“How about this?” Frank said and held up a fishing net. It was big enough to hold a few gallons of fish. The net was attached to a hoop two or so feet in diameter at the end of a six-foot-long pole. Perfect.
“Grab two of those,” Hughes said. “And we need some more rope and a roll of duct tape. Can’t forget the duct tape. Might not make it back without duct tape.”
He saw something else that caught his eye. Bear spray. He had never heard of bear spray before, but it sounded promising, and when he read the label he knew it was exactly what they needed.
The stuff was the same kind of pepper spray used against human assailants. Hughes once bought his wife a small can the size of his finger for her key chain when she was still able and willing to leave the house. The bear spray, though, came in a can the size of a beer bottle. It’s industrial-grade mace, more or less, and according to the label, the entire can empties in ten seconds if you hold down the button. This shit will drop anything with a respiratory system for at least a half-hour.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “where have you been all my life?”
“What did you find?” Frank said.
“Big-ass can of mace.” Hughes held it up. “For bears.”
“Not just for bears,” Frank said and grinned. “So we have everything we need now?”
“We have everything we need.”
They returned to the boat and shoved off. After paddling out 100 feet or so, Hughes raised his Mossberg in the air and fired a single explosive shot, one that would be heard for miles in every direction.
Then they waited.
* * *
It no longer made any difference if Kyle and Hughes still planned to shoot Parker. His back would kill him first. The way they’d tied him up forced him to lean all the way forward, and he’d been stuck in that position for at least twenty-four hours.
“Help!” he moaned. “You guys have to loosen me up! You’re torturing me!”
It really was torture. He wasn’t exaggerating. The human body can’t be contorted like that for such a long time. If they ever planned on letting him go, they damn well better get him comfortable, fast, or he’d turn homicidal again.
He never should have tried to kill Kyle, but he was beginning to wish he’d succeeded. Living with guilt and suspicion was far preferable to living with guilt, imprisonment, torture, and the threat of execution or exile.
He heard a boat engine approaching in the distance. Apparently they’d left and were now coming back. Was that why they hadn’t answered? Maybe they’d let him go now. Or at least let him know what in the hell they were planning.
* * *
Kyle heard Hughes and Frank on the gravel pathway outside. He opened the door and stepped onto the porch. Hughes carried his shotgun in his right hand and a brown paper bag in his left. Frank followed.
“Did you get it?” Kyle said.
“We got it,” Frank said. “It was a bitch and a half and we damn near got killed, but we got it.”
Annie joined Kyle on the porch. She crossed her arms and hugged herself to keep warm. “Where is it?”
“Still down at the dock,” Hughes said.
They left it down at the dock? Unguarded? “It that a good idea?”
“It’s not
going
anywhere,” Frank said.
“I don’t want to bring it up until we’re ready,” Hughes said. “Too dangerous.”
Kyle heard faint yells from Parker upstairs next door. “My back is killing me! Loosen my ropes! Please!”
Everybody ignored him.
“How did you get it?” Kyle said.
“With
great
caution and care,” Hughes said.
“You get the other stuff?” Kyle said.
“Right here in the bag.” Hughes held up the brown paper bag.
“Well, come on in then,” Annie said. “We should get started.”
They went back inside. Kyle closed the front door behind them.
Annie sat on the couch and rolled her sleeve up over her elbow. Hughes took several syringes out of the bag. Kyle winced. This was not going to be pleasant.
“There are all kinds of goodies in that pharmacy,” Hughes said. “I picked up some narcotic pain meds and some antibiotics. We’ll need both for sure at some point.”
“Maybe we should give some of those pain meds to Parker,” Annie said.
“Hell no,” Kyle said.
“Why not?” Annie said.
“Because fuck him, that’s why.”
“He’s in pain. You heard him. And it’s only going to get worse.”
“You should take some of those pills. This is going to hurt.”
“I can take it. I’ve been through a lot worse.”
“No. I mean, this is
really
going to hurt. None of us has a clue what we’re doing.”
