Текст книги "The Darkest Place"
Автор книги: James N. Cook
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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 34 страниц)
“Dad. Dad! Wake up! You have to wake up!”
For just a moment, he came to, lifted his head, and looked me in the eye. A calloused hand touched my cheek, his dark eyes smiling one last time.
“It’s okay, Caleb. You’re gonna be all right.”
Then he went limp.
I shook him. No reaction. His eyes were open, pupils beginning to dilate despite the bright sun overhead. I laid him flat on the ground and shouted for Mike to help me start CPR. He exchanged a glance with Sophia, pushed her back a step with a gentle hand, and we went to work.
A minute passed. I worked the chest compressions while Mike breathed into Dad’s lungs. “Come on, come on, come on,” I repeated over and over again.
Sweat poured down my face, soaked my shirt, crimson droplets fell onto my father’s bloody torso. Five minutes went by. I felt Dad’s ribs crack, but kept working anyway. My breathing became labored, heart pounding in my chest. Several times Mike became light-headed and had to put his head between his knees to recover.
Several more minutes went by. The grinding in my father’s chest sounded like sticks rattling under a rubber mat. Finally, strong hands gripped me by the arms and pulled me away.
“Stop, Caleb,” Mike said, his voice hitching. “It’s over, son. He’s gone.”
I struggled against him for a moment, but it was no use. He was more than twice as strong as I was. He sat on the ground and held me in a bear hug until the kicking and screaming subsided into choking, racking sobs.
When he finally let me go, I pulled my father’s head to my chest and cried for him under the harsh, impartial glare of the Oklahoma sun.
FORTY-TWO
After an indeterminate period of wailing and cursing God for taking Lauren, Dad, and Blake away from me, when I finally gathered myself enough to assess our situation, I kissed my father on his cooling forehead and asked Mike to help me search the property for a shovel. He told me I needed to sit down and let him look me over.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
He took me to the driver’s side of the Humvee and turned the mirror so I could see my face. The left side was a bloody mess, the eye swollen, my cheek and forehead lacerated in dozens of places, several pieces of shrapnel embedded in the skin. I touched one of them and felt it grind against my upper gum line. It was a miracle I had not lost an eye. Oddly, there was no pain.
“Now look here,” Mike said, pointing at my torso and left arm. They hadn’t fared much better than my face. My shirt was soaked with so much blood I couldn’t tell its original color had been desert tan.
I sat on the front porch and let Mike and Sophia cut away my clothes and tend to my wounds. They extracted the shrapnel with tweezers, and in the case of one big shard stuck in my hip, a pair of needle-nose pliers. The pain gradually began to penetrate the haze of grief and adrenaline, but I simply gritted my teeth and took it. An hour later, the metal was out of me, the wounds were cleaned, stitched, and irrigated, and I had fifteen milligrams of OxyContin in my system. The multitude of bandages on the left side of my body reminded me of a confetti-covered street after a parade. I put on fresh clothes and the three of us searched the house.
The inside was ransacked, as though whoever once lived there had packed up and left in a hurry. There were three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a wide, spacious kitchen. The pantry was empty except for a few cans of vegetables on the floor and a burst-open sack of ant-ridden sugar. Most of the pots and pans were gone, and there were color-mismatched squares on the walls where pictures had been taken down. Others, mostly old-fashioned artist’s prints, remained. I could only assume the missing frames had contained family photos.
Funny, the things people take when they evacuate.
There was a gun cabinet in the master bedroom, but it was empty. The three beds still had sheets on them, clean except for a little dust. One of the bedrooms looked as if it belonged to a teenage boy, while the third was clearly the domain of a pre-teen girl. Lots of pink, and unicorns, and rainbows, and racks of stuffed animals.
The only part of the property that seemed undisturbed was the tool shed. It had a padlock on it, but a few swings of a crowbar solved that problem. Inside the shed, we found the usual collection of yard implements—lawn mower, weed trimmer, hedge clippers, tree pruner, etc.—and a couple of digging spades.
It took the two of us most of the afternoon to dig a grave. I used the mental exercises Mike taught me about keeping my mind clear to focus on the task at hand, losing myself in the rhythmic stab of the shovel, stomp of foot, levering of dirt, and shoulder-swing throw into an ever-growing pile. The sound of rocks and earth rasping over metal filled my existence, drowning out all other voices. When the grave was deep enough, we wrapped my father in a sheet and lowered him into it. Then we filled it in again and stood for a while mopping sweat from our faces. Dad was not a religious man, so we didn’t bother with a cross. He would not have wanted one.
