by David Rogers
Jessica frowned. She didn’t dispute anything being said, but she was trying to think of how much Candice had drunk this morning. She wasn’t sure.
Tyler started speaking again when Austin indicated he was done. “Okay, so, last thing. If we do stop, stay in your vehicle unless you have a reason to get out. Don’t shut your engines off unless myself or Mr. Carter comes by to tell you to. And keep your windows at least three-quarters up if we’re moving slower than ten miles per hour, for security reasons.
“If you’re armed, remember you’re shooting for the head. Whenever possible take your time and aim, because we want you to get used to using the weapons and to aiming carefully. If you do it often enough it’ll start to become more natural. Of course, we’re hoping to not get that much practice today.”
There was a bit of laughter, some of it on the nervous side, but with just enough voices that sounded genuinely amused to make the whole of the response cheerful.
“Any questions?” Tyler looked around expectantly. “No? Okay, there are bathrooms all over the house. When you’re done, come into the garage so we know you’re ready to go.”
“Candice, do you need to go to the bathroom?” Jessica asked.
“Not right now.”
“Candice.” Jessica said sternly. “Did you hear Mr. Morris and Mr. Carter? We’re not stopping for potty breaks.”
“I don’t need to go.”
“You don’t want to make sure?” Jessica persisted. “Mommy’s going to go just to make sure.”
“I – okay.”
Jessica nodded and picked up her walking stick. It wasn’t as good as a full crutch, but it had a proper handle and was considerably more comfortable to lean on than the baseball bat had been. She let Candice precede her through the house, where Candice surprised Jessica by peeling off at the door.
Leaving Candice outside, where she was apparently content to ‘guard the door’, Jessica went inside and used the toilet, then washed her hands. She grimaced at her appearance in the mirror. Her face was a little pale, probably residual shock, and her hair needed a good brushing. She took a moment to look in the medicine cabinet and was pleased to find a collection of ‘guest amenities’ stocked in it. She pocketed a square of soap, two toothbrushes and a miniature tube of toothpaste, and a comb for later.
“Okay, your turn.” Jessica said as she limped out.
“I don’t think I need to go.” Candice said again, but she went into the bathroom. Jessica glanced around the hallway while she waited, and opened a door that looked suspiciously like a closet after a few moments. Sure enough, she found towels and linens and pillows piled on the shelves. She took down four towels and shook them out of their neat folds so she could drape them over her shoulder, which was easier than trying to carry them one handed.
A few minutes later Candice came out of the bathroom. Her hands were wet, so Jessica decided to leave it alone. She had the towels if worst came to worse. The suitcase wasn’t in the dining room, but she went into the garage with Candice instead of searching the house for it.
There she found most of the group was already waiting, though not all. Austin saw her and came over as she limped up. “I’ve got your suitcase over there.” he said, pointing. Jessica looked and saw it was sitting near the roll up door.
“Thanks, I was wondering where that got to.” Jessica said.
“I think it would be best if you two rode with me.” he continued. “We didn’t load the vehicles assuming you’d be a driver, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to be behind the wheel with your leg like that.”
Jessica hesitated. She was no expert, but her initial impulse was the lead vehicle might be a dangerous place to be. Then she considered who was going to be driving that vehicle, and changed her mind. “Okay, if you think it’s a good idea.”
“There’s not really room for you anywhere else unless you want Candice riding in your lap all the way down, or are prepared to ride in different cars.”
“I’m staying with mom.” Candice said immediately.
“I thought so.” Austin said, smiling at her. “So you two ride with me and you can be together.”
“Good.” Candice nodded firmly, like the matter was settled and done.
Jessica suppressed a chuckle. “I hope we won’t get in your way.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about it.” Austin grinned.
“Candice, you remember the rules, right?” Jessica asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. All the rules are still in effect, so stay close to me.”
“I will.” Candice promised.
“Okay, we’re all here.” Tyler said loudly.
Austin turned, abruptly all business. “Stay alert, don’t assume you’re ever safe, and that includes between here and the cars just as much as it does once we start the trip. There could be dozens of zombies right outside the door. Pay attention, it’s cheaper than your life.”
Jessica found herself gripping the holstered pistol again. The faces she saw around her looked solemn and serious, which she found reassuring even if she knew few of them knew how to properly use the weapons and gear they carried. Austin waited, as if inviting comment or perhaps giving everyone a chance to get set, then went over and hit the button to raise the door.
The sunlit driveway was clear. Jessica limped out in the middle of the group, which was the safest spot mostly because everyone was pointing guns outwards. Austin, his voice loud and commanding, pointed people off to various SUVs that were parked along one side of the long driveway. It was maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Dennis’ house really did have a driveway; not just a parking pad where cars were left upon arriving.
The waiting SUVs looked new, with fresh wax and no imperfections in their paint jobs. They were all black. Jessica surmised they were probably Eagle vehicles, which wasn’t a surprise; but what did surprise her was that there were only six, plus a four door BMW that looked fast and capable even parked.
