Sandy decided it was best not to ask if the man had been expecting him to die or run away. Instead, he offered, “Sandy. I worked in a building full of doctors and got tired of the title pretty quick.”
Pat stepped forward and took his hand in a crushing grip. “Thank you. Thank you, Sandy.” Tears brimmed in the man’s eyes, and he glanced over his shoulder at the children, who’d abandoned their game to examine the newcomer.
A bit embarrassed by the show of emotion, Sandy shrugged.
Pat turned. “You know Jason. This is my wife, Stacy. That’s my little girl Penny, and my son Mason. Kids, say hi to Sandy.”
The children chorused a greeting, then returned to their toys. He must not have been that interesting, after all. He smirked to himself.
“Pat—” Jason interjected. He gestured to the suitcase, then held his words back and looked at Sandy. Realizing the younger man was seeking his approval, he nodded. “He brought food and water!”
Pat groaned, and even the kids and his wife looked overcome. Rather than ask questions, Sandy knelt and unzipped the suitcase and began laying out cans of food. He’d found the bag in one of the abandoned cars in the marina parking lot, filled to bursting with clothing and miscellaneous junk that held little or no utility in a survival situation. Small wonder the owner had left it behind. Sandy dumped it all in the back seat of the sedan and loaded it up with supplies from Buddy’s RV. Even with the serious dent he’d made, there was still a little bit left.
Stacy approached as though she were reluctant to appear too needy. He looked up and noted the pinch-eyed look of desperation on her face. “Here,” he said. “I don’t know how long you guys have been on short rations, but I’d start out with something light—some fruit?” He nodded toward the grill. “And if that works, we can warm some stuff up till that’s done. I know that’d be a treat for me. I can’t remember the last time I had a hot meal.” He’d found any number of places to hole up in, but the thought of building a fire in any enclosed buildings had terrified him. The first time he tried he couldn’t sleep for fear of waking up to a raging inferno. The first time he’d tried a campfire out in the open, he’d ended up attracting so many infected that he’d had to make a run for it. After that, cold food had become the order of the day.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting some cans of pears and fruit cocktail. “For everything.”
That crawling sense of embarrassment ran up his spine again, and he settled for another shrug. “You’re the first people I’ve seen in months. I’d be a pretty big piece of—” He glanced over, noted that Penny and Mason were in earshot, and shifted gears. “—crap, if I didn’t try to help out.”
Stacy gave him a knowing smile and laughed. “Jason, go get Richard and your sister.” She busied herself at the grill with a stack of cans.
The younger man sketched a salute and disappeared through a set of double doors leading into the back of the showroom. Not sure what else to do, Sandy grabbed a bottle of water and sat down in one of the office chairs. After his rope-and-bat seat, the padded cushion felt like a little slice of heaven. He took a drink and gave a contented sigh.
Pat settled into the seat next to Sandy. The two sat silent for a moment before Sandy decided to break the ice. “Your place?”
The other man nodded. “Pat’s Aqua Marine. We set up shop a little out of the way to save money on rent. The lease on our last place was nuts. Thankfully I’ve got—had—enough long-time customers that it worked out fine. Saved our butts, sure as the world.”
“Quick thinking with the boats,” Sandy observed. “Even up off the floodplain, they’d swarm the walls and bust through.”
“That’s Kendra’s idea. Jason’s sister. She’s the office manager. Well, was.” Pat sighed. “I’m still working through the tense thing. Before winter, I was still holding out hope that the Army was going to ride to the rescue.”
Sandy thought about overrun roadblocks, scattered bones, and blown bridges. He tried not to sigh. “Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
“What’s your story, Sandy?”
“Nothing much to it. I holed up in my office until it got cold enough to slow the infected down. Been on the road ever since. Figured I’d head north to cowboy country. If that wasn’t safe, Canada.”
“Infected.” Pat snorted. “That’s a new one. Better than zombies, I guess.”
“Jason?”
