Harden

by D. J. Molles

  Lee tapped his foot. Nodded disconsolately.

  “You trust this guy?” Abe asked, perhaps just to get Lee’s mind off of the tube removal.

  Lee raised an eyebrow at Abe. Realized he was talking about Paolo. “Absolutely not. I trust you. And I trust Julia. There’s not many other people I trust. But…” he considered his words for a moment. “Beggars can’t be choosers. And right now we’re begging for allies. Not friends, mind you. But allies. And I think Paolo is an ally. I believe his story.”

  “Take a deep breath and hold it,” Julia instructed.

  Lee inhaled. Felt a dim pain as he held the air in his lungs.

  He felt a pull inside of him. “Don’t tense up,” Julia said, and then it was out.

  Lee coughed, stifled it because it hurt. “Fuck. That’s unpleasant.”

  Julia set the chest tube off to the side. “It’s out now.” She had a finger pressed tightly to the hole of his wound. “I’m gonna pull the sutures closed. It’ll hurt.”

  Lee clenched his teeth and waited.

  He felt her hands moving. The pinch of the purse-string sutures being pulled, the two flaps of skin coming together tightly. Then the flicking of Julia’s fingers as they expertly tied off the knot, closing his wound.

  “Alright,” she said, leaning back and inspecting her work. “Gonna bandage it again. Then you’re done.”

  “So, is my lung healed?”

  “No.”

  “It still has a hole in it?”

  “It’ll close,” she said. “Unless you over-stress it.”

  “Which I probably will.”

  She leaned over to make eye contact with him. “Well. Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “Don’t have a whole lot of choice here, Jules.”

  “Hold still.” She swabbed the area clean. Applied an occlusive dressing to the site.

  Abe leaned back. Stretched. The bags under his eyes had become luggage. “So what’s the plan?”

  “The plan,” Julia answered over Lee. “Is for Lee to sleep so he can think clearly.”

  “I slept last night.”

  “You just woke up from a three day coma, and you’re still injured.”

  Lee had to admit, he felt exhausted.

  He looked at Abe and nodded. “We need to coordinate with Paolo and his people. See what our options are before we come up with a plan.”

  Abe frowned deeply. Puzzling something out.

  “What?” Lee prompted.

  Abe looked at him. “So these cartel fucks. Apparently they have at least some control of the oil, although how much remains to be seen. Okay. That’s all well and good, and maybe that’s true, or maybe Paolo just wants us to ice these guys because he’s got a bone to pick with them.” Abe’s jaw worked for a second. “What still doesn’t make sense to me is why they hit us the way they did.”

  “Like they knew we were coming,” Lee said, picking up on Abe’s train of thought now.

  “Yes. And why the hell they took prisoners.”

  Lee shook his head. “You’re right. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “None of it makes sense.”

  Julia settled back and gave the two of them a look. “Maybe it would make more sense once you’ve had some sleep.”

  Lee glanced at her. “What? You got a better idea?”

  “Not right now,” she answered, then got up and moved to where she’d set up her gear. “Abe, you need to rest up too. I’ll stay awake.”

  Abe rubbed his face, seemed to melt into his chair. His eyes looked red when he pulled his hands away. They looked far-off. After a moment, he smiled. Chuckled to himself.

  “What?” Lee asked.

  Abe shook his head. “Just thinkin’ about my life.”

  “Well, don’t do that.”

  Abe looked at him. “Yeah. This is it, right? This is life. Sleepin’ in fuckin’ chicken coops. Working with crazy people so we can make it another day.”

  Lee smiled a rickety smile. “Subvenir-atin’ and Refectus-in’.”

  “Co-ordin-atin’,” Abe sighed.

  “Co-ordin-atin’,” Lee agreed.

  ***

  What was nice about the room was that it had no windows, so when they extinguished their little lamp, it was dark, except for the line of daylight under the door.

  What was bad about the room was that Lee’s brain ran amok in the darkness.

