Then the Range Rover’s headlights flicked on.
Too soon. Max was maybe sixty feet away, the Range Rover at least 400 feet away.
Hughes wanted to wave both his arms high and wide in semi-circular arcs—the universal distress signal—but he still had the claw hammer in his right hand, so he only waved with his left. He couldn’t see the faces on the guys in the Range Rover with the headlights in his eyes and had no idea if they were getting the message.
They were not getting the message.
The driver turned on the engine.
The infected version of Max snapped his head to the left, toward the street, and looked straight at Hughes. He screamed the scream of the infected and ran straight at Hughes.
Hughes ran toward the Range Rover two blocks ahead.
“Infected!” he shouted. “Infected in the motel parking lot!”
The Range Rover’s passenger door opened and a man stepped out wearing desert camo fatigues beneath a heavy parka with an M-16 slung over his shoulder. “The fuck is going on?” he shouted.
Hughes kept running and no longer bothered to conceal the claw hammer in his right hand. He was still more than a block away from the Range Rover.
The security guy raised his M-16, but even from a distance Hughes could see a look of utter disbelief wash over his face.
Max had come out of the parking lot behind him. Hughes heard another blood-curdling scream a few dozen feet behind him.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the security guy said.
The second guy stepped out of the Range Rover and braced himself behind the door for protection.
“Get behind the vehicle!” he shouted to Hughes and raised his own M-16 rifle.
Hughes passed the Range Rover at full speed and heard Max belt out a final piecing scream—which Hughes could swear echoed through Lander’s darkened streets—before the two men shot him four times.
Hughes sat in the back of the Range Rover while they grilled him. He didn’t mind. He hadn’t dressed for a night out in the Wyoming winter before bolting out through the window. No time. The Range Rover had air vents in the back and the heat was cranked all the way up.
“The fuck happened?” the first guy said. The second guy tried to reach someone, presumably his commander, on his hand-held radio.
Hughes saw Andy and Kyle emerge from the parking lot down the street, confusion and shock on their faces. They weren’t dressed for winter either.
“He’s the motel manager,” Hughes said.
“We know who he is,” said the second guy. “How the fuck did he get infected?” He put his radio in his lap. No one was answering it.
Hughes shook his head. “No idea. I met him twelve hours ago and he was fine. Been in my room ever since. Nothing happened between then and him being infected all of a sudden. I mean, something must have happened, but the motel wasn’t attacked. I didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have slept through something like that.”
The two guys up front were silent.
“He woke me up, banging on my window,” Hughes said.
“So you were asleep,” the first guy said.
Hughes nodded.
“And Max just starts banging on your window all of a sudden.”
“Pretty much covers it,” Hughes said.
The two guys were silent.
Andy and Kyle were standing and shivering next to the vehicle now. Hughes saw Parker making his way toward them swathed in full winter garb.
“What’s going on?” Kyle said and he hugged himself against the cold. Real concern in his voice.
The second guy, the guy in the passenger seat, buzzed down the window. “Go back to your rooms. All of you. Everything’s under control.”
Kyle looked at Hughes and raised his eyebrows, looking for confirmation. Hughes nodded.
The second guy buzzed his window back up.
Kyle turned to Andy and said something Hughes couldn’t quite hear now that the window was up.
“Why’d you run into the street?” the first guy asked Hughes. “What, you escape out the back or something?”
Hughes nodded. “Could have brained him in the parking lot, but I wanted to lead him away from the motel first. Figured you guys might be out here on the street. Figured right.”
The two guys looked at each other.
“Why’d you think we’d be out here?” the second guy said.
Hughes sighed. “How likely is it that the last town standing in the Western United States wouldn’t have some security on the streets?”
The second guy squinted at him. “What would you have done if we weren’t here?”
Hughes shrugged. “Brained him.”
The two guys said nothing.
Kyle and Andy met Parker in the street. The three of them huddled together, looked at Max’s body on the ground, and walked a block or so away from the Range Rover so they could talk privately. Hughes couldn’t hear them.
“You sure you heard nothing at the motel before this happened?” the second guy said.
“Not a thing,” Hughes said. “He could have been attacked when I was asleep, I suppose, but I’m a light sleeper so I doubt it. He was attacked somewhere else.”
The two guys just looked at each other again. They were genuinely baffled. Hughes could tell. They had no idea how this had happened.
Hughes saw Andy talking animatedly and gesturing with his hands. Kyle and Parker were listening intently, as if Andy knew something nobody else did. The two security guys up front in the Range Rover didn’t notice. They were looking at Hughes.
“When were you asleep?” the first guy said.
“Went to bed around nine,” Hughes lied. He wasn’t going to tell them he stayed up all night to keep watch, not when he was staying up and watching for them.
The first guy rolled down the window and summoned Andy and the others with a big wave of his arm. The three of them ambled up to the vehicle.
“Any of you hear any commotion at the motel this evening?” the first guy said.
