by Brian Parker
Sidney grunted. “He’d still be stuck in there if it weren’t for me and Katie.”
“And don’t you ever let him forget it,” Carmen said. “He gets all high and mighty sometimes. It must be that West Point education. It’s good to bring him back down to earth every once in a while.”
“So…” Sidney let the word hang in the air. It’d been three days since Jake returned from town with a whole bunch of Strykers and a bunch of soldiers. In that time, the soldiers had all voted—voted!—to go AWOL after learning they were potentially being used as pawns in a foreign takeover. Whether the general down in Fort Bliss was actually involved or not was up for debate since all they had was a dead man’s assertions that he’d kept information about the foreigners secret from the rest of the Army.
The soldiers had decided to remain a military unit, loyal to the United States, but not the corrupt leaders that had gotten them into the predicament. They’d disconnected the tracking systems from the vehicles, which meant they had to rely on old-fashioned maps to go wherever they were headed, which also meant there were a lot of map reading classes in the evening around the farmhouse as the older soldiers taught the younger generation how to navigate without GPS.
Something else odd had happened, the bearded guy, Grady, had somehow become heavily involved in the platoon’s leadership. He’d been a Special Forces operator a long time ago and was working as a CIA contractor when everything went down. Apparently, he was pretty high up in the organization and had seen a lot of crazy stuff. His self-confessed lack of memories for the past year was a red flag for Sidney and she avoided him whenever she could. He claimed that he had snatches of memories and visions of doctors doing things to him, but he had no clue where the time had gone.
Yeah right. The dude was hiding something. She was sure of it.
Grady’s companion, or prisoner—or whatever Taavi was—seemed content to remain with the soldiers. He didn’t speak any English whatsoever, so who knew what was going through the guy’s mind. He’d probably cut everyone’s throat the moment he got the opportunity.
“So,” Carmen said. “I think he’s going to go with them.”
“Really?” Sidney asked in disbelief. “He was talking about—Hold on. Can you hold Lincoln while I make him a bottle?”
Carmen smiled and pulled a bottle from the pocket of her robe. “I heard him fussing, so I figured that even if he took the breast, he’d need a top off.”
“You are Super Mom,” Sidney grinned. “How do you do it?” She lifted her bra up into place, ensuring the thick pad was over her nipple before she dropped her shirt and reached for the bottle.
“It was a lot of trial and error,” Carmen admitted. “I still screw up every day though. My kids are just old enough that my mistakes usually aren’t that big of a deal.”
Once Lincoln was feeding, Sidney returned to their earlier conversation. “So, back to what I was saying. A couple of days ago Jake was saying he wouldn’t leave with the soldiers if they tried to take him back. But now he’s going with them on some stupid mission?”
Carmen nodded. “Yeah. Grady has convinced him that if they can make it back to DC, or New York if DC is overrun like you say it is, then they might be able to find a cure for this thing.”
Another soft knock at the door made her look up in annoyance. “Who is it?”
It was Jake this time. “Sorry to bother you. I just heard the little guy crying.”
“Yeah. Come on in,” Sidney said. He opened the door and stepped inside the room, closing the door behind himself. He nodded toward Carmen nervously.
Sidney stood and gestured to the chair. “You wanna hold him and feed him?”
“I, ah… No, not really.”
“Don’t be such a pussy,” Carmen said. “Hold the baby.”
Jake relented and sat in the chair Sidney had occupied. She knelt over him, taking in his musky odor as she handed him the baby. She crinkled her nose. “You need a shower.”
“I washed my hands,” he replied. “Haven’t had time to get cleaned up yet.”
Sidney handed him the bottle. “Just hold it there, he’ll suck on it.”
“Do I burp him or whatever?”
“In a little bit.” She sat on the bed and glanced at Carmen leaning against the wall. She wore a slight smile as she watched Jake feeding the baby. “Carmen just told me that you’ve decided to leave with Grady.”
“I kind of figured that’s what you two were talking about when Miguel said Carmen was in here.”
“So, was all that stuff the other night about us being a family just bullshit?” Sidney asked, addressing the elephant in the room.
“What? No!”
“Keep your voice down,” Sidney hissed, pointing at Lincoln. He was already beginning to drift off, content to let the warm formula dribble down his cheek and pool along his neckline.
“No,” Jake repeated, quietly this time. “It wasn’t bullshit. But that Iranian dude, and possibly Grady as well, has been inoculated against the infection. They—”
“How does he know that?”
“Let’s just say that Grady’s a different kind of cat. I’m not sure if he’s all there anymore. They experimented on him like crazy.”
“They who?”
“He doesn’t know. He remembers that they were foreign with dark hair, but that’s about it.”
“Okay, so what do you mean that he’s not all there?” Sidney asked, concerned that the man had been hanging around the farm.
“He’s convinced that he’s immune, first of all. He has several oval scars on his forearms and one peeking out from his beard that he says were absolutely not there before his team went to Brazil.”
Sidney nodded her head. “We knew that there were some people who were immune. We found that out while we were still at Fort Bliss. Even if he is immune, what does that have to do with going to New York?”
