Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  "We're not going to last like this," said Harrison, moving around to help.

  "What are you doing? Get back there!" Eddie shouted at him.

  "But you won't be able to—"

  "Guys!" Kari yelled, and pointed up the road. Something new was coming through the scrub, traveling fast enough to kick up dust.

  "Oh no."

  The Wraiths, as if sensing the survivors' desperation, attacked with renewed vigor. They poured onto the hood of the bus, growling and hissing as they came.

  "Get Nami back!" Eddie cried, and pulled Susan out of the way so he could take up a position along the front. He kicked the first Wraith away, snapping its neck and sending it flying to the dirt. It did not get back up.

  The next one ducked beneath his foot, as if expecting the kick. It grabbed Eddie's plant foot and leaned forward to bite him. A shot rang out and its head disappeared in a cloud of red spray. The hand let go; the body slid onto the hood.

  "My last bullet!"

  The next two came together, one on either side of the bus, followed by the last two straight up the middle.

  "I can't hold them off!"

  "I'm out of ammo!"

  Eddie kicked at one, missed, tried again. The other was up, preparing to leap.

  A shot rang out, and the thing collapsed and tumbled off.

  "Where the hell—"

  With another blast, the first one arched its back. It, too, fell dead to the ground.

  Motorcycles roared toward the bus, circling them. Men in dusty gray and brown garb quickly dismounted and dispatched the last two Wraiths. Several other men formed a quick perimeter. They occupied themselves for several minutes securing the area. The survivors could only watch in numb relief.

  A thick-necked man with graying scruff on his cheeks stepped to the front. "I'm coming up!" he shouted. He stepped easily from the bus's bumper to the hood, and from there to the windshield. He reached up with a gloved hand, waiting for a lift. Eddie gave it to him.

  "Grantham Cheever," he said, by way of introduction. He held a pistol in his free hand and quickly scanned the rest of the group. "Anyone touched?"

  Eddie turned. "Nami?"

  The former guard was moaning in pain. His leg was still bent the wrong way at the knee, and his arm dangled uselessly beside him. Susan stood helplessly nearby. She looked like she wanted to help, but she didn't want to touch him.

  Cheever aimed the pistol for his head.

  "No!" Hannah cried. She jumped up and onto Nami before anyone could move.

  "Hannah!" Eddie yelled.

  "Don't shoot him! Daddy, he's not infected!"

  "I'm not . . . . Please," Nami panted. "It didn't touch skin. But . . . my shoulder . . . knee." He cried out. "Oh, god! I think they're broken."

  "Dislocated," Cheever stated. He turned back to Eddie and something like revulsion flashed across his chiseled face. Or maybe just wariness.

  Eddie's visage was still a bit of a shock, even though his skin had returned to its normal hue in the three days since they'd escaped the bunker. The veins on his face, neck, and arms, however, pulsed like dark, wriggling worms. And his muscles bulged and rippled like a snake's.

  Or perhaps it was the complete absence of hair that startled the stranger.

  "Anyone checked on Jonathan?" Eddie asked, disregarding the man's stare. "Is he . . . infected?"

  No one replied.

  Another motorcycle rider pulled up to the bus. He switched off his bike and dismounted. "All clear, Captain! Ramsey and Bolton found another straggler in the bushes. Took it out. Nothing else nearby."

  Captain Cheever nodded. "Keep watch. Private Singh, report!"

  Another man stepped out of the bus. He spun around as soon as his feet hit the dirt. "All clear inside, sir. "He shielded his hand from the morning sun. "But you'll want to see this."

  "What is it, Private Singh?"

  The man pointed toward the back of the vehicle. "I think we got ourselves a ghost."

  "Come on, you can do it. We're more than halfway there."

  "All right, Colonel Sanders," Finn growled.

  He slid a foot ahead and shifted his center of mass forward to meet it, then brought his back foot up. His palms were raw from rubbing against the twisted metal and his fingers were cramped. His hands were nearly black from the dirt caked between the twined steel threads.

