Amazing that Lander hadn’t been overrun entirely by now with these idiots running it.
She listened intently and heard no other sound after the gunshot. The patient was down. He hadn’t clawed or chewed his way past the guard or Doc Nash.
The guard who remained outside her door was just as nervous as she was. He kept looking at her through the window with an oh shit look on his face. Their roles were on hold temporarily. For the moment, at least, she was no longer a prisoner and he was no longer a guard. They were two people in a hospital where an infected man had just been shot. They were in this together. He was not going to leave her in there if anything came down the hall at them. He’d do whatever he could to protect her. That was clear. She could read it on his face.
She’d scoffed earlier when Doc Nash had said the guards were there for her protection, but now she supposed it was true. She wouldn’t be much good to anybody if she was dead. Sure, she was immune to the virus, but she wasn’t immune to dying if one of those things sunk its teeth into her throat.
She heard footsteps out in the hallway. The second guard was coming back. He glanced at her for a second through the window, then pulled his colleague aside out of earshot.
There were no sounds in her part of the hospital. She seemed to have an entire floor to herself. The building was quiet as a church on a Monday. She heard everything they said.
The infected man didn’t have a bite mark anywhere on him.
15
Parker felt better when he got back to the motel than he had at any time since he’d recovered from the infection. He had a warm room all to himself in a town that was at least semi-functioning, and he had books to read that might help him calm down.
He’d start with the book on panic attacks and then read the other one, You Are Not Your Brain. The title alone made him feel better even though he didn’t quite understand it. On one level, of course he was his brain. Without his brain, he was a meat sack. But his brain was on fire. His brain was malfunctioning. His brain was diseased. His brain was bombarding him with violence. It wasn’t his fault, though. It comforted him to think, it’s not me, it’s the virus. It’s not me, it’s my brain.
There seemed to be some deeper part of him, some older truer self, that existed apart from all that. There had to be because he was not always like this. He never wanted to hurt anybody. Yes, he hit his wife once, but only once, and he never forgave himself. He felt like epic shit for what he did to Kyle. If he wanted to hurt people, he wouldn’t feel that way, would he?
Something prevented him from acting on the violent thoughts that were poisoning his mind. But what? His soul? He wasn’t sure he even believed in souls anymore. Whatever it was, he still possessed something the infected had lost.
He took off his parka, his hat, his gloves, his scarf and his boots. He collapsed onto the bed and felt 30 percent better already. He didn’t know if books alone could save him. Part of him doubted it, actually.
He’d keep going, though. He had to. He’d sworn an oath. Annie Starling was the most precious person alive. He’d guard her with his life and follow her to the ends of the earth. He had no other role, none whatsoever, until the end of the world.
It was the only thing that kept him from eating his gun.
The mayor had told Kyle he’d be back in a couple of minutes, but he didn’t come back. His chief of security came back instead and said the meeting was over and that he’d drive Kyle back to his room.
Kyle didn’t want a ride back to his room. He wanted to walk. He was relieved he wouldn’t have to talk to the mayor again, though. He still hadn’t figured out what he should say about Parker if Steele kept grilling him.
He wanted to tell Steele that Parker was dangerous. If Parker had tried to kick him over a cliff a year earlier, Kyle would have gone straight to the police and filed charges. The system would take it from there. Lander didn’t have a functioning police department anymore, which probably meant it didn’t have a functioning court system anymore, but truthfully there was only one reason Kyle didn’t tell the mayor about Parker.
It wouldn’t bother Kyle much if Steele’s security team meted out some rough justice. Kyle didn’t give a shit about Parker. If he could press a button and have the bastard disappear from the face of the world, he’d do it, no hesitation. Everybody would be better off.
Hughes wouldn’t see it that way. Annie wouldn’t see it that way. Otherwise they would have agreed with Kyle all along that Parker should be abandoned if not eliminated.
Temple took Kyle outside City Hall and led him to a black SUV parked out front. He pressed a button on a key fob. The running lights flashed and the door locks thunked open.
Kyle wanted to ride in back. Temple told him to sit up front in the passenger seat.
They said nothing to each other as they drove down Main toward the motel. It was only a two-minute drive.
There was no other traffic in either direction. Kyle understood why now. Like the mayor had said, they were damn near out of gasoline. It was obvious, now that he thought about it, but it would likely take Kyle an entire year to process all the ramifications of the end of civilization. He had taken everything for granted. Electricity, plumbing, heat, gasoline, the Internet, grocery stores, police officers, city workers, everything. People didn’t strictly need most of the trappings of civilization to survive and be happy. They’d survived many thousands of years without these things.
Still, life wouldn’t be easy even under the best conditions. He wasn’t as sure as he had been earlier that living a simple country life on a safe and tidy little island away from the infected was the way to go. What if he broke his leg? What if he needed antibiotics? What if Annie got pregnant and had trouble delivering the baby?
Living in a town like Lander made a lot more sense than living on Orcas Island. And it made a lot more sense than continuing their journey out in the wasteland.
