Weapons. Food. Money.
It was unclear what they planned to do with the money.
“Hey. Shhh. Shhh. Shhhhhh.”
They watched as a couple of yellow suits on what appeared to be bicycles came drifting down the decline. The bikes were taking their time, weaving slowly in and out of traffic and the suits riding the bikes turning their hooded heads first to this side and then to that side. The yellow suit in the lead seeming to point out little features on the ground to the suit in the back as they crept lazily, silently, eerily, through the deadened line of vehicles.
“What the…?” A man with a two by four with a few rusty nails protruding from the end was the one who couldn’t quite find the last word he was searching for. He stood with the others, because all of them were standing now. As a group, they watched the yellow suits calmly apply the brakes on their bikes.
From a distance, maybe from the top of the bridge, one would have seen the tallest of the yellow suits dismount from the bike and calmly unstrap a pack tied to the back of the bicycle. The suit walked to the foot of the bridge, approached the circle of men, setting the bag slowly on the ground. From the height of the bridge, the yellow suit, looking something like an astronaut or a technician trying to control a viral outbreak, bent down, opened the bag, and began fishing around for something inside it. The other suit waited with the bikes. The men stood and stared with their weapons in anticipation…
In a movie, the music would have built to a crescendo, but this was not a movie. It was real life. When the yellow suit stood up with something strange in its hands, the men screamed, broke, and ran. They scattered in all directions, running for cover like men chased by bees, or devils… or death. They never looked back.
With her head down, looking at the package in her hands, Veronica had missed the sight of the armed men fleeing in panic. Now, finding herself alone, she reached up and undid the helmet of her fallout suit and removed it, feeling the cold air slip across her face. She opened the box of graham crackers she held in her hands and carefully tore open the interior packaging. Removing a cracker, she took a bite. She slipped the cardboard flap back in its slot and dropped the box back in the bag, and, throwing the bag across her shoulders, she walked back to Stephen.
“What was that about, Mom?”
“I guess they weren’t hungry,” Veronica said. “Besides, they weren’t going to stop us with a silly board with nails in it!”
She put her helmet back on and mounted her bike, and she and Stephen rode down into the highway leading into Staten Island.
CHAPTER 28
The man struggled gamely, but he was stuck fast. He’d fallen through the boards of the dilapidated bridge, and the wood had given way just enough to bite into his leg but not enough to allow it to wriggle free. He didn’t have the leverage or the angle to pull his leg out. He was looking at the leg as if deep in thought, perhaps determining whether he had other choices. He ran his hand along the back of his neck and then over a few day’s growth of beard.
Hidden in the trees, Lang could see that the man’s ankle had become wedged in the supporting cross braces of the old footbridge, and that he was unable to reach down through the broken boards to free himself no matter what he tried.
Peter watched along with the others as the man struggled, and he noted aloud that the man had better find a way to get loose. “If he doesn’t manage to free himself, he’s surely going to die…” Peter paused. “…if not from the injury or starvation, then from some group of troublesome passersby looking for gear, guns, or just trouble. They’ll eventually come upon him.”
“We need to help him,” Lang told Peter, looking at the older man with a face that betrayed both fear and compassion.
“I don’t know, Lang,” Peter said. He stared, unblinking at the man on the bridge. He could not help but see both the metaphor… the bridge itself… and the danger. “Helping him could put us all at risk. We could be found ou—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Peter!” Natasha snapped, interrupting him. “What if that was you stuck there on that bridge?”
“Well,” Peter said, “sure, I would want someone to help me, but I’d also not expect it. I’d understand if they couldn’t do it without great risk to themselves. No one deserves the heroic, Natasha.”
“Still, I’d like to go and check on him, Peter,” Lang said.
“You can’t go, Lang.” The old man looked at the youth, his skin pale and beginning to look almost transparent. “You can’t even lift up your arm! How are you going to help this man get free with one arm?” Peter paused, staring at Lang. Then he looked down for a beat before adding, “No... If anyone is going, I’m going.”
“Peter, be reasonable,” Lang said. “Who’s going to protect Natasha and Elsie if you get shot out there? It has to be me. I’ll go.”
The two men continued their argument, and as they did, Natasha’s eyes grew wide, and she knelt down as if she needed to inspect her boot. She looked up, then left and then right, and before either Lang or Peter could say anything to stop her, she was sprinting full speed towards the bridge. She stayed low to the ground, maintaining maximum cover as she ran.
Her actions caused the others to stop in their tracks, and then spring into action. Without a word, Peter raised the rifle and balanced the barrel on the small branch just to his left. He adjusted the iron sights, allowed a bit for windage and the expected drop, and began to steady his breath, willing himself to slow his heartbeat.
If this man makes a wrong move, Peter thought, I’ll drop him.
Without taking his eye away from the sights, Peter whispered to Lang, who was mentally already on his way, leaning in anticipation, to take the .22 Marlin and run to the low hill to the northeast.
