Aftermath (5 page)

“
Sue and Stan,” Harper replied.

“
You may want to speak to them,” Bus put in.

Lee leaned forward. “How often do they check the fence? Once an hour? Once a half-hour?”

Harper seemed to resent having to answer Lee’s questions, but he squinted his eyes and did some arithmetic in his head. “Takes about ten minutes to walk the perimeter, then they spend another ten or fifteen minutes on their sentry points...Yeah, probably between twenty and thirty minutes.”

“
Plenty of time to
snip-snip
and plant the talking box,” Lee said. “Then run to the dirt road and make a good escape. May have had a car waiting out at the road. If they moved fast enough, they would have avoided the sentries and the infected.”

Harper seemed to be coming around to Lee’s point of view. “And at that point, there’s no harm in running, even if it makes more noise. In fact, it may have just increased their odds of attracting infected to the area. The guy running doesn’t care because he’s about to get in a car and drive away.”

Bus took a breath to speak but someone started banging on the office door, causing the whole thing to rattle. Lee looked up and could see a dark figure standing on the walkway outside through the smokey glass. Bus let the breath out in a slow defeated huff and Lee got the feeling that Bus already knew what the person wanted, and it wasn’t good.

“
Come on in,” Bus said, just loud enough to be heard.

The door swung open and a boy’s face on a large man’s body stepped in. The big kid easily stood over six feet and probably weighed over 200 pounds. He wore dirty old overalls that made him look like a farm hand and wrung a tattered up baseball cap in his hands. His eyes were red and strained and his whole body shook.

“
Uh...Bus...” The kid looked at the floor. “We lost Kara. Doc tried, but...” The kid sobbed once then shamefacedly stared at the floor with his mouth closed tight.

A low, miserable noise came out of Harper as he leaned back and set his gaze on the dingy ceiling tiles. He bared his teeth as though experiencing some deep physical pain. Bus stood up suddenly and stepped over to Harper, putting a big hand on the other man’s knee and patting it slowly. To the kid, who appeared on the verge of losing himself again, Bus gave his shoulder a quick squeeze and thanked him for coming to tell them. The kid nodded and hurried out.

Harper stood out of his seat, shaking his bald head.

Steady as usual, Bus spoke calmly. “We should go down there.”

***

The medical trailer was a mess of gore.

The infected that Lee had brained with the microscope had not been removed but simply pushed to the side, like a pile of dirty laundry. A dark stain ran from the coagulated pool where the creature had first fallen to where it had been shoved aside. It lay up against the wall now, half on its side, half leaning on the wall, with one dead arm slung limply over its face. Lee could still see those blank eyes, as lifeless as a doll’s, staring up at the ceiling.

Doc had used Lee’s cot to conduct the operation, amputating Kara’s arm in a futile attempt to save her life. No anesthetic. No blood transfusions. Not even a real operating table. Just a dirty cot draped with thin plastic sheeting, now streaked and dappled with blood.

Outside, the sound of grief was like fingernails on a chalkboard to Lee. The weeping of families always made him feel strange and tense, and he thought of Afghani mothers pulling their limp children out of the ruins of a hut that a misguided JDAM had nearly disintegrated. Bus and Harper were with the people as they groaned and wept for another one lost. Not the first. Certainly not the last. But another one.

Only Doc remained in the tent. The younger man sat on a crate at the table where all his medical equipment lay, his scraggly brown hair hanging over his face. He stared straight ahead, perhaps at his bloody hands that lay like dead things on the table, or perhaps simply at the wall.

The sounds of grieving began to move away from the medical trailer. Lee took a few steps over to the table where Doc sat and put a hand on his shoulder. The skinny medical student cringed and shrugged it off.

“
Wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t.”

Lee didn’t immediately respond. He felt awkward, like a bull tiptoeing through the proverbial china shop. Finally he decided to forgo the platitudes and stick to the facts. “Doc, you’re barely even equipped to stitch someone up after a bad fall, let alone perform major surgery. It had to be done, and you were the one that had to do it. No one blames you that it didn’t turn out well. It’s just the way that one went.”

Doc’s head tilted back and a strange, humorless chuckle escaped him. He met Lee’s gaze and there was something intense and disturbing in it. Something that immediately made Lee uncomfortable. “You don’t get it, man. It’s my fault. And they
will
blame me. Maybe not now, but they will. They will eventually blame me.”

Lee opened his mouth to speak, but a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

He was preparing to turn and address the person, but then the hand was suddenly pressing down on him and spinning him around. Lee had just enough time to see the incoming haymaker and throw his left arm up to block. His arm absorbed most of the blow but whoever the hell it was had thrown their body into it and the fist still bounced off the side of his head, causing him to stumble.

What the...?

Subconsciously, Lee’s feet spread wide and his elbows tucked in. He didn’t register the face, only the dark, aggressive shape, narrow slits of eyes, and a grimacing face broadcasting the next blow, this one a stiff right uppercut aimed at his solar plexus. Even as he saw the incoming strike, Lee’s mind raced, trying to explain what was happening. It couldn’t be an infected—it displayed too much control. But why would anyone in the camp want to hurt him?

Was it one of Milo’s men?

Lee pivoted to avoid the blow, but it still caught him in the side and had enough steam behind it to send a bolt of pain into his ribs. Lee managed to trap the arm against his side and held it tight. His attacker tugged back, attempting to free himself. Lee got low and sent a swift knee into the side of his attacker’s thigh, crunching the common peroneal nerve and toppling his attacker almost immediately.

Lee went down with him, still holding his attacker’s arm. He cocked his free hand back and was ready to deliver a hammer blow to the larynx and end the fight instantly when he took a breath and looked down, only to find a kid staring back up at him. Maybe a little more than a kid. But definitely less than a man.

