Joseph wondered if the shelling of the city had been the reason for the assault on the convoy. The black-and-gold-clad Pittsburghers loved their city. He assumed that some would die to save it, even from fellow Americans. If the people loved the city as much as they loved their sports teams, they would fight for it. Especially from fellow Americans or Baltimore fans.
Two patients died in the night due to wounds sustained in the ambush. He didn’t have the capabilities to perform the necessary surgical interventions and his medical tent looked like a military hospital from a different era. Blood-soaked floors, missing limbs, and the dead. The infantry unit within Quarantine Base Rattlesnake had taken the attack hard. Joseph remembered the look on Sergeant Yates’s ruddy face when the unit returned. It was the haunted look of a deeply troubled man.
The soldiers who had died under his care did not rise again to torment their brothers in arms. They stayed lifeless, white-hospital-sheet-covered, bodily husks. He strapped the men to the table just in case. He speculated that not everyone carried the virus in a dormant state, otherwise when they died they would have woken hungry.
Joseph rolled a cigarette in his hands, placed one end in his mouth. As he inhaled, he shook his head. He never thought he would be a smoker, but times had changed. He had changed, or maybe he didn’t expect to be around much longer in this world. The crack of a rifle penetrated the peace of the morning. I should never expect more than a few moments of peace. We will all die by fifty at this rate just from stress. A clamor of voices near the base entrance drew his attention away from the picturesque scenery of the collapsing Pittsburgh skyline.
The voices were accompanied by the familiar rumble of a diesel engine. Escorted on either end by a Humvee, an airport mobile lounge rolled slowly into camp, its giant tires turning through the gate.
“Goddamn,” Joseph cursed. He threw his cigarette down, and started to run. Lunchbox.
As Joseph drew close, a soldier put a hand on Joseph’s shoulder.
“No further, Doc. We don’t know if these people are safe,” a bareheaded soldier said to him.
Joseph brushed his hand off. “Nonsense. They’re my friends. Mauser, Gwen, over here!” He pushed past the bewildered soldier and approached the mover, slapping the sides in excitement. Thud-thud. He made his way around the lounge to the back door of the mover.
The mover door folded open in accordion fashion. A lanky man in a WVU sweatshirt looked down at him.
Joseph stared up in confusion. “Who are you? Where is Gwen and Mauser?”
The man stared back and rubbed a patchwork five o’clock shadow. “I’m Kevin,” he said.
A disheveled blonde peered around Kevin. “Joseph, oh my God. You’re alive!”
His heart shook. They are alive.
Gwen hopped down into his arms, gripping him tight. Joseph could hardly believe it. He brushed her hair out of her face. “You survived.” This was the closest he’d been to a woman since he left for Africa almost nine months ago.
“Mauser? Is he …?” he said.
Gwen sniffed and nodded. “He’s alive,” she said.
Kevin climbed down joining them.
“This is Kevin. Mark’s friend,” she said.
Joseph didn’t understand.
“But Mark is dead,” he said, letting the words come out piece by piece.
“No,” she said, pushing back from him. “He’s alive.” A smile lit her face as if she glowed.
A man stood in the doorway of the mover. Light shined around him as if God were sending him back to earth. Joseph didn’t recognize the ghost peering down at him, but he knew it was Steele.
Steele’s eyes had darkened and his beard covered a much thinner man’s face, making him appear almost homeless. A nasty scar was in the initial stages of healing. It had begun to pucker along the edges, running from his forehead to the back of his scalp like a hair part given by a butcher’s apprentice.
Joseph clasped hands with him. “Steele. You’re alive. I … I thought the worst,” he said.
Steele grimaced. “Me too, Doc. Me too,” he said.
Sergeant Yates marched up to them, rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the newcomers. “These men must undergo interrogation before they are admitted into the base. Step away from them,” Sergeant Yates commanded.
Joseph threw up a hand. “I can vouch for these men,” he said. “And woman.”
Sergeant Yates scowled. His rifle stayed aimed on Steele. “We have strict orders to investigate any insurgent activity in the area. They may have a lead to the ambushers.”