“I trust you.”
“You want me to do it?”
“Like I said, I trust you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m not a doctor and this isn’t a hospital. Take two of those pills. Hughes, give her some pills, will you?”
Hughes unscrewed the cap on a little orange bottle and gave Annie two pills. She swallowed one without water.
“We should wait a half-hour or so,” Kyle said. “Let that pill start to kick in.”
He picked up one of the syringes.
“How much of my blood do you think we’ll need?” Annie said.
“Enough to fill this whole thing,” Kyle said and tapped the needle tip with his finger.
* * *
Parker drifted in a delirious state made of one part sleep and another part pain. The agony in his lower back remained constant even while he slept. It was part of his body now as if it had always been there and always would be. He even began to make some sort of peace with it. He’d stop resisting if only the pain would stop getting worse.
The door opened downstairs and he snapped to alertness. He reflexively tried to sit up, but of course he could not, not with his wrists yoked to his ankles as if he were chained to the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” he heard Kyle say. “I will never get used to that smell.”
Parker no longer even noticed the smell of the corpse downstairs on the couch. That was the least of his concerns now. Only two things mattered to him anymore. He couldn’t move, and his lower back felt like someone had reached in with a pair of pliers and yanked things out.
He heard several sets of feet on the wooden steps. The whole crew was on its way up there. To let him go? Shoot him? Read him the riot act?
The door opened. Kyle appeared with a syringe in his hand with Annie beside him and Hughes and Frank behind. Hughes had the Mossberg, but he pointed it at the floor.
“We have a job for you,” Kyle said.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” Parker said.
Kyle’s face remained flat. “You mean you’re sorry you didn’t succeed.”
“No,” Parker said, suddenly desperate all over again to have his ties loosened and to feel even the slightest bit of relief in his back. “I snapped. I wasn’t thinking. It could have happened to any of us with all this shit that’s going on.”
“But it didn’t. You’re the only murderer here. But it doesn’t matter anymore because we have a job for you.”
Parker looked again at the syringe in Kyle’s hand. It was filled with dark liquid.
“We debated whether or not to tell you what’s going on,” Kyle said. “I didn’t want to say anything because I don’t think you deserve it, but the others convinced me.”
“Can you please loosen these ropes? Then we can talk. My back is killing me. I can’t stay hunched over like this anymore.”
“Unfortunately for you,” Kyle said, “your job requires you to remain precisely in that position.”
Parker groaned. He had a bad feeling about where this was heading.
“What’s in the syringe?” He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.
“Blood,” Kyle said.
A wave of panic hit him and his entire body seized up. Were the sadistic bastards going to
infect
him?
He pulled against the ropes with everything he had left. “Get me out of here! Let me go and I’ll never bother any of you ever again!”
“Relax,” Kyle said. “This is Annie’s blood.”
Parker settled down, but he could still feel his heart pounding in his chest and the blood rushing in his ears. He was hyperventilating, and it was hard for him to breathe in this position.
“Annie is immune to the virus,” Kyle said.
She was immune? Really? “How do you know?”
“Because I got bit,” Annie said. “Look.” She turned around and lifted her shirt up. Parker saw an obvious human bite mark below her shoulder.
“Jesus,” Parker said. “You got bit and it didn’t affect you? Are you sure you were bitten by one of those things?”
“Oh, it affected me,” she said. “I became one of them.”
Parker didn’t move, but he felt like he fell onto the floor.
“I spent days as one of them before my system defeated the virus. It’s hard to be sure. My memory of that time is vague.”
“Jesus, Annie,” Parker said. “Did you—kill people?”
“I did,” she said and swallowed. “I attacked and killed some of Lane’s crew shortly before he took over the grocery store. He saw the whole thing. That’s why he recognized me. But he couldn’t place me because it never occurred to him that I was infected when he saw my face. He didn’t think anyone could turn back.”
“My God,” Parker said. So that’s why she looked like such hell when Hughes first brought her home. That’s why she was covered in so much blood. She’d bathed in the blood of her victims. “Annie, I’m sorry.”
