“I don’t suppose you know what’s going on . . . I mean what’s really going on and causing all of this.” His voice was dry and flat as he stood beside me and looked at the carnage in the subterranean shelter.
I pointed the barrel of the .22 toward a blood covered baseball hat partway down the stairs. “A couple of days ago, the kid that was wearing that hat asked me the same question.”
“What was your answer to him?”
“The truth. I don’t have a clue.”
“Some people are saying it was a biological weapon in our food. I’ve also heard about polluted water, and a terrorist attack on our blood supply . . . hell, a lady at the last convenience store that I was able to buy food at was screaming to anybody that would listen about how it all got started from contaminated toothpaste.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?” I asked him.
“What?”
“If the world’s supply of toothpaste is the source of this plague, then all you rednecks in North Carolina will probably be safe.”
The look on his face moved rapidly from comprehension to amusement, and then he cracked into a wide grin and spit a stream of tobacco toward my feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
We turned and trotted back to the boat, and a few minutes later we were motoring downstream. It took us about twenty minutes to cover the three miles of gently curving creek and make our way back to Silver Lake, and once there we switched the outboards on the bass boats. Supplies were moved over, and we arranged ourselves with Shawn and Michelle in the smaller lead boat, and Mack, Faith, Lynn and I right behind them in the larger boat. Our trip upstream was uneventful, including the stop to pick up the hidden gas can and truck key, and a little less than an hour after we started, our two boat wagon train pulled in behind Tater’s house. A thin wisp of wood smoke drifted upwards from the chimney, and Michelle hopped lightly to the bank and stood guard as Shawn and I pulled the boats partway out of the water.
“Tater’s coming,” Michelle said as she leaned her head toward the skinny form walking around the corner of the house and heading our way.
I helped the passengers off of my boat, and then swiveled towards the grizzled face that was now standing a few feet away. “Morning,” I said to him.
“Back at you. It looks like you were fruitful and multiplied.”
“Well, we had some free time, so we wandered around and picked up a few hitchhikers.”
“I can see that.”
I pointed towards the smoke coming from the chimney. “It looks like your stove is still fired up and working.”
He nodded and chewed on his lips slowly, like he was teething over the missing piece of fresh hay that should have been dangling there. “Yup, she’s purring like a kitten. Of course, now that you’re back, I was wondering if you can help me with another problem that has recently presented itself.”
I sighed deeply at his words, and my peripheral vision caught Michelle silently shaking her head and tapping at her watch. “What problem are you talking about?” I asked. Michelle dropped her face into her hands at my words, slowly shaking her head in exasperation.
“I put out a pair of traps in a beaver run at the creek yesterday, and both of them scored. So I was wondering if your crew would mind helping an old feller eat some of it up before it goes bad.”
Michelle’s expression did a reverse course, and both of her thumbs turned skyward as Shawn’s southern drawl joined the fray. “Oh hell yeah . . . anything but fish.”
The inside of the old farmhouse bloomed with a mixture of wood smoke and frying meat—both of them intensified by the air temperature that was pushing into the mid eighties. In less than a dozen steps our jackets were piled on the floor, and the odors of our sweat stained clothing and long unwashed bodies filtered through into our rapidly thawing noses. Mia was dipping ragged slices of beaver into a bowl of yellow cornmeal, and then dropping them into a Dutch oven half full of simmering, popping vegetable oil. When they crisped to a golden brown just a few minutes later, she scooped them out with a pair of tongs and set them to drain on a wire rack next to the big wood stove.
“All I got to drink is water. It’s still pretty toasty from where I boiled it, so we’ll have to wait a bit before we knock it back,” Tater offered.
“Maybe not,” I said, “do you have any clean containers?”
He nodded. “I’ve got three of them five gallon buckets cleaned up to hold water, but so far we’ve been using it up as soon as we boil it, so they’re all empty.”
“Give me one, and I’ll use my filter to fill it.”
Tater disappeared into another room for a moment, and then returned with a plastic, five gallon bucket that still bore the label of the chocolate frosting it had formally contained. I put my jacket on and then took the handle from his hand. “Be back in a minute.”
Michelle stood and grabbed her AR. “I’ll go with you.” She swiveled to face Tater and Mia. “Go ahead and start without us . . . eat while it’s warm.”
“This ain’t for us, young lady. Ever since you left we’ve been practically gagging ourselves on these little water cows, and dang if I’m not plum stuffed to the gills. I just didn’t want them to go to waste, and your crew showed up at the right time.” He turned towards Shawn and Lynn. “Dig in.”
The aroma drifting up from the fried mountain of North America’s largest rodent almost physically restrained me. It took Michelle’s nudging elbow to get me moving. I slung the .22 over my shoulder and let her lead me out the door.
