by Mark Tufo
“What?” She felt paralyzed, the desire to flee was there, but the body was not willing. She wanted to scream but what was the point, she was caught as effectively as a fish in a net.
“Come here.” The voice said semi frantically.
As she scanned the woods she was able to see a small arm motioning her onwards. Like a moth to a flame she was powerless, she hesitantly moved toward her doom.
“Faster lady or he’s going to see you.” The voice said near hysterics.
Beth understood that fear, even if she had no clue as to what was going on. She half hobbled, half shuffled toward the diminutive figure. He wasn’t the man from the outpost, this was a boy probably not much older than ten or eleven from the size of him.
“Come on,” he said urgently.
She had no sooner reached the boy when he pulled her arm down and with her earlier fight spilled out of her, and relief flooding through her, her whole body dropped into a heap.
“Who—” she tried to ask. The boy was having none of it. He clamped his hand over her mouth with a strength that belied his size. And this is it she thought, he tricked me and now it’s done. Fear and surrender overwhelmed her. She hated herself for being so weak.
The boy held up one finger to his mouth and with the hand that was previously cupped over her mouth he pointed to the roadway. Less than fifty yards away a fatigue covered behemoth of a man seemingly appeared from nowhere out of the woods on the opposite side of the highway almost directly across from their position. He was heavily armed.
God, he has to be strong just to be carrying all the weaponry he had, she thought.
“Where are you, bitch!” he yelled. “I know you’re close, I can smell your fear!”
And she didn’t think he was lying. Her pupils dilated, her chest heaved, sweat poured out of her. The boy crouched even lower into the forest floor. She followed suit. The man crossed the westbound lanes and stood motionless in the divider for what seemed an eternity.
“You can’t hide forever, bitch! I know you have no food and I know you have no weapons. I found the gun you killed my brother with! I’ll never stop hunting you! If you come out now I promise to make your death sort of fast!” At twenty-five yards, Beth could see the rage that possessed him. He quaked with the force of it. She was almost tempted to take him up on his offer, better to get it over with now than to keep up this cat and mouse charade. He began to cross the southbound lanes almost on a direct route to their hiding spot. Fifty feet… forty-five… forty. Beth thought her heart might just crash through her ribs at any moment. And then he stopped, his gaze swiveled farther up the road. He grunted as he set out on a slow trot, a pace that Beth felt she couldn’t match right now if she was at full tilt
“Johnnie, head toward Fort One,” her small savior said into thin air.
“Huh?” Beth mustered, her senses still in hyper-drive, the cascading adrenaline rush was beginning to subside and her limbs felt like stone. Heavy motionless stone, exhaustion washed over her. It was then that Beth heard the tinny response.
“Roger, that Max,” the voice responded a little out of breath but not panicky.
“What’s going on here?” Her curiosity began to peak now that the initial threat had been averted.
“Well, first things first, lady. Let’s get back to Fort One. And then I’ll tell you what’s going on.” Max was doing his best John Wayne impression. Beth wanted to laugh, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He had saved her life—who was she to question him?
“Alright, Max? That’s your name?” The boy nodded. “Didn’t you tell your friend to meet us there?”
“That’s right,” he answered, doing his best to not be annoyed by the grown-up’s lack of understanding.
“So won’t that man follow him there?” she asked, having no desire to run into her adversary again, especially now that she had seen him, he had been much less scary before that.
“He’ll try, I’m sure,” the boy said as he turned to head deeper into the forest. “Davy Crockett himself couldn’t follow Johnnie the way he’s going. And if he somehow did stumble upon Fort One he’d be in for a couple of nasty surprises.”
“This just gets better and better.” Beth snorted and shook her head before being swallowed up by the woods.
To Beth it seemed like they had walked for hours, the best she could do was to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She watched her feet because she didn’t trust her balance; one bad footfall and she knew she’d end up on her ass, and being this exhausted, she’d probably just start kicking and screaming on the ground like a five year old. She didn’t want to give Max that satisfaction. It didn’t look like he much cared about grown-ups as it was.
