by D. J. Molles
“We met one of your people on the road,” Georgia said suddenly. “Harper. Julia. I don’t remember the rest of their names. Except for the guy…” Her face sneered. “Mike was his name, and he was a murdering bastard. Killed one of our men in cold blood. Claimed our man was trying to steal from them. But your guy just got scared. I saw the whole thing happen. Then Harper threatened to shoot us all because we wanted Mike to pay for what he did.”
At the mention of Harper’s name, Angela immediately turned to Lee. She knew some of what had happened, but not all. Lee had not kept it from her intentionally. But he’d given her a brief summary of what Harper had told him, and only glossed over the fact that they’d had a run-in with another group of survivors, never going into any details about what had gone down.
But Lee knew the details.
And he knew the aftermath of that night.
Lee stared at Georgia for a while, at the angry man that she’d gathered off the floor that stood behind her now, like a kid might stand behind his mother’s legs. Finally, she realized that Angela was diverting the question to Lee and she made eye contact with him. She must not have liked what she saw in his eyes, because she only attempted to hold his gaze for a second or two before breaking and looking away.
“Mike,” Lee said, distantly. “Yeah. Mike Reagan. And his wife. Torri Reagan. I heard about what happened.”
“Oh, you did?” Georgia said with some contempt. “What was your man Harper’s version?”
Lee took another breath. In and out. “He said that he heard a gunshot. Went running over. Saw your man on the ground, bleeding out. Saw Mike standing over him with a rifle. He said he didn’t know what had happened. He said that Mike claimed that your guy pulled a gun on him, but then later admitted that he’d shot without justification because he was scared. Just like you claim.”
The crowd around them murmured. It was a sound of displeasure.
“I bet you want Mike dead, don’t you?” Lee said slowly. “Blood for blood, right? That’s the way the world works now. Georgia? Mac? You want Mike dead?”
Mac and Georgia exchanged an uncertain glance.
“My man’s life for your man’s life. And what about Mike’s wife?” Lee asked. “What about Torri? You want her dead, too?”
“No…” Georgia said quietly.
“Nonsense,” Lee said. “Both of them. Mike’s life to pay you back, and Torri’s as interest for your troubles. Blood for blood. That’s how it works. That’s the currency of lives when we swap and trade them like fucking canned goods, isn’t it? The old two-for-one deal?”
Silence.
Lee raised his voice to a demand: “Would that satisfy you?”
Georgia’s face pinched down. Angry at being called out. “Yes. Both of them dead.”
“Well, it’s fucking done,” Lee said, and then spat on the ground. “You got your wish. Mike was so fucked in the head because of what he did that he told everyone he couldn’t live in this world anymore, and he said he couldn’t let his wife live in this world, either. So he shot her dead and then swallowed his own goddamn rifle. How’s that for justice? Does that satisfy your fucking needs?”
The silence continued. No one had the nerve to speak.
Lee’s stomach was roiling and he wanted to tell these people that they made him sick, but in truth, it wasn’t them that made him sick. It was the fact that they were just alike. The anger of the man with the knife and the woman named Georgia had been the same anger that he’d felt when he’d seen Angela about to be hurt. The same anger that made him think of executing the man right there on the floor, made Georgia want Mike’s life.
Lee’s rifle sagged, then slid out of his left hand, so it was just dangling at his side, held loosely by his right. He was suddenly very aware of himself, and after the anger went away there was always the feeling of exhaustion. Not physical, necessarily, but mental. Sick to his soul, as well as his stomach.
This is the way of things now. If you want to be angry at anyone, be angry at yourself.
Or better yet, be angry at no one and recognize the necessity of things.
What were they now but tribes? Stone Age tribes. And tribes feuded, and they fought, and it was blood for blood. If a son of one tribe killed the son of another, it was either war or, if they sought to maintain peace, the murdering son’s life was forfeit. That was the way of things long ago, and its time had come again. Due process and trials by jury were kind concepts to ease the sensibilities of a populace that was basically gentle and harmless as sheep.
But there weren’t too many sheep left in the world now. Most of them had been killed during the collapse. What was left was mostly wolves and coyotes, Lee thought. And packs of domestic dogs turned feral again.
Lee felt the energy draining out of him, and what replaced it was the tingling sensation behind his eyes that heralded a bad headache coming. He shook his head at Georgia and Mac both. “I think both our groups have lost enough. Don’t you?”
He turned away before they could answer.
THIRTY
GATHERING
THEY WENT UNDISTURBED ALL DAY. In the little warehouse behind a small storefront in a cluster of businesses, they had waited. Sergeant Kensey had sent Marines to the front of the shop to keep watch out the windows for sign of the infected. They took two-hour shifts while the others slept. None of them had raised an alarm. It seemed that the pursuing horde had either lost interest or passed them in another direction.
Harper stood over where Julia lay as she clenched her eyes shut and tears came out of the corners to stream down her temples and wet her hair. She was half in, half out, her brain still groggy with medication but with enough pain coming through that she could feel Kensey’s fingers as he spread open the ragged wound where her leg bones had split her skin, and began to irrigate it with a syringe.
“Does it smell?” Julia croaked.
