by D. J. Molles
Lee could smell the man from outside the trailer. Most of the people managed to bathe regularly now, but they all still smelled of hard work and body odor, Lee probably being the most offending of them since he'd been in the field for the past few days. That Lee could smell the stranger over his own stink was a feat in and of itself.
"You recognize him?" Harper asked.
Lee shook his head. "Don't know him."
They didn’t linger. The man was clearly passed out from exhaustion, and they could not expect to have a lucid conversation with him until he was rested.
They continued on to the Camp Ryder building.
A short series of cement steps led up to a pair of steel double-doors kept closed to block out the cold air. Pushing them open, the pair was immediately inundated with the overwhelming smell of the place, and the noisy clamor from inside. The building had once been a service bay for Ryder trucks, and the smell of oils and car parts was forever steeped into the concrete floors and walls, however it was now home to several families and Marie’s kitchen. There was always a slight haze of smoke in the place, and it bore with it the heavy scents of people and cooking food.
Immediately upon entering the building, a metal staircase to their right rose up to a second level that overlooked the floor below with a series of metal catwalks that led to a roof access point, a few utility closets, and what used to serve as a foreman’s office—a twelve by twenty foot room that housed a desk, a filing cabinet, a few folding chairs, and a large corkboard with a map of North Carolina pinned to it.
In the office they found Bus and Kip Greene standing in front of the map. Bus wore the same OD green jacket as Lee and Harper—actually a Gore-Tex parka—and a pair of jeans with the beginnings of holes in the knees, twice patched and twice ripped. Stress had drawn some of his size from him, but he was still an imposing figure, especially next to Kip Greene, who stood all of 5'8", with wiry arms and a thin neck.
"Captain…Harper…" Bus greeted them as they walked in.
Lee clasped hands with him. "Good to see you, Bus."
"How was Lillington?" Bus ventured cautiously.
Lee dropped his pack to the floor. "Nothing worse than usual."
"Glad everyone came out alright." Bus nodded.
Lee turned his attention to the man from Broadway. "Kip…how are ya?"
"Decent. You?" Kip nodded, his hands planted deep in the pockets of his tattered old Dickies coveralls.
"Good. But we could still use some help." Lee looked pointedly at him.
Kip smiled grimly. "Funny enough, that's what I came to talk about."
“Oh?” Lee perked up a bit. He took a seat at the edge of the desk. "I sense there's a caveat."
Kip nodded.
Bus folded his arms across his chest. "I've been trying to explain to Kip that we need to use Broadway as a launch point for Sanford..."
"My people aren't interested in being a base for you guys," Kip said, steadily.
"It's not just about us, you know." Lee pointed to the map. "You guys have been catching all the shit leaking out of Sanford since this started. You're doing an admirable job, but if you let us go in and clean house, you'll be able to focus more on your farming, and less on watching your back."
Kip shook his head. "Not an option at this point."
Lee let his hands drop to his lap. "Okay. Why don't you explain what you want with us, then?"
Kip looked up at Lee from underneath his eyebrows. "We've been taking a lot of heat from Sanford. More and more lately, in fact. I'm not sure why, but they're coming out of that place in droves. I don't know, maybe they're running out of food in there. They all look pretty lean." He adjusted the brim of his cap. "Anyway, we've been getting them as they try to go down 421, but..."
Lee waited.
Kip seemed a little abashed. "But we're running out of ammunition."
Lee folded his hands. "Ah."
"That's why I'm here. To set up a trade."
"And what are we trading?"
"Food for ammunition. We've got corn, wheat, peanuts and tobacco. We'll trade any of them, in any combination, as long as the deal is fair."
Silence blanketed the room.
Lee was the first one to speak. "Kip, you mind if I talk with Bus and Harper for a moment?"
Kip shook his head. He stepped out and closed the door behind him as the three men from Camp Ryder gathered in close so they could speak in hushed tones.
Lee spoke first. “I think this is a good opportunity to build up some goodwill by making a generous trade with them. Keep in mind, they'll probably need rifles as well, since most of what we can give them is 5.56mm and I doubt they have many rifles that are chambered for that."
“We could play hardball,” Bus suggested. “If they need the ammo bad enough we might be able to break him down and let us use Broadway to get into Sanford.”
Harper made an ugly face. "I don't know if playing hardball is a good idea. That might just piss them off, and then Broadway is out as a source of food and as a base."
Bus rubbed his eyebrows. "I just want to avoid a repeat of Smithfield. I sure as hell don't want you guys camping in the woods outside of Sanford while you clear it. We need them."
Lee spread his palms. "Ammunition is a finite resource. We can have the best of both worlds. Let's make a small but generous deal with him now so he's forced to come back soon. Then we can play hardball. If we have some goodwill built up with him and his group, we're less likely to scare him off when we do. Plus we'll get a little fresh food out of it."
"We need the wheat," Harper nodded. "Cornmeal would be good, too."
"Any value to tobacco?" Bus questioned.
Harper and Lee both shrugged.
"As a trade item, yes," Lee said. "But I wouldn't worry about it for now."
Harper grinned. "Don’t tell LaRouche."