During the process, Sophia expressed concern the people who attacked us in Boise City might come looking for us and maybe we should hurry up and get going. I told her to grab a pair of binoculars from the Humvee, climb to the balcony above the farmhouse’s second floor, and keep a lookout. If anyone showed up, I would shoot them, cut out their heart, and eat the fucking thing in front of them while they died.
She paled, nodded, and backed away.
*****
Night fell.
We stayed at the farmhouse. I sat on the front porch, outfitted for battle, grenade-launcher equipped carbine between my knees. Mike and Sophia went inside to eat dinner, but I declined. I had no appetite.
There was a pair of NVGs next to me. When full dark came, and the half-moon and stars were the only light to be seen, I donned them and conducted a wide patrol, circling the property, praying I saw signs of pursuers. I wanted them to come for us. I wanted to see the outline of the suppressor through my rifle’s optics, feel the stock buck against my shoulder, hear the clack of the chamber, the muted crack. I wanted to hear screams of pain as people died in the darkness. I wanted them to know they were being punished.
But no one came.
Maybe they got what they wanted from the vehicles we left behind, or maybe we killed enough of them they decided it wasn’t worth coming after us, or both. Maybe they tried, but simply could not find us. Mike had done a good job of leaving a meandering, double-backed, circuitous trail for any tracker to follow. Even with a good horse and a flashlight, I would have been hard pressed to figure it out myself. Whatever the case, as dawn crept red and gold over the eastern sky, I switched off my NVGs and headed back to the farmhouse, disappointed.
Mike and Sophia greeted me from the kitchen table and offered me breakfast. I took off my gear, sat down, and shoveled food down wordlessly. I do not remember what I ate. Minutes later, I went upstairs to one of the bedrooms, took off my boots and combat gear, and fell into a dreamless slumber.
*****
Five weeks passed.
My wounds, carefully tended to by Sophia, healed quickly. Soon, all that remained of them were fresh pink scars and a few persistent aches where the shrapnel had scraped bone. I was still sore most of the time, but did not let it slow me down.
Mike spent most of his time scouting the area and hunting wild game. Sometimes I went with him, but most of the time I made some excuse to stay at the farmhouse with Sophia. I know he knew why, but he didn’t make an issue of it. Not that it would have done him any good.
Sophia and I made love often, taking comfort in each other’s embrace, reveling in the heated, gasping, kissing, thrusting passion of new lovers. We explored each other, teased each other, took turns reducing one another to clutching, moaning incoherence. Then we would rest for a while, talk and laugh in exhausted, throaty voices, and start all over again.
I often wondered in the months after why my sexual appetite, which had never been much of a distraction before, suddenly had so much power over me. It was not until after I joined the Army, and the battle of Singletary Lake, that I learned of the strange urges that possess a man after combat. I remember sitting with my back against a cinder-block wall, and a Navy medic coming around to check the guys in my platoon for injuries, and how pretty her green eyes were, and the roaring, burning urge to pull her clothes off and take her right then and there.
She must have seen something of it in my eyes, because she gave me a strange look. Or maybe she noticed the swelling in my pants. Either way, I cast my eyes to the ground, ashamed, willing the feeling to go away. It has happened a few times since, and for a while, I thought there was something wrong with me. But later, I learned most of the other soldiers I served with had experienced the same thing at one point or another, and it was not unique to men. Why it happens, I do not know. I am sure there is a psychologist out there somewhere who can give me a rational explanation, but I have not crossed paths with them yet.
So with Sophia at my side, and Mike the Stalwart an ever-present reassurance, the pain and anguish slowly began to fade. But I never let Boise City out of my mind for more than a few hours. The shadows behind the windows, the indistinguishable faces behind muzzle flashes, the glimpses of what I could have sworn were Army issue combat fatigues. A single word kept rattling around my mind, whispering to me, visiting me in the dark hours when I drifted off to sleep next to Sophia’s warmth.
Deserters.
During those weeks, I did not spend all my time eating roasted meat and indulging carnal pleasures. I drew up a few ideas about how we might head back and recon Boise City, see what we were up against, what we could do to make them pay for what they did to us. When I thought I had worked out all the angles, or at least as many as I could see, I asked Mike to join me for a sit-down on a nearby hill.
