“What…happened?” Casey asked, lowering arms from Kyle’s shoulders. Every inhalation appeared painful for her, and an audible rattle could be heard with each breath. “Head hurts…worse. I’m dizzy. So weak.”
“I think it was carbon monoxide exposure from the back of the jeep. Casey, I’m so sorry. I could have lost you,” Kyle said, his voice trembling.
Casey looked toward Huai Li and then back to Kyle, her puffy eyes wary.
Huai Li leaned forward. “Hey, it’s time to drop the pretense. Trey is a lousy actor, anyway.” She gave Casey’s hair a gentle caress. “I know you’re not Harley Evans,” she told her. “I suspect you’re not really Trey Bronson, either.” She looked at Kyle. “But I don’t care. Whoever you really are, and whatever you’re running from, isn’t any of my business.” Huai Li’s one visible eye dropped downward, and she appeared to be in deep thought as she paused. “Everybody has a past of some kind.” She gave a resigned smile as she surveyed their surroundings in the pale moonlight. “We need to get out of here and find a safe place to shelter and plan our next move.”
Kyle nodded in agreement. “Let’s get you into the jeep,” he told Casey. “I’ll put you in the front with me, so Huai Li and I can keep a better watch over you.”
“But where?” Casey asked. Her body shuddered as a coughing spell erupted. When it abated, she cleared her throat. “We don’t have a plan.”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Kyle admitted. “But Huai Li is right, we need to get on the road. The longer we stay close to the depot, the greater the chance we’ll be caught. I think we should avoid the populated areas and head into the countryside to look for a safe place to hide out and assess our options.”
Kyle helped Casey to her feet. She took a few steps and then stumbled into his arms. Kyle looked at Huai Li, the pain evident in his expression. He carefully took Casey in his arms and carried her to the jeep, gently lowering her onto the passenger seat as if he thought her body might shatter. He pulled a lever and reclined Casey into a semi-upright position and placed her seatbelt across her torso and hips. She just laid there, apparently too exhausted to respond.
Kyle climbed behind the steering wheel, and Huai Li got into the back seat. They drove back onto the highway, toward the east. Huai Li handed Casey a bottle of water and suggested she sip it slowly to stay hydrated. Casey obediently sipped, but then replaced the cap and let the bottle fall to the floor, where it rolled beneath her seat.
As they drove into the night, Huai Li and Kyle scanned the horizon and watched road signs for exits that might lead toward towns they’d never heard of, or county highway junctions that might lead to nowhere but farmland. Casey just reclined in the seat, her expression listless and swollen eyelids occasionally falling closed for a few minutes at a time.
At length, Kyle took an exit, and they traveled down a rural roadway dotted with sporadic caution signs for curves, Amish buggies, and deer crossings. A few houses dotted the landscape, but they needed something more isolated and less likely to have potential inhabitants, humans, or other creatures less so. Huai Li noted the peculiar lack of power lines and the absence of vehicles near the few farmhouses they passed.
In the distance, they spied a barn near what looked to be hundreds of acres of dead stands of tobacco, unharvested in the surrounding fields. Their once large and healthy leaves having shriveled and drooped downward, leaving a haunting impression, like emaciated Christmas trees left to die, for as far as Huai Li could see. Kyle turned off the pavement and onto the limestone gravel farm lane. He slowed down and turned off the headlights, using only the moonlight reflecting on the chip seal to guide his route.
He parked just beyond the barn, the brakes shrieking in the night air. “I’ll check it out, and you all stay here,” he said. “Huai Li, get in the driver’s seat, and if I go down, get the hell out of here, understand?”
Kyle parked and retrieved three rifles from the back. He handed one to Huai Li, and gave the other to Casey. The teen reached for it, and as Kyle let go of it, the weapon fell through her fingers, landing on the shift column with a clatter.
“I can’t lift it!” Casey cried, her voice rasping.
Kyle and Huai Li exchanged concerned looks.
“It’s okay, Casey,” Huai Li said, “we’ve got you covered.”