Lee stretched his arms. "So what’s the offer?"
"You're in charge of guns and ammo," Bus pointed out. "You tell us what we can afford."
Lee considered it for a short moment. "How about we trade five rifles and 600 rounds total. That'll be six mags per rifle. Depending on their level of contact, that could last them one or two weeks."
"That's a good time-frame for us," Harper noted.
"Alright. Everyone agree?"
"Agreed."
"Yup."
Lee headed for the door.
He was about to reach for the handle when he heard shouting and the sound of footsteps pounding rapidly up the metal staircase. Someone cried out in alarm. The steps thundered as they drew closer. He didn’t recall grabbing it, but Lee’s rifle was suddenly in his hands and addressed towards the door.
The door burst open and a madman with sunken eyes and sallow skin tumbled in. The strange creature's eyes landed on Lee and the captain's finger went to the trigger. The thing reached forward and sunk down to its knees and seemed about to scramble at Lee on all fours.
Lee was about to pull the trigger when it spoke.
"You're Captain Harden!" the man said and clasped a hand over his face. "I found you…I finally found you!"
CHAPTER 3: BAD NEWS
LaRouche hit the top of the stairs, breathing hard, with his old Beretta M9 thrust out before him, aiming it at the back of the stranger’s head. His eyes worked quickly between the man kneeling on the ground and Lee, who stood looking shocked. "You okay, Captain?"
Lee’s eyes were wide as he stared down at the man. "Yeah, I'm fine." He lowered his rifle so the barrel was not pointing at the man's chest. Gaunt, sickly, emaciated—the dirty look of someone who has been on the road for a long time. "You must be Jacob."
The man clasped his hands together. The fingers were long, almost spider-like. Black dirt encrusted the underside of the ragged fingernails. The skin appeared browned, like leather. Deep-set eyes and a hawkish nose. Wiry, dark hair. The man nodded, clearly expending much effort on maintaining a handle on his emotions and just as clearly on the verge of failing.
Lee glanced up at LaRouche, who had ported his gun. Lee gave him a nod, and the sergeant holstered up. Lee set his own weapon to the side and then knelt down and hefted the slender man up to his feet, grimacing at how horribly light he felt.
"Jesus, there's nothing left to you," Lee exclaimed.
Jacob laughed weakly and let himself be led to one of the folding chairs. Harper and Bus were still standing in a sort of daze, not sure what the hell was going on. For that matter, Lee wasn't sure either. Jacob didn't seem entirely sane, but then again, only God-knew what he’d been through to get there.
"You came all the way here from Virginia?" Harper asked in amazement.
Jacob nodded. "From Petersburg. I've been on the road since..." he looked at a scratched and worn watch that clung to his wrist. He regarded it with some confusion. "Shit. It's busted. When did it break? Damn…I don't know how long I've been on the road. A few weeks, I think. Last time I checked my watch, I'd been on the road for fifteen days, and that was at least a week ago. Maybe two." Jacob looked up and realized he was rambling. "Sorry. I've gotten into the bad habit of speaking to myself. Passes the time. Makes things seem less...” He didn’t finish the thought.
Lee took a seat across from the man. "Do you need anything? Food or water?"
"Oh, no. Thank you, Captain. I've just,” he swallowed and for a moment seemed to be lost in an unpleasant memory. “I've just been looking for you."
"Yeah." Lee shifted. "I’m sorry…I don’t..."
"No. You don't know me.” Jacob smiled. “Captain Mitchell sent me here."
Lee jerked like he’d been touched by a lightning bolt. "Captain Mitchell sent you here?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Does he need help?”
Jacob’s smile grew brittle, and then it shattered and fell away. His eyes looked to the floor, and Lee felt his stomach knot up, reading that expression as clearly as if it were a billboard sign and knowing that something had happened…something bad.
Jacob cleared his throat. "Captain Mitchell is dead."
LaRouche and Harper and Bus stood with incredible stillness, watching Lee and gauging his response. Lee looked right back at them, caught in some indecisive loop as his brain whittled away at those words and tried to carve from them some other meaning, though there was no other meaning to be had.
When he did speak, it was subdued: "He's dead?"
Jacob nodded.
The question burned in Lee's mind, and he spit it out suddenly. "How did he die?"
Jacob avoided eye-contact. "I had to kill him."
Everyone stiffened. Lee felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips, and he glanced at his rifle, leaning against the wall. But after a moment of thought, Lee realized what Jacob must have meant.
"Because he was infected."
Jacob nodded again. "I tried to do it quick, I did. But I couldn't use the gun because they were all around us and in the trees and I knew they'd come running. So I used a knife. And he made me promise! He put the knife in my hand and he made me promise! I didn't want to, but I did…I did."
Lee stared. "Jesus Christ…” He rubbed his face rapidly. “So what about the people he rescued? Who's with them now? What about the Coordinators from Delaware and Maryland and West Virginia? Are they helping? I mean, shit...Captain Connors from Maryland should be right there across the water..."
"They're all dead."
There was a sudden humming sound in Lee's ears. "What?" His voice sounded muted, as though he were hearing himself from a different room in a large house.
"They're all dead," Jacob murmured.
