The Remaining: Allegiance

by D. J. Molles

  Staley nodded in agreement. “Though we’ve pretty much cleared Wilmington and the smaller surrounding towns, we can’t secure them, so the Followers keep small scouting elements posted all around us. We can’t send out a scavenging party without the Followers finding out about it. Sometimes they hit us, sometimes they don’t. Most of the time we back them off without too many casualties, but at a monumental cost to our ammunition stores.”

  Lee looked thoughtful. “Sounds like a fucking insurgency.”

  “Not too different,” Brinly said.

  “How’d you manage to punch out to meet us?” Lee asked.

  Staley smiled. “We parked our truck in the back of a Chinook and had them fly us over.”

  Lee considered all of this in silence for a moment, looking at the map. “What’s the effective range of the howitzers, First Sergeant?”

  “Eighteen kilometers is tops for regular munitions,” Brinly answered. “We can jack that up to thirty if we use Rocket-Assisted Projectiles. We had some of the newer M777s, but the GPS has been out of whack on them for some reason. Targeting is… unreliable. So we’re using the M198s. But, on the plus side, we have a whole shit-ton of the RAPs.”

  “Fuck…” Lee tapped his fingers on the map. “Only eighteen kilometers.”

  Staley frowned at him. “If we agree to all of this, and we somehow manage to get you our artillery pieces, how were you thinking about using them? On a moving target like the hordes, spread out over miles, the artillery won’t be very effective.”

  “No, they won’t,” Lee said, his feet now tapping on the ground beneath him, rapid to the rhythm of his thoughts. “But if we can get them all in one place…” He stopped long enough to take a glance and see a pair of incredulous looks aimed at him. He held up his hands. “I know. It sounds ridiculous, but we’ve done it before. When we had a larger city area to handle that we knew would hold a horde of a couple hundred or so, we would sneak in at night and rig up a bunch of claymores. We found out that they’re attracted to the smell of cooking food, so we dumped deer guts into a hot pan. Then we’d go up to the top of a building and we’d wait for them. They’d always come en masse and when we had them in the killbox, we’d blow the claymores and pick off the rest with rifle fire.”

  Staley and Brinly both nodded, appreciating the ingenuity, but staying reserved.

  “That’s feasible for a horde of hundreds,” Brinly said. “But hundreds of thousands? Even millions? There’s no way.” He leaned forward in his seat. “I understand what you’re getting at here, Captain. If you had the artillery within range, you could call down a fire mission on them. And maybe that would be effective. But first of all, how are you gonna get them there? And second of all, how are you gonna keep them there? Because I don’t think a pan full of burning deer guts is gonna cut it.”

  “No.” Lee stood up, thinking out loud more than explaining an already-formed plan of action. “But we both have seen these hordes. They’re like cattle. They can be herded.”

  “Cattle don’t try to eat you,” Brinly said flatly.

  Lee pointed at him. “You’re right. And to herd cattle, you have to push them in the right direction and it takes a lot of manpower over a lot of area. But with these infected hordes… they’ll just give chase. And when one is chasing, the whole group follows. You don’t need to prod these guys along. You need a carrot on a stick.”

  “Meat on a stick,” Brinly mumbled.

  “Meat on a truck, actually.” Lee smiled, hesitantly. “A pickup truck with a couple of guys and a clear path to lead the horde where we want them.”

  Staley rubbed his face. “We’ve still got the issue of the Followers to deal with, Captain. I’ve got limited small arms capabilities here. Not enough to keep my base safe, continue scavenging, and get a convoy of artillery through hostile territory. And if I rely on the helicopters to clear the way for the arty, then I don’t have enough fuel to demo the bridges. It’s one or the other.”

  Lee’s lips compressed. “The bridges. The bridges need to be blown.”

  “Yeah.” Staley nodded, but before he was able to say anything else there was a rapid knock on the door to the office and then it flew open.

  Outside the door, the sounds of Camp Ryder were spilling in and it was the sound of hostility brewing. Marie stood in the doorway, her face flushed, her brown kinks of hair hanging in her eyes. She looked at Lee and spoke with urgency. “We got a bit of a problem.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  FRICTION

  LEE CAME DOWN THE stairwell in a clatter of boots. The noise in the room was escalating quickly. People were spreading away from the center of the room like oil separating from water. Lee paused halfway down the stairs, trying to determine what the hell was happening.

  Two men were the center of attention, both of them strangers to Lee. One of the men—the taller man—was holding the shorter man by the lapels of his coat, and nearly lifting him off his feet. The tall man’s face was close to the other man’s, but the shorter man wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were wild with rage and they were fixed on Angela.

  Angela, who stood very close with a pistol leveled at him.

  About five steps up, Lee had a good vantage point and noticed other things. He noticed the knife on the ground at the feet of the two men. He noticed that not everybody had retreated from the conflict. Some of them were crowding close in again. Some of them looked like they might jump in to start a fight.

