Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (14 page)

"It's crazy," Finn whispered from the bottom bunk. "I mean, how
easy would it be to become infected? All it takes is the
slightest—"

"Touch. I know," Bix said, yawning
loudly.

"Seems to me like an unnecessary risk.
These people don't know what they're dealing with. They have no
idea what they're doing."

"How else are they going to figure out
how to cure the Flense?" Bix countered. "I mean, think about how
helpless we were inside the bunker. After three years, we knew
absolutely nothing about it. Isolation doesn't work, maybe this
will."

Helpless,
maybe
, Finn thought,
but also safe
.

The scene in the barn had deeply
troubled him, and once more he sensed his adolescent anxieties
returning.

He wanted to find someplace isolated
and away from people, someplace he could go and just shut down. The
need was so strong that he began to resent the horrific
circumstances that had forced him to make the decisions he had over
the past few days.

He shoved the feelings angrily away.
Hiding wasn't the solution. He couldn't just crawl into a hole
anymore and hope tomorrow would magically fix everything. The world
had changed. And he had to accept that so had he.

"I'm just—" he started to say, but
stopped, unsure what he was trying to convey. "It's just that
I—"

"It's okay, bro."

"No, it's not." He sighed. "I just
wish I were more like Harper."

"I doubt he would've done much
better."

"Don't say that!"

"Finn, can we talk about this in the
morning? It's time for sleeping now."

Finn frowned up at the sagging
mattress above him. Bix had called dibs on the top bunk the instant
Adrian showed them the guest room, like they were at summer camp or
something. Finn was just as happy with the bottom one, but for some
reason it still irritated him.

You're just jealous that
everything seems to roll off of him so easily.

He lay in the darkness for a long time
listening to his friend's breathing slow down, and he wished that
he could just turn it off as easily as Bix seemed able to
do.

But he couldn't. The sight of the
Wraiths chained inside that cage in the barn had shocked him to the
core, and that shock had remained with him all through dinner.
Lying there, he now regretted not having pushed the couple harder
for answers while he had the chance.

He had wanted to, but after the
humbling grace Adrian had delivered before the meal, he felt it
would be incredibly rude, especially when the reverend asked the
Lord for forgiveness of their trespasses, including the boys', and
begged for His mercy on those who needed salvation.

Even when the topic inevitably
gravitated to what they had seen in the barn, Finn couldn't bring
himself to be critical. As Jennifer tried to explain, chaining the
Wraiths up was actually more humanitarian than letting them run
around in the wild, killing and infecting.

"They don't last long out there," she
said. "It's because of their violent and delicate nature. They just
don't last very long."

Of course, this didn't seem consistent
with Finn's understanding of the creatures. But then again, he'd
spent the last three years isolated from the real world. He had no
relevant experience with Wraiths other than the few minutes they'd
spent trying to get away from them back at the dam.

"But I don't understand," Bix had
asked between bites. "You said you wanted to rid the world of the
Flense. Why keep them? Why not just kill them on sight?"

"They are the Lord's creatures,"
Father Adrian said. "They may have been taken by the devil's germ,
but that don't mean they cain't be saved. It is our job to exorcise
them of their disease."

"Just seems like an awful risk," Finn
commented. He was terribly uncomfortable with those things so
close, even with the safeguards in place, the alarms and mines and
sensors and such. What if the industrial scale diesel-burning
generators failed?

"The Lord challenges us," Adrian said.
"The path to righteousness must be filled with the cleansing fire
of hardship. How else can our souls be purified?"

Jennifer nodded. "We try, but we can't
eliminate all risk, of course. We do take precautions, especially
when it comes to direct physical contact."

"How?"

"Well, first of all, we make sure
we're properly covered."

"The gloves," Bix said.
"Bandanas."

She nodded. "We also discovered that
there are ways to control them using a special electronic device.
It sorta works like the stun gun, except it don't knock them out
like one. Instead, it makes them more like they're
sleepwalking."

This had raised Finn's curiosity, and
he had wanted to know more about the nature of the device, but by
then it was getting late, and the adults insisted on continuing the
discussion in the morning.

"Y'all are dead on yer feet," Adrian
said. "And if'n we kept y'all up much longer, yer chins'll leave
permanent indents in yer chests."

Bix yawned, and that triggered a wave
of yawns from the rest of them, even Finn.

After four days of walking, of
constant vigilance and lack of a regular diet, with his stomach
full for the first time in as long as he could remember and the
road dirt washed off and replaced with soft, clean, fresh clothes,
all he wanted to do was sleep.

Except, now he was wide awake. Or, he
thought he was.

Before he knew it, it was morning,
sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and the delicious
smell of bacon filled the house.

* * *

"Now, I know y'all are still tryin to process what you seen last
night," Father Bowman told them at breakfast the next morning. "I
can see it in yer eyes. It kept y'all up into the wee
hours."

"Not me," Bix said, mumbling past a
mouthful of pancakes and maple syrup. "I slept like a
baby."

"Babies wake up a lot," Finn pointed
out. "You snored like an old man."

"Did I keep you up?"

"Actually, no. I slept pretty good,
too. I guess I was more tired than I realized."

"From all that runnin," Billy joked.
He elbowed Luke and snorted. The two men had already finished their
breakfast when Finn and Bix walked in. It did not, however, stop
them from stealing the bacon off the boys' plates as soon as
Jennifer put it there.

Finn frowned at the two men and
wondered if they suffered from some kind of developmental
deficiency. They both acted like twelve-year-olds at
times.

