“Where are they?” Riley asked. She’d taken a protective step closer to her brother and raised her Model 7.
“Don’t know. They want to be seen, they’ll be seen.”
“He’s right.” Troi shuddered in her poncho, but not from the rain or chill. “There’s no animals.”
“What should we do?” Evan gripped the barrel of his assault rifle.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“They know we know they’re there.”
“What?” It wasn’t clear if Evan had understood what the guide had said or didn’t believe what the man had said.
“Do you think they’re going to attack us?” Anthony spoke quietly.
“I doubt it. I wouldn’t.”
“Great,” Evan said.
“If they’d meant us harm, they’d more than likely have done so by now.”
Troi breathed fast and looked around quickly. Riley took her arm and steadied her. “Relax.” She tried to sound calmer than she felt. “Relax.”
“Y-yeah, right.”
“So? What do we do then?” Evan stared into the gaping dark of a third-floor window.
“We keep going.” And just like that, their guide resumed his walk through the rainy morning.
“We keep going.” Evan didn’t sound happy with the answer but he followed, turning as he walked, staring down the buildings around them. He let Anthony, Riley, and Troi walk between himself and Krieger as he brought up the rear.
* * *
The city streets were remarkably clear of vehicles. There was an occasional car parked at the curb or stalled in the middle of the street, a door or doors open. The cars were sunken down on the remains of tires that had flattened and rotted long ago. The buildings they passed were still marked with the numbers of skeletons inside.
The day was dark from the clouds and rain, and thunder rumbled in the distance. After many hours of walking with a few, brief rests interspersed, the day began to end. Krieger led them through and past the last blocks of high rises and businesses. They started moving into residential blocks on the other side of the city. None of the four friends wished to stop for the night this close to the city, so they continued to follow the coughing man through the rain. Krieger did not call a halt until well after the sun had set and they were navigating in the muted violet of the early evening.
“Let’s stop here for tonight.” The guide indicated a two story brick house set back from the street. A strip of land in front of the home had been a lawn, but the onion grass and goldenrod had grown to ridiculous heights and disappeared into the house itself through the open front door. Wild grapevines snaked up the front of the house. Above the entranceway, the number 3 had been painted. “And let’s sleep indoors this evening.”
Krieger led the way into the house and the four friends followed. The first floor was coated with a fuzzy green mold and the windows were all broken out. As they walked up to the second floor, the stairs under their feet creaked, unmuffled by the rotted, molded remains of carpet.
There was a landscape painting in what had been the hallway of the second floor. The painting was covered with fungi and mold. The bathroom was unusually well-preserved compared to the other rooms and houses they’d passed and explored. The ceramic tiles were largely intact. Water had gotten into the house around the chimney flashing, working its way under the slate shingles, which had collapsed in on one of the bedrooms.
A second bedroom housed a terrible sight. Amid the stink of mold and dust, three skeletons lay entwined on a yellowed mattress. The skeletons on either side were full-sized—adults—while the skeleton between them was that of a toddler. The two adults were holding each other and the child. No one wanted to settle in this room.
Krieger set his Bo against the wall of what had been a third bedroom. He dumped his bodypack and the others followed suit, realizing there would be no fire this night and that it would be a cold one.
“We’ll sleep in shifts.” Krieger’s voice and face were the most expressive any of them—aside from Troi—had seen thus far on their trek. “We keep watch by this window.” The window looked out onto the street they’d come down. Its panes were still intact, but the wall underneath was discolored where water had gotten in around the glass. “I’ll keep first watch.”
Evan briefly considered saying something to Krieger about not falling asleep this time, but thought better of it.
They ate, largely in silence, listening to the house creak around them. The friends noticed that Krieger wasn’t drinking as often from his bottle. They noted the way he sat on his body pack, looking out onto the street as the night came upon them and blackened all. Anthony was closest to the door leading to the hallway and the staircase. He turned his back to the others and pulled his Model 7 in close to his body, looking out into the hallway, waiting and listening.
An hour later he was wide awake and having a hard time lying still. Someone snored lightly. Anthony peered out into the hallway through the night-vision scope. There was nothing to be seen in the hazy green glow.
He rolled over gently, not wishing to make any noise. Krieger kept silent vigil at the window. His sister, Evan, and Troi were all asleep. Evan had his mouth open and was the one snoring.
Anthony turned back to the dark and the doorway and fought to keep his eyes open. It was a battle he realized he was rapidly losing, so he drew the Model 7 in close again and let his eyes close. As he drifted off, he heard someone say his name. He knew it was no one in this room, just one of the voices or sounds he heard when he was exhausted and on the verge of slumber, and he did not fight it.
* * *
The creak of the stairs woke Troi. She had no idea what time it was, but knew, from the all-encompassing dark, that it was the middle of the night. She sat up, shivering because her sleeping bag had come off her. The Model 7 sat in her lap. The dark, huddled forms of her friends were on the floor near her.
The stairs creaked again.
