by Ryan, L. T.
She’d built her own vision of utopia. The reality of the world around her couldn’t penetrate the protective bubble surrounding the farm. He imagined Addison had spent a lot of time there as a child, and possibly in her teens. He had to help her face reality.
“And what if they’re dead?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped after drawing in a sharp breath.
“What if the farm’s overrun? The gas looted? The cattle, goats, sheep, and chickens slaughtered? And what if it wasn’t only survivors that did it?”
The swell in her eyes returned, this time cresting past her lower eyelids.
“Look around at what we’ve seen. The scene you escaped from, both in town and at that camp. If your grandparents had a good thing going, chances are someone else knew about it. And even if those people didn’t make it, someone did. And we have to accept the realization that it could have been a group of afflicted that turned up.”
“No,” she said softly. “That didn’t happen.”
“Knowing what we know about the state of the country, chances are it did happen. We’re the outliers here, Addie. If you survived, then most likely your family didn’t.”
“I have to find out. Please, take me there so I can know for sure.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently squeezed. “If we go, and things are as I expect them to be, we’ll never make it to Charleston in the ATV. We won’t get far walking. The longer we’re in an area, the greater the chance those things find us. Once they do, we won’t get away from them on foot.”
Tears rolled off her cheeks. She refused to make eye contact.
Sean said, “Look, I can’t stop you if you decide to go. I’ll give you some gear and that’ll be it. But I think it’s a better idea for us to stick together and complete this journey. Once we reach Charleston, we should be able to refuel the ATV and restock and prepare for another trip. We’ll see about getting you to their farm then.”
“Promise?”
Sean knew a promise in this new world meant nothing. They could all die in an hour, ripped apart by a pack of frenzied afflicted. Back-stabbed and betrayed by their fellow man. He nodded anyway. Her eyes flitted left and right. He embraced the woman, pulling her body tight to his.
“Come on,” he said. They walked to the ATV and both climbed in the front seat. “Why don’t you show me on the GPS where they live? That way I can start thinking about the best way to get there from Charleston.”
He waited while she traced the highway and country roads, then he marked the location, both on the GPS and mentally.
“Now to find a hospital.”
Chapter 11
The square room smelled like left-sock soup. There were enough windows to fill the space with natural light. Phil figured they kept those windows shut to keep the smell in, ‘cause whatever was in those bowls set on every table smelled enough like death that the afflicted would swarm once they caught wind of the aroma.
Phil studied the dozen or so faces staring back at him. He failed to recognize any of them. The guy who’d met them at the gate, Robert he’d said, led them to the center of the compound. Phil was impressed with how well they’d fortified the place in the months since he’d last visited. It might manage to withstand an attack from a small group of those afflicted.
Maybe not from a damn horde of them like his camp had faced earlier that morning.
Ralph tapped nervously on the mission style table. His head jerked left to right, making his distrust a tad too obvious. Phil nudged his friend with his knee a couple times then gestured for him to settle down. He knew Ralph had cause to worry. His wife and kid were supposed to be here, and as of yet, they hadn’t appeared.
“Give it time,” Phil whispered.
He heard Derrick groan from the other room. When they’d entered the house, a plain looking woman who kept her silver hair in a loose bun rose and met them a couple feet from the door. She inspected Derrick’s arm and without so much as a word of explanation led him through the maze of tables to an adjoining room. The door was cracked and Phil saw her standing next to his son one moment, then out of view the next. Every time she returned Derrick made some kind of noise. Most of them indicating pain.
Several minutes went by with no updates. Phil kept his mind occupied by counting the seconds between the beads of sweat that slid down his nose and plunged to the table. He couldn’t help but think of how much time they were wasting. How much further away Sean Ryder traveled every minute they sat idle.
But Ralph needed to see his family.
And Derrick needed medical attention.
And Phil needed to see that other survivors had made it.
And all three could use food and sleep.
A shower wouldn’t hurt.
He chuckled at the thought, wondering how he could smell the food over body odor.
The back door swung open on rusty hinges and two heavyset men stepped inside. The dozen or so people in the room paid no attention despite the heavy footfalls created by their hiking boots. The people slopped up their soup, or whatever it was, with hunks of bread and spoke quietly to the people at their table in between bites.
The big guys parted and a familiar face appeared.
“Barton,” Phil said.
Long hairs draped over the guy’s upper lip and covered his top teeth as he smiled. Barton crossed the room, nodding at folks eating their lunch, squeezing a couple shoulders. He stopped in front of the table. “Phil, good to see you.”
Phil extended his hand.
Barton took it and his smile faded. “Just the two of you?”
Phil looked past the man and gestured. “My son is in the…infirmary, I suppose.”
“Is it bad?”
“Flesh wound.”
“From one of those things?” Barton’s eyes narrowed and he took a step back while his hand went to his holstered pistol.
Phil resisted the urge to look away, to glance at Ralph for assurance. How had Derrick sustained the injury? “He lost his grip climbing up the cliff. His arm slowed his fall, but resulted in a nasty gash.” He paused and studied Barton’s expression, which hadn’t changed. “I was actually hoping he could stay here for a while.”
