by D. J. Molles
The young man declined, then hung his head.
LaRouche replaced the pack. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbled.
“Look,” Jackson said defensively, still not meeting LaRouche’s gaze. “We didn’t have a fucking choice.”
LaRouche shrugged. “I’m not judging you.”
Jackson breathed shakily. “They took another group of survivors a few days ago. They were a little further west of us, near Fremont. So, we thought we might be in the clear. We knew that The Followers were coming out of the east. Thought maybe they skipped over us. Maybe they wouldn’t find us. But then yesterday morning…” He looked up, tears glistening on his lower eyelids. “There was no time. I didn’t have time to do anything. I just shoved Tessa out the back of our tent and I told her to run. Didn’t even tell her I loved her. Couldn’t put a coat on her, or shoes.”
He buried his face in his hands for a moment. His shoulders shook, but when he removed his hands, his face was blank. “I just…came out with my hands up, because I didn’t want to die. They were going into everyone’s shacks. Killing them if they resisted. Dragging the cooperative ones like myself out in front of the farmhouse.” His voice took on a slow, monotonous tone, almost hypnotic, as though he spoke these memories out of a nightmare. “Took the women and children away. Tied ropes around their necks. Shot them if they tried to run, or fight. Then they made us do this weird…oath…and we had to get down on our knees. But some of the guys wouldn’t kneel…so…”
LaRouche gave the man the only compassion that he could muster: he leaned forward, touched him on the shoulder, and shook his head. “We know.”
Jackson nodded.
LaRouche looked off into the surrounding woods. “So you were with the group that we hit yesterday.”
Another nod.
“And you just came back here?”
“Yes. I ran back here, but I…I was too afraid to go in. So I just sat in the woods and stayed quiet. Hoped that Tessa would show up.” He rubbed his forehead. “When I saw her get out of ya’ll’s truck, I didn’t know what to think. But Father Jim seemed so kind to her…and I couldn’t just let her go again. So I came out of the woods.” He glanced at LaRouche. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do. And I didn’t know there were infected that close to me in the woods.”
LaRouche sighed, but couldn’t think of much else to say, except, “Well…”
“So, aren’t you guys going to help?”
LaRouche tongued the tobacco in his cheek. “Help with what, Jackson?”
“Help us with The Followers.”
LaRouche made a humorless chuckling sound. “Jackson, let me be completely honest with you. There are many, many times more of them than there are of us. It’s simply not a situation that we have the time or resources to handle.”
“What do you mean you don’t have the time?”
LaRouche narrowed his eyes. “I mean I don’t have the fucking time. There are bigger things at play here. Much bigger things. You want my advice? You tell me another group of survivors. A group that hasn’t been knocked over by The Followers. And when we drop you off, you gather everyone you can, and every weapon and every supply that you can, and you head west as fast as you fucking can. ‘Cause there ain’t shit I can do about The Followers, and if you decide to stick around, then it’s just a matter of time before you’re nailing someone to a fucking telephone pole, or getting hung on one yourself.”
“What about my daughter?”
“Your daughter isn’t my concern,” LaRouche replied, blandly. “I already saved her once. The rest is up to you.” He looked at the other man pointedly. “You’re her father.”
Jackson looked like he had just tasted something sour. “And what if I don’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Where to find another group of survivors.”
LaRouche shrugged. “Then we leave you right here, Jackson. One way or another, you’re gonna be out of my hair.”
Jackson looked down, inspected his worn out, dirty boots. “Parker’s Place,” he muttered.
“What now?” LaRouche leaned forward.
Jackson spoke up. “Parker’s Place. It’s another farm. About thirty people there. Few miles north of here. Last I heard, they were doing okay.” Jackson met LaRouche’s gaze. “If you take us there…I would appreciate it.”
“Okay.” LaRouche sniffed. “We can do that.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so LaRouche turned away from him and stepped back towards the circle of vehicles. He didn’t have much appetite, but he knew he needed to eat something. As he stepped between the Humvee and the LMTV, Jackson’s voice stopped him.
