“Your hand, Daddy!”
“I know, baby.”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course, baby.”
“But your hand—”
“Let’s not worry about that now.”
I hugged her. She was crying. Hell, I felt like crying, too. Jared—who had a little bit of crazy in him—had gone over to Mike and turned the man over. I was about to shout to him to not touch the man, but realized that if there was a chance to save him, then we should.
He was, after all, sick.
Like me.
My shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch where his boots had driven home. If possible, my hand hurt even more. Sudden images whirled through my mind. Thoughts of chaining up my little brother and this guy. Who would do that for me? I suddenly staggered. I couldn’t help it. I gently pushed Anna away, bent over and vomited.
When I was done retching, I had sudden clarity. I was sick, infected by the same disease that had stricken my brother and his friend. I just witnessed a man leap over a six-foot wall as easy as if it had been a street curb—a man who was hell-bent on either killing me or coming after my daughter. Or both.
With the reports of the infected eating people, nothing was ever going to be the same.
Ever.
My neighbors would have heard the gunshot. It wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. The police would come. They would find the body. A full investigation would ensue. I would be questioned about everything, even harboring a fugitive. I would lose my job, and possibly get arrested. And they would see the infection. I might never go to a jail. I would probably disappear like my brother.
I would disappear off the face of the Earth.
I could think of only one answer: to run.
“Anna, listen to me,” I said. I know I wasn’t thinking straight. My brain felt sluggish, drugged, sick. I tried again. “Anna, we have to get out of here. Jared, I’m sorry you’re in the middle of this. And what the hell are you doing here anyway…in my daughter’s bedroom?”
“Anna didn’t want to be alone—”
I shook my head. “Never mind that. I want you to go home and forget what you saw.”
He took Anna’s hand firmly. “I’m not going anywhere, sir.”
I wasn’t expecting him to put up a fight. But he loved my daughter, I could see that. I was just about to argue with him, when I heard a curious sound coming from the koi pond.
It was a cough.
* * *
He spurted water and rolled to his side, coughing.
“Get back,” I ordered the kids and lifted my gun again.
Mendoza coughed again and again, and now water and blood bubbled up from his mouth. He coughed some more and gasped. I suspected that a lung had been shot through.
As I cautiously approached, he turned his pale face toward me and looked up. “Jack?” he said, or, at least, I think he said my name. His voice was harsh and guttural.
I aimed the gun at his face, lining up between his eyes, when I noticed something about just that...his eyes.
They weren’t red. Sure, they were still kind of red...but not the flaming red that I had seen just five minutes earlier.
“Wait, Jack,” he said, and sounded a little more clear.
I paused.
“Jack. Please don’t shoot me—” He sat up—or tried to. He grimaced and reached for the wound in his chest. Blood was spreading rapidly.
I kept the gun on him, my muddled brain confused as hell.
“Dad, wait,” Anna said. “Don’t you see? His eyes. He’s better.”
Mike looked from me to her. I realized that he was cognitive. In fact, much more cognitive than even earlier today. He did seem better. And, yes, the eyes...
“Dad, don’t shoot him.”
It was an absurd, insane sentence. My little girl asking me not to murder someone. And hadn’t I just killed him? I mean, hadn’t I just shot him in the chest and watched him drown? How long had he been face-first in the pond? Five minutes, surely.
Mike pressed a fist into his bleeding chest. I saw another wound on his arm where my bullet had grazed him. Mike looked alert, awake. But he was hurt. Yes. Damn hurt. Still, he seemed cognizant, aware. The glassy-eyed look was gone. This, I suspected, was the real Mike.
I lowered the gun as a police siren filled the night air.
Chapter Thirty-two
It was later.
The police consisted of, thank God, Carla. She’d responded to a report of a shooting and, by the time we had explained the situation, she’d decided to report that I had shot at a coyote that had jumped into the back yard.
The zoo veterinarian, a man I trusted and knew well, was presently working on Mike. The vet had asked only if a crime had been committed. Other than trespassing, which I could live with, I told him no. That was all he needed to know and he went to work on the man.
I was feeling increasingly like shit. Not because I had suffered a minor beating, but because I was getting sicker and sicker.
We were all sitting around the kitchen table, Carla included.
“But how is he better?” Anna was asking. She had yet to take her eyes off me. She knew her daddy was sick and was doing all she could to be brave. God, I loved her.
I just couldn’t lose her. Not like this.
The two young minds were doing the thinking for me, with Carla chiming in here and there. She looked at me, too. There was sadness in her eyes. Alarm, too. I didn’t blame her. She should feel alarmed.
“Maybe the gunshot,” suggested Jared. “Or maybe losing so much blood somehow cured him. You know, starve a cold, bleed a zombie.”
I nearly laughed. It was the first that I had heard anyone at all say that word. So, that’s what this was. Unfortunately, I was seeing my life from both sides of the zombie patrol. Currently, I was fighting them. Would I soon become one of them?
Earlier, I’d heard from Carla that more and more reports of the infected were making it into the mainstream media. Also being reported was that there was no known cure. Police were put on high alert. It would only be a matter of time before the world knew.
Jesus, how many were there? Hundreds? Thousands?
And, no doubt, they were multiplying at a frightening rate.
Soon, my brother, me and Mike would be nothing more than a blip on the government’s radar. Soon, they would have a much bigger mess to deal with.
I saw my daughter’s brain working as she took in all that surrounded her. Her wide, excited eyes tried to puzzle it all together. Finally, she snapped her fingers, actually snapped them like her mother used to do. I think it was the first time that I realized she was growing up.