by D. J. Molles
“And where was that house?” Lee asked.
“We saw that one right before we ran into the guys in the red pickup. It has to be close by.”
“Do you remember what the house looked like?”
“Not really. I remember it looked weird… like a barn, but it was a house.”
Lee knew exactly which house he was talking about. He didn’t know the man who lived there. He knew he drove a black Ford Ranger and had seen him at the local supermarket on occasion. He was a gray-haired guy pushing fifty. Lee wasn’t sure if he lived with anyone else. What he did remember was a black sticker on the bumper of the Ford Ranger that said, GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS… ESPECIALLY OUR SNIPERS. This seemed to coincide with the pile of bodies. One gun or many, the guy was likely military or law enforcement, and provided he wasn’t a raging psychopath, he could lend some much-needed muscle to the team.
Just as Lee was about to ask another question, three things happened in the same instant: Sam’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened in a silent scream, there was a loud bang behind him, and Tango started barking ferociously and lunged for the window.
Lee bolted upright and brought his rifle to his shoulder, looking for the threat. He saw a bloody face pressed against the shatterproof window, the eyes wide and crazy, the tongue licking obscenely at the glass and leaving a bloody trail wherever it went. Tango was at the window snarling and barking, the hair along his spine standing straight up like a Mohawk.
Finally Sam found his voice and screamed. Lee almost pulled the trigger, but he knew it would only weaken the shatterproof glass.
As of right now, no one was getting into the house without monumental effort or explosives.
Lee stayed his trigger finger and backed away from the window.
After emptying his lungs in one giant scream, Sam was silent, plastered against the couch as though he was attempting to meld himself into the fabric.
Another bump on the side of the house and a rapid banging on the glass in the kitchen. Lee pivoted and looked into the kitchen. The back patio doors, also steel-framed and shatterproof, were being assaulted by another infected who was holding a hammer and beating the glass ferociously.
Tango didn’t notice the new intruder and was still barking at the first.
“Tango, heel! Come on! Leave it!” Tango backed a few feet away but kept barking. Lee grabbed Sam by the shirt and hauled him off the couch. “Follow me.”
Lee shoved the kid into the kitchen, which Sam resisted, since it was toward the other infected with the hammer. As he was opening the door to the basement, he could swear he heard the one with the hammer scream, “Open the fucking door!”
He flipped on the basement lights so Sam wouldn’t be afraid and pointed down into the basement. “Go.”
“No!”
“Sam!” Lee shouted. “Get the fuck in the basement!”
Sam turned and went four steps down, then froze and looked back.
“Tango,” Lee called over his shoulder, keeping an eye on the infected with the hammer. The blows were creating little white scratches in the window but not breaking or cracking it. The big dog came running through the kitchen in a brown-and-black flash and headed straight to the back patio door, locked onto another target. Lee reached out and grabbed his collar. “No! Go downstairs!” He hauled the dog back, then pushed him onto the basement stairs.
The dog looked back, still barking and wagging his tail. Fun, fun, fun.
Lee closed the door and went back into the living room. The infected on his front porch went nuts when he saw Lee and started punching at the window as hard as he could, then started trying to kick it in. Lee got a better look at the guy. He was dressed in slacks and a polo shirt and was wearing golf shoes. It was difficult to tell the age because his skin was so covered in crusted blood, but Lee could see the creature was balding and guessed mid-forties.
He grabbed his go-to-hell pack. There’s no golf course within miles, Lee thought. He must have been running around for days.
He opened up the door to the basement and found Tango right there, ready to get back in the fight, and Sam, halfway down the stairs, crouched in a ball, unwilling to go back upstairs and unwilling to descend any farther into the creepy basement.
“Come on, Sam,” Lee took the stairs slowly. “That’s shatterproof glass, okay? Those guys aren’t getting in here for a long time. And if they do, I’ll take care of them. You believe me, right?”
Sam shook his head.
Lee felt bad for the kid, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He walked down the stairs and heard Sam and Tango fall in behind him. He punched in the code for the hatch, heard it click, then turned the wheel and opened it up. “It’s safe down there. No one can get in.”
Sam peered down the hole hesitantly, saw that it was dark, and shook his head.
Lee knelt down beside him. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but you have got to trust me now. I will never tell you to do something unsafe. You got that? If I tell you to do something, it is because that is your best chance at not getting hurt. You have got to listen to me. I promise you there is nothing bad down there. Me and Tango go down there all the time.”
Sam still looked unsure.
“You can’t be afraid anymore, Sam. You gotta be brave.”
Sam finally budged and swung his legs into the shaft. Lee wasn’t sure if it was anything he had said or whether the kid just made up his own mind to go, but he was happy that they were moving. After Sam got to the bottom, Lee grabbed Tango around the chest, for the first time becoming annoyed that he hadn’t insisted on a more pet-friendly entry to his bunker. He knelt down and hoisted Tango into the hatch. The dog scrabbled around, still excited, and Lee lost his grip.
Tango hit the ground with a yelp.
Lee swore loudly and stood frozen as he watched Tango stand up on all fours and walk around. Tango seemed a bit loopy for the first few seconds, but then he looked fine. Lee cursed the dog under his breath and swung down onto the ladder, closing the hatch behind him.