Lee stopped himself.

The moment seemed to stretch awkwardly as he stared, shocked, at the eyes of his attacker and saw nothing but pure loathing. The only thought circling in Lee’s head came tumbling out of his mouth: “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

There was shouting and Lee realized he was surrounded by a crowd that had poured in through the mouth of the medical trailer during the brief struggle. The shouting had a distinct sound to it that told him the crowd was not on his side.

A voice broke through the background noise: “Get off my son!”

Lee looked up in time to see a boot catch him in the shoulder and shove him backwards. Lee didn’t resist the force, but rolled with it. He felt the cold steel floor across his back and then white fire from his stitches. He winced as he recovered and got his knees back under him.

More shouts: “Did you see what he did?”

“
He’s one of them!”

“
He let those fuckers in!”

Are they talking about me?

Then Doc’s voice, stressed and high-pitched above the others: “Would everyone get the fuck out of my trailer! Get the fuck out! OUT!”

Lee fought off the blazing pain in his back and focused. In front of him he could see Doc’s back, his arms spread wide. They swooped rapidly back and forth as though the crowd that had gathered were a flock of birds that might be shooed away. Over the tops of Doc’s shoulders Lee caught the stares of several people and he didn’t like what he saw.

Anger.

Mistrust.

Hatred.

The man that Lee had earlier identified as Kara’s father stepped forward quickly and pulled the kid up off the ground.
Get off my son,
he’d yelled. Which meant that Lee’s attacker was Kara’s brother.

They were all family.

The crowd absorbed Kara’s father and brother as they backpedaled, all eyes still on Lee while Doc raved at them to get out. Watching those people stare at him, Lee thought that he had never felt so abundantly alienated, so obviously on the outside. Did they truly blame him for what had happened? Was it just because he was a stranger to them? Or was there something else that he was missing?

Bus made his way through the gathered people like a ship’s bow cutting through water. He did not look happy. Nearly a head taller than everyone else, Lee could see his eyes glaring from underneath furrowed brows.

“
What the hell is all this about?” He shouted.

Lee wasn’t sure whether the question was directed at him or the hostile crowd. The big man now stood between Lee and the crowd, with both arms stretched out as though he were holding the two parties away from each other by the sheer force of his will.

Kara’s father stepped out of the crowd, but didn’t try to get past Bus. He just pointed one finger at Lee and began shouting. “He’s with Milo! He’s gotta be! We heard about the breach in the fence! He did it! It had to be him!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he screamed, his cheeks and forehead becoming red with rage.

Lee could tell that Bus hadn’t expected that. He stood there, looking taken aback.

Doc sounded like he was on the edge of panic. “I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about. The captain has been in the medical trailer all night.”

Kara’s father—Steve, wasn’t it?—directed his ire at Doc. “How do you know he was here? You were in the Ryder building for almost an hour. He could have done it then.”

Bus tried stepping in. “Steve, this is ridiculous...”

“
Ridiculous?” Steve shouted. “Ridiculous that I don’t want to trust the guy that just got here? Is it so crazy what I’m saying? Have we ever had a breach like that in our fences before? Someone cut that shit—Miller said so himself. And here we are, harboring strangers. So who do you think did it, Bus? One of us?”

Bus floundered for a moment. He could say that it was Milo’s men that cut the fence, but Steve and his supporters obviously believed that Lee had allied himself with Milo. It was also clear that they were so incensed at this moment, nothing Bus could say would sway their opinion. He needed time to let the people calm down. And he needed Lee to speak with them. If Lee could speak with them, he could convince them, just like he’d convinced Bus.

Forced to ride the fence, Bus nodded curtly. “Okay. Everybody out. Let me handle this.”

“
How are you going to handle it?” Steve demanded.

“
Steve,” Bus said with a quiet warning in his voice. “You know me. You know you can trust me. Now go. Let me handle this.”

Steve seemed to consider the words as he stared at Lee with barely controlled anger. His fists, balled at his side, his lips a thin gash across his face, tears welling up in his eyes. But eventually he nodded to Bus, and he turned away from them.

The hostile grumble of the crowd died to a low murmur as everyone followed Steve out of the trailer. Lee stood up, feeling weakness in the muscles along his spine and then a brief chill washed over him that stung at the wounds on his back and then quieted. The two men faced each other a few feet apart, and Lee waited.

“
Are you okay?” Bus spoke quietly and for the first time Lee sensed the complicated depth of the relationship between Bus and the people of Camp Ryder. The strong man, yes. The figurehead, yes. Their brave spokesman, yes. But he was not in control in a situation like this. When fear was the dominate emotion, he issued orders and people listened, because fearful people need a leader. But when anger took over, the mob became more powerful, and the leader became just a mouthpiece.

Lee nodded slowly. “I’m assuming that was Kara’s family.”

“
Yes.” There was a long silence, in which Bus looked deep in mental calculations. After a moment, he looked to Doc. “How long until his stitches heal?”

Doc, flustered and sweating now, raked a finger through is natty hair. “Uh...Six weeks until I take them out.”

“
How long until he’s healed enough to go out?”

Doc looked at Lee, his jaw muscles bulging and a vein beginning to stand out under his left eye. “Probably a week before I could be sure the wounds won’t get infected. But they won’t be properly healed and they could tear open and renew the chance for infection.”

Bus let a slow, deep breath hiss through his teeth. “Captain, is there any proof you can give me that you aren’t with Milo’s men?”

Lee’s stomach dropped.

Was this for real? Were they all serious about this? An hour ago, he was their friend, and now they were accusing him of being a spy for Milo? It bordered on absurdity. But as absurd as he thought it was, he had no way to refute it. No way but to simply deny the charges. “No. I don’t have any proof. Just my word.”