Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  Jacinta joined him at the gate. “New recruits,” she bellowed, “we welcome you to our home. If you’d like to take a seat…”

  There were stones scattered about the entrance to Wolfjaw. Alistair had designed the space so it might serve as a barrier to battering rams. Not that they’d had much trouble in that department, but he’d watched the footage of what went down in Waco, Texas. There was no way he was going to allow ATF vehicles to storm his ramparts. But on days like today, when they were about to induct a whole new bunch of fresh faces, the stones became chairs.

  His people would bring out folding tables, heaping platters of food, jugs of freshly made lemonade and show them what was possible when you put your mind to it.

  Then they’d round them up and begin the games.

  Josephine passed through the gates with him, studiously ignoring the food that went the other way. She had to have been hungry, but her thirst for knowledge had overridden her belly. She would not be disappointed. Josephine Morgan would see what one man on a laser-focused mission was capable of and be awed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jim’s garage wasn’t in complete darkness. There was a tiny window over the back door and another near the key rack, but Aggie was glad she had her flashlights.

  She had a vivid memory and an even more vivid imagination. She didn’t need to see bone and goo to know that something terrible had happened to the body under the blanket closest to her. That was the cadaver of the nurse who’d come to help them. Cass was her name. She’d had a gash in her hand when Aggie had first seen her at the hospital.

  She shuddered. Dad had a gash in the back of his hand.

  She had lacerations up her legs and on her fingers.

  Paul had stitches in his gut.

  Mimi had been nicked in the shoulder and had crisscross stitches put in by Jim.

  Jim and Bryony had been inside one of those health camps. Actually, that thought helped calm her somewhat. They’d been in with the sick and dying—Jim said they’d seen the worst of the worst—but they’d made it out and seemed healthy enough. Bryony was out front playing with a dog.

  You could be close to this thing and not catch it. Not everyone caught everything. She’d been exposed to measles when she was a kid and had never gotten them. Neither had Midge. But Paul and Petra had been covered in itchy scabs for days and days.

  She scanned the pile of rolled carpets with her flashlight, looking for the best place to plant her feet. There was no way to get to the gas cannister without stepping over the bodies. Her best bet was going to be go sideways, so her feet were parallel to the cadavers.

  She went to the “feet” end of Cass’ carpet. Without folding back the cover she couldn’t know for certain that the disease hadn’t eaten her from head to toe, but it looked like there was a near-human shape under there, so she could at least hope for a less squidgy, infected area. She trained the light beam in the spot she wanted her foot to go and pushed the instep of her right boot close to the edge of the carpet. She was going to lean on that foot and lift the other one over Cass and position it between her and whoever was in the next carpet. It was either Arthur’s wife, who had died in a barrage of gunfire or his son, who she had killed when he was stalking her.

  It was a grim business, staying alive.

  The first step made her heart hammer and her brain swim, but she had successfully straddled Cass’ remains. Now to bring her right foot to join her left foot and do it again.

  She used her flashlight to focus her attention and point her foot in the right direction.

  This was when she was going to be most vulnerable. Rather than having her weight evenly distributed across both feet she was going to be heel to toe, both feet between two bodies. Best not to think about it too much.

  Her left foot, it turned out, had been lucky and found an area where there were no human remains. Her right foot wasn’t so lucky. When it landed she felt the bump beneath her boot and a terrible easing of that bump which meant whatever was under there had disintegrated on contact.

  Hell. She couldn’t do this slowly. If it was alive—this thing, this infection, this whatever—it could eat its way through the carpets and get on her shoes and then she’d be trampling it all over creation. She looked down, made a calculated guess and took another step. Ugh. Crunch.

  Again. Do it again.

  Step. Crunch. She was walking over decomposing bodies. She had to move. She dropped her flashlight, lunged at the counter where Jim’s gas canisters were housed, grabbed one with each hand and threw them as hard as she could down the garage.

  One clanged on the roof of Jim’s Mustang Cobra and the other one rolled to a stop beside one of his so-called jalopies.

