by D. J. Molles
The rest was a lot of crying and sobbing and profuse apologizing and screaming for Mom (but not Dad, for God’s sake; Marie, don’t call Dad, he’s gonna kill me!). To this day Julia remembered the sick feeling of surprise, right along with the sick feeling of knowing you were in deep, deep trouble. She remembered the taste of dust in her mouth and the sharp pain in her forehead where the cordless drill had slipped off and pegged her in the head. And she remembered the concept of the pain in her arm, but the memory of it was so far away that it didn’t seem so bad.
But this was bad.
This was different.
This was here and now.
Their little convoy had fled the water tower and hauled ass down the highway, looking for an out-of-the-way place where they could find some refuge. Like a little herd of hunted deer, trying to find a place to bed down. Like refugees they ran, looking at places as they drove by at fifty miles an hour and deciding in the span of seconds whether it was safe or not. Could they stay the night there? Were they far enough away? Would they be able to hear the infected horde if they came upon them?
And like those running deer, they followed the paths of least resistance and they instinctively went with the things that they knew. For the entire time they’d been on the road, small industrial parks were the safest places that they’d found. They were usually set out of the way of the main highways, a lot of them had fences to keep people out, and most of them were built simple and hard to get into. The factories and warehouses were ideal places to pull out of the way, to roll up big bay doors where trucks had once loaded themselves down with pallets and crates of whatever the hell the place manufactured, and to pull their little convoy in and disappear for a while.
So when they saw the familiar buildings—most of them corrugated steel, white or tan in color—the convoy seemed to yank itself off the road and into that little out-of-the-way business park. The Marines got out and posted coverage while Harper, Charlie, Dylan, and the other remaining few found the quickest way into the safest compound and got their vehicles out of sight.
Julia didn’t remember much of any of this. She remembered looking out the window of the Humvee and seeing scraggly, leafless trees flying by, and beyond that just dark night sky, clear and cold and brittle and brutal.
And Kensey.
He stayed with her. She held on to him with abandon and he took the pain of her fingers digging into his arm and shoulder without a single wince or hiss of pain. He just kept telling her she was going to be okay, to hold on, and that they were finding a safe place. At first she told him to shut the fuck up and quit trying to soothe her, but he ignored her and continued on.
“It’s okay. You’re all good.” He went on and on.
And eventually it worked.
But when the panic left, the pain came on stronger.
They had moved her into the building and by the cold, halogen light of a few flashlights and lanterns, Sergeant Kensey pulled up his medical pack beside her and began giving her broken and torn-up leg a closer looking over. He took out his medical shears and cut quickly and expertly through two layers of pants that she wore, exposing her leg. Julia had refused to look. She didn’t want to see that bone sticking out again. Even the thought of it made her stomach weak and her bladder and bowels fluttery.
Even through pain, weird thoughts found their way in.
Embarrassment because her legs hadn’t been shaved in months.
Really, Jules? That’s what you’re worried about?
She had clenched her eyes shut and refused to look at anyone or anything. She kept her teeth clenched down so hard that her jaw ached, but it barely registered over the throbbing in her leg. The ache in her jaw had a soothing quality to it, though. Like her screaming jaw muscles and teeth were little relief valves, letting off the pain like a boiler lets off steam. But not enough. There was still too much for her to get out.
After a moment, she felt a hand touch her head. It was ice cold, but in that moment, it felt nice. She realized she was drenched in sweat. Simultaneously hot and shivering. She heard Kensey say her name, so she opened her eyes. Kensey was crouched there at her head, looking down at her. Harper and Charlie were crowded in close. All their faces were half shadow and half harsh light. From the halves she could see, there was pity and concern.
“Julia,” Kensey said again. “Your fibula is broken. It’s sticking out of your skin. I have to set it, okay? I have to set it and sew up your leg or it’s going to get infected. It’s going to hurt a lot. Worse than it hurts now.”
