Whimper (29 page)

“There are steps on the back of the porch that lower with the same mechanism. Hopefully they’re down. We can use them, but we have to go all the way around the house to get to the van,” I said, wishing I could see the back steps from here. I’d have to go to the other side of the house to get a good look, and we couldn’t afford to leave the steps down that long.

“Let’s make a run for it,” Brianna urged. “We’re wasting time.” We hit the button, ducked under the sliding metal grate and pulled the door shut behind us. The infected woman had stopped twitching and now lay deathly still in a small pool of blood on the porch. We skirted around her, giving her as wide a berth as possible. I snagged the poker as we went past and handed it to Brianna. “Don’t get any of the blood on you,” I reminded her, feeling like Elliott.

Brianna rolled her eyes at me. Right. She had been dealing with this shit a lot longer than I had, but it still needed to be said. We cautiously rounded each corner, but for once our luck held and we made it off the porch and down the back steps without any surprises.

The storm knocked down quite a few fall leaves. Their edges had browned in the sun and were starting to curl. They made a soft crunch underfoot which would have been pleasant under normal circumstances, but since we were trying so hard to stay quiet, each crinkle was like a hammer smashing my nerves.

A loud bang startled us both so much we stopped moving, looking around wildly for the source. “Run,” I whispered when we couldn’t find anything immediately. Brianna took off, her slim legs eating up distance much faster than my own could. I pushed myself to catch up with her when she rounded the corner and I lost sight of her. The van was right there, she didn’t have very far to go to reach—

My thoughts were interrupted by Brianna’s short shriek, a shrill burst of sound that cut off as quickly as it started. “Oh my God,” I panted as I ran even harder, my legs churning against the grass.

I charged around the corner, nearly colliding with Brianna as she ran back towards me. “There’s a dead body by the van!” she squeaked, “I’m so sorry, it startled me.”

I wanted to smack the shit out of her for scaring me. Seriously? I shot her a dark glare and jumped in the driver’s seat of the van. Stowing my bag in between the seats. Brianna slunk into the passenger seat, chagrined. “I’m really sorry. I’ll keep it together from now on.”

The big magnet we usually stuck to the side of the van when doing deliveries had left a faded rectangle on the side, but otherwise it was a plain white van very similar to the ones used by the CDC. If no one looked too closely, we might be able to blend right in. I took off down the street in the same direction they’d gone, saying a little prayer they’d driven right past my bar and out of town. As I rounded the next corner, I knew for certain that prayer had gone unanswered. Six white vans sat parked at all angles in front of The Firebrand. People in biohazard suits milled around in the street, collecting dead bodies and placing them in one of the vans like they were piling up bags of trash. I slowed, trying to figure out where to go. If they’d spotted us, it would look suspect if we turned off now, but if we got too close they’d know for certain we didn’t belong. Neither of us had a plastic suit to slip on. I pulled into the parking lot across from the cluster of vans and Brianna and I slipped into the back cargo area, concealing ourselves behind the seats.

From our vantage point, I had to lean all the way to the left to see the front door of Firebrand. My beautiful front door stood open, a gaping hole where the sparkling beveled glass should have been. Those bastards broke my door! “That door was over one hundred years old,” I snarled.

“I’m sorry,” Brianna whispered, sliding over into my personal space so she could see over my shoulder. “What do you think we should do? Can you see Elliott?”

Just then, two people in biohazard suits emerged through the front door, leading someone between them. My heart sped up. Even under these circumstances, it would be good to see Elliott on his feet.

As they stepped out, the sunlight glistened off the bright copper ponytail of one Amie Winters, looking very much alive and decidedly not cannibalistic. She was actually
smiling
! I watched as she gestured with her hands, as though she was trying to talk her captors in to something. She actually tossed her fucking ponytail and smiled gratefully as they put her in the back of one of the vans.

“Un-fucking-believable!” Brianna hissed. “Elliott saves her life and she’s fawning over the enemy like a fan girl!”

