Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland

by Michael J. Totten

  Kyle stumbled toward the bathroom and turned to face Hughes. His eyes were wide, almost panicked, and he held his palms out in front of him as if they might protect him.

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “You have a little sit-down with the mayor, then Parker gets hauled off in cuffs?”

  “Fuck!” Kyle grimaced and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything!”

  Obviously he’d told them something.

  “You told them about the cliff,” Hughes said. “That Parker tried to shove you over the edge.”

  “I didn’t!” Kyle said.

  He was defiant now and putting on a good show, but Hughes would have to be a sand-pounding idiot to believe Kyle hadn’t said or done anything. Parker had said Temple spotted him scoping out the hospital, but that couldn’t be the whole story. Temple would have arrested Parker on the spot if that’s all there was to it.

  “You told them something,” Hughes said.

  Kyle closed his eyes.

  “You’re a child,” Hughes said.

  Kyle kept his eyes closed as if reality would leave him alone if he didn’t have to look at it.

  “As if there’s even a remote possibility,” Hughes said, “that I’m going to stand here and think it’s a coincidence that they arrested Parker five seconds after they dropped you off.”

  Kyle groaned and covered his face with his hands. Then he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Steele asked me about you and Parker and Annie. It was like a second screening. He wanted to know what we’re all good at.”

  Hughes sighed. “And?”

  “And what?” Kyle said. “That’s it.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him Parker used to build cabinets and that you’re good with guns.”

  Hughes rolled his eyes. “So they arrested Parker because you said he used to build cabinets. You’re incredible, you know that? You’re a six year old in a man’s body.”

  “Steele could tell I don’t like Parker,” Kyle said.

  “How?”

  “It’s just obvious, I guess.”

  “So they hauled Parker off because the mayor picked up a vibe that you don’t like him. Christ. What am I doing with you?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on!” He did sound confused, like he didn’t expect what had happened to happen. “They were suspicious of him before they brought me in. I couldn’t give him a ringing endorsement, so they took him. I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Kyle may not have told them everything, but he obviously told them something.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You have to!”

  “You know what? I don’t. I don’t have to do anything except get Annie to Atlanta. You were never interested in the mission. Parker was, but not you. I’ve been waiting for weeks for one of you to finish off the other. Looks like you won. Congratulations.”

  He turned to leave and put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Where are you going?” Kyle said.

  “I have a job to do.” He opened the door. Cold air blasted his hands and face.

  “Wait,” Kyle said.

  Hughes paused. “For what?

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything.”

  Hughes nodded. “I’ll bet.” He left and slammed the door.

  He went back to his own room, stashed a change of clothes into his backpack, grabbed the keys to the Suburban, tucked his Glock into the front of his pants, donned his winter parka and hat, wrapped his scarf around his face, locked up his room and walked toward Carter’s house.

  In a way, Annie wasn’t important. She was just one person. Only her blood was important. Hughes cared about her, of course, and he’d do just about anything for her even if she weren’t immune, but the real reason he had to get her out of there—and the only one that ultimately mattered—was because she might be the only chance to save everyone. Nothing else mattered and neither did anyone else, including himself. If he had to do it alone, he’d do it alone.

  Carter’s street was only five minutes away on foot. Hughes almost wished it was farther. He wanted to walk and sort himself out. He had to go straight there, though. No one was looking for him, but a lot of people, if asked, would remember the strange black man no one had ever seen before.

  Few people were out and about, though. Lander wasn’t Manhattan. It wasn’t even a quiet neighborhood in Seattle. Hughes almost felt like he had the town to himself. He wondered, as he walked past the houses, how many were empty. Lander had lost people to the infection, and it had lost people to Steele, to the mayor, if they got in his way.

  A bad situation, no doubt, but it would also make Hughes’ job that much easier. There were fewer people in his way.

  He might have to shoot his way into the hospital, and he’d almost certainly have to shoot his way out once he had Annie. In all likelihood, he’d have to shoot his way out of town. There was going to be a lot of shooting. And he’d have to make damn sure he had a full tank of gas because they were certainly coming after him.

  At least he’d have Annie. He wouldn’t have to do everything by himself once he freed her.

  Too bad he couldn’t bring Carter along, but no way was he bringing Carter along. Carter might, however, be able to help Hughes figure out the best way out of town after he’d secured Annie.

  No one was out for a run or a walk on Carter’s street. No kids were riding their bikes and there was no traffic. Even so, Hughes slipped into Carter’s back yard and knocked where nobody could see him.

  He heard Carter’s footsteps in the same kitchen he’d been in earlier that morning.

  Carter opened the back door like he was pissed off that someone was knocking around back instead of in front. His face changed when he saw it was Hughes. Something had happened. He stepped aside and Hughes entered without a word.

  “Tell me,” Carter said.

  Hughes didn’t want to tell him, but he had to.

  “One of my friends was arrested.”

  “Already?”

  Hughes nodded.

