Fear of thoughts. That was precisely his problem.
“OCD is fear of thoughts?” he said.
“When you get right down to it, yes,” she said.
“How do you know that’s what this is?” he said. “How do you know I’m not actually going to hurt someone? You don’t know me.”
“I can tell by how it makes you feel,” she said. “You say you can’t imagine anything worse. A violent psychopath would never say that. Violent psychopaths enjoy killing people. They don’t fret about it.”
Parker just looked at her and blinked.
“There’s a difference between thoughts and urges. Everyone has violent thoughts once in a while.”
“I don’t have them once in a while. I have them constantly.”
“You have them constantly because you won’t let them go.”
I have them constantly, he thought, because my mind was poisoned by a terrible virus.
“What do I do?”
“Relax. Stop worrying about it.”
Come on. “Easy for you to say! How?”
She sighed. “They’re just thoughts, neurons firing harmlessly in your brain. You’re very stressed out. We all are. In your heightened state of stress, one part of your mind got spooked by another part of your mind. That’s all. The trouble is that you’re pouring gasoline on the fire by obsessing about it.”
Maybe she was right. Annie had said she’d had the same thoughts ever since she was infected, but for some reason he freaked out and she didn’t.
No, he knew why. He knew damn well why he freaked out and she didn’t.
“My wife,” he said.
“I thought you said you weren’t married,” she said.
“I used to be.”
Betty said nothing.
Parker felt a laceration in his chest. “I hit her.”
Betty flinched. Her eyes changed and her expression went flat.
Parker had only hit Holly once, but once was enough. It ended his marriage and he never forgave himself.
“And I once tried to kill a man. His name is Kyle. I tried to push him over a cliff.”
There. He’d told her everything now. Everything except the fact that he’d been infected. He could never tell anyone that unless he wanted to suffer the same fate as Annie.
Betty feared him now. He could see that she was reevaluating everything she’d just told him, thinking that perhaps he was a monster after all.
“When did this happen?” she said.
“A month ago,” he said.
Her face softened a little again. Things were clicking into place for her but they weren’t clicking into place for him.
“Was this before or after your problem with anxiety started?” she said.
“The anxiety started right after it happened.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
She stood up and went to the tiny smudged window in the back of the cell. She looked outside, though Parker knew she wasn’t admiring any scenery. There was nothing to see out there except the parking lot.
He’d just told her he tried to push a man over a cliff, yet she felt comfortable enough to turn her back. He could shove her face into the wall and she wouldn’t be able to stop him. She wouldn’t even see him coming. He could easily kill her before anybody could stop him.
“You’ve heard of free will,” she said.
Parker nodded, though she couldn’t see that with her back turned. “Of course.”
“The flip side of that is free won’t.”
Parker said nothing. He had an idea what she meant, but he wasn’t sure. She turned around to face him.
“Have you ever heard of free won’t?” she said.
Parker shook his head.
“You are free to do what you want to do,” she said. “You are also free to not do what you don’t want to do.”
Parker squinted at her.
“Do you want to hurt anybody?”
“No.”
“Do you want to kill anybody?”
“No!”
“Then you won’t. There is no mysterious force that will compel you to do something you don’t want to do unless you’ve been infected with that terrible virus.”
Parker bristled. “I look at people and I think, what’s to stop me from killing that person right now? And I panic.”
“There is something stopping you.”
“What?!”
“You. You’re stopping yourself with free won’t.”
Parker thought about that. It was a good answer. It didn’t calm him down, but it was a good answer.
“The fact that you’re so worried about this means you’re less likely to hurt someone than the average person. You’re actually a better person than most of the rest of us.”
Parker blinked a couple of times. She had to be fucking kidding.
“I did try to kill somebody,” he said.
“Where did this happen?” she said.
“A thousand miles from here.”
“A thousand miles from here,” she said. “In a post-apocalyptic environment.”
Parker said nothing.
“If you weren’t a fundamentally decent person,” she said, “you would not have this problem. You seem to think you’re on the verge of becoming some kind of serial killer, but no serial killer in the history of serial killing has beat themselves up the way you’re beating yourself up. You think the hordes of infected out there feel bad about what they’re doing?”
He went slack jawed and had no idea what to say.
“You definitely have a problem,” she said, “but you don’t have the problem you think you have.”
His mind was blown. He’d have to spend a long time thinking about this.
“Hear me,” she said. “Right now. I’d make you write this down if you had something to write it down with. Are you listening?”
He nodded and bit his tongue to focus his attention.
