Juggernaut Read online

  “A few miles” turned out to be something of an understatement. The sun was beginning to set when they finally reached the farmhouse. The roadside produce stand at the end of the driveway had clearly already been looted by someone now long gone. The chickens and animals running loose in the yard seemed untended, several of them dead, and no one had appeared with a gun to warn them away from the property.

  “Wait out here.” Nico deposited his bags under a tree and drew the gun holstered at his hip. “I’ll check inside, make sure there’s no one there.”

  Zach frowned at the derelict building. “What if there are bodies of people who died from the Rot? Could they still be contagious?”

  “I told you, I’m immune.”

  “You’re insane. And even if you are immune, I’m not.”

  “Which is why I’m going to check it out and you’re staying here. If there are bodies inside, I’ll burn them or we’ll stay in the barn or something.” Nico met his eyes levelly. “Trust me.”

  Zach seemed fretful, but he nodded reluctantly and let Nico go.

  There were bodies, two of them. They looked like they might have been an elderly couple, though it was hard to be certain with the damage the Rot had done. They lay together in a bed upstairs. The smell was indescribable, and Nico clamped a hand over his nose, vomiting into a corner. He left quickly, closing the door behind him.

  He emerged trying not to appear as queasy as he felt. “Looks like we’re sleeping in the barn, unless you want to risk going in as far as the kitchen. It’s on the other end of the house and they’re upstairs, so it might be far enough away to be safe. Tomorrow we’ll torch the house to burn the bodies.”

  Zach swallowed. “I think I’ll take the barn, thanks.”

  Nico nodded. “Good choice. It doesn’t smell very pleasant in there.”

  Though, to be honest, the barn wasn’t a terrific alternative. The animals had been left untended for too long. The horse stuck in one of the stalls was dead, its ribs showing through its hide, and there was evidence of a rat infestation. But it was better ventilated, at least, and the circulating air had taken care of the worst of the odor.

  Once they’d dropped their bags inside, Nico stood in the doorway, staring at the chickens, goats, and pigs in the yard. “Don’t suppose you know anything about killing and butchering animals?”

  “A little. My father’s late brothers all hunted deer. He made me go with them once when I was fourteen. I know enough not to damage the intestines and taint the meat.”

  “We’re low on protein.” Nico turned to face Zach, lifting his shirt and pulling the waistband of his trousers away from his body to reveal a significant gap. “My metabolism is fucked up. I need more calories than I’m getting. Do you think we might be able to butcher one of these goats or pigs? Even a chicken will get us by for tonight, but I was hoping we could take something with us.”

  “We could try.” Zach seemed to be having trouble tearing his eyes away from the expanse of midriff Nico had uncovered, so he dropped his shirt. Zach shook himself and lifted his gaze to nod, focusing on the subject. “It’s more preserving the meat that would be a problem. Without refrigeration, the most it will last us is a few days.”

  “That’s fine. We just need something to live off until we can figure out how to carry what was in my car. Or find a store that hasn’t been looted. Or a restaurant. Or, I don’t know, someplace.”

  “Then let’s do it.” Zach gave the animals a speculative look. They were tame enough; they had flocked around Zach and Nico, hoping to be fed, when they had approached the house. “You go inside and find me a butcher knife from the kitchen, then start gathering wood for a fire. I’ll deal with the animals.”

  Nico was scavenging for cooking implements and almost dropped a pot on his foot when he heard the gunshot in the yard. When he came out, Zach was kneeling over one of the goats, which had been shot cleanly between the eyes. While he butchered the carcass, Nico built a fire. They rigged a crude spit for slices of the goat meat, which cooked unevenly, but Nico tore into it while it was still rare, groaning at the flavor.

  Zach was hardly any more decorous. Nico wasn’t sure what sort of food stores Zach’s family had maintained, but he probably hadn’t had much in the way of fresh meat in recent months, either.

  They both seemed more emotionally stable by the time they were done eating. It was hard to be distraught with a full belly. They sat companionably on opposite sides of the fire, cooking strips of chevron that they would wrap in foil and take with them when they went.

