Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed

by Marchon, Matthew

  “Yes, we do,” I say slowly. “The scientists called them vampires.”

  “Called them what?” Marty chokes on his crackers with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

  “They were working on a cure to end drug addiction. But they said an addict will always be addicted to something, so they were trying to shift the addiction to something they’d always have, as long as they were alive.”

  “Blood,” Norwood groans in a monotone drawl.

  “The government forced them into animal testing before they were ready. But the mice weren’t addicted to anything, they had to be infected with it first. Kristen’s mom felt bad because they were losing so many mice, so when it was in these early stages, they made a cure that was easy to administer. Saline. Saltwater. It stops the infection. Everything was so experimental, they weren’t ready to begin testing yet.”

  “How the hell did it get out?” Neil asks, head resting on his fist, eyes closed.

  “Kristen’s brother. He broke into the lab Monday night and took both vials.”

  “Both vials,” Maxwell repeats. “Son of a bitch, the one to get them addicted, and the one to shift the addiction to their own blood. They’re essentially junkies with no inhibitions.”

  “Hold on,” Neil growls. “You’re telling me, the whole fucking world just ended because a bunch of druggies didn’t wanna detox?”

  A hush falls over us as we all retreat into our own thoughts. It’s a lot to take in, I know because I’m still trying.

  This was essentially our choice. Humans chose this. They wanted to get addicted. You can’t tell me otherwise because if they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t have done it. It’s as simple as that.

  I didn’t want to become a drug addict, so I didn’t.

  It’s an informed decision, I don’t care what anyone tells you. Jeremey, Kristin’s brother, he knew what he was doing when he did it. I remember. Heroin wasn’t some new thing no one had ever heard of. We all know the consequences. We know the trajectory your life will take. We’re not stupid. We all know.

  He didn’t care because he didn’t see anything better for himself. It’s not like he’s alone. It’s an epidemic that’s been plaguing our country for longer than we like to admit. But in our backwards form of logic, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.

  Parents couldn’t bear to see their children succumb to voluntary addiction, and this is what it’s come to. They administer Narcan over an epi-pen. Addicts somehow became more important. I don’t know, maybe I’m jaded because of how it turned out, but to be perfectly honest, it pissed me off long before Jeremy Abbot had his first taste of human blood.

  “I joined the Army because I didn’t wanna follow in my father’s footsteps, like my brother and sister did.” Tears glisten beneath Maxwell’s eyes. “Keyvon was only nineteen. It was over a week before my mom even reported him missing, because that was normal for him. I found him, down by the river. There were maggots crawling in his scabs. His arm was still tied off, needle in his hand. I enlisted the next day, in the cafeteria, left for Basic right after graduation. I did it to escape, so I wouldn’t turn into them. Not just my family, my whole damn city. But there was never really any escaping it, was there?”

  “You didn’t become them,” Norwood says, sweetly. Is sweetly right? Norwood? Maybe I’m still more out of it than I thought. “Look at you now, saving the world.”

  She snorts in protest. “I can’t even save us. I wanted to do it all, because everyone around me did nothing. You know that phrase, jack of all trades, master of none? I wanted to be a weapons specialist, be a medic, a pilot, hand to hand combat, all of it. And I did it, I did it all, it’s just, I’m only there to fill in until the masters arrive.”

  “Max,” Norwood says, shaking his head, “those skills, they’re what got you through this. They’re why you’re alive, and the rest of your unit isn’t.”

  “No, you guys are why I’m alive. Without you…”

  “Wait,” I whisper, before the wheels are done turning in my head. “Pilot?”

  “Not like, pilot pilot. Afghanistan, we were in the desert, supply run. None of us saw it coming. We lost three that day, pilot lost an arm. He talked me through it, I got us outta there. I’m not certified or anything, but you know, I’ve done it.”

  “Could you do it again?” I ask, a hope in my voice that makes them all take notice.

  “Fly a helicopter? I mean, I guess, maybe, if I had to. Why? What are you getting at?”

