Cooper was to McQuarry now. “What’s up?”
McQuarry watched the one with the spear gun talking for the others. He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. Then he motioned to the older one with the rifle and stepped back, letting rifleman talk.
“You gonna answer me?” asked Cooper.
McQuarry lowered the binoculars. “Yeah. Sorry. Just saw something on the other side of the bridge. Some people coming across. Could get interesting. Very interesting.”
CHAPTER 16
MARCH 13, 2033
SCOURGE +163 DAYS
MERRITT ISLAND, FLORIDA
Kandy stepped forward. She was tired of the back-and-forth. Mike gave it a go, Barry was struggling to make a case and Brice didn’t seem interested in shooting his shot. She tried her hand.
“Look, guys,” she said. “We—”
“Sergeant,” the older of the two guardsmen cut in, although older was an overstatement. Both looked to Kandy to be about fifteen.
They reeked of cigarette smoke, ripe body odor and had nonregulation stubble creeping up their faces in the blotchy pattern of boys whose balls hadn’t dropped. She wasn’t impressed. But they were armed and had some vague authority to protect the bridge and what lay beyond.
“Sergeant, my apologies,” she acquiesced. “We’ve already crossed two bridges. Nobody gave us hassles at those checkpoints. They barely even looked at us. We’re harmless, interested only in looking for supplies and learning more about what’s beyond our little corner.”
The sergeant sniffed, pulling snot into his throat. He swallowed and his nose made a honking noise. “If you’re harmless, why are you armed?”
Kandy smiled. “For protection. You know what’s out there. Not everybody has good intentions. We merely—”
The other soldier, the one who wasn’t a sergeant, narrowed his gaze in recognition and wagged his finger at her. “Hey,” he said, nodding as he spoke. “I know you. You’re that news lady. Right?”
Kandy demurred. A shy, well-practiced smile intended to convey a humble self-deprecation brightened her face. “Yes, that’s me. The news lady.” She extended a hand. “Kandy Belman. Nice to meet you.”
The non-sergeant eagerly shook her hand. “Sal Amande. I’ve been watching you since I was a kid.”
Kandy stopped herself from asking when he’d stopped being a kid and thanked him. Having been on Orlando television as long as she had, viewers frequently told her how they’d watched her from the time they were in diapers. They likely thought this a compliment, though it only made her feel old. At least they recognized her. That was something.
The sergeant’s eyes widened. “You’re Kandy Belman? The reporter? From TV?”
Kandy’s smile flattened, leaving a hint of it. “Yes.”
Sergeant stomped his boot. “I knew I recognized you. I thought I’d seen you before, but I was thinking you’d tried to cross the bridge previously or something. Damn. Kandy Belman. You do all the live reports out in the field.”
Kandy nodded. “That’s me.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said the sergeant. “I’m not a big news watcher. I get my news on my phone from Twitter or whatnot and—” He caught himself. “I mean, I did get my news from Twitter, not now. But I was saying I knew who you were. You were on Twitter. I’d see you in my feed all the time. People retweeting your stories and all.”
Kandy had forgotten about Twitter. Somehow, in the months post-Scourge, she’d romanticized her former career. Like an old lover whose faults evaporated over time and left only the shiny parts, so did her career morph into something she longingly missed.
Now that the sergeant reminded her of it, her stomach clenched. She’d hated the social media requirements of her job. Well, hate was too strong a word, though the mandate of having to post on Twitter, Facebook, SnapChat and Instagram was taxing. It took away from the time she could take to make her television reporting more thorough, better written, engaging and creative.
During the last years of her career, management had placed an increasing importance on social media. They wanted to own the social space. There were multiple arguments from managers and from consultants that social media was the key to the future. It was the bridge from television viewership to direct-to-consumer consumption on streaming apps or sites.
People in charge always had more of a connection to the research and the data that pointed the business in the proper direction.
