Palimpsest (Book 3): Coins for Charon
Page 4
The clipboards aren’t intimidating them either, which says a lot.
I can hear the well-intentioned Doctors and Nurses from here…
“Honey, are you alone?”
“Where are your…”
“Just you kids…”
“Oh sweetie, how long…”
“How did you…”
“When…
“So scared…”
“Afraid…”
“Hungry…”
“Safe…”
“Safe…”
“Safe.”
“Lots of questions, not so many Band-Aids,” I say.
I look back to Pete, I missed something.
“We just need to make sure…” Pete says as he guides me by my arm to a makeshift exam table.
I continue to follow my own advice, be weak, be the victim — you’re not a threat, but it’s getting tougher since Cliff, and I’m about done with Pete too. I’m sure he means well, but…
“Sit,” he says and pats the table.
I set Pixie down on the table instead. She looks only slightly more puzzled than Pete, but lies down just the same.
The tent is about the size of the head shop Sam and me and Emily spent the night in…has it just been a little over a week? I’ve gotten so used to the dark, the lights are just weird. They aren’t very bright, but still cast dark shadows, turning everything a sickly yellow.
It reminds me of a horror movie I once saw on cable at…shit, I can’t remember my best friend’s name. Tommy? Is that it? It was at his house, with his mom and brother. I can’t remember the name of the movie either.
Fuck.
There’s probably close to twenty tables arranged across the straw and mud floor, surrounded by wooden trunks and metal chests, lids propped open. Medical supplies are packed inside and cover most of the work benches. An antiseptic smell fills the tent, like one of those spray cans of air freshener trying to cover up the stink of shit, urine and rot — trying to hide death.
I wonder how many people never made it past this tent.
I think about Cliff out there, and those other evil fucks — just waiting. What happens if parents don’t make it through, what happens to their kids?
I’m not seeing any guns in here.
Shouldn’t there be?
Something’s wrong about all of this, or is it just the missing Crayton guys?
The kids are all staring at me, watching, nervous, but the lab coats are too wrapped up in their jobs, they haven’t picked up on it yet. The kids are holding it together.
So far, so good.
Jem and Emily are walking away from Shinji and Hawk, off to the right side of the entrance, a few beds away from me, finally responding to their overmatched Nurse.
I take a step toward Hawk, catching her attention, and then toss Shinji’s coat over.
She snatches it out of the air and stares at me for a moment and then turns back to Shinji. He looks scared, but okay.
Pixie’s chest begins to rumble.
I stare at Casey behind me as I scan the room, and then I see it.
It’s on an exam table near the fence side of the tent, to my left, a white blanket stained black and crimson is draped over the body; its chest is slowly rising and falling. Bandages lie loosely across the face, and just sitting on the floor, ignored next to one of the exam table wheels, is the mask, the hose and the backpack cylinder.
His ripped and battered, waffle-soled boots stick out from under the blankets, pointing up at the ceiling. They twitch ever so slightly, the sole’s separating.
Casey’s Doctor is an older guy, he has her coat off and is wiping a cotton ball over the crook of her arm.
I glance back at the Cart Thing, he’s not dead yet, is he?
Casey doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t move, she just stares at me with those big brown eyes as tears begin to roll down her cheeks.
I glance at Jem, not sure if she’s seen him yet, and shake my head.
Emily will do what I say, but Jem scares me — she’s less predictable.
I take a step toward the thing, my fingers flexing as I test the grip on my. 45.
Casey’s doctor looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He pulls out a syringe and a small vial filled with an orange phosphorescent liquid, and then steps close to Casey.
She’s about to break.
The thing twitches, its chest still moving, and then…it’s still…the sheet flattens as the lungs deflate. I watch closely, but his chest doesn’t rise again. He’s finished.
I think.
I take another step, slowly inching my gun out of my pocket.
I turn back to see Casey crying, she’s terrified of the Doctor and the syringe — and after what I’ve seen, so am I.
