Avalon: The Retreat

by Rusin, L. Michael

  Mike chewed over what Dan said before he spoke, “Let’s each take a radio, a sub-machine gun, and a couple of hand guns. Sam, do you want one of my grenades?” He said it as if he were preparing for a picnic. “I expect the trip there and back to be two days, tops. I want to take some extra food, too.”

  Mike looked at Dan and said matter-of-factly, “You know Doc, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “The problem with that thinking,” Dan retorted, “is you’re no ordinary man.”

  Mike smiled and winked at Caroline. She was trembling as a tear slipped down her cheek and fell away.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Mike gave his best smile of comfort, “I’ll be back soon enough and you’ll get so tired of me, you’ll want me to leave again for a few days.”

  Her hands went to her face and she began to cry, her shoulders shaking. Mike reached over, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her forehead and then her lips before gently pulling away.

  “Stop that, wench,” he said softly. “If you keep this up, I won’t go.”

  They all laughed except Caroline. The men went outside, cranked up their dirt bikes, and drove away through the big firs headed toward the hidden bunker. Caroline watched them go, rubbing her stomach absentmindedly as she watched them until they were out of sight.

  Beth and Len were at the edge of Fitch’s main street and the smell of open sewage was everywhere. It was so powerful that she had a tough time breathing without the urge to vomit. It was worse than bad. She walked up to the car she had seen from the hill and saw a dead woman inside and a dead man slumped down on the seat with his head nearly on the woman’s lap.

  There were hundreds of thousands of flies on the overhead of the car, and maggots were crawling all over the bodies. They all had to hold their hands over their faces because the smell was beyond nauseating. She saw Jasper crawl up a fire escape ladder and with a boost from Davey, scramble up to the roof. She suggested they split up; she would take this side of the street, Len the other, and Davey could walk behind her next to the walls of the buildings. Tom was on the other side behind Len.

  They walked down the street and on Beth’s side was a restaurant. She looked inside and saw dead people everywhere. They moved on to a grocery store and there were dead bodies lying on the floor. They walked for an hour and it was the same everywhere; the whole town had been ransacked and looted and all of the people were dead, but there were no children anywhere.

  Her gut told her that the Slavers had been here and done this terrible slaughter.

  Chapter 30 Desperation

  Beth was in a quandary; this was going to be more of a challenge than she thought. Her ultimate goal was to get to the old ranch, but if they got there in the dead of winter, she knew they wouldn’t survive and she had no illusions about how cold it was going to be near the top of that mountain. They would probably either freeze or starve, so she didn’t think it would make a whole lot of difference if they died here or there.

  But for some unknown reason, the quest to make it to the ranch was overpowering. It was that single goal that kept her focused and driven throughout this entire journey and it seemed now, looking back on it all, that they were at it for months rather than days. She had counted on finding food here at Fitch.

  In fact, she was hoping it would be the problem solver she desperately needed and the answer to her fervent prayers. She suppressed the urge to scream out her disappointment after seeing what was left of Fitch. This was no more than a place reeking with the stench of the dead and full of flies that tormented them nearly to the point of insanity.

  Beth was at her wits’ end, so she decided to get everyone involved in the decision on this one. She called all seventeen of them together in a group. There were two men, three older teens, four younger teens… like Matt… three women including her, and the rest of them were younger children. She asked individually and they all said more or less the same thing; they wanted to stay right here until the flies died off and then go into town and stay. Nobody had an answer for the food situation except Len.

  “Look,” he suggested, “we’ve only scouted a small portion of the town so far. Why don’t we go back tomorrow, in the late afternoon before it gets dark, and search along the perimeters? Maybe we’ll find something, but I say we don’t give up.”

  It was as good as anything else, so they would go in tomorrow evening and see what they could discover. Right now they would go to bed hungry. Several of the children were crying because they wanted something to eat and it tore at her heart to hear them. She tried to sleep but it was fitful, and then it was morning. They had to wait until dusk to go into town so the flies wouldn’t drive them crazy. It was a long day and the children constantly complained about wanting food. Finally it was dusk and they prepared to walk into town again.

  They went down the street but there was no food to be found; just about all the shops that carried food had been ransacked. Len did see one place that he wanted to explore, a dental office. He went inside and found what he wanted… tooth scrapers and picks, various supplies for filling cavities, drills, filling ingredients, epoxies, small mirrors, and more toothpicks. He found a medical bag in a supply cabinet and filled it with the things he needed, including vials of anti-biotic, Novocain, and mini-sutures. He also found excellent grade stainless steel hypodermic syringes.

  There were other odds and ends, pliers, small stainless inserts that could make a dental dam, and various pieces used to build dental braces. If only he could find some pure gold for some bridging and reconstruction of the bridging, but that was a little too much to hope for. He took what he needed, at least as much as he could carry. It was a good haul and with what he had, he could do almost anything. The bag was heavy.

  Back out on the street, Beth and the boys stood guard and waited for him.

  “I was beginning to worry” she commented, “You took your sweet time.”