  For all that, though, Nico noticed they both had their handguns lying on the ground beside them, ready to use if anything approached.

  “I suppose you want some explanations.” He gave Zach a reluctant look, but he made himself face the fact that he was going to have to address this.

  Zach snorted. “I’d say that’s an understatement. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but if we’re going to be traveling together—assuming I’m not, in fact, going to die—then I need to know.”

  “It’s a pretty incredible story. I need you to trust me enough to believe that it’s the absolute truth, or at least as much of the truth as I know.” Nico swallowed and poked the fire with a stick. “I swear to you, I’ll be completely honest, but you have to take some of it on faith.”

  Zach hesitated longer than Nico would have liked, mulling that over, but he finally nodded. “Fine. Tell me.”

  So Nico told him. Everything. How he knew General McClosky. His contract to entertain Secretary Littlewood. All that McClosky had told him about Project Juggernaut and the Bane virus. There were points where Zach had looked dubious, but he hadn’t interrupted with any incredulous protests.

  “You blame yourself,” was his only observation when Nico finally reached the end of his story.

  “Yes. No. Shit, I don’t know. I keep going back and forth.” Nico began snapping the stick he was holding into small pieces, throwing them on the fire. “I couldn’t have known what McClosky was asking me to do, but maybe that’s where I fucked up. Maybe I should have been questioning more instead of enjoying the subterfuge. Thought I was Mata fucking Hari or something.”

  “You were used, Nico.” The understanding in Zach’s voice was almost too much to bear. “He used you.”

  “I know,” Nico said bleakly, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “If I hadn’t had so many other issues with what happened that night I was with Littlewood, it might not feel so awful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Secretary Littlewood was— Well, let’s just say the world’s a better place if he died in the pandemic. God, I hope he died, because the thought of him surviving is fucking terrifying.” Nico shuddered. “I spent months in therapy processing what I had to do that night. I chose to do the job, even once I realized what a monster Littlewood was. But learning what they had done, what it had all been for . . . That was the first time I actually felt powerless about it. Victimized.”

  Zach didn’t say anything; he simply watched Nico with those gentle, sympathetic eyes. Nico glanced around, checking to make sure there was nothing sneaking up on them, but all the animals in the yard were calm.

  “Maybe I’m just looking for someone to blame,” Nico said with a philosophical shrug. “There’s plenty of it to go around. McClosky answered to the politicians whose wars he needed to find a way to fight. And hell, if those RAL goons hadn’t tried to kill my mother, McClosky wouldn’t have been shot. He could have stopped them from bringing the wounded Juggernaut troops back to the US.”

  “The RAL—” Zach gave him an astonished stare, and then he began to laugh. Long, uncontrollable peels of hysterical laughter that made Nico look around nervously, afraid someone or something would overhear. Zach flopped over onto his side, wiping at his eyes, but each time his giggles died down, a new wave would start up again.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” he gasped. “It’s not funny, it’s absolutely tragic, but—” Another fi
t of hilarity followed, until Nico was ready to poke him with a burning stick to get him to knock it off. “The RAL. Oh my God!”

  “Care to share with the rest of the class?” Nico groused.

  Zach guffawed but managed to hold himself together enough to choke out, “All these months—” snicker “—my father’s been blaming—” gasp “—people like you for the pandemic. ‘Fornicators and sodomites,’ he keeps ranting. But it was the RAL’s so-called soldiers for God that caused it all along!”

  Then he was off again, but the longer it went on, the less it sounded like laughter and the more it sounded like sobbing. Nico stared helplessly, finally crawling around to Zach’s side of the fire and petting him like he would a child, until he calmed down.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  Zach pushed away, wiping at his face, and Nico let him go. “It’s just . . . I suspected my father knew what the RAL was up to. I even heard him having a conversation with someone that—after the fact, at least—sounded like he knew about the RAL planning to bomb that midsummer party. I guess if you’re partly to blame for what you helped McClosky do, maybe I am too. I never said anything. I told myself I was making it up.”

