by D. J. Molles
Shumate shrugged. “It’s a long story. But then again, you’re not going anywhere, are you?”
Lee worked a bit of tuna out of the gap where his tooth used to be. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Well,” Shumate looked off. “You remember a few months ago when I was leading a group of survivors over there in Smithfield, just mindin’ my own damn business? When out of the blue, this asshole shows up and simultaneously ruins everything I built and leads a goddamn billion infected to my front door?”
Shumate rubbed the slight crease between his lower lip and chin, his false good humor gone. “You know, I barely made it out of their alive?”
“We all barely made it out of there alive.”
“Funny, you still have your face.”
Lee regarded the can of tuna in his hands, somehow no longer hungry.
“I’m getting ahead of myself.” Shumate rolled his hands over one another, like the wheel of a steamboat backing up. “So there I am. The power goes out in the hospital, all the doors open, and every fucking infected within five square miles is running freely through the halls of my little building that I…” He made an angry noise and punched one fist into the other. “…I tried so hard to keep safe. And of course, you know, Milo was there—now that guy was a fucking asshole—and he wasn’t a whole helluva lot of help. And everyone else seems to have forgotten about lil’ ol’ me, because they’ve all gone to run off with the great, big, strapping, army hero…” he pointed at Lee. “…goddamned Captain America over here.”
Shumate mused for a moment, then continued. “So, I’m all by myself, scared out of my mind and running up the stairs because there’s no place else to run. And the whole time I just keep thinking, ‘I should have done this a long time ago. I should have been looking out for number one’.” He chuckled bitterly. “You see, all these years I’ve just been a faithful public servant, working my ass off, putting myself on the line for a bullshit salary, so that other people could chase the American dream in safety.”
He looked at Lee, his face open and honest. “I know that you’re thinking, ‘this guy’s a shit bag now, he must’ve been a shit bag then’. But I wasn’t. I was a good goddamned cop. Never took a penny that wasn’t mine. Never cheated on shit. Never lied. Never handled anyone rougher than I needed to.” He touched his chest as though feeling the badge that was no longer there. “I believed in that shit. But somewhere between the fourth floor and the roof of that hospital, I realized it was all bullshit. Because people are animals, and animals will take advantage of anything they can. They will use the shit out of you, and then leave you high and dry as soon as it becomes inconvenient for them to stick around.
“So I decided to start looking out for me, because clearly no one else was going to. I reached the roof and I thought I was gonna be able to close the door in time, but one of them got through. He was just some kid, maybe fifteen years old, but he grabbed ahold of me and I couldn’t get him off. I fought him, tried to shoot him, lost my gun, tried to stab him, lost my knife.” His hand went to his face. “He got his fucking teeth in me. Right there. Right on the jaw. And he just bit down and started shaking his head like a dog. Next thing I know, half my face is missing.”
Lee looked unconvinced. “You were bit?”
“Can I finish my story?” Shumate asked. “Anyway, I manage to get this fucker over to the roof and push him off. He goes down—splat. Then I’m on the roof by myself and, I’ll admit, I am freaking out a bit. I mean, I just got bit in the face. How could I not die? The amazing part about this shit? I actually got sick.” Shumate chuffed. “Got sick like eight hours after getting bit. Raging fever, hallucinations, delusions. Then by the time morning broke, I was better. Weirdest thing ever.
“So morning breaks, I realize that not only am I not infected, but all the infected that chased me onto the roof are all gone. So, I just waltz down through the hospital, just gathering weapons and supplies from dead bodies as I go. I make it out, and I head for the countryside. Figured it would be the safest place for me. Met the rest of these fuckers on the road and we all decided there was some safety in numbers, so we decided to stick together.
“But enough about me,” Shumate ran his fingers delicately across the mottled scar tissue of his face, wrinkled oddly at the corners of his smile. “What happened to you? You look like shit. What happened to all your ‘supplies’? Thought you had a bunch of food and water and guns? Now you’re out wandering around a neighborhood like a homeless man. Starving. Thirsty. No weapons.” He shrugged. “Looks like all your followers abandoned you.”
