Rose and Jamie didn’t move, weapons still pointed at the men. Rose had been in this type of situation before and she was glad to see that Jamie was not listening to the man. Realizing they likely weren’t going to drop their guns, the man stopped and put his hands up. “Honest, we’re here to help you guys out,” the man said. “My name’s Zach. Me and my merry men here are survivors just like you. Let us help you.”
Zach was smiling in a way that did not make Rose feel comfortable. He was about six feet tall with tan olive skin, jet black hair, brown eyes and shabby clothing; jeans and a sweatshirt that was faded, dirty and sweaty. The men with Zach were dressed similarly, all in old and dirty clothing, but all appeared to be relatively healthy. None of them were gaunt and did not have that look of hunger she’d seen many times in the infected. These men were athletically toned and well-fed, like Rose and Jamie. Their friendly demeanor worried her. If it came to a fight, Rose and Jamie were at least evenly matched if not outnumbered, since Rose and Jamie currently had a position of advantage behind the car.
Calling to Zach but not lowering her gun, Jamie asked “How can we trust you?”
Smiling, Zach looked over both his shoulders to the two men on either side of him and nodded, both pairs backed away. “My men will stay back and will not raise their weapons. We can talk and you can decide if I’m trustworthy. Only me.”
Jamie lowered her gun slightly and leaned over to Rose, “Should we trust them?” she said quietly.
“No,” replied Rose in a terse whisper not lowering her gun or taking her eyes off Zach.
Jamie sighed. “Rose, we need to get this tire fixed and these guys aren’t going to just leave I don’t think. Let them help us and once the car is fixed, we can get out of here. Okay?”
Rose ground her teeth mulling over Jamie’s word, her eyes boring into Zach skull. Finally, with a grunt, she lowered her gun slightly. Rose growled at Zach, “Get over here.”
Zach complied and met Jamie and Rose at the front of the car. Jamie had reholstered her gun but Rose kept hers readily available in her hand next to her leg. Being this close to Zach, she could see that he was only slightly older than them, maybe 30 at the most. He wasn’t clean shaven, but had only a few days worth of stubble so he clearly had access to a razor and water.
“We have tires, tire irons, jacks and gas back at our camp. We can go back, grab some supplies, and then come back and change your tire. How does that sound?” said Zach, completely pleasant.
“Too good to be true,” replied Rose matter-of-factly. “You want us to believe that you will just help us out and send us on our way for no reason? Because you’re a great guy?”
“Well I am a great guy, and I hope we’ll have time for you to figure that out. But yes, I just want to help you guys. That’s what we’re doing out here. We help people,” said Zach, leaning against the front of their car and grabbing an apple out of his pocket before taking a bite.
“How could that possibly benefit you?” asked Rose, skeptical.
“Geez you guys must have been out of the way for a while,” said Zach, his mouth full of apple. “There aren’t much of us left. By us, I mean non-infected. We’ve gotta help each other out or we’ll all be screwed. We’re from Boston. We were sent out here to find people and direct them toward the city. Boston’s one of the last main strongholds left. They’ve got everything there: water, food, even electricity. We’re one of the outposts here in Portsmouth. Anyone comes across our radar, we patch them up and point them in the right direction.”
Rose was still trying to be skeptical but doubt was eating away at her skepticism. If there was a surviving society of people out there, it would make sense to set up outposts to direct people to the city proper. If they had a place that’d withstood the infected, only having more people there would help. Had the human race turned this corner while she was hiding in Canada?
“Are you fucking kidding me?” asked Jamie, disbelief plain in her voice. “Boston survived and they even have power?”
“Yes ma’am,” answered Zach, a smug smile on his face as he took another bite of apple.
“You realize this is a little hard to believe,” said Rose, finally holstering her gun and putting her hands on her hips. “We saw how deadly the infected were, how quickly cities and towns were decimated. You really expect us to believe you?”
