The Remaining - 01

by D. J. Molles

  Tango hit the ground with a yelp.

  Lee swore loudly and stood frozen as he watched Tango stand up on all fours and walk around. Tango seemed a bit loopy for the first few seconds, but then looked fine. Lee cursed the dog under his breath and swung down onto the ladder, closing the hatch behind him.

  “Is he okay?” Sam asked.

  “He’s fine. Just stupid.” Lee walked with Sam down the cement tunnel, Tango leading the way eagerly. He was probably hungry and thirsty, though he’d had his fill of pissing on everything he could find after being outdoors for half the day.

  “Are you mad at me?” Sam asked, crestfallen.

  “No, kid, I’m not mad at you.” Way to go, Lee. Kid loses his entire family and you snap at him because he gets a little scared. “I know its tough, and you don’t really know me, but you have to trust me now, okay? I’m your friend. Friends have to trust each other.”

  Sam looked at the hatch to Lee’s bunker. “Alright.”

  Lee pushed the hatch open and gestured for Sam to enter. “Welcome to Château du Harden.”

  “What?” Sam was confused.

  Lee didn’t feel like explaining. “This is where I’ve been staying the last month or so.”

  Sam looked around, locking on the big screen TV. “Oh my God! You do have a TV! It’s HUGE!”

  “Yup.” Lee was always amazed at the resiliency of the younger generation. They bounced back better than adults, could go from tragedy to triumph seamlessly, and never thought twice about it. It could also be a sign that Sam was becoming emotionally disconnected. A defense mechanism.

  Lee looked at his watch.

  1230 hours. He had almost eight hours of light left and two locations of potential survivors. The older man in the barn-house could obviously take care of himself and was therefore a lower priority for rescue. The family on the roof top was the higher priority, though they were an unknown distance away. In this heat, on the top of a roof, they were unlikely to make it much longer without supplies. The survival of the family on the roof was very time-sensitive, which meant Lee needed to move to their location ASAP.

  The only problem was that he could not realistically make the trip before it got dark out, and certainly not the trip back. He toyed with the idea of making the trek to their house on foot, eliminating all hostiles, and sleeping in the house with the family, then moving out in the morning.

  Then came the issue of Sam. He did not want to take Sam with him and expose the kid to needless danger. Lee felt confident he could handle the infected in the yard, but he didn’t need to be worrying about Sam while he did it. Or Tango for that matter. They would both have to stay here. And Lee didn’t want to leave Sam and Tango unattended for too long. Two days would be too much.

  He didn’t like it because it went against his training, but sometimes you had to improvise and adapt your tactics to the situation. Lee would have to use his truck. That meant a few things. First, he had to get to it, which meant taking out the two unwanted guests attempting to beat their way into the house. Second, it meant he would have to take roads to get there, which meant the possibility of another gang like the men in the red pickup truck. While he’d handled them fairly easily, he had the advantage of surprise and there were only five of them, none armed with anything more potent than a bolt-action rifle. Should he be ambushed by a better-equipped or more numerous group, his chances of survival were greatly decreased.

  But the cold facts were that there was a family of three on a roof, likely suffering—if not already dead—from dehydration and heat stroke. Not to mention the complete and utter despair of their situation. He could not imagine the crushing feeling of hopelessness after seeing Sam and his dad, probably the first people they’d seen for a while, and then just watching them walk away.

  He had to rescue them. Out of personal conviction, and because it was his job to do so. As a Coordinator, it was his primary duty, and one he’d sworn to uphold, just as he’d sworn to uphold the country and the constitution.

  And the only way to rescue them was by truck. On the positive side, he would be back before nightfall. Lee walked over to his closet and called Sam over to join him. The kid was going to be in the house alone. Lee was not going to forbid Sam from opening the closet full of weapons and ammo because there was nothing that would make a kid want to play with the shit more than being forbidden to do so.

