by Justin Bell
Chapter 7
Feet crunched on cold, dead wood, the narrow branch cracking under the weight of Jackson’s step toward the edge of the trees.
“You’re as stealthy as a drunk moose,” said Clark as he stepped over the broken branch himself, moving in line with Jackson toward where the trees started to drift apart.
“It’s right down there,” Jackson said, ignoring Clark’s barb. They stopped in the line of trees, a scattered throng of young, struggling brush, drifting apart from the center, revealing clearance between the branches. Several yards away a sporadic row of houses stretched out in front of them offering a clear view of several different back yards. Everything looked completely normal from his perspective, or as normal as a snowless winter in Massachusetts looked. The grass faded from green to brown, short and threadbare like worn socks. Two of the yards had fully constructed swing sets, one of them made of wood and looking new, the second a beat down and rusted metal skeleton, one of the swings hanging by only a single chain. A low wind blew, the swing swaying gently, links clattering together as it moved through the noiseless breeze. The town itself was quiet, eerily so, just as every part of the world was these days, a lack of voices or engines, or just activity in general.
As Jackson looked down about this town, the silence struck him especially hard as he viewed a nice, private neighborhood at dusk, which should, by all rights, have some scattered lights on, have children and parents returning home, or kids outside burning off the energy of a busy academic day. Bikes should be ridden, yes even in December, and dishes should be clinking in sinks.
Instead he looked down upon a ghost town, a darkened shell of a town, built up around emptiness, with no life inside of any sort. A facade.
“Just looks like houses,” Clark said.
“They’re all dark,” interjected Broderick. “I see a few cars from here. I’m sure we can find something to borrow.”
“This is just the most convenient entrance,” Jackson replied. “I walked a short distance farther down, and I could see a few more businesses. Pretty sure I saw at least one gas station and garage. Farther up the trail the slope becomes a cliff.”
“Then let’s go check it out,” said Broderick, moving past Jackson and Clark and going into the tangle of trees and brush. Jackson glanced behind him, gesturing for Javier and Melinda to go next, then he and Clark followed. Broderick had swapped out his Scorpion for the fully automatic M4, and Jackson now held the Scorpion while Clark clutched an AR-15 in his two hands. They wandered slowly from the tree line, walking foot over foot, eyes roaming the surrounding area, knees and elbows locked, weapons raised. It seemed almost ridiculous, men with assault rifles walking through the backyards of small, quaint houses, and as Jackson wove through the struts of the rusted swing set, he couldn’t help but feel even more out of place. Approaching the corner of the small house, he pressed himself tight to the wall, Clark and Broderick falling in just behind him. They held there for a moment.
Waiting, testing the silence, a low clatter of noise rang out from behind them, the opposite corner of the house, the sound of objects falling over, crashing into other objects. A low curse hissed and a flash of movement blurred from that corner, a figure charging out from the other side of the house, running.
“Grab her!” Clark shouted and Broderick was already off at a full sprint, his long legs carrying across the dead grass in rapid motion, his legs moving. It only took a few moments and Broderick was airborne, throwing himself forward, colliding with the running figure, who shrieked and flailed as they both tumbled down toward the ground. The tangle of bodies twisted around on the ground, the female shouting, trying to push away, but Jackson caught up to them quickly and as she peeled herself away from Broderick she jumped up right into Jackson’s grasp.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, hey hey. We’re not after you, we’re not trying to hurt you. Calm down, okay?”
“Get away from me,” she hissed. “Please! I’m just trying to live my life. I don’t want to hurt anyone!”
“Us either, lady,” Clark interjected, coming up on the scene in his typical slow, plodding pace. “We’re just trying to get our hands on a car, okay? Just passing through. You don’t come at us, we won’t come at you.”
“Says the guy whose buddy just tackled me to the ground,” she spat back.
Broderick pulled himself away, rising up into a two-kneed kneel, holding both hands up. “Just reflex, okay? Just reflex.”
She scowled at him, then shifted her stern, narrow glare back toward Clark, finally landing on Jackson.
“I haven’t seen you guys around here before,” she said. “You’re not… ‘off’ like those other guys.”
“Other guys?”
She nodded. “There’s another group that’s been wandering around,” she replied. “I’ve been steering well clear. They give me the willies.”
“Well, we just got here,” Clark said. “There’s no malice here, please believe me.”
“We just want to get a car and move along,” continued Jackson.
“Smart idea,” she said. “This town… it’s dead, anyway.”
“Dead? Like literally dead?”
She looked up. “I’m a doctor,” she said quietly. “Family practitioner. I have a small office downtown, the commercial area.” Her voice had drifted to the point of breaking, sounding like she was speaking on the edge of a taut piano wire, a wire that might snap at any time, sending her words spiraling into chaotic gibberish.
“Let me guess,” Clark said. “People got sick.”
