No More Fear: Part Eleven

***Once again, sorry for the long wait! Enjoy.***

Five minutes later, the two soldiers appeared in the doorway to the store. We original four had stuck around near the door to wait for them, eager for any news from the outside world. We all looked up expectantly at our new guests when they caught up to us.
Mark jerked his head toward the stairs, “Let’s head to the roof. I’m sure you boys could use a breather.”
Gomez stared blankly. Skinner gave a slight nod and reached up to his chin to unclasp his helmet strap. We all climbed the stairs and took seats on the furniture near the fires that were still burning. I studied the two privates. They were nearly the same age as each other, though younger than me. Their faces were both caked with sweat mixed with dust. I noticed Gomez’s vest was splattered thickly in dark red blood that had long since dried. Skinner had a line of dried blood running from above his eyebrow down to his chin. He removed his helmet and I saw he had a bandage wrapped loosely around his head. It flopped down into his eyes and he quickly pulled it off, balled it up and tossed it into the nearest fire where it shriveled and burned. I saw that Skinner had very light blond hair, cropped short in military fashion. His eyes were dull blue. Gomez had black hair, cut like Skinner’s, and brown eyes. Zach approached them both, offering them each two bottles of water. They both accepted the bottles with a nod of appreciation, unscrewed the caps in unison and guzzled for a few long seconds. When Gomez had drained half his bottle, he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and stared at the roof under his feet. His shoulders slumped as he relaxed. After Skinner had emptied his whole bottle, he sighed deeply and looked at Mark who was sitting across from him. After a few seconds Mark broke the silence, asking the question the rest of us were dying to know the answer to.
“Just what is going on out there, soldier?” Skinner looked down at the ground, formulating his reply. He looked up after a few seconds and pursed his lips.
“Well, it’s tough to explain exactly.”
“Try,” Ellie said sternly.
“All right. Well I guess I’ll just start from the beginning.”
“That’d be swell,” Mark said.
“Okay, well, I signed up for the Guard a few months ago, and I finished boot camp less than a week before the first outbreak. Heck, Gomez here didn’t even make it out of boot yet. They just started rounding up everyone that had any training at all, issued them gear and stuck them to a division. We’re both from Nevada. I’m sure you all heard about what was going on there.”
“I heard about the camps,” Mark said, “How they were corralling the worst cases of the super flu there to be quarantined.” I hadn’t even heard of the camps Skinner and Mark were talking about, but I kept my mouth shut and listened.
“Yeah, well I heard that’s where this all started. There was this one camp that was the first one they opened, the biggest one they’ve opened that I know of. What was it called again? Saint Theresa; Camp Saint Theresa, that was it. Well that place was immense, I mean freaking huge. We stopped there for a couple hours before they sent our division this way. I heard those camps were supposed to be medical installations, you know? Not Theresa. This place looked more military than most military bases I’ve seen. Yeah, they had a huge medical center, but there were troops everywhere. Well anyway, that’s where it all started. That’s what I heard anyway. They had some critical patients in there. I guess the super flu mutated somehow in some of the patients. The doctors there called the mutated flu the Campion Virus. Well, somehow some of the Campion patients managed to break out of the quarantined section of the base. I heard that these ones could move quick, not tripping and shuffling like the ones you see now. Well, one of them went nuts and started biting lab workers and other patients and the place went ballistic. I mean a full out riot. The sick people who could still walk wanted out, so they rushed the gate and got it open and a lot of people got out. I guess some zeds went with them.”
“Zeds?” Zach asked.
“Yeah. Zeds,” Skinner repeated, “You know, zombies? Zees? Ghouls? Gees? They’re all the same. They’re all walking targets now. Slouching, moaning targets. Anyway, the soldiers managed to regain control of the facility after a couple hours.”
“So what are you doing out here?” I asked.
“Ahh, yes. Well, as you probably know, the virus spread out here like crazy. No one knows if it’s made it to the east coast yet, but seeing as how the population density increases as you move east, everyone is assuming the east coast is toast. No one has heard anything. From anyone. Anywhere. The country is shut down. Freaking dead.”
“Dead?” Ellie gasped.
“Yeah, dead. That’s what Campion does. It somehow reanimates dead cells. All these infected people, they’re all dead.” He waved his arm out to the vast moat of undead below us. “There is a cure though.”
