by Lukens, Mark
“I know,” Luke said, catching his breath.
They stared at each other and started laughed again.
“Stop,” she said. “No more laughing.”
Luke drank some coffee, washing down the last bits of the chewed-up snack cake. He looked at Wilma; she had stopped laughing now. “I’m sorry your brother left you.”
“He had to. He had no choice.” The laughter was gone now and the soldier in Wilma was back. She brightened a little. “Hey, how about a tour of the place?”
Luke sipped a little more coffee and grabbed another snack cake. “I’m ready.”
“Well, you’ve seen the classroom and the kitchen.”
He walked around the bar and met her in the kitchen. Wilma opened up a few cabinets. “We’ve got food stocked up in these cabinets. More in that pantry over there. The water comes from a solar-powered well and pump. All the water is sent through a filtration system. All electricity comes from the solar panels on the roof, some of it stored up in batteries.”
“Yeah, I saw the solar panels when we were outside.”
Wilma led him down the hallway. “Here are the bedrooms, but we called them quarters. The bathroom’s over here. That bedroom down there at the end of the hall has its own bathroom. Gravity flush system for the toilets and a septic tank. This bedroom was made into a communications room.”
He followed her into the small communications room. Two desks met in a corner each holding desktop computers, monitors, different kinds of radios, microphones, and a few other pieces of electrical equipment that Luke couldn’t name. Some of the monitors were still turned on.
“Can we reach anyone with this equipment?” Luke asked.
“No internet connection. Everything was severed on Friday morning when the collapse started. Most of the radio stations are just static now; a few are playing pre-recorded stuff, especially the president’s last address. Same thing with TV. We’ve got an analog antenna, but it isn’t picking up much. But we do have a ham radio over here.” She led him to the other side of the room where another desk housed radio equipment stacked up on the desk and on the floor beside it.
Luke didn’t know what any of the equipment did or was supposed to do. He looked at her. “Can you reach anyone?”
“No one that can help with anything. Nothing but silence from the government and military and police. We reached out to a few other operators from around the country, but they’re saying pretty much the same thing is happening there that is happening here.”
“So this is happening all over the country?”
Wilma nodded. “All over the world, as far as we can tell.”
“All over the world?” he repeated, trying to imagine that. “So you don’t think this was some kind of terrorist attack or an attack from another country?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Could still be an attack of some kind, maybe a suicide mission for the whole world, some group that wants to kill off everyone. Maybe some kind of religious or environmental group that thinks humans are a virus on this planet. Or there’s always my favorite theory, the elites wanting to kill off most of the population so they can start over.”
Luke didn’t respond. He didn’t want to get into a philosophical debate with her.
“I’m going to keep monitoring the ham radio a few times a day, see if there’s any new kind of information about what kind of disease this is. But a lot of the ham operators have gone silent.”
“You think they turned?”
“Or they’re dead. Or they’ve just gone silent, so no one picks up their signal. That’s what our camp is doing; I can’t reach them now—they’re not going to respond.”
Luke just nodded.
“Come look at the garage.”
He followed her down the hall in the other direction, through the kitchen again. A door opened up to a massive garage.
“This structure was added to the house two years ago,” Wilma said as she stepped down into the garage.
The garage looked almost like an airplane hangar to Luke, and he now knew what the massive building was that he’d seen behind the house when they first pulled up to it. It looked like it could have easily held ten cars inside, but instead of cars there were ten dirt bikes parked, all of them pointed towards the two large garage doors.
“Those doors are reinforced steel,” she told Luke. “Not your normal garage doors. Walls are block construction. Bars on the windows here are just like the ones in the rest of the house. We’ve got a cache of weapons over there in that locker. Plenty of ammo. All kinds. You can load up on ammo for your gun.”
Luke just nodded. He looked over at the row of lockers, shelves holding cardboard boxes and crates of supplies. There were tools hanging from a pegboard, and more toolboxes on the floor, along with extra gas cans, metal barrels, motorcycle gear and parts. He walked towards the group of dirt bikes, all of them propped up on kickstands. Some of the bikes had packs strapped to the back of them.
“I hope you can ride one of these,” Wilma said with a smile.
He nodded. “I’ve ridden motorcycles before.”
“Dirt bikes?”
“Yeah. A long time ago.”
“You should be fine. We’ll make sure the two we take are fueled up, and we’ll take a little extra fuel, but at some point we’re going to have to find some more fuel along the way. But there are plenty of abandoned cars and trucks—we’ll find something.”
“Why dirt bikes? I would’ve thought four-wheelers or a dune buggy or something would have been better.”
“We wanted something off-road. We figured the roads would be clogged with wrecked, stalled, or abandoned vehicles. The roads would also be the places where the military or police would set up checkpoints. Most people only imagine roads when they think of traveling, but there are so many other routes: fields, farmland, neighborhoods, alleyways, bike paths, railroad tracks. And maybe dirt bikes seem like an odd choice, but there are several reasons we selected them. The first thing is how versatile they are; you can drive them on the street, on the dirt, through mud and water. They can also go through trails in the woods, narrow places where cars and even four-wheelers can’t go. They’re pretty easy to work on and they can go quite a ways on a tank of gas.”
