by Matt James
I notice that he has a wedding ring on. I knew something awful must have happened to him, and now I know what. It’s the feeling of death that he said he has.
I step forward and stick out my hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He doesn’t move a muscle. So, I lower my hand and rejoin Jill and take in the other people. “You’re well-organized.”
Tyson crosses his arms. “I’d hope so. This is most of what’s left of my department. The others have either left…” his face falls, “or died.”
Knowing that the people here are fellow police officers makes me relax a little. This isn’t just some gang of gun-toting lunatics—minus Tyson maybe—they’re cops doing what they’re trained to do. They’re protecting us, but they’re also protecting each other, and whoever else is still alive here.
“So,” I say, “there’s an infection?”
Tyson’s eyes blaze. “Yes, but we need to get moving.”
He motions to his men—and women—I notice that there are a few female officers mixed in as well. Two of them move for our vehicle and two more head towards Jill and me.
“Hang on,” I say, holding up my hands. “What’s this? We already said we’d cooperate.”
Tyson places his hand on his holstered pistol’s grip. “Forgive me for not believing you, but we don’t take any chances, not after what’ happened.”
“Tell me then. What happened here,” I wave my hand, “besides the obvious.”
“Lieutenant,” one of his men says, “we have incoming.”
Tyson looks past me, which gets me to turn around. There’s a mass of bodies back a little further, and it won’t take much for them to find us. We need to leave and, unfortunately, we’ll have to abide by the Lieutenant’s rules.
“Fine,” I say, “but the girl comes with us,” I motion to Jill and me.
“What girl?” he asks. His eyes dart to our Explorer. Dammit… He lost more than just his wife.
“Our daughter,” Jill replies. “You aren’t taking her away from us.”
It looks like he’s about to protest our request, and just when he’s about to, he closes his mouth and sighs.
“Fine.” He turns on a dime and walks away. “You’re riding with me then.” He stops his march and looks over his shoulder to me and then to one of his men. “Cuff them.”
6
This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I told Tyson that we’d cooperate with him. I’m cuffed and sitting in the front seat of a blacked-out SUV, next to the man that ordered me to be put in shackles. Jill and Hope are in the back seat with a tall, well-built female officer sitting between them. My wife is cuffed as well, but gratefully, Hope isn’t. I can’t imagine a scenario where she’d need to be.
Even Tyson can’t be ‘that’ coldhearted?
His reaction to the mention of having a daughter has piqued my interest as to who Lieutenant Daniel is, exactly. He clearly lost someone near and dear to his heart. You don’t have to be a Holmes-level detective to figure that out. My guess is that his wife and daughter were killed within the last month.
While he’s had some time to mourn their passing, he’s still grieving. He's put his focus on doing everything he can to keep his people alive, putting off the grieving process for another time. It’s the reason he’s so on edge and insanely paranoid. Eventually, he’ll come down from the mental ledge and realize that not everyone is trying to kill him—infect him.
Speaking of that.
“Tell me about this infection?” I ask, turning my attention off of the unreasonably tight handcuffs and onto my captor.
He lets out a long breath before speaking. What he says shocks me.
“We call them burners.” His eyes glaze over, lost in a memory. “My wife and daughter were the first.”
Fuck me… No wonder he’s so paranoid.
Instead of focusing on his loss, I inquire about the “infection.”
“What is it?”
Tyson adjusts his posture. He’s uncomfortable with the question, but he explains, nonetheless.
“There are a select few of the creatures that carry a transmittable disease.”
“Really?”
I’m stunned. This is news to me for sure. I’ve literally seen everything these things have to offer and have yet to witness anything that resembles a contagion. If it’s true, then this is a gamechanger.
“You tell me,” Tyson says. “You’re a New York cop in Tennessee. Tell me what you’ve seen.”
