“After all that, they just turned it off? How does that keep with their stonewalling strategy?” Sam interjected, her eyebrows rising. “I thought the point of turning it back on was to keep the masses occupied and only somewhat informed.”
Ben made a disgusted sound. “I don’t know. It’s off, I have no access.” His face got red; he slammed his hand against the table, rose and stormed from the room. He left his laptop on the table like some useless relic.
It spoke volumes all by itself.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said from Monica’s right. “He’s been under a lot of stress.”
Casey coughed. “I think the world is under a lot of stress.”
Lucy looked like she wanted to respond but couldn’t.
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Rodger offered. He was looking better; more alert. “Meanwhile, there are things we have been neglecting around here; chores that need to get done.”
“I ain’t milking no damn cow,” Casey spoke up, a smirk on his face. Even in the darkest times leave it to the stoner of the group to try and make a smart-ass remark. He loved his buddy, but did he ever take anything seriously?
Sam took a quick drink from a Diet Coke, then turned towards Rodger, “my kids are out with Todd’s feeding the livestock and mucking out the barn.”
“That’s a start, but there’s plenty more out there that needs to get done, and it’s going to take more than just the kids to do it,” Rodger returned, his hand absent-mindedly stroking the bandaged part of his skull.
“Go ahead and put a chore list together, we’ll start on it this afternoon,” he told the older man, who nodded in response. “And no one’s seen Sean?” he asked again for confirmation.
“Not since this morning,” Monica said and everyone else was shaking their heads as well.
Casey said something under his breath and it didn’t sound flattering. “Maybe he’s over at the other compound. He probably needed his space.”
“I think everyone is looking for space and he’s the only one of us looking to drown away the world,” he told them. “I’m worried. Maybe I should go over to the other compound and check things out. Lord knows I need the distraction.”
No one seemed to want to argue with him; so he took that as assent. “I’ll go with you,” his wife offered and he reached out and took her hand; squeezing it.
“I will too,” Samantha said, making him smile. Maybe it would be good for them to get out of here and spend some time together. Though, the way things were going, there would be plenty of time for that.
They all sat there quietly; pondering if there was anything left to say. That laptop bore into his eyes and made them hurt. Cut off from the world around them, they were now at the mercy of a higher power; he prayed there was someone out there looking out for them. They were doing a terrible job of it themselves.
Chapter 17
Convergence
Joseph
Tishomingo, OK
Joseph was leaning up against an old-fashioned blue wagon on the front lawn of a motel, at a junction in a city he had never heard of. He held his Remington 700 PSS and kept his eyes roving for any sign of trouble. He had continuously trained for more than a decade on the force and the rifle felt at home within his grip. Every once in a while, he looked through the scope, making sure that the roads were clear, ready to move the instant something changed. His cellphone sat on the iron bar of the wagon and he occasionally glanced at it to see if anyone had contacted him. It was on silent, no need to draw attention through stupidity.
He was just over six feet and was clad in his SWAT uniform. He hadn’t seen the need to change and wouldn’t feel comfortable in anything else anyhow—this was his second skin. He kept his blond hair short and had a trimmed and maintained goatee. His skin seemed tanned, but it was the Indian blood in him being bred out. Somewhere there was a full-blooded Cherokee in his past but he had no clue how removed. He could only tell by the slightly darker skin and higher cheekbones. It was nowhere near enough to draw money from any of the casinos that had been popping up with increasing speed on the reservations; not that he cared. He made enough to take care of his needs, if that even mattered anymore.
When it had all gone to shit; he had been on an armed robbery call. Most of the units broke from the scene but he had stayed behind. The robber was in his sights and when his phone buzzed, it did nothing to break his concentration as he slightly applied pressure and shot the robber through the head. Clearing his weapon, he had given the all clear sign, but in the intenseness of his concentration, he had failed to realize he was alone.
Moments later a survivor had exited the bank; at least that’s what it appeared to be. As he looked through the scope at the teenage girl emerging from the front doors, alone, he had felt something in his stomach turn and for a moment; he wondered if he had gotten out of bed that morning. The smell of gunpowder was still fresh in the air, the wind cooling his sweat, and the blood was much too vivid to be a dream.
He watched the girl standing on the bank steps, looking out on the world, and the reality of what was happening began to break through his mental barriers. Reaching down; he had picked up his phone and looked at the text waiting on him. Grimes. What the hell? There was no fucking way. He looked through the scope once more, his trained eyes taking in every detail. “Oh, fuck me,” he had said.
It was really the moment that defined everything that came after.
He had taken the shot. He didn’t doubt for one second that the thing on those bank steps was no longer a girl, yet the image and his reaction stayed with him; refusing to part no matter how justified the kill had been. He stood in front of this abandoned hotel in the middle of nowhere and tried to think back on everything that had happened to bring him to this point. It was all there in horrid detail and he examined it all. He wanted to make sure that every decision had been correct; that there had really been no other way.
