by D. J. Molles
LaRouche stared straight ahead, feeling like a dumbass and suddenly understanding why dozens of commanding officers over his military career would shoot down his common sense thinking. Because it was easier to do that than simply admit that you weren’t able to see the forest through the trees. That you were wrong and somebody under you was right.
LaRouche huffed. “When you’re right, you’re right.”
Wilson lifted a brow. “So…”
LaRouche nodded. “We’ll do it.”
Wilson didn’t make a deal over it. Just kind of shrugged it off and sighed. “Well, I’ll let you sleep then.”
He started to get down from the LMTV but LaRouche reached out and grabbed his jacket sleeve. The younger man stopped and looked back at his bedraggled superior. Bags under his eyes, creases all over his face like he’d been wrung out and left to dry.
“You’re gonna be a good leader,” LaRouche said quietly. Then he released his grip on Wilson’s sleeve and crossed his arms over his chest, closing his eyes and seeming to situate himself for sleep. “Now get out of here before you let all my warm air out.”
Wilson smirked, then hopped down and closed the door behind him.
***
While night deepened, Harper’s group to the west lit no fires and remained mostly silent. Their place in the industrial park had not changed. The horde of infected had come and had slowed and had meandered around the area, all while Harper’s group waited in their vehicles, the engines at idle while Julia stood atop one of the buildings and occasionally glassed the road out with her scoped rifle.
For hours the distant clamor of the horde went on, so that Harper would sometimes think they had passed and he would have to focus on listening in order to hear them again. By the time they could truly not hear the horde any more, the sun was already touching the horizon and they shut the engines off and decided to make camp. Double watch, due to limited fortifications.
They ate quietly. The mood of the group was in a downward spiral, it felt like. First the clash with the other group of survivors, and then the loss of Gray, which everyone bore without a word or a tear, simply bore it up like another burden to be carried on their backs. Winced like it caused them pain when they looked for him and Harper only shook his head.
And Mike. Mike losing his shit. Now sitting wordlessly with his back to the cold corrugated steel of the building they’d parked next to. His head was tilted back, eyes to the sky. And then he would nod forward and stare at the ground. Harper ate a meal that he wouldn’t remember, and didn’t taste, and he watched the man repeat the movement over and over. The upward look of pleading. The downward look of despair.
A man begging God and not hearing an answer.
Harper needed Father Jim with him. He needed someone to tell him that there was a plan to all of this. He needed a scripture, some hocus pocus from three thousand years ago that somehow pulled everything together. He’d never believed, but he wanted it now. Wanted something to believe in.
Harper drank some water. Took a piss, watching the last bit of twilight fade.
The land behind the industrial park fell away into some flood zone, a low point in the land cleared by the construction crews to build the park, and then abandoned back into the clutches of nature where it was now half engulfed, sprouted with adolescent trees and weeds as high as a man. A wisp of fog was just beginning to gather at the base of the land, like nitrogen pooling.
Harper saw no beauty in any of it. Just something cold and unknown. Just a place for danger to hide, like a shadow or a cave. He shivered when he looked at it, zipped himself up and turned his back to it, wishing to be in the relative safety of the Humvee, only to remember the blood inside of it. Gray’s blood.
He went to it anyway. Empty on the inside, like an abandoned house. Julia and Mike the first two on watch. So it was just Harper and what was left of Gray. Harper and his old ghosts. Annette, and Miller, and Josh, and now Gray. Good company, but they didn’t talk much. He just replayed them in his mind like a favorite album, like a treasured vinyl full of songs that made you sad, but you just kept torturing yourself with them because you couldn’t help yourself.
He stared out the windshield until the heat of his body had fogged it and then he closed his eyes. He fell asleep quickly, though it was not restful. His aging body didn’t react well to long nights and long days cooped up inside the cramped vehicle. His lower back woke him often, forcing him to shift positions and alleviate the pain for another half hour or so. He didn’t dream. Just slept.
