Fair Haven

by Red Lagoe

  "I trust you," she said and Marcus believed her.

  Dumb girl. She stretched and yawned, laying against his chest, thankful to have his protection, and Marcus wasn't sure how to break it to her that she'd have to go solo soon.

  The rain continued on, and her head became heavier against his chest. The hush of the falling rain sang like a lullaby and Kayla fell asleep.

  They could have been at the quarantine camp by now, if it weren't for this storm—and Kayla's damn feet. She slept hard, with the dead weight of her head on Marcus's chest.

  His opportunity to slip away presented itself.

  22

  The Lab

  John and Melody approached a gated portion of the fence along Horace Avenue while the rain continued to dump on them.

  "I used to climb onto the roof of that car in the woods when I was a kid. It used to be my place. My safe place. I thought we could hide..."

  There was no excuse, and she couldn't find the words to explain why she crawled in there, but she didn't need to, because John seemed to understand.

  "I had a place like that," he said. "It was a small vacation house in a little hamlet in upstate New York. Dark skies. Great observing. It was my place."

  She nodded and looked through the rain toward the lab. The gas station down the street was charred and blackened, and still smoldering from the night before.

  "Guess we know where that explosion came from," John said.

  The top two floors of Marcus's building were visible behind it. Four dead bodies were face down on the pavement between the tracks and the gas station, and confusing feelings of hope and dread overwhelmed her. "His lab is that building behind the Gas-Stop."

  She stared, unwilling to find out Marcus's fate. She had to stall.

  "So what happened to your little place in New York?"

  "After this happened," he gestured to his leg, "she talked me into selling it and moving here. Jackie. She said it was so I'd be around more people, and it'd be good for my PTSD, or some bullshit, but it wasn't. What she really wanted was to live near some guy out in Madison that she had an online thing with."

  "You gave up your place for her and she took everything?"

  "Yep. I couldn't prove that she cheated. She claimed I had psychological issues that she couldn't handle anymore."

  "Did you?"

  "Maybe. I'm certainly not the same person she married, but I wasn't some axe-wielding psychopath either. She got the money from the sale of that house in New York. She got almost all our stuff and even took Sinead."

  "Sinead?"

  "The cat. She had a bald patch."

  "Like Sinead O'Connor?" Melody smiled.

  John nodded. "You know, I've been wondering how she's doing through all this...but if I think like that, it'll drive me insane." He said.

  "Your ex? Or your cat?" Melody snickered.

  "Mostly the cat," John laughed.

  "We should keep moving," John said, looking through the gate, manipulating his prosthetic to give his sore flesh some relief. "How many people work in there?"

  "I don't know. But the day Marcus went into work, a lot of people stayed home because of what was happening. He said that he and Greg were staying, but I don't know about anyone else, or how long they stayed."

  The street was barren. Vacant buildings and cars lined the path to the lab, and the blood stains from the bodies washed away with the heavy rain. Melody's heart was already pounding within her chest from running, but it intensified as she looked through the downpour toward the lab.

  They slinked though the creaking gate and crept down Horace Ave.

  A parking lot stood between Melody and his building. Marcus's car was one of the few left in the lot. Seeing his car brought both fear and hope crashing into her. She felt sick to her stomach.

  There was nobody in sight. Not even the infected. The eerie emptiness put her on guard as she moved to the front doors of the building with John. With her hands cupped around her face, she looked through the glass to see an empty lobby.

  They left the pounding of the rain behind them, and moved inside, dripping puddles onto the floor. The tiles were smeared with dried, bloodied footprints, but there were no people in sight. She wanted to scream out for Marcus, but refrained. As their shoes squeaked across the floor, John rectified the position of his rifle across his back, and unhooked the strap on his pistol holster. He readied his knife in his hand.

  "He works upstairs."

  "Let's sweep the whole building," John said. "We'll start with these hallways down here, then head up the stairwell."

  They worked their way through the empty first floor halls with their flashlights, but found no one. Everyone on the first floor had gotten out—the infected and the uninfected. John opened the heavy door to the stairwell and shone his flashlight inside.

  "Hold this," he said, and Melody held the door open while he traded his knife for his pistol.

  "Hold this? Can't SEALs handle their weapons?" Melody said.

  "Fine." He took the weight of the door against his body. "I was just letting you help."

  "Don't pander to my need to be useful," she gave him a sour face.

  He smirked then called into the stairwell.

  "Hello." His voice echoed off the cinderblock walls, which triggered sounds of imagined footfalls stampeding toward them, but Melody controlled her fears and the false noises ended. It was silent.

  Climbing the black stairwell with nothing but a flashlight beam to guide them brought a new level of fear. Melody held her breath and stayed close to John for the seemingly endless ascent. Each foot step a sound, a vibration for the infected to follow. But none came.

  Once they were on the second floor, the stench of death became stronger. They worked through a maze of cubicles, finding four dead bodies along the way. Their faces looked familiar, but Melody didn't know most of the people that Marcus worked with. With each corpse that she approached, her heart thumped a little harder in anticipation of finding him.

