Infected (Book 1): The Fall (26 page)

Chapter
37

Nobody had any desire to remain at the site of the slaughter.  Wim and his crew were already piling into his pickup.  What hadn’t been collected was going to stay where it was until morning and I had doubts whether the drillers would ever come back.  Wim fired up his pickup and left without saying a word.  The savagery had exacted a toll on him. He would deal with it in his own way, in his own time.  Right now, he didn’t want to relive what he had witnessed by talking about it.

We headed to our own trucks in silence, walking cautiously at first as we attempted to avoid stepping on the bodies of deceased infected.  I recognized several faces as I passed bodies. A few were people I knew.  Others were people I had merely seen around town.  Seeing them laying dead in their changed form was surreal.  They were familiar and yet completely foreign at the same time.  It was like being in a dream and then waking to realize the dream had no continuity and didn’t make any sense. 

The grass was slick with blood, more slippery than immediately after being watered.  Matt lost his footing as he attempted to traverse the bodies and fell to a knee.  When he stood, the knee of his tan pants was defiled with bodily fluids that had spurted from the infected. 

Frank and Jeb continued in brooding silence.  Concern covered their countenances. Their long faces were glued to the ground. Twice I saw Frank sneak a concerned glance at Jeb.  When he caught my eye, he immediately returned his gaze back to the ground, embarrassed by his demonstrated worry.

We reached the trucks at the street and Jeb broke the silence. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

Nobody spoke.  Jeb already knew the answer; we all knew the answer.  No one wanted to be the first to admit the truth. He had been exposed.  He was face to face with an infected.  He breathed air coming directly from the infected’s body, air that was full of microscopic particles of the virus.

I finally broke the silence. “We will know in a couple hours.  My exposure was worse than yours and I’m fine.  As far as we know, you’re immune to the infection, too.”  There was nothing else I could say.  Telling him he would be fine was false hope that no one would accept or believe.

“What do I do in the meantime?” he asked.  It was an honest question.

“You can’t go home to your parents. If you are exposed, it would be a death sentence for them. You’re welcome to come with Matt and me.  We’re on our way to check out Curtis’ camp and hopefully catch him by surprise.  If you want to come, we could use your help.  It will probably be more dangerous than this afternoon’s project was.”

“We’re with you all the way,” Frank said, speaking for both of them.

“No,” Jeb disagreed. “You’re going back to Mom and Dad.  If the farm gets overrun, they won’t stand a chance by themselves.  If I make it through the night, I’ll see you back there tomorrow.  If I don’t make it, I don’t want you to see me turn into them,” he said, pointing back to the drilling rig and the pile of corpses surrounding it. 

Frank started to speak and stopped as his mouth opened.  He knew Jeb was right; their parents needed help.  Besides, he didn’t want to see Jeb get sick and regress into a mindless lunatic.

“Okay,” Frank said in resignation.  “Connor, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“What’s up, Frank?” I asked, walking away from the trucks.

Frank didn’t say anything until we had traveled fifty feet and were out of earshot of Jeb and Matt.  “We’ve sacrificed for you today.  You owe Jeb and me.  We both know he doesn’t have a chance.”  His voice changed pitch at the end of his sentence.  He stopped talking and looked away from me, attempting to hide the grief that was threatening to cripple him.  After a minute, it became obvious he couldn’t contain the emotion and he continued in a broken voice.  “When the time comes, put him down.  Don’t let him turn.”

“Frank, I…”

“No, Connor,” he interrupted, “You owe him that much.  He gave his life to help you.  The least you can do is allow him to go out as a man.  You can’t ask him to give his life and then abandon him when he needs you.  You can’t do it.”  Tears began to cascade silently down his face as emotion overcame him.  He tried to hide the tears.  Finally it became so obvious, hiding them was pointless.  He wiped the tears with his finger and turned to face me. 

Looking me straight in the eye, in low, slow speech he said, “Give me your word you will do the right thing when the time comes.  Give me your word he won’t roam around as one of them,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at the dead for a second time.

I hesitated.  He was asking the impossible of me.  Yet what he was asking was fair.  I slowly relented.  “Okay, I’ll do it.  You have my word.  And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what happened.”

