The Remaining: Fractured (8 page)

He moved through the house carefully, much in the same way as before. He felt clearer than when he’d first woken up, his mind more focused. In the living room he found a large fish tank, still full. The sides of the glass were speckled with algae, the top of the water a thick layer of pond scum. Two large and exotic-looking fish floated amid the green layer, their bulbous eyes gray and sightless.

A soft click of claws on the foyer tiles caused him to spin.

Deuce stood partially through the doorway, sniffing the house hesitantly. His ears forward, tail level. His body language was neutral.

Lee moved on.

The kitchen was cramped. A table took up much of the floor space, and was parked in front of the back door to barricade it. He left it where it was. Lee searched the narrow kitchen and came up with a can of corn and a half-full gallon of water from the pantry. He uncapped the water and sniffed it. It smelled fine. He took a sip, swished it around in his mouth. It was cool on his tongue, and tasted slightly of plastic, but otherwise was okay. He took a longer drink, then recapped the jug.

He rummaged through the drawers, pulling up a can opener when he found it and setting to work on the can of corn. He opened it and ate it there, fishing every last kernel out. What was left in the bottom of the can was a murky-looking water. He pulled out the cornmeal he’d taken from the other house and mixed small amounts into the water until he had created a thick paste.

Deuce sat before him, very attentively.

Lee scooped a big wad of the paste onto his fingers and held it down to the dog. Deuce moved in quickly and it was gone from Lee’s finger tips in a flash of pink tongue. Lee pulled out another mouthful. “Go ahead, buddy. You earned it. You already saved me once.”

Lee ate the last half of the cornmeal. He took a moment to think more than five minutes ahead. He stood quietly in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and looking out the kitchen window into the backyard. The yard ended in a thin patch of trees that separated this house and the house on the next street over. Through the layer of trees, the houses on the next street looked strangely untouched. Like he could just step through that bit of forest and find himself in a neighborhood without violence and chaos, with joggers and dog walkers and people in robes stepping out to get the newspaper. Fresh cups of coffee in hand.

He looked down at his dirty old boots. Mud-caked and blood-spattered. Bits of leaves still clinging to them. He didn’t want to think about a neighborhood without violence and chaos, because such a thing was not real. He would not delude himself. This was the world. This was
his
world. He may as well have been born into it, because everything else was so long gone, it seemed that it had never existed.

Think about what you need to do,
he told himself.

Eddie Ramirez shot you in the head and stole your GPS.

You need to get your GPS back.

How the fuck are you going to do that?

It was easier said than done. Eddie had a big head start on him. And he’d taken Lee’s Humvee. And Lee could only take an educated guess as to where the other man was heading at that moment. But he knew that he should know where Eddie was going. He just couldn’t make it clear to himself. He closed his eyes, his face scrunching up in what looked like pain, but he was only trying to think. His scattered mind seemed to be avoiding him. Like something recently forgotten that only recedes deeper back into your mind the more you try to haul it to the surface.

Lee touched his head where it ached, as though the overstress and confusion and multitude of questions were going to split his skull open like an over-pressurized pipe. Whatever wires had been jarred loose by taking a bullet graze across his dome, Lee could feel that he wasn’t thinking as quickly or making connections as well as he’d done before. He felt stunted. Like his thoughts were being suppressed. Like he had the truth rolling around in there, but he just couldn’t lock it down into place.

He started with what he knew and tugged at the thread gently.

Eddie Ramirez. He stole my GPS and tried to kill me.

Why?

Because…

Because…

Because of Abe Darabie.

Lee’s eyes popped open. His fingers suddenly wrenched down into a fist.

That one little thread had suddenly unearthed the whole ugly truth that had been hiding beneath the silt of his injured mind. And it hit him like a gut-punch, just like the first time he’d learned it. Abe Darabie—his closest friend—had sent people to kill him. To terminate him. To execute him. To keep him from opening any more of his bunkers. Because that wasn’t in the cards. It wasn’t in the plan to let North Carolina live. It wasn’t in the plan that Lee’s portion of the mission actually be successful. Lee was just a waste of resources. A rogue operative.

