Troy returned from the rear of the garage with a large jug in his hand. “Ta-dah! This here is Wade’s special home brew.”
“It’ll knock you on your ass,” Geoff said, “that’s for sure.”
“But you could drink in the complex. Why come up here?”
“There’s nothing like this down there.” Troy turned up the jug to his lips and took a long swig, coughing as it burned down his throat like liquid fire. “And hell, Geoff here would go crazy if he couldn’t see the stars. Mankind wasn’t made to live in the earth.”
“What he means is…” Geoff grabbed the jug from Troy’s hands, “we’d go crazy if we were cooped up with those
Geoff offered Jeremy the jug, but he waved it aside. “No thanks. Isn’t getting wasted up here dangerous?”
Geoff laughed. “Isn’t breathing dangerous these days, kid?”
Jeremy didn’t answer.
Many, many feet below them, Sheena rolled her chair closer to Lex’s bed and reached out to take the woman’s wrist in her hand. Lex’s pulse still felt steady, if somewhat weak. There had been no change in her condition for days.
Sheena looked Lex over and winced. Once, she’d been a vibrant thirty-three-year-old woman whose charm and laughter lit up the dark corridors of Def Con. Now her skin was a sickly pale color and her long blond hair had lost its luster. Sometimes Sheena found it hard to believe she was looking at the same person who’d been her assistant, friend, and lover for the last five years.
She leaned forward in her wheelchair and rested her head on Lex’s chest. Tears glistened down her cheeks as sobs shook her broken body. She lifted her head, and her hand crept to the main power cord of the life support system. “I’m sorry,” Sheena said, no louder than a breath; then she pulled the plug.
A sharp, piercing tone filled the room as Lex’s vital signs flatlined. Sheena silenced the alarm with the flip of a button and turned out the lights. She wheeled herself out of the dark room without looking back.
“
To Jeremy, Troy’s voice sounded like that of a weeping angel. But as beautiful as the sound was, it stirred the creatures at the fence into a fury. Jeremy tried hard to block out the raging and the thrashing.
There were more of them today. They numbered in the dozens, and Jeremy noticed Geoff’s unease as the ceremony continued. The guard was armed to the teeth and clutching a fully loaded AK-47 in his hands. Everyone else seemed focused on saying goodbye to Lex, even Ian, though the CIA man didn’t look well. A sheen of sweat covered his snow-white skin, and he fidgeted with his handkerchief.
When Troy’s song ended, they all stood together, watching the bloodthirsty horde outside the gates until finally Geoff barked, “Okay! Everybody back inside—now!”
Jeremy wondered as he went if this would be one of the last times he would feel the sunshine on his skin.
Sheena kept the nature of Lex’s death to herself. Some suspected what she’d done, while others didn’t care, but no one confronted her about it. Lex’s death affected them all, including Jeremy, though he’d never met the woman.
A somber air fell over the Def Con complex. On the surface, Geoff, Troy and Wade waged a quiet war against the growing tide of the infected. Ian kept more to himself than ever, rarely leaving his makeshift quarters in the armory. Only Nathanial seemed to actually improve since Sheena suddenly stopped riding him about collecting more data on the trajectories of the wave in space.
Jeremy at last found the time to introduce himself to Toni, and the two spent hours each day trying to enhance the base’s communications gear to extend its range and the power of its signal. She was a very kind and warm person, Jeremy discovered, once you wormed your way around her defensive layer of shyness.
“Pass me the screwdriver,” Toni called from beneath the control room’s main communications console. Jeremy selected a Phillips head carefully from the toolbox and passed it over. He heard Toni work for a moment with the tool before she slid out and smiled at him.
“I think that does it. Anyone on this side of the country with so much as a handset should be able to hear us now.”
Jeremy grinned and pointed at the top of the console. “So this little red light is supposed to be on and flickering this way?”
“What?” Toni pulled herself up and looked at the light. Her whole body tensed up and she barely seemed to breathe.
“Was it something I said? I’m sorry if…”
She whirled on him and threw her arms about his neck as he stood there, totally dumbfounded.
“Someone out there is trying to reach us!” She half giggled, half screamed as she slammed a finger down to transfer the incoming transmission to the room’s speakers.
The broadcast was garbled by terrible static and interference, but they managed to understand a few words. “This… Freedom Station… Anyone… us?”
Toni held a hand over her mouth.
“Freedom Station,” Jeremy repeated. “Holy shit.”
Toni had already opened the channel and was responding. “We copy that, Freedom. This is Def Con, and you have no idea how happy we are to hear you.”
“Repeat… Couldn’t…” the voice replied.
“Go tell the others!” Toni told Jeremy. “I’ll try to clean this up some and keep the channel open… Go!”
Jeremy dropped his toolbox and darted off, yelling down the corridors.
15
The woods were quiet and a gentle rain began to fall as Amy made her way up the mountainside. The night had given way to a gray sky full of clouds. The rain was a warm one, however, and she welcomed it. She fished around in her pockets and brought out the last of the berries she had found during the night, plopping the whole handful into her mouth. They were wonderful, the food of the gods, but she longed for more and hoped she would come across another patch soon. She wasn’t a nature person, having grown up in New York, but she knew some berries were poisonous and had to be careful what she picked.
Briefly, she entertained the notion of trying to shoot or catch one of the rabbits that ran rampant in the woods, but she had no idea how to hunt them. If it came down to it, she swore she would eat grass rather than waste the last five rounds in her weapon. She couldn’t risk being defenseless if one or more of the creatures crossed her path.
Amy reached the top of the large hill, which, to a city dweller like her, was considered a mountain, and she looked down at the town below. The instant she saw it, she ducked into the foliage out of instinct. She cursed herself for being foolish. It was miles away. Nothing could see her… unless the creatures down there were the smart kind, keeping a watch with binoculars.
There didn’t appear to be any kind of road or trail leading from her position to the town. It looked as if the forest stretched all the way to the city limits. The town’s proximity meant she was much more likely to come across the creatures than she had thought, even if she kept to the woods and tried to cut around it. She took a moment to steel herself before heading straight for the town. She was going there, and she was going to find the things she needed. Maybe, if it was mostly deserted, she could find a home or some kind of building to hole up in and finally get some rest.
