by James Cook
“Good to see you again.” Tom called out to me, smiling.
He stood over his makeshift barrel-grill roasting what looked like a couple of whole venison tenderloins. My mouth watered at the smell. Nearby, smoke curled around the edges of a fifty-gallon drum that I hadn’t noticed the day before. I assumed that they were preserving the meat that they could not prepare for immediate consumption. Smart.
“I can’t tell you how good that smells.” I said.
Tom’s smile broadened. “Told you I’d have dinner waiting for you.”
I smiled back. I had to admit, I was starting to like the guy. “Anything I can do to help?” I asked.
“You can help me set up seats for the two of you.” Sarah said from behind me.
I turned around to see her and Brian rolling a short section of log toward the fire. It was about the right size to use as a stool. I walked over to help them.
“Careful now,” Sarah said, “It’s pretty heavy…”
She trailed off as I squatted down and casually pulled it up to my chest, being careful to lift with my legs. It had some weight to it, but I am not a weak man. “It’s alright, I got it.” I said, and turned to carry it back to the fire.
Sarah chuckled from behind me. “Okay, that works too.”
After shrugging out of my pack and harness, I laid my rifle down on the ground next to me and took a seat near the fire. The warmth felt good in the chill afternoon air, and my stomach growled at the scent of meat sizzling on the grill. It had been almost three months since I had eaten fresh venison. I didn’t like the stuff before the Outbreak, but after eating it as a staple food for the last two years I’d developed a taste for it.
Brian shoveled some hot coals into a smaller fire pit nearby, and then opened a few cans of beans into an aluminum pot. Gabe helped him lash a few sticks together from which to suspend the pot over the coals. While the food cooked, we talked about the weather, how harsh the winter had been, and how strange the unseasonably cold spring temperatures were. I shot Gabe a look at that one. We knew why it was cold, but I wasn’t quite sure how to break the news to these folks. Sarah caught the exchange, and her expression grew quizzical.
“So where are you folks from, originally?” I asked, changing the subject.
They grew silent for a moment.
“We came here from Atlanta.” Tom said staring into the fire, a thin, grim line replacing his smile.
“Jesus Christ.” I breathed. “How did you get out of there?”
Atlanta was ground zero when the Outbreak hit. It spread outward from there, and in less than a year, consumed nearly the entire world.
Tom shrugged. “We ran. We packed up everything that we could fit in my Explorer, and hit the road. I lived in Atlanta my whole life, so I knew the back roads better than most other people did. Atlanta was one of those cities where half the people who lived there were from somewhere else. I used to hate that, but in the end, it worked to my advantage.”
I nodded in understanding. Charlotte was the same way back before the end of the world. After the big banks moved in and brought tens of thousands of jobs with them, the mild weather and low cost of living attracted workers from all over the country. By the time the Outbreak hit, it was a rare thing to meet anyone born and raised in the city.
“We’ve been moving slowly, one place to another for the last couple of years.” Tom continued. “We headed straight for the mountain country when we left Atlanta. Been working our way north on foot ever since.”
“But why come here?” I asked.
Tom pointed to his wife. “Sarah grew up near Morganton. She knows the country around here. Figured this would be a good place to start over.”
I turned to Sarah. “You’re from Morganton?”
She nodded. “Yep. Grew up about ten miles south of where we sit right now.”
That got a wry smile out of me. Small world. I thought about asking her if she had ever been down to Alexis, but decided against it. That conversation could wait.
“How did you end up in Atlanta?” I asked.
“I worked in the FBI field office there.” She replied.
“You were an FBI agent?”
Sarah nodded. “Used to be. I left the Bureau after Brian was born. It was hard enough just being married, but when he came along…it was tough. Work kept me away from my family a lot.” She reached out a hand and stroked the back of Brian’s head. “I put out some feelers and wound up getting an offer as a security manager for a big retail chain. The number on the offer letter was twice my government salary, so I turned in my badge and my gun and I never looked back.”
I absorbed that for a moment, and then pointed at Tom. “So how did the two of you meet?”
“I ran my own contracting business.” Tom replied. “Mostly remodeling, roofing, things like that.”
“He had good reviews on Angie’s List, so I hired him to refurbish the kitchen in my condo.” Sarah interjected.
Tom grinned. “I was clean-cut and had a good bit more meat on my bones back then. I noticed her giving me eyes a few times while I was working, so after I finished the project ahead of schedule and under budget, I asked her out on a date.”
“And the rest,” Sarah said, “is history.”
I smiled at the two of them. After the pain and darkness I had seen over the last couple of years, the obvious love between these people was like the beacon of a lighthouse over a stormy sea. All doubts about whether or not I was in good company faded from my mind, drifting up into the trees with the rich smoke of the campfire.
“You guys are so lame.” Brian said, shaking his head.
Sarah pounced on him and dug her fingers into a ticklish spot on his ribs. The boy squawked and twisted, falling out of his chair. Sarah stepped away grinning as she pointed a finger at him.
“Let that be a lesson to you, calling your parents lame.”
