Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  Darius gestured the rest of them toward the door. “Joe, you stand watch here while Xolani works. The rest of you are with me. We’re camping here tonight, so let’s secure the location. Toby, Titus, take the other scanner. Scout the area, make sure nothing’s on our doorstep. Go.”

  By the time all the possible entrances were secured, except the one Gina and Kaleo would use to return, Xolani had cut open Rhys’s shirt and inserted an airway guard to keep his tongue down and his throat from swelling shut before she could intubate him if it became necessary. As Darius watched, she injected another dose of antibiotics.

  “We’re lucky so far.” She tugged on her braid, her face drawn and sweat darkening the neck and back of her Army-green T-shirt. There was no ventilation in the clinic, and the day hadn’t cooled yet.

  Darius covered Rhys’s blazing brow with his hand, surprised to realize the dark blond hair that had been so brutally hacked off when they’d first found Rhys had grown long enough to flop into his eyes and stick to his temples.

  Xolani pushed his hand aside to check Rhys’s temperature herself. “I’d be a lot happier if we had ice or cold packs to bring down his fever.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “No reaction to the antibiotics yet. Heart rate and resps are holding steady. No wheezing or stridor. No signs of angioedema in the face or eyes. His skin is so flushed I can’t tell if he’s breaking out in hives yet in this light, but this is about the best we can hope for right now. If he doesn’t react within the next few hours, we should be in the clear, at least as far as allergies are concerned.”

  “What about the infection?”

  She flicked a worried glance at him. “Hope like hell it’s not a resistant strain of bacteria requiring designer antibiotics that I don’t have access to.”

  “Anyone ever told you you’re a great comfort?”

  Xolani snorted, then sobered. “Good job shutting Gina down earlier.”

  Darius shook his head. “Yeah, well, she had a point. We may have condemned those hostages to death to save him.”

  “Houtman condemned those hostages to death when he threw his blood on them.” Xolani put her stethoscope in her ears again and listened to Rhys’s chest. “No matter when we get to them, it’s been long enough that unless he started fucking all of them on day one, multiple times a day, they’re gonna die. With three hostages, even as a Jug, I’m not sure one man would be able to provide prophylactic immunity to all of them.”

  Laying her fingers against the fluttering pulse in Rhys’s neck, she sighed. “Let’s face it, Darius. This isn’t a rescue op. It never has been. If we’d gotten to the hostages within a day or two, maybe, but now? Our objective here is to end Houtman before he endangers anyone else.”

  “You gonna tell him that?” Darius looked down at Rhys, whose unconscious face contorted into a grimace as Xolani palpated around the bite wound at his waist. Pus oozed from the seams of the inflamed flesh.

  “He’s going to need to get used to the realities of the world we’re living in sooner or later.” She bowed her head for a moment, then met Darius’s eyes frankly, her gaze probing. “Which in this life means inevitably losing the people you care about.”

  Darius’s jaw flexed at the unspoken warning. “How soon until he’ll be able to travel?”

  “Depends on how widespread the infection has become, how well he responds to the antibiotics. Could be days. Up to a week, perhaps.”

  “And exposing him to Alpha?”

  She shook her head subtly. “There wasn’t much point to it by now anyway. Just a precautionary measure. We’ll just have to hope the exposure he’s had already has done the job.”

  Rhys’s fever worsened overnight. The clinic had no proper gurneys, so Darius and Xolani slept in chairs in the examination room with him, trying to keep him from falling off the table when he thrashed in his delirium. Xolani diluted the antibiotics in a saline IV, delivering them in a continuous feed.

  As Xolani had pointed out, they didn’t have any ice. If they could have managed to find a working power cell, they might have been able to rig up some sort of cooling unit, but they didn’t even have that. When Rhys’s temperature continued to soar, Darius broke operational security protocols to carry him outside and lay him on a blanket in the cool night air of the high desert with wet rags on his pulse points. Titus manned the infrared scanner, and Darius kept his weapon at the ready as Xolani worked to keep Rhys comfortable and medicated.

