The Road Trip At The End Box Set

by J N Wood

  ‘No idea?’ I replied.

  Jack started to trace his hand over the page. ‘And definitely no Sarah?’

  ‘I’ve not seen a Sarah Gayter, no.’

  Jack stood up straight and stared at the ceiling. He let out an exasperated groan, before saying, ‘Let’s carry on.’

  ‘Is that them or not?’ I asked. ‘It’d be a bit of a coincidence if not. Maybe the sheriff just wrote the name down wrong. He could have been drunk.’ I stood up and turned to the sleeping sheriff. ‘I’m gonna ask him.’

  It took longer than expected, but I eventually managed to wake up the very disgruntled sheriff, and asked him if he remembered. He did not. He did tell us it was entirely possible he could have written the wrong information down.

  So, with the sheriff already back in a deep slumber, we sat ourselves back down at the desk, and carried on reading. We still had to look for Dale and Sophia’s names anyway.

  Chapter 10: Maps

  I had no idea how long we’d been there by the time we finished. The sheriff was still asleep. We hadn’t found any Dale and Sophia Walkers, a Beth Tillman, a Sarah Gayter, or any more people called Royston Gayter.

  ‘Okay,’ Jack said, putting the last pad back on the shelf. ‘If it is her, why did she put Gayter? And where is Sarah?’ And if it is Beth, how do I find her?’

  ‘Speak to the bosses. They probably keep a record of everyone that works for them.’

  Hang on, forty odd thousand people. Bollocks.

  ‘Maybe,’ I added.

  ‘Fuck,’ Jack muttered.

  ‘Right, let’s wake him up again.’ I pointed to the unconscious McCallany on the sofa. ‘We get out of here, find out where we’ll be living for the foreseeable future, and then search the camp for Beth and her new husband.’

  ‘Fuck you Chris.’ Jack hesitated while walking over to the sofa. ‘What if she thought I’d died, and married Roy?’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t be so fucking ridiculous. It’s been two weeks. Sheriff Hopper here will have been shitfaced and written it down wrong.’

  I stood over the sleeping McCallany. ‘Wake up Sheriff, the…’ I looked to Jack. ‘What are those creatures called from Stranger Things?’

  ‘Demogorgons,’ Jack replied.

  I prodded the sheriff on the shoulder. ‘Wake up. Eleven needs your help, the Demogorgons are chasing her.’

  ‘What the fuck you talking about?’ the sheriff said, his eyes still shut.

  ‘We’re finished,’ I replied. ‘Can we go into the camp please?’

  ‘Wait outside,’ he barked.

  A few minutes later, Sheriff McCallany walked out of his container. He waved the iPad at us, saying, ‘Two birds with one stone.’

  ‘So Sheriff,’ I said, as we followed behind him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This credit playing card money system thingy. How does it work?’

  ‘Just imagine this place is like a big cooperative. The cards don’t equate to anything really, not anything of value anyway. They just prove you’ve done something for the cooperative. And as long as you continue to do something to help your cooperative, you won’t be shown the door.’

  ‘Do people get thrown out?’ Jack asked. ‘How strict are you?’

  ‘I personally haven’t thrown anyone out. But some of the other bosses have. This place ain’t my Blaine anymore, it’s Refugee Camp 33.’

  ‘As in, there’s thirty two other camps?’ I asked.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You don’t know for definite?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No’

  ‘Well, who gave Blaine its new name?’ I asked.

  The sheriff spun around and walked backwards. He lifted the iPad up and flipped it over, showing us the underside of it. Ref. Camp 33 was written on a bit masking tape, stuck to the bottom.

  I nodded. ‘Okay, so the iPad named it.’

  Sheriff McCallany grinned back at me, and then spun around.

  ‘What if the number of a boss gets called and they get to go over to Canada?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Ain’t happened yet. But I’m sure someone will move up and take their place. They each have fifty or so people working directly under them. It’s not just one person taking care of four thousand people.’ He stopped when we were about ten feet from the fence, and turned to face us. ‘I said this to your friends earlier, and now I’m telling you. This ain’t America anymore. I’m the only thing that resembles the law around here, and there ain’t no fucking way I’m gonna try and control that lot in there. Keep your heads down, and stay away from people that look like they might want to hurt you. That might be hard to do in such a small space, with forty thousand people crammed in, but it’s the only way you’ll survive.’

