“Look, we’re only here to get our family. We’ll leave. We don’t want any trouble,” Wolf assured them, the gun still in his hand. At his side, Geno pulled his own and pointed it at the three men, pushing Tabitha behind him as the men entered the house.
“We heard the gunshot. Where’s Mac?” the guy with the bat asked.
Daniel stepped through the front door behind them. “Mac isn’t in charge anymore,” he stated firmly, himself holding an AR aimed at the men.
The three men spun around to look at him. “Who says?”
“I do, as do quite a few of the rest of us. We’re not listening to Mac anymore. This is our town and we don’t like the way he’s running things. You’re welcome to leave if you have a problem with that,” Daniel said.
The guy with the bat burst into laughter. “No kidding? Well, it took you long enough, Daniel!”
Wolf froze—he’d been ready for a shoot-out, but the three men in front of him had lowered their weapons, and the man with the bat seemed almost excited. Had there really been that much support building up against Mac? Maybe so. Surprised by the man’s easy acceptance of the change in regime, Wolf traded glances with Geno and Tabitha, who was pressed into Geno’s back, hugging him from behind. The guy with the bat turned back to look at Wolf, Geno, and Tabitha, a small smile on his own face.
“We’ll be going,” Wolf said in a calm voice, keeping the gun in his hand in case the other two had a different opinion.
“Thank you,” the bat guy said. “I’m Dustin, and I for one am glad to be free of that man. My wife is going to be thrilled.”
“Go on home, Dustin,” Daniel said.
Dustin was still smiling as he walked out the door. The other two men were staring down Wolf, but looked to have relaxed their weapons some, becoming less sure of themselves. Wolf looked to Daniel.
“Let us leave and we won’t bother you again,” Geno told them.
The man with the gun shook his head. “I don’t like this, Daniel.”
“Then leave. Both of you, go. You’re not welcome here anyway. You two have done nothing but cause trouble,” Daniel said firmly, the barrel of the AR still pointed at their chests.
“Excuse me?” the man spun around, holding his gun on Daniel now. “You’re not the man in charge here. Mac was, and I’m his number-two.”
Wolf looked at Daniel and saw the hint of fear in his eyes. This wasn’t going to end well. Daniel had said there would be a few men who were loyal to Mac that would likely cause problems.
“Leave now,” Wolf ordered. “I will shoot you.”
The man turned to look at Wolf, the gun lax in his hand, and Daniel took advantage of the distraction and struck the man’s wrist, dropping the handgun to the floor. Wolf dove for the man with the knife and disarmed him in a moment’s time, the man having been distracted by the attack on his friend. Wolf stepped back, the hunting knife in hand as Daniel aimed the AR at the two loyal to Mac and ordered them out of the house. There was a lot of posturing and dirty looks, but the men clearly knew they’d been defeated.
“This isn’t over, Daniel. We’ll be back,” the man snapped.
Another man appeared in the doorway. “William and Brooks were just leaving. Can you see them to the exit?” Daniel asked.
Once they were out of the house, Daniel turned back to face Wolf. “Thank you for all you’ve done. Now, let’s go see your little girl.”
Wolf breathed a sigh of relief. “How many more are out there?” he asked.
“Mac sympathizers?”
“Yes.”
“They’re being escorted out as we speak,” Daniel replied, stepping onto the porch. “Not surprisingly, there are very few.”
Wolf watched as several more men were escorted toward the gate by guys holding AR-15s. “Good.”
Daniel stepped off the porch and walked across the road to the small brick building that housed the clinic, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Wolf kept the gun in his hand in case of trouble. Tabitha had run ahead and was already pushing the clinic door open, Wolf right on her heels.
Fred came through a back door as they entered, carrying Lily in his arms with Regan and RC right behind him. Wolf rushed to his daughter, who looked a hundred percent better than the last time he had seen her.
“Hey,” he said in a soft voice when she smiled.
“Hi, Dad. How’s it going?”
He laughed at her easy nonchalance—this was his Lily, getting back to normal already.
“I’ll get her back in bed,” Fred said, carrying her through the door of an exam room.
“I just put fresh sheets on the bed,” Heather said with a smile, Travis by her side.
“You’re here,” Wolf exhaled a breath of relief.
Heather smiled in return. “I am. The guard on our side took care of the other three while I hightailed it back here. I heard a gunshot,” she said.
Wolf nodded his head. “Mac’s dead.”
Fred gingerly laid Lily on the bed, although she insisted on sitting up and giving everyone hugs.
“I’m sorry,” Lily blurted out.
Wolf gave her a stern look. “Never do that again,” he ordered her.
Regan stood beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist. “She’s healthy and on the mend. You can be mad at her later.”
“And you,” Geno said to his wayward wife. “I swear, woman, if you do something like this again, it is not going to end well for you,” he growled.
Tabitha grinned back at him. “I think you should know me well enough by now to know I don’t take your orders all that well.”
Wolf looked at Travis. “What was your part in all this?”
He shrugged, looking suitably embarrassed. “I noticed Lily was gone and figured she was coming here. I followed her. She was most of the way here when I got to her, but got really sick before she could make it in. When we got to the walls—”
“He carried me,” Lily said, cutting him off.
