Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (16 page)

My resolve vanishes. I don’t want
to
die,
I just want to be with her. My body conveys
the message by trembling all the more fiercely. After a moment, our lips part,
but our foreheads remain pressed against each other as we both start crying. I
place a hand on the side of her face and caress it.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I
didn’t mean it.”

“I know that. You’re a bad liar,
Kip. That’s why I love you.”

I want to respond, but I heave at
a sudden onslaught of pain. She catches me and lowers me to the ground.

“Your eye,” she says. “I’ll take
care of it. Just breathe, let your muscles relax.”

She goes for her pack and digs
out a handkerchief and a tube of anti-bacterial ointment. She spreads the ointment
over the handkerchief and gets to work wrapping it around my head to cover my
right eye.

“Get up,” she says.

“No,” I tell her.

My voice is soft and calm.
There’s no use arguing. I silently tell my father that I know exactly how he
felt when I went for that medicine. Why bother?

“Please,” Melanie says, her eyes
pleading. “Don’t give up.”

“I’m—done,” I manage to
say.

She throws herself over me.

“I don’t want you to die. I don’t
want to be without you.”

I push her away and look down at
my chest.

“The gun,” I say.

Sobbing uncontrollably now, Melanie
nods and says, “Okay.”

She pulls the 9mm out of my chest
holster and stands over me. I raise a hand to pause her for a second as I push
myself up to my knees. A sharp ache and a spell of dizziness nearly force me
back down, but I hold steady and look at her, shivering.

“Pull the slide,” I tell her.
“Don’t be scared.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod gravely at her. “I’ll slow
you down.”

“No you won’t. I can—”

“Stop. This is how it is.”

Melanie nods again before yanking
back the slide.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m luckier than
anyone.”

“I’m glad I met you. I’ll never
forget you. And—and I love you.”

My heart breaks. I look down at
the weeds and close my eyes against a surge of hot tears.

“I love you, too,” I tell her.

Melanie never fires.

Instead of a gunshot, I hear the low
rumble of an engine.

My left eye shoots open. I look
up at Melanie, feeling like I’ve awoken out of a nightmare. She swings the
pistol in the direction of the warehouse. I twist to see what might be there
and my back gives out again. I fall to my stomach, gritting my teeth in anger.

“What is that?” she says.

“I don’t know,” I say between
grunts. “But get down.”

She drops to one knee. The engine
noise grows louder.
It’s coming from farther up the road that
leads out of the industrial park—a battered truck engine
,
it sounds like
. My uncle Frank had an old pickup that made a
noise just like it.

“It’s a truck,” I say. “I’m
almost sure of it.”

The rumbling dies down until it
cuts off completely, followed by the thin squeal of brakes as the vehicle comes
to a full stop.

I can barely see anything. From
down here, my view is blocked by a tangled mess of brambles between
me and the parking lot
. Crouching would solve the problem,
but my back screams at me to stay put.

“Can you see anything?” I ask
Melanie.

She rises into a crouch and gazes
out at the lot.

“No, nothing at all. Not even
virals
.”

I let out an impatient sigh. Who
knows what it could mean for us? The people in that truck could be killers or
saviors.

I crane my neck to get a better
view, but all I see is the black smoke billowing out of the warehouse’s busted upper
windows. A plume of it escapes the hatch to form a dull smear across the sky.
The building is still standing, but it looks oddly bent; I doubt it’ll be standing
a month from now.

If I extend my neck a few more
inches, I can look through a narrow slit in the brambles that allows for a
limited view of the building’s far corner and a slice of the parking lot.
Several seconds go by in which I don’t see or hear anything out of the
ordinary, until finally something appears.

An infected man comes stumbling
around the corner wearing a coat of flames, arms swinging around his smoking
torso like he’s trying to clear the air of insects. A normal person would have
dropped to the ground and rolled. Not this guy; obviously confused, he makes a
series of irrational and erratic motions, like he’s stone drunk instead of on
fire.

Seconds go by. How is it that he
doesn’t fall?

A rifle goes off. Melanie and I
shudder at the sound.

