Shadows Have Gone (31 page)

“I need you.” Lewis leaned forward for emphasis, but a rumbling cough made him sit back as he tied to suppress it.

“No, you don’t. You left me to rot in the fucking wasteland after the Crisis. Do you know how many times I called the center? You couldn’t pick up the goddamn phone and tell me to come in then? Now, two fucking years later, you stroll in and expect me to drop my life? No. There’s your answer. No.”

“You took an oath.”

“Honorable fucking discharge. My service is complete. I fulfilled my oath and then some. I bled for you. I lied for you. I killed for you. I did my duty, and now I’m done.”

“You’re never done. Once you’re in, you’re always in.”

Justin barked out a laugh. “This isn’t the fucking mafia, Lewis. It was the army. A shadow unit, yes. But those of us who survived got to retire with a pension. I was out. Done. Duty discharged. Got a nice certificate to hang on the wall and everything.”

“Your oath goes beyond some paperwork,” Lewis snapped.

“Don’t you even think of reminding me of that oath. I know very goddamn good and well what it meant, and I have the fucking scars to prove it.”

Justin didn’t realize he was shouting until he heard the stark echo ring off the paneling. His hands clenched the arms of the chair until his knuckles bleached white. His throat felt raw from the force of his words, and he coughed into the inside of his elbow. Nausea churned in his gut, and he took deep breaths to try to quell it.

Lewis’s smile was almost beatific. “You know as well as I do that the oath is part of your life even after your term of service is complete. It’s why you took Carly with you in the first place, isn’t it?”

Justin didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Yes, that was part of it. If one of their brothers fell, it was expected that anyone from the Unit would care for their widow or children.

“There was never any obligation to come back.”

“Obligation? I suppose not. But when your country is in a time of need? What about honor, Justin?”

“My country doesn’t exist anymore. My community does. And that’s where my loyalty lies. My vows are now to Carly. My loyalty is with her. And I hate you for what you’re going to do to her.”

“Me? I have no intentions of doing anything to her.”

“Yes, you do. You engineered this thing because you knew how I’d react. Well, I know how Carly is going to react. She’s going to come for me. She’s probably already on her way. There’s your miscalculation. You didn’t account for her and what that woman will do if anything stands in her way. She is become Death, the fucking destroyer of worlds. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I’m going to have to patch her up afterward. I’m going to be the one who holds her when she pukes and cries over what she had to do. Because it rips her up inside. It won’t stop her or stay her hand, but she pays a heavy fucking price for every bit of it, and I have to watch that. I have to feel it with her. That’s why I hate you, Lewis. For the pain you’re going to inflict on her over what she’s going to do to try to get me back.”

Lewis stared at him for a long moment and then began to laugh, laugh as Justin had never seen him laugh. He laughed until his face reddened and tears sprang to his eyes, and it turned into helpless coughing. He waved at Justin as though he had offered to assist and drew a handkerchief out of his desk.

A fucking cloth handkerchief. Justin shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Justin, but I can’t help it. You truly did find your perfect match. Both of you skilled and with the most powerful will I’ve ever seen, but crushed under an emotional burden of equal weight. It’s priceless. It really is. If it wasn’t for that fatal weakness, you could rule the world.”

“That’s what you never understood. I didn’t understand it myself until I met Carly, but now I see it. I’ve asked myself why humans deserve a chance to survive. Maybe nature intended us to die out, and we were just a sad remnant waiting for time to finish the job. After all, what makes us any more special than the millions of other species that have fallen by the wayside? But then I realized what it was. The one thing we had that made us superior to every other species. The thing that made us worthy of survival.
Love
, Lewis. It was love. From it stems every good thing human beings have ever done. Every work of art, every poem, every hospital, every law that codified compassion. It’s interesting. The very thing you despise as weakness is the one thing that makes our species worthy of continuing.”

“A noble sentiment, but in practical application?” Lewis shook his head. “Nothing but a liability. You said it yourself—the price Carly would pay after having to do what needs to be done. And I imagine you spend some time wallowing in guilt, too.”

Justin gave a soft snort. “You don’t have any idea.”

“Which proves my point. What good is it?”

“Love is what bonds a community. Loyalty and vows will only get you so far. But love? If I loved you, I would stay. But I don’t.” Justin gazed for a moment at Lewis’s face and then laughed himself. “You don’t get it. That’s what kills me. You really don’t get it. Here I was, in this almost superstitious state of awe for you. I saw you as this all-wise, all-powerful, omniscient being. But you’re not. You have feet of clay after all. You don’t understand the most basic, fundamental aspect of what it means to be human.”

Justin stood. “It’s been real nice catching up with you, but I’m going to try to intercept my wife before she unleashes hell on this place. Your troops seem nice, and I’d hate to see her fuck them up.”

“You’re not leaving.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“You’re not leaving!” Lewis shouted it so loudly it sent him into another coughing fit. Justin stared at him as Lewis sank back down into his chair, hacking into that handkerchief as his face reddened.

“Jesus, are you okay?”

“Allergies,” Lewis muttered between coughs. Lewis started to say something but lurched forward and fell to the floor. His back heaved as he braced his hands on the carpet, helpless gurgles issuing from his throat. He sat back up after a moment, his face red and glistening with sweat. It wasn’t so much the retching that alarmed Justin but the weakness in the way Lewis flopped back against the wall. It seemed to be an effort for Lewis to hold up his head, although his gaze was as steady and piercing as ever.

“Christ, Lewis, are you okay?” Justin left his chair and hovered over Lewis. He had never seen him like this.

He touched Lewis’s neck with the backs of his fingers. He’d known the man for ten years but had rarely touched him. One or two handshakes. Lewis didn’t encourage familiarity from anyone. He tensed as Justin’s fingers brushed his skin and moved aside slightly, rejecting the contact instinctively but keeping himself in check. He must really be ill if he was revealing “tells” about the way he felt.

