by D. J. Molles
He injected small doses of lydocaine into several areas around his wound, creating the effect of a local anesthetic. When the few CC’s of lydocaine were done, he put the cap back on the syringe and dropped it with the bloody gauze. He waited a few breaths until the stinging sensation in his legs began to numb, then strung a curved suture needle with the nylon thread. He fished out a pair of hemostats and some small shears to cut the nylon thread, and began stitching the wound closed. It took five stitches and about ten minutes to close the wound.
He salved it with the triple antibiotic ointment and slapped on a fresh gauze pad, then held it in place with surgical tape.
Patched up, he went back to his bathroom and retrieved the MK23 from its holster, buried in the wet, bleachy jumble of his ruined MOPP suit. He ejected the magazine and cleared the chamber. The thing was still dripping with water and bleach. He inspected the muzzle for any foreign substance—hair, skin or blood—that might have blown back from the chest of the girl and still be clinging to the weapon.
His hand abruptly began to shake violently as he tried to focus on the weapon. He felt his breath catch in his throat, and for a moment he watched her, chest poked full of .45 caliber holes, still standing, still coming towards him. He remembered the iron pressure of her grip, holding onto his ankle. What teenage girl had that type of strength?
Unable to hold the pistol still, he dismantled it with fumbling fingers and laid the parts out on his bathroom counter to dry.
He needed to get dressed.
CHAPTER 5: THE PETERSONS
Lee pulled on a new pair of multicam combat pants. His boots were drying in the shower stall, still soaking wet from his hasty decontamination. Wet boots were a curse, and he wasn’t going to be putting in any miles in the outside world until they were dry.
That was his excuse, anyway.
He kept replaying the image of the girl coming out from behind the stairs. The spidery way she scuttled towards him on all fours, the thin arms, only skin and bones, but shockingly powerful. It reminded him of how a person on drugs or who was mentally deranged could display extreme amounts of physical strength and stamina. He figured that it might have something to do with her frontal lobe looking like Swiss cheese.
Was she just an example of how the rest of the world had become?
He pictured crowds, riotous mobs entirely peopled by sick, violent, and super- humanly strong mental patients waving sharp kitchen implements, lead pipes, and other weapons of opportunity.
He tried to remember what the girl’s face looked like, but all he could remember was her wild, tangled hair and those strange, demented eyes. He wondered if he knew the girl. Surely she had to live around here somewhere. Were her parents still alive and sane?
And he kept thinking about the Petersons. Jason and his wife Maria, and their four year old girl, Stephanie. Jason was a smart guy, and tough as nails, but Lee didn’t know if he would’ve been ready for something like this. Toughness only went so far. He hoped that people had been able to get help from the FEMA camps. He hoped the Petersons were safe somewhere.
Lee made up his mind then and there to check on the Petersons. Tomorrow. It was not an option. Holing up in his bunker had become counterproductive. In another two weeks, things could only be worse. If the Petersons had secured their residence and were waiting for rescue, Lee might be their only chance.
Besides, rendering aid was his primary objective.
I am Captain Lee Harden of the United States Army. The US government has sent me to help you.
That was the script Lee was required to say when rescuing people. Project Hometown existed so people would know that no matter how bad things got, the United States government was still there, still fighting for them. In the front pocket of Lee’s go-to- hell pack he had a laminated card that read those very same words in five different languages.
After that, the Petersons were all Lee could think about.
***
Lee slept poorly that night.
After cleaning his MK23 and topping off the magazine, he drank a few bottles of water and cooked a freeze-dried meal of spaghetti and meatsauce, since all the fresh food had been used. He barely tasted the food and didn’t feel like eating it, but he crammed it down anyway because he knew he needed to eat something.
The knife wound began to feel itchy, which immediately made Lee think of infection, though it was unlikely that infection would have set in so fast. Every time he thought of the plague spreading through his brain, his stomach curdled with anxiety.
What a shitty way to go.
Late into the evening he laid on his bed and felt his forehead for a fever and cleared his throat to see if he were developing a cough. He had no appetite, but that was not surprising given what he’d done to the girl. Frank had said infected subjects were asymptomatic for up to 72 hours, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen faster. Catching through saliva would always take longer to metastasize than being direct-injected into his blood stream from a filthy, plague-infected knife.
He slept in his combat pants, on top of the covers, with his M4 locked and loaded and tucked in close to his body. Tango lay on the floor to the side of the bed. Lee woke several times in the night to find Tango staring at the bunker door with his ears fully erect. Occasionally, he would emit a low growl, deep in his throat. The dog’s attention to the door made the hair stand up on the back of Lee’s neck.
Each time it happened Lee’s heart would pound in his head so hard it seemed to make the room shake, and he would think to himself that there was no way he was going to be able to fall back asleep. But each time, he would stare at the door, and find his thoughts wandering, and his heart-rate cooling down, and then his eyes would grow heavy once more.
***
By 0500 hours he was done trying to sleep.
