Spore Series | Book 5 | Torch Read online

  There wasn’t a single child in sight.

  The blankets and covers from the previous evening’s pillow fort were missing, and someone had done a spot clean. An energy bar wrapper lay on her desk next to her computer monitor. Kim walked over and picked it up. Then she looked curiously at the door to the living room.

  She approached cautiously, neck craned forward to hear.

  “AMI, where are the children?”

  “I’m detecting above average bio signatures in the living room. The cooling units are working twenty percent harder to keep a relative temperature.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  Kim waved her hand in front of it, and the door slid aside, blasting her with a wall of sound. Kids laughed and clapped, oohed and aahed, or made disgusted noises. They sat in a packed cluster on the floor, cross-legged or half piled atop pillows and blankets. They sipped from juice boxes or soda bottles with smiles plastered on their faces.

  They stared at something on the wall Kim couldn’t see.

  Wide-eyed, she bent inside and turned her face to the television hanging above the pull-down kitchen table. The screen displayed a game with a gun-toting hero blasting their way through hordes of zombies.

  The evil creatures cornered the hero and swiped with bloody claws until the screen turned red.

  Game Over appeared on the screen. And then Next Player Please.

  “My turn!” bossy Karen Reese called out. She stood and stepped over the other children to take the computer tablet from Riley, who occupied one of the bucket seats.

  Her daughter stood and gave up her spot to the girl. Apparently, the active player was allowed to have the best chair in the room.

  Riley carefully stepped around the kids to greet her mother.

  “How did you manage this?” Kim asked, placing her hands on her hips. She shook her head, impressed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re all peaceful, fed, and entertained.”

  Riley wiped her arm across her sweaty brow and gave her mother a wide grin. “AMI piped the Zombie March game to the TV. We’re having a tournament.”

  “Brilliant,” Kim said. “And thank you.”

  She turned to a sleek coffee maker that hung beneath a cabinet. She drew open the feed door, grabbed a pod from a drawer, and plugged it in. Then she shut the feed door and hit the start button. At the last second, she remembered a cup and snatched one from a cabinet just in time to catch the first drips of fresh brew.

  She turned and watched the game progress as Karen Reese shot up dozens of zombies. The girl was still playing when Kim’s coffee chimed. She picked up her cup, added a teaspoon of powdered cream and sugar, and side-stepped over to Riley.

  “We’re bringing in the kids from the Stryker. Can you hold down the, um, zombie fort for a while?”

  “Sure thing, Mom. We’ve been playing since dawn. I think we’ll be fine.”

  Kim kissed her daughter on her forehead and returned to her lab.

  “The kids are set,” she said to Bishop. “I’m going to peek in on Savannah.”

  “Great. We’ll be here.”

  Kim stepped through the prep room and hesitated at the decontamination chamber door. She took a detour into quarantine, grabbed two energy bars, a bag of barbecue chips, and a bottled water from their supplies.

  In decontamination, Savannah was sitting up on her makeshift cot and leaning sideways against the wall. Kim locked eyes with her, noting a sprig of confusion before the woman’s expression softened.

  “How are you, Savannah?”

  “Better, I think,” the woman replied hoarsely. Something caught in her throat, and she leaned over and coughed into a cup Kim had provided the previous evening.

  Kim waited for the woman to get it all out and wipe her mouth before she crossed and sat on a bedside stool.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said. “I brought you more to eat and drink.” Kim placed the food and drink next to her and picked up some empty ones, holding them in her lap.

  “Thank you,” Savannah said, lifting the water bottle and twisting off its top.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  She nodded and swallowed. “I’m on a bus. You gave me a shot.”

  “I did, and I think it’s already helping.” Kim leaned in and peered into the woman’s eyes. The black spots appeared smaller, though it could be a trick of the light. “Listen. I need you to do to me a favor. Can you step outside, so we can bring the children in to eat? I know you’re injured, but it’s the only way we can do this. We can’t let you roam around inside the bus until the kids are more comfortable with you. Even then you’ll have to wear a mask. I guess this room will be a mini cafeteria for a while.” Kim’s eyes drifted. “At least until we settle them in at a new location.”

