by D. J. Molles
Lee rubbed his hands together for warmth. "Yes, I'm thinking clearly. The guy's been banging and yelling at our gate for the last five minutes. If we refuse, he's going to keep freaking out at our gate and draw infected in and we'll have to fight them anyway. At least this way, we can keep the guy quiet and maybe save his family."
Harper made a leery face. "I dunno..."
"Me neither. But it’s happening." Lee opened the driver's door and waved Harper in like a chauffeur.
Harper growled but complied.
CHAPTER 7: STRANGERS
As the Humvee rumbled to life, Julia, LaRouche and Father Jim all came jogging up, rifles in hand. Lee pointed to the bearded man in the rags and waved him over. To save time and arguments, Lee wanted the man standing there when he told the group what they were doing.
Jim stared, perplexed. “Hey…is that the guy…?"
Lee nodded towards the bearded man. "This guy’s wife and two little kids are stuck in the back of a truck about a mile from here. Pack of infected around them. We're going to go bring them back."
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
Julia broke it. "Is he coming with us?"
Lee nodded. "He's gotta point out where he's talking about." Lee turned and faced the stranger with a hard look. "And I swear to God, if this turns out to be anything but what you say it is, I will put a bullet in your brain. You understand me?"
The man held up his hands, but looked angry. "Jesus! Fuck! Let's go! I swear to God, it's not like that!"
Julia looked pissed. "Alright. Get in the damn truck. Let's go."
The tired crew scrambled aboard the vehicle, the bearded man sitting in Father Jim's normal spot, with Jim crammed in the cargo area and Julia regarding the filthy, stinking man that took his place with a scowl and a curled nose. The man didn't seem to notice. He was on the edge of his seat, poking his head between Harper and Lee and staring anxiously out the windshield.
The Humvee spewed gravel as it lurched out of Camp Ryder and into the darkness. They kept the headlights off because the moon gave enough illumination to see by, and all their eyes were adjusted to the dark.
"Take it out to Highway 27 and make a right." Lee turned partially to face the man. "What's your name, stranger?"
"What?" The man looked at Lee as though he had spoken a foreign language. It took him a moment to understand the question. "Oh. Eddie…Ramirez."
"Where are you from?"
"From Winston." The man's voice grew heavy. "We were headed to the coast. Heard things weren't as bad there."
"Things are bad everywhere," Harper griped.
"What did you do for a living?" Lee asked.
"Diesel mechanic."
Lee and Harper exchanged a quick glance. Any type of mechanic could have proven themselves incredibly useful, but a diesel mechanic in particular seemed to be a rare stroke of good luck. Between the tractor that trailed their tanker of diesel fuel, the diesel generators that kept the hospital running in Smithfield, and the Humvees, a diesel mechanic was only rivaled by a doctor in terms of immediate value.
The rescue mission had just quickly gone from an act of kindness to an absolute imperative: if they failed to rescue this man's family, it was doubtful that he would help them with anything.
Everyone in the Humvee realized this without Lee having to spell it out.
They all hunkered down a little more seriously over their rifles.
They reached Highway 27 and Eddie leaned forward even further and thrust his hand out. "Turn here! Turn right! It's less than a mile from this turn!"
As Harper made the turn, Lee twisted and looked at his crew behind him. "Everyone, check your weapons. Make sure you're locked at loaded. We're gonna do this fast. Take out the threat, pull Eddie's wife and kids out of the truck, and then we're fucking gone, okay? Remember that they're inside the truck, so watch your backdrop. Those bullets will punch straight through that sheet metal."
Everyone nodded silently.
Eddie looked terrified.
"Hey," Lee grabbed the man by the shoulder. "Don't fucking move until I say so. You got that? Do not. Get out. Of the car."
"Yeah. Don't get out."
"That's it right there," Harper slowed the Humvee.
Up ahead, the bulk of an overturned tractor trailer and a pileup of cars around it gleamed like bleached bones in the moonlight. Some sort of mechanical elephant graveyard.
Harper came to a stop in the road. "I don't see any infected."
