Those Who Remain (Book 2) (9 page)

“Yes… The cleanup,” Mrs. Terrence whispers, gaze falling over the bodies around us. “But… Before that, we need to talk.”

Her tone darkens the mood pretty fast. Roger helps Danny up and we form a circle around her.

“Talk about what?” I ask her.

Mrs. Terrence raises her sleeves, revealing a deep bite on her right arm. My heart beats faster. I take a step back. Danny says nothing.

“When did this—” I start, but she raises a hand.

“It doesn’t matter, dear. Not anymore. It happened, and we need to deal with it.”

This is my fault. I did this to her.
“Mrs. Terrence, I’m so—”

“It wasn’t your fault, Lily. I wanted to help. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. This… How are we…?” I turn to face Danny, afraid of speaking anything else. He just stares at his mother.

“We need to deal with this now.” She looks around us. “I won’t endanger anyone.”

It takes me a moment to realize what she wants.
Oh no.

Danny shakes his head, taking a few steps back. He says nothing.

She faces her son, face set. “Honey, we need to do this. You know we have to.”

Roger steps closer to his friend and places a hand on his shoulder. “Danny.”

He wrestles his friend off, moving even farther back. “We can fix this, okay? Just, just let me think. It’s… I can fix this. Maybe if we cut your arm off, right? Maybe then you’ll be okay, prevent the infection from spreading.” He runs his fingers through his hair, head shaking. “But then… Then you’ll bleed out. Fuck. I need to go to Whitefield’s hospital. Why didn’t I go a month ago like I wanted? It’s okay. I can do this. The trip isn’t that long.”

“Danny….” Mrs. Terrence grabs his hands. “Please.”

He brushes her off. “Ma, stop. Don’t distract me. I’m thinking. Just don’t talk, all right? I have to fix this.”

Mrs. Terrence eyes me, then Roger. She wants to be left alone with her son. I take Roger’s hand. We give them their privacy.

A few minutes later a shot echoes. Danny comes back. He says nothing and gives Roger the gun.

“Danny….”

“Take care of it for me, will ya?” He whispers, and then passes us by with vacant stare on his face.

The Doctor VII

December 26th, Sunday, 10 am

The Humvee truck inside the base’s garage saves me from the blisters of a long journey by foot. We load the car with all the supplies the base has left. Water, bread, first aid kits, clothes, boots. Anything that Tigh judges useful in the long run goes inside. Our trip to the mysterious secret base will take almost two weeks, if nothing goes wrong. He figures between bad roads filled with abandoned cars and two quarantine checkpoints turned into death traps, we might have to sacrifice speed for safety.

That, and the fact that the miracle base is not exactly in Canada. Instead, it’s located on a remote and unpopulated island named Akimi, twelve miles from the north coast of Ontario, with deep forests and little roads between here and there.

“It’s on the Hudson Bay,” Tigh educates me while packing a military-grade hiking bag. “No one lives there most of the year, so it was easier to set things up. The Army used the cover of building an international bird sanctuary. Canadian authorities didn’t have a clue.”

“Nice going. I mean, international diplomacy and common courtesy… Who needs it?”

“Well, think what you want. If it wasn’t a secret, it probably would have been destroyed like everything else.”

Our conversation lacks the usual annoyance and anger. Probably because we both feel like crap, we aren’t fighting anymore, and are focusing solely on the trip. My bullet wound gets in the way of preparations, but overall I think I’ll live. Or, to be precise, I won’t die because of it. Tigh gives us three days, so I can sleep in a proper bed for a little while longer, but after two nights, I can’t stand it anymore. Everything inside the base torments me. Nightmares of Tom becoming enraged and trying to bite me mixed with the pleas and cries of Victoria’s family haunt my waking hours.

Outside of the base, standing side-by-side, we take a few minutes to stare at what has been our home for a month. Tigh’s eyes linger more on the heavy metal doors, and for once, his shoulders slump, his back arches and a long sigh escapes his lips. My chest feels like it’s being crushed by the weight of a concrete block. The guilt I was trying to bury these past days, comes back in full force.

I wrap my arms around him, hands finding his back. My head can only reach his chest as I close my eyes. “I’m sorry, Tigh.”

“You said that already,” he answers with a low voice. “We need to move out, Doc.”

He doesn’t return the embrace, but he doesn’t push me away. We stay like that for a few more seconds, and then I get inside the truck on the passenger's side. Without another word, we depart, driving toward the main road to reach the highway.

Tigh’s predictions turn out to be spot on. Every hour or so, we encounter an obstacle. Snow covered roads, fallen trees, abandoned frozen cars that won’t turn on, and worse. Before reaching the highway, Tigh stops before a crash site of two cars: a family van turned over, bags scattered over the pavement, and another car with a smashed rear, blocking our way. The second car looks functional, and we might be able to circumvent the van, if we maneuver the other out of the way.

Tigh gets out the car and orders me stay put. As promised, I obey him. My long track record of bad judgment makes heeding his decisions a lot easier. While he surveys the damage, I roll down the window of the car, and look for any signs of danger.

The Sergeant treads carefully between cars, his rifle ready to fire. He kicks the luggage out of the way, and approaches the van. My heart races, a hand on the door’s handle, as his feet pass by the broken windows of the overturned vehicle.

Movement inside the van catches my eyes. “Tigh, below you!”

