The Remaining: Refugees (35 page)

“Have you seen it move?”

“I think it’s asleep.”

“Too cold out here for it to be sleeping by itself, exposed.”

“You think it’s dead?”

H
e leaned out a little further from the corner and whispered to LaRouche, “Just get ready to take it out if it starts coming.”

“Okay.” LaRouche blinked. “What are you…?”

Lee waved one arm around the corner
, and then braced for the reaction from the infected
.

“Oh, Jesus.” LaRouche hunched a bit and tightened the grip on the rifle.

Down inside the alley, the slumped form did not stir.

Lee repeated the wave, twice. He garnered no response.

They both watched in silence, holding their b
reath. Eventually they turned and
looked at each other. LaRouc
he raised his brow in question.

Lee looked back at the still figure. “What I wouldn’t do for a bow.”

Finding a compound bow, or a crossbow
,
had been a frequent topic of conversation, as they had encountered several situations where the ability to make a silent kill would have been nice. Lee had a suppressor, but contrary to popular belief, they did not “silence” the weapon, and would still be loud enough to wake the infected in the nearby den.

The other option was trying to sneak up and smash the skull with Lee’s crowbar. Historically, it was unsuccessful, simply because the damn things were impossible to sneak up on. Like cats, the smallest sound made them perk up and look around.

“Alright,” Lee ducked back in. “Stack up on me.
Hold fire unless it starts coming at us.”

LaRouche blew a breath out. “You got it, Cap.”

The t
e
n stacked up tight on each other and moved around the corner, hugging the wall to their right. The alley jogged down for about twenty yards, where the wall to their right ended and opened into a paved parking lot with the barest traces of paint still clinging to the concrete,
framing
the
parking
stalls that now sat vacant and purposeless.

Lee forced himself to remain hard on the target as he a
pproached
.

Whatever or whoever was slouched against that steel door to the apartment building still had yet to move.

He was now within ten yards of it.

In the crisp moonlight, Lee could
see it was an older man, with w
isps of gray hair still holding stubbornly to his liver-spotted scalp. He wore only a set of stained, white underwear and one black sock on his left foot. His limbs were sallow, his chest sunken
in
with a tuft of white hair poking up from the hollow of it.
From its nose to the top of its chest, it was
covered in dried blood.

What’s it doing out here? What’s it doing away from the den?

It definitely wasn’t one of the hunters. It was too old and too frail. Lee had seen these old and sick ones in the hordes. Occasionally, he’d seen one of them lying in the street, either dead or dying, or too sick and weak to move. It was disturbing to leave them lying on the ground, for in their last moments, they seemed less insane and aggressive, and more like the people they had once been.

Lee motioned for everyone to fan out. The single-file stack split up and LaRouche began moving to the right, while Lee remained stationary, covering the infected at the door.
When they had the thing effectively surrounded, Lee glanced to his right and found
the man next to him was
Jake. Gone was his joker’s expression and twinkling eyes. Now his lips were pursed in concentration, his brow wrinkled up into a fierce glare of intensity.

“Relax,” Lee said, very quietly.

Jake nodded once.

“Move up with me.” Lee let his rifle sink down to his chest and quietly withdrew his KABAR from its sheath on his vest. “Stay hard on him, but don’t fire unless I tell you to. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Lee stepped forward, and Jake moved with him, close enough for their shoulders to brush. Lee held his knife over handed and flexed his fingers on the grip, squeezing in as tight as he could go. If the old infected made a move for them, he would lunge forward, seize it by the throat, jerk it back, and plant the knife wherever he could get it into the brain—either through the temple, the palette, or the base of the skull.

It can’t make a sound,
Lee told himself.
Not a sound.

CHAPTER 16:
GOING UP

Standing
before it
, Lee tensed and drew his hand back, ready to strike out. Jake stood directly beside him, and to either side the others trained their rifles on the form and held their breaths.

“He’s not breathing,” Jake mumbled.

Lee stared at the man, at the bib of crusted blood around his neck and chest.
Dark, almost black-stained skin
.
The blood was not smeared, as though the old man had been feeding, but instead was caked as though it had poured from his own nose and mouth. Now standing closer to him, Lee could see the malformation of his head, caused by the explosive compression and decompression of a high-powered bullet.

Lee bent down
to look
closer. “
He’s been shot in the head
…”

A thunder clap obliterated the silence.

