Barry looked at the ground, licking his dry lips. Jared fought the urge to look at him, but felt the sight of the two women and the conditions they’d been kept in, not to mention what Barry’s imagination could probably conjure regarding the women’s treatment, was punishment enough for trying to derail their rescue.
“So now you know our names and story, how ’bout you let us know what we’re supposed to call you two?” Jared added, trying his best to sound cheery and nonthreatening.
The brunette stood a little straighter. “My name is Stephani.”
All heads turned to the younger blonde woman. “Claire,” was all she said.
“Okay,” Jared quipped. “Stephani and Claire, nice to meet you—so what now?”
Even Claire looked up at this question. “What do you mean, now what?” Stephani asked.
“I mean, now what does everyone do? You’re free to go your own way, though I wouldn’t suggest it based on what we’ve seen in the city so far, but you can. I mean, we’re trying to build a safe community in the hills, where people can be free and safe as long as we all work together,” Jared finished.
The women looked at each other, then at the surrounding neighborhood before staring back at the three men.
“I’ll go if she goes,” Claire blurted out.
“Go where, Claire?” Jared asked, immediately feeling foolish as if he had purposely made the rhyme when in fact he had not.
“With you guys—if she goes, I’ll go too.”
Jared turned to Stephani.
“We’ll come with you,” Stephani said in a hushed tone.
“Great, we can—” Jared was cut off as Stephani broke into his sentence.
“We answer to no one. I get a weapon—I don’t care what it is—gun, knife, it doesn’t matter. No one touches either of us no matter what. We don’t share sleeping bags, beds or any of that shit.” Stephani appeared to lose steam after the no-bed demand and fell silent.
“You’re your own person, Stephani. Like John said earlier, we are not those two dead guys; we are decent people trying to do decent things in an indecent world. In the hills waiting for us is an old man, a little girl, and John’s girlfriend. She’s probably close to your age.”
John looked shocked; then his face turned a special shade of red, telling Jared he’d crossed a line. Jared glanced at Barry, who gave him a quizzical look, which Jared ignored, before turning back to Stephani.
“Bottom line is if you come back with us to the hills, it’s going to have to be later, but I have a thought on how we can make that happen and still keep everyone as safe as possible,” Jared added.
“How’s that, skipper?” John sneered.
Jared tried to ignore the jab as he continued, “We’ll go back to Devon’s place, which is as safe and secure as any place I’ve seen in the city. You two can stay there while Devon gets us to the foothills over in Cupertino. He’ll come back and make sure you guys get food and water and stay off the radar. The three of us have to get up to Woodside and bring back a guy who is going to help us with a solar-power issue we have.”
“Solar-power issue?” Stephani asked, her nose scrunched in question.
“Yeah, the issue is we have none,” Jared replied flatly.
After everyone agreed to no touching, no sharing beds, and to look out for one another, the group of six headed back to Devon’s iron shop. Once they arrived back at the iron shop, Devon explained where everything was and how he laid low, staying out of sight unless he was out hunting. Jared reminded him the girls could never go out with him, then stopped short of explaining why.
The teen stammered and stuttered his way through explaining his ironworks shop and how to get in and out, and where to hide in the ventilation ducts below the floors if someone entered the building. Once the women were as comfortable as one could be with Devon’s accommodations, the men prepared to leave. Jared reminded the girls that Devon wouldn’t return for a couple of days, so not to worry and remain hidden. He also felt the women’s angst as it hung thick in the air over being left alone so soon after being released from the horrors of the biker compound.
Before either of the women could pitch a fit, Jared spoke up. “It’s all happening pretty quickly, and I can only guess you two are feeling out of sorts with us bringing you back here and immediately leaving you alone.”
“What if we just left?” Stephani spouted with a tension-laced voice.
Jared shrugged slightly. “Then you take off and make your own way. We weren’t kidding before when we told you ladies you were free to go.” Jared paused before thoughtfully continuing, “I just think you’d fit in with our group, and I don’t think you’re going to do well out here with just the two of you, but we do have to go now. Like I told you guys, we have people waiting for us back home.”
Claire remained slumped shouldered and silent throughout the exchange, and now Stephani’s shoulders sagged as she nodded her head slowly. “Okay, we’ll wait here.”
Before leaving the shop, Barry, John and Jared pulled out half their food rations and left them for Stephani and Claire. Jared felt whatever the two women had gone through at the hands of the bikers was likely on the darker side of horrific, so eating rats with this semi-weird teen might not be the best for their current mental state. Leaving their rations would, at the very least, alleviate them having to consume any of the local rodent population.
The three men along with the teen made their way through the city without encountering a single soul. By the following day, Devon left the three men at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, but before he departed, John grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Listen up, young buck, those girls have been through a lot—don’t do anything weird when you get back.”
Devon tried to pull away as he shook his head fearfully.
“I’m not fucking around, bro. Just take care of what they need, and otherwise leave ’em the fuck alone unless they ask you to do something—got it?” John growled, pulling the teen even closer.
