Infected (17 page)

She bolted around the lot, a string of bullets following at her heels. At the van, she squeezed into the narrow space between it and the brick wall. Trying the door, she found it was locked, but the window was partly open. She reached in, the top of the glass cutting cruelly under her arm, grabbed the handle, and yanked.

Carina jammed the door open as far as possible, squeezing inside the passenger seat and grunting as her ribs were
compressed between the door and the body of the van. She pulled the door shut behind her and crawled into the back. The metal floor was cold and hard on her knees, and the interior smelled like cigarette smoke and burned coffee. She looked around frantically for a weapon of any kind, but all she found was an empty coffee cup that had rolled under one of the seats.

Something was pressing against her hip—and suddenly Carina remembered the dart gun. How could she have forgotten it? She jammed her hand in her pocket and pulled out the gun. It was small and black, barely bigger than a water pistol. She could see the cartridge fitted into the barrel, which was open on the sides. A greenish liquid filled the tiny tube. The gun was simple in design; there was only the trigger, and a small slide that she figured was the safety. She snapped it forward just as something struck the side of the van and it rocked with the impact.

Someone shot out the driver’s side window. Much more efficient, Carina had to admit as she cowered behind the backseat, than wedging himself through the passenger door as she had. She watched a hand, muscular and thick, grope for the door handle and yank it open.

The huge bald man climbed into the driver’s seat. He was too big to squeeze easily past the steering wheel, which must have frustrated him, because he let loose what sounded a lot like cussing in another language, spraying the floor of the van with bullets as he forced himself between the two front seats.

Carina knew she had only one chance. The minute he
saw her, she was dead. She blinked, and an image of her mother—she’d aged so much, in that one year she had been away—flitted through her head. There were faint lines around her eyes, and there was a softness to the skin along her jaw. Her mother had suffered, and Carina, who had always wished for affection and warmth from her distant mom, realized the love had been there all along. Madelyn had simply never known how to show on the outside what she felt on the inside.

And now she was dead. And the man in front of Carina was one of her killers.

The fury inside Carina was suddenly unrestrainable. She rose to her knees, a guttural, furious cry escaping her lips, and with two hands aimed the pistol directly at the man’s round, oily face.

She wasn’t much of a shot. The gun bucked in her hand, and the dart lodged in the man’s throat. He dropped his gun, pressing his hands to his neck, making a sound like air whooshing out of an inner tube. His lips moved as though he was trying to talk, and his eyes went glassy. Foam bubbled from his lips. He began to sink to the floor, his knees going out from under him.

Carina didn’t intend to stick around to see what happened next. She thought about trying to get his gun, but he had collapsed on top of it, his breath coming in shallow gasps. There was no way she could move a man of that size—and besides, who knew what he was capable of, even in his compromised state; he looked like he had enough power in a single hand to strangle her.

Carina yanked up the lock and slid the side door open a few inches, staying behind it and wincing as she anticipated a hail of bullets.

But there was nothing. Far in the distance, she could hear sirens. Across the parking lot were the Dumpsters, but no sign of the second gunman. Glass littered the ground next to the van, and she stepped down cautiously, her shoes crunching on the shards.

Crouching low, she ran to the Dumpsters, praying that the gunman wasn’t waiting for her behind them. Because that would mean that Tanner … 
No
. She wouldn’t consider that, not until she had to.

She reached the Dumpsters and rounded the side, nearly colliding with Tanner, illuminated by a harsh streetlight. He was squatting, supporting himself against the wall with the backpack he had somehow held on to through the chase, an unreadable expression on his face. Placing a hand on his cheek, she felt his strong pulse, his warmth beneath her fingers. He was alive.

“Are you all right?” she whispered hoarsely.

He covered her hand with his own, holding it close against him, and nodded. “Car …”

He swallowed hard and turned with effort. Carina followed his gaze.

