by D. J. Molles
Lee knew himself better than to labor long over the dilemma. If the two on the roof failed to respond when he honked his horn, that would not be enough for Lee to leave them to rot on the rooftop. He would need to see them, look at them, and check them for pulses before he abandoned them.
Which simplified the situation.
There was a deep drainage ditch on the side of the road, separating him from the field that stretched out to the house. Traversing the ditch in the pickup truck was out of the question. It was possible that he could make it, but Lee preferred to be sure that his getaway vehicle would be ready for him if things went bad and he had to get lost. However, he did pull the vehicle as far off the roadway as he felt comfortable with, then exited, closing and locking the door quietly.
He hitched up his go-to-hell pack and dipped down into the drainage culvert. If he could get within a few hundred yards of the house he might be able to communicate with the two figures on the roof and hopefully plan an exit for them, if the threat of infected still remained.
Lee held out hope that the infected that had tried to kill the family earlier would have lost interest and left the area. Lee had absolute confidence in his ability to take on a threat, but there was no denying that the warped and destroyed minds of the people infected with the FURY plague didn’t go down easily. And taking on ten of them at a time was going to be that much harder.
He climbed up out of the ditch and headed toward the house, skirting along a small clump of trees that bordered the field. He moved at a trot, stopping every few moments to survey the area and check behind him. Each time he checked, he looked back at his vehicle. He didn’t like the way it was sitting there, all alone and painfully conspicuous on the side of the road. It was begging for attention.
He also took the time to look at the house and see what he could through the windows and the open front door, but he was either too far to see the movement or there was simply no one inside. The thought meandered across his mind that, if the house was empty, what was the family still doing on the roof?
Unless they were already dead.
After several circuits of scooting along the edge of the woods and stopping and looking around, he was about two hundred yards from the house. That was close enough. He took another good look through his magnifier at the two individuals on the roof. It was two females, one about mid-thirties, the other a child, maybe five or six. Still, neither moved. From this distance, Lee could not see the rise and fall of their chests to determine if they were breathing.
Or maybe he was close enough and they just weren’t.
He bear-crawled a few yards forward to a stand of thick brush that gave him good concealment. There, he dropped his go-to-hell pack and slipped a hand into one of the side pockets. He rooted around a bit, then came out with a compact of camouflage face paint. He didn’t want to camouflage himself right then, but he did want the mirror inside.
He opened the compact and angled it toward the sun until he saw a dull square of light flash over the front of the house. He wiggled it around, finally centering it on the adult female and flicking it over her eyes. He did this several times but garnered no response. He turned the mirror slightly so that reflection washed over the younger female’s face and repeated the flicking.
This time the head came up.
Lee could see the girl sit up slightly, shield her eyes, and then peer out into the woods where the flashing light was coming from. The girl had curly blond hair that whipped around in the breeze. She looked concerned and obviously did not see the flashing light as anything friendly. It had probably been so long since anything friendly came by that she wouldn’t believe it even if she knew.
Lee kept flashing her with the mirror, then dropped it and came out of his concealment just long enough to wave a quick arm.
This time the look on the girl’s face changed from suspicion to urgency. She rolled toward her mother and shook her arm. The mother, her face sunburned and grimed, looked up, appearing out of sorts or possibly woozy in the afternoon heat. The girl began silently pointing toward Lee, who took the moment to step out of cover again and wave once more.
The mother sat bolt upright and began wildly waving both arms. Then she shouted. “Help! Please help!”
Lee swore under his breath and motioned to her, palms to the earth with both hands—Calm down!
But it was too late. From somewhere inside the house came that horrid screech.
Lee pointed at the house, counted with his fingers—1, 2, 3—then raised his hands in question, attempting to communicate: How many are inside? The woman looked down below her feet as though she would see through the roof with x-ray vision, then looked back up at Lee and shrugged. Lee wasn’t sure whether the shrug meant she didn’t know how many were inside or she didn’t understand the question.
He motioned for her to calm down once more, then fell back into his concealment.
Not a second after he did this, a figure burst through the front door. It was a male, tall and very skinny. His left leg appeared injured and he dragged it behind him, though he moved fast, despite the handicap. He was wearing only a pair of briefs and some dress socks. He dragged a garden rake behind him.
The infected craned his neck up to see the two survivors on the roof and began making chuffing noises that sounded like an anxious dog. He came down the front steps, the steel head of the rake clattering after him.
The two females on the roof heard him coming out into the yard and flattened themselves onto the roof. Lee didn’t know whether Slim had already seen them or not, but the shout was enough to rev his engine. He grabbed the rake with both hands and started swinging it overhead like an ax. The tines smacked the rain gutter and he pulled, ripping a section down.
From around the other side of the house, drawn by the commotion, two more infected appeared. They ran to where Slim was standing and started pacing around, looking up at the roof like they knew someone was up there. Neither of the newcomers had a weapon in hand, but both seemed agile and, so far, uninhibited by the plague’s effect on motor skills.
