The Remaining: Refugees (48 page)

The man’s bloodless lips moved, forming words before he found a voice to put to them. “…you know who sent me…you know.” His eyes swam around in the deeper end of unconsciousness and then came back to the surface for a moment.
“Your time is coming, Captain.”

“
You’re not answering my question.”

“We weren’t the only ones.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They sent others.”

“To kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’m tired.”

Lee leaned away from the man as though the sight of him was repugnant. Deeper in the woods, but this time much clearer, he heard the howl
,
echoed back and forth. He stood and wiped rainwater from his eyes and from where it had gathered around the mouth of his beard.

Sergeant Prestone
watched him as he stood. “You gonna help me?”

Lee shook his head. “Won’t do you any good.”

The man tried to haul himself upright, but was too weak. “But you said…”

“I said you had about three minutes left to your life. But you’ve gone and wasted
time trying to bullshit me
, and the infected are getting too close.” Lee
rubbed his chin
. “Guess you should have talked faster.”

“
Then k
ill me.”

“No.”

“Please…just shoot me.” Sergeant Prestone
sounded panicked. “Don’t let them get me.”

Lee pulled the hood of his parka up over his head and turned away from the dying man. “You won’t distract them if you’re dead.”

Lee turned himself back the way he had come and began walking quickly away.

“You sonofabitch!” the man cried out weakly from the ground. “You sonofabitch! Don’t leave me here!”

But Lee had already left him. His parting hope was that the man passed into shock before he felt much. He could not imagine the pain of being eaten alive.

As he worked his way back to the group, he thought he heard the sounds of growling and barking, and perhaps a scream of terror, muted by the woods and the rain.

CHAPTER 22
:
ODD
CARGO

“Hold him down!” Julia ordered.

Wilson squirmed
beneath the bulk of
two of his teammates, one holding onto each arm while Julia took a hold of his right wrist and held it tight, then took the first stump of a finger, what used to be his little finger, and forced it out straight.

“Waitwaitwait!” Wilson cried out. “Don’t do that, Julia! Please!”

She showed no pity when she looked at him, only honesty. “Wilson, this is gonna hurt, but we gotta do it. I gotta close up your fingers somehow, and there’s not enough skin to stitch them shut.”

“Can’t you sew my fingers back on?” His voice
shook
.

“No, I can’t sew them back on.” She turned to Jim. “Bring it over here while it’s still hot.”

Jim knelt down, holding his M4, barrel up.
T
he barrel
burned
hot enough to
sizzle
the rain drops off into steam as they hit it. The look on Jim’s face was
pained
, as though he
felt the agony of
what Wilson was about to experience.

Julia pulled Wilson’s wrist towards the hot barrel. “Put that cloth in his mouth. Wilson, you bite down on that thing hard, but
do not
jerk your hand around. You gotta be strong.”

His response was a shake of the head. “Fuck! Jesus! Oh no…”

Lucky
knelt o
ver his head, ho
ld
ing
a towel from one of their packs, rolled up tight. He placed it apologetically in Wilson’s open mouth, at which point the young A
ir Force cadet closed his eyes
and bit down hard.

Julia pushed the stump of Wilson’s little finger into the barrel.

It took a moment for the sensation of h
is own burning flesh to hit him. Then
his eyes shot open
, showing the whites all around,
and he issued a sound that would have been a scream if not for the towel in his mouth.
His teammates urged encouragement to him, but their voices were overcome by the
desperate noises coming from him
.

“One more,” Julia said. “One more.”

Wilson shook his head fiercely, but it did not save him. With one grown man forcing his arm out straight, Julia
held
onto the remain
s of his ring finger and pulled
it inexorably towards the scalding metal, touching it amid muffled shouts and jerking, and holding it there while the skin and meat and blood vessels seared into one raw, red mass.

“Done,” Julia said and immediately released Wilson and stepped back. Two of his teammates jumped back with her, but the one holding onto Wilson’s right arm was too slow. As soon as
Wilson
got his left arm free, he swung out wildly and
clobbered
his teammate
, causing him to stumble
backwards.