  I forced a smile. ‘You’re really painting a pretty picture of Refugee Camp 33 Sheriff. Thanks very much.’

  He returned my smile. ‘Well you’ve been warned. Come on then, welcome to Thunderdome.’

  Jack and I exchanged amused glances.

  While the sheriff was unlocking a gate in the chain link fence, a short and stocky woman started to walk in our direction.

  She waited until she was a couple of feet away before speaking. ‘Hey Sheriff. These the last two?’

  ‘Yep, the last two, for now. I’ll leave them in your capable hands. I’m going to speak to our Canadian friends.’ He turned to us. ‘Gents, this is Tina Turner.’

  The woman gave the sheriff a sardonic smile. ‘Thank you Sheriff, always a pleasure.’

  The sheriff closed the gate behind us and locked it. ‘Good luck fellas, see you around.’

  Jack and I said our goodbyes as he stumbled past the woman, who looked nothing like Tina Turner, and crossed the empty road behind her.

  ‘My name is Naomi,’ she said. ‘As you may have noticed, the sheriff is an asshole. Probably got a bit of PTSD. If he just left that office of his more often, it would do him the world of good. Drinking two bottles of whiskey a day doesn’t help.’

  Jack and I just smiled and politely nodded.

  Slightly unhinged maybe, but I wouldn’t say an arsehole.

  Jack pointed at me and said, ‘Chris,’ before telling her his name.

  ‘Follow me,’ Naomi said. ‘I’ll take you to see Tim’s guys, so you can find out where you’re staying.’

  We followed her down an empty road. The inner fence looked like it ran all the way along this straight road, at least as far as I could see. The map the sheriff had shown us had the fence running all the way down H Street to the water. So I guessed this was H Street. It was still deathly quiet. Apart from the odd person stood along the fence, staring at the buildings and spaces beyond, there was no sign of all these people.

  ‘Hey Naomi,’ I called out.

  She stopped and spun around to face me. ‘Keep the volume down guys. We can talk normally, at this kind of level, but no shouting, not anywhere in the camp.’

  ‘Does it make that much difference?’ I asked. ‘The dead are at the outer fence.’

  ‘Why find out?’ She had a stern look on her face. ‘There are thousands upon thousands of people in here. If we all just thought fuck it and starting shouting and hollering, I think it would make a difference. But why find out?’

  ‘Very true,’ I said, raising my hands. ‘Sorry.’

  She swiftly spun around and starting walking again. ‘What were you going to ask me Chris?’

  ‘I was going to ask you where everyone is. The part of Blaine that had been sectioned off for the camp didn’t look that big on the map.’

  She pointed to a road coming up on our right. ‘Look down there in a few seconds.’

  I looked down the road as we continued by it, still walking along H Street. About one hundred feet up the road, it turned from a normal, if empty looking street, into a bustling and chaotic looking market street. The front gardens of people’s homes on both sides were now filled with stalls and tents, and the space in between, formally the roadway, was filled with masses of people. The mo
st remarkable thing was the people were going about their business in almost silence. There was just the slightest murmur of conversations going on, like a swarm of bees quietly buzzing in excitement.

  ‘Come on guys,’ Naomi said. ‘You’ll see the same again on the next street, and the street after that, and the street after that.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Jack whispered. ‘People, lots of fucking people.’

  We picked up our pace and followed her. She was right. The next street was the same, as was the one after. We turned right onto that street, and headed towards the mass of people.

  ‘Keep close to me. Try not to get lost,’ Naomi warned, just before she slipped effortlessly into the crowd.

  Just a couple of seconds later, I was also in amongst them. For a split second I thought I wouldn’t be able to get in, they would all turn on me and start taking bites out of my flesh, and clawing at my face with their bony, dying fingers. But they just parted, or changed direction to walk around me. Some glanced at my face, or the baseball bat in my hand, but most didn’t pay me any attention at all. Beards seemed to be very fashionable at the moment, making me think they didn’t have any hot water.