Still covered in flames, the
infected man lunges as if an invisible leash around his neck has been yanked.
He falls flat on his face in a burst of smoke.

“Raiders,” I say. “But
why—”

Melanie cuts me off. “Kip, I’m
going to carry you. Let’s go.”

“No, wait.”

I can’t turn away just yet. There
is still a mystery to solve.

What kind of raider would waste
ammo on an infected person already on the verge of death? And why would they
stick around when it’s obvious only a miracle could have saved any supplies that
might have been inside the warehouse?

Unless the good guys have
arrived, and shooting the flaming man was a mercy kill.

“I need to see who it is,” I tell
her.

The next minute is torture. Who’s
around that corner? Why are they taking so long to appear? Maybe they’re trying
the side door, but that doesn’t make sense. The inside is clearly destroyed.
All they can expect to find in there is smoke and debris.

“What if it’s raiders?” Melanie
says. “A whole truck full of them?”

“The truck,” I say. “We might be
able to take it.”

“You mean kill them? With the
condition you’re in?”

The engine starts again with a
rumble.

“
Shhh
…”
I motion for her to get down.

Through the narrow slit in the
brambles, I watch as something big appears from around the corner. It inches
slowly into the lot. Even though all I see are isolated details—a curved
metal plate, a muddy headlight,
a side mirror
above a
dent in the door—I know enough to confirm my fear. The vehicle is a
battered, dust-covered truck with a snowplow attached to the front, and it’s
about to drive right over the corpse of the infected man.

I flinch at the sound of bones crunching
beneath the wheels.

“Oh my God,” Melanie whispers.

My neck cramps up. I lower my
head and slip out the clamshell mirror. I snap it open with one hand and lift
it to catch a glimpse of the parking lot.

I’m just in time. As the truck crawls
into view, I see a dark, hunched figure in the driver’s seat, a passenger’s
seat that is thankfully empty, and a burly black man standing in the back. He
leans against the roof and holds a hunting rifle.

My initial thought is that I’m
looking at raiders, but that assessment quickly changes when I see the cargo
being transported in the truck’s bed.

People are sitting against the
sides, heads bowed in misery. They look to be all female, but as I twist the
mirror to follow their movement, I catch sight of a man’s graying head.

Suddenly, Melanie grabs my arm
and pulls it down.

“They might see the reflection,”
she says.

“Good call.”

I ponder what their arrival
means. Unlike raiders, these men didn’t come here to gather supplies. If that were
the case, they would have taken off by now, uninterested in a fiery wreck. These
men in the truck are seeking something else.

Melanie stares at my face. I slide
the mirror into its pouch, avoiding her questioning look. The last thing I want
is for her to panic.

“What did you see?” she asks me.

“Melanie, whatever happens, you
stay down. Promise me.”

“Kip, who are they?”

I hesitate. “Slavers.”

Her face crumples in a look of
terror. “Oh, Jesus. Oh my God.”

“
Shhh
… Just
stay down.”

“But they know someone is here.
The smoke…”

I know what she’s thinking.
Someone had to light the warehouse on fire, after all.

There might still be hope, though.

“Not if they think the fire
killed them,” I say. “If they think everyone was inside, they’ll go in, or
leave.”

Melanie finds no relief in my
words. She looks away, shaking her head slowly. I want to put a hand on her
back and tell her they’ll be gone soon, but even I don’t believe that. Until
now, the only thugs we’ve had to deal with are raiders, who know only three
things: how to steal, rape, and kill.

Slavers
,
on the other hand, are
a different breed
.

They’re like those people that try to build utopias in the mountains,
my father had explained to me once.
Except they don’t recruit doctors or carpenters.
They’re not interested in rebuilding
society or living a long and healthy life. All they care about is satisfying
their animal urges while doing the least amount of work possible. The
unfortunate souls they take back to their camps become slaves—old men who
can work without posing a threat; old women who can plant gardens, cook, and wash
their clothes; young girls they keep for pleasure. That, my dear son, is why
slavers don’t go out on supply runs, because supplies are temporary and finite.
But people are the gift that keeps on giving.