“Yeah, he’s been a regular font of useless knowledge. But, he was right about getting them in the head. So you hit the bridge and headed north,” Pat guessed.
“That was a bit of a roadblock,” Sandy agreed. “Worked out, though. Your infected are washing down south as we speak.”
Pat shifted in the seat and rubbed his chest with a grimace. “That right?” His voice was tight with restrained tension. After a moment, he relaxed a bit and continued. “How’d you manage that?”
Sandy thought about probing but decided if the other man wanted to tell him anything, he’d offer it up. “I hung off one the upper supports and baited them into walking over the edge.”
Pat laughed. “Damn, I’d have liked to have seen that.”
Sandy shook his head. “Yeah, well, that’s not a trick that will always work. You get a horde coming anywhere other than north, that makes it tricky to get them to head that way.”
“You have any ideas on that?”
“Maybe. You have any boats you aren’t using for the wall?”
“A few.”
“I was reading an article about bases overseas, back in the day.” That he’d been mining it for talking points to paint on a protest sign was information that he didn’t need to share, particularly given his internal regrets of that time. There were a lot of things he wished he’d not done during his college days. The war protests, per se, weren’t among them. But they’d been a turning point in his life, leading to this moment. It was funny how that worked. “They used alternating barriers in the road to slow down traffic.” He made a snaking motion with his hands. “If you don’t give a straight shot on approach, that reduces the potential speed that a vehicle can build up. In our case, it cuts down on the pressure that a horde can put on the walls. The driveway is a weak spot. If they stack up enough to climb up the sides, we’re hosed as it is.”
“We, huh?”
Sandy coughed a chuckle. He hadn’t even realized he’d done it. “Yeah, I guess. If you’ll have me.”
“He’s got more hair than you, for sure,” commented a new voice. Pat and Sandy turned. Richard and a tall brunette waited outside the camp circle.
Pat laughed. “Sandy, you know Richard. This is Kendra Weiser, Jason’s sister.”
Sandy stood. He tried to avoid giving her the once over but failed. She was tall and had her brunette hair drawn back into a ponytail. She wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, faded jeans, and hiking boots. Despite the lack of makeup, she had a fresh-faced beauty that was the most stunning thing he’d seen in months. Realizing that he’d frozen, he extended a hand with a sheepish grin. “Sandy Scopulis.”
She shook it with surprising strength and gave him a broad smile. “So I hear. Or maybe we should call you Pied Piper? We had a pretty good viewpoint from up on the roof.”
“Just doing what I can,” Sandy said. “I’ve been running solo on the road for a while. If I wasn’t paying attention I’d have been a snack a long time ago.”
She laughed. “Well, good. You should teach us some lessons.” She nodded toward the suitcase of food. “Where’d you dig that up?”
“RV, down in the marina parking lot.”
She made a face. Jason crowed from across the room. “I told you there was stuff worth salvaging down there.”
“Enough,” Kendra said, and her brother closed his mouth with an audible clop. Sandy glanced over at Pat. The bald man looked annoyed.
“I get it, I get it,” Pat muttered. “Forgive me for playing it safe.” He pointed at Sandy’s pistol. “Do note that
he has more bullets in his pistol than we do in the entire building, Jason.”
Not anymore. Sandy figured silence was the better option and didn’t give voice to the thought.
“I got it,” Jason said, slouching down into a chair.
Pat turned to Sandy and grinned. “Stacy and I have been friends with Jason and Kendra’s mom and dad for years. They lived—live—out west. The kids stayed around here for college.”
Kendra sat down next to her brother. “We were planning on bugging out that way, but the roads were nuts. Ended up back here.” She waved her hands in the air. “And now you know the rest of the story.”
Sandy couldn’t help it. He laughed. After a moment the rest of the group joined in. It flowed for a long, comfortable moment until Stacy broke in.
