The Remaining

by D. J. Molles

  To Lee’s right, the boom of Jack’s .308 changed to the pop-pop-pop of pistol fire. Lee found his back pressed against the wall, the stairs in front of him. His M4 went dry—a quick mag change and he was back in the fight—but even that brief cessation in his suppressive fire gave the infected horde a few more feet in a battle of inches.

  Pop-pop-pop and Jack’s pistol went silent.

  Lee edged to the left, toward the master bedroom, as Jack picked up his rifle and began swinging it like a baseball bat. Standing to the right of the stairs close to Stephanie’s room, Jack began smashing the solid buttstock into anything that popped up from the stairs.

  Lee could not imagine the mound of dead infected lying at the bottom of the stairs, but the horde kept coming, kept pressing them back. Now Lee and Jack were being divided, and the oncoming attackers were reaching the top of the stairs, filling the gap between the two comrades. Lee held Jack’s gaze for a brief moment before he disappeared under a wave of infected.

  “Jack!”

  Lee kept firing, kept recharging his weapon after every empty magazine, but he found himself backpedaling, now against the closed door of the master bedroom. He no longer saw individuals in the oncoming mob but only a faceless, amorphous mass of sickening human flesh, all gnashing teeth and clawing hands. Lee emptied his last magazine.

  He tried to figure how many were left, tried to do the grisly math—it couldn’t be many more after he’d used every last rifle magazine that he had strapped to him—and yet, there were more coming at him, though he could not determine their numbers. He could only keep fighting and hope that he had enough to outlast them.

  He transitioned as fast as he could to his pistol, but it was too late. Out of the bodies clawing toward him, what looked like it used to be the leg of a large piece of furniture slammed into his left shoulder, knocking him down. For a brief second he couldn’t see. But he refused to quit, refused to get taken out like that. By a fucking piece of furniture. He felt his back hit the ground, his head and neck pressed up against the master bedroom door. He tucked his gun arm tight into his body and brought his MK23 to his chest, pointing out.

  He felt someone on top of him, but he still couldn’t see past the bright sparklers going off all around his eyes. He felt arms, a shoulder, a neck. He grabbed hard around the neck with his left hand, felt his attacker’s hands clamp desperately around his own wrist as he shoved outward. It was a rough approximation, but he pushed the muzzle of his pistol into what he thought was his attacker’s chin. He shut his eyes and mouth and turned his head away, ready for the fountain, and pulled the trigger.

  The writhing body on top of him became dead weight.

  He hugged the body close to him, felt a river of warmth running down his neck and chest, smelled the shit and piss and horrid unwashed odor, but clung tight to that body like a drowning man to a raft. Perversely, he felt comforted by the weight. A human blanket. A body shield.

  He punched out with his pistol, and in the narrow section of his vision that had cleared, he began picking off targets as they rushed him. He counted rounds as they went out, a death clock on its last seconds.

  Two.

  Three-four.

  Five.

  Six-seven-eight.

  The bedroom door supporting his head was suddenly gone. He felt the back of his head slap the ground and thought his head had exploded. There was white fire and sparks and a boom that he felt in his sinuses. Then another and another.

  Hot shotgun shells were falling from the sky, burning his face. Angela was yelling for him to get in the room. Lee shoved the dead body off and rolled onto his hands and knees, then launched himself past Angela’s legs and into the bedroom. He was up on one knee when he heard Angela grunt and fly backward into the footboard of the bed.

  Lee twisted in time to see a shovel coming down on him like an ax. He jumped forward, felt the shovelhead glance off his ankle, and recovered his position on one knee. He punched out with his pistol and put his sights on the big naked man in front of him. At the same time, Angela let loose with another 12-gauge round that ripped apart Shovel Guy’s left shoulder, nearly shearing the arm off.

  The big man stumbled back with a groan, but he still held the shovel in his other hand. The shovel was big, but he whipped it around like a toy, even with just one hand. Angela ducked at the foot of the bed, and Shovel Guy waved his weapon back and forth in rapid arcs.

