They were in Walter’s office. Preacher Dave and his son Scott were manning the crow’s nest, and Leonard and his wife Glenda had volunteered to stay inside the store. Five minutes ago they had separated themselves from the campground residents to focus on a single question—the issue of a return to Ravenwood. Much to Eric’s dismay, the crowd at the store had elected Diane to function as their speaker. It wasn’t unanimous, and those who voted against her were firm in their opinion. But they were still in the minority. Just like Eric’s group, Diane’s crowd was deciding a single question—would they go to shelter Yellow or stay at the store. Before their groups separated, Walter had spoken one final time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I understand we’ve all got to come to some decisions. Let me throw this out there so you can factor it in to your resolution. My offer still stands whether you stay or go. It’s the Christian thing to do, and I’ll still hand out whatever food and gas that I can. But you need to know this—this store . . . this property . . . does not have a revolving door. If you leave, you won’t be coming back. If everybody leaves, either tomorrow or in the future, then this store and the area surrounding it becomes part of the ‘no man’s land’ that I spoke of earlier.”
Sam kicked his feet up on the corner of Walters’s desk, earning him a puckered brow and pointed finger from the owner.
“Let me get this right. We’ve got about ten minutes to decide ‘if’ we’re going to make a run at the campground. If we vote ‘yes,’ we’ll have to figure out the details later tonight. Am I correct?”
“Yep, that’s right,” Walter chimed in as he puffed a double ring of the aromatic tobacco smoke toward the stationary ceiling fan, “but before we vote on this, and no matter which way it goes, there’s still a lot of things that need to be said tonight. Just not here.”
Several heads nodded, but no one spoke. Finally, Amy stood up and looked around the room. “Three of us sitting here have a direct, personal stake, or link, to the campground. Doc is missing his wife Sally and his two stepchildren. Walter, Sally was your sister, and the kids were your niece and nephew.” She stopped and looked out the darkened window toward the lake. “And I’m missing my mother and father.”
“Amy,” Michelle stood and laid a hand on her shoulder, “why didn’t you say something earlier?”
Still looking into the gloomy darkness beyond the glass, Amy said, “They’re gone, both of them. I watched my dad, eighty-one years old and in failing health, trying to fight off a teenage boy with red eyes. My mom was already on the ground screaming at me to run. She was covered with bite marks. So I ran.”
She turned and looked around room again. “I can’t believe—I won’t let myself—that they’re still alive. Still human. Doc, you said that you saw your wife, Sally, coming up out of the campground with one of the waves as we were leaving. So, by my math, the only two people that we have a direct, personal link of attachment to are Marty and Francis. That’s one thing we have to consider. The other thing, from my line of reasoning anyhow, is where our other responsibilities to act are guiding us. Eric, Sam, Michelle . . . do you feel an obligation from a law enforcement standpoint to return to the campground?”
Sam started to answer, but Amy waived him off, “Hold that thought for a moment.” She turned to face Thompson. “And you, Mr. Thompson, is there a military code of honor that might be guiding your actions in this matter? What I’m getting at is that each of us have a responsibility, not only to the people over in the store, but to ourselves as well.”
She turned to face Walter. “Do you have a little tablet of paper and a few pens?”
“Why?”
“So we can vote.”
“I don’t need paper. I’ve got no problem with everybody seeing how I vote.”
“Fair enough. Is everybody else good with an open vote?”
Callie raised her hand. “What exactly are the qualifications to vote? I mean, I’m not very good with a gun, so I doubt if I’d be involved in that capacity. Do I still vote? And while I’m on a roll, are we going with a majority decision that everybody has to follow, or does it have to be unanimous?”
Silence filtered across the room as they considered her words. Doc Collins broke the stillness a minute later with popping bones as he stood and stretched. “I’d feel the most comfortable if everybody in this room got a vote, and that our decision to go must be unanimous.”
“I agree,” Thompson said, “and for the record, Preacher Dave told me to tell you that if you’re giving him a vote, he votes ‘yes’ for a rescue mission.”
Mike cleared his throat, and then followed it with a swig of soda “Just so I’m clear, we’re only voting about a trip back to the campground. A rescue mission.”
Everybody nodded.
“OK,” he continued, “I’ve got a suggestion. Let’s do a preliminary vote right now. Just to get a feel for where we stand.”
“All in favor?” Eric said.
“Wait, are we voting on the rescue mission right now, or on whether we want to do a preliminary vote?” Sam crinkled his face as he asked.
“Holy crap, I feel like I’m in a sorority. The next thing you’ll want to do is to have a show of hands on who’s in favor of Buffy going to the prom with Stud McMuscles the hometown football hero.” Walter blew out a dragon breath full of light gray, cherry apple smoke as he stood. Three quick steps into a half circle later, he kicked Sam’s foot off the corner of his desk and perched down in the vacant space. “This is a preliminary vote. Right now, all in favor of going back to Ravenwood on a rescue mission . . . raise your hand.”
