Sorry. Wasn’t liking it. Vitale and Keel, our leaders, were losing it. Out of control. I didn’t know if it was nervous breakdowns, if they’d been exposed to other chemical agents, or what. Their…behavior was obscure and uncomforting.

Dave stared at me. He agreed. Was in his eyes. We’d have to have each other’s backs. Chatterton looked our way. No doubt. The three of us saw a problem. If I wasn’t reading the signs wrong, Marf also felt the same. Trust was thin in these . . . platoons. Getting thinner by the second.

Spade? Spencer? They acted gung-ho for Vitale. Didn’t mean they agreed with or were against anything unfolding, just I hadn’t seen anything to indicate one side was preferred over the other. Except Spencer was ready to shoot a Coast Guard Captain, and Spade was ready to explode the brains of a fellow soldier on a split-second guess.

Other than that…

#  #  #

I did not like leaving my kids on the boat. It was the very last thing I wanted to do, but there didn’t seem to be much choice. People were in trouble. They’d saved us. My kids were safer with the vessel. I had every intention of returning.

Clouds back lit by moonlight looked iridescent in the sky. When they passed over the moon, we were plunged into darkness, but they passed quickly. The fog seemed to be settling some, too. It stayed low around our calves and as we walked, it swirled away and returned.

Staying low, we walked several hundred yards away from the ship. I saw chain link fence and a tall wooden structure at the corner.

“Watch tower,” Marf said. “The entrance to the camp should be on the north side.”

Our breath plumed from our mouths with each quick and shallow breath then fell behind us. It reminded me of puffs emitted from old train engines. Felt more like a wolf out on a winter night. We resembled a pack; crouched and hunting.

“Once we get in, Marf, you three go right. West. We’ll go east. Do a perimeter check. Listen for anything. Then we’ll start clearing the apartments, working our way to the center. Easiest thing is going to be following Palmeri, Pettenski and Saylor’s footprints. Mud’s good for something,” Vitale said.

We followed in a row. All the rain softened the earth; wet the dirt. My dress shoes were shit in this mud. The goo gathered on the soles. I walked carefully, afraid I might lose one or worse, both. Cash was more of a gamer than I was. He liked his war games best. I’d played with him more than once. Once would have been enough. While he controlled his soldier with ease, mine always seemed stuck in one place, spinning in circles with the weapon aimed at either the sky or the ground. Can’t imagine playing a game would help now, but it did feel eerily similar. I was out of my element.

Through the fence, I could see the apartments. They were not big, but long. I saw no signs of life. I wondered how many people were supposed to be here, uninfected, military and medical.

Vitale’s words spun around in my head while we walked. I understood the basics. Testing the uninfected for cures. Can’t imagine the entire population gone, walking dead. The idea was surreal. Pockets of uninfected left? Pockets. The idea overwhelmed, depressed and I needed to block it off, file it away, and worry about it later.

We rounded a corner by the second watchtower. The fence seemed to go on forever, disappearing into darkness. We had come upon the entrance to the camp soon, had to. I looked up; saw the bottom barrel rolls of barbed wire. I’d thought it early, that the place felt like a prison. Now it seemed like we were about to break into one.

Best guess, something got in or was already infected on the inside. Hated guessing, but was all that made sense. Still -- where was everyone?

This brought me back to my first question. How many people had been here to begin with, before we arrived?

Chapter Twelve

0108 hours

The front gate was wide open. I don’t know what I expected. I thought it might be off hinges, or a cut chain with a smashed padlock disassembled on the ground. No, there was none of that. The gate was just open.

“Okay,” Vitale said. “Footprints look fresh. Split in three different directions. Looks like they separated. First mistake. I find them; I’ve got some ass-whipping to dish out.”

No one laughed.

“What about going straight? One of them went straight,” Dave said.

“Perimeter first,” Vitale said.

“Sir, how many people were here? I mean, overall,” I said.

“Keel has more intel than I’d been given, but he said seventy-ish. Around fifty residents. Medical and military personnel were at twenty. Makes it some seventy people here. We stick to the plan. Marf, west. We’re going east.” Vitale waved his arm. Chatterton and Spade followed.

“We stay close,” Marf said. “I’ll take point. Dave, and then Chase, you be the eyes in the back of our heads. We’re not going to go fast. We’re going to stay close to the fence. Walk along it.”

“Didn’t we just do that, but from on the other side?” Dave said.

“We did and we’re doing it again. This time, we are looking around the actual compound. Out there, we weren’t focused on the inside. Only on getting to the gate,” he said.

Again, we crouched, moved along the fence.

The apartments looked crudely constructed with wood frames and a few windows. Then the clouds passed over the moon. Darkness fell over us like a blanket being dropped over our heads. I couldn’t even see my breath.

I saw a beam of light. Marf must have had a flashlight. Of course he did. These guys were better than boy scouts were. Trained to be prepared. It worked for him, up in front. Back here, all I could see was the thin beam of white light. He kept it aimed down. The light was like a laser, precise and contained. It wouldn’t necessarily attract unwanted attention.

I kept looking behind me.

Might not be able to see my breath, but I could sure as shit hear my breathing. It was fast and heavy. I couldn’t figure out how we would be able to find much of anything in such complete darkness. I assumed Marf used his small light to follow the tracks. Aside from the tracks, we had nothing else to go on.

If there wasn’t Marf’s light and the fence to assist, I’d be lost and stumbling blind. It already felt like a dream, a nightmare, with my feet sticking in the mud, the darkness and the sense that I’d never get where we needed to go. If I start hearing chh-chh-chh-ha-ha-ha, I would not be surprised, because part of me expected it. My imagination flared and it was getting the better of me. I’d wanted to help find the lost soldiers, but couldn’t help regretting it now. I wanted to be back on the boat, back with my kids and Allison. I might be surrounded by the military, but I no longer felt safe. They knew little more than I did. Only real difference was training and weapons. They had them; I did not.

The clouds passed. The moon was out.

There was a building just to our left. It was set out from the rest of the apartments. I tried to remember the layout that had been explained. Thinking it is the military barracks. Place where the soldiers on site slept.

I saw Marf’s fist shoot up, so we stopped. I looked left, right and behind us. The silence unnerved me. I didn’t hear crickets. Nothing. I couldn’t hear the other group either. I wondered how they were doing.

Dave turned around. “We’re going to clear the barracks.”

“What about finishing the search of the perimeter?”

Dave shrugged.

Marf ran toward the wood steps that led to the front door. He waved us over.

“We’re going in. Look around. Might be some extra weapons. We’ll make a note of inventory, okay? Right now, we have enough to carry. We don’t want to be weighed down, so we’re just looking, but not taking stuff. Not now,” Marf said.