Refugees

by D. J. Molles

  Lee turned back to LaRouche and found the sergeant looking at him.

  LaRouche held up a hand and signaled them with a wave.

  Lee reached behind him and tapped Jim, who was next in line. “Moving,” he whispered.

  The tap and word was repeated all the way back as Lee stood and quietly made his way across the street to join LaRouche. Once at the corner, LaRouche gave him a palm to signal to slow up a little, then held a finger to his lips. Lee turned and held up a finger to everyone else. They moved to positions along the storefronts, glancing uncomfortably through the shattered windows at the dark interiors of the businesses.

  Lee leaned in closer to LaRouche, who had refocused his attention down into the alley. They spoke in soft whispers.

  “You got something?”

  LaRouche nodded. He switched positions with Lee so that the captain was at the corner and leaning out slightly. He pointed to the end of the alley, where the small parking area terminated in the back of their target building and the steel door they had jimmied the day before.

  “You see it?” LaRouche asked. “Leaning up against the door?”

  Lee squinted into the darkness.

  Something was there, slumped in the shadows. His first impression was of a person, sitting with his back up against the door.

  “Fuck,” Lee breathed out. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “What’s it doing outside of the den?”

  “Have you seen it move?”

  “I think it’s asleep.”

  “Too cold out here for it to be sleeping by itself, exposed.”

  “You think it’s dead?”

  He leaned out a little farther from the corner and whispered to LaRouche, “Just get ready to take it out if it starts coming.”

  “Okay.” LaRouche blinked. “What are you…?”

  Lee waved one arm around the corner, and then braced for the reaction from the infected.

  “Oh, Jesus.” LaRouche hunched a bit and tightened the grip on his rifle.

  Down inside the alley, the slumped form did not stir.

  Lee repeated the wave twice. He garnered no response.

  They both watched in silence, holding their breath. Eventually they turned and looked at each other. LaRouche raised his brow in question.

  Lee looked back at the still figure. “What I wouldn’t do for a bow.”

  Finding a compound bow or a crossbow had been a frequent topic of conversation, as they had encountered several situations where the ability to make a silent kill would have been nice. Lee had a suppressor, but contrary to popular belief, it did not “silence” the weapon, and would still be loud enough to wake the infected in the nearby den.

  The other option was trying to sneak up and smash the skull with Lee’s crowbar. Historically, it had been unsuccessful, simply because the damn things were impossible to sneak up on. Like cats, they would perk up and look around at the smallest sound.

  “Alright.” Lee ducked back in. “Stack up on me. Hold fire unless it starts coming at us.”

  LaRouche blew out a breath. “You got it, Cap.”

  The ten stacked up tightly on each other and moved around the corner, hugging the wall to their right. The alley jogged down for about twenty yards, where the wall to their right ended and opened into a paved parking lot with the barest traces of paint still clinging to the concrete, framing the parking stalls that now sat vacant and purposeless.

  Lee forced himself to remain hard on the target as he approached.

  Whatever or whoever was slouched against that steel door to the apartment building still had yet to move.

  He was now within ten yards of it.

  In the crisp moonlight, Lee could see it was an older man with wisps of gray hair still holding stubbornly to his liver-spotted scalp. He wore only a set of stained white underwear and one black sock on his left foot. His limbs were sallow, his chest sunken in, with a tuft of white hair poking up from the hollow of it. From its nose to the top of its chest, it was covered in dried blood.

  What’s it doing out here? What’s it doing away from the den?

  It definitely wasn’t one of the hunters. It was too old and too frail. Lee had seen these old and sick ones in the hordes. Occasionally, he’d seen one of them lying in the street, either dead or dying, or too sick and weak to move. It was disturbing to leave them lying on the ground, for in their last moments, they seemed less insane and aggressive and more like the people they had once been.

  Lee motioned for everyone to fan out. The single-file stack split up and LaRouche began moving to the right, while Lee remained stationary, covering the infected at the door. When they had the thing effectively surrounded, Lee glanced to his right and found the man next to him was Jake. Gone was his joker’s expression and twinkling eyes. Now his lips were pursed in concentration, his brow wrinkled up into a fierce glare of intensity.

