“Oh, great! Just don’t go running off into the fields again!” Carolyn scolded.
“We’ve made it through the worst of the winter weather, the infected have died off by the thousands, we’re all safe and happy here, I think it’s cause for celebration.”
Carolyn smiled at that and held her coffee mug out for Jake to fortify it with a slug of whiskey. Pete, Tom and Kate joined in, but everyone else passed so, coffee and whiskey, they drank a toast to old friends, new friends and friends no longer with them.
Later, Liz and Eve along with Susan and Hannah decided it was still a bit chilly to hang around outside and retreated into the house. Jake lit another cigarette and Kate, to Kim's annoyance, joined him.
“You know I don’t approve of this,” Kim pointedly told Kate. “I would mention that you need to use mouthwash afterward but that seems to make everyone laugh.”
Vickie did laugh out loud and Carolyn tried to shoot a stern look her way but ended up chuckling herself.
“I don’t know why mouthwash is so amusing, but I think it would be better not to smoke at all. Jake, you have so many injuries, some of which may trouble you for the rest of your life and I can’t understand why you persist in such an unhealthy vice. I worry about you.”
“I appreciate that, I really do, but I’ll decide on my own when it’s time to quit.”
“It's not fair,” Vickie pouted, “you guys with your cigarettes and a whole case of whiskey-”
“A whole case?” Carolyn blurted out. I never saw you bring a whole case back to the trucks!”
“Yeah, well, you and Pete were otherwise occupied in the back of one of them, ah, ‘doing inventory’ I believe is what you told me,” Jake smiled.
It was Carolyn’s turn to have her face redden and she glared at Pete when he chuckled aloud.
“-having a whole case of whiskey,” Vickie continued, “when you were the one who threw out the stuff I got from that evidence locker.”
“What stuff,” Kate asked, leaning forward.
“Some good stuff. A lot better than cigarettes. I had at least a half-pound inside a gym bag and he left it on the road, just when we were starting to have fun,” Vickie looked at Carolyn, smiling.
“Yeah, it’s too bad about that bag.”
Vickie was about to badger him more about it, but something in his tone of voice stopped her and she stared at him.
“But, the gym bag wasn't in the car. Carolyn and I both searched for it.”
“I told you, I tossed it out on the road. The contents, well, you've never asked me about that.”
“You rotten son-of-a-bitch,” Carolyn noted. “All this time, and you've been holding out on us.”
“Is that true, Jake? You've had it all this time?”
“I was just waiting for an opportune moment to present itself.”
“Jake, honey,” Vickie asked sweetly, “do you think that moment is going to come along soon?”
Laughing, Jake reached into his jacket pocket, taking out a wrinkled cigarette box. He opened it and withdrew a perfectly rolled joint.
“Uh-uh,” he said, pulling his hand back as Vickie reached for it. “Two hits apiece for now. I don't want a repeat of what happened in the Hummer that day.”
“What happened in the Hummer?” Pete asked.
“Never mind,” Carolyn shot him a glance.
“Can we get in on that?” Kim asked in a timid voice.
“I thought you didn't approve of smoking,” Jake retorted.
“Some smoke is good, better than others.”
“All right, let's get off the porch and head back to the big shed in case Eve decides to come back out.”
“Oh, yeah,” scoffed Vickie. “That’s what’s going to corrupt her.”
Tom raised an eyebrow, but refrained from making any comment.
Inside the shed, out of sight of the house, Jake handed the joint and his lighter to Vickie, who quickly put flame to the tip and drew in a lungful, passing it to Carolyn. It went to Kim next, then Kate and was passed to Pete. Tom and Jake both demurred, saying someone needed to keep a clear head. After the second time around, Jake neatly butted it out to the protests of all four women and stuffed it back into the pack, putting that in his pocket and fastening the button.
“Let's just see how far that takes you before we get any deeper into it. You’ve been quite a while without so it’s likely to hit you pretty hard.”
“We can handlely it!” Vickie said, which caused Carolyn and the Kays to start giggling and Vickie puzzled over what was funny about what she'd said until Kim explained it to her.
“Yeah, maybe we'll just wait for another time to light that up again,” Jake said as he lit another cigarette. Kate bumped Kim playfully with her shoulder and Kim giggled again.
“You all look like two hits were enough for now,” Jake told them. “Maybe later.”
“I don't know about this,” Tom said, seriously. “You really think we need to be bringing this stuff back?”
“You guys have your liquor,” Vickie answered him, “is that really so much different?”
“Well, we don't always drink just to get drunk,” Pete said.
“Bullshit,” Carolyn pronounced. “The only reason anyone drinks whiskey is it has alcohol in it. If it didn’t, every distillery in the world would shut down overnight; every brewery too, for that matter. Besides, you big goof,” she added, planting a long, hard kiss on his mouth, then speaking in a soft, low voice, “you're the one who’s most going to benefit from this the minute I get you alone.”
Pete looked at her for a moment before mumbling something only she could hear. Carolyn put her hand to his cheek and smiled sadly.
“I'm tired,” Kim announced, taking Kate by the hand. “I think we'll go take a nap now.”