  Aggie took two giant steps, skidded off the edge of Cass’ carpet and landed facedown beside a blue car she couldn’t name and didn’t care about and wanted to get far, far, far away from. The tires had dissolved into the cement floor. That could only mean one thing. She had this gloop-disease on her.

  Stay calm, Aggie. Slow and steady wins the race. You need a strong mind, now more than ever.

  She got to her feet and inspected herself.

  Her left glove was fizzing. Her instinct was to jam her hand under her armpit and rip the glove off, but that would transfer the acid to her body. She bent down, put the tip of the glove under the tip of her toe, pressed down hard and pulled.

  The glove came off.

  She inspected her hand. It looked like it had looked when she’d washed it in orange juice; kind of cut up, but not too bad.

  Ew, she was in the garage with uncovered skin. She checked the bench to her right. There were going to be work gloves around someplace. She was cycling too fast, she knew that. Stay calm. Think “not measles” and “not me” and “not this time”.

  Jim had some driving gloves at the end of the counter. Leather. They were going to have to do, though she had no idea whether they’d offer her any protection. She needed gas for her family and she was going to get it. She was Agatha Everlee. A little flesh-eating-whatever wasn’t going to stop her. Scare the pants off her, maybe, but not actually stop her from doing what needed to be done.

  She pulled the gloves on, hunted around for a piece of hose, and made her way to her first victim. That was the way to go at this: with comedy. Better laugh than cry, isn’t that what Dad would say? Yea, no. Let’s not go there. We don’t know what he’d say right now.

  She opened the door to the Barracuda. Jim had been so proud of this car. He’d built most of it himself. He’d “never have been able to rustle up forty thousand smackers for this little beauty” he’d said, so he’d found the bones of a burned out car and taken it from there.

  Aggie searched for the gas tank release. “Man, I am so dumb,” she muttered. There was no release in these old cars. You just twisted the cap off. She took a moment to compose herself, fumbling in her pocket for her second flashlight. She couldn’t find it. It had to have come out of her pocket when she fell.

  Oh, well. Nothing to be done about that.

  She climbed out and inched her way to the side of the car.

  All the online reading she’d ever done said it was dumb to use a piece of hose and suck gas up and out of the tank, but she didn’t have a choice. She hadn’t found a gas pump like she thought she would so she was going to have to go at this old style. She unscrewed the top of the cannister, put the end of the hose in the gas tank and sucked.

  OMG. Gasoline tasted so disgusting.

  She rushed the hose to the cannister and let the gas flow. There was a lot less in the tank than she’d hoped. She’d barely filled a third of the cannister. She didn’t need to bother with keys and latches, she could just move from car to car and see which had gas caps that screwed off. By touch. In the dark. Using only her memory of the layout of the place and the thin line of light that crept in under the doors.

  Jim’s ancient Cadillac was huge. She had some vague memory of him saying it was from the 1930s. It was a beautifu
l machine. Useless for her purposes, except for whatever it had in its tank, but that didn’t stop her from admiring the sweet, smooth contours of its luscious body.

  She’d only filled one gas cannister, but she’d been in the garage for a million years. She needed to get out there, put what she had in the Humvee, and hope for the best.

  As she turned to close the garage door she saw footprints in the cement.

  Her footprints.

  Had she tracked blood through the place?

  Ugh, no. That was the bottom of her boots melting. How had she not felt that?

  She stepped back inside the garage and, as calmly as she could, took the boots off without touching them and hotfooted it out into the sunlight.

  She needed to get rid of the clothes she was wearing. Burn them. But she needed something to change into. She didn’t want to go back into the house wearing something that might have even one atom of this disease clinging to a thread. There was no choice. She was going to have to strip down to her t-shirt and underwear, leave the uniform in the garage, and make her way back to the house like this was the most normal thing in the world.

  Mimi raised her eyes when she saw Aggie, but Aggie saluted and smiled. “Slipped in the paddock. Was up to my eyeballs in manure. Figured you wouldn’t mind if I went for a change of clothes.”

