“Thank you,” Ms. Mary smiled, shoving the mayo container into her pack. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
* * *
It was still dark as the initial group of Blenders departed the tower. They first had to rid themselves of three biters lurking just outside the tower. Josh and Patrick lured the biters to the viewing ports they’d created in the tower’s lower-level walls. Once the biters were close enough, the men used sharpened metal spears to jab through the holes and into the heads of the curious biters, ending the threat.
This first group consisted of Michael, Josh, Patrick, Wendell, Charla, and Christine – the strongest and most fit in the group. This group carried the heaviest or most awkward to haul supplies – things like the generator, gasoline tanks, propane tanks, and coolers – across Lyon’s peninsula to a sandy beach lining the river just below the suspension bridge leading into Riverside.
Once there, Michael, Charla, and Christine stayed behind to guard the supplies while the others went back to gather the remains of the supplies and the rest of the Blenders.
Michael was surprised to feel as though an immense weight was lifted from him as he departed the tower for the final time. The place, while secure, had begun to feel like a prison – a prison with far too many bad memories. While their new adventure certainly held any number of dangers, there was an element of excitement too.
Michael wanted to get away from everything Lyons and Riverside, and Chicago as a whole had become for them. All he associated with the place was filth, death and destruction. He wanted a fresh start in a new location. And he hoped to find that fresh start with the onset of spring. He was realistic about the road – or river – ahead. He knew that it could, and likely would, be filled with an array of obstacles for them to have to clear. But he felt ready. And he felt that his Blenders were ready.
Half an hour later, with the first glimmers of dawn not far away, the rest of the group arrived. They were loaded with supplies, and more importantly, they had remained un-harassed by biters en-route.
Once everyone was gathered on the beach, Michael suddenly felt exposed. He knew daylight would be upon them soon, and with it, a host of dangers. A massive herd of biters stumbling upon them or a gang of miscreant scavengers willing to kill them to take their supplies were among his greatest concerns. He knew that time was of the essence and wanted to have the boats loaded and be ready to shove off as soon as it was light enough out to safely do so.
Therefore, he once again split the group. He, Josh, Patrick, Caroline, Charla, Christine, and Christine’s two boys – since both youngsters had attended a summer camp in which they had become proficient in handling both canoes as well as kayaks – crossed the suspension bridge and made the five minute walk past the library, down the hill, and along the riverside path to where they had stashed the boats. Ms. Mary, Wendell, and Julia Justak stayed behind with Justin to guard the supplies.
Once at the boats, each of the Franko boys quickly commandeered a kayak and a paddle. Hauling the vessels over to the river, they each donned life vests that the adults insisted they wear, jumped inside their respective craft, and nimbly set off to rendezvous with the rest of the group less than two hundred yards downriver. The group had been able to gather a total of six lifejackets, three of which had been set aside for the kids. The other three lifejackets were assigned to the weakest swimmers in the group – Wendell, Ms. Mary, and Caroline Trove.
Patrick and his mother captained one of the canoes. Charla and Christine took another. Michael and Josh handled the more awkward and difficult to control fishing boat, barely getting it across the river in time to make their beach landing on the other side of the suspension bridge.
Once everyone was back together and gathered on the beach, things moved quickly. It was determined that the fishing boat would be stocked with the generator, gasoline, propane, cook stoves, drinking water, canned goods, and other heavy or bulky supplies that included one of the larger coolers.
Andrew and Jack Franko were split up, one to handle the steering of each two-person kayak. Christine accompanied her youngest son, Jack, in one kayak. Andrew guided the other kayak with Ms. Mary in the front seat. Meanwhile, canoe number one was captained by Josh and Julia Justak, while canoe number two was guided by Patrick Trove and Charla. The metal fishing boat, the sturdiest and most stable vessel was guided by Michael, wife Caroline, Wendell, and young Justin Justak.