“Look I’m not here to convince you,” answered Zach, standing up. “We’ll patch up your tire and get you on your way. If you head into Boston, great. If not, well I did my job and I’ll sleep just fine tonight.” He turned and began walking back toward his men.
Jamie looked over to Rose. She could tell Jamie wanted to follow them, but was hanging back, waiting for Rose to affirm it was the right choice. Rose wished she knew. Finally, Rose shrugged and began to follow Zach. She whispered over to Jamie, “Keep your eyes open, we may have to fight our way out of this.”
Jamie nodded and followed behind Rose.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was only about a 20 minute walk to Zach’s camp. It looked like it had been a small military base at one point but destroyed and then rebuilt. Zach confirmed that it had been a holdout during the first year of the infection but had been overrun and abandoned before being retrofitted by a team from Boston. That team had disappeared about a year later and Zach’s team was sent to take over the base. According to him, it appeared as though the previous team had just up and left and there’d been no sign of them since.
True to his word, Zach and his men had all the supplies needed to change and replace their blown tire. Rose and Jamie were given a quick tour of the base before their new tire and other supplies were loaded up and lugged back to their car. One of Zach’s men went to work changing the tire while Rose supervised, concerned about possible sabotage. This fear seemed to be unfounded as the man finished up without issue. Zach and Jamie had been making small talk the entire time, much to the annoyance of Rose. Jamie would laugh often and loudly at anything remotely funny Zach would say, almost to the point that Rose thought she was flirting with him.
When the tire was finished, Rose was at her limit of Zach and was ready to leave immediately. Unfortunately, by the time the tire was changed, it was deep into the evening and was getting dark quickly. They’d be lucky to make it out of the city before nightfall, a point not lost on Zach.
“Not safe to travel the roads around here during the day,” Zach said, kicking their new tire. “Even worse at night. Look I know this sounds exactly like I planned it this way, but it’d really be the safer option if you guys spent the night.”
After noting the time and the encroaching darkness, Rose had considered this might have become an option. But hearing Zach suggest it made her temper flare and her judgement fly out the window. “Thanks, Zach, but I think we’ll take our chances. We can fend for ourselves,” Rose sneered.
Zach put his hands up, surrendering, but Jamie jumped in before he could speak. “Rose, don’t be an idiot. With all the shit in the road and infected around, it’s not like we can just drive around slowly with our lights on. We’d be sitting ducks.”
“We have warm food,” added Zach. “And you can sleep in your car if that’d make you feel safer. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“What do you say Rose?” asked Jamie. “It’s only one night.”
After a moment to think, Rose gave in and emitted something between a sigh and grunt before opening the driver’s door, flopping down into the driver’s seat and closing the door. She could hear Jamie say to Zach, “Jump in the back seat” and Zach order his men to “double-time it” back to the camp. Jamie slid into the passenger seat and Zach wedged himself into what little room there was in the back seat behind Jamie.
“Just one night, okay?” said Jamie, squeezing Rose’s leg. Rose fired up the car and they were off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It indeed took Rose some time to weave through the debris on the road and with the growing darkness, they
arrived at the camp just after Zach’s men did. There was an outer cordon of chain-link fence topped with razor-wire that Rose parked just inside of near the entrance/exit gate.
Not counting the five men Rose had already met, there appeared to be only two other men at the camp. Everyone was gathering around a large brick fireplace near the front of the camp that had a crude stovetop built onto it heated by a wood-burning fire underneath. On the stovetop was a large copper kettle with steam rising off it. Rose couldn’t smell it from this distance, but she knew it wasn’t just boiling water and she could feel her mouth salivating at the thought. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, eating a hot meal that wasn’t canned would be nice.
Jamie had walked over to the stove and joined the men as Rose finished locking the car. Introductions had already begun when Rose arrived so she missed the names of the men who’d been with Zach earlier. Rose learned that one of the two men she hadn’t met was responsible for the soup they would be eating.
