by D. J. Molles
As though he had not heard her until this last pained request, his eyes focused just slightly and moved down to meet her tearful gaze. His head came up off the ground with what appeared to be every ounce of effort he had within his body and he stared at her with shocking intensity for someone so close to death. “Take it,” he said. “Take it. You have to.”
And then his eyes became unfocused again and he collapsed backwards into unconsciousness, his face shedding its color like a tree shedding the bright autumn leaves to welcome the cold barrenness of winter. The hitching of his chest became more rapid, and then it slowed, and the last sound that came from him was a slow and beleaguered groan, like the sound of a steel structure giving way under an immense pressure.
Angela squeezed her eyes shut, felt the tears trickling down her face.
She whirled on Jerry. “You fucking murdered him!”
Jerry shouted angrily back at her: “He tried to grab my gun! What was I supposed to do?”
“You’re a fucking liar!” She pointed her finger in a broad sweeping gesture. “And you’re all fucking cowards for letting him do it! Murderers and cowards!”
Jerry’s sneer returned to his face like stagnant water freezing over. “Tie her up and find someplace to put her. Someplace where she won’t be heard.”
Moving slowly, still in shock, two men took Angela by the arms and placed them behind her back. One held them clasped there while the other began to restrain her with thin cordage that bit painfully into her skin.
The anger and disbelief were suddenly vaporized in an explosion of thoughts for her daughter, for Abby, and for Sam. “Jerry! I’ve got children! You can’t do this!”
“I’ll make sure they’re taken care of,” he said quietly. “Perhaps when you decide to calm down, you can see them again.”
Angela began to pull against her bindings but they’d already been tied too tight. “I’ve got to see my daughter! You can’t do this! Let me see my daughter! Let me see Abby!”
Jerry gave her one last look of disdain, strangely tainted with remorse, and then shook his head. “Get her out of my office.”
Angela screamed bloody murder and thrashed wildly as they carried her out, until they managed to gag her and safely lock her in the very same shipping container that Tomlin had occupied, only a day before.
When the people of Camp Ryder saw Angela being dragged past them, kicking and screaming, they averted their eyes or simply shook their heads because they knew that her loyalties were to Bus and Captain Harden, and most of them that remained supported Jerry.
They looked on, scared and unsure, and some of them thought it was shameful to see such a nice lady treated like that, but none of them lifted a finger to do anything about it, because they were sure that Jerry had his reasons for doing what he did.
This would be the new Camp Ryder, and they trusted in Jerry, that he had made the right decision, no matter what it was. Now they had hope for their future. Now, things would change for the better. No more of Captain Harden’s warmongering. No more sending their people out to die for reasons they couldn’t understand. No more of Bus wasting their precious resources on refugees that had no right to them.
Yes, everything would be better, now that Jerry had taken control.
***
LaRouche stood with his feet on the double-yellow line running down the center of the highway. He faced south, his head tilted up as though scanning the skies for evil portents of things to come. A bloody sun splattered the western sky with red, a bleeding heart viewed through an open wound. The shadow of the day covered them with a cadaverous chill, and LaRouche zipped up the collar of the micro fleece sweater he wore under his jacket to cover his exposed neck.
His eyes remained affixed to some elevated object in front of him.
Jim’s voice was shaky beside him. “Should we…take them down?”
LaRouche blinked, without words.
They stood on a section of highway just outside of Fremont. To the south, a narrow but well-traveled dirt road led away from the main highway, and presumably to the camp that the man with the convoy of two pickup trucks had escaped from.
Beginning there at the dirt road, and extending east along the highway at intervals of perhaps 300 feet, were wooden utility poles sunk into the dirt along the shoulder. Upon these poles were hung the naked bodies of ten men, some of them young, some of them older. They were hung upon crossbeams of two-by-fours, spiked through their wrists and feet, and the crossbeams lashed to the poles with rope and wire.
It was exactly as the man had described.