  “We passed a sign for the hospital, when we were coming into town.”

  “Life Flight,” Felecia finishes for me, because we’re Nolecia and we can do that. “They might have one stationed there. Max, could you fly it?”

  She shakes her head, chewing on her lower lip like it’s gum. “No, no, absolutely not. No, guys, no.”

  “So, that’s a yes then?” Felecia asks with a hopeful smile.

  “No, that’s a negative. I’ve never flown alone. I learned for emergency purposes only.”

  “Girl,” Felecia says, nudging Maxwell with her beautiful butt, “it doesn’t get much more emergent than this.”

  “We believe in you,” Sami nods, a look in her eyes a monster couldn’t say no to.

  “We’re getting on that helicopter with you,” I say, placing my hands on her shoulders, “because we know you can do this. We know the risks. We’ll just hope there’s parachutes on board.”

  Maxwell laughs, bowing her head, still shaking it relentlessly. “Where the hell have you guys been all my life? I coulda used friends like you. Fuck it, yeah, okay, we’re doing this. Let’s find a way across this river. We’re flying outta here. That or I accidentally blow it up with us inside.”

  “Wait, are you serious?” Sami’s practically hyperventilating with excitement, but the guys don’t look quite so optimistic.

  Marty grunts, skepticism weighing heavy in his displeased growl. “We really think this is worth it? I mean, this is one hell of a long shot.”

  No one says anything because, yeah, he’s right, it is, but what other choice do we have? That was our helicopter. Our ticket out of here. Can we really sit here and watch it slip through our fingers? We probably won’t beat them there, not with the head start they have, but everything we’ve done up until now, there was always someone saying it couldn’t be done. And then we did it.

  “We have to,” I finally say, surveying their pessimistically hopeful faces. “If we don’t try, we’re gonna spend forever wondering.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Are you hearing yourselves?” Neil groans, raising his voice to that irritating Buckley whine that instantly clenches my hand into a fist. “They’re hours ahead of us. We’re not intercepting that helicopter, it’s not physically possible. You guys don’t understand, my dad doesn’t lose.”

  “And that’s assuming there’s a helicopter at the hospital,” Marty says, pointing across the river. “And that we can get to that hospital alive because right now, it’s not looking like a viable option.”

  “What if there’s no Life Flight?” Norwood asks, staring at his feet, oddly somber compared to his normal over the top self. “We thought there’d be a truck in that garage back at the dam, and here we are riding around on a freakin’ lawnmower. Say we do make it all the way down to that airstrip outside Yuma, and we’re too late, Dipshit’s dad is already gone, what then?”

  “We’re on one helluva time crunch here as it is,” Marty continues, nervously smoothing out his mustache over and over again. “We know the power’s about to go out, we can’t be wasting time on a fool’s errand. We’re a-fucking-live, after all this,” he says with a winded chuckle. “I think it’s time we take a moment to appreciate that, and maybe redefine what living means to us. We’re stuck in this shithole, but we can make the best of it. We’ve got Fort Henderson waiting for us, ripe for the picking. Corn Nugget’s already cleared an entire floor. We have our plan and we need to stick to it.”

  “I don’t wanna l
ive like this forever,” Sami cries, trying to hold back tears but her resolve is fading. “I want normal, not some stupid army base, fighting dead people until we turn into them.”

  “They’re right.” I don’t know why I’m saying this out loud, to a kid who still has hope, but maybe she shouldn’t. “We should go back to Fort Henderson and start over. Start a new life. That’s the smart thing to do. But if we did that, we’d spend forever wondering if maybe we could have made it to the airstrip in time. I don’t know about all of you, but I’d be laying in bed at night, playing out these scenarios in my head where, what if we did make it? What if we left the country? Sami, you need to understand something, all life is, is a bunch of what ifs. We make a choice, and then we make another choice, and then we question those choices. If they stay, that’s the right choice for them, because it’s what they feel in their hearts.”