“You’re suffering from a specific kind of anxiety right now, the irrational fear that there’s nothing stopping you from doing the worst thing imaginable. It affects everyone a little bit differently. It depends on their definition of the worst thing imaginable. Priests fear they’ll snap and blaspheme God. The world’s best parents worry they’ll take a dark turn and molest their own children. The guilt-ridden are terrified that they’ll confess something and ruin their career or their marriage. People who love life fear they might throw themselves off the top of a skyscraper. People who abhor violence worry they’ll hurt someone for no good reason at all. Everyone with this kind of anxiety fears they’ll do the one thing that they’re least likely to do.”
He stared at her.
“The fact that you’re so bent out of shape about this,” she said, “tells me everything I need to know about you.”
“You say that,” he said, “as if I didn’t actually try to kill somebody.”
“Something happened to you after you did that,” she said.
You got that right, he thought. My friends turned me into a monster.
“Something changed deep inside you,” she said.
She had no idea what had happened to him. She thought he just got hit with some kind of guilt complex.
He supposed she wasn’t wrong. Maybe that’s why he and Annie reacted so differently to the disturbing thoughts left behind in the wake of the virus. Parker had a damn good reason to feel horrible about himself while Annie did not.
He took a deep breath and shuddered as he slowly exhaled it.
“Okay,” he said. “So what do I do?”
She pursed her lips. “All you have to do,” she said, “is trust yourself.”
He swallowed hard and focused on a spot on the wall behind Betty’s shoulder.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
“You’ll figure it out,” she said.
“That’s it? I’ll figure it out?”
“We can talk again tomorrow after you’ve absorbed what I just said.”
; “What do I do until then?”
“Think about something else.”
He laughed.
“Your mind is stuck in a loop without an exit ramp,” she said.
That was for damn sure.
“You can start by focusing on your real problem instead of this fake problem,” she said.
“What’s my real problem?”
She shook her head. “Take a look around you. It’s obvious You’re locked up for no good reason in a prison at the end of the world. We all are. If we don’t get out, we’re going to die here.”
25
Hughes and Elias spent the afternoon in the living room next to the fireplace discussing the coming assault on the mayor. Elias had it all worked out. Everyone had their orders and everyone was in place.
First, his man at the local utility would disable the electrical grid. Then four men would hit Steele’s house, four would hit Temple’s and another four would set up on Main Street and pick off any of Steele’s men who dared to show up to fight. Steele’s crew would be totally blind in the dark without night vision. It’d be as simple as fish-barrel-bang.
That’s what Elias said, anyway. Of course, Steele’s men would have flashlights and their vehicles would have headlights, but Hughes was in no mood to argue.
“I’ve been thinking about what you can do without night vision,” Elias said as he poked the crackling fire with an iron. He had twelve pair of night vision goggles and Hughes was his thirteenth man.
Hughes sat in the recliner with his feet out. He didn’t care what Elias had in mind as long as he could break free and hit the hospital while Steele’s men battled it out with Elias.
“I have a Maglite you can use,” Elias said. “It’s the kind of flashlight police officers carry.”
“I know what it is,” Hughes said.
“Take it and a rifle and hunker down at Carter’s house. Wait for the shitshow to start and then hit the prison. Soon as we take out the mayor, everyone manning a checkpoint on the outskirts will rush into town and leave the perimeter unguarded. They’ll come off the prison, too, more likely than not. Least most of ‘em will. You can take out the rest.”
A stupid plan. Elias was no kind of military commander. Just a cocksure would-be insurgent in a small town with no clue. Steele’s men wouldn’t leave the prison unguarded. Elias should take the prison with a whole squad. He was going to get himself and all his guys killed.
“You might be able to just walk in and open the doors,” Elias said. “A one-man job. If it’s too hot, if they keep too many men on it, just rendezvous with me and my crew on Main and we’ll hit the prison together.”
Whatever, Hughes thought.
“Can you do that?”
Hughes nodded. “Sure.” But he wouldn’t.
“New moon’s in two days,” Elias said. “If the clouds clear and the snow melts, we’ll be good to go. If we have to wait, we’ll wait. We can do it with a half-moon in the sky just as easy. A half-moon won’t rise until midnight. Only thing we can’t do is strike during a full moon because a full moon will rise right when the sun sets.”
Hughes never spent much time thinking about when full moons or half-moons rose and set. Moonlight had no effect on his life in Seattle. The city was always lit. Even if a windstorm brought down a power line, other parts of the city were lit. Seattle was bright enough even at midnight that Hughes could hardly even see any stars.
Out in the countryside, though, it made sense that Elias knew what the sky was up to. It affected him. The mountainous landscape beyond the house must be frighteningly dark at night with no snow on the ground and no moon in the sky. During a full moon, though, Elias could probably read on the deck with his lights off. He’d see someone or something coming at him from 100 yards away.
Tires crunched in the gravel out front.
Hughes and Elias looked at each other.
“Expecting anyone?” Hughes said.
Elias shook his head and pointed upstairs. “Go up into my room. On the left at the far end of the house. There’s a sliding door leading onto a second-floor deck. If you have to, you can climb onto the roof. Do it quietly.”
