There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (125 page)

His heart raced as she sat next to him. She looked at the jigsaw scars on his leg and patted it affectionately.

“Josie, I’m sorry for what happened!” he blurted. “If you’ll only let me explain—”

             
Josie cut him off with a shake of her head. “You’ve nothing to apologize for, love. If anybody’s at fault, it was
I
. You see, up until that night I’d felt myself slipping.”

             
Tubby frowned. “Slipping?”

             
“My mind,” she explained with a shrug.

She was fully dressed in jeans, polo shirt, and a bra underneath. It hadn’t escaped Tubby’s notice that after that night, Josie had ceased going around half-dressed. As if she’d suddenly become aware of her surroundings.

“I felt like I was going crazy, you know? Trying to get by with little to no sleep. And when I did sleep, I had these awful dreams. It all came to a head that night you and I…Well,
you know
. After I found myself on the sofa with you…I-I knew I had finally snapped. And even though I felt
whole
again, and the nightmares had thankfully stopped, I was too mortified to speak to you.”

             
Tubby couldn’t help but grin. “Glad I could be of help, me lady.”

             
She punched him playfully in the arm. Then, blushing bright red, she said, “Me too, Ralphie. Me
too
.”

             
Tubby sat up, allowing his leg to bend naturally. He glanced over at Josie hopefully. “I don’t suppose…”

             
Josie said nothing. Just looked at him sadly and shook her head. The scent of strawberries made the rejection all the more painful. He smiled and shrugged, as if his heart wasn’t breaking into a million pieces.

             
Grabbing a pair of clean socks off the table, she asked him, “How’s the leg, tiger?”

             
He cleared the lump from his throat and watched Josie slip the athletic sock over his right foot. “Better,” he said. “I owe you guys so much.”

             
Josie wiped the bottom of his left foot clean, slid his other sock on, helped him with his sneakers, and tied the laces on his shoes. It was a simple act of nurturing on her part, and yet indelibly intimate. Realizing this, Josie blushed and released his foot. She smiled down at him with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know about Rusty, but as far as I’m concerned, consider your debt paid in full.” It was Tubby’s turn to blush. “I’m not kidding, Ralphie,” she said with a sigh. He had turned into such a looker since she’d first met him—then again, Josie had always seen him for who he really was. “You, my fine friend, are going to be
very
popular with the ladies.”

             
Tubby looked up at her. “Just not the one who matters most to me.”

             
“Good morning, yo
u
Creepo
s
,” said Rusty, pushing through the curtain. He pretended not to have heard what they were discussing. He’d suspected something like this had happened, but until now he hadn’t been sure. One thing was for certain: someone was going to get hurt if he didn’t break this nonsense up!

Josie chuckled gratefully. “Morning, Gnat. Ready to say the magic word so we can blow this Popsicle stand?”

Rusty shoved his glasses up on his nose. It had been an unspoken thing, his knowledge of the combination. To speak of it would convict him as an accessory to Bud’s murder. Each of them had a burden to bear, but that didn’t mean they had to make the load any heavier than was necessary. Josie put her arm around his shoulders. Despite his growth spurt, he was still shorter than her.

“What do you think we’re going to find out there?” she asked him

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking.

They had all heard the same panicked reports over the Weather Band radio, the urgency in the reporters’ tones growing day by day. Like fire in a dry hay field, RS13 had spread all along the East Coast. Cutter had been right: Several of the infected
had
made it to the mainland—courtesy of Hurricane Jack the Ripper. President Bush had enforced a quarantine on the whole of the United States. Not that anyone wanted to enter, but millions sure as hell wanted to get out! The first week after the virus reached the mainland, 89.8% of the virus had been contained to the Eastern Seaboard, and most of that to the Southern half.

That’s when it really started to get hairy.

Inexplicably, there were outbreaks in California, Utah, Nevada, and Michigan. According to one station before it went off the air, the virus was spreading faster than the quarantines could be put in place—this, despite the desperate, heavy-handed methods of USAMRIID.

For a short time, RS13 had spared the rest of the world its madness. Except for one notable exception.

Once his generals informed him that the mutant virus threatened to decimate the whole of the Eastern Seaboard, Bush had no choice but to recall the troops from around the world. And that had included Iraq. The very survival of the USA was in doubt and the country needed its troops to keep the disease from crossing into uninfected states. Militant Muslims around the globe declared the virus retribution from Allah for the sins of the Infidels. They danced in the streets, drunk on their joy and hate.

Then the virus began to pop up all over the Middle East. Suddenly, no more dancing. It seemed Allah had a bone to pick with them, too. Then again, maybe Jr. had decided to send over a dose or two. After all, RS13's inception had originated with them in mind. It just seemed fair that they should join in the fun.

After that, the virus couldn’t be contained.

Except for the military, Congress had banned all air travel. Countries once loyal to the U.S. threatened any American citizen found crossing their borders with immediate and aggressive expulsion. Reports of vigilante death squads rounding up and executing Americans—even those who’d lived in their country for years—didn’t stop the desperate from trying to escape the spreading red tide.
And all the while, unnoticed and unchecked, infected rats and mice crossed the international borders with impunity.