  “The children. They’re afraid of me.” Savannah’s eyes fell to her feet.

  “They are,” Kim agreed. “Do you have any idea why that is?”

  “It’s blurry.” The woman squinted in concentration. “We all worked at the packing factory when the spores hit.”

  “What kinds of things did you pack?” Kim asked, trying to jar the woman’s memory. She reached out and took Savannah’s hand, examining her skin for any other signs of infection.

  “Industrial cleaners. Hand sanitizer. Soaps. Stuff like that. It was storming out. Wet and muggy. Twenty of us on shift. We heard screams from the open bay doors where they were stacking product. I saw Sammy driving her forklift. She had a full load when this dark cloud drifted into the bay. She drove through it and then kind of lost control. She was choking...” Savannah shook her head and frowned. “Sammy turned toward the dock. The semi-truck hadn’t shown up yet, so the bay door was wide open. She drove it right off the edge. Took two people with her, but I can’t remember who.”

  “That’s terrible,” Kim groaned. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. What happened next?”

  “Me, Charlie and a dozen others saw that cloud rolling in and people dying, so we ran. We went through the break room and down into the basement to the storage rooms. We stuffed wet rags beneath the doors to keep the stuff out.”

  “How did you know to do that?”

  “My husband was really into weird trivia. He said the people in Israel are always ready for a gas attack. Their citizens seal up doors and windows. They can stay inside for days and weeks without going out.”

  “That’s good information,” Kim said. “Makes me wonder if they’re dealing with this any better than us. What happened next?”

  Savannah pushed herself up on the mattress. “I guess we stayed in there for a day. We drank water from a faucet in the storeroom. Used the drain to take care of our business.” The woman shook her head. “We started getting hungry. We found a box of N95 masks, and Charlie put one on and tried to go upstairs. He died on the stairs carrying down an arm full of snacks.”

  “On no,” Kim said, and she switched to the woman’s other arm, checking for odd bruising or dark, splotchy outbreaks. She bore two on her upper arms, but it looked like they’d shrunk.

  “We got the snacks off the stairs and ate those,” Savannah continued. “Of course, by then people were acting a little cranky and mean. Roger and Vanessa had an incident and were separated. The others were going stir crazy. A week passed, and we talked about leaving again. Someone suggested we double up on the N95 masks and tape them to our faces. You know, make them airtight? I was losing my mind by that time, so I volunteered to go. I geared up and walked upstairs to the break room. I found the snack machines that Charlie had busted open. I grabbed everything I could carry and dropped it off at the bottom of the stairs. Then I left.”

  “So, what you did worked?”

  “For a while. I got my purse out of the locker and walked to my car without dying. I figured the way I’d taped the masks did the trick. Or the stuff had lost its potency. I mean, it was all over the place, right? But it was turning gray.”

  “We observed that, too.” Kim lay Sava
nnah’s arm across her stomach and pulled down the cover to inspect her legs.

  “I remember sitting in my car looking around at everything. My phone was dead.” She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. “For the first few days trapped in the warehouse, all I thought about were my husband and kids. I figured the worst had happened, but once I was in my car, I went home anyway.”

  Kim rolled her leg to one side, checking beneath her knees for marks.

  “I got home and found them out in the yard.” Savannah’s eyes squeezed tighter, and teardrops streaked down her cheeks. “We had a small field Brian tended. He wanted to become more self-sufficient, you know?”

  Kim nodded.

  “Summer break had started a week earlier, and he must have taken the kids out to work the field. He loved teaching them, too. How to trim the tomato plants and weed the garden...”

  Kim patted her knee. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I couldn’t believe it.” Savannah shook her head in dismay. “What could have possibly caused it? Was it a terrorist gas attack?”