It was three hours into the night when he woke up suddenly, a gunshot echoing back to him. There was a moment of pause where that rolling crack of a bullet bouncing off the buildings and trees was the only sound, and then shouts could be heard.
Harper threw his door open, blinking his foggy eyes, trying to clear his head. His back protested the sudden movements, every joint screaming at him as he forced his body to be more limber than it was after three hours of no movement. He grabbed his rifle, didn’t think to grab anything else. His boots hit the ground and he hobbled towards the back end of the Humvee, trying to figure out what was going on in the darkness.
There were no other gunshots. Just shouting now.
Desperation. Panic.
“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” he growled as he hitched along, rifle already tucked into his shoulder, his head scanning stiffly this way and that, looking for a sign of what the hell had just happened. Someone ran by on the other side of the vehicles. Doors opened, more of the group stepping out to see what had happened.
Someone yelled: “Mike! Mike, stop!”
Harper sprinted the last few vehicle lengths. He could see two others gathered around the back end of the next-to-last LMTV, and he didn’t like the way they looked. Like they were taking cover behind the tailgate. Just barely peeking around the corner.
Harper didn’t stop. He moved around the corner, saw Julia, saw Mike, felt a sudden gush of relief that they were both alive. Then a tightness in his chest as he pieced together what he saw. Tightness like the sudden intake of breath before you shout.
They stood at the last LMTV in the column. Julia, directly in front of the vehicle, right in the middle of the space between its grill and the tailgate of the next one. Mike off to the side, near the driver’s side door, which hung open. Julia held her rifle into her shoulder, but the barrel held low, as though she felt threatened but wasn’t sure what to do. Mike held his rifle as well, facing Julia, but he didn’t threaten her with it.
He held it inverted, one hand stretched out to touch the trigger, the other holding the barrel directly under his chin.
This isn’t happening, Harper thought. This is a nightmare.
“Mike,” Julia said tightly, her feet moving about as though she couldn’t decide whether to move towards the man or away from him. “Put the gun down! Put it down and talk to me!”
Mike closed his eyes. “No…no…no going back now.”
Already one gunshot. Who fired the shot?
Harper’s eyes tracked to the open driver’s side door. This was the LMTV Torri and Mike always drove. The driver’s door hanging open. A single brass shell casing, glittering on the pavement. Blood on the passenger-side window.
“Oh, fuck…” Harper choked. “Mike…”
Mike shook his head vehemently, raising his voice above Julia and Harper’s. “It’s done. It’s fucking done.” He sobbed, a wretched, garbled sound. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry…so sorry…”
Harper couldn’t think straight. “Mike! We need to see Torri! We need to see if she’s alright!”
Mike looked at him like he was a stranger. “She’s dead!” he screamed at them. “I fucking shot her in the head!” He glanced towards the cab of the LMTV, like he feared she might be alive, then his face contorted and he looked away. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”
Harper’s voice cracked. “Mike, just stop! Stop what you’re fucking doing and put the gu
n down! Stop pointing that thing at yourself!”
Julia was suddenly silent, just standing there, the barrel of her rifle raised just slightly now.
Mike didn’t seem to notice. He sobbed several times, the whole frame of his body melting towards the ground, gummy-looking spittle frothing at the corners of his mouth and flying off as he wept violently. Harper and Julia exchanged a micro-second glance, and in their looks it was like they already knew.
Mike suddenly stood up straighter, his face blank, though still streaked with tears and snot and spit. His voice was a mumble. “I’m sorry, Harper. I couldn’t let her live in this world. We…we weren’t meant for this.” Bleary eyes tracked back to the cab of the LMTV. “She was so beautiful…but she was dying inside. We both were. All the killing. No peace. Never any peace. Always afraid. We weren’t meant for this.” He smiled a ghastly smile full of fear and hatred. “There’s no other way out for us. No other way.”