Troi scooted around on her butt, looking to the window and the moonlight filtering through. Krieger was not there. Oh boy. She stood up, shouldering the stock of the Model 7, considering whether or not she should call out to Riley, to Anthony and Evan, deciding against it for the time being. She trained the barrel of her rifle on the doorway, above Anthony’s inert form. Was something out there? On the stairs? Where was Krieger?
She heard a feint cough somewhere and relaxed slightly. Krieger. Troi stepped over and around her sleeping friends, peering out the doorway into the hall and what she could see of the stairwell from there. There was no one, nothing. She crossed the room to the window and looked out onto the street below. In the moonlight she spotted Krieger standing in the middle of what had been the lawn. She knew him by his furs and the squat grenade launcher. Its barrel rested in the crook of one arm.
Troi pulled on her jacket over her hoodie, zippering it. She slung her Model 7, left the bedroom and took the stairs slowly, carefully, trying to avoid excessive noise. Though she stepped gently, the stairs still creaked in protest, though perhaps not as shrilly as they might have.
“Krieger.” She stepped out of the house and walked up behind the man. The rain had stopped but it was colder.
He turned at the waist, grunted in acknowledgement, and resumed his original position.
“What’s going on out here?” She stepped abreast of the guide.
“Saw one. About an hour ago.” He indicated the end of the block, along the route they had come. “Down there, that way. Had a torch.”
Troi knew if whatever the guide had seen had had a torch, it wasn’t a zombie. “Think he was alone…” Krieger’s voice trailed off.
“Do you think they want to hurt us?”
“No, I don’t think so. Whoever it is, they’re probably more worried about us than we are of them. I think maybe they’re curious is all.”
She digested this, shuddering from the cold, staring down the street into the dark.
“Where’d the guy wit
h the torch go?”
“Don’t know. One minute he was there. The next minute he was gone.”
“Should I wake the others?”
“No need. Like I said, they’re not going to attack us. These people wouldn’t be seen, they didn’t want to be seen.”
“Who’s out here? In the Outlands?”
“All sorts.” He looked to Troi as though he were lost in thought as he spoke, lost in a past of things remembered. “Wild people. Outcasts. People who don’t want to be a part of society. Some others, like me, come and go. Not to mention your hostiles, your munts.”
“Zed?”
“Oh yeah, there’s still some of him left.”
“Around here?”
“We’re getting closer. Mostly you won’t run into Zed unless you’re up near a hot zone. That is, unless one of ‘em wanders out of a hot zone. That still happens you know.”
“How close are we to Bear?”
“We’re getting there. By tomorrow night we’re going to see one of the most spectacular sights there is to see on this earth. Few more days after that, you should find Bear and his people, if they’re still out here.”
Troi noticed how Krieger had switched between we and you, but thought nothing of it.
“You think Anthony’s crazy, don’t you? You probably think we’re all crazy.”
“Nah. I don’t think none of ya’ are crazy.”
“Why are you out here?” Troi meant in the Outlands.
“You mind if I ask you how old you are?”
She told him her age.
“My daughter would have been close to your age. A few years older.”
“What’s your story? You’re old enough to have known the world, the way it was.”
“I am.” He kept watch down the block but did not look alarmed. “I was one of those guys who was ready. I was prepared.”
“For Zed?”
“For whatever. Up until the early 90s, for the Soviets. Then the terrorists. For the Yellowstone Caldera, for urban unrest, a space rock, you name it.
“Our house was secure. Gas grill, extra propane cylinders. Honda generator. We could go off the grid if we needed to. Our fridge had a transfer switch. We were all ready.
“I packed and kept bug-out bags for the house, for each of our cars. Went through the contents with my wife, taught her how to be comfortable with a pistol.”
Troi thought she heard a dog bark far off in the distance.
“I was at work when it happened. Like a lot of people, I worked quite a distance from where we lived. There was no way I could get back home. We had a rendezvous point, a place where we knew to meet. I went there. She wasn’t there. So I waited for them.
“And I waited. And still she didn’t come. Those early days, the government—when there was still a government—they quarantined everything. Maybe she couldn’t get out. Shit, I couldn’t get in. So I didn’t try anything stupid. I waited. Now, some people might have said waiting was a stupid thing.
“But I had my gear. I had my food. I had a gun. I holed up in the woods, by myself. I had my Mountain House meals, my water purifiers. I trapped small game.
“You know, the hardest part were those first few weeks. The nights. The nights were rough. Waiting. Just…having to wait. I knew if I left, I might miss them. Or I might get killed. I used to lie down to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. I’d listen to the night and the things in it, listen for them. The planes going by, the vehicles and tanks, the voices of the people on the road. And then, after awhile, there were no more people or tanks or planes, and I knew there weren’t going to be.”
The night was very still around them.
“A few times, I heard her—heard my wife, heard her coming with our daughter—but it was only a dream, and I’d wake up.
“And then one day, I met a guy. A soldier. He had been. I think he must have deserted somewhere along the way. He didn’t say.
“He told me the city where we lived was gone. It had been nuked. I believed him, but I didn’t want to. I shared a meal with him, shared my water. He was in pretty rough shape. It was good to sit and talk with another human being after weeks of purposefully avoiding them.”
