by Phil Maxey
Cal put his head down. “When I left, I think I had no plans of going back.”
“This ski camp is on a road that comes from the fort. Cal, you stay here, we will go back, get the vehicles and supplies then be back here within a few hours. We then get the hell out of this forest.” Zach looked around him. “Agreed?”
They all nodded.
After sharing out the noodles, which they heated in a pan with snow melted on the stove, they packed up their supplies, and Zach, and Abbey headed back. Fiona wanted to stay behind to keep an eye on Cal.
Walking along the road, after an hour they were within radio range of the fort.
Zach clicked on his radio. “Bass, come in. Over.”
A few seconds passed before Bass’s voice came through. “Zach! Did you find him? Over.”
“Yes, but tell no one else. What’s the status on Jason? Over.”
“He didn’t make it. Over.”
Zach swore under his breath, shaking his head. “What’s been Brandon’s reaction? Over.”
“They are having a meeting today about whether they should kick us all out, some want to go further than that. Zach…”
“Yes. Over.”
“A lot of the people we rescued from the Portland camp, want to stay. Including some of my people. Over.”
“When’s the meeting? Over.”
“Fourteen hundred hours, roughly four hours from now. Over.”
Over the next thirty minutes, Zach explained that he wanted to leave the fort, pick up Cal and Fiona and be leaving the forest, he wasn’t going to wait for the meeting. If people wanted to stay that was up to them. He also told him to start getting the supplies together for leaving.
They approached the eastern gate. A young woman was standing high above it, looking down on them.
She waved a rifle in their direction. “Stop!”
“It’s Captain Felton, tell Brandon we have returned.”
After a few minutes, a car could be heard pulling up on the other side of the gate, and the large wooden poles that made up the gate started to shift, and swing backwards. Zach and Abbey moved through the widening gap. Brandon and another man were standing next to their pickup. Both of them had rifles slung over their shoulders.
“I heard about Jason, I’m sorry that he died,” said Zach.
Brandon’s stern expression did not waver. “Did you find him?”
“No. He covered his tracks too well.”
“Where’s the other girl?”
“We and our people need to be moving out today, she’s waiting nearby.”
Brandon looked ruefully at Zach. “What about your sick?”
“I was hoping we could work something out in regards to the people that are sick, my second in command has told me there are also some soldiers that would want to stay. I imagine military trained people would be of great use to you here.”
The other man stepped forward. “We don’t need what’s left of the government sticking…” before he could finish Brandon raised his hand, while still looking at Zach, and the other man stopped, his face contorting into frustrated silence.
“And most of you will be out of here by sundown?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then, I’ll give you and your friend a ride back to the Inn.”
“I need to see Dr. Tanner. She’s at the medical center?”
“I’ll get a message to her to come to the Inn.”
Zach nodded, and he and Abbey got into the pickup.
A short ride later, Zach and Abbey were dropped off by Brandon, and then entered the lobby of the Inn. Michael, Bass, Jacob, Rob, Mary, Irene and Tyler were sitting on the chairs. When they saw Zach they all started talking at once. Zach held up his hand and approached Bass. Abbey walked straight to Michael and Jacob and they walked up the small staircase and out of sight.
“How many want to stay?” said Zach to Bass.
Before Bass had a chance to respond, Mary spoke up. “You can’t just leave us all here! You said you would get us to the Austin camp.”
Zach faced her. “We only have the bus and the Humvee, some people will have to stay but it seems some want to anyway.”
“Well, I expect myself, Morgan, Irene and the children to be on that bus.”
Zach nodded then turned his attention back to Bass who answered his earlier question. “There’s a number from the Portland camp that want to, they don’t figure our chances for making it all the way back to Austin…” he then paused, his expression looking frustrated. “Including some of my remaining platoon.”
“McClain will have them court-martialed if they don’t return.”
“I was thinking, we’ll tell Bravo that we left a few soldiers here on purpose, if the higher-ups think they are here as an outpost they will probably let it go.”
“Good plan. Have we got enough room to take everyone that wants to leave?”
“Depends on how many of the sick want to leave. But presuming it’s all of us in this room, the kids upstairs, and a few others, we possibly got enough room for another four adults.”
Morgan came in through the semi-glass doors and ran up to her sister, giving her a hug.
“We’re leaving already?” she said to her sister and Zach.
“Yes, as soon as possible,” replied Zach.
“But the sick at the medical center, they have just settled in, also I can do a lot of good here.”
“I’m sure Brandon would be happy to have a doctor here of your abilities.”
Morgan anxiously looked at her sister, who gave her a similar reaction.
“We should talk,” said Morgan to her sister. They both left the lobby, walking up to the small landing.
Rob walked over to Zach. “We’re going to need fuel. Not sure if they’re going to give us any.”
“Go with Bass, see if you can find some, barter some of our supplies if you have to. Try and find some maps as well. Then have the bus and the Humvee at the eastern gate on the hour,” Zach paused then continued. “Is the bus road worthy? It took a beating.”
“She’ll be fine,” said Rob defiantly.
“If she’s not, let me know as soon as possible, as we will have to find something similar.”
