The Zone Page 6

  Nobody was around when I recovered my hose; I flushed out and filled the water cans and a couple containers I had laying about. I only had two second story windows and my front door to black out, so a few minutes with packing tape and a roll of tin foil took care of it. I couldn’t help but think about my night-time intruder: the light from my TV screen, even on screen saver, would have been clearly visible through the white butcher paper cover on the door. The building across the alley had lights on a timer that came on at night-but why light was a factor did not track. Burglars preferred buildings that looked unoccupied, and contrary to TV, they usually hit in daytime when people were at work.

  A dozen twelve ounce water bottles salvaged from my trash, each filled three-quarters with tap water went to the freezer wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper; once frozen, if the power cut off they would make the freezer act as an old-style icebox for a couple days. It was work for hands while I thought; I cleaned my place to keep busy while I twisted at what was going on. Could I be delusional? Had I been alone so much I had imagined the woman and my night-time intruder and the people running past? I wished I had paid more attention in all the mental health classes I had sat through. The one thing that I did recall was that mentally ill people usually believed they were completely sane, like the old saying that if you were worried you were going crazy, you weren’t.

  I hadn’t imagined the phone call with Fred-that was on my phone’s log. So was my call to 911-I pulled it up and noted the length of transmission.

  There was a small breaker box on the roof but no power jacks so I had an extension cord coiled on a hook at the top of the ladder; I set the boom-box on the roof rampart, extended the antenna, and started searching the channels, looking for half-remembered stations. I found a station I used to listen to on patrol, mostly 80s rock, and got the emergency tone. Halfway across the dial I got a local station:

  “…emergency broadcast system reporting. To repeat to all listeners, the State of Emergency declared by the Governor’s office will be superseded by the Federal emergency powers act as of six pee em today. There is a state-wide curfew from seven pee em to six aye em throughout Texas; any persons not indoors during those hours is subject to detention without recourse to Habeas Corpus. All National Guard and Reserve personnel are ordered to report to their unit armories. All other persons are advised to stay at home, to insure that no light is visible from their homes, and to remain on the upper floors in a multi-floor dwelling. Do not make contact with strangers, and do not take action against rioters or looters unless in self defense. A statement from the CDC reports that the avian flu outbreaks have been contained, but that the effects of the disorienting fevers are producing unpredictable and even violent outbursts in victims. Do not approach sick individuals, and do not transport infected subjects to region hospitals. This is the Emergency…”

  If I was going insane, I wasn’t alone. Several other channels were broadcasting the same message. Interesting, but what did it mean? Flu driving people crazy? Maybe. A fever certainly was disorienting, although it usually was debilitating. Hard to see flu victims rioting so bad you had to shoot them. But I’m not a doctor. I needed more information.

  The skyline didn’t look all that different; there were a couple smoke pillars, and a few military helicopters, but I couldn’t hear any shooting. Where could I find a TV or computer with Net service?

  Struck by a thought, I gimped downstairs and rummaged in the back room, going through packed-away patrol gear until I found it: a portable CB radio. I had bought it after a few local burglars took to using them for communication. I hadn’t used it in years, but at least I had taken the batteries out, so it wasn’t ruined.

  Back on the roof I powered it up, and traffic wasn’t hard to find. I found what I was listening for after a few minutes: an older man, gruff, calm, the sort who held together in an emergency. His call sign was fid-matt, meaning he was likely a veteran: FIDMAT, Fuck it, Don’t Mean A Thing, the manta of a combat soldier.

  I asked him to jump channel. “Fidmat, this is seven-five Romeo: listen, I’ve been out of pocket for a few days What with the rioters, over?”

  “Seven-five, you musta been under a rock. People are going crazy, some sort of an infection. Not airborne, its fluid based, but bad news. Those that survive it become homicidal-you can’t imagine unless you’ve seen it. You still in town, over?”

  “Fid, yeah, I’m a half-click to the northwest of the new access circle, over.”

