Harold then pulled out a cold pack from his first aid kit and cracked it. He pressed the pack against the side of Matt’s head. This would help prevent any swelling inside Matthew’s skull.
Carl waited until Lorenzo approached him. “Hey,” Lorenzo said, “you look like you kissed the underside of a truck.”
“And you look like you went dancing with Swamp Thing,” Carl added.
Lorenzo looked down at his still wet boots and pants. “The price we pay for not having a bathroom.” He sighed. “I got Harold back but there’s no sign of Ben.”
Carl closed his eyes. Not exactly the best news he could hear. “We should post a lookout. We can’t have everyone asleep at the same time.”
Lorenzo nodded. “We’ll take care of that. You just rest.”
Carl let his head tilt against the tree. “Where do we go after this?” He sighed. “My parents’ farm near Adam’s Point is the only place I can think of. But I’m scared to find out what’s over there.”
“It’s better than not knowing what happened to them,” Lorenzo said. “Besides, maybe this time it’ll be better. I think the worst thing to do is to give up.”
A coughing fit abruptly seized Carl. He didn’t stop until he hacked up a gob of black phlegm. Shyanne shrank back in horror.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lorenzo said. “He’ll be like this for a while. His body’s just cleaning itself out.”
Carl clutched his lips. “Throat…hot. Need water.”
“I’ll get it!” Shyanne cried.
She returned a moment later with a bottle of water from Alicia’s pack. Carl drank it. “Thanks.” He relaxed against the tree. “Adam’s Point is my hometown and Tara’s. We’ll try it. Afterward, we’ll decide what we have to do. We need a community, somewhere where we can pool our resources and look after each other.” He looked up at the dark trees. “There’s no way we can survive out here.”
Shyanne yawned. Tara, standing beside her, smiled. “Someone sounds sleepy.”
“No, I’m not,” the girl said as she turned on her side.
“Yes, you are,” Tara replied.
Shyanne giggled. “No, I’m not.”
Tara laughed. “Well, I predict someone’s going to fall asleep real soon. You going to dream about those food trees you were talking about earlier?”
Shyanne’s eyes had been growing heavy for the past hour. Tara knew the girl had been tuckered out from the ordeals of the day. She deserved a rest. Tara would have sat there and watched her sleep if someone else wasn’t drawing her attention.
“I want to dream,” she said, very sleepily. “Dream about…something…new…”
As Shyanne drifted off to sleep, Tara asked Carl, “Keep an eye on her. I need to go talk to Michael.”
Carl nodded. “He’s all yours. I want to watch over Shyanne anyway.”
Tara figured that Carl would want to be distracted by Shyanne. She had overheard his past few conversations. The man clearly was dejected by the day’s events.
Tara walked around the tree where Carl was reclined. She hiked to the other end of the camp. Michael was reclining against another large tree, his eyes looking a little glassy. Tara feared that Michael had lapsed back into his sedentary state.
“Hey,” Tara knelt down beside him. “You still with me?”
Michael smiled. “My brain checked out for pizza. It won’t be back for a few hours.”
“Did you tell it to bring back olives and Italian sausage?” Tara asked.
Michael chuckled. “Three topping pizza. Has the works.” He coughed, but just lightly.
“You should send it into Shyanne’s dreams. I hear she dreams about trees that grow pizza.” Tara then leaned a little closer to Michael. “So, are you feeling better?”
“I’m getting there. The world smells like a dusty old attic, but I guess I can live with that for a while.” He rubbed his nose. “What about you?”
“I want to move to Tahiti,” Tara said.
“Might be the safest place on the planet. We could find us a boat and row there,” Michael said.
Tara smiled. “I might just take you up on that.”
Michael looked out into the woods. “I was just thinking about Rupert. I don’t remember him very well. I was in a weird place. It was like I was stuck in a world of dreams. But he took care of me until we met up again. I didn’t even get a chance to thank him.”
