“Then we do what we have to do,” said Michelle.
The silence in the air was thick enough to impede movement as the three of us got up and walked out.
Chapter 10
*click*
I feel sick. Not like “red eyes and wanting to bite somebody” sick, but more “sick to my stomach, tired of all this crap and really wishing I could actually be on a vacation right now.” It’s about 11:55 PM, and Max and I are back at Uncle Andy’s cabin. Walter, Bernice, Michelle and my uncle are all staying at Walter’s house tonight. Yeah I know, I’m supposed to be with somebody else . . . you know, that policy about going somewhere alone. But Max is with me and I don’t think I could be better protected even if I had a squad? . . . herd? . . . pod? . . . a whatever they call a bunch of Navy SEALS as bodyguards. It was a long day, I hardly even know where to begin. I’m inside the cabin right now. I’ve got a big pot of water boiling on the wood stove, and I predict a massive influx of hot chocolate in my near future. Two to one ratio is what you want. If the little packet says, “Add one packet to eight ounces of hot water . . .” then you need to add two packets for every eight ounces. It gives you a frothy, thick, chocolaty drink that coats the inside of your throat. Max is laying down about five feet away from the wood stove, absorbing the heat and digesting a huge meal of dog food, deer meat, rice, leftover biscuits, and a few handfuls of stale Cheerios mixed in for good measure. That was my supper as well, um . . . minus the dog food. So where was I? Well I guess I haven’t even started yet and there’s so much to tell. All right, here we go. We got to the campground about 9:45 AM, and immediately knew that something was wrong. There was a large crowd of people gathered outside the entrance. Most of them were just standing on the road and milling around, but there was also quite a bit of pushing and shoving going on toward the center mass of the assembly, and right in the middle of that was Doc Collins. We parked our vehicles, shut them off, and locked them. As soon as we got out, shouts of “Who’s in charge here anyway” and “I don’t have to put up with this or listen to you” assaulted our ears. They weren’t directed at us, but at Doc. Uncle Andy, Michelle, and I waded into the crowd and made our way over to Doc, who looked very relieved at our early arrival.
I resisted the urge to say “What’s up Doc.” Instead, I opened with, “Hey Doc, having a rough morning?” His look of relief changed. The new face looked at me like I owed him money. Doc let his expression linger for a moment, then let out a deep sigh and said, “Don’t you guys listen to your radio at night?”
My look of confusion seemed to pacify him, slightly. Uncle Andy jumped in and said, “Hey Doc, I’m sorry, but we were kind of dealing with a . . . ‘situation’ last night.”
“Well . . . join the crowd Andy,” Doc replied with a scowl.
“Hold that thought,” I said. “First off though, why are we not at the amphitheater?”
“Oh, don’t know, maybe because of the zombies,” shouted one of the nearby eavesdroppers. I looked around at the crowd a little closer; several were armed.
“Is everyone OK?” asked Michelle.
“Yes . . . and no . . .” said Doc.
“Doc, we need to get to a place that we can talk privately, is there a place we can send this crowd that’s safe?” I leaned over and whispered to him.
Doc thought for a moment, and then shouted down the crowd until he had their attention. “We need to move to a different meeting place besides the amphitheater.” He pointed southwest and said, “There’s a soccer field about 150 yards that way, just past the old basketball hoop that you can see sticking up; let’s head over there for the meeting. It’s got a few sets of old bleachers we can sit on.” The crowd grumbled but started shuffling that direction. Doc looked at me and said, “You got five minutes.”
I spent the next two minutes giving him a quick rundown of what had happened, everything from Sam Ironfeather to the dead blond. I could see the dawning of comprehension in his eyes, and he stopped me before I could finish, motioned to Sally who was standing about fifteen feet away talking to a another lady I didn’t recognize. Sally walked over and Doc said, “Hey honey, the people walking to the clearing are not going to stay there long if we don’t get them focused on some type of task. Is there anything that you can think of . . .”
Sally interjected, “I was your nurse for seventeen years . . . I think I know how to handle any few unruly patients.” She turned away, lit a cigarette that she removed from the side pocket of a backpack she was carrying, and walked towards the crowd. The other lady followed.
Doc said, “That ought to buy us another fifteen minutes or so.”
Uncle Andy and I spent ten of them filling in some details, including our offer. When we were finished Doc said, “Yeah, count me in.” Then he looked at us and said, “Just do me a favor next time and keep that damn radio turned on.”