Tom shook his head and gestured at Brian with a metal spatula. “When you’re done rolling around in the dirt and getting your clothes filthy, how about you make yourself useful and go set up the table.”
Brian picked himself up from the ground and brushed off a newly acquired layer of pine needles and bark. “I’m on it.” He said, and ran off toward the tent shelter.
Sarah walked over to check on the beans. “These are about done, honey.” She said, looking up at Tom. “How much longer on the venison?”
“It’s ready.”
Brian came out from under the tent with a white plastic folding table. He set it up on a flat part of the clearing before ducking back inside to fetch a stack of multi-colored plastic plates. Gabe helped me move our log stools over while Sarah placed three folding chairs for her family around the table. Tom pulled the venison off the grill and brought it over on a large metal pizza pan.
“You fellas have one of these at your place?” Tom asked, noticing my furrowed brow as I looked at the pan.
“No, we don’t.”
“You should scrounge one up, they’re great to have around. I use it as a serving platter, a cutting board, a table—hell, I even used it as a griddle once.”
“Huh. I might have to do that.”
“I’m afraid this isn’t going to be very fancy.” Sarah said as she took her seat, “We don’t have much in the way of silverware.”
“No problem, we brought our own.” I replied.
Gabe and I dug our mess kits out of our packs to retrieve our aluminum cups and forks. Once everyone sat down at the table, Tom used a hunting knife to carve up the roast tenderloin and laid out a thick portion on each plate. It was all I could do not to tear into it right away. To avoid looking like a starved pig, I waited until Tom finished serving up the meat and Sarah had finished doling out scoops of beans.
“Alright, everybody, dig in.” Tom said.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I used the knife on my multi-tool to cut up the steaks into bite-sized pieces. When my teeth sank into the first morsel, I had to suppress a moan of pleasure. I
t was tender, juicy, and cooked to perfection. It had a bit of gaminess to it, but I didn’t care. After spending the whole winter subsisting on jerky, smoked fish, canned food, and MRE’s, fresh meat slow-roasted over an open fire was freaking orgasmic. I inhaled about half of what was on my plate before I leaned back to take a breath. Tom and Sarah were looking at Gabe and me with matching smirks on their faces.
“I can tell you hate it.” Tom joked.
I chuckled, and shoved another piece in my mouth. “Yeah, it’s awful. In fact, you guys should put your steaks on my plate and let me eat them for you. I don’t want you to have to suffer through this.”
Everybody got a laugh out of that, except Gabe. He was too busy carving up slices of venison with his Bowie knife and shoving them in his pie-hole. I don’t even think he heard us.
“Hey Gabe?”
“Hngh?” He grunted, a small stream of juice dribbling down his beard.
“You know, should probably chew some of that buddy.” I said.
That elicited another round of laughs. Gabe had the good grace to look embarrassed, and swallowed while wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” He said, smiling sheepishly.
“Don’t worry, sweetie, you’re not offending anybody at this table.” Sarah said as she reached over to pat him on the arm.
“Hey, I’m just glad you like it.” Tom said. “Can’t tell you the last time we got to sit down and have a meal like civilized folks.”
Brian held his empty plate up to his father. “Dad, can you cut me another piece?”
I looked down, amazed at how quickly the kid cleaned his plate. Tom had served him a huge portion, but the boy made it disappear in short order. He ate faster than even Gabe, and that was saying something.
Tom stood and picked up his knife. “Sure son, how much do you want?”
Brian held up a hand with his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. Tom sliced off the appropriate sized portion and deposited it on his son’s plate.
“There you go buddy, eat up.”
“Thanks.” Brian said as he tore into it.
Sarah smiled at Tom as he sat back down. “This is great, honey. I’m glad you went hunting this morning.”
He smiled back, his eyes happy and haunted at the same time. I could only imagine how nice it must be for him, putting a meal like this on the table for his family. If their loose-fitting clothes and gaunt faces were any indication, they must have suffered more than their share of hardship and hunger.
“So have you guys run across any other survivors lately?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Tom and Sarah came back to themselves with a slight start. They exchanged a brief smile and squeezed each other’s hands before resuming their meal.
“We ran into a guy who was building a trading post just outside of Black Mountain about a month ago.” Sarah said.
“A trading post? Is he nuts?” I asked.
Tom shrugged. “I thought he was crazy too. The post was on a stretch of highway that connected a few groups of survivors he said he’d made contact with. If what he said about the other people was true, maybe he was onto something.”
I considered that. “We have a HAM radio back at our cabin,” I said, “we’ve managed to make contact with a few scattered communities out west.”
They both looked up at that.
“Really? Where?” Sarah asked.
“All over the place.” Gabe said, jumping in. “I’ve spoken with people as close as Tennessee, and as far away as California. There’s more out there, but not all of them have power or radio equipment.”
“You have power?” Brian said, perking up.
Gabe smiled across the table at him. “Yep. Solar panels. We don’t use them for much, but they’re nice to have around.”
“I’ll bet.” Sarah said, her eyes wistful. “Do you have a water heater?”
I nodded “Yeah, actually we do.”
