The Remaining: Fractured (16 page)

What looked like a few families. Some older folks. A few kids. Several harried-looking adults. If they were armed, Jacob couldn’t see it. They huddled around two pickup trucks, some of the children and elders still sitting in the bed, looking forlornly through the glass of the hospital doors. Two of the men stood at the door, receiving Doc’s hoarse commands.

“Turn around and go away!” Doc shouted through the glass. “We have nothing for you here.”

One of the men didn’t seem to be getting the message. He looked incredibly frustrated and his voice came through clearly even through the glass. “You don’t understand! We spoke to LaRouche! We spoke to his group two days ago! We gave them information about The Followers, to help them, and they told us that we could come here! We have people in need of medical attention, and we need food and water!”

“We’ve got none of those things here! Go away!”

“We were told that this was one of Captain Harden’s settlements! That you were working with him and Camp Ryder! Aren’t you supposed to help? Where’s Captain Harden? I want to talk to Captain Harden! Right the fuck now!”

Doc actually laughed at the man. “You were lied to, sir. Captain Harden is gone! He abandoned Camp Ryder two days ago and no one has seen him since! We’re no longer taking any other survivors! Not here or at Camp Ryder! You’re on your own. Now get the fuck out of here or we’ll be forced to use violence!”

The man on the other side punched the glass door. “That’s fucking bullshit!”

Jacob had seen enough. He closed the door gently so as not to make a sound. He vaulted quickly up the three flights of stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the top, breathing heavily, and ran to his room. He stopped just inside the door and looked at the notepad again. He grimaced, ran a shaky hand through his hair.

“You sure you wanna do this?” he said to himself. He’d developed a bad habit of debating verbally with himself while on the road from Virginia to North Carolina. Sometimes it was nice to trick yourself into thinking you had a friend. Sometimes it was nice to break up the silence.

“Do you have a choice?”

He considered his own question.

“I don’t feel like I do. I feel like this is the path that has the greatest chance of success.”

He nodded. “Then go with it. And do it quick.”

He took a deep breath, blew it out so it puffed his cheeks. “Okay. We’re gonna do this.”

“It’s okay, you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

He went to the corner of the room and grabbed the rifle there. “Yeah, but it’s hard to get used to.”

He checked the magazine, then checked the chamber. Just like Captain Mitchell always taught him. He had a full thirty rounds, and one in the chamber. He flicked the safety off so he wouldn’t forget. Then he ran through the door to his room again. Down the hall with his heart pounding. Down the stairwell, slowing as he got to the bottom, softening his footfalls.

Beyond the door the shouts had reached a different pitch.

Bordering on aggression.

Jacob didn’t stop to take a breath. He didn’t stop to think it over, or to make sure he was doing the right thing. He knew that if he stopped, he would stop completely. And he’d already made his mind up. He’d already decided that this was the right thing to do. Or at least the thing with the highest probability of success.

He pulled open the door and slid through quietly. At the sliding glass doors, Doc Hamilton was screaming, with his face nearly pressed against the glass, while the two guards stood to either side, their rifles raised, though they knew they couldn’t shoot through the glass and into the crowd.

“Open the fucking door!” the man on the outside yelled, pounding it with his fists. “Let us talk to Captain Harden!”

Doc’s face was going red. “You’ve got ten seconds to get the fuck away from my door before I have my guys open up!”

Jacob raised his rifle.

His first shot went through the buttock of the guard to Doc Hamilton’s right. The man crumpled as the round dinged the ballistic glass and left behind a spattering of red. Another shot straight into the man’s midsection as he toppled over, his rifle falling out of his grip.

Jacob transitioned to the guard on the left. He was just beginning to realize what had happened, and was in the process of turning. Jacob fired three times, got him with two of the shots, but the third went wide and clipped Doc Hamilton in the shoulder. The old man cried out in pain, clutching his shoulder and spinning around to face Jacob, eyes shimmering with fear.

Behind him, the people on the outside had fallen silent.

Jacob walked up at an even pace, rifle still trained on Doc’s chest.

