by D. J. Molles
“We’re checking the area, Professor,” he responded, his voice less than enthusiastic.
“So you do think that someone is there,” White pronounced, triumphantly.
Greg sighed and dropped the binoculars in his lap. “I think that if I blundered into unknown situations without checking them out from a distance, then I’d be dead by now. I can’t see any movement in or around the buildings.” He glanced back at White. “Hostile or otherwise.”
“So…”
Greg turned fully in his seat and looked at White. The professor regarded him with that usual pinched expression that sat amid all of that snow-white hair. His head slightly inclined, looking down through his thick glasses at Greg. Like he resented being forced to converse with such a low-brow specimen.
Greg adjusted his Yankees ball cap. “Let me explain something to you, Professor. You might be able to manipulate Jerry and get what you want out of him by threatening to trash him publicly, but I don’t like you. I am not beholden to you. I don’t give a fuck what you think or say. I only allowed you to come along with us today as a favor to Jerry. And given the fact that I generally regard you as an idiot, whose survival so far defies logic and probability, I’m going to need you sit back there and shut the fuck up. Okay?”
Professor White stared back at Greg, looking somewhat shocked.
But silent, at least.
Kyle sat beside Professor White and looked tense and awkward. Which wasn’t difficult for him. He was one of those guys whose awkward stage somehow lasted well into their twenties. A thin, gawky neck. Just a thin smattering of unsightly facial hair that clumped at his cheeks and his chin, leaving the other areas bare.
Arnie grinned, chuckled. His loose folds of empty skin quivered under his chin like a wattle.
Greg turned back around. “Go ahead and take us in, Arnie. Slow and easy.”
“You got it, Boss.”
They rolled on, Greg and Kyle readying themselves for whatever they might find, while Professor White sulked. They rolled their windows down and laid their rifles on the doors, barrels protruding out, though it was tight to maneuver a rifle in such a small vehicle.
They stopped at the intersection of S. Main Street and Front Street, caddy-corner to OP Lillington. The ring of red brick buildings had been partially secured—most of the windows and doors were boarded or covered with some sort of barricade. A few were still open, giving it the look of an abandoned project.
Greg leaned forward again, looked up to the roof of the building and watched it for a minute.
“No watchman?” Kyle asked.
Greg just shook his head. “Go ahead and take us around back.”
Arnie took them into the entrance, a narrow alley wide enough for a single vehicle. The end of the alley was usually barricaded by a car, which the guards at OP Lillington would roll out of the way for incoming friendlies, like you might open a gate.
The barricade car was rolled away. No one around it.
They crept passed, then stopped in the middle of the open space, surrounded completely by all those buildings. The other barricades still stood intact—the dumpsters and tires and other abandoned cars still stacked up and crowned with loops of barbed wire. It was only the entrance that had been left open. Like an abandoned house with the front door hanging off its hinges.
Greg opened his door, stepped out. He took a moment to survey his surroundings while behind him the others squirmed their way out of the tiny hatchback car. It was very still there in the center of OP Lillington. Greg would still check the interiors of the buildings, just to say that he had, but he already knew that the place was abandoned. He could tell just from the immense silence of it.
“Hellooooo?” Professor White yelled. “Anybody here?”
Greg spun on the man. The professor had his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone and took another deep breath to continue his shouting. Greg slapped the hands away from his mouth, then stood there, glaring.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
White looked concerned. “I was trying to call out…”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?”
“But what if there are people around?”
“And what if they’re the wrong people?” Greg shook his head. “Jesus, it really is astounding that you’ve lived this long.” He turned away from the professor, stood without moving for a moment, feeling out the ensuing silence, listening for sounds of anything that might be coming for them.
Nothing.
Greg started walking for the buildings. “Kyle, you’re with me. Arnie, stay with the professor, please. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“You got it.”
The professor sounded indignant. “I don’t need a babysitter, Greg!”
“Oh, I think you do,” Greg said without turning around.
They cleared the buildings and found nobody, just as Greg had suspected. Nor did they find any sign of anybody. Or any clue as to where they had gone. Like OP Lillington had never existed.
In the quiet darkness of one of the buildings, Kyle spoke up. “You think the infected got them?”
Greg considered it, but shook his head. “No. There’d be bodies. Blood.”
“You think…” he lowered his voice. “…maybe the hunters got them?”
Greg just made a face of consternation. “The who?”
Kyle glanced around, uncomfortably. “Some of Harden’s guys were talking about these new infected they were calling hunters. Said they were big and fast. Said they hunted like animals. Ran in a small pack. Grabbed people and carried them away, instead of tearing ‘em apart right there like the normal infected. Maybe that’s what happened here. Maybe the hunters got them all. Carried them away.”
Greg shook his head again. “Bullshit.”
“Well, what do you think happened?”
Greg shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t know, Kyle.”
Before they exited the building, Greg found a good pry-bar lying near one of the outer doors. He picked it up, judging its heft. He seemed satisfied and left the building. In the back parking lot, Arnie and Professor White sat on the hood of the Geo, the professor looking sour and Arnie looking amused.
