Chapter 12: Blood on the Highway

The fire was ash and the wind cut straight through the concrete barriers.

Arthur had been sitting with his back to the low wall for an hour watching the road and listening to Rico breathe. His shoulder had bled through the bandage. Ellis had wrapped it tight the night before but the cloth was dark now and the skin underneath felt hot. He moved his arm once to test it and a sharp pull ran down to his elbow.

His backpack sat at his feet. Every thirty seconds or so a dull light pulsed inside it through the fabric. He had put the Crystal Core in there after he pulled it out of the wolf. It was warm even through the bag. It made his palm itch when he held it.

He kept thinking about the wolf. Not the teeth or the way it moved. The way it looked at him right before he brought Carla’s axe down. There had been something behind the eyes that did not belong to an animal.

He unzipped the bag just enough to see the Core. It throbbed once in his hand like it was listening. He zipped the bag shut and pushed it under the tarp and covered it with his jacket. The others were still asleep and he wanted it to stay that way.

Behind them the facility sat in the cold light. The fence still had power. A low hum came off the wire and the floodlights over the bunker doors had not gone out once since they found it. Whatever had opened its eyes in the fourth chamber was still in there. None of them had gone back to check.

Marcus woke first. He stood and pulled his coat tighter and looked at the facility then at the highway north.

“We should strip the server room,” he said. His voice was low. “That place has power and power means records. If they were keeping things in containment they were keeping notes.”

Arthur shook his head. “We are not going back.”

“Ten minutes is all I need. The drives will have the origin logs. That is worth more than anything we have on us right now.”

“Rico can’t walk,” Arthur said. “We are not splitting up.”

Marcus looked at him for a long second. In the early chapters he would have argued until Arthur gave in. He was older and he had been the one making the calls when they left the city. Now he looked at Arthur’s shoulder and at the backpack under the tarp and he let it go.

“Fine,” Marcus said. “But we are leaving information behind that could keep people alive.”

“People come first,” Arthur said. “That is how we keep people alive.”

Marcus nodded once and started packing his rifle. That was new. Arthur giving an order and Marcus following it. It did not feel good. It felt heavy.

Rico woke up swearing under his breath. He tried to sit and his face went white. The wolf had caught his leg just above the ankle and torn through muscle. Ellis had cleaned it and wrapped it but the gauze was soaked and the flesh around the bite was swollen tight.

“You look worse than I feel,” Rico said to Arthur and tried to grin.

Ellis was already beside him. He was pale himself from his own ribs. The wolf had thrown him into a barrier and he breathed shallow when he moved. But his hands were steady as he checked Rico’s wrap.

“Don’t move it more than you have to,” Ellis said. His voice was hoarse. “You lose more blood and you will not be joking.”

Lini was awake too. She knelt on Rico’s other side without being told and slid her arm under his shoulder. She was small and her hands shook but she held him. When they lifted him together she took most of his weight on her side even though it hurt her.

Rico looked down at her and forced another joke because he was scared.

“You know normally when people say they got my back they don’t let giant crystal dogs bite my leg,” he said to her.

Lini frowned at him. “You saved me. So now I save you.”

Arthur watched that and felt the guilt sit deeper. Rico had pulled Lini out of the way when the wolf lunged. If he had been a second slower it would have been her leg in that wrap. Or worse.

“You are still talking,” Arthur said to Rico. “That is a good sign.”

“Yeah but I am still bleeding. Less good.”

Ellis and Lini helped him to his feet. He could put a little weight on the leg but not much. They moved slow. Arthur took point with Sophia behind him and Marcus at the back.

The highway north was empty except for cars left to rust where their owners had abandoned them. The asphalt was cracked and weeds pushed through. The air smelled like cold metal and wet concrete.

Two miles from the facility they found the truck.

It was a military mobile lab tipped onto its side with the rear doors blown outward. The paint on the side said BIOHAZARD MOBILE UNIT 07 and underneath that someone had sprayed a black X. The tires were gone and the windows were smashed from the inside.

