by D. J. Molles
Angela nodded. “Yeah. He started heaving and hopped down out of the truck bed. He wandered off into the grass over there.” She pointed to the passenger side of the vehicle.
The poor dog was as dehydrated as the rest of them. Got the dry heaves and was trying to find a puddle of water to get something to drink. Lee grabbed another bottle of water and walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. He didn’t want to whistle or yell to Tango for fear of drawing unwanted attention, so he clicked his tongue and called the dog’s name in a normal conversational voice.
After a moment of silence, he could hear rustling in the brush at the end of the parking lot. Paranoia grabbed him and he moved to draw his pistol, but then he saw Tango’s long, wolflike face poking through the tall weeds. The dog wasn’t moving at his usual breakneck speed. He simply walked along, his tail at half-mast and his head lower to the ground. What little resources they’d had, Lee had given to the humans in the group and he felt a pang of guilt for letting Tango’s condition worsen.
Lee bent down to one knee and opened one of the bottles of water. “Come here, boy.”
The dog walked to his master, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. The corners of his mouth were strung with that frothy yellow substance that dogs sometimes vomit up. Lee poured water into his cupped hand and offered it to the dog. Tango went straight to Lee and without hesitation planted his muzzle in Lee’s hand, lapping up the water. In about two gulps, the water was gone. Lee repeated the process a few more times but didn’t want to give Tango too much at one time, as he would likely not hold it down.
Tango kept panting, but at least held his head up.
Lee capped what was left of the dog’s water and wiped the slick saliva from his hands. Tango followed him back to the truck and after a moment of staring up at the truck bed like it was an insurmountable obstacle, he jumped in with Jack.
Jack didn’t look much better than the dog, though he leaned against the back glass with his eyes closed and a faint smile on his face. The sun was warming the sky and Lee felt for the first time that the air did not feel as dense or humid as the previous few days, and the sky seemed free of the usual summer haze.
Lee didn’t interrupt Jack from his reverie. The man had a few miserable days left. He should enjoy the small satisfaction from the sun on his face and a little water in his belly. Lee got into the driver’s seat and cranked the truck up again. They pulled out from the back of the convenience store’s parking lot and got back onto the road. Inside the vehicle, the mood was lighter than before. A brief moment of levity while Sam and Abby found a reason to giggle at something for the first time in days, possibly weeks.
He wondered how long it would last.
CHAPTER 17
Timber Creek
Lee drove another half mile before Angela directed him—somewhat unsurely—to take a left onto a two-lane highway that ran east to west, with downtown Angier a few miles to the north. Lee found himself reaching to turn on the blinker and nearly laughed at himself. Perhaps if the circumstances were different it would have been funnier.
He drove with the window down and his arm hanging out. The air smelled like summer, and not at all like the end of the world. The sunlight flashed in and out of the trees as they drove by. Lee felt that if he could just close his eyes for a brief moment, he would wake up, driving down a country road with a beer in his hand and Deana in the passenger seat next to him.
It was then that Jack began screaming.
Lee’s first instinct was to accelerate, rather than stop. He looked in the rearview mirror and couldn’t see Jack. In the span of a half second, Lee was certain that Jack had turned and was flying into a blind rage. Lee would have to gun him down. And then Jack’s hand pounded the back glass and he began screaming Lee’s name.
This time Lee slammed on the brakes. There was a tumble from the bed and the yelling choked off. “Stay in the car!” he said over his shoulder. Lee threw the vehicle in park and was out of the car before it even skidded to a stop.
He drew his pistol and pointed it at the bed, not sure what he would find. There was a flash of bloody arms and legs and Jack threw himself over the side of the bed and landed on his face in the middle of the road.
Following the man overboard, Tango thrust his head over the side and began snapping his jaws. Lee thought it looked like he was barking, but there was no sound. It was like the dog was trying to bite Jack but couldn’t reach. Bloody slobber hung in frothy ropes from the dog’s mouth, dangling back and forth and sticking to the side of the truck.
