by D. J. Molles
Jacob coughed into his hand. Then: “Some estimate as high as ten.”
“Ten million?”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
“We can’t survive that!”
Bus held up a hand and spoke calmly. “Folks, that’s why we’re here—to talk about our options. Right now, this is just the news. There’s no reason to panic right now.”
“Bullshit!” A man from Camp Ryder pointed at Bus. “That’s what they said when this whole thing started!”
Jerry seized the moment to wrest control away from Bus. “There’s a reason everyone is scared right now, Bus. I think this is a major problem.” He turned to the crowd. “But we need to clear up some things, and we can’t ask questions if we’re all yelling at the same time.”
Lee could almost feel Bus tensing. The anger rolled off of him like a burning fever.
This time it was Professor White who stepped forward. “Excuse me, Jerry.”
Jerry yielded graciously. The two men were as thick as thieves. Nauseating, like a pair of Washington politicians. Lee wondered absently how many of those politicians were now running wild and naked through the small towns and forests of Virginia, eating unspeakable things and growling to each other.
“I’m Professor White,” he introduced himself grandly. “Now, you’ve established that there are somewhere between two and ten million plague victims north of us,” White said, with one hand in his pocket and the other gesticulating mildly at his side, as though this were another lecture. “My first question is, how big of a group have you actually seen with your own eyes?”
Jacob looked uncomfortable. “Maybe a thousand? I don’t know. I was running.”
Professor White smiled, but it was unpleasant. “So it’s safe to say you haven’t seen the… What does our friend Captain Harden call them?” White put up a pair of very sarcastic air quotes. “Hordes? At least not in the numbers that you postulate, correct?”
Someone growled, “Speak English, you stuffy fuck.”
A few people cleared their throats to disguise a chuckle. Lee restrained a smirk.
White looked at the crowd with a sneer, then turned back to Jacob. “So you haven’t seen a million plague victims all in one spot? Not even close to that number, correct?”
“No, but…”
White held up a hand. “Isn’t it possible they’re breaking off into smaller, and I would say more manageable and less threatening groups? Once again, I think our revered captain calls them ‘packs’?”
Jacob spoke loudly, a little irritation showing in his voice. “First, I should remind you that I’m not one of your students, professor, and I’ve probably written more textbooks on the subject matter of my expertise than you have taught from in your entire career.” Jacob swallowed, glared, let the moment hang. “Secondly, the grouping together of infected subjects, at least as it pertains to establishing a pack mentality, appears to be a primarily rural anomaly. The vast majority of infected subjects originating from large urban areas tend to stay cohesive in large crowds. There are packs up north, just as there are here, but since the majority of the infected are coming from those urban areas, the majority will be in hordes.”
Looking somewhat miffed, White hesitated to speak again, and Old Man Hughes overtook him.
The grizzled, white-haired man from Dunn spoke in a low, growling voice that spoke of a lifetime addiction to tobacco, only recently and unwillingly overcome. “These big groups, or herds, or hordes, or whatever… will one join up with another?”
Jacob shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest. But it’s a definite possibility.”
Hughes nodded once. “Any idea how long it’ll take them to get down this way?”
Lee had not thought it possible, but Jacob’s face grew even more drawn. “By my best estimate, they’ll be crossing into North Carolina before the year is out.”
The crowd buzzed like a live wire.
“That’s not enough time!”
“Where are we gonna go?”
Jerry stepped forward again. He fixed Lee with a weasel-eyed look and Lee knew exactly what was coming. He raised one hand for quiet and pointed the other right at Lee. “I want to know what Captain Harden has planned for this. Surely you have some… contingency in place?”
Professor White snorted loudly. “Or are you just going to wade in with your guns blazing and hope for the best? Kill everything in sight, right? It’s simpler that way.”
Lee pictured two quick shots: one to cap his knee and bring him down and the other to bust his head open. Yes, violence was simpler.
Steeling himself with a deep breath, Lee stepped forward. “Yes, we have a plan.” His lips stretched wide in a smile that lacked humor. “And it involves as little shooting as possible.”
Jerry spread his arms, the ringmaster inviting the participant into his circus.
“Roanoke River,” Lee said simply.
Jerry and White both stared blankly.
He turned his attention to the crowd, made up of the group leaders and several residents of Camp Ryder who just wanted to watch. Most of the faces he recognized. “The Roanoke River is an unbroken waterway that cuts across most of the top of our state’s northern border. It terminates into the coast. Further inland, near a little town called Eden, it’s known as the Dan River. That waterway can be a natural barricade.”
“Can’t they just go around that town, then?” Jerry’s eyes narrowed to dark little slits.
Lee nodded. “Yes. That’s the point. The town is about forty miles from the Appalachians. Jacob has already established that the infected won’t cross into the mountains because they naturally follow the path of least resistance. So between the mountains and the river, we create a bottleneck.” Lee looked directly at Professor White. “So we can thin the herd.”
“This is ridiculous.” Jerry raised his hands and looked to the crowd for support. “What about all the bridges? They’ll just cross there! This plan holds water like chicken wire!”