  I realised I’d been holding my breath, and had to fight to force some air into my lungs.

  I turned my head to check on Jack behind me. ‘Alright?’ I mouthed.

  He must have been thinking something similar to me. He gave me a very brisk nod. His mouth was tightly closed and his eyes were trying to look everywhere, almost bulging out of his face.

  Up ahead, Naomi took a left turn and walked between two canvas covered tents. One looked like it was selling clothes, second hand by the look and smell of them. The other had tables displaying pillows and blankets. A large man was leaning over one of the tables. He was holding three or four leather belts in his hand, reaching out towards a woman. She looked like the vendor, her arms were crossed and she was slowly shaking her head.

  Everyone smelt of body odour, some much more than others. I was pretty sure I also smelt terrible.

  Deodorant must be hard to come by around here. I bet the tent selling that must be making a killing.

  ‘Repent, you must repent,’ a woman was repeating, much louder than everybody surrounding her. I found her in the crowd, and our eyes met almost immediately. ‘Only Jesus can save you now,’ she called out to me. Everyone in the vicinity of the woman spun around to face her. Some told her to be quiet, others shushed her. ‘You are all fighting the hand of God,’ she cried.

  I slipped between the two stalls, and tried to catch up with Jack and Naomi.

  Naomi had stopped in front of a building. ‘This is the Senior Centre, where Tim and his team organise where everyone sleeps. Just go on through that door,’ she said, gesturing behind her. ‘I’ll see you around, okay?’

  ‘Okay, thanks Naomi,’ I said.

  Jack was staring at something behind him, only just stopping himself before he walked into Naomi.

  ‘Shit, sorry,’ Jack said. ‘It’s not been that long since almost everyone died. Why am I freaking out?’

  ‘What, with the crowds?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack replied.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon acclimate. It takes some folk a while to get used to it again.’ She gave us a smile and a nod, before disappearing into the throng of people.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ I said. ‘I think it’s the fact that there’s so many people, all on one little street. Is this what it’s gonna be like everywhere?’

  ‘I fucking hope not,’ Jack said, as he pulled open the door into the Senior Centre.

  Thankfully, relatively speaking, it was almost empty of people. We walked into a large room. Rows and rows of desks filled the space, maybe forty or fifty desks. Only half of them had someone sat behind them.

  As we approached the closest occupied desk, the man sat behind it looked up from the book he was reading, and said, ‘Complaints? Speak to Melvin.’ He turned his head slightly to his left, and still keeping his voice down, called out, ‘Melvin, these are yours.’

  ‘No we’re–,' I started.

  ‘Melvin,’ the man said again. ‘Melvin? Oh hang on, Melvin didn’t show today. You need to see…’ He trailed off and spun his seat around so he was facing the other way.

  ‘We’re not here to complain,’ Jack said.

  ‘Speak to Aisha,’ the obnoxious man said, swivelling back around and continuing to read his book.

  ‘Hello.’ I waved at him until he looked up at me. I spoke as slowly and as clearly as I could. ‘We are not here to complain. We are new. Our friends should have already been here and found us somewhere to stay.’

  The obnoxious man seemed to take offence. ‘No need to be so condescending,’ he said.

  What the fuck?

  ‘Over here,’ a woman, a few rows back, called out to us. Her hand was up above her head.

  ‘I’m gonna go and make a complaint about you,’ I said, pointing at the idiot sat in front of us.

  Jack shoved me towards the woman with her arm raised. ‘Come on Chris.’

  We walked through the gaps between the desks until we reached hers.

  ‘You Jack and Chris?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s us,’ Jack said.

  She handed Jack two sheets of paper. ‘I’ve circled in red where your accommodation is situated on these maps.’

  Jack handed one of them to me and I looked down at an approximation of Refugee Camp 33. It looked like it had been drawn with a biro pen, and the street names were almost illegible.

  ‘Before you say anything,’ the woman said. ‘My daughter drew those maps, so don’t say anything insulting. We ran out of actual maps two weeks ago.’

