“Okay,” Kyle said. “Hughes and I have a hold of it. Frank, open the door.”
Parker heard grunting and snarling. He wanted it to be some sort of animal, but no. He knew what it was.
One of those things.
* * *
Madness and mayhem out in the hallway. Annie stepped back as Kyle, Frank, and Hughes wrestled with the thing they had captured in Eastsound. This one really did look like a thing. Annie felt no kinship or bond with it whatsoever. Not even pity.
It was a male. Maybe thirty years old. It was covered in gore and it stank of a charnel house. Its eyes were like intelligent animal eyes, seeing and focusing but lacking compassion and decency. Its face was red and swollen and puffy. Hughes had stunned it with pepper spray designed to repel grizzly bears, which made it furious and explosive.
Hughes and Frank had placed some kind of fishing net over its upper arms and tied its wrists together behind its back. They covered its mouth with duct tape. It could still kick and head-butt and throw its weight around. It thrashed about so violently, she feared it might get its arms free, rip the tape off its mouth, and start biting.
Annie held the Glock. Her job was to guard that thing while the others tried to control it.
This was not at all what she had in mind. When she said they should inoculate Parker and then infect him, she meant they should inject Parker with the virus, not let one of those things actually bite him. But Kyle insisted—no, he
demanded
—that they do it this way. His sadistic determination frightened her almost as much as this thing did.
Hughes grabbed its bound wrists with one hand and the hair on the back of its head with the other. Kyle and Hughes each managed to hold one of its shoulders. They had it positioned in front of the door like they were going to use it as a battering ram.
It managed to scream even with its mouth taped shut. It sounded human and not at the same time. Parker hollered on the other side of the door, but the thing in the hall made so much noise with its muffled yelling and thrashing that Parker’s screams were hardly even noticeable in the background.
“Annie,” Hughes said. He gripped the thing’s head and held its writhing arms still as best as he could. “I need you to open the door, step out of the way, and then aim that Glock at this creature’s head. We’re going to get it down on the floor in front of Parker and then rip the tape off. Let it bite Parker one time and one time only. Then shoot it. Do not hit any of us and do not hit Parker. You got it?”
She nodded, trembling.
Parker screamed from the other side of the door. Surely he knew by now what was happening.
She reached for the doorknob and the thing lunged at her. It rammed the top of its head into her shoulder and groaned into the tape. She flinched and stepped back.
“Sorry, Annie,” Kyle said.
“Jesus, this thing,” Frank said.
Hughes gripped its hair and pulled back its head. “Okay. You’re clear.”
She reached for the doorknob again, twisted it, flung open the door, and stepped back.
Parker, tied to the chair, strained and thrashed as violently and hysterically as that thing. “You motherfuckers! You’re going to burn for this!”
“Get it down on the floor,” Hughes said and kicked the back of the thing’s knees with his boots. It went down just a few feet from Parker.
Parker’s face was red from the straining. Spittle flew from his mouth. “You’re the most wicked people alive. I never did anything half as bad as what you’re doing right now. Kyle, after I turn, I’m going to rip through these cords and chew off your face.”
Annie tried to aim at the thing’s head, but she couldn’t keep her hands steady and the gun bobbed all over the place.
“Frank,” Hughes said. “Lift Parker’s pants leg. Expose his ankle.”
God, Annie thought. Lifting his pants leg so that creature has something to bite. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. She’d need to shoot that thing if it got loose.
Hughes turned its head sideways, slammed it into the floor, and leaned all his body weight into its back. “Rip off the tape, Frank. Do it
carefully
.”
Parker wept. He seemed too tired and resigned to yell anymore.
Frank tried to yank the tape off the thing’s mouth, but he flinched and pulled back, afraid of losing his fingers—and worse. Unlike Parker, he had not been inoculated. None of the others had yet been inoculated. No one even knew if the inoculation would work.
“Try again, Frank,” Hughes said. “This thing’s head isn’t moving.”
Frank reached toward its face with a shaking hand, grabbed a corner of the tape, pulled, and jumped back. He scrambled six feet backward to get clear of its teeth.
The tape was still over its mouth.
“Damnit, Frank,” Hughes said and ripped the tape off himself in a flourish. He did it so quickly, the squirming thing had no time to react. But now its head was free and its teeth were bared, the virus cocked and loaded, the worst biological weapon the world had ever seen.
Parker jerked as if he was being electrocuted in his chair.
Annie should have known what would happen next, but somehow she didn’t. She knew the bite was coming. She anticipated Parker’s screams. She knew she’d have to blow the thing’s brains out before it bit somebody else.
But she didn’t foresee what happened first.
It belted out a scream unlike anything she had ever heard in her life, even from the others she had encountered. Those things didn’t take kindly to being detained and controlled by their food. If malevolent violence had a sound, this was it.
She felt shocked and appalled all over again that she had once been the same kind of thing that made such a noise.
It lunged like a big cat and bit Parker’s ankle.
Annie turned away as Parker screamed in horror and agony. She knew that sound because she had made it herself when she had been bitten. It came back to her in a rush, the knowledge that she was finished, that the dark waters were rising, that she would transform into a thing so mindless she’d be a brain-dead woman walking, yet walking all the same and biting and spreading the disease that burned down the world.
But then she recovered. She came back from the other side as if she had been resurrected.
The same thing might happen to Parker.
Please, she thought. Let him recover. Let him live. She needed him to rise whole from that chair.
She snapped back to alertness when Hughes took the pistol from her trembling fingers and blew the thing’s brains onto the floor.
“Kyle,” Hughes said. “Frank. Get rid of that body. Throw it on the lawn outside next to the others. And try not to get too much blood on your hands.”
