“You should consider staying with us; we have plenty of water, lots of good people and a highly defensible area.” Said Nate
But in the sales pitch, or part of it, Nate said “We really don’t need your meager supplies, but they would pay your way into the collective. It is the fighters that we are looking for.”
It just did not sound right.
While they were talking with us I could occasionally pick out an armed person moving through the woods. I was not sure if they were guards for the community or sentries to keep an eye on us. Throughout the conversation the little voice in my head was screaming, “Danger, this was not a good place and that we needed to get out of there, and quick.”
It was about 8 PM when a bell rang, it sounded like a church bell. Barry and Nate looked at each other and then turned back to us. They explained that the bell was a warning that the nightly curfew was coming up and that everyone needed to be inside by 8:30. Since we had not yet officially decided to stay or been assigned housing we could stay in our own area for the night but that we should not wander very far because of the guards. They said that we could talk about arrangements more in the morning. Then they walked to their little golf cart and drove off.
It grew dark and as it did, I caught a smell of cigarette smoke or saw a soft glow nearby. I felt, knew, we were being watched.
Uncle Elgin, my Dad’s brother, come out from his cottage. We were parked on his property. He had been sort of a local character up at the lake for years. Although in his early 70’s he was still doing well. But he was slowing down, and one could see the effects of the sore knees, and back.
He had bought the place back in the 1970’s for snowmobiling. Over time he has expanded it. He was somewhat of a collector, tag sale maven, and scrounger. The cottage had the main building with room to sleep between 10 and 15 people easily. If push came to shove, I am thinking he could double that number. There were also a couple of out buildings; one had a billiards table and play room with a three bay garage that was as large as the cottage. There was a boat house and he had added three additional small temporary buildings since I was last there.
Elgin brought us out a large pan of ziti and sauce. Matt had built a little campfire; we were not worried about starting it because we had seen a number of them in various locations around the lake. As we sat around the fire enjoying the dinner we talked. We really stayed away from the subject of the infected and the community at first. We reminisced about the good old days, telling stories about Christmas’ past, and relatives who had long since passed. The story of the burning presents came up. That story had become a family legend.
It was about 25 years ago, while we were living on Flanders Road in Southington. Each Christmas Eve the family would get together and celebrate it there. Our whole family, including my sister Greta would be there along with the Grandparents. The routine was that we all ate upstairs and then headed down to the family room where the Christmas tree was set up. There was a big crackling fire in the fireplace making it nice and warm down there. After about 45 minutes one of the older relatives would sneak away, dress up as Santa and make an appearance to pass out the Christmas presents. Things were running according to schedule. While the women were cleaning up the rest of us were downstairs checking wrapped gifts and tags.
There was a stack of presents over by the hearth. The entire pile was for Matt and Mark, my nephews. Suddenly, Uncle Elgin announced loudly that he had spoken with Santa who told him that the boys had been bad and they were not going to get any presents. He picked the pile of gifts up and tossed them into the fire. Matt was about 6 and Mark about 4 so you can imagine their reaction. It was the end of the world, at least for them at that time. Mark kicked Elgin in the shins and there were tears aplenty. My reaction was simply “Oh wow”.
What had happened was that my sister Greta had decided to prank the boys. She had gift wrapped and tagged a number of empty boxes. She had conspired with Elgin to do the actual deed earning him the name of “Mean Ole Uncle Elgin”. I am to this day somehow considered a conspirator even though I had nothing to do with it.
We laughed and remembered. Then grew quiet thinking about how the world had changed. Elgin brought the ziti pan back into the cottage. After about five minutes of the quiet we heard someone coming. I was concerned because of the curfew idea and reached slowly for my side arm. We had all started wearing them after we hit the road. Actually I had started long before that and had I not the incident with Brandon might have turned out a very differently.
It was Uncle Elgin. He had come back out to join us and to pick up the plates from earlier. He said he wanted to talk to us about staying. I figured that a sales pitch from him was coming, although I had expected it to come later if we faltered in our decision to stay. As he walked around collecting dishes; he sang the praises of Barry and Nate. They were the top dogs in the Lake Community Association. Barry was a civil engineer with some local government experience and Nate was a former volunteer fire chief. Elgin went on about how the place had fallen together and was becoming a community, a safe community. But something did not seem right in his pitch. He seemed nervous, looking around as if he was being watched.
As he came to take my plate, he commented that it was good that I had decided to join and shook my hand, in that offered hand was a folded piece of paper. I caught on, and replied, “We have not fully decided to stay, but were going to vote on it shortly.”
I added, “The place seemed wonderful and I was certain that we could fit right into the program. I personally was looking forward to it.”
