The Last Bastion

by K. W. Callahan

  The boat itself – a sizeable metal fishing boat – was in good shape. And they got the first of their planned water transportation tethered just below the tower in the calm pool formed by the dam’s remnants.

  “One down,” Josh said. “How many more you think we need to make the trip?” he asked Michael as the group sat on the tower’s third floor eating their dinner of pork and canned beans later that night.

  The group was now making a push to begin finishing as much of their remaining meat as possible. With temperatures on the rise, Michael was concerned about the possibility for spoilage. He was also considering the weight of the meat and how it could affect the navigation of their boats during their river travels. They could only carry so many supplies with them without risking overloading the boats they hoped to find. And there was no longer a way, once temperatures began holding above the freezing mark, to keep the meat cold. Therefore they were cooking and consuming as much of the meat as possible.

  “Don’t know,” Michael said. “That fishing boat could easily hold four to six people, or two to four people and a lot of our supplies depending on how we want to do it. Problem is, a boat like that will probably be harder to control in the river as compared to a canoe or kayak. I’d say we need at least four more two-person boats, maybe even five.”

  “That’s a stretch, don’t you think?” Julia Justak asked.

  Michael shrugged. “I have no idea, at least not until we get out and start searching the area. The thing is, I’m not sure we even want to attempt kayaks. From what I understand, they tend to roll more easily than canoes or rowboats. And with the inexperience of most of our group in such contraptions, and with the water temperature the way it is, we don’t want people taking a dunking en route.”

  “Especially since we don’t have wetsuits,” Patrick added.

  “Right,” his father agreed.

  “So who’s going out to look for boats?” Andrew Franko asked.

  “Me, Patrick, Charla, and Wendell,” Michael said. “It’s mostly going to be a scouting mission to start. Even if we find boats, we probably won’t try to bring them back with us. We just need to see what’s out there first.”

  “Where are you going to look?” Andrew asked.

  “Probably right around here to start. With the bridge out, and biters all over the place, I don’t want to get too far from the tower right away.”

  “Yes,” Caroline gave her husband a concerned look, “don’t press your luck. We have time. We don’t need to be taking any unnecessary risks just yet.”

  “We may not have as much time as you think,” her husband eyed her warily. “Temperatures stay like this and things could get unbearable around here real quick,” he reminded her.

  “Eat up,” motherly Ms. Mary reminded them about their food quickly cooling in front of them. “You’ll need your energy for tomorrow. Full bellies will help you get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep. You need to be up before sunrise to beat the biters.”

  “Good point,” Michael agreed, diving back into his food with gusto.

  * * *

  The group was up and on their scouting mission well before sunrise in the dim pre-dawn light. They had given themselves an hour. It wasn’t much time, but they didn’t want to be caught out in broad daylight when the biters were most prevalent.

  It turned out that they didn’t even need their full hour. The initial search was a bust. They didn’t locate any better waterborne mode of transit than a couple inflatable pool toys and inner tubes.

  Back at the tower, the entire Blender group met to re-evaluate their situation.

  “We need more time,” Charla said. “And more options. We need to be able to look around a bunch of houses. And not just around the exterior of houses but inside their garages. That’s probably where people would store things like canoes if they had them.”

  “You’re right,” Michael agreed. “And to do that, we need to get over to Riverside proper and search the homes there.”

  “But to do that, we need to get across the river,” Patrick added. “And with the bridge being blown, the only way to get over there is to wade across the river or use the suspension bridge that’s a mile away and leaves us totally exposed.”

  “Well,” Michael considered, “I was thinking about something while we were out on our first mission. We already have one boat. Why not use it?”

  The group looked at him, silently waiting for the rest of the plan.

  “Why don’t we take the fishing boat down to where the river hooks a ninety degree angle by the library?” Michael continued. “It gets us to Riverside quickly and unencumbered by biters. We could offload at the park there early in the morning. Hopefully biters won’t be hanging around that spot since there aren’t houses in that immediate vicinity. We can take some food with us and make camp inside one of the houses during the day. Then we’ll already be in place for another search around dusk, and another the next morning if we need more time.”

  “How do we get the boat back here?” Ms. Mary asked.

  “Hmm…good question,” Michael frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe we just leave it there for the time being. If we don’t find any other boats, we might not need it anyway. So why go to all the trouble of hauling it back? If we do need it, we can deal with getting it back later.”

  “Or we could just haul it up on shore and hide it,” Josh added. “I think I know of a good spot where we could stash it. We could put any other boats we find there with it. Not like there’s probably a big market for boats among scavengers around here these days.”

  “Good point,” Michael agreed. “Worst case scenario, we have to go to the boats when we need them rather than bring them back to the tower with us. Does that sound good to everyone?”

  There were nods and murmurs of confirmation from the rest of the group.

  “Good,” Michael said. “Oh, and one more thing. I think we should bump our scouting party up from four to six people. Then we can break up into two groups of three or three groups of two and cover more ground. Do I have volunteers? Josh, you’re currently exempt as you know,” he added.