Lee waited, breathing hard now. No others came out of the house or from around the back. There were only three left. Lee wondered where the others had gone. Then he wondered why these ones were still here. Were they really that persistent? How long did it take for them to lose interest in something? And did they ever get exhausted, or would they continue trying to get to their victims for hours on end?
Lee quietly pulled on his go-to-hell pack. Then he shouldered his rifle and stood behind the brush with one knee on the ground, peering through the leaves at the scene before him. The rake was broken, and now all three infected were making strange noises and staring up at the roof. One was still pacing back and forth, but the other two stood in place, hands clenched by their sides as though ready to fight. On the roof, the woman held the girl in her arms, and both stared fearfully below the edge of the roof, where unseen threats waited to tear them apart.
“Head shots this time…” Lee slowed his breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, then stepped out of his hiding place.
He moved forward, wanting to cover as much distance as possible to make his head shots more accurate. He figured that a shot to the head would almost always put someone down, no matter how persistent he was, and if all three bum-rushed him, he would need them to drop fast.
He walked at a steady pace, heel to toe, rifle to his shoulder, red dot trained on the pacer. He seemed most likely to notice Lee’s approach, since the other two had their backs to Lee and were still staring up at the roof.
He closed to about one hundred and fifty yards, and they still had not noticed him.
He pictured himself tripping and falling as he traversed the uneven ground, the three infected descending on him as he attempted to right himself. He looked down at the ground to inspect his footing. When he looked back up, the pacer was sprinting at him.
“Shit—” was all Lee could get out of his mouth. He planted one f
oot behind him as the infected closed the distance with surprising speed. All in that same second he told himself to be still, be calm, and to take a good shot, then he thought about the infected girl, sitting in the field, mourning her infant’s death, and wondered if he should give warning before shooting this unarmed infected, the same warning he would give any other person.
Hesitation.
He put the red dot on the infected’s head—closing about a hundred yards—and breathed out slowly. The 3x magnifier gave the infected the appearance of being much closer, and Lee’s instincts screamed to take the shot, but he waited. Another breath in… getting closer… breath out…
Lee pulled the trigger once, watched the shot clip the infected’s shoulder and spin him, fired again, and saw the neat hole punched right above his left ear. The figure dropped.
Lee lowered the scope to see the big picture, which was two other infected, hauling ass toward him and screeching wildly. Lee chose the faster one without the damaged leg and fired quickly. The head shot was perfection and the body dropped. Lee pivoted to the third infected, so close now that his snarling face and skin-and-bones torso filled up Lee’s scope. Three shots brought him to the ground, but he didn’t want to die and kept crawling on all fours until Lee finished him with a round to the top of the head. Slim died about twenty feet from Lee.
It wasn’t until after Slim stopped moving that he heard the screaming.
Lee looked up and saw both survivors standing at the edge of the roof, the woman holding her daughter as she reached out, tears in her eyes and her face clenched in grief and anger. She was screaming at Lee, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying; all of her words were contorted with emotion. Lee looked at the mother and saw the look in her eyes, and then he looked down at the body twenty feet from him and heard the little girl cry out for Daddy.
It wasn’t Daddy anymore, but this five-year-old didn’t know that.
“Fuck.” Lee felt that pressing coldness in the pit of his stomach like he had just massively screwed something up. But what was he supposed to have done? Let the man tear into him because he was afraid to make a five-year-old cry? Lee shook his head and moved toward the house.
When he was close enough to talk, the little girl had turned away from him and buried her face in her mother’s chest. He opened his mouth to tell them his customary script, but the words caught in his mouth. He felt ashamed, though he knew there was nothing that could have been done differently. Even so, he didn’t want to introduce himself as the conquering hero of the United States Army one minute after gunning down this girl’s father.
He went with a simple, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I could do to save him. I’m here to help you. How did you get up there?”
The woman blinked away tears, obviously upset but also rational enough to understand that her husband had been rendered insane by the plague and would have killed any of them had Lee not put him down. She pointed to the backside of the roof.
“There’s a ladder on the ground in the backyard.” Her voice was hoarse and cracked. Lee could not see any supplies on the roof and assumed they were both parched dry from lack of water.
He jogged around the house, taking the corners slowly and panning to see what threats lay beyond. When he saw the backyard was clear, he walked, searching the overgrown grass and weeds for a ladder.
He found a painter’s ladder lying in the knee-high grass, angled away from the house, and Lee reasonably inferred that it had been propped against the house, then kicked off to prevent their attackers from following.
Lee picked up the ladder with one hand and heaved it back into place, leaning against the roof. The woman and her daughter appeared over the crest of the roof and worked their way carefully down the incline to the ladder.
The woman pointed to the ladder. “Abby, go down first.”
The little girl shook her head violently, her blond curls flying. “I don’t wanna go down with him!”
Lee felt stung. “It’s okay, sweetie. I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Abby wasn’t having it and screamed in an ear-splitting shriek, “You killed my daddy!”
“Abby.” The woman’s voice was shaking but stern. “You will not talk to him like that.”
