Fred started to drop himself, feet first, through the window. The girl moaned, then yelped in pain as he squeezed past her. His feet landed on something soft.
I’m standing on her mother.
He pushed the thought away and forced his attention on to the job at hand.
It took some contortions by Fred and some heavy lifting from the sheriff, but they managed to get the girl out of the truck, and Fred was more than happy to climb out after her. He didn’t look down, even when his footing gave way and slid from under him. He grabbed the lip of the window and hauled himself up, taking in huge gasps of air that tasted as sweet as a hit of sugar. He helped the sheriff take the girl’s weight and they were in the process of lowering her to the ground when a shout came from behind them.
“Get back in the bus, please. Turn around and go back to town.”
Fred had heard that tone already, back at the barricade. He knew what he was going to see even before he turned.
A row of men in hazard suits walked out of the forest. They were spaced ten yards apart and the line stretched off into the dark for as far as Fred could see. All carried automatic rifles, and the nearest had his weapon pointed straight at them.
“This girl needs hospital treatment,” the sheriff said.
“Get back in the bus, please. Turn around and go back to town.”
“Change the record,” Big Bill said. “Can’t you see she needs help…”
His pleadings were cut short by a short burst of automatic fire. Dirt and pebbles flew from the ground at their feet.
“Get back in the bus, please. Turn around and go back to town.”
Even then Bill looked like he was going to make a stand, until the girl in their arms moaned, coughed and expelled a mouthful of blood.
“Maybe Doc…” Fred said, trying not to stare at the man holding the weapon on them.
Big Bill spat at his feet.
“Maybe,” he said. The sheriff took the girl’s weight, lifted her in his arms and without another word turned back to the bus. Fred had one last try.
“We just want to get to safety,” he said.
“Get back in the bus, please. Turn around and…”
Fred raised a hand and turned away.
“I know…go back to town. Do us a favor, would you? Come and look for us in the morning…if there’s any of us left.”
He followed the sheriff back to the bus.
12
Bill and Fred carried the girl onto the bus and laid her out on the floor beside Charlie. Passengers stood and gathered round until Bill moved them away. Janet pushed her way through.
“Give Doc some space,” he said. “This girl needs treatment, and she needs it now.”
As ever, the sheriff’s tone was enough to get them all back into their seats, but there was a new buzz of conversation around her as Janet knelt at the stricken girl’s side.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked.
The girl tried to speak. Fresh blood bubbled at her lips and Janet was kept busy for the next few minutes trying to assess the damage. The girl was in distress at first, but calmed somewhat as the tranquilizer that Janet administered started to take effect.
The girl only spoke once, just as she was going under the influence of the drug, and it didn’t make much sense to Janet.
“Watch out for the bears.”
Then she went under, her breathing finally slowing and heart rate coming down enough that Janet felt safe in doing a full examination. At first she was worried the girl might have internal injuries, but the blood in her mouth proved to be from where she’d bitten into her tongue. She also had deep bruises from where the seat belt had grabbed at her shoulder and a graze on her knee that had taken the skin off almost to the bone. But Janet was finally able to sit back on her heels and look up at Bill.
“She’ll live,” she said.
“Well, for the same time as the rest of us anyway,” Bill replied, grimly. “Although I ain’t too sure it’s going to be for long.”
Janet knew that Charlie had turned the bus around and driven away from the woods, but after that she’d been busy with the girl.
“Where are we headed?”
Bill looked tired and worn.
“We’re thinking maybe The Roadside
.
It’s on the far edge of town from the collapses, at least the ones we’ve seen so far. It’s either that or just stop where we are and wait it out, but folks will need toilet trips, and water, and…”
She put a hand on his arm.
“The Roadside sounds like a good plan to be getting on with. Once we get there we can regroup, come up with a strategy. It’s only a couple of hours until morning.”
The rest of the passengers looked shell-shocked and resigned—apart from one. Ellen Simmons stared at Janet with something that looked like pure venom.
I wonder what slight I’ve given her now?
Whatever Ellen Simmons’ problem was, it was minor in the current scheme of things. She checked on her other patients, making sure most were at least comfortable, and when she next looked up, Charlie was bringing the bus into The Roadside car park.
* * *
Janet spent the next five minutes making sure everybody got off the bus safely before recruiting Fred’s help with the girl. The youth was only too happy to oblige, taking most of the weight as they walked across the short stretch of parking lot and into the bar. They got her into one of the padded seats against the wall. She was still out cold, but started to stir as they stood back, carefully, each waiting to move quickly if she showed any sign of either falling off the seat, or waking in a confused state.
Most of the patients were subdued and quiet, cowed by what the night had brought upon them, but it didn’t take Ellen Simmons long to make her presence felt once everyone was gathered in the main bar area.
“I never thought I’d see the day when we had a coward for a sheriff,” she said, loudly so that everyone was sure to hear. She stood in the center of the bar, hands on hips. “I’d be thoroughly ashamed of myself if I was you, Bill Wozniak.”
“I could say the same right back at you,” Bill said sharply, then shook his head and raised a hand. “No, sorry, I didn’t mean that. We’re all tired and…”
Ellen Simmons barked a laugh.
“See. You ain’t even able to insult me properly. We need strength and leadership here, not somebody turned into a moon-eyed boy by the charms of a Jezebel.”
Charms of a Jezebel?
Janet thought.
I rather like that.