He’d been awake, hugging his M4 and staring at the clock for the past half-hour and when it turned, he immediately sat up. He didn’t turn on the lights because it would still be dark outside and he didn’t want to ruin his natural night vision. He went to the bathroom and leaned the rifle against the bathroom counter while he relieved himself. While he had his pants undone, he pulled them down far enough to inspect the bandage on his wound. There was only a small spot of blood that had soaked through, but he changed the bandage anyway and applied a fresh coat of ointment. The wound wasn’t red, swollen, or itchy. If it was going to get infected, it would have most likely begun to show signs.
After pulling his pants back up, he threw on his combat shirt, pistol belt and drop leg holster. He checked that the magazine of his MK23 was topped off, seated securely in the magazine well, and that there was a round in the chamber, then holstered the weapon. His boots were still a little damp on the inside, but he felt like a few hours of body heat would take care of it.
He pulled on his chest rig, which held six double-magazine pouches (twelve magazines total) for his M4. The thirteenth magazine was already loaded in his rifle. He adjusted the straps on the rig until he was comfortable with the weight distribution, then double-checked each of the magazines to ensure they were all fully loaded.
He doubted he would need this much ammunition for his incursion to the Petersons’ house, but then again, he had doubted yesterday that a crazed 15 year old girl would jump out from underneath his front steps and stab him in the leg. He realized that his complacency had nearly killed him, just as he had warned that young lieutenant in Iraq. His attitude had transformed overnight, from skeptical to vigilant. He was going to expect and prepare for the absolute worst. His mind had been full of doubts yesterday. He didn’t want to believe that the world was spiraling out of control, or that it was already in ruins. The extent of the damage to American civilization was as yet unknown. What he did know, was that he would have to err on the side of caution. If it had been a full-grown man that had attacked him yesterday, he wasn’t sure he would be alive. Mistakes in this new reality would be far more costly than Lee could afford.
On a
positive note, he was still asymptomatic.
He didn’t feel like bothering with dehydrated scrambled eggs, so he grabbed a handful of Powerbars, shoving one into his mouth and the remaining three into his pack. He washed it down with a hastily mixed “Orange beverage” that came in a small, single- serving packet. It had plenty of vitamin C and carbohydrates for immediate energy. Like energy for running and fighting. Energy he hoped he wouldn’t need, but had the jumpy feeling that he would.
After his quick breakfast, he shouldered his go-to-hell pack, then slipped on his single-point sling and connected it to his M4. He was going out without the MOPP suit, as he felt that its noise and encumbrance outweighed the benefit of the very little good it would do to protect against a bacterial infection. He was, however, going to wear his Promask. He just wished he’d received more information from Frank about the plague. Perhaps Abe would know. He would message him about it when he got back.
After masking up and checking the seal, he pulled the charging handle of his M4 back halfway, noted the glint of brass waiting in the chamber, and let it slide forward and lock. He flipped the safety off. That was what trigger fingers were for.
“Tango,” Lee pointed to a spot next to his foot. “Heel.”
Tango’s ears perked and he came running over, excited. It was time to work, which, for him, meant fun-fun-fun. He had no idea what was going on in the world, and that was excellent. Good working dogs never realized the horrible situations they were in. That’s why Police K9’s wag their tails while attacking armed gunmen. Even one traumatic incident resulting in a negative experience for the dog doing what he was trained to do could ruin it.
It was good that Tango was happy do go outside. But Lee sure as hell wasn’t. He looked at his dog, standing by his right side and looking up at his master expectantly. “Tango, sneak.”
This wasn’t a normal command, but Lee had taught Tango a few tricks outside of the usual Schutzhund training. Tango immediately pulled his lolling tongue in and his head lowered ever so slightly, his shoulders hunching a bit, giving him the appearance of a wolf stalking its prey. As long as Lee kept reminding Tango to “sneak,” the dog would keep low to the ground and wouldn’t make a sound. It was almost unnerving for Lee to watch his canine friend revert back to his feral roots.
Lee reached forward and opened the bunker door.
The red-bathed tunnel stretched out before him. It looked empty. He felt a bit of relief and supposed he had been expecting the crazed girl from yesterday to be standing there, waiting for him.
Surely she was dead. No one could survive that many shots to the chest. Lee and Tango made their way down the tunnel, both moving silently. While moving, Lee quietly but with an excited tone told Tango “good,” earning a wag of the tail. He reminded the dog to “sneak,” and Tango went back to sneaking. Lee did this without even thinking. The cycle of command, obedience, and reinforcement was second nature to Lee, and when possible, he would reward the dog with something. He kept an old, chewed- up rope in his cargo pocket, a toy that Tango was particularly fond of. It was Tango’s treat for a job well done.
At the ladder, Lee went up first to unlock the hatch. He pushed it open and surveyed the basement, much as he had done the previous day. All clear. He went back down the ladder.
“Come on, boy. Up!” He reached down and hoisted Tango up to the ladder rungs, which he awkwardly navigated. Lee strained and gave the big dog a final heave. Tango got his front paws on the ledge and scrambled up into the basement. Lee followed him quickly up the ladder, then closed the hatch and punched in the code to lock it. He waited until he heard the click, then turned towards the stairs.
In his flight the previous day, he had left the door from the basement into the kitchen standing open. The ambient light coming from upstairs was enough for Lee’s adjusted eyes to see the staircase clearly, and that no one stood in the doorway to the kitchen.
