Refugees
Page 30
A cold wind pressed at his back.
The dormitory door stood open.
Not so unusual, but for the bloody smear across it.
Greg dropped the satchel. It made a muted metallic clank as it hit the concrete. He shouldered his shotgun and stepped back, away from the door, and then to his right, so that he was back behind the overgrown bushes.
The sound of a car door opening.
Greg glanced back and saw Arnie running across the waist-high lawn, his old hunting rifle in hand. They knew better than to call out to each other, but when Arnie had jogged up within a few feet of Greg, he took a gulp of air and whispered, “What’s wrong?”
“Blood on the door.”
Arnie raised his rifle.
The two men edged toward the door.
Taking a longer moment to look at it this time, Greg noticed blood on the floor of the entryway as well. A few drops and then a long, coagulated smear that zigzagged across the tile floors and disappeared into the dark hall. Far down that hallway at the opposite end, a single window let in pale gray light and illuminated a small area in its glow, but everything between them and that window remained invisible in its shadow.
“Should we go in?” Arnie asked.
“I think we’re gonna have to.”
“Got your flashlight?”
Greg fished the little yellow light out of the back pocket of his jeans and flicked it on. The light was a mottled circle that probed dully at the heavy shadows, barely lighting their way. Slowly, the two men entered the dormitory, the candle-like orb of light guiding them along the trail of blood on the floor like wheels on a track.
It terminated in a door left ajar.
The placard to the right of the door read STAIRS.
Greg pushed the door open with the barrel of his shotgun, holding the pump action with the little flashlight pinched between his fingers. The door swung open and a draft of rank air hit them both, causing throats to clamp shut and eyes to water.
“Jesus Christ…” Arnie stepped back, fanning a hand in front of his face.
Greg handled it more stoically and pushed into the stairwell.
It was not the smell of rot, but the smell of bowels spilled.
In the corner of the bottom landing lay the top half of a body. The head was largely untouched, dark brown hair, a young man’s face, grotesquely serene atop its masticated corpse, reminding Greg of an obviously Photoshopped picture. Sharp ribs standing out from a spine stripped of meat. The organs scattered across the floor as though they’d been dug out and indiscriminately flung in random directions.
“Is that…?” Arnie choked.
“Yeah.” Greg turned away. “It’s one of the kids.”
“Where are his legs?”
“I’m guessing that’s where the blood trail came from.” Greg started up the stairs. “Whatever took him down dragged the other half of him off somewhere.”
At the fourth floor, they found a single dorm room with a splintered door. A crowd of bloody footprints stampeded back and forth down the hallway, but they centered there at the door that barely hung onto its hinges. Inside, the walls were red, like some hellish brothel, and textured with flesh. It stank of copper coins and sewers. It was too difficult to determine what parts belonged to whom, so they counted heads and came up with three.
Arnie shook visibly. “I thought the infected didn’t like to leave the ground floor.”
Greg shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What are we gonna tell Professor White?”
Greg looked at his partner. “We’re not gonna tell him shit.”
* * *
The shipping container was located back behind the Camp Ryder building and had become something of a storage shed for unused mechanical parts and other pieces of junk that people didn’t want to throw away, fearing it would be needed in the future. Cracked radiators, empty oxygen tanks, old hubcaps—they wasted nothing, but what they couldn’t find a use for eventually found its place inside this out-of-the-way container.
Two of the volunteers who had carted Captain Tomlin away still stood at the closed doors of the shipping container, a lock and chain around the bottom. These were new additions to the box.
Lee carried with him an unlit LED lantern, though the sky was not yet completely dark. He set this at his feet and eyed the padlock. “You got the keys to that thing?”
One of the volunteers responded by stretching out his hand, a single key held delicately between his thumb and forefinger.
“Is he still restrained?”
The man with the key nodded. “We put him in there exactly how you gave him to us.”