Jennifer scraped the last of the hash
browns onto Bix's plate and told the troublemakers to get on out of
the kitchen. "Finish up your chores. We'll meet you at the new barn
later and get those walls in place."

"I guess I'm just trying to wrap my
head around the idea of bringing Wraiths here inside your
compound," Finn said. "Why would you take such a risk?"

"Our duty," Adrian told them, leaning
in. "The Lord has called us to be soldiers in His army to fight
this evil scourge."

"Fight it by inviting the enemy
inside?"

"They ain't the enemy,
Finn. They're just human, like y'all and me. For too long, the
devil was allowed to sow his germ in the world. This is a time of
judgment. To prove our worthiness, we must cleanse ourselves of
it.
All
of
us."

"Judgment?" Bix asked. "Are you
talking, like, the Rapture? Or extinction?"

Finn shifted uncomfortably. It all
sounded like a bunch of religious mysticism to him.

"Both," Jennifer answered. "Or
neither. Maybe this plague is biblical, or maybe it's manmade. I
don't know. All I know is that it nearly destroyed mankind. Most
were infected; many were killed. Precious few are left behind to
rebuild. But to do so, we have to figure out what caused the
Flense— to stop it, to cure those infected, and to
rebuild."

"Just as Noah did," Father Adrian
said.

"Seems to me that didn't turn out as
planned."

"The Lord's will is not for man to
understand, Finn."

Jennifer set her plate and a steaming
cup of coffee down and sat between the boys. "I think that's enough
of this for now, Adrian."

He shrugged.

But Bix wasn't finished. He wanted to
know more about the world right after the Flense. He wanted to know
how they'd survived. "You said most people were infected. How did
you escape?"

"A fair amount of luck," Jennifer
said.

Something dark clouded Adrian's face
for a moment. He looked over at Jennifer and took her hand and held
it. "The faithful see luck as providence. The good Lord guides
us."

"I worked in a pharmacy at Walmart,"
she said. "It was late one night, and Father Adrian was in for his
yearly flu shot when the police ran in and told the managers to
lock the doors. There were shootins in the parkin lot. The store
went straight into lockdown. We waited for hours. By then, we could
see how bad it was through the storefront windows. It just kept
getting worse and worse."

Adrian nodded.

"We survived for nearly a year inside
that buildin, always holdin out hope that someone would come and
tell us it was safe. But that never happened."

"A year in a Walmart?" Bix exclaimed.
"How many of you were there?"

"Thirty or so to start, but we lost
nearly half in the first few days. When people—" Father Adrian
choked up. "When people lose their faith, they stop thinkin
clearly. Some drunk themselves into comas on the free liquor. Many
others tried to leave when it was clearly not prudent."

"They just wanted to get back to their
families," Jennifer quietly countered.

"I don't blame them for
that."

"After about six months, we were down
to a half dozen, includin Billy and Luke."

"God's children," Adrian said.
"They're a bit slow upstairs, in case you ain't noticed. But they's
good boys, sometimes a little childish, but harmless
nonetheless."

Jennifer gave them both a wide grin.
"Which is why it's so refreshin to find a coupla smart young lads
such as yourselves."

Bix coughed uncomfortably. His face
turned bright red.

"Anyway, we ran outta food and water
and had to move on," she continued. "After a year, the world had
become unrecognizable. No power, no government. And no longer so
full of ferals runnin around wanting to eat everyone."

"What happened to them
all?"

"Died, I suppose. Humans are fragile
creatures to begin with," Jennifer said. "Poorly adapted to
survivin out in the elements. Same with the ferals. I guess most of
them died of exposure or starvation."

Finn frowned. Once again, her claims
didn't mesh well with his own observations. The creatures were a
lot tougher than she gave them credit.

"Or ate each other," Bix
said.

"We packed up a coupla cars and drove
straight north until we found this place."

"Not straight," Adrian corrected.
"Cars kept breakin down. Took us weeks to get here."

"That's why he doesn't like cars. He
doesn't trust them."

Finn wanted to ask them where they'd
found the land mines, but decided it wasn't that
important.

"We resolved then to dedicate our
lives to fixin what had been broken. We caught our first feral
about a year ago, thinkin we could cure it. Each time, we get just
a little bit closer."

Both boys' stomachs were full by then
and they were growing drowsy. The conversation strayed to the
subject of family. Finn was surprised when Bix opened up about his
mother leaving shortly before the Flense.

"I know she's . . .
dead, but sometimes I imagine her out there somewhere."

The couple seemed very sympathetic,
which only encouraged him to talk about his father's freewheeling
lifestyle before the Flense. Finn's thoughts drifted away, but when
he heard Bix mention looking for the mine up north he snapped
back.

"We're going to look for Harper there,
right Finn? Family's important."

Finn wanted to choke him. After
reminding him this morning not to divulge any details about where
they'd been or where they were going, Bix was spilling
everything.

"I think know which mine yer talkin
about," Father Bowman said. "There was an old molybdenum operation
years ago up along the river."

"You know where it is?" Finn asked,
hopeful despite his anger.

"Sure do, son. It's a good ten-day
walk from here by foot, three or four on horseback."

Finn was crushed. He hadn't realized
it would take so long.

"Listen," Adrian said, patting Finn's
arm, "I know y'all are eager to find yer family, but there's a lot
of ground between here and there and too many chances for somethin
to go wrong. But properly outfitted, y'all stand a much better
chance of succeedin. Give us a coupla days to get y'all ready. In
the mean time, help us erect the new church. When it's finished,
we'll put y'all on a coupla horses. It'll sure beat walking. Y'all
will still git there ahead a schedule."