by D. J. Molles
LaRouche met him before he reached the fire. “You guys okay?”
“Fine.” Lee waved it off. When they reached the fire, Lee hitched his foot up onto an overturned bucket and leaned on his knee, looking at his group gathered around the fire. “Listen…” He cleared his throat. “You all did great today. Every one of you. It’s just… sometimes it doesn’t matter.”
They all nodded and looked down into the fire.
At the edge of the amber light, Deuce grumbled and trotted around them.
Wilson raised his head. “Cap… I don’t know if you thought about it already, but we were talking about what happened earlier. The shooter…”
Lee spoke without emotion. “He was aiming for me.”
CHAPTER 20
Hard Truths
Wilson looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“The only reason I didn’t get shot was because I bent down when the shooter fired. Otherwise, the round would have gone through both of us.”
“How do you know the shooter wasn’t just aiming for Jake?”
“I don’t.” Lee shrugged. “But that infected was put there to slow us down, to get us to bunch up around the door. And yet the shooter only fires one shot. Whoever it was, he wasn’t just trying to ambush us, or he would have hosed us all down. He was trying to take out a specific target. And I have a hard time believing that someone was gunning for Jake.”
LaRouche scrunched his brow. “Well, why would anyone try to kill you?”
Lee shook his head. “I really don’t know.” But then he thought, Yeah, you know.
LaRouche shifted his weight, appearing uncomfortable. “Well… should you continue going on operations with us?”
Lee scratched the back of his head. “I’m not going to run and hide, if that’s what you mean. Honestly, I don’t really give a shit about this guy’s motivations at this point in time. I’m not sending you all out to do my dirty work for me and staying back behind the lines.”
The electronic sound of a voice being transmitted over the radio trickled from the Humvee a few yards from their fire, and it cut off any further debate. Lee looked over at the Humvee, along with everyone else. The words were inaudible, but they all knew what they were. And yet they hoped.
Jim was the first to stand up. “I’ll get it.”
The group watched silently as Jim stepped over to the Humvee and sat inside, retrieving the handset and speaking in a hushed tone. Julia appeared, staring with her cold blue eyes at Jim as he talked inside the vehicle. She was wiping her hands off with a small red cloth, and then she dabbed her face with it as she approached the fire. Her eyes retreated from Jim and grew hypnotized with the writhing flames.
The embers crackled and popped in the absence of their voices.
The handset clacked as it was set back into its cradle.
The Humvee’s door groaned, its hinges needing lubrication.
Jim stood with his hands folded in front of him.
They all knew without him speaking a word, so he said nothing at all. Instead, he walked back to his spot, where he had arranged a large pot next to the fire. It trembled and stood ready to boil over. Inside was rice and split peas, and he stirred them with a metal spoon that clanked on the sides of the pot. They all watched in the quiet of the deepening night as he took a small spoonful and tested whether the food was done. His eyes glistened and shone red, but he did not make a sound.
Seeming satisfied with the texture of the food, he removed the pot from the fire and set to opening some canned meat. As he worked, his tears traced down his nose, and he swiped at them with his sleeve.
They ate in silence, unable or unwilling to put into words yet another loss.
* * *
In the morning, Harper woke to what promised to be a dismal day. The clouds that stretched unending across the sky were a uniform, primer gray, and they spit out rain slowly and steadily, an excruciating pace common only to November and the beginning of December in North Carolina. Summer rainstorms were a panicked rush, as though the clouds were trying to empty themselves as fast as possible in order to cool the parched earth beneath them. But in these late months, the sky leaked like a loose-fitted pipe, as though the clouds were sullen and depressed and could not be bothered to work harder.
Harper stared out from behind the door of his shanty and cursed the sky. He could feel the ache in his joints. The hard times and the grief were like bitterness in his bones. He felt old. Out of shape.
Used up.
Tired.
He sighed and closed his door.
“Too much work to be done for a pity party,” he mumbled to himself as he lit his camp stove—not the one he used to burn deer guts. He’d scrounged up a little treat that he hoped would brighten his morning. It was a pack of instant oatmeal, brown-sugar-and-cinnamon flavored. He’d traded up three packs of AA batteries for a box with five packs left in it, and he saved them for when he needed a pick-me-up.
Diet food was what he would have called it four months ago.
Now it was an indulgence.
He boiled the water and poured the packet in, and for a long time he stood there over his little tin mess pot with his eyes closed, just breathing in the aromas and imagining a different place. The rich, spicy pungency of the cinnamon. The warm, robust sweetness of the brown sugar. There were so many things associated with those two smells, it was like running a dragnet across the riverbed of his mind, dredging up those memories of family and holidays that had been drowned and buried so long in the silt of his subconsciousness.
Holidays.
When the cold was cozy and it didn’t seep into his chest and make him worry about pneumonia. When the big concern of the day was what wine to bring to Thanksgiving and whether his brother-in-law Frank would get tanked at Christmas dinner. When he spent hours on the couch with Annette, listening to Bing Crosby with only the glow of the tree lighting their living room. Colored lights only on odd years, because Annette thought they were tacky, but he loved them and she conceded once every other year. Her stupid ornamental nutcrackers displayed on the mantel, their jaws dropped in perpetual shock.
