Aftermath (30 page)

Milo stood, his voice cold now. “Fine. I hate that you forced me into this situation. I wish we could have worked something out.”

Lee matched his tone. “We can’t work anything out.”

“
Noted.” Milo spun on his heels and strode for the door.

Lurching from a dark shadow, Doc tried to grab his arm. “Where’s Nicole? Where is she?”

Milo jerked away from him and backhanded him in the face. Lee noticed for the first time the bloody bandaging wrapped around Doc’s left hand and wondered what was missing underneath all of that. A giant man stepped in and threw Doc to the floor, and then there was the distinct sound of duct tape being pulled from the roll, and Doc’s hands were secured with tape behind his back, lying facedown just a few feet in front of Lee.

Doc didn’t resist, and he didn’t look at Lee. His face was covered with stringy hair, so that Lee couldn’t see his eyes. He just kept mumbling to himself, droning on and asking incessantly for whoever this Nicole lady was. All the while, Milo stood and watched with a vacant stare. When the men were finished restraining Doc, Milo nudged his arm with the toe of one of his boots.

“
Doc.” Milo sounded far away. “I take no pride in this, but I’ve been using you for the last few weeks. Nicole guaranteed your cooperation, and you were such an enormous help to us, that I simply didn’t want to lose you. But I suppose all good things must come to an end.” Milo bent over Doc’s prostrate form. “Come on, now. Surely you suspected. Pretty girl like that, in with a bunch of low-lifes like Big G here. What did you think was going to happen?”

It seemed as though the life had left Doc.

He remained as still as a corpse on the floor.

Milo patted Doc on the back. “Yes, I’m sure you knew already. You just didn’t want to admit it. I think it was Big G that had her last, and I’m sure he would tell you that she was...well, she was probably too fucked up on pills to remember much of anything. Or feel much of anything. So I hope you can take some comfort in that.”

Then Milo turned and cast a smile and wink at Lee, as though they were old college pals, and the desecration of Nicole was just another good time to reminisce about. Huddled in the doorway, some faces that Lee didn’t recognize stared on in vague amusement, while others like Shumate and Javier stared uncomfortably at the ground. Doc simply breathed slow and steady breaths and didn’t say anything. He sounded hollow.

“
Ah, well.” Milo shook his head in disappointment and walked through the door, leaving Lee and Doc alone.

CHAPTER 17: FIRE

In the stillness of the room, there was only the sound of Doc’s breathing.

Against the wall, Lee cringed, waiting for that moment to come crashing down on Doc and squeeze the screams out of him. Lee didn’t know who this Nicole was, Doc had never mentioned her before, but it was obvious she was important to him. After long minutes, Lee realized that the emotion wasn’t going to come. Doc didn’t start crying, or yelling, or sobbing, or anything else besides continuing to take those long, deep breaths. Gradually, even those subsided until he just laid there, face pressed against the floor.

Just existing.

“
Doc,” Lee murmured.

He gained no response. Not even a movement.

“
Doc,” Lee tried again. “Who’s Nicole?”

Doc budged finally, rolling onto his left side so that he now faced Lee, his head lolling. His eyes were lost in the darkness, just sunken orbs. A clump of his hair stuck to his lips and stirred as the air moved between them.

“
You’ve gotta tell me…” Lee began, and almost missed the whisper.

Had it not been for the slight movement of his lips, Lee wasn’t sure he would have registered anything at all. But what he did register didn’t make sense.

“
What?” Lee leaned forward. “What did you say?”

Doc’s eyelids fluttered closed as he gathered the strength to form a few words. When his eyes opened again there was a glistening there in the dark hollows. “It was me. I did it. It was all me.”

“
I…Uh…” Lee shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “I don’t understand.”

“
Because I thought they had her, Captain.” Doc’s voice became louder, more insistent. “I did. I thought they had her, and I thought that if I didn’t do what he wanted me to do that they would kill her. He promised he wouldn’t kill her. He promised.”