Wilma walked over to a side door in the garage. “When it comes time for us to leave, we won’t even have to open one of the garage doors, we can open this door and push the bikes right out into the back yard.”
“But they’re noisy,” Luke said. “And they don’t offer much in the way of protection.”
She smiled at him. “Well, you can’t have everything, I guess.”
CHAPTER 23
As Wilma took her shower in the master bathroom, Luke took a shower in the guest bathroom. He stood under the water for ten minutes after washing up; he never realized how much he had missed hot water, soap, and shampoo. He had always considered himself pretty tough and adaptable; after all, he had done two separate stretches in prison. But even being locked up was nothing compared to this new world he found himself in now. He couldn’t believe how much everything had changed, and how all of it had changed so quickly.
When he was done with his shower, Luke stepped out and dried off. He had his backpack on the counter with his extra change of clothes inside. His dirty clothes were on the floor and Wilma said she could wash their clothes later. He shaved and brushed his teeth.
He felt better now. He remembered last night when he had asked Wilma if she was feeling better. She had answered that she was full, halfway warm, her pain was subsiding, and she was getting a buzz from a can of beer. Well, he had half of that list checked off right now.
When he left the bathroom, he went down the hall to the kitchen. Wilma was already done with her shower. He could smell something cooking.
“Just whipping up some dinner,” Wilma said and then frowned. “Or lunch. Hell, I don’t even know what time it is.”
“I’ll take either one,” Luke said. His stomach was rumbling again
.
Noodles were boiling on the stove, and there was tomato sauce simmering in another pot.
“I’ve got some bread heating up in the oven,” she told him. “We’ve got plenty of butter and garlic.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” Luke told her. “Get off your ankle for a little bit. I can get the rest of this.”
She smiled at him. “I’ll take you up on that.” She went to the small kitchen table and sat down.
Luke pulled the bread out of the oven and laid the cookie sheet down on two potholders on the countertop. He found two bowls in the upper cabinet and dished up the pasta, then he ladled the sauce over top of it. He brought the bowls to the table and put a few pieces of the bread on a plate.
“There’s some water, sodas, and beer in the refrigerator,” Wilma told him. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Luke grabbed two cans of beer and brought them back to the table and sat down across from Wilma.
For the next ten minutes they hardly spoke, both of them wolfing down their bowls of pasta and sauce, wiping up the sauce with the bread.
After they were done, they left the bowls and plates sitting on the table in front of them. Luke finished the rest of his beer and got up to grab two more for them. He set one down in front of Wilma and sat down again across from her. “Why don’t you tell me more about this camp down in West Virginia?”
“Like these safe houses, the money for the land, supplies, and structures at the camp was spread out among the entire group. The camp sits on fifty acres of land, much of it wooded. The camp is right in the middle of the property, all of it completely fenced in, and there are turrets every thirty feet with a walkway just below the top of the fence. There are twenty buildings in the camp: barracks, cabins, a kitchen and dining hall, a church, an armory, storage, two greenhouses. We have a small farm for vegetables and fruits, pens for livestock. Everything runs off of solar power with backup generators for emergencies. We have a stockpile of weapons, ammo, explosives, medicines, canned goods, food staples like flour and sugar and rice. We have enough food already stored to feed a hundred people for at least twenty years.”
“And you plan on going down there?”
“Yeah. I’ll wait a few days, make absolutely sure I’m immune to the plague, and then I’m going down there.”
“What if no one’s there?”
Wilma just stared at him. “Matt will be there. And Rick and Mario. They just left. They had their gas masks and gloves on.”
Luke didn’t say anything, but he was sure she knew what he meant. That was a long way to travel through possibly millions of rippers. The odds weren’t that good of making it.
“Matt will make it,” she said. “They’ll wear their masks.”
Giles wore his mask, and he still turned, Luke thought, but he didn’t want to remind her of that.
Wilma reached across the table and touched Luke’s hand, giving it a squeeze, then resting her hand on top of his. “I want you to go with me.”
“I don’t know.” Luke didn’t pull his hand away. He felt a stirring inside of him just from her touch. He held her gaze. “They might not want me. I’m not part of your militia. You saw how your brother and the other two reacted when they saw me this morning.”
“They’ll want you. There will only be a fraction of us down there after this plague. We’ll still need people. Especially people with your skills.”
“I don’t know how to farm or hunt or fish.”
“But you know how to shoot. How to kill.”
Luke sighed.
Wilma drew her hand back. “I know you said that you’re not a good person. I heard you say that last night before I fell asleep. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
“Not like me.”
Wilma sat back and folded her arms, waiting for Luke to explain.
“Okay,” Luke said. “You want to know my life story? Is that it?”
