“How old is she?” I finally managed to ask.
“She's eight,” the preacher said.
“No,” I said again. “I don't understand,” I said dumbly. “The Virus isn't contagious.” I had nothing better to say, but all of the evidence in front of me pointed to the opposite.
Andrew spoke again. “I wish that were still true.”
Bending down, he opened a small hatch on the bottom of the door. Looking closely at it, I could tell it was not part of the original structure. It had been added recently.
The preacher slid the bowl of oatmeal through it quickly, pulling his hand back out, and shutting and locking the hatch.
Inside the cell, Kylie attacked the food like an animal, and I shuddered.
If The Virus had evolved and was now contagious, we were in a lot of trouble. Just when we were really starting to get a handle on things, this could throw everything out of balance. And even if there was a cure like Cray said, what if it wasn't effective against this.
I shook my head in disbelief. “So she was bitten?” I managed.
“Yes,” Andrew said, “but probably not in the way you're thinking.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kylie was bitten by a dog, not a Fester.”
“What?! She got this from a dog?”
Angie took over for the preacher. “We have a nice garden,” she said “out of reach of the Festers. It gives us a lot of what we need, and we do have some livestock here too.”
Andrew said, “Chickens and pigs mostly. We converted an old wing of the hospital to house 'em.”
“But we know we're pretty safe during the day,” Angie continued. “The Festers usually keep to themselves during the daylight, so we'll go out into the town in small groups and get stuff we need. Kylie loves blackberries, and we don't grown them. But we know of a patch close by here, and we'll go out picking sometimes.”
I looked at her, but she still gazed at the floor, never looking up.
“We were out a while back to pick some, and we walked up on a dog. Just a medium sized dog really. A mutt. He looked harmless, but I think Kylie startled him, and he took a quick bite at her leg. It barely broke the skin, and we ran it off. Apart from that, it didn't show any hostility.
“Later that night, Kylie got a bad fever and was having a hard time breathing. I took her to see Haley. Have you met her? She’s our doctor. She gave us a little medicine, but thought it might just be the flu or something. At the time, we really didn’t think it was related to the bite. The next morning, I woke to Kylie sitting on top of me.” She pulled aside the neck of her shirt revealing a mostly-healed bite wound the size of a child's mouth.
“I didn't catch it, The Virus I mean,” she said, and her tone was heartbreaking. “I screamed for help, and we managed to get her down here and locked up.”
She went silent, and I thought about everything she'd told me.
“So,” I said, “the dog was carrying The Virus but didn't show any signs, and Kylie became infected from the bite but didn't transfer it to you.” This was really bad news. “How is that possible?” I asked, almost to myself.
Andrew cleared his throat and placed a comforting hand on Angie’s arm. “You're guess is as good as mine.”
Chapter 19
Cray
The problem with pain is that it's exhausting. I sit on a leather sofa, my head laid back, and concentrate on ignoring it. Although I could wish for it all day long, I don't have the ability to turn off pain receptors like Mira does. However, I have found that it is possible to deal with a lot more than most people think, but it's an issue of mind over matter, and the worse the pain, the harder it is to ignore.
Take a headache for instance. Nothing too terrible there, and I can deal with those easily enough. A freaking gunshot wound to the shoulder, however, not easy to ignore. In fact, with more extreme injuries, there’s really no such thing as ignoring it, but I can usually tolerate most of what I’ve been through. But today, I’m having a rough time. It doesn’t help that the only thing I can think about is Mira, getting back to her, and figuring out some way to force Damian to save her. I don’t even want to consider the possibility that he may have been lying about his ability to do this. Either way, I’m hurting like crud. Maybe I can get the doctor to get me some more lidocaine, or at least get Ming to knock me out again.
Also, I'm still reeling from the revelation that The Virus is now contagious. As if we didn't have enough bum luck, now we have this on our hands too. Any optimism I had left is quickly bleeding away.
I’m about to get up and see if I can find Ming, when a small head peeks around the corner and I make eye contact with the wintry blue eyes of a young boy. He quickly ducks back behind the wall, then slowly peeks around again.
Despite my discomfort, I can’t help but smile. “I’m not going to eat you, kid,” I say.
He moves around the corner now, slowly, and with caution. His blue eyes are as big as baseballs, like he’s never seen anything like me before.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” he says.
I’m not sure how to respond.
“You’re the Sweeper. The one from New York, right? The girl said your name was Cray. Your name was all in the news before I came here.”
Uh-oh.
“Did you really try to kill Cedric Archer?” the boy says.
I decide to tell the truth about the encounter in the tower and leave off the truth about my current excursion.
“No,” I say simply.
The boy visibly relaxes and I’m amazed at his ability to take my word for it. “I knew it, he says. Since I found out, I’ve read everything I could find about you. You’re like the most awesomest Sweeper ever. You can kill twenty Festers with your bare hands. I knew you couldn’t be a traitor. I knew it had to be a mistake!”
The last thing I was expecting was hero worship.