Troi found herself looking down the block where the guide was looking.
“That night, while we slept, he tried to kill me. Tried to take my stuff. But I killed him. Then I didn’t know what to do. What if he’d been lying to me? What if he hadn’t? What if they had bombed the city? Made it uninhabitable.
“I packed up and started for home, but, before I got very far, I met the sick people. They were dying. From the radiation. And I saw the fires, still burning on the horizon. I knew that soldier was right.
“I went back to the rendezvous point. I waited.” He switched the barrel of his MM1 to the crook of his other arm. “But they never came.
“I’ve spent a lot of time since then thinking. Wondering why I’m alive and they’re not. And I don’t have a good answer for that. I have no answer at all.”
“I’m sorry,” offered Troi.
“Ahhh. It’s funny, how much the world can change in twenty-five years. Mine was an age of God, of gods. People believed. People your age don’t believe anymore.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s up to the individual. Life leaves you wondering sometimes, right? And there never seem to be many answers. But then, all of a sudden, something happens, and it’s like an answer been handed to you. I guess if you have faith in something, that kind of thing might reaffirm it for ya.”
“You mean like Anthony with Mickey and everything?”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.”
They stood together quietly for some time.
“Go get some sleep, Krieger. I’ll keep an eye on things.”
The guide shook his head. “No, don’t think I will. Think I’ll enjoy this night. You go on and get back to bed. I’ll be around to wake you up soon enough.”
“You sure?”
The guide grunted by way of reply, and Troi figured their conversation was over. She stared off into the dark for a few more moments, to where the houses and the remains of homes disappeared, before turning and heading back to her sleeping bag.
* * *
The next morning they left the city behind them for the countryside. The clouds were layered one atop the other like billowing smoke for as far as the eye could see. Spots of white shined through amid the cerulean, above the red and brown and green treetops. The clouds looked choppy and violent—a typical sky after a heavy rain.
They walked across green fields, upon which splashes of yellow and red pooled beneath trees. The rains had brought the leaves down. Of the leaves left on branches, clumps of green held out against the oranges and browns.
They spotted the large expanse of concrete slab amid the grasses from a distance.
“Hey,” said Evan. “Let’s go check it out.”
“Why?” asked Troi.
“This way.” Riley led them. Krieger squinted one eye and watched her walk toward the slab, followed by her brother and their friends. The other girl looked back at Krieger before reluctantly going along.
Now why’d they want to go bothering about something like that? Krieger sighed. He took a swallow from his bottle, screwed it shut, and went after them.
Rain waters had pooled on the concrete. An enclosed, portable toilet stood in one corner of the slab. They stepped out of the grass and onto the hardened cement.
“What do you think this was?” Riley asked.
“Warehouse or something stood here once,” said Evan. “That sound right, Krieg?”
The guide grunted. He didn’t know and didn’t particularly care.
They stepped around the puddle, across the concrete, and towards the small shack-like restroom.
“What is that?” Anthony asked as they neared it.
“Port-a-potty.” Krieger hacked and spit into the puddle. “Shit house,” he offered for further clarif
ication.
“This wasn’t a warehouse, Ev,” said Anthony. “They were going to build something here. That’s why they have the…shit house.”
“Maybe they were going to build a warehouse,” said Evan.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Riley reached the port-a-potty first. She tapped on its side with the barrel of her Model 7. There was a door on the front of the thing and it was closed.
“Wait.” Troi had the stock of her rifle pressed tight to her shoulder. “Wait, Rye.”
Riley turned and gave her a why-look, but just as she did so there was a noise from inside the port-a-potty. She danced nimbly away from it.
“Whoa!” Evan said.
Four Model 7s aimed at the enclosed toilet. Something was inside it. Something that had moved and thumped against an interior wall.
“Hey—Who’s in there?” Anthony called out.
Krieger rolled his eyes. He hadn’t drawn his pistol or taken Bertha off his back. He stood there gripping staff and his bottle of booze by the neck.
“What do you think is in there?” Evan said, squinting down the barrel of his Model 7.
“It’s locked inside.” None of them felt particularly relieved by Riley’s remark.
“How do you know that?” demanded Evan.
“It would be out here if it wasn’t.”
“She’s right.” Troi feathered the trigger of her Model 7, wanting to depress it. “What do we do?”
“Leave it here?” Anthony wondered aloud.
They all looked when Krieger snorted then spit. “Fuck no. We can’t just leave it here. You all know that.”
“So then what do we do?”
“Shoot it up,” volunteered Troi.
“No,” said Evan. “Let’s pour one of Krieger’s bottles around this thing, set its dead ass on fire.”
“Fuck if you’re wasting my hooch.”
“I’ll open the door,” said Riley. “When it comes out, somebody just shoot it. But wait for me to get out of the way.”
“Sis, don’t—”
“I’ll be okay.” She stepped gingerly to the port-a-potty. Whatever was inside was keeping quiet.
Resurrection (Eden Book 3) Page 14