Tara crawled closer to him. “I’m sure he knew how much he mattered. I wish he could have made it to Tennessee to see his parents.”
Michael nodded. “When we’re all rested, I guess we’ll be hitting the road to Adam’s Point.”
Tara leaned into Michael’s shoulder. “Do you think any of them are still alive? Your folks and mine?”
“Adam’s Point’s a good place. I’m sure they have been able to hold it together,” Michael replied, though he didn’t sound very sure.
“A whole army base didn’t make it through this disaster. I don’t know if anything can,” Tara said.
Tara leaned even closer. Michael slipped his arm around her shoulders and drew her in.
“We’ll do all we can,” Michael said. “Somehow we’ll pick up the pieces even if it’s just us that has to do it.”
Carl limped toward the opening in the tree line. “Easy,” Ricardo said. The teen was bracing Carl as he walked slowly toward the house. “You shouldn’t even be up. You’re loco.”
“Yeah, sure, I’m crazy, but I got to get a look at it,” Carl said.
With the rising of the morning sun, Carl wanted to get a look at Ben’s house. The fire Carl had started finally had burned itself out. To Carl’s surprise, the home remained standing. No section of the home had collapsed fully. That didn’t mean the house was livable, though. Carl was certain that much of the inside was cluttered with wreckage, plus the interior supports were substantially weakened. Someday the house, or much of it, would cave in.
A horrid smell caught Carl’s nostrils. Several bodies lay near the front door. Harold had taken them out yesterday. Flies had gathered around each of the corpses. Soon birds and other animals would show up to feast on the remains.
Ordinarily, Carl would not care. He just as soon would leave these bastards to rot under the sun. But he wanted them buried nonetheless. He barely could walk as it was. God only knew how long it would take for him to mend to the point where he could travel. He didn’t need these bodies lying around to attract disease and infection. Harold, Thomas and Lorenzo would see to the burials.
Carl turned to the back end of the house, where the kitchen lay. He was far more interested in uncovering resources that might still be in the house. There had to be guns left in there, abandoned by the men as they bailed out of the inferno the house had become. Not only that, but Carl felt he had a duty to recover the stolen munitions. He would not leave them here in an enemy stronghold.
“Carl! Dammit, what are you doing?” Tara shouted behind him.
Carl turned his head. “I’m going to the house and no one’s stopping me.”
“That place is too dangerous!” Tara pointed to the ranch house. “And you, we had to carry you from here. You barely can walk!”
“But if I can walk at all, I’m going,” Carl said as he took another step.
Tara shook her head. “God!” She ran up to him and took him by the arm. “You never quit.”
“I don’t know the meaning of the word. Don’t you want to be back at camp watching Preston?”
“Alicia and Michael are taking care of him,” Tara said, “Believe me, I want to be there, but I can’t let something happen to you. Preston wouldn’t forgive me when he wakes up.”
When he wakes up. Not “if.” Carl thought to himself. Preston had taken a nasty turn last night and Alicia had to give him CPR to help him breathe. For the moment, Preston was alive, but it was clear he still was very weak and not out of danger. So, they had to stay put for now.
Carl sat down in the wooden chair near the dining room tabl
e with a dust mask over his face. He and Tara had discovered it toppled over but it being knocked over had spared the table from catching on fire. Flames had scorched the right side of the kitchen but had not struck the table. Holes in the ceiling let in rays of sunlight. The rain must have come in and helped douse the fire.
Carl was too weak to continue, so he allowed Tara to search through the kitchen and into the hallway. The living room was impassable. The ceiling and attic had caved in. It would take days to dig through the debris, but Carl did not recall seeing any of the stolen military gear in there anyway. That left Tara confined to the kitchen and the few rooms she could enter.
What they did find proved to be very useful. Much of the Camp Jefferson firearms had survived the explosion and fire. Tara brought them outside. Matt approached, now fully awake. He was nursing a big headache but claimed to be alright. Ricardo and Shyanne also helped move the supplies from just outside the house toward the camp, though Shyanne was denied any responsibility over the munitions.