They all agreed the current time, with watch or radio, and Rob and Bass left. Zach walked up the first floor where Abbey, Jacob and Michael were talking in their room. Zach closed the door behind him.
Michael looked off into the distance. “So he cracked, but you think he’s okay now?”
“Seems to be,” said Zach.
“And we have no idea what the whole Arclight thing was about?”
“No.”
Michael looked between Abbey and Zach. “But it’s got to be connected to Abbey in some way right? I mean it’s too much of a coincidence, her hacker name being the same.”
“Right now, we have to get our shit together, and be ready to leave this place. Whatever is going on with Cal, we will figure out on the road.”
“You sure it’s wise for him to travel with us? What if that ailment he had returns? He’s a highly trained individual.” said Jacob.
Abbey joined everyone else looking at Zach.
“If it does we’ll deal with it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fiona kept looking over her shoulder at the trees forty-feet from her as she and Cal walked into the remains of the gas station store. There were empty shelves but many still held their items.
Cal picked up a candy bar. “There’s still a fair bit of food here we could use.”
“I’m more interested in what’s left in the fuel tanks below the forecourt. Problem is getting access to it. We need to find a way to get the pumps working. A lot of these more out of the way stations have backup generators, in case they lose connection to the grid. See if you can find the key to the tanks, if I can’t find a backup generator maybe we can use a hand pump.”
She walked to the back of the store, pausing before moving into the back office. “If you see any maps, grab them as w
ell,” she shouted.
Cal stuffed a few bars of candy and soda cans into this backpack and looked behind the counter. A few key’s hung from rusted hooks. He put them in his pocket, then looked back to the walls of the store. “Top trails in Mt. Hood” and “Roads and highways of Oregon and Idaho.” Sat on a small shelf. The latter he put in his pack.
He felt his forehead. Fiona had washed it for him, but the wounds still stung. What was going on inside his head had healed, and that’s what mattered to him. He knew now, that he needed to pass on his dream message to Abbey, but he had no idea why.
Fiona reappeared from the back office, as he picked up a blue and white baseball cap from the floor, placing it on his head.
“Suits you,” she said with a smile. “They have a generator, with a full tank of gas to run it, when everyone left no one thought to do anything with the generator so it’s just sat out there all this time, waiting to be turned on. Found any keys?”
“Yeah, a few.”
“Hopefully we won’t need them. When I turn that thing on, it’s going to create a lot of noise. I know it’s daylight but I want to fill a few canisters up from the pumps and turn it off all within a few minutes. Let’s use those canisters there,” she pointed to shiny plastic fuel containers in a heap in the front corner of the store. “You’re probably right about this sugary crap as well, let’s get it all packed up before Zach returns.”
“Presuming he does.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” she looked at items on the shelves, hiding her own doubts.
“Just a sense I got from him this morning. Maybe he thinks I’m damaged goods.”
“Aren’t we all.”
His expression darkened, like the sun had suddenly been eclipsed. “I could have killed the kid, he was only doing his job.”
“We learned the world ended on the back of being locked up in a tiny room for years, we are all capable of doing fucked up things, and we are going to need you if we are to make it back to Bravo.”
“But what I said to Abbey, and how I suddenly felt better? It makes no sense.”
“When any of this makes sense, I’ll let you know.”
Over the next hour they managed to fill up eight moderately sized fuel tanks from the pumps, running the generator in short bursts. They had also piled all the food into five large fabric bags they found hanging on the store’s walls. Just as they were finishing up, the sound of vehicles echoed around the forest.
Back in the fort, roughly half of the new arrivals were aboard the patched up vehicles at the open east gate. Only Brandon was there from the town’s people.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Zach,” said Brandon standing next to the Humvee while Zach was in the driver’s seat.
“You have a good thing here, I hope for all your sakes it lasts.”
“We will fight to keep it going.”
They both shook hands through the Humvee’s open window. “Stay safe,” said Zach driving out onto the snow-encrusted road.
It wasn’t long before the small convoy of bus and Humvee, was pulling up outside the ski lodge. Mary had been quiet as they moved along the snow-padded roads. She expected Morgan to leave with her. Sadness and anger inside her, mixed with a reluctant admiration for her sister doing what she felt was right. All the years growing up in Seattle, Morgan was the one that great things were expected of. Their parents had earmarked her to either be a doctor or a lawyer, she chose the medical profession so Mary, got the law, whether she found it interesting or not. Luckily she did and more than that, found she was rather good at it. As she sat looking out the bus’s windows into the bleak wall of trees around her, she wondered if she would ever see Morgan again. The children in front of her were also uncharacteristically quiet, most had grown to like being in the wooden castle, even within the short amount of time they were there.
Sam and Isaiah didn’t take much convincing to leave the fort. As Isaiah put it. “I’m done with this hillbilly monster bullshit.” And as Zach and Bass walked over to Cal and Fiona who were walking from the house, they discussed all the mischief they were going to get into in the camp near Austin.
“I heard that there’s like a ten to one ratio of women to men. That’s some good odds,” said Sam enthusiastically.
