by D. J. Molles
Lee couldn’t hear the response on the radio. He turned to look behind them. A shape was scuttling out of the woods and onto the roadway. Lee’s chest was heaving so hard, the blood pumping so swiftly through him, he could barely stabilize the rifle long enough to take the shot. He fired three rounds and wasn’t sure he hit it. He turned and started running again.
Screeches and howls. They sounded close.
His legs burned. Ached. His feet stung like pins and needles for some reason. Every muscle in his body was cramping, seizing up, and he was painfully aware of how long it had been since he’d drunk any water. His mouth felt like paper.
Don’t give up now.
The only easy day was yesterday.
Keep those feet moving. Keep ’em moving.
“Devils…” Tomlin gasped for air, still running. “I dunno. Devils Racetrack something. That’s the road name, I think. I don’t fucking know!”
Lee’s world was shrinking. His heart rate had reached the point where his vision was becoming spotty. His peripheral vision was almost completely gone. He had to turn his head to see Nate, lagging to Lee’s left, and slightly behind.
“C’mon.” Lee reached out a hand and grabbed Nate by the shoulder. He barely had strength enough for himself. But he wasn’t going to let Nate fall behind. Not on top of everything else. No one else, please, God, no one else!
Straight ahead, Lee spotted shadows.
Tomlin must have seen them as well. He popped his rifle up quickly, firing on the run. Lee didn’t know where his rounds went. Tomlin had to slow almost to a walk, and he fired five more rounds before they saw one of the shadows falter and hit the ground. They were close enough then that Lee could see it was two males, younger, stripped naked and looking like nothing but skin and bones.
The one twisted in circles on the ground, spraying blood.
The other kept coming. Lee and Tomlin concentrated their fire and put it down.
They didn’t stop. Just ran right past the bodies while they were still moving.
Lee realized his rifle was empty. He ejected the magazine and simply let it drop to the pavement. Chalk it up to a loss. He grabbed the only magazine left in his pouch and slammed it home with more effort than he wanted to admit, then sent the bolt forward.
“Last mag,” he huffed.
Neither Tomlin nor Nate responded. They were too busy running. Too busy trying to keep moving. Lee had let go of Nate to fire his rifle and reload it. He checked to his left again and saw that Nate was there, still pushing.
“They’re comin’,” Tomlin gasped as he ran. “They’re comin’.”
Headlights bloomed over the roadway, far ahead of them.
“That’s them!” Tomlin called out when he saw the lights. “We’re almost there!”
Nate let out a cry of pain and determination.
Lee just put his head down and ran.
Get it in. Do the work. You’re almost there. It’s almost over.
The relief he felt at the sight of the headlights was almost giddy. There was the usual part of him—the negative part, the one that claimed “realist” when in fact it was very much “pessimist”—that told him those headlights were only more enemies, more bad guys, maybe the Followers. But in that moment, Lee needed something to hold on to. Something to give his feet a reason to keep moving. He didn’t let himself believe the bad. Just the good.
It’s them. You’re almost there.
The headlights grew closer and closer, but not fast enough for Lee. Every time he looked up, he thought they would have covered more ground, then he would look back down at his pounding feet, hear the calls of the infected in the woods behind them and all around them, flanking, following, trying to surround them, and when he looked back up at the headlights, he would think the same damn thing: Fuck, why aren’t they closer?
And then one of those times, the headlights were there, and Lee could hear the roar of the engine over the rushing of his own blood and the heaving of air in and out of his parchment-dry throat. And when he looked up, the headlights turned, angling in the roadway, and Lee saw fire burst out and the deep, bone-jarring sound of the .50-caliber M2 mounted on top, thumping away into the night, the rounds whistling menacingly over their heads. Menacingly, and yet the most beautiful thing he thought he’d ever heard in his life.
It was an LMTV, and as Lee reached the open backend, he grabbed the handholds and might’ve failed to have the strength to pull himself up, if someone from inside hadn’t reached out and grabbed a hold of the straps of his chest rig and hauled him into the bed.