Tara emerged from the hallway clutching a bundle of coats. “Found these in the hall closet. Felt these would come in handy during winter.” She tromped up to the open doorway and tossed them outside. “You know, I’ve never found any pictures of who actually lived here.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” Carl said. “It spares us the sight of innocent faces.” He remembered when they had found the country house about a day ago. A family of four was gruesomely slaughtered by Ben’s party. Carl and his companions had the unfortunate task of burying the four before leaving. It was a blessing that this time he would not find out if Ben and his goons had killed anyone to take refuge here.
Tara turned back to Carl. “One of those scumbags probably owned this place anyway. I didn’t find any water, but I did find a few six packs of beer. I guess that figures, huh?”
“Don’t take any of it. It’s worthless. We need water, not something that’ll dehydrate us or get us drunk on the road.”
Tara smiled. “Too bad. I’m sure my dad would like a few cans even if he can’t drink them cold any longer.” She sighed. “If he’s still alive.”
Carl watched Tara for a moment. He wondered if she felt as apprehensive about reaching Adam’s Point as he did. Unfortunately, he couldn’t summon much optimism to help her. They had been burned too many times already.
“Carl, how deeply did you study disaster scenarios?” Tara asked. “I mean, do you think it’s possible to raise a child with everything having fallen to pieces like this?”
“Well, if you mean having children and raising them in a post-EMP world, it’s going to be enormously challenging. Unless you’re a prepper or somebody who is conditioned to live off the grid, you’re going to lack a lot of skills that you would need to survive. You have to shelter, feed, clothe and raise a child without the help of a Walmart, a pediatrician, a school, and you definitely can’t distract a kid with a cartoon channel anymore.” He scratched his arm.
“But we have to procreate. We have to have another generation after us to help rebuild. It’s going to be hard. Parents are going to lose children to disease or things that never would have been an issue when we had our technology. But if we just give up, then we give up on ever having another chance to do it right. We’ll never build robots, never visit the Moon again, and never reach Mars. We’ll be down to maybe a handful of cavemen subsisting in the wilderness.”
Carl drew in a few breaths. His chest still hurt. That wouldn’t change for a while, but at least he could talk at length again. “So, what brought this on?” he asked.
Tara rubbed her stomach. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.”
Carl leaned a little closer. Tara’s attention to her abdomen aroused his suspicions. “Tara, do you think…”
Tara shook her head. “I don’t know. I may never know for months maybe.” She laughed, but it was a pained laugh. “I may be jittery over nothing. I just wonder if there can be any future for me and Michael at all. I’m scared to reach Adam’s Point and find we’ll have to run again, and then along the way…” She grasped her stomach again. “I would just be devastated if I had to put a child through the kind of life we’ve had over the past few days.”
Carl nodded. “I understand how you feel. One thing I’ve learned is that absolutely nothing in life is guaranteed.”
Tara then smiled sadly. “But you know, having children around is wonderful. Last night, I dreamed about my own pizza tree.”
Carl glanced at Shyanne outside the door. She was picking up a small cardboard box and clutching it in her arms. As he watched her walk away, he reflected on how sad it would be if adults did not feel they could have more children because of the darkened world around them.
Chapter Seven
There still was one pressing question left over from the battle—what to do with Seth. The man who Thomas had captured finally had awoken yesterday but was groggy and slow to say anything. It took about an hour for him to recognize that he was tied to a tree. Then he erupted in a gaggle of profanities until Harold shut him up good with a punch to the face. Seth was much more agreeable after that.
They allowed him to relieve his bodily waste in a nearby spot, to eat, drink, and take short walks, but he always was bound at least slightly and when his activities were done, he was tied back to the tree.
Carl figured they would be moving on soon, which meant he had to decide about Seth. He knew very little about Ben, so he was useless as a source of information that could reveal where Ben might have gone if he had survived. He was not very quick on the draw. They had found him inebriated when they had captured him. Carl figured Seth was no stranger to the bottle.
