The Remaining: Fractured (44 page)

Lee’s mind was pulled in a million different directions. He pulled his knees up, felt the pain and stiffness in his muscles and joints and the nearly overwhelming hunger overtaking him, but he tried to focus, tried to apply himself to the problem at hand. “Okay. We’ve got to make contact with Marie again. Get an idea of how many people she can have armed and ready to go…”

“Lee.” Tomlin looked at him, hesitantly.

Lee looked at his friend and comrade, watched the other man’s eyes track up to Lee’s head, to his injuries. Unconsciously, Lee raised a hand and touched the bandaging again.

“It was Eddie Ramirez, wasn’t it?” he said quietly.

Lee nodded slowly.

Tomlin rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry, brother. I tried to tell you on the radio, but Jerry had already disconnected it. I don’t know if I would’ve been too late or not. But…I’m sorry.”

“It’s not…” Lee trailed off.

Tomlin found some dirt on the knee of his pants and rubbed at it with his palm. “Lee, I know this is a lot to process for you, but I have to ask you something else.”

Lee waited.

“When we found you, we looked all through your pockets and we couldn’t find the GPS. We were taking some contact from infected, so we didn’t stick around to check the van.” Tomlin looked cautiously hopeful. “Could you have dropped the GPS in the van? Do we need to go back for it?”

In all of the running and shooting and escaping that had happened since Shumate had captured him, Lee had not thought about the GPS. His only thought had been about how he was going to get back to friendly territory, and the problem of how he was going to recover that little piece of technology that meant everything to him had simply slipped into the background.

Suddenly, jarringly, it was there again. Right there in the middle of everything.

Lee stared at Tomlin, and Tomlin stared back. And they knew each other well enough that Lee did not need to speak the actual words to Tomlin—he already knew the truth. He could see it written in the dread that lurked behind Lee’s eyes.

“Fuck…” Tomlin suddenly stood up.

Lee clasped his hands together, knuckles white. “Eddie took it after he shot me.”

Tomlin tilted his head to the ceiling, swore again, loudly.

“There’s gotta be something we can do to get it back,” Lee said. “I mean, you were working with Darabie to take me down, right? Didn’t he give you guys a rendezvous point or something? Don’t you know what route he’ll be travelling, or some way to catch up with him and get it back?”

“Lee.” Tomlin faced him. “He’s got a three day head start on us. He could be fucking anywhere. I was never given any special rendezvous points or any shit like that. I know that his ass is probably heading to Tennessee, but you already know that much. And there are dozens of roads that cross the Appalachians—and that’s assuming he’s in a vehicle. If he’s on foot…then fuck me,” he muttered. “This is bad.”

Lee grit his teeth. “There’s gotta be some way we can get it back.”

Tomlin shook his head. “Ain’t gonna fuckin’ happen. We’re not gonna catch Eddie, and chances are that Darabie’s already taken that shit and turned it over to President Briggs, if they didn’t just destroy it outright. And we’re not getting in those bunkers without it, Lee. That’s the whole point of ‘em.”

All this time Lee had thought that somehow, Tomlin would know how to get the GPS back. He wasn’t sure why he’d latched onto that idea, maybe just the stress of his situation. Or maybe it was just the destructive reality of the alternative. Maybe it was that he just couldn’t bring himself to accept what amounted to complete and utter failure. Rock bottom. Falling down a cliff with sheer sides—no way to get back up. No way to make up the ground lost.

Permanent.

Irrevocable.

A supreme fuck-up.

Almost every problem a human being encounters through their life has a remedy. Perhaps that remedy is unpleasant, or perhaps it is difficult. Maybe that problem is not remedied simply because that person sees the remedy as worse than the problem. But there is always the
hope
. Always the
possibility
. Always a chance, however slight, to make things right.

But this?

You couldn’t remedy this. You couldn’t work your way around it, you couldn’t overpower it or overcome it. It was a sudden, jolting paradigm shift, a jarring ninety-degree turn in reality that made him question those deep parts of himself that he’d taken for granted for so long. Because if he wasn’t Captain Harden, coordinator for North Carolina, there to reestablish civilization, then what the hell was he? Just another guy with a gun?