We all looked up hopefully as he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a single bullet and held it up between a thumb and forefinger in the flickering firelight. He smiled grimly and we all relaxed, hopeless once again.
“Anyway,” he continued, “Some genius officer decided it would be a great idea for us to leave our nice, safe concrete walls and go scout out nearby cities. They wanted to see if there were any survivors. I think they really just wanted to see if it would be okay to just saturation bomb entire cites, if they were completely over-run, try to take out as many gees as possible before they had a chance to spread out. Well they didn’t have enough aircraft or fuel to go everywhere, so they sent out about forty convoys to all the major cities they could. My sorry division was sent out here to look and see if Campion had made it over the mountains. Surprise, surprise, it had. You guys here are lucky though. Just before we started down the mountains, one of the flyboys told us he had just spotted a huge column of zeds, millions, following a couple thousand survivors heading north. I guess that’s why there’s so few down here. They must have been pulling them in from everywhere.
The zeds aren’t smart, well the slow ones aren’t, but they seem to hear pretty good, and they are relentless once they get on your tail. The quick ones are freaking deadly, though. They’re smart, not as smart as a regular human, maybe as smart as a five year old, but they have some problem solving skills and they are nimble enough to run, jump and climb. I’ve only heard of a few sightings of runners, but if one gets the drop on you, you’re in some trouble. I heard of one incident where three of those runners somehow managed take down a whole SWAT team while they were clearing an office building. They know how to work together. Let me tell you something, you see a runner, you take him down quick. No one seems to know what makes runners runners, but the lab geeks had some theories they were testing.
Anyway, we had six other Hummers and a fueling tanker when we left, twenty-five men total. We managed to get about two miles into the first city we came to and then our commander had us dismount to check buildings. That’s when Sarge got bit. Zeds just came out of the woodwork. Well, we hauled tail outta there. I didn’t even realize no one was following us until Sarge started yelling. But there was no way we were going back in there, no way man. So we just kept on going. Problem was none of us knew where we were and it was dark. Zeds were starting to come out of everywhere, so we just kept right on moving.”
Skinner seemed to shrink after finishing that sentence. He sat very still and stared out at the stars. All the rest of us sat quietly, letting his words soak in and waiting to see if he had anything else to say. Skinner took a deep breath and his hand fumbled around in his pocket for a moment. He produced a crumpled box of cigarettes and a tarnished silver lighter. He shook out one of the cigarettes and held it lightly between his lips. He flicked the lighter open and in a shower of sparks a flame jumped to life. He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke down for a few seconds before releasing it out his nostrils. “And that’s about it,” he finished.
“So how long until a rescue party is sent out?” Zach asked eagerly. In reply, Skinner let out a short, sarcastic grunt of a laugh.
“Rescue party? This isn’t some isolated incident. It’s the whole friggin’ country. There’s no one out there in a position to rescue us, no one is in a position of control. There are higher priority targets out there, anyway. We’re way down there on the list, pal. We’ll be waiting weeks. Months. Who knows? We’re on our own.”
I swallowed hard. Gomez hadn’t said a word since he’d sat down, and now I knew why, and I shared the feeling. Despair. We were alone out here. Trapped inside our four concrete walls with an ever growing horde of undead amassing all around us. Who knew how many there were? When would they stop coming? Would they ever stop coming?
Skinner finished his smoke in one long drag and flicked the glowing butt over the edge of the roof. It traced a luminous crimson arc in the air until it disappeared over the wall. “Good news though. Our Hummer is loaded with supplies. We’ve got the fifty and maybe a thousand rounds for it. Couple thousand rounds for the M-16’s. Oh, and we have Gomez’s M249 in back somewhere I think, if we didn’t leave it behind. And they sent a truck load of explosive ordnance for some dumb reason. I guess they really didn’t know what the best way to kill a gee was. In my experience one well placed bullet works better than a frag grenade or a rocket. We might have some nine millimeter and some medical supplies; I’ll have to unpack everything and take a look to be sure.”
“Well that sure is good news,” Mark chimed in, “Best I’ve heard all day, as a matter of fact. Let’s grab some shut-eye and we’ll take inventory in the morning when we have more light. Sounds like it’s been a busy enough day for you fellers.”
Zach and Ellie showed the two privates where they could make themselves comfortable for the night. I found my bed and removed my gear, leaving my sidearm and light within easy reach, as had become my custom, and promptly fell asleep.