The Hole (17 page)

They’ve got communications. So at least something is still working, somewhere.

She spoke too softly for Janet to hear, but the answer wasn’t long in coming.

“The general has given me the go-ahead,” the scientist said. “I’ll take you over there now. We’ll have to be quick…he gave me five minutes. But that should be more than enough time to put your mind at ease.”

It did anything but put her at ease. Mullins led them to a large field tent. The last time Janet had seen anything like it in size had been on a visit to a circus as a teenager. But there was little fun to be had here. Suited and hooded figures moved between rows of beds. There were over fifty
patients
, in varying degrees of mobility. Janet knew some of them to speak to, and recognized others by sight. But they all had one thing in common; the same blank stare that Janet knew all too well from the bar, the stare of victims.

She scanned the faces hopefully, but found none from the convoy that had been lost in the road collapse.

“Where are the rest?” she asked, scaring herself with the hitch in her voice and the tears that threatened to come. Seeing just how few had made it through the night finally made her realize the scale of what had unfolded. Her knees went weak and she staggered, having to use one of the camp beds to prevent her from falling.

Mullins was as her side immediately, and Janet heard both concern and fear in her voice.

She thinks I’ve been infected.

Janet managed to stand up, stiffened her back, and wiped the tears aside.

“
Where
are the rest?” she asked again, more insistent this time.

“This is all,” Mullins confirmed. “Apart from those of you in the bar, and the ones the general had stopped at the barricade.”

“
Stopped?
That’s a good word for it.
Murdered
is a better one.”

The scientist said nothing.

She disagrees with the general, on at least that point. That might be useful to keep in mind for later.

“Have you seen enough?” Mullins asked seconds later.

Janet nodded. The patients were being treated well enough. But she’d also seen the armed guards at all of the exits, and the tension in the men carrying the weapons.

There might be more folks getting stopped before the day is out.

15

Fred came awake with a start. He and the girl, Sarah, had slumped together, each of them keeping the other upright. She slept through his wakening.

And I didn’t dream, so that’s a bonus.

He looked down at the top of the girl’s head, at her mop of blonde hair. Although asleep, she still held his arm in a tight grip, and as he moved to change position her grip tightened, then loosened slightly when it was obvious he wasn’t trying to move away.

I don’t even know this girl.

But in a way, he did. He’d saved her life. And, although she didn’t know it, she’d probably saved his, or at least stopped him from going crazy, just by being there beside him. At least she had stopped him thinking about another blonde, and another mop of hair, the last sight as she fell away into the blackness.

Black thoughts tried to creep back in. He managed to move enough that he was able to get a smoke out of his pocket and light up without disturbing the girl any further, and the everyday act of getting the cigarette lit and going was enough to calm his mind, for a time at least.

The girl moaned and snuggled closer when he leaned forward to flick some ash off his smoke. He fought off a sudden urge to pet her hair again. Now that it was full morning, and the
authorities
, such as they were, were parked outside, Fred felt slightly better with his current lot in life. That was improved further when the sheriff put a fresh mug of coffee in his hand and sat beside him.

“Give us one of them smokes, lad,” the big man said.

Fred checked to make sure the sheriff wasn’t joking.

“You ain’t no smoker, Big Bill.”

“Not since I was your age,” the sheriff replied. “But today’s special. It won’t count.” The big man said the last with a grin, and Fred was surprised to find that he was grinning back. He passed the sheriff a smoke and lit him up. They sucked smoke in silence, before the big man leaned in and whispered.

“You saw something out back, didn’t you?” he said.

Fred didn’t speak, couldn’t get words to form.

“I saw it in your face,” Bill said. “You saw something, right enough.”

And there it was, just behind his eyes if he wanted to look, the old miner shuffling forward.

Fred is dead
.

“Was it another demon?” the sheriff whispered.

Fred thought about that for a bit before answering.

“You know what, Sheriff? I think that’s exactly what it was.”

* * *

Doc came back seconds later, and Fred was amused to see the sheriff grind out his cigarette on her blind side and wave the smoke itself away with the back of his hand before turning.

“Your turn, Bill,” Doc said. “And best leave the cigarettes here. It’s a no smoking lab over there.”

Bill grinned ruefully and gave Doc a peck on the cheek before leaving to join the armed men outside the door.

“So, what’s up, Doc?” Charlie said, and got a laugh from most of those present which defused the tension that had been growing.

“They seem to know what they’re doing,” Doc said. “And there’s some other folks from town over there in the big tent. We weren’t the only ones to get out.”

That statement caused a flurry of questions, about friends and family, that Doc was hard-pressed to answer. Some folks expressed a desire to move to the quarantine area, even after hearing Doc’s misgivings. As Fred expected, Ellen Simmons wasn’t one of them.

“I will
not
be held prisoner in my own town,” she said, and looked around for support. Charlie gave her a mock salute from behind the bar, but that was the only answer she got, and she sat back down, a look of thunder on her face.

The sheriff came back not long after that.

Charlie surprised Fred by volunteering to go next. “Maybe they’ll give me something for this headache,” he said, pointing at the vivid wound on his scalp. “The booze stopped having any effect a while back.”

