The Passenger (Surviving the Dead) (13 page)

“Are there any other survivors?” Holland asked
impatiently. “Did you see anyone else escape?”

Alan turned his head, blinking lazily. “I don’t know. It was too dark, I could barely see my hand in front of my face. I tried calling out for a while after that son-of-a-bitch led the horde away, but nobody answered. Maybe
the children got away over the north wall. I don’t know.”

The dying man
turned his gaze back to Zeb and leaned forward, eyes bright. “He was
laughing
, Zeb. I heard him. While those monsters killed us all, he was sitting on top of the market shelter, swinging his feet like a little kid and fucking
laughing
. You find that bastard, Zeb. You find him, and you make him pay for what he did. You hear me? Promise me you’ll find that motherfucker.”

Zeb patted the man’s
shoulder gently, but there was no softness in his eyes. “I promise, Alan. I’ll find him, and when I do, I’ll make him suffer. You have my word on that.”

Alan seemed reassured. He
lay back down, his grip weakening in Zeb’s hand. In a few short minutes, he lost consciousness, and then rattled out his last breath. Zeb reached gently down and shut the dead man’s eyes.

“Uncle Zeb,” Michael said. “You know what we need to do.”

The old sheriff nodded slowly and stood up. He took a few steps away and rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead. “You mind doin’ it, son? I don’t know if I got the heart.”

Michael gripped his uncle’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”

Ethan motioned to his men to step away and pulled Hick’s pack from under Alan’s trembling body. Already, he was showing signs of reanimation.

“Go ahead.”

Michael drew a small pistol from under his coat and stepped forward. “I’m sorry Alan. I wish we could have gotten here sooner.” He raised his hand and pulled the trigger.

Birds took flight
under a golden haze as the gunshot echoed into the morning.

*****

They spent the rest of the day looking for other survivors, but found only corpses.

At the edge of
the wall where Ethan and Cole found the ladders and cranes, they discovered a semicircle of dead bodies stacked waist-high. Upon examining them, Ethan realized they were all the older, more ruined bodies of the horde that destroyed the town.

Behind them was a set of bunkhouses similar to the large ba
rracks where they had found Alan, but smaller. Zeb explained that all of the town’s children slept in the bunkhouses near the escape apparatus, just in case. From what Ethan could see, it looked as if a group of defenders had formed a line around the children and held it while they escaped, but later succumbed to the horde. The ground in front of the wall was covered in a carpet of empty shell casings and broken hand weapons.

Etha
n nudged a few of them with his boot and thought of his own son back at Fort Bragg. Andrea was probably cooking breakfast right then, sunlight shining in through the kitchen window and setting her bright red hair aglow. Aiden would have woken up hours ago, coloring in his books, playing with his toys, and asking when daddy was coming home. Ethan looked up at the sun, the same warmth shining on him and his distant family, and he tried very hard not to cry.

After exploring
the ground outside the south wall, Zeb and Hedges found more than a dozen unique tracks leading across the overgrown field to the forest beyond. Most of them were small, but there were a few adult sized ones as well.

“Well
, at least the children got away,” Ethan said when Hedges delivered the news.

“We’ll light a signal fire for them tonight,” the deputy replied. “If they’re still nearby, they’ll come back. You might want to have your men lay low, Sergeant
. Those kids have a couple of defenders with them, and after what happened here last night, they might react badly to unfamiliar faces. You should probably let me and Zeb do the talking.”

Ethan nodded. “Fine by me. We’ll stay out of your way.”

Tired from a long day of fruitless searching, Ethan decided to pack it in for the night. After rounding up his men, he ordered them to restock their ammo from the town’s armory—Zeb had found the key to it on Alan’s body and opened it up to them—then scavenge some food and find a spot to make camp. Cole suggested the roof of an old fast-food restaurant near the eastern wall, well away from Zeb’s signal fire near the gate. They all agreed.

“What about water?” Hicks asked. “Ain’t like we can take it from the river.”

Ethan thought about the ghouls splashing around in the muddy stream and grimaced. “You’re right. We need to refill our canteens. Cole, let’s go take a look around and see what we can find. Hicks, you and Holland find some food and get a meal going.”

“Will do, boss.”

