“Who were they?” Timothy asked.
“No one, just random thugs,” Oliver declared while inspecting the BMW. He ensured that the two inside were dead, grabbed their two Ruger Super Redhawk.44 Magnums and the AK-47, and found some extra bullets in the back.
“What a bunch of pussies,” Oliver sniggered as he looked over their weapons.
“Can we just go now?” Timothy insisted, jumping into the back seat of the Black Widow and pulling his knees up without bothering with the seat belt.
“Not yet. It’s time for a shooting lesson.” Oliver urged him out while holding the door open for Timothy. He then handed him his Glock.
“Now see if you can shoot the BMW’s tire.” He smiled hard and stood back. Calloway joined him, and together they watched Timothy aim and fire. His first three rounds missed. One got the hubcap, which made an irksome sound that hurt Calloway’s teeth. Timothy finally managed to hit the tire with help from Oliver, who showed him exactly how to aim. Oliver had him shoot out the remaining three tires, and then some trees. After two hours had passed, they were ready to leave.
“You’ll get some more lessons later. You’ve done very well,” Oliver said, patting Timothy on the back.
“How far do you think it is from here to Montpelier?
“It depends on the roads. If it stays this good, I’d say a couple hours.”
“Let’s hope so. I really don’t know what to expect when we reach Bellamy’s house. I’ve no idea what I, or rather what we, will do if he’s not there.”
“It’s a possibility. What are his survival skills like?”
“Better than mine. He’s ex-NYPD bomb squad and a former Navy Seal.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about him then. He’d be very adaptable in this new world.”
“I’m more worried about where to look for him. For all I know, he’s passed us somewhere along the way and is headed to my house.”
“Listen, I know it’s easy for me to sit here and tell you not to worry. But seriously, dude, you’re gonna give yourself a heart attack. Let’s just wait and see, and go from there, okay?”
Calloway wanted to argue his point. At the same time, he didn’t want to piss off the very person who’d rescued him and his son.
“Not that you need any assistance, but I think I should help, you know, with the shooting.”
“Nothing stopping that corporate head of yours, you’re welcome to get your hands dirty. Where did you put your gun?”
“It was tucked in my back pocket, so suffice to say I no longer have it. Truthfully, I don’t remember the last time I saw it.”
“No worries, I have plenty. You should have told me, and I’d have given you one right away.”
“I didn’t want to admit that I’d lost my only gun.”
Oliver gave Calloway a warm smile.
***
The time had gone fast, Calloway thought as he looked ahead and recognized the outskirts of Montpelier.
“Let’s go see if your brother is home,” Oliver said.
CHAPTER 8
THE DISCOVERY
Ethan took it upon himself to start a crusade, which was saving those who wanted to be saved. After scouring through the remaining hospital wards searching for survivors, he found only eighteen. The rest had run, leaving their loved ones infected with SD-16 to die alone. He told those who would listen to him the latest developments and theories. Those that didn’t believe him, he didn’t care to save.
Ethan then travelled throughout the ground floor, securing their way out by eliminating any of the bodies that hadn’t turned to bone. He stabbed them in the head using a medieval-style knife that was twenty inches long, double-edged, and tapered to a needle point. Not wanting to risk having to fight off hordes of human zombies, he convinced himself that he was doing the right thing. Some would probably label him smart, while others might very well label him totally insane.
He spent three days roaming the corridors, checking every nook and cranny, leaving nothing unturned. He went floor-to-floor and room-to-room where the abandoned SD-16 patients were left to die alone and put the dagger through their skulls. When he was sure he’d eliminated every threat, he returned to room 506.
“Where have you been?” Kara asked, feeling somewhat awkward.
“Doing what needed to be done.” Ethan’s face remained cold, his eyes like crystals changing from dark blue to light blue in the room’s light.
“What does that mean?” Shadow almost barked at him. Then she reined herself in and lowered her tone.
“I made sure that when it’s time for us to leave here, we can do just that. The details are irrelevant.”