  Josh had come down with a cold after his river crossing. He wasn’t feeling terrible, but his cough was loud. And there was no way Michael wanted him coming on a covert scouting mission announcing their presence to biters across the land with constant sniffling and a hacking cough.

  Ms. Mary and Caroline quickly volunteered.

  “We leave at the same time tomorrow morning,” Michael announced. “Those not going on the trip will be charged with gathering the supplies for the packs tonight and securing the tower while we’re away.”

  * * *

  “All right, buddy,” Patrick said to Justin as he zipped up his coat and then knelt in front of the tired looking nine-year-old. “You hold down the fort while I’m away. No card practice while I’m gone. You beat me eight games to two yesterday. You’re getting too good,” he smiled, gave the youngster a hug, and then ruffled the boy’s hair.

  “Watching those two together almost makes me feel like I’m not doing my job as a father,” Josh whispered into Julia’s ear.

  “You’re a wonderful father,” Julia whispered back. “And right now, considering our situation, Justin can use all the attention and positive reinforcement he can handle.”

  “True,” Josh considered. “Still makes me kind of jealous, though.

  “Don’t worry. Patrick is more like an older brother. And you can give card playing to Patrick since you’re great with Justin in just about every other realm.”

  “Thanks,” Josh smiled, reveling in receiving some lavished positive reinforcement of his own.

  The half dozen Blenders crept stealthily down to the end of the dismantled dam in the darkness. There, one by one, they carefully loaded themselves inside the rowboat, doing their best not to bang it into the dam’s concrete or otherwise draw attention to themselves.

  Once loaded, Christine Franko cast them off and th
ey were on their way. It was still dark out, the early dawn providing just enough light to guide them. It was obvious that Wendell was nervous about being on the water, but he kept his concerns to himself, praying the short trip remained uneventful.

  They had formed makeshift paddles for themselves out of pieces of 2 x 4 and plywood. They were far from perfect tools to navigate the clunky rowboat, but they were better than nothing. And as the Blenders did their best to thread their way through the rubble-laden rapids the detonated bridge had formed in the river, the paddles served more as push tools to help keep the fishing boat from bashing too hard into the massive chunks of concrete. Even then, the boat took some pretty hard licks as it was shoved by the eddying water over and between the missile-formed boulders.

  But it was smooth sailing from that point until they reached a bend in the river just before the Riverside Library perched high on the bank above it. A large park lined this portion of the river. And the group paddled themselves up to the riverbank where they disembarked, hauling the fishing boat up the side of the bank with them. Wendell was the first to hop from inside the craft, breathing a deep sigh of relief to be off the water.

  “We’ll stow it over here,” Michael pointed. “Josh told me about a spot,” he led the group who had collectively lifted the fishing boat and were carrying it along a paved path that followed the river’s western bank.

  They walked about 100 feet along the path before they came to a set of about half a dozen concrete steps. The steps led down to a large, tree-studded field. It was the same field where Wendell used to daydream of how life in Riverside would have appeared a century or more earlier. It was where he would describe to Charla his visions of parasol-toting ladies and top-hat adorned men strolling arm-in-arm, a barbershop quartet regaling passers-by from a white gazebo.

  To the left of the steps was a sort of overgrown alcove created by the curvature of the path above them and the steps themselves. Several trees and some ivy and other overgrowth helped to shelter the space. This was where the group placed their rowboat, nestling it up close to the stone retention wall below the elevated walking path.

  Directly across the field, was another set of stone steps leading up a sizeable hill to one of Riverside’s winding streets. This was where the group began their search. They split up into groups. Michael, Ms. Mary, and Caroline formed one group. Patrick, Charla, and Wendell formed the other. Each group took one end of the street and worked their way, house by house, toward one another.

  “Anything?” Michael inquired as the two groups rejoined in the front yard at a home positioned near the center of the block about half an hour later.

  “Nope,” Patrick shook his head.

  Michael looked up and down the deserted avenue. With the exception of several dead biter bodies littering the street, it could have been a quiet Sunday morning in Riverside. Other than some neglect to the homes and yards around them, everything appeared fairly normal.

  The sun wasn’t up yet, but the early morning darkness was fading fast.

  “Let’s cut in to the next street then and try there,” Michael said. “We may not have time to finish before the sun is up, so let’s stay close to each other. I want to have a place to bunk down for the day before it gets too light out. We’ll take two houses that are side-by-side, check them, and then move on to the next two. At the last two houses we hit before sunrise, we’ll choose one as our stopping point. Take it slow and steady. We’re in a hurry, but we don’t want to be stupid,” he reminded them.

  As they worked, it only took a couple minutes to check each house. The two teams didn’t even have to go inside the actual homes. They just did a quick search of the yards and then checked inside the garages before moving on.

  It didn’t take long before they hit pay dirt. A tarp-covered aluminum canoe and two kayaks were discovered by Ms. Mary’s team behind the garage of a large Victorian just as a light rain began to fall. All the vessels appeared to be in sailable condition.

