by D. J. Molles
They were taken back to the Marine encampment. Smoke hung over the entire clearing. The guns belched fire into the sky, time after time; endlessly they went on. The smell of the guns permeated him, the sound of them, the feel of their impacts. The booming guns hijacked all of his senses.
Sometime around dawn, the last gun crew fired their last round. It rocketed out into the night and somewhere far in the distance splashed down inside of Smithfield, inside of the mile radius surrounding the Johnston Memorial Hospital. As the sky turned to gray all around them, Lee could look northeast and pinpoint where Smithfield was by the black smudge on the horizon. What had once been an American town, now reduced to smoking rubble.
The silence felt strange and empty. His ears rang. His body ached.
He wanted to feel some measure of triumph, some sort of victory. But he was overwhelmed. Shorted out. Everything inside him felt like static. No signal. Empty.
He stood out of the way of the Marine crews as they worked to hook the artillery pieces to the trucks that would tow them. The Marines were dirty and bedraggled, their faces and hands filthy with grime and dirt and carbon scoring. They looked about as exhausted as Lee felt.
Carl appeared next to him, or perhaps he’d been standing there. Lee felt out of touch with himself. He glanced in Carl’s direction, swayed a little on his feet, and shifted his weight to cover it up. “Sorry about your helicopter,” Lee said quietly.
Carl’s lips were a flat gash across his face. “I don’t give a fuck about the chopper. Dale was a good pilot.”
Lee nodded. Had nothing to say. There were words that floated around in his head, but he was so discombobulated, he feared that they only sounded good there, and if he dared to say them they would come out sounding completely different. It was best to stay quiet.
“Brinly’s agreed to take a stop off at Fort Bragg,” Carl said, his tone clearly saying that he was changing the subject. “I figured I could afford to give the Marines some fuel for their birds. Not like we need it so bad anymore. Plus we need a ride back to Bragg.”
Lee just nodded again.
Carl regarded him. “You okay?”
Lee raised his eyebrows. “Am I okay?” His mouth hung open for a moment. “Fuck if I know. I’m just taking it one minute at a time. I’m here. But I don’t feel like I’m here.”
“You sound dead on your feet.”
“Yeah.”
Tomlin, Nate, Julia, and Lee were all shoved into the same vehicle. They sat side by side on the bench seat in the back of an LMTV, along with a half-dozen Marines. No one talked. Everyone was too damn tired. This LMTV was covered, though, so the wind didn’t get them as bad. They had a little room to spread out, but they stayed together because it was warmer. Julia was next to him, and Lee clasped her hand in his. He didn’t think twice about it, simply wanting to comfort her and take some comfort himself from the presence of human contact.
He was too tired to stay awake, and too keyed up to sleep.
So he just closed his eyes and drifted.
TWENTY-SIX
MILES
LEE AWOKE ON A cot. Cold wetness on his hand.
He was disoriented. He didn’t know where he was, or why he was there. He leaned partially up off the cot and saw that he was in a crowded barracks room, and the first place his mind went was basic training. But the other people in the barracks room were not soldiers or recruits. They were men and women and children, jumbled in together. Some of them slept, and some of them were walking around.
Homeless camp, he thought to himself. I’m in a homeless camp.
For a second, the disorientation caused a little spark of fear. He pulled himself into a sitting position and swung his legs off the cot. It was only when he turned that he realized he was not alone. The brown-and-tan dog that he had named Deuce was huddled next to the cot, looking up at him with his curious golden eyes, his tail slapping the ground.
Tomlin was seated in a chair next to Lee’s cot, slouched over and asleep.
The disorientation evaporated. He remembered where he was. He remembered arriving at Fort Bragg. The massive, organized confusion of it. Carl’s men had sent a giant bus for Angela and Camp Ryder, and by the time that Lee and the Marines pulled into the center of Fort Bragg, they were still trying to get the people from Camp Ryder settled into some barracks.
Which was where he was.