  “These sons of bitches!” the shorter man spat, his greasy, wet hair flying about madly. “These murdering sons of bitches!”

  Lee realized the taller man wasn’t just holding the shorter man’s lapels, but he had yanked one of the man’s arms behind his back as well, trying to restrain him. He could take one look at the shorter man and tell that he wanted to cut Angela, and the taller man was holding him back.

  “Mac,” Angela said, her voice harsh and loud in the confined space, cutting through the loudness of the crowd. “You better get your man on the ground before I put him there!”

  Angela was so intent on the two men struggling that she hadn’t really noticed the fact that it was her and about five Camp Ryder people, surrounded by the entire group of strangers. And the crowd all around them was not watching like a crowd watches. It was stirring, like people that were about to be involved. One side or the other, a collective decision was about to be made, and the dam was very close to breaking.

  “You cunt!” the man spat.

  The taller man reared back and gave the other man a short right hook that took him in the side of his face.

  Immediately the crowd jerked, like they’d been slapped into motion. The volume of voices went up sharply, and the tone became undeniably aggressive.

  The shorter man hit the ground. He sprawled, reached out, and managed to get his hand on the knife. Mac jumped onto the shorter man’s back, growling like an angry dog. Both men rolled and squirmed around in each other’s grips. Lee saw the blade of the knife flashing between them.

  A few of the bystanders lurched forward.

  Lee wasn’t sure who they were planning to help. He wasn’t going to wait to find out.

  He pointed his rifle at the ceiling and let off three quick rounds.

  Everyone cried out at once. The rounds were deafening in the enclosed area and took them all by surprise. The collective note that they issued was high and frightened. Dust and small chunks of concrete from the ceiling dropped and peppered the people underneath. Everyone ducked their head and there was a moment where the crowd was paralyzed. Shocked into submission. Their eyes looked around, then up at Lee. They saw him standing on the stairs with the rifle pointed up. He even had the attention of Mac, and the man with the knife still clutched in his hand.

  Lee realized his own hands were trembling with anger, white-knuckled on the grip of his rifle, like it was a neck that needed strangling. He didn’t see people or survivors staring back at him. He just saw a bunch of mindless animals. No better than the infec
ted. A horde. Staring up at him with their hollow eyes. Not understanding the calamity that he could bring down on them.

  Do they know me? Lee’s mind spat flames and burning coals. Do they know what I’m capable of?

  There was the briefest instant where Lee just thought about opening up. Solving a whole lot of problems. Putting some people in their fucking places. Lee wanted to show them how the world was. It wasn’t a world where you could just come into another man’s camp, eat his food, and then try to knife his people. It was a world where thieves were executed and traitors were left outside the gates, to be devoured by things that lurked in the woods.

  “What the fuck is this?” Lee bellowed. He pointed an accusing finger at the short man, lying on his back. Lee looked right into his eyes as he pointed. “You. You piece of shit. I should shoot you dead right now.”

  “Lee…” someone said, but Lee wasn’t listening.

  Lee turned his face to the rest of the strangers gathered and he thought about killing, and dying, and none of it mattered. Sometimes things needed to be done. Sometimes points needed to be made. And the consequences were often cloudy, or insignificant no matter how bad.

  “Any one of you put a finger on me or my people and I’ll kill you.” Lee started down the stairs, his pace clipped, his footsteps sharp in the silence. His words came out sharper, to the same beat as his boots. “I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you. I got twenty-eight rounds left in this thing. Are there twenty-eight people here that want to die tonight?”

  At the bottom of the stairs, the crowd parted.

  Lee walked through them without looking. Any one of them could have leapt forward and taken him out with something as stupid as a homemade knife. But he knew just as much as they did that they weren’t going to make a move on him. He could feel it in the room, the shift in the mood. The manic violence of moments ago was no longer the crowd’s. It was his.

  “Lee!” Angela’s voice.

  He was locked on to the man on the ground. Mac was climbing off of him, putting a hand out to Lee, trying to ward him off, all of the sudden trying to protect the man that had only a moment ago been intent on putting a knife into Angela. And that… that…

  “Listen…” Mac said, palms out.

  Lee kicked the knife out of the grip of the man on the ground, then put the rifle in Mac’s face. “Shut up. Don’t say another goddamn word.”

  Lee registered the front doors of the building flying open. In the back of his mind, he figured that the guards and the Marines standing watch in the rain had probably heard the gunshots and come running to investigate. There was a brief exchange of shouts—the Marines checking on Staley, and Staley telling them to stand down—and then silence again.

  Lee looked down at the man on the ground, the muzzle of his M4 tracing over the man’s face and chest. He thought about pulling the trigger. That was what he wanted to do with the man, though he knew he should do it outside. The man needed to die. He needed to die because… because…

  Because there was no other solution. What else did you do with people like him?

