“We’ve been making it,” the man kept his answer brief, obviously not wanting to divulge too much information. “Just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
“Huh, that’s for fucking sure,” the second man, who remained standing in the dining room doorway, snorted.
The two men carried themselves with an air of confidence that made Michael wonder what they had done in their previous lives. Executives of some sort, law enforcement maybe or similar work – firefighters, paramedics, maybe even military backgrounds.
“How about you all?” the first man asked. “How are things in Brookfield?”
“About the same as they are here,” Michael said, not knowing if what he said was true, but realizing that these men probably wouldn’t either. He didn’t want to reveal their true location and situation if possible to these people whom they hardly knew.
“Pretty shitty, huh?” the guy shook his head.
“You could say that,” Michael nodded.
“What about the rest of Chicago? You all hear anything about possible safe havens or help coming anytime soon?” the man took a seat at the head of the table.
“St. Louis is the only word we’ve gotten on a potential safe haven. That’s why we’re looking for boats.”
The man at the table frowned, obviously not understanding.
“We’re going to attempt river travel,” Michael explained. “Roads seem pretty dangerous. Trying water routes seemed the best way to get there with minimal biter interaction along the way.”
The man nodded. “Good thinking. Hadn’t considered using the river. Guess I should have, but I didn’t.”
“Anyway,” Michael looked to move on, “you mentioned a canoe?”
“Let’s start with what you have to trade, first,” the man at the head of the table said.
Michael gestured to the packs set atop the table. “Not a lot. But we’d be willing to trade some of our food. We only have a couple days worth, so we can’t give too much.”
“What about your guns?” the man asked.
Michael took a deep breath. He really didn’t want to give up any of their weapons. They’d already lost several to damage and broken parts in their various firefights. But he had to admit, they still had some to spare back at the tower.
“We’d be willing to give up a couple, but we still need to protect ourselves,” Michael said.
The man nodded, his tongue wedged in the side of his cheek as he considered.
“How about half your food, four guns, and ammo for the guns?” he said after a moment.
The price seemed steep to Michael, especially since they had just found a cache of boats before entering the home. But he didn’t want to press their luck considering they were outsiders here, had broken into the home, and he had no idea how many more people were upstairs. While it appeared that the Blenders had the upper hand both in numbers and firepower, there was no guarantee that this was indeed the case. And while Michael wanted to work a deal, he also didn’t want to give up so many of their weapons that they found themselves outgunned inside the house or at a disadvantage against biters – or against anyone else for that matter – during the rest of their scavenging mission. But he had to remind himself that he had no desire for his group to be cast back outside into what had now become a driving rain.
“How about a third of our food, two guns, and some ammo for the guns?” Michael countered. He thought it a reasonable offer, but they no longer lived in what might be considered reasonable times.
“I don’t think you’re really in a position…” the man at the head of the table began, but a voice from the doorway behind him interrupted.
“Dad, Abby won’t play with me,” a young boy, probably no older than six or seven whined. The boy had long black hair that curled down around his cheeks.
The man seated at the head of the table turned. “Zach,” he looked behind him, “not now.”
“But Dad…” the boy pressed.
“Not now,” the father emphasized.
“Zach,” Ms. Mary said kindly as she reached inside her coat pocket and pulled out a plastic baggy, “do you like baked pumpkin seeds?”
“Oh yes,” the boy nodded eagerly.
“Here,” Ms. Mary held the bag out to him, giving it a soft shake as it dangled from her gloved hand. “These are for you. They’re good and salty,” she smiled at him. “I made them myself last fall.”
Zach hurried over to accept the bag, reaching his hand inside and grabbing out a few of the seeds to pop into his mouth.
“Mmm…they’re so good,” he chomped greedily.
“What do you say, Zach?” his father prodded.
“Thank you,” Zach smiled at Ms. Mary.
“You’re welcome,” she smiled back, reaching out a hand to rub his hat-adorned head and giving Zach the bag of treats.
“Now back upstairs,” his father instructed.
“Yes, Dad,” the boy snapped to, doing an abrupt about face and hurrying out of the room.
The sound of the boy’s footsteps could be heard thumping up the stairs and across the wood floors above them.
“Nice boy,” Michael nodded at the man sitting at the other end of the table.
“Thank you,” the man nodded, straight faced.
“So what do you think?” Michael got back to the business at hand after their brief interruption. “A third of our food, two guns, and ammunition for the guns in exchange for the canoe and shelter here until dusk.”
The man hesitated and then took a deep breath, nodded, and said, “You all seem like decent people. I’m fine with that. Which guns would you be willing to give up?”
After a few minutes, the group had determined that they would trade a .44 revolver with 15 rounds of ammunition, and a .38 revolver with 11 rounds of ammunition. Then they took another ten minutes to empty the contents of their packs onto the dining room tabletop and divide it into thirds.
After that was done, and the two men had collected their portion of the proceeds, the Blenders repacked their supplies.
