by SD Tanner
She knew there was something seriously wrong with Jacob’s spine otherwise anyone with his leg injuries would be in horrible pain. It didn’t take a doctor to realize that he should be dead, and at a medical level, she wasn’t entirely sure how to care for him. Not feeling any pain, Jacob probably wouldn’t notice if his legs became infected, and as his self-appointed nurse, she would need to pay close attention to them for him. Putting an arm around his leanly muscled back, she heaved him up and swung him around until he dropped heavily into the wheelchair.
From the wheelchair, Jacob grinned up at her. “Didn’t feel a thing.”
Walking over to the cupboard, she retrieved a light blue blanket and wrapped it around his legs, tucking it in lightly so it wouldn’t get caught under the wheels. She found a pair of soft slippers under the bed, and kneeling down, eased his feet into them. As she did this, she felt his hand gently stroke her hair and she looked up at him expectantly.
“You have a kind heart. I can see why Ted calls you Angel.”
“How do you know that’s what he calls me?”
With a small smile, he shook his head slightly. “I don’t know. I just do.”
It seemed odd that Jacob would know Captain Ted’s pet name for her, but she shrugged it off and walked to the back of the wheelchair. With her foot, she released the wheel locks and began to push Jacob out of the room. At the door, she glanced down the brilliant white corridor and decided to take a right, which would take her deeper into the CDC. She vaguely remembered one of the rooms contained the people waiting to be infected by the designer virus. She wasn’t sure if they’d been infected yet and was curious to find out what had happened to them. Searching for their room, she opened one of the doors that didn’t have a glass-viewing window and saw a row of beds.
“Hello.”
“Come on in, honey,” a woman’s voice replied. “We’re as decent as we ever get in here.”
The door suddenly opened fully and a man in a robe held it open for her. Glancing up at him, she smiled. “Thank you.”
She wheeled Jacob into the room. “Hi, I’m…Angel, we met a few days ago. Th is Jacob. I’m showing him around and I thought I’d introduce you all. He’s new to the base too.”
There were six people sitting in chairs or on beds, but no one looked any different to the last time she’d seen them, and she assumed they weren’t infected yet.
“Hi Jacob, welcome to the nuthouse,” a woman said, as she stood up and walked over to him. “I’m Gloria.” Pointing to each person in the room, Gloria proceeded to rattle off their names, “James. Winona. Maria. Marshall. Clive. But I don’t expect you to remember their names.”
With a smile, Jacob pointed to each of the people in the room. “Gloria. James. Winona. Maria. Marshall. Clive. Nice to meet you all. Angel says you’re all planning to be infected with the designer virus. May I ask why?”
“To help the bases survive. Once we’re infected, we can kill hunters with a touch.”
Tilting his head up at Gloria, he asked, “Why would you want to be able to kill?”
“Cos they eat us alive!” Marshall exclaimed. “They’re our enemy.”
“Do you think they’re your true enemy?”
“Well, they ain’t our friends.”
“But they’re humans, just like we are.”
“Were humans,” Gloria replied. “They’re undead and we’re food to them.”
“I can understand why you think that, but do you blame a lion for eating a man or do you accept it’s just what a lion does?”
“They’re not lions. Lions are God’s invention. Hunters are not God’s will. They’re an abomination.”
“Are you sure? They’re on this earth, so don’t they have as much right to exist as you do?”.
“Maybe,” Marshall replied firmly. “But I’d shoot a lion if it tried to eat me.”
“And so you should. That’s how survival works, but don’t you have compassion for the lion because you know it is what it is?”
“Nah, I’d skin it and use it as a rug.”
“Shut up, Marshall,” Gloria said firmly. With an understanding look, she added, “Don’t listen to him. He’s just talking tough. Truth is, yes I would kill the lion, but I wouldn’t want to.”
“Exactly. You must kill the hunters to survive, but there’s no pleasure in the act. They may not look or act human, but somewhere in the core of them, they must still be human. Do you really think all traces of humanity can be removed by a virus? What if they’re aware of what they are and what they’re doing?”
