Tish gave him a cool look and said, “I think that’s your job to help figure out, isn’t it, Deputy?”
He chuckled. “I suppose it is. If you’re squared away here, I suppose I’ll park the truck and see what my new coworkers have to say.” She turned and regarded the piles of supplies filling the clinic’s front room and smiled.
“It’s not everything I wanted and more, but it’s better than nothing.” She turned back and looked him in the eyes. “Thank you, Vir, truly. You have no idea what this represents.”
He smiled and shrugged. “I do the best I can, Doctor. If you’ll excuse me?”
She waved her hand. “Go. I’ve got plenty to do here without babysitting you. My dad should be at the station.”
Chapter 19
The seats of the armored personnel carrier were even more uncomfortable than he’d imagined they’d be. To add insult to injury, despite the relatively good condition of the road, every little bump hit like a ton of bricks. Something inside of the vehicle rattled. Miles stayed silent, but dubiously eyed the strips of duct tape holding various panels in place.
“What ya packing, nugget?” Janacek, the SEAL in the Padres cap said. His tone was anything but friendly. Lieutenant Ross had tucked his chin into his chest and appeared to be sleeping. His two subordinates were wide awake and seemed to be in the mood to chat.
Miles bristled, but he forced himself to push the reaction down. These guys didn’t know him from Adam. Yeah, sure, they knew he was the town marshal of a group of survivors, but what did that mean? For all he knew, they figured he only got the job because of his family connections, not because he was actually capable of taking care of himself.
Second, and perhaps most important, he had nothing to prove to these guys, any of them. Yeah, sure, they were Navy SEALs, baddest of the bad even before Z-Day, but he’d survived just as long as they had. The world didn’t offer much slack for the incapable, these days. If they didn’t recognize that, then tough. He’d show them by doing, one way or another.
Miles forced a cheery smile onto his face. “Custom-made short-barreled 300 Blackout upper with an EO Tech holographic sight. Troy free-float rail with a Surefire tactical light, AAC compact suppressor, and a MagPul vertical grip and adjustable stock. I swapped the lower out with one from an M4A1 we salvaged right after the day so I can go full-auto if need be.” He patted the rifle that lay across his lap. “It’s a bit of a mutt, but I built it and it’s saved my ass more times than I can count.”
Janacek grunted. “Yeah, well, if you burn through all your magazines in ‘fun mode’ don’t look to us; we’re using 7.62 and 5.56.” He jerked a thumb over at his own rifle, an immaculate-looking FN SCAR 17. It was either brand new or the SEAL treated it like a vintage car. Miles leaned toward the latter.
“Don’t mind the Gun Monkey,” Foraker interjected with a grin. “He’s got a quartermaster’s heart; mismatched parts give him the willies.” Janacek looked away and scratched his nose with a middle finger. The Chief chuckled and turned back to Miles. “You give up a lot of range with that round, don’t you?”
Miles smiled. This, at least, was something he could roll with. If not for the environment it was not unlike working in Larry’s shop, shooting the breeze and debating the merits and ballistic properties of various loads. “Sure,” he said. “If I was shooting supers I wouldn’t have any benefit — I’d be better off with a 7.62 like Janacek. But at short range, the heavy subsonics perform like a .45. And instead of having thirteen in a mag —” Miles patted his holstered Springfield. “I’ve got thirty. I’ve made head shots on zombies as much as a hundred yards out. Any further than that it’s a waste; the round starts dropping like a rock.” Miles fell silent as he reflected back on more dangerous and chaotic days. “When we used to go out, we’d alternate weapons systems on our teams. My father-in-law and, ah, Derek, usually handled the long range stuff. Sticks and I were more up close and personal.” He raised his head and met the Chief’s eyes. “Absent companions,” he said, in echo of their meal the night before.
The Chief nodded and Janacek frowned. Miles couldn’t read the underlying intent behind the expression. The guy looked like a stereotypical surfer dude but he had an amazing poker face.
