by Pike, JJ
Hedwig headed out and east toward the path back toward Jim and Betsy’s place. That would take her to the edge of the wood where they’d have a better line of sight.
“Where are you going?” Stuart shouted. Great. So he was going to be a liability and a PITA.
“East for half a mile, then south to the edge of the meadows so we’re not waiting for people to leap out from behind every tree.” That should have been obvious. Then again, he wasn’t a soldier.
“There’s a sinkhole the other side of Jo’s place. Toward the southwest. Where it dips into the gully?” He hadn’t moved from outside Barb’s place. He was pointing in the other direction. “You know where I mean?”
She did. Aggie hadn’t marked a new sinkhole near Jo’s place on the map. She trusted Paul’s missing sister far more than she trusted this putz. But she was willing to listen. “Sinkhole?”
“MELT.” He shrugged. “It’s traveling underground. In the water. At least, that’s what Caleb thinks is happening.” He waited.
She still wasn’t sold. Walking through the trees would slow them down by at least three hours. Then again, she was already with one of Caleb’s men. She wasn’t going to miss the meet.
“You saw that they brought out their dead?” He had to mean the pile of bodies to the southeast of Jim and Betsy’s place.
She nodded.
“And the hanged man?”
Raccoon food man. He wasn’t someone you forgot in a hurry.
“They were a sampling of the dead. The army guys have been dropping like flies out here.” He pulled at the sheeting hanging from his cuff. “They didn’t take it seriously, like us.”
She wasn’t wearing plastic. She and Sean had taken off all their protective gear. She had no idea who to trust or what made sense or which way she ought to go.
“I can walk us through these woods, past Jo’s place, and on to the quarry without hitting any soft patches that have been infected.” He held up two fingers in a salute. “Scouts honor.” So, not a soldier and not a scout either.
If it had just been one dead and mangled soldier hanging from the tree, or the single platoon passing them when they left the salt mine, or one random pile of bodies she might not have bought his story. But all three things strung together, and in such close proximity, painted a picture of the countryside having been overrun by the military (or paramilitary? or militia? she couldn’t be sure). And it made sense that a percentage of them had died on the road. It added up.
Reluctantly she joined Stuart. The good thing about his plan was that she got to hang back and let him take the lead. He’d claimed he knew which paths were safe. Fine. Good. It also meant she had a clean shot if he got up to any funny business.
They walked in silence. Every so often, Stuart would point at a depression in the ground and say “MELT.” If he was right, it was everywhere. In abundance. Barb was going to have to move. No question. Hedwig resolved to pick her and Sean up on the way home.
The walk through the trees wasn’t as onerous as she’d thought it was going to be. It took them less than an hour, even with the tiptoeing and taking detours, to get to Jo’s place. Aggie said the place was packed with “General Hoyt’s plastic soldiers” who were “heaving with disease.” The General had left them behind before Hurricane Erin had hit. At least they’d stayed put; not spread the disease around; kept themselves to themselves. She and Sean had avoided it all these months.
But Stuart had brought her here.
Right to the epicenter of the joint.
Not a single human in sight.
Only the wind in the treetops to keep them on their toes.
The barn where the plastic soldiers lived was short and squat, the windows hung with burlap sacks and cobwebs, the door slightly ajar. Hedwig and Stuart hung behind the beeches that lined the edge of Jo’s property.
“Do we think they’re all dead? Gone? Other?”
Stuart didn’t have time to answer.
Jo’s front door opened, screaming on its hinges, then slammed shut. They had their weapons trained on a tall, skinny man in a once-white coat now streaked in brown. He held his hands up, one clutching a ceramic kidney bowl. “I’m unarmed.”
“Walk toward us.” Hedwig and Stuart dropped into defensive formation immediately; back to back; almost as if they’d trained for it. She kept the guy in her sights while Stuart watched the barn door. “Good. Stop. Close enough. Bowl on the ground.” She had taught herself not to blink. That’s how fast things could change. He might have a .9mm stashed in the belt of his pants. Or friends inside.
