by D. J. Molles
The dog burst through a tangle of thick brush and came running full speed for Lee, tail circling wildly behind him like a propeller. Lee was glad to see Tango unharmed but he couldn’t help having a greasy feeling of dread. Where was Sam? And what had happened?
He held up a hand and bent down to one knee as Tango approached, slowing to a trot, then coming to a halt before his master, tail sweeping an arc of leaves from the forest floor behind him. Just happy to see Lee.
Lee gave him a quick scratch on the head and then looked up to the woods. He didn’t have to wait for long before he saw a small, skinny figure running toward the group in that awkward prepubescent manner. Sam saw them, waved once, but then kept looking behind him, as though he were being pursued.
“Fuck…” Lee held his rifle at a low-ready. “Something’s wrong.”
“Yep.” Apparently Jack had come to the same conclusion.
Lee didn’t know what to expect from Sam, but the kid ran up and latched onto Lee, clinging around his waist, and it broke Lee’s heart. He wasn’t this kid’s father. He couldn’t be that person for him, and he didn’t have the time even if he wanted to. This was survival, not a Social Services visit.
“Sam, what happened?” Lee asked sternly.
The kid was out of breath. He kept glancing back into the woods. He spoke between gulps of air. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We thought you were dead.” Sam’s voice broke as he said the last part.
Dammit… Lee was trying not to be angry. “Why aren’t you in the bunker?”
“I took Tango outside so he could go to the bathroom. Then some army men came. I was scared. They didn’t look nice. We hid in the woods, and they went into your house. They took everything out. Then they set it on fire.”
Lee stared down at this pathetic kid clinging to him like a life raft.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lee mumbled without thinking.
“Captain!” Angela hissed behind him.
Tears sprang into Sam’s eyes and Lee immediately regretted letting the words slip out of his mouth.
“I said I was sorry.”
There were other choice words that Lee wanted to say—not directed at Sam in particular, but at the situation that he now found himself. But for the sake of the kid, he kept it to himself this time. He removed Sam from his leg—perhaps a little roughly—and pushed him into Angela’s arms. “Watch him for me?”
She nodded once.
He looked at Jack. “You’re with me.”
Then Jack and Lee took off at a run.
* * *
The haze in the trees was thickening and above the forest canopy Lee could see a dark column of smoke rising into the sky. The smoke was dark tendrils and light-gray mixing together like cloudy boiling water. Strange memories from old science classrooms: black smoke from petroleum products, white smoke from plant products.
“Captain…” Jack slapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.
Lee slowed and stopped behind a cluster of trees. “What?”
Jack wiped sweat from his eyebrows. “What if they’re still there?”
Lee considered the odds. “If we take them by surprise and hit them hard, we can probably take out about six or seven.”
Jack didn’t look convinced.
“If you can get a good hide, I can start taking out any heavy weapons or vehicles they have.” Lee indicated his 40mm grenades, of which he had three left. “Attention’s on me; you take out the survivors.”
“If your house is burned down, there’s no point in attacking them. It’s all risk and no reward.”
Lee knew Jack was right. “Fine. I’m comfortable saying we can take out five. If there’s more than five, we’ll leave it.”
Jack seemed to chew it over. “Alright. But give me some time to scout it out.”
“Agreed.”
They started moving again, this time slower, watching their footsteps and gliding through the woods nearly without noise. When they had drawn closer to the house and the smoke was palpable, Jack motioned Lee to remain while he crept quietly forward. Lee took cover behind a large tree and settled down at the base of its trunk, watching Jack move forward like a big cat prowling.
The skeletal man slid easily through the woods, nearly to the point that Lee could not see him. Lee could tell that the woods opened up just ahead of Jack’s location, and at certain angles Lee thought he could see his house.
He watched Jack stand very still for several moments, then settled slowly to the earth, propping his rifle on a fallen log and scanning the area through his scope. Jack made four very careful, very slow arcs across Lee’s field of view. Lee watched impatiently, wondering how long the sniper was going to take.
After what was probably close to five minutes of complete silence, watching Jack reconnoiter the area, the sniper looked back in Lee’s direction and motioned very slowly with his hand to move forward, then patted the air just above the ground, indicating Lee should move stealthily.