She shrugged. “That’s the weird thing.” Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned away, as if she was suddenly chilled deep. Jackson wouldn’t be surprised if she was, her parka was thick, but she hadn’t been wearing any gloves or a hat. “Nobody really got sick. They just keeled over. Died. Like, almost immediately.”
Jackson and Clark looked over at Broderick who didn’t look all that surprised. The woman seemed to understand that Broderick might have some knowledge of the situation and glared at him herself.
“Do you know what’s going on here?” she asked.
“I was part of a research team, yes. We landed in Boston very shortly after the first incident. But my team was, unfortunately, caught in the middle of everything and… and I’m the only one left.”
“We need to get on the road so we can get him back to his headquarters to start figuring out what the heck is going on,” Clark said.
Her eyes drifted downward.
“Do you know where we can find a vehicle of some kind? Preferably a truck? Sports utility vehicle? Anything?”
She was quiet for a moment, but finally spoke. “We had a two-door. Small. My, uh… my husband and I.”
Jackson closed his eyes. “Did he—?”
She nodded. “I was right there when it happened. Thought he was choking on something. Did the Heimlich maneuver, had everything all planned out in my head, all the different steps I needed to take to save his life. None of it worked.”
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said.
“Save it,” she replied, then sniffled heavily. “Just… don’t. Lots of people with stories a lot sadder than mine.”
“So what are you doing here?” Clark asked.
She shrugged. “Like I said, just living my life. Trying to avoid getting grabbed by some sickos. Besides that I can barely think ten minutes ahead much less a day. Or a week. Existence is my only priority right now.”
A muffled shout echoed from their left and Clark whirled toward the sound, his weapon coming up. “You hear that?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Broderick replied. “Coming from down the road that way.”
“It’s those jerks that have been roaming around town,” the woman said. “They walked off that way not long ago. Sounds like they’re on the way back.”
“We need to get back in the trees,” Broderick hissed. “Make ourselves scarce. Last thing we want to do is mix it up with some locals. We just need to keep
moving!”
“All right, let’s go,” Jackson said, then turned around. “Javier, Melinda, let’s—”
The grass behind him was empty. Javier and Melinda were nowhere to be seen.
***
Melinda looked up at the adults as they moved forward along the short, dead grass, guns in hands, heads swiveling back and forth. Looking left, looking right, looking straight ahead.
Not looking at her. Not caring about her.
It didn’t really bother her, none of them were her parents, they were just strange adults who had stumbled upon her. They’d saved her, and she was grateful for that, helping her escape the burning city, but besides Javier, the rest of them just kind of existed, large objects that were always around her but didn’t really do anything for her.
Even Javier walked quickly, coming up just behind them, ducking low and looking carefully, taking each step slowly and carefully. Mel knew she needed to go with them, they’d just saved her from that group of mean people and she had to stay close.
Then she saw it. Three backyards over, perched on the ragged grass. It was a swing set, like the one in the yard they were walking into, but it wasn’t rusted or broken, it was made of hard plastic, spotless, and it had a curvy slide. A slide like the one at the playground that Mom and Dad used to take her to, the one they would only take her to once a week if she was lucky. Even when they did take her, she usually got so consumed by the swings, monkey bars and sandbox that she almost always forgot to take her requisite twenty trips down the curvy slide.
She looked toward them, their backs getting smaller as they approached the backyard. She looked back toward the swing set, and for a precious moment, the curvy slide seemed to be haloed in a faint orange glow, a beam of light punching through the clouds above and illuminating it like a beacon. It wasn’t just a slide, it was a life goal. Without thinking about it any further, Melinda took off at a dead run, her small legs throwing her forward, shoes pounding over short grass.
Javier saw the blur of motion out of the corner of his eye and turned, Melinda already in the next backyard, still running, making a beeline for that plastic swing set, guiding her body straight for the slide.
He chewed his lip and turned to tell the others what was happening, but a clatter of noise came from the house and they all lurched in that direction. Instead of bothering them, he pulled back, turned and ran after Melinda, galloping over the grass, trying to cut the space between him and her. By the time he reached her, she was already climbing up onto the colorful platform, layered wood slats screwed together like a back deck.
“Melinda!” Javier hissed at her as she pushed herself down the slide, lifting her arms in the air.
“This is awesome!” she said back to him in a quiet, but enthusiastic voice.
“Honey, we need to go,” Javier said. “Now. People might be coming back.”
“I want to live here,” Melinda said, smiling widely. She scurried up the ladder again and pushed her way back down the slide. Javier tried to be firm, but his mouth twitched into a slight smile, seeing the young girl have so much fun, especially among all of the horror surrounding them.
“We can’t, Mel, we’ve got to keep moving.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know who lives here. The Army just stopped at another town a few miles away. Don’t you remember that?”
“Maybe they already came here?” Melinda asked. “Maybe the town really is empty? Besides, how do we know what’s going on in Connecticut or wherever? At least this place has a swing set.”
“That’s a good point,” Javier replied, smiling more broadly. He heard voices behind him and he turned back to where the group had been. They were huddled around a woman he didn’t recognize, talking about something he couldn’t hear. Someone was here, apparently.