Lee glanced up at the man hovering over him, but otherwise gave no sign that Shumate’s words had perturbed him. He returned his attention to the can of tuna in his hand, now with a little less than half of the meat left. He scooped it out and held his hand down to Deuce, where it magically disappeared with a flourish of the dog’s tongue.
“Giving half your food to the dog,” Shumate observed. “That’s heartwarming.”
Lee just kept looking at the dog. “You have to take care of the things that keep you alive, Shumate.”
“Mm.” Shumate touched his chin, as though pondering it. “You were about to tell me why you’re running around out there all by yourself.”
“It’s complicated,” Lee said.
“Oh, I’m sure it is.”
Lee set the can of tuna down. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
Shumate feigned shock. “I want you to tell me how you came to be here, bound up and beat to hell.”
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“Who?”
“Guy named Eddie.”
“Hmm.”
“He took something from me.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I’m going to get it back.”
“Big talk for someone with their wrists tied together.”
Lee ground his teeth and glared. “Make a fucking joke, Shumate. But the more time you keep playing games, the worse the situation becomes.” He shook his head. “We’re on a fucking clock and we don’t have much time left. You think you’re getting some sweet revenge over some grudge you’ve been carrying, but I don’t give a shit. There are things happening much bigger than whatever happened between you and me.”
Shumate nodded. “Says the guy who has everything to gain by being cut loose.”
Lee closed his mouth and looked off.
“Don’t stop now,” Shumate rubbed his hands together. “You were on a roll. It was just getting exciting. Go on. Tell me about the ticking clock.”
Lee shook his head.
Shumate snorted. He took the tin can from the floor and stood up. “I don’t really give a shit about you, or your delusions of grandeur. You might be the savior of the world in your own mind, but in reality you’re just a sad little man, beat down and close to dying, trying to scratch a few more days of existence from the universe.
“But,” Shumate held up a finger. “You could still serve a purpose.” He tossed the empty tuna can into the far corner of the garage. “So far we’ve only been able to scavenge from neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Haven’t really gone near the cities because of the hordes. But, if you and your dog can smell the infected coming, then you might be useful to us.” He put his hands in his pockets. “If not, then I’m just gonna kill you and be done with it.”
He turned, took two steps, then looked back over his shoulder, tapping his head. “And I won’t miss.”
CHAPTER 10: PROBABILITIES
Jacob sat in his room, scribbling madly into a notebook. He’d been given one of the patient rooms on the third floor, and he shared that floor with Doc Hamilton and the two guards posted to them. Which were the only regular residents at Johnston Memorial Hospital. If someone got hurt bad enough, they’d be shipped over there and stay on the third floor for a while, but right now it was just them.
Jacob stopped writing and looked up at the single lantern glowing on his desk. He stared at the little LEDs, that
tiny filament encased in plastic. Blue-white when it shone. Lighting up his circle of existence—a card table that acted as a desk, strewn about with notes. Papers with endless strings of cramped writing on them, sketches of chemical compounds and the formation of bacteria in the bloodstream. Papers on the walls, pinned up by thumbtacks. Complete chaos, it seemed. But Jacob knew where everything was.
Right now, though, his entire world revolved around the notepad in his hand. It was the center of his existence.
A compendium of bad news.
He kept staring at it, then closing his eyes and shaking his head. A moment later he would open his eyes again, stare at what he had written, and the cycle would repeat. Like he didn’t want to believe his own conclusions. And maybe he didn’t have to. They weren’t proven, after all. Just theories. Perhaps there were other explanations for what he observed. Something he just hadn’t thought of yet.
He set the notebook down.
“Bad news,” he said quietly into the darkness of his room.
Outside of his room, someone ran down the hall.
Jacob stared at his door, irritated.
A banging noise. Shouting.
