"No," I said, "On the news they were saying that a lot of the southern states were without power.”
"How would they know?" she said. "Everybody down here is sick, besides I don't think that will affect the internet."
I shrugged. I didn't know. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try. Except...
"That generator makes a lot of noise. How do we run it without everybody in Grace County showing up on our doorstep?"
CHAPTER 12
We had to figure out how to run the generator without attracting attention. The ideal situation would be to put it underground to deaden the noise, but Blaine and Betsy didn't have a basement or root cellar. Even if they did, we would have to be in a different location because of the gas fumes and carbon monoxide.
We considered running it in the workshop while we were in the house, but even then it might be heard and alert everyone to our location. Thus far, we'd been ignored, but I feared eventually we'd be detected by someone, healthy or infected, if for no other reason, because of the smoke from our fires.
The generator's previous owners had left it outside like they were supposed to, but they wound up dead from something far worse than fumes.
"Why don't we forget the generator," Jen said, "If you have enough charge on your battery, we could drive around--maybe find a signal."
"Those modems and routers need electricity, though."
"I wonder how the cell towers are doing."
"Neither of us have phones, so--"
"There are lots of people out there not using their phones," she said. "We can just search houses until we find one."
"That might involve coming in contact with them, and I'd like to avoid that as much as we can."
"How about this," Jen said, "We put the generator in the back of the truck and run the cord into the house. One of us sits in the truck with it running while the other is inside logged on and getting news. If they show up, the one in the truck just drives away, but slow enough to lead them away with them. Once they've been led far enough away, just speed up, circle around and come back home."
"That's a bad idea--"
"Kiss my ass. I'm the only one thinking here."
"No," I said raising my hand, "No, it really is a bad idea, but I think you are on the right track with moving it. We should just take it somewhere else, away from here, where making noise wouldn't matter. All we want to do is get news. Eventually we might need to use it to pump some fresh water, but if we can find bottled water--"
"So we just need a place that has an internet connection and a basement," she said.
"Yes or an easy escape. I'm thinking the museum."
"Where you worked? But that's in town...."
"We were going to have to go into Clayfield for water and other supplies eventually anyway," I said.
"Why? The whole countryside is full of unoccupied houses loaded with supplies. There must be houses out here with internet connections and basements or easy escapes."
"But going to the museum would save us from running into situations like we did yesterday where we don't know if we'll find what we're looking for. There is no need to risk it for an uncertainty."
"It's all uncertain, now," she said. "I thought you wanted to avoid the sick people. This is going to put us in a larger population of them."
"There shouldn't be anyone at all in the museum. If we pull right up to the door, we can run in and lock up. The place is solid. Plus, the building is large enough and the doors are spaced far enough apart, that if we distract them on one side of the building, we can get out on the other side."
"This sounds like a pain in the ass," she said. "I went out by myself and got all this good stuff without getting too close to anyone. I say we stay in this area and try to find a charged phone and access the internet that way."
"We're also out of drinking water," I said. "The city water system might still be working, or we might need to go into some of the stores and get bottled water. We'll have to go into town for that anyway, at least until I figure out how to get water from that well out there without so much noise."
"So we're breaking into stores now?" she said.
"I know," I said. "I sound like a hypocrite, but we need water--"
"I'm just giving you a hard time. In fact, now that you mention it, we might need to go to the county line and stock up on booze."
We got to work on our plan.
First, we removed the back seats from Betsy's minivan. The generator would go in there. Our thinking was that if we ran the generator from the van, no one could get to it to tamper with it or damage it.
We filled the generator from Blaine's lawnmower gas can then plugged in the long orange extension cord. Once the generator was inside the van, I cracked the back windows. Then I fed a little of the extension cord out of the one on the passenger side so we could access it quickly.
Next, we loaded the guns. The shotgun and shells Jen brought back from the Kaler house were 12 gauge. Her gun was a 20 gauge, so we were still out of ammunition for that weapon. The other one she brought back fired .22 long rifle--not a powerful gun, but it was better than the sticks I had been using. I really didn't want to use the guns at all, but we needed to keep the infected at a distance.
I took the .22, and one of the partial bottles of alcohol--about three fingers worth of Captain Morgan. Jen took my laptop, the shotgun, all of our empty water containers in a garbage bag, a box of ammunition for each of us, and the Southern Comfort--still 3/4 full.
I drove the minivan, and Jen followed behind me in the pickup. I kept glancing back at her in the mirror. She had a red bandana tied around her nose and mouth and she looked like a gangsta or maybe a bandit from one of those old westerns. I could see the shotgun propped up in the seat beside her. I was so relieved to have her back. I couldn't say if it was her that I was happy to have around or if I was just glad I wasn't alone.
