Lyle threw me the bottle, and I took pull on the bottle. “Actually, Lyle, I had a pretty good record of rescuing people.” I took another drink, and tossed the bottle to Claire. “I consider what we're going through right now a temporary setback.” We all shared a laugh. The cheap liquor was doing its magic.
The laughter faded into the night. Lyle took the bottle from Claire and had another drink. He kept it in his hand, and swirled the dark, vicious liquid around in the bottle. He seemed to be getting serious. “You know, Denise said something about your rescues in the past. Something caused you to stop going out to save people. What happened?”
Claire looked very uncomfortable. “It's a long story,” I said, playing with a piece of debris from the floor. “And it doesn't have a nice ending.”
“I'd like to know,” Lyle said. “If me and my people are going to live in Cannon Fields, we have to know all about you.”
“You really want to know?” I said, looking at Claire. She looked like she wanted to dig a hole and disappear, as I began. “Claire and I joined Cannon Fields about one year into its existence. They were living on food stocks that they had on hand. Eventually, the residents accepted us as one of their own. I settled down with my Karen, and Claire fell in love with Ryan. A few months later, we were living second lives. I was happy in my little home, and Claire was pregnant with Alex. We had both been given second chances.” Claire stared blankly at the fire.
“The following spring and summer were pretty rough. We managed to make a few rescues, but they were all people that were nearby. Lisa and Elizabeth's family were first, followed by a few more. Then, we had to stop rescues, at least temporarily.”
Lyle was hanging on my words. “Why?”
“Our leader, Denise, had a plan. We would grow and process our own food, and we would hunt in the woods for deer, rabbit, and whatever else we could find out there. We planted corn, vegetables, grains, and other assorted food in the open spaces of Cannon Fields. We were optimistic that we could at least supplement our food stocks, but the Alabama soil was unforgiving and the crops didn't grow very well. Our gardens failed, and the plants were all eaten by bugs, or wilted from lack of water. The hunting wasn't too good, either. All the animals just seemed to go away. Our hunters came back with nothing.”
“You began going through your food stocks faster than you thought,” said Lyle.
“Things got real bleak as summer turned to fall. Our food was really low by then. The prospect of starvation was tearing Cannon Fields apart. Denise had to make some real good speeches to keep us together. Some people left anyway. They just lined up and walked away. We never saw then again. For those that remained, we started skipping meals to save food. We all started to lose weight. I had to make a few new notches in my belt to keep my pants up. As fall turned to winter, we were all getting weaker.” Lyle handed me the bottle, and I took a drink. The cheap liquor was beginning to take on a sour taste that made me vaguely sick to my stomach. Claire was still staring into space. I think she was trying not to listen.
“The food got critical as December rolled around. We ate wild onions, herbs, and mushrooms from the woods. Sometimes we had an occasional rabbit or two as well, but they were thin with hardly any meat on them. Not to mention the resident Red-Eyes usually tore them up before we got to them. When spring finally showed up, I think someone actually made soup out of the dandelions in the fields. Tasted horrible, but it kept us alive.”
“But you made it through,” Lyle said.
“We were weak, but we managed to plant more corn, wheat, and vegetables. We scrounged for canned food in the stores, and cleaned out all the shelves everywhere we went. Some of us even went as far south as Birmingham, or west to the Georgia border to check for supplies. We stayed away from the north and Huntsville because the stories coming out of there were not good. Too many zombies on the hunt.” I paused for another drink. Claire's ice blue eyes were a little watery.
“We pulled together. We lost a few, and had to stand by while we burned their bodies to keep them from the zombies. We wouldn't have made it if we didn't stick together. We waited and hoped. The corn and wheat grew strong, and the vegetable gardens exploded with food. Even the animals came back. Sal the butcher was busy all spring and summer. We had a surplus, enough extra food even for the next winter. We weren't going to starve, and everyone started gaining weight again. There was a future for us. It was nothing short of a miracle.”
