“Thank you, dear,” he said dryly. He hesitated, then continued in a serious voice. “But Becks, there’s something I need you to start wrapping your head around.”
She looked up at him, eyebrows raised.
“If this town doesn’t pan out as far as meds go, I will have to go in a one soon to find and scavenge a pharmacy.”
“But not this town, and not tomorrow.”
“no.”
“Okay.” She gave him a short kiss. “We’ll deal with that day when it comes.”
He hugged her, then left to find George.
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
In the end, they didn’t go into Lebanon. George knew of only one pharmacy in town, the one in the Walmart. Will had seen dozens of the discount stores during the trip south, and they all had one thing in common- looters and scavengers had already picked them clean of anything useful. It got to where they didn’t even bother stopping when they spotted the big blue signs, certain it would be wasted effort. Jiri theorized that in the Midwest, Walmart had become the go-to store for everything from groceries to big screen televisions. It made since the store would be most people’s first stop for looting when society unraveled.
So after breakfast they packed up and headed out, skirting Lebanon to the south with the help of a momentous find from the previous day. During the sweep of the farm, Kathy reached into the door pocket inside a one-ton Dodge truck and found a greasy stack of old Rand-McNally maps held together with a thick rubber band.RoadmapsforMissouri and most of the counties in Southwest Missouri in their possession, mean no more traveling blind.
Danny shook his head in wonder as he examined the maps. “Man, I didn’t know these things still existed. I thought smart phones and navigation systems made them obsolete. Who still uses paper maps?”
“I had a map for every state in the Union in the cab of my truck,” George, with his head held high.
“I guess that answers my question,” Danny muttered, causing Jiri and Coy to laugh.
Lebanon had a population of ten thousand and the roads were thick with creepers around the town. After they dispatched their fifth one in their first forty minutes out Will ordered them off the road.
“We can cut through this area, here.” He drew a line across the map with a thick and gnarled finger. “And pick back up with our road right here. Not only will we be avoiding the dead, but it’ll shave some distance off our trip too.”
He paused and waited for the complaints.
David argued about the danger of walking blindly through the woods. “What if we get turned around? Plus, those trees make good hiding spots for creepers and people that might mean us harm. We could walk right up on them and not know until it was too late.”
Getting young Tempest over the many fences that lined the fields worried Sylvia, and Justin argued the map didn’t show bodies of water. “What if we come to a river or lake that’s too big to cross?”
“Any more objections?” Will asked. His answer was silence. “Those are good points. For me, though, I’d rather take my chances in the woods and help Tempest over a hundred fences then fight a creeper every two minutes until Lebanon is twenty miles behind us. If there’s a body of water we can’t cross, we follow it south until we can.
“And consider this- so far, we have fought them in ones and twos. But if we stay on this road long enough we’ll run into a group or a herd. We should avoid that if we can.” He held up both hands in front of him in a supplicating gesture. “But I’ll tell you what. As I’ve said, this isn’t a dictatorship and I’m not your boss. My family and I, Danny, and Jiri are taking to the fields. If anybody else wants to stay on the road, fine. Maybe we’ll run into each other again in the future.”
As he suspected, none of the people with arguments were willing to break away from the team members who did most of the fighting.
They scaled a fence together and headed across an empty pasture toward the tree line in the distance. If we ever have a society again, I ought to consider a career in government, Will thought with a self-satisfied smile.
Later that day, Sylvia paused alongside a fence row. She watched as Will picked up Tempest and handed her to Danny on the other side. They started the process at the first fence they came to and repeated it at every one since. Sometimes Danny handed the girl off to Coy, and sometimes Coy passed her off to Will. But Tempest crossed every fence at the hands of some combination of the three rugged ex-cowboys. They handled her with care and lifted the sixty-pound child with ease. By the third fence, the little girl enjoyed it, raising her arms without needing to be told and giggling at the men’s antics as they lifted her high off the ground and pretended to drop her.
Sylvia had to hand it to Will- the handsome redneck was a natural leader. Time and again he made the decisions for them based on what he thought best. But he made those decisions seem like the group’s ideas, plans any sensible person agreed with. He had a knack for anticipating objections and he always had a rebuttal ready.
“You guys are free to do what you want,” was his mantra; usually uttered just before he told them what to do.
And if need be, he could trot out the end-all and be-all of arguments. ‘This is what I’m going to do. The best people in the group are doing it as well. Do whatever you want- but you’ll be on your own, without our help and protection.’
It didn’t matter to Sylvia. Her daughter had food, friendship, and as much safety as she was apt to find in this world. Will provided those things, so she would follow him.
She was a petite woman with an open face and attractive features. Before the epidemic, she was the only black, female real estate professional in Belton, Missouri- a fact that gave her enormous pride.