I adjusted my own mask. I still didn't know if the masks worked, but we could find out about that when we got online at the museum. It would be good if we could find out about the necessary amount of alcohol. Hopefully we wouldn't need to get drunk every time we had an interaction with the infected.
Even though it was a longer route to the museum, I took Bragusberg Road again. Gala Road would have taken us to Clayfield, too, but I didn't know if we'd encounter any wrecked or abandoned cars that way that would block our path. Our last drive down Bragusberg Road had been clear, and I didn't want to stop until we got to the museum.
I took it slow. I wanted to check out the houses on our way into town. The infected were out, and there were a lot of them. I made a mental note of every house where I saw them. It didn't mean those houses were abandoned, but it was a good (bad) sign.
The disease seemed to affect them in different ways. Some of the people were quite spry but others were almost catatonic. I noticed a few with bad injuries, but they didn't act bothered by them.
I would see them in yards and fields. Some would run out to the road as we passed and chase us. At one point, we had a small crowd behind us, like we were the press vehicles in a televised marathon. Jen was getting nervous about it. A couple of times it looked like one of our pursuers almost caught up to her, but I don't think there was any real danger of that. We were going slowly, but fast enough to stay ahead of them.
When we got on an open, straight stretch of road, she sped up and pulled alongside me on my left. She couldn't roll her passenger side window down because it was the manual kind of window, so instead of yelling at me, she gave me a dirty look, flipped me the bird and motioned for me to get a move on. I grinned as she dropped back behind me. After that, we drove 60 mph until we got in the city limits and left the crowd of infected in the road between two cornfields.
CHAPTER 13
There was a lot of smoke over Clayfield. It looked like fires were still burning on the west side of town. My house was out that way, and I was curious whether it was still standing. I would check on it later, but at that time, we needed to
get into the museum without attracting too much attention. It didn't look like that was going to be possible.
As Bragusberg Road enters the city limits, it is lined with large trees and old, but restored, Victorian and Shingle Style houses. I could see people out on the front lawns of some of the homes. They were interested in us, but only a few followed. One particular blue house was surrounded on all sides by at least a hundred people. Most stood, staring up at the second floor, but there were some that were trying, and failing, to climb up the side.
Bragusberg Road ended, and I took a right onto 6th street, headed north. As I approached the court square, my stomach knotted up.
They were everywhere. The only other time of year I saw so many people in the streets was in October during the town's Pumpkin Festival.
The south side of the square was so thick with people, it would be impassable. I looked in the mirror at Jen to make sure she was doing okay. I didn't see anyone near us at the moment, so I slowed and stopped when I got within a half a block from the intersection with Water Street; that put me a block and a half from the crowd. I wanted to watch them a little first, before we took a detour around them.
Just like at the blue house, there were some that just stood and stared. Their interest was directed to one of the buildings on the back side of the courthouse. There were others that were very active. They behaved much like wild animals--chasing, clawing and biting each other. A dark-haired woman ran out of the crowd, dressed only in a pink sweater and one gray sock. Her left knee was bloody. A man ran out after her, tackled her and pushed her face to the pavement. He forced her legs open.
I'd seen enough.
I pulled down Water Street and planned to circle around the old, and now defunct, Barret Clothing Mill up 5th Street, away from the crowd.
When I looked in my mirror, the red and white pickup shot past, continuing toward the court square.
“Dammit, Jen! What are you doing?"
I slammed on the brakes, and put the minivan in reverse, and backed out into the intersection. Everybody looked at us, even the slow ones. A few had already started toward us. Jen ran the pickup over the curb and skidded to a stop on the sidewalk almost to the corner, opposite the crowd. I turned to follow her.
Her door opened.
"No, Jen," I whispered. "Oh, no no no...."
She stepped out in the street and pulled the shotgun to her shoulder. The end of the weapon bounced up with the recoil, and the side of the rapist's head blew apart. There was a collective gasp and the entire crowd jerked in unison at the sound of the gun, paused, and then charged her en masse. Their snarls and whines all together went up like a roar. She slipped back into the truck. The backup lights came on when she put the truck in reverse, and then the beasts engulfed her. There were so many, I couldn't even see the truck anymore.
I got on my horn. A few of them looked up, they didn't leave the pickup. I didn't want her to panic and do something stupid like shoot at them through the glass.
"Son of a bitch!"
I pulled the minivan around so I was broadside to them and grabbed the rifle. I let down the window and aimed at a head in the crowd near where the truck was buried. I couldn't pull the trigger. I took a deep breath and pointed at the knee of one on the perimeter. I squeezed.
The sound was nothing like the shotgun. It was more like a crack!
A man buckled and fell to the ground, but the crowd still didn't move toward me.
The rifle was a semi-automatic. I didn't have to do anything but pull the trigger. I squeezed it again. A woman arched over grabbing her side near her kidney and stumbled away from the crowd. I fired three times in a row, not aiming. I saw two people drop. It became easier when I didn't think about it.
