Isolation | Book 4 | Holding On

by Jones, Nathan

  “Uht uht uht,” Jay said mildly, although his eyes flashed warning as he glanced around at all the people listening in. “They say we did. But like you said, they're in a quarantine camp that's taking in new people every day, and we're in the middle of a Zolos pandemic. More likely they had a completely unrelated outbreak and blamed it on us to turn the camp against us, since they know plenty of people there sympathize with our cause.”

  Larry shook his head. “There hasn't been a single outbreak in that camp since this started. And lately we've been turning away most of the refugees headed there before they ever get close, either convincing them to move on or getting them to join us instead.” He nodded towards the nearby camp of Zolos-vulnerable recruits to emphasize that point. Then he hardened his voice. “So you want to say that just days after our water balloon stunt, they miraculously had a carrier among the handful of new arrivals?”

  Jay just glared at him, as if he was starting an unreasonable argument.

  That just made Larry even angrier. “If we spread Zolos to those poor people, we have to take responsibility for it,” he snapped.

  “We?” Jay said quietly. “You were the one in charge of safely filling, transporting, and launching the balloons. I may have ordered the water balloon fight, but you were the one who said you wouldn't do it unless you personally made sure we didn't actually spread the virus with our hoax. So if this is on anyone's head, it's yours.”

  Larry opened his mouth, then shut it. The fact that he knew Jay was right didn't do anything for his fury. And certainly not his guilt.

  He finally snarled a few blistering curses at his friend, turned, and strode away.

  Liza hurried to catch up to him, grabbing his shoulder. “Hey,” she said fiercely. “Don't let him dump all the blame on you. He's the one who made the call, you just did everything you could to make sure it didn't get innocent people hurt.”

  Larry shook his head dully. Everything he could do hadn't been enough, and now people were sick. After watching his loved ones sicken and die in a quarantine camp, he'd been part of visiting that same horror on innocents.

  What sort of monster was he?

  “Hold on, Larry,” Mitch, still by the fire, called.

  Larry turned, surprised, to find his neighbor on his feet facing Jay, expression grim. He wasn't the only one.

  Mitch spoke again, eyes still on their leader. “I'm just as pissed at Stanberry as anyone, but enough is enough. Larry's been trying to convince us to give this up and go home for a while now, and now I think I agree with him.”

  Jay scoffed. “Is that right? So after everything they did to us, everything we've gone through, you want to just run away with your tail between your legs and let them win?”

  After a second or two of thoughtful silence, Mitch shrugged. “You know what? Sure. I'm sick of this. I just want to stop. And from what we've heard from Stanberry, they'll be happy to drop this fight if we just walk away.”

  Larry was further surprised to hear almost everyone in camp raise their voices in agreement, even the fighters who'd just come with Jay. Including some of those who just yesterday had been gleefully smashing up an innocent family's house.

  It looked as if spreading Zolos to the camp really seemed to have shaken everyone.

  Jay looked around, eyes almost wild with disbelief and outrage. “Seriously? You all want to turn tail? What about the people we recruited, you just want to abandon them?”

  “Bring them home with us,” Larry said, starting back to the fire. He couldn't quite believe he'd finally gotten through to his friends, but that didn't mean he wasn't relieved. He raised his voice. “Because we have homes. Homes that are mostly untouched, waiting for us to go back and start to rebuild our lives. So what are we doing wasting our time out here, over a half hour away from them? What are we even accomplishing?”

  “What are-” Jay started to shout, but he was drowned out by a roar of approval from the crowd around them. He looked around in helpless fury; his face darkened, and even his bald head visibly reddened at the strength of his emotion.

  Larry hated to undermine his friend and bring him to this point, but it had to be done. So he raised his hands as well as his voice and kept going. “Come on, guys. Let's pack up and go home.”