“What happened to them?” Janacek said, finally. “Your friends.”
Miles paused for a moment. It wasn’t something that he talked much about; everyone he might have discussed it with already knew the story. It was something that just was, and any discussion of it had been long ago. Where to begin?
“You guys cross over many bridges on your way down here?” His tone was mild, but there an enough of an undercurrent in it that Janacek and Foraker glanced at one another. Finally, the Chief took the ball.
“No, we didn’t. Seems like most of them got blown up.” He patted the side of the LAV. “Slowed us down a bit, but it takes more than a creek to slow this baby down.”
Miles smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his eyes. “First week or so, we just holed up. I don’t remember who suggested the wall at first, but just like that, we were figuring it out. The first thing we did was block off traffic from the east and west. North and south we at least had the creek and the river to slow the things down, so it wasn’t as bad. We used cars, farm equipment, even school buses as temporary walls.” He looked up. “Pretty common job for farmers, in case you didn’t know, driving school buses. Gave them a steady income, and kept them busy in the winter months. Insurance, too, I guess. Anyway, as we got more and more secure we realized that while we did have a lot of what we needed, there was plenty of stuff that we had little or no supply of. Early on we realized there were some kids surviving in the school, so we went and got them, but they didn’t have anything. They were from all over, so it wasn’t like we could go to their houses and pack them a bag, you know? Some of these kids barely had clothing to wear, they’d gotten bloody, or ripped up, you have it.
“We got thirteen kids and one teacher out. I don’t know how many kids were in school that day. Surely there were a bunch at home sick, or whatever. A hundred, maybe?” Miles shivered. “I try not to think about it too much.”
“Been there,” the Chief echoed.
“So anyway, we had a secure position, so we figured no better time than any to start scavenging.” Miles snorted. “We had it all figured out. Even went pretty smooth, at first. Sticks was my best friend from high school. Big into off-roading, that sort of thing. He had a dune buggy he’d put together with his dad as a project car. We armored that thing up nice and tight, covered it up with chain link and sheet metal. He’d run interference for us. Run up and down the roads with his stereo blaring, get the zombies chasing after him. Worked like a champ.
“We went into Lewisville because it’s smaller; we figured it wouldn’t be as dangerous as Cincinnati. The town is this huge triangle in the junction of a couple of rivers, so you cross a bridge coming from any direction.
“When the National Guard got called up, they set up blockades on some of the bridges. As best we can tell they got overrun, because they left behind all their equipment and weapons. We had to unload to clear a path for the salvage vehicles, and we took that time to grab what we could.” He patted his rifle. “That’s where I got the more legally dubious parts of my gun, along with the Humvees and the bigger cargo vehicles. So that part went pretty smooth, all things considered, so we kept moving forward.
“The plan was to use three school buses to block off the entrance to the local Target, then go through the place at our leisure. We stripped most of the seats out of the buses to make room. And, it worked great. Sticks cleared out the parking lot, we parked a bus on either side of the doors, then capped it off with the third bus. Ended up spending the night and packed those buses up to the roof.” Miles shook his head at the memory. “Place was abandoned. Any survivors were chased out by anyone who turned, and the ones that hadn’t wandered out were easy pickings.
“Honestly, if we’d had the room we would have
kept at it; there was still plenty of stuff in the Target, and there were several other stores in the strip mall next door. Of course, it was a good thing we didn’t stay longer. Hindsight, and all that.