* * *
Annie was angry. Kyle could see that. She wouldn’t talk to him. Would not even look at him.
He sat on the front steps of the guesthouse while she slammed kitchen cabinets and banged things on the counter. He wanted to go in there, but he wouldn’t be able to say the right thing, not after the violence upstairs in the main house, and especially not since they all knew more violence was coming whether or not Parker recovered.
They hadn’t yet discussed who would shoot him when this was all over, but Kyle would make sure he got the honor. He would insist. It was his right.
* * *
Parker was beyond pain now. The part of his brain that received and interpreted it had switched off. The rest of his conscious mind would shut down soon enough. Only a distorted version of the lizard brain would remain.
It was all over for him even if he recovered, but a tiny flickering part of him hoped he’d recover anyway. For Annie’s sake and for the few healthy humans left in the world. If her immunity could be passed on to enough people, she might prevent this scourge from becoming an extinction event, but he’d never know. He’d be dead either way. So he also hoped, for entirely selfish reasons, that when he slipped out of consciousness, it would be lights out forever.
Please, he thought. Just let me go. Let me go to sleep and never wake up.
* * *
Hughes wasn’t easily disturbed, but what happened in that room was the worst thing he’d seen since the death of his family. And this time he was to blame.
What was wrong with him?
He should have insisted they do it differently, that Parker be injected rather than bitten.
It was possible that the virus could only be transferred through saliva and biting. Kyle was right about that much. They didn’t actually know that the blood carried the virus. None of them had witnessed a person getting infected from contact only with blood. But they’d figure it out. If Parker didn’t turn after being injected,
then
they could have brought that awful thing into the room.
That would have been the civilized way to handle it.
Kyle could be awfully persuasive. He was persuasive when he was naive, and he was persuasive when he was vindictive.
That made him a dangerous man, one of the most dangerous Hughes had ever known. He didn’t
seem
dangerous in the slightest, not like Lane or even like Parker, and that’s what made him worse than either. Not even Hughes kept his guard up consistently enough, and Hughes was more allergic to dangerous people and ideas than just about anyone.
What really shook him was how Kyle had seemed like the most decent of the whole bunch after Carol. Yet look at what he did. Look at what he made all of them do.
* * *
Annie slipped out of the guesthouse and into the main house. The rotting corpse in the living room smelled worse every time she walked in there. She was hoping she’d get used to the sight and the smell, but no.
She crept up the stairs so Parker wouldn’t hear, and he was whimpering and moaning when she reached the door leading into his room.
Yes, it was his room now. His very own room of torment and horror. No one else in her group would ever use it for any other reason.
Parker hadn’t turned yet. The sounds he made were too soft and too—human. He wasn’t screaming or violently thrashing about.
But oh God, was he going to scream after he turned. No one had gagged him or taped up his mouth. Perhaps they should have, but this way his bellowing would allow them to monitor him from a distance. Annie would need to find something to plug her ears.
She pressed her hands against the door as if she could feel the energy inside. She couldn’t, but all the same she tried to transmit some peaceful energy of her own across the grim threshold. It was useless, of course, but she didn’t know what else to do with herself.
She wanted to say something, anything, but it would only make Parker feel worse. From the sounds he was making, she figured he was in some kind of delirium. Perhaps that was best. Delirium is its own form of anesthetic.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear her but needing to say it.
She hoped with all her heart that he would recover and make all this worthwhile. It would be a major breakthrough, especially for a small band of survivors without any medical training. She might be able to save lives in the future, but for now she just hoped Parker pulled through so that something decent could result from the horrible thing they had done to him.
The horrible thing that was her idea, sort of. His body would be shot through with holes and broken at the base of the cliff right now if she hadn’t told the others about her immunity and suggested they test it on Parker, but she had no idea it would be such a nasty business.
Another thought occurred to her, something no one had mentioned yet and probably had not even thought of, partly because it was a bit early for that, but mostly because the idea would terrify everyone else.
If her immunity could be transferred, they couldn’t stay in the Pacific Northwest. They’d need to find an operational medical facility, one that could study her and mass-produce a vaccine. Certainly no such facility existed anywhere near Puget Sound. They might have to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles. She’d need to tell the others. And she’d need to tell them sooner rather than later.
If Parker recovered.
And there was one other thing. If Parker came back, he’d be the only person in the world who understood what she’d gone through. She needed him to recover.
She needed him to survive.
The whole world needed him to recover and then to survive.
* * *
Kyle hated that Annie was mad at him. He was beginning to think she’d always be mad at him, or at least think of him differently than before. They could not have a future together if they couldn’t get past this.
Parker had been right about one thing. Ruthlessness has to be met with ruthlessness. Kyle had been too soft. The cozy and comfortable morality of high-tech Seattle and Portland had no place in a world where life was brutish and short. Kyle understood now. Annie needed to understand it, as well. They needed to talk.
Annie thought she had sneaked over to the main house to visit Parker, but Kyle had seen her leave. He wouldn’t say anything. It would just create one more thing for them to fight about. Instead he waited on the couch for her return while Frank and Hughes chopped wood for a fire in back.
She came back a half-hour later. And she looked startled when she opened the door and saw Kyle sitting there waiting.
“I know why you’re upset,” he said.
“You do, huh?” she said.
“It was pretty gruesome what happened up there.”
She shook her head. “You don’t get it at all.”
“What don’t I get?”
“Every day since this virus appeared has been gruesome. I never even imagined the things I’ve seen the last two months. But what happened up there was worse because it was pointless. We didn’t have to do it that way.”
“It was the only way to be sure.”
“Bullshit.”
“We could have injected him with infected blood,” Kyle said, “but we still don’t know if it would work. It’s not like we have anyone else around here to experiment on.”