Z Children (Book 2): The Surge (21 page)

Killer
ants. The kind that bite the shit out of you.

“That…was…way…too…close,”
I said, gasping for air. “Fuck, I’m out of shape. That was barley a damn quarter-mile
run!”

“Language,
JW,” Virginia hissed. I looked behind me. She was sitting between the shelves,
Bonnie held in her arms. The little girl’s eyes were wide.

“You
almost died,” Bonnie whispered, leaning even closer to Virginia so that their
bodies visually became one.

Before
I could respond, reassure her that I hadn’t even been close to taking my final
bow, Chris opened her pie hole. She may not have hesitated driving away, but
more than likely, that was just because she wanted to save her own ass.

“Well
I hope it was worth it, you idiot Neanderthal.” Chris slammed her palms against
the steering wheel before death-gripping it again. “You scared us all to death!
What the hell were you thinking, going out there in the first place? If it
wasn’t for Virginia and Bonnie, I’d have driven off and left your ass here.”

“She
wouldn’t have,” Virginia spoke next, unthreading her arms from Bonnie’s body
and coming to kneel between the two front seats. “She’s just venting. She was
as scared for you as we were.”

Somehow,
I didn’t believe that.

“But
just so you don’t do something stupid like that again.” Virginia slapped the
back of my head with just enough force to edge away from playful, “You did
scare us to death. I had to open the door and then hold Bonnie down so she
wouldn’t jump out and try to help you. So you listen—No. More. Separating. If
something needs to be done, we find a way to go together. This macho stuff is
going to get you killed and then how the hell are we going to survive. Huh?
You’re supposed to get us to Atlanta, Mr. Risk-taker.”

I was
half-listening, rubbing the spot on my head like she’d hit me harder than she
actually had. “Damn, woman, that hurt. Isn’t it enough that I nearly got eaten
by zombies? Don’t need you beating the crap out of me too.”

“That
was a love tap, JW. Do something like that again and I’ll show you what it
feels like to have the crap beaten out of you. And, trust me, I’m a doctor so I
know where to hit. Now what the hell happened?”

 “What
do you think?” I said, finally dropping my hand and the act that Virginia’s
weak slap had actually hurt. “A Z happened.”

I
looked over to see Chris shaking slightly with silent laughter.

“What’s
so damn funny?”

“You
are. Big old soldier man, bitch-slapped by a teensy-weensy woman. Made my day.”
Chris’s cheeks were flushed now like she was more embarrassed than amused now.
Maybe that was because Virginia was giving her the evil eye.

“Well,
you heard her, Chris. It was just a love tap. Virginia can love tap me any time
she wants,” I said the words deadpan and waited for the response that I knew would
come.

It
didn’t come.

The
next thing I knew, we were swerving like a bat out of hell to avoid a pile of
bodies in the road, our wheels bumping and jumping along the raggedy median. We
didn’t have time to continue our little jabs—to further hone the relationship
that was forming between myself and the lesbian doctor that hated men.

The
pile was large, spanning nearly the entire width of the road. From my
perspective in the truck, it reached higher than I was tall.

All
small bodies.

Dead Z
kids.

I hated
the fuckers, of course I did, but seeing them like that—each pale face sporting
an obsidian hole, thin streams of already-dried black blood leaking from their
orifices, I felt bad for them. Sick inside.

The
whole damn world was sick now. A fucking disease crawling with more disease. No
longer just poverty, famine, strife.

Death.
So much fucking death.

Faced
with the stark reality of what the future held, I fell into my thoughts which
were dark and unending.

We
were all quiet for the next hour, reveling in the stillness of the inside of
the truck, thanking unseen forces for our safety and ability to break from the
war raging outside the thin walls of the auto. The only sound that intermittently
cut through the quiet was Bonnie’s now-sharpened pencil scratching across the
pages of one of the small journals she’d gotten at Bud’s. I wondered what she
was writing.

I
wondered if I really wanted to know.

***

VIRGINIA

I had
to break the silence. I couldn’t handle it anymore.

