by Rich Baker
Jesse hands the wadded cloth over to her. “Here, start with a sweatshirt. You look cold.”
She accepts the black hooded sweatshirt and pulls it over her head, grateful for the extra layer. When she emerges from the hood, he’s slid a can of soup with a spoon sticking out of it across the table.
“Eat up, too. Sorry for the fancy dishes. We just use what we have, you know?”
“Thanks!” She thinks she sounded too eager, but if he noticed, he didn’t react. Instead, he takes a bite of the soup from his can, blowing on it first to cool it off. She takes a bite from her can. It’s a hearty beef and vegetable soup, and in her hungry state, she can’t remember anything tasting so good. She wants to devour it but forces herself to take a bite at a time. Jesse fills the silence.
“Well, you're not leaving tonight, right? I mean, you’d be crazy to try to go in this weather. I can’t remember it raining this much for this long before. You should stay a few days. Help with some of the work, earn your keep a bit, and I'll help you pull together supplies for your trip.” He waves his hand toward the junkyard outside. “Hell, we can probably even pull a working car together for you. It would give some of the guys something to do.”
Danielle’s eyes get bright. “Really? You could do that?”
“I don't see why not. But nothing’s free in this world, you know. You'll have to stick around a bit, pull your weight, you know? Make it worth our while.”
She narrows her eyes. There’s always a catch.
“What kind of work would I be doing?”
Jesse knows she's hooked, but he plays it cool. “Whatever you're comfortable with. We have no shortage of things that need to be done. Laundry. Cooking. Cleaning up from cooking. Emptying the latrines. Actually, we burn the waste. It’s sorta fun if you can get past the smell. Maintaining the weapons, loading the magazines for the weapons, patrolling the fence, manning the lookout posts, scavenge runs, day care for the little kids, teaching the older ones. Like I said, you name it. We need people. Good people that ain't afraid to work a little.”
Danielle mulls it over for a minute. She still doesn’t trust him, but she also has no other options. And on the plus side, no one here has tried to kill her yet. She acquiesces. “I suppose I can give it a go for a few days.”
“Good! I'll introduce you to Adelaida. She's Max's sister.”
“Who’s Max?” she asks.
“Oh yeah, we didn’t get that far before,” he waves his hand in a wide arc. “This is his family’s place. All of it, hundreds of acres of the salvage yard, the car lot, the repair shops, everything you see. He runs this place. Addie – that’s what we call Adelaida - is a great gal. She'll give you the tour, find you a bed, all that kind of thing. She'll take care of you.”
“But you'll be around too, right?”
“Yeah, sure. I go on a lot of patrols and scavenge runs, but I'll be around. I'll look in on you, make sure you’re getting on okay.”
Jessie signals at a beautiful woman, who nods at him, says a few more words to the woman she's talking with, and then turns and heads toward them. She reminds Danielle of Rosario Dawson. It’s her smile. She has a mouth full of teeth, as Danielle’s father used to say. Thinking of her father, she wonders if these people can really help her get to California. She decides that she’ll do whatever she has to do to secure their help. Jesse interrupts her thoughts with introductions.
“Addie, this is Danielle. Danielle, Adelaida Montero.”
Addie extends her hand to Danielle. “Addie, please. No one other than my mom and this moron calls me Adelaida.”
Danielle laughs uncomfortably. “I’m Danielle.”
“So, Danielle, you're the one that Jesse rescued from the people at Murphy’s? It sounds like you're lucky he found you!”
“Yeah, I suppose I am. I’ve not had much luck lately, so I’ll take what I can get.”
“Well, girl, you’ve found a good place to be. I think you’ll like it here. Let’s walk, and I’ll give you the grand tour!”
Addie opens a big umbrella and pulls Danielle close to her. She shows her around the complex of buildings and finally, leads her to a house.
“This is where my husband and I live. Or, lived. He died right after the turn,” Addie says.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say,” Danielle replies.
“It’s okay, no one does. It’s just how it is now. I’m adjusting, I guess.”
She unlocks the door and extends an arm, motioning for Danielle to go in. After the blond woman goes inside, Addie follows her and closes the door.
“I have a couple of extra bedrooms upstairs,” Addie continues. “You can take your pick. There’s a Jack-and-Jill bathroom in between them. I had one of the guys boil some water, so there’s a hot bath waiting for you, and fresh clothes on the counter by the sink. I had to guess your sizes; hopefully, everything fits.”
“Why are you being so nice to me? You don’t even know me,” Danielle says, her eyes narrowing. “What do you want from me?”
Addie looks at her for a long couple of seconds, then decides to tell her the truth.
“Information. Based on some of the things you said, I believe you know who killed my husband. I’d like you to tell me where they are. But I also know trust is hard to come by nowadays, I know you’ve had a tough run of luck recently, and I know what it’s like to find yourself alone at the end of the world. So, I want you to know you can trust me, and that starts with me being honest about what I want. I want vengeance, and you can help me with that. But it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can feel safe here. We’ll make a spot for you. And if you decide that we’re treating you better than your old friends, maybe you can help us out with that information. If not, that’s okay too.”