  "Stop telling me I can do it. You were the one who needed convincing to begin with, remember?"

  The river rushed along thousands of feet below them. He knew it wasn't that far — probably no more than three hundred feet — but it sure felt a lot farther. And he hadn't expected the wind to be so strong. It hadn't looked windy at all standing on the rim.

  Another gust slammed into them, knocking him against a cable. His knees threatened to buckle. The wind whistled angrily through the perforations in the foot-wide grating beneath their feet. It had seemed amply wide at the beginning. Now it felt like he was walking a tightrope.

  "Colonel Sanders," Bix said, chuckling humorlessly. "That's a good one. Finger-lickin' good."

  "Last time I ever let you talk me into anything for a piece of fried chicken."

  "Not just chicken. Bacon," Bix muttered to himself as he inched along. "Soft bed. Warm shower. Fried chicken. And bacon."

  Slowly, they made their way across the gorge. With his concentration stretched to the breaking point, Finn began to wonder what would happen if a Wraith suddenly appeared behind them. Would he be able to run?

  What if one shows up ahead? Or on both ends?

  He decided not to share these concerns with Bix. They just needed to get across, and the sooner, the better.

  "This totally sucks," Bix groused as the bridge shook, canting them a couple inches to one side. It felt as if the movement displaced them by a dozen feet. "Can I just say that? Who the hell's idea was it to put a goddamn footbridge over the goddamn canyon here? I ain't a freaking mountain goat!"

  "Adrenaline junkies."

  "Screw them."

  Finn wanted to tell Bix to shut up, but he had to admit that his griping was amusing enough to distract him from the vertiginous height.

  "I feel like a freaking spider."

  "I don't think spiders get elevation sickness, Bix."

  "That's it, Finn. Next time we take the bus."

  "As I recall, I told everyone to stay on the bus and get to the evac center."

  "And let you have all the bacon to yourself? No way, man."

  "Yeah, because you knew we'd meet—"

  Another gust battered them, and they both kneeled. A shudder passed through the cables, threatening to flip them off. "I think I just peed," Bix announced. "I don't want to look down to see."

  "I think I'm going to be sick," Finn replied.

  "If you spew, just keep it on the downwind side."

  "That goes for you, too."

  Bix started to laugh.

  "Glad you find it funny."

  "It's not funny. I'm scared shitless. This is my terrified laugh. Can't you tell? My hilarious laugh sounds like this: 'Hee hee hee!' "

  Finn nudged him in the back. "Just get going already."

  They traveled another thirty feet. "You don't trust them, do you, Finn?"

  Finn didn't answer right away. He sighed and said, "They seem nice enough. But . . . . I just don't think it's wise to tell people where we were and where we're going and why. Right now, telling people stuff makes us even more vulnerable than we already are. And, to be honest, I think Jonah was right about there being other dangers than Wraiths. We just need to be more . . . circumspect."

  "I'm not Jewish."

  "Circumspect, not circumcised."

  They inched along a few more minutes before Bix muttered Jonah's name with a sour note in his voice. "That guy is truly messed up in the head. His parents are messed up— were messed up. And what the hell was Bren's father talking about that was Jonah's big secret?"

  He edged forward experimentally, and when the bridge and wind d
idn't immediately conspire to throw him over the side, he straightened up again and stepped forward with growing confidence.

  Finn kept quiet. He had an idea what the secret might be, but he wasn't sure. Some of the hints the girls had dropped, both before and after their escape from the bunker, had opened up his mind about the boy. People aren't always what they appear. And that seemed to describe Jonah perfectly.

  If his guess was correct, then this big secret about Jonah proved deeply insightful. It especially explained a lot about their interactions with each other over the past few years.

  "You know what I think?"

  Finn grunted noncommittally. The bridge was feeling considerably more stable again, now that the middle was behind them. They moved along at a faster clip, rising up toward the end. He honestly didn't want to break his focus to have a discussion about Jonah with Bix.

