Anderson nodded in sudden realization. “The dancing. That’s why you weren’t self-conscious back at the cabin. When—”
Her face hardened, and she nodded. “You learn to make yourself numb and ignore being stared at like a piece of meat. If you’re smart, you even learn how to use it. I had a plan even before you made your grand entrance. The shotgun was under the bed and there was a knife along with it. I knew they were going to kill us regardless of what I did. I planned to take out the sergeant with the knife and just play it by ear with the other two.”
She’d tensed visibly at the mention of the previous day’s ordeal, and Anderson tried to change the subject.
“Tony sounds like a stand-up guy,” Anderson said.
Cindy grew very quiet, but no less tense. “He is,” she said at last. Her eyes glistened in the flickering firelight and she wiped them with the back of her hand.
“What’s the matter?”
She glanced over to confirm Jeremy was still sleeping. “Tony and his family live in Staunton. We’ve been talking on the HAM set every day since the blackout, and there was a lot of FEMA activity in his area lately. I haven’t been able to raise him in two days, and given what happened to us yesterday, I figure FEMA probably hit them too. Otherwise I would’ve heard from him.”
He nodded and they drifted into silence again. After a long pause, Cindy changed the subject.
“Okay, I spilled my guts, so what’s your story?”
Anderson smiled. “Not nearly as interesting as yours, I’m afraid. I graduated from high school, tried college, but it didn’t work out, then ended up in the Army just in time to be sent to the Sandbox and shot at. I got out and was a deputy sheriff for a while down in Georgia; then I got on with FEMA as a law enforcement officer—”
“And FEMA is now trying to kill you. That sounds fairly interesting.”
He shook his head. “It’s probably better for both you and Jeremy if you don’t know about that. Sometimes knowledge is a liability.”
Cindy looked skeptical. “Aren’t you the frigging man of mystery,” she said. “All right then, what about family. Married?”
“Once. Quite happily,” he said. “But now divorced.”
“Care to elaborate?” she asked.
“Infidelity,” Anderson said.
“Yours or hers?”
“Mine,” Anderson conceded.
“I thought you were happily married?”
Anderson grinned. “Well, I wasn’t a fanatic about it.”
She shook her head. “Pigs. You’re all pigs.”
“Hey, at least I’m an honest pig,” Anderson said.
Cindy laughed. “Yeah, I guess you are at that.”
Chapter Ten
Delaware River Viaduct (Abandoned)
South Bank of Delaware River
Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania
Day 30, 5:55 a.m.
Shyla Texeira stared across the weed-choked length of the abandoned bridge to the New Jersey shore beyond and thought of home, less than twenty miles away. A few minutes’ drive in normal times, but times were anything but normal. Still she shouldn’t bitch. They’d made much better time than she dreamed possible when they sat trapped under the bridge at Harpers Ferry a scant week before.
Their elation at having eluded their pursuers by ducking under the bridge was short-lived when they realized escape was near impossible. They heard traffic overhead on the bridge regularly and choppers beat the air at all hours as the search for them intensified. They had a ringside seat to the search, because through negligence or indifference, FEMA failed to change radio frequencies. They pieced together what was happening from reports on the radio in the stolen SUV.
It was hot in the car, but the shade of the bridge overhead helped. There was the added discovery of a supply of both bottled water and MREs in the vehicle, allowing conservation of their own meager supplies, along with two M4s and ammunition. Activity on the bridge above and radio traffic was frantic that first day and most of the next, but the third day brought a reprieve. They could hardly believe it when radio calls went out for all units to stand down. The ‘suspects’ had been spotted southbound, and all resources were being reallocated in that direction.
They assumed the suspects were Simon and Keith and felt a twinge of guilt their deliverance resulted from the Trembles’ misfortune, but they could neither help that nor afford to dwell on it. They focused instead on their big decision: whether or not to use the stolen car. It had almost a full tank of gas and two extra five-gallon jerry cans in the rear. Tex and Wiggins were already exhausted, and both nursed badly blistered feet. The temptation to ride proved to be too great. At first light on the fourth day they dragged the brush from the vehicle and drove east on the AT where it ran concurrent with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath.
They had no illusion as to the danger. Having observed radio traffic and FEMA activity seemed lightest during early mornings, they started each day at first light and drove no longer than two or three hours before finding a hiding place. Firm believers in Levi’s plan now, they stayed as close as possible to the Appalachian Trail and always knew the direction and distance to the nearest access. They used secondary roads, logging roads and power line right-of-ways—any route the SUV could handle that kept them close to the AT and away from people. It was a disciplined progress, darting between hiding places for forty or fifty miles at a stretch, resisting the siren song of the open road, which might get them home—or dead—in a matter of hours. It was agonizingly slow, but orders of magnitude faster than traveling by foot.
The challenges were the rivers and streams: the Delaware and the Lehigh, the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna, and a half dozen major creeks in between. They planned each crossing like a military campaign, poring over their inventory of local maps for the least traveled bridge, and saying a silent thanks to Levi Jenkins each time they did so. At times they went miles out of their way to access seldom used and hopefully unguarded crossings. They bumped across rivers on railroad bridges, and twice crossed creeks on pedestrian bridges barely wide enough to accommodate the SUV, holding their breath and gambling the bridge would take the weight.