Wilson backpedaled away from them, the pain blinding him to the fact that they were only helping him. He clutched his three-fingered hand to his chest and ripped the towel out of his mouth, and like it was a plug in a
spigot
, he spewed out swears and cur
ses as he huddled on the ground, his eyes squeezed shut again.

Julia breathed heavily with a shake of her head, wiping her bloody hands off on the hem of her
parka
and then swiping the rain out of her eyes.
Beside her, LaRouche grimaced, looking down at Wilson’s form.

“Damn,” he muttered.

The sound of boots in the wet leaves behind them.

Lee trotted up to
the group, soaked and breathing heavily, rainwater steadily dripping from his beard.
He pointed to the road. “We gotta go…” His words trailed off as he caught sight of
Wilson, still lying on the ground
. He
took a deep, rapid b
reath to catch his wind again, t
hen he looked at Julia
, questioningly
.

She zipped up her pack with a jerk and hauled it up off the ground. When she spoke, she avoided Lee’s gaze. “We lost Zack.”

Lee seemed taken aback. “What happened?”

“They got him
in the chest,” she said tightly. “
Nothing we could do for him.”

Lee put a hand to his face, pulling it slowly down over his eyes, as though the anger and the frustration and the pain could be wiped f
rom him like the rainwater. He stared warily back in the direction he’d come from, but when he saw and heard nothing, he looked once again at Wilson, who was just now sitting up, still cradling his hand.
“What’s wrong with him?”

Julia
pulled one backpack strap onto her shoulder
. “Lost two fingers on his right hand.”

Lee
nodded slowly, not responding
.

“We just seared them closed with a hot rifle barrel.”

“Oh.” Lee took a step so he was standing over
Wilson, and extended his hand
. “Come on, man. We gotta get mobile again
.”

Still grimacing,
Wilson
took the offered hand
.

Lee hauled the man to his feet, then turned to the rest
of the group and pointed for the vehicles
. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”

LaRouche pulled up beside him as they headed for the vehicles. “What about the Humvee?”

“We’ll come back for
it later
,” Lee said. “For now, just grab our supplies and the radios and put them in the other Humvee and let’s get going.”

“Hey,” LaRouche touched the captain’s shoulder. “Who the fuck was that shooting at us?”

Lee looked at him, and something
strange
passed over his eyes
.

“Just some guys,” he said, and left it at that.

***

Moving quickly, they dismantled the M2 on the now-defunct Humvee and pulled the SINCGARS radio off its bracket, stowing both of them in the other Humvee. Then they pulled Zack’s body out of the cab of the LMTV and put it in the back cargo area. They would take it back to Camp Ryder and bury it with Jake.

Bury it with the others.

The windshield in that LMTV was still useable, despite the gaping hole on the passenger’s side. Lee
hurriedly
took a cloth from Zack’s pack and wiped down the seats. His face remained stolid, and he gave no more reaction to this grisly task than if he were simply cleaning a dirty window, even when he found a long tendril of flesh hanging on to the rough hole in the seat back. He eyed the thing and then picked it up with his thumb and forefinger, and flicked it out the door behind him.

All the while his eyes kept tracking back to the woods
.

With only a few seconds to spare, Deuce reappeared. He was quiet, but clearly concerned with something in the woods, as his golden eyes remained locked, and his ears perked in that direction. Lee was not the only one that took note of the dog’s attentions—the rest of the group quickly piled into their vehicles.

LaRouche took the driver’s seat and
watched the captain
warily. He
saw how
Lee’s
eyes seemed unfocused as they began to drive, staring straight ahead through the rain-dappled windshield, blinking in time with the windshield wipers.
His eyes only became sharp again when he glanced down at his GPS to monitor their progress.

A
n error message popped up on the screen
of the GPS unit
and Lee’s eyes narrowed. He held the device up, then off to the left, then off to the right, up against the window. Finally, the error message went away. Lee held the device in the air and muttered something under his breath.

“
Something
wrong with it?” LaRouche asked.

Lee turned to face him like he had forgotten the sergeant was sitting
there next to him
. That same
weird
look again
, but it quickly disappeared. “Maybe
the satellite
orbits are starting to decay.” He looked back to the screen.
“That’
s the second time
it
’s happened
this week
.”