A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  Twigs laughed in the middle of a drink and snorted water out of his nose. This just made him laugh even harder until Lindsay, one of Miss Val’s helpers, cleared her throat and gave the two of them a pointed glare.

  They hunched in their seats, presenting the image that they were suitably chastened. Twigs took a bite of pot roast, chewed, and said, “What you doing after school?”

  “You have pictures of your dad?” Alex blurted. He regretted the question at once and grimaced. For better or worse, he’d broached the subject.

  His friend looked down at his plate, then raised his head to meet Alex’s eyes. “You know I do.”

  Alex gave him a ghost of a smile. “I try not to think about it, but I don’t have any pictures of my parents. I don’t even remember what they looked like.” Twigs took another bite of food and chewed it longer than was necessary. Alex was going to wait but decided that he needed to further explain his train of thought. “I was up in the nest yesterday, and I realized we’re not all that far the school.”

  Twigs frowned. “Okay?”

  “My old house is right across the street from the school.”

  “So, what — you want somebody to go get you a picture? Dude, they scavenged those houses years ago.”

  Alex frowned. “Yeah, but, they weren’t looking for photo albums, they were looking for food, stuff to live on.”

  Twigs straightened in his seat and set his spoon down. “You’re going.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Alex hissed.

  “I want to come!”

  “Shut up!”

  Their argument was moot, at that moment. A wave of murmurs broke out across the room. Alex and Twigs turned to look, but they couldn’t see what the excitement was about through the wave of bodies that drifted toward the main door from the serving line.

  Alex turned back to Twigs. “It’s just a pipe dream, kid,” he muttered. “I lost my rifle privileges after I skipped class. Miss Val locked my .22 up in the safe.”

  Shrug. “I got a slingshot. That’s quieter, too.”

  Alex gave Twigs a thoughtful look before waving a hand in disapproval. “No way. I’m not dragging a seven-year-old into the Wild to get eaten.”

  “Seven and a half,” Twigs groused. “Besides, didn’t you say that there aren’t as many creepers around now?”

  He looked at the smaller boy. This is nuts. Why am I even considering this?

  “Come on, Alex,” Twigs whined. “We can totally do it. After school tomorrow, I’ll get my slingshot and a bunch of ball bearings — you should see what these things do to a can, pow! We’ll be back in time for dinner. It’s not that far, right?”

  Alex gritted his teeth and thought back to his time on the tower. No, it wasn’t all that far. Hit Stone Creek Lane, and the cluster of buildings was two intersections down. There wasn’t a thing between here and there; just fields and emptiness.

  Nowhere to hide, either.

  He pushed the thought away. “All right,” Alex drew out. “If we do this, you have to stay cool. I know how you geek out.”

  Twigs looked like he was trying not to bounce in his seat. “You got it, Alex, this is going to be so awesome!”

  “Shut up,” Alex hissed again, shaking his head.

  It had been a long time since Hanratty had felt so out of place. It wasn’t so much the attire of the people around him. After years without resupply, many of the troops wore whatever they could lay hands on. No, if anything, it was the attention. On ship, or at any of the forward operating bases, he was just another troop, an officer to salute. If anything, the general mood he’d become accustomed to was one of indifference.

  That was not the case here, and there was no middle ground. The people regarded him with either awe or outright contempt.

  The large barn was clad in faded red sheet metal, and the crowd milling around it parted as Miles led him toward a personnel door in the side. This particular side of the building looked as though it had been set up to be a large sliding door at one time. The survivors had installed hardware and welded beams into place to secure that part of the building in a closed position. This was where they stored their farming equipment before. Now, it’s the — what did he call it? — The First Church of the Time Share.

  Miles opened the door for Hanratty, and he stepped through with a nod of gratitude. The interior was neat and to his surprise, well-lit. His guide must have noticed his interest in the overhead lighting and commented, “The light fixtures in here are all LED. They’re not as much of a drain on the batteries. We use most of the capacity from the solar panels and wind turbines to run the refrigeration equipment in the storage silo. There’s enough left over to run some lights into here and the hospital. We make do with what we can elsewhere.” He shrugged. “Lanterns and candles, to be honest.”