"Keep an eye out," Lee called. "360-degrees."
Eddie began jabbing his finger in the air. "They're right there! They're right there!"
Lee thought about smacking him, but restrained himself. "Calm down. Where are the infected?"
"I don't know!" Eddie was breathing rapidly. "You gotta go get my family!"
Lee leaned forward in his seat. The tractor trailer was lying parallel to the roadway, the dark windshield staring straight up the asphalt at Lee, the tires oriented towards the shoulder so that they were looking at the top of the rig. It was there, just beyond the front bumper that Lee could see something odd.
He pointed. "Hey, Harper...you see that?"
Harper squinted his eyes. "Yeah. Steam."
"Breath," Lee said quietly.
Just behind the cab, Lee and Harper could see the faint rising clouds of steam coming from something huffing its hot lungfuls into the frosty night air. They billowed out from behind the bumper with force and then drifted lazily up into the air where they dissipated into blackness.
"We should..." Lee began, but was interrupted by the sound of the door behind him opening.
"Hey!" Julia shouted.
Lee turned in his seat to find that Eddie was no longer behind him, but had bailed from the vehicle and was now running for the back end of the trailer. Almost in the same instant that Lee comprehended what had happened, a wiry shape lurched from around the tractor trailer, scrambling on all fours, then coming upright into a full sprint.
"Shit!" was all Lee could get out. He threw open his door and stepped out, not feeling the pain in his ankle, though he could feel the wobbling weakness in it. He ran forward about three steps and then planted his feet wide and pulled the rifle snug into his shoulder. As he sighted through the Aimpoint scope, he realized there was nothing there. He'd either forgot to turn the damn thing on, or the batteries had finally crapped out.
Lee lowered the rifle for the slimmest of seconds, and gained himself the whole panorama of what was happening, fighting against tunnel vision.
Far off to the left, a few more ghostly shapes had appeared out of nowhere. About thirty yards ahead of him, the first infected was heading straight for Eddie, who was trying desperately to juke right. The infected was quick, and if Lee waited too long, he would be on top of Eddie, and Lee would not be able to take the shot without his sights.
He snapped the rifle up and fired off three rounds. He couldn't tell if they connected, but the infected hesitated in its run and turned its head toward Lee for a split second, and Lee pulled the trigger again. He didn't count the rounds—it could have been two, it could have been ten. He just fired until he saw the infected jerk back, and then crumple to the ground where it began twitching and pawing at the concrete.
"Eddie!" Lee yelled, but the man was off and running again.
Behind him, the fifty-cal thundered into action, each shot illuminating the night around them like a lightning flash. The long burst of automatic fire ripped chunks of concrete into the air and then tracked up the shoulder of the road to the other three or four shapes that Lee had seen.
Lee sprinted towards Eddie, but looked to his left and watched the huge bullets find two of the four infected. Entire limbs and great pieces of anatomy flew off of them, like they were delicate and poorly-assembled mannequins.
Eddie reached the back end of the trailer and Lee watched him stutter-step as though he couldn't decide which direction to go from there. Then he began to backpedal quickly.
>
Swearing, Lee reached down and engaged the backup iron sights on his rifle.
"Get back!" Lee yelled and squared himself toward the trailer.
Eddie kept backing away, but he wouldn't turn and run.
From around the corner came two more figures. Lee began firing immediately. He could hardly see the iron sights in the darkness, but he approximated his aim and kept pulling that trigger. One of them went down, but the other was going for Eddie and was in too close for Lee to take the shot. Eddie tried to rear back and kick the thing in the chest as it closed in, but it deftly swatted his leg out of the way and leaped onto the man.
The two figures tumbled to the ground. At first, the infected was on top, biting viciously at Eddie, but only catching great mouthfuls of dirty clothing. It fixated upon a thick lapel and began rending at it, shaking its head back and forth with the piece of cloth in its teeth and snarling like a dog. Eddie clamped both hands around the thing's throat and pushed it away from him with a cry of terror. Then he rolled the thing and managed to gain the top position.