“Stay under cover,” Peter raised his voice. “That gun is good, as-is, from seventy-five to one hundred meters. Keep your eyes on the woods and watch the dirt road as it comes around that bend. If anyone, anyone at all approaches…” He let the implications hang in the air and whispered quietly under his breath, to himself as much as to Lang, “Don’t miss.”
****
Natasha reached the old, decrepit bridge, and the man finally saw her. He slowly lowered his right hand, moving as if he were testing her, determining whether she was going to ask him to stop – and she saw that he had a Glock pistol strapped to his good leg.
“Wait!” Natasha shouted, with authority. “Don’t do it! If you move, and your hand gets near that gun, your head will explode. Trust me. You are in the sights of someone who is very, very good. Just… please… don’t be stupid. I’m here to help you, and I’m unarmed.”
She turned around slowly with her hands up, and lifted her coat so that he could see she did not have a gun of her own.
The man stared at Natasha for a second. Without blinking, without giving any indication on his face of his thinking one way or the other about anything, his hand opened up very slowly, and swiveled at the wrist to show whoever she was talking about… whoever was pointing a gun at him… that he had no intention of doing anything stupid. Methodically, he put both hands flat down on the wood surface of the bridge, and then paused, just staring at Natasha without a word.
“That’s good. I see that you are clever,” Natasha said, moving again toward the man. “I’m going to climb under the bridge and see if I can get your ankle free. If I were you, even if it hurts horribly and you want to scream out, I wouldn’t move very much, or make any noise.”
The man didn’t respond at all. He just answered with his eyes, a slow blink that declared openly and plainly that he understood what this woman and her people expected of him. That he’d been given a kind of trust.
With that, Natasha hurried down the embankment, and, near the edge of the tiny stream, she climbed upward into the ancient trusses and supports that held the weight of the old bridge.
****
Ten minutes later, they were sitting in the cover of trees. Peter worked on the quiet man’s ankle, examining
it to determine if it was broken or if there was any serious injury. Just a moment ago, Natasha and the quiet man had come hobbling in together. Drawing close to Peter’s location, Natasha ran ahead to get the medical bag, before remembering that they no longer had it. Happily, there was no need for it; the man’s ankle wasn’t in any serious danger.
“It’ll be sore awhile, and if we were in the old world I’d tell you to stay off of it and take it easy, but obviously you can’t do that now.” Peter looked at the others and wondered if they remembered what it was like to be back in that other life, then he looked back to the man to see if he gave any indication of his thinking, but he did not.
Peter turned to Lang, “I don’t even know if he speaks English or if he understands me. Perhaps he’s a mute.” He raised his voice to the man, speaking slowly, “Do you understand?”
“He speaks English,” Lang said with a slight smirk on his face. “And he understands you. At least, he understood Natasha well enough, back at that bridge.”
“People communicate in many ways,” Peter said, “sometimes body language conveys as much understanding as words.”
Natasha nodded her agreement to Lang’s opinion. “He understood the words I said. Apparently, he’s just the quiet type.”
The quiet man—about twenty years old, handsome and well built, with blue eyes and sandy-colored hair—looked slowly over to Lang and smiled without saying a word.
“Well, there’s not much I can say for his gifts of conversation,” Peter said. He helped the man re-lace his boot and then stand to his feet. The man gave a little hop as he did so. The ankle was tentative, at best, but he applied weight to it and then stood up straight, as if to indicate that the injury was not going to be a problem for him.
The man was dressed in what had once been an army green coat and BDU pants, but the man had engaged in some makeshift winter camouflage attempts, and the coat and pants had been hastily spray painted with splotches of white paint, and here and there outlines of green pine branches appeared among the white patches.
His gun, a bolt-action sniper rifle with a pricey scope attached to it, he’d camouflaged with white and green as well. His backpack matched the rest of him.
Peter nodded to the man, and then to the weapons each of them carried, as if he was bringing attention to the fact that he was not going to cause anyone trouble, and he didn’t want any in return.
“Well, sir,” Peter said, “I don’t know who you are, where you came from, or what you’re doing out here.” He glanced at the man. “We don’t know whose side you’re on, or if you are a good guy or a bad guy, but—”
“It’s okay,” the man said quietly. It was the first words he’d spoken. “It’s really… it is best…” The four others stared at him, and he shook his head that he meant it. He wanted the older man to understand that he appreciated the hospitality, but he understood that the group now had to be on their way.
“We should just part and wish each other well,” the man said.
Then, the awkward moment was over, and the man just stared at Peter without any hint of a response on his face.
“Well, sir, you’re free to travel with us,” Peter told him, in case that might influence his decision. “We’re short-handed and under-trained, but we could use the extra gun and skills. Up to a point. It’s up to you.”
The man shook his head no, and he picked up the rifle and tossed it over his shoulder by the strap before doing the same with his bag over the other shoulder. He turned to walk away, limping only slightly on his injured ankle. Just as he was about to disappear into the thick brush of the woods, he turned and looked at all four of the travelers, one at a time.