The dog’s eyes were wild and strange.
“Fuck!” Jack stood up unsteadily and backed away from the truck. He had bleeding marks all over his arms and face. “Lee… dog… bite.… Dog bite! Dog bite!”
Lee lowered his pistol and looked Jack in the face. Behind the blood seeping from several bite marks, Lee could see the man’s eyes were confused and frustrated.
Jack must have seen the look of pity on Lee’s face and grabbed his hair with both hands, like he was trying to pull it out, his face twisting into a grimace. “Fuckdammit… words are hard.”
Confusion. Loss of speech.
Tango let out a hacking bark. Lee turned to his dog and pointed a stern finger at him. “Tango, leave it!” The dog looked at Jack, then looked at Lee. He sat down, but his eyes were fixed on Lee. The aggressive snapping jaws turned into that stupid smile, with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. His eyes regarded Lee with what looked like relief, as though to say, Hey, I know you. You’re a friend.
Lee turned back to Jack. “Slow down and breathe. Think about your words.”
“Ah… umm…” Jack kept rubbing his hands over his head, raking his hair back with his fingers. “I… I…”
Lee heard the door of the vehicle open. He turned and watched Angela step out and close the door behind her. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
Jack sat down in a squat, head in his hands. Blood was dripping from his arms onto the ground. Lee and Angela kept their distance from him. “Something is wrong…” Jack spoke haltingly. “With Tango. He… he… snapping his jaws… and bites me. Keeps biting me.”
This time Angela spoke quietly to Lee. “Maybe Tango can smell Jack turning.”
Lee looked over at his longtime companion, who now paced restlessly in the back of the pickup bed. Growling low, head hanging, tail slightly tucked. Uncharacteristically fearful. Undeniably aggressive. It would be more pleasant for Lee to believe that Tango simply smelled the infection in Jack and attacked on instinct. But Lee wasn’t living in a pleasant reality.
He didn’t answer Angela as he walked over to the side of the bed.
Tango kept pacing, growling, grumbling to himself. Then he saw Lee and his low-slung tail rose just a bit and wagged two or three times.
“Hey, buddy.” Lee reached into his right cargo pocket and pulled out that old tattered rope toy. The dog wagged his tail and stared at the toy. In his simple canine mind, it was just time for fun, fun, fun.
Inside the Petersons’, Tango had defended them by attacking the infected man with the shovel. Probably taken a good chunk out of him when he did it. Lee wanted to blame himself for it, but he knew it would have been impossible to keep Tango from coming in contact with the infected. His only hope had been that interspecies infection was impossible.
Lee walked to the end of the truck and lowered the tailgate. He moved slowly, like his legs were encased in concrete. He felt flushed. Light-headed. He held the rope toy out and Tango made his way to the end of the tailgate, then jumped off. He didn’t look as nimble as he had the day before. He looked like a different dog.
Angela spoke softly. “Lee, we can just leave him here.”
Lee matched her low volume, but his tone left no room for argument. “I asked you to wait in the truck.”
There was a moment of silence. She tried again. “I understand that—”
Lee turned to face her. “I will do what
I think is best. Now get in the fucking truck.” Lee turned to Jack. “You too. Both of you get in the truck. Leave me be for one goddamned minute.”
Lee turned back to Tango and gave him the rope toy. The dog chewed on it. Carefree. Ignorant. Beautiful. Behind him, Lee heard the truck door open and the scuffle of Jack climbing back into the truck bed. Then the door closed and there was just the quiet rumble of the truck’s engine at idle.
Lee bent down and took the rope. “Tango, give.” The dog obediently released it. Lee walked toward the grassy field to the side of the road, still holding the rope toy.
Tango followed, tail wagging. The dog’s stride was stiff, but he didn’t seem to notice. Lee kept walking, feeling Tango moving diligently next to him, occasionally his flank brushing Lee’s leg as they walked, as it had so many times before.
Lee wasn’t sure how far he walked, and he didn’t care. He knew that everyone in the truck could still see him, but he wanted to be away from them. This was not their business. This was just Lee and his dog, alone again. Like they started. Simpler.