Lee looked up, saw Marine digital camouflage.
He turned back around and reached out a hand, pulling up Tomlin, and then Nate. The M2 drowned out anything anyone could have said, and Nate’s boots had barely left the ground before the LMTV was moving again, roaring down the road, the wind buffeting in their ears.
Lee collapsed onto the bed of the LMTV, trying to get air. He felt sick. If he had anything at all in his stomach, he might have ejected it. His throat was so dry and constricted, it felt like it was triggering his gag reflex.
The M2 fell silent, and it was just the wind and the engine, taking them down the night road.
He felt something cool touch his hand.
Lee leaned up partially. It was a canteen that had been placed in his hand. He looked past the canteen and could see the person that had put it there. Julia was sitting on one of the fold-down seats, her wounded leg stretched out straight. She was regarding Lee with a look that was so many things. There was grief, but there was also a great relief, an expression of anticipation.
Lee uncapped the canteen and guzzled water. It was painful at first, but he kept drinking it. When his throat and tongue had moisture on them again, he pulled the canteen away from his lips. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said back.
The Marine that had pulled Lee up into the truck let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Julia leaned closer toward Lee and put a hand on him, her face tense with a hard sort of expectation. “Did it work? The artillery? Did you see if it worked?”
Lee nodded, then coughed a few times. He managed a wan smile. “It worked, Jules. Better than I thought. You should’ve fucking seen it. It would’ve made you smile.”
Julia seemed shell-shocked. She leaned back, almost limp. Her face was no longer intense, but lax. But that only lasted for a moment. Then her hand came up and covered her mouth, and Lee could see her eyes clenched as tears started to come out of them. Not tears of happiness or relief. Just sadness. Just the great, gigantic cost of it. The losses that could never be recouped.
She turned her face away from them and she wept loudly.
Lee’s own sense of relief was drooping as well, like the wind was scouring it away. But instead of grief, he just felt nothing. What the hell was he supposed to feel? He wasn’t sure. He knew he should feel elated. He should feel enraged. He should feel joy and sadness. He’d lost and he’d won. He’d survived and he’d died. In a million different ways, he felt a million different things, and in the whirlwind of them all, he felt absolutely nothing.
He looked to his right and found Tomlin and Nate, both leaning back against the walls of the LMTV, their chests still rising and falling rapidly, while the rest of their bodies seemed like they were trying to be as motionless as possible, their muscles turned to slag. But they looked back at him.
Nate closed his eyes, and tilted his head back.
Tomlin nodded to his friend and partner. Good job. You did it.
Lee’s eyes fell away from him. Yeah. Sure.
He looked back up at Julia. He saw her, and he thought about Harper. He thought about their team, the one that had gone into small cities and towns with packs of claymores and bags of deer guts. The ones that had cleared out the hordes and established the observation points that would keep the Camp Ryder Hub safe. There’d been Jul
ia, of course. And Harper. Father Jim. LaRouche. Wilson. They ate together, slept together, fought together, bled together. That small group, responsible for so many things. And the weight of that responsibility had crushed them down and brought them all closer together.
And of all of those in that original group, who was still alive? Just Lee and Julia.
When he thought about it like that, he felt incredibly alone. Without Father Jim there to keep him on track. Without LaRouche there to fight tooth and nail over anything that could be fought over. Without Harper there, always with sound advice. Without Wilson there to be everyone’s friend and mitigate the frequent disagreements.
Where were they all? Where did they all go?
Swallowed up. Gone forever.
Lee picked himself up, noticing how incredibly cold it was for the first time that night. Feeling the chill of it seeping deep into him. He sat down next to Julia and he put an arm around her and drew her in. “It’s just us now, Jules,” he told her. “Just you and me.”
The night was long and frightening. It dragged on to the sound of thunder in the distance that was so faint, Angela wasn’t sure whether she had imagined it or not. Perhaps it was the artillery booming. The sound of victory. Or maybe it was the sound of a million feet, drawing closer. Hordes so large they swallowed the countryside, and consumed everything.