“
What did you do?” Lee asked, warily.

Doc waggled his head and rolled onto his back so he was staring at the ceiling. “He told me to do it, Captain. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t mean for it to turn out like that, but it did. It did, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop anything.” He suddenly spoke so forcefully that spittle flew up from his lips: “I couldn’t save Kara! And I couldn’t fucking save Nicole!”

“
Jesus,” Lee said with dawning comprehension.

“
I cut the fuckin’ fence, man.” Doc’s face twisted up. “I cut the fence, and I put the CD player there. I thought—I really fucking
thought
—that I was gonna get you. I was gonna take you and your little device at gunpoint and I was going to escape fucking Camp Ryder and bring you back to Milo. And I was gonna save Nicole. That’s what I was gonna do. Save Nicole.”

He cut the fence. He cut the fence because he knew that everyone would gather in the square and no one would see him kidnap me
. But what he planned on doing once he got Lee outside the fence was a mystery. Perhaps some of Milo’s men were waiting nearby for Doc to deliver Lee into their hands.

“
Doc…”

“
But you weren’t there. Nothing happened the way it was supposed to. You got up, like you were fine and you started fighting the infected like you hadn’t just been knocked out for hours and you ruined the whole fucking thing. Fucking ruined it.”

Lee’s voice cut through the mad rambling. “Doc, where’s Josh? What happened to Josh?”

Doc was eerily silent for a long time. Then: “I shot him. I shot him in the gut and I left him on the road. Like an animal. Like roadkill. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I knew that Nicole was dead. I wouldn’t have shot him. I wouldn’t have cut the fence. I wouldn’t have even”—his voice exploded—“COME ON THIS FUCKING TRIP!”

“
Oh my God,” Lee felt a tightness in his gut. “You...”

There was a moment there that Lee pictured it all. He pictured Doc putting a bullet in Josh and watching the kid squirm around and die. He saw the blood, smelled the opened bowels, heard the pathetic screams, all like he had been standing there when it happened. And through it all, in his mind’s eye he could see Doc, watching but doing nothing. Doc, the weakling. Doc, the coward. Doc, the complainer. The one who convinced everyone to let him come on the trip and the whole time was scamming them. The one who killed Josh and gave all those hard-earned supplies to their enemies. The liar. The traitor.

Doc.

But Lee found any further words were caught in his throat. There was such a tidal wave of thoughts that he just sat there with his mouth open, trying to find the language to express himself but couldn’t, as though he’d suddenly been struck mute. Through the hazy shock of disbelief—or simply not wanting to believe—it began to make sense to him. Little details began popping back up in his mind, like wreckage from a sunken ship that floated to the surface. Doc’s insistence that the people of Camp Ryder would eventually blame him for Kara’s death. How eager he was to come with them on the trip, but how unwilling he seemed once he was there. How he volunteered to accompany Lee into Smithfield. Lee had to wonder if there’d ever been a genuine moment between the two of them, or had every decision he’d made been for the purpose of getting Lee to walk into a trap?

Two competing notions fought for control.

The first was pure hatred. The sting of betrayal, the humiliation at realizing how utterly duped he had been and the nearly all-consuming desire to lash out because of that. The childlike instinct to repay mental pain with physical pain that turned into the very adult will to stomp Doc’s head into a pulpy mess.

The second was a kind of morbid curiosity. The never ending desire to know WHY something happened. To seek some fact that might explain it all away. Something that might absolve Lee of any responsibility. Something that Lee could point to and say, “See? Anyone would have been tricked by that. It’s not just me. It’s not my fault.”

Instead, what eked out was simply, “How?”

Doc didn’t ask for any clarification. He just started talking again. “We went to my parents’ house when all of this happened. We were both students at Duke. But my parents were gone by the time we got there. I think they’d already been evacuated. I think everyone had already been evacuated. So we just stayed there, not quite sure what to do, thinking the government would come back for us. Thinking that someone would come to save us.