“Hey, don’t do that,” I shout across the tent, louder than I intend, immediately getting the attention of everyone inside.
Pixie begins to growl louder.
Pete puts a hand on my arm — again. “It’s okay, they’re …”
I shake him loose. “No, it’s not okay.”
Pixie barks and glares across the room, mirroring me, alternating between the Cart Thing and Casey’s tormentor.
The Doctor pauses, studies me for a moment before shaking his head and dismissing me. He grabs Casey’s wrist and pulls her arm out straight.
Casey cries out.
Pixie leaps to her feet.
The Cart Thing stirs, breathing again. Its arms are strapped down…not tight enough, though, he’s working loose as he begins to thrash against his restraints…
“Please don’t stick me, please,” Casey cries.
I see Jem and Emily beginning to move toward Casey while their chaperones are distracted by my mouthing off.
“Hey fuck face, what part of stop didn’t you understand?” I shout louder. “Get away from my kid!”
“That’s quite enough, young man!” another woman shouts at me.
Her lab coat isn’t buttoned all of the way up, and I can see her gray, expensive looking Brady Bunch dress underneath. Her disapproving cat-eye glasses are perched on a sharp nose, little silver chains looping around her neck. She reminds me of a librarian from school.
Pixie leans over the edge of the exam table, barking at her with — way too big for a puppy — fangs, like a vulture tired of waiting, she’s just not sure which way to go.
The doctor stops again, and I see disapproving frowns spread across the room in a wave.
Pete tries to grab me.
It’s the last time.
My .45 is out and against his head in a flash. “Let’s go, Pete.”
He gasps, but doesn’t resist as I push him in front of me. The doctors stop what they’re doing and back away. The doctor with the syringe stops this time, maybe I’m more interesting now.
“Put it down,” I say as we near. It could be medicine she desperately needs, but I can’t trust these people, not yet.
The doctor sets the syringe on the chest next to the table and backs away.
Two older women slowly head for the back exit, but Jem and Emily have already moved to cut them off, both of them in matching, two-handed shooter stances.
Jem motions with her .38. “Don’t try that shit on us.”
Emily grins.
The older woman looks more horrified by Jem’s cursing than by her gun.
“Jem,” I shout, and motion to the far end of the tent at the Cart Thing.
Her eyes narrow and she begins to move in that direction with Emily in tow.
I shove Pete in the same direction.
Pixie’s back to growling, watching, her blue-white eyes darting about the room.
“Everyone be quiet, okay, I don’t want to kill anyone today. But we have some questions. Pete, what the fuck is that doing here?” I ask, pointing at the creature jerking against the straps holding it down on the exam table.
“He was severely wounded, we’ve been treating him,” Pete says.
I motion for Jem to stop before
she gets too close, and peer over the body.
The bandages over his face have fallen away, even as he continues to struggle, revealing that this one’s different. He doesn’t have tattoos, and despite the injuries to his face, he still has his lips.
He looks like he’s in his twenties, a soldier fallen on hard times.
“Who is this piece of shit?” I ask.
A stern, feminine voice answers from the crowd of lab coats, “Watch your tone, he’s a Marine, wounded trying to keep order, to protect your ungrateful butt.”
“Yeah, well, what the fuck ever, just stay over there, okay?”
“He’s in pain, let me help him,” she demands.
“You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” I ask.
A fresh-faced young woman, wearing a matching lab coat over a clean paisley dress, rushes to the Marine’s side with another syringe. “Shoot me if you wish, but I’m going to help this young man,” she shouts.
“Stay back, he’s…”
As she gets close, the creature wrenches his arms free and reaches out, jerking her wrist so hard that I hear the bone snap.
