But when he’d peeked out his curtain, a sense of foreboding washed over him. The clouds were low. A coil of sickly gray fog had snaked its way into town overnight, clinging to the landscape like a thrush infection. It wasn’t a romantic fog. It was bad fog. Trouble fog. The kind that told you to climb back into bed and try again the next day. Maybe he could spend a little time organizing his field notes or studying the maps. But instead of listening to that voice, however, that little survival instinct working so hard to keep him alive, he’d gone ahead and resumed his patrol after breakfast. Chuck Danley had been itching to get out of Dodge for a bit, and he decided to accompany Adam for the trip.
And now, eight hours later, they were here, at a deserted bar, his gun locked and loaded and aimed at some random survivor whose path they’d crossed, while across the way there, just on the other side of the long oak bar running the length of the place, said survivor was holding a gun to Chuck’s head. One man lay dead on the floor, a victim of friendly fire when Chuck’s captor had inadvertently shot his companion in the back. It was the shootout in St. Louis all over again, and Adam was afraid they would keep doing this over and over, a horror movie stuck on repeat, until they finally finished each other off.
They were about an hour southwest of Evergreen, passing through Duncan, Oklahoma, an old oil town in the southern part of the state. Both men were exhausted after another futile search for Rachel’s camp, and Adam had suggested camping there for the night after rounding up some supplies to take back to Evergreen. Chuck suggested a drink, and Adam had thought it an excellent idea. The bar, called Branson’s, was near the center of town. A few cars were still in the parking lot, but they each sat on four flat tires. After Chuck parked, they took a minute to stretch their tired legs after hours cramped in the car, bouncing through the back roads of Oklahoma.
They stepped inside the chilly bar to a sudden hail of wild gunfire, no warning whatsoever. A scream, presumably from the guy shooting his buddy, and a loud thud. Adam slid into a booth and drew his gun; Chuck dove behind the bar, where he came face to face with his captor. He’d had no time to pull his weapon, which the man had confiscated.
Despite the chill in the bar, sweat was running into Adam’s eyes, and he resisted the urge to wipe his brow, lest it be construed as an offensive maneuver, or worse, give his mirror the opening he needed.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Adam said. “No one has to get hurt.”
“My friend’s dead ‘cause of you!” he barked.
“Let’s take it easy,” Adam said softly, electing not to dispute the matter with the man. His gun had been up for several minutes now, and his shoulder, which had been aching, was starting to burn. “No one else needs to get hurt.”
“Fuck you!”
“I swear I’m not gonna hurt you. Let my friend go, and we walk out of here.”
He had to fix this. He had to. This was just some scared son of a bitch, caught in the world’s biggest shitstorm. He looked lost. This man was no different than him or Chuck. Scared, panicky, the enormity of the disaster weighing heavily with each passing day.
Adam’s right arm began to shake with fatigue, so he carefully cradled it with his left, keeping the gun as level as he could. He hoped the other guy couldn’t see how badly he was trembling.
“What’s your name?”
The man’s face scrunched up in surprise, as though he couldn’t believe the question he was being asked.
“What?”
“Your name. What’s your name?”
“Mark. My name is Mark. No more questions!”
“Mark, I’m Adam.”
“I said no more questions!”
“I didn’t ask any questions. I just told you my name.”
Adam held his breath, hoping he hadn’t said the wrong thing. The moment stretched out like taffy, and he became aware of the sweat greasing his body despite the chill, of the way the gun seemed to be sliding in his hand, as though lightly oiled.
“OK,” Mark said. “OK. But I’ll ask the questions.”
Adam nodded slowly, deliberately.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Just looking for supplies.”
“Where you guys from?”
“We’re living in a town called Evergreen,” he said.
“What’s that? Where is that?”
“A ways up the road,” Adam said. “You’re welcome to come back with us.”
“You serious?”
“I am,” Adam said. “But you’ve got to put down the gun first. You’ve got to trust us.”
The barrel of his gun dipped down.
“But what then?”
“We just get through it,” Adam replied. “We keep getting up every day. There must have been some reason we survived. There must be something to look forward to.”
“What if there isn’t?”
Adam paused, trying to come up with some answer that would sound genuine.
“Because I wouldn’t be trying to talk you out of this otherwise.”
Mark blew out a noisy sigh when he heard this.
“Why are you even doing this?” Adam asked.
“Because as soon as I let him go, you’re going to kill me.”
“No. I promise.”
“Then put your gun down.”
A smile shot across Adam’s face, as though Mark had told him a moderately funny joke.
“Not sure I’m ready to do that yet, Mark.”
“OK, well, I’m not letting him go.”
“Guess we’re going to be here for a while then. I’m gonna take a seat.”
He crossed the room and climbed into a booth, where he could prop the gun on the seatback. Immediately, he felt the sweet relief of an arm unburdened by the weight of the gun. His shoulder popped deliciously.
“You had a family, didn’t you?” Adam said.
Chuck’s eyes went wide with disbelief, but he kept quiet. It was a risk, treading onto Mark’s hallowed ground, but maybe he needed a chance to unload it. Tell someone, not about the plague, but about the family he’d lost.