He rubbed Deuce’s head¸ earning himself an even harder tail wagging. Lee smiled down at the animal. “Hey, buddy. I’m glad you’re here.” The dog hung its tongue out and laid its head against Lee’s leg, seeming relieved that Lee was finally awake. Lee turned his attention to the man sleeping across from him.
He reached out and touched Tomlin’s knee. “Brian.”
Tomlin sniffed and jerked, then woke up, blinking rapidly. “Shit. I need a full eight hours.”
Lee rubbed his face. “I think we need a full twenty-four. How long have I been asleep?”
Tomlin looked toward a window. Beyond, the sunlight was bright and golden. An early sun. “Not that long. It’s still morning.”
The medics from Fort Bragg had been triaging the injured as they came in. Lee recalled them pulling him off to the side and doing a quick patch job on the lacerations on his face and wrapping his broken ribs tightly. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else that could be done with broken ribs.
Just remembering them brought the pain back and he winced.
“Yeah.” Tomlin smirked. “Three broken ribs. How’s that feel?”
“Don’t remind me.”
Tomlin rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Carl’s sending fuel back with the Marines. When they can get some birds in the air, they’re gonna do a visual recon of the Smithfield area. See how bad the damage is. See if any of the horde survived.”
Lee nodded. He felt the burgeoning of something. Hope? Relief? Maybe. But his mind wouldn’t let him believe that it was over. How could it be over? It was never over. “I’m sure some of them survived.” He met Tomlin’s eyes. “I know you saw them. But you should have seen them from our perspective. Flying over with the thermal imaging. Damn. There were a lot of them. I think that artillery made Smithfield dust. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a decent amount of them managed to get away. Scatter out into the countryside.”
Tomlin leaned forward and put a hand gently on Lee’s shoulders. “Hey. You did good. You did fucking great. I’m sure a few of them got away. But we knew there was gonna be cleanup. And they won’t be in the millions anymore. There’ll be pockets of them. And we can deal with that. We’ll hunt ’em down. Do whatever needs to be done. Carl’s a part of this now, and I don’t think he has any intention of kicking us out on our asses. He’s already talking about using Fort Bragg as a central staging area to reclaim the rest of North Carolina. I think he recognizes that we’re in this together.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.” Lee looked around them. Most of the people in the barracks were Camp Ryder folks. When they saw him looking, they nodded to him. But they steered clear and left him alone. Which he supposed was best.
“I talked with Carl about what happened with Kensey and the Marines. And Tyler.”
“Oh.” Lee felt his stomach sink, steadily, like a boat hull filling with water.
“Hey, you did what you had to do,” Tomlin said earnestly. He shook his head. “Man, I can’t believe that shit. Briggs…”
“Yeah.” Lee looked down at his feet. He hadn’t bothered to take off his boots before lying down for his hour or two of rack-out. “I don’t… fuck, I don’t know.”
“It’s gonna be a goddamn cluster,” Tomlin said quietly. “But Carl’s always been against Briggs. We’ve got his backing one hundred percent. And I think what’s gone down over the course of the last few days has solidified Colonel Staley and First Sergeant Brinly. I think they’re with us.” Tomlin brightened. “Which, by the way, you didn’t hear, but Angela found Staley’s daughter.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Her and a
truckload of the women that were being held captive by the Followers. They managed to escape and ran into Angela as they were leaving Camp Ryder. Almost got shot up by the escort, but Angela told them to hold their fire. Good thing, too.” Tomlin’s face darkened. “What those fuckers did…”
“Any word on them?”
Tomlin shook his head. “I haven’t talked to her. Or any of the women. Most of them are in bad shape. A few malnourished. All of them dehydrated. Stuck in the back of a fucking cage. Like animals.” Tomlin’s jaw clenched. “If any of those fuckers are still rolling around…”
“We’ll find them,” Lee said. “Just like we’ll find the rest of the infected.”
Tomlin nodded.
Lee thought of something else. “Brian, have you heard anything about Abe?”
Tomlin’s face grew serious. “I, uh… I’ll show you where he is.”
