by D. J. Molles
Harper gave him a questioning look. “You seem excited.”
Jacob shook his head. “Not excited. Fascinated, though. Truly, truly fascinated. But very scared. This isn’t a laboratory anymore. This isn’t studying something that’s safely contained. This is studying something that is right here, right now, wiping us out.” He took a deep breath. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
Harper put a hand on the scientist’s shoulder. “Don’t get bogged down just yet. We still have to catch one of them.”
Jacob stalked over to a corner of the small cube that he called his home and snatched up a metal pole with a thin cable coming out of the top, a makeshift dog catcher’s pole. “Same as you catch any other animal that wants to bite you. I’d suggest the use of a heavy tranquilizer, but I don’t want to take any chances with the fetus.”
Harper eyed the pole. “Where’d you come up with this thing?”
“I made it.” Jacob set it beside his pack. “I took to heart what Captain Harden said to me the other day, when I was about to throw myself out of the gates for a chance to snare one of them. Admittedly, that was not smart. He was right, I was wrong. So I made the catch pole, and if I’m not mistaken, there are many unused rooms at Johnston Memorial Hospital that might serve perfectly for housing a test subject.”
“I believe there are.”
Jacob nodded, very serious. “Then I believe I’m in.”
***
They met back in Broadway just before sundown. Lee, Jim, and LaRouche had already made it back and downloaded their gear, and by the time Wilson’s Humvee pulled past the roadblock at the eastern end of Broadway, Jim had already started a fire and pulled out food.
At the tell-tale rumble of the Humvee, Lee and his two companions looked up and watched the vehicle roll down the strip towards them. The last they’d heard from Wilson was that they were firing up the generators and blowing the dust off the equipment they needed to operate on Jake. No prognosis outside of Doctor Hamilton’s general assessment that things didn’t look good.
They waited tensely as the vehicle stopped and the doors opened. Wilson stepped out, but his expression remained blank. The other members of his team followed, and they looked mostly exhausted. They hoisted their packs onto their shoulders and began meandering their way towards the glow of the fire like moths drawn to the light.
Lee and Jim offered quiet encouragement as they dropped their packs and took their places around the fire. Lee looked back to the vehicle and watched as Julia slid out last. Her clothes were soaked in blood and the pale skin of her arms were smeared with it. Like a fierce blush, it and reddened her neck and face. Strands of her hair were stained from the base of her scalp all the way back, clumped together from constantly brushing her hair away with bloody hands.
It appeared that she made a conscious effort to avoid eye-contact with Lee, looking everywhere else as she slowly approached. Wilson stepped to her side and put a gentle hand on her shoulder and said something that Lee couldn’t make out. Whatever he said, Julia offered a faltering smile and a nod.
Lee looked down into the flames. “What’s the news?”
Julia answered, her voice stone-cold. “Doc Hamilton is operating now. He said he’d hit us on the radio as soon as he had news.”
Lee glanced up and saw her eyelids flutter.
“He’s gotta go in,” she said in a flat monotone. “Repair the artery. Close up the chest wound. Hope the blood pressure doesn’t drop too low.”
“Julia did phenomenal,” Wilson said to Lee. “She was on point the whole way there. If Jake makes it, he owes it to her.”
Julia shot Wilson a withering look. “Let’s not play pretend, okay?” She looked at Lee for the first time, angry, though he wasn’t sure if it was directed at him, or some nebulous power responsible for what had happened. “Jake’s not gonna make it. He was shot through the chest with a high-powered rifle round, and it took almost 45 minutes for him to get anything but the most basic battlefield care. He already lost too much blood by the time we got him into surgery, and Doc Hamilton poking around in there is only going to make him bleed more. They can pump him full of IV fluid to keep his BP up, but at some point in time it’s going to dilute the blood too much, and they don’t have anything to replace it with. And then Jake’s going to die.”
The group looked at her, awkward and silent. They waited for her to continue, but she had said her mind. After a stretch, Lee stepped around Wilson and put a hand on her arm, firm but gentle. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You still need to clean up.” Lee pulled slightly, and she allowed herself to be removed from the circle. “Jim, why don’t you get some food going?”
Jim nodded. “You got it.”
Lee grabbed his pack as he walked with Julia towards an area where Kip Greene had told them there was a rain basin. The last little bit of crimson light coming from the sunset lit up Julia’s face and blended all of the gore together so that Lee could not tell where it stopped and her skin began. She stared straight ahead, her face immovable.
“What’s the problem, Captain?” There was bite in her voice.
Lee chose not to take the bait. She was looking for a conflict, looking for some way to exercise those emotions she kept under lock and key, but fighting with him wasn’t going to solve anything. “No problem, Julia. You said your peace, now it’s time to get cleaned up. You know…wash your hands for supper and all that?”
“And I need an escort to do that?” She jerked her arm away from him.
Lee looked behind him, feeling his blood rise and wondering who might be watching them. “Cool it,” he said in a warning tone.