  Instead, he chose the approach of hoping that some knowledge and instruction on these pieces of equipment would alleviate the kid’s fascination with them, and hopefully keep him from killing himself.

  He opened the closet and saw Sam’s eyes go wide. “Wow. You’ve got a lot of stuff.” Lee knelt down and pulled out his 5.56mm ammo can, then extracted the magazine from his M4 and started topping it off. “These are all tools, Sam. Just like a screwdriver or a hammer. They are here so that I can do my job. And you need to learn about them too, since you’re going to be helping me do my job.”

  Lee spent the next twenty minutes telling Sam all about the equipment in the closet, and some of the equipment on his person. He answered most of Sam’s questions, and did his best to let the kid handle most of it so he wouldn’t be sneaking around Lee’s back, pulling grenade pins out of curiosity. After a comprehensive crash course on pistols, rifles, grenades, GPS devices, and how to load a magazine, Lee was finished topping off his rifle and pistol and replacing the 40mm grenade he’d used to blow the truck. He closed the door and stood up.

  “Now listen to me, Sam.” Lee waited until he had eye contact. “We’re friends, like I said, and friends trust each other. That means I trust you. You remember when I said you were a man in my book?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Nothing’s different. You are still a man in my book. And men don’t take their friend’s tools, unless they have permission, or if they really need it. Like in an emergency.” Lee felt his explaining-things-to-kids ability flagging. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Remember, if you pull the pin on one of those grenades, you’re going to die. No matter where you throw it in here, the pressure will pop your head open. Got it?”

  Sam looked a little apprehensive of the closet now. Good. Lee stood and double-checked his equipment.

  “Where are you going?” Sam seemed worried.

  Lee wondered if abandoning the kid was the best thing right now, but decided he couldn’t let this one child affect his decision-making when it came to fulfilling his mission. If there were people out there that needed help, he had to rescue them and bring them together.

  Subvenire Refectus.

  To rescue and rebuild.

  “I’m going to go try to help the people on the roof. I should be back in a few hours.”

  “But what about the people outside?” Sam almost shouted.

  “Sam...” Lee gave him a warning look and kept his own voice low. Lead by example. “I have to try to help those people, because that’s my job. I will be fine, just like I’m fine now after helping you. And you let me worry about the two people upstairs.” Lee wasn’t as sure as he sounded. If the girl from yesterday had taught him one thing, it was to not underestimate the strength or tenacity of infected individuals. “I’ll be fine.”

  Sam clenched his jaw, not happy about being left alone. “What do you want me to do while you’re gone?”

  “Here,” Lee walked over to the remote and flipped the TV on. He was not above bribing the kid into submission. “Play Call of Duty. You better have it beat by the time I come back.”

  “That’s impossible,” Sam mumbled.

  “Whatever.” Lee tossed him the controller and turned on the gaming system. “I beat it in five hours, but if you think it’s too hard...”

  “I can beat it.” Sam announced and grabbed the controller.

  Lee smiled. The kid had a competitive streak. A good thing for someone living in a world like this. Non-competitive people tended to give up more easily. Competitive people just keep going, even when there’s no competition.

&
nbsp; Lee opened the hatch and told Tango to stay. Just before he closed it, he looked back at Sam and caught the kid staring at Lee with unguarded fear for what might happen. He gave the kid a brave smile and a thumbs-up, and in his best Arnold voice said, “I’ll be back.”

  Lee saw a weak smile before closing the hatch and locking it behind him.

  CHAPTER 8: DOWN THE ROAD

  He made his way quietly out of the bunker and up to his basement.

  Without Tango there to be his early-warning system, he spent more time listening and waiting. Before opening the hatch to his basement he hung on the ladder with his ear pressed to the steel, but didn’t hear any movement from inside. He thought he could still hear the banging from the infected he had begun to mentally refer to as Hammer Guy. The sound was so faint, he entertained the possibility that he could just be imagining it.

