They were going to be
majorly disappointed.
Crash had watched as
the first of the military convoy had arrived. That was first light,
just as the sun was peering over the horizon. They had set up a
perimeter using tanks and concrete barricades they’d brought in
on a truck.
The survivors had
started reporting soon after. They came in cars, trucks, on foot. One
lady even pulled up on a golf cart.
By noon, the area was
buzzing with activity. The whole process was surprisingly organized
with survivors checking in and being examined on one end, then being
assigned a number and a basic supply kit in section two. Finally,
they made their way to the final section where they were asked to
wait until the first of the convoy started heading back to the safe
zone.
Crash had managed to
hack in to the central communications system of the entire United
States Military. Through there, he had been able to locate the group
that was assigned to McLean. With a few simple pieces of code, he now
had access to every computer, every radio, even every cell phone of
the military personnel in that unit.
It was amazing what
he’d become capable of in the past week.
He still didn’t
completely understand how or why it worked, but his mind was able to
communicate with any machine. It was as if they were people he was
talking to on a forum, only they weren’t people at all.
If he wanted to get
into a person’s cell phone, he simply reached out to the phone
with his mind.
It sounded insane, but
it was real and it was awesome.
And what made it even
more amazing was the fact that all of the power in the greater D.C.
area had gone out two days ago. No one in an entire fifty mile radius
of his neighborhood in Trinidad had power.
Except him.
He’d simply told
the machines to all work and they did. He could even unplug his
computer from the wall if he wanted to, and it would still work.
So here he was in his
crappy basement apartment with all these luxuries no one else had. Of
course, he was glad to be below ground with no windows. That way, if
anyone out there was looking for a place to pillage and plunder, they
wouldn’t know what he had down here.
He paced behind his
computer now, waiting for the three to arrive. It had to be soon.
The evac site looked
like a war zone with its mangled, half-eaten bodies and downed
zombies piled on top of each other.
There had been a group
of survivors, but they got the heck out of there as soon as they
could. On the radio, the acting commander had said he didn’t
want to risk losing any further survivors, but Crash thought the guy
was probably just scared to death and wanting to get the hell out of
dodge.
From the corner of his
eye, Crash saw movement on the screen. He leaned over the desk,
planting his palms on the top of it as he watched the screen closely.
Was it them?
A van pulled up and
three living, breathing humans got out, their faces stricken with
fear and sorrow and confusion.
Yes, it was them. Two
girls and a guy. All three about Crash’s age. Maybe a little
younger. But it was them.
The blond guy walked
over toward where the check-in had been and Crash sat down, prepared.
A two-way radio had
been left on the table. They had been using it to communicate with
the supply camp, but when all hell broke lose, it was discarded and
no one bothered coming back for it.
Crash pulled his
microphone close to his mouth and took in a breath. This was going to
be interesting.
“Pick up,”
he said. “Is anyone there?”
He waited, watching on
one of the hospital’s outside security cameras as the three of
them hurried toward the radio. It was the guy who picked it up first.
“Hi,” he
answered. “This is Noah Vincent. We’re reporting for
evacuation, but this place is a mess.”
“I know,”
Crash said. “There was an attack earlier in the day. Anyone who
was still alive when the smoke cleared was taken to the safe zone.”
“Is that where
you are now?” the hot blonde girl shouted into the radio. “Are
you coming to get us?”
Crash cleared his
throat. Man, she was one hot tamale. But she sounded terrified and it
made his stomach sick to have to break the news to her.
“No,” he
said. “I’m sorry. But the soldiers aren’t coming
back for anyone. I’m pretty sure they’ve written that
place off for good at this point.”
“Wait, so you
aren’t a soldier?” Noah asked.
“Not in the
slightest bit,” Crash answered.
“Then who are
you?”
Good question. This was
going to be the hard part. How exactly would explain this? They would
think he was some nut-job.