She saw what Austin had meant about there being nowhere else she and Candice could ride. Both Morris couples slid into the BMW, and all the SUVs except the lead one had their back seats folded down to create more cargo room. She didn’t bother to figure out what had been loaded into the vehicles, instead waiting near Austin as he finished assigning people to vehicles.
He escorted her and Candice up to the lead SUV. The suitcase went into the back seat, then Candice hopped up after it. Jessica accepted his help in maneuvering herself into the front seat, which was awkward with only one leg. The SUV rode kind of high off the ground. Jessica was still shifting around, trying to find a position that was the least uncomfortable when he made it around to the driver’s side and got in.
“You going to be okay?” he asked.
“Hmm? Oh, I’m fine.” Jessica smiled. The SUV was surprisingly roomy. She rattled around in it like a pea in a pod, and even Austin with his bulk and all the gear he had strapped on had no problem fitting into the vehicle.
“What about you girlie girl?” Austin asked Candice, turning his head to look in the back seat. “You all set?”
“Yup.”
“Candice, put your seatbelt on.” Jessica said automatically as she decided to refold all the towels she’d taken into a single bundle that she could slide under her foot.
Austin did something to his stubby gun that made it click audibly, and placed it between his seat and the center console. Then he looked over his shoulder again.
“Your mom says you’ve got some rules to follow?”
“Uh huh.” Candice said. “They’re important.”
“Well I’ve got one more to add. Don’t touch the gun here, okay?” He pointed at the MP5 that was next to his seat. “It’s dangerous.”
“I won’t.” Candice promised.
“Good.” Austin nodded, then leaned over and took the bundle of towels from Jessica. “Here, let me.” he said.
Jessica stopped trying to lean forward and reach under her left foot without being able
to bend her knee. He gently lifted her leg with a hand under her thigh, then slid the towels into place. “How’s that?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He put his hand on the key that dangled from the ignition and unhooked a walkie-talkie from his vest. “Mr. Morris, this is Carter.”
“Go ahead Carter.” Tyler said after a moment.
“I’m going to pull out to the street and wait for everyone else to form up.”
“We’re ready here.”
“Okay sir.” Austin stuck the radio back on his vest and turned the ignition key. The SUV’s engine came to life with a powerful rumble. Jessica watched in the side mirror as the BMW rolled down the driveway’s slight incline after them. Austin parked about a block away and waited, eyeing the rearview mirror. Jessica saw Tyler sitting patiently behind the wheel of the BMW while his wife sat sideways and spoke to the other Morris couple in the back seat.
“That’s all of them.” Austin muttered, taking his foot off the brake when the last of the vehicles finally joined them in a line along the curb. He drove to the end of the street and turned right, away from Abbotts Bridge Road.
“What was happening on Abbotts Bridge?”
“Huh?” Austin glanced over at Jessica briefly, then returned his attention to the street.
“When I got here, Dennis said there was a big horde on Abbotts Bridge.”
“Yeah.” Austin said, sounding a little sour. “If it could have just held off forming until, I don’t know, daybreak at least, it might have made a difference.”
“What do you mean?”
Austin was winding through the neighborhood slowly, keeping his speed under twenty miles per hour. Jessica saw a couple of zombies wandering around, but they were up near the houses. By the time they could make it down to the street the convoy should be past. “Mr. Morris was trying to talk some sense into the guys who wanted to leave, and I think he’d almost convinced most of them when Joe’s team came back with word of the horde.”
“How many is a horde?” Candice asked.
“A lot.” Austin said. “At least a couple hundred. They didn’t stop to get a count, just turned around and came back. Anyway, it was too much for most of the guys, and they split.”
“Why didn’t you?” Jessica asked, picking up the thread of her interrupted conversation in the dining room.
He shrugged. “You want the short version or the long version?”
“I was told this is going to be a long, slow trip.” Jessica pointed out.
He chuckled. “Well, out of deference to all of my audience, I’ll give you a medium version.” Jessica nodded as his eyes flicked towards the backseat without turning. “I had a disagreement with my commanding officer a few years back, this was when I was still a Ranger.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough.” Austin turned onto Bells Road as he left the neighborhood and accelerated up to thirty miles per hour. The big SUV seemed to be crawling at such a slow speed, but Jessica didn’t even think of complaining. She was still trying to get over the memory of the deafening bangs when her Accord’s airbags went off last night.
“On a patrol I kept my squad behind to help cover a civilian team that was in danger of getting pinned down. My CO didn’t like that, said the professionals had enough to worry about without having to save ‘amateurs’ who didn’t know to stay away from active war zones.”
“What were civilians doing there?”
“They were a private security contractor escorting a team from the local Red Cross who were trying to evacuate some residents that were too close to the conflict areas.”
“Where was this?”
“Afghanistan.”
“I don’t understand . . . what kind of private security works in Afghanistan.”
He chuckled briefly. “You know, like what I do now. Or did, I guess. Who knows if careers have meaning any more.”
“Mercenaries?”
“There’s a lot of international political baggage to that term, but basically, yeah. Mercenaries, worked for one of the big British outfits. They were doing it basically for cost, and partially for humanitarian reasons.”