The sound was so sudden and overwhelming that Lee felt every muscle in his body jerk simultaneously like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket.
Strangely, nonsensically, he thought that the body of the old man had been booby-trapped and it had exploded. But it still sat before him, crumpled and motionless against the door
.

He looked up at Jake, to see what the noise had been.

The younger man leaned
over, one hand on his knees and the other steadying himself against the wall. He looked right at Lee, dumbfounded
, confused, terrified
.

Then he coughed, and blood spewed out.

Lee watched a thick gobbet of
red
as it flew through the air. It seemed slow and lazy as it arced its way down to the ground. He could hear the sharp intake of his teammates’ breaths, the shuffling of feet, the movement of fabric. He could feel his gut tightening, forcing the words out of his mouth.

“Get insid
e!” Lee shouted.

The sensation of time-warp dissipated.

He reached up and snatched a handful of Jake’s sleeve as the kid’s knees buckled and his body sank against the wall.

LaRouche began to fire his weapon rapidly. The sound of his rifle was like an explosion that set off an avalanche. Lee was suddenly surrounded by a ring of fire and noise as everyone opened up, the muzzle flashes like tongues of flame licking out into the darkness
, everyone aiming for the rooftops
.

Lee pulled roughly at Jake’s arm, forcing him to flop onto his back. His eyes were wide and pale, the blood like tar around his mouth. His chest rose and fell, and Lee could see the gaping wound in the glitter of the muzzle flashes, like dozens of cameras going off. He jammed both of his hands under the kid,
the concrete rasping away the skin of his knuckles
, and hooked his fingers into Jake’s
armpits. He
jerked the kid partially upright.

“Open the door!” Lee screamed behind him. “Open the fucking door!”

Someone—Lee couldn’t tell who it was—stepped around and kicked the dead body out of the way of the door and then yanked it open. Lee didn’t wait for an invitation. He immediately began backpedaling
, trying to maintain his grip on Jake, but the guy
had begun to squirm
around and
claw
at his chest. In the back
of his mind, Lee registered the sound of Jake’s breathing—ragged, gurgling, wheezing.

The sound of air passing by a wet valve.

Lee hauled himself
into the doorway
, pulling with everything he had. The stench of
the
rotting corpse enveloped him
again
like a
soggy
, putrid blanket. He pulled Jake just inside the door and then collapsed with one
giant
last effort that landed them both on the ground.

Lee twisted up and onto his knees and leaned over the wounded form beside him. The sheer surprise of the moment was giving way to the pain, and Jake’s body was beginning to
shake
, his throat beginning to find the ragged threads of a voice and issue those horrible noi
ses of the wounded
.

Lee ripped Jake’s parka open
, exposing the hooded sweatshirt beneath. All of it was drenched in blood. Quickly, he traced his fingers over the glistening red fabric and found the hole and the torn flesh under it. The wound was on the right side of Jake’s chest, maybe three inches from his sternum. If the bullet hadn’t clipped the heart, it had come damn close. It was welling up, deep and fast. Too fast to just be capillaries. Lee pressed his palm to the open wound and
bore down on it with all of his weight.

Jake cried out and his eyes went wide.

Lee looked up.
“
Julia! I need some help here
!”

Outside the door, t
he rifle fire
slowed
. LaRouche held the door open with his foot and screamed at the others to get inside
as he
took evenly spaced shots, putting suppressive fire down on something, though Lee wasn’t sure what it was.

“Get in! Get in!” LaRouche shouted.

The members of the team
tumbled
through the door, tripping over themselves to get inside. Were they still taking fire? Lee couldn’t hear over the sound of LaRouche’s shots, but he didn’t think so.
There had only been one shot.

Lee kept watching the faces come through the door, looking for Julia, but not finding her. His stomach suddenly dropped
inside of his body cavity and for a brief moment he forgot that his hands were pressed tight against the warm, wet flesh of Jake’s chest wound.

“Where the fuck is Julia?” he barked, trading fear for anger.

LaRouche lowered his weapon and looked at someone that was still outside the door. “Julia! Get the fuck inside!” He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into the doorframe and then shoving her inside. He followed quickly, letting the door close behind them.

It had seemed dark in the pre-dawn light, but with the door closed to the outside world, the blackness inside the apartment
building
was absolute. It was only the sound of footsteps, heavy breathing, and Jakes tortured groans.

In the palm of his hand, Lee could feel the pulse, rapid and still strong, but he could also feel the blood seeping through his fingers, warm and steady. It
pushed
through his fingers with the
insistent
rhythm of Jake’s heart.