by D. J. Molles
Yes, infected.
Professor White preferred the term “plague victim,” but Jerry didn’t share the man’s sympathy for them. He’d witnessed those creatures tear plenty of people apart, and felt comfortable saying that they weren’t human. However, Professor White and Jerry agreed on one very important point: Captain Lee Harden and his sock puppet, Bus, should not be running Camp Ryder.
Jerry stood up from his twin size mattress, oblivious to the creaks and groans of the inner-springs. Half a year ago, Jerry would have been outraged to be forced to sleep on such a mattress. Then he spent two months sleeping on dirt, and grew to appreciate the barest of cushions between himself and the ground. Now the stained, popping mattress felt luxurious, like the finest bed, wrapped in Egyptian cotton.
He stretched and twisted, working the kinks out. Another thing that would have ruined his day in his past life, now just a minor annoyance. Most days bore with them some sort of persistent ache or pain. You couldn’t just pop some muscle relaxers for your back anymore, or a couple ibuprofen for your head. You just had to tough it out, and with that came a certain sort of level-headed patience. Because it was so constant, pain and cold and general discomfort became disconnected from the mind, like white noise just humming in the background.
It made him realize how truly weak humans had become.
If you felt the slightest twinge of pain, you took an ibuprofen. If you were sleepy, you took caffeine. Then, if you couldn’t sleep later, you could take some sleeping pills. In between, if you didn’t take your morning shit right on time, you took a laxative, but then if it didn’t come out right, you took anti-diarrheal medications. If you took too long sitting on the crapper, reading the Wall Street Journal, you might develop hemorrhoids, in which case you could shove a glycerin suppository up your ass. If you had a bad day, you took the white pill. But if you were too happy, then you took the pink pill to calm you the fuck down. Pills, pills, pills, until everyone was the same, homogenous, robotic, smiling (but not too smiley) upper-middle class white male with a 2,000 square foot house, a matching set of Volvos, 2.5 kids, cheerleader wife, and a golden retriever named Buddy.
Hey, you achieved The American Dream!
Your prize?
A failing 401k to obsess about, and a mountain of debt to make you consider killing yourself.
That was the life of pathetic stasis that Jerry had come from. He was a man defined by a checklist, as though his life culminated in whatever he could put on his resume: 100k+ salary? Check. President of the HOA? Check.
Platinum American Express?
The most expensive Titleist driver?
Member of the Town Council?
Check, check, and check.
All of that was gone now. Now his life was difficult. It was dirty mattresses and hunger and pain and wiping your armpits and crotch with baby wipes between your weekly sponge baths. Now you had to be strong to survive, but the reward was survival itself. And there is no greater sense of purpose than to simply survive. It is, after all, your primary instinct.
So here was Jerry, stripped of his titles, and his family, and his belongings that never really meant anything to him in the first place. He was a modern day Job, but the destruction of his previous life was not a test of his love for God, but a blessing, imparting to him a fresh sense of purpose, a new drive to succeed at the most important thing of all: living.
And then there was Captain Harden, some relic of the old world sent to reestablish those very things that had destroyed humanity in the first place. Society, order, government—all just a bunch of bullshit. It might work for a short time, but in the end it was destined to fail. Jerry was no anarchist—he knew there had to be some “system” in place in order for people to get along. But the larger the population, the stronger that system had to be in order to bind all of those divergent threads together. Here in the new world, it was more natural. It was tribal. And Camp Ryder was the tribe. It did not need to expand, it needed to simply survive.
The weak suburbanite that still huddled inside of him, made Jerry want to cheer Captain Harden on. The protector! The savior! Come rebuild our society so we can have central air again! But the rest of him loathed the prospect of returning to that place of restriction. Here in the tribal society, every voice was heard, because the tribe was small, and so the system was loose. Everyone was on a level playing field, but Jerry, already accustomed to manipulating his way around and over people, had the possibility of rising to the top.
A tribal leader.
But only if Camp Ryder remained a tribe.
When Camp Ryder became a state, then Jerry would once again simply be Jerry, and the only way to be important would be to have things.
As Jerry pulled his faded pair of jeans on over his thermal underwear, he once again ignored the root of the issue in all of his ponderings and rationalizations. The true problem was Jerry’s own obsession with being important. Because in Jerry’s mind, Jerry was #1. Jerry came before everyone else, including the wife and the two children and the golden retriever named Buddy that he’d left inside of his burning house while he ran out the side door and crawled through a hundred yards of tall grass so the hooligans that had set his house ablaze wouldn’t see him escaping. And it wasn’t until he had reached the woods and run another mile that he realized who he had left behind.
When it hit him, he fell to the forest floor and he wept bitterly and clawed at the rotten leaves. He was not ashamed, or grief stricken…he was angry. Angry with his wife, and angry with his kids. Jesus Christ, did he have to do everything? Did he have to pick each one of them up and carry them out of the burning house? Were they fucking stupid? The house is burning! You’re supposed to RUN!
Now their stupidity had put him in an impossible situation.
Now he was alone in the dark of the woods.
Now he had no one.
How dare they leave him alone in this world!
