Ashlee’s eyes misted over again while she listened to Will. She gave him a grateful smile and took her sister by the hand. “We’re grateful for ya’lls help, and we’ll carry our weight.”
Will banged his hand on the table. “It’s settled then. We get a good night’s sleep, head out early in the morning with two new partners, and with luck, we can be in Carthage by the end of the day.” He looked at Becky in a speculative manner for a moment, then turned to the sisters. “Girls, how many bedrooms are there in this place?”
“Five,” Ashlee said. “Plus there’s a daybed in the old nursery,” she added.
“Excellent.” He could count on both hands the number of times he had made love to his wife since they’d left the ranch, and have fingers left over. Most of those were quick and dirty tussles that were satisfying, but that was all. As everyone got up, he felt a familiar rush of warmth and maneuvered himself next to Becky.
Bending down, he whispered in her ear, “I’m going to take the first guard shift. I’ll be back in four hours. I expect to find you alone in a bedroom, naked, on your back, and acting like your ankles hate each other.” She answered him with a wicked grin.
“Andro!” he yelled, looking about for Casandro. He saw the big Latino near the door. “Let’s go get our guard shift started.”
The Hendrickson equipment shed was huge compared to what the cattlemen were used to. Back home, Will ran his herd on 1,200 acres with two tractors, a backhoe, and a Bobcat. He stored the equipment in a shed not much bigger than a suburban three-car garage.
This shed was a monster. A metal building thirty yards wide and half a football field long, with a flat roof twenty feet high, it housed three enormous tractors, a pair of combines, and all manner of implements, tools, and attachments. At the top of the rear wall, a row of dirty windows let in a sickly yellow light that the gloom fast swallowed. A thick layer of dust settled over everything, and even though the equipment had been idle for months, the air was redolent with the odor of oil and fried hydrocarbons.
Will, Danny, and Jiri stood in a semi-circle near the shed’s big overhead entrance door, their necks craned up like a trio of baby birds at feeding time.
“He ain’t gonna be up there much longer,” Danny said.
Three Maglite beams illuminated Mr. Hendrickson as he hung, kicking and flailing, suspended above them. He had climbed to the top of one of his combines- the very one he used to mow down creepers at the Sweeton’s cornfield, judging from the dried blood and gore on the machine’s headers. He tied one end of a rope to a rafter beam, looped the other around his neck, jumped, and turned. Time and decomposition worked together to help the rope burrow into its neck, causing its head to hang at a precarious angle. When they entered the shed it hung motionless and silent, looking like any other farmer who hanged himself in his work boots and bib overalls. As soon as it realized there were people near, though, it kicked, thrashed, and waved its arms wildly. It tried to snarl at them, but its throat was so constricted all it could produce was a guttural cough, like the sound an owl might make as it choked on a small bone.
“No wonder they were scared of trying to cut him down,” Will said.
“Shit, I’m scared of trying to cut it down,” Danny said, staring at the creeper flopping and kicking above. “Can we just shoot it in the head where it hangs?”
“That’d probably be best.” Will rubbed his forehead and peered at his companions. “What’s your take on these girls?”
“They’re awful young,” Jiri said.
“Yeah, but they’re farm girls,” Danny said. “They’re used to working hard.”
“It doesn’t matter, fellas,” Will said. “Are you going to tell Tara and Becky, or Sylvia, or Tess that we’re not taking the girls with us? They’d leave us and take the girls with them- after they scratched our eyes out.”
“Oh,” said Danny. “Ohhhh. Yeah, I never thought of that.”
“Yeah. So let’s shoot this thing, bury it, then go back inside and act like a pair of orphan teenage girls is what’s been missing from this group all along. And Danny...” he fixed the younger with his most menacing glare.
“What?” Danny said, his arms spread wide and his face the picture of wide-eyed innocence.
