Containment (26 page)

“Unusual?” Emma smirked. “Okay, Doc, I’ll let you know when anything
unusual
happens. Oh, sorry.
If
anything unusual happens. All things considered, the lines separating usual and unusual have been kind of blurred over the past few weeks. I mean, what do you—”

Dr. Caldwell cut her off abruptly. “Stop! We don’t have the time right now for this. Just be on the lookout, okay? Don’t let anything sneak up on us or you.”

“On it.” Her demeanor lost all condescension just like that.

Malachi and Dr. Caldwell wasted no time. They vaulted over cars and, on one occasion, went through the still open doors on both sides of a minivan. Once at the entrance to the bus, they tried to look in the windows but found them covered with what appeared to be cardboard. The mystery was still contained within. And then like Pandora opening her box, the door labored itself open with a series of clicks and clanks.

There stood a man whose gaunt, emaciated frame needed to add some weight in order to qualify as a wraith. He smiled wearily but said nothing.

After a brief pause, Dr. Caldwell asked, “Are there others with you?”

The man nodded slowly. His eyes were struggling in the sunlight. Still he said nothing.

The doctor didn’t want to pressure this obviously tortured soul but he needed him to understand the urgency of the situation. “We can help but we have to go now. Do you understand?”

A distant gunshot captured both of their attention and seemed to add the exclamation point to the doctor’s statement. Standing there, Dr. Caldwell was able to smell the horrible rot that filled the air of the bus. It was a mixture of death, sweat, and feces being swirled together into a potent aroma. He wondered how anyone could possibly exist in such conditions.

There were two others with him; another man and a woman. All of them shared enough in common with Holocaust survivors that Dr. Caldwell found himself inspecting their arms in search of the telltale black numbers, dashes, and letters.

The other man was an older black man whose greying curls were only slightly lighter than his sickly looking skin. He smiled as he descended the bus stairs and almost stumbled when his feet hit the pavement. He apologized for his misstep and the involuntary grab onto Malachi’s arm to prevent his plunge. “I’m sorry. I’ve spent more time crawling around on that damned bus than I have on my feet in…actually, I don’t know how long it’s been. Guess I still need to get my sea legs under me.”

The woman coming behind him did fall. Dr. Caldwell was suddenly very concerned about her mobility, or lack thereof. Her legs weren’t much bigger around than the typical mop handle. The doctor got a hand under her arm to hoist her up. To him, she didn’t feel like she weighed much more than a mop either. She was likely in her fifties, about Dr. Caldwell’s age, but she had the physical affect of an elderly senior. She seemed weak and vulnerable, a lethal combination that could prove problematic for all of them. He was relieved when he withdrew his hand and she was able to stand on her own.

The first man to greet them and the last off the bus was younger than the other two. He also appeared to be much more fit, though his muscles too had suffered and atrophied from the conditions they’d had to endure recently.

He drew in a deep breath of air, savoring it like fine wine. He closed his eyes and exhaled with gusto. “I forgot what air could smell and taste like. All I’ve had to breathe for as long as I can remember has been shit and death, death and shit. Poison with every single breath.”

The other new man shot a look in his direction and said defensively, “It worked didn’t it?!”

Meghan asked, “What worked?”

The woman answered, “It was Daniel’s idea. He thought that maybe if they couldn’t smell us and we didn’t move around enough for them to hear, then maybe we could be safe.”

“No such thing as safe anymore,” Art commented from behind them.

Again, the other man said, “Well it worked and we were safe. Weren’t we?”

Seeking clarification, Meghan asked the man who insisted that whatever had worked, “So you’re Daniel then?”

“No. He’s still...he’s still...” stammered the woman, unable to complete her sentence.

The first man finished for her, “He’s still on the bus. He died a couple of days ago.”

Emma asked tentatively, “Was he...?”

“Bitten? No. He just went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up the next morning,”

“What do you think caused it?”

His voice meandering like a long Alaskan summer day, the first man answered as he looked up at the cloudy sky, “What does it matter what caused it? He’s dead, just like the rest of them.”

“We haven’t eaten in days,” the woman continued, “and the water ran out about three days ago. A few of us tried to drink our own urine but then that stopped too. I think it was just hope that had sustained most of us these past few days. I just knew that someone would happen along; well, someone that didn’t want to eat us, that is.”

Dr. Caldwell said, “We’ve got some food and water but I think we should get off the street. Emma, can you conjure up some granola bars and water or something? Anything that can be chewed on the go.”

“Sure.”

The parking garage was a short jaunt up the street. Though agonizingly slow, they moved as quickly as the three newcomers would allow them. Luckily, they were able to get up to the third level of the parking deck without incident.

In getting to the parking structure and then up the winding driveway to the third floor, they heard two gunshots and then nothing else. It was both worrisome and promising. The gunshots could only be from Neil and Jerry, which meant that they were still alive but it also meant that they were still in trouble.

From their vantage point, they could see back up the street from where they had come, the most likely route the two men would take to reunite with the rest of them. Meghan alternated between holding the radio to her ear or to her mouth, with which she would plead for any response. None was forthcoming.

Dr. Caldwell, meanwhile, had gone up to the top tier and was using the binoculars to get a better view. It didn’t look good. There were still hundreds of the things moving up the street in the direction that the two men had traveled. They weren’t moving as fast as the others who were originally on their heels. They were probably just chasing the group that was chasing Neil and Jerry. They weren’t nearly as animated or as alert, though they were every bit as frightening.

He decided that it would probably be wise to do some looking all around them and maybe even check out their next step. He looked around at the top tier of the parking deck. There was no roof and no cars, so it was more or less a one block by one block open-air parking lot.