“I assume you want to kill them. Honestly, I’ve seen enough killing to last me a lifetime. What if I don’t want to tell you where they are?”
“Then we’ll find another way to get to them. Probably more people will die than need to in order to get the job done. But let’s give it some time and see how you feel, okay?”
They stare at each other in silence for an uncomfortable couple of seconds. Addie breaks the silence.
“Go get your bath, and get a good night’s sleep. Whatever you decide, we have some work to do tomorrow.”
Danielle climbs the stairs and finds the bathroom just as Addie described it. The water is steaming in the tub, and a fresh shirt, yoga pants, socks and an unopened package of women’s underwear with the Murphy’s Sporting Goods logo rest on the counter. She glances at the size. The shirt and pants are just about right. The underwear is a little small, but it will do. It will be good to get out of the clothes she’s wearing and into something clean.
She sits on the toilet for a few minutes, debating what she should do. She knows she can’t go anywhere tonight, in the dark, in the rain, in an area about which she knows nothing. Since she stuck here, she may as well make good use of the hot water. She stands and undresses, then carefully tests the water with a toe. It’s hot but tolerable. She steps in and lowers her tired and aching body into the water, a hiss involuntarily escaping her lips as she adjusts to the heat.
As she relaxes and settles into the hot water, her mind retraces the events of the last few days, and her path forward begins to reveal itself.
* * *
Danielle and Addie sit on opposite sides of a table covered with ammunition and magazines for a variety of rifles and pistols. Danielle is sorting through boxes of bullets, arranging them into piles by caliber while Addie loads magazines.
“So, is all of this for the Puckett’s?”
Addie looks at her for a second and goes back to loading the magazine for an AR15.
“It’s for whatever comes next,” she says. “There’s always another threat we need to deal with. We’ve been lucky so far, and not many zombies have come out here, but there are millions of people in Colorado, so millions of zombies now. Our luck won’t last forever. We have to be ready fo
r whatever, you know?”
“The Puckett’s call them Zeds. It’s supposed to be the word the Canadians use for the letter Z.”
“That’s weird. The guys here call them Z’s or Zekes. I just call them zombies,” Addie says. She finds it interesting that after breakfast and setting up this work detail that Danielle has brought up the Puckett’s without being prompted. She decides to get a little more personal.
“You want to get to California, yeah?” she asks.
“Yeah. It’s where my family is. San Diego.”
“It’s a lot of ground to cover to get there.”
“I know. But I have to know if they’re alive or not. I don’t have anything else here. I just want to know for sure.”
“I can understand that. It was killing me not knowing what happened to Hector for those first few weeks. We can help you map a route if you want. The hard part would be avoiding the cities and clogged roads, but there’s a lot of desert roads between here and there that should be pretty deserted. I know the guys can fix you up with a good truck. But can I give you some advice?”
Wow, Danielle thinks, she asking permission to say something, not just telling me what to do like the Puckett’s? What a novel concept!
Aloud she says “Yeah, go ahead.”
“I think you should stick around here for a while. We have food, water from the wells, lots of protection, a team of people going out and getting supplies for us. If you’re not afraid to work hard, you have a place here with us. I would hate to see you get hurt or killed trying to get to Cali. You'd be going from bad to worse. We have a few million zombies, or zeds, or whatever you want to call them, but there’s tens of millions in southern California. You have Phoenix and Las Vegas between here and there, and that’s millions more. Plus, a woman alone in this world? Even if you don’t get killed by a horde, you could wind up a sex slave before you even get out of the Colorado. Your folks wouldn't want that, even if they are still alive. We’ll help you either way, but I think you should stay.”
Danielle is quiet for a minute, searching for a response. She surprises herself when she blurts out “I’ll tell you where the Puckett’s are.”
“Hey, I’m not telling you this to get you to give them up. I want to get justice for my husband, but I don’t want you to compromise yourself to get it, you know? We have other ways to find them.”
“No, I want to. If you’re really going to help me get to California or take me in here, I want to do what I need to help you. I don’t owe them anything.”
“Okay, if that’s your decision,” Addie says, “Then I can get Jesse, and you can tell us what you know.”
Danielle looks at the boxes of ammunition, then up at Addie and smiles.
“I’ll tell you everything.”
Seven
“As near as I can tell, there are more than sixty people with the Monteros. The three older ones are focused on their families, and Max has taken over the rest of the crew. That means there are at least forty-five people that will do Max’s bidding. He’s building an army, and we have two of his damned agents right here under our roof. Dad is afraid to kick them out now, out of fear that they’ll come and take over the shop. Well, we have some surprises for them if they try.”
D-Day pauses to turn the page in the journal he took from the bedroom of the dead woman at the pawn shop, and then continues reading.
“I heard them discussing someone named Ben Puckett tonight. Apparently, Max Montero has ordered them to find him and his people, to observe and report their activity, and not to engage them in battle. Lucky is pissed about that. Like usual he was talking tough about how he could take them all out by himself, and do some ‘skull fucking’ as he put it. Nicky was more subdued and said they’d better just follow orders, and let Addie (?) do the killing once they found them. I don’t know who Addie is, but I sense she’s high up in the Montero organization. These two are starting to give me the skeeves.”
