The subdivision was a shorter walk than I thought, I told Kim about some of the places I had seen when I wandered around. I told her about the fight at Fort Du Chartes, and she gasped in the appropriate places.
The first house was a large one, and I wanted to try it, but Kim pointed to the one across the street that looked like it had a playset in the back yard. Where there were kids, there might be what we were looking for.
The area was quiet, and I didn’t see any sign of Tripper activity, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. I had the strange feeling I was being watched, but I couldn’t see where it might be coming from. I thought about a machine in the sky, but I couldn’t hear anything. I was carrying the wrong bow for that anyway. I had my recurve, not my compound.
Kim broke open the door to the garage and we went inside. There was one car in there and several kid’s toys like bikes and balls and such. Over on the wall, there was a bunch of shelves and there were some sleds. I grabbed the two sleds that were there that looked like big plates. The other two were just large strips of plastic that I didn’t think were going to work.
“Well, that’s half of it, anyway,” I said. “If we could find two more, we’d be in business.”
“Let’s keep looking. I don’t think our luck will repeat itself too soon,” Kim replied.
I was of the same mind, so we went back outside and I placed the sleds at the end of the driveway to pick up later when we left. We went to four other houses, and while we didn’t find any Trippers, I also couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. I looked at the windows of several houses, and tried to see if there was any movement at all, but there was nothing.
When we left the final house in a small circle of them, Kim pointed to the end of the driveway of the first house we had visited.
“Look!”
I followed her line of sight and saw that three more sleds just like the ones we had found were sitting on the edge of the driveway. Just to be safe, I nocked an arrow and Kim did the same. I led the way and saw that there were brush marks in the snow, indicating someone had also wiped out their tracks. They had done a better job than I had, and even I would have trouble tracing them back to where they had come from.
“Josh, look at this.” Kim pointed to the driveway of the house we found the sleds in. The snow had been brushed clean of footprints, but there was a message written in the snow:
If these are what you need, take them and go.
Please don’t kill us.
I pondered that last statement for a minute. I had the distinct feeling that if I tried to find whoever gave us these and left this note, I’d be dead very quickly. They had managed to figure out what we were looking for, come out and drop the sleds off, write a note, and remove their tracks. All without us even knowing they were here. That told me about a level of survival that even I hadn’t reached. Their defense wasn’t walls or bullets or arrows. Their defense and possibly their offense was invisibility.
They had done me a favor, so I was doing them one in return. Underneath their note, I wrote one of my own with my arrow.
If you see several men dressed alike, all carrying rifles, do not approach them. They are not from here and they mean to kill you.
Kim looked at my note and then at me. She didn’t say anything, she just gathered up two of the sleds and waited for me to get the other three. I put my arrow back in my quiver and hung my bow over my back. I carried the sleds in my left arm and purposefully moved my coat back behind my Colt. I knew they could see me, and I wanted them to know that coming after me was also a losing proposition.
Chapter 43
Kim and I made it back to the barn with about three hours of daylight left. While Kim built a fire in the house and got dinner going, I took the opportunity to attach the sleds to the wheels of the wagon. It wasn’t anything fancy; it was just bits of rope tying the sled’s handles to the wagon. Judy looked at me like I was nuts, but when she pulled that wagon tomorrow, she’ll see what was what.
I stepped out of the garage and closed the door. The sun was casting long shadows to the east and in between the house and the barn was a streak of light that turned the snow orange. I admired it for a few minutes, then took up my bow. I stepped into the light, and as I did, I whipped out an arrow and sent it flying towards the road. It had barely left my hand when I was pulling another arrow out and sending it after the first one, only this time slightly to the left.
The arrows hit the ground near the driveway, impacting the snow on either side of a small mound of snow and ice. I put another one on the string as the mound of snow stood up and raised its hands in the air.
I walked halfway down the driveway and holding the arrow at the ready with my left hand, I motioned for the mound to come forward. It walked slowly in my direction, and I could see the mound was little more than a blanket that had been painted to look like snow and ice. If I hadn’t walked by that part of the driveway just a few hours ago I wouldn’t have noticed it at all. But the setting sun had cast a shadow where there shouldn’t have been one.
The mound took the blanket off, and I was a little surprised to see it was a girl. She was young, about my age, and had a wary look about her. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face and she was armed only with a long knife.
“That’s far enough. Are you one of the ones who left me the note in the snow?” I asked, easing the string on my bow. I left the arrow where it was and my hand on the string.
The girl stared at me for a moment then nodded once.
“What did you mean by your note?” she asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
I told her about the men who were hunting me, and told her about the boy they had killed. I wasn’t sure they were still after me, but I didn’t want anyone else getting killed for it.