“Hold on, kid. I can’t kill twenty Festers with my bare hands. At least, not all at once.” The boy says nothing, but by his expression, I know none of his enthusiasm has waned. “You must be Toby,” I say.
That’s almost too much for him.
“You know who I am?!”
I laugh again. “Yeah. I overheard your name from Andrew.”
“Oh,” he says, now looking a little deflated. I guess he was hoping for a more extravagant explanation. “So how did you end up here? And what happened to you? You look terrible!”
“Thanks kid. I feel terrible. It’s a long story though, one you’re probably better off not knowing.”
“Is it like secret spy stuff or something?” he asks eagerly.
“Something like that.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a Sweeper ever since I was little. Do you think I could be a Sweeper someday?”
That draws me up short. “I thought you guys didn’t believe in killing Festers?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “They don’t,” he whispers. “But I’m not so sure. I mean, it’s what you do, right?”
“Not anymore. I kinda lost that job with the whole Archer thing. And besides, I found out something. Something really important. Do you want to know what it is?” I say conspiratorially.
His eyes light up and he nods vigorously and I smile in spite of my pain. His enthusiasm is catchy, and I find I’m feeling a little better, enjoying his company.
“I found out there’s somebody who knows how to cure them.”
His eyebrows wrinkle as he processes this, turning it over in his mind. Finally, he seems to come to a realization. “You mean, they can be like regular people again?”
“Right. In a way, they’re still regular people. Just very sick.”
“So,” he says slowly, “you’re saying it’s not good to kill them anymore?”
“I think that would be kind of unfair if we could help them. What do you think?”
This time his answer comes quickly. “Yeah, that wouldn’t be very nice. I guess my friends were right.” He hesitates slightly. “So,
you’re girlfriend’s really pretty. She’s been real nice to me while you were brain dead.”
My hazy mind takes a second to catch up and I laugh. It hurts. “You mean Ming. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s just a friend. My girlfriend is very far away.” My eyes sting suddenly with tears, and I blink them away, forcing myself to think on the moment. “My girlfriend is sick, too. I’m trying to get back to her.”
Toby looks at his shoes. “Is she a Fester?” he says softly.
“No. No, she’s not. She got…hurt.”
“Worse than you?”
He looks back up again, his expression concerned.
“Yeah. Worse than me.”
He nods his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cray. I hope she gets better.”
“Me too.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mira.”
He looks at me thoughtfully. “Does that ever get confusing? Ming and Mira? That would confuse me.”
“Not really. And I’ve never been around them at the same time anyway,” I say.
His cheeks grow red and a mischievous smile plays across his lips. “Well, if Ming isn’t taken, do you mind if I ask her out?”
This time I laugh really hard. Needless to say, I regret it, but I can’t help myself.
“Knock yourself out, kid,” I say. “But don’t you think she’s a little old for you?”
His gives me a beaming smile. “Dude, it’s the apocalypse. There’s not a lot for her to choose from.”
Toby keeps talking until I have to start dropping hints that I really need to rest. Over the next couple of days he keeps me company when he’s not shadowing Ming, which is most of the time. But she gets a kick out of the attention, and the kid’s really sweet. I start to look forward to the times he comes by. Maybe it’s his innocence, or his lack of guile, but it helps me to relax.
I’m still chomping at the bit to get out of here, but Ming is insistent I rest some until I’m better. She keeps saying I’m no good to the world dead. Well, that’s my generous interpretation. What she actually keeps saying is, “Stay in the bed and rest, loser, or else I’m going to smother you in your sleep.”
Chapter 20
I'm awestruck by what I see beneath me.
I stand at the window of a skywalk connecting the main part of the building to the upper roof of the parking deck. There used to be similar walks connecting to each of the four tiers of the deck below this one, but according to Andrew, they destroyed them. One of the most amazing things they've been able to accomplish is the sizable oasis covering most of the topmost deck across from us.
When they first moved into this place as a refuge, they knew they would need to grow their own food. Some of that was done indoors when viable, but through cautious and painstaking work, they moved tons and tons of rich sod to the top deck, packed it tightly, and created a massive crop growing field, high out of the reach of Festers and animals. It's an amazing feat, and I'm supremely impressed by it.
According to Andrew, they sealed up the entryways between decks with huge blockades that have held for years. In fact, he said the Festers in the area have seemed to learn they can't be breached and no longer attempt to break through them.
I let my eyes wander down the side of the parking deck, peering into each empty level in turn until I get to the lowest deck, and that is where one of the most frightening and troublesome things I've ever seen resides.
In the blinding daylight, the shadows at the edges of the openings are broken enough to see the writhing mass inside. Bodies, Festers, lie on the floor, and not just one or two or twenty. Hundreds. The whole bottom floor is filled in what appears to be a form of huddled hive sleep.
Andrew has been speaking, and I was distracted. I force myself to pay attention.
“Fascinating, isn't it? It only took us the first day being back here for all of them to show up and give us the scare of a lifetime. That's why we had to do all the reconstruction on the deck. Not just for our crops, but to keep them below.
“And they don't try to get in the building?” I say.
