by Sam Sisavath
“Truce,” Earl said.
Keo stared at him, not quite sure if this was some kind of trick—a joke at his expense, maybe—or if he was really seeing two men with the drop on him calling for…a truce?
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Earl said. “Least of all kids. I’m Earl and this is Levy. Come on out of there and let’s talk,” he said, directing that last part to Norris and the others in the basement below Keo.
Keo didn’t move. This had to be a trick. Wasn’t it?
Earl seemed to have read his face. The older man grinned. “Hey, I’m the one with the AR-15 and you’re the one stuck on some stairs, remember? I don’t have to do this. Doesn’t that count for something?”
He’s got a point.
Keo climbed up the rest of the way.
*
There were four of them: Earl and Levy, the two in the cabin; and Gavin and Bowe, who were outside with the Chevy and the Durango. Gavin was the third voice Keo had heard earlier. Earl was easily the oldest, while Gavin and Bowe were around Levy’s age. They all wore similar camo hunting clothes, but unlike most hunters he knew, they carried pouches stuffed with magazines for their AR-15s, each of the carbines showing the wear and tear of heavy past use.
“You’re lucky I decided to circle back here at the last minute,” Earl said when they were all outside the cabin. “We usually don’t stray too far from the house, but we decided to see what was down here this morning.”
“You have a house around here?” Keo said.
“About ten miles upriver.”
Earl was friendly enough, and so were the three with him. Their only relation was as co-workers at a warehouse in Corden. The three younger men worked under Earl and it was actually there, working the second shift, that they survived three nights ago.
“You know about them, I’m guessing,” Earl said. “That’s why you were in the basement.”
“The creatures,” Keo nodded.
“Uh huh. Bloodsuckers. I guess everyone knows about them now. The ones still alive, anyway.”
Norris and the girls were carrying the supplies they had taken into the cabin back out to the vehicles. Earl’s people lent a hand and they had everything loaded back up in less than ten minutes.
“Where were you guys headed?” Bowe asked. He had short brown hair and was just slightly taller than Keo at six-two, but he had much broader shoulders. Keo had no trouble envisioning the kid running over people during a high school football game. Bowe also looked about five years removed from his high school graduation.
“Fort Damper,” Norris said. “We were headed down there when we ran into some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Earl asked.
Norris told them about the men in assault vests and the ambush.
“Shit,” Earl said. “Levy swore he heard some shooting when we were searching homes up the road yesterday. Around noon?”
“Sounds about right,” Keo said.
Levy smiled triumphantly. “I told you guys, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You always hear shooting,” Bowe said. “When do you not hear shooting?”
“It’s true,” Gavin grinned. He had short red hair and barely came up to Bowe’s chin, though he filled out his camo with girth what he lacked in height. “Every single time we’re out here.”
“Yeah, but I was right this time, wasn’t I?” Levy said, and actually reddened a bit.
“And you didn’t know who they were?” Earl asked.
Keo shook his head. “They just opened up on us.”
“Damn.”
“Black assault vests?” Bowe said. “Like what, commandos?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Keo said. “You’ve never run across people like that since all of this happened?”
“Not yet,” Earl said. “Hopefully, we never will. We’ve mostly kept to ourselves down here. Yesterday was the farthest we ever went up toward the interstate. If we need something specific, we just drive to Corden.”
“Corden’s close?” Gillian asked.
Keo noticed that the men, including Earl, stood a little bit straighter when Gillian walked over to them. He found that oddly amusing and comforting at the same time. He was worried about how the four men would react around Gillian and Rachel. Besides food and shelter, women were likely the third most valuable commodity these days. For some, they might be the number one.
Seeing Earl and the other three’s reaction to Gillian, though, put Keo’s mind slightly at ease. Not entirely, but he was less concerned than he had been just a few minutes ago.
“Pretty close,” Earl said. “Why?”
“We were hoping to find some more survivors there,” Gillian said. “Maybe even pick up supplies along the way.”
