“Owners must have shut down pretty quick once the Evolution started,” West said, looking around the huge building.
“They were smart,” Avian said. He pulled a flashlight out of one of his side pockets. “Most of these big box stores stayed open until the Babies were ripping their faces off as they tried to sell them a shotgun.”
“Man, we haven’t seen any Babies in how long?” West said as he, too, pulled out a flashlight.
“Not many people left to infect,” Bill said as he headed for the clothing. There were three classes of Bane: Babies—the newly infected, Sleepers—self-explanatory, and Hunters—those who actively sought humans to infect. “There aren’t many babies of either species being made anymore.”
With that grim thought, we split off, the three men to the men’s clothing section, me toward the women’s.
And as I started browsing, I thought of the ability to have children. If this really did work and we killed off all the Bane, it was going to take a very long time to rebuild any kind of population. I knew of one other pregnant woman in New Eden besides Morgan. Bringing children into this world felt too dangerous. And there weren’t many people left to repopulate the planet with anymore.
My eyes drifted over to Avian, halfway across the building.
Did I possess the ability to bear children? I’d never considered it before. I’d honestly never even thought about being a mother. I was only eighteen. But when the time came, that I was old enough, when Avian and I followed tradition and that was the expected next step, would I even have the ability?
Somehow I didn’t think so.
I had cybernetic bones, a mostly cybernetic heart and lungs. Why wouldn’t my baby making organs be cybernetic too?
Surely a fetus could not survive in a body like mine.
Pushing the thought aside, I tried to pay attention to the task at hand.
It didn’t take long to find some waterproof clothes, all skintight running clothes. They would fit easily under my usual cargo pants. I grabbed three pairs. I also found two short-sleeved shirts and one long-sleeved of the same kind.
“You finding any coats or anything like that?” Avian called from across the building.
“Nope,” I replied, scanning the racks around me with my flashlight.
“It was late spring when the Evolution started,” Bill said. “They would have stopped carrying that kind of stuff by that time. Especially here where you barely need a coat in the winter anyway.”
“Let’s check the back room,” West said. We all walked to the center aisle that cut through the building, leaving our findings in a pile on the floor.
There was a narrow hall that had changing rooms branching off of it, and at the end, there was a solid steel door. Bill, at the head of us, pushed it open and stepped inside. We had all shuffled in when Bill stopped short, covering his nose and reeling back.
The smell hit me.
I didn’t even see the source of the stench before I started gagging.
West lost his lunch to the side of me and I was just stepping out of the spray when I saw a tiny little foot poking out from behind a box.
“Avian,” I whispered when I heard a muttered moan.
We both leapt over the pile of boxes and then instantly froze.
There were two young boys lying in a nest of rags. One couldn’t be more than ten years old. His skin was ashen colored and covered in some kind of a rash. His stomach was swollen and bulging. There was a gaping bullet hole in his chest. He was obviously dead. He was the source of the smell.
And lying next to him, his chest barely rising and falling, was a child that looked about five.
Avian dropped to the younger child, pulling him into his lap. He held his fingers to the boy’s neck, feeling for his pulse. He too had a bullet wound, in the fleshy part where his arm met his chest. It looked deeply infected.
“Pulse is very slow,” Avian said, gathering the boy up into his arms. “He looks like he’s been starving to death, and infection has been eating at him too.”
It was true, the child was nothing but skin and bones. I took Avian’s firearm, slinging it over my shoulder as he stood, the boy in his arms.
“We’ve got to get him back to the hospital,” Avian said, already headed for the entrance. “He isn’t going to last much longer.”
“Bill, can you go with him?” I asked, watching Avian’s retreating form.
Bill simply nodded and followed.
By this point, West was on his hands and knees, dry heaving.
“Here,” I said, grabbing a shirt that was hanging out of a box. I ripped the plastic off of it and handed it to him. “Put this over your nose. It will help with the smell.”
“Thanks,” he said, his voice shaky. He spit on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He climbed shakily to his feet and tied the shirt around his nose and mouth.
“Better?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he nodded, taking a deep breath, hands on hips. He turned away from the body.
“I wonder what happened to them,” I said, looking down at the dead boy once again.
“I don’t think he’s the only body in here,” West said, shaking his head, still not looking at the boy. “The smell is too intense to be coming from just one small kid.”
I swore under my breath and started looking around. I didn’t have to search for long before I found who I assumed was the mother in another alcove of boxes. There was a hole blown through the side of her head and a handgun rested beside her. But she also had a massive bruise mark on her decaying skin, a perfect mechanical handprint on her forearm.
“Shit,” I breathed. “West! She was infected! Her boys could have been infected too before she shot everyone!”
“Come on!” West said, waving toward the exit. “We’ve got to get back to the hospital. Avian just picked him up!”
We darted back out of the building, gathering up the pile of supplies as we ran. We paused outside momentarily.
“They’ve got the car,” West said. “And we’re, like, seventy-five miles from the hospital!”
“Start checking vehicles,” I said, racing across the street to a parking lot. “Maybe we’ll find something with keys.”
“Eve,” West said as we started yanking car doors open. “You know if that kid was infected that it’s too late for Avian. He’ll get infected.”
I shook my head, my jaw set hard. “No,” I said as I checked another car. No keys. “There’s a chance the boy wasn’t infected. And if it just barely happened, he won’t be able to spread the infection for a few hours.”
But even as I made my argument, I knew it wasn’t true. Those bodies had been dead for days, maybe even over a week. If the kid was infected, TorBane would be fully saturated into his system.”
“Got it!” West shouted. He held up a pair of keys as a floor mat came tumbling out of the truck. “Get in!”
I hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. I tossed our supplies in the back seat. “You don’t know how to drive,” I said, my voice breathy.
“Today seems like a good day to learn,” West said, shoving the key in the ignition.
The truck clicked and sputtered. It had been a sitting, rusting dinosaur for six years. We’d been stupid to think any of these vehicles might start.
“Come on!” West shouted, pounding the steering wheel. He slammed one of the pedals with his foot and suddenly it roared to life. “Yes!”
“That there puts it into drive, I think,” I said, pointing to the stick on the side of the driving column.
West yanked on it and the truck jerked backwards and slammed into the vehicle behind us.
“Okay,” West said, shifting the stick again. “R stands for reverse. So D for drive?”