The Remaining: Refugees (30 page)

Lee rose slowly so he could just see over the abutment to the intersection south of them. “What am I looking for?”

“
Across the intersection, you see that two-toned building? Red on top, white on bottom?”

“Yeah.”

“You see the entry to that building? Right there next to the square pillar. I think it’s a person.”

Lee stared at the building, squinting against the low-slung sun. “I don’t see…”

The words
rolled to a stop
on his tongue as a head poked out from behind the pillar. He couldn’t see the features of it
from this distance
, but he could see it
looking around
as though scanning for threats. After a moment of this looking back and forth, it disappeared and then emerged again, dragging
something behind it—
what looked like the lower half of a dog.

“Shit,” LaRouche whispered.

“That ain’t a person,” Lee murmured.

It dragged its prize quickly across the street, then paused on the other side to look around again.

“Why can’t it be a person? You’ve never eaten dead dog?” LaRouche was trying to make a joke, but when Lee snapped a look at him, there was a thin sheen of sweat across his brow that belied his lackadaisical attitude.

The person, the creature, the infected—whatever the hell it was—must have determined that the co
ast was clear again. It
reached down and grabbed one of the dog
’s
legs and pulled it around the corner towards an open building door, and then disappeared inside.

“Where’s he going?” LaRouche asked shakily.

“Den, maybe.”

“What, are they hoarding food?”

“I don’t know. I’m watching the same damn thing you are.”

A minute passed.

The infected came out from the darkness of the building, this time without the dog’s hindquarters. Still in the shade of the buildings portico, it looked back and forth, and then scampered across the street where it had come from.

“I’ve never seen them that cautious before,” Lee said quietly, as though the infected might hear him from so far away.

“You think it’s a pack or a horde?”

“There’s only one.”

“What do you think he’s a part of?”

Lee shook his head. “I’ve never seen a pack this far into an urban area.”

“So you think it’s a horde?”

Lee didn’t answer.

“What do we do?” LaRouche asked after a moment.

“I wanna know what the fuck is in that building.”

LaRouche suddenly ducked and pointed. “There he is again!” he hissed.

The same movements. Stopping at the building across the street, poking the head out, looking back and forth a few times, running across, looking back and forth…but this one was different.

“Not the same one,” Lee said. “The other one was wearing a shirt and jeans. This one’s just got
some khaki shorts, it looks like.”

“What’s it holding?”

They both squinted. The infected at the corner was holding something cradled in its two spindly arms, but they couldn’t tell what it was. It disappeared into the building and came back out a moment later with nothing in its arms. Before crossing the street again, it looked both ways, as though it were a pedestrian concerned about vehicular traffic. For a moment, its gaze lingered in their direction and Lee felt his heart jump into his throat. But then
the creature
jogged across the street and disappeared, following the same trail as the other infected.

“They’re like ants,” Lee stated with sudden certainty. “They’re out there scavenging something and bringing it back to their den. They’ve got a fucking den inside that building.”

LaRouche kept chewing at his lip. “We could take ‘em out in their den, while they’re sleeping.”

Lee looked at him like he was insane. “Not a fucking chance. I’m not wandering into that building
in the dark
to fight some infected. That’s nuts.”

“Okay,” LaRouche didn’t put up an argument.

Apparently he didn’t like the sound of his own idea.

“No,” Lee looked back towards the south. “We’ll do a trap in the morning. Catch ‘em right outside of the den. Once we’ve wiped ‘em out, we
’ll
check out the den.”

“We should do some more recon.”

Lee nodded. “We
need to get a head count on them
, and I want to see what they’re scavenging.”

“Alright,” LaRouche took a deep breath, like he was preparing to take a dive. “Let’s do it.”

They made for the stairs and headed for the ground floor. They were quicker going down than they’d been coming up
, and in a minute or two Lee pee
ked out of the building and took a glance at the city around him. It was devoid of life
, just
as before.
They
faced
north, onto Carthage Street.

Moving with cautious urgency, they slipped out and hugged the wall of the building, jogging west for a short distance and then quickly cutting down an alley that ran behind the
store fronts
. The intersection where they had seen the infected crossing was only one block down from them.
On that corner, another tall
building stood, some sort
of apartments or condos
.

When they reached it they found a steel door standing closed and locked between them and the inside.
If they checked the street-side for doors, they would expose themselves, so it was this door or nothing
.

