The Remaining: Fractured

by D. J. Molles

  But this?

  You couldn’t remedy this. You couldn’t work your way around it, you couldn’t overpower it or overcome it. It was a sudden, jolting paradigm shift, a jarring ninety-degree turn in reality that made him question those deep parts of himself that he’d taken for granted for so long. Because if he wasn’t Captain Harden, coordinator for North Carolina, there to reestablish civilization, then what the hell was he? Just another guy with a gun?

  Lee looked around him, saw the faces of the people as they quietly watched this exchange, this quiet crumbling of men and their ideals. The faces of these people that looked at him and Tomlin like they were some sort of saviors. That somehow everything would be okay in the end, just because they were there.

  Lee lowered his gaze to the ground. He kept trying to think his way out of it, but all those thoughts just led down dead-end roads. What was left? Not much. Just some desperate people, searching for another day. Trying to get through with their lives, and the lives of their loved ones. And Lee was no different from them.

  “What are you gonna do?” Lee asked, rhetorically.

  Tomlin just stood silently.

  “Not much you can do,” Lee answered his own question. There were other things he could have said in that moment, perhaps something edifying to the others. Perhaps a grand speech about never giving up, never giving in. But it would all be a lie at that moment, because that was not what Lee was feeling. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling. He’d just been given a giant load of Bad Fucking News and he was still picking his way through it, processing it a little bit at a time.

  Instead he just looked around with a frown. “I need some food. And my weapons.”

  Tomlin eyed him, his jaw muscles bunching. He seemed perplexed. Maybe he felt Lee should react stronger. And maybe Lee should have. Maybe all of that would come later, and Lee even suspected that it would. Nothing this damaging could ever be fully felt so soon after learning about it. The human brain did not like to be shocked, and it would only allow you to process it in small increments. The bigger the shock, the smaller increments it was sliced into.

  Finally, Tomlin nodded. “Yeah. I’ll get them for you.”

  “Are you going out to Camp Ryder tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Tomlin gave him a sidelong glance. “I think it’d be best if you rested.”

  Lee shook his head. “I’ll get a couple more hours in.” He stopped and Tomlin looked at him, saw how dead serious he was about it. Lee took a long, slow breath. “We’ve got nothing else now, Brian. All we’ve got is Camp Ryder. It’s our best chance right now, and I think if we can get it back, we might be okay. And I’m not gonna sleep through that.”

  Tomlin nodded once. “Alright then.”

  When Tomlin left to get his weapons and some food and water, Jacob stayed there next to Lee and set right back into checking Lee’s wounds, as though there had never been any interruption to his work. Jacob took his pulse, shined lights in his eyes. Took off his bandages, replaced them. Frowned the whole time in general concentration. He sniffed the bandage from Lee’s head and didn’t make too bad of a face, so Lee took some comfort in that—maybe the infection was on the retreat.

  “You’re a fucking wreck, Captain,” Jacob said as he pulled a bottle of saline solution out of a little blue satchel at his side. He took a large, plastic syringe and drew out a quantity of the saline solution, bending Lee’s head down and beginning to squirt the solution in high-pressure streams along the wound to irrigate it. “You show a magnificent propensity for hurting yourself.”

  Lee winced, the irrigation feeling less like gentle saline and more like lemon juice. “Oh, trust me. I try to avoid it.”

  “Here,” Jacob handed him a small cloth to dab at the fluid running down his face. He continued on in silence for a moment, then leaned back with a heavy sigh. “No, you don’t. Men like you…” He looked sad. “Men like Captain Mitchell. You just keep pushing until you’re dead.”

  It sounded like a simple observation, but felt more like an admonishment.

  Lee said nothing.

  Jacob continued irrigating the wound a bit, then inspected it closely. He pulled out some fresh bandages, began wrapping Lee’s head. Lee watched the expressions on Jacob’s face cycle through concentration, into sadness, into something like anger. Like he was stuck in the middle of all three.

