by Tim Yingling
Doing all of that took me close to a minute and a half. That is an eternity when someone dangerous has someone you know. Rice is probably out of her mind terrified right now. I couldn’t blame her. If I was the one who was captured, and the person who was with me was taking their sweet time getting ready, I would be terrified as well. But I knew something she didn’t. It was a simple concept, one that she should have known. She was a hostage to get to the main objective for Stone. He needed her for leverage. Not something to discard right away. I should have seen it when Varner came into the school, but I didn’t. I only assumed that he made it to Columbia because he left before I did. But then again, Stone was gone before I was as well.
And I am getting off track again. Like I said, it took me a minute and a half to get everything ready. I reseated the magazine into the weld, placing the full magazines into my left cargo pocket. I didn’t want to use my firing hand for anything but firing the weapon. The only reason I would let go of the rifle with my right hand was to grab the pistol. Also, speaking of the pistol, I wasn’t able to reach the cargo pocket on my right leg. Didn’t affect me any. I would still be able to operate.
I positioned myself on the wall next to the door. I had the entire rest of the room to my left. The door and hallway I hoped Stone was in and to my right. The rifle I held with the hand-grip in my left hand and the heat-guard in my right. I normally don’t switch to my left hand to fire with, but I had no choice in this instance. I couldn’t position myself to use my right hand. If I wanted to use my right hand, then I would expose myself. I would have to stand away from the wall to aim down the hallway toward the front doors. Then when I wanted to look down the hall in the opposite direction, the direction the bathrooms are in, I would have to step all the way out into the hall. I didn’t like that.
Using my left hand for the time being (and then switching to my right once I deemed it safe in the hall) allowed for myself to stay concealed just a little. I had to lean my head forward a tad to look out the door and down the hall. The rifle was raised to chest level. I didn’t need it in the high ready as of yet. As I moved off the wall and panned the door, I did move the weapon to the high ready. The hallway was clear at both ends.
I know the sound came from the ladies room, and that was my destination because Rice was down there. It wasn’t that far of a walk. I only had to go about twenty steps. Luckily, the ladies room was on the same side as me. Unluckily for me, I had to keep the rifle in my left hand. I mean, I’m a good shot with my firing hand, but when it comes to using my non-firing hand, I’m about half-n-half.
I panned the open door to the bathroom. There was a wall in my way. A wall leading to the right with an opening at the end. I could see one mirror so far. And those would be my key to survival in there. Also, I could finally switch to my right hand.
I did so as I moved to the wall, placing my left shoulder on it. I walked down the wall to be about a foot and a half from the end. From this point, I could still use the mirror to get what I needed.
The image of the bathroom didn’t offer anything in the first mirror. I stepped off the wall to see into the second mirror. That offered more. I could see a shadow from the other end of the room. And the bucket with a puddle of water that had formed around it. I stepped off a little more for the third mirror. This is the mirror where I received all the information I needed.
Rice was still in the room. She was standing with her back to the door. I didn’t know what the position said. There was no one else in the bathroom. All the stalls were open and empty. It was just myself and Rice.
I took a quick glance to my left to make sure Stone wasn’t going to come at me from that direction before stepping fully into the bathroom.
“Rice,” I said. She half turned to me. I wasn’t pointing the rifle at her. I turned so I was aiming in the direction of the door. “Where is he?”
She turned fully after I asked. She didn’t look scared. She looked pissed.
“I’m sorry, I let him get the jump on me.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. The man has many years of experience on us. Hell, he probably could have gotten the jump on me while I was moving Varner to a safer spot. So, do you know where he is or not?”
She pointed at the window above and behind her. “He went back out there. Before he left he gave me a message for you.”
She didn’t say the message right off. After she told me he went out the window, I knew he wasn’t still in the building. That’s not to say he couldn’t have figured out the front door windows were busted out. He could have doubled back and is waiting in the wings for us to come out. I honestly thought that until she told me what the message was.
“He said, ‘Yames’ time is coming. You and his friend are safe until I get my hands on Yames. Just wait.’”
So he wasn’t going to be coming after us on that night. It only made sense. It seems he wanted to play mind games. If I had the time, which I didn’t, I would be able to play the game right back with him. Seeing as how I had someplace to get to in an allotted amount of time (I wanted to be back in Pilgrim by July 30th, the 31st at the latest), I didn’t have the time to play fuck-fuck games with this asshole. We needed to get moving.
I dropped the weapon to my side and motioned for Rice to get moving. She did, first going to the bucket and then the faucet to fill it back up. She later told me she didn’t blame me for taking so long to get to her. She understood why that was.
As we went back into the room, I plopped down on my sleeping bag while she went to her area. I instantly started to write all of this down. She saw to Varner before she clocked out for the rest of the night. Varner was finally coming to, but I wanted to make sure he got some sleep. And sleep he did. Both of them did. I didn’t. I was staying awake looking at everything that moved.
