by D. J. Molles
Eventually he did fall asleep. And when he did, it wasn’t dreams that followed him through the night, but memories of all the things he had lost.
CHAPTER 8
Roadblocks
There was no fanfare for the volunteers as they huddled around the pickup truck at dawn. Cool morning dew had settled on everything and Lee had woken up damp from head to toe. Around them the camp was slowly coming to life, but most of the people were quiet. They gathered water and boiled it. Some of the families had personal items such as coffee and tea that they made themselves in the morning to stave off the hunger.
One such family—the Burkes, Lee remembered—kindly gave a small cup of hot instant coffee to each of the five men. They all thanked the Burkes profusely and drank the brew with relish. A few individuals walking by to collect water or visit the latrines behind the Ryder building wished them good luck and told them to be careful.
There was no breakfast to be had, so after the coffee, the five men grabbed what little they were bringing and piled into the truck. They each brought a few extra bottles of water. Harper had his shotgun and .22 revolver, and Lee had his rifle and the .22 pistol. They put the ammunition Bus had gathered for them in a small knapsack in the backseat. Miller was armed with his .38 Special and a few extra shells in his pocket. Doc had a 20-gauge shotgun someone had given him for the trip and a small box of shells. Josh carried his Ruger LCP and an ancient bolt-action .22 rifle.
Lee put the six gallons they had siphoned into the truck’s tank and then tossed the two gas cans and the siphoning tube into the bed with Miller. Harper cranked the engine and it started up with a throaty rumble.
By the time Lee had seated himself in the passenger’s seat, Bus was there, looking bleary-eyed and tired. He leaned into Harper’s open window and looked at the group. “You guys don’t do anything stupid, okay? Do what you gotta do and come right back. We need you and we’re all counting on you.”
Bus received a few silent nods.
Lee met the man’s gaze and gave him a thumbs-up. “I’ll get ’em back safe, Bus.” Though he knew it was a promise he couldn’t necessarily keep.
Bus backed away a few steps and someone opened the gate.
Harper put the pickup in drive and they left the relative safety of Camp Ryder just as the sun cleared the treetops.
* * *
They drove slowly.
As he had the day before, Lee kept his window open so he could rest his rifle on the side-view mirror and scope out any potential hazards. They stopped frequently when Harper or Lee spied something in the roadway. Mostly it was abandoned vehicles or accidents that had not been cleared. Each time they stopped, Lee spent a few minutes surveying the vehicles and the surrounding landscape for signs of an ambush.
Checking these vehicles for fuel ate up more time. The job of testing and siphoning fell to Miller, since he was already in the truck bed and strangely didn’t seem to mind the taste of gasoline fumes. Smartly, he didn’t try to siphon each vehicle to see if there was fuel. Instead, he would insert the tube and feed it down into the bottom of the tank, then blow through it. If he made bubbles, he would siphon. If the air blew freely, they would move on.
They had managed to glean only a little more than a gallon so far. Most of the vehicles in the roadway were abandoned because they were completely out of gas. The ones from pileups and accidents were close to empty or had already been siphoned by other passing motorists in the six weeks since the collapse.
After clearing another cluster of abandoned cars with nothing to celebrate fuel-wise, Lee broke the silence. “So, Doc… you’re a medical professional, right?”
“Fourth-year medical student,” he replied flatly.
Lee honestly didn’t know whether that was good or bad. He plunged forward. “Can you tell me anything you’ve learned about FURY? Have you been able to do any research?”
“Research?” Doc smiled‥ “Like spinning up some blood samples in my high-tech laboratory?” He laughed. “No.”
Lee craned his neck and looked back at the younger man with a blank stare.
Doc got uncomfortable and stowed his attitude. “No, I haven’t really been able to do any research because I don’t have the equipment. However, we can draw certain conclusions about the bacterium from what we observe in our personal experiences.”
Lee turned back around. “I’d like to hear it.”
“Well, we begin with what we know.” Doc gave a lengthy sigh. “We know it’s a plague, which means it’s borne from bacteria, not a virus. We know bacteria are a little bit larger and a little clumsier than a virus. A virus can’t reproduce by itself, but bacteria can. Also, bacteria are living organisms, while a virus is just a bit of genetic material floating around.
“We can safely assume that FURY is not airborne, because bacteria usually are too heavy to float around in the air like viruses do. Which isn’t to say that someone coughing on you can’t give you FURY, because the bacteria will cling to mucous and spit globules that are coming out of the person’s mouth. Generally, a bacteria means we have to get it from physical contact. But physical contact doesn’t seem to be enough with FURY because we’ve all seen people fight hand-to-hand with the infected and not contract the plague. It seems to only want to transmit from one bodily fluid to another. Blood to blood, spit to spit, mucous to mucous, and every other combination therein. So, from that we can infer that the bacteria doesn’t like to be dry.”
Miller looked thoughtful. “Seems like it’s very selective. If it needs such a narrow avenue to spread, why did it spread so fast?”