He had come out of Arkansas with three of his buddies and now they were gone. They were part of his team and had reacted as their training had taught them, but it hadn’t been enough. Everything was text book; well, okay, there was no more text book as far as this fucked up world was considered, but if there were, they had done all the right things at all the right times. There were just moments when things were just too fubar to come out any other way.
That he was standing there was no testament to his skill; no shrine to his training. It was just dumb fucking luck; being at the right place, at the right time. He had a few close calls and had come within moments of death too many times for it to be anything else. Ben had helped when he could, he could not fault the boy that; but it had been hours since he had received anything from him and he didn’t know what that meant. Were they still all right? Was he heading to someplace safe? Or had all their planning been for nothing?
He hadn’t taken as much time as all the others in preparing the place. There were a few vacations that he had been forced to take for psychological reasons and that gave him the chance to do what little he had. He didn’t really need the time off, but if he didn’t take it, they would begin to question him. They wanted him to be okay with doing the job, but not all right in dealing with what happened when he did; an oxymoron that he just couldn’t reconcile.
He had a clear-cut view of the world; at least of the way it had been. There was good, there was bad, and if you were bad and you were in his crosshairs; then that was it. They give the green light; you were waking up in hell. You didn’t cure a rabid dog with a hug; you did it with a bullet through the brain.
It wasn’t that he didn’t feel any remorse—he did. He could still picture the face of everyone he had ever killed. At night he went through them, almost like an evening prayer. He knew for certain that there was nothing he could do in every case; but still went through it as a way of keeping his Humanity, his soul.
After clearing his conscience, he knelt in prayer, then went to sleep on his cold lonely bed; rarely experiencing a sleepless night.
The bed saw little in the way of company in recent years, more from his lack of being able to share his life with someone that “got” him rather than by choice. He could have settled down numerous times, but none of them had felt right. Each had some deluded fantasy of what his job was and he couldn’t bear to share with them the reality of it. When the time came where his need to share overrode his need for sex, he said goodbye and left them graciously, always making sure they knew it was him not them.
He had very few close friends, most of them were virtual people he talked to over the computer; faces he didn’t have to look at or eyes he didn’t have to look into. Voices in the wind that spoke to him and offered him an alternate place to take himself from time to time. Now it looked like those voices; which beckoned him to come west, were the only things he had left in this world; how ironic was that?
Now, if only he could get there.
A sound drifted his way from the right, along the eastern road into town. Hunkering down below the lip of the wagon, he looked through the scope down the deserted road and waited. A black truck came into view, followed by four or five other make and models of cars. They were making good time and the cop in him wanted to tell them to slow the fuck down. Then he remembered, he forgot his ticket book back across the Arkansas state line.
He laughed to himself but kept his hands and eye steady. As the black truck approached, he got a good look at the driver and his finger relaxed off the trigger, “well I’ll be damned.”
He stood and waited as the caravan approached. They slowed at the intersection and then one by one pulled into the motel parking lot and parked. The Nissan X-Terra that he had liberated a few hundred miles back was parked there as well and he went down to greet the tall black man stepping out of the truck.
“Holy shit Mark, you made it,” he grinned, setting his rifle against the side of the truck and offering his hand to the sturdy and rough looking fireman.
The grin and the white teeth was a welcomed sight as they shook hands. It didn’t seem enough, but they weren’t the embracing type. Roxanne and Deborah had gotten out the other side and the little girl ran and flung herself at him.
He scooped her up and gave her the embrace he wanted to give her father. “You found them!”
“We weren’t lost,” Roxanne responded. “Just took him a little bit to catch up to us.” Her smile was enough to wipe the last hundred miles from his heart and he embraced her as well, giving the little girl over to her father. She was warm and it had been a long time since he had a woman in his arms. With things the way they were, he had wondered if he ever would again.
He pushed back and looked at her, “damn good to see you.” Then he turned and looked at the others standing just out of range of their conversation.
They all looked to Mark and the big man made a wrinkled nose expression, then smoothed it back out and rotated to look at them. “Check to see if there are any supplies to be had, and use the bathrooms, no telling when we’ll find another one. I assume it’s safe?” He said that last to him and he nodded; he knew better than to leave his flank unchecked.
“Cleared it long before you guys got here. Been waiting awhile,” he responded.
“Got held up in McAlester. Rape gang tried blocking the road into town,” Mark said, giving his wife a long stare.
“Are you kidding me? I just came through there and I didn’t have any problems. Place seemed deserted,” he said, wondering what he had missed. He couldn’t afford to be off his game.
Roxanne was shaking her head. “They almost had us. We pulled over to get some gas and they came out from behind the store, bold as could be, demanding that us women get handed over.” Her eyes cut to her daughter, but she seemed occupied with playing on the wagon and wasn’t paying attention to the conversation.
“Obviously, we had a few words,” Mark said with a finality to his voice. He was watching his daughter as well and Joseph could only imagine the ugly things running through his friend’s head.