He listened patiently, chewing on a toothpick. When I was finished, he tossed the toothpick into the brush and said, “Caleb, you have to let it go.”
“It’s not that simple, Mike. They killed Blake. They killed my father.”
“We all knew we were taking a risk going into Boise City, son. There could have been infected, or hostile locals, or deserters holed up, or any host of dangers. We went in there with our eyes wide open—Joe and Blake included. We rolled the dice, and we came up snake-eyes. Joe and Blake were two of the best friends I’ve ever had. I loved them both like brothers. But they’re gone now, and we ain’t gonna accomplish a goddamn thing getting ourselves killed trying to avenge them. It’s not what they would want us to do. I know that because if I had died and they had lived, I wouldn’t want them to risk their lives the same way. There’s been enough bloodshed here, Caleb. No measure of revenge is ever going to bring them back. We need to move on.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Mike interrupted. “And what about Sophia, Caleb? What if something happens to us, and she’s on her own? What do you think will happen to her?”
To my shame, the thought had never occurred to me. I had been too caught up in my own anger and plotting and pain. The idea of Sophia alone in these wastelands, unprotected, sent an invisible spear through my gut. I looked down and crossed my hands in my lap. “I’m sorry, Mike. I never thought of that.”
The big man reached out and put a massive hand on my shoulder. “Listen, kid. For all I know, you and Sophia are all I have left. I have no way of knowing if my wife is still in Oregon, or if she’s even still alive. I think it’s pretty safe to assume the Outbreak made it that far. The only way for me to find out is to get you two someplace safe and then try to find her. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t. I don’t know. But I can’t start trying until the two of you are out of harm’s way. And every day that goes by, my chances of finding her alive get slimmer and slimmer. So do me a favor, Caleb. I know you’re hurting. We’re all hurting. But I need you to start thinking about someone other than yourself for a while. Okay?”
I sat quietly and watched him walk down the hillside back to the house. Inwardly, I cursed myself for a fool. Mike was right. I had been a selfish idiot. I had forgotten about protecting Sophia. I had forgotten about Mike’s wife, Sophia’s mother, stranded in Oregon. All I had thought about was myself, and my pain, and how much I wanted, needed to lash out, to make someone else hurt as much as I did.
I looked down at my hands, the calloused palms, the new scars, the dark brown skin from too much time in the sun. They were not the hands of a child. They were the hands of a grown man.
It was about time I started acting like one.
FORTY-THREE
“We need to find a place to hole up,” Mike said, stating the obvious.
Sunrise crested the horizon on the outskirts of Springfield Colorado, brightening the ink-black night with the iridescent colors of dawn. Through the windows, the shapes of tall grass and solitary trees moved slowly past, lonely shadows against the charcoal gray of early morning.
“Just keep following these trails,” I said. “There’s bound to be a house around here somewhere.”
“I hope so,” Sophia said from the back seat, stifling a yawn. “I’m exhausted.”
I glanced over my shoulder, seeing only a dim outline of her face in the Humvee’s gloomy cab. “Worst case scenario,” I said, “we’ll park in a hollow and hide out until nightfall.”
“I’d rather sleep in a bed.”
Mike said, “We’ll take what we can get, Sophia.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue.
I turned back around and stared through the front windshield, the hazy outlines of wrecked and abandoned vehicles drifting by like ships passing in a thick fog. Mike drove slowly, navigating via the Humvee’s blackout lights and a pair of NVGs, maneuvering deftly around the increasingly frequent obstacles on Highway 287. We had left the farmhouse just before midnight, Mike and I having decided it would be best to travel under cover of darkness. We knew by then the infected were more active at night, and figured anyone we might encounter who had survived thus far would be aware of that fact as well. Ergo, it made sense that if we wanted to avoid other people as much as possible, we should use the danger posed by the infected to our advantage.
Sophia had not been crazy about the idea, but after I explained that traveling during the day would make us an easy target for marauders, deserters, or just plain desperate people, she saw the wisdom of our plan.
The route we chose was roughly 265 miles, a distance we hoped to cross before daybreak. But the slow speeds we’d had to maintain to ensure safe travel on the increasingly choked highway, not to mention all the times we had to drive off road to make any progress at all, had seen us cover barely more than fifty miles.