Julie cast him a pained look. She didn’t add to the conversation. Her glare was persecution enough, thought Ethan. In his mind, right at that moment, he believed they’d all thank him if their theories were correct. And if they weren’t correct, they’d still thank him. It was how Ethan’s brain justified his actions, over and over until he was drowning in his own thoughts.
Ethan had good reasons and when the time came, he would divulge those to them. With four days to go, he patiently waited it out. He spent most of his time sitting in the middle of the room in the lotus position, giving fleeting thoughts to the Tyringham town and wondering if people had left when he didn’t return. Did they stay and finish with the building plans?
All of it was consuming him like a giant invisible monster. He was eager to get back there, yet grounded here with an insatiable need to find out if his own wife would reanimate. He’d soon know, as he’d omitted room 503 from his purge.
***
“It’s time, isn’t it?” Julie asked, directly facing Ethan.
“Yes.” He said as he fiddled with his Colt 1911. Julie put her hand on his shoulder, and he didn’t shrug it away this time. Instead, he gave her hand a squeeze and then took a deep breath.
“You ready?” Ethan said to Julie. She nodded, and they left the room. Shadow left Kara and Ronan behind, and followed Julie out the door.
The three of them hesitated outside room 503, just long enough to hear some rustlings behind the door. Ethan pursed his lips with a heavy sigh. He knew what those sounds meant. Each of them looked at the other in disbelief, all waiting for Ethan to open the door.
Ethan’s ears began to play tricks on him, and for a moment he almost thought he could hear his wife calling out for him. It frightened him so much that he withdrew his hand from the door and took two steps back, almost tripping over Shadow.
“What’s the matter, Grizzly Adams?”
“Shadow, the name’s Ethan and nothing’s wrong. I just thought I heard something elsewhere.”
“Wait,” Julie said, “Before we go in, what’s the plan?”
“Ain’t it obvious?” Shadow asked sassily.
Julie waited for Ethan to answer her. She stood directly in front of him with her back against the door, blocking him.
“Well?”
Ethan looked at Julie, perplexed. He raised his Colt and waved it in front of her face. “That’s the plan,” he snapped.
Ethan was agitated by the notion that his wife was no longer human. His anxiety level had his heart beating so hard, he felt it pulsing in his throat. Everything about this turned his stomach into a raging cesspool of acid. The last thing on earth he ever wanted to do was kill his own wife. It pained him so much, he didn’t recognize himself anymore.
Julie watched Ethan’s face twitch and then harden, seeing for the first time just how difficult this was for him. She stepped aside, allowing him to open the door. Immediately their hands went to their noses.
Shuffling around the middle of the room was his wife, ambling like a lost child. A lone tear ran from Ethan’s eye as he took aim and shot her squarely in the head. He rushed forward to catch her before she fell. He lowered her down gently as her murky blood ran all over him.
Ethan cried as if his heart was being wrenched out of him. Emotional pain flowed out of his every pore. From his mouth ca
me a drool of saliva that caused Shadow to buck forward and back with gross written all over her features. Julie tried her best to console Ethan, but found it difficult, knowing her only daughter would also be terminated.
The realization that she wasn’t going to stay dead didn’t alter how she felt. She, too, began to sob. But each of them knew their tears wouldn’t bring back the dead, and killing them now was the kindest thing they could do. Mercy killing is what Shadow told herself as she snatched the dagger from Ethan’s sheath and forced it into Spike’s head.
“Shadow, why did you do that?” Ethan asked through heavy sobs.
“I just couldn’t let you do it, Ethan. I had to be the one.” She bolted out the door with her hands cupped over her face.
Julie picked up the dagger, wiped Spike’s blood on the sheets, and stood over Jessica’s brother Robert. With shaking hands, she hovered at the top of his skull, just watching him. The light cascaded through the window, reflecting a golden white glow that kissed the blade. A vision of him rising out of the bed with arms reaching for her catapulted her sideways, and at that moment, she dropped the dagger. Then she dropped to the floor in a heap, like a pile of unfolded laundry.