“We were getting close to the bridge out of town when the ground started shaking. At first, we didn’t realize what it was, then we saw the fireball to the north. The Air Force had come to save the day,” Miles spat. “And they were blowing the bridges for us. The first two buses made it over the line, and I don’t know what the hell the pilots were thinking. I know they were low enough to see the school bus, they were in A-10s, for God’s sake, but they fired anyway. The bridge went up when Derek’s bus was halfway across. It just, I don’t know, disintegrated. You look at a school bus and think hey, that’s big, and it’s solid, but it’s nothing.” Miles reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “We knew it was pointless, but Larry and I were in the second bus, and we stopped and got out. We had to make sure, you know? If there was some chance that Derek and the guy who was with him—” Miles voice trailed off. “Huh. Can’t remember his name for the life of me. How horrible is that? Tommy? Bobby?” He shrugged. “Too many people over the years, I guess. But, yeah. They did a good job. Took the bridge out and dropped the entire span into the river. We got down there and started looking, just hoping, I guess. By the time we got down onto the bank the zombies were starting to lemming off the other side. Nice big boom on the outskirts of town — it drew them out like somebody kicked an ant hill. We never did find anything; there wasn’t any time. Made it back up the far bank and back onto to the bus. Back behind our wall.” He stared at Janacek and Foraker in turn. “So, sure, call me nugget all you want, guys. Make your jokes. I don’t have your skills in any way, shape, or form. But I survived eight years, on the ground, when people who should have been doing something to help were stabbing us in the back.” His voice was starting to rise in anger, and he forced it back down. “You know how much harder it got to do supply runs when we were exposing ourselves every couple of miles, trying to find crossings or fords where there used to be a bridge? How do you put in a new bridge quietly?” He stared at Janacek. “You know how to do that?”
The other man regarded him for a moment, then gave a shallow shrug.
“Yeah, didn’t think so.” He settled back into the seat and tried to get comfortable. Finally he gave up and mimicked Ross’ position by tucking his chin into his chest. At this rate, the trip was liable to take at least another couple of hours, and all things considered he’d rather spend them sleeping than in uncomfortable silence.
He hadn’t realized the depth of his anger. Once the initial shock and surprise of the last few days had worn off, once he’d started thinking about those old memories, the rush of emotion that had coursed through him had been overwhelming. And while he himself had good reasons to feel the way he did, he was hardly the only survivor that had a bone to pick. He’d told Tish that the concept of an ‘evil military’ was a silly trope of apocalyptic fiction, but the truth they’d experienced was perhaps more pitiful. The survivors didn’t trust the military, and by extension, any remnants of government, because when the chips had been on the table they had exhibited little more than sheer incompetence from the top down.
Was that broken trust irreparable? He didn’t know. There were others, maybe, who hadn’t lost as much, or hadn’t been so directly impacted by what had gone down, but he’d heard about the undercurrent in the town hall. For every person who was happy to see some semblance of the old government, there was someone else enraged by the reminder. Nothing to do, now — I need to keep my focus on the now and not worry about what comes next.
And then the drone of the engine and the sense of movement did something he never would have expected — they lulled Miles into a light, but dreamless sleep.
Charlie’s awakening came as a shock.
It wasn’t the result of any external factor. No, his shock stemmed from the fact that his return to consciousness was slow and natural, prompted by the slow-building pressure in his bladder. As Charlie lay there and composed his thoughts, he realized the reason for the abnormal morning was that he hadn’t dreamed. He’d slept well for the first time in a long time.
He opened his eyes and studied the wall next to his bed. Ever since Z-Day, he’d preferred his bed to be in the corner. On the nights when he did sleep he’d often thrash himself away from a nightmare only to find himself wedged against the wall. Even in the depths of sleep he sought the security that the wall seemed to provide. He’d tried sleeping with the headboard against the wall, only to wake and find himself curled into a ball at the headboard. So, he slept with the mattress paralleling the wall to satisfy his own unconscious desires. Even though the rough-hewn timbers of the cabin left scrapes and scratches on his back, more often than not he’d find himself wedged up against it.
This morning, though — he’d not only slept well, he’d done so in the center of the bed. Odd, that. He ruminated over it only shortly before the insistence of his bladder drove him to throw the covers off and rise.
The light was blinding as he opened the door to step outside. He glanced at the position of the sun and judged that it was almost noon; he’d been more tired than he’d thought. Small wonder Dalton was nowhere around. This time of day, he was liable to be horse-trading their share of the salvage for things that were more useful to them than booze or Spaghetti O’s.