“Is he okay?” Sam asked.
“He’s fine. Just stupid.” Lee walked with Sam down the cement tunnel, Tango leading the way eagerly. He was probably hungry and thirsty, though he’d had his fill of pissing on everything he could find after being outdoors for half the day.
“Are you mad at me?” Sam asked, crestfallen.
“No, kid, I’m not mad at you.” Way to go, Lee. Kid loses his entire family and you snap at him because he gets a little scared. “I know it’s tough, and you don’t really know me, but you have to trust me now, okay? I’m your friend. Friends have to trust each other.”
Sam looked at the hatch to Lee’s bunker. “Alright.”
Lee pushed the hatch open and gestured for Sam to enter. “Welcome to Château du Harden.”
“What?” Sam looked confused.
Lee didn’t feel like explaining. “This is where I’ve been staying the last month or so.”
Sam looked around, locking on the big-screen TV. “Oh my God! You do have a TV! It’s huge!”
“Yup.” Lee was always amazed at the resiliency of the younger generation. They bounced back better than adults, could go from tragedy to triumph seamlessly, and never thought twice about it. It could also be a sign that Sam was becoming emotionally disconnected. A defense mechanism.
Lee looked at his watch.
It was 1230 hours. He had almost eight hours of light left and two locations of potential survivors. The older man in the barn house could obviously take care of himself and was therefore a lower priority for rescue. The family on the rooftop was the higher priority, though they were an unknown distance away. In this heat, on the top of a roof, they were unlikely to make it much longer without supplies. The survival of the family on the roof was very time sensitive, which meant Lee needed to move to their location ASAP.
The only problem was that he could not realistically make the trip before it got dark out, and certainly not the trip back. He toyed w
ith the idea of making the trek to their house on foot, eliminating all hostiles, and sleeping in the house with the family, then moving out in the morning.
Then came the issue of Sam. He did not want to take Sam with him and expose the kid to needless danger. Lee felt confident he could handle the infected in the yard, but he didn’t need to be worrying about Sam while he did it. Or Tango, for that matter. They would both have to stay here. And Lee didn’t want to leave Sam and Tango unattended for too long. Two days would be too much.
He didn’t like it because it went against his training, but sometimes you had to improvise and adapt your tactics to the situation. Lee would have to use his truck. That meant a few things. First, he had to get to it, which meant taking out the two unwanted guests attempting to beat their way into the house. Second, it meant he would have to take roads to get there, which meant the possibility of another gang like the men in the red pickup truck. While he’d handled them fairly easily, he’d had the advantage of surprise and there were only five of them, none armed with anything more potent than a bolt-action rifle. Should a better equipped or more numerous group ambush him, his chances of survival were greatly decreased.
But the cold facts were that there was a family of three on a roof, likely suffering—if not already dead—from dehydration and heat stroke. Not to mention the complete and utter despair of their situation. He could not imagine the crushing feeling of hopelessness after seeing Sam and his dad, probably the first people they’d seen for a while, and then just watching them walk away.
He had to rescue them. Out of personal conviction, and because it was his job to do so. As a Coordinator, it was his primary duty, and one he’d sworn to uphold, just as he’d sworn to uphold the country and the Constitution.
And the only way to rescue them was by truck. On the positive side, he would be back before nightfall. Lee walked over to his closet and called Sam to join him. The kid was going to be in the house alone. Lee was not going to forbid Sam from opening the closet full of weapons and ammo because there was nothing that would make a kid want to play with the shit more than being forbidden to do so.
Instead, he chose the approach of hoping that some knowledge and instruction on these pieces of equipment would alleviate the kid’s fascination with them and hopefully keep him from killing himself.
He opened the closet and saw Sam’s eyes go wide. “Wow. You’ve got a lot of stuff.”
Lee knelt down and pulled out his 5.56mm ammo can, then extracted the magazine from his M4 and started topping it off. “These are all tools, Sam. Just like a screwdriver or a hammer. They are here so that I can do my job. And you need to learn about them too, since you’re going to be helping me do my job.”
Lee spent the next twenty minutes telling Sam all about the equipment in the closet and some of the equipment on his person. He answered most of Sam’s questions and did his best to let the kid handle most of it so he wouldn’t be sneaking around behind Lee’s back, pulling grenade pins out of curiosity. After a comprehensive crash course on pistols, rifles, grenades, GPS devices, and how to load a magazine, Lee was finished topping off his rifle and pistol and replacing the 40mm grenade he’d used to blow the truck. He closed the door and stood up.
“Now listen to me.” Lee waited until he had eye contact. “We’re friends, like I said, and friends trust each other. That means I trust you. You remember when I said you were a man in my book?”
Sam nodded.
“Nothing’s different. You are still a man in my book. And men don’t take their friends’ tools unless they have permission, or if they really need it. Like in an emergency.” Lee felt his explaining-things-to-kids ability flagging. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Remember, if you pull the pin on one of those grenades, you’re going to die. No matter where you throw it in here, the pressure will pop your head open. Got it?”
Sam looked a little apprehensive of the closet now. Good. Lee stood and double-checked his equipment.