  “So how’d you get here?” Lee asked carefully. “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

  Jacob faltered, but only for a split second. Almost unnoticeable. “I won’t go into my reasons right now, Captain. Suffice it to say Doc Hampton was not on our side. I had to deal with him harshly.” He tied the bandage off. “The rest is just…boring science.”

  “How did you find Old Man Hughes and Tomlin?”

  “Same way you did.” Jacob sniffed. “Had a group come into Smithfield, looking for food and water. I had a disagreement with Doc Hamilton on how to proceed with them. Eventually, me and the group left Smithfield and came to Lillington, looking for Old Man Hughes. Lucky for me, they keep that lookout. So when they saw us show up, they made contact, just like they did with you, and brought us back here. The rest is history.”

  Lee folded his hands in his lap. “What about your research? Your…test subject?”

  Jacob inspected his work, then began to put things away in the bag. “There will be others. As far as research goes…” He zipped up the bag and stood, something bad crossing over his features, but only briefly. “Something to talk about another time. Right now you need food, water, and sleep. And you need as much of it as you can get.”

  As Jacob packed up, Lee watched a familiar form skirting around the edges of the warehouse. Deuce, moving with a limp, his right front leg splinted and wrapped heavily in bandages. The dog didn’t seem to be aware that he was injured. He just kept moving along the wall, his nose to the ground. He would stop at each of the rolling garage doors, as though inspecting the security.

  Jacob followed Lee’s gaze to the dog and smiled. “He’s been doing that pretty much as soon as I got the splint on him—which, by the way, I almost got my finger taken off for. Been making circles around the warehouse ever since. Like he’s on sentry duty.”

  Lee thought about who might take care of the dog while he was gone, but he supposed that Deuce was pretty good at taking care of himself. Deuce had survived this long without much help from humans, and he seemed capable of continuing that way. It seemed like Deuce took a bigger risk by being around these people that constantly put him in danger. But he would never complain about it. Because that’s what he was there for. That was his job. He did what was expected of him. And in that, Lee thought that perhaps he and Deuce were very similar.

  Tomlin appeared with the M4 Lee had taken from Kev, and Lee’s KABAR knife, along with a bottle of water and a whole MRE, which was probably more food than Lee could handle. He handed Lee the weapons first. Lee slid the knife back into his sheath, then checked the chamber of the rifle, put it on safe, and laid it next to him on the ground.

  Tomlin handed him the food and water and looked like he’d relaxed some. “Eat up. Get some more sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

  CHAPTER 28: SENSITIVE ISSUES

  Angela met Marie by the same fire pit she’d used to cook the rice the night before. About half the camp was awake now, and most would be out and about within the next half hour. The sun was just beginning to get above the trees that surrounded the camp, and their little site remained in frosted shadows.

  Sam and Abby came along, as Angela could barely let them out of her sight now. He immediately began to work up a morning fire, exposing the embers from the previous night and gathering a little tinder to let it catch. Abby hung about his shoulder like any younger sister would, watching everything he did with curiosity, asking questions the whole time. The two were consumed with their task and left the adults alone.

  “I barely slept,”
Angela mumbled, rubbing her puffy eyes and wishing for coffee. She looked intensely at Marie. “What happened? I don’t understand the note…I mean…I do understand, but…”

  Marie took a good look around her before speaking. “I went up and shined the light, just like we talked about. Didn’t get a response until I was about to head down. I see a light blinking back out in the woods. I sat there watching it for a second and realized it was getting closer to the fence. Then it stopped for a little bit. Then it was right on the fence, shining down on this rock—like the size of a soccer ball.” She rubbed her face. “Then the light went out and I didn’t see it again. I couldn’t tell who was holding it, but I could tell what they were trying to get me to do. So I did it.

  “I had to sneak down to the ground level. Took me while, but when I finally got there I just sat on the other side of the fence, shining my light into the woods, trying to see something. I couldn’t see anything, so I went to the rock. Lifted it, and right there was the note that I gave you last night.”