The man stopped, and his dog stopped with him. Lee looked down at Tango. “You want the toy, buddy?”
Tango wagged his tail. Lee tossed the rope, but not too far. When he would take Tango out into the backyard, when things were normal, he would throw tennis balls as far as he possibly could. Tango was a fast dog and would sometimes catch them before they could bounce twice. This time he hobbled after the rope, his mind excited but his body uncooperative. Lee had always admired the dog’s muscular grace. Now he didn’t think he could throw the rope again. He didn’t think he could watch the dog hobble anymore, ignorant of his own sickness.
Tango returned at a walk, the rope hanging in his mouth.
“You tired already?” He tried to sound cheerful for Tango, but his voice was weak. Lee knelt down to Tango and put his left arm around the dog’s chest, felt the dog’s ribs and wished the last couple days of Tango’s life hadn’t been so rough on him. He scratched the dog’s neck, leaned in close, and whispered, because he couldn’t find his voice. “You’re a good dog, Tango. I can’t give it to you, but you deserved a full belly and a soft blanket.”
Tango wasn’t listening. He just kept chewing the rope. Fun, fun, fun.
Still holding the dog, Lee pulled out his pistol, put the muzzle against the dog’s head, just behind the ear, and killed him with a single shot.
* * *
They drove on in silence.
Lee’s mind pulled him a dozen different directions. His emotional response to losing Tango had dismayed him. Not because he did not have affection for the animal, but because as a handler of a working dog, he knew his dog was there to do a job, not to be a pet, and he understood the danger inherent in that. Lee had not wanted to become emotionally attached to Tango, but it was unavoidable, especially given the long weeks he’d spent in The Hole.
It also struck another sensitive chord inside of him. Everything he knew was being stripped away in one way or another. His house, his dog, everyone he knew—everything was gone. It had all been replaced with this new cold reality that offered no comfort, no familiarity. It was as though he had been borne through a raging furnace and come out the other side with every old thing burned away. In the span of days, he found himself living a completely different life.
Tango had been the last tie to his old life. The last comfortable, familiar thing he knew. Besides the shell-shocked state Lee found his mind in, there were other concerns.
Such as Jack. It had been obvious to everyone—including Jack—that he was becoming symptomatic. The confused speech, the pale skin, the constant sweating. In Lee’s briefing, what felt like months ago in the comfort of his bunker, Colonel Reid had established a seventy-two-hour asymptomatic time period. However, that may have been old data based on a less intrusive means of infection than being bitten on the arm.
With no other data available on the plague or how easily it was transmitted, Lee felt increasingly uncomfortable with carting the infected man around. Lee knew he couldn’t catch the plague simply by being around Jack, in the same way he knew it took a detonator to set off a nuclear device. But it didn’t make it any more comfortable to sit next to one.
And whatever the science might be behind Jack’s contagion, the fact of the matter was that he wouldn’t be around much longer. He was a time bomb, and Lee didn’t know how long the fuse was. He knew he didn’t want to abandon him and he didn’t want to kill him, especially when Jack could help them get to a safe place. But the longer they waited, the more of a risk Jack became. It was coming to the point where Lee continuously checked the rearview to make sure Jack wasn’t frothing at the mouth and trying to beat his way through the back glass to attack them.
From a strictly utilitarian perspective, the only reason Jack wasn’t dead was because he could still help in a fight. But how much trust could there be in a combat situation when Lee knew the guy who was watching his back could turn into an instinctive killer at the drop of a hat?
Then there was the mission, which was essentially on hold until Lee could get Angela, Abby, and Sam to a safe location. His mission required that he travel among groups of survivors and continue to make contacts and connections and build bridges between communities. He couldn’t do this with parties of survivors slowing him down.
Was his mission even feasible?
