Harden

by D. J. Molles

Mitch, still pumping his palms at the man. “Easy, Paolo! Same team here, Buddy!”

  Paolo drew his pistol from its holster, held it down at his side.

  As one, the circle of Mitch’s team tightened up.

  Mitch slapped the side of the bed to get Paolo’s attention. “Whoa! What the fuck is that? Put that shit away, Paolo!”

  “Imunna fuckin’ killim!”

  Carl was trading his gaze between the man he was covering with his rifle, and Paolo. He didn’t speak. Just shook his head.

  Lee pulled himself along the truck bed and shouldered Mitch out of the way. He had to fight to take a big breath, but managed to belt out, “PAOLO!”

  The man’s blue eyes jagged to Lee, and they were about to go back to the target of his hatred, but something in Lee’s face stopped him. For a second, Lee thought that maybe he just looked that pissed. But as Paolo stared at Lee and his expression of rage was edged out by something like shock, Lee realized that it was because of how bad he himself looked.

  Based on the cold sheen of sweat he felt across his entire face, Lee guessed that his skin was dead pale. Hanging off the side of the truck like he couldn’t support his own weight, lips probably still tainted red from coughing blood.

  “Christ,” Paolo mumbled. “What happened to you?”

  Lee shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself, and don’t do anything stupid.”

  Paolo twitched. He looked over his shoulder and realized for the first time that Mitch’s team had edged very close to him. Close enough that all they had to do was reach out and touch him.

  Lee hitched himself down to the tailgate so he was standing next to Paolo. “Look at me.”

  Paolo looked at him.

  Lee raised his hand and motioned with his fingers, a gesture that said, come closer so we can confide in each other.

  Paolo leaned close.

  Lee spoke quietly. “You’ll have your chance. But not before I bleed that motherfucker for everything he knows.”

  “I heard that!” the man in the truck bed suddenly wailed. “I heard that, and I’m not giving you shit!”

  Carl raised his boot, put it to the side of the man’s face, and mushed it into the truck bed until the man mewled in pain. Carl ground his heel to make his point. Then he leaned down, and a rare flash of intensity came over his features, causing his lips to curl in a savage sneer. “Quiet now, meatsack.”

  Meatsack obeyed, save for a whimper.

  Paolo dragged his gaze back to Lee. Held eye contact for a moment longer, his jaw working like a dog that wants to bite. Then a fresh round of panic hit his features. “What about my people? What about—”

  Lee cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. “We’re gonna find out about the rest of your people. And a whole lot more. But we can’t go back to your hideout right now.”

  “But—”

  “It’s too dangerous. Could be a trap, and you know it.” Lee took a hold of Paolo’s arm, because he felt the need to make physical contact with the man, like he might serve as a lightning rod to ground him. “Give me tonight, Paolo. Just give me tonight.”

  A spattering of fat raindrops tumbled out of the sky, and started audibly smacking the concrete, the truck, and the people around it.

  Paolo’s face seemed to tremble. “But where are we gonna go?”

  Lee had already considered that. “Back to Hurtsboro.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ─▬▬▬─

  TIMES CHANGE

  They strung the man up from the exposed rafters in the basement where Julia, Abe, and Lee had hidden for three days. The detritus of MRE wrappers were still piled in the corner. The pullout couch still tousled.

  No one had spoken to the man yet.

  He had tried to cry out several times, but every time he did Carl slammed him in the face with the buttstock of his rifle. After four iterations of that—split lips, a few lost teeth, and a broken nose—the man had finally gotten the picture and remained silent.

  Lee was upstairs, sitting shirtless at a small kitchen table.

  Julia sat beside him, correcting a few busted stitches in his chest wound.

  The entire house was dim. The day outside had darkened even further into a violent twilight. Wind rushed at the house, and the walls creaked threateningly. Rain washed heavily over the windows in pale waves. Sometimes they heard the sharp tick-tack-tick of hail.

  Lee looked down at Julia’s hands. “Nothing serious then?”