“My name is
Crash,” he said. “I’m just a guy who’s been
hiding out in a basement for the past several weeks. But I’ve
been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for all three of you.”
He saw them stare at
each other, confused. He couldn’t blame them. He was still
confused about how all this worked.
“This is going to
sound crazy, but I dreamed about you before this virus even started,”
he said. “I didn’t know your names, but I knew that fate
would somehow bring us together.”
He paused. No one said
anything, so he kept going.
“I hope you guys
are still with me here, because this is important,” he said.
“We’re
listening,” Noah said.
Crash ran a hand
through his hair. “I dreamed about the virus before it
happened,” he said. “And somehow, I knew that I needed to
be prepared to meet up with four others. People like me who would
have a special purpose in this new world. Am I making any sense?”
The girl with the black
hair exchanged a meaningful look with Noah. She took the radio from
his hands.
“More than you
can know,” she said. “So you have special abilities too?
Something extraordinary that you couldn’t have ever imagined
doing before this began?”
He laughed. “How
do you think I’m talking to you now?” he asked. “I’m
sitting at my computer in a city with no power, but for me, the power
is still on and on my monitors I can see you clear as day from the
security cameras just outside the emergency room.”
All three of them
turned and looked toward the hospital.
“I’m
Parrish, by the way,” she said. “And this is Karmen.”
Karmen, huh? In his
mind, he’d been calling her Barbie. He kind of liked that
better, because she was so freaking perfect.
She grabbed the radio
from Parrish. “You said you have power? And food?”
“Yep,” he
said.
“Where are you?”
Noah asked.
“Trinidad,”
he said.
“Like Trinidad
the island?” Noah’s eyes got huge and Crash had to laugh.
“No, like
Trinidad, the neighborhood in D.C.”
Noah’s shoulders
visibly relaxed. “Man, that’s not too far from here,”
he said.
“I know,”
Crash told him. “Do you think you can make it here? I’ve
got enough food and water to last for months. I think we have a lot
we need to talk about.”
“Wait,”
Parrish said. “Earlier, you said that in your dream there were
four of us. But we only have three.”
Crash frowned. “I
know,” he said. “I can’t explain it. I just know
there are five of us out there. Five with special abilities. The four
of us and someone else, but for some reason, I haven’t dreamed
of the fifth person yet.”
Noah took the radio.
“How do we know we can trust you?”
Crash looked at the
video. “Because you have nowhere else to go.”
As she climbed out of
her dead mother’s van, Parrish’s hand trembled. On the
road, they had seen a few undead wandering around, but there was a
sense of safety inside the car. As long as they were moving, there
was no way any of the zombies could touch them.
They had brought the
radio with them and Crash had managed to get them all the way to the
14th Street Bridge in the van, but now there was no choice
but to go the rest of the way on foot.
The entire bridge was
one massive pile-up of cars. People who had been desperate to flee
the city.
Getting out of the car
was terrifying. In the distance, she could see the sun hanging
dangerously low in the sky. Night would fall in the next few hours,
and they did not want to be outside when the rest of the undead
wandered out to look for food.
“It’s going
to be okay,” Noah said, startling her when she saw that he had
made his way around the car to her side. “We’ll make it
in time.”
Being with Noah
definitely made her feel better and she was glad not to be alone on
this journey. She tossed a look back at Karmen. She was worried about
her. Afraid she was going to be a liability if things got rough. She
seemed pretty shaken up by the scene at the evac point. Not that
Parrish could blame her. It was gruesome.
And she knew Karmen had
been thinking of it as her chance to get back to a normal life.
Normal just wasn’t
what fate had in mind for them.
“Okay, let’s
get this over with,” she said, carefully shutting the door to
the van. “According to Crash we need to be as quiet as possible
from here on out. He said there are packs of them inside some of
these dark buildings. He thinks that the sun makes their bodies
decompose faster, so they try to stay cool during the day and only
come out at night, after the sun goes down. But if they hear us, they
won’t care about the sun. They’ll just see us as food,
and come straight after us.”