In a house less than a block down the street, Cole found a black plastic barrel with the words DRINKING WATER in white stencil across the front. Opening the lid, he leaned down and sniffed.

“Yep. That’s water.” He turned to look at Ethan. “Think it’s safe?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. We’ll filter it and boil it anyway, just to be sure.”

They loaded the barrel onto a hand truck they found near
by and wheeled it back to camp. Hicks had found a small metal fire pit and hauled it to the roof, along with a few bundles of wood. Holland got a fire going, and set to work making a stew from jars of preserved vegetables and dried venison liberated from the town’s emergency supply. Ethan smelled the food and felt his stomach grumble, realizing he hadn’t eaten since before dawn. It was now nearly sunset.

They ate their meal in subdued silence, each man stari
ng straight down at his food and thinking his own dark thoughts. Ethan finished his first bowl quickly and went back for another, eating it more slowly this time. He kept his mind on setting up the watch rotation, making sure everyone cleaned their weapons after dinner, and wondering how many survivors were going to come back through the gate that night. He did his best not to look around at the town, at what less than two days ago had been a thriving community, a place where hundreds of Outbreak survivors had carved out a life for themselves wishing only for peace and a safe place to raise their children. All gone now.

He thought about the destroyed gate, and the shape of the blasted doors, and the scorches on the archway. He thought about Alan, and his last words admonishing Zeb to find the person responsible for the death of this place. He thought
about Alan’s description of the killer, a scrawny knife-wielding man in a big coat. He thought about the trail they had followed to Broken Bridge, and the fact that very few of the attacking horde had remained behind. If the horde was still following the madman responsible for all this mayhem, it wouldn’t be hard to pick up their trail again. Once they did, they might be able to figure out where the murderer leading the horde planned to strike next.

Tomorrow, he would talk to Zeb. If the old lawman was half as smart as E
than thought he was, he had most likely come to the same conclusions.

It was a place to start.

SIXTEEN

Gideon felt like whistling.

He couldn't, of course. Whistling was an activity he'd left in the past, along with half of his teeth. A few key dental structures removed and one of a man’s most basic expressions, making music, was gone.

Still, he smiled as he walked. Even the gaps between his last few crumbling teeth couldn’t dampen his spirits. He felt light as a feather, twisting and dancing on the air. Whistling might not have been an option, but there were plenty of other things a man could do to entertain himself.

Killing was one of them.

Smoking meth was another. For Gideon, the two were inextricably blended.

The town of Broken Bridge was miles behind him, a mission accomplished beyond his wildest expectations. It was a larger place than any other he'd attempted to strike, and when his finger fell on the trigger of the rocket launcher, Gideon was sure his time was finally up. No part of him expected to see the heavy gate fall so spectacularly, and his gap-toothed smile widened as he remembered the thick metal ripping away from the concrete supporting it.

Broken Bridge had been a place of order and discipline. At least that was what the people he captured had told him. A group of stranded soldiers had built the town, gathered other survivors together, armed them, trained them, and turned them into a small but lethal militaristic society. They had a fierce reputation, those people, and even the most daring marauders no longer bothered them.

A daunting task, killing such worthy opponents.

When Gideon struck, a swarm of ghouls at his back, it was with the expectation that he would die. High as he had been, and drunk on the rush of his own impending death, the sense of unreality gripping him had heightened to levels he’d never known. The amphetamines drove him, gave him the energy he needed to push past the pain, and the exhaustion, and his own flagging strength. He’d felt so goddamn
powerful.
But below that surreal elation, always burning bright and hot within him, was the anger.

The memories hit him again as he walked in the pre-dawn light. The fledgling brightness of the morning sun dimmed, going dark as he heard the echo of his long-dead doctor’s voice. The day when everything changed.

HIV
, his doctor had said.
Bad news, to be sure, and expensive to treat. But it’s not the death sentence it used to be.

He'd almost hit the man then. Not a death sentence, sure. But a lifetime of medicine and ridiculous precautions because of
one
night away from home. Because he'd been lonely and horny and had taken a risk. In what universe was that fair?

Rather than get violent, Gideon had clenched his teeth and listened. He heard the spiel about opportunistic infections, proper drug regiments, taking precautions. He kept calm by imagining
how surprised the doctor’s face would look if he slammed a fist into his jaw. Or how unruffled the good doctor would be if Gideon jammed a dirty needle into his arm, all the while chanting about how it wasn't a death sentence.

