“Maybe it’s really at the hospital,” offered one.
Gray sneered. “Is that what’s troubling you? No. It’s not at the hospital. The hospital has been under constant guard. I know that I didn’t shirk my watch. Did you, Brother Michael?”
A skinny man in the back twitched as all the eyes in the room swiveled onto him. “No, no of course not, Brother Gray.”
“How about you, Brother David?”
A man she recognized as the guard in the fog shook his head quickly.
“Well, there’s your answer then. We’re not the liars and sinners here. And if we aren’t lying, then Joe here must be.” Thwack! The ax crushed another finger. Tears streamed down Bernard’s face and he sobbed.
“Just tell us where it is and all this can stop. It can all be done, Joe. You’re in control of this whole thing.”
Bernard groaned, but he didn’t shake his head again. Ruth ached with dread. She knew he couldn’t last. He was going to tell them. What could she do? She was trapped. And once they had their hands on her—
“Where’s the food, Joe?” Gray asked again, his tone almost friendly.
Bernard whimpered like a dying dog. He raised his good hand again. It hung in the air as Bernard sobbed again. Every eye watched the hovering hand. Bernard slowly raised his forefinger and pointed to the hospital.
Gray slammed the ax down twice, in quick succession. Bernard screamed. Gray turned away from him in disgust. “This man still refuses redemption. Throw him in the cart. He can face the cross like the others. Maybe Juliana’s misplaced affection for him will make her give up that bloodthirsty whore, to save him and he can end all this misery.”
A few of the men lifted Bernard from his chair and pushed him out of the door. Ruth’s mind raced. If they’d just wait until dark, maybe she could rescue him. But if he didn’t stop bleeding he’d probably be in shock by then. She had to find a way to treat him, and fast. Her muscles tensed, ready to spring up from her hiding spot as soon as the rest of the group moved on. But Gray had other plans.
“You,” he said, pointing the ax at one of the men standing in the doorway, “stay here and keep an eye on this place. Juliana will send someone out here eventually to find the food she needs for the hospital. If it’s that baby-slaughtering doctor I want you to hold onto her until I come to get you. Do what you like with her, just be sure she’s alive and conscious for the cross.”
Ruth shuddered and tried to crunch farther into the shadows beneath the bed. A few more of the men lingered to search the cottage. The rest followed Gray outside. There was a bustle and the sound of breaking plates as the men swept the small kitchen clear, looking for food. It wasn’t long before one of them found the seedlings in the shed. He called the others over. “Well, shit. I actually believed the gardener,” said one, peering in.
“If the plants are here, where’s the edible stuff?” asked another.
They all piled into the small shed. Ruth glanced at the front door. It was still ajar from when the others had left. She couldn’t see anyone outside. Nobody was looking. Soon they’d tear the rest of the place apart. They’d find the loose floorboards, and they’d find Ruth. She took a deep breath and pushed herself up by her hands, the back of her hair just catching on the underside of the bed. She glanced at the storage shed door to make sure their backs were turned and then tensed to spring out from beneath the bed.
“We better tell Gray,” said one of the men and turned around, Ruth froze. She’d moved too close to the edge of the bed. He’d surely see her if he looked.
“Wait a second before you go off running your mouth,” said another and came out of the shed after him. The other two men followed. “Listen, Gray doesn’t have a family. He’s only got to look out for himself.”
“And?” asked the first man, his eyes narrowing.
“We can’t feed everybody, no matter how bad we want to. Your kids are hungry, John. We’re neighbors, I hear ’em crying at night. Mine too. I do what I can for the Congregation, but scavenging hasn’t gone so well these past few months. There’s less and less in the city. Me and Martha— we’ve talked about leaving, lots of times. But this is our home, always has been. And we figure any help would come here first, to a big city where there might still be people left to need it, not out in the wild. So if we can find a way to stay, we’re going to.”
