Hughes was kicking himself. It was obvious from the moment they caught sight of Lander, before they even entered the damn city limits. The first guy at the checkpoint outside town had said, a lot of us are ex-military, but we answer to City Hall. If they were cops, he would have said they were cops. Why put civilians on the town’s security perimeter? Why not have cops man the checkpoints? What are cops for?
“We have guns in the truck,” Parker said.
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “They didn’t take our guns. If Annie was a prisoner, don’t you think they’d take our guns?”
“They feel secure,” Hughes said. “They’ll put twelve guys on Annie in the hospital. Three of us can’t take on twelve.”
“Jesus,” Kyle said. “Listen to yourself. These people are doing exactly what I’d have them do if I were mayor of this town. Guarding the roads in. Checking newcomers for bites. Putting us up in a motel when they see that we’re not infected. Testing Annie’s blood. They haven’t done a single thing wrong.”
“If you were mayor of this town,” Hughes said, “what would the cops be doing?”
Kyle said nothing.
“We can scout out the hospital at night,” Parker said. “We still have the night vision. They didn’t search the truck. They have no idea what we have.”
“They feel secure,” Hughes said. “They’ll have people watching all over town. They’ll see us coming long before we get to the hospital. And they’ll watch extra close tonight. We should sit tight. Don’t walk toward the hospital. Don’t hide indoors either. We should let them see us acting all casual, strolling around in the other direction, away from Annie, just checking out the town like we’re a bunch of idiots who have no idea what’s happening.”
“What do you think is happening?” Kyle said.
“They’re going to keep her,” Hughes said. “They aren’t sophisticated enough to create a vaccine here. The mayor said they aren’t all rednecks out here in Wyoming, and I take his point, but only a few thousand people live here. They don’t make vaccines in Lander. They make vaccines in Atlanta. Maybe a hospital in Chicago or Houston could do it, but not this one. They still won’t let her go. They’d be crazy to let her go.”
“You think the CDC would let her go if this was Atlanta?”
“Hell no, the CDC wouldn’t let her go if this was Atlanta. They’d keep her forever if that’s what it took, and they’d be right. You think if Annie said to the CDC she didn’t feel like cooperating anymore that they’d let her go? Shit.”
“And you think they’ll do the same thing in Lander,” Kyle said.
“Why the hell wouldn’t they?” Hughes said.
“You said yourself they won’t be able to make a vaccine here,” Kyle said.
“Doesn’t mean they’ll let her go. Have you forgotten already what we did to Parker?”
Parker stiffened.
“He’s immune too, now, remember?” Hughes said. “Because he shares Annie’s blood type and got an injection. We figured that shit out and we’re not even doctors. How long do you think it’ll take them to figure it out?”
Kyle opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then shut it again.
“They wouldn’t let Annie go even if this town was perfectly normal,” Hughes said. “And it’s not. Something is going on here.”
“Something bad,” Parker said.
Kyle sighed, amazingly still unconvinced. “What do you want to do then?” he said.
“Just lay low tonight,” Hughes said. “Like everything’s all copacetic. Like we’re thrilled to be here.”
“I am thrilled to be here,” Kyle said.
“Then you won’t have to do any faking,” Hughes said. He turned to Parker. “Leave the guns in the truck. They have eyes on us. Count on it. Starting with the motel manager.”
Before heading back to the house, Joseph Steele, mayor of Lander, Wyoming, had a short talk with Nash, the doctor, in an empty exam room.
“How does this work?” he said. “Tell me.”
“I should make a serum first,” Nash said. “I’ll need to centrifuge her blood. It will remove the red blood cells and leave all the antibodies. We have machines for that.”
“Will it work?”
“I have no idea. It seemed to help with Ebola. And the Spanish Flu, during World War One. But it’s controversial. We’re not entirely sure how effective it was.”
“Best guess?”
Nash shrugged. “Fifty-fifty, I guess.”
“How soon can you get me that serum?”
“I can have it for you this evening.”
“Good man. Bring it to my house. And don’t tell a soul.”
“You got it.”
He’d have a serum that evening. Roughly fifty-fifty odds of success. Heads he wins. Tails he loses. Not great. Better odds than before, though. Much better.
“Jackson and Hastert will make sure she doesn’t go anywhere,” Steele said to Nash. “We’ll put her up on the second floor in a wing by herself. Tell her something to put her at ease. Tell he we need to keep her under observation for a while.”
“We don’t need to keep her under observation. She’s fine.”
“Make up something. She won’t know.”
“I think she will. They all will.”
“Figure something out. She’ll trust you more than she’ll trust anyone else. I think I spooked her a little. We all did. With the guns.”
“Why not let her join her friends? We can call her back in here in a day or so.”
“They’re not staying in Lander.”
“I see.”
“At least, they think they aren’t.”
Nash said nothing.
“The serum,” Steele said. “My house. As soon as you have it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So go do it.”
Joseph Steele, mayor of Lander, Wyoming, had another conversation with Temple, his head of security, in a different exam room.
“What’s your read on these people?” he said.