He bent, slowly, and placed the kidney bowl on the ground as instructed. It was piled high with needles.
“Hands back up,” she said.
He obeyed.
There was no patting anyone down. No frisk and search. No touching. But they did make him run his hands over his own body slowly, then lift his shirt, then his trouser legs one by one, and finally turn around several times so she could inspect his outline. As best she could tell, the man wasn’t armed.
“Who are you?” Hedwig kept her weapon trained on him
“Dr. Hanzlik. Infectious diseases. NIH.”
Hedwig narrowed her eyes. What a crock. The National Institutes of Health weren’t sending doctors into the Hot Zone.
“We’re here to take samples. Nothing more. You can join your friends if you like…” He pointed at the barn.
“Hands remain over your head at all times. They’re not our friends.”
“Who are you?” said Dr. Hanzlik. “It’s unusual to see two people on their own.”
“Doesn’t matter who we are. Where are the plastic soldiers?”
Hanzlik frowned. “Who?”
“The men who were here. They wrapped themselves in plastic to keep MELT busy. The General left them here. Said he’d be back. Guess he lied.”
“General Hoyt?”
It was Hedwig’s turn to look surprised. She nodded.
“He knows they’re here. He’s part of the advance team. We’re working for the same goals. He’s over at Indian Point with…”
“I know where he is,” said Hedwig. She didn’t, but it wouldn’t do to look like they were behind the curve.
“You want to see them?” The doctor nodded toward the barn. He’d learned to be cautious. His hands hadn’t moved.
Hedwig did and she didn’t.
“Yeah,” said Stuart. “I want to see them.”
Well, damn. She was supposed to be walking away from the…what had Barb called them…the vomitous and trembling. She didn’t need to be walking into a pit of ugh.
Stuart was already moving. The doctor mimicked his motion. Slow. Steady. All eyes alert and ready. She didn’t have a choice. They were going inside.
Ugh. Truly. Ugh. Why was she letting this happen?
The trio moved in unison—clunky and slow, their feet dragging across the ground like amateur tango dancers after their third tequila—toward the silent barn.
“You first.” Hedwig motioned with her gun. “Wait. Is it airborne?”
The doctor shrugged. “We know about as much about this compound as we did the day it leaked out of the lab in Manhattan.”
If that was true he was a madman. He didn’t have a mask. Or gloves. Or booties. Or a hazmat suit. She only had his word that he was a doctor. Anyone could have pilfered an off-white coat from a corpse. Ditto the ancient stethoscope that hung around his neck. “How come you’re not wearing protection?”
“How come you’re not?”
No answer. The truth sounded stupid and reckless. She couldn’t very well say ‘Sean and I didn’t want the clothes to slow us down.’
“I’m part of a scientific team,” said Hanzlik. “I’m here as a researcher. I’ve been collecting blood samples.”
Hedwig checked in with her Pig-o-meter. It wasn’t blinking. What she found, instead, was a tiny flicker of a flame. If the NIH was willing to send real-live scientists into the Hot Zone, perhaps they were worki
ng on a cure. There was hope. A light at the end of the tunnel.
The doctor took his hands down from his head. “Would one of you like to get me my kidney bowl?”
Hedwig’s gun, which had relaxed just a tad, was back up and pointed at him. “Stuart?”
Stuart pushed the bowl across the ground with his foot. Good man. No touching.
The doctor bent and picked it up. “If you kids have been out here this whole time and aren’t infected, you should let me take your blood. You could be immune. There aren’t many young people who show immunity. They’ve been eating fast food for so long their bodies are riddled with plastic.”
Hedwig was a farm girl. No fast food allowed unless she was at the mall with her friends. She’d grown up on home-cooked food. Skillets full of biscuits and gravy. Was it possible that being the daughter of old-fashioned, frugal parents had made her immune? Or boosted her immunity? Or…whatever. It made her miss her mom more than she had in the entire time she’d been out in the wild.
