Blood Soaked and Contagious (10 page)

“Hey? Is Jayashri all right?” I didn’t see her and got a flash of serious paranoia that something had happened while I was out.

“Yes,” I heard from behind me, “I’m fine. Thank you for being strong enough to do what I could not.”

I scooted around on the bed, and discovered that the soft, spicy place where my head had been was her lap. She wasn’t meeting my eyes, and that bothered me more than I could cope with at the time. I put my finger under her chin and lifted her face so that I could see she was all right. There were tears in her eyes and no small amount of embarrassment with them.

“I was very worried about you after we heard all the noise in the basement.” She wiped her eyes.

Something about that statement perplexed me. “Which noise? Him screaming, or the breakdancing beach chair noise?”

“Dude, we didn’t move until we heard you holler,” Shawn piped up from behind me. That made a lot of sense, so I dropped the issue.

“I had to put some sutures in your arm, I hope you don’t mind.” Jaya gestured at the bandage-wrapped thing attached to my elbow.

“Do I want to know how bad it was?” I wanted to know how bad it was.

“Well, once we used the bolt cutters to remove the fingers,” Baj mimed using a substantial bolt cutter, “it did look quite nasty. No major nerve damage that we could see, but he missed your artery by about a millimeter. It looked like Jaya put in… darling, was it three internal sutures and four external for each puncture?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Oh. No wonder it hurts.”

“I would tell you not to use it seriously for at least a week,” she said, looking at her own forearm, “but that may not be a realistic suggestion at the moment.”

“No, I don’t think we’ll have that luxury.” I shook my head, hoping to clear out some of the concrete-induced cobwebs, but all it did was make bright white starbursts behind my eyelids. “Nnng. Okay. Give me a minute and I’ll try to lay it all out for you. We don’t have a whole lot of time to waste.”

Frankly, I’m not sure how long it took me to get my brains back together, but I was able to report everything I’d learned from Jerry the Zombie Grunt. My friends were a tough crowd, and I know it wasn’t a performance they particularly wanted to be a part of. For my part, I was right there with them.

“All right. This is not a wonderful situation we’re in, but we might be able to do something with it,” Baj was doing his most thoughtful face. “We need to pull in our snipers before they get killed. They might be more useful elsewhere, or if we could keep them mobile at the very least.”

“Not to put too fine a point on this, Baj,” all I could do was wave my right hand around in a vague sort of way, the left hurt too much, “but what the fuck are we going to do?”

He sighed. “We are going to do what villages have done since people started gathering in groups. We are going to round up everyone we can find, have a meeting, and present the issues to everybody as we understand it.” He looked really noble, standing there like a statesman, in the old sense of the word. “Then, the community will decide what we will do.”

“Bajali and I can escape,” Jaya said, “and that would take the brunt of any attack away from the community. It might not mean Hightower’s plans are foiled, but it would give everyone we care about a little extra time to make their own plans.”

“I’m gonna tell the two of you, right now, that you’re spouting bullshit.” Shawn was a plain speaker, no one would ever argue that point, but he had never delivered words with that much... I’m not even sure that there’s a word for it. The closest I’d ever heard to his tone of voice came straight from movies.

Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments.” Yul Brynner in “The King and I.” If Shawn had suddenly intoned, “Pharaoh, let my people go,” I would have sprung up from the bed and started looking for Hebrew slaves to free. As it was, I was glued to the mattress, and I could tell that Baj was just as stunned. Then again, he may have been thinking something like, “And who is this crazy, mountain of a redneck I have invited into this house? Is this moonshine I smell?” I doubted that, but it was a possibility.

“There is not a single man, woman, child, or even family fuckin’ pet who would have the two of you run away if we could keep you safe.” Shawn pointed one finger at Jayashri behind me and poked the other salami-size index finger at the end of Baj’s nose. “Yeah, we’ll have your meeting and tell everyone about what all is goin’ down, but You. Are. Not. Running. Away. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

All three of us answered with a quiet, “Yes, Sir.” I don’t know why I said it. I wasn’t going anywhere.

“You,” he said, moving the Jayashri finger to point at me, “Go make some space in the store so we can all talk about this and make some plans. If you’ve got a whiteboard and markers, set ‘em up. We’re gonna need ‘em.” He moved the finger back to Jayashri, and continued, “You two, round up our neighbors and anyone they see fit to bring along. They’ve got an hour before I come lookin’ for ‘em. Tell everybody to meet at the hardware store in 45 minutes. That’s all. SCRAM!”

We scrammed.

Before I made it past him, he handed me back my .45. “Boy, you don’t scram as hard as all that. You’ve had a shitty evenin’.”

“Yes, Sir.” I just nodded and made my way outside.

Night had fallen all the way, and I wasn’t even sure what time it was anymore. There were more stars in the sky since the world changed. The air was crisp, and I felt like I was really living in the moment. Even the sound of my shoes on the pavement was more real. Somewhere in the back of my head I remembered the sorts of poetry written by warriors who were about to go out and do battle with very little chance to return home alive.

You would get words that conjured up the transitory nature of being alive, how splendid it was to be in that moment, maybe even some yearning they felt would never be realized. I thought a bit while I walked and wished that I were a poet. Words were not my art, but every now and then I stretched myself in hopes I would find them in my heart, ready to be spoken.

The crisp autumn air shakes,

the falling leaves,

tumbling to Earth;

White burning stars light

a lonely path,

walking here alone;

A final moment grasping,

the dreams slumbering

between silent breaths;

I never banged Shawn’s sister.