But for Kandy, who was about storytelling and community impact, the idea of condensing her worth into a selfie at a crime scene or a pithy post about the foam on her latte didn’t cut the mustard. It was demeaning, devaluing and made her no better than the twentysomething social media influencers who pitched the brands of their amazing yoga pants or tagged the best physical trainer in the world at an overpriced gym.
Standing in front of the sergeant and Sal Amande, all of this flooded back into her memory. Suddenly she didn’t miss her old profession quite as much. It was as if they’d reminded her that her ex-boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend.
Kandy was happy and sad at the same time, a confusing combination of emotions that made her want to sit down on the asphalt and pull her knees to her chest. The world would never be what it was. Never. She had to get over her longing for things.
She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, I appreciate you watching me no matter where it was. I know a lot of people stopped watching television long before the Scourge. I’d bet you miss your phone more than your TV, don’t you, Sergeant?”
“You got that right,” he said, sounding every bit the post-millennial that he was. “It’s easy to get bored now. Nothing to distract you, you know?”
Kandy smiled again. “I do.”
Barry took a step forward and raised his free hand. She beat him to the punch.
“Look,” she said, “since you know who I am, would it be cool if we passed? You know I’m not some random trying to cause trouble. We’ve spent the last six months on the water. We’re seriously trying to get a handle on what’s happened here.”
Barry lowered his hand in retreat and shook his watch on his wrist.
The sergeant sighed and his posture relaxed. Then he tilted his head forward, as if imparting a secret. “I can tell you it’s not good. Most of the checkpoints are abandoned now. It’s chaotic. Sal and I are only here because we have nowhere else to go. No family or anything. We’re doing our duty.”
“We appreciate that,” said Kandy.
She could sense a softening of will. This was familiar to her. Many times in the course of her career she’d approached people for on-camera interviews and they’d initially shut her down. From experience Kandy could gauge whether it was a hard no or an equivocating denial. If there was any wiggle room, Kandy could work her magic, engaging with gentle persuasion. It was like a Jedi mind trick, in which the participant almost unconsciously changed their mind and agreed.
Kandy didn’t know how men reporters did this, but for her it was part flirtation, part undying gratitude. She appealed to the subject’s desire to help and to be a part of something necessary and most importantly to their ego.
The sergeant glanced over his shoulder like a man checking to make sure the coast was clear. With a nod he stepped closer to Kandy, held out his hand and waved his fingers. “Let me see an ID.”
Kandy’s brow furrowed. “ID?”
“We have to keep track of the people who cross. You have identification and I’ll let you all go.”
Kandy fished a driver’s license from her Star Wars backpack. Behind her, Mike, Brice and Barry produced theirs. One at a time, they handed the plastic laminated cards to the sergeant. He studied them, studied the faces to whom the cards belonged, said the names aloud and handed the cards to Sal. Sal pulled a worn notepad from the pocket at his triceps. He slung his rifle onto his back and plucked a pen from the front pocket of his digital camouflage uniform, punched the pen top with his thumb and flipped through the li
censes as he copied down the information.
Barry took his back. “What do you do with that?”
The sergeant frowned. “With what?”
“The notebook. The names and info. What do you do with it?”
Sal flipped the notebook closed. The spiral wire that held it together was bent on the ends. The cardboard backing and cover were curled and looked as flexible as the narrow sheets of paper between them.
Sal glanced at it and tucked it back into his arm pocket. “It’s CYA. We don’t know who’ll come looking for the information. But our superiors told us to do it, so we do it.”
The sergeant agreed. “Totally CYA.”
The soldiers moved to the side of an orange and white barricade and pulled it aside. The movement left an opening through which the quartet could walk. It wasn’t wide enough for a vehicle.
“C’mon now,” the sergeant said, waving them along. “Be careful. Just because we’re letting you cross doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. There are as many people out there who’d yank out your eyes as give you the shirts off their backs.”
Kandy gave the sergeant a thumbs-up. “Thanks, Sergeant. Thanks, Sal. We’ll be back.”
The sergeant saluted. “We’ll be here.”
