They’re getting closer. Dr. Valentine can tell it, without having to see it. The screams of the men and women prove the Turned are drawing ever nearer. She grabs onto Rose’s wrists, ready to pull her free, she takes an opportunity to look over her shoulder. Yes, they are getting close. A group of five Wicked Briars is barreling down on them from multiple directions. Zeroing in on their frantic activity to save Nettle and Rose.
“Nettle come stand closer to us.” Says Shaw. “Hurry, Merna. We don’t have much time.” He groans under the weight of the wood beam pinning Rose down. The bulk of the pile is bending the pole in the middle, where it was kinked during the explosion. He readjusts his grip and pushes downward with everything he has left in him.
“I have her.”
There’s nowhere to go. The avenues of escape have been closed. Rampaging, Wicked Briars, joined by smaller Hobbles are so close the smell of acidic puke dripping from chomping jaws is overpowering.
Moments from death, they position themselves and wait for the pain of a terrible death. Rose buries her face into Dr. Valentine’s side. She too knows what’s coming.
Shaw picks up the pole to fight but realizing it is hopeless and drops it with a flat-keyed clang to the rock-strewn ground.
A truck screeches to a stop directly in front of them, cutting off the advancing enemy. It’s an old military ambulance with the name, Flying Fish, painted crudely on the side, in white paint. Gun slots perforate the exterior, and out of those ports, soldiers are shooting at the vile stampede, coming like a rushing wall of ugly.
The back doors of the ambulance fly open and Major Connors tells Shaw and Valentine in no uncertain terms to get inside the ambulance fast, but to leave them, meaning Rose and Nettle. He is aiming his pistol at Nettle’s ringlet-covered head, daring her to take advantage of the situation.
“Don’t say that. We have to take them. They’ll die here,” says Dr. Valentine.
“These subjects are the only chance we have of winning the battle with the Turned,” says Shaw.
Rose pulls on Dr. Valentine’s arm. “We have to save the others,” Rose is pointing back to the part of the hospital that’s still standing. She knows the other children are in still inside.
Dr. Valentine looks back to the shattered building, and then down to Rose. The look in her eyes should be enough to tell Rose that they can’t help the others. “Hopefully, we can come back for them… later,” she says. Her words ringing false.
“They’re just kids,” says Rose again, refusing to give in. Trying frantically to pull away from Dr. Valentine’s grip. “They’re just kids.” Tears flow down her face.
The weapons firing from the Flying Fish’s portholes is increasing. A soldier from inside warns that the Wicked Briars are nearly on top of them. Connors allows Shaw and Valentine inside along with the monsters, wearing child-costumes, but only because there is no time left to banter it back and forth.
“Get us out of here, Hollander!” Connors says to Hollander who is in the driver’s seat. “GO! GO! Floor it.”
The Flying Fish bursts through a barricade at break-neck speed. The guard posted there is dead. The remainder of his mangled body is dispersed indiscriminately throughout the immediate area. Two trucks follow the Flying Fish, as it makes its escape through the North entrance, and speeds away from the fallen base. Many soldiers have left behind. They’ll either escape or be digested within the guts devils.
They travel several miles, over rough road, before they’re no longer being chased by the invaders. Everyone has been so quiet since fleeing the base that it’s startling when the driver speaks out.
“Where are we heading?” says Hollander.
Connors hasn’t taken his eyes of the children, still holding his pistol to Nettle’s head. “Wrap her hands up in this stuff. The thin handkerchief and the dirty, frayed rag isn’t going to be enough. He hands Shaw some bandages and tape he gets from a med-bag on the floor.
Dr. Valentine watches him intently as he ponders his next move carefully because his next decision could be the one that gets them all killed. She’s surprised to hear his decision. “Fort Worth.”
“Why Fort Worth, Major?” she asks.
“Because they contacted us right before we were attacked. They’ve got someone there that may be able to help with your research. I wasn’t going to tell you. We weren’t going to go. Too far. But now, it seems as good a place as any, since the base has been lost.”
Dr. Valentine sits on a cot and leans against the panel. She watches the world pass by in a blur it’s become desolate a desolate battlefield, painted by the brush of a demented mad-mad, the colors taken from a palette of greys, and blacks, and reds. The mad painter has skillfully captured the spirit of what’s left of the world and has put it all down on a canvass of futility.
Shaw places a final layer of gauze over Nettle’s hands and tapes it all down snug.
Valentine’s not sure what disgusts her more; the destruction and loss she witnessed back at Camp Able, or the shit-eating grin on Shaw’s face.
Chapter Fourteen
“Okay Sweetie, monsters are real, and they look like people…”
The laborious journey across Texas, from Brownsville to San Antonio, can be described as nothing short of agony. The roads have despised their company and given them great pains, and hateful jabs in the ribs, at every opportunity.
Highway 77 isn’t too bad to travel on, but it isn’t good either. Abandoned automobiles litter the long silent stretch of road, some burned out, some still with corpses inside, decomposing in the sun.
Three, rag-tag, vehicles managed to escape the ruin of Camp Able, but one; a big one that carried a lot of green men, broke down just outside of San Antonio, in a place called Southton.
Rose heard the driver of the truck say what the problem was, and the problem was that it’s “flat busted.” They couldn’t fix it, and so they had to leave it sitting on Highway 37, to rust along the side of the road. So, all of it means, a lot of the green men are now on foot. This makes the convoy move much slower than Major Connors’s cares for, but as he says, “It is what it is.” The Major intends to acquire a new truck as soon as possible, but “first thing’s first,” says the major, “We need a safe place to call home for the night.”
Rose has hardly moved at all, from her place beside Dr. Valentine. She stares out the window, next to her. Rose doesn’t think she’s ever seen so many dead people in one place, as there are here in San Antonio, but her amnesia hasn’t really gotten any better, so she really doesn’t know if she’s ever seen this many dead people, or not. Putrid bodies litter roadways and sidewalks, like fallen leaves, and dried corn husks. They’ve been laying there a long time.
Rose’s legs ache from being cooped up in the Flying Fish, for so long. She wonders if she’s forgotten how to walk or talk, because she hasn’t been able to move around, and she’s had to remain so quiet for so long. Everyone is keeping as far away from Nettle as possible. The girl stays huddled in a tight ball and packed into a gloomy corner of the old military ambulance. She wraps her arms around her and rocks back and forth, jerkily, like a broken rocking horse.
Nettle’s hands are still wrapped tightly in wads of field dressing, and at least an entire roll of tape covers each one. Everyone still moves carefully gingerly about the girl, frightened and respectful of her unique touch, which is strange because Nettle’s hands are wrapped up in so much bandage that she couldn’t touch anyone even if she wanted. She wonders if she’d be immune to Nettle’s touch in the same way she’d been unaffected by Ivy’s scream.