All That I See - 02

by Shane Gregory

  We drove south two blocks and stopped again. The FedEx truck and the silver pickup were parked ahead. There were three armed men standing around talking. The doors on the bucket truck opened. The two men got out, and the driver motioned for me to join them. I really needed another drink. I took a deep breath and got out, slinging the rifle over my shoulder.

  The men looked at me when I approached then went back to their conversation. I stopped about fifteen feet away from the group and pretended to adjust the strap on the rifle. I didn’t want to get close enough for them to realized I wasn’t who they thought I was, and I wanted to be far enough away that I could put one of the parked vehicles between me and them if the shooting started.

  “I don’t get how she got over here,” said the driver of the bucket truck. “We seen her go in that church.”

  “Maybe there’s two of ‘em,” said a man leaning on the FedEx truck. “Wouldn’t that be somethin’?”

  “Well, we done scared her now,” said another. “Ain’t no way she’ll come with us willin’.”

  “What about that ol’ boy she was with? I don’t like the idea of killin’ healthy men.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. You know he weren’t no good. He’s either dead or infected by now,” the driver said. Then he looked over at me. “How ‘bout it, Sammy? Did that ol’ boy get away?”

  I shook my head.

  “Fuck him anyway,” the driver said. “He’s the reason we lost James and the others. He brought it all on himself.”

  Another truck pulled up from the opposite direction and two more people got out. That brought the count up to seven with one more still manning the bulldozer. Then I realized one of the newcomers was a woman. That surprised me. She stayed next to the vehicle while her male companion approached the group. He was wearing a black long sleeved shirt, a camouflage hunting vest, and camouflage pants. There was a large handgun holstered on his hip.

  “Y’all ain’t found her yet?”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, she can’t be far,” he said. “We ain’t got a lot of time. Shit is comin’ down the goddamn pipe, y’all.”

  “I still say she ain’t worth all the trouble,” said the man by the FedEx truck. “Let’s just head on out before—“

  “We ain’t leavin’ without her, Lee. We might have freed her from that piece of shit, but we can’t leave her to waste away here in Clayfield. I mean shit, man, how many times in the past two weeks have you seen a healthy woman?”

  Lee looked over at the woman by the car.

  “This ain’t about gettin’ laid,” the camo guy said. “Ellen ain’t gonna single handedly rebuild the human race. If there’s another uninfected woman out there, we’re takin’ her with us and….” His voice trailed off, and he looked at me.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  The group turned their full attention on me.

  “That’s Sammy.”

  I took a step backward.

  “The hell it is,” said the newcomer.

  “Shit, Willy, that’s Sammy,” said the driver of the bucket truck. “I just talked to him.”

  I took another step back.

  The new man, Willy, stepped forward with his hand resting on the grip of the revolver. His eyes were squinting, scrutinizing everything about me.

  “What the hell happened to your ear?” he said. “You been bit?”

  I didn’t speak.

  “Sammy?” the driver said. “You feelin’ alright?”

  I wasn’t feeling alright at all, but Sammy….Well, Sammy was in worse shape than I.

  I nodded, hoping they would leave me alone and go back to their conversation. Willy pulled his revolver, but didn’t point it at me. I took another step back. The rest of the group all turned their bodies toward me, and a couple of them stepped forward.

  “Y’all know what I think?” said Willy. “I think this here might be that fucker that’s had her all this time.”

  “Sammy?” the driver said again.

  “Goddammit, Ray! It ain’t Sammy. Can’t you see that?”

  “I’ve been lookin’ forward to this, asshole,” he said to me. “I’ve heard all about you. You’re a real piece of work.”

  I thought they must have me confused with someone else.

  “We saw what you did out at the high school. It makes me sick to think about the perversions you been forcin’ on that poor girl.”

  What was he talking about?

  Another truck pulled up behind Willy’s truck. Most of the group turned to see, but Willy and a couple of others didn’t take their eyes off of me. I glanced up when two more men got out of the new truck.

  “What ya got, Willy?” a man said, joining the others.

  “Take a wild guess,” Willy said.

  The new man stopped and stared at me.

  “Pull down your mask,” he said.

  I didn’t move, so Willy pointed the revolver. I nodded and pulled the masked down.

  “Son of a bitch,” the new guy said, pulling down his own mask. It was Nathan Camp.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  Chapter 25

  I stared at Nathan for a second, looked around at the others then I ran. I wasn’t thinking clearly, just that I had to get away. I didn’t think I’d have time to get in the truck, so I ran past it. Then out of nowhere, somebody clobbered me. I don’t really know what they hit me with—maybe their fist—but it slammed into my left shoulder and knocked me sideways. I was seeing stars. I tried to stand, but then my head got punched a few times. They took Sammy’s weapons. Then they were dragging me by my feet face down.

  “Where’s Sammy?”

  I had the 9mm down in my pants under my shirt. I rolled and tried to grab it, but somebody kicked me and took it.

  “He’s wearin’ Sammy’s cap, y’all. I could’ve swore it was him.”