Ethan held Rebecca’s decaying hand, as he dissolved into the kind of despair that can take one’s mind prisoner. For an hour both Julie and Ethan stayed on the floor, neither of them speaking. Julie untangled her legs and stood up, then picked the dagger up off the floor. With the bloodstained blade in her hands, she faced her biggest fear. Tiffany looks like a sleeping princess, she thought. How could she turn into one of those things? Her eyes fell on Rebecca’s decaying, limp body. As she turned away, her gaze fell on Summa and her heart plunged into the pit of her stomach.
“Oh my God, Ethan, how do we do this?”
When Ethan didn’t answer, she got onto the floor and pushed his face up to meet hers. “Ethan, please.”
A few moments passed, and he finally opened his mouth. But nothing came out other than a hoarse, rough hiss. Julie waited. He spoke again, but this time an incoherent babble came out, so she again waited.
“I’ll do it,” he finally said more clearly.
“No, that’s not what I’m asking of you.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I can’t do it on my own. I need you to be okay. To be okay!”
Ethan looked at Julie fixedly. She looked back. “I will be,” he finally said.
“I hope so, Ethan, because we need you. I need you. I can’t do this on my own. That’s my little girl.” Julie’s tears became unstoppable.
“I’ve told myself we’re doing them a favor, you know, like we’re preventing them from suffering anymore by switching off the life support. Funny thing is, it’s helping me to cope, and I’m the one with the anxiety,” she said while sniffing, sounding like a sick child full of the worst winter flu.
Ethan thought about it for a long while. He dropped Rebecca’s hand and pushed his body back until it met with the base of Spike’s bed. The look on his face was complex. It was as if he’d split down the middle. One side looked alive somehow, and the other side looked dead. Julie didn’t know what to make of it, so again she found herself waiting.
“I don’t believe it,” Ethan said, looking straight at Julie.
“Don’t believe what?”
“This, any of it. This has to be a bad dream, right?” He spoke in a small voice, with a horrid look shadowing his face.
“I didn’t in the beginning, either… But now – I mean, it’s in our faces. It’s what it has become. To survive, we must rely on each other. We’re all we have,” Julie said as she wiped the wetness from her cheeks.
Ethan gazed around the room. His eyes fell on each patient for a moment, then rested back on his beloved Rebecca.
Julie watched Ethan take the dagger and end Summa’s reanimation process. Then, turning to Robert, he plunged the blade into his skull, freeing him from the transformation. Ethan paused with the dagger at his side. Julie took the dagger from Ethan with shaky, pale hands. She then stood at her daughter’s bedside.
Her body began to tremble violently. A cloudburst of tears fell onto Tiffany’s outstretched arm, landing on the many sores that ravaged her comatose body. Julie hesitated before raising the dagger above Tiffany’s head. She could hear Calloway screaming at her to stop, and she could hear her own inner voice telling her to stop.
Ignoring her thoughts, she breathlessly plunged the blade into Tiffany’s skull, forcing it into her cranium. Julie’s voice erupted into a loud humming sound in an attempt to drown out the crunching of bone along with the sloshing of blood. Her stomach flipped as her body heated up from the inside out, cooking her like a microwave. She sank to her knees, howling, as her mind assaulted her with rapid thoughts. Ethan had been holding her without her even being aware of his touch. Together they fell into each other’s arms, absorbing one another’s tears.
“Hey, are you two coming? We want to go to that town now,” Shadow said as she hovered in the doorway. Julie slowly let go of Ethan. Both of them had red, puffy eyes.
“Here, take this.” Shadow handed them both some paper towels.
“We aren’t murderers. We all had to do what we had to. Mercy killing is what it is. It’s time to save ourselves, so let’s go,” Shadow insisted as she urged them out the door.
At some point, Ethan started to lift himself out of the pit of his personal purgatory. He wasn’t sure if it was the smell around him, or the sights, that brought him back to the present as they descended the stairwell. He would fight, to keep his sanity, to stay alive, to keep them all alive, and to keep his promise to Calloway.