The kayaks, while swift and easily maneuverable, were far less stable than the other boats. And they offered no room for supplies. Therefore, the centers of the canoes were loaded with the packs of goods the Blenders had prepared. One pack was attached to each seat at the front and rear of the canoes, while the rest were attached to the cross-sections at the center of the canoe. This helped ensure that should a canoe capsize, the packs would stay attached to the buoyant canoes rather than sink to the bottom of the river or float away downstream. The rest of these spaces at the center of the canoes were packed with garbage bags full of extra clothing, blankets, sleeping bags, coolers, and the group’s sole tent.
Once everything was loaded and secured, Michael stepped back from the metal fishing boat, the right side of which was pulled up onto the sandy shore. The sun was just starting to make its presence known behind the trees on the eastern horizon. He knew that about 12 miles from the point where he now stood, lay downtown Chicago. He wondered what it looked like now. Visions of apocalyptic television shows he had watched over the years came to mind. Such programs fast-forwarded decades or even centuries into the future. Through computer-generated images, they illustrated how the world’s cities would look after humans were gone. He wondered how accurate the portrayals would be. He wondered if he’d ever see Chicago again. He wondered if they would even make it out of the Chicago area.
He pushed the thoughts aside. There was no longer time for worrying about tomorrow. There was only time for worrying about today, and not even that. There was really only time for worrying about the moment. An hour, half an hour, ten minutes, even five minutes was almost too far to plan ahead. Things could happen so fast in this new world that only the moment truly counted.
Living for the moment. It was something that Michael had tried to do for so long but never accomplished. Now that he had achieved the goal, he wished he hadn’t.
“All right,” he shook himself free from his mental philosophizing, “let’s climb in and prepare to disembark.”
While most of their weapons were secured in waterproof containers, a member of each vessel kept a single handgun out and at the ready just in case. While they would indeed be traversing a path not easily reachable by biters, it didn’t mean that other survivors of the Carchar Syndrome might not try confronting the Blenders. And if the group needed to make landfall quickly for some reason, Michael didn’t want them spending valuable time rummaging for weapons in what might be a life-or-death situation.
Michael shoved boat after boat off the shore where they were beached until the only boat left was his own metal fishing boat. Then, with one last glance around at his serene surroundings, he heaved the fishing boat out into the water. With the soft scrubbing sound of sand against its hull, he jumped into its stern as it floated slowly out into the current.
CHAPTER 7
Cara held her hand over Louise’s mouth to ensure that the little girl didn’t cry out. Brandon started up the bank toward the gunfire, but Cara, seeing that it was people, not biters attacking them, stopped him. She grabbed the back of his coat and pulled him back down beside her. He looked at her with confused eyes, and then back just in time to see Ben and Jill gunned down.
“Please…I need you,” she pleaded with him. “Louise needs you too.”
Brandon swallowed hard, torn between a sense of loyalty to the others and a sense of responsibility to his wife and child. The number of armed individuals firing at the roadhouse helped make his decision. He knew there was no way they’d be able to hold out against that many heavily armed people. Joining the
fight would be suicide. But if he sheltered with Cara and Louise, they might stand a chance.
It was all over a minute later, and Brandon realized that they were now on their own – the last known survivors of Riverport.
After the armed intruders departed, Cara stayed with the silently weeping Louise. Meanwhile, Brandon crept down to the river where Marta had landed. He dragged her body out of the water and up onto the bank. He didn’t see any signs of injuries on her front, so he rolled her over onto her stomach. There, he could see three bullet holes torn into the back of her black coat. He also noted some blood on the back of her head from the impact she must have suffered during her fall into the river.
Suddenly there was some slight movement, and Marta let out a soft groan. The indications of life startled Brandon, as he had assumed, after seeing the bullet holes in her coat, that Marta was dead.
