The door swung open. Cheers and applause erupted again.
“Thank you oh thank you oh thank you,” Tawnie said, and to Parker’s relief, she didn’t hug Kyle. Honestly, though, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she did. Parker himself was half tempted to hug Kyle, but he’d probably regret it less if he chewed off his thumb.
“Wait here,” Kyle said, “while I free the others.”
Parker and Tawnie stepped into the common area and looked at each other for the first time outside the cell. She was as ravishing as before, though she couldn’t possibly think the same about him. He’d lost some weight, but he hadn’t shaved, hadn’t washed and wouldn’t dare look in a mirror right now. No one could possibly find him anything but grotesque, but she hugged him again anyway, this time not like a doomed lover but like a sister. He might have died a little inside if he hadn’t expected it.
Kyle took his flashlight with him and went from cell to cell with the master key. The light refracted around the cellblock at spooky angles and made Tawnie’s face appear almost skeletal for a moment. Freed prisoners gathered around. Parker ignored them.
“Kyle and I have two more friends out there,” Parker told Tawnie. “They’ll be going with us to Iowa.” He had trouble swallowing, suddenly unsure if Annie was really okay.
Tawnie said nothing and stared at a point in space over his shoulder.
“It will be better,” he said, “with five of us instead of just two,” though he reeled at the thought that Tawnie would almost certainly hook up with Kyle.
After a moment’s pause, she said, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Parker said. “We’ll take you. I promise. And I don’t break promises.”
“Okay,” she said again and touched his forearm with her fingers.
Kyle descended the stairs with a line of freed prisoners in tow. Everybody looked terrible, ragged and gaunt and stunned by the light as if they’d been living underground for a decade, some traumatized into stunned silence like concentration camp victims. Kyle, though, looked cleaner, fresher and more invigorated than anyone else in the building, as if he’d just had a meal and a shower.
A man Parker didn’t recognize slipped on a splotch of gore and nearly fell on his ass. “Careful,” Kyle said.
“Come on,” Parker said and took Tawnie’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Before we go outside,” Kyle announced, “I have to warn you, there are lot of infected out there. You saw how many were in here, and there are hundreds of others. I have a van outside, but I can’t fit everyone in it and I only have the one flashlight. You should probably wait in the building until morning.”
“We’re coming with you,” Parker said.
“Parker—”
“This is Tawnie. She’s coming with us.”
Kyle pointed the flashlight at her, which meant he also pointed the shotgun at her. Tawnie squinted and shielded her eyes with one hand.
“Fine,” Kyle said, then opened the door leading out of the cellblock and into the lobby.
“Come on,” Parker said.
They only took a few steps before Tawnie she slipped on something, a loose organ or piece of muscle or gut. She went down so hard and so fast, and she smacked the back of her head on the floor.
Parker spun around and hurried down to her side. “Tawnie!” he said and placed his hand on the back of her neck. “Are you okay?”
“Ow,” she said and scrunched up her face. She sounded bleary and pained, but otherwise fine.
Another man, a stranger, crouched beside Parker. “Let’s get her up,” he said. “Carefully.”
“Are you hurt?” Parker said.
“Yeah,” she said and winced. “It hurts. I think I might be bleeding a little, but…I’ll be okay.”
Head wounds rarely bled only a little.
Parker and the stranger helped Tawnie up. Parker gently felt the back of her head. Something was stuck in her hair, something slick and gross like a scrap of seaweed. He pulled it off and flung it onto the floor.
Kyle returned from the lobby. “You coming?”
“Tawnie’s hurt,” Parker said.
“What happened?” Kyle said.
“I fell,” she said and grimaced as she touched the back of her head, “but I’ll be fine.” Her fingers came back with blood on them.
“You’re bleeding,” Parker said. “Kyle, you have a van?”
“Yeah.”
“You have a first-aid kit in there?”
“I don’t know. I borrowed it.”
“Go check!”
“Let’s just go. The parking lot’s clear. We can drive her to the motel and stop the bleeding there. It’s only two minutes away.”
One of the other prisoners held open the door as Parker led Tawnie into the hallway. Kyle held the second door. And just like that, Parker was out of the cellblock with Tawnie and everyone else right behind him. Against insanely stacked odds, they were free. The air in the building’s lobby smelled delightfully like nothing at all.
“How are you doing?” Parker asked Tawnie.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I just need a towel or something.” Her eyes twitched a little.
Parker worried she might have a concussion.
“Let’s just get her out of here,” Kyle said. He cracked open the front door of the building and pointed his flashlight outside. “Still clear.”
The prisoners gathered around Kyle in the lobby.
“The rest of you should stay here where it’s safe, but I have to take her,” Kyle said.
“Go, go,” said a woman and waved her hand toward the door. Parker didn’t know any of these people. “We’ll be fine. You’ve done so much already. Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you,” a man said. Another dozen or so strangers thanked him in turn.
“Okay, you two,” Kyle said and gestured with his head toward the parking lot. “Come on.”
