Tater coughed as he pointed at the Frankenstein contraption. “My daddy built that monster out of parts from an old boiler system they tore out of the hog processing plant that burnt down in Fargo back in the fifties. It ain’t pretty, but when she gets going, you lose your eyebrows just filling her up.”
My eyes followed the heavy cast iron pipe from the stove to where it angled into a mortared shut hole in the bricks several feet above the original fireplace opening.
Tater stepped forward and swung open the loading gate on the side of the rectangular heater—a bellow of grayish-white smoke oozed out to join its brethren drifting in the air. “I was able to shine a light from here, and outside of a few dust bunnies, the angled vent pipe is clear . . . so whatever is blocking the smoke has got to be in the chimney proper.”
A squeak behind me drew my attention, and I turned toward the stairway that led to the second floor. Several sets of dark eyes stared back at me from between the spindles of the banister. Tater followed my gaze, and then cleared his throat. “You boys stop fooling around on them stairs. I told you they ain’t safe to play around. Now go get your mama and bring her down here for a minute.” The dark eyes blinked, but didn’t move.
“Go on now . . . fetch your mama. Tell her it’s OK to come down.”
Three pairs of feet thumped up the stairway, propelled by Tater’s gruff demeanor. He turned to look at me, pausing momentarily to load and light a cigarette one handedly between a pair of lips that sported a noticeable divot from the decade’s long frequency of abuse.
“Them kid’s mama— little Spanish lady—was working as my caretaker from the VA when all this stuff started happenin.’ She ain’t got no family ‘asides her kids, at least none in this country, so when I headed for the farmhouse, she tagged along. Weren’t nowhere else to go anyhow. We got out of the city just in time I reckon. Been here a little over a week now.” He turned back towards the stove. “That warm weather we’ve been having made me lazy, and I didn’t even think we’d need to light the ol’ gal, but I hate to see them kids a-shiverin’ in their coats all night long.”
A small pile of kindling was stacked on the floor near the stove, and several gatherings of wood chips and splinters surrounded a squat, basketball sized tree cross section that sported the upright angle of an embedded hatchet.
“Are you going to have enough fuel to keep this burning?” I asked.
“The barn, one side of it anyhow, is loaded with slab wood that came from a sawmill,” his wrinkled face puffed another blast of cigarette smoke as he studied me, “probably long before you were born. There’s maybe ‘nuff in there for two winters, I’d imagine. I brought me a chainsaw and five gallons of gas so I can cut it to length.” Tater noticed my sideways glance at his missing arm and chuckled. “Don’t you worry none . . . I’ve learned to do with one what many folks can’t do with two.”
The squeaks on the stairs returned, and a diminutive lady with short, dark hair descended slowly. In her grasp was the well worn length of an old shotgun. It was a single shot, and for the moment at least, wasn’t pointed at me. Surrounding her legs were the grasping figures of her children. All three were boys, triplets I’d guess, and bundled against the chill in puffy layers of baggy sweatshirts.
I watched as she came down the stairs cautiously, her dark eyes apprehensive as she stopped on the landing and peered around the room. A moment later, she burst in rapid fire Spanish. I was clueless.
Tater looked me. “She wants to know why your lady out by the truck is holding a gun.”
I nosed towards the dark haired woman. “What’s her name?”
“I call her Mia,” Tater replied.
“Tell Mia that my friend is holding a gun for the same reason that she is—just to make sure that everything is going to be safe.”
Tater and Mia volleyed back and forth for a moment before Mia appeared to relax somewhat. She turned to me and in halting, broken English said, “Can you fix?” Her eyes looked toward the rusty wood burner that continued to seep tiny ribbons of smoke into the room.
The weight of impatience to get moving towards Devils Lake clashed with four pairs of dark eyes that held unswervingly on to me as I considered her question.
As if guided by some unspoken queue from his mother, one of the boys trotted over to me and bear hugged my leg.
Tater grinned and lit another cigarette. “They kinda grow on you, don’t they?”
I chuckled and shook my head. “Michelle . . . have you ever fixed a chimney?”