Underneath him now, the creature scrambled and gnashed its teeth, strangely silent as Eddie bore all his weight down on the thing's throat so that it couldn't make a sound.
"Shoot it!" he screamed at Lee.
Lee extended his rifle out, holding it with one hand as though it were a giant pistol and pushed the muzzle against the infected's eye. Both men cringed and turned their faces away. The head seemed to explode as the gasses from the barrel entered through the ocular cavity and exited out the nose and ears. One spastic hand flailed out, sightless and aimless, and slapped against Eddie's face a few times before it lay still.
Lee brought the muzzle of his rifle up and scanned for other threats, the blood steaming off the hot barrel.
Julia and Harper ran up to them.
"What the fuck was that, asshole?" Julia yelled at Eddie.
"Is that all of them?" Harper looked around.
Without giving heed to either of them, Eddie scrambled up from the dead body he was seated on and stumbled like he was drunk towards the trailer once more. "It's okay…they’re in there…they’re in there…"
Lee jogged after him. "Watch my back," he called over his shoulder.
Motherfucker! Lee wanted to break this guy's ankles so he couldn't run away anymore. In the two seconds it took to reach the back of the trailer, Lee thought of a dozen scathing remarks he wanted to give the mechanic.
But when Lee reached him, the man was frantically opening the locks and levers that held the trailer doors closed, and Lee knew that whatever he said now would be wasted breathe. This man's brain was on a single track, and it was the welfare of his family. For that, Lee could not fault him, though it did nothing to ease his anger, and he still wanted to break his ankles.
Eddie flung the door open and pulled two squirming bundles of clothing and blankets out, followed by a woman in similar dress who stared at him with something that was a mixture of rage and relief. Tears glistened at the bottom of her eyes and her mouth worked as though she were trying to find the right words.
"You left us!" she cried, and smacked him hard across the face. "Don't you ever fucking do that again!" She hit him again and again and finally seemed to dissolve as he grabbed a hold of her and pulled her in tight so she couldn't move. Her strained voice was muffled into the shoulder of his coat. "Don't you ever! Don't you ever!"
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Beneath the two adults, the kids, a girl and a boy, wailed and clung desperately to each other and their mother.
Lee grit his teeth and felt the rising of something in the back of his throat, but it wasn't from disgust. It was that clenched, acidic feeling of sympathy, and it threatened to eat away at the hard edge Lee had honed over the last few months, like a fine blade drawn ceaselessly across a strop. He looked away.
Speaking into the darkness, Lee said, "Alright, come on. You guys can do this in the Humvee. We gotta move."
With Julia, Harper, and Lee surrounding them like the points of a triangle, the family of four quieted down and began moving towards the Humvee.
"Thank God," the woman kept whispering. "Thank God."
***
Harper drove fast for Camp Ryder. In the back, everyone bumped around and jostled as he dodged or simply ran over debris in the road. Most of it was tree branches from the past storm season that had ripped through the Carolinas. Some of it was debris from traffic accidents, and some of it was abandoned cars that forced Harper to take the shoulder.
While they drove, Julia knelt in the back cargo area, crammed in next to Jim and LaRouche and dealt with the family of four that now took up the two backseats and the floor space where LaRouche would normally stand and man the gun.
Lee was turned in his seat and he watched her work quickly and calmly. She looked natural in this element. Crouched in the back of the Humvee, tending to patients. She pulled the dirty clothes off the whimpering children, calming them with a smile and a friendly question while she checked arms and legs for bite marks. The girl's name was Elise and the boy's name was Anton. Julia shined her little penlight in their eyes and looked into their mouths. She asked them their age, and if they knew how to sing certain songs, and gradually they stopped crying.
As she worked, Lee fiddled with the sight on his rifle and discovered that it had been turned on, but that the batteries had finally run out. He thought that he had scavenged some double-A batteries, but he would have to check. Batteries of any kind tended to be a luxury to find nowadays. They were one of those staple items that disappeared quickly along with canned food, bottled water, and ammunition.
