“Mother gave us a list several weeks ago. She said we’d be needing them.” Sandi paused to make sure I was paying attention. Then she added, “She knew you were coming.”
“Of course she did.” I made a mental note to watch our six. The best-meaning people followed David Koresh and Jim Jones right up until they went completely bat shit crazy. Mother might be no different. If she or her followers were going to construct their own version of the End Times, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
Ever notice that these alien vines look a lot like kudzu? It used to be that alien vine was something that grew down South, covering anything that stayed in the same place for more than a minute. Now it looks like this alien version has been engineered to be something terrible. Stay away from the alien vines. Stay as far away as you can. For those who go in never come out.
Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,
Night Stalker Monologue #1371
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
T
WO HOURS LATER
we were ready to go. But before we did, I took a moment to pull Dupree aside. I felt it was important to acknowledge his importance to the mission. I also felt it was my duty to make sure we had a connection. So while Phil, Steve and Sandi prepared the truck, I had a private moment with the smiling man who was busy readying his own equipment.
“This is it.” I squeezed his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“Like no one else. To think that in a few hours I’ll be able to touch an alien organism.”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I imagine there’s going to be forces at work to keep us from engaging.”
The smile didn’t budge. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Not only do I need to take samples, but I’m curious to see what the portable gas chromatograph detects beneath the canopy.” He held up a nozzle, at the end of a small hose. “This is the sniffer here. That OMBRA has them already built is a nod to their dedication to the project. Something like this must have cost them billions.”
I shrugged. “What’s money when civilization ceases to exist?”
This made him laugh.
“Seriously, though, I want to thank you for opening up. We’ve all had it bad. Some of us have had it worse. But to have you here now, with me, on this mission, makes me feel like I have the absolute best and brightest with me.”
His smile slipped. “You trying to give me a pep talk?”
“I’m a little out of practice. How’d it sound?”
“Contrived.”
“Okay, then how’s this.” I put an arm on his shoulder and stared into his eyes. “Don’t fucking get killed out there, because we need you.”
I let go of his shoulder and stood back, raising my eyebrows as I gauged his reaction.
“Much better. I almost believed it that time.” His smile slowly returned, like armor to be put on or taken off. “What do you think of Mother?”
I glanced over to where the other three were loading the oxygen tanks, to make sure they couldn’t hear. “I didn’t feel threatened and I didn’t feel scared or worried, but that actually worries me. She has some sort of crazy charisma.” I shook my head. “There’s really no telling what she’s capable of doing.”
“Or willing to do. I’ve read about cult leaders before. What if she makes us drink some cyanide Kool-Aid?”
I nodded. “My thoughts exactly. But at least she thought ahead enough to get hazmat suits. Last thing I want is to turn into one of the fungees. That stuff has made our world into one scary place.”
“The problem is that you never knew how scary a place it was before. Parasitic species live all over the world. Ever hear of the
Leishmania
parasite spread through the bite of the
Phlebotominae
sand fly, which can affect the spleen, or liver, or even your bone marrow?”
I could swear his grin got wider as my frown deepened.
“And then there’s Chagas Disease, and Granulomatous Amoebic Encephalitis, and the African Eye Worm, and the Tse Tse fly that spreads African sleeping sickness. Or worse, Nodding Disease, which kicks off ever increasing waves of epileptic seizures. Ever seen that? Parents have to chain their children to poles so they won’t hurt themselves or someone else. Ever been into a village where children are chained to poles? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s a sight you can’t unsee. Or even the simple botfly, which hatches and comes to term beneath human skin, climbing out of a rupture so it can find someone to do it all over again.”
I was overwhelmed by information. I’d been happy to have been just a grunt, never having known any of this. “You. Have. Got. To. Stop.”
He shrugged. “Just trying to let you know what you’ve been missing. Trust me, I can go on for days.”
“Please, no.”
We were interrupted by Sandi, who declared they were ready to go. They had loaded our gear into a black four-by-four pickup truck rigged for urban survival.
As we strode to the truck, I turned to see Mother standing on the front porch, smoking a corncob pipe, her eyes tracking us, her face blank. Smoke coiled in front of her face, but she made no move to blow it away. Her hair was set in old fashioned curlers. Finally she nodded imperceptibly towards me.
I returned her nod.
The truck looked like something out of
Mad Max
. Extra metal was welded everywhere to deter anyone trying to climb aboard, including a corrugated metal canopy with three inch holes. The holes, in turn, were covered with a fine screen mesh. The same metal and mesh covered the front and side windows. To enter, one had to either slide through the missing partition window or climb through a locked entrance at the tailgate.
“What’s that for? Bird protection?” I asked in jest.
Phil stubbed out a cigarette and gave me a cold stare. “You really don’t know what you’re getting into, do you?”
I felt my grin tighten. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Steve reached out to grab Phil’s shoulder, but Phil shrugged it off. He glared at me. “I know you’re a soldier,” he said, “and you have all this great equipment and eat three squares a day and project outside the wire every now and then, but there are those of us who have been fighting every day since the invasion. While you’ve been in your mess halls and playing video games, we’ve been struggling to survive—street level, with the everyday promise of death.”
He paused to light another cigarette.
I stood there, striving for patience I rarely had.
He sucked in smoke, then exhaled violently and gestured to the tire guards. “These are to protect us against the spiker plants, which can take out tires as easy as anything.”
He pointed to the metal jutting from the sides of the truck at forty-five degree angles. “These are to stop fungees and spikers from getting close enough to the truck to grab hold.”