“Yeah, that would be nice.” She finished off her beer.
Luke got up and went to the refrigerator. “This is going to require two more beers.” He was already buzzed, and one more beer sounded pretty good.
CHAPTER 24
“I got in trouble all the time when I was a kid,” Luke said. He opened his third beer and took a sip.
Wilma sipped her beer, saying nothing, just waiting for him to continue.
“I was a bad kid. I liked to fight. Not just fight, but I liked to hurt the people that I fought. I had a violent streak. A mean streak. I got into so much trouble they kicked me out of school. I was hanging out with older kids anyway, and one of my friends got me into MMA—mixed martial arts.”
“I know what MMA is,” she said with a small smile.
“I started going to a fighting gym, working out with weights and on the bags. I started sparring with some of the guys, picking up everything I could learn. In a few years I had turned my fists and feet into lethal weapons. I got as good as the guys that trained me. I was probably good enough to turn pro, but I got in a fight and nearly killed two guys outside of a bar. I got arrested, and then I got a pretty harsh sentence from the judge because I was a trained fighter—three years, but I only did two because of good behavior.
“I was a tough guy, and I could handle anyone one-on-one, or even two-on-one, but I couldn’t fight the whole prison population. Right away two older Italian guys took me in under their wing, teaching me the way of prison life. These were made men, and they had some protection in the pen, but they saw another solider in me. I protected them, and they in turn protected me. Nobody messed with our group in prison.”
“You’re in the mafia?” she asked.
Luke saw the shock and disgust on Wilma’s face—she couldn’t hide it. Maybe she had been bracing herself for stories of bar fights and maybe even some drug use, but probably nothing like this.
“It’s not like what you see on TV or in the movies,” Luke told her. He was sure she had her preconceived ideas about the mafia just like he’d had his own preconceived ideas about militias. “It’s much more organized and low-key than that, more like a business.”
“Yeah, right,” she said with a smile.
He could tell she was getting a buzz from the beer.
“So, what did you do for the mafia when you got out of prison?”
“Well, I was never truly a member of the family—I could never be because I wasn’t related to them, but I could be like an adopted member. I became what they called an enforcer.”
Luke stopped talking for a moment. He could see that he didn’t need to offer much of an explanation about what an enforcer did. He could see that she was already using her imagination.
“And you wanted to do that?” she asked. “To be an enforcer for a mafia family?”
“My MMA career was over by then. I couldn’t get sponsors. I had violent felonies on my record so I couldn’t get any kind of good job. I felt like I had no choice but to work for them. A man named Jacob trained me. I already knew how to fight, how to kill with my bare hands in various ways, but he taught me a few street-fighting tricks. I had some experience with firearms, but I trained with Jacob at a gun range twice a week, learning to shoot just about every kind of weapon there is. But it was more than just shooting and fighting. Jacob taught me how to dress presentably, but more importantly how to carry myself, how to control my temper. We were only to use violence when necessary. There were many times that just the presence of either me or Jacob would get other men spilling their guts and begging for forgiveness. The whole point, Jacob told me, was to intimidate them without using violence. It was so much easier that way.”
“But I’m sure examples had to be made along the way.”
Luke nodded. “Yes. There were times when violence had to be used.”
“So why are you by yourself and not with this . . . this family?”
“Jacob tried to kill me the night before last.”
“The guy that trained you?”
“Yeah. Vincent s
ent him to bring me to the house. I tried to run, but Jacob caught me before I could leave.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s dead. He made me drive my own car while he was in the back seat with a gun on me. But then the police started chasing us, shooting at us. I wrecked the car and got away. The police got him.”
“Why was he sent to get you?”
“Because of what happened at Howard’s house earlier that morning—the morning of the collapse. I told you a little about it when we were making the rope to get out of that bedroom.”
Wilma just nodded.
“Vincent sent me to go protect his brother and his family. He lived in Ashtabula County, right on the lake. When I got there, I saw that his wife and girls were slaughtered. I found Howard in the bathroom with blood all over him. He was talking gibberish. Just staring at me like he was an animal. He charged me, and I had no choice but to shoot him. When I called Vincent, tried to tell him what had happened . . .” He let his words die away.
“He didn’t believe you,” Wilma said.
“I don’t think so. Actually, Vincent wasn’t even acting like himself. Now I think he was just beginning to turn at that moment.”
“What happened at that guy’s house . . . that’s kind of what happened at my cousin’s house. She had already turned when I got there. She already . . . already killed her kids.”
Luke nodded, letting her know that she didn’t need to go on.
“You’re still not a terrible person,” Wilma said after a moment. “You were just doing your job. And like you said before, you could have left me outside back at that house. You could have locked the kitchen door.”
“You had my guns with you.”
“Funny,” she said, but she stared at him like she was trying to figure out if he was joking.
He was only half-joking. “You stole my stuff. You aimed a gun at me. You tried to steal my truck and leave me stranded in that house.”
“Yet you still let me back inside the house.”