I do. Both Jill and I recount the gist of what we’ve both experienced so far. We even retell our finding of Hope. I was reluctant at first, but I want this guy to trust us. Telling the truth is the best way for that to happen. Plus, with his wife and daughter dead, I’m hoping that our decision to take in, and keep, Hope as our own sways him into helping us.
“The Unseen, huh?” He nods. “It’s a fitting name.”
“Absolutely,” Jill says. “Tyson, is it? Look, we’re trying to find my parents. You can appreciate that, right? That’s all we’re doing. Whether they’re dead or alive, we aren’t here to pick a fight.”
“I believe you.”
My eyebrows raise. “You do?”
He nods. “But I also need to protect the people of Chattanooga.” He glances at me. “I’m not crazy, Detective.”
“Frank is fine.”
“You can call me Tyson, and as far as the virus is concerned…” He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable. “We don’t know much more than you. We were out foraging for food and supplies one day and, well, Holly was bitten by one of the Unseen.”
“Holly?” Hope asks, sounding sad.
Tyson nods. “My daughter. She was just a couple of years older than you.”
“What do the burners look like?” I ask. “Tell me everything.”
Tyson looks at me like I’m nuts but does as asked. The look on his face is one of horror. It’s apparent that he wants nothing to do with the creatures and is mortified that I do.
Knowledge is power, my friend. Knowledge. Is. Power.
“While most of the Unseen look like monsters from Hell, the burners don’t.” Interesting… “The one that attacked us looked like nothing more than a woman on the run. She resembled you and I. Except for her eyes…”
“Were they missing?” Jill asked. It was my question as well.
Tyson shakes his head. “No…they were bright red. Like there was a fire burning within.”
“Faith and Holly ran to her side to help.” Tyson grips the steering wheel hard. “The woman leaped onto Holly and bit her shoulder. Faith and I wrestled our daughter free, but not before she was bitten too.”
“And the burner?” I ask softly.
“I put a bullet in her head and patched up the girls. We went home and hid like we had been doing. Three days later, Holly’s eyes changed.” Tyson’s voice catches. “Then, Faith’s...”
We ride in silence for a moment. After two minutes, I ask one more question.
“What exactly does a burner do?”
Tyson points a thumb over his shoulder. “Remember the charred piece of asphalt I pointed to back there.”
I nod, recalling the burnt road. “What about it?”
He turns to me as we pull into a hospital and parks. “Burners explode.”
* * *
Still handcuffed like common criminals, we’re led into the hospital’s lobby. Mom and Dad are right behind us, and they’re handcuffed, just like us. Everyone has been relieved of their weapons too.
Except for Hope. No one checked her, which means she still has her pocketknife. Not that it’ll help us right now.
Besides the group that met us on the roadways, there are another twenty, armed men and women inside the hospital—around forty in all.
Forty-four if we get our weapons back.
The fact that our weapons were confiscated tells me that while Tyson trusts us, he doesn’t trust what we’ll become if we are, in fact, infected by the burner virus. His paranoia makes all the sense
in the world now. He’s lived through the effects.
Poor guy.
Unlike Wes’ prison, the Chattanooga Medical Center is filled with families and other regular citizens. The facility back in Florida housed mostly cops and inmates. This place is the home to those seeking refuge and safety. It also shines Tyson in a whole new light. Yes, he’s friggin nuts, but no, it’s not for his own wellbeing.
It’s then that I decide to cut the guy some slack. It’s not like I was going to cause any problems, anyway. The only thing I might’ve done is made things uncomfortable for him and gotten us thrown out. It’s not my best plan, I know. I doubt they would’ve given our weapons back either.
Come to think of it, it’s probably my worst plan to date, and that’s saying something!
So, all we have to do is hang out for three days, get fed, maybe scrounge up some ammo and gear, and then get back on the road to Gatlinburg. I mentally shrug. Not that lousy of a prison sentence, if you ask me.
We get all kinds of looks as we’re marched through the foyer. Every gender, race, and age group are present. Young, old. Rich, underprivileged. They’re all huddled together, watching as Tyson leads us through a door in the rear of the lobby.