The doctor moved into the barn.
The young people followed.
There was no lighting, of course, but also no candles or kerosene lamps. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The barn had been turned into the hospital ward from Hell. There were cots lined up against the wall, hammocks hanging from the rafters, sheets up in the loft and men everywhere. Pocked, cratered, split open, and oozing, their wounds had made mincemeat of them.
Hedwig pulled her shirt up over her mouth to keep the smell off. If a skunk had rolled in a dead squirrel and rubbed herself all over a trash panda who’d been ankle-deep in manure and been left in the sun to ripen it couldn’t have been worse. She resisted the urge to run and gag and not come back. These men sunk in their filthy cots were no threat. Unless the doctor was wrong and they weren’t immune and the disease was airborne. Then they were screwed.
A hand, thin and wretched, mostly bone and scabs, grabbed at her pant leg. She backed into Stuart, who had his head buried in the crook of his arm.
“We believe MELT has left the building,” said Hanzlik. “It has eaten its fill—every molecule of plastic in their bodies stripped out of them—and gone to pastures greener.” He knelt beside the man who’d tried to grab Hedwig. “How are you doing Andrew? Feeling any better?”
How could they feel better? Better than what? They’d been worse?
Hedwig wanted to believe you could come back from this awful disease. If not, who was going to survive? They couldn’t stay underground forever; become mole people. If Hanzlik was right and she was immune, that didn’t mean Paul or Petra or Midge would be. She didn’t know what they’d grown up eating. Had the world poisoned its children and hung them out to dry?
“What are the blood tests for?” She had to look away as he searched for a vein. Once. Twice, Three times. All failures.
“We’ll find one yet, Andrew, just you see.” The doctor peeled back the bedsheet to reveal a blackened stump where Andrew’s leg had once been. It wasn’t like Bill’s stump, which she’d always thought looked like raw hamburger or a bad sunburn. It was far worse. The scabbed-over blackness of Andrew’s stump was interspersed with ruby-red bulges. The doctor hunted up his patient’s leg until he found a square of flesh not much larger than a postage stamp which still had its normal-flesh-color, if there was such a color as gray-beige-baby pink.
The needle went in. The blood came out. The vial went into the kidney bowl. Same with the man in the next bed. And the next. It wasn’t until they were on their tenth patient that Hedwig realized the men weren’t screaming out or flinching. They weren’t doing much of anything. They wheezed and blinked, occasionally spidering their fingers out from the edges of their cots in search of solace.
If she’d been Barb she would have held a hand, said some soothing words, found a cup and given them something to drink.
Even if she could have summoned the courage to be half the woman Barb was there were no bowls, no cups, no drips. What were they eating? How were they alive?
Stuart tapped her on the shoulder. She spun so hard, elbow drawn back and ready for the strike, that she would have broken his nose if he hadn’t ducked. “We should keep going.”
“I need to…” She choked back the words. She was a coward. A loser. A heel. If Hanzlik was correct and she was immune what would it matter if she touched one of them? She crept toward the open door, her heart in her shoes, her head swimming with competing voices.
There was only one voice who was silent. He said nothing. He was going to leave this one with her. She was going to have to live with herself. You could have done something kind and you elected not to. Was that who she’d become? Because they were sick? Or soldiers? Or potential Pigs?
Andrew’s chest rose and fell, his hand curled like a mummy’s fist on the center of his piano-like ribs. She couldn’t. It was too dangerous. She would pray. Send him vibes. Consign him to His care.
The door creaked as they made their way into the dappled sunlight of the clearing.
Hedwig holstered her gun.
“You good?”
She turned back. “Two minutes.”
Trembling and weeping, ashamed that it had taken her so long to make the decision, she held Andrew’s hand while he died.
Hanzlik stood behind her, his kidney bowl full of vials of blood. “We’re done here.”
“What happens now?”
“We lock the door and go on our way,” he said.