  When he did open the hatch, he did it slowly and quietly. Once open, he crept out, careful to control his M4 and other attached gear so it would not bang on the walls or the hatch and make noise.

  Now in the basement, he listened and realized he was not hearing Hammer Guy or Caddy Shack. The basement was silent, and the upstairs along with it. This set Lee off his pace even more than hearing the two goons still trying to break in. Because if he heard them trying to break in, that meant they were still outside. Now, in the silence, he was not so sure.

  He checked his chamber to ensure he was locked and loaded. Up the stairs.

  SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training taught him to compartmentalize so your life didn’t seem so impossible. When you are surrounded by enemy forces and fear drives you to ground and makes you think you are incapable of moving to your objective, you simply compartmentalize. Instead of moving to your objective, you focus on just crawling to that fallen log, and then from there, slithering down into the swamp. You divide it up into manageable tasks that don’t seem so life-or-death.

  Right now, though fear told him Hammer Guy and Caddy Shack were sniffing around the house for him, making it to the top of the stairs seemed feasible. So he put one foot in front of the other, rifle trained at the door and eased his way quietly up.

  He stopped and listened again.

  Hearing nothing, he opened the door just an inch so that he could catch a glimpse of the patio doors where Hammer Guy had been. As he cracked the door, he could see Hammer Guy, squatted down on the ground, facing away from the house, carving something into the dirt of Lee’s backyard with the claw of the hammer. The air seemed warmer than it had been when he’d first entered the house, but he’d been in his bunker which he kept at a cool 70 degrees. He supposed his body had acclimated to the cooler temperature and felt the difference in the slightly warmer house.

  Lee watched Hammer Guy work for a few moments, disturbed by the infected man’s raw intensity and aggression. After a few moments, Lee edged further out of the doorway and looked to the front of the house to see if Caddy Shack was still hanging around. His angle wasn’t very good, but that also meant Caddy Shack couldn’t see him. He wanted the two infected calm and quiet so he could get a better position of attack on them. And he wanted to kill them silently so he wouldn’t attract any more attention.

  Lee was beginning to think that the strange howling noise the infected made was some vestige of predatory instinct left-over in human DNA from the days of hunting in packs. To Lee, it sounded like the call of a wolf on game, and Lee got the distinct feeling that when one infected made the howl, more infected would come running, out of some primal, knee-jerk response to the call of prey.

  He slipped through the doorway, then down a hallway that led to the main portion of his house and the stairs to the second level. He slid quickly around the banister and took the stairs two at a time. He turned left at the top, facing the front of the house where the still-unaccounted-for Caddy Shack had last been seen.

  In the guest bedroom decorated in nautical style, Lee squatted down duck-walked to the window overlooking the front porch and front lawn. The porch was covered, but if Caddy Shack moved out into the yard, Lee would have a good bead on him. Wood blinds covered the windows and were pulled closed. Lee used a single finger to lift one of the slats and gain a view of his front yard.

  The view was too narrow. He couldn’t see Caddy Shack.

  “Sonofabitch...” Lee dropped his go-to-hell pack with a little less caution than normal. Something hard on the bottom of the pack made a heavy thump on the hardwood floors. Lee cringed.

  Somewhere in one of the upstairs bedrooms, something glass shattered.

  Lee swept the rifle up to his shoulder, thinking, What the fuck was that? Not daring to breathe a word. He knew damn well what it was. Something was fucking around in one of the upstairs bathrooms and had heard him drop his pack. The warmth in the house wasn’t because the thermostat was set a few degrees higher, it was because someone had done enough kicking to break his front door in. Now the heat and humidity—and whoever had kicked the door in—were inside his house.

  Lee kept an eye on the far end of the hallway through the bedroom door and reached with his free hand into his pack and withdrew a suppressor from a side pocket. He repositioned himself so that he had quick access to the MK23 on his leg should something come into view while he was attaching the suppressor, then turned the M4 skyward and started threading the suppressor.

