“I think those men are going after the mayor,” he said.
“Oh my god,” she said and covered her mouth.
Nash couldn’t tell if she felt fear, relief or both.
Hughes relished the darkness. Anyone could see his flashlight from several blocks away, but no one could see his face. He moved quickly and silently and kept to the side streets until he had to cross Main to get to the Suburban in the motel’s parking lot.
Kyle was in that motel, so Hughes killed the flashlight, groped his way to the vehicle, rummaged through the bags in the back and sighed when he found the night vision monocles. No one had taken them. Hughes had the only set of keys, but anyone could have found a locksmith.
He grabbed two other things—the water filter he’d picked up in Washington and his always-reliable pump-action Persuader.
The night vision monocle worked well enough, he supposed. Elias’ men would see better with their military grade equipment, but he could sort of see. Most of the world was in shadow, but the surfaces of some things appeared to be bathed in a grainy green glow. He doubted he could make out anyone’s facial features at any kind of a distance, but he didn’t need to.
He ditched Main and stashed himself in somebody’s yard behind a stand of juniper trees. His watch read 12:20 a.m. He waited.
Gunfire broke out right on schedule ten minutes later.
Hughes resolved to wait twenty more minutes before moving on.
After another minute or so he heard shouting from the same direction, then more gunshots.
He didn’t know where Steele lived, but the ruckus sounded due southeast of his location, the exact same direction as the hospital. The hospital was only a mile away, but he’d have to detour. The last thing he needed was to blunder into Elias and his men. They were expecting him to head to the jail. Hughes had no idea how they’d react if they found him going rogue and didn’t want to find out. They might think he was working as an informant for Steele.
A few more shots rang out in the night over the next twenty minutes. They sounded muffled, as if they were inside a house rather than outside.
Hughes moved out and heard a vehicle hauling ass a few blocks away. It seemed to be heading toward the sound of the gunfire he’d heard earlier. A few moments after the vehicle stopped, he heard two shots from a single rifle.
He took the long way around, adding at least a half-mile to his trek to Lander Regional Hospital. When he was halfway there, he heard a horrendous crash of metal on metal a ways off to his left, followed right away by more gunfire. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like it was coming from Main Street, well away from what he presumed was the mayor’s house.
When he finally reached the hospital, he found it lit up with some kind of emergency backup system and the front doors left unguarded.
Perfect.
He removed his night vision monocle and stepped inside like he worked there. The lighting was dim. The place appeared to be empty, though of course it would not be. Annie couldn’t be the only “patient,” and there had to be some staff around somewhere.
A woman, most likely a night nurse, emerged from a hallway behind the check-in desk and froze when she saw Hughes. She looked down at his shotgun.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“I’m looking for a patient.”
“Visiting hours are from—”
“I’m taking her out of here.” He squinted at her and rubbed his index finger along the outside of the trigger guard.
“Who?”
“Annie Starling.”
For a long time, the nurse didn’t move. She seemed to be weighing the consequences first of one decision and then another.
“Annie is my friend,” he said in as calm and friendly a voice as he could manage. “I’m the one who brought her in here a couple of days ago. Things are going sideways and I need to get her to a safe place.”
“Sir,” she said and turned her head toward the hallway, as if somebody might come to her rescue from that direction, but the look of hopelessness on her face told Hughes otherwise. She was alone. “I can’t let you take anyone out of here.”
He raised the shotgun and pointed it at her abdomen.
“I’m not asking,” Hughes said.
He wasn’t acting, either. He’d shoot her if he had to and could hate himself for it later. Annie could make the world the way it used to be again, and nothing, and no one—not even an innocent night nurse—was going to stand in Hughes’ way.
He wouldn’t have to shoot her, though, unless she pulled her own weapon on him.
“She’s…” the nurse said. “She’s not here.”
“Bullshit,” Hughes said and placed his finger inside the trigger guard.
She gasped. “I just checked on her. She’s gone. So are the men who were outside her door.”
“They took her.”
The nurse shook her head. “They went out by themselves. I saw them leave. What’s happening out there?”
She could not take her eyes off the shotgun. Hughes wanted to take his finger off the trigger, to put the woman at ease, but he didn’t.
“So Annie just left then? That’s what you’re saying?”
“She’s in no condition to leave by herself.”
“Why not?” He inched the barrel forward. “What did you do to her?”
She put her hands over her head and showed him her palms. “She’s okay, I swear. She’s just weak. The doctor took a lot of blood from her.”
Hughes winced. “Who’s her doctor?”
She clenched her mouth. “Dr. Logan.” She tucked a stand of hair behind her ears. “Brandon Logan.”
Hughes didn’t believe her.
“You’re going to do two things,” he said, “and you’re going to do them right now. First, you’re coming with me while I search every room in this hospital.”
She flinched.
