No one had hurt him or his friends, not even Annie. Hughes was right that they had to get her out of that hospital before the mayor started farming her for blood, but look at this place. It wasn’t a prison. And they’d get her out of there, surely.
Parker passed an Indian jewelry store and a clothing boutique, both open. A bank—closed, of course—had enlarged black and white photographs of Lander in the front windows. The photographs were almost a hundred years old. Someone had hand-written the date down at the bottom. The cars on the street in the pictures look like ancient Model Ts.
Lander didn’t look terribly different back then. It looked slightly better, yet mostly the same. In the meantime—during the 1960s and 1970s—some of the grand old buildings were razed and replaced with nondescript filler, but most of the old gems were intact. The center of town, unlike some parts of America, managed to preserve most of its original charm.
Just past the bank was Wind River Books. The store was open. Parker didn’t have any money, but he wanted to duck inside anyway because it was there and because he could. He had a job to do first, but he could hit the store on the way back.
The hospital was less than a mile away. It only took him fifteen minutes to get there. Finding it was easy. Getting lost in a town as small as Lander was impossible.
He half expected to see a checkpoint or two on the way, but he didn’t. Not until he was almost on top of the building itself did he see four armed men standing guard at the front door, two on the left and two on the right.
One of them was Temple, the man who’d taken Parker and his friends to the hospital when they arrived the day before.
Parker was a block away. Temple stiffened when he saw him.
Shit. One of only a handful of people on Steele’s entire security squad who knew what Parker looked like just happened to be right in front of the hospital standing watch. For a moment, Parker thought it was bad luck, but he realized it was no coincidence. Temple guarded the hospital because he’d recognize Parker, Hughes or Kyle if they came by to scope the place out.
Parker waved and kept walking toward the building. He tried with all his might to act normal, like it didn’t bother him in the least that Temple had made him, that his intentions were entirely innocent, that he was happy to see a familiar face on a walk through a strange town.
Temple didn’t wave back. He said something to the other three standing watch with him. They stiffened. Everybody knew who was who and what was what now. All Parker could do was pretend what was happening wasn’t happening.
“Hey,” he said when he reached the hospital’s front doors.
“What’s going on?” Temple said.
Parker stopped. Nobody moved to block his entrance to the building, but he was certain they would if he had kept moving. “Just thought I’d say hey to Annie.” He thought about lunging forward and sinking his teeth into Temple’s throat.
“You okay?” Temple said.
“Fine,” Parker said.
“You look nervous.”
Parker didn’t know what to say. “I’m just, you know…”
“What?”
“Like I said, I thought I’d say hey to Annie.” Parker wanted to be anywhere else. He knew they weren’t going to let him in there. He never intended to go in there. He just wanted to know how many men, if any, were guarding the place. “I don’t know when visiting hours are,” he said.
“We don’t have visiting hours,” Temple said. “This isn’t a prison. But Annie’s doctors told us she should rest by herself for a couple of days and decompress. I’m sure you understand.”
Annie could handle stress better than anyone Parker had ever known, but he played along.
“Of course,” he said and nodded. “Tell her hey for me, will you?”
“I will,” Temple said. He stared at Parker. So did the other three.
Parker would be sweating most of the water out of his body if it weren’t so damn cold outside. He couldn’t stop himself from shaking. “I’ll just head back now.”
Temple said nothing. Neither did the others.
Parker turned and headed back the way he came. He moved rigidly and awkwardly and gave away his anxiety. Playing it cool and composing himself was beyond his ability.
They didn’t come after him, though, and he relaxed a little when he reached Main Street again.
He made a beeline for Wind River Books, not because he was looking for something to read, but because the store looked like the most comfortable, inviting and normal place he’d seen yet.
Stepping inside was like walking through a hole in the dimension to another place and time.
A small cowbell rang when he opened the door. Books lined every wall, floor to ceiling. More shelves, six or so feet high, crisscrossed the floor. The genres were clearly marked. New Releases. Mysteries. Romance. Young Adult. History. Psychology.
The air felt warm and slightly humid. Parker could actually smell the books.
A little black cat approached him and meowed a hello.
Parker had been whooshed back to the past, when the world was all right, when he took feelings of peace and contentment for granted. He wasn’t a literary or bohemian guy. He didn’t while away his hours in bookstores. He could see the appeal now. He could spend the rest of his life right there in the store. He’d happily sleep on the floor if the owner wouldn’t make him leave.
A fifty-something man with glasses, a receding hairline and a goatee tinged with gray stood behind the checkout counter. “Morning, neighbor,” he said.
Parker just looked at him, unsure what to say.
“Help you?” the bookseller said.
“Yeah, uh, hi,” Parker said. “We’re not really neighbors. I mean, I guess we are now, but—I’m not from here.”
The bookseller raised his eyebrows.
“Me and my friends just got here yesterday,” Parker said.
The bookseller came out from behind the counter in a hurry. “Where are you coming from?” he said. A bit of urgency in his voice.
“Seattle,” Parker said.