He pointed to the mesh. “This is to keep birds and insects from getting in.” He tapped his forehead with his forefinger. “Don’t you get it, soldier?
Everything
out there is infected. The pigeons are as dangerous as a fucking tiger and attack anything they can.”
Sandi came up and stood in front of him, her back to me. She placed both hands on his shoulders and said something I couldn’t hear.
I’d encountered Phil’s type of anger before. No one likes for someone to come in and take over their missions. It’s happened to me, and I’ve done it to others. I’m sure Phil and Steve were as good as or better than anyone I’d ever served with. That they were still alive more than a year after the invasion was testament to their abilities. Still, if we were to succeed at the mission, it had to be as a team, rather than as a few pissed-off individuals.
Phil shook his head at something Sandi said, then stalked to the other side of the truck, where he began to slide into his kit.
Sandi turned to me and spread her hands. “So I see he gave you the guided tour.”
Nicely played. “Is it really an issue with the birds?” The thought of being attacked by a flock of contagious birds seemed suddenly terrifying.
“Not so much anymore. Early on, as the black alien vine spread, birds were getting infected in droves. But they also attacked in flocks. Most of them have long since died. Now we get the occasional migratory bird that stumbles into the black alien vine footprint.” She shook her head. “It’s nothing as bad as it was.”
“And the insects?” Dupree asked.
I remembered his description of the Amazonian ant. Of
course
insects could be carriers. Was I to be worried about ants and gnats and flies, as well? How could we hope to keep from being infected?
“As far as we can tell, the insects are infected, too. They’re moving like a bow wave in front of the alien vine as it encroaches.”
Dupree nodded. “There’d be a gray zone between the infected insects and the non-infected. Whether it’s the deimatic behaviors exhibited by the infected or pheromones, non-infected insects would flee to the best of their ability. Of course different modes of locomotion would result in complete infection of some species before others as they are overrun.”
I frowned. “You mean the faster bugs would win.”
“Not just fast; flying bugs as well.”
I stared at the mesh and shook my head. “So the butterfly is as deadly as a pterodactyl.”
Steve came around the back of the truck in a hazmat suit without the mask and helmet. He looked like a black Michelin Man. “Thank God pterodactyls are extinct.”
Sandi showed us to our suits and we wedged ourselves into them. The Viking HDS Dry Suits were made of vulcanized rubber. They were form-fitting and bulky. It was probably different in the water, but on land it was like I was wearing five layers of clothes. Still, it was better to wear this than to be exposed to infection.
We had our packs in the back of the vehicle just in case we needed them. I managed to rig a holster for my pistol on the right side of the suit. A bag clipped to the left held the flexible helmet. A rack of oxygen tanks which we’d use once we got closer to the action lay in the rear of the truck.
Phil got behind the wheel, and Steve sat beside him. Sandi rode in the back with us. She held a MAC-10 across her knees and wore black wraparound glasses.
“Let’s hit it,” she said through the back window opening.
The truck lurched forward and we headed down the mountain. Instead of following the 210, we turned north until we found Sierra Madre Avenue and took it west.
Several people stopped scavenging long enough to watch us pass. We didn’t encounter much vehicular traffic.
During the first ten miles, we saw a lone motorcycle weaving through a line of wrecked cars. The rider wore a gas mask beneath a spiked black helmet, and had a sawed-off shotgun in a holster on his back and another holster affixed to the gas tank that held what looked like a semi-automatic pistol. He looked our way once, but made no move towards us.
We passed a side street where a pickup was idling at the curb. While a woman stood at the back of the truck with an AR-15, a man carried food from a home in a plastic laundry hamper. They just stared at us as we passed.
I guess we were the new normal.
Then things changed.
I felt the vehicle slow and I glanced out the windshield. A traffic circle lay ahead of us; across it was a school bus.
“Where’d that come from?” Sandi said. “Wasn’t there yesterday.”
Phil slowed to a stop about a hundred yards away.
“See what it says on the side?” Steve said.
We all saw it. On a white background beneath the windows, in sprayed red letters, were the words,
GOD’S NEW ARMY
. Beneath that in smaller letters it read,
NEW BELIEVERS WELCOME
.
Steve pointed to the left. “We could cross-country and then head south on North Dalton.”
Dupree glanced in my direction. “What do they want?”
Sandi frowned. “Women, probably. Which makes you guys free to leave.”
A man dressed in white, with a shock of shoulder-length blond hair, walked around the back of the barn. I aimed my 416 in his direction and zoomed in with my scope. White shoes, a white suit and a white tie, he looked every bit the southern preacher. I recognized his face. How could I not? He’d been a media darling for at least a decade. “Paul Sebring.”
“Oh, hell.” Sandi charged her submachine gun. “I was hoping to miss his reach. Phil, let’s go four-wheeling.”
“What do they want?” I asked.
“My guess? You.”
“But can he know about our mission?”
“Must be someone up at Mother’s.”
I keyed in on movement from inside the bus. I zoomed in. Waited for the focus. Then—
“
Sniper! Everybody down!
”
I didn’t wait for the other to shoot. I put two rounds into the sniper.
Sebring ducked as the glass exploded behind him. When he straightened, he was no longer smiling.
Phil threw the truck in gear and shot over the curb, going south between a blue one-story cookie cutter home and a yellow two-story version of the same. The space along the side shrank to almost nothing as the metal on the truck’s sides raked the wooden siding like the claws of some great animal against a gargantuan chalkboard. I held on and watched Dupree grit his teeth and close his eyes. Then, like a BB shot out the end of a straw, we were into the back yards.