The Remaining: Allegiance

by D. J. Molles

  Whatever was in the tunnel had reached the door now, and it was pounding on the other side. But instead of holding, as solid steel should, the hatch was buckling and caving in like thin sheet metal. “Open the goddamned door!” the manic voice screamed at him. “Open the door and come back with me!”

  Gashes in the steel opened, then yawned like many growing mouths. Fingers came through—the hands of dozens of people. They reached for him and their flesh parted under the rough-cut edges of the steel and blood poured out of them. The fingers and hands ripped and tore and pressed at the openings, forcing them wider and wider so that Lee could see dark shapes moving in the red light of the single remaining emergency light in the tunnel.

  “Open the door and come back with me, Lee! Come back to where you belong, you murderous piece of shit!”

  Lee took a breath to scream, but his teeth began to fall out, cluttering his tongue, dropping down into his throat like coins down a well. He spewed them out, gagged, and he could not find his voice.

  A face appeared in the jagged hole that was directly in front of him. He knew that it was Father Jim, but even as this recognition pounded over him, nauseating and head-splitting, Father Jim pressed his face into the hole in the steel and his skin tore open along his cheekbones, pulling away and revealing bloody bone underneath.

  Father Jim glared fiercely, wildly. “You sinner! You sinner! You sinning piece of shit!”

  Teeth still falling out, all Lee could do was cough and spit them to the ground at his unmoving feet.

  “You wanna quote the Bible, you blasphemous sonofabitch?” Father Jim’s marred face screamed. “Here’s a psalm just for you: ‘The Lord has forsaken you, and you are in want. He maketh you to run like the hounded animal you are. Your still waters have turned putrid. You have lost your soul.’ ”

  More teeth than Lee could have possibly had were coming out of his mouth. Like vomit made of bones. They clattered out of him, piling up on the ground. If he could have spoken, what would he have said? Would he beg for mercy? Would he beg for the thing he would not give others?

  “ ‘Yes, you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death,’ ” Father Jim continued, voice booming and venomous all at once. “ ‘And you will be terrified of the evil because it has pervaded every part of your sorry soul. You are alone, and no can save you. There is no banquet to be prepared, because everything you have has been taken by your enemies. Your head is anointed with the blood of others, and your cup is filled with shame.’ ”

  Lee could not breathe, and he collapsed to his knees.

  The hands coming through the door were reaching, lengthening, and they grasped him now, pulling him toward the door. Toward doom. And the red light in the tunnel beyond was the glow of fire. And everything he smelled was the stench of death.

  Father Jim’s breath, impossibly close to his ear: “ ‘Surely your violence and brutality will follow you all the days of your life, and when you are finally slaughtered like a dog, you will go straight to Hell forever. Amen.’ ”

  Lee woke up, air coming through his clenched teeth.

  Angela was there. Her hand was on his chest. She was looking at him with concern, but also a bit of a tensed look, like she was trying not to show pain. He looked down and saw that he was holding her wrist in a death grip.

  He released her, all at once sitting up and folding himself up against his knees.

  Relief. That the dream was over, and also that the agony in his head had dissipated. Like the headaches were some physical manifestations of bad things wanting to be excised. Pressing to make their way out of the cellar and into the house.

  After a few breaths, Lee rubbed his face. “I’m good. Headache’s gone.”

  Angela nodded. “What was the dream about?”

  Lee shook his head. “Nothing. Didn’t really make any sense.”

  “Oh.”

  The naked feeling would not depart, though. Lee found himself looking to make sure that his rifle was still lying on the ground beside his bedroll. His knife still strapped to the belt around his waist. He relaxed and let his head fall backward, staring at the ceiling. His neck muscles stretched in a way that was painful but also wonderful.

  The window in the office showed a cloudless blue sky.

  He looked around and realized Deuce was not with them. Lee didn’t bother asking where the dog had gone. Deuce was given to bouts of patrolling. Like the dog had some internal clock that forced him to run the perimeter of wherever he was at. Lee knew that he had probably slipped out of the room when Angela had entered, and was out in Camp Ryder, trotting the beaten path along the inside of the fence. Smelling for danger. He would return in his own time.

