The Remaining: Refugees (37 page)

“Did we get ‘em all?” Jim’s voice wavered breathlessly.

“I dunno,” Lee turned. “Keep going.”

From
the dimness
below them
, crawling up
the
bloody flight of stairs, a wounded infected
appeared, gibbering
as it claw
ed
past the bodies of its denmates, the
concept of its impending death
lost behind the urging of its own
blood lust.
Its dark eyes fixed them with a blank stare, devoid of emotion, and it reached for them
, eyes dark and alien
.

“I shot that thing in the head!” Jim said shakily. “How’s it…?”

Lee put two in its chest and it collapsed backward.

“Why didn’t it die?” Jim demanded, his voice on the edge of panic.

“Just go!” Lee shouted and hauled himself up the last flight.

As they reached the top of the stairs and stumbled into the muted light of dawn, Lee could no longer hear
the thing
clinging to life. On the rooftop, they found the other members of the team hu
ddled in the center of the roof
. Julia was bent over Jake, working feverishly at starting an IV. The other
s
crowded around her and between their bodies Lee caught glimpses
of
Jake. His mouth was open and his eyes stared vacantly at Julia. The only evidence that he was still alive was the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

N
o one
watched
the stairwell door that he and LaRouche and Jim had just emerged from. They were all watching Jake and mumbling encouragement to h
im, leaving their backs exposed
.

“Hey!” Lee barked. “Someone
gonna
watch the fucking stairs?”

Wilson popped up at the sound of Lee’s voice and shouldered his rifle. “I got it, Cap.”

Lee strode quickly to Julia’s side and knelt down beside her. Jake
’
s eyes tracked him, still glassy and unseeing. “How’s he looking?”

Julia’s lips were set in a thin line, her jaw clenched. Red smears across her face and neck. “He needs blood. I don’t have the equipment to do a transfusion, and I don’t have time to test everyone’s blood types.” She swabbed the inside of Jake
’
s elbow and then looked up at Lee. “We need to get him to Smithfield, and fast.”

“Okay,” Lee nodded, but had no idea how possible t
hat would be. “Gimme a minute.”

Lee stood up and caught
LaRouche’s eye and motioned him
over
.
They kept low, below the line of sight from any rooftops around them.

“Cap?”

“What do you think?”

“That was a high-caliber rifle, and close.” LaRouche glanced out beyond the edges of the roof. “I didn’t see a muzzle flash, but I’d think he was on top of one of these adjacent buildings.” He looked at Lee. “Who do you think it was?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Lee growled. “Some a
sshole, trigger-
happy scavenger.”

“Let’s check it out.” LaRouche nodded towards the edge of the roof.

They moved towards the edge, hunching lower as they went towards the abutment until they were duck-walking. Without prearranging it, they separated so that
they were about ten yards apart
.

Lee put his shoulder to the abutment and looked at LaRouche. “On three.”

“Okay.”

He counted with his fingers,
one, two, three
, and they both popped up and looked out over the nearby rooftops. In the brief moment that they were exposed, they searched for movement, for anything that seemed unnatural, for the glint of gunmetal or
the flash of a scope lens
. When they ducked back into cover
, they looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Nothing,” LaRouche said.

“I got nothing,” Lee confirmed. “One more time, a little slower.”

Again they counted down, and on three they both stood up partially and looked out over the small-town rooftops laid out around them, but they could find no evidence of the sniper. Lee had to agree with LaRouche’s assessment. That had been a high-powered rifle round, and it had come from someplace very close to them. And yet there was no one on the roofs.
N
one of the nearby buildings had
facing windows from which a sniper could have made the shot
.

LaRouche
swore
. “
He must’ve bugged out already
.”

Hit and run tactics?
Lee thought.

“What about the infected?”

Lee leaned further over the edge. There was no movement
in the alley
below him, and when he switched to overlook the street, there were none there either.

“
Should be about fifty, right?” Lee asked.

“Yeah.”

He turned and looked at the kid in the center of the roof, lying on his back and barely there anymore. “Jake needs to get to Smithfield ASAP. We’ll clear the stairwell and do a headcount on the way down, see how many we took down. That’ll give us an idea of
how many are left
.”

“Okay.” LaRouche looked pained. “We’re not pulling out, are we?”