“My wife, Gloria,” Mark said. He chewed on his lower lip, like he was fighting back tears.
“She was a social worker. Child protective services. Fifteen years she did it. Each kid more screwed up than the next, but she went to it every day like it was the first day on the job. She cussed like a sailor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My son,” Mark said, his face shiny with tears. “That was the worst. He was autistic. He was fifteen years old. His whole life, I never saw him scared of anything. Anything. And when the outbreak got really bad, I couldn’t get him off the computer. Even after his mom died. He was glued to the news coverage. The morning after his mom died, he came down for breakfast, and he looked scared. He’d just started showing symptoms. And that’s when I became really scared, when I thought he looked scared. Now maybe he wasn’t, and I was just imagining it, or maybe I was just going insane, but that’s when I really lost all hope. I didn’t see the look on his face again. He kept getting sicker and sicker and reporting the news to me. He died that night.”
Adam didn’t know what to say.
“So there it is,” Mark said. “The sad story of my wife and son, lying dead in our house.”
Adam sat there, the gun propped on the seatback, his trigger finger sweaty and itchy, not because he wanted to pull the trigger but because it was just itchy.
“Can I ask you a question?” Mark said.
“Sure.”
“Why did this happen?”
“Oh, man, I don’t know.”
“You believe in God?” Mark asked.
Adam thought back to when Sarah had asked him the same question.
“No.”
“I do,” Mark said. “Went to church every Sunday. Every Sunday. He fucked us but good though. Guess we weren’t up to snuff.”
“You think this was God’s judgment?”
“What else could it be?”
“Accident. Terrorism. Who knows?”
“However it happened. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“If you’re right, I doubt He’d want you to kill anyone.”
“And I didn’t want Him to kill my family, but I guess what I wanted didn’t matter.”
“I know, it’s not right.”
“You’d really take me back with you?”
“Of course,” he said. “We need good people. We need to start rebuilding.”
All the fight seemed to leak out of Mark just then, his shoulders sagging, his chin dropping. He gave Chuck a gentle shove, pushing him away, and just like that, it was over. He tossed the gun on the bar and began to sob, his hands covering his face. If Mark felt any twinge of shame in breaking down in front of two men he did not know, he didn’t show it. Adam sighed, the exhale coming shallow and ragged as his heart struggled to slow down. It felt like the standoff had gone on for hours, but Adam suspected they’d only been in the bar for a few minutes.
Adam climbed out of the booth and knelt by the man who’d been shot during the standoff. There was little chance he was still alive, and even if he was, he wouldn’t be for long. The man was lying on his stomach, his arms pinned underneath his body, which was soaked with blood. A quick pulse check told Adam all he needed to know.
Despite the loss of life, Adam felt good. The urge to stay alive deepened with each passing day, and he’d survived yet another test in this world. And this time, it hadn’t been dumb luck or chance or a lucky shot. No, this time, he’d done it on his own. He’d been the one to dial the situation back. He had talked Mark off the ledge. He looked down at the gun in his hand, really felt its weight.
Strange, this post-mortem he was conducting. It reminded him of the process he’d once utilized in his practice, after each delivery, after each c-section. He studied each chart, no matter how routine the case had been, looking for any tidbit, any nugget he could take and apply to the next case. Maybe that’s what had happened here. Maybe he’d been filing things away in this new world until he needed to call on them.
As he stood up, all ready to pat himself on the back, a single gunshot shattered the fragile calm that had descended on the room. Adam froze, his mind blank, as the gun’s report echoed through the bar, hanging over them like a tortured spirit. A soft thud drew Adam’s attention to the bar, where he saw Mark’s body slump across the bar top before sliding down onto the floor. His head hit the floor with a loud crack. Standing above him was Chuck, Mark’s gun in hand.
Adam stared at him, his mouth slightly open, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. Chuck stepped over Mark’s body and emerged from behind the bar.
“Ready?” Chuck asked, wedging the gun into the front waistband of his jeans, as casual as a man returning from a trip to the bathroom.
“What did you do?”
“Man had a gun to my head,” he replied. “By the way, that was a hell of a thing you did, getting him to put it down. You Jedi-mind-tricked the shit out of him, bro.”
“But he let you go,” Adam said, ignoring the compliment. “He let you go.”
“I took care of business.”
“You took care of business. Jesus.”
“I’m supposed to give him a hug because he’s losing his shit over the a-fucking-pocalypse? He was a fuckin’ menace. We let him walk, he pulls this shit with someone else. Fucking idiot shot his own friend. Natural selection at work here.”
The cold-bloodedness of it was what really scraped at Adam’s insides like sandpaper. Chuck talked about executing Mark the way he might have described flushing a nasty cockroach down the toilet.
“But you murdered him,” Adam said. “The threat was over, and you just murdered him.”
“You’re starting to get under my skin a little, Doc,” he said. “I don’t mind a philosophical discussion about life in a post-apocalyptic world, but you’re getting dangerously close to hurting my feelings.”
