Through the large gap in the dunes, I could just see out to sea ahead and anchored off the wave breaks, were several small sloops and pontoon boats.
I drove the Jeep slowly up to the barrier, Julie behind me, Randy in the plow, behind her, followed by everyone else. Whoever was behind the wall should have been able to see us coming for miles on our approach.
Through the cuttings in the wall, shadows moved. Rifle barrels were pulled back in and faces took their place. Heads rose and fell over the top section of the wall directly over the road.
Cheyenne, her hand on her Winchester, resting below the dashboard, mumbled at me.
“Well, at least they’re not shooting us. Too many holes, too many rifles.”
I parked the Jeep and climbed out. Cheyenne stepped out but keep the Winchester within reach, hidden by the door. Janessa stepped out behind me, making King wait inside.
I cupped my hands around my mouth.
“Hello, in there!” I shouted. “Is there anyone we can talk to? We’re trying to get to Bruxton!”
Engines roared into life behind the barriers in front of us, sounding like tractor trailer rigs.
“Where are you from?” A woman yelled from above what I guessed was the gate section to let vehicles through.
I smiled, “Actually I’ve from here. Bruxton. But we’ve got people from all over, from Georgia, South and North Carolina, and other places.”
“You’re from Bruxton?” the woman yelled back.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “My dad, my family, owns Walkers on the Water boat rentals and fishing cruises. My name’s Taylor Walker.”
“Sifu!” Someone screamed along the left of center.
Sifu was the term for kung fu teachers at my school. My school was traditional. It was like Sensei in karate.
“Let him in! Let them in, that’s Sifu Walker! He’s my teacher! I know him! Let them in!”
I glanced back at Cheyenne and shrugged, I didn’t recognize the person yelling. I’ve had many students over the years.
The engines roared behind the barricade and the sheet metal split along a seam and, like barn doors, they opened out toward us, reinforced on the reverse side.
A line of disheveled survivors waited behind the barricade, their weapons carried or slung over their shoulders. Teenagers or early twenties to thirty-year-old mostly. The barricade formed a gateway tall enough for the two tractor rigs behind it to push right up against the gate to prevent it from being pushed inward. The rigs were backing up and moving to the side of the entrance.
A skinny seventeen-year-old with dark shaggy cut hair, muscular brown skin, wearing a red t-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes came running out. He wore bandages on his arms and on the left side of his face.
I smiled. I knew him from since he was a kid, he became a student at eleven. One of my most talented pupils.
“Holy crap! Diego?” I shouted.
He ran up to me and stopped a few feet from me and gave me a traditional martial arts bow. Right fist placed into a flattened left hand and bowed at the waist.
Forget decorum!
Wrapping him in a fierce hug, we broke into laughter.
I’d shared sweat with this kid, stood by him at several competitions. He was an exceptional young man with a great future in the martial arts and more.
“Diego! It’s good to see you!” I let him go.
“Same here, Sifu! I knew you were on vacation for your book. Sifu Wong said you were going down to Georgia. I’m glad you’re okay!”
“Sifu Wong?” I paused, “He survived? How about anybody else?” He knew I meant his fellow students.
He looked down, “No, Sifu. Either dead, killed, or Changed. Sifu Wong isn’t with us anymore. We went to his house. He was one of those things. He was trapped inside. I . . .” he choked up, “I . . . he . . . jumped through a window to kill me. I had a gun. I . . .” he stopped and looked down.
Damn.
I hugged him. Sifu Wong had been my teacher. A laid-back Chinese man. Once I became teacher level, I took a loan and bought into partnership with him and we built a bigger building. One of two martial arts style schools in Bruxton. Ours, a traditional kung fu school, and a Jiu jitsu school as our competitors. Doug Wong was a hell of a nice guy. We watched Diego grow up. Sifu meant teacher but it also meant father. We felt like a father to this kid, and over the years it seemed he thought so too since his father died in combat, just like Janessa’s, in a war far from home. To have to kill Doug, any of his fellow students, or anyone for that matter, must have crushed Diego’s spirit.