“It’s been what, a day? How the fuck did things go to shit so fast?” Joseph asked, but he already knew the answer. He had seen real ugliness in his life, things that he wished upon his soul that he could have missed; things that gave him nightmares at night. Now there was no one keeping those nightmares in the shadows. All the good people were making for the trees while the wolves circled around on the outside. Like he heard in some movie, don’t fear the dead, fear the living.
“Could have been worse,” Mark said. “Could have been military stopping us; have had enough of that recently. They get any closer on their inspections they might as well have us drop shorts and stick fingers up our asses.”
Joseph laughed, “I hear you brother. Anal probes on the side of some hick country road; sounds like something out of X-Files.”
Roxanne’s smile was warm, but looked forced. She had to be hung up on what had happened and he wished he had met them closer in, then he could have sniped every last one of those bastards before they even got close to them.
“Must have hidden while I drove through. Probably thought with those people you have with you that you’d be easy pickings,” he observed out loud.
There were twelve in all and each of them had disappeared to ransack the motel beyond. There was an old couple, a family of five with three younger kids, a couple of single men, and a pair that looked like high school sweethearts carrying a newborn baby. “Not what I’d call a threatening posse you got there,” he smirked.
“Well, now we’ve got you,” Mark said back.
“That you do, brother, that you do,” he said, smiling and picking up his rifle again. His eyes returned to roving the streets for a second before looking back at his friend. “Pick up anything worth a shit to fight with?”
“You know me, got to take my axe everywhere I go,” the man responded, hefting it and looking along its shaft at its newly sharpened blade.
Roxanne laughed. “He keeps carrying it like that I just might leave him for someone that wants a warm body instead.”
Joseph grinned; but the levity of what was going on made it fade quickly. “Heard from Ben?”
Mark lost his smile as well. “Not in a while. Things were going good there for a bit, but then it all went silent.”
“You don’t think—,” Roxanne began.
“Nah,” he responded, shaking his head. “They’re fine, we’ll hear from them soon enough.”
“I’m sure you’re itching to get moving,” the big man said, looking to see how the others were coming. He looked anxious to help them out.
“Not much in there, you know. Office had some food in the fridge, but the power is out so most of it won’t keep. Best thing to do is stock up on the toilet paper, unless you want to start foraging for leaves and pray you don’t come across poison ivy,” he said grimly.
“I’ll pass.”
There was a moment of silence as the three of them stood there, taking the world in around them. There was the occasional sound from the hotel but nothing else to intrude upon them. Then he braced his rifle against the crook of his arm and looked west. “Bout time to hit it, what do you say?”
“You bet your ass,” Mark replied. He turned to go and help the other people in their group bring what they found back to the vehicles. Joseph watched him go and wondered if he should also pitch in. As he looked upon Roxanne’s face his mind took in everything at once; the past day flooding through him with in crystal clarity; that vivid memory of his analyzing every detail.
She had a momentary slip where the horror of what might have happened back at McAlester had seeped through the façade she was putting up and her eyes met his. They seemed dead for half a second and his heart skipped. “It is good to see you Joe,” she said, almost in a robotic tone and he felt it hit him in his gut.
“Everything is going to be fine,” he said back, trying to show her how sure of himself he was. He wasn’t though, and she might have caught that because she only smirked, slapped him on the shoulder, and followe
d her husband towards the motel. He turned and looked back at the road and wondered; just what the hell was fine about any of this shit?
Chapter 18
Belief
Todd
Compound 2
They were armed and walking down the tunnel towards the other compound. It was built almost exactly like the one they were currently staying in and should’ve been powered down.
He was sure that Rodger made regular trips to maintain the crops and feed the livestock; something that he wasn’t going to be up doing for a while and Todd would have to help pitch in to see it done.
It was mainly a back up to the compound they were staying in and would hopefully remain that way. It was just a side note that they had made when they were planning the lay out, and he never expected Sean to actually get behind the idea and build it. Then again, what hadn’t he gotten behind? It came back to the man’s persistence to doing everything all the way rather than piecemeal. Still, wasn’t one crazy enough to build?
Yet, the man loved redundancies.
Even now with the world ending, he wondered why they even bothered—knock on wood. The defenses were designed to last, not to easily fall so they’d have to abandon it quickly. And if one could fall, what would keep the second from following suit?
They could have taken one of the vehicles through the tunnel, but walking seemed right. He needed the walk to help clear his head. Besides, one of the jeeps had been missing and he suspected they’d find it once they reached the other side. The thought had crossed his mind that Sean might have gotten to his plane and flown away, but then he didn’t have anywhere to fly to, did he? He couldn’t hide from the world out there like he was trying to do here.
Monica and Sam walked silently on either side, both of them just enjoying being together and not wanting to ruin it with idle chat. So when his phone went off, it startled them both as the familiar ringtone echoed down the hall.
The Rotting Souls Series (Book 2): Charon's Blight: Day Two Page 11