by R. J. Spears
Great. My visions were now out on the table. I’m sure they were waiting for us to start growing wings any moment to fly off into the heavens.
I could tell Jenelle was holding off a smirk, but Hank was dead serious in his tone and demeanor.
“Before I ask about this God stuff and visions, I want to clear up about what you know about this cure, or information on a cure, or whatever it is. You’re a doctor. What do you know about vaccines or making them?”
“Very little,” Brent said. “I’m just a G.P. Any of my specific medical research knowledge is so much in the past, I might call it ancient history.”
“So, you know about fixing broken bones, stitches, and fixing people up?”
“Basically. I was slightly rusty on the emergency room medicine, but I’m back up to speed now, after...after…”
He didn’t need to go on. Our group understood what “after” meant. His time with Marlow had refreshed a lot of Brent’s nearly forgotten medical school knowledge. I appreciated that Brent didn’t go into specifics about Jason being the source of the cure.
Hank wasn’t letting it go. “I don’t know that we’re all that interested in some theoretical cure, but what do you know about this mission from God?”
“Not any more than I told you.”
Hank glanced to Jenelle, and his expression seemed to say, “See, I told you so. These people are dangerous because they’re crazy,” then he shifted his attention to me.
“What more do you have to say?” he asked.
Owen broke in and said, “Hank, these people might have an interesting story, but they’re just getting by, just like us.”
I leaned forward and said, “Listen, we’re just passing through and don’t want any trouble. We will be out of your hair tomorrow.”
Jenelle finally decided to weigh in. “No, need to rush. If you need an extra day or two, please feel free.”
Hank must have not been pleased with Jenelle’s statement, because if his stare could shoot daggers, she’d be a pincushion.
“We’ve probably worn out our welcome,” Jenelle said. “We will let you people alone now. Come on, guys.”
Owen stood from where he was sitting on the floor, and his knees popped loudly in the quiet that had fallen over the room, and a sheepish embarrassment passed over his face. Hank didn’t move for a couple seconds but finally took the cue from Owen and stood. Jenelle led them out of the room, and I followed them to the front doorway.
Jenelle stood by the door and waited for Hank and Owen to pass by her. She watched and waited for them to get off the porch and halfway down the sidewalk. “Sorry about Hank. He’s can be a hardass at times, but his suspicions have saved us a more than once. Not everybody is as nice and innocent as you guys are.”
“I don’t know how nice we are, and we definitely aren’t innocent,” I said. “At least, I’m not.”
A slight smile came to her lips, and she said, “You’re good people. Or good enough.” She started out the door but stopped and turned back. “Holler if you need anything.”
I put on a southern fried accent and said, “That’d be right neighborly of you.”
Her slight grin broadened into a smile and then she walked away.
She was barely gone when I realized I had no idea where they lived. At the time, I didn’t know how much that information would matter, but it proved to be an important detail and one that I should have known because it really came back to bite us.
Chapter 25
Surrounded
“How many do you think are out there?” Ellen asked.
“At least fifty with more coming,” Henry replied, his tone flat as he watched in the distance as zombies brushed through the brown corn stalks of a field never harvested next to the school. The initial wave was in the parking lot and drifting around the perimeter of the school. A small crowd of them seemed to be sniffing at a school bus parked halfway across the parking lot, as if they could still smell the traces of the child rider’s scent in the bus. Others got up close and personal with the building, pawing at the windows, while the others shuffled about in that way the undead do when they know there is food around.
“Why did you even go to the outside classrooms?” Mrs. Hatcher said, her hands on her hips and an undisguised look of scorn on her face.
“We were trying to get a better radio signal, and I had to get to the outside rooms to do that,” Henry said, trying not to sound too defensive. Mrs. Hatcher specialized in armchair quarterbacking nearly every decision made by those in charge.
“But did you have to shoot them?” she asked, her voice dripping with disgust. “Now look, there’s a horde of them out there.”
Henry didn’t reply, and Ellen looked to the floor, feeling a little bit guilty. Maybe a quieter hand weapon would have been a better choice, but she also knew that Mrs. Hatcher didn’t have her own son in close proximity to an oncoming zombie. She chose to take the most direct method to quell the threat and that had been shooting the damn thing. End of story.
“We are where we are,” Henry said. “What we have to do is figure out a way to; either get out of here or to take care of them.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Mrs. Hatcher asked. “I say we make a run for it.”
“That sounds all well and good until you take into account how many people we have to get on the busses and the fact that over half of them are either young kids or geriatrics,” Ellen said as she watched the zombies filter by the window, vacant looks in their gray-milky eyes.
“Can’t we shoot our way out?” Mrs. Hatcher asked, and this time, she sounded a little whiny. Ellen knew the woman was speaking out of fear, but there was only so much she could take of that. They all were afraid.
“We only have so many guns and so many people willing and able to take on zombies face-to-face,” Henry said. “Plus we have a limited supply of ammo. Add to that the trucks are low on gas and the the fact the helicopters are still out there, and I don’t like our chances.”
