The Remaining: Refugees (42 page)

The lean muscles all along its
body
rippled
and
tensed.
The head snapped out towards the sports fields and raised up, the nose working furiously. Lee followed its gaze, but couldn’t see anything. Its lips curled in a low growl, and then, without warning, it shot into the backseat of the Humvee.

“Whoa!” LaRouche jerked his legs back.

The dog thrust its
dark
muzzle between Lee and Jim, facing forward, and then began to bark savagely. Lee and Jim both drew back
away from it, but then realized that it was barking at something out beyond the front of the vehicle, out in the sports fields.

Frothy spittle speckled
the windshield
as the dog continued to bark
.

“You think it smells something?” Jim asked over the sound of the dog’s panicked barking.

Lee opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by LaRouche.

“Contact! Infected!”

Lee leaned out and slammed the rear door, and then his own. “Let’s go, Jim!”

Jim stomped on the gas, lurching them forward and whipping the vehicle to the right. Lee tumbled into the radio console and the dog, feeling the hot breath and the grungy fur against his face. Jim snapped the vehicle in a complete 180, LaRouche shouting obscenities from the turret
as he held on for his life
. He straightened out and headed for the gap in the barriers that they had come through.

Righting himself and leaning forward, Lee was able to
look back and
see out his window to the football fields,
where
the dark shape
s
of
three infected
were visible, s
printing towards them in a wide skirmish line. The one in the center was bulky and brown-skinned, with wild, black hair…

“Jesus! They’re fast!” Lee exclaimed.

The Humvee shuddered and the dog in the backseat yelped in surprise as LaRouche opened up with the
fifty
. Just before they shot through the barriers and turned back onto Bragg Street, Lee could see
the white steaks of the tracers lancing out at the pursuing infected, kicking up chunks of concrete.

Then they were on Bragg Street, and Lee could no longer see them.

***

Harper knocked twice on the plywood wall and then pushed open the blue tarpaulin curtain that served as a front door. Inside, Jacob knelt on the
dirt
floor and appeared to be stuffing his backpack with the personal items he’d arrived with, and a few things he’d been provided by Julia and Jenny, who most often served as the welcome party. Beside the pack, the plate carrier that had once belonged to Captain
Mitchell
from Virginia
sat on the floor, three aluminum box magazines lying across the
chest.

Jacob looked up
at Harper
and regarded him enigmatically.

The guy was a real puzzle, Harper thought. Obviously, he was sharp as a tack. Not just book smart, but street smart
. T
here was a bit of a fighting dog lurking under all that educat
ion
.

His eyes, expressionless, returned to his work. “Can I help you, Mr. Harper?”

“Mind if I come in?”

“
Come on
.”

“Thanks,” Harper slipped through the door and pulled the tarpaulin back into place. “You goin’ somewhere?”

“Yes,” Jacob zipped up the main compartment of his pack. “I think I can do some good at the hospital in Smithfield. I
found a pair of scavengers
that are making a run out past Smithfield. They’re going to drop me off on their way.”

Harper chewed at his lip. “Yeah, uh…”

Jacob pointed to the three magazines. “Would I be able to get some extra magazines from you? Those three are the last I have left, and one of them is only half loaded. Is there any way I can get three more mags and, say, two hundred rounds of ammunition from you?”

Harper rubbed his nose. “Jacob, we need your help with something.”

The scientist tilted his head back. “Oh?”

“Captain Harden and his team made a very interesting discovery today. He wants me to take you and a team out to Lillington to…check something out.”

Jacob smiled. “Mr. Harper,
you’re
going to have to be more specific.”

“Captain asked me to keep it quiet, so what I tell you stays here.”

“Of course.”

Harper stepped closer and knelt down so that they were on eye-
level and told him what there was to tell. As he spoke, Jacob continued to work at packing his things
, but as the truth of the matter came out, his movements began to slow until he appeared frozen in place.

“Pregnant?” Jacob’s mouth worked silently for a moment. He seemed both terrified and dazzled by this news, and the edges of his mouth ticked up as though he wanted to smile, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “I don’t believe it.”

Harper looked at the floor. “I didn’t either, but…”

“Do you know what this means?” Jacob suddenly demanded.

“Uh…”

“It’s reproduction. It’s continuity in the line.” That scared smile again. “There will be mutations—there
has
to be mutations. It would
take years and years
…unless the gestation period is decreased. It could be. I just don’t know.” He snapped his head up and looked at Harper gravely. “Please tell me…”

Harper
shook his head
. “They were killed before the captain realized what they were.”

Jacob threw his hands up with a loud groan.

“Listen,” Harper looked around as though someone might be in the shadows of the room, eavesdropping. “The captain doesn’t think this is the only den with females in it. That’s why he wants us to check Lillington.”