They found Abe Darabie recovering in the same field hospital as the injured Marines and Rudy, who’d caught a round that almost killed him and suffered through the night. Just as Lee and Tomlin gained access to the hospital, they were settling an unconscious Rudy back into the room after emergency surgery. The medics looked exhausted. The patients looked terrible.
The doorway into the room was guarded, but the soldier standing watch either knew who Lee and Tomlin were, or he didn’t care that they were coming into the room. He let them pass with nothing but a solemn nod.
A few feet into the room and Lee choked on the smell of it. The smell of sickness and injury, lurking beneath heavy antiseptic. He hated that smell. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He’d never had a problem with hospitals in his life, but seeing beds filled with men close to death and in pain… that was never a pleasant thing to behold in any of your senses.
Lee could see Abe. He was lying down in the far corner of the room, asleep, apparently. Or maybe just resting. His hair was wild and greasy; his jet-black beard was matted and wiry and out-of-control. From the way the sheets were draped over him, Lee could tell there was very little left to him.
Tomlin spoke quietly. “I asked the medic about him when they were triaging everybody coming in. They knew who he was. He’s the only reason the guard is here. They got him locked down to that gurney he’s on. But he’s fucked up, the doc said. Said they had to go in and take the bullet out and he nearly died of blood loss.”
Tomlin cleared his throat. “Apparently the doc had to beg for blood. Nobody wanted him to use their supply on Abe. Doc managed to get him two units of blood and kept him from dying. Got the bullet out. He’s been awake, they say, but on and off. He’s still real weak.”
He was only trying to escape, Lee thought. Just like any of us would have done.
But he kept it to himself. He was not surrounded by sympathetic ears.
He looked at Tomlin. “You coming?”
Tomlin shook his head. “Nah. I’m… I’m a little mixed up about all this.”
Lee reached out, wincing at the pain in his ribs, and gave Tomlin a squeeze on the shoulder. “All right, buddy. I’ll get up with you. We’re gonna be busy over the next few weeks.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna grab some sleep.” Then Tomlin left.
Lee looked at Abe and walked slowly to the bed that he lay on. He stood there at the foot of it for a time and he watched Abe’s eyes flickering underneath his eyelids, the heavy, rattling breaths. But they were steady and even. The sound of deep sleep.
Lee went to the side of the bed. There was a bucket upended at the bed. Lee didn’t know whether it was a makeshift stool or not, but that’s what it would be for him. He sat on it and looked at his old friend, resting one arm on the sheets beside Abe, wondering if he should wake him or just let him rest. He wondered if he truly had anything worth talking about, or if he just wanted Abe to be awake so that he would know he was okay.
His frazzled mind was working through things. Processing them little bit by little bit. He didn’t yet have a full comprehension, but still there came flashes of clarity. The magnitude of what had been done. The horrible odds of the gamble that Lee had made, anteing up with other people’s lives. But what he’d done, what he’d accomplished… couldn’t he be proud of that? Or had the cost been too great?
His mind swirled, capturing glimpses of emotions and trying to knit the whole thing into some massive patchwork. All the shock and the grief and the overwhelming relief, the loss of friends and the realization that he’d saved his people and countless others from complete annihilation, the rage and the resentment, the feelings of betrayal, the hard coldness of revenge, righteous anger, justice, and guilt for his own sins—they were all scattered parts, put together into some great, unfathomable thing. Like the blind man at the elephant, he could not realize it in its entirety, but could only sense the parts.
He found himself short of breath and realized that his chest ached and his throat was tight.
You’re done. You did it. You finished the race.
So why did it feel like he had miles and miles left to go?
He felt cold, dry fingers touch his.
He looked up and saw Abe, his eyes watery and only half-conscious.
Lee took the other man’s hand and held on to it, like it was keeping him from slipping off of the edge of the world and falling into oblivion. Abe’s lips were parched and cracked and peeled, but they smiled the slightest hint of a smile, one that was born with such exhaustion, but through that exhaustion it was genuine.
Abe spoke and his voice was a dry whisper. “Hey, brother.”