“I don’t
think I can do this,” Karmen cried. “Why don’t we
just turn around, head for the mountains or someplace secluded? I
don’t get why we’re voluntarily going in to the city.”
“We’ve been
through all that,” Parrish told her, motioning for her to join
them outside the car and to keep her voice down. “You’re
free to stay here or drive up to the mountains on your own, but we’re
going in.”
“Fine, but if we
die in there—”
“If we die in
there, what? You’ll kill us?” Parrish smiled. Karmen
didn’t seem amused.
“Let’s just
get going,” Noah said. “We’re burning daylight.”
“Here,”
Parrish handed the radio to Karmen, “you talk to Crash and help
guide us through the city. Noah, you stay out front, and I’ll
stay in the back.”
Parrish took her
shotgun out of her bag, so glad they’d brought all the guns
despite the orders to leave them behind. She gripped the gun tight
and followed as Noah started climbing through the obstacle of smashed
up cars that blocked the bridge into the city.
Karmen struggled to
keep her eyes on Noah’s back or her own feet. Anything to keep
from looking into those smashed-up cars with dead bodies inside. All
those people who had only been trying to get out of the city. Her
stomach felt queasy just thinking about it. She definitely didn’t
need to see it.
It was all just too
much. Too much sorrow. Too much disappointment. Too much uncertainty.
The evacuation was her
last real hope of a normal life. She’d wanted it so badly. When
they drove up and saw all those dead bodies, the soldiers gone, she
almost lost her mind.
And now these cars. She
didn’t want to look.
Still, her eyes
betrayed her.
Karmen glanced inside
the blue station wagon to her right and immediately wished she
hadn’t. Inside, a small child, still strapped into her car
seat, lay lifeless. In front of her, Noah’s foot slipped. He
told her to wait there while he searched for a better path through
the pileup. No matter how hard she tried, Karmen couldn’t tear
her eyes away from that stupid blue station wagon. In the front seat,
the mother was slumped over the steering wheel. Another person was
doubled over in the passenger seat. The father? Maybe. She couldn’t
see very well from this angle.
But it was the child
that disturbed her so much. She looked like she was only sleeping.
Karmen leaned in toward the car and studied the little sleeping face.
The more she looked, the more she began to convince herself that the
child was still alive. Her cheeks looked almost rosy in this
lighting.
The window was rolled
down and Karmen reached out her hand, very slowly, toward the child.
She thought that maybe if she could shake the little girl’s
shoulders, she could find out if she was still alive or dead. She
imagined saving this little precious thing from her metal tomb, and
carrying her to Crash’s house where she could clean her up and
take care of her.
Her hand shook slightly
as she reached through the open window. She could hear Noah and
Parrish whispering toward the top of the car pyramid, but she
couldn’t hear them. All she could think about was this little
girl and what she would name her once she got her out of the car.
“Hello?”
she asked in a hushed voice.
Karmen ran her index
finger over the child’s pale, soft cheek. The girl’s eyes
opened wide and her head twisted with a morbid crack. The girl made
an awful hissing noise and Karmen jumped back, screaming in horror.
Inside the car, the
child writhed against her restraints. Her arms stretched out toward
Karmen, and her jaw opened and snapped shut like an alligator.
Falling back, Karmen scraped the back of her leg against the twisted
metal of a pickup truck and screamed again, this time in pain.
Parrish and Noah ran to
her side. “What happened?” Parrish asked, her eyes wide.
Karmen wasn’t
sure she could trust her voice. It was as if the moment had scared it
out of her. Instead, she could only point toward the child zombie in
the station wagon. In horror, she watched as Parrish lifted the butt
of her shotgun and jammed it into the child’s head. The tiny
figure went still.
The group kept moving,
finally finding a path through the twisted pile of metal. But for a
long time afterward, Karmen’s heart was filled with a sick,
hollow sense of loss.