has been real adamant about staying outside though,” continued Phil with a sing song mystic quality to his voice. “She is afraid to infect us and she is really afraid of what some of the … voices … in her head tell her to do with the baby. So we fixed up the garden shed outback with a bed and things, it’s kind of cozy. She lives there.

“We talk, she comes to the window in the back and listens to the baby and we pretend like it was old times. She is still all there mentally, just sick. She keeps clean and well dressed. The bag lady thing you saw out front is just what she wears when she goes out. Because she is infected, she can go places we can’t and she brings us things, this pistol for example, formula and diapers for the baby, and the electrical parts we need to keep my stuff going.”

“About that stuff,” said Chad.

It was as if you had flicked a switch in Phil’s brain. One minute he was telling Chad and his friends about his troubles with Margaret and then he was back to being the tech wizard.

“Yeah, I built a bit of a server farm and whatnot here,” said Phil. “And I have a shortwave internet repeater and some other things I fooled around with.”

“You still have internet?!” asked an astonished Chris.

“Man, the internet was designed to survive nuclear war,” said Phil using the tone a parent would use with a backward child. “A zombie apocalypse is small potatoes. There is a lot less capacity as various nodes go on and off the net as the power fluctuates, but I think the bozos who started this epidemic are probably pretty old school and didn’t get just how robust the net is and how bad some of us would want to keep it up.”

“The bozos that started this?” asked Chad. He knew about Terry’s idea that someone was behind this but thought that was all privileged communication.

“Look, you don’t have to play the classified game with me,” said Phil. “I am in charge of the network, remember? I can read all the logs. When things started to get dicey, I … listened … and made some preparations. Since then, the blogosphere has gone rampant with speculation. That’s why Dan and his wife are here. He is a genius at cobbling together computers and network systems and was worried about what he was reading. He is real useful though, I bet he could make a computer and a radio out of rocks and a coil of bailing wire. I figure we can just Skype Terry.”

“You can still do that?” said Chad in awe.

“Sure,” said Phil like it was no big deal. “Fort Lewis keeps someone on line twenty-four/seven to monitor the web for intelligence and to communicate. I’ll put in a call.”

“What about electrical power?” asked Dave. “This setup looks like it sucks a lot of power. You must have quite a generator to power …”

“Not really,” said Phil as he powered up a big screen monitor and connected a high definition webcam. “Remember I told you about Dan? Well his wife used to work for a solar power company as a chemical engineer. She and her team have designed a solar cell that is printed on aluminum foil and when the company dissolved a couple of weeks ago, she and Dan loaded up a Hertz Rent-a-Truck that they had rented before the collapse and loaded a bunch of product plus installation racks and various other plunder and drove here. 

“The reason the neighbors tolerate Margaret and her … condition is that they all have free solar power to keep their food cold, their lights on and a connection to the internet.”

Chad, Dave, and Chris watched in awe while Phil connected to Skype, something they wouldn’t have blinked at a month ago. The IT wizard cracked a couple of jokes with the airman on duty and then asked for Terry. In a few minutes, Terry sat down and said Hi.

“Damn, it’s good to hear from you,” said Chad after he sat down and got into the viewing cone of the camera.

“Maybe not after you hear what I have to say,” said Terry. “I don’t know how else to say this, but there is an organization that has seriously penetrated the Government.”

Phil, off camera nodded sagely.

“We don’t really know who they are,” continued Terry. “But based on intercepts from the net we know that they know all about you, Amber Hoskins, Chris Vaughn, and have probably tried to take her by force because they know she is in remission. They are going to try soon if they haven’t already.”

“Geez Terry, not on the internet!” said Chad with alarm. “Besides, it’s a bit late. They hit us yesterday, for probably the third time.”

“Damn, I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner but the cell net is in disarray and I couldn’t get you on Skype or the internet,” said Terry, “was anybody hurt?”

“Clinton Taylor was killed,” said Chad woodenly. “He died saving my family.”

“That is bad news,” said Terry. “I am truly sorry; he was an irascible old coot, but a principled one.”

“Back to the original subject, I am not telling you anything they don’t know,” continued Terry, “and we, and by we, I mean General Buckley and your friend Colonel Antonopoulos, figure it might help you some to know what they know so we have been trying pretty bad to get in contact with you. I have tried a dozen ways but there is no way short of an airlift or an armored convoy that I can get out there to talk with you face to face and there are reasons we can’t risk those assets for this.”

“Things are pretty bad then,” said Chad.

“Brother, your predictions were optimistic and we think we know why.”

“OK, give.”

“You remember when we pieced together the fact that the designer drugs ‘Slash’ and ‘White Heaven’ were involved in the transmission of the Plague?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” said Chad worriedly.

“Well, it’s more complex than we first believed,” said Terry. “White Heaven does carry the Plague spores covered with a degradable coating that, over time, if it becomes lodged in your system, will develop into a full-fledged infection.”

“Not startling,” said Chad.

“Well, this might be,” said Terry. “Remember we theorized that ‘Slash’ was an enabler that caused people to be less resistant to the infection?”

“That’s right,” said Chad. “What about it?”

“Well, it’s more than that. It is also a useful palliative treatment once you are infected. Like every military post, there is a small population of drug users on base. Slash and White Heaven are cheap and soldiers don’t have much disposable income, so those were drugs of choice. Several personnel on base, users, became infected and managed to hide it for a long time because they were also Slash users.”

“I am getting the feeling that this is not good news,” said Chad warily.

“It also makes them susceptible to ‘The Call.’ If you have someone in remission, you have probably heard of it.”