Duality (The Hitchhiker Strain) (5 page)

The other two guys had eventually
stumbled onto our fortified little haven, and our group clicked. Maybe it was because there was almost no one else in our age group still alive for miles, but something about us worked.

We spent all our free time together in the gym training for the day th
e adults would realize we were capable of helping too. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, weapons of choice, and exactly how to get under the skin of whoever was being the most obnoxious that day…which was usually me.

And I missed it every day.

Now my team is made up of Eduardo—who I’d guess is the leader and thankfully seems okay with having me tag along—my doctor’s son, and Liam. It’s still three guys and me, but I know it won’t ever be the same.

We come close to a dozen other towns and even a
few small cities as we drive but don’t bother stopping to search for supplies. We’re still in the heart of United Militia territory and there’s probably nothing left that they haven’t picked over. The wealth of America is now canned goods and an abundance of guns, and even those won’t last forever.

“
Are we there yet?” I joke.

“
Yup.” Dooley surprises me with his answer. It still looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere. “Five minutes out from our first stop, anyway. There’s a veterinary hospital near here that we’re supposed to check for antibiotics and a few other things.”

Eduardo adds, “
We’ll grab those then get back on the road for another couple hours before dark. We might need to switch cars, depending on what the gas situation looks like, but there’s nothing to worry about. Everyone gets a good night’s sleep at whatever house looks easily defensible. Then first thing tomorrow morning, we’re in Kearney.”

“
Sounds good,” I say. “Tell me what you need me to do and consider it done.”

Chapter 7 - Chelsea

Somehow, I wake up. I really didn’t expect to.

The fuzzy way my thoughts are moving through my mind tells me I must have been hit with a tranquilizer rather than a bullet
—but the idea seems absurd.

When I begin taking in my surroundings, things make even l
ess sense. I’m in the back of a van, my face turned up to the metallic ceiling. I shift slightly and catch sight of another unconscious body beside mine. Dead or alive, I can’t tell. Smells deadish, but that doesn’t mean much anymore.

My hands and feet are
bound and my head is so foggy that I barely know who I am, but I’m alive. I can feel my pulse everywhere as my body struggles to stay conscious. Everything hurts. My lungs, my skin, my arm especially—everything.

Even if the sad-looking boy didn
’t put a bullet through my brain, I’m not sure I’ll survive much longer. The beast is lurking in the back of my mind, prodding me to get away from our captors. If nothing else, we should be allowed to die on our own terms.

I use my limited energy to strain against t
he ropes that bind me, but either my captor is smarter than I gave him credit for or I’m even weaker than I thought. I grunt in frustration as the rough fibers dig into my skin, drawing the attention of whoever is sitting in the passenger’s seat—not the boy, but a woman who watches me with cold, clinical eyes. Without saying a word, she reaches back, awkwardly hanging over the side of her seat, and injects something into my neck. I try and snap my teeth, but there’s a gag sitting snugly in my mouth.

Too qui
ckly, I feel my body dropping away all over again.

I
’m jolted awake again when the sliding van door opens, letting daylight stream directly into my eyes. A man I don’t recognize steps into my field of vision, blocking most of the light, but my eyes are still burning and I can’t make him out. He’s joined by another.

This time, two sets of hands lift me into the air. One by the feet and another from under my arms. Everything I am struggles against their grip, but they never falter. Out of the co
rner of my vision, I can see the sad-eyed boy stepping out of his car. He looks up and sees me right as I’m carried into an elevator. The thought of working electricity is enough to clear all other thoughts from my mind. I didn’t expect to ever feel the now unfamiliar hum of electricity again.

More than anything, I want to put the pieces together and figure out what
’s happening to me, but nothing here makes sense. Nothing. This is a lot of trouble to go through to kill someone. Too much. It’s a kill-or-be-killed world now, and there’s no time for anything but survival.

No risks. No compassion. No hatred. No fear.

Who would take the time to plan something like this—capturing the infected, binding them, transporting them. Why?

