by W. J. Lundy
“You sure there’s nobody here?” Shane asked him.
“No, there’s nobody else,” he grunted.
“Okay, Kyle, here’s how I see it. I can hang you by your wrists from one of these chains here,” Shane said pointing to a number of chains and pulleys connected to the block and tackle hoists attached to the ceiling. “But I figure you’d be very uncomfortable and noisy, and that would prevent my girl from resting.”
“Yeah, I don’t like that idea either,” Kyle said, looking at Shane fearfully.
Shane looked around the room. “I guess I could bring you over there and set you down on one of those mattresses.” Shane looked towards Ella, then back at Kyle. “I don’t know, Kyle, maybe I should just kill you now. Seems it would be a whole lot easier and save me a great deal of trouble.”
“No. Honest, I ain’t gonna be no trouble. Look at me, I’m all beat up anyhow. I can’t do nothin' to you,” Kyle begged.
Shane stood, contemplating the idea. He looked over and saw Ella staring back at him with sad eyes. Shane leaned over and whispered into Kyle’s ear, “Okay, but if you cause us any problems I will bleed you out.”
CHAPTER 20
The deck of the small riverboat was empty. David was pacing nervously, shouting instructions to the rest of the crew as lines were being pulled up and engines started. Brad moved along the plank wood deck and a crewman indicated for him to drop his gear against a rail. The boat was nearly fifty feet long and twenty feet wide, more of a floating barge than boat—probably used to transport crates of goods up and down the river in better days. A white planked pilothouse divided the barge into two halves. Parts of the white shack and some of the deck looked to have been recently repaired. Scorched and splintered bits of wood still remained.
David moved toward Gunner and spoke loudly so they all could hear. “I’ll be bringing the rest of the crew on shortly; you are all to remain on the aft deck. Nobody goes inside, nobody goes up to the bow. Any questions?”
Gunner nodded and pointed to the fresh pine planks and burnt decking near the corner of the pilothouse. “You doing some remodeling?”
“It’s dangerous out there; we had some trouble on our last cruise,” David said, pointing to the distant shoreline.
Gunner walked closer to the repaired bits of the pilothouse and pointed at the unpainted bits of plank. “Burn marks and frag bits. So the Primals are throwing grenades now?”
David looked away toward a pair of incoming small boats. “Like I said, it’s dangerous out there. Here comes your crew, stick to the aft of the barge and I’ll have you at your destination by morning.”
David turned and walked into the pilothouse, leaving a pair of crewman to help guide in the small boats. Brad saw Doctor Howard standing alone holding his pack, so he guided him to the rail and told him to drop his bag. Howard sat on the deck with his back to the rail as Brad stood over him with his rifle in his hands. Gunner and Meyers were standing near an opening in the aft deck, coordinating the transfer of gear and personnel from the other ship. The small boats pushed off unceremoniously and motored back into the harbor in the direction of the Coast Guard boat.
Once the crowd cleared from the opening in the rail, Brad could see bags of gear stacked in the center of the barges deck. Men crowded around them and then dispersed to find places of their own along the rail. Meyers shot a thumbs-up to David who was observing the transfer through a window in the pilothouse. The engines gurgled and the riverboat picked up speed in the water.
Brad looked across the deck, seeing Vilegas, Parker, Brooks and Sean—all of the shooters from the group. He smiled and moved forward to greet them when Chelsea passed between Brooks and Sean, carrying a pack in one hand and her rifle in the other. Brad stepped forward, trying to hide the shock at seeing her onboard. He moved closer and took the bag from her and tossed it next to the rail close to his own.
“What are you doing here? I thought you would stay with Kelli at the fort.”
“I’m needed here,” she said, taking her rifle and slinging it over her shoulder. She was dressed in her USMC camouflage uniform, but was now also wearing a British military chest rig filled with NATO magazines in detachable pouches. “Besides, if we find her, what do you all know about taking care of a little girl?”