As people streamed out to meet us, I introduced Cheyenne, Janessa, and the others to Diego as they climbed out of their vehicles. He turned red as he bowed to Cheyenne, and she smirked at me. Diego was shy, and a pretty woman was his Kryptonite. By the time he got to Julie, turning red with her too when he did a traditional bow, which he had a habit of doing, Julie returned the bow right back at him.
“Are all Taylor’s students as cute as you and him?” Julie asked, popping a bubble.
Diego turned even redder, “He, I mean, I, I, uh . . .”
“You got a last name, Diego?” Julie grinned at me.
“Um. Garcia.” He continued looking at the ground.
“Diego Garcia?” She grinned. “Like the island?”
He nodded silently. I glanced at her to behave herself and she popped a bubble in response, ignoring me completely.
“Let me guess. Military brat?” She asked.
Diego nodded.
“Well, we’ve got that in common. Navy?”
Diego shook his head, “Army.”
Julie shrugged. “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
Diego grinned and finally looked her in the eyes.
Julie put an arm around his shoulder. “Well, Diego, I want you to meet some friends of mine. I call them my Ninjas. They like martial arts. I’m not a martial artist. They might like a lesson or two. Sifu Taylor has been lax in his tutoring the last two days.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “And they’re females. And they’re pretty.”
“Beware, Diego. She’s the devil in disguise.” I cautioned as she waved for her young Ninjas to come forward.
“Yes, Sifu.” His grin was blinding.
The others behind the barrier said we should hurry and get inside the gates. They would explain what had happened to them and how they’d survived after.
The barrier was still ten minutes from my home. There was another barrier to go through before Bruxton they said, at the edge of town as a backup, and I wanted to get past it and get home.
“So. Sifu huh?” Cheyenne grinned as we drove through the barrier. “And you’re from the coast.” She nodded slowly.
I gave her side-eye, “Yeah. And?”
She smiled. “You know that sounds like seafood, right? You’re ‘Seafood Taylor’.”
“It’s Sifu. Not Seafood.”
“Shrimp. Shrimp is seafood.” Cheyenne smiled.
“It’s Sifu.”
“You’re my little shrimp.” She chuckled. “Oh, and why didn’t you tell me your father’s business was named Walkers on the Water. Seriously? A bit biblical, isn’t it?”
“Hey, it’s dad’s business. Grandpa’s before he retired to his farm. It’s catchy, and we are a part of the bible belt.”
Janessa smiled in the back, looking at me in the mirror.
“Shrimp Walker.” Cheyenne smiled.
Shaking my head, we stopped on the other side of the barrier as Diego joined us, resting his rifle on the floor. He was excited to see King. While petting King, he explained most pets were either dead or changed and filled us in on what things were like in Bruxton.
None of it was good.
Chapter 13
Retired Navy Seabee’s and construction workers from other parts of the Outer Banks built this barrier after being forced south toward Bruxton at the outbreak of the Change.
They had moved at a breakneck pace, night and day, placing this wall at one
of the thinnest sections of Highway 12. They named it the Alpha wall, the second wall was the Beta wall on the edge of Bruxton. The Alpha wall on the back side was a combination of scaffolding, school buses, and tour buses, with ice and fish hauling tractor trailers placed at either end and backed into the water, pushed further in by the bulldozer. The high dunes on either side of the wall were pushed back to the back side of the wall, clearing a non-climbable area by the ocean against the opposite side and creating a cleared area in front of the wall by several yards.
Diego explained the mutants we weren’t familiar with that we just encountered on the shore, everyone here knew as common. The Fish men, a few Crab men, something they called a Lure, and Tanks which were aquatic in nature. The dead Tank they killed just outside the barrier was normal to us, but they said one big one, which took on the properties of a snapping turtle, plagued north of Avon, but we hadn’t seen it coming through.
