by D. J. Molles
“Any aches or chills?”
“No.”
“Can you breathe through your nose?”
The woman demonstrated.
Julia held up a penlight. “Open your mouth and say ‘ah.’ ”
“Aaahhh.”
Julia shone her light around, decided everything was good except for a case of bad breath—not so uncommon nowadays—and smiled. “Thank you.”
Lee nodded to the older woman as they passed to the next person. “We’re heading out in five. Wilson and his team are staying. You staying here or coming with us?”
She looked at him and Lee didn’t see any of the reproach from earlier.
She nodded quickly. “I’ll be ready to go in just a few. I’m finishing up now.”
“Okay.” Lee turned partially away but felt the need to reiterate the time frame. “Five minutes.”
Her eyebrows went up slightly. “Yup. I’ll be ready, Captain.”
He decided not to say anything else.
In four minutes they were rolling. A thin layer of clouds ranged across the horizon, showing sterling in the thickest parts, shot through with ribbons of bright sunlight like gold and silver smelted together.
The Humvee with the dozer attachment growled out of the parking lot, bristling with weapons as it exited the outpost and left the town and its new residents behind them. Harper drove with Lee in the passenger seat. Jim and Julia sat in the back, and LaRouche was crammed in the middle with the .50-caliber M2 machine gun mounted on top.
Lee turned to look out the driver’s side of the vehicle and found LaRouche’s dirty boots once again resting atop the radio console—a natural footrest for whoever was sitting in the turret. Lee elbowed them off.
“Keep your fucking feet off the radio, LaRouche,” Lee griped for the umpteenth time.
“My bad,” LaRouche mumbled from up top.
All the windows were down, letting the cold wind blow through the vehicle so that they could all rest their weapons in the window frames, pointing out into a world that had grown dangerous and alien.
“Well, I’m very pleased with Outpost Lillington,” Father Jim offered up brightly. “It seems like a very secure location.”
Lee looked out the passenger-side window at the passing terrain. He nodded slowly and remained introspective.
“Should lock down this section of highway,” Jim continued. “Extend the patrols out a bit… Make movement a little safer…” He seemed to realize that no one else was in the mood for conversation and let his words trail off. He turned back to his own window.
Lee’s mind poked cautiously at the questions that nagged him, like you might poke a stick into a dark hole in the forest floor, unsure of what lay inside. Who was the man from Virginia, and what did he want? What news did he bring? Lee wanted to believe that it could be good news but felt in his gut that it was not. Good news didn’t come with a single man, sick and exhausted from miles on the road.
Underneath all of that, a question remained that seemed so inconspicuous in its simplicity but Lee felt was just the tip of something vast and unseen, and it whispered foul omens:
Where have all the females gone?
They passed over the Cape Fear River. The water looked cold and dark, the same color as the woods that surrounded it. The weather had only been this cold for the past week, and a few trees along the banks still clung stubbornly to their brown and wilted leaves, but for the most part the forests were bare. Just a tangle of empty limbs and gray bark, splashes of emerald here and there where a lonesome evergreen stood.
Clattering over the four-lane bridge, Lee wondered when was the last time the bridge had been refurbished. Infrastructure was just another one of the many concerns constantly vying for attention in the back of his mind. Survivors were integral to the success of his mission. He had to rely on them to assist in rebuilding.
But there were so few.
Far fewer than he had ever imagined.
Engineers were at the top of his list: civil engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers… the list went on. At this point, he’d take any kind of engineer he could get his hands on. But it seemed that they were lucky to find survivors at all, let alone someone with a specific skill set.
“Heads up,” Jim said suddenly from behind him.
Lee’s eyes snapped into focus and he looked out the passenger side of the vehicle. The grade of the earth coming off the road sloped down into a deep ravine that cut toward the Cape Fear River and ran parallel to the roadway. On the other side of that ravine, the ground rose up in a steep incline, and it was there, about midway up the face of that hill, that Lee could see what had drawn Jim’s attention.