For the last two hours, we had skirted the edges of Springfield, sticking to back roads and dirt trails across empty farmland and keeping our distance from the small town. Boise City had taught us a harsh lesson—wilderness good, towns bad—and instilled within us a healthy dose of paranoia. But despite our caution, I kept expecting to hear the thwap of bullets striking the Humvee, or the popping of tires over hidden booby traps, or vehicles to surround us with glaring headlights and bristling weapons. Thankfully, none of that happened.
The dirt trail we followed curved eastward across the highway and led us to a narrow strip of woodland running north to south. We went off-road and turned northward, keeping the thin treeline between us and the road. After a mile or so, the trees disappeared revealing a collection of squat buildings, a few livestock trailers, and acres of empty barbed-wire corral. Mike removed his NVGs, the day having brightened enough to see without them, and backed the Humvee down a shallow embankment until the buildings were out of sight.
“What do you think?” he asked, staring out the windshield. “Small-time ranch operation?”
“Looks like it,” I said. “See any movement?”
“No. But it’s early. If someone is there, they might still be asleep.”
“Ghillie suits?”
“Ghillie suits.”
“What about me?” Sophia asked.
“Stay here,” Mike said. “Stay out of sight and keep your rifle handy. If you spot trouble, drive out of here as fast as you can. If possible, pick us up along the way. If not, just run.”
Sophia laughed. “Yeah, sure, that’s what I’ll do. Just leave you here. Great thinking, Dad. Except hell no, that’s not gonna happen.”
He scowled in her direction, then climbed out of the vehicle. I followed him to the back of the Humvee and waited while he opened the hatch. Inside was the majority of the ammo, weapons, and medical supplies we had taken with us upon leaving the convoy. There were also two five-gallon gerry cans of fuel, one of fresh water, and a few days’ worth of food. More if we rationed.
Behind the cases of ammunition and cardboard boxes lay three ghillie suits, neatly rolled and tied, one for me, one for Mike, and one for my father. Blake’s had been in his Jeep.
I had kept my father, as well as Lauren and Blake, out of mind as much as possible over the last few of weeks. But seeing Dad’s old camouflage caused a bolt of grief to lance through me, twisting my stomach and cutting with renewed pain. Mike didn’t notice and reached inside to retrieve the suits, making me grateful for the sullen, ambient grayness of the morning.
“That field over there is tall enough to hide us,” Mike said. “We’ll go straight at it, then turn west and work our way back to the Humvee.”
I cleared my throat. “Works for me.”
“You okay?”
“Not really, but let’s do this anyway.”
Mike studied me a few seconds, then handed me my ghillie suit without a word. We both attached suppressors to our rifles, grabbed a couple of grenades each, and swapped out our red-dot sights for VCOG scopes. Once outfitted, we made our way up the hill in a crouch, going to our bellies near the summit. From there it was a question of moving slowly, not allowing ourselves to rush, and being careful not to disturb the grass around us. A few minutes in, a strong wind picked up from the east allowing us to move more quickly.
Just as the sun cleared the horizon, we stopped behind a thicket of vines covering an old, slowly rotting wooden fence. I made my way to Mike’s position and spoke to him in whispers. “Now what?”
“We move in,” he said. “The sun is at our backs; it’ll make us harder to see. Stay low and follow my lead.”
The two of us crawled to the edge of the field where we came to a dirt-and-rock-strewn clearing patched with clusters of short brown grass. Although it was still early morning, the sun seared down from a cloudless sky, raising sweat on my back and warming my rifle under my hands.
Tin roofs of low buildings shimmered in the near distance, waves of undulating heat rising and dissipating, the pop and creak of expanding metal on plywood audible from where I lay. The two of us peered through our scopes, scanning. Minutes ticked by, but we saw no movement, no indication of occupants.
“I think it’s safe to approach,” Mike said. “But keep your eyes open.”
We stood up and moved swiftly across the clearing, intent on the nearest building. Once there, we put our backs against the bricks and moved to opposite corners. Peeking around, I saw low walls with empty space above them, four-by-four columns supporting a slanted roof, and narrow doors permitting entry into wide, dirt-floored stalls. The entrances were too small for horses. Sheep maybe?
To the north, barbed wire fence surrounded about ten acres of corral. Beyond where I stood were five more mini-barns of identical construction, a shack the size of a small camper, and two open-air sheds with rusted tools dangling from wall hooks. Past these were a few livestock trailers.