The teen slumped into the seat as Kyle laid the rifle on the floorboard. “Back in a minute,” he said. Huai Li climbed behind the wheel with her gun at her side and waited.
Kyle’s figure disappeared into the darkness against the silhouette of the barn, leaving the two women alone. Casey leaned out her window and vomited over the side of the jeep.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Huai Li asked the obvious.
“Knew it would… didn’t we?” Casey answered. She flopped back onto her seat, her body thumping heavily against it, as if she had no strength to do anything but fall back. “Listen…we…” She paused to breathe before continuing. “Appreciate you… helping. Staying isn’t safe…” Casey’s shoulders quaked as she coughed and gasped for air. “You have…somewhere to go? People you know?”
Huai Li shook her head and looked at Casey, noting how weak she appeared. “No, I have no other family or friends near here. I’ve been living on the depot base since before the outbreak, and after that, they wouldn’t allow any of us to leave. Very few were permitted to have any outside contact at all, and information wasn’t shared about what was going on outside the compound. We were told only what we needed to know to deal with the virus and do our jobs.”
For a long moment, Casey just laid there, her breath labored and rattling with phlegm. “You can’t stay…with us.” She slowly raised a hand and fanned her fingers toward the bandage around Li’s head. “You need help…with…that.”
A stream of drool trickled from the corner of Casey’s mouth, and Huai Li turned away at the smell it effused. It was a smell Huai Li knew well. The teen’s disease was progressing rapidly. Huai Li wondered if the carbon monoxide exposure had further weakened Casey’s immune system, or may have accelerated the virus’s natural growth process.
“Casey, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got antibiotics to prevent infection,” Huai Li responded, still looking away. Her voice firm with stubborn conviction, “And it’s not like it can be fixed. I have to live with it, but I can still help you.” Huai Li turned back toward Casey. “You’re weak, and we don’t know how long it will be before Kyle gets sick,” she reasoned, pointing toward the barn. “No matter what happens to you two, I won’t be infected, so it doesn’t matter if I stay.”
“You’re safer alone,” Casey countered, gasping for air as she spoke. “Not an issue…if we would kill you…only when.” She licked her lips, and a split formed in the bottom one. Tears spilled over her lashes. “Kyle’s okay for now… but we’re going to die. Nothing you can do…out of your hands.”
“Okay. Let’s just stop arguing about it for now,” Huai Li said. “We don’t have to decide on it right this minute. Kyle’s coming.”
“It’s clear,” Kyle said, opening Casey’s door. He slung his rifle across his back and reached for her.
“No,” Casey said. “I’ll walk.”
Kyle looked at Huai Li, who gave a doubtful nod. He offered his hands to steady Casey’s balance as she stepped out of the vehicle.
Once she was on her feet, Casey fixed her eyes on the barn, her expression one of steely resolve. She gingerly placed one foot in front of the other. Kyle walked behind her, ready to catch her should she fall. Her silhouette inched forward in the moonlight.
“I’ll slide the door open, and you can drive the jeep inside,” Kyle called over his shoulder to Huai Li.
Huai Li hopped out of the back seat and walked around the vehicle, but didn’t immediately get into the driver’s seat. Instead, she stood beside it, rifle at the ready, to help should Kyle and Casey need her. She couldn’t risk the possibility they’d be attacked by a zombie or an angry property o
wner.
The sound of Casey’s raspy breathing carried on the night wind, along with the growing stench that Huai Li associated with the virus. The unsettling noise, Huai Li knew, was often heard in the hours before death in non-diseased patients, an effect of fluids filling the lungs. The terminal secretions were amplified by Z180A, which produced extreme amounts of foul-smelling mucus in the respiratory system, as well as the digestive tract. It was a curiosity that the strain also produced a similar mucilaginous effect in blood plasma.
Casey stopped and stood for a moment, and Huai Li watched her shoulders rising and falling in the half-light. She felt her throat tightening. Casey was so strong and determined, even in the face of imminent death. The teen continued moving forward but then collapsed onto the gravel. Her hands hadn’t reflexively moved to brace her fall.
