He raised the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the camp from left to right, describing the scene as he went. “They turned over some portable bathrooms, and some are burnt lumps of plastic now. Half the FEMA tents have collapsed, and people are picking through the scraps. Now, wait. They’re trying to get some tents standing again.”
“Does that mean someone’s in charge?”
“Probably.” He continued scanning through the camp. “It looks like someone set up shop in Humphreys’s old office. There are guards stationed on all sides.”
“Is it Humphreys and his soldiers? Did they regain control?”
Moe grunted as he found a small courtyard near the officer buildings with a wooden fence rail running along the front. He lowered the binoculars and shook his head sadly. “Humphreys isn’t in charge anymore. He’s tied up with some of his officers in a corral. They look pretty beat up.”
“Let me see,” Sage said, holding out her hand for the binoculars.
He paused, eyes darting between the binoculars and the camp.
Sage pressed her lips together. “I said, let me see.”
He nodded and reluctantly handed them over. Sage snatched the binoculars out of his hand and put them to her eyes, searching from one end of the camp to the other.
“I see a lot of dead people,” she murmured before her voice dropped an octave. “Oh, no. They’re beating someone on the north side of the camp.”
“Keep going.”
Sage swallowed hard as she continued directing her gaze over the camp. She grunted as her eyes ticked across the mess of atrocities caused by the change of leadership. But who was in charge now?
“I found Humphreys,” Sage gasped. “You’re right. He doesn’t look good, and neither do his officers.”
He’d fought alongside outstanding soldiers in his day, and Humphreys and his people were no exception despite them screwing up the camp. The soldier in him hated to see them taken prisoner, but at least they were alive. “Can you find the doctors?”
“Looking.” Sage continued sweeping the binoculars back and forth. “They’re guarding the lab facilities and what remains of the food stores. They secured those in the trucks.”
Moe nodded. “Whoever is in control has to know they need to prepare for the long haul. They’ll be weeding out any threats to their authority while establishing firm control over the loose cannons.”
“I found Dr. Reemer,” Sage said, raising excitedly onto her elbows. “Someone with a gun is escorting her from the officer’s building to the lab facility.”
He squinted at the large block of buildings that made up the medical facilities, though he couldn’t identify any specific figures. “How do you know?”
“They just escorted her to the labs, and one of her staff opened the door and let her in. They must be holding them prisoner there.”
“Is anyone wearing air filtration masks?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Sage said. “I don’t think they broke them out from storage, even if they have them.” Sage pointed at the line of trucks parked along the north edge of camp, guarded by tiny figures with guns.
“I saw Humphreys’s soldiers wearing them in the first few days, but they must have put them away when there were no spore clouds.”
“And we missed the slower spread through body contact.”
Moe remembered the black mucus the woman had coughed up. “Or bodily fluids.”
Sage handed the binoculars back to Moe. “We need to get Dr. Reemer and her staff out of there.”
Moe raised the binoculars and studied the camp more. “We can get them out of there, but we’ll need some help.”
Chapter 29
Jessie Talby, Yellow Springs, Ohio
Jessie opened her eyes to the world shaking around her. She rolled back and forth, shook and vibrated, head throbbing as her entire right side caught fire like she lay on a hot plate. The high mechanical whine of an electric engine ground her eardrums, and familiar voices spoke in thick resonance.
“You don’t have a first aid kit anywhere?” Bryant asked.
“This is a lab, not a medical facility,” Paul replied. “Or, at least, it was a lab. Damn, Burke.”
“Save your complaining for later. Right now, we need to get Jessie’s bleeding stopped.”
A deep ache gripped her right side, and she winced and opened her eyes to look upon an angelic child. It was a little girl with round cheeks and deep brown eyes. Two ponytail holders held her hair in twin afro-puffs, and her lips spread in a friendly smile.
“Hi.”
“Hey, girl,” Jessie replied. “Where are—Ow!”
