David Wong - This Book is Full of Spiders

Johnbacked up in the Caddie, and kept backing up. Farther and farther down the street, the tow truck and its tilted bed shrinking in his windshield. He stopped. He thought.

He flicked his cigarette out of the window.

He buckled his seat belt.

Owen said, “Dude, this is going to be lost on you. But I need to say it. Because we are going to die, Wong. Don’t think I don’t understand that. I know the feds aren’t gonna let us outta this place. So let me say my bit. I have kept the order in this quarantine since the day the feds pussied out of here. All in all, I’d say it’s the best thing I ever done in my life. Maybe the only positive thing I’ve ever done. And that’s all right. Whether it’s bombs in here, or bein’ torn apart by the mob out there, I will stand before the good Lord and say that I held things together as long as I could. And my final act is to declare you guilty, for the deaths of thirty men and women, and the probable deaths of two hundred and seventy more. I find you guilty of committing the only real sin Jesus ever asked us not to commit: the sin of not giving a shit about anyone but yourself. Doc, step aside.”

From behind Owen, somebody said, “They’re having a block party out there. Listen.”

“What?”

“They’re playin’ music. Creedence.”

They were turning up the volume, too. “Bad Moon Rising” swelled in the distance, getting louder and louder. And under it was another sound, a terrible noise like a mechanical Chewbacca that fell into a rock-crushing machine.

At that moment, John’s Cadillac came soaring through the air.

It cleared the first fence and almost cleared the second—the rear tires caught the razor wire and started unspooling it from the top of the fence, trailing behind the falling Caddie like the streamers on a kite.

Everyone scattered. The grille of the Caddie plunged right into the middle of the bonfire, scattering smoke and flames and bones to the wind. The Cadillac finally bounced and jolted to a stop among a rain of burning human skulls.

The voice of John Fogerty garbled and died. The driver’s door opened and John flung himself out, clutching a sawed-off shotgun. He screamed, “DID SOMEBODY ORDER SOME FUCKING PRISON BREAK WITH A SIDE OF SHOTGUN?”

Guardian:Be advised, a vehicle has breached the quarantine fence along the western side. I repeat, a vehicle, appears to be a civilian passenger car, has breached the fence.

Yankee Seven-Nine:Guardian, are you we looking at containment failure here?

Guardian:Negative, uh, Yankee, the fence appears to be intact.

Yankee Seven-Nine:Okay I need clarification, Guardian, I thought you said it had been breached by a vehicle—

Guardian:Affirmative, there is a vehicle inside the fence, the driver has exited.

Yankee Seven-Nine:Then how is the fence still intact, Guardian?

Guardian:It, uh, appears he went over.

Yankee Seven-Nine:He what?

Guardian:Yankee, I think he ramped it. There’s a… some kind of truck with a platform on the back and I think he used it as a ramp.

Yankee Seven-Nine:All right, did you say you had a clear shot at the driver?

John grabbed my shoulders and screamed into my face. “DAVE! ARE YOU IN THERE? IT’S ME. JOHN. I AM YOUR FRIEND. CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

“Why are you talking like that?”

I looked inside the Caddie. John had come alone.

“Where’s Amy?”

“I don’t know! Outside town I think.”

“Oh. Thank God.”

“Or not. I actually don’t know.”

Owen strode up and kicked aside a smoldering skull. He raised the pistol.

John raised his shotgun. Their eyes met.

John said, “Owen? What the hell are you doin’ here?”

“You are one crazy son of a bitch, John.”

To me, John said, “Is he infected?”

“I don’t think so.”

Owen said, “Ain’t none of us infected.”

I said, “We… don’t know that .”

John said, “Well, whatever. Everybody needs to get the hell out of here! By lunchtime this is all gonna be a crater. Did you hear the announcement out there, Owen?”

I said, “Wait, do you two know each other?”

“Yeah, remember I said I was doing setup for him? This is DJ O-Funk.” To Owen, he said, “Hell, I thought you’d be out there on Daryl’s farm, ridin’ this thing out.”

“I was. Went into town on a beer run and got scooped up by the feds. I punched one of those guys in the space suits and I guess they took that as a sign of infection.”

I noticed the rest of the inmates were staring at us, shell-shocked, as we held this conversation next to the crashed Caddie and among the scattered pile of smoking human remains. It finally occurred to me to turn my eyes up to the circling drones, wondering if they were zeroing in on our skulls right now. I had a vague thought that we should run for cover, but the entrance to the hospital was a hundred feet away. It’d be a nice, leisurely couple of shots for some guy sitting at a console out in the desert. We could duck in the car, but the drone was also equipped with the kind of rockets that could turn it into two tons of burning steel confetti.

Actually, why hasn’t he shot us already?

Dr. Marconi walked up and John glanced at him. “Doc? You been here the whole time?”

“John. I would ask you what you are doing but I fear you would actually tell me.”

“I’m just here to get Dave. Now we’re gonna get in my Caddie and I’m gonna drive a Caddie-shaped hole in that fence over there. The rest of you can walk right out behind us. Once out, you will owe me a case of beer. Each of you.”

Owen said, “You didn’t see the big fuckin’ guns lined up outside? They’ll turn you into chunks in two seconds.”

“I didn’t see any big fuckin’ guns, I saw a bunch of little fuckin’ guns. I don’t think they were anticipating Cadillac-driving zombies. But either way, you need to find a way outta here, before they bomb the place.”

John ducked into the Caddie and said, “Oh, Owen, did paychecks go out last week before this all happened?”

Owen glanced at me, then John, and said, “How the fuck did you two ever find each other?”

To me, John asked, “You comin’?”

I took to the passenger seat. The Caddie seemed to be listing somewhat and steam was oozing from under the hood. But the engine was still running, so that was good.

John said, “Marconi! There’s room in the backseat.”

Marconi leaned in and said, “I assume your plan didn’t progress beyond this exact moment.”

“I try to take it one step at a time.”

Marconi shifted his eyes to me and said, “Remember what I said?”

“Yeah, the Babylon Protocol.”

He started to correct me, but instead said, “There is a way to beat it. But with God as my witness, I do not know how any of us will get the chance.”

“Just tell me what we need to do.”

“Think it through. Think about the symbols we rally around. Think about what binds people together.”

“Just fucking tell me —”