“Get him off me!” the young man yelled.
Beckett and Frist tackled Mack to the ground and restrained him. Mack flailed and kicked and managed to free one of his arms, and when Frist moved to pin the loose arm, Mack snapped his head forward and clamped his teeth on Frist’s fingers like a vise.
Frist yelled in pain and in fear, but like a good soldier he drove his elbow into Mack’s face hard enough to break his teeth and his nose.
Beckett put his knee on Mack’s neck and leaned forward with all his body weight. Parker heard Mack’s neck snap like stick breaking underwater.
Frist sat on his ass and used his feet to push himself on the floor toward the wall while clutching his bitten fingers. Blood covered the front of his shirt and some dribbled onto the floor.
The other man Mack had bitten—Parker did not know his name—sat on the floor next to Frist. They were both going to turn and they were both going to die, probably within minutes, not hours.
The second man closed his eyes and rested the back of his head against the wall.
Beckett stepped toward them.
“Not yet,” Frist said as he breathed heavily.
Beckett nodded. “We’ll wait.”
The second man looked at Beckett in terror.
“It won’t be like Charlene,” Beckett said. “You won’t feel a thing. There won’t be much to see either.”
Parker understood. Beckett was a decent man. Both Frist and the other man would pass out before turning. It didn’t have to be violent. Beckett could just pinch their noses and cover their mouths.
Frist looked at Charlene’s slumped corpse in the corner. He’d be lying next to her in a matter of minutes.
Frist passed out before the second man passed out, but Beckett did not make a move until both were asleep. Then he quietly, and with dignity, dispatched Frist exactly as Parker expected. He pinched Frist’s nostrils closed with one hand and used the other to cover Frist’s mouth.
Thirty seconds elapsed. “You want some help?” Beckett’s second deputy said. Parker did not know his name.
Beckett seemed to consider it. He’d have to hold this position for a while to be sure Frist was really gone before moving onto the other man.
“I got this,” Beckett said and shifted his weight. “I think.”
He gave it a couple of minutes, then released Frist and checked for a pulse. He seemed to feel nothing.
Then he repeated the peaceful yet gruesome procedure on the second man.
Nobody in the cellblock spoke while he did this.
After both men were confirmed dead, Beckett and his second deputy moved the bodies next to Charlene’s.
Five dead, Parker thought, and two infected because 40 people drank water out of the tap. The chances of turning were one-in-twenty, or five percent.
Beckett walked to the exit leading out of the cellblock. The hallway outside was still empty. Nothing and nobody stirred out there.
He kicked the door.
Nobody moved and nobody said anything.
He put his hands on his hips and turned his head sideways. “Nobody else drink any water,” he said.
34
Kyle never thought of himself as brave.
He’d shot, stabbed, bludgeoned and burned alive more of those things than he could count, and it terrified and sickened him every time, but he wasn’t brave. He did it because he and his friends would die if he didn’t.
Men and women who signed up for the military, who volunteered to fight on battlefields in the Middle East and other forsaken parts of the world instead of hanging out at the Lloyd Center Mall—those people were brave.
But Kyle? No. He was no braver than a woman scratching the face of a serial killer who’d shoved her into the back of his van.
Some people couldn’t even do that much. There seemed to be a fault in their wiring. When their nervous systems kicked into gear, they didn’t go into fight-or-flight mode. They froze like a deer on a mountain road as a triple-tractor trailer rig barreled down on them with its high-beams on.
That’s what Andy did when the infected rose up in Lander, and he damn near got himself and Kyle killed.
They headed straight back to Andy’s motel room after the SUV crunched the woman with purple hair, and they huddled together in the room for hours behind the closed curtains, trying to figure out what was happening in Lander just from the sounds they could hear, hardly daring to breathe lest they attract the infected. Kyle and Andy each sat on one of the dining set chairs, Kyle near the door and Andy near the window, Kyle with his crowbar at the ready and Andy with his claw hammer. Kyle could only faintly see his neighbor’s face with the curtains drawn and the power out.
He counted twelve separate occasions where he heard gunfire. He wasn’t sure how many times he heard screaming. He didn’t think to count the screams when he first heard them, but after he did start counting, he reached 29.
He heard all kinds of screams. The screams of the infected, the screams of the terrified and the screams of those who were in agony.
More often than not, the screams of the infected were not answered by gunfire.
For a long time, they didn’t speak.
“This is it,” Andy finally said. It was late afternoon now and the sun would be down soon.
“What?” Kyle said.
“The beginning of the end.”
Kyle had seen far worse in Portland when the outbreak began. At first, cases were rare. No one even understood what was happening. A terrifying and savage crime wave just seemed to appear out of nowhere, not only in Portland but also in Seattle and San Francisco. Every theory imaginable was floated on television and on the Internet, including terrorism, Satanic cults and even an alien invasion. It was clear, though, after a week or so, what was happening, and the police department didn’t last very much longer. It was equipped for normal levels of crime and domestic disturbances, not a virus that turned citizens into a ultra-predators.