In spite of their selfishness, he survived, and he eventually found Camp Ryder.
Here, he found the true purpose, and here, once again, Jerry was #1.
Or at least tied for first with Bus.
But then GI Joe came along, and Jerry was #2.
This was unacceptable. Because Captain Harden wanted to fix things, he wanted to put them back together, back to the way they were. And everyone cheered and clamored, just like that sad little part of him that just wanted to be comfortable again. But all the while the new Jerry simmered in anger. The captain was trying to take away Jerry’s tribe, in which he could place himself as the leader, the elder, a person of importance.
So Jerry told people what they wanted to hear: that this whole thing would all be over soon, that Captain Harden was just overreacting. No need to rebuild anything, because nothing had been destroyed in the first place. Things were just a little…out of control. It would all get better. They just had to stick together, stop trying to save the world, and everything would be okay.
It was all a bunch of crock.
Jerry was good at manipulating, and he used that to his advantage. In order to maintain his tribe, he had to undermine Captain Harden. Captain Harden said that this was a permanent change, that things would not get better on their own, so naturally Jerry insisted that they only needed to wait it out. Captain Harden said that they needed to rescue survivors, so Jerry argued that it was dangerous, and a waste of resources.
Then Professor White had come along, and provided a new way to contradict Captain Harden.
The “infected” were victims, and they should not be killed without first determining if they were a danger. It was a proven fact that some of the “plague victims” were non-aggressive, so lying in wait atop a city building and gunning them down as soon as they came in sight was murder. History would judge Captain Harden harshly as a butcher that had committed genocide against his own people. Another Hitler. Another Mao. Another Stalin.
Pure genius.
Regardless of the fact that Jerry disagreed with P
rofessor White, he stuck to the old adage: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
He pulled on his a heavy wool pea coat he’d traded up a carton of cigarettes for, followed by a wool cap, then stepped into his boots. He’d disdained to accept any of Lee’s “supplies,” and even refused to carry one of his M4s. Instead, he carried an old coach gun he’d sawed down to a 12-inch barrel. He left the wood stock intact, as he was a little nervous that if he made it a pistol grip it would fly out of his hands when he fired it. He carried the shortened scattergun slung at his side, inside of his coat, and one of the pockets was heavy with extra shells.
It was a good weapon for him. Simple and effective. Easy to use. Never jammed. Didn’t require much cleaning.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” Jerry looked at the plywood slab of a door.
“It’s me, Jerry.” The voice was low.
“Come on.”
The door swung out and a man stepped in quickly amidst a rush of cold air, slamming the plywood closed behind him. He was short, but solidly built. He’d been a little emaciated when Jerry had first met him, but with the steady stream of supplies from Captain Harden’s bunker, the meat from hunting, and the food from scavenging, the man was beginning to a show his build, and he reminded Jerry of one of those migrant workers that stood as high as the average man’s chest, but could pick up a slab of concrete with their stubby little arms and carry it on their shoulder.
“Arnie,” Jerry smiled as he laced up his boots. “How cold is it out there?”
The stocky man waffled his hands. “Cold now, but I think it’s gonna be warmer than yesterday.”
“Good.”
Jerry grabbed an empty satchel and slung it over one shoulder. It was just for show. He wouldn’t really need it. He followed Arnie out of his shanty and over to the little red Geo hatchback that sat on the side of Main Street, just a short jog to the gate. Arnie got into the driver’s seat and Jerry squeezed into the front passenger’s.
“What do I owe you for the gas?” Jerry asked.
Arnie cranked the little four-banger to life and put it in gear. “I got it from a friend. Friend of yours, too. So don’t worry about it.”
Jerry nodded and smiled. “Sounds good. Thank you.”
“Here,” Arnie pulled two red sashes out of his pocket and handed one to Jerry. “Tie it on your right arm.”
Jerry accepted as they pulled up to the gate. The sentry stepped up to the window and leaned down to peer inside. He greeted Arnie amiably—he was a regular scavenger—but regarded Jerry with a look of surprise.
“Jerry?” the sentry looked confused. “You leavin’ the compound this morning?”
Jerry forced a smile. “Everyone’s gotta pull their weight, right?”
“Right.” The sentry nodded and patted the hood of the car. “Be safe out there.”
“Will do,” Arnie said, and cranked the window back up.
The little Geo made its way down the worn dirt entry to Camp Ryder and exited out onto Highway 55. Jerry instructed his driver as they went, making a right onto 55 and taking it down to Highway 27. At the intersection, they could see the town of Coats beyond that was still a regular stomping ground for scavengers. No outpost had been set up in the town, because it was so close to Camp Ryder, but it had been cleared of infected and still held some small treasures for those that wished to look.
Of course, any place that had been “cleared” wasn’t necessarily safe. The packs roamed where they wished and could often be found skirting the edges of these small towns, though they seemed uncomfortable with so much concrete underneath their feet and would quickly vanish into the woods unless there was prey to run down. Anyone outside the wire kept their weapon on hand and kept checking behind their back if they wanted to survive.
