Chapter 41
Remy
“It seems like a silly place, but that’s where we’re headed anyway,” I said, my voice muffled through my balaclava. And then, louder so Vince could hear me, I commanded, “Let’s go.”
He started onward, nimbly stepping through the snow, with Ripley trotting alongside us. We hadn’t made it very far when a thunderclap bang broke the silence, and the air smelled vaguely of fireworks.
Vince gave a distressed braying sound and stomped his feet, but I managed to keep him from rearing up entirely. I glanced over him, and he wasn’t hurt, just spooked. Ripley let out an alarmed growl and pressed herself low to the ground, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
“Wait. Is that cat with you?” someone asked, sounding surprised, but I still couldn’t see him.
I squinted and finally saw movement in front of me. Two men came out from behind a snow berm they’d been using as a hunting blind. They were both dressed in winter ghillie suits, made of white and gray rabbit fur, and that made them almost invisible until they moved.
Most alarmingly, though, they were carrying long rifles pointed at us.
“Yes, and I’d rather you didn’t shoot her or any of us,” I said.
“Well, if you come down and do as we say, that won’t be a problem,” the taller of the two men said.
I carefully climbed down off the mule, and something about that must’ve startled Ripley. She let out another annoyed growling sound, and the taller man fired his rifle. Another loud thunderclap, and she jumped back, narrowly dodging the bullet.
“What the hell, man?” I shouted. “I did what you asked!”
Ripley turned and raced into the nearby tree line, disappearing into the woods before anyone could get off another shot.
“I’m not ending up a stupid cat’s meal,” the taller man insisted, and he was already fumbling with his rifle, reloading it by dropping pellets into the barrel and ramming them down with a narrow rod.
“Is that a musket?” I asked in surprise.
It had been a while since I’d seen a gun, since ammo had been in short supply with the factories closed and so many guns emptied on zombie hordes. But I was fairly certain that was not a typical rifle.
“All you need to know is it will kill you just fine,” the taller man insisted.
“Are you from Fort Lately?” I asked.
The taller man lowered his rifle slightly, getting a better look at me. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I’m headed that way,” I said.
“And what do you want with Fort Lately?” the shorter man piped up.
“If you haven’t noticed, it’s rather chilly out here.” I brushed crystals off my eye lashes with my gloved hand. “I was looking for somewhere that my mule and I could warm up for the night.”
“Sure, we can put you up somewhere warm,” the taller man said in a breezy way that made me worry. “Go on up that hill to the main gate. We’ll be right behind you.”
I took Vince’s reigns, and as I started past the men, they both kept their guns pointed on me.
“Are you gonna leave your big cat out here?” the shorter man asked.
“I figured she’s safer out there than with your guns,” I said, which was true, and I had to believe she’d find a way to take care of herself. A nice cave or abandoned cabin to curl up in and lay low until the cold snap broke or I came out to find her.
I led Vince up the hill and the men walked behind me, with occasional chattering between the two of them. Mostly they debated which one of them should alert “Nell” about the big cat, but I was able to gather that the taller one was called Benedict and the shorter one was Clifton.
The entrance to the fortress was through a locked door followed by a dark passageway through the thick concrete walls. Vince made an annoyed grunting sound, like he was telling me he had a bad feeling about this place, and I didn’t disagree with him.
Beyond the passageway was a crowded town square, in that there were buildings cramped up against each other, but it was empty in terms of actual people. I suspected that the icy temperatures were keeping many of them inside, especially since I could see the smoke coming out of chimney tops.
The whole place had such a weird vibe, like an old, abandoned Santa’s village.
Everything was covered in ice and snow, but bright colors bled through the frost. It was so quiet as we walked in, and other than a distinctly unpleasant waft of manure mixed with fresh baked bread, it would be easy to think it was abandoned.
“Take the mule to the stables,” Benedict ordered Clifton, who nodded as he hurried to take the reins from me.
Vince again made a displeased grunt, but this time, I stroked his neck.
“It’ll be okay. Just warm up, and I’ll see you soon,” I promised him.