There was a mumble of concurrence from the crowd and it peaked out, sounding hostile. Everyone was scared and angry, but they weren’t sure whom to be angry with. Jerry was trying his damnedest to make them angry at Lee, but the vast majority owed Lee their lives, even if they didn’t agree with him all the time. The exceptions were those who had sided with Jerry from the start, the people who had been here before Lee.
Lee waited for the grumbling to pass and then spoke. “We’ll blow the bridges.”
Jerry’s eyes went wide.
Professor White held up his hands. “You’re gonna blow the bridges? What the—”
Old Man Hughes’s voice boomed over White’s. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice carried when he wanted it to and immediately stole the attention from the two men who appeared to be in the beginnings of a fit.
“You asked the man a question,” Hughes said and gestured to Lee. “At least have the decency to let him answer it before you get your knickers all twisted up.”
A welcome quiet fell over the crowd as everyone listened instead of yammering back and forth.
Lee took the opportunity to continue. “I’m setting up two teams. The first will be responsible for spearheading out east to where the Roanoke River ends in Swan Bay. They will then work their way back west, dealing with the bridges as they go. Obviously, we won’t be able to blow every bridge. But there will be groups of survivors that live near these bridges, and we will attempt to make contact with them, to enlist them to guard the bridges near them. If there is no one to guard the bridge, then we’ll destroy it. If we can’t destroy it, we’ll mine it and barricade it as best we can.”
“What about the Followers?” someone yelled.
Lee shook his head. “There’s no reason to believe there’s any truth to those rumors.”
A middle-age man stepped forward, his eyes wide with fear. “I talked to a man who came from out east. He said the Followers burned his camp to the ground. He said they cannibalize the children, rape the w
omen, and hang the men from a cross if you refuse to join them.”
The crowd stirred.
Lee held up a hand. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it seems a little far-fetched.”
Bus jumped in before anyone else could revive the topic. “Let’s focus on what we know, folks. Let’s get back on track here and listen to the rest of this plan.” He nodded to Lee. “Go ahead, Captain.”
Lee shifted his weight. “The second team will head northwest toward the town of Eden. They will establish a secured route between Camp Ryder and Eden, and we will use this route to run supplies and to ferry refugees away.”
Jerry’s eyebrows shot up. “Refugees?”
Lee nodded tiredly. “Yes, refugees. If there are hordes as large as Jacob suggests there are, and they are migrating south, I anticipate there will be refugees fleeing from these hordes. If they can fight, we’ll arm them and use them, but if they’re unable or unwilling to fight, we need a safe place to send them. The Camp Ryder Hub is the safest place I can think of.”
Old Man Hughes tossed his gray head up. “Excuse me. But how do we know that they will be migrating south? From what we’ve seen around here, the infected hordes are pretty much sticking to where they’re from. Why would the ones from up north be any different?”
Jacob nodded to Lee and politely fielded the question. “It’s about food supply. I’ve actually seen it. You asked me earlier whether I’d seen these massive hordes, and I haven’t, but I’ve seen what they can do. I’ve been through cities they’ve left behind. They’ve picked them clean of every edible thing. Even the canned goods—I’ve seen them bash them against a curb to get at what’s inside. They won’t sit around and starve to death, you understand.”
He looked around the crowd, gauging how many people were actually comprehending him. “The FURY bacterium eats away at your reasoning abilities, the mental safeties we’ve put in place over generations of living in civilization, which help us to be nonaggressive and productive citizens. All that’s gone, but they still have the instinct to survive. In fact, that instinct is even stronger in them than it is in us, because they’re incapable of shame or morality. They don’t have limits on what they will do to survive. And the primary survival mechanism that drives them is hunger. They’ll go to where the food is… and that’s south.”
Lee looked at Professor White and saw the unbidden shock rise on his features, as though he simply couldn’t believe what he’d seen with his own eyes for the past few months, and he was only believing it now because someone with a PhD was telling him about it. Yes, we’re the food, professor, Lee thought. Do you still want to save them all? Are they still “plague victims”?
“Okay,” Jerry said, his voice more subdued. “Let’s talk a little about your plan, Captain.”
Lee tensed slightly, knowing this would be the hard part. “We have the equipment to get the job done.” He looked around. “We just don’t have the manpower.”
“Ah.” Jerry smiled viciously. “So now you need us, huh? Things aren’t so one-sided, are they?”
Lee tried hard to remain placid. “They never were. I can’t do my work without survivors, and without me, the survivors don’t survive.”
This angered Jerry. “We were doing just fine before you came!”
Keith Jenkins, the man who had loaned Lee his pickup truck to make that first fateful run to Bunker #4, stepped forward, and Lee watched Jerry bristle like a dog with its hackles up. It was a well-known fact that the two men despised each other.
The old man adjusted his dirty old ball cap on his balding head and spat on the ground. “I know I’m gettin’ old, but I’m pretty sure my memory is still good. And as I recall, we was pretty much starving before Captain Harden came along. Didn’t have no guns, didn’t have no medicine, and we never left the damn gates.” He raised his head so he was peering at Jerry from underneath the shade of his cap bill. “Seems like you’re one ungrateful motherfucker.”
