“I’m a creeper, Buddy. I’m a fucking creeper.” He fell back to the floor, stared up at the ceiling, and cried.
Chapter Twenty
* * *
Clay sat up in bed in a back bedroom at the camp house, his back propped up by a pair of pillows. He was shirtless and wore a large bandage over the bite wound on his shoulder. Coy and Danny, their faces pale, sat on a pair of chairs pulled up next to the bed. Brianne sat next to him on the other side. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she sniffled often. One hand clutched a wad of tissues; the other was entwined in one of Clay’s. Jiri leaned against the closed bedroom door. His face was impassive, but Will knew him well enough to pick up on the grief he carried.
Will moved to Clay’s bedside and put a hand on Brianne’s shoulder. “How are you feeling, son?”
“Other than the obvious, you mean?” Clay asked, with a gallows-humor grin.
Will nodded and smiled back as best he could.
“Fine, really. A little thirsty.”
Danny and Coy both jumped up and reached for their canteens.
“I’vegotwaterrighthere,” said Brianne. She pointed at a pitcher and half-full glass on the nightstand.
“Your thirst is probably a precursor to the fever,” Jiri said.
“Or maybe he’s just thirsty,” Coy snapped, glaring at Jiri.
Will caught Danny’s eye across the bed and Danny gave him a slight nod. They would need to keep an eye on Coy.
Clay drained the glass back and returned it to the nightstand. “Thanks, hon.” He smiled at Brianne and squeezed her hand. “So,” he said, looking from Will to Jiri. “How’s this work?”
“The fever kicks in anywhere from twenty minutes to four hours after the bite, depending on its severity,” Jiri’s voice was dry and clinical. “Fever leads to aches, chills, vomiting.”
Brianne cleared her throat and shifted her gaze to a picture on the far wall.
“Brianne honey, we’re going to be talking about some...hard things,” Will said as gently as possible. “You may not want to hear it. Why don’t you let Danny take you out to sit with Becky and Tara awhile? We’ll get you right back in here.”
“No.” She said curtly. “I’m staying here.”
Jiri looked at Will, who nodded. He continued, “When the fever spikes, you could have convulsions and suffer from delirium. When it breaks, you’ll probably have cramps. Your muscles will ache and your joints will burn. You’ll have a terrible, unquenchable thirst.”
Coy slapped the wall with an open palm. “Come on, man!” He cried. “You’re talking like this is preordained, like it’s written in stone. You don’t know, none of you know for sure what happens. We’ve seen four people get bit and turn, and one of those was a little kid. So don’t act like you’re an expert about what’s going to happen here.”
“After the outbreak began, I spent a couple of weeks volunteering at the campus infirmary,” Jiri said in a calm voice. “At first when people got sick, the infirmary sent them to the KU Medical Center in the city. But the last four or five days, when things were really turned to shit, they’d handcuff bite victims to the bed, wait for them to turn, then take them out and shoot them. I’ve seen twenty-three people turn.”
He gave Coy a level look; Coy met his gaze with an angry expression, then dropped his eyes.
“Anyway, all the water in the ocean won’t quench your thirst and whatever you drink you’ll just throw back up. If you throw up hard enough to rupture something, and a lot of the patients at the infirmary did, you’ll vomit blood.” He glanced at Brianne, who was looking steadfast at the floor. “Eventually the fever will burn you up and you’ll die, if dehydration and blood loss don’t kill you first.”
Clay gave a wan smile. “So basically you’re talking about a repeat of spring break my sophomore year.”
Jiri laughed and patted the stricken man’s arm
Clay grew serious. “How long until I turn?”
“There’s no way to know. I’ve seen it happen in twenty minutes, I’ve seen it take eight hours. Never longer than eight hours.”
“So, Will... what are my options?”
Will blew out a noisy breath, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Your options are to do whatever you want. We’ll put in a truck and you can go with us for as long as you are able. You make the call on how and when this ends- not me or anybody else.”