“And then, if I don’t find her, you’re going to print the names and home addresses of everybody who works here in this building.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Sir, I can’t just—”
“You can and you will. Right now. Let’s go.”
She relented and came around from behind the counter with her hands over her head.
“You can lower your hands,” Hughes said, though he made her walk in front of him.
The hospital was mostly empty. It was a regional hospital, and most of the region was out of commission. The night nurse seemed to be the only person working that night. It took him the better part of an hour to search every room and every floor, including the utility closets, and he didn’t find Annie.
Hughes frog-marched the nurse back downstairs to the Human Resources office and watched as she angrily dug through the filing cabinets. He was fading fast. His body had metabolized most of the adrenaline that had kept him going earlier, and now he needed to sleep.
She slapped a sheaf of papers down on the desk. “There. Happy?”
Hughes shuffled through the pages. There were a lot of names and a lot of addresses. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It would take him a long time to knock on everybody’s door, and he doubted that whoever took Annie would cop to it even with a shotgun pointed at their gut. He’d had to canvass the entire town without being seen, and he’d have to contend with the near certainty that the hospital employees would warn each other that a dangerous black man from out of town was prowling around with a gun looking for Annie.
Unless he could convince this woman to help him.
“All right, listen,” he said. He wanted to sleep for a week, but she still had plenty of energy. It wasn’t two in the morning for her. Not if she worked the graveyard shift every night. “I’m sorry for scaring you, and I’m sorry for ruining your night. I take it you know all about Annie, why the mayor kept her here.”
The nurse nodded. She no longer seemed afraid of him. Now she was just angry.
“I brought her here from Seattle,” he said.
She nodded
again. “I know.”
“We never wanted to stay here in Lander. We’d never even heard of this place. We’re on our way to Atlanta. To the Centers for Disease Control, if it still exists.”
Her face softened and she looked at the floor. She understood now.
“You can’t make a vaccine in Lander,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Will you help me? Will you help all of us?”
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.
“You know where she is,” he said.
She turned her head away from him and gave him the side-eye.
“You’re not giving me many options here,” he said. “I don’t want to shoot you, lady, but you understand what’s at stake here? You think you matter more to me than Annie? More than the entire human race?”
Hughes knew she was going to tell him. Maybe it was the threat that did it. Maybe it was her desire to do the right thing. Her perception of the right thing may have changed since he first showed up with a gun in his hand.
She looked him straight in the eye now. “Frank Nash.”
“Who’s that?”
“Her doctor. I think he’s the one who took her. I lied to you earlier. I’m sorry.”
“If you’re lying to me now—”
“I’m not,” she said and raised her hands in surrender. “I swear. Frank Nash is her doctor. I don’t know if he has her or not, but he can help you regardless. And I suspect he probably will.”
He cocked his head sideways and studied her. The resistance had gone out of her. Her face looked softer now, more cooperative, almost as if they were friends. She was telling the truth.
“Do what you have to,” she said. “Do what you can. Just don’t tell anyone I told you, okay? They’ll—”
“I know what they’ll do. I won’t let it happen.”
She blew out her breath and shuddered, finally and completely at ease. He flipped through the pages she’d given him and found Frank Nash’s home address.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Rebecca. Rebecca Bailey.”
“Okay, Rebecca Bailey. Thanks for your help. I’m sorry it had to be like this.”
“I understand,” she said and touched his arm. “Just leave before somebody sees you and never come back.”
30
Frank Nash knew he’d better not go back to his house. The two hospital guards knew he had Annie, and it was only a matter of time before they or somebody else kicked down his door.
He went to Juliette’s house instead. She lived alone next door and might never come back. She was one of the first civilians Steele had locked up, so her house was empty. Nash and Juliette had keys to each other’s houses so they wouldn’t have to break in if they locked themselves out.
He parked in his driveway, fetched Juliette’s spare key from a bowl on his kitchen counter and took Annie into his neighbor’s home.
No one would think to look there for him or Annie. No one else in the world even knew he had a key.
Nash had stashed ten gallons of boiled water in plastic jugs in his pantry. He brought them to Juliette’s place in five quick trips, then said goodbye to his house. He wasn’t going far, but he had no idea when he’d be back.
Juliette’s house was smaller than his own, and it was cold. The heat hadn’t been on all winter. Nash didn’t know if she had electric or gas heat, but it didn’t matter now. The electricity was at least temporarily off and the gas was permanently off. He and Annie would have to make do with blankets.
There was no spare bedroom. Juliette used the second room as some kind of home office, though Nash doubted she used it much since she’d worked strictly nine-to-five at the Fremont County Courthouse.
Her mid-century modern furniture looked dated and futuristic at the same time, like it could have been used on a science-fiction film set in the 1950s. She’d painted all the walls white and decorated them with minimalist art, some of the pieces post-modern paintings and others black-and-white photographs of the Manhattan skyline. Juliette either wasn’t from Wyoming originally or she yearned for big city life. Nash wasn’t sure. He’d never asked.
