The three of them jumped as he slapped the side of the truck. That sound was followed by a round of laughter that sounded like it came from at least five or six inspectors.
Vinnie continued talking to them in a boisterous voice. "Can't say this is the easiest job I've ever had, though. This truck came in yesterday from Tucson. Some fool hid inside of it before they loaded the Beasts, and they tore him apart like he was a piñata! Now, I gotta clean up the mess—the worst I've ever seen. "You wanna see?"
Mumbles indicated polite declines before the group moved away to another area of the shop. Apparently, the inspectors detained him for quite a while after that, because it was another couple of hours before Vinnie returned to let them out.
Ruth socked him in the arm. "You volunteered to open the truck for them? Are you out of your freakin' mind?"
"It wasn't a risk. Those pussy inspectors wouldn't have had the stomach to let me open the door after what I told them. They'd already looked inside a few of the other vehicles. If I hadn't bluffed this one, we'd all be on death row right now. "
"That was a really long inspection," she said. "Are they on to us?"
"I think we're all right. We're going to have to be more careful, though. We just got to get through the next few weeks. I think this may be the last meeting we have in the shop. Better lay low."
The four of them talked for a while longer before Ruth went outside to "water the garden beds", her code for making sure the inspectors were long gone. Then, Vinnie had them hide in the back seat of an SUV before instructing one of the shop employees to drive them to a location near their apartment and drop them off.
Once inside Philip and Ashley's abode, Cheryl and Aidan were finally able to talk freely. She cornered him as soon as the door was shut behind him. "You down with this?"
"Not a hundred percent comfortable yet," Aidan replied as he settled down at the kitchen table. "But I'd rather be on Team Blow-this-Place-the-Hell-Up" than still be on the road with Eaters chomping at my heels.
"We don't exactly know yet what we've signed up for."
"Guess we're going to find out more tonight."
Later that afternoon, after rummaging through things in the apartment that they hadn't explored yet, they found a stash of cash and decided to go to a grocery store a couple of blocks away, because they'd already eaten most of the much food in the pantry. On the way there, guilt settled over Cheryl like a foul, dark cloud. "Do you think they're okay?"
"Vinnie and Ruth? Yeah—"
"No. I mean Philip and Ashley, Mark, and the others."
"I'm sure they're fine. They've probably gone back to Jeremiah's and they're sitting the pews enjoying some of those nice biscuits that Hannah makes. Mark's probably convinced Philip and Ashley that they're better off down there, and Zach and Diego are probably hashing their differences out over a rowdy game of chess."
Cheryl giggled at that last visual. None of it was likely to be true, but there was no way she was going to be able to go on with her vendetta to reverse the world's woes if she dwelled on her attachments to the old gang.
When they got to Sonora Mart and stepped inside, any expectations of a cornucopia of food choices quickly vanished. The shelves were mostly full, but the selection was limited to rows and rows of boxes and cans. There was no dairy section, no produce, nothing refrigerated or frozen. As they perused the shelves, they found strangely decadent things in odd packaging like brownies in a can, powdered beef bourguignon, and dozens of packages simply labeled as
meat product
. None of the generic labels listed ingredients.
Aidan raised an eyebrow. "If you have to ask…"
They settled on some veggie soup, crackers, and a few other items that seemed recognizable. Then, they checked out after standing in a long line with the other shoppers. That evening, they were surprised at how tasty the food was and ate it with gusto. Then, they bided their time, until it was time to head to the club.
The Blue Scorpion was seven blocks from the apartment, an easy walk. The only bouncer at the door was a Beast, an unusually well-preserved female specimen with vacant eyes and a low cut dress, revealing her sickly gray, but ample assets. With an awkward robotic motion, she held out her hand for the twenty dollar entry fee listed on the sign around her neck. When they handed it to her, she stuffed it into an apron around her waist that was bulging from the wadded bills already inside it.
When Aidan stared at the amount of cash she was holding, Cheryl said, "She's probably programmed to strangle anyone with sticky fingers."
They went inside and found themselves surrounded by a couple hundred scantily clad people on the dance floor, gyrating and liquored up on the Tequila shots that were
on special
at nine bucks a pop. They took a seat near the dance floor after getting a couple of sodas. When Aidan asked Cheryl if nervousness about the meeting was causing her to bounce her leg under the table, she explained that the last time she'd been in a nightclub back at Fort San Manuel, she'd barely made it out alive.
"I don’t think an attack is too likely in here. They've got Eaters serving drinks like trained monkeys."
She'd barely noticed the bartender with the half-slit eyes and sunken cheeks. Maybe, she was getting used to being around the automated dead. That complacency was scary. What other things were the O.N.E. leaders planning to instill in the society, bit by bit so they'd be accepted by the masses? She hoped she'd get a little more insight from the RT tonight.
When ten o'clock came, Aidan stretched and looked around like he was looking for a restroom. (Though, he'd spotted the sign upon their arrival.) "See you in a few," he said before heading to the back of the club.
Cheryl knew there were probably cameras and loyal O.N.E. members embedded throughout the place. She watched the people dancing, the ones sitting at tables looking doped up on firewater or some other substance, and the bartenders who were the walking, pouring dead—except for the live one that seemed to be their captain. After a few minutes, she decided no one was watching her, so she wove her way towards the sign on the back wall that said,
RESTROOMS
, in painted neon yellow letters.
She found a narrow hallway. It was so dark; she had to feel her way along the walls. After a couple of yards, it turned to the right and led to the restrooms. She bypassed them and felt along the wall again. The hall dead ended after a few feet. She was sure she'd heard Ruth's instructions right. After a moment of panic, she backed up and retraced her steps.
