The Remaining: Refugees (8 page)

Lee glanced up at LaRouc
he, who had ported his gun.
Lee gave him a nod, and the sergeant
holstered up. Lee set his own weapon to the side and then knelt down and heft
ed
the slender man up
to his feet, grimacing at how horribly light he felt
.

"Jes
us, there's nothing left to you,
"
Lee exclaimed.

Jacob laughed weakly and let himself be led to one of the folding chairs. Harper and Bus were still standing in a sort of daze, not sure what the hell was going on. For that matter, Lee wasn't sure either. Jacob didn't seem entirely sane,
but then again, only God-knew what he’d been through to get there
.

"You came all the way here from Virginia?" Harper asked in amazement.

Jacob nodded. "From Petersburg. I've been on the road since..." he looked at a scratched and worn watch that clung to his wrist. He
regarded it with some confusion
. "Shit. It's b
usted. When did it break? Damn…
I don't know how long I've been on the road. A few weeks, I think. Last time I checked my watch, I'd been on the road for fifteen days, and that was at least a week ago. Maybe two." Jacob looked up and realized he was rambling. "Sorry. I've gotten into the bad habit of speaking to myself. Passes the time. Makes things seem less...
” He didn’t finish the thought.

Lee took a seat across from the man. "Do you need anything? Food or water?"

"Oh, no. Thank you, Captain. I've just
,” he swallowed and for a moment seemed to be lost in an unpleasant memory. “
I've just been looking for you."

"Yeah." Lee
shifted
. "I
’m sorry…I don’t..
."

"No
.
You don't know me.
” Jacob smiled.
“
Captain Mitchell
sent me here."

Lee
jerked like he’d been touched by a
lightning
bolt
. "Captain Mitchell
sent you here?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What’s wrong? Does he need help?”

Jacob
’s smile grew brittle
,
and then
it
shattered and fell away. His eyes looked to the floor, and
Lee
felt his stomach knot up, reading that expression as clearly as if it were a billboard sign and knowing that something had happened…something bad
.

Jacob clea
red his throat.
"Captain Mitchell is dead."

LaRouche and Harper and Bus
stood with incredible stillness, watching Lee and gauging his response.
Lee looked right back at them, caught in some indecisive loop as his brain whittled away at those words and tried to carve from them some other meaning, though there was no other meaning to be had.

When he did speak, it was subdued: "He's dead?"

Jacob nodded.

The question burned in Lee's mind, and he spit it out suddenly. "How did he die?"

Jacob avoided eye-contact. "I had to kill him."

Everyone stiffened. Lee felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips, and he glanced at his rifle,
leaning against the wall. But a
fter a moment of thought, Lee realized what Jacob
must have
meant.

"Because he was infected."

Jacob nodded
again
. "I tried to do it quick, I did. But I couldn't use the gun because they were all around us and in the trees and I knew they'd come running. So I used a knife. And he made me promise! He put the knife in my hand and he made me promis
e! I didn't want to, but I did…
I did."

Lee
stared
. "
Jesus Christ…
” He rubbed his face rapidly. “
So what about the people he rescued? Who's with them now? What about the Coordinators from Delaware and Maryland and West Virginia? Are they helping? I mean, shit...Captain Connors from Maryland should be right there across the water..."

"They're all dead."

There was a sudd
en humming sound in Lee's ears.
"What?"
His voice sounded muted
, as though he were hearing himself from a different room in a large house
.

"They're all dead," Jacob murmured.

Lee stared, his hands planted on his knees and his fingers digging into the fabric of his pants and the flesh underneath.
The humming noise rose to a high-pitched ringing sound, and then throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
He wanted to speak, and though he wasn't struck speechless, nothing came to mind but
curses
. He closed his mouth and the words and anger and indignation sat back in his throat and curdled there.

The thin man's eyes watered and grew red. He was on the verge of breaking down. "There's nothing left, Captain. There's nothing left up there. There's nothing left anywhere north of here."

That
ringing in his ears, the sound of a teakettle in another room
. It seemed to grow louder
,
to fill the vacuum created by the lack of words being spoken
.
He could feel his heart beating in his chest, sharp and rapid taps like a snare drum, and he could feel his palms beginning to sweat.
B
ut
t
here was a numbness there, like the point of a pin being pressed against a thick callous so that you could feel the pres
sure, but not the pain.