She dropped a hand on the table. “You have to let me us it sometime. I’d strangle a dolphin for a soak in a hot bath.”
I deliberately put that particular mental image out of my head.
“Well, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” I said. “You don’t even need the water heater. We could just heat some water over our stove and pour it in a bathtub for you.”
“Honey, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” Tom said. “We just met these fellas. I don’t think we should go imposing on them just yet.”
Sarah frowned, cutting her eyes at him. “Speak for yourself.”
“Really, it’s no trouble at all.” I said. “We’re not going to need the place for much longer.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked.
“Gabe and I are leaving for Colorado soon.”
“Colorado?” Sarah asked, exchanging a glance with her husband. “Why go all the way out there?”
I hesitated for a moment, unsure how to approach the subject.
“How much do you know about what happened to the rest of the country after the Outbreak?” I asked.
Gabe stared at me from across the table, his expression a mixture of sadness and caution. I held up a hand in a placating gesture. “Dude, they need to know.”
Gabe nodded, placing his knife on the table beside his plate and heaving a sigh. Tom looked back and forth between us.
“We haven’t heard much.” He said. “Just hearsay from what few other survivors we’ve met. You know something I don’t?”
I sighed. “Yeah,” I said, “I guess we do.”
Over the next half hour, Gabe and I laid out the situation. I told them how I met a group of survivors in the nearby town of Alexis who had established a fortified community in a warehouse at an abandoned textile mill. I glossed over most of that story, the important part being at the end. A unit from the remnants of the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg found us and stopped to make contact. From them, we learned that the Outbreak had forced what was left of the federal government to retreat high into the Rocky Mountains. The military abandoned their efforts outside of the Rockies and consolidated what was left of their forces at Colorado Springs. The President, the first family, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Speaker of the House, and a few other high-level government officials took shelter in the old NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain while the military worked to clear the city outside of infected. At some point, the powers in charge discovered the network of HAM radio operators still kicking around and jumped at the chance to establish contact. Initially their goal was to build a communications network, and coordinate reclamation efforts all across the country.
They got mixed results.
Some people were happy to do their part to help out, but others were downright hostile. There didn’t seem to be very much middle ground. Many communities felt that the government had failed them, the military had abandoned them, and they had no intention whatsoever of submitting to the will of a government they no longer had any use for. ‘We’re doing just fine without you, thank you very much’, seemed to be a common sentiment. Even among those still loyal to the government, there was a lot of anger out there.
I personally believed that the government had done everything they could to contain the Outbreak, and that pointing fingers and bickering was not going to do anyone a damn bit of good. The only thing that mattered now was destroying the infected and rebuilding our civilization.
To that end, the President issued a standing invitation for anyone still alive to come to Colorado and join the growing community of Outbreak survivors there. Last we heard, the population had swollen to more than sixty thousand, including nearly thirty thousand military personnel.
A few large communities in nearby states had established commerce with Colorado Springs, and were working diligently to secure trade routes for smaller groups. Slowly, inch by inch, combined military and civilian extermination squads were reclaiming territory from the infected. The problem they faced was that there were damn near three hundred million infected s
till roaming around just within U.S. borders alone. Most of the country had become a gigantic dead zone. Major cities were so infested that no one, not even the military, dared go anywhere near them. Even outside the cities, the landscape was thick with the walking dead. Anyone trying to make his or her way to the Rockies faced a long and extremely perilous journey. As if that were not bad enough, warlords, bandits, marauders, and sick-fuck opportunists roamed the wastelands in search of people to rob, rape, pillage, and kill. It was a pretty bad situation all around.
“So, bearing all this in mind,” Sarah said, eyeing Gabe and I as if we were a pair of particularly slow children, “why on Earth would you leave the relative safety of the Appalachians to risk your lives crossing fifteen hundred miles of lawless, infected wasteland?”
I shrugged. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding on a mountain waiting for something to kill me. I’m not stupid enough to think that getting to Colorado is a sure thing, but if at the end of the road I have the chance to start a new life, then it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Gabe looked across the table and nodded his assent. Tom and Sarah grew silent for a few moments, thinking.
“You know, I guess I never looked at it that way.” Tom said. “We’ve spent so much time just trying to get by one day to the next…”
Sarah nodded. “We honestly had no idea that so many people were still alive.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but it gets worse.” I said.
“Worse?” Sarah asked, her eyes widening. “What could possibly be worse?”
I told them about the situation outside the United States, starting with the limited nuclear exchange in the Middle East. The table went quiet, Tom and Sarah going pale at that. Even Brian seemed subdued. I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say, so I moved on with the story.
The Outbreak had spread beyond our nation’s borders and consumed nearly all of Central and South America, but Canada was still a bit of a wild card. The Outbreak definitely spread there, sending millions of Canadians fleeing north to escape it, but the military was still unsure what became of them. I could only imagine how harsh the nuclear winter must have treated them so far north, all those people struggling along in the wilderness with no electricity, food, or medical facilities. The President sent Special Forces units north who were expected to return soon with news. I wasn’t getting my hopes up.