The National Guard didn’t last much longer than the police department, and the army never even showed up. The city was chewed to pieces as if it had been dumped into a garbage disposal. The number of casualties became purely theoretical before the end, measured not in raw numbers but by the percentage of the population.
Eventually, the screams of the dying and the infected on Portland’s streets melded together into a single cacophonous roar. The air choked with smoke and the stench of the dead. Kyle couldn’t step outside his loft condo for even a second without risking imminent death. By that point, hardly anyone made it out of the city alive. Kyle still didn’t quite understand how he made it aside from pure luck.
So yeah, Kyle had seen much worse in Portland than he’d seen so far in Lander, but Lander was more vulnerable. In Portland—as far as Kyle knew, anyway—the virus never spread through the water. The disease also seemed to transform people more slowly. It took hours, not minutes. The virus seemed to be stronger now, and more transmittable. Portland at its worst still had a functioning electrical grid, and at least the police and the national guard slowed the rate of infection even if, in the end, they couldn’t stop it.
Lander, on the other hand, had no police department. Wyoming had long ago lost its National Guard. Steele’s militia, for whatever it was even worth in the first place, had been reduced by at least half by an insurrection. Lander had toxic water, no electricity, no effective government and a more dangerous strain of the virus. The town was moving much more rapidly through the stages of disintegration. Kyle wasn’t sure if the tipping point had already been reached, but if not, it was less than a day away at the latest.
So Andy was probably right. This was the beginning of the end for Lander, Wyoming. No one could boil water in the microwave or the oven, nor could they boil it outside on a barbecue. They’d be attacked within minutes. They couldn’t burn wood in a fireplace, either. The smoke would attract the infected. So would the sound of the chopping of wood.
Even if the wave of infected outside co
uld be beaten, Lander would probably never recover. The cold would return, and people would start freezing to death without power and gas. The cold would also kill the infected, of course, but that would only prolong Lander’s death throes.
Kyle couldn’t stay. With or without Annie and Hughes, he had to leave.
“Let’s take your van,” Kyle said.
“And go where?” Andy said and slumped in his chair.
Kyle heard a scraping sound out in the parking lot and held up his hand in the dim light. “Shh.”
For a long moment he didn’t hear anything else, but then it happened again. Scrape. Like someone was dragging a shoe across the pavement.
“What is that?” Andy said.
“Shh,” Kyle said.
He turned his ear toward the window.
Scrape.
“One of those things,” Kyle whispered.
“What’s it doing?” Andy whispered.
Scrape.
Kyle got up from his chair and stepped toward the window.
“Don’t,” Andy whispered and readied his claw hammer to smash anything that tried to come through the window.
Kyle could part one of the curtains if he was careful enough. If one of those things saw him, though, then what? Sure, he could open the door and beat it to death with his crowbar, but it would scream, and its scream could attract more. Better, perhaps, to just open the door and rush outside and do the deed quickly and quietly.
Scrape.
Closer to the window this time.
“Don’t move,” Andy whispered.
Kyle could slip out the back through the bathroom window and come around the front of the building. Hughes had done that when Max the infected motel manager was creeping around outside, but Kyle would still risk being seen, only this time whatever was out in the parking lot would be standing between Kyle and the relative safety of the motel room.
Scrape.
He and Andy had to get out of the motel, and they had to get out of Lander.
“Okay,” Kyle whispered. “Here’s what we do.”
“We’re not doing anything,” Andy whispered. Real fear in his voice.
“You have the keys to your van?” Kyle said.
Andy said nothing.
“Andy,” Kyle said.
“Shh,” Andy said. “Listen.”
Kyle listened. He heard nothing. He heard nothing for several long moments. Perhaps whatever was out there had left.
Or maybe whatever was out there heard something inside the room. It could be standing less than two feet away, right on the other side of the glass and the curtain, its mouth open and its head cocked sideways with its ear toward Kyle and Andy.
Kyle forced himself to breathe slowly. He could feel and even hear his own heartbeat. He listened as keenly as he could, as if he might hear a spacecraft landing on the dark side of moon if only he listened hard enough.
And heard two things in rapid succession.
A single POP from a handgun a couple of blocks down the street.
Then a short sharp gasp on the other side of the glass.
One of those things was indeed just outside the window.
It made a primitive guttural sound and moved toward the street. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
Kyle parted the curtains.
“No!” Andy whispered.
Kyle saw it.
One of its legs seemed to be injured and it was missing a boot. It limped a little as it moved toward the street. Silent step. Scrape. Silent step. Scrape.
It was enormous. Built like a lumberjack or a football player. Built like Hughes and strong enough to rip a car door off its hinges. Six foot five at the least and 350 pounds, its arms as long as some people’s legs.
But it wasn’t Hughes.
It was wearing one of the unofficial uniforms of Steele’s militia.
Kyle closed the curtains and closed his eyes.
Thank God he hadn’t run out there with the crowbar. That thing would have torn Kyle in half and sunk its teeth into his bowels.
“What did you see?” Andy whispered.
Kyle shuddered. “We need to get out of here.”