“Why you gotta walk with me, huh?” Julia shook her head and turned the corner of a single-story brick building where a rain catch sat, filled almost to overflowing. “Make sure that crazy Julia doesn’t go off the fucking deep end? Screw you. I can handle myself just fine.”
Lee clenched his hands at his sides. “Clearly.”
“Yeah.” She looked up at him, fire in her eyes. “Clearly. Now why don’t you go play army man with your buddies out there and leave me the fuck alone.”
Lee took two quick steps and his hand shot out, almost involuntarily, but he stopped it before it touched her. He extended his finger so it pointed right into her face. “Is that the best you can fucking do?” he spat. “Is that the best you can come up with?”
Julia swatted his hand out of her face. “Leave me the hell alone!”
Lee faced her, putting his hands down, but not leaving. “No. You give me a fucking answer. Is that the best you can do?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Rob, and I’m talking about Jake.” He leaned forward so their faces were separated only by a few inches. He could smell the blood on her, and the sweaty scent of her. His words came out of him, strained and hot and barely controlled. “You never even reacted to Rob being killed. You can cry a goddamned river for the infected we shoot, but when it comes to your own people, your own friends, you shut down and strike out at the people that are here for you.”
She looked like she was about to hit him.
Lee didn’t care. “So is that the best you can come up with? One of our own is about to die, and the most emotion you can wring out of yourself is to be a fucking bitch to your friends? To the people that care for you? Is that the best we can expect?”
Her voice trembled. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me, Julia! Tell me that I’m wrong!”
She hit him in the chest with both palms, rocking him back on his heels. “This coming from you? What about you, Lee? I’ve never seen you shed a fucking tear!”
“If I thought twice about all the people that have died because of me, I’d never be able to make a decision again.” He threw his arms out. “What’s your excuse?”
“Don’t you tell me what I feel.” He
r whole body shook with rage. “I think about Rob every damn day. And now I’m gonna think about Jake. And the two of them are going to be stuck in my head forever and I’m never going to be able to get them out, along with all the other people I’ve lost.” She took a step forward. “What is it that you want to see? You want to see me cry? Is it not good enough for you until I come and dry my tears on your shoulder like a good little girl? Fuck you!”
She spoke with such force that Lee found himself searching for a response, but coming up empty-handed.
Julia raised her head. “You wanna see tears, you’re gonna wait awhile, because all I am is pissed.” Her voice dropped in volume. “I’m bitter, and I’m angry, and I can feel it just sucking the life out of me. Because every day I wake up and I’m confused.” The stiff aggression of her body suddenly slacked, like high tension wires snapping. He shoulders sagged, her head lolled, and her arms flopped to her sides. “I look around and I wonder where my house went, where my family went and I have to remind myself every day that all of that is over. I just keep thinking that I’m not supposed to be here. That maybe tonight is the night that I go to sleep and I wake up and things are back to normal.” She shook her head. “But it’s never going back. I’m stuck here. I’m trapped.”
Lee stared at her for a long moment. The resentment, the frustration, and the fear all came out of him in a breath and he leaned forward onto the rain catch, hanging his head just above the water, smelling that clean smell of rain, seeing the shimmering image of his silhouette against the darkening sky.
She waited for a long time before speaking again. “You think about them, too.”
He felt the side of the rain catch shift as she put her weight on it.
She continued: “Because if you weren’t thinking about them, you wouldn’t be so worried about whether I was thinking about them.”
A grim smile touched Lee’s lips.
“You’re just as fucked up as the rest of us,” she said. “You just do a better job hiding it.”
Lee looked at her. She had her back turned to the rain catch, leaning on it with one elbow and looking down at the ground, her face set in an expression that had no name. Not quite resignation. Not quite determination. More like the resignation to be determined. It was something that spoke of the drive to gut it out when crushing defeat was all you had to look forward to.
It was the look of a human being who no longer saw, nor cared to see, anything of beauty, but instead focused solely on the concept of survival. Same as a wild animal will not appreciate the splendor of the jungle it lives in, but instead sees only the danger that lurks inside.
This was not a moment of absolution or enlightenment. It was a hard realization that while the infected seemed to be moving forward, the rest of mankind seemed headed in the opposite direction. The two were still worlds apart, but they seemed bound and determined to meet in some wretched middle, where fighting for food and water and procreating the next generation was an all-consuming task. Simple propagation of the species, and nothing more.
“Friend of yours?”
Lee saw her looking out towards the street. He followed her gaze and found the stray dog that they had rescued—or had rescued them, depending on how you looked at it—standing at the corner of the building and regarding the two of them cautiously.
Lee stood up. “Yeah. We found him in Sanford today. Still pretty skittish, but he’s even more afraid of infected than he is of us. And he can sniff ‘em out way before we can.”
Julia raised an eyebrow. “An infected-sniffing dog.”
Lee bent down and held out his hand. The dog approached, still timid, but it gave a demure wag of its tail and stretched itself out to lick Lee’s fingers tentatively. “Good boy.” Lee turned his wrist in an attempt to scratch the dog behind the ears but it backed away quickly. Lee stood straight again. “He’s still a little shy.”
“What’s his name?”
