The Pandemic Sequence (Book 3): The Tilian Cure (18 page)

During the course of the hour, Mike moved to speak alone with Derrick, who had just broken away from a conversation with some of the refugees.

“Listen,” he began in sincere apology. “I didn’t mean to take over before. This is your group and I shouldn’t have been issuing any orders.”

As they walked side by side away from the main party, Derrick replied. “Mike, as far as I’m concerned, you’re the leader whenever you’re around. I’ve only been Paul’s second for a month. You kept us safe for over six years.”

“Not everyone,” he replied as his voice caught with sadness.

“No, not everyone,” Derrick repeated. “But I don’t think anyone could have. I used to blame you for Jenni. For going out hunting that day. What I didn’t realize is how much more time I got to spend with her because you protected us for years after the outbreak. She could have died in the school, at the military base, or a hundred different other times. But you kept us safe.”

“Derrick, that day in the mountains…”

“That day in the mountains was you keeping me safe. From myself. Jenni was beyond protecting, but I was too blind, or stubborn, to see it.”

Several silent moments passed as the two men stood and looked out into the vastness before them. With the large gathering of refugees to their backs, Mike could almost believe they were the last two beings on earth. Three, as Gazelle nudged alongside his foot.

“Why didn’t you get on the boat?” Mike eventually asked.

“I don’t think I was ready, you know, to be back in civilization. I don’t know, that probably doesn’t make any sense.”

Softly, Mike responded. “I understand how that feels.”

When the hour passed, vehicles and people reversed direction and began the somber journey back to the Horde. The progress was slow, a heavy glacier drifting in a sea of ice, and Mike fought back the urge to demand a faster pace. Derrick had prepared him well for the snail’s speed though, and he simply swallowed his words and frustration. He could not blame these people for trudging slowly back over their recent tracks. Derrick had been their Moses, leading them beyond the Tilian desert. And me? What am I? he thought. A Red Sea that will not part.

He could feel the tension among the refugees. A cold stillness that chipped away at the last resolves of courage and hope. Others had fallen under his leadership, and he had shared their apprehension. But, the mood among these survivors was of a different shade. They had seen what Mike had yet to witness. For most, an army of Tils—a violent ocean of disease and death—had laid waste to their lives only a few weeks earlier. And now Mike was forcing a return to the vortex.

Women hugged children, their own and those placed in their care, offering soothing words and caresses, but their eyes filled with sneering hatred when they fell on him. These refugees had said their last goodbyes to loved ones, most with the belief—however hidden and ignored it was—that no reunion lay in the future. Death had been at their backs until ill-fortune crossed their paths with Mike Allard, and he turned them to its longing embrace. He tried to remind himself that a similar fate had most assuredly been awaiting them if they had travelled on to the rendezvous with the Mohawk. The thought did little to ease him.

“Here,” Lisa said, sidling up on his right. Mike looked to her hand and gratefully received the freshly replenished canteen of water.

After taking a long swallow, he lowered the canteen and ran his mouth across his shirt’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Derrick says the Horde has quite the setup. Water purification systems, farming, livestock. They even make some of their own fuel,” she shared, as Mike handed the now half-empty canteen back to her.

With a laugh, he added, “Yeah, but in the mountains we had snow!”

“Oh! You’re right. How could I forget?” Lisa mocked. “How I loved those nights when I thought for sure I was going to lose a few toes to frost bite.”

Laughing easily now, Mike let the moment wash over him. “We definitely didn’t have it easy up there, but we made do, I guess. Even with all of Marena’s complaining!” For the second time in the day, he wished his words had been chosen more carefully. Mentioning the doctor, another and far more guilty participant of the Ira Project, pushed the momentary mirth away. It was with surprise that Mike listened to Lisa expand on the subject of the doctor.

“You think he was bad then? You should have seen him when we left the facility. He complained so much, the ground was too hard, the air was too cold, the food was too dry, that I seriously thought about letting the Tils have my ears!”

The unexpected humor, combined with a mental picture of the events, had him laughing once again. Not one to miss a lighthearted moment, Erik quickly jogged up to them and joined in the various imitations of Dr. Marena. Even with the man’s scientific perversions, Mike felt a measure of gratitude towards him. For a number of years, the doctor had patched up and treated many of the camp’s inhabitants. And the guy is probably the only reason I am still alive after Miami, he admitted begrudgingly.

Not one to tread long on one topic, Erik turned to Lisa. “Have you thought about how you’re going to tell Paul about the baby?”

Teasingly, Mike groaned. “Oh no, he’s back to the baby!”

“Not really,” she began in explanation. “I mean, he thinks I’m dead, so I’m guessin’ we’ll have a lot to discuss.”

“You’re not part of that ‘we,’ Erik,” Mike joked.

“Keep it up old man! You’re asking for another beat down.”

“Another? Funny I don’t recall any past ones.”

“That’s cause you’re old,” Erik retorted in a final shot, making a motion of insanity with finger and forehead.

As the journey progressed, Derrick walked with the trio when his duties allowed him. Gazelle never failed to greet him anew with a welcome seemingly a hundred years in the waiting. Mike wondered if her canine psyche had developed an innate devotion to the man that had saved them both.

Conversation continued, though mostly of updates on the past year, each tale leading to another, filling in the gaps of continuity. For Mike, hearing Erik and Lisa’s respective exploits was just as revelatory as Derrick’s own tales. He assumed much had transpired over the past year in Havana while he had secluded himself at home. Big events, like Andrew and Michelle’s engagement, some of Paul’s journeys, and of course Erik’s struggle with drink and resettlement, had reached his ears. But he listened now to the mundane, the trivial, fleeting moments which are barely memorable, but when combined, enrich life. Hearing them brought on tepid melancholy as he understood how much life he had missed. The sadness came not from any sense of loss, but rather a quiet realization that perhaps his old desire of freedom from leadership had come to pass. Those in his care, once helpless children running blindly in a dangerous night, had grown and accomplished what he had wished for them all along. They had survived.

