Contain (25 page)

The passengers on the entire bus are
screaming now.

I look through the windshield just in
time to see the boy and his father flash past us on our right. The
infected are on their heels.

Somehow, the boy manages to grab the
handrail and leap inside. “Dad!” he screams. “Dad!”

An object hurtles past him into the
bus, striking the driver before bouncing into the aisle. He doesn't
react. His eyes are on the van in the middle of the road, guiding
us straight toward it.

I see a palm strike the
window two seats behind the door — the father is
running — and the son is standing on the step, yelling:
“
Run, Dad! Hurry!
”

“
Close the damn door! Close
the goddamn door!” someone shrieks.

The man's hand appears again, one
window closer to the front. The boy is leaning out, reaching,
grabbing for his father. But he's not going to make it! The
infected are almost upon him!

The driver reaches for the handle. His
fingers curl around it. He shouts at the boy: “In or
out!”

“
Hurry!” I
shout.

And then the two strangers are inside,
a jumbled heap on the stairs, and the door is slamming shut, trying
to shut, unable to shut. The man screams that his leg is caught.
Someone hurtles past me up the aisle. He reaches down and pulls
both father and son up the stairs.

“
Jonah!” the man behind me
screams. “Get back here!”

Then we hit.

Jonah is slammed against the
windshield. He collapses onto the floor. The van crumples, twists,
smashes against the granite wall beside us and explodes into
flames.

We swerve to the right, aiming
directly for the guardrail. There's nothing beyond but sheer cliff
and a raging river a hundred feet below us. We strike the metal,
and the protective cables snap, tearing out the posts and whipping
at the side of the bus, shattering windows, threatening to flatten
tires. The bus tips to the right as the wheels on the left lose
contact.

I tumble out of my seat, fall into the
aisle. Bags and objects fly through the air, ejected from the
overhead shelves.

But the road arcs in our favor, and
the driver maintains the line, bringing the tires back down. I'm
thrown back into the seat right before we sideswipe the cliff on
the left. The windows on that side explode in. Glass and rock and
bits of foliage strike us, pelt my face and arms.

Somehow, we manage to stay on the
road.

By the time we've descended the hill,
the driver has regained control of the bus. The dam is just ahead.
The infected things are far behind, a quarter mile, maybe. But
they're still coming, running, galloping. It's been a thousand
millennia since humans moved like that. They stop for nothing and
will reach us in another minute and a half. Then they will be upon
us. Our only hope is to keep going.

The boy, Jonah, picks himself up. He's
bleeding from cuts on his head and arms. His mother is frantic,
shrieking at him to get back into his seat. His father is roaring,
cursing the driver, cursing the two people we just rescued. But
nobody is listening to him. Nobody is listening to anything but
their own screams.

The driver lays onto the horn. He
angles the bus toward a chain link fence.

Ahead, I see a figure sprint from a
guard shack and pull open a gate just as we careen through,
catching the edge of it and wrenching it from its track. The guard
flies through the air, slams to the cement and skids fifty feet. He
doesn't move. The bus screams to a stop. The doors open.

A man with a rifle in his
hands shouts at us from the door. “Everyone off! Grab what you can!
Hurry!” He points to a cement ramp sixty feet away. “Down there!
Go! Go!
GO!
”

We run. Most of us are carrying
something, anything, just whatever was within reach as we leapt out
of the seats, leapt down the aisle. We leap off the bus and tear
for the bunker.

The van driver is at the head of the
pack, sprinting, his son's hand in his own, the guitar he saved in
the other. For a moment I hate the man, thinking how stupid it is
to care about such a thing as a goddamn guitar at a time like this.
How many times over the next three years will I be glad he
did?

I spin around as soon as I'm off the
bus. I need to find my dad. But he's not there. I pull away from
someone grabbing at me and lurch toward the back of the bus, where
I see him through a shattered window.

He's still inside, helping people who
were hurt. Up the aisle, the man who was sitting behind me, the
father of that kid who pulled the two inside, is blocking
everyone's way as he tries to dislodge a bag wedged into the
overhead compartment. I can hear him screaming that he needs it, he
needs his laptop computer.

I hear gunfire then. The infected have
come into view, a hundred feet from the gate. One falls in a spray
a blood. It's coming so fast that its momentum carries it another
twenty feet before rolling to a tangled heap on the tarmac, half
its skin abraded through to the raw muscle by the rough
cement.

Others are hit by the rounds; red pock
marks blossom on their bodies, chests and faces and necks, spraying
more blood, and yet they keep coming. They reach the fence and
begin to climb over it.

The man on the bus is still fighting
for his bag.

The backdoor explodes open.
My father is first to jump out. He lifts a girl down, then a small
boy, then another boy. Then come the adults. “Run, Finn!” he cries,
his eyes locking on mine. “
Get out of
here!
”

He jumps back onto the bus.

My chest feels like it's being
squeezed in a vise. My throat is a straw, then a swizzle stick. My
vision has narrowed to a pinpoint, yet somehow I run.