They made another right on Highway 27 and took it west. It was a long straight road and it changed names to Leslie-Campbell Avenue as it drew closer to Campbell University. The university was a ghost town, as it had mainly been empty during the summer when the FURY pandemic hit. Jerry didn’t even think Captain Harden and his crew had done any clearing operations in it, but had simply reconned the area and declared it “safe.”
It was here at the entrance to Campbell University that they entered a roundabout, turned onto Howard Drive, and immediately pulled left into a small shopping center with a coffee shop on one end and a Chinese-food restaurant on the other. They pulled towards the coffee shop and drove around the back of the building where they found another small car. It was parked alongside the back of the building, facing the same direction as their Geo.
As they parked behind it, Professor Tommy White and one of his students stepped out. The older, long-haired man waved in greeting, but his face was stony, or as stony as it could be on such a flaccid little creature. White’s companion was some white kid with dreadlocks—yet another one of those wannabe hippie stoners, rebelling against two yuppie parents for committing the mortal sin of purchasing shoes made in Malaysia.
The two men met in the middle, their companions standing back a bit and keeping a watch not only for infected but for any other prying eyes.
Jerry extended his hand. “Professor, I’m glad to see you.”
White shook it limply and absently, as though he had weighty things on his mind that Jerry was interrupting. “Yes, thank you for meeting me.”
“Well,” Jerry clasped his hands together. “I say we cut to the chase and speak in very plain terms with each other. That will make things much simpler and more efficient.”
White regarded him with a quirked eyebrow, but nodded.
Jerry continued. “I’m sure we have our different reasons for how we came to this position, but I think we can both agree that Bus needs to be removed from power, and Captain Harden with him.”
White grimaced. “I don’t know if Bus is a part of the problem here…”
“He’s a part of my problem,” Jerry stated calmly. “They have a symbiotic relationship, Professor. You must remove both if you are going to remove either. They are viewed as one and the same. The original members of Camp Ryder support the captain only because Bus supports him. All the newcomers love the captain because he saved them, but they only support Bus because Captain Harden supports him. They’re two different ends of the same problem.”
White shuffled his feet a bit, uncomfortable. “I don’t want any more bloodshed.”
“Nor do I.” Jerry put his hands inside his coat pockets. The brass at the base of the shotgun shells was cold on his fingers. “But I also don’t wish to die, and I think you and I can both agree that that is the end result for the path Bus and Captain Harden have put us on.”
“We can just run. Avoid all the conflict. Band together and head for the mountains.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Jerry shook his head. “You’ve got a bunch of college students that don’t know anything about surviving in the wild. You haven’t accepted any of Captain Harden’s guns, and neither have I. We’ve got no supplies, no medicine, no way of surviving outside of the Camp Ryder Hub.”
White’s eyes widened. “But you heard the guy last night! There are millions of them coming this way! We’ll never be able to survive that many.”
Jerry held up a finger. “He thinks there are millions of them heading this way. It’s an unproven threat. Don’t fall victim to Captain Harden’s overreaction to these things. While he uses them as an excuse to take more and more militaristic control of everyone, you’re using it as an excuse to run prematurely. Both are equally dangerous.”
“As opposed to what?” White’s voice raised up a little bit and the young guy with the dreadlocks looked over at them. “Waiting until they attack us to start running? That’s ridiculous! If we wait until they’re here, we’ll never make it out!”
Jerry pursed his lips. “Captain Harden got one thing right. There will be a stream of refugees fleeing from the north, as these supposed millions move south—if they move south. That w
ill give us all the warning we need.”
“That leaves supplies,” White scratched at his temple.
“The supplies are there,” Jerry said. “And there will be more.”
White considered this. “Harden will never just give you his supplies, and he will fight for them.”
“Captain Harden won’t be here.” Jerry smiled. “He’s recruiting more goons to go with him and start blowing up every piece of infrastructure he can get his hands on, the fucking idiot. Camp Ryder’s going to be empty. But he’s going to leave behind supplies, because the camp is going to need them. He said he’s going to be sending all the refugees to Camp Ryder, right?”
“Right.”
“That will be our window of opportunity.”
“To steal the supplies.”
“To take over Camp Ryder,” Jerry corrected.
White fussed and growled. “This isn’t a military action! We’re not taking over anything!”
“We have to.” Jerry looked at the older man. “Don’t you get it? You’re not waltzing into Camp Ryder and taking those supplies. Not without getting into a firefight. Captain Harden and his hit squads might be gone, but Bus still pulls some weight. If my people and your people are all united, and they are all armed, we can take over. And once Bus is out of the way, we have control of everything in Camp Ryder.”
“You said it yourself,” White pointed out. “My people are just students. Besides, I don’t want them shooting at each other.”
“They won’t.” Jerry sounded confident. “With all of our people together, we’ll completely outnumber Bus and his supporters. We go in all at once, everyone armed, and we won’t even have to fire a shot. They’ll give it up without a fight. As long as Captain Harden isn’t there to convince them otherwise.”
“And then we can head for the hills.”
Jerry dodged the question. “We’ll have the supplies to do so.”
“Alright.” Professor White looked off into the eastern sky, all the color melting out of it into a golden slag that ran across the horizon. It was already feeling warmer. “What do we need to do?”