Travis blushed. “They were nice. The doctor, Ben, he took good care of Lily,” Travis explained.
Tabitha nodded her head. “He is a good doctor.”
Daniel came into the crammed exam room, Ben right behind him. “The good doctor has decided to stay,” he announced.
Wolf reached out and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you for helping her.”
Ben shrugged, smiling over at Lily. “Sure. It was my pleasure.”
“We should probably get out of here and let him get Lily settled,” Heather said, putting her arm around her son as she steered him out of the room.
Wolf smiled as they passed in front of him. He had a feeling Travis was about to get a very stern lecture about his part in the whole thing.
“I’m going to step out, as well,” Fred murmured.
Geno and Tabitha followed him.
“I’m glad you’re going to be okay, Lily,” Regan said with a smile before nodding her head at Wolf and walking out of the room.
His dad silently followed after giving Lily another quick hug, leaving Wolf alone with the doctor and his daughter. Ben looked uncomfortable, which put Wolf on guard.
“I’m sorry,” Ben muttered.
Wolf eyed him. “For what?”
He cleared his throat as he stuck a new needle in Lily’s arm. “For wanting Mac to keep Tabitha around. I shouldn’t have said it. I didn’t know she was married and had someone out there waiting for her. I thought she was alone and I wanted the extra pair of hands,” he explained.
“Oh, that.” Wolf relaxed, looking back to his daughter and trading a smile with her. “Well, I think you’ll have to apologize to her husband, and if I were you, I’d make it a really good apology.”
Ben looked terrified. “He was the big guy with the gun?”
Wolf grinned. “That’d be him.”
“Great,” Ben moaned.
Lily laughed. “He’s not so bad once you get to know him. I’ll tell him you didn’t know. Tabitha will protect you if it gets to that point,
” she assured the doctor.
Wolf smiled. He couldn’t believe he was staring at his daughter, looking almost back to normal. “Thank you for saving her,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
Ben finished what he was doing and smiled. “I was happy to help. I’ll leave the two of you alone. And you, young lady, stay put. Leave that IV in.”
“I know, I know, I will,” Lily promised.
Wolf pulled the blanket over Lily before sliding a chair up next to her bed and sitting down. He needed a few minutes to get his emotions in check. The relief at seeing his daughter was overwhelming. Everything was going to be okay.
20
Regan headed toward the house they were all crashing in while Lily rested up and healed. They were all back to carrying again, never knowing if a Mac sympathizer would make an attempt to seek revenge, but it felt good. At the moment, life felt good. She passed by one of the kids who lived nearby, waving as he rode his bike past her. She was carrying a sandwich, something she’d thought she’d never hold in her hands again. It felt weird to be doing something so normal.
“Hi,” she greeted Wolf, who was sitting under the shade of a pergola in a comfortable lounge chair outside their borrowed home, his gun tucked under his leg.
“Hey,” he smiled.
“I brought you a sandwich. I thought you were going to join us for lunch at the park?”
He grinned. “I have a confession.”
She sat in the chair next to his, handing him the sandwich that was nothing more than lettuce, tomato, and a little salt between two slices of fresh baked bread. “A confession? I’m intrigued,” she teased.
“I took a nap,” he said, embarrassment in his voice.
She laughed. “Good. Everyone else that did night watch slept. I knew you were tired. You don’t have to always be the tough guy. Take a break now and again. You’re making the rest of us look bad,” she teased.
He shrugged a shoulder before taking a bite of the sandwich. “I didn’t think I was tired until I stretched out on this chair. It wasn’t that I was trying to be tough—it was more like I didn’t want to be locked up inside when there’s so much to do out here.”
“Everyone’s taking care of things. They all have assigned jobs; this town really functions as a cohesive unit. It reminds me of the stuff I used to read about in history books. Everyone has a specialty. This is a village with different tradesmen working together to survive.”
Truthfully, she couldn’t help but feel a little envious at what the people had managed to put together. They were making the apocalypse work. It was admirable, and she hoped her own group could one day do the same.
Wolf took a bite of the sandwich, nodding as he chewed. “They’ve done well for themselves,” he agreed.
“It’s nice here, don’t you think?” she asked, wanting to broach the idea of sticking around for a while longer.
“It is, but you know it won’t last,” he cautioned. “This is the calm before the storm. These people aren’t prepared to survive a strong storm, or even an attack. What if there are others like Mac looking for an opportunity? Others like Damien, forming small armies? As time goes on, those armies are going to fan out. They’ll have to. They aren’t thinking about how to survive on what they grow; they’re focused on taking what everyone else has. When one of those armies reaches this place, it will fall.”
Regan nodded her head. “I know, I know.”
“I don’t know if you do. The kids here, they’re going to be captured or killed. Same with the women. The men will likely be killed or forced to join the armies. It’s the same thing that was happening back in Heather’s neighborhood.”
“But we could help them build better defenses with your knowledge,” she argued.