“JW?”
I spoke tentatively.

He was
still in the passenger’s seat with Chris still driving. He’d been staring out
the window ever since the pile of bodies. Even his chest was rising and falling
so infrequently that I worried it would stop all together—like something about
that many dead kids, even Z kids, was more than he could handle. Maybe it had
brought something back. Some memory that he had suppressed, pushed down far
into his body, a demon he had chosen to ignore rather than confront.

“Did
anyone get out? At the evacuation point? Or…I mean…did they all die?”

Quiet
filled the area around me again. He didn’t speak. In fact, his response came so
many minutes after my question that I had given up hope that he’d respond at
all.

“It
looked like they got some people out.” Shifting about in his seat, JW reached
into his shirt and yanked out a hearty stack of papers and booklets. He rifled
through the pages until he came to the one he was looking for. “About fifteen
thousand people were successfully evacuated.

“That’s
all?” My heart skipped a beat. There had to be at least a couple hundred
thousand people in this area. Fifteen thousand was so few. “
God
. There
has to be ten or twenty times that many people in this area.”

“More
than that I’d gather. That evacuation site was supposed to handle a lot of East
Texas, not just the immediate area. We’re talking fifteen thousand out of half
a million people or more.”

“So
many people…” I felt emotion welling up inside me like a great, unstoppable
force, but I had to stop it. Bonnie’s pencil was no longer moving like
lightening across the page of her little book. She was listening, her eyes
glistening. I didn’t want to make the reality harder on her than it already
was.

 I was
so glad that Chris spoke, saving me from myself. “It’s terrible. Really damn
shitty, but the fifteen thousand that made it out—they represent hope.
Everything is going to be okay. And what’s to say that there aren’t thousands
of people surviving on their own, Virginia? Not everyone would have come to
mandated evac points.” Chris’s hand reached back from the driver’s seat and I
reached my own out. Our fingers grazed one another, and the tips curled to
grasp in a momentary link of support. Then her hand returned to the steering
wheel. “Where did they send them?”

Her
eyes had never left the road. I wanted her to look at me. The kindness of her
hand finding mine was a piece of the old Chris. I wanted the moment to last
longer. I guess the end of everything means that you don’t get what you want.
Or, if you do, it doesn’t last.

“Middle
of the Nevada desert and the mountains of upstate New York. Couple other
locales, but those were the main.”

“And
those make sense? Middle of a desert and the mountains?”

“Isolated,
low population density. As good a choice as any.” JW straightened the paperwork
and neatly shoved it into the large, deep dashboard storage of the truck.

In the
driver’s seat, Chris groaned and stretched. “Feel like driving? My ass hurts.”

“Same
seat over there as over here. Proud of you for making it over an hour driving,
though. Such a feat,” JW grumbled the sarcasm like a bear woken too early from
hibernation. But he was already unbuckling, his shoulders straightening. I’d
learned, in our short time together, that the man operated better when he was
put to task instead of idle.

“I can
keep driving if you aren’t up to it.” The love of my life’s voice was
condescending and snarky. It pissed me off. That had never happened to
me—meeting someone that instantly irritated the shit out of me—but that seemed
to be the case with JW and Chris. They just weren’t going to magically start
getting along which meant I got to play peace keeper all the damn time.

“Chris,
just pull over. JW, stop being ornery.” Neither looked at me, but Chris pulled
over and JW’s stern face melted into some semblance of civility.

I
could hear Bonnie’s pencil scratching across the slightly-yellowed paper of her
salvaged notebooks again. She had already filled several pages with quick and
studied cursive. That was a lost skill and I was surprised that a girl so young
would be versed in that dying art. It seemed more often nowadays, that children
could hardly write legibly in print, let alone write artfully in script.

It
took several moments for driver and passenger to switch, but once he was
seated, JW shifted immediately into drive. Ranger wasted no time pressing his
body against his seat and away from Chris. Dogs are intuitive and I was sure
that Ranger had long-sensed the tension between his partner and…well…my
partner.