Chapter 44
*click*
OK, just a short note for the record before we head out. Let’s see, we got to the old farmhouse a little after 10:00 AM. There were no major problems on the way—as a matter of fact, we didn’t have any hostile encounters at all. Taking the back roads seemed to keep us out of the traffic jams entirely. We did manage to backtrack and avoid two small intersections that showed some activity and a few cars, but other than that, it was pretty smooth sailing. The chimney fiasco was another story. You know the expression, ‘before you do something, ten other things have to be done first’. Well it’s true. Michelle came in to the house and met everybody. After one look at the three little boys, she volunteered us to help out. But of course, Tater didn’t have a ladder to get onto the second story roof. No chimney cleaning equipment either. They say that necessity breeds invention, so we ended up winching out the stuck sedan. Our next move was pulling my truck close to the house. It was still too short, and that, coupled with the generally dilapidated condition of the roof, forced us to rethink. We ended up building a rickety ladder out of the sawmill slabs from the barn. Tater wasn’t kidding either; there was a pile of them in there about forty feet long and maybe fifteen feet wide—taller than me, too, in the right hand section of the old barn. The center part was wide open with the exception of a few scattered mounds of moldy silage. The left side of the barn formerly held stalls, but it looked as if they had been removed years ago to make room for other farm equipment, none of which was there. Anyhow, we built a ladder that was held together by a few rusty nails that we pulled out of the barn siding, and then reinforced with lengths of fencing wire that we found behind the farmhouse. I managed to get on the roof, and then Michelle handed me up a length of the slab wood. My plan was to smash it up and down in the chimney to break loose the accumulation of bird nests, but of course, I didn’t think about the chimney cap being in the way. It took a solid hour of chipping away with a little framing hammer before I was able to loosen the metal tabs enough to swivel the chimney cap out of the way. Then it was another forty-five minutes of bashing and twisting until we hit daylight in the fireplace. There was still a lot of little crap inside the chimney, and Michelle came up with the idea to use a length of paracord with a rough ball made out of the wire fencing tied in the middle of the rope. It actually worked really well, and reminded me of the ‘rope and brush’ bore cleaners I used for firearms. When we were done with that, I sawed up enough of the slab wood for several nights worth of fire while Michelle prepared a few of our spare MRE’s for Tater, Mia, and her boys.
By the time they were done eating, it was about 2:00 PM. The old stove, true to its reputation, was starting to put out some serious heat, and we finally got around to getting the ‘official’ permission to park the truck at the farm. The boat went in the creek easy enough, and then I pulled my pickup into the center section of the barn. We had brought along additional supplies just in case, and after sorting out the food that had to go with us, Michelle took the rest in for the kids. She even gave them half of my precious supply of hot chocolate. While she was doing that, I grabbed the shovel I brought and dug a trench in the bone dry dirt against the inside foundation wall. Our shotguns, some ammunition, and a few other valuables that we weren’t taking with us—but at the same time, didn’t want to just leave in the vehicle—got put in heavy plastic bags and buried. The dirt was then packed down firm, and the top scattered with straw. The bass boat was equipped with a
twelve gallon external fuel tank, and we had three additional gas cans, five gallons each, with us as well. The transfer of our weapons and packs to the boat didn’t take long, and after a few final waves from Tater and Mia’s family, Michelle and I headed downstream.
Chapter 45
“What is that?” Michelle pointed toward a bobbing mass in the creek ahead of us.
“I don’t know,” I said as I idled down the twenty-five horsepower outboard motor to a crawl and looked where she indicated. The channel up ahead shifted to the left and narrowed, and dead center was a blockage of some type. As we drifted closer, we’re able to pick out the bloated and waterlogged form of a cow at the center of the debris.
“Great. We’re what . . . maybe a mile from the barn and we’ve already hit a snag,” she hissed in frustration.
“Sorry, my mapping program doesn’t update with dead livestock sightings. Besides, it won’t take us long to lift the boat around, and then we can get moving again. We’re not that far from where this stream enters into Silver Lake, anyhow.”
True to my prediction, we were able to ‘float lift’ the boat around the obstacle, and the job was accomplished without having to unload our gear—not that we brought a whole lot with us. Both Michelle and I had light packs that only contained critical supplies for our search and, hopefully, rescue attempt. Each of us also wore a tactical vest overtop of our weather gear. Mine was primarily loaded with high capacity magazines for the silenced .22, although I did have a pair of thirty round AR magazines—Michelle’s vest was geared only toward the 5.56 platform. Neither of us had anywhere near a full military combat load out, electing for speed and mobility rather than prolonged firefights. If it came to that, we had extra ammo in the boat. Then again, the likelihood that we would have to sustain an extended battle from onboard a bass boat seemed doubtful to me.
After passing around the ‘cow clog,’ I ran the boat another quarter mile before beaching it near a thick tangle of an old, washed out beaver dam.
“Why are we stopping here?” Michelle asked.
“I want to stash one of our gas cans and the truck keys up in the brush above the creek. That way, if something happens to one of us, the other person will have a way to get home, even if somebody comes by and siphons the gas from my truck.”
“Let’s make sure we don’t have something ‘happen to one of us’ on this trip, OK?” Michelle's voice was devoid of any emotion; a sure sign, as I had learned through the years, that she was doing her best to bite back what she truly wanted to say.
“Sorry . . . don’t mean to be a downer . . . just trying to be a realistic.”
She said nothing in reply, and it only took us a few minutes to offload and camouflage the gas and a key, and then we were back in the boat heading downstream. I kept the motor at low RPMs—just enough to steer us through the current from the recent rain as Michelle rode point with binoculars in hand and rifle at the ready.
“OK, slow down,” she said after another five minutes of travel. “I see the overpass. It’s got to be Highway 281.”
I cut the motor and grabbed on to a passing bush, holding our position in the creek as Michelle studied the scene.
“Eric, that’s not much of an overpass. It’s more like a low bridge over a country creek. Are you sure we can even go underneath it?”
“I had to duck my head a bit when I came through it a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure we can manage.”
“Was the water level this high when you came through last time?”