  “Seven-five, you better tune in to FM 101 in about three, they’re about to throw your ass to the wolves. Have you seen infected, the fully infected, over?”

  “Fid, yes, I saw them at a distance, over.” Infected. Shit, being delusional would have been better.

  “Seven-five, if you have to deal with them go for spine or skull, they seem immune to shock, and they either clot better or bleed slower. Don’t worry about the law, the troops have been shooting them on sight. Word is they have gunships working out today on the south end of town, over.”

  “Fid, thanks, over.”

  “Seven-five, I hope your call sign is your alma mater, son. You’re deep in the shit. Over.”

  “Fid, they got me surrounded, the poor bastards, over.”

  “Seven-five, go with God. Out.”

  The Seventy-Fifth Infantry, the parent regiment of the Airborne Rangers. Yes, fid, I was an alumni. It had been a long time, but once a Ranger, always a Ranger. Born to die.

  Fid was right: they were throwing my ass away. The radio reported that in less than fifteen minutes they were establishing an Exclusion Zone which encompassed most of the metro sprawl. Once in place, anyone crossing the line would be shot without challenge. Persons caught within the Zone should seek shelter, mark their place with flame orange or bright yellow on the roof, and await instructions.

  I had about fifteen minutes; I could find a vehicle and make it if I really rushed. It would be close-I was a good two miles from the line, and the troops would be edgy. And then what? Being a refugee was never a fun experience. Might be better just to stay put: I had food, water, firepower, a strong position. Sit it out, because if the rioters were sick, then either they would recover or die in due course. How long could it last?

  I found two traffic control vests and a neon yellow raincoat in my patrol gear and taped them to my roof for whatever good it would do. I got tired of the yammering on the CB and turned it off, and the boombox, too: the messages were the same, over and over: stay inside, blackout, go to second story, yadda yadda yadda. No real help.

  I sorted through my place, going through every closet and drawer, making sure I knew exactly what I had to work with, a small ship marooned in hostile waters. Although I don’t think it was ships that got marooned. I found the odd box of ammunition, a folding knife I thought I had lost, but nothing important. Down in the back room I checked through the various boxes, repacked where needed, and moved them into a better order than the random stacks they had occupied since I moved in.

  In the process I found the camping gear which the ex had told me to take when I got the last few items from my ex-home. The stuff represented one of the many failed efforts to get my son to snap out of the growing drug haze he was sinking into. He hadn’t been interested, although at least the time spent out in the boonies had been drug-free for him. It had proven to put a small plateau in the decline of my relationship with my wife; she had liked camping. I found two collapsible water bags I rinsed out and filled, and a handy field shower gizmo that had worked surprisingly well. The camping gear got me thinking of my ex, and I tried her number again. No answer, nor my daughter either.

  The last camping gear box had four Family Radio Service radios in it, what they used to call hikers radios, little plastic jobs good for a couple miles and less affected by sunspots than CBs.

  My phone ringing made me jump. It was my ex-sister-in-law, a gloomy woman who was a hundred pounds soaking wet with a voice you would associate with a big gal who drove long-haul rigs
and smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels a day. “Martin, have you heard from your wife?”

  “Ex wife, and no, just voicemail.”

  “She is in the Exclusion Zone.”

  “So am I. Why didn’t she leave?”

  “We did. We are in a nasty little hotel FEMA is using north of the city. She took my truck and went back after your daughter and grandson.”

  Shit. “When and where?

  “Yesterday around noon. It’s a beige F150 regular cab with a Cowboys back window cover. She was heading to Trellwood Housing Project.”

  “Hold on.” I got a map from my patrol gear box and found it. “Shit, right in the middle of a bad neighborhood. Was she armed?”

  “Yes, a little .38. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing effective, probably.” It was all the way across town. “Do you know if she made it? Did she call at any point after she left?”

  “Nope.”

  “She say what route she was taking?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You’re a massive help. Why didn’t you call me earlier? It’s a big frigging city.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t care.”

