“No, I wouldn’t!” Seth shouted. “I’m done! Finished! I don’t want this shit anymore!”
“Frankly, Carl, your original idea sounded fine to me. No one’s going to keep order around here except us,” Harold said.
“If you want to throw the bleeding heart moniker on me again, fine, guilty as charged, but I think it’d be a mistake to just kill this guy,” Preston said. “We need to draw the line when people are helpless.”
“I don’t know, Preston. Harold makes a good point,” Lorenzo said. “Seth could hook up with Ben again. Even having two of those bastards back together could cause us a lot of trouble.”
“I told you, it ain’t happening!” Seth shouted.
Carl locked eyes with Harold. He respected the man’s judgment. He also felt he owed Preston. How would he handle this?
Carl decided to mull over Seth’s fate some more by himself. Preston, satisfied, turned and walked back into the camp.
He didn’t cover more than a step before he suddenly fell over. Weakness had claimed his limbs.
“Whoa!” Tara caught him before he slammed into a mud pile. “You’re copying bad habits from Carl. You ought to be sitting down, resting.” As she propped him up, she laughed. “You’ve already come back from the dead.”
Preston smiled nervously. “Really?”
“Alicia and I gave you CPR. I think we both resuscitated you.”
Preston held onto the tree. He was shaky, but at least he could hold himself in place. “You know, I could feel you were there while I was asleep. Alicia, too. Sometimes I can sense all of you. Maybe that sounds touchy-feely New Age to you, but it felt real to me. And every time I thought I might leave this Earth, you guys pulled me back.”
Tara smiled. “Maybe we were. Maybe this world would be a much worse place without you giving us your bad leftie advice.” She chuckled. “And all the good advice, too.”
She then leaned close and gave him a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks for saving our lives,” she said softly.
Preston was, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. He just massaged his cheek with a growing grin.
Tara started to back away. “You know, Michael was impressed with how you shoved him into the closet like that. You’re stronger than you look.”
“Really?” Preston’s grin grew a little, but then he froze and looked around. “Uh, is Michael around here by any chance?” He quickly dropped his hand from his face.
Tara laughed. “Don’t worry, he’s not the jealous type.” She rolled her eyes. “Unless it happens to be Wednesday.”
Ricardo pressed the map flat on the right end while Shyanne held it on the left. The adults -- sans Lorenzo and Alicia, who were taking guard duty -- were studying the display of geography, roads, and train tracks to find the best route to Adam’s Point. The good news was that Road 32, the road they had followed to Camp Jefferson and was not far in walking distance from their camp, actually traveled in a straight shot west toward Adam’s Point before sloping down back toward the suburbs from where the group had started. To reach Adam’s Point, they would have to travel a small road that forked from Road 32.
Carl, however, was torn. “Remember those bodies we found on that road a couple of days ago?” He was referring to the bodies Ricardo, Matt and Thomas had discovered while on a scouting mission in a tall tree. “Roads may not be safe anymore. If marauders see us, I don’t know if we can retreat fast enough.”
Preston looked away as Carl spoke that last phrase, but actually Carl had himself in mind as well. The two of them were recovering slowly but neither was in any shape to run, if the situation demanded it. They both had contracted chronic coughs, and running was sure to make their breathing a lot worse. Even Harold had become mildly sick recently, though he did his best to cover it up. Carl and Preston also struggled with their internal weaknesses. Each man walked a little stronger each day, but it still was unknown if they could handle a prolonged hike, much less a chase.
“It’s not like the woods are totally safe,” Tara said.
Carl nodded, knowing that Tara was referencing Ben’s ambush. “True, but at least the woods require some skills to handle. You’d have to be pretty hardy to survive out here for any length of time.”
“We also can gather water and food,” Harold said. “It may be slower, but it might be the best for us.”
“Right.” Carl then jabbed his finger into the spot in the woods just off Road 32, roughly where their camp was. “Alright. We’ll take the road a short ways here.” He traced his finger a few inches west. “Then, we get off here.” He then pushed his finger up through the woods to the road that forked off Road 32. “We have to figure two days of navigating the woods.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Preston said.
“One more thing.” Carl backed up a little. “We need a fallback spot. If this doesn’t work out, if there’s trouble in Adam’s Point, we need to think about where to go next. We have to move quickly. I don’t want a small town if we can help it. Someplace where there’s going to be people but not a huge mass. We need to stay away from cities.”
“A suburb?” Preston asked.
“Yeah, but nothing too big. Big suburbs can be just as bad. We need something small, maybe someplace that’s new,” Carl replied.
“How about East Creek?” Preston asked.
“Where’s that?” Tara asked, “I never heard of it.”
Preston pressed his finger on the map near someplace on the West Virginia-Virginia border. “I was part of a canvassing operation for a candidate for Virginia governor. We were looking at Virginian exurbs where we might find college-educated adults to register to vote.” Preston smiled sheepishly. “We didn’t find a lot of takers in East Creek. Turned out they weren’t big fans of the candidate’s tax policy.”
Tara folded her arms and laughed. “Poor thing.”
