The Remaining: Refugees (34 page)

“Chemicals in the body can play a part. For instance
,
some races produce more testosterone than others. Certain people are more capable of accessing instinctive memories. Some people are genetically predisposed towards violence. Physiologically, some people can eat certain things, including raw meat, and others cannot.” He smiled faintly. “We’re not all as homogenous as our previous popular culture would have us think.”

“So…” Harper closed his eyes and tried to think. “Some people are naturally better at being
an infected
. Is that what you’re saying?”

Jacob
watched smoke rise from the stick
. “
Essentially…yes
.
G
enetic predisposition
s
. While they are not evolving in the sense of growing tails and cat’s eyes to see at night, it is an evolutionary principle that we are seeing take place here
:
Survival of the fittest.” He rammed the stick into the dirt and looked at the two men, his eyes
glistening in the firelight
. “You have to understand that civilization has been breeding the survival instinct out of humanity for generations upon generations. Survival is based upon aggression, but aggression
is rooted out
in
modern society
. If a modern human being is then infected with FURY and the bacteria eats through its frontal lobe, all it has left to rely upon are its animal instincts. The
more intact those instincts are
the more successful that human will be at surviving. The instinctively weak will become food for the instinctively strong.”

That hollow feeling was back in Harper’s stomach. “How do you figure out which ones
are instinctively strong?”

Jacob
scratched at the crook of his neck with a single, long finger
. “
Obviously a person that was athletic when they got infected will be more able to catch prey. Some people see better than others, some people hear better than others,
and
some people smell better than others.
Then there will be people that exhibit several of these…survival attributes
.
If I’m correct, then what Captain Harden saw in the hunters was just the cream rising
to the top
, so to speak.
”

“I don’t believe this,” Bus mumbled.

Harper tilted his head back a bit. “What area of science did you say you were in?”

Jacob smiled, patronizingly. “Microbiology on all my paperwork. But genetics is something of an interest. I’ve probably done enough research on my own time to constitute a doctorate.”

Harper clenched his jaw. “
Y
ou can tell us all about the genetics, but you can’t tell
us where the bacteria came from?
”

Jacob’s expression soured a bit. “A large part of genetics is simply observing and understanding key characteristics, whereas microbiology requires a lab. It is, by definition, the study of things that can’t be seen with the naked eye.” He sniffed. “Hence the ‘micro’ in microbiology.”

Harper loaded a retort, but was stayed by Bus’s voice.

“So this isn’t going away.” Bus
said
. “They’re not just gonna…die out.”

Jacob looked at the big man with something akin to pity. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

***

Thirty miles away in Broadway, the discussion was much less detailed. Lee and his team asked the same questions, but mostly had no answers. A few people had some theories, but none worth seriously considering. In the end, the discussion of what Lee and LaRouche had witnessed petered out in about
five
minutes.

They ate cold MRE’s for dinner and bedded down for the night. There was no joking and no quiet laughter in the darkness, as there usually was. They were all serious and stone-faced, lost in thoughts of what had been, and
what
was still to come.

Jim had the last watch and he woke them two hours before dawn.

They ate a hasty breakfast and Lee took a stick and began to draw in a patch of dirt, using the light from a single gas lantern. What he produced was a reasonable facsimile of the intersection of Wicker Street and Steel Street. Lee used small stones to illustrate buildings, and shallow lines in the dirt to show roads. As he finished, his team gathered around him, some of them still eating or drinking, but all of them geared up and ready to go.

Lee knelt down on his haunches and pointed to each item and named it. “This is the intersection of Steel Street and Wicker Street in Sanford. The southeast corner is where the suspected den is located. It’s a tan-ish, sandstone-colored building. Two stories.” He moved his pointer. “On the northwestern corner is the building we’ll be taking. It’s an apartment building, and it
’
s about…” He looked to LaRouche. “What would you say?
Five or six
stories?”

“
I counted six
.”

“Six stories then.” Lee swept the pointer down along what was Steel Street. “We’re gonna come in from the north, since we didn’t see any activity in that section during recon. We’ll park the Humvees back a few blocks and hoof it in to the apartment building. Once we’re on the roof, we’ll overlook the southern-facing wall and set the traps right here.” He circled the street in front of the building.

“Uh…” One of the
guys from Jeriah Wilson’s group
popped his hand up
. A short, red-headed man-boy that everyone had originally taken to calling Lucky Charms, and now just referred to as Lucky
. “Isn’t that a little close to the den, Captain?”