A rattle of chains from behind him turned Javier’s head and Mel was swinging one of the swings at full tilt, pumping her legs, another broad grin splitting her face, her dark hair flying out behind her as she did.
“The house is nice, too,” she said happily. “It has two whole floors! I bet there’s a whole separate bedroom for kids.”
Javier looked toward the house and confirmed that she was right, the wide, yellow house did indeed have two floors, the back wall scattered with square windows. There was an extension on the right of the house as well, a smaller growth along the wall, but from this angle he couldn’t tell if it was a garage or something else. He had to admit, the house did look nice, and the town did seem to be at least mostly abandoned. Would living here really be so bad? The quiet suburbia of central Massachusetts, their pick of houses, their pick of cars, no banks left to pay mortgages to.
The swing crested its upward motion and Melinda threw herself from it, leaping out into the air, legs pumping comically as she arced, then fell, landing in a clumsy, stumbling crouch in the dirt.
“I’m gonna do that again,” she said and turned back toward the swing set.
“Nah, I’m sorry little girl,” a voice echoed. “I’m afraid play time is over.”
Javier snapped his head around, his eyes widening. The men were walking from the trees, and not just any men, but the same eight men they had tussled with a short time ago. One of them had torn the sleeve from his shirt and was holding it over a nasty gash on his head, while another wore a green parka black with char and tufts of burnt down where he’d been kicked into the fire. Several of them held weapons, and Melinda immediately recognized the one who had grabbed her before, the same one holding the cloth to his bleeding scalp.
“Well, look who it is,” he sneered as he stepped closer. “I was hoping we might run into all of you guys again.”
Javier took a cautious step backwards, then looked over his shoulder to call for help.
Jackson and the rest of the group, including the mysterious woman, were all gone.
***
The narrow, leafless branches scratched at their faces as Jackson, Clark, Broderick, and the woman pushed their way into the trees, ducking low and moving as quickly as they could without making too much noise. Jackson turned, kneeling low, looking out through the interlocked branches.
“I can’t believe we just left them out there,” Clark hissed.
“We’re not leaving them,” Broderick replied. “But we had to make ourselves scarce. It’s not our fault the kid ran off.”
“Well, it kind of is. Shouldn’t we be watching her?” Jackson replied.
“That’s Javier’s job. He’s obviously good at it.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes at Broderick, his lips parting to make some sort of accusatory comment about whatever issues he had with Javier, but he clamped his mouth shut again and left the words unsaid. They couldn’t be unsaid forever, but this wasn’t the time or the place.
Looking down into the backyard a few houses away, Clark could see the group of men emerging from another break in the trees, swarming around Javier and Melinda. He could tell, even from this far away, that it was the same group as the one they’d encountered on the trail a while back, and he silently derided himself for allowing them to stop so soon after leaving. They should have taken more time, put more distance between the two groups. Rookie mistake.
“You know those guys?” the woman asked.
Jackson nodded. “Unfortunately. They ambushed us on the trail a ways back. We barely got away, put one of them in the fire, and smacked another with a shotgun upside the head. I imagine they’re a little ticked off.”
“So, like ten angry rednecks with weapons?” she asked.
“Sounds like you’ve met them, too?”
She nodded. “Two of them lived in town. They’re pretty much what you’d expect. The other guys, I have no idea where they came from, I’m wondering if they floated over from another local town. Wherever they came from, they all get together and they think they run things around here. Within twenty-four hours of everything going sideways, they were breaking into the local bar and stealing booze.”
&nb
sp; “Lovely.”
“Hey, they have their priorities.”
Next to the plastic swing set, Javier was frantically looking around. Clark figured he was looking for them, and meanwhile the group of men began closing in. He could hear them speaking but couldn’t hear precisely what they were saying from this distance, though judging by their aggressive nature, he could only imagine what was going through Javier and Melinda’s minds down in the backyard.
She’d slipped away when they hadn’t been looking. Little Melinda, only ten years old. The only one with the forethought to look for her and then chase her down was Javier. The thought was a wake up call to Clark, a realization that they did indeed have a child in their group, and that none of them fully appreciated the magnitude of that responsibility. The ironic thing was that nobody in the group was a parent, but they had been thrust into this surrogate parental role, and if this was any indication, they were failing miserably.
“We need to do something,” Clark whispered.
“They’re armed,” Broderick replied. “And we’re pretty far away. If we try to approach them, it’ll be open season on us, and they outnumber us. We don’t have Jackson lurking in the trees to surprise them this time.”
Jackson looked back at him. “No…we’ve got all three of us.”
“They’re three hundred yards away… at least,” replied Broderick. “Open backyard from us to them. No cover.”
“Can we move through the trees?” Clark asked.
“Without them hearing us?” Broderick asked. “They may be half-drunk miscreants, but I’m pretty sure even they will hear us.”
“The two guys from town are both hunters,” the woman said. “They’ll hear you.”