Apocalypse unleashed

8

United States of America

Fort Benning, Georgia

Local Time 0635 Hours

“Pull the bicycle over to the side and stand down,” one of the men in the jeep ordered.

Joey’s mouth went dry, and his first instinct was to flee. He just knew the soldiers were there because of what had happened at the mall. They were going to arrest him for murder. He didn’t know how his mom was going to deal with that.

Dawn was starting to light the eastern sky, but the soldiers still needed light to see well. The one in the passenger seat got out. He shined his flashlight in Joey’s eyes.

“You got ID, kid?” the soldier asked.

Joey calmed a little at that. If they didn’t know who he was, that was a good thing.

“Yeah,” he answered. He made sure to keep his hands where the soldiers could clearly see them. Goose had taught him that, saying that night patrols were often performed by young and inexperienced soldiers who could overreact. “My dog tags are under my shirt. I’ve got a driver’s license in my wallet.”

“Lemme see them.”

Joey caught the chain around his neck with a thumb and lifted the dog tags free. He remembered how cool he thought they were when he’d gotten them. Then they’d become something he had to have with him.

The guard checked the dog tags and the driver’s license.

“You know Sergeant Gander?” the guard asked.

“He’s my stepdad,” Joey said.

“He’s a good soldier.”

Joey didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept quiet.

“What are you doing out here, Joey?”

“Thought I’d clear my head.”

“We haven’t had any problems in the camp, but it might not be safe on the streets.”

“Don’t see why it wouldn’t be. You guys are out here.” Joey gave the guy a smile.

For a moment, the soldier held his expression; then he grinned too. “Yeah, we are. What do you have on your mind?” He handed Joey back his license.

“My mom is one of the camp counselors. She’s taken in a lot of kids.” Joey shrugged, borrowing one of the teen habits he knew adults attributed to kids. It was camouflage for the moment. “Kind of crowded at my house right now.”

“I bet. I heard your mom is doing really good things.”

Joey nodded, but he wanted to scream. “Just wanted to catch a breath of fresh air. Maybe ride down to the main gates and look out at the city.”

“There’s not much to see,” the soldier said. “Things there are still pretty confusing.”

“I know. I’ve seen it on television.”

“Just stay back from the gate. The guys there have jobs to do. The general has given orders that everyone’s to stay on post. If you leave, it’s going to be hard to get in again.”

“No plans on leaving,” Joey replied.

“Take care of yourself, Joey.” The soldier climbed into the jeep.

Joey waved, then got back on his bike.

Columbus, Georgia

St. Francis Hospital Chapel

Local Time 0641 Hours

“Miss McGrath?”

Jenny McGrath blinked her eyes awake. For just a second, panic filled her because she couldn’t remember where she was. Bright lights reflected off white walls. She felt stiff and uncomfortable, and she was aware that the back of her thighs had gone numb.

“Jenny?”

Someone shook Jenny’s shoulder. Instinctively, Jenny reached for the hand that held her, gripped two of the fingers, and prepared to pull the hand from her. She’d had to defend herself against unwanted attentions before. She was used to moving quickly.

She looked up into Ester Pryne’s face. A diminutive woman in her forties, Ester wasn’t at all a threatening figure. She was a nurse in the cardiac ward, where Jenny’s father was currently awaiting a miracle.

That’s what the doctor had finally come out and said a few days ago: that it would take a miracle for Jackson McGrath to recover from the car wreck he’d had a few weeks ago.

“Are you all right, child?” Ester wore granny glasses and kept her peroxide blonde hair short. Laugh lines-she refused to allow them to be called crow’s feet-surrounded her eyes and marked the corners of her mouth.

“My father,” Jenny said, because that was the first thought in her head every time someone woke her. Jackson McGrath hadn’t regained consciousness since the accident.

“Your father is still with us,” Ester said. “I’m worried about you, though.”

“I’m fine,” Jenny said. “Thank you.” Conscious of the slack way she was sitting in the church pew in the hospital’s chapel, she sat up straighter and felt for her backpack at her feet. Thankfully it was still there.

“I thought I might eat breakfast this morning after my shift. I’m off at seven. If you don’t mind, I could use the company.”

Ester’s ploy was so thinly disguised that Jenny thought she would have had to still be asleep to be taken in by it. Still, she felt grateful for the attention. “Don’t you think you’ve bought me enough breakfasts lately?” Jenny asked.

“No. I don’t think you’ve gained an ounce. In fact, I’m worried that you might have lost weight.”

Jenny knew that she had. Her jeans no longer fit her the way they had, and she’d needed to tighten her belt. Before the last few weeks, she’d always been in good shape. Working extra jobs to pick up the slack left by her father’s drinking had kept her fit.

“Let me buy breakfast today,” Jenny said. Three weeks ago, one of the hospital administrators had offered her a job in janitorial. With all the people who had gone missing, St. Francis was seriously understaffed. Jenny suspected the nurses had made the suggestion. Since then, she’d been working forty-hour weeks, and the hospital had turned a blind eye to the fact that she was sleeping in the waiting rooms and the chapel.

“Well, I appreciate the offer,” Ester said. “Do you want to come by the nurses’ station and get me?”