When she entered the profession her husband Archie said would starve before she sold a house, and he was almost right. She worked for eleven months before she made her first sale. But slow and steady, word spread among Belton’s sizable black population that one of their own was selling homes and treating people right. Her sales increased, month by month. She used to joke that she may never sell a million dollar home, so instead, she sold twenty $50,000 homes each year. Six months before the outbreak, her income reached a level where Archie could quit his job at the plant and work full-time toward a law degree while she supported the family.
A few days after the first shocking news footage of dead people coming back to life, then killing and eating the living, Archie returned from a trip to the hardware store. He was breathless and shaking and sported a bloody six-inch gash on his shoulder. He told his wife and daughter that a group of the dead had chased him and he’d cut his arm on a fence as he escaped.
Over the next two days, Sylvia watched in helpless dread as Archie ran a fever that spiked so high it caused him to wander in and out of delirium. When the fever broke and Archie regained his lucidity, he’d lie in sweat-soaked sheets and complain of horrible headaches and a bone-crushing weariness. He drank bottle after bottle of juice and water and never quenched his thirst. The least amount of light in his room caused a blinding pain in his eyes. At two in the afternoon on the second day, he cried out once and passed away.
Sylvia ordered Tempest to wait by the door and threw clothing for the two of them into a suitcase. She ran up the staircase to get a few toys for the child and toiletries for herself. She hurried back down the stairs, watching her feet as she went, and ran full-speed into her dead husband.
The impact knocked her away from him and she landed painfully on bottom two steps. As she got back up, Archie’s corpse closed in on her. His face swollen and gray, the man she loved for eleven years made a horrible moaning wail and reached for her with both hands. She pulled away and raced back up the stairs. When she got to the top, she looked back and saw him clambering after her on all fours. Yellow saliva flowed down his chin.
Sylvia opened a bedroom window, climbed out on the overhang and jumped. She landed and turned her ankle, sending stark pain shooting up her leg. She pulle
d herself to her feet, crying, and limped toward the front of the house. As she neared the front steps she heard Tempest screaming. She hopped up the steps, using the railing as a crutch, and pulled the door open. The image of her daughter leaning back into the screen door and screaming as the apparition that used to be her father shuffled toward her would be etched on Sylvia’s mind forever. She grabbed Tempest and slammed the door.
She gave thanks that her Toyota had an automatic transmission that didn’t require she use her wounded leg to drive and careened out of the driveway. They left Belton and headed south on I-49. They made only it twenty miles before they could go no further- the interstate was wall-to-wall automobiles, most of them empty. Jiri, out on a mission to scavenge abandoned cars for supplies, found them holding hands and walking in the breakdown lane with vacant looks on their faces. He guided them back to the rest of the group. That night he told he told Will that if he had been a creeper, he didn’t think either Mom or daughter would have even noticed him.
The Crandalls and their group took them in, clothed them, fed them, and kept them safe. So yeah, Will could make all the decisions he wanted, and Sylvia would happily go along. If there was a better way to make it through the day in the world they found themselves in now, she didn’t know what it was.
The logic was inescapable. They were on the south side of Interstate 44; their destination was on the north side. At some point, they would have to cross the highway.
In Missouri, I-44 starts at the Oklahoma border and ends in St. Louis. Looking at the maps, they saw that it didn’t run in a sensible, straight line from the border to the city. It advanced in fits and starts, running east-west here, bending north for a while there, and angling off to the northeast for a while in other places.
Where it mattered to the group, the interstate split into two sections. One ran in a straight line, east from the border for ninety miles until it hit Springfield. From there it underwent one of its drifts north, curling lazily thirty miles to the north and fifteen east to Lebanon.
They camped that night two miles east of the highway, and where to cross it was the subject of the evening’s after-supper conversation.
David led a small but vocal band that argued they use caution.
“We follow forty-four South and East, keeping a quarter-mile gap between us and the interstate,” he said. “We can probe it every mile or so until we find a safe place that’s free of the dead where we can cross.”
Will disagreed, and a majority of the team backed him.
“We have to cross now,” he countered. He pointed to his left, at the western horizon. “Our destination is straight that way.” He moved his arm counter-clockwise until his finger pointed to the south. “Every step we take in that direction is a step we have to make up later. You are trying to talk us into walking away from our goal.” He shrugged his shoulders and held his palms up in front of him as if the idea was the silliest thing he’d ever heard.
“We are already in a time-crunch, David. Every day spent between here and there increases the odds that we get caught out by a cold snap or early winter storm. And your answer is to add more days to the trip? No sir.
“And these probes of yours, looking for a safe place to cross. Once every mile or so the whole group just stops and waits for someone to sneak to the interstate, count the dead, and sneak back to the group? That is a recipe for hours spent standing and doing nothing when we could be making forward progress.”
“That doesn’t have to be the case,” David said. He was slump-shouldered and without his normally forceful tone sounded whiny and weak. His body language said he knew he had lost the debate. “We don’t have to just stand around and wait. We could use that time to hunt, we could send the probes out during meal times so the rest of us don’t have to stand and wait...” His voice trailed off and he fixed Will with an earnest gaze. “I know you are worried about the time element- we all are. But if you put speed ahead of the safety of the group, you’re taking a chance and putting all of us in danger.”
