Isolation by Jones, Nathan (the first e reader .TXT) 📗

side had already been riddled with bullet holes, but Jay didn't seem satisfied with his fighters' progress because they were still at it. Probably since the earth berms and piled undergrowth and refuse around the targets was even more riddled with bullets.

As Larry got out of his truck in the main camp's parking area, he heard his friend shouting orders through a bullhorn. Everyone in the trucks scrambled out and changed positions in the vehicles, then a tense silence settled as everyone seemed to wait.

He spotted Liza Coates leaning out the passenger side window of the lead vehicle, gripping her rifle with an extremely reluctant expression on her face. She'd become even more dissatisfied with what was happening here than Larry was, and was probably a large part of the reason he hadn't been pulled into Jay's madness.

He had to admire her willingness to speak out when everyone else seemed too afraid to. And no doubt after she learned about Zolos in the quarantine camp she'd once again insist Larry try to talk sense into Jay.

Well, Larry didn't usually need much urging, although he appreciated her moral support. But this time he didn't need any urging at all.

Since any confrontation was going to be delayed until Jay's little vehicle training exercise was over, Larry settled down at the fire beside Mitch, an older man who'd lived down the street from him. Or still did, technically, although neither of them spent much time in Wensbrook these days.

“Is it true?” Mitch said quietly, staring towards the training fighters with troubled eyes. “Is there a Zolos breakout in the quarantine camp?”

“That's what they're saying,” Larry murmured back. “And from what the scouts are saying, they're certainly acting like it with how they're scrambling to manage containment and treatment.”

His neighbor cursed under his breath. “Was it us?”

Larry looked away with a surge of guilt. “I don't know.”

The half dozen people at the fire with them had been quietly listening in, and after that the strained silence lingered; most of them probably feared exactly what Larry did, that they'd spread Zolos to innocent people.

A minute or so later the gunfire at the range faded, and Jay's voice over the megaphone called out. “All right, cease fire! Magazines out, chamber check, safeties on! Good work everyone, I think the next time Stanberry tries dirty tactics we'll be ready for them.”

There was a minor commotion as everyone piled out of their vehicles and put away their weapons, eager to wash up and get some dinner. Liza immediately made her way over to join Larry, eyes scrunched in deep concern. “You hear what happened in the quarantine camp?” she hissed.

“I heard,” he replied grimly.

Her grip on her rifle tightened until her knuckles were white. “This is seriously messed up. We need to-” She abruptly cut off, eyes turned back towards the firing range.

Larry turned and saw Jay approaching with most of the fighters. “Why so grim?” their leader called cheerfully towards the people gathered around the fire. “What's eating you guys?”

“What do you mean, what's eating us?” Larry demanded incredulously. “We spread Zolos to those poor people in the quarantine camp with that “harmless prank” you insisted on doing.”

“Uht uht uht,” Jay said mildly, although his eyes flashed warning as he glanced around at all the people listening in. “They say we did. But like you said, they're in a quarantine camp that's taking in new people every day, and we're in the middle of a Zolos pandemic. More likely they had a completely unrelated outbreak and blamed it on us to turn the camp against us, since they know plenty of people there sympathize with our cause.”

Larry shook his head. “There hasn't been a single outbreak in that camp since this started. And lately we've been turning away most of the refugees headed there before they ever get close, either convincing them to move on or getting them to join us instead.” He nodded towards the nearby camp of Zolos-vulnerable recruits to emphasize that point. Then he hardened his voice. “So you want to say that just days after our water balloon stunt, they miraculously had a carrier among the handful of new arrivals?”

Jay just glared at him, as if he was starting an unreasonable argument.

That just made Larry even angrier. “If we spread Zolos to those poor people, we have to take responsibility for it,” he snapped.

“We?” Jay said quietly. “You were the one in charge of safely filling, transporting, and launching the balloons. I may have ordered the water balloon fight, but you were the one who said you wouldn't do it unless you personally made sure we didn't actually spread the virus with our hoax. So if this is on anyone's head, it's yours.”

Larry opened his mouth, then shut it. The fact that he knew Jay was right didn't do anything for his fury. And certainly not his guilt.

He finally snarled a few blistering curses at his friend, turned, and strode away.

Liza hurried to catch up to him, grabbing his shoulder. “Hey,” she said fiercely. “Don't let him dump all the blame on you. He's the one who made the call, you just did everything you could to make sure it didn't get innocent people hurt.”

Larry shook his head dully. Everything he could do hadn't been enough, and now people were sick. After watching his loved ones sicken and die in a quarantine camp, he'd been part of visiting that same horror on innocents.

What sort of monster was he?

“Hold on, Larry,” Mitch, still by the fire, called.

Larry turned, surprised, to find his neighbor on his feet facing Jay, expression grim. He wasn't the only one.

Mitch spoke again, eyes still on their leader. “I'm just as pissed at Stanberry as anyone, but enough is enough. Larry's been trying to convince us to give this up and go home for a while now, and now I think I agree with him.”

Jay scoffed. “Is that right? So after everything they did to us, everything we've gone through,