“Movement! Right side!” Lee called.
“I don’t think…” Jim pushed his glasses up on his face and squinted to see farther.
There were four of them in all. Two large ones and two small. They were strange and bulky in their appearance, and it took a moment for Lee to realize that all of them were heaped with heavy coats and blankets to keep them warm.
LaRouche swiveled in the turret, bringing the fifty about.
Jim slapped at LaRouche’s legs. “Don’t shoot! I don’t think they’re infected!”
“Relax!” LaRouche dodged his legs about. “I’m not gonna waste ’em…”
“Stop here!” Jim spoke with urgency.
Harper looked back incredulously. “I’m not stopping here.”
The sound of Jim’s door unlatching.
“Close your fucking door!” Harper barked at him.
“Hey!” Jim leaned out the window, his door still hanging partially open. “Hello!”
Lee reached across and slapped Harper’s shoulder. “Stop before he falls out.”
The Humvee screeched to a halt, causing everyone inside to lurch forward and LaRouche to slap the top of the roof, trying to gain his balance again.
“It’s okay!” Jim yelled again.
The figures were now almost to the top of the hill. One turned and Lee could see the face peering at them with dark, suspicious eyes, his jawline shadowed by the scraggly beginnings of a beard. It was a younger man with a tan complexion, possibly Hispanic, but difficult to tell from this distance. The unknown man turned back around and pushed the others ahead of him—they appeared to be a dark-haired woman and two small children.
“What are you doing, Jim?” Lee said with a note of caution.
From behind him, Lee heard the loud creak of the dry, rusted door hinges as the ex-priest flung his door open. Lee twisted in his seat and tried to reach through to the back and grab a fistful of his jacket, but Jim was already out the door.
“Hey!” Lee growled. “Get the fuck back in here!”
Father Jim completely ignored Lee, even left his rifle in his seat and stood outside the Humvee with both arms raised above his head. “It’s okay, we’re here to help! You don’t have to be afraid. We won’t hurt you!”
They continued to clamber up the steep embankment.
Lee kicked his door open with force and slid out of his seat, bringing his rifle to his shoulder. He resisted the urge to simply grab the other man and stuff him back in the Humvee. Warning klaxons were blaring in his head and he could feel heat rising up the back of his neck. He reached out and put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “What are you doing? Leave it…”
Jim shrugged the hand off and continued waving his arms. His voice took on a desperate quality. “We’re here to help you. It’s okay! You don’t have to be afraid!”
The four strangers reached the top of the hillock and dipped over to the other side, the man pushing the woman and the two children over before disappearing himself. Just before vanishing onto the other side, he turned and looked at them again, and this time his eyes locked onto Lee. He appeared to hesitate for the briefest of moments, but then ducked down over the top of the hill.
Jim stood in the street with his hands still raised.
The look on his face was one of complete confusion.
The breath came out of him in a long blast of steam.
Finally he let his arms drop to his sides.
“What the heck?” he said indignantly.
He turned back around and found the rest of his squad looking at him. From the driver’s seat of the Humvee, Harper shook his head just slightly and then studiously avoided eye contact. Julia held his gaze a bit longer, showing a measure of concern. Lee looked at him severely and grabbed his shoulder again, this time more firmly.
“What the hell was that?” Lee demanded.
Jim looked over his shoulder toward the hill, but they could see nothing. “I dunno… I just thought that… I thought…”
“Come on.” Lee pulled him toward the Humvee again. “Let’s go.”
“I thought they needed help.”
“They probably did. But we’re an armed vehicle—would you have stopped?”
“No,” Jim mumbled.
LaRouche sighed and let the barrel of the fifty rise up and point at the tops of the trees. He leaned over and spat. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pointed the Ma Deuce at ’em.”
Lee looked back into the woods. Faintly, he thought he could hear them crashing through the forest, just barely audible above the grumbling Humvee at idle. He ushered Jim back into the Humvee, the ex-priest seeming deflated and limp. He closed the door and then got back into the front passenger’s seat and pointed on down the road.