He quickly rolled her over onto her back and unzipped her coat, realizing several critical things in the process. First, if Marta had been shot in the back three times, there probably wasn’t much he and Cara were going to be able to do for her. Second, his rough dragging of her body from the water probably hadn’t done her injuries any good. And third, Marta’s currently waterlogged condition, paired with the ambient temperature outside, could quickly lead to deadly hypothermia regardless of the severity of her injuries.
It was as Brandon worked to remove Marta’s coat and pull up her sweater and T-shirt to inspect her wounds that he realized why she was still alive. In the process, he encountered a flak jacket, the accessory that had obviously saved Marta’s life.
After running up the riverbank to ensure that all the armed attackers were gone, Brandon hurried back down to where Cara and Louise still crouched behind a large tree.
“Get Louise inside and stoke the fire,” he told Cara. “I’m going to get Marta.”
“She’s still alive?” Cara asked in surprise as she and Louise got to their feet, not having expected any of their group to have survived the attack.
“Yeah,” Brandon nodded. “But she won’t be alive long if we don’t get her out of these wet clothes and warm.”
Several minutes later, Brandon had Marta inside the roadhouse kitchen. Thankfully, the fire was still burning. And while their woodpile had been knocked askew by the trampling feet of armed intruders, there was still plenty of wood to feed it.
Brandon laid Marta on the floor beside the barrel fire they had burning.
“Help me get these wet clothes off her,” he instructed Cara.
The two worked together, stripping Marta of her shirts, the flak jacket, and her boots, socks, and pants, until she was left only in her black bra and panties.
Then Brandon stood, staring down at the still unconscious yet strikingly beautiful eastern European. He liked a woman with a slightly less severe personality, like his Cara. Marta was more intense, dark, brooding. But he couldn’t deny that now that he was seeing her scantily clad, she had an incredible body beneath all that bulky clothing. But with Cara and Louise right there, he did his best to pretend not to notice.
“We need something to cover her with,” he said, realizing that they didn’t have a blanket or extra clothing. He took off his coat and laid it over Marta’s midsection.
“Hold on,” he rushed out of the kitchen.
He was back a minute later, just as Marta was coming to. The poor woman’s face had a bluish hue to it and she had begun to shiver. Cara and Louise each had one of Marta’s arms in their hands, massaging her cold flesh, trying to get the blood moving.
Brandon had several coats that he had stripped from Dan and Ben outside. He laid one over Marta’s legs and the other over her torso as Cara and Louise continued to work to warm her. Brandon then began massaging Marta’s feet and lower legs.
“Wha..wha..what…” Marta tried to speak but her shivering and her chattering teeth made it impossible for her to be coherent. She struggled to sit up, but Cara gently pushed her back down.
“Just relax,” Brandon said. “We need to get you warm.”
He took the coat from her legs and draped it atop the barrel stove’s hot steel for several seconds, just long enough to warm it, but not long enough to melt the material. Then he removed it and exchanged it for the coat on Marta’s torso. Next, Brandon took off his hat and gloves and placed them on Marta. Then he put a pair of dry socks on Marta’s feet.
The trio kept up their massaging of Marta’s extremities, continuing to work her fingers, toes, arms, and legs back and forth to get the blood flowing.
It took them almost another 15 minutes to get Marta back to the point where she had enough wits about her to speak. Sweet Louise worked to wring as much water out of Marta’s clothes as her little hands would allow. Then she draped them around their barrel stove to dry.
Poor Marta was in a bad way, with nasty-looking bruising and some swelling on her back where the three bullets had struck her flak jacket. There was a large lump and a cut on the back of her head where she’d splashed down in the river shallows below the roadhouse deck. But the main thing was that she was alive.
As they finally got her into a sitting position, her first words were, “Uh…I need vodka.”
“Sorry, wish we could oblige, but no vodka here,” Cara gave her a sorrowful smile.
“Bar with no vodka,” Marta breathed heavily. “I have died and gone to hell?”