The bookseller’s head snapped back a little.
“We drove here. Only took a couple of days once we crossed the Cascade Mountains.”
“How—really?”
Parker nodded. He didn’t come into the store for conversation. He wanted to look around and pretend everything was fine for a couple of minutes.
“Not many new people in Lander?” Parker said just to say something.
“No,” the bookseller said, still clearly thunderstruck. “A couple from other parts of Wyoming and a maybe a handful from Idaho, but nobody from Seattle. Not that I’ve heard of anyway.”
The man was gearing up for another question. He was gearing up for another dozen questions at least. What’s it like out there? How bad is Seattle? How’d you get all the way across Idaho? Is Lander still surrounded by the infected?
Parker wanted to break away and look at some books, but he didn’t want to just rudely stalk off. “Mind if I look around?”
“Not at all,” the bookseller said and swept his arm in a welcoming gesture.
Parker could not understand his own mind. He was terrified that he had been turned into a monster, that he was going to snap and murder someone with his teeth any second, yet he didn’t want to be rude to the store owner? What kind of monster is worried about being rude to strangers?
He headed toward the Psychology section. The bookseller followed.
“Looking for anything in particular?”
Something that will tell me what the fuck is the matter with me, Parker thought.
He hadn’t gone into there with anything in mind, hadn’t woken up that morning and decided to go shopping for the last potboiler. A self-help book from the Psychology section wouldn’t hurt, now that he thought about it. He didn’t know what to get, though.
“Do you have anything on PTSD?”
The bookseller looked a little bit crushed when he heard that. It seemed to ans
wer several questions he hadn’t asked yet. Yeah, man, it’s bad out there. I’m alive, but I’m traumatized. I wake up screaming in the night. Only a matter of time before the same or worse happens to you and your family.
“I don’t think so,” the bookseller said, “not about PTSD specifically, but—hang on.” He scanned the Psychology section and pulled a title off the shelf. When Panic Attacks by David Burns. “This might help.” He handed Parker the book and smiled like he’d just given five bucks to a homeless man.
Parker wanted to say he wasn’t crazy, but he wasn’t sure he believed that. His mind kept spinning in a constant vicious circle with the murderous thoughts of a hungry hungry predator. Adrenaline flooded his chest again. He swallowed hard and tried to keep himself from shaking.
That book. When Panic Attacks. It might actually help him. He still wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong with him, but panic attacks were definitely part of his problem.
Only part of his problem, however. He felt like he had two or even three separate people living inside his head now. One was his usual self. There was a second terrified version of himself. Then there was the third self. The new self. The monstrous self. The murderous self that fed his usual self lurid fantasies about ripping everybody apart. His usual self felt detached, apart, remote, like an observer. That part of him hated the new self and was still flabbergasted that the new self even existed.
His mind was a raging battlefield. He yearned for a cease-fire but had no idea how to get one.
A rational part of him believed he was fine and should just chill, that he had recovered from the virus, that he had no desire whatsoever to chew somebody’s face off, that he was standing in a perfectly pleasant bookstore in a sanctuary city. Everything was fine. He was safer now than he’d been since the outbreak began, and if he actually wanted to bite people, he would have done it already.
The anxious part of him believed that the virus permanently damaged his brain and that it was only a matter of time before he finally snapped.
Part of him wished he was dying. Not dead, just dying, on his deathbed with a few days to live. Then he’d know he could just hang on and make it the rest of his life without killing somebody. Maybe then he could relax and have at least a few days of relative peace before passing on.
The bookstore owner stood there and watched him. Parker felt another surge of adrenaline when he imagined throwing himself at the guy and biting his nose off.
He scanned the shelves again, not wanting to look the man in the eye while thoughts of murder poisoned his mind. A title leapt out at him. You Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey M. Schwarz.
Parker had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it struck him like a lightning bolt and he pulled the book off the shelf.
He wanted both books. He wanted to read them today. He no longer cared what was happening in Lander, Wyoming. He didn’t even care about Annie or the fact that four men guarded the front door at the hospital. Not at that moment. He needed to get himself sorted out first or at least calmed down a little. Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.
“I don’t have any money,” Parker said.
The bookseller chuckled. “You really are new in town, aren’t you?”
What, were they using the barter system now? Even here?
Parker said nothing, so the man just explained. “Money isn’t worth anything anymore. We have no economy. There’s some cash floating around, sure, but almost everyone’s money is sitting in bank accounts on dead computers. None of the stores you see are getting any new shipments. So we keep the stores open, so to speak, but we’re not actually selling anything.”
Parker just looked at him.
“Does that make sense?” the guy said.
Not really, Parker thought. “So how do I buy these books?”
“You can’t.”
“What if I did have some money?”
The man shook his head. “We don’t want the stores to go empty. And they would, after a while.”
Lander was no earthly Elysium. “So you just keep the store open and come in to work to keep up appearances?”
“Mayor’s orders. Don’t get me wrong. Most of us agree with the orders.”