  By the time they made it to the third floor—Marcus's floor—hope slipped further from her. They entered the open office area with the floor to ceiling windows, and anxiety took hold of her.

  A white lab coat laid crumpled on the floor ahead, and Melody approached it with trepidation. It was torn and smeared with blood. Her heart swelled and she held her breath as she knelt down to pick it up with trembling hands. The embroidered name on the pocket read, Dr. Hill.

  The floor shifted beneath her and reality spiraled. She didn't know what to make of Marcus's bloodied torn coat in the middle of the floor, but she imagined the worst. His lab was down the hall—mere steps away. She held onto the coat and sprang up, dashing down the dark black hall that led to Marcus's lab, shining a beam of light in search of him.

  "Marcus," she said down the hallway into the silence.

  "Damn it," John said as he followed.

  The hallway reeked of necrosis as she jogged with her bat on her shoulder. This time she wasn't freaking out—she was ready to fight, fully aware of her surroundings and ready to wail her bat into the skull of whoever got in her way.

  She found the door to the lab and slowly cracked it open as John rushed up behind her.

  "Marcus?" She whispered and shone her flashlight into the blackness of the lab, sweeping the light across the counters and microscopes. There was no response.

  John placed his hand on her shoulder to hold her back from entering, but she pulled away.

  She stormed through the lab with her flashlight, searching for him and calling out his name. Her white column of light shone on every wall and every corner. The vending machine was busted open and candy wrappers overflowed the wastebasket. He had been there for a while. A sign of a struggle—the microscope was busted on the floor.

  In an instant, she imagined all the scenarios that could have led up to him being attacked, wondering if he had fled to the roof for safety.

  Melody rushed back toward the lab entrance and tripped over a ro
lling chair in the middle of the room. She regained her footing, but ran into John in the darkness. He held her by the arms while she struggled to get away. Heavy, panicked breaths escaped her.

  "I have to find-"

  "I know," John interrupted with a calm voice, "but you're losing your shit."

  She could hear her own breathing as she huffed violently. John was right, and she hated that. She needed to calm down. This kind of frantic behavior would get her killed, or worse, get John killed. John's steady flashlight beam shone beyond her as she took a breath and tried to regain her senses.

  "I'm good," she said, nauseated, but ready to move on.

  John kept his stance in front of the lab door.

  "This is as calm as I'm going to get," she said as John inspected her face with his flashlight to be sure.

  "Chuck, you can't just clear a building on your own. We do this together. Communicate."

  John opened the door, aimed his flashlight into the hallway, and a large body lunged at him out of the darkness. Dr. Carter, with necrotic skin around his collarbone, grabbed at John, releasing a growling moan as he tried to bite into him.

  John grabbed him by the throat, shoving him against the hallway wall in one swift movement. Melody held her flashlight on Dr. Carter as John stabbed his knife into his chest.

  Dr. Carter was unfazed. He continued to chomp his teeth at John, despite having a knife in his heart. John kept him pressed against the wall, then pulled his nine mil to blast a hole into the side of Dr. Carter's head. The tall beast of a man was immobilized and dropped to the floor.

  "Did you see that?" John asked, pulling his blade from the man’s chest. "Right in the heart. It didn't even slow him down."

  They made their way through dark rooms, up to the fourth floor, and all the way to the roof, but found no sign of Marcus. The four story building was clear.

  Melody sat against the floor-to-ceiling window in the corner office on the top floor, manipulating the fabric of the torn, bloody white coat between her fingers. A long, candy-apple red strand of hair was attached to the coat, and she pulled it away.

  She searched the pockets and pulled out his car keys. His wedding band fell to the floor. She snatched it up and stuffed it in her front jeans pocket, wondering who the red hair belonged to. It was not the first time that Melody questioned his fidelity, but this time she didn't care enough to let it bother her.

  She held the coat up to her nose in an unlikely hound-dog attempt to catch a scent of some woman, but she could only smell the necrotic odor left behind from the infected, so she dropped it to the floor. She brushed off her knees and stood up to look out the window.

  "I knew that guy back there," Melody said about Dr. Greg Carter. "I only met him once, but he seemed like a good guy."

  Melody had met Dr. Carter at the company picnic over the summer. Dr. Carter ran around with the children in a water gun fight while his wife confided in her that they were trying for a little one of their own.

  "What if he went to that quarantine camp?" she said.

  John crossed his arms ready to protest.

  "I know," she interrupted before he could speak, "It's not likely that I'll find him."

  John hung his head with obvious discontent.

  "I have to try." She was desperate. "He could've gotten out of the coat."

  "Is there a reason your husband wouldn't be wearing his ring?"

  "He has to scrub before handling certain materials sometimes. He takes his ring off occasionally. That's not unusual. What are you getting at?"

  John sighed. "That quarantine camp might not even be there anymore."

  "I know."

