Mad World (Book 3): Desperation (11 page)

Fifteen

“Dad …”

“I see it,” Dad said, his voice grim. The road was gently curving to the right, and there in a grassy area, surrounded on three sides with trees, a huge crowd had gathered, with more people running out of the trees. They were dragging… what? I pressed my face to the glass, trying to make out what I was seeing. “What??!”

“Good god,” I heard Jonathan in the back say, in a low voice. He could see more clearly out the rear window from his vantage point.

“I’ll be damned…” Dad pulled over to the side of the road bordering on the action. A crowd of people stood in the way; we couldn’t see through them clearly. It looked like the mob was dragging wood into the crowd. I craned my neck to look, but couldn’t see clearly. We all grabbed our guns, Jonathan grabbed his med kit, and we opened the doors. Suddenly, the air was pierced by several screams.

“AAIIEEEE!!!!!!”

“AHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

“Non! NON!!! NOOOOON!!!!!!”     (No!! NO!!!! NOOOOO!!!!!!)

“A L'AIDE!!!!!!!!!”     (Help!!!!!!!!)

The crowd numbered around 30 or so people. They looked to be locals mostly, although a few were in suits - they’d probably had been on their way into the city and stopped to watch or join in, it was hard to tell. Some were pulling large branches of fallen wood from the wooded areas over to a series of bonfires. They had what looked like six people, at least one looked to be a child, tied up to charred posts buried in the ground. The bonfires we’d seen through the trees were at the base of each post. As we piled out of the vehicle, we could see that two of the people were already on fire and screaming.

DeAndre, shotgun in hand, began sprinting across the grass, and Dad was right behind him. We all began running in a tight group toward the mob. I could see several people coming out of the thick trees with branches in their arms, which they piled up against the posts the other people were tied up to. The child who was tied up started to cry.

“Wait just a damn minute!” Dad yelled as we all ran up to the edge of the crowd.

Two men with tire irons came out of the mob to meet us. They looked like they were going to try and stop us. The joke was on them. As we approached them, we all lowered our shotguns and pointed them at the mob. Mine in particular was pointed at one of the men with tire irons. He was the bigger of the two, and he barely came up to my shoulder.
Québécois
were not generally big people.
I would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious. This was a kid they were going to kill, and five other innocent people, as well. I put on my best
‘Make my day’
face, and they immediately backed off. They all started talking at once in French.

“Quoi?”     (What?)

“Ne nous dérangez pas!”     (
Do not bother us!)

“C'est des monstres, ils vont sûrement tous nous tuer!”     (
They are monsters, they are sure to kill us all!)  

“Ils nous infecteront tous!”     (
They will infect us!)

“La semaine dernière deux autres transformés et nous n'avons rien fait sauf essayer de les remettre en santé puis pendant la nuit ils ont transformé et tué cinq hommes!”     (
Last week two others turned and we did nothing but try to nurse them back to health and they turned in the night and killed five men!)  

“Nous devons le faire!”     (
We have to do this!)

“Ils doivent être détruits
!”     (
They must be destroyed!)

DeAndre sprinted up to, and past, the mob of people. He ran up to the first burning victim, whose legs were already aflame and who was screaming the most hideous cries I have ever heard. D whipped out his knife in a second and was hacking at the ropes that bound this first victim, all the while kicking at the logs and branches that made up the bonfire at the base of the post he was tied to. I ran up and began to help him, and together we had the fire kicked away in no time. The mob, in its haste, hadn’t seemed to build a very large pile of wood and brush there, and in fact had been lugging more from the forest to the fires as we ran up.

“Grab him as I get the ropes cut,” DeAndre said to me, and just in time, I caught the man as he crumpled from the post into my arms. He was moaning as I pulled him away from the fire and over to the grass several yards away. I whipped off my jacket and beat the fire out with it. Jonathan immediately went to work on him, and I leapt up and ran to the next victim, who was nearly free, courtesy of Dad and Zach. She looked unconscious, but not burned very badly, so she might have fainted from the trauma and fear of her ordeal. The third victim hadn’t caught fire yet, but the branches at his feet were flaming up. DeAndre was already there, kicking away the burning wood and reaching up to cut the fellow down. He thanked D as he came free from the ropes, and hopped down off the post of his own accord.

The fourth and fifth victims had not yet been set aflame, but were crying from fright. The first, a young woman of about my own age, had tears streaking down her dirty face, making wet lines through the dirt and dust on her cheeks. Dad was just getting to her to untie her. I made my way to the last victim. She looked to be about five years old.

“Hold still,” I said as I cut away her bindings. Her chest heaved with sobs. As the last rope came free, she jumped into my arms, put her hands behind my neck and locked them there. As I picked her up and carried her to where the others lay, she went limp.

Jonathan was going from one victim to the next, applying what treatments he could.

“Here you go little one,” I said as I laid her down gently onto the grass next to the others. She clutched at me, crying harder.

“It’s okay. Jonathan here is a doctor,” I peeled her arms from around my neck and sat next to her, patting her hands. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “Are you hurt, sweetie?” I looked into her face. She mutely shook her head. “What’s your name?” I tried again:
“C'est quoi ton nom?”

“Gisele,” she said in a quiet voice. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and started sucking it, and closed her eyes. A minute later she lost consciousness.

“Hey, this little girl isn’t burned, but she just passed out,” I said. I felt her neck. She was burning up with fever.

“Mmm hmm,” said Jonathan absentmindly. His face was strained in concentration as he worked, and his brow was furrowed in concern.

“Something’s not right here...,” he said.

Dad and DeAndre had the mob backed up halfway across the small meadow and held their shotguns at the ready, should the crowd make a move. A few in the crowd yelled out.