  After Ms. Mary alerted the other team to the find, Michael said, “Okay, let’s check a couple more houses and then select one to bunk down for the day.” There was the distant rumble of thunder. “Sounds like the rain might break loose soon, so we’d better move our tails.”

  Five minutes later, the team had scoured the perimeters of four more homes and selected one, a three-story, sky-blue Victorian as their spot to settle down for the day. The two teams tried the home’s front door, but it was locked.

  Michael looked up and down the street. He could see several figures approaching from one end of the block that he assumed were biters.

  “Let’s head around back,” he nodded toward the figures on the street.

  The others turned to look.

  “We don’t want to shoot biters unless our lives depend on it. It would only bring more of them. And we don’t want to be trapped inside one of these houses, surrounded by biters, and cut off from making it back to the tower. We don’t have enough supplies for that type of situation,” he turned away from the home’s front door, leading the group off the porch and around to the back yard.

  There, they found the back door locked as well.

  “Damn,” Michael hissed. “Guess we’ll have to break in.”

  The back door had a single, large pane of glass in its center. With the butt of his handgun, Michael carefully knocked out one corner, managing to leave the rest of the pane intact. He then reached inside, and after a few seconds of fumbling, had the back door unlocked and open.

  “All right, guys,” he stepped back to allow entry to the home. “Let’s go,” he waved them ahead.

  The group of six scavengers filed inside. They paused in a long hallway that stretched toward the front of the home as Michael closed and relocked the door behind them.

  “Let’s look for something to push in front of that broken glass,” Michael said. “If those biters out there saw us come inside, we might…”

  He was cut short by a noise at the end of the hallway in which they stood. The noise had come from where the home’s front entry foyer met with a staircase leading upstairs.

  The group turned and raised their weapons just as the two men at the other end of the hall did the same.

  Michael was surprised. He hadn’t expected anyone to be inside the home, and suddenly he felt that his group was trespassing – which they were.

  “What do you want?” the first of the two men asked.

  Even though they were inside, both men were wearing knit caps, fingerless gloves, and winter coats. The first man held a revolver. The man beside and slightly behind him held a hunting rifle. Both men looked to be in their mid to late thirties.

  “We were just looking for a place to hold out for the day,” Michael answered. “Starting to rain outside…and the biters are coming out. We didn’t know this house was occupied.”

  “Well it is,” the first man answered tersely. “Where you all from?”

  “Brookfield,” Michael answered.

  “What are you doing over here in Riverside?”

  “Looking for canoes,” Michael said.

  “Canoes?” the man made a face. “What the hell for?”

  “Get down the river,” Michael answered honestly.

  “Mmm,” the man gave a slight nod.

  “Would you be willing to let us stay…just until it gets dark out again? Then we’ll be out of your hair,” Michael asked.

  The two men glanced at one another. Then the first one looked back to the group of Blenders gathered in the hall.

  “You said you’re looking for canoes?” the first man asked.

  “Yes…canoes, kayaks, rowboats, fishing boats…that sort of thing,” Michael clarified.

  “We help get you a canoe, and we let you stay here for the day, you willing to barter?”

  “Sure,” Michael nodded. “As you can see, we don’t have much,” he gestured to the packs they all carried. “But we might be able to work a deal. Can we lower our weapons?”

 
; The two men scanned the faces of the intruders who had unwittingly broken into their home.

  “I guess so,” the first man nodded, slowly lowering his revolver.

  The Blenders did the same, as did the other man, lowering his hunting rifle once the Blenders had lowered their weapons.

  Suddenly there came the sound of booted footsteps on wood floors above them.

  “Everything okay?” a woman’s voice called down the stairs from above.

  “Fine,” the second man called back sternly. “Just stay put.”

  The two men’s eyes flicked nervously from the voice upstairs back to the group of travelers standing in their hallway.

  “Let’s go into the dining room,” the first man suggested, nodding toward open pocket doors to his right.

  He led the group into a spacious, and finely appointed, dining room. A large glass chandelier hung above a darkly stained dining room table with eight chairs set around it. A massive buffet was set against one wall, a wooden silverware box set atop it straddled by two brass candleholders. On the opposite wall was a glass-fronted hutch filled with dishes, an extra dining room chair set on either side of it. And on the far wall hung a huge, gold-leaf-framed oil painting of a gilded-age family at dinner.

  The second man waited until everyone had filed into the dining room before following them inside.

  Michael couldn’t blame the two men for being wary after having six armed strangers break into their apparent home. He just prayed that everything remained calm. He’d lost enough people lately without adding more to the casualty list.

  “Have a seat,” the lead man gestured to the chairs around the dining room table.

  “Thank you. This place yours, I take it?” Michael asked, trying to keep things informal, yet cordial.

  “It is,” the man nodded.

  “Very nice,” Michael observed, looking around the room. “How have you guys been holding up since the outbreak?”

  “We’ve been making it,” the man kept his answer brief, obviously not wanting to divulge too much information. “Just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”