Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (4 page)

They all turned and looked toward the
back of the bus where the man lay shivering on the last seat.
Another series of muffled coughs rose up from beneath the pile of
old coats.

"Medicine, too," Jonah quietly added
to their list. "Antibiotics, if possible."

"We'll use them," Nami said, "but I
don't know about Jon. Before the Flense he was one of those
homeopathic types, never believed in modern medicines. Was always
into herbs and natural healing. He told me he lied on his job
application, otherwise they never would have let him
work."

Jonah scowled. "Time for him to change
his tune. If he's contagious, he puts us all at risk. And that baby
sounds like he's getting worse, too, so whatever we can find will
go toward helping us all."

"You still didn't answer my question,"
Nami said. "What can Allison and I do?"

Jonah turned to Harry. "You stay here
with your family and the rest of the group. Nami'll take your
place. Keep an eye out for movement. If you see anything, take the
bus and leave. Just go."

"And leave you behind?"

"If we hear the bus going, we'll know
something's up and we'll hunker down until things clear enough for
you to return. Assuming it's Wraiths—"

"What else would it be?"

"Assuming it's Wraiths," Jonah
repeated without answering, "you'll draw them out of town.
Hopefully." He pointed to the hatch in the roof of the bus. "If for
some reason you can't leave, climb up on top. Shout to let us know
you're in trouble. This town is small enough that we should hear
you."

He turned to Kari and Nami. "Make sure
to stay together. Watch each other's back. Return before it starts
getting dark."

Danny hesitated shutting off the bus,
then twisted the key. The engine chugged and coughed, then wheezed
into silence. Not a one of them didn't utter a silent prayer that
it would start up again the next time they needed it.

A few minutes passed, then Jonah
gestured to Danny and they stepped off. Each of them gripped a
heavy metal pipe in their hands.

Harry watched them go, then turned to
Kari. "As much as I thought the boy's father was an arrogant jerk,
and even disliked Jonah himself for acting the same way, I have to
admit he has some redeeming qualities."

Kari reluctantly nodded. "He's
decisive, assertive, capable. I just worry about the choices he
makes. That was Jack Resnick's biggest failing— he was reckless
when he got emotional. And stubborn."

She plucked a couple sturdy weapons
from the stack on the seat by the door and handed one to Nami, who
handed over his pistol to Harry.

"Whatever you do," Nami said, "fire
that only as a last resort. It seems to trigger the change in
them." Then he and Kari followed Jonah and Danny into the
town.

Harry nervously fingered the cold
metal on the barrel of the gun, feeling the places where rust had
begun to etch away at it. Nothing infuriated a Wraith more than the
deafening blast of a gunshot. Nothing made them attack with greater
violence.

He prayed he wouldn't have to use
it.

* * *

Danny would much rather have been anywhere other than where he was,
standing on the porch outside the door of an abandoned house. He
felt like bolting back to the bus and, indeed, his gaze did flick
up the road to where it was parked. Fifty yards, he estimated. He
could cover it in about ten or fifteen seconds.

"Hey!" Jonah hissed. "You with
me?"

Danny's attention snapped back.
"Yeah."

Jonah raised his pipe and nudged Danny
back as he tried the knob. It was locked. Nevertheless, the door
yielded when he pushed on it. He gave it a good shove and it popped
open. The splintering on the jamb around the deadbolt was proof
enough that someone had smashed through it before.

Someone, or
something.

The air inside smelled
musty.

Jonah knocked the pipe loudly against
the door frame a few times and waited, cocking his ear and leaning
slightly inside.

Danny shook like a leaf. He really,
truly did not like this. It was really dark inside the house. Too
dark.

"Okay, come on," Jonah whispered. "If
anything's in here, it would've come out and attacked us by now.
Shut the door behind you."

He stepped confidently into the middle
of the room, then disappeared into the next before Danny had taken
two steps. Danny cursed under his breath, but Jonah reappeared with
a chair in his hands. He wedged it beneath the knob. "So they can't
get in," he said.

"And we can't get out."

"Just kick it out of the way if we
need to leave in a hurry."

"Easy for you to say." Danny wasn't
sure he'd be able to remember under pressure.

"Open the curtains. Let in some light.
Come on, Danny, snap to it. We need to hurry."

They went room by room, opening and
inspecting cabinets. They spent the bulk of their time in the
kitchen and garage, giving the bedrooms a cursory check before
moving on.

But the small house had clearly been
scavenged already, and there was nothing of any use. Danny was
relieved that they hadn't found any bones in any of the beds, but
he was also disappointed that there was no car in the
garage.

"Guess Susan was wrong."

"About what?" Jonah asked, as they
moved onto the next building.

"Nothing."

They checked four more houses and what
looked like had been a general store before the sky grew noticeably
dimmer. All they'd managed to collect was a few cans of dog food
and a two liter bottle of cola that the solids had long since
precipitated out of. They decided to take their chances and stuck
it in the pack to bring back with them.

