Chapter 18: Retribution Interrupted

“It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye,” Mattie broadcast in a haltering childlike voice filled with grief, just the thing to touch the heartstrings, “not only to one wonderful individual who’d survived against such terrible odds, but two. The fact that they were killed by a pompous, self-righteous group who think they were protecting the world from those who are suffering makes it even worse. But for now, we need you, our listeners, to pray for our recently departed, and to encourage us in your own way to continue through this difficult time.

“We’ll be broadcasting our previous recordings, as well as broadcasting the final eulogy for our friends tomorrow. We ask your forgiveness, but we really don’t possess the strength to continue on as if nothing has happened.”

Although he couldn’t see anyone in the early morning light reflecting off the large house, David figured they’d waited long enough. They had arrived early, stopping overnight in another abandoned house away from the ritzy Peterson neighborhood and slipping in during the predawn darkness. The sun had just begun to peek over the horizon, and while it was still dim there was enough light to identify shapes and motion in the gloom. He’d sent Greg and Alice ahead only to find the single lookout asleep at the community guard house, so it didn’t take long to dispose of him. The bound and gagged man was now waiting locked up in the back of a trailer safely hidden away on an innocuous side street.

Glancing left and right one last time for any signs of activity, noting with grim satisfaction that his motley band of makeshift warriors were in position and ready, David took one last deep steadying breath before he stood and walked confidently towards the massive house. The huge edifice loomed in the dark, still showing no lights or any other signs of life. David grimly smiled that their careful misdirections had caused the residents to ignore the very real threat to their safety, but he also realized that they were not really people who did much in the way of planning themselves, merely reacting to whatever frightened them and taking whatever they wanted. Reaching what he considered to be a safe distance, David made his presence known by firing a shot over the house.

“Hello the house! This is David Scott, the person you tried to assassinate,” he shouted in a voice laden with sarcasm. “I’ve got a little gift for you.”

David remained where he was, not yet seeking shelter despite the very real threat that the people he was currently disturbing would very much like to put a bullet in him—especially since he was waking them so rudely. He was going for maximum effect with yet another ‘grande gesture’, so he wanted to be sure that people were awake to see it. It didn’t take long before he saw signs of movement reflected in the scattered windows of the great manor house. Not waiting for anyone to open the door, he decided to get it over with.

Waving the grisly relic before him, he continued. “This is what’s left of your volunteer assassin. The plague was the last of his concerns,” he called out before he hauled off and threw the severed head at the front door of the house. Of course, not being very aerodynamic, it didn’t travel very far and it fell to the ground with a sickening sound—David thought he heard a couple teeth cracking—bounced and rolled in an awkward pattern for a few feet, and then finally came to rest several yards from the door.

David was preparing to seek shelter when a shot rang out from his left. Despite knowing it was Alice, positioned in a blind by the brick wall surrounding the property, taking a shot at someone attempting to shoot him, he jumped, but it made him move that much quicker, retreating behind his makeshift shelter, one of several reinforced picnic tables the group had quietly established about the yard to keep the occupants of the house from being able to identify which ones were occupied.

“Got ‘em, Dad,” Alice’s voice crowed over the microphone in his ear as he settled in. “Top floor, second window from the left. The sucker was trying to draw a bead on you, but I got him clean in one shot. So far no one’s trying to take his place.”

“Thanks for that, honey,” he replied, touching his ear with a minimum of motion so he wouldn’t present another target. “I always appreciate not being shot!”

They remained where they were, silently watching the house and waiting to see what the response might be. Finally someone threw the front door open but remained clear of the opening as they called out.

“What do you want?” a tense, gravelly voice shouted, but due to echoes and bad acoustics, David couldn’t be sure whether it was the group’s leader or not.

