by A. R. Wise
“This must’ve been how they carried up supplies.”
“Smart,” I said as I glanced up through the tall, hollow tube. “Think we have time to go up and check inside?”
“Maybe,” said Ben as he looked back at the Jeep. “I could hear the Greys in the neighborhood. It won’t take them long to sniff us out.” He leaned his head into the center spire and whistled sharp and loud, then shouted, “Hello?”
His voice echoed inside the tower, sounding tinny and distant from where I stood. We waited for a response, but didn’t get one.
“You stay here,” I said. “Keep an eye out for Greys. I’ll climb the ladder and see what’s inside. If you see Greys, just whistle up at me.”
“Okay,” said Ben before he kissed my cheek. “Be careful.”
“Always.” I slapped his butt before heading over to the ladder. I looked up at how high the catwalk that the ladder led to was and then realized that I wouldn’t likely have a better vantage of the area than this, so I jogged over to the Jeep to retrieve my binoculars and then came back.
The climb was more arduous than I expected, and there were no safety measures taken to keep someone from falling off until I was already twenty feet high. At that point the ladder was surrounded by a feeble cage, which wouldn’t do much more than bounce you around if you actually started to fall.
I made it to the catwalk and hoisted myself up before taking a moment to catch my breath and look out over the area. The vantage was stunning, and revealed far more of the space than I’d expected. This area was surprisingly flat, even though it was tucked up against the foothills. I could see out across the golden fields that defined the arid land that stretched away from the Rocky Mountains all the way to a curving horizon. The swathe of a ruined world was stunning, and while it was beautiful to me, it would certainly depress someone who’d spent the majority of their life in the Green days. This was my world, the Red world, and those of us that lived in it had learned to appreciate a different sort of beauty.
There were no signs of Greys on the path that led up here, but I still wanted to hurry to avoid any unnecessary risks. The catwalk led around the entire circumference of the fattest portion of the tower, but I didn’t need to follow it more than a few feet before I found the entrance to this abode. Another door similar to the one below was carved out of the side, and I tugged on the rope gently to ease it open. The hinges had been kept well-oiled to prevent them from squealing, and I was surprised to discover that there was a good amount of light within the tower. It wasn’t a massive, hollow bubble like I’d expected. Instead, a wooden floor had been built, and walls erected to create rooms. There were plastic panels on the ceiling that let natural light in, and there were several plants inside, flourishing in their pots far better than the brown, dead weeds that covered the land outside. The pulley system must’ve been below, hidden beneath the floor I was standing on, and I wondered if there was a storage area down there. It was far warmer inside than out, a result of the windows above, and I wondered if this place got stifling in the summer or if they’d devised some sort of way to cool it down.
“Hello?” I called, and got no reply.
A nylon rope hung down from the center, just over a porcelain, clawed tub that dominated the middle of this space, and I gazed up to see what it was attached to. There was a latch in the center of the ceiling that the rope could open, and I realized that this was a chimney of sorts, allowing them to light a fire in a tub. I walked over and glanced in to confirm my suspicion and saw that the tub was filled with ash and black streaks from a recent fire.
Cloth doors provided separation and privacy to the residents that lived here. There were four rooms, but the first that I entered wasn’t meant to sleep in. It was a lavatory, if you could call it that, with buckets set out, each filled to a varying degree. I cringed as the smell hit me, and then backed out and closed the curtain.
I called out again, adding, “I’m here to help. I’m a friend of Harrison’s.”
Still no answer.
I inspected one of the rooms, pulling aside the curtain to peer inside, and saw something that I was afraid I’d find. There were syringes in here, their canisters blackened from reuse, spoons with burned ends and sticky residue, and rubber tubes that had been stolen from medical supplies to help Harrison’s friends shoot up. I sighed and closed the curtain, my suspicions confirmed.
“Goddamn it, Harry.”
Truth and fiction always swirled themselves around everything that Harrison ever said, and I’d been suspicious of his tale about this place ever since I’d heard it. While he insisted the people here were disabled and needed his help, I don’t think his definition of ‘disabled’ was the same as mine.
I searched the other rooms, and found similar paraphernalia there as well. Drugs weren’t tolerated in the settlements that had been in this area. It wasn’t because of a lack of compassion, but rather the necessity that every member of a town contribute in some fashion. While certain activities could be ignored, some addicts had to be shunned. Harrison and his friends had traveled here, and used this tower as a place to fall back on when their addictions got the better of them. While Harrison was certainly one of the more productive members of this group, and was probably responsible for bringing them the food they needed to stay alive, I’m certain he spent his fair share of days or weeks laying on one of the dirty mattresses here, dazed and drugged.
There was one level below where I was, and I wanted to check it out before leaving. This was where the pulley-system was located, and where the group kept their supplies. It was a small space, with a low ceiling, and I was nearly content leaving without checking each box when I heard a creak come from nearby. I pointed my pistol and flashlight over to the corner, and saw netting that had been torn away from the wall. It looked like the soldiers had searched this room, and torn up most of the boxes here, spreading the meager supplies out over the floor. I spied the netting, which looked like it had been stolen from a children’s park, perhaps to be used as bedding.