“Let’s keep moving.”
There was a moment of silence, thick and uncomfortable.
Then Harper put the vehicle in gear and they continued on.
From the backseat, barely audible over the sound of the engine and the wind rushing by the open windows, Father Jim murmured, “I’m sorry. I thought we could help.”
* * *
They arrived at Camp Ryder before noon.
In the span of a few months, Camp Ryder had undergone some extreme changes. Some of the ramshackle huts were gone, and “The Square” had graduated from an empty area with a fire pit in the center to a noisy open-air market. Those who scavenged would set up spots inside The Square to barter items they had found—anything from dental floss to batteries or canned food. While everything Lee and his group gathered in their scavenging operations went into a pool to be distributed evenly through the group, scavenging had quickly become a livelihood for those with the impetus to go outside the gates.
The influx of Lee’s rifles and ammunition had played a large role in making scavenging possible. Since accessing Bunker #4 three months ago, Lee had emptied it in the course of several trips to and from. The outposts they had set up at several key locations in the area ran patrols along the major roads, keeping them mostly clear of raiders and their roadblocks. He had distributed a rifle and five hundred rounds of ammunition to every member of the community who wanted them, provided they were over the age of sixteen. This was a defensive measure. If the community came under attack from infected hordes or from a human threat, Lee wanted each and every adult man and woman to be able to join the fight.
While the area was safer now than it had been after the initial collapse, it was still dangerous and they’d taken some losses. Infected were a constant threat, and the patrolling of the roads did very little to limit them. The previous week, two scavengers had been killed before they could make it back to their vehicles and flee. The infected had them almost completely surrounded by the time the scavengers knew what was happening.
Last month alone they’d lost five.
The month before that, seven.
But even with the constant danger, the scavengers had successfully created a thriving trade economy right there in the heart of Camp Ryder. They traded among themselves frequently, but people came in from the other communities that had been incorporated into the collection of towns and neighborhoods that was being called the “Camp Ryder Hub,” and every so often they got visitors from the two groups of survivors that had decided to remain independent of Camp Ryder: Newton Grove to the southeast and Broadway to the west.
Speak of the devil… Lee thought as he noticed the red Isuzu Rodeo pulling in just past the gate.
The driver would be Kip Greene from Broadway. He came to Camp Ryder for two reasons: to talk with Bus and to trade with the scavengers. The Broadway survivors were almost all farming families, and they had continued to tend their crops as best they could after the collapse. They used what they had of their harvest to spare to trade at The Square.
Harper pulled the Humvee up to the gate, where a group of three scavengers was preparing to leave and receiving white armbands from the sentries posted there. Every day had a randomly assigned color. An appropriately colored strip of cloth would be given to the scavengers as they left so they could quickly identify themselves as friends when they approached the gate later.
The three scavengers hustled out of the way as the sentry pulled the gate open for the Humvee as they rolled into camp. Harper pulled their Humvee to the right and parked it out of the way. Behind them, Lee could hear the chain-link fence rolling shut. Recently reinforced with scrap metal and hanging heavy on its hinges, it rattled and clanked noisily as it closed.
Lee eased his way out of his seat and took a moment to work some blood back into his stiff ankle. Feeling a little more limber, he walked to the rear of the vehicle and hauled his heavy pack onto one shoulder. Standing up, he felt the hollow feeling of hunger seeping into his midsection and his stomach growled noisily. He glanced across the dusty parking area and could see Angela standing there with Sam by her side. They both waved to him when he looked in their direction.
Inwardly, he could not shake how strange this made him feel, still the impostor living another man’s life. But outwardly he smiled, waved back, and made his way over to them.
Angela looked at him brightly, her pale skin flushed at the nose and cheeks against the chilling wind. She pulled her jacket closer around her. “Good to see you back, Lee.”