Joseph stepped up to Yates. “This man is a United States Counterterrorism agent. I can assure you he is no insurgent.”
Sergeant Yates’s eyes narrowed at Steele. “This washed-up mangy dog? Ha. Show me some proof?” he said with a sneer.
Steele took off his badge and tossed it over to the big sergeant, who snagged it out of the air. He looked back and forth from the badge to Steele.
“Could have gotten this off anyone. I’m going to need something more.”
“Sergeant. Take my word on the lives of your men in that tent over there,” Joseph entreated.
The sergeant’s face softened. “I know you did your best to save them.”
“Please, Sergeant, these are my friends.”
Sergeant Yates snorted. “I am not unreasonable. They can come in, but they can’t have their weapons while they are in the base.”
Steele nodded. The tension deescalated. Yates handed Steele’s badge back to him. Steele took it, replacing the badge with his weapons.
“If you think you can keep the deadheads from getting in here, be my guest, Kemosabe,” Mauser said. He handed over his weapons one by one.
“We do a fine enough job,” Yates said. He ejected Mauser’s magazine and racked the slide back to make the weapon safe.
Mauser eyed the man, judging his competency, or was it his general care for the weapon.
Joseph pulled Steele away from the volatile sergeant. “Follow me. We have a lot to catch up on,” he said. Then he saw her. The woman from the ambush, standing in the back, steps away from everyone. Her thin dirty blonde hair hung tangled around her shoulders, her clothes muddied and stained.
He pointed up at her. “Why is she here?” he stammered. He would never forget the joyous look in her eyes as she harmed others. She looked down, guilt shadowing her features. “This was her fault,” he spat. She’d brought all this pain and suffering down on them and it spoiled his reunion with his friends.
Steele put a hand on his shoulder. “Ashley is with us now,” he said.
“She lured us into an ambush,” Joseph sputtered.
“Let’s give her another chance. Do you think you could take a look at my head?” Steele leaned in, pointing at his grisly scalp.
Joseph scowled at Ashley. “Of course. Of course. Bring Mauser too.”
They walked for the medical tent. Joseph pointed at some tents nearby. “There’s some empty tents you can stay in,” he said to the rest of them.
Steele nodded and spoke with Gwen privately and then he and Mauser followed Joseph to the medical tent.
Joseph hurried through the tent, leading them to the back. “Steele, why don’t you take a seat?”
Steele sat down on a cot, weariness slumping his shoulders a bit as if he wore a heavy backpack all the time.
Joseph pulled on some latex gloves over his hands. “I see Mauser has a limp. There’s only one of me. You’ll have to go second.”
He probed a finger into Steele’s wound, exploring the depths of the wound to exclude subjacent skull fracture. Firm skull met his finger.
“Ow, Doc.”
“You are lucky you have such a thick skull. This should have killed you. If not the shot, then the infection for sure.”
Steele stifled his pain with a laugh. “Gwen will be happy to hear that.”
“I see some signs of infection, but it is subsiding.” Joseph squeezed his skull with this thumbs, and inch
ed back along the wound that permanently lined Steele’s skull. “Does it hurt here?”
“Uh yeah. You’re poking my head where I got shot.”
Aside from general swelling there was no squishiness along his cranial bones. Joseph released Steele’s head.
“One more test here. Are you having any trouble hearing?”
“What?” Steele asked.
“Huh, Doc?” Mauser replied.
“Never mind, you two. Turn to the side,” Joseph said. Heathens. He conducted a routine otoscopy to ensure Steele didn’t have a tympanic membrane rupture of his middle ear. He looked inside with his otoscope, a standard doctor instrument with a small flashlight and a magnifying lens to see in the ear canal. Everything appeared normal.
“I don’t feel any fractures. Your ears looks fine. So you aren’t in terrible shape. The infection is subsiding but we are going to need to stitch you up, and keep this clean.”
