by D. J. Molles
If they were military, they were most likely an inactive unit or reservists. They were not equipped and they did not act like an active military unit. Whether their intentions were good or bad, Lee didn’t know, and now was not the time to find out. He racked his brain for any readily available plan to snatch back his truck, but none of them was possible with the two survivors to look after.
Lee lowered the scope and estimated the distance.
The three approaching men were about four hundred yards out and walking at a slow but steady pace. That gave Lee and his two survivors only a few short minutes to get the hell out of the area.
He pulled himself back around the corner. Angela and Abby were staring up at him with wide, expectant eyes. “We gotta move.”
“What?” Angela stood and Abby followed suit.
Lee grabbed her by the shoulder and gave her a gentle push away from the house. “Head for the woods. There are people coming. I don’t know if they are friendly, and we’re not finding out.”
“They could be here to help.” Angela argued over her shoulder, stumbling along with Lee. “They could be friendly.”
“There’s five of them and they’re all armed.” Lee said, lowering his voice despite the urgency spurring his feet. “If they don’t have our best interests in mind, we’re fucked.… Excuse me.”
Angela craned her neck behind her, trying to catch a glimpse of the newcomers. Lee kept a hand on her shoulder and a hand on Abby’s and kept steering them toward the woods. “Come on,” he said. “I know you guys are tired, but we gotta pick up the pace.”
“What about your truck?” Abby whined loudly. “How are we gonna get back to your safe place?”
“Shhh!” Lee hissed, looking behind him as though he expected a barrage of shots in response. “Speak quietly! They have my truck now. We have to walk.”
They hit the wood line and Lee dropped to one knee, tugging on their shoulders and gesturing for them to do likewise. Angela and Abby crowded in close and traded concerned looks, back and forth from their house to Lee.
His speech was a rapid whisper. “You guys keep going straight through the woods until you can’t see the house anymore. I’m going to bring up the rear. When you can’t see the house anymore, lie down and hide. I’ll find you.”
“How will you find us if we’re hiding?” Abby asked.
“Because I’m good at that kind of thing.” Lee looked sternly at both of them. “You both need to start trusting me. If you want to stay alive until I can get you to safety, you will do exactly as I tell you. Don’t question me and don’t try to outthink me. Now go.”
Angela nodded quickly and fiercely, though Abby still looked confused. Her mother grabbed her hand and silently headed deeper into the woods without looking back. They moved quickly and loudly, each footfall like an earthquake to Lee. He just hoped the incoming personnel didn’t notice.
Lee waited for a moment, then swiveled and duck-walked over a few feet to a large tree and peered around it, his rifle raised. He angled himself slowly, until he got a good view of the house through the brush, and then looked through his scope. Nothing yet. With a few quick mental calculations, he decided he had some time to get a little more distance.
He stood and quietly sidestepped his way farther into the woods and away from the house, keeping as much concealing brush and trees as possible between him and the corners of the house. He kept looking where he was stepping, then back at the house. About twenty yards behind him, the woods sloped down. If he could make it to that slope…
Too late.
The three men cleared the corner of the house. One of them moved like a professional—the bald-headed one who wore ACUs—his rifle was shouldered at low-ready and his body pivoted like a tank turret. Everywhere his eyes went, his rifle went, and he cleared the corner quickly and smoothly, gaining an angle on the back of the house. Then he motioned his two comrades forward.
The other one wearing ACUs had longer-than-regulation dark hair. The kind of long, slicked-back hair seen on the front of a bottle of Rogaine. He still held his rifle like an amateur—butt-stock under his armpit, muzzle pointed at the sky—and he walked without urgency. The third one wearing the woodland top and the jeans held his weapon ported, the barrel cradled in his left arm.
One possibly military, the other two… not so much.
Without Angela and Abby to weigh him down, he could probably take out these three goons and have a good chance at using the house as a defensible location to take out the rest of the squad. But without knowing their intentions, he did not want to be the first to open fire. He wasn’t willing to take the gamble on whether they were good or bad guys, but the possibility still remained that they could be partially made up of US Army personnel on a benevolent mission.
Lee had slowly moved his way to another large tree and sank down onto one knee, surveying the scene with only his left eye, peering out from behind the thick trunk.
Bald ACU moved toward the back door of the house, scanning the yard as he did. Rogaine ACU and Woodland followed after him. Bald ACU waited at the back door until Rogaine tapped him on the shoulder, and then all three filed into the house.
That was Lee’s cue to leave.
He pushed off the tree and made a dash for the down slope, then took the hill head-on and flew down at breakneck speed, maximizing the opportunity of having all three unidentified persons distracted by clearing the house. He continued his sprint until he felt he’d lost enough altitude that they would not be able to see him over the hillcrest. He stopped and turned, looking back, and could not see the house.
A brief moment to catch his breath from the sprint and then he took in his surroundings, trying to get his bearings. For a split second, he felt out of his depth, one of those crippling and paralyzing moments where one realizes that people are relying on you and that you cannot fail them. The responsibility of Angela and Abby, and Sam, who was probably wondering what the hell was taking Lee so long, felt like a rope around his chest, tightening steadily.