Walter, Eric, Callie, Amy, and Thompson raised their hands.
Doc dropped his forehead and rubbed his eyebrows. “I just don’t know . . . I just don’t know.”
Sam looked around the room, stopping at Thompson. With a shake of his head and a sigh, Sam’s hand crept up to join the others. “Somebody has to keep Thompson out of trouble.”
Mike stood and rolled his thick, muscular neck. “I’m not a coward, and yeah, I like a good fight. But can any of you tell me what we’re really fighting? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll bop heads ‘till the cows come home, but if I walk off that field of battle with another mark in the ‘win’ column, am I going to die because I got some little speck of blood on me during the fight? You know, a lot of people look at me. They see the tats, the crew cut, the crowbar . . . I practically scream ‘roughneck’ from every angle. But that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I don’t want to throw away my life needlessly. So convince me.”
Michelle stood and walked toward the door that led to the hallway. “Eric, can I have a word with you?”
Eric stood to follow and Sam hooted out a catcall. Thompson, chuckling, said “Maybe she lost another contact.”
The mostly empty diet soda can ricocheted off the wall inches from Thompson’s head just before Michelle turned the corner.
Chapter 22
Eric followed Michelle down the hallway to the right hand door. “Would you mind going in first so Max doesn’t freak out?” she asked.
“I thought you were a member of the pack,” he teased.
“I am, but if he’s changed into a zombie dog, you’ll be first on the menu.”
“Funny. Real funny.”
Eric cracked the door to the room with a large, handmade table. He had put Max in there just a few minutes before the meeting, and the giant black canine was curled up in the near corner. Several scatterings of wood chips decorated his dark fur, and his golden eyes stared unblinkingly as they entered.
“Hey buddy,” Eric called out as he dropped to the floor and stretched out beside Max. A huge paw pushed through the wood chips and lodged against Eric’s chest as Max thumped his tail.
Michelle took a seat on the tabletop and watched the two boys as they began to wrestle and play in the thick layer of shavings. After ten seconds they were both covered head to toe with the dusty flakes.
“You know, we still don’t have any idea if Max is susce
ptible to this disease.”
Eric threw a double handful of shavings at Max, who dodged and weaved before crashing into his crouched form and bowling him over.
“OK, OK, you win.” Eric laughed as he stood. Turning to face Michelle, he said “Yeah, you’re right. We don’t know. We also don’t know if I’m sick. Or anybody else, really. So until that time comes, I’m not going to worry about it.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
“Maybe it’s just apathy.”
“No,” she said, “it’s not.”
He closed the distance between them and lowered a hand to her shoulder. Emerald eyes slowly met, and locked, with his. The look on her face showed determination mixed with trepidation.
“What is it? What’s wrong?
“I’m about to do something wrong. I’m about to put my best friend in a position that they shouldn’t have to be in.”
The confused look on his face was frozen as her hand reached up and touched his cheek. “Wait . . . let me finish.” Her dancer’s lithe body curled into the ‘crisscross applesauce’ position on top of the table as she stared into his eyes. “I want to make a deal with you. I’ll go to the campground with your team. I’ll change my vote, even though I honestly don’t think it’s worth the risk. I’ll do that, if you promise me . . . promise me . . .,” her words trailed off.
“What?”
“My mother.”
“Huh?”
“Eric, when I went to Fort Hammer with Andy, one of the things I grabbed from my office was the memory card from the answering machine. When you were sleeping, I borrowed Bernice’s laptop and played the messages. Before the phone lines went down, my mother had apparently managed to get through.” She shifted her legs underneath and elevated upwards, coming eye to eye as she continued. “Devils Lake. She left me a message saying that she was heading to Dad’s cabin at Devils Lake, Eric.”
She plopped back down into a sitting position, lowered her head and ran her fingers through the tangled mass of wavy strawberry blonde hair. “I can’t do it alone,” she barely whispered, “so that’s what I’m asking. That’s the position I’m putting my best friend in. A dangerous mission at the campground in trade for a suicide mission to Devils Lake.”
“So when do we leave?”
“Eric, please say no. Tell me that my mother’s already gone, and that I’d be throwing my life—our lives—away. Tell me that we can just go somewhere where none of these ghouls, or creeps, or whatevers are jumping out from behind every shadow. Just tell me no, and then tell me how wrong I am for even asking. Tell me, please.”
“So when do we leave?”
Deep green eyes, moistened with hastily wiped tears looked up at him. “Eric, I love you.”
His fingers joined with hers in the tangled cascade of curls. “And I love you. So let’s make sure we survive both of these fools’ errands. Besides, the way I figure it, you’ve been blind to my affections for about twenty-five years now, so with penalties and interest, you’re going to owe me another, oh, about forty more.”
“Forty more years, is that so?”
He shifted his hands and embraced her tightly, “At least forty.”