“But Gray said—”
A third man interrupted. “Gray said we should let him know if we find the food. This is just seedlings. He’s burning the greenhouses. He doesn’t care about plants. He’s no farmer. But we could do something with them.”
“What about the rest of the Congregation?” asked the last man.
“You heard Father Preston, they’re leaving as soon as they get the Afflicted out of the hospital. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my newborn sleeping next to a zombie, no matter what the Father says. I’m staying. And if I’m staying I have to feed my family.”
Ruth took advantage of the confusion as the men argued amongst themselves for a few more minutes and drew herself farther into the shadows. She’d have to wait for another opportunity. She worried about where they would take Bernard and whether he was still holding onto consciousness or not. Part of her hoped not. At last they agreed that one of them would go find a wheelbarrow while the others reported back to Gray.
“What if that woman comes while I’m gone?” asked the man who was meant to guard the cottage.
One of the others scoffed. “She’s locked up tight in that hospital. There’s almost fifty people in that field. There’s no way she’s coming here.”
They left together, closing the cottage door behind them. Ruth sagged against the floor in relief. She only waited a moment and then darted to the door. She peered out the window into the bright afternoon. She’d never get across the garden without being seen. The guard had found the barrow and was wheeling it back. She pressed herself against the wall so she would be behind the door when it opened. She grabbed a sharp trenching shovel that was leaning nearby. Bernard had used it to start building an irrigation canal early that spring. It hadn’t been completed.
She realized she was going to have to incapacitate the guard and a wave of anxiety sent cramps through her gut. Despite what Father Preston proclaimed, she’d never considered herself a murderer. The man just wanted to feed his family. He believed she was evil. She knew that. Deep down in their hearts, all the people that followed Father Preston were convinced she was truly bad. Deep down in her own, she desperately wanted to believe she was not. But she knew she was about to do something worse than everything that had gone before. By the time the day is out, you’ll have to do it again, said a little voice, but she pushed it away. No time for thinking or even justifying now.
The wheelbarrow’s rusty wheel creaked as it came to a stop outside the cottage. The man clumped up the few steps and opened the cottage door. He headed for the storage shed, leaving the front door open. Ruth gave it a gentle shove so it would shut but not slam. The light changed as the door began blocking the sun and the man began turning to see why. Ruth leapt at him before he could see her. She brought the heavy point of the shovel down on his nose, shattering it and spraying a heavy splash of dark blood over the floor. The man reached up and began to yell, but she jerked the shovel back and drove it into the front of his throat before he could bend over to cradle his broken nose. The man tried to gasp and only gurgled. He toppled and lay on his back, his hands still holding his broken nose as he struggled to breathe through the slice in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth sobbed and brought the shovel down on his neck once more. She dropped the shovel and ran to the door. She looked through the open crack but didn’t see anyone. She slid out of the door and shut it behind her, hoping nobody would check on the guard until she and Bernard were long gone. Where had they taken him? There was a low whine from behind her. Ruth whirled around thinking the guard was still alive, trying to reach her. But the door was still closed. The sof
t whine came again and Ruth crouched down and tried to see into the crawlspace beneath the cottage. Bernard’s dog crept forward and thumped its tail.
“Good boy,” she said quietly, stroking the dog’s muzzle, “find Bernard. Good dog. Find him.” The dog was a mutt, probably a stray long before the Plague. But it knew Bernard, and even if it couldn’t understand Ruth, it naturally sought him out. She followed the dog as it snuffled its way over the muddy patch that used to be the garden. She crouched and kept glancing around, but there was no one in sight, no sounds of anyone else. Ruth ached to be well past the open park land, even though the grass was high enough in most places beyond the vegetable patch to hide her if she stayed low. But the dog took its time, untangling Bernard’s old, familiar footsteps with the recent ones. They came to a wide opening where the grass had been heavily trampled. It lay, gold and green in a matted path, the sweet smell of the broken blades at odds with the grief and fear that grasped at Ruth’s chest when she saw it. It was something that belonged to an earlier time. A smell for sports fields and late summer evenings. It made her even sadder. She hurried down the path the men had made, leaving the dog to follow behind her. She stumbled out of the grass onto the blank flatness of the street. She took a quick glance around and then darted into the shade of a bus shelter. The dog followed her and stood in front of the bench. She pressed herself into a peeling ad on the wall and took a long look around.
