"I need a doctor!" he tried to shout to anyone that would listen, but all that came out was a wheezing sound, like a broken harmonica.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked to his left. Two of the volunteer guards were at the front door of the building. One had the door cracked open, the muzzle of his rifle sticking out. He fired intermittently, but Jerry could not see was he was shooting at. The bra.s.s casings pinged off the metal doors and rolled to a stop at Jerry"s feet. The second guard just stood behind his friend, looking scared.
Where was Greg? He spun in a circle, looking for the rest of the people that had volunteered to guard Camp Ryder. They weren"t really Jerry"s people, they were Greg"s people. Greg was the one that knew them, like the union representative knows all his blue collar buddies. They did what Greg told them, and Greg did what Jerry told him, so Jerry considered them his people by proxy.
But the Camp Ryder building was empty. He couldn"t see any of those people. He couldn"t find anyone to help him. He turned back to the two guards at the door, realizing that there was a gunfight going on out there, that he would not be able to make it to the medical trailer to get help. He tried to call out to the two guards at the door, but they didn"t seem to hear him.
Finally, the one that wasn"t shooting looked over at Jerry and stared at him. There was no recognition in his features. Just the same old black fear. The look of knowing that things aren"t going to end well. He seemed not only unimpressed by the fact that Jerry was calling to him, speaking to him directly rather than through Greg, but he also seemed unimpressed by the object embedded in his leader"s neck.
The guard threw a thumb over his shoulder and shouted over the thundering sound of the rifle in the narrow hall. "They"re out there! We"re f.u.c.king trapped in here! We"re f.u.c.king trapped!"
Jerry turned his back to the guards, faced the interior of the building. It stretched out, all the abandoned tables and chairs. All the little bits and pieces of shanties left over from Jerry"s order to move them out. Under the stairs, the room where Marie had set up her cooking station, now being used to hold Angela"s little brat and the brown kid. Kyle stood outside of the door, looking like he didn"t know what to do with himself.
He gave no reaction either to seeing Jerry.
No one seemed to know him, or care about his injury.
This had to be a nightmare.
He had to find a place to hide. He needed a place to lock himself in, where he could take a moment and think, and maybe figure out what to do with the thing in his neck. He started to feel woozy. Was he gonna pa.s.s out? Was he losing too much blood?
He pulled his hand away from it and looked at it. It was coated in a slick layer of blood. He tried to speak again as he saw this, and seemed to get a little better control of his voice. "I don"t wanna bleed to death," he said, his voice raw, a murmur that sounded like a deaf person talking, which had always given him the creeps when he"d heard it. Even now. But he kept talking anyway.
"Somebody help me!" he mumble-screamed, ambling along the wall in his blank-minded state, looking for a place to hide. "Somebody f.u.c.king help me!"
But no one heard him, much less understood him.
Eventually he fell to his knees, less out of his body giving way, and more from sheer self-pity. He found himself just in front of an open door, dark on the inside. Another one of the small rooms that used to be offices and now held supplies of some sort or another.
He wheezed and felt something trickling up his throat. Spat and saw blood. He crawled into the room, still calling for help in unintelligible murmurs, and he hid in the darkness, thinking, Why G.o.d? Why do these bad things always happen to me?
Angela came out of the office like she"d been thrown out. She stumbled, barely caught herself from pitching headlong down the stairs. The interior of the Camp Ryder building was a racket of urgent noises. Two men at the bottom of the stairs, firing their rifles in that tiny s.p.a.ce so that even their small arms sounded like the booming of cannon. They yelled at each other, and someone else was yelling but the noise of it was hoa.r.s.e and nasally and no words could be clearly distinguished.
All of that was just distraction.
Below her, right below her, she could hear Abby crying.
It is the singular ability of a mother to be able to pull the sound of their children"s voices out of chaos, to hear them cry in between the screaming of wounded and the thunder of guns. She didn"t think about it, didn"t pride herself in it, she just moved forward, like Abby"s cries were tethered to her by a winch, pulling her in.