Lee moved out of his cover smoothly and made his way toward Jack at a steady glide. When he got within about ten feet of Jack, he lowered his body to the ground and low-crawled up shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack. From his new vantage point, much closer to the edge of the woods, Lee could see his house.
Or what was left of it.
It was still on fire, although it was beginning to smolder. It had obviously been lit on fire several hours ago, as the fire had completely eaten the structure and the upstairs had completely collapsed in on itself. What little remained of the house jutted up out of the ground—burned and uneven walls sagging and torn down. Like the rib cage of a recently gutted animal.
For a moment, Lee couldn’t speak. It wasn’t the house that he was attached to. In fact, it wasn’t anything that he was attached to. It was purely the worry of survival that he now felt like a vise grip being ratcheted down on his stomach. His house was superfluous, but now his bunker was covered in what looked like five feet of burning rubble, and it could take days before that much burning material cooled enough for him to get through. Inside were supplies that meant the difference between life and death. Desperately needed food and water were now inaccessible, if they were even still down there. In all likelihood, whatever raiding party had come along and burned his house had cleaned it out of anything useful prior to lighting the match. The guns and ammo would be gone, without a doubt. Some of the more sensitive equipment they may have left alone—not knowing what it was or how it could help them just meant it was extra weight.
The second immediate concern was the medical supplies. He hadn’t truly concerned himself with the condition that Angela and Abby were in. The truth was, while he’d stabilized their malnutrition and dehydration as best he could with the supplies he’d had in his go-to-hell pack, they were both still in a bad state and getting worse by the hour. He had been relying on the ability to get them to his bunker and stick them both with IVs to rehydrate and stuff them with MREs for a few days to get their strength back up. Without that possibility, their chances looked bleaker by the minute.
And Lee didn’t have any food or water left in his pack. Without those essential supplies, he had to put a timeline on each of their lives. Lee and Jack were both fairly well fed and hydrated as of yesterday, which meant they could probably go without water for the next two days, given the heat and their stress levels. He gave Angela and Abby until the following night.
Without a word, Lee dropped his pack and knelt down on one knee. He unzipped one of the front pockets and thrust his hand in, rooting around for a second before withdrawing the GPS device. He knew it was in there, knew it was safe and still in his possession, but in that moment he needed to look at it and touch it. It was hope made tangible.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
Lee just breathed a sigh of momentary relief and shoved the device back in the pack. “Let’s just say it’s an insurance policy.”
Lee hauled the pack onto his shoulders again. Focus. Compartmentalize. The
bunker was no longer an option for shelter, but he had to get Angela, Abby, and Sam into some sort of safe place. In order to accomplish this, he needed to know what, if anything, Jack had seen.
In a tone as calm as he could muster, Lee spoke. “You see anyone?”
“Not a soul.” Jack looked at Lee. “I’m pretty sure they burned the house just to fuck with you. They must’ve gotten your address from your truck.”
“My registration,” Lee nodded. The general two-man consensus was that the rogue army unit had done this. “I need to check out my neighbor’s house. We’re going to need to get our group indoors. Hopefully they didn’t burn that house down, too.”
Jack just shook his head. “Hoping is a bad habit these days.”
CHAPTER 13
Horde
The pair moved swiftly across Lee’s property. Lee fought to keep his eyes scanning for threats and not to simply stare at the burning wreckage of his home. He was scared now. His attitude had been somewhat lax, removed from the reality of his situation. He’d felt safe sitting on top of all his readily available supplies. Now, he had four more people following him, and his supplies were gone. The dire circumstances were becoming real to him. Real in the form of thirst, hunger, and diminishing ammunition.
The issue was time. He had less than forty-eight hours by his own estimation to get water to Angela and Abby. Food was less urgent, but Lee was still concerned about the amount of calories they were putting out with all this hiking. Even Jack seemed to be suffering, though he didn’t voice it. Lee’s own body was stronger and not as malnourished as the others. Lack of food was not a priority for him as it was for the others.
Ammunition depended on how much trouble they ran into before he could get the group to a point of relative safety. Best case scenario, they didn’t get into anything before he could find a place for the group to sit tight for a while. Worst case scenario, they were attacked, ran out of ammunition, and were killed.