  Angela sighed. “When are we gonna talk about what’s going on with you?”

  “What’s going on with me?” Lee thought he sounded convincing enough.

  Angela raised her eyebrows. They stared at each other for a while. But Lee was ceaselessly stubborn in ways that Angela was becoming intimately familiar with. Some of them were good, making him reliable, steady, loyal, honorable. But other times he could tell it truly bugged the shit out of her that getting the truth out of him was like wringing water from a rock.

  “Okay.” She slapped her thighs. Settled back against the wall and crossed her feet out in front of her. She pulled her blond hair out of her face and pinned it behind her ears. “You don’t want to talk about what’s going on with you.” She held up a hand, index finger protruding. “I’ll just say one thing and then we’ll move on.”

  Lee nodded. “Say it.”

  “It’s eating you alive, Lee.”

  … it has pervaded every part of your sorry soul…

  Lee forced a smile that came up grim and sullied. He took her hand in his, holding it tight. “It’s my problems, and no one else’s. Not you or Tomlin, or Abby or Sam. Just me and mine. And I won’t pawn them off on anyone else. Period.”

  Angela’s jaw stuck out. Clearly she wanted to say more, but she had promised one thing to say, and she had said it. She looked down at the ground, as though resetting the conversation. When her eyes rose again, the expression on her face was more neutral. “Camp Ryder, then.”

  “Camp Ryder,” Lee echoed.

  “Bus is dead. Jerry is dead. Mr. Keith is dead.” She raked a single fingernail along her right eyebrow. “Camp Ryder needs a leader. And this isn’t an accusation, Lee, but you and Tomlin haven’t exactly been there over the last few days. I don’t think either of you have said anything to these people outside of closed-door meetings up here.”

  Lee’s tongue touched a patch of flaking skin on his lower lip. “You asking me to step up?”

  “You. Or Tomlin.” She nodded vehemently. “Everybody feels like we’re just floating in the breeze right now. I mean, I know that you’re distracted with the mission to blow the bridges and making sure everything there goes off, but there’s still these people right here. If you don’t have the time for it, maybe Tomlin needs to be the one to step up.”

  Lee tilted his head. “Angela, me and Tomlin aren’t going to lead Camp Ryder. You know that, right?”

  Confusion. “What? What do you mean?”

  “That’s not what we do. We’re not supposed to come into groups of civilians and take them over. That’s not what the mission…” He trailed off, his mind catching up to his mouth.

  “Lee, there is no mission anymore. You said so yourself.”

  He took a deep breath. “The point remains the same, though. We’re not taking over Camp Ryder. We’re not taking over leadership of anyone. We’re here to help. I was here to help Bus, and I’ll be here to help whoever else takes control. But it’s not going to be me.”

  “Lee…”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes,” Lee nodded. “What about you?”

  “Leading Camp Ryder?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” She gave a violent shaking of her head. “Come on, Lee. Half these people
don’t even know me.”

  “And yet you talk to them. They talk to you. You have your finger on the pulse of the camp. You just said yourself how everyone was feeling. How’d you come across that information, Angela? Mind-reading?”

  Angela couldn’t really refute what Lee was saying, but she wasn’t able to accept it, either. “No. No way. I can’t do that. I got other things to worry about. I can’t… I mean… I just can’t.”

  Lee stood up laboriously, taking his time. “Angela, whether you like it or not, you’re already doing it. If you didn’t say another word about leadership, in a week, you’d be the ‘unofficial leader’ of Camp Ryder. Give it a month, and you’d be just like Bus. No one ever chose him to do the job. He fell into the role.”

  “And someone hated him so much that they killed him in cold blood over it.”

  That gave Lee pause.

  “We could…” Angela seemed to be calculating something. “We could hold an election.”