  Angela chewed her lip nervously. She felt electric. Terrified, even. “So, did you go back at midnight?”

  Marie nodded. The dark-haired woman took another look around while she reached into her jacket pocket. A family sauntered past, carrying a water bucket and a pan with what looked like a freshly-skinned rabbit on it. They nodded coolly to Angela, but showed a little more warmth to Marie, who gave them a smile and a wave and waited for them to walk out of sight again.

  When they were gone she pulled another tightly-folded piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Angela. “Don’t read it out here,” she said. “The quick version is that Captain Tomlin needs intel on our situation in here. Who’s with who. What types of weapons do we have. Etcetera.”

  Angela nodded rapidly. “Okay. Okay.”

  Marie looked at her, very serious. “We’re gonna need to start talking to people, Angela. It’s dangerous, but I feel a little better going at it with Tomlin right across the fence from us.”

  “If things go bad, there’s not anything that Tomlin can do about it,” Angela said. “He’s outmanned and outgunned from the outside in. Jerry’s been putting up all these barricades on the fence-line…” she shook her head. “We’d need to coordinate something. But it’s gonna be tough without any real-time communications.”

  Marie smiled sadly. “Sounds like Captain Harden rubbed off on you.”

  Angela dropped her gaze to the ground and she felt Lee’s absence hard in her chest, like being alone and out of your depth. Like trying to be an expert in subject matter completely foreign to you. Six months ago, she was a housewife and a mother. Now she was trying to lead people into a fight.

  Marie saw the look in her friend’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Angela looked up and took a deep breath. “Is there any other way to do this?”

  Marie just shook her head slowly from side to side.

  Angela swallowed all those small, terrified feelings. The world was changing. And she was required to change with it. “People are gonna get hurt, Marie. There’s no way around it. But I think that more people will be hurt if we don’t do anything. I think Jerry will kill us all. I think he’s malicious, but worse, I think he’s naïve. And I think the course he has us on will kill us if we don’t stop him now.”

  Marie nodded. “I’ll gather the intel and get it to Tomlin. You focus on talking to folks. We need people on our side, Angela, or we might as well just try to find a way to get ourselves out of here.”

  “There’s people on our side,” Angela said firmly. “They’re just too scared to speak up.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to give them some courage.”

  “I know,” Angela said plainly.

  Marie turned. “I’ll get up with you later.” Then she walked away as abruptly as she had the previous night, leaving Angela feeling keyed-up and tense. She still had no idea who Keith had spoken to, and so she didn’t know who might have sold him out to Jerry. Speaking to anyone would be risky. But without them she had nothing.

  At the fire pit, Sam was on all fours, head bent low to the ground, blowing steadily into a bundle of smoking tinder. At the bottom, a dull glow began, brightened as he blew, then yellow flames leapt up. Sam leaned back on his heels, smiling.

  Angela gave him a thumbs up. “You’re getting good at that, Sam.”

  His smile faltered and she knew that it was Keith who had taught him.

  She knelt down by the fire with Abby and Sam. They prepared their usual breakfast of oatmeal. Even that was running low. Sometimes she’d put raisins in to give it some flavor, but she’d run out a few weeks back. Kept meaning to get more—either by scavenging or trading. She knew that Abby and Sam preferred it, but they never complained if it wasn’t there. They rarely complained about anything.

  She looked at her daughter, her girl, crouched down next to a fire and satisfied simply to be warm after a cold night. It filled her heart up and shattered it all at once to see her so happy with something so simple. She wanted to give her more, but there was nothing else to give. Food and warmth was all she had to offer her own daughter.

  “Guys,” Angela said, mixing the dry oats in with a bit of water before she put the pot on the fire. “I’m gonna let Ms. Jenny watch you guys after we’re done with breakfast, okay? Just for a little bit.”

  Abby smiled knowingly. “Ms. Jenny’s got a boyfriend.”