“Soup’s on, people. Well, soup, vegetables, beanie weenies, and a little bit of everything.” Sandy grinned again. Whoever Buddy had been, he’d had eclectic tastes. The RV had plenty of canned vegetables and soup, but there’d been as many cans of Spaghetti-Os. His smile faded as he wondered whether there’d been a kid with Buddy. He glanced at Penny and Mason and told himself that Buddy had a taste for them. Maybe it was a lie, but it was an easier line of thinking. The tinge of emotion made his laughter fall flat in his own ears, and he trailed off to what felt like an awkward silence.
Such was the new paradigm. Sandy had lost his grandparents when he’d been younger, and the process of grief had progressed from the crush of loss to a slow return to normalcy. Only it hadn’t been normal, being honest. He could go days, even weeks, until even the most innocuous thing would make him think of his grandparents, and that sense of loss would hit him all over again. It wasn’t forgetting so much as it was compartmentalization.
Which became all the more difficult when it was a world of grandparents, parents, siblings, and children. The beauty of the rising sun was as beautiful now as it always had been, until the morning light illuminated the shadow-shrouded corpses that littered the world.
The group gathered around the grill as Stacy juggled hot cans, setting them on the tile. There were plenty of plastic bowls and plates—more camping equipment, he supposed—and enough variety that they all found something to suit their taste, even the children. Sandy recalled coworkers complaining about the pickiness of their children, but Penny and Mason were hungry enough that they took their plates without a word of complaint.
He sat and dug his spoon into his bowl of beef stew. The spoon was halfway to his mouth before he realized that Stacy was leading the group in a quiet prayer. He eased the spoon back into the bowl and lowered his head. He’d never been much of a believer, but it had always struck him as rude to buck the cultural customs of those who’d accepted you as a guest.
“Lord, these past few months have been hard. But we hold out hope in Your name, Lord. We thank You for the new friend you’ve delivered unto us. Please let this food be nourishment and strength for our bodies, and may our souls find comfort in Your promise. Amen.”
The rest of the group chorused in reply and Sandy joined in, a half-beat later. After that, they all got down to the serious business of eating. They weren’t so far gone that they wolfed down what they had, but the survivors kept an intent focus. The room fell silent save for the sound of chewing and the occasional, unconscious hum of pleasure.
A memory of an infected feeding frenzy he’d watched from the window of his office popped up in his mind, and Sandy grimaced. He lowered his half-eaten bowl of stew, wanting nothing more than to hand it off and get out of the room. He forced himself to remain in his seat, and after a moment, he forced himself to push the images away and finish his meal. Leftovers were a relic of the old world, and there was no certainty when any of them would see their next meal.
Finished, Sandy continued to hold his empty bowl. He glanced over at the suitcase of food. His heart sank as he realized that what he’d thought was an overwhelming amount of supplies wasn’t much spread out between eight people. There was enough in the case for another meal or two if they stretched things.
Despite that, he couldn’t bring himself to shatter the good mood by bringing it up. The possibility of death at any moment lent a sense of immediacy to what might have been a normal activity back in the day. He contented himself with watching the rest of the survivors eat, taking comfort in their comfort.
Though he wasn’t trying to look at any of his companions in particular, Sandy found that he kept sneaking glances at Kendra. After a few, she noticed the look and gave him a knowing smile. Caught, he all he could do was wave a hand in embarrassment and shrug. Her smile broadened, and she leaned over and whispered something into Stacy’s ear. The other woman laughed.
Pat eased over and sat down next to Sandy. He looked down into the suitcase of supplies on his way and made a face of his own. “There anything left back at that RV?”
“Some, not much. There are a ton of cars in the parking lot, but I don’t know if there will be any food in them. The ones I checked had clothing and junk for the most part.” He considered. “Clothes might come in handy, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Pat said. “We brought some spares, but we never expected to be here this long, and it’s not like we have a washer and dryer in the back. We’ve got water, at least, though we have to boil it.”
“Line down to the river?”