“I want to ensure that you won’t try to kill me again, or kill anyone else for that matter. Unfortunately, I can’t do that until I’m sure you aren’t planning to—”

His words were cut off by the sound of automatic gunfire in the backyard. David already knew what was happening, as they’d planned for just this scenario. The person in the front was attempting to distract him by asking innocuous questions that they had no desire to hear the answers to, while someone else tried to exit out the back with the intention of circling around the abandoned neighborhood to attack him from behind. It’s what he would have done, so he knew enough to prepare for it.

“You were right, David,” Greg informed him over the radio. “They tried bailing right away. We put one down and wounded another.”

“Good, a few casualties should motivate them a little more, and if they’re nervous about contagion, then blood scattered liberally about should help unnerve them as well. We’ll see what they do next,” David answered before yelling to the house again.

“Not very bright of you trying something without determining whether it was feasible first!”

There was another silence.

“We heard that you’d died,” the person behind the massive oak door finally yelled.

“Obviously, the reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated ... by us,” David answered, knowing the person was still stalling for time, since they had no authority to make decisions for anyone. David couldn’t imagine Peterson allowing anyone under him acting without his say so. He imagined the ‘old school’ attitudes he seemed to convey would extend to how he treated his people. David’s group had broadcast the message of he and Alice dying yesterday to give their opponents time to let their guard down, thinking they’d won and his people were dispirited and in disarray. Today was supposedly the day of the funeral, so they wouldn’t have expected an attack.

“Then who died?” the man called back. His response told David that the Charlottesville group had been watching enough to recognize that his people had been grieving.

“No one you’d care about. They had their whole lives ahead of them and might have gone on to do great things—like possibly curing these plagues. But you’d prefer killing victims rather than solving anything.” David had more than a little pent up anger, and was more than willing to rub their own stupidity in their faces.

There was no response, but he hadn’t expected any. He was about to peer at the house again to see if there was any activity when someone started shooting at him. There was return fire, both from the left and the right. The fire from the house halted almost immediately, but additional fire erupted from the side of the house.

“You were right, they’re trying to climb out the side windows, assuming we wouldn’t think to cover them,” Betty informed him.

“These people are not exactly military strategists, just a bunch of people with a grudge,” he answered over the open but secure military channel. “Just watch, I’ll give you five-to-one odds they try the other side of the house next.”

“I’m not about to touch that, even if you gave me twenty-to-one odds,” Monique responded. “These people might have resources, but they certainly aren’t the brightest people I’ve run across.”

It was about three minutes later when additional gunfire proved her correct.

“Are you getting tired of trying to slither away?” David called out in an open challenge. He didn’t know if it would get them to open negotiations, but he did know that it would likely upset them, encouraging them to make mistakes.

“You may have outfoxed us at the moment,” shouted a voice David recognized as belonging to the infamous Mr. Peterson. David still had no idea who the hell he was or why he felt he deserved to decide the fate of people he didn’t even know, but Peterson’s tone made it clear that he wasn’t too concerned with such insignificant details at the moment. He simply wanted him gone. “But all we have to do is wait you out ‘till nightfall!”

“Maybe,” David replied easily, “but I’m eager to see you try. Unlike you, we have unlimited access to electricity, and we have plenty of batteries for our night vision equipment. We can put a bullet between your eyes before you even find your window latch.”

Mr. Peterson didn’t bother responding to that. David surmised he was trying to come up with some reasonable alternatives.

“What do you want from us?” he called out several minutes later, his after-the-fact planning apparently not having turned up any solutions. “Do you plan to extract your revenge?”

“I thought of it, and personally I’d prefer it that way. But I’m tired of death and dying. If you lay down all your arms, and exit the house so we can search it to see what you’ve hidden, we’ll discuss relocating you.”

“Relocating us?” Peterson responded unbelievingly. “You’d take all our possessions and leave us to fend for ourselves on the streets?”

“That’s what everyone else is doing now, so don’t sound so shocked. But I’m not about to allow you to remain here with both the weapons and resources to attack me again. We’re willing to take you and a fair amount of your possessions to a location far from here. We’ll give you your guns once you get there, plus enough ammunition to survive, but if you try to trick or shoot one of us, we’ll put all of you down.”

