by D. J. Molles
Maybe they were already there.
Lee made his way down the slope. The man on the ground caught sight of Lee approaching and twisted himself so that his back was against the tree, baring his teeth in a grimace. Lee stopped short just a few feet and pointed at the man with the muzzle of his rifle.
“Who the fuck are you?”
The man groaned and clutched at his wound but did not respond. The crotch of the man’s pants was dark with blood, and it soaked the entire pant leg. It looked like the round had caught the man high on the inside of his thigh and exited near his buttocks. The amount of blood suggested damage to the femoral artery.
Lee got the sensation that he was being watched and he turned to glance behind him. The woods stretched on in a glistening, rainy pallor. There was no wind to cause anything to move, and the forest sat preternaturally still in the steady downpour. Over the sound of the rain, he thought he heard a distant growl, but when he listened, it was not repeated.
He turned back to the man and knelt down. “Let me lay this out for you, hotshot. I give it three minutes before you pass out from blood loss.” Lee rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “I don’t know how long it will take the infected to find you, but I can’t imagine it will be long. So… you think you’ll still be awake to be eaten alive, or do you think the blood loss will get you first?”
The man blinked rapidly and began looking around.
“All that shooting?” Lee said. “There’s gotta be a pack of them somewhere around here, coming to investigate. So you tell me… you wanna sit here and see how it ends for you… or do you want some help?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t wanna die.”
Lee’s face became flint-rock hard. “Who are you?”
A moment’s hesitation, and then: “Sergeant Prestone.”
“You Army?”
A shaky nod. “82nd Airborne.”
“Why are you trying to kill me?”
The man’s eyes glinted and a red smile touched his lips. “Because you’re a fucking traitor, Captain Harden… a fucking traitor.”
Lee reacted without conscious thought. He leaned forward and struck out with the buttstock of his rifle, hitting the wounded man in his upper thigh, right where the bullet had entered him. The man’s eyes went wide, he made a tortured sound, and curled in on himself like a little gray pill bug.
Lee sidled closer and grabbed the man by the face, forcing eye contact. “Do not fuck with me.”
“It’s the truth,” the man moaned. He was beginning to shake and his skin was becoming pale. “It’s the truth…”
Lee shook him. “Who sent you?”
“No. Get me out of here… The infected…”
“The infected are going to rip you to shreds unless you tell me who sent you.”
“Save me and I’ll tell you.” The sergeant’s voice was faint.
“It doesn’t work like that.” Lee shook his head. “You tell me who sent you.”
The man’s bloodless lips moved, forming words before he found a voice to put to them. “… you know who sent me… you know.” His eyes swam around in the deeper end of unconsciousness and then came back to the surface for a moment. “Your time is coming, Captain.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“We weren’t the only ones.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They sent others.”
“To kill me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m tired.”
Lee leaned away from the man as though the sight of him was repugnant. Deeper in the woods, but this time much clearer, he heard the howl, echoed back and forth. He stood and wiped rainwater from his eyes and from where it had gathered around the mouth of his beard.
Sergeant Prestone watched him as he stood. “You gonna help me?”
Lee shook his head. “Won’t do you any good.”
The man tried to haul himself upright but was too weak. “But you said…”
“I said you had about three minutes left to your life. But you’ve gone and wasted time trying to bullshit me, and the infected are getting too close.” Lee rubbed his chin. “Guess you should have talked faster.”
“Then kill me.”
“No.”
“Please… just shoot me.” Sergeant Prestone sounded panicked. “Don’t let them get me.”
Lee pulled the hood of his parka up over his head and turned away from the dying man. “You won’t distract them if you’re dead.”
Lee turned himself back the way he had come and began walking quickly away.
“You sonofabitch!” the man cried out weakly from the ground. “You sonofabitch! Don’t leave me here!”
But Lee had already left him. His parting hope was that the man would pass into shock before he felt much. He could not imagine the pain of being eaten alive.
As he worked his way back to the group, he thought he heard the sounds of growling and barking, and perhaps a scream of terror, muted by the woods and the rain.
CHAPTER 22
Odd Cargo
“Hold him down!” Julia ordered.
Wilson squirmed beneath the bulk of two of his teammates, one holding onto each arm while Julia took hold of his right wrist and held it tight, then took the first stump of a finger, what used to be his little finger, and forced it out straight.
“Waitwaitwait!” Wilson cried out. “Don’t do that, Julia! Please!”
She showed no pity when she looked at him, only honesty. “Wilson, this is gonna hurt, but we gotta do it. I gotta close up your fingers somehow, and there’s not enough skin to stitch them shut.”
“Can’t you sew my fingers back on?” His voice shook.
“No, I can’t sew them back on.” She turned to Jim. “Bring it over here while it’s still hot.”
Jim knelt down, holding his M4, barrel up. The barrel burned hot enough to sizzle the raindrops off into steam as they hit it. The look on Jim’s face was pained, as though he felt the agony of what Wilson was about to experience.
Julia pulled Wilson’s wrist toward the hot barrel. “Put that cloth in his mouth. Wilson, you bite down on that thing hard, but do not jerk your hand around. You gotta be strong.”