At the creek I began filling the bucket with filtered water as Michelle watched the area for danger. The flow rate from the small hand pump filter was about one liter per minute, so it was going to take almost twenty minutes to fill the bucket. Midway through the task, Michelle leaned down next to me and stopped my hands. Placing both of her own hands on the sides of my face, she tilted my lips to hers and kissed me—gently at first, and then harder as her fingers slid around to the back of my head. When she started to pull away a minute later, I reached around and hugged her tight against me, opting for another moment lost in the illusion that the world was still sane.
“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping me safe from danger while I get water?” I asked mischievously.
“The worst danger you’ll ever face is if you decide to leave me again, because I think I’ll just shoot you myself instead of going through the worry about whether you’re coming back or not.”
“I missed you too,” I smiled as I reached down into the grass near the creek and plucked an early dandelion, lifting it towards her nose and her awaiting hand, “but I prefer to say it with flowers instead of threatening you with a bullet in the back.”
She returned my smile and we went to kiss again, but our timing was off and we bonked heads like awkward kids at their first prom. When our laughter finally stopped, I steadied her head in my hands and leaned forward. This time, we were right on target.
Chapter 78
The glowing green letters on the digital display of my truck’s dashboard indicated 1:31 PM, and for the hundredth time in the last hour, I wished that I would have bought the extended cab version of my pickup. Shawn and I were sitting in the bed of the truck, and Faith was rolling around between our feet encapsulated in not one, but two of the pickle bags. Her giggles as she steamrolled back and forth made my own heart lighter, and I tried to focus on the road ahead as we pulled out of the farmhouse driveway. Tater, Mia, and her dark haired children were waving goodbye to us from the front porch. We returned their wave as all six tires from the truck and boat trailer bounced through another set of potholes in the gravel drive.
“Tell Michelle to turn around and go back,” Shawn said, “I think there’s only one pothole left that she didn’t hit.”
I chuckled and waved one final time as we accelerated down the country road. My belly wasn’t stuffed full, but it was pleasantly occupied by about eight chicken strip-sized portions of fried beaver. Mia had sprinkled some
type of red powder over the food, and it gave the chunks of meat a sweet, peppery taste that gradually magnified in heat until the cumulative effects began to hit around strip five. The bright side is that I drank a lot of water after my meal. We still had five cans of unopened ravioli, and we left it for them along with the small bass boat. The fuel gauge on my truck was showing over three quarters of a tank, so we emptied our spare gas cans into Tater’s vehicle. The stash that I had buried in the barn was dug up, and as a final token of goodwill, Shawn, Mack, and I took turns with the filter and topped off all three of Tater’s water buckets. When we were finally loaded and ready to go, Lynn and Mack rode up front with Michelle, and Shawn and I stayed in the back and froze our tails off. We followed the same route on our return. Aside from the distant sighting of a large swarm of ghouls, our trip back was uneventful. At least until we closed in on the marina. From 500 yards out, the sound of rifle fire ramped up over the wind rushing past my ears, and I knocked on the roof of the cab. Michelle dropped her speed as we cut the distance in half, slowing even further as I began to pull up my pair of binoculars. The cold chills that gripped at my insides had nothing to do with the temperature, and as the distant scene began to come into focus, bullets began cracking through the air all around us.
Chapter 79
The M35 bounced twice after the jack’s hydraulic release was turned, and the big vehicle—now fully roadworthy—idled roughly in apparent impatience as the camouflaged figures stowed the toolkit that had been recovered from the tow truck. When it was secured, they jockeyed the transport into position and began winching.
Estes wiped a combination of dark grease, silver anti-seize compound, and multicolored—but mostly black—road grime from his hands. The smudges that transferred to his uniform quickly became lost in the kaleidoscope of stains already present; stains that included the blood of four more people that had fallen under his watch. Their stop at the intersection had been a necessary, but costly setback, and Estes frowned as his gaze lingered on the line of bodies next to the Humvee. The only way forward or through the logjam of vehicles had required the use of the winch on the M35, but the blown front tire needed replaced before that could happen. Unfortunately, with the jack missing from the transport, they had to deal with a pack of infected that were ambling through the snarl of stopped vehicles. What started off with Sergeant Keene operating as a sniper quickly degenerated into a full scale fight for their lives as several dozen more of the gray people materialized from the wreckage. By the time it was over, Corporal Matthew “Bones” Henry, and PFC Dennis Spurlock—both members of Alpha squad—had lost their lives. Airman Eli Horton, and the civilian contractor Nora Veil had also been killed in the attack. If that wasn’t bad enough, the sergeant from the medical team, Rita Thorn, had broken her arm trying to escape the grasping claws of one of the red-eyed monsters, and Specialist Glenn Perkins had torn a huge gash in his forearm on a jagged shard of metal while trying to pull PFC Spurlock away from a pair of infected. Perkins’ normally dark Mediterranean skin tone was pale by the time they had gotten the bleeding stopped. Since then, they had worked quickly to winch a path deep enough to allow them to turn on the highway that branched to the left. It was almost clear, and only one more vehicle—maybe two at the most—would need to be pulled away.