“I, uh…” Jackson started, then paused until LaRouche turned to face him. “I heard a few of them talking. The tall, older guy. I think he was in charge.” Jackson kicked at a loose chunk of concrete in the road. “This isn’t an expansion. They’re not trying to…you know…take over the world.”
LaRouche eyed him, wondered how fucked this man’s brain had become in the last twenty-four hours. “Sure seems like that’s what they’re doing.”
Jackson shook his head. “They’re being driven west.”
“Driven?”
“Something is pushing them this way.” Jackson looked around, shrugged. “Don’t know what it is, though.”
LaRouche felt a cold certainty settle in his stomach. Bet I know what it is.
Instead, he just flicked a salute to Jackson. “Thanks.”
***
Wilson and Jim sat on the tailgate of their Humvee, sharing a packet of Chips Ahoy that Wilson had long-ago lifted from the glove box of a vehicle. They didn’t bother checking the expiration date—just sniffed it to make sure it didn’t smell offensive, and then split the pack.
Jim closed his eyes as he chewed. “What was my problem with these things again?”
Wilson shook his head. “I never had a problem with a cookie.”
Jim inspected the half-cookie pinched between his fingers. “A while ago, I would’ve declined these when you offered them. Something about trans fats, or what not. Now I don’t even remember what trans fats were, or why I cared about them.”
Wilson smiled. “Yeah. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”
“They really don’t,” Jim said wistfully, looking at the last bite with some regret.
Wilson sucked on his teeth. Glanced at the ex-priest. “Listen…I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, especially in front of a stranger.” Wilson crumpled the blue wrapper in his hands. “We shouldn’t show division when dealing with people we don’t know.”
Jim made a noncommittal noise. “It’s just…”
“I know.”
“Yeah.”
Wilson sighed.
Jim glanced around. “I really thought he was gonna do it.”
“Shoot him?”
“Didn’t you?”
Wilson’s lips quirked, but he didn’t seem to have a solid answer. “He gets a little intense.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.” Jim snorted. “If he’d’ve pulled that trigger, that man’s brains would be all over his daughter. She would have watched us murder her father after she asked for our help and we promised that we’d give it.”
“Cut the man some slack, Jim,” Wilson said. “He just got infected blood in his mouth.”
Jim looked unconvinced. “I don’t think you can contract it that way.”
“Would that make you feel any better?”
“It wouldn’t make me feel like I needed to shoot someone.”
Wilson looked his companion in the eye. “Jim. You’re my friend. And I’m asking you as a friend. Please don’t push LaRouche. The last thing he needs right now is to be worrying about looking over his shoulder at us—the people that should have his back no matter what.”
Jim looked pained. “I understand that. But I’m not just gonna allow him to murder someone in front of me.” He leaned in t
o Wilson, his voice growing harsher. “For God’s sake, he already tortured and murdered one man! It’s bad enough that I’m still following his orders when I’m doubting his mental stability, but I absolutely will not just stand by and watch him do it right in front of me!”
Wilson nodded, and began to respond, but LaRouche turned the corner of the Humvee.
The silence that suddenly fell on them was brief, but obvious and painful.
LaRouche glanced between them, seeming to know everything.
“What’s up, Sarge?” Wilson broke the silence, then cleared his throat.
LaRouche tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “Get everyone loaded.” He gave Jim a sharp look. “Time to hit the road again.”
CHAPTER 19: HAUNTED
It was an old shopping center along Highway 61. A failing economy had crippled the strip mall long before the collapse came along and wiped it out. Most of the suites in the brownstone building were empty. The ones with windows still intact had signs advertising that the leases were available. A few stubborn businesses had remained open until the bitter end. A New York-style pizza place. A liquor store. A small grocery store.
Harper directed Julia to pull in. They were getting close to the section of I-85 that ran between Burlington and Greensboro, and he didn’t want to stop. If any place was going to be bad, it was going to be the interstate between those two cities, and he wanted to hit it with a running start and not stop until sundown.