“It’s about an hour’s drive from here. You don’t need to go back to the interstate if you know the right roads to take.”
“Wait a minute; you guys said you were headed down to Damper?” Bowe said.
“Yeah,” Norris said. “If someone has answers about what’s happening out here, it’d be the military. Damper would have had contact with the government in the early going, I’d imagine.”
“You don’t wanna be going down there,” Levy said.
“Why not?” Rachel asked, walking over to them. “Isn’t it safe?”
“Fort Damper’s gone, ma’am,” Bowe said, looking almost apologetic. “Some fool burned it down to the ground the night all of this happened.”
*
They had been following Earl’s mud-caked black Bronco for the last thirty minutes when it finally turned off Highway 146 and onto a patch of dirt road marked by an old rusted sign that didn’t have letters anymore. They drove slowly for a few more minutes, heading deeper into the woods.
The Bronco finally slowed down before turning into an open clearing. Keo followed in the Chevy, Norris bringing the Durango behind him. It was hard to miss the house after he made the turn.
The clearing was a wide-open yard carved out of the surrounding woods. Trees had been felled recently to make extra space, and the ground was brown and flat and easy on the Chevy’s tires. The house was red and black brick and mortar, a large one-story building around 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. Antennas jutted out of the roof, and there were two ATVs parked haphazardly in the yard along with three trucks. The two front windows had burglar bars over them, and the front door was protected by a heavy security gate.
It looked like the kind of country home someone who liked hunting would build from the ground up and retire to in his old age. So what were four guys who worked at the same warehouse doing here?
Keo parked next to one of the trucks while Norris maneuvered the Durango behind him. Earl, who was driving the Bronco, pulled up next to them.
Earl climbed out and walked over to them. “This is it. The house.”
“You built this place yourself?” Keo asked.
“It was just me for the first five years,” Earl nodded. “The boys lent a hand in the last two, so it went much faster after that. I gave them a place to stay in return for the free weekend labor.”
“Any objections to throwing our supplies in with yours?”
“Heck no.” He walked over to the Chevy and peered in at the boxes of food, cases of bottled water and soda, and everything they had liberated from the gas station. “You guys really stocked up on the junk food, huh?” Then he gave them an amused look. “You know that a lot of your boxes have holes in them?”
“Yeah, we noticed,” Keo said. “Got some boxes of jerky in there somewhere.”
“One question,” Gillian said as she came around the Chevy’s hood.
“Shoot, ma’am,” Earl said.
“Is that a generator in the background?”
“Good ear.”
“Does that mean…?”
“Working plumbing? Yes, indeed.”
“Oh, thank God,” Gillian said, smiling brightly at him.
Earl laughed. “We’ll get you guys settled in, s
hare with you what we have. It’ll beat sleeping on a dirt basement floor, I can guarantee you that much.”
“I think just about anything will beat sleeping on a dirt floor,” Keo said.
“You coming, Earl?” Bowe called from the other side of the Bronco. He and Gavin looked as if they were already preparing to leave again.
“In a sec,” Earl said. He turned back to them. “Bowe thought he saw some deer tracks not far from here. We’re gonna go see where it leads. Deer population’s really thinned out; we hardly saw any the last few days.”
Levy walked over. “I can show them the house, Earl. I got a feeling Bowe saw rabbit tracks and thought they were deer.”
“Hey, screw you,” Bowe said. “They were definitely deer.”
“Whatever,” Levy said.
Gavin chuckled. “Levy hears gunshots all the time, and Bowe thinks he sees deer tracks all the time.”
“Hey, they were definitely deer!” Bowe shouted.
*
The door into the house was a foot wider than the standard three feet, which made rolling Lotte in easy. There was also a small ramp, though Keo couldn’t imagine what Earl needed that for. They didn’t have to worry about tracking dirt inside because there was already plenty on the wooden floorboards. Keo could tell it wasn’t real wood from the glossy shine, but the construction was solid and it didn’t creak under their shoes, which probably meant concrete underneath.