Harper shook his head, reached out his hand. “Mike…”
“Sorry.” He opened his mouth and stuck the barrel of the rifle in. Eyes went skyward. The same pleading look from earlier. Everyone shouting now. Trying to break through to him in that last second. But he pulled the trigger anyways, and his mouth seemed to strobe like lightening came out of it, and he crumpled, trailing gunsmoke and blood from his nose.
There was a collective cry, and then stunned silence.
No one moved to him, or to the LMTV where Torri lay dead. Not immediately, anyway. Somehow there wasn’t a question in any of their minds. As though death were a given. An unstoppable force that could not be resisted. As though the simple act of checking the two bodies for a pulse would be a useless waste of hope.
Julia didn’t move from her spot, but she knelt down, her rifle cradled in her arms and she seemed bent over it, hair hanging in front of her face so that Harper couldn’t see her. He found that his hands didn’t know what to do and they flew about his person, raising his rifle, reaching into his pockets, touching his head, wiping his palm across his face like it was something he could wash away.
He could find nothing to say that made any sense. Just swore up and down. Like each swear was a puff of steam, bleeding off pressure. He paced back and forth between the two LMTVs, three steps between them, then spin and three steps again. Back and forth.
Eventually, he broke the pattern. By now the entire group had gathered around. They wailed. They wept. They asked questions, because they had not seen for themselves. The answers were shouted back, and then the askers wept as well. Or simply stared down at the bodies with that blank face that was becoming more common than any expression of grief. That stare that didn’t see. Just internalized everything. Put it away some place where it wouldn’t bother them. Like burying nuclear waste. Out of sight, out of mind. Deal with the toxicity of it later.
Mental stability on credit.
Ridiculous. Ridiculous. All so fuckin’ ridiculous.
“Who the fuck does that?” Harper suddenly shouted. He pointed to the body. “Who does that?”
Julia stood, eyes red, face splotchy and wet. Wiped snot on her hand. She looked at him and in Harper’s mind she thought that it was his fault. That he should not have been so hard on Mike after the breakdown earlier that day. That he was the reason that Mike had done this.
Or maybe she wasn’t thinking that.
Maybe it was Harper’s own guilty conscience.
“Shitfire,” he murmured. “Fuck me.”
He slapped his rifle unceremoniously down on the bumper of the LMTV and stalked around the front of it to the driver’s side door. Hated what he was going to do. Hated to do it. Hated that no one else could bring themselves to do it, but somebody had to and it might as well be him. Might as well be the “man in charge,” if you believed that horseshit.
Might as well be the man whose fault it was.
He yanked himself up into the cab, found her body lying sideways across the center seat. Blood dripping on the passenger window. White chunks visible even in the darkness. A hole in her left cheek, just below her eye. Powder burns all around it. The eye nearly popped out of socket from the pressure. It glared at him, blatant and unblinking.
A single sob escaped him. He gagged. Then swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
It’s nothing. It’s nothing. Just another sack of flesh. Not a person any more. Just rotting flesh. Gotta get it out of my vehicle. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. Just an object. Like a broken machine that’ll never be fixed.
He opened his eyes again. Refused to look at her. He grabbed her by the legs and pulled her towards the edge of the seat, then stepped down to the ground and hoisted her onto his shoulders. Then he walked. He walked off to the edge of the parking lot where the pavement met the overgrowth, nature reaching out to consume it all.
He left her there in the tall weeds. Then he returned for the other one—couldn’t think of them as people any more, couldn’t think about their names, their personalities, their faces. Just whitewashed it all. Julia helped carry him by the legs. They laid him next to the wife he’d killed. Didn’t know if that was appropriate. But didn’t know what else to do.
The others talked about burial.
Harper checked his watch, knew he would not sleep for the rest of the night.
The others gathered around the bodies by cold, white lantern light. Tried to make sense of it. Some need to meet death with ceremony, like they’d planned it all along. Like they were prepared. Someone found a shovel and started digging.