He shuddered as he tried to imagine her running around as one of those things and hunting people, biting people,
eating
people. Then he paused. “What does this have to do with me? And why is your blood in that syringe?”
“We’re passing Annie’s immunity onto you,” Kyle said. “At least we’re going to try.”
Parker was truly confused now. He thought they were going to punish him. But this wasn’t punishment. This was a gift. They weren’t going to kill him then. There’s no way they’d draw blood from Annie’s arm and inoculate him only to kill him or exile him later. He breathed easier.
“So you’re going to stick that in my arm?” Parker said.
“I’m going to stick this in your arm,” Kyle said. “It’s best you don’t move when I do it. I’m not a doctor. It hurt something fierce when I stuck this in Annie. I’ll try to make it relatively painless even though you don’t deserve it, but it is going to hurt.”
“We’re pretty sure,” Annie said, “that the antibodies in my system are in my blood and that they can be added to yours. So you’ll be immune just like I am. In theory.”
“Have all of you gotten the injection?” Parker said.
Kyle’s face remained flat. Annie looked like she was going to say something, but she hesitated. Hughes shook his head.
Then Annie spoke up. “You’re the first.”
He was the first? That made no sense. He was the bad guy. So why was he first?
“Why?”
“Because we don’t know if it works yet,” Kyle said.
Nobody said anything else. Nobody even looked at him. They just stood there and waited for him to figure it out for himself.
“You motherfuckers,” he said. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“It’s the only way to be sure,” Kyle said and plunged the syringe into Parker’s arm.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Parker wept silently. He no longer cared about the pain in his back, nor about the pain in his arm where Kyle had jammed in the needle. He was one of the last human beings on the face of the earth, yet he had no more value to anyone else than a lab rat.
How long, he wondered, before they brought the next needle in? The one that would infect him. And what would they do with him once the results from their little Nazi experiment came in? If he turned and stayed turned, they’d shoot him. That was clear. But what if he turned back into Parker, like Annie had turned back into Annie? Were they still going to shoot him?
Probably
. Since shooting him was the plan in the first place.
Maybe after he turns, he’ll have enough strength to rip through the ropes and break out of the bedroom. The virus didn’t give those things extra strength, but it did seem to make them less sensitive or concerned about pain, like psychotics hopped up on angel dust. Maybe he could bust his way free and eat Kyle.
He actually laughed at the thought, a horrible grim laugh even though there was nothing funny about it. He didn’t want to eat Kyle. He didn’t want to eat anybody. Yet he laughed at the thought. Perhaps this was the beginning of acceptance.
Acceptance. Yes. He’d have to accept this. It’s not like they gave him a choice. They were going to stick him with an infected needle, and he’d either turn back like Annie did or he wouldn’t. And then they were going to kill him.
He wondered what it would be like after he turns. Would he be aware of what’s happening? Would he remember the person he was before, when he still knew his name and where he had come from? Annie said her memories of that time were vague, which suggested she was still sentient on some level. She wasn’t sleepwalking. Otherwise she wouldn’t remember it.
He hoped he would at least remember his name. Please let him at least remember his name.
The front door downstairs opened and he tensed up. This was it. They were on their way up. He only wished they could wait a little bit longer and give him more time to make peace with the terrible transformation awaiting him.
Then he wondered: Where on earth did they get the fluid for the second injection?
A horrendous racket downstairs. Lots of banging and scraping.
He heard Hughes say, “Grab his hands, Frank!” and Frank said, “I’m trying!”
Grab whose hands? Kyle’s?
Then he heard Kyle’s voice. “Steady. Get it onto the stairs.”
Get what onto the stairs?
Something heavy banged into the wall.
And then something growled.
No.
It couldn’t be.
They wouldn’t.
He heard a new voice he didn’t recognize. It struggled and strained as if it were gagged. Parker’s entire body flushed with red heat.
The commotion reached the top of the stairs, and soon they were outside the bedroom.