by D. J. Molles
Wilson popped up at the sound of Lee’s voice and shouldered his rifle. “I got it, Cap.”
Lee strode quickly to Julia’s side and knelt down beside her. Jake’s eyes tracked him, still glassy and unseeing. “How’s he looking?”
Julia’s lips were set in a thin line, her jaw clenched. Red smears across her face and neck. “He needs blood. I don’t have the equipment to do a transfusion, and I don’t have time to test everyone’s blood types.” She swabbed the inside of Jake’s elbow and then looked up at Lee. “We need to get him to Smithfield, and fast.”
“Okay,” Lee nodded, but had no idea how possible that would be. “Gimme a minute.”
Lee stood up and caught LaRouche’s eye and motioned him over. They kept low, below the line of sight from any rooftops around them.
“Cap?”
“What do you think?”
“That was a high-caliber rifle, and close.” LaRouche glanced out beyond the edges of the roof. “I didn’t see a muzzle flash, but I’d think he was on top of one of these adjacent buildings.” He looked at Lee. “Who do you think it was?”
“I have no fucking idea,” Lee growled. “Some asshole, trigger-happy scavenger.”
“Let’s check it out.” LaRouche nodded towards the edge of the roof.
They moved towards the edge, hunching lower as they went towards the abutment until they were duck-walking. Without prearranging it, they separated so that they were about ten yards apart.
Lee put his shoulder to the abutment and looked at LaRouche. “On three.”
“Okay.”
He counted with his fingers, one, two, three, and they both popped up and looked out over the nearby rooftops. In the brief moment that they were exposed, they searched for movement, for anything that seemed unnatural, for the glint of gunmetal or the flash of a scope lens. When they ducked back into cover, they looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Nothing,” LaRouche said.
“I got nothing,” Lee confirmed. “One more time, a little slower.”
Again they counted down, and on three they both stood up partially and looked out over the small-town rooftops laid out around them, but they could find no evidence of the sniper. Lee had to agree with LaRouche’s assessment. That had been a high-powered rifle round, and it had come from someplace very close to them. And yet there was no one on the roofs. None of the nearby buildings had facing windows from which a sniper could have made the shot.
LaRouche swore. “He must’ve bugged out already.”
Hit and run tactics? Lee thought.
“What about the infected?”
Lee leaned further over the edge. There was no movement in the alley below him, and when he switched to overlook the street, there were none there either.
“Should be about fifty, right?” Lee asked.
“Yeah.”
He turned and looked at the kid in the center of the roof, lying on his back and barely there anymore. “Jake needs to get to Smithfield ASAP. We’ll clear the stairwell and do a headcount on the way down, see how many we took down. That’ll give us an idea of how many are left.”
“Okay.” LaRouche looked pained. “We’re not pulling out, are we?”
Lee stared at the den. “No. We need to get in there.” He jogged over to Wilson and tapped him on the shoulder. “Wilson, I need you and your team to come with me.”
Wilson nodded firmly. “Will do, Cap.”
Lee moved back into the stairwell and Jim followed, LaRouche remaining behind with Julia and Jake.
CHAPTER 17: THE DEN
Lee clicked his gunlight on, illuminating the darkness. His knees felt rubbery and fatigued as he made his way down. On Level 5 he found the last infected Jim had claimed to have shot in the head. He and Jim leaned over the body and inspected it. The lifeless eyes stared at them, wide and lemur-like. A jagged groove ran from the top of the infected’s forehead, all the way back to its crown.
“Is that where I shot him?” Jim asked.
Lee nodded. “Sometimes the round skips off the skull. I’ve seen it happen before.”
They continued on down the stairwell and Lee started counting heads. As he went down, the bodies got thicker and he hesitantly stepped between them, certain that at any moment one of them would explode up and latch its filthy jaws into his jugular. On Level 2 the stairwell was so choked with bodies that Lee had to walk over them, their soft flesh and blood squirming under his boots as he put his weight on them. Here, the walls were spackled with red dots and white chunks of brain and bone. Bullet holes marred the wall like a hidden picture could be revealed if all those dots were connected.
At the bottom he stopped and looked around.
“Forty-two,” he said aloud.
They moved to the door, which had closed on its own. Lee pushed it open partially and took a quick sweep outside, finding only three more infected bodies, and no snipers on the rooftops sighting in on him. He stepped out and held the door, motioning Wilson and his three teammates to pass through.
He grabbed Wilson and looked him in the eye. “Be quick, but don’t be stupid.”
Wilson nodded curtly. “We’ll be back in a second.”
Lee and Jim made their way back up the stairs, having to stop on Level 3 to give Jim’s legs a rest. Lee didn’t push it. To be honest, his legs felt fatigued as well.
At the roof top again, he found LaRouche kneeling near Julia and Jake. The sky above them was gray and purple like a contused body. Lee called him over, away from Julia and her patient. The three men huddled together, but their eyes lingered on their wounded comrade. They knelt about fifteen feet away and eventually they dragged their attention back.
“Is he gonna make it?” Jim asked.