He shrugged. “This town is in the middle of nowhere. The walls are flimsy at best. It can be attacked from all sides. I don’t think it can ever be truly defended. Now, if it were in a place where at least one side was easily defended, possibly,” he explained.
She let out a long dramatic sigh. “I hope they find a way to keep this place safe.”
“I do, too, but it won’t last—not if they stay here, at least.”
It was a discussion they had already endured several times. They were all feeling the same way. “But what if it lasted a little while?” she pushed.
“I know, Regan, I know what you’re thinking. I like it, too, but what if the guys we kicked out of here come back with reinforcements? There are fewer than fifty people living inside these walls, and a number of them are retired folks who are not going to be able to put up much of a fight,” he reminded her. “There’s a reason they needed our help.”
She nodded, wishing things were different. She knew all the reasons they couldn’t stay, but it was still a hard pill to swallow. The thought of walking away from another house and another community was hard. Wolf had drilled the idea of strength in numbers into her head so much, it had actually stuck. There was strength in numbers, but not only for safety. The strength also came from people dividing the work load and accomplishing more in less time.
“Do you think they’ll be okay here?” she asked.
“There’s no way to know. They need to fortify these walls a little better and be more proactive when it comes to security. The guards I worked with last night were barely keeping their eyes open. Look at how easy it was for us to get in here, and we barely had to try,” he said, shaking his head. “From looking at this place, I never thought it would be so easy.”
“I know, I know,” she replied, feeling a lot like Lily.
“I like it here, I really do, and I like the people, but they’ve cut themselves off from the world. They have to leave the walls to forage and hunt, leaving the town vulnerable. They need more able-bodied people and a way to be self-sufficient within the walls.”
“Like you had on the island?” she asked.
He nodded. “Exactly. Walls don’t just keep the bad guys out. They keep the good guys in.”
She sighed, leaning back in the chair and closing her eyes. It was another warm day, but there was a slight breeze that made it a little better. She was slowly becoming accustomed to the heat and humidity of Florida. She knew it would be a little cooler in the swamp without the sun beating down on them, but the humidity would be horrible, especially over the next couple of months as they got through the rest of summer.
“When are we leaving?” she asked, resigned to the idea.
“Ben thinks Lily will be fine in a day or two. The wound is almost healed, and she hasn’t had a fever for two days,” Wolf replied. “She still has a month or two for that bone to heal, but it doesn’t look like there will be any long-term complications.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes still closed as the warm air lulled her into a deep state of relaxation.
He chuckled softly from beside her. “See, you’re falling asleep, too.”
She smiled, not opening her eyes. It felt good to relax on a comfortable chair after so many days of traveling and sleeping on the hard ground. It was what she liked most about the town. They had a home, beds, kitchens, and even a few outhouses on the edge of the wall. There was a large pool in the center that was used to collect rainwater, along with a variety of containers lined up under the roof of every home to catch the daily rainfall. The town might not be fortified, but they were making huge strides in becoming more self-sufficient. Regan hoped they could live in peace for a while.
It was the sound of kids playing in the road and mothers chatting as they hung laundry, as well as the smells emitted from the large cooking area in the park, that made it so idyllic. She imagined herself on a warm summer day back in the 1950s. The people seemed to be perfectly content to live without electricity and running water. They were taking it all in stride—something she also hoped to be able to do once they established their own little community. In her mind, she thought back to the Gilligan’s Island television show. The castaways had built huts and created their own little vill
age. They had established a new normal for themselves, that included time to read, eat leisurely meals, and have fun.
The people in this town were in a good place and already creating a new normal. They knew how to work with their hands, making things. The women knew how to bake bread, make jam, and cook meals with very little. It was part of the older generation’s daily lives, in fact. To them, it was slipping back into old habits that their mothers had taught them. Skills that had been passed down for generations. Having the elderly around was proving to be a huge bonus in this new world with no modern conveniences. Unfortunately, Regan’s generation was a bit helpless, and had been far too reliant on microwaves and malls.
“Are you napping?” Fred’s voice startled Regan as she started to drift off, her mind having transported her back to a time she had never personally lived in, but was now wishing she had.
She sighed and opened her eyes, a little irritated to have her reverie disturbed. “What’s up, Fred?”
“I’m headed for the van. Are you sure you want me to bring it in here?” he asked.
Regan sat forward, looking at Wolf. She wasn’t sure it was the best idea, but Wolf and RC were convinced it would be okay. Regan was distrusting by nature and no matter how much she liked the people in town, she didn’t trust them not to take what they had.
“Well?” she asked Wolf.
He shrugged. “Everyone agreed it would be easiest. We have to trust they won’t overpower us and take everything.”
Regan shrugged her shoulders. “I guess you have your answer. Are you taking Geno with you?”
Fred nodded. “Yep. We’ll see you guys in an hour or so. If we’re not back, please come save us,” he joked—or, at least, he was half-joking.
She knew he was worried that the van had been spotted and looted. They had taken the keys, of course, but it was the stuff in the back of the van that was the most valuable. The heavy brush and trees the van had been parked in had been excellent camouflage, but anyone walking off the road or hunting in the area would have come upon it. Mac’s followers could easily have found it in their grand exodus from the town.
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