“Someone there?” I asked. “You’d better tell me if you are. I didn’t come here to kill you or steal anything. I’m with the Rollers.” I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing to say or not. It was likely that the group that stayed here hated the High Rollers even more than the zombies. “I’m Harrison’s friend. He sent me here.”
A hand rose from the debris that crowded the corner, just to the side of the netting. I shined my light on the person hiding there, and saw a dirty man, probably in his thirties or forties, with dreadlocks and gaunt cheeks. His wide eyes stared out at me, and I realized that he’d been hiding beneath a tangle of rope and netting, somehow managing to evade capture.
“Harry sent you?” asked the man, revealing his rotted teeth in the process.
“Yes, I’m a friend. My name’s Annie.” I reached out my hand to help him up, but he stayed where he was, trembling and with pupils that were just pinpricks of black in his bright blue eyes. He was high.
“You’re a…” he swallowed hard. “You’re a Roller?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Where’d you guys go? You guys all went away. You guys all left us. Everyone’s dead. Vineyard, Juniper, Hanger, they’re all dead.”
“I know,” I said as I knelt down and shined my light at the ceiling instead of directly at the stranger. “The military got to them.”
“They got here too,” said the man with a sudden burst of excitement. He pointed up, and then all around at the mess they’d made in the supply room. “They did this. They came here and did all this and took everyone else. They took them and I wanted to stop them, but I couldn’t.”
“You’re lucky they didn’t find you,” I said as I looked around the thoroughly searched area.
“Oh, I wasn’t here then. I was outside, watching and listening from the trees. I came in here after.”
“You came in here afterward?” I asked as I considered his story. “To
get high? After your friends got taken, you came in here to get high?” I couldn’t hide my contempt.
He recognized my distaste and scowled as he said, “It was your damn fault. It was you they were looking for. They thought we were you!”
“Me?”
“Yeah, they wanted the High Rollers. They asked about someone named Laura. She’s one of you.” He jabbed his finger in my direction, as if the accusation pleased him. “And they said they had a guy named Levon; said they had him already.”
“Levon?” I asked, startled. “He said they have Levon?”
He nodded.
“What else did they say?”
“That’s it,” said the frightened man.
“Did they say where they had Levon? Did they have him at the airport?”
“I don’t know.”
I was going to ask something else, but then I heard Ben’s distinctive whistle echo through the tube nearby. I scrambled over to the opening of the shaft, which was protected by a round rail that prevented someone from simply falling in, and shined my light down. Ben was looking up and held up four fingers before pointing out in the direction of the road that led up to the water tower.
I decided that going back to the ladder would be a waste of time, and looked at the pulley system they’d devised here to see if I could use it instead. I found the locking mechanism on the pulley and latched it, securing the rope and guaranteeing I wouldn’t fall if I used the rope for support.
“Are they coming back?” asked the dirty man in the debris behind me. “Should I keep hiding here?”
I didn’t give a shit what he did. “Sure, keep hiding.”
The rope would provide a good and quick exit, but I took a moment to slip on a pair of gloves first to avoid burning my palms. Then I saddled the edge of the railing and dropped slowly down, setting my feet against the edge as I lowered myself as quickly as I could manage. Ben was there to catch me at the bottom.
“Find anything?” asked Ben.
Part of me wanted to tell him exactly what I found, and about how Harrison had been lying about the real reason he wanted to come back here. I wanted to tell Ben that Harrison was an addict, and that he hadn’t kicked his habit like he claimed, but was instead hoping we’d deliver him here so that he could binge with his friends and fall into a stupor for as long as the drugs lasted.
“There’s a guy up there that says the military was looking for us. He said they’ve got Hero.”
Ben glanced up the tube and asked, “You’re kidding? Should we take that guy with us?”
“No, no,” I said, eager to hide the fact that the only reason Harrison wanted to come here was to get high. “He’s fine up there.”
“There’s no blood out here,” said Ben. “Lots of footprints though. I think they loaded them into trucks and took them.”
I looked around and asked, “Are there any Greys coming?”
“No, not yet. That’s not why I whistled for you.”
“What’s up then?” I asked.
He pointed up and I looked out into the blue sky, confused. Then he explained, “There was a drone.”
“A what?”
“A military drone in the sky. It zipped over here. At first I thought it was a bird, but then I heard its motor.”
I didn’t know what to think, and I furrowed my brow as I asked, “They have drones?”
Ben nodded and said, “Apparently. I’ve never seen them before, but I know what they are. I read all about them in some of the Red magazines. The military had a ton of them, and were using them to spy on other countries. I guess it was just a matter of time before they used them to try and find us.”
They were looking for mom. I’d thought Ben was the one that Jerald wanted, and by association it made sense that the military would be looking for the Rollers, but why did the man in the tower say that they asked about a woman named Laura?
“Ben, we’ve got to get back home.”