I was about to chime in my own disgust, but there were more figures emerging from the doorway. Two men in suits stepped through the doorway backwards, guiding something over the slight threshold. An ambulance style gurney swathed in plastic, almost like a tent over the top, slowly emerged through the doorway. “It’s like ET. What the hell is it?” I asked Brianna, her chin digging into my shoulder as she peered over.

“I think it might be Elliott,” she answered solemnly. “What should we do? There are so many of them.”

They moved the bulky apparatus to the open doors of a waiting van, folding the legs up underneath it as the two of them pushed it forward. “I can’t see inside that thing, but what else could it be?” I wondered aloud, worrying the skin around my thumbnail with my teeth.

There was no possible way the two of us could fight off all the people here and wrestle an unconscious Elliott into our own vehicle. “Maybe we should follow them?” Brianna suggested, leaning back. “We can’t overpower them, but we can find out where they’re taking him. Maybe there will be a chance to reach him there.”

We watched with leaden hearts as they slammed the van doors and the various personnel climbed into their vehicles. I almost felt bad for the guy who had to drive the van loaded with dead bodies. Almost.

As the vans pulled away, we joined in at the end, trailing them through town. We left campus behind, moving quickly through the empty streets. Some of the houses had signs on their roofs or windows begging for help. Occasionally we’d catch a glimpse of a face peek through a window as we drove by. There were still people here! At least it wasn’t too far gone. Once we left campus, I didn’t see a single infected person or dead body. It only took a few minutes to reach our destination. I suppose I should have guessed our destination; it did make a certain sick sense. As we pulled into the complex, the vans split up. The ones carrying Amy and Elliott pulled under the high portico marked “Emergency,” while the one carrying the dead drove around the back, presumably to the morgue entrance. “The CDC took over the hospital,” I said to Brianna, my voice flat.

“Yeah, I see that,” she replied, without even a trace of sarcasm in her voice. We circled into the lot and through the parking garage, idling a moment to make sure they were unloading the vans at the E.R. entrance before we left. “We have to check the bar. We have to make sure that’s really Elliott in there. Maybe they missed him…” She shook her head, acknowledging how ridiculous it would be for that to happen. “We still have to be sure.”

I drove a winding route back to the bar, making certain no one had followed us from the hospital. “How do you think they found him in the first place?” Brianna asked.

I shrugged, guilt niggling. “They were already looking for us in the area. Someone might have spotted us go in, they might have gotten lucky and stumbled upon him, or they…they might have traced the cell phone somehow,” I confessed.

Brianna only nodded. I felt better having my possible guilt out in the open, but still felt the need to explain. “I needed to get the information off that phone. I didn’t think it connected. I thought I was careful.”

Bri sighed. “It’s okay, Zoe. It was worth the risk. You don’t even know if that’s how they tracked him down. They were already looking for their patient zero. They were going to find us eventually. How long until they link your house to the bar and know to look there next?”

I hadn’t thought of that. It wouldn’t take much at all to figure out the connection. “We won’t go back to the house for a while anyway.”
If we ever do
, I thought.

“After we check the bar, I have to check and make sure…” I trailed off, unable to put image into words. I had to be certain that Zack wasn’t laying on the sidewalk rotting in the sun like all those other corpses. He deserved so much more. I should have gone back for him sooner, whether Elliott thought it was safe or not. I cleared my throat hard, struggling not to cry.

“Did I tell you I think I found a link between your family, the house, and the virus?” Brianna asked suddenly.

I shook my head, continuing to drive, though part of me was curious. “How did you find it without the internet?” I asked thickly.

“I compared notes—lots and lots of notes—until I found something that matched up and made sense. I suppose it was dumb luck too, that I even had these tiny tidbits of information to link together. Maybe when we have the internet, I’ll be able to find enough to confirm the connection. For now, it’s my own theory. Would you like to hear the story?” she asked gently.

“Yeah, okay.” I could use the distraction from my memories of Zack’s last moments on earth.

“I will tell you everything I know about it, but first there’s something I need you to tell me. Something you’ve been avoiding. Zoe, I need you to tell me what happened to Zack.”

My hands spasmed on the steering wheel, my knuckles blanching white with tension. “I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t make me relive it. It’s bad enough that it pops into my head when I don’t want it to!”

