Those Who Remain (Book 2)
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Contents
THOSE WHO REMAIN: BOOK TWO
ACT II
The Doctor VI
The Geek VII
The Last One Out V
The Girl in the Forest V
The Hunter's Daughter V
The Geek VIII
The Hunter's Daughter VI
The Doctor VII
The Hunter's Daughter VII
The Geek IX
The Girl in the Forest VI
The Last One Out VI
The Doctor VIII
The Hunter's Daughter VIII
The Girl in the Wrong Place VII
The Geek X
The Doctor IX
The Hunter's Daughter IX
The Geek XI
The Geek XII
The Doctor X
The Hunter's Daughter X
INTERLUDES
Daniel Terrence
Alexander Spencer
Lauren Tanaka
PREVIEW FOR ACT III
The Doctor XI
The Rotting Zombie I
OTHER BOOKS BY PRISCILA SANTA ROSA
THANK YOU FOR READING
THOSE WHO REMAIN: BOOK TWO
By Priscila Santa Rosa
Copyright © 2014 by Priscila Santa Rosa.
All rights reserved.
Written by: Priscila Santa Rosa
Cover Art by: Tatiana (Alteya) Medvedeva
Edited by: Elizabeth Sultzer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
www.priscilarosa.com
Kindle Edition
ACT II
The Doctor VI
December 24th, Thursday, 3 pm
Each time the needle goes in, I wince and clutch the bedsheet. Tigh works in silence, closing my wound with careful, calculated movements. I don’t know why he tries to shelter me from pain. I deserve it.
I deserve to suffer. I’m a failure of the highest order. Careless, stupid and responsible for six deaths. Seven, if I dare to count little Victoria. I did not bite her; I did not shoot her, but I couldn’t save her. She was my responsibility, and I failed on every possible level.
That and my vaccine… Tom. I close my eyes. I won’t cry in front of Tigh. I won’t look for pity.
The Sergeant closes the stitches, biting off the end of the thread. We don’t talk. There’s nothing left to argue about. Despite my injury, I help them carry the bodies out. We burn them on the grass field around the bunker. Charlie takes off in the helicopter during the following night. Tigh and I run at the sound of the engine powering up, but do nothing to stop him. Instead, we get back inside and pretend nothing happened.
Days pass. I’m not sure how many. It’s hard to know without Tom’s knocks on my door, calling me to eat stale bread early in the morning; without his smile at my lack of enthusiasm over getting up at four o’clock in the morning.
Empty beds match empty chairs in the mess hall. One of Tom’s mousetraps lies in a corner. The metal corridors aren’t only empty; they are suffocating. I need air.
Snow covers the grass for the first time this year. The scenery around the bunker entrance is deceitfully quiet. I can only imagine what horrors are happening right now, somewhere. The sky is gray and the air I needed so much is cold and dry. I like the way it stings my cheeks.
“Cold enough for you?”
Tigh’s voice jolts me from head to toe. He stands right next to me, arms crossed, hair and shoulders wet and white with snow. How long has he been outside?
“How’s the wound?” He indicates it with a nod.
I stare at the field, blinking sluggishly. Why is he talking to me?
“You should eat something.”
My head shifts sharply to him. “Please leave me alone.”
“We need to talk, Doc.”
I laugh, feeling bitterness swell inside my chest. “There’s nothing else to talk about. You were right from the start. I failed. I can't…”
“You lost your will to live, is that it? Is it that easy?”
If I had some strength left I would punch him. It would hurt a lot, because, honestly, his chin might be made of solid rock, but I would still do it. Nothing about this is easy. “Is this some kind of demented pep talk out of the Army’s instruction manual on acting like a human being?”
Tigh does something I could never expect. He laughs. Not a short, crude laugh, but a long, pleasant one. “Something like that.”
“You hate me. Why bother?”
“You’re the only left to talk to.”
The sad thing is that his joke isn't really a joke. We stare off the distance, watching snow falling on the now white grass. The cold finally finds its way to my core, and I shiver.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out. My hand goes to my eyes, just in time to stop the tears from coming out. “I really am. I’m so sorry. They are dead because of me, and I have no idea how… How to fix this. How to pay for it.”
“Pay for what? People die. People always died, always will die.”
“You talk as if you don’t blame me.”
“I don’t. I blame myself. I could’ve stopped you. Locked you up and ignored your blasted arguments. Instead…” He stops, and lets out a sigh. “There’s no point in wallowing in self-pity, Doc. What’s done is done. The past won’t change for nobody. So we move on and do better next time.”
“Next time.” I snort. “I don’t think there’ll be a next time. I hope there won’t.”
He says nothing. The silence bothers me, so I ask him, “Why didn’t you go with Charlie? Why stay here?”
When he offers no answer, I sigh. “You have no obligation to keep me safe, Sergeant. If this is some kind of misguided sense of duty, because I'm a doctor, then stop it. You've already done your duty and beyond. Besides, I'm not a doctor anymore. There’s no point of being one anymore. There is nothing else left to do.”