She loved those silly things.
The ridiculous cornucopia she put in the center of the dining room table every year for Thanksgiving, with the fake mini pumpkins and the plastic gourds and the velvet leaves in fall colors. The little things that were absolutely necessary in order for her to enjoy the holiday properly.
Annette.
He opened his eyes and stared down at the thickening oatmeal. All around him were dirt floors, plywood walls, blue tarp to seal him from the rain, and a cold emptiness with nothing to fill the void. The memory of her was like a dying tree that he tried time and time again to pull up from the soil of his mind, but her roots were dug in too deep, inextricably intertwined with every thought, every recollection of his old life. There was not a place, not a feeling, not a scent or a taste or a sound that did not carry with it some tiny bit of Annette. She haunted him ceaselessly.
He missed her so hard that it became a very real, very physical pain in his chest. It was a tightness and a melancholy, but there was also a note of frustration that he felt each time he thought of her, some distant realization that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried or how long he waited, he could not have her back.
In life, you are often set apart from the things that you desire only by your willingness to work tirelessly to gain them. So many things are unlikely to be achieved but still within the realm of possibility. But death is not conquerable. It cannot be overcome or outmatched. You cannot outthink it. You cannot outmuscle it or even wait for it to be over, because it is truly, perfectly infinite. And this realization caused in him each time a new uproar from a small, petulant child in the back of his mind who threw a tantrum because he could not get what he wanted.
Because what he wanted was impossible.
Not impossible, the way the word was used to describe a daunting task that the lazy
person simply did not want to take on. But impossible in the coldest, most pragmatic sense of the word. There was no way to fix it. It was simply unattainable. And goals that were unattainable were best left alone, for they destroyed men’s minds and weakened their resolve to live.
He ate his oatmeal slowly, wishing to relish it but failing miserably.
These memories were not worth their weight in grief.
He looked at the box of oatmeal, swallowing against a lump in his throat. “Fucking waste of good batteries.”
He finished his breakfast and strapped on his gear, checking to make sure his magazines were all topped off, and then slinging into his M4. Looking down at himself in his BDUs and army-green parka, with all of his gear and his rifle hanging off of him, he almost laughed. If you could see me now, Annette… you’d get a kick out of it.
He left his shanty and threw the Gore-Tex hood of the parka up over his head to keep the rain off of him. It was misting steadily and he watched clouds of it billow down out of the sky, falling not at the speed of rain but more like the steady drifting of snow on a windless day.
He met Jacob, Nate, and his three volunteers at the front of his pickup truck near the gate. Nate had chosen Devon and a middle-aged man and woman whom Harper knew to be a couple, though he couldn’t remember their names for the life of him. He nodded to them all as he walked up.
“Morning, everyone.” He extended his hand to the middle-aged man. “I’m sorry; I don’t remember your name.”
“Mike,” the guy said, taking Harper’s hand. “This is my wife, Torri.”
“Glad to have you guys.” Harper motioned for the pickup truck. “I think we can fit everyone in. We need to hit the road, and I’ll tell you guys what’s going on while we’re on the way.”
They all managed to squeeze into the bench seats. Harper drove with Nate and Jacob up front with him. Devon, Mike, and Torri sat in the back. As they left the gate, Harper kicked it into four-wheel drive, as the dirt road had turned into a boggy mess overnight. The old Nissan crawled steadily through the muck and found its way eventually out to Highway 55. Dirt and gravel clinging to the tires pelted the wheel wells noisily as he brought the truck up to speed.
When the worst of the noise had subsided, he told them what the situation was. He warned them to not talk about this with anyone else, that they should consider it confidential until further notice. Then he explained Captain Harden’s belief that there would be a den in Lillington, and in that den there would be some live infected hiding out. He paused here for a long time, considering the ramifications of telling them the part about the infected being females and being pregnant. But he figured it was best to get the arguments out of the way now, rather than when they had the damn things cornered in whatever hovel they were hiding in.
The reaction to the news was not quite shock but more just a general disbelief. Without having Captain Harden there to explain to them why he thought this, most everyone, with the exception of Jacob—who already knew—screwed up their faces and asked why the hell the captain thought there would be pregnant females in the den. That was ridiculous.
“These people are crazy violent.” Devon was shaking his head. “No way they’re out there… making babies. Secondly, I just don’t see them having protective instincts.”
Mike’s eyes were incredulous in Harper’s rearview mirror. “You know, I’m usually on board with whatever the captain has for us, but this seems a little far-fetched. Jacob, is there any realistic basis for thinking there are dens of females out there, and that they might be pregnant?”
Jacob gave Harper a sidelong glance and looked uncomfortable. “Well, uh, yes. In fact, there is.”
“So…”
Jacob studied his dirty fingernails. “The FURY bacterium did its business already, eating through the brain. We already know that it didn’t leave behind much—just enough for basic primal functions. We’ve grown accustomed to considering these… people… to be hyper-aggressive. But much of the hyper-aggression was simply a by-product of the plague’s effect on the brain during the primary stages of infection, and I believe most of what we see now isn’t mindless aggression but simply the drive to hunt for food.