“No,” Julia groaned. “That’s not possible.”
Kensey smiled wanly. “I can give you some morphine. I’ve got plenty.”
Julia bit her lip and shook her head, opting to close her eyes again. She didn’t like looking at them right at that moment. She wanted the blackness. The blackness helped her focus on other things. Like every other place in the world that she would rather be in that moment than lying on her back on the cold cement of some anonymous warehouse, getting ready to experience pain she could not comprehend.
But she wasn’t going to get knocked out.
“No, I don’t want the morphine,” she said.
“What?”
Her eyes shot open, suddenly angry. “I don’t want the motherfucking morphine! Fuck!”
“Julia.” Harper tried to step in.
Julia shot her hand out and seized someone by the ankle—she wasn’t quite sure who it was. “No! No! I don’t want to be out of it! I don’t want to be loopy on some fucking drug when the infected come for us! Fuck! Just get that shit over with! Jesus Christ, please stop talking about it and get it the fuck over with!”
She imagined in her head that the three guys exchanged a look—like doctors over a patient on a stretcher, trying to figure out how best to proceed with surgery. But whatever they communicated in those looks that she imagined, they never said shit to her. There was just a long, eerie silence. Like everyone was holding their breath. And she started holding her breath, too, because she could feel Kensey’s hands questing on down her leg, sending little lightning bolts of pain everywhere he touched. Eventually her lungs started to burn, so she started breathing in short, shallow little bursts through pursed lips.
Like Lamaze, for the baby you never had.
The baby that you’re never going to have…
What the fuck are you even thinking about right now?
Then she felt someone holding her arms down and she knew that it was about to happen.
No no no no no.
And then the worst thing she had ever felt happened to her. Her eyes shot open to blinding whiteness and the glare of hellfire with devils’ pitchforks in her leg and there was bone grinding on bone, and bone rending on flesh, and she was positive that she was in hell because this feeling was never going to end, it just kept on going and going and going and Jesus Christ just give me the morph—
Then she passed out.
She didn’t stay out, though. She kept coming to. It felt like floating up from the depths of a lake and breaching the surface, only to find the surface on fire, and then diving back under. When she was under she dreamt of things with mouths tearing at her and red beasts with horns and claws delving their talons into her legs and trying to burrow, burrow, burrow. In and out of these nightmares, she had no concept of time. She thought to herself that it couldn’t possibly take so long to set a broken bone, that there must have been complications, because she was so sure that hours had passed, but every time her eyes opened and she felt the fire engulfing her again, Kensey was still there, huddled over her leg. She tried to tell him to give her the morphine, but then she would be under with the red beasts and the biting mouths. Finally, she started trying to tell him to stop completely, but she had no more success forming those words than she’d had before.
When she came up from unconsciousness once, Kensey was done. He was seated by her side and it was quiet in the warehouse and dark save for one source of light—she couldn’t tell whether it was l
antern or flashlight. The pain had faded, but it was still heavy and all-encompassing.
“Am I okay?” She slurred the words together, picking her head up off the ground with some effort, the tendons in her neck standing out and her muscles shaking badly. She still refused to look down at her leg for fear that he had not set the leg and she would see that bone sticking out again.
Kensey looked at her with eyes that seemed tired and red. She realized that he’d been dozing off before she had spoken. He reached up and put a hand to her shoulder. “Yeah. I got it set. And your legs stitched up and bandaged.”
She realized that she was crying again. Her face already felt stiff and crusty from the tears that had dried, but being awake even for this short time had them coming again. She laid her head back again and stared at the ceiling, baring her teeth. She reached out and grabbed something—his jacket, she thought.
“Fuck it. Gimme the morphine,” she groaned.
She heard his voice very calmly tell her that she’d done good. She heard some rustling in his bag. Out of the corner of her vision she could see him lifting something into the light. A small bottle, upended onto a syringe. She turned her head and watched him draw a small dose out. She was surprised at how little there was in the syringe, but she didn’t ask for more. She felt like it was bad enough that she’d given in, and if he gave her a small dose, that would be best anyway.