I should be more panicked, but al
l I want to do is close my eyes again and go back to sleep. At least I can stop myself from doing that much. Whatever is happening to me, I don’t want to miss a single beat.

I manage to swing my weight enough to knock my feet into the chest of the bearded
man holding my feet, but he doesn’t even react. Instead, I’m unceremoniously dumped onto a gurney. I try and use the moment to wiggle free, but they grab hold of me easily; I’m far too slow now.

Someone else is strapping me down. Thick leather straps are t
ightened across my ankles, my hips, and then my chest. I push harder to break free, but I know it’s pointless. Still, we won’t surrender. I won’t give in to sleep. To death. The beast knows as well as I do that we don’t have much time left. The one thing we can agree on is that we aren’t ready. Even those of us hungry for destruction have an overriding urge to live.

I
’m only sixteen.

I wince when they peel my sleeve up off my arm. I lost my makeshift bandage somewhere along the way, and now my injury sits e
xposed for everyone to see. Talking to each other in hushed voices, the men leave. The sound of a metal door clanging shut and locking echoes through me.

I turn to watch the door but instead see a small crowd of people watching me. There
’s no privacy here. I’m in a cell, surrounded by heavy black bars, each about six inches apart. Being watched.

Three voices
talk over each other from outside my cage. All male, all excited.

What kind of sick place is this?

Why have you brought me here? I demand, but of course nothing comes out. My heart starts to thump dramatically against my chest. Is this fear or am I finally dying?

I won
’t give them the satisfaction of seeing the terror in my eyes or the way sweat has started dripping down my face. I turn away but try to still focus on what’s being said. I’d take any clue at all about what is in store for me, but my head is swimming so much that I can’t pick out more than a few words at once.

Ultimately they shuffle away, leaving me with at least the illusion of privacy, bu
t they don’t go far. Somewhere down the hall, another cell is opened.

My mind begins to wander, and I let myself get swept away in the haze. The
peace only lasts a minute before I’m ripped back to my reality by a blood-curdling scream.

Someone cl
ose by is being tormented by these people. The noise he’s making barely sounds human, and it won’t stop. He screams and screams and I can’t so much as cover my ears. I’m forced to listen to him endure who knows what. Medieval torture to atone for the lives he’s taken? Being fed to first-gens who will feed on us as readily as humans? Whatever it is, it lasts forever. Or maybe only minutes. His voice gives out before his torture does, and I can hear his breathing coming in distressed gasps.

It
’ll be me next. It has to be. My reward for everything I’ve done. Everyone I’ve killed. These people have brought me here to make me pay.

It isn
’t long before they come for me. Three scientists, gleaming like shiny new pennies in their sterile uniforms, their faces hidden under surgical masks and their eyes cold as steel. I want to scream and claw and bite. I can’t. All I have left in me is to focus on the quiet tears rolling down my cheeks.

I can smell the woman who approaches me before I see her
—ginger and smoke. She steps into my field of vision and proceeds to check my straps. She’s wearing a lab coat on top of her scrubs, as though that will make what she’s about to do to me more humane. Are these people doctors? I’m not sure if that should make me more or less afraid. There’s no time to figure it out because the leather strap around my hips is tightened a notch farther, squeezing me until I’m completely immobile. Can’t they tell I’m already dying? Do they really think I’ll be able to escape from this now?

The woman rea
ches into her jacket and pulls out a syringe. Is that it then? Death by lethal injection?

She takes the cap of the syringe and squirts a tiny amount out of the massive needle. I
’m holding my breath and my fingernails dig into my leg where my hands are tied down against my body. I want to loosen my grip—I do—but the beast needs something to fight against and my body is all we have left.

Strangely though, the more I concentrate on forcing my grip to relax, the more clearheaded I become
—not unlike when I first got this damned bite. The beast wants me to take over, to make this better, and to find a way to save us. But like a caged animal, it’s too desperate to give up control entirely. We’re nearly out of time, and I’m not doing enough to get us out of this.

There
’s nothing I can do.