“Another primary instinct for survival is the act of procreation. Primal instincts are primal instincts, and sex is one of them. We think of it as separate, because we like to romanticize it, but it really is just a basic biological function in order to ensure the survival of the species.” Jacob looked back at three faces that all seemed extremely uncomfortable. “Other basic functions are maternal instinct—a very powerful instinct, mind you—and a male’s instinct to protect. So no, I don’t think it’s far-fetched to believe that they are mating, procreating, and protecting the pregnant females. It actually makes perfect sense from a biological perspective.”
The interior of the truck was silent for a long moment, everyone digesting this latest bit of bitter truth.
Torri looked distraught. “So what are we going to do if we find them?”
Harper pointed toward Jacob with his thumb. “That’s why I brought Jacob along with us. It’s his deal to catch one of ’em, so that’s what we’re going to do. Captain Harden has reason to believe that the pregnant females might not be aggressive…”
“Yes, about that.” Jacob smiled hesitantly. “We shouldn’t expect that. If they hold as true to biological nature as they’ve done in the past, then what we’ll see is the same thing we see in other pregnant females of the animal species. Namely, up until the point of giving birth, they will avoid a fight at all costs, but if you corner them or get too close, they’ll definitely attack. This is true of almost every animal. What we don’t want to do is enter a den where perhaps they have already given birth, because I believe we will find the females to be even more aggressive than the males in that situation.”
“You don’t think…” Harper took his eyes off the road for a moment. “But it’s only been four months since the outbreak!”
“Some of them could have been very pregnant when they were infected,” Jacob observed. “Whether or not they could maintain a viable pregnancy after that is a point of speculation. Another thing to think about is the gestation period. We already know the plague causes massive increases to the metabolism, and that affects a whole slew of other biological functions, including aging. It’s possible that the gestation period grows shorter.”
They drove the rest of the way in relative silence.
It was just after seven in the morning when they pulled up to the back lot of Outpost Lillington. Harper had radioed ahead the previous night to let them know they would be arriving in the morning, but still the sentry regarded them with suspicion. One of Old Man Hughes’s people, he believed. Harper rolled down the window and felt the cold wetness on his arm as he hung it out the window to display his yellow armband.
Still, the sentry approached with caution, trying to peer through the rain-mottled windshield at who was inside. When he finally looked in the open window, he immediately recognized who he was dealing with. His face became sharp and urgent. “Mr. Harper! I’m glad you’re here. Something bad happened. I think some of our people got hurt. You’ll have to talk to Professor White.”
Well, isn’t that just fucking dandy. Harper pursed his lips. Always a goddamned emergency.
The sentry ran back, and he and his partner pushed the car they used to barricade the entrance out of the way—Harper supposed they kept it in neutral so they could roll it back and forth with relative ease. When the car was clear of the little alley, Harper goosed the gas and trundled noisily into the parking lot, where he parked in the center—angry, a little concerned, and not really worried about where he parked his truck.
He had barely put his boots to the muddy gravel ground by the time he heard someone shouting his name. He looked up and found Professor White running toward him, his face twisted in panic, and Old Man Hughes trailing closely behind. Unconsciously, Harper slid his hand onto the grip of his rifle.
/> “Harper! Harper!” Professor White wailed. “Thank God you’re here!”
Harper couldn’t help himself; the guy brought out the worst in him. He extended his hand swiftly and stopped the professor’s forward progress with a palm to his chest that nearly knocked him over. “Calm the fuck down, Professor.” Harper nodded politely to Old Man Hughes as he plodded up in his dirty overalls. “Now, what’s the problem? Why are you running up on me like that?”
The panic in Professor White’s face disappeared for the briefest of moments, and Harper saw a flash of irritation—and what was that, a bit of hatred?—before the needy fear reasserted itself. He stammered to get the words out: “F-four of our people were just kidnapped!”
“What?” Harper looked at Old Man Hughes like White had just spoken a foreign language and the old man was going to translate it.
Hughes nodded. “Five of his kids went out to do some scavenging. One of them just came back, beaten to a pulp. Said the other four got jumped and kidnapped.”
Harper took a second to absorb this information, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Hughes and White. It appeared they were deadly serious. He turned to his pickup truck and handed the keys to Nate. “You guys continue on without me. I’m gonna figure out what the hell is going on here.”
* * *
They were back at the high school by what Lee supposed was daybreak, although there was no definitive point in time when the sun shone through the dreary sheen of clouds. Deuce was willing enough to climb in the Humvee, but when everyone else began to pile in, he retreated to the rear of the vehicle and hunkered down there for the ride.
They rolled slowly through the break in the barriers that surrounded the high school complex and came to a stop amid the dead bodies and ravaged crates of supplies. Lee stepped out, keeping his eyes on potential hiding places while he walked to the back of the Humvee and opened the rear hatch. Deuce was huddled there against the tailgate and tumbled out as soon as the fastback was open. He jogged a short distance away, taking occasional glances back toward Lee while his nose worked the air.