Lee stared, his hands planted on his knees and his fingers digging into the fabric of his pants and the flesh underneath. The humming noise rose to a high-pitched ringing sound, and then throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He wanted to speak, and though he wasn't struck speechless, nothing came to mind but curses. He closed his mouth and the words and anger and indignation sat back in his throat and curdled there.
The thin man's eyes watered and grew red. He was on the verge of breaking down. "There's nothing left, Captain. There's nothing left up there. There's nothing left anywhere north of here."
That ringing in his ears, the sound of a teakettle in another room. It seemed to grow louder, to fill the vacuum created by the lack of words being spoken. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, sharp and rapid taps like a snare drum, and he could feel his palms beginning to sweat. But there was a numbness there, like the point of a pin being pressed against a thick callous so that you could feel the pressure, but not the pain.
Lee waited for it in silence, for the moment to become real and for that deep wringing feeling in his gut to come back again. He was familiar with it now, like a frequently visiting, but unwanted guest. But the longer he waited, the more certain he was that it was not going to happen. He felt little more than hollow disappointment.
He leaned forward in his chair until he was sitting on the edge and he steepled his fingertips in front of his face and rested his chin on his protruding thumbs. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose so the air whistled past his fingernails.
He could smell his hands.
Like musty earth and sweat.
"Excuse me," Lee said quietly. "This is a lot to take in right now."
He opened his eyes again and looked at the pathetic form huddled in the chair before him, his skinny limbs like thin branches shoved into pant legs and shirt sleeves, like a scarecrow.
He spoke very slowly, choosing his words. "I think we need to stop and have you explain some things so that we're all on the same page. I understand that Captain Mitchell is dead. I understand that you allege the other captains are also dead. Please explain, and let's start with your relationship with Captain Mitchell. Who are you, and how did you come to know him?"
Jacob took a quick swipe at his eyes, then raked his fingers through his dirty hair. He had a strange way of speaking. Oddly formal in its wording, but somehow disjointed and meandering, as though nothing he said was planned, but rather a simple verbalization of his own train of thought. "My name is Jacob Weber. I'm a microbiologist with the CDC, or I suppose I was until a few months back. I was visiting the Level Four facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland when all of this happened. I was requested to stay and gather as much information as possible, and by the time anyone knew what was happening, travel had become very unsafe.”
His eyes wandered. “Actually, that's just what I tell myself—I don't really know why they left me at Fort Detrick." He pursed his lips. "Seems like they could have sent a helicopter for me. Or something…but they didn't. So I continued to work there, locked down in the bowels of Fort Detrick until everything collapsed. It was just me and another scientist, an epidemiologist named Lori, and a skeleton crew of army security personnel.
"After a while we decided to leave. I'd already gathered what data I could, made some interesting discoveries, but the...uh…samples…they became non-viable. Anyway, it was out of the question to try to get more samples and there was no reason for us to stay where we were, so we left. The army personnel came with us." He swallowed hard. "It was very bad. Much worse than I expected. I mean, I watched the news up until they stopped broadcasting, but I guess things just got exponentially worse when the power grid failed." He looked thoughtful. "That's my guess, anyway. I don't suppose it was the reactors that went out. They'll go on forever by themselves, I think. But maybe it was just the grid itself. With no one there to repair and maintain it. Maybe it was just that fragile.”
; He directed his gaze to Lee, his face becoming abruptly blank and detached. "So...Lori died first. She was eaten. Then some of the personnel began to get sick with flu-like symptoms. I told them it didn't necessarily mean they were infected with FURY. It could've just been a cold. But I think it got into their heads that they had been infected. Three of them committed suicide, and then it was just me and two others. After the first few days outside we realized we weren't going to get through it, so we holed up in an office building and we waited."
He paused there. "I'm not sure what we were waiting for. We knew that if we tried to continue on that we would die, or be killed, or be eaten. But I think we didn't want to give up just yet. We wanted to stretch out our last bit of time, maybe. Eek a little more out of our pathetic existence.”
Jacob smiled sadly. "Lucky for us, we saw Captain Mitchell and a little gathering of refugees getting the hell out of the city, so we came running out to catch up with them. Almost got ourselves shot for it, they were so jumpy. And that's how I met Captain Mitchell."
Lee waited a few beats after Jacob had finished talking. "So why did Captain Mitchell send you down here? And what happened to everyone?"
"Captain Mitchell sent me because I know about FURY." The scientist held up his hands. "That's not to say I know everything. But I have what information we were able to get from studies prior to the collapse. I may be the only person in the country, maybe even the world, who knows what I know."
"The samples..." Lee said.
"Infected subjects." Jacob stated flatly. "We were able to capture several of them in the beginning and observe them for an extended period of time. Studied their blood, and their biochemistry. Very…intriguing."
"What have you learned?"
Jacob considered this with faraway eyes that reflected thoughts in the shape of spectrograph analysis and microscope slides and vials filled with tainted blood. "Let’s see…the FURY bacterium is a very interesting little life form. It adapts and mutates incredibly quickly. In fact, it underwent some very extreme changes, even just in the time we were able to observe it at Fort Detrick.