Captain Tomlin had all the same training that Lee did. And off the top of his head, Lee figured there were a dozen ways he could have gotten free from zip-tie bindings if he were left alone like Tomlin. There were a lot of sharp metallic edges in that shipping container. All it would take was some patience and the willingness to get cut a few times.
Lee bladed his stance toward the door, his rifle ported against his chest. “You mind pulling those doors open for me? Just in case.”
The man looked at the key in his fingers. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
The man with the key bent down at the lock and undid the chain. It clanked noisily across the metal as he pulled it away and yanked at the two doors. Lee raised his rifle fractionally, half expecting to see Tomlin crouching in the shadows with a piece of rebar, or some other such weapon of opportunity, clutched in his hand. He pictured this in his mind, because it was exactly what he would have done if their situations were reversed. He would have hidden with something sharp or something heavy, and he would snag the first idiot to walk into that box and he would either open him up or bash in his skull. Then he would grab that man’s weapon and take out whoever else was standing around before heading for the nearest exit.
Yes, that’s what I would do, Lee thought. But I would not have stood in the middle of the road waiting to hitch a ride. Clearly, we are not thinking on the same page here.
The doors opened wide, and it took a moment for Lee’s eyes to adjust fully to the dark interior of the shipping container, but he was able to immediately see the form of someone lying on the ground; he could see the pale palms of his hands still secured behind his back and the slumped, almost fetal position in which he lay.
At the sound of the doors opening, the figure stirred, craning his neck up and around. He was lying on his side, with his back to the entrance, probably in the very same position in which they’d thrown him in the container. He’d managed to pull the shemagh-turned-blindfold off his eyes and it sat limply on the ground next to his head.
Tomlin craned his neck far enough that he was able to see Lee approaching out of the corner of his eye. As Lee stooped to place his lantern on the ground and turn it on, the man’s face immediately went from hesitant curiosity to anger.
“What the fuck is this shit, Lee?” He twisted wildly until he was in a sitting position, partially facing Lee where he stood, just a few feet away. “Are you fucking off the reservation, man? I told you I’m here to help you and you throw me in this fucking shithole with two random guys?” Tomlin’s eyes flashed. “If you had any idea why I was here, you wouldn’t be draggin’ ass comin’ to talk with me.”
While Tomlin spoke, Lee circled around him slightly and visually inspected the bindings to make sure they were still secure. He didn’t want to step too close to Tomlin until he had a few questions answered. He waited until it seemed that Tomlin had said his fill, and then he looked him in the eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Close the door and we can talk.”
“Brian, answer the question.”
Tomlin’s eyes jerked to the two men standing at the door. His jaw stuck out defiantly, but when he looked toward them, his eyebrows twitched upward, almost imperceptibly, but Lee knew the look. It was a look of concern. Whatever he had to say, he really didn’t want those two to hear him.
&nb
sp; When he spoke, his voice was very quiet so that Lee had to lean forward to hear. His eyes remained fixed on the guards as he whispered, “Please. Please just close the door and tell them to go away.” His eyes turned to Lee and they seemed earnest. “Give me five minutes, Lee. Five minutes and you can do what you want with me.”
Lee searched the man’s eyes. He knew his face well, knew his facial expressions. It was strange to look at a face that he knew so well in his memory and try to see if it was the person he knew, as though what he saw before him now was only Brian Tomlin’s body, and some sinister force was controlling it. The face was so familiar to him, it almost broke him down to see it like this.
He knew this face in so many different ways, as he knew all of the Coordinators like family. He’d known this face when it was gaunt and tired after sixty days of Ranger school. He’d known it covered in face paint and lit by night vision, and he’d known it when it was heavy with a twelve-pack of beer and lit by the glow of the football game on TV.
He knew the man sitting before him.
He knew him like a brother.
But as Harper would surely agree, even brothers betray each other sometimes.
