Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

Now about fifty potentially infected people were jammed inside, sitting on each other’s laps, curled up on the floorboards. More held on to the rear end, clutching to the fender so they didn’t fall off. Nobody complained about being crowded.

None of them had gone symptomatic since he’d picked them up. He supposed it was just a matter of time, though. And with even one zombie inside the truck, every single person back there would be at risk. Whitman had no idea how to solve that problem—he’d started coming around to Angie’s plan, which seemed to be to just hope for the best.

After the army doctor had put the plus sign on Whitman’s hand, after they’d told him he was headed for Staten Island and the hell of the camps there, he had just gone crazy for a while. Fought his way free, gotten back to a CDC mobile command center somehow. There’d been nobody there. He’d found the truck and he’d just driven away, with no idea where to go next.

He’d found Angie in the Boerum Hill neighborhood, along with about a third of these people. They’d been standing behind a wrought iron gate that fronted an apartment complex, watching their world go up in smoke.

He’d known right away he’d found his next move. Whitman had never been a doctor, but he’d devoted his life to helping people. To protecting them from deadly epidemics.

So they’d picked up everybody they could find, everybody with a plus sign and nowhere to go. Now those people looked up at him as he checked on them, looked up at him with hungry faces. Hungry for information, or just for somebody to tell them things were going to be okay.

“We’re headed for Brighton Beach,” he told them. “Angie thinks there will be boats there to evacuate us.”

“I heard we was supposed to get to La Guardia, man. You know, the airport?” someone called out.

Whitman shook his head. Both airports—La Guardia and JFK—had been taken over by the military. There would be nothing for them there. “No, the airports are out of the question. And I don’t think there are any boats, either.”

The truck erupted with people asking angry questions. A man wearing a pair of coveralls stood up and pointed at Whitman.

“Angie said there’s boats. So there’s boats.”

Whitman smiled at the man. “You’ve known her long?”

“She’s our neighbor,” someone else volunteered, a young woman with a shaved head.

“Just to talk to, but she always seemed nice,” an old lady replied. “I think she works on Wall Street.”

“Nah, she’s a doctor,” the guy in the coveralls insisted. “She basically runs that college hospital, you know—”

“If anybody knows what’s going on, it’s Angie,” her neighbor said. He nodded happily to himself. “Angie’ll know what to do. She’ll get us some place safe.”

“Why don’t we take a vote?” Whitman asked. “I’m telling you right now there are no boats. How many people want to go and look for boats anyway, just because Angie heard a rumor?”

He was not prepared to see all those hands go up.

“Do you have a better idea?” the old lady asked.

He opened his mouth and realized he had no answer for her. Shaking his head, he climbed back into the truck’s cab, into the passenger seat.

“What the hell was that?” Angie demanded. She looked furious.

“I figured I would give them a choice.”

“Those people are scared out of their minds! Why on Earth would you tell them there are no boats?”

That, he could have answered. But he looked up, then, just in time to see the roadblock come into view ahead.

There wasn’t much traffic on the road, and the military hadn’t committed much to stopping what little there was. Just a single armored personnel carrier with a shovel-shaped nose, sitting so it blocked both lanes. A soldier with a rifle stood in front of it, flagging them down.

Whitman could see more soldiers through the APC’s windows.

“Don’t stop,” he said.

“Fuck you. After that stunt you just pulled, undermining me? I’ll take my chances with the Army.” Angie said. “They can help us—give us an escort down to the beach.”

“Turn around,” Whitman said. “Back up.”

She must have heard the agitation in his voice, seen it in the way he craned forward, peering through the windshield, staring at the soldier with the rifle.

“They’re not zombies,” she said, sounding exasperated. “They’re better than zombies, at the very least.”

“For God’s sake, just back up,” Whitman pleaded. The soldier was coming closer, saying something Whitman couldn’t make out. He tried to give the soldier a cheery wave, an apologetic shrug: Sorry, we didn’t know this road was closed.

The soldier started miming at him. Turning his hand, as if he were shutting off the truck’s ignition.

“ Please, ” Whitman said.

“You gonna tell me why?” Angie asked.

“Yes! Yes, later, just—”

The soldier raised his voice until Whitman could finally hear him. “Switch off your engine! Then come out one at a time, with your left hand visible!”

“Go!” Whitman screamed.

Angie shoved the gearshift lever hard as she stamped on the pedals. The truck didn’t want to switch directions. It didn’t want to move backwards—took forever to start accelerating, to get rolling away from the soldier and the APC. Through the windshield Whitman could see the soldier raising his weapon. The soldier was still shouting but not at Whitman or Angie, now—he was shouting at his buddies back in the APC. The armored vehicle had enough machine guns mounted on its roof to shred their truck, to turn it into strips of bright metal in the space of a minute. What that would do to all the bodies inside wasn’t worth considering.

He shouted for Angie to hurry up, to get the truck moving.

The soldier opened fire before they’d even rolled back ten feet. His assault rifle tore through the truck’s grille, into the engine compartment. Whitman could hear bullets rattling around in there like BBs in a cup. The windshield starred and turned white.

But the truck moved. Angie stared at her side mirror and spun the wheel and they were accelerating, gaining speed. She fishtailed the truck and got it turned around, and there were more shots, a lot more, and someone screamed.

But they were gaining speed.

The truck died fifteen minutes later.

Whitman had to give it to the truck’s makers—the ponderous thing wheezed and rattled and screamed, but it kept running long after its radiator was shot full of holes. It bled coolant across ten long Brooklyn avenues and got them clear of the soldiers who were chasing them.

Working together, the bunch of them managed to push the truck into an abandoned taxi garage. Whitman felt it was important to get a roof over it, just in case anyone was tracking them with satellites or drones.

“Why would anyone do that?” Angie asked. “Are we so important?”

Whitman shook his head and bent over the steaming radiator again. The guy in the coveralls said he was a mechanic. He’d taken one look at the truck’s engine, though, and started swearing. Now it was Whitman’s turn to stare at the damage and try to pretend like there was something they could do.

Angie picked up a wrench and pointed it at him. “Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re the one they’re looking for,” she said.

“I’m nobody.” He poked his finger through a bullet hole in the manifold, because he didn’t want to look at her.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Angie asked. “I need to make a plan if I’m going to help these people. To make a plan I need information.”

Whitman rubbed at his head. “I don’t know anything. How could I? I’m out here just like you.”