She rolled partially on her left to see they’d placed her atop the motorized cart with her head resting on Paul’s weapons duffel bag. Bryant hobbled ahead of them on his crutch, occasionally half-turning to exchange a word or two with Paul.
Jessie allowed her head to roll back, seeing Paul upside down as he walked behind them with his hand on the cart’s throttle. The old man gave her a wave and a smile.
“I can walk,” Jessie said. She tried to move, but Fiona held her down easily. She frowned and tried to rise again, wincing when Fiona pushed her flat.
“Stop.” Fiona implored.
“Stop fighting, Jessie,” Bryant ordered. “They shot you through the shoulder, and Fiona is keeping pressure on the wound.”
Fiona nodded. “I got you, girl.”
Jessie quit resisting, laying back with a strained expression on her face. “Did the bullet go through?”
“I won’t know until we get you back to Paul’s,” Bryant responded. “Just lay still until we get there.”
“Here we are,” Paul said. The trundling cart stopped.
Bryant hobbled up to her and handed his crutch to Paul.
“What are you doing?” Paul asked.
The soldier gestured. “Someone will have to...”
Jessie’s vision grew darker as she focused on Bryant’s rugged face. His jaw held a powerful profile, even with the scruff of brown beard lining it.
“You can’t lift her,” Paul complained.
She agreed. The soldier had been shot in the hip a few short days ago. How in the world could he lift her?”
“Okay, Fiona,” Bryant said. “You can let go. Paul, take over.”
In one smooth motion, he lifted Jessie in his rock strong arms and drew her close to his chest, and she caught a whiff of gunpowder and sweat wafting from his T-shirt. Paul was right there, placing his hands on the towel Fiona had been holding against the wound, applying enough pressure to draw a moan of pain from Jessie’s throat.
Her eyes fell shut as Bryant lurched along, his shoulders and chest as hard as steel as he carried her. They entered a clean room that smelled like scented candles. Then they passed through two more rooms before the clear thuds of the soldier’s boots on stairs caused her head to loll around.
“So weak...” Jessie’s lips formed the words, though she could barely push out any air.
They continued down a long hallway of creaky floorboards that reminded her of an old house. Bryant carried her up another flight of stairs, his boots treading softer as he walked on carpet. Jessie’s head rolled up, and she looked upon a wide-open foyer with glass windows and a modest chandelier hanging from a silver chain.
“Where...” Jessie didn’t have the strength to speak, and the ache in her shoulder grew to an almost unbearable peak.
They reached one landing and then ascended to another before walking down a long hallway. She waited to pass out but remained awake through it all, her body yearning for a darkness to take away the pain.
“Put her in here,” Paul said. “It’s the guest room.”
Bryant shifted his weight, turning sideways as he thrust Jessie through a door by quick-stepping inside. He carried her to a bed and placed her down with her head resting on a pillow. His arms slid from beneath her, the soldier straightening with visible discomfort, his lips spread in a grimace of pain.
; “Sorry...” Jessie started to say, but her wind escaped her.
Bryant leaned down and lifted the cloth from her wound. He nodded and replaced the covering, saying something to Paul that sounded distant and unintelligible. Paul lifted Fiona and placed her on the bed next to her. The girl put her little hands on Jessie’s shoulder and put pressure on the wound.
“I got you, girl,” Fiona said, her tongue out in concentration.
Jessie smiled but clenched her jaw as a new ache rippled through her body. Paul left and returned soon with a thick bathroom towel and a book, placing them both under her shoulder.
“Should help with the pressure.” The mycologist’s words punched through the pain.
Jessie faded again, and the world turned black. When she woke up, Bryant sat next to her in a chair, leaning over her shoulder and dabbing her wound clean. She angled her head down and lowered her eyes to watch him work.
Soon, Paul brought in a bottle of some amber liquid with an intricate label and handed it to Bryant. “Someone from the Bluegrass Mycological Society gave me this bourbon, but I’m not a drinker.”