Sophia raised a hand and they all stopped. She had taken watch since Carla died and she was good at it. She scanned the tree line and then nodded once that it was clear.

Marcus climbed inside first with Arthur right behind him. The interior stank of rot and chemicals. Two bodies in white coats lay on the floor. They had been there a long time. Their faces were covered but their gloves were still on and their hands were curled around sample cases like they had tried to protect them.

All the equipment was destroyed. Microscopes smashed. A centrifuge tipped over. Coolers torn open with vials shattered inside.

Photos were pinned to a metal board that had fallen against the wall. Thermal images of shapes that were not human. One was clearly a wolf but larger with growths along its spine. Another was something long and low to the ground that Arthur did not recognize. Close ups showed crystal pushing out through skin and fur. One photo had writing in marker. CRYSTAL BEAST — CLASS C — AGGRESSIVE MUTATION.

Rico stayed outside with Ellis and Lini while Sophia kept watch at the door.

Marcus pulled papers from a drawer that had not been broken. Most were water damaged but one folder was sealed in plastic. Arthur took it.

The cover sheet was typed and stained.

SUBJECT: CRYSTAL WOLF — UNKNOWN ORIGIN

FIRST SIGHTING: SECTOR 9 — 14 MONTHS PRIOR TO CONTAINMENT BREACH

BEHAVIOR: TERRITORIAL / PACK ADAPTIVE / HIGH INTELLIGENCE SUSPECTED

He turned the page. The next pages were gone. The binding showed where they had been torn out clean. Not ripped in a fight. Removed by someone who knew what they were looking for.

“They knew,” Sophia said quietly. She had come inside and was reading over his shoulder. “Fourteen months before. This was happening before the outbreak. Maybe this was the outbreak.”

Marcus looked at the bodies. “They were studying it while the rest of the world was still going to work. They kept it quiet.”

Arthur put the folder back. He thought about the Core pulsing in his bag. The lab had called the wolf unknown origin. That meant they never figured out where it came from either.

He did not say anything about what he was carrying. That was the first secret. It sat heavier than the shoulder wound.

They left the truck and kept moving. The road rose and the wind got stronger. Lini stayed next to Rico the whole time matching his slow pace even though Ellis told her she could go ahead. She held the strap of his pack so he would not have to carry it. When Rico stumbled she caught him.

“You don’t have to do that,” Rico told her.

“I know,” she said.

That shut him up.

Sophia fell back to walk with Arthur while the others were ahead. She had been watching him since the night before. Not in the way that worried him. In the way that said she noticed more than the others.

“You have not said much since last night,” she said.

“I am thinking.”

“Before all this you worked in an office,” she said. “You told me you never even held a gun.”

Arthur nodded.

“Now you killed something that should not exist and you told Marcus no and he listened. Everyone looks at you first now.”

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“I know. That’s why they do.”

They walked in silence for a while. The road was empty and their footsteps were loud. Then Sophia said, “When did you stop being afraid?”

Arthur looked at her. “I didn’t.”

She reached out and touched his good arm once and let her hand drop. She stayed beside him after that.

Around noon the road changed. The birds stopped. There were no infected on the shoulders like there usually were. Instead there were bodies. Infected dead but not from gunshots. Torn open. Limbs bent wrong. Blood dried black on the asphalt.

The asphalt itself had long gouges cut into it. Three parallel lines that went for twenty feet then stopped then started again. Claw marks but bigger than the wolf.

Ellis crouched despite his ribs and looked at one of the bodies. “This was not the Crystal Wolf,” he said. “Something else did this. Something bigger.”

Marcus followed the gouges north with his eyes. They ran straight up the highway for half a mile and then vanished into the trees.

“It came through here fast,” Marcus said. “Not hunting. Moving. Like it was following something.”

Sophia checked the tree line. “Us?”

“Maybe,” Marcus said. “Or maybe it was tracking the same thing we are.”

They moved faster after that. Rico tried not to show pain but his breath came short and his face was gray. Ellis helped him and Lini stayed on his other side. Arthur kept his hand near his axe and kept looking over his shoulder.