In that moment it felt ridiculous, outlandish, and impossible. He’d spent two days on the surface of this shitty place and had come into contact with only four survivors, one of which was about to die. And that wasn’t counting Sam’s father. To pay for this he’d lost his house, his supplies, his dog, and a generous helping of his positive attitude. What he was left with was a pistol with four rounds left in it, an empty rifle, a symptomatic infected man, and three survivors who were now only slightly further away from terminal dehydration. Not to mention that edible food appeared to be nonexistent. Did he really think he was going to find entire groups of survivors in this wasteland?
“That’s it! Right there!”
Lee snapped out of it and saw Angela leaning between the two front seats, pointing out the windshield at the entrance to what looked like it had once been a well-to-do condominium complex to the left of the road. The sign, made of brick and plaster and missing a few vowels, announced it as T MBER CRE K.
Lee slowed down and turned left into the entrance, then rolled to a stop.
The inside of the pickup truck was awkwardly silent, as though no one could think of the right thing to say. In the rearview mirror, Jack stood up and looked over the cab. Lee didn’t know whether he felt like laughing or crying. He wasn’t quite sure what they’d expected to find, but he knew what they’d hoped to find, and this was not it.
The gates to Timber Creek looked like someone had driven a Mack truck through them. One of them lay mangled but still clinging to the lever that once had opened and closed it. The other one was gone completely. The complex itself looked like someone had burned half of it to the ground and looted the other half. Burned-out husks of cars still sat in their designated parking spaces. Trash and broken glass were littered in every corner. The buildings stood like skulls in a catacomb, their broken windows as black as eye sockets, and just as dead and empty.
To keep himself from laughing or crying, Lee took a slow, deep breath and tried to let it out quietly, though he was sure everyone in the vehicle knew what mood he was in. “Well…” He looked around at the mess in front of him. “I guess we can look around.”
And that’s when the truck slammed into them from behind.
CHAPTER 18
The Patrol
Lee heard the impact like an explosion and felt himself spinning, like he was strapped into a carnival ride. Jack tumbled over the top of the cab and dented the hood on his way to the ground. When they stopped spinning, they were turned nearly 180 degrees counterclockwise and were now facing their attacker. Lee got the impression of a freight tractor with no trailer attached, it
s twin exhaust pipes poking up like devil’s horns. He didn’t wait to see what came out of the truck.
Lee had just enough of an angle to stick his pistol out the driver’s side window and still draw a good sight picture on the truck facing them. He pointed for the driver’s seat and cranked off his last four rounds. The dark windshield turned into white spiderwebs. Jack staggered to his feet and fired his last two rounds of buckshot, peppering the driver’s side door.
As Lee pulled his gun back into his pickup truck and tossed it in the passenger seat, he watched as the driver’s side door of the truck opened and a bloody body was shoved out like a bag of garbage. The truck immediately started rolling toward them.
“Jack! Get in!” Lee screamed over the roar of the diesel engine bearing down.
Jack stood in the open, still holding his empty shotgun. He never looked back. The truck hit him so hard, it looked like the old Marine simply disappeared.
Lee tore his eyes off the scene and slammed his pickup’s accelerator, steering hard right, trying to maneuver for the wreckage of Timber Creek. With not a bullet among the four of them, Lee felt their only chance of survival was to evade and outflank their attackers inside the condominium complex.
Their vehicle almost made the turn, but the pickup’s powerful engine and heavy torque spun the wheels for just a bit too long and, as Lee wrangled the pickup toward the damaged gate, the freight truck T-boned them on Lee’s side.
Glass shattered inward like a sharp horizontal rain. The kids were screaming like air raid sirens. Lee heard a popping sound that he thought was the engine malfunctioning and then quickly recognized it as small arms fire. He mashed the accelerator again, but the pickup wouldn’t budge. The two vehicles were hooked together.
Lee ducked as two rounds punched clean through the side of his door and missed his midsection by inches. “Get out!” he yelled at Angela and the kids, who were already opening the rear passenger side door. He launched himself over the center console, leaving his MK23 and his M4 but grabbing his go-to-hell pack as he shoved open the front passenger side door and leaped out, face-first.