After The Virus (11 page)

“And what exactly do you suggest, Big?” If he needed their help to rescue Rhiannon and Snickers, he might as well know the fallout cost now.

“Guns, big guns, people who can use them, and you. I got a feeling you got lots of good ideas on offensive play. I figure we just stop ‘em.” Will didn’t respond so Big continued. ”I know you think what we were before don’t matter, that it’s how we behave in the present that counts. You taught me that, Tex, though I had to think about it for a bit. But we do each got skills, put enough of us together and we have a… a…”

“Community?” Stupid suggested.

“Yes, I was going to say family, but that’s better, Clarence,” Big agreed, then concluded, “You lead, we go.”

“Just to clarify. You want me to help you build an army, lead you to war with these Rebuild Humanity guys, and you’ll help me find and rescue the girls.”

“That about covers it,” Big grinned.

“And, just because somehow you’ve figured out I played pro football, some time ago, you think I’m some sort of strategist?” Will asked.

“Saw you throw. Damn shame about that knee of yours, but its always the knee with Quarterbacks, ain’t it?” Big mused.

“Yup,” Stupid agreed.

“ ’Course, we didn’t recognize you right away, but when we decided we were tired of trouble, we knew to come to you,” Big explained further. “We’ll help you get your girls back. We just want to do it smart, and you got the brains and the organizing skills.”

Will took a moment to look at the river, which he could now hear more than see as night darkened the valley quicker than the mountain sky.
 

“We need to regroup,” he said finally, deciding.

“That we do,” Big agreed.

“One Ear knows the city like the back of his hand, don’t you?” It was a statement, not a question.

“Maybe,” One Ear begrudgingly answered.
 

Stupid grabbed hold of his one remaining ear and growled, “Don’t ya remember our chat? And how you decided to answer all our questions?”

“Yeah, I know the city. I helped pick it. I helped him set everything in motion. He’s a visionary, you know.” One Ear seemed actually proud.

Big snorted at this statement. “We ain’t fans of visionaries, are we, Clarence?”

“Nah. Seems like there’s an awful lot of that going around. Maybe the virus does something to some people’s brains even when it don’t kill ‘em?” Stupid pondered.

Will arrived at his first strategic decision. “You, Buddy, you’re going to the city.”

Buddy freaked. “Boss’ll kill me, coming in without her.”

“You aren’t going in without Rhiannon; you’re following her and her kidnappers. That ought to be valuable information,” he suggested.

“And what’s to stop me from telling him your plans,” Buddy threatened.

“Tell him anything you want; what do you know?” Will shrugged.

 
“That you’re coming for them, that they’re important to you, that you’ve got others with you, and you’re coming from the east,” Buddy answered.

“Don’t suppose it matters. Unless your Boss has the girls, and if he does, that’ll make them easier to find. Won’t it, One Ear?” he prodded.

“So, Boss’ll rescue Rhiannon and the kid from the Red Jackets, and then you think you can just follow some map drawn by him to get to them.” Buddy, still sneering and sarcastic, jutted his chin at One Ear.

“Well, except for the map part, no one can read them properly anyway, that sounds like the beginnings of a real plan, Tex!” Big was beyond pleased.

“Plus a bullet to your brain will make it real hard to talk,” Stupid piped up.

 
“Right, I’ll be so scared of you when I’m in the city,” Buddy spit.

“You will, seeing as I’ll always be close enough to be holding a gun to ya.” Stupid turned to Will. “I do brainstorming, Tex. I was good at that part of school”.

He was happy for Stupid’s support. He’d never been a good bully, but he had serious doubts about this new plan.

Stupid continued before he could interject. “Say I’m Buddy’s new best friend, saved him from the river when One Ear met his death? He don’t go nowhere without me.”
 

Buddy wasn’t buying. ”Your threats are nothing compared to the Boss. I go to the city? I talk. You have Stupid here come with me? I get him killed.”

Buddy was right. It wasn’t a safe play, no matter how much he wanted to send help after the girls, right now, right away. Too many things that could go wrong. Stupid watched him closely and saw denial on his face before it made it to his lips.