Jacob was in the process of smearing his hands down his face, but stopped when he heard this last part. His forehead and cheeks looked flushed from the pressure he’d
exerted
on his skin. “Because you wiped out the Lillington horde, but you didn’t check for the den.”

“And there might be females there.”

“Are you going to kill them?”

“We’re gonna try to get a test subject
.”

Jacob turned, his hands at his sides and the fingers working back and forth with a manic energy. “And if she’s pregnant…that’ll answer so many questions. I’ll be able to watch the gestation period. And see how the baby grows.” He turned to Harper. “What effects does the plague have on the fetus? We don’t know. We can assume a lot, but until we watch it with our eyes, observe and record it, it’s just bunkum.”

Harper gave him a questioning look. “You seem excited.”

Jacob shook his head. “
Not excited. Fascinated, though
. Truly, truly fascinated. But
very scared
. This isn’t a laboratory anymore. This isn’t studying something that’s safely contained. This is studying something
that is right here, right now
,
wiping us out
.” He took a deep breath. “It’s a lot of pressure.”

Harper put a hand on the scientist’s shoulder. “Don’t get bogged down
just
yet. We still have to catch one of them.”

Jacob stalked over to a corner of the small cube that he called his home and snatched up a metal pole with
a thin cable coming out of the top,
a makeshift
dog catcher’s pole. “Same as you catch any other animal that wants to bite
you
. I’d suggest the use of a heavy tranquilizer, but I don’t want to take any chances with the fetus.”

Harper eyed the pole. “Where’d you come up with this thing?”

“I made it.” Jacob set it beside his pack. “I took to heart what Captain Harden said to me the other day, when I was about to throw myself out of the gates for a chance to snare one of them. Admittedly, that was not smart. He was right, I was wrong. So I made the catch pole, and if I’m not mistaken, there are many unused rooms at Johnston Memorial Hospital that might serve perfectly for housing a test subject.”

“I believe there are.”

Jacob nodded, very serious. “Then I believe I’m in.”

***

They met back in Broadway just before sundown. Lee, Jim, and LaRouche had already made it back and downloaded their gear, and by the time Wilson’s Humvee pulled past the roadblock at the eastern end of Broadway, Jim had already started a fire and pulled out food.

At the tell-tale rumble of the Humvee, Lee and his two companions looked up and watched the vehicle roll down the strip towards them. The last they’d heard from Wilson was that they were firing up the generators and blowing the dust off the equipment they needed to operate on Jake.
No prognosis outside of Doctor Hamilton’
s general assessment that things didn’t look good.

They waited tensely as the vehicle stopped and the doors opened. Wilson stepped out, but his expression remained blank. The other members of his team followed, and they looked mostly exhausted. They hoisted their packs onto their shoulders and began meandering their way towards the glow of the fire like moths drawn to the light.

Lee and
Jim offered quiet encouragement as they dropped their packs and took their places around the fire. Lee looked back to the vehicle and watched as Julia slid out last. Her clothes were soaked in blood and the pale skin of her arms
were smeared with it. Like a fierce blush, it
and reddened her neck and face.
Strands of her hair were stained from the base of her scalp all the way back
,
clumped together from constantly brushing
her
hair away with bloody hands.

It appeared that she made a conscious effort
to avoid
eye-contact with Lee, looking everywhere
else
as she slowly approached. Wilson stepped to her side and put a gentle hand on her shoulder and said something that Lee couldn’t make out. Wh
atever he said, Julia offered a faltering
smile and a nod.

Lee looked down into the flames. “What’s the news?”

Julia answered, her voice stone-cold. “Doc Hamilton is operating now. He said he’d hit us on the radio as soon as he had news.”

Lee glanced up and saw her eyelids flutter.

“He’s gotta go in,” she said in a flat monotone. “Repair the artery. Close up the chest wound. Hope the blood pressure doesn’t drop too low.”

“Julia did phenomenal,” Wilson said to Lee. “She was on point the whole way there. If Jake makes it, he owes it to her.”

Julia shot Wilson a
withering
look. “Let’s not play pretend, okay?” She looked at Lee for the first time, angry, though he wasn’t sure if it was directed at him, or some nebulous power responsible for what had happened. “
Jake’s not gonna make it. He was shot through the chest with a high-powered rifle round, and it took almost 45 minutes for him to get anything but the most basic battlefield care. He already lost too much blood by the time we got him into surgery, and Doc Hamilton poking around in there is only going to make him bleed more. They can pump him full of IV fluid to keep his BP up, but at some point in time it’s going to dilute the blood too much, and they don’t have anything to replace it with. And then Jake’s going to die.”