Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (5 page)

The shot sends a jolt through my
entire body, but it’s nothing compared to what it does to the man. He jolts
upright with a gasp, paws at the wound, and starts to spin, his mouth gaping
open in a silent scream.

I put another bullet in his
skull. Then I do the same to the woman, though it’s clear she isn’t getting
back up again. Another glimpse of the arrow sticking through her head reminds
me I’m not alone in the room.

I swing around, pistol raised,
and fall instinctively to one knee in the case the archer has loosed another
arrow at me. But this mystery archer is actually a young woman, and though she
aims what appears to be an expensive bow at me, I can tell by the guarded,
fearful look in her eyes that she doesn’t want to shoot.

I lower the pistol. The room goes
quiet except for the sound of our breaths. I’m sure every infected within a
hundred yards heard the gunfire and is making a beeline toward the SuperMart. The
girl’s eyes lock with mine, and I know she’s thinking the same thing.

And yet, despite the urgency of
our situation, all we can do is stare at each other. I don’t know what to
think. Armed with a small pack, an arrow quiver, and a utility belt, she wears
a coverall almost identical to mine, except hers is Navy Blue whereas mine is
black. There’s no doubt she’s a trained survivalist, but the way her nostrils
flare with each breath, and the unblinking fear in her eyes tell me she’s
having trouble accepting this situation.

“Kip?” she says. “Is that really
you?”

I’m stunned.

“How—how do you—”

The words catch in my throat.
Suddenly I’m convinced this is some sort of trick. I’ve heard stories over the
years—at first on the radio and then from my father—of raiders who
enlist or force young women to lure unsuspecting survivors into traps.

But even if that’s the case, how in
the hell does she know my name?

“Relax,” the girl says. “We went
to school together.”

I loosen up a bit. Maybe if she
wasn’t so grimy, I would have been able to recognize her. Now that I think
about it, I’ve seen her face
before,
only it looks
slightly different because of the weight she’s lost in the past several years.
Her name is Marie or something like it.

“Peltham High School,” I say. “You
were in the class below me.”

She nods slightly, eyes locked on
mine. I wonder why she doesn’t blink.

“Can I trust you?” she says.

“I was wondering the same thing.
Marie, right?”

“Melanie.”

She says it quickly with no sign
she’s offended by my slip up. I never knew her in high school, but her name is
familiar—and mine, too, probably—from posters the school drew up
when she and I both ran for president of our respective classes. She was
elected. I wasn’t.

“Melanie, listen to me,” I say. “They’re
coming. The infect—”

“I know, I know. We need to get
out of here. But how?”

“The window,” I say, gesturing to
the hole I cut into the glass. “I have a grappling rope we can use. We’ll
figure out the rest later.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

She hurries past me and climbs
through the window. I can’t help but wonder what makes her trust me so easily.
In a world like this, a guy my age is more likely to be a rapist or a thief
than a normal guy.

“This way,” she says when we’re
on the ground.

I gather the rope and follow her
southward.

South. Even though my house is to
the north.

We crouch-run along Route 1,
using what cover we can find along the way to avoid exposing ourselves. We’re
headed toward a Lubroline station a half-mile away.

“I can’t stay,” I tell Melanie.

“Just be quiet.”

I follow her, shaking my head.
This is so stupid. My father is going to die, and it’ll be my fault, all
because of a girl. How can I be sure she isn’t leading me into a trap?

“Wait,” I say, grabbing her arm
and pulling her into a patch of weeds. They’re tall enough to hide us while we
crouch and face each other.

“Let go of me,” she says.

I release her arm—that old,
familiar fear of overstepping a girl’s boundaries. And yet, out here, a guy in
my situation could be way worse. She doesn’t seem to get that.

“How can you trust me this much?”
I ask her. “We barely know each other. I could be dangerous.”

“If that was true, you wouldn’t
be telling me this.”

I frown at her. “You trusted me
before I said it, though.”

“I can tell you’re not like that,
Kip. You’re a collector, not a raider.”

“A what?”