“AILLE!”     (
HEY!)

“ARRÊTE!”     (
STOP!)

The crowd surged forward again.

“All right, BACK OFF!!!” Dad yelled, punctuating his words with a shotgun blast into the air. “NO ONE’S GETTING BURNED ALIVE TODAY!” DeAndre, Zach and I flanked Dad and pointed our shotguns at the mob.

Jonathan worked beside us on the victims. He sat back on his heels after a minute and turned to us.

“Jake…”

“What’s up?” Dad answered. “Will they live?” Referring to the two burned people we’d rescued from certain death.

“No, actually. None of them will.” Jonathan turned again to examine the little girl I’d rescued, then looked up at us again. “They’re all infected.”

I had figured as much from the way the mob had been acting. “But they aren’t turned yet. Some don’t even look close.” I looked down at the little girl. She was still unconscious.

Jonathan looked her over. “This one is close. She’s burning up with the fever. She’s probably going to turn within a day or less.

Suddenly a woman ran up to us.

“Gisele! Ma petite Gisele!”     (Gisele! My little Gisele!) She ran up and knelt on the ground next to the little girl. Her upper body covered the little face and she wrapped her arms around the small body. Looking up at us, she asked, “Est-ce quelle est morte?”     (Is she dead?)

“Maman?”     (Mama?)

Little Gisele seemed to be coming to, and Jonathan bent down to examine her.

I looked at the victims lying on the grass, and the two of them standing nearby. Those who hadn’t been burned seemed to want to stay near the others on the ground, so I looked down and studied the people lying there. There were three of them. 

The first was a man who looked to be about thirty years old, clean cut, and wearing a business suit. He was about 6 feet tall, had recently had a haircut, and, as I looked closer, had a manicure. His suit looked expensive. Below the knee, though, it was charred and his shoes were partially burned. They looked like they’d been Italian loafers before the mob had gotten hold of him. Those shoes had cost a bundle. My eyes moved back to his face. He was moaning quietly, and Jonathan was fitting an I.V. to his arm.

“He’s the worst off,” Jonathan said, seeing me study his new patient, “but I think we got to him just in time. All of them, really. Another few minutes and ...”

The man opened his eyes and looked at me. I found myself staring into thoughtful, intelligent grey eyes that studied me quietly. I crouched down beside him.

“Hey there. How’re you feeling?” I asked.

“Much better than I was. Thank you for helping us.” He studied me silently for a minute. His accent sounded like it came from New England.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Claude. I was on my way to work this morning when they jumped me in my driveway.”

“Out of the blue?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I was sick over the weekend, but this morning I felt fine, so I thought ...”

Jonathan turned to us. “Claude? Okay if I give you something to help your blood pressure? Your burns are more severe than the others, and I’m concerned.”

“Yeah, sure.”

I turned to the second victim, a woman. She was sitting up, sipping on a bottle of water. Her face was quite pale. She looked up toward me briefly as I turned to face her, then lowered her eyes again.

“Hi,” she whispered.

I got down on one knee and checked her wounds. She was wearing a long skirt whose hemline was now partially burned and ragged, so her legs were bare and had been scorched in the fire. Jonathan had spread salve on them, and they were now wrapped neatly in gauze. It looked very painful.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

She shrugged and didn’t answer.

I studied her face. She looked like she was about to pass out. I reached out to touch her hand, and she flinched, but didn’t pull back. 

“Sorry,” she said quietly. “Jumpy I guess.” She snuck a look off to the side at the mob halfway across the hill. Dad, Zach, and DeAndre had them contained there, and Dad seemed to be talking to some guy off to the side.

I turned back to her.

“Don’t worry, we won’t let them hurt you again.”

She turned back to me and finally met my eyes. “Thanks but it doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes were a piercing blue and looked defeated. She fell silent again. 

I swallowed thickly and moved to examine the little girl, Gisele. Her mother was sitting next to her and had pulled her daughter onto her lap. She rocked back and forth as she held the still form, and sang a quiet lullaby. Little Gisele looked red and flushed, but her skin looked dry, not sweaty. I could hear her rough breathing as she lay unconscious. 

As her mother held her, softly crooning her song, I saw tears were running down the woman’s face. She didn’t look up at me as I knelt beside her and her daughter. She had closed off the entire world; there was only her little girl. She concentrated on her rocking, on her soft singing. I stood there for a few minutes, watching, and swallowed back tears of my own as I thought of my own mother, Alyssa, lying near death in a bed back home, just as red and flush as little Gisele.

“How are they doing?” DeAndre asked as he and the others walked up to us.

“Well, they’re hurt. But they’ll probably make it,” I said, staring at Gisele and her mother.

“The girl is partially catatonic, from the plague and ordeal,” Jonathan said. “This lady and man will recover, but they’re probably in a lot of pain. Right now the shock of the situation is providing a natural anesthesia, but soon their systems will calm down enough to where they’ll really feel those burns. The salve I’m putting on is a topical analgesic, among other things, so it will help a lot with the pain, but it cannot block it entirely.” He moved to check the lady’s bandages.

DeAndre, Dad and I stood guard over Jonathan and the victims he was treating, while Zach made sure the wood fires were completely out.

A few of the townspeople were still arguing with us in French, but after about 10 minutes, they started walking away.

“What do you want to do about them?” I asked Dad and DeAndre. D just shook his head; Dad stood there thinking. After a minute he turned to Jonathan.

“Can they travel?” I remembered the doc back home telling us Mom couldn’t travel with us to Boston. In the middle and later stages of the plague, incubation victims were highly unstable. Any kind of trauma could accelerate the pathogen’s takeover of the human brain, and they could immediately turn, without warning.