“But it would be perfect for us. It is a few days away,” Preston added.
“And a few more if we travel from Adam’s Point,” Carl said. “But it sounds like our best bet if Adam’s Point goes south.” He looked at the group encircling the map. “I want this to be the last leg of our journey. I have to believe there’s a place where we can survive, live, and build a new home.”
Sometime later, when the map was packed up, Carl was sitting alone, watching Shyanne and Tara play together. Michael now was joining them. Shyanne looked at Michael with a big smile. Michael then presented Shyanne with a yellow flower. She took it and spun it around.
“They look like a family there, don’t they?” Harold asked.
Carl looked up. Harold was approaching slowly from his right. “They do,” Carl said.
“I guess we both got family on our minds, don’t we?” Harold ran a hand through his hair, brushing off fresh sweat. “I never asked you if you had anyone special.”
“No. Closest was in high school. Nice girl named Nancy. When I joined the service, I lost all contact with her. I don’t think it was serious. When I came home, I tended to my parents, reestablished ties to cousins, friends, but finding a wife…” Carl shook his head. “Never happened. I think right now that’s probably not going to be in the cards.”
Carl watched Michael, Tara and Shyanne a little longer before speaking. “Whatever happens, those three have to make it. Alicia and Lorenzo, too. And the kids. I only care if I make it long enough for everyone else to find a home.” Then he raised his hand to stare at his open palm. “Whatever happens to me next doesn’t matter.”
“Well, you still have a lot of years left. There’s no reason to give up on what your next days may bring.”
“I’m a soldier, Harold. I fight and bleed for others. Even when I came home, I was trying to make people aware of what could happen if disasters struck our country. I didn’t settle down. I didn’t stop. Now I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if I do stop, if I don’t have any enemies to face or an obstacle to conquer. Part of me hopes that I meet my end in battle.”
“I wouldn’t
give up hope that you can find some peace. It’d be a damned shame if you could only be a soldier,” Harold said.
Chapter Eight
Carl gazed into the living room of the ranch house through the open window. Much of the room was now impossible to walk through thanks to the mounds of wreckage piled up inside. The dust mask helped make it bearable for Carl to gaze inside, but even so, it was impossible not to inhale some of the soot and ash that wafted through the window. That, and the gasoline. Harold had discovered a small can of it in a shed and laced some of the wreckage with it.
He backed up. He wanted to forget this place as soon as he could, although he recognized that would not be possible. The experience of fighting Ben and his men would be etched in his memory forever. But at least he had one last shot at tearing down their legacy.
He backed away to join his friends who had gathered some distance away, close to the tree line at the edge of the ranch’s yard. Lorenzo and Harold hovered over a green metal box. It had been taken from Camp Jefferson and then retrieved by Tara from the basement as she searched the hideout. Harold leaned down, opened the box, and pulled out a green hand grenade.
“Your call,” he said as he handed it to Carl.
Carl felt the pineapple-shaped grenade in his hand. It almost felt sacred to him. It was a reminder of a life he had once lived, and of the sacrifices of so many. Today, he would use this weapon to mark the end of an evil man’s legacy.
“Everyone, take cover behind those trees!” Harold cried.
Carl waited until the party crouched down behind trees behind him. Carl was sure they would be safe here, but he wouldn’t take any chances.
He advanced a few steps toward the house. Then he pulled the pin and threw the grenade into the window with all of his strength. Carl then fell to the ground.
The section of the house with the living room was rattled by the force of the grenade’s loud explosion. Carl looked up. Smoke poured from the open window, and a few pieces of smoldering debris lay strewn around the yard near the house. Carl waited. A few seconds later, fresh flames licked the air from the open window. The burning was underway.
Tara and Lorenzo helped Carl to his feet. “Great,” he said through heavy breaths. Already the fire was starting to emerge through a hole in the roof. Carl let himself be led away by his friends as he watched the house burn.
Carl then urged his friends to let him wait a little longer. He waited until he noticed smoke and a little fire pour from the kitchen window. Now he was certain the fire had spread throughout the home.
It was better this way. The house was beyond repair, at least beyond the repair abilities of anyone without heavy construction equipment. Since that was not likely to happen, it was best to scorch the place to the ground before anyone else tried to use the place as a sanctuary.
“Carl?” Preston asked from behind.
Carl turned around. Preston was leaning against a tree. By now he was capable of walking, but he did so carefully while carrying a light pack. The man also was noticeably thinner than before.
“Yeah, I know.” Carl glanced one more time at the burning house. “It’s time to go.” They couldn’t wait any longer to start their journey.
And besides, Carl had one more piece of business to take care of.
Carl raised his gun. Seth was prancing around at the end of the road like a scared animal. Carl sighed.
“You have to the count of twenty. If I still see you, I’ll take the shot,” Carl said.
Seth nodded. “Look, could you make it thirty? Or twenty-five? Yeah, yeah, twenty-five!”
“Now!” Carl cried.
Seth let out a pathetic whimper before taking off into the vast field beyond. The treeline lay far away. Seth seemed to realize this and was running as fast as his legs could carry him.