“You will act like those girls are my flesh and blood daughters. You will pretend like they were born without vaginas. If the women say a word about you flirting with, ogling, approaching, or any other thing with those girls, I’ll tie you down in your sleep and cut off your pride and joy.”
“And I’ll hold the knife until he’s ready to cut.” Jiri chimed in.
Danny held his hands up, palms open, a pained expression on his face. “I can’t believe you guys. I’m hurt. I’m really hurt. I may be a horndog but come on, those are little girls. In all the time you’ve known me, has anyone ever accused me of messing with jailbait?”
“Nope. But you’re in an end-of-the-world induced dry spell and there’s no such thing as jailbait anymore. I just want to make sure you know that they are in the same hands-off league as Tess.”
“Now, wait a minute! Tess is about to turn eighteen.”
Will shot him a stare of such dark malevolence he backed off at once.
“Okay, okay, no Tess, I won’t even look at the sisters, I’ll be the end times celibacy poster boy.”
“Good boy.” He pointed at the creeper struggling at the end of a rope. “Now shoot that thing, and let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
* * *
“Sweet baby Jesus in a swaddling blanket, this coffee tastes good,” Jiri said between noisy slurps from a steaming mug. Mr. And Mrs. Hendrickson had been aficionados of high-end coffee and had a kitchen cabinet stacked with foil packs containing premium blends. It was just past dawn, and Will stood next to the Hendrickson’s front porch, drinking a cup of Hawaiian Kona with Jiri, Justin, George, and Danny.
Will skipped in the coffee craze that swept the country in the years before the outbreak, never been in a Starbucks, and never owned a Keurig. He drank one cup of coffee a day, early in the morning, and all he cared was that it was hot and laden with caffeine. But he had to admit, this coffee tasted good- rich, with a chocolaty wallop at the end. He wondered briefly how Becky and Kathy managed to brew coffee without electricity, then decided fuck it- his Useless Information file was full for the week, anyhow.
He nodded at Justin. “Got your map, Junior?”
“Right here.” Justin patted a folder under his arm.
Will guided them to a decorative lawn table out in the yard. “Spread it out here and tell me what’s up.”
Justin studied it. “Okay, look here,” he said. He pointed to a spot on the map. “Here’s where we are now.” He trailed his finger a few inches. “Here’s the route to Carthage, where we want to be.” He ran his finger along a penciled-in route between the two. “And this is how we get there.”
“George, take a look at that plot. Is that good road all the way? Is it all two-lane? I don’t want any four-lane roads.”
“I already seen it,” George said. “It’s all two-lane and state highway.”
“Well, look at it again. Be sure,” Will said. He spun around and snapped at Jiri and Danny. “And would you two quit talking about the coffee like they invented it yesterday, and also stop looking in the same direction? All it would take right now is three creepers coming up behind us, and the group’s entire brain trust gets wiped out. How many times do I have to tell you to keep your head on a swivel out here?”
Danny jerked and took a step back. “Okay, Will. We’re on it.”
Will didn’t reply- he just looked hard at Danny.
George broke the awkward silence. “This is right,” he said, pointing to the map. “We take Missouri 13 southwest, then bounce along some county highways till we get to 96 highway west of Springfield. 96 will take us right near The Underground. There are two places where the roads have four lanes. Right here, when we pick up on 96- it comes up
off the interstate we passed over aways back. We ain’t got to travel on it, but we’ll sure be within eyeballing distance. And then here, at the end? That’s four-lane the last three or four miles. But the place sits on a four lane-highway- ain’t no other way there.”
“If there’s no other way then there’s no other way,” Will said. “But what about that first one you said, where we take the road by the interstate. Justin, find a way we can hook up on 96 highway a little further west and away from the interstate. I’ve fucked around with that particular road all I’m going to.”
Justin started to ask a question and Will cut him off with a wave of his arm. “Just find a route, Justin! It’s not hard.”
Will was walking toward the rear of the house when Danny called out to him. He stopped and waited with an impatient scowl.