Lee waited for it in silence, for the moment to become real and for that deep wringing feeling in his gut to come back aga
in. He was familiar with it now, like a frequently visiting, but unwanted guest
. But the longer he waited, the more certain he was that it was not going to happen.
H
e fel
t little more than hollow disappointment
.

He leaned forward in his chair until he was sitting on the edge and he steepled his fingertips in front of his face and rested his chin on his protruding thumbs. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose so the air whistled past his fingernails
.

He could smell his hands.

L
ike musty earth and sweat
.

"Excuse me," Lee said quietly. "This is a lot to take in right now."

H
e
opened his eyes
again
and looked at the pathetic form huddled in the chair before him, his skinny limbs like
thin branches shoved into pant
legs and shirt sleeves
,
like a scarecrow
.

He spoke very slowly, choosing his words. "I think we need to stop and have you explain some things so that we're all on the same page. I understand that Captain Mitchell is dead. I understand that you allege the other captains are also dead. Please explain, and let's start with your relationship with Captain Mitchell. Who are you, and how did you come to know him?"

Jacob took a quick swipe at his eyes, then raked his fingers through his
dirty
hair.
He had a strange way of speaking. Oddly formal in its wording, but somehow disjointed and meandering, as though nothing he said was planned
,
but rather
a simple verbalization of
his own train of thought.
"My name is Jacob Weber. I'm a
micro
biologist with the CDC, or I suppose I was
until
a few months back. I was visiting the Level Four facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland when all of this happened. I was requested to stay and gather as much information as possible, and by the time anyone knew what was happening, travel had become very unsafe.
”

His eyes wandered.
“
Actually, that's just what I tell myself
—
I don't really know why they left me at Fort Detrick."
He pursed his lips
. "Seems like they could have sent a helicopter for me. Or something
…b
ut they didn't. So I continued to work there, locked down in the bowels of Fort Detrick until everything collapsed. It was j
ust me and another scientist, an epidemiologist
named Lori, and a skeleton crew of army security personnel.

"After a while we decided to leave. I'd already gathered what data I could, made some interesting discoveries, but the...
uh…samples…they
became non-viable.
Anyway, it was out of the question to try to get more samples and there was no reason for us to stay
where we were, so we left. The a
rmy personnel came with us." He swallowed hard. "It was very bad. Much worse than I expected. I mean, I watched the news up until they stopped broadcasting, but I guess things just got exponentially worse when the power grid failed." He looked thoughtful. "That's my guess, anyway. I don't suppose it was the reactors that went out. They'll go on forever by themselves, I think. But maybe it was just the grid itself. With no one there to repair and maintain it. Maybe it was just that fragile.
”

He directed his gaze to Lee, his face becoming abruptly blank and detached.
"So...Lori died first. She was eaten. Then some of the personnel began to get sick with flu-like symptoms. I told them
it
didn't necessarily mean they were infected with FURY. It could've just been
a
cold. But I think it got into their heads that they had been infected. Three of them committed suicide, and then it was just me and two others. After the first few days outside we realized we weren't going to get through it, so we holed up in an office building and we waited."

He paused there. "I'm not sure what we were waiting for. We knew that if we tried to continue on that we would die, or be killed, or be eaten. But I think we didn't want to give up just yet. We wanted to stretch
out our last bit
of time, maybe. Eek a little more
out
of our pathetic existence.
”

Jacob smiled sadly. "Lucky for us, we saw Captain Mitchell and a little gathering of refugees getting the hell out of the city, so we came running out to catch up with them. Almost got ourselves shot for it, they were so jumpy. And that's how I met Captain Mitchell."

Lee
waited a few beats after Jacob had finished talking
. "So why did Captain Mitchell send you down here? And what happened to everyone?"

"Captain Mitchell sent me because I know about FURY." The scientist held up his hands. "That's not to say I know
everything
. But I have what information we were able to get from studies prior to the collapse. I may be the only person in the country, maybe even the world,
who
knows what I know."