Lee looked around him, saw the faces of the people as they quietly watched this exchange, this quiet crumbling of men and their ideals. The faces of these people that looked at him and Tomlin like they were some sort of saviors. That somehow everything would be okay in the end, just because they were there.

Lee lowered his gaze to the ground. He kept trying to think his way out of it, but all those thoughts just led down dead-end roads. What was left? Not much. Just some desperate people, searching for another day. Trying to get through with their lives, and the lives of their loved ones. And Lee was no different from them.

“What are you gonna do?” Lee asked, rhetorically.

Tomlin just stood silently.

“Not much you can do,” Lee answered his own question. There were other things he could have said in that moment, perhaps something edifying to the others. Perhaps a grand speech about never giving up, never giving in. But it would all be a lie at that moment, because that was not what Lee was feeling. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling. He’d just been given a giant load of Bad Fucking News and he was still picking his way through it, processing it a little bit at a time.

Instead he just looked around with a frown. “I need some food. And my weapons.”

Tomlin eyed him, his jaw muscles bunching. He seemed perplexed. Maybe he felt Lee should react stronger. And maybe Lee should have. Maybe all of that would come later, and Lee even suspected that it would. Nothing this damaging could ever be fully felt so soon after learning about it. The human brain did not like to be shocked, and it would only allow you to process it in small increments. The bigger the shock, the smaller increments it was sliced into.

Finally, Tomlin nodded. “Yeah. I’ll get them for you.”

“Are you going out to Camp Ryder tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going with you.”

Tomlin gave him a sidelong glance. “I think it’d be best if you rested.”

Lee shook his head. “I’ll get a couple more hours in.” He stopped and Tomlin looked at him, saw how dead serious he was about it. Lee took a long, slow breath. “We’ve got nothing else now, Brian. All we’ve got is Camp Ryder. It’s our best chance right now, and I think if we can get it back, we might be okay. And I’m not gonna sleep through that.”

Tomlin nodded once. “Alright then.”

When Tomlin left to get his weapons and some food and water, Jacob stayed there next to Lee and set right back into checking Lee’s wounds, as though there had never been any interruption to his work. Jacob took his pulse, shined lights in his eyes. Took off his bandages, replaced them. Frowned the whole time in general concentration. He sniffed the bandage from Lee’s head and didn’t make too bad of a face, so Lee took some comfort in that—maybe the infection was on the retreat.

“You’re a fucking wreck, Captain,” Jacob said as he pulled a bottle of saline solution out of a little blue satchel at his side. He took a large, plastic syringe and drew out a quantity of the saline solution, bending Lee’s head down and beginning to squirt the solution in high-pressure streams along the wound to irrigate it. “You show a magnificent propensity for hurting yourself.”

Lee winced, the irrigation feeling less like gentle saline and more like lemon juice. “Oh, trust me. I try to avoid it.”

“Here,” Jacob handed him a small cloth to dab at the fluid running down his face. He continued on in silence for a moment, then leaned back with a heavy sigh. “No, you don’t. Men like you…” He looked sad. “Men like Captain Mitchell. You just keep pushing until you’re dead.”

It sounded like a simple observation, but felt more like an admonishment.

Lee said nothing.

Jacob continued irrigating the wound a bit, then inspected it closely. He pulled out some fresh bandages, began wrapping Lee’s head. Lee watched the expressions on Jacob’s face cycle through concentration, into sadness, into something like anger. Like he was stuck in the middle of all three.

“So how’d you get here?” Lee asked carefully. “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

Jacob faltered, but only for a split second. Almost unnoticeable. “I won’t go into my reasons right now, Captain. Suffice it to say Doc Hampton was not on our side. I had to deal with him harshly.” He tied the bandage off. “The rest is just…boring science.”

“How did you find Old Man Hughes and Tomlin?”

“Same way you did.” Jacob sniffed. “Had a group come into Smithfield, looking for food and water. I had a disagreement with Doc Hamilton on how to proceed with them. Eventually, me and the group left Smithfield and came to Lillington, looking for Old Man Hughes. Lucky for me, they keep that lookout. So when they saw us show up, they made contact, just like they did with you, and brought us back here. The rest is history.”

