Aftermath (43 page)

Now his fevered eyes were open wide, as though sensing the impending end of himself. Not his physical death, so to speak, but the death of the person that he was. Staring at him in the moonlight, Jacob thought of that efficient little bacterium working its way through the captain’s brain, eating away all those non-essential human affectations and leaving behind...what? An insane person? A wild animal? A new species, perhaps?

Captain Mitchell coughed and his eyes lost some of their focus. That look lasted for the better part of a minute, until they snapped back into reality and he pinned Jacob with that intense stare of his.

“
Jacob, where’s my knife? I need my knife.”

Jacob’s eyes flashed down to the blade strapped to the front of the captain’s vest. He spoke coherently enough, but was it wise to give him a knife when he was almost gone? “Why do you need your knife, Captain?”

“
I...uh...” the captain lost his train of thought again.

Jacob thought he knew the answer to the question anyway.

Thought recaptured, the captain spoke again with urgency. “I need my knife. You have to help me. I don’t want to be like that.”

Because a gunshot would only attract the thousands of them milling about only a mile or two from where they were. The captain wasn’t willing to risk Jacob in that way. Jacob was an oracle now, something to be valued and protected. That was why they were in the situation they were in. Because the captain had been protecting Jacob. At the cost of everyone else.

Jacob slid the knife out of its sheath and placed it in Captain Mitchell’s open palm. He tensed when he released his grip on the knife, wondering if the captain would turn and begin slashing at him with it. But the captain only looked at the cold edge of the blade and spoke haltingly. “You gonna ‘member what I told you ‘bout?”

Jacob nodded. “I remember. I’ll get there. I promise.”

With some effort, the captain removed the sling of his M4 rifle, followed by his tactical vest and laid them in a pile next to Jacob. When words escaped his tongue, the captain just pointed to the items, and then to Jacob.

“
You want me to put it on?”

The captain nodded weakly. He was beginning to twitch.

“
I can’t leave until dawn,” Jacob said, looking around at the dark woods. “You know how they hear at night. Do you think you can make it through the night?”

Captain Mitchell shook his head. The twitching was beginning to turn into full body spasms. There were only minutes left now. The captain realized this, some part of him was clear enough to know he had to die, and knew it had to happen soon. And he knew he’d already made Jacob promise that whatever happened, Jacob would not let him turn into one of them.

Jacob had made that promise, as the captain had made that promise to him.

The captain held the knife back out to Jacob and fought for his garbled words. “You,” was all he managed to choke out. “You.”

Jacob tried to be clinical. How do you kill a person painlessly with a knife? It didn’t work. As he reached out to take the blade, the question turned into something different: How do you kill
your friend
painlessly with a knife? And when his fingers closed around the handle of the blade he began to weep.

The captain’s tenuous grasp on reality slipped and his head began lolling around, his eyes tracking hallucinations in the darkness. His legs began to twitch as though kicking out at something. The fingers of his hands opened and closed. His breathing became rapid and shallow.

Quick. He had to do it now.

Jacob looked around for something heavy and found a rock a little bigger than his hand. It would do. He got up on his knees, unable to control his hitching chest and the tears that streamed down his face. Nor was he able to control the nausea curling in his stomach and he was certain that he was going to vomit, but forced himself to wait until he had completed his promise.

The captain was not all there anymore, but he wasn’t violent just yet, and he allowed himself to be lowered to the ground by his shoulders. With his head jerking spasmodically on the ground, Jacob set the tip of the knife against his temple with one trembling hand, and gripped the rock with the other.

“
I’m sorry,” he whispered.

But Captain Mitchell wasn’t there. His gray eyes had gone vacant and though they were open, they were not seeing, and they surely did not recognize Jacob.
He’s already gone,
Jacob thought to himself.
So I’m really not killing him.

It didn’t help.

He gritted his teeth and swung the rock down on the handle of the knife like he was driving a nail. The blade slipped in with surprising ease. The captain twitched a few more times and then lay still in the leaves at the base of the tree.

Jacob leaned back against the tree and wept bitterly and quietly for a little while longer. The vomit didn’t come after all, and the nausea in his gut was replaced with a deep, unforgiving grief. When the cold feeling in his gut was all that was left, he gathered the captain’s things up and began to put them on. The vest was still slightly warm and damp with the captain’s sweat. It felt heavy and encumbering, but he knew it would protect him. He slung into the rifle, feeling marginally better that he had a weapon now, though he was unfamiliar with it outside of its basic functions.

To the north, Jacob could see the little twinkle of orange firelight where their compound on the edges of Petersburg, Virginia continued to burn. It made his heart ache to think about all of the dead people turning to ashes in that fire, all the men and women and children that he had known, that the captain had tried to so hard to protect.

He never closed his eyes even once during the night, but kept scanning the trees for the black shadows that would be stalking him. Throughout the entire night, he heard the howls and screeches of the infected. Sometimes they sounded close, other times they were far away. They were searching for him, combing the woods for him.

He waited for the gray light of dawn before standing and facing south.

South, because there was nothing left for them up north.

Stay off the roads.
Captain Mitchell had told him.
And you’ll have to walk. I know it’s a long ways, but you have to do it. They need the information that you have. They can still make it. They still have a fighting chance.

His other words rattled around inside Jacob’s head, so much information he had a hard time holding on to it all. It was all random and disjointed in his mind, none of it neatly organized according to category: Don’t drink anything but fresh rain water; full auto just wastes ammunition; follow the interstate, but don’t get too close to it; always be aware of your surroundings; don’t make contact with anyone until you’ve watched them for at least a day; don’t ever tell anyone why you’re looking for him...

He wished he’d written it all down.

He looked over his shoulder one last time at the body of Captain Mitchell, laying at the base of the tree. Then he checked his watch. It was 6 o’clock now.

Time to get a move on.

It was a long walk to North Carolina.

END OF BOOK TWO

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