“Name’s Bill but everybody calls me Buck,” he said, shaking Rose’s hand. He was a large man, plump and greasy, with small eyes and a puffy, red face. He seemed to be out of breath simply from the introduction.
“Hello, I’m Rose and this is Jamie,” said Rose motioning to her companion. Jamie gave the man a smile but did not seem eager to shake his hand.
“And this is...Nick?” added Zach, motioning to the last man Rose had not met. “Nick is new to the camp as well. We just ran into him, what? A week ago?”
“Yeah I think it was about a week,” said Nick. Rose could tell Nick was different from the other men. He still had that sickly, gaunt look of someone who’d gone hungry for some time, but seemed on the mend now.
“Nick was in some dire straights when we found him. We’ll get him healthy enough then send him on his way to Boston. Probably any day now, right Nick?”
“Yeah you got it,” he answered, turning to Rose. “You made the right choice coming here, these guys are great.” Nick stood up and patted Zach on the back. Rose saw a flash of something behind Zach’s eyes but it was there and gone so quickly, she couldn’t place the emotion. Disgust? Pity?
“Alright, let’s eat!” said Zach, stepping away from Nick’s touch and toward the pot.
The food was good, much better than Rose had thought it was going to be. It was packed with vegetables and meat, all grown or caught by Zach and his men according to him. While Boston would send a messenger from time to time, each outpost was designed to be self-sufficient. According to Zach, as many strides as they’d made in Boston, there just wasn’t the infrastructure to have supplies shipped out to them or have established communication lines, at least not yet. That sounded reasonable to Rose but at the same time, it seemed like Zach had all the right things to say. Rose had decided to take all this with a grain of salt and to let the situation play out, ever watchful of Zach and his men.
Jamie had taken a different approach. As with any gathering, it wasn’t long before the alcohol came out and Jamie and Nick did not hesitate to partake. Everyone seemed to be drinking, but Rose was just too skeptical and stuck to water. Long after the soup was gone, the drinking continued into the night and as the night dragged on, the more tired Rose became. Several times, Rose had dropped some pretty obvious hints to Jamie it was time to head to the car for the night, but she was either too drunk or was just plain ignoring them. As much as Rose wanted to leave, she wasn’t going to leave Jamie behind.
Finally, Rose got the distraction she needed. Nick, after taking another shot of some yellow-colored booze someone had been pouring from an old milk jug, promptly passed out, face down, in some nearby grass. This was followed by raucous cheers from Zach’s men. Jamie, who was sitting in Rose lap, finally turned to her and said, “Alright, let’s go.”
Standing, Rose called to Zach while pointing at Nick, “Is he going to be alright?”
“Yeah he’ll be fine, we’ll get him back to his room. You guys sure you don’t want to stay inside the base? It’ll probably be more comfortable than your car.”
“We’re good. Thanks,” Rose answered turning away from Zach. Jamie put her arm around Rose’s shoulders and they both stumbled back to the car, Jamie near dead-weight.
Once Jamie’s butt to hit the passenger seat of the car, it didn’t take more than a minute before she was snoring away, her head leaning back on the headrest and her mouth open wide. Rose climbed into the driver’s seat, reclined it back as far as it would go and locked the doors of the car before she too surrendered to sleep, eager for the next morning’s arrival.
Rose wasn’t sure how long she’d slept but it’d been at least a few hours. It was still dark, but not as dark as it’d been; morning was approaching. All that water she’d been drinking had caught up with her and she needed to find a place to relieve herself. Jamie was still snoring in the passenger seat, but she’d shifted positions and her head was now wedged between the headrest and the A-frame of the car door. Quietly, Rose opened her door, re-locked it making sure she had the keys in her pocket, and closed it as quietly as possible. Jamie didn’t even stir.
