Aftermath (3 page)

Lee had asked for Bus to team up with him because he wanted a chance to talk to him. There were things about their most recent encounter that disturbed him and he wanted to get Bus’s thoughts on it.

While they walked, Lee spoke. “What happens to the girl now?”

“
Kara?” Bus mumbled absently. “Doc will amputate and hope for the best.”

Lee almost stopped in his tracks. “Amputate? Are you kidding me?”

Bus shook his head, looking briefly run down. “No. The faster they cut Kara’s arm off, the better chance she has of not contracting FURY. Doc figures it works about half the time, which is better than 100% chance of infection. Only problem is that most of the time the amputation goes septic. Or they lose too much blood.” Bus swore bitterly. “We just don’t have the medical equipment. It’s like the fucking Stone Age again. Like civil-war surgeons just hacking off limbs with saws and crossing their fingers.”

Lee couldn’t think of anything else to say. The concept of amputation to prevent bacterial infection through a bite or open wound seemed to be a reckless medical maneuver, but when faced with the certainty of turning into one of
them
, the amputation had a cold practicality.

Lee pressed on: “Did you notice anything about those last infected?”

Bus didn’t answer immediately. He stalked along and painted his flashlight over the length of fence before them but found it to be secure. When he finally spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I remember how they were a month ago.” He stopped walking and turned to look at Lee. “They were disjointed and confused. Lost. Insane. They attacked each other just as often as they attacked us. I don’t know what the hell is going on or how it’s happening so fast, but the groups are changing. Learning. And they’re doing it quickly.”

Lee pictured the dark shape darting out of the trash bins and circling the edge of the lamplight while they sat in their encirclement, weapons pointed out. The cold, blood-crusted talons dragging that young girl to the ground and the other trying to carry her off.

“
Like a wolf pack,” Lee said, almost more to himself than to Bus. “Adaptation. Evolution. It doesn’t seem like they’re mindlessly attacking any more. It seems like they’re hunting us.”

Bus stopped and looked Lee in the eyes. “Bullshit,” he said.

Lee shrugged. “Think about it. That’s the first time you’ve ever seen them come from both directions. Usually they’re in one solid group and they just charge you. This was different. It was like they were trying to distract us so the other two could get in close.”

Bus didn’t answer. He just started walking along the fence line again. The truth was that the words were bitter. It was not an “ah-ha” moment, it was an “oh shit” moment. The infected were bad enough as a mindless herd. The thought of them in small packs, hunting them like prey, was a hard pill to swallow.

But Lee wasn’t willing to ignore the situation either.

“
This is the first time we’ve seen them maneuver like that.” He followed along with Bus while he spoke. “When the situation changes, your tactics need to change along with it. If they’re getting smart enough to get past your chain link fence, we’re going to need to think of something else to keep them out.”

Bus shook his head fiercely. “Even a dog can dig himself under a fence. That doesn’t mean anything. They’re mindless shells of what once were human beings. They’re just running on auto pilot now. There’s no evolution in this.”

He sounded distraught, as though he were attempting to convince himself. I reject your reality, and substitute my own. Lee decided not to push it. He just hoped Bus had other things on his mind and wasn’t this unreceptive all the time.

Lee had to admit to himself that it was difficult to tell with the infected. Sometimes their actions seemed like the result of logical thought, and other times it just looked like instinct. Most of them appeared to be able to manipulate tools, but they weren’t using them properly, they were simply using them as blunt objects to strike out with. Just because a monkey can strike somebody in the head with a wrench, doesn’t mean it can fix your sink. They all seemed to hold on to some rudimentary intelligence, but it also seemed to vary from individual to individual. Just as some were more aggressive than others, some were more intelligent than others. But then the question arose again, was it intelligence or instinct? Lee kept coming back to the example of a wolf pack. When a pack hunts, singles out the weakest prey, and then flanks it to take it down, is the success of their hunt based on a premeditated plan, or ingrained animal instinct?

A voice came hollering across the compound. “Bus!”

Bus and Lee both looked and saw Miller running up, breathing heavily. “I think we found where they came in.” He took a big gulp of air. His eyes darted back and forth, carrying grave meaning. “I think you should take a look at it.”

Miller turned on his heel and started jogging back across the compound. They followed behind him, their flashlights strobing up and down as they ran. Lee took a sidelong glance across the center of the compound and saw the crowd at the medical trailer being pushed out by a man Lee didn’t recognize. From inside the trailer Lee could hear screaming, high-pitched and wretched. Doc had begun the amputation.

“
Right here.” Miller had stopped and was pointing.

They turned the corner of a shanty made out of aluminum siding and blue tarp. Lee and Bus looked forward as they slowed to a walk and approached what Miller pointed at. Confusion passed over their faces followed by a deep, dreadful uncertainty. They looked at each other and then back at the object of their attention.

An opening had been peeled back from the fence, from top to bottom. The chain-links had been pulled away and rolled up like two sides of a scroll. Only they weren’t pushed inside, but pulled outwards and tucked in so neatly to create the man-sized breach in their defenses that it left little room for question about who or what had done this.

It was then that Lee and Bus both noticed a low, husky voice, quietly intoning some strange narrative:
“...but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves...”

“
What the fuck is that?” Bus glared and shot his flashlight towards the sound of the voice. The flashlight played around a bit and then found the culprit. Nestled in a patch of overgrown grass at the corner of the shack was a small black CD player, round and glistening like an insect’s head, the two bulbous speakers stared up at them like compound eyes.

“
...the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible...”

Bus moved swiftly forward, raising his foot as though to stomp the thing out of existence but Lee’s hand shot out and grabbed him by his arm, hauling him backwards. Bus looked at him like he was about to turn that foot on Lee, but then understanding dawned.