As the morning progressed, Seth grew more agitated. He asked to be let go. He vowed to let them be and proclaimed all he wanted to do was to go home.
Carl wasn’t about to grant him his request. The request even infuriated him. When Lorenzo asked why, Carl unleashed his anger.
“This man assaulted a military base. He is guilty of attacking and murdering American soldiers in one of their own installations. You think I’d forget that? You think I’d forget the faces of men like Parker as they lay dying on the floor, or the men I saw on the floor, riddled with bullets?” Carl paced slowly past Lorenzo, leaving the imprisoned Seth farther behind him as he vented. “Let’s not also forget that this man killed a policeman. Ben told us the story. He slit the throat of an officer who put him in jail for drunken driving.”
“Well, I say he’s lying!” Seth shot back, rather pathetically.
Carl shot Seth a glare. “With the way we found you, I buy his story completely.”
“Nobody’s saying this guy’s not a scumbucket, but what are you suggesting? We kill him?” Lorenzo asked.
Carl kept glaring at Seth. “This man committed an act of terrorism. And since we’re in a state of complete anarchy, I would say I’m duly authorized as a member of the U.S. military to capture this man and try him as an enemy combatant.” Carl then started approaching Seth. “What do you say? Maybe if you plead guilty, I’ll let you choose which way you can die.”
Seth pressed up against the tree. “Get the hell away from me! Look, I didn’t even shoot at any soldiers! That was all Harper. Yeah, and Nichols, Santiago, Bernard.”
“Bullshit!” Carl would have throttled this man if he wasn’t still weak. “You were there. You killed soldiers. You destroyed a base. A place where we could have found shelter. You kidnapped my friends. You murdered Rupert!” Carl seized Seth by his dirty shirt. “That’s too many counts for you to go free, you piece of shit!”
“Carl.”
The former Marine turned his head. Preston was leaning against a nearby tree. He was pale, his eyelids half-open, his mouth slightly agape. He looked absolutely terrible, but he was awake and he spoke, which was more than Carl and everyone else had hoped for in the past day.
Preston pointed his finger at Carl. “Now…you got to…respect his rights. We don’t live in a…milita
ry dictatorship.” He gulped in more air before continuing. “I have a whole speech locked in my head but I can’t get it out. You know what I mean.”
Carl hesitated. He remembered Preston Wilson as a passionate crusader for progressive causes, a fighter against the military-industrial complex, police brutality, and so-called right-wing ills. Preston considered Carl his perfect foil, a military veteran who stood against the things he fought for. Carl tried his best to stay out of the partisan fray and advance what he believed to be the right message for the nation. Sadly, he was too late to make much of an impact.
So, it was no surprise that Preston was objecting to Carl’s declaration of a military trial. But Carl understood Preston differently now. The two had been through tough scrapes. The challenges of the past week had stripped away a lot of that old partisan rancor as it became clear that survival overruled old disagreements.
Preston simply didn’t want Carl to kill Seth.
Carl released Seth. If it had been anybody else, he might not have listened. But he owed Preston far too much to refuse him. In cooling off from his rage, he admitted that killing a man tied to a tree might be a bridge too far for him.
Carl approached Preston. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But you do know what he’s done? It’s hard to just let that go.”
“Yeah, I figure it is. I’d still like to think that maybe we can be fair to each other and recognize we all have dignity instead of killing each other like dogs.” Preston winced. Talking for any amount of time had taken its toll on him.
“We could just lead him away and force him to keep walking. Don’t give him any weapons,” Lorenzo said as he approached. “Let him face the world with his own bare hands.”
“You still can do a lot of damage with your bare hands,” Carl said.
“I hate to bring this up,” said Harold as he approached. “But Ben still could be lurking out there. You set this little punk loose, and he may hook up with Ben again. That’d double your trouble right there.”
Silent Interruption (Book 4): Of Tragedy and Triumph Page 5