by David Peters
“Four years since I stood at the makeup counter wondering, which shade of purple would match the dress my mom just bought,” said Erica.
Travis spoke quietly, “I miss having something new to read while I’m doing my business.”
Dylan laughed, “What was that Travis?”
“I miss having a new magazine to read while I take care of business in the outhouse.”
Erica grimaced, “That’s disgusting!”
“Hey, it’s a habit I picked up when I was a kid. It’s hard to give it up. All I can do now is stare at a blank wooden wall. I think I have read every single word in this town down to the ingredients labels on all the food. You know that canned meat product that Wilson loves so much? Meat is listed as the third ingredient. Let that one sink in for a minute.”
“My poor Travis,” Erica said as she patted his shoulder, “the end of the world has really been tough on you, hasn’t it?”
Caperson said quietly into his cup of tea, “Four years since I had one of those microbrew draft beers from Billy’s. The place always smelled like bar food. He had a Billy Burger that would knock your socks off and bar nachos that were to die for. He was the first pub in town to get a hi-definition big screen TV. Watching a good game of football,” Caperson shook his head, “man I miss that place. Best damn chicken wings too, big fat wings, meaty. Some secret homemade sauce I could taste on my fingers for days.”
Niccole asked, “That a bar near where you used to live?”
“Yeah, Billy was this Greek guy that somehow wound up in Twin Falls. He was really into brewing his own beer so he opened a small pub and started selling his creations. He had an Irish Red that was absolutely perfect, cold, beautiful yellow-red when you held it up to the light. It was like drinking heaven. Pair it up with a Billy Bacon Burger and, oh my. That combination left me fat, dumb and happy for days.”
“Cap-Cap, my friend,” Dylan turned with a smile, “you sound like you could really use a shot of Paradise Falls Whiskey. It isn’t a Billy the Greek home brew, but it is smooth as silk. In fact I think all of us could use some, accept for these little guys.” He tussled Daniel’s hair as the little boy continued to eat the wheat pasta.
Daniel and Annie yelled in unison as they clapped their hands together, “Whissy, Whissy!”
Jen laughed as she asked them, “Wouldn’t you rather have some fresh apple juice? You know how you little party animals get when you tie one on.”
“Appo juice! Appo juice!”
“That’s what I thought, fresh apple juice for the little ones,” Jen called out.
Dylan pulled a bottle filled with a dusky, brown liquid from the top of the cabinet and set it on the counter as he spoke, “You know what I really miss? The movies, shopping, technology, all of that is well and good but what I miss the most isn’t anything like that.”
“What is it?” Niccole asked.
“I miss going for walks down by the Snake River.”
Niccole gave him a confused look, “You go for walks down by our river here all the time, I don’t understand.”
“I scout, that isn’t the same. When you go for a walk, you can turn everything off. I can’t do that anymore. When I was down by the Snake, I could watch the sun rise and think, wow, the hills are beautiful. I look at a sunrise now and wonder how many Hunters are in the hills I’m looking at or how bad the storm on the horizon is going to be. I can’t pass a track in the mud now and not stop to make sure it’s from a boot or hoof of some sort. I can’t turn it off anymore. I miss that. I miss being able to turn it off.”
There was a brief, quiet knock and Niccole made her way across the small living room to the door. She opened the door and found a very wet looking scout at the door.
“Sorry to bother you folks during dinner, but I didn’t think this should wait.”
“Not a problem Jackson, is everything okay?”
“Is Dylan available too? He kind of needs to hear this.”
“Sure, come on in. Not much in the way of food left, can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I’m okay. Like I said, sorry to bother you folks during dinner but this couldn’t wait until the morning meeting.”
Dylan placed several short glasses of Paradise Whiskey on the table, “What is it Jackson?”
“Sir, I was on one of the first long range patrols, I wasn’t scheduled to be back until tomorrow night. I was about twenty miles to the east, running the top of Razorback Ridge. I could see about forty miles further to the east. Boss, there were about eighteen campfires on the most distant hillside. It was too far to make out anything in the low light, but my gut tells me that it’s the survivors from Folkesburg. There were too many camps for it to be anything else.”
“How long until they arrive do you think?”
“They are probably three days behind me assuming they aren’t all on foot. I would have tried to get a count but I felt it was more important for me to get back here and report. I thought I caught a few horses in the campfire light, but it was pretty hard to really see in this weather. It’s really just an educated guess at best. I can head back out and try to intercept them, if you think it’s the thing to do.”
“No, we can’t ask you to do that. Caperson, can you spin up one of the other long range patrol folks and get them headed in the right direction?”
“We are calling them LOPs in case you are wondering. Long range, overnight patrols.” The way he pronounced the acronym it sounded like LOPE.
“Wouldn’t that be L, R, O, P?”
“Dylan, what in the hell is a LROP? You can’t even pronounce it. Besides, it’s four letters that don’t spell anything. Everyone knows the good acronyms have to spell something out.”
Dylan smiled, “Yeah, what was I thinking?”