She clambered down the stairs, holding the shotgun between her hands. She still couldn"t get her hands to cooperate and she doubted that she could even pull the trigger. But if she needed to, she would find a way. She would figure it out, if it came down to it.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs, fearing that one of the two guards at the doors would notice her and take some sort of action. But the one man was entirely focused on firing shots out of the door, and the other was barely holding his rifle anymore, his face stricken. Angela looked at them for what felt like minutes, but was only a few seconds, wondering if she should risk simply walking out in front of them. Maybe she should hide the shotgun. Maybe...
The man with the sad face looked up at her and her heart felt like it was going to crumble. But he didn"t raise his rifle. He just shook his head and murmured something about being trapped.
Angela took the last step down, turned her back to him and walked stiffly around the stairs. When she turned the corner she could see Kyle standing there, rifle ported across his chest, pacing rapidly in front of the door behind which Abby and Sam were being held. She stood there, still as stone for a moment, not quite sure what to do. Kyle looked distressed himself, rubbing his head, his hand not on the grip of his rifle.
Angela raised the shotgun, somehow fumbled her finger into the trigger guard. She held the sawed-off piece out in front of her like a pistol, her elbows locked out, the entire structure of her body shaking violently. She marched forward, like the shotgun was a divining rod and she was forced to follow it towards Kyle.
"Hey!" she yelled, her voice harsh and cracked.
Kyle spun around and froze. He didn"t raise his hands in surrender, but he didn"t brandish his rifle either. It just hung there across his chest, muzzle pointed at the floor. Kyle"s eyebrows were squeezed up, jaw slack.
Angela shook the shotgun at him fiercely. "You have my f.u.c.king daughter?"
Nothing. Then a single nod.
"And you didn"t hurt her?" tears breaking the hard edge of her voice.
Kyle winced as though the insinuation were painful to him. "No."
Angela waved the shotgun off to the left. "Go!" she shouted at him. "Get the f.u.c.k out of here! If I see you again I"m gonna f.u.c.king kill you!"
It was strange, his reaction. He turned, faced deeper into the Camp Ryder building. Confusion pa.s.sing over his face, like he no longer recognized it, didn"t really know where he was. He took a step. Stopped. Didn"t look at Angela again, but asked a question of her anyway: "Did you kill Jerry up there?"
Angela thought about it. Her arms ached from holding the shotgun up. "I don"t know."
And that was it. Kyle took a few steps, then broke into a jog, making a wide arc around her and heading back towards the entrance of the building where the rifles were still firing. Angela thought of shooting him anyway, because what if he went over there and started firing and shot one of Angela"s friends? What if he shot Marie?
What if he shot Lee?
"Mommy?" banging on the door. "Mommy!"
She forgot all about it. She ran to the door and ripped it open. Inside, Abby and Sam were seated on the floor, up against the wall closest to the door. Both of them bound behind their backs. And both of them immediately burst into tears of panicked relief when they saw Angela standing there in the door. She dropped the shotgun down on the floor next to them and grabbed them, because she had to touch them, put her arms on them, make sure they were whole and not hurt. Then she pulled them into an embrace, telling them they were okay now, they just had to sit tight for a little bit until all the shooting stopped. Then she reached behind their backs and began to work the duct tape from their wrists.
"What about Jerry?" Sam cried out as she worked. "What if he gets us again?"
Angela shook her head. "Lee"s out there, Sam. And he"s gonna come for us. He"s gonna come for us."
Lee"s entry team stalled at the front of the Camp Ryder building. The front doors were set back into an alcove, so that you had to run up stairs to get to them, and during that time you were completely exposed, backlighted, and hanging out in the fatal funnel. Possibly one of the worst doors Lee had ever encountered.