Fort Bragg could scrounge only one bus to transport the men and women of Camp Ryder back to the safety of their gates. Cramming the thing full of people and their belongings, Angela had estimated it was still going to take three trips. And it looked like she was going to be right. The bus had already come and gone twice, with two gun-truck Humvees escorting.
Angela looked out into the murky darkness to the northeast and saw no blush of dawn, no hope of the night ending just yet. She had sent Abby and Sam on with the others, and Deuce had accompanied them. Sam remained quiet after what had happened. His emotions seemed locked down.
Angela had decided to be the last one out of Camp Ryder. Bus’s words still worked their way through her brain: Take it, you have to take it.
I did the best I could, Bus, she thought. But now we have to leave it.
The last group to go was smaller than the previous two. Marie had decided to stay with Angela, along with Old Man Hughes, who sent most of his people from Dunn on before him, except for two men that refused to leave without him. The rest was just a smattering of single men and women with no children, no families. Less than a dozen all together. They milled about eagerly at the gate, eyes constantly looking out, hoping for the glimmer of headlights coming down the gravel drive to Camp Ryder.
It was strange to see the place so desolate. Almost everyone that called the place home had gone, and what was left seemed little more than a trash pile without the warmth of humanity living in it. No fires were burning. There was no sound of people talking or murmuring in the confines of their shanties. It was strange and empty. Like a ghost town.
“I see headlights!” someone called out.
There was that long moment where everyone craned their necks, hoping it was the bus from Fort Bragg, and not some wayward element come to attack them at their weakest possible moment. Less than a dozen of them, standing around laden with everything they owned in the world and only a few rifles and pistols among them.
The trunks of the barren trees to either side of the gravel driveway glinted and glimmered with white light. Two headlights and the sound of a diesel engine roaring down the path. A very familiar sound to Angela now. The sound of a Humvee, which seemed very distinct in her mind.
Only one.
“Something’s wrong,” she murmured, stepping toward the gate, and then wondering if that was wise.
The Humvee came in quick, then ground to a halt in the gravel, just in front of the reinforced gate. Someone inside hit the horn twice, and it sounded oddly weak despite the heavily armed vehicle it was coming out of. The passenger-side door opened, and in the reflection of the vehicle’s own headlights, she could see the passenger.
One of Carl’s men.
“Angela!” He waved. “Open the gates!”
Angela pointed to Old Man Hughes’s two men that were manning the gates. “Open them.”
They grunted and slid the heavy thing out of the way. Angela jogged through, scanning around out of cautious habit, her mind bouncing around in a thousand different directions, wondering what had happened, what had gone wrong. Something always goes wrong…
She went to him on the passenger’s side of the Humvee. “What’s wrong?”
The man was young, and clean cut, which was odd. Most of the men had given up on shaving and cutting their hair. His rank was a black, triangular emblem that Angela knew meant he was a “specialist.” His name tag labeled him as LITTLEJOHN, but he’d introduced himself as Bryce.
“Nothing, I don’t think,” he said with a shrug. “Got something up at the top of the road that you might want to see. We’re gonna leave this one up to your judgment.”
He motioned for her to get in the back and she did, after a brief hesitation and a glance back at Marie and Old Man Hughes. But then she closed the door and the Humvee turned around and roared back down the gravel drive, heading for the roadway beyond.
Specialist Bryce didn’t bother telling her what he meant by any of what he’d said. And she didn’t ask. She craned her neck around the front passenger’s seat to see out the window. The headlights bounced off trees as they took the few small turns in the mostly straight gravel drive, and then she could see the roadway up ahead. The bus, sitting a ways back, and the other Humvee, stopped in the middle of the road, its turret facing another, unfamiliar vehicle.
“Who the hell is that?” Angela demanded.
Bryce shook his head. “No fucking idea. It’s a truckload of women.”