She reached one hand out, and Lee took it. Not a handshake, but a quick and heartfelt squeeze. What there was between them was a mystery to Lee, but he had long ago decided to go with it, because despite his reservations, it was something real. It was something he could come back to. Something to ground him so that his entire existence was not an unending slough of death and conflict.
“Where’s Abby?” Lee asked.
“She’s learning how to sew with some of the other kids.”
Abby hadn’t warmed up to him, and it didn’t seem like she was going to.
“Did you hear about the guy who’s asking for you?” Sam broke in, peering up at Lee with one eye squinted against the sun.
“Yeah, I heard,” Lee said and glanced at Angela, who returned a quizzical look. To Sam again, Lee said, “Did you learn anything new the last few days?”
“Mr. Keith taught me how to shoot his .22 rifle,” Sam nodded with a smile. “We went out and got a couple rabbits. He said I was a natural. Showed me how to skin them and cook them and everything.”
“Wow.” Lee’s eyes went up. “He took you outside the fence?”
“Is that okay? We didn’t go very far.”
“Yeah.” He pictured the old man and Sam running through a field with wild-eyed and shit-covered crazies sprinting after them, screeching and howling. Then he saw blood and entrails smeared across the grassy earth. He swallowed. “I’m sure Mr. Keith was smart about it.”
Angela spoke up. “Where’re you off to now?”
Lee pointed a thumb toward the Camp Ryder building. “I gotta get up with Bus and figure out what’s going on with this guy from Virginia. You hear anything about it?”
She shook her head. “Last I heard he was in the medical trailer, passed out. He was in pretty bad shape.”
“How so?”
“Jenny mentioned dehydration, dysentery, malnutrition…”
“He must’ve been on the road for weeks.”
“Yeah.” Angela nodded.
Lee craned his neck toward the medical traile
r. “I should probably see what’s going on with him.”
“Of course. See you at dinner?”
“Yeah,” Lee said, slightly distracted. “I’ll be there.”
Harper met with him as he made his way toward the Camp Ryder building.
Ahead of them, people gathered at the entrance to the medical trailer to peer in curiously at the man from Virginia. While the novelty of newcomers had faded somewhat as contact was made with more and more survivors, this particular newcomer had caused a stir. A man who showed up out of the blue and asked for Captain Harden by name was an immediate subject of interest, if not downright suspicion.
Lee and Harper stopped there in front of the medical trailer, and the passersby watched as though they believed there would be some great reunion between Lee and the stranger. Inside the trailer, a nearly shapeless form of skin and bones lay crumpled like a discarded piece of paper upon one of the cots, a white bedsheet draped over him like a body in a morgue.
Lee could smell the man from outside the trailer. Most of the people managed to bathe regularly now, but they all still smelled of hard work and body odor, Lee probably being the most offending of them, since he’d been in the field for the past few days. That Lee could smell the stranger over his own stink was a feat in and of itself.
“You recognize him?” Harper asked.
Lee shook his head. “Don’t know him.”
They didn’t linger. The man was clearly passed out from exhaustion, and they could not expect to have a lucid conversation with him until he was rested.
They continued on to the Camp Ryder building.
A short series of cement steps led up to a pair of steel double doors kept closed to block out the cold air. Pushing them open, the pair was immediately inundated with the overwhelming smell of the place and the noisy clamor from inside. The building had once been a service bay for Ryder trucks, and the smell of oils and car parts was forever steeped into the concrete floors and walls. However, it was now home to several families and Marie’s kitchen. There was always a slight haze of smoke in the place, and it bore with it the heavy scents of people and cooking food.
Immediately upon entering the building, they could see a metal staircase to their right that rose up to a second level that overlooked the floor below, with a series of metal catwalks that led to a roof access point, a few utility closets, and what used to serve as a foreman’s office—a twelve-by-twenty-foot room that housed a desk, a filing cabinet, a few folding chairs, and a large corkboard with a map of North Carolina pinned to it.