Danny wore a concerned expression. “You okay boss?”
“I’m fine,” Will answered in a clipped voice. He pointed toward the house. “Go get ‘em up. Get ‘em fed and ready to roll. I want to be headed west in an hour.” He turned and walked away before Danny could respond.
Truth was, he wasn’t fine. Will had always believed in hiding his negative emotions. Twice in his life, he almost lost his ranch. Once during the farm crisis in the early eighties, when damned near every farmer and rancher in the Midwest was getting their bank notes called. And once in the mid-nineties, when beef prices dipped so low that it cost more to feed cattle than they were worth on the market. Some of his neighbors sold off their entire herds to staunch the bleeding. Will came perilously close to bankruptcy both times, and no one other than his banker ever knew. Becky knew that the business was in a rough spot and funds were tight, but she never had an inkling how close they’d come to disaster.
But now. It was possible that by the end of the day they would be in Carthage, and that thought weighed on him like a load of bricks. He was afraid of what they would find when they got there, and of what might happen if creepers swarmed the place. He’d worked it around in his mind like a dog worrying an old shoe, and he couldn’t come up with anything.
What would he do with fifteen-no, seventeen- people if the mines weren’t safe? Where would they go next? The desert? The mountains? The west coast, where the grapevine said the outbreak wasn’t as bad? And how would they get there? In a time where a two hundred mile trip took over a month, how would they make one of a thousand miles? And what did it say about his leadership? It would be his second failure in a row. Would the group even trust him after that?
All these questions and more rolled around his mind, and the possible answers all pointed to the breakup of the group. If they didn’t find safety at the end of this trip, some of the people would likely go their own way. And because safety lay in numbers, the dissolving of the group was a threat to his family. Life for the four of them would return to the way it was their first few weeks on the road. Back when every day was a terrifying, day-long nightmare of searching for food and water while creepers chased them non-stop. Going back to that would lead to one thing; one by one, he and the people he loved would get bit. It was inevitable. It was the times.
He looked around at the bare trees and the light frost hugging the early morning ground. It was late November- back home up north the snow would have flown already, and it couldn’t be far off here. The temperature felt like it was in the low thirties, and when he woke up earlier he noticed that the windows of the sister’s home were frosted over on the inside, even though they had been burning camp stoves the night before. They were close to running out of nights where they could sleep under the stars. That meant clearing a house, and taking all the risks associated with that, every day. Another reason for group members to fade away if the place in Carthage was a failure.
There had to be safety in Carthage. There had to be a haven for his group. There had to be.
Will stood in the backyard, looking out at hundreds of acres of unharvested corn and soybeans. As a fourth generation rancher, it made him want to cry sometimes, the waste he saw in fields and pastures along the way. Everywhere they went, he looked upon fields with crops either rotting or gone to seed. And if it wasn’t unharvested crops then it was pastures filled with cow carcasses with their legs stuck up in the air. In central Missouri they passed factory hog farms that stunk more than any creeper; it was the same way with the poultry farms in the southern part of the state. Sometimes, when he reflected on all of the wasted effort and lost investment, the rotted crops and dead livestock, it left a sour taste in his mouth that made it uncomfortable to swallow. No different than the rest of the country, I guess. He thought bitterly. The whole county’s just one big loss.
The sound of footsteps from behind sent him whirling around with his gun drawn, only to find Jiri standing there with his hands raised.
“Don’t shoot,” Jiri said with an easy smile.
Will put the handgun back in his holster in silence and turned back toward the fields.
Jiri approached and stood next to him.
Neither man spoke. After a time Jiri broke the silence. “No matter what we find at the end of this little trip, it’s a remarkable thing you’ve done.”
“There’s got to be a place for us in those mines. There’s just got to be.”
“You need to quit basing your success or failure as a leader on whether or not there’s a place for us there. You’ve led a large group of people a long way in terrible circumstances with little more than the force of you will. And if things go bad when we get to Carthage you’ll lead them to the next place.”