Kandy waited for Mike, but he motioned for her to take the lead. She did, taking point as they wound their way through the checkpoint and found themselves well onto the bridge by the time the mouth of the barricades spit them out on the asphalt.
She felt the incline in her thighs. It surprised her. But she’d done so little walking in the past six months it shouldn’t have come as a shock that unused muscles were screaming for attention. Sure, she’d swam every day off the confines of the Rising Star. Swimming was swimming though, it wasn’t walking.
Mike was a half a stride behind her and to her left. “You feel it in your legs?” she asked him.
Mike replied with a weary smile. “I do. Especially because of my foot. I think I favor it even though I don’t need to, you know? My knees, my ankles, they’re all sore.”
Kandy slid her thumbs inside the backpack straps at her shoulders and rubbed them up and down. The pack was wearing on her despite its small size. “I didn’t think about your toes,” she said. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to compare my strain to yours. I—”
Mike waved her off. “Please. Everybody’s got their own truth. Nobody ever said the apocalypse was going to be easy. Then again, nobody ever said shark attacks were part of the end of the world either.”
They shared a laugh. The sudden chuckle was unexpected and genuine. Kandy felt it in her chest. It felt good. She tried to think about the last time she’d been happy enough to laugh. Then she reconsidered. Happiness and laughter weren’t dependent on one another.
Happiness was relative. Laughter wasn’t.
She could be happy and not laugh; she could laugh and not be happy.
Thinking about the connection between the two was an issue she knew she couldn’t resolve. Pounding the asphalt in her boots, Kandy vacantly paid attention to the sky above them, the thin cirrus clouds spreading apart like cotton in an otherwise blue sky. A breeze blew along the river below them. On it, a colony of gulls flapped their wings in unison. Some of them cawed, their high-pitched voices sounding like clips of laughter. Were birds happy? Did they know any different? Maybe the human apocalypse was a newfound paradise for them. With fewer people to rape the oceans of their collective bounties, the natural order of things might restore itself. An advance of fish would repopulate and provide endless nourishment for the gulls. Even if the birds weren’t happy, their call was a laugh. And they were laughing at the third of the human population that remained.
She was deep in thought and ruminating on the things she’d never say aloud, not even to Phil, when Mike drew alongside her and jabbed his spear gun at the path ahead. His voice was hushed, his tone serious. All hints of the humor from moments ago were gone, evaporated like the thinning clouds.
He stopped to wait for Barry and Brice. “There’s somebody up ahead. Three men. They’re armed. Don’t look now. We should keep walking, weapons ready.”
Kandy resisted the urge to spin and stare. Her hand went to the small of her back and her fingers wrapped around the grip of the nine millimeter. She pulled it from underneath her shirt and popped out the magazine. She checked it, making certain it was loaded and then used the heel of her palm to slap the magazine back into the handle. The audible slide and click was oddly comforting.
Handgun at her side, her index finger rubbed the outside of the trigger guard. The safety on the weapon was embedded in the trigger. No need to check. The firearm was ready to go.
Brice checked his shotgun and gripped it with both hands. He held it level, with the butt beneath his ribs.
Barry drew his rifle to his shoulder. He tilted his head from side to side. His neck cracked and he exhaled.
“Let’s keep moving,” said Mike. “Try not to make contact. Try not to engage. Nothing good can come from it.”
Kandy agreed with him. Strangers weren’t a good thing. All those rules her mother taught her as a child applied here. She sucked in a breath and exhaled, unintentionally mimicking Barry as the quartet restarted their march. The only sound was the collective scrape from their boots on the uneven asphalt and the beat of her heart in her ears.
As they moved at an even, deliberate pace to the east, the trio opposite them moved with purpose to the west. The men were a dark blur at the edge of her vision.
Her jaw clenched. She tried to control her breathing, her accelerating pulse. The surge of adrenaline coursing through her body made her want to run, to take off in a dead sprint.