“
But the only people that came were Milo’s people. They knew we were in there, even though we hid and stayed as quiet as we could. I think they’d been watching us. Or maybe just Nicole.” His voice fought back a break. “When they came in after us, I didn’t fight. I should have done something. Anything. But I just stood there with my hands up. I was sure they just wanted food or water, or maybe they were just going to take my parents’ things. I kept telling them to take what they wanted and leave us, but they weren’t interested in any of the stuff.

“
I remember Milo walking in and I was so terrified. The look in his eyes...he was smiling, but not in his eyes. They scared me, what I saw in them. And then he was looking at Nicole. He...he would run his fingers through her hair. I don’t remember how it happened, but Milo found out we were medical students and I could see he was thinking about something. Then he had his men take Nicole out to that big green Hummer and I could hear her screaming from inside the house.

“
And Milo described Camp Ryder to me. He told me where it was. He told me that they would take me in because they needed a doctor, but that I would be working for him, in exchange for keeping Nicole alive. So they drove me to Camp Ryder, and dropped me off a mile from the gate. I was so scared of walking alone, but all I could think about was Nicole. When I came to the gate, Bus was there. He took me in. Fed me and gave me water. I told them about my medical training, and they were so excited. They were so happy to have someone to help them. But I wasn’t there to help them. I was helping myself. Trying to help Nicole.”

Lee took a deep breath and forced his voice flat. “How long ago did you get to Camp Ryder?”

“
I don’t know. Two weeks ago? Maybe a little more. I lose track of time...”

“
But Milo must have continued to talk to you.”

“
Yeah.” Doc sounded far away. “There’s a tree that grows against the fence. He would leave instructions on pieces of paper and hide it under a rock at night. Or at least
someone
would. That’s how me maintained contact with me. That’s how he told me to watch out for you.”

“
So, this whole time...”

“
I’ve been trying to trap you,” Doc nodded his head. “I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. But they didn’t give me a choice. They set up a roadblock to catch us on the way back from the bunker. I was supposed to have you there by 12 o’clock today, or they were going to kill Nicole. That’s what they said, anyway.”

“
How did he know about me?” Lee demanded.

Doc made a small shrugging motion. “I don’t know. He never said. Just said to keep my eyes out for a soldier, accompanied by a female and two kids. He said he wanted to speak with you. That you had access to supplies. But he never said how he found all of that out.”

“
Had to be my bunker,” Lee mumbled to himself.

Doc looked at him. “I know you probably want to kill me.”

Lee stared back at him, considering that for a long moment. Did he really want Doc to die? It was a difficult question to answer. Lee knew that he would not feel bad for Doc if they blew his head off right then and there. He knew watching Doc die would only leave him with a sense of fulfilled justice. He had murdered Josh in cold blood, whatever the reasons might be, and he was also responsible for Kara’s death. A death that he allowed Lee to take the blame for. And even though he had killed two people, he couldn’t find it in himself to fight when they needed him during their engagement at the roadblock the previous day, freezing up and standing there. Worthless.

No, Lee had no great love for Doc. Ten minutes ago, he was still an ally, albeit an annoying one. Now he was just some sad, broken creature, and for all his righteous anger of only moments ago, Lee felt that pent up fiery feeling in his chest beginning to deflate. He wanted to be angry with Doc, but found himself simply disgusted instead.

Lee shook his head. “No. I don’t want to kill you. Because you’re going to help me.”

Doc made a drowsy sound. “I don’t care anymore.”

Lee worked his way up onto his feet. “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to help me get out of here if it’s the last thing you do,” he hissed, spittle flying from his teeth. “You fucking owe it to me, Doc, and you owe it to Josh and Kara and everyone else at Camp Ryder that you’ve fucked over with your bullshit.”

Lee crossed to him and pushed Doc into a sitting position with his foot. “Sit up,” he commanded. “Quit rolling around and feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody did this shit to you, you made this situation yourself. Now you have to deal with it. At least be useful for something.”