“Thanks,” he said then held up the bottle and twisted off the top. “Blanton’s. Should do the trick since Paul only has a half bottle of rubbing alcohol.”
The soldier poured some whiskey onto a rag and wiped it across her wound. The painful sting brought Jessie up with a cry before she settled back and moaned low. She stared at the bottle, and Bryant looked back and forth between her and the whiskey before he handed it to her.
She had never drunk hard liquor in her entire life, so she didn’t know what to expect. Bryant lifted her head, and Jessie put the bottle to her lips and tilted it back for a sip. The lukewarm liquid stung her tongue, though it wasn’t a terrible sting. She swallowed that bit before letting a second mouthful in.
Her second swallow sent a lance of fire through her chest, and she held out the bottle and coughed several times. Bryant took the bottle from her and placed it on the nightstand. Jessie’s chest burned, yet her center of focus had stabilized.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” The soldier placed a clean cloth on her wound and pressed it down, then he lifted her shoulder and put a fresh one beneath. Using tape and pieces of torn cloth, Bryant wrapped her shoulder, so the cloth stayed firmly packed against the wound.
He scoffed. “Experimental field dressing 101. Sorry if I hurt you.”
“It didn’t hurt,” Jessie lied, grimacing through clenched teeth.
“Take these for the pain,” Bryant said. He held up three blue pills and a glass of water.
“How bad is it?”
“You’ve got a slug buried in your shoulder, but don’t ask me to get it out. We’ll find someone more qualified to help you there.”
Jessie leaned forward and allowed him to place the pain medication on her tongue. Then he put the glass to her lips so she could wash the pills down with a swallow of water.
Bryant rested back in his chair, seemingly done with his doctoring. “I need to secure the house. I don’t know when Burke and his goons will be back.”
Jessie nodded. “I’ll be fine as soon as the pain meds kick in.”
“I’ll leave Fiona here with you.” Bryant lifted the girl and placed her on the bed.
Fiona blinked down at Jessie, looking worried. “I’m here. I’ll help.”
“Thanks, girl,” Jessie smiled through the pain.
She drifted in and out of consciousness as the sun set over Yellow Springs. Time passed in slow blinks, and each time she woke up, something new was happening.
Fiona stayed with her for some time then moved to the end of the bed where she laid on her stomach and watched her Scooby Doo shows. Jessie listened as the gang arrived at another spooky location and got into trouble looking for clues, only to reveal the identity of another monster at the end.
Time blinked again, and she rolled her head to the right. Bryant stood on the other side of the room, talking to someone on his radio.
“There’s been a change of plans,” he said. “The lab was compromised, so you need to come to a new address. I’ll send it over now. No, the testing is still on. We have some serum for you.”
Bryant turned around and saw Jessie staring. He winked at her, then his eyes dropped to the floor. “If you see a black bus next to a place called Clifton Mill, blow it up, will ya?”
Jessie fell unconscious again.
Sometime later, Paul came to the room and tried to feed her a spoonful of soup, though she didn’t have an appetite.
“Give it to Fiona,” Jessie said. The medication had taken the edge off her pain and made her a little drowsy. “Any sign of Burke?”
“Not yet.” Paul folded Fiona’s DVD player down and placed the bowl on it. The girl took the spoon and slurped at the broth. “Bryant is up in the tower, keeping watch.”
“Tower?”
Paul raised his eyes and looked around before settling them on Jessie again. “My home is an old Victorian. The oldest home in town, I think. It has a tower on the top, and you can see almost all the way around.”
“It sounds beautiful.” For the first time, Jessie noticed the tall windows with their re-painted trim, the high ceilings, and the antique guest furniture.
“I’ve got to get back. I’m guarding the back door, and I’m slamming cups of coffee to stay awake. Will you be okay here?”
“Yeah,” Jessie coughed. “I’ve got Fiona and my whiskey.”
“Easy with that stuff.” Paul glanced uneasily at the bottle of Blanton’s on the nightstand.
“I’m not a drinker,” Jessie admitted. “But it sounded cool to say.”