He’d only been up here once before. It was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and he was pretty certain that everyone had decided to come to the Fifth Avenue Mall for whatever big sale at which his wife was also determined to be. They grabbed one of three remaining parking spots in the whole garage. It was cold and slushy and earlier than he wanted to be awake. He was miserable that day and complained almost the whole time.

He could remember that day like it had just happened. He remembered the petty resentment that he felt toward his wife for making him come. He was suddenly ashamed of himself and longing for his wife. He walked over to what he thought had been the spot in which he had parked that morning. He stood there and remembered his wife and the life they’d had together. It wasn’t perfect but it was good. They shared more laughter than tears, but they shared it all. No longer optimistic about her prospects for survival, he thought about her last moments. It was agonizing for him to think that she likely had to suffer so much and was alone in doing so. He said quietly to the wind, “Oh honey. I’m so sorry.” He could feel the grief begin to wrap its rough, hot hands around his heart, but then he heard, “Sorry for what?”

He pivoted around, expecting to see his wife, and instead saw Emma, who was walking toward him. He shook his head and said, the pain forcing a slight crack into his voice, “I was talking to...thinking about...remembering...my wife.”

She paused for a moment, not sure whether he wanted the company or not. Despite her feelings for him, she didn’t want to impose herself or be a nuisance. She had actually come up to the top at Meghan’s urging because it didn’t make any sense for any of them to wander off alone. She’d eagerly complied with Meghan’s request, and even went so far as to try and convince herself that she was going after the doctor because it was sensible, and not because she wanted to be in his company all the time.

She suddenly felt like an interloper, as if she had interrupted a private conversation between a married couple. She was all set to turn on her heels and walk away when he looked up at her. “Memory is the weirdest thing,” he said, “and it sneaks up on you when you least expect it.” He wanted to say more but he just cracked a difficult but seemingly reassuring smile for both of them.

She could sense that he was still hurting and wanting to say more. What could she possibly say that would bring any solace? It was especially difficult for her given that she was more and more convinced that she wanted to be the one for which he held special, random memories. She was becoming the “other woman”. It didn’t matter that his wife was likely amongst the ranks of the undead currently wandering the city.

“Meghan thought it would be a good idea if I...if you weren’t...I can just go back down if you want to be alone.”

“No, no. It’s fine. I just wanted to check out where we’re going to be heading and see if I might be able to catch a glimpse of Neil and Jerry.”

“D’you think they’re going to make it?”

With the toe of his shoe Dr. Caldwell fiddled with a small pile of sand. While he made lines in the fine grains, he said, “If you’re asking me if I think they have a chance of getting back to us, I’m not sure. There are an awful lot of those things down there. Neil is pretty smart and Jerry is good too, there are just so damned many of them. I guess I don’t know that there would be a whole lot of value in waiting for them for too long. I don’t think it would be wise to mention this around Meghan. Is she going to be able to make it?”

Emma shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe. She’s seeming pretty desperate right now.”

“Is there anything any of us can do?”

“Yeah. Can you make all of this go away and have things go back to normal again?”

Again appreciating her humor, the doctor smiled. “Sure. And then I can solve the mystery of cold fusion and the gift of immortality.”

She smiled at him. “Meghan will keep up. She has to. What choice does she or any of us have? Now how is our next move looking? Gift of immortality?”

Heading directly north from the parking garage was a street that became a bridge connecting downtown Anchorage with its neighbor, Elmendorf Air Force Base, part of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Midway across the bridge was what appeared to be a pair of military Humvees that had attempted to hold back the surge and had met the same fate as every other roadblock.

Leading up to the two-vehicle barricade, Dr. Caldwell could see a swath of discarded clothing, luggage, children’s toys, and the odds and ends of a populace on the run for its life. He’d seen similar sights during his tour in the Middle East; refugees fleeing the fighting in search of a peaceful stretch of real estate where there wasn’t shooting and dying all around. The sad truth that Dr. Caldwell suspected and even accepted was that in this conflict there was no such place. The dying and suffering was a self-perpetuating mess that never stopped pursuing these refugees. They could count themselves lucky if it didn’t precede them to where they were running and was waiting for their arrival.

He couldn’t see to the far side of the bridge to the security checkpoint, but he suspected that it would just be the same as everywhere else. He was fostering the lingering, perhaps teasing, sense of hope that the military training, organizational capabilities, and armament of the security forces of the joint military bases would have somehow enabled them to be successful where everyone else had failed so miserably. That hope was already fading. Seeing the abandoned Humvees and the disarray all around and behind them didn’t help matters. Was there hope for any of them anymore? It was becoming ever more difficult for him to hold at bay his pessimism regarding that question.

During the Gulf War, he’d seen and heard that sense of ever impending doom with soldiers engaged in the day-to-day meat grinder that the conflict had become during his deployment. Some of the men just seemed to come to terms with the fact, in their minds, that the battles and the killing and the death would never end. In fact, most of the men, once true combat exhaustion had set upon their nerves and their emotions, accepted the fact that death was inevitable and usually waiting around the next corner or on the next patrol. The numbness to which combat fatigue led was both a blessing and a curse. And Dr. Caldwell understood that all too well. Yet, there he was, with the proverbial Novocain dulling his senses and his judgment.

He fought back his doubts, at the very least for the moment, because he was preparing himself to go deal with Meghan. They couldn’t afford to wait much longer. It had been some time since Neil and Jerry had led the horde away, and it was becoming less and less likely that either of the two men were going to re-emerge. As much as it pained Dr. Caldwell to think it and even accept it, it was a reality that they couldn’t ignore.