The building across from her, an old glass case that used to be offices leaned against an adobe church nearby, closing the alleyway to a sliver. On the other side was a lot, a construction site with a naked metal frame of a building. Saplings grew in its center and weeds covered most of the gravel. Bird nests clung to the beams. It looked almost undisturbed. But there was a tarp that had been thrown back from a pile of steel beams. The metal gleamed too brightly, it flashed in the summer sun unlike the rusting beams of the structure.
Nearby, a few telephone poles were stacked, the bottom two dark and rotting. The top pole had been freshly sawn, sections of it strewn over the lot. It had to be where the Congregation was getting their materials. Ruth was surprised it was so close to the garden.
How long had they been planning this whole thing? Just Gray, she told herself, the others are going along. Even Father Preston, though he doesn’t know it. He’s not in control. Gray is. And he’s probably been planning something since I threw his ear trophy back in his face and humiliated him years ago. She knew she should be frightened, overwhelmed at the forethought that had gone into it, but a bright flare of rage flickered in her head instead. Bernard had to be near the construction site. She had to find him.
She didn’t see anyone guarding the site, and she had followed too quickly for them to have picked up the beam and the section of pole and taken off already. She didn’t like running across the open road, but she hadn’t been on this side of the gardens for a long time. The roads around the site might be blocked with debris or buildings like the one across from her. She didn’t have time to make a lot of detours. She took a deep breath and then raced across the road, careful to stay clear of the broken glass that had fallen from the windows above her. The dog padded after her, his tongue hanging out in the heat of the afternoon.
She made it to the construction site and threaded her way through the debris and rusting tools. There was still no sign of anyone. On the far side of the site was a squat brick building with a blacked out door. It hid between the other buildings, once it was a squalid little mole at the base of shining towers and bright, clean sidewalks. Now it was the survivor, a great swollen mushroom thriving as the others toppled and shrank. Ruth could hear voices inside as she got closer. They rose and fell, but they were garbled and confused behind the brick. Ruth snuck around the building, trying to find a window to peer through.
She didn’t see the dog’s hackles rise until she heard it growling beside her. She tried to calm it but the animal pulled away and continued its low snarl. It was facing the rear of the building. Ruth slowly leaned out to look around the corner. There was Bernard. He was lying in the back of a police car, unconscious. He was shut in the car’s cage, but the front half was missing, shorn away in some accident, jagged, rusty edges left of the roof. Someone had welded a kind of metal yoke to the sides and its two stalls were occupied by two restless people. They were bound to the metal, their arms lashed to their sides and a football helmet jammed down onto each head. Only their legs were free. The car was anchored to the building with a thick tow cable so that even when the people in front pulled, it stayed put. Ruth didn’t have to get close to know the two were Infected.
How could Father Preston not see how badly things had twisted out of control? How could he possibly justify what Ruth saw as pure slavery? The Infected had heard the dog. They were trying to twist in their harnesses. She could hear their teeth snapping and grinding in a futile effort to feed. They began to moan with anticipation and Ruth knew she didn’t have much time. She ran to the car and opened the door. Bernard opened his eyes as cooler outside air hit him. He was covered with sweat and drying blood. Ruth helped him scoot forward out of the car.
“Can you walk? Just a little way, we have to get out of here.”
He nodded but swayed as he stood. Ruth supported him. The Infecteds’ cries were growing. She gave one glance at them, wishing there was something she could do, but she knew there was no time. She pulled Bernard down the alley as quickly as she could. The dog bounded after them. The Infected began shrieking as Ruth helped Bernard into the only dark place she could find.