“Oh my God,” Winona exclaimed in horror. “It never occurred to me they might still be aware of who they are.” With wide eyes, she asked, “Do you think they know? Oh my God, that would be horrible. Those poor people. There’s millions of them.”
Jacob wheeled his chair over to Winona and took her hand. “You have a kind heart, Winona. Remember who they were and be kind when you kill them. The distance between us and them is literally the size of a microscopic germ.”
It had never occurred to her the hunters might still have traces of humanity left in them, but she’d been at Ruler’s camp and knew what true evil looked like. The super hunters, as they called them, were really demons, but were the hunters? On reflection, she didn’t think so. Unless under the control of a demon super hunter, the hunters appeared to be mindless. They were called hunters because they seemed to be driven to hunt and eat their prey. She studied Jacob thoughtfully and wondered why he had so much compassion for the hunters. It was an intelligent reaction to what appeared to be ruthless killers, but she had to agree, there was a possibility hunters may have a legacy of human awareness.
“What’s made you think hunters may be aware?”
“Nothing I’ve seen, but when we take anything at face value we may not appreciate the real nature of what we’re dealing with. When we do that, we can be quite cruel, even if it’s by accident. We should never judge what we don’t understand and we must never assume we understand until we truly do.”
“So, you’re sayin’ it’s okay to kill ‘em,” Marshall said. “But we shouldn’t do it lightly, ‘cos if that’s what you’re sayin’, then that’s true.” He looked into the distance. “I always liked a good hunt. It was more than just the shootin’. It was the goin’ out with my buddies, havin’ a few beers, jockeyin’ over who took the best shot and the huntin’ was just the thing we did. I never really thought about the animals. They were targets. A way of measurin’ our success.”
“Were you a good shot, Marshall?”
“I weren’t a bad shot,” he replied, with a tinge of pride.
“Did the animal suffer?”
“No. I usually had ‘em down in one shot. Only a bad hunter injures and doesn’t kill.”
“Did you eat what you killed?”
Marshall gave Jacob an indignant look. “Well, of course I did. What the hell is the point of huntin’ if you don’t eat your kill?” Looking disgusted, he added, “Otherwise you’re just killin’ for the hell of it and that’s not why you hunt.”
“Then you’re a practical man, Marshall. You hunt to eat and that’s the way the ecosystem was designed to work. Man is designed to hunt. It’s how man survives, but good men take only what they need and don’t waste life.” Looking around at the people in the room, he said, “You shouldn’t be infected. You can do more alive than not.”
“The designer virus doesn’t kill us,” Gloria replied. “It just changes us.”
“Umm…it kills some of us Gloria,” Clive said nervously.
“Well that’s a risk we agreed to take. You don’t have to go ahead with this if you don’t want to, Clive.”
“None of you should go ahead with it,” Jacob said firmly. “You can help the bases more by staying alive and caring for those around you.”
“But Gears says we need the infected,” Winona said shyly.
“Gears is wrong. Mankind needs to stay alive and the hunters aren’t the real problem. Rul
er and his demons are.”
Gloria shook her head adamantly. “With all due respect, Jacob, I don’t know you, and Gears and his brothers have taken care of us all for a long time now. I don’t think you can just waltz in here and tell us a man who’s kept us alive and saved so many of us is wrong.”
“And even if he is, we’d still follow him,” Marshall added. “He has our best interests at heart.”
“Yes he does, but he doesn’t know everything. I’ll talk to him when I see him. If he understood what’s really going on with the designer virus, maybe he wouldn’t tell you be infected.”
“How do you know what’s going on with the designer virus?” Marshall asked sharply.
“I was at Ruler’s base. I met Ruler and his demon super hunters. It’s a very clever virus and it knows how to survive even once the host is technically dead. Hunters are dead. Super hunters are dead. It’s only the virus that’s keeping them moving. Why would you believe the designer virus would work any differently? Wasn’t the designer virus derived from the hunter virus? How different can it be?”