The world darkened a little more, in reality this time, as clouds moved in. Gideon thought it appropriate. The memories stung now more than ever—the other half of the equation that kept him running.

Julia left him as soon as he broke the news. She'd suspected his infidelity for years; no wife whose husband stayed gone on business trips as long as he did could do otherwise. She screamed at him, called him names, threw things, all over one mistake. Gideon held himself in check.

Julia cursed him
as she dragged her suitcase to the front door. He tried to stop her, reason with her. He felt the razor-sharp memory of his hand squeezing her arm as she pushed him, trying to make him let go. He squeezed harder, pulling her away from the door.

Until then, he had managed to bottle up the rage, the injustice of it. All his life had been a lesson in channeling those impulses into more productive behavior. But when she slapped him, teeth bared with the effort of swinging her arm as hard as she could, his vision went red. There was a short gap, a flashpoint where time passed but no memories penetrated the haze.

The next thing he remembered, Julia was standing over him, her back against the door as she clutched her bleeding face. Gideon’s left eye hurt like ten kinds of hell, and his balls ached all the way to his teeth.

Julia left that day, and it was the last time he ever saw her. There was no pity on her face, nothing of the love and adoration he'd seen on their wedding day. Staring up at her then, he would have accepted fear or anger or even hate.

Instead, she had sneered at him and called him a fucking coward.

From there, the memories grew vague. He kept up with the medications because, no matter how dark the ho
rizon, Gideon could be relied upon to protect Gideon. A lesser man might have fallen to pieces and crawled to others, begging for help or sympathy.

Gideon took another path.

He got trashed.

Months of working extra hours and hoarding cash were punctuated by breaks filled to the brim with hedonism to make the Romans blush. When he planned those forays, there was never an
y intent to do anything stupid. But once the booze soaked his brain, considerations like telling women his HIV status or even wearing protection became unimportant.

When the world fell apart, he was coming off one of his benders. He'd missed the news, having spent over a week in an expensive hotel room drinking, snorting cocaine, and banging whores. It didn’t help that he had shattered the TV on the first night.

It wasn't quite instantaneous, but when Gideon dried out enough to leave the room and heard the newscasts, he began to worry. The talking heads said it all, how the dead were rising, how the infection was spreading, how the chaos was building like a storm. The President assured everyone the military would soon have the situation under control.
Stay in your homes,
he said.
Don’t panic.

Gideon was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. He could read between the lines; the plague was out of control. Things were getting bad, and quickly.

When the Outbreak hit Gideon’s town, he was long gone, running ahead of the storm with a trunk full of medicine stolen from every pharmacy he could rob. Two days and a gun to his head later, the car and his pills were gone.

On foot, the plague caught up to him. Gideon found himself in the middle of it, surviving despite the odds. He'd done so for a long time, now.

After the first few weeks of trying, he gave up searching for the right medications. He wasn't truly sick, then, but he knew it was only a matter of time. So he'd gone wandering, surviving day to day, eventually finding a measure of peace.

Until he found the meth.

The house had looked normal enough on the ground floor, but when he’d gone down to the basement, the normalcy ended. Whoever had set up the lab knew what they were doing. It wasn’t one of those filthy, cluttered death traps he’d seen on the news so many times. This setup was clean, orderly, professional. Clearly labeled chemicals, properly stored. A set of beakers and burners that would have been right at home in a high-school science lab. And sitting on a shelf, separated into bundles packaged tightly together with clear cellophane, was the meth.

Hundreds of pounds of it.

Gideon couldn’t even guess at the street value. He’d always been partial to cocaine, but hey, any port in a storm. He’d taken all he could carry. After smoking some and feeling the tingling rush of strength that came with an amphetamine high, he realized he could carry more. So he went back and stocked up again until his pack had bulged with the stuff.

It wasn’t nearly as heavy as it used to be.

Slowing his pace, he wandered over to a large stone on the side of the road and sat down, warming himself in the sun. The thin glass pipe no longer burned his fingers when he smoked, calluses having long since formed in curious lines across his fingertips.