Chapter 21
The subway was pitch black and the smell of sewage mixed with seawater was overpowering even after almost a decade. The dog whimpered beside them. Ruth scratched him gently behind the ears. “Don’t worry boy, we aren’t staying long.” She could hear shouts above them and decided the mouth of the stairwell wasn’t the best position. If they were in luck, the guard station might still have its emergency med kit and she could treat Bernard while they waited out their pursuers.
“Stay awake Bernard, we’ll have you feeling better soon. We have to move now, but not far.” She fished the music player out of her pocket, thankful she’d remembered to hook it to her little solar panel days before. The screen lit and a cast a dull gray circle around them. The tiled floor was damp but free of standing water. Ruth felt better until she heard a stealthy scrabbling from a distant wall. She flashed the player toward the sound, but it was far too weak to light up anything at a distance. She wondered what else had taken refuge in the subway station. She looked down at the dog, but its hair lay flat and it thumped its tail gently. Trusting the dog’s instincts more than her own, she pulled Bernard down the slippery tunnel.
The gray circle began reflecting in shimmery waves a few feet farther in and she felt cold water seeping in through a hole in her shoe. She struggled to keep her footing as rubble and debris cropped up in little piles below the water. Bernard was slow, but he seemed steady enough. By the time they reached the bank of turnstiles, the dog was swimming in the muck and Ruth was wet past her knees. The garbage and weeds turned it into a kind of pulpy rot instead of water and she made sure to keep Bernard’s injured hand far above the surface.
They followed the line of turnstiles toward one wall. The dog began to growl and swam frantically wide of the metal posts. There was a bang and a howl close to Ruth and she jumped. Bernard perked up and tried to back away. Ruth lifted the music player. The feeble beam showed her a bone-thin arm laced with old scars and then a hand with long jagged nails, three inches of filthy, cracked claw. There was another howl and the arm was replaced by a naked chest, so emaciated that Ruth couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It smashed against the other side of the turnstile, stopped by the locked metal bar. The Infected leaned forward, its mouth gaping with want. The weak light got lost in the hollows of its face and made it seem a skull with a thin covering of vellum or plastic. Its mouth was bloody with the last prey it had caught and its skin peeled and
puckered with old bites and infections. Ruth wondered what it had been eating. Rats, she supposed. It was too weak to push through the bars and not intelligent enough to go under, but she still didn’t like it being there. It might attract other, worse things.
She nudged the dog up some shallow steps and away from the Infected. The water sank away to ankle level as they reached the guard station’s roll up door. In the first few chaotic days of the Plague there had been several attacks in the subway. The government assumed that was where the Plague started or that the subway’s dark tunnels attracted the Infected for some reason. In reality, it had only been more noticeable on the subway because of the number of people crammed into the trains and waiting on platforms. But rumor and panic had won, and the police had shut down the stations very early. The guard station’s security gate had been closed and locked. That it was still intact gave Ruth some hope that the emergency kit was still inside and whole. But how was she supposed to get the gate open?
She let Bernard lean against the wall. He was pale and beginning to sweat even in the cold dark of the subway. Ruth knew he was going into shock. She had to stop the bleeding. The little music player’s light flicked around the metal gate, the dirty tile wall, the turnstiles and screaming Infected. She turned to the other side of the gate. The light shone on an old, greasy fire extinguisher that still hung on the wall.
“I need you to hold this, Bernard. We’re almost there. Just hold this so I can see the lock.” She handed the player to him and fumbled in the dark for the extinguisher. It was heavier than she expected, but she had adrenaline on her side. She swung it as hard as she could, and missed. It shattered a few of the tiles on the wall with a loud crunch, but that was it. She pulled back and tried again. It slammed into the metal slats, making a dent. She was swinging too hard to keep it up too many more times. Her arms shook, but she swung it again anyway. Another miss. Bernard’s hand wavered and he slumped slowly into the wall. The dog whined and the Infected kept shrieking. She couldn’t concentrate.
Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) Page 17
