Aftermath (23 page)

LaRouche considered him for a moment. Lee was not above attempting to pull rank on LaRouche if necessary, but that was a tricky card to play. Here they were, witnessing the collapse of the government, all command and control had been stripped away. There were no consequences for insubordination, unless Lee wanted to duke it out with him, and he didn’t. Lee didn’t think it was his rank that finally persuaded LaRouche to shrug it off and start talking, but something in LaRouche’s own mind clicked and his demeanor softened.

“
One other soldier, besides myself, a Johnston County Sheriff’s deputy, and thirty-two civilians.” LaRouche’s right hand didn’t hover so closely to his Beretta anymore. His eyes constantly scanned as he drove, but he seemed less concerned with Lee and his two companions now. “The other soldier’s a private, he’s wounded and not gonna make it much longer. The deputy—Shumate’s his name—he’s kind of in charge, but don’t really know what he’s doing. And the civilians are all about as clueless and panicky as you’d expect.”

Lee remembered his radio. “We might be able to help each other out, Sergeant.”

“
Oh?” LaRouche sounded doubtful.

Lee nodded. “I have some medical supplies and a doctor. We left them in a pickup on the south side of town, just across the barricades.”

LaRouche still looked guarded. “Are you in contact with him?”

Lee nodded and keyed the radio that he still held in his hand, waiting a few beats before speaking. He forewent typical radio protocol, because Doc probably wouldn’t know what to do. “Harden to Doc, you there?”

He released the button.

Static on the other end for a brief second, then silence.

They all waited.

LaRouche drove the Chevy Lumina quickly through another set of turns, then straightened out. Up ahead and to their left, a big building loomed. Signs on the side of the road pointed arrows towards it and bore a blue square with a white H. Other signs teetered in the rain, their bases kept down by sand bags. These signs were labeled with that strange, circular biohazard symbol and read, “QUARANTINED AREA: BSL 4,” and beneath that, “LEVEL 4 PROTECTION REQUIRED.”

A checkpoint stood up ahead. The red-and-white striped crossing arms were tipped over, some of them broken. The white, tent-like decontamination domes were tattered and bullet-riddled and wavered weakly in the sharp winds as though they might fly apart at any second.

Lee keyed the radio a second time, speaking very slow and clear: “Harden to Doc or Josh. Harden to Doc or Josh. Answer the radio. Do you copy me?”

Static, and then nothing.

LaRouche steered the sedan around the decontamination tents, between two fences strung thick with concertina wire and backed by more cement barricades. When they were around the checkpoint, he steered the sedan through a hole in the barricades and zoomed up to a parking garage entrance, then drove it up to the highest level. From there, Lee looked out over the hospital parking lot and the vast line of barriers that had been erected around it. In one far corner, he could see stacks of what looked like long black plastic bags. They were thrown haphazardly in an enormous pile. Backed up to this pile was a large, flatbed truck.

Body disposal.

His stomach felt heavy, pulled down by a lead weight. Perhaps from this high vantage point, the radio signal might get better reception...

“
Doc. Josh. This is Captain Harden. Can you copy anything I’m saying?”

Static, and then silence.

Miller swore quietly. “Something’s wrong.”

CHAPTER 13: DOC

Fear and urgency forced Doc to press harder on the gas pedal than was prudent in the rain. It came in white sheets that battered the windshield with too much force and volume for the wipers to handle. Perhaps if he was going slower, he might be able to see, but the speedometer hovered between sixty and seventy miles-per-hour in the straightaways, dipping below that only for curves or low points in the road that might have standing water and cause him to hydroplane.

He tried to remember the abandoned cars and wrecks that dotted Highway 210, heading west, away from Smithfield and back towards Camp Ryder. They seemed to sneak up on him, jumping out of the rain and forcing him to slam on the breaks and navigate around them at breakneck speeds. A few times, he clipped the shoulder and fishtailed, but he always quickly recovered. He couldn’t lose control.

Not now. Not when he was so close.

Fear and urgency.

He realized he’d been breathing heavily through his mouth and his tongue was becoming dry, so he closed it and worked up enough spit to coat his tongue again. He wanted to go faster, but if he went faster, he would crash, he was certain of it. Crash and die, and he would look like those battered, bloody messes that came into the ER, all covered in plastic tubes and oxygen masks and wires and beeping equipment. Except none of that modern technology would be there. There were no cell phones, no 911 to come save him, no medics to take him to a hospital and fix his broken body. He would lie in that smoking wreckage until the infected found him or he died from his injuries.

So the fear and urgency pushed him on, but he didn’t let them push too hard.

Because he had to make it back. He had to save Nicole.

Another abandoned vehicle loomed out at him, but it was a feint—the vehicle was far enough on the side of the road that he barely had to swerve to avoid it.

He took a look at his odometer.

Trip A: 8.7 mi

He’d zeroed it out as he’d peeled out of Smithfield. Ten miles, he’d told Doc. Ten miles outside of Smithfield, we’ll set it up. We’ll get him when he’s coming back. That’ll be best, Doc. And then we’ll let her go. Won’t that be nice, Doc? To see her alive and well again? Just bring him to us. But don’t be late, Doc, don’t be late. Because if you don’t show up, I will slit her open. Yeah. I’ll slit her open from her pussy to her tits. Do you believe me, Doc? Do you believe me?

And Doc did.

He believed him.

And he couldn’t be late.

He slowed down now, because the odometer read “9.0 mi,” and he knew the roadblock was coming soon. The staccato chatter of rain on his windshield settled to a dull drumming as his speed dropped from sixty miles-per-hour to forty miles-per-hour. The road before him came into focus a bit and he was able to see the sharp curve in the road ahead of him maybe a quarter mile.