“Jacob!” Doc shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Jacob tilted his head just slightly at the question. “I’m trying to figure out whether or not to kill you.”

Doc slid down into a sitting position, his face going white. “Jacob…”

“I don’t see you being of any benefit to me. In fact, I see you lowering my odds of success.”

“Success at what?” Doc blubbered.

“Survival. For everyone. The human race, as a species.” Jacob shook his head. “I see you as an impediment to that, Doc. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. We just don’t have the ability anymore to put up with people like you—liars, backstabbers, etcetera, etcetera.”

“I’m not…” Doc shook his head, beginning to sweat. “I’m not…”

“Ssh.” Jacob said softly. “Don’t move.”

Doc remained still and Jacob shot him once, right on the bridge of the nose.

The crowd outside jumped at the sound of the gunshot. They gasped and drew back as Doc slumped. His right foot kept spasming, like he was attempting to point his toes. It went on like that for a few seconds, and then finally relaxed. Just the sound of blood dribbling onto the tile floors.

Jacob took a deep, shaky breath. He ported his rifle and went to the door, standing just to the side of Doc’s body. The man that Doc had been in the shouting match with now stood back a good distance, clearly nervous about Jacob. But neither him nor his group made a run for it.

Jacob motioned him forward. Had to repeat the motion several times, like he was calling for a stubborn dog. Finally the man stepped forward, close enough for Jacob to be heard through the closed doors.

“You said that LaRouche sent you here?” Jacob asked.

The man hesitated, but then nodded. “Yeah. Where’s Captain Harden?”

Jacob shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not here.”

The man looked around. “Why’d you kill those men?”

“They would have killed me.”

“The old guy wasn’t even armed.”

“No.” Jacob looked down at the body. “But he did some other things.”

The man’s fingers worked nervously. “So what now?”

“We have food and water,” Jacob said. “And medicine.”

This caught the other man’s attention again. He eyed Jacob up and down. “Okay.”

Jacob smiled, knowing that the man knew there was a catch. “You can have it, but not before I open these doors. And before I open these doors, you have to promise me something.”

A glance behind him, then, “What’s that?”

“There’s been a bit of infighting around here the last few days.”

“I can see that.”

“Some people don’t think we should help other groups, such as yourself. But I’ve got friends that side with me. And I need help finding them. If you help me find them, you can have whatever you can carry with you.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“I am, but probably not the kind you want. I can do some basic stuff, though.”

“Okay,” the man nodded. “You got a deal.”

Jacob stepped back away from the door. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He left the man outside, probably mystified and wondering what the hell he’d just agreed to. But the man never called out to Jacob as he walked away, and Jacob went back to the stairs, leaving behind him the dead bodies of Doc Hamilton and the two guards. He climbed the stairs steadily. Went into the third floor and into his room. He grabbed the ruck that he’d taken from Captain Mitchell that still contained everything Jacob owned in the world—he still hadn’t emptied it completely after moving to Johnston Memorial Hospital.

He stuffed everything into the pack, which was only an extra pair of pants, a battered pair of boots, and a collection of solid color t-shirts, a few white and a few black. And finally his prized possession…his Pink Floyd t-shirt. He wore it when he needed to free his mind up a bit. It put him in the mood to make leaps in his logic and think more creatively.

Then he went to this table and began pulling all the papers off the wall, then stacking them up. While he did this, he looked at the notebook one last time, shaking his head, sad to his core. Then he slapped the pile of loose notes down into the middle of the notebook and closed it like an overloaded sandwich. He stuffed the whole thing into his ruck.

He swung it up on his back, grabbed the lantern off his desk, and exited the room without looking back behind him. Always forward. Never look back. You can always second guess your decisions, but why? You were incapable of changing them. Forward was the only way.

He went to the stairs again, but this time he did not go down. He went up. To the neonatal ward. He pushed into the room, found it dark. He got the uncomfortable sensation that Stacey had gotten out and now lurked in the shadows, waiting for him. He clicked on the battery powered lantern and held it up. The pale light cast a moon-glow over everything. He stepped into the ward.

