by D. J. Molles
He took his cloth and soap and his rifle and made his way downstairs. Outside, near the rain catches, there was a collection of buckets in various sizes and colors. Lee took one and filled it with water from one of the rain catches, feeling the bitter coldness of it as it splashed on his hands and woke him up a bit.
Feeling slightly less dead on his feet, he took his bucket around the other side of the Camp Ryder building where something of a “bathing area” had been set up using some tent poles and tarps to create privacy screens. He shrugged against a gust of wind that pestered at his clothing. Between the cold water and the cold wind, it promised to be an unpleasant experience.
The stalls of blue tarps had been erected over a cement sidewalk that ran parallel to the fence so that everyone could stand on the hard surface, rather than in the grass and dirt. It was early afternoon and the warmest part of the day, therefore the best time to bathe, so Lee only found one open stall. He entered and put the tarp back over the opening like a shower curtain. He stripped down all of his dirty and bloodstained clothing, placing his rifle atop these, and, out of habit, he checked himself thoroughly for bites and scrapes.
A few purplish bruises here and there, but no broken skin.
He stood over the bucket of cold water with his little sliver of soap and steeled himself. Then he plunged in and scrubbed himself down as quickly as he could. A moment later he was done and shivering. He swiped the excess water from his body and dabbed the rest of it up with the red towel he’d taken from his pack. He pulled on the same dirty pair of trousers and stomped into his old Bates M-6 boots, still trustily holding together.
That was when the screaming started.
“Shoot it!”
“Oh my God!”
“Get away from the fence!”
In a flash, Lee was standing outside of the stall, his rifle in his hand, cold wind scouring his back dry. In front of him, five people filled the twenty-foot space between the showering area and the chain-link fence that bordered the camp. Three of them were backing away quickly from the fence, while the other two were shouldering their rifles.
Lee’s first thought was, Shit! There’s a breach in the fence!
“What’s wrong?” Lee yelled, scanning the fence.
One of the men pointed and looked back at Lee. “You see it? Right there!”
Lee focused into the woods and saw it almost immediately. The glassy, vacant eyes. The slack jaw. The withered torso, ribs standing out grossly. A moving sack of tissue and organs. For some reason, the small gathering on Lee’s side of the fence fell abruptly silent, and Lee could swear he could hear the thing’s breathing; heavy, labored, and raspy.
“What the fuck’s it doing?” one of the men whispered.
Lee raised his rifle and took a step forward, feeling soft grass beneath his feet instead of hard concrete. The creature in the woods had that wild-eyed look of the infected, but it did not charge them, did not show any clear aggression. It stood in a small clearing between two trees, just a few yards from the fence line, and watched them with eerie curiosity. Its head tilted to one side, and then the other, like a perplexed dog listening to a confusing sound.
After a few steady steps, Lee was between the other two men, all three pointing their rifles at the creature on the other side, but still it made no movement toward them.
“What’s wrong with it?” one of the men said.
The infected—an emaciated male—turned in the direction of the man who spoke.
“Holy shit!” the man gasped. “It’s fucking looking at me!”
“Are you gonna shoot it?” another asked.
Lee’s finger touched the cold trigger.
“Captain?”
Lee glanced to his left at the man who had spoken, but he could not keep his eyes from wandering back to the creature who stood on the other side of the fence, mere yards away. He remembered the infected woman and her dead infant, kneeling out in the middle of that tilled field, his first day out of the bunker. Was this one of the same? One of the rare nonviolent infected?
“Is it infected, Captain?”
Lee watched as the infected tracked the flight of a bird through the trees, his head moving slowly and lazily, eyes squinting in the sun. He seemed childlike.
“He’s gotta be infected,” Lee said absently, and he raised his rifle marginally.
A voice called out, thin and reedy. “Wait! Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!”
Lee turned and found Jacob hobbling quickly toward them, his feet bare, his right hand clutching at his gut. His face was scribbled with the effects of pain, and he was still sweating, despite the cold.
Lee’s own body prickled in gooseflesh as he remembered how cold it was.
Jacob came abreast of them, panting and shaking his head rapidly back and forth. “Don’t… don’t shoot him.”
Lee regarded the man with a doubtful look. “Why not?”
Jacob took a gulp of air. “Because I can use him.”
“The fuck is this crazy guy talking about?” one of the two men grumbled.
Lee raised an eyebrow. “You mean capture him?”
Jacob nodded vehemently.
“Absolutely fucking not.” Lee turned back toward the fence.
“Wait!” Jacob hissed and pawed at Lee’s elbow. “I’ve got to get samples from somewhere! Clearly he’s a nonaggressive infected, which means he’s the safest one to get them from!”
“What the fuck are you gonna do with samples, even if you get them?” Lee said. “You’ve got no lab; you’ve got no equipment…”
“No, Jenny told me about Smithfield and the hospital. I can do research there. I have so much left to learn! Things that can help us not only understand them, but possibly develop some sort of cure! Please!”
Lee sighed through his nose, felt the warm air brush across his bare chest. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous. It’s science.”
“Where the hell you gonna keep him?”
“Wherever.”