  “I found almost everything I need to fix someone’s teeth,” he said excitedly. “I can do nearly any job with this stuff and believe me, when you need my services, you need them.”

  She knew that was true. There were a couple of times that she had needed a dentist and, although the treatment was tedious and uncomfortable, the visits were worth it in the end.

  “We need to go a little further,” she was talking to all of them now, “It’s critical that we find some food to take back with us.”

  They traveled slowly and with care. The main road stretched out in a straight line for a couple of miles. There were restaurants, clothing stores, a sporting goods store, and other shops and places of commercial enterprise that followed the road down both sides of the street in an unbroken line interrupted only by the fires. The smell of rotting flesh was almost more than they could bear.

  The sporting goods store was worthy of a visit so she went inside like she was trained to do, back to the wall, covering fire to both sides, and as point, she whipped around the corner quickly and stepped inside with her revolver pointing straight ahead. With a two-hand stance, her back was against the wall and she went into a crouch. It was dark and hard to see, but although it had been ransacked, there were many items of value left behind.

  There was a display cabinet with the glass intact, and she saw several different kinds of binoculars on the shelf. She signaled for the boys to come over and help themselves. A display of sheath knives and pocket knives were mounted on a rack with a clear plastic cover. They opened it and took them all. To one side were baseball gloves, bats, and balls. She wanted those bats. Over on one side of the store was a wall full of archery equipment. They took all of those, as well.

  In a few more minutes, they could carry no more. It was time to leave and go back to the group and the children, but they still had no food. Davey wanted to know how they were going to carry all the stuff, so she sent him back down the street to get that bicycle they had seen lying on the sidewalk. She sent Tom into the sporting goods store and told him to get the large ta
ble cloth that was in the main window used as a prop for the display. Tom returned in a few minutes, and Davey wasn’t long coming back with the bike.

  “Lay the sheet on the ground and spread it out. Okay, that’s good, now pile the things in the middle of the sheet. All right, now fold the four corners toward the middle and tie them in a knot. Perfect, now each of you get on one side, lift the bundle and put it on the bike seat. That’s great! Now get on either side of the bike to steady the load, and let’s push it back to where the rest of the group is waiting.”

  As they headed toward the outskirts of the wooded area where the rest of them waited, they passed Jasper; she whistled for him and he poked his head over the top of the roof.

  “Come on down, Jasper,” she called to him. “We’re heading back.”

  He scrambled down the fire escape and jumped the last few feet to the pavement with a thud.

  As they made their way back to where the others waited, she felt hollow inside. She knew they would be expecting food, not hardware. They needed to meld into the trees, set up camp, and come back after dusk the following evening to avoid the flies and do more exploring. When they arrived, most of the children were asleep. The lookout challenged them as they approached and it made her feel proud that they had learned so quickly.

  “It’s Beth and the others, Ricky!”

  “Okay, Miss Beth, c’mon in.”

  She laid her head down and tried to ignore the hunger pangs in her stomach. Her mind was going from one thing to another and she couldn’t get to sleep. She was really worried. Without food, they were all dead in another month, some of the young ones sooner. This was bad; she had counted on there being some food here. Instead it was a ghost town full of dead people, an awful stink, smoldering fires, and those terrible flies. Just thinking about the flies brought to mind the one that flew into her mouth and it made her shiver involuntarily.

  They passed the day waiting for night to come again. It wasn’t easy because they were so hungry and even Beth felt less energetic than she had in some time. Food, although not a lot of it, had kept her spirits and stamina at least in some slight balance. The sounds her stomach was making amazed her. It was a symphony of squeaks, groans, and gurgles.

  The next evening they headed back to Fitch again. Only this time they went around the town to the west, walking down a small asphalt-covered strip that ran a couple of blocks away from and paralleled the main street. Cars were stopped haphazardly as if they suddenly ran out of gas and were abandoned in place.

  There were houses, a car wash, and farther on, an auto repair shop. Beyond that were more fires burning, except these looked different than the fires burning in the other part of town. These were smaller and there was a different odor, one of meat cooking. It was slight but it was unmistakable, there was meat over a fire somewhere.

  They turned down an alley that went behind the businesses and homes. They couldn’t see anything, but they heard noises ahead. It was difficult to make out what it was because they were still too far away from the source. She had them separate, like before, a few to the left and a few to the right. They walked slowly, and the smell of cooking meat increased in intensity.

  After another ten minutes of walking, they could see the flickering flames of at least a couple dozen fires. They continued to edge forward and the scene became clear in another ten minutes. It was a main encampment of Slavers and they were roasting dead children on wooden spits over the fires! She stood there taking in the scene with her binoculars and was mesmerized by the absolute unbelievable sight in front of her eyes. She came to her senses and motioned for them to fall back.

  They had to have a plan, and it better be a good one. She did a very sketchy count, and there were probably two or three hundred of them camped over there, maybe more. It was a formidable force to deal with. They didn’t see any captives, but Beth was sure they were there somewhere. She decided to fall back and cross over to the other side of town; they had to get away from these Slavers!