She watched as Jacob’s simple, but effective explanation was understood by the group. His words made sense as she was learning his words often did. What she didn’t understand was, even though he’d lived at Ruler’s camp, how he knew what he knew, but she supposed he’d seen a very different view of the war they were fighting.
Now sounding unsure of himself, Marshall asked, “So, you’re sayin’ we shouldn’t do this?”
“I’m saying you can do more for man by staying as God made you.”
Suddenly there was the sound of something crashing somewhere on their floor of the CDC, and the noise was followed by the sounds of people screaming. Marshall immediately ran to the door, opening it slightly and the sound intensified and seemed to be drawing closer.
Sounding alarmed, James asked, “What the hell is that?”
She wasn’t sure what made her move, but she felt an urgent need to get Jacob as far away as possible from the CDC. Grabbing the back of his wheelchair, she spun him around and ran straight to the door. “Open the door!”
Without hesitating, she ran out of the door and turned to the right. Running at full speed down the corridor, she headed for the exit.
“Angel! Angel! What are you doing?”
“We have to go.”
She hadn’t looked to the left when she ran out of the door, and only now as she neared the exit did she risk a glance over her shoulder. Behind her, not more than thirty feet away, newly infected hunters were attacking the people who were running down the corridor. A nurse fall to the ground, only to be attacked by two hunters still dressed in scrubs and lab coats. A short stocky man pushed his way past the attacking hunters and glared at her aggressively. His blue on blue eyes made it clear that he was a demon super hunter and she thought she recognized him. Knowing they would need to climb the stairs to the next level, she turned away to help Jacob from his chair, and the short stocky man began to move down the corridor toward them.
“Put your arm around me! We have to get out of here!”
“You can’t carry me up the stairs. You should go, Angel. Leave me here.”
“No! You either help me or we both die here.”
Jacob must have heard the determination in her voice and he put his arm around her shoulders. Heaving, she used all her nursing experience, to pull him from the chair and push her way through the door. Jacob’s legs dragged uselessly behind him and she felt his weight pulling her body to the left and tried to compensate. They made it through the door, but she didn’t know how she could get him up the stairs. Dropping him on the bottom step, she got behind him, and putting her arms around his chest, she began to pull him up one stair at a time. Jacob used his arms to leverage himself up each step, and they slowly began to make their way up the first flight of stairs. Before they’d gone more than ten steps, the short stocky man came through the door and he snarled at them.
“Fuck off demon!” Jacob shouted. “Go back to hell!”
“Make me!” As if he was sharing a joke, the man did a small jig. “You were supposed to die at the camp. Can’t imagine how you survived. Bit hard to kill aren’t you?”
“My life is not yours to take.”
Slowly up the stairs, his blue on blue eyes glinted. “What makes you so sure of that?”
Before Jacob could reply, Terry appeared at the door, and without hesitating, he placed a pistol against the neck of the stocky man, and pulled the trigger. At such close range, the bullet tore through his neck and his throat exploded in a spray of blood. She thought she felt a light, wet spatter across her face. The sound of the gun in such a small narrow space was deafening, and her ears rang with the sound of the shot.
Terry turned to the people who were crowding behind him, and flicked his head in her direction. “Help her with him.”
Several people pushed past Terry and one of them was Marshall. He and another man each hooked an arm under Jacob’s armpits and began to quickly haul him up the stairs. She looked over at Terry, who was now firing his weapon down the corridor she’d just left. “Are you coming?”
Without turning to face her, Terry called. “Go!”
For some reason she didn’t want to leave him behind either. She supposed there were so few people left in her life she was reluctant to lose anyone, even if she barely knew them. Deciding her first priority was Jacob, she turned and followed him and the men helping him up the stairs. When they reached the second level, Terry joined them and they locked the door and sealed the level below.
