Chapter 42- Fading

Chapter 42

Fading

Villa Pylar, Venezuela

Surviving isn’t a binary status.  That isn’t to say that a person isn’t either alive or dead, that most certainly is true.  But a person can survive and not survive, it’s possible to be “half surviving”, it’s possible to keep running on empty, on four flat tires, to keep running before you break down for good.

Walking all day and all night, Oscar began to get the feeling that he was getting towards his breaking point.  Hannah had attempted to keep the conversation going, attempted to keep their spirits up.  The sense of expectation, that they had been setting off on a great adventure was fading away, being replaced by fatigue, sadness and injury.

Hannah had picked up the trail, drops of blood on the leaves, about six miles out from Villa Pylar.  Oscar had felt a new surge of energy and that they were closing in on their elusive enemy.  But the town of Villa Pylar had a population of around eight thousand.  Finding one invisible infiltrator in there was going to be nigh on impossible.

The two of them sat down to rest for a moment.  Hannah had kept the radio at her side the whole time and they had overheard the orders being relayed to Sabre-Two.  Villa Cyranno, Oscar’s home, was bombed into a pile of ashes.  Bones were reduced to less than dust.

Oscar had felt nothing at the time, nothing about the death of the town, the death of all of those people had had once connected with.  All he felt now was tired, all he felt was the ache in every joint.

Oscar now looked over at Hannah as she sat listening in on the radio. 

“Anything?” he said to her.  She looked up, her eyes were red and tired.

“Nothing that I can follow,” she replied wearily.

“Do you think we might be able to get some sleep before we head into the Villa?” he asked her, thinking it was unlikely she’d say yes.

“No, no we cant.  But I’m not sure we can go in there anyway,” she said back to him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Think about it Oscar.  There are eight thousand people in there, more or less.  If they’ve been exposed to these infiltrators we’ll never be able to find them in such a large area.  Our only hope was to catch them before they reached a major conurbation.”

Oscar followed her words as best he could and spent a second thinking about it, looking for the deeper meaning that she was laying underneath her words.  But his mind didn’t function like hers and certainly not on this level of fatigue.

“What are you actually saying Hannah?  No entiendo,”

She looked at him again with those tired eyes and she blinked twice before she spoke.

“Oscar, we cant do this now,” she said with a husky voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Let me finish,” she said, holding up a hand.  “We cant do this alone.  We’ve followed the infction to here.  So we’ve got to take action,”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“We’ve got to call in the air strike and burn this area clean,”

“No,” he said fiercely and got to his feet.

“Oscar!” she pleaded.

But Oscar had taken all he could cope with.  He couldn’t give up these people and give them to the fire like the villagers of his old village.  Oscar still had the belief, still had some hope left that they could go in, they could sort out what was going on, find out who was human.  They could do it.

Hannah gave him a look that was all imploring.  Oscar’s eyes focused on her machine-gun, slung around her back.  Oscar saftied his weapon and pointed it at her.  Her eyes fell.

“You’re going to shoot me?” she asked him.  “You know that might almost be a relief,”

“I wont shoot unless you try to call in that air-strike,” replied Oscar.

“You’ve got the drop on me Oscar.  But I might have to test you,” she said.

“Oscar,” came a voice from behind.  Oscar span around pointing the machine-gun.  Wharton, agent Wharton, was standing behind him.

“Oscar, she’s right.  We’ve got to call in the strike,”

“You!” snarled Oscar.  “You are dead.  You are one of them”

“I understand why you’d say that,” he replied.  “But I’m not.  That doesn’t even matter,”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“Think about it, kid.  The infection is out there.  And we’ve got no idea, for sure, how bad it’s gotten.  Any one of us could be infected,”

“I’m still human,” replied Oscar.

“Sure, so am I and so is Hannah.  But we’ve got no way to be really sure,”

“The test,” replied Oscar bitterly

“It worked, yes.  But we cant replicate it without whole blood to test.  We could all take turns burning ourselves but Hannah’s got a better notion,”

Oscar looked over at her, aware that he had his back to her.  But she hadn’t drawn a weapon.  She looked up and Oscar thought he saw a tear in her eyes.  But that could have just been the light.

“Oscar, we’ve got to call in the air strike and we’ve got to call it in on this location,”

Her hand waved across Villa Pylar.

“Yes,” replied Oscar.  “But you wont do that,”

“Yes I will,” she said.  “I’m going to and if you must shoot me to stop me, you go ahead.  It’ll be okay.  If you don’t shoot me, the air strike will kill us anyway,”

“It’s the only way to be totally sure kid,” added Wharton.

“Dios mio,” breathed Oscar.

“I hope so,” replied Wharton with a strange smile on his face.  “Hannah?”

“Yep, I’m ready,”  She looked at Oscar.  “Oscar?  Are you ready?  I’ll even turn my back if that makes it easier for you,”

Oscar looked down at the village and thought about it, thought about the mothers and fathers, women and children, old men and cats and dogs and chickens.  He thought about fading stucco walls and linen cloth, he thought of all the wooden stumps hammered into clay fired earth.

“I can’t, I just can’t.  I just can’t,” he said.  Oscar dropped the gun to the floor.

“I’m very proud to have met you Oscar,” said Hannah, her voice strong again.

Oscar wanted to reply but his mouth was dry and frozen.

“Okay do it Hannah,” said Wharton.  Wharton sat down on a big rock and ran his hands through his hair.  His side-arm was in one hand.

Oscar turned and ran towards the village, he ran as fast as he could, down hill and over stones.  He ran down the hill, half expecting to be shot in the back as he went.  He ran as fast as he could, running as fast as a human could run away from the onrushing flood.

Hannah put the radio receiver down and hugged her legs to her chest.  Wharton stayed where he was looking up into the sky.

Oscar ran towards the village, some remote survival instinct telling him to keep going and to fight against the very reality of the situation, a situation that he knew was utterly utterly hopeless.

Oscar ran, unaware that he was screaming.

There was a sudden flash of light in the center of the town and a rush of air.  Oscar felt the weight of the last two days drop away in an instant of heat and a flare of blinding light.