A bloody and battered hand reaches out of the window, grabbing him by the ankle. Tigh uses his free foot to kick the hand off, crushing the bony fingers until they let go of him. Another pair of hands tries to reach him, this time coming out from the driver’s window. The Sergeant jumps out of the way just in time.

I stare at the van, waiting for the infected passengers to crawl out and attack Tigh, but they must be trapped by seat belts or between the wreckage, because Tigh goes to the other car without another incident. He buries his combat knife insides the still almost-alive driver’s eye, as the man struggles to free himself from a restraining seatbelt. I wince when the Sergeant tosses the body out on the road to make room for himself.

My eyes linger over the driver’s form. This is the first time I see someone infected for what was probably a full month. Victoria’s exposure didn’t last a week. I want to get out and examine it up close, but decide against it. It’s not safe, and I can help Tigh more inside the Humvee by letting him work without having to worry about my safety.

The back of the man’s head is completely covered by black lumps, with no hair left. He’s bitten in the right shoulder, a line of swelling tumors originating from there and spreading over his upper arms and neck. The nails and extremities of his fingers are black, just as his teeth are likely to be. Tigh’s stab resulted in external bleeding, as a pool of blood forms below the face, but the rate and volume of the bleeding intrigues me: slower and less than of a healthy human.

This virus is changing human bodies in a fundamental way, and very quickly. It can’t be a stronger strain of rabies, since it is far too devastating. Could it be multiple viruses mutating at the same time? A cluster of different diseases? Between Victoria’s behavioral pattern—a desperate hunt for meat—and the various extreme versions of different virus symptoms—rabies mania, saliva transmission with smallpox lumps—the more I think about it, the less I’m sure a simple vaccine will solve this. In my desperation to fix things, I became blind to the obvious level of complexity of the virus. Almost like it was manufactured… But that’s impossible. Or not. Three months ago I would never have imagined any of this to be possible. I don’t know what to think anymore.

With the other car out of the way, Tigh comes back and starts our truck. I can only stare at the skeletal arms flailing out of the van, and, as we leave them behind, they almost seem to be pleading for help. Help that neither I nor anybody else can give them.

By sunset, Tigh parks our car on the side of the road and we eat canned beans in silence. I half-expect him to tell me to drive, so he can sleep, but he doesn’t.

“You can sleep on the backseat. More room,” he says instead.

“Maybe we should take turns, I could drive while you rest, that way we can cover more ground. What do you think?”

Tigh busies himself throwing the empty can out the window, then rolling the glass up again.

“I’m not tired,” I insist, after his lack of answer. “I can drive just fine.”

He frowns, passing a hand over his face. “That’s not a good idea.”

The lack of trust stings, but he has every right to doubt my judgment. So instead of arguing, I move to the back of the car. I toss and turn at first, looking for a good sleeping position, but apart from the initial discomfort, it’s the first night in a long time without nightmares. Not even Tom and Victoria haunt my dreams.

When Tigh wakes me, the moon’s still up in the starry sky, but the orange on the horizon mixes with the dark hue of the night. My back is killing me, but I hear a crack when Tigh feels his neck muscles. His back must hurt worse than mine. Between driving all day and the constant tension over obstacles, I worry about his health.

After I jump over to the front of the car to sit in the passenger's seat again, he throws some bread and an apple into my lap, “Eat. We have a long day ahead.”

“Before we leave… I think we need to talk.”

“About?” He tears a piece of bread.

“I know I don’t exactly inspire confidence after everything I did, but sooner or later you’re going to need me to help you. And it’s better if we get used to it soon. So….” I take a deep breath. Tigh gazes at the road ahead with a neutral expression. “What I’m saying is that you need to teach me how to shoot and fight for real this time. I need to know how to help you.”

He doesn’t talk, so I insist. “We need to be practical about this. Soldiers work in pairs, don’t they? Never go in without a partner?”

“That’s mostly for police officers.”

“Okay, but—”

“I can train you. But are you sure you want to know how to kill someone?”

I chew the inside of my cheek, eyes wandering on the scenery outside. Trees, snow, gray pavement. “I already know how to kill people, that’s how you learn how to save them. Besides, I’m already responsible for too many deaths. A gun won’t change anything.”

“If you say so.”

Tigh is true to his word and after another day of traveling, we stop to train. He hands me a handgun, light and loaded with blanks, and tries to teach me how to not miss a target right in front of my face. He also explains how to walk and aim, and what to do in a situation where there are enemies all around us. It’s a lot to memorize, but I did spend the better part of my adult life reading and memorizing books thicker than concrete blocks.

After a few hours, I’m exhausted, so Tigh prepares dinner. We sit on a fallen tree, glad to be out of the stuffy car. Our shared silence isn’t a comfortable one, at least to me. I’m not sure how to behave, what I should do or not do. Every time I open my mouth to ask him something I realize the subject might be related to the base and what happened there. I’m not ready to let those thoughts back in my mind. So, instead I let silence fall over us.

He doesn’t seem to care.

What he cares about is training me as hard as he can, my gunshot wound allowing. Sun or snow, he pushes me for hours. I was no couch-potato, my profession didn’t allow for much time to rest in front of a TV, but I start to realize there’s a huge difference between running around an E.R. and trying to fight a grown man with hand-to-hand combat. Between all that, we make for slower time. After three more days of traveling, we finally reach the highway and our first quarantine checkpoint: a blockade of wire fences, gates, military tanks, and medical tents to test people for diseases.