Bill went red at that, his fists clenched. He strode forward towards the older woman, and for a second Janet thought he might hit her. Instead he stopped six feet from her, and took a deep breath, looking for calm before replying.
“And what would you have had me do, Ellen?” Bill said. He spoke softly, but everyone in the room heard him.
“Your job,” the woman said. By now she was almost shouting. “You should have got us to safety. That’s what we pay you for.”
Janet’s mouth ran ahead of her thinking, and she spoke up when it was obvious that Bill wouldn’t rise to the bait.
“And I suppose you’d be happy if we all got killed in the process?”
“Pah,” the woman said. “They wouldn’t have killed us.”
A small voice spoke up.
“They done killed my ma and pa.”
The bar fell quiet, and everyone turned to look. The girl was awake. She looked pale, almost gray, but she sat up straight in her seat, and Janet was pleased to see that the flow of blood from the injured tongue had stopped and that the wound wasn’t bad enough to stop the girl from talking.
“Shot Pa in the head,” the girl said. Janet moved towards her, but Fred Grant beat her to it. He sat down beside the girl and put an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t protest.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” he said softly.
She shook her head, and looked determined.
“That old bat don’t know what she’s talking about,” the girl said. Janet was watching Ellen Simmons, and had to hide a grin at the look that crossed the older woman’s face as the girl continued. “They done shot Pa, and all he did was try to drive up the track. Ma’s dead too, I guess, if she ain’t here.”
Everybody in the room went quiet at that. The only noise was the soft sound of pouring liquid as Charlie helped himself to a beer. Janet realized for the first time that she knew the girl; Sarah Bennett, a quiet girl of nineteen or so who normally sat in the waiting room while her mother, Agnes, got her weekly diabetes checkup. She’d never heard the girl speak before now. But now that’s she’d started, Sarah was in no mood to stop.
“Pa weren’t in no mood to take any shit,” she said. “Not after the barns got ate up by the holes and the bears started to growl. We got out of the farm like lickety-spit and headed for Aunt Ellie’s over the hill. She’s waiting for us. She’ll be so worried…”
Her eyes widened and her eyelids fluttered. Afraid that the girl might faint, Janet was on the move, but before she could reach them, the girl started to sob. Fred Grant tightened his grip on her shoulders. She leaned her head against his chest, then seemed to gather some resolve to speak again and looked up.
“Pa was never one for obeying the feds,” she said softly. “And he weren’t about to start now. So when they stopped us at the forest track, he cursed them, long and hard. Ain’t hardly ever heard Pa use language like that when he hadn’t had a drink, but by then he was as angry as a bag of squirrels. The men with the guns told us to turn around and go back to town, and then Pa told
them
where to go, and tried to drive through. They shot him in the head. He was driving, and they shot him in the head. We hit a stone at the side of the track and…”
She didn’t have to say any more. Everyone present had seen the truck on its side, and could imagine how it got that way. The girl pressed her face against Fred Grant’s chest and started to sob again. He patted her hair awkwardly and looked more than a little embarrassed. But he didn’t draw away, holding the girl until her sobbing subsided into a muffled sniffle.
Even Ellen Simmons had the good grace not to fill the silence with her rancor.
Once it was clear that the girl was done talking, Janet turned to Big Bill.
“Who are they? The men in the suits?”
Bill shrugged.
“Feds? FEMA? Or maybe the CDC?”
That gave Janet pause for thought. If it were the CDC, it would explain the extreme measures being taken to contain the townsfolk.
“They think it’s an outbreak?” she said. She tried to keep her voice low, but Ellen Simmons heard her.
“An outbreak? Like in that film?” the older woman shouted. “Well that settles it. I’m not waiting here for the government to kill me off or for some filthy foreign disease to eat me up.” She looked to Big Bill again. “I demand that we get out of here. Right now.”
Big Bill walked over to her and put the squad car keys in her hand.
“There you go, Ellen. You know where I left it. Good luck.”
The sheriff turned back to Janet, leaving the Simmons woman to splutter behind him.
“Let’s say it is an outbreak,” he said. “What happens next?”
She thought back to everything she’d read in the sporadic bulletins the government medical officers sent out to town doctors. It wasn’t much, but Janet knew there were strict procedures in place for such eventualities. She just never expected to be on the receiving end of them. Bill was still waiting for a reply.
“After containment, they’ll start to come into town to take samples,” she said. “Probably not before sunup, when they can get a clearer picture of the extent of…whatever this thing is.”
Bill nodded.
“About what I thought. Let’s take inventory and squat down here. At least until we know what’s what.”
Another thought struck Janet.
“Bears,” she said. Bill looked at her quizzically, as if she’d suddenly gone mad.
And maybe I have.
“Sarah said there were bears. My guess is for her it’s bears. For you it’s devils, for me it’s little gray men. Too much X-Files, I guess.”
Fred Grant looked up at that.
“And for me it’s ghosts.”
“I see where you’re heading with this,” Bill said. “We’re all projecting our own fears, is that it?”
“Something like that. If the CDC is here, it could be a chemical agent, acting on our brains.”
She’d momentarily forgotten that others were listening. Within seconds the room was full of animated conversation, those who were able to relating all of the weird shit they had seen at the time of the collapses.
“I done told you already, it were black helicopters.”
“No…Ruskies. I saw them, clear as day.”
“Weren’t no Ruskies. Not unless Ruskies can grow fangs and make their eyes glow in the dark.”
It seemed Janet was indeed onto something. Each person that had seen something had experienced it in a different way from anyone else.