“No. Keep going,” Michelle answered.
Rubbernecking for all they were worth provided no additional clues, and the farm was soon left behind. They traveled the remaining few miles on Smyrna Chapel Road before arriving at the cable blocking the cut-through. Their crossing was not quite as easy on the return trip due to the storm that had come through. It took almost two hours of spinning tires and winching, punctuated by more than a few colorful words before they came to the far side at Crossbow Lakes. There was no sign of Bucky or Fred.
“Do you think they’re OK?” Michelle asked.
“Probably. They seemed like a pretty resourceful couple. Maybe they packed up and are already at Ravenwood. In any event we don’t have time to worry about it.”
The mud road gradually turned back into gravel as they made their way out to the highway. A brief chat on the walkie talkie reaffirmed their plans, and both of the muck covered vehicles turned left onto the pavement. It was 2:00 PM.
Turning east on 704 put them about thirty miles from the place where Andy and Michelle would turn off and head to the cabin. Sam and Thompson would continue on another five or six miles to Walter’s. The first ten miles passed relatively uneventfully. Several vehicles that they didn’t remember seeing on their way out were pulled off to the side of the road. A few sat directly on the road and had to be navigated around. The first one they came to that needed to be dodged was an older model Chrysler sedan. It was parked caddy cornered across the westbound lane, but its proximity to another vehicle, a teal green Honda at the edge of the eastbound lane, left very little free space between them. The shoulder looked wide enough for them to pass on the left, but Andy insisted that they stop one hundred yards away to scope the area with binoculars first.
“Can you see anything moving?”
Michelle zoomed the binoculars to maximum magnification and scanned both cars. While she was doing so the walkie talkie crackled to life.
“Geronimo Jefferson to old geezer and princess, come in.” Thompson’s voice came over loud and clear, as did the background chuckling from Sam.
Andy picked up the little radio and replied. “That would be some embarrassing shit for a youngster like yourself to get their ass kicked by an old geezer.”
“What’s the holdup? Do you want to wait here while the A team goes and checks it out?” Thompson asked.
Andy was just about to reply some choice words when he noticed that Sam had piloted the Explorer right next to his truck. Thompson’s grinning face was looking through the window while his hand made the standard ‘roll it down’ motion.
Andy adjusted the brim of his cap with a single middle finger as he smiled at Thompson before rolling down his window.
“What do you have . . . did you see something move?” Sam asked as he leaned forward to look around Thompson.
“We’re just checking it out. Which I think is a smart thing to do, by the way. It looks like we can drive around to the left, but I still think we better err on the side of caution,” Andy replied.
Another twenty seconds of glassing the scene shed no clues about any danger, and Michelle passed that information on.
Andy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel a few times before asking, “Do you want to go past them fast or slow? One at a time or both at the same time?”
Thompson turned and consulted with Sam for a moment before looking back toward Michelle and Andy. “How about we do it separately. We’ll go first, maybe twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, and if we make it past without any trouble we’ll stop maybe fifty yards further down the road and watch as you drive by.”
“Works for us,” Andy replied after a brief consult with Michelle.
Sam piloted Michelle’s truck down the road at a steady pace while Andy and Michelle watched. They saw the Explorer’s brake lights come on as it shifted onto the road’s shoulder to the left of the Chrysler, but it didn’t stop. At the agreed upon distance past the vehicles the Explorer stopped and the walkie talkie sounded again. It was Sam’s voice this time.
“Andy, you copy?”
“I’m a hundred and fifty yards from you . . . I would hope that these radios carry at least that far.”
“Roger that. Obviously nothing jumped out and tried to mug us, but there are a couple bodies . . . three or four at least that are leaning against the Chrysler on this side. They don’t look like they’re moving, but Thompson couldn’t get a really good look at them when we went by, so proceed with caution.”
“10-4,” Andy replied.
Putting the truck in gear, Andy accelerated towards the Chrysler. Thirty feet away he steered off the pavement and onto the shoulder. Just as the gravel started crunching underneath his tires the radio burst out with Thompson’s excited voice.
“MOVEMENT . . . ONE OF THEM IS MOVING!”
A split second later Andy slammed on the brakes, locking up all six wheels and forcing Michelle to brace herself against the dashboard. The same abrupt deceleration rolled the walkie talkie and practically everything else that had been strewn upon the bench seat onto the floor. Thompson’s shouting was immediately cut off. The scrunch of tires sliding on gravel ended rapidly as the dual wheeled pickup came to a stop right next to the sedan.
Recovering from the quick stop, Michelle caught movement in her peripheral vision. A pasty faced man wearing a Reebok windbreaker was staggering toward them. Shattered glasses in bent wire frames hung crooked off of his face. A spiderweb of thick black veins crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead.
“Holy crap! Andy, that’s the first guy we picked up on our way out here!” Michelle said.
Andy swore and dropped the truck into reverse, mashing on the pedal and rocketing them backwards. As they moved away the figure stopped, mouth gaping and shutting like a fish too long out of the water.
“Wait a minute . . . . hold up,” Michelle said.