Devon nearly rattled a tooth loose nodding his head in short and choppy nods. John released the terrorized kid, who nearly ran as he headed back the way they had all come.
Jared waited till Devon was out of earshot before turning to John. “You need to—”
John actually placed his hand over Jared’s mouth, then gently shoved him back. “You’re on my shit list, man. What the fuck was that yesterday with the ‘she’s my girlfriend’ shit?”
Jared stared at the ground, collected himself, then stared John directly in the face. “You’re right, it was out of line and childish, and I’m sorry for saying it.”
“Childish and wrong—yes, you’re dead wrong. There’s nothing between us, and why the fuck would you care anyway?”
“I don’t care. What I care about is we should all be working together as equals. Yeah, I shouldn’t have taken a shot at you in front of those girls, but you shouldn’t insult Barry and the kid with all that Nancy and No Gun shit.”
The two men stared at each other, Jared’s chest heaving with the anxiety of taking on this man he knew full well was superior to him in battle, albeit not everything else. Barry stopped when the two started in on each other, and stared, his mouth hanging slightly ajar.
“Alright, if we’re getting shit off our chest—Barry, your condescending bullshit stops now. We all know you’re wicked smart, but you don’t have to shove it in our faces.”
“Enough!” Jared yelled. “Enough of this stupid infighting. Jesus, guys, we all have something to offer here. John, you can’t shoot your way out of this societal collapse any more than Barry or I can singularly think our way out of it. Let’s go get this Dwight guy and get back home. I’m literally worried sick about Essie.”
Barry remained quiet as John shrugged his muscled shoulders. The group stood waiting to see if anyone wanted to weigh in on the matter any further, and when no one did, John turned, and the group followed him towards the coastal range.
Chapter 13
<
br /> The three men marched for nearly three hours, sometimes using old hiking trails, but oftentimes they broke brush, moving straight up the face of the coastal mountain range. John’s intention was to reach the top and then pick their way north, staying off the roads and even trails if they could. During a rest stop, the men noticed a large presence of several buzzards overhead. They could look back and see the built-up urban area, which was San Jose, Cupertino and several other towns, and there were no buzzards circling these areas.
An hour later all three men’s sense of smell was accosted at the same time. The smell of death wafted in the air and grew stronger as they climbed. No one spoke, but each of them scanned the area ahead, looking for the source of the foul stench. As the three men crested a small rise, they saw the source. There were bodies scattered across a trail that had been used for hiking less than three months ago, but was now the final resting place for what appeared to be nearly fifty corpses.
Bodies were on the trail and in the open grass around the trail. The scene was spread out over an area roughly the size of three football fields.
“What the fuck?” John muttered as he took a knee and pulled out his binoculars.
Jared followed suit, trying not to breathe through his nose due to the horrific odor. Both men searched the grisly carnage and only saw rotting bodies with no indication as to how they became corpses. Jared could see men, women and children amongst the dead. They all appeared to have bags or packs of some sort as if they were moving in a large group when tragedy struck. The scene below began to make sense after what Devon told them about people leaving the city and heading to the coast in an effort to be near crops and the Pacific Ocean for fishing.
Barry knelt behind John and Jared with a look of horror written on his pallid face. He licked his lips as he stared at the death and destruction ahead of them. His throat felt tight and his mouth was dry. He’d felt these same symptoms before he’d fallen out at the bikers’ place, and now he fought to control himself. He didn’t need John seeing him topple over in the grass at the sight of what was becoming a fairly common thing to see these days.
“Look around and breathe,” Jared said as he noticed Barry’s downward spiral. “Don’t focus, keep your eyes moving, and take some deep breaths. Bart used to say you have to control that beast when it appears and tries to take control; otherwise, you will be useless in a fight.” Jared jerked his head towards the bodies. “Control it or end up like them.”
Barry spent a few minutes gathering his wits while John and Jared waited.
“They were ambushed,” John said.
Jared nodded his agreement. These people were most likely ambushed and stripped of anything they had in the way of food and water by another group who had made the decision to dispose of their moral compass. Jared couldn’t imagine just sitting on a trail and waiting for a bunch of families to happen by, then shooting all of them just so he could fill his belly with food and drink.
John glanced at his watch, did some quick math in his head, and realized it had been just about three months since the electricity went out. That was all that had happened—the electricity stopped working, nothing more. No pandemic, no nuclear bombs, nothing on a large scale had touched humanity the day of the solar flare. The people who’d died in the first couple of weeks after the solar flare didn’t have the skills to survive in a world that digressed 150 years overnight. Their deaths were nothing more than nature culling the weak and arranging them in their proper position in life—a grave.
John studied the size of the group rotting in front of him and wondered how large the offending group of Marauders was in order to be able to wipe out fifty people in the open. John took another pass at the group with his binoculars and didn’t see a single firearm carried by any member of the doomed assemblage. He had studied many different types of violent encounters in his previous unit and knew how hard it was to amass large body counts in an open area with a limited number of shooters.
