Z Children (Book 2): The Surge (18 page)

Of
course we weren’t.

Side
mirror.

They
were racing after us. They weren’t giving up.

I
turned, heading south, going as fast as was safe. It was the wrong direction—away
from the airport—but I didn’t want to lead them there. It would be stupid to lead
them to our current destination goal. With not as many cars here to weave
around, I could stick to forty and fifty.

After
over five miles, they halted abruptly. Some of the adults had issues stopping
as quickly as the children did. They fell over their own feet, landing in
ungraceful piles on the ground. I was close enough to one to see in the side
mirror how its skin seemed to slough off after impacting the concrete. My
stomach churned, and I had a strong damn stomach. I was glad the women hadn’t
seen what I had.

“This
is only going to get worse, isn’t it?” Bonnie’s voice was once again small, as
it had been when she’d told me that she’d used to like the dark, once upon a
time, before every living moment was a nightmare.

“Yeah,
kid, it’s only going to get worse.”

Her
swallow was audible. I hated myself for confirming her fear.

Sure
they were gone, I pulled over and studied the atlas. We needed a way back to
the airport without backtracking over where we’d just been. The long way
around. Always seemed safer than the shortcut.

Several
streets before the terminal came into view, we began seeing FEMA and CDC signs
shortly after losing our zombie tail. Directions were written in
brightly-printed signs—which made me wonder who had the time and budget to make
signs during a fucking apocalypse—telling survivors and evacuees where to park,
check in, the works. It had only been several days. Here, it seemed that the
government had responded like lightning. What made Shreveport different?

I
slowed to a stop on a road that gave me a near-perfect vantage point of the
terminal and reached for the binoculars I had taken from Jesse’s store. They
were nice; an old set of Nippon Nikons, but the clarity was spectacular. The
girls were all asleep in the back—Chris was curled up on the floor space
between shelves; Virginia and Bonnie were actually on the shelves. Each were
covered with one of the blankets we’d also procured from the surplus. The
delivery truck coming to a halt didn’t rouse them.

Ranger
was at attention in the passenger seat. He needed to sleep; old boy had to be
exhausted. I knew him, though.

He
wouldn’t sleep unless I did.

Taking
my time, I scanned the apron of the flight line and the surrounding grassy
areas—the blades already suffering from no maintenance and stretching further
to the sky than normally would be allowed.

Someone
had cut down a portion of the perimeter fencing and made and entry control
point out of it, but it wasn’t manned. Whatever type of evacuation had been
executed, it was over now. That meant there wouldn’t be any help to be found
beyond that breached barrier. Where had they evacuated to? That was the
million-dollar question, and I positive that, if I knew the answer, I had a
chance to get my packages to safety.

I
rotated my head and popped my neck muscles. It was like a muted twenty-one gun
salute the way it shot off and filled the cabin of the delivery truck with
sound. Damn, my neck seemed to be getting stiffer all the time. It was probably
what was causing the light headaches. My mind jumped back to the moderate
wounds I’d suffered escaping the hospital. No.

They
weren’t bad enough—not to make me sick, not to cause the headaches that made me
wince every few moments.

My
mental voice told me to get Virginia or Chris to look at the lacerations again.
But I didn’t. I knew it was me being stubborn, but I chose to think of it as me
being focused. I didn’t have time for myself, not right now. It might also be
that I was avoiding telling Virginia that I wasn’t feeling well—she was more
than likely going to give me absolute hell for turning down her offer to clean
me up in the first place.

Looking
back into the binoculars, I focused on a large gathering of oversized white
tents.

The
whiteness of them was punctuated by the dirtiness of the roaming monsters and
the shadows created by the carrion birds. For a split second, I understood
Hitchcock’s vision of blackbirds and a lovely blonde. I imagined myself living
it, of racing away, desperately slapping at a shower of feathered obsidian.
Shaking my head, I pulled myself away from fiction and back into the brutal
reality of fact.