  Lee’s immediate gut reaction was hell no. He didn’t want this opened up to an election. God knew what sop they would elect if given the chance. He didn’t want just any Joe Schmoe in Camp Ryder to suddenly be running it. He wanted someone he trusted to run it.

  Angela was good, Angela was solid, Angela had the trust of the people of Camp Ryder more than she knew. And Lee was comfortable with her. He could deal with her. And she respected the things that he needed to do. What if someone else came in, and became another Jerry? Another proponent of sequestration, cutting Lee off at the knees…?

  Cutting you off from what, Lee?

  From your mission? Your nonexistent mission?

  So what if the next guy doesn’t want to expand. Doesn’t want to go out there and meet other groups of survivors. You don’t have supplies to give them, and even if you did, would they want to be a part of what you’ve started? Directly opposing the acting president of the United States of America?

  It was all academic anyway. He did not have the supplies. There was no reason for him to gather other groups of survivors. If someone else took control of Camp Ryder, Lee would be little more than a military advisor. Perhaps he would train volunteers to act as a military arm of the camp. But he could not support anyone.

  “Okay,” Lee said, slowly. “Do you think that’s the best option?”

  Angela considered it for a moment. “Yes. I do.”

  Lee finger’s combed his beard and he was about to speak, but a knock at the door held any further conversation.

  Lee regarded the door with some slight irritation, as though the inanimate object were responsible for the interruption. He glanced at Angela and said quietly and quickly, “You’ve got your work cut out for you on that, Angela.” Then he turned back to the door. “Come on in.”

  The doorknob rattled, almost hesitantly. Like it had sensed his irritation and wanted to cut its losses. But the door swung up anyway, somewhat slowly. At first he had thought that it would be Tomlin at the door, but even just the character of the way the door opened told him this was not the case.

  The person that stood in the door made his whole body clench.

  Then the ghastly expression on the person’s pale face made his stomach plunge.

  “Jenny.” Lee’s voice was low.

  She stepped through the threshold, both hands clutching a notebook. Jacob’s notebook. The one that Lee had given her for some interpretation because he couldn’t wade through the language of Jacob’s medicalese. Her gait was stiff. Her whole body tense. Her countenance beaten.

  She shook the notebook. “I read it.”

  Neither Lee nor Angela said anything.

  She took two more paces into the room and extended the notebook out to Lee like she just wanted to be rid of it. He took it from her, and then her hands retreated to the pockets of her jacket. Her eyes remained on the notebook until Lee turned and tossed it onto the desktop.

  The sound of it slapping down seemed to wake her up. “You want Captain Tomlin in here for this?” she said, hollowly.

  Lee’s jaw clenched.

  Angela spoke up. “I’ll get him.”

  TEN

  NOTES

  THE FOUR OF THEM stood in the office of the Camp Ryder building. A place where bad news had been traded many times before, with Lee in the exact same position: Standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the dirty linoleum floor. The peeling sides. The dingy, worn-out blacks and whites. An image synonymous in Lee’s eyes with the hard, knotted feeling in his innards.

  To his left and right were Angela and Tomlin. Angela had taken a seat on one of the folding chairs that inhabited the room. Tomlin leaned on the wall, near the door, his hands clasped behind his back. In the center of all of them, Jenny had also taken a seat, but she seemed more relaxed than the others. Not in the sense of being at peace, but relaxed as you are when you concede defeat.

  Jenny folded her hands in her lap. Looked up at Lee and seemed bitter and old and used up. “You already know what the notebook was about, right? Why Jacob was keeping it?”

  “It’s his notes,” Lee said, a guessing tone to his voice. “About the infected he had captured.”

  “The pregnant one?” Tomlin asked.

  Both Lee and Jenny nodded.

  Tomlin’s foot wiggled. “I was under the impression that he had killed her before he left the hospital.”

  “He did,” Lee said.

  “Then why are we worried about his notes on her?”

  “Because he told us to.” Lee rubbed the corners of his eyes. “He clearly felt that there was something in the notebook that held bigger implications for us. But I couldn’t make out some of the stuff he was talking about. I figured Jenny, with her medical background, might be able to translate.”