“No, I think you’re gonna be okay,” Kensey replied. He’d been brusque with Harper and clearly wasn’t on the same page as them, but Harper appreciated the kindness he’d shown to Julia, and the care he’d given her.
Through the single door to the warehouse from the shop front, Harper could see that the day was failing, the light dimming, and along with it, the rain. The gales that he could hear hitting the metal roof above them had stopped about an hour ago and given way to a long, steady drizzle, and now it seemed to only be spitting. Soon it would clear up and move on, he guessed.
Inside the warehouse, they had turned on two battery-powered lanterns, but they seemed to be losing some of their juice, and Harper had only enough spare batteries to replace one of them. He’d scrounged around the interior of the warehouse but not come up with anything useful besides an old Sara Lee Zebra Cake, still in its package. He saved it for a special occasion. Maybe when they got back to Camp Ryder.
The Marines cracked some chem-lights and tossed them on the ground. There were four of them total, framing the area where the group had laid their gear and bedrolls. As the one lantern faded, Harper stooped to replace the batteries on the other, leaving them momentarily with nothing but the ghostly green light of the chem-lights.
Kensey paused in his work as he waited for the light to return. It was chilly in the warehouse, but he wiped his brow on his sleeve as though he were sweating. He seemed calm, though. Always calm, Harper had to give him that.
Harper tossed the dead batteries and heard them clatter into a dark corner. He slapped the fresh ones in and turned the light back on. It was much brighter this time, and would last for several nights. He set it back down near Julia’s broken leg and Kensey returned to his work.
When he was finished irrigating the open wound, he bandaged it again, then looked at the splint they’d constructed for the broken leg. It was shoddy, but it worked, and Kensey said that it felt like he’d set the bone pretty good. Just the fact that he’d said that he’d felt it had made Harper a little queasy. But her leg looked normal, at least, rather than the odd angle it had taken when the
y’d dragged her out from under the water tower where her stubborn ass had gone.
The thought of it still pissed Harper off. But how mad could you be at someone who broke their own leg trying to prove a point? A little mad, it seemed. But not much. And not enough to bring it up to her. Maybe she realized she should have listened to him, or maybe she still felt she was in the right. Now wasn’t the time to get on her case, though. Harper was well aware how bullheaded she could be and knew that the conversation should wait until she was a little more whole.
Julia seemed to realize that Kensey’s operations were finished. She opened her eyes and blew out a long-held breath. “You done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.” Kensey reached into his bag and rummaged through a few items. “How’s your leg feeling?”
“Horrible.”
Kensey smiled wanly and pulled out a syringe from his bag. “You want some more?”
She stared at him for a moment, and then at the syringe. She bit her lip and Harper could tell that she wanted it, and the pure hunger for the relief from pain that the morphine would bring inspired both fear and pity in Harper.
“There’s no shame in it,” Kensey said with a slight shake of his head. “I’ve seen big, tough men wail like little bitches when their bones are broken. You’re handling yourself well. It’s my gift to you for being an easy patient.”
She nodded and he stuck her.
A few moments later she was passing dreamily into La-La Land. Not enough to knock her out, though she looked like she might fall asleep soon, but she definitely wasn’t with them. Her brain was elsewhere, and for a moment Harper envied her, because she sighed a sound that was something like contentedness and the barest smile touched her lips. It was honest and true and something he had not seen, or worn, in months.
Kensey watched her for a minute, then took her pulse, timing it on his wristwatch. Satisfied, he left her alone and packed his bag of tricks. “I’ve been informed that we’ll be accompanying you back to Camp Ryder,” he said without looking up.
Harper regarded him with a pinched expression. “Informed by who?”
“Colonel Staley.”
The fucking colonel, Harper thought. The author of my woes. “You know, if it wasn’t for that motherfucker dragging his goddamned feet, we wouldn’t be in this position.” Harper kept his voice low as Julia’s eyes closed sleepily. “We’d have the fucking bridges blown to bits and all those infected that chased us into this hole would be on the other side of the river.”
Kensey zipped his pack up and stood. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He looked at Harper. “If it wasn’t for us, you would have gone in there, guns blazing, and taken that shit over, right? I mean, we really held y’all back. Shit. You woulda just nuked the damn place it if hadn’t been for us. You’d’a done it with all those helicopters…” He looked elaborately confused. “Wait a second. Those are our helicopters.”
Harper wanted to knock the man’s teeth out, and might have tried if the words hadn’t hit their mark. As bitter as they were, they were the truth. If it had just been Harper and his group up in Eden, they would have found the same damn situation—infected continuing to come across the bridge, and no real way to keep them from doing it because they didn’t have the manpower. Shit, they didn’t have the manpower to hold them off long enough to place the charges and blow the bridges. Essentially, they would have sat there, doing exactly what they did, but they would have done it alone.
“That’s fair,” Harper said begrudgingly. Then he pointed a finger at Kensey. “But you need to admit we were right. Your colonel waited too long because he wasn’t sure about us. And I get it. I do. Believe it or not. But that doesn’t change the fact that we were right. He should’ve helped us blow the bridges and then the original plan would still be intact. Now we’re running with our tail between our legs.” Harper threw his hands up and growled with exasperation. “Shitfire, maybe it’s nobody’s fault, but that don’t stop it from being hard to swallow.”
