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Head Games

17 March, 2:30am, a rest area just north of the Georgia-Florida border

Lieutenant Angela Rodriguez looked at herself in the bathroom mirror:  Brown hair tangled and filthy; face covered in dirt and grime; eyes wide and staring out from a bruised and exhausted face.  “You’re beautiful, girl, look at you,” she said to herself grimly.  Wonder of wonders, the water was still running and she washed her face.  The demons were back.

When her Commander had explained his own life story to her it had hit a personal note.  The talk of demons upset her.  Everyone had their own demons to contend with, true, but try telling someone not to worry about their own.  She had learned not to let them bother her anymore, though, and had been living her life pretty well until now.  The mirror now showed a scared little girl that she hated.  A little girl who had sat by as her mother and sister were beaten and raped; daddy laughing in this little girl’s face and calling her ugly.  “You so ugly, bitch, I won’t even fuck you!” said this demon in her head.

“I’m not ugly, dammit,” she whispered to herself.  She took hold of her bangs, still framing her face and pulled, hard.  “I’m not ugly, you son of a bitch.”  A noise startled her and she turned, .45 auto up and ready. 

The sound had come from the direction of the bathroom stalls.  Walking slowly, she peered into the first to find it empty.  She dropped to her stomach and looked under the other stalls.  At the very last stall was a pair of small legs, now moving to stand on top of the toilet.  She advanced toward that stall ready for anything.  “Hello?” she called softly.  “Listen, I’m not a zombie.  You’re safe.”  Nothing.  She had reached the last stall and leaned to it.  “Hey, if you’re in there I’m cool, OK, I’m not one of those things.”  She pushed the door open slowly and stood peering into the barrel of a small gun.  “Hey I-“

The gun fired into her face.

Hodds had finished fueling the car and was now sitting on the hood enjoying a well deserved cigarette break.  He had yet to see one of the living dead since they arrived here at the rest stop.  Maybe they all went to Florida and said screw Georgia, he mused.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the state but give me Columbia any day, he figured.  Once you got past the drug pushers and cartel-commandos that tried to kill you every five minutes, Columbia was a pretty nice place to be.  The beaches, the women, the cuisine all contributed to its place in Hodds’ heart.  You could spend days just watching the water.

Now, though, he would probably never go back.  If any of it survived this new plague it would likely be unrecognizable.  There were just too many horror stories between there and here.  Too many friends gone; too many places seen overrun and devoured to ever be the same again.  If this ever ended Commander Hodds resolved himself to finally take that retirement package The Board offered. 

The Board.

The shadowy organization known to employees and constituents only as The Board controlled every SEAT team’s deployment world-wide.  If diplomatic negotiations between warlords in Somalia fell through, The Board knew about it.  If Fidel Castro decided to begin arming his country with Soviet ICBMs, The Board knew about it.  If a President, a Speaker, a Chairman, a Chancellor, or any world leader was assassinated, The Board either knew about it or likely had some finger in the pie.  The Board had a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.  It would not be altogether unthinkable if they had one in this pie.

Spreading faster than a wildfire it had come, straight for the big cities.  Hodds and his team had gotten out of the Middle East where they had been stationed at the time and come back to the US only to hit their first mission.  Before yesterday they had been pulling three days without sleep. 

He lay back on the windshield lighting his last Marlboro remembering Columbia some more.  The gleeful sound of a small-caliber gun brought him away from his musings.  He knew the sounds of guns and that was nothing Angela carried.  He ran in that direction, bursting into the women’s bathroom, assault rifle ready.  “Angela?” he called.  “Angela do you hear me?”  He turned the corner to the stalls and saw a form leaning against the wall, another smaller form stood with its arms around it.  “Angela!  Push it off, I got it!” he yelled to her.  Her hand came up, limply and waved him off.

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