  In the darkness anything was possible. And his mind pursued every if, but, and shoulda-woulda-coulda. Lee’s worries and fears were an animal trapped in a cage, running around and around and around, and all Lee could do was visualize closing the door on that sad animal and hoping it would tire itself out in the dark.

  Exhaustion didn’t exactly win out. But it took the parts of Lee that it could corner and carried them off to a twitchy, anxious sleep.

  He was in the field again. The bright, green, rolling hills.

  Beautiful sunshine.

  Angela there with him.

  Even as he stood there, he was aware that he was dreaming, and he thought, More of this? Why can’t I just sleep in blackness for once in my goddamned life?

  Green grass. Rolling hills.

  The dream version of Angela indistinct. A mere impressionist painting of the woman who had taken up residence in his brain. She didn’t speak this time around. She had nothing to say. She seemed to be basking in the warm sunshine.

  In the distance, Lee saw the tree again. The only feature of the landscape. Distant. On the top of the hill.

  The leaves shimmered in the sunlight as a light breeze stirred them, though he himself could not feel the breeze. For that matter, he could not feel the sunshine. He could not feel anything.

  After a moment, he saw something else.

  Underneath the branches of that tree.

  A figure, in the shadows.

  Small.

  He squinted, tried to make it out, but couldn’t.

  He started to walk towards it.

  He fell through the ground.

  Plunged into darkness.

  The pit. The cavern.

  Blackness.

  He scrambled for something. His hands flying about.

  There was a horrendous banging noise.

  A door opened in the darkness and light came rushing through, silhouetting three figures…

  Lee’s hand found what it was looking for. It found the warm metal of the rifle that lay with him. He swung it up. He heard shouting, peripherally, but it didn’t make any sense to him. It sounded like animals howling.

  Infected. Infected. They got inside…

  He put the rifle to his shoulder and hit the light.

  The beam from his weaponlight smashed the darkness.

  One of the figures was walking towards him. Stoop-shouldered, hitching gait. The beam of light hit the thing’s face and lit it up, pale and almost white in the glow of the halogen beam. It was swollen and cut-up and demented.

  “Lee,” it said in a broken, croaking voice.

  Kill it! Kill it before it eats you!

  “Lee, I’m sorry.”

  Lee’s finger descended to the trigger as his heart tried to smash through his sternum.

  More shouting.

  Something hit him hard, pushing his rifle out of the way.

  “Lee! Look at me!”

  Reality swirled. Half in and half out of a nightmare.

  A slap across his face. Hard. Stinging.

  Fingers grabbing him, pulling his face to look in another direction.

  Found Julia staring at him.

  “Lee! Wake up!”

  Lee blinked panic-widened eyes, sickly and disconnected, hallucinating. “Infected,” he mumbled, and it was only when he heard the rasp of his own voice that his mind found a connection to reality and swung back into place, like the pins and cylinders of a lock lining up.

  “There’s no infected,” Julia said, her voice sinking into a forced calm. “It’s just us. No infected. There’s no danger. Chill the fuck out.”
r />   Lee’s eyes shot over to the figure in the room.

  Not infected.

  The face was malformed because it was swollen and bruised.

  “Carl?” Lee came lurching upright on feet that felt like sacks of needles.

  The two figures that were supporting Carl were Paolo and—surprisingly—Braxton, as though he’d shown up out of thin air. Both of them were staring at Lee with concern.

  Carl Gilliard had one good eye. The other was swollen shut. He had to angle his face to make eye contact with Lee. His swollen, split lips moved. “Sorry, Lee.”

  Lee thought he was apologizing for scaring him. “Not your fault.” He came up off the cot where he’d been sleeping. “Sit him down. Shit. What the fuck happened to you?”

  Paolo and Braxton navigated Carl to the cot and eased him into a wincing sitting position. Carl was holding one arm across his belly.