“Not a thing,” Andy said. A note of defiance in his voice.
“No,” Kyle said in a cooperative tone. He was shivering hard now.
Parker, eyes wide and wild, shook his head.
Hughes noticed some of the townsfolk gathering on the streets and keeping their distance. They’d heard the screaming and the gunshots. It was the kind of scene that in a normal town during normal times would have been lit up with flashing red and blue lights from police cars. There were no flashing reds and blues, no police cars, no cops at all.
He thought about asking the guys in the Range Rover when they thought the cops would show up, but thought better of it.
“Max must have been out when he got bit,” the first guy said to the second guy. “Somebody would have heard something otherwise.”
The second guy nodded.
“Somebody bit him. Somebody we don’t know about. Somebody who’s still probably out there.”
The two guys said nothing for a moment, then both turned back to Hughes.
“Go back to your room,” the first guy said. “Take the others with you. Lock your doors. Don’t come out ‘til the sun’s up.”
The radio on the second guy’s belt squawked. He answered it. “Temple? You awake, finally? Over.” Hughes recognized the name Temple. He was the one who’d met them at the checkpoint on the way into town.
The radio squawked again.
“What?” Temple said. Hughes recognized the voice.
“You’d better get down to the motel on Main. We’ve got another infected.”
As he walked back to the motel with the others, Hughes figured he might finally get some sleep once his system metabolized all the adrenaline. There would be no more drama tonight. Not at the motel anyway. No one was going to bust into anyone’s room. The mayor and his militia had a much bigger problem on their plate now.
“Was that really the motel manager?” Ky
le said to Hughes.
Hughes nodded.
“He turned?” Kyle said.
“He turned,” Hughes said.
“What happened?” Parker said.
Hughes filled them on the walk back and invited the others into his room. No one was returning to bed yet. He turned on the lights, closed the curtains, and told everyone to find a seat wherever they could.
The room felt chilled. The radiator was gurgling and hissing heat into the room, but the bathroom window was still open. He closed the bathroom door and sat on the bed.
“You were right,” Kyle said as he sat in one of the dining room table chairs. “About the cops. They would have showed up by now.”
Andy nodded and took a place on the floor. “I’ve been here for two weeks and haven’t seen a cop yet.”
Parker was too nervous to sit down. He paced back and forth between the bathroom door and the main door. “What’s going here?” he said. Hughes noticed that Parker’s hair had been mussed by the pillow. By the look on his face, though, he hadn’t slept much.
“I’m not from here,” Andy said. “The few people I know act like everything’s normal and fine, but they’re holding something back. They won’t talk about the 5,000 pound elephant in the room.”
“Who do you know?” Hughes said.
“Mostly just people I work with,” Andy said.
“The mayor said everybody here has a job,” Hughes said. “He found you a job?”
Andy nodded.
“Doing what?” Hughes said.
“Long distance fuel runs,” Andy said. “I’m with a crew that siphons gas out of the tanks from cities and towns farther out and brings it back here.”
“What were you doing before?” Kyle said.
“Delivery driver,” Andy said. “For the whole Wind River region and Jackson Hole up north.”
“Do you feel safe here?” Parker said.
“Safer than I did back in Pinedale,” Andy said and blew out his breath. “I still don’t really trust anybody.”
“How do you suppose Max got infected?” Hughes said.
“You’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you,” Andy said.
“You’ve been here longer than we have,” Hughes said.
“After everything I’ve seen the last couple of months,” Parker said, “I don’t think anything will sound crazy.”
“I think the mayor did it,” Andy said.
“Okay, that’s crazy,” Kyle said.
Hughes agreed. That was crazy. “No reason for the mayor to do it.”
“He’s ruling by fear,” Andy said. “He wants everyone in town to be afraid so they won’t challenge him.”
“This place is surrounded by an apocalyptic wasteland,” Hughes said. “It is for all intents and purposes the last town in the world. People don’t need to be any more scared before they rally around a strongman.”
“He got rid of the cops,” Andy said. “Or the militia did. The cops are all gone. Like you said.”
“Is he really the mayor?” Hughes said. “I mean, was he the mayor before?”
“I think so,” Andy said. “He didn’t take over. People seem to love him, and they talk about him like he’s been mayor for years.”
“I don’t like him or trust him,” Hughes said, “but he didn’t infect Max. He’s not infecting people to create a climate of fear. He doesn’t need to. Even if he were, why infect Max? I got the feeling Max was keeping an eye on us for him.”
Andy nodded. “For sure.”
“No way the mayor did it, then,” Hughes said.
“The infection is here,” Parker said.
“It’s never not been here,” Andy said. “They’ve been fighting it all along. The town just hasn’t fallen yet.”
10
The sedative Doc Nash had given Annie wore off completely by the time she woke in the morning. The only window in her room opened into the hospital’s hallway, so she could not see outside, but she knew it was morning without even checking her watch. She hadn’t slept so long and deeply and well even once since the outbreak started.