  Rhys’s hoarse cries sometimes split the quiet sounds of the night, calling out for his sister, for his mother, for Gabriel.

  For Darius.

  “The Rot . . . Is it the Rot? It’s okay. Do you have to kill me now? It’s okay, Darius. You can kill me.”

  Darius was grateful for the dark that cloaked his wince and his shudder, and the scalding sting in his eyes. If Xolani sniffled suspiciously, he pretended not to notice.

  When the sun came up, they took Rhys to a mountain-fed stream that ran through town, using towels soaked in the frigid water to try to bring his temperature down. Kaleo and Gina retrieved a gurney they had found in an old ambulance the night before, and they strapped Rhys to it so his thrashing wouldn’t pitch him to the ground. The rest of the squad spent the day patrolling the town to make sure there wouldn’t be any more revenant attacks.

  By evening, Rhys’s temperature had come down some, and they moved him back to the clinic. Darius woke from a fitful sleep by Rhys’s side to hear Gina and Toby, standing the second watch shift together, having a murmured conversation.

  “Which one of us is going to remind Darius we still have an op to conduct, here?” Gina asked as he listened in. “We’ve lost two days now.”

  “You wanna be the one to do it?” Toby asked sharply. “You heard him: we don’t leave a man behind, and I’d think twice before suggesting Cooper’s not one of our men again. He’s marched with us for over a month now, and frankly, he’s kept up pretty damn well, considering the circumstances. Doesn’t matter if he’s not a Jug. He’s still our brother.”

  “More like our mascot.” Toby’s silence spoke volumes, and after a moment Gina sighed. “Fine. Sorry. That was out of line. But let’s be real: we don’t even know if this kid’s going to live yet, and I don’t mean this infection. We still don’t know if he’s going to go revenant on us or if he’s got Beta. This could all be for nothing. How much do we want to invest in this kid, timewise and emotionally? I mean, how do you think Joe’s going to take it if we have to put a bullet in his head?”

  “It’ll bring up some memories for him, sure, but he probably won’t take it nearly as hard as Darius. But yeah, it’ll be bad. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth the effort.” Toby’s voice softened. “None of us have much worth holding on to, which makes us hold on even tighter to what we can. Joe knows that better than any of us.”

  Darius glanced over to see Xolani’s eyes slit open on the other side of Rhys. He ignored the gentle sympathy in her gaze.

  “We’ll stay through tomorrow night, then we march.” Something in his chest felt hollow as he made the decision. Xolani nodded, though she looked no happier about it than Darius felt. “If he’s well enough to be moved, we can carry him for a day or two until he’s able to walk on his own. Push him in a wheelchair or something. We can still keep up a good pace that way, maybe faster than if he were on his feet. If he can’t be moved, we’ll split up. Three will stay here with him, the rest will go after Houtman. I’ll announce the assignments tomorrow. Whoever remains here will have to lay away provisions for the whole winter. We might not get back to base before the weather turns. We may even end up wintering separately if the party going after Houtman can’t make it back here in time.”

  “No.” They heard a dry whisper from the gurney. Xolani sprang to her feet, checking Rhys’s temperature as he blinked to try to focus his bleary eyes on them. “I need to go.”

  “Well, you’re not going anywhere tonight, so lie still.” Xolani peeled up his bandage to ch
eck the wound at his side.

  “Darius, please!” Rhys rasped. “I have to!”

  “Hush, boy.” Relief and dismay battled for dominance as Darius tipped a canteen up for Rhys to wet his parched mouth. “We’ll talk about all that in the morning. Your best chance of being on your feet in time to march is to rest now as much as you can.”

  “Probably good advice for all of us.” Xolani listened to Rhys’s heart and lungs and nodded slowly. “Inflammation around the wound is going down, no sign of tissue necrosis. I think you just may be in the clear, kid.”

  Rhys smiled weakly, trying to dodge as she ruffled his sweaty hair. “Don’t call me ‘kid.’”

  Xolani chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck as if it was stiff. “I’m gonna go bunk down with my man, get some shut-eye. If I hear you awake before third watch is over, Darius, I’ll be strapping you to that gurney.”