“And what if we just decided to sit this out?” Peterson yelled, clearly trying to weigh his options. “We’ve got plenty of supplies, and you’re bound to let your guard down eventually. After all, you’ve got to sleep, and you’ll likely infect your friends before long.”

“There’s not a chance of that,” David replied, casually resting his head against the reinforced table he was sitting against, gently closing his eyes since he wasn’t about to stick his head up to look at anything. “While you may have provisions, so do we. Including some fairly old technologies; things like catapults, which would allow us to send various body parts of your dead countrymen through your windows. It’ll be hard avoiding the plague with that happening, now wouldn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Peterson blustered, conveniently forgetting just what he himself had dared a few days earlier.

“It’s a well-accepted practice, used during plagues throughout the middle-ages in Europe, the crusades in the Middle East, and several occurrences in the orient. We’d hardly be doing anything you haven’t asked us for with your own decisions.”

“Someone’s trying to set up a firing position behind a curtain,” Alice quietly warned him. “Want me to take him out now, or wait until he shows himself?”

Instead of answering her directly, David instead relayed the information to Peterson. “You know, if you keep trying to take pot shots at me you won’t have to wait, as we’ll end up killing everyone in the house. Your man behind the curtain is about to die if he doesn’t back off.”

There was silence again for a few moments.

“Drat, you spoiled my shot,” Alice teased in an openly hostile attitude that worried her father. “Tell you what, you owe me a shot at the fat man in charge to make up for it.” David’s desire for revenge might have lessened, but it didn’t look like hers had. She continued to be very protective of her father.

“Don’t worry,” he answered, speaking softly enough it wouldn’t be heard from within the house. “I suspect you’ll have plenty of chances to shoot someone. But I don’t want him to die too fast. I want to make an object lesson of him.”

Several very visceral images of her father’s ‘object lessons’ ran through Alice’s mind, though none of them seemed to be quite appropriate in this case for the man who’d tried to kill her father.

“You think you’re so clever, but you’re in the wrong,” Mr. Peterson insisted, his frustrations showing as his voice broke. He was coming close to losing his control, even as he continued trying to justify himself to the people he’d tried to kill. “Your attempt to defend yourself threatens all of humanity!”

David was about to respond with another clever comeback—once he managed to think of one—when there was another disturbance.

“Dad, there’s a woman trying to open a window. She doesn’t seem to have a gun. What do you want me to do?”

“Let her open it but watch she doesn’t try something. It may be that Mr. Peterson’s control over his people isn’t quite as absolute as he thinks it is, but there’s no sense being stupid about it either.”

The window opened, unnoticed by the others in the house, and a Hispanic woman dressed in a simple black T-shirt leaned out, her long brown hair cascading around her distressed face. “Don’t shoot! I’m bringing my daughter out. I want to speak to you,” she yelled out.

“You’re fine,” David called over his shoulder loudly enough for Peterson to hear him, still not showing himself. “But if anyone tries to shoot you in the back, we’ll shoot the entire house full of so many holes you won’t be able to keep it lit at night,” David answered, issuing his own warning. It wasn’t exactly his best line, but it got the message across.

Turning, David nervously watched the woman scramble out the window. David was anxious, not because of anyone taking a pot-shot at him, but because of both his and Peterson’s people. David had spread his people around the building to prevent anyone slipping out, but it would be difficult watching both the woman and anyone attempting to prevent her from escaping. Although he and Alice could shower the building with bullets, they couldn’t watch everyone.

Once she managed to clamber awkwardly out the window, the woman turned and helped a younger girl out as well, picking her up and hefting her out. The girl, like her mother, was Hispanic, though she seemed to have a more hopeful look, with long free flowing hair held back with a bright white head wrap which made her easy to track in the still dim light. She too wore a simple T-shirt, bright red in this case, this one announcing a summer camp that David doubted men of Mr. Peterson’s ilk would ever subject his kids to.