Now that she was awake, she felt anxious. Not terrified—she was in no immediate danger—just nervous and anxious and energized. How long would she have to stay in this room? She had to do something. Anything. She had enough energy to climb a mountain and no way to exhaust it.
For the first time in her life, Annie felt truly alone in this world. Her sister was certainly dead. Her parents most likely were too. She was cut off from her friends and held captive by strangers. The only person who would never leave her and never let her down was herself.
Two men stood outside her door with their backs turned. She could see only the backs of their heads and their shoulders through the window that opened into the hallway, but she knew they were different men than the ones who had stood guard the previous day. These two had different builds, different heights and different haircuts.
She wondered if the door was locked from the outside. Did hospital doors generally lock from the outside? She wasn’t sure, but she doubted it. Hospitals didn’t generally function as prisons. Just this one.
At least she wasn’t chained to the bed.
And at least she had her own attached bathroom. She rose and padded over to it in her socks. The guards didn’t move. She doubted they even noticed.
She shut the bathroom door behind her and saw that someone had left a toothbrush and a travel-size tube of toothpaste on the sink. Probably the doc, but she didn’t remember him or anyone else going in there. The drugs must have knocked her out cold.
She finished up and returned to the bed, though she didn’t get under the covers. She just sat there and inventoried the room. A blue vinyl visitor’s chair was along the wall to the left of her bed. A flat-screen TV was attached to the wall in one corner just below the ceiling.
Some cabinets, a bare countertop and some drawers took up the entire wall opposite the visitor’s chair and next to the door. She got up and opened the drawers and cabinets and found them all empty. Somebody had cleared everything out when she was asleep. There was no machinery in her room and nothing at all she could use as a weapon. It had been stripped of just about everything except the toothbrush, the small tube of toothpaste and a hospital gown which she had no intention whatsoever of wearing, not even if she later felt like she’d kill for a fresh change of clothes.
Doc Nash appeared outside in the hallway. He knocked on the glass and let himself in.
“Good morning,” he said. “The guards told me you were up.” So they were paying attention. “How did you sleep?”
“Very well,” she said. “I don’t need any more sleeping pills. That’s for sure.”
Doc Nash cleared his throat and said nothing.
The silence felt uncomfortable. She had no idea what to make of him yet. Would he help her get out of there? She wasn’t going to come out and ask him directly.
“So,” she said just to say something.
“I just thought I’d check up on you,” he said and gave her a pained smile.
Somebody told him to check up on her, she thought. He clearly had nothing to say. There was nothing wrong with her. She was fine. Everybody knew she was fine. And there was no way Doc Nash was going to make any kind of vaccine from her blood. Not in a small town hospital by himself. She didn’t know how it worked, but surely it was beyond him.
He fidgeted with the buttons on his white coat. He had no idea what to say and no idea what to do with his hands. He was in an awkward position. That was clear. Maybe he would help her then. If he could.
“Doc?” she said.
“Yes?” he said.
“Can I trust you?”
He flinched a little. “Why wouldn’t you be able to trust me?”
She pointed with her eyes to the guards outside in the hallway.
His face sagged like he felt a little crushed inside even though she hadn’t said anything. “Look…”
Annie arched her eyebrows.
<
br /> “Nothing bad is going to happen, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I promise that nobody is going to hurt you.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
He blew out his breath and said nothing.
“I’ll be happy to come back here any time you need me to come back here,” she said. “Where would I go? There’s nothing else out there.”
“Do you mind if I sit?”
“Please.”
There was only one place for him to sit—the blue vinyl visitor’s chair. He sat but said nothing. He just looked at her. And he was a little red in the face.
“I get it,” she said.
“Do you?” he said.
“This is not your decision.”
“No, it’s not.”
“What if it were your decision?”
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.
Annie wasn’t stupid. If she were in charge of the last town standing, she wouldn’t want to let an immune person go either. She’d probably do it anyway, but she’d think long and hard about it.
An immune person was incredibly valuable—the most precious person alive, as Hughes had once said—especially since her immunity could be transferred to someone who shared her blood type. Doc Nash and the mayor didn’t know that yet, but how long would it take for them to figure it out?
“What did you do with the blood sample you took from me yesterday?”
Doc Nash rubbed his eyes. “I took it down to the lab and ran some tests.”
He was a terrible liar.
It was a reasonable answer. It’s what Annie expected him to say. It’s also what she expected him to do.
But he rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the floor when he said it. His hands shook a little. He had not one, not two, but three obvious tells.
Lying didn’t come naturally him. It was not an ingrained habit. He was not an inherently dishonest or manipulative man. That was clear. Which meant he might help her, but he also looked frightened and weak. She wouldn’t want to count on him if they were being rushed by a horde of infected.
If he really was lying, if he hadn’t taken her blood to the lab to run tests, there was only one other thing he could have done with it—the same thing Hughes, Parker and Kyle did when they took blood from her arm on the San Juan Islands.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 9
