I wheeled around, instantly raising the rifle as if I had been trained to do so from birth.
Riley was looking at us apathetically. He wasn’t afraid of the rifle I had pointed at him and there was no clear expression on his face. I could not tell if he had friendly or ill intent.
I did notice that he held a pistol in his hand, not aimed at us, and that there was a rifle very similar to mine slung over his shoulder. He apparently meant us no harm.
Still, I was reluctant to lower my weapon.
“Riley,” Kendra said.
“Been watching you guys for about an hour now,” he said, as if it were totally normal. “I couldn’t decide if I should make myself known. I can still help you, you know.”
I couldn’t put my finger on it right away, but there was something very different about Riley now. He spoke in a detached way and his face seemed slack, his eyes distant.
“Did you kill Vance?” I asked.
“Yeah. I had to. That son of a bitch was crazy. Sorry about what he tried to make you do. I didn’t have any way of stopping him. Between him and Greenbriar, they were like their own little crazy militia.”
“So why wouldn’t you kill us, too?” I asked. “How can we trust you?”
He looked genuinely hurt and then smiled at us. “Because you’re not a threat. Despite what you might think of me from keeping close to Vance, I’d like to help you. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t care one way or the other if it weren’t for the baby. I had a two year old boy when all this shit came down on us.”
“How can you help us?” Kendra asked. I was glad to hear the skepticism in her voice. But there was also compassion there, simply from having heard about Riley’s son.
“I know where you can get a set of wheels with damn near a full tank of gas,” Riley said. “It might not get you all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains, but it would be close.”
I slowly lowered my gun. “What about the supplies in Athens? Do you know where there are more?”
“Sorry to say I don’t. But we can head back there together and split them between us. No offense, but I’m not taking a chance with those Safe Zones. If any of what Vance told us is true, those things are run and maintained by the military. He said most branches of the military got really hectic and crazy there near the end. But you do what you want…and take whatever supplies you need from our place in Athens.”
I could tell that Kendra wanted desperately to believe him. I did, too. Even after what had happened with Vance and his lies, I felt that Riley was being honest.
“There’s one more thing,” Riley said. “I can offer you answers.”
“To what?” I asked.
“Anything,” he said. He slowly slid a backpack from his shoulders, a pack I had not seen because I had been so focused on the rifle slung over his shoulder. He reached into the pack and pulled out a dull gray square that I recognized at once: Vance’s rugged laptop.
“What’s on it?” Kendra asked.
“Footage from inside the nests,” Riley replied. “He’s got everything on this thing. There’s footage of those creatures from when it all started. He even has military footage of one of the nukes being dropped somewhere near Boston. There’s military reports and video footage on here that explains everything. Not that it will help, really. But…I don’t know. Just knowing more about what went down sort of helped me cope. Does that make sense?”
I thought about Ma and how she had died. I wondered if the information on Vance’s computer would help deflate that hurt in any way. I wondered if it might help explain why a God that I had always thought was good and great had sent monsters from beyond Hell to destroy His masterpiece.
But more than that, I thought about driving in relative comfort to the Safe Zone. I thought about having a good portion of supplies with us. I thought about getting Kendra and the baby to safety. It was enough for me.
Besides, if Riley turned out to be like Vance, I’d kill him. It was as simple as that.
“How far away are we from your little hideout?” I asked.
“I’d guess an hour by foot.”
Kendra and I shared a glance. Between us, the baby spoke a few syllables of gibberish.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
25
The walk back to the parking garage took an hour and a half. Riley actually led us beyond the parking garage and into a small group of storage sheds behind an old textile warehouse four blocks further down the road. With a set of keys he had taken from Vance after killing him, Riley unlocked two of the sheds.
One of them held a Yamaha motorcycle and a beat up Cadillac. The other held a newer model Nissan pick-up truck of the off-roading variety.
“You can have any of them,” Riley said, “but I’d suggest the truck. The tank is nearly full and it will be a lot better when it comes to getting around roadblocks.”
“Sold,” I said. Riley opened the Nissan’s driver door, reached beneath the seat, and retrieved the keys. He handed them to me with what looked like pride.
“Why are you doing this?” Kendra asked.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said. “And I’m not doing it just to make up for what I took part in when we tried sending you into the nest.” He said this last bit while looking directly at me. I could clearly see the regret and yearning for forgiveness in his eyes.
“This is my sorry ass way of repenting for also helping send those other people in,” he added.
“How many were there?” I asked.
“Four before you. And we never had those same results. When we sent you in, that was the first time anything came out. This time, it…it was almost like whatever is inside the nest was waiting for us.”
“What is inside it?” I asked.
Riley only shrugged. “It would do no good for me to explain it. The best thing you can do is watch some of the videos on the computer.”
“Maybe at your hideout,” I said, and climbed behind the wheel of the truck.