  "We couldn't see beyond the trees on the roof to get a look at it from here, and based on what we saw last night—no lights coming from that direction, it's likely gone, or overrun."

  John's words were sharp and to the point.

  "I know," she snapped with disdain.

  "Do you think he would go there?"

  "Maybe."

  "Without coming to get you first?"

  His blunt words sliced through her, but he had a point. Marcus was either dead, or he left her behind. All of the potential things that could have happened to him whizzed through her mind.

  "He may not have had a choice," she tried to make excuses. "He could've succeeded with the vaccine and taken it to the quarantine zone."

  John paused to stare back out at the dead town.

  "We should get out of here," he said. "We need to go somewhere more remote...maybe the mountains."

  "I'm not an idiot," she whispered.

  "I don't think that you-"

  Melody cut him off with pain in her voice, "I know we shouldn't be running around town in search of someone that is probably not alive. I know that we should get the hell out of here, but I won't be able to live with myself if I give up on him."

  "Certainly seems like he gave up on you," John said.

  "Well then that would be on him, but I can't do that."

  "Are you fucking serious?" John put his hands on his head and paced.

  "I have to try," she said.

  "You did try."

  "You should go. I'll stay in town and look for him. We can meet up with you somewhere later. I know a place in the mountains."

  "That's not happening. I'm not leaving you here."

  "We can take a boat," Melody said.

  "There's a good chance that all the boats around here have been taken out of the water for the winter. Those that had boats on the water are probably already gone by now," John said. “How far do you think our neighbors made it, towing that Carolina skiff? They couldn’t get around the corner without that lady getting her throat ripped out.”

  "You're right. Almost everyone pulled in their boats a few weeks ago to winterize. Except Marcus's parents. Marcus's dad was certain we'd have a warm spell, so he left the boat in the water."

  "Someone could've taken it by now."

  "Maybe not, though. Unless Marcus took it," she laughed, but John stared at her without a smirk.

  "He wouldn't do that," she said, unsure if that was true.

  Nervous and hopeful, she grabbed a pen and notepad from the desk to draw another crude map of Fair Haven.

  "To get to the lake from here, we would have to either go straight through town—which is no good for obvious reasons—or we could continue to follow the tracks to the outside of town and cut through Gilmore's fields."

  She spoke fast, without giving him a moment to argue. "It just so happens, that these tracks lead right to the high school." Her eyes met with John's to gauge his response—he appeared leery of her plan, but she continued talking. "We can check out the quarantine area from afar..." Melody drew a u-shaped bump on her map. "...from Make-out Hill. We hop off the tracks just before the school and climb the hill to-"

  "Make-out Hill?" John said, cutting her off.

  “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “I have no intentions of making out with you, Chuck. Isn’t it called Mariner’s Hill?”

  “Not to the people that grew up here...”

  Her heart raced and she stumbled over her words, scrambling to convince him of her plan. "If there's anything sketchy about the quarantine zone, we can cut through Gilmore's land toward the marina—and hope the boat, or any boat, is still there. It's only a mile or so from the high school to the cottage. Then, we can boat to the northwestern-most point of the lake up near the mountains. Like I said, I know a place up there."

  John looked up from the map to make eye contact. They were both hunched over, and their faces were close enough to smell the rain on each other's skin.

  "You were serious? You know a place?" His voice was skeptical.

  "It's way up in the mountains—very secluded. It should be safe. It's my grandfather's old cabin. I inherited it."

  "Why didn't you say anything about it before?"

  "I couldn't trust you."

  "And you do now?"

  "Not really, but what the h
ell do I have to lose?"

  "Well there you have it."

  John smiled and fist-bumped her shoulder. Melody knew that he had no interest in checking out the death camp that authorities were calling a quarantine zone, but he at least understood why she needed to go.

  Melody stood up before the window, soaking wet, triumphant in her negotiation with John but the glass reflected a broken woman staring back at her, barely holding the pieces together.

  She knew that Marcus was gone for good, but until she checked the quarantine zone for him, she was not about to mourn him. Her jaw tightened and teeth clenched to fight back the will to cry over the likely loss of her husband.

  John stepped closer to her side and reached his arms around her body to lock her within his embrace. She scowled but remained still, with her arms dangling to her sides, as his firm arms wrapped around her. She nearly knee-jerked him in the beans, but refrained.

  Awkwardly giving in to the intimacy, she leaned into him and allowed her face to rest against his strong shoulder. Melody was never one to hug, but that embrace was a powerful one, and she was relieved to know she had a trustworthy friend to rely on.

  "I'm OK," she insisted, backing away from John. "Don't get all sentimental and stuff."

  "I don't do sentimental. I figured since you're a girl, you'd want to hug or some bullshit."

  She glanced into those steel blue eyes piercing through her, and that was all it took. She thought she had gotten over her crush on John, but there she stood with her entire body screaming for his attention. Her sudden attraction to him again shocked her, and she imagined throwing all of her reservations to the wind and charging at him with a kiss, but she couldn't.