  There were more cheers, and to his relief Jay's shoulders finally slumped in defeat and he raised his own hands for quiet. “I only agreed to take charge because you all asked me to,” he said sullenly. “So if this is what you want, this is what we'll do. But you're fools if you think this will be over if we just leave. So if you don't mind I'm going to keep planning and preparing, just in case.”

  Larry would've preferred that his friend drop this obsession with Stanberry, for his own sake. But he supposed it was probably a good idea to not let down their guard until they were sure the trouble was over.

  “Fair enough,” he said, motioning towards the camp. “Come on, let's get out of here.”

  Chapter Three

  Return Fire

  By full dark there were a dozen new Zolos cases in camp, and close to a hundred frightened people huddling in isolation, waiting to see if they'd join that number.

  Chet had joined Aimee, Ben, and Val in helping Betty Griegs to care for the newly infected, as well as preparing the survivors' camp for an influx of new patients. The poor nurse-turned-camp medical administrator was running herself ragged doing what she could, even though plenty of people had offered a helping hand.

  There were just some things that only trained medical professionals could do, and they didn't have enough of those. Not to mention a severe lack of medical supplies, even though Chet and the other scavengers had done their best to find what they could for her.

  Back when they'd been able to scavenge.

  Also, with the possibility of Jay counterattacking after the ambush, most of the Zolos survivors who weren't helping with the outbreak were on patrol or sentry duty. Chet would've preferred to be out there with them, but when Aimee had asked him for help he couldn't refuse her.

  Particularly since most of those currently providing care to the sick were people still recovering from the virus themselves, and a lot of tasks required helpers strong enough to lift and carry people. They needed Chet, Ben, and Val as much here in camp as out there patrolling.

  Also, some guilty part of him felt like he needed to be with the woman he loved, considering he was about to completely ignore her advice.

  Aimee had wanted him to focus on what was important, on their loved ones and rebuilding their lives. But he had to think that considering everything that had happened today, she'd understand that he had good reasons for what he was planning tonight.

  She hadn't specifically said so, sure. But when they'd discussed the failed ambush and the Zolos outbreak while helping the sick, she'd certainly seemed to agree that they needed to do something about Jay.

  Something besides just sitting around waiting for the bald maniac's next attack, hoping they were ready to stop him from killing innocent people. Like he'd outright said he planned to. Like he had done, exposing innocents in the main camp who weren't even from Stanberry to Zolos!

  After everything everyone had suffered during this pandemic, that Jay would deliberately-

  Chet saw red for a moment, blurring his view of the road ahead. What little he could see of it with his headlights off, of course. He took a ragged breath and forced himself to calm down, before he crashed his truck trying to sneak away from Stanberry in the dark.

  “You good, big bro?” Ben asked.

  “Fine,” he said as coolly as he could. “Just keep doing your thing.”

  His brother nodded and rolled down his window, squinting into the darkness ahead. Not just to spot obstacles in the road that Chet might miss, but for signs of enemy patrols or ambushes.

  It wasn't just a guess that Jay and his goons were lurking around Stanberry ready to ambush anyone trying to get out. Chet and Ben and the others might have taken out six of their vehicles, but
no doubt they already had new ones.

  To say nothing of all the silhouettes he'd seen on distant hilltops that quickly ducked out of view, flashes of sunlight in the distance off binocular lenses or metal gear, things like that. Jay's people weren't just patrolling but also setting out scouts and sentries.

  With all that in mind, in order to get out of town safely, even under the cover of darkness, he drove down a driveway at the end of a dead-end street at the edge of town, then onto a big field that connected to a few other fields and grassy open spaces before connecting to a gravel road farther out. That road led away from Stanberry for miles before it ended at a paved road that was hopefully well beyond the area Jay's goons were prowling around.

  It had to, right? Jay only had so many people, and even with vehicles and plenty of fuel they could only keep an eye on so much area without running themselves ragged. Most likely they just had a thin cordon around the town, along with that convoy of thugs roaring around responding to potential targets.