  She waltzed past her grandmother, darted up the stairs, and grabbed a pair of pants and a shirt from the box in the attic.

  As she pulled her pants up she noticed the longest scratch on her leg. Could be her imagination, but it certainly looked like it was inflamed. There was nothing she could do about it. She’d check it again in half an hour.

  When she made it to the bottom of the stairs, Mimi was waiting for her. “He’s awake. Paul’s awake.”

  OMG, please don’t let him be in pain. Betsy was out with Mom on the trail dealing with the Fran situation. All she could do was give him drugs and she had no idea if a spleenless person was allowed drugs. There was no internet, no way to look it up. When it was TEOTWAWKI for reals, you had to know things or know someone who knew things. Perhaps Mimi knew? She’d been in the hospital for months on end. Even when she was an outpatient, she’d spent hours talking to other sick people. She knew all kinds of random stuff. Like, you’d die of sleep deprivation before you’d die of starvation. Weird how she’d pulled that one from the archives right as Paul woke up (and they were all on edge because they were so sleep deprived).

  Quit stalling, Agatha Everlee. If you need help, you can ask your grandmother. If she doesn’t know the answer, you can ask…

  You can ask…

  Shoot, who would she ask if Mimi didn’t know what to do with Paul?

  “Hey, sis.” Paul was groggy, but more alert than Bill had been when she found him. “How’s things? Did I miss much?”

  Had Paul missed much? Only everything. “Hey! Paulito! How you doing? Mom and Dad are home,” she said.

  “Mom’s here?” He tried to sit up, but the restraints kept him in place. “Where?”

  “She had to go and see to…a thing.” It wasn’t a lie, but he didn’t need to hear that Fran had killed herself. He needed good news right now.

  Paul frowned. “She’d never leave me here. Mom would stay with me…” He closed his eyes. “You’re just telling me she’s okay to keep me happy. I know you, Aggie. You’re telling me what you think I want to hear.”

  Which just went to show that he didn’t know her at all. Aggie prided herself on telling the truth whenever possible. She didn’t want to argue. She didn’t have the energy. There was something dispiriting about her brother not getting her at such an elemental level.

  “We’re going to move you, Paul. I want you to keep very still. You’ve had an operation and I don’t want you to bust open your stitches.”

  “I have stitches?” He hadn’t opened his eyes. He was drifting off again. “Coooooool…”

  Aggie waited until his breathing had settled into a nice, sleepy rhythm. “Mimi? Will you help me carry him out to the Humvee?”

  Mimi nodded.

  “On my count.” Her grandmother was at Paul’s head, she at his feet. He looked so peaceful. Too peaceful. There was a nakedness about his expression; like, somehow he knew he’d been stripped of his protection against the world. She was projecting and she knew it. Paul no more knew what a spleen did than she had a few hours ago. If she told him he didn’t have a spleen he’d probably have asked if you could live with one or needed both, like lungs or kidneys or eyes or ears or any number of human bits that came in pairs.

  “One…two…three.” She picked up her end, but Mimi was a step behind her.

  He was tippy and off-balance, but miraculously didn’t slide off his sled.

  “Sorry. I thought you’d say ‘go’.” Mimi raised Paul so her end of the sled was even with Aggie’s end.

  Aggie backed up towards the door. She needed to move slowly and narrate each move so they didn’t get out of sync again. That was a good thing. It stopped her from thinking about having to go to the back porch to get her father or how long they had to wait for her mother or any of the other million little things that suddenly felt much larger than they ought to feel.

  “Do you ride, Mimi?”

  “Ride? Like a horse?” Mimi was a little out of air, but not too bad. “I used to. A long time ago. Why do you ask?”

  “I was thinking you and Bryony could take Indigo and ride to the mines.”

  “We’re not going in the truck with Paul?”

  Aggie shook her head. It wasn’t a truck, but there was no point correcting Mimi.