Clear of the window, they took off running as fast as they could. Although David knew that Alice would now watch the house for anyone looking to get a shot off, he couldn’t trust someone they didn’t see, so he stood up, encouraging the mother and daughter, but also to draw the fire of anyone looking to prevent deserters.

The woman and child, who looked to be about thirty-something and around Alice’s age respectively, ran even harder seeing him, appearing obviously skittish, as if expecting to be fired upon.

“I’ve got some people inside looking out windows, but so far no one is drawing a weapon,” Alice advised her father.

“Don’t shoot anyone yet,” he advised. “We want them to feel that we won’t attack anyone that’s not trying to hurt us. We want to encourage them to voluntarily surrender, with or without Peterson’s approval.” David paused a moment before continuing. “They probably never outlined how to handle situations like this, and they haven’t figured out how to respond yet. Don’t warn me if they do try something, just take them out,” David authorized her, trusting her judgment. However no shots rang out and soon the mother and daughter reached him. They ran behind the protective table, effectively declaring to anyone watching from the house what to aim for, before he joined them to find out what they wanted.

Dropping down, facing away from the house with his back against the barrier, he noticed the girl had the unmistakable purplish pox marks on her face. David also noticed her mother wore latex gloves when she touched her. “I take it you’re afraid what will happen once they discover she’s infected?”

“Yeah,” the mother gasped, still trying to catch her breath, holding her daughter protectively with her gloved hand. “She started showing yesterday afternoon, so I sent her to bed early. I then emptied some of Taylor’s liquor, planning on claiming she was merely hung over.”

“Taylor is Mr. Peterson?” David asked. She merely nodded her head.

“Can you help my girl?” the woman pleaded, her eyes shining with unshed tears. It looked clear that she considered David her only chance. “She’ll die if we stay here, even if they let us leave. You’re her only hope of survival.”

“Shit,” David cursed to himself, touching his earpiece to convey his thoughts. “We have a complication folks. We’ve got an infected girl that needs treatment. We can’t waste time waiting these people out, nor can we take the time to disarm and escort them somewhere else. It seems she’s been sick for a while already, so our window of opportunity is rapidly closing. If we’re facing a day long drive to get her back home, we’ll need to leave immediately.”

“David, this is Tom,” the scientist interrupted. “After our last encounter I took the precaution of bringing two 1000cc IV bags of your plasma, which I have in a refrigerated cooler in the van. If you can get her to me, I can start her treatment immediately.”

“Good thinking, but we’re still stuck,” David lamented, considering their options. He glanced at the two worried faces watching every movement he made for some sign of what his final decision would be. “We don’t have much of a choice. Either we stay here and fight it out or let them go, risking they’ll go into hiding or launch a counter attack.”

“We could continue this without you,” Greg offered.

“And you wanted me to take on an active role as negotiator,” Ayana added, “I could always take over for you here.”

“No, I think David needs to handle these particular negotiations,” Melissa suggested. “He’s got a better feel for what works and what doesn’t. I don’t object to your helping, but David wanted you to observe first, and this is a bit too high-stakes to gamble it all at the moment.”

“We could start an all-out offensive,” Greg suggested, his finger twitching with the desire to shoot someone else, the memories of Peter and Nina still fresh in his mind.

“No,” David answered with a heavy sigh. “I hate the idea of killing anyone we don’t have to, after all, there are too few people remaining as it is. Besides, for all we know they may have either a secure basement or a safe room. In a house this big and with as much money as Mr. Peterson had, it wouldn’t be surprising.”

“How about a holding action?” Alice offered hopefully, not willing to let these people go so they could try to hurt them again, especially now that they had them right where they wanted them. “We’ll just sit on them, not allowing anyone to slip out but not negotiating, simply making them wait.”

“That might actually be more psychologically advantageous,” Monique offered. “Waiting without having any control over what’s happening would be emotionally devastating. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had more people surrendering if we did that.”