There
—she found it. It was a pinky-sized hole in the wall at waist level. She stuck her finger in it and pulled, sliding the panel back. Hearing voices coming down the hall towards her, she quickly stepped inside and shut the panel behind her.
In complete darkness, smelling dust and rat droppings, she felt around until she found another hole. This one was golf ball-sized. After pulling that panel open, she found herself in what must have once been a storage room, because empty shelves lined the walls. Using only a lantern for light, there a dozen people in the center of the room, all adults of various ages but sharing a hard-edged, determined appearance. They faced a petite woman with short, red hair and a galaxy of freckles across the bridge of her nose. With her Arizona Diamondbacks cap, tank top and shorts, she looked more like a kid than a woman who was commanding a troop of rebels.
Everyone turned to look at her as she approached
"Cheryl?" The redhead asked.
She nodded as she sat down next to Aidan.
"I’m Paige," she said, then began making other introductions.
They were huddled close, because with the thump-thump-thump of the bass from the club's sound system, it was hard to hear. Cheryl figured the music made it difficult for any planted microphones to pick up what they were saying.
"I was just telling everyone about some of the lies that O.N.E. has fed people," Paige said. "They aren't who they say they are, and they haven't told the truth about the infection and what a danger it still is. Despite the vaccine, we're all still at risk."
Then, Paige began going over some things that Cheryl already knew.
"Before all this started, O.N.E.s' lab, XCGEN did some genetic experiments, inserting pig genes in dogs. Those frankendogs were fucked up, infected with some mutated, garbage genes and a flesh-loving virus, yet they ended up with the military in Afghanistan.
That wasn't an accident
. That was O.N.E.s' ground zero for starting the epidemic. Initially, we think the virus hopped to humans only through bites. But, in the process of creating a vaccine, XCGEN discovered a way to proliferate the virus through other methods. Seeing a way to use this to their advantage, they used their stooges in cities all over the world to unleash the virus on the population."
Some in the group gasped, and an older woman with wide brown eyes covered her mouth with her hands. "On purpose? They did it on purpose?"
Paige ignored her and went on. "O.N.E., One New Earth, is not some altruistic group that saved the people in this town by enacting martial law and taming the infected. They are an elite group comprised of scientists, academics, and politicians who thought they could better the world through genetic engineering after reducing the population. They've succeeded with wiping out most of us. Now, there are some frightfully serious problems for those of us who are left."
There were nervous glances around the group as if some of them doubted they had any power to stop such a well-organized machine.
"I don't want any of you to question why our resistance group has to do what we have to do, so I’m not going to hold anything back." She took a deep breath and continued fleshing out her story with more unsettling details. "Entire species have been wiped out. As you know, the virus has taken out dogs, cats, and farm animals. For some reason, they just died without becoming the voracious, walking dead."
Cheryl's mind drifted as she remembered the day she'd found Mark at Fort San Manuel, long after thinking he was dead. He had been so distracted by his obsession with the idea that the epidemic had not been an accident, their reunion almost seemed trivial to him. His words from that day ran through her head.
People fuck with nature. It fucks back
. As Paige went on, she realized just how true that statement had become.
"Now…it's gone beyond that. It's gotten even more out of control, but they're keeping it quiet. You've probably heard that no one gets into this city, or any of the other O.N.E. controlled cities without going through the decontamination showers."
A few heads nodded.
"They're afraid the virus has jumped again. The whole genetic manipulation done at XCGen on the pigs and the dogs…they think it may have now transferred to the plant kingdom."
"What?" Cheryl mouthed. Then louder, she said, "That's impossible, isn't it?"
"They opened Pandora's Box when they tinkered with biology."
"I still don't see how a virus could transfer—"
"I don't know for sure myself, because I'm not a scientist, but here's what some in the RT are saying. When an animal is infected and also has some type of parasites in its system, the parasites ingest infected cells. Then, the parasites' offspring are shed in the animal's excretions. Plants can then become contaminated through contact with the soil as they uptake markers of the infection through microbes which have a symbiotic relationship with their roots."
Aidan threw his hands up. "If you're saying we can get infected through the food we eat, that's the scariest thing I've ever heard."
"Now, you know why there aren't any animals in Sedona. They killed them all to prevent the spread of—"
"But, there are Beasts roaming the streets!" One of the men in the group exclaimed.
"Beasts don't crap, and they're incinerated in the end, so we're told that it's safe to be near them—as long as they have their black box attached, so they're under control. However any contact—"
"What about the vaccine?" Cheryl asked.
"You ever heard of someone getting a flu vaccine then getting the flu? Viruses mutate all the time. If O.N.E.'s scientists are keeping up with the mutations, we believe they're reserving the updated vaccines for their elite. The rest of us will eventually be infected by one means or another."
Cheryl felt her stomach lurch. The vegetable soup they'd eaten for dinner had tasted fine, but had it contained ingredients that were tainted? "Should we be afraid to eat?"
Paige laughed. "Obviously, we can't not eat. You're probably not going to get sick from eating a tomato or a plate of green beans…but if you have enough of something that carries the marker…eventually…"
Murmurs coursed through the group. Paige answered a few questions then insisted they move on to the RT's agenda.
"All right…those of us who've formed the RT know this is a systemic problem with no simple resolution. For all we know, it may take decades or even hundreds of years to reverse the damage that has been done—that is…if people survive that long. It is a given, however, that as long as O.N.E. remains in control, we're all doomed."
Paige's rant turned fiery as she ran through the list of plans to dismantle O.N.E.'s power. Cheryl thought some of them seemed impossible like the idea to raid the armory. Yet, without guns they really had no chance to achieve any of their goals. She imagined herself trying to sweet talk a guard and getting close enough to snatch his gun as a companion took out a nearby camera. When she snapped out of her daydream, Paige had moved on.