by D. J. Molles
He paused there. “I’m not sure what we were waiting for. We knew that if we tried to continue on that we would die or be killed or be eaten. But I think we didn’t want to give up just yet. We wanted to stretch out our last bit of time, maybe. Eke a little more out of our pathetic existence.”
Jacob smiled sadly. “Lucky for us, we saw Captain Mitchell and a little gathering of refugees getting the hell out of the city, so we came running to catch up with them. Almost got ourselves shot for it, they were so jumpy. And that’s how I met Captain Mitchell.”
Lee waited a few beats after Jacob had finished talking. “So why did Captain Mitchell send you down here? And what happened to everyone?”
“Captain Mitchell sent me because I know about FURY.” The scientist held up his hands. “That’s not to say I know everything. But I have what information we were able to get from studies prior to the collapse. I may be the only person in the country, maybe even the world, who knows what I know.”
“The samples…” Lee said.
“Infected subjects,” Jacob stated flatly. “We were able to capture several of them in the beginning and observe them for an extended period of time. Studied their blood and their biochemistry. Very… intriguing.”
“What have you learned?”
Jacob considered this with faraway eyes and Lee imagined that the scientists thoughts took the shape of spectrograph analysis and microscope slides and vials filled with tainted blood. “Let’s see… the FURY bacterium is a very interesting little life-form. It adapts and mutates incredibly quickly. In fact, it underwent some very extreme changes, even just in the time we were able to observe it at Fort Detrick.
“During its first stages of existence, the bacterium was much smaller, which accounted for the extremely high infection rates. You see, the smaller and lighter the bacterium is, the more likely it is to be aerosolized, which means it can attach to globules of mucus or spit coming from a person sneezing or coughing… even laughing or talking. So it acts almost like an airborne virus, at least in close proximity. In addition to its aerosolized mode of infection during most of the first thirty days of the outbreak, the bacterium could remain alive on a dry surface for upward of twenty-four hours.
“Of course, without the proper investigations, we’ll never know, but I think this explains the huge spike in infectivity we saw. I’m sure you can imagine the havoc that could be created by a single host individual, contagious in an airport, sneezing, coughing, wiping his nose, and leaving a trail of bacteria behind him for others to touch, which would remain infectious for a whole day.”
Lee narrowed his eyes. “We come into contact with infected subjects all the time. Very close contact sometimes. We’ve touched them, even got fluids on ourselves, but we’ve never been infected.”
Jacob wiped the corners of his mouth. “That goes back to the mutations that the bacteria went through. During the first month of the initial outbreak, the onset of symptoms was a little slower. It took almost a week for the infection to advance into its final stages—lack of reasoning, loss of language skills, hyper-aggression, et cetera, et cetera… What we see now from an infected host is nearly complete infection in the course of a few days.” He faltered. “Captain Mitchell took just about seventy-two hours. I believe this is due to the size of the bacterium. Over the course of the first month, June going into July, it mutated and grew much larger.
“From the last study I conducted, I observed the bacterium mutate into its larger form as it reached the end stages of infection, and then it continued to multiply until it inundated the host’s entire body.” For a moment, Jacob’s eyes looked feverish. “It does some very strange things to people at that point… But going back to your question about infection, after the bacterium mutates to its larger form, not only is it too cumbersome to be aerosolized, but it becomes hydrophilic, which means it cannot stay alive on a dry surface for more than a few moments. About a minute, actually.
“So the reason you’ve gotten the infected fluids on you and you haven’t been infected is partially because the bacterium is too large to absorb through your dermis, but also that the active bacteria in that infected fluid die within a minute of landing on you. At the current stage, or what I guess is the current stage unless it has mutated again, there are only four different methods of infection that I’m aware of. Blood to blood, blood to mucus, mucus to blood, and mucus to mucus. Generally speaking, mucus to mucus is the least likely mode of infection, requiring a gross exposure to infected materials. But anytime it involves blood, the chances skyrocket. It seems the FURY bacterium has grown to prefer that as a method of transference.”
“Which is why the bites infect so fast,” Lee said thoughtfully.
Jacob nodded. “Now, it stands to reason that if the infected host bites you in a place where your flesh does not have as many capillaries, such as in the hand or foot, and the bite is quick, there’s a chance the infection might not take hold. I personally haven’t seen an instance of a bite not turning into an infection, but it is possible.”
“So what about the rest?” Lee asked cautiously. “What did you mean when you said there’s nothing left north of here?”
Jacob looked down. “An unfortunate side effect of the infection. The infected hosts operate with very high core temperatures, and it affects their metabolism in a way I don’t quite understand. I’m no nutritionist, but I would venture to say that the infected hosts are burning through four thousand to five thousand calories in a day, if you combine the physiological stress that the infection places on their bodies and their increased activity levels. Others hypothesized that the bacteria were eating through the parts of the brain responsible for hunger and thirst signals, but if that were the case I believe the infected subjects would be eating themselves to death. Instead, you see them able to eat almost nonstop, and yet they suffer no physical consequences, which can only mean that the body is using every bit of what they eat.”
