The Remaining: Fractured (43 page)

He could smell acrid smoke. That sharp, harsh smell from when the airbag deploys. And he could feel the burning sensation on his face, but he knew it wasn’t actually a fire. He could see the big white bulk of the airbag deflating in front of him. He tried to reach out to push it away from him, but suddenly it seemed like it was miles away. His arm felt like it was stretching out for miles to reach it.

More unconsciousness.

Deuce growling loudly.

Lee reached over, started trying to find the dog, though he wasn’t sure whether he was dreaming about doing it, or actually doing it in real life.

He opened his eyes and realized he’d just been laying there, motionless, his hands still limp at his sides. He tried to sit up a bit, but couldn’t really complete the motion. Unconsciousness pulled at him like a black hole. He looked to his right, his eyes crossing as they moved, and he could see Deuce there, crumpled in the floorboard of the front seat, whimpering and shaking, one paw raised up as though it were injured.

“Deuce,” Lee let out a dry whisper.

He heard a high-pitched motor. Something small. Like a dirt bike.

He reached out for Deuce with the last bit of anything he had, managed to touch the dog on the neck. Then his eyes rolled out the broken windshield and he could see a single headlight bouncing towards him as the noisy whine of the dirt bike’s engine drew closer.

I won’t go again,
he thought as he slipped.
I won’t let them take me again.

Not again.

Not again.

***

He dreamed dreams of reality.

Deuce was barking madly and Lee wanted to fight, but his body felt like something made of cast-iron. He thought of Angela on the rooftop, and how she had told him that he was cursed. That everyone around him died. Just like Deuce was about to die. And Lee couldn’t stop it, because he was going to die too.

He felt himself falling, his feet tumbling over nothingness. Hands grabbed him. He felt cold and warm, all at once. This world collided with another full of his memories, and all the pieces intermingled. Mom and Dad in double coffins, and Deana standing next to him, except that it wasn’t Deana—it was Angela.

“Everyone around you dies,” she said sadly.

And then Dad was looking at him, angry. “What the hell’d you do to my truck?”

Then another face, and he was on his back and the face was leaning over him. An infected, its mouth open wide, about to bite him. Lee struggled for his knife, felt his hands gripping it but the hardwood handle felt more like sand in his fingers. The infected yelled at him as he brought his knife up.

“Captain Harden!”

Then the infected grabbed Lee by the wrist and twisted the knife out of his hands. Lee jerked back and forth as best he could, trying to punch or kick at the infected, or get a hand around its neck, but again drifted into another place and the face of the infected was the face of Jacob and he was laughing like a madman.

“They’re all dead!” Jacob shouted as he laughed. “They’re all dead, Lee! All your friends! Everyone you knew! Everyone in the
world
! Everyone is dead! Complete and total and unequivocal extinction, my friend. You’re completely alone. The only person left on the face of the planet.”

Other infected came. They all bore the faces of people that he knew. He was carried. There was shouting. There were gunshots. Then he was carried further, and he was laid down again and it was cold metal that he lay on. Captain Brian Tomlin crouched next to him, shouting at someone else, and Lee wondered abstractly if Tomlin were still angry with Lee for throwing him in that metal box when he first showed up.

Maybe this was Tomlin’s revenge. He came all the way from South Carolina, only for Lee to wrongly imprison him, and now he was an infected, and he was hell-bent on revenge. He was going to put Lee into a metal box and in the dark he was going to eat Lee alive while he was barely conscious and couldn’t fight…

Tomlin looked down at him. “We got you, Buddy.”

Lee reached for Tomlin’s neck, planning to choke him to death, but Tomlin just took his hand and held it firmly.

Back down into blackness. Back into formless void, like floating in a vacuum. And then like a meteor, he streaked through the firmament of his own mind, slamming down into earth, embedding there, dark and solid and shapeless and surrounded by megatons of smothering soil and there was nothing but him and the darkness, and his thoughts and memories could not reach him there.

***

When he did awake, he knew instantly that it was reality.

Lee’s mind was instantly in high-gear. The fever that had clouded his brain seemed lessened, or perhaps broken completely, and the exhaustion was gone and replaced with a sudden and horrible energy, the positivity that he was being held somewhere, perhaps an infected den. A live bit of food for the pregnant females that were lurking in the darkness. The notion that he had to escape rippled through him like static electricity.

