Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland

by Michael J. Totten

  Steele just saw Annie as an animal to be farmed. He should let her live in peace somewhere in town and take blood from her slowly and only as needed. The mayor had forgotten the children’s story about the goose that lays golden eggs. You’d damn well better not kill it.

  Charles couldn’t eat. He could barely drink. Joseph and Nadia Steele propped him up at the kitchen table, held his head back and poured water down his throat. Massive amounts of the stuff spilled onto the floor before their son’s reflexes took over and he finally swallowed some.

  “He can’t live like this,” Nadia said. “I can’t live like this.”

  She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Steele to hold Charles by himself. He carried his son into the living room and set the boy down upright in the corner of the couch. Nadia went to the front window and looked outside.

  She wore sunglasses inside the house now so her own husband would not see her cry.

  “I should take him in,” he said, “and let Nash hook him up to a feeding tube.”

  She crossed her arms and looked sideways, as if she was the most put-upon person on earth. “We should hold a funeral.”

  “He’d not dead, Nadia!”

  “He isn’t alive. Look at him.”

  “Remember what he was like yesterday?”

  Nadia said nothing.

  “Yesterday he would have killed us if he wasn’t tied up.”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “We’re making progress.”

  She turned to look at him, though he could not see her eyes through her sunglasses.

  “You…” She shook her head and sat in the recliner near the fireplace. Steele remained standing. “You just can’t see it, can you?”

  Steele closed his eyes and counted to five. “What I see is that he’s better,” he said when he opened them again.

  “Better than what!”

  “Better than he was yesterday.”

  She turned away from him and looked at the fireplace. “Sit down, Joseph. I can’t stand you hovering over me like that.”

  He sat on the couch on the other side of the room and counted to ten in his head.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  “You just can’t see it.”

  She was the one who was blind. If it weren’t for Steele, Charles would already be in the ground. “Why can’t you see that he’s getting better?”

  “I’m not just talking about him.”

  “Then what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Us. Everything!”

  He’d do anything for his wife and his son, but Nadia seemed to enjoy hating him.

  “Where would you go?” he said. “Where would I go?”

  She shook her head like she was trying to get something out of her hair. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Us. If you don’t think—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Joseph. I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about all of us. This whole town.”

  He groaned. She was going there again. They were all going to die. Lander was dying. The whole world was dying. The only thing left to do was accept it and die well. She was convinced that her husband and son were dying in the worst way possible and dragging her down with them.

  “Nash is making more serum from Annie’s blood,” he said. He couldn’t read the expression on her face behind her huge sunglasses. “It might work almost like a vaccine.”

  “You are amazing.” She spat the word amazing as if it were bastard. “Let that young woman go. Let her die in her own way with dignity.”

  “Let her—” He stopped himself. There was no point arguing with Nadia when she was in such a dark place so far beyond reason or hope. He wanted to take her hand and show her the way back, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “I’m going to send for Nash,” he said. “While we’re waiting for him, I’m going downstairs to clean up the basement.” He needed space. She needed space.

  “You do that,” she said.

  He stepped outside and told one of the guards on the porch to go fetch the doctor. When he returned to the living room, Nadia was gone. She’d headed upstairs and taken Charles with her. Which seemed pointless. Charles would be going to the hospital soon. Steele would just have to carry him back down again.

  He heard her rooting around in his office and wasn’t happy about it. She wasn’t forbidden from going in there, but it was his space and nobody else’s. Whatever. She could have the whole damn house to herself for a while.

  Just the thought of cleaning that awful room in the basement fatigued him. He’d probably never get the smell out, but he could start by scrubbing the concrete floor and burning the mattress Charles had slept on when he was infected.

  Steele took a rag and a can of bleach powder from underneath the kitchen sink and headed down the stairs into the dark. He could still just barely hear his morose wife’s footsteps as she crossed the second floor from his office to their bedroom.

  He wanted to shut the world out and go blank, to lose himself in the grim task ahead. The room didn’t smell as bad anymore. The wretch-inducing stench of body odor and waste had dropped by maybe a third. If Steele took everything out and burned it, then scrubbed bleach powder into every surface, he might just be able to get that room back to normal.

  That wouldn’t bring his wife and son back to normal, but he could only control what he could control. Nash might be able to help Charles, but the doctor could do nothing for Nadia. She needed a different kind of doctor. Her mood was so black that Steele doubted even anti-depressants would do any good.

  A surge of adrenaline shot him up so ramrod straight that he drove his head into the low ceiling. He felt a stabbing pain on the top of his skull and heard a faint ringing in his ears, but he didn’t care.

  Nadia had taken Charles upstairs.

  She’d been in his office.

  He kept his gun in that room.

  He had to get up there. Now.

  He dropped the rag and the can of bleach powder on the floor and ran.

  “Nadia!” he shouted.

  And heard the unmistakable POP of a gunshot.

  “Nadia!”

  He took the basement stairs two at a time and heard the front and back doors of his house burst open as the guards rushed inside.

  “Nadia!” he cried again when he reached the kitchen.