Jacob leaned forward, close to Lee, and looked disgusted. “I kept one of our captured subjects on a three-thousand-calorie diet for two weeks. At the end of those two weeks he’d lost thirteen pounds of body weight.” Jacob shook his head. “It’s incredible, really. But it’s also causing our biggest problem. The insatiable hunger combined with hyper-aggression and lack of reasoning skills is why we’re seeing the subjects turn cannibalistic. Furthermore, their digestive tracts are still the same as ours, and we are not made for digesting raw meats. This means that the infected host can eat pounds and pounds of raw meat in a day and still not be satisfied because his body cannot process it and get the right nutrition out of it.
“The problem with all of this”—Jacob began to pick nervously at his fingernails—“is the population density of the northeastern states. You see, with cities like DC, Baltimore, Boston, Philly, New York… back when people lived there… there were millions and millions of mouths to feed on a daily basis. But the food doesn’t come from those cities; it comes from the surrounding countryside. They ship it in. So what happened when everything collapsed? Everyone went out and looted the supermarkets and the grocers. In addition to that, the infection hit these places the hardest. Everyone all jam-packed in like that… it was just a waiting game. So now, that high population density has become a high population of infected subjects. And there’s no food for them to find, because by the time the infection even got its momentum up, every bag of potato chips had been looted. And there’s no food for them to kill, because there’s very little wildlife, and all the normal people like you and me have either been infected, or they’ve fled or died. So what do these hordes of infected subjects do?”
“They push out into the countryside?” Lee asked dazedly.
Jacob nodded. “Yes. But there are millions of them, Captain. They roll through like locusts, and they consume everything that can be consumed, plant and animal alike. They don’t leave anything behind. They just keep driving forward, stuck in an endless hunger loop.”
Finally, some
one besides Lee spoke up.
Harper raised his hand like a kid in class and spoke hesitantly. “Why don’t we just wait for them to starve themselves out?”
Jacob smiled, but it was defeated. “Do locusts simply starve to death after they ravage a farmer’s field?”
“No.”
“No.” Jacob shook his head. “Because they move onto the next field.”
“What if they move west?” Harper asked.
“They won’t move west,” Jacob said firmly. “The Appalachian mountains are a barrier for them. They’ll follow the path of least resistance, which is south.”
“Can we back up a second?” Lee sounded irritable. “How do you know the other captains are dead?”
Jacob met Lee’s gaze. “Captain Mitchell was in contact with them from his bunker. He spoke with Captain Connors several times. Connors was on the run from Maryland. Baltimore had pretty much made the entire state a danger zone. So he headed south and managed to link up with us. I actually… saw him die.” Jacob took a deep breath. “Captain Roberts from Delaware—we never made contact with him. But Captain Connors had brief contact with him before he got out of Maryland, and he was firmly set in his opinion that Captain Roberts didn’t make it.”
“So why did he send you?” Lee grated out, feeling queasy now.
“When things went bad in Virginia, Captain Mitchell put everything he had into protecting me… because of what I knew.” Jacob’s eyelids fluttered. “When he realized he wasn’t going to make it out, he left it up to me. He believed that if you had enough forewarning, you might be able to hold the line here at North Carolina and prevent a mass migration into the other southeastern states.”
Lee nodded slowly.
“So… what do we do now?” Bus began, but he stopped when Lee planted both of his hands on the map of North Carolina and hung his head.
“Jesus Christ,” Lee breathed. “This is a clusterfuck.”
“No shit,” LaRouche murmured and leaned up against the wall, hands in his pockets.
Lee raised his head and looked at the map, inches from his face. Roads with funny names, spider-webbing their way across the thin paper to small blobs of urban areas scattered about the state. Blots and splotches of blue for lakes, thin lines for rivers. The state was full of rivers and lakes…
Jacob began to look physically uncomfortable, and he leaned back in his chair, holding a hand to his stomach. A greasy-looking sweat broke out over his face. When he realized the others were looking at him, he smiled wanly. “Still dealing with this… stomach bug… Think I drank some bad water.”
Lee spoke into the map, his own breath hot as it swam back at him. “What you did was incredible, Jacob. You put yourself in harm’s way to come down here. But you shouldn’t be stressing your body right now. There will be plenty of work in the coming days, but now you need to rest.”
Jacob stood up silently and prepared to leave.
Lee turned around fully and stepped up to the man, placing both of his hands on his shoulders. “You did a damn fine job. Captain Mitchell would have been proud.”
Jacob smiled weakly. “Thank you.”
“Go rest.” Lee looked up at LaRouche. “Make sure he gets back okay.”
“Will do,” LaRouche said.
The two men left. As they walked through the door, Lee could see that Kip Greene was still standing outside. Lee blinked and felt his eyes moving sluggishly, burning with a need for sleep. The exhaustion of the last few days was catching up to him quickly now, even overpowering the aching hunger in his stomach.
Lee waved the man inside. “Mr. Greene, come in here for a moment.”
The man entered the room and Lee stepped back to the map, placing his finger on a dot called Sanford. “This is Sanford. I need to clear Sanford, because I need to access what’s on the other side of Sanford. It’s not an option at this time. It just became a necessity. Is that clear?”