To make it worse, they had lost momentum on their push for the door because of a single guard, just inside the door, taking shots every time they peeked around the corner. It didn"t take long to develop a strategy to overcome this, but by then the momentum was gone. Ten, long, slow seconds eked by as Lee stood there at the corner, blinking bits of dust and debris from his eyes as the man behind the door sent round after round exploding through the corner of the cement blocks, just inches from Lee.
A gunfight is not a sterile environment. No decision is pondered all by itself. It is constantly moving, constantly developing, constantly changing. And in those long seconds, there were plenty of other things vying for his attention and his focus.
Jacob at the back of the stack, hard on that corner behind them. The shrieking, barking, chuffing noise of an infected as it rocketed around the corner and Jacob firing round after round, chipping chunks of flesh off and finally hitting it in the chest and neck and face and bringing it down just a few feet from where Jacob stood.
Out in the Shantytown, people cowered, the men and women hovering over their children like hens over their chicks, their arms encircling them as though it would protect them from a bullet, or an infected. There were still a few armed men running around from position of cover to position of cover, trying desperately to avoid getting caught by one of Lee"s snipers in the woods, but they had them caught in a crossfire and they were getting picked off one by one.
Ten seconds.
Lee looked to his left, having to keep his right eye closed involuntarily because he could not get the grit out of it. His stack was behind him, nearly flattened up against the wall, all bunched together and needing desperately to move from that spot, needing to get inside, away from the infected that kept pushing at them.
Decision time.
Lee grabbed Devon"s shoulder, for no other reason than he was the closest. He shouted, "You go low around the corner! I"ll go high!" He made a wide circling motion with his hand. "I"m gonna swing around you and go for the door. Don"t stop shooting until I"m in front of you."
Devon nodded. "Okay. I got it."
Lee shook his shoulder. "And hey..."
"What?"
"Don"t f.u.c.king shoot me."
"Okay."
Lee and Devon switched places quickly so that Devon was closest to the corner. Lee pushed him down to his knees and prepared to move. Behind them, another infected dodged around the corner, received a volley from Jacob that clipped its arm, and then jumped back into cover.
He took one breath, because that was all he could afford. Then he slapped Devon hard on the back and shouted, "Move!"
Devon popped out, began firing.
Lee jumped around him, took the center of the stairs and charged forward, firing as he went. Little dots appeared all over the steel door as the bullets punched through. Lee could see the muzzle of the gunman"s rifle sticking out of the door, spewing out smoke in jarring concussions that tingled in Lee"s sinuses, but he just kept pushing forward because he knew that the motherf.u.c.ker behind the door couldn"t see him. As all the holes appeared in the door, perforating it in every place that the gunman could possibly be, Lee could hear the man screaming, a high-pitched wail of fear and pain.
Lee slammed into the door with everything he had, trapping the rifle between the door and the jam. He reached down and grabbed the hot barrel, burning his skin, but he didn"t feel it. He pulled the door just slightly and ripped the rifle out of the gunman"s grip, sending it clattering down in the entryway.
He opened the door, saw the man on his knees, clutching his gut with blood-soaked hands, still screaming, and he kicked the man in the face. The teeth clacked noisily and the consciousness immediately left the man"s eyes. Lee didn"t think he would regain it before the wounds in his gut bled him out.
Another man was off to the side, his rifle laying at his feet and he raised his hands and waved them, a dark splotch spreading in the seat of his pants. "Don"t shoot me! Don"t shoot me!"
Lee leaned on the door until it was as open as far as it would go and he could see farther into Camp Ryder. He pointed his rifle at the man begging for his life. It was strange for just a split second, because he knew the man. Wes was his name, Lee thought. He"d helped Lee build the rain catches that sat on the side of the Camp Ryder building. A little talkative, but otherwise a nice guy.
Lee put a foot into the man"s shoulder, pushing him to the floor. "Get on the f.u.c.kin" ground!"
The man flattened himself, his hands covering his head.
Lee held the door, almost looked behind him to see if the others were moving up, but they didn"t require an invitation. Devon came staggering up the stairs, nearly tripping over the unconscious man in the doorway and the rest of them followed.