A non-viable asset.

“Motherfucker,” Lee mumbled under his breath. He looked at the dirty dishes surrounding him on the kitchen counter. For a brief moment he wanted to sling them across the room. Just to see something besides himself get broken.

But he didn’t. He just looked at them, slowly shaking his head as the picture became clear. The whole, terrible picture. And he silently argued with himself, his own mind opposing himself like a madman:

Everything east of the Appalachians has been written off. We’re in a dead zone. A no-man’s land. And then there’s everything west of the Appalachians. All the interior states, surrounded by mountains. A convenient buffer between them and all those over-populated coastal cities.

So if I were to make a guess, I’d have to say Eddie Ramirez is heading west. West with my stolen GPS, to cross the Appalachians. Probably into Tennessee.

So, great. You’ve really narrowed it down.

Somewhere near the border of Tennessee and North Carolina.

In the fucking mountains with a two-day head start.

I’ll find him.

There’s no fucking way you’re going to find him.

I will. I have to.

The sound of Deuce growling snapped him out of it.

For a moment he stood confused, as though the growl required interpretation. Then abruptly he dropped to the ground. He fumbled with the knife in his hand. Felt his heart lodge firmly in his throat. He put his back to the cabinet doors. Leaned out just slightly, peering around the corner. From there he could see straight through the living room and to the front door. It still hung open from when Lee had kicked it in.

It was open about a foot, and through that opening he could see a thin sliver of the world outside. Green-brown lawns. The charcoal strip of the street. A single mailbox. He waited there, not breathing, not moving, his whole body just a bundle of muscles and nerves locked down and ready to bolt at any minute.

Beside him, Deuce stood stiffly. The hair along his spine risen and his head was lowered. He continued to growl, but it was low, subdued.

Lee focused on the door again. He couldn’t see any movement outside, and Deuce was not barking yet. But his window of opportunity to get the hell out of the house was rapidly closing. He had to assume that whatever infected Deuce smelled were moving closer. And all Lee had was his knife. If he was still in the house when they got close enough to sniff him out, or hear him moving, it would be all over. He might take one. Maybe two. But after that they would overpower him.

Lee reached out and poked the dog gently in the side of its neck.

Deuce looked at him and grumbled.

Lee put his finger in front of his lips. “Ssh.”

He rose slowly from his crouched position, eyes still locked on the front door. When he was on his feet, he turned and faced the back door. There was a window in that door, and through it Lee could see the backyard and the strip of woods beyond. Then the next street over. More houses. Lee stared at them for a long moment but saw no movement.

Deuce growled again, this time a little louder.

“Alright,” Lee said. “We’re going. Just stay quiet.”

He pulled the table out of the way as quietly as he could and opened the back door. It creaked loudly, the weather stripping cracking as it separated from the door. Lee grimaced at the noise and swore under his breath. With the door open, he leaned out and looked both ways.

All clear.

He stepped through the door, Deuce on his heels and then trotting past him, casting wary glances back behind them as they headed for the trees. He didn’t want to be in the house, but the woods weren’t much better. The last few days had been dry, and the leaves would be loud. He wasn’t sure how far away the infected were, but he always assumed that they were in earshot.

He jogged to the woods and then slowed. “Shit!” He turned back to the house, one hand flying to his head. He’d left the jug of water sitting on the kitchen counter. His feet moved unsurely, as though one foot wanted to go back and the other wanted to go forward.

He looked forward through the woods, to the back of the next line of houses. He could hole up in one of those, take a minute to barricade the doors and windows, keep watch and wait for the neighborhood to be clear of infected before running back for the water…

He shook his head.

Bullshit
. He wasn’t going to get himself killed over a half-gallon of water, no matter how thirsty he was. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to escape one house just to cram himself into another one less than a hundred yards away from the first.