Twice they were fired on by civilians who no doubt mistook them for FEMA, but they escaped both encounters with only a bullet hole in the SUV. At one point they rolled into a concealed checkpoint when they attempted to cross a little-used bridge across the Lehigh River. Fortunately the new toll-keeper was a semi-honest former sheriff’s deputy now in business for himself. Negotiation rather than gunfire ensued, and three MREs turned out to be the toll. A man had to feed his family, after all.
And now they were here, the last bridge between Tex and home.
“What the hell is this?” Wiggins asked. “I never saw a bridge with bushes and trees growing on it.”
Tex laughed. “It’s structurally unsound. They condemned it years ago, but never tore it down because some group or another was always coming up with a plan to fix it. After a while, it turned into kind of a local landmark. The kids crawl around up underneath and inside it and paint all sorts of graffiti; some of it’s actually pretty good. And it’s sort of an unofficial walking path too. There’s … well, there used to be … a really good ice cream place here on the Pennsylvania side. We’d come here when I was a kid and walk across to get ice cream.”
“Well, they sure as hell don’t want anybody driving on it,” Wiggins said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it around that barrier. And for that matter, I don’t know if I WANT to drive on this thing. Are you sure it’s not gonna fall down?”
Tex shrugged. “No, but I think it will be all right. Besides, it’s a minor risk given what we been facing lately.”
“Yeah, you got that right,” Wiggins said. “How far to your folks’ place?”
“Twenty miles more or less. How’s the gas?”
Wiggins shook his head. “Running on fumes, but I’ll try to get us there, or as close as I can, anyway.”
***
Reynoldsville, New Jersey, looked like a typical American town. Or more accurately it looked like it at one time HAD been a typical American town. As Wiggins followed Tex’s directions through the deserted streets, he saw the flash of a face in a window or a curtain quickly drop back in place. In the small-business district, two fast-food restaurants stood empty, their windows smashed, and trash blew through the empty parking lot of the looted supermarket.
Wiggins glanced over at Tex. She was visibly upset, and he tried to take her mind off what she was seeing.
“So how’s a Portuguese girl end up in western Jersey?”
She glanced over. “Make that Portuguese-American. My folks came here from Newark, where there’s a very big Portuguese community. My dad is actually kind of a big deal here. He and Mom came here first, long before I was born. They liked it, and Dad saw an opportunity. Land was relatively cheap, and he was a contractor. A lot of people in Newark were really sick of the inner-city blight and many had the money to move. The only thing holding them back was reluctance to leave the established Portuguese community. Dad figured if they were able to move in groups, they might be willing, so he got a loan and built six houses and marketed them in Newark. He sold them right away and plowed the profits back into twelve more houses. In a few years, Reynoldsville had the biggest Portuguese population in New Jersey outside of Newark, and Dad became sort of the unofficial patriarch.”
Wiggins grinned. “So does that make you, like, first daughter?”
Tex laughed. “Maybe first daughter to run away to sea.”
“Yeah, so how did that go over—”
“Turn here.” Tex pointed. Wiggins turned right, and they moved down the tree-lined street into an upscale area of nice homes. Very nice homes.
“So you really are a princess,” Wiggins joked, but Tex ignored him, intent on studying the silent street ahead.
“It’s the third house on the left, just past the next cross street,” Tex said. “But where the hell is everyone? I expected at least a little activity.”
Wiggins had no answer, so he just followed Tex’s instructions and turned into the driveway of an impressive stone house. It looked abandoned, curtains fluttering in the wind from an open upstairs window. They got out and Tex ran to the door. It hung open on one hinge, the door frame around the deadbolt splintered.
***
Tex stopped and stared as Wiggins moved up beside her. Wiggins drew his Sig. “Uh … Tex, maybe I should go first.”
She shook her head and moved through the open door, Wiggins close behind her. The overpowering stench stopped them.
“Stay here,” Wiggins said, and slipped past Tex with his Sig in a two-handed grip.
Even breathing through his mouth, he had difficulty forcing himself forward. Had it not been for Tex, he had little doubt he would’ve turned and left. He found them in the living room and, from the state of decomposition, figured they’d been lying in the heat quite a while. They were facedown on the floor, a pool of long-dried and stinking blood spread around them on the hardwood floor. He disturbed a cloud of flies, who buzzed their annoyance before settling back down to their meal. Both the corpses had their hands zip-tied behind their backs.
Wiggins heard a strangled sob behind him and turned to find Tex staring down at the bodies. He took her arm and gently led her back outside, into the yard and away from the house. He took a deep breath, but the fetid stench of death clung to him like it had soaked into his clothes. Tex was almost catatonic.
“Was it—”
She nodded. “I … I recognize Dad’s slippers, and that was Mom’s favorite housedress.”
The silence grew, and after a long moment, Tex spoke. “We … we have to bury them.”
Wiggins shook his head. “Not you. Me. That … that’s just too much to expect anyone to deal with.”
