A Time to Die (30 page)

“The government came into the village. I watched from the hill of our vineyard. Everyone was gathered in the town square. Then they started shooting!”

The interviews went on, including the women describing how it started north, went south, and changed to the cannibalistic behavior. She included how those bit then became enfermo, and how some just seemed to change without reason.

“Many were eager for the chance to tell their story during that respite from fight or flight,” she dubbed. “Unfortunately it won’t be a respite that lasts very long.”

“Here they come!” someone yelled and the camera was snatched up and you could see her running in its jogging view until it came to the window. She sat it on its little tripod and then the rifle barrel appeared. Outside, they came in a human wave. She’d decided to leave out the earlier brief attack on the boy. It didn’t work without showing her holding the dead boy, and that was an affront to her grieving. Kathy knew she was somewhere in the house, still feeling that little boy in her arms, still hurting, was a mother still wishing it was her instead of him. “Fire!” she yelled, and the footage ended.

Kathy set the camera to live feed and pointed it at herself, checking the focus through the computers. She gasped at how gaunt and wretched she looked. It reminded her of women she’d seen in Chechnya or Yugoslavia during the war. Torn, beaten, and defeated. “That attack lasted several minutes. As you saw there were hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They are the enfermo, and you cannot reason with them. They have no compassion, they have no mercy. All you can do is run, or fight.” She had a cut she would add, a little unfocused gratefully, of the bloody aftermath and the stragglers feeding on their slain brethren.

“It is an unspeakable horror we face. What is this disease? Where did it come from? Does our government understand the magnitude of the tragedy that is coming our way as fast as insane feet will carry it? Or are there already enfermo in our own country? The fact that the government detained me and tried to suppress this story speaks volumes on the potential truth. Frightening, horrifying even, if you consider it.”

“If you encounter a person acting like the enfermo, I beg you to avoid them at all costs. Call the police, run away, and defend yourself. This is life or death now. They’re in the United States for sure, only in what numbers? Our soldiers have faced them, and in at least one incident died.” She’d cut in the downed and burning chopper, but leave out the soldier. She owed him that much, and she was afraid of talking about the machine guns and explosives. Even now, she was fearful of the government and their laws. “This is Kathy Clifford, coming to you from somewhere in southern Texas.”

Another few minutes of work and a high speed run through and it was finished. Total run time just under 25 minutes. Perfect, she thought with a nod. Out of her bag she brought her last burnable asset. Unfolding it she pressed the power button. The little LCD screen came alive with an animated Earth. Across its surface a meteor traced a path of stars around an orbit, the stars spelling the word Iridium.

Kathy linked the phone with her computer via a special USB cable and extended the big antenna then waited. “Acquiring satellite,” the phone displayed. “Ready” it said after a minute. The data connection wasn’t great by modern standards, especially uploading. She didn’t dare risk sending the story directly to a news service. Instead she uploaded it to a prepared Dropbox account. The phone showed 50% power when she started. Twenty minutes later when the story was finished it read 15%. “Damn, that was close,” she said and started typing an email. That, thankfully, only took a minute. Then she sent it to a preset group of accounts. Twenty news agencies, stringers, and freelance aggregators. “Done.”

“They’re poking around closer to the house,” Tobey said from the door then stopped when he looked over her setup. “Is than an Iridium satellite phone?”

“Yep,” she said, “don’t ask me where I got it.”

“Jesus girl,” he said and ran over, “why the fuck didn’t you tell me you had one? I’ve been checking my cellphone every couple hours praying I’d get a signal!”

“What difference does it make?” she asked. “It’s not like a few cops could help us. Besides we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“There are always options,” he said. “May I?”

“Sure,” she said and handed it over. “They might turn it off really soon, once they find out what I just did. And there’s only 15% power left. Long odds.”

“Better than no odds,” he said and accepted the phone. He had his own cellphone out and was looking up a number. Once he had it he punched it quickly into the satellite phone and pressed transmit. The phone rang for a moment then picked up.