A hard slapping noise sounded off to their right, and Mrs. Hatcher screamed and jumped backwards, knocking over two school desks and nearly falling. A zombie peered in the window, smearing its blood handy across the glass as it looked in at them expectantly. It’s mouth opened and closed, and a gooey substance that looked like a cross between slobber and mud dripped from its mouth.
Mrs. Hatcher worked hard at getting herself back under control, but both Henry and Ellen could tell that she was over the edge and nearly past it and into crazy town. “You’re making it sound hopeless,” she said as her eyes started to fill with tears. Ellen didn’t even need to look her way to know that Mrs. Hatcher was close to losing it.
“We’ll think of something,” Ellen said, looking toward Henry and mouthing the words, “Won’t we?”
Henry looked to the floor and then out the window as if to draw some inspiration from the scenario, but at the time, he was coming up empty. “If there was something to learn from my dad, it is never to give up hope.”
“But your dad was killed on a near suicide mission,” Mrs. Hatcher said as silent tears streamed down her cheeks.
Henry didn’t need to be reminded of that. Leave it to Mrs. Hatcher to take things down a notch. He missed his dad every day as did the people of the Manor. Greg had led them through some hairy situations, and he would know what to do now, but Henry knew he would never be the man his father had been.
Ellen seemed to sense these thoughts passing through her son at the time and reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, giving him a gentle squeeze of reassurance. “We’ll think of something. We always do.”
“Well, think it up fast,” Mrs. Hatcher said, snuffling away. “We only have a couple days’ worth of food, and who knows how many of those things are coming our way.” At that, she turned and left the classroom, leaving Ellen and Henry alone with their thoughts and doubts.
Chapter 26
Covert Actions
“What do you see?” Del whisper
ed into Jo’s ear. Both of them were prone, lying on a semi-dry bed of pine needles. They were a quarter of a mile away from the Manor, the place they had fought so hard to escape not that long ago.
It had been no easy journey back. They had figuratively and literally threaded a needle to get back, avoiding helicopter sorties and the occasional jeep full of soldiers. With his military insights, Sergeant Jones had been their go-to guide. The proverbial man with the plan.
Jo swept the binoculars across the complex again and noticed that not much had changed to the buildings themselves. The main building still looked mostly burned out and useless. The back buildings were fully intact. What she did notice was there was a lot more trucks there and more men. The trucks were parked in the back of the building near the loading dock.
“There’s a lot more troops there than when we left,” she whispered back to him.
“Great. The more the merrier,” Del said.
Jones reached toward Jo and said, “Let me see.”
She handed the binoculars over to him, and he immediately put them to work, scanning the complex and assessing what was there. He checked the guard towers, the makeshift landing field, and the surrounding fields. In some places, he saw parts of zombies -- legs and arms, partial pieces of torsos, all leftover from the brutal assault when Colonel Kilgore and his troops arrived and took over. Jones remembered the whole scene vividly, and that was the moment when the scales had started to tip for him. The Colonel had shifted from a calm and poised leader to something unpredictable and even reckless. It went downhill from there.
“What do you think?” Jo asked.
“I agree,” Jones said. “I see four more troop trucks, four mobile fuel trucks, and two more helicopters. I would imagine they have one in the air now, so that leaves them with three. I don’t see the Huey, though. It could be up in the air, too, but I sort of doubt it. Those things are maintenance hogs.”
“What about the helicopters?” Jo asked. “Do you think we can get to them?”
As if on cue, the sound of a helicopter’s blades beating the air filtered their way, coming in from the east.
“Speak of the devil,” Del said.
The helicopter sounds came closer, the rotor getting louder with each second. Del tried to get a visual on the chopper, but the canopy of leaves above them blocked anything but sparkles of sunlight breaking through. So, instead, he just waited for the inevitable arrival of the flying beast.
It seemed to all three of them that, while the noise of the helicopter got louder, it seemed to slow down as it passed over, blotting out the sun for a second. Jo guessed it was slowing down for a landing, and she was right.
This helicopter was bigger than the previous ones they had seen. It had none of the sleek and menacing lines of the attack helicopters, looking bulky and wide, more suited to carrying people. It was massive in comparison, but they all looked big to Jo.
“That’s a big mother,” Del said, adding a low whistle at the end of his sentence.
Jones recognized it. “That’s a Sea Dragon.”
“A what?” Del asked.
Jones responded, “An MH-53E Sea Dragon. It’s a troop carrier with some offensive power. But mostly, it hauls people.”
It had a large footprint when it landed and looked like a small house. Its rotor’s kicked up a lot of debris, sending dirt and grass swirling away like a tornado as they slowed and then stopped spinning.
“That wasn’t here when we were here,” Jo said. She looked at the aircraft. “How many people can that thing carry?”
“It’s capable of carrying up to fifty-five people, maybe more in a pinch,” Jones said.
The question unspoken between them was why they needed such a massive helicopter. That question got answered when the doors on the side slid open and six or seven soldiers started hopping out. Each one of them stepped away from the chopper a few feet but turned back on it, their weapons at the ready, as if they were waiting for something dangerous to follow them out.
