Chapter Five - Cat
CHAPTER FIVE
Cat
THE TRANSPORT VEHICLES held around twenty people with large benches lining either side. I was the last person to get on mine before it took off, so I sat down next to the couple from the car in front of me. The man had his arm around the woman and she was sniffling with her face buried in his neck. I guess he’d agreed to be more compliant when he realized there was no avoiding this situation, so they let him out of his cuffs.
“Do you know where they’re taking us, by any chance?” I asked the man.
“No, they didn’t specify. Just said it was somewhere safe, a quarantine zone or something.” He replied while rubbing the woman’s back.
“I heard the soldiers say we’re going to the football stadium at the college on the outskirts of the city. The one with the dome you can see from the highway,” a girl sitting across from me spoke up.
She looked to be around my age, give or take a few years. With short blonde hair and big blue almond-shaped eyes, she was pretty in a girl next door kind of way. Her build was pretty thin but in an athletic could still probably kick your ass kind of way. She was wearing a pair of work boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt. It looked like she must have worked in some kind of workshop cause she had dust all over her clothes. Then I noticed I hadn’t said anything and was kind of just staring at her.
“Sorry, thank you. It’s been a long night. My name is Catherine. My friends call me Cat, though.” I fumbled out.
“No worries,” she smiled sheepishly. “I think it’s been a long night for all of us. My name’s Sadie.”
“I’d love to say it’s nice to meet you, but I don’t think I could classify anything that’s happening right now as nice.” I attempted a grim smile of my own.
Just then, our forward momentum lurched to an abrupt halt and we all fell deathly silent. The truck’s cab doors could be heard opening and closing, then a litany of footsteps crunched by on the shoulder on the other side of the thin metal wall.
“Coming up on the right, aim for their heads!” A voice hollered and a barrage of deafening gunfire followed.
People around me were covering their ears and whimpering. Sadie and I just stared into each other’s eyes in utter shock at what was happening around us. Once the shots ceased, an ‘all clear’ rang out, then the footsteps returned to the cab and we were moving once again.
“Did they just...shoot people? They said ‘Aim for their heads!’” Sadie whispered to me with wide eyes.
“Yeah...it definitely sounds like they did…” I replied numbly, just about at my limit of how much shit one person can handle in a day.
“Those aren’t people anymore,” the man next to me chimed in. “I saw my neighbor get taken down by one of them things. Watched him bleed out, watched someone I’ve known for twenty years die right in front of my eyes. Then a minute later he was back up again looking for someone to bite.”
The rest of the ride we just rode in silence after that. What can you even really say? I just sat there and tried to process everything I had seen and been through in the last couple of hours. To think I had gone from never even seeing a dead body, to turning someone into one, then witnessing them reanimate and run around the streets attacking the first living soul they saw. I don’t really even think anything had began to hit me yet, I looked down at my shaking hands. My body was in fight or flight and I’m not even sure which one of those it was currently choosing.
We started to slow down after traveling for a quite a while now, so I was hoping that meant we were at our destination. I heard what sounded like a large garage door raising then after we passed through, shutting behind us. I prayed it would be enough to hold whatever those things were out there. When we came to a stop, we all waited until someone appeared to let us out. After what happened on the ride over, I think everyone was too scared to exit before knowing for one hundred percent certain that the coast was clear.
Once the door was open, we were met with the sight of an enclosed underground parking area that was converted into what looked like the processing department of a prison. People were being split up into two lines by gender and taken one at a time into little cubicles.
“All right, listen up! My name is Captain Pearson and I’ve been appointed in charge of this quarantine zone,” a tall woman with a short black bob spoke to us once we had all exited the truck. “You’re all here because currently it appears like we have an unidentified illness spreading around the city. In efforts to contain the spread, we’re trying to get all healthy people off the streets so we can focus on maintaining your safety.”
The surrounding crowd broke out into murmurs, now talking in worried tones to those around them.
“Please quiet down! What we need you all to do now, to protect everyone’s continued safety, is please move your designated lines over there. We need to ensure you’ve been assessed by medical to be positive we aren’t letting in anyone already infected.”
With those words, the crowd got louder. I could see people starting to panic at the mention of someone potentially already being infected here in our midst. I think hearing it out loud from someone of authority finally made everything real in their minds. Stuff like this only happened in horror movies, not real life.
“Do not panic! If anyone is found with the illness, they will be transferred to the infirmary to receive medical care. We just have to separate you from the general population until any and all symptoms have passed. Now please, start to line up. Another truck should be here soon and we have to keep things moving,” Captain Pearson tried to reassure the crowd.
With that, people started to get into their respective lines. I found myself moving over to the line at Sadie’s side. Even though I’d just met her, I felt like maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to stick together. Buddy system, you know? Safety in numbers. She looked at me and gave me a weak smile, hopefully thinking the same thing I was.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen any zombie movie where someone just magically gets better after being bit,” a woman ahead of us in line scoffed to the one standing next to her.