“I got a lot to atone,” Stupid solemnly stated. “I figure I make sure the ladies are safe till you can get ‘em, that might square me a bit.”
 

“But you got no real way of keeping Buddy in line, Clarence. Even if you did manage to shoot him if he opened his mouth, you’d be sacrificing yourself.”

Big was nodding his head in agreement. Stupid looked devastated. Buddy looked a little too smug.

“No. Our choices are to kill him, keep him, or let him go. Keeping two hostages is just asking for trouble, and killing isn’t something to be casual with.”

“I got ya, Tex.” Stupid wasn’t happy about it, but he seemed to be listening. “ ’Course,” Stupid turned to leer at Buddy, “there’re worse things than dying.”

Will almost laughed at Stupid’s perseverance. Instead he just asked them to give him a bit of time to think, then he walked back to the vehicles. Stupid seemed happy to watch over the hostages, and Big tagged along to rally the troops.

He needed paper. Big was right; he had always been good at strategy. ‘Course, X’s and O’s now represented guns and death, so that was new.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

RHIANNON

She didn’t like walking in the dark, surrounded by creepy people she didn’t know, and separated even by a shoulder from Snickers. She’d catch a flash of the whites of the girl’s eyes every time the moon angled through the trees just right, and knew that she was okay. Still, Rhiannon stayed on high alert, maybe because no one spoke directly to them; maybe because she knew they were headed toward the city. As long as they stayed to this side of the river — she could hear it to the right — they were far enough away to have a chance of escaping.

A brief muttering rumbled back through the group. She walked face first into Grunt’s back and smashed her nose. He had stopped suddenly.

Now that she was within reach, Snickers quickly wrapped her unbroken arm about Rhiannon’s neck, and miracle — Grunt allowed the girl to shift off his shoulder and into her achingly empty arms. Not wanting to alarm Snickers further, she attempted to not clutch her, but failed miserably.

Grunt turned sideways, and she realized they had flashlights; she just hadn’t been able see before beyond his bulky back. She had never liked bulky-muscled guys. A long, lean build like Will’s, now that was perfect. Not so tall that you cranked your neck to kiss, but tall enough to feel —
protected
. Plus guys who obsessed about their bodies were usually assholes, like Grunt, who now grabbed her upper arm and yanked her sideways.

He pulled Rhiannon and Snickers, who was still clinging to her, off the path and through some trees until they came to a small clearing. Here, a few others she hadn’t seen before were guarding a low concrete building. The door was hanging off its hinges, but from violence, not age; the hut-like structure was old but well maintained.

Grunt switched from pulling to pushing her toward the building. She dug in her heels. Why should she go in there? It didn’t lead anywhere as far as she could see.

“Get in, climb down,” Grunt ordered. Three flashlight beams swung to light the inside of the building, and she saw a ladder leading down. Shriller, as if he’d been waiting for this moment his entire life, scampered down the ladder; so she decided it was safer, relative to the current kidnapping at gunpoint, to follow than negotiate.

Setting Snickers down from the perceived safety of her arms was a struggle. She momentarily worried that Grunt would step in and forcefully remove the girl, but he didn’t.

While climbing down, she glanced around the area lit by the flashlights’ beams, and wondered if she’d missed her chance at escaping. She thought this might be a sort of mechanical room, though its location in the middle of a forest seemed very odd. The raised letters on the first rung read: GVRD. As she descended, farther and farther, she realized where this was all heading. They were using the old sewers to move in and out of the city — and, she guessed — under the river.

Fuck
.

She wasn’t claustrophobic, but —
 

She stepped down once more and hit ground. Snickers, who had climbed down after, crawled from the ladder into her arms without touching down.

Rhiannon turned to see Shriller, flashlight in hand, waiting at the opening to one of three tunnels. She’d have to bend in half to crawl through.

“Don’t worry, no poo poo, just used for overflow, except no chance of that now!” Shriller found the death of 99.9 percent of the population funny.

More people climbed down the ladder, so she had to move. She didn’t bother darting off into one of the other sewer lines, like her character would have in a movie. In fact, she was surprised they could move around undetected like this anyway;
shouldn’t you always check the sewers when hunting people?
Seeing her look, Grunt grinned. It wasn’t comforting.