I looked to my right. I had new group headed my way from the south.
Two more shots, and the mob finally became interested in me. They cleared up for her in front first, and when I saw her truck lurch forward, then pull away across a corner lot and down South Street, I mashed the gas and headed down Water Street. We were running parallel to each other, and we both had a group chasing us. We crossed over 5th simultaneously a block apart and sped down to the next cross street, which was 2nd. By then, the crowd was far enough behind us not to matter. She stopped at the intersection and waited for me to turn north and pull back in front of her. When I got to the intersection of South and 2nd where she sat idling, I stopped in front of her, perpendicular to her vehicle.
I glared at her. Her eyes narrowed. This time, I flipped her the bird, and motioned for her to get a move on, then pulled away.
Our original route changed, but our plan did not. I was pissed about what Jen had done--unnecessarily putting us in danger like that--but I hoped that some good would come of it, and the noise of the gunfire and horn would draw people away from the museum.
I took a left onto Broadway, then a right onto 5th. I had to drive up on the sidewalk, because this is where the head-on collision had taken place. This was also where I wrecked my car. The cars were all still there, but not the bodies. The old man I hit with my car might have lived, but there was no way the man in the other wreck survived. They were both gone. There must have been other healthy people out disposing of bodies.
I escorted Jen to the front of the museum. She pulled in close with the passenger side of the pickup near the front door. She got out, pulled out the garbage bag of stuff and the shotgun, and ran inside. I sat in the van and watched to make sure she was in, and then I pulled the van to the side of the building on North Street underneath a window. I got the passenger side in as close to the building as I could; I even scraped off the side mirror in the process.
When I got out, I could see Jen inside at the window breaking out a pane of glass. I fed her the extension cord, and then I ran around and got back into the van. Stepping into the back, I started up the generator. Then, I grabbed the rifle and the Captain Morgan, hopped out, and locked the doors. The sound of the generator was noticeable inside the van, but not as loud as I thought it would be.
I was about to run to the front door, when I noticed that the corpse of the woman I'd hit with my car wasn't in the street anymore. Someone was definitely removing the bodies. It made me wonder if we still had a city government, or if it was a group of regular citizens.
I didn't have time to think about it right then. I went around to the front of the building. Across and up the street, the delivery van was on its side at the newspaper office. In the museum lot, the little red truck was resting on the splintered sign. It was so quiet and still and unnerving. I went inside, relieved we were able to get in so quickly and without any interference. I locked the front door and looked around.
The place was as I'd left it. No one had been in. I walked through the small gift shop and permanent collection toward my office. The extension cord was hanging down the side of the wall below the window in the giftshop.
"Jen?"
No answer.
She was in the office sitting in my chair.
"C'mon, Jen, we need--"
She held up a hand. She was on my office phone. Her red bandana was pulled down around her neck like a kerchief. I pulled my own mask down.
"We need to--"
"Shhh," she said.
I left her to her call, grabbed the end of the orange cord, and tugged it through the broken window and into the office.
"It's just ringing," she said.
"Who are you--"
"Shhh."
The office computer equipment and modem were plugged into a power strip. I unplugged it from the wall and plugged it into the orange cord. The light on the modem came on.
Jen hung up.
"I was checking on my brother," she said. "He lives near Kansas City. Nobody answered."
I went straight to the phone and dialed my mom. I listened to it ring and watched Jen turn on the computer.
"What the hell were you thinking back there?" I said.
"I won't put up with that shit," she said,
not looking at me.
"You could have gotten both of us killed.
"You didn't have to stay."
"You know, if what they say is true, and they're just running on base instincts, then we're going to see a lot more of that," I said.
"Then you're going to see a lot more killing," she said.
The phone rang almost twenty times, so I hung up.
"It's working," she said. "I'm online.”
I got out my laptop and plugged into the power strip and one of the other ports on the modem.
"I'm on CNN’s website," she said. "No new stories there since yesterday. The last story was posted yesterday morning at 10 a.m. It is about a state of emergency in Minneapolis."
She looked up, and then to me, "Which side of the Mississippi River is Minneapolis?"
"The wrong side, I think. Any mention of St. Louis? My mom lives there."
She shook her head.
I got online, too, and checked my emails. There was nothing there from my mom.
"Check Facebook," Jen said. "Check all the social sites. That's where we'll find out what is happening."
There were no new posts on any of those sites. The only notification I had was Jen's reply to me two nights before. I checked Blaine and Betsy's profiles, but they were unchanged.
Frustrated, I got up. I needed to take a look at the minivan, anyway. I peered out the window. I could hear the generator, but it was muffled. Thus far, we'd not attracted any attention.
"What time is it?" I called out.
"Almost three," Jen said.
The King of Clayfield - 01 Page 8