The aspect of their deaths that the man had been unable to describe was the disembowelment. The executors had not simply hung the victims and left them to die, but had slit them across the bottom of their midsections, just below their navels. Their carcasses hung hollow on the crosses, their insides piled below them at the base of the pole, tethered to them only by the pale linkage of unraveled intestine.
Hung around the neck of each body were placards on which a single word had been printed: UNREPENTANT.
LaRouche put a fist to his mouth and swallowed hard. The air was filled with stenches unimaginable, and he could feel the acid of his stomach eking up his throat, a prodding nausea insistent that he purge himself. His gaze traveled down the road.
On the side of the road, perhaps 25 yards from LaRouche, lay the bodies of three infected that had been tearing at the bodies like carrion eaters before the convoy had arrived and gunned them down. The fourth of their small pack had fled into the woods, wounded in the leg.
Finally, LaRouche fought down the urge to vomit enough to speak. “No. Leave them.” He turned and faced Jim, whose eyes were filled with tears, and who looked like he was struggling to contain his own stomach. “We don’t have time to bury them all before dark. And they might serve to warn away anyone traveling east.”
Jim nodded, trembled. “Except us.”
LaRouche didn’t respond.
Wilson leaned out of the lead Humvee, just a few yards behind them. “Sarge, I can’t get anyone from Camp Ryder to respond.”
LaRouche looked at the dark-skinned man and considered this for a moment. “I’m sure they’re just missing the transmission. They’re probably…” He swallowed again. “…eating dinner.”
“Do you want me to keep trying?” Wilson asked, his voice sounding vacant.
“We’ll try again in a little while.”
LaRouche turned back towards the south, but he could not look at the crucified bodies again.
Jim spoke. “What do we do now?”
A cold wind blew from the north and buffeted against their backs. It scrubbed away the foul stenches like white-wash clearing a canvas to a blank slate. But it was only so that new and unknown horrors could be painted on it. It froze them to their cores and its soft voice whispered of an end to the things they knew and a beginning of long, dark months ahead, of changes that would not only reshape them as people, but would also reshape the world around them.
“We keep going.” LaRouche said quietly. “We complete the mission. Whatever it takes.”
CHAPTER 32: WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU
Images of flashing smoke and burning sparks, conforming to roiling towers of flame that reached for him, seared his eyes and puckered his flesh, and melted into vast fields of lava flow that distorted his vision with heat like the surface of the sun. He felt the right side of his head melting, hot and tingling at first, and then cold and clammy.
A beast appeared before him, its breath hot and rank and it gnashed its teeth at him and began to eat the melted portion of his head. He did not react to this because it did not make sense, and it could only be a part of some strange death-dream.
Behind the beast that fed on him he could see random crisscrossing patterns of light and dark, slate gray and deep navy blue. The dark shapes clawed at the corners of his vision, the gray took the center and gave way to the flailing talons of these dark creatures. In the immensity of the gray
stood a lonesome spark that burned, burned, and throbbed.
Slowly, dreamily, he reached up and pushed the beast away from him, because he could not bear the sensation of it eating his melted head any longer…
Like a series of firecrackers going off along a lit fuse, the truth began to light up his mind, beginning with the feeling of fur.
Fur.
Dog’s fur.
Not a beast.
Deuce.
He wasn’t gnashing at him, he was barking.
Lee touched the side of his head that he thought had melted and felt it was intact, save for a raised, fleshy groove that stung at the prodding of his fingertips and caused him to jerk his hand back. Deuce continued to wail and bark and whine at him, and this was not truly registering with him just yet. He was dead. He was dead.
He had been shot in the head.
This wasn’t—couldn’t—be real.
He forced his fingers once again to the ragged wound that ran along his scalp from the hairline of his right temple to the back of his head, behind his ear. The pain cleared his mind, but only slightly. It burned badly now, the only sensation of coolness coming from the evaporation of Deuce’s saliva as he dutifully licked his master’s wound.
Sometimes the bullet skips off the skull, Lee heard himself say, as though it was some fleeting memory of a past life.
The barking…
The barking…
The barking…meant there were infected near.