A new front opened up inside Adam’s soul, this one labeled helplessness. Short of yelling at Chuck, telling him how disappointed he was in him, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot else Adam could do to him. And Chuck didn’t seem particularly concerned with what Adam thought of him. It had been one thing out in the wilderness, when they’d been on the road, to bear witness to the evil man could do. But this guy Mark had been harmless. And Chuck was supposed to be one of them. A valued member of their fledgling community. What was Adam supposed to do now? He couldn’t let this psychopath assume a leadership role. He couldn’t let the kids look up to him. He couldn’t let him be part of their new world.
Did Chuck think he was just going to get away with it?
“You’re not coming back with me,” Adam said, his voice steely and low.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“The fuck I’m not,” Chuck said.
“You’re out,” Adam said. “No more of this shit. You do what you want, but you do it somewhere else.”
“What, are you gonna tattle on me? To your little bitch girlfriend?”
“They need to know.”
“My word against yours.”
Adam’s heart had started galloping again. Thump-thump, thump-thump, thumpthumpthumpthump. Not because he didn’t know what to do. But because he knew precisely what he had to do. Adam held Chuck’s gaze, never letting his eyes drop to the man’s waist, where he’d tucked the gun, but never letting it out of his peripheral vision. Chuck stood his ground, his hands by his sides, his fingertips twitching. This was an angry man, a dangerous man. Some itch in his psyche needed scratching, and killing Mark hadn’t done it. Adam replayed the last few moments of the standoff with Mark, trying to remember if he’d secured his weapon after it had ended.
He hadn’t. He was one hundred percent sure he hadn’t. He was ninety-five percent sure he hadn’t. Chuck’s arm twitched, and he knew that Chuck was going to try to kill him because Chuck did like Evergreen and he could come up with any story he damn well pleased, and they’d never know what happened here. They were ten feet apart, and it felt like his arm was encased in concrete, as slow as it was bringing the gun up to do its terrible work. Adam’s eyes zeroed in on Chuck’s waist, where it seemed his hands had arrived with blinding, graceful speed.
Too late, too late, and then both guns were out, and both were firing. As he emptied the clip, the guns breathing their terrible lead exhaust, Adam waited for the hot plug in his chest, the brief crackle in his forehead that would mean it was all over, that this new world had gotten the best of him, that he hadn’t been fast enough or smart enough or accurate enough.
He fired until the gun was dry, its empty clicks feeling hollow and impotent. Only then did he dare open his eyes. The air was thick with smoke and the sound of desperate gasping. Adam stole a look toward the ground, where he found Chuck writhing about, his hands at his ruined throat, blood bubbling and spilling between his fingers. He’d be dead in less than a minute.
Adam wanted to hate him for making him do this, but he couldn’t manage a single discrete emotion as he watched the man die on the bitterly cold floor. He felt no regret or sorrow; it was what had to be done. He hadn’t asked for this world any more than anyone else had. But as he’d been told, and as was coming into sharp, jagged relief, this was the world he’d been given. In that world, things would have to be done, things he might not like to do.
As Chuck Danley bled to death, Adam turned and left the bar without a word. He shoved his hands into his coat and walked the two blocks to where he’d left the car. The wind was blowing hard out of the west, and in the air, he could smell a hint of snow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Marry me,” Adam said.
They were eating dinner in the apartment they now shared. It was early December, and a light snow was falling outside. But the juice was still on, and warm air blew up through the vents. They were the luckiest sons of bitches on the planet. For now.
“What?”
“You heard me,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” he said. “Can’t promise a big church wedding or honeymoon to Maui or anything like that, but I’m serious as I can be. I love you, Sarah. More than you’ll ever know.”
“But what about my little problem?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Adam said. “Makes me think we need to do it sooner than later.”
She wiped her lips with her napkin and set it down next to her bowl. She leaned across the table and took his face in her hands.
“Adam, baby, we’re not going to grow old together,” she said. “This thing, it’s not a maybe-kinda thing. I’m going to die of Huntington’s.”
He felt the tears form at the corners of his eyes.
“Listen, one of the things I’ve learned from living through this thing is that there’s no time to waste. Think of all the millions, billions of dreams that died with everyone else. We were given a second chance, a chance to start over. But that second chance comes with a price. The price is that this is a really dangerous place now. That thing with Chuck. Sometimes I sit down and play with the numbers, try and estimate how many people survived the plague. Even if just two percent survived, that leaves more than six million people in this country alone. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not a very optimistic person generally. I don’t trust a lot of folks. I think maybe that’s why I was drawn to obstetrics. I saw a lot of happiness and got to deliver a lot of good news. That’s not to say I didn’t treat some very sick women. Every doctor does. But it was kind of a way to self-medicate my general feeling about people.”
“You sure know how to charm a girl.”
“I guess what I’m saying is that for the first time in a long time, I know what makes me happy, and that it makes me happy for the right reason. And it might have been a cliché to say that life is precious, but it’s pretty goddamn true these days. There are precious few lives left, and if you’re lucky enough to be alive, every moment is precious. I’m telling you, I’m lucky to be alive right now. You don’t know how close Chuck came to killing me out there.”
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 38