“We suspected it was bad, but…” Quinn waved his hand at the rain-pelted dirt, his throat closing up.
“It’s global,” Wexler said, finishing his cigarette. He crushed it beneath the sole of his boot and stood. “The scientists had just started to scrape the surface of the virus when it all collapsed.” He surveyed them again. “Did you see anyone else alive out there?”
“Yes. They were mostly hostile,” Alice said, not looking up. “But there were a few.”
“We’ve had two small bands of renegades come through, both repelled easily, but then we had numbers and firepower. We burned through ammo during the fight with the tall bastards because we figured we’d have another transport come in within a day. None ever came.”
“So you three are it?” Alice asked. “You’re all that’s left?”
“We have two more. One is Sergeant Collincz. She’s over attending to Doctor Holtz in the rear of the compound.”
“What about him?” Quinn asked, pulling out the ID card with Harold Roman’s picture on it. “Did you know him?” Wexler took the card from him and glanced up.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it in the pack I was wearing earlier. Roman was hiding in a distributing warehouse on the east side of Fort Dodge. He’d been injured, looked like a stilt bit him. He died in the middle of the night,” Quinn said.
Wexler grimaced and turned the ID card over and over in his hands.
“He disappeared three nights ago while on watch. He was a lab technician from Minnesota, showed up right when we were first setting camp. We had to recruit him to help watch the walls after everyone died. I was sure he’d been taken.”
“He was also carrying this,” Quinn said, opening the paper with the medical terminology on it. Wexler read through it and after a moment, shook his head, handing it back.
“Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.”
“I can’t understand it either, but that’s my father’s signature on the very bottom.”
Wexler took out the pack of cigarettes again, pulling one free before rolling it between his fingers. “You could try showing it to Holtz, but don’t get your hopes up.”
“Why’s that?” Quinn asked.
“Because he’s lost touch with reality the last few days. He’s a military doctor and was working in a lab here on base when everyone started developing the fever and dropping dead. He tried everything that they sent him as far as vaccines and even made quite a few of his own, from what I understand, before his wife fell ill.” Wexler tucked the cigarette away for later. “When she died, he became unstable, didn’t sleep for days and started babbling nonsense to anyone that came within earshot. He’s been asleep for over twenty-four hours, and we’ve been taking turns checking on him.”
“I’d like to see him,” Quinn said.
“Me too,” Alice said, coming to her feet.
Wexler gazed at them and then out at the rain before standing to grab several ponchos off the floor.
“You’re going to need these. It’s a bit of a walk.”
~