He wasn’t going to get the jump on us again.
* * * *
Friday, 24 June 2016
Little Cedar Creek, South Carolina
678 Miles to Pilgrim, Indiana (372 Miles to Commerce, WV)
Let me tell you something interesting. Going on no sleep and walking for damn near ten hours in a day is not good for you. I felt like one of the zombies as we walked from the high school to the place we ended up in. Not exactly a town, but there was a creek close by so I used that as a reference point. Not only does the lack of sleep not help, but you also have to add in the amount of energy drinks I consumed throughout the day. I know that drinking them will dehydrate a person faster than anything, but I needed something to keep me going. The cigarettes just weren’t cutting it.
Yeah, yeah. Don’t get me started on the smoking thing. I don’t want to hear it. I have listened to it for over twenty years. That’s how long I have been smoking (minus the two I quit). I know I shouldn’t, but I thought I needed to at the time. Adding in the energy drinks and smoking made for a hard time staying hydrated. So, what did I do? I drank a shit ton of water all day long. Needless to say, I was pissing like crazy.
I also had to try to keep a vigilant eye on the two people with me.
First, let’s talk about Varner.
Former Specialist Thomas Varner was still in a semi-catatonic state. He had been since I woke him earlier in the morning. The reason for semi is because he still does what I tell him to do. I told him to eat, he did. I told him to wash himself up and clean his area before we left. He most anxiously did (I think it was mostly because he wanted to get the hell out of the area before Stone showed up again). When I told him to start walking he didn’t. He more or less became extremely dumbfounded. The look on his face told me that. I felt for the kid. When I first saw him the night before I didn’t see anything wrong with him. But after he went to sleep (he was in a canyon of a slumber to the point where I wasn’t able to wake him up) I examined him more closely. He had several bruised ribs; one was cracked. His stomach was damaged. I don’t see how he was able to eat before we took off. After that, I didn’t find any other bruises. It was like Stone wanted him to b
e able to find us and walk with us. Tom was a messenger. Nothing more. I don’t think the message he gave us the night before was the end of it. There had to be more, Tom just didn’t remember what it was. I don’t think he would remember even if he wrote it down. It wasn’t just physical abuse Stone did to Tom. There were signs of mental disturbance as well. Don’t know the extent.
Next, comes Rice.
As far as a person goes, I don’t have a problem with her. Soldiering skills? Not so much. She wasn’t even able to tell Stone was behind her on the hard floor in the school. Some of you may be saying that I wasn’t able to tell that Stone was behind me either. But who’s to say that he was actually behind me? I didn’t know if he was in the hall or not. I thought maybe he was, but I don’t know. But Rice. She doesn’t have the skills that myself and Tom have. She didn’t have the training we had in the military and doesn’t know how to utilize it like we do.
I say we because I am under the impression that Tom will come back around eventually. It will just take a few days. And I’m not even that vigilant. I need sleep to be a hundred percent. I have done this on occasion where I don’t get any sleep and then go out on a mission. But I also had others who would help me out who have the training that I had. I didn’t have that on the first day. Tom was out of it, Rice had no experience, and I was dead on my feet. Stone could have easily picked us off right there if he was antsy in his pantsy, but he didn’t do anything to us all day. I honestly think he was playing with my head. I don’t know why, but I just do.
We started the day at 0700. That’s about the time I wanted to start walking every day. My plan was simple. We walk for five hours, take lunch around noon for about an hour, and then finish off the day with another five hours of walking. Done no later than 1800 daily.
At least, that was my plan. I didn’t think we would make it on the first day.
After we left the school, I made a quick stop at a gas station. The first place we stopped was the Dollar General right outside the school. I was looking for energy drinks. If Hannah knew I was going to down energy drinks all day she would kill me herself. But Dollar General didn’t have any energy drinks. They didn’t even have a section for it. So, we went to the gas station. I found the drinks there, as well as several cartons of Camels. I already said that I knew I shouldn’t be using them, but they will keep me awake. I didn’t care about the smell or noise. The zombies wouldn’t be able to catch up with us even if they wanted to.
After each energy drink, I downed a bottle of water. I was trying to counteract the side-effects of the drinks when it came to dehydration. As long as I drank a sixteen-ounce bottle of water after a twelve-ounce can of energy drink, I figured I would be fine. To an extent. It didn’t take but the third energy/water rotation for the waterfall to kick in. Every fifteen to thirty minutes after that I was running to the bushes and giving them their daily nutrients.
After the gas station, I saw a sports store not too far away. I wanted to stop by there for one thing, and one thing only. The pace counter I took from the store wasn’t the cheapest one on the market, but it was pretty damn close. We wouldn’t get to forty miles by the count on the pace counter on that day. That’s only because we had already been walking. I figured we had gone a few miles. We only walked for an hour at most. And we weren’t even going as fast as I thought we should be. So, I was putting us at just about three miles so far. I could have consulted the map, but I didn’t.