They rumbled into the parking lot, jostling over the remnants of a speed bump, the black and yellow-painted stripes barely visible anymore. The convoy rolled in behind them, and Julia brought their Humvee in a slow, wide turn, around the empty parking lot, and finally stopped, facing an exit.
Now the dark interiors of the suites were on Julia’s side, and she and Harper gazed out the driver’s side window at them, no one daring to open their doors or even take the vehicle out of gear before they gave it a long minute to see if the racket of the incoming vehicles had stirred anything that might be lurking in the shadows.
In the turret, Gray shifted his position. The hinges of the M2 creaked a bit. They were in need of some grease.
After a while, Julia’s shoulders relaxed a bit. She turned to Harper. “Clear?”
Harper nodded once, then grabbed the radio set. “Takin’ twenty minutes for food and fuel,” he said into the mic, then set it back on the cradle. He glanced at Julia, then pointed to the little strip of shops. “You gonna help me clear these things?”
Julia sighed, pushed her door open. “Yeah, why not.”
Gray grumbled wordlessly as he extracted himself from the turret. When he was in the cab of the truck and working his way towards a door, he said, “Holler if you need me. I gotta take a piss.”
Harper stepped out, slinging into his rifle and adjusting the collar of his jacket so it covered his neck. He sniffed the air, detected only the smell of human civilization long abandoned—a sort of non-smell, like frozen concrete. An absence of exhaust fumes, the smell of restaurants, and smoke from factories. But also the absence of anything natural, like trees or dirt. Just a plain, dead, grittiness in the air.
“Doesn’t feel as cold,” Julia remarked as she started towards the shopping center.
Behind them, doors opened and closed, and conversation bubbled.
“Yeah,” Harper nodded. “Doesn’t feel too bad.”
Julia held her pace for a moment, allowing Harper to step in line with her. She looked up at the first business that Harper seemed to be guiding towards—the pizza place. “Think we’ll find anything?”
Harper let his hand fall to the grip of his rifle. “Well…we can always hope.”
The pizza place had three sections of windows. Two of them were shattered into a sea of dirty blue diamonds that crunched under foot as Julia and Harper approached. In the last window hung an unlit OPEN sign, and a graphic of Italy, in green, white and red.
Harper stopped in the doorway and peered in. The shattered glass littered an industrial rug just inside the door. Chairs and tables had been overturned. Mounted high in a corner, an ancient television sat blank on a frame. Black and white pictures of New York in the ‘30s and ‘40s hung askew on the walls.
To the left, a counter blocked the dining area from the kitchen. Beyond it, the stainless steel of the commercial appliances glimmered darkly in the shadows. The counter stopped before it touched the wall, leaving an open section for people to walk. Sticking out of this, Harper could see a single leg, on its foot a black tennis shoe. The way the pants draped, Harper could see that there wasn’t much left to the leg. Time and rot had withered it away, so the pants seemed to be clothing a stick figure.
Harper wrinkled his nose, but the odor of decay was faint. The body had been there for quite a while. He stepped through the shattered glass door, dodging a little bell that hung from the door frame, the copper turned pitted and green from exposure. The pebbles of glass crunched mutely under their feet, the soggy rug squishing. Julia chose to go through one of the windows that no longer existed, stepped lightly around a broken table and a few shotgun shells that littered the floor.
Harper looked at the shells, then at the wall behind them, where little black holes stood out. Then he looked at the counter, where the body lay hidden, and could see the wadding from the spent shotgun shells, and the clusters of holes where the lead shot had ripped into the counter.
Harper rounded the corner, then stared down at the remains of what appeared to be a middle-aged man, though it was difficult to tell at this level of desiccation. He lay flat on his back, face shriveled and eaten away. He wore a t-shirt bearing the name of the pizza place, and a big, ragged wound in the upper right portion of the chest, with the shotgun wadding still stuck in the dried, grizzled meat.