“What the hell…” Jacob threw himself out of his chair and stalked to his door. He ripped it open and stepped out into the hall. He looked left, saw nothing but the row of unused hospital equipment lying derelict along the wall. Then he looked right and saw one of the guards, banging on Doc Hamilton’s door.
“Doc! Hey! We got a problem!”
“What’s going on?” Jacob asked.
The guard turned to him, eyes excited. “Whole group of survivors coming in. Maybe a dozen. Coming straight for the hospital.”
Doc Hamilton opened his door, looking bleary-eyed. “What the hell is your problem?”
The guard repeated himself.
Doc looked over at Jacob. “Well, we can’t take them here.”
“Why not?” Jacob asked. “What if they’re friendly?”
“I don’t give a shit whether they’re friendly or not,” Doc reached back inside his room and grabbed his jacket. “This ain’t Captain Harden’s mess anymore. We’re not going out and wasting our resources on every Jim, Jack and Sally with a sob story. And I’m not the only one that thinks that way.” Doc pulled his arms through the jacket and gave Jacob a stern look. “Trust me, Jacob. You’re already on the line with Jerry. Don’t piss him off anymore.”
“How would he even find out?” Jacob said with a mild tone.
Doc just shook his head. “Don’t be a smartass, Jacob. It doesn’t become you.”
Doc exited his room and followed the guard down the hall. They passed by Jacob’s room, neither of them looking at him. So was the strange dynamic with them and Jacob. They wanted his knowledge, wanted his help learning about the FURY bacteria. But they also knew he wasn’t with them. He’d been with Captain Harden and Bus, which made him a pariah of sorts.
Jacob had already been through this rigmarole. The day after Jerry seized Camp Ryder, he sent his goon squad—Greg, Arnie, and Kyle—to have a chat with Jacob about loyalties and bullshit like that. Jacob had stared blankly, not really absorbing any of the speech that Greg gave him, but clear that it was meant to intimidate him into silence and subservience.
At the end, Jacob had just looked all three men in the eyes and made it very clear that his concern was getting information from the test subject they had captured, and didn’t really care what regime he gave that information to.
This was a bit of an untruth, because he did care. But he also didn’t see how telling them that would benefit him. At least now they left him alone, didn’t hang over his shoulder. Now he had freedom to move about, and for the most part they believed him. They believed that he was purely motivated by scientific curiosity.
It was interesting how everyone overlooked the endless weeks he’d spent on the road, by himself, fighting his way from Virginia to North Carolina. They only saw his bookish features and quiet demeanor. Perhaps that was an advantage.
He leaned on his door as Doc and the guard disappeared into the stairwell. He looked behind him at the little card table that acted as his desk. Stared at the notebook lying open there on the table. After a minute he walked over to it. Put his finger on the page, tap-tap-tapping it against the paper.
He weighed. He considered. Options. Implications. Like trying to see into the future, see which roads were most probable. Which ones led to success, and which to failure. Was there really any way to tell, or did you just make an educated guess and hope for the best?
Jacob left the desk behind him. He walked out of the door and down the hall to the stairs. He moved quickly, but calmly. He descended two flights to the ground level. Even in the echoing stairwell, he could hear the rumblings down on the bottom floor. He could hear some people speaking loudly—that would most likely be Doc Hamilton and the guards—and a rumble of dissent underneath those clearer voices.
Jacob opened the door and looked out across the lobby. At one time this area had been a clutter of decomposing bodies left over from the days when the CDC and National Guard still shoved infected and injured people through the doors, containing them in the building and eventually leaving them to die. Now all the bodies had been removed and burned, but somehow the smell of it still tainted the air. If ghosts had a smell, Jacob was sure that this is what they would smell like.
Like dust and mold and very faintly of rot.
On the other side of the lobby, the sliding glass doors were closed. It had already been explained to Jacob that the glass was bullet proof, and Doc Hamilton and the two guards stood on one side of the glass, confident that they were protected, and they yelled to a small group of people that stood before the doors.