He explained that the construction group that built the wall, once they finished the Alpha wall, the group guarded by armed ex-military, had advanced north and planned to blockade above Mare’s Head south of Kill Devil Hills and Highway 64 from Roanoke Island.
The boat by the pier that had warned us about the Fish men was sent out this morning to see what had happened with the blockades since they hadn’t heard anything the previous afternoon. The Changed clustered together at night and rested once the sun went down so the survivors worked at night as quietly as possible. The construction group left the previous night, continued working during the day, but by mid- afternoon nothing had been heard or seen of them. They weren’t answering their radios and neither the Highway 64 group or the Mare’s head group checked in at their scheduled time.
We gave them the grim news there were no survivors from the 64 group.
Diego then informed us of larger sea craft anchored off the Diamond Shoals lighthouse out to sea. A yacht, four power boats, a tug boat, speed boats, and several sailing boats, one or two from my family’s business. I didn’t mind, it kept people alive. The small craft just past the shoreline by the Bruxton city limits took supplies and people back and forth from their location.
The boat that shot at us anchored off the pier, was coming back from the Mare’s Head area and said they hadn’t met anyone from the partially constructed wall when they were supposed to come to a timed meeting at the pier while they, the boat, watched for more boats out at sea.
Other local news was bad.
Diego’s mother was missing, assumed changed or dead. His pet Dachshund had been eaten by a group of felines changed before they were killed. After the morning of the Change, the military survivors, when not manning the walls or helping construct them, systematically patrolled the town, killing any mutants, humanoid or animal, they encountered along the length of Highway 12 all the way to the ferry, including the non-aggressive Porcupines.
Bruxton, as far as they knew, was mutant free, but they remained vigilant due to the Fish men in the area.
Shallow bottom boats patrolled the coast, piloted by locals who knew the shifting sands of the shoals. The crews were armed to kill any Fish men or creatures coming down the shore. No ferries came from any other islands like Ocracoke, and a group of people patrolled southwest of our position toward Hatteras inlet.
The second barrier wall, the Beta, we came to wasn’t as formidable as the first. It was on the edge of Bruxton. One end was still in construction and nearly completed. Diego told us snipers were stationed at the top floor patios of the vacation homes and rentals on either side of the wall. We could see people moving on those patios. Off the beach were the pontoon boats and shallow-keeled speed boats that would ferry people to the offshore flotilla if needed in case of an evacuation. This wall was shorter as we drove through. It was made with a few tour vans and two buses mainly blocking the road. The dunes on either side looked like people had either used another bulldozer or just charged their vehicles into the sand and dunes until they were stuck. Not a well-constructed wall at all compared to the first one. The group manning the defenses were mostly fifty or older. The snipers on the patios were younger. They waved us through and we kept going.
Diego told us a command center of sorts was located at the recreation center on the edge of town, so we headed for it.
He continued explaining that since the lighthouse was the highest point on the island, lookouts were stationed there with radios, calling for survivors while watching the surrounding area and ocean for ships, military vessels, and unusual movement, and giving heads up on vehicles coming down Highway 12. Teenagers stationed there were supposed to be moving up and down the frequencies on radios and walkie talkies, but evidently, they weren’t because they hadn’t heard our chatter on the way here. That’s why everyone was so surprised when the lookouts announced that a group was coming down the parkway toward the main gate. The teenagers assumed it was one of the two groups returning but discovered it wasn’t.
Cheyenne asked if the survivors had problems with the people in charge becoming dictators and madmen much like back in Georgia and with our good friend Amos Benson.
Diego thought she was kidding, then realized she meant it.