  “So, we’re still going?” she asks, wiping her eyes, trying to be stronger than her hope is letting her be. “We can still try, even though we know there’s no chance?”

  “One thing I’ve learned, there’s always a chance. Hell, everything we’ve done, there’s been no chance. It’s crazy, but, one moment changes everything. And then the next moment changes it again. What if they, I don’t know, run out of gas before they hit their next airport and have to travel a long way just to refuel? Or there’s too many infects to fight off and they have to wait until they clear out? Or, anything. They could hit bad weather and have to make an emergency landing until it passes. We’re here because of accidents and circumstances we never could have predicted.”

  “Noah, that’s it.” Maxwell suddenly comes back to life, like she inhaled the dose of Narcan that couldn’t save her brother. “Rodriguez and Collins were discussing a storm system. When we got the battery going, the equipment came back online. They’re going out around it, over the fires. We have more time than we thought. A Medevac chopper will be faster, we can outrun it. Guys, this might actually be doable!”

  Everything has been circumstantial, since this all began. Maybe life is always like that and we just don’t think about it because it’s not life or death decisions.

  The butterfly effect, the smallest event can change the course of the future. We don’t think about the severity of every choice we make, or their repercussions, because if we did, we’d never be able to choose anything. We’d be too worried about the outcome and how it might affect everything moving forward.

  Hopes aren’t meant to be broken or fulfilled. I don’t think there is any ‘meant to be’, that’s just something we tell ourselves to make us feel better. Sometimes dreams come true, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes reality lets us down, and sometimes it surprises us by being better than we’d imagined. We don’t know until the moment’s passed.

  We may not beat the helicopter to the airstrip, in fact, there’s a strong possibility we won’t. But that moment will bring us to another moment, where we’ll be led to another moment, and another after that, until our moments run out.

  “They’ve got too much of a head start,” Marty groans, shaking his head. “Even going out around the storm, we’re still up here in the mountains.”

  Maxwell paces back in forth in short bursts, steam practically shooting from her ears as she plays out the scenario in her head. “No, look, they’re gonna need to refuel more than us, with all that weight. And who do they have to clear a path to the pumps? Look who we have,” she smiles, pointing at me and Felecia. “What’ll take Buckley’s chopper an hour, maybe more, will take us ten minutes. They’re gonna need to stop three, maybe four times. If we get the right bird, we’re looking at once.”

  “Okay, everybody hold on a second here,” Norwood shouts, hands in the air to silence our excited chatter. “Say we do this, we fly down to that airstrip, stick a rocket up Buckley’s ass, and leave this shithole on some military flight that might not even still be there, what happens next? We go to jolly old England, get clumped together under tents with little silver blankets, surrounded by fences like we’re prisoners, living in refugee camps while Nolecia get poked and prodded because they’re technically infected?”

  “That true?” Marty asks, cynical skepticism his default frame of mind.

  “Depends who you listen to,” Maxwell answers, shoulders slumped. “Everything’s supposed to be classi–”

  “Fuck your classified information,” Norwood growls, never one to trust authority. “What did they tell you, Max, specifically? We need to know.”

  “You know what, screw it, the world’s ending, whatever,” she sighs, clawing at her face. “Okay, yeah, refugee camps. Too many people in too small of an area without enough supplies. Some sort of draft, to help combat this. It’s ugly, okay guys, really ugly.”

  Are we better off here?

  “But not for you,” she continues, before any of us can respond. “Not if we can get those scientists out of the country, where they might be able to turn the tide in this war. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how it’d make you feel, but, look, you’re not getting stuffed in some refugee camp, living in squalor. Not you. Everyone else leaving this country, yes, but you’d be stepping on foreign soil as heroes.”

  Felecia shakes her head, disgusted, but with a hint of pride. “So they live in tents while we get escorted into Victor’s Village?”

  “Where the winners live, treated like royalty, surrounded by poverty.” Marty massages his rotator cuff, watching the last seconds of the sunset paint the sky. “We live in luxury with the elite while everyone else starves? Trailer trash who won the lottery.”