Jessica considered. “Partially?” she asked after a moment.
“Well yeah. I mean, I knew a couple of the guys on that team from before they mustered out and went to work for the Brits, and I know a lot more of them now, and trust me, a lot of those guys were there because they liked the buzz of being in combat. But they liked getting paid for it even more, and these gigs pay very well. Or, I guess they did.”
He was silent a moment, then shrugged. “Also I’m told the company got certain tax benefits for doing things like that; it effectively let them write off the entire cost of everything associated with the contract, so they got training and advertising basically for free.”
Jessica shuddered. She couldn’t imagine considering something like combat as mere training. It made no sense to her. “So what was the problem, for you, then?”
“Like I said, my CO didn’t like that I’d helped them. He demoted me, started trying to get a court martial to sit to consider a DD on me.”
“DD?”
“Dishonorable discharge.” Austin said as he curved around to follow the road north.
“On what grounds?”
“Bullsh– stupid ones. But he had friends who were helping him pull strings, and there was no guarantee I wouldn’t go down for something no matter how stupid it might have been.”
“So how does that lead back to Tyler Morris and why you didn’t leave?” Jessica asked, a little confused over this story.
“Well from that point it’s pretty simple actually. Mr. Morris heard what was happening from some contacts of his and got in touch with me with an offer. I decided to accept rather than roll the dice fighting an uphill battle.”
“That must have been some offer.”
Austin grinned. “Not really. He offered me the chance to have all the training and combat I could stand, and to give me top notch pay and benefits. And he didn’t lie about a single bit of it either.”
“So you stayed because Tyler gave you a job?”
“I guess you could say that. But the way I see it, Mr. Morris gave me a fair deal when I was in the process of getting shafted. A DD would’ve made it almost impossible for me to get hired to anything like what I did in the 75th – no National Guard or police or private security, h– heck a DD would basically blackball me from most rent-a-cop positions too.
“Effectively I would’ve been back to square one with no options but to try and work up some career ladder somewhere against people ten and fifteen years younger than me.”
“I suppose I can see why you’d feel indebted.”
“It’s a little more than that I guess, but that’s a big part. The rest is Mr. Morris is a honorable guy, a good boss. He doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk too. He wasn’t ever an operator, but he doesn’t treat us like idiots or knuckle draggers either.”
“Is that common?
Austin laughed. “You have no idea how many people we work for, the companies who pay us, as well as the clients who pay for us, who think we’re incapable of wiping our own– uh, of walking and chewing gum at the same time.”
Jessica grinned. “Well I don’t think that.”
“Most kind.”
“Do you have any gum?” Candice asked. “I’d like some if you do, please.”
“Afraid not girlie girl.” Austin said. “Best I can offer are energy bars or MREs.”
“What are those?”
“The bars are like granola, and the MREs are sort of like microwave dinners that don’t need a microwave to cook them.”
Jessica looked back to see Candice wrinkling her nose, and laughed. “You don’t need anything to eat right now anyway Candy Bear. We’re not stopping for the bathroom, remember.”
“I know, that’s why I was hoping for some gum.”
Jessica gave Candice a mild version of ‘the look�
�, though she left off the finger. Candice sat back with a set expression, not exactly pouting, but definitely feeling at least a little bit put out. She settled for looking out the window though, and Jessica turned back to Austin.
“Well, I appreciate everything you’re doing, and I hope you’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.” Jessica told him.
“Come on now, don’t be like that. You’re helping me as much as I’m helping you.”
“How do you figure?”
He grinned. “It’s either talk to you or listen to the radio, and I’m tired of hearing nothing but bad news. We’re to the point where I don’t need the news to tell me how bad it is. I can just look around and see it for myself.”
Jessica glanced down, out of her window, as they wove around a figure crawling across the pavement. It seemed to be trying to grab at the vehicle’s wheels. She was sure this was a stupid idea because she could see it had been hit or run over, or both, already. One of its legs was showing splintered bone that stuck through flesh and pants alike. She shuddered and looked away.
“What’s wrong?” Austin asked.
She hesitated, then smiled when she heard the strong undertone of confidence in his voice. He sounded ready to handle anything.
“Nothing. Just praying for a safe trip down state.”
* * * * *
Darryl
Darryl stepped out of the bathroom carrying a bundle of clothes and his boots in both hands, with the wet towel he’d used to dry off after the shower draped around his neck. Tiny was there waiting in the hallway and nodded as he stepped past Darryl, locking the bathroom door behind himself.
Feeling refreshed after his shower – but still a little out of sorts after having been forced to sleep, then get up and stand guard, then go back to sleep again – he went barefoot down the hallway to the kitchen. When he got there, he took one look inside and abruptly decided he was not going in.
“Uh, Jody.” he called hesitantly. The kitchen was a whirl of activity. Every counter, and both sides of the so called dining table, was occupied by someone who was mixing or stacking or otherwise preparing some food item or another. Whatever they were doing, it smelled wonderful, but they also looked busy as hell.