Those thoughts swirled around in my cramped brain, and I realized I needed to find another hobby. Failing that, I needed to find a tribe of suburban Virginia Amazons who would club me upside my head, drag me to their Ikea-furnished boudoir and make me father a whole new generation of busty womanhood.

“I could always take up drinking heavily,” I thought to myself as I opened the store door. I paused for a moment, looked down at the crusty dreadlock head by my foot, and silently remarked that it felt like days since I had decapitated his sorry ass. Then I kicked it down the street like a soccer ball mating with an octopus.

Once inside I headed for the back room. I knew there was a whiteboard back there, and there was easily enough space to fit everyone who might show up. My portion of the event coordination was more of the Friendly Greeter and Concierge, rather than People Herder, at least until things got started.

I was not at all sure I’d be able to add anything of major intuitive thinking with this many brains crunching down on the subject. Then again, every idea counts, even if it is a bad one. For the moment, at least, I could breathe quietly and try to process how my day had gone.

The arm was sore. My head was still pretty achy, and I wasn’t quite sure that all the beans in my maracas were shaking. I was even comparing my brains to South American noisemakers, and that didn’t bode well at all. Instead of thinking about it too hard, I just walked back out to the front of the store, through the plumbing section. In a split second, I thought of 101 uses for PVC pipe.

While words have never been my art, building things is where my art expresses itself. You can tell me what you need to do, and I can figure out and build something that will help you with that job. In the world we’re living in, that is an incredibly useful talent to have. Why do you think I set down roots in an abandoned hardware store? It isn’t the ambiance or the foot traffic; let me tell you.

I got to the front of the store just as Grandmother Yan, Mister Yan’s widow, appeared at the door. She came in, gave me a hug, and said, “You a silly boy. Don’t let monster bite you arm. Meeting in back?”

“Yes, Grandmother.” You learned very quickly not to call her anything other than Grandmother. She was tough as granite, wrinkled like a dried-up apple, and could move like lightning with a rice paddle.

She was another person I adored, and I would die to protect her.

If our community had a kind of strength, beyond the amazing set of skills available among us, it was the love we shared. I won’t lie and say there weren’t problems, but you expect problems in a tribe made up of so many different kinds of people. Think of it as a big blended family, and you’d probably not be far off. Those issues didn’t stop the love, genuine affection, and loyalty.

Truth be told, it probably made everything stronger.

Gina “Explosivo” Halperin and her husband, Mark, showed up at a dead run, and I funneled them back to the meeting area. They were bickering about using broken glass or gravel in anti-personnel IEDs as they went. It would be difficult to call an argument about explosives and frangible material “cute” but they managed to do it in their unique, lanky geek sort of way.

I looked down the street. Hajj Siddig Muhammad and his family were jogging over. Jim and Darcy Smith rounded the corner, carrying gallon jugs in each hand. Darcy’s cider was one of the best trading neighborhood products. No one knows why it is as good as it is.

Matt “Flower” Wilson was a bit further down the street and a more difficult to see in the all-black tactical gear that he was wearing. I never asked him where “Flower” came from. Matt is another one of those rugged guys, a former Ranger, and our primary sniper.

He had made intimations that his service didn’t end when his enlistment was up. From the way he moved and how he kept to himself, I strongly suspected there was more to him than met the eye. I wasn’t about to corner him and ask pointed questions. He never let any of us down, and that was enough for me.

I heard running from the other direction, turned my head, and saw our second sniper booking it toward the store. Nate Banks. I was willing to bet we wouldn’t see his wife at the meeting, because she’d found herself in the role of community babysitter and elementary school educator. With all the adults at the meeting, someone had to...

The thought hit me like a ton of bricks to the nuts. They could go after the kids and force us to give up Baj and Jaya.

“Nate! Barbara! Go!” He heard his wife’s name, pulled his weapon, and shot off in a different direction. I turned around. Flower had heard me and taken off at a run, too, in a slightly different direction.

I must have looked like I was about to go all the way crazy, because Siddig tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he’d organize things until I got back. Then I took off after Nate.

There’s an alley across the street, between the shops and services that line Route 29 and our neighborhood. Nate’s house was two blocks down the alley and one block in. Flower had taken off down Bajali’s side yard, which would have him approaching from the front of the house, unless he jinked sideways. Knowing Nate, he’d go for the kitchen door.

That would mean if they were going to snatch and grab the kids, they would have to have a vehicle on Route 29, or no more than a block away. They’d have to move very fast, and distance was a killer if you’re trying to keep a group of people under control. Failing that, they’d create a hostage situation right here.

Their other option, if the hostage taking didn’t work, would be to just start blowing shit up. Kids. People. Anything and everything that might make us want to hand our friends over.

Yes, we all shared a lot of love, but there are things that even a loving community can’t suffer for the people that live in it. I imagine the faces of our dead children would motivate enough people to eject Baj and Jaya, even in the face of what Hightower would use him for.

I heard gunshots. One burst of three rounds, followed by a single shot. Then I got tackled by someone who had very bad breath. I couldn’t help but yell when we landed on my bandaged arm and slid across the gravel and into the chain-link fence on the other side.

Black fatigues, goggles, helmet, black gloves with holes cut for claws, and a pistol rubbing into my right eye socket. Pretty full “utility belt.”

“Don’t fucking move.” It was a hoarse whisper with fetid halitosis.

Two more bursts of gunfire. Four more single shots.

My attacker reached for the .45 holstered on my right hip. He shifted his balance to the right, and I helped him. The gun came away from my eye as he started to fall, and I turned my head towards the ground because I’d rather have a bullet graze my skull than take off an ear.