“It was actually a little bit higher I think. Then again,” I continued as I looked at the boat, “the last time I was in a flat bottom. This one is a semi-V, so we might have to lay back a little further.”
“That might not be our only problem. I can see several vehicles on the bridge. One of them is upside down, and there’s at least three people up there as well. I have no idea if they’re infected or not. Also, that little cluster of trees on the right side of the road is preventing me from seeing anything in that direction.”
One of the tricks I’ve learned through the years of boating is to keep a short length of rope tied to a hard point near my seat. On the other end of the rope I have a sliding loop, and attached to that loop is a small set of clamping pliers. When the situation arises, it’s easy to hold your boat in position by locking the pliers on any handy anchor point, like a tree limb or root ball. If nothing small is available, you can use the sliding loop to hold onto larger objects. Either way, it’s quick and effective—and it’s exactly what I did before picking up my own binoculars.
I studied the landscape from the creek all the way up to the bridge. Like most places in North Dakota, it was basically flat. On the left hand side of the creek just before you hit the highway was a rather disheveled looking farmhouse. As far as I knew though, it wasn’t abandoned . . . or at least it hadn’t been. The bridge was maybe a tenth of a mile ahead, and as Michelle had indicated, there were several vehicles blocking it. I tried to keep the binoculars steady in the bobbing current, and after a minute I saw two people emerge from behind one of the cars. They seemed to be pointing toward the south, but that’s about all I could make out from here.
“Infected or not, that’s our direction,” I said.
Michelle shifted her rifle into a ready position as I unclipped the bush anchor and guided the boat downstream. It wasn’t a straight run; the creek meandered through a series of large sways and loops on its course toward the bridge, and both of us kept a sharp eye out as it loomed closer. About seventy feet away I cut the engine off and dropped the little mushroom shaped anchor. We drifted another twenty or so feet before it caught the soft bottom and slowed us to a stop. From this distance it was easy to see the pileup of vehicles that blocked the road. What also became visible was a traffic jam that stretched to the south further than we could see. Several of the cars, trucks, and RV’s in the jam were burnt out husks. A few of them still smoked.
“This isn’t good,” Michelle whispered with her neck slightly angled towards me. “With this many cars, there ought to be a whole lot of people milling around.”
I was about to reply when a group of four people materialized from among the wreckage on the north side of the low bridge. They were moving in a series of leapfrogs, with at least two of them stationary and watching toward the south at all times. Through my binoculars, none of them appeared armed—with firearms, anyhow. One of them carried a baseball bat, visibly stained from use on objects other than baseballs. Another one was hefting what appeared to be a machete. The other two were lost to my vision momentarily. Above the quiet babble of the stream, I could hear car doors being opened. I eased my binoculars down and let them hang from the neck strap, and then picked up the silenced .22.
Michelle had dropped her own binoculars and now held her AR in a two handed grip, the business end of which was pointed directly toward the bridge, and I was scanning the area through the reflex sight of my Ruger when a scruffy haired, baseball hat wearing head poked up over the bridge’s cement guardrail. The face below the brim did a wide-eyed double take when he realized the barrels of two rifles were pointed at him, and quick as a flash he dropped below the cement barrier. Extremely faint voices crept across the breeze to our ears as we held position in the current.
“What now?” Michelle whispered over her shoulder.
In answer to her question, another head—this one covered in an orange winter cap—peered over the railing for a split second before diving down out of sight.
“If they were infected, they wouldn’t be acting like that,” I whispered back.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t shoot at us.”
“I didn’t see any guns, did you?”
“The guns you don’t see are the ones that get you killed.”
I glanced up at the afternoon sky as Michelle’s statement sank in. We had maybe ninety minutes of daylight left, and I wanted to get to the ranger station before then. These little delays—from the farmhouse chimn
ey to the dead cow, and now this—were starting to really irk me.
“Get ready,” I hissed to Michelle as I dropped the Ruger to a less threatening, one handed position across my chest. With my other hand, I half cupped an improvised megaphone and called out. “Attention on the bridge, we mean you no harm . . .”
I was interrupted by the orange hat poking over the cement. The face below it was young—maybe eighteen or so—and nervously gesturing the universal hand signal for silence. The raised finger in front of his lips slid sideways and pointed to the south at the long line of traffic. I glanced in that direction, but from my slightly lower elevation, I could see nothing except cars. I could guess, though. Pointing my finger to the northern side of the creek next to the bridge, I mimicked his silence gesture and then nodded in that direction. He glanced tensely again towards the south before quickly nodding at me and disappearing below the buttress.
In a short span, I had pulled up the anchor slightly and let the boat glide forward, dropping it again when we reached the slow eddy that twisted in a lazy half circle just before the water drifted underneath the bridge. The current pushed us gently towards the bank, and we leaned backwards to allow the nose of the bass boat to lift slightly onto shore. When the friction stopped us, Michelle agilely hopped out and crouched, steadying the boat with one hand while she held the AR with the other. I was tracking through the red crosshair, searching the area for any targets as she dug her heels in and pulled the boat further onto dry land. When it stopped, I padded quietly onto shore.
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 46