  There was a vicious growl, and suddenly Tango was attached to the big man’s upper arm. The shovel dropped to the ground. Shovel Guy flailed and screeched, but Tango wasn’t letting go.

  Lee was quick to his feet, not wanting to take the shot with Tango in the picture—it would have to be a contact shot. He closed the distance and managed to maneuver himself directly behind Shovel Guy. He put the muzzle at the base of the man’s skull, pointing upward, and pulled the trigger. The top of his head erupted like a shaken soda can and the body turned heavy and collapsed.

  Tango followed the body to the ground and kept growling and ripping at the arm. Lee grabbed the dog’s collar with his non-gun hand and yanked the dog back with a sharp “Leave it!”

  It was anything but silent.

  Lee heard ringing in his perforated eardrums, the rasp of his own breath, Angela gasping for air, the two kids whimpering in their hiding place somewhere in the room. He could hear the blood rushing through his ears like he was standing under a waterfall. All through the house came the pathetic lilting moans of the dying.

  But no one was screeching. No one was running at them. Lee knew it had only been a few short minutes, but time stretches when you’re certain you’re going to die. Lee moved quickly to the bedroom doorway and looked through, keeping the muzzle of his pistol pointed down the hall and the weapon itself tucked in close to his chest.

  He first noted that Stephanie’s bedroom door was shut, which gave him hope that Jack had survived the attack by locking himself in the room. The hall that separated them was littered with corpses and those that still clung stubbornly to life. Their desperate situation did not affect their aggression. Lee watched one of the injured infected crawling over the bodies of others, unable to move its legs but still biting and clawing at the air.

  He waited another long moment, listening to the sounds of the house, but there was only the constant groan. Lee called out to Jack but got no answer. He felt someone move beside him and turned to find Angela standing to his right, pointing the shotgun at the figure crawling slowly toward them.

  Lee reached out a staying hand. “Don’t waste the ammo.”

  She looked at him, confused. Lee holstered up and took the shovel from the ground. He turned and put his hand on the doorknob. The others did not need to see the messy cleanup. Angela looked at him with eyes as blank as any professional poker player, and Lee had to appreciate her guts.

  Before closing the door, he nodded to her. “You did really good, Angela. Thank you.”

  “Yeah,” was her subdued response.

  Lee closed the door and faced the hallway. Dusk had cast the house in a dim gray, but he could still make out the shapes of the bodies and see the movement of the ones still twitching or clawing for him.

  Inside the master bedroom, Angela stood like a statue. Her only response to the sickening sound of the steel shovel crushing bone was a blink of her eyelids.

  Cleanup was a messy business. It took more than one strike to dispatch most of the crawlers. To be sure he hadn’t merely knocked them unconscious, Lee put the point of the shovel to their necks and stomped down, severing the spinal column. The stench was overpowering, and Lee felt sick to his stomach doing the work. These people who littered the ground, they were less than animals to him now. He was killing the wounded with no more thought than he would give to crushing a bug.

  Twice he retched but produced nothing. His stomach was empty. After taking out five of them, he made it to the closed door of Stephanie’s bedroom.

  He didn’t want his head blown off trying to open th
e door, so he tapped it first and called out to Jack, hoping to God he would answer.

  “Jack, you with me? Talk to me, buddy.”

  The response was strained. “Yeah.”

  Lee threw open the door and found Jack sitting against the far wall. He was covered in blood from head to toe, but Lee couldn’t tell if it was his or from the three dead bodies at his feet. Lee needed to check, but he thought he could guess which it was. Jack looked bad, but he was still holding a big KA-BAR knife that he had produced from somewhere.

  Lee stepped over the bodies to get to Jack and knelt down. “You look shitty, devil dog.”

  Jack grimaced and Lee saw blood staining his teeth.

  “Where’d they get you?”

  “Eh…” Jack grunted and leaned forward. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Jack just gave Lee a look. “Yeah, I know.”

  Lee nodded. “Where’s the blood coming from?”