Andy stopped the truck a hundred feet away from the slowly moving figure. “I think you’re right. I think that’s the guy that we first saw walking down the middle of the road a couple of days ago,” Andy said.
“I’m sure it is,” Michelle said, “but I swear that he was trying to say something back there. Like he was trying to talk as we backed away.”
They watched with hesitant uncertainty as the figure limped back towards the sedan and began pounding heavily on the rear passenger window. Three or four blows and the glass fractured. Another one and it shattered. Hooking his right arm into the opening, the man half collapsed against the door and went still.
A horn sounded in the distance.
“Where’s the radio?” Andy asked.
Michelle looked down from the spectacle she’d been staring at long enough to locate it and her binoculars that had tumbled to the floorboards. When she grabbed a short stubby antenna, batteries went flying. She set the walkie talkie up on the seat, followed by the binoculars and a Mason jar of Mrs. Glass’s pickled beets that she had been contemplating opening. Another trip to the floor to grab the batteries followed.
“Crap. Hold on a minute,” Michelle said as she fumbled through the junk trying to locate the last AA battery. She finally found it recessed in the shifter boot of the four wheel drive lever. When she sat up, Michelle saw Andy peering through the binoculars.
“What’s he doing?” she asked Andy while installing the batteries under the back plate of the little radio.
“I don’t know. His back is to us, but he’s still hanging against the car with his right arm through the window. His left arm looks like it’s kind of smacking the car door, but I can’t really tell. Maybe he’s caught there.”
The last battery clicked into place and the walkie talkie blared to life. “ . . . me. OK? . . . . . . . . . .. Repeat, flash your lights or beep your horn and let us know you’re alright. Come on Michelle, talk to me . . .”
Andy smashed the horn for a two second burst. Michelle keyed the transmit button and said, “We’re OK. We just knocked the batteries out of the radio for a minute. Can
you see what’s going on with that guy? It looks like he’s stuck on the door or something.”
“We can see him,” Sam’s voice came over, “but you’ve got the only pair of binoculars. And our angle isn’t too good. Do you want us to drive closer?”
“No. But can you reach the rifle?” Michelle replied.
“Can you be a little more specific? Do you want us to shoot him?”
“No. I meant can you reach the black plastic rifle case behind you. It’s got a gun inside it with a 4x12 power scope that you can look through.”
“Hold on.”
“Be careful when you open the case. There’s a half dozen cartridges just loose on one end,” she added.
“Gotcha,” came the reply.
A few seconds later Michelle saw her truck back up, then pull forward partially off the road with the driver’s side window facing the Chrysler. Andy, who was still looking through the binoculars spoke. “It looks like they found the gun.”
Ten seconds later that speculation was confirmed as Thompson came over the airwaves. “OK, Sam’s got the gun and he’s looking through it now.” After a brief pause, Thompson’s voice came back hesitantly. “Um . . . this is messed up.”
Michelle and Andy glanced at each other, frowning in confusion. A scant breath before she was about to ask for clarification, Thompson’s voice broke through again.
“Hey Michelle, Sam wants to know if this gun is sighted in.”
“Of course it is. Why? . . . . . . . . . . DON’T SHOOT!”
A resounding BOOM thundered across the distance as the rifle fired. The man leaning against the old Chrysler snapped his head back and then crumpled quickly onto the pavement.
Michelle jumped on the radio. “WHAT THE HELL? WHY DID YOU SHOOT HIM?”
Another pause yielded no reply so Michelle repeated her question.
Patience had never been one of her virtues, and each additional second of silence flushed her cheeks a deeper shade of aggravated crimson. Finally Sam’s voice came through.
“Just drive past him slowly.”
Michelle took out her frustration on the transmit key, squeezing it hard enough that her thumb turned white.
“I asked you not to shoot him. I think he was trying to communicate with us,” she hissed in exasperation.
Another brief silence strained the limits of Michelle’s tolerance before Sam’s even monotone came through.
“He did.”
Michelle grimaced and looked at Andy, who merely shrugged his shoulders in innocence before moving the truck forward again. Hitting the shoulder further back than the first time, Andy steered the pickup as far off the road edge as he could without risking a slide into the drainage ditch. Pulling even with the old sedan, Andy slowed to a crawl as Michelle’s mouth dropped open. In coarse, hand-width strokes of blood, the man with the broken glasses and jogging suit had roughed out two words on the car door. “Kill me.”
Chapter 39
Pulling up even with Sam and Thompson, the four of them sat quietly, each lost in their own mental swamp regarding the implications of what they had seen. A cold chill vibrated up and down Michelle’s spine as she thought about what just happened, and she half-consciously reached over and turned the heater fan to high.
A few moments later Sam and Thompson got out of the Explorer and sat in the backseat of Andy’s truck. Michelle’s words practically leapt out.
“Please, somebody tell me that we haven’t shot a bunch of people who didn’t do anything wrong besides being sick. Tell me that these infected people are not going to get better. Tell me they don’t know what they’re doing.”