  “Relax,” Lee said very quietly.

  Jake nodded once.

  “Move up with me.” Lee let his rifle sink down to his chest and quietly withdrew his KA-BAR from its sheath on his vest. “Stay hard on him, but don’t fire unless I tell you to. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Lee stepped forward, and Jake moved with him, close enough for their shoulders to brush. Lee held his knife overhanded and flexed his fingers on the grip, squeezing in as tightly as he could go. If the old infected made a move for them, Lee would lunge forward, seize him by the throat, jerk him back, and plant the knife wherever he could get it into the brain—either through the temple, the palate, or the base of the skull.

  It can’t make a sound, Lee told himself. Not a sound.

  CHAPTER 16

  Going Up

  Standing before the infected, Lee tensed and drew back his hand, ready to strike out. Jake stood directly beside him, and to either side the others trained their rifles on the form and held their breath.

  “He’s not breathing,” Jake mumbled.

  Lee stared at the man, at the bib of crusted blood around his neck and chest. Dark, almost black-stained skin. The blood was not smeared, as though the old man had been feeding, but instead was caked as though it had poured from his own nose and mouth. Now standing closer to him, Lee could see the malformation of his head, caused by the explosive compression and decompression of a high-powered bullet.

  Lee bent down to look closer. “He’s been shot in the head…”

  A thunderclap obliterated the silence.

  The sound was so sudden and overwhelming that Lee felt every muscle in his body jerk simultaneously like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket. Strangely, nonsensically, he thought that the body of the old man had been booby-trapped and it had exploded. But it still sat before him, crumpled and motionless against the door.

  He looked up at Jake to see what the noise had been.

  The younger man leaned over, one hand on his knee and the other steadying himself against the wall. He looked right at Lee, dumbfounded, confused, terrified.

  Then he coughed, and blood spewed out.

  Lee watched a thick gobbet of red as it flew through the air. It seemed slow and lazy as it arced its way down to the ground. He could hear the sharp intake of his teammates’ breath, the shuffling of feet, the movement of fabric. He could feel his gut tightening, forcing the words out of his mouth.

  “Get inside!” Lee shouted.

  The sensation of time warp dissipated.

  He reached up and snatched a handful of Jake’s sleeve as the kid’s knees buckled and his body sank against the wall.

  LaRouche began to fire his weapon rapidly. The sound of his rifle was like an explosion that set off an avalanche. Lee was suddenly surrounded by a ring of fire and noise as everyone opened up, the muzzle flashes like tongues of flame licking out into the darkness, everyone aiming for the rooftops.

  Lee pulled roughly at Jake’s arm, forcing him to flop onto his back. His eyes were wide and pale, the blood like tar around his mouth. His chest rose and fell, and Lee could
see the gaping wound in the glitter of the muzzle flashes, like dozens of cameras going off. He jammed both of his hands under the kid, the concrete rasping away the skin of his knuckles, and hooked his fingers into Jake’s armpits. He jerked the kid partially upright.

  “Open the door!” Lee screamed behind him. “Open the fucking door!”

  Someone—Lee couldn’t tell who it was—stepped around and kicked the dead body out of the way of the door, and then yanked it open. Lee didn’t wait for an invitation. He immediately began backpedaling, trying to maintain his grip on Jake, but the guy had begun to squirm around and claw at his chest. In the back of his mind, Lee registered the sound of Jake’s breathing—ragged, gurgling, wheezing.

  The sound of air passing by a wet valve.

  Lee hauled himself into the doorway, pulling with everything he had. The stench of the rotting corpse enveloped him again like a soggy, putrid blanket. He pulled Jake just inside the door and then collapsed with one giant last effort that landed them both on the ground.

  Lee twisted up and onto his knees and leaned over the wounded form beside him. The sheer surprise of the moment was giving way to the pain, and Jake’s body was beginning to shake, his throat finding the ragged threads of a voice and issuing those horrible noises of the wounded.

