She glanced through the house then back to him. “I guess not.” She suddenly grinned up at him. “But I thought you were too good for a dump like this?”
He snorted a short laugh. “I don’t think there will be a huge rush on the housing market anytime soon.” He draped his good arm over her shoulder and led her to the kitchen window. “The world is pretty much our oyster.”
She settled in next to him, wrapping her arms around his middle. “As long as your cagers don’t find us, right?”
Simon groaned. “Right.”
14
Hatcher opened the door of the truck and stepped out, his eyes wide. “What the…”
“We found him inside.” Hank led the old man across the road, his over-shirt tied to the man’s waist. “He was hiding in the pharmacy.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t cut him in half.” Charlie muttered. “Skulking around in there, looking like a damned Zulu.”
The old man trembled as Hatcher set him down in the truck. “What’s your name?”
The old man shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure.” He looked up at him with ruddy eyes. “I remember that I have a wife…” He swallowed hard. “Had. I’m not sure she made it.”
“Okay.” Hatcher looked to Buck. “Hand me a water.”
He twisted the cap off and gave it to the old man. “Easy now. Not too fast.”
The old man sipped the water and leaned his head back, his eyes closed. “I remember…too much.”
“But not your name?”
He shook his head again. “Eduardo keeps coming to mind, but I can’t be certain.”
Hank scoffed. “He don’t look Mexican to me.”
Hatcher shot him a hard glare. “He was infected. It’s not like they don’t all look alike.”
“Point,” Hank muttered.
“I’m sorry, son.” The old man took another sip of the water. “My memory was shit before this happened. That much I do know.”
“It’s okay, gramps.” Hatcher stood and looked around the area. “I don’t guess you know where you lived, do you?”
The old man thought for a moment. “I remember the front door was blue.”
“Yeah, that helps,” Hank muttered again.
Hatcher came to his full height and turned around. “Why don’t you and Charlie head back. Radio if you happen to see anything that might lead us to Simon.”
“Simon!” The old man sat up, his eyes wide. “Now him, I remember.”
Hatcher turned his full attention back to the old man. “Go on.”
The old man shuddered. “That damned shotgun. If it weren’t for that shotgun, they would have killed him the first night.” He closed his eyes and grimaced.
“Yeah, that sounds like Simon,” Buck said low. “I don’t guess you know where he went?”
The old man shook his head. “He was gone when I woke up. We were supposed to make him more arrows, but…” He trailed off. Suddenly he sat up. “He’d been shot. In the arm.” He pointed to his bicep. “It looked bad, too.”
“So he probably didn’t get far,” Hatcher said as he scanned the area.
“He had a woman.” The old man took another sip of water. “She was helping him.”
“Of course he did,” Hatcher groaned. “Knowing Simon, he had a bunch of them.”
The old man met his gaze and nodded. “He ‘coupled’ with most of them.” He shook his head as if to shake the memories from his mind. “Most of them ran off as soon as they could remember.”
“Remember?” Hatcher asked.
The old man nodded. “Lately, we’ve all been getting these memories back. Like light flashes in your brain.” He struggled to put his thoughts into words. “It was like god was letting us see little bits and pieces of our old lives.” He looked up at Hatcher. “You know. Before.”
Hatcher nodded. “Go on.”
“Anyways, the women, they remembered things first. And they got real anxious when they remembered. Then next thing you know, they’d disappear.”
Hatcher looked to Buck. “Like the woman that me and Roger ran into.”
The old man twisted the cap back onto the bottle. “That Simon…he was evil. You could just see it in his eyes.” He sighed heavily and leaned back in the chair. “The only good thing that man did was feed us.”
“He fed you?”
He nodded as he pushed himself up in the seat. “We were starving out there. We’d run out of…people.” He averted his eyes and refused to face the other men. “Simon killed our leader and brought us here. He knew how to open the food.”
“Son of a…” Hatcher trailed off.
“It didn’t taste right at first, but we were so hungry.” He finally looked up and tears were streaming down his cheeks. “Do you think God will ever forgive us for what we did?”
“No,” Hank stated from behind Hatcher.
Hatcher glared at him again then turned back to the old man. “I think god knows that it wasn’t your nature to hurt others. It was the virus.”
The old man turned away and formed a thousand yard stare through the windshield. Hatcher stepped away and shut the door. He turned to Hank. “Go back. Me and Buck will take him around and see if he recognizes his house.”
“And if he don’t?” Hank asked.
Hatcher couldn’t help himself. “Then I guess you’ll get a new roommate.”
Carol packed the last of her notes into the cardboard box then handed it to Dr. Miller. “I think that’s it.”
As the group made towards the exit, Miller nodded back to Kelly. “What about her? Are you really going to just leave her here?”
Carol snorted. “Something tells me that she’s a survivor. She’ll be just fine.”
The group made their way down the stairs and back out to the campus grounds. Carol refused to look back at the windows just in case Kelly was watching them.
She followed the soldiers as they led back to the chopper, weapons at the ready. She nearly ran into the back of a soldier that had stopped in front of her. “Contact!”
She looked over his shoulder and saw a half dozen people cresting a short rise near the chopper. The pilot radioed the ground troops at the same time they were