“Funny, it turns out that being immune doesn’t do much good if you get ripped to shreds by the infected. Ask all the Iranian soldiers back at the airport.”
“Makes sense. If a bunch of them get riled up and attack movement, then keep attacking when their infection doesn’t spread, then you’ll end up getting killed. But why does he think those soldiers were immune?”
Jake nodded his head in agreement. “Taavi showed him through gestures and drawing pictures and shit that he’s gotten vaccinated against the virus.”
“That must have been an excruciating three hour conversation,” Sidney deadpanned, remembering her time in the Peace Corps when she was deployed to both Senegal and to Bangladesh and didn’t speak the language in either country.
“So you know what that crazy fucker did last night when most of us were asleep?”
“Who? Grady or Taavi?”
“Yeah, your story is very confusing, mi amor,” Carmen said.
“Grady,” Jake answered. “He’s immune—that’s how he ended up getting captured when his team was all killed. He said his captors did all sorts of experiments on him and his memory is coming back in pieces and parts. One of the things he remembers is them having infected come into his cell. He couldn’t remember why, but had an idea and went out last night into town. Then the crazy fucker made a bunch of noise to call the infected to him. Now, do you see why I say that he’s kind of fucked in the head?”
Sidney leaned forward. She’d seen Grady throughout the day and he seemed unhurt. “What happened?”
“The infected came running to where he was—a couple hundred of them according to him. But they stopped about five feet from him and wouldn’t get any closer. They shifted away and wouldn’t let him get closer to them. When he was satisfied with his little experiment, he started walking and they parted away from him. He just walked back here and they didn’t follow him. Ain’t that some shit?”
Sidney scoffed. “And you believed him? Maybe you’re the one who’s crazy.”
Jake shrugged. “I mean, it makes sense, in a fucked up way, doesn’t it? How
are the Iranians or the North Koreans, or whoever, supposed to take and keep the US if they have to fight the infected just like we do? Why not come up with some type of, I don’t know, repellent or some shit, that will give them a way to have freedom of movement without worry of constant attack?”
“Like a mosquito repellant?” Carmen asked. “That’s just stupid, mijo.”
“Kind of, but not the same,” he answered, ignoring the jab. “They injected him with all sorts of shit. He has an entire year missing. What if they came up with something that works better than a vaccine? He thinks that’s what they did to him and they were trying to test it in the field, with the American infected when the soldiers were attacked. I didn’t believe him, so I made him show me.”
“And?” Sidney asked.
“It worked. We went out to the highway this morning. He walked out into the middle of a small group of them moving up the road and they avoided him. Came directly at me.”
“Okay, so it works, but why are you guys going to New York?” Sidney pressed. “Why not go to Fort Bliss where the CDC relocated to? I know they were taking people who they thought were immune over to the hospital and testing their blood and stuff.”
Jake shook his head. “We don’t know the status of General Bhagat. He’s keeping the fact that foreign militaries are operating on US soil a secret from everyone there. What else is the guy hiding?”
Sidney shrugged and decided to play devil’s advocate. “Or, he could just be trying to influence what he can and knows that telling his soldiers about the invaders won’t do anything but make them more worried since they’re stuck on that base defending against all the infected.”
“You and I both know that at this point the infected down there can be handled by a couple of companies of soldiers as long as they have ammo. I think there may be more of them up here, surviving off the old corn harvest, than there are down in the desert around El Paso now.”
“Maybe. But I find it hard to believe that a guy in his position is behind a plan to overthrow the United States,” Sidney countered.
“He sure as hell had no problems letting a few hundred thousand people kill themselves, and then blaming me for it,” Jake grunted, rocking slightly as Lincoln stirred from his outburst.
“I’m not defending him,” Sidney replied. “But I’m also not walking in his shoes. He has millions of people to care for and not enough resources to do it. If cutting out some of those mouths to feed could prolong the life of the rest?” Her voice inflection turned the statement into a question. They’d never have the answer for it, though.
“Regardless,” Jake said, “Grady is planning to go to DC to his company’s offices to try to raise some of his old contacts. If that doesn’t work, we’ll go into New York.”
“Is everyone going?” Carmen asked.
Jake nodded. “Most of them. We have three soldiers who want to stay here and help Vern if he’ll have them.”
“Let me guess,” Sidney scoffed. “Two of them are those guys who’ve been following Katie and Sally around like little puppy dogs.”
“Yeah, plus one of the medics, Specialist Weir. He had a close call when they were at the Cullen farm and says he’s done traveling the country.”
“Are they just gonna sit around and do nothing?” Sidney asked.
“No. They’re gonna do whatever Vern needs them to do. But they’re also gonna help pull security around the farm while I’m gone.”
“Ahem,” Carmen said, making an effort to clear her throat and get their attention. “Why are you going, Jake? Why can’t the others go and we stay here, like we have been?”
Jake nodded. “I was waiting for you to ask that.”
“Well?” she pressed.
“I need to go. I can’t… It seems stupid to you guys, I’m sure,” Jake said. “I know that I have a good thing going here, and I’m still planning to leave. I realized something the other night when I was headed toward the airport. I haven’t done all that I can in our fight. I want to find a cure for this so your kids—so Lincoln—can grow up and not face death at every turn. This is an opportunity to do that.”