“What happened here?” asked Michelle.
Doc shook his head slightly and said, “In the strictest medical terminology, I would have to say that the human race is one big corn encrusted turd floating in the punch bowl of life right now.” Michelle started out with a smile, but it broke into a low fit of laughter at Doc’s humor.
“Always the wordsmith, ain’t you?” said Uncle Andy.
Doc continued, “We got started on the flyers . . . made enough to post on every campsite marker and a few extra for the restrooms, picnic shelters, those kind of places. Sally and I drove around on the golf cart to put them up as well as doing a bit more traffic control with the people still getting settled in, especially where we were doubling up on campers in the pull through slots. Most folks were still outside their RV’s and tents talking, trying to get things figured out, exchanging stories, providing comfort—those sorts of things. Almost everybody had a large fire going, most of them so large that had this been a normal weekend of camping, I would have asked them to keep it to a reasonable height or risk being removed from the campground. As it turns out, those campfires probably saved lives. About two hours after you left we finally made it back to our camper. Sally got ready for bed while I made a pot of coffee. I was just starting to jot down some ideas for the meeting—I still haven’t slept yet—when somebody knocked on our door. There was a man, Mr. Hardiman, or Hardison, I didn’t really catch what he was said. Mid-fifties, white male . . . he didn’t look too good to me. Flushed skin, high temperature, bloodshot eyes, rapid heartbeat . . . seemed a bit disoriented also. Of course my first thought was ‘this is the sickness, the infection from Korea that we all heard about on the news . . . the ‘Korean plague’ that all the campers were talking about around their fires.’ Or it could be any one of a hundred different diagnoses that I could think of off the top of my head, from food poisoning to influenza to heart attack or diabetic hypoglycemia. After giving him a quick ‘once over’—he was strangely silent during it; not really expanding on any answers to the questions I was asking him, just the basic yes or no’s—I went to get some aspirin for his fever and some Gatorade, just because it couldn’t hurt if he rehydrated himself. He had been drinking; I could smell it on his breath. Hold on a minute, speaking of Gatorade . . .”
Doc reached into a backpack at his feet, the twin to the one Sally had, and brought out a thirty-two ounce original flavor Gatorade, you know, the green one. He took a few swigs, screwed the cap back on, and kept it in his hands as he continued.
“So I was just about to give him the old ‘take two aspirins and call me in the morning’ speech when he bolts up and says, ‘Doc, I ain’t worried about me, it’s my wife and kids that are sick.’ Obviously any patient that goes from a semi-confused state of mind directly into total lucidity within the space of five seconds—without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars—has something wrong with them. I tried to get him to lay down and rest for a minute, but he kept saying, ‘You gotta come quick, we’re in space nineteen . . .’ and then he took off out the door. Sally was still awake and said she’d keep working on the agenda for the meeting, an
d for me to go take care of the family. It took me about eight or ten minutes to find my bag and pack some things that might be useful, it had been a while since I’d made a house call. When I had that done and ready, Sally told me to ‘be careful’ and I went to slot number nineteen.”
Doc took another drink from his Gatorade before continuing. “This campground has two loops, Golden Eagle and Blue Heron. Only the Golden Eagle loop has electricity and RV sized parking areas.
Blue Heron is set aside for more primitive camping, the three T’s—tents, tarps, teepees—no RV’s allowed. Golden Eagle loop is numbered 1-80, Blue Heron is numbered 1-40. Being the campground host, my RV is in slot number one of Golden Eagle loop. Mr. Hardiman, or Hardison, didn’t say which loop he was on. I went outside—thought about taking the golf cart but figured that anybody who saw me driving by would flag me down with all kinds of questions that I didn’t have the answers to—so I walked. For whatever reason I went to Blue Heron loop number nineteen first. It was a large tent, one of those multi-room setups with the vestibule on both sides for additional storage. Three guys, one older lady, and a few kids were seated around the picnic table, assembling s’mores by the light of a Coleman lantern. I asked them if anybody was there by the name of Hardiman or Hardison; they said no, so I chatted with them for a few minutes and reminded them about the meeting in the morning and then walked to Golden Eagle loop, site nineteen. It was a late nineties, Four Winds Chateau Sport model, twenty-eight footer. There were no lights on, inside or out. I turned on my flashlight and went up to the door and knocked. No answer. I knocked again a little louder . . . announcing myself . . . nothing. So I opened the door and looked inside.”
