“Move!” she commanded, pointing toward the perimeter fence. “Go now!”
“What about Greg?” Justin demanded.
“Gone!” she spat back. “Dead as shit! An’ if ya don’ wanna be dead too, we got to go!”
From within the compound, Justin could hear all sorts of commotion—men yelling, a siren, a couple of gunshots. Naturally, he was torn; he owed it to Greg to see what had become of him, but he also owed it to the greater world to get Mr. Lampert out of this place. Unfortunately, he had no time to think it over. Already, Teresa and the others were moving off into the darkness. With a final, rueful shake of his head, he ran after them.
What followed was a painful, nightmare flight over rough terrain that seemed to go on and on, for hours at least, if not for days. At least it gave Justin no time to think about what had happened to poor Greg.
Clearing the St. Alferd’s compound proper, thanks to a neat hole Teresa had evidently clipped in the chain links, they simply pelted away into the night. Cass took the first shift at carrying Mr. Lampert and toted the Old Man in her arms like a new bride for the first long leg, maybe a couple of miles. Teresa kept them away from anything that seemed like a road and instead directed the little band into dense undergrowth and dark ravines. And all the time, seemingly just behind them or just off to one side, there was a constant din from their angry pursuers as the cannibals combed out on motorcycles and on foot in an obviously organized effort to recover their human livestock.
Just at the point where Justin was sure he’d collapse, Teresa called a halt in a thick stand of some thorny bushes. As he and the others lay on the ground panting (except for Lampert, who just grunted a little), she peered through the bushes for a time before finally turning back to the group.
“How did you managed to free us?” he asked her, trying to catch his breath. “How did you bend the bars?”
“Old car jack,” said Teresa. “An’ a good bolt-snipper. Piece’a pie.”
“And what happened to Greg?” he asked. “At the end, there.”
“Who?” said Teresa. “Oh, that four-eye greep back at the camp? Yeah, he got blasted. One’a them St. Alferd cannibos got him with a scat gun, right inna head. Boom! Dead.”
“Oh God,” said Justin miserably, scrubbing his stubbled face. “I was afraid of that. The poor man.”
“Hey, shit flies,” Teresa shrugged. “Happen alla time. One day yer fine, jus’ bompin’ along, and then: Blammo! Yer dead as road kill. Ain’t mean nothin’.”
“Not to you, perhaps,” said Justin, trying to keep the scorn from his voice. “But to the rest of us… well, let’s say it’s a loss that we will keenly feel.”
Teresa simply shrugged, her lovely face unreadable in the dark.
“And what about my other colleagues?” asked Justin. “My friends, I mean.”
“What about ‘em?”
“Can we, I don’t know,” struggled Justin, “can’t we go back for them?”
Teresa gave a rude snort. “Not fuckin’ likely! And anyhow, what’s with all that “we” shit? I the one’s did all the rescuin’ back there! Not for me, you all be carved up like cluckers by now!”
Justin sighed deeply and hung his head as a fresh wave of despair washed over him. So that was that. Dr. Poole and all of the rest of the CDC crew, plus all of the gear and vehicles, were gone. They were as gone as any of the others who’d fallen along the way, sacrificed to their hopeless mission, and now he and the other survivors were left with no transport, no supplies, no idea where they were and only the vaguest notion of where they should go. He could now number his possessions with fingers, as they consisted entirely of what he was wearing: a pair of boots, a pair of socks, some underwear, a pair of chinos and a light blue button-down shirt. And that was it. No med-kit, no gun, no survival gear, not even a knife. In short, they were, as Mr. Lampert would say, good and fucked. Sighing again, all but overloaded, he fell onto his back and stared up at the impersonal, starlit sky.
“Yer sad, hey?” asked Teresa softly, kneeling down next to him.
“Yes,” said Justin. “I am. Very sad.”
“Cuzza yer friends?”
“Yes. They’re good people. Good friends, good colleagues.”
Teresa was silent for a moment. Then: “I lost some good friends, too.”
“Oh?” said Justin tiredly. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss. I suppose that all of us have shared that experience, what with the Plague and all.”
“True that,” she said sadly. “Me, it was my BMF, Clanky. He was a good dude. Mech-head, ya know? Fix anything. Ran the juice line to my place. He got runned over an’ greased by a Wildfist dump truck, out on route twelve. Last spring. Yeh, I miss ol’ Clanky.”
Justin said nothing and stared at the stars. After a long pause, Teresa stood up and jerked her head.
“C’mon, Case,” she said. “We still gotta long way to go before sun-time.”
“But to where?” asked Justin. “Where are we going?”
“Same place we was goin’,” she said. “Baron Zero’s.”
Five minutes and a few sips of brackish bottled water later, they were back on their feet and stumbling through the dark. At least it was Erin’s turn to carry Mr. Lampert.
Chapter Fourteen
Bright sunlight, dappled by the leaves overhead, burned into his eyes when he woke up and when he tried to move, even to roll over onto his side, he found that he was so stiff and sore that he wasn’t all that certain that he’d ever move again. Groaning, he fell back, shut his eyes again, and tried to go back to sleep, but other parts of his body—the ones that needed food and water and to go to the bathroom—were not at all amenable and so he groaned again and began to work on getting himself up off of the ground.
“S’amatter, hey?” came Teresa’s voice from above him, mixed with the calls of birds and the rustle of leaves. “Ya ain’t sick, hey? Or didja break somethin’ maybe?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Justin painfully, flexing an arm. “I’m just very sore. From all of the… exertion last night.”
“Oh, that,” said Teresa disdainfully. “Aw, you be a’right. Jus’ gotta get up and move aroun’. You see.”
“If you say so,” Justin groaned yet again. For a while he concentrated on simply moving each pain-shot limb. Gradually the worst of the pangs and muscle spasms passed and he opened his eyes and looked around.
They were in a small forest, one of many that dotted the otherwise rolling, grass-hilled landscape hereabouts, and the sky above was cloudless and as blue as a robin’s egg. Maybe a hundred yards away, the remains of an asphalt road, half-hidden in weeds and grass, could be seen, and from somewhere not far away came the gurgle of a stream. It was a very pretty little spot, all in all, and the weather was as mild and pleasant as any he’d ever felt, but the crush of fears and uncertainty in his jumbled thoughts and the pain in his body left him all but unable to notice. At the moment, it was just another anonymous spot in the middle of a threatening and impersonal nowhere.