  Nico waited silently. Finally, Zach licked his lips and said, “So, you were going to tell me how this all means you’re immune to the Rot?”

  “I have the Alpha strain.” There didn’t seem to be any subtle way of putting it.

  “You what? But you weren’t a soldier.”

  “Nope. I’m still a whore.” He gave Zach a wry half grin. “McClosky had some ampules of the Alpha virus, and he gave one to me. Well, two, actually, and I stole the third because I didn’t want that asshole getting immunity to the pandemic he created.” Pain lanced through his chest as he admitted, “I gave one to my mother, but it was too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nico clenched his fists against his thighs. “The, um, the woman I told you about. The one who attacked me before I wound up in your shed. It was her. That’s why we crashed. She’d been exposed a few weeks before I got to her.”

  “Oh Lord.” Zach closed his eyes, and his lips moved almost imperceptibly for a moment. Was he praying? “I’m so sorry. She was a revenant?”

  “Is.” He clenched his hands tightly together. “She . . . she was knocked unconscious in the crash, but I couldn’t—”

  Now it was Nico’s turn to fall apart, and Zach rubbed a soothing hand up and down his back, murmuring in his ear. He didn’t try to chastise Nico for all the deaths he might have inadvertently caused by not killing his mother when he’d had the chance. Maybe he knew Nico had already been torturing himself with those thoughts.

  “She wouldn’t want to live like that. I know it. She wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.”

  Zach’s eyes and voice were full of empathy. “Of course you couldn’t.”

  It was insane, confiding all this, letting Zach comfort him. They were total strangers. He was a whore, and Zach was a Bible-beater, even if he seemed to be a fairly decent one. But it didn’t matter after those evenings they’d spent talking anonymously across the yard to each other. What mattered was that Zach was the first sympathetic ear he’d had since this whole nightmare had begun.

  His confessor.

  “I’m so afraid of going back to that car, that we might come across her. I’m going to be looking for her everywhere, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “If we find her, do you want me to . . . do what needs to be done?” Zach asked gently.

  “You can’t.” Nico raised his face, startled to see how close Zach’s bright eyes were. “You can’t go near her. I don’t want you infected. If we come across any revs, or anyone with the Rot, you need to stay away. Let me take care of it. I’ll— If it’s her, I’ll do what I have to do. Somehow.”

  Zach’s arm around his shoulders squeezed. “I’ll pray for you to find the strength, if it comes to that. And for the Lord to give you solace.”

  The part of Nico that had been at odds with bigots like the Reverend Houtman his whole life wanted to tell Zach to take his prayers and shove them someplace biblical, but he was so sweetly earnest that Nico couldn’t do it. Zach hadn’t said a single thing about the state of Nico’s soul or where he might be destined in the afterlife. He’d just listened and understood and offered Nico reassurance from the same place he found it himself.

  When would the other side of Zach emerge? The sanctimonious, judgmental side? When would he reveal his disdain for Nico’s previous occupation, for his preference for men, for his lack of religious faith?

  “You need to heal, emotionally as much as physically,” Zach said softly, and Nico was startled to realize he’d been on the verge of dozing off with his head on Zach’s shoulder. “We should bank the fire and get some sleep.”

  “You go. There were some afghans in the living room that were far enough from the bedroom to be safe. I put them in the barn. Go wrap yourself up to keep warm, and I’ll stand first watch. I’ll wake you up in, what, four hours?”

  Zach lifted one eyebrow ever so slightly, his lips twitching. “You will, huh? Just how much sleep have you been getting the past couple weeks on the cold floor of our shed?” He nudged Nico up with a push on his shoulder. “At least I’ve had a bed. I’ll take first watch. You get some rest.”