I hope he took Corey along, Charlie thought with a grunt. He had things he needed to get done, and the boy was liable to get in the way. Especially if he had to spend all day dodging the military as Miles had asked.
Inside, Charlie wet a towel from a pitcher of water and rinsed the night sweat from his face, torso, and crotch. I need to talk someone into going in with me to build a bathhouse or something. There were a few showers set up, but they were cold due to the logistical difficulty of heating intermittent amounts of water. If it were centralized, though . . .
Put in a wood furnace of some sort, have a hot tub for soaking, and rig up some showers. He sighed at the thought. Maybe the Carpenters would have an interest in expanding their laundry and incorporating some of his ideas. He’d have to check with them later. If nothing else, it would give him some sort of avenue to put his savings to use. For the most part, he just accumulated trade credit through Jim Piper and only rarely used it for the few personal items he needed. Have to do something about the soap; the home-brew wood ash lye soap the Carpenters used to launder clothes would never do.
Charlie paused. Another oddity — here he was, thinking about the future, with himself as something other than an inactive observer. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. He looked at his reflection in the mirror hung over the sink and studied the planes of his own face.
Don’t get your hopes too high, he thought to his reflection. Who’s to say the kid will stick around? They could make a break for it instead of waiting.
He stared at himself for a long moment, until he finally smiled at himself in the mirror. At least I know I’m not around the bend, I didn’t start talking to myself. He huffed laughter at his own expense. If the kid’s there, or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s a leap of faith, but it’s also time for me to live again. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do that.
The old sore spot deep inside of him ached at the thought, but he knew that was just an emotional reaction. Sheila and Cooper were dead and had been for a long time. They weren’t coming back, and short of killing himself, he wasn’t liable to see them again, if at all.
Charlie had never been a churchgoing type. He’d gone, mainly for his wife at first, and later for his son. After Z-Day, any interest he’d had in attendance had been burned away. If there was a God, He was obviously an uncaring one, to leave a doubter like Charlie alive and immune through all this, while letting two who’d so fervently believed in Him to be reduced to monstrosities.
Despite Charlie’s antipathy, the community wasn’t large enough to entirely avoid the concept.
While their doctrine was different, the one thing that both Pastor Dave and Rabbi Behrens had spoken on was the subject of suicide. They’d both observed that while they couldn’t understand the reason for the end, they could understand the way they needed to react to it.
“Lift each other up,” Pastor Dave had proclaimed one Sunday where Charlie had found himself close enough to overhear. At the time, he’d listened just long enough to get angry and make his way out of the building, but now, the words resonated with him. “Life is a precious gift, and not ours to lose for our own sake. If you must die, die well, as our Lord did, and as he said in the book of John — ‘there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’”
Charlie flexed his fingers and studied the scars on the back of his hands. Of course, he’d never really tried to commit suicide. For whatever reason, the infection would not take hold in him as it had so many others. Testing the possibility was perhaps toeing the line, but short of being completely consumed, biters posed little threat.
But there was a difference between living to live and just existing. Charlie could not in good faith declare that he’d been doing more than treading water for a while now. Well. No longer, it was time to put away the shell and see what kind of life he could build if he was actually trying to build one, instead of just sleepwalking through his days.
He dabbed himself dry and put on a fresh undershirt and a button down that was still on the clean side. He considered for a moment, and then grabbed the small backpack he carried on runs. There were sufficient supplies stocked in the buses before every run, but he still preferred to carry something portable just in case. The backpack held a change of socks and underwear, some bottled water, a bit of food, and several loaded magazines and some boxed ammunition for his pistol. He balanced the pistol on his left hip with the scabbard for his Bowie knife on the right and shrugged into his leather jacket despite the relative warmth of the day. If all went well, he wouldn’t be wearing it for long, anyway.
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