The air outside the car was cool and crisp, refreshing after being locked in the warm, moist air inside the car. Making her way from the car into the camp, Rose patted her handgun verifying it was still in her holster on her hip. The fire in the stove was still flickering, casting an orange glow on the front of the base. Everything seemed quiet and deserted. There was a main front door to the base directly behind the fire. It was a metal door with metal hinges that appeared to be well taken care of and well oiled. Rose walked up to the door and gave it a yank, but it appeared to have been locked from the inside. Figuring that was probably good security protocol, Rose began to make her way around the base. On either side, there was about a 10 foot gap between the fences and the walls which made walking around it fairly easy despite some tall grass.
Rounding the back side of the base, Rose found several more doors but all of them were locked. Behind the base was a small field with at least five different gardens with raised beds, each bed surrounded by chicken wire. As Rose walked by them, she could see different varieties of vegetables in different stages of growth.
At the far end of the field was another building that Rose could distinctly see light coming from. This building seemed to be newer construction compared to the base behind her. As she approached, she found a large wooden door at the center of the building. Grabbing the handle, it appeared to be locked, but the door had not been closed tightly, a quick tug opening it up.
Not knowing what to expect, Rose unholstered her gun and entered inside. Inside the door was a small antechamber with a table and several chairs. The room was unoccupied but there were several lanterns burning illuminating the room brightly. In a sloppy pile in one of the chairs was a pair of shoes and some clothing that looked vaguely familiar to Rose. There were several doors off of this room, one each to her left and right, and one directly ahead of her in line with the front door.
Moving to the center door, Rose grabbed the handle with her left hand and slowly and quietly pulled it open. The door was solid wood and about 4 inches thick which had done a good job of deafening the sound, but as the door opened, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Born on the Bayou, playing loudly inside, spilled out. The room was also brightly lit with more lanterns which reflected brightly off the stainless steel table in the center of the large room. All along the walls of the room were all different cuts of meat, human meat, in different stages of dry-aging. Rose could easily distinguish between arms, legs and torsos hanging from hooks and chains all around the room and from the ceiling in some places.
In the center of the room, on a table straight out of an autopsy lab was Nick, or rather what was left of him. Nick’s torso was draining onto the table and over a lip into a tub where his dismembered legs and arms were also draining. Rose knew it was Nick because his dismembered head was propped up next to his torso on the table, his dead eyes staring right at the door Rose ha
d just come through. Buck was standing over the tub, his back to Rose, and he was whistling along to music.
Rose stood there, perfectly still, taking it all in while fighting off shock and the urge to flee. However Buck, still whistling, turned around. He didn’t immediately notice Rose, but must have caught her out of the corner of his eye. Buck took the deboning knife he was holding in his right hand, slammed it down on Nick’s torso sinking it deep where it stuck quivering, and pointed to Rose.
“Hey! You can’t…”
Rose didn’t realize she’d shot Buck. As if in slow motion, she saw the red hole appear in Buck’s forehead and the brain matter spray out the back of his head. It wasn’t until she looked down did she see that she still had the gun pointed in his direction, wisps of smoke twirling from the end of her barrell. However, this realization was quickly followed by the next that both doors she’d come through were left open and that shot had likely been heard.
Spinning on her heel, Rose sprinted through the doors and out into the gardens. Rose had almost reached the side of the base when she heard shouts from behind in the garden. Not slowing, Rose raced down the side of the base and shot out into the front. As she passed the stove, she heard the front metal door clang open and several people exit, their boots crunching in the dirt. Skidding to a stop at the car, Rose began to bang on the roof with the butt of her gun. Jamie sat up straight, eyes blood-shot and groggy. “We’ve got a problem Jamie,” said Rose loudly, turning to face the men behind her.
Zach and his four men were standing about 15 feet behind Rose in a semicircle with Zach at the center. Rose moved slowly to her left as Jamie exited the car, shotgun in hand.
Jordan Rose Duology (Book 2): Homecoming Page 8