The swarm followed, and the fresh sense of hyper-reality brought on by the atomized crystal flowing into his lungs made the ghouls stand out even more
sharply against the lovely day. His memories since beginning his habit were vague in many places, but when he lit the pipe, those first days came back in vivid detail.

What began as an escape—a break from the fear that every little cough and sniffle would be the illness
that ate him alive—had evolved into a crushing addiction. Just as Gideon had no way to know when HIV would transition into AIDS, he didn't feel the damage from the drugs building up inside of him.

The psychosis took root in his already anger-ridden mind, brain chemistry and str
ucture irrevocably altered by time and the painful memories of his life before the Outbreak. Whatever tenuous grip he’d had on sanity loosened bit by bit until, finally, it fell away altogether.

That was
when the killing started.

At first, it was runners. People out on their own with no permanent place to live. A few here and there, mostly after arguments. Those early kills were crimes of passion and opportunity, fueled by hate a
nd justified by his situation. As time went on, his psychosis grew worse and worse, and as a consequence, so did his crimes.

Gideon watched the swarm and planned
his next move. Broken Bridge had been the end game. The finale. His tomb as well as his greatest accomplishment. After all, he had survived the end of the world only to face a future limited by the disease slowly dissolving his immune system.

He sat on the rock and watched the swarm grow larger. The high wasn't as powerful as he'd have liked—the plight of the junkie—but it was enough. It quieted the hungry thing entwined in his brain. Had a person approached him then and asked
why
he did the things he did, the question would have brought only a blank stare. Purely hypothetical, of course, as he hadn't allowed a person close enough to speak without killing them for months.

If he had to die, w
hy should anyone else be allowed to live?

The monster inside him purred at the thought, wanted to know how to proce
ed. Gideon shouldered his rifle—a military sniper carbine stolen from the body of a dead soldier—and stood, full of energy. He didn't know where to go from here, hadn't planned for victory.

But he knew what he'd like to do. Better, he knew where to ask the right questions.

*****

“I want to know where the people are,” Gideon said in an even, almost bored voice. “I asked your friends
, but they didn't answer.”

The clearing was strewn with bodies, but the swarm would be on its way soon to clean up the mess. Gideon never let them get too far behind. They were so easily distracted, his little darlings. The loud crack of the rifle—three fast shots to take out the guard, and one a few seconds later to lame the woman—would draw their attention.

The rest was knife work.

Five people killed, and easily done at that. One dead man to start, one injured woman clutching at the spurt of blood jetting from her leg, and the same question asked for each of them before they died. The next two were teenagers, too rebellious to do more than spit in his face. His weapon cowed them, but not enough to make them give in.

Two quick slashes, and the mud turned red around them.

The other pair of corpses were an older couple, too horrified to even attempt to answer when Gideon spoke to them. Which led him to the woman, who now had a belt cinched tight around her thigh and her hands tied behind her back. Gideon straddled her stomach.

“Hey,” he said, tapping the woman on the forehead with a crusty fingernail. “I'm waiting. Talk to me. Where are the people?”

She stared at him, terrified
, but with a defiant gleam in her sky-blue eyes. “Fuck you. You're going to kill me anyway. Just do it.”

“That's true,” Gideon replied. “You're gonna die, tha
t’s for sure. But it's up to you how much pain you feel before then.”

The woman glanced at his crotch, eyes widening. Gideon laughed.

“Sorry, sweetheart, but that's not gonna happen. That old thing stopped being much use a long time ago.” He fumbled around the pockets of his coat, stained with the juices of the dead man he'd pulled it from, and eventually produced a small butane torch. He clicked it to life.

“I want to know where the people are,” Gideon repeated as he held the blade of his small knife to the blue-white flame.

The woman's breathing quickened, but she closed her mouth into a tight line. Gideon cocked his head at the display of self-control, birdlike in his curiosity. Without changing expression, he pressed the flat of the blade against her cheek, the tip just below her eye.

Skin sizzled, the smell somewhere between chicken and bacon. He pulled the blade away when the sound stopped, not bothering to ask again. The monster wanted pain and Gideon agreed with it, and both of them were dangerously close to forgetting their purpose.

A second, louder wave of sizzling was broken by the woman's pent-up scream. Gideon stared at her as she shrieked in agony, wonder and confusion on his face.