His response was a shake of the head. “Fuck! Jesus! Oh no…”
Lucky knelt over his head, holding a towel from one of their packs, rolled up tight. He placed it apologetically in Wilson’s open mouth, at which point the young Air Force cadet closed his eyes and bit down hard.
Julia pushed the stump of Wilson’s little finger into the barrel.
It took a moment for the sensation of his own burning flesh to hit him. Then his eyes shot open and he issued a sound that would have been a scream if not for the towel in his mouth. His teammates urged encouragement to him, but their voices were overcome by the desperate noises coming from him.
“One more,” Julia said. “One more.”
Wilson shook his head fiercely, but it did not save him. With one grown man forcing his arm out straight, Julia held on to the remains of his ring finger and pulled it inexorably toward the scalding metal, touching it amid muffled shouts and jerking, and holding it there while the skin and meat and blood vessels seared into one raw, red mass.
“Done,” Julia said and immediately released Wilson and stepped back. Two of his teammates jumped back with her, but the one holding onto Wilson’s right arm was too slow. As soon as Wilson got his left arm free, he swung out wildly and clobbered his teammate, causing him to stumble backward.
Wilson backpedaled away from them, the pain blinding him to the fact that they were only helping him. He clutched his three-fingered hand to his chest and ripped the towel out of his mouth, and like it was a plug in a spigot, he spewed out swears and curses as he huddled on the ground, his eyes squeezed shut again.
Julia breathed heavily with a shake of her head, wiping her bloody hands off on the hem of her parka and then swiping the rain out of her eyes. Beside he
r, LaRouche grimaced, looking down at Wilson’s form.
“Damn,” he muttered.
The sound of boots in the wet leaves behind them.
Lee trotted up to the group, soaked and breathing heavily, rainwater steadily dripping from his beard. He pointed to the road. “We gotta go…” His words trailed off as he caught sight of Wilson, still lying on the ground. He took a deep, rapid breath to catch his wind again, then he looked at Julia questioningly.
She zipped up her pack with a jerk and hauled it off the ground. When she spoke, she avoided Lee’s gaze. “We lost Zack.”
Lee seemed taken aback. “What happened?”
“They got him in the chest,” she said tightly. “Nothing we could do for him.”
Lee put a hand to his face, pulling it slowly down over his eyes, as though the anger and the frustration and the pain could be wiped from him like the rainwater. He stared warily back in the direction he’d come from, but when he saw and heard nothing, he looked once again at Wilson, who was just now sitting up, still cradling his hand. “What’s wrong with him?”
Julia pulled one backpack strap onto her shoulder. “Lost two fingers on his right hand.”
Lee nodded slowly, not responding.
“We just seared them closed with a hot rifle barrel.”
“Oh.” Lee took a step so he was standing over Wilson, and then extended his hand. “Come on, man. We gotta get mobile again.”
Still grimacing, Wilson took the offered hand.
Lee hauled the man to his feet, then turned to the rest of the group and pointed for the vehicles. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
LaRouche pulled up beside Lee as they headed for the vehicles. “What about the Humvee?”
“We’ll come back for it later,” Lee said. “For now, just grab our supplies and the radios and put them in the other Humvee and let’s get going.”
“Hey.” LaRouche touched the captain’s shoulder. “Who the fuck was that shooting at us?”
Lee looked at him, and something strange passed over his eyes.
“Just some guys,” he said, and left it at that.
* * *
Moving quickly, they dismantled the M2 on the now-defunct Humvee and pulled the SINCGARS radio off its bracket, stowing both of them in the other Humvee. Then they pulled Zack’s body out of the cab of the LMTV and put it in the back cargo area. They would take it back to Camp Ryder and bury it with Jake.
Bury it with the others.
The windshield in that LMTV was still usable, despite the gaping hole on the passenger’s side. Lee hurriedly took a cloth from Zack’s pack and wiped down the seats. His face remained stolid, and he gave no more reaction to this grisly task than if he were simply cleaning a dirty window, even when he found a long tendril of flesh hanging on to the rough hole in the seat back. He eyed the thing and then picked it up with his thumb and forefinger, and flicked it out the door behind him.
All the while his eyes kept tracking back to the woods.
With only a few seconds to spare, Deuce reappeared. He was quiet, but clearly concerned with something in the woods, as his golden eyes remained locked and his ears perked in that direction. Lee was not the only one who took note of the dog’s attentions—the rest of the group quickly piled into their vehicles.
LaRouche took the driver’s seat and from there watched the captain warily. As they drove it became obvious that Lee’s eyes were unfocused, staring straight ahead through the rain-dappled windshield, blinking in time with the windshield wipers. His eyes only became sharp again when he glanced down at his GPS to monitor their progress.
An error message popped up on the screen of the GPS unit and Lee’s eyes narrowed. He held up the device, then off to the left, then off to the right, up against the window. Finally, the error message went away. Lee held the device in the air and muttered something under his breath.
“Something wrong with it?” LaRouche asked.
Lee turned to face him like he had forgotten the sergeant was sitting there next to him. There was that same weird look again, but it quickly disappeared. “Maybe the satellite orbits are starting to decay.” He looked back to the screen. “That’s the second time it’s happened this week.”