“Yeah. I had it installed when we built the place. Figured it made more sense than using city water for engine tests. The filter still works, but we don’t have enough gas to use the electric pump too often. Jason and Richard rigged up a hand pump. Once you get it primed and going, it’s not too bad. We get enough to drink and bathe.” Pat grinned. “Hope you like sponge baths.”
Sandy shook his head. “I wish I’d taken more advantage of the executive washroom at work before the grid failed. They had a sweet shower.”
Pat looked wistful at the thought. “Hell, I’d have stayed.” He took a quick glance around the room and leaned a bit closer. “Look, can I be straight with you?”
“Sure.”
“One of the reasons I played things so conservative as far as getting out and scrounging is my health.” He shrugged. “My family doc has been riding for me years about my weight. I’ve lost plenty, but my ticker doesn’t seem to care.”
Sandy considered the man’s cheeks, put two and two together and frowned. “High blood pressure?”
“Yeah. Any thoughts?”
He leaned back in his chair and tried not to groan. “What sort of medication were you on?”
“Tenormin. We did the ninety-day mail-order thing. I started cutting them in half early on, but I’ve been out for a month.”
Sandy rubbed his face and tried to avoid the urge to cry. “There’s got to be a pharmacy nearby. In the meantime, I’d say avoid sodium, but—” He glanced at the canned food again. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” Pat sounded tired. “Can’t hop down to the farmer’s market and buy fresh any longer, huh?”
“Long-term, we need to build up a garden. Push the walls out, take advantage of the surrounding fields. We’d need to make them taller, of course. Dig trenches. May as well push down to the river while we’re doing it.”
“That sounds great, and it’s not too far from what I’ve pondered, but that’s longer term than I’ve given myself time for. Between the zombies, my health, and the dipshit Mafia showing up every three or four days, it’s a perfect trifecta of suck.”
“Yeah, I guess so. So, what’s your short-term agenda?”
Pat shifted uncomfortably. “Just so you know, I hate to ask. But you seem to know what you’re doing…”
Sandy knew what was coming, and he raised a hand to forestall the speech. “I get it. It’d be crazy for you to go out, so you want some of the other people to make the run.”
“Right.” The other man frowned, and Sandy could tell he wasn’t used to standing by while others did the hard work. “I’ve been working it over in my head. The creeps have been doing laps on this s
ide of the river for months. Anything easy to move is long gone, so whatever we find is going to be the result of pure, dumb luck. Like the RV.”
He nodded. “Granted.”
“So we’ve got to go across the river to Louisiana.” He watched the confusion cross Sandy’s face, then added, “That’s the name of the town—Louisiana, Missouri.”
“Okay.”
Pat ticked off the points on his fingers. “Before the bridge blew, there was a roadblock on the other side. There was one hell of a fight over there, but they got overrun. Who knows if there’s anything worth keeping left, but there have to be vehicles, ammunition, food, whatever.”
Sandy considered it and nodded. “Sure. I’ve seen it before.” He touched the pistol at his waist.
“So step one—weapons, ammo, food. Anything else useful. Assess the vehicles to see if any of them might run. You’ll have to bring a battery back. We’ve got a generator, we can get enough of a charge on it to crank.”
“I know exactly nothing about cars. You have a mechanic on staff?”
Pat went pale. “Barry. But Richard is pretty handy.”
“Okay,” Sandy agreed. “Go on.”
“Step two—cross the river again. We’ll scrounge up some tools or whatever. We’ve got a hand siphon in the back, you can use that to consolidate fuel in whatever vehicle you go with. I’m guessing most of them are diesel, and we don’t have any on hand. Have next to no gas as it is.” He ticked off the third point. “Make a run through town and assess how thick it is. Hopefully, it’s not too bad, but there were this side of 4,000 people living in town before the end.”
“It’s not St. Louis, at least,” Sandy observed, though inside he wanted to scream and start running.
“Heh. South of town, out in the boonies, there’s a gun shop. It might be worth a trip to run down and see what they’ve got. Even if it’s tapped out, you can use it as bait.”
A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2) Page 9