“No, nothing like that. No. I mean the veterans and a Park Ranger that survived went straight into organizing everything. They warned people to stay inside as they drove around, killing the roaming monsters, then, once the streets were cleared, they came around and told everyone to get a weapon, any guns, and to come to the rec center. Once we met up there, anyone who was able and willing went back out and drove around, playing loud music, sirens and beeping their horn to get the attention of the monsters trapped inside houses or in cars and we killed them.” He glanced down. “I asked them to let me take care of Sifu Wong. It was only right.” He took a deep breath. “Your students, Sifu, the younger ones and my age, were either dead during the Change or changed and already dead, shot by survivors. I couldn’t find anybody from the school other than Sifu Wong.”
We turned onto the short street for the rec center, following signs indicating survivors should check in there first.
The rec center was a big grey building, with a long porch stretching across the front of the building. A large soccer field was positioned in front with an area large enough for two separate games to be played simultaneously. The center also had a large inside basketball court and was sometimes a base for waiting out storms.
“I’m worried, Sifu,” Diego said. “Our toughest people went out with the construction groups. Those were trained, tough, strong people. What if none of them make it back? Are the people in your group able to help us?”
I nodded. “Some of them, yeah. Some like in this Jeep, Julie and her ninjas, and in the plow, are smart and can fight, and have taken on a lot in the last week. They’re all survivors.”
“Cheyenne’s a fantastic shot,” Janessa added. “She’s a country girl who can hunt and survive in the woods. She’s our personal badass.” Janessa smiled.
Cheyenne grinned, “Nah, I’m nothing compared to Julie. I’m just a good shot; Julie is a survivor, she knows what to do off the top of her head. She doesn’t even need a gun.”
“Then there’s our leader.” Janessa nodded at me. “He’s kept us together and given us hope all this time. Saved me and Cheyenne and lots of others since this started. That’s why he’s all cut up. He’ll fight them without weapons.” She made chopping motions in the air with her hands. “Hiyah! Hiyah!”
“You . . . you used your kung fu?” Diego’s eyes lit up.
I nodded. “When I needed to.” I frowned at him. “I hope, if it came to it, you would too.”
Diego nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I have Sifu! I have! That’s how I got these.” He pointed at his bandages. “They were little mutants, but they still put up a fight. I helped an old lady being attacked by three of them. I did as you trained me.”
Cheyenne grinned at me while Diego talked about the techniques he used in a blow by blow account.
You’r
e his hero, she mouthed wordlessly.
I rolled my eyes and pulled into the center’s parking lot.
She tapped my shoulder, mine too, she concluded.
Waiting until Diego finished his story as Janessa attentively listened and he showed her the arm-bar techniques he’d used, we finally got out to meet a group of people exiting the center as each of our vehicles pulled into a parking spot in the small lot. Some parked at the gas station on the road on the other side of the soccer fields. Randy parked the plow off to the side of the centers left side, then he and Patty joined us, and Julie and Demetri finished parking their green monster.
“Well, I’ll be!” a woman’s voice echoed through the older, heavily tanned people coming out to meet us. “Taylor Walker! Our local author! Well, thank goodness you survived. That would’ve been a shame.”
“Mrs. Gale!” I ran into the arms of my high school English teacher.
Gray haired, sixty, tanned, with a sparkling smile, the teacher who convinced me I should write, returned my hug. Her yellow sundress was damp from the heat and clung to her thin frame. Her glasses rested on her forehead, just in front of her pulled back, ponytailed, long hair. I told everyone in listening range who Mrs. Gale was to me.
“That’s not your Jeep.” She looked over my shoulder. “Trade or acquisition?”
“Acquisition. My baby is sitting in a car lot somewhere in Georgia.”
She let me go but kept an arm around my waist.
Yes, I was always the teacher’s pet.
“Now who are your friends?” She asked.
“This is Janessa Simpson. From Georgia. She’s been our nurse and darn good at it too.”
Janessa extended her hand, absently rubbing at the several days’ worth of fuzz on her scalp as her black hair grew back, “Hello, ma’am.”
The Unchanged (Book 3): Safe Harbor Page 10