Pulse (19 page)

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be figuring out a cure or something?”

Chewing on his lip, Adam ran his fingers along his suitcase. “I was working on a few things when the campus I was on was overrun with infected. I barely escaped with my life.”

The doors opened. Dom looked over, scanning the crowd…

“Chelsea!”

He was on his feet in an instant, pushing through the disgruntled crowd. The look of relief on her face made his heart lift. He took her in his arms for only a moment when the soldiers told them to clear the doorway.

“What took you so long?” Dom asked, gripping her hand in his as he led her to his spot. “Are you okay?”

“I went behind a curtain. They started asking me questions and when they asked if I’d been in contact with the parasite I said yes.” She lowered her voice for the last bit, looking around at the crowd. “But that was the
wrong
answer. They asked me where and when, who it was, if I touched them, and a billion other questions I didn’t know the answers to.”

Dom sat her down, placing himself between Adam and her. He saw the green tag hanging on Chelsea’s neck. “But they cleared you?”

“Sure, eventually. I think it was only because someone was throwing a fit about them taking her tablet away behind the curtain next to me. Then I heard soldiers mention a lot of them outside of the evacuation zone.” She hugged her arms around her knees. “God, Dom. I think there might be a ton of infected surrounding this area.”

To his side, Adam snorted then laughed. “Told you.”

Chelsea leaned forward, eyeing him. “Hi?”

“Uh, this is Adam. Just met him.”

Dom breathed slowly as he debated whether or not he should tell Chelsea what he now suspected; what crazy Adam had been saying.

Then it all came out. Faster than the conversation with Adam since he subtracted all the conjecture. It was a consolidated version but as Chelsea listened to it, it became evident she was ready to accept it.

“When I walked past the gym down the hall, there was a fight going on. Some guys were arguing, but it looked like it was getting physical. The soldiers were just starting to intervene as I went by.” Chelsea squeezed her eyes shut. “I think we made the wrong choice coming here. I really do, Dom. I think we need to leave.”

Before Dom could agree with her, the first series of gunshots rang, sending
the entire crowd into a panic.

Getting past the evacuation zone was much easier than Sadie anticipated. Their gates were overwhelmed, and there were actually side streets they hadn’t blocked off. She skirted around the massive crowd pressing against each other and was quickly alone, her footsteps sounding loud on the concrete as she walked.

“Whadda you got there, mommy?”

Sadie’s blood ran cold. Her hair stood on end as she froze. Her brain told her to run, but her body wouldn’t listen.

“She asked what you got there,” another female voice said.

In front of her, three women slipped from behind a delivery truck. The streetlight cast a sickly yellow glow across their faces. Up until that point, Sadie hadn’t seen live infected people. She’d heard them. Seen glimpses of them from afar, but never this close.

Their eyes were demonic, the grins on their faces unbearable. Blood splattered their clothing and they each carried knives. One raised her head and sniffed.

She wanted to reach for the gun in the side pocket of her backpack, but she couldn’t support Jon with one arm. She stood stone still, gaping at the infected.

“That boy is one of us,” she said.

“She’s got him tied up, that fucking bitch.”

“Child abuse!” one screeched, rushing forward.

Sadie found her feet and spun around, running straight for the evacuation zone. There were people there with guns. She couldn’t do this on her own. In that moment a primal voice in her head took over. Fear propelled her through a narrow alley that cut through to the evac zone. The burst of adrenaline gave her new strength; she grasped Jon in one hand and reached back, yanking the revolver free from the backpack.

The glow of the huge lamps was just in view when s
harp pain brought her to her knees as the first stab entered her back. One of the infected women grabbed her hair, yanking it up as another tore Jon from her arms. The third came in front of her, crouching down to make eye contact.

They didn’t realize she had a gun. Sadie brought it up, squeezing the trigger as many times as she could. The back of the woman’s head burst as the bullet entered through her eye, splattering the concrete behind them.

But the pain from the stab wound was too much. Sadie collapsed, putting up as much of a fight as she could when they pried the gun from her hand. Neither seemed upset by the loss of their companion.

“You’re a bad mommy,” one
shouted, spit flying into Sadie’s face. “You’re. A. Bad. Mommy.” With each word her knife entered Sadie’s stomach, blood pumping from the wounds.

The woman holding her hair let go, sending Sadie to the ground. All she could think about was Jon, her little boy, and how…how maybe she was a bad mother. It was her fault, all of it. His getting sick. Her taking him from home. And Brett. Everything was her fault, everything…she was so close…

“Are you my mommies?”

Sadie inhaled a wet breath. She turned her head, face scratching the concrete as she strained to see her boy. Her vision was darkening, coldness creeping up her limbs.

The women had cut his restraints. He stood near her, looking up at the trio of infected. They stroked his hair, his little arms.

“Yes,” one said. “We’re good mommies.”

The one that stabbed her turned, looking down the alley. The right side of her body jittered violently. “Claudine, he can get in. We can go around the back; no one will see us. We’ll slip him through the bathroom windows and he can get all those healthy fuckers in the school.”

“Good idea. Hey kiddo, mommies want to give you a boost into that school there. What do you say?”

“Ok,” his sweet voice replied. He looked at Sadie, with no recognition in his eyes.

Sadie welcomed death.

It was silly, Adam thought, how gullible people were. Transition lenses. Really? And didn’t the kid notice he didn’t have a green tag? He knew he was like that at one point, too. It made him like this Dom guy more. He seemed honorable, so concerned with saving his girlfriend, but was realistic enough to accept Adam’s logic about the bombing (which was all true, no lies there). The gullible part was what made him a great candidate to replace Marla. In a way, his girlfriend would replace Marla, too. Though Dom obviously didn’t know anything about science, his attitude would go far.