  “I’m sorry,” Carl said again.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” Lee insisted. “It was just a nightmare. You know…”

  Carl shook his head with obvious pain, then reached out and grabbed Lee by the wrist. “I’m not talking about that.” The battered operator looked up at him with his one good eye. “They killed Brian, Lee. They fucking killed him and I’m sorry.”

  ***

  Lee stood on the side of the pickup. Elbows up on the bed. Looking down into it.

  Abe stood next to Lee.

  Paolo was at the rear of the bed, near the tailgate.

  Their truck was now parked outside of the chicken house. Lee supposed he’d slept for several hours, because the sun was down below the trees, slanting through them in hazy yellow bands.

  “Sorry for taking liberties with your truck,” Paolo mumbled.

  When no acceptance or rejection of his apology came forth, he cleared his throat and kept going. “Braxton spotted them on the side of the road when he was coming back, but he was too scared to stop by himself. Thought it might be a trap. He got back while y’all were sleepin’, so we took your truck to go investigate. Figured…” Paolo puffed through his lips. “Figured we might need the pickup bed.” A long pause. “Your man Carl was lyin’ in the middle of the road. Bound up like a trussed hog. And…” A nod towards the bed. “He was lyin’ there too.”

  “Brian Tomlin,” Lee murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s his name.” A pause. “Was his name.”

  Except it didn’t look like Brian Tomlin. To anybody that didn’t know the man’s face by heart, he would’ve just looked like a black blob.

  Lee smelled the sulfurous, petroleum stink of crude oil.

  Paolo nodded once. “So this was your guy.”

  Lee didn’t answer. The answer was self-evident, and he didn’t feel much like talking.

  What am I supposed to feel right now?

  Was it rage? Was it grief?

  That’s what he thought he should be feeling. But the truth was that he felt hollow. He felt as empty as the cave from his dream, and just as dark.

  Are you done?

  Are you dead inside?

  He wanted to feel something. Anything. And knew that Tomlin’s death would eventually settle on him. But every death came differently. Some came like hurricane winds and blew you down. Others crept in slow like a soaking fog.

  It was just that, right now, it was too big.

  He couldn’t metabolize it. He couldn’t absorb it.

  Perhaps worse than any tangible emotion, what Lee felt like doing in that moment was hiding. The urge of it was compelling, and comforting, and childlike in the way that he was completely overwhelmed.

  He wanted to crawl into the backseat of the truck and lay down on the floorboards. He wanted to lay there and be left alone.

  The place in his brain where Tomlin lived was suddenly cut off. Closed down. Like a boarded up business. That part of his brain that catalogued the life and actions of those he held dear would never be added to again.

  They were now just memories of yet another person that was gone.

  And it took the energy out of him.

  It sapped his strength like a chronic sickness.

  “Do you want help burying him?” Paolo asked.

  Lee blinked a few times, found that he’d been staring at the black image of Tomlin’s body so long that it left a ghostly afterimage behind. “Not gonna bury him out here.” Lee shoved himself off the bed of the truck, feeling like lead weights had been attached to his limbs. “Not gonna bury him where the goddamn primals can dig him up. We’ll take him back to Butler where his body can be left alone.”

  Like you want to be left alone.

  Is that what you want, Lee? You want to crawl into your grave?

  …the woods are lovely, dark and deep…

  …but I have promises to keep…

  But Lee didn’t much feel like keeping promises.

  He turned around and faced the chicken house.

  “Uh,” Abe started.

  Lee looked over his shoulder at him.

  Abe’s eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. His face held his emotions back like an unstable levee. “It’ll be dark soon enough. If we leave him out here…”

  “We’re not gonna leave him out here.” Lee’s voice lacked inflection. “I’m going to go in there and I’m going to get Julia and Carl, and then we’re going to leave for Butler.”

  Lee walked back into the chicken house, and Abe walked with him. And for every bit of rage that Lee thought he should be feeling, it radiated off of Abe like a blast furnace with the doors open. And it was contagious.