There, unmoving and crumpled between the Dumpsters and the wall, his chest covered with a seeping stain, was the second gunman.

Dead.

She knew he was dead by the lack of focus in his eyes. The fact that Tanner was alive was further proof: the two Albanians had not been about to let Carina or Tanner survive if they could help it. But if she had been unsure he was dead, the long, jagged piece of metal jutting from the bearded man’s chest would have convinced her: it was embedded deep in his heart, and the area surrounding it was saturated with the blood that was dripping from his shirt into a growing pool on the ground.

“Are you all right? Where’s the other guy?” Tanner asked.

“I’m fine. He’s unconscious, I think. I shot him with the dart gun. Whatever was in there, it put him out. I guess if they increased the dose—”

“—to accommodate for the virus, it probably was enough to take out a horse,” Tanner finished the thought. “Thank God you’re okay, Car.”

But she wasn’t, not at all. Her vision was starting to flicker at the edges, as if her brain was short-circuiting as it processed information from the optic nerves. Her hands were trembling, and the smallest sounds pounded in her head like hammers. Her scalp itched, and it was only the memory of the man on the video pulling out his own hair that kept her from scratching at it.

But she couldn’t let the symptoms of the infection interfere with what she had to do. “How did you …?”

Tanner lifted his hand and slowly unclenched his fist. Inside was another piece of metal, shorter than the one that had killed the bearded man but just as jagged.

“Where did you get it?”

Tanner’s other hand slid down the side of the Dumpster, coming to rest on a metal band that had apparently once served to lock down the lid; a padlock dangled from the end. He pushed the metal and it clanged against the side of the Dumpster, the sound echoing hollowly in the space between the buildings.

“You … broke it?”

“Yes.” His voice was wooden.

“You literally tore off that piece of metal?”

Only then did Carina notice that some of the blood on Tanner’s hand was fresh. It wasn’t all from the wound in his leg. She could make out a few abrasions and cuts on his palm; ripping the metal had sliced through his flesh. She
gasped and reached out to touch him. The piece of metal clanged to the ground as he finally let go of it.

Taking his hand gently, she pushed back his fingers. “Ow,” he said. “That’s a little tender.”

“How did that … thing get in
him
, is what I want to know. I mean, he had a gun, right? And even you aren’t as fast as a bullet …”

“I, uh, threw it.”

“You—”

Suddenly she understood. Sometimes, when Tanner was bored, he practiced throwing knives in the backyard. Dull ones—old steak knives from his mom’s kitchen drawer—at a homemade paper target fixed to a tree with a pushpin. It drove his mother crazy, and every time she caught him doing it she gave him extra dish duty, which he did without complaint—but Tanner insisted that working on his throwing accuracy this way increased his distance with the discus.

As if to illustrate her thought, Tanner picked up the piece of metal lying on the ground and got to his feet. He gingerly flexed the foot of his injured leg and set his weight on it, testing. Then he whipped the metal piece across the parking lot, straight at the van door that Carina had left open. The metal lodged in the upholstered seat, buried halfway, and the van rocked from the impact.

“If I keep this up, I’ll go to the state championships for sure,” he said, attempting a smile.

But Carina knew every one of Tanner’s smiles. There was the easygoing one he flashed whenever he ran into friends, the cocky one when he won a heat at a meet, the gentle one
when he helped his two middle brothers with their homework, and her favorite, his unguarded, pure happy-to-see-her grin, the one he reserved just for her.

This smile was like none of these. It was transparent, a ghost of a smile pasted over much deeper emotions. Horror. Guilt. Self-recrimination.

Tanner had just killed a man. And it was tearing him apart.

“Oh …,” Carina breathed, feeling like her lungs were being crushed. Tears pooled in her eyes, and she longed to take him in her arms, to comfort him the way he had comforted her when her uncle died. She wanted to take his pain away, the way he had for her.