Marla.

She had been fun in many ways. After a day on the road he couldn’t resist it any longer. He pulled over and had her on the side of the road. The front of her body was almost shredded from being rubbed against the concrete highway, but it was amazing for him. It would be for her soon, too. Obviously the parasite would be transmitted via his semen, then Marla would be like him.

But she hadn’t. While they were on the freeway she managed to open the car door.
She looked back at him with contempt so pure it almost caused a flicker of guilt within Adam.

“I’ll never be like you.
Ever
.”

Even though he slammed on the
brakes the moment it happened, she’d flung herself out. Still attached to the door, her body was dragged on the pavement at 75 mph long enough to break her legs and cause massive damage to her body.

Adam took off her cuffs
, her dying body limp and heavy, and left her on the highway. Much to his irritation, beneath the blood and gore, her face seemed serene. Rather than letting the parasite take over her body, she chose suicide.

But that
was the end of Marla, her reasons ultimately meaning nothing to Adam. If she didn’t want to achieve perfection as he had, so what? Perhaps not everyone was meant to.

When he arrived in Seattle a day later, he discovered his old apartment building and its adjacent properties had been leveled to make way for a middle school. At that point Adam almost suffered from a mental collapse. His brain lapsed in and out of being able to think logically. Not having his old apartment back seemed like the most horrific thing in the world.

Adam went inside and trashed a few classrooms to release his rage before he realized it wasn’t too big of a deal. He was back in Seattle, his home, and still had all his notes and samples. He just needed to find a good place to settle in and begin researching. If Seattle ended up anything like the infected states he drove through, he merely had to wait things out. They seemed like ghost towns, but within the woodwork survivors and infected alike were teeming. Once it quieted, he’d break into one of the college chemistry departments and begin his work.

But after he resolved to get himself together, the military showed up and started taking over the middle school. Adam had no choice but to hide, fearful of what they’d do when they found him. He hid underneath the theater room stage, gleaning information from soldiers and refugees as they started piling in. Once there were enough of them, Adam exited his hiding place to figure out how to escape.

It didn’t take long for him to figure out he couldn’t leave without a big diversion. Lucky for him, he didn’t have to make one. As soon as the infected came through the door, the room’s inhabitants swarmed towards any exit they could think of. Chairs were thrown at windows, many rushed the double doors and tried pressing through the infected trying to come in.

Adam knew of an emergency exit behind the stage. Not many refugees went back there, and sure enough, as he led Dom and his girlfriend back, there were only a few people darting through it. More would come once they caught on.

He led them through, utilizing his basic knowledge of the layout from when he first arrived, and exited out the side of the middle school. People ran in all directions, going anywhere as long as it was away from the school.

“Where are we going?” Dom asked, raising his voice above the chaos behind them.

Adam looked up and down the street, spotting his car where he’d left it. “Down there, my car. Come on!”

They followed him blindly, just as Adam had hoped, and he ushered them into the backseat. It was dark, and hopefully they wouldn’t note the smears of blood and handcuffs on the passenger side. If they did, he could easily explain it away.

Or use his gun. The gun fixed a lot of things.

As Adam pulled off the curb and began driving away from the school, he noted Dom in the back seat with his smart phone out. The girl retrieved hers as well.

“Keep going south. The roads don’t look too bad according to these traffic cams. If we keep going towards the forest, I think we can…”

The girlfriend lost it. “Dom, we talked about this! We’ll die if we go traipsing into the woods hoping to survive this.”

“I have a friend who lives in…” Adam’s voice caught on the lie as he tried to think of a woodsy town south from Seattle. It had been too long since he was in the area. “Black Diamond. It is southeast from here, but I think it’s a good place to try and hide if we can make it there.”

Dom and Chelsea looked at each other, then Dom agreed to Adam’s plan. Were they skeptical? Adam thought he was acting the part well of a nervous survivor.

The next two hours passed in silence as the couple’s adrenaline seemed to fade. Adam did know where Black Diamond was; he often hiked alone in the area when he was a teenager. There were many big summer houses in the area. They need only break into one and stay in it until the time was right to come back to Seattle.

Kill them. Eat their skin. Feel their blood
.

Adam tried to suppress the violent thoughts, but each time he looked back and saw them, he wanted to do something to hurt them.

I need them
, he thought.
I need people to see this thing through
.

Nothing to see. Rape her, make her yours. Make him watch.

Kill her while he watches

Cut off her

Blood on your skin

blood

Adam didn’t realize how his body had been twitching, or how his glasses slipped down his nose too far, showing his bloody eyes, or how he’d been saying all the things he wanted to do to them out loud.

He didn’t realize it until he felt the muzzle of a gun pressed against his neck and a voice say, “Pull over.”

He doesn’t have a green tag

The text Chelsea typed out and handed to him made his body tense. The guy, Adam,
didn’t
have a tag. Why hadn’t Dom noticed that sooner? He was also weird, and now that they were alone with him he seemed even stranger. As Chelsea and Dom sat in the back seat, he made an effort to watch how the man acted.

It didn’t take long to realize, now that the heat of the moment had worn off, that he was infected. For the first hour he just drove, calmly navigating the roads and taking them southeast just as he said he would. Then things got weird. He started whispering to himself, his right hand jerking off the steering wheel and back on.