At mile marker 88 they saw the tower. It was a military repeater on a concrete pad with a generator that still thumped quietly and a red light blinking on top. The fence around it was intact.

Marcus got the door open and went inside. The radio equipment was old but powered. He switched it on and static filled the small room. He turned the dial until a looped message came through loud and clear.

“Shelter 42 to all survivors ... this is an automated broadcast ... capacity has been reached. Do not approach the main gate. Repeat do not approach the main gate. We cannot accept new arrivals. Seek alternate shelter. God help you.”

The room went cold.

Lini looked up at Arthur. Her eyes were wide. Sophia grabbed his arm without thinking.

For weeks Shelter 42 had been the plan. It was the reason they went north. Maggie was supposed to be there. If she was still alive she would have gone there. It was the only place left with walls and medicine and a chance.

Now the message was telling them to stay away.

Arthur stared at the speaker. He felt the weight of the decision forming before anyone else said it.

Then the backpack at his feet pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

Strong enough that light leaked through the fabric and the zipper glowed.

At the same second the radio slipped. The Shelter 42 loop cut into sharp static and a different voice came through. Not automated. A man. Low and close like he was right next to the mic and did not want to be heard.

“The carrier has awakened.”

The hair on Arthur’s neck stood up.

The static rose and swallowed the voice and then the automated loop came back.

“Shelter 42 to all survivors ... capacity has been reached...”

Sophia looked at Arthur. Her face was pale. “What was that? Who is the carrier?”

Arthur did not answer. His hand had moved on its own to the backpack where the Core was pulsing again in time with his heartbeat.

Outside the wind moved through the trees and something in the distance broke a branch.

Rico looked toward the sound and tried to stand straighter despite his leg.

Ellis lifted his rifle.

Lini moved closer to Arthur.

The radio kept playing.

Does it match with the flow

The wall was the first thing you saw from the highway and then you could not see anything else.

Concrete thirty feet high topped with razor wire and floodlights that never went off. Watchtowers every hundred yards with machine guns pointed out not in. Armored trucks parked bumper to bumper behind the gates. Shelter 42 looked like it had been built to survive the end of the world and it had. That was the problem.

Maggie stood with the museum children in the dust outside the south gate and tried to keep them together. The crowd went on for blocks. Tents made from blankets and plastic sheeting and car doors leaned against each other. People slept on cardboard. People slept on bare pavement. Cooking fires burned in oil drums and the smoke never cleared.

They had been here four days. Long enough for the temporary camp to stop looking temporary. Paths had been worn between tents. Someone had dug a latrine trench behind the old bus station. Someone else was charging water for food.

She had walked for weeks to get here because she thought walls meant safety. Now the walls were right there and they were closed.

The children sat in a tight circle around their packs. Kelvin sat closest to Maggie with his knees pulled up. He held onto her sleeve whenever she moved. Next to him was the braid girl with her two braids tucked forward over her shoulders. She kept touching the ends when she was nervous. On the other side was the glass boy. His glasses were taped on one side and he kept pushing them up even though they slid right back down.

Two adults from the school were still with them. The rest had left to try other gates.

Maggie knelt and checked each child one by one.

“You hungry?” she asked Kelvin.

He nodded. None of them complained anymore which was worse.

The braid girl looked at the gates. “When are they going to let us inside?”

Maggie followed her eyes. The soldiers on the wall were not looking at the crowd. They were looking past it.

“Soon,” she said.

She did not believe it when she said it. The glass boy pushed his glasses up and looked at her and then looked away because he needed her to lie.

Luis leaned close and kept his voice down. “People are saying the shelter is full. Not almost full. Full for weeks. They stopped intake before we got here.”

Maggie did not answer. She kept her hand on Kelvin’s back and watched the gate.

At noon a truck came. It was a supply truck with a military escort that stopped a hundred yards outside the wire and opened the back.

The crowd moved before the soldiers could form a line. Hundreds of people stood at once and pushed forward. Maggie grabbed Kelvin and the braid girl and pulled them back against the concrete divider as the surge went past. The glass boy held onto her pack so he would not get separated.