Isaiah laughed. “You’re right about that, if it’s a choice between a five legged, hairy ape thing, or you? Well actually…”
Sam playfully grabbed Isaiah prosthetic hand, causing him to try and grab Sam’s leg. They both caught Addison looking at them over her shoulder giggling. They both sat up, looking serious.
“Yeah, well I just want an apartment I can call my own and a good meal each day,” said Isaiah.
Sam looked down at his camouflaged pants and top. “Never thought I’d be back in these.”
“We keep them on until we get to that camp, then we are back to being civilians. I’m not spending my life fighting those fucked up creatures, I’ll leave that to the people who haven’t already sacrificed their shit.”
“Amen to that brother.”
Zach sat in the Humvee with Abbey to his right and Cal, Fiona and Michael behind. All but Cal looked down at the maps of the area and examined their route out. Zach’s instinct was to head south as quickly as they could but that would just keep them in the forests for longer, so the route which was south and then east seemed a safer bet. It would also get them back on the plains, which from their experience of the past few weeks was fairly safe.
“South, and then east seems the quickest route back to the plains,” said Fiona.
Zach opened up a larger fold out map. “I was thinking the same. And then keep heading south and east.”
“That’s taking us towards Idaho,” said Michael.
“That’s the idea. By time the sun goes down we will be about two hours from the border. We’ll find a place to hold out for the night, then head towards Idaho at first light.”
Zach closed the maps, and told Bass on the bus they are moving out.
After thirty minutes the trees started thinning out and the thick white compact snow that clogged the road began to give way to tarmac. After forty, the forests were a hundred yards back and only a smattering of white powder lay on their route. Luckily there were no sign of E.L.F’s.
An awkward silence had set in within the cabin of the Humvee. Zach and Bass had given Cal the news about Jason soon after they arrived at the lodge, and in response he offered them his weapons, but they refused, saying they trusted him. But what had happened to Cal was still a mystery to the inhabitants of the Humvee, including Cal himself. The guilt for the death of the young guy back at the fort kept trying to invade his thoughts, but he was damned if he was going to let one deep rooted psychosis be replaced by another, especially now that he was able to string two thoughts together. There would be a time for paying for what he had done, but this wasn’t it.
He looked across to Fiona who seemed lost in the world passing them by, and then to Michael who was sleeping. Both had become friends, and in Fiona’s case maybe something more, he had to stay right for them.
Abbey, like Fiona was watching the forests recede, and the hills and plains grow around them. But she wasn’t able to appreciate leaving Portland or the fort behind her because ever since Cal leaned forward in his wretched state and mentioned her hacker name she was not able to think of anything else. What was more troubling to her, was the fact that she never used it as part of her official job, hacking for the government. For that she used other names. Arclight was her personal hacker name, for stuff she did ‘off-book’. And the last time she did that was when she made the entire DOD’s satellite network go crazy and spin out into space. She kept trying to tell herself that she must have said the word Arclight at some point over the previous few weeks, or that it was just an amazing coincidence, but she knew the truth. That name had not left her lips, not even to Zach, and she didn’t believe in coincidences.
As they followed a winding road which flowed between hills, a river
came into view, a few miles to the north. On the hills beyond, hundreds of silver skinned entities glistened in the early afternoon sun.
Zach clicked on his radio. “Stay alert. We need to move through this small town and over its bridge. We see the things on the hills a few miles off. Keep a constant speed, but if they start to move in this direction, we will increase our speed. Over.”
Jacob looked at them through a small pair of binoculars he found under a seat on the bus. Each creature had silver fish like scales, which caught the sun above, illuminating them with a brief flash of light as the convoy progressed.
A few seats in front of him a young boy looked on at the strange reflective creatures as they moved down to the river. “Are they thirsty?” he said to Mary who was sitting behind him.
She went to tell him to not look at them, but then realized that this child and the others in her care were growing up in a world where these sights would be normal. She leaned towards him slightly and they both watched the creatures sinking into the rushing waters and swimming away. “I don’t know, what do you think?”
The young boy then told her his theory on what they were doing, and for a moment, she saw them as he did, not as creatures of death, but as the nature of a of a new world.
The convoy moved onto the main street, with the bridge in their sights a few hundred yards ahead. Stopping at a junction, five yellow school buses sat parked opposite. Zach paused, with the Humvee’s engine idling.
Abbey looked at Zach, realizing they were not moving. “What’s wrong?” she then looked to where Zach was looking.
Zach clicked on his radio. “Rob, you see those buses? Over.”
“Yup… Over.”
“Could you get one of them started, even without the keys. Over.”
“The older ones, yeah.”
“Bass. Come in. We’re going to need some cover. Over.”
Bass acknowledged, and Zach drove the Humvee with Rob following alongside the buses. Rob and Bass jumped down from the bus and two soldiers ran to the side, pulling open the storage department and grabbing some canisters. Rob then ran down the line of buses, and pulled the door open on a dusty looking one, disappearing inside, the soldiers ran with him. Bass walked over to the Humvee, looking at the surrounding buildings. Only the light wind added any noise to the surroundings.
