Timothy Long - Z-Risen - Outbreak

I strapped my trusty .45 around my waist, then grabbed a huge pea coat and fell into it. Warmth eventually set in while we stood around talking about the wonders of running water. Christy looked dour and when Roz suggested looking for a bed we followed.

“Sleep. I need a week of it,” I said.

“Me too, man. I’m as tired as I’ve been in my whole damn life. Even boot wasn’t this much work.”

Together we went to find a couple of cots.

10:30 hours approximate

Location: Undead Central, San Diego CA — San Diego US Naval Hospital

Roz and Christy found a cot and a sleeping bag right next to each other; no one else had claimed them, so they settled in. Joel and I nodded at Roz and moved on to find a corner of our own.

I settled back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. Someone had left a pile of magazines in a corner but who cared about that shit anymore? Damn world was gone and I was supposed to read celebrity gossip? Hell, most of those chumps were dead anyway if Los Angeles went down like San Diego.

The enclosure was huge and filled with sorry sorts. We walked up and down aisles before deciding that if someone came for this pair of cots they’d have to be bigger and meaner to make us move.

People moved in and out of the area. Kids cried. Babies howled. Mothers shushed, and fathers looked dour.

“When do we tell them we’re enlisted?” I asked Joel quietly.

Joel leaned over close and whispered. “I don’t know if we should. Something weird about this base.”

I had to agree with Joel’s assessment. Since we’d arrived no one had answered our questions. They told us there’d be time for that later. We should settle in, relax and eat. No one would come clean about what was going on.

I’d tried to ask a few people, but they were all tightlipped. Then I found a guy named Edward Bowls. He was in his mid-fifties and coughed all the time. One time I thought I saw his hand come away with blood but he covered it up.

“It’s bad out there,” he’d said when no one else was around. “They try to make it seem like this is isolated but it’s not. The states are falling fast and there doesn’t seem to be anyway to stop the spread of the virus. It doesn’t get everyone but it gets most. Some have managed to setup battle lines and quarantine zones. I heard that Montana is pretty clear but there ain’t shit in that state to begin with, just a bunch of open space. Plus everyone’s got guns.”

“So not everywhere is as bad as San Diego.”

“Yeah but some places are worse. I heard Lee was up north and is heading back up there. Lee’s in charge I guess, cept he ain’t military.” Edward leaned over and coughed until he was out of breath.

“He’s not? He sure seems like it.” I tried to play it cool.

“Some group of mercenaries. That’s what I heard. I guess he was over in Afghanistan spreading freedom with a machine gun before his boys got called back home.”

“Mercenaries.” Joel swore.

“That bad?” I asked but neither one answered.

“I heard stuff and it wasn’t pretty,” Joel said and put his arm over his eyes.

I lay back on the hard cot and tried not to think. That lasted for about fifteen seconds.

“So mercenaries, like Black Water. US has been using them for years, right?”

“I guess, man. I never ran into them when I was over there.”

What if Lee had been right? What if Christy was one of them? What if monkeys flew out of my ass? One thing I’d learned in this new world was to stop dwelling on the what-if’s. All those got you was a big cup of regret and not much else.

But questions swirled around my head. Craig was fine all day and the night before. What was different about the disease when it attacked him? Why was it delayed?

Then it hit me. He’d gone back to Roz’s house and secured some of our gear. What if one of the things had gotten at him and he kept that part of her trip quiet?

Shit.

“Are you sure you didn’t you see any sign of the virus in Craig?” I asked Joel.

“You’ve asked me that a hundred times. I don’t know, man, I was there too and I don’t know.”

“Right? I know he was fine. I know it. Lee had no right to do what he did.”

“Lee’s probably gone now, so what are you gonna do?” Joel asked me.

“Go after him? Wait for him to get back. I don’t care. I just want a chance at his ass.”

“He seems to be in charge or something. Weird that he doesn’t wear any insignia but everyone knows who he is.”

“He’s an asshole,” I said.

“Truer words, brother.”

Joel rolled over and covered his head with his pillow.

Asshole.

We woke to screams.

I sat up in semi-darkness and felt around for my side arm. It was under my pillow, that’s right. Tucked next to a backup mag. Joel was on his feet and checking over his own weapon. We weren’t the only ones. There were so many armed folks you’d think we were at an NRA sleep over.

A guy dressed in fatigues ripped the tent entrance open and shouted over the rows of cots.

“Up. Everyone up. Move quickly to the landing pad. Choppers are arriving. When you get the sign, you keep low and get on board. Got it? You don’t listen and you get left behind.”

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. My head felt like it was full of cotton and my eyes were gummed shut. Joel was already strapping on his gear and appeared to have been up for hours. I wished I had a double dose of energy drink, then a bottle of whiskey to wash that shit back with. Thai whiskey. I’d crush a few heads for some.

The civilians around us rose and packed quickly. Kids were quieted and shuffled out. It didn’t turn into a panic until the guns started to boom outside.

I pushed through the throng with Joel Kelly close behind. Roz was on her feet with a backpack over her shoulder. She tugged out a handgun and held it at her side.

Christy stuck to her side but she was clenching her fists open and shut over and over again. I dropped my pack to the ground and opened it. Moving things around, I found what I was looking for.

“Don’t shoot anyone. You know how these work, right?”

It was the little Sig Sauer 229 I’d found on Monster Ken an eternity ago.

Christy took the gun and looked it over. She racked the slide back to inspect the chamber and then let it slam shut.

“I’ve played a lot of video games.”

“Good,” I said. “Now don’t shoot anyone unless they’re a threat.”

“Yep.”

She lifted her head and nodded at me. Confidence, though a spark at best, showed.

“What now?” Roz yelled over the noise.

I tried to smile at Roz but it came out as a sneer. She thumped me in the chest, then kissed her fingers and smacked me across the cheek, not too hard, kind of a love tap. Then she did the same to Joel Kelly.

“Let’s go kick some ass,” Kelly said.

“Or haul ass,” I said.

Together we navigated the throng and moved to the entrance.

Our quarters weren’t even two hundred feet from the entrance to the base so we got a quick appraisal of the action and it wasn’t good. Not good at all.

Joel must not have believed his eyes because he moved toward the gate. The wrong way. Stupid jarhead.

Civilians streamed past us in a panic, clutching children close. A man lugged a huge suitcase a few feet then looked over his shoulder and gasped. He tossed the bag to the side of the pathway and started to push through the crowd.

Men and women, some in white gowns and others in wheel chairs spewed out of the hospital doors. Other’s watched from windows with huge eyes.

I watched too. I watched and I got scared.

As far as the eye could see they came. The mass was the largest I’d seen yet, even surpassing the horde that we’d spotted moving through the city. They stumbled toward the fence in their greed for human flesh.