And then suddenly the doorway to the building was jammed with bodies. Lee turned and looked and could see a column of perhaps fifteen or twenty people, all bunching into the alcove of the Camp Ryder building, mixing in with his entry team and trying to get the h.e.l.l away from Shantytown. At first, Lee thought that it was because of the gunfight going on. But then he saw the other shapes that slipped in and out amongst the shanties.
The hunters were in Shantytown, and they moved like foxes in a henhouse. Like a feeding frenzy. They reached out and grabbed at anyone who was within reach, their teeth gnashing wildly as their prey ran about in a sheer panic. Two of them seized upon a woman as she burst through the door of her shanty, screaming, and they dragged her to the ground where Lee could no longer see her, though he could see the creatures" arms ripping at her, could see the blood spurting up onto the outer wall of the shanty, and then one of the hunters took hold of the woman"s leg and began dragging her towards the fence.
Lee kept his body pushed up against the door, people shoving past him, climbing over each other in a sheer panic. Most of them were unarmed, but Lee didn"t have time to check them-if he would have tried to stop them, he would have been trampled. Just inside the building, Lee could hear his team shouting commands at someone, and the column of people slowed to a standstill, unable to push into the building.
Jacob came around the corner into the alcove and stopped in the middle of the stairs, just before the jam of people that kept Lee pinned to the door, all of them still trying to squirm their way in. Jacob opened his mouth as though to shout, and Lee knew what he was going to say-that the infected were coming. But Jacob saw the people, saw their panic, and knew it would only make it worse. So he shut his mouth, and then turned his back to Lee and faced out.
One of the infected came around the corner, on all fours, its arms and legs scrabbling for purchase on the gravel. It propelled itself towards Jacob and he let out a small scream of surprise at the thing"s sudden appearance and danced backwards a bit, firing several times and stopping it dead in its tracks.
Someone in the back of the crowd of people pushing through the door heard the gunshots and turned in time to see the infected crumple to the ground. They screamed, "infected!" and the already-palpable fear of the group exploded into full-blown hysteria.
Lee turned his head and bellowed into the Camp Ryder building, "Get these people inside! Get them inside the f.u.c.king building, NOW!"
Lee took one breath, two breaths, and whatever was stopping the people from getting inside was abruptly removed and they began to pile in again. He turned to Jacob and waved. "Jacob! Get in here!" But even as he said it, he knew, he just knew that the infected would pile into the opening of that alcove before all of these people could get into the building and close the doors behind them.
And Jacob knew the same d.a.m.n thing.
Two more infected rounded that corner, already fixated on Jacob.
Lee raised his rifle, began firing around and over the civilians that crowded him. He aimed to hit whatever Jacob did not shoot at, trying to give him time. Jacob stood in the middle of the stairs, shooting to his left, then shooting to his right. He fired three rounds into one infected, toppling it backwards, then pivoted and fired four more rounds into another as it reached for him, stopping the thing dead in its tracks as the last round plastered through its cranium. An infected that he"d already shot continued to crawl towards him and he planted his foot on the brow of the thing, shoving it back and destroying it with two point-blank shots. Jacob was lost in the sudden orgy of violence and seemed for a moment to forget that he was in danger.
"Jacob!" Lee yelled. "Get the f.u.c.k in the building!"
Two more came at Jacob, came around the corner quick, and Lee could not fire on them because he would have had to fire through Jacob. Jacob yelped, lurched backward away from them, tried to backpedal, but tripped. As he went down, Lee sighted in on one and fired, sending three rounds through its chest but not stopping it before it landed on top of Jacob and the man began to scream.
Lee pushed forward, breaking away from the crowd, just as the second infected landed atop Jacob and for a moment, Lee could not even see the scientist. He could only see the infected, how they were burying their faces into their victim and clamping down with their jaws, biting into his belly and ripping around until Jacob"s guts began to fold out onto the ground. Jacobs screams became harsh and breathless and he tried weakly to push the creatures away from him with his rifle.