Greg walked over to the professor and motioned with the pry-bar. “Let me show you something, Professor.”
White slid down off the hood and Greg led him towards the entrance. As he passed, he gave Arnie a small nod, and then Arnie and Kyle hopped in the Geo. As Greg and White exited the former OP Lillington, the little old car rattled to life, the fan belt squeaking loudly for a few seconds.
White looked back. “Where are they going?”
Greg rolled his eyes. “Relax, professor. They’re gonna swing around and pick us up.”
“Well, what’s so important out here?”
Greg just kept walking until they reached Front Street, and there on the corner, he stopped. He pointed across the street with the pry-bar. “You see that, Professor?”
White squinted his eyes. “What?”
“Directly across the street. Don’t act like you can’t see it.”
White frowned with irritation, stepped past Greg. “My eyes aren’t what they were…”
Greg hit him in the side of his right knee with the pry-bar. White cried out in pain, his leg seizing, and he stumbled, trying to grab at his knee. Greg swung again, this time catching White’s hand as it gripped his knee, the impact crushing his fingers. White screamed, collapsed onto the ground, holding up his injured hand.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
Greg ignored him. He swung the pry-bar down and finally hit White’s knee straight on, breaking the bone and inverting the joint. Then he went to work quickly on the other leg, getting into a sort of rhythm as he hammered down onto the kneecap while Professor White screamed on and on. He felt the second knee break and then Greg stood up straight, breathing hard.
He dropped the pry-bar on the ground.
Professor Whit
e sobbed uncontrollably. “It hurts! It hurts!”
Greg raised his voice over White’s blubbering. “While conducting a routine scouting operation into the disappearance of the group at OP Lillington, we were attacked by a pack of infected. Unfortunately, during the ensuing struggle, we were unable to save Professor White.” He bent down and made eye contact with White. “How’s that sound?”
“You bastard!” Spittle flew from White’s mouth. “You fucking bastard!”
Greg just shook his head. “You should’ve learned when to keep your fucking mouth shut, Professor. Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets gone.”
“I’m sorry,” White muttered. “I won’t say anything else! I promise!”
But Greg had already turned his back on the professor. He walked to the Geo and sat down inside, closing his door against White’s rising voice as it begged and pleaded for them not to leave him there. Greg motioned Arnie on, and they sped off, leaving the professor on the sidewalk, hollering desperately as he attempted to crawl after them, dragging his crumpled legs behind him.
Greg looked into the backseat at Kyle.
The kid’s face was pale.
“You gonna be okay with this?” Greg asked.
Kyle seemed shaky, but he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m okay.”
***
The pain in his legs was blinding. Like they were caught in a mechanical crusher, one of those big ones they used to turn cars into little cubes of scrap metal. He crawled after the vehicle, dragged himself along the sidewalk, elbows and palms scraping into bloody messes against the rough pavement.
The car made the turn onto S. Main Street, heading towards the bridge over the Cape Fear River. Heading back towards Camp Ryder. And then it disappeared. White lay there, one arm outstretched after the vehicle like he might just reach out and grab it. Then he collapsed, weeping in agony and despair.
He lay there for a moment, just trying to overcome the pain. Just trying to make himself move more. He didn’t want to die right there, but the pain was so bad he didn’t think he had the strength to keep going. Maybe Greg would come back for him. Maybe it was all just a cruel trick, to teach him a lesson so that he wouldn’t talk bad about Jerry anymore.
“I learned my lesson!” Professor White screamed in desperation. “I’m sorry!”
A scraping growl echoed off the buildings.
Fear flooded his system. He evacuated his bowels in terror.
“Oh, no! No!” He hitched himself up onto his raw and bloody elbows, trying to look behind him. All he saw was a lean, sinuous form ducking behind a building, only a block from him. “No, no, no! Somebody help me! Please! Help me!”
He looked back towards S. Main Street and there, just in front of the railroad tracks, he could see a figure. Standing there next to the woods. At first he thought it might be an infected, but it was astride a dirt bike. White didn’t know whether it was friend or foe, a bandit or just a regular survivor. In that moment, it didn’t matter. He would take anything over being eaten alive.
He raised his hand, weakly. “Help! Help!”
The figure rolled forward on the dirt bike.
“Over here!” White yelled, excitedly—someone was going to save him! “Please! Help me!”
The dirt bike worked its way around the rail road tracks, and then onto the road. And when it hit the concrete, it turned, heading away from Professor White, and the engine gunned, loud enough that he could hear it over his own cries for help. He thought maybe it was a mistake, maybe the man on the dirt bike just needed to get around a median or something.
But in the following quiet, he could hear the sound of the dirt bike’s engine fading.
Fading.
And then nothing.
He stared in the direction it had disappeared. Who the hell was it? Why wouldn’t they come help him?
A guttural noise behind him.
He looked and didn’t see anything.
The same noise again, this time from above.
Professor White looked up. And screamed.
