Induction

Fifteen men, Jake included, didn’t make it back to the store. Adam tried to carry me inside, but I fought him. I refused to go inside in hopes Jake would return. I sat outside all night, eyes fixated on the gate. The air filled with the sounds of a heated debate between the remaining men. They were split; some wanted to go out and search while other, more prevailing heads, thought it best to wait until morning. The decision was made to leave at dawn. Ten men would stay behind to man the barricade; twenty-six would go in search of their comrades.

Meg was inconsolable, and I was in no condition to comfort her. She had witnessed her parents ripped apart before her eyes. The loss of her brother, her last bit of family, was too much to handle. Margie led her back into the store, one arm around Meg’s shoulder and the other gently stroking her hair as she whispered things I couldn’t hear into her ear. She really was a remarkable woman. She helped wherever needed and never complained.

When dawn came I stood before Lieutenant Dan, rifle slung over my shoulder. “I’m going.” He searched my eyes and said nothing. One, slight nod of approval was the only indication he’d heard me. Adam, on the other hand, was a tougher sell. After a much-heated debate, he accepted my decision. The condition, of course, was that he would be accompanying me.

“I’m not going to let you go off half-cocked and get yourself killed. One day of target practice doesn’t make you G.I. Jane.” I rolled my eyes at him and squared off.

“Adam, if you think for one second that I’m the kind of woman who would let my husband get stranded out there without moving heaven and earth to find him, then you don’t know me at all. If Jake’s out there, and I know he is, I’m going to find him and bring him home.” I waved my hand in the air, motioning toward Target and put a caustic emphasis on the word home.

* * *

I rode up front between Warrant Officer Seth Puri and Lieutenant Dan. Adam was relegated to the back of the truck. Saying the atmosphere was fraught with tension would be an understatement. We were all wired. All hell bent on doing whatever it took to find them. I had the niggling fear that finding them would not mean finding them alive, but I shoved it down deep inside. I needed to stay positive.

Scenarios played out in my head regardless as we drove toward the fuel tanker. Our hopes were that they had barricaded themselves in somewhere and were safely waiting extraction. The other possibilities, far less pleasant, were too hard to speak aloud. They could be dead, or they could be undead. If they were undead, what would I do? Did I have it in me to put Jake down? I thought back to Adam’s fear of having to do the same for his daughter and made the conscious decision to focus on finding him alive.

The world had changed so drastically in the week and a half I’d spent behind the safety of our walls. The streets were desolate, like a ghost town in a spaghetti western. I half expected to see tumbleweeds rolling across the street in front of us. The buildings we passed each told a story of their own. One strip mall looked untouched by the savage events, while the next was a charred husk and barely standing. Its bare-bones frame looked like a blackened skeleton.

Everything was gray and colorless. Even the dried blood, once bright red, had turned a brown muddy color after it dried and baked in the sun. I held my palm up in front of me, cradling the sunlight like it was something to be held. It was the first truly clear and tropical day since the storm. A small glimmer of hope welled inside of me, finding meaning in this gift from Mother Nature. Maybe things would be okay after all.

It was more than two miles before we saw our first reanimated corpse. Impaled on the wreckage from a motor vehicle accident, its skin hung off its body like it was two sizes too big. As we passed, its arms reached up to us like a baby begging to be coddled.

A few hundred feet later an emaciated dog ran from an unmoving corpse. Its muzzle, covered with blood from the abdomen of the body it had been feasting on, was in stark contrast to its tan fur. Without human intervention, pets would be forced to find food for themselves. The scene sent a flurry of new thoughts through my head. Were animals susceptible to the infection? I had no answer, but was curious what would happen to the dog. The last thing we needed to deal with was a pack of undead dogs knocking at the door. After Santa Barbara Boulevard ended, we turned left onto Cape Coral Parkway and headed to the bridge in search of the missing truck.

“An M4’s magazine holds thirty rounds.” Seth reached under his seat and handed me a tactical vest. “You’ve got six spare magazines.”