Lee folded his hands in his lap. “What about your research? Your…test subject?”

Jacob inspected his work, then began to put things away in the bag. “There will be others. As far as research goes…” He zipped up the bag and stood, something bad crossing over his features, but only briefly. “Something to talk about another time. Right now you need food, water, and sleep. And you need as much of it as you can get.”

As Jacob packed up, Lee watched a familiar form skirting around the edges of the warehouse. Deuce, moving with a limp, his right front leg splinted and wrapped heavily in bandages. The dog didn’t seem to be aware that he was injured. He just kept moving along the wall, his nose to the ground. He would stop at each of the rolling garage doors, as though inspecting the security.

Jacob followed Lee’s gaze to the dog and smiled. “He’s been doing that pretty much as soon as I got the splint on him—which, by the way, I almost got my finger taken off for. Been making circles around the warehouse ever since. Like he’s on sentry duty.”

Lee thought about who might take care of the dog while he was gone, but he supposed that Deuce was pretty good at taking care of himself. Deuce had survived this long without much help from humans, and he seemed capable of continuing that way. It seemed like Deuce took a bigger risk by being around these people that constantly put him in danger. But he would never complain about it. Because that’s what he was there for. That was his job. He did what was expected of him. And in that, Lee thought that perhaps he and Deuce were very similar.

Tomlin appeared with the M4 Lee had taken from Kev, and Lee’s KABAR knife, along with a bottle of water and a whole MRE, which was probably more food than Lee could handle. He handed Lee the weapons first. Lee slid the knife back into his sheath, then checked the chamber of the rifle, put it on safe, and laid it next to him on the ground.

Tomlin handed him the food and water and looked like he’d relaxed some. “Eat up. Get some more sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

CHAPTER 28: SENSITIVE ISSUES

Angela met Marie by the same fire pit she’d used to cook the rice the night before. About half the camp was awake now, and most would be out and about within the next half hour. The sun was just beginning to get above the trees that surrounded the camp, and their little site remained in frosted shadows.

Sam and Abby came along, as Angela could barely let them out of her sight now. He immediately began to work up a morning fire, exposing the embers from the previous night and gathering a little tinder to let it catch. Abby hung about his shoulder like any younger sister would, watching everything he did with curiosity, asking questions the whole time. The two were consumed with their task and left the adults alone.

“I barely slept,” Angela mumbled, rubbing her puffy eyes and wishing for coffee. She looked intensely at Marie. “What happened? I don’t understand the note…I mean…I do understand, but…”

Marie took a good look around her before speaking. “I went up and shined the light, just like we talked about. Didn’t get a response until I was about to head down. I see a light blinking back out in the woods. I sat there watching it for a second and realized it was getting closer to the fence. Then it stopped for a little bit. Then it was right on the fence, shining down on this rock—like the size of a soccer ball.” She rubbed her face. “Then the light went out and I didn’t see it again. I couldn’t tell who was holding it, but I could tell what they were trying to get me to do. So I did it.

“I had to sneak down to the ground level. Took me while, but when I finally got there I just sat on the other side of the fence, shining my light into the woods, trying to see something. I couldn’t see anything, so I went to the rock. Lifted it, and right there was the note that I gave you last night.”

Angela chewed her lip nervously. She felt electric. Terrified, even. “So, did you go back at midnight?”

Marie nodded. The dark-haired woman took another look around while she reached into her jacket pocket. A family sauntered past, carrying a water bucket and a pan with what looked like a freshly-skinned rabbit on it. They nodded coolly to Angela, but showed a little more warmth to Marie, who gave them a smile and a wave and waited for them to walk out of sight again.

When they were gone she pulled another tightly-folded piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Angela. “Don’t read it out here,” she said. “The quick version is that Captain Tomlin needs intel on our situation in here. Who’s with who. What types of weapons do we have. Etcetera.”

Angela nodded rapidly. “Okay. Okay.”

Marie looked at her, very serious. “We’re gonna need to start talking to people, Angela. It’s dangerous, but I feel a little better going at it with Tomlin right across the fence from us.”