The directions I wrote down from Google the day before wanted me to walk through the city. I tried doing some magic to make it so the map would show me moving along the freeway, but it wouldn’t let me. I left it as was. It wouldn’t be a problem, and I came to find out I was right about that. There was no problem. We walked along the outside of the city, stopping around noon to eat and do any business we needed to. I kept an eye along the freeway for any movement. Stone wouldn’t be able to sneak up on us on the freeway. We were elevated. He had to stay back a bit, but still in eyesight. At least we were in his eyesight, he wasn’t in ours.
There was no talking among the three of us at lunch. I didn’t expect any. Rice knew enough to keep quiet. That’s not to say there was no noise. Sure, you had the normal outside noises. Crickets going to town, cicadas whispering, the wind blowing, and then there were the non-normal noises. Occasional gunfire, loud grunts from dead things, and screams from living people. I even heard cars in the distance. And that’s where all the non-normal noises were. In the distance. Normally I would be able to judge how far away the noises were. I couldn’t this time. The noises were bouncing off the buildings in the city. They could be coming from anywhere. I just had to hope they were in the distance.
We finished up eating about half-past twelve. Cleaned up our area as best we could. I didn’t want to leave anything to say someone had been there recently. Mostly, the cleaning just came from us dumping our trash (canned goods and bottles) over the side of the freeway. We did some more personal business before we left. Once all was said and done, we walked. I kept looking at my new pace counter. I had to put it on my left wrist. Having both my watch and the pace counter on my right wrist didn’t help at all. An hour after leaving, I noticed we had picked up the pace. I was happy about that. It just means we were coming around.
The eating and energy drinks are what helped me. I think it was mostly the walking that helped Tom. He was starting to get color back in his face. Rice was keeping up. She wasn’t in the best shape to be doing this, but she was holding her own.
I didn’t know which exit I was looking for, but I knew which road. I needed Route 321. Surprisingly, the route wasn’t that far away from where we ate. We took the exit onto the back road. After about a hundred meters I turned around and looked at the off-ramp we just come down. I didn’t see what I wanted to there. But I did see what I wanted to see on the freeway.
Stone stood on the freeway at the foot of the off ramp. He had something to his eyes. Both of his hands were holding it up. The object had to be a pair of binoculars. He was keeping a good eye on us. I offered a wave to him, just to tell him I could see him. My eyes didn’t have that good of vision, but I didn’t need good vision to know he was snarling at me.
I shifted my eyes from Stone to the road below him. The road we were on. What I saw there disturbed me more than seeing Stone on the freeway.
A wall of cars had been put in the underpass of the eastbound lane. I didn’t see it coming down because I didn’t want to look into the city. I had no need to. We weren’t going that way. Someone had gone to great pains to make sure the city was cut off from the rest of the world. That looked like something Stone would want.
The wall wasn’t the disturbing part. It was the two people on top of the wall with rifles aimed at the three of us. Rice gently touched my elbow and whispered, “Are they going to shoot?”
I stared at them for thirty seconds. After twenty, the man on the right lowered his weapon. I didn’t want to say anything until the other man lowered his. When he did, I turned around and walked. As Rice caught up, I said, “They were only going to shoot if we got closer. Let’s hope that Stone walks toward them.”
Tom finally said something coherent after I was done. “He won’t walk toward them. He wants you.”
I smiled at first. Then I turned to see the look on Tom’s face. The look wasn’t something I wanted to see. It necessarily didn’t scare me, but it disturbed me. I didn’t care to find out why that was just yet. I only wanted to continue to walk. Neither did I try to convince Tom to keep talking. But someone else did.
Rice was walking a good five feet behind us. When she heard Tom talk, she picked up her pace to be on his left side. “Why does Stone want Sarge so bad?”
Tom didn’t say anything at first. We only walked. But I could see the wheels turning in his head. It seemed to me he was trying to remember exactly what Stone had done to him. I wish he could remember so I could know what I was up against.
Rice asked the question again. And again, Tom wa
s having trouble answering. Rice gave up on the question to ask another. “Did Stone take you while you were still in the hanger or did you leave before he ambushed you?”
This one Tom could answer. “I was barely off the airfield before they took me from behind. I don’t know how it happened, but there was more than one.”
That made me think of one thing. We haven’t had to fire the pistols we acquired in the woods outside the airfield. I had to sling the M4 that use to belong to Tom before taking out the M9. I quickly took the top off it, putting the bottom into my cargo pocket. It was easy for me to disassemble the slide of the M9. I had been doing it for thirty years. That’s not an exaggeration. My dad started to teach me how to disassemble weapons when I was six. I am thankful for that because I knew all the parts of the M9 by heart. So, when I looked at the slide, I knew in an instant I didn’t need to disassemble it any further. The spring was missing. Stone was a clever gentleman. I should have checked earlier if I seriously thought about it, but I didn’t. It was no harm anyway. I’m sure we would be able to find some along the way.