'What’s his story?' she wondered. It was then that she placed her foot in a stream for the second time. “How many times am I going to get my feet wet?” she grumbled. “Hey, this stream looks the same,” she said more than a little exasperated. She finally lifted her head and looked from side to side. It was difficult to tell where she was but she would’ve sworn they had passed that old twisted oak tree an hour ago.
She caught up to Max and a little more forcefully than she meant to, grabbed his arm and jerked him to a halt He glared at her with hate-filled eyes, eyes that had seen probably more than their fair share of death and cruelty; likely more death in his short life span than seasoned mercenaries had their whole career, but sadness and fear were not part of the equation for the mercs.
“You grab me like that again, lady, and I’ll leave you here. I’ll leave you for him,” he said with all the pre-pubescent menace he could muster. The words may have sounded funny coming out of such a small figure, but she in no way doubted he would do just as he said he would.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” she stammered, loosening her grip on his shoulder. I just think we’re going in circles, is all. Are we lost?” She let go, the offending hand falling uselessly by her side.
“We are and we’re not.”
Beth could only stare at the boy. Confusion wrinkled her brow.
“We are going in a circle and no we’re not lost, God you’re pretty thick for a grown-up.” Max could tell his words had hurt the lady but right now he wasn’t quite sure he cared. “Listen lady, that guy looked like he was military which probably means he has some survival and tracking skills, I am not going to give him any opportunity whatsoever to find us, and if he does I want to make sure we have ample time to prepare for our guest.” He flashed her a humorless big gap-toothed grin “Are you satisfied?” And without waiting for her response he turned and started heading back deeper into the woods. At least that was the direction she figured he was heading.
“Um… okay,” she answered, he was already out of earshot. She stumbled after him to catch up, wet shoes and all.
It was another forty-five minutes until they reached Fort One, but to a miserable, cold, wet, and exhausted Beth it seemed like three times that, for all her discomfort she made sure not to display anything to her diminutive surly guide. Max began to make a series of arm gestures of which Beth could make no sense. They looked nothing like the old hand signals on her dad’s old war films which he used to like to watch on cold Saturday afternoons. Beth didn’t much care for those movies but the thought of being able to curl up with her father for the day and garner the majority of his attention made it all worthwhile. A stab of nostalgia panged her she was able, with some difficulty, to push it aside, she just didn’t have the strength to sustain such a strong emotion.
Cautiously, Max moved forward, gesturing her to follow him, at least that’s what it looked like. When she tried to move quickly enough to walk side by side with him, he quickly put his hand up to stop her.
“What the hell, Max, you just told me to follow you,” she said, exasperated.
“Lady, you have at least two rifles pointing at you, if you make any kind of threatening move, they’ll open fire.” Beth halted the second she heard ‘rifle’. “I’m going to walk in slowly, yo
u follow me about ten feet behind.”
Beth stood stock still, not yet knowing whether she should leave this twisted Neverland or continue on down the rabbit hole. Just then, a small breeze rippled through the barren tree tops, the cold cut through her ill-prepared clothing. Her mind made up, the rabbit hole suddenly seemed inviting.
Beth walked slowly, hands held high for all to see, she had no desire to find out how accurate a kid could be with a rifle, if in fact it was a child. She had not heard Max say anything about the inhabitants of his sanctuary. She just assumed, there was the boy who had diverted her stalker and Max. She couldn’t imagine any sane parent letting their kids out unescorted these days. As she neared the opening of a large culvert, she saw as many as three youngsters make their presence known, each one standing to garner a cleaner shot if need be. When Max reached the mouth of the opening, he must have given the signal for the all clear. The three guards melted back into their stations, they looked young, but Beth didn’t think they’d hesitate a moment if the threat was real.