Kip nodded slowly.
“We didn’t want to hardball you, but the situation has changed. We’ll give you a fair trade for your food. But I’m not gonna beat around the bush.” He looked the man in the eyes. “If you’re not going to at least let us operate out of your town while we retake Sanford, then I think we’re done talking.”
Kip didn’t respond directly. He considered this for a long time and through several noisy sighs, and then said, “Everything that guy said… is it true?”
“He has no reason to lie.”
“What are you gonna do about it?”
Lee looked at Harper and Bus. “Right now we’re going to gather our leaders together so we can figure that out. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like. Our committees can get interesting.”
CHAPTER 4
Gray Areas
Harper left the room as Lee, Bus, and Kip struggled to come to an agreement over the exchange rates between food and ammunition. In fleeting moments like this, Harper saw himself very clearly, as though the real him were still asleep in his comfortable king-size bed in his nice three-thousand-square-foot house in a pleasant little neighborhood, just dreaming a strange dream where he was no longer brokering million-dollar contracts between banking firms, but instead finagling over the price of corn versus 5.56mm cartridges.
But no…
This was his life now. This was his reality, however unreal it was. No more king-size bed. No more lawn service. No more three-piece suits and conference calls. His wife, Annette, was dead, and that hurt the most. His brother, Milo, was dead, and that was just a blank spot in his memory that he refused to think about. There were others he had known who had died. Miller, not least among them. And at times he would wake up at night crying, but he wouldn’t remember what his dream had been, only the residual feeling of a great loss.
In a way, the suddenness of the collapse was a blessing. It had acted as a severance between his old life and his new, so that it seemed to him at times that he had simply ceased to exist in that alternate universe and had appeared here in this one. Had the collapse dragged out over months and years, it would have been an invisible thread that forever tied him unmercifully to all the things from that aching hole in his subconsciousness that left him confused and teary-eyed in the early morning hours.
He was much the same man, though without the frills. His suits had been replaced with a military-issue green parka and a pair of old jeans. His Italian leather shoes had turned into old work boots. No more trips to the barber to keep him looking presentable—his nose hair was ridiculous, and Annette would have screamed if she saw the overgrowth of his back hair. He didn’t carry a briefcase anymore, just a rifle. He didn’t worry about interest rates; he worried about how much rain they were going to get this week, and whether he was going to get eaten by a pack of starving cannibals.
Yes, many things had changed, but for the most part, Bill Harper was still Bill Harper. The partner. The adviser. The go-to guy. But not the leader. Never the tip-top. Because he wasn’t comfortable there, and he wasn’t good at it. He couldn’t think clearly or objectively when he was in control of everything and everyone. Second-tier suited him just fine.
He exited the Camp Ryder building and headed down what they had dubbed “Main Street,” the wide, open dirt path that ran through the length of the camp, with the shanties crowding in on either side. There were nearly twice the people in Camp Ryder that there had been when Harper had first arrived. There were stragglers from other towns, people who had escaped the larger cities, refugees who never got evacuated. Most came in pairs, but a few were in small groups or family units. Some of them had skills and knowledge that contributed to the effort, but most of them had to be taught something to keep them occupied and useful. Jerry had a fucking hissy fit every time they let someone into the camp, whether that person had a useful skill set or not. But Jerry was smartly steering clear of Harper after he’d knocked him out.
A day after Harper had punched him, Jerry called for a public apology.
Harper told him to go fuck himse
lf.
So, that was one bridge burned.
He reached the Humvee and yanked open the passenger’s side door, then he sat down and palmed the handset. “Camp Ryder to Wilson or anyone at Outpost Lillington.”
A crackle. “Go-ahead for Wilson.”
“Hey, relay this message to Wilson from Captain Harden: You guys need to hold down the fort while Old Man Hughes and Professor White come in for a meeting. We just got some bad news and Captain Harden needs all the group leaders back at Camp Ryder so they can, you know… talk about shit forever.”
“Yeah. All right.” A pause. “So, how bad is bad?”
“Bad,” Harper said to the handset. “Real bad.”
* * *
Nearly an hour had passed by behind the closed door of the foreman’s office when Lee, Bus, and Kip Greene finally exited with an arrangement made. Five rifles and nine hundred rounds of 5.56mm ammunition in exchange for ten pounds of wheat flour, ten pounds of cornmeal, and thirty large mason jars of home-canned corn.
Kip Greene agreed to let Lee and his team use Broadway as a stepping-stone to Sanford, but they refused to fall underneath the purveyance of the Camp Ryder Hub. He didn’t like the idea of being told how to run things by “outsiders,” but he relented that it would be a relief when Lee had cleaned out Sanford of infected.
Throughout the process, sleep deprivation and distracting thoughts wormed their way through Lee’s mind and caused flickers of brief, nightmarish images behind his eyes, as though his brain were a television set picking up some hijacked broadcast.
When they finally left the office, Lee turned back inside and went to his pack. He took from it an old red cloth, the kind used as a mechanic’s towel. Inside the folded cloth was the remainder of a bar of soap Lee had steadily been using for the last month. It was amazing how long you could stretch a single bar of soap when you only bathed every few days.