  Lee ripped open Jake’s parka, exposing the hooded sweatshirt beneath. All of it was drenched in blood. Quickly, he traced his fingers over the glistening red fabric and found the hole and the torn flesh under it. The wound was on the right side of Jake’s chest, maybe three inches from his sternum. If the bullet hadn’t clipped the heart, it had come damn close. It was welling up, deep and fast. Too fast to just be capillaries. Lee pressed his palm to the open wound and bore down on it with all of his weight.

  Jake cried out and his eyes went wide.

  Lee looked up. “Julia! I need some help here!”

  Outside the door, the rifle fire slowed. LaRouche held the door open with his foot and screamed at the others to get inside as he took evenly spaced shots, putting suppressive fire down on something, though Lee wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Get in! Get in!” LaRouche shouted.

  The members of the team tumbled through the door, tripping over themselves to get inside. Were they still taking fire? Lee couldn’t hear over the sound of LaRouche’s shots, but he didn’t think so. There had only been one shot.

  Lee kept watching the faces come through the door, looking for Julia but not finding her. His stomach suddenly dropped inside of his body cavity, and for a brief moment he forgot that his hands were pressed tightly against the warm, wet flesh of Jake’s chest wound.

  “Where the fuck is Julia?” he barked, trading fear for anger.

  LaRouche lowered his weapon and looked at someone who was still outside the door. “Julia! Get the fuck inside!” He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into the doorframe and then shoving her inside. He followed quickly, letting the door close behind them.

  It had seemed dark in the predawn light, but with the door closed to the outside world, the blackness inside the apartment building was absolute. It was only the sound of footsteps, heavy breathing, and Jake’s tortured groans.

  In the palm of his hand, Lee could feel the pulse, rapid and still strong, but he could also feel the blood seeping through his fingers, warm and steady. It pushed through his fingers with the insistent rhythm of Jake’s heart.

  Arterial bleeding…

  Lee pulled his right hand away and began searching his tactical vest for the flashlight he kept clipped there. Underneath his other hand, he could feel Jake writhing and his groans were beginning to become screams. He found the flashlight and clicked it on. The tiny spear of light suddenly illuminated Jake’s face and his eyes were shut tight, his teeth clenched and red.

  “Hey, buddy.” Lee tried to sound calm. “I need you to hang on. This is gonna hurt like a motherfucker.” He pulled his other hand off the wound and probed it with two fingers. “You ready?”

  “No!” Jake gasped. “Don’t hurt me!”

  “Just hang on…” Lee gritted his teeth and pushed his fingers into the wound.

  The breath caught in Jake’s throat. He jerked away from the touch, and Lee could feel the muscles in Jake’s chest contract around his two fingers. The breath came out of him in a shriek.

  “Hold on!” Lee shouted over the cries and tried to concentrate. He could feel the blood squishing past his fingers. He just had to find where it was coming from. He had to find it and clamp it off. Three other flashlights came on, bathing everyone in harsh white light that blanched their features into pale, haggard masks.

  Julia appeared, kneeling down at Jake’s other side and ripping open her medical pack. She pulled out a pair of shears and went to work on the hooded sweatshirt. “Gimme some light!” she ordered. “On the wound!”

  The flashlights all shifted to focus on Jake’s chest, the different angles casting the shadows of Lee’s hands off in separate directions. “He’s got a clipped artery, I think.” Lee looked at Julia. “Maybe a collapsed lung.”

  She nodded quickly, hair flying in her face as she delved into her pack.

  “Hey, Cap!” LaRouche hollered. “We gotta move it upstairs! There’s no way the infected didn’t hear that shit!”

  Lee looked at Julia again to see what she thought. She had one hand touching Jake’s femoral artery and the other on his carotid. After a brief moment of concentration, she made eye contact with Lee and shook her head quickly.

  “BP’s already too low.” As she spoke, she began riffling through the contents of her pack, withdrawing sterile dressings, hemostats, scalpels, and some sterile-packaged items that Lee didn’t know the name of. “He’s bleeding out too fast. We gotta stabilize it right now, or we’re gonna lose him.”