He kept the M4 at a low ready as he moved towards the stairs, with his non-trigger hand he patted Tango. “Stay.” Tango sat, ears forward, eyes locked on the doorway up the stairs.
Normally the dog would go first and seek out the threats to prevent harm to the human counterpart. In this situation, with Tango as his only partner, and not knowing whether the virus was transmittable from humans to animals, Lee did not want Tango biting on any infected persons unnecessarily.
Lee made his way up the stairs and cleared the house, the knot in his gut that was always there before shit hit the fan started to abate as he went through the motions. Each time he prepared to enter a room, the anxiety would flare, then dissipate as he moved. It reminded him of Fallujah, fighting house-to-house. At the beginning of those long nights he would be sick to his stomach and his hands would be shaking. Then after they breached the first door, they would begin to fade. By the time they were on their third house of the night, he would feel relatively normal.
On edge, as he was now, but normal. After clearing the house he went to the kitchen and found that Tango’s curiosity had gotten the best of him and he’d made his way to the top of the stairs and was peering into the kitchen, his nose working the air. Lee held back admonition. Good working dogs were sometimes hard to control.
“Come on.” Lee tapped his thigh and Tango padded into the room. “Sneak,” he reminded.
He made his way to the front door. It still stood intact. The sick feeling made a comeback. He edged over to the sidelight and angled his vision around the front porch. A pale foot lay there, stretched out away from the front door, toes pointed down. The foot was small, petite even. The girl from yesterday, he knew, and fought acid rising in the back of his throat. He stared, though he couldn’t see anything above the calf. The skin was gray and waxy-looking. It was covered in scrapes and harsh bruising, as though she’d run recklessly through a patch of briars.
The logical part of Lee’s brain told him that she had to be dead. But something else inside of him thought, maybe not. Lee angled his body and pointed his rifle in the approximately location that he felt her head would be. For a moment, the gun felt heavy and awkward in his hands. For someone that had grown up around firearms, that brief feeling crumpled his already-shaky confidence. He could already taste his half-digested Powerbar eking up into his mouth. He didn’t want to shoot this girl again. He reached forward and touched the cool metal of the doorknob. The door swung open.
Her hand came down, still holding that small knife.
Lee jumped back and only just kept himself from firing a round. The girl lay dead, but her arm had been propped against the door and had fallen when he’d opened it. She was no longer a threat.
Tango rushed in, fascinated and wanting to stick his nose in it. Lee shoved the dog away with his leg and stated in a stern voice, “No! Leave it...Leave it.”
Tango pressed at his leg until Lee gave him a good jab in the ribs with his knee and repeated the command. Finally Tango stood back, but let out a pitiful whine and stared at the dead girl, transfixed.
The door was covered in smeared blood and pocked with tiny dents made with the point of her knife. She had somehow managed to crawl onto his porch after being shot several times in the chest with a .45 caliber bullet, and had obviously spent some time pounding on the door, whether in rage, or desperation, or perhaps a bit of both.
The front mat was entirely soaked in blood. The sight of blood in large quantities never ceased to turn Lee’s stomach. There was something so...not Hollywood about it. Artificial blood looked artful and pretty. The splatters were perfect, the pools were all one homogenous color. Paint-by-numbers gore. In reality, the aftermath of a traumatic wound was chaotic and disgusting. There was always some strange chunk of anatomy that came out with the blood flow that made you lean in closer and say to yourself, “what the fuck is that?”
These images also had a cumulative effect. Lee found them harder to bear now than when he’d been a younger man. Looking from the dead girl to the pock marks on the door, he noticed the piece of paper he had no
t had time to read the day before. It was lined and clearly torn from a spiral notebook. It was held to the door with a single bit of clear tape. The words were handwritten and short.
Lee reached up and plucked it off the door, eyeing the dead girl while he did it. Her failure to die when most others would have made him highly uneasy and he kept thinking about her getting up, even now, and cutting into him with that knife. Before diverting his attention to the note, he kicked the knife away from her hand. Tango tracked it with his eyes as it skittered across the foyer, but didn’t make a move for it.
The note was from Marie Peterson.
Lee,
Jason did not come home from work today and didn’t call. We thought maybe he
with you. If you find this note, FEMA is evacuating us at 1pm today to a camp in
Sanford. Please tell Jason to find us as soon as he can and tell him I love him. We will wait for him in Sanford as long as we can.
Marie
The note was dated 7/05.
Lee felt somehow responsible for this, though he couldn’t tell why. Sanford was a small city about 50 miles southwest of Raleigh. It seemed like an unlikely and out-of-the- way place to put a FEMA camp, but then again, in a viral outbreak, you would want the safe zones to be a significant distance from major population centers.
Where Lee stood now was about 30 miles directly east of Sanford, outside the small town of Angier. He could make the trip in two days, three at the most. Of course his pickup truck was parked in his garage with a full tank and would theoretically get him there within an hour, but in a social collapse, without the threat of force from police officers and highway patrol, thugs and psychopaths reclaimed the streets and made them the most dangerous place to be.