Barton took a moment to answer. “Sure. We’ll do what we can for him. Just gotta promise he’ll pitch in around here. He won’t get special treatment ‘cause he’s your son.”
“Of course.”
“Barton,” Ralph said. “My family. Where are they?”
Barton exhaled hard through his nose. His eyes retreated to slits.
“My ex-wife was supposed to come with the two boys.”
Barton clasped his hands together and looked around the room. “Lots of folks made it here. Many I ain’t never seen before. But if they was able-bodied, I wasn’t going to turn them down. So, as it’s been, I haven’t had a chance to really get to know everybody. You can look around if you’d like. Ask around. Show a picture if you got it.”
Ralph reached into his pocket and pulled out a ragged picture with worn edges and lines running through the center. Phil wondered how many times a day the guy pulled the photo out to stare at the images of his boys. Did hope build or fade that he’d see them again with each reach into his pocket and with every new fold?
“Hmm.” Barton took it and gestured toward another guy. The man set his bread down and rose. Halfway across the room, he looked back, making sure no one had moved in on his food. “Jim, you seen these folks?”
The guy shook his head. A second later, he reached for picture and said, “Wait, yeah, I remember the woman. God, she was upset. Stood there at the gate crying.” He looked at the men seated on the other side of the table and nodded while speaking. “She was sick, you see. Refused to leave her babies, who’d contracted it too. We had to… shit, I hate to say it, but we had to ease her transition.”
Phil glanced at Ralph. The man’s face had turned beat red. The chair snapped back and broke a window pane. Ralph lunged forward. H
e made it halfway across the table by the time Phil managed to get a hand on him.
Barton threw an arm in front of Jim, forming a wedge between Ralph and Jim. Chairs scraped the hardwood floor as people rose, pulling out their pistols or hunting knives and forming a barrier that blocked Phil and Ralph in.
“What the hell you doing, son?” Barton yelled. “Goddamn, I’m sorry about your wife, but we had to do what had to be done. Imagine if we let that damn woman in here what could have happened? Have you seen what those things are capable of?”
Ralph continued to fight against Phil. He strained and spat. “Ex-wife.” Phil slammed the guy against the back wall and pressed his forearm into Ralph’s chest. Ralph seemed to relax. The color drained from his face and his muscles went slack. “And even if she wasn’t sick, you probably did the world a favor.” The guy went limp and dropped to the floor. He looked up at Phil. Tears slipped down his cheeks, cutting through two weeks’ worth of grime. “My boys, ah God, my boys.”
Phil imagined everyone in the room had lost someone, making it both possible to feel for the guy for his loss, and hate him for crying about it. He wanted to drag him by the hair and tell him to man up.
The front door opened and a man Phil recognized entered. His name was Justin. He glanced at Phil on his way to Barton. They spoke in hushed tones.
“One truck finally made it back,” Justin said.
“What about the rest?” Barton steadied himself on a chair back.
Justin wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head. “Fuckers ambushed them. It was an all out assault from the front and side of the house. Killed eight men. You hear me? Eight. Goddamn, we can’t eat that kind of loss.”
Phil looked down at Ralph to make sure the guy was okay. He stepped between two tables to get to Barton. “What’s this about?”
“Walk with me,” Barton said.
Phil pulled Ralph off the floor and made the man accompany him outside with Barton and Justin. Tension filled the room. He half-expected a bullet in the back as he turned to leave.
Outside, Barton said, “We’ve been keeping the area cleansed. No one new allowed. Understand?”
Phil nodded, said nothing. He had considered taking a similar stand, but his numbers were not strong enough to afford the potential loss. It had to be a sure thing, like Ryder’s compound, for him to risk his people.
“Well our scout spied this family show up in an ATV,” Barton said. “They took shelter in the Barnswell’s place up on the hill.”
“This house,” Phil said. “About halfway between Danville and South Boston?”
Barton glanced over at Justin, who nodded. “Sounds right.”
“And it was an ATV?”
Justin nodded again.
“Come with us,” Phil said. He led them to where they’d parked and pointed to the GPS. Ralph took over and found the waypoint they’d set so they could search for clues that Ryder might have left behind.
“Yeah, that’s the exact spot,” Justin said. “You know those fuckers?”
“Did you get them?” Phil asked.
“Nah. They had to retreat and those bastards took off south through the woods. Said they tried to cut ‘em off, but they were smart enough to stay away from the road.”
Phil and Ralph shared a glance. Just how much to tell the men, Phil wondered. They’d suffered losses because of Sean Ryder, too. Hell, the two groups combined, Ryder was responsible reducing their numbers by half. Looking around the camp, Phil took notice of how many people milled around. Enough to create a small team to help track Ryder down.
“Pull it up, Ralph,” Phil said.
Ralph did as instructed and the four men huddled around the screen staring at a dot near Durham, a couple miles north of I-40.
“What’s that?” Barton asked.
“That’s the guy that killed your men,” Phil said.
“Son of a bitch. You serious?”
“I am.” Phil caught his gaze. “And he’s the same one that caused my camp to get massacred. Now how many men you think you can spare to help me catch the bastard?”
