Guardian: Negative, uh, Yankee, the fence appears to be intact.
Yankee Seven-Nine: Okay I need clarification, Guardian, I thought you said it had been breached by a vehicle—
Guardian: Affirmative, there is a vehicle inside the fence, the driver has exited.
Yankee Seven-Nine: Then how is the fence still intact, Guardian?
Guardian: It, uh, appears he went over.
Yankee Seven-Nine: He what?
Guardian: Yankee, I think he ramped it. There’s a … some kind of truck with a platform on the back and I think he used it as a ramp.
Yankee Seven-Nine: All right, did you say you had a clear shot at the driver?
2 Hours, 5 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
John grabbed my shoulders and screamed into my face. “DAVE! ARE YOU IN THERE? IT’S ME. JOHN. I AM YOUR FRIEND. CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
“Why are you talking like that?”
I looked inside the Caddie. John had come alone.
“Where’s Amy?”
“I don’t know! Outside town I think.”
“Oh. Thank God.”
“Or not. I actually don’t know.”
Owen strode up and kicked aside a smoldering skull. He raised the pistol.
John raised his shotgun. Their eyes met.
John said, “Owen? What the hell are you doin’ here?”
“You are one crazy son of a bitch, John.”
To me, John said, “Is he infected?”
“I don’t think so.”
Owen said, “Ain’t none of us infected.”
I said, “We … don’t know that.”
John said, “Well, whatever. Everybody needs to get the hell out of here! By lunchtime this is all gonna be a crater. Did you hear the announcement out there, Owen?”
I said, “Wait, do you two know each other?”
“Yeah, remember I said I was doing setup for him? This is DJ O-Funk.” To Owen, he said, “Hell, I thought you’d be out there on Daryl’s farm, ridin’ this thing out.”
“I was. Went into town on a beer run and got scooped up by the feds. I punched one of those guys in the space suits and I guess they took that as a sign of infection.”
I noticed the rest of the inmates were staring at us, shell-shocked, as we held this conversation next to the crashed Caddie and among the scattered pile of smoking human remains. It finally occurred to me to turn my eyes up to the circling drones, wondering if they were zeroing in on our skulls right now. I had a vague thought that we should run for cover, but the entrance to the hospital was a hundred feet away. It’d be a nice, leisurely couple of shots for some guy sitting at a console out in the desert. We could duck in the car, but the drone was also equipped with the kind of rockets that could turn it into two tons of burning steel confetti.
Actually, why hasn’t he shot us already?
Dr. Marconi walked up and John glanced at him. “Doc? You been here the whole time?”
“John. I would ask you what you are doing but I fear you would actually tell me.”
“I’m just here to get Dave. Now we’re gonna get in my Caddie and I’m gonna drive a Caddie-shaped hole in that fence over there. The rest of you can walk right out behind us. Once out, you will owe me a case of beer. Each of you.”
Owen said, “You didn’t see the big fuckin’ guns lined up outside? They’ll turn you into chunks in two seconds.”
“I didn’t see any big fuckin’ guns, I saw a bunch of little fuckin’ guns. I don’t think they were anticipating Cadillac-driving zombies. But either way, you need to find a way outta here, before they bomb the place.”
John ducked into the Caddie and said, “Oh, Owen, did paychecks go out last week before this all happened?”
Owen glanced at me, then John, and said, “How the fuck did you two ever find each other?”
To me, John asked, “You comin’?”
I took to the passenger seat. The Caddie seemed to be listing somewhat and steam was oozing from under the hood. But the engine was still running, so that was good.
John said, “Marconi! There’s room in the backseat.”
Marconi leaned in and said, “I assume your plan didn’t progress beyond this exact moment.”
“I try to take it one step at a time.”
Marconi shifted his eyes to me and said, “Remember what I said?”
“Yeah, the Babylon Protocol.”
He started to correct me, but instead said, “There is a way to beat it. But with God as my witness, I do not know how any of us will get the chance.”
“Just tell me what we need to do.”
“Think it through. Think about the symbols we rally around. Think about what binds people together.”
“Just fucking tell me—”
“I think you already know. David, there needs to be a sacrifice.”
“A sacrifice? Why?”
“Think it through.”
“What, like somebody has to die? One of us?”
Marconi backed away and said, “Go, before the drone operators finally make sense of what they’re seeing and open fire.”