Doc shrugged. “There’s a lot we don’t know. Maybe somebody out there had time to get some answers before things fell apart, but it wasn’t me.” He regarded his hands with great interest. “I would venture a guess that it has less to do with the virulence of FURY and more to do with how the infected people act. Normally when people get sick they stay in their houses and avoid other people. In this case, the sick ones are seeking out the healthy ones. Imagine if someone with the flu wasn’t sitting in bed and sipping chicken noodle soup but intentionally going out and coughing on everyone he could find. Imagine how fast that would spread.”
Josh’s eyes widened. “Do you think that’s a biological mechanism of the bacteria? To spread itself?”
Doc looked at him as though he’d just asked if the moon were made of cheese. “No. I think a bacterium is a single-cell organism incapable of desiring to extend its life. I think the spread of the plague is an unfortunate coincidence based on what the bacteria do to our brains and the base instincts of aggression ingrained in our DNA.”
Josh spoke in a dramatic, breathy voice. “It’s like a perfect storm of biology.”
Doc’s eyes narrowed. “You’re fucking weird, man.”
Josh laughed and looked out the window.
“Any other inferences?” Lee asked.
“Not really.” Doc shifted in his seat. “Based on our collective experiences, those are pretty much the conclusions I’m willing to come to. Perhaps a bacteriologist or maybe even someone with a complete PhD might know more.”
They came upon another pileup, this one made of two cars and an SUV.
Fifteen minutes after spotting it, they left it behind—no gas to be had.
“So I answered one of your questions,” Doc said. “Can you answer one of mine?”
Lee thought for a moment. “Sure.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“This whole thing. This ‘mission’ of yours. I mean, what’s in it for you? There’s no government anymore; there’s no one to pay your salary or recognize your work.”
Lee actually found himself laughing. “You know, for all your sarcasm and pessimism, Doc, you’re guilty of doing the same thing.”
“Oh?”
Lee turned in his seat and made eye contact. “Why do you heal people? You get nothing from it. You’re not getting a big doctor’s salary or driving a nice
car or being recognized by the medical field.”
Doc turned away from Lee’s gaze. “I just do what I can do.”
“And I do what I can do.” Lee faced forward. When he spoke again it was quiet and sober. “This is no way to live. No one wants to be afraid for the rest of their life. We all want to get our old lives back. Of course, our old lives are gone. We’ll never get them back. What we can get back is our sense of pride, our sense of decency.” He sighed. “It’s difficult to explain. Sometimes I think I’m just fighting so I can have a chance to stop fighting.”
Harper smiled. “Makes sense in a twisted sort of way.”
Lee shrugged. “That’s my answer.”
“And you’re stickin’ to it,” Harper finished.
Doc didn’t say anything. He appeared lost in thought, staring out the passenger’s side window.
“Roadblock,” Harper murmured.
Lee sat forward and peered over the top of his rifle as Harper brought the pickup to a stop and angled it so that Lee could gain a better view of the roadblock. This one consisted of two cars completely blocking the road and one in the ditch to the right, as though it had tried to go around and gotten stuck. On either side the road, a steep embankment rose up with trees at the top.
Lee put his eye to the glass and scoped out the roadblock.
“Back up,” he said quickly.
“What?” Harper asked but was already putting the truck in reverse. “What’d you see?”
Lee watched the roadblock with his naked eye until it was nearly obscured by a bend in the road. “Stop.”
Harper obediently stopped the truck.
“I didn’t see anything. Yet,” Lee said, sighting through the scope again. What he noticed was the way the two vehicles in the roadway were positioned. They were nose-to-nose, taking up both lanes, but didn’t appear to have the significant damage that one might expect from a head-on collision.
Someone had parked them there to block the road.
He watched the two cars in the center with a steady, unblinking eye. Seconds ticked by, turning gradually into a minute, then two. Then, just as Lee was about to give up and look elsewhere, he saw the top of a blond head poke up and peer over the top of one of the hoods.
“Got one.” Lee called it. “Doesn’t look infected. Two now. Two men.”
“They look hostile?” Josh was almost climbing over the center console.
“Definitely looks like they’re trying to set an ambush, but I don’t see any weapons yet. Wait…” From out of the car in the ditch emerged a female. She was younger, possibly late teens or early twenties, and somewhat pretty, with dark hair, jean shorts, and a thin white tank top.
Bait for the trap, he thought.
The woman stood in the roadway, faced them, and began waving her arms.
“Is she waving at us?” Harper squinted.
“Back up more,” Lee said. “Until we’re out of sight.”
The pickup lurched backward and put more distance between them and the roadblock. When the roadblock was comfortably hidden by the bend of the road, Lee opened his door and stepped out. He pointed to Harper. “Give me five minutes to get in position, and then I want you to very cautiously approach that roadblock. If they start shooting, I want you to get down behind that engine block and haul ass away from here. Just remember: Door panels don’t stop bullets.”
“What about y-you?” Harper stammered.
“I’ll catch up with you guys.” He gave him a thumbs-up and hoped this wasn’t a huge mistake. “Don’t worry.”
He turned and dipped down into the ditch on the side of the road, slinging his rifle as he went. Then he scrambled up the embankment and disappeared into the woods.