  Something crashed down the hall.

  Lee tried to focus on finding the thread, but found himself staring back down the hallway. He didn’t want to shoot this fucker without a suppressor on his gun. The noise was loud enough to not only draw attention from other infected in the area, but would draw them right into his house through the open front door.

  He heard the sound of something regurgitating and the splash of fluid on hard- wood floors.

  He found the thread and started twisting, fast.

  There was a gasp from down the hallway and then pounding feet. Scratching with each footstep. Like cleats. Or golf shoes.

  Come on...

  Lee twisted as fast as his hands could manage. Footsteps were at the door. Done. Something loomed into the bedroom.

  Lee brought the rifle up and fought the panicked instinct to just start shooting. He put the red dot center mass on the approaching figure and pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession. Both rounds punched neat holes in Caddy Shack’s chest, staggering him back into the door. Strangely, the suppressed M4 sounded to Lee like the snap of someone driving a golf ball down the fairway.

  Caddy Shack seemed to recover from the blows after only a second. He looked at Lee and opened his mouth. Thick red blood dribbled out. He reached out with both hands, the fingers twisted into claws and lurched towards him.

  This time Lee did shoot reflexively, pulling the trigger three times. Caddy Shack didn’t stop coming. Lee backpedaled fast, pushing his back against the wall and shooting from the hip.

  It didn’t take long for Caddy Shack to cross the bedroom and when he was within arms length, Lee stopped shooting and kicked out like he was kicking a door in Iraq, connecting with Caddy Shack’s chest and sending him to the ground. Lee stumbled, recovered his balance and shoved the suppressor against Caddy Shack’s head. The muzzle blast did more damage than the bullet, nearly inverting Caddy Shack’s face.

  Lee fell backwards once he was sure the man was dead and scooted away from the body until his back was against the wall again. “Fuck me...” Lee breathed hard, his chest thumping like a kick-drum. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body and knew if he wasn’t holding his M4 in an iron grip, his hands would be shaking.

  He pulled himself up and stepped over to a bedroom mirror, checking his face for blood spatter, but couldn’t find any.

  The shakiness reached its peak and then the relief flooded his system, his body dumping endorphins into his blood stream.

  “Whoo,” Lee huffed a few more times, then decided to get moving.

  He shouldered his pack and moved down the stairs again, leaving C
addy Shack for later. He didn’t want the body stinking up his house, but didn’t have the time or protective equipment to remove it. He found the front door open, as he’d suspected. Little circular star marks were dented all over the door. The tiny cleats from his golf shoes. He’d kicked the door God-knew how many times to get it the latch to give. After a quick inspection, Lee realized his error. Distracted by getting Sam into the house, he had not engaged the deadbolt.

  Lee swore to himself and closed the door, this time turning the deadbolt. Since the frame was steel, it barely showed any damage, and neither did the door. It was simply the latching mechanism that had given way to hundreds of kicks.

  Since Caddy Shack was no longer an issue, Lee felt no need to use stealth on Hammer Guy. He opened the back patio door and put a bullet in his head. Quick and easy. He took a moment to look at what he’d been carving in the dirt.

  HELLP

  Lee looked back and forth between the dead body and the words it had written in the earth. This misspelling seemed to imply both the state of the world, and what everyone in it wanted. But Lee knew the infected weren’t able to reason to the point of cleverness.

  Could they?

  Lee continued on to his detached garage and went inside, watching his back as he entered and closed the door behind him. His Chevy 1500 still sat where he’d left it, apparently untouched and still with a full tank. He tossed his pack in first, then climbed in and set his M4 on the passenger seat. He buckled in, then cranked it up and only then did he hit the garage door opener.

  The door rattled and cranked its way open. Anyone within a quarter mile could have heard it. Lee backed out and surveyed his yard. There appeared to be nothing there, except the dead body of the man that had been crying out for help. Or saying that the world had gone to hell.