by Tom Calen
Several hours into the trip, one of the cars in the convoy suffered from a flat tire which forced an unscheduled stop. Two of the refugees worked feverishly to change the tire. Several passengers used the stop to relieve themselves, while others patrolled the perimeter against any intruders. One of the men signaled to Mike and Paul, both of whom were looking over the map. Upon reaching the guard, Mike could already see the cause for his beckoning gesture. Scattered some distance off the highway’s shoulder was a rotting heap of carcasses. Mostly animal, but he identified several pieces of human bodies. With flesh and muscle still clinging to some bones, it was clear that the deaths had been recent. The discovery of the tell-tale signs of nearby Tils spread quickly through the refugees, and propelled even greater haste in replacing the tire and reloading the convoy. Only once the vehicles were moving again did Mike relax slightly.
The further south they went, more indications of the Tils presence became evident. Mangled corpses littered the highway at every turn of the head. Even the bodies of Tils, weak from starvation, could be seen crawling across the hot black surface of the road. An anxious vigilance could be felt at the two subsequent stops to prevent the bus’s engine from overheating. As the sun was setting, the hunt for a secure place to make camp for the night began.
Eventually, the council settled on a long stretch of an overpass. The decision was supported by the limited number of possible entries for any attack. Before letting the refugees exit the vehicles, several members of the security team undertook the regrettable task of removing any corpses from the area. Once the sound of bodies hitting the water below ceased, Mike allowed the passengers to begin setting up for the night. The football field-sized section of road was heavily guarded at both the northern and southern ends. With every capable member taking up arms, Mike hoped the guards had slept well the night before, since there would be no shifts to relieve them that night.
Refugees sat in huddled masses, the scent of fear over their exposure to the trials of darkness filled the evening air. I doubt anyone gets sleep tonight, Mike suspected. Too restless to sit idly, he alternated between the two guarded ends of the overpass. Paul joined him as he spoke with the men and women protecting the southern exit. The conversation was trivial, a result of the participants only half-focusing on the whispered chatter. All eyes peered into the darkness, focusing and refocusing on each shadow and piece of debris the soft wind moved.
As Mike began to take his leave and return to the northern front, a faint scuffling sounded from the darkness. Immediately, guns were raised, cocked, and aimed in the direction of the noise.
“Easy,” he said. Worried that the sound was benign, he did not want any itchy trigger fingers giving away their position. With the moon only a sliver in the sky, Mike agreed to let one of the men use his flashlight to scan the area beyond.
As the soft glow fanned out over the highway, it came to rest on one lone, still figure standing a few dozen yards away. With its head bent severely to one side, it was clear that it was a Til before them. Instead of rushing towards them, the infected continued in its unmoving stance. The stand-off resembled an old film save for tumbleweeds blowing across the ground.
Mike turned to one of the women in the group. “Can you make the shot with the crossbow?”
“Our bolts are for short range. I don’t know if I can make it,” she replied.
Hesitant to have the night’s silence torn by gunfire, Mike instructed her to take the shot. The woman quickly holstered her sidearm and retrieved the crossbow at her feet. Loading the bolt, she knelt to the ground and braced the bow securely to increase accuracy. With a click and a whoosh of air, the arrow sped through the distance and nicked the arm of the infected before it passed by the target. The Til, unfeeling of any pain, simply turned and beat a fast retreat into the darkness.
“Did it just run away?” Paul asked in amazement.
“Sir, do we give chase?” another guard asked.
Mike paused for a second, considered the risks and declined the man’s offer of pursuit. With tension still in the air, Mike ordered Paul to quietly let the guards at the other end know that contact had been made. He stressed that Paul should do so without needlessly alerting the other refugees.
“They’re scared enough already,” Mike explained. He remained at the post for the rest of the night. In his mind, Paul’s earlier question was persistent in its nagging. It ran away, he thought. Why would it run away? Can it feel pain? No, it didn’t even flinch when the arrow cut its arm. Could it really have been scared off?
* * *
The refugees were so eager to leave the area the next morning that it was not necessary for Mike to give any instructions for haste. Within minutes of waking, the gear had been packed and the convoy loaded, and he gave the order to move out. There were some sixty miles left in the journey, and he hoped that the next hours of travel faced no obstacles. A light rain began to fall and Mike listened to the steady pattern of the windshield wipers slide across the glass of the front window. Again as before, the miles were marred by tens, if not hundreds, of corpses left to rot in the baking heat of Southern Florida.
A little more than two hours later, with less than five miles left before the convoy would reach Miami, Mike’s attention was drawn ahead as Paul began to decelerate the SUV. The lead car had come to a stop and now the remaining vehicles of the convoy were following suit. The numerous lanes of the highway were completely blocked with abandoned vehicles as far as the eye could see. Following their training, the security team immediately set up in formation around the convoy.