Hughes nodded and crept up the stairs and into Elias’s bedroom. It was the one room in the house Elias didn’t bother to clean. Underwear and socks were all over the floor.
He heard a car door slam outside in front of the house.
The deck was covered in pristine snow. Elias hadn’t been out there in a while. If Hughes went out now and climbed onto the railing and the roof, it would be obvious, he’d leave tracks, so he slid the door open in a hurry and made as many footprints in the snow as he could. The deck looked well-used now.
Someone banged on the front door downstairs. A loud authoritative knock.
Hughes swept snow off the railing and onto the ground a story below while checking to make sure nobody came around back from the front. All clear so far.
He heard Elias open the door downstairs.
“Afternoon,” Elias said. Hughes could hear him just fine.
He heard a man’s voice answer, but he couldn’t quite make out what he said. Elias didn’t invite him in.
Whoever it was did all the talking. Elias said nothing.
Hughes could only make out a few words—Lander, mayor, and doctor. For a moment he thought they were talking about Annie, but that couldn’t be right.
After a minute or so, Elias said, “Okay, thanks for letting me know,” and shut the door.
No one would come upstairs looking for Hughes.
He heard a car door slam and a truck engine starting.
“Clear,” Elias said from downstairs.
Hughes returned to the living room. His hands were still cold from brushing snow off the deck. “Who was it?”
“One of Steele’s men.”
“What’d he want?”
“Just some bullshit,” Elias said.
“What?” Hughes said.
“Told me to boil my water.”
“What for?”
“He said the mayor thinks the water is infected.”
“The mayor thinks that?”
“Well, the doctors are saying that. Supposedly. Ridiculous.”
“Maybe not,” Hughes said. “You saw the coyotes yesterday morning. They’re drinking the same water we’re drinking.”
“It’s bullshit,” Elias said. “This mayor…”
“Ruling by fear,” Hughes said. “I’ve heard that before. But what if it’s true?”
“Viruses don’t spread through water.”
“Cholera spreads through water.”
“You a doctor?”
“No, but cholera spreads through water.”
“You want to boil your water, go ahead.”
“Look man,” Hughes said, “let me boil some water for the both of us. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning to find you infected and chewing my face off.”
Elias chuckled and nodded.
Hughes didn’t think it was funny. “What about when your guy shuts off the power?”
“What about it?”
“Won’t be able to boil water with the natural gas and the power both off.”
“Power’s only going to be off for a couple of hours. It’ll be the middle of the night. Most people will sleep through it and not even notice.”
With a loud firefight at the mayor’s house, Hughes doubted anybody in Lander would sleep through the night.
Nash nearly killed Annie Starling and Steele made him do it.
He drew blood from her arm. And then he drew more. If he kept going—even a little—he’d bleed her to death.
She screamed when he started. The guards had to restrain her. He kept telling her to relax, that it would hurt more if she didn’t, but she couldn’t relax.
“You’re killing me!”
She fought so hard he almost broke a needle off in her arm.
Eventually she calmed down. Blood loss will do that to a person. When he finished, he left he
r alone in her room with barely enough strength to keep her eyelids half open and placed an appalling amount of her blood into the centrifuge machine.
Later, dozens of Steele’s militiamen came down to the hospital to have their blood type tested. Anyone with type A would get a serum injection as soon as Nash had it ready.
Nurse Bailey handled the blood tests. Dozens of men lined up in the lab. She pricked their index fingers, took small samples, labeled the samples and told the next man in line to step forward.
Everyone in that line was a man, and everyone in that line was in the militia.
Nash was disgusted with them and with himself.
“You think this is going to work, doctor?” one of the men said. He was at most twenty years old. Nash didn’t know him. Nash didn’t want to know him.
Nash shrugged his shoulders. “It might. If you’re Type A.”
The men in line discussed blood types and vaccines. Most of them had no idea what they were talking about. A blood serum was not a vaccine. It might not even work. All Nash knew for sure was that a serum made from Annie’s blood transformed Steele’s son Charles from infected to catatonic. It was hardly a cure. Only God knew what would happen to these men if they got infected after being injected. Maybe they’d recover like Annie and maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d only recover part-way.
For the most part, Nash hated what he was doing and hated the mayor for making him do it. He wanted a small amount of blood serum on hand for anyone in town who got infected, but Steele was using it all up and possibly wasting it on his goddamn militia. Another part of him was thrilled, though. He was doing important post-apocalyptic work even if it was the wrong post-apocalyptic work. His standing in the community was rising.
He understood why they had to keep Annie close, of course, and he agreed. He was a doctor. He was obligated by the ethics of his profession and by his own personal mission to help people, to treat them when they’re injured or sick and to prevent illnesses and infections whenever possible.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 23