  "I think he might be in love with Bren, that's what I think. Or maybe even Bren's mom. I don't know, it's just a feeling I get."

  This brought Finn to a stop. He stared at Bix's back and shook his head. "No, I don't think it's either of those things."

  "Well, that's because you ain't the master of loooove, bro. I have the sight."

  "Speaking of love, how's that flirting thing going with Jennifer?"

  He expected Bix to blow him off, but he didn't respond. He didn't even seem to be listening anymore. He was kneeling with his head down and breathing funny, making strange little noises with his throat.

  "Downwind, remember," Finn said.

  "Shh!"

  "What?"

  "Down there."

  "Are you serious? I'm not looking—"

  Bix let go of one of the cables and pointed past his left foot. "It's him!"

  "Who? Jonah?"

  It took a moment for Finn to quell the vertigo that swept over him as he looked down, another moment to see what Bix was pointing at. Far below, like a tiny ant moving beside the silver and white thread of the river, was a person.

  "It's that guy," Bix whispered, "Micheal Williams, from Bunker Two. I recognize the clothes."

  "But that's impossible. He threw himself over the side of the dam. No person could survive that fall."

  "No human being maybe. But he was infected."

  Finn realized that Bix was right. It was the same man, his clothes torn and bloodied.

  The boys watched as the creature picked its way over the stones, moving in that creepy way that brought shivers to their spines.

  When it was nearly beneath them, the Wraith stopped. It suddenly looked up. Both boys sucked in a sharp breath. A second or two later, a long, faint howl reached their ears.

  They ran the rest of the way across the bridge.

  "Ghost?" Eddie asked. "What do you mean? What's that?"

  "Why don't we get down off this roof first," the captain said.

  Using metal hooks, the other men had already begun pulling the dead Wraiths into a heap twenty yards away. They were careful not to let any part of their skin come into contact with the things.

  The survivors watched as they sprinkled gasoline over the bodies and then flung a lit match onto them. The smell of the burning corpses made Kari sick, and she dropped to her knees and vomited over the side of the bus. Harrison had to hold onto her to keep her from taking a header.

  "What's a ghost?" Eddie asked again. He didn't move.

  "Are you in charge of this group?"

  Eddie looked around at the others. "We don't have—"

  "Yes," Susan said, stepping forward. She gave him a pointed look. "Eddie's our leader."

  Once again, the captain gestured for them to climb down first. It took them several minutes to get Nami off the roof. He cried out in agony half a dozen times. Once they were all safely on the ground, one of the men came over to attend to him, a medic by the name of Carter.

  "A ghost," Captain Cheever said at last, "is someone the infected don't seem to bother with. For some reason, they don't seem to notice them."

  Eddie frowned. "What do you mean?"

  He waved at the door of the bus. "May I?"

  Eddie nodded.

  The captain climbed the steps with Eddie, followed by the other adults in their group. He stepped quickly toward the back, where another of his men stood beside the seat where Jonathan had been lying before the attack. The former guard was still there, still very ill, but clearly not infected with the Flense, despite the Wraiths getting inside.

  Kari pushed her way past them. After Allison's death, she'd taken over caring for him, keeping him comfortable, applying damp washcloths to his forehead to keep his fever down.

  "They didn't touch him," she whispered. "They were in here with him, and they didn't touch him. Why not?"

  Eddie shook his head. In all the attacks he had ever witnessed, the Wraiths spared no one. He'd seen people lie down and pretend to be dead. The Wraiths always stopped for them. They didn't for the people who really were dead. Somehow, they knew corpses wouldn't make suitable hosts to the contagion they carried.

  "A small percentage of people just seem invisible to them," the captain said again. "It's very rare, and we don't understand how or why."

  "Could it be because he's sick?"

  The captain's eyes narrowed. "Sick how?"

  "We don't know. It's some kind of lung infection, maybe pneumonia."

  Cheever's face tightened, and he swiveled to each of them in turn. "Anyone else?"

  They all shook their heads. "Just the baby," Susan said.

