The Remaining: Fractured

by D. J. Molles

  He spat again, this time the entire chaw coming out and falling onto the floorboard of the Humvee. He lifted his sleeve to wipe his tongue on it, but realized that his sleeve was already coated in blood. He stared at himself, the blood on his sleeve, on his lap, all over his chest. His mouth hung open, and he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  Something tugged at him.

  He looked at his door, saw that it was still open. He hadn’t lost his rifle—it was still tethered to him by his sling. He pushed the door open, yanked his rifle inside, then closed the door. He felt strangely, immensely elated that his rifle was not lost. Then he crashed down again, odd, unruly thoughts vying for his attention.

  It’s in my mouth.

  Fucking thirteen bodies.

  I shouldn’t have eaten the Charms.

  Wilson slapped a bottle of water into his chest. “Rinse yourself out! Don’t fucking swallow!”

  He grabbed the bottle. Twisted the cap. Squeezed a flood of ice-cold water into his mouth. Spewed it out the window. More water. More spewing.

  “How we lookin’?” Wilson yelled up to Joel, hunched over his steering wheel as the Humvee ripped off of the gravel easement and skidded onto paved road.

  “I don’t know!” Joel screamed back, his voice cracking. “I can’t see them anymore!”

  LaRouche hocked, retched, hung his head out the window and spit. He ducked back in so that he could wave forward. “Keep going, Wilson. Keep us going.”

  They made a sudden turn onto a main highway—LaRouche couldn’t see the sign. Wilson floored it, maxing out the Humvee’s speed and putting another mile between them and the infected.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” the stranger yelled. “Who are you people?”

  LaRouche spit twice more, then spun around. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The stranger lurched forward. “I’m this girl’s father, you sonofabitch! What the hell are you doing with her?”

  There was a moment of surprised silence. And then LaRouche nearly climbed over the radio console to get to him. He punched him in the face with a quick left hand, then tried to reach past Joel’s legs to grab a piece of him. The man rocked back, holding his nose.

  “Hey, hey!” Jim shoved LaRouche back towards his seat.

  In the back, barely visible behind Joel’s legs, the girl sobbed.

  LaRouche didn’t care. His mind was just a blank, red page. He drew his pistol and pointed it at the stranger, bellowing over the sound of the roaring engine and the girl’s crying. “Motherfucker I will kill you! Do you understand that? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “LaRouche! Put the gun down!” Jim yelled.

  Joel tried to pull his legs out of the way. “What the fuck’s going on down there?”

  The Humvee swerved, then braked hard.

  Tires screeched.

  One of the other vehicles crunched into their bumper.

  No one seemed to notice.

  The stranger still held his nose, staring at LaRouche’s pistol, scared into silence. The girl was still crying. Jim was still trying to talk to LaRouche, who had streams of drool coming from his mouth because he refused to swallow, and staring at the stranger like he had already gone mad, though the pistol was beginning to waver.

  Wilson reached out, touched LaRouche on the shoulder. “Sarge.”

  LaRouche looked at him.

  “Come on, man.”

  It was not as though LaRouche suddenly realized that he was doing something wrong, or that he “snapped out of it”, so to speak. He simply shook his head, then withdrew the pistol, as though he had weighed the risks and the rewards of executing the stranger and decided that it was not the best choice. He holstered the pistol, threw his door open and hauled himself out.

  Wilson turned into the backseat.

  Jim threw his hands up in a beats-the-hell-outta-me gesture.

  Wilson shot him a dirty look and then pointed one finger in the face of the stranger, still huddled there in the back. “What the fuck is your problem, you piece of shit?”

  “What?”

  Wilson wanted to punch the man himself. “Who the fuck do you think you are? That man just risked his life and all of our lives to save you, not to mention your little girl. And then you turn around and call him a sonofabitch?”

  “I thought…” the man looked at Jim, then back at Wilson. “I thought…”

  “How’s about you just shut the fuck up for right now?” Wilson snapped. “You’ve done enough goddamned thinking.” He kicked open his door and grumbled as he got out. “Should kick you out of my fucking truck, you stupid motherfucker.”