As they drew closer, Angela could see what he meant. The unfamiliar vehicle was an old flatbed truck, and the bed had been enclosed by a series of two-by-fours and some makeshift carpentry to create a sort of cage. Inside this cage were at least ten women, maybe a few more. They stood at the walls of the cage and their eyes glittered in the light of headlamps and they looked desperate and despairing.
A few of Carl’s men were standing in the roadway, their weapons addressed, but not so aggressively that Angela felt there was immediate danger. There was a female stranger standing in the middle of the road, next to the cab of the flatbed pickup truck. Her hands were raised up. The driver-side door of the pickup was hanging open, and Angela intuited that she had been the driver.
Their Humvee stopped just a few yards away from the scene.
Angela and Bryce stepped out and walked up quickly, stopping between Carl’s men and the strange woman. Angela put her hand on her pistol’s grip and regarded the stranger with a cautious, untrusting eye.
Her initial perception had been one of a woman, but this was a girl. Little more than sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her hair was in oily tangles; her face looked unwashed, her clothes worn for too long without washing. But she was not like the women that huddled in the back of the flatbed truck. Though she was plain, her eyes were sharp and measuring and when they fell on Angela, she knew that she was being sized up as well.
“What is this?” Angela demanded, nodding toward the flatbed truck. “Who the hell are you and why do you have a truckload of women in a cage?”
The girl with the sharp eyes kept her hands up and made sure not to move too much or too quickly. “Is this Camp Ryder? I’m looking for Camp Ryder. LaRouche sent me here to find Camp Ryder.”
Angela almost choked. She took a few steps forward. “LaRouche? LaRouche sent you?”
“Yes.”
“When? How long ago?”
“An hour, maybe?” She looked pained. “I don’t know.”
Questions rampaged through Angela’s brain. It took her a moment to pick and choose the most pertinent ones. “Is LaRouche alive?”
The girl standing in front of her looked unsure. “I don’t kn
ow. He was… he was hurt pretty bad.”
“How… how the hell?”
“I know LaRouche was from here. From Camp Ryder. But he was captured by the Followers. That’s where we came from. The Followers. We were all prisoners. LaRouche worked with them. But I don’t think that he wanted to. Because… because he came back for us. He got us away from the others and told us where to go. Told us to come here. To Camp Ryder.”
“The Followers?” The facts were like an unsolved jigsaw puzzle scattered about. She tried to put them in logical order. “You came from the Followers?”
The girl looked frustrated. “Look, there’s a lot to explain. I’m sorry. I know. But we just got away.” Tears sprang up in her eyes and she looked behind her. “I don’t know whether they’re still coming after us or not. LaRouche stayed behind to try to stop them, but I don’t know if they killed him or not. It was Deacon Chalmers and a few others. I think most of them died attacking the Marines, but… but… do you know the Marines? Do you know them?”
“What?” Angela rubbed the side of her head. “I… uh… yes. We know some of them.”
The girl’s hands dropped and reached out. She took a hopeful step toward Angela, her voice straining and for the first time, those sharp green eyes breaking down a little bit. “Do you know John Staley? Colonel John Staley?”
Angela’s mouth worked for a moment as she wondered whether she should answer that question. But the words came out after a moment of indecision. The girl standing in front of her just seemed so suddenly desperate, and her need to have an answer to that question was palpable and genuine.
“Yes. I’ve met him.”
The girl started to shake. Her face twisted up in some mix of relief and horror, like coming out of a long, long nightmare. “I’m Claire Staley,” she choked out suddenly. “Colonel Staley’s daughter.”
The next hours of Lee’s life passed by in a fog. When the adrenaline waned, when his heart was no longer pumping at its maximum capacity, the exhaustion took hold of him hard. He operated in a daze and later would only remember bits and pieces of it in a disjointed fashion, rather than in a continuous time line. In the darkness, with his mind split in a million directions and his body beaten down, time stretched and contracted in an odd, dreamlike fashion.