  I counted to ten. “Keep trying her phone. If you hear from her, call me. I’m going to see what I can do.”

  “Probably nothing you can do.”

  “I can get killed trying, which ought to make your friggin’ day. Isn’t that the purpose of this call?”

  “Bite me.”

  “Somebody ought to. Call if you hear from her.” I hung up.

  What a mess. Things were very unsettled-the radio, CB, and the call to 911 made that very clear, and my first instinct was to sit tight until I had a handle on what was going on. I had no vehicle, and on foot the urban sprawl is an impossibly huge area. Add in the fact that there was likely nothing I could do, and it was pretty much a no-brainer.

  Pacing restlessly, I cursed my ex-in-laws, my ex-wife, and my idiot daughter. This was a problem I did not need at this time-wasn’t that the whole point of a divorce, after all? The elimination of a whole seething mass of problems? We were quits-that’s what the legal papers said.

  I didn’t want to do anything. It was extremely ill-advised to try to do anything under the circumstances. My whole life I had taken on unnecessary personal risks because John Wayne and my father had pounded it into my thick head that you have to walk the chalk, shoulder the load, and I was just bright enough to know I was being programmed like Pavlov’s dogs but never bright enough to throw it off.

  A week ago I could probably have gotten away with ignoring the whole problem, but things had changed-I was less the zombie lately. Too bad getting my act a little bit back together involved the same tired old act that had dropped my life into the shit in the first place.

  I was going to try, knowing perfectly well it was stupid. All the mental posturing was just pointless melodrama to ease my ego-the fact was I had no choice: the truth at the heart of it was that my father and the Army and police work had made me into something and I wasn’t smart enough to change-having a sense of duty is a royal pain. It was yet another choice that wasn’t a real choice.

  Decision made, I turned to the facts: I didn’t know if she had reached the location, or if she was in that area, or had been on her way back. She had started from the north, but she could have gone any other direction on her way out, if she had gotten to my daughter. One thing I was sure of was that she wouldn’t have left under her own power without having found her kid; for all her other shortcomings she never once gave up on the kids. You would have to kill her to stop her. Unfortunately, in these circumstances, that wasn’t impossible. Unbidden the image of the woman running down the street came to mind.

  So, what to do? They could be literally anywhere.

  Except she was a travel agent, a very good agent. She would have approached this methodically, planning routes and connections carefully. She was a cop’s wife, too. She would have avoided the major traffic arteries, figuring them to jam first; the side streets were too easy to block and too hard to maneuver-she would take the business districts where there are a lot of parking lots which allow you to bypass the blockage of roads. I traced a route from the north to the housing project-it felt right. I had seen her plan routes before, hell, I had driven them on vacations. She could dodge traffic like nobody else.

  So, head towards the project, cut onto her likely approach path where I could; if they weren’t there, figure her escape route based on local conditions. That would have been her plan, too.

  OK, I had a plan; now logistics.

  They had harped on this in the military: your load had to take into account the conditions to be dealt with, the problems likely to be encountered, and the time frame of the operations, cross-referenced with the amount that could be carried. It always boiled down to educated guesswork and compromises.

  I was in decent shape, but I had a bum knee, so I planned to drive, but I might have to walk some. Therefore what I took had to be man-portable. Combat boots, black BDU pants, tight black Tactical sweat top with POLICE in bold white down each arm. Black police ball cap, tactical shades, fingerless tactical gloves, thigh holster with the Glock 21C and a spare mag, black nylon configurable tactical vest. I pondered body armor, then decided to leave it. There wasn’t any shooting to speak of, and it added some weight and a lot of heat.