Looking more closely, I saw the tires on the trailers were inflated and showed no signs of dry rot. The wire comprising the corral was well tended, and the water trough by the gate was full but not scummy. By all appearances, the ranch had been, until recently, an active operation. Whoever owned this place had not abandoned it very long ago.
Rocks crunched softly under Mike’s boots as he moved closer. “Looks clear on my side.”
“Same here.”
“Let’s split up. I’ll take the buildings this way, you search over there.”
“Got it.”
Mike leap-frogged around me while I swept the stalls closest to us. Finding them empty, I moved on to the next building, wincing at the noise my steps made in the loose, omnipresent gravel. The vegetation immediately around the stables had been worn away by hundreds of trampling hooves, with some of the prints still visible in the hard-packed dirt.
Definitely sheep.
The door to every stall was open. I spotted a line of old, washed out tracks heading westward, indicating whoever owned this place had let the animals go free. I admired his or her decision; if I had been in their place, and all hope was lost, I would have done the same thing. Better to let the critters take their chances in the wild than doom them to starvation or death at the hands of the infected. Maybe years from now people would be hunting wild sheep and raising them for wool. It was an interesting thought.
Just as I turned to walk to the shed at edge of the field, Mike let out a startled curse and I heard the muted crack of his carbine.
Then came the moans.
It started as one, then four or five, and then I lost count as more groaning answered, coming from a stable to my left. A pair of gray hands knocked aside the door of the shed I approached, followed by a gore-streaked old man in ragged clothes. He stumbled into the brightness of early morning, head swinging side to side, ears tilted toward the sky. More infected lurched out after him, also swiveling their heads.
In the space of seconds, where there had been peaceful silence, more than a dozen undead had appeared. In the field ahead of me, I saw more emerge from the tall growth, standing up unsteadily, looking dazed as if they had been sleeping. The sound of Mike’s rifle went from a slow trickle to a frenetic barrage.
“Caleb, fall back!”
I raised my rifle and fired without thinking, dropping the five infected closest to me. There was a grating, shuffling sound behind me, and I turned just in time for a ghoul to seize my arm and lunge at me. I let out a terrified yelp and pulled away, but the creature had a grip like steel. Its teeth snapped shut less than an inch from my bicep. With no time for a plan, I raised the barrel of my rifle and shoved it sideways into the ghoul’s mouth. It bit down on the hardened steel, teeth chipping and cracking from the pressure.
I let go of the gun just in time for the creature to start shaking its head back and forth like a dog and crack me across the temple with the stock. Stars danced in my vision as I dropped to one knee, drew my pistol, and fired a shot upward through its throat. Red and black mist erupted from the back of its head, the painful grip on my arm releasing instantly as the ghoul slumped to the ground.
I stood up and turned a quick circle, gun at the ready, legs rubbery from the blow to my head. Another ghoul had made it within four feet of me, arms outstretched, hissing like a pissed-off cobra. My first shot missed. Cursing, I backed up a few steps, centered my aim, and fired again. This time, it went down.
Boots pounded the dirt behind me, growing closer. I looked over my shoulder to see Mike sprinting toward me, rifle slung across his back, a short, slotted metal fencepost in his hands. At the end of the post was a rough, heavy-looking cylinder of dirt-crusted concrete.
Where the hell did he get that?
As I watched, he angled toward one of the undead closing in on me, raised the improvised weapon, screwed his heels into the ground, and swung it like a baseball bat. The concrete cylinder burst the walker’s skull open like a ripe melon, bone and brain fragments flying in one direction while the corpse fell in another.
“Caleb, come on!”
I had stopped moving and was staring at the corpse, its skull shattered, brain tumbling out, dirt sticking to the shriveled tissue. A large, fat fly circled down and landed among the mess, its wings buzzing as it walked excitedly over its feast. My feet felt leaden, vision gray and black around the edges, mind blank, disconnected, a numb tingling creeping up my face. Something constricted my chest, making my breath come in short, stuttering gasps. Mike yelled again, and when I didn’t respond, he slapped me across the cheek hard enough to make my eyes water.
“Wake up!”
I did, blinking against the pain. “Son of a bitch.”
He bent, picked up my rifle, and shoved it against my chest. “Take your gun, dammit.”
I grabbed it and brought it to my shoulder, muscle memory putting my hands in the proper places.
“Back to back,” Mike said. “We’ll shoot our way out of here.” He took a couple of seconds to raise the metal and concrete club over his head, take aim, and throw it like an axe. It spun end over end three times before striking a ghoul in the chest and knocking it to the ground. I heard ribs shatter from fifteen feet away.