A short while after full night fell, a stationary gathering of lights twinkled along the distant horizon. Those familiar with both the sight and the location called out proclaiming the Horde camp was ahead. Mike was unable to distinguish dread or relief in their tones. The day had been far longer than Derrick had intended. Even those requiring a seat in a car for the duration of the trek were showing the cutting edges of weariness. For his part, he was surprised to find himself still conscious. With little sleep the previous night, and a day’s march afoot, his body no longer held the strength to cry out in exhaustion. He had dismissed Derrick’s suggestion of riding for a time, not wanting to displace another passenger and further fuel the dislike stared toward him. Either following Mike’s lead or being equally attuned to the refugees’ moods, Lisa and Erik had declined similar invitations.

With their destination some few miles ahead, Mike motioned to Lisa and the two walked together, separated from others’ hearing.

“What you said earlier about having a lot to talk about with Paul,” he began as he had rehearsed for the past hour. When the thought first moved into his mind, he had dismissed it as impossible folly. But the idea had left its seed and quickly claimed his attention. “So much has happened since… well since the outbreak. None of us are who we once were. We’ve all done things, had to do things, that would have sent us running years ago. Maybe who we were before isn’t as important as what we’ve become.”

“What are you saying, Mike?” she asked.

“I’m saying that when you talk to Paul… I’d understand if you decided not to tell him about your work with the project. I don’t think he’d react badly if he knew, not like me at least. He’s a better man than me. But you both have been through so much, and well, I’m just saying I’d understand.”

Even in the dim white light of the half moon and the unsteady streams of headlights, he could see the pools of tears that swelled in her eyes. Softly, she spoke, “Thank you, Mike.”

“I know Erik won’t say anything, and I doubt Derrick will either. Nothing you have done in the past can outweigh how much you’ve done since,” he told her with unfeigned sincerity.

“Thank you, Mike,” she repeated. “But, I intend to tell him. I have to tell him. I love him, and we’re going to have a baby, and he deserves to know all of me. Not just the parts he’ll easily accept. It means a lot to have your forgiveness—if that is, in fact, what I have?”

Pausing, searching his thoughts, his emotions, and finding no argument, he replied. “You do.”

More may have been said, though he had shared what he had intended, but a voice from one of the lead cars shouted. “They’re coming to bring us in.”

He fixed his eyes toward the camp’s lights, closer now than he had expected. Twin beams of white broke off from the encampment and made a steady approach along the road. As the vehicle neared, he felt Lisa’s hand grasp his own in a grip that revealed her anxiety.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean Tils,” Matt offered weakly, after a long moment passed as the pair stared at the bloody limb. If he meant the comment sincerely, his voice betrayed his true belief.

“True,” Michelle replied. “It could have just fallen off while someone was walking.” She knew all too well the signs of an infected attack.

“I meant it could be from someone that Duncan’s men killed.”

“Maybe.” Michelle eased another handgun from its holster. “Duncan’s office is on the fourth floor. We need to make our way to the main hall.”

With Matt guarding their rear, Michelle led them through several side corridors. Many of the rooms they passed stood open to reveal chaotic messes of upturned furniture and strewn papers. Evidence of violence streaked red along the walls and floor. Unlike past trespasses through Til feeding grounds, she saw no remnants of feasting. Beyond the severed leg spotted earlier, she found no other human parts. Wounding to infect, not kill. Just like Tumi said. The dark thought knotted her nerves.

Save for their own soft footsteps, no other sounds disturbed the eerie stillness. “We’re almost to the main hall,” she whispered, more to hearten herself than to inform the man behind her. As the narrow passage ended and opened itself into the vast central room, Michelle stopped abruptly.

The towering statue, La Estatua de la República, which served as the focus of the main hall, had once been a beacon of strength and inspiration for Michelle. With each passing, at the start and end of each work day, she had stood before its base and found proud calm in its Athena-inspired features. Now it resembled the goddess of Hell.

Draped around the statue’s base and extending in a vast, uneven circle, lounged dozens of the infected. Their bodies, some clothed in tatters while others wore only victims’ blood, splayed immodestly in orgiastic relief. Limbs and bodies intertwined with each other in bestial sleep. Others huddled together around a lifeless form, tearing and shredding flesh and muscle with teeth and hands. Several pairs grunted and panted in the throes of violent mating. Michelle knew of no artist in time’s history, no painting or film, that ever depicted a scene of more deprived damnation. Her vision swallowed all these burning images, yet her gaze was drawn immediately to the statue’s feet.

Seated in victory as a throne-less king, a well-muscled Til reclined with casual ease as he oversaw the sycophants beneath him. His face, unmarred by battle, sneered with superior dominance. It was a face that had visited her dreams often in the last weeks. This Tilian king had once stared at her with cold emptiness from behind a glass cell wall.

Matt pressed behind her, his breath hot against her neck. Feeling his warmth and presence, Michelle was drawn out of the hypnotic scene. She glanced to the stairwell at the far wall. The vast chamber would allow no cloaked movement towards the stairs. Searching her mind for other options, she felt Matt draw his breath in a quick gasp.

She looked back to Death’s dais to find the emotionless stare of the Til had once again fallen on her. The creature made no discernible movements, save for the narrowing of his eyes. Pushing her weight back, she felt Matt retreat a slow step. Seeing its quarry attempt escape, the Til roared an unintelligible command. The dozens surrounding him, previously preoccupied in garish works, sprung to their feet.