“Where are they?”
“They set up inside the building REPER abandoned, I guess they left a ton of equipment and supplies behind. But that means they’re right there outside of quarantine and they’ll be the first to get overrun if the quarantine fails. So the first order of business is to meet up with them and get a status update. But it’s a fortified building, and we’re all going to be armed. Everything is going to be fine.”
Josh turned out to not be full of crap on the subject of getting inside town—the army guys manning the checkpoint on the country road south of the lake let the RV through after a short conversation with Fredo. But then, a few miles later, they met a second checkpoint, one that was approximately ten times scarier than the first. It was a terrifying wall of black vehicles and men in equally terrifying black suits. They had night-vision goggles or something behind their visors that lit up red in the night, making them look like freaking demons.
“Josh? What is this? Who are—”
Josh shushed her, but Amy thought he looked like he was trying with all his might to keep poop from escaping his body. An army of the black-clad men with their elaborate machine guns swarmed the bus, those red eyes floating in the night. Barrels were raised, like they were ready to paint the inside of the RV red. One of the guards went to the driver’s side door and Fredo held a one-way conversation with him. Fredo gave the guy the OGZA pass code or whatever, but there was no answer. The guy backed away and conferred with someone else. After a tightly knotted minute, he waved them through. Amy and the seven members of the Zombie Response Squad entered Outbreak Ground Zero.
The power seemed to be out in most of the town and all the stores were closed, but they would be anyway since it was the middle of the night. Still no signal on her phone. Fredo said, “We’re six blocks away. Still nothing from OGZA?”
Josh tapped on his laptop and said, “No. Everything has been cut off for the last hour.”
Amy said, “We probably just got close enough to the town where the wireless signals are all blocked or whatever. Like maybe they can still send but we can’t receive now.”
Josh said, “That’s probably it,” in a way that did not sound at all convincing. “I actually don’t know how they were getting around the blackout before.”
Fredo said, “Whoa, is that it? The lights down there?”
Josh answered, “That’s the quarantine. That’s the city’s hospital back there behind all that. They got the perimeter all lit up. Look at that fence.”
“Jesus,” Fredo breathed. “It’s … right … there. They’re right there behind that fence. Jesus.”
Amy could see Fredo’s imagination spinning with images of what creatures must be shambling beyond that fence. Or maybe she was projecting, because that’s what she was doing.
And David is in there with them.
Wait, why were there advertisements all over the fence? Under one of the floodlights she could see an ad for McDonald’s bratwurst.
A chubby guy hugging a long machine gun—a gun Amy recognized as “the gun all of the bad guys use in Vietnam movies”—said, “What do we do if they’ve been overrun?”
Josh answered, “We’ll have to play it by ear,” which Amy understood to mean, “We’ll turn around and run away and congratulate ourselves for having tried.” The RV continued past the quarantine and headed right for the creepiest buildings in town: the old TB asylum, a depressing old building that looked like a giant cinder block somebody had fished out of a swamp, next to a smaller building just like it, both of them looming over a bunch of dead trees.
Amy said, “Okay, that place does not look safe.”
The larger building was damaged, with smoke drifting from a huge hole in one end. A lot of equipment was scattered around the yard. She saw boxes of supplies on a pallet and at least two hoods from decontamination suits laying in the weeds. They’d all either been killed, or run away in a panic. And this RV full of college kids was declaring it their new safe house.
Josh said, “I bet it’s one of the safest locations in town. The feds already did the job of securing all the windows and doors and OGZA says they found a lot of food and stuff left behind.”
The RV was rolling to a stop. Amy stared at the massive, smoking hole in the wall and her imagination lit up with the image of some elephant-sized creature, breathing fire, smashing through it with its fists.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me, Sullivan.
Josh said, “That’s the gym down there, with the hole in it, but OGZA got that sealed off so you can’t get into the rest of the building that way. I guess some oxygen tanks exploded.”
“Were they trying to kill a shark?”
“What?”
Amy didn’t answer. To Fredo, Josh said, “You got the flares?”
Without a word, Fredo reached into the glove compartment and pulled out an orange pistol with a comically oversized barrel. He rolled down his window, pointed the gun toward the sky and fired. The lawn was bathed in light, a tiny white star rocketing up, then drifting lazily back to earth.