Hearing what he needed to hear, Frank turned and walked back to the others, leaving me to contemplate the promise I made.  It was the same promise I had tried to extract from Matt yesterday.  The only difference was I didn’t have the leverage to get him to make it. 

Frank had the leverage. 

Relinquished to what I was going to have to do in a few hours, I returned to the group.  Frank and Jeb had sequestered themselves twenty feet from Matt and were talking in low voices.  Matt and I stood by my pickup and waited for them to finish their good bye.  After a couple minutes, the two brothers shook hands and walked away from each other.  Frank walked to his truck, which was ahead of ours.  Jeb walked back to mine.  Frank’s walk was slow. Each step was deliberate and methodically placed as if each was exponentially more painful than the previous.  Jeb’s pace was quick and purposeful.  He was moving to a new task.  He knew he didn’t have long to live and he wanted his last hours to be meaningful.  Neither looked back after they parted. 

Frank climbed into his truck, fired the engine and left the three of us in silence once again. 

“I know I don’t have long to go,” Jeb declared.  “Let’s do something important with that time.  I never did like Curtis, even before he turned into a killer.  How are we going to get him?”

I explained my plan of driving part way up Sager Road, ditching the truck somewhere along the way, and approaching across country from there. 

“It’s no good,” Jeb interrupted, shaking his head. “Curtis knows you guys are going to come for him. He’ll have someone hidden at the start of Sager Road to let him know when you come.  It would be better to park on the highway a couple miles past Sager and approach across country.”

“That’s going to be close to seven miles over rough country.  That’s a long hike,” I said, considering his words. “We’ll trust your instinct.  You’ve done this a lot more than we have.”  If I were in Curtis’ position, I would post a lookout like Jeb had pointed out.  Without Jeb’s insight, our incursion would have been compromised from the start.

Matt and I piled into the truck. Jeb hesitated and then climbed into the bed. 

“What are you doing?” Matt questioned.

“I’m infected.  I’m not going to contaminate your truck by breathing in it,” he stated vehemently.

“Fair enough,” I acquiesced as I shut my door.  “If Tuttle agrees to let us pass his roadblock, we’ll leave the truck a couple miles down the road. I’d also like to have Glenn take a look at this,” I said to Matt as I pulled my pant leg up, exposing the bite wound on my leg.

“When did that happen?” he asked, scrunching his face when he saw the two semi circular bloody wounds on the front of my shin.

I pushed the blood soaked sock down to the top of my boot, examining the bite wound for the first time. Teeth had ripped through the skin and hit the bone.  Since it was on my shin, there wasn’t really any muscle.  Although it looked bad, the damage was actually pretty minimal with torn skin and not much else. “I got it while I was busy shooting the infected lined up in front of you. At the time, a bite on my shin seemed better than two infected chewing your head off while you reloaded.  I’m starting to wonder if I made a miscalculation.  At least this way, it will be easier to face Eve.”

I pushed my pant leg back down, pulled away from the curb, and steered the truck toward the highway. 

Chapter
38

Another trip through town proved as uneventful as the previous trips had been earlier in the day.  There were no vehicles driving on Main Street and none parked there.  No businesses were open.  Nobody was trying to shop and more importantly, nobody was looting. 

Save for last night’s incursion into the pharmacy, people were still maintaining civility.  I was fairly certain things were not going as well in large cities where people were always looking for a reason to riot or loot.  All they needed was an excuse, no matter how slight it may be. 

I was amazed at how quick people were to burn the neighborhoods where they lived and destroy the businesses where they shopped, businesses which were owned by people who lived in their community.  Their tirades never hurt the people with whom they were upset. Like a two year old banging his head on a wall because he was angry with his parents, they only hurt themselves. 

It was only a matter of time before looting started in Lost Hills.  In a few more days, it would become apparent that the majority of the population was gone.  People who owned the businesses would be dead or infected.  The reality that everybody was on their own, with no help coming, would set in.  Food would begin to go bad.   Stores wouldn’t open without owners or employees.  Eventually it wouldn’t make sense to let needed commodities go to waste and people would begin to take them.  I hoped it would be done in an orderly manner so that everyone who was left could benefit.  I trusted that the people in town would not destroy everything in their wake. What we currently had was all we would ever have.  There would be no replacements coming.