  Julia pulled away from his side, inspected her work, then propped one elbow on the table and looked at him. “It’s all serious, Lee. You’ve been pushing too hard. You need rest, or this shit’s not going to heal.”

  Lee felt the truth of that deep in his bones, as if his marrow was somehow aching. He thought that if he was back in his house in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone, he might collapse into his bed and sleep for days on end.

  Deuce seemed to share his exhaustion. The high-strung dog apparently had burned himself out over the last few days. He was ten feet from Lee, just inside the living room, where the floor was carpeted. He’d walked away from Lee, found the soft carpet, and then simply laid down on his side and was now asleep.

  Lee reached out and put his hand on Julia’s. Looked at the dark ghost of blood that sat in the grooves and wrinkles of his hand. Saw the same thing under her nails.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I know it’s not easy to do what you do. But I appreciate you…” he cracked a smile. “Managing me.”

  She lifted her thumb, brought it down so that it grasped his palm. “Well. Someone has to manage your ass. Obviously, you won’t do it.”

  “You know I can’t stop,” he said. Thought of how he could clarify that, and decided to leave it as it was. A simple statement of fact.

  Julia searched his face. Didn’t find whatever she was looking for. She looked off into the kitchen. Not at anything in particular. Just staring.

  Lee watched her. She was, at once, haggard and beautiful. She was an attractive woman, but no one looks their best after being in the field for a week. Still, there was something about how hard she pushed herself that made her beautiful to him.

  Was that strange of him to think so?

  No.

  She was a kindred spirit.

  “We were carrying you when we lost Nate,” she said, her voice distant. “Me and Abe. We each had an arm. We were dragging you across a road. It was dark. You were practically dead. We’d been giving you CPR while we waited for the blood and air to drain out of your chest so your lung could re-inflate. I was only thinking about you. You and your chest. You and your wound. I couldn’t imagine anything else. I thought you were going to die, and I thought that I had to apply every bit of myself to saving you, or…or…I dunno. Or I’d just evaporate. Like if you died there wouldn’t be enough of me left over to be a real person.”

  Her eyes drifted. Crashed into Lee’s. Veered away again. “Then, Nate was holding cover on the road, and we were carrying you, trying to get to cover, and the next thing I know, a round just catches him. Just…right in the head. Like that.” She snapped her fingers. “That was it. That’s all it took. A microsecond. And then he was gone. I was trying to keep you alive, and I lost someone else. And then I had to leave him there. Because…because fucking triage, Lee. Do you understand?”

  Lee nodded, stiffly.

  “Because you were still alive, just barely, but still alive, and the rules of triage say I leave him there and get you to safety. So I did. And I’d do it again. I loved Nate like a brother, but I’d do it again, because those are the rules. Because you have to triage.”

  “If you’d have gone back, they would have shot you, too,” Lee said.

  Julia waved him off. “It’s not about that, Lee. That’s not the point. The point is, I was trying to keep you alive, and I lost Nate. And then, you wake up, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re awake. And I take the chest tube out, and I think, everything is gonna be okay, Lee’s in th
e clear now, and then I lose Tomlin.”

  Julia held out her hands, palms up, and her eyes spilled over as she stared at their emptiness. Then she clenched them and rapped them on the table top. “It’s like fucking Whack-A-Mole, goddammit. The second I keep one of you alive, someone else goes down, and I don’t know what the fuck to do, I don’t know who to watch, I feel like everyone’s on the ragged edge of dying and if I so much as fucking blink, or look away for an instant, I’m going to lose someone else!”

  Lee wished that he had something to say. Something wise. Something poignant. Something that would salve the way that Julia felt. But it all sounded so broken and worthless in his own head that he didn’t dare say it.

  It seemed that anything that had ever been worth saying about loss had already been said at some other time, when someone else had been lost. And now it was all stale platitudes. There was no wisdom in death. There were no words that could make someone feel better.

  Sometimes it was simply best to keep your mouth shut.

  Lee looked at her hands on the tabletop, and he nodded, feeling his own emotions clench down hard around that little stone of grief inside of him.

  That was all he could give her. He could only commiserate.