Michelle, Uncle Andy, and I didn’t say a word, we were all thinking about the story of what happened in the state trooper barracks.
“They were dead. One adult female, his wife I’d imagine, and three children—two girls and a boy—all between the ages of eight and eleven. I checked their vitals, starting with the wife and kids, no pulse, no respiration, no pupillary response. Just dead. Their skin color, however, was ashen gray. Mr. . . . let’s just call him Mr. Hardison, he was lying on the floor by the fold out kitchen table. Now remember, I had seen this man walk out of my RV not twenty minutes ago. And here he was, as far as I could tell, stone dead—notice I didn’t say stone cold dead—because he wasn’t, as a matter of fact he was hot, hotter than when I examined him the first time. I leaned down to check further; starting with his eyes . . . they were a solid deep red. Even the iris, which was blue twenty minutes ago, was stained dark ruby. I sat upright, not believing what I was seeing. Aside from specializing in orthopedic surgery, I had my own family practice for over thirty years, and I’ve seen many cases of subconjunctival hemorrhaging, but never like this, and never in the iris. I was still kneeling over him, thinking, when his finger twitched. I checked for pulse on his carotid artery and found one, weak and rapid but getting stronger. Then he reached up and grabbed me. The shock of that, the surprise maybe—something—triggered some primal reflex in me and I twisted up and away, out of his grasp. Mr. Hardison sat up, knocked over the kitchen table getting to his feet and moved over to check on his family. At least at the time, that’s what my own thought process was telling me . . . a father . . . the husband . . . was walking over to pay his respects to his tragically deceased family.”
He took a tiny sip from the sports drink, hands unsteady as his eyes met ours. We knew what was coming next.
“Last summer, Sally and I wanted to repaint several rooms in our house. We decided to do it ourselves, not for any financial reason, but rather to try and spend some quality time with each other now that I was retired. After we moved the furniture out, we started taping the window and door trim, and the angle where the walls met the ceiling. She would stand on a ladder in one corner holding on to a short starting run of the blue masking tape, my ladder would be in the other corner. I’d walk over and take the dangling roll of tape in my hand and walk backwards while she held on. Once we had a nice long piece, we’d work together to stretch it along the wall/ceiling seam.”
He paused again, moved the bottle halfway up to his lips, held it there for a second, and then moved it away without taking a drink.
“The sound that the blue masking tape made pulling off of the spool, that ‘unsticking-unrolling’ resonance that slowly drops in pitch as the run of tape gets longer . . . it’s the same sound that’s made when a father slowly rips the pectoral muscles off the rib cage of his son.”
Doc Collins spun away from us and vomited. Stomach acid, drool, and Gatorade, not pretty.
A few minutes later, he was on his feet apologizing to us. We told him it wasn’t necessary and that we understood. In any event, he kept apologizing for a few more minutes, rinsed out his mouth with the remaining Gatorade, spit, and then continued. “I turned and ran. No sneaking, no quiet retreats involved, I busted ass and got out of there. I ran all the way up to the campground office over there.” He pointed toward a little modular home with faded wood siding and a small yard that was enclosed with an often repaired split rail fence. “Got up to the door and twisted the knob. It was locked. My keys were back at my RV. I ran back down in my RV, not really too far being that it’s in slot one, opened the door practically at a run and about gave Sally the fright of her life. I grabbed my keys off the breakfast counter and told Sally to ‘lock the doors and don’t let anybody in except me.’ She recognized the tone in my voice and did just that. I ran back to the office, opened the door and flicked on the lights. Two seconds later they went out. Every light in the campground went out. I knew it was a power failure of some kind, because the battery backup system for the office computer, the UPS—uninterruptible power supply—was beeping. Every few weeks we’d lose power up here and I had heard that sound before. The marine radio is in the office, plugged into a wall outlet, so I used my flashlight and plugged it into the UPS. I tried to raise you over at the marina—nothing.”
I interrupted, “Just out of curiosity, if you were out of power up here, wouldn’t it be likely that Walter would be out of power at the marina and wouldn’t have been able to answer his radio anyhow?”
“I considered that,” Doc said, “but most of the power failures that we have at the campground are caused by tree limbs falling on the lines that run up Ravenwood Campground Road. Besides, I’m pretty sure that Walter has his radio on a dedicated UPS system as well,” I nodded my understanding as he continued.
