The Pandemic Sequence (Book 1): The Tilian Virus (20 page)

“So you’re abandoning us? Kicking us out?” Derrick shouted with understandable anger.

“It’s not safe, Derrick, and you know that. If we had more time then maybe, but as it stands now we have no way to contain her during the trip,” Mike repeated the statement he had said several times in the past twenty minutes. Once the council had made its decision, he had volunteered to be the one to inform Derrick of the news. His guilt in helping create the young man’s situation drove Mike to accept that the words had to come from him. With barely enough vehicles to transport the refugees, a separate vehicle could not be spared to isolate the infected Jenni Calente.

“So, that’s it then? After all these years, after all we have been through together, you’re just going to leave us behind?”

Mike could not bring himself to repeat the rationale again.

“We’re so close. She can get better once we get to Cuba. You know it, she can get better. They’ll be able to help her. You can’t do this to us! Please, don’t do this to us!” Derrick implored. His pleas were steadily becoming more frantic, tears streaming down his face. Their voices and movements had incited the caged, infected Jenni to snarl wildly as it thrashed against its restraints. The moment grew to be too much, and Mike knew he had to leave the confining tent.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words catching in his throat. He turned quickly and exited through the tent flaps into the pre-dusk mountain air. Avoiding the camp proper, he instead took himself into the wooded area that marked the edge of the refugee stronghold. His vision began to blur as his own tears welled up. Mike could still hear the pleading screams of Derrick in the tent.

“Please, don’t do this to us!”

Mike quickened his steps, hoping to get far enough away to no longer hear the repeated imploring of his former student. Branches stung his face as he shifted into a run, the thin wisps of wood whipped and lashed at him. He welcomed the pain as a form of required punishment, a self-mortification that could bring absolution of his sins. Several minutes passed before his blind sprint resulted in a stumble and he crashed to his knees. The free-flowing tears mixed with the thread-like trails of blood on his face. Breathing heavily, he cast his eyes upward as a primal scream ripped from his lungs and filled the silent woods. Six years of pain, loss, fear, and defeat took control of his voice as he continued to scream into the fading light. In time his throat became raw and the shouts weakened to thin rasps until silence once again claimed dominion.

Rising from the softened earth, Mike could make out lumbering shapes in the distance. As his vision cleared from the tears, the violently bent necks of the figures became obvious. Still in a cathartic meditation, he instinctively reached his hands towards the double holster on his chest. He felt complete, felt whole, as his fingers wrapped around the warm steel. Easing them from the leather restraints, his arms straightened and dropped to his sides as the figures advanced. His eyes did not move yet his vision perceived his surroundings with uncanny certitude.
Seventeen
, his mind stated lifelessly.

The infected quickened their pace, yet Mike kept his guns lowered. Soon they were thirty feet away, then twenty, fifteen, ten…

With a dark glare and half smile that bordered on demonic, he slowly raised his arms and began firing his weapons into the group of infected. Ignoring his own rules for Til encounters, he did not take head or heart shots. Instead, he filled the diseased bodies with lead in arms, legs, and stomachs. The force of the shots caused the infected to stumble and fall. He did not want to give them a quick death, he wanted to give them pain, though they could not feel.

“
Come on! Get up!” he screamed at them. In that moment, he no longer cared if he got bitten. In that moment, he almost envied the creatures before him and their inability to feel pain, physical or emotional. He envied the carefree reality in which they existed.
If I get bit
, he thought,
then it all ends
.

Mike shouted again for them to rise. And so they did. And again he squeezed the triggers; the rhythmic percussion of the blasts lulled him into a stupor. The infected continued to fall from the bullets tearing threw them. Soon, though, they no longer were able to rise. The loss of blood or the ruined leg muscles prevented them from offering any further threat. Only one still lived and was using its arms to drag itself closer to Mike.

The creature howled in rage as Mike stood his ground above it. From practiced memory, he knew that he had one round left in each gun. Pity, not anger, drove him now as he lowered one weapon and delivered a killing shot to the tormented figure. Returning the spent weapon to its holster, Mike turned and retreated through the woods back to the camp. His left hand still held the gun that contained one unspent round when, several minutes later, he reached his destination.

Having heard the screams and gunfire, a concerned crowd had gathered in the darkness. Mike met their stares with a measured look. Locking eyes briefly with Paul, whose own eyes expressed understanding and pity, he moved to his left and entered the stigmatized tent he had been in earlier. His eyes took in the sight of Derrick as he sat before the cage that held his high school sweetheart. As the infected-Jenni raised her head, she greeted him with a snarl and a growl. Derrick turned his attention to follow her gaze.

“What? What do you want?” the young man asked him. His tone showed his exhaustion and contempt.

“I’m sorry.” They were the only two words that he could manage without breaking his resolve. When he spoke them, he slowly raised the gun and squeezed the trigger to expel the final shot. Derrick’s eyes widened and the shout had barely formed on his lips when the bullet whizzed past his head and sunk deep into the creature in the cage. Her body convulsed with one spasm before falling lifelessly to the dirt floor, a shallow pool of blood forming around her head.

Mike felt the air leave his body as Derrick tackled into him. He put up no resistance as the younger man landed blow after blow into his face and chest. He took the beating as punishment for not allowing this scene to play out all those months ago. In truth, he could not feel the pain. His body was numb and his mind had disconnected from it during the screams in the woods. His daze continued as he heard Paul Jenson rush into the tent and struggle to pull the enraged man off. Derrick screamed wordlessly, and Mike understood the sound, having been its owner an hour before. There were no words to express the emotions that now raged through his former student. Even so, Mike recognized each one as if translated in some fashion.