  Hanratty looked at the young man and tried to keep his expression blank. Does he understand, I wonder, how impressive this all is?

  The Marine had, in essence, circumnavigated the globe in the years since the fall. The initial infection rate in and around Al Asad Airbase in Iraq had been low. Much lower, in fact, than what the United States and Western Europe had experienced. If the surviving CDC guys knew the reason for this, they weren’t sharing it. Not at Hanratty’s level, anyway.

  When the second stage infection had kicked in, the number of cases were small enough that the situation should have been recoverable. The response that any society was capable of was often only as good as the level of cooperation inherent in said society. In Iraq, that level of cooperation was right at zero. Sunni and Shia took the opportunity presented by the chaos to kick off another round of sectarian violence. This negated any possibility of an effective quarantine. American troops that could have assisted in securing pockets of infection had instead fallen back to their own positions. Iraq had carried on with admirable determination after the first round of infection, but the eruption of tribal warfare doomed it. When the infected rose up amid the intermittent fighting, the chaos redoubled.

  When the evacuation flights ended not long thereafter, Hanratty and thousands of American military personnel were a long, lonely five hundred miles from their secondary extraction point of Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf.

  They’d fought hard and gone down harder, but by the time they reached Iraq’s lone deep water port, thousands were hundreds. At the end, Hanratty had been the most senior surviving officer. He’d led his troops through an unending hell that left many of them wide-eyed and shaking, even once they were out to sea and away from danger.

  “Butter bar” Second Lieutenant Hanratty burned away in the fires of that chaos. He’d seen the worst humanity had to offer, led troops against both infected and uninfected, and lived to tell the tale. The Colonel who’d debriefed him had given him a fierce hug, then pinned the silver bars of a first lieutenant on Hanratty’s shoulders.

  He’d done nothing but distinguish his reputation since. Much of his success — and survival — built off of two key lessons he’d learned on the retreat to Umm Qasr. First and foremost — always keep your hatch dogged.

  Second, the infected were not as dangerous as the uninfected. The infected were predictable. You couldn’t trust the uninfected to act in a rational manner.

  Nothing he’d seen in the years after had disabused him of either notion. But now . . . he wondered about his second lesson.

  The crowd inside of the building was still light as word of their arrival trickled out. This gave Hanratty time to give the interior a quick assessment. The section to his left featured what looked to be an added-on kitchen and serving line. Near that, the survivors had lined up picnic tables and battered folding tables in neat rows. A few steps away from the last row of tables sat a wooden podium — for the meeting, Hanratty assumed. Low shelving units cordoned off the other half of the building. The contents inside that area proclaimed it to be some sort of classroom setup. Colorful mats covered the floor, and white boards and posters covered the blank spaces in the walls that
weren’t filled with shelves. The warm scent of cooking meat and baking bread filled the air, and Hanratty’s mouth began to water. Miles and his people might have considered it bland, but it smelled damn good to him.

  The gentle hum of curious conversation fell dead silent as a shriek filled the air. Hanratty turned, seeking the source of the noise, as a figure sprinted toward him.

  Instinct screamed at him to draw his weapon and defend himself. He pushed it away with titanic effort. The figure sprinting toward him continued to scream as she came. The woman looked to be in her mid to late 40’s and wore shabby, shapeless clothes. As she drew to a stop in front of him her screaming died out and she brought her hands down on his shoulders. Rather than being an assault, the motion was loving. As she brought one hand up to cup his cheek, she began to babble.

  “Tommy, oh Tommy, why didn’t you come sooner? We needed you, Tommy. They hurt your father and your sister — where were you!?” The last came out as a high-pitched shriek, and the loving hands clutched at his uniform with sudden desperation.