The little girl was still sobbing but didn’t say anything else. The woman turned and made her way down the ladder. She moved slowly and a bit clumsily, making Lee concerned about the level of dehydration. When she finally reached the bottom, she held out her arms and motioned for the girl to come down. Finally Abby swung her tiny legs out and began climbing down, her mother hovering underneath her, arms outstretched, waiting to catch her if she fell.
When both of them were on the ground, Lee placed a hand gently on the woman’s shoulder and pointed toward the brick wall of the house. The angle of the sun cast this side of the house in shade, which was what both of them needed. He noticed that despite the heat, the woman wasn’t sweating, which only meant that her body didn’t have the fluids to spare.
“Come over here.” Lee held her by the arm as she walked slowly into the shade. “Cool down for a minute. I have water.”
The mention of water made both of the survivors’ eyes go wide. The woman nodded as she sat down against the brick wall. “Please. We haven’t had water in days.”
Lee unhooked his rifle and leaned it against the wall, still close by. Then he took off his pack and set it on the ground. From the main portion, he withdrew four bottles of water, setting two on the ground and handing one to each of the females.
“They’re not cold,” Lee advised. “Drink it slow at first or you might vomit.”
While the two survivors undid the caps on their bottles of water and sipped at them, obviously using significant self-restraint to keep from gulping them down, Lee scanned the perimeter of the property but saw no threats. Satisfied, he closed the main portion of his pack and opened a smaller section where he kept a stash of medical supplies. From inside he pulled out two packs of electrolyte tablets and two ice packs.
He handed the packs of electrolyte tablets to the mother. “When you get done with the bottle of water, put both tablets in the next bottle and shake it up. They’ll help rehydrate you.” As he said this he crushed the ice packs, breaking the chemical bags inside and turning the contents to a frozen slush.
With an ice pack in hand, he approached Abby cautiously, as you would a dog you were unsure of. The little girl looked at him with fearful blue eyes but didn’t react, so he put on a disarming smile and held out the ice pack. “This is gonna help you feel better, okay?”
Happy to be drinking water, though still obviously distraught, the girl nodded and allowed him to place the ice pack against her head.
After a second she pulled away. “It’s cold.”
“Honey,” the mother said, sounding tired and out of it. “It’s gonna cool you down so the heat’s not so bad. Just let him do it.”
Abby relaxed and Lee put the ice pack back on her head, then worked it down to the base of her neck and held it there. After a few moments, he took her hand and put it where his was. “Hold that there, okay? Even if it starts to feel uncomfortable.”
Then he turned and put the ice pack on the mother’s head. Her eyes were closed and tears were coming out, gathering grime as they ran down her face. Lee spoke soothingly. “It’s gonna be all right. I’m gonna get you guys someplace safe.”
The woman opened her eyes, now red-rimmed with tears. Her voice was a soft whisper. “Thank you.”
Lee nodded in response. “What’s your name?”
“Angela…” She thought for a moment, like she couldn’t remember. “Mooring.”
“Angela, I’m Lee Harden.” He still decided not to introduce his rank and purpose.
Later, he thought. Now’s not the time.
While Lee held the ice pack to the base of her neck, Angela finished the first bottle of water and opened the second, dropping in the contents of one of the packs of electrolytes—two tablets. They imm
ediately began to dissolve and turn the water an orangey yellow. She shook the bottle, though her movements were sluggish.
“How long were you on the roof?”
“I think… three days?”
“Have you had any water at all?”
“We brought up a gallon. That was all we could grab on our way out. They were already breaking through the front windows.”
“Was it just you three?”
She nodded.
Lee looked at both of them. “You guys did really well. You’re both going to be very dehydrated, but hopefully the few bottles and electrolytes will get you out of the danger zone until I can get you back to my safe house.”
“You have a safe house?” Angela said it with some awe, as though she could not fathom the concept of a secure location.
“It’s several miles from here.”
“Did you walk?”
“No, I drove my truck—” No sooner had the words left Lee’s mouth than he heard the distant slam of a car door. A very distinct sound in the quiet of nature. He immediately froze and looked around. Angela and Abby sat unmoving, staring at him while his eyes scanned.
He grabbed up his M4 and stood. Angela’s hand shot out, the quickest she’d moved yet, and held his arm. “Please… don’t go.”
Lee looked down, pitying her. “I’m not going far. And I’ll be right back.”
She released his arm and he stepped to the corner of the house, then peered around. He could see the land laid out in front of him and his truck on the road. No… not his truck. Someone else’s, parked facing the opposite direction. A dark blue Dodge Ram. Lee leaned out a little farther, gaining a better angle and seeing the rest of the scene.
His own pickup truck was boxed in by the Ram in front and an olive drab Humvee to the rear. Outside of the vehicles, two figures were inspecting his truck, while three others approached the house from the road. A remnant of the US military? More likely just pirated US military equipment. Lee brought up his rifle, using his scope to look at the three men approaching. Two of them wore ACUs but lacked any identifying marks, and neither was wearing Kevlar, which made them look like civilians who had raided an army-navy store. The third wore an old woodland camouflage jacket and jeans. All three carried M4s. They walked with the rifles across their chests, not addressed toward the house. Lackadaisical.