Clifton led the mule, along with all my gear, away, and I was stuck with Benedict and his rifle.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked as he nudged me toward a pathway to the left. “Is this what you do with all your visitors?”
“Not all, but some,” he said. “You seem sickly with that limp, and you’ve been out in the cold. So I’m taking you to the Wellness Center for an inspection.”
“The Wellness Center?” I glanced over at him with a cocked eyebrow to see if he was kidding. “Are you running some kind of health spa here?”
“We all care about health here,” Benedict replied. “Is that so crazy after the way civilization fell to disease and rot?”
“It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” I admitted wryly.
The Wellness Center turned out to be a squat building painted a nausea inducing shade of seafoam blue. There was no sign denoting it, at least not with words or a name. Above the door, a large white solar cross was painted.
I was hit by the strangest smell upon entering. The sickly clinical scent with a smoky earthiness. Like disinfecting cleaners and lingering illness and patchouli all mixed together.
The building that housed the Wellness Center must have been some kind of gift shop, back before the virus.
A sepia photograph of the star-shaped fortress (from before the Revvers had started painting it) was framed on the wall.
Beneath it was a sign in bronze letters reading Fort Lately National Historic Site.
Some of the shelves that had likely held shirts and trinkets now held supplies – folded cloth, bandages, little glass bottles of alcohol and syrups, rows of various crystals and dried herbs, and all sorts of other wellness paraphernalia.
One side of the room had been turned into a triage area of sorts. Three beds were separated by curtains between them. Two of them were empty, but the third held a young boy covered in red hives.
“Keep going,” Benedict commanded, directing me toward the back of the building and a door labeled with a big red sign: Quarantine KEEP OUT.
The clinical scent and the hospital beds brought my mind back to the locked medical ward at the Blaine County Quarantine Zone.
My brother Max had only been eight when they started experimenting on him.
The doctors and butchers there had been so desperate to find a cure for the lyssavirus that they hadn’t even cared if they killed a little boy in the process.
And they would’ve, if I hadn’t traded places with him.
For six months, they kept me in a locked room while they drained my blood and sliced me open.
They biopsied my spleen, my lymph nodes, and my salivary glands.
They cut open my skull to get a sample of my brain and drilled a hole in my bone to get my marrow.
When what they found there wasn’t enough, they’d cut me open and started taking my organs.
Anything they thought I’d survive without: appendix, tonsils, uterus, ovaries, and my left kidney.
And all of it had been done with little to no anesthetic because they had nothing to spare.
But I couldn’t let myself dwell on that. That was the past, this was now, and this was different. A quarantine was a necessary precaution these days, one that I was powerless to stop anyway. All I could do was take a deep breath and try to slow the racing of my heart.
A cold sweat was breaking out all over my body, and my hands were clammy. My clothing felt too restrictive, and I pulled off my balaclava and gloves, and I kept taking deep breaths.
Benedict glanced back at me as he unlocked the door. “You okay, lady? You aren’t gonna hurl, are you?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
He pushed open the door, revealing a small wood paneled room that had likely been an office back when this was still a gift shop. It had apparently been repurposed as a holding cell for the possibly infected, with two cots and a red biohazard bucket for waste.
“On you go then.” Benedict motioned for me to enter, and when I didn’t do it on my own – I couldn’t seem to force myself forward – he grabbed my arm and dragged me in.
My feet caught up underneath me, because only one of them had real feeling. On my left foot, I could only feel a vague throbbing burn around the zombie bite, and an increasingly uncomfortable pins-and-needles sensation everywhere else.
I fell face first onto the cold tile floor, and Benedict let out a snorting laugh.
“One of the Empaths will be in soon to check you for bites,” he said.
“What’s an Empath?” I asked.
But instead of answering me, he slammed the door shut, and I was alone and locked in a room. My stomach rolled, but I swallowed it down because I didn’t really have time to vomit.
On my foot was a clear zombie bite, and no one here would believe me if I said I was immune. Especially not with Benedict already telling me I looked sickly. They’d see the bite and probably take me out back and shoot me.
I stared down at my aching foot and took a deep breath. I had to do something about it, and I had to do it before the alleged “empath” came in.