Lee wiped the dog slobber off on his pants. “I’m gonna call him Deuce.”
Julia held out a hand. “Hey, Deuce.”
The dog regarded her with a tilt of his head, but didn’t come any closer.
“He’s still warming up to us,” Lee said quietly. He looked back at Julia. “Listen, I didn’t mean...”
Julia shook her head. “You’re right, though. I can’t take it out on you and the others.”
Lee nodded once, but didn’t respond. He put his hands in his pockets and decided to leave the whole conversation where it was: a mutual understanding that they were both dealing with these things in their own way, and they both needed their space to mourn in the way they saw fit. He turned back to the street and put one foot in front of the other. Behind him, he could hear Julia gathering a bucket of water to clean herself off with.
Deuce backed away from him as he crossed the street, but paralleled him, keeping about ten feet of distance between them at all times. He was interested in whatever food Lee might drop, but still not willing to roll over and show his belly just yet.
LaRouche met him before he reached the fire. “You guys okay?”
“Fine.” Lee waved it off. When they reached the fire, Lee hitched his foot up onto an overturned bucket and leaned on his knee, looking at his group gathered around the fire. “Listen…” he cleared his throat. “You all did great today. Every one of you. It’s just…sometimes it doesn’t matter.”
They all nodded and looked down into the fire.
At the edge of the amber light, Deuce grumbled and trotted around them.
Wilson raised his head. “Cap…I don’t know if you thought about it already, but we were talking about what happened earlier. The shooter…”
Lee spoke without emotion: “He was aiming for me.”
CHAPTER 20: HARD TRUTHS
Wilson looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“The only reason I didn’t get shot was because I bent down when the shooter fired. Otherwise, the round would have gone through both of us.”
“How do you know the shooter wasn’t just aiming for Jake?”
“I don’t.” Lee shrugged. “But that infected was put there to slow us down, to get us to bunch up around the door. And yet the shooter only fires one shot. Whoever it was, they weren’t just trying to ambush us, or they would have hosed us all down. They were trying to take out a specific target. And I have a hard time believing that someone was gunning for Jake.”
LaRouche scrunched his brow. “Well, why would anyone try to kill you?”
Lee shook his head. “I really don’t know.”
LaRouche shifted his weight, appearing uncomfortable. “Well…should you continue going on operations with us?”
Lee scratched the back of his head. “I’m not going to run and hide, if that’s what you mean. Honestly, I don’t really give a shit about this guy’s motivations at this point in time. I’m not sending you all out to do my dirty work for me and staying back behind the lines.”
The electronic sound of a voice being transmitted over the radio trickled from the Humvee a few yards from their fire, and cut off any further debate. Lee looked over at the Humvee, along with everyone else. The words were inaudible, but they all knew what they were. And yet they hoped.
Jim was the first to stand up. “I’ll get it.”
The group watched silently as Jim stepped over to the Humvee and sat inside, retrieving the handset and speaking in hushed tones. Julia appeared, staring with her cold blue eyes at Jim as he talked inside the vehicle. She was wiping her hands off with a small red cloth, and then dabbed her face with it as she approached the fire. Her eyes retreated from Jim and grew hypnotized with the writhing flames.
The embers crackled and popped in the absence of their voices.
The clack of the handset being set back into its cradle.
The Humvee’s door groaned, its hinges needing lubrication.
Jim stood with his hands folded in front of him.
They all knew without him speaking a word, so
he said nothing at all. Instead, he walked back to his spot where he had arranged a large pot next to the fire. It trembled and stood ready to boil over. Inside was rice and split peas and he stirred them with a metal spoon that clanked on the sides of the pot. They all watched in the quiet of the deepening night as he took a small spoonful and tested whether the food was done. His eyes glistened and shown red, but he did not make a sound.
Seeming satisfied with the texture of the food, he removed the pot from the fire and set to opening some canned meat. As he worked, his tears traced down his nose and he swiped at them with his sleeve.
They ate in silence, unable or unwilling to put into words yet another loss.
***
In the morning Harper woke to what promised to be a dismal day. The clouds that stretched unending across the sky were a uniform, primer gray, and they spit out rain slowly and steadily, an excruciating pace common only to November and the beginning of December. Summer rainstorms were a panicked rush, as though the clouds were trying to empty themselves as fast as possible in order to cool the parched earth beneath it. But in these late months, the sky leaked like a loose-fitted pipe, as though the clouds were sullen and depressed and could not be bothered to work harder.
Harper stared out from behind the door of his shanty and cursed the sky. He could feel the ache in his joints. The hard times and the grief were like bitterness in his bones. He felt old. Out of shape.
Used up.
Tired.
He sighed and closed his door.
“Too much work to be done for a pity party,” he mumbled to himself as he lit his camp stove—not the one he used to burn deer guts. He scrounged up a little treat that he hoped would brighten his morning. It was a pack of instant oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon flavored. He’d traded up three packs of AA-batteries for a box with five packs left in it and he saved them for when he needed a pick-me-up.
Diet food is what he would have called it four months ago.
Now it was an indulgence.