The others laughed as the Kays left, then Carolyn led a rather subdued Pete away by the hand and Tom, too, drifted off, leaving Jake and Vickie alone in the shed. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him and he pulled her close, holding her tightly. After a few moments, she rocked back on her heels and just looked up into his eyes.
“I'm sorry, Vickie.”
“Don't be. I love you, Jake, even if you haven't been able to.”
Jake turned his back and stepped outside of the shed, lighting another cigarette.
“You're smoking a lot more, Jake.”
“I'm frustrated! I have a beautiful, wonderful, willing woman here in you and I'm just not able to... to perform! I'm frustrated as hell by that!”
“You've always found other ways of satisfying me, Jake. I don't have any complaints on that account,” she purred, taking his arm.
“I can't give you anything you can't get from Carolyn,” he sighed.
“Carolyn and I really haven't had much time together since she and Pete became serious.”
“Yeah, I've noticed you two are never really alone together anymore. I'm actually sorry about that.”
“Don't be. We had a good relationship while it lasted, but I have always loved you. I'm not giving up on us, Jake. We're going to make this work. I know we will.”
Jake held her in his arms again, enjoying the way she felt, the way she smelled, the softness of her, the warmth. Then he suddenly remembered exactly what Dr. Warfield had said. He said the survivors would be incapable of reproducing. He didn’t say they'd be sterile, but that they'd be incapable of reproducing. Incapable. He'd never had any trouble getting excited around Vickie before he'd been bitten and spent exhausting days searching for the rest of the group. Even if they'd not actually consummated their relationship, he'd always been readily aroused when she was this close to him, in his arms, kissing her, touching her. Since the battle at the farmhouse and its aftermath, nothing she did, and there was virtually nothing she hadn't tried, seemed to arouse him. Now he began to realize how insidious the infection was.
He broke away from her, holding her at arm’s length, a look of deep concern on his face.
“Jake! You're scaring me! Wha
t's the matter? What is it?”
“I've- I've got to talk to Tom. I have to talk to him right away.”
With that, he left the shed and walked quickly back to the house before Vickie had a chance to say anything more. Everyone could tell there’d been something amiss with Tom and Liz’s relationship in the last few weeks and he had to ask Tom if the same thing was happening to him.
Jake found him in the pantry, talking to Liz, holding both her hands, some sensitive moment obviously having been interrupted.
“Tom? Can I talk to you in private for a minute?”
“What's wrong?” Liz asked worriedly.
“Just something I need to discuss with Tom. Can you step outside with me, Tom?
Puzzled, Tom followed him out the door and into the back yard where Jake led him around the back of the shed.
“I have to ask you this, Tom. Are you and Liz... Hell! Tom, are you still able to get it up?”
“What the hell kind of a question is that?” Tom was indignant.
“I have to know, Tom! I haven't been able to since I got here to the new house. Remember what Dr. Warfield said? 'Incapable of reproducing'. He didn't say sterile, he said ‘incapable’.”
Tom's face paled visibly and he took a staggering step back, leaning heavily against the shed wall.
“Oh, my God,” he said gloomily. “Incapable. No matter what we've tried, no matter what Liz has done... Oh, my God!”
“How long, Tom?”
“It started becoming difficult weeks ago, but for the last week or two... Oh, God! It hit you first after you were bitten, after all the times you were injured and the time you spent searching for us but it's been affecting me, too. What about Pete?”
“He still seems to be okay, as far as I know. I think he and Carolyn are still getting together. He's a few years younger than either of us, so maybe that has something to do with it. If he starts having trouble, too...”
“...Extinction event,” Tom finished gloomily.
. . .
More days passed with temperatures gradually rising from just above freezing to the mid-fifties. Jake's frustration and dread increased with each passing day. Vickie noticed that he seemed distant, distracted, taking no interest in any kind of intimacy, barely able even to talk to her without sinking into a dark mood. She tried to get him to open up to her, but his responses were terse, almost impatient. She turned to Carolyn for support and Carolyn confided in her that Pete was encountering more and more difficulty in lovemaking and, in fact had actually been incapable of performing the last several times they'd tried. Finally, she confronted Jake on one of the rare occasions when they found themselves alone together.
“What is it you aren't telling me,” she demanded. “Whatever is happening to you is starting to affect Pete, too. Is it happening to Tom as well? Don't shut me out, Jake, whatever it is!”
“God, no; it’s happening to Pete too?”
“Jake, I'm really scared! What's going on?”
“I- I need to talk to Pete,” he said, turning away from her and leaving the room.
He found Pete on the front porch, a bottle of Jack on the railing and a glass in his hand, cigarette dangling from his lips.
“So, it's affecting you, too,” he stated simply.
“What?” Pete asked, turning to face him.
“It's true, isn’t it? I was really hoping it wasn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You and Carolyn. You aren't able to have sex anymore, are you?”
The color left Pete's face and he looked at Jake for a long time before deciding he should be angry.
“How is that any of your damned business?”
“Dr. Warfield,” Jake said. “The extinction event.”
His face went blank, uncomprehending for a moment and Jake could see the realization dawn upon him as Pete fell back onto a chair.
“Oh, God! Incapable. You, too?”