She must have fainted.
Huai Li rushed forward but was stopped in her tracks by a blinding white light and something hard poking into her back.
“Don’t move! Either of you! Drop your weapons and back away from the body on the ground!” a man’s voice called out in the darkness. “You’re surrounded, and we’re armed.”
Kyle’s shadow dropped his rifle to the ground, and Huai Li held hers out for the person at her back to take.
“Hands in the air!” the voice bellowed. “You’re coming with us.”
Chapter 11
Casey
The sound of my breathing rushed loud inside my head, along with the drumming of my pulse pounding hard. A twitch throbbed at the corner of my eyelids. Where was I? What was happening to me?
“You awake?” The young adult male voice startled me. His tone seemed distant, muffled, like when you’re swimming with earplugs, and someone talks to you. I became aware of heat coursing through my body, and my skin was curiously damp and itchy. My mouth felt tight, heavy, and unnatural when I attempted to speak, and I couldn’t open my eyelids. They felt rigid and immobile. I felt pressure in my bladder and had an awareness of something foreign in the area of my groin. Is that a catheter? Am I in a hospital?
I doubted that possibility because of the unusual smell in the air, something similar to gasoline, but not quite. It wasn’t overpowering or unpleasant, just a whiff. My nose scrunched, but only partly so because there were hard things with rough edges that hurt my nostrils when my muscles moved.
“Wait. Let me help with that. Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them, okay?”
I could only lie there and allow the unseen man to do whatever it was he planned. A strange light pressure moved about my face, and there was pulling and tugging at what felt like a covering or shell over my skin. Whoever it was, seemed to be peeling and cracking bits and pieces of it off my flesh. As the parts were removed, cold air reached my skin, and it felt refreshingly soothing as the man worked.
I remembered being sick and going toward a barn, but what had happened after that? Had we been captured and brought back to that horrible army depot? My eyelids felt lighter, and a warm wet cloth dabbed at them.
“Okay, you can open your eyes now,” the voice said.
The room around me was dim, and the features were blurry. I blinked a few times, and walls lined with shelves filled with dark bottles and jars came into view. A young man dressed in a blue shirt, black pants, and suspenders appeared in front of my eyes.
My breath caught in my throat. The red hair and intense blue-green eyes…the face… “Derek?” Except that’s not what came out of my mouth. It was more like ehwhegg.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you,” he said. “Just a minute.” There was more tugging and crackling around my ears, nose, mouth, and cheeks, followed by another warm, wet cloth. “Okay, now what was it you were trying to tell me?” his voice clearer now that my ears were no longer covered.
“Derek?” I asked, my voice quaking with emotion.
The face stared back at me, and the eyes gave several rapid blinks followed by a pause. “No, I’m Blake,” he finally responded. “Blake Spitzer. You’re going to be okay. Let me get my dad. He’s the one who helped you, really. I’m just his assistant. Hang on.”
Blake disappeared, and I tried to sit up but couldn’t. I was able to tilt my head just enough to see that I was covered with a sheet, but underneath, my entire body seemed encased by the same hard substance that had been on my face. The room around me was lit by glass lanterns I recognized as the kind you’d see in old movies, that burned oils. That explains the smell. I squinted at the dark glass bottles and jars on the shelves and could see more clearly, now, that some appeared to be filled with dried weeds. Their labels were lettered with hand script. Beside the platform I rested on, an IV drip was set up, and its tubing disappeared under my sheet. Portions of fieldstone walls were visible in areas that weren’t obscured by the many shelves. There were no windows, and the ceiling was unfinished. Support beams, topped with rough wood planks, was all there was, leaving me wondering if we were underground in a basement or root cellar.
Steps sounded, and Blake returned, leading an older man whose face was barely discernible beneath his salt-and-pepper colored beard, and bushy brows. His dark eyes and hair were a stark contrast to Blake’s, but he wore the same type of clothing. “Casey, this is my father, Jack Spitzer.”
“Wait, who are you, and how do you know my name?” I asked.