Once the door is shut, I’m forced to my knees and secured to a enormous, metal filing cabinet. Jill and my parents are too, one next to the other. Hope is the only one of us left standing.
“Well,” Dad mumbles, “this is just wonderful.”
Hope turns toward him. “It is?”
With only one hand secure, Dad rubs the frustration away from his face with his free hand. After pacing the smallish room a few times, Hope and her stuffed animal plop down between Jill and me. I’m not happy about being delayed, but at least we’re all together, and with no means of escaping, now, we can only sit and wait.
“No one was bitten by some strange Unseen, were they?”
Four sets of eyes turn toward me and stare, nonverbally giving me the finger. I knew the answer to the question, but it was a question that had to be asked. We’ve been through a lot since crossing into Tennessee. I needed to be sure that no one was infected by a burner.
The file room is quiet and terrible—as in there isn’t much going on. I’ve been so used to action that sitting around and waiting isn’t easy. Then again, this might be the perfect time for us to catch up on some sleep. We do have an armed force protecting us after all.
I relay the thought to everyone and get a series of nods and shrugs. Regrettably, I can’t get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep. I’m tired enough for sure, but too much has happened within the last hour for me to just turn it off and pass out.
Hope and my parents? Not so much. They’re all snoring like steroid injected chainsaws within minutes.
Man, what I would give to fall asleep that easily.
Instead, I find Jill’s eyes and break into song and sing, “Just the two of us. We can make it if we try…”
Jill rolls her eyes and leans into me, careful not to wake Hope, and kisses me. Playfully, I bite her lower lip and smile. She softly laughs and looks deeply into my eyes. I must stare for a little too long because she leans away and raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
“What what?” I ask back.
“That look.”
“You mean the look after a beautiful woman kisses me? That look?”
Jill shakes her head and smacks it loudly against the metal filing cabinet. She and I hold in our laughs, praying that we don’t wake the others. Mom and Dad need their rest, and so does Hope. Jill and I can make do for the most part, but we’ll eventually need to get some sleep ourselves. For now, we lay down and stare at one another, peeking between the top of Hope’s head and the feet of the filing cabinet.
I think about digging around for Hope’s pocketknife, but who am I kidding, I ain’t no MacGyver. If I were, I would’ve ended this conflict a while ago with nothing more than happy thoughts and a fucking paperclip.
We reach our cuffed hands under the cabinet and find each other’s fingers. Then, it’s Jill’s turn to sing.
“Shiny happy people holding hands…”
I quickly echo the words, just as the song does.
“Shiny happy people holding hands…”
Hope snorts a sleepy laugh. “You guys…” she yawns, “are so weird.”
Then, she’s snoring again.
Chainsaws are roaring once more.
7
Just as I’m about to close my eyes, the door squeaks open, awakening me from my almost slumber. Whoever it is, he/she just stands there and stares. I can’t see who it is, exactly. The person's identity is obscured by a backlit halo. The room beyond them is too bright to make out a face.
“You're shitting me, right?” I grumble, annoyed to all hell.
The visitor quickly steps into the room and shuts the door, bathing us in darkness, once more. The only light is that of a battery-powered lantern in the rear corner of the room. Tyson was kind enough to leave us with that.
The jerk could’ve at least given us pillows.
“Who—”
“Shhh…” she says—and it’s most definitely a she. The woman is only a couple of feet away from me now, kneeling at my side. She has strawberry-red hair and a face full of perfectly placed freckles. If anyone ever looked like the country girl next door, it’s this lady.
“I need your help, Detective Moon.”
“Uh… Okay?” I honestly don’t know what else to say. “And you are?”
She puts a finger to her mouth as Jill begins to stir. The redhead cringes when Jill’s eyes snap open, immediately turning into a venomous glare.