I'm barely aware of the security doors
slamming shut behind me as I throw myself into the unlit hallway. I
glance up in time to see the last of us slip through. The man who
needed his computer is there, his face red.

But the driver is missing. And so are
several other passengers, including my dad.

I don't know where I am. I don't know how I got here. It's dark,
that's all I know, at least for the eternity it takes me to release
the air in my lungs and suck in another breath.

I'm lying on my back. It's dark and
the air is still. I smell . . . blood.

I hear nothing but my own blood moving
inside of me.

The first thing I do is stretch my
fingers out on the floor beside me. It's some sort of rough
material, a thin, plastic woven mat. Then I remember the scene down
on Level Six, and I realize I'm still in the bunker, although which
floor, which room, I can't tell.

The turbines still aren't on. There is
no light.

Slowly, painfully, I get to my feet.
My ankle won't hold my weight, and I fall down again, crack my knee
on the cement. Something drips into my eyes, and when I touch my
forehead, the pain is immediate and intense. I've reinjured the
wound I received falling down the stairs.

Today? Yesterday?

“
Hello?” My throat hurts.
“Anyone there?”

A rustle of sound, just on the limits
of my senses. I freeze.

“
Who's there?”

Nothing. Just my
imagination.

Where the hell am I? How
did I get here?

I reach out, feel a wall. Fingers
spread, I slowly sweep my hand over the surface, searching for the
door. I'm totally blind. A paper dislodges, flutters to the
floor.

Where is
everyone?

I hiss as I step. My ankle twists, and
I drop, instinctively rolling to protect my knee. “Damn
it!”

And then someone is grabbing me,
grabbing my shirt, yanking me upright again. I feel my feet leave
the floor. For a second I'm treading air. I shout out in alarm.
“Let go of me!”

Then I'm standing again, leaning
against the wall, supported by it, and the hands are off of me. I
wave my arms around, but no one's there.

“
Mister Resnick?
Dad?”

I can't tell which way is up, which
way is out. The darkness is utterly disorienting. I try to scramble
away and don't even realize I'm falling until my shoulder hits and
the air is knocked out of me.

“
Help!”

Once more, I'm jerked upright. On my
cheek, the humidity of an exhale. I lash out, but my fist meets
nothing.

“
Jack?” I say. My voice is
shaking like mad. “J-jonah?”

I feel like I'm going to be sick.
“Who's there?”

Pressure builds inside my head. I
wince at the pain and cough. “What do you want?”

Something moves somewhere inside the
room, the sound of skin against skin, the slap of a naked foot on
the floor.

“
Eddie?
”

“
You're safe, Finn. I won't
hurt you.”

Hearing him speak I almost lose
control of my bladder.

“
W where are
you?”

“
To your right.” His voice
is soft, no hint of insanity or rage or the damage the steam did to
him.

I turn my head a bit, though I still
can't locate him. Either the hit to my head has screwed up my ears,
or the walls of the room are warping his voice.

“
No, not quite that much,”
he tells me.

I turn a little to the
left.

“
Don't try to move. You'll
hurt yourself.”

How can he tell where I'm looking? I
can't even see an inch in front of my face. To prove it, I wave a
hand. I can feel the air moving across my cheeks, but I'm
completely blind. How can he see me?

“
My eyes,” he says,
answering my thoughts. “I can see in the dark.”

I suck in a sharp breath.

“
Well, it's not totally
dark. There's the slightest phosphorescence, some kind of mold on
the walls. It's enough for me to see by.”

My heart is beating a million times a
minute. What has happened to him? Is it because of the things
inside his body?

“
Can you read minds,
too?”

He chuckles, and the sound sends a
shiver up my spine. “No, I can't do that.”

“
How then?”

“
My senses have become so
much sharper than they've ever been. Eyesight, hearing. even my
sense of smell is sharper. I'm . . . . I'm just
better.”

Better? I'm not so sure about that.
After the horror I saw on Level Six, better isn't the word I'd
use.

“
What do you want with me?”
I ask.

I start edging my way to the left,
away from where he says he is, even though to my ears he sounds
like he could be anywhere, everywhere.

“
There's no reason to be
frightened. As I said, I won't hurt you.”

“
No? Then what about Doc
Cavanaugh? Why did you take me from Level Six?”

“
You were in danger, Finn.
Jack Resnick has lost it. He was choking you.”

“
He thought I killed the
doctor.”

“
He was wrong.”

Because it was
you!

“
He won't bother you
anymore.”

“
What does that mean? What
did you do to him?”

Eddie doesn't answer.

“
Did you kill him? Did you
kill the doctor?”

“
No.”

He's lying.

“
Then you have to come
back.”

“
They won't understand,
Finn. They fear what I've become. Our visitor, too. I heard what he
said. But he's wrong.”

“
What have you
become?”

“
Better. I told
you.”

I scramble to my feet, my heart
gripped in sudden terror. I reach out and my fingers find the door
jamb. The knob.

“
Listen to me, Finn. I've
been doing a lot of thinking, and I've come to a conclusion. This
place isn't safe.”