When I finished, the girl thanked me and told me about her community. Instead of running, they had perfected the art of hiding in plain sight. The houses they lived in all had gardens that they planted in the attics, with the roofs opened up to catch the sun and rain. They hunted and scavenged, and if strangers or Trippers came by, they hid. As it turned out, the houses Kim and I went into were actually occupied. We just never saw them. That news actually creeped me out a bit. When she finished, she started back down the way she had come. I called out to her before she left.
“How many of you are there?” I was curious as to how many were surviving like her.
The girl smiled. “Over five hundred. If you come back this way, announce yourself that you knew Grace, and they’ll come to meet you.” With that, she walked away.
I met Kim as I went inside the door and she was putting away my rifle.
“Do you think there are any of them in here?” she asked.
“Not with the Tripper here. But they sure managed to adapt, didn’t they?” I said.
“How did you see her?” Kim asked, pulling the pot off the fire. She had made a small stew.
“The sun. She cast a shadow where there wasn’t supposed to be one,” I said.
“Nice shooting by the way. You going to get those arrows so we’re not advertising we’re here?” Kim asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, heading for the door.
Chapter 44
Captain Vega was reading reports when one of the drone techs came in.
“Sir? Am I bothering you, sir?” he asked.
Vega looked up. “No, what is it?”
“Sir, I have a video on Lt. Campbell’s position.”
“And?”
“And I think you need to come see it, sir.”
Captain Vega sighed. “How bad this time, Private?”
“Sir, you need to see it for yourself, sir”
“That bad?”
“We’ve learned some new things, sir, and they’re pretty disturbing,” the private said.
“I’ll be right there.” Captain Vega waited until the private was gone and then he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. This is getting annoy
ing. The only man I have left with Tripper experience is me, he thought. Maybe that’s what I have to do.
Vega left his office after a few minutes and headed down to the drone drivers’ room. He felt like he had spent more time in there the last few days than he had in the past five years.
When he entered, the men in the room stood at attention, but relaxed when he waved a hand at them. They were standing around a screen, and Vega made his way over to it.
“Here you go, sir. It’s pretty grim. I couldn’t keep the bird around too long; we don’t have the air time the other drones do. I’ll show you the previous video,” the technician/pilot said.
“What am I looking at now?” Vega asked.
“What’s left, sir.”
It was a scene straight out of hell. Hundreds of Trippers were covering a small area, what looked like the outside of a house. There were several small groups of Trippers crouched on the ground, and Vega realized as he watched that they were feeding on something. With a sick feeling in his stomach, Captain Vega realized that they were eating his men.
“Jesus. What on earth happened?” Vega said. It was one thing to think about what the Trippers had done in the past; it was another to see what they were capable of up close and personal.
“Let me show you, sir. Here’s the video we managed to get. It’s not great. We had to splice it between two drones; one was coming back while the other was going out.” The tech played with the screen for a minute, then the video came up.
Vega watched as the men he had sent out spent some small time looking around. Some Trippers came up from the south, and the men took care of them handily enough, but while they were finished them off, another, much larger group came from the north. The men fought, but they were overwhelmed by the odds. The last man to go down was Lieutenant Campbell. He emptied his gun into several Trippers who just took the rounds and kept coming. He went down with Three Trippers beating him to death, while a fourth tore open his guts.
“Christ Almighty. Thank God we put those walls up,” Vega said, mostly to himself. He patted the tech on the shoulder. “Thanks for this…show.”
Vega addressed the room. “Get the low fliers back; they’re useless. Send up one of the bigger ones. I need a wider area searched.”
“What are we looking for, sir?” one of the men asked.
“Start with that area, then circle out,” Vega said. “Look for anyone not a Tripper. Don’t bother with communities, just look for travelers. Let me know when you find one.”
Captain Vega went back to his office. He pulled out a handful of letters and spent an hour addressing the families of the men he had sent over the wall. When that finished, he went over the files of the men he had left, and selected three of them. They weren’t the best, but they were soldiers. And this time, he had an edge. He knew what the Trippers would do, and he also knew that bullets to the chest were useless. He wouldn’t make the same mistake Campbell did.
For all his years of staring at the wall and hating what was on the other side of it, Captain Vega was doing something he never thought possible. He was going over the wall.
Chapter 45
“We’re going to die.”
“Probably.”
“This is my fault, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“That’s not nice.”
“Nope.”
“You can take them, can’t you?”
“That’s what I’m about to find out.” I gave Kim a kiss on the top of her head and stepped out of my hiding spot. I was already drawing my bowstring back and getting a bead on the nearest Tripper I saw.
An hour ago, Kim and I had reached a small farm on the outside of a town. While I took care of the horses, Kim had decided to visit the town. She came back with a sack of supplies and a horde of Trippers on her trail. Kim and I took shelter in the stable while the Trippers wheezed and scrambled around outside. They didn’t see us go into the stable, which was the only thing that saved us. What also saved us is we took shelter where all of our supplies and weapons were.
