The Remaining

by D. J. Molles

  “Has anyone attempted to attack you?”

  “Not attack us.” Bus stroked his bushy beard. “We’ve had a few curious people drive down the dirt road to our main gate who we’ve turned away with a few rifle rounds. But if someone was determined to get in, I doubt we could stop him.”

  Lee opened his eyes. “Have you blockaded the driveway?”

  Bus looked confused. “No… we use it.”

  “You need to find another way in and out of the gate. The driveway’s too obvious and you’re going to continue to get visitors, and it also makes it easy for an attacking force. Couple trees across the roadway won’t stop someone on foot, but it’ll stop a vehicle for sure.”

  Bus looked thoughtful. “Bill and his scouts have been using the alley cut through the woods for the power lines to get through to the main road without being seen. I suppose everyone can use that.” Bus aimed his stare back at Lee. “So where’s all this going?”

  “Just trying to get a feel for what we’ll need.”

  “You mean your supplies?” Bus snorted. “We can worry about extra stuff later. Right now we need food, water, and guns. Medicine is a close fourth, although I’m sure Doc would disagree.”

  Lee grimaced. “Multiple trips at this point in time are a bit more of an endeavor than we should risk. You have to understand that my caches are local, but the way things are out there, a few miles might as well be a few hundred.”

  Bus smiled humorlessly. “You are using a lot of ‘we’ statements. I’m getting the feeling that you’re not just going to borrow one of our trucks and come back with a bumper crop of supplies.”

  Lee looked Bus straight in the eye. “With all due respect, my going out alone at this point in time would essentially be suicide. Forty-eight hours ago, you would not have heard those words come out of my mouth, but I’ve got a little more wisdom and a lot fewer weapons. I’m going to need a team to go with me.”

  “Okay.” Bus bridged his fingers in front of his face and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m not saying that I’m cool with that, but let’s say you get this ‘team.’ What happens then?”

  “Well.” Lee took a breath. “We’d need at least three of your vehicles, preferably the ones that can hold the most cargo, and two men for each vehicle at the very least—one to drive and one to gun if things get tight. We can probably pack enough supplies into three vehicles to last us through the winter… hopefully.”

  Bus sighed. “Three vehicles, huh? Is this including medical supplies and guns and ammunition?”

  “Food and water will take up a lot of space.” Lee rubbed his temples. “So would ammunition. Food and water are number one, but I’m pretty sure I can fit a six-month supply into three vehicles. Then throw in some weapons, ammunition, and maybe a little ordnance, and some medical equipment… yeah, we should be able to fit it in three. It’ll be tight, though.”

  “You realize I don’t make the decisions all by myself, right?” Bus asked as he stood up.

  “I take it you will propose this to a committee, then?” Lee felt a breeze seep into the cargo container and pulled the sheet up a little tighter.

  “Pretty much.”

  “If it’s a committee we’re talking about, let’s go for five vehicle and three people per.”

  Bus actually laughed. “I thought I knew everyone who lived here, but apparently you’ve been here longer than I thought.”

  Lee smiled and relaxed onto his side. “You forget, Bus. I’m US Army. I know how things work in committee.”

  Bus turned around and walked out. Over his shoulder, he said, “Rest up, Captain,” and then turned the corner and exited the cargo container. As he left, Jenny and Angela filed in. Jenny was holding a tray with another bottle of water and a plastic bowl. She set the tray down in front of Lee. The bowl contained what looked like rice and black beans.

  Jenny smiled. “Doc’s orders: gotta get some food and water in you.”

  Lee accepted the tray with a nod. “Thank you for helping us. You and your group have been more than kind to us already.”

  “Well.” Jenny helped Lee sit up in his bed and checked the bandages on his back. “We keep you alive, you keep us alive… that’s the plan, anyway.”