He stepped into the woods with fresh urgency, picking his way as quickly and as quietly as he could. The dried leaves and twigs felt more like tripwires and sensors, threatening to give him away at each step.

Deuce was already on the other side of the strip of woods, looking back at him with what seemed like impatience.

Yeah, I’m working on it…

Lee forced himself to focus completely on the forest floor and where he put his feet. In his mind he pictured a pack of the filthy creatures tumbling around the corner of the house and seeing him picking his slow progress through the woods, locking onto him like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer.

Just get to the other side.

His feet hit grass. He looked up and found himself in another back lawn and he broke into a jog. Deuce lingered for a few seconds, sniffing the air, his body language cautious. The houses here were packed close together so that the side of two adjacent houses created a narrow alley perhaps ten feet wide. Lee went to the left of the house directly in front of him, making for the street on the other side.

Halfway down that narrow alley, he stopped and looked behind him. Deuce wasn’t following.

“Deuce,” he said at a loud whisper. “Come on!”

When he faced forward again, something large and dark stood in front of him and it lashed out and turned his vision into stars and he tasted blood.

CHAPTER 6: GUT CHECK

Lee hit the ground on his back. He rolled onto his side and tried to bring himself up, gripping the knife in close to his body and praying that he wouldn’t lose it. He could smell dirt and grass and when the sparkles cleared in his vision, he was looking at mildewed vinyl siding, wriggling patterns cut through the green by the slime trails of slugs.

“Stay down!” someone shouted. “Drop that knife or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

Lee opened his mouth, felt blood dribble out onto his chin, and he wondered if he’d lost another tooth. He twisted slightly, slumping against the dirty vinyl siding. The figure stood over him, just an impressionist blur. Lee blinked rapidly, trying to bring the figure into focus.

A large man, well over six feet. A giant, reddish-brown beard that looked like it had been grown long even before the collapse, only now it clumped into dreadlocks towards the bottom. An old black cap with no logo and a crumpled and tattered brim shaded the man’s narrowed eyes, dark and suspicious. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves bunched up at the elbows, revealing a clutter of blue tattoos on both forearms. The man held an M4 carbine, the barrel oriented perfectly with Lee’s face.

“I said, ‘drop the fucking knife’!” the man yelled again.

Lee complied, half because he truly believed the man would shoot him, and half because he wanted him to stop yelling. He held up both hands, palms speckled with dirt. “Alright,” he said quietly. “I dropped the knife. You need to be quiet.”

“What the fuck did you say?” two thick eyebrows came together in the center of the man’s face.

Lee’s mind kicked into gear. Slightly delayed, but better late than never. The barrel of the man’s rifle was too close to Lee, only inches from his face. Action would always be faster than reaction, and a trained man would know to keep his gun out of reach of his enemy.

Lee pointed back behind him. “There’re infected back there!”

The man’s eyes tracked up, away from Lee.

Lee pivoted his foot underneath his body, getting a good stance, about to launch himself.

Then two other figures appeared around the corner of the house.

Lee stopped himself.

One of them held an AK-47. A pale, skinny kid that couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. He pointed his rifle at Lee and eyed him coldly. “What we got here, Kev?” He stood with his head cocked to one side, and he spoke in that certain way that said he desperately wanted to appear tougher than he was, but had likely come from a soft, upper-middle-class life.

The second newcomer was a middle-aged man with dark hair and a beard, both shot through with gray. He wore a blue knit cap, under which his long hair hung in a single braid, just slightly longer than shoulder-length. He held a pistol-grip shotgun with a sidesaddle full of spare shells. His eyes were a frosty blue and he looked like the type that didn’t talk much.

Kev—the guy with the big, red beard—looked back down at Lee’s face. “You fuckin’ with me bro? I don’t see any infected.” His moustache and beard compacted as though his lips had disappeared from between them. He reached down with one hand and hauled Lee to his feet. “Get the fuck up against the wall.”