Kensey’s sarcastic and argumentative expression softened and he nodded. “Nobody wants to retreat. But sometimes you have to. Sometimes even Marines have to, even though we claim that we don’t know the word.” He shook his head. “Colonel Staley made decisions because he has thousands of people looking to him to keep them alive. I’m sure you can respect that. It might not have been the right decision, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”
Harper clenched his jaw and swallowed any other biting words he might have. He waited for kinder ones to crop up in his mind. “You really have a great amount of respect for this Colonel Staley.”
Kensey nodded. “I do. He’s given everything he had for the Marines and their families at Camp Lejeune, not to mention the thousand or so civilians we’ve taken in from the surrounding cities. I mean, the man lost his daughter, for chrissake. But he’s still out there, trying to make the best decisions. I haven’t agreed with every single one that he’s made, but I hold my tongue, because for the most part the things he does are with good reason. At the end of the day, none of us knows how this shit is gonna turn out.” Kensey looked angry for a second. “Our entire future has just been completely blacked out. And now we’re just all placing our bets on how shit’s gonna turn out. And when the dust settles, some of us will be traitors, and some of us will be murderers, and some of us will be heroes, and it’s pretty much just a flip of the coin which one you’re gonna land with. But you make your bets and you deal with the consequences of your choices.”
Harper had nothing to say to that. Kensey was communicating something to him, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe he was just venting. Kensey didn’t seem like the type of man that needed to vent very often, but maybe Harper had caught him at a bad time.
A bad time? Harper almost laughed at himself. That’s pretty fucking hilarious. Bad time. What a comedian I am. It’s all bad times, isn’t it?
Harper chewed his lip for a moment. “With y’all with us, we should be able to hit the trip in, oh, maybe four or five.”
Kensey nodded. “You told me you have the path back to Camp Ryder clear, right?”
“Right. We did it on the way up.”
“So, no traffic snags or roadblocks?”
“Not since we came through about a week ago.”
Kensey looked down at Julia, slipping quietly into sleep. “We’ll wait until morning comes. Then we’ll hit the road.”
It was in another small town where the Followers stopped and regrouped. It had been a rural town that had tried to upstart itself with a new-built business center full of columns and banks and sandstone walls, and maybe they would have made it had things not gone south for the entire country.
Figuratively and literally, LaRouche thought.
That had been burning in his mind again lately—to tell or not to tell about the hordes coming south. But here and now he had little to gain by holding back, and his life and the lives of many others to keep by speaking up. The prospect of telling was becoming increasingly attractive.
The town had been selected by Deacon Chalmers based upon what sounded to LaRouche like a previously agreed-upon rally point. He also made veiled comments concerning having scouted out the safety of the town. And true to the reports that Chalmers had cited, LaRouche had not seen a single infected in the area. Nor bandits. Nor civilians. It seemed to be one of those areas that had been abandoned by everyone and for no real reason that LaRouche could see.
While LaRouche had driven, Chalmers had been staring at a map, and directing LaRouche where to go and on what streets to turn. During the longer stretches of road, when directions were not necessary, Chalmers remained pensive and kept saying, “We knew this was going to happen. We knew it from the beginning.”
Eventually they had come to the town and parked there amid the newly constructed buildings. A few had been occupied before the collapse—a restaurant, a hardware store, a salon. But the majority were vacant, still with signs in the windows that advertised them for lease.
The small convoy that had gathered with them on the side of the road hours earlier pulled in behind them. Men began to get out, some of them looking confused. All of them murmuring among themselves. Chalmers put them to work, directing them where to go. Onto rooftops and into abandoned businesses. The larger vehicles blocked the roadways in and out of the town center. The way the buildings were organized created a sort of wall around them, so that when the roads were sealed, there was the disarming illusion that they were secure.
LaRouche paced about the confines of the business park, gripping his rifle and never taking his eyes off the skyline or the trees, when he could see them past the buildings. That was where they would come from, if they came for them at all. They would come in and rocket the shit out of them with helicopters, or they would send in a strike team through the woods.
Or maybe they’d do both.
Why am I doing this? he kept asking himself.
Because I have to do something.
Because I’m completely fucking lost.
It was like his forebrain, which thought about consequences and morals and how to differentiate between right and wrong, had simply shut down when he’d killed Father Jim, and ever since then the choices had been invisible to him.
Eventually he worked some of the nervous energy out of himself. And then the lack of sleep from the previous night began to toll on him. He found a shop windowsill to sit on. His muscles and bones ached when he sat. He leaned on the M14 rifle he’d found, and he closed his eyes against the world. His ulcer was churning, insisting that it not be forgotten.
He never slept, though. Just dabbled at the edges of it.
As the day crept on, people continued to murmur about what they were doing there, and Chalmers continued to remain aloof. LaRouche saw him atop a roof several times, pacing and praying, and often looking out toward the east. LaRouche watched him and wondered when he was going to send up the call that the Marines were coming down on them again and they would have to run.