“Wherever?” Lee felt himself shivering again. “We’re completely unprepared for this. What are you gonna do when the damn thing gets loose and fucking bites one of the kids?”
“He’s nonaggressive!”
“He’s unpredictable.”
“Fine.” Jacob drew himself up. “I’ll do it myself.”
The scientist turned and began to limp away.
“Jacob, don’t leave that gate.”
But Jacob continued on, calling over his shoulder with bitter resolve, “Captain Mitchell would never have kept me from my research!”
Lee stared at the scarecrow of a man striding determinedly toward the front gates. What were they going to do, hold him prisoner? Restrain him for his own safety? Lee looked back toward the fence and swore under his breath. The infected was staring up at the sky, his mouth agape. He didn’t look dangerous at all…
Lee felt a welling of pity for him, rather than fear.
He raised his rifle and fired.
The thing rocked back and collapsed.
Even as the echo of the shot died, Lee turned and found Jacob staring wide-eyed at the fallen body out beyond the fence. He rushed forward with his arms outstretched toward the thing, as though he might cradle him and coax him back to life, a beloved child.
“What did you do?” Jacob screamed as he came forward.
Behind him, people ran out of their shacks to see what the gunshot had been. They filled Main Street and craned their necks to see. As Jacob tried to run past, Lee took two steps and intercepted him, grabbing a firm hold on his jacket and pulling the man close so that Lee could smell the stink of his skin and the warm staleness of the man’s breath.
In the narrow space between them, Lee spoke with force, but quietly so no one else could hear. “What were you going to do, Jacob? Were you going to go all the way around the fucking fence by yourself? What if that thing’s friends came out of the woods after you? Were you gonna make it back to the g
ate before they got you? Did you even fucking think about that?”
The people were beginning to stare and murmur.
Lee released the man’s jacket, causing him to stumble back a bit. Looking with grim resolve out at the gathering crowd, he slung into his rifle and felt the nylon strap rasp across his skin. Jacob stood, slope-shouldered and dejected, and Lee kept his voice low when he spoke again. “When and if it’s safe for us to do so, we’ll capture one of them for your goddamned sampling. But only if it’s safe.” He jammed a thumb into his chest. “And I’m the one who determines whether it’s safe.”
Jacob didn’t reply.
The crowd looked at Lee, and Lee at them. He struggled to determine what he should say in that moment, and eventually he decided to say nothing at all. Disgusted, though unsure whom he was disgusted with, Lee turned and marched briskly back to the shower stall, where he snatched up his belongings and headed back to the foreman’s office.
* * *
Bus followed him into the Camp Ryder building. “What the hell was that?” he said with exasperation.
Lee tossed him a sidelong glance. “That was Jacob trying to get himself killed and me stopping him.”
“Lee.” Bus held up a hand for him to stop.
The two men halted at the base of the staircase to the foreman’s office and faced each other.
“What do you want, Bus?”
“We’re on the same side here.” Bus lowered his head and looked at Lee from under his bushy eyebrows. “I’m with you. I get it. I understand. But some of these other people don’t. And every time you do something like that, they use it against you and they use it against me.”
“Every time?” Lee leaned on the railing. “Because I do things like that so often?”
Bus put a hand to his temple. “No…”
“No, I don’t.” Lee nodded. “Look… I have a job to do, and I don’t give a fuck about some wannabe commandos trying to second-guess every goddamn decision I make. They can say what they want, as long as they’re not standing in the way of me doing my job. Right now, I need Jacob; it’s that simple. I need his information, and I need his knowledge. If anyone puts that in jeopardy, including him, then they force my hand.” Lee began climbing the stairs. “Trust me, Bus, I don’t want to be the bad guy. But I’m also not going to play games with people.”
Bus stormed after him. “I’m not asking you to play games. I’m asking you to think about the backlash from people like Jerry and Professor White. They already have enough people backing them—they don’t need a rallying cry.”
Lee made a derogatory noise. “What are they gonna do? Picket me?” He could feel himself going on the defensive, and he didn’t like it. He took a deep breath and stopped halfway up the stairs. “I understand that my actions sometimes put you in a shitty situation. There are hundreds of situations where I’ve avoided taking action, because I knew it would put you in that situation.” He leaned against the railing. “But you gotta look at things from my perspective. What was I going to do there, Bus? If I let Jacob leave the gate, I let him put himself in unnecessary danger. And if I restrain him from leaving the gate, I turn him into a prisoner.” Lee tossed up his hands. “Yes, it’s a shitty fucking situation. But the alternatives were worse.”
Bus hung his head. “We just can’t win, can we?”
“Maybe we’re just not winning the way we want to win.”
Lee turned and continued up the stairs, not waiting to see if Bus would follow. When he reached the door to the office, Bus was no longer on the stairs. Gone off to conduct damage control, perhaps. Why? Because Lee was a loose cannon? Because Lee was someone who needed a spin doctor to defend his actions?
Lee shut the office door behind him and dropped his things next to his pack. He knelt down there and placed his hand on the tan nylon and became still. For a long moment his eyes were unfocused, unseeing, and he sat silent and unmoving for the better part of a minute. There were no conscious thoughts that went through his mind in those moments, just the overwhelming sensation of being absolutely and completely exhausted.
