Refugees - 03

by D. J. Molles

  A nervous laughter ran through the group.

  “Last issue to address,” Lee said, folding his arms across his chest. “I know it’s short notice, but is anyone here unable to leave Camp Ryder by tomorrow?”

  Silence fell over the room. Glances were exchanged, shoulders were shrugged. Some people just bowed their heads slightly.

  Lee nodded. “If no one objects, then plan to leave late tomorrow morning.”

  The group seemed to be in consensus. All heads nodded the affirmative.

  “Does anyone have any questions?”

  For a moment Lee thought he might escape without questions, but Lucky poked his carrot top out of the crowd and raised his hand. “Yeah, I got a question.”

  Lee pointed to him. “Go ahead.”

  Lucky looked around briefly. He was part of Wilson’s team, and therefore in LaRouche’s group. “Since we’re headed east I figured we should probably know what to do if we come across The Followers.”

  There was an audible groan from several members of the group. From the other side of the room, Nate rolled his eyes and lifted his hands. “It’s just an urban legend, man. Just people spreading scary stories. I doubt there’s a group of people out there simultaneously cannibalizing and Bible-thumping.”

  “You don’t know that,” Lucky said defensively. “Have you been east? Has anyone in this room been out that way in the last few months?”

  “I’m with Lucky,” Wilson said quietly, inspecting the bandaged stumps of his now three-fingered right hand. “It’s possible that The Followers are a complete fabrication. It’s also possible that everything we’ve heard is true. I think a more likely scenario is that the truth lies somewhere in between, as with most other things like this.” He looked up at Lee. “I think we should have a plan to deal with them, if we come across them…even if it is a big ‘if’.”

  Whether out of pity for the man that had just lost his fingers, or in deference to the fact that he was probably right, no one continued the argument. Instead, all eyes shifted to Lee, looking for his answer to the problem of The Followers.

  “Because we don’t know truth from fiction at this point in time, we can’t really make a plan to deal with them,” Lee said thoughtfully. “However, I would simply say to use common sense. If you encounter a group—any group—that is hostile, you blow them the fuck up. But if you think you can get them to cooperate, then go that route. If The Followers do exist, and they are expanding out from the east coast, they might end up being a valuable ally.” He smirked. “And if they don’t want to be an ally, then they’ll make a great barrier between us and the infected.”

  LaRouche nodded. “I think we can handle that.”

  A few more people asked a few more questions. Some of them Lee deferred to Harper and LaRouche. When the general questions became more specific, Lee dismissed the group so that they could each meet with and speak to their respective leaders and get some answers.

  As the group trickled out of the room, only Lee and Bus remained.

  The big man leaned on his desk and took a long look at Lee. “What happened in there?”

  “With Captain Tomlin?”

  A nod.

  Lee fiddled with the piece of paper still in his hands and considered the question. “No disrespect to you Bus, but I think it would be best if I kept this between me and him.”

  Bus made a fair enough face.

  “I need more time to speak with him. When I get everything sorted out, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “What about Professor White and the rifles?”

  “Once we see Harper and LaRouche off tomorrow, we’ll worry about getting those rifles to him.”

  A knock at the door interrupted them.

  Lee turned to find Eddie Ramirez standing, half inside the room. He looked rapidly back and forth between Lee and Bus.

  “Help you?” Bus asked.

  “Yes.” Eddie’s tone was clipped. “You told me that I would be heading east with the others. Is that still true?”

  “Actually,” Lee faced the door. “I didn’t get you in on the briefing because I need you here for a little while longer. I’ve got some business to take care of, but I’m going to catch up to LaRouche’s group afterward and head east. I wanted you to stick around because there’s a few vehicles out by the Sanford airport that I want you to have a look at and see if we can’t get running again.”

  Eddie’s face became neutral. “Oh.”

  Lee peered at him. “Is that okay? I’m hoping it will only take a couple of days.”