  “OH JESUS!” Jake suddenly screamed. “FUCK!” He tried to say something else but dissolved into a coughing fit. He thrashed around as he coughed and swatted at Lee’s fingers, still inside the wound.

  “Jim!” Lee called out. “Hold him down!” He could feel the pressure of the bloodstream on the tip of his finger. “I almost got it… Almost got it…”

  Julia held out a pair of hemostats. “When you find it, clamp it.”

  Jake’s breathing became rapid and shallow.

  “He’s hyperventilating,” Julia said with a note of detachment. “Try to breathe deep, hon. Slow, deep breaths.”

  Jim knelt down at Jake’s head and took both of the kid’s hands in his. “That’s it, Jake. You’re doing great. Slow down your breathing for me, okay? Slow it down. All the way in, all the way out.”

  Jake gaped up at Jim, tears streaming down his face. “It hurts… It really hurts.”

  “I know, buddy,” Jim said soothingly. “You gotta hang on for just a little longer, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I think I got it,” Lee said. He closed his eyes. In the slick moving parts of Jake’s chest cavity, the blood spewing from that artery was pressing at his fingers, but the pulse was growing weaker by the second. Lee realized that he was kneeling in a puddle of Jake’s blood. He pushed deeper.

  A faint cry and a groan. Jake was close to passing out.

  “Cap!” LaRouche’s voice sounded out. “I’ve got contact!”

  Lee’s eyes snapped open and he looked up. LaRouche was leaning partially out of the door, the barrel of his rifle nosed out of the crack. “You gotta give me some time!”

  “Fuck!” LaRouche’s stance tightened up. “I got five infected comin’ around the corner…”

  There. The firm, fleshy tube of a large artery.

  “I got it!” He grabbed the hemostat from Julia’s fingers. “Everyone get ready to grab Jake and haul ass up these stairs!” Lee put his flashlight in his mouth and tasted the sharp coppery tang of Jake’s blood.

  “We gotta move!” LaRouche bellowed and started pulling the trigger.

  The confined space shook as the rounds blasted out.

  Lee hooked his fi
nger around the throbbing artery and fed the tip of the hemostat down along his index finger until he could feel its tiny jaws around the blood vessel, and then he clamped it down. If he’d been in a hospital or any other setting, he would have checked to see if he’d stopped the bleeding, but they just didn’t have the time.

  He pulled his fingers out of the wound, leaving the hemostat dangling out, trembling with each of Jake’s hitching breaths. “It’s clamped! Go!”

  Hands shot forward in a flash, seizing Jake’s arms and legs, and they bore him up so quickly that it seemed to Lee that Jake simply disappeared from beneath him. By the time Lee grabbed his rifle from where it lay in the coagulating red pool, they’d already hauled him up the first section of stairs, Julia following beside with a rifle in one hand and her medical pack in the other, shouting at them not to knock the hemostat loose.

  The clatter of a magazine across the floor.

  “Reloading!” LaRouche called.

  Lee surged toward the door as LaRouche slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle. He shouldered past him and pulled the door shut. Immediately the door lurched under his grasp, a live thing trying to get away from him. Angry fists pounded the other side, nails scratching in panicked desperation at the door. The infected on the other side made short, sharp barking calls, excited, signaling to the others that they had found live prey.

  “Get the crowbar out of my pack!”

  LaRouche looked around blindly for a moment. With the rest of the team retreating up the stairs, they were taking their flashlights with them and the room was falling into darkness again. Then, at the base of the stairs, another light appeared and it was Jim holding it.

  “What are you doing?” Jim yelled at them.

  “We’re gonna block the door,” LaRouche shouted back with a little anger. “Gimme some light here!”

  Something hard hit the door and it jerked outward so hard that it almost pulled Lee off his feet. The door cleared the jamb for a second and through that tiny crack, Lee saw a flash of what waited on the other side. Dozens of faces with wide eyes and bloody maws leered in at him and pressed themselves forward. Behind them, he could see the corner of the building that led to the alleyway, and more of them were coming around the corner.