  “He do something?”

  “It’s a long story, Carter.”

  “You ain’t been in town that long. What the hell happened?”

  “Turns out one of my friends isn’t as much of a friend as I thought.”

  Carter nodded, as if he understood, but of course he didn’t.

  “What can I do to help?” Carter said.

  “I can’t stay here,” Hughes said. “Just tell me the easiest way out of town. Which road out will be the least heavily guarded?”

  “They aren’t keeping you in. You can go out any way you want. But you can’t survive out there by yourself.”

  “I got this far.”

  “By yourself?”

  Hughes sighed. “One of my friends has been arrested and the other one is a backstabber.”

  “You should stay.”

  “Where? I can’t go back to the motel.”

  He could, actually, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t impose on Carter either. It would put the man at risk. He should just leave town in the Suburban and come back for Annie in the dead of night by himself. They wouldn’t be expecting him. They’d think he’d blown town. They might take the security detail off the hospital after a couple of days. He saw no other options. He couldn’t ask Carter to help him bust Annie out of that hospital, and he couldn’t trust Kyle.

  “I’m putting you at risk,” Hughes said. “I shouldn’t have come here.” Hughes made his way toward the door.

  Carter put his hand on his arm. “Sit down and take off your coat.”

  Hughes stood there for a moment, then sat at the table and stared at the fridge. He left his coat on.

  “You remember what I told you earlier?” Carter said.

  “I remember everything.”

  “My friends and
I succeed, your friend won’t be locked up anymore.”

  “How on earth are you going to take on Steele and his army?”

  Didn’t matter, Hughes thought. Carter had little chance no matter what he had planned. If Steele could take out Lander’s entire police department, he could eliminate Carter and his friends without even breaking a sweat.

  “We’ve got a secret weapon,” Carter said. “Steele won’t see it coming.”

  Hughes just looked at him. The guy was delusional. How many assassins had sat in dingy kitchens like Carter’s and thought they could change the world with a gunshot? Hughes had no idea, but he knew for sure that nearly all of them failed. If it was so easy, it would have happened all the damn time.

  Still, he should hear Carter out. If Carter and his friends were planning something soon, Hughes could hit the hospital at the same time. He was going to hit the hospital anyway, so he might as well do it when Carter was up to some bullshit and keeping everybody distracted.

  “Tell me,” Hughes said.

  “Come on,” Carter said. “I’m taking you to Elias.”

  “Who’s Elias?”

  “Lives above Lander. In a big place up in the Wind River Mountains.”

  18

  Parker stared out the tiny window into the county jail’s parking lot. The three strangers who had invited him into their cell, two men and a woman, gave him a moment to get his bearings, to take in his bizarre new surroundings, but he needed more than a minute. Less than an hour earlier he was in his room at the motel on Main and feeling faint twinges of optimism and hope.

  “We should talk.” Sam Beckett’s voice. Lander’s chief of police.

  Parker turned around. Beckett and the other two looked at him with wonder on their faces. Hundreds of people crowded this jail, yet they were still surprised to see him.

  Because he was a stranger. They didn’t know him. They seemed to think he belonged there even less than they did.

  “This is Amy Solomon and Beau Thornton,” Beckett said.

  Thornton was bigger than Beckett. Aside from his full beard, he looked like an army officer or a cop. Probably one of Beckett’s deputies.

  Amy looked like a country housewife. Shoulder-length brown hair, a little plain maybe, though pretty good for a woman who appeared to be pushing sixty. She stood close to Beckett. Perhaps she was his wife.

  They told Parker the whole sordid story and little of it surprised him.

  A power struggle had broken out in Lander between the militia and the government—the police department in particular—and the mayor sided with the militia. A lot of people in town sided with the militia. The more men with guns on the street, the better, as far as they were concerned, but the militia answered to no one but itself. It had no rules of engagement and no procedures. The police department had a small internal affairs division—someone had to police the police—but the militia did not. The militia did not police itself, wasn’t interested in policing itself, in fact refused to police itself. That job was left to the regular police. It bred a certain amount of predictable and all-too-human resentment, and it happened almost immediately.

  The police chief—Beckett—had appealed to public opinion by arguing that all governments needed a monopoly on the use of force, that two competing armed factions was a recipe for civil war.

  Much of the public, including the mayor, agreed. Lander, Wyoming, needed an institution with the monopoly on the use of force. And they sided with the militia. It was bigger. It was theoretically stronger. And it was grassroots.

  Things came to a head when one of the militia commanders, man by the name of Swenson, popped a kid in the chest who’d been bit. The police arrested Swenson but didn’t charge him. Beckett wasn’t sure what to do with him since the kid was going to die anyway.

  That’s when the mayor purged the police department. The next day he started purging its supporters.

  “This jail was built in 2001,” Beckett said. “It normally holds up to 360 people, but we’re up to almost 800 now. More than half of us you could say are political prisoners. Police officers, sheriff’s deputies, city and county employees and a few city councilmen. The rest are friends and family and some neighbors who protested when the mayor arrested us.”