  Eddie seemed to be considering it. “Yes,” he said finally. “That should be fine. What’s a few more days?”

  Lee nodded. “I appreciate it. I’ll get up with you.”

  Eddie left and Lee and Bus exchanged a look.

  Bus’s white teeth shown underneath his beard. “Antsy little guy, isn’t he?”

  “Well…” Lee tossed the paper on the desk. “He’s got a family to worry about.”

  Bus headed to the door. “You sleeping in here tonight?”

  Lee looked around as though he were feeling out the emptiness of the room. “Yeah. Probably.”

  ***

  He lay on a wooden front porch, one of the long-planked kind that take up the entire front of a ranch house, like the kind in old western movies. He lay there with his eyes closed, but he could feel the warm sunshine on his cheeks, across his forehead, on his lips. The light came through his shuttered eyelids deep and red. The sound of a steady, warm breeze blowing gently through trees crowned fully with green. This was his place in the sun. His place…

  “Get up.”

  Shadows flashed across his eyelids.

  He opened his eyes.

  His father stood over him, his hand outstretched as though to help him to his feet.

  “Get up, Lee,” he said. “Get up and look.”

  “Look at what?” His own voice was small and childlike.

  “They’re coming.”

  He shook his head. “I’m tired. Just let me sleep.”

  “Get up and look, Lee. They’re coming.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “You know who’s coming.”

  Lee accepted his father’s hand and stood up. Before him, perfectly manicured grass stretched out. A large oak tree stood to the right, its expansive limbs moving slowly, undulating and seeming to glimmer in the light, sighing quietly. A dirt path led away from the porch and edged straight away from them through the front lawn. It then rose, bisecting a hill the sloped up from the yard.

  “There.” His father pointed to the hill.

  Lee squinted and could see figures atop the crest of the hill, just black silhouettes against a sun bleached sky. They stood shoulder to shoulder, and chest to back, and had he not looked carefully he would have thought they were the top of the hill themselves, as completely as they covered it. “I see them.”

  “They’re coming.”

  “I know.”

  “Take this.”

  Lee looked down and saw what his father offered. It was an M4. Lee accepted the weapon. He ejected the magazine, looking down into it and judging its weight. It was less than half full. “There’s only a few rounds in this thing.”

  Harper appeared to his left, so that Lee was standing between him and his father. “It’s all we have left.”

  “What happened to all the ammunition?” Lee asked.

  “We used it all up.”

  “How did we use all of the ammunition?”

  Harper shook his head and repeated himself: “We used it all up.”

  Lee slammed the magazine back into the rifle. “Okay.”

  His father put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “You’re gonna have to make it count.”

  ***

  Lee opened his eyes and felt immediately that he was not alone in the room.

  He rolled to his right and reached for his rifle.

  “Don’t.”

  Lee blinked and looked
up to the darkness above where his hand reached out across the floor. He did not have to take time to realize who was seated in the folding chair, one boot placed securely on Lee’s rifle. He knew Tomlin from his voice.

  “Before you try to kill me,” Tomlin said quickly, scooting the rifle further away from his fingers. “Keep in mind that if I wanted you dead, you would be.”

  Lee’s voice was ragged with sleep. “What happened to the man who was guarding you?”

  Tomlin’s teeth flashed like blue pearls in the darkness. “He’ll be fine. Probably just embarrassed about falling asleep on the job. Don’t worry, I didn’t touch him.”

  Lee curled his fingers into a ball and considered attacking. He would need to extricate himself from his sleeping bag in order to be able to use his legs to balance himself—any hand-to-hand would be pointless without his legs, especially against someone as good as Tomlin.

  “I know you’re thinking about taking me, Lee.” Tomlin’s voice maintained its calm. “I don’t have a weapon, so I won’t be able to stop you. I didn’t come here to kill you. I came here to help you. Just give me chance.”