Kendra got in with the baby, sliding next to me to allow room for Riley. We drove back to the parking garage that Vance had taken us to three grueling days ago. I parked in the rear of the garage at Riley’s suggestion. He claimed there had been a few random looters that had come along in the past few months, looking for cars and supplies. Vance had lost two vehicles this way and that was why the Nissan, the Caddy and the motorcycle had been moved to the storage sheds.
I parked beside a beat up GMC truck that Riley told us had been his even before the creatures had showed up. He spoke about the truck as if he were incredibly proud of it. Just by the way he looked longingly at it, it was clear that the truck represented his old life, perhaps the only remaining piece of it he still had.
When we walked back down the stairwell towards the area Vance had used to conduct his warped kidnappings, I felt a sense of relief flush over me. I knew that there was food and water below, waiting for us. I was no longer entering this place as a stranger, but as someone that had been here and survived Vance’s scheming. I almost felt like I belonged in this place—that the spoils awaiting us had been earned.
Back in the small complex of rooms, Riley went into a small storage closet and pulled out four bags. Two looked to be large duffels of the sort that was used in the military. The others were basic backpacks any hiker would use.
“I’d like at least two of these,” he said as he doled them out. He said this in a way that made me pity him. He knew that we outnumbered him and that if we chose to do so, we would take anything we wanted. I no longer felt like Kendra and I were the ones taking the chance here. Really, it was the other way around.
As we looked at the bags, it occurred to me that in the end, Kendra and I had lost nothing. Despite Vance’s plans for us, we were going to get back all of our belongings: the baby sling, our weapons, and our meager bags. Even the pacifiers.
The three of us made our way into the supply room where Kendra and I packed as much as we could into the two bags Riley had
just given us. We took two boxes of crackers, a box of Cheerios, six cans of pinto beans, and a few sticks of beef jerky. As we went through the supplies, not a single argument broke out until we came to the box that contained the remaining Gatorade.
There were only five bottles left. We all shared an awkward look when three different hands reached towards the box at the same time.
“I hate to pull this card on you,” Kendra told Riley, “but I need fluids to keep my milk production up. If it wasn’t for feeding the baby, it would be different.”
“I get that,” Riley said. “But as you know, fresh water is hard as hell to come by. I need fluids as much as you do.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but I’m keeping hydrated for two.”
Riley looked away, clearly conflicted. I pitied him again. Had he chosen to do so, he could have come directly back here after the encounter outside of the nest. He could have come back and taken everything he wanted. But instead, he had hung back and waited for us. He had wanted to help us and now here we were, trying to take what we wanted and taking severe advantage of his generosity.
“Wait,” I said, knowing that if Kendra kept going, the discussion was going to get heated. “How about we take three and you take two? I think that’s fair, right?”
Riley thought about it for a minute and then nodded, although the look on his face indicated that his idea of fair was never having invited us back here in the first place.
“Eric,” Kendra said, “those two bottles could be a huge difference. We have a long way to go and—”
“And Riley is trying to help us,” I said, interrupting her. I had never interrupted her out of annoyance before. I hated the way it made me feel. “I’m not going to walk all over a man that is trying to help us. He only has few supplies, too. You drink the Gatorade and I’ll have the water from the Dunn’s house.”
She shrugged, defeated, and walked over to the door. She nestled the baby to her and kissed his head.
With our supplies packed up and an immediate sense of anxiousness among us, we headed back into the central room where we had shared a paltry dinner with Riley and his now-dead companions just two nights ago. The electricity was out again and it felt like walking through some sort of modernized crypt.
“One more thing,” Riley said as he lugged his packs into the room. He took a familiar bag off of his shoulder and set it on the table in the center of the room. It was Vance’s laptop bag.
“I have no need for this,” he said, “but I figure if you two are heading to one of those Safe Zones, it could maybe come in handy. You never know. Plus, there’s a ton of crap on here about what all went down. You know…if you want answers or whatever. There’s a sheet in there with all the passwords. Vance wrote them down for me in case he ever died. I thought it was stupid at the time but…well…not so much anymore, huh?”
I looked at the bag for a while and eventually took it. I slung it over my right shoulder where the weight of all of our other belongings hung loosely. Kendra carried a single bag on her back and the baby cradled to her chest.
“What did happen?” I asked him. “Did they ever find out what those things were?”
“According to Vance, not really. On all of those things, he was actually telling you the truth. Some kind of inter-dimensional thing. There’s stuff on his computer that explains it, although I don’t know that it would help you sleep any better at night.”
We headed back through the darkened halls and to the parking garage above. I had somehow lost track of the progress of the day. As we approached the Nissan that Riley had helped us with, I checked my watch and saw that it was 4:30.
“Where are you headed?” I asked Riley as I started putting our bags in the back of the truck.
“At first, I thought I’d stay here,” he said. “You know, where there’s at least some electricity. I thought it might do some good to stay with the supplies and help any others that end up coming through this way. But the more I think about it, the lonelier that seems. So I’m gonna head out, too. Before this all happened, I was living in Abilene, Texas. I think I might head back out there, just to see if there’s anything standing.”