  Chet had carefully scouted out this route on his patrol earlier before volunteering to help Aimee with the sick, covering every square foot of terrain he could because he knew he'd be driving it in the dark with his headlights off. He'd known it was going to be difficult, but he hadn't realized just how bumpy and uneven the fields were until he was driving across them.

  “Dip,” Ben hissed, clutching his rifle tighter as he leaned out the window, squinting to try to see ahead.

  Chet was too slow to swerve, and the bump would've slammed his head against the roof if he hadn't been wearing a seatbelt. He cursed, jerking the wheel to keep from losing control.

  “Watch it! I told you there was a dip there!” his brother groused.

  “You said a dip, not a ditch!” Chet snapped back. He'd almost gotten stuck in that trench; even the truck's off-road capabilities weren't quite enough to handle blindly barging into obstacles.

  Well, they'd be to the gravel road soon. It wouldn't be the best surface to drive on in the dark, but definitely better than this. And its pale color would make it much easier to follow.

  After a few more serious bumps, nothing the truck couldn't handle, Chet finally pulled onto the road with a sigh of relief. Although when he noticed Ben relaxing he reached over and punched his brother's arm. “Don't relax now . . . we've got to get past any Wensbrook patrols.”

  Ben nodded and stuck his head back out the window, looking around warily for signs of headlights or campfires or anything else suspicious. Chet stayed tense as well, keeping his eyes on the road but trying to catch sight of potential threats out of the corner of his eye.

  He was so antsy that it almost came as a surprise when they reached the paved road, several minutes out from Stanberry, without any sign of trouble. “Maybe they think we're one of theirs?” Ben suggested when Chet shot him a confused look.

  Chet shrugged, just glad they'd made it past, and turned them in the direction of Wensbrook.

  After that the drive got quiet, aside from his brother shifting uncomfortably every minute or so. Ben hadn't been fully on board with this and had already expressed his reservations several times. Chet was actually expecting him to start up again now that they'd escaped from Jay's cordon around Stanberry, and was pleasantly surprised when he said nothing.

  Finally, they reached the outskirts of Wensbrook, a familiar sight even in the dark after weeks of scavenging. At that point Chet turned off the headlights again, then pulled onto a road he'd only used once and only vaguely remembered.

  This was where things got difficult.

  He'd been able to scout out the route closer to Stanberry, but here he was approaching unfamiliar territory blind. The half moon didn't provide that much light, and even though he didn't expect Jay to be expecting trouble to come to Wensbrook, he still didn't dare use the familiar highway the scavengers had usually used to get to town.

  And they couldn't spend hours creeping towards the place with the engine rumbling, alerting everyone within hundreds of yards of their presence until Jay's goon's came and captured them.

  That left only the option of parking well away from Wensbrook and hiking in, lugging all their stuff. He just hoped they had enough time to get in, do what they needed to do, and get out again in the five or so hours left before dawn.

  A minute or so later he reached a lightly forested hill leading down to the thickest cluster of houses in Wensbrook, near the tourist businesses along its Main Street. He pulled off onto the shoulder and cut the engine, clapped his brother on the back, then climbed out of the truck, grabbing his rifle from behind his seat as he went.

  Then he made his way to the back of the truck, where four five-gallon gas tanks were strapped to the bed, along with two stacks of old newspapers bound with string.

  After Jay had forced them to stop scavenging, their fuel usage had gone down to practically nothing, so it had been easy to siphon twenty gallons of gas from unused vehicles. Nobody had even looked twice at him as he'd done it.

  Chet slung the newspapers on his back and picked up two of the gas tanks as his brother joined him at the side of the truck. “You sure about this, bro?” Ben murmured.

  Chet turned his eyes towards the buildings below as he answered. “I'm sure that Stanberry's tried to make amends with Wensbrook. Tried to appease them, hunkered down and dug in and hoped they'd go away.”

  He paused, then raised his voice slightly. But not too much, in case anyone was nearby to hear. “They won't, though. They won't stop, they'll just keep on doing worse and worse to us until we either give in or we fight back.”