“He looks better off than this lot,” Mauser said. He threw a thumb over his shoulder at the tent of bandaged men. “What happened? Accident?”
“Ambushed by civilians,” Joseph said. He only looked up briefly as Mauser shook his head. “What the hell is happening out there?” Joseph said.
“It’s getting worse. Those moonshiners held everyone hostage,” Steele said. He gritted his teeth as Joseph cleaned the head wound, wiping it with antiseptic. Joseph pulled out a needle and a bottle. He prepped a local anesthetic, flicking the tube of liquid with his finger and inserting the needle directly into the wound. Steele tensed beneath him.
“You might feel some numbness above your eyes.” He injected Steele in multiple spots to ensure he wouldn’t feel much of the operation. “You may get a two-face-thing going on.”
“Not to mention the pain of you sticking me with that needle,” Steele said with a grimace. “Just wake me up when you’re done.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Oh, dang, Doc. Should have told me to look away,” Mauser said. He shielded his eyes from the surgery.
“Not helping,” Steele said, his eyes still closed.
Joseph carefully cut hair matted together with clotted blood and dead skin away from the wound to let it heal as cleanly as it could at that point.
“This will be a lot better than it could be.” Joseph snipped a flap of skin away from the wound. Blood emerged in its place and he wiped it away with gauze. “Without cosmetic surgery you are going to bear a nasty scar for the rest of your life. Even with impressive stitching on my part, which I promise you I am attempting, it still isn’t going to be pretty,” he said. Gripping the needle with his forceps, he pierced the lacerated skin at a ninety-degree angle, attempting not to scratch the bone of Steele’s skull.
“Why is that?” Steele said.
Joseph looped the stitch across this skull, pulling it tight as if he were making a quilt patchwork atop of his head. He stuck his tongue out as he concentrated. “Well, you are the seventh person I’ve done this on since residency. So you could say I am a bit out of practice.”
Joseph sutured up and down the ugly bullet wound parting Steele’s flesh, finishing each rung with a surgeon’s knot. “Henderson, can you grab me some more antiseptics from the supply cache,” he said, wiping blood from Steele’s head with a strip of gauze.
Steele had the audacity to smile like he was enjoying it. “How’s it looking?” he said.
“Well, you couldn’t get uglier,” Mauser said. He sat back on a cot, propping his leg up.
Steele rose a single functioning eyebrow.
“You look … better than you did.” Joseph’s eyes darted to the entrance of the tent. To his relief, Henderson had left the tent as he had asked. He hoped Henderson wouldn’t catch on that he was sending him on a menial task so he could talk to Steele and Mauser alone. He whispered, “The colonel here won’t help me leave. He is holding me against my will. The longer I am stuck here the less likely I will be to find Patient Zero.”
Steele closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. “Joseph, we finally get to a safe place, and you want us to leave and go out into a countryside filled with people that want to kill us, living and dead?” He opened his eyes, hard sapphires that eroded Joseph’s will.
“I don’t know if you’ve been outside lately, but it’s utter chaos. The world is coming to an end,” Mauser said, black raccoon eye glaring at Joseph.
“I can’t think of a better place for us to be than a military base surrounded by hundreds of professional American soldiers,” Steele added.
Joseph crouched down in front of Steele, and adjusted his glasses. “This base is like a stone in a biblical flood. How long before the supplies stop? How long before the infected break through? The other quarantine bases have been overrun,” he said.
Steele’s eyes fogged over.
“I don’t think you understand. If only half of the intelligence we have on this virus is correct, eighty-five percent of the Eastern seaboard is dead, dying, infected, and coming this way,” Joseph said.
Mauser’s mouth hung slightly open.
“When we ran the analytics on the casualty data in Mount Eden, the information was staggering. If we don’t find Patient Zero, projected casualty and infection rates in less than three months are one hundred precent,” Joseph said.
Steele closed his eyes, taking in the information. He understood.
Mauser scowled. “What do you mean one hundred percent?”
“I mean,” Joseph paused … “extinction of the human race.”