Sean walked up from behind and slapped Brad on the back. “She’s right, and I ain’t turning down any extra rifles in the fight. Everyone here volunteered.”
Sean pointed to the piles of gear bags with British Navy decals. “Get geared up. We figure we will be deep in Indian country for at least three to four days. The Limeys parted with some of their rations, but you know they only gave us the shit they didn’t want.”
Meyers laughed at the comment. “It’s the Queen’s finest boiled sweets, Yank; so no whining.”
Brad shook his head and moved to the pile of olive drab bags. He found his own multi cam rucksack and separated it from the mix. He opened the compartments and began to dump personal items on the deck next to it. He started the task of preparing his kit for patrol. Chelsea walked up next to him and knelt down, unzipping a large vinyl bag. She pulled out a stack of filled magazines, three at a time, and placed them next to Brad’s gear. Brad looked over at her as she continued pulling items from the bags.
“I don’t think this will end well,” he said.
“Probably not, but when it does… I want to be out there with you all.”
She reached into a bag, pulled out a 24-hour pack of rations, and pushed it in Brad’s direction. He reached for it and grabbed her hand. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Well, I did, and that’s the last I want to hear about it,” she said as she got to her feet and moved back to the group of men talking at the far side of the deck. She took a seat at the corner of the rails where Gunner and Meyers had placed their packs. Brad broke down the rations and loaded his rucksack. As he worked, he took notice of the armed crew members patrolling the tops of the pilothouse. Traveling down the river, he expected them to be on watch and alert, but they all appeared to be looking down at his team instead of at the shoreline. Brad finished with his pack and secured the straps. He moved to a corner of the rail where Sean and Brooks were laid out on the deck.
Brad dropped next to them and leaned against the rail. He looked to the shoreline, which was now closer as they headed out of the harbor and into the mouth of the river. The sun was setting and he could just make out shadowy figures moving on the far off boardwalks and beaches. He could hear howling but was unable to determine if it was the wind or the creatures over the rumbling of the engines. A close-by crew member noticed Brad staring far off and pointed out a distant structure, a high walled building on a narrow island.
“That’s the Castle. People made it there early, came by boat or anything that could float. They hid out there pretty well for a bit too.”
Brad stared at the walled structure without looking up at the crewman. He could see distant forms moving along the beach in front of the castle’s walls. As the barge moved past, he could see more and more of them standing shoulder to shoulder watching the slowly moving vessel. Some of them walked knee deep into the water and reached out at them.
“What happened?” Brad asked.
“They lost control. Same as most places do. Somebody gets in, infects the rest. They kill each other off. I was out here on the water watching when the place fell. We could hear their screams, the gunshots. They fired flares; some even tried to swim out to us.”
Brad turned and looked up at the crewman. “You didn’t help them?”
The man shook his head and dug through a shirt pocket. He took in a deep breath as he placed a bent hand-rolled cigarette between chapped lips and lit it with a disposable lighter. “No, it’s Captain’s rule—if they running we don’t help. If they walking? Now, walking we will barter with ‘em, see what they want. But in cases like that,” he paused and pointed the glowing cigarette at the quickly fading island castle. “Yeah, like that, we don’t get
involved.”
“You mean you leave them to die,” Brad said looking at him disgusted.
“Shit, you say what you want, but that’s how we stay alive. Not getting involved.” The man leaned out and spit over the rail, then turned to walk back to the pilothouse.
Brad watched the man leave. The sun had fully set now and the surface of the boat was bathed in darkness. The pilothouse held dim lights that cast a soft glow. The distant shore was nothing but a silhouette of blackened outlines. Brad pushed back against the rail and pulled his knees up into his chest. He watched the men on the roof of the pilothouse pace back and forth, patrolling. One turned and stared down at the pile of olive drab bags of gear. He seemed to focus on them a bit too long, long enough to make Brad feel uncomfortable.
“What are you thinking?” Brooks whispered.