  Angela glanced at her. “Why do you say that?”

  “There’s a man in her house at night.”

  “Oh?” Angela rolled her eyes. “Well, Jenny is a big girl, and that’s none of your business.”

  Sam glanced up at Angela. “Why is Ms. Jenny watching us?”

  Angela slid the pot close to the fire. “I’ve got to talk to some people.”

  Sam nodded soberly, as though he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  ***

  Jenny stared at Angela for a long moment, then bent slowly to tie the laces of her shoes. Most everybody had found the value in a good pair of boots. But Jenny insisted on wearing sneakers. A dirty old pair of white Reeboks. She sat now on a camping chair that was the only seat in her shack, set beside the pile of blankets that served as her bed. Angela stood awkwardly by the door, Sam and Abby beside her, and she watched her friend knot, then double-knot the laces, then stand up.

  “Angela,” Jenny’s voice bore some edge. “What are you doing?”

  “This has to happen,” Angela said, resolutely. “There’s no way around it.”

  Jenny grimaced and looked away.

  “Lee was building something here…”

  “Lee’s dead,” Jenny said suddenly.

  Angela’s head pulled back like she’d been stabbed. “I…”

  “He’s dead and so is Bus, Angela. We haven’t heard back from Harper and LaRouche—and Jerry told us he’s tried to contact them—so God knows what happened to them.” Tears came up in her eyes. “Look, I liked the old times too. But that’s what they are. Old times. They’ve come and gone. We have to make new friends now, Angela. We have to accept certain losses.”

  Angela gaped. She thrust a finger out in a random direction, as though her woes were some omnipresent force. “What’s going on out there is unacceptable, and you should realize that. I can’t believe these words are coming out of your mouth! I can’t believe you’d just write everything off, just like that!” Angela blinked rapidly. “And you don’t know that Lee is dead, Jenny. And he hasn’t abandoned us either. Until I see a goddamned body, I won’t believe any of that shit that Jerry’s trying to sell. And neither should you!”

  “I’m not…” Jenny hung her head. “I’m not siding with Jerry. You should know that I’m on your side. I just get tired of fighting these things, Angela. I just want to stop worrying about it. Let someone else take charge.”

  “I’m taking charge,” Angela said. “And if you don’t want to be a part of what I’m doing then that’s fine. All I’m asking you to do right now is wat
ch the kids for a little bit. If you don’t want me to tell you why, or give you any other information, then that’s fine. You’re just doing me a favor. And don’t say another word about it.”

  Jenny sniffed. “Okay.”

  “So can you watch Sam and Abby?”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Of course I can. I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t. I just…I worry about you.”

  Angela shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about them. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I won’t take long. Just a couple of hours.”

  Jenny nodded. “I’ll either be here, or in the medical trailer.”

  Angela hugged the other woman tightly and then she departed, kissing Abby, and squeezing Sam’s shoulder before ducking out of the shanty and into the bright, cold, morning sunshine. She looked left and right and started down towards the shanties that were nearest the fence line. She knew exactly where her first stop would be.

  She found Katie Malone stepping out of her shanty, bundled up in a hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her head and a thick coat over that. She clutched a small pot in her hands and nearly dropped it when she turned and saw Angela.

  “Jesus!” she gasped.

  “Sorry,” Angela said, touching the other woman’s arm. “Didn’t mean to surprise you. How are you?”

  Katie nodded, brushed some hair back. She looked beleaguered. Her eyes were clear and dry, but she had the worn-out look of someone who didn’t get much sleep. She looked around as though searching for an appropriate answer, the expression of someone who has a lot of things to say, but all of them too personal and inappropriate to be shared between simple acquaintances. Finally she just gave the obligatory, “Fine. Thanks.”

  Angela motioned towards the flap that Katie had just closed. “I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast. But can we talk?”

  Katie seemed to consider it. She looked at her pot, the contents of which Angela couldn’t determine. Then she looked around. “Okay. We can talk.”