“I couldn’t get anybody on the radio, so I turned it off and headed back to my RV after locking the office. My flashlight was starting to get dim as I trotted across the field between the office and my RV. I was about ten yards away from my campsite when somebody said my name.” He looked at each of us before continuing, “I’m sure that I ruined the pair of boots I was wearing when I jumped out of them. A few minutes later when my heart slowed to under 200 beats per minute, I saw that my mysterious name-caller was Jason. That’s Jason Lambert, I mean. Jason and his wife had been staying at the campground for about a week, tent camping at sight number twenty-three on Blue Heron loop. They brought a small boat, fourteen foot semi-V with an old Evinrude, and Jason would fish while Angela stayed at the camp and read. Jason’s a good guy, retired navy Seabee, owned a heavy equipment rental business for years also if I remember right. He invited me to go fishing several times and I took him up on it. Nice guy, like I said. Anyhow, he asked me if I was OK, but that’s when the screaming started. I said, ‘C’mon,’ and trotted down Golden Eagle loop toward the noise. As we got closer, we could see there was a small crowd of people at sight number fifty-nine, which, the way the roads twist around on the loop, is actually very close to site number nineteen. Thank goodness for the fires at the campsites along the way or we’d have been stumbling over our own two feet headed down there. By the time we made it, Jason was huffing and puffing a bit. You don’t get much cardio from fishing. Anyhow, we got there just in time to see three or four guys putting the boot t
o another guy who was on the ground between them. Several ladies were screaming and yelling, some of them encouraging the beating, others shouting out ‘stop it, stop it.’ When I finally got things sorted out, the basic story was that the guy getting beat had been caught stealing food out of another guy’s cooler. I think there was a lot of frustration being vented that had nothing to do with missing food. We helped the guy up; he didn’t want any medical treatment, didn’t even want me to look at him. By now, the noise from the scuffle had drawn about twenty-five people from different campsites, like moths to the flame I guess, and I was having a hard enough time just getting a word in, much less any kind of cooperation, so I just stood there and didn’t say a word, waiting for them to calm down. A few minutes later, things are starting to settle, and I hear—from somewhere behind the crowd—‘Hey, get your hands off me you pervert . . . HEY, LET GO OF ME YOU ASSHOLE . . .’ It was followed by what I would describe as primal, animalistic sounds. The crowd started screaming and backing away, revealing the figure of a lady, a girl really, maybe nineteen or twenty, on the ground and having her throat chewed on by Mr. Hardison. Blood was squirting four feet into the air from her severed carotid as he tore into her. People were running for their lives when that ‘thing’ stood up. From beside me I heard an explosion. Jason had a gun in his hand, a 38 snub nose revolver, one of those compact five-shot deals. I don’t know where the first shot hit, but the other four hit Mr. Hardison dead center in the chest. He just stood there, red eyes glinting in the firelight. Then he started for us. We backed away, stunned, not believing what we were seeing. Jason tripped over a folding chair and fell down and the “thing” advanced on him, a little stiff legged but picking up speed. I took another step backward and ran into the RV. It was about five feet away from Jason, reaching down toward him when I heard a TH-WHACK sound. Mr. Hardison, or whatever it was dropped like an anchor. Standing behind him was a strange sight, some big guy wearing an expensive suit and tie, holding a long handled axe one handed. OK, long story short, because I know we’re pressed for time. The guy with the axe turns out to be one Victor Wayne Chapman, VW for short. Real estate agent from Fargo, so he says. After checking our shorts, we thanked him for his timely intervention. I checked both bodies. Dead. I hoped for real this time. By now the gunshots have woken up almost everybody, and you know the way rumors fly. Half the camp is convinced that we were attacked by a thousand zombies last night, the other half probably thinks it was vampires. By 5:00 AM over thirty families left, just packed up and took off, didn’t even bother to take the rope down across the road out by the highway, just ran right through it. Sally went and restrung it less than an hour ago. I’ve got at least another fifty families that have told me they probably won’t stay through the day, which as far as I’m concerned would be perfectly all right. I imagine a lot of them are just waiting to hear what goes on at the meeting. Anyhow, I tried to reach you on the radio again, no luck there, so I’ve been directing my energy toward keeping the peace, not that I’m having much luck with that either.”
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