“We found you on the community farm,” the older man responded.
“Where’s—?”
“It’s okay,” Jack said, raising his hands. “Kyle and Huai Li are waiting for you when you feel like getting up.” He came to my side and placed a hand on my forehead. “Your fever has been down for three days now, so we can probably take the rest of the clay poultice off.”
“Three days?” I asked. “How long have I been here?”
“It’s been a week,” Blake answered.
“A week!?”
“Well, to be fair, it doesn’t normally take that long, but what you had was a difficult strain to cure.”
“Cure?” I stared at them, unable to process what they were saying. “But how? That isn’t possible!”
“Well, as you can see, you’re still here, and once the women come and help you with the poultice, I’m sure you’ll find your sores are clearing as well. Your breathing is much better. Are you in pain?”
I thought about it. “No?” It was so unreal I couldn’t wrap my mind around the possibility that I was really going to be okay.
“Dad,” Blake said, “she called me Derek.”
“Are you from around here?” Jack asked. “Did you know my other son?”
“Well, no. I’m from Ft. Wayne, and I wouldn’t have known your son, at least I don’t think so. It’s just that Blake looks so much like my foster brother, the resemblance threw me off. When my vision cleared, I could see he wasn’t Derek. I’m sorry, it’s just a coincidence.”
The older man’s jaw dropped, and he covered his hands with his eyes. He cried like his heart was breaking, and Blake put his arms around him. When the man had calmed down, his eyes searched my face. “I know your Derek is my son,” he said. “It’s no coincidence. His mother left us, and last year, I saw on the news he was taken from her by Child Protective Services. She had married a man named Compton, and they’d changed Derek’s last name, but there was footage of him on television. Oh, they had his face blurred out, but I heard his voice, and I knew it was him. I’ve been searching for him ever since she left us, but once he was in the foster system, I lost track of him, with no hope of locating him. I tried. The Good Lord knows, I tried.”
As I listened to him talk, I didn’t know what to think. “My Derek had a disability,” I said. “Some kind of genetic syndrome.”
“Angelman’s, yes,” Blake blurted out, his eyes both excited and worried. “It’s something that runs in our family, Dad’s side anyway, the Amish side.”
“But wait, I don’t understand,” I admitted. “If you’re Amish, how did you see Derek on television?”
<
br /> The old man cast his eyes toward the ceiling and shook his head in a manner that bespoke of soul-crushing regret. “My wife wasn’t Amish. We met when I was just twenty and on Rumspringa. We were young and foolish and traveled to California and got married. Of course, we were shunned, but we didn’t care.” He dabbed the corners of his eyelids with a starched white handkerchief. “She and I both worked our way through college. She became a doctor, and I earned my degree in botanical virology and immunology.”
“That was before my grossmammi and grossdaadi became ill, in their last days,” Blake added.
Jack nodded at his son. “Casey, do you know where Derek is now?” he asked, changing the subject, his expression doubtful and yet hopeful.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.” Sadness pierced my heart, and I paused to let the threat of tears subside before continuing. I’d never adequately mourned losing Derek, who had become more important to me than I’d realized when he lived with us. “He was at his school on the day of the outbreak, and I was in a different school. Later, a rescue mission was sent to where he was, and they told me they found no survivors there.”
“And who was it who went on this rescue mission? Were these people that you knew? Did you trust them to do a thorough search?”
His question stunned me. I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but the truth was, I had no reason to trust anyone who worked in the safe zone, and the authorities there had organized the search for survivors at Derek’s school. In fact, I had every reason to not trust them. “It was the military, Mr. Spitzer, and no, I don’t know if they did a thorough search and rescue mission at the school. I’d just assumed they did, but that was before I—.”
“Before what?” he asked, his brown eyes serious and focused.
I shook my head. “It’s not important,” I said, realizing the less he and Blake knew about what transpired at the safe zone, the better. It would be dangerous for anyone to know too much about the place and what had happened there. “Just know the farther you stay away from them, the better,” I said.
The Viral Series (Book 2): Viral Storm Page 17