Others soon filled the tent and Mike could feel arms and hands pulling him up from the ground. His eyes stayed locked on Derrick as the boy fought for freedom from the men that held him in check. The voice of Dr. Marena shouting orders to bring Mike to his medical tent seeped into his hearing, though their meaning was distant and incomprehensible. The smell of alcohol and sterilization were the only indications to Mike that he had reached his destination.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled with a voice that felt borrowed.

Did someone say my name?
his mind inquired.
I’m fine
, he repeated, yet his mouth did not move.
Why won’t you listen to me? I’m fine. I’m fine!

Dr. Marena’s face hovered before him and Mike felt himself being lifted off the ground. His eyes now stared at the dark gray fabric that lined the interior of the tent.

I don’t want to lie down. I’m not ready to sleep
.

He could see Dr. Marena’s mouth move but could not hear the words. He felt a pinch in his right shoulder and soon a warm sensation spread across his body.

I don’t want to lie down. It’s getting dark. Why is it dark? Hello? Hello? Is anybody in here?

* * *

Pain
. That was the first sensation Mike could register as he slowly opened his eyes.
Correction
, he thought,
make that a lot of pain
. His blurred vision began to clear and he recognized the familiar accoutrements that marked the medical tent. His eyes shifted side to side. Mike tried to turn his head, but he could feel something attached to him to prevent such movement.

“Hello?” His voice sounded rough and scratched. He realized how dry his throat was when he spoke, but the dryness paled in comparison to the pain that shot through his mouth when he spoke the word.

“Don’t try talk, Mike,” came a voice from behind him. The shadows in the tent shifted and Dr. Marena entered his field of vision at his left side.

“You have a broken jaw, among other things, so keep your mouth still,” the doctor instructed.

“How long?” Mike asked doing his best to keep his jaw immobilized.

“You’ve only been out for a few hours. I had to use Demerol to knock you out. I was able to reset your jaw. I don’t have the equipment to wire your jaw shut, so I had to immobilize it with a strap. It’s not my best work, but it’ll hold. Your nose was broken in three places, and I reset that as well so it should heal fine. You had a pretty nice gash around your right eye, which I stitched up. Your lip was split, so you have a few stitches there, too. Both of your eyes are pretty well swollen, and I have given you some anti-inflammatories to help bring that down. Oh, and you lost a tooth, but not much I can do about that.”

Mike listened to the doctor as he rattled off the list of injuries.
Well
, he thought,
guess my modeling days are over
.

“Chest?” he asked the doctor.

“Bruised and cracked ribs. Without x-rays I can’t tell you how many, but there is nothing punctured, so if you keep them wrapped and don’t lift anything heavy for a while, you’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” Mike managed to say after the doctor helped him sip water through a straw. The cool liquid eased his parched throat with welcome relief.

The doctor nodded in return and informed him that he would be back shortly. Once the man left, Mike broke orders and began to rise up from his prone position. Pain seared through his body with a staggering force. At first trying to grit his teeth against it, only to find that increased the unwelcomed sensation, Mike forced himself to sit up on the gurney.

“Didn’t he just tell you to stay put?”

On instinct, Mike tried to turn himself to the direction of the voice. His sore ribcage screamed in protest, drowning out his neck’s own complaints. As the pinpoints of light faded from his vision, Mike moved more cautiously and turned to find Paul sitting in a chair in the corner of the tent.

“Where’s Derrick?” Mike said through his teeth.

“Locked up in his tent,” Paul replied.

“Release him tonight,” he ordered.

“You sure about that? What if he decides to finish what he started?” Paul asked him as he indicated Mike’s current condition.

“Then he does,” Mike answered, getting used to speaking without moving his jaw. “But, he won’t, and I won’t have him chained up like a criminal. He and I both did what we had to do. If he decides to stay then it’s on his terms. If he leaves, then we give him what we can spare.”

Paul nodded in consent.

“So, how are you feeling?”

“Well, my legs don’t hurt,” Mike tried to joke, but the laugh caught in his throat as pain throbbed in his chest.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Mike had hoped that his broken face and chest would have allowed him at least a brief reprieve from having to assess his emotions so quickly after the event.

“She died months ago. It’s up to him now if he joins her, or decides to live.” Though he would always carry the guilt of not having acted sooner, he did feel an increased lightness in his soul. He had acted out of contrition by ending Derrick’s torment and with his penance complete, Mike hoped both he and the young man could find whatever peace still existed in the world.

Derrick, having been released from his physical and emotional bonds, left the camp sometime in the night. He left no note, no farewell.

* * *

With the threat of the approaching Tilian horde and the precipitous departure it forced, Mike had little time to rest his sore body. He was pleased to find that the camp had accomplished much in those few days. The majority of the supplies had been loaded into the transport vehicles. In their eagerness to depart, some of the refugees had even taken down their tents and chose to share with others.

Moving slowly through his own quarters, Mike began to box up his belongings. When the virus broke out, he had escaped with the clothes he had been wearing, and the small gray canine that now rested comfortable on his cot. Gazelle seemed to sense the approaching relocation for she kept her eyes half-cocked and had taken to staying even closer to Mike than normal. She was his only real reminder from his life before the virus. The items he placed into the small box consisted of essential documentation and maps; nothing of personal consequence.