She wails in pain as she tries to pull away, but the wails only turn to shrieks as his chin lifts, his eyes squeeze shut, and then his mouth finds her arm, like a blind puppy searching for his momma’s teat, its jaws wrap around her arm, teeth sinking so deeply into her flesh that the tissue bunches up white, like raw scallops before the blood bubbles out around his lips, dripping down her arm to the floor.
She loses her footing, slipping as she tries to pull away, falling even as she reaches for the side of the table and misses — leaving her hanging from the thing’s teeth as he leans over the side of the exam table, pursuing her.
The table begins to lean with him.
He renews his grip as she lands on her knees, and then he raises his head, a syrup-veil of blood covers his face, and like a viper, he rears back as his eyes open, emotionless obsidian orbs, and then as if to head-butt her, he lunges forward, his jaws collapsing around her arm, and I hear the bone snap again.
Her panicked shrieks fill the tent as her legs twist and churn in the bloody straw. She’s trying to get some leverage, and then her friends fall to the ground next to her, pulling at her arms even as they keep their distance from the hungry soldier.
“Stay back!” I scream, hoping everyone will, especially my kids.
I can’t imagine what this is doing to them — they watched this before, at the school, watched their friends…
They looked terrified, frozen.
Jem begins to move in on the thing, but I motion for her to stay back, shaking my head again.
As the thing relaxes its hold and goes in for another bite, the young doctor suddenly pulls free and into the waiting arms of her colleagues, blood soaking her lab coat and dress, the muddy straw at her feet turning black.
Her not so fresh now, girl-next-door face is drawn with disbelief, shock and surprise.
The thing howls as it begins to jerk back and forth on the table, violently thrashing from side to side, the table tilting further with each episode until it finally flips just as the young woman’s friends pull her to safety.
The table crashes to the ground, one edge slicing into the thing’s leg, but he ignores it and never stops biting at empty air, twisting as he pushes against the lower straps that still confine him.
He digs his fingers into the dirt floor, dragging himself and the exam table, crawling after the blood trail — his eyes black on black on black.
Pete is crumpled on the floor near me, terrified.
The soldiers are going to be here any second.
I grab Pete and shake him, keeping one eye on the brutalized woman and the other on the thing still struggling against the straps. “Who’s attacking the other side of town?” I shout at him.
Pete looks up, his eyes unfocused and jittery. “Why…”
“Freemont, it’s under attack…who is it, why?” I demand.
Pete shakes his head.
Many of the Doctors and Nurses begin to slip out the back, leaving the kids alone with this nightmare.
Fucking typical.
“Emily, get them together,” I shout.
Jem is even closer to the Button Eye than the last time I looked.
Fuck me. “Jem, no…”
I drag Pete to his feet. “Talk to me, what’s going on here?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, we were, just…I don’t know,” Pete mumbles incoherently, his voice becoming hysterical.
Jesus…
Paul Brolin and his buddy lower their heads and step inside the tent, very casual, very confident, very what the fuck…
I shove Pete back to the floor and take aim at Brolin. “Don’t make me kill you, dude.”
“You think…” he begins as he slowly moves for his own holstered pistol, and then he stops as I put the barrel of my .45 against Pete’s head.
“Or Pete here?” I ask.
He studies my face. I think he’s a believer. For Pete’s sake, I hope so. He folds his arms across his chest.
His buddy follows his lead and raises his hands as if to show me that they’re empty.
“What seems to be the trouble, son?” Brolin asks.
“We need to put a bullet in that thing’s head and then one just like it in that woman’s,” I say, pointing for a moment at the bitten doctor.
The woman wails again. “Get me out of here, please…” she shrieks to her friends.
“Hold on just a goddamned minute, Tex,” Paul says.
“We don’t have a minute, that thing, he’s sick, he’s got a virus, he bit that Nurse and now she’s got it, she’s going to start attacking people too, like real fucking soon.”
“Bit, like a zombie, son, is that what you’re saying, we have a fucking zombie infestation? Like the movies?” he asks, rolling his eyes and laughing as he walks toward the Button Eye still strapped to the table.