  Angela sat at the edge of Lee’s bed. Her bloodstained and filthy clothes were gone and she now wore an old T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. Both looked big for her, but they were clean. She also looked like she’d been able to wash up, and she looked much better. It was amazing what simple hygiene could do for morale.

  Lee spoke around bites of rice and beans. “Looks like you got that shower you wanted.”

  Angela smiled. “Bucket of rainwater and a piece of a soap bar: the next best thing.”

  Jenny excused herself and reiterated her desire for Lee to rest. Lee promised he would sleep more. To Angela, he asked what time it was and discovered it was about nine thirty PM.

  “How are Sam and Abby?” Lee asked.

  Angela shrugged noncommittally.

  “Did they get food and water?”

  “Yes. Jenny gave them plenty of water and a little bit of food. Sam ate fine, but Abby wasn’t feeling well.”

  Lee could see worry tightening Angela’s face. “I’m sure she’s fine.” Angela nodded but Lee could see tears in her eyes and she bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Lee leaned forward and touched her arm. “It’s not uncommon for dehydrated people to feel ill after drinking or eating.”

  “It’s not that.” Angela shook her head, looking like she was trying to regain her composure with a sigh and a skyward gaze. “She’s just… changed so much. If you’d have seen her a month ago, you wouldn’t believe it was the same person. She’s just gone through so much in such a small amount of time…” She trailed off.

  Lee let a long moment of silence pass before speaking. “We’ve all changed, Angela. No one comes out the other side of something like this the same as she went into it. We’re surviving through something that none of us expected. But we’re surviving. And that’s what counts.”

  Angela didn’t respond. She buried her face in her hands, looking ashamed of her tears, but Lee could see her shoulders rock slightly with sobs as they came and went, like waves buffeting a shore. Finally, she wiped her face and looked at Lee with red-rimmed eyes.

  “Sorry. You’re right. And we have it better than most.”

  Lee nodded. “We’ll make it.”

  Angela stood up. She turned to leave, but stopped and looked at Lee. “Honestly, do you think we’ll survive?”

  Lee met her stare unflinchingly, though he took a second to consider the question before answering. Did he really think they had a chance? The survivability of the plague was almost nil. The projections for human casualties that he’d received in his mission brief were what could only be described as biblical. Did he truly believe that he and some survivors could turn the tide of the infection, could fight back against brutal nature?

  He nodded. “It’s going to be a tough road, but we’ll make it.”

  Angela accepted Lee’s foretelling with a weak smile. Whether she really believed it or accepted it simply because it was more pleasant to believe in, Lee didn’t know. For that matter, he had to ask the same question of himself.

  He finished his rice and beans and his bottle of water.

  The food felt like a brick in his stomach, but the water helped soften it. He was still dehydrated, but at least he was recovering. He switched sides and lay down, careful not to pull at his stitches or mess up his dressings. He stared at the corrugated steel wall across from him and tried to construct plans that would help him and the Camp Ryder group survive, but he was tired and his thinking was muddy.

  Eventually he fell into a dark sleep. It was full of sounds but he couldn’t see, like he was staring into a black hole but could hear everything around him. He heard the roar of an unstoppable fire and the cries for help of every victim it consumed. The cries were at first distinguishable from one
another, but they steadily grew more numerous until they became one single, sustained note of panic and excruciating pain. The maddening sound of screaming turned into the throaty screech of the infected, and Lee thought to his dream-self, Who are the real victims in all of this? The infected or the survivors?

  Gunfire startled him awake. His dreams had become reality.

  extras

  meet the author

  Tara Molles

  D.J. Molles is the bestselling author of The Remaining series. He published his first short story, Darkness, while still in high school. Soon after, he won a prize for his short story Survive. The Remaining was originally self-published in 2012 and quickly became an Internet bestseller. He lives in the southeast with his wife and children.

  Also by D.J. Molles

  The Remaining

  The Remaining: Aftermath

  The Remaining: Refugees

  The Remaining: Fractured

  And look for the fifth book in the series coming in 2014!