She felt the pin prick on her leg—like hearing a raindrop in a storm.
“Will it knock me out or just numb… my…” Her leg felt incredibly warm. Not uncomfortably so, but like she was dipping herself into a bath. And it spread across her body quickly until she could feel it in her face, a warm, smooth sensation. After feeling the worst pain she’d ever felt in her life, this was the most blessed relief she had ever felt. The contrast was mind-boggling. “Holy fuck, that is strong stuff,” she wanted to say, but the words smothered out on her tongue and she slept.
Dawn found the Followers of the Rapture on the run. Deacon Chalmers’s camp had taken whatever could be carried in their hands and slung on their backs or thrown into the cars that they took. LaRouche stayed with Deacon Chalmers, as he had commanded, and they had left the camp mere moments after LaRouche had issued his dire warning.
LaRouche had quickly rooted around for a better rifle. He found a dead man with an M14 and an old GI belt with three spare magazines in a pouch. He dropped the crummy rifle in his hands and appropriated the superior rifle—a little weathered, but otherwise in good shape—and pulled the belt off the other man. It was a little loose around his waist and the pouch sagged it farther off his hip, but he didn’t have time to adjust it. Chalmers was yelling at him.
When he looked up, Chalmers was standing up in the passenger side of a 1980s model Z71 pickup, teal green in color. The man with the bushy gray goatee waved at him. “Let’s go, LaRouche! You’re driving us outta here!”
LaRouche left the dead body that he’d just plundered and ran for the pickup. The bed had some odds and ends in it. Food, and water in big, dirty-looking jugs, piles of damp-looking clothing, and a few rifles. He got in the driver seat and saw a four-speed on the floor.
Chalmers slammed his door shut. “You know how to drive a stick?”
LaRouche cranked the car and slipped it into gear. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Then drive. Don’t stop until I tell you to.”
And then they had driven out of camp and when LaRouche looked into his rearview mirror he saw a trail of cars and trucks and campers coming after them, clouds of dust kicking up in their headlights as they went. But there were also plenty of other people that were milling about in a panic, yelling to each other that they needed to get out of there, but not seeming to be able to find a ride. One of the men caught Chalmers’s pickup truck as it slowed to take a curve and vaulted into the bed. But all the rest were left behind.
By the time the camp passed out of sight, LaRouche could still see people there, and many vehicles still sitting, unstarted and abandoned, and he wondered how many people had simply run off into the woods. And he wondered about the women in the cages, and the pregnant ones in the tents, living in comparative luxury. Had anyone gathered them? Had anyone bothered to save them?
And what about Claire? Had anyone grabbed her before they all just fled the scene like criminals?
You did this, LaRouche thought. You told them what was coming. You told them that they had to leave immediately.
And if he hadn’t told them he was almost positive that things bigger and badder than a recon patrol of Marines were going to come after them. Artillery was going to start flattening the earth around them, tanks were going to roll, helicopters were going to start buzzing overhead, spitting flame and rockets and destruction. Once he had called it a beautiful sight, but now he was terrified of it.
He was right about that, wasn’t he?
They hadn’t abandoned those people for nothing, had they?
Because no matter what, bad things were coming for whoever stayed in that camp. Whether it was the Marines or the infected. They might have a chance against the infected, if it wasn’t a large horde. But fighting against the Marines was a losing proposition.
They drove for a time. LaRouche kept seeing pale shapes in the woods, just out of the range of the pickup’s dim headlights. But when he looked at them, there was only darkness, and he did not stop. Could not stop. They needed to get away from the camp and they needed to get far enough away that whatever came for them wouldn’t be able to find them again.
Shortly before dawn, LaRouche thought he heard the faint booming of explosions and when he looked in the rearview again, though it was difficult to see past the headlights of the vehicles behind him, he thought he saw a glow in the sky where their camp had been.