D-Day looks up at the group. “This is the last entry,” he says and continues reading.
“Last night they woke me up late, or early depending on your viewpoint. Maybe around two AM. I missed the first part of the conversation, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that they raped and killed a family. I don’t know how many, but I am gladder than ever that I hid that baby monitor in their room. Now I know for sure how depraved they are. I don’t care what dad says; they’re done today. They either pack their shit and get out, or they die. I’m not going to have them under our roof even one more night. I think I hear one of them now. I’m going to go lay it on the line with them.”
He closes the notebook and sets it on the table.
“There it is. The Montero’s have a platoon at their disposal, and they have you guys in their cross hairs. I have no idea of their fighting capabilities, but if the two you guys dealt with are any indication, they’re well-armed. Even if they’re mostly civilians like you guys, being outnumbered four to one is not a good situation to find yourselves in.”
“So, let’s leave. Let’s go north like you were going to do before you met us,” Natalie says.
“I think she’s right,” Kyle says. “We should go. But, I would want to go to the mountains, to Danny’s hideout. Naomi is there, and I don’t want to go north without her.”
“Agreed,” Ben says. “Not without Mom.”
“We could leave. The Montero’s want us, not you guys,” Stephenie says aloud while signing.
“If it will help you guys out, I agree,” Annie says. ‘We’ll leave, just the three of us if that’s what you want.”
“The Montero’s aren’t going to care,” Ben says. “They’re going to want to kill us no matter what. If any of them are like the two guys we just fought, they won’t stop until we’re dead.”
“Yeah,” Andy says. “And if you guys leave, we’ve lost our best three shots. We need you now more than ever.”
“Why don’t we all go to the mountains?” Natalie asks. “The Montero’s will never find us up there. Danny said once we were healed we should go up there. Let’s go now.”
“If we split up, the most likely event is that we never meet up again,” D-Day says. “If you’re going to the mountains, either we all go, or we say goodbye when we split up.”
“We all go to the mountains,” Carmen says. “And if we want to split up and go north once we find the rest of your people, we can do that. With all of us, we can get Robert and Toni up the mountain, even if we have to carry them. D-Day?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he says. “I’ll go where you go, woman.”
“Good. It’s settled then,” she says.
“There’s still the issue of the river,” Kyle says. “If it’s roaring like you said it is through town, what’s it like coming out of the mountains?”
“There’s one way to find out,” D-Day says. “You okay riding bitch?”
* * *
Ninety minutes later D-Day and Kyle are standing on the Gypsum Highway at the mouth of North Creek Canyon. In front of them, the river roars past, following the terrain southeast toward Longview. The road, as far they can see ahead, has been washed out, replaced with a torrent of brown frothing water, rushing past in a boil, trees and parts of buildings and other debris popping up and disappearing in the current. The back end of an SUV briefly breaks the surface, only to vanish a second later. D-Day shouts to be heard over the din of the raging water.
“I don’t think we’re going up this way!”
Kyle shakes his head. “I’d say not,” he shouts back. “There’s another way to get up there, but I’m worried it’s going to be as bad.”
They get back on the Victory and Kyle instructs him to head back toward Longview, then has him turn north at a cross road. They weave around tight corners as the road follows the hillside. One area has water running over the road, and three-fourths of the road is covered with washed-out hillside. They come to a crest in the road, and the descent on the other side disappears into a wide, muddy river
a half mile across. It’s not the raging torrent that North Creek was, but it’s still filled with all kinds of debris, including the occasional zombie bobbing up and down in the current.
“The Little Thompson,” Kyle says. “The Big Thompson is a few miles north. I’m guessing that this has us totally cut off to the north.”
“Let’s check the main highway. If any of the bridges are going to be intact, it will be those. They’re built to handle hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks every day.”
“Yeah,” Kyle says. “But if they’re under twenty feet of water it doesn’t do us any good.”
They ride out to the main highway, weaving around the cars clogging the intersection, avoiding the bodies of the zombies they killed on the trip out of town, and turn left on Highway 287. In a few minutes, they find the highway under water, the Little Thompson flowing over it. A mobile home juts out of the water, right in the middle of what would be the highway.
“How much you want to bet that’s lodged in the bridge?” D-Day asks. “Something strong is holding it there.”
A big cottonwood tree floats toward the mobile home, the water pushing it up and onto the thin metal walls. Pressure mounts as more debris piles up behind the big tree, and they see the mobile home start to collapse. All at once, the part above water breaks off, the water rushing to fill the void in the submerged portion. Insulation, furniture cushions, a table, and hundreds of books float to the surface and drift away.
“Let’s keep going east,” Kyle says.
They get back on the bike and head east. They don’t get much farther than County Line Road when they see the series of reservoirs and equalizer ponds have all flooded and cover the road. This water isn’t a rushing torrent, but it’s still ten feet deep and rising.
They try going north on County Line and run into the Little Thompson again, rushing through farmland and disappearing into the distance.
“Okay, Kyle, I think we head home and come up with Plan B because Plan A is sunk. Pun intended.”