Matt, checked in with Eve while I drove.  She assured him that everybody was fine.

Once on the highway, I sped up to fifty-five.  The speed limit was sixty-five, but I wasn’t in a hurry.  Gas trucks weren’t coming to fill the underground tanks.  There was no need to waste a valuable resource. 

We were about to pass a rundown house on the edge of town when Matt pointed and said, “Look at that.”  The ancient man who lived in the house was sitting on the front porch with the ancient woman who was his wife.  He had a century old double barrel shotgun across his lap.  They had seen their share of storms come and go over the decades, from the Depression to the Cold War.  They had seen people panic over financial crisis, terrorist acts, and other catastrophes.  They had weathered each storm that had come.  To them, this was another bump in the road and they would endure it together.  They were a fixture of the community, sitting in their rockers every evening, watching the sun set. The old man waved as we passed.  I hoped they would still be there next week.

For the second time, we came into view of Tuttle’s men.  The guns still moved in our direction as they had before.  This time they were kept at the low ready.  I slowed the truck to prevent giving cause to aim them any differently.  As I eyed the vehicles, I noted the lack of armor Tuttle had mentioned earlier.  There was nothing to stop bullets from ripping through the vehicles if they were attacked.  I pushed the thought from my mind.  There was no real danger of attack.  There were lots of guns in town, but nothing to rival the fire power the two fifties mounted on top of the vehicles would unleash if threatened.  Regardless of what was happening in town, nobody would be foolish enough to engage in that fight.

Tuttle left his position and walked to our side of the road block.  His face broke into a grin as he raised his right hand in greeting upon recognizing us. Following protocol, he donned his gas mask as did his men.  They weren’t taking any chances. 

I stepped out of the pickup and returned the wave as I approached.

“What can I do for the Vista County Sheriff’s Department this evening?” he asked cordially.

Matt spoke up, “We have two favors.  First we would like permission to leave the quarantine and travel a couple miles up the road.  Secondly, Connor needs more medical attention.  We were hoping Glenn could put him back together again.”

“Glenn will be happy to look you over and do what he can. What happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.  The short of it is, I got bit on the leg.  It looks like it’s going to need some stitches.”

“Bit by what?” Tuttle asked accusingly, his tone dropping an octave below what it had been.

“I was bitten by an infected,” I answered, not understanding what the problem was.

“That’s what I was afraid of.  We know you’re immune to the infecting virus, but  there’s no reason to assume that you’re also immune to the prion that actually causes the transformation into an infected.”  He turned back to the blockade and yelled, “Glenn, get over here!  We have a problem.”

I felt like I had been sucker punched.  I hadn’t seen this coming.  Biology hadn’t been my strong suit.  I had assumed that immune was immune.  I was right back where I had been yesterday afternoon.

Glenn came at a trot.  “What’s the problem, Sir?” he asked.

“Connor was bitten a little while ago.”

“What bit him, Sir?”

“I was bitten by an infected,” I said shortly.

“What did you do after you were bitten?”

“I shot it in the head.” I said abruptly, his game of twenty questions growing old.

“By the fact that you are here talking to me, that was already understood,” he said jovially as if he was oblivious to the fact that my life was on the line again.  “What I’m trying to get at is, did you eat the brain?”

“Of course I didn’t eat the brain,” I answered disgustedly.  “Why would I eat the brain?”

“You would know the answer to that better than I would,” he answered, maintaining his enigmatic air.  “I don’t know what motivates people to do the things they do.” 

“Glenn!” Tuttle snapped.

“Sir?”

“This man is concerned about his well being and frankly, I am, too.  Give us some answers.”

Even getting bawled out by the Captain didn’t diminish his carefree demeanor.  “Absolutely, Sir,” he belted out, happy as he could be.  “Prions concentrate in brain tissue.  Prions wouldn’t be in the saliva at all. Unless you ate contaminated brain tissue, which you deny doing, I don’t see how you could have been contaminated with them.  Now, let’s see that bite.”

The weight of my immediate, impending demise lifted from my body for the second time.  I released the breath I had inadvertently been holding.  A sense of calm erased the anxiety that had rolled over me like a tsunami.