Then 56 days into the epidemic, all th
e
Creep
s
could get on the radio was white noise. Static ruled the Delco, from dial to dial. Whether it was the military blocking the airwaves again, or of an even more ominous cause, they could only guess. Rusty had stubbornly stayed with it; traveling the dial slowly one way, then back the other, hour after hour, going through Bud’s stock of Eveready batteries, until only six remained on the shelves.

All to no avail.

The world, it seemed, had passed on.

The radio was set aside until the day before their departure, but nothing had changed; it was still a vast wasteland. They briefly discussed the ramifications of what meager information they’d been able to learn, and decided they were better off not knowing the full extent of the damage. In any event, they weren’t going to leave the island. Josie told them what John Cutter had related to her and Bud that night in the wax museum, down in the cellar with the three other doomed men. She told them of the virus’s short life span, using Cutter’s comparison of ripples in a pond. If Cutter had been right about RS13, then the virus should
never
have been able to spread as far and wide as it had! And in so little time! What the missing ingredient was to the epidemic, they had no idea. If they had heard over the airwaves that rats and other rodents were the missing integer to the equation, they wouldn’t have believed it. It was inconceivable that rodents could bring down the human species in less than two months!

Rusty put forth that even though the virus had begun on their island they were safer than the vast majority of the world’s survivors. This was due to the fact that they
were
on an island, surrounded by water for miles around, and that all of Moon’s Rabids had presumably long since expired, their infectious body fluids dried up by now.

It was safe to go up. The question remained, however: To
What
were they going
Up
to?

They smiled sheepishly at one another. All three had on their army coats. Tubby’s was now too big for him, while Rusty’s fit him for the first time ever. The simple act of putting on their club jackets gave them a feeling of solidarity—that together they could face whatever the cruel world had in store for them.

Cree
p
s go it together! Always and forever!

While Rusty and Josie waited by the vault door, Tubby armed himself with the Mossberg, filling his coat pockets with extra shells, making sure to keep them separate from the magic talisman he kept in his pants pocket. Rusty and Joe declined to bear arms this time around. Neither had the belly anymore for killing. “You think Peg Leg’s is open?” Tubby asked them, breaking the tension. “Jeepers, am I hungry!”

They laughed at the baggy clothes hanging on Tubby’s body. Rusty had once suggested that Ralph wear some of the clothes Bud had left behind, but one look from Josie told them that was a bad idea. Instead, she had taken-in Tubby’s pants as best she could. They still looked ridiculous. “You’re half the man you used to be, Opie,” Rusty said, with a straight face before laughing.

“Stop calling me Opie,” said Tubby, with an equally straight face. Then he burst out laughing, too, Josie joining in at last, until all three were on the floor, hysterical.

Like a boiler giving off steam, the combined laughter was just the thing needed, releasing some pent-up pressure that’d been building ever since Bud left them. Finally, it trailed off into three smiling faces, all nodding their heads at one another:
Yes
.
It was time to go home.

Chapter Twenty-On
e
:

          Because Rabids Don’t hang their fucking

          Wash…

Rusty’s hand hovered over the lock. Suddenly he wasn’t so anxious to leave. Suddenly it seemed a very bad idea to open that door. “What if it’s not over with up there? What if the virus is still kicking around? Maybe we should wait another week. We’ve got enough food! We could—”

             
“No, Rusty,” Josie said, cutting him off. “Over. Not over. I don’t give a shite anymore. You and Ralphie can wait down here till the food runs out. But me…I’ve had enough. Personally, I wish Bud had never found this feckin’ mausoleum. Now, if you don’t mind, love. Open Sesame, will ya?”

Rusty blinked owlishly behind his glasses. Josie was right, of course. Whether or not the virus was still spreading, enough was enough. The bunker might have saved their lives, but living under the earth wasn’t really living at all. Life was what you lived on
top
of the earth. The Deep Sleep was what awaited you below. It was what they had been playing at for the last eight weeks.

Yeah, it was time to start living again.

He dialed in the combination, pulled the chain free, and spun the wheel clockwise. Easy, peasy, kiss my teasy.

The locks disengaged and the door swung a quarter way open of its own accord. 

Josie held her breath and squeezed past the door. She half-expected to see Bud’s body on the other side, still keeping guard, but there were no identifiable remains in the alcove. Only tidy ashes and bones.

She tentatively took a whiff of the air. No decay. Just the dry dusty smell of a sooty chimney. Josie let out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t ready to see her Bud’s last remains—or for that matter to smell them, either.

She stepped through the ashes as quickly as she could, and left the bunker, vowing in her heart never to set foot in it again. Not even if an army of Rabids were waiting up top with forks and knives and Heinz 57.

She crawled out into the cool sunshine of a mid-December morning, the fresh air hitting her like a jolt of caffeine. She took a deep breath of the clean, crisp air, and slowly turned in a circle, scanning the entire clearing, swamp, and surrounding woods. There were precious few leafy trees in the Pines, but those still standing were in full autumn bloom. The cool seasons were always late on Moon. She searched and found the area where they’d left the Pines that night in their race to the bunker. The fire they’d started marked the area precisely. The flames had petered out shortly thereafter without doing much damage. Probably due to the drenching rains Hurricane Jack had left behind
,
Josie thought to herself.