“And if there isn’t?” Kendra asked.
Riley shrugged in a way that let us know that he honestly didn’t care. “Vance said there were whole portions of Mexico that were barely touched by monsters. And from what I remember, there wasn’t much unrest down there when it all happened. Maybe I’ll head down there and see what I can find.”
For just a moment, I thought about following him. What if there was some place on this wrecked world that had been unscathed by the hell that had been unleashed? Wouldn’t it be worth traveling around these decimated landscapes to find such a place?
“Well good luck to you,” I said before the idea could take root.
“You as well. I’d stick to the interstates if you can. Probably less threats there. Less blockages, too.”
“Thanks.”
With that, Riley gave a bored sort of nod and then threw his bags into the back of his GMC. He got inside and pulled out slowly, like he had no particular place to go. I guess he really didn’t.
But as I got into the Nissan and watched him drive down the street in front of the garage, I thought about the two Gatorades he had in one of his bags. For some reason I could not quite place, I got a very strong feeling that he wouldn’t survive long enough to finish them both.
26
Leaving Athens was so simple it made me uneasy. We stopped once to look over the route we had mapped out in the Dunn’s kitchen and were able to get on the interstate with relatively little trouble. There was a single car sitting abandoned along our exit but the Nissan was easily able to navigate through the grassy incline along the ramp to get around it.
Driving on the interstate was beyond creepy. It looked like the abandoned set to one of those really bad zombie movies. Despite this, hearing the faultless hum of the engine as the baby slept in Kendra’s arms was bliss. Even driving towards a horizon that looked like nothing more than a graphite smudge against a sheet of slate, it was the most hopeful I had felt since leaving the Dunn’s house.
“How are you?” Kendra asked at some point.
“Good. Why?”
“I didn’t know if that nest or whatever it was maybe got to you.”
I thought about it for a few seconds and then shook my head. “No. I mean, it’s nothing I’d want to relive anytime soon, but I’m good. How about you?”
She chewed at her bottom lip and looked away from me when she answered.
“When I was lying in that ditch with the baby, I was sure we were going to die. I saw that first thing come out of the nest and was sure I was going nuts. But then the men all started shooting at it and I knew it was real. And when I was in the ditch, I was sure that whatever was in that darkness was going to wrap around us and kill us. Or even if the men managed to kill it, they’d rape me and kill the baby. I was seriously not expecting to see life outside of that ditch. I was sure I was going to die…and a small part of me wanted it.”
I reached over and took her hand. She interlaced her fingers with my own and I was again reminded of the kiss she had given me before heading into the nest.
“What was it?” she asked. “Inside…what was it?”
“I don’t know. The tentacles or whatever they were…I think they were connected to something.”
“Like one single body?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus…how big would something like that have to be?”
“Big,” I answered.
That conversation sat heavy between us as I drove on. I had stopped trying to fathom the size of such a thing the moment I stepped out of the nest. I didn’t want to think about it. Things like that weren’t supposed to exist.
That, of course, was an invalid point given what our world had endured over the past fourteen months.
When it got dark outside, we opted not to switch on the headlights. We had no idea h
ow many other people were out there, lurking the highways for food or supplies. Headlights slicing through the darkness would be like an advertisement for attack. So we slowed down and rolled along with the interstate unspooling beneath us like a ragged black ribbon.
Without the aid of headlights, I drove slowly. On occasion, road signs and wrecked cars would surface out of the darkness, murky and indistinct. The way they seemed to blend with the night made me think of the shifting objects within the nest. The memory of those shapes made my guts clench.
Time seemed to crawl along slower in the truck. Maybe it was because we were more aware of our motion with wheels beneath us. Without the headlights, I didn’t’ dare go more than twenty-five miles per hour.
I had not checked my watch in a while. Still, because time had become a thing that I could almost sense, like people with arthritis can sense an approaching rainstorm, I figured we had been driving for five or six hours when we passed the grisly scene on Interstate 85, just after passing into North Carolina.
At first, driving slowly towards the obstruction, I thought we were seeing sandbags. But as we neared the shape stretched across most of the four lanes, I saw the shapes for what they really were.
Bodies.
There had to be at least one hundred bodies stacked two and three high. They made up a barricade that nearly went from one edge of the interstate to the other. On the other side of the line of corpses there were the burned out shapes of several vehicles. A few other bodies were scattered here and there around the cars.
“My God,” Kendra said.
I weaved the Nissan to the far side of the road into the oncoming lanes, hoping for enough room to pass. I found that other vehicles had been this same way since the macabre roadblock had been constructed. A few bodies along the far end had been knocked from the pile and crumpled into peculiar angles on the pavement.
There was a slight thump as I was forced to drive over one. Kendra made a sound in her throat that made me incredibly sad for her. I looked over to her and the baby and was glad to see that he was still sleeping.
Nests: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Page 10