If
there was an answer to where the survivors went, it would be there in one of
the tents, among the walking dead and all those damn carrion birds. I thought
about what Chris had said in regards to—this time not thinking cinematically—if
they were spreading this disease, this thing might become unstoppable, a global
event. Hell, it might already be a global event. All it would take is one infected
on a plane. It hit me, and it wasn’t the first time that it had, that we really
didn’t know the breadth of what was going on outside of our own fight for
survival.

I
shook the thoughts from my head as if I was shaking wrinkles from a wool
blanket before tucking the corners in tightly around a mattress. I shook them
firmly, deliberately, determined to bounce a coin off the bedspread once I was
finished making the bunk. It worked. I was clear once more. I could ignore the
fogginess and sickness that was humming at the edges of my conscious mind. At
least for now.

Raising
the glasses once more, I looked over the flight line, past the tents and
directionless horde. A lone Delta 737 sat there, its emergency ramps deployed.
They hadn’t taken off in time. I could see several decimated bodies littering
the ground beneath and around the ramps. A few dozen Z adults—no kids—were
walking aimlessly. That was a new one, to see the full grown creatures on their
own and without a child to direct them.

I made
a mental note of that to ponder over later. Why were these adults separated
from a leader? I moved my gaze back to the tents, realizing that I hadn’t seen
any kids there either. Just the big ones, just the ones that didn’t seem to attack
you of their own volition.

Where
the hell were they?

Focusing
on the terminal building instead of the lonely plane and tents, I saw them.
They were near the concourse of the tarmac. They seemed to be…

I had
to swallow, wet my suddenly dry throat, but I could not because there was no
moisture left in my mouth; just the desert, just the discomfort. They seemed to
be playing some kind of game. The Nikons were good, but not powerful enough to
make out the details of their movements.

There
was a lot of them—running, opening and closing their mouths as if they were shouting.
I saw it then, the pale orb that bounced about on the ground, rolling quickly
from beast to beast, routinely being punted in the opposite direction. Each
kick seemed deliberate, not just for sport, but also with the aim of hitting
another of the Z kids. Each time it struck one of the monsters, it seemed to
leave a splash of fluid behind.

A
soccer ball. That had to be what it was. The dark coloring I was seeing against
the pale expanse was the telltale decoration of your average, everyday soccer
ball.

Soccer
meant to hurt, the ball meant to slam into shoulders and faces.

But
still a game.

Still
a damn game. Still something a
human
child would be doing.

Looking
out the driver’s side window, my gaze went to the clouds in the sky; they were
slowly rolling by like pale honey across an uneven countertop. They were so
normal, like the child’s play, so unobtrusively reminiscent of what it would be
like to have a calm day with everything operating as it should. They were
unassuming, wispy things that made me hate the world as it was now so much more
than I had just seconds before staring at their movement against the pale blue.

I set
the binoculars on the dash of the truck, looked around, and rolled down the
window. I needed to see closer. I needed more detail.

 Carefully,
I lifted the .06 from the floorboards and rested it on the half-down glass. The
old gun was now sporting a very powerful variable scope, one of those that I
never could have afforded before the world went to shit. Couldn’t afford it
now—except through the generosity of Jesse. I spun the scope’s dial up to its
maximum 24 power and looked through the eyeglass. I had bore-sighted it with a
laser while I was in the shop, but until I pulled the trigger, I wouldn’t know
exactly where the round would land. I only knew that the end game of its
journey would be damn close to the bullseye.

I had
to take a few moments to get it sharply focused, but soon my prey became
realized in crystal clarity. They were still playing their monstrous amalgam of
dodge ball and soccer. There were adults wandering closer to the game now, and
when one ventured too near the sport, a Z kid seemed to take great delight in
knocking them to the ground and trampling across their bodies.

There
were so many things I wanted to know watching the scene. Where did they get the
ball? Could things get anymore fucked up? I tried to focus on the actual ball,
but it was going by so fast now—a blur of black and white becoming gray—like
the tiny orb in a pinball machine.