The liquid insid
e the syringe is clear with the faintest tint of blue. The color is all I can look at as my warden approaches me. Her face doesn’t betray even the smallest hint of fear. It would seem I’m not the first monster these people have captured and she’s more than confident in her ability to control me.

Someone tears away the remaining fabric on my shoulder and swabs my arm, wiping away months of dirt and bacteria. I don
’t even bother to turn and watch. No, instead I’ll watch the substance that will be my final undoing.

“
Ready.” Finally, the doctor looks right at me. “This is going to hurt. And then it’s really going to hurt. The first time is always the worst.” Our eyes remain locked on each other, but I have no time to decipher her words before the tip of the needle is pressed against my skin.

I can feel every inch as the needle slips under my skin, but that pain is nothing compared to what
comes next. At first it’s a shooting pain down my arm, but the feeling quickly spreads. And amplifies. And burns.

Fire.

Ice.

A thousand pinpricks, all racing through my veins.

Stop! No. It’s too much. Please. I can’t take this anymore.

Someone help me!

Unlike my neighbor, I remain silent. I scream internally, my jaw locked together in an effort to fight back the agony. Then my back arches up so violently that I swear my spine will break. I hope it will.

Too much. Too much.

For once, unconsciousness would be a gift. Relief never comes.

Chapter 8 – Savannah

Our first day out ended up being
kind of boring but left me feeling on edge when we finally reached our destination the next morning. I'd left Initiative Headquarters expecting a fight and instead spent all of my time loading various supplies into a small moving van Eduardo had found in the garage of a long abandoned house. We found almost everything we'd been looking for in record time—Dooley and Eduardo had been doing this for months now and knew what was needed and where we had the best chance of finding it. I was just getting in the way until Eduardo set me loose in a department store to go to work picking out clothing. Members of the Veritas Initiative have a communal stockpile that they can all pick and choose from as needed.

A year ago, a shopping spree like this one would have been
a dream come true. Two hours to pick through the entire store, taking whatever I wanted at no cost. But there isn't a whole lot of challenge in shopping for seven hundred scientists. Everything I’ve picked out would fit
someone
, and I doubted anyone would appreciate my creativity when it came to their fashion choices.

At least Eduardo didn
’t question whether or not I could be trusted to take care of myself. We'd encountered both varieties of the infected when we'd cleared the vet’s office and some of the houses in Kearny. They were mostly people who had trapped themselves inside wherever they'd died. Never more than two in one place, and all easy to dispatch of, but it was enough for me to prove to this new group that I was capable of keeping myself alive. The superstore ended up being home to quite a few long-deceased locals too, so there is plenty to keep me busy as I wander aisle to aisle, moving quietly to avoid potentially bringing down an entire group at once.

While stuffing two shopping carts full of
clothing--all of which I'd have to fold later to make sure they took up minimal space in the van—it is hard not to think about the time Cole and I spent in a similar store when we first met. It seems like a lifetime ago. I'd been separated from my friends and we had to grab some bikes to speed up our progress, but we'd stopped for a break so I could cut his hair for him, a job that was long overdue. It was a strangely intimate moment to share between near strangers, and it was the first time I'd noticed that there was more to him than being the jerk who'd grabbed me off the streets of Ravencrest when he was trying to track down his uncle. The two of us got off to kind of a rocky start, but we've come a long way since then.

It
’s impossible to ignore that things have been rough between us for the last few weeks though, and I’m not sure what to make of it. We don’t fight or anything, but we don’t really talk either. Now that we’re both living in
his
world, with
his
friends, it isn’t really the same as before when we were on the run together. But I know I have a habit of getting restless. Being out here, doing my own thing again, and not having to rely on him to keep me company/busy/entertained/whatever all day, every day will make a big difference. And things are still way better with him than they were before we met—when I was stuck with a massive crush on Alex, who couldn’t see anyone but his girlfriend, Marybeth.

Once my cart is overflowing with polo shirts and jeans, I take the last ten minutes I have before L
iam is supposed to pick me up at the front of the store for myself, browsing the odds and ends that haven’t been picked through yet. All of the food is long gone or way past expiration, but there's an interesting selection of things from the world that came before. Odds are we'll never be coming back to this town, so there's no point in leaving any stone unturned. I grab a couple of books for Cole and a band shirt for Zack, already imagining their faces when I come home bearing gifts.