Terry turned to the group. “We need to evacuate everyone from this level. Angel, you go with Jacob. Gloria, help Angel with Jacob. I need the men to help me get the injured out.”
Working quickly, they managed to get the people out from the first level of the CDC. Finally there were about sixty people sitting outside on the scrubby land that surrounded the building. The CDC helicopter was not there, but Terry assured them it would return and they could get word to the bases they needed help. Jacob was sitting in the shade leaning against a tree, and she was walking around doing what she could for the injured and sick people who were pulled from their beds. Everyone was in shock and no one quite understood what had happened.
Walking up to Terry, she asked quietly, “Who was that short man?”
Terry looked up from the patient he was tending to. “That was the Major. He’d been in a coma for almost a year. I didn’t think he’d be able to walk after that, much less attack anyone.”
She remembered who he was now. Terry had shown her his room when she’d first arrived. “Wasn’t he infected?”
Terry nodded. “Yeah, but he had blue on blue eyes and that’s not right. In my experience only super hunters have blue on blue eyes and we don’t have any super hunters at the CDC anymore, so I don’t know how he could have gotten possessed.”
While they were talking she thought she could smell smoke. Puzzled, she looked back at the building, and smoke was leaking through the cracks in the closed windows and doors.
“Oh my God! The building’s on fire,” a woman exclaimed.
Terry sighed and stood up. “Okay, let’s move everyone further away from the building.”
They began to move people away from the building and she heard the pucker pucker sound of the helicopter returning to the CDC.
CHAPTER TWENTY: Escape from New York (Pax)
It was definitely BD and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He missed everything about her. Her mannerisms, cheeky looks and mischievous nature were imprinted in his memory, and he had to admit, he’d idealized her as the perfect woman for him. Ip could read minds and had said it was her, but even if she hadn’t, he was convinced this stunning woman was BD.
Ruler’s limousine had been parked outside the front of the hotel with the key in the ignition. TL was driving, Gears and Ip were in the front passenger seat, and only he and BD were sitting in the generous passenger seats. He hadn’t paid much attention
to the interior of the limousine, but she was looking around curiously at the décor. Following her gaze, he saw light grey leather seats, garish strip lighting, a built in bar and a large sunroof. The limousine could easily seat ten people, and he and BD were sitting against the back seat that looked over a bench on their left and the bar on their right.
He returned his gaze to her. “Classy, huh?”
He knew Ip was reborn into another body and he’d hoped BD could be too, but now it had happened, it felt surreal and he was out of his depth. Ip never remembered who she was, and he wondered if BD knew her past and what he meant to her.
She looked at him doubtfully and he wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t recognize him, or she didn’t agree the limousine was classy, or possibly both.
He tilted his head toward hers. “Can you talk? Or are you like Ip? You know, you can’t or don’t wanna talk?”
She gave him a shy sidelong look. “I can talk.”
Beaming back at her, he asked hopefully, “Do you remember me?”
Through his headset he heard Gears speak. “Shaddup, Pax. You’re supposed to be watchin’ our six!”
He glared at the front of the limousine where he assumed Gears head was. “Shaddup, Gears.” BD frowned at his sudden outburst, so he tapped his ear. “I got an earpiece and Gears ain’t mindin’ his own business.”
Smiling slightly, she asked, “Do you two always fight?”
“Mostly.”
“Pull over, TL,” Gears ordered. “They look like the survivors.”
He pulled himself up, jerking back slightly when TL braked sharply, and opened the sunroof. Balancing on the leather bench seat, he pulled himself up holding onto the edge of the roof and looked around. They were stopped on 7th Avenue, which had been cleared to allow vehicles to pass, and to his left he saw Benny leading a group of bedraggled looking people.
Grinning, he waved. “Yo, Benny! Good job!”
“Shit, Pax, don’t fuckin’ yell in my goddamn ear,” Gears shouted.
Wincing at the sound of Gears voice roaring through his earpiece. “Yeah, alright. Why’s everyone so damned pissed?”