  Jim opened his door.

  Wilson leaned back in. “No! You sit down, Jim.”

  Jim stared back, shocked.

  Wilson shook his head. “Sarge don’t need any more of your bullshit right now.”

  He closed the door behind him. LaRouche was several yards in front of the vehicle, on the shoulder of the road. He was bent at the waist, hands on his knees, his rifle slung onto his back. He breathed hard, retched, then spit.

  Behind them, a few others jogged up to see what had happened. Wilson waved them off, made a cutting gesture across his neck. They stopped, looked between Wilson and LaRouche, then nodded slowly and began to back away.

  Wilson walked to LaRouche’s side. They could hear mumbles behind them, doors opening and closing in vehicles as everyone hopped down, curious to see what they could see, try to determine what had just happened in the lead Humvee. Whispering their suspicions to each other. After a moment, Wilson took a deep breath, hooked his thumbs into the strap of his rifle.

  “You alright?” he said under his breath.

  LaRouche stood up a little straighter. He stared out, away from them. The land dipped down from the road, hit a thin tree line, but beyond those bald trees were rolling farmlands. Unkempt and overgrown hills. Beyond that, blue sky, patchy clouds. Just another day in the country, perhaps.

  LaRouche made an ugly noise, sneered. “Fuck that guy.”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “What if I’m infected?”

  “You’re not.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “How much got in your mouth?”

  “A lot. A fucking lot.”

  Wilson pursed his lips. Didn’t have anything to say to that.

  “Fuck him. Wouldn’t have even happened if we’d’ve just left him there.”

  “You don’t even know that you’re infected.”

  LaRouche grunted.

  The sounds of an abandoned world filled in the silence between them. The wind scoured the concrete, whistled through tree branches that swished together, hushed over dry grasses, stirred dead leaves. LaRouche blew his nose onto the concrete, first one nostril, then the other. Wilson used to wrinkle his nose when he saw LaRouche “farmer blow”, as he called it, but he supposed he’d gotten used to it. There weren’t many options when you couldn’t just grab a Kleenex.

  “Besides,” Wilson offered. “You rinsed your mouth out quick. You didn’t swallow any.”

  LaRouche growled, spit again. “You know, I hate to admit it. But Jim was right about me.”

  Wilson rubbed a bit of dirt from the stock of his rifle.

  LaRouche laughed, a tired, hard-knock sound. “Feels like I’m losing it.”

  Wilson snorted. “Man, we’re all fucking losing it. The fuck do you expect? You think we’re gonna all run around as good as we once were?” He ran a hand over his shaggy black hair. “Nah. We’re all just…” his hands worked in the air, trying to find the right word. “…harder versions of ourselves, I guess. There’s no one alive that’s survived this far and is still the good person they once were. So yeah, maybe you’re fucked in the head, but I don’t think it’s any worse than the rest of us.”

  LaRouche coughed, cleared his throat. “Yeah…”

  “Come on,” Wilson waved towards the Humvee. “Let’s find a better place to stop for lunch. Those fuckers a
re probably still running after us.”

  CHAPTER 18: MORALITY

  They found an old supermarket parking lot and the convoy pulled up into a rough circle in the middle of the wide-open cement expanse. Two remained on watch in the turrets, while the others got out, stretched legs and drank water and had a bite to eat.

  LaRouche pulled out his map, laid it across the hood of the Humvee and checked back to his last marker, about 25 miles behind them. It was strange to only go such short distances in the span of so many long hours. But caution demanded slow speeds and circumventing possible threats. Sometimes it took an hour or two just to get around a town that was little more than a blip on the map. Something that would have taken you five minutes to get around, going sixty miles per hour on an interstate.

  He looked around him, shielded his eyes from the sun.