  Beckett looked crushed. Defeated. Like he was awaiting his doom. No one was getting out of there any time soon.

  Parker swallowed hard.

  “You aren’t from here,” Amy said.

  “I don’t belong here,” Parker said.

  “None of us belong here,” Beckett said.

  “I came with some friends,” Parker said. “From Seattle.” He told them about the road trip, but he didn’t tell them he’d tried to kill Kyle. He didn’t tell them Annie was immune. He didn’t mention Annie at all. He only told them that he’d gotten into a fight with Kyle and that Kyle apparently told the mayor about it.

  Beckett and Amy told him more. The cops and regular criminals got along okay. Normally police officers go through hell in prison—they fare as badly or worse than child molesters—but there were too many officers in the county jail for that to be any kind of a problem. The police officers could form their own gang, so to speak, but so many civilians had been crammed into the cellblock all at once that the usual prison structure collapsed. Criminals were a minority now. They were outnumbered by the innocent and the well-behaved, and everybody, even the worst of them, felt like they were on the same side in the same terrible situation. The looming threat of annihilation can change people for the worse, but it can also change them for the better.

  The guards brought food once in the morning and once in the evening. Parker could only imagine how humiliated the chief of police must feel.

  “I’ll take you up to the second floor,” Beckett said, “and introduce you to a couple of people you can share a cell with.”

  Parker didn’t think there’d be enough room. “How many people are in each cell?”

  “Four or five,” Beckett said. The cells were built for two. “We take turns on the beds and the floor. Some people like to spread out and sleep in the common area. You can sleep wherever you want.”

  Parker followed Beckett out of the cell and back into the common area. Everyone stepped out of Beckett’s way.

  The place still smelled like a zoo. Each cell had a sink for washing, but no one had spare changes of clothes. Parker wondered if he was the only one who noticed, if the stench just faded into the background after a while. He hoped so.

  The energy on the second floor felt different than it did on the main floor.

  It felt worse.

  No one spoke to each other. Many sat hunched over and looking at the floor like they were staring into an abyss. The looks on some faces were beyond desperate. People were giving up. That was clear. The collective mood was morbidly depressed, even despondent.

  In a regular prison, those who weren’t sentenced to life without parole knew they’d get out eventually, even if their release date was many years in the future. In this place, no one had a clue if they’d ever get out or if they’d even be allowed to live beyond the next couple of days. And if they did get out, they had little left to return to. The human race was in its twilight. For all these people knew, a horde of infected would show up and kill everyone in Lander and there’d be no one left alive to let the prisoners out. They might last longer than everyone else, but then they’d starve to death at the end of the world.

  A psychiatric ward probably had a better average state of mental health than this place.

  Parker was finally going to lose it and no one would be able to help him.

  Kyle’s world was falling apart. Annie was being held in the hospital, Parker was taken God-only-knows where, and for all Kyle knew Hughes would never come back.

  He wanted to curl up under the covers and hide. Instead he sat on his bed behind his locked door and closed curtains with his boots on, unable to move or make any kind of decision.

  His neighbor Andy pounded on the
door. “Kyle, shit man, open up.”

  Kyle would not open up. He did not want to face Andy. He didn’t want to face anyone.

  Andy banged on the door again. Kyle ignored him. Andy would give up eventually.

  Kyle could not understand why the mayor had Parker arrested. It didn’t make any sense. Hughes’ suspicion did, though. Kyle had to admit it looked bad.

  A small part of him relished what happened and viewed it as a karmic sort of revenge. If Parker hadn’t tried to kill him, Kyle would have defended him in Steele’s office the way he’d defended Hughes. Parker would still be free. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault, exactly, that the mayor hauled Parker off, but it was clear—he could admit it to himself now—that what he said and didn’t say to Steele were contributing factors.

  Mostly Kyle realized that even inadvertent karmic revenge wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It did not feel like justice. It felt empty, bitter and cold, and it could not be undone.

  Kyle took his boots off. He wasn’t going to get under the covers. It would feel too much like giving up. He wasn’t going anywhere, either. All he could do was sit tight and wait, and hope, for Hughes to come back.

  Annie stirred from a failed attempt at a nap when Doc Nash let himself into her room and gently shook her foot.

  “You’re napping,” he said. “I’m surprised.”

  She sat upright and rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t actually sleeping. The best she could do was reach that in-between state where her mind tumbled away but she could still feel her body on the mattress.

  Doc Nash looked as distressed as she felt.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I’ve tried. And there’s nothing else for me to do here.”

  “Do you want another sedative?”

  “No.”

  “I could bring you some books.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  She had imagined not.

  “I heard,” she said. “He wasn’t bit.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” he said.

  “So what happened? Who was he?”

  “Fred Walsh. Neighbor of mine, actually.”

  “And?”