  Urban area, so food wasn’t an issue; I tucked a bottle of water and a couple candy bars into the left cargo pocket of my pants. Weapons: the Glock, and my M-4LE, a semi-auto version of the Army’s M-4 assault carbine, with holo sight, and combined tactical flashlight/laser sight; two thirty round magazines on the weapon, six more mags on the vest. Tools: Spyderco lock blade, Gerber multi-tool, window punch, lock pick set in a nylon case. Vision: spare batteries for weapon tactical lights, C-cell Maglite with spare batteries, night vision goggles in a case on my left hip, with spare batteries. Mission gear: military bandage in plastic, small first aid kit, two city maps, cell phone and car charger, CB radio, two FRS radios with fresh AA batteries, a roll of duct tape, and some toilet paper in a zip-lock baggie.

  It wasn’t the load-out I wanted, but it was what I could manage given my resources and options.

  Outside on the worn-out sidewalk, the door locked behind me, I felt like an idiot. They were dead or someplace safe by now, and I was literally a day short. I was too old to be playing Ranger. With a bit of discipline I could stay in my place for thirty days without much of a problem, supply-wise. This was stupid.

  Somewhere to the south maybe six blocks away someone hammered out a dozen shots rapid-fire, panic fire, just blazing away. Spine or skull, guy.

  I squeezed the bar and slid the stock on the M-4 to full extension, then twisted the holo sight switch to ‘on’. Screw it, Alan had it right: some people are too stupid to live.

  Chapter Four

  I wasn’t going to walk across town, so I swung east, planning to follow the access way until I came to a car lot or a suitable vehicle. I wasn’t moving fast-I didn’t know how far I was going to go on foot, and I didn’t know what the dangers involved were. I stayed close to the curb, far enough to have warning if someone popped out a doorway, close enough that a sniper on the same side of the street couldn’t get a good shot. I didn’t know what everyone was afraid of, so until I learned the rules I was being very careful.

  Shots popped in the distance, mostly singles, once or twice sustained, panicky fire. Crossing an intersection at a trot I saw a crowd six blocks to the south, maybe sixty people in a close pack moving south at a slow walk, looking purposeless. I didn’t waste any time watching them. Despite alleged riots severe enough to abandon control of most of the city I saw few signs of looting and no fires, no overturned vehicles, not much of anything in fact. Probably the problems were elsewhere, but I hadn’t seen much signs of fire. The big riots in LA had burned a lot of buildings, and the infamous battle for Seattle saw intense looting and vandalism. Something wasn’t right.


  The raised roadway loomed ahead, and I could see a couple vehicles alongside the guardrail. Wrecks? Breakdowns? It wasn’t clear. The street passed under, and access ramps swept up on both sides. I eyed the roadway and thought about the radio advising to get above ground level. My intruder couldn’t figure out where the water and the noise came from-he never looked up. High ground was always better in military terms, but the access way would channel me, only two ways to go, limited maneuver options. On the other hand, I no longer had the option of running. Back in the day I could have free-roped down the side in a jiff, but those days had passed.

  I headed for the south ramp, but a noise caught my attention; following it, I found a young man sitting in the shade behind a silver relay box on a three foot concrete pedestal. He was sitting with his legs stretched out, head hanging down, dressed in filthy tee shirt and jeans. He had a banger’s crop-cut and Latino gang ink showing, but his skin was an ashy hue; it was hard to believe you could be alive with skin that color. He was wheezing like he had asthma, and the image of the kid I had seen at the dumpster Thursday came to mind. This guy was sicker, much sicker-I was surprised he was still breathing.

  “You okay, buddy?” Old habits.

  By rights he should have jumped or started or something at the unexpected sound of my voice, but he didn’t, he just dragged in another breath. Then he looked over at me with an unblinking stare from eyes that looked filmed over, maybe cataracts or something. He had sores on his face and neck, lesions like you see on extremities when circulation is very poor.

  Then he got up. It wasn’t how anyone would normally get up, he sort of rolled onto his side and then jackknifed up onto his feet in a single motion that was clumsy and smooth at the same time; I could hear his joints pop as he did it. A guy that sick shouldn’t be able to do that; hell, nobody ought to want to do that. It was like watching someone try a move they saw a gymnast make and come close while hurting themselves in the process.