She wanted … But no, that wasn’t entirely right. She
longed
for him, but this was different from the longing that took over her senses whenever they touched. This was a longing to be his strength, to be his support. To join herself with him so that together, they would be more than they were apart. Together, they would be enough—for any challenge, great or small. And it was hard to imagine any challenge greater than coming to terms with taking a life.

What she was feeling was more than longing, though. It was love.

Love
. Carina tested the word in her mind as she gently caressed Tanner’s face. She loved him; she knew that now. But love was the emotion she had feared above all others, the most terrifying, because it had always been linked with loss. And now Tanner was covered with his own blood, wounded, in just as much danger as she was. His chances
of survival were made even worse by the gunshot wound in his leg. Loving him was the last thing a sensible person would do.

“Carina, please, run now, while you can,” he said, as if sensing her thoughts. “Leave me here.”

“I’m staying. The cops will be here soon.” The sirens were coming closer, only blocks away now. “We’ll be safe with them.”

Tanner took a breath, wiping his hand on his shorts. “No. We won’t. Think about it, Car: we’ve been involved in a homicide. Possibly two, since I didn’t see anyone come out of the van but you. By the time the cops process the scene, straighten out who did what, it’ll be tomorrow. I mean, it’s already tomorrow. We’ve got less than three hours left. And those hours are going to be spent at the police station. There’s no way they’ll believe us if we tell them what’s really going on.”

“They have to,” Carina said. “At least enough to call Sheila—her boss—someone—”

“And what, Sheila will rush over with the antidote? Even if she just conveniently happens to have it at home, there’s no way she’d incriminate herself in that way. And to requisition it from the lab, even if they rushed through the steps—come on, Car, it’s got top government security, there’s no way it’s happening in time.”

With a sinking heart, Carina realized Tanner was right. If the cops found them, they were as good as dead. Frantically she scanned the empty lot, the street beyond, the nearby houses. The parking lots and streets were lit by unforgiving
streetlamps, the cold yellow light barely casting shadows behind parked cars and fire hydrants. There was nowhere to hide, not with Tanner injured. She wasn’t even sure he could walk.

And then her eyes lit on the drainage pipe that went under the road where it crossed the creek. The opening was about three feet across, large enough for an adult to crawl into. They had to get there—even if she had to carry Tanner, the way he had carried her earlier. She probably could, given all the other new capabilities she possessed. But before she tried, Carina had to do something she very much did not want to do: she crawled across the asphalt to the body of their would-be killer and looked for his gun. There—it had fallen near where he was sprawled. She had to move his leg slightly to get to it, and she did so with her foot, suppressing a wave of nausea. The weapon felt heavy in her hands.

“I’d put this in my pocket but, well, I don’t want to shoot myself,” she said.

Tanner was already standing up, and he started to take the backpack off his shoulders. Action brought some of the life back to his eyes. “I’ll carry it, I’ll—”

“Here,” she said, pushing the pack back in place. She unzipped the outer compartment and dropped in the gun. “Okay. Now I need you to let me help you walk,” she said, slinging his arm over her shoulders.

“I’ll slow you down, I can’t—”

“We’re not going far.”

She walked as fast as she could, Tanner keeping up better than she had dared hope. In fact, by the time they reached
the ditch, he was almost walking on his own. Maybe it was shock that had immobilized him earlier—or maybe the virus helped heal him.

“Hurry,” she urged, waiting for him to crawl into the pipe before she followed. He had to stay low, the backpack scraping the top of the pipe. Inside, there was an inch or so of standing water and a layer of slick mud. It smelled of rot and urine: someone else, probably homeless, had been here. For a moment she was afraid there were vagrants already inside, taking shelter for the night, because something blocking the other end kept any light from entering. But as they crawled deeper, feeling their way into the darkness, she found that it was trash wedged against a tangle of branches and dead foliage; at some point during the rainy season, the water had been high enough to sweep garbage into the pipe, and it hadn’t yet been cleared.