“Keene, status update,” Estes called.
The scrappy attitude and Brooklyn laced accent of Sergeant Alex Keene came back immediately. “The situation sucks, and it’s going to suck even more really soon if we don’t get the hell out of here.”
“How many . . . and how long?” Estes sighed.
“I’ve got a group of four moving through the line of traffic and heading our way. ETA at their current speed is probably three minutes. There’s another group—larger—about two minutes behind them.”
“Give us a two minute warning, and then meet me at the Humvee.”
“Roger that.”
Estes turned to face Ross Morgan and Calvin Rook, the two remaining privates from Alpha squad. “Morgan, rewind the winch and get everybody loaded in the A3 right now . . . we’ve got incoming. Rook, you’re driving.”
PFC Morgan took off on task with the speed born of desperation, but Rook paused and looked at the narrow path they had created.
“We’ve still got two more cars to pull out of the way, captain.”
“What’s the matter Rook . . . you never played bumper cars before?” Estes said.
The private grinned and nodded. “Yes sir!”
“You’re leading the way, Sergeant Keene and I will follow in the Hummer. We’ve got a grand total of three rounds of ammunition, so don’t lead us into a firefight, got it?”
Rook’s affirmative salute coincided with the sergeant’s warning, and Estes slapped Rook on the back. “Let’s go Calvin.”
The winch finished spooling, and Estes trotted over to the Humvee and hopped in the driver’s seat. Crammed would be a better word for it, and he mentally cursed the designers that didn’t take into account anything but compact body frames. Behind him, Specialist Oakley coughed lightly.
“Hold on Oakley,” Estes muttered, “we’re getting ready to move out, but there might be a few bumps on the way.”
“OK.”
Keene’s wiry form vaulted around the bed of a stalled pickup before hood sliding across an old Buick. He landed next to the Hummer, and in the space of two seconds, slid through the doorless entry of the vehicle and shifted sideways, aiming his rifle toward the logjam of vehicles.
“Now would be a good time to leave, captain.”
Estes picked up the microphone. “Make a hole Calvin . . . go-go-go!”
The M35 idled up and lumbered ahead, gaining momentum with each second until it crashed into the quarter panel of the blue Ford sedan, crumpling the metal and screeching it forward against the front bumper of an ivory colored work van stenciled on the sides with a mosaic of scrolling flowers. The low gear ratio of the M35’s transmission kept churning the wheels, and with the squeal of tires and the shriek of tearing metal, the last two vehicles preventing their escape were shoved aside. Rook turned the big transport hard left onto the highway, and Estes followed in the Humvee just a few yards behind. When they had cleared the wreckage, Estes picked up the microphone again.
“Calvin, give me about a mile of clearance from the intersection, and then if everything looks good, pull over and we’ll reassess.”
"10-4."
"Captain," Oakley's voice carried over the rumble of the Hummer’s diesel engine, "when we stop up ahead, do you mind if I ride in the transport?"
"What's the matter Oakley," Sergeant Keene puffed out after a wink towards Estes, "don't you like the company?"
"The company is fine, but why does it stink so bad in here? It smells like a pile of moldy canvas in a locker room full of jock straps.”
Keene and Estes traded knowing smiles. The “funk” smell was widely believed to be a factory installed extra in every Humvee ever made, and—like the sulfur and rotten egg smell of the mercaptan that was added to natural gas for its distinctive odor—once exposed, you would never forget it.
“What are you talking about Oakley? I don’t smell nothing,” Keene said.
“Me neither,” Estes added, “maybe it’s you.”
Chapter 80
“Do you think the information he gave you is accurate?” Doc Collins asked.
Andy nodded. “Yeah, I can pretty much guarantee that he wasn’t holding anything back, at least anything that he was aware of.”
“That he was aware of?” Bucky’s gravelly voice questioned.
“Well, what I’m trying to say is that I’m pretty sure that ‘we’ know what ‘he’ knew, but with that comes the understanding that he might not be up to speed on the whole plan. Although, I will add that he was pretty thorough in his explanation.”
Silence descended across the room, with only the occasional sputter or pop from the wood burning stove breaking through. Rebecca finally dissolved the
stillness by rehashing a similar question to the one that started the meeting almost an hour ago. “I was checking on Francis when you came back from talking to that guy, so can you tell me what he said?”
Andy picked up the radio. “Mr. Lee, you already heard the situation, correct?”
“Yeah, Scott and I know what’s going on.”
“OK, I’m gonna turn the radio off of monitor. That’ll make it nice and quiet on your end. Remember . . . observe and report only. Don’t start a war. Don’t even fire unless your life is on the line.”
“Got it,” Mr. Lee replied.
Calloused fingers held down a button and the radio chirped, changing it from monitor to standby mode.
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 65