This caused more than a few double takes and looks of concern, but also some smiles and facial expressions of hopefulness. Uncle Elgin also smiled; he knew he had successfully passed his message and returned to his cottage.
As we sat, we put on some background music just to muffle the discussion from prying ears. I opened it saying “I don’t feel comfortable in this place. There is a seeming hierarchy, and what appeared to be a caste system developing.”
I continued that, “I had a brief meeting with Nate and Barry. I feel that Nate is the top of the food chain and Barry, his lieutenant. But I just have this bad feeling about them, there is something not right here.” While I talked Teckla’s head bobbed up and down in agreement with me.
Frank said that he had done a tour of the lake by boat. “The surrounding shore was divided into sectors, some of the sectors are defensible, even heavily fortified, there are others including the one we are in that are open to attack.”
Nick, who was the least prepared for the trek, said that “I am all in favor of staying, tossing in our supplies to the collective and staying put.”
This took responsibility off of him, and he could just drift along, or so he believed. I could see that this was a point of contention between Lauren and him. She seemed to have a different feel for what was happening here or in the outside world. She had no intentions of burying her head into the sand.
I think the two things that put us over the top, although I think with the exception of Nick we already were decided was when Jan spoke. She “ahemed” and said “I was just wandering around near the water when I overheard a couple of the men talking. They were talking about us and that we looked like most of us would be good fighters, particularly the big bald kids (Matt and Mark). But they also talked about the young girls, Margo and me and how they would be prime breeding stock.”
She was a little flushed and adamantly exclaimed, “I am not going to be breeding stock.”
After having heard what Jan had to say we all sat in silence. I put my arm around Margo and Anne giving them a hug and whispered, “We will be all right.”
Anne and I have a long history, 30 years together, some of which was not so shiny, but I never felt closer to her than I have over the last year.
After Elgin left, I excused myself to head to my tent to check on my cell phone to see if I had any texts or calls. I took Elgin’s note out of my pocket and read it. In his
scrawl it said “It is all a lie, danger, get away quick!!!!!”
When I returned to the fire I still had the paper in my hand.
“I have just gotten a text from Anne’s parents. They said they were still safe and that they wanted to be picked up if we can do it.” I made it look like I was reading it from the paper like I had written it down.
I had added to Elgin’s note that we were going to vote on going or staying at the lake. It was phrased that we wanted to go get Anne’s parent, and escape the community then thumbs up. If we were in favor of staying, then thumbs down. I knew it might sound confusing, because the way we voted and the hand gestures of thumbs up or down were opposite of the true meaning to confuse any of our ‘watchers’. I passed it to Teckla, who passed it to Frank and so on.
After about 10 minutes of the quiet we took the vote. It was a unanimous thumbs up vote. Once done with the vote we talked about how to get out of there with a minimum of muss and fuss. I had laid out a frame work with the idea of the rescue, so it was more a case now of planning it as if we as a group were going to head back to South Windsor. Margo sent a text message to Anne’s parents and to our pleasant surprise they answered. The news was actually pretty good. It seems that so far things had remained quiet and that there had been no significant undead activity in the area.
They said that the roads from what they had seen on the TV were all still pretty passable with the exception of the Interstates. Through Margo I asked them what the status of the van was and if they could get out. The said that they might be able to.
I remembered Brandon’s car. I had them check it. The keys were in it. He had a Hyundai Santa Fe with four wheel drive. That would make them more mobile. Margo tested that they needed to charge the batteries of the walkie talkies and that they should be on Old Main Street by about 9 AM tomorrow morning. The cavalry was coming and we would hit the beach soon.
I had an idea. There was a little of the road off of Main Street that led to the Connecticut River. I thought that this might work. In the morning we would tell Nate and Barry that we were impressed by the place and that we had decided to stay. And that in looking at the set-up we wanted to go back home and get Anne’s parents as well as pick up some additional items. We had access to a good sized generator, additional food and supplies that had been packed into the minivan.
I would explain to them that the reason we had left the folks behind in the first place was that they had not wanted to be a liability to us. But now that we see what the future could hold it made sense for them to come along. We had been in text communications and had set up a rescue plan.
I felt that it was unlikely that Nate would be happy about the extra mouths to feed knowing that they were so old, but the mention of the generator was to sweeten the pot. I would also lay out the requirement that this was a full team effort as we had information that things were getting hot down in that area and we would need our full complement to insure our success.
I really did believe that we could get the folks and bring them safely with us, but that it had to be done quickly, like in the morning, and it had to be a water rescue. I would need two volunteers to go with me.