“The black guy, Hughes, could be trouble,” Temple said. “He’s capable and intelligent.”
“Which might also mean he could be useful. As long as he isn’t hostile.”
“He doesn’t have to be.”
“No, he doesn’t. But he might be anyway.”
“The other big guy, Parker, is definitely trouble,” Temple said. “I don’t know what his deal is, but he definitely has one.”
“A what?”
“A deal. Emotionally unstable. Aggressive and twitchy. Loose cannon.”
“And the younger guy?”
“A punk. Won’t cause any trouble. At least not by himself.”
“Bring him to my office first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll start with him. Figure out what to do with these people, especially this Parker character. In the meantime, set up a perimeter around the motel. I want eyes on them, but not too close. If they look out the windows or step out into the street, they see no surveillance. Got it? Hang back enough that you’ll see if they leave, and then follow them at a distance. They might try to come back here and spring Annie. And they’re armed.”
“Why not take their weapons?”
“Because they might not be hostile. We don’t have to do this the hard way. They might go along. But if we take their weapons, they definitely won’t go along.”
“We could just put them in—”
“We could. And we might. But that would make things harder with Annie. This could be easy as peach pie.”
“These four made it a thousand miles through an apocalyptic wasteland.”
Steele said nothing.
“And they still have their guns.”
Steele said nothing.
“But we’ll keep an eye on them,” Temple said.
“Hang back a few blocks. Give them some space. Put them at ease. Let them go anywhere in town that they want except my house and this hospital. If they try to come here, turn them back politely, and if they don�
�t comply, you know what to do. And bring Kyle to my office. The punk. First thing tomorrow.”
“You got it.”
“So go do it.”
They moved Annie to a new room in the hospital. Not an exam room. A recovery room. As if she’d just had her spleen out.
Her new room was on the second floor. As far as she could tell, she was the only one up there.
Tubes weren’t sticking out of her arms. Her leg wasn’t hoisted up in a cast. She was just dumped in there and told to take a pill. Some kind of tranquilizer. Valium, perhaps, or Ambien. She didn’t know. But she felt it. She just wanted to lay there.
Guards were posted outside the door, supposedly for her protection.
“For just a night or two,” Doc Nash told her.
When she asked why, he was surprisingly direct.
Because the mayor said so.
Everyone knew there was nothing wrong with her. She appreciated that the doc hadn’t tried to make up some story about a non-existent fever, heart murmur or whatever. He told her like it was.
Because the mayor said so.
He also said it might make things a little easier on everyone if she just swallowed this pill.
She agreed. So she did. And it worked.
She just lay there, woozy, the room not quite in focus. She felt almost relaxed, despite it all, but she did not want to fall sleep. Sleep felt dangerous somehow. Something terrible might happen even if she just nodded off. Her eyes lingered on the small vertical window in the closed door that allowed her a peek into the hallway.
She could see the shoulder of one of the men guarding her only exit. She couldn’t see his weapon, but she knew that he had one.
Parker lay alone on his bed in a state of heightened anxiety.
That word. Anxiety. It felt so much heavier now than before.
He’d heard about panic attacks, of course, but had no idea they could hit with such incredible force.
A full-blown panic attack was more terrifying than being swarmed by a band of infected. It wasn’t even a close call.
He could function when the infected came at him, but this otherworldly anxiety brought him to his knees. It took him straight down to the floor like he’d been slammed by a freight train, as if his nervous system was plugged into a 220-wall outlet.
Images of teeth chewing through living human flesh looped through his mind endlessly. He’d imagined biting Kyle, Hughes, Annie, and everyone he had so far encountered in Lander. Back at the hospital, he was almost certain he’d lunge forward and bite one of the security men in the face. He wasn’t even sure what gentle, invisible barrier held him back. Whatever it was, he didn’t think it would last much longer. One of these days—any day now, any minute, any second—he would sink his teeth into someone and clench his jaw like a vise.
He wanted to cover his face and scream to make the images stop, but he was a man, not a whimpering child, and he was afraid—no, terrified—that once he started screaming he wouldn’t stop until somebody dragged him off somewhere and shot him.
No way had he beaten that virus.
The ceiling and walls seemed to pulse around the edges as the blood throbbed in his head. If he didn’t get up he’d be flooded with full-on panic again, so he rose from the bed, opened the door and stepped outside.
It was early evening now and shatteringly cold. He’d need to go back inside and get a jacket or he’d freeze, yet the cold was refreshing. It snapped him back to the present and back to reality. His anxiety flagged a little. The cold was as good for him as a slap in the face.
He wanted to go for a walk. Maybe he could shake it off. Clear his head. Straighten his shit out.
The motel door to his right opened like a gunshot.
It was Kyle. “Going somewhere?”
Parker imagined biting Kyle in the throat while the poor bastard screamed murder. “I am not well.”
Kyle just looked at him.
“Where’s Hughes?” Parker said.
“Taking a nap,” Kyle said. “He wants to stay up all night.”