“So why even suggest a book for me to read?”
The guy blew out his breath. “Habit, I guess. Going through the motions, like you said. I’ve been a bookseller for twenty years. Look. Feel free to borrow these. Just don’t rough them up, okay?”
“Okay,” Parker said.
They stood there awkwardly in the aisle for couple of moments, neither quite knowing what to say next.
“I’m staying in the motel down the street,” Parker said. “I can bring them back in a couple of days.”
“Actually,” the man said, “just keep them. I don’t need to keep every book on the shelves. You probably need those more than I do if you have PTSD, as you say.”
“Thank you,” Parker said and clutched the books to his chest.
“I have to ask.”
Parker nodded. Of course he had to ask. But Parker didn’t have to answer him honestly. He wasn’t going to say that his friends tied him to a chair and infected him with the virus on purpose. “Seattle burned to the ground. The entire city is gone. A fire started somewhere and there was no fire department left to put it out. So it just kept spreading, like a forest fire inside a city.”
The guy went pale.
“It’s pretty much the end of the world. I drove out here with three friends in a Suburban. We saw a couple of towns along the way that look like they’re still holding on, but nothing like this place. So yeah, I’m a little stressed out.”
“You are most welcome here,” the bookseller said. Then he stuck out his hand. “I’m Bob Lander.”
Parker took the man’s hand and shook it. “This town named after one of your relatives?”
Bob Lander laughed. “No, having the same name is just a coincidence.”
“I’m Parker. Jonathan Parker.”
“Your friends call you Jonathan?”
“Parker.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Parker,” Bob Lander said. “You’ll be safe here. Don’t worry. Some quality time in a quiet place should lower your stress level all by itself, I’d imagine.”
Parker squinted at Bob just a little. Did he not know what had happened the night before? That Max the motel manager had gotten infected? That Max had been shot to death on that very street? Surely it had happened within earshot of the bookstore, but Parker supposed Bob didn’t live inside the store. He didn’t sleep on the floor, and it wouldn’t make sense if he had a room somewhere in back. His house could be way up in the foothills, for all Parker knew. Maybe Bob hadn’t yet heard about what had happened. There were no newspapers anymore and probably no phone service either. Word must get around more slowly than ever. Bob might not even know. Or maybe he did know something and wouldn’t let on.
“A word of advice,” Bob said. “Don’t try to buy or trade anything from the other stores. I could get in trouble for letting these books go, but I can see that you need them.”
“Trouble?” Parker said. “For letting me borrow a book?”
“Think about what would happen if these stores went empty.”
Parker had seen plenty of empty stores since the outbreak. Hundreds. Thousands. Most had broken windows. Most had been looted. Some had been burned. There were dead bodies inside and outside.
12
Swenson drove at half speed down every street in town over and over again. Dick Hastert rode with him in the passenger seat.
They’d taken their coats off and cranked the heat up so they could ride in comfort as if it was not even winter. Swenson always cranked up the heat in the truck because it was so damn cold almost everywhere in his house.
They were looking for whoever it was who bit the motel manager the previous night. There were no other reports of anyone else infected anywhere in town, but Max hadn’t just up and infected himself.
He and Hastert had covered most of Lander already and hadn’t seen a damn thing out of the ordinary. And they hadn’t heard a single report of anyone else being infected. Which was strange. The infected stood out like rabid dogs in a rabbit hutch, and they’d always come in waves of several at once. There was never just one unless someone wandered in from one of the neighboring towns back when there were still neighboring towns.
Swenson and Hastert had already driven every north-south street, and now they were driving every east-west street. They called it mowing the lawn. You couldn’t search a large city that way, but with barely 8,000 people in Lander, they could mow the damn thing over and over again if they had to.
The radio squawked. Swenson answered it.
“Steele here. You guys find anything? Over?”
“Not a damn thing,” Swenson said. “Over.”
“Somebody bit the motel manager,” Steele said. “Over.”
“Hand me the radio,” Hastert said. Swenson handed him the radio.
“Sir, this is Hastert, over,” Hastert said to Steele. “There was that other incident. Over on Woodlawn Street. Eugene Harris. Bit his neighbor. What was her name? Over.”
“Evelyn,” Steele said. “Nice little old lady. But that was two days ago. Over.”
Swenson and Hastert exchanged glances.
“Is it possible,” Hastert said to Swenson, “that the same person who bit Gene bit the motel manager?”
“And laid low for two days?” Swenson said. “That seems pretty unlikely. How would an infected lay low?” He took the radio from Hastert and switched it back on so he could talk to Steele. “We know Gene bit Evelyn. But who bit Gene? We ever figure that out? Over?”
“No idea,” Steele said. “We don’t have a database on who bit who. Just keep looking. Over.”
Kyle stayed behind at the motel while Hughes and Parker went out. Hughes had insisted on it. “Keep an eye on things here,” Hughes had told him.
There wasn’t a whole lot to keep an eye on. Nothing was happening. His neighbor Andy had gone to work. Kyle was alone at the motel.
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