Caperson pulled a small scratch pad out of the pocket of his flannel shirt, “Jimmy was scheduled to go out tomorrow afternoon. I’ll warn him on the way back to our cabin tonight that we need him to head out at first light. I can’t see it being much of a problem. The kid is pretty stir crazy since we mucked around with the patrol schedules. Do you have any special orders for him?”
“I’ll defer to the Boss Lady on that one, Coco, any requests?”
“Unless there is something we desperately need to know before they arrive, I want him to help get them here. There’s a good chance they won’t know about the washout on the highway below, unless they take the scout trail cutoff few miles before it, they may try to go straight through the woods.”
Dylan nodded, “Erica, how are we fixed for new arrivals?”
“The last three that showed up are still in tents. We really need to talk about getting some more space. I honestly don’t know where we are going to keep putting people.”
“But we still have a metric ton of tents in one of the sheds, correct?”
“We do have a lot but most of them were never designed as permanent housing so when the seams give out they are generally turned into clothing or something else equally useful. I’ll start getting things set up at first light.”
Dylan met everyone’s eyes as he looked around the room, “I think we are doing pretty much everything we can do prior to them showing up. Does anyone disagree?”
He was met with nothing but nods of agreement.
“Okay then. With that issue put to rest, I do believe our whiskey has had just enough time to breathe. Shall we?”
~2~
Dylan stood on the wall next to Niccole, “That is a hell of a lot of people.” He had tried to count them but gave up when he passed two hundred.
Daniel was asleep, his small head resting on her shoulder as she looked on in shock, “That has to be at least four hundred, maybe more. I see a ton of kids and a lot of old folks coming in too. That’s a lot more mouths with a lot less workforce to support it. This is going to be tough.”
The caravan of people extended several hundred yards down the road. Most people were on foot but there were nearly two dozen horses and at least s
ix old style wagons, complete with white canvas tops had already passed through the gate. Every single person was disheveled, dirty and looked exhausted. They would spread out in the open area just beyond the moat and into the empty fields. Some would begin to set up the tents that were being handed out but most simply found a place to lie down. Over a dozen people moved through the crowd checking for any signs of Corruption before allowing them to move into the town walls. As soon as they would pass through the heavy front gate into the main courtyard, most would simply sit down where they stood. Some found an out of the way patch of ground and would once again fall asleep. Even the noise of passing carts didn’t wake them. Many carried what belongings they could grab wrapped in sheets and curtains.
“I need to find out who is in charge of this group. Didn’t you say their town mayor was named Martha?”
“Last I heard she was the one calling the shots. I didn’t usually talk to her though.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a few hours, tell Erica that I’m sorry about the overtime,” he smiled and kissed her affectionately.
With another parting hug, Niccole turned and walked down the ramp. She struggled to make her way through the crowd as she walked toward their cabin with the blue door.
Dylan walked through the crowd looking for anyone that would meet his eyes and appeared to be at least partially awake. He finally found a man in his early twenties that had the knowing eyes of a military soldier, “Excuse me. Is Martha in this group somewhere?”
“She isn’t here, sir. She won’t be here either. She stayed with the blocking force back in town.”
“Blocking force?”
“Yeah, that’s what they called it. More of a diversion but I wasn’t the one naming the plans. Are you Dylan Murphy?”
“That would be me. What’s your name?” Dylan shook the man’s hand.
“James Bareli, but you can just call me Zeus, everyone else does.”
“Zeus? Like the Greek god?”
“That’s affirmative. I was in charge of an artillery platoon before everything got all pear shaped. They would call for fire from the heavens, I delivered. The first time our call sign was Zeus, it stuck like glue.”
“Why did you leave Folkesburg? What happened?”
James put his bag on the ground and sat down on top of it, “One of our scouts just happen to catch the ‘Rupts moving through a cut about fifteen klicks away from us. We had maybe an hour, two tops before they would be at the perimeter of town and beating the gates down. There were thousands of them, or so I’m told. All I ever saw was the smoke and fire from the Sappers hitting the wall. Eight people stayed behind in order to create a diversion and give the bulk of the town the time they needed to make an escape. More than thirty of us volunteered for it but she would only take the older people, those without families or special skills. I have both so she wasn’t going to have me.”
“Are you the one in charge now?”
“I’m not really sure who is to be honest. We got pretty scattered getting here and there really wasn’t any chain of command when we left. Scouts took the lead because they knew the land better than most of us. ‘Rupts attacked nearly every night. Small force mainly, but they hit us with Sappers on the second night, split us into several groups. I grabbed as many as I could with me and never stopped until we had crossed into Oregon. Think I damn near ran our horses to death. People were falling asleep as they were walking. The guys with a military background fared better on the march. We did what we could to rotate those who couldn’t walk into the wagons but it didn’t take more than half a day before they were overloaded and in danger of throwing a wheel.”
“You did good, James. I’m going to assume for the time being that you speak for these people, are you okay with that? Is there someone else that has been designated?”
“Like I said, we didn’t have time and have been on the run ever since. I sort of grabbed the reigns the best I could. I’ll take the responsibility until someone better comes along. Right now I just want to get these people behind a wall and let them rest before any more of them collapse. Some of these people are pretty torn up.”