  Lee took that moment to push the sleeping bag off his legs. He moved slowly, not wanting to broadcast an attack, but wanting—needing—to get himself ready. As he moved, he kept his eyes on Tomlin and he could see the faintest of smiles on the other man’s lips, his eyes twinkling slightly in the darkness. When the bag was clear of his feet, he shifted his weight so he appeared relaxed, but Lee could feel the muscles in his torso and legs, ready to explode if necessary.

  Lee kept his voice low. “Convince me quickly. Or I’m going to break your neck.”

  “I believe you.” Tomlin’s face grew serious. “I’m going to tell you why they want to kill you. And I’m going to tell you who ‘they’ are.” He leaned forward slightly. “You’re not going to like what you hear. But I’m going to tell you anyways.”

  Lee waited, stock-still.

  Tomlin traced the lines of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “You remember the term ‘non-viable asset’?”

  Images came to Lee’s mind of endless stacks of SOPs, clumped together by sections with a stapled corner. Do’s and don’ts associated with Project Hometown. What was approved. What was unapproved. The acceptable and the unacceptable. Rules on things and situations Lee thought would never happen to him, and so they were relegated to a dusty storeroom in the back of his mind, dredged up now as though some servo in his mind had been cued to pull all documents associated with the term non-viable asset.

  “Yes,” Lee said thickly.

  Tomlin ventured on. “It’s when someone violates mission protocols to the extent...”

  “I know what it is.” Lee cut him off.

  The back of his neck began to tingle hotly.

  He thought about the map hanging on the wall behind him. The cities and towns, some of them highlighted in red. The viable, and the non-viable. What could be useful, and what was a waste of resources.

  A waste of resources…

  Tomlin’s brow shifted and Lee could see the question in his eyes, like an old sadness. When the other captain spoke, his voice was heavy with disappointment. “Why’d you do it, Lee? What the fuck were you thinking?”

  Lee turned his head slightly, finding it difficult to look Tomlin in the eyes now. His gaze went to the office door and rested there. Even in the dim light he could see the paint peeling, and the metal rusting underneath. Growing old. Wearing down. Breaking. Entropy. The gradual, eventual, and inevitable destruction of everything in the universe.

  Nothing was built to last.

  He heard his voice, calm and monotone. “It was an accident.”

  “An accident?” Tomlin said, incredulously. “You left your fucking bunker! Over a week early!”

  Lee pulled himself to his knees. “Leaving the bunker was a mistake,” he growled. “But not coming back to it was an accident. You think I wanted to be lost out here by myself? You think I wanted to lose communication with the rest of you guys?” He shook his head, the snarl in his voice causing his nose to curl. “It wasn’t a fucking option. Shit happened, and I had to adapt and overcome to the new situation. And the new situation was that I was cut off. I didn’t go AWOL. I didn’t abandon the mission.”

  Tomlin nodded. “I know, Lee. I know what happened. I saw where your house used to be.”

  Lee shook his head as though he were about to say something else about it, but then stiffened as something else had struck him as odd. His brow furrowed and his eyes zigzagged across the ground and then rose to meet Tomlin’s. “How’d you know I left my bunker?”

  “They were watching us the whole time, Lee. Sensors in the hatches, and in the bunkers. So they can tell when you come and when you go, and which bunkers you’ve gone to.” Tomlin snorted. “None of us realized it, but we should have.”

  Lee rubbed his face. “I don’t understand. We lost communication with Frank. Everyone was gone. Who the hell was watching us?”

  Tomlin didn’t seem to want to answer the question directly. “He sent me and the others to kill you because you were a non-viable asset. He didn’t want you using the equipment in your bunkers. He didn’t want you using up the resources.”

  Lee’s mind reeled with possibilities. “Was it Frank?”

  Slowly, Tomlin shook his head. “Frank’s dead, Lee. This was one of us.”

  Lee found himself stiff as a board. “Then who was it?”