“And the rescues started again,” Lyle said.
“It was Doctor Connelly. She made a great speech about how we were all blessed, and about how we should share it with other people. She said the human race depended on it. Denise agreed, added something about how every person we add made us stronger. Sydney, our resident whiz kid, got the radio working. He hooked it up to car batteries, we found him a scrap antenna, and as soon as he flipped the switch, the calls for help came over the airwaves. We would pack up and go to the rescue. Got pretty good at it too. Like a crack squad, we would go in and scoop up all the people to bring them home. Ten perfect rescues in all, about thirty souls brought to Cannon Fields. It made us feel good. It made us feel like we were doing something, not just surviving. It was almost like we were pushing back the darkness. Then, the River Mills rescue came up.” I took a long swig of liquor and handed the bottle to Claire. The tragic end of my story was near.
“It was like all the others. Sydney picked up a frantic woman on the radio, calling for help. She said they were under attack by bandits from the road. We piled into our vehicles and hit the road. River Mills subdivision was the destination. We had never met them before. In fact, the call for help was the first we ever knew of them. We did our best, but got there too late. The battle was already over. We found nothing but the bodies. Men, women, and children...all dead. We thought we had failed, but we went house-to-house, looking for survivors, but found nothing. Then, right before we gave up and left, a survivor came out of one of the houses. He led us to the last remaining River Mills residents. Fifteen in all. Nine men and six women. They thanked us. Kissed our cheeks and gave us hugs. We put them in our vehicles and took them home.”
Claire grabbed the backpack and retreated into the darkness. Lyle watched her go. I continued my story. It was too late to stop now.
“We brought them home, and put them in quarantine. We had to make sure nobody was bitten. They accepted it with a smile. We fed them. Gave them new clothes and a place to sleep. We said good night, and locked them inside.”
“Something bad happened,” Lyle said. “Claire wouldn't have left the fire if everything turned out okay,” Lyle said.
I ignored him and went on with the story, anxious to finish. “During the night, they broke out of quarantine. They went to a few houses, stole weapons, and took our people hostage. Went down the streets taking people prisoner. Men, women, and especially children.”
“Christ,” Lyle whispered.
“We fought them in the streets, but we couldn't shoot at some of them because they had our kids in front of them as human shields. We managed to wound two before they broke into another house. 1201 Songbird Lane. The house on the corner. They broke in through the back door and barricaded themselves inside, with some of our people as hostages. We surrounded them, and Denise tried to talk them out of anything rash. They had been on the road too long and were unstable. Unreasonable demands for all of our food, water, and guns came out from their leader. Not some of our supplies, all of it. It was impossible. Denise tried to talk them down, give them a few supplies to make them go away. They didn't listen. And then...” I paused to brace myself for the conclusion to my story. Our story. The story of our ordeal.
“They started shooting the hostages. Our people. Right through the head. They tossed the bodies out while we watched, helpless to do anything. Our men, women, and even the children.”
“The children? How did it end?” Lyle said quietly.
“We stormed the house. Fought them room to room. Some of them e
scaped and tried to run, but we caught them. Dragged them back to the house, and we passed sentence right there in the front yard. No trial. No alternatives. One by one, we shot them through the head. Me, Ben, and a few others. We executed them. We shot them dead for their crimes, even as they begged for their lives. We killed them all as the residents watched. After it was done, we made a promise. As the rain came down, we promised ourselves that no one was going to hurt us again.”
“And the next day?” Lyle asked.
“We burned the bodies to keep the zombies away. Can't bury anyone these days or the Red-Eyes will come. We mourned our people, and we mourned what we had become. We crossed a line that day, and couldn't go back. A little more of our humanity had died. We thought we had it all figured out. We thought no one could touch us inside our gates, but we were wrong. The apocalypse had truly touched Cannon Fields, and we took our rightful place in the broken landscape. It took a while, but we managed to piece it back together. We still can't forget though. I still see the pain in everyone's eyes. One of the casualties was rescues. None of us had the heart to go out there anymore. We were afraid. Not just afraid of what was out there waiting for us, but that the massacre might happen again. From then on, rescue calls on the radio were ignored, and we tried to get on with our lives.”