“Me and Tom both!”
Pete dropped his glass and it shattered on the porch floor.
“What the hell is going on out here?” Carolyn called out, clearly concerned as she emerged from the doorway.
Jake took the bottle from the railing and upended it, taking a long swig before handing it back to Pete and turning to face Carolyn. He quietly told her that there was something they all, she, Liz and Vickie, Tom and Pete and himself needed to talk over. They met in the master bedroom and only the three men knew exactly what the problem was that they needed to discuss.
“I think you all already know something's not right,” he began. “We’ll have to let the others in on it, too, but I felt we should talk about it ourselves beforehand because it already has impacted everyone in this room. We haven't been completely honest with you about what we heard from Dr. Warfield. What he said about the infection rate, the survival rate was true, as far as it went. What we've kept from you is what he said about the aftermath.”
After a long pause during which Jake tried to put the words together and Pete and Tom nervously shuffled their feet, Liz was the one who spoke up.
“Go ahead, Jake. I think you need to tell us everything,” she hesitantly stated, suspecting the worst but hoping beyond hope that she was wrong.
“Dr. Warfield,” Jake at last managed to find his voice, “told us that this was 'an extinction event'. He said there were indications that the survivors would become incapable of reproducing.” He paused a moment, studying the faces of the three women in the room.
“He said 'incapable', which Tom and I interpreted as meaning people would become sterile. We now know that this isn’t what he meant.”
Vickie let out an audible gasp while Liz and Carolyn both shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“I was the first one affected,” Jake continued. “I suspect it was because I was in a weakened state after all that’s happened, but, anyway, since I finally found you all again, I've become... incapable. It started affecting Tom a few weeks ago and now, Pete too.”
Pete lowered his head, slowly shaking it from side to side. Carolyn went to him, touching his arm, Liz took hold of Tom's hand and Vickie fell back into a chair, tears running down her cheeks. Kate and Kim, eavesdropping at the doorway, looked at each other and held hands.
“Well, by now, I think you all know what I'm getting at. This... disease... has caused us no end of trouble, but we always thought we'd get beyond it, that human civilization would eventually recover and flourish again. It seems we may have been wrong about that.”
“It isn't fair,” Vickie said softly. “We survived the infection, we survived the infected, the gangs, we've built a home, a family. It just isn't right to have gone through all of this for nothing.”
“What do we do now?” Kate asked no one in particular.
“We go on,” Jake stated flatly looking over at her, then back to the rest of the group. “Can we really do anything else? Like Vickie said, we've survived everything thrown at us this far, how can we give up now?”
“Dr. Vargas,” Carolyn spoke up. “We should make some effort to contact the other group of survivors. He might know something, might be able to offer some help or advice.”
“Could be,” Jake said doubtfully. “But he isn't a medical researcher; he hadn’t even finished his internship yet. He was planning on going into general practice. Still, it wouldn't hurt to find out if the other group has been affected.”
“This fucking disease!” Kim spat out. “This, on top of everything else! If this had to happen, why couldn't it have happened before those... those fucking bastards kidnapped us?”
“I wonder what Art would have said about this,” Tom mused. “No doubt he'd have seen this as divine punishment.”
“Yeah, well, to hell with Art,” Jake said. “There's nothing divine about this. This infection is man-made. It came about from power mad politicians bent on conquest and domination rather than the bettering of their own people's lives. The only comfort is that those same researchers who created th
is damnable disease were probably among the first victims of the infection. Even that isn't much comfort since they were the only ones who actually knew how it was developed and might have at least had a clue on how to counteract it.”
“I don't believe it,” Hannah said, stepping in from the next room where she'd been listening in, unnoticed. “I refuse to believe that this is the end of the human race, that we're the last generation.” She stepped further into the room, pointedly scanning all their faces. “I can't believe that God's plan calls for our extinction in this manner.”
“How do we know what His plans are,” Pete asked in a soft voice.
Hannah sat on the edge of the bed before answering. “We don't know, not for certain. He destroyed the world once by flood, but the human race continued because He chose to let the few survivors rebuild and prosper. He didn't wipe out the whole human race in one fell swoop with this infection any more than He did with the flood and I can't believe He intends for His creation to end this way. We will survive, I know that much. It will be a long, hard path to travel and there will be many more obstacles and failures ahead, but we will continue on.”
“So,” Jake began cautiously, “you believe that God is testing us, punishing us for our sins?”
“No! I don’t believe that at all! Just as you said, this infection is man-made. This isn't God's punishment; it's man's folly. It's something mankind needs to overcome, to learn from. We all need to change the way we treat each other; we need to work together for the betterment of the human race, not simply for conquest and power!”
“I can't find any argument with that,” Tom said, putting his arm around Liz. “Who knows? The original infection mutated rapidly and then died out. It's not communicable any more, even by bite. Maybe this, I guess, side-effect will die out eventually too.”
“I don't intend to give up on us,” Vickie came up to Jake's side. “We'll get through it.”
“What was it, a good three months or so until the infection wasn't communicable even by bite anymore?” Pete asked. “Maybe it will mutate again. Maybe in another few months...”
The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 27