My mom used to travel
a lot for work, but she'd always come back with something small for both me and my dad. As soon as she got home from each trip, before even taking off her coat, she'd fish our presents out of her purse and hand them over. They were always something small and usually edible, but the ritual was part of the Cooper family identity. Maybe it's something I can start up with my friends now that I'll be going out more often.

On a whim, I jog over to the electronics section and grab a few CDs to give to my new tea
mmates for the drive back home. I hear something fall to the floor in a different section of the store. I’ve already killed four infected since I first pried open the automatic doors, but it’s a big store and I’m still not alone in here. Unwilling to stick around any longer, I grab a random selection and hope for the best.

I quickly roll one of my carts outside to the front of the store and head back to the men
’s section for the other, all the while feeling like the idiot heroine of any number of horror movies. Except I know if it comes down to me versus monsters, I’m a lot more capable than a helpless bimbo.

Two of the infected have found their way to my cart. Neither one looks like they
’ve been dead for long—they might have been hiding out in the store for months even before they died—but everything about them, from their stance to their smell, tells me they aren’t alive anymore. The taller of the two, a man, has lost an entire arm. His companion is a girl who looks like she was probably a couple of years younger than me when she died. All of her limbs are intact, but her throat’s been ripped out—the girl never stood a chance. I’d prefer not to have to take these two on since fighting could attract even more unwanted attention, but this has to be done.

Even now I still have to push the reminder that these two were once living, breathing people out of my mind. But I do it. Crouching down behind a display rack, I move in closer, looking for any opportunity to take
one down before they’ve even noticed where I am. For the sake of stealth, I want to avoid using my gun, but I make sure it’s easily accessible in its holster to be safe. Instead, I pull out a small knife from where it was strapped, sheathed, to my belt. The blade is almost ten inches long, attached to an engraved ivory hilt. I’ve used it before in sparring matches, but this will be the first real action it’s seen in a long time.

The girl smells me before I have the chance to attack, spinning to face me and
letting out a long, guttural moan. As she takes her first staggering step forward, the other turns to see what caught her attention and follows. Not even breathing, I hold my position as they approach me, shuffling but eager. As soon as they’re close enough, I reach out and grab on to a clothing rack, planning to use it as an anchor for my first kick. Instead, my weight sends it crashing down to the floor at my feet. Moving without thinking, I push against it with my foot, sending the entire rack sliding across the floor until it collides with the young female zombie. She topples to the ground in an undignified clump before getting tangled in hangers and winter jackets. The man, who drags his left foot, is a little slower but doesn’t stop moving to see what happened to his companion. I have half a second to duck down and stab my knife into the girl’s skull. The violence of her final death sends blood spewing up as I withdraw my blade, but there’s no time to be disgusted at the scene or myself before I have to dart back up and take a few steps away to avoid the next inevitable attack.

I pause again, letting the limping zombie catch up with me. Whenever possible, I prefer to let them attack first so that I can use their slow reaction time to my benefit. Just as
I expected he would, the man goes for my throat with a sudden jerk forward, his hands outstretched. I duck down before he can get a grip on my clothing and let his weight send him toppling over the arch of my back. I hear the
thunk
of his head hitting the linoleum but focus on moving away before I turn to assess the damage. Even before I look back to strike again, his moaning tells me the fall wasn’t enough to do him in.

Brain damage is a tricky thing. Sometimes it
’s as simple as a knock to the head, hitting just the right spot, or a swift kick to the temple. Sometimes you have to run them right through to make sure they’re really,
really
dead. This time it’s the latter. Thankfully, I have a plan B. Grimy fingers grab my wrist as I bring my weapon down but his grip falls slack immediately. Dead.

The knife comes up caked in innards as I pull it back out again and sends a splatter of brain matter sailing out to stain my clothing. Wonderful. Not that it matters at this point
—I’ve already been hit with all kinds of bodily fluid today. And I have no intention of sticking around to add to the collection. It’s well past time to get out of here.