“We leave them?” They were pathetic. Rotting where they lay. Just because they couldn’t make sounds didn’t mean they weren’t in agony.
Hanzlik was already halfway back to the house by the time she found her voice again.
“You can’t. Your job is to do no harm.”
He didn’t stop. “My job is to find a damn cure. These men are beyond my help.”
Hedwig faced Stuart. “How many bullets do we have?”
He didn’t answer.
It was down to her then. Mercy killing. She stepped into the barn and begged God to guide her hand.
It took less than a minute to relieve herself of all the ammo she had on her, but she felt better for having done it.
Twenty-seven souls released from bondage. Twenty-seven men and women who would suffer no more.
She stepped into the light, tears streaking her face, her gun limp at her side.
Stuart had his pistol trained on her, his lopsided friggin’ grin back on his ugly damned face.
Hanzlik was on the porch, arms folded. “Good job, Stuart. Bring her in.” He pushed the front door open. “No damaging the merchandise. We want her in one piece.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JANUARY 2022
Michael Rayton never got an answer as to why they needed to shave his entire body. Nor what the gel, which was slathered over him after he’d been shaved, was for. Nor what was administered intravenously. What extracted. Or how long the Q-tip was that went up his nose, into his brain, out through his ears, back down his gullet, into his intestines, and out through his rectum.
Not literally.
But they did perform the most thorough cavity test he’d ever heard of. Strike that. Never heard of. It was beyond bizarre. When he exited the brick house where he’d been subjected to a battery of unnamed and un-nameable tests, Michael was smooth and clean and stripped of all flora and fauna, inside and out. He had a million questions, but no voice with which to ask them. He’d been emptied, then pumped full of painkillers. That was the only rational explanation for the fact that he was upright. They had to have dosed them up to the eyeballs.
He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and trudged after his leather-clad internist to a small hut on the edge of the camp where he was issued thermal underwear. Two pieces. Both silk. No buttons. The outer wear was hemp lined with wool. Again, no buttons. Heavy jerkin, wool; no buttons. The hat was fur. Real fur. With flaps that came down over his ears and secured under his chin with a small ribbon that slotted through an eyelet. He was issued f
our pairs of socks. Wool, of course. And wooden-soled shoes that seemed to have been made for him. No way the army had enough men to make shoes in a size thirteen-wide with a high instep, on the off-chance that there’d be a man with feet shaped like his.
“Dr. Rayton?” The clerk behind the wooden desk wore a mask and old-fashioned aviator goggles but was doing his best to be cheerful and engaging. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“A map, a car, and a recommendation for local good eats,” he said.
“Hahahahahahaha.” It was a forced laugh, but to be expected from a boy handing out duds in a shack in a place with no name. “There’s a righteous steak house about thirteen miles south of here…”
“Where’s here?”
“Uhhhh…”
Man alive. They needed to train their people better.
With no dressing room or screen, Rayton dropped his blanket and dressed himself in full view of the clerk. He’d never been picky about nudity, but today it genuinely didn’t matter who saw him in the altogether. Would that it had been the cute nurse instead of the insipid clerk.
His clothes fit. Not in a “off the rack, but not too bad” but a “Saville Row, they know how to cut on the bias and make this snug and keep the cold out and the warm in” way. There’d been a whole load of planning going on.
By whom? Did that matter anymore? He’d been airlifted to relative safety. Now his focus had to be trained on the next step. What he needed was access to K&P’s labs, Zhang’s brain, and a whole mess of MELT-infected humans. He had no idea how he was going to do that. Was Alice right? Did they play ball until they saw their chance to make a run for it? He pulled his hat down over his ears and jammed his feet into his clog-shoes.
The assistant handed him a coat, only slightly heavier than a small, wet dog, and a green, army-issue bag. Michael rewound the last few hours. Whenever he was inside there was air conditioning. When he’d been outside for a few minutes, it was warm enough for him to be clad in a thin blanket and nothing more. He shucked his hat, coat, and sweater, rolling and packing them so they’d take the least amount of space.