  To the east was a cell phone tower. The rest of the horizon bore nothing that he could see would hold one of the radio repeaters. He turned back east and judged the distance of the cell tower at about two or three miles away. Which would put him just inside the 30-mile range of the last repeater.

  Not that it mattered much.

  Still no comms with Camp Ryder.

  But if the radio problem was with Camp Ryder, and they managed to fix it, LaRouche didn’t want to be out of radio range.

  As he considered this he realized he was deliberately ignoring the gnawing feeling in his stomach. Focusing on the duties of his leadership role, rather than thinking about the possibility that some tiny bacteria could be sneaking its way through his body, hijacking his cells, and multiplying inside of him. He was mentally hiding under the covers.

  He looked up from the map, stared out at nothing in particular.

  Am I infected? He toyed with the idea, felt himself strangely detached from it, as though he considered someone else’s problem. He had thought many times about what it would be like to be infected. How sick would he feel? How long would he hold onto his sanity? Would he know what he was doing when he fed on humans? But in all the time that he’d thought about being infected, he had never thought he would find himself so…numb.

  Like it wasn’t real. Like it couldn’t possibly be happening to him.

  Was it happening? Or was he just being paranoid?

  Wilson seemed to think so. But it wasn’t Wilson’s mouth that blood had gotten into. And Wilson could just be saying that to get LaRouche to calm down, while he was secretly wondering when and how he would have to execute his leader.

  There was simply no way to know. He couldn’t just go to the hospital and have his blood work done. Have a nice old doctor in a white coat with kind eyes explain to him the situation. No, he would just have to wait and see. He would have to wait, and agonize, and think about it at night, and see if he got sick, just like everyone else that had been infected, hoping against hope, until they were wracked with fever chills and losing their minds, but still just conscious enough to know that they’d been infected for sure and that there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.

  He shook his head. And if you can’t do a damn thing about it, there ain’t no point in worrying.

  He thought it resolutely enough, but it didn’t take away the doubtful feeling in his stomach, and in his mind, the future of his life past the next two days became a black unknown. Something theoretical. Something intangible. Like there was no purpose in planning for anything past that point. No purpose in planning anything except for how you want to be taken out if shit went downhill.

  Bullet in the head, he thought. That would be best.

  Or kamikaze it. Go out in a blaze of glory.

  “Hey,” a voice brought him back.

  He turned and found Father Jim walking up behind him. His pace was slow, methodical, almost hesitant. Like he feared drawing too close to LaRouche, and that alone gave LaRouche a twinge of irritation. LaRouche snapped the map closed, forced the jutting feelings down. He had no reason to be mad at Father Jim, or anyone else for that matter. His short fuse was his own problem, and it needed to be controlled, not unleashed on anyone that looked sideways at him.

  “Jim,” he nodded. “What’s up?”

  Jim folded his hands in front of him. “How are you?”

  “I’m dandy.”

  Jim gave him a grim smile. “We have disagreements. That doesn’t mean we have to be opposed to each other. We’re both on the same team, even if we sometimes think things should be done a little different.”

  LaRouche thought of some choice retorts, thought about pointing out that it really didn’t matter what Jim’s opinion was. Thought about pointing out that Jim didn’t have much experience in these things, and that LaRouche had been in a combat theater, in a third-world country, not so different from this. But all of these smart arguments fell flat, because there was no comparison to this world and the old world. There was no comparison to this LaRouche and the old LaRouche.