“But if they want to surrender, who handles the negotiations?” Greg asked, mentally running through a checklist of their alternatives.

“Alice,” David answered immediately. “These people have been listening to us for some time, so they’re liable to trust her more as a result. Plus she knows how I feel, and would be more likely to know how I think. Ayana, you stick with Alice so you can advise and watch how she handles things. If anything, call me and I can tell you what I think, but otherwise I’ll be preoccupied.”

There was silence over the air for a few moments, and then one by one the others concurred with that plan.

“OK, we’ve got a change in plans folks,” David yelled out over his protective barrier. “We’ve got a sick individual here, someone who may have unintentionally infected the rest of you. We can potentially cure her, but we need to act now. Thus all negotiations are over. You’re officially on lock down. No one enters or leaves the house. If you have anyone injured, they’ll have to come out to receive medical care.”

There was silence for a short while, as David imagined them discussing this turn of events.

“Screw you!” Taylor finally yelled defiantly. “We can take care of our own!”

“Tell me this,” David yelled back. “How safe is anyone that gets sick? An open wound leaves them more susceptible to infection. If they get sick, will you allow them to leave, or will you just kill them where they lay?”

“Clever, Dad,” Alice said, her admiration of her father’s latest move evident in her voice. “Introduce doubt amongst the enemy, and make them question their leader.”

“That’s the idea,” David replied, “but I’m actually curious about his mindset.”

“You won’t pit our own people against us, and we won’t allow you to use our injured as hostages,” Taylor replied.

“That’s fine,” David replied in a calm voice. “If you’re OK with your people dying, then that’s on you, not us. I’m going to take these people and head for somewhere I can treat them, as it’s a painful and prolonged treatment taking several days. If anyone fires at us, we’ll riddle the house with automatic weapons fire. If anyone does want to surrender, just wave a white flag out the window before coming out. We won’t fire unless we see either a gun or hostile intent.”

“Fuck you,” snarled Taylor. “No one is surrendering. We have everything we need here, and we can easily wait you out. It’s clear you’ve already lost interest, and it’s only a matter of time until the others do the same.”

Ignoring Taylor’s rants, David once again touched his ear while motioning to the two women. “Get ready, everyone. I’m making a run for it. Tom, meet me at the front of the property. We’ll have to pick a house to use for the treatment. Hopefully one close enough I can stay in contact if needed, but not so close to be attacked by anyone we missed.”

With that David and his two new wards jumped up and sprinted away, David carrying his assault rifle in his hand. However, there were no attempts to shoot them, although Taylor Peterson assaulted them with insults as they ran.

Tom confidently started the plasma infusion on the clearly anxious Natalie, into whom Monique had just inserted the IV. Her mother, Tricia, wasn’t much better. “This will make her better, won’t it?” the older woman plaintively asked.

“You’ll need to prepare yourself,” David patiently explained as he tried to get her to understand what was going to happen. “This is a very harsh process as it involves her suffering through not just a single plague, but each subsequent one. However, we’ve learned that this process allows people to survive them, and to come through immune to all the variations as well. We don’t quite understand how it does it yet, but it seems effective. However, you also need to be aware that it takes it from an almost certain fatality and only reduces it to a 40% fatality rate. There’s still a very strong likelihood she’ll die. What’s more, we’ve found it helps if it’s a hands-on approach, with either me or one of my associates sitting with them through the entire process, encouraging them to work through it themselves.” He really didn’t want to worry about explaining the details of all of Tom’s current theories at the moment, and he didn’t think they’d make her feel any better about the whole process.

Both the mother and girl stared at him intently, and when he paused Tricia glanced worriedly at her daughter before turning back to him, looking for any further reassurance he might offer.

“But the other point is that she’s highly contagious now. We’ll take care of her, but you’ll need to leave her in our care for the next several days. We’ll keep you apprised of what’s happening, but you’ll never again be able to hug your daughter, as she’ll also become a carrier. Normal interactions, like we’re having between you and me are fine, but her touch can infect you. It’s not something I approach lightly, but it’s not only the best option for her, it’s essentially the only option for her at this time.”