But it wasn’t completely dark. He lay on his back and he could see rafters above his head. A high ceiling. Something like a warehouse, or maybe a large showroom. He got the impression of a vast space. There was movement around him. Voices.

The next thing that he noticed was that he was not bound, and it set his heart to slamming. He would have to make a run now, while he still had a chance. He would have to just get up and start running.

He leaned up just slightly.

Stared in shock. Confusion.

It was a wide open space, dimly lit. Some old classic cars, once shining and beautifully maintained, were now covered in a layer of brown dust and shoved off into the corners and against the walls to make room for a Humvee and a big bus. A big, white, church bus. Just like the one that Old Man Hughes and all the survivors from Dunn had used.

And there were people. People standing around. People milling about. Engaging in casual conversations. Not infected. Just regular people. And none of them were pointing a gun at Lee. None of them guarded the exits of this big open space.

“What the fuck?” Lee murmured to himself.

His hand went to his side, reaching for his knife, but it was not in the sheath that still hung on his belt.

“Hey!” a voice hollered.

Heads turned towards Lee.

Adrenaline surged through Lee. He twisted rapidly towards the sound of the shout, which had come from directly behind him. It was a face he recognized. A thirty-something man with dark hair and a stern face. He was smiling broadly at Lee, and that confused Lee more than anything else.

“Captain Harden!” the man said, then raised his voice louder. “Hey! Captain Harden’s awake! Get Captain Tomlin!”

Lee stared at the man, still not convinced that he was friendly. “Nate?” he breathed. He was almost positive that it was Nate. Nate Malone. The first guy to come forward and volunteer when Lee had come up with his plan to blow all the bridges along the Roanoke River. But Nate had gone with Harper, right? He’d gone with Harper’s group, north towards the town of Eden. What was he doing here? For that matter, where the fuck was “here” and what was
Lee
doing there?

And where was his rifle?

He wanted his rifle badly.

“Lee!” a voice called out. Familiar.

He turned and found Captain Tomlin walking briskly towards him. He was flanked by two other familiar faces—Old Man Hughes and Jacob—and Lee was suddenly certain that this was just another dream. This was just some, less-damaging reality that his warped brain had conjured up to avoid facing the fact that he was in an infected den, waiting to be eaten alive. It had to be, because he couldn’t figure out why those three men would be together in this mysterious place.

Old Man Hughes hung back a bit, his skinny old arms folded across his chest, the beaten up trucker’s cap still perched on a head with barely any hair left on it. Jacob and Tomlin continued forward and they both knelt down next to Lee, Tomlin on Lee’s right and Jacob on the left. Lee still did not trust his mind to tell him the truth and he found his eyes wandering to Tomlin’s rifle, which was strapped to him and dangling at his side. He wondered if he could get it away from Tomlin.

Jacob shined a light in his eyes. He spoke very clearly and deliberately. “Can you tell me your name?”

Lee stared at Jacob, not sure whether he should go along with this or not. Still utterly confused.

Jacob and Tomlin exchanged a concerned glance.

“Lee Harden,” Lee said, cautiously, and his voice came out like the rattling of a jar of rocks.

The two men looked relieved.

Jacob: “Do you know where you are right now?”

Lee looked irritated. “I have no fucking idea where I am! What the fuck is going on right now?”

Tomlin put a hand on Lee’s shoulder and smiled. “Easy, Buddy. We just need to see how bad your head injury is.”

“It’s fine.”

Jacob spoke again. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Lee had to think about that one. “Uh…driving, I think. A van.” His eyes suddenly juked between the two men kneeling next to him. “Where’s my dog? Where’s Deuce?”

Tomlin nodded, his voice relaxed. Soothing. “We got him, Lee. He’s got a busted leg, but we got him and he’ll be fine.”

“So you remember driving?” Jacob asked. “Do you remember the accident?”

Lee blinked rapidly. “Uh…I don’t…yes. There was a car in the road.”

“Do you remember what happened then?”

Lee shifted, growing frustrated. “Enough of the fucking questions! Can one of you tell me what the fuck is going on right now? Where the hell am I and how’d I get here?”

“You’re just outside of Lillington,” Jacob said. “That’s where you had the accident.”