“A collector. You go out on
supply runs and—”

“Okay, I get it. I’m a collector.
But I’m also heavily armed, and I haven’t seen a girl in three years.”

She seems taken aback by this.
“Oh.”

I’m about to explain when she
cuts me off.

“Well, I haven’t seen a guy in
over two years since my neighbor Artie left his house and never came back. So
I’m in the same boat. What difference does it make?”

Now I’m flat-out suspicious. I’m
a guy carrying knives and guns telling this isolated young woman I might be a
rapist, and she’s either too dumb to realize it, or she’s playing games with
me.

“Tell me you’re not this naïve,”
I say in a harsh whisper, “because
I’m
definitely not. If you’re not the least bit scared of me, then either you’re
too stupid to be out here—no offense—or you’re leading me into a
trap. How do I know
that
station”—I point at the Lubroline—“isn’t hiding three guys with
shotguns who are going to—”

“Go screw yourself,” she throws
back at me. “I just saved your life.”

“And I’m grateful for that,
Melanie. Really, I am. But my dad is going to die of sepsis in less than two
days if I don’t get him the antibiotics in my pack. So it was nice meeting you,
and I hope I didn’t offend you, but I have to go.”

“You’re just going to feed him
pills, huh? How do you know you have the right ones? Are they broad or
narrow-spectrum?”

I’m not surprised she knows this
stuff. It’s
Survivalism
101.

“One of each,” I say, maybe a
little too smugly. “
Nafcillin
and
Vancomycin
.”

“And what are your dad’s
symptoms?”

“He has sepsis.”

“You said that already. But what
did he look like when you left the house?”

I describe all of the important
details, down to his heart rate and the way he was breathing. She nods along
with my words and never rushes me. I notice she has coppery green eyes and a
light dusting of freckles visible beneath the layer of grime on her cheeks.

“Cold and clammy skin,” she says,
repeating my description, “dizziness when you tried to move him to the couch, a
rapid heart rate, breathing rate—I’d say he’s on the verge of septic
shock.”

“What are you, a doctor?”

“No, but my Mom’s a nurse.
Was
, I mean. I live with her and my
sister.”

“What about your dad?”

Her expression hardens, and her
eyes take on a distant look.

“He couldn’t handle it. All this,
I mean.”

She drops her gaze like she’s
ashamed.

“It wasn’t your fault, Melanie.
I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“It’s okay.”

She flashes me a look of
revelation, as if she has just remembered something.

“Your father needs medicine, but
not pills.”

“Huh?” I say stupidly.

“You need to inject the medicine
directly into his blood steam, intravenously, and he’s going to need fluids,
too. Otherwise, his blood pressure will drop, and he’ll go into septic shock.
Then his organs will start to fail—”

“Oh God,” I say, awash suddenly
in self-loathing. “You’re right.”

How could I have been so stupid?

“Kip,” she says, “look at me.”

When I do, all I see is urgency,
and not a trace of pity.

“I can give you what you need to
save him,” Melanie says.

“You have an I.V. set-up?”

She nods. “The one at my house is
broken. I wanted to replace it. But you need it more than I do—and besides,
I won’t be able to get
home until I
fix my bike anyway. That’s more important.”

“What does your bike need?”

“A new chain.”

“You rode a bike out here without
a spare chain?”

“You know what?” she says,
scowling at me. “That’s right. I did. Sort of like how you forgot what sepsis
was and how to treat it.”

I sigh impatiently and look away
at nothing but a soft wall of smelly, bug-infested weeds. Our coveralls are
probably covered in ticks right now. Not that I care the slightest bit about
ticks.

“Let’s go somewhere safe,” I tell
her. “Then we’ll talk about this.”

I lead the way, feeling like a
jerk. But Melanie is right, which makes bumping into her one of the luckiest
breaks I’ve had so far.

The Lubroline station is one of
those quick-serve, oil-changing facilities where you drive through one side and
out the other ten minutes later. A small building made of brick and glass, it
looks like the last place a rational person—especially a trained
survivalist—would use as shelter. All six of its garage doors are busted,
and the floor is covered in a broad carpet of broken glass.