Lander had a capable security force long after almost everywhere else in the Western United States had collapsed. Lander had a mayor and polite professional people who followed his orders. Steele wasn’t some kind of a warlord. He had a college student for a receptionist and a name plate on the door. He welcomed and greeted refugees. He even advertised that he welcomed refugees on hand-made signs hundreds of miles out in the desert.
Lander had a fire department and a hospital. Kyle didn’t know if the doctors were advanced enough to create a vaccine, but how hard would it be for a town of more than 8,000 people to figure out a way to get Annie to a better hospital somewhere else? Steele could probably find someone to fly Annie to the Centers for Disease Control if Atlanta still existed, and if not, he could send an entire armed convoy to escort her by ground.
Even so, what were the odds that Atlanta was in better shape than Lander? One percent at the most? What were the odds that they could even get to Atlanta in one piece? One percent at the most? So fuck it. He should stay in Lander, and Annie should too.
Hughes returned to the motel and knocked on Parker’s door. Parker opened up right away and let Hughes in without a word. He looked good. Not content, certainly, but significantly less disturbed.
Hughes saw two brand-new books on the bed. “Did some shopping?”
“Not exactly,” Parker said. Hughes detected a hint of sarcasm. “Nothing’s for sale. Stores are open, but the mayor won’t let anyone sell anything. It’s all just for show.”
Hughes groaned to himself. Lander was getting more strange and screwed up by the hour, and he wondered if he’d even scratched the surface yet.
“Where’d you get the books then?”
“Bookstore owner let me borrow them. And he told me not to try to buy anything from any of the stores or there would be trouble.”
You know much about East Germany, Carter had asked him. Hughes didn’t know if East Germany used to have fake stores that didn’t actually sell anything. North Korea sure did, though. The government put them there to fool visitors.
Nothing in L
ander was put there to fool visitors. Lander hardly had any visitors.
“You check out the hospital?” Hughes said.
“Yeah,” Parker nodded. “Four guys out front. One of them was Temple.”
“He see you?”
“He saw me. One of the only people in this entire town who’d recognize me, and he was right there at the front door.”
That’s why he was on the front door, Hughes thought. They’d have to be careful and not approach the hospital again until they were armed.
“What else did you see?” Hughes said.
“Aside from the stores that aren’t really stores, downtown feels almost normal,” Parker said. He seemed much more relaxed—more himself—than he had in a while.
“How are you feeling?” Hughes said.
“A bit better, actually,” Parker said. “The bookstore owner thinks these books might help.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Not much. Just that we drove here from Seattle and that I’m really stressed out and worried I might have PTSD. He didn’t seem to find that very surprising.”
Hughes nodded. Parker didn’t seem like the kind of guy to delve into self-help books, but what else was he supposed to do? Keep losing his goddamn mind? He didn’t even have the option to self-medicate. Nobody did. Not anymore.
“What did you see on the other end of town?” Parker said.
“Like you said,” Hughes said, “everything appears almost normal.” Hughes would have to tell Parker what Carter had said, that the mayor had crammed a bunch of innocent people into the jailhouse alongside the cops, but later. He didn’t want to shatter Parker’s first halfway decent mood in a month. “Hardly any security at all in the other direction. There isn’t much of anything out that direction. If I’d have kept walking another ten minutes or so I’d have left town. You talk to Kyle?”
Parker shook his head. His face darkened at the mention of Kyle’s name.
Two black Range Rovers pulled into the lot, one after the other, and slammed to a halt in front of Hughes’ and Andy’s rooms.
Hughes and Parker peered outside. Temple was behind the wheel in one of the vehicles. Kyle sat next to him in the passenger seat.
“The hell is Kyle doing with these guys?” Parker said.
“No idea,” Hughes said and opened the door.
Kyle stepped out of the Range Rover. “Hey,” he said when he saw Hughes.
“Where you been?” Hughes said.
“Had a sit-down with the mayor,” Kyle said.
Temple stepped out of the Range Rover and slammed his door. Three of Steele’s security men stepped out of the other. They were all armed with rifles.
“Where’s Parker?” Temple said.
Parker was standing just inside the room. Hughes stood aside so Parker could step outside.
“What’s going on?” Parker said.
“You’re coming with us,” Temple said.
“Where?” Parker said. “Why?”
Temple nodded. The three men with rifles took that as a signal and came at Parker as if they were apprehending a fugitive.
“Hey!” Hughes said.
“You’re under arrest,” Temple said.
Two of the security men grabbed Parker by the arms while another stood ready with his hands on his weapon.
Kyle looked stricken. “Wait,” he said.
“For what?” Hughes said.
One of the security men produced some zip ties from his pocket and cinched them around Parker’s wrists.
Parker looked like a scared animal. He didn’t resist.
“You know,” Temple said.
“No, I don’t know,” Hughes said.
Temple had made Parker at the hospital. And Kyle was with him.