Tawnie hooked her arm in Parker’s and a feeling of wonder came over him as soon as they stepped outside. The spiral arm of the Milky Way shimmered in a blazing arc overhead, indifferent to the ravaging plague and destruction so far below. The cool air smelled of pine trees and sage and tasted like water.
The van in the parking lot seemed vaguely familiar, like he’d seen it somewhere before. Probably at the motel. “Is that Andy’s?”
Kyle nodded. “It’s Andy’s.”
Tawnie doubled over and vomited clear fluid onto the asphalt.
“Shit,” Kyle said.
“She might have a concussion,” Parker said. He placed his hand between her shoulder blades as she vomited again, though this time she only dry-heaved. “You okay?”
She moaned.
“We need to get in the van,” Kyle said and swept the parking lot with his shotgun and flashlight.
“Give her a second,” Parker said. “Sweetheart? You okay?”
She spit and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Not really.”
“Are you going to throw up again?” Parker said.
She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and seemed to take stock of her body. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Kyle,” Parker said. “Shine that light on her.”
Kyle did.
“Come around over here,” Parker said and gestured for Kyle to shine his light on her back.
Parker saw a lot of blood. It matted the back of her head and ran down her shirt. The air was cold enough that Parker could see his breath when he exhaled. He found it refreshing after the heat and stink of the cellblock, but Tawnie wasn’t wearing a jacket.
“Do you have another coat in the van?” Parker said.
“No,” Kyle said, “but there’s heat. And there are blankets in the motel room.”
“Alright,” Parker said. “Let’s just go.”
Just as he reached for Tawnie’s hand to help her get to the van, she dropped to the ground as if someone had flipped off her switch.
Parker gaspe
d in shock and alarm and crouched next to her. What the hell happened? A concussion shouldn’t knock her out cold minutes after it happened. He touched her cheek and got no response.
Kyle just stood there. “Get away from her,” he said.
“What?” Parker said.
“Step away, Parker.”
“The fuck are you talking about, step away.”
Parker touched Tawnie’s forehead and felt heat. She was burning up. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Get up,” Kyle said.
“No,” Parker said.
“You have to.”
Part of him knew Kyle was right. He had to get up and back away or Tawnie would kill him.
“The floor,” Kyle said. “In the prison.”
Parker closed his eyes. Oh God. The floor. It was a diseased lake of virus and Tawnie had split her head open on it. The infection surged into her bloodstream and her brain as rapidly as if she had been bit.
“We have to go,” Kyle said.
“We can’t just leave her like this,” Parker said.
“Do you want to…”
Kyle didn’t have to finish asking his question. No, Parker did not want Kyle to shoot her. The only decent option was suffocating her before she woke up.
Parker couldn’t do it if his life depended on it—and his life didn’t—nor could he stand the thought of anyone else doing it.
For two years his life consisted of one unspeakable thing after another. His wife left him, the fucking world ended, his friends infected him with the virus on purpose, his mind turned deranged and homicidal, a warlord of a mayor tossed him into prison to die, and now the only woman who’d paid him the slightest bit of attention since his own wife called him a monster was about to turn into a monster herself.
God fucking hated him.
The door to the building opened. Two liberated prisoners, a man and a woman, came outside. They must have seen what happened through the windows.
“What’s wrong with her?” the woman said, concern on her face.
“She got infected,” Parker said, his voice cracking. His throat ached like he had a marble lodged in it.
“How?” the woman said, panicking this time. She spun around as if she might be attacked from any direction at any moment. “Was she bit?”
“What’s going on?” the man said.
Parker ignored them and fixated on Tawnie. She looked peaceful laying there on the asphalt. As soon as she woke up, though, she’d never be peaceful again.
“She cut her head on the floor,” Kyle said. “And the floor is covered in virus.”
“We all walked on that floor,” the man said. “We’d better hose off our shoes.”
“With what?” the woman said. “Contaminated water?”
Parker’s eyelids felt gummy and hot.
“What do you want to do?” Kyle said.
“I should do it myself,” Parker said, “but I can’t.”
“I’ll take care of it,” the man said with genuine kindness in his voice.
The man looked like a logger with a green flannel shirt, black jeans, brown leather work boots and a month’s growth of black beard. His hands appeared strong enough to crack walnuts.
“What’s your name?” Kyle said.
“Jim,” the man said.
“Thank you,” Kyle said as they shook hands.
“You’ve done enough already,” Jim said, “getting us out of there. We can’t thank you enough.”
Parker returned his attention to Tawnie. “I was going to take you to Iowa,” he said and caressed her cheek.
Nobody said anything. They all gave Parker a moment, but there wasn’t much time. “Should we go now?” Kyle said. “Or wait?”
Parker wanted to stay by her side, but he’d either have to watch Jim suffocate Tawnie or, if they waited too long, she’d wake up infected and Kyle would have to open her up with the shotgun.
“Let’s go,” Parker said and stood, trying with all his might to keep it together.