  “Oh, you’re hoping to catch up with Jim and Sean so you can take Midge off their hands!” Mimi beamed. “That’s a great idea. I’ve been so worried about that child. You want space in the back so Midge can go there alongside Paul. Excellent! Those boys are going to be so tired. Sean might be okay, but Jim.” She shook her head and waggled her finger at Aggie as if she’d done something wrong. “He had surgery recently, you know.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “No one’s supposed to know, but Petra told me. He had hip surgery. He’s in a lot of pain…”

  Aggie stopped listening once Mimi went on one of her rambles. That hadn’t been the plan, but her grandmother was right; Jim and Sean would be exhausted. But that still left Mom and Betsy with no transport. She needed to get some walkie-talkies and get everyone connected. Petra could give one to Hedwig so they could liaise and get another all-terrain vehicle back here. Well, not exactly all-terrain, but better than a sports car.

  “Hold up a second. Can we put him down while I catch my breath?” Mimi didn’t wait, she was already bending down with her end of the sled, taking Paul with her, so Aggie had no choice. They had to put Paul on the ground. “Maybe you should keep him here? Paul, I mean. Maybe we shouldn’t move him just yet?”

  Aggie swore in her head, using every level of profanity she knew, from the most benign to the worst she could imagine. Why was everyone so damn contrary? There had been plenty of time to discuss options before now. Why did Mimi wait until the last minute to say her piece? She was so selfish. So thoughtless. Mimi needed to get her act together and act like an adult for once. Aggie was tired of her last-minute complaints and griping. Wasn’t she watching the weather? Hadn’t she noticed the wind pick up? Was she ignoring what that meant? Or was she in denial?

  “Paul’s not well enough to move.” Mimi was serious. She was going to dig her heels in when they were almost out the door. “Betsy said as much. He needs medical attention before we ship him out. He needs antibiotics, to start with. You can’t…”

  Aggie’s temper flared and snapped. She was done being told what to do. She was taking charge and they were going to like it or leave it, but she wasn’t waiting around for the wind to hit maximum velocity and for everyone to die. “We need to move. I’ve been saying this for days. You think no one listens to you, Mimi? Try being fifteen and the voice of reason. There’s a nuclear disaster happening, practically on our d
oorstep, but will anyone get their shit together and move? Nooooooo. It’s all ‘I’m freaking out about this’ or ‘I have to go do that’ or ‘Now that you’ve thought it all through Aggie and made all the arrangements and found a safe place for us to go to, now I want to throw a wrench in the works and rearrange everything you’ve worked so hard to put in place’.” Aggie, to her surprise, burst into tears.

  Mimi didn’t move, which was just as well. Aggie didn’t want anyone’s pity hug or platitudes. She wiped her face on her sleeve and bent down to grab the handles of Paul’s sled.

  Her brother was smiling up at her. “Good to see you let rip, Agg. You should do it more often.”

  Suddenly, like she’d been beamed in for the main event, Petra was there at Paul’s side. She’d seen the whole thing. Ditto Dad. Only Bryony and Mouse hadn’t seen her have a meltdown which was good, because they were the ones that mattered the most. Not.

  How humiliating. She’d lost it in front of everyone.

  “She’s right. Aggie’s always right,” said Petra. “We need to go.”

  Her sister stepped up. She filled the gas tank with the gas Aggie had syphoned from the cars in the garage; talked Mimi through putting Paul in the Humvee; got her father situated up front; then had a long, somewhat frustrating, conversation with Mimi about where she and Bryony were supposed to go.

  Aggie watched in astonishment as her sister put Mouse on Bill’s lap, put her hands out cowboy style—fingers interlaced—to make a stirrup and give Mimi a leg up, showed Bryony how to hold on to the pommel once she was seated and, finally, climb into the front of the Humvee and adjust the mirrors so she was set to drive them all to safety.

  Bryony cried so hard about being on a horse and being scared and not wanting to sit up so high they had to redo everything, stashing Mimi and Bryony in the back of the Humvee—which was too tight and not great and mind your feet, don’t step on Paul—but what else was there to be done? It was what it was. They were all going in the Humvee.