The rescue plan was really kind of simple. We would take one car, probably the KIA because of the trailer hitch back to South Windsor with three of us. I had seen a boat shop and a Honda dealership off of on Route 8. The plan was to grab a couple of the jet skis and a trailer to get them to the Connecticut River boat launch in the area of Windsor, by I-291. Two of us would cross the river after signaling ahead have the folks and meet us near water’s edge. We zip back across the river, jump in the car and head back toward north. Part of the plan was contingent on the amount of ice that was in the river, we would need open water for it to work. The weather had been on the warm side, so it should be fine
Matt, Mark and Frank all volunteered at once. But I held off on taking Matt. He would have a very important role in the morning activities.
“Matt, I want you to hunker down in the back of the box truck with the rifle with the laser sight. You are our insurance policy, and the edge to close the deal if need be.” I told him.
He and I spoke further after the group broke up to grab some sleep. Our wake-up time was going to be at 5 AM and I wanted to be ready to roll by 7 AM.
March 3rd
Nate, Barry and Uncle Elgin were at our camp by 6:30. It seemed that our morning activities, although watched did not become a concern until about 6:15 when we began to load our gear into our vehicles. They had also gotten the word from their eyes and ears after our vote last night but did not realize that we were making a move.
Barry was the first to speak, “I want to know what you are doing.”
But he and I were not located in the right spot of this discussion. I invited him over to our fire for a cup of coffee and then asked him “What do you mean?”
He fumed, “You are taking advantage of us and now you are going to leave? We invited you to stay and this was how you repay that hospitality?”
“No, No, you misread our intentions. We were very much in favor of the set up that you have. We’re so impressed that we were going back to South Windsor to pick up the two elders that we had left behind.” I explained.
Anne jumped in and tearfully added, “When we left South Windsor we were forced to leave them behind. They felt the road would be too hard a journey for them. But now that we had found a sort of Shangri La, we want them to join us.” She asked “If the situation was reversed could you just leave your mom and dad alone to die when there was the chance to save them?”
I let that sit for a moment and then jumped back, “Look, we packed additional food, some wines and a 2000 watt generator that would be a very handy addition to Shangri La.”
Nate entered the fray, “Those items would be a big asset to the community, but I don’t understand why you all had to go.”
Ah, a classic case of good cop, bad cop.
“Why don’t some of you stay here?” he suggested.
My answer was simple, “We’re a herd and we travelled together and watched each other’s back. At this point the risks are low but it’s an ever changing situation. The larger rescue group would be in and out much more effectively than trying to sneak a small group in.”
Barry looked at me for a moment, and then said, “That’s not acceptable, half your group has to stay.”
I looked at Barry, and then at Nate, and made a little nod to the left. Then told Barry, take a look at Nate. I asked him, “Is Nate your leader?”
With a smug look he said “yes”. As he turned to look at Nate, the color drained from his face. He saw the little red dot on Nate’s forehead.
“In fact, I think that it might be real meaningful if Nate helped us out by driving with me to the edge of their territory. Just so that your folks understand that we are sanctioned to leave and that we will be welcomed when we return.”
Fortunately, Barry was quite happy to be the #2 guy and stuttered that it seemed like a good idea to him. Nate, with a perplexed look on his face turned to Barry, and at that point also saw the red dot on Barry’s forehead. Instantly he understood the dire situation they were in.
Nate’s last effort to win this was to say, “You won’t give the order; you can’t just kill a living human.”
In some cases this might have worked, but I could only smile, and said, “That was what Brandon thought too, so let us take a little drive and we will get this all done quickly so you can be back for your mid-morning coffee break”.
Check and mate, both the men were deflated. They knew what the situation was, and neither was not about to give up his life to try to prevent our rescue mission.
Nate said “I will go with you to the edge of the compound but you might not find so warm a welcome when you get back.”
“I can understand that, and we will see how that all works out, remember, part of our return to good graces might be based upon the delivery of the generator and some other useful or lux
ury goods.” But realistically, I knew that they did not want us back, we were not sheep and they needed sheep.
“Barry, why don’t you stay behind and keep things calm and quiet while we are gone,” I said. “Uncle Elgin, you ride with us to give Nate a “wingman” and a little security.”
I had no desire to just dump Nate out in the woods by himself. I was not sure if there were infected in the area, but I would not want to be dumped that way. Elgin accepted the idea, as did Nate.
We “mounted up”, with Nate getting into the Kia with me. I made certain that my side arm was not anywhere he could get at it, and I also made certain that he was unarmed. I would return his Colt, a nice revolver with pearl handles when I let him out at the edge of his little fiefdom. I think this guy did have a little Patton complex.
Elgin rode with Teckla. They talked about the compound and where it was going and Elgin basically confirmed what we had figured out. It was a place in which everyone was equal, but some were more equal and would be sacrificed very quickly should push come to shove.
The Event Series (Book 1): Life After the Meteor Page 3