Nevertheless, Lee found himself standing up and turning his head partially, his eyes still locked on Tomlin while he spoke to the two men outside the shipping container. “Close the doors, please. You guys are relieved. Go get some chow.”
A brief pause.
“Uh… okay. Thank you.”
The doors swung closed. The flimsy glow of twilight went out completely, and everything in the shipping container that existed beyond the five-foot bubble created by the lantern seemed to disappear, as though Lee and Tomlin had suddenly been launched into deep space and were floating there in an abyss of dark matter.
Lee backed up a single step. Now the light was evenly between the two of them. Lee shifted slightly so that he was not pointing his weapon at Tomlin, but the threat was very clear. “You have five minutes, Brian. Please tell me what the hell is going on.”
Tomlin’s eyes closed, and Lee could see them twitching back and forth underneath the lids as he gathered his thoughts. He took a deep breath, his eyes still shut. “The long and short of it is that your life is in danger.”
Lee almost laughed. “Really?”
Tomlin’s eyes snapped open. “I’m fucking serious, Lee!”
What trace of black humor Lee had taken from that statement suddenly disappeared like a match puffing out in the wind. It struck him that Tomlin’s concern was not only for the secrecy of what he was about to reveal, but he appeared to be genuinely concerned for Lee.
“I know you already know about the other two guys,” Tomlin said. “They weren’t hardcore killers or anything, but they were no slouches either, so count yourself lucky they didn’t get you. Both designated marksmen out of the 82nd. But they aren’t the only ones out for you.”
Lee stared, felt something stir in the pit of his stomach.
Tomlin took his silence as an invitation to continue. “There’s someone else, at least one other. And I think he’s on the inside, Lee. I don’t know whether he’s close or just close enough to feed intelligence, but that’s how those two boys knew where to set up and wait for you.”
“You saying I have a mole?” Lee’s nose wrinkled a bit, like he’d smelled something foul.
“Mole. Informant. Spy. Whatever you want to call it, Lee. Why do you think they knew you were heading to Sanford that day? How do you think they knew where and when to set up to catch you before you got to your bunker? Because someone was feeding them intel from the inside.”
Lee canted his head. “Interesting. The way I saw it, whoever was controlling this little operation to kill me had to have knowledge of where my bunker was, not just when I planned to go there. And that’s information that only I have. But maybe another Coordinator would know.”
Tomlin smiled savagely. “Like me, right?”
“Yes. Like you.”
“Fuck you, Lee.” He lurched up onto his knees. “You and I both know that’s not true!”
Lee had to suddenly restrain an urge for violence. “Yeah, well, apparently I’m kinda out of the loop these days. So why don’t you tell me what the fucking truth is?”
“You are out of the loop!” Tomlin nearly yelled it. “That’s where all this shit started from!”
Lee held up a hand, his lips curling in a snarl. “Before I listen to any more of your bullshit, just answer one question for me. Did you come here to kill me?”
That one froze him.
Tomlin lowered his chin slightly, then sank back onto his heels.
A moment stretched by, and Lee arched his eyebrows, looking for an answer.
“Yes.” Tomlin shook his head. “That was the original plan.”
Lee crossed quickly, knocking over the lamp and causing the light to slant up at them and cast their faces in strange shadows. He grabbed Tomlin by the collar. “The original plan was to work together! The original plan was to save what we could and reestablish some sort of government! Why aren’t we sticking to that plan, Brian? What happened to that plan?”
“Things change,” Tomlin said bitterly.
Lee shoved him to the ground and shook his head in disgust. “I’m done.”
Tomlin squirmed into his side. “Lee, wait! You have to let me finish!”
But Lee had already turned his back on him. He pushed open the two doors and stepped out into the gravel lot of Camp Ryder. He turned back around, one hand on each of the double doors, his face just a shadow in the darkness. “I don’t have to let you do shit, Brian. I’ll deal with you later.”