  Then someone was on me. They twisted my arms up behind my back and I heard the clicks and felt the pinch of handcuffs. They rolled me over on my back, and I blinked up into the falling rain drops as they all looked down on me.

  “Where’s Sammy?” Nathan said.

  “Infected got him,” I said.

  “He’s a liar, Willy,” Ray said.

  Willy squatted next to me.

  “You’ve been a regular thorn, ain’t ya?”

  I looked away.

  “Well,” he continued, “we ain’t gonna put up with it, ya hear? We’re gonna have law and order. We ain’t gonna be animals. It’s unfortunate that men like you survived the plague. I hate to say it, but I don’t reckon you’ll survive the trial.”

  “Trial?” Ray said. “Hell, Willy, he’s done gone and did somethin’ with Sammy, an’ you know he’s been takin’ advantage of that poor girl.”

  “I know,” Willy said. “It ain’t like we got time for it, but like I said, we ain’t gonna be animals.”

  He stood and looked around.

  “Right there,” he said, pointing to the glass truck in which I’d arrived. “Cuff him to that frame. We’ll deal with him at the warehouse. Until then, we’ve got a healthy woman to find.”

  They handcuffed me to the top of the A frame rack in the back of the truck. I was standing up, and there was no way I could sit. I stood there for hours. The undead began migrating into the area a little at a time, following Sara’s scent or whatever. Several walked past me as the day wore on, but I remained perfectly still and they never noticed me. I would have thought they would have smelled me, but either they were more interested in Sara or the rain kept them from getting a fix on me. For a while, they congregated around a house, but then they moved farther south.

  It rained steadily the whole time. I was cold and soaked through. Sometime in the late afternoon, the silver truck pulled up. A man got out of the passenger side and came over to my truck.

  “Did you find her?” I said.

  “Shut up, asshole,” he replied as he crawled into the glass truck and started it up.

  We travelled north.
There was a vehicle in front of us, and behind us were the headlights of four more. I tried to get out of the cold wind, but the best I could do was squat. It was dark by the time we arrived at our destination, and I don’t know where it was. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen any warehouses to the north of town, and the only thing I could think of was maybe one of the remaining structures left from the old tire factory. All of the vehicles were able to pull into the huge building through a garage door. There was room in there for a whole fleet of vehicles, and in fact, there were a couple more inside. The headlights went out, and the engines shut off. I could hear the muffled sound of a generator running, and there was light at the far end of the building along with more figures standing around. The sound of a dozen car doors shutting echoed. Then I heard voices and footsteps walking away.

  I watched the silhouettes that were around the light, and I tried to get an accurate count. There might have been fifteen of them. I thought I could make out two or three women. After a long while, two men came and got me. They led me toward the light.

  The group looked at me. There was a mix of expressions. Some looked angry, some curious, and others were indifferent. I saw the doctor, Travis Barr, among them. I recognized Nathan’s friend Jack, too. They were all standing and sitting around a kerosene heater, and there was a little lamp sitting on a table. I was led into a room off to the side; it looked like it had been a furnace room or something. It was dark inside, so I couldn’t see much. One of the men turned on a flashlight , and they freed my left wrist, then cuffed my right hand to something. They shined their light around the room, and the beam fell on another man sitting in the corner. His hand was cuffed to a large metal pipe that was attached to the wall. It was Nicholas Somerville.

  “Mr. Somerville?” I said. “Are you okay?”

  The two men left and shut the door. It was completely dark in the room.

  “Nah,” Nicholas said slowly and quietly.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A while,” he said.

  Then it hit me that I was sitting, and I kind of just sat there and tried to enjoy being off my feet.

  “You alright?” Somerville said slowly.

  “No,” I said. “It’s been a pretty shitty couple of days. They plan to execute me, I think.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “Willy Rupe thinks he’s the law in Clayfield now. Asshole. I’ve already had my trial.”

  “When did we become the bad guys?”

  I heard Somerville shift in the darkness and breathe heavily through his nose.

  “I guess we’ve all gone a little bad these days,” he said. “Did Judy make it out to you?”

  “No,” I said. “When?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know one day from the next in here. She was supposed to go out to that old horse farm where you were staying.”

  “She might have,” I said. “We left for a while to look for you then we left again yesterday morning.”

  “Yeah, she’s probably fine.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, we couldn’t find that house she was looking for that had the solar panels. I figured since we were out anyway, I’d run over to the high school and have a talk with Nathan Camp. Sara told me he was over there. I knew him from before, you know, from working with the city. I was hoping for some support, and I thought it would be good to get that doctor to come in with us. He and I had our disagreements in the past—city budget issues and fire fighters wanting a raise--but I thought he’d be over that.”

  “Why do they have you in here? What was the trial about?”

  “This is more about Willy than anything,” he said. “Judy and I drove over to the high school. They were gone. It looked like the place had been overran, but it had happened a while before, because there weren’t any infected still around. There was a note taped to the door that was intended for someone else. I think the names were Pat and Peterson and one other person. Anyway, it said something like…um…‘We’ve had to move. You are still welcome with us. We’ll be at the tire plant.’ …something like that. So Judy and I drove out there…here.