As Mike stepped out of the truck, his eyes scanned the surrounding area. The highway was bordered by the typical foliage used to block the sounds and sights of traffic from the residential neighborhoods in the distance. As he and Paul walked forward to assess the situation, Lisa jumped down from the roof of the lead car.
“There’s no way we’re getting the bus through. I don’t think we could even get a car through it,” she informed the pair.
Not doubting her assessment, Mike still stepped first onto the car’s hood then its roof to see the blockade for himself. Hundreds of cars, trucks, and buses filled the lanes of the highway in both directions. Easing down off the car, Mike winced slightly as his ribs reacted to the contortions of his descent.
“What do you think?” Paul asked him.
“I don’t like it, that’s for sure. It could be cars left by others that heard the Cuban message. Maybe so many have come that the road’s become a parking lot. Or…” he answered, his tone showing worry.
“Or, it could be a trap,” Paul said, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah,” Mike replied, drawing out the word as his mind debated the camp’s next steps. “How much further before we reach the city?”
“Best guess, I’d say two, maybe three miles,” Lisa said.
“All right, it’s walkable,” Mike admitted, though he distrusted the idea of travelling even such a short distance in unfamiliar territory on foot. “Lisa, have your men stay on point. Paul, get the camp gathered.”
“Yes, sir,” the two responded in unison and set out to execute his orders.
Within minutes the entirety of the refugee camp was assembled on the shoulder of the highway. From the hood of one of the convoy’s cars, his hair and clothing clinging wetly to him, Mike informed them of what needed to be done.
“Okay folks, here’s the situation…we’re going to have to walk from here.” As expected, several groans could be heard among the survivors, but mostly the mutterings were fearful. Mike continued, “I know you’re tired. I’m tired, too. I’m tired of waking up each morning not knowing how many of us would live to see the night. We have three miles ahead of us and six years behind us. We knew this journey was going to be tough. I don’t know what dangers are ahead of us,” he pointed down the blocked highway. “But I know all the dangers we have already overcome.”
He paused to scan the faces of the crowd before him. He could see t
heir fear, but that fear was matched by their determination.
“We will take only the necessities we can carry. Everyone with a firearm needs to have that weapon ready and accessible. We will get through this, folks. We will because we owe it to our family, to our friends, and to our loved ones that did not live to see this day.” As he stepped down from the car, the crowd dispersed and began to ready themselves for the final miles of the trek.
“Very Bill Pullman of you,” Paul deadpanned. “I half expected you to shout that this was our Independence Day.”
With a laugh, Mike replied. “What do you want? It’s all I had on the fly.”
Within a half-hour’s time, the party of refugees, over seventy in number, embarked on the weaving path down the highway. Thankfully, the rain had stopped soon after his impromptu speech. The going was slower than he would have preferred, but the vehicles were so tightly crammed together that often assistance had to be given to help people over hoods and trunks. The return of the sun worked to dry Mike’s clothing and remove the discomfort of moving about in wet jeans.
It was difficult to judge how much distance had been covered, but he estimated the group to have already walked a mile when word came from the rear of the group that a guard needed to see him and Lisa urgently. In an attempt not to arouse worry, the two walked calmly and steadily to the rear guard.
“What’s the situation?” Lisa asked him. The short man, coming up only to Mike’s shoulder, seemed hesitant to respond.
“I can’t be sure, but I think we’re being followed,” came his nervous reply.
Mike quickly snapped his head up and stared into the distance. “Why do you think that?” he asked, searching the road they had come down.
“That’s the thing, sir. It’s just a feeling, like someone’s watching us. And once in a while, I’ll see a flash of movement, but it’s gone before I can focus on it.”
Though not overly familiar with the man, Mike did know him to be very competent in the field. The lieutenant had spoken quite highly of him, thus he was reluctant to discount the man’s information as simply nerves.
As he turned to Lisa to discuss what the man had said, a series of shots from what sounded like several machine guns erupted at the head of the group of refugees. Dropping quickly behind a wood-paneled van, Mike could hear the shouts of the refugees as they sought cover of their own.
Chapter Twenty-One
The buzz of activity woke him from a dreamless sleep. Tossing the thick covers aside, Mike stepped from the warmth of the bed and cringed slightly as his feet met the cold, smooth wood of the farmhouse bedroom. Winter’s reach could still be felt, though the calendar had already turned to March. Embers from the previous night’s fire were all that remained in the fireplace. As he shrugged into an oversized flannel robe, he made his way over to the window.
Tying back the thick drapes allowed for the bright light of morning to flood the room. Looking down from his second story window, he could see the scurrying figures of his companions setting about the morning tasks. In the time they had lived in the farmhouse, several other survivors had joined them, swelling their population to forty-eight. Normally, Mike would have felt a pang of guilt for sleeping so late into the morning, but the security meeting of the night before had stretched well into the predawn hours.