  LaRouche folded the map, meticulously lining up the creases. “You know, you get to a certain age in your life and you think, ‘This is it. This is the person I am’. And I used to think that I knew who that person was.” He glanced up at Jim. “I’m not saying that I’m having a personality crisis or any bullshit like that. It’s just…” he squeezed his fingers together like he was trying to grasp some fine, invisible filament that floated in the air. “…I can’t remove myself like I used to. I can’t put these things on someone else. I can’t point to some big old chain of command standing behind me and say, ‘I’m just following orders. If you don’t like the way shit went, talk to them’. They’re not there anymore. It’s just me. It’s just us. And there’s no support, there’s no one else to rely on.” LaRouche pointed out to the horizon. “We’re fucking alone out here. And every decision that I make, I have to make for us. Not for whether I think it’s going to be comfortable, or whether it fits into my personal, mental image of how I saw myself, or even if it fits into my personal code. All that ain’t shit right now, Jim. Because I can tell you right now, if my decisions land us in a bad spot, and you’re lying on the ground, bleeding out and staring up at the sky, you ain’t gonna give a shit about the morals behind what decisions I made. All you’re gonna be thinking is that I made a decision, and it was the wrong fucking decision. And it got you killed. And all the wives and children back at Camp Ryder? They don’t give a shit about some sleazebag refugee and his daughter. They just want their husband and father back. And I cannot—I will not—remove myself mentally or emotionally from that.”

  Jim’s eyes were sad. “You can’t keep us all alive by sheer willpower. Only God…”

  LaRouche cut him off. “I’m not getting into an existential debate with a priest. God will understand that I’m putting in my best effort here.”

  Jim smiled wanly, nodded, and looked away. “I understand.”

  Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, LaRouche thought.

  “We’ve given the man food and water. Reunited him with his daughter.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “You should talk to him. See what he has to say.”

  “Yeah.” LaRouche let out a beleaguered breath. “I suppose I should.”

  ***

  Wilson and Joel stood with the man when LaRouche approached. The others sat on the tailgates and bumpers of their trucks, eating from food of their own creation, or dipping into the supply of MREs for a taste of good old processed food that made them feel like there was still civilization out there.

  LaRouche took a good look at the man in the overalls and white thermal shirt. He seemed young to have a four year-old daughter—only in his mid to late twenties. But he also had that weathered look of a farmer, and in LaRouche’s experience, most men in that culture didn’t wait too long to marry and have kids.

  LaRouche scratched his neck, regarded the man placidly. “What’s your name?”

  “Jackson.” The man put an arm around his daughter. “This is Tessa.”

  LaRouche forced a smile for the sake of the child, bu
t dropped it when he turned his eyes back to Jackson. “We need to talk. Alone.”

  Jackson looked at his little girl, then at Father Jim, who he apparently was comfortable enough with. Jim gave him a very small nod as though to tell him that he was not in any danger. Jackson squeezed his daughter’s shoulder. “Sweetie, can you stay here for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

  Tessa looked hesitant, but nodded.

  Jackson rose and LaRouche directed him between an LMTV and a Humvee so that when they stepped through they were outside the circle of vehicles. LaRouche stopped, rested his hands on the rifle slung across his chest.

  Jackson wrung his hands. “Listen, I’m sorry…I had no idea.”

  LaRouche waved him off. “Forget it. That’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

  “Okay.”

  “We can’t keep you around,” LaRouche stated simply. “We’re conducting a very specific mission, and there’s no room on board for you and your daughter, understand?”

  Jackson opened his mouth as though to protest. He stared at LaRouche, saw the deadpan eyes, saw that LaRouche would not be impressed by whatever he had to say, and then he closed his mouth. “So what are you going to do with us?”

  “Well, I’m not gonna leave on the side of the road,” LaRouche grumbled, then added under his breath, “No matter how easy that would be.” He twiddled his thumbs. “Your group must have known some other groups of survivors. We can take you to one of them.”

  Jackson looked unsure. “Shit…we only knew two or three of them. There’s no telling if any of them are still alive. The Followers have been tearing us apart, man.” he looked up. “You guys look like you know what you’re doing. Weren’t you the guys that…?” he cut himself off, a look of terror and shame passing over his features.

  LaRouche shifted his weight. Tilted his head. “Jackson…”

  The younger man looked away, his chin quivering.

  LaRouche shook his head as though he’d just heard sad news. He turned and spat on the ground. His mouth was dry, his spittle frothy. He fished in his cargo pocket for his packet of Red Man. It was down to its last bit of tobacco. He opened the pack, took a pinch for himself, then offered it to Jackson.