“I got it,” Lee whispered, and pointed to the corner of the building where a narrow alley led out to the
street.
“Watch that alley.”

LaRouche moved to the corner, keeping back away from it a few feet and leaning out just far enough to see down the alley. He scanned back and forth quickly, then leaned back into cover. He looked to Lee and gave him a thumbs up. “Alley’s gated off at the street.”

Lee nodded. “Watch my back.”

He dropped his
pack
near the steel door and unzipped the main compartment. After his first few scavenging trips, Lee had learned the value of two items
: a crowbar and a bolt cutter. Without the proper tools, it was incredibly difficult to make your way through an urban area after everything had been boarded up, chained up, and locked up by business owners hoping to eventually come back and reopen their doors.
I
t was times like these that the crowbar and the bolt cutter justified the extra
twenty
pounds they added to his pack.

He pulled the crowbar out and shifted his sling so his rifle hung on his left side, out of the way. He glanced over his shoulder as he stepped to the door. LaRouche was still at the corner, peeking out, and then scanning behind them.

All appeared
quiet.

Lee set the flat, curved head of the crowbar into the narrow crack between the steel door and the jam, right above the latch. The head of the crowbar was just a sliver too thick, so Lee put his weight onto it and struck it three times with
the
palm of his hand, until it was embedded nicely into the crack. Then he took the end of the crowbar and began leveraging up
and down, bending the frame away from the steel door
.

“
Psst!
”

Lee looked up.

LaRouche made eye-contact with h
im and held up a single finger, then pointed down the alley.

Lee
bit his bottom lip and went back to work, that old familiar shudder working its way through his limbs
.
He focused on his task, kept prying up and down, up and down. Not worrying about what LaRouche’s hand signals meant
. He was close now, but these industrial doors were tough.

“Come on you bitch,” he mumbled to himself, straining hard to bend the metal.

Light but rapid footsteps behind him.

Lee turned and found LaRouche beside him, eyes wide. “Gate’s not latched!” he hissed. “One’s coming down!”

From the alley, the faint sound of rusted hinges.

The clatter of a metal gate on a brick wall.

“Open it!” LaRouche urged
under his breath
.

Lee set himself into the door, fingers aching from their grip on the crowbar, his forearms beginning to burn from the strain. “I’m fucking trying
!”

LaRouche made an angry growling noise low in his throat and turned his attention to the alley, raising
his rifle. “This is about to be
bad.”

“I’m almost there…”

From the alley came that distinctive chuffing sound.

Something sniffing the air.

“Captain…”

Lee grit his teeth, trying to work fast, but trying to work quiet at the same time. If he rushed, he would make noise, and noise would only draw the infected to them faster.
A
nd the others would
follow
.

“I got it…I got it…”

He pushed the crowbar in one more time and this time instead of leveraging up and down, he pried with steady, firm pressure.

The door popped with a little scrape. Lee ducked in
, leaving his pack outside on the ground. LaRouche slipped in just in time for Lee to close the door as quietly as he could, plunging them into darkness. In the brief flash of sunlight when he’d opened the door, Lee had seen a long hallway, white walls, and red carpeting. It smelled like death.

Something further down the hall.

A hunched figure.

Alive or dead?

He felt his stomach tighten involuntarily as the stench of the rot, held in so long in this dark
,
enclosed space permeated his mouth and his nose and seeped into his throat and sinuses. He could feel the churn in his gut, and his mouth began to water, preparing for vomit.
He tried to bury his nose in the fold of his shemagh that lay wrapped around his neck, but couldn’t quite reach.

He wanted to ask LaRouche if he had seen anything
down the hall
, but he was afraid to speak. He wanted to click the flashlight of his rifle on and illuminate this petrifying dark, but he was afraid to move. He remained glued to the outward-opening door, both hands clamped on the handle and pulling it shut as tightly as he could. If he made a move, if he allowed himself to vomit
, or even breathed too loud, it
would
be heard by the infected.

It would
cry out to the others
, knowing there was something to feed on inside.

Lee and LaRouche’s chances of survival
went downhill from there
.

He strained, sweat on his palms making his grip on the handle slippery. His ears searched for any sound, but heard only the overwhelming silence of the building. Whatever he had seen down the hall, real or imagined, it was not making any noise