  Julia sniffed. Made a noise as though disgusted with herself, and then swiped the tears out of her eyes like they’d rebelled against her, and then wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. She leaned forward, across the table, put her hand on the back of Lee’s neck. Kissed his temple. Her breath and lips were warm against his skin. “We need you, Lee. We need you alive.”

  Lee said nothing in response.

  Julia sat back in her chair again. Turned to look down the stairs that led to the basement.

  She was silent. Thinking about something.

  Her lips parted. Jaw worked. Her teeth shown for just a flash.

  “Let me do it,” she said, her voice as still and as dangerous as the surface of quicksand.

  He wanted to ask her what she meant, but he knew.

  It made him think of the road. Of killing that man, with his empty hands upheld for mercy. It made him think of the Julia he’d known at the beginning. The Julia who had trouble reconciling the slaughter of the infected, because she still viewed them as people. Crazy people, but people nonetheless.

  Times change.

  People have to change with it.

  “Two years ago,” Lee spoke like you might walk across broken glass. “You would’ve tried to stop me from killing that man today.”

  She eyed him. “Two years ago, I would’ve thought that I could stop you.”

  This is who you are. This is what you do.

  “He deserved what he got.” She jerked her head towards the basement. “So does this guy.”

  Lee didn’t want her to go downstairs. And he questioned himself. He questioned why that was, and he knew that it wasn’t because he thought Julia was not capable. It was because…

  Because he wanted to protect her.

  Her change made him sad, he realized.

  On the one hand, there was something familiar and good about being of one mind about things. On the other hand, Lee wanted her to be better than him.

  Has that ship sailed? He wondered.

  Are any of us “better”?

  Are any of us “good” anymore?

  He didn’t have an answer for himself.

  “Fine,” he said. He reached forward, took his shirt, slid it painfully back over his body. Then stood up. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Rudy, Morrow, Logan, and Blake had braved the squalling storm to kick out a few blocks and create a perimeter.

  Abe and Mitch were upstairs in the bedrooms, providing overwatch on the streets, though the gales of rain severely lessened their visibility. But they were also keeping Paolo upstairs, and keeping an eye on him.

  It was just Carl and Julia and Lee down in the basement.

  And the man tied to the rafters.

  Carl posted up on the door to the outside.

  Lee sat in one of the wooden dining room chairs they’d brought down. About five paces from their prisoner.

  Julia poked around in the corner of the basement, as though she’d previously seen something over there and was trying to find it. She came up with an aluminum softball bat.

  The man watched her with a cocked eyebrow. “Sent a woman to do a man’s work,” he grunted.

  Julia smiled. Tested her swing in the air. The bat made a humming noise as she warmed up like a batter who was next at the plate.

  Lee sat erect with his hands on his knees. Slouching hurt his side. “What can I call you? I mean, besides ‘Meatsack.’”

  The man pulled his eyes off of Julia and looked at Lee. He hocked and spit, but the globule didn’t reach Lee’s feet. “You can call me Fuck You. That’s what you can call me.”

  Lee remained placid. “Is that first name Fuck, last name You? Or Fuck You is your first name? Like Fuck You Johnson?”

  “You think this shit scares me?” the man snapped. But there was a tremor in his voice. “You can’t scare me. Y’all are fuckin’ amateurs compared to what I’ve seen. You have any fuckin’ idea who I work for?”

  Lee shrugged. Looked at the ceiling, thoughtfully. “You remember those Tootsie-Pop commercials? How many licks to the center of a Tootsie-Pop?”

  The man stared, not sure what to say, and choosing to say nothing.

  “How many hits to the center of your spleen?” Lee asked. He looked quizzically at Julia. “You’re the resident medical professional. How many hits until his spleen ruptures?”

  “Four?” Julia suggested. “Maybe five?”

  The man chuffed. “In your dreams, Sweetheart.”

  The sound of the bat hitting his midsection was at once a slap, a thump, and a bone-deep crunch.

  The man’s eyes went wide, his mouth open, his shocked diaphragm only able to issue a ghostly gruuu-ungh! out of the hole of his mouth.