Moving again, but slowly, he pulled a pair of trousers from his pack. They were identical to the ones he was wearing but not quite as filthy. Before dressing himself, Lee looked at his dim reflection in the office window. His body showed the signs of long days of hard work and not quite enough calories to fuel them. His torso looked etched, and he’d lost what little body fat he’d had and, along with it, a lot of his musculature.
When he had on relatively clean clothes, he leaned his rifle against the desk, opened the door to the office, and then went to the map on the wall. He crossed his arms over his chest and sat on the edge of the desk.
The map was large and displayed the entire state of North Carolina. With a black marker, Lee had split the state into three zones: East Zone, Central Zone, and West Zone. Camp Ryder was positioned in the Central Zone. Inside this zone, Lee had used a red marker to shade in the urban areas of the larger cities to designate them as “nonviable,” meaning he could not safely clear them with his current resources. These “nonviable” areas included the Fayetteville and Fort Bragg areas and the Raleigh-Durham area.
For a long time Lee stared at the map. His eyes tracked across distances and terrain features, roads and rivers and lakes. He visualized the endless hordes, vast and wretched and stretching from horizon to horizon.
How do you defeat a superior force? Lee rubbed his forehead. You minimize their numbers. You force them to bottleneck.
He looked at the map and shook his head. The state of North Carolina was a very wide state, its northern border working in from the coast all the way to the Appalachians. It would be nearly impossible to force a bottleneck in such a huge area.
Use the terrain to your advantage.
Lee leaned in and looked closer.
Every elevation, every rise, every valley, every riverbed.
The wheels turning, feeling slow and rusted with fatigue.
He planted the tip of his index finger on the North Carolina coast, directly on top of the words SWAN BAY, and then traced a meandering course northwest, then west, all the way across the top of the map, and ended on a little town called Eden.
Lee tapped it. “Eden.”
“Do what?”
Lee turned to find LaRouche entering through the door, Julia, Harper, and Jim close behind. Still halfway lost in thought, Lee repeated himself. “Eden. It’s a little town northwest of here. Near the border.”
“Sounds like a nice place.” LaRouche sighed and sat in one of the folding chairs. “We should go there sometime.”
Julia remained standing and leaned against the back wall. “What’s going on, Cap?”
Lee realized he was still holding his finger to the map. God, he was tired. His arm dropped down to his side. “I’m assuming you all heard?”
There was a round of grim nods, hesitant, as though if they simply didn’t admit to knowing it, they could make it untrue. Just a bad dream that could be dispelled by hiding their heads under the covers.
Lee planted his hands on the desk and leaned on it. He looked at each of them in turn. “You guys are my team,” he said with quiet resolve. “You know that I would never ask you to do something I didn’t think we could accomplish.”
LaRouche hung his head. “This is gonna be bad, isn’t it?”
Harper nodded solemnly. “What do you need us to do?”
Lee took a deep breath. “LaRouche is right. It’s gonna be bad.”
CHAPTER 5
Dissension
The “committee” lasted about five minutes into Jacob’s methodical retelling of events before it began to fall apart.
As always, everyone met in the middle of the Square, with the fire pit glowing with hot coals that mimicked the color of the setting sun. At first, the crowd was attentive, interested, even excited to hear what this knowledgeable newcomer from Virginia had to tell them. But then, as he began to tell them of the deaths of the captains
from Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, his words became like an electrical current, and the still and somber crowd began to stir uncomfortably and to murmur back and forth. As he continued to speak, the murmur grew louder, until Jacob was sweating profusely again and holding his stomach as he stammered out a few words at a time.
Lee stood quietly beside and slightly behind Bus, with his team flanking him to his right. He rested his weight casually on his good leg and his hands were folded and resting on the buttstock of his slung rifle. As the crowd became louder, Lee cast a sideways glance that Julia caught. She blew out a breath and shook her head very slightly, communicating what Lee already knew: This was not going to be easy.
The dam broke when Jacob began speaking about the infected.
Jerry was the first to shout over the rest of the crowd, forcing his voice to be heard above everyone else’s. “How many are there? Surely you have some sort of estimate!”
Jacob glanced back at Bus, who gave him a reassuring nod. “Yes. We did actually run some numbers when we were initially determining the probabilities of a widespread outbreak. But you have to keep in mind those numbers are outdated at this point in time. You also have to factor in such things as infected attrition due to starvation and a myriad of other factors.”
Jerry raised both eyebrows. “So? What are the numbers?”
Someone else shouted, “Would you just tell us a fucking number?”
Jacob wiped a bead of sweat from his eye and blinked a few times. “Uh… millions? Several. Million.”
There was a collective gasp of shock and disbelief as everyone wrapped their heads around such a large number. Lee could see people doing the math, comparing “millions” to what they had seen already. In Smithfield, some of them had seen a few thousand. They must have been visualizing what a thousand times as many infected looked like.
“The numbers vary,” Jacob said defensively. “I think we can safely say there are at least two to three million of them. It’s possible there are more.”
“How many is more?” Another faceless voice.