Lee blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head, trying to organize a million thoughts that screamed at him for his attention. No, he could not give them his attention. He could not think about Eddie Ramirez, or betrayal, or Abe Darabie, or—Shit! Where’s my GPS?
In his pack.
In the Humvee that was long gone.
Sonofabitch…
But he was here, he was now, and that GPS was somewhere else. He had a different set of problems that he needed to solve first. There was the present to worry about. And presently, there were infected nearby.
Infected.
Infected, Lee forced himself to focus.
Compartmentalize…
Deuce had turned himself so that his stiff and fearful tail was nearly touching Lee, and he faced into the woods, barking savagely.
Weapon?
Of course not. He leaned upwards, felt dizzy for a moment, saw sparkles at the edge of his vision and a massive, nearly debilitating headache throbbed through his skull. Perhaps a fracture. Perhaps a concussion. Perhaps swelling on the brain that would kill him momentarily anyway.
Can you even be conscious and have brain swelling?
He didn’t think so.
He felt around on the ground, searched it with his eyes, but found nothing but rocks and dirt. Then he felt his vest, still strapped to him. His magazines remained in place, along with his Ka-Bar. Eddie Ramirez must have shot him and just kicked him out of the driver’s seat and into the road. If he had bothered to take the time to search the body, maybe he would have discovered that Lee was not actually dead.
No, I’m fucking alive.
I’m ALIVE!
He felt exultant, but the feeling was quickly clouded over by pain and more confusing thoughts, like the impact of the glancing bullet-strike on his skull had rearranged some wires inside his head and now things were not processing correctly.
Weapon, he repeated in his mind.
The only weapon he had was his Ka-Bar.
He ripped it from its sheath and held it firmly in his right hand.
The dog at his side continued to bark ferociously at the darkening woods. The sun was setting, dusk was taking over. It was cold. Soon it would be dark, and it would be even colder. He had no food, no water, no shelter, and he was unsure how long his body would hold out. He was unsure how much damage the round had done to his head. He knew other soldiers that had caught rounds to the head and survived. Some of them were normal. Others had trouble speaking. Some were paraplegics.
As though testing that last theory, he rolled onto his hands and knees and with some effort pulled one of his feet underneath him. Everything hurt. Excruciatingly.
At least I can move.
I can move, and I have a knife.
He took a deep breath to steady himself.
If you can move, and you have a knife, you can run, and you can fight.
Deuce was backing away from the wood line, nearly in a panic.
They were close now.
It was time to run.
END OF BOOK THREE
Thank you for reading this book.
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Book Four is in progress…
Table of Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgement
CHAPTER 1: KILLBOX
CHAPTER 2: THE HUB
CHAPTER 3: BAD NEWS
CHAPTER 4: GRAY AREAS
CHAPTER 5: DISSENTION
CHAPTER 6: A LONG NIGHT
CHAPTER 7: STRANGERS
CHAPTER 8: A DELICATE MATTER
CHAPTER 9: VOLUNTEERS
CHAPTER 10: A NARROW WINDOW
CHAPTER 11: TROUBLE BREWING
CHAPTER 12: RUMORS
CHAPTER 13: SANFORD
CHAPTER 14: EVOLUTION
CHAPTER 15: DIVERSION
CHAPTER 16: GOING UP
CHAPTER 17: THE DEN
CHAPTER 18: A SIMPLE EQUATION
CHAPTER 19: TALKS
CHAPTER 20: HARD TRUTHS
CHAPTER 21: IN THE WOODS
CHAPTER 22: ODD CARGO
CHAPTER 23: THE PRISONER
CHAPTER 24: OLD FRIENDS…
CHAPTER 25: …AND NEW ENEMIES
CHAPTER 26: NEW REALITIES
CHAPTER 27: TRAITORS
CHAPTER 28: TIPPING POINT
CHAPTER 29: BAD THINGS
CHAPTER 30: THE COUP
CHAPTER 31: JERRY
CHAPTER 32: WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU