by W. J. Lundy
Sean stood and followed the man closer to the river’s edge where a dirt path ran parallel to the water. Eli slowed his pace and let Sean walk beside him. “We send hunting parties out all the time—just a few of the boys—after deer and rabbit. They do okay by us. About four weeks ago, maybe a bit less, a pair of my sons stumbled upon something out of the ordinary.”
Sean remained quiet, holding his questions and allowing the man to speak. They passed a bend in the river, and Eli stopped. He pointed to the opposite bank. Sean could hardly make out the shapes of vehicles covered in brush and tarps. Eli walked toward a tall oak and leaned back against it.
“They found this little campsite here. My boys thought maybe they were survivors. We’ve stumbled upon small groups from time to time, offered them what we could. Only this time, these folks weren’t camping, and they were all men—six of ’em, to be exact. At first, they didn’t appear to be no harm to us, so my boys left them be, just kept a close eye on them. We never approach strangers unless we identify one, like ol’ Henry back there, or we for sure know they’re friendly.”
“It’s a good policy,” Sean said.
Eli nodded and smiled. “Well, they watched them for a couple hours, sent another boy back to the farm to get me and some of the others. By the time we got here, things had turned from odd to sinister.” He pointed to the center of the cluster of vehicles. “Now what we got here is two SUVs and a U-Haul truck. Well, when I come up on them, that truck was backed up facing the river. The doors were closed shut, but there was an awful ruckus coming from inside.”
Sean shook his head. “You got to me be kidding me.”
“I wish I was, friend,” Eli said, looking down. “One of those men rolled that door open, and the inside had about fifty of ’em packed in there. Every one of them was hooked to a series of chains bolted to the floor. One of those boys had a pair of bolt cutters. They were fixing to cut those things loose and let drop into the river. They would have washed downstream a bit then stormed my farm. Even with shooters on the roof, I would have lost people.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say you didn’t let that happen.”
“I sure as shit didn’t.”
“You leave any alive?” Sean asked.
Eli shook his head and started walking back toward the barn. “Intended to, but it just didn’t work out that way. Frontier justice and all.”
Sean shrugged. “It happens.” He looked back toward the vehicles one last time. “And nobody ever came looking for them?”
“Nope; which made me think this was the entire party—at least until all those people showed up at Crabtree, and then the activity at the railroad. My best guess is these guys were out foraging or scouting ahead and stumbled on my place. With the way that truck was set up, they’d used the technique before. I feel no guilt in killing them.”
Sean nodded. “No judgments from me.” He didn’t care about dead raiders, and he could tell by the look in Eli’s eyes that the old man didn’t care about them either. “What else? Don’t hold back on me.”
Eli sighed, letting out a low cough. “There was a leader … wore a grey camo parka … barked orders like a boss. I only remember the details because it was his face I put the first bullet into. There were a couple others, some fought, others fled, but they all died in the proximity of those vehicles. City boys are no match for my kin.”
Sean locked his jaw, hearing the details of the leader’s description. “I know all about the ones with the grey ponchos; this is the same group I’m hunting. And the Primals in the truck… what’s the disposition on them?”
“Yeah, we took care of ’em. Them and the raiders are all buried out in my hay field. I figure they make as a good a fertilizer as anything. When you say hunting, you mean you got questions to ask of ’em?”
Sean shook his head but didn’t speak. Eli nodded knowingly and said, “I know where you’re headed, and that terrain ain’t suited for your mounts. I’ll give you a couple of vehicles. I have a nice Ford Ranger and a Tahoe back in one of the barns. I want you to take them.”
“Why would you just give us trucks?”
“Those are solid vehicles to get you where you need to go. Those mounts you have are fine, but they won’t take to the pressures like sheet metal can. But hear me out. I ain’t after your horses either. You come back for them when you return; vehicles or not, I’ll still give you the horses back.”
“Where is the but?” Sean asked.