What looked like a few families. Some older folks. A few kids. Several harried-looking adults. If they were armed, Jacob couldn’t see it. They huddled around two pickup trucks, some of the children and elders still sitting in the bed, looking forlornly through the glass of the hospital doors. Two of the men stood at the door, receiving Doc’s hoarse commands.
“Turn around and go away!” Doc shouted through the glass. “We have nothing for you here.”
One of the men didn’t seem to be getting the message. He looked incredibly frustrated and his voice came through clearly even through the glass. “You don’t understand! We spoke to LaRouche! We spoke to his group two days ago! We gave them information about The Followers, to help them, and they told us that we could come here! We have people in need of medical attention, and we need food and water!”
“We’ve got none of those things here! Go away!”
“We were told that this was one of Captain Harden’s settlements! That you were working with him and Camp Ryder! Aren’t you supposed to help? Where’s Captain Harden? I want to talk to Captain Harden! Right the fuck now!”
Doc actually laughed at the man. “You were lied to, sir. Captain Harden is gone! He abandoned Camp Ryder two days ago and no one has seen him since! We’re no longer taking any other survivors! Not here or at Camp Ryder! You’re on your own. Now get the fuck out of here or we’ll be forced to use violence!”
The man on the other side punched the glass door. “That’s fucking bullshit!”
Jacob had seen enough. He closed the door gently so as not to make a sound. He vaulted quickly up the three flights of stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the top, breathing heavily, and ran to his room. He stopped just inside the door and looked at the notepad again. He grimaced, ran a shaky hand through his hair.
“You sure you wanna do this?” he said to himself. He’d developed a bad habit of debating verbally with himself while on the road from Virginia to North Carolina. Sometimes it was nice to trick yourself into thinking you had a friend. Sometimes it was nice to break up the silence.
“Do you have a choice?”
He considered his own question.
“I don’t feel like I do. I feel like this is the path that has the greatest chance of suc
cess.”
He nodded. “Then go with it. And do it quick.”
He took a deep breath, blew it out so it puffed his cheeks. “Okay. We’re gonna do this.”
“It’s okay, you’ve done this sort of thing before.”
He went to the corner of the room and grabbed the rifle there. “Yeah, but it’s hard to get used to.”
He checked the magazine, then checked the chamber. Just like Captain Mitchell always taught him. He had a full thirty rounds, and one in the chamber. He flicked the safety off so he wouldn’t forget. Then he ran through the door to his room again. Down the hall with his heart pounding. Down the stairwell, slowing as he got to the bottom, softening his footfalls.
Beyond the door the shouts had reached a different pitch.
Bordering on aggression.
Jacob didn’t stop to take a breath. He didn’t stop to think it over, or to make sure he was doing the right thing. He knew that if he stopped, he would stop completely. And he’d already made his mind up. He’d already decided that this was the right thing to do. Or at least the thing with the highest probability of success.
He pulled open the door and slid through quietly. At the sliding glass doors, Doc Hamilton was screaming, with his face nearly pressed against the glass, while the two guards stood to either side, their rifles raised, though they knew they couldn’t shoot through the glass and into the crowd.
“Open the fucking door!” the man on the outside yelled, pounding it with his fists. “Let us talk to Captain Harden!”
Doc’s face was going red. “You’ve got ten seconds to get the fuck away from my door before I have my guys open up!”
Jacob raised his rifle.
His first shot went through the buttock of the guard to Doc Hamilton’s right. The man crumpled as the round dinged the ballistic glass and left behind a spattering of red. Another shot straight into the man’s midsection as he toppled over, his rifle falling out of his grip.
Jacob transitioned to the guard on the left. He was just beginning to realize what had happened, and was in the process of turning. Jacob fired three times, got him with two of the shots, but the third went wide and clipped Doc Hamilton in the shoulder. The old man cried out in pain, clutching his shoulder and spinning around to face Jacob, eyes shimmering with fear.