The dead man held a small, black pistol in his right hand.
A single, one-dollar bill fluttered in the space between his neck and his upheld right arm.
Harper glanced to the left, saw that the cash register was open and empty.
“Geez,” Julia mumbled as she came within sight of the body.
“Fucker got robbed,” Harper said wistfully. “Must’ve been during the collapse. They never even picked up the body.”
“Pretty shitty. Get killed over a pizza place that’d be out of business in a day or two, over money that isn’t worth anything.” Julia clucked her tongue. “Amazing, amazing, stupid people.”
Harper knelt down, then furrowed his brow and looked up at his companion.
Julia stared neutrally down at the body, then realized Harper was looking at her. “What?”
Harper shook his head. “I liked you more when you were less gloomy.”
Julia sniffed. “Yeah…well…”
Harper waved it off. “I’m just fuckin’ with you,” he said, but knew that a part of him wasn’t. A part of him missed the Julia that had first joined the team, before all the bodies started piling up. When she was a little kinder, a little softer. Still stubborn as a mule—that was just Julia—but a bit more pleasant to be around. Just slightly different from the rest of them. Like she was one or two steps removed from the cruelty that had become their lives.
Nowadays, though…nowadays her smile was rare, and her thoughts were dark and cold.
Just like the rest of them.
Harper grumbled under his breath, a nonsensical sound of dissatisfaction. Then he leaned forward and patted the pockets of the corpse, feeling for anything that might be of value. He felt something in the right pants pocket, reached in gingerly, trying to avoid touching the nearly-mummified flesh through the cloth. He pinched the object between two fingers and slipped it out.
A little white square, with a pair of ear buds trailing after it.
Harper held it in his hand for a long moment, smiled down at it.
“Not what you thought it would be?” Julia asked.
Harper shook his head once. “Nope.” He held the device up. “Now, what kind of music you think the purvey
or of this fine establishment listened to?”
Julia put a hand on the counter, tilted her head as though to get a better perspective of the dead body. “Tough call. Still work?”
Harper looked the small square over, found a little silver switch and flipped it. A small green light came on. “Well, what do you know? Shit’s still got a charge.”
He took the two buds, set them in his ears, and pressed play. The ear buds popped. Recorded silence hissed at him. He cringed, his eyes squinting and looking up and to the left as he anticipated an assault of something horrid to come banging through the tiny speakers that sat against his ear canal.
What he heard instead was the thrum of a classical stringed instrument—a cello, he thought. Once upon a time he had considered it to be one of the most beautiful sounding instruments in the world, and for a moment it seemed like the music had been left there just for him. The notes resonated in his chest, and he loved them and hated them all at once, and for the same reason. For daring to barge into his drab, fearful life and reminding him of wonderful things that he preferred were left forgotten. This dichotomy of appreciation and resentment became a physical pain in his chest and it forced him, unwillingly, to think of Annette.
Annette when they were both young on the bench seat of his 1972 Chevy shortbed, parked on the lookout. The tops of the trees green with full crowns of leaves, and beyond those you could see nothing of the small town that hid amongst them, save for the white steeples of two churches that rose above the treetops, one on each side of the town. Looking out over the hill, he could see the rain coming towards them, a sheet of it, like a bank of fog rolling towards them, and it swallowed one church steeple, and then the other.
The notes rose and fell.
Rose and fell.
And abruptly the memory became an image of Annette when she was older. Worn down. Dirty. Bedraggled. Trying to appear brave for him as she clutched a bag containing everything she owned in the world and was shuffled through a FEMA camp by National Guard soldiers with worried looks on their faces. Then there were bright searchlights and the downdrafts of helicopters all taking off at once, and the screeches of the infected, and Annette running in one direction while the panicked crowd pushed him in the other. He reached out for her, screamed, tried to kick and thrash through the wall of people bearing him away, but she didn’t hear him and she disappeared into a crowd, looking scared and lost, and that was his last memory of Annette.