From the neonatal room he could hear a clatter.

Good. Stacey was still in the room.

She smelled him getting closer, or saw the shifting light from his lantern, and began to growl menacingly. He approached the window cautiously. He knew that she couldn’t break through it—she’d already tried, and Jacob had been relieved to see how sturdy the reinforced glass was—but it was still nerve wracking to walk up to the glass and have her lunge at you.

Tonight she was burrowed under the bed. The tray where they had piled her food was licked clean and tossed into the far corner of the room. She was only partially under the bed—her pale rear end sticking out just slightly, her spine twisted to look behind her and glare at him. When she saw him at the window, she slunk further underneath the bed, muttering.

Jacob forced down a shivery feeling and walked around to the doors. He unlocked it and swung the doors open, raising his rifle at the same time. The lantern hung from the hand that gripped the fore-end of his rifle, and it dangled, the light washing back and forth, like they were on a rocking boat.

“Stacey,” he said softly.

As though she would recognize her name and come to him.

He knelt down slowly so that he could see under the bed. The light from his lantern glistened in her squinted eyes. She opened her mouth and hissed at him, and it glistened there too.

“I can’t just leave you up here,” Jacob said with a note of regret. “Sorry, Stacey.”

He pulled the trigger rapidly. The first few shots caused her to come lurching out from under the bed in panicked aggression, all the hormones in her body telling her simultaneously to attack him, to defend herself, and to defend the wretched offspring growing in her belly. But the next few rounds slowed her down, and the last three ended her life.

Jacob stood up. And for a moment of weakness, he did look back. He looked back at who he’d been only months ago, and he wondered about himself. He wondered what things were twisting up inside of him, changing and souring and hardening. It was not so much the things that he did, as the fact that he did them so casually. What kind of a man was he?

 He left the neonatal ward and went back downstairs. In the lobby, he unlocked the front doors and forced them open. Then he stood face to face with the other man. He extended his hand, but then saw that there was a spot of blood on it. He stared at it for a long time, but then the stranger’s hand enveloped his, seemingly oblivious to the blood, and he shook it.

“Brett,” the man said.

“Jacob Crane,” Jacob tried to force a smile, but couldn’t. “Pleasure.”

***

Stay awake…

Stay awake…

Lee jerked slightly as he felt his chin touch his chest. Despite the cold and the discomfort and the numbness sinking into his fingers from the ropes around his wrists, he was falling asleep. The warmth of Deuce sleeping fitfully at his legs seemed to mentally draw him in, so that he focused on it, and ignored the other things.

Like the chills, that might have been from the air, but might have been from fever. He felt rotten, and it was difficult to tell whether it was from dehydration and fatigue, or the infection that he feared was setting into the ragged wound on his scalp.

He needed to get free. He had to escape. Or he was going to die.

He lay there, staring across the open space between himself and the dwindling fire, while Kev stroked his beard and stared back. Kev was the second watchman. The first had been Shelley. Lee had to guess that it was close to three or four in the morning, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep himself awake. He fast approached that point of exhaustion where rocks became pillows and standing up was as good as lying down.

The only thing keeping him awake now was the throb of adrenaline that pushed his eyes open each time he remembered the simple fact that time was not on his side. Time was slipping away. Time was his enemy.

Stay awake…

Stay awake…

Stay awake, because the next opportunity you get, you’ve got to take it. You’ve got to take it and get the fuck out of here. All bets are off. No holds barred. Do or die time.

He could feel himself fading anyway. He knew he needed the sleep, but he knew that if he awoke confused, he might miss the one, fleeting opportunity when it came to him. Sleep was like a river that would wash every damn memory out of his brain, force him to build it all back up again like broken dams. If he could just delay the flood…

Just keep reminding yourself of what you’re doing.

Eddie Ramirez shot me in the head and stole my GPS. I am somewhere north of Sanford. I have to get my GPS back. Eddie Ramirez shot me in the head and stole my GPS. I am somewhere north of Sanford. I have to get my GPS back. Eddie Ramirez…shot me in the head…fuck…I feel like shit…and something about my GPS…