Clay nodded his understanding.
Will clapped his hands together. “Hey, why don’t we all get out here and give Clay and Brianne time to be alone and talk about things. Clay, you holler if you need anything, son.”
Will stopped in the hallway. “Spread the word- we are wheels on the highway at eight in the morning, with or without Clay. Also, the women need to keep eyes on Brianne. I’m not losing another distraught survivor. Coy, you come and go with me.”
He led his son out onto the back deck where he leaned in close and looked at him kindly. “How are you holding up?”
“Okay, I guess,” Coy said, looking over Will’s shoulder.
“I wouldn’t be okay if my friend was laying in there dying. I’d want revenge.”
“How do I get revenge? The thing that killed him is already dead. Twice.” He looked down and kicked at the deck.
“That’s correct, Son. That’s correct. I wanted to hear you say that.” His voice grew firmer. “I’m gonna need you to look me in the eye, Coy.” The boy looked up and it heartened Will to see sorrow in his eyes, rather than anger. “There’s nothing you can do here, Coy. Nothing you can kill, catch, trap or shoot. You can go out tonight and kill a thousand creepers, and Clay will still die tomorrow. You can yell at everybody in the group, you can put your fists through the walls, you can cuss your Mom. And Clay will die tonight or tomorrow.”
Coy’s eyes were welling with tears.
“You can’t undo this hurt, Son. Nothing can make it better. And anything you try to do to make it go away is just going to put you in danger or alienate people in the group. You are my son and I love you, and I won’t let anything happen to you. That includes letting you harm yourself. I’m not going to do it. So you and me are going to sit down on this deck and talk. And we’re not going inside until you tell me you understand you have to let go of this. You just have to take the hurt, Son.”
They sat side by side on the top step. Coy leaned in against his dad and talked. Two hours passed by before they went in the house.
Coy went to see Clay as soon as he came back in the house. Thirty minutes later, as Will prepared his bedroll next to his already asleep wife, he heard Coy call his name.
“He wants to talk to you,” Coy said.
Clay and Brianne were pretty much as he had left them. He had a flushed face that he didn’t have before, and she had fresh tear tracks on her cheeks.
He looked up at Will, his countenance grim. “Are you sure it’s okay if I ride along a while?” he asked in a flat voice.
“I’m sure you can ride with us for as long as you’re still drawing wind,” Will answered. “Two things to keep in mind, though. The highway is clear halfway into Buffalo. I don’t know what the roads are like beyond that, or how far we can drive.”
Clay nodded his understanding.
Will turned his attention to Brianne. Sadness clouded her features and she looked exhausted. “Brianne, sweetheart, would you give me a minute to talk man-to-man with your fella?”
Brianne looked at Clay with a questioning expression. He smiled and squeezed her hand in answer. She got up from her bedside, kissed his cheek and left, giving Will a pat on the arm as she passed.
Will took Brianne’s seat beside the bed. “How’s the pain right now?”
“Not bad. A little achy. Don’t ask me about the thirst, though. I’m sitting here thinking about all the beers I drew at the bar. So help me, I’d let a gaggle of silverback gorillas ass rape me for one tall, frosty Coors Light.” He sighed disconsolately.
Will nodded, at a loss for words. He decided to just l
et the gorilla comment fly by. “Son, from what Jiri says, you’re going to in a lot of pain, pain I can’t do anything about. You don’t have anything to prove to anybody. You should ask yourself what you want Brianne’s last memories of you to be.”
“Do you mean sitting here in bed as opposed to writhing around on the ground and screaming like a loon?”
Will chuckled. “I’m not sure I’d put it that way but something like that, yeah.”
“She’s pregnant.”
Will sat there, thunderstruck.
“She’s pregnant and I’m going to spend every possible second at her side.”
“Okay then,” Will found his voice. “I’ll send her back in. Do the boys need to finish getting you two loaded?”
“Everything is in the Ford, except for our clothes for tomorrow and our weapons.”