  Outside, as if on cue, the baby cried out, a wet, gurgling sniffle that became a cough. The captain leaned down and stared at him through the window. No one spoke for several heartbeats.

  Finally he straightened up again. He looked like he'd seen a real ghost. "Off," he said. "Outside. Now."

  "Why?"

  "Flu."

  He pushed his way past them, and they all followed, all except Kari, who remained behind with Jonathan.

  The moment he exited the bus, the captain let out a huge breath. His face had gone pale. "Carter!" he shouted. "Specialist Carter!"

  A man ran over. "Yes, sir?"

  "You have the first aid kit? Go fetch it."

  Carter nodded and ran to one of the bikes.

  "I want antibiotics!" Cheever shouted after him.

  "You think it's the flu?" Eddie asked.

  A global epidemic of influenza had swept across the globe two years before the Flense, wiping out a third of the population before it could be brought under control again. The infection persisted through the next winter, but its devastation had been greatly diminished through careful management and a massive global immunization program. Millions still died, but those numbers were significantly smaller than the billion who had succumbed to the disease a year before.

  But as devastating as the flu had been, it had been nothing like the Flense.

  "Maybe," Cheever replied.

  "Some of our people suffer from severe malnutrition. Their immune systems are likely compromised. It's just a cough."

  The captain spun around to face Eddie. "I need to know where you people came from, what you've been exposed to, where you're going."

  Eddie shook his head. "We appreciate your help, we really do. We would have been in dire straits had you not shown up when you did."

  "Dead or infected is more like it."

  Eddie shrugged. "Point is, we don't know you. How can we trust you? No offense."

  "Understood, and none taken, but it's a two-way street." He sighed and gestured at his men. "You already know my name. I was a supply officer at a small military outpost called Westerton Army Depot before the fall. The base is about eighty, ninety miles south of here. One of our sentries reported seeing your vehicle lights in the desert last night."

  "Sentry? Army Depot? You're with the army?"

  "Not the army you're thinking of. That one doesn't exist anymore. We're a group of survivors. We run the base in a military fashion, but we're more of a sanctuary now. It's just one of a
bout twenty or so safe refuges that formed after the fall. Refuges that we know about, anyway."

  His last words felt like he was fishing for information.

  "You're able to keep out the Wraiths?"

  "Wraiths?" The captain's eyes narrowed. "Yes. But they aren't the only things you need to watch out for out here. There are some unsavory characters living in the world. Roamers, we call them. They're lawless people. If the creatures don't get you, a roamer might. Inside our gates, we offer sanctuary to those who need it. Outside, there are no guarantees."

  "And in exchange?"

  "Everyone contributes in one way or another in our community."

  "How many people?"

  "About three hundred. We're under the command of Colonel Wainwright."

  "Colonel?" Eddie looked dubiously over at the men. "Sounds a lot like the old military to me. Your men don't look like soldiers."

  "Listen to me, Eddie. The old military is gone. So is the government, has been since the fall. But that doesn't mean we haven't tried to keep some of the structure and order of the past as we try and rebuild the future."

  Eddie realized how much he'd just given away. The captain now knew that they had been living in isolation for a while, perhaps as long as the fall, as he put it. This insight was bound to elicit even more questions about him and the others, questions he simply wasn't comfortable answering. He shuddered to think what these men might do with knowledge of the bunker if they didn't have good intentions.

  The captain lowered his voice. "I understand your reluctance. No pressure. But once we get you back to Westerton—"

  "Whoa, wait a minute," Eddie said. "We're not going with you."

  Cheever spun around. "It's for your own good."

  Eddie glanced at the men around them. They seemed to have taken on a hostile posture all of a sudden.

  "Are you going to force us?"

  The captain turned around. "Your vehicle runs, does it not?"

  "It's damaged. It needs oil."

  "Oil and repairs we can provide."

  "But, Daddy," Hannah cried. She pulled Eddie aside and whispered, "What about Jonah and Danny? We can't just leave them."