“Where are you going?” Sam seemed worried.
Lee wondered if abandoning the kid was the best thing right now, but he decided he couldn’t let this one child affect his decision-making when it came to fulfilling his mission. If there were people out there who needed help, he had to rescue them and bring them together.
Subvenire Refectus.
To rescue and rebuild.
“I’m going to go try to help the people on the roof. I should be back in a few hours.”
“But what about the people outside?” Sam almost shouted.
“Sam…” Lee gave him a warning look and kept his own voice low. Lead by example. “I have to try to help those people, because that’s my job. I will be fine, just like I’m fine now after helping you. And you let me worry about the two people upstairs.” Lee wasn’t as sure as he sounded. If the girl from yesterday had taught him one thing, it was to not underestimate the strength or tenacity of infected individuals. “I’ll be fine.”
Sam clenched his jaw, not looking happy about being left alone. “What do you want me to do while you’re gone?”
“Here.” Lee walked over to the remote and flipped on the TV. He was not above bribing the kid into submission. “Play Call of Duty. You better have it beat by the time I come back.”
“That’s impossible,” Sam mumbled.
“Whatever.” Lee tossed him the controller and turned on the gaming system. “I beat it in five hours, but if you think it’s too hard…”
“I can beat it.” Sam announced and grabbed the controller.
Lee smiled. The kid had a competitive streak. A good thing for someone living in a world like this. Noncompetitive people tended to give up more easily. Competitive people just kept going, even when there was no competition.
Lee opened the hatch and told Tango to stay. Just before he closed it, he looked back at Sam and caught the kid staring at Lee with unguarded fear for what might happen. He gave the kid a brave smile and a thumbs-up, and in his best Arnold voice said, “I’ll be back.”
Lee saw a weak smile before closing the hatch and locking it behind him.
CHAPTER 8
Down the Road
He made his way quietly out of the bunker and up to his basement.
Without Tango there to be his early-warning system, he spent more time listening and waiting. Before opening the hatch to his basement, he hung on the ladder with his ear pressed to the steel but didn’t hear any movement from inside. He thought he could still hear the banging from the infected he had begun to mentally refer to as Hammer Guy. The sound was so faint, he entertained the possibility that he could just be imagining it.
When he did open the hatch, he did it slowly and quietly. Once it was open, he crept out, careful to control his M4 and other attached gear so it would not bang on the walls or the hatch and make noise.
Now in the basement, he listened and realized he was not hearing Hammer Guy or Caddy Shack. The basement was silent, and the upstairs along with it. This set Lee off his pace even more than hearing the two goons still trying to break in. Because if he heard them trying to break in, that meant they were still outside. Now, in the silence, he was not so sure.
He checked his chamber to ensure he was locked and loaded. Up the stairs.
SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training taught him to compartmentalize so his life didn’t seem so impossible. When you are surrounded by enemy forces and fear drives you to ground and makes you think you are incapable of moving to your objective, you simply compartmentalize. Instead of moving to your objective, you focus on just crawling to that fallen log, and then from there, slithering down into the swamp. You divide it up into manageable tasks that don’t seem so life-or-death.
Right now, though fear told him Hammer Guy and Caddy Shack were sniffing around the house for him, making it to the top of the stairs seemed feasible. So he put one foot in front of the other, rifle trained at the door, and quietly eased his way up.
He stopped and listened again.
Hearing nothing, he opened the door just an inch so that he could catch a glimpse of the patio doors where Hammer Guy had been. As he cracked the door, he could see Hammer Guy, squatted down on the ground, facing away from the house, carving something into the dirt of Lee’s backyard with the claw of the hammer. The air seemed warmer than it had been when he’d first entered the house, but he’d been in his bunker, which he kept at a cool seventy degrees. He supposed his body had acclimated to the cooler temperature and felt the difference in the slightly warmer house.
Lee watched Hammer Guy work, disturbed by the infected man’s raw intensity and aggression. After a few moments, Lee edged farther out of the doorway and looked to the front of the house to see if Caddy Shack was still hanging around. His angle wasn’t very good, but that also meant Caddy Shack couldn’t see him. He wanted the two infected calm and quiet so he could get a better position of attack on them. And he wanted to kill them silently so he wouldn’t attract any more attention.
Lee was beginning to think that the strange howling noise the infected made was some vestige of predatory instinct left over in human DNA from the days of hunting in packs. To Lee, it sounded like the call of a wolf on game, and Lee got the distinct feeling that when one infected made the howl, more infected would come running, out of some primal, knee-jerk response to the call of prey.
He slipped through the doorway, then down a hallway that led to the main portion of his house and the stairs to the second level. He slid quickly around the banister and took the stairs two at a time. He turned left at the top, facing the front of the house where the still-unaccounted-for Caddy Shack had last been seen.
In the guest bedroom decorated in nautical style, Lee squatted down and duck-walked to the window overlooking the front porch and front lawn. The porch was covered, but if Caddy Shack moved out into the yard, Lee would have a good bead on him. Wood blinds covered the windows and were pulled closed. Lee used a single finger to lift one of the slats and gain a view of his front yard.