The thing outside screamed. It sounded like the usual high-pitched scream of the infected, only much lower in pitch. It was on Main Street now, and it saw something.
Prey.
Kyle heard three more sharp POPs from a handgun, then nothing.
“Where are your keys?” Kyle said, no longer bothering to whisper.
“Where do you want go?” Andy said, partly annoyed and partly astonished.
“Nebraska.”
“Nebraska?”
“Nebraska.”
“The fuck’s in Nebraska?”
Hopefully Hughes and Annie, Kyle thought, on their way to Iowa, the Missouri River, and Georgia. Instead he said, “Snow and ice.”
Andy thought about that for a moment. “How would we live?”
“You want to try to live here?” Kyle said.
“What about all my stuff?”
It would take at least ten minutes and possibly twenty to get all of Andy’s stuff in his van.
“Leave it,” Kyle said.
“We’ll die if we leave it.”
Kyle closed his eyes. Andy was right. They had to load up the van. They needed supplies or they’d freeze to death or starve.
He dared another peek through the curtains and saw nothing and no one in the parking lot. He then checked his watch. It would be dark outside in half an hour. Better to load up the van at night, but also better to load up the van now that the parking lot was clear. A half-dozen infected might show up if they waited.
“Let’s pack it up,” Kyle said.
Andy put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Jana,” he said.
“Who’s Jana?” Kyle said.
“My wife,” Andy moaned.
Kyle’s chest and limbs felt tight. He’d lost people too. Everyone had. But he did not lose his family. He’d already lost his family years ago. His parents died when he was in college and he’d never married. He had no siblings or children. “I’m sorry, man,” he said.
“We lived in Pinedale,” Andy said, “and we visited Lander a lot. It’s just up the road, you know? We came here on weekends sometimes when we didn’t want to drive all the way to Jackson.”
Kyle peeked out the window again. Still all clear. They had to go.
“I remember us together here,” Andy said. “Living here, it’s like a tiny part of her is still alive.”
Kyle understood. Lander provided some continuity between Andy’s old life in normal times with his wife and the terrifying new time he lived in now.
“I have no memories of Jana in Nebraska,” Andy said. “We drove through it once on a trip to Chicago, and that’s it.”
Kyle said nothing for a few moments. A respectful pause. Then, “You know we can’t stay here.”
Andy sat up and nodded. Kyle couldn’t tell if Andy’s eyes were wet or dry. The room was too dark.
Andy took a deep breath and looked around. He had boxes of who-knows-what stacked up against one wall, some of it no doubt personal memorabilia. Family photographs, his high school diploma, that sort of thing. He didn’t need it.
“Let’s leave the boxes,” Andy said.
Thank God, Kyle thought.
“Just my backpack,” Andy said, “those bags of supplies over there, and whatever you need from your room.”
Kyle parted the curtain again. Outside was still clear. “I’ll get my stuff. Start packing.”
As quietly as he could, Kyle slipped into his own room. He thought about locking the door, but left it open so Andy could come inside without having to knock and make noise.
He didn’t have to pack much and was ready to go in five minutes. When he returned to Andy’s room, he found that Andy was also ready to go. He had everything he needed next to the front door. Everything he needed included only one of the boxes.
“You leaving the other
stuff?” Kyle said.
Andy nodded. “I haven’t touched it since I got here. I haven’t even thought about it much, to be honest.”
When Kyle had moved into his loft condo, he’d stashed all kinds of personal things in boxes in one of the closets and didn’t open a single one of them the entire time he lived there. He figured he’d drag that stuff around with him as long as he lived because he couldn’t bear to get rid of it, but he didn’t take any of it with him when he left Portland.
Kyle opened the door. The sun was low in the sky. It cast a red hue on the motel’s exterior. The wind felt chilly. He heard distant yelling from the far side of town and saw an enormous plume of black smoke in the direction of downtown. He heard three more distant sounds. The rage-filled scream of an infected. The sharp crack from a rifle. And the scream of a human being in terrible agony. His stomach churned.
Andy had parked his van on the far side of the parking lot, roughly 70 feet away, instead of right in front of his room. He probably hadn’t intended to use it again. They could drive it up to the door and park it there to expedite packing, but that would make too much noise. They could also have one person stand guard with the crowbar while the other loaded gear, but that would take twice as much time. So Kyle left a hammer on the floor just inside his room and carried the crowbar over to the van with the first load of gear so they’d have a weapon handy on each side of the lot.
He and Andy made as little noise as possible while loading the van. Andy had a bunch of stuff stashed in there already, mostly in boxes, and Andy had to climb inside and move things around to make room. He slid the cardboard box that Kyle presumed included photographs into the back across the grooved metal floor and banged his head on his way out the side door.
Andy brought his hand to his scalp and said “shit.” He did not say it loudly. Kyle knew it was involuntary, like an audible flinch. No matter. He said it just loudly enough.
Scrape.
The sound came from Main Street just around the corner from the motel and beyond Kyle’s sight line. Kyle barely heard it, but his lizard brain’s threat detection system was on full alert and his ears were as finely tuned right then as a rabbit’s.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 33