  Joe’s bass murmur came from the doorway. “Take my blanket. I’ll keep an eye on him. I’m on third watch, anyway.”

  Darius wanted to argue, but another glance at Xolani convinced him to live to fight another day. Thanking Joe as he took the chair Xolani had abandoned, Darius settled onto Joe’s bedroll in the waiting room outside.

  Despite the weariness of two days with little sleep, Darius found himself staring at the block of lantern light that filled the door to the exam room where Rhys lay. He heard deep, rhythmic breaths as Rhys dozed, but then they would catch abruptly each time he startled awake.

  Just before dawn, he heard Rhys murmur, “Joe, how many days has it been?”

  “This is the second night,” Joe answered in a low rumble. “Try to get some more sleep.”

  “I’ve missed two days?” Rhys’s voice was sharp with distress.

  “Probably a few more yet to come. Don’t worry about that right now. It’s not likely to make any difference.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence fell, and the sky continued to lighten into the dingy gray of predawn. Darius wondered if Rhys had fallen asleep until he spoke again.

  “Joe? What happened to your husband?”

  “I waited too long to go look for him,” Joe said. “When we got back to the States, they put us in quarantine at the CDC in Atlanta. Then the civvies outside NORAD got restless over the conditions there, so the military brought us in to quell the uprising. They didn’t think that maybe none of us were all that fond of the military government, what with all they’d done to us, which meant they got a bit of a surprise. After we helped the civilians overthrow them, I went back to Milwaukee. Chip was tough. Resourceful. I knew he’d find a way to make it through. And he had. Problem was, a few weeks before I got there, another couple survivors joined his party, a mother and her little girl, and they didn’t quarantine them. By the time I found him, he hadn’t become catatonic yet, but he was starting to show patches of the Rot.”

  Darius heard Rhys swallow. He wished he were far enough away that he didn’t have to listen to this. He’d heard it before, or at least a bare-bones version of it, but he’d never heard it while facing the prospect of having to do what Joe had done.

  “What did you do?” Rhys asked.

  “You know what I did.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What, you want details?” Joe’s voice grew a little harsher, and Darius heard him shift in his seat. “I made love to him, and then I killed him, just like he asked me to.”

  Something beneath Darius’s rib cage tightened into a painful knot.

  “That’s not what I meant, either,” Rhys whispered. “After that.”

  There was a slight rustle, which Darius imagined was Joe shrugging. “Went back to Delta Company. They were all I had left. My only family. Spent a lot of time drunk or high. Eventually it stopped hurting enough that when Toby came on to me, I didn’t run away. We’ve been together five years now, I guess.”

  “Do you regret going back to Milwaukee to find him?” Another rustle and a soft grunt of discomfort, as if Rhys had tried to roll onto his side.

  Joe hesitated. “No. Sick as it sounds, in some ways, that moment when I killed him was beautiful. He died looking at someone he loved, and his death came from someone who loved him, not some fucking virus or monster. And I never loved him more than I did in that moment. If I hadn’t been there, he would have been alone with a gun in his mouth or begging a stranger to do it. Or he would have just rotted away. No.” Joe’s deep voice roughened. “I don’t regret it. But I wouldn’t recommend it, either.”

  A long silence, then: “Oh.”

  “What’s on your mind, little brother?”

  Rhys snorted. “Guess that’s better than ‘kid.’” He sighed. “Nothing. I just needed to know. I think I’ll sleep now.”

  Darius’s chest hurt, an empty ache that seemed to constrict his heart and lungs every time he tried to imagine doing for Rhys what Joe had done for his husband. It kept him lying there, wakeful, until his people began to stir for the day.

  Rhys continued to rest and improve throughout the next day, dutifully drinking the broth Xolani made for him and napping whenever he could. Titus, Jamie, and Joe left together in the morning, saying they’d found some potentially useful supplies on the outskirts of the small desert town, and Darius and Xolani spent the day monitoring Rhys’s improvement and debating whether or not they’d be able to move him tomorrow.