  Miles stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the screaming woman. As he pulled her away, she began kicking and screaming even more. A second woman, tall and slender, with long, ink-black hair, ran up and grabbed her as well. Despite the combined strength of the two of them, she still bucked and flailed.

  “No! I want my Tommy to take me home! Let me go!”

  A pretty black woman with close-cropped hair stepped in to aid the town marshal and first woman. “Calm down, Betty,” she said, “Just calm down, hon, it’s going to be all right.” She raised her head. “Somebody give me a hand, damn it!”

  A big man, easily one of the biggest Hanratty had ever seen, stepped forward and pushed Miles and the slim woman to one side. “I’ve got you, Betty,” the big man said, and he picked her up as though she weighed nothing. Once her feet were off of the ground, the shrieking woman collapsed into sobs and buried her face in the big man’s broad chest.

  “Thanks, Dalton,” the black woman said. She turned to Hanratty. “Are you all right, Captain?”

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. “No harm done.”

  At that, she swiveled toward Miles and said, “We’re going to give her something to help her rest. Be back as soon as we can.” She gave Hanratty another look. He couldn’t tell if the expression was one of veiled disgust or pity, but she didn’t elaborate as she and the big man headed for the door.

  “All right, Tish,” Miles said and ran a hand through his hair. The conversation around them bubbled up even higher as the people inside the building began chattering about what they’d just seen. Miles looked at Hanratty. “Shit, Captain, I’m sorry that happened. Betty, she’s, well, she’s been pretty much out of it for a long time now. Her son was overseas when it happened, and the rest of her family . . .”

  “Yeah,” Hanratty said quietly as he tried to hold back his own tears. “Yeah, I think I got that part.”

  Someone approached from Hanratty’s side, and Miles’ faced flickered through several emotions. He wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been reading the facial expressions of enlisted men for years. The small-town sheriff — marshal, rather, he corrected himself — looked not too different than some of the troops when notorious, annoying staff officers approached. Hanratty turned.

  The woman looked about as unimposing as they came; short and slender. She’d pulled her medium-length gray hair into a tight ponytail, and a pair of half-framed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. The ratty sweater she wore over a button-up blouse only made her look more like a stern librarian. She beamed as she stepped up to Miles and Hanratty and extended her hand.

  “Norma Benedict. Let me say how ecstatic we all are to have an official government representative here, after all this time.”

  “Happy to oblige, ma’am,” he said politely. “Captain Adam Hanratty, United States Marine Corps.”

  She kept hold of his hand and began patting his forearm with her other. “Oh splendid, splendid, a Captain! I myself am the head of the small town council here, in case you didn’t know. We’re all excited to hear what you have to say and offer any help you might need.” She beamed. “Oh, but I’m being a terrible host! Please, sit and eat with us, and then you can discuss what you’ve come all this way to say.”

  “Thank you, I’ll do that,” Hanratty said. She gave him a nod and Miles a thin smile, then turned away. Stepping toward the rows of cafeteria tables, she raised her hands and spoke in a commanding tone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! We have a special guest this evening, but of course, you all know that. Captain Hanratty will be joining us for dinner, then we’ll have a meeting to hear what he has to say and open the floor for any questions.” A few in the crowd clapped, a few directed curious looks in Hanratty’s direction, but the majority of the body began queuing up in the cafeteria line. The buzz of conversation was suddenly interspersed with the clinking of serving utensils and tableware.

  Miles clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck,” he said. “I’m headed over to sit down with the three amigos.”

  Hanratty glanced at him. “Right. Dumb question here, now, and I hate to ask it, but do you have any idea which way you’re leaning?”

  The other man grimaced. “Yeah, I mean, I know none of the particulars other than it sounds like a super awesome field trip.”

  “Had to ask,” he replied, evenly.

  “Oh, granted,” Miles said with an easy grin. “Allow me to return the favor. Is any help you and your superiors offer contingent on me saying yes?”

  Hanratty’s initial reaction to the question was anger. Just asking it was an insult to everything he stood for. Before he could reply, he realized that the question wasn’t intended that way at all. Miles delivered the question without animus; he simply wanted to know where he stood.