“One…two…three,” Carl counted.
Seth ran farther and farther away. His body shrank in size as he widened the gap between himself and Carl and his party.
“Fifteen…sixteen…”
Now Seth was nearly a dot on the horizon. He still was visible, but very far away. Everyone waited to see what Carl would do.
“Nineteen…twenty!”
Carl aimed the gun at the moving dot that was Seth. Then, he flipped the gun down and put it in his holster. He spun around and winked at Preston. Preston laughed softly.
“That may not have been too smart,” Harold said.
Carl turned to the man with a twinge of guilt. “I sent him off clear in the other direction. If we go straight on to Adam’s Point like we did to get to Camp Jefferson, it’ll put a lot of distance between us and Seth. After a while, I don’t even think he’d be able to find us even if he wanted to.”
“Still, you let go of a lot of things to release that man,” Harold said.
Carl gazed in the direction down the road where Camp Jefferson lay. “I know,” he said with a heavy heart. Carl could take comfort in the fact that most of the men who attacked the base were dead as well as the traitor who exposed the base, plus the man who led them likely had no more followers. It was not perfect justice, but it still was justice.
Once Carl was satisfied that Seth was too far away to be a likely threat, he ordered the group to set out for Adam’s Point. The party began their trek down Road 32 at a much slower pace than before. Carl and Preston walked cautiously, not daring to push their bodies. After a while, neither man felt they could walk much faster even if they wanted to do so.
Alicia and Tara watched both men constantly with slight apprehension. On two occasions, Preston had to stop to spit up phlegm. Carl only would cough, but even he had to halt once to clear his lungs.
Michael fared better than Carl and Preston, but even he seemed to struggle. More than once he stopped to catch his breath, or he would complain about chest pains.
After about three hours, they reached the point where Carl had said they should disembark for the woods. Carl decided to delay their entry into the wilderness, instead allowing them to continue on the road. He believed they would eat up more time trying to drag their battered bodies through the woods. They would take to the woods later.
That “later” continued to be put off. One hour passed, then two.
Finally, Harold piped up. “Carl, are you sure we’re not spending too much time on this road? You mentioned the possible dangers, and I agreed.”
Carl wiped fresh sweat off his face. He was scared that he was losing his stamina. He never had experienced this much trouble on a hike before. “I just think we need to go easy,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll cut through the forest soon enough.”
An hour later, Carl came to believe that he had stuck to Road 32 for too long.
The way forward was blocked by a derailed train that had fallen off a train crossing and blocked the road. To get over the wreck, they would have to climb up and over one of the cars. However, there was another problem, one easy to view and to smell. The train cars were carrying petroleum. Carl and his friends could tell by how much of it was spilled across the road and on the ground along the tracks. There was so much of it that it formed a river that flowed past the tracks.
“Shit,” Michael whispered.
Alicia waved her hand in front of her face. “Something reeks. Is that the gas?”
“It may be the dead,” Lorenzo said. “A train accident like that is bound to have killed a bunch of people.”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to be hell to get over all that,” Michael said.
Carl cringed. He couldn’t ask all of them to try. They would get soaked in petroleum even making the attempt, and he didn’t want to mess up their clothes and packs. Those spilled chemicals also could be dangerous. “We’ll have to go around.”
“You mean take the route we should have taken?” Harold asked with a bit of chiding in his voice.
Carl bit his lower lip. “We’ll have to backtrack a little bit. We have to at least get away from the smell.”
They spent an hour ba
cktracking before marching off into the woods. Their initial foray into the forest was far from pleasant, as it turned out to be muddy and especially deep in some places. Lorenzo got stuck in a small sinkhole and had to take off his pack before Michael and Harold pulled him free.
In the end, the group returned to the road and backtracked again before trying to venture into the woods again. They found the ground this time was swarming with ticks. Carl quickly urged them to back off. He did not want the party to have to deal with tick bites.
Finally, they encountered some solid ground to start their forest journey, but to Carl’s chagrin, it took about two and a half hours to walk back this way from the train wreck. All that time wasted! It was all Carl could do not to belt out a string of profanities.
They didn’t even get that far into the woods before Maria complained of sore feet. They stopped to rest and eat. Carl was so worn out he almost wanted to quit for the day. But he couldn’t, not when he was so close to his parents.
However, the party could not progress much farther before night fell. They had to stop and make camp. According to the map the Farrells had brought along, there was a big stream that cut through this area of the forest. Harold and Lorenzo hoped they could bag some fish and find some fresh water as well.
Carl accompanied the pair through a gap in the trees. The path ahead led to the stream. All three of them carried fishing poles confiscated from Ben’s house. Behind them, Shyanne played with Harold’s boys and Ricardo.
“So, how’s Matt doing?” Lorenzo asked.
“He has headaches every now and then, mostly when it gets too hot,” Harold replied. “But he says he’s doing better. I just hope there’s no permanent damage.”
“I knew this one guy who had a concussion. His doctor told him he could never fly in a plane again.” Lorenzo chuckled. “Imagine that.”
Silent Interruption (Book 4): Of Tragedy and Triumph Page 6