“Fort Hood, Third Corps Ops,” she heard a woman’s voice answer, “authentication please.”

“Thank you, authentication follows. Victor, Charlie, Romeo, Tango, Tango, Zebra, one, three, niner. Pendleton,” and he spelled his name using the same lingo.

“Thank you, please stand by.”

“Army Fort Hood?” she asked. He only nodded, listening for the controller to come back and hoping against hope.

“Major Pendleton,” a gravelly voiced man came on the line, “if this is him, care to tell me where I caught one?”

“Left ass cheek, General Rose, sir. Your favorite cocktail party conversation topic.”

“Tobey, you mother fucker!” the man laughed. “Where the fuck are you and why the fuck are you using the secure ops line?”

“Just across the border from Mexico, east of Monterrey. And that should answer both questions.”

There was a long silence. “Jesus jumping Christ, Tobey. I could lose my star if you’re involved in what I think you’re involved in.”

“So you know about it?”

“Only a little bit. Where you near Monterrey when it went?”

“Went? What do you mean, general?”

“You don’t know? It’s all over the news, son.”

“Sir, we’re so deep in the shit a snorkel would just feed us more shit.”

“I see.” Another pause. “Well, it’s on the God-damned news. I can neither confirm, nor deny if it is true that Monterrey Mexico was destroyed by a nuclear weapon.”

Kathy’s hand went to her mouth and her eyes went wide. “Oh no!”

“Who’s that with you, Tobey?”

“Girlfriend, sir,” Tobey said.

“No shit? First good news I’ve heard in a couple days.” Even still digesting the news of Monterrey’s fate, Kathy felt a flush on her cheeks at that. “Ann has been gone for years.”

“Who dropped the bomb, sir?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that the Mexican government nuked their own city.”

The phone beeped and vibrated. He looked down and saw the power bar said 10% and was now red. “General Rose, I’m going to give you some information. What you do with it is your decision.”

“Proceed,” the man said.

“I’m on my property in Texas, coordinates are—” and he read off a series of numbers from memory. “In addition to myself and my girlfriend, we have in excess of 100 Mexican nationals, refugees from the…incident, who are requesting asylum.” The phone beeped, 5% remaining.

“Son of a bitch, Major, what are you doing to me?!”

“Asking you for help, sir. We have hundreds, perhaps thousands of hostiles on our six. They are currently occupied with us, but we cannot hold out much longer. When we are gone they are heading north. I repeat, they are in the open into our territory, behind the wire.”

“Okay, I’ll see what—” The phone buzzed and displayed “Battery Depleted, Shutting Down.” Tobey shrugged and handed it to her.

“For what it’s worth,” he told her. “Thanks.”

“Thank you for trying,” she said. “Girlfriend, eh?”

He blushed, actually blushed, and rubbed his short cut hair. “It seemed the thing to say at the time.”

“I’d be happy to be your girlfriend,” she said, a little surprised at herself. She hadn’t had an official boyfriend in many years. No time for that as a big time reporter. Or as a fugitive from justice, for that matter. “In fact, I’d say I have been for a while. I’ve never had a boyfriend invade another country to come and rescue me.”

“You take care of yourself pretty well,” he said, “if you’d had some better firepower you might not have needed rescuing.”

“Daddy didn’t raise no idiots,” she said with a wry smile. “So what now?”

“We wait.”

* * *

Aka Sushi on Madison Avenue, New York City, just south of 79th Street, was one of the newest and trendiest of a thousand sushi shops on the island. Opened by a Japanese sushi master named Koru Akahori, he set out to create a traditional shop that served both the best Japan had to offer, but also not afraid to try new trends. Koru received daily air shipments of tuna and salmon caught the day before in Japan and sent packed in ice. People who tried his sushi said it was the best sushi experience in their lives.

Just before noon Koru parked his Aston Martin in his private space and entered the shop. His assistants had been hard at work for hours, cooking rice, hand pressing seaweed, chopping vegetables, and setting tables. The restaurant boasted a twenty-stool sushi bar and forty tables. There was already a line outside and they didn’t open for an hour.