  This is the world now, for them. We’ve kept it all together because of The Mission and the command structure, but these people haven’t had that. We weren’t here to protect them and we took our sweet time to get here. Why should they trust us?

  “No,” Hanratty said. “It’s not.” He shrugged. “I’m sure Ross would prefer I not reveal the nature of his mission in a non-secure setting, but I think you’ll laugh about your question, later. Whatever your answer, Atlantic Command is intent on creating forward-operating bases to use as sally points for recovery operations. Piggy-backing off of existing communities of survivors is easier than putting together our own setups. I wasn’t briefed on that aspect of the mission, as it’s more a strategic focus than tactical, but from what I’ve gleaned, they’re planning on enhancing fortifications, opening up the service to new recruits, but also helping out in any way we can.” Hanratty shrugged. “Combat occupations took the biggest hit, after the fall. More than half of us are Fobbits and admin pogues, but we’re all hard-core infected killers, now. We’ve had to be. But there are engineers, medical staff, and the like, who’d be glad to step aside and offer local support if we can add some fresh blood.”

  “Volunteer, not a draft? We’re not exactly brimming with excess manpower.”

  “Volunteer only. We discussed a draft but rejected the idea for pretty much that reason.”

  “Engineers and medical, huh. Any psychologists?”

  “Some, not many, I guess. I’d have to check to be sure.”

  Miles nodded. “Well, part of the reason we’re so upside down on manpower is the psych cases. We had, uh, a lot of people who never did track right after everything that happened. We’ve been taking care of them as best we can, but it’s not like we’re professionals or anything.”

  Hanratty smiled. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m excited to help, Mister Matthews. Far too many places we’ve come across went a . . . different direction, with those sort of survivors.”

  Miles gave him a hard look. “I won’t say it hasn’t come up. And it would be downright insubordinate of me to mention that my quote unquote boss is one of the people who keeps push
ing for it, so I’ll avoid that.”

  He nodded sagely. “It’s important to keep discipline in the chain of command.”

  Miles laughed. “All right. I’m out of here. Enjoy dinner.”

  He watched the other man go as he left the building. Most of the crowd reacted well to Miles, reaching out to shake his hand, exchanging high-fives, or simply giving friendly waves.

  Wonder why he’s not in charge instead of Conan the Librarian?

  Hanratty shrugged and stepped up to the end of the serving line. He picked up one of the well-worn serving trays and studied it for a long moment. Though scratched and faded, he could make out the remnants of a stylized cartoon bulldog painted on the tray. He chuckled to himself and mused, “It looks a bit like Chesty.”

  From his left: “Chesty?” Hanratty raised his head and turned. The tall, slender woman who’d helped out with Betty stood there with a bemused expression on her face.

  “The bulldog, ma’am.”

  She smiled, though there was a tinge of sadness to it. “Ah. That’s Benny the Bulldog. There is — was — a K-6 school a couple of miles north of here, Stone Creek Elementary.

  “Believe we saw it, ma’am,” Hanratty said with a nod. “We drove by when we came into the area.” He paused. “If I’m not being too intrusive, there was quite a bit of battle damage to the building.”

  She smiled again, though this one was more legitimate. “You can blame that on the Gunny and a few of the other boys. They saw us barricaded in my classroom — some of the students and me — and stopped and got us out of there. It made quite an impression.”

  “Marines have a way of doing that, ma’am,” Hanratty agreed and returned the smile with one of his own. “Particularly Recon Marines, like the Gunny. So, the trays?”

  She shrugged. “If we didn’t have it, we needed to get it somehow. The school was an amazing resource for us. Books, supplies, furniture . . . Once it was clear, of course.”

  Hanratty winced. Kids were the worst; more than a few of the troops he’d served with had eaten a bullet after actions with infected children. Such reactions were almost nonexistent, now, of course — years of constant fighting had hardened the soft edges. Sometimes he wondered if that was a good thing.