Tex looked as if she was going to object, then closed her mouth and nodded.
***
Tex seemed still in shock, and Wiggins rethought things. His grisly task was going to take a while and she needed something to keep her mind occupied. They found two shovels in the garage and he gave her one and suggested she find an appropriate resting place in the expansive backyard. Tex nodded and disappeared out the back garage door with the shovels while Wiggins mentally steeled himself. This was easily the most difficult thing he had ever done.
He protected himself as well as possible, donning a pair of coveralls and some rubber gloves he found in the house; but he could do nothing about the smell but breathe through his mouth. He found heavy-duty black garbage bags in the garage and made his way reluctantly into the living room. Over an hour later he stepped back and surveyed his work critically, looking at two bundles neatly wrapped in colorful quilts he found in the upstairs bedrooms, the blankets held tight by duct tape. He nodded, satisfied. He hadn’t wanted Tex to have a final memory of her parents wrapped in the black bags like so much garbage; no trace of the black plastic was visible.
One by one he carried the bodies out and laid them on the large patio, then walked to the back of the yard where Tex was working. She’d gone back into the garage and gotten a pickax, the better to break the ground, and she was working with a will, slamming the heavy implement into the ground with a ferocity bordering on savagery. He watched as, oblivious to his presence, she buried the blade so deep it took all of her strength to pry it free. She punished the ground as if it were the murderer, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Wiggins cleared his throat and spoke.
“Tex?”
She looked up. “Oh. Sorry,” she said, climbing out of the hole.
She looked over and saw the bodies and her chin began to quiver. “Those were Mom’s favorite quilts.”
Oh no, thought Wiggins. “Tex, I’m so sorry—”
She shook her head. “No, it’s all right. Actually it’s perfect. She would have loved that. Thank you, Bill.”
Wiggins nodded, relieved, and picked up one of the shovels to begin removing loosened dirt from the grave.
They buried them in a common grave, together in death as they had been in life. Tex and Wiggins worked wordlessly, as if idle chatter would profane the task. It took two hours, and when they finished, Tex dropped to one knee and bowed her head over the graves and Wiggins followed suit respectfully. Her lips moved in a silent prayer; then she crossed herself and rose, wiping a tear from her eye.
She looked over at Wiggins as he stood. “What now?”
Wiggins reached over and squeezed her arm. “We’ll figure it out, Tex.”
***
Wiggins had covered the spot on the living room floor with plastic, then covered that with blankets. The stench still lingered in the house, but it was far less pervasive. They found the motive for murder in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom. The large floor safe was open and empty.
“They got what they wanted. Why did they have to kill them?”
“Because some people are just murdering scum,” Wiggins said. “And with no law enforcement around, those assholes all crawl out from under their rocks.”
Tex nodded. “I saw other broken doors up and down the street as we rolled in. I’m betting whoever did this probably hit the entire neighborhood. Maybe even the whole town. That’s why there’s no one on the streets. They’ve likely run away, or they’re dead or in hiding.”
Wiggins nodded. “So what do you want to do, Tex? You want to stay here?”
She shook her head. “Definitely not here. Not after what … what happened.”
“How about other family? Anyone nearby?”
She shook her head again. “We weren’t the stereotypical big Portuguese family. Mom had a tough time getting pregnant, and I’m an only child. They had me late in life, and all of my grandparents died when I was a kid. I’ve got a lot of relatives in Newark, but no way in hell I’m going into a city right now.”
“Well then,” Wiggins said, “I guess you’re going to Maine.”
“You … you don’t mind?” Tex
asked.
“Mind? Like I WANTED to travel all that way alone? You think I’m nuts?”
Tex smiled wanly. “Well, now that you mention it—”
“Very funny. Ha-ha,” Wiggins said. “Do you want to stay here until morning? Is there anything we can use?”
She considered it. “The place is ransacked, but I doubt they hit the attic. There may be some camping gear and other stuff up there we might be able to use, and it didn’t look like they hit the garden shed either; there might be something there.” She shook her head. “But I don’t want to stay in here. Not … not in the house anyway. Let’s just pull the SUV into the garage and close the door.”
“Understood. Let’s see what we can find, then make a plan,” Wiggins said.
***
The attic yielded a pair of old but serviceable hiking boots Tex had put away years before, and they found a pair of Tex’s dad’s boots that fit Wiggins well. They threw those in the SUV to replace their own rapidly deteriorating footwear. There were also a few odds and ends of camping gear. But the real find was in the garden shed, a nearly full five-gallon can of gasoline for the riding lawn mower, with another half-gallon or so in the mower itself. Wiggins drained the gas from the mower into the can and was about to pour it all into the near-empty SUV when he stopped.
“We should change cars,” he said. “We’ve been hiding way off the beaten path most of the time, but surely we can find another ride here. If we get stopped, a stolen FEMA vehicle previously driven by two dead people might be kind of tough to explain.”
Tex nodded. “Gas is more valuable than cars these days. I’m thinking we need to scour all the garden sheds and garages anyway to scavenge as much overlooked gas as we can find, so we might as well look for a car while we’re at it.”
Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) Page 15