They were silent for a while.
After a time, Lee pointed out the windshield. “There, to the right. That’s our road.”
LaRouche cranked the wheel to the right and they pulled onto the unpaved road. It was just plain dirt turned to mud, and mostly overgrown. Lee consulted his GPS again, but the screen was frozen with the error message again.
“Sonofabitch…” Lee shook the device as though maybe a wire was loose. Finally he gave up. “Just go straight down. We’ll find the damn thing.”
* * *
It took five minutes to find the bunker—a big cement lump protruding from the forest floor with an iron door that looked as formidable and secure as a bank vault. A large tree branch, still adorned with wilted and crinkled brown leaves, had fallen over the door, partially obscuring it from view.
After they found the bunker, it took more than two hours to load everything into the trucks. The first LMTV—the one with the .50-caliber bullet hole in the windshield—was crammed full of a thousand pounds of C4, fuses, blasting caps, and det cord. There were another thousand pounds from Bunker #4 back at Camp Ryder. It sounded like a lot, but cutting bridges took a lot of explosives.
P is for Plenty, Lee thought absently.
The other LMTV held crates of claymores, grenades, and ammunition that only took up about half of the cargo bed, so they filled in the cracks with M4s, boxes of magazines, and a jumble of the six-magazine shoulder bags, haphazardly thrown on top of everything else. There was room in the Humvee and in the cab of the HEMTT, so Julia hauled up as many medical supplies as she could fit in those spaces.
By then it was early afternoon and it had stopped raining.
Lee closed and secured the bunker and convened with his team. Strapping back into his rifle and gear, which he’d doffed to carry supplies back and forth, his eyes traveled from person to person. Tired faces, but hard as well. Hard with violence and loss.
“I know it’s been a rough couple of days,” he said. “Sanford didn’t take as much time as we thought, but we paid the price for it. I know you guys want to get back to Camp Ryder, and I don’t blame you, so I’ll leave it up to you guys.” He situated his sling around his neck. “Eventually, we’re going to need to scavenge whatever vehicles the National Guard left for us at the airport outside of Sanford. We can do it now, on the way back to Camp Ryder, or we can go straight home and make another trip tomorrow.” He shrugged. “I’ll leave it up to you.”
They looked between each other and murmured.
A consensus was quickly reached.
LaRouche nodded. “Let’s do it now. Get it out of the way.”
“Alright.” Lee gestured for the trucks. “Then let’s not burn any more daylight.”
The unpaved road dead-ended in a slight clearing with a few sapling trees trying to push up out of the shadows of their brethren, their growth frozen for the time being as they stood dormant for the winter. It was tight, but with some maneuvering and some spinning of the tires through the muck and mud, they were able to get the trucks turned around and on the move.
They drove on, kept turning through bends in the road, and Lee expected to see a roadblock with rifles pointed at him, but there were none. They had not seen any sign of roadblocks in more than a month. Lee had heard them referred to as bandits. Such an old word for such a seemingly new problem.
But it wasn’t really new, was it?
It was the same old humanity, suffering from the same old problems.
These problems didn’t stem from a fallen government. They lay within humanity’s base instincts, and the collapse of society only made it easier for them to manifest themselves. Perhaps Julia was right. Perhaps there truly was no difference between the infected and the uninfected. They all had the same p
roblem lurking inside of them. One simply had the ability to cover it up, and the other did not.
Because society is just a mask that we wear, constructed to look like something else, something better, something we wish we could be. If you live in that society long enough, if you wear the mask long enough, then you eventually forget that you’re only a few generations removed from savagery, and you let yourself believe that it’s no longer a part of who you are.
You’re better than that now.
You’re “evolved.”
But it’s an inescapable part of you, just as it’s a part of a dog, and the infected hordes, and the packs of hunters. It’s the rabid selfishness of an animal that knows no morals or laws. It’s a common bond between humans and everything else that lives and breathes. The only thing that sets humans apart is their often-errant desire to distance themselves from it. To be greater than that small creature inside of them.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
But if humanity was anything, it was stubborn.
And resilient.
And self-deceiving to the extreme.
So we rebuild, Lee thought to himself. For better or worse, we’re gonna try again.
He sighed and rubbed his face. I’m just tired. Just fucking tired.
The twists and turns of the empty roads led them on for nearly an hour before they finally reached the narrow two-lane road that led into the regional airport.
Lee could see what it had been before and also what it had become. To either side of the road stood old farmhouses. These had been walled off with hastily erected chain-link fencing, staked into the shoulder of the road with metal poles. Lee could remember the monumental amount of trash his unit had left behind them everywhere they went during the invasion of Iraq, and here was no different. Even simply transporting the refugees from the high school in Sanford to the airport for evacuation had resulted in such a trash clog that the edges of the fence were cluttered with it up to about knee height. Water bottles, MRE wrappers, diapers, cigarette butts, and even bits of clothing, sneakers, and electronic accessories like iPods and cell phones littered the sides of the road. It was like everyone had simply started shedding dead weight at this point, throwing whatever they didn’t need over the side and into the street.