Brianna laid a soft hand on my shoulder. “Zoe, I know he’s gone. But you’re still here. You’re going to have to face this or it will be something you relive over and over again in your mind. Talking about it will hurt, but it also helps. I want to help you, please?”

I turned into the alley behind the bar. For a fleeting moment, I considered ramming the van full speed into the back wall of the bank at the other end. It’d be over, and I wouldn’t have to feel pain like this again. “I’m not a quitter,” I remembered my uncle saying over and over as he fought his cancer. I wasn’t a quitter either, and neither was my brother.

I pulled up behind the bar as twilight started to fall. “We were trying to get here. The CDC caught up with us two streets over. We tried to run, one of the security forces brought his rifle up to shoot me, but Zack knocked me out of the way. He saved me and they shot him in the head.” I sobbed out the last word. Then smothered the tears. We had to get inside. I had to see if anyone was still here and what kind of havoc they had wrought in my beautiful bar.

Once inside, we found the locker room door unlocked and open. Puddles of water still dotted the floor and the stupid foam coffin lay on its side, empty. I dashed throughout the building, but there was no sign of Elliott. As we’d suspected, they must have taken him.

The only real damage was to the front door, but who knew how long it’d be before I could have that fixed. Would it even matter? Soon enough, there might not be anyone left to come spend money at a bar anyway.

I snagged some supplies in a big cardboard box, and a few small mementos of my uncle, just in case. “I’ll try to be back,” I said aloud, patting the gleaming wooden bar.

Brianna gave me my space, but I knew we needed to hurry. Once back in the van, I headed towards the sidewalk. What would I do if he was still there? I didn’t even have a blanket to wrap him up in. What if he wasn’t there? How would I ever give him a proper burial?

“So, during my folklore research, I found a story about a village who had a rash of unexplained deaths after a drought. They said that some of the sick people came back to life after succumbing to their fevers, but when they revived, they were mad. This happened to several of the villagers, and various methods were tried to cure them of their madness, but they all died. The wife of the village blacksmith was attacked by one of the mad women when she was trying to bring them bread. Soon after, she started to run a fever and became very ill. Unfortunately, the blacksmith’s wife was pregnant with their first child. When her fever spiked, she went into premature labor and the baby was born. The baby was a girl, small but healthy. The mother, however, died very soon after delivering and then sprang from the table during the wake, as mad as the others. She tried to attack the baby, and her poor husband snapped her neck trying to stop her. It depends on the version of the story whether it was on purpose or accidental, but regardless, she died a second time and the baby lived to grow up and have children of her own.” Brianna finished her macabre story as I drove slowly by the spot where Zack would have sprawled in the rain. It was empty. If his blood stained the pavement, it was too dark to tell and for that I was grateful.

“He’s not there. They took him. I’ll never see my brother again. I never should have dragged him into this mess. This is all my fault,” I said, my voice taking on that eerie hollow quality again. Maybe my soul really had slipped away with my twin?

“That’s the point of my story, Zoe. You didn’t drag your brother into this. If I’m right, your family has been connected with this virus for hundreds of years. Your ancestor was a blacksmith, in the same village, during the same time period as this outbreak. I think the baby’s DNA was mutated by her contact with the virus and she passed that potential for immunity down to her offspring until it came to you,” Brianna said excitedly, like I’d won some kind of grand prize from the genetics lotto.

“It doesn’t work that way,” I argued. I wasn’t a fabulous biology student, but I remembered some things. “If there were people carrying around mutated DNA with special immunity powers, someone would have been studying it before now.”

“Yeah, people like Elliott.” Brianna smiled. “It might be more common than we know. DNA is still a mystery in so many ways. There are lots of markers and configurations they haven’t decoded yet. If they had, we’d have a cure for cancer. Where are we going?” she asked suddenly, realizing we were driving into the dark campus without any headlights.

“We’re meeting up with a bunch of rebels in a hidden base. I’m giving them secret information and supplies, and they’re going to find a way through the quarantine. If they’re still alive,” I added under my breath.