“I’ll be up all night, too.” Parker figured Hughes wanted to stay awake and keep watch, but Parker would be up all night freaking out.
“What’s going on with you?” Kyle said. It was a polite way of asking, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?
“I can’t stop thinking about biting people.”
Parker noticed that he felt better when he talked to another person, even if that other person was Kyle. Everything seemed to normalize temporarily. His obsession seemed less rational somehow and had a hard time sustaining itself if he had something and someone else to think about.
Kyle did not look sympathetic. “How come this isn’t happening to Annie?”
It was happening to Annie, in a way. She too had terrifying images in her head. They just didn’t bother her. Maybe Annie recovered more fully because she was naturally immune.
Or perhaps she was just inherently a less violent person. Maybe a guy like Parker who had once hit his wife and tried to kick Kyle over a cliff could never fully recover. He was already a broken human being before he was infected. Maybe the virus—or whatever it was—just amplified whatever was already wrong with him.
Or maybe Parker was making everything worse by obsessing about it. If you’re told to think about anything but a white elephant, you’ll inevitably think of a white elephant. If you try to suppress the image, the white elephant won’t ever leave you alone. Maybe he was white elephanting himself into insanity.
He was still amazed that Kyle, Annie and Hughes hadn’t shot him and shoved him over the cliff after he tried to kick Kyle over it. If Annie hadn’t needed all the protection she could get on her long and doomed trip to Atlanta, surely the others would have killed him. He thought he’d deserved it at the time, but as it turned out, killing him would have been a mercy.
And at this point, keeping him around might not even be necessary. The three of them had faced an elemental question on the San Juan Islands. What was better? Three people against the infected or four? Annie needed every bodyguard she could get. There were thousands of potential bodyguards in Lander, Wyoming, who had never tried to kill Kyle and whose minds weren’t consumed with thoughts of bloody homicide.
Contentedness, Parker realized, is not our default condition. It is elusive. It has to be earned. It has to be fought for. It can be snatched away in an instant. And it’s all in the mind. What’s happening externally is irrelevant. Parker was in a warm motel room, as safe as he could conceivably be in this world, yet he felt less content than Annie had felt when they were all still out in the wasteland. Annie had almost seemed to be enjoying herself on their journey, like she was some kind of free spirit on the ultimate holiday.
People were more than just biological organisms that wanted to survive. The very parts of us that found richness and meaning and purpose in life could turn on us and make us miserable in ways that simpler animals could never be miserable. Dogs didn’t sit around fretting about whether or not they’re good dogs. Sheep didn’t lay awake at night worrying about their purpose in the world. Parker remembered what contentedness felt like, but he didn’t know if he could ever find it again. He felt lost in a maze. And no one knew how to help him. No one could take his hand and show him the way out.
“I don’t know why Annie is handling this better than I am,” Parker said. “Maybe she’s just a better person.”
Kyle said nothing. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said it all. Annie was definitely—no doubt about it—a better person than Parker.
“I’m worried about you,” Kyle said.
“You should be,” Parker said.
8
Steele was on his couch in the living room, trying and failing to re-read his dog-eared copy of Pines by Blake Crouch, while his wife Nadia sat silently in the worn-leather recliner and scrutinized a Sudoku puzzle when the knock on the door finally came.
Nash. With the blood serum.
Steele opened the d
oor. The doctor stood there, black medical bag in hand, flanked on each side by the two front watch guys in their Arctic parkas and military-issue M-16s.
“You got it?” Steele said.
“I got it,” Nash said and patted the bag.
“Come on in, then.” Steele thanked the guards and shut the door. An eddy of frigid air swirled in the foyer.
“In the basement,” Steele said.
“I figured,” Nash said. “Ma’am,” he said and nodded to Nadia.
Steele led the doctor through the antique living room and into the updated kitchen and stopped at the basement door in the back of the house. Nash had never been in Steele’s home before, but he wasn’t going to get the grand tour. Not today.
Nash sucked in his breath.
“You ready?” Steele said.
“As I’ll ever be,” Nash said.
“Tell anyone about this and I’ll have your head,” Steele said.
Nash gulped and said nothing.
Steele opened the door. “Watch your head.”
The house was more than a century old. The basement ceiling was low. It wasn’t like those spacious Midwestern basements that doubled as storm shelters. Steele couldn’t stand up straight down there. Nadia could, just barely, but the clearance was at most five feet, eleven inches, and Steele stood six feet and zero inches exactly. His back hurt if he spent more than a few minutes below ground without sitting down.
The basement felt a bit claustrophobic. There was no sheet rock on the walls. The floor was made of poured concrete. There were exposed pipes and heating ducts overhead. Boxes full of crap he couldn’t believe he and Nadia ever wasted money on were everywhere. Sometimes he noticed a faint whiff of mold, but not anymore. It was too cold.
The basement was dark, too, even with all the lights on. It’s not like he put table lamps down there to make the place soft and all warm and cozy like one of the bedrooms. A few bare bulbs did the job, but they cast long dark shadows.
“I have a set of workman’s gloves down here you can wear,” Steele said.
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