  “One of them was swinging a hammer around and nicked me in the mouth… knocked out a few teeth.” The older guy slumped and was silent for a long moment. “And one of ’em bit me.”

  For a perverse moment, Lee thought Jack was kidding. Surely it was a joke. Then Lee scanned Jack’s arms for wounds. The older man was holding his right forearm with his left hand. He withdrew the hand and Lee didn’t have to ask the question he was thinking: Did it break the skin? On Jack’s forearm there was a near-perfect circle of teeth marks, gouged well into the skin. It could have just been the trauma to the wound, but Lee thought it already looked red and swollen.

  Lee wanted to swear, but he controlled himself.

  Jack immediately saw the look on Lee’s face. “You don’t gotta pussyfoot around it, Lee. I know I’m fucked.”

  Lee noticed it was the first time Jack had called him by his first name. “Not necessarily.… I mean, even if you are, you won’t show symptoms for a while.”

  “So what?” Jack snorted. “You’re just gonna keep me around, getting sick and going crazy, ’cause you don’t have the stones to do the job?”

  Lee gritted his teeth. “I’m not gonna kill you, Jack.”

  “Fuck…” Jack was quiet. “You have to shoot me.”

  “No.”

  “Shoot me, Lee.” Jack’s eyes got fierce. “Don’t play this whole comrades-in-arms, never-leave-a-man-behind bullshit with me! I don’t even know you, motherfucker! Put me down! Do it before I start losin’ my mind! Fucking shoot me!”

  “I’m not—”

  Jack cut him off by lunging for Lee’s pistol. “Gimme that!”

  Lee swatted his hand down. Jack grabbed for Lee’s collar, but Lee slammed him back into the wall and shook him hard. His face was red. “Fuck you!” he shouted in Jack’s face. “You’re not the only person trying to survive here!”

  “I’m gonna die anyway!” Jack twisted away.

  Lee slammed him against the wall again. “We’re all gonna fucking die!” Jack glared. A few heartbeats passed in intense silence. “We’re all just a step away from it. But right now we are closer than ever and there’s a woman and two children and they’re on the fucking brink!” Lee took a few deep breaths in silence, then lowered his voice. “I need every working trigger finger I can find to help me get them out of here and into someplace safe. You wanna die? Do it yourself. But don’t ask me or anyone else in this group to lessen our chances of survival.”

  Lee stood up and grabbed the shovel.

  Before exiting the room, he stopped and turned. “We need to wash the blood off.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Decision Time

  Lee didn’t bother counting the bodies as he walked downstairs, finishing off the ones that were still moving. The hallway was littered with them, and he fought to keep his footing on the steps. There were even more on the landing, piles of them, often stacked three or four high. With the risk of contagion, it was out of the question to attempt to move the bodies out of the house.

  Not to mention the smell was becoming too much to bear.

  When he had scoured the lower level of the house for stragglers and come up empty, he returned upstairs. Jack stood at the top of the stairs, looking shell-shocked, staring at the wall. Certain death was a difficult concept to wrap your brain around. Knowing that very soon you would cease to exist. Knowing that, for you, there was no such thing as a future.

  Lee left him to his thoughts without speaking and went to the master bedroom. Angela was sitting on the bed, holding the two children. The two kids looked like they’d been crying, while Angela just looked numb.

  Lee stood in the doorway, not sure what to say.

  Angela broke the silence, her voice soft and cracked. “Jack got infected?”

  Lee didn’t answer for a long time. He wanted to rub his face, but his hands were sticky with blood. His shirt under his combat vest was clinging to his chest and becoming stiff. His whole body felt like it was coagulating. “Yes.”

  Angela’s only response was a long, deep breath.

  “It’s almost dark,” Lee’s voice was flat. “You got blood on you. There’s a stream in the backyard we can use to wash it off.”

  Lee felt himself brace for some volcanic reaction from Angela, but she only nodded and then slowly stood up. She grabbed the two children by the hands, appearing to take comfort from them as they did from her. Watching it made Lee feel more alone. The trio walked slowly past him, down the hallway, and edged past Jack, who still stood at the top of the stairs.