After a few moments passed, it was Thompson, surprisingly, who spoke first. “Ma’am, I think I know what you’re thinking. The same thing that I thought when Sam told me what was written on the car door. You know, the question of whether somebody can come back once they’ve been infected. Like is there a medicine or treatment for them. Or if we just give them enough time will it run its course like the flu. And I got to tell you, I don’t think so. And if there is a medicine, I doubt we’ll ever see it. I think it’s a lot more likely that the guy was almost at the end of his rope when he was writing that, and I think that he knew it.”
Sam nodded his head. “I agree. Now maybe you all have seen more of these things . . . and more of the results of the sickness than I have. But what I have seen leads me to believe that they ain’t going to get better.”
Michelle looked up at Andy.
“And you?” she asked.
Arching his eyebrows, Andy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, half whistling between his teeth as it left. “Well, as much as it pains me, I’m forced to agree with tweedledumb and tweedledumber,” he said, hiking a thumb towards the backseat. “I’ve got no proof, but I have yet to see anybody who got better. True, we’ve really only been knee deep in the turd field for a short time, but nothing I’ve noticed makes me want to spend a lot of time putting band aids on them and hoping they’ll feel better tomorrow. I think . . . I really think that we’re following the best course of action. Michelle . . . and Sam and Thompson . . . you all know that we’ve had some seriously bad encounters with these things. Can you imagine if we would have tried something warm and fuzzy as opposed to something fast and lead. I can’t. Now I don’t know what stage or progression of the infection that guy was in, but I’d imagine that, like a lot of other things, there is a point of no return. I think he knew that he was getting close. Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly understand how we’d want to be sure that we were doing the right thing, and I can’t imagine the moral repercussions that would avalanche on us if it turns out there’s a magic pill available at every corner drugstore that will fix em’ right up. I just don’t think so. Although, this train of thought leads me to two others, and I think we need to have a quick . . .” Andy gave a sly look at Sam before continuing, “Pow-Wow.”
Sam smiled at Andy’s joke and said, “What’s on your mind?”
“The first thing,” Andy started, “is that we need . . . right here and now . . . to get this straight in our heads. We either shoot, or we don’t. So far we’ve done OK, but I know that this line of thinking . . . the ‘whether they’ll get better or not’ is going to make one, or all of us hesitate. And that could get the rest of us killed dead. So I think we should all examine ourselves and figure out what’s going to take precedence. We all need to be on the same page.”
Glances were exchanged for a few moments as they each contemplated the murky chaos of uncertainty. At length, Michelle hesitantly volunteered her thoughts. “I . . . think . . . um, that is I’m . . .“ Her words fell off into silence for a moment before she found them again. “Ummm . . . .I guess at the center of it all, for me anyhow, is fear. Fear that someday I’m going to become infected. And then what? Will I know it? Will I be aware of the things I’m doing? Will I hurt other people or maybe even one of you? And also there’s fear of what we’ve already become. Think about it, whether they were infected or not, we’ve been slaughtering people. People. Does that not make you cringe inside? Just in the past few days our combined body count would put us as some of the worst serial killers in the world. Who knows what it will be by next week. This has all happened so fast that we’ve been caught up in the adrenaline rush. But I think that inside each of us, we’re all scared. We all want to be heroes, protectors. But at some point in the very near future, what we’ve done, what we’re doing, is going to have to be paid for.”
Andy put a firm, yet gentle hand on her shoulder. “You have a lot of wisdom for somebody so young, ‘Chelle. And I agree with you. We’re all in survival mode, riding the tide of strangeness and disbelief. And yes, we’re going to have to answer for what we’ve done. But you know what? I think we’re getting lost on what the question is. I don’t believe, given the current situation as we know it, that the question should be ‘what have I done’? Instead, we should be asking ourselves ‘has what I’ve done saved a friend, or myself, from harm?’
. . . and equally important . . . ‘am I prepared to do it again?’”
Another ten minutes passed in silence. The additional bodies and high heat setting was starting to make the climate inside the truck a bit too warm. Finally, with a shrug of her shoulders and several deep breaths, Michelle met each of their eyes. “I want you to know,” she began, “that I will not hesitate. I think you’re right. I don’t think there’s a way back once you’ve been infected. And I want you to promise me, each of you . . . that if I do become infected, you will not let our friendship get in the way of you doing what you need to do before I become a danger to anyone else.”
"I’ll give you that promise if you’ll do the same for me," Sam replied.
"Same here," Thompson added.
"And me," Andy said.
“All right then, let’s get moving,” Michelle said.
Thompson and Sam returned to the Explorer and followed Andy as he drove down the road, windows open to equalize some of the sweltering heat that had built up. A few more miles passed before they came to the section of road where they had helped the lady in the minivan and her two children. Another dozen miles went by before Andy tapped the brake, slowing down to about thirty.
“Look up ahead, is that the same place where the two RV’s were . . . the place that we tried out the silenced 22?”
“I think so,” Michelle answered, “but it certainly wasn’t like that.” Michelle grabbed the binoculars and focused up ahead on the wreckage of what looked to be a dozen or more burned out cars and at least three more large RV’s, all in addition to the pair that had been there earlier.
“Sam, hold up . . . we might have a potential problem up here,” Andy said over the radio as he coasted to a stop.
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