Lyle was looking at me with wide eyes. “Why me? Why are you helping me?”
Smiling the best I could, I said, “Maybe it was time again. Time to not be afraid, I guess. And above all, the Doctor is right. The people left behind need to help each other, or the human race will disappear from the earth. I guess that's why we're helping people again.”
“I'm grateful,” Lyle said. “Claire...will she be all right?”
I got up, and brushed off my pants. “She'll be fine. It was the kids we lost that day that hurt her. I'll go find her. Keep an eye on the van, okay?”
“Okay,” Lyle said. He put his head in his hands.
I went to find Claire in the creaky, yellow house. The door from the patio room to the house was open. I assumed she had gone into the house alone. Claire knew better than that.
The door led to a small kitchen. I caught a glimpse of faded flowered wallpaper and busted tile through the open door. “Claire,” I said in the loudest voice I dared. “You in there?”
There was no answer for a long minute. Then, a small voice came from the house. “In here. Come on in and join the party.”
I stepped over piles of debris and broken furniture, closing the door behind me to give us a little privacy. It was an older kitchen, probably built sometime in the seventies. The appliances were all of the vintage variety except for the refrigerator, which was one of those fashionable stainless-steel ones. Huge gaps marred the sandy yellow tile, and water had damaged the pretty flowered wallpaper in spots. All the drawers and the refrigerator door were wide open, and the contents were dumped on the floor. No food, just piles of utensils, broken plates and cups, assorted cookware, and other kitchen debris. Someone, or groups of someones had raided the place pretty hard.
The only other furniture in the room was a small metal table and four chairs. One of the chairs was flattened and twisted apart on the floor. At one end of the table was Claire, with an empty chair beside her to her right. At the other end of the table, occupying the last available chair was a dead body draped in black, with its head thrown backward. Even in its decayed state, there was an obvious hole in the forehead. The body had been there so long it had become part of the chair and table. Fibrous growths, maybe mold, grew and attached the poor fellow to the furniture. The dried gore spread across the sink behind the body told a story with a sad final act.
Suicide. It was nothing Claire or I hadn't seen before. The road was full of endings like the scene in the kitchen. We hardly flinched anymore.
The remaining empty chair creaked and groaned a bit as I settled into the seat. For a minute, I thought it was going to collapse and dump me on the floor, but it held. “Who's your friend?” I said, nodding to the body seated at the table with us. It was like some macabre family breakfast.
“The owner, I guess. Gun is on the floor. There's a note on the table,” Claire said. Her tone was flat and defeated.
Among the forest of liquor bottles and debris on the table was a yellow legal pad. Scrawled in red ink were the words, “Gone to Huntsville.” They were underlined twice.
“Looks like he decided to stay in and have a bender,” I said.
“Rest of the house is clear. I guess he was alone when he offed himself,” Claire said, still sounding a little listless.
I read a few of the empty bottles on the table. Tequila, aged scotch, champagne...all good stuff. Our dead friend really did go out with a bang. “I had to tell Lyle the story about River Mills. He had to know. I don't want any secrets,” I said.
Claire looked me in the eye. Her eyes were red-rimmed from some light crying. “I know,” she said. “I just hate that story.”
“Not half as much as I hate telling it.” I fiddled with a clear bottle near my right hand. It used to contain some apple-flavored vodka.
“Maybe we'd tell it to more people if it had a happier ending,” Claire said, trying to smile.
“Maybe.” It was all I could say. That horrible day had burned itself into our minds and souls. It had become part of us and would never go away. We just had to try and put it behind us. You had to do some awful things to survive these days.