“Yes.” Lee pointed to it. “I want it close, because as soon as we take out the infected, we’re going to go in and see what’s inside that den.”

The group grumbled, but no one spoke up.

Lee nodded with a small smile. “
I know it sounds unnecessary, but from what we saw ye
sterday, it seems the infected a
r
e
storing up food there and are very protective of it. I would like to see what’s inside.”

“Won’t the food be tainted?” Wilson looked disgusted at the prospect of eating food from an infected den.

Lee shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Things like canned goods should be fine. Besides, who knows what else they’re squirreling away up in there. It’s worth a look.”

LaRouche nodded. “It might also give us some insight into how the infected work.”

Lucky
sneered with sarcasm. “What is it, a fucking safari?”

“It’s called intelligence,” Lee said evenly. “And you’re welcome to stand guard outside if you don’t want to go in.” He tapped the stick across his knee. “Does anyone else have any questions or concerns before we get going?”

Ten people shook their heads and remained silent.

Lee stood up and flexed his stiff ankle. “Then let’s get going.”

*
**

They moved silently along Horner Boulevard, a road that paralleled Steele Street. Their boots, even the ten pairs of them moving in tandem, made only the barest of whispers across the concrete
, and their presence inside this small burg created no more stir than a moon-cast shadow sliding between the dark places between buildings.

Lee had never taught them how to move stealthily, whether in the cities or in the woods. By the time they’d joined his team, they had all learned everything there was to know about avoiding detection. The infected had taught them, and the thieves and the murderers that stalked the roads. Mistakes were paid for in blood and the lives of the ones that you loved, so you learned quickly, or y
ou paid dearly.

No do-overs.

No second chances.

Though they lacked the overall discipline and knowledge of a military unit, when Lee considered the world around him and the social collapse they had all survived
, and thought of it
as a proving ground
with an attrition rate of ninety-percent, it made these select few more qualified to survive and operate in this world than even the best the military had to offer.

In these moments of clarity, crouching silently at the corner of a red brick building, with an old blue mailbox to his left and a leathery, skeletal corpse to his right, when his eyes scanned down these dim streets and saw the shapeless shadows of his team moving in a tactical column, Lee felt an immense pride. Not the pride of the teacher looking at his students, but the privilege of a man who is astonished at the capabilities of the people he fights alongside.

Lee watched them for a half-second longer before turning his gaze south again. These moments were always fleeting in the midst of his work, like shapes in a cloud quickly swept away by the wind. The brief thought was swallowed by the night once more and he was refocused.

He stood at the corner of Horner Boulevard and Carthage Street. Ahead, LaRouche was on point this time and he was on the southern side of Carthage Street, near the alley that led to the rear of their target building. He move
d to the mouth of the entrance
, and put his shoulder to the corner, leaning out partially to get a view of the dark area behind the buildings.

Lee watched, his rifle resting on his knees. He waited for the signal for the rest of them to move up, but LaRouche seemed
to be fixated
on something. Impatiently, he wanted to call out to him, but he knew it would be unwise. You had to trust your point man. His whole purpose was to feel out the danger, so if he needed an extra minu
te, he got it.

Lee scanned east and west on Carthage Street, then north and south along Horner Boulevard. Behind him, the others crouched quietly, spaced out along the sidewalk with Wilson taking up the rear and dutifully facing the way they came.

No threats.

Lee turned back to LaRouche and found the sergeant looking at him.

LaRouche held up a
hand and signaled them with a wave.

Lee reached behind him and tapped Jim, who was next in line. “Moving,” he whispered.

The tap and word was repeated all the way back as Lee stood and quietly made his way across the street to join LaRouche. Once at the corner, LaRouche gave him a palm to signal to slow up a little, then held a finger to his lips. Lee turned and
held up a finger to everyone else. They moved to positions along the store fronts, glancing uncomfortably through the shattered windows at the dark interiors of the businesses.

Lee leaned in closer to LaRouche, who had refocused his attention down into the alley. They spoke in soft whispers.

“You got something?”

LaRouche nodded. He switched positions with Lee so that the captain was at the corner and leaning out slightly. He pointed to the end of the alley, where the small parking area terminated in the back of their target building, and the steel door they had jimmied the day before.

“You see it?” LaRouche asked. “Leaning up against the door?”

Lee squinted into the darkness.

Something was there, slumped
in the shadows
. His first impression was of a person, sitting with their back up against the
door.

“Fuck,” Lee breathed. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“What’s it doing outside of the den?”