  Tomlin exhaled shakily. “It was Abe. Abe Darabie.”

  CHAPTER 26: NEW REALITIES

  The blue glow of the computer screen.

  Electricity, cool air, running water.

  The sensation of being trapped.

  The Hole.

  He remembered it, felt it, familiar to him like an old, childhood house, even the distinctly cold, cement-like smell of it that no amount of carpet and furnishings and living in could remove from the place. It was a bunker, not a home.

  A place of restriction.

  Seclusion.

  Maddening.

  He watched himself from four months ago sitting before his computer, and wrestling with himself whether to send an email, whether to violate those precious policies. It was like he was there in the room, standing behind himself. He could even see the message, though he knew it was just a memory.

  You hear anything from Frank?

  A message addressed to Captain Abe Darabie.

  His closest friend.

  He clicked send, and the response did not take long.

  Neg on coms with frank. I’m at 48 hours…did you open your box?

  Lee’s response: Yeah, I opened mine. Is this for real?

  I hope not…proly shouldn’t be talking…just keep your head down and wait for them to cancel us…I’m sure they will.

  Abe Darabie.

  His closest friend.

  The image of himself sitting at his computer inside The Hole disappeared and instead he was staring at cement walls and the smell of people and smoke and under all of that the rusty smell of old grease and oil. Before him was a man who wore a uniform so intimately familiar to him. A man who had been his friend, and then his enemy, and now was supposed to be his friend again.

  “I don’t believe it,” Lee said hollowly.

  Tomlin didn’t react, as though he had expected this response.

  His voice calm and even, he went on. “When 48 hours ran out, you and I both got the same mission packet. Same as the other coordinators.” A pause to swallow and moisten his lips. “Except Abe. He got a different packet. When he opened his, he was promoted to Major Darabie, and his job was expressly outlined as monitoring and controlling the rest of us. None of us knew about it until five days before leaving our bunkers. We were able to conference our computers and he spoke to all of us, and explained his mission packet, and what we were to do. But by then, you’d already left your bunker.”

  Lee didn’t speak, but he shook his head, breathing through flared nostrils.

>   Tomlin looked pained. “I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, Lee, but I’m trying to tell you the truth. Abe didn’t like it, but he declared you a non-viable asset, because you violated the procedures and you were out of contact. He was just gonna drop the whole thing if you came back online before the rest of us left our bunkers. He was just gonna act like it never happened and move on. He didn’t want to blacklist you, Lee.”

  “Then what the fuck happened?”

  Tomlin’s face tightened and his voice grew cold. “Things got complicated.”

  Lee clenched his fist. “Complicated how?”

  A long pause. “When Abe briefed us a week out, he put you on the backburner. He didn’t order anyone to find you or kill you—we all had enough to worry about. He told me and Mitchell privately that if we came across you, he wanted us to detain you so he could figure out what happened.” Tomlin pushed himself back in the seat. “He gave you the benefit of the doubt. We all did.”

  “And have I not been doing what I’m supposed to be doing?” Lee asked quietly, but forcefully. “Am I not completing my mission?”

  “Better than most, actually.”

  “Then why is he trying to kill me?”

  “Things were a little easier for Abe in Colorado. He maintained steady contact with us throughout August and September. Then about a month ago he found a large group of US Army, just a hodgepodge of various units. They were under the command of a colonel. The secretary of state was with them, along with a few other cabinet members.”

  Lee stared on, a question scribbled across his features. “Okay…”

  “The secretary of state is number four in succession to the president,” Tomlin said, verbally tiptoeing. “Which is currently the highest ranking cabinet member they’ve found. According to the secretary of state himself, the others are dead.”

  It wasn’t that Lee didn’t understand what Tomlin was saying. He understood the concept of presidential succession, understood the purveyance of the presidency over the military—namely commander-in-chief—and he understood that whoever fell into that office by virtue of their rank, took that job, and everything it entailed.