  They knelt in a circle like football players in a huddle and told them what she thought they should do. No one argued; it sounded like a good plan to them. They fell back about three blocks, cut over another five, and came to a large building with a parking lot all around it. It looked abandoned, but it was buttoned up tight when they got to it. They walked all the way around it and it seemed like it was a few acres in size.

  There were several cars in the parking lot, but all appeared to be abandoned. She sent Davey and Tom back to the auto parts store and asked them to find and bring back a crow bar. Beth, Len, and Jasper walked around the building again for another look, and it appeared to be untouched. Apparently the bikers were concentrating on the west side of town and were ignoring this area altogether. There must be a reason… and there was. A large sliding door suddenly opened in front of them.

  “If you move a muscle you’re all dead.” It was a man’s voice, somewhat gruff and scraggly. “Put your weapons on the ground!”

  They did as they were told.

  “I’m Sheriff Bob Waters,” the voice said, “And you can all consider yourselves under arrest. If you do anything you’ll be shot. Put your hands over your head and walk toward me. Chris,” his voice got a bit louder, “Can you cover them!?”

  “We got ‘em covered, Sheriff,” came a voice from the roof.

  “If you’ll allow me…” Beth tried to reason with them.

  “Shut up,” the Sheriff said, “You’ll get a chance to talk inside. Step this way… now!”

  They walked forward and the door closed as they stepped through the threshold. There was a light on inside; they must have had a generator running somewhere. It was a home improvement store, one of those warehouse types with huge shelves of everything imaginable. She saw lawn mowers, shovels, and food on the big shelving units; lots and lots of food!

  “Okay, Missy,” the Sheriff was talking as he came forward, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “Can we lower our hands?”

  “No,” the man barked, “And answer my question, damn you!”

  “My name is Beth Kelly,” she spoke slowly and deliberately, “I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation; my credentials are in my pocket.”

  He reached over and felt for them through her clothing. When he found her badge and identification, he relaxed his attitude.

  “Okay Miss Kelly,” the relief could be heard in his voice, “You and your people can lower your hands.”

  “Sheriff,” another man interrupted, “The kids that were with her are back.”

  “Let ‘em in, Ralph.”

  The boys were startled when the door opened and they stood there blinking in the light.

  “Sheriff, this is David Driscol and Tom Wyatt.” Beth introduced her group. “This is Doctor Len Stroud and this boy is Jasper Smith, our resident sniper… and he’s a good one!”

  It took awhile, but Beth told them about the trek with the children, about the High Desert, and about how they had gotten this far. It was an incredible story and the people in the warehouse gathered around to hear. There were maybe fifty of them and the Sheriff explained how the Slavers came out of nowhere, overwhelmed them, and began killing the townspeople. The Slavers were all armed and the townspeople weren’t, so it wasn’t much of a battle. They quickly rounded up all the women and children they could find and headed out of town.

  “They didn’t go far, Sheriff,” Beth spoke up. “They are over on the west side a few miles from here eating your babies.” A woman shrieked, and they all turned to look at her.

  “Look, Sheriff,” Beth continued, “I have some half-starved kids just outside of town toward the south. I could sure use some food to take back to them if you could be so generous.”

  “You damn sure better Sheriff!” It was the woman who had screamed. “I demand you do it!”

  The Sheriff agreed, and within a half hour, they prepared to leave.

  “I’ll be back with the kids,” B
eth stopped on her way out, “And then we have to figure out a way to go after those animals. We’ll need to kill every last one of them, Sheriff.” She said it with a certain tone of finality. “When we return, can we give you a password or something to get in?”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Kelly,” the Sheriff replied, “We’ll know it’s you.”

  Chapter 31 The Slaver’s Camp

  Mike and his group came down off the mountain in an easy ride. It didn’t take long to get to the base of the mountain and then swing toward the east to cross into the small valley. In another hour he expected to arrive on the western outskirts of Fitch. He signaled to his companions to pull over under a stand of Madrona trees.

  Off toward the east Mike saw that the sky was a bit hazy, but the weather was still warm. The sun was trying to burn through and it looked like a big yellow ball he could actually look at, but not for long. There was no breeze and only the evergreens had leaves on the branches. He was looking forward to spring and caught himself laughing.

  “We’re always wishing our lives away. We always want something different than what we have.”

  A woodpecker landed on a tree trunk and was busy searching out bugs.

  “Want something to munch on, Mike?”

  It was Sam offering a piece of jerky made from the Claymore deer. Without saying anything, Mike reached over, took a piece, and chewed on it for awhile until it was soft enough to swallow. Each of them drank some water from the canteens and rested. Mike opened the cap on his gas tank and the rest followed suit and opened theirs. He moved the bike with his knees to shake it a bit and put the kickstand down. It was time to put a little gas in there to top it off. It was always best to take care of the boring stuff when there was nothing exciting going on. Sam and the others waited and when Mike finished filling his tank, he handed the can to Sam.