  “Except you didn’t win some random lottery,” Maxwell says sternly. “We survive this, luck had nothing to do with it. The things I’ve seen you guys do, what you’ve been through, you found the damn cure. You make it, your story outlives you. You become legends. And you’ll be treated as such.”

  Felecia holds Maxwell in place, to stop her nervous pacing. “You say you like you’re not one of us.”

  “Because I’m not. I’m a soldier, it’s my duty. I’ll be given a medal and sent back out. But you guys, what you’ve done… You’ve earned your Victor’s Village.”

  “Not all of us,” Neil grumbles, lightly punching the side of the trailer. “Is this even what we want?”

  “It’s the closest thing to the normal that you’ve been searching for. And I’m gonna do everything in my power to get you there. Which means we need a way over the river. The mountains will take too long.”

  Norwood hops down from his seat on the railing, grabbing walkie talkies from the duffel bag and leaving the utility road.

  “Dustin, where are you going?” Maxwell yells after him as he disappears into the dark clutches of the forest.

  “I’m gonna find a tree to hump. We got a little tiny bit of light left, from the top of one of these bad boys, I should be able to get a lay of the land. Someone shine one of those lights on me.”

  “You better not get stuck,” Maxwell calls after him, rummaging around for the flashlight. “I’m not coming up there to get you!” But she totally would.

  “So we’re seriously doing this?” Neil whines. “This is insane. What do we do when we get there and they’re already gone?”

  “Caylee won’t leave without us,” Felecia says, redoing her ponytail. “If they’re gone, she won’t be, and we’re finding her.”

  “Felecia, are you even hearing yourself?” Neil’s voice is hitting that octave now where his testicles retreat inside of him. “This is Noah’s other girlfriend we’re talking about.”

  “No, this is my best friend we’re talking about. And I’m not leaving her.”

  “You can’t risk your life for someone you barely know.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Felecia, she’s Hispanic. Do you know what my dad’s probably already done to her? She’s not making it to that airfield.”

  “Then we’ll figure out their flightpath and walk to every airport they might have hit until we find her.
Then we’ll march our happy asses back to Fort Henderson and at least we can say we gave it everything we had. And when we get back, you can keep your opinions to yourself.”

  “Noah,” he says, turning to me, giving up on what I assume is his attempt to get Felecia to leave me and be with him instead. “You can’t let her do this. If you care about her, at all, you can’t let her risk her life for some other girl. You can’t.”

  “I think that’s where you’ve always gone wrong Neil,” I say, tightening the laces on my boots, preparing for something you can’t possibly prepare for. “I respect her decision because I respect her, and everything she does. She knows how I feel about Caylee. She knows I love her. Just like I love Marty. And Norwood. Maxwell. Sami. Even you. What Leesh and I have, we don’t need to justify it to calm your insecurities. She knows I would never do anything to hurt her, that I place her life above my own, she knows that, and it doesn’t matter if you do.”

  “He called me Leesh,” Felecia coos, nudging Sami in the ribs. “That’s my pet name, it means he loves me.”

  “Hashtag, relationship goals. Well, you know, except for the whole end of the world zombie thing, and kissing, that’s kinda gross too.”

  “Give it a couple years,” Felecia laughs. “Come back and talk to me then. Of course you’ll have a British accent by that point and I’ll find you hard to understand, but also sort of sexy, so I’ll try my best to listen.”

  “Hey, you’re gonna have a British accent too.”

  “You’re right, dammit, I’m gonna have trouble understanding myself.”

  “Caylee’s gonna sound funny,” Sami giggles. “Pip pip, aye dios mio, cheerio.”

  The spark that flashes in Felecia’s eyes, I think Caylee’s the friend she’s been waiting for all these years. I can’t bring myself to think about what Buckley’s doing to her. The what ifs will drive you crazy, and dwelling on them will only take you to a dark place there’s no escape from.