“So,
you said there were a few other locations. Like where?” I reached forward and I
brushed my hand down Ranger’s back. The rough, burned skin decorated with
sparse fur felt reassuring against my palm. He stiffened at first, but once I’d
petted him several more times, gently and trying to exude a sense of calm, he
relaxed and a guttural, happy grumble rumbled up his throat.

“They
only directed a few planes to the other locations. Not important. Useless info
to us,” JW rattled off the words like bullets from a semi-automatic, or at
least that’s what it sounded like to me.

He
spoke them quickly, dismissively, shooting my question down as erroneous and
unnecessary to answer. That was unusual, at least I thought it was unusual for
him, given what I’d learned about him. Chris’s head had already swiveled atop
her neck like some creature from a horror movie. I could see the anger about to
form upon her lips and be emitted as words that would no doubt lead to another
bickering fest.
No thank you
, I thought with determination.

“Right,
but I’m still curious,” I said the words nicely, but firmly. JW tossed me a
cursory glance over his shoulder and then his eyes fell, only for a moment, on
Chris’s twisted expression.

“I can
remember one of them off-hand.” JW merged unto a larger road. “Somewhere called
Pine Gap. Heard the name before, rings a bell, but for the life of me, I can’t
remember why the hell I’d know the place.”

“Australia.”

We all
turned to look at Bonnie who wasn’t looking at us, her pencil still moving
steadily across the page she was currently filling with thoughts and
impressions.

“How
the heck you know that, kid?” JW’s mouth was slightly agape, and I wondered if
Bonnie’s singular word had dislodged the memory of Pine Gap that he hadn’t been
able to previously recall.

“Read
it, don’t ask me what book. I was doing a project on natural disasters last
year. They track satellites in Pine Gap and they’d be able to get
communications up and stuff there. At least that’s what I think it was.” Bonnie
shrugged. “And you said the Nevada desert—that would have to mean Delamar, the
dry lake. That’s the only place a large jet could land.” Then the girl grinned,
and it was one of those smiles that basically says—and you think that
you’re
the smart one in the group.

“Damn,
kid.” JW scratched his head. “Pine Gap.” The look on his face told me that his
memory had indeed sparked. I wanted to ask him about it, see if he’d tell me.

I was
too chicken shit at this point to ask JW anything that might turn personal. I
had a feeling some of his stories would scare me more than the monsters we were
fleeing from.

“Kid’s
got a brain under that messy mop of hair.” JW had both hands back on the wheel
again, his eyes were glued to the road ahead, but I could still see the gears
working behind the pupils. I jumped when Ranger gave a quick bark of agreement.
It amazed me how the dog seemed to understand everything JW said or wanted him
to do, even when JW didn’t actually speak.

That
connection was even more apparent seconds later when JW looked down at Ranger
and whispered,
“Traitor.”
And I’ll be damned if the dog didn’t smile at
him, stand up, squeeze around my body, and trot off to lie beside Bonnie.

***

BONNIE

Bonnie’s Journal

I
don’t know where to start really. My family’s dead. Well, I think all of my
family’s dead. I don’t know about Mom. But I stopped thinking about her a long
time ago. So I guess she doesn’t count. Does she? So they’re all dead. But I’m
not alone. And I’m not as scared as I probably should be.

When
I found the stack of journals at Jesse’s shop (well, Jesse’s Dad’s shop, but I
guess Jesse’s now since his Dad is dead…like mine), I thought I’d write
stories. Silly things to keep me occupied. But now…how can I write about
fantasy and fairies and the stupid stuff that I used to like when everything
around me is a horror story?

So,
I’m just going to write the truth. I’ll leave fiction for other people.

The
day it all happened, Dad was nearly running late for work. Like always. Grandma
was having one of her worse-than-normal mornings, but it was also a good day,
because we had money for food. I didn’t really like taking the bus to the
store. Too many people and it limited what kind of things we could buy,
especially if the bus broke down like it often did. We couldn’t afford to have
food spoil. We just didn’t have enough money for that, for the wastefulness.