  Tomlin made a dubious face.

  Jenny cleared her throat. “Over the course of the week or so that he was studying her, he recorded daily—sometimes twice daily—her vital signs, as well as those of the… baby.”

  Lee grunted at the use of the word.

  Jenny picked at her fingernails. “He also made some notations about his previous research. Drew some conclusions based on what he’d found at the onset of the plague. It seems, from what I can tell of his writing, that he did not believe that a female who was pregnant before being infected could continue to carry a viable pregnancy after the onset of symptoms.”

  Lee and Tomlin both frowned at Jenny.

  She clarified. “Back in June when all of this happened, he recorded incredibly high temperatures in subjects dealing with the onset of symptoms. It screwed with their metabolism in a way that he wasn’t really able to explain. Or didn’t bother explaining in his notes. A pregnant woman who runs a fever that high—I’m talking about fevers high enough to cause brain damage—is at a very high risk of losing her pregnancy. Add in the factors of the hyperactivity, violent behavior, and… the things that they eat… and it’s highly unlikely that a woman pregnant prior to being infected could carry that pregnancy to term. There would just be too much going on in her body for the fetus to be able to adapt.” Jenny wet her lips. “In Jacob’s opinion, it was so unlikely that he called it ‘virtually impossible’ at several points in his notes.”

  “Okay,” Tomlin said, hoisting himself off the wall. “So the female subject he captured got pregnant after the infection. I don’t think that’s too hard to believe. It seems like these infected are forming small colonies. They still have the instinct to hunt, gather food, protect themselves. It stands to reason they would have the instinct to procreate.”

  “Yeah.” Jenny nodded. “That’s all very true.” She leaned forward, put her hands in her pockets. “But if you accept that it’s a virtual impossibility that the subject Jacob had captured was carrying a pregnancy from before the infection, then you’re basically forcing yourself into a different fucked-up conclusion.” Jenny looked briefly angry as she said this. “The fetus’s heart rate was sitting steady at about a hundred and fifty beats per minute. He nota
tes that this is high for what he assumed was a three-month-old fetus, but not outrageous given the possible fetal stress, and taking into account biological changes that the plague might have caused. But one of the last tests he did was due to the subject showing some vaginal bleeding. He did an ultrasound, took record of the heart rate—still around one-fifty—and he measured the fetus, which he hadn’t been able to do before. He recorded the fetus as approximately fourteen inches long.”

  Jenny stopped there.

  Lee looked at her, couldn’t quite read her expression but could see that he was supposed to draw some sort of conclusion from it. Then he looked at Tomlin, saw the same confusion on the other man’s face that he suspected was on his own, and turned his gaze to Angela, who was apparently the only other person to understand what Jenny was driving at. Her hand was covering her mouth. Eyes sharply narrowed.

  “What?” Lee asked. “What does fourteen inches mean?”

  “That’s a six-month pregnancy,” Angela said flatly.

  “Soooo…” Lee extended an index finger, as though he were trying to connect two dots that he couldn’t quite find. “The fetus was conceived before the infection?”

  Jenny looked noncommittal. “If you call the pregnancy survival during the high-grade fever of initial infection a virtual impossibility, then no. Jacob cites in his notes that vaginal bleeding is possibly indicative of the subject’s womb unable to keep up with the fetal growth. And the fetal heart rate…” Jenny trailed off, rubbing her temples, then raking her hair behind her ears with a suddenly unsteady hand. “… Well, he calls it abnormal fetal growth rate.”

  Tomlin bit his lower lip and hissed air through his teeth, making a steady ffffffff sound.

  Angela’s voice was clinical. “If you accept that a pregnancy wouldn’t make it through the infection, then you have to accept that the subject got pregnant sometime in the last three months, four if we’re being generous. Which means the baby she has is twice the size that it should be.” She pressed her fingertips together until the knuckles were white. “Is there any reason to believe that this is pervasive among all pregnant infected? Or is this just some freak, isolated incident?”