CHAPTER 3: ISOLATION
It had felt odd for Angela to drift through Camp Ryder like a stranger, the eyes of passersby regarding her with some suspicion, and sometimes pity. As though she were a poor refugee, filthy and harrowed by the dangers of the road. But an outsider nonetheless. Did none of them remember just a few days ago when she had helped to mend their clothes? Brought them food and water when they were sick?
She had found herself walking with her head down, skirting the edge of The Square. In the few days since she’d seen it last, The Square seemed to have been abandoned. There were no cars or trucks parked near the gate from neighboring settlements, no little shops set up to receive customers and to trade wares. Just the big fire pit, filled with nothing but ashes, and a few people gathered around it to talk quietly.
She’d been saved by a familiar voice, gravelly but kindly.
“Angie!”
She’d turned and found Keith Jenkins picking his way through a row of shanties. The old man was one of the few who had stood by Lee, loaning him his pickup truck to make the trip to Bunker #4 months ago. Since then he’d spent a lot of time with Sam, filling a sort of grand-fatherly role as he taught the kid how to hunt and trap small game. Keith Jenkins had become more a member of Angela’s family than almost anyone else she’d met at Camp Ryder.
She tried to call back to him, but suddenly just broke down. Tears came hard, and she didn’t know whether they were because of the jarring loneliness he’d just pulled her out of, or whether they were from the happiness of finally seeing a friendly face.
He put an arm around her as they met. “Come on, Angie. I got your kids at my place.”
His breath was sharp and sour, but she took comfort in him being there. She walked with him, leaning into him and sobbing quietly into her hand, her eyes barely able to see what was in front of her, just a watercolor mash-up of graying plywood boards and blue tarpaulin. She’d never felt so simultaneously miserable and relieved in her life.
Keith had taken her to his shanty and inside she found Abby and Sam. The boy stood by reservedly, a small smile on his lips. Abby broke down and wept hysterically upon seeing her mother. Angela’s tears seemed to dry up under her clenched eyes as she held her child fiercely and didn’t move from the floor of Keith’s shanty for a long time.
She hated it. She hated Abby seeing these things, experiencing these things. Abby was changing. Going colder on the inside, so slowly that Angela was the only one that could notice. A steadily growing stoniness to her demeanor, and when she wept it sounded more angry than sad.
She was losing her little girl, bit by bit.
Keith brought her a bottle of water, the plastic stained and scratched up from months of reuse. She drank it thirstily and he got her another, told her she was welcome to any of his food whenever she was up to it.
She made her way over to a plastic crate and sat on it, still holding Abby in her arms. She kissed her girl and pulled the hair out of her eyes. She looked up at the older man that sat across the small shanty from her. “How long was I gone for?”
A shadow passed over Keith’s eyes, as though he were dismayed that she didn’t know, but he hid it quickly and took the question straight on. “You were out for two days, Hon.”
Angela nodded. “Keith, what’s happened?”
Keith looked around them with some obvious discomfort, then crossed the room and took a seat on his mattress, close to Angela. He made a circumferential motion with his finger. “Thin walls and unsympathetic ears, Angela,” he said in low tones. “We have to be careful.”
He looked pointedly down at Abby.
Angela understood quickly. She squeezed her daughter again, kissed her neck, then pulled her up off her lap. “Honey, why don’t you go play with Sam?” She looked at the skinny, thirteen-year-old boy. “Sam, can you and Abby play outside for a minute? Just…” Her hands wavered. “…just right outside the door. Ple
ase. Don’t go far.”
Sam nodded. “We won’t.” He put his arm around the little blonde girl, big brother and little sister, and guided her out the blue tarpaulin flap.
Keith smiled, sadly. “He’s a good kid, Angie.”
“I know.”
He looked back at her. “Been asking where Lee’s at.”
Angela’s hand went to her face again. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t know, Keith. There was talk about someone that had been sent to kill him—I don’t know all the details—but I think it was Eddie, that new guy.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “Vicky Ramirez’s husband?”
Angela shook her head. “He’s not her husband, Keith. It was all just an act to get inside the damn gates. Vicky didn’t know what it was about, but I think Eddie killed…” She swallowed hard. “Lee and him left together just a few hours before all of this went down and then we couldn’t get Lee on the radio.” She hung her head, her dirty, bedraggled hair obscuring her face. “What happened, Keith? What the hell happened?”
Keith sighed heavily. “Best I can tell, Jerry’s been in cahoots with that little weasel fuck from Fuquay-Varina, Professor White. It looks like Jerry killed the radio antenna on the top of the Camp Ryder building, and his boys come hauling in here, opened up the gates for Professor White and his idiots, and they all got rifles.”
The old man shook his head. “Most of the people that would have stood up to some shit like that are gone with Harper and LaRouche now. There are a few good people left, but not enough to make a stand, and everybody else supports Jerry.”
Angela raised her head. “You said Jerry took down the radio antenna?”
Keith nodded. “Unplugged it, I think. Not sure if he’s plugged it in again or not.”
Angela considered this. “Maybe that’s why we couldn’t get a signal out when we tried to reach Lee.”
“That would make sense.” Keith rubbed his thumbs together. “Bad timing, though.”