Then he took another breath, shook his head, and the feeling was gone.
He needed to find Angela and Abby, make a plan that would keep everyone safe and not require too much strenuous activity from the dehydrated and undernourished mother and daughter, and get everyone back to the house before Sam lost it and wandered off, believing Lee was dead.
But the first thing was simply to start looking for Angela and Abby. Compartmentalize. So Lee started walking, looking for signs of human foot traffic through the woods.
* * *
The presence of survivors had not gone unnoticed by the unidentified personnel who had cleared the house. After securing the premises and calling in the rest of the guys, the bald man in the ACUs took a good long look at the back of the house, where the overgrown grass was matted down. Like people had been lying in it. And the couple of empty water bottles, and the two empty packets of electrolyte tablets that were still lying in the grass. There were also two ice packs, still cold and sweating in the heat. It looked to him like two people had been rescued, which meant there had to be at least one rescuer.
At least three people unaccounted for.
And one of them had medical supplies.
CHAPTER 9
… Especially Our Snipers
After a short search, Lee found some leaves that were disturbed, revealing the forest floor beneath and a nice half-moon shoe print in the dirt. On the trail, he followed the spoor to a little ravine about fifty yards farther into the woods where he found two frazzled blond heads and two fearful sets of blue eyes peering at him from behind a fallen tree.
“Thank God it’s you.” Angela stood and Lee could see she was holding a thick branch like a club. The thing was rotted out and probably would have done nothing but powder an attacker in wood particles, but Lee could appreciate her spunk. Most people would just lie down and wait for fate to deal them their hands. At least this one was willing to fight it out.
Lee took another
look behind him to make sure he had no followers, then slid over the fallen log and rested his pack against the log, splaying his legs out in front of him. He took the moment to drink a bit from his CamelBak, then motioned for the two girls to join him on the ground. They both got low.
This time Lee spoke in a normal tone. “I’m going to get you guys back to my house, but the truck is not an option right now. We have to assume that whoever that was at the house knows we were there and is following us.”
“Will they be?” Angela sounded worried.
Lee shrugged. “I don’t know. But we will assume they are so we aren’t surprised when they show up looking for us.” Lee pointed due east. “There’s another farmhouse a few miles that way. An old man lives there. I think he’s ex-military. We’re going to head that way and hope for the best.”
“I think that’s Mr. Burnsides.” Angela gave Lee a look that communicated it was only a guess. “He’s the only ex-military guy I know around here.”
“You know what he drives?” Lee asked.
“No idea. Haven’t really talked to him. Seen him in the market once or twice. Older guy with gray hair. Don’t know him other than that.”
Lee nodded. That was essentially useless information, but Angela was only trying to be helpful. He looked at his watch. It was already nearly 1700 hours. It would be dark at about 2100 hours.
“Alright, we have about four hours of daylight left.” Lee rolled himself onto his feet. “If we move quickly, we should be able to make it to Burnsides’s house before dark.”
Abby pointed to Lee’s pack. “Do you have any food?”
Angela put an arm on her daughter’s shoulder. “Please, if you have any food… we haven’t eaten in days.”
Lee didn’t really want them eating on dehydrated stomachs. It could cause them to vomit and become even more dehydrated. But they also needed something to perk them up.
“Yeah.” Lee dropped his pack and pulled out two MREs. He tore both of them open and fished through the contents. He extracted the PopTart and the fruit cocktail from one and the pound cake and Smarties from the other. He handed the candy to Abby and the fruit cocktail to Angela. “Eat those slowly for some carbs while we walk. If you hold it down okay, I’ll give you the PopTart and pound cake. And keep drinking that water.”
Lee shouldered his pack again and started walking without any further instructions. The two girls followed after a moment of wrestling open their individual packages. They ate eagerly and quietly as they walked in Lee’s wake.
* * *
Lee peered through thick summer foliage at the farmhouse that sat alone and dark, set back on a long dirt road. The forest came to a point, jutting out across the surrounding land and pointing directly at the farmhouse. From the edge of the woods to the farmhouse was about fifty yards, and Lee made sure he stayed well back in the trees. All around him, flat farmland stretched, planted with half-grown tobacco crops.
It was still light but would be getting dark soon. They’d made the trip in a little less than three hours. In the waning sunlight, Lee could see a large chicken coop in the backyard with several hens and a rooster patrolling the chicken wire. They seemed to still be well taken care of.
The house was dark, but the upstairs windows were open. The interior looked black. If Mr. Burnsides were a true sniper, he would not be sticking his muzzle out the window but hiding far back in the darkness of the room, away from light and prying eyes. Lee wondered if he was being watched right then through the scope of a high-power rifle and the thought made him very uncomfortable. He wanted cover, but there was only concealment in the form of bushes and thin trees. Nothing that could stop a bullet.
In the front yard of the farmhouse was the pile of bodies Sam had spoken of. They were no longer smoldering and were mostly ash, but Lee could see some bits of charred skeleton, even some items of clothing, and a single boot. Again, he wondered if these were infected or just the bodies of everyone who had come looking for help and didn’t find it.