Brad looked over and saw Brooks lying against his pack with his boonie cap pulled low over his eyes. His hands were crossed in his lap over the grip of his Heckler & Koch Mark 23 pistol.
“Something isn’t right about this crew and this captain,” Brad whispered.
“No shit, Sherlock. These guys have been out here working the river since day one. I’m sure they have seen some dark stuff.”
“It’s more than that. Those two on the roof seem to be more interested in us than the Primals. And the one keeps checking out the gear.”
Brooks yawned and crossed his legs. “His special attention to our goodies hasn’t gone unnoticed. Just sleep with one eye open tonight. And keep your weapons close,” he said, patting his pistol.
Brad brought his right hand down to his hip, felt his pistol, then shrugged his shoulders and cradled his M4 in his arms as he pushed back against the rail. He closed his eyes tightly and then opened them; looking up at the roof, he saw that the patrolling guard had moved. He let his eyes drift now and saw David, the captain, looking out of the window back at the soldiers sleeping on his aft deck. Brad stared at the man in the darkness until the captain turned and disappeared back into the shadows of the pilothouse.
He lay back, trying to push the dark thoughts from his mind. He couldn’t leave the suspicions of the crew. He knew the captain was hiding something and wondered why he agreed to help them without even bartering for compensation. Who were these men that left the innocent to die? Brad reached back down to his holstered pistol and drew it out. He held it with his right hand and covered the slide with his left. He wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.
CHAPTER 21
Bacon sizzled on a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. It didn’t take much to restart the fire in the center of the garage because the coals were still hot; some stirring, a few handfuls of kindling, and it was soon burning bright. Shane found piles of split wood just outside of one of the bay doors. He discovered the plastic barrels were rain catches. All over the building, and even outside, he saw boxes of canned goods and packaged containers of smoked meats.
Shane cut another generous slice from the hunk of bacon and was rewarded with the splash of grease as it hit the pan. Using the same knife, he pried open a can of diced peaches. “So where’d all this stuff come from, Kyle?” he asked without looking up from the skillet.
“Uhh, what stuff?” Kyle answered, dazed like he had just woken up. Kyle was slowly sipping from a Mason jar, sweat beading on his forehead. Shane had finally softened his attitude toward the prisoner. He had cut his bindings, splinted the man’s broken leg, and even allowed him some shine for the pain. Kyle’s belly had swollen and his breathing had become labored. Shane was sure he’d suffered internal injuries in the attack—probably a broken rib, maybe worse. Even though he wanted to, he didn’t enjoy seeing the kid suffer.
“The food… the whiskey… everything—where’d you get it?”
Kyle straightened his arm and pushed himself up into a seated position. Grunting through the pain, he twisted until he was resting against an old seat cushion. “Farmers’ market in town, we hit it early. They had a butcher shop; made their own meats and such. Most of the market was sacked, but nobody thought to crack open the delivery trucks. A lot of the meat was spoiled; you push through all of that and the canned, dried, and smoked stuff was good.”
“This is a pretty big take. You could have helped a lot of people.”
“Yeah… there was more folks here for a bit,” Kyle said before taking a long drink, then pausing to cough; he looked down at the blood on his hand before wiping it on his shirt.
“Take it easy with that stuff. It’ll help with the pain, but if you have internal bleeding, it’s just going to make it worse.” Shane used a fork to lift slices of bacon onto a plastic plate, added hunks of canned peaches, and placed the plate on Ella’s lap. “You know, this is the best we have eaten in a while; even at the fort we rarely had fruit. So where’d they go? The others?”
“They just gone,” Kyle said uneasily.
“Gone? Without all of their belongings, huh?” Shane said, pointing to the piles of clothing and luggage. “So what, you got them buried in the back somewhere?”
Kyle looked away and put his head down. “I’m not even supposed to be here. I should have been at college… never shoulda come back to this place,” he sobbed, pausing again to cough. “When it all started, I was about to go to school. I’d already got an apartment and a job up in Hampton. Momma begged me to come home when things started getting really bad.