Barton’s face twisted into a smile. “As many as you need. And anything you need. We got trucks, gas, weapons, explosives. Only thing missing is a tank and a helicopter.”
“Very well.” He turned to Justin. “Pick your team. The most experienced men you can rustle together. This guy, I guess you can say he’s handicapped, but it don’t matter. He’s highly trained. And he has my daughter, so I need people who can handle themselves and hit a target. We leave in fifteen.”
“Let’s go prep a vehicle and arm you,” Barton said, pointing across camp.
“I’ll meet you over there in a second.” Phil waited until the man distanced himself. He turned to Ralph. “You don’t have to go. I understand if you don’t want to. I’ll consider it a favor if you stay and watch over Derrick.”
Ralph looked past Phil. The thousand yard stare. He was close to losing it. “I’m fucking going.”
Chapter 12
The loose sand swallowed Turk’s feet as he trudged toward the dunes. His calves and thighs burned with every step. The lower half of his body felt as though it was an anchor.
“Keep moving.” The guy in the black boots prodded Turk forward. He wasn’t stupid enough to touch Turk’s back with the muzzle. Did it even matter? In Turk’s present condition, he might not be able to take advantage of any mistakes the man made.
He’d try, though. Even if it meant death.
The dunes rose up like a sandy wall partially shielding houses from view. The sky darkened beyond. Clouds raced and swirled.
More people stepped out and blocked the path. There were two guys armed with assault rifles, and a young woman with a pistol. Every step Turk took forward, she took a matching one backward.
Are there more behind the dunes?
Turk scanned the top of the mounds. He shifted his gaze to the row of homes that ran the length of Sullivan’s Island. A mixture of modern overgrown vacation houses and older beach bungalows on stilts. Doors flapped open in the quickening breeze. Windows were smashed. Mangled and shredded bodies were strewn on wooden decks.
Turk reached the path between the dunes. The two men took position on either side of Turk. The woman held steadfast ten feet away. She scrutinized him through narrowed eyelids.
“Stop here,” the guy in the combat boots said.
The woman took a few steps forward. “Take off your shirt.”
“Fuck you,” Turk said.
“You can go back into the ocean, only this time with bound hands and a gunshot wound,” the guy behind him said, jabbing Turk in the kidney, careful to retreat before Turk could make a move.
Turk pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it halfway between him and the woman.
She gestured with her pistol. “Where’d you get those scratches on your side?”
“Running through the woods from some crazy ass rednecks.”
“Drop your pants.”
“You serious with this shit?”
“Just do it,” the guy behind him said.
“Christ.” Turk unbuttoned his pants. The damp fabric clung to his skin. He shook each leg until the pants fell around his ankles. He held his arms out to the side. “Happy?”
“Almost. Turn around.”
He took a deep breath while studying their faces. The guys looked scared, like they were going about this because they had no choice. Reminded him of the two idiots from the base. The woman appeared indifferent. She’d done this before, and she’d do it again as many times as necessary. Why? Turk only had guesses. If he didn’t do it right, or they didn’t like what they saw, they would shoot him and not care one way or another about it.
“Turn.” She twirled her index finger in a circle.
He shuffled in a half-circle, coming face to face with his original captor and getting a good look at his face for the first time. It was like looking at the woman dressed as a man. Take away her long hair and his stubble an
d they were the same person.
Twins.
“So you guys like to prowl the beach to harass survivors?” Turk said.
“No,” the guy said. “We figure you never know what kind of trash will wash up.”
The men behind Turk laughed.
“Shut up,” the woman said. “What are these scars from?”
“This and that,” Turk said. He’d decided to keep information about himself to a minimum until he knew more about the group’s intentions.
“Were you shot?”
“Maybe.”
“Shrapnel?”
“Exploding popcorn machine at the movie theater. Hot butter’s a bitch.”
The guy took a step back and hefted his rifle. He aimed at Turk’s mid-section. “That’s enough.”
“What do you guys want from me?” Turk bent over and pulled his pants up. He turned around. “I got swept out of the harbor by the current. No idea how long I spent out there. Took everything I had to get back to shore. And now the last thing I need is to be questioned by a bunch of new world commandos who don’t know the first thing about the weapons they’re holding.”
“What were you doing in the harbor?” she asked.
“Looking for anything to help,” he said. “What else?”
“Why were you near the jetty? Only thing close to that is the fort.”
Turk said nothing.
“You tried to approach the fort?” she asked. “Did you see anything? Are they still there?”
“Who?”
She held his gaze for a moment, then looked past him. “We’ve been out here too long. Let’s get him inside.”
Turk rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth and collected several of the loose grains of sand. He spat them to the side.
“Was who still there?” Turk said.
She turned his back on him and walked away.
Why had she buttoned up after mentioning the fort? Had the group come from there? Or were they repelled as well?
“Let’s move,” the guy behind him said.
The woman led the way to a sand covered boardwalk. Turk followed her. The two men with rifles remained a few steps behind him. One kept watch over Turk. The other watched the houses. Turk followed the man’s gaze, not confident that the guy was adept enough at spotting danger.