“Oh stop, you don’t really think they’re zombies, do you? I bet it’s just another virus that’s like the flu but worse,” she replied.
Sadie and I just side eyed each other with a doubtful look. I’m not sure what she may have seen before being forced here, but the look on her face said she had seen enough to know that this wasn’t just some flu. I didn’t recognize either of the woman from our truck, so it would explain how one of them could still be in denial.
After seeing the infected for myself and hearing soldiers instructed to aim for their heads? I couldn’t deny the fact that people were dying, then coming back to spread whatever it was that was turning them.
“So, where were you trying to go before all this?” I asked Sadie, just trying to make small talk in an attempt to get my mind off the current shit show we found ourselves smack dab in the middle of.
“Oh, I was just on my way home from work. I work second shift as a welder over at a fabrication shop on the east side of Rotlington,” she answered.
“Oh no way, that’s pretty bad ass. I wish I knew how to do something cool like that,” I replied.
“Thanks,” she smiled proudly. “I was stopping at the grocery store to grab something for dinner when all hell broke loose. An older guy just dropped right in the middle of the produce section. There was a nurse there shopping too, she thought he had gone into cardiac arrest so she started trying to do CPR. After a few minutes, he popped up out of nowhere and just bit her right in the face. He just absolutely started mauling her like some rabid animal. People then began running for the exits, so I got the hell out of there, too. I was panicking and before I knew it, I got trapped in the line of cars of people being rounded up,” she revealed.
“Yeah, that happened to me, too. I wanted to try and go back the way I came, but they pulled up behind me so I didn’t even get the chance to try.”
“Where were you trying to get to?” She asked.
“I was on my way to my parents’ cabin. It’s on a lake in my hometown, Efferville, about two hours from here by highway. I tried to take it, but it was a damn parking lot by the time I got there. Then I tried to take the back way but ran into the roadblock before I could even get out of the city. My parents are there with my little sister, Rhiannon. I tried to call them but I don’t have any service on my phone,” I said with a frown, remembering I had no idea if they were safe or not.
“Don’t worry,” she said and grabbed my hand. “I’m sure they’re fine. That’s why they’re not letting anyone out of the city, remember? So it stays contained. They’ll be okay.”
She gave my hand a reassuring squeeze before letting go. I wasn’t a touchy feely person, but that small attempt at comfort warmed my heart. I’d never really had any girl friends. In high school, I had joined the cheerleading squad my freshman year in an attempt to try and put myself out there.
At first, it seemed like I was finally starting to fit in, finally kind of popular. They started inviting me to their parties until one in particular when it all blew up in my face. If I really thought about it, I’ve only ever had two friends and those guys were my absolute best friends. I lost them that same night.
The prospect of potentially making a new friend had my spirit lifting a little higher. Maybe after this all was over, I’d have ended up with something positive out of it. When we got to the head of the line, there were two women in scrubs. One had a tablet in her hand for taking down people’s information and the other one was waiting just inside the room.
“Full name and date of birth, please. If you have your ID on you, that’d be even better,” the one with the tablet stated.
I dug into my bag and pulled out my wallet, handing over what she’d requested.
“Perfect, thank you. Go ahead and enter the room where you will be asked to undress so we can examine you from head to toe for any signs of infection.” She said, after handing me back my card.
“Uhm...what? A strip search? Can’t you just like swab my mouth? Take my temperature or something?” I asked nervously.
“I apologize, but unfortunately, no. The only way we can truly be sure is with a full body examination. I’m remiss for any discomfort this may cause, but I feel it important to inform you that if you refuse, you will be moved to medical where you might be placed under additional stricter quarantining,” she replied with indifference.
This should have been a walk in the park for me. I mean, I spent every night for the past year shedding my clothes without a second thought. After Harry, though, it was hard to stomach the thought of being that vulnerable around a stranger ever again. It wasn’t really looking like I had an option, though. A fire bloomed inside my chest, angry tears filling my eyes at the thought of being backed into a corner yet again. I hadn’t even asked to come here. My hands clenched at my sides and I was gritting my teeth until I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“It’ll be okay, Cat. I’ll be right here outside the door the whole time. You can wait for me and then we can go find where we’ll be sleeping for the night after. I promise, as long as we stick together, everything will be okay.” Sadie looked into my eyes, searching.
I gave her a weak nod and let myself get led into the examination room. Once I calmed down, the search wasn’t as bad as I had made it out to be in my head. I was grateful that Sadie had been there to get me out of my head so I didn’t get my ass hauled off to medical. Even though we met barely an hour ago, there was an instantaneous connection I’d never experienced before. She had a naturally comforting presence about her and I just felt in my gut I could trust her. I didn’t know what we were up against, but I guess there’s only one way to find out.