* * *
Harper watched the captain vanish into the woods, moving with a feral intensity that creeped him out a bit.
Doc snorted. “Who does this guy think he is? Fucking John Rambo?”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Harper said quietly.
Miller stuck his head in through the open back glass. “Uh… what the hell we doin’, Bill?”
“Sorry.” Harper realized no one had explained to Miller what was happening. “Roadblock ahead.”
“Why’s the captain runnin’ off by himself?”
“Because he’s a secret government operative,” Doc said, putting on an official voice. “Capable of overcoming all the evil in the world.”
“Would you shut the fuck up!” Harper suddenly shouted. “You were the one who asked to come on this trip, but all you’ve done is sit there and bitch! If that’s how you’re going to be for the rest of it, you can get the hell outta the truck and get to steppin’ back to camp!”
Doc shut his mouth.
“So…” Miller trailed off.
“Roadblock.” Josh took over for Harper. “Captain Harden told us to give him five minutes, and then we’re going to approach the roadblock.”
Miller nodded coolly and then pulled his head out of the back glass and stood up, looking over the top of the cab.
Time stretched.
The clock on the dash had only passed about two minutes.
The silence in the car was absolute as everyone intermittently stared at where the road disappeared into the bend, and then back to the little green digits of the clock. Legs bounced and fingers tapped. Everyone held their guns with sweaty hands and bloodless knuckles.
Finally, five minutes passed.
Harper let his foot off the brake and the truck started rolling forward again.
They all craned to see the farthest visible point in the road.
The roadblock came into view, and this time the girl was leaning against her car with her head in her hands, the picture of distress. Harper kept the truck rolling slowly, not accelerating and not slowing down. After a brief moment, the girl seemed to sense that the truck had come back into view. She turned to them and began waving frantically.
“Maybe she’s really in trouble.” Josh sounded concerned.
“Just watch for the two guys behind the cars.” Harper felt the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stand up. They were committed now. They were rolling into the roadblock. If it was indeed a trap, Harper had the feeling they wouldn’t get away before the two guys behind the roadblock opened up on them.
He hoped the captain knew what he was doing.
As the truck drew closer to the roadblock, the girl ran up to the driver’s window. Her face was a mask of despair, but she was attractive nonetheless. As she approached, Harper couldn’t help himself from noticing the two dark nipples under the thin cloth of the white tank top. Nor could he help noticing the purple and yellow bruises on the sides of her arms and around the base of her neck.
“Please! Please help!” She was pointing to the car in the ditch. “My dad’s hurt! He needs help. Please!”
Harper swore under his breath.
Everyone in the truck was in complete vapor lock. No one knew what the fuck to do.
Should we get out of the truck?
Should we drive away?
“Please! He’s hurt!” she pleaded.
“Harper.” Doc sounded stressed. “Just let me take a look.”
And then several things happened in such quick succession, an outside observer would have seen them as simultaneous. But Harper saw each thing individually, like they were all snapshots laid out in front of him, one after the other.
The girl was backing away from them, hands down at her sides, shaking. The look of desperation was gone from her face and had been replaced by a hollow expression. Regret?
Perhaps guilt.
He blinked, and then there were two men standing behind the roadblock, pointing guns at them.
His stomach tightened.
To his left came the sound of leaves and branches parting, and then the same noise to his right. He looked and saw a man running out of the woods, coming straight at the passenger’s side of the truck, pointing what looked like an SKS at him and screaming, “Get
out of the fucking car!”
And all Harper could think of were Lee’s words: Door panels don’t stop bullets.
Harper put his hands up, not daring to go for his shotgun or the revolver in his pocket.
This guy had him dead to rights.
His door opened and he felt someone grab him by the collar, and then he was being pulled out of the vehicle. He couldn’t get his feet under him fast enough and he tripped and sprawled onto the pavement, his chin striking the concrete and leaving flesh behind.
Rough hands grabbed him up.
His own warm blood trickled from his chin down his neck.
The guy with the SKS was still yelling at Doc and Josh and Miller to get out of the car.
Harper found his feet and stood, holding his chin. Josh got out of the truck, looking terrified. Harper was sure he wore the same expression. Doc just kept yelling back, “I’m a doctor! I’m a doctor!” Harper tried to count how many there were. Two behind the roadblock, covering them with rifles. One on either side of their vehicle.
Four armed gunmen?
The man with the SKS grabbed Doc by the shoulder and spun him so he was facing the bed of the truck. Over the top of the bed, Harper could see Doc’s eyes were shut tightly. The gunman seized the scrawny guy by the back of the neck and slammed him hard against the side of the truck while screaming in his ear, “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
Doc closed his mouth. Then he opened his eyes.
His gaze fell on Harper and there was a horrific certainty hanging in the air between them: We’re gonna die now. This is it.
And then Harper heard a sound he’d never heard before in his life. If asked to describe it after that moment, he would have struggled to compare it to anything he’d ever experienced and would have eventually settled on the description that it sounded like someone hitting an overripe watermelon with a baseball bat.