“Okay then”, Will repeated. “We roll at eight.” He stood, smoothed Clay’s comforter, and left the bedroom.
Brianne was waiting outside in the hall. He took her by the arm with care and led her away from the bedroom door. “I’ll give you an hour to be alone together, then I’m sending someone to sit with him in case he dies during the night.”
“No! Will,” she argued.
He cut her off abruptly. “No, that’s final,” he said, his tone curt. He looked down at her stomach. “He told me. He told me, and I’m not leaving a pregnant woman in there when there’s a chance he might turn.” He chopped the air with a hand. “That’s it. One hour.”
He drew in a big breath of air, let it out shakily, and walked back toward his bedroll.
Danny slept sitting in a chair leaned back on two legs and supported by the wall behind him. Though sound asleep, he could wake in a moment’s notice. He learned to sleep in that position during the long, cold nights in the birthing barn, where long periods of inactivity were interspersed with frenetic bouts of activity.
He heard a woman’s voice say his name. His eyes flew open and in the muted light of the nightstand lamp, he saw Brianne with her head on Clay’s chest.
Her muffled voice was thick with tears. “He’s gone.”
He jumped to his feet. “Let’s get you up off of him, then.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. He just went.”
“Still. Come here.” He pulled her up by the arm and she rose with no complaint. She hugged him close for a long moment, then he led her to the door. He had to call out to Becky several times before she came padding down the hall with Coy in her wake.
“Go with Becky,” he told Brianne in a gentle voice. “I’ll have him cleaned up for you when you see him again.”
She nodded wordlessly and followed Becky back up the hallway. He and Coy approached the bed.
“Let me do this for you, okay Bubba?” Danny said.
Coy nodded, never taking his eyes of Clay’s body.
Danny used both hands to turn Clay’s head toward the wall. His knife was sharp; it slid in Clay’s ear to the hilt and back out with ease.
“I’m going to go clean this blade and get some towels,” he said. He thought it would be best to give Coy time alone with his friend. He looked back as he shut the door. Coy, his shoulders slumped and eyes cast downward, was crying for the first time since Danny met him.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
The morning broke gloomy and cold, to match the mood of the group.
Coy and Danny dug a grave for Clay out under the pines in the backyard. Jiri said a few words over the grave site, and they marked it by placing Clay’s boots over it with his melee tool planted in the ground between them. Will watched Brianne as Jiri spoke. She glared at Justin, who stared wistfully at Clay’s two-sided tool. Thankfully, he didn’t ask if he could have it; Will wasn’t sure he could move fast enough to stop Brianne from scratching his eyes out if he did.
Judging from the thunderclouds on Coy’s face all morning, Will’s talk with the boy didn’t stick. I need to keep him close, Will thought.
After the burial, Danny approached him with a problem. They had no way to communicate between cars as they drove.
“The only thing we can do is stop the whole caravan and get the driver of each truck out for a roadside meeting,” Danny said.
Will pursed his lips and shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t know. Are you thinking walkie-talkies or something like that?”
“Unless you can get the cell towers working again then yeah, they would have to be hand-held. Hand-held radios. That’s what they call walkie-talkies now. Ever since the Korean War.”
Will ignored the jibes. “Ask around, see if anybody has an idea. All I can come up with off the top of my head is hitting a police station or an electronics store. And it will have to be farther down the road. We’re going to blow through Buffalo without even touching the brakes.”
“There were a lot of creepers in town last time, huh?”
“Too many for me to stop there again. Plus the crazy pastor that pointed a crossbow at us. Who knows what that was about? I don’t want to find out.”
They started to go their separate ways when a thought occurred to Will. “Danny,” he called.
Danny stopped and looked at him.
“Rural fire stations and ambulance barns on the outskirts of towns. Two places we may be able to get radios.”
Danny gave him a thumbs up and continued on his way.