Chapter 23
They returned to Walters’s office just in time to see the results of another preliminary vote. This time, Doc Collins had his hand in the air. So did Crowbar Mike. Michelle stepped into the center of the circle and raised her hand to join them.
“OK,” Walter said, “let’s do this for real. All in favor of a rescue mission . . .”
Eric cut him off before he finished. “Wait, let me say one final thing before we vote. Ever since this possibility was brought up to me, I’ve been giving it some thought. Running the numbers, as they say. Yes, I voted to go back, but maybe I need to clarify something. When I think ‘rescue mission,’ I’m not picturing everybody charging into the campground with guns blazing. My idea is more of a stealth approach. We go in, spend just enough time there to determine if there are survivors, and then get the heck out—hopefully with any survivors we find. I’m not looking for, nor, do I think we can afford, a firefight. Anyhow, that’s just my opinion.”
The faces around the room nodded in understanding, and then Walter called for a vote. Every hand went up.
Chapter 24
Back at the store they found that the crowd had separated into two unequal groups. Diane was standing in front of the larger gathering with her arms crossed—Mr. Lee mirrored her pose as he stood at the head of the much smaller faction. Leonard and Glenda were seated in the corner, away from both divisions.
“Is that your final decision?” Diane asked.
“We’ve already told you that.”
“Fine . . . then we’re done here.”
Both she and Mr. Lee turned to face Eric as he stepped forward. “Who wants to go first?”
“Why don’t you tell us what the special people decided in their little clubhouse meeting,” Diane mouth sarcastically.
Eric frowned and shook his head. Enough was enough. “Diane, I’m trying . . . really trying . . . to give you a little leeway. But I’ve got to be honest; you’re not making it very easy with your piss poor attitude and mouthy personality. Give it a rest, OK?” The corner of his eye caught the beginnings of a smile cresting on Mr. Lee’s face as he continued, “I’ll get right to the point. We’re going back to the campground to attempt a rescue mission. I don’t have the details worked out yet, but I just wanted you to know what our decision was.” His head swiveled back and forth between the two groups. “I guess from the looks of things, everybody here is not on the same page about going to the shelter.”
Mr. Lee nodded as Diane spoke. “We,” her arms gestured to the large group she headed, “are going to shelter Yellow with the firemen. They,” she pointed a finger across the room, “are not. Although for the life of me I just can’t understand why.”
Eric took another step forward and studied the faces of those that had elected to stay. Mr. Lee, the man with a braided beard and his wife. Another two couples that he recognized the faces of, but didn’t know anything specific about. Behind them sat BB and his mother. Sleeping in her arms was another child. Ten people.
“OK. That’s it then. We’re still going to run a guard up on the roof tonight—I think Leonard and his wife Glenda have already volunteered for that. The rest of you, get some sleep.”
Sam stepped forward and removed a key from the large ring. “This works on both doors.” He handed it to Diane, and then after a moment of contemplation, removed a second key and handed it to Mr. Lee. “Even though the firemen are outside and we’ve got guards on the roof, I’d still work out some type of watch in here. You’ve got the two shotguns from Mr. Sheldon and several other personal weapons. Figure it out.”
Walter pointed at the table. “I’m leaving you that camouflage radio for tonight. We’ll monitor the other one up at the house.” He looked around the room for a moment before adding, “Be safe and get some sleep. I’m putting a guard up on the roof of my house as well. Remember what I said about the areas that are off limits.”
With that, they turned and filed out the door. It took another several minutes to get the roof guards switched out, and then Eric loaded everyone into the bed of his truck and drove them up to Walters’s house. A return trip brought Max, and Eric walked him alone up the hill to Walters’s tractor shed.
Sitting on the floor with his back leaning against a hay bale, he spent some time rubbing the muscular haunches of enormous wolf hybrid. Curious gold eyes flecked with silver and black stared back at him as he talked.
“Hey buddy, I’ve got to leave you in here tonight. Just to make sure, OK? If you’re still feeling good tomorrow, I’ll see about getting you back in the house.”
Max nuzzled his elbow and pressed closer. “Just make sure you’re OK buddy . . . I don’t want to lose you.” Max gave a small whine and molded his body against Eric before dropping down across his lap.
“Hey—
you big fur ball,” Eric reached down and grabbed two enormous handfuls of hair at the side of Max’s brawny neck, “look at me.” With an agile turn, Max flopped onto his back and regarded Eric with a look that conveyed greater intelligence and understanding than any domesticated dog was capable of.
Raking his fingers in a big circle across Max’s belly brought out a huge panting tongue, and Eric changed the scratching to a series of soft pats. “Listen, if anything happens to me, keep Michelle safe. And make sure you eat, OK?”
Dark eyebrows furrowed for a moment, and then a pair of huge paws reached up and pushed against Eric’s underarms. A moment later, the massive black canine scrabbled to his feet, knocking Eric backwards and prone. It was immediately followed by almost 110 pounds of muscle sitting on Eric’s chest.
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 25