  A long, angry, red mark quickly appeared on his left side.

  Julia’s aim was impeccable.

  “That’s one,” Lee noted. “Jules, what’s the spleen used for?”

  Julia adjusted her grip on the bat. “Fights infection. Filters your blood.”

  “Filters your blood,” Lee repeated. “That sounds important. Will you die without treatment?”

  “It’s considered life-threatening,” she said. “Internal bleeding.”

  “How long?” Lee asked. “Until he dies, that is.”

  Julia gave a facial shrug. “I dunno. Everybody’s different. Days. Maybe a week.”

  “Fuck You,” Lee addressed him formally. “You killed three friends of ours on the road with your little rope trick. What did you guys do to the rest of them?”

  The man finally started breathing again, but it was obvious that it caused him pain. Having his arms up above his head didn’t help. The body’s natural instinct is to curl around an injury, to try to protect it. He couldn’t do that. His injury was exposed for more abuse.

  “We fuckin’ killed ‘em,” the man gasped, but he put some venom into his words, and managed to raise defiant eyes to Lee. “Slaughtered them all. Stacked their bodies inside the chicken house for the infected. It’ll be a nice little buffet for them—”

  FWUMP

  “Gaah!” A cough. A breathy swear.

  Lee let him get his air back again.

  “I gave you an answer,” the man slavered. “Don’t fucking hit me!”

  Julia lifted the bat and used the tip to poke the red welts on the man’s side. “I thought you were too tough for me, Sweetheart.”

  “Next time less editorializing,” Lee advised the man.

  In his own thoughts, his mind turned over what he’d been told. That’s bad news for Paolo. That’s bad news for all of us. But he already knew it, didn’t he? Of course he did. We all fucking knew it.

  “Hit him again,” Lee said.

  The man’s eyes widened. “Wait—”

&nbs
p; Julia swung for the fences.

  FWUMP

  No sound from Fuck You this time. After a few moments, a gagging noise.

  Lee leaned forward in his chair. He held up three fingers. “That’s three, Fuck You. You got one, maybe two more.”

  In all honesty, Lee thought Julia had probably already ruptured the spleen.

  “You didn’t even…ask me anything!” the man groaned.

  “I want a pumping station,” Lee said. “I want a place with a lot of diesel fuel where I can fill up several big-ass tankers. Tell me about a place like that.”

  A stream of drool was coming out of the man’s mouth. He was looking up at Lee from under his brow. “You’re gonna kill me anyways,” he mumbled.

  Lee chose not to address that concern just yet. He nodded to Julia.

  She made another home run swing.

  The man’s side was beginning to look like hamburger. The raw, purple skin had broken and was issuing thin trickles of dark blood. The ribs were definitely broken. The spleen probably pulverized.

  The man was crying now.

  Lee couldn’t blame him. He’d actually held out for longer than Lee had expected.

  “Fuel dump,” Lee said, reminding him, refocusing him. “I want specifics. Location. Guards. That sort of thing.”

  “You already ruptured it,” he moaned. “I can feel it. You busted my insides.”

  “Yeah, maybe she did. But hey. Listen.” Lee held his palms up like two sides of a scale being balanced. “You got two options here. And you’re right, they both result in you being dead. But one is clearly better, and I think you’ll agree. Option Number One: You tell me about the fuel dump, and then the crazy guy that wants to kill you can come down here and put a bullet in your head. It’ll be quick. I’ll make sure he doesn’t fuck with you.”

  The man spat. His saliva was bloody. His voice was barely a whisper. “And what’s Number Two?”

  “Number Two is, we leave you where you are, tied to the ceiling rafters like a side of beef. We open all the doors. Your sweet stench wafts out there into the world. The primals come sniffing around. And they eat you. Whenever it is that they find you. Which, in my experience, will probably be pretty quick, but who knows, right? So, the mystery with Option Number Two is this: Are you going to die of internal bleeding after hanging there in agony for three or four days? Or will the primals find you quick enough to eat you while you’re still alive?”