  I compared mine with Jack’s. They looked like two completely different places. ‘I’m gonna have to say something, and you might find it insulting,’ I said.

  The woman rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, go on.’

  I took Jack’s map and showed both of them to the woman. ‘Which one of these would you say was the most accurate?’

  She leaned forward slightly, taking in both sheets of paper. A few seconds passed while she inspected them, before prodding the one in my right hand with her pen. ‘Probably this one,’ she told us.

  I placed the least accurate of the maps back down on her desk. ‘Okay, thanks very much.’

  She forced a smile onto her face, a split second later it was gone.

  As we left, I noticed most of the people sat at the desks seemed to be asleep, or well on their way.

  Jack stopped by the door. ‘Before we go back out,’ he said. ‘Let’s figure out where we need to go. I don’t want to get lost in the crowds.’

  A building was circled on the right hand side of the map, quite close to the east inner fence. The child’s drawing made it impossible to see which road it was on.

  ‘Is that on F Street?’ Jack asked. ‘Or 12th Street?’

  ‘Fuck knows. I’m not going back over to ask the shit artist’s mother. We’ll just have to go and knock on doors.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Jack said. ‘Go back the way we came, and then turn left onto 12th Street? We can’t get lost that way. Where do we need to go to speak to the Fencer’s and Zombie Patrol bosses?’

  ‘Can’t remember. I doubt this map looks like the one in the sheriff’s container anyway. Let’s find everyone else first.’

  As we left the building, Jack said, ‘I’m gonna complain about you,’ mimicking me. He was swirling his finger around in front of him.

  ‘I didn’t say it like that, and I wasn’t doing that with my finger.’

  Jack then wagged his finger at me. ‘I’m gonna complain about you too.’

  ‘Yeah, fuck off.’

  Chapter 11: Lost Souls

  With a little bit more ease, we entered the crowds again. I kept my eyes on Jack’s ginger hair as we forced our way through thousands of silent or quietly muttering refugees.

  Word of a fight on the other side of the street quickly ma
de its way to us. What followed was almost a stampede, as people tried to escape getting caught up in the brawl. All I could see over the bodies scurrying past were occasional fists swinging through the air. No words were spoken. I just heard grunts of pain.

  Jack grabbed my arm and said, ‘Let’s get out of here, before we get crushed.’

  We let the crowds take us to the end of the street, both of us releasing a sigh of relief after reaching the outer road and leaving the crowds behind us.

  We were soon turning left onto 12th Street, and walking with the east inner fence on our right. Every twenty feet someone stood watch, staring out through the line of trees on the other side. Jack spotted Gee first, pointing him out to me. He was stood on the corner of 12th and F Street. He noticed us and waved.

  When we were closer, he shouted, ‘Hey fuckers,’ with a big smile filling his face.

  One of the guards by the fence turned to him, saying, ‘Shut up.’

  Gee raised his hands to the angry man, not looking apologetic in the slightest. He turned back to us with a sheepish grin.

  ‘What’s up with Gee, why is he so happy?’ I asked Jack.

  ‘No idea.’

  When we were a few feet away from him, Jack asked, ‘Why are you so happy Gee?’

  ‘Not happy, just not fucked off as much as before.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Have we been given a nice place to stay?’

  ‘No. It shit. Follow me,’ Gee replied, turning and starting to walk down F Street.

  ‘So why do you look happy all of a sudden?’ Jack asked again as we followed.

  ‘I don’t,’ he snapped.

  Jack looked at me and shrugged, saying, ‘Okay, fair enough Big Gee.’

  Gee took us to the end of F Street, and then turned right onto what must have been 11th Street.

  Jack pulled the map out of his pocket. ‘This is a shit map.’

  We walked past a house on our right before Gee made a right turn. ‘This is house,’ he said, and headed towards it.

  A single story, white wood panelled house stood before us. It looked like it might be a bit of a squeeze for all of us to fit in.

  We entered into the hallway and Gee opened the first door on the right. ‘This is where you two sleep,’ he said, gesturing for us to enter.