Josh said, “They’re supposed to signal with a light from one of the windows. They have a lantern or something and they’ll flash it off and on.”
Everyone stared at the darkened building. Minutes passed. No lights.
“Maybe they didn’t see it.”
Josh said, “Do another one. Do you have a red one? Maybe they missed the last one.”
Another flare fired. Another wait. No response from the building.
Vietnam Gun Guy said, “Man, that’s ominous as shit. Maybe we should go back.”
Josh said, “Hey, this is what we came for, Donnie. If they need help, so be it. That’s why we brought all this hardware. This is the real thing here, we’re not just playing zombie video games and jerking off here. Everybody load up, we’re goin’ in.”
Amy finally spoke up and said what she had been wanting to say for more than two hours. It was futile, she knew, but she had to try.
“Josh … I want you to leave the guns behind.”
Vietnam Gun Guy, Donnie, said, “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”
Josh asked, “Why?”
Amy took a breath and said, “I don’t know how to say this without bruising your ego or whatever, but you’ve accidentally pointed that gun at my head four times in the course of loading it. Josh … I’m impressed that you did this, you’re amazing for just making this trip. But you don’t know what you’re doing with that thing. And I think there’s a one percent chance you’re going to actually need the guns and a ninety-nine percent chance that a stray cat is going to jump out of the shadows and you’re all going to shoot each other. And me.”
Josh laughed.
“I’m not joking. You’re not pixels on a screen. You’re flesh and blood. If you get spooked and shoot your friend, he’s dead, and dead forever, or in a wheelchair. You’ll live with that the rest of your life. Leave the guns behind. If there’s something in there, we are way, way, way more likely to survive if we just run as hard as we can back here, than if you try to stand and act out some video game fantasy. The guns will just weigh you down, Josh.”
“We’ll be careful, I promise.”
“No, you won’t, because you don’t have the training to understand what ‘careful’ is. Josh, I’m begging you.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“If you leave the guns here, when we get back, I will have sex with you. I’ll put that in writing. I am not kidding at all. Your friends can watch. You can videotape it.”
“Stop it. We’re not going in there without protection, and that’s that. And this isn’t a video game fantasy, you’re insulting all of us when you say that.”
As he spoke, Josh was affixing some small electronic device to his shotgun. Amy thought it was some kind of fancy scope, but Josh tapped away at his laptop, and a video window appeared. He swung the shotgun around and the video image swung around with it. Josh had a wireless gun camera.
He handed the laptop to Amy and said, “If we don’t make it back, make sure the video gets uploaded to the YouTube channel. The world needs to know what’s happened here.”
Amy said, “Oh, so I’m not going now?”
“We’ve got the guns—no, listen—we’re going to go make sure it’s all clear first. Then we’ll come back for you. Don’t look at me like that. We’re not being sexist here, Fredo’s going to wait behind, too, and he’s male as shit. He’s going to stay behind the wheel, engine running, in case we have to make a quick getaway. You’re going to be watching it live, on my gun cam. If things go bad in there and it looks like we’re not going to make it out, don’t hesitate to just g—”
“I won’t. Fredo, you hear that? If I say go, we go, right?”
“Yeah, I’m hitting the gas at the sound of gunshots and screams.”
To Amy, Josh said, “Okay, your new job is now to make sure Fredo doesn’t leave unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
To the men in the RV, Josh said, “Regulators, mount up.”
Everyone stood. One guy had a little flashlight attached to his gun, and he clicked it on. The kid in back strapped on his bulky night-vision goggles.
Josh said, “Remember, save your ammo. This isn’t a video game, we’re not going to pick up more along the way. Short, controlled bursts.” He turned to Amy and said, “I’ll be back. I promise.”
Josh took a deep breath and opened the side door. A blast of cold air shouldered its way in. Outside was the sound of wind whistling through the wounded building and suddenly Amy badly wanted that door closed and locked again, to have the warm, metal cocoon sealed off from whatever was out there.
Stop it.
The boys started filing out into the darkness and Amy heard Josh say, “Get your ears on.” Everybody pulled out earmuffs or plugs. Protecting against that debilitating monster shriek John had talked about.