Maybe Chalmers saw it, too, because he told LaRouche to stop.
“Take a quick break, let the others catch up,” he said.
LaRouche put on the brakes. Behind them the convoy jumbled together as it rolled to a stop. An accordion collapsing in on itself. Chalmers opened his door, and LaRouche decided to do the same. The night had been frigidly cold, and it was still chilly, but a strong wind was blowing and it carried with it the smells of warmer, stormier weather.
No sooner had they opened their doors than people began to shout and yell back and forth. Questions were being asked, LaRouche thought, mostly of Chalmers. But though the organization was loose, even the Followers had ranks and divisions and a chain of command, and the leaders of squads that had survived were getting out of their vehicles and trying to make contact with their underlings, trying to get head counts and see what their strength was.
But Chalmers was not concerned with them, and he did not answer even the few questions that were directed at him. Eventually the panicked askers ducked out of sight, realizing that Chalmers was not paying them any attention. He was standing up on the running board of the pickup truck and looking out in the direction where they had come from, eyes on the sky.
LaRouche looked in the same direction. Still not quite sure whether that was the glow of fire he was seeing. He had the itch to continue on. His stomach was in knots, and it was burning again. He wanted to get moving again, though he kept scanning the crowd and looking for Claire.
“LaRouche,” Chalmers called. When LaRouche turned to look, the other man had a faint smile on his lips. His eyes shimmered in the glow of headlights and he looked zealous and full of righteous anger. “You were right. The Lord delivered us from the evildoers. And you were the mouthpiece that he spoke through.”
LaRouche stood there, hand on the cold roof of the pickup, speechless.
Chalmers reached a hand out and grasped LaRouche’s. His fingers were hard and calloused and oddly hot. The grip was ferocious and trembling, but the man that held him was still smiling madly. “The Lord rewards his true servants.”
LaRouche could only nod, his hand crushed in Chalmers’s vise of a grip.
He looked out again at the convoy,
overflowing with people trying to find where they belonged, jostling and bumping shoulders, and he thought, Where’s Claire?
Clyde drove the flatbed truck with the wooden cage on the back. The cab of the truck was meant for a maximum of six people, but there were eight crammed in. He drove fast, hauling over bumps and curves, always on the ragged edge of the sensation that the truck was going to tip over. Especially with all that jostling weight in the back. The thing was top-heavy. When he took curves hard, he could hear the women in the wooden cages, crying out in alarm. It grated at his nerves. He hadn’t wanted to take this truck. He’d wanted to leave them behind. But he rescued them and they were repaying him by squealing and complaining.
Ahead of him the roads were empty and the sky was gray turning to pale blue. The barren trees writhed in their rooted places along the side of the road and trash and debris and leaves skittered recklessly in front of the van, caught in the wind. To the southwest the sky was still dark as night, a column of black clouds coming in, its vanguard tinted pink by the rising sun. Pink and turning to orangey red.
Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.
Clyde looked to his right and saw his passenger, a thickly built, bearded man that Clyde recognized but whose name he could not seem to remember. Craig? Or Clegg, maybe? Whoever he was, he held a battered Soviet bloc AK with the buttstock on the seat between his legs and both hands clutching the foregrip. He leaned on it like an ancient sentry on a spear. Behind his grizzled, threatening appearance, his eyes were worried. The man kept checking the side-view mirror on his side of the vehicle. Perhaps looking for pursuers.
Would the Marines come after them like that? They seemed to hound and harass, but they’d never really chased them down before. The new guy, LaRouche, seemed convinced that the Marines were going to wipe them out indiscriminately, not caring whether they were chewing through men or women, innocents or combatants. But in Clyde’s experience, the Marines seemed to press, to prod, to poke, and every once in a while they gave a solid attack.
Except for the bridge, Clyde thought, feeling sick to his stomach.