“These are old, unmapped, but my Gramps was a city planner back when they were laid.”

It was a little disconcerting that he could read her thoughts like that; scary, actually. She’d always been considered a bit of an enigma.

“Don’t go thinking to pretend you’re claustrophobic; I know you aren’t.” Grunt was back to snarling orders and as punctuation, he gave her a short shove forward.

She briefly wondered what they were going to do to her once they got her into the city. She tamped down that train of thought quickly. If it hadn’t been obvious before, it was now.
Guessing the future was pointless; you dealt with what you could at the given time and gave up on the impossible. Good thing that very little got slotted into the impossible category… of course, this day was far from over.

Grunt knocked her shoulder with his to communicate he wasn’t pleased with daydreaming. Evidently, he’d never fully learned to use his words.
 

After a few cramped steps, Rhiannon, with prompting from her bruised ribs, realized she wasn’t going to be able to carry Snickers much farther.

She fished the scarf from around Snickers' neck and tied the ends around each of their wrists. That way, they couldn’t be easily separated.

∞

Water dripped. She could hear it, even over the sounds of people breathing nearby. Areas around the soldered bolts —
or maybe they were called rivets —
looked wet. She really, really, really tried to not think about the thousands of pounds of pressure placed by the river on these old, old, old pipes. Not thinking about it didn’t fix it, but dwelling never made anything easier. Plus, it wasn’t as if she had any control over their location.

She wondered if the commuting rats bothered Snickers, but the girl didn’t flinch; others, farther back, were more vocal, until Grunt yelled.

Her mind wandered; the lack of visual input didn’t help her focus. She wondered how many blows to the head one person could recover from.

Weren’t there brain pathways, which, once severed, never regrew? Did they compensate, perhaps never the same, but not noticeably different? Is possible that I am actually suffering some massive delusion? Why does it always come round to that thought, that I could actually be concocting this all in my mind?
She tried to remember if she’d been hit on the head before the virus.

Snickers' quick hand squeeze focused the drift of her mind. Raised, perhaps concerned, voices and more flashlight beams emanated from up ahead.

∞

She stepped from the sewer into another mechanical room; more red-streaked people were here. One, a woman, was familiar, excepting the red hair. Though it could just be that the woman was actually looking her in the eye, when the others, rudely, didn’t look at her or Snickers at all. Her brain started clicking around this observation, as it was currently prone to doing.
Maybe they weren’t not looking out of rudeness… maybe they weren’t looking at us because they didn’t want to form any connection. Fuck, what the fuck are they going to do with us?

The familiar woman stepped forward to address Grunt as he stepped from the sewer pipe. She laid her hand on his arm and leaned in to talk. She couldn’t hear what the woman said, and Grunt wasn’t happy about the message, but he turned his angry look on her rather than the messenger.

So I’m the sacrificial lamb here, am I? The one who you blamed when things went wrong. The one that you punished —
 

“You know me.” The familiar woman spoke as if she was pissed she had to state the obvious.

”I do?” Rhiannon answered, not giving an inch, or even a shit, really.

“I’ve done your makeup for, like, over 335 days in the last ten years and you don’t recognize me?” The woman seemed overly attached to numbers and facts.

Fuck.

Mandy.

Now she could see, past the red-painted, dreadlocked hair and the ten-years-too-old look you got from lack of fresh veggies.

“You counted?” Rhiannon smiled when sarcastic, a habit picked up from romantic comedies; even if she was a bitch, she always had to be fuckable. Though more often, she played a dull simpleton, but, of course, you still either wanted to be her or to fuck her. It was her life’s work, up to now.

“Take the girl,” Mandy ordered.

She screamed then, right in their faces, when they reached for Snickers. She screamed all her anger, frustration, and tears she couldn’t cry. This inhuman sound ripped through the small space, reverberated along, and echoed from the sewer tunnels. They cringed and covered ears. They were all looking now. She’d scared them. They saw she was a real, breathing, feeling person. They’d heard her fear of losing the child.