  I had her wait in the truck. I told her if anything happened that she should get the hell away and go find you and Sara…where’s Sara?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m hoping she’s waiting for me at the stables.”

  “Huh…I hope she is, too,” he said. I heard him shift again then he continued. “So I told Judy to go find you if something happened. I went up to the warehouse and banged on the doors. Finally a couple of men came out. Of course, when Judy saw it was Willy, she tried to run him over with the truck.

  “That’s about it. She drove off like I told her, and I wound up stuck in here. I’ve been convicted of attempted murder. The trial was silly. I don’t really know what they plan to do. I don’t think any of them have the balls to execute me. They’ll probably leave me here when they go or let the infected get me.”

  “Go where?”

  “They’re leaving town,” he said. “I’ve been talking with one of their group--a woman named Wanda—she’s been bringing me food when the others are gone. She told me a man came into town about five days ago. He said he was from just north of Jackson, Mississippi. He claims they nuked it.”

  “Nuked it? Who?”

  “I don’t know,” Somerville replied. “Government I suppose.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m inclined to think it’s horse shit, but…I thought the same about zombies a month ago, too.”

  “But wouldn’t we have known?” I said. “Isn’t there fallout and mushroom clouds?”

  “I don’t know about that stuff,” he said. “Wanda told me the man had burns all over his body. She said he wouldn’t stay here because everything is headed this way—healthy people, sick people…one big exodus. He says other cities were hit, too. Everybody south of here is headed north.”

  “I have trouble believing that,” I said. “It would do more harm than good. If there still is a government, and I don’t believe there is, they would wait and let it run its course. Eventually these things are going to deteriorate enough that they won’t be a threat.”

  “Hell, maybe they don’t know how things are,” Somerville said. “Maybe they’re in an underground bunker somewhere pushing buttons.”

  “Why Jackson, Mississippi?”

  “Why not? Hell, the damned things are everywhere.”

  “Okay, but why not Memphis? If the man came up from Jackson, he probably passed within a few miles of Memphis.”

  “She didn’t say,” he replied. “Anyway, I’m with you. But they believed the guy, and they’re getting the hell out of here. They’ve already had somebody scouting the river for a big enough boat.”

  The door opened, and the two of us squinted into a flashlight beam. The light came closer, and Travis Barr knelt beside me holding a duffle bag.

  Chapter 26

  “Hello again,” Travis Barr said.

  “Dr. Barr,” I said, acknowledging his greeting.

  “One of the others said your ear was injured. Want me to take a look?”

  “No point,” I said. “Willy said I’d be executed.”

  “Well, when I heard about it, I insisted they let me look at you,” he said. “They didn’t want me to, but it’s my job.”

  “My earlobe was bitten off,” I said. “I poured whisky on it and seared it good with a cigarette lighter.”

  “That certainly sounds…barbaric. Let me look at it; maybe I can at least make it hurt a little less.”

  “Are they going to kill me?” I asked bluntly.

  Barr was shining his light down into his bag.

  “They talk tough, but…I don’t know…I’ve never seen them do anything like that. Here, hold the flashlight. Point it at your ear so I can see.”

  He put his hand under my chin and pulled
my face around. He groaned a little when he saw my ear.

  “They said the young blond woman was with you, but they didn’t see Jen. What about her?”

  “Jen’s gone. Turned.”

  “Turned?” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry. Damn, that’s a shame.”

  He squeezed out some cream on his fingers, and touched it to my ear. I pulled away.

  “You really caused a lot of trouble for us,” he said. “We lost good people as a result of your actions.”

  “If Nathan had let me—“

  “Oh, I blame Nathan, too, but you could have handled it differently. Of course, they’re out their discussing what to do with you now. Nathan is having a lot to say.”

  “Don’t you just love our new judicial system?” Nicholas Somerville spoke up from the dark corner.

  “What? That’s my trial?” I said. “They’re doing it without me?”

  Dr. Barr pulled my face around again.

  “Nathan, Jack, Wanda, and I are the only ones left from our original group,” he said. “I have tried to be magnanimous when it comes to you, because I know Nathan, and I know how he treated you. Nathan and the other two don’t like you at all, and they have painted a picture of you for Willy’s group that is kind of extreme. As far as everyone else is concerned, you are the lowest scum. You can count on them accusing you of a lot of things, and I’m confident that you’ll be found guilty of everything.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “They’d talked about forcing the councilman to work for them, but now I think they’re just going to leave him chained here.”

  “That’s sure humane of them,” Somerville scoffed.

  “I’ve heard them talking about shooting you, but I don’t know if any of them could actually do it. It’s different shooting healthy men…but I guess you would know that better than I.”

  “That’s not really fair,” I said.

  “I think it’s completely fair,” he shot back. “You can justify it all you want, but the fact is you have killed healthy people…and in a world where healthy people are an endangered species. It’s reprehensible.”