by D. J. Molles
The girl was standing now, hunched over, strange-looking eyes staring from under a hood of tangled hair. She pointed the bloody knife at him. “You!” It was a wheezing whisper.
“Drop that knife!”
“You!” She started forward.
He pulled the trigger, instinctively aiming center mass. Three shots in quick succession at near point-blank range spattered her chest in red. She stumbled back but didn’t go down. Her breath came out again like she was trying to say something but couldn’t form the words. She put one foot in front of the other, and Lee turned and took the three wooden stairs to the porch in one bound. He planted his shoulder into his front door, noticing as he went that there was a piece of paper taped to the door. He didn’t have time to grab it. He spun in the doorway, slammed the front door and locked it, then sprinted for the basement door.
He nearly tripped going down the stairs, feeling the pain in his thigh now. His footfalls were a rapid tumble. He hit the basement floor, blind in the dark, and groped around for the hatch. His hand touched cold metal.
He heard something banging on the front door upstairs. “Slow down,” he told himself but didn’t take his own advice. He nearly dove in, hitting his elbow and the top of his forehead on the frame as he scrambled in. He slammed the hatch behind him, twisted it to lock it in place, then skipped the metal stairs and jumped straight to the ground.
Pain shot up his leg and his knees buckled, crashing him to the floor. He got up and ran for a few steps, then slowed to a jog, knowing that it was panic driving him and trying to battle it off. He breathed deep and tried not to think about the girl running swiftly and silently up behind him to slit his throat.
The door to the bunker came into view and Tango stood up, his head lowered, sensing something was wrong.
“Move,” Lee snapped as he lurched through the door, pushing Tango out of the way with his wounded leg, then wincing as he realized it was a bad choice. Tango’s attention was fixated down the tunnel.
Lee swore as he slammed the hatch closed and whipped the wheel into the locked position. He ripped the gas mask off his face, tasted fresh air. He moved quickly to the kitchen sink, pulling open the cabinet doors and grabbing a bottle of bleach from underneath. He spun the cap off and started dousing himself right there in the middle of the kitchen.
He rubbed the bleach all over the exterior of the MOPP suit as he marched into the bathroom with the bottle of bleach and cranked on the hot water. He waited for the water to start steaming and then stepped in, still fully dressed. He doused himself two more times with bleach, working it over every inch of the MOPP suit. The water seeped in and stung his skin. He started pulling the suit off, swearing under his breath through clenched teeth as the scalding hot water sprayed over him. Rivulets of hot water snaked down his body and found his fresh leg wound. He cried out in pain and punched the wall of the shower.
“So fucking stupid!” he yelled.
He doused himself three times head to toe with the bleach, rubbing it everywhere, including the open knife wound, which brought tears to his eyes. He rinsed with the scalding water and stepped out of the shower. He skipped drying and dressing and went straight to his closet where his medical pack lay, grabbing a hand towel off the bathroom sink as he went.
“There’s no way I got myself infected. No fucking way.” Lee didn’t believe himself.
He riffled through the pack, pulling out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, yanking off the cap, and pouring it over the wound. He watched as the clear liquid cascaded over the wound, then stung and started to bubble. The more bubbles, the dirtier the wound. There was no telling what the hell was on that knife or if she had used it to stab or cut someone else who was infected. Lee could see the bacteria as microscopic ants racing through his bloodstream, already beginning to pick away at his frontal lobe.
As the hydrogen peroxide did its work, he inspected the wound and thought about the consequences of his ill-fated recon mission. He estimated the knife was about three inches long—he thought it was a kitchen paring knife. Though the blade was only a half inch wide, when she stabbed him she’d pulled it down, slicing open an extra inch of flesh. There was definite muscle damage, but nothing so severe that it would inhibit his movement.
He pulled out a sterile-packaged syringe and held it between his teeth, then found a bottle of lidocaine, an iodine wipe, a pack of triple antibiotic ointment, two medium-size gauze pads, and a pack of suturing needles with a length of nylon thread.
He used the first gauze pad and pressed it down on his wound, kicking his leg up onto the back of his couch to keep it elevated and to reduce the blood flow that had already created red streams that crisscrossed his lower leg down to his ankle and had begun dripping on the floor. While holding the gauze firmly on the wound and grinding his teeth against the sharp pain, he mopped up the blood on the floor and on his leg with the hand towel he’d grabbed on the way out of the shower.
After a few moments of firm, stinging pressure on the wound, he pulled the gauze away and checked the blood flow. The wound filled slowly with blood and trickled over again onto his leg, but the blood wasn’t pulsing, which meant no arterial damage, and the flow seemed to be abating with the elevation and pressure. Luckily—if you could call it that—the wound was a clean cut, so he didn’t need to use a scalpel to remove any “nonviable” tissue or smooth out the edges as you would with a ripping or tearing wound. That would save Lee a significant amount of pain.
He put the gauze back down and held it in place with his elbow while both hands worked open the sterile syringe package and used it to draw a few CCs of lidocaine. He cleared the syringe of air and clamped it back in his teeth, then opened the iodine wipe. He pulled off the bloody gauze pad and tossed it on the ground, then swabbed the area around the wound with the iodine wipe, staining his skin a yellowish brown.
He injected small doses of lidocaine into several areas around his wound, creating the effect of a local anesthetic. When the few CCs of lidocaine were done, he put the cap back on the syringe and dropped it with the bloody gauze. Lee waited a few breaths until the stinging sensation in his leg 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 toward 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 toward 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 stre
ngth 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 superhumanly 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, Marla, 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. Holing up in his bunker had become counterproductive. It was no longer an option. 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 meat sauce, 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 lay on his bed, 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 seventy-two 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 bloodstream 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 hairs stand up on the back of Lee’s neck.
Each time it happened, Lee’s pulse 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 decided to get up.
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 switch 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 were 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 fifteen-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 who 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 singlepoint 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 gas mask. He just wished he’d received more information from Frank about the plague. Perhaps Abe would know. He would e-mail 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. Dogs never realized the horrible situations they were in. That’s why police K9s 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 to 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 in his lolling tongue 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 L
ee 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 stairs, 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 clicked his tongue and Tango quickly climbed the stairs and edged around his legs and into the basement. Lee pushed the hatch closed behind him and punched in the code to lock it. He waited until he heard the click, then turned toward 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 toward the stairs, with his non-trigger hand patting 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 any infected people unnecessarily.