“It’s so I can hear if someone’s up
here,” Melanie says. “Follow my steps.”

Up here?

I place my boots in the clean
spots on the floor where Melanie has cleverly made a winding trail.

There’s a row of panels built
into the concrete floor, which I imagine the technicians once slid open to
access the car’s undercarriage. A raider with a crowbar and enough time on his
hands could probably crack one of these open without much difficulty and find
the space below, which I’m sure is where she’s been hiding.

“Those are sealed,” Melanie says,
thrusting her chin to indicate the nearest one.

“Good,” I say. “I was going to
ask.”

She whirls on me, gracefully avoiding
the glass shards. Maybe she was a ballerina once.

“Do you think all girls are
stupid,” she says, “or just me?”

I lift my hands and motion for
her to slow down. “All I said was—”

“I don’t care what you said. It’s
in your tone, your body language. I saved your life, and the only thanks I get
is accusations that I’m leading you into a trap, or subtle remarks meant to
make me feel stupid.”

Her voice reverberates inside the
building.

“Keep your voice down,” I whisper.

“See? There you go again,” she
says, lowering it only slightly. “I
know
that.”

I feel like gritting my teeth.
She’s going to get us killed.

“Fine,” I say in a grating
whisper, “go ahead and scream at me. It’s obvious you want an audience. How
about a horde of infected? Will that do it for you?”

She looks away, cheeks rippling
as she clenches her teeth. The first girl I’ve seen in three years, and she
totally hates me.

“Do you want my help or not?” she
asks me in a quiet, stern voice.

“What I want is that I.V. setup
so I can save my father’s life. You want to trade for a bike chain, that’s
fine. You’re lucky I don’t plan on just taking it from you.”

Her next motions are so swift
that I don’t comprehend what she’s doing until an arrow with a sharp metal tip
is staring me in the face, tightly drawn against the bowstring.

It took her two seconds, tops, to
ready the weapon. Her boots never even crunched the glass.

Mine definitely make a crunching
sound as I take a cautious step back, arms flying up to defend my face.

“What is your fucking problem?”
she says.

“
Melanie
. Will you just relax?”

The arrowhead is a well-crafted
point of glistening steel with ridges along the blades meant to give it teeth.
The way she yanked it out of her quiver and nocked it—I didn’t even know
that was possible, except in the movies.

Maybe she’s killed guys like me
before. Why not? It obvious this isn’t her first time out here, which is more
than I can say for myself.

She needs my help, though.
There’s no denying that.

“I know you won’t shoot me, Melanie,”
I say. “That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

“Then why are you being like
this? What
are
you afraid of?”

Her bow is trembling now, the
arrow still nocked against a string, bent at an angle that could end my life.
Faced with the possibility of dying, though I don’t fear it at all, I tell her
a truth I’m just beginning to understand.

“I’m afraid of what you might
mean to me, when this is over.”

I’ve always excelled at
embarrassing myself around women.

Flirting with them at parties,
working with them in study groups, even chatting with them online were all just
opportunities for me to screw up.

Even female teachers at school
were a struggle. Peltham High had a few attractive ones, and I was always such
a mumbling kiss-ass around them that a couple of jocks once started a rumor about
how they had caught me taking pictures of my English Lit teacher, Mrs. Russell,
during class. (It wasn’t true. My cellphone didn’t even have a camera.) Nothing
ever came of it except a few jokes, but for the rest of that year, I never took
out my cellphone in any class taught by a woman.

The worst was when I had
sketched, then framed a portrait of Hailey Bushnell—my girlfriend during
the last four months of sophomore year—and given it to her as a birthday
gift along with a bouquet of roses. We continued dating for the next three
weeks, but she never mentioned it until she broke up with me at the start of
summer. In her words, the drawing was an example of how “intense” I was about
our relationship. She said it made her notice “little things” about me, like how
I always looked in her eyes after kissing her, like I was “counting our unborn
children.”