Fred was further surprised to find himself fretting while the older man was gone, a gnawing worry sitting in his stomach that was only allayed when Charlie sauntered back in fifteen minutes later.

“Next!” he shouted.

One of the more seriously wounded went next, having to be helped by the guards in a slow shuffle to the trailer. He didn’t come back. The guards walked across the parking bay ten minutes later and rapped on the door.

“He decided to go to quarantine,” one of them said. “Who’s next?”

Ellen Simmons looked like she wanted to say something, but a look from Big Bill quickly stopped her, and one of the other wounded took the next turn.

The morning passed slowly. Fred felt no compunction to move, and Sarah showed no sign of waking up. He held her close, checking every so often that she was all right, and watched the people leave for their checkups. Some came back, some didn’t. Fred guessed they’d either been chosen, or even volunteered, for quarantine.

Ellen Simmons had other ideas, and after half a dozen had failed to return, she couldn’t keep herself quiet any longer.

“It’s a death panel, I’m telling you. We’ll never see any of them again; they’ll be dead and buried before you can say
Jack Robinson
.”

Charlie said it before Fred could.

“Ellen, if you don’t stop your mouth from running off, someone’s going to stop it for you.”

The woman was about to reply, but she chose that moment to look Charlie in the eye. There was something there she hadn’t expected, something Fred hadn’t seen before in the older man. There was a steely resolve, a certainty.

The soldier he used to be is even stronger this morning.

Fred was suddenly glad to be on Charlie’s side of the fence. The face he’d looked into wasn’t a man he wanted to mess with. It seemed Ellen Simmons had the same thought. She went quiet again.

The day wore on.

Finally there was no one else left who needed to get checked up.

“I already gave,” Ellen Simmons said dryly when Doc looked at her.

“Your turn,” Doc said to Fred.

He shook Sarah awake. There was a moment of panic in her eyes; then she looked up at Fred and smiled. Something melted in Fred’s chest, and he held her tight.

“The government men want to have a look at us,” Fred said. She stiffened at that, but he lifted her face up and looked her in the eye. “I ain’t going to let anyone harm you. That’s a promise. And I’ll be with you the whole time. That’s another promise.”

They stood and went to the door.

“One at a time,” one of the guards said.

“It’s both of us or neither,” Fred said.

“One at a time,” the guard said again.

“I heard you the first time,” Fred said. “So, neither it is.” He turned to lead Sarah back into the bar, half expecting to be shot. The guard surprised him.

“Come on then, both of you. Let’s get this over with.”

Sarah maintained her clinging hold on him as they headed out across the parking bay.

* * *

Sarah stopped suddenly at the entrance to the trailer.

“I ain’t too sure I want to do this,” she said quietly. Fred heard one of the guards step closer behind them.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he repeated.

“You’ll save me from the bears?”

He nodded, unsure how to reply, but it seemed to be all she needed. Hand in hand, they went up into the trailer.

The scientist, Mullins, Doc had said her name was, seemed amused at their pairing until Fred reminded her of how he’d met the girl.

“How are you feeling?” the woman asked Sarah.

“Your storm troopers shot her parents and damned near killed her too. How do you
think
she’s feeling?”

Things got a mite frosty after that. Fred endured the indignities of the tests. He had made a quick trip alone to the bathroom to collect his personal samples, wondering what mood the girl might be in on his return. She had been relatively calm then, but got increasingly agitated, and when she was asked to go alone to the small bathroom to give urine and stool samples, she refused point-blank to leave Fred’s side.

“Come with me,” she said, and looked up at him from eyes he was growing to realize he couldn’t refuse.

“I’m not sure that’s proper,” the scientist said as Fred took Sarah by the hand and led her along the trailer.

“I’m not sure I give a fuck,” Sarah said, and Fred had a big smile on his face as the girl led him into the bathroom.

* * *

There was only just enough space for the two of them to fit inside.

“Face the wall,” the girl said, even managing a small, sad smile. “I need you here, but I don’t need you seeing me do this.”

Fred did as he was told and stood with his nose to the door. He couldn’t plug his ears though, and he heard the sounds that accompanied her
sampling
clear enough. If Sarah was embarrassed at all, she didn’t show it.

“All done,” she said after a time. Wherever Sarah had been in her head, it seemed she was coming out of it. If Fred was worried that she might no longer need to lean on him, it was quickly quelled when she took his hand again as they left the bathroom. Sarah handed the samples to the scientist.

“You folks killed my ma and pa,” she said dully. “I’m only helping you because you need it to help the others. It don’t mean I like you, and when we get out of this, I’m going to be telling everybody that’ll listen what you did.”

“It wasn’t me…” the scientist started, until Fred put up a hand.

“Right. You’re only following orders. Tell it to your general. We’re done with listening to you.”

He led Sarah back to the bar. Her hand fit in his as if it belonged there.

16

The power in The Roadside gave out in midafternoon. Charlie had been trying to get a signal on the television above the bar. He jiggled the internal antenna, and at the same moment the lights went out.

“What did you do, old man?” the sheriff said.

“Weren’t me, boss,” Charlie replied. “I think a collapse might finally have took down the power lines out West.”

“Is there a generator in the building?”