It was too far away to make out faces, but two people appeared at the door and stood there, looking out. These people didn’t wear uniforms but had on civilian garb. After a few seconds, it looked as if some force pushed them out, because they spilled out onto the ground. One went to all fours, but the other person managed to go to one knee.
The soldiers with weapons outside the helicopter fanned out, and Jo could see them motioning for the two people to get up and start moving. Two more people appeared in the doorway, and it was apparent from their clothes that they, too, were civilians. They must have gotten the message from the first two that it was better to leave the helicopter on your own initiative, rather than to be shoved out, because they jumped out.
The soldiers outside spread out in a wider pattern and began to shepherd the people away from the helicopter. It was clear, even at a distance, they were keeping the people in a tight, controlled group.
This continued for another forty seconds as more civilian types hopped off the helicopter. It was too hard to tell definite ages from a distance, but you could tell it was a mix of men and women. There were even a couple children.
The civilians huddled together in a tight mass, facing outward, and adults moved the children protectively to the center of the group. Expressions were impossible to make out, but it was easy to tell from their body language that this group was leery of the soldiers, keeping their heads down.
“What’s up with that?” Del asked.
Neither Jo nor Jones answered right away. Jo followed up Del’s question with one of her own. “Jones, do those people look like captives to you?”
“I’d have to say, yes,” Jones replied. He then asked, “Do you recognize any of them?”
“They’re pretty far away, but I’d say no,” Jo responded. “No, they don’t look familiar. What about you, Del?”
“Nope. I don’t know them from Adam,” Del said.
Jo looked to Jones and asked, “What do you think the soldiers are doing? Are they out grabbing people to find out where we are? Or where Joel and his group are?”
“They don’t need to bring them back here to find that out,” Jones said.
“Then why did they bring them back?” Jo asked pointedly.
Jones was quiet for a few seconds as he watched a last contingent of around ten soldiers and what looked like two pilots exit the helicopter. Two of the last set of soldiers to get off the chopper moved away from the civilians as if to get some distance from them. These two soldiers leaned their heads in close together, and it was easy to tell they were discussing something. Everyone once in a while, one of their hands would shoot out and point toward the scrum of civilians.
“Sergeant Jones, you didn’t answer my question,” Jo said.
Jones decided not to shirk the question and looked directly at Jo. “If you asked me, I’d say they were captives. For what, I don’t know. If you asked me to guess, then I’d have to say the soldiers brought them back for a purpose.”
“What kind of purpose?” Jo asked with some sharpness in her tone. A slight chill slipped up her spine as she looked back to the group, counting the women she could see. Then she let her eyes pass over all the male soldiers.
Jones interrupted her dark thoughts and said, “I don’t think it’s what you’re thinking. Yeah, I can see all male soldiers, but if that’s why they brought the women back, then there’d be no men there. My guess is they need workers.”
Del decided to join the conversation. “Why do they need workers?”
“Maybe to work the fields. You still have some viable crops, and there’s no mechanical farm equipment there. At least none I can see. Maybe to work inside.”
Jo started to ask another question, but the two soldiers broke-up their confab and started shouting to the other soldiers. They were too far away to be heard distinctly, but it was obvious they were giving orders, and the soldiers went into motion. In short order, they had the civilians on the move, herding them back toward the second
building in the complex.
One man broke from the herd, though, and turned back toward the soldiers, standing his ground. The civilians slowed, and a few looked back at the man. He seemed to be shouting at the soldiers. That didn’t last long as a soldier closed on him, slashing his rifle in a wicked arc that caught the man in the midsection. He went down as if someone had dropped a piano on him.
The civilians got the message and kept doing as they were told and headed out of view around the corner of one of the buildings.
The two leaders shouted at a couple soldiers, and they retrieved the fallen man and dragged him along. The fallen man’s feet dug little furrows in the ground as they pulled him along.
“Well, that was some scary shit,” Del said.
Jo and Sergeant Jones were quiet again.
“I’m beginning to doubt the sanity of this mission,” Del said.
Jo looked down at the ground for a moment then said, “I think it’s all the more important that we do it. If they are out collecting people, then the next mission could be our folks.”
Del said, “You do have a point.”
“Well Jones, do you think we can take out the helicopters?” Jo asked again.
“That’s a tall order,” Jones replied, while he focused in on the helicopters at the far end of the complex. One was in full view, but he could only see the tail of the second one. The first one was definitely a new arrival from the Wright-Patterson base, which Jones found curious, but he attributed it to a reaction to the rebellion that he had been a part of.
He continued his assessment. “There’s nothing but a big ass open field behind them, so there is no sneaking up on them. I can’t see all of what’s out there, but with the increase in force here, there’s got to be guards out there.”
“But why more men?” Jo asked.
“I’m not sure,” he responded. “They are probably a part of the reinforcements that were called in when we did what we did. Maybe they stayed to chase us down. I can tell you they have almost no one on guard duty, which is strange. They didn’t expect us or anyone to come after them. The ones watching are probably there to look out for zombies.”