“Sure.” Jenny glanced at the clock on the wall. “Do I have time for a shower? And I want to go by and check on Dad.”

“You have plenty of time. I’ve got some paperwork I can noodle around with if you’re running late.” Ester held out a plastic bag. “I also brought you this.”

Jenny hesitated. Growing up as Jackson McGrath’s daughter had brought only two kinds of attention: scorn and pity. Over the years, she hadn’t cared for either of them.

“What is it?” Jenny asked.

“A gift. Something a few of us got together and wanted to give you.”

“Ester, I don’t want charity. I just-”

“This isn’t charity, child,” Ester interrupted. “It’s a gift. There’s not a nurse on this floor who hasn’t seen hard times. A lot of us learned not to believe in much outside our own skins, but we learned to accept small kindnesses that came our way. If we hadn’t gotten them, we might not have made it through those dark times. One thing we know: you don’t get through them alone.” She pushed the bag forward.

Reluctantly, Jenny took the bag and peered inside. A pair of jeans, khakis, and a handful of blouses were neatly folded inside.

“We know you’ve had to struggle to keep your clothes clean,” Ester said. “We’ve seen you washing your clothes in the bathroom and drying them outside.”

Jenny’s face burned with embarrassment. She’d been doing all she could do to keep herself clean. She hadn’t wanted to get thrown out of the hospital, and being unclean would only have made her feel like everything she had to deal with was impossible.

“We had to guess at the sizes,” Ester said, “but most of us are pretty good at that. You’ll have to let us know how good we did.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Jenny whispered.

“You say, ‘Thank you.’ That’s all.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said. Surprising herself, she reached out and hugged the older woman.

“You’re welcome, child. You’re welcome.” Ester patted Jenny on the back and hugged her. “Now you get your shower. Both of us need to eat.”

Fort Benning, Georgia

Local Time 0649 Hours

Guards held the checkpoint with the barriers in place. There were more of them present than Joey had ever seen. On other occasions, before the disappearances, the guards had often laughed and joked, though they’d always been professional. There was no laughing and joking now. In fact, two jeeps filled with armed men sat farther back. Their presence was obvious and powerful.

Other guards, these with sentry dogs, walked the perimeter. The dogs moved effortlessly and remained ever watchful.

As he watched them, Joey felt more safe than he had in days. The nightmares about the mall shooting, about Zero and the others, had left him wrecked. He knew that. Seeing the guards at work helped him relax. As long as he didn’t leave the camp, he was safe.

Unless Zero or one of the others got picked up and busted for the murder of the old man. Then they could blame everything on Joey.

As soon as those thoughts crept into his mind, Joey felt sick with dread and fear all over again. His hands shook on the bike handles, and he thought he was going to be sick.

“Hey, kid.”

Joey looked over at the K-9 soldier and the German shepherd at his side. “Yeah?”

“Do you feel okay?” The soldier was older, probably Goose’s age, and he wore sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeves.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“Just kind of creepy thinking about it, you know?”

The sergeant hesitated a minute, then nodded. “Yeah. Really creepy. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find out this was all a bad dream.”

“But it’s not.”

“No, I guess not.” The sergeant looked at Joey again. “But don’t worry about it too much, kid. The brass will figure this out. They always do.”

“I hope so,” Joey said. “The sooner the better.”

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, stay back from the fence, okay? It makes the snipers tense.”

Snipers? Joey looked around at the nearby buildings.

“They’re there, kid. Always on watch.”

“Okay.” That made Joey feel even more safe. The camp was like one of those old medieval castles. The armed guards were the moat that cut it off from the rest of the world.

“I gotta get back to it,” the sergeant said. “Got a lot of miles to cover before my shift’s over.”

“Have a good day,” Joey said. After the sergeant and the dog had moved on, Joey sat astride the ten-speed and stared out where Columbus sat touched by the early dawn. He thought about the madness that was in the city.

Many metropolitan areas had tried to return to a semblance of order. That was what people did, he supposed. Just picked up the pieces and moved on. Like his mom had when his dad left them. And like what she’d done in the camp when so many kids needed somebody.

But that was just the surface. Looting and violence had broken out all over. People were scared and mad, and they were going to be that way until they knew for sure what had happened.

And that it wasn’t going to happen again.

St. Francis Hospital

Local Time 0656 Hours

Jenny luxuriated in the hot shower. The nurses had allowed her into their locker room weeks ago, once they’d discovered she was living at the hospital. Megan Gander had tried to get her to return to Fort Benning, but Jenny didn’t want to leave her father. Her whole life, every time he’d gotten bad, wherever they’d been living, whether in jail or in a psych ward, she’d always managed to be there for him. She lived with the fear that if she wasn’t there, something would happen to him.

Dark hair washed and dried with a community hair dryer, she quickly dressed in a pair of khaki cargo pants, a white blouse with three-quarter sleeves, and her tennis shoes. She used a separate plastic bag to put her dirty clothes in. She planned to wash them later.

Jenny looked in the mirror and noticed how hollow-eyed she was becoming. Red rimmed her green eyes. No wonder the nurses are worried about you. They probably think you’re going to be their next patient. A little makeup would have helped, but she didn’t have any.

Satisfied she’d done all she could do, she turned from the mirror.