Eli smirked. “I need you to take a couple of my guys with you. Couple of the young men are eager to get out and see the world. I can’t have them going it alone.”
“I’m not a babysitter,” Sean said suspiciously.
“Don’t expect you to be,” Eli said frowning. “These are good boys; they can take care of themselves, and if you tire of them… well, point them back this way and give ’em a boot in the ass. Regardless of that, we haven’t heard much from the world north of the Ohio River in months, and I’d like to get details back from my own kin. No disrespect.”
“I see,” Sean said. “So… you want me to escort some of your people to go out and take a look around. You know we’ve already got a mission of our own.”
Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “This won’t be no babysitting trip. My boys can hold their own, and they know that country far better than you do. That, and I know where your man left the train. My people can get you there; you just make sure they get back here.”
“You know about the train? How?” Sean asked.
“We heard it headed to Crabtree that night. We sent a party to find out what it was all about. That’s when we heard the fighting. My boys laid up in the woods where they could oversee the rail and avoid the infected. Later that night—early morning maybe—that engine and only a couple cars came flying past here, burning up the tracks. I sent my nephews to follow it. They found that engine and a sleeper car, but everyone was dead or gone. Lots of food and stored goods still left inside.”
“Everyone?”
“My people scouted out a road and saw a pair of tracks headed north. I suspect that would be your people. If it was the raiders, they would have stuck by the train and waited for their friends to come fetch them, if not drive it all the way back east. Either way, they wouldn’t have left their supplies.”
They continued walking and had circled all the way back toward the ranch buildings. Eli stopped and turned back to face Sean. “My only role here is to take care my people and this ranch. I want you to take my boys and find out what’s out there. You keep ’em as long as you need them, just get them back to me.” Eli sighed again. “No secrets on the frontier, right?”
Sean shook his head and said, “None.”
Eli grinned. “If you don’t take the boys with you, they’re bound to go anyhow. Can’t keep young men locked up on a farm forever, ya know.”
Sean looked at the man and noticed tired eyes, something he hadn’t recognized before. He nodded and offered his hand. “Okay, I won’t turn down more help—and more people that know this land, the better.” When Sean turned and looked back toward the house, he saw big open barbecue fires. Women were cooking meat, and pots were smoking over the fires. Kids were chasing each other in a field, playing. Sean saw Eli staring at the children.
“We’ve got to find a way to live out here,” Eli said just above a whisper. “I don’t have the people to fight raiders and the infected. It won’t work; I can’t protect them like this.”
Sean swallowed and sighed. “Send word to the south,” he said. “Cloud and the others at Crabtree will help you. They’ll reimburse you to use this place as a staging area. I’ll write orders for some of your men to deliver to Colonel Cloud and verify who you are. A working farm’s got to mean something.”
Eli turned back to face Sean. “Okay, I’ll accept that. It’s time for us to join up with what’s left of the world,” he said. “Now go gather your men; I’ll ready the vehicles for your trip east.”
Chapter
12
Northeast of Coldwater Compound, Michigan Safe Zone
Brad stared up at the stained ceiling tiles in a cold sweat. He could hear a persistent thumping from somewhere in the building. Not remembering where he was, his eyes searched the surroundings. He closed them tight and then opened them slowly to adjust to the light and found himself still in the strip mall building. He pulled the blanket away from his chest and turned to see Chelsea on a cot beside him. She was asleep facing the wall, her rifle leaned up next to her.
Sitting up, he swung his legs off the cot. There was a low glow from the woodstove at the far end of the room, keeping the room at a comfortable temperature. He could see Gyles standing watch at a barred door where the front of the store would have been before the place was boarded up. Brad turned back to the MRAP behind them. He could still see the vehicle’s sturdy hatch shrouded in heavy canvas. He leaned forward and focused on the lone night watchman, Gyles, in the low light. The man held his rifle in one arm, his head turned like he was listening to something outside the wall.
Brad slid his feet into the worn leather boots, lacing them up just tight enough so he could walk. He took his rifle and walked to the front of the space to join Gyles. The thumping remained, a steady cadence of what sounded like a fist hitting the boards outside.
“When did it start?” Brad whispered.
Gyles looked at him. “About an hour ago.”
“Any idea how many?”
Shaking his head, Gyles whispered, “One too many, I suppose.” Gyles held up his hand, pausing as another loud bang hit the wall. He sighed and looked back at Brad. “I know they always come—they come every night—but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. No matter how many I kill, they still freak me out.”
Brad frowned and moved away from the wall. Looking straight down a blacked-out hallway, he could see that where this building ended, someone had cut a hole in the wall to enter the shop next door. Through squinted eyes, he saw a dim light at least two shops down. Brad pointed and Gyles nodded at the light. “It’s Palmer; he’s got a peephole down there. Checking things out on the far end.”
Brad patted Gyles’s shoulder then moved toward the passageway, ducking to enter the next building. It looked like a tax or insurance office, decorated with typical wooden desks and fake plants. Following the light, he moved to the next hole cut in the wall, past an electronics shop, and finally to what was once a small market. A battery-powered lantern was sitting on a store counter. He could see the remains of looted store shelves and a turned-over soda machine.
“I’m over here,” a voice called out.
“Hell, man, you scared the shit out of me,” Brad said, spinning on his heels. He spotted Palmer behind the counter watching a small black-and-white TV monitor. “You got cable out here?” he whispered.
Palmer shook his head. “This is the old store security monitor; they’ve got two cameras out front, more out back and along the side. They don’t use much juice, so I’ve got them tapped into a battery pack I set up on the roof. The owner of this shop must have owned the strip mall. They had a good eight cameras hanging. I moved a few, but he had the place pretty well covered as it was.”
“How are they still on?” Brad asked.
“Like I said… batteries. Whoever he was, he was prepared for the usual blackouts. I plugged in some solar chargers to keep them up and going, and I’ve added more cells. If I’m careful, they’ll run most of the night.”
“See anything good out there?”
“No, but lots of bad,” the man said, not taking his eyes off the monitor.
Brad stepped closer; he couldn’t see much through the hazy black-and-white picture. Palmer pointed to what looked like snow or normal broadcast interference. The man pressed a red button on a bar below the TV, and the camera angle changed and focused to view just beyond the parking lot, into tall uncut grass fields filled with overgrown bushes. What Brad first thought were sparkles of static snow on the display, quickly materialized into glowing eyes.
“There’s got to be a hundred of them,” Brad said. “How can so many have found us?”
“They doubled back and led them to us.”
“Raiders?” Brad asked.
“Can’t be the Primals alone,” Palmer said. “We drove too fast, and it’s beyond their range. Someone led them here.”
“And the creepers?” Brad asked, still focused on the cold eyes seeming to stare back at him through the camera.
Palmer pulled away from the camera bank and opened a drawer. Inside was a stack of old flip phones. “No, no creepers yet, but they’ll be coming up behind them; we’ll be surrounded soon. The raiders probably led them here going fast enough to stay ahead of the Primals. The mass of others will be just behind them, but not far. I suppose we only have an hour or so before they spring whatever attack it is they have planned.”
Brad pointed. “What’s with the phones?”
“They look like phones, but I have them plugged into the strip mall’s Wi-Fi router. Think of each of these phones as a clacker on a claymore. Phones obviously have no cell connection, but the shop’s Wi-Fi is still online.”
“Clacker? Well, if that’s the trigger then where is the claymore?” Brad asked.
Palmer grinned and hit the camera bar again, flipping through displays until one stopped on a boarded-up building across the street. He pointed at the first flip phone. “I have a pair of homemade bombs setup. One is out back on the approach road; another set is daisy-chained and hidden up on the roof, angled down toward the front parking lot.”
Brad looked at the last phone on the counter. “And that one?” he asked.
Palmer pointed at the building in the monitor. “Fifty gallons of old gas and diesel with a block of C4 is in the basement of that old bookstore over there.”
“And why over there?”
Palmer shrugged his shoulders. “Logical assumption. I figured if outsiders ever came and put me under siege, they would most likely set up in that building over there. It’s taller than this one, it’s made of concrete block, and the windows are all boarded up. If they got on the roof, they would have good fields of fire over the parking lot and us—logical spot, really. They could hold off well against the Primals and keep us pinned indefinitely.
“Sergeant Brown said I should tear it down. But I figured it would do better as a trap.”
“Did it?”
Palmer changed camera angles again and stopped on one that looked at the side of the bookstore. The place appeared completely empty. “Not certain, but do those look like tracks in the road to you? And that—” Palmer hit a control, zooming the camera to the sidewalk near the store’s boarded-over front window to where there was a lump in the snow. “Now that right there is a body. I’d say our bad guys are in there.”
A loud explosion and flash of light flickered the camera monitors. Brad stumbled back as dust and ceiling tiles fell from above. He turned back toward the passageway, where he could see orange light and smoke filtering in. Spinning back to Palmer, he could see the man was flipping switches. “I’ve lost the back cameras,” he shouted. “What the—? How did they sneak up on me?”
Gunfire erupted from deep in the building. A second, larger boom shook the structure, causing more of the ceiling tiles to break loose and fall all around Brad. He staggered back and pulled his rifle close.
Scooping the flip phones into his hand, Palmer turned toward him. “Go!” he shouted, eyes fixed on the monitors.
Brad stared at him with wide eyes, still confused about what was happening.
“I said go, damn it,” Palmer yelled again. “They’re hitting the back; if we lose that MRAP, we’re screwed!”
Brad ducked away and stepped hard, backing toward the passageway. Looking ahead, he saw the path was already filling with smoke, the toxic gasses flowing from one storefront to the next through the holes in the wall. He let the sounds of gunfire lead him as he ran crouched down—ducking through the last passage—then turned ba
ck toward where he’d left the others. He looked to the corner where Chelsea had been and found her empty cot. There was a bright flash, then an explosion knocked him off his feet. When he rolled off his back and pulled himself up to his knees, the room was filled with smoke. Brad crawled forward and saw the back of the MRAP engulfed in orange flame, roiling with black smoke. He crawled ahead to a makeshift barrier where his group had been returning fire.
Gyles was staggering to a knee, dragging an unconscious Chelsea by her wrists while firing with his free arm. Brad ran to his side. “What the hell happened?”
“Take her; we’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Gyles said, staggering back while choking and coughing on the thick smoke.
“Where’s Sergeant Brown?” Brad asked.
Frowning, the veteran soldier shook his head. “Come on; we’ve got to go.”
Brad looked back toward the MRAP. The bay was completely engulfed in flames, which were working to hold back the advancing Primals. As Brad looked up, he could see that the fire was spreading across the ceiling, the heat igniting plastic and the rolls of carpet as it spread. He grabbed Chelsea’s wrist and hoisted her into a fireman’s carry as he followed Gyles back to the storefront. On his right, Brad spotted Palmer ducking through the passage, still holding the flip phones. He pointed at a long wooden shelf, and Gyles nodded. The young man ran directly to it, pulling it down and away from the wall.
Behind the shelf was another passageway. This one didn’t lead into a store, but was instead a void space, lined with cinder blocks that ran between the store’s Sheetrock and the outer wall of the building. At nearly a run, Gyles stepped in first with Palmer trailing close. Brad moved quickly to avoid being left behind. The air was hot and dry but clear of smoke. Brad could feel the intensity of the fire radiating off the interior walls. The men ahead broke to the right and then down a long corridor that must have run the length of the building. The farther they moved from the fire, the cooler and darker it got.