“Ace,” he said, matter-of-factly and without any apparent emotion. “That’s my name,” he said. “And thank you all.” He acted as if that was all that needed to be said. Ace then turned back toward the woods, and with a few confident steps, he was gone.
Lang looked at Natasha and Elsie and noticed that they sat there staring for a few extra beats, watching as Ace disappeared into the woods. Ace was a good-looking man, no denying it, Lang thought. He didn’t blame the ladies for being a bit taken with him. A smile broke across his face. He shook his head, and they all stared at each other for a moment, searching to see if everyone was having the same thoughts about the strange encounter with this man, and then they all broke into laughter.
****
They came upon the abandoned cabin just as darkness began to fall. Some kind of violence had occurred there, though there were no corpses evident lying around the place. They could tell there had been violence by the pockmarking of bullet holes in the walls, and the telltale signs that looters or bandits, or maybe just regular folks had ransacked the place. The door hung loosely on the hinges, and the glass from most of the windows was lying shattered on the ground instead of safely in its frames.
We know the events that we experience, and we have some knowledge of the legends that we are told, but the mind reels at the stories a place like this could tell when the world as we know it has ended. This lonely cabin in the woods had seen numerous such tales play out as individuals, groups, and bandits, and maybe even armies had crisscrossed these woods in search of someplace “safe.” The story of our four travelers was just now intersecting with this cabin, but dozens of other stories, all of them just as important to the characters living through them, had unfolded here. From the looks of the place, not all of them had ended well.
“Buildings make me nervous,” Peter said. “We don’t have enough people to secure a building, for one thing.” He paused, as if there were no reason number two. “It is shelter, sure, but it’s not much more than that.” He looked around at the place and considered the things that to him were painfully apparent, if one only cared to look. “If we stay too long, more people will be coming along.”
“Lang has to rest, Peter,” Natasha said. Elsie nodded her head in agreement and added, “And his wound needs treatment. He’s growing weaker, and the pain is obvious on his face.” Natasha touched Peter on the arm, and gave him a little smile, “We need to stop.”
They went through the building thoroughly, checking every place where someone might be hiding, but they found no one. Then they began to prepare an area to treat Lang’s wound. Peter briefed the women on what they would need to do, which didn’t take long seeing that their meds and first aid case had been stolen.
He patted Lang lightly on the back, then told Natasha, who’d been standing lookout at the door, that he needed go up front and secure the premises.
“You guide Elsie through the steps that I taught you. Do it thoroughly, and call me if you need anything.”
Elsie helped Lang remove his shirt, and it became clear, very quickly, that things were not right. The skin was pale and the area on the arm surrounding the wound was angry, red, and warm to the touch. The gunshot wound was infected, and it was much worse than they’d suspected.
The darkness was starting to invade the cabin. Natasha called to Peter who came down the hall, and, as he did, she stepped out into the hallway to meet him. Peter knew that if there were anything at all that they could do to help Lang, they’d have to do it quickly, before the cabin became shrouded in darkness. He might not survive another day if we don’t do something now, Peter thought, the world itself might become shrouded in darkness.
Something must be done. But what?
****
Clive Darling guided the rigged-up RV he calledBernice up a small incline until he could just see Carbondale over the bulge of the dashboard. The black, armored chase vehicles that accompanied him split up as he brought Bernice to a stop. Some moved to his left and others to his right. They moved in a line, the vehicles, until they came to a stop, like sentries out on a search, an ancient tribal ritual played out in modern sleek machinery. Doors and hatches on the vehicles opened up with precision, and soldiers poured forth from them, and in seconds the team had set up a secure perimeter, which included snipers and patrols.
Clive turned to his passenger and explained that he’d learned that the maniac running the Carbondale “resettlement” center had secured generators and a power plant. Clive explained that the officer running the prison camp was planning on electrifying the fences and illuminating the control tents where interrogations were said to be taking place around the clock.
The listener listened. He watched the man speak with confidence about how a life ought to be lived. He heard in that voice, the voice of the man named Clive, the intonations and ideas of a brother.
As Clive spoke, the listener saw a man who knew what he was about. Clive’s mannerisms showed the listener that the man with the Savannah drawl really believed the words that he said, and that he was not full of guile. This made the listener think of his own journey, his own modern ride, his own tribal ties.
“They don’t need electrical power to terrorize the public,” Clive said to the passenger, his slow drawl emphasizing the horror in the word… Terrorize.
Clive indicated with his hand the general world; first the world outside and then the world inside, over there in Carbondale. “They seem to have been doin’,” he paused. “…You know… the terrorizing… alright by themselves. But—”
Clive paused and looked at his passenger, the man so odd in his own weird skin, this man who seemed to mold himself around the world, and yet, who in the end molded the world around him. He watched his passenger listening, as they sat in the RV with their soldiers spread out in a perimeter around them. As they waited, the two men just passed time, just sharing like friends would.
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