Lee clutched his friend’s hand with both of his, then he lowered his head and wept.
Sam stood in the barracks, beside the cot where Abby was lying, passed out in an almost unwakeable sleep. He watched her for a time, staring at her and seeing many other things. But always he would blink and she would be there, and she seemed peaceful.
He could not sit. Not here in this strange place, no matter how many faces around him were familiar. He kept standing, and he clutched his little rifle. The small caliber. The tiny little bullets, of which he had only thirty more. The tiny bullets that could do so much. And had.
He looked away from Abby and cast his gaze, young and hollow, over the people he knew. The survivors from Camp Ryder. Somehow family, and somehow complete strangers to him. He found himself looking for the kids from the camp that had pushed him away, the ones that didn’t want to talk to him because they could see the weirdness in him. But he didn’t see any of them in this barracks. He wished they were there, though he didn’t know why.
He started at the sound of the barracks door swinging open.
A man came through the door. Tall. Balding head. He looked dirty all over, but his face. His face looked like he had washed it. He had a trimmed beard and eyes that scanned and analyzed, collecting data, it seemed. Judging everyone. But not in an unkind way. Like he was making a tally. Counting numbers in his head.
Sam shifted, slightly, so he was facing the man.
The man with the analyzing eyes stopped by and spoke quietly to a pair of younger guys that Sam knew from camp. He could not tell what they said. The man spoke, and the young men listened. Then they nodded. Shook hands.
Sam watched the man continue through the barracks, speaking to people. The young men. The young women. The able-bodied of them. The only common thread that Sam could see among them was that they did not have children with them. They did not appear to be families.
Sam watched him until he had made his way around the entire room, had talked to seven different people, and finally came to stop at the foot of Abby’s bed.
The man looked at Sam, held his gaze for a long time. More numbers rolling behind his eyes. Then he looked down at Abby, who still slept. He looked at her and something else went on in his head besides the analyzing. Then he blinked rapidly and looked back at Sam. Up and down. Fixed on the rifle.
“Small rifle,” the man observed.
Sam looked at it. “It works.”
A falt
ering smile flashed over the man’s mouth, then it was back to straight. He nodded toward the sleeping form on the bed. “You know her?”
Sam considered. “My sister.”
He, dark-skinned and Middle Eastern. She, pale and blond.
“Hmm,” the man said. “Parents here?”
“Her mother.”
“You?”
Sam shook his head slowly.
The man scratched his beard. “What’s your name, son?”
“Sam.”
“I’m Sergeant Carl Gilliard.” He extended his hand.
Sam hesitated, then took it.
“How old are you?” the man named Carl asked.
“Thirteen.”
Carl nodded steadily.
“Why?” Sam asked.
Carl looked away, as though seeing things beyond the walls of the barracks. “We got a lot of work to do around here, Sam. Miles of fencing that needs to be patrolled. Need people. Now, you’re young, but… that’s the way it is now. I think you know what you’re doing. Am I wrong?”
Sam looked at him. Then at Abby. “No, sir.”
Carl reached out and squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “Good man.”
Angela was sitting on his cot when Lee returned. She sat with her knees together, elbows braced, chin resting on her hands, looking off into no particular direction. Her eyes were intense but unseeing. Her mind was not in the present, but milling over things come and gone and things still to be. It was a troubled look.
Lee stopped in the doorway of the barracks, still not seen by Angela. It was not as crowded as it had been thirty minutes prior, and the people that remained were sticking to their individual bunks, taking stock of what they had and what they had lost. Lee looked at the things stuffed beneath his cot, and atop it, and the woman that sat on it, and his mind ventured in the same direction.
He stepped through the door, but it wasn’t until he stopped beside Angela and his cot that her eyes came back to the present and she straightened from her pensive slouch. She looked up at him, for a moment seeming surprised to see him there. Then her expression softened into something more familiar. The look she gave him wasn’t quite a smile. Her lips were pressed together, the corners of her mouth just slightly downturned, as though her mouth wanted to summon a smile but couldn’t quite find the energy.