The Remaining: Refugees (66 page)

He dove to the ground, his hands splayed out in front of him, trying to sweep the bottom of the chain link fence away from his head. He was only partially successful, getting most of his head through before the bottom of the fence swung back into place and gouged him from the ears to the neck and then caught on his clothes.

Tomlin writhed under the pressure of the fence,
only gaining
inches with each movement, feeling panic welling up and
not fighting that feeling
. This was no fine motor skill that required a clear head, it was not a critical decision of what was a threat and what was not a threat. This was just an animal trying to get out of a trap, and if there was any time in the world to panic, it was then.

He cleared his upper body, then dug his fingers into the soft dirt and
clawed
himself all the way free of the fence. And when he was free, he didn’t stop to look back or to assess the damages. He lurched to his feet and pointed himself straight into those woods.
As he ran, h
e scooped up the rifle and shoulder bag a
nd flew
as fast as his feet would carry him.

CHAPTER 31:
JERRY

The pounding at the office door continued for nearly thirty seconds straight. Crouched behind the overturned desk, Bus and Angela stared at the door and wondered
how long it would last once the men on the other side
started kicking.
The pounding now was only someone’s fist. It was a big, industrial door with a metal frame, and would not come down easily, but it would
eventually
.

And then what?
Bus thought.

The hammering fist ceased, and a voice that was only vaguely familiar came through, slightly out of breath. “Bus! You need to come out of there, before we come in and get you! Don’t make this harder than it needs to be!”

Bus grit his teeth and shook his head, but didn’t respond.

Angela watched him quietly and adjusted the grip on her pistol.

“Bus…” The voice called again—Greg? Was that his name? “Are you armed?”

“Of course I’m fucking armed!” Bus yelled at the door. “Where’s Jerry? Let him speak for himself. He wants to take this place over, he can come look me in the eyes and we’ll talk it over.”

This time it was Jerry’s voice that came through the door. Lilting, proud, bitter, engorged with his own perception of victory: “
I’m here, Bus, waiting for you to open the door, if you really want to face me like a man. But there will be no talking this over. We’re through with talking. You’ve pushed us into this position, so don’t bitc
h now that we’re taking control.
”

Bus hung his head for a moment and there was silence between him and the people on the other side of the door. How many were out there? Five? Ten? All armed? And Jerry especially…wouldn’t Jerry enjoy it if they had to get in a shoot out? Because there was really only one outcome to that.

“Bus, we are trying to handle this with as little violence as possible,” Jerry intoned self-righteously, as though this whole situation was Bus’s fault. “But you’re making it very difficult. And the longer you hole up in there, the more likely
it is
that someone is going to get hurt.”

Bus closed his eyes, rubbed them. When he opened them, he looked at Angela with a strangely serene look on his face. “You know, Angela, when I first met you, I never would have imagine
d
one day we’d be barricaded in this office,
holding guns
.”

Angela looked grim. “And yet, here we are.”

Bus actually laughed, as though the situation
was some comedic story he was hearing about
third
-hand. “Yes…here we are.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Jerry shouted through the door. “I’ve given you plenty of chances to handle this like an adult and face the music! I’m giving you one minute to open this fucking door before we break it down! And then whatever happens will be on your head, not mine! You hear me, Bus? It’s your fault! It’s always been your fucking fault, and it’s gonna be your fault again! Open the fucking door!”

Bus almost winced at the sound of the man’s shouts, as though his voice were a particularly ear-piercing and high-pitched noise that you could feel in the fillings of your teeth and down the skin over your spine. When the room grew quiet again, he sighed quietly.

“You’ve got a lot of fight, Angela.” He looked at the pistol in his hands. “Probably a lot more than I ever gave you credit for.”

“Bus,” she said, licking her lips nervously. “Maybe we should…”

“Here.” Bus held out his hand. “Let me have your gun.”

She stared at him like he was nuts.

“Come on. Let me see it for a second.”

Slowly, she held the pistol out to him, and dropped the heavy metallic object in his outstretched hand. Bus looked at it like some
alien artifact
he didn’t quite
comprehend
, and then he stood up from behind the desk.

“What are you doing?” Angela asked, a note of apprehension coming into her voice.

Bus ejected the magazine of her gun, and jacked the round from the chamber. He looked at her with a sad smile, and then tossed her weapon on the floor so that it skittered away into the other corner of the room.

“Bus!” Angela stood up like she was going to make a leap for the gun.

The big man held out one giant paw to stay her, and when she was firmly rooted behind the desk again, he retracted his hand and tossed his own weapon to the ground alongside Angela’s. He shook his head. “We’ve survived this long. I’m certainly not going to be taken out now by this motherfucker.”

“Open the door, Bus…” Jerry taunted.

Angela and Bus regarded each other for a long moment, but both knew that it was the right decision. This did not have to end in bloodshed, and Bus would do the people of Camp Ryder a disservice by making a useless sacrifice of himself.