John had also seen the results after a single shooter corralled a large number of unarmed people in a closed-off area such as a school or church. Those body counts were always far higher than some maniac who walked into an open park and started shooting. The people who did this had to be traveling in a pack of at least twenty or thirty, by John’s estimation. This meant organized criminal leadership, which sent a tingle up his spine.
“We gotta be careful out here, boys,” John whispered. “Whoever did this was well armed, organized, and numbered around twenty or thirty people. We walk into that and we all die, so keep your heads on a swivel.”
John’s statement did nothing to quell Barry’s feeling of nausea and unease. The second near panic attack had been brought on by the mere presence of the dead lying out in the grass, and now John just identified the real risk of being ambushed and killed, which was something Barry had not considered as anything other than a theoretical outcome until now. Seeing bodies turned that theoretical outcome into more of a probability. Who had perpetrated this barbaric and murderous act?
“We stay off trails and roads from here on out,” John continued in a hushed voice. “From what I can see without going down and doing a close inspection, which I ain’t doing, they were killed probably a month ago.”
Jared slid closer to John. “What do you think is going on out here?”
John shrugged. “Dunno, man, maybe it was two bands moving towards the coast, and one was armed and needed what this bunch had and—” He swept his hand across the scene. “They fucking took it. I have no idea. Everything I’m seeing these days seems to be the first time for me. I’ve seen a lot of bad overseas, but what’s happening now is all new to me.”
“Maybe the other party moved on over the hills to the ocean?” Jared offered.
Again, John shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, Jared, I don’t know. It’s all new, so I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or why shit happened today other than the obvious. It’s survival, and some people will prey on weaker, less prepared people in order to survive, but, bro, I gotta believe it ain’t a long-term solution. Hanging out in the mountains waiting to rob people.” John pursed his lips. “You’re gonna run out of people to fuck over, and then what?”
Jared thought on the matter for a few seconds, then stowed his binoculars and got to his feet. “Let’s get going. The sooner we get this Dwight guy, the sooner we can get back to our place, where there isn’t so much stinking death.”
The trio skirted the aboveground graveyard and continued silently picking their way up into the hills. Twice before they reached the crest of the coastal range, they passed clusters of dead people. Both times, the groups appeared to have been killed on or about the same time frame as the first bunch of people, but were found in much smaller numbers. The first was thirteen people, mostly women, while the second appeared to be four families.
Each time they encountered the dead, they smelled death long before they reached the carnage. After the second batch of dead bodies was found, John and Jared agreed to avoid getting too close to any more rotting bodies for fear of disease and/or contacting the source of all the violence in the hills. Once the three men reached what appeared to be close to if not the highest point in the mountain range, they turned and headed north along what John described as the military crest of the mountains.
The military crest was just a bit lower than the actual top of the mountain, assisting the men in blending into their surroundings. Someone watching from afar could easily see three figures walking along the top of a mountain range, but it would be significantly more difficult to make out the same three figures walking just twenty yards below the summit of the same mountain range. The difference being their silhouettes painted against the clear October sky or masked against the mismatched network of grass, bushes, dirt and whatever else made up the face of the coastal mountain range.
Every now and again Jared, John and Barry would catch the scent of death as it rode on the winds that whipped from the northwest
through the draws and over the higher terrain features. John followed the mountain range on the east side rather than venturing too far west and risking contact with those rumored to have fled to the sea. He also wanted to keep the backtracking to a minimum once they reached the Woodside area. In order to stay away from the built-up areas, they were forced to travel farther to the west than they all would have liked, but the alternative was too dangerous to even consider.
Once the sun dipped low out over the Pacific Ocean, John chose a spot deep up into a draw, where someone coming down from the top couldn’t see them due to the thick brush and oak trees covering their position. Anyone approaching from the top would find the terrain far too steep to merely drop straight down into the draw. In order to access the little crevice, the trio was forced to hike down a finger to the south of the draw until it leveled off slightly, allowing them to enter the draw and start back up to where they intended to spend the evening.
The terrain feature was a seasonal creek, which was dry at the present time. In some spots it was no more than six feet wide, while in other places it opened up quite nicely, measuring close to ten yards across. John picked a spot nearly one hundred yards from the place the little team was able to drop into the creek. It was just past a bend that could be easily defended in case any unfriendly types decided they wanted to forgo their moral compass. The only con was there would be no way out of their resting spot for the night if they got in a fight. John thought the trade-off was better than a place they would have to defend on multiple fronts.
Even Jared thought the likelihood of being discovered was slim to none as long as they were quiet and didn’t start singing songs around a campfire. It was after 2000 hours by the time all three men ate and finished with their bathroom needs. They gathered around for what was becoming a hated tradition of drawing straws to see who chose first, second, and last for sentry duty.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 9