I fired my arrow and killed the Tripper, putting it into the back of his head. His companion, a small woman who was staring at a fencepost probably trying to figure out if she should hit it or not, went down on top of him with an arrow through her head. Those were the only ones in front of me, so my path was clear. I stepped forward, then turned around, searching for another target as I stepped carefully backwards. I didn’t want to get too far, as it would be harder to hit targets that were too far away. If I could get them to march in a straight line that would help, but there was nothing here that would help me. In this part of the state, it was flatter than a tabletop.
I waited for a minute, but no Trippers came around. I waited a minute longer, and still no Trippers. I began to feel stupid standing in the snow with no one to kill.
I released the tension on my bow and picked up a stick next to my foot. I threw it up into the air and it came down hard on the roof of the stable. I had to laugh when I thought about what Kim’s reaction to that might be.
I forgot about her reaction when a good-sized horde of Trippers came stumbling around the back of the stable, looking for whatever made the noise. They never figured out what the ruckus was, and I doubted they cared once they got a look at me.
I dropped two of them the second they came around into view, and another as he came around the other side. I kept doing this until there were about ten Trippers on the ground, and then I had to turn and run. They just started moving too many too fast in my direction. I pushed through the snow, looking to get to a little higher ground about fifty feet away.
Two Trippers, faster than the rest, started to outpace their peers. They came up behind me, somehow managing to stay in the path I had cleared. I pushed faster, and gave myself enough time to drop both of them. The rest used the time wisely, and I had them to worry about. I gained the hill and fired arrow after arrow. I hit most of them, missing a couple that stumbled at the right time or moved right before the arrow took them. Three of them reached the base of the hill when I ran out of arrows.
I held my bow out of the way with my left hand as I drew my gun with my right. The nearest Tripper, a huge man with dark red eyes, dropped as my first bullet took him in the face. The next Tripper, a teenager with a weird-looking haircut, died with another to his head. The last one fell and crawled up the hill, dying with an outstretched hand toward my boot.
I reloaded and went through the dead, collecting my arrows as I did. When I reached the back of the line, with the two I had originally killed, I found I had four more arrows than I started with. I guess Kim lent a hand after all.
I knocked on the door, waited a few seconds, then knocked again. I slowly opened the door, and put a hand out to the nose of Missy who was nervous about the sound of Trippers nearby. Judy was just looking at me with ‘Where were you?’ eyes, and Pumpkin couldn’t care less.
Kim was holding my rifle, staring at the roof. She jumped when I touched her shoulder, and I had to be very fast to get the muzzle of my own gun out of my face.
“Josh! Jesus Christ on a stick! What the hell are you doing in there? There’s a Tripper on the roof!” she whispered.
I don’t know how I managed to keep a straight face, but I did. And the devil tempted me something fierce. I wanted so badly to play it out, but I likely might have gotten shot for my trouble. So I did the smart thing for a change and told Kim it was just a stick I had thrown onto the roof to make noise so the Trippers would come after me.
“Are you kidding? You scared the shit out of me! Don’t ever do that again!” She swung her free hand at me and I stepped back. Judy stamped and blew behind me, and Kim knew better than to cause a bigger ruckus in a small area with three horses.
I apologized and spent the next fifteen minutes or so wiping off the arrows and putting them back in my quiver. I left the extra four out.
“Thanks for your help out there,” I said.
Kim looked at me. “Those a
ren’t mine.”
Chapter 46
I sighed. “Nothing is ever easy.” I picked up my rifle and went back outside, easing my way over to the side of the building. I used the sights of my rifle to scan the windows, and found the upstairs window was slightly open. I went back around to the other side of the stable and moved toward the front of the house. I kept all of the windows in sight, and I was ready to open fire if any of them twitched. None of them did, so I went up to the porch. I knocked on the door.
“Hello the house!” I said. Technically, I was in violation of convention by already being on the porch, but by being helped, the nuances were different.
No one answered. I waited for another five minutes, but no one showed up. I went back to the stable.
“We need to go. This is someone’s place.” I said.
“We just got here!” Kim said.
“And we just got refused entry,” I said. “We need to go.”
“Oh. They didn’t even answer the door?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll saddle up the horses.”
“I’ll get the supplies and gear ready.”
It was another convention of the times that if you were refused entry to the house or no one came to the door even when you knew they were home, you were to leave immediately. If you didn’t leave, you were considered a threat and dealt with accordingly. I had figured the distance from the window to the Trippers was about seventy-five yards. They were all kill shots, and shooting from a high position wasn’t easy. This was a place to leave alone.
We led the horses out and the sled worked as well as ever. I rode Missy over to the porch and dropped off the arrows. I didn’t need them, and it was the best way to say we were sorry to have left a mess.
Born In The Apocalypse (Book 3): Jericho Page 12