“Okay, I understand that part of it,” Carmen said. “Why you? Why are you leaving us?”
“These are my soldiers,” Jake said. “Well, about a third of them at least. I abandoned them once, and it was the hardest decision of my life. I’m not going to do that to them again.”
“So, you’re abandoning your new family because you’re guilty?” Carmen asked.
Sidney saw the flash of anger in her friend’s eyes and she was leaning forward with her hands clenched at her sides. She’d held it in until she got the reason for Jake’s decision to leave, but the fiery Puerto Rican was about to lose her shit. “Carmen, please,” she said. “The baby’s sleeping.”
Carmen nodded and crossed her arms across her chest. “Well?” she demanded quietly, aware of the baby’s slumber.
“It’s my duty, Carmen. I have to go.”
“No you don’t, pendejo. You want to go. You’ve abandoned me before. You left me in that camp for months. Now, when we come here, you keep going into town for diapers and formula for the baby.” She glanced up at Sidney. “It’s not your fault, mamma, you are amazing and so strong for bringing a baby into this world. But I can’t deal with a man who wants to leave me at every opportunity he gets.”
“Carmen, that’s not what I’m doing. This is my duty.”
She chopped her hand across the air to silence him. “That’s it. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” Carmen stopped and turned into the hallway.
“Carmen, wait,” Jake called softly.
She turned back. “Don’t bother coming to my room tonight, Jake. I’m done with the bullshit, okay?”
“Carmen?” She was gone. He stared at the empty doorway for a moment before sighing. “Well, that didn’t go like I thought,” he muttered, looking down at Lincoln.
“What did you expect, Jake? Did you think she would cheer for you to go off and fight the war while she got left alone here, where, oh by the way, it’s not safe from the infected—and maybe from the Iranians or whatever now too?”
He nodded sullenly. “I just think I’ve gotta do this. I can’t explain it.”
Sidney smiled. “I think I understand. It’s a calling.”
“Something like that,” he muttered.
She leaned over and patted his knee. “Just come back to us, okay? We’re all trying to make the best of things here. Those soldiers who are staying should help to keep the infected away, but we like you. Carmen needs you. She may not say it, but having you here for her and the kids is extremely important.”
“Hmpf,” he grunted. “She sure has a funny way of showing it.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn about women, Jake.”
“You don’t know anything about my past or what I know about women,” he replied, indignantly.
“I don’t need to know the specifics.” She grinned mischievously, letting her feelings surface for a brief moment as she arched an eyebrow. “Maybe one day you can show me what you know.” She liked Jake, but immediately felt guilty for betraying Carmen’s trust. She had to put a stop to where her body was urging her to go.
“I—”
“Here, give me Lincoln and go to bed,” Sidney ordered. “You need your sleep before you leave.”
She leaned over and lifted the baby gently from him, once again taking in the strong odor of a hard day’s work that emanated from Jake. It was no longer an unpleasant smell to her like it would have been a year ago. Now it felt…right.
She laid the baby on the bed. When she turned back, she was surprised to find Jake standing close behind her. “Sidney, what do you want from me?”
Sidney pushed lightly against his chest, backing him up into the rocking chair. “I want you to go on your mission to save the world. Then come back to us here in Kansas.”
“No, I mean—”
She sighed. “I know what you mean, Jake. It�
�s complicated right now, okay? You have Carmen, and—”
“Not anymore, apparently.”
“She just needs time,” Sidney countered. “You have Carmen, and her kids look up to you. I’m still dealing with some feelings from Lincoln’s father’s death.” She took a tentative step forward and placed her hands on his hips. “Maybe things will be different when you get back. Maybe not. I don’t know, but for right now, we can only be friends.”
He frowned and then she noticed the twitch at the corners of his mouth. “No,” she said. “And not friends with benefits. Just friends. Okay?”
He nodded and she pushed against his hipbones. “Now, go on. Get to bed—or wherever you’re gonna sleep tonight. You’ve got a long trip ahead of you and it isn’t going to be easy avoiding the infected on the ground and the jets overhead.”
“Are you gonna see us off in the morning?”
“It depends on what time, and what the little guy is doing,” she replied truthfully.
“Alright. Well, if I don’t see you tomorrow morning…”
“Goodnight, Jake. I’ll see you later.” Another soft push, this time to his back, and she followed him to the door. She shut it behind him and wondered what the heck she’d gotten herself into.
If Carmen wanted to re-stake any type of claim on Jake when he returned, then she was the first one out of the mix. She certainly didn’t need to be involved in some crazy post-apocalyptic love triangle. That wasn’t fair to any of them, but most importantly, it wasn’t fair for Carmen’s kids. She wasn’t that type of person and she’d be furious if Lincoln’s emotions were jerked around like that.
That final thought solidified it for her. She would let Jake be and not pursue him if he actually did return from New York. Of course, the odds of him traveling across country, then back, were slim to none.
“Oh, Jake,” she whispered at the door. “Why are you such a fool?”
17
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