The crowd stirred, and everyone started shouting, some in support of Jerry and some against him. Keith Jenkins just shook his head and stepped over to Lee while Jerry looked around, seeming unsure of what to do or say in that moment. Keith smiled and nodded at Julia, then planted himself firmly beside her, clearly on Lee’s side, as though he’d drawn a line in the sand.
He raised a hand and hollered, “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m with Captain Harden.” He turned to Lee. “Anything you need, Cap. You let me know.”
Another, younger man stepped out of the crowd and over toward Lee. “I’m with you, too.”
“Wait!” Professor White wailed, holding up his hands. “Wait! There’s no need for a military force! We don’t need a goddamned draft right now. This isn’t Vietnam, Captain!” He spoke with such vehemence that spittle flew from his mouth in sprays. “Stop looking at everything through the eyes of a warlord and try to see it through the eyes of the peaceful people you’re supposed to be protecting. We’re trying to rebuild a civilization, not fight a war! Why do you want us to keep fighting when we don’t get anything out of it?” His eyes were beginning to water and his voice cracked with emotion. “It’s like you’re living out your childhood fantasies, playing war in your backyard! But it’s not a game anymore, Captain. These are real lives you’re taking. You’re sending real people to die when there are other options!”
Lee bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood. The pain cleared the buzzing in his ears and the rising, prickling heat that washed over his head. A few more deep breaths. “If there is another, better option, please let me know.”
The professor’s emotion was like a radio transmitter, and the group of his students from Fuquay-Varina that had come along with him were all picking it up; they were beginning to shout and to cry along with him, their forms hunched over and pleading, desperate.
Lee thought they looked pathetic, but he tried to clear the anger from his head and detach himself from them. What were they, really? They were scared sheep. Scared of the shepherd, scared of the sheepdog, and scared of the wolf. Their only capability for problem solving was to stampede away. He couldn’t fault them for it. It was who they were.
White drew closer to Lee and his posture was both furious and supplicating. “We run. We leave this behind. You said that they don’t go over the mountains, so we should go over the mountains where they can’t get us! The mountains are rich with wildlife. We can live there in communities until the infected die out. They must eventually die out. We can wait it out rather than fight! At least we’ll be alive!”
Lee shook his head pityingly. “And what about the rest of North Carolina? What about South Carolina and Georgia? We just leave them to figure it out on their own? Better them than us, right?”
“They can run too! They can go over the mountains…”
Lee’s control was like a wet rope slipping through his fingers. “The mountains only go so far. Why don’t you take some fucking responsibility for something instead of shoving it on down the line? This is our problem now. We need to solve it.”
White opened his mouth to protest, but Lee cut him off and pointed a finger in his face.
“You talk all these high ideals about society, but you’re not willing to do shit for it. And you know what? That’s fine! That’s why there’re people like me, and Julia, and LaRouche, and Father Jim, and Harper. People who are willing to fight. If you’re not willing, that’s okay. But don’t hold back those who are.”
White was shaking his head, tears beginning to stream down his face. “You’re going to ruin us. He’s going to ruin us! He’s going to send everyone off to die in a war for no other reason than his personal ‘warrior’s code.’ ” White stepped backward into his crowd of weeping students. “We had the chance to create something better, Captain. All you want to do is send us right back to where we were!”
“Guys!” Bus stepped between them. “I think there’s been enough shouting for one meeting.”
But White was done. He kept sh
aking his head and then he brought up his finger and waved it toward Lee. “This man is a criminal. He’s a warlord. All he wants is power, and he’ll spend your lives to get it!” White turned before anyone else could speak. “We’re done with this meeting. Clearly no one here is going to listen to reason.”
Professor White and the others from Fuquay-Varina gathered around him and slowly began to edge away. The young people looked accusingly across at Lee as they crowded around their beloved leader and comforted him, as though Lee had physically hurt the man. The older ones followed the crowd, but they avoided looking up at Lee or anyone else from Camp Ryder. Their faces were full of shame.
Lee watched them go, grinding his teeth.
Jerry remained standing with his arms crossed. He shook his head slowly, looking between Lee and Bus. “Bus, I think your judgment has been clouded. In fact, I think your judgment has been clouded since Captain Harden arrived here. This isn’t something we can fight. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and run.”
“It’s not something you can run from either,” Lee said, taking a step toward the man but keeping his voice as level as he could manage. “What happens when the infected reach Georgia? There are no more mountains to hold them in. They’ll just keep spreading. Are you going to live on top of a mountain for the rest of your life, scared to death to go down into the rest of the country? Is that the future you want?”
Jerry shook his head. “This is all gonna blow over.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jerry sighed smugly, as though he knew something Lee did not, and that he was unable to explain it to Lee because the captain was so simple-minded he wouldn’t be able to understand. “Where does your plan start, Captain? What’s your first order of business?”
“Sanford,” Lee said. “Sanford to recover what military equipment was left over from the evacuation attempt. Then to Bunker Two on the other side of Sanford. We haven’t tapped that bunker yet, so it’s got everything we need. Once we have the equipment we need to begin, we’ll split up. One team east, one team north.”
“You still don’t have the manpower.”