We buckled our seat belts. John threw the Caddie into reverse. He backed up, rolling through the fire pit, knocking aside a wheelchair. He cranked the wheel and got the Caddie pointing behind the building, not far from the strip of woods John and I had escaped through on that first night, before there was a big-ass fence there.
The crowd of inmates in front of us split like the Red Sea.
John floored it. The back tires dug down into the mud. We launched forward, barreling toward a section of fence bearing the words, FLAME GRILLED FRIDAY, AT CUNTRY KITCHEN. I braced my hands against the dashboard and heard myself screaming.
The fence never stood a chance. The hood bashed through the first layer, whipping down the layer of plastic sheeting. The fencing was still raking its way down the rear windshield when we hit the second layer of fence, smashing a wooden pole in two, ripping through the chain link. The boundary between quarantine and the outside world was pierced once and for all. And then—
CRASH
—with a cataclysmic sound of metal and plastic splattering against concrete, we hit the vehicle barrier both of us had forgotten about until that moment.
The King Kong fist of inertia punched me in the back. My last memory before I blacked out was the filthy windshield about one inch from my face, and the seat belt then yanking me roughly back. When I came to, the hood was crumpled up in front of me and John was shaking me, saying, “GET DOWN!”
Since I had temporarily forgotten where we even were, I also had forgotten what exactly I was ducking away from. I groggily turned to look outside of the driver’s-side window, and saw a hulking camo-painted vehicle with no driver. I had no problem figuring out what it was. I saw a turret on top of it, light glinting off of a camera lens and on either side of the lens were two massive gun barrels.
The machine whirred and the barrels spun on me. The movement wasn’t robotic at all, but quick and smooth and purposeful. I froze, mesmerized, staring into the twin black holes and chose that moment to wonder what Marconi was talking about when he was going on about “sacrifice.”
EIGHT HOURS EARLIER …
Bing …
* * *
Bing …
* * *
Bing …
* * *
The RV’s door-open chime wafted through the frozen night.
It was the soundtrack of Amy’s last moments. The thing in front of her breathed and its breath smelled of exotic dead meat. It sniffed her. A realization washed over her in that cold, dark space: this was how virtually all living things born on earth have died—with teeth tearing through their muscle and bones. We humans have computers and soap and houses but it doesn’t change the fact that everything that walks is nothing but food for something else.
A tongue licked her forehead. Amy instinctively threw up her hand to ward off her attacker, and grabbed a handful of fur.
Amy opened her eyes and in the darkness, found Molly staring back at her.
Molly sniffed her again, turned, inspected the Pop-Tarts on the floor among the broken glass, then trotted over to the side door of the RV, staring at Amy and wagging her tail. Dog language for, I need you to open this door for me because I do not possess hands.
Strangely, that got Amy’s leg’s moving again. Molly needed to go out. Amy had responded to that canine nonverbal cue a thousand times. She moved quickly to the door, steeled herself, and pushed it open. Molly jumped into the night, into the still air that minutes ago had carried dying screams and the visceral crack of gunfire. Into the night, where teeth and mindless appetites waited, digesting the entrails of boys she’d been laughing and joking with an hour before.
Stop freaking yourself out and MOVE.
Molly returned, looking at Amy expectantly. Amy stepped into the night air, crouching low, keeping her eyes focused on Molly to keep the terror at bay. The dog was not afraid. Amy got ready to run, trying to decide which direction to go. She looked at Molly, as if hoping for a suggestion.
Molly made a beeline for the basement window.
No.
Molly jumped over two piles of guts that used to be Josh and Donnie, and disappeared into the cafeteria Amy had seen on the grainy camera.
No.
From below, Molly barked. Amy decided that dying out here, in the yard, in the open air, was somehow better than dying down in that dark basement. Molly barked again, but this time it was followed by the sound of shuffling footsteps behind her, somewhere in the night. A lot of them. Something was out here. Down there in the room, Molly was still alive and unharmed. Still, Amy half decided to just go running off into the night. But to where?
She got down on hand and knees and crawled through grass that was slimy and sticky with blood and other bodily discharges that were never meant to leave the confines of their organs. Her knees squished through spilled entrails until she awkwardly climbed/fell through the window.
Amy was blind in the darkness. The lantern was gone, the flashlight was gone. Molly was immediately at her side. Amy reached down to touch her, then grabbed her collar. Molly pulled her along, Amy using her as a Seeing Eye dog.