I took her hand to try and reassure her a little, and I felt how cold her tiny hand was even through my glove. “Come back to the fire. Your hands are freezing.”
“Okay. It is kind of cold in here.”
The light from Claire's flashlight turned brown and began to waver. “Your flashlight is about to die,” I said.
“Needs some new batteries.” Claire reached for the dying light. The flashlight began to vibrate on the old table. In fact, the whole kitchen started to shake. The air was filled with the sound of whining machinery. Something was going on outside.
Claire and I flew out of the busted kitchen, leaving the body behind. Claire was in front of me navigating through the junk on the floor. I brought up the rear with my gun drawn. Loud bangs and the sounds of metal hitting metal continued from the outside.
Someone was stealing the van. It was the only explanation.
Claire got tangled in an errant piece of debris on the floor. She fell to the ground, hard. Not missing a beat, I picked her up to continue the chase. She had stepped into a metal folding chair, and it had wrapped around her legs. “John! Wait a minute. I think I really hurt myself,” she said.
I set Claire gently on the ground. I prayed nothing was broken. A broken bone, especially a leg, could be a death sentence. Outside, the sounds continued. It sounded like the thieves were having trouble hooking up the van.
“Where does it hurt?” I asked.
Claire winced in pain. “Right ankle. Twisted, I think. Dammit.”
I checked out her right ankle. My heart sank as I noticed it was already beginning to swell. It might be a sprain. “Claire, the van...”
She rubbed her hurt leg. “Go. I'll be fine.”
I left Claire to her injury to stop our van from disappearing into the night. Noticing that Lyle was absent from the fire, I threw the door to the outside open and leveled my gun at whoever was trying to take our ride. It was too late.
The sloping nose of our van was already sliding around the house into the side yard. It began to pick up speed as it neared the road. I took off after it, but there was no way I was going to catch up. The thieves had the accelerator down and were moving so fast the wheels were spinning on their vehicle.
I watched from the street, breathing heavily as the black tow truck went down the street and disappeared into the night. The Junkmen had found us and had taken their prize. I had no idea where Lyle was, and Claire and I were stranded far away from home. All we had was the clothes on our backs, my gun, her bat, and whatever supplies we had in the backpack.
“I can't find Lyle. Where is he?” she asked.
“Don't know,” I answered. Lyle wasn't here, and I wondered if the Junkmen did something to him. “I told him to watch the van.”
Claire found a solid chair to sit down on and put her ankle up. She groaned in pain as she removed the shoe and sock from her injured leg. A purple ring had already started to form near the ankle, and it was swelling. “That hurts,” said Claire, trying not to shed tears.
I found the bandage from our first-aid kit and began to wrap Claire's injured ankle. Not a perfect wrap, but it would have to do for now. “In the morning, if your ankle feels better, me and you are going to the Fort to get our van back,” I said. The wrap seemed to help. The swelling was going down a little, and the bruise was starting to subside. That was a good thing. We had a lot of walking to do tomorrow.
Chapter 15: The Old Man
The sky was beginning to go that gray color just before the sun comes up. I sat in the metal folding chair I found, gun in my lap and waited for the day to start. Behind me, Claire slept soundly, wrapped in a few blankets we'd found the night before. During our long days on the road together in the past, this is what Claire and I did. One of us would sleep, while the other stood guard to keep the bad things away. I always volunteered for the last shift before morning because it was always nice to see the sun come up.
It was also the most dangerous time of night. The zombies were at their hungriest before dawn.
Some tall grass moved in the dark yard. I sat up in my chair, muscles slightly stiff from the cold and middle age. A pair of yellow-green eyes came from behind the grass and stood in front of my chair. The eyes were only a foot or so off the ground, a little too short to be a man-eating zombie. I settled back down in my seat and relaxed a little.
Sometimes We Ran (Book 3): Rescue Page 13