Kyle unwrapped the flashlight from the shotgun barrel and handed it over to Jim. “You’ll need this,” he said. “I have a couple more where we’re going.” He opened the back of the van, retrieved a crowbar, and handed that to Jim too. “And take this. Just don’t use it on her.”
“Of course,” Jim said. “Thank you.”
“Parker,” Kyle said. “Let’s go.”
Parker kissed Tawnie once on the forehead. He knew she might wake up and bite him on the face but he didn’t care. He could take it. He was immune.
Kyle started the van and turned on the headlights as Parker climbed into the passenger seat. Parker wanted to glance back at Tawnie one last time before Kyle pulled out onto the street, but he couldn’t bear to watch what happened next.
“He’s not going to use the crowbar on her,” Parker said.
“Of course not.”
As Kyle drove away, Parker leaned forward, put his face in his hands and shuddered a few violent sobs. He felt Kyle’s warm hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, man,” Kyle said. “I’m sorry for everything.”
Parker sobbed again, even harder this time, then he sucked down his pain, forced himself to sit up, promised himself that he could cry later alone and with dignity, and watched the dark city through the windshield.
They first passed a hideous cinderblock building without windows, then a mobile home park before driving into a neighborhood made of modest single-family homes spaced widely apart. On the grass in front of a white house with a gabled roof, an infected child gnawed on the arm of a very dead woman, perhaps its mother.
Parker couldn’t get the fuck out of Lander, Wyoming, fast enough.
“Where’s Annie?” he said as Kyle turned onto Main Street. “And why isn’t Hughes with you?”
42
It’s funny the way things work out sometimes. Hughes spent all day and all night driving down every street in town and every road outside of town, nearly getting himself killed a couple of times, but he found Annie right back where he started in the house next to Frank Nash’s.
Hughes knew she was in there because she’d written a huge message in white paint on the window: “Hughes. I’m inside.”
He slammed the Suburban’s brakes, made a quick scan of the area, killed the engine, flicked off the headlights and hauled ass to the porch.
“Annie!” he hollered and banged on the door with his fist. “It’s Hughes!”
She opened up right away. Must have had seen him pull up through a crack in the curtains. She stood in the doorway, warmly illuminated from candles burning inside the living room, with a look of wonder and love and relief on her face.
“You came back,” she said and embraced him.
Hughes hugged her like he’d never hugged anyone in his life. She must have found some perfume because she smelled like flowers.
“Are the others with you?” she said.
Hughes pulled away from her, placed his hands on her shoulders and shook his head no.
“Come inside then,” she said.
The previous day of Annie Starling’s life had been strange. Partly because it was the first time she spent a whole day free and alone since recovering from the virus, and also because she’d made a comfortable nest for herself in a stranger’s living room. All it took was some drawn curtains, a heavy wool blanket, some thrift store candles that made the space feel like a warm Catholic cathedral, a half jar of peanut butter and crackers and a riveting biography of Thomas Jefferson from the homeowner’s bookshelf.
Most of all, though, it was the fact that she was in danger—an entire town was dying around her—yet it hardly bothered her, finally proving what she had always suspected, that she feared a cage more than death. She understood Kyle much better now. He was right. Living simply with just enough of the basic necessities and without having to struggle was as good as life was going to get in this world. That was probably always true for jus
t about everyone; they just hadn’t known it.
But now Hughes was back. Of course she was happy to see him. If she hadn’t wanted to see him again, she wouldn’t have painted a message for him on the window, but she would have been perfectly content to spend a few more days in her nest before anyone, even Hughes, dragged her out of it.
“Come inside,” she said.
“We should go,” Hughes said. Parker and Kyle weren’t with him and she could tell by the tone in his voice that something was wrong.
“Come inside first.”
“Five minutes,” Hughes said as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
She led him into her home. Not into her own house—Juliette’s, Doc Nash’s neighbor, a woman she’d never met—but she’d made it her own and was in no hurry to leave now that she knew Kyle and Parker weren’t waiting for her in the truck.
“Where are the others?” she said and sat on the couch. Walking and standing still made her light-headed.
“It’s a long story,” Hughes said. He just stood there in the entryway with his hand on the doorknob.
Her stomach rolled. Something had happened. “You’d better tell it.”
He sat a comfortable distance from her on the couch, took a deep breath and waited a long moment before getting started, as if the story might sound a little bit better with a prologue of silence. Then he told her.
Parker had been arrested after Kyle said something to the mayor. Hughes left them both and spent all his time and energy looking for Annie. He traced Frank Nash from the hospital and squatted in his house for a while. They must have just missed each other.
“Makes sense that you hid in this house instead of Nash’s,” Hughes said.
“You abandoned Kyle and Parker?” Annie said.
“You’re the priority.”
“Thanks, but—”
“I could get Parker out of prison or I could get you out of the hospital. You’re more important, and either way, breaking you out of the hospital should have been a lot easier than busting Parker loose from a prison.”
“Back up,” she said. “I don’t understand. Why was Parker arrested? Because Kyle told Steele that Parker tried to kill him a thousand miles from here? Why would anyone even care?”
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 41