“Hell, classes wouldn’t ever start again anyway… so I left and came home. It was nice and quiet out here—far from the city and all—like nothing was going on, but folks knew it would get here eventually. Me and Earl, we tried to get the house ready for Momma. We did what we could with what we had but needed supplies, so we made a run into town. We hit up every shop we could think of, buying stuff till the truck couldn’t hold no more. Paid with a credit card too,” Kyle said with a soft laugh.
“People weren’t panicking yet, not then, not this far out from the city. But we all saw it on the news. You know the way people were acting? Even around here, folks were starting to get scared. Everyone was nervous, being on edge, keeping their distance. We loaded up the truck and drove back home. When we got there, we found Momma… dead,” Kyle said.
“Infected?” Shane asked.
“No. Robbers we suspect. She’d been shot. Probably angry when they realized she had nothing worth taking. We called the sheriff, but they was too busy. The dispatcher told us we should just call the funeral home. Shit, they wouldn’t answer their phone. We drove Momma down there, but the place was empty, all closed up. We buried her ourselves, next to Daddy, over at Oak Creek Cemetery.
“We didn’t feel like staying at the house no more. So we came here, to the scrap yard. Earl’d gone to high school with Gary’s son, Jasper, and we all knew their cousin Andrew from spending time out here at the yard. We knocked on the gate and Gary took us right in. It was good here, safe, ya know? Even when shit got really bad on the outside; even after the power went out. They have enough solar cells to keep a few lights on. And Hell, there was nothing that got through them fences.”
“So when did it all go bad?”
Kyle shrugged his shoulders and took another long sip from the Mason jar, drinking it dry. He coughed and spit red onto his shirt sleeve, then lay back on the mattress, and stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know man, but… I guess you was right killing us all. We ain’t good people… not no more, we ain’t,” Kyle said, beginning to slur his words. “We took in a family for a bit, but it didn’t last. The husband was always getting angry about the way Gary talked to his wife. The way he stared at her.”
Kyle coughed hard. “You want to know what we was doing out there on that road?”
“It doesn’t make any difference now,” Shane said, looking at the boy. He was growing paler by the hour and sweating profusely. Shane got up and grabbed another sealed jar from a shelf and switched it with one in the boy’s hand. The boy pushed the jar away and pointed to a wooden box on the shelf. Shane retrieved the box and found it ful
l of hand rolled cigarettes. Shane shook his head, “I don’t think you should be smoking with that cough.”
Kyle forced a small laugh. “Don’t worry, I have a prescription. This is Jasper’s personal stash. Ha, I don’t think he’ll mind though.” Kyle reached into the box for a small cigarette and Shane helped him light it. After another long coughing fit, he breathed in deeply and lay back again.
“You was right; they was out looking for people, Earl and Gary. Not to attack, though, like you was thinking. We didn’t have enough guns for that. You know to fight folks fair. Shit, that pistol I was carrying? It ain’t been loaded since I got it. Jasper had lots of bullets for his SKS, and Andrew, his rifle only had a few rounds left. Andrew was the one you kilt trying to sneak up on you. I liked Andrew; he was always a good friend to me.” Kyle paused, staring up at the ceiling.
“You have 7.62?”
“What?” Kyle asked as if waking from a dream.
“The SKS; you have ammo for it?”
“Oh, yeah… on the shelf, by the shine—buncha’ boxes of it. Jasper was a prepper; or he thought he was. He’s the one that set all of this stuff up. The lights, water… all of it.”
Shane walked back to the sedan and retrieved the empty SKS he’d pulled off the dead man in the field. He dropped the magazine, then pushed aside jars on the shelves. He found an open Spam can of ammo. He pulled the can closer and located several already-loaded magazines. Shane grabbed one. Loading and charging the SKS, he left the empty on the shelf and returned to the couch.