“I understand,” she answered, looking like she was about to break down at any moment. “Do you mind if I say goodbye one last time?”

“No, but just keep in mind my warnings about potential infection. I’m not sure we have enough plasma for another treatment.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve had good luck with it so far,” Monique tried to assure her, though she didn’t sound entirely convinced, even as she said it.

As David stepped aside, giving them some privacy for what could be their last moments together, Tom moved him even further aside to discuss some additional topics.

“David, you realize this could be even riskier than usual. So far, we’ve had decent successes with adults, but children seem to respond worse. Not counting Alice, we’ve only rescued one ‘child’ this way, while we’ve lost two.”

“Mattie turned out fine, and she’s even younger than Natalie,” David replied quietly, glancing over his shoulder at Monique trying to calm the mother and daughter down.

“Yes, but that brings up another point. The people who’ve survived have, for the most part, also survived another plague, thus their immune systems were already prepped for this. Mattie had survived her father’s infection a couple weeks earlier, Peter and Nina had never been infected before.”

“The same could be said of Betty and Monique,” David countered, even as Monique wandered over, having given the women time alone and seeing the two men in an active discussion.

“Sorry, but you’re forgetting that both Debbie and I survived one,” Monique reminded him.

“Yeah, but again, Monique and Betty are adults,” Tom said, ignoring Monique’s correction as immaterial to the discussion, “and adult immune systems are more robust than children’s, having been exposed to more things over their lifetime. I’m taking Peter and Nina’s deaths as a warning. Frankly, Natalie has the odds stacked against her, and you may be setting yourself up for a very big failure here. If she dies, you’ll confirm all of Taylor’s accusations about you.”

“He doesn’t object to what I can do for people,” David pointed out. “He objects to it on philosophical grounds. But I concede your point. This could turn ugly if it doesn’t work out.”

“Not to mention, you’ve got a loose element in the mother,” Tom added, casting a quick glance back at the mother still saying her goodbyes to her daughter. “She really needs to be watched the entire time, taking up another couple of our people. Otherwise she may try to break in to console her daughter, she may take off or return to the Peterson camp, or she may turn violent if things don’t go well.” Tom was getting a bit worked up about this, sweat appearing on his brow and his lip beginning to twitch, never having had to worry about patients potentially turning violent in a war zone before.

“Yeah, I thought of all that,” David admitted, shrugging helplessly, “but it’s not like I could turn them aside. But we’ll have to figure out a way to handle the issues as they arise.”

“I can always stay with her and watch over her,” Monique offered.

“No, that won’t work,” David immediately shot back. “You need to be here with Natalie. I think she’ll respond to you better than she will to me, and you also need to be on call, in case there’s an injury at the house. They already have injured over there, and there’s no one else that knows basic first aid.” Though he didn’t list it as a reason, David wasn’t quite ready to be separated from Monique quite yet. She was still recovering and weak, and they’d already formed a fairly strong bond, and they seemed to be good for each other.

“We’ve got another issue,” Mattie said, walking in from outside, looking nervous about broaching an uncomfortable topic. “You’re not going to like this, but when I was getting the cooler from the truck, I was radioing home and accidentally turned the car’s radio on and somehow hit the scanner button. I know, I know, I was trying to do too many things at one time. But anyway, normally, it’d just look continually, searching for nonexistent channels. However, before I could turn it off again, it found another live broadcast.”

“Really? That’s great!” David replied, confused by why Mattie would be upset at such a discovery. “It means there’s another active group trying to reach out to survivors. We should see if we can connect with them, offer them whatever assistance we can.”

“Unfortunately, we already have,” Mattie said frowning, carefully watching David to gage his reactions. “Here, listen to the recording I made of it,” Mattie said, turning on the mobile phone she’s used to record the message.