Aftermath (39 page)

Lee reached the church bus and Harper and LaRouche hauled him in even as it started rolling. One of the infected tried to jump at the front of the bus but only smashed its head against the windshield, leaving a bloody mark and a wide crack in the glass before tumbling to the side and becoming a small speed bump.

“
You alright, Captain?” LaRouche yelled.

Lee found himself leaning against the driver’s seat, his M4 squashed uncomfortably against his back, his legs dangling into the small steps down to the bus doors. He craned his neck to see who was driving the bus and discovered Father Jim looking down on him with a genuine smile.

Lee expected some platitude or scripture about the Lord rescuing them, but the priest just nodded knowingly. He must have seen the look in Lee’s eyes, the disbelief that somehow Father Jim had been at the right place at the right time with just the right equipment to save their asses, and so Father Jim said nothing. Instead, he patted Lee on the shoulder and steered the bus in a wide left-hand turn, banking around the northeastern side of the hospital as a few infected stragglers chased madly after them.

“
Are you okay?” LaRouche repeated, kneeling down so that they were on eye-level with each other.

Lee tried to take a deep breath, felt the pain spike through his ribs, but managed to control the wince and give a thumbs up. “All good here, Sergeant.”

The bus listed slightly as they cornered, reaching Brightleaf Boulevard again and turning south, towards Camp Ryder. Towards safety. Lee felt an immense relief like a warm blanket being pulled over his drowsy body. Out to the right of the bus, the parking lot of the Johnston Memorial Hospital stretched, empty save for a few bodies and a few cars. The enormous horde that had occupied it so recently had disappeared, running off into Smithfield to chase Harper in a vehicle they would never catch. To the left of the main hospital wing, Lee could see the parking garage and the still-smoking ruins of the pickup truck that LaRouche and Harper and Miller had unintentionally lit on fire. Behind the smoldering ruins was the hulk of the big green Humvee, and it looked like it was smashed into the wall of the hospital, right where the door had been.

Staring at the scene, Lee couldn’t help but laugh, though the pain it brought quickly stifled it. That must have been what Milo and his men were struggling with in the stairwell. To keep them from being attacked while they stole back their pickup full of supplies, LaRouche, Harper, and Miller had wedged the Humvee against the door so no one could get out.

Lee had to admit, that was clever thinking.

Too bad in way, though.

It seemed like a waste to leave the Humvee there.

Lee was about to close his eyes and relax for a brief moment when movement from the rooftop of the hospital caught his eye. He sat up, gritting his teeth, his eyes narrowing. LaRouche noticed the intense focus and spun to look out the window.

“
What? What do you see?”

Lee pointed to the top of the building. “Is that...”

A dark figure was sprinting along the rooftop. The weird, loping gait was a dead giveaway to anyone that knew him and LaRouche almost immediately responded, “Fuck! That’s Milo!”

“
What?” Harper snapped his head around. “How the hell did he get out alive?”

LaRouche jabbed a finger out towards the hospital. “He must have escaped to the roof, somehow.”

It was clear what Milo’s objective was. The top level of the garage was only a short drop from the roof of the hospital, and he was heading for that, without a doubt. He was making a run for the Humvee.

CHAPTER 23: THE RIVER

Lee pulled himself upright, looking through the windshield at the pickup truck driving just ahead of them. “Tell Miller to stop.”

“
What?” LaRouche put a hand to his chest. “We can’t stop! You’re injured! You need to...”

“
Tell him to stop!” Lee shouted, causing both LaRouche and Father Jim to jump.

The sergeant must have heard something in Lee’s voice that told him this was not the time to argue. He put the radio to his mouth. “Miller, this is Sergeant LaRouche. Stop right there. We’re going to stop.”

The response was instant and high-pitched. “We can’t stop now!”

Lee snatched the radio out of LaRouche’s hands. “Fucking stop the truck, Miller! Milo’s getting away! He’s got my fuckin’ GPS!”

Realization dawned on the faces around Lee. Without the GPS, their safety, their security, the presence of food and ammunition and medical supplies would be limited once again. They realized how much they had all believed in Lee, that he could rescue them, that he could rebuild them. But without the resources, Lee was just a good soldier. Someone you’d like to have in a fight, but not much else.

Ahead of them, Miller applied the brakes sharply.

The bus lurched as Father Jim pulled to stop to avoid slamming into the pickup truck.

Lee was off the bus before anyone could stop him, hobbling towards the Dodge Ram, trying to keep the pressure off his left leg. Stiffly, he pulled his M4 off of his back as he approached the driver’s door and yanked it open.

“
Scoot over,” he barked.

Miller threw the truck in park and jumped over into the passenger seat.

“
Hold this.” Lee shoved his M4 into Miller’s hands and struggled for a moment to get himself into the driver’s seat with much grunting and swearing and rapid, shallow breathing that hissed through his clenched teeth. Through the open door they could hear the sound of tires squealing on pavement and when they looked up, they could just see the rounded green hump of the Humvee disappearing down into the parking garage, its long antenna waving goodbye to them.

Lee put the truck in drive, then seemed to realize something. He turned and faced Miller. “If you wanna get out, now’s the time to do it.”

Miller didn’t hesitate. “You know I’m with you, Captain.”

Lee slammed on the accelerator. The engine roared and the vehicle raised up off its shocks, tearing down Brightleaf Boulevard. They watched the Humvee fly out of the darkness of the parking garage, clipping a cement barrier as it hauled towards the checkpoint and the street just beyond.

Lee found his grip on the steering wheel tenuous and had to hold it with both hands, just to make sure it didn’t slip. On the good side, his hand was regaining some range of movement. The speedometer swelled up to 65 mph before he had to slam on the brakes to make the right turn onto North Street. Just ahead, the Humvee emerged from the checkpoint onto North Street about two blocks ahead of them.