No matter how close they were to Jacob, Lee had to take the shot. He fired into the tangle of arms and legs and blood and the first infected jolted backwards, its jaw ripped from its face and its left eyeball punched out by a well-placed round. But the second creature grabbed a hold of Jacob"s legs and began dragging him backwards. Trying to take him away.
Just like the lady in Shantytown.
Jacob tried to fight it, but he couldn"t maneuver the rifle in his grip anymore and either shock or the purity of his fear was causing his entire body to seize up. The rifle tumbled out of his grip as the thing pulled him down the stairs. The infected twisted and screeched at Lee, but Lee spread his feet, got a good sight picture, pulled the trigger, and put a bullet straight into its mouth, pulverizing its brain stem and killing it instantly.
It collapsed onto Jacob. Lee ran forward, feeling the blood pounding through the veins in his temples, warping his vision. He quick-footed down the steps, swinging his rifle back and forth, certain that another infected was going to come around the corner. But they were out in Shantytown now. They"d gone after the easier prey, and they were already beginning to pull back. Two of them clung to the tops of the fence with one hand, and with their other hands clutched a body by the leg. Lee stared at the dead faces in horror, thinking that he recognized them. He knew those people, even if it was only in pa.s.sing. Then the hunters slipped over the top of the fence, pulling the limp corpses over with them where they seemed to disappear.
Lee"s first instinct was to shoot at them. He thought perhaps those people they were carrying were still alive, and maybe just maybe he could save them. But he could see how limply they swung against the fence and were pulled to the other side. It was not the looseness of a person knocked unconscious. It was complete lifelessness. So Lee just stared at them as they went, stunned and sickened.
Two other hunters vaulted the fence, both of them carrying parts of a body in their mouths-one with part of a leg, and the other an arm. The last one of them looked back and for a brief, strange moment, Lee was certain that it was looking directly at him. Just a strange, freakish and mutated version of what had once been a person, crouching there atop a fence with a b.l.o.o.d.y limb hanging from its mouth. Then the thing simply dropped over the other side and was gone.
They had made their kills. They had taken what they came for.
Their hunt had been successful.
Lee remembered what he had descended the steps for. He looked down at his feet, saw the ruined man lying on the steps in front of him. He came down to his knees at Jacob"s side. The stomach had not only been torn open, but there was obvious damage to his organs as well. Even if Lee could have piled all of those guts back into Jacob"s body, they would have leaked their contents into his blood and Jacob would have gone into septic shock.
Jacob"s eye fluttered, his mouth lolling open. His body pumping all kinds of doping chemicals into his blood. Lee stared down at him, wanting to say something to keep him awake, keep him talking, keep him fighting. But for what? What good would it do? Besides the irreparable condition of his insides, Jacob had been bitten. All that infected saliva had gotten inside of him. The bacteria coursed through his veins, replicating, infesting, cl.u.s.tering at his frontal lobe.
"f.u.c.k," Lee muttered and grabbed Jacob"s hands.
They squeezed back. Jacob opened his eyes as though struck with a sudden urgency. "Notebook in my backpack," he mumbled, blood working into the corners of his mouth.
Lee nodded. "Okay, Buddy. Notebook in your backpack."
Jacob"s head rose off the ground, trembled violently. "There are some things...just read it."
"Okay. I"ll read it."
Jacob looked Lee in the eyes. "It"s not good, Lee. It"s not good."
The sounds of the world around him seemed suddenly to envelope him, as though his brain could no longer block them out. There were people shouting inside the building behind him. A few people yelling out in Shantytown. A kid crying. A woman screaming, though Lee couldn"t tell if it was pain or grief. There were gunshots still coming from the woods, from the snipers shooting at gunmen inside Camp Ryder, or perhaps shooting at the hunters as they attempted to escape with their meals.
Jacob"s eyes crossed, looked skyward.
"Jacob!" Lee shook him. "What do you mean it"s not good?"