  By the time they made it back to the maintenance room, Lee felt something kindling in his chest, and he sheltered it jealously, glad to be feeling something, even if that something was destructive.

  It was an endless circle, he knew.

  But what else was he supposed to do?

  The tides pulled him. Like it was all a current, and he couldn’t fight against it. His destiny would always carry him to a place of wrath and tears.

  In the room, Carl was leaning back on the cot, his mouth open because his broken nose was too swollen to breathe through, his arm cradled across his midsection.

  Julia was hunched over him, probing for broken bones. Lee could immediately tell, just by seeing her face in quarter-profile, that she was crying. He saw it in her jaw, and in her cheeks, and in her shoulders.

  Lee knelt beside Carl, conscious of his own injuries, even as he felt sympathy for Carl’s. He put his hand on Carl’s leg—gently, because he didn’t know if it was bruised or broken. Lee had something to say, and Carl’s one eye watched him carefully while he struggled to grasp what exactly it was.

  He finally blurted, “Don’t you dare fucking apologize.”

  Carl’s eye blinked, and his lips twitched. He didn’t shed a tear though. Lee had never seen Carl shed a tear. But Lee could see that it was only barely held in check.

  “Not your burden to shoulder,” Lee said.

  “Whose is it then?” Carl asked.

  “Can you tell me who did it?”

  Carl’s nostrils flared. He nodded.

  “Then that’s whose burden it is,” Lee said. “And they’re gonna shoulder every bit of it.” He stood up with a wince. “Can you walk?”

  Julia took that opportunity to speak. “He’s got broken ribs, I think. But I can’t be sure without an X-ray. No obvious signs of internal bleeding, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

  Carl leaned forward with what looked like a good deal of effort. “I can walk.”

  “You only gotta walk to the truck,” Lee said. “Get your shit. We’re heading back to Butler.”

  ***

  Paolo had stayed with the truck.

  He wasn’t a huge fan of having the thing parked in front of his hideout, but with the two guys with guns all torn up about the death of their friend, Paolo had figured it wasn’t the time to bring it up.

  Paolo figured that someone should stay with the body. So he
turned around and leaned back against the tailgate, not wanting to look at the poor dead fuck inside the bed.

  He began to think about things. Began to think about Bullock County Correctional, how nice and safe it had been, and how it sucked to be shacked in a chicken house. Also thought about Little T, that backstabbing, sellout sonofabitch, and whether or not he had been involved in whatever had happened to these people.

  He eyed the hideout, and wondered how much longer he was going to hole up in this fucking place? Aside from being relatively secure, it didn’t have much else going for it. It was a place of stagnation, and stagnation was anathema to Paolo, who had lived his life always moving forward to the next thing.

  He was like a shark. He had to keep moving, or he would die.

  Maybe it was time to do something. Maybe it was time to take some risks.

  Breaking inertia was always risky. That’s what made stagnation so easy.

  Because stagnation was usually safer. At least short-term.

  A whistle reached his ears, coming from the woods.

  Two notes. Up-down. Almost like a bird call.

  He twitched. Came upright off the bed of the pickup.

  Two notes.

  And then an echo, deeper into the woods.

  And then another echo.

  Not echoes, he knew.

  It was a danger signal, passing from one of his spotters to the next.

  “Shit,” he murmured to himself, just as the first of his spotters burst through the woods at a dead sprint.

  “Big’uns!” the spotter shouted as he ran.

  Paolo shoved himself off the truck and ran to the door to his safe house, repeating the call: “Big’uns comin’! Infected! Infected!”

  EIGHTEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  PRIMALS

  Lee and his team were halfway out the door of the equipment room when the alarm was raised.

  “Infected! They’re comin’!”

  “Motherfuck,” Lee spat, and slung into his rifle. His armor pressed against his new stitches and they smarted. He started moving forward quicker, but Abe caught his arm and turned him back.

  “What’re you doing?” Abe had the other hand on Carl’s elbow, offering nominal support because Carl insisted he could walk by himself.