  Three guards were in the house now. Pratt, Shannon and Rourke. One from the front and two from the back. They looked shocked and frightened. Geddy, the fourth guard, was out fetching Nash from the hospital.

  “Upstairs,” Rourke said.

  They all headed for the staircase. Rourke went up first, followed by Pratt and Shannon. Steele climbed last.

  Rourke rushed into Steele’s home office as Pratt bolted into Charles’ bedroom.

  Shannon took Steele and Nadia’s bedroom and cried out the moment he saw what was inside. He stepped out and shut the door, his face ashen.

  Steele tried to push past him. “No!” Shannon said and stood in the doorway.

  Pratt and Rourke stepped back into the hallway. Each grabbed one of the Steele’s arms. They hadn’t seen what Shannon had seen, but they had a pretty good idea what was on the other side of that door.

  “Charles!” Steele shouted.

  Shannon shook his head. “She didn’t shoot Charles.”

  She’d shot herself then.

  “Let me see her!” Steele shouted.

  “Downstairs,” Shannon said, not even trying to hide the look of shock and alarm on his face.

  Rourke and Pratt dragged Steele backward toward the staircase.

  “Let me go!”

  “Sir, you really don’t want to go in there,” Shannon said.

  “It’s my family! My house.”

  Rourke and Pratt stopped dragging Steele but did not let him go.

  “I need to see them,” Steele said.

  “She shot herself,” Shannon said. “In the head.”

  Ste
ele closed his eyes. Vertigo overtook him. He felt like he was tumbling backwards and probably would have if Pratt and Rourke weren’t holding him.

  He opened his eyes and looked right into Shannon’s. “My son?” Steele held his breath.

  “She only shot herself.”

  Steele had to know for sure that his son was okay. “I have to go in there.”

  “You don’t,” Shannon said.

  Pratt and Rourke loosened their grips on his arms. Steele could order them to stand down. He was about to and they knew it. He shook his arms free.

  Shannon still blocked his path.

  “Get out of my way,” Steele said.

  Shannon shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Get out of my way!”

  Shannon didn’t move.

  “Man, just let him past,” Rourke said.

  Shannon shot Rourke a look.

  “He needs to get to his kid,” Rourke said.

  “I’ll bring him out,” Shannon said. He looked genuinely pained. He was the only one who had seen the inside of that bedroom. The scene would hit Steele ten times as hard, but it would hit him ten times as hard whether he went in there or not. Not seeing wouldn’t help. He knew he could imagine even worse.

  Steele took a deep breath. He was shaking all over. “I need you to step aside.”

  Shannon didn’t move.

  “That’s an order.”

  Shannon deflated.

  “It’s okay, man,” Rourke said. “Just let him past.”

  Shannon relented and cast his eyes toward the floor as he moved out of the way. Steele felt the man’s hand on his shoulder as he stepped past and opened the door.

  He saw blood everywhere. Soaked into the bed and the pillow and onto the floor. It even spattered the wall on the opposite side of the room. Nadia had Steele’s H&K 9mm in her hand next to the side of her head. Steele turned his eyes away. He didn’t dare look at her face.

  Charles lay on his back next to her staring at the ceiling. He seemed unharmed.

  Steele covered his mouth, rushed past his guards into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet.

  “Jesus Christ.” Rourke’s voice.

  Every muscle in Steele’s body contracted to expel the contents of his stomach as violently as possible. Acid burned his throat and his mouth. He spit into the toilet and braced himself. He knew he wasn’t done yet.

  “You okay, sir?” Pratt’s voice.

  “No.”

  Steele’s body shuddered and he vomited a second time.

  “Told you he shouldn’t go in there,” Shannon said in a low voice.

  He was finished now. His gut was empty and he felt a momentary sense of relief. “Charles,” he said.

  Nobody said anything.

  “Is Charles okay?” he said.

  He stood and flushed the toilet. His mouth tasted of bile. He was not going back into that bedroom.

  Steele opened the tap on the sink and filled his cupped hand with water. He swished some around in his mouth and spit it out. The water hadn’t been boiled, but fuck it. He’d either be fine or he wouldn’t.

  Shannon stepped into the bathroom, an even grayer look on his face like he’d just been shocked all over again. “Sir?”

  His boy was dead. Wasn’t he?

  “Charles?”

  Shannon shook his head.

  Steele should have seen it coming. In hindsight, it was obvious.

  “He’s not breathing,” Shannon said.

  Steele went down hard on his ass. Pratt knelt next to him and said nothing. Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say. They were all in a state of shock.

  Nadia must have smothered Charles with a pillow. She wouldn’t shoot her own son, but she couldn’t live let him live like that either. It was a wonder she hadn’t shot Steele.

  Someone knocked on the front door downstairs and opened it.

  “Hello!” Frank Nash. The doctor. Cold air blew up the stairway.

  Steele closed his eyes.

  “Go down and tell him,” he said to no one in particular.

  Nadia did this to punish him.

  She killed herself and their son in their marital bed, where they’d made love countless times and conceived Charles. The heart and center of their home was now a horror scene.

  Steele could never go back in that room, could never sleep in that bed again.