LaRouche looked off. “Julia says it’s pretty bad. The artery can be closed to keep him from losing blood pressure, but there are complications that go along with sealing a major blood vessel. It sounds like the bullet might have collapsed his lung, too. She won’t know until they open him up.”
They all knew what that meant.
They’d found a medical professional to replace Doc, but he was a general practitioner, not a surgeon. The equipment was there at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Smithfield, but the experience and the knowledge were not. He did the best he could, but often it was not enough.
“Damn,” LaRouche shook his head.
Lee couldn’t disagree. “Let’s try to stay focused here.” He pointed back towards the stairwell. “I got 45 dead bodies, and we estimated fifty yesterday.”
“We didn’t count to a man,” LaRouche pointed out.
“I know.” Lee sniffed at his nose which was beginning to run in the cold. “So worst case scenario, there are some still inside the den, but I don’t think that’s likely. I’ve never seen the hordes separate into groups. They’re all or nothing.”
LaRouche cleared his throat. “We keep putting these rules on them, Cap. Like they’ve got ROEs, but they don’t. They’re just wild fucking animals. They’re unpredictable. The truth is, we don’t know what those bastards are gonna do next.”
Lee rubbed his forehead. “I’m just judging from past behaviors. Look, I know going in there doesn’t sound very pleasant. But if there’s something we can find out by going in there, I don’t want to pass it by because we were afraid to get our hands dirty.”
LaRouche sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m with you.”
The sound of a diesel engine rumbling below them drew their attention.
Lee stepped to the edge of the roof, first taking a glance at the rooftops around them, and then looking over at the big green vehicle below. Wilson leaned out of the front passenger’s seat and looked up at Lee. He gave the younger man a thumbs up and then turned to the others on the roof with him.
“They’re ready. Let’s get Jake down there.”
LaRouche and Jim each took an arm and Lee took the legs. Julia followed behind, holding the IV above the wounded man. Jake was in and out of consciousness
as they moved him and he made thin and high-pitched mewling sounds at random intervals as he became more wakeful. Then shock would take him over again and his body would sag heavy in his comrade’s arms.
Lee made eye contact with Julia.
He could see the detachment in her eyes. Jake was no longer a friend, he was a patient, and a patient was nothing more than a broken machine that needed to be fixed.
Lee had seen her like this before. There’d been another member of their team, Rob Kiker, a middle-aged guy from Jim’s congregation. A firefighter, with some basic, recreational weapons knowledge. They’d gotten in a scuffle with a pair of unknown scavengers just outside of Camp Ryder, and he’d been stabbed twice in the chest with a pocket knife.
He’d been one of those guys that was everyone’s friend. No one had a bad thing to say about him. And when he was lying on the concrete amongst some overgrown weeds pushing up through the cracks, bleeding out into a growing pool, Julia had been there with this same blank, emotionless expression on her face. She never said his name once when she was working on him. She kept referring to him as “patient.”
“Patient’s BP is dropping pretty low,” and “I think the patient’s aorta got nicked.”
And in that moment Lee resented her. He resented that she refused to call him Rob, and that she’d never cried a tear for him, and probably would never cry a tear for Jake, and yet she grew sick and pale and she trembled at the thought of the systematic killing of these creatures, the same ones that hunted them, that killed them, that fed on them.
They deserved her emotion, but not Rob? Not Jake?
Lee looked away from her, feeling his expression beginning to reveal his thoughts.
They loaded Jake into the back of the Humvee as quickly and as gently as they could, and Julia climbed in the back with him, the IV pack nearly empty already. Lee shut the back hatch of the vehicle and slapped it twice. Without any further acknowledgement, the Humvee took off, bearing Jake toward Smithfield.
In the settling dust, the three men moved out.
They emerged from the blue shadows between the buildings and discovered that the sun had cauterized the bruised sky and now sat on the horizon, that kind of white-hot that was too bright to look at, but gave off no heat. At the mouth of the alley, Lee stood as point and he looked right and then left, studying the street in each direction. When he felt it was safe, he moved on.
They crossed Wicker Street, and stood at the south side of the intersection, looking across Steel Street at the entrance to the den. It was strange to stand there with the wind blowing at their backs, and bearing with it that silent and empty sound, like a missed note from a woodwind instrument that is held indefinitely. It was the call of vast and lonely places, and it settled into these ghost towns like a thin layer of dust, coating everything. It was not the complete absence of sound, but instead the presence of sounds you are unaccustomed to hearing because they are normally drowned out by the busy noise of human existence.
Here in this abandoned city it was the creaking of the stoplights hanging from their hinges, the skitter of dried leaves and trash along the concrete, the steady trickling noise of water moving beneath them in the sewers. It is these noises that make you so acutely aware that there are no other people around.
“You smell that?” Jim said quietly.
Lee sniffed. It was faint, but it was there.
“Might be some more in there,” Jim observed.
“It’s where they sleep. It’s bound to smell like them.” Lee curled his nose. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
He crossed Steel Street and found himself facing the tan brick wall. Only a few inches of masonry between him and whatever was inside. He found himself pulling away from the wall, as though the building that contained these creatures’ den was itself alive and predatory, its entrance just another hungry mouth waiting to consume them.