  “It wasn’t a gas attack,” Kim sighed. “It was a fungal outbreak caused by the overuse of untested pesticides. A brand called Harvest Guard.”

  “That makes sense,” Savannah clicked her tongue. “My husband used Harvest Guard.”

  “Did you stay at home after you found them?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “I wandered around town before ending up back at the warehouse. I guess I wanted to see if my co-workers had any better luck.

  “Turns out they’d all had similar experiences as me. So, we set up a camp inside the warehouse. We threw out the dead. Shut the bay doors and left only one small entrance. We had plenty of disinfectant and nothing better to do, so we scrubbed the place down and made it livable. We scavenged for food. The few survivors we found were hostile, and we learned to avoid them. I guess we fell into a routine.”

  Savannah stopped and grabbed her cup from the floor as a coughing fit gripped her. Kim helped her hold it to her face as she hacked up the wet, meaty mucus that had been clogging her throat and nasal passages.

  When she was done, she fell back exhausted against the pillows.

  “What happened with the kids? They seem to hate you. They call you the Ugly Eight.”

  Savannah grinned with ill humor. “That’s funny. I’m not sure what happened with the kids. Roger found them first. None of us could get close to them after that. I mean, they treated us like the plague.” She laughed at the irony of her own words. “We figured he must have done something to one of them. We tried to throw him out of the camp, but Vanessa came to his defense. We had a terrible fight.”

  “Wait. I thought you said those two had to be separated down in the storeroom.”

  “They’d been a couple for some time. Partied a lot. Fought more. But, when someone threatened either one of them, the other would run to their defense.”

  “You never actually contacted them? The kids, I mean.”

  “I didn’t. Not once. I may have wanted to help them at some point, but by then we were all getting sick. The masks weren’t working. Whatever we’d done to sterilize the place wasn’t enough.”

  Savannah fell back against her pillows, tired.

  Kim looked toward the prep room door. “My husband wants me to get the kids started on breakfast. We can talk more later. Are you okay with trying to walk?”

  Savannah nodded and threw off her covers. She put her good foot on the floor and raised her eyes to Kim doubtfully.

  “You really shouldn’t have to do this. I mean, you should be in a cast with that bullet wound. But we don’t have any other way to get them safely fed.”

  Savannah nodded and reached out to rest her hands on Kim’s shoulders. Together, they stood and hobbled toward the stairway. The back door slid open, and the pair walked out into the bright morning sun.

  She’d pulled the bus off at a rest stop near Zell, and several shaded benches sat in a wide yard. Bishop had let the older boys and girls off the Stryker, and they were kicking a soccer ball in a section of grass without much fungal growth.

  The kids stopped playing and stared at Savannah. Kim felt the woman tense next to her and turned her away from the kids toward another bench.

  “The decontamination chamber is yours.”

  “Okay, kids,” her husband called. “Time for breakfast.”

  A muffled but rousing chorus rose from the kids as they jogged over to the bus and climbed aboard. Bishop would take them through the proper procedure and give them a couple of hours rest without their masks on. Then they’d mask up and get back on the Stryker.

  She helped Savannah sit in the shade, but the woman scooted to the end of the bench where a bright ray of sunlight punched through a break in the trees. She turned her face upward and bathed in the warmth.

  Taking a cue, Kim edged closer and lifted her eyes skyward.

  *

  Bishop ran the kids through the standard decontamination protocols. A topical spray and a complete undressing where they tossed their clothes into a bin. Then they took another foam shower before unmasking and changing.

  They’d tagged the clothes with each child’s name, but he got confused when the labels fell off or got mixed up. The sheer number of pants and shirts was overwhelming, trying to match up sizes with the kids while preparing food.

  He assumed some kids would complain about lack of privacy, but they completed the protocols without question. Then he remembered they’d been doing the same thing for weeks before he and Kim had shown up. Common sense measures in the new age of airborne infection.