When they had first come upon the abandoned farmhouse, the remains of its former occupants stained the green grass of the front yard. The gruesome task of removing and burying the bodies was well worth the price of security and lodging the discovery offered. The property itself stretched out over a few hundred, relatively flat, acres. A three-foot high wooden fence encircled the farmhouse as well as a small cottage. While the initial height was certainly not an effective barrier against the infected, Mike immediately developed a plan to dismantle some of the other, outer structures around the farm and use the salvaged wood to raise a taller fence.
Though the previous residents had not survived the outbreak, several of the farm’s animals did manage to evade the hunger of the infected. His urban upbringing provided no knowledge of animal husbandry, which forced Mike to rely on the skills of his far more rural students. The animals had been rounded up, their respective pens had been rebuilt, and soon the small group of refugees had a plentiful amount of fresh eggs and milk each day.
The main building was more than adequate for the eight of them, though as their numbers grew, the farmhouse’s new tenants had been forced to double and triple up in the bedrooms, as well as convert the large dining room and ever more massive basement into shelter-style sleeping quarters. The winters had been survived with relative ease, in large part due to the numerous fireplaces and wood stoves that filled the home. The trees that covered the outer edges of the property provided ample firewood.
After the first winter and its subsequent thaw, Mike and the other refugees began planting myriad types of vegetables in the hopes that the community would eventually become self-sufficient. A childish glee had enveloped them when the first sprouts of green poked through the ground. With the additional hands now living among them, the harvesting of their crops was made less arduous. The nearby Tennessee River provided an abundance of trout, bass, carp, and other aquatic protein sources.
It was with wariness and trepidation that Mike consented to accept the first band of survivors. Though Blaine’s murder and the battle with the renegades had been months earlier, any interaction with strangers was cause for alarm. Gradually, after lengthy discussions, the initial band of refugees welcomed the new members to the group. As months passed and cycled into years, more and more survivors had followed the same thoughts Mike had had to seek an isolated area.
The newcomers hailed from several counties in Tennessee, as well as the northern neighbor, Kentucky. One small family of three had managed to survive their journey from western Kansas. With each arrival, the strangers would provide information about the world beyond the security of the farm. There was still no government presence, military or political. No one had heard or seen any broadcast communication since the airwaves shut down at the beginning of the outbreak. As for the infected, they still roamed freely, attacking and feeding at will.
Once dressed for the day, Mike headed downstairs and found Michelle and Sarah feeding split logs into the kitchen’s large wood stove.
“Morning,” he greeted them and he followed his nose to the still-warm pot of coffee.
“Hey, Mike,” Sarah returned. “Surprised you’re up already. I heard the meeting went late last night.”
Relishing the warmth of the coffee, he took a seat at the table while he waited for the morning’s collection of eggs to be brought in. “Yeah, some of the guys on patrol reported that two areas of the fence have been broken down. They couldn’t tell if it was just accidental, animal-related, or something else.”
Though everyone was aware of the security patrols and the purpose they served, many—Mike included—still preferred to leave the “something else” undefined in casual conversation. The refugees would never be able to escape the reality of the infected, but over the last two years they had developed coping strategies. In order to create some sort of normalcy, it had become an unspoken rule, one of many, to save talk of the Til for only the most necessary occasions.
“How worried should we be?” Sarah asked.
“I’m going to take a ride out to the sites in a bit and see what we’re dealing with,” Mike informed her. Though he was concerned with the report, he preferred to keep his feelings to himself and spare others what could be unnecessary worries.
Derrick and Andrew soon entered the kitchen through the rear door that led out to the yard and chicken coops. Each of them was carrying a basket heavily laden with the morning collection of eggs. Since their time at the farmhouse, Derrick had eased into the role of overseeing the management of the daily tasks. Mike marveled at the young man’s natural acumen with recognizing and evaluating the various details of maintaining a thriving farm community. For his pa
rt, Derrick seemed to enjoy the work. In high school his focus had been sports, but now it was clear the youth was impressed with his newfound skills. In addition to gaining Mike’s respect, the other refugees praised him regularly for his success in the challenging undertaking.
Perhaps his most adoring supporter was Andrew. Sarah’s son had grown considerably in the last two years, leaving the lankiness of the pre-teen years behind in favor of a body made strong by the hard rigors of farming. Having lost his father to the virus, he had slowly grown to view Derrick as the male role model boys his age so desperately needed. To Derrick’s credit, he understood the younger boy’s needs and took him under his wing as a little brother.
Many of the refugees throughout the farm had steadily developed the same sort of familial relationships. Michelle and Jenni, previously good friends, had soon developed the rapport usually visible in only the closest of sisters. Fathers, mothers, and siblings had begun to emerge regardless of the lack of actual blood relation.
Mike, however, found himself thrust into a drastically different role. For him, no bonds of family had formed. He served none as a surrogate father or brother. Instead, he had become their leader, an untrained general in a war not of his choosing. As he felt the shackles of leadership tightening around him, he soon realized that no matter how much he cherished those around him, he could not serve them if his thoughts diverted from the task at hand. While the others had slipped back into a form of normalcy, he had found he could not relax his anxiety with regards to their plight.