“Jill,” I whisper. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry for Tyson’s treatment of you. I’m sure you can understand his suspicion.”
“You mean…his paranoia,” Jill mutters, yawning, none-too-pleased.
“Yes, that.”
“Back up a sec,” I say, “you said you need my help? For what?”
“Who are you?” Jill asks.
“My name is Andrea Daniel. I’m Tyson’s sister.” Andrea is dressed like her brother. She’s a cop like him, part of the CPD. “I need Frank’s help with something.”
Jill and I just lay there in silence and wait for Andrea to explain. Before she does, she scurries over to the door to check that no one is coming. Satisfied that we won’t be interrupted, she rejoins us at the rear of the room and gets into a catcher’s squat.
“I need your help to find my nephew.”
“Nephew?” I ask, stunned at the request. “So, it’s not just his wife and daughter that he lost, is it?”
Andrea’s face falls, stung by what I said.
“Ty is a rookie with the department,” she explains, “and he was helping me with a recon mission not too far from here. We were ambushed a few days ago, and I lost him near the city zoo.”
“Ambushed?” I ask.
“Zoo?” Jill asks.
Both questions are answered quickly.
“Yes,” she replies, “we were making our rounds, looking for survivors, checking off places one by one. The zoo was supposed to be an easy assignment for us until the Unseen showed up.”
“Been talking to your brother, have you?” It’s the only way she would know to call them that, and the only reason she’d be here asking me for help.
“Everything he told me about you was, frankly, impressive. We’ve lost a lot of good people to these things.” She grinned. “The fact that you survived New York and are now here is incredible.”
“We stopped in Florida, you know?”
Andrea’s eyes light up. “Really?”
Jill nudges me, knowing that I love the attention.
“Anyway,” I say, “back to your nephew.”
“Right,” she says, “I believe he’s still alive, or at least, I need to confirm whether he is or not. Tyson has already buried two members of his family, I don’t want him to prematurely bury Ty too. If I can bring him ba
ck—”
“You can right your wrong,” I finish. It’s not that I think Andrea is wrong at all, but it’s what she thinks.
And what Tyson probably thinks too.
“And if I help you?”
Her eyes harden. “I’ll get you all out of here ASAP.”
I glance over to Jill, who is burning holes into the redhead. I can tell she’s thinking deeply, but I also know that she’d beat the shit out of “Raggedy Ann” if she could get loose.
“You don’t think we’re infected?”
Andrea snorts a laugh. “No. You’d be showing signs of it if you were. My brother has always been—”
“Crazy?” Jill asks. I don’t think she’s blinked yet.
That can’t be healthy.
“Extremely thorough,” Andrea finishes, clearing her throat. “But yes, he’s been a bit off lately.”
She looks uncomfortable with Jill, and honestly, I can’t blame her. Andrea’s brother is the reason we aren’t on our way to Gatlinburg. Jill can’t take it out on Tyson, so, instead, she’s decided to take it out on his sister.
“If I help you, son or no son, we’re as good as ghosts?”
Andrea stands. “As long as you bring your ‘A’ game, yes.”
“What are you implying?” Jill asks, sounding mightily pissed off. She leans forward as much as she can. “Do you have any idea what we’ve been through? We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for Frank sacrificing himself countless times.” Jill sits back. “I doubt your brother can say the same for himself.”
Andrea turns and sniffs.
“Look…” I start to say but get cut off.
“No,” she holds up a hand, “she’s right. Tyson gave up on his own son.” She turns. “But I won’t.”
Seeing the determination in her eyes makes my decision easier, and knowing how Jill knows me, she already knows what I’m going to say.
“I’m in.”
Andrea rushes forward and unlocks my cuffs. I lean over and gave Jill a hard kiss on the lips. We stare into one another’s eyes before I get up to leave.
“Don’t come back without him,” Jill warns. Andrea stops from turning away and looks down at my wife instead. “I’ll kill you myself if you don’t.”