  “Maybe, but there's already enough bad blood from what we've already done in Wensbrook,” his brother argued. “Is this really going to help stop the fighting, or do you just want to get back at them?”

  Chet ground his teeth. Sure, he may be pissed at Wensbrook, but he'd come to this decision from a logical position. “Appeasement isn't going to stop the fighting. We have to show them that if they keep going, they'll lose. They think they can do whatever they want to us, and we can't do anything to stop them. But even if they pretend they've got nothing to lose, they do. And it's about time they start losing those things.”

  Ben was quiet for a second. “Haven't they lost enough, though?”

  He whirled on his brother. “If this doesn't sit right with you, you can wait in the truck. I'll do it on my own.”

  “Hmm. What to do?” Ben raised his hands, ghostly in the darkness, and wobbled them like scales in the balance. “Do something I have reservations about, or leave my big bro to go into danger alone.” He spat off to one side. “Let's just get this over with.”

  In spite of his bravado, relief washed over Chet; he didn't want to do this alone. Although he did feel a bit guilty about twisting his brother's arm. “All right, grab your stuff and let's go.”

  Ben grabbed his own stack of newspapers and pair of gas cans, and together they picked their way down the hill through the sparse forest. Before long they reached a low fence surrounding the backyard of a big house in a nice neighborhood.

  The sort of house Jay lives in? Chet wondered.

  Well, it didn't really matter; most of the houses were abandoned anyway, and there was no way to tell who among the Wensbrook survivors lived where. Most of them were probably camped out a few miles from Stanberry anyway, where they could be close enough to keep terrorizing the town and quarantine camp.

  He nodded to Ben, then headed one way as his brother headed the other.

  The next fifteen minutes or so were a heart-in-throat blur of darting from house to house, packing wads of newspapers around wooden sections of the structures and dousing them with liberal splashes of gasoline. In his haste he splashed more than a bit over his feet and on his gloves, but hopefully he wouldn't light himself on fire when the time came.

  Once he was done with his houses he headed back to the first backyard where they'd split up. He was a bit chagrined to find that Ben had beaten him there.

  “You get yours?
” Chet hissed.

  His brother nodded, shaking his empty gas cans. “Seven houses, ready to go up. It's just too bad we don't know which one's Jay's.” He wiped at his forehead with a sleeve. “You?”

  Chet nodded. That made fourteen houses in total, the nicest they'd been able to find. Thirteen for the houses in Stanberry Jay had burned down, and one for their ransacked farmhouse. Probably that number should be higher now, since Jay's thugs had probably trashed way more houses than theirs by this point.

  But there was no way to know for sure when they hadn't yet been able to check the other outlying houses around Stanberry, and Chet was satisfied with the number.

  He hadn't forgotten Nick's words from earlier about the danger of escalating violence; it was enough to simply return Jay's destruction in kind, until the psycho got the message that the loss and suffering wasn't going to all be one-sided.

  Ben cleared his throat. “All my houses were dark so I couldn't tell if anyone was in them, but did you notice all the cars parked on the street? Is it possible Wensbrook's got a bunch of people here?”

  Chet immediately shook his head. “What people? They've only got a few dozen guys with them, and most of those people are up in Stanberry giving us grief. Those are probably just vehicles abandoned during the outbreak.”

  “Yeah, but I don't remember seeing that many in this neighborhood when we were scavenging here. Most of the vehicles around here were in garages.”

  “You're just imagining things,” Chet snapped. “These houses are abandoned, so let's just do this. Exactly like we planned it . . . start at the farthest house after a count of three hundred, light each fire, move on, when you're done meet back at the truck and we'll get out of here.”

  Ben was slow to nod his agreement. “One last chance to change our minds.”

  Chet snorted. “And have them discover gas-soaked newspapers around these houses and be furious anyway? We've already got this far, let's see the fireworks.”

  His brother nodded grudgingly. “One, two . . .” he started counting, then fell silent as he melted into the darkness.