24 – Another Bad Plan
Ben Watanabe
“What? Why?” I was dumbstruck.
“They’re going to be moving,” said Annie with a distant gaze, deep in thought. Then she turned to me, as if snapping back to reality. “The Rollers are moving supplies to the new settlement. If they had drones out looking for movement, then they might see the trucks moving out. We’ve got to get back there and warn them that they need to hide.”
“What about Hero?” I asked.
“We can tell the Rollers,” she said. “They can decide what to do next, but we have to warn them about the drones. If Jerald came out here and collected these people, then it’s not going to take him long to find the Rollers.”
She was already moving to the Jeep, and I jogged to catch up. We both saw a Grey on the road behind the Jeep staggering its way up the hill. It was an emaciated specimen, with only a few strands of hair still clinging to its grey scalp, and a dislocated lower jaw that trembled with excitement as the creature tried to moan in hunger. The Grey quickened its pace, but was still several yards behind the Jeep.
Annie went to the driver’s side, but I still had the keys. “I’ll drive,” I said and she didn’t argue. She ran around to the other side and I got in fast to start the Jeep before our visitor had a chance to get to us. Seconds later I was smashing into the zombie in reverse, sending the corpse spinning through the air as I turned around to head down the hill. Other Greys were following in their friend’s footsteps, coming up the hill with their arms outstretched and their mouths open wide. I normally try to drive around zombies, because smashing your way through them has a bad tendency to get bits and pieces stuck up in the undercarriage of a vehicle. This time, however, I plowed straight through them because of the narrow path, sending the monsters bouncing off our hood and crunching beneath the tires.
We got back out to the main street, and discovered that the horde in the town was larger than we’d expected. There weren’t enough of them to block our way, and I managed to drive around the majority of them. Annie got her pistol ready, and was prepared to roll down her window and start shooting if she needed to. Luckily the horde thinned once we got further up the street, and when we were certain that the route was clear, Annie put her gun away and got out Billy’s map.
“We can’t take the long way back.” She placed her finger on the map in the general area where she thought we were. “We’re going to have to either get on the trade route or go through Denver.”
I didn’t like either of those options. “I thought Denver was infested.”
“It is,” she said as she mapped a course we could take. “But the highway’s still in good shape. Well, not good shape, but I think we could still make it. That would be the fastest way.”
“Yeah, unless we ran headfirst into a horde.”
“The trade route’s going to be just as risky. The last time we were on it, Jerald had put spike strips all over it to herd us into that town where the church was. He knew where we were, and where we used to camp, and he was working with some of the traders. Chances are he knows that route already.”
“So we’re going to Denver then,” I said, my concern apparent. “How can we be sure we’re not going to lead them right to the camp? What if there’s a drone watching us right now?”
“Already thought of that,” said Annie. “We’re going to drive past the rehab center, and into some cover, then we’ll push the Jeep down a hill before hiking back through the woods.”
“Annie, there’s no way we’re going to do this before dusk.”
She leaned forward to look out at the sun. It was making a rapid descent towards the mountains. We still had at least an hour before it made it to the edge of the range, and that would still leave us with an hour or more before it got dark, but that could easily put us in the middle of Denver, surrounded by Greys at nightfall.
“We can make it,” she said, determined.
“No, Annie, we can’t.”
“We can try.” Her anger brought a sharp edge to her words.
“We haven’t exactly been lucky on this trip so far,” I said.
“You got lucky,” she said, and I appreciated the wry grin her comment brought to her lips.
I conceded with a laugh. “Yeah, well, you got me there.”
“I know this is risky,” she said. “And I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was important.” Annie turned in her seat so that she was facing me, pulling her leg up as she did. “If they’ve got drones out there, and they sent all those men out to round up a group of heroin addicts, then they’re desperate to find the Rollers. Before, they barely ever even poked their heads out of their holes, and now all of the sudden they’re sending out squads. We’ve got to get back to Mom and warn her.”
I’d caught something in what she said that gave me pause. “Heroin addicts?”
She looked away, avoiding the subject by saying, “You know what I mean.”
It didn’t take me long to figure out what she was hiding, but I didn’t want to ask for any more information. I was content letting her keep that secret. It was better to leave that shooting star alone.
She guided me through the area, using Billy’s map to determine which routes would be the clearest. His map wasn’t perfect, but it was still more reliable than anything I’d encountered in the past. It was rare that any survivor knew much more about the area that surrounded them than what they could walk to in a day. The way that Billy and the Rollers had mapped out the area with such detail, keeping track of which roads were useless, which were still intact, and where the raiders liked to camp, probably kept us out of trouble more times than not.
We reached what had been a major highway in the Red days that carved a path north to south through the state. I stopped on the side of the road before the curved on-ramp, and looked out behind us at the sun that was just about to touch the tops of the white-capped mountains. The wind was billowing snow from the peaks, making it look like fog was rolling down to the foothills. We were miles away from the mountains now, in the flatlands of the state, and once we rode up onto the highway we would be visible to anyone that bothered to look for us. I knew this was dangerous, and so did Annie.