“Not really, other than the occasional stray. Don't you see, it's their way of protecting themselves during the light? They all hole up in one place together and sleep until dark, or whatever it is they do that's like sleep. But it sure looks like sleeping to me.”
“I agree,” I say. Despite the twisting, and turning, and rolling, for the most part, their eyes appear to be closed from this distance. I think that's exactly what they're doing. That also goes a long way to explain the disappearance of the Festers every day in the cities. They find places of refuge to sleep, to wait for night. It's just another revealing piece of the puzzle that implies there's some remnant of intelligence, or at least instinctual survival, hidden deep inside them.
Strange that the ones at Damian’s fortress didn’t sleep during the day. Could it be that trapping them inside, away from sunlight, affected their sleeping rhythms? Or maybe it was the isolation. Maybe they only slept when they were together, not separated in cells.
I think again about how uniformly and without remorse we just started killing them off as soon as possible. But the small uninfected population was terrified, and fear can cause you not to think clearly, not to take chances. At the time, and even now, the general consensus is that's it's us or them. But the cure changes all of that. They're no longer just animals.
Which brings me back to the terrible truth that now there actually are infected animals, and unlike the Festers, they can transmit The Virus through biting.
Andrew speaks along the lines of my thoughts.
“We never wanted to kill 'em,” he says. “Course I already told you that, but after we saw this behavior, we knew even more it was wrong. I believe there's something of their humanity left in there. It doesn't seem right to snuff out what little light is left inside.”
“So what do you do?”
“About them? Nothing really. I don't know what we can do. We've tried to tell people in the cities from time to time what we think, but most of ‘em think we're all crazy religious nuts. We ain't got no scientists here to try to work on cures and stuff like that, and even if we did, I'll bet we don't have anywhere near the setup it would take. So mostly, we just trust God to take care of us, and take care of them.”
“That seems like wishing into a well,” I say.
If the preacher is offended, he doesn't show it.
“Does it?” he asks. “Son, if life has taught me one thing that I know beyond all doubt, it's that God is real, and He's full of love. He takes care of all things in His time.”
Some deep, primal part of me wants to believe that. Wants to believe so badly that God is somewhere looking out for us, but I just can't reconcile that idea with all of the bad I've seen.
Andrew is a simple country man, but he's not stupid, and he's one of the most genuinely kind and trusting individuals I've ever encountered. I want to know what he thinks, but I'm careful to approach him with gentle steps so as not to be offensive, and I find myself surprised by that, because I would usually walk over just about anybody's feelings if it suited my argument.
“I just don't understand that,” I say finally, quietly. “Isn't that what people have always wanted to know? How can a loving God be real and let so much bad stuff happen? I just can't figure it.
Andrew speaks without pause, and I know from his quick response that this is something he has pondered long and hard for a very long time.
“I understand that skepticism,” he says. “I really do. But if I may be so bold, I think the logic is fundamentally flawed.”
I stifle a chuckle, not because I'm being rude, but because I'm not used to people telling me my logic is flawed.
“You see, here's what I've figured out,” he continues with soft conviction. “God had a choice. He could give us free will, or make us robots. Nobody wants to be loved by a robot, cause that ain't real love. Real love is a choice, and God, above all else, wants real love. But in giving us fr
ee will, He knew He was giving us the ability to hurt ourselves and others. So instead of denying us that, he gave us that free will and promised that when things did go bad, He would always be there to help us, if, and this is a big 'if', if we want Him to, because He's not going to force Himself on nobody.”
We remain quiet for a while, each lost in his own thoughts. From the corner of my eye, I see an easy smile on Andrew's face, and I envy his ability to be at rest despite the crummy world we live in. What would it be like to have that kind of peace?
Far below, movement catches my attention as a Fester jerks suddenly and then becomes still.
“So you don't believe in any kind of killing?” I say.
This time, the preacher doesn't answer right away. There's a pained look in his expression, and I wonder if he's ever killed anyone before.
“I wouldn't say that,” he says at last. “Defense, protection of the weak, I guess there are times when it’s warranted.”
I look out over the small city laid out before us and think of my past. “I've killed indiscriminately,” I say. “Festers and men. Does that make me evil?”
The preacher looks pointedly at me, and I see a gentleness in his eyes that almost breaks my heart.
“Cray, I can't judge your actions or point any fingers at you. I don't know what you've done, and I don't want to know. What I do know is this. You've got a good heart. I think you try to do what's right by you. There's no doubt you're a tough cookie, but from my short time around you, I know I would trust you with my life and the life of my people.”
After that, we stand in silence for a long time and I weigh his words, turning them over and over in my head.
“If you knew all I've really done, I don't know if you'd still feel that way,” I say.
“I know who you really are,” he says. “I know what you've done. Toby told me.”
I guess I'm not really surprised. “Toby doesn't know all the truth. I did try to kill Cedric Archer. That's why I'm here. That's how I got shot.”
The Night Sweeper: Assassin: A Zombie Conspiracy Novel (The Sweeper Chronicles Book 2) Page 14