  In the afternoon, Darius found himself by Rhys’s bedside alone. He kept playing Rhys’s conversation with Joe over in his head, wondering how he could possibly reassure the boy and ease his increasing fixation on his own eventual death without offering him hope that might turn out to be false.

  The problem was, Darius had already succumbed to that hope. He knew it was a bad idea, knew he needed to be practical, and yet he was patently unwilling to entertain the notion that Rhys was going to die after all they had done.

  Rhys’s eyes were still shadowed with pain and weariness but much better than they had been two days before. “Please don’t leave me behind.”

  “We’ll come back for you, I promise.”

  “I need to be there with you.”

  “Rhys . . .” Darius gripped the side rail of the gurney. “Even if we give Houtman what he wants and bring you along, you realize there’s a chance your friend might not make it. He could already be infected with Beta. Xolani isn’t sure Houtman could . . . inoculate . . . all his hostages.”

  “I know.” Rhys nodded soberly. “I still need to go.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s been over five weeks, Darius, and I’m still not a Jug. Jacob is, and he had a lot fewer chances to be infected than I did.”

  “Doesn’t mean it couldn’t still happen.”

  Rhys lifted his head, his eyes searching and his voice uncertain. “If I have to die, will you be the one to do it? Please?”

  It took every ounce of discipline Darius possessed not to wince, not to shiver with the chill that washed through him, not to thread his fingers through Rhys’s and make him promises he might not be able to keep. Instead, he gritted his teeth and nodded. “Yes. If you want me to.”

  “Good.” Rhys gave a satisfied sigh. “It should be you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I matter to you.”

  Darius made himself smile, though Rhys’s words felt like a knife in his chest. “Yeah, you do, boy. Far as most of us are concerned, this shitty life’s been a bit better since you came along.”

  Rhys answered the smile with one of his own. “That’s why I have to go with you.” He fell silent and then asked, even more hesitantly, “And what if I live?”

  In some ways, that question was even worse. “Well, I guess you’ll have at least a few more options, won’t you? You’re the only one who can say what you want to do once you have a choice.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever had a choice before, not in my whole life.” Rhys gave him a wry smile. “At least, not one that wasn’t ‘do this or die.’”

  “You’ll get used t
o it.” Darius managed a grin. “You have to stay with us, but beyond that, well, it won’t be like it is now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll be able to choose. What you do. Who you do it with.”

  “What if I don’t want to choose?” Rhys eyes softened, looking lost and unsure. “What if I want things to stay just the way they are?”

  Jesus, but that sweet innocence of Rhys’s brought out the best and worst in him. Darius caught himself thinking how he would have answered that question if Rhys were well. He’d have staked his claim again, like he’d done so many times before, and made it clear just what the situation would be if Rhys didn’t choose.

  That wasn’t good. He couldn’t count on Rhys sticking with him once he had other options. Or if he did, it might only be because freedom was too scary after being trapped for so long. The best thing Darius could do for Rhys would be to nudge him toward independence, assure him that if he thought he wanted things to remain the same, it was only because he was afraid of the unknown.

  Rhys couldn’t know his own mind, and if Darius were a more noble man, he wouldn’t take advantage of that fact.

  But he wasn’t a more noble man, and if Rhys wanted things to remain the way they were until everything was settled, Darius wouldn’t argue.

  “Well, you don’t have to decide just now.”

  The burring of a small engine outside the clinic rescued Darius from the battle between what he should do and what he wanted. He rose, releasing Rhys’s hand. “Stay here, boy.”

  On the street, Jamie sat astride a two-seated four-wheel ATV, while Titus and Joe jogged to catch up with him, beaming like smug parents on Christmas morning.

  “What the fuck is that?” Darius folded his arms across his chest.

  “Show a little more respect, Big D.” Jamie rubbed the rusty handlebars of the antique affectionately. “I spent all damn morning finding hoses and wires for this thing that hadn’t been chewed apart by rats, refitting her for a power cell, and cleaning and oiling her.”