His first assistant chef bowed and greeted him, and gestured at a cutting table. On it sat a particularly good acquisition, half of a 1,500-pound tuna caught in the Sea of Japan twenty-six hours ago. Koru took a razor sharp filet knife and with surgical precision made several quick slices, extracting a triangular wedge of tuna. His assistant held out a plate and Koru placed the slice on it, then cut it into four pieces. Some sauces were provided by another assistant and Koru tasted the sashimi with each sauce in turn. Satisfied, he nodded and the chefs descended to cut up the incredibly expensive fish.

The doors opened on schedule and the restaurant was soon flooded with hungry customers devouring plate after plate of delectable sushi, sashimi, nigiri, and tempura. With guests often having to wait more than an hour, the staff was diligent to move people out as soon after finishing as possible to avoid them holding the table too long.

The midday rush over, Toru returned from the bar where he usually retreated to his office for a few minutes. He reviewed some invoices, checked the Asian market for fish prices, and had an extra cup of ginger tea. His stomach was a little upset. But, by the time he finished his paperwork and he got up, he nearly fell. His head was swimming and he was having trouble concentrating. He pressed the intercom and told his assistant to come, planning to have him take the first chef for dinner. It seemed like a good idea to head home. The assistant was just finishing dinner prep and said he’d be there in fifteen minutes. Toru said that was acceptable.

Fifteen minutes later the assistant knocked on Toru’s office door. There was no answer. He looked confused and knocked again, with the same results. He scowled, confused and uncertain. It was a major disruption in harmony to simply barge in on your employer, and was not done in Japan. Even though he was Nisei, born to Japanese who’d immigrated to the USA decades ago, he was always conscious of propriety. But Koru had not sounded well. After one more knock with no answer, he opened to door slowly, announcing himself in Japanese and apologizing for his intrusion.

Toru was face down on the desk, twitching uncontrollably. The assistant bolted over and reached out to place a hand on Toru Akahori’s head. The man suddenly sat bolt upright, saliva and blood dripping down from lips pulled back in a snarl. The assistant took a half a step back and the master sushi chef launched himself over the desk and tackled him. When nearby kitchen staff came running they found horror waiting.

* * *

The bus was marked San Francisco Christian Academy. Inside were seventy-one twelve-year-old boys and nine teachers fresh from a camping trip at the beach twenty-four miles down the California coastal highway at Pescadero State Park. They’d made camp in a state park and roasted marshmallows and hotdogs each night all weekend. They sang religious songs and enjoyed Christian fellowship. On the last night, as a treat, they took surf rods and went fishing. Luck had been with them and a variety of fish were caught and roasted for dinner. A few were left for breakfast and one of the teachers took some rice and veggies and made ad hoc sushi. The boys laughed and about half tried it, with varying degrees of like to disgust.

The coastal highway was twisty and slow in the older school bus. More than two hours from breakfast to the edge of San Francisco. By the time the Pacific highway changed to the multi-lane freeway outside Daly City, twenty of the children were violently ill and the teachers were panicking. Thoughts of mercury poisoning or something else were racing through their minds as the driver was ordered to divert to the nearest hospital. The other children watched their classmates with apprehension as they went from ill, to near catatonia, to delusional barking and rambling. As they were pulling up the emergency ramp of San Francisco General Hospital just off the 101, a boy snapped out of his delirium, looked around, snarled and grabbed a teacher around the neck from behind and sunk his teeth into the man’s flesh.

Two others had gone insane before the first orderly came to the bus door in time to see one of the adults crawling down the stairs, bright red arterial blood spraying from a torn carotid artery. Before the afternoon was over, three doctors, two nurses, and nine orderlies would be bitten by the kids. Two boys never made it into the hospital. While security was helping to restrain the stricken, they raced off down the sidewalk into downtown San Francisco.