“That it did.” Paul patted her hand in a fatherly way. “Night.”
“Night, Paul.”
The man rose from the chair and waddled out of the room, and Jessie faded to the sounds of Fiona eating her soup.
Chapter 30
Kim Shields, Topeka, Kansas
The expressway’s white lines zipped beneath the RV as Kim munched a pack of Cheetos she’d taken from the gas station. After Topeka, the abandoned traffic thinned, and that meant fewer wrecks to navigate. For some stretches, she might not see a wreck for five or ten miles. Her spirits lifted to almost reverent heights the closer she came to home, and she waited for Bishop’s call to hear that her family was ready to come meet her on the road.
“AMI, do you have any music on board?”
“I have an onboard catalog of three-hundred thousand songs, downloaded by previous CDC staff members. However, I can attempt to access more songs via my satellite connection. What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Part of her wanted to hear some rock-and-roll to celebrate her homecoming, though her twisted emotions called for something more sentimental. She sometimes did lab work to the sounds of movie soundtracks with no lyrics to distract her.
As she approached Salina, Kansas, her headlights reflected off a cluster of dead taillights ahead. Kim narrowed her eyes and spotted cars piled up on either side of the road with some small debris scattered between them. She could slip through without slowing much. “I’ll tell you what, AMI. Let’s try something light and mellow. How many listings do you have for folk music? You know, something with strumming guitars.”
“Checking.” AMI paused. “I have thirty-seven thousand folk selections. Would you like me to shuffle them?”
“That sounds great, actually.”
Kim grinned as a guitar’s mellow chords strummed in the cabin, capturing her mood. A woman’s light voice joined in, filling her head with images of clean forests and streams devoid of Asphyxia.
The artificial Cheetos cheese flavor lay thick on her tongue, so Kim reached for a bottled water to wash it down. She raised it to her lips, took a sip of the lukewarm liquid, and placed it back in its holder in the center console.
“Warning,” AMI chimed as an alarm blared in the cabin. “I’m detecting motion ahead.”
Kim threw her gaze forward
as a strip of two-inch long spikes rolled across the road in front of her. She slammed her foot on the brakes as the tires rolled over the spiked strip with a rip of rubber. The front of the bus pitched lower, throwing her against the wheel with a cry.
The bus vibrated and veered to the right as Kim slammed herself back in the seat and fought for control. It skidded on its rims before grinding to a halt near the right shoulder.
“Kill the music,” she growled. The music shut off, leaving her with the idling engine and air filtration units humming.
Her eyes fell to the bus’s cameras, and she spotted Richtman cradling his rifle as he limped toward the bus from where he’d been hiding behind the wrecks. Kim cursed and slammed her fist on the steering wheel.
With a quivering breath, she stood and picked up her rifle. Her hands shook as she checked the chamber and then removed two magazines from the ammunition pouch Bryant had given her. She stuffed the magazines into her waistband and stood in the bus’s lounge. What was she going to do, go out and face Richtman in a gun fight? Especially after she’d missed him point blank the last time she’d tried to shoot him.
“What’s the status on the tires, AMI?’
“The front tires have zero air pressure, and the rear tires are fifty percent compromised. Mobile Unit XI will need to be repaired before it is drivable.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A rifle shot cut the silence, and a round smacked the side of the bus, causing Kim to duck. Another round fired off, and the round pinged off something in the air filtration unit to make it hiss.
“He’ll shoot the bus to pieces.” Her heart sunk as she turned back to the cameras.
Richtman stood on an exit ramp to the right of the bus, and she saw he’d parked his vehicle halfway down the ramp next to an overturned car. Off the exit sat a cluster of dark buildings that might have been hotels, restaurants, or gas stations.
More shots smacked the side of the bus as he worked his way around to the front.
“I have to stop him.” Kim drew up her courage as she thought through every contingency. “Is there a way up to the roof, AMI?”
Spore Series | Book 3 | Fight Page 18