“Maybe there is.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You killed Victoria. I don’t have another way of harvesting a sample in good enough condition to make a vaccine. Even if we’re crazy enough to go find another infected, finding a child again—”
“I have something to tell you. About the Army.”
I frown at his interruption. “Do you still think they’ll send in orders? Tigh….” I sigh. “They are gone. They left. They bombed cities. They lost.”
“Retreating is not losing.”
Here they go again, just like Tom. Does he knows something more or is he just plain delusional? “Did they contact you at all? And it has been how long? One month now?”
“They had a contingent plan for a situation like this.”
“Really?” My sarcasm is hard to hide.
“Yes. If you stop arguing with it me, I can explain it to you.”
I suppose my curiosity is greater than my bad mood, so I stay silent and let him continue.
“After the disease started spreading and the CDC headquarters got blown up by nobody knows what, our orders were to secure the medical staff at St. Jude Hospital. Bring as many doctors as possible to our base. It was vital they stayed alive. Next, we were supposed to wait for retrieval and further orders.”
“But they never came.”
He nods. “No. But like I said, there was a contingent plan. A list of directives to follow, in case of the loss of communication. Called Cod
e Z.”
“Code Z?” I open a smile, a bit incredulous, a bit intrigued.
“That's the Code for Zombies,” he clarifies, dead serious.
“Zombies? These people are not—”
“Doesn't matter. Same pattern. Same tactics can apply to this situation.”
I don’t think my eyebrows can be more raised. “You are telling me our government prepared for a zombie invasion?”
“Yes. Of course. Semper paratus. I'm sure they planned for aliens. Perhaps even werewolves.”
I let out a small short laugh, then another when he doesn’t reveal the news as a joke. “Tigh, this is grasping at straws. This doesn't prove they are still active.”
“The instructions are clear: limit the spread of the disease with quarantine zones, then if not sufficient, bomb high density areas and retreat to a safe location. Then gather and protect the best scientific minds to work on a cure. There’s a high security CDC facility in Canada, and I'm sure what's left of high command is there.”
“Best scientific minds? That's me? Or, at least, that supposed to mean me?”
“Desperate times.”
Oh, he can be cheeky too when he wants. I'm learning a great deal about this man.
He continues, “With the CDC gone… Well, our options were limited.”
“So everything you did… It was all about your orders. You kept me in here, tolerated my presence and listened to my requests because there was slightly higher chance of someone grabbing us if you had a doctor with you. Without me, they wouldn’t take your men to safety. Is that it?”
He crosses his arms, and gives me a shrug. “I admit there were times I wanted to throw you out and lock the door, but didn’t because of my orders.”
I clear my throat. “Thanks, I guess.”
“But you are missing the point. They are still out there, and since we both have nothing else to lose, I say we stop waiting and go to them.”
I stare back at him, unsure if he’s crazy or really serious.
“I should’ve done this a month ago. I admit it I… I hoped for the easy way. I expected the Army to be better prepared. My hesitation led us to this clusterfuck. My fault, my responsibility.” His eyes flee from mine for a brief second. “But if you still want to try to fix this disease, I promise you: I’ll take you there at all costs. I swear to you on my life, we’ll get there. You only need to promise one thing: you’ll follow my every order, without question.”
We face each other for a while. A cold wind blows in, and I hug myself. His voice holds so much conviction; I almost give into him. But there’s too much confusion in my heart. So many doubts lingering in the soup of what became of my mind. He lost good people because of me. Friends, people he knew probably most of his adult life. How can I let him risk his life for me after all I’ve done? I can't ask him to go into a suicide mission over desperate guilt and one thin line of hope.
A hope I wish to feel again.
Yes, I will probably die in this attempt at grasping remote chances, yet after my failures, after the people that died here, I feel like I deserve whatever fate awaits me out there. If I’m supposed to die anyway, wouldn’t it be better to die trying to do some good? And if I survive, if we do reach Canada and this Utopian facility, then I’ll have some way of paying for my mistakes not with my death, but with actual work.
I would be a doctor again.
I offer him a hand. “Okay, Tigh. I believe you and I promise to do my part.” I open a smile. “But if you wanted to do this, you shouldn’t have let Charlie take our helicopter.”
“The bastard didn’t exactly tell me his plans.” Tigh takes my hand in his and we shake them. “But I enjoy walking anyway. Good for the soul.”
“I don’t know about souls, but it’s no good for shoes. And for gunshot patients in recovery.”
He nods. “I’ll get you some boots. You’re in the Army now, and recovery is for civilians. Grit your teeth and keep moving, soldier.”
I laugh, but I’m half-afraid he’s serious. We’ll make a strange team, Tigh and I.
The Geek VII
December 17th, Thursday, 3 pm
Margaret waits for us inside the car; arms crossed. I knew it was a bad idea to bring her with us. You should’ve drawn us a map, like I told you, lady!
Margaret and Jacob bickered, Roger tried appealing to his better side, but, unsurprisingly, nothing worked. There isn’t anyone as stubborn as Jacob. As usual, Lily didn’t disagree with her father. I’ll never understand the hold he has on her.