The drive to the outskirts of Buffalo was uneventful. The caravan picked its way through the intersection where the wreck took place and weaved around the other random cars left on the road. They got out of their trucks at the last crossroad before the collapsed bridge and gathered in a semi-circle facing Will.
“We’re running through this little town hard and fast,” he told them. “Stay right on the truck in front of you; don’t get spread out. If the dead get in your way try to maneuver around them but hit ‘em if you have too. Don’t stop for anything. We will take a little jog out past this creek, then come back to the highway. After that, it’s a straight shot through town. If you get stuck or have to stop, for God’s sake don’t go honking your horn. Flash your lights and keep flashing them until someone comes back for you. Do not get out of your vehicle for any reason. Are we all clear?”
He got some halfhearted nods in response. Usually when they laid out plans a sense of excitement or fear filled the air. This time the faces looking back at him were etched with sorrow. Grief infected the group, and its members weren’t paying attention.
“Hey!” He slapped his hand on the hood of the nearest truck in an attempt to snap them out of their funk. “Does everyone understand the plan?”
The second time he asked, he used a louder, angrier tone, and they all nodded or murmured they got it.
“Good.” He scratched the back of his head and tried to tamp down his frustration. “One more thing. When we get through town, we’re not stopping. The next little town down the highway is Bolivar. We’ll press on until we are two or three miles outside the town, or we come to a place where the highway is blocked, whichever comes first.”
“How far is that? To the next town?” Tara asked.
“Not far. A little less than twenty miles.”
“Dad, look,” said Coy, his tone excited. He pointed behind Will, back toward town.
A dozen creepers from the town shuffled toward them, approaching the creek from the other side. An angry murmur swept through the group and Coy unstrapped his rifle from his shoulder.
“Let’s take them out,” he said, his mouth fixed in a sneer.
“Hold up, Coy.” Will tried not to let his irritation show. “Before we start shooting up the countryside, let’s try to get a fix on what’s going on here.”
"Some creepers need put down, that’s what’s going on here,” Coy snarled as he raised the rifle. Before he could aim Danny, moved in front of him and clubbed the barrel with his forearm, knocking the gun out of Coy’s hands. The weapon clattered to the ground.
“What the fuck, Danny!” Coy’s sneer
turned to a look of surprise and he took a step backward.
Danny was on him cat-quick, bumping Coy’s chest with his own and glaring at him, their noses a fraction of an inch apart.
“We fire when Will tells us to fire, you little shit!” Danny snapped.
“Boys!” Becky’s tone was distraught and she hurried towards them, looking to Will for support. He cut her off and took her by the arm, shaking his head at her. When he pulled her back to his side she resisted at first, then relented.
“What, are you, a creeper lover now?” Coy yelled. “You’ve killed more of those things than anybody here!”
“I kill them when Will tells me to.” Danny moved even closer to Coy, daring him to react.
Coy smoldered and kept opening and closing his right hand. Will didn’t think he had the nerve to swing on Danny, who was older, heavier, and a long-time bar brawler with a mean streak when events turned serious.
“Those things killed Clay!” Coy shouted, pointing at the dead gathering across the creek.
Quick as a snake strike, Danny shoved him in the chest with both hands. Coy was stout, but he stumbled backward and almost fell.
Danny bounced back in front of him before he recovered. “The creeper that got Clay is gone, Coy. I put it down. And you know what? You could put down a thousand of them and Clay will still be in the ground. You can put down ten thousand and Clay will still be in the ground. Do you know what will happen if you put down a million of them? Clay’s still gonna be worm food.”
“Stop it,” Coy whispered. His cheeks were flushed and he no longer looked Danny in the eye.
“You can put down all of them in the country, and Clay will be woodchuck shit come spring.”
“You shut your mouth!” Coy curled both hands into fists at his side and spittle clung to his chin.
“Or you can keep fucking around, not using your head, going off half-cocked until you get bit and we bury you right next to him. Is that what you want?”
Journey Page 17