Lee looked behind him, keeping his movements very slow so as to not attract any attention he didn’t already have. From where he was lying, he could not see Angela or Abby in their hiding place about fifty yards back in the woods. They were to wait for Lee to give them the signal before they came out. No sense in everyone dying if Mr. Burnsides turned out to be a nut job. Lee wasn’t thrilled about being the guinea pig, but he couldn’t very well make Angela or Abby do it.
Lee took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves, perversely wondered what it felt like to have a high-power bullet punch a hole in your chest, and then stood. He kept his M4 slung but both his hands in the air. He walked slowly to the edge of the woods, and then stepped out into the open.
Please don’t be a crazy motherfucker…
No shot rang out.
A white curtain in one of the dark windows stirred as a breeze kicked up and then died down.
He kept his hands up, fingers splayed as though showing someone the number ten. He stepped a few feet closer to the house and was stopped by a barked command.
“That’s far enough!”
Lee stretched his hands up a little farther and couldn’t help but cringe, waiting for the shot. He didn’t like putting his life in another person’s hands, but this was one of those situations where he just had to bite the proverbial bullet and do it. The voice came from the house again. “Put your hands on top of your head and interlace your fingers.”
Lee complied.
“Now get down on your knees.”
Again, Lee did as he was told, but he decided to try talking. “I have two civilians with me who need help.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Lee clamped his mouth shut, his palms feeling a bit cold and sweaty.
“Look down at the ground and don’t look back up until I tell you. If you disobey me, you will be shot.”
This was a bad idea.
Lee looked down at the ground. Several long moments passed and Lee heard quiet footsteps approach from his right side, then they swung wide around him and came up from behind. He felt a firm hand grip his interlaced fingers, holding them on the top of his head, while another hand patted him down. Lee’s sidearm was liberated from its holster, and his M4 was unclasped from its sling and removed. The hands explored his pockets and inside the tongue of his boots, checking—Lee presumed—for any hidden weapons.
“Don’t move,” said the voice, very close now. Lee heard the soft footsteps retreat a few paces behind him and then stopped. “Moving slowly, turn and face me.”
Lee kept his movements exaggeratedly slow, just to make sure. It was obvious that Mr. Burnsides, if that was whom Lee was dealing with, was not to be fucked with. When Lee turned he found a man, probably in his mid-forties, standing and pointing a Remington Model 700 rifle at him, topped with a very nice Leupold scope. Lee immediately noticed the man was tall and extremely thin. His long-sleeve denim shirt and khaki pants fit him snugly, so Lee assumed the man’s scarecrow figure was not a recent development and hadn’t been caused by food deprivation. He wore a dirty old ball cap and Lee could see short gray hair peeking out from underneath. Though the man’s skin looked taut over his skeletal features, his face was scoured with deep wrinkles that gave him a weathered look. Dark, narrowed eyes glared at Lee from underneath wild-looking eyebrows.
This was not the man Lee knew from the market. The man spoke first. “Who are you?”
“My name is Captain Lee Harden of the United States Army. I have two civilians in my care and we are only seeking to move through here and mean you no harm.”
“Bullshit…” the man spat.
Lee didn’t know whether he meant it about the United States Army thing or about the mean-you-no-harm thing.
“Haven’t seen regular army for weeks,” the man clarified. “All we got left now are some POG reservists out pillaging everything they find in the name of reestablishing law and order.” He said POG like pogue. “You a POG reservist?”
Lee shook his head and spoke in a calm, level tone. “No, sir. I am active duty. The United States Army has sent me to help.”
“Help with what?” The man snorted.
“My ID is in my pack. Please, see for yourself.”
Still pointing the rifle at him, the man knelt over the pack he had taken from Lee and hesitated at the pockets. Lee told him which pocket to go into and he delved in, retrieving Lee’s military ID card. He looked at it for a long moment, then put it back.
“Still not convinced,” he declared.
Lee nodded. “I understand your hesitancy. However, whether you are convinced or not of my occupation, I am not here to harm you, and I am only trying to find a way to get two civilians to a safe zone.”
“Ain’t no safe zone around here. And what two civilians you keep talking about?”
“They are hiding.”
The man rolled his eyes. “I ain’t tryin’ to hurt nobody.”
“Neither am I. And I have a safe zone. If you will promise not to harm me or the two civilians, I will be glad to explain everything to you… indoors.” The man considered this for a long moment. While he considered, Lee spoke again. “By the way, you aren’t Mr. Burnsides, are you?”
He looked at Lee with suspicion in his eyes. “I am.”
“Because I knew the man who lived here.” Lee didn’t elaborate but left the unsaid question hanging in the air.
“Don Burnsides. Yeah.” The man looked at the pile of ash that had once been a burning tangle of corpses. “Don was my father.”
Lee could see the pain in the man’s face, a face that didn’t usually display those types of feelings. There was a story there that Lee could tell the younger Burnsides didn’t want to talk about. As quickly as the look of pain came, it passed by, like a cloud casting a quick shadow and then rolling away in the wind.