I take one final look back to make sure I
’m not being followed as I scoot out of the store on the momentum of my cart. I reach the parking lot right when Liam pulls up.

“
Help me shut this again,” I snap at Liam right as he hops out of the van he’s brought to collect me and my haul.

He reacts right away, shooting a questioning look at me that I choose to ignore. Together, we u
se our weight to slide the door shut. I can’t lock it, and if there’s anything else still moving around in there, they can probably get out, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. We’ll be long gone before that happens.

“
Are you okay?” Liam asks in lieu of a greeting, his eyes trailing over the carnage that’s been left on my clothing.

“
Yeah, totally fine.” I feel a little soggy and my arm feels a little stiff, but there’s really nothing to complain about. I have to admit I look kind of gnarly though. There’s absolutely no way to come out of a fight with the undead looking like you recently stepped out of a fashion magazine.

“
Well, for the sake of both my nose and the upholstery, is there maybe something you could change into for the ride back?”

“
Right,” I say, letting out a chuckle.

I probably wouldn
’t want to sit in this for the whole ride back anyway. Thankfully, I left the clothes I picked out for myself right on the top of the pile. Going back into the store isn’t an option, so I turn my back to Liam and pull my t-shirt over my head without bothering to ask him to look away. Before wiggling out of my jeans, I look over my shoulder to see if he’s been watching. He’s staring right at me, looking more startled than sneaky. I clear my throat pointedly, catching his attention.

“
Do you mind?”

“
Not at all,” he responds with a wink but turns away without any further prompting.

I quickly throw on a new pair of pants and pop my shoes back on before letting Liam know it
’s safe to look at me again. My old, bloody clothes lie abandoned on the sidewalk.

“
Where to?” I ask once we’ve packed everything up and thrown it into the back of the van.

“
That’s it! We’re done for this trip. We have a few minutes before we have to meet up with the guys and then we’re on our way.”

“
Really?” We’ve filled up the pickup and the van to the point that they were both overflowing, but I assumed there would be more. “We’re not going to grab another van? Wouldn’t that take way more than the car?”

“
That car is Dooley’s baby. There’s no way he’s leaving it behind. And last I checked, you never got your driver’s license.”

“
Like that really means anything anymore,” I scoff.

“
Have you ever driven anything bigger than a car?”

“
Well, no.” In truth, I hadn’t had my learner’s permit for that long before the curfew went up, and teaching me to perfect my driving had been bumped right down to the bottom of my parents’ to-do list. It was yet another thing I’d had to learn on my own.

“
Then you’re not much good to us. Trucks aren’t so bad, but vans can be a little awkward to handle, and they’re pretty impossible to maneuver if you get them stuck somewhere. Some of the roads we cover are in pretty bad shape and getting worse.”

“
Yeah, yeah. I get it. Maybe you can show me the ropes at some point now that I’m not on house arrest anymore.”

“
I’ve never taught anyone to drive before, but I can give it a go.”

“
Awesome!” Learning to drive is one of those things I thought I’d never get the chance to do with the world the way it is now.

“
That’s a problem for another day. For now, it’s time to get back on the road.”

"Did you hear about Kansas?" Liam asks once the two of us are buckled in.

"No. I'm not exactly up to date on all the latest news and gossip." And now I'm curious. I used to spend time wondering how various states might have fared in all of this. I imagine Texas and California are kind of a mess—big populations and all that. Alaska is probably the nicest place to live in the U.S. now. Cold temperatures mean frozen Zs. New York City probably got the worst of everything—lots of people, cramped spaces, supplies that need to be imported from elsewhere. Kansas never even featured in to my train of thought. "What's up with Kansas?"

"Apparently they've got a militia of their own or something l
ike that. And it's big."

"Hmm." I bite into a stale chip from the stray snack-sized bag I found in the department store. "Is this a
‘random rumor someone heard from a guy who talked to his neighbor who overheard from a mysterious hitchhiker kind’ of thing?"