“I didn’t do anything,” Parker said, sounding as confused as he was frightened.
“Hang on, guys,” Kyle said.
Hughes narrowed his eyes at him. “What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them anything!” Kyle said.
The three guys bundled up Parker and shoved him into the back of an SUV.
“There’s been a mistake,” Hughes said.
“No mistake,” Temple said. “Mayor’s orders. We’re taking this guy off your hands. We’re doing you a favor.”
Hughes squinted at Kyle. Kyle had told them something. “Motherfucker.”
Kyle just stood there slack jawed.
“You want to go too?” Temple said.
Hughes shook his head and showed the palms of his hands.
The security guys slammed the back doors of the SUV on Parker.
“Don’t worry,” Hughes said. “I’ll talk to the mayor.”
“Yes,” Temple said. “You will. He’s looking into you too. Now back in your room. Don’t come out until someone comes to get you.”
Nobody’s coming to get me, Hughes thought.
Temple hopped behind the wheel of his SUV. One of his men got in the passenger seat. The other two climbed into the vehicle with Parker.
Parker looked at Hughes through the glass with a look of pure anguish on his face, like the world was ending all over again.
Part II
The Resistance
16
The Steele family lived on a quiet street in a quiet town in a quiet state in a noisy century.
Wyoming was the tenth largest state in the union and its least populous. It was also the most sparsely populated after Alaska. More people lived in metropolitan Des Moines, Iowa, than in all of Wyoming. Its capital and largest city, Cheyenne, was smaller than most college towns.
The state had no natural boundaries, almost as though early cartographers had deliberately drawn a box around the part of the country they knew would be the least populated, the least developed, the least connected. It consisted almost entirely of mountains, rangeland, high prairie and desert, and due to its location on the continent, it was an ice box in winter. Wyoming wasn’t far from the geographic center of the United States, but every place in Wyoming was nevertheless a long way from everywhere else in America. Alaska and Hawaii aside, it was about as isolated as a place could be in 21st century America.
So the troubles of the world hardly touched the Steele family. Gang violence and homelessness were problems seen on television and read about in newspapers. Foreign wars struck closer since some of Lander’s finest young men volunteered for military service in some of the world’s worst places, but the Steeles had never been to any of those places themselves. They remained distant abstractions.
Lander was like a bubble, even a time capsule. It was twenty years behind the rest of the country and, in a handful of ways, a hundred years behind. Change came slowly to Lander, if at all.
Even the infection came slowly.
It still came, though, as Joseph Steele knew it would.
Lander still looked like an American town, and it was important to keep up appearances, but America didn’t exist anymore. The government was gone. The military was gone. The Constitution had become a historical document.
No officials from Washington, D.C., ever arrived in Wyoming. The Federal Emergency Management Agency never showed up with food, blankets or portable shelters. FEMA probably never showed up anywhere, but even if it did, Wyoming would have been last on its list of priorities.
No helicopters or planes flew overhead anymore. For all Steele knew, Lander was the last town standing.
He’d done everything he could to keep it safe. Other cities and towns had relied on existing services like police, fire and medical, but those services failed catastrophically everywhere. The United States was not built to withstand an extinction event. Its government services could barely keep up with the usual problems before the outbreak. They couldn’t stave off the infection any better than sandbags could hold back a tsunami.
Steele thought this was obvious, so he swept aside Lander’s delicate governing structure and militarized the civilian population. He turned a loosely-knit community into a
single organism with himself as its head.
He wasn’t the only mayor who did this, but he was the only one for hundreds of miles in any direction who managed to hold it together and beat back the infection simultaneously.
But he could not protect his own son. He saw more quickly than most leaders that the old habits and values and ways had to be scrapped, and he was audacious enough to act on it immediately—with no delay whatsoever—but even he was too slow to save his own son.
He should have pulled Charles from school. Should have shut the schools down entirely like he’d shut down the police, the courts, and the county’s mini-bureaucracy that had been designed for a much safer era. Kids didn’t need to sit in classrooms and read about American history anymore. They didn’t need math. They sure as hell didn’t need Social Studies or English or, God forbid, music and foreign languages. Kids needed to learn to hunt. They had to learn to defend themselves, to tie knots and can vegetables and repair machinery and build shelters and mill wood. Somebody needed to figure out how Lander could make its own bullets and then teach the kids how to do it.
Steele should have shut down that school. If he had, his boy wouldn’t have been on the playground when the infected stranger from Pinedale attacked. Charles wouldn’t be locked in the basement with a rope around his neck.
His wife Nadia believed everything happened for a reason, but Steele always knew the universe was indifferent. The universe doesn’t even know we exist. Most of it was empty space that stretched for billions of light years in every direction. The parts of the universe that weren’t empty space were lifeless star systems with the occasional dead planet. Nothing that matters ever happened anywhere except on Earth, and if Earth were destroyed by a giant asteroid or a black hole or an apocalyptic pandemic, the universe would not even notice.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 15