  He was too tired to protest. He helped Zach bank the fire and wrap the last cooling strips of goat meat in foil before finding a place where he was sheltered from the wind and where the stale straw in the barn wasn’t too dank. His last glimpse of Zach before he lay down and closed his eyes was of his new companion sitting with his head bowed by the fire, a book that looked suspiciously like a Bible closed on his knee.

  Nico opened his eyes to find the first hints of daylight seeping into the barn. He sat up with a gasp, throwing back the blankets to rush out into the chilly gray dawn, terrified that something had happened to Zach while he’d slept.

  But Zach still sat by the fire, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, reading. He must’ve sensed Nico’s presence, as he looked back over his shoulder and smiled a greeting. Nico slumped against the wall of the barn, willing his heart to stop hammering.

  “You didn’t wake me up,” he accused, crossing to join Zach by the fire.

  Zach shrugged. “Seemed like you needed the sleep more than I did. You should go get a blanket or a jacket or something. It’s too cold to be out here in just a shirt. I found some canned soup in the kitchen to warm for us.”

  “Thanks.” Shivering too much to argue, Nico ducked into the barn to grab his jacket and went out to the fire, where Zach scooped steaming soup into mugs.

  “It’s not coffee, but it will have to do.”

  “Oh Jesus. Don’t mention coffee. You’ll make me cry.” Nico sipped the hot broth, slurping up noodles and chunks of chicken before he tore into one of the strips of cold meat they had cooked the night before.

  Zach blinked, watching him stuff his face. “Is this what you meant about your metabolism?”

  “I think so.” It took an effort not to rip another chunk of meat off with his teeth and speak with his mouth full. If only the clients who had paid a thousand dollars or more an hour to wine and dine him at the finest restaurants on the East Coast could see him now. “I think it’s part of the virus. I’m always hungry, and being on such lean rations, the weight has just been dropping off me.”

  “And still you’re able to walk miles carrying heavy bags without breaking a sweat.” Zach chuckled softly. His eyes passed down Nico’s body from head to toe in a rather unmistakable appraisal. “If I were the insecure type, I’d feel inadequate.”

  Nico smirked, then shook his head. “It’s not all great. I probably should have mentioned this last night . . . I told you the Rot came from when people infected with the Alpha virus were wounded and others were exposed to their blood, right?” At Zach’s nod, he continued. �
�If I ever start to bleed, you need to stay the hell away from me. Don’t try to save me. Don’t administer first aid. Let me die if you have to, but don’t come near me.”

  Something dawned on Zach’s face, as if he’d just solved a mystery. “So that’s why you were so afraid for us that first day you came to our shed. You were wounded.”

  Nico nodded. “I mean it, Zach. I don’t know you well, but I don’t want to be responsible for your death, okay? I’ve caused too many deaths already. Unless—” He dug in the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out the third ampule. “You could use this. It’s the last ampule of the Alpha virus, the one I stole from McClosky. Then you’d be able to keep up with me. And you’d be safe from the Rot, or becoming a revenant.”

  Zach took the ampule from Nico’s hand, staring at it as if mesmerized. “I’d be strong and fast. Superhuman. And you’re just offering it to me like it’s nothing.”

  “I don’t care what happens to it. I’d rather see you safe.”

  Zach closed his eyes and bowed his head, his brow wrinkled in concentration and his lips moving. Praying again? It was something he seemed to do a lot. When he looked up, his brow was smoothed and his eyes were calm. He offered the ampule back to Nico. “No. I don’t want it.”

  Nico hesitated, and Zach shoved the ampule at him more firmly.

  “You’re sure?” Nico frowned.

  Zach nodded, a decisive jerk of his head that brooked no argument. “I’m sure. Whatever God has in store for me, I don’t think being a superhuman with toxic blood is part of it.”

  Nico bit back an argument and dropped the ampule back inside his pocket. The silence stretched out between them, threatening to become uncomfortable, until Nico gestured to the Bible that Zach was absently caressing.

  “How many times have you read that?”

  Zach held it up. “This? Never.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Well, I mean, I’ve read the Bible before. Several times, in fact. This is just the first time I’ve read this particular version of it.”