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  THE REMAINING,

  don’t miss the next book in the series

  THE REMAINING: AFTERMATH

  by D.J. Molles

  CHAPTER 1

  Camp Ryder

  Who are the real victims in all of this?

  The infected or the survivors?

  Gunshots perforated the darkness of Lee’s dreams, yanking him violently out of sleep.

  He sat upright on a cot in almost complete darkness, his sleep-blind eyes struggling to focus and make sense of what was going on around him. Half in and half out of sleep, Lee’s mind conjured up the nearest memory of darkness and gunfire: the dim stairwell in the Petersons’ house, the haze of cordite hanging in the air, the stench of the infected.

  His breath caught in his chest. Dread hammered at the back of his mind. Something horrible had happened in the Petersons’ house. Something terrible and irreversible…

  Jack had just been bitten!

  But no. That didn’t make sense.

  Because wasn’t Jack already dead?

  He had to shake his head to clear the images of the Petersons’ house and Jack in the bedroom, covered in blood. He knew they were false. This wasn’t the Petersons’ house. It was… someplace else. Someplace safe, he thought. But maybe not so safe anymore, because there’s screaming and gunfire coming from outside.

  Another gunshot rang out, this time very close to him.

  Adrenaline pumped like a piston in his guts. His heart rate quickened.

  Slow down. Evaluate your situation. Try to remember.

  Try to remember what the fuck you’re doing here.

  He took a moment to look around and work through what he was seeing.

  He was not in complete darkness, as he’d first thought: A single gas lantern glowed dimly against dull corrugated-steel walls. He was completely naked, save for a thin white bedsheet that had been spread over him from the waist down. He lay on a cot in what looked like a shipping container and his back was in excruciating pain, though he couldn’t remember why. His tongue felt thick and pasty. And he had no weapons.

  Where’s my damn rifle?

  From somewhere outside he heard Tango howl.

  Tango! he thought, almost jumping off of the cot, but stopping himself as the sound of it reverberated and echoed. That’s not right. That doesn’t sound like Tango. The howl tapered off into a throaty snarl that didn’t sound much like a dog anymore. It was human.

  It couldn’t be Tango, anyway.

  Because he was dead too.

  And with that thought, the rest came back with sudden and overpowering force. Tango was dead. Jack was dead. He’d lost his rifle at Timber Creek. Someone named Milo had ambushed them. He remembered crawling through a boarded window, nails carving through the flesh of his back. Red and Blue saving their asses with Molotov cocktails. Angela and Abby and Sam just barely making it to Camp Ryder…

  The survivors. Camp Ryder. Wasn’t there a ten-foot-high fence around the compound? How the hell did the infected get inside? It was an infected he’d just heard, he was sure of it. But who was shooting at them? The questions all struck his brain in rapid succession.

  I can’t just lie here, he thought. I’ve got to move.

  He ripped the white sheets off of himself and stood, staggering through a flash of lightheadedness. The questions still rolled around in his head, but he couldn’t answer them now. Most of his thoughts were still muddled, but two things were coming through with piercing clarity: He needed a weapon—anything would do better than his bare hands—and he needed to get out of the shipping container. Running on instinct, these desires became a white-hot need, as real to him as his need to breathe.

  That howl again, this time just outside the shipping container.

  A shotgun boomed and the pellets struck the steel walls.

  Flashlights from outside played across the wall, casting the wavering shadow of a man running straight for Lee. The movements were unmistakably wild and animalistic.

  A short, sinewy form lurched around the corner of the shipping container just in time for another blast of buckshot to scoop its legs out from under it like a rug had been pulled. The infected hit the ground hard on its back and attempted to stand again without any regard to its injuries. Its wide eyes glistened feverishly in the lamplight as its shredded right leg twitched about, pulled in different directions by rearranged muscle fibers. It collapsed with a hissing sound and began to drag itself toward Lee, leaving a thick trail of blood behind.