That would be it, he was certain.

He realized his hands hurt and he forced his grip on the steering wheel to relax, only to find them squeezing harder a moment later. His heart was pumping hard now, and the urgency was gradually being overshadowed by the fear. He did not like this. He did not like it one bit. But he had to. He had to do it. For Nicole.

He wished to God in that brief moment that he would never have agreed to this. It would have been better for them both to die that hot afternoon, trapped in his parents’ house, trapped like rats while a big green Hummer and a pair of pickups pulled up in his parents’ lawn and men with guns started swarming the house. He should have just told them all to fuck off, then held Nicole tight for those last few seconds before they gunned them all down.

But even as he thought it, he knew it would not have happened like that. No, maybe for him it would have been quick and easy, but then again, maybe not. Maybe they would have made him watch, because they were like that. They did things like that to the people that didn’t cooperate. Yes, they would have made him watch, and then they would have killed him, painfully, and they would not have killed Nicole. They would have kept her, like a toy. A pretty plaything to be handed out to the men when they did a good job.

Doc’s jaw was ratcheted down so hard on itself that it hurt his teeth.

No, he had to make the deal.

And here he was, completing that deal, and he just forced himself to think about Nicole. Everything would be okay in a little bit. Everything would be okay once this was over.

He realized he’d slowed to about twenty miles-per-hour as he crept into the turn.

The rain seemed to be letting up a bit now.

As predicted, they were waiting for him.

Two pickup trucks and that big green Hummer with the nasty machine gun on top. The Hummer faced him, glaring down the center of the road like a mean pit bull that’s just snapped its leash. The two pickups were angled in, taking up the rest of the road, like the smaller dogs that hung out with the big dog.

A man popped out of the top of the Hummer and grabbed the machine gun, swinging it in Doc’s direction. Then more men started jumping out of the pickups, all of them holding rifles like the one Lee had given him. They weren’t military though. Doc knew what they were, and why they were to be feared.

Criminals. Low lives. People that had trouble following the rules even before the world went to shit.

Lost causes, one and all.

Out of the four men that had come out of the pickup trucks, two stayed behind, pointing guns at Doc while the others began jogging towards him. He brought the pickup truck to a stop, not wanting them to perceive any accidental acceleration as aggression. He held his hands up, touching the ceiling. The M4 was still in the seat next to him. He didn’t even look at it. He didn’t want to give them an excuse to shoot him, because unlike the normal people like Miller and Harper and Josh, these guys looked for reasons to shoot people and had to be convinced
not
to.

They were “not to be fucked with.”

The two men stopped short, and exchanged a confused look.

One of them, a tall younger guy with a face covered in teardrop tattoos, crosses, and other nonsense, raised the rifle and shouted, “Get outta the fuckin’ truck!”

Doc slowly reached for the door handle and opened it.

“
Yeah...Move slow!” The tattooed man nodded. “Now keep your hands up! Turn around and face away from me!”

Doc complied. He stared down the road he had just come from.

“
Now start walking backwards towards me!”

And he began walking backwards, thinking to himself that this was actually a very professional-sounding take-down, but that these men probably had experience with them, being that they were likely the subject of several police takedowns during their lifetimes.

“
Okay, now kneel down!”

Doc kneeled, and then rough hands were patting him down for weapons and hauling him to his feet. The hands spun Doc around, and then he was facing the guy with the tattoos and he could see that what he thought had been a cross at the corner of the man’s eye was actually a dagger pointed down. The guy grabbed Doc by the collar and got in his face. His breath stank like stale cigarette smoke and a hint of booze.

“
Where the fuck’s the other guy?” he demanded.

Now the tattooed man’s companion joined. “Yeah! Where’s the others?”

“
I...Uh...” Doc realized his heart was pounding so hard he could barely speak. “They’re not here.”

“
Oh my fuckin’ God,” the guy shoved Doc back. “Oh my fuckin’ God. Are you serious with this shit?”

Doc struggled to get the words out. “Yes...no...they’re not here.”

The tattooed man wiped rain out of his face and then pointed at Doc, shaking his head. “That’s your problem, man. Not mine. Good luck explaining that shit.”

From behind the two excited criminals, the back passenger door to the Hummer opened, and
he
stepped out. The source of Doc’s grief.
He
had made all the commands,
he
held all the power, everything had been
his
idea. The schemes and threats and the leverage had dominated Doc’s existence for so long, that Doc had unconsciously built him up into a godlike status in his mind. A vengeful, hateful god. A god that Doc served not because he wanted to, but because he was forced.

But he was just a man, and Doc realized it again as he watched him stride up, hunching his shoulders against the rain. He was thinner now than he was when they’d first met. Then, he hadn’t been overweight, but he’d had a slight pot to his belly and no muscle mass to speak of. His face had been drawn, his eyes dark and sunken, and his teeth rotting out from years of methamphetamine usage.

Now he looked taller, healthier. Any extra weight he’d had on him had vanished and his skin now was stretched taut over cruel-looking cords of muscle. But his eyes were still dark. He’d been a harmless addict, but had since become a sober psychopath.

The jeans he wore were snug on his legs, but not tight. The knees and seams had begun to fray a bit, but they were not yet torn. He wore old, black steel-toed boots—what he lovingly called his “shit-kickers”—the type you might see on a good old-fashioned Neo-Nazi. On his right side was an old .357 revolver holstered in a low-slung leather gun belt. On his left side hung a giant Bowie knife. He wore a faded, dirty gray shirt with a shamrock on it. His hair was shorter than Doc remembered, and his lean, angular face sported a barely healed cut that ran from his cheek to his chin. As he approached, Doc could see that the cut was clumsily stitched closed with what looked like regular fabric thread.