“Come on, lady, you stand out there any longer and they might just use you for target practice.” Max snorted when Beth jumped and headed briskly into the corrugated steel opening. Max had to dip his head a little, Beth was uncomfortably stooped over, the strain on her back was unbearable. Just when she thought her mild claustrophobia and lower back pain might get the better of her, the culvert pipe ended and opened up into what could only be described as a child’s slice of heaven. Toys and stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes were scattered about; Star Wars posters, Hulk flashlights, Spider-Man action figures were everywhere in direct contrast to the wall of small fire arms lining the far side.
“What is this place?” Beth nearly stammered.
“It’s Fort One, of course,” Max answered smugly, letting his new guest soak it in.
“But what exactly is it?” Beth asked, looking for clarification. The room was vast for something underground, possibly fifty yards to the far wall and twenty-five yards from side to side. Bunk beds and air mattresses where pushed up against the wall to her immediate right. She looked closer and noticed some of the beds were occupied with kids that may have been previously sleeping but were now staring raptly at her.
Beth’s attention snapped back as Max began to answer her. “Our best guess is that it is some sort of pump house for the Quabbin reservoir. There are other rooms back there”. He pointed to a door past the ‘armory’. “Mostly they are filled with machinery, we sometimes use them as offices when we don’t want some of the younger kids to hear what we’re talking about, we don’t want to scare them any more than they already are.”
“Where are their… yours… all of your parents?”
Max seemed to show the first real display of emotion with Beth’s words, but he did his best to dismiss it with a wave of his hand.
“Most of us here are orphans—well, I guess all of us are now,” Max said a little lower. “Wait—let me start over. Us original twelve were in an orphanage when the aliens attacked, we made it through that part fine. It was what happened afterwards that made us no longer wards of the state. Our orphanage was attacked by a huge gang of militia wannabes looking for food. They killed our head mistress and any adult that stood in their way, some of the older kids they took, for the most part they left us kids alone, and I mean all alone.” Beth’s heart stung with pain for the kids, not only had they started life with a shitty hand, God had decided that wasn’t enough and took even those cards away.
“Lady, don’t look so butt hurt,” Max laughed.
“Does it show that bad?” Beth said as she wiped the precursor to a tear away.
“Lady, your face is droopier than Little T’s stuffed bulldog,” Max said as he pointed to a small child sitting in the upper bunk. As Beth turned to see the little boy he immediately pulled his superman blanket over his head.
Max stood on his tip toes to whisper in Beth’s ear. “He’s still a little scared, his dad went to work one day and never came home, his mom… well, she ran into the same gang of thugs we did, and it wasn’t pretty. If we hadn’t come along a couple of days later he would’ve starved to death over his mom’s body.”
Beth wanted to run over to the little boy and cradle him in her arms and tell him everything would be alright. Max, sensing her motives, grabbed her hand.
“Don’t—he hasn’t let anyone touch him since we found him. He eats, plays with whatever toy he wants and sleeps, that’s about it. We figure he’ll come around eventually.”
“How old is he?” Beth asked as Little T pulled the blanket back a little to expose one eye.
“Probably four, but he hasn’t told us. Pretty much everyone here has the same kind of story.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Well, of me?” Max said pointing to his chest. “Just the one.” He flashed a brilliant smile. Beth couldn’t help but perk up a little. “All of us, including you now, there’s twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven! How do you feed everyone? What do you eat?”
“For a while, we lived off the highway gas station a couple a miles up the road, we cleaned that thing out in a couple of days, we had more Devil Dogs and Ring Dings and potato chips than we knew what to do with. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m probably the only eleven year old that can’t stand junk food anymore. My headmistress would have been so proud, I used to steal cookies from the pantry whenever I could, I got my hand slapped more than once. But Mrs. Herron was a really nice old lady. She always made that place feel like my home. She died protecting me.”
“Max, I’m so sorry,” Beth said as she stroked the little boys arm.