Glenn pulled a pair of rubber gloves from a pocket in his pants and placed them on his hands.  With the application of each glove, he pulled on the back and allowed the rubber to loudly snap against his wrist.   After briskly rolling my pant to just below the knee, he examined the wound.

“Hmm,” he said dramatically.  “If you have a couple minutes, I can stitch this up for you.  Follow me to the aid station.”

I followed him around the vehicle to the back door of the Humvee.  He opened it, pulled out a canvas bag and pointed to the back seat. 

“Sit down and prop your foot up like so,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to demonstrate with his own foot.  The weight of the bag pulled him over and he hopped on the foot that had been planted on the ground and lowered his raised foot to keep from falling.  “You get the picture.”

Glenn dug into his bag and withdrew several packages.  He opened them and laid the contents out on a makeshift table that one of the other soldiers had set up for him.  After shaving the hair around the wound, he scrubbed my shin with an orange wipe and continued to talk.  “When I was still on active duty with Delta, none of the guys I worked with would ever tolerate anesthetic for stitches.  Even the Rangers I came across were solid enough to refuse it. Now that I’m in the reserves, people are made of different stuff and beg for anesthetic. Don’t feel like you have to prove anything to me.”

Using a pair of clamps, he picked up the curved needle trailing suture and brought it to my shin.  Just before he pushed the needle through my skin, Tuttle barked from over his shoulder, “Glenn, that’s enough!  Give the man a shot.”

“It’s okay,” I interrupted, “Sew away.”

Without hesitation or warning, he plunged the needle deep into the skin. With a twist of his wrist, it passed through the gaping hole and out the other side.  He released the needle from the clamp, regrasped it at the tip, and pulled the length of suture through. After quickly knotting and cutting the suture, he plunged the needle in again and repeated the process.  Each time the needle was driven into my skin, it felt like a talon ripping my flesh apart.  By the time he was completing the tenth stitch, I was wondering why I had allowed him to bait me into a battle of the ego.  Then it ended.  I had maintained my pride before Tuttle and the others.

Glenn scrutinized his work and then gave an approving thumb up.  “That will work just fine.  And by the way, I was just joking about Delta and the Rangers.  Even they weren’t dumb enough to refuse anesthetic when it was available.”

Tuttle shook his head and laughed.  “He pulls that one every time he sews someone up.  You’re the first one I have seen who was dumb enough to fall for it.  I have to give you credit though.  You didn’t make a sound.  I’m impressed.”

I didn’t know whether I should be embarrassed or mad, so I didn’t say anything. 

“Why do you need to pass the blockade?” Tuttle asked, suddenly becoming serious.

My face was still burning from being duped by Glenn.  “We’re going to recon Curtis’ camp. We want to approach across country and surprise him.  If we start from two miles down the road, we can follow a ravine most of the way and remain out of sight.  Does that work for you?” I asked.

“I would be happy to look the other way for your little excursion as long as you take an observer.  Glenn, pack up.  You’re going with Connor and Matt to recon Curtis’ camp.”

“Yes, Sir!” Glenn replied eagerly.  He packed his unused medical supplies away and gathered up his rifle and equipment.

Tuttle lowered his voice.  “Keep your eye on him.  He’s been looking for blood since this morning when your guy shot the baby.  Glenn is the best man I’ve ever had under my command.  If Curtis is there, Glenn will find a way to kill him. I haven’t been with him in action, but I know people who have.  Everybody I’ve talked to who served with him in Delta tells the same story. He’s unstoppable.  Once it starts, he won’t quit until everyone is annihilated. He kills with an efficiency and ruthlessness that is unmatched by anybody else.  As soon as it’s over, he immediately reverts back to what you’ve seen today.  The transformation to killer and back is scary. If this turns into more than recon, you won’t regret having him.”

“Thank you.  We appreciate you letting us borrow him.  If he’s half the man you claim, we’ll be glad to have him.”

Glenn walked up with a bulging pack secured to his back and his rifle hanging loosely at his chest from a single point harness.

I turned to face him.  “Alright Glenn, here’s the plan.”  After I explained it, I asked, “Do you have anything to add?”

“Let’s blow his head off.  And call me Zack.”