Poor Roger can’t stop staring at the cabin. He whispered to me his suspicion this trip would turn out a failure, but being proven right wasn't the type of thing he drew comfort from—unlike me.
Snow covers our shoulders. Ma's knitted scarf protects me from the cold, but I'm more afraid of what's going to happen in a few days. Professor Spencer's warnings turned out to be sadly accurate. We spotted the military-grade trucks parked over by the community college, and about thirty armed bastards are now two hours from our little unsecured town.
I'm not sure if this is my fault or not. Maybe if I hadn’t asked for more guns these idiots would never know about us and we wouldn’t actually need more guns. Or maybe if I planned this whole protect-the-town thing better, I could have predicted guerrilla attacks. I don't know. What I know is that our last chance of surviving just slammed the door on us.
“Let's just rob them, Roger,” I say with a smile, but half-serious. “They will never miss most of the stuff, anyway.”
Roger shakes his head, to my disappointment. “We can't do that.”
At my lack of enthusiastic agreement, Roger widens his eyes. “Danny, we are not doing that,” he insists.
The ‘why not’ dies down in my throat. I have to ignore Rule Number Ten of the Zombie Apocalypse: laws don’t exist anymore, and morality is subjective. Cold reason and logic are everything every Zombie fan wants to follow during an outbreak. How many times did I scream at the TV for that dumb guy to just shoot the obvious crazy psychopath soon-to-be murderer? Or groan when people took ages to discuss what they should do with poor bitten Mary while she turns and eats the little kid?
Sadly, it's not as easy when you are the one in the same situation. The pull of normalcy, the moral safety of following the good Sheriff's decision, is just too tempting.
Do I want to rob Lily? No. Was it a good idea? Yes. One-hundred percent. Should I do it? Taking the guns to save the town was a minor evil for the greater good, but that slippery slope is very slippery.
I don't want to toss and turn on my own bed, unable to sleep. The whole point of saving Redwood was, and is, to have a place Ma and I would never need to turn into monsters or lose hope for a better society emerging from the chaos. Keep everything the same as always. Why else do all of this? Yes, being practical about a bite is imperative for survival, denying a poor father a decent burial for his son is hard, but not evil. Robbing two people we know of their guns? Kinda dick-ish.
“Hey, I wasn't being serious.”
For a minute I was, and he knows it too.
We go back to the car. Roger gives the cabin a frown, before turning the car on, and taking the dirt road back home. It takes us double the time to reach the town, since the snow blocked most of our path. The three of us have to stop twice to clean the way. Fortunately Ma told us to bring shovels—if nothing else, she said we would use them to knock some sense into Jacob.
I'm actually relieved to see Redwood remains quiet as ever. Part of me thought we would find the whole town burning by now. For once, I'm pretty happy to be wrong.
The council gathers inside the same classroom as always. Other people were also invited, the ones with more experience in combat, and who had zombie kills. I figure they are the most likely not to shit their pants over the news of an oncoming conquering army. Panic never solves anything; we need people capable of clear thinking.
Professor Spencer is also here, and to my annoyance, he's sitting next to Ma. I have
no idea what she sees in him. Dad was handsome in his younger days, and his hair, before the cancer, was lustrous and fluffy. This guy is bald and looks like a newborn sloth.
“So, that went horribly,” I comment after Roger finishes explaining our failure. “I told you that guy wouldn't lift a finger to help us.”
“Did you offer our supplies?” Ma asks, with a frown. “Said please, at least?”
“Yeah, we did, Ma. Jacob still hates us.”
“He doesn't hate us,” Roger says. “He's careful and focused on protecting Lily.”
I close my eyes, so as not to roll them instead. One day I would like to know why Roger is so determined to defend the bastard.
“Great for him, but we are still screwed.” I cross my arms. “Now what?”
We all look at each other, expecting a magical solution to arrive any second. When it becomes clear magic doesn't exist, I raise my hand. Time to tell them my bad idea.
“Well, I have a backup plan: Zombies!” I get up again with a crazy smile on my lips. “I mean: duh! We have zombies.”
“You want to use the zombies against them?” Roger always manages to interpret my crazy ramblings. “How?”
I turn to the professor. “You said they were bad at killing them, right? Too confident? Wasting bullets and all that?”
The professor nods. “Indeed, they were incredibly arrogant.”
I walk around the circle of chairs, mind racing. “So we grab some zombies, and use them to do the damage for us. A sneak attack while they sleep.”
Roger is not happy; he has a hand on his crossed leg, a frown in place. Maybe he thinks I'm being too dishonorable by using a cowardly tactic, or maybe he just doesn't like the idea of infecting someone on purpose. Understandable, but it's not like we have any other option. He needs to realize that.
“But after they all turn into zombies, we’ll still have to fight them.” He shakes his head. “That’s going to be dangerous.”
He’s right.
“Yeah, but we fought against them before,” Margaret says. “Better an enemy we can predict, than one that can actually think.”