I recall those words—
the gift that keeps on giving
—as I
stare at the pistol in Melanie’s hands. Should those men find us, they will
shoot me on sight, no questions asked. But Melanie they’ll keep, feeding off
her youth and energy for only God knows how many years or decades.

“We’ll kill them,” I say. “Give me
the gun.”

She hands it over.

“You can’t shoot them from here,
though,” she says. “The trees.”

I believe her, but I look for a
line of sight anyway. My lower back is still a knot of pain and stiffness. Lifting
myself into a crouched position is too risky—my back might give out
again—but I might have a clear line of sight through a path that lies
between us and the back corner of the parking lot, where I can see some of the
red tanks.

“Right there,” I say, gesturing toward
it with a thrust of my chin.

Melanie studies the narrow space.

The truck is still moving. I can
tell not just by the quiet rumble of the engine, which could simply be idling,
but
by the constant, quiet sound of wheels crunching along
the pavement. My guess is they plan on turning in a wide, slow arc so the guy
with the rifle can scan the surrounding woods from his elevated position.

“I need them to keep driving
forward.”

“All the way to the back?” Melanie
says. “What if they turn around?”

I lift the 9mm just high enough
to answer her question. The look she gives me in response tells me she thinks
I’m crazy.

We stare at each other, listening
to the truck crunching toward the back of the lot. I aim down the length of the
path. Maybe I can shoot the driver while he’s in the act of
turning—assuming he enters my line of sight.

But that isn’t going to happen.
Melanie places her hand on my arm and gently lowers it.

“What are doing?” I ask her.

She slips the bow off her
shoulders and sets it aside, then reaches back to gather all of her arrows into
one hand. She sets those aside as well.

“Melanie, don’t move,” I tell her
in a fierce whisper.

I reach out to grab her, but I
end up closing my fingers around empty air. Melanie is already on her feet. Within
seconds, she’s standing at the edge of the parking lot, in view of the men in
the truck—a healthy teenage girl with her hands up in clear surrender,
not a weapon in sight, giving herself to a pair of men that might even be worse
than the Colonel and his merry band of killers.

I want to shout at her to run,
just run away, as fast as she can. But I keep silent. The man with the rifle has
spotted her and has her in his sights. He could easily shoot me the moment I
make a move. Then Melanie would truly be screwed, as my gun is the only chance
she has.

She continues moving along the
edge of the parking lot toward the back corner, and I watch as the truck makes
a sharp turn and starts driving straight toward Melanie.

This might actually work.

I aim the pistol at the space in
front of Melanie. With a roar of its shaky engine, the old Dodge lurches across
the lot, coming to a stop almost where I need it to. Ignoring the pain in my
back, I crawl on elbows and knees to get a better view, but not far enough to risk
exposure.

“Hold it!” a man shouts. “Stop
right there!”

Melanie freezes mid-step.

“Don’t hurt me,” she says,
lifting her arms higher.

I crane my neck to see around the
tree trunk that’s in my way. The black guy with the dreadlocks leans over the truck’s
roof, aiming his hunting rifle at Melanie. The weapon is dirty, with a worn
stock, and his technique is utterly flawed—rather than tilt his head inward
to sight along the barrel’s length, he tilts it away.

The driver-side door creaks open
and slams shut. The driver appears from around the side of the truck opposite
me, taking careful but confident steps toward Melanie as he tucks a shiny revolver
into the back of his pants. He’s a fleshy, orange-bearded man with a protruding
gut and a perfectly
bald head
. This tells me he’s from
a camp where shaving—and its inevitable waste of water—is a habit
instead of a luxury.

He wears a dark blue, plaid shirt
that appears to be clean and is tucked into an equally fresh pair of jeans. His
boots are muddy but intact. As he approaches Melanie, he grabs his belt around
the sides and lifts his pants in a manly gesture. This is a guy who grooms
himself and takes care of his clothes as if the Outbreak never
happened—as if survival were not the most urgent matter.