Levy led them inside, then showed the girls where the bathroom was. Gillian and Rachel hurried off with Christine and Lotte, as if the water might run out if they didn’t get to it fast enough. Keo and Norris exchanged a brief chuckle.
“Keo,” Levy said, walking back to them, “that’s a weird name.”
“Tom was taken,” Keo said.
“Huh?”
Keo smiled. “It’s a joke.”
“Oh, gotcha,” he said, though Keo couldn’t tell if he really did “get” it. Levy looked as if he got confused easily.
Now that he was inside the house, Keo noticed the thick slabs of wood fastened over the two front windows. They were held in place by makeshift riggings that could be easily manipulated by pulling on welded link chains to lower the pieces completely over the openings. Both inch-thick blocks of wood had small, rectangular peepholes with a sliding metal covering, and simple latches at the bottom to hold them in place once they were brought down into position. The set-up wasn’t anything fancy, but then, it probably didn’t have to be to keep the creatures out.
The front door, too, had been worked on. Keo had thought it looked heavy when Levy was opening it earlier, and now he knew why. It was solid oak, but they had attached a second layer of lumber to it, effectively doubling the door’s strength. They had also drilled two sets of brackets on either sides of the doorframe, with the two pieces of 8 foot 2x4 that he guessed would be dropped across the door to barricade it leaning against the wall nearby.
“When did you guys reinforce the door and windows?” Keo asked.
“Earl’s idea,” Levy said. “The four of us put them together the same day we got here, using supplies Earl was going to build a garage with. The burglar bars are strong enough to keep those bloodsuckers out, but we didn’t want to take any chances.”
“And they work?”
“We’re still here, aren’t we?”
“Good enough for me,” Norris said.
The living room was as big as any house Keo had been in. There was a fireplace in the back with two comfortable looking sofas in front of it, along with an armchair in a corner and a couple of stools next to an island counter in the kitchen. The place clearly lacked a woman’s touch, which was something he noticed almost right away.
“Earl bought this place and built the house for his wife,” Levy said. “But then they split up and he sort of ignored it for a long time. Then one day he invites us out here for some hunting. That was two years ago, and I guess Gavin, Bowe, and me decided to help him finish the place. Plus, it was a good excuse to come hunting and drinking every weekend. When everything went down, we figured this was probably the safest place. You saw what happened in the cities?”
Keo nodded. “A smaller version of it, yeah.”
“We were working at the warehouse when it went down. We got real lucky.”
“How’s that?” Norris asked.
“It was a small warehouse and we managed to lock it down in time. Man, those things kept trying to get in all night. It was crazy.”
Keo looked around the room before stopping at a gun rack on the wall next to the fireplace. There were a couple of hunting rifles and a 12-gauge shotgun, and open boxes of ammo on top of a shelf. “Is this everything you guys have?”
“That?” Levy said, following his gaze. “That’s nothing. Wait till you see the armory.”
*
The house had two back hallways, and Levy led them to the one with the basement. He opened the door and walked down wooden steps, a small squiggly bulb on the wall partially lighting their way. The basement had a solid concrete floor and walls, and a humming noise punctured the silence as a large LED panel powered on in the center of the room.
The basement, like the house above it, was built for space. It was one giant room with small 1x1 foot ventilation grills strategically placed along the top of the walls. Half of it was already filled up with stacks of moving crates, and one entire wall was covered with propane tanks of various sizes and brands—the hundred-pounders in the back and the smaller twenty-pounders up front. There had to be close to fifty in all.
“Where’d you get all the propane tanks?” Norris asked.
“We brought what we could fit into our vehicles from Corden the first morning,” Levy said. “We’ve been looting the rest from businesses between here and the city since.”
“What about the houses?” Keo asked.
“We were saving those up for later,” Levy said. “They’re in there, you know. The bloodsuckers. Hiding in the backs of those houses.”