Kandy always told herself that nervous energy was a good thing. The beginnings of perspiration under her arms, the desire to chew on the inside of her cheek, were signs she was alive. The twitch in her fingers, the bounce in her step evidence of her ability to perform on live television.
That was good. This was not.
This energy was born of fear. Kandy adjusted the grip in her right hand but kept the weapon at her side.
The thick fatigue in her thighs was gone. The weight was in her chest.
Kandy focused on the ascending bridge in front of her. Keen on the sounds of birds to her right, she locked her eyes on the far side of the expanse and the low rise of riverfront buildings dotting the western edge of the Intracoastal Waterway. The gulls’ laughter mixed with the scrape of their boots, the brush of wind across their faces and the thud in her ears. It was a cacophony of sounds that threatened to distract her from the approaching threat potential but only heightened the drama. It was a soundtrack synced with cinematic dread.
The shapes of the men materialized more clearly as they neared, even as they drifted to the farthest point of her peripheral vision. Mike was in front of her now, Brice next to him, Barry to her right. She smelled him. His sweat was pungent, like overripe fruit. It was fear, she imagined, manifesting itself. Kandy wondered for a moment if the odor was hers. Had the rush that fueled the tingling anxiety that ran throughout her body also soured? No, the odor was too masculine. The foul musk was his. No doubt.
“Hey.”
The voice cut through the air and lodged a thick knot in Kandy’s throat. She didn’t stop and, despite a twitch, didn’t look across the bridge to the eastbound lanes that ran adjacent to them. Only a short concrete barrier separated the two thoroughfares. The barrier, tattooed with the rubber skid marks and swaths of automotive paint from vehicles pre-Scourge, was low enough to cross with a high step.
Mike kept walking and Kandy followed. Now she stared at the back of Mike’s head, unaware of the path beyond.
The voice, gruff and barbed with the twang of underprivilege, was even with them and called to them a second time. She’d heard the prominent accent in the diminishing rural stretches of land in Lake County or north in Marion County where the well-heeled horse breeders masked a greater poverty that stretched across the flatland
s smack-dab in the middle of the state south of Gainesville. It was a twang that some referred to as belonging exclusively to Florida Crackers. It was a pejorative term unless used by those who self-identified. It was an ugly drawl that hid one’s intelligence and drew mockery from those who failed to understand its history.
“I’m talking to you. You four. You’re right here; I see you. You can’t not see me. I’m talking to you, Spear Gun.”
The voice was behind them now and the man to whom it belonged was shouting. There was aggression in his voice. They should have stopped. They should have acknowledged him at least.
Mike stopped and spun around. He held the spear gun at his waist, but his aim wasn’t directed at any of the three men. Kandy followed his lead and faced them. Her mouth was dry. She ran her finger across the trigger guard, tapping the barrel of the nine millimeter against her hip.
Mike’s voice was calm. Kandy didn’t know how the kid wasn’t quavering with fear. She could taste it, a thick paste on her tongue. She wanted to puke. As many times as she’d faced threats, none of them carried with them the palpable tension of this encounter. Not even the shoot-out at the store parking lot her last night on the job. Everything then had happened so fast, she’d not had time to process what was happening until after it was over. That was a narrowly avoided head-on collision. This was more like a slow-motion fall from a cliff she could see coming from a mile away.
“We don’t want any trouble,” said Mike. “No disrespect intended. We’re just trying to beat sundown.”
The man with the rough voice and the Cracker accent took a step toward them. He carried a bolt-action rifle. Kandy wasn’t a gun enthusiast, but she’d done enough stories about gun-control measures over the years she understood the basics. A shotgun was different from a rifle. A revolver wasn’t the same as a semiautomatic.
The Cracker wasn’t aiming the rifle at them, but the tension in his body told her it was loaded and ready to fire. He ran his teeth over his lower lip and appeared to study each of them before resting his eyes on Mike. “Nobody said anything about trouble.” He then checked with the men on either side of him, craning his neck to one side and the other. “Did anyone say anything about trouble?”
The Scourge (Book 2): Adrift Page 18