Lee nodded. “Might want to check that out real good before you go stomping around it. Depending on who put it there, it could be booby-trapped.”

Bus managed a halfhearted smile. “That’s why I keep you around.” He gestured towards the CD player. “I’m guessing you have much more experience with booby-traps than I do. You tell me.”

The voice, supremely ignorant of the circumstances, continued its droning:
“...the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake...”

Lee gave the big man a humorless smirk and leaned forward with extreme caution. He shined the flashlight first around the immediate area of his feet, then lit up the patch of overgrown grass. When he saw nothing to alarm him he stepped forward and peered down into the nest of grass, working the flashlight around at different angles.

“
...the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude...”

Lee let out a long breath and relaxed a bit. Then he knelt down and stabbed the top of the CD player with his finger. The black cover popped open and the disembodied voice went silent. Underneath, a white disk spun madly at first, and then came to a gradual stop. Lee reached his hand in and plucked the CD from the tray, looking at the title and reading aloud: “Moby Dick by Herman Mellville. It’s an audiobook.”

Bus’s face was made of granite. “Hilarious.”

Lee shook his head. “I don’t think it was a joke.”

Miller chimed in, pointing to the neatly clipped ends of the chain links. “Pretty sure someone cut their way through this...looks like bolt cutters.” Bus regarded Miller with a dubious look, to which Miller responded, drably, “I wasn’t always the upstanding citizen I am now.”

“
Milo?” Lee suggested.

Bus crossed his arms. “I don’t see who else would be interested in fucking with us, and given our recent tiff, I think that’s a pretty good deduction.”

“
Why not just attack us?” Josh finally spoke.

Lee offered a possible answer. “Because a day attack is too easily defended and they know they can’t be out in the woods at night because of the infected. So they use the infected. Cut a hole in the fence. Put a CD player with just enough volume to attract the infected, but not get noticed by us.”

“
Kind of clever if you think about it.” Bus stared grimly out at the dark woods. “Audiobook just sounds like some guy talking. Music would have caught our attention.”

Everyone that had survived up to this point seemed to know that the infected had nearly superhuman hearing at night when they became more active. Lee had to assume that because of this, Camp Ryder enforced noise discipline at night. Even at the low volume it had been set, the CD player had probably been the loudest noise coming out of the camp, though it probably would have gone unnoticed by regular ears or dismissed as a quiet family discussion.

Lee stood up and stepped to Bus’s side. “I think maybe you should tell me about Milo.”

Bus nodded, then pointed to Miller and Josh. “You two patch up that fence. Only one of you working at a time, the other keep watch. Don’t let anyone else sneak in. I’ll send someone else down to help you.” Bus turned to Lee. “Walk with me.”

***

The two men walked through the darkness, their flashlights casting a dull glow off the ground before them and just barely illuminating their tired faces. Most everyone had gone back to their makeshift homes, but a few stragglers still made their way through the dark. Unlike the deep silence of early morning, there was still a whisper of excitement: quiet voices echoing out of wood and tin shacks, holding furtive conversations. Lee had to wonder how many other infected were in the area to hear those barely audible whispers?

Lee looked up at the sky and saw the faint glimmer of dawn to the east, or perhaps it was his imagination. It wasn’t until you spent time outside of the comfort of civilization that you began to realize why people in ages past feared the night. The night was long, it was uncomfortable, and it was dangerous. The dawn marked the end of the dark misery and the return of warmth and safety.

“
You know what time it is?” Lee looked briefly at Bus.

“
About four in the morning.”

Lee felt his heart sink. The light to the east was just his imagination after all. Dawn was two long hours away and there would be no sleeping after this. The pain in Lee’s back was beginning to catch up to him.

A dark figure strode up to them as they crossed the center of camp. All Lee could see was the figure’s right side, illuminated by the cold blue light of an LED lantern. As the figure approached, it raised the lantern up to eye-level and Lee recognized the pursed face and the balding dome of his head, washed out and pale in the glow. The angle of the light cast shadows that made his face look weirdly severe.

Lee thought he remembered Miller calling the man “Bill.”

He was the one who had resisted bringing them back to camp, only to be convinced by Lee’s arguments and Miller’s pleading to give them a chance. He was of average height, and probably average weight before he had been forced to ratchet down on his belt during these lean times. He was probably in his forties and going bald on top, with a ring of wiry gray-brown hair. Overall, his body language and his facial expression communicated to Lee that he was not a pleasant person to be around.

“
Bus.” He nodded to his superior with respect then turned a somewhat disdainful eye on Lee. “Are you supposed to be up? I thought Doc wanted you recuperating.”

Lee was about to respond, but Bus cut him off, and Lee was grateful. He was too tired to argue. With a dismissing wave of one meaty hand, Bus said, “Harper, we have a problem. Captain Harden is just helping me out, and then I will let him go straight back to bed.”

The man’s cold silence said enough.

Lee quirked his eyebrows. “So is it Bill or Harper?”

“
Bill Harper,” he said with a grumble. “Miller’s the only one that calls me Bill. Everyone else calls me Harper.”

Lee nodded. “Harper it is.”

Bus led the trio towards the Ryder building. The larger structure towered over the shantytown like a castle amongst the villagers’ mud huts. It was a two-story cement structure with very few windows that Lee could see. Purely industrial, with very little to beautify it. Lee wasn’t sure what it had been used for prior to the arrival of its current occupiers, but he immediately began looking for its strong points, its weak points, and how it could be improved as a defensive location. If a firefight occurred, the thin walls of the shanties would provide very little protection. This building would have to be their defense.