Mauser brought a hand to his forehead. “That’s some heavy stuff, man.”
“This is heavy, Mauser, the heaviest thing mankind has ever faced. And that fate rests upon you getting me to Patient Zero. Even then, I don’t know.” Wrapping gauze around Steele’s head, he covered his wound. “You have to keep this clean. You are lucky the infection wasn’t worse,” he said.
Steele nodded, eye drooping a bit from the anesthetic. He looked like he belonged in a mental institute. He glanced at Mauser. “We have to, Mauser.” He looked back at Joseph, his face drooping like a bloodhound. “I don’t know how we are going to do it, but we will get you to Michigan. I will talk to the commander,” Steele said.
“I thought I was crazy, but this is ridiculous. How do you expect us to make it all the way there by ourselves?” Mauser looked away in anger. “No offense, Joseph, but my vote is to stay.”
“We will find a way,” Steele said, firm in his conviction.
“Did your brains fall out when they shot you? This is crazy,” Mauser said. He stood up, wobbling on his bad leg.
Joseph gestured to his leg. “We haven’t had a look at your leg.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Mauser waved Joseph off, hobbling out of the tent.
Steele’s eyes followed his friend until he was gone.
“The colonel won’t be reasoned with,” Joseph said.
Steele continued to stare after Mauser. Joseph’s heart sank into the pit of his gut. No one could really grasp the urgency when the only thing they could imagine was survival until tomorrow.
Steele looked back at Joseph as if he had only just noticed him for the first time. His eyes were the only thing that made him appear upset. “Let me talk to the colonel first. After all, he is providing free room and board.”
“Someone has to be thinking further out than tomorrow. Get me to Patient Zero, today.”
“Give me a few days. Let me feel everything out before we run.”
“How are you two gentleman?” a voice came from inside the tent. They both turned toward Colonel Jackson who stood nearby, hands behind his back.
How long has he been there?
“Joseph, I see you are providing some medical assistance to this civilian.”
Joseph wiped a nervous palm down his pants. He gestured with an open hand to Steele. “This is Counterterrorism Agent Mark Steele. He rescued me in Africa.”
“The Division, huh? Heard about you guys. Where is your unit, now, Agent?” Th
e colonel stepped closer to Steele.
“The only one left is Agent Ben Mauser outside.”
“And what exactly were you and Agent Mauser planning on doing here?”
“I was thinking about taking you up on some hot meals,” Steele said with a small smile.
Colonel Jackson’s lips spread thinly over his high-browed skin-tight face. “I bet you were.”
The colonel leapt for Steele, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him closer. Steele latched onto his wrists, stalemating the colonel. Jackson bore down on Steele from above.
“I know you two wouldn’t be planning on running away from our base, would you?” Colonel Jackson turned his eyes to Joseph. “It would be a shame to have to execute the both of you for treason.”
Joseph found himself putting his hands up. “No, no. We were only discussing Steele’s journey here,” Joseph eked out. His words sounded small and insignificant.
Colonel Jackson sneered. “That’s not what I heard. I heard you whining to be rescued, like a fucking baby.” Jackson released Steele’s shirt, letting him fall back onto the cot. He paced. Drawing his sidearm, he held it near his side.
“To think you would go behind my back, after I specifically told you about your responsibility to these American fighting men. Woe to our society when its people no longer support its troops. Are you not patriots?” Colonel Jackson raised his arms outward and back down to his sides, disgusted with them both.
“Sir, I think we can talk this out,” Steele said.
“Can we? You can’t even answer the fucking question. Are you a patriot?” Spit flew from Colonel Jackson’s mouth. Men leaned upright on their cots, watching the scene unfold. Steele’s eyes lambasted the colonel. Rage seethed from Jackson as if Steele’s very existence angered him.
“I am a patriot. I too live to serve this country, but listen to what Joseph is telling you. See the big picture,” Steele pleaded.
“Right, right. So a cop is lecturing me about big picture strategy?” Foam formed at the corner of Colonel Jackson’s lips. He ran his tongue along them. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 53