“I know that.”

“Good,” Jacob smiled. “Your brain isn’t as jangled as we thought. Although you did punch Nate in the face when he was trying to pull you out of the wrecked van.” Jacob and Tomlin both looked slightly amused.

Tomlin nodded. “And you tried to stab him.”

“So we were a little concerned about your mental state,” Jacob said plainly.

Lee looked back over his shoulder at Nate. The man pointed to his cheek, which Lee could see was just slightly swollen. Lee shook his head. “I, uh…I don’t remember that.”

Nate shrugged. “It’s okay. You were barely there, Captain. I’m just glad I got the knife out of your hand before you gutted me.”

Lee closed his eyes. “I still…I’m not…”

“Like Jacob said, we’re just outside of Lillington right now,” Tomlin took up the reins of explanation in a slow, even tone. “Not a whole lot is going to make sense to you right now. No one knows where you’ve been, or how much you’ve missed, but I’m going to start from the beginning, okay? And I’m gonna tell you some shit you probably don’t want to hear. But you’re gonna hear it anyway.”

Lee swallowed. “Okay.”

“When you were gone, Jerry took over Camp Ryder. He did it with the help of Professor White from Fuquay-Varina, who we believe to be dead right now. When Bus realized what was going on, he told me to get out of Camp Ryder and try to hook up with the other outposts, to let them know what happened, because Jerry severed the radio communications.”

Lee’s eyes opened wider, his lips compressing tighter. But he said nothing.

Tomlin continued. “Old Man Hughes had a good idea what was going on when Professor White and his crew, who had typically refused any guns and ammunition from you, suddenly wanted all they could get, and left OP Lillington loaded down for a firefight.”

Lee put his head in his hands. He could feel that they had wrapped his head wound with fresh bandages. He closed his eyes, grit his teeth. “I gave them those fucking guns.”

“There’s no way you could have known, Lee.” Tomlin looked at the ground. “But when the radios went down over the Camp Ryder Hub, Old Man Hughes saw the writing on the wall and decided to get the hell out of Lillington. He packed everybody up within the hour and moved them across the river into this warehouse. But he kept an eye on Lillington, to see who would show up looking for them. Put a scout on a dirt bike in the woods right outside of OP Lillington. I was the first one that came looking for them, and they brought me in. And that’s essentially how the rest got here, too.”

Lee stared at the people all around them. “Who all is here?”

“Old Man Hughes’ group from Dunn,” Tomlin listed. “Couple families that got out of Camp Ryder right when Jerry took over. Jacob and a group of survivors he met over at Smithfield. And Nate and Devon, as of yesterday.”

Lee looked behind him at Nate. “But aren’t you supposed to be with Harper?”

Nate nodded. “When the radios went down, Harper sent me and Devon back to see what was going on at Camp Ryder. The scout recognized us when we made our way through OP Lillington.”

From behind Nate, Devon came jogging up. He smiled excitedly, held a hand up in greeting. “Good to see you awake, Captain.”

Lee nodded at him, seeming a bit overwhelmed. Then he turned back to Tomlin. “So, what the fuck’s been going on at Camp Ryder?” Lee asked. “Has anybody been able to get in? Has anyone made contact with them? Do we know what the hell Jerry’s doing?”

Tomlin raised a placating hand. “Relax, Buddy, I got you covered. I’ve been watching the place on a nightly basis, and in fact last night I was able to make contact with Marie.”

“You talked to Marie?”

Tomlin shook his head. “No, we exchanged notes. But it’s the first communications we’ve been able to make with anyone inside Camp Ryder. We’re trying to determine how many friendly people we have inside the fence.”

“What about Angela?” Lee asked, and then almost seemed embarrassed by his own question. “And Bus? And the other people that didn’t support Jerry?”

Tomlin looked unsure. “Most everybody that supported you guys went with either Harper or LaRouche. There’s not a whole lot of people left in Camp Ryder that aren’t supporting Jerry. But I’ve been able to put eyes on Angela. She seems okay. Both of the kids, too.” Tomlin rubbed his knuckles. “Bus I don’t know about. I haven’t been able to get eyes on him. I don’t know if he’s even still in Camp Ryder or…” he glanced up at Lee. “…or if he’s even still alive.”