“Close, but you’re still alive,” Brandon helped her reposition the coat that had slid down as she sat up, revealing one half of her bra-covered bosom.
“Thank you,” she accepted the help.
“Your clothes should be dry soon,” Cara said.
“Glad to see you lived,” Marta said to the family of three gathered around her. “Glad to see I lived…I think,” she added. “The others, they are dead, yes?”
“Yes,” Brandon nodded.
“I see,” was Marta’s muted reaction.
Brandon and Cara helped her slowly to her feet.
Marta grimaced as Cara assisted her with getting one of the spare coats on and zipped up. She hovered near the barrel stove, her hands held out over its top.
“Did they find the food?” Marta asked after a moment.
Brandon glanced toward the access panel in the ceiling. It remained covered and looked untouched. “Don’t think so,” he said. “But I’ll double check. Are you good here?” he asked Marta.
“Good…no. But I survive,” she gave a sturdy nod.
Brandon left to get a chair on which to stand in order to ensure their supplies were still in place, which they were. He began removing them from their hiding spot.
“What are you doing?” Marta asked firmly.
“I’m getting our stuff. Don’t you think we should get the hell out of here once you’re feeling well enough to travel?”
“No, I don’t,” Marta said frankly.
“Really?” Cara said, surprised. “Why not?”
“The bad people, they come. They kill our people. They go. Why would they come back?”
Brandon paused in his work to look from where he stood on the chair below the access panel over to Marta.
“Well,” he considered, “they might come back to double check that they got everybody.”
“They might,” Marta said. “But I don’t think so. They have more important matters. They kill the others. They think they kill me. And they don’t know about you; otherwise, they would kill you.”
Cara’s eyes flicked toward where little Louise sat quietly by the fire. The child didn’t appear to be listening. She seemed to have completely zoned out after the horrific day she’d had.
“Why they come back?” Marta continued re-arranging some of her damp clothing around the stove. “They take food we leave out. They would take rest if they know about it. I see no reason they return. So I see no reason we leave. This is last place they think to return.” After a pause, she said, “Where we go anyway? Here we have shelter. Here we have water. Here we have heat. Until warm weat
her, why go somewhere else?”
She made some valid points. And neither Brandon nor Cara could find much to argue with in them.
Therefore, they decided to stay at the roadhouse, at least until they could come up with something better.
CHAPTER 8
The day broke sunny and with a few puffy white clouds sprinkled across the sky. It was chilly but not cold. The sun helped to warm the air. An ethereal mist rose and then hovered just above the river’s waters. Justin Justak swatted at it as the fishing boat drifted down the center of the Des Plaines River.
The Blender armada had come up with a travel arrangement for their boats. The two kayaks would lead the way, traveling about 75 to 100 yards ahead of the other boats. These swifter and more easily maneuverable craft would act as scouts. They could cruise up ahead of the others to inspect potential obstacles, locate the best deep-water routes, find ways around rougher water, and investigate bends in the river ahead. Then they could come back and report their findings to assist the others in avoiding potential problems.
Next were the canoes. These boats were far more maneuverable than the fishing boat, but not as agile or easy to handle as the kayaks.
About 50 yards behind the canoes, and still within shouting distance, was Michael and the fishing boat. Laden with four occupants and an array of supplies, the boat was far heavier and more difficult to steer. This weight meant that it was difficult to paddle and it took longer to adjust its course in the river, especially when in swifter moving currents.
Michael and his passengers used the first portion of their journey to familiarize themselves with controlling their vessel. After spinning in circles for several minutes and narrowly avoiding a fallen tree that jutted dangerously into the river from one bank, they began to settle in and feel more comfortable on the water. They maneuvered themselves inside the boat, attempting various positions until they found spots that worked for all of them to paddle effectively. Then they worked out a system of orders to coordinate their efforts at keeping the boat headed in a relatively straight path downriver.
The Last Bastion (Book 4): The Last Bastion Page 7