Will bristled at the accusation. “The group’s safety is always on my mind, David. That’s why every time we clear a house or sweep a building, I lead the charge. But you want to talk safety? Let’s talk safety. Every mile we walk alongside I-44 also takes us a mile closer to Springfield, a town of one hundred twenty thousand people. Are you ready to battle a herd of a hundred thousand dead? Are you going to lead the charge? I’m not. Because I’m not getting anywhere near the place.”
He shook his head in frustration and turned away from the older man. His gaze landed on Jiri, who sat on the ground, leaning against a tree stump. Will eyed him in silence; Jiri gazed back, serene.
“Where do you stand on this?” Will asked. “You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet.”
“That’s a good question, with a pretty simple answer.” Jiri pulled himself to his feet and took a long, slow look around the group. “Every one of us has seen plenty of four-lane highways. Has anybody ever seen one that’s not wall-to-wall empty vehicles and creepers?” He paused, awaiting an answer. When no one spoke up, he continued.
“No matter where we cross, we’ll fight the dead. That’s what we do. We might have other commitments, like watching out for family members or trying to finding safety. But at our core, we put down creepers. And if that’s what we do, there’s a whole slug of them two miles that way. We might as well head over in the morning and do our job.”
Will stomped his foot, twice. “Here here. I don’t think there’s anything else to say.” He gave David a meaningful look and glanced at the handful of people who backed the older man’s argument.
David fluttered his hands in a frustrated what does it matter gesture, but said nothing, nor did his supporters.
Will was already on the move. “I guess that solves it. Let’s get to work putting a plan together.”
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
They camped that night in a clearing in the woods. Someone had cleared the trees and brush before the outbreak, maybe as a staging area for hikes deeper into the forest. The clearing was twenty-five feet across and covered in a soft carpeting of leaves and pine needles. A man-made fire pit, rocks stacked on top of one another in a simple square with an iron grill placed over the top, sat off to one side.
Their tents and sleeping bags were a colorful cluster at the center of the clearing, arrayed around a small fire that did a poor job of dampening the night chill.
Will and six team members worked well into the evening developing, discussing, and redeveloping a plan for crossing the interstate. A line in the dirt with Will’s knife represented the highway, and pebbles acted as stand-ins for the group members. He was so focused on planning that he jumped when a strange voice called out from behind the tree line.
“Armed man coming in,” a deep baritone announced. “My sidearm is in its holster on my hip and my hands are in the air. Don’t anybody shoot me.”
Will spun toward the sound of the voice, jerking his pistol from its own holster as he turned. He pointed it at the spot in the trees where he thought the voice came from and used hand motions to move Jiri, Danny, and Coy into a perimeter. Justin, who had the watch shift on that side of the camp, turned in confused half-circles, facing the woods, turning to Will, and turning back again.
“Is there just one of you?” Will called, feeling ridiculous for standing there and yelling into the trees.
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Early Meekins, United States Air Force, at your service.”
Will glanced at Jiri, and then Danny. It was hard to read their faces in the dim light. “Come on in, but keep your hands up and you’d better be alone. You have a lot of weapons pointed at your direction right now.”
To Will’s surprise, the stranger responded with a hearty chuckle. “I imagine that’s so,” he said in that deep voice. “That’s why I thought it would be best to holler before I came in.”
Will listened for the sound of footsteps crunching in the leaves,
but heard nothing. A man materialized, like an apparition, on the east side of the clearing. One second he was in the trees, and the next he stood among them, without making any noise in between.
Will shot Justin a withering look; the man noticed and smiled.
“Don’t be too hard on your man pulling watch duty, partner. I taught at the Air Force SERE School for four years. I could sneak up on Daniel Boone himself, and he wouldn’t know I was there until I pulled on his coonskin cap. Can I put my hands down now?”
“Yeah, relax Colonel.” Will gave the stand down signal and holstered his weapon. He examined the airman. The man was small and compact, belying his deep voice; he was built much like a fireplug, yet seemed to be light on his feet. He had a shaggy mane of reddish-brown hair, a thick mustache, and several days’ worth of scraggly beard. “I guess before we talk about what you’re doing here, my first question is can you prove that you are in the Air Force?”
The stranger snapped to attention and saluted. “Lieutenant Colonel Early Meekins, Seventy-Second Airbase Wing, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma City Oklahoma. The seven-two is a material command wing- before everything went to shit, I was in charge of supplying weaponry to the British airbase Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. I can show you my military ID if you’d like.”
“I believe we can take you at your word, Colonel,” Will said, in a dry voice. “And what brings you out here to our happy little part of the apocalypse?”
The airman’s face grew somber in the firelight. “Just like you, I was hoping to find ongoing military activity at Fort Leonard Wood. When that proved a bust, I thought I would catch up and see where you folks are headed next.”
Will’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t understand... catch up?”
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