Harper escaped them. He took his rifle with him, and he walked and walked through the complex, not really afraid of what might be there anymore. Inoculated to it for the time being. He walked until he found a quiet spot between two buildings where he could no longer hear the sound of the shovel stabbing into the dirt, and he knelt there and let out what he could not let the others see.
CHAPTER 26: ESCAPE
Lee stood over himself. Knew that it was some sickly fever dream. His crumpled form on the landing of the stairs, curled up into a ball. His consciousness hovering there over his body, like it had seeped out of him and floated up to hang there in the air. He tried to wake himself because the infected were coming up the stairs, but his shouts were silent soughs of wind, and then the infected fell upon his body.
He woke up in a panic, scrambling for his rifle, and almost pulled off a shot before reality pierced the haze of sleep enough for him to realize that he was still alone in the stairwell. From his position he could still see the front door of the shop that he was inside, and he could see that the barred and locked doors and windows still stood intact.
And it was still dark out.
Early morning, or midnight, or ten minutes after he’d fallen asleep, he had no idea.
The panic subsided quicker than Lee thought possible, like a faulty engine that will roar to life and then immediately stall out. He felt the drowsiness sweep over him again. He forced himself to take another bite of the candy bar, another swig of water, before it overcame him and he fell back asleep.
He opened his eyes, thinking, I’m still dreaming.
It was light out. Blazing, hot, midday light.
Just the presence of the light sent a shock of fear through him that he couldn’t explain for a moment, but as he gathered himself and stood on the steps, he realized what it was. The daylight meant the infected would be out. They would be out and hunting and the chances of his safe escape from this town had suddenly been greatly diminished.
Deuce. Gotta get Deuce.
He stumbled down the stairs. His feet and limbs felt like a scarecrow’s: just clothing stuffed with straw. Clumsy and without sensation. The rifle dangled from the sling around his chest and shoulders, and he didn’t even bother to take hold of it. He made his way to the front door, checked both ways and didn’t see any infected.
Gotta get Deuce.
Hope he’s okay.
He unlocked the door. Stepped out into the street.
The daylig
ht was blinding. Everything seemed washed out for a moment. He squinted against it, tried to look both ways down the street again, but then gave up and simply walked out, not really caring about it anymore. Just feeling a welling sense of dread as he wondered about the dog he’d left alone on the roof.
Into the shop across the street.
Noting that Shumate’s and Aaron’s bodies were gone.
Not even blood on the sidewalk to mark where they’d been.
Odd.
He went up the stairs inside the antique shop. Into the upper level. To the ladder that accessed the roof. The hatch at the top was ripped from its hinges. Daylight poured in.
“Oh no,” Lee whispered. “No, no, no…”
He climbed. Into the daylight. Like swimming to the surface of a dark ocean. On the roof, the sunshine felt hot on his skin, like a burning fever. He looked around the roof, but Deuce wasn’t there. There was nothing on the roof accept for…in the corner…
He walked over to it, unsteady, chest hitching as he knew what it was.
A patch of blood, dried dark brown in the sun. Bits of tawny fur still clinging to it.
“Deuce,” Lee whimpered. “Deuce, I’m sorry.”
“You did it again,” someone said from behind him.
Lee turned and found Angela there, standing on the roof. She stood in the oversized OD Green jacket he’d given her, hands outstretched and covered in sticky blood. Her eyes were sad and forlorn and she shook her head slowly, her blonde hair swaying slightly.
Lee found tears in his eyes. Shame for them. Shame for leaving Deuce on the roof. “I didn’t mean to…I just…I just…”
Angela’s eyes were downcast.
Somehow, her disapproval crushed him, leveled him, brought him to his knees. He wept bitterly and tried to think of something to say to justify himself, to prove to her that he had not failed, that he was still strong, that he was still worth something. But he had nothing.