  What else do you do? Lee suddenly wanted to scream. WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

  You couldn’t just let people do this kind of thing to you. You couldn’t leave this type of thing unanswered. It wasn’t the goddamn civilized life anymore. There weren’t police to help anyone handle an idiot with a knife. It was up to him. It all came down to him…

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Lee,” Angela’s voice said. It was calm, but there was very little warmth to it, and that alone was enough to make his head turn. He looked at her. Her blue eyes could be cold sometimes, like ice under water. They were that way now. Her lips set hard. Her face no longer kind. “If I wanted him dead, I would’ve shot him myself.”

  Lee matched her tone and expression. “He had a knife. He was getting ready to cut you.” As though that was all the explanation necessary. And perhaps it was.

  Angela’s hand on his shoulder was squeezing him now. She leaned into him and her words were very quiet in his ear, so that Lee wasn’t sure if anyone else heard her. “We should think long and hard about something like this before we do it.”

  There’s nothing to think about.

  But he kept silent.

  Her grip on his shoulder eased and her voice softened. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  For a second, his stomach flip-flopped. He thought about Kyle and Arnie and the others that he’d shot dead on the road out of Camp Ryder. The men that he had… murdered? Yes, murdered. There wasn’t another word for it. Perhaps… executed. Did she know about them? Was that what she was talking about?

  I did it for the camp. I did it because I had to. Because the bad guys always come back to bite me in the ass, and I’ll be damned if I’m letting it happen again. Like this motherfucker… this motherfucker needs to die before he causes more problems down the road. Surely she understands…

  But when Lee looked back into her eyes, he saw some of the kindness had returned to them and he knew without truly knowing that she’d only been speaking in generalities. She had only been telling him that she understood where he was coming from. Understood his anger.

  Angela turned away from Lee. She ignored the man on the ground and directed herself at the man she’d called Mac. “Who the hell is this guy and what is his problem?”

  Mac looked around quickly. “He didn’t hurt anybody. I stopped him. That was what you said. You said if any of your people got hurt. And no one got hurt.”

  Angela holstered her own pistol to show that violence was off the table.

  Lee was thinking, Speak for yourself. But she reached a hand out to his rifle and lowered it so the muzzle was pointed at the floor, rather than the short man cowering on it.

  “Look…” she began.

  But the woman named Georgia stepped up and stood over the man on the ground, stooping down to help him to his feet but keeping her suspicious eyes locked on Angela and Lee. “Your group hurt ours, Ms. Angela.”

  The expression of congeniality melted from Angela’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  Mac looked rapidly back and forth between Georgia and Angela, gauging his loyalties against his desire for a place to rest in relative safety. If Lee were to take a guess, he thought that the group of strangers was likely split in half. There would be some who would probably do anything to make peace and stay safe. And there would be others who would never be able to function here without resentment.

  “Maybe we should talk about this privately,” Mac suggested, but his voice was small.

  Georgia’s face twisted into anger. “Fuck privacy. Everyone in this room knows the truth. Ain’t no point in hiding it.”

  Lee had some choice words to say, but he bit his tongue. He had the presence of mind to know that he should stay silent. Nothing peaceful was going to come out of his mouth. His thoughts were muddled with violence, and compromise was barely comprehensible.

  Angela fielded it calmly. “Georgia, no one here except for your own people knows what you’re talking about. To my knowledge, all that any of my people have done is take you out of the rain and give you half of what’s left in our food stores, and trusted you to treat this place with respect. I don’t think one little scuffle is the end of the world, but if there are bigger problems going on, then I’d like to hear them.”

  Her characterization of a man trying to gut her as a “little scuffle” seemed to deflate Georgia. The tension ebbed. And for a moment, Georgia—and quite a few others, Lee noticed—glanced at the ground in something that might have been shame.

  Do beggars and thieves have shame?

  Lee’s jaw clenched. You need to take a deep breath and settle yourself, buddy. No one in this room needs you pissed-off right now. Cooler heads prevail. The moment for anger is gone. Let it go.

  He deliberately breathed in through his nose and let it out slow. He had never considered himself an angry person, nor ever had tr
ouble controlling his temper. But there were deeper things at work. He knew himself enough to recognize that. Things were forming inside him like mineral deposits and they were sharp and jagged and drew blood. For a moment there, he’d felt as out of control as he’d felt when he had been on the roof of that building in some small town west of here, surrounded by infected, with Shumate and his men across the street, waiting to kill him.

  In some ways he hated it. In others, he loved it.

  He hated it because it was not who he was, or who he had been—You cannot be who you were—and it reminded him of how much had changed, and how much he was being forced to change with the world. He hated it because for his whole life he had disliked the men that reacted and respected the men that thought things through.

  And he loved it because there was no thought of consequences. Things were much simpler from that viewpoint. Things were easier to accept, to deal with. Violence begot violence. Might made right. The ends justified the means. The Machiavellian methods that made sense to the baser instincts of his mind felt satisfied.

  But, love or hate, the moment had passed, and the wisdom to see that trumped all.