“You’re wrong about this one, Professor. If we get there and then have to go back out on the road again, people will peel off and go their own way. The key to survival now is in numbers. A group can protect itself. How many individuals, couples, and small families have we seen get wiped out, heard about getting wiped out? If it gets down to just my family out here alone, I can’t keep them safe.”
Jiri gave him a speculative look. “Is that why you’ve been growling at everybody for the last few days? You think we’ll lose people if this trip doesn’t end favorably?” He cocked his head and gazed at Will.
The rancher stayed quiet for a long time, then finally nodded his head.
“My good man, you’re just not thinking this through,” Jiri spoke with passion. “Are David and Kathy going to leave and head for Colorado by themselves? No. You saved Tempest’s life; will Sylvia ever leave your side? No. Would Tara risk her and Tess’s lives by leaving the safety you and Danny provide? No. Shit, I’m a pretty competent guy, and I can’t imagine any situation that would cause me split.”
Will listened in silence but with a dawning sense of realization. He’d lay awake nights, worrying about keeping his family safe if they were on their own, without stopping to consider that the safety the group provided was just as important to everyone else. If he didn’t want to face the creeper apocalypse with just Becky, Coy and Danny beside him, how in the world would David want to face it with nobody but Kathy by his side?
“You picked these folks up in dribs and drabs all across Kansas and Missouri. They were terrified, starving, thirsty. You gave them security, you fed them. You killed what scared them until you had the time to teach them how to kill it themselves. Everyone in the group likes and respects you and most of them hold you in awe. If you told them we had to go from here to Texas by foot, some of them might carp and complain, but every one of them would make the walk.”
Will smiled. Listening to Jiri lay out the whole picture lifted an enormous weight off his shoulders.
Jiri held his right nostril shut with his index finger and blew air out his nose, sending a stream of snot hurtling to the ground. He looked at Will and shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry about that. Bit of a head cold. Anyway, since it’s just the two of us out here, I’ll tell you something else. I’ve been doing some thinking on a long-term scale.”
“You do like to look at the long view on things, I’ve noticed. That’s rare, especially nowadays.”
The professor accepted the compliment with a dip of his head. “Most people’s focus is on day-to-day survival, understandably. Since that’s the case, the people who can think about things down the road will hold the advantage when down the road gets here.”
“How do you mean?” Will said, perplexed. He considered himself a bright man; he had tripled the value of his farm holdings as a result of twenty years of smart moves and shrewd deals. But often times when he and Jiri had these conversations he felt like a peasant trying to hold discourse with the king. Jiri thought about possibilities and situations that hadn’t occurred to Will, actions and reactions to those possibilities and situations, and layers of permutations about the results of those actions and reactions. It made Will’s head spin.
Jiri took a moment to answer. “We’ve talked before about how there will be an end to this- that the creepers are decomposing. There’ll come a day where they won’t be a threat. Oh, that’s not right. Creepers will be a threat for decades to come, but not in the way they are now. There won’t be herds and groups, and you won’t have to worry about them pursuing you. People will continue to be bitten, but it will be the result of someone stepping on a mostly decomposed creeper in tall grass, or reaching into a pond and sticking their hand in one’s mouth. And there will have to be procedures in place to deal with the people that are bitten in those situations, a way to keep them from becoming a threat to the population at large. But before too long getting bit by a creeper will be like an alligator attack in the old days- lethal, but rare.”
“So you’ve said.” Will nudged Jiri with his elbow. A solitary creeper had emerged from the bean field to the west and was approaching. Most of the skin had sloughed off one side of its face. The receding skin around its mouth accentuated its drooling rictus of yellow and black teeth. It approached them hungrily, a bad limp forcing it to shamble even more than creepers normally did. They paid it little notice as it approached.
Journey Page 20