  Like a car with a faulty transmission, Lee’s mind finally dropped into gear. He lunged for the table with the medical equipment. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but if anything was to be a weapon, it would be something on the table. He swept his hands back and forth like a blind man feeling in the dark, knocking over a metal tray with a few scalpels and forceps soaking in alcohol. The tray clattered to the ground and sent the instruments skittering across the floor. He thought about diving for one of the scalpels, but it wouldn’t bite deep, and given infected people’s pension for not even registering flesh wounds, he decided he needed something with a little more stopping power.

  Lee grabbed the heaviest object he could find—a big microscope that felt like it was solid metal. He spun toward the infected and found it nearly close enough to grasp his legs. Lee shouted in surprise and jumped back, grabbing the microscope by the eyepiece with one hand and smashing it down as hard as he could on the head of the infected. The heavy base of the microscope made a wet cracking noise as it dented the skull.

  The crazed man on the floor thrashed and drew in a loud, gasping breath. His eyes turned skyward and he began to convulse violently. The sight of it soured Lee’s stomach almost instantly. He stared, frozen, for several of his rapid heartbeats before swinging again. The bludgeon struck his attacker in the temple. His eyeballs bulged and the top of the skull mashed into a strange, cone-like shape.

  Lee swallowed hard against a gorge in the back of his throat. He dropped the microscope and took a faltering step away, trying to catch his breath while his pulse ran away from him. The pain in his back, all but forgotten for those brief few seconds, suddenly spread over his body like he was soaked in kerosene and playing with matches.

  He staggered toward his cot but didn’t make it. He lost his feet and planted his hands and knees on the floor as he felt his stomach suddenly reject whatever was inside of it. He felt the splatter on his arms and then hung his head, breathing hard and spitting.

  Pounding footsteps behind him.

  Still keyed up, Lee turned toward the sound and lashed out with both fists.

  “Hey! Whoa!”

  Lee focused on the face, kneeling down next to him.

  A broad face with a wild man’s beard. A Colt 1911 in one hand, the other gripping Lee by the shoulder and shaking him gently. “Can you stand up?”

  Lee wiped vomit from his lips and searched his mind for this man’s name. “Uh… Bus?
”

  “Yeah.”

  Lee became suddenly aware that he still had no clothes on. He stood up shakily, with Bus supporting him. “Can I get some pants?”

  The big man pointed toward the foot of the cot where a pile of clothing was folded neatly beside Lee’s old Bates M6 boots. “It was all we could rustle up for now.”

  Lee nodded and stepped to the cot, straddling his puddle of vomit—rice and beans, he remembered. It was a pair of athletic shorts and a green T-shirt with a yellow smiley face on the chest. It was a far cry from his trusted MultiCam pants and combat shirt, but at least he had his boots back. The harsh reality of his last four days had only strengthened his opinion that these were the best boots ever made.

  Inside one of the boots, he noticed someone had stashed his GPS device. Before Doc and Jenny had begun to operate they had tried to take it from his hands, and Lee had refused to give it up. It appeared they had either succeeded in removing it when he’d fallen asleep or perhaps that Lee had dropped it and they had been kind enough to put it back for him. Either way, finding it snug in his boot immediately increased his trust for these strangers. He’d made clear one simple wish and they’d abided by it.

  At the entrance to the cargo container, a younger man appeared holding a big hunting shotgun. He was skinny, but he had a round childlike face and a patch of blond hair that stood off of his head like a halo. Despite his cherubic features, Lee guessed him to be about twenty years old. As he entered, he looked first at Lee, then to Bus, then to the mess of what once was a human being on the floor.

  “Holy shit…”

  Lee pulled on the athletic shorts and spoke to Bus. “How’d they get in?”

  “I guess they found a hole in the fence. Or made one somehow; that’s the only thing I can think of.” Turning to the young man, Bus said, “Josh, give Captain Harden your pistol.”