Once everyone was in the bus, Ethan excused himself and went back inside the hospital. He went to several areas collecting medical equipment, then took it back to the bus, only to go back for more stuff. When he finished, the bus looked like a landfill of blankets, mattresses, sheets, and medical supplies. Every space of the bus was packed like a cream-filled donut.
“Jesus, Ethan, where are you going now?” Shadow asked.
“I’ll explain when I get back.” He sped off, returning a short while later.
“Sorry, I had to leave a note for the others to let them know where we are.”
“What others?” Kara said.
“Well, Calloway and Jessica’s mother, if they ever return.” Ethan said as he started the bus and headed straight for the town. He focused on the road, deep in thought with the raw possibility of not knowing if the people had stayed or moved away.
“What happened to the other people in the hospital, the others like us?” Shadow asked.
“I asked them to join us, even told them what happens after four months of incubation. Most of them didn’t believe me, and the ones that did said they’d go home. Like us, they needed visual proof. I was unsuccessful at persuading them to join us.” Ethan sighed and drove with more determination than ever.
When they arrived at Tyringham, Ethan was ecstatic to see how much had been done in the time he’d been gone. People were coming up to him and hugging him as if he was a long lost relative. It gave Kara, Shadow, and Julie a sense of hope. They were welcomed into the town and shown houses they could choose to live in. A large woman named Shelly did most of the talking. The others who had gathered around began to disperse, to carry on fortifying the town. Shelly started introducing the remaining townspeople to them as they bumped into some on the way to the houses.
“Everyone seems so nice and helpful,” Kara said as she continued to turn her head while walking, smiling with each new encounter and growing more excited when she saw some children of the same age as her son Ronan.
Ethan had gone off to do an inspection to see what had been done, what needed to be done, and to see who had survived. He was told three had been killed, one seriously injured, and the rest had made it through. The town had taken shape with only a few areas left to reinforce, but it wouldn’t take as long as Ethan had first thought. He retired to his house
exhausted, deflated, and emotionally drained. He slept surprisingly well that night, ten hours undisturbed, and woke to the smell of coffee.
CHAPTER 9
REUNION AND LOSS
It was just a little after midnight when Bellamy pulled in, tired and dirty, covered in blood, and wearing the scars of battle. He got out of the car and headed straight for his room, eager to see Lily and the girls. He scurried down the path, his shoes slapping against the dirt road. He pushed open the door, and walked into the entranceway of the hotel, then rushed through the bar area and up the stairs. The metal of the doorknob was cool against the palm of his hand. He twisted it excitedly. Forgetting that it was late, he entered and switched on the lights, and stood staring awestruck at the empty room.
He raced off to the bedroom, expecting to see them all huddled in bed, and was shocked to see it empty. Unsure of what to think and not wanting to get into a panic, he quickly set out to find Nakos.
Bellamy practically dove out the door, bumping into Nakos in the hallway.
“Where are Lily and the girls?”
“When did you get back?”
“A few moments ago, dude. Where is she?”
“I’m so glad you’re back. There’s been an accident. You’d best follow me.” Nakos wasn’t sure how to tell him that he was the one responsible.
“Jesus, did a dog attack her, or the girls, or what?”
Nakos stopped and turned around to face Bellamy. Looking at him, he felt sick. The waves of nausea rose higher, filling his mouth with a godawful foul taste. He grabbed Bellamy’s arms, more so out of fear that he’d deck him at the news than fear of falling. He held on tightly.
“What the fuck is going on, Nakos?”
“Okay, listen. The girls are fine. They’ve been staying with me and at Anya’s. Lily was attacked, but that is not why she’s still in the sickbay.” He paused and watched as Bellamy grew more anxious.
“She was shot in the hip, by me. I was shooting at the dog that was biting her, and a bullet went through the dog and into Lily’s hip.” Nakos paused again, watching Bellamy deeply. Seeing the seething anger rising, he carried on before Bellamy could react.
Hounded | Book 3 | Hounded 3 Page 6