That’s
what it was.

It was
zombie pinball.

I
started to imagine the dinging as the ball was launched to and fro. Ding. Ding.
Ding. Waiting for one of them to miss or waiting for the ball to disappear into
some unseen hole and then magically reappear.

So
messed up.

I
blinked, prepared to give up on following the ball’s movement.

Then
it rolled to a stop.

I
stared at it, blinked, took a mental breath that did nothing to steady me.

I
stared again to make sure that I wasn’t making a mistake, seeing things that
weren’t there because I was exhausted. It was no mistake. My brain was not
foggy. I was as lucid as I could be given how I was feeling. It just was what
it was.

A
human head. Pale and bloated skin, dotted with purple bruises. A short expanse
of dark hair was beginning to thin from the friction of being rolled across the
tarmac. Soon it would all be gone. The epidermis would separate from the
dermis. The dermis would give way to the subcutaneous tissue. Layer by layer,
the human head would become a skull dotted with the remnants of muscles and
nerves.

For
the first time in a long time, bile tried to make its way out of my mouth.
Those little circus freaks were playing games with someone’s head. I went from
sick, to pissed, back to sick, and then settled on pissed again. I wished that
I had a mortar. I would sanitize the entire area. I would obliterate everything
I was seeing and everything that I wasn’t seeing. Whatever thought I had about
these monsters being human was gone. It melted away like seafoam on stormy
waters. There was no gray area. Even when I’d seen glimpses of awareness in the
adults…

There
was no gray area.

There
was alive and there was dead.

These
zombie S.O.B.s needed my help to permanently put them in their fucking graves.

I took
my eyes off the grotesque scene, lowered the magnification on the scope, and
looked back over to the tents. Not a creature stirred, not even a mouse.
Evidently all of the large beasties were now playing field hockey on the
apron—or getting trampled more like, not actually playing. Undead life was just
too boring without a human head around.

That
thought sent another wave of anger and nausea through me.
One day, little
monsters, I will have the firepower to make your sad existences no longer.

Satisfied
with my evaluation of the area surrounding the terminal building, I steadied
myself mentally to venture in and take a looksee. I knew what the girls would
say—that I was a damn fool thriving on near-death experiences—but if there was
even the remotest chance of finding information on how the government was
responding to this thing, where they were sending people…well, I had to get in
there.

I just
had to be smart about it. This couldn’t be a haphazard Dumpster drive down a
garbage chute.

“What’s
up, JW?” came Virginia’s sleepy voice from the back “Why are we stopped?”

I
could hear her shuffling, the material of her clothes moved across the metal of
the shelving like a strange, ghostly whisper.

“Just
need to make a quick pit stop and have a look around,” I said casually, hoping
not to wake up Chris, Bonnie, and their endless string of vocal worries.

“Where
are we?” her voice stronger now, fully awake—maybe she knew I was being obtuse
on purpose. Chris shifted on the floor.

“Outside
a FEMA evacuation camp. Looks like everyone is gone, but I might be able to get
some intel on where they went. Worth the effort anyway.”

I
started moving, making it clear that my mind was already made up. Shit, my neck
was so stiff; I popped it again and this time it hurt more than it helped. My
back was a little kinky too. Must be getting old. A tired old warhorse and the
battle had just begun. This isn’t how I thought I’d spend my years after
service. More blood on my hands.
When the dust settles and the monsters are
annihilated
,
I have the feeling that I will have pulled the trigger more
times after discharge than during active duty.

That
is an ugly fucking reality.

Cracking
my neck a third time, both shoulders popping loudly this go, I couldn’t
suppress a low groan.

 “You
okay, JW?” Virginia asked. She was fully off the shelving and kneeling between
the front seats of the delivery truck. Don’t know how she got off the shelf and
avoided dropping right onto Chris who had moved a bit but fallen into stillness
again.