A bank of three windows above them, the glass that used to be in their frames now littering the sidewalk under their feet. He listened but did not hear anything coming from inside.
A blue mailbox on the corner.
A NO PARKING sign, bent almost in half.
Two trees, one on each side of the corner.
Lee pushed up to the turn and glanced around. The stench there in the alcove of the building’s entrance was enough to make him curl his nose and take short breaths. “Alright…slow and deliberate. Take your time. Make sure you check everything.”
The front door was open.
Lee faced it straight on and clicked on his gunlight. It gave him a straight view down a hallway with white walls. He approached, angling first to the right, and then to the left of the door to see what was on either side.
Trash.
Empty cans of food.
Dark piles of excrement.
He moved through the door. The hallway extended down about forty feet and terminated in a pair of double doors. Lee could see that the doors were open, but the inside was dark, and the angle of the doors only allowed tiny slivers of his light to punch through. On either side of the hall, there were doors. Two to the right, and two to the left.
“I’ll hold the hall,” Lee whispered. “You two clear the rooms.”
“Moving,” LaRouche acknowledged.
The two men slipped behind Lee and into the first room, moving at a steady pace, smoothly taking the corners of the room and clearing it quickly of threats. It was empty. Just more of the same refuse as in the hallway. While they cleared, Lee remained in the hall, his rifle snug in his shoulder, and he scanned, taking each door, and trying to see further into that big room past the double doors, but failing.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Behind you,” LaRouche touched Lee’s shoulder as he crossed the hall to the next room.
Their flashlights played across the walls in glowing phantasms.
Lee found himself fixated on the room at the end.
With each breath that he took in, smelling dank and ripe with all of the odors of these filthy animals, his grip squeezed tighter on his rifle, his cheek pressed harder against the buttstock, the little red dot of his scope burned hotter in the abysmal darkness at the end of the hall.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Moving.”
Lee stepped closer to the door. It was a deep, black square in the center of his gunlight’s bright halo. Movement inside? Something pale and slick flitted across that tiny shaft of light that the double doors allowed in. A trick of the light, perhaps.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Moving.”
Another few paces forward.
Now Lee faced the door, only about ten feet from it. His angle was still poor to see inside and he considered adjusting, but then again, if he could see them, they could see him.
If there was anything there at all.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“All clear, Cap.”
“There’s something in that room straight ahead. I think I saw it move.” He didn’t take his eyes off the door as he spoke. “You still got your frags in your vest, LaRouche?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re gonna frag and clear. Two frags—one from me, one from you. Jim, you’re gonna pull hard cover on that door until we slip those frags in, then hug the wall so you don’t get hit with shrapnel.”
“Okay,” Jim’s voice was tight.
“Go ahead and cover us.” Lee waited until he could see the ring of light created by Jim’s gunlight, squared up on the door. Then he lowered his rifle and plucked a fragmentation grenade from a pouch on his vest and moved closer to the door, hunching down as he went. LaRouche moved alongside him. Lee took the right-hand side of the door, and LaRouche took the left.
The base of the doorway was cluttered not only with trash, but with rotting, discarded carcasses that appeared mostly consumed. Cats, dogs, rats, a rib cage from something larger that Lee couldn’t identi
fy.
From inside, something muttered and drew a harsh breath.
Lee looked up at LaRouche. In the illumination of Jim’s gunlight, half of LaRouche’s face was plunged into deep shadow and he looked otherworldly. They both held up the green spheres in their hands and pulled the soft metal pins. Lee held up one finger, then two, then three, and then the two men leaned forward and chucked the fragmentation grenades into the room.
There was a hiss of alarm.
The sound of both heavy objects striking the floor, the spoons flying off and clattering across the floor.
Lee turned away from the doorway and pushed himself up against the wall, one ear shoved tight against his shoulder, the other plugged with the fingers of his left hand, while his right took the grip of his rifle and prepared to start firing.
It seemed to take forever for the grenades to go off.
In Lee’s mind, he was sure that before they could go off, the infected would exit the room and tear them to pieces.
He knelt there, huddled against the wall and looked down between his legs. A cat smiled up at him with one cloudy eye, its skin drawn back and displaying its full set of teeth. Such a small thing, with so many sharp teeth. What was mankind’s obsession with domesticating predatory creatures?
He felt the shockwaves punch him through the wall, one after the other, hammering his chest and jarring him to the bone. A billow of smoke loomed in the entrance, both doors blown open wide. He could hear a sound like hail on a tin roof, but it was debris and dust and chunks of plaster skittering across the tile floors of the hallway.
Lee hauled himself up and stabbed the button of his gunlight.
When the light came on, the cloud of dust and smoke rolled over them, and it was like high-beams in a thick fog, blinding them. He turned in the general direction of where he thought the door was and began moving forward. Through the smoke he could see the glowing cone of LaRouche’s gunlight, moving swiftly through the open doors.
LaRouche was yelling, “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”
Old habits…
Lee cleared the doorframe and the room began to materialize in the smoke, as though it was being born of the smoke itself and the particles floating through the air were converging in the room to form the long conference table that had been shoved to one side, the office chairs piled atop it.