Lee slammed the doors on Tomlin’s protests, but not before he could hear the other captain screaming at him—not in anger but in what appeared to be a sincere warning. “Watch your back, Lee! Watch your back!”
CHAPTER 25
… And New Enemies
It felt like tunnel vision, walking through Camp Ryder, the closed and locked shipping container behind him. The only thing visible was what lay directly ahead of him. Each question was a dropping anvil, smashing into that ice-cold, frozen surface over his mind and causing hairline cracks, weaknesses to be exploited when he least expected it, fissures to make him lose control.
His breathing came in rhythm with his rapid stride. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going. Simply escaping that shipping container, escaping whatever else Tomlin had up his sleeve, whatever other lies he had to spew out of his mouth. He rounded the corner of the Camp Ryder building—it was as good a destination as any.
But as he came around to the front of the building, he could hear the voices filtering out, cheerful in each other’s company.
He did not want to be with these people.
He did not want to put on a face for them, to make them believe everything was okay.
He did not want to endure their concern for him if that face faltered.
He wanted to be left alone.
Standing there at the front of the building, still swimming silently in the shadows, he stared at the entrance to the Camp Ryder building and the banner that Harper had hung there three months ago. A symbol of what had been and what could be again. Weather had turned the midnight blue to gray twilight, the red had become blanched, and the white was dingy at the tattered edges where hundreds of hands reached up to touch it every day, to honor it in their own way, to try to remember what the fight was all about.
The flag stirred only slightly in the breeze.
Where is the line between determination and stupidity?
He slumped against the cold concrete wall, felt it leach the warmth from him, pulling it through the fibers of his parka. Every bit of him felt heavy like cast iron, his feet like they were encased in concrete. His rifle dangled loosely from his hands, an anchor weighing him down, and he got the very real sensation that, like any heavy, immobile object, if he were to stand there long enough, he would sink into the ground and the earth would swallow him up.
He’d fought the fight. He’d run the race.
But the enemies never stopped coming, and the race had no finish line.
He’d spent much of his adult life considering himself a sheepdog of sorts—a creature that lived to confront the wolf, that protected the sheep because doing so was instinctive for him. But maybe he wasn’t a sheepdog anymore. Maybe that was a younger man’s game.
Perhaps now he was just a tired mutt with a scarred muzzle and a limp, who had battled his fair share of beasts and rescued as many sheep as he could manage. Perhaps he didn’t fight nowadays for the same reasons he had a decade ago. Maybe now he only hobbled out to confront that threat because it was the only way he could buy himself some peace and quiet. Maybe all he wanted was a place in the sun to lie down and rest and to be left alone, like any old dog that wishes to while away his days, lying on the front porch with his eyes half lidded in the sunlight.
He closed his eyes and imagined himself at peace.
And he thought, Maybe that’s worth one more fight.
He opened his eyes again and there in the forefront of his vision was the flag. He tried to dig deep and feel that pride he had once felt, and perhaps it was there, buried beneath the exhaustion and the resignation.
The only easy day was yesterday, he thought. Because yesterday, at least I knew whose side I was on.
* * *
Devon returned from Smithfield in Harper’s pickup truck, bearing Jake’s body. He rode by himself and no one asked him why he had made the drive alone, and he did not offer an explanation. They carried Jake’s and Zack’s bodies to a corner of the compound where crudely made crosses marked the graves of fourteen others, and the two men were interred by firelight. When they were finished, no words were spoken, because all the words of loss and death had already been said, and to say them now only smarted like a reopened wound.
A somber procession made its way into the Camp Ryder building, and upstairs to gather in the office and discuss the coming days. Nearly thirty of them crammed into the tight space—standing room only. The desk and the chairs had been pushed back against the walls and the door to the office remained open because one or two people stood in the frame of it, peering in over the heads of the others. Their attention was focused on Lee, Harper, and Bus, who stood with their backs to the map of North Carolina and faced the crowded room of volunteers.