“The canoe is in the garage next door,” the man said as his cohort returned from the kitchen with a box to gather up the Blenders’ supplies. “You all are free to bunk down in here,” the man gestured around the dining room. “We’d prefer you limit your movements to the first floor. I’ll bring you down a bucket to relieve yourselves in so you don’t have to leave. We don’t go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary. It draws biters.”
Michael nodded, “Sounds reasonable.”
“Oh, and I wouldn’t try coming upstairs for any reason unless you announce yourself first. We have some trigger-happy people up there,” the man added as he rose from the table.
“Don’t worry,” Michael agreed. “We’ll be just fine down here.”
He felt as though he should formally introduce his group since they were staying in the man’s home, but the man appeared to have no interest in exchanging pleasantries.
“What time are you planning to leave?” he asked Michael.
“I’d say somewhere between four and five…whenever the light starts to fade…barring interference from biters,” Michael said.
“Okay,” the man nodded. “I’ll come down around four and check in with you.”
“Thank you,” Michael said.
Then the two men turned and went back upstairs.
“Think we’ll be okay here, Dad?” Patrick asked in a hushed voice after the two men had gone.
Michael shrugged. “I suppose it’s as good as anywhere. Hard to know about people these days. At least we’ll have help if biters try to get in here.”
“But now we have to worry about the people upstairs coming down and killing us all while we’re resting,” Wendell added.
“I don’t think the chances of that happening are too high,” Michael said. “But I still think we have to stay on guard.” He checked his watch. “It’s a little after eight o’clock now. Let’s see, that’s eight hours until four o’clock.
There are six of us. Divide six into eight hours and that would be…” he calculated for several seconds, “…an hour and twenty minutes each. I’ll take the first watch unless anyone has any objections.”
The group took another minute to organize their watch schedule before settling down to rest. The darkness of the rainy day, and the early hour at which they had gotten their start that morning, made it easy for everyone in the group to grab at least a few hours sleep.
* * *
The rain had stopped, and the Blenders were on their way again as the late-afternoon sun settled low in the western sky. Their first stop was the garage next door from which they hauled out a dark green canoe that looked as if it might never have been used. Inside the garage, they also found two paddles and two lifejackets.
Michael sent Charla and Wendell to haul the canoe back to where they’d stashed the fishing boat. The rest of the group made their way to the other house where they’d located the additional canoe and kayaks. They used one of the canoes to carry an assortment of paddles, some of which were double-ended for the kayaks, and lifejackets they’d found. It took them another 15 minutes to get all the boats to their rendezvous point beside the river path where they’d stashed the fishing boat. Then they spent another half hour concealing the boats. They used the tarp that had previously covered the two kayaks and canoe at the first house, and a collection of leaves, sticks, and other forest debris to cover their fleet.
“Let’s see,” Michael paused in assisting the others with their camouflaging work. “We’ve got the two canoes which could easily fit two adults with a child in the center, so that would make six people. They could also carry some supplies with them. The two kayaks could fit another two people each, but probably not much in the way of supplies, which would get us to ten people in total. And then we have the fishing boat. As we’ve seen, it can handle six adults, since it got us here. But the heavier we load it, the harder it is to control. If we don’t come across something better than these kayaks, we’ll have to decide how we want to work this.”
“Right,” Caroline nodded. “I don’t know if I’d feel too comfortable in one of those kayaks.”
“Me neither,” Wendell grumbled, eyeing the contraptions warily.
“So we’ll have to balance the amount of supplies we carry, versus peoples’ various comfort levels in the water,” Michael said.
“And like you mentioned,” Charla added, “the more weight we load inside these boats, the harder they’ll probably be to steer.”
“Plus, we don’t want to go putting all our eggs in one basket,” Caroline said.
“Good point,” her husband agreed. “We put all the supplies in the fishing boat, and it goes down, and we’re going to be in a bad way.”
“Well, I’ve been kayaking before,” Patrick said. “I feel pretty comfortable in one of those. I could probably take one myself if no one else wants too.”
“I’ll check with Josh, first,” Michael said. “I think that he and Julia have been kayaking before. They might be able to take one too. And if I spend some time with you in one,” he nodded at his son, “I might be able to pick it up pretty quick.”
“It’s not rocket science,” Patrick grinned at his father, enjoying the fact that for once, he felt more confident about something than his father. “But I’d be glad to teach you…any of you,” he gestured around at the rest of the group with a hand.
“Thanks,” his father smiled back at his boy, feeling proud and enjoying the opportunity to watch his man-child of a son stepping up to ditch the ‘child’ portion of the title.
“Shouldn’t we wait to debate this until we get home?” Wendell asked nervously.
“You’re right,” Michael nodded. “We can figure this out later. We’ll have a longer return trip since we’ll have to take the suspension bridge across the river and cut up through the forest preserve to get back to the tower. For now, we should hoof it home and start laying out exactly what we think we can take with us and how best to spread it out among the boats.”
CHAPTER 5
The first five biters inside the roadhouse fell dead in a heap, hindering those just behind them as they struggled their way around their cohorts’ corpses. But this wasn’t enough of an obstacle to slow the ravenous beasts for long, at least not with the number of biters pouring in through the doorway.