Kari and Nami returned to the bus a
few minutes after them. They had had better luck, finding more food
and water, as well as a few bottles of motor oil in a dusty shed.
They had brought it back, though Jonah said it wasn't enough to
last them the twelve or so more hours it would take to get to the
evac center. Yet despite their relative success, their mood
remained solemn.

"Didn't find any cars, just a truck
without an engine in the maintenance garage," Nami quietly said. He
glanced grimly at Kari, who echoed the look. "Looks like it had
been stripped clean of useful parts."

"So much for people going home to
die," Danny grumbled to himself. He didn't seem to notice the
frowns it brought him.

After the food and drinks had been
doled out and the children and some of the adults had returned to
their seats, Mister Blakeley drew the scouting parties together.
"Spill it," he quietly told Kari and Nami. "Yes, I noticed. What'd
you find?"

"Blood," Kari finally conceded. "In
the automotive shop. Lots of it."

"
Old
blood," Nami
clarified.

"I think we'd better get used to
seeing it," Jonah said. "Or did we forget what it was like at the
end?"

Nobody answered right away.

"It was more than just blood," Kari
said. "There were chains attached to the walls. It looked like
someone had locked people up inside and then—"

"We don't know that," Nami quietly
told her. "We don't know what happened in there or why."

But Kari pressed on. "The blood wasn't
new, but it wasn't three years old, either. And I don't know if
they were Wraiths or uninfected people that had been chained up. I
can't imagine why anyone would do that, but it's pretty damn clear
that something not . . . not nice happened in
there."

Jonah stood up. "I want to see for
myself."

"It's almost dark!"

The sun had now slipped completely
below the horizon, and shadows covered the land, filling the
canyons between buildings with a cold, dead silence. The inside of
the bus itself had grown dark enough that the figures sitting just
a few seats away were little more than huddled shapes.

"I'd rather check tonight and know
better what we're dealing with than to spend the night
wondering."

A pair of flashlights was all they had
for illumination, but he didn't want to take them from the other
passengers. He disconnected the cell phone from the bus's charger
and tested the light from the screen. It would do for what he
needed. He said he planned to be gone no more than ten
minutes.

"You coming, Danny?"

Danny swallowed dryly. "I should have
known you'd want company."

Finn came to with a start. And a pounding headache.

And immediately threw up the dried
nuts he'd eaten for breakfast into the pine needles beside
him.

"Smooth move, bro," Bix said, wiping
the splatter off his hand onto his pants. "Blech."

"What happened?"

"Try not to move," someone else
replied, a woman. She had a thick southern accent.

Finn attempted to get onto his feet,
then decided it was too soon and sat back down again. His head
spun. The pain was already receding, though it left his head
feeling—

Itchy. Like my brain
itches.

"What the hell happened," he asked
again.

"We thought y'all was feral," a male
voice replied. "Soon's I heard the shout, I knew y'all wasn't, but
by then I'd already pulled the trigger."

Finn raised his head from his hands
and squinted up at the strangers. The itchy sensation was gone now
too, vanished in a flash as if nothing had happened. Even the pain,
focused around a growing lump on his forehead, felt more and more
distant.

Before him stood a man and a woman.
They appeared middle aged, or so he guessed in the evening
twilight. Both carried a certain toughness about them, a ruggedness
that spoke volumes about how they'd managed to survive the past
three years in a world that had gone to hell.

Their clothes — jeans and denim
jackets, leather gloves and boots, cowboy hats, bandanas about
their necks — were functional without being showy. Both also
wore multiple sidearms strapped to their hips.

They stepped forward and kneeled down,
giving Finn a better look at them. The man was clean-shaven. The
woman had her hair pulled back and braided down to the middle of
her back. They both had smile lines at the corners of their mouths
and eyes, the latter twinkling with concern in the day's dying
light. Concern and not a little amusement.

Finn leaned instinctively away from
them.

"It's cool, man," Bix reassured him.
"They're cool. They didn't mean to hurt us."

"Y'all hit yer head," the man said,
his voice even thicker with accent than hers. The woman raised a
hand to touch the knot on his forehead, then withdrew it when Finn
flinched away again.

"What the hell did you shoot me
with?"

"Stun gun," the man replied. He patted
his hip. "Sorry, but I had to do it. Y'all know how it is. Shoot
first and ask questions later. Ain't the only way to avoid getting
the feral, but it sure is the quietest."

"Feral? What's that?"

The couple gave him a strange look.
"The sickness," she said. "Don't tell us y'all don't know about
it."

"You mean the Flense?" Bix
asked.

The man and woman exchanged glances.
"Ain't heard it called that in years," the man quietly said. "Since
the televisions and radios stopped reportin. Y'all been hibernatin
in a cave all this time? And how come y'all ain't got no weapons
sides those measly walkin sticks? Those things ain't no good if'n
you get surrounded." He looked at their packs and shook his head.
"No food, little water. Where y'all come from?"

"The d—" Bix started to
say.

"We had a place," Finn quickly jumped
in. He gave Bix's arm a warning squeeze as he struggled to his
feet. The throbbing in his head and the sick feeling in his stomach
flared, but only momentarily. The others stood with him. "It was
safe for a while, secure, but it's not anymore. We had to
leave."