Lee stared at the den. “No. We need to get in there.”
He jogged over to Wilson and tapped him on the shoulder. “Wilson, I need you and your team to come with me.”

Wilson nodded firmly. “Will do, Cap.”

Lee moved back into the stairwell
and
Jim
followed, LaRouche remaining behind with Julia and Jake
.

CHAPTER 17:
THE DEN

Lee clicked his gunlight on, illuminating the darkness.
His knees felt rubbery and fatigued as he made h
is way down. On Level 5 he found the last infected Jim had claimed to have shot in the head
.
He and Jim leaned over the body and inspected it. The lifeless eyes stared at them
,
wide and
lemur-like
. A jagged groove ran from the top of the infected’s forehead, all the way back to its crown.

“Is that where I shot him?” Jim asked.

Lee nodded. “Sometime
s the round skips off the skull
.
I’ve seen it happen before.
”

They continued on down the stairwell and Lee
started counting heads. As he went down, the bodies got thicker and he hesitantly stepped between them, certain that at any moment one of them would explode up and latch its filthy jaws into his jugular. On Level 2 the stairwell was so choked with bodies that Lee had to walk over them, their soft flesh and blood squirm
ing
under his boots as he put his weight on them. Here, the walls were spackled with red dots and white chunks of brain and bone. Bullet holes marred the wall
like
a hidden picture could be revealed if all those dots were connected
.

At the bottom he stopped and looked around.

“Forty-two,” he said aloud.

They moved to the door, which had closed on its own. Lee pushed it open partially and took a quick sweep outside, finding
only three more infected bodies
, and no snipers on the rooftops sighting in on him. He stepped out and held the door, motioning Wilson and his three teammates
to pass
through.

He grabbed Wilson and looked him in the eye. “Be quick, but don’t be stupid.”

Wilson
nodded curtly
. “We’ll be back in a second.”

Lee
and Jim
made
their
way back up the stairs, having to stop on Level 3 to give
Jim’s
legs a rest.
Lee didn’t push it. To be honest, his legs felt fatigued as well.

At the roof top again, he found LaRouche kneeling
near Julia and Jake
.
The
sky above them was gray and purple like a contused body.
Lee called
him
over, away from Julia and her pa
tient. The
three men huddled together
, but their
eyes lingered on their wounded comrade. They knelt about fifteen feet away and eventually they dragged their attention back.

“Is he gonna make it?” Jim asked.

LaRouche looked off
. “
Julia says i
t’s pretty bad. The artery can be closed to keep him from losing blood pressure, but
there are
complications that go along with sealing a major blood vessel. It sounds like the bullet might have collapsed his lung, too.
She
won’t know until they open him up.”

The
y all knew what that meant.

They’d found a medical professional to replace Doc, but he was a general
practitioner, not a surgeon. The
equipment
was there
at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Smithfield, but the experience and the knowledge were not. He did the best he could, but often it was not enough.

“Damn,” LaRouche shook his head.

Lee couldn’t disagree. “Let’s try to stay focused here.” He pointed back towards the stairwell. “I got
45 dead bodies
, and we estimated fifty yesterday.”

“We didn’t count to a man,” LaRouche pointed out.

“I know.” Lee sniffed at his nose which was beginning to run in the cold. “
So wo
rst case scenario, there are some
still inside the den, but I don’t think that’s likely. I’ve never seen the hordes separate into groups. They’re all or nothing.”

LaRouche cleared his throat. “We keep putting these rules on them, Cap. Like they’ve got ROEs, but they don’t. They’re just wild fucking animals. They’re unpredictable. The truth is, we don’t know what those bastards are gonna do next.”

Lee rubbed his forehead. “I’m just judging from past behaviors. Look, I know going in there doesn’t sound very pleasant. But if there’s something we can find out by going in there, I don’t want to pass it by because we were afraid to get our hands dirty.”

LaRouche sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m with you.”

The sound of a diesel engine rumbling below them drew their attention.

Lee stepped to the edge of the roof, first taking a glance at the rooftops around them, and then looking over at the big green vehicle below. Wilson
leaned
out of the fr
ont passenger’s seat and looked
up at Lee. He gave the younger man a thumbs up and then turned to the others on the roof with him.