“Where’d they come from?” Dan yelled over the gunfire.
Jill stepped forward, careful not to enter the line of fire coming from Marta, Dan, and her husband Ben. She had one of her javelin-like spears out and at the ready.
“Must have broken from the herd that attacked the town this morning!” Ben yelled back.
Jill jabbed a biter who had broken toward the right side of the barroom. Her spear sliced into its chest and out its back like a hot knife through butter. It was a move she had perfected killing dozens of biters.
Cara and Brandon exited the kitchen, guns blazing. They took down three more biters entering the bar from outside as Dan and Marta reloaded their weapons. All of them used semi-automatic rifles as their weapons of choice. Each carried a handgun – a mixture of semi-automatic pistols and revolvers.
When Richard had been alive, he thought it advisable for the townspeople to carry an assortment of these weapons. He felt it hedged their bets regarding rates and reliability of fire. While the semi-automatic pistols tended to hold more bullets and were faster to reload, they could also jam at inopportune moments. Meanwhile, revolvers were typically more reliable, but they usually didn’t hold as many bullets and took longer to reload.
Four more biters crowded in behind their fallen brethren, staggering over the rapidly growing pile of dead just inside the door.
Jill used her javelin to take down another biter who had broken from the pack while Cara and Brandon finished off the other three who had entered.
Dan, his rifle reloaded, headed for the door. Marta followed him outside, and the two of them took down eight more biters before they could get to the roadhouse.
“Well that was certainly unexpected,” Dan ejected his magazine and checked to see if there were still live rounds left to fire.
“Be nice to know if more surprises are here,” Marta scanned the surrounding countryside before following Dan back to the roadhouse.
“We don’t have enough ammo for this type of stuff,” Ben said as Dan and Marta came back inside. He was reloading a magazine for his rifle. “I’m almost out of bullets.”
“I know,” Dan nodded. “We were running low before we left town. Another attack like that, and we’ll be out completely. I’ve only got about thirty rounds left…total!” he gestured to his semi-automatic rifle. “Come on. Let’s get these biters hauled out of here and the place cleaned up. Then we can work on getting this door secured in case any more come along.”
After everyone had reloaded their weapons, the group began hauling biters outside, one by one. They tossed the biters in a pile, inside a ditch, on the other side of the road. The job took almost half and hour, and then the cleanup inside the roadhouse began.
Killing biters was dirty business, and the sights and smells of the gore left behind after a biter slaughter could be overwhelming to say the least. Therefore, the group found several mops and buckets, which they filled with river water, and set to work. Even little Louise was given a pair of rubber gloves and a wet rag to begin wiping down tables, chairs, and walls as best she could. While the tiny tike didn’t do the best job in the world, she set about her work with gusto. And she certainly put in the effort, muttering to herself or anyone who would listen about the “messy biters” and how “they never clean up after themselves”.
Her sweet ramblings as she cleaned made the rest of the group smile in what would otherwise have been a joyless work session.
Suddenly, as Louise’s babblings continued, she let out a slight yelp as she slipped in a pool of biter blood. Halfway down, she caught herself with a hand, grabbing hold of the back of a chair for support. St
ill, the slip landed her with a knee and her other hand in the center of the mess in which she stood.
“Oh lord,” her mother cringed in disgust as she saw what had befallen the child.
Louise was making her own face of disgust, looking at her hand with a face that only a five-year-old could make. “Ewwwww!” she said and then suddenly burst into tears as she continued to kneel with her knee still planted in the ooze.
“It’s all right, sweetie,” her mother reassured her as she hurried over to help her daughter back to her feet. “Yuck!” Cara eyed the mess with distaste. “Come over here,” she led Louise out of the pool of blood and toward the roadhouse door. “We need to get you cleaned up. Let’s go down to the river.”
“But that water is so cold, Mommy!” Louise whined. Her crying had stopped, but the tears were still evident on her cheeks.
“I know. I’m sorry. But we can’t leave you like this,” she gestured to the mess-covered child. “You’re all mucky!”
“I’ll come with you and give you a hand,” Brandon said to his wife. “I need to change my mop water anyway.”
The two parents exited the roadhouse, leading their little one around the side of the building and down the sloping, tree-lined bank toward the river’s edge. Brandon was careful not to slip on the leaves that lined the riverbank as he carried his bucketful of bloody water. A muddy shoreline extended for several feet before meeting with the river.
Careful to avoid the muddiest section of shore, Cara led Louise over to the water’s edge. Brandon took his bucket downstream a few feet to avoid dumping it where his wife was getting Louise cleaned up.
Cara used a wet cloth to wipe at Louise’s hand and bloodstained pants.
“There we are,” she cooed.
“My hand is so cold,” Louise said, flexing the red and still-wet hand.
Her mother wrung out the cloth, set it down, and took Louise’s hand in both of hers, huffing warm breath onto it.
“There,” she said. “Is that better?”
“A little bit,” Louise smiled at her.
The Last Bastion (Book 4): The Last Bastion Page 5