Shaking the last of the fuzziness from my head, I adjusted my VCOG to its 1x setting, aimed, and began firing. My breathing was even now, hands steady, the trembling in my legs gone. I let fly ten rounds in ten seconds and dropped ten ghouls. Behind me, I heard the shuck, snap, and clack of Mike reloading.
We moved steadily toward the western field, keeping each other in our peripheral vision, checking our flanks and corners every few shots, dropping anything trying to angle in on us from the side. By the time I had burned through my first magazine, there were only fifteen or twenty walkers left standing. A minute later, they were all down.
Mike and I stood among the once-human wreckage, bodies strewn around us, spray patterns of coagulated blood and brain tissue contrasting sharply with the pale dirt under our feet. We gripped our rifles and looked around dazedly, hardly believing what just happened.
“We watched this place for a long time,” Mike said. “I saw nothing.”
“Neither did I.”
“Not a stir, not a peep, not a damn thing. They came out of nowhere.”
I looked at the stables and the fields beyond. “It’s like they were waiting for us.”
Mike thought a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I talked to some of those soldiers from San Antonio. The things they told me are starting to make sense now.”
“Like what?”
“This one guy told me they don’t like sunlight, especially when it’s hot outside. Said if they can’t find food they look for shelter, or just kind of drop like they’re hibernating or something. Might explain why they’re more active at night.”
I thought of the ghouls emerging from the field and stables, faces confused, swaying and turning circles as though punch drunk, angling their heads to vector in on me. There was no way they could have known we were headed this way—we didn’t know we were headed this way—and none of the undead’s behavior thus far indicated they were intelligent enough to plan an ambush.
“I see your point. But it’s early morning, Mike. Why weren’t they out last night?”
“Maybe nothing worth eating came along in a while.”
“So you think they were sleeping?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I’m just telling you what the man said. Your guess is as good as mine.” He removed the half-spent mag from his carbine and replaced it with a full one. “Think we got ‘em all?”
“Could be more in the fields. Crawlers.”
“Have to keep an eye out.”
I turned toward the Humvee. “Yes, we will.”
*****
It took us an hour to stack the bodies in one of the stables.
That done, we used shovels liberated from the tool shed to scrape the leftover gore into small piles, which we then carted away in a wheelbarrow and dumped out of sight in the fields. Last, we made makeshift brooms with bundles of grass and erased both our tracks and those of the undead.
From a distance, our location would look abandoned and undisturbed. But up close, the striations left by the grass stalks would be a dead giveaway. All we could do was hope the weather helped us out with a strong wind or an afternoon thunderstorm.
After cleaning up, the three of us looked at each other, each one waiting for the others to speak. Finally, Mike said, “Well, anyone feel like sleeping in one of the stables?”
Sophia and I said, in unison, “No.”
We looked at each other and laughed. “Kind of seems like a lot of work for nothing, doesn’t it?” I said.
Mike shrugged. “I’ve done a lot harder work for a lot dumber reasons. At least the next person who comes along won’t have to worry about those things.”
“Walkers,” I said, more to myself than the others.
“What?”
I looked at Mike. “That’s what the soldiers called them. Walkers. Walking corpses, walking dead, you know. Like an abbreviation.”
He turned his head toward the stable loaded with dead bodies. “Makes as much sense as anything, I suppose.”
“Walkers, schmalkers,” Sophia said. “I’m tired. Let’s get out of here.”
Mike and Sophia slept under the shade of a lodgepole pine near the Humvee, the engine making the occasional faint ticking as it finished cooling. I stayed close for a while, perched atop the wide vehicle, binoculars focused on the small ranch up the hill until it became clear no more infected were nearby. Thanking fate for small favors, I put my ghillie suit back on and conducted a slow, careful sweep of the surrounding area.
I’m a firm believer people overuse the word ‘surreal’, often applying it to situations out of context with its definition, but that’s exactly what the next five hours were like. Surreal. No airplanes droned overhead, no cars buzzed along the highway, no voices drifted to me on the wind, nothing manmade. The only sound was a light breeze sighing through the dry brush and the rustling of sparse evergreen limbs. Sometimes a rodent or lizard skittered away at my approach, a bird took flight with a flap of feathered wings, or a door to one of the open stalls beat against its frame. Otherwise, I heard nothing.