  He wasn’t even sure he could sleep in the house anymore.

  Voices downstairs. Shannon, Pratt and Rourke telling the doctor what happened.

  “Oh no!” Nash said.

  “Jesus Christ.” Geddy’s voice. Steele’s fourth daytime guard. The one who had gone and fetched Nash.

  Steele picked himself off the floor. His guts lurched again and the world tilted sideways. He had to get out of that house.

  He stumbled down the stairs and gripped the rail to keep himself from falling.

  Nash rushed up to him. “Let me help you.”

  “I’m fine,” Steele said, but he was not fine. No, he was not fine at all. “Where are my keys?”

  “You’re not going to drive, are you?” Nash said.

  “I have to go,” Steele said.

  “Where?” Nash said.

  “The cabin,” Steele said.

  “You have a cabin?” Nash said.

  Shannon gently took Nash’s arm. “Sir,” he said. “Maybe you should—”

  “Get the fuck off me,” Steele said.

  Everybody stepped back and gave him some space.

  “I need…” Steele said. He didn’t know what he needed. He just had to get out of the house. A detached part of himself recognized that he was in fight-or-flight mode, and since there was no one to fight, his only option was flight.

  “I’m going to my cabin,” he said. “Shannon, you know where it is.”

  “I don’t, actually,” Shannon said.

  “Don’t come get me unless it’s an emergency.” He didn’t want to be bothered even in an emergency, actually. Especially not in an emergency, now that he thought about it.

  Shannon glanced at the others. He started to say something, but Steele cut him off.

  “Just let me go.”

  “How long do you expect to be gone?” Nash said.

  Steele had no idea. “Doc,” he said. “Just finish up your work with Annie. Shannon, Temple’s in charge while I’m gone. Don’t tell anybody but him that I’m leaving.”

  “But—” Shannon said.

  “Just do what I tell you! And don’t tell a soul what happened in this house today or I’ll have all of your heads.”

  He’d left his keys on the kitchen counter. He remembered now. He grabbed them and his winter coat off the hall tree near the front door. That was all he needed. He had spare clothes and toiletries at the cabin already and it was only an hour away.

  He opened the front door.

  “Shit,” he said. Snow covered the ground. He’d forgotten about that, but it was only a couple of inches. He could make it.

  “Be careful, sir, please,” Shannon said.

  Steele nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know where your cabin is,” Shannon said. “How will we find you?”

  “You can’t,” Steele said. “But I’ll be back.”

  He wasn’t sure Shannon believed him or that he even believed himself.

  He climbed into his SUV, backed out of the driveway and headed downtown. Lead boiled in his guts and the sky pushed down on him with incredible force, but he kept going. Returning to the house wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t home anymore.

  Fleeing wouldn’t help either, though. He knew that. When he got to his cabin in the desert he’d crack into pieces. He’d carry the black bile inside him all the way to sunny Florida if he could make it that far.

  He drove onto Main toward the city’s southern exit, though he felt like he was driving toward doom.

  26

  Annie never felt so weak. Tired and fatigued didn’t even begin to describe
it. She hardly had the strength to move, and if she tried to sit up she felt like she was going to faint. If Doc Nash had taken any more of her blood, he would have killed her.

  A tall glass of orange juice sat on the table next to her bed just out of reach. No drops of water beaded the glass. It was warm and had been there a while. She needed the calories, she needed the sugar, and she hadn’t tasted anything as delectable as orange juice for months. She just didn’t have the energy to fetch it. All she wanted to do was lie down for a year.

  And then what? Wait for Nash to drain her to the edge of oblivion again? Was this how she’d spend the rest of her days? Locked in a room and farmed like an animal?

  The mayor didn’t even need to keep guards on her door anymore. Blood loss could keep her frozen in place for the rest of her life.

  At least Nash had the decency to tell her what was happening. He’d semi-cured Steele’s kid with serum made from her blood, but the kid was too brain-damaged to come out of it. Nash thought the virus might have done irreparable violence to the kid’s cerebral cortex. Annie suspected the kid retreated so deeply into himself that he never wanted to come out again.

  She thought about Parker. If he’d spent a week—or God help him, a month—tied to that chair with the virus napalming his mind, he almost certainly would have gone permanently insane.

  So now the mayor was inoculating his soldiers with blood serum. He and Nash didn’t know if it would work. Annie knew it would, though she’d never tell them. They’d never let her go if she told them. Let them wonder or figure it out the hard way.

  If she did manage to get out—if Parker, Hughes and Kyle managed to break her free—would the CDC in Atlanta treat her any better?

  Kyle had no idea what to do with himself. He’d fallen through a crack between the floorboards of his life and landed in some kind of a neutral zone. The last chapter of his life ended and the next one hadn’t begun yet. He didn’t even know what the next chapter would be like. Would he have a job? How long would he stay in this motel? Would he see any of his friends again?

  He walked the streets of Lander looking for something to do and waiting for something to happen. He walked almost every street and peered into almost every window on Main. The only places he hadn’t gone yet were at the southern edge of town near the hospital and the checkpoint where he, Annie, Hughes and Parker had arrived.