He felt someone touch his arm and looked back to find Eddie looking at him and rubbing his red nose with the sleeve of his jacket, leaving glistening snot trails behind. "Thank you. I...I don't even know who you people are. Thank you."
Lee nodded and extended his hand. "Captain Harden."
Eddie shook his hand and looked bewildered. "Where...I mean...how did you get all this stuff? Are you with the military?"
"Yes and no." Lee decided to skip the lengthy explanations. Eddie would work that out on his own. "We're part of a larger group. You mentioned you were going east."
Eddie nodded. "Yeah. We heard it wasn't as bad out by the coast."
"Hm."
"Where'd you hear that from?" Harper looked back momentarily.
"Just..." Eddie shrugged. "From other people."
"Look," Lee pulled his nearly empty magazine out and replaced it with a fresh one. "I'm not trying to deter you from chasing your dreams. I'm just telling you how I believe it is. I haven't heard anything to suggest that things are any better in other regions.”
“In fact,” Harper said, “We’ve heard the opposite. According to people coming out of the coastal region, there’s a group called The Followers…”
Julia threw him a sharp look. “Don’t fill their heads with that crap, Harper.” Looking back to the family, she shook her head. “It’s nothing but unsubstantiated rumors. Boogeyman stories.”
Lee cleared his throat and continued. “Regardless, if you're determined to continue looking out east, we won't hold you back. I’d like for you and your family to at least stay a few days in the camp before you head out." Lee looked at him. "I was also hoping you might look at some things for us. We have several diesel machines. It'd be great if you could make sure they're in good working order before you go. I don't know when I'm gonna come across another diesel mechanic."
Eddie nodded emphatically. "Right. Yes. Of course."
Julia interjected. "Excuse me. I need to check you too, sir."
Eddie showed her his arms. "I haven't been bitten. I swear."
Julia smiled, but Lee could see it was strained. "We just have to check. Look straight ahead please." She flashed the light in both eyes, watching the pupil dilation. "Open your mouth and say 'Ah'."
He complied. Julia shot Lee a little look, but nodded that he was good to go.
"
You say you guys came from the Winston-Salem area?" Lee started again.
"Yeah."
"How are things there?"
"Bad. Winston-Salem and Greensboro...man, there's just not much left."
"How about the infected? Are the groups large?"
"It's the surrounding countryside. Man, those little groups of 'em, the wolf packs, they're all over the place outside the city. Inside the city, its mostly regular people that do the most damage. More like gangs. They're not really friendly towards anyone." Eddie reached across and took his wife's hand. "They pretty much looted and burned our neighborhood to the ground. We barely made it out."
"How long have you been on the road?"
"About two weeks now." Eddie looked at his two kids. "It's been slow going with the little ones."
"I'm surprised you made it this far," Lee said, frankly.
"Me too."
Harper pulled the Humvee up to the front gate of Camp Ryder and the sentry took a moment to shine his flashlight inside the windshield and see who it was. Harper squinted against the light and waved his hand. The sentry pulled the gate open and they drove through, back in the same spot they had left from. A few people hung around the main drag, curious about the goings on, and a few more shacks glowed as people lit their lanterns and flashlights and poked their heads out to see what the hubbub was about.
Harper made a rude noise and flung his door open. "I'm going back to bed."
LaRouche opened up the back hatch and climbed out, his rifle clattering across the tailgate. "Yeah, Cap. If you don't have anything for me, I'll be catching some Zs."
Lee nodded as he got out of the car. "Yes. Thank you. You guys can all go grab some sleep. We'll talk in the morning."
Beside the Humvee, Eddie and his family huddled in a tight unit.
Julia nodded towards them. "I'll try to get them a little food and some water. Probably have to sleep in the medical trailer tonight. I don't know if we have room for them anywhere else."
Lee nodded. He could feel his body crashing underneath him. He felt worse now than he did when he'd turned in for the night. But he didn't want to leave Julia by herself to take care of the newcomers. "Yeah. I'll grab the water and food if you want to get them settled into some bunks."