He reached forward and unlocked the door, and then stepped back.

It took the men on the other side a moment to comprehend what he’d done, but then the door flew open and two men burst through, shouting and pointing
their rifles at Angela and Bus, yelling at them to raise their hands.

The man—it was Greg
after all
—that pointed his rifle at Bus, stepped to one side, and behind him Jerry stood in the door of the office, staring balefully at Bus from under scowling eyebrows, and
pointing
his sawed-off shotgun at him.

For a moment, Bus’s heart jumped, thinking that Jerry was just going to shoot him dead right then and there…but no. Jerry didn’t have the sack for such an overt act of violence. Jerry was a politician, and he knew that even though his supporters disliked Bus, they wouldn’t look at it very kindly if Jerry gunned him down for no reason.

Jerry stepped forward and raised his head up so that he was looking down his nose at Bus, and he sneered, the picture of haughty defiance. “Get on your knees, Bus.”

Bus shook his head. “Why are you doing this?”

Jerry leapt forward, but still left about a foot between the muzzle of his shotgun and Bus’s chest. “Because you
fucked us over, Bus
! You have us running around like lackeys for that GI Joe, giving everything we have to his ‘mission’! You just let twenty of our group—twenty innocent people—march out of Camp Ryder on a fucking suicide run to God-knows-where, to do God-knows-what, all because The Great Captain Harden said it was a good idea!” Jerry’s face was a contorted mask of rage. “You’re fucking pathetic! Pathetic!”

Bus laughed in his face. “And what are you going to do, hero? What’s your master plan for all of this? Run and hide? Wait for it to be over?” The smile on Bus’s face
dissolved
abruptly into a snarl. “Because I have news for you! It’s not going to be over! You’re not going to be able to wait it out!”

“Shut up!” Jerry shrieked.

“You think you can just wait for them to die, but you can’t! They’re just getting stronger!”

“
Shut the fuck up!
”

“And they’re breeding! They’re breeding,
Jerry!” Bus took a step forward and reached towards Jerry in a supplicating gesture.

The shotgun blast shook the room like an explosion had
gone off underneath their feet. T
he twin barrels flashed bright, hot, violent smoke, and Bus toppled backwards like some invisible force had
yanked
him to the ground.

“Bus!”
Angela screamed, and shoved past the man guarding her, who stood with his eyes as wide in shock as everyone else in the room, their panic-stricken gazes crossing rapidly between Bus’s figure on the ground and Jerry who stood over him, his eyes wild and glistening like a mad man.

It seemed to take Jerry a moment to realize what he had done
.
F
or a moment so fleeting that it seemed to have been only a trick of the light shifting through the cloud of gunsmoke that hung in the air before him, Jerry looked terrified.

“Did you see that?” Jerry began screaming. “He tried to grab my gun! You saw that, didn’t you? Greg! You saw him try to grab my gun! I had to shoot him! He was trying to grab my gun so he could shoot me! I had to do it!”

Greg stood, petrified in place. His mouth worked and he could find neither the courage to tell the truth—that there had been no aggressive movement on Bus’s part, that Jerry had shot him in cold blood—nor the intestinal fortitude to
directly
affirm Jerry’s lie.

Angela fell to her knees at Bus’s side. “Bus! Somebody get help! Help him!”

The big man lay on his back, his eyes wide in surprise, staring at the ceiling, as his chest hitched up and down, all the brawn of it mangled under the tattered and bloody remnants of his jacket. Strange noises came from him, from his mouth and from the air seeping through his lungs and directly out of his chest. No one in the room moved, or ran for help, partially because they were unsure how Jerry would react, but
also
because they all knew that no amount of medical help would save Bus from what was coming.

Angela put her hand on his brow and smoothed back the dark curls of his hair. Hot brine welled in her eyes and her breath was becoming ragged with sobs. “Bus, look at me! Look at me! You’re not gonna die! You’re gonna be okay! It’s gonna be okay…just fucking look at me!”

As though he had not heard her until this last pained request, his eyes focused just slightly and moved down to meet her tearful gaze. His head came up off the ground with what appeared to be every ounce of effort he had within his body and he stared at her with shocking intensity for someone so close to death. “Take it,” he said. “Take it.
You have to.
”

And then his eyes became unfocused again and he collapsed backwards into unconsciousness, his face shedding its color like a tree shedding the bright autumn leaves to welcome the cold barrenness of winter. The hitching of his chest became more rapid, and then it slowed, and the last sound that came from him was a slow and beleaguered
groa
n, like the sound of a steel structure gi
ving way under an immense pressure
.

Angela squeezed her eyes shut, felt the tears trickling down her face
.

She whirled on Jerry.
“You fucking murdered him!”

Jerry shouted angrily back at her: “He tried to grab my gun! What was I supposed to do?”