It seemed that Milo knew he was being pursued.

More than that, it looked like he was trying pretty damned hard to get away.

Not so brave now, without his pack of goons.

“
Tell the bus not to follow us,” Lee’s voice was loud and strained. “Tell them to go straight back to Camp Ryder. We’ll get up with them there when we deal with Milo.”

Miller seemed to realize what sticking with the captain entailed. “Shit. Okay.” He keyed the mic. “Miller to anyone on the bus. Don’t follow us. Captain Harden says go straight back to Camp Ryder. We will meet you there.”

There was hesitation in LaRouche’s response. “I read you. Be careful.”

From the tone of his voice, Lee could tell that LaRouche didn’t want to leave the fight behind him, but it was too late now. He couldn’t follow Lee into battle and bring all the innocent civilians with him. Lee knew from watching LaRouche that he wasn’t one to back down from a fight. But sometimes you had to swallow that down and do what was right for the people around you.

Miller’s voice broke through his reverie. “You okay, Captain? You look pretty banged up.”

Banged up?

He’d been blown up, lost a tooth, shot through the shoulder and taken a three-story fall with a rope wrapped around his wrist that kept him from dying but ripped nearly every ligament in his left arm. He could barely breathe through his cracked ribs, barely walk with his left leg, and barely sit with his busted tailbone.

Yeah. Maybe he was a little banged up.

“
I’m still breathing,” Lee said stubbornly, perhaps more to convince himself than Miller. He recalled instructors in his survival course taking a half-gallon of corn syrup with red dye in it and spilling it out on a patch of pavement. They pointed to the big puddle and said,
Take a good look at that gentlemen. Remember the size of that puddle. That’s how much blood the average male can lose before he’s in danger of dying. If you feel like dying before you see that much blood on the ground, you’re just being weak.

Don’t be weak.

They were gaining on Milo when the Humvee hit the brakes hard and laid rubber trying to make the left turn from North Street onto Second Street, nearly losing control and planting the big green vehicle in the living room of a house.

Lee slowed in time to make the turn and then accelerated again. Milo’s choice of the Humvee as a getaway vehicle was probably not smart. If he’d taken the Chevrolet Lumina, he might be putting distance between them, but a military Humvee peaks out around seventy miles-per-hour and accelerates like a tired old war horse compared to the quick acceleration of the Dodge Ram. After a moment of pressing the gas pedal to the floor, they were right on his ass.

Milo swerved back and forth in the roadway, trying to wait until the last second to dodge abandoned cars. Lee’s reactions were quick and he kept the pickup right behind the olive green tailgate. So when Milo hit the right-hand turn from Second Street onto an inviting four-lane stretch of road, Lee followed, thinking that the four-lanes were going to give Milo room to maneuver and possibly get away.

Lee noticed it immediately. The way the land sloped off just slightly, but the road elevated just a bit. The way all the businesses and houses just suddenly stopped. How the sides of the road went from barren shoulder to concrete abutments.

“
Look out!” Miller pointed.

“
I see it,” Lee applied the brakes just a second before Milo did.

It wasn’t the bridge up ahead that stopped them, but the concrete barricades that spanned from abutment to abutment, barring anyone from entering or leaving by crossing the river that flowed underneath it. As had become the usual thing, the barricades were topped with concertina wire, and on the Smithfield-side of the bridge, a single sheriff’s vehicle sat abandoned.

The pickup truck came to a screeching halt.

It only took the briefest of seconds for Milo to start moving again. The Humvee lurched forward and to the right, hitting the curb and heading for the steep, muddy embankment that led from the road, down to the river.

“
What the fuck?” Miller sounded bewildered. “Can he make it across in that thing?”

Lee took a glance at the river and knew the answer to that question without too much thought. “There’s no fucking way.”

The water underneath the bridge was high and angry and brown. The heavy summer rain had swollen its banks so that they licked the edges of a paved jogging path that ran alongside the water. Some sections of the jogging path were just barely submerged under roughly an inch of murky water.

But despite the ugly look of the river, Milo appeared to have made up his mind. The Humvee rumbled quickly down the embankment, ran along the wet jogging path for less than a hundred feet before finding a gap in the trees big enough to squeeze through, and made for the water.

“
Oh my God,” Miller murmured.

For a brief moment, Lee thought the vehicle was going to make it. It hit the water with a mighty splash and surged forward as though it were built for amphibious operations. But then the front-end rocked forward, dipping below the water line and not coming back up. Lee wondered how many people had tried this very same maneuver as they tried to escape the horrors of whatever had occurred in Smithfield, only to drown in their vehicles.

Perhaps it was one of these submerged vehicles that the Humvee landed on, because it stopped sinking after a moment, leaving the top of the vehicle above water. Lee could see about six inches of the doors, but there was no way Milo was going to be able to push them open with the water rushing against the side of the vehicle.

“
He’s gonna be trapped in there,” Miller observed coldly.

But he spoke too soon.

A pair of wiry arms reached out of the circular opening of the gun turret, and after a brief moment, a water-logged figure dragged himself out of the interior of the Humvee, one hand on the roof, one hand on the .50 caliber machine gun on the back end. And then Milo looked right at them.

Lee knew what was about to happen and opened his door, simultaneously reaching for his M4 only to discover that Miller was no longer in the passenger seat and neither was Lee’s rifle. The younger man had already stepped out of the car and was raising the M4 to his shoulder even as Milo swung the big gun on them and gripped it with both hands.

Miller took the shot.

The bullet hit Milo with a wet smack that Lee could hear even from fifty yards away. He could see the spray of misting blood and water come off of Milo’s back as the man pitched backwards into the river.

Miller let out an audible breath.