  Lee felt a cold nose nudge his arm. He gave Tango a scratch behind the ear. The dog’s fur stuck to the blood on Lee’s hands. They left the master bedroom behind. At the top of the stairs, Lee looked at Jack. He thought of different things to say, but they all tasted wrong in his mouth. After a pause, he simply touched Jack lightly on the shoulder and kept moving.

  Down the stairs, over the bodies, he followed Angela and the children out of the house. They all walked slowly down the hill, stepping around the freshly dug graves as though they weren’t there at all.

  Shortly after they walked down the hill, Jack exited the house and followed.

  * * *

  They decided that the pickup truck in the garage was the best place for everyone to hide out for the night. The smell inside the house was too rancid to live with, even for just one night. The truck was a king cab, so the group would fit into the vehicle comfortably, with Tango curled up in the bed. Lee found the keys on the kitchen counter, which was a small miracle in and of itself. The bigger miracle was that the truck turned over and had a quarter tank of fuel left in it.

  Lee cracked the windows so it wouldn’t get stuffy and turned off the car, but he left the keys in the ignition so he wouldn’t have to fumble with them if they needed to drive away quickly. He left the dome light on, as it was the only light in the garage. Angela and Jack sipped slowly on cups of water. Lee had taken the last gallon or so of water out of the hot water heater. He drank enough to take the edge off his own dehydration and gave the rest to the others.

  The two children had taken a few cups of water each and had fallen asleep shortly after. Abby looked slightly better, but Angela was still critically dehydrated. Jack had insisted that she take most of the remaining water for herself, as he thought it would be a waste for him to drink too much of it.

  “How are you feeling?” Lee asked him.

  He pursed his lips. “Fine.”

  “Maybe you’re not infected.” Angela sounded hopeful.

  Jack smiled wanly but didn’t say anything. They all knew that Jack was probably infected. Lee thought about Angela’s husband. She must be familiar with the signs and symptoms of infection, as she probably watched her husband succumb to them, all the while hoping he’d break out of it, that the impossible would happen and the infection wouldn’t take hold. It would be difficult for her to watch it again.

  Lee spoke. “We need to move.”

  They both looked at him.

  “In the morning, I mean. We’ll
sleep here tonight, but we can’t stay here. The little bit of water we had is just holding off the dehydration, not curing it. And we have no food at all. We need to find you someplace to stay.”

  “What do you mean ‘find me someplace’?” Angela leaned forward. “What about you?”

  Lee twisted in the driver’s seat and looked back at her. “I’ll stay there too. But I’ll have to get a resupply. I need to leave you guys in a defensible location that has some food and water.”

  Jack leaned back against the headrest and spoke quietly. “Why don’t you tell us about that insurance policy, Captain?”

  Lee faced him.

  “What are you talking about?” Angela asked.

  Jack looked back at him steadily. “Your GPS device? What’s on there?”

  Lee stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.

  “What’s he talking about, Lee?” Angela and Jack waited in pregnant silence for a response from Lee, but he wasn’t sure how to tell them. The facts were likely to only make them angry. The facts were also very dangerous, not only to Lee but to anyone who knew them. And the more people who knew, the more dangerous the secret got for Lee.

  Then again, they deserved some sort of explanation. He couldn’t expect two grown adults to simply trust him implicitly with their very survival. He needed to tell them enough that they would trust his decisions but not so much that he was putting them or himself at unnecessary risk.

  “Fine.” He nodded slowly. “Understand that everything I say is going to be the short version. It’s not because I don’t trust either of you, but it’s for your safety. And what I do tell you needs to be kept between us. Agreed?”

  Angela and Jack both nodded.

  “There are going to be groups out there. Groups of survivors who have banded together for protection. It’s these groups that I’m supposed to unite and attempt to rebuild a centralized government with. However, as one man—especially an outsider—I’m of no value to them. They’ll never trust me, never listen to me. I have to bring something to the table. Something they can’t say no to.