He said he’d take the couch in the living room and tucked Annie into Juliette’s bed.
“This isn’t your house,” she said and shivered under the covers.
Nash stood over her and pointed his flashlight up at the ceiling. It lit the whole room.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s my neighbor’s house.”
“Where are they?”
“She,” Nash said. “Juliette Durand. She lives here alone. Or did. Steele locked her up.”
Annie propped herself up on her elbows. “What for?”
God, she was beautiful, Nash thought, and not for the first time.
“Lay down,” Nash said. “You need rest.” She also needed food and water. His jugs of water would last a while, but finding food would be a problem. He didn’t dare show his face in town, at least not for a while, not until he knew it was safe, and so many people could connect him to Annie that he wasn’t sure it would ever be safe.
“Where are my friends?” Annie said.
Nash had no idea. He knew she’d arrived with some people from Seattle, but he knew nothing about them. He envied them, even though he didn’t know them.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” he said.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. And he could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t either.
Gunfire cracked through the night as Hughes returned on foot to the motel’s parking lot.
He heard two distinct fire fights—one on the east end of Main near City Hall, and another in one of the residential neighborhoods on the south side of town. His night vision monocle allowed him to slip unseen between the two without drawing attention to himself with the Maglite.
All the motel rooms were dark when he arrived, though Kyle was surely awake. Hughes figured it was possible to sleep through a firefight in a war zone, but only after a long period of adjustment. Kyle couldn’t possibly be asleep unless he’d knocked himself out with a fifth of whiskey and a half bottle of Ambien.
So Hughes had to be careful. In a way, it wouldn’t matter if Kyle ran out into the parking lot when he heard the Suburban’s engine cranking up. Hughes wouldn’t have to give him a ride, wouldn’t have to explain himself, wouldn’t even have to acknowledge Kyle at all. He just didn’t want to deal with it.
How strange, he thought, that he’d go out of his way to avoid a socially awkward moment even at a time like this, but that’s what he did.
He manually unlocked the Suburban’s driver side door with the key rather than thunking all the doors open with the fob. He slipped into the seat and made as little noise as possible when he shut the door on himself. Then he turned over the engine and drove away.
He checked the rearview mirror just before turning onto Main. Kyle hadn’t come out. If he’d heard Hughes driving off and wanted to run outside, he was too slow.
Dr. Frank Nash lived just ten blocks away. Hughes parked on the street in front of the man’s house and banged on his door.
No answer. And the front door was locked.
The back door was locked too, but Hughes managed to push open a bedroom window on the main floor and climb in by stepping on top of a garden spigot and hoisting himself up.
After he crawled into the dark house, his night vision monocle blanked out on him.. At first he thought the house was too dark, but no. The damn thing quit working. A cheap piece of crap. He should have tried to scrounge up one of Elias Sark’s military grade devices, but it was too late now. He turned on his flashlight.
The house sounded and felt empty.
“Annie!” he shouted. “You in here?”
The house still sounded empty and felt empty. Nothing stirred. It took him less than two minutes to make a quick search of every room and every closet and underneath the
one bed. The house didn’t just sound and feel empty, it was empty.
Nash wasn’t home, but unless he was one of the casualties outside—and Hughes doubted that very much—he’d come home sooner or later.
Hughes eased himself onto the couch in the living room and made himself comfortable.
When the fighting finally ending around five o’clock in the morning, Swenson wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a month.
His ears still rang with gunfire and the odor of gunpowder lingered in his nostrils. He knew his sense of smell should return to neutral soon enough, but he wondered if his ears would ever stop ringing. He might have just given himself a mild case of tinnitus. If so, he’d never complain, not even to himself. The rat bastard traitors killed nearly a quarter of his fellow soldiers and wounded almost half. They gut-shot his best friend Adam Neils. Swenson doubted the man would survive.
He’d have to mourn later. First things first. Get the power back on.
His Range Rover had been shot full of holes and several rounds hit the engine block. He turned the key and nothing happened. Not even the lights on the dashboard came on, so he and his partner, Dick Hastert, walked bruised and aching toward the electrical station.
They didn’t talk much on their way over. An unreal hush had fallen over their town. Only Swenson’s fellow soldiers braved the streets. Most of his neighbors were still inside their houses, hiding under their beds or in their bathtubs and comforting their children, no doubt wondering what the fuck was going on but not curious enough to come outside in the pre-dawn darkness to find out.
Some people probably thought Lander had been hit with a wave of infected. If only. The infected would have been easier to put down. They attacked randomly. They didn’t shoot back. And they didn’t target the government and the leadership.
Nobody had a clue where the mayor was. Steele’s wife and kid were gone too. Temple was dead, though. The rat bastards slit his throat in the middle of the night while he slept.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 28