He shrugged, “It’s over now. Now we look out for ourselves, all of us here are each other’s family and for the most part it works.”
“What do you do for food now that the junk food is gone?”
“Trust me lady, it’s not gone. We just don’t want to eat it anymore.” He grimaced as he grabbed his belly, just the mere thought of another Twinkie did that to him now.
Realizing that he had not answered her question, Max stated simply, “We trade.”
“Trade what and with who?”
“You sure do ask a lot of questions for a grown-up, most of you guys could care less what a kid is up to.”
“Well, for one thing, Max, I’m not like most grown-ups and another thing, I don’t think that I’m all that old.”
Max laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re not nearly as old as Mrs. Herron.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Beth said sardonically. “So really, who do you trade with?”
“There are these people, out in Worcester, mostly decent folk just trying to get by. There are a couple of jerks in their group, but they leave us alone, at least since they tried to follow us a few months back.”
“What happened?” Beth said, trepidation flowing into her voice. The thought of these kids being stalked like she was, scared the hell out of her.
“We shot one of the guys in the ass and they turned tail and rode away so fast I almost peed myself laughing.”
“That’s terrible!” Beth shrieked, “You shot someone?”
“It ain’t that bad, it was only a pellet gun, the only thing that got hurt on him was his pride and his ass, I guess,” Max said a little loudly, daring Beth to reprimand him for his use of cuss words. Beth said nothing, though, she figured the kid had long ago earned the right to use swear words whenever he saw fit. “Besides, if he had kept following us he would have gotten a lot worse.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to know where we were located, I guess, and where our stash was.”
”Your stash?” she asked.
Max stood up without a word and motioned Beth to follow him to one of the doors opposite the armory. Beth walked in and nearly froze upon gazing inside. The room was nearly as big as the room she had just left and was crammed with case upon case of different liquors, vodkas, rums, tequilas, beers, everything. It was an alcoholi
c’s nirvana. “Where the hell did you get all this?” Beth turned to look at Max who had a huge grin spread across his face.
“Well, when the shi—stuff really started to go down, we had first gone up into New Hampshire, a bunch of us figured for some stupid reason that New Hampshire was probably safe.” Max’s face dropped a little. “Lost my best friend in New Hampshire,” Max said, apparently unwilling to elaborate anymore on that subject. “Anyway, while we were leaving, one of the kids, Sammie, spotted one of those ‘no goody’ stores on the highway.”
“‘No goody’? Oh, ‘no duty’ stores.”
“Yeah, whatever. Do you want to hear my story?”
“Yes, sorry,” Beth said as she did her best to shield a smile.
“Anyway, we trade in the pickup truck we’ve got and Sammie gets one of those big tractor trailer trucks, we spent almost a whole day stuffing that thing with everything we could fit in it.”
“Sammie drove the truck?” Beth asked.
“He’s almost sixteen,” Max answered defiantly.
“And so how did you find this place?” Beth said motioning her arm across the expansive room.
“That’s a whole ‘nother story, lady, and don’t be bringing it up to Sammie.” Max looked at her until she answered.
“I promise,” Beth answered.
“His big brother, who worked for the parks department or something used to bring him here and do all sorts of awful stuff to him.”
“His big brother? How awful.”
“Not like his real big brother, but like one of those organizations.”
“Oh Big Brothers, Big Sisters. How horrible.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t talk about it much. He got his revenge though. The creep was hiding out here when we took over.”
Again Beth waited for him to elaborate but no new information was forthcoming. Beth figured she knew how that story would play out anyway.
“So about once a month, Sammie and a couple of other kids pack up a car we have and head down to Worcester, we trade this stuff for food. Good food like hamburgers and hot dogs and sometimes even deer if their hunters have been lucky. They tried to follow us once and once they tried to make a bad deal with us. But when we didn’t show up for our scheduled monthly runs, I guess they knew better than to screw with us, it’s gone pretty smooth since then.”