His skin was burning hot. His lymph nodes were so swollen that they were visible beneath his jaw. Beads of sweat glistened like diamonds against his skin. Lewis started coughing, and he coughed so hard he retched again, though nothing came up.

“Fuck,” Justin whispered.

He reached up and touched his own lymph nodes, and then he realized why he felt so cold.

It couldn’t be.

No, goddammit, it can’t be . . .

“You’ve got it.” He stared at Lewis, horror forming an icy, electric ball in his guts. He wiped a hand over his own brow and looked down at the sweat glistening on his palm. “I think we’ve both got it.”
 

Justin’s legs went weak, and he had to sit down. He stared at the floor, the detail of the carpet swimming in and out of focus. Crumbs were nestled into the fibers. Carly would have a fit.

The Infection was back.

In the back of his mind, he had always been prepared for this possibility. They all knew it could come back at any time. Everyone who had been immune to the first wave of the Infection was a carrier, the Infection’s version of Typhoid Mary, something Justin had suspected but hadn’t been sure of until they Infected the people of Colby, who had barricaded themselves away during the Crisis.

It had happened to Tigger, Carly’s cat, who had caught the mutated version that wiped out the prior residents of Colby. Tigger had apparently been immune to the first wave of the Infection, but when the outbreak happened in Colby, the poor damn cat had died along with the rest of them. None of their little group of travelers had gotten sick as they nursed the townspeople, but the cat’s death had been a stark warning. They carried the Infection inside them, a malevolent guest in their cells, lurking, biding its time, constantly picking at their immune systems’ defenses until it found a way out.

It had always been a possibility.

Perhaps an inevitability.

Carly had insisted it wouldn’t happen. Fate could not have brought them this far only to see them wiped out when the virus finally overcame their immune systems.

Carly had been wrong.

Justin looked at Lewis. Looked in the face of the fevered man and knew he was looking at his own death, as surely as though he were looking down the barrel of a gun.

Carly.

Dagny . . . my Daggers.

But if it was just the two of them who had gotten sick, perhaps Carly hadn’t been exposed to this new strain.

“Lewis, I need you to answer this honestly. No bullshit. No evasiveness. Was Carly showing any symptoms after she met with you? Any at all?” He knew how closely Lewis watched people. He would have seen a flush to her skin, or sweat on her temples.

Lewis shook his head. He met Justin’s eyes without any prevarication. “She was fine. Well enough to come back and raid my office during her escape, actually.” He gave a little chuckle that turned into a cough. He reached up and touched the knot under his jaw.

The relief that swept through Justin made him dizzy for a moment, and he had to close his eyes. Maybe there was a chance after all.

“The Infection used to have a period of light symptoms, during which the person was infectious. This new strain seems to skip that.”

It had with the daughter of Tom and Cynthia, too, Justin remembered. She’d plunged right into full-blown sickness without the lightly symptomatic phase.

Lewis wiped sweat from his face and stared at his palm for a moment. “Just the two of us, so far.”

So far.
If Justin could stop it here, before it spread, maybe his family—everyone—would have a chance. He could end it with them, keep it from spreading any further.

“Come on.” Justin took Lewis by the arm. He stopped in the armament closet and emerged to take Lewis’s arm again.

“Where are we going?” Lewis asked.

“Where this has to end,” Justin said. “We can’t let it spread. There’s only one way to stop it for sure.”

Lewis gazed at what Justin held in his hand for a moment, then nodded. He walked, a little unsteadily, from the room, and Justin followed. They didn’t meet anyone in the halls, thank God.

“Is there anyone in here?” Justin asked.

Lewis shook his head. “Just us. I didn’t want to be overheard.”

“Good. Anything you want to keep?”

“Not anymore.” Lewis gave a soft laugh, and Justin wondered why. He supposed it didn’t matter in the end. Nothing did.

Justin went into one of the offices. There was an old paper shredder in the corner, and it supplied what he needed. He opened the filing cabinets as quickly as he could and spread the shredded paper liberally, lighting the wads with his Zippo as he went. The next room didn’t light as easily because there wasn’t as much paper around, but he finally got it going. He waited for a moment to watch, just to make sure. The fire reached the old faux-wood paneling, and it ignited almost as readily as the paper.

“Come on.” In the hallway, Lewis’s legs gave out, and he fell with a grunt to his hands and knees. It was a shock to Justin to see Lewis like this, his tie dangling to the floor and his jacket rumpled around his shoulders.

“Here.” Justin went down on one knee and slung Lewis’s arm around his shoulders. He slipped his arm around Lewis’s waist and hauled him to his feet.

“Why don’t you just leave me here?” Lewis muttered.

“Tempting, but we still have some talking to do, I think.”

Outside, he unhooked the small gas cylinder that had been powering the generator and tossed it away from the building. No explosions. Not yet.

Lewis headed across the compound toward the storage building. Of course, he and Justin thought the same. It had been Lewis who trained his mind. They didn’t encounter anyone until they were halfway across the compound. Justin yanked up the back of Lewis’s shirt and found the gun there.

He pointed it at the soldier, a middle-aged woman who threw her hands up in alarm. “Stay the fuck back.”

Others came out, alarmed by the shouts. They watched as Lewis and Justin retreated into the propane storage room. It was a large, squat cinderblock bunker. Inside were rows of metal cages with gas cylinders, the type that were used in backyard barbecue grills. Behind the bunker were half a dozen large tanks, each containing about fifty thousand gallons of propane, assuming they had all been full when the world ended and hadn’t sprung any leaks in the interim.

He helped Lewis sit down against the wall.