“No, what the fuck is wrong with you, not like fucking zombies, like fucking rabies, but I think it’s mutated or something, it’s all fucked up,” I say, hoping this lie is more believable.
“Mutated?” Paul looks at his buddy. “I know he’s a shiny penny, but I wouldn’t have pegged him for the CDC, how ‘bout you?” He returns his attention to me. “I’m just going to take a look see, okay, Tex, go easy, no need to go all O.K. Corral on the good Doctors, just taking a look.” Paul moves past me, his hands out away from his waist, and then I realize I’m out of position, I can’t cover the both of them.
And then his buddy starts inching his way toward me. “We can work this whole thing out, just put the gun down and we can talk.”
I risk glancing back at him, but by the time I refocus on Brolin, Emily and Jem have moved around behind the Button Eye, close to Paul, their guns barely concealed behind them.
Jem tilts her head toward Paul, as if questioning, “Is he low?”
Brolin keeps walking closer and closer to the Button Eye, close and closer to Jem and Emily. I nod at her and then to Brolin.
His eyes aren’t laughing now.
Everything is spinning out of control.
And I’ve already spent too much time thinking…
There are two more Crayton guys out by the gate. How long would it take them to get in here if I start shooting?
How many are behind us through the exit?
Brolin unfolds his arms and motions for me to put the gun down. He can see the Button Eye thrashing about, the blood from the attack on the doctor, but not its face.
“Jesus Christ, what happened here?” he demands.
“I told you…”
“Just relax, Tex, we’ll sort this out…” he says with a patronizing tone
“Brolin, stop! Do you like Pete here?” I ask.
He pauses and looks at Pete, as if he’s deciding on what to order for lunch.
“Pete, I don’t think he does…Dude…Mister Brolin here is about to get you really, really fucking dead.”
Peter whimpers and covers his head with his clipboard again.
“Not in front of all of these kids,” the other soldier pleads.
He gets me, I only wish…
“Brolin!” I shout. “Seriously, we don’t have to do this, no one has to die, but we need to deal with this virus.”
“Except for this Marine and the good Doctor, the infected ones, right, Tex?”
“Jesus, you’re not getting it.”
He grins. “No, I think I am. Told you Tex was going to be trouble.”
This isn’t working.
His eyes shift sideways, and like a match suddenly sparking before the flame catches — everyone left in the tent knows what’s about to happen.
I hear rising voices, flashes of movement, doctors diving for cover — Pete screams.
Brolin’s hand goes for his gun.
I plant one knee into Pete’s neck, pressing him down the rest of the way to the ground and out of the way. I turn as I kneel, and raise my .45, like an old west gunfighter searching for a target.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Brolin’s got his weapon out of its holster.
Pixie’s in midair, jumping from the exam table…
I see Paul shift his gaze to Pixie as she closes the gap between them…
His pistol follows…
Pixie barely hits the ground before she’s digging in and leaping again…
Paul pulls the trigger shattering the night.
Pixie howls…
Two more shots go off in quick succession …
Screams fill the tent.
Pixie lands at Paul’s feet and pounces sideways as she begins barking furiously.
Brolin pauses, as though surprised by the twin holes that suddenly appear in his face. His gun falls from his hand, and then he topples over, collapsing onto the ground. His helmet rolls from his head, rocking to a stop upside down in the straw.
His buddy holds his hands up and closes his eyes.
I aim my .45 to the tent roof. “Hey!” I shout to get his attention, and then motion for him to get on his knees and drop his weapon.
“Slow,” I say as I watch the tent entrance. The other soldiers will be here any second.
Allen’s off to my right, watching, trying to decide what to do.
“Allen, get his gun, cover the entrance, we might have company here in a second,” I say.
He picks it up and stands like he’s probably seen in the movies, holding the gun sideways, and waving it up and down in a chopping motion as he rocks back and forth from foot to foot.