Timothy Long - Z-Risen - Outbreak

After the chopper crash, they let us in the front gate. From the looks, as we hauled ass toward safety, I had a feeling they wanted to send us a bill and make us haul the remains of the chopper inside the base.

I was happy that the pilot and co-pilot weren’t near us. I was afraid they’d point the finger at us and say it was our fault. The entire battle inside the chopper had taken half a minute. Then we’d struck the ground. I asked Joel Kelly later if he’d ever been in anything like that before.

“A chopper crash? Shit. Been in a few. That one wasn’t bad. I’d call it a shaker, but not quite a bone rattler.”

I grinned back at his grin and wondered if he was bullshitting me. Only a boneshaker? When we hit it felt like someone had picked me up and thrown me against a brick wall.

Roz moved alongside us while Christy fell into step but she kept glancing over her shoulder as we made our way toward the base.

“Don’t think about it,” Roz said.

“What if he’s okay? We weren’t that high; maybe Craig hit something soft.” Christy whined from behind us.

“He didn’t survive.” Roz fell back a step and put a hand around his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Christy shrugged it off and moved a few feet away.

“Nothing we can do about it now except get that son of a bitch that killed Craig.” I tried to sound reassuring.

“He’s out there. I know it,” she said. “Everyone else in my life is dead. Craig was all I had left.”

She had a point, but I couldn’t think of anything to say so I let her talk.

“We didn’t ask for this. None of this. I shouldn’t even be here. I should be home doing school work or playing video games with my friends. I’m so sick of this. So sick of all of this. I hate this world.”

“Yeah. Me too. But you gotta go on and honor Craig’s memory. If you’re gone who’s going to remember him?” I asked.

When we were all gone, who would remember us?

“You guys lost?”

I turned to find an unexpected face. With her helmet off she wasn’t bad looking, in an “I’ll rip your balls off if you cross me” way that I kinda liked. What I didn’t like was the fact that she’d helped Lee kill a kid. I also didn’t like that she’d hit me hard enough to make me see stars. I guess I could forgive the second one with enough time.

“Well look who it is,” I said and came to my full height.

She looked up at me but wasn’t intimidated. She didn’t look mad or sad. In fact, she had no expression at all.

“Yeah. Look who it is. You guys looking for a shower and chow? Because you need it.”

Roz crossed her arms and stared at Sails. Sails met her gaze and didn’t flinch.

I leaned over and whispered in Joel’s ear, “Girl fight, bro.”

He pushed me off.

“You seen Lee?” I asked Sails.

“No. If you want to thank him I’ll pass along your message. Do yourself a favor and let it go. It sucks, but it was for the best,” she said and moved away.

Joel got in her face.

“It was for the best? He was just a kid. What if it was your kid, huh?”

“It was my kids, but now they’re gone. If you’ll excuse me,” she said and moved away.

Shit.

Joel looked like he wanted to say something but he didn’t. Anna glanced between us and didn’t say a word before moving off into the crowd.

The base of operations was made up of a hospital and a bunch of smaller buildings. People scurried around, most of them armed. I hadn’t seen so many people in one place in a long time and it was comforting.

Hand painted signs hung on hastily constructed signposts indicating in which way lay food and supplies. I spotted one in particular and almost broke into tears.

‘Showers.’

I smacked Joel and pointed. He nodded but couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the departing figure of Anna Sails.

“You like that?”

“I’m not happy, bro.”

“Join the fucking club.”

I pointed at a sign that read “food” and we moved toward it.

“Chow first. Then I’m going to shower so long I turn into a giant prune.”

“Squids and water,” Joel said and then led the way.

They fed us in an overcrowded mess hall filled with a mix of military, military wannabes, and civvies. There were lines drawn, like a prison mess hall. A group of survivalist types complete with “been in the mountains for months” beards sat near a couple of families but the groups didn’t look at each other. The military men and women strutted around with weapons on open display.

“Pass the salt?” a man asked me.

He sat with four kids and a wife who hovered over the little ones while they ate dry cereal and stared around the room with wide eyes.

The kitchen had canned supplies and boxes containing even more boxes of crackers. There were five-gallon jugs of bug juice and sliders that tasted like slimy vegetarian fake meat. I don’t know where they got the stuff but my stomach thanked me. My guts weren’t so happy an hour later but I rode it out and then came back and begged for more. I’m not a little guy and it takes a lot to feed this zombie killing machine.

The rest of the partially formed base was obviously in transition when we arrived. A steady stream of cars and trucks roared into and out of the base. There was a constant unholy racket of helicopters thumping at the sky as they roared in and then back out. Most delivered supplies but a lot of them carried away people. Folks that were dressed in civvies and carried bags or stuffed suit cases. Where was everyone headed? If it was somewhere safe I wanted to go there now.

Like the empty field we’d flown over yesterday this place had tents everywhere. They told us to go to some section that me nor Joel Kelly could make heads or tails of. Might as well have been some Sudoku puzzle for all the sense it made.

I wasn’t complaining. I can’t say how relieved I am that I’m somewhere surrounded by guns and people who know how to use them. The food might not be the best but it was food. I’ve been so hungry over the last ten days I’m sure I’ve lost about fifteen pounds.

We ate and tried to talk but we didn’t get a lot of answers. I turned to the guy that had asked for the salt and asked him what was happening in the world. How far had the virus spread? Were all of the other states affected?

“When the televisions and radio stations died we lost touch with the outside world and just waited. We ran out of food a few days ago and started moving around. A convoy found us and rescued me and the family. Thank god for the military.”

“So you don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world?” I had so many questions but everyone I talked to had a similar answer. Even the military guys didn’t know what was going on.

One thing I learned was that there’d been mass desertion, as the enlisted grew worried about families and just left their posts and stations.

“All I know is I got food and water and a warm place for my family. That’s good enough for me.” He turned away.

I resisted the urge to grab him by the shirt collar and demand answers. Instead I snapped my plastic fork in half. I probably just needed to go find a place to curl up and sleep for the rest of the day. First we needed to spend some time trying to clean off two weeks of blood and filth.

The tent was huge and sectioned off for men and women.

It wasn’t warm and the soap were cakes of white with other people’s hair in them. I didn’t care, and judging by the sounds of others near me (including Roz, who hummed a song in a bad falsetto) no one else did either.

Not much of a shower, but I was left grinning and shivering. Piles of clothing, most of it military, were in a corner. I pawed through it until I found something big enough to fit me. Must have been someone’s shitty idea of a joke because the only pants my size were a pair of old dungarees that were loose in the waist and too short by a few inches, but they were better than my beat to hell overalls. The shirt was digital camo and had enough arm pockets to hold a few odds and ends. I filled one with .45 ammo and another with 9mm.