“One of our scouts saw you coming so we have quite a bit prepared already. Why don’t you follow me and see if we can get on top of things here?”
Dylan wove a path through the crowd and made his way across the main square, “The back field there, we refer to it as tent city, newcomers start there and are then worked into either new or existing housing. Your arrival is going to make things very tight. We are working on pushing out but it is going to be a lengthy process. We need a lot of lumber and land cleared in order to make the room and we haven’t managed to find any heavy equipment to do it.”
James nodded as they walked among the tents, “We did manage to bring a fair amount of supplies. It’s mostly canned food, stuff that was in cases that we could load up fast. We have never been real heavy on weapons. Most of them were left behind with Martha so she could cover for us. I’m sorry we couldn’t bring more. We simply didn’t have the time.”
“Food alone is a big help, we don’t have the stores and were already talking about rationing in the near future.”
James nodded his understanding as they continued toward the main storage shack. Dylan finally found who he was looking for and waved, “Erica, this is James. He’s going to be the voice for the new arrivals for the time being. Will you please work with him to make sure we know what is going where and that no one gets left out in the rain? Let’s get these people rested up as soon as possible. We need to understand what we are up against with this change in tactics from the Corrupted and we need to start preparing yesterday. If you find anyone that had a good view of what showed up at Folkesburg, send them to me pronto.”
Erica nodded her understanding and shook James’ hand, “Glad to meet you.”
James shook the offered hand, “Likewise.” He turned back to Dylan and asked, “Why are you so sure they are going to attack here?”
“I’m sure because that’s what the Corrupted have always done. I can guarantee they have been following you the entire time. If not, they are close on your heels, sniffing your path from the moment they picked it up. Don’t worry about it. We can deal with a small probing attack. I’m much more concerned about larger numbers.”
James raised his eyebrows, “I wish I had your level of confidence when it comes to fighting these things off. We thought we had them pretty well pegged at Folkesburg but we never saw the attack coming. We had such an open area, we could pick them things off at four or five-hundred meters. Here, you guys have forest damn near to your doorstep.”
“I don’t know if I would call it confidence, but I do have a fair idea of how the Corrupted like to play the game.”
“And how exactly do they play the game?”
“They have one rule and one rule only. Do whatever it takes to wipe out humanity. If they find something that works, they stick with it.”
~3~
Their main concern was the immediate medical care for the new arrivals. Doc was also working overtime as he moved from tent to tent in order to document everything from broken bones to scratches. He moved several individuals from tent city into his small clinic for closer monitoring and to make sure whatever they had didn’t spread.
“This man needs to go to the quarantine cabin. He is showing all the signs of early viral meningitis. It won’t kill anyone but I can’t have it spreading through the town. Make sure he is in the contagious room.” Doc stepped out of the tent to allow two of his helpers to assist the man up. They wore heavy breathing masks and thick rubber gloves but still managed to sound pleasant as they half carried the delirious man to the cabin.
Dylan watched as the aging man made his way painfully over to Dylan and leaned against the wall next to him.
Doc massaged his neck, “My back is killing me. How hard would it be to have Travis make us a hot tub?”
“He could do it in a day or two, no problem. It’s just th
at it would probably run on explosives.”
They shared a laugh then grew uncomfortably quiet.
Doc was the first to speak, “I think that man going into the Q-Hut is the last one, at least for the time being. I’m sure as some of the others wake up after resting we’ll get a lot more coughs and aches and pains.”
Dylan leaned forward and stretched his back, “Expect a few more stragglers. James said they were split up at least twice in attacks. Not sure where in the hell we are going to put them, or how we are going to move around as it is. Have you seen Erica recently?”
“She is struggling to stay upright over on that bench,” Doc said as he pointed to a bench several dozen yards away.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Doc. Try to get some rest if you are able to. Let your orderlies get the stuff that isn’t life threatening. Something tells me the next few weeks will be a little rough and sleep will be few and far between.”
“I’ll do what I can, Dylan. I strongly suggest you do the same.”
Dylan nodded, “It’s like you just said, Doc. I’ll do what I can.”
Doc smiled back as he turned and headed toward his office. Dylan went the opposite direction and sat down heavily on the bench next to Erica.
“You still with us, Cupcake or are you off in dreamland imagining a world of ice cream and hamburgers?”
She startled slightly as he rubbed her shoulder, “Just resting my eyes for a minute. Do I have your name on the list yet? Are you with anyone? Did you lose anyone? Did you say you have hamburgers?”
“Pretty sure I’m not on the list and I would kill for a hamburger right now.”
Erica rubbed her eyes, “Sorry, Dad. I’m running on autopilot at this point. I think I could sleep for a month, but I would only dream about spread sheets and stores figures and wondering how high stuff can be stacked before it falls over. That or how you can fit twelve cubic feet of stuff into an eight cubic foot box without stomping it flat first.”
“Sleep sounds so damn good right now. How is everything going? You get everything you need, aside from sleep?”