Keo nodded. “We noticed.”
Levy headed to the far end, where Keo almost stopped in his tracks at the sight of the weapons piled on top of a shelf. There were boxes of ammo on the floor, so many that someone had gotten creative and stacked them into one big pyramid.
“Damn, son,” Norris said. “The ATF know you have this arsenal down here?”
Levy chuckled. “We grabbed everything we could find, along with the propane, before we hightailed it out of Corden.”
Keo picked up one of a dozen or so M4 carbines on the shelf. The M4 was a shorter version of the M16 and was just a shade over a pound lighter. He liked the M4. It was a good fighting weapon.
“Got those from a pawnshop,” Levy said. He pulled another weapon from a shelf and Keo smiled at the sight of the Heckler & Koch MP5SD. “Found this little ditty at the same place. The only one, unfortunately.”
“Daebak,” Keo said.
“Huh?” Levy said.
“Nothing. May I?”
Keo put down the M4 and took the submachine gun. He ran his fingers along the stainless steel suppressor attached at the end of the barrel. The weapon felt light, and he found out why when he pulled out the long but empty magazine. The MP5SD looked in good condition, though he could tell it had been put to use before, and often.
Norris chuckled at Keo. “Jesus, kid, it’s just a gun. Don’t drool over it.”
Keo grinned back at him. He couldn’t help himself.
“We always bought our hunting gear from the guy who ran the pawnshop, so we knew he had all these gems in the basement,” Levy said. “Figured, what the hell. It wasn’t like there was a lot of people left in Corden to take them.”
“The four of you are the only survivors?” Norris asked.
“That we know of. But it’s not like we spent a lot of time looking. We drove up and down the city for a while that first day, then decided the best course of action was to split for the house. We’ve been trying to contact other people on the radio since we g
ot here, but so far no luck. How about you guys?”
“Not counting those psychopaths at the gas station, we haven’t seen anyone since we left Bentley,” Norris said. “Even FEMA’s down.”
“Yeah, we tried FEMA, too. Nothing. Hell of a thing, huh? Power grid’s down, radio’s down. There’s just nothing out there. But we’ll keep looking. I mean, what else we gonna do, right?”
“Anyone claimed this?” Keo said, holding up the MP5SD.
“It’s yours,” Levy said. “I only play with American.” He said to Norris, “You’re welcome to the M4s. Complement that shotgun of yours.”
“You have any more of those?” Norris asked, pointing at Levy’s gun belt.
“As a matter of fact, yeah.” He sifted through another box and pulled out two tactical belts with pouches and a gun holster already attached. It was similar to the ones he and the others were wearing. “We brought extras.”
“The same pawnshop?” Keo said.
“Yup.”
Keo took the belt and picked through one of the crates loaded with handguns. He settled for a Glock G41 .45, then went hunting for magazines.
Norris decided on a G42 .380. “I had one of these back in the day.”
“Just like old times, huh?” Keo said.
“Not quite.”
Keo found a handful of magazines and loaded the G41, then stuffed the rest into one of the pouches.
“What about you?” Keo asked Levy.
Levy tapped the AR-15 slung over his back. “We got these babies nice and broken in. Plus—” he added like a proud parent “—we converted them from burst to full-auto. So if those assholes you tangled with show up here, they’re going to eat some lead and like it, that’s for damn sure.”
CHAPTER 17
Earl came back an hour later without any deer. “False alarm,” he said.
“Are there supposed to be a lot of deer around here?” Keo asked.
“The woods are usually thick with them.” He shook his head. “It probably has something to do with what happened three nights ago. I think those things might be feeding off the deer population.”
While the women were getting dressed after their long, hot showers, Keo and Norris helped Earl move his things from his room and over to Gavin’s. The house’s four bedrooms, each one with wooden floors and the same Spartan design, were split evenly among the two hallways. Earl might have built the house initially for his wife, but apparently she had never gotten around to putting her stamp on the place.