  Bishop’s son, Trevor, was uncomfortable with the free-spirited kids. Instead of interacting with them, he helped his father. Once they had everyone settled and eating, he joined his father in the prep room, both sitting on molded plastic seats.

  Bishop leaned forward and rubbed his face, and the boy mirrored him. They turned their heads simultaneously, locking eyes until they couldn’t hold the stare any longer and burst out laughing.

  They’d been wearing masks for almost twelve hours. That was a half day without food or water. That would have been considered dangerous weeks ago, but it had become necessary in the new world.

  Bishop ran his hands over his cheeks and itchy skin, then rubbed his scalp as pleasurable shivers ran across his shoulders.

  “I can’t wait to leave my mask off forever,” Trevor said.

  “That's what we’re trying to get to. Your mother is going to find a cure. We’re going to get a shot, and our bodies will be able to fight off the fungus.”

  “Then I’m going to burn my mask.” The boy turned it in his hands. “This is the same one I’ve had since the beginning.”

  Bishop spotted two notches in the plastic on the top edge. He pointed them out. “What are those for?”

  “Oh, those are for my...” Trevor jerked his eyes away.

  “Oh, son.” He shook his head. “Those are for your kills. With the gun?”

  Trevor nodded as he ran his thumb across the marks.

  Heat travelled up the back of Bishop’s neck, and he made no effort to hide his disappointment. “You know what I’m going to say to that, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “That gun...Any gun, is not part of some game. It’s not Zombie March. You don’t shoot someone and then count it like a score.”

  “But they threw firebombs at us,” Trevor protested. “They tried to kill us.”

  “I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it,” he raised his finger. “But that doesn’t mean we have to celebrate death. There’s been way too much of that, you understand me?”

  Trevor nodded, cowed by his father’s size and the weight of his words.

  “You had no control over what they did,” he continued, leveling his tone, “but you have control over your own actions and how you justify them. I asked you to fire on them, and you did. You took down our enemies. That was a good thing. But I didn’t slap you a high five, did I? I d
idn’t ask you to enjoy it.”

  “I didn’t,” Trevor admitted quietly, eyes staring at the floor. “I wanted to puke.”

  “Good.”

  The boy’s shoulders hitched, tears plopping on the floor. Bishop settled his hand on his back and patted him gently.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Trevor sniffled, his tone turning angry. “I’m just so sick of all this.”

  “I know you are. And we’re going to do everything we can to get you someplace safe. I swear.”

  “But what if you don’t, Dad? What if you can’t? What if we’re stuck in this bus forever with all these kids?”

  He didn’t have an answer for his son, and the question haunted him the rest of the day.

  Chapter 3

  Randy, Ft. Wayne, Indiana

  Randy rested his hands in his lap and twiddled his thumbs. Life in the hospital wasn’t something he’d wish on anyone. The air was stale, the nurses stiff and professional, and his lockdown complete. He couldn’t even leave his room to take a walk.

  It had its good points. The lights stayed on more often, and the meals were hot and regular. And he had his own bathroom and shower. Earlier, he’d spent a delightful half hour beneath the steamy nozzle until they cut off his hot water.

  They piped movies into the hospital room TVs every few hours. It was mostly old flicks he wasn’t into like Back to the Future and Harry Potter. And they played war movies or romantic comedies that bored him senseless.

  What he really wanted to see were old football games. He would have given his left pinky to see the 2007 Super Bowl when the Colts had ripped the Bears. Randy had watched the game as a child, jaw hanging open as Payton Manning slung the pigskin like an old-time cowboy.

  That was the game that made him want to be a quarterback.

  He kicked his legs out and let his heels hit the side of the bed. He’d already done all the exercises he could do with his wounded chest, and he’d avoided sending messages to Tricia. It seemed cold, but it was pointless with Randy’s life slowly winding down. The dawning realization that he was going to die had settled in hours ago, a sinking feeling that returned with a vengeance whenever he closed his eyes to sleep.