The smoke in the air cleared a bit as they moved farther away from Lee’s burning house. They were moving into the wind blowing steadily from the west, and it seemed to be pushing away most of the smoke. They neared the edge of the woods and stopped, surveilling the Petersons’ house. Nothing appeared out of place. The graves in the backyard were still mounded high with freshly upturned soil. Lee noticed Jack giving them a hard look, but Jack didn’t ask about them, and Lee didn’t really feel like talking about it.
After a few moments of watching, Lee decided to break the wood line. Jack fell in behind him and they moved at a walking pace toward the back of the house. Everything still appeared as he had left it. Jack mentioned quietly that there was a burning pickup truck in the front lawn that looked like it had been blown apart.
Lee nodded. “Yeah. That was from earlier.”
Jack didn’t prod further. They entered through the back door and cleared the house. After it was clear, Jack walked into one of the upstairs bedrooms, Stephanie’s old room. “I’ll hole up here and keep watch while you go get everyone else.”
“Okay… If you get attacked…”
Jack smiled. “You’ll hear me shooting.”
Lee fished into his pack and retrieved the Smith & Wesson pistol he’d taken from Jason Peterson’s body, handing it butt first to Jack. “It’s got a full mag. It’ll give you a little more time, at least.”
Jack took the pistol and stuck it in the back of his waistband.
Lee flicked him a quick salute. “Be back in a few.”
As Lee exited the house, he checked his corners to make sure there were no surprises, and then began moving with less caution. He covered the terrain at a jog, stopping if anything piqued his curiosity or didn’t sound right, but never for more than a few seconds before he continued on. He crossed the open lot of his house at a run, then fell to a jog when he was back in the safety of the woods. A few hundred yards east, he found the three rescues crouched down near a large tree. Tango watched his master approach with a wagging tail.
Lee caught Angela’s eyes and jerked his head to the side. She rose from her crouch with the two children, telling them to stay there. Then she walked a few paces away and conferred quietly with Lee.
“What did you find?”
As she spoke, Lee noticed her unsteadiness on her feet and the crusted salt deposits around her eyes, nose, and mouth. Her dehydration was worse than Abby’s. Lee figured she’d given her daughter most of the water when they were on the rooftop. He had several diagnostic questions pop into his head to clarify the extent of her dehydration, but he thought it better to wait until they were indoors.
“My house is gone, but my neighbor’s house is still there. We’re gonna hole up in there.”
Angela looked heartbroken. “What about… the medical supplies? What about Abby? How are you gonna help her?”
Lee shook his head. “I don’t have any medical supplies right now.”
Angela’s worn face contorted like she was about to start crying. Or maybe her body simply didn’t have the moisture to spare for tears.
“Look, we have some time… it’s just not much.” Lee put his hand on Angela’s shoulder. It felt frail and bony. “We’re going to get you guys indoors, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
“What if she doesn’t make it?” Angela croaked. “I can’t do it. I can’t lose her… I can’t lose anyone else.”
Her voice was low enough that the kids couldn’t understand her, but they must have understood the tone of her voice and looked up in that way children do when they know something is wrong.
“Angela, she’s going to make it.” Lee had no way to back up that promise. “We’ll do whatever we have to. But right now we need to go.”
Lee didn’t wait for an answer. He turned Angela so she was facing the correct direction, then beckoned for the kids to join them. They both shuffled to their feet. Lee led the group through the woods, taking the same way he’d traveled the previous two times. Urgency spurred him on, but he forced himself to maintain a slow pace so the kids could keep up.
For the first time he noticed his own body showing the signs of fatigue through hunger and dehydration. Besides the hunger, which he’d learned to ignore long ago, his hands felt shaky, and his mouth was getting dry. Every once in a while, despite the heat of the day, he felt a chill work its way through his body.
They made the walk to the Petersons’ house in about twice the time it had taken Lee to get to the group. He listened the entire time for the telltale sound of Jack’s rifle, but all was silent. They approached the house, and Lee saw Jack peer at them from an upstairs window, then gave the okay symbol with his fingers.
Once inside, Abby stared at the splashes of blood across the living room carpet and in the kitchen while Angela tried to act like she didn’t notice anything. Lee guided them past the gore marks, through the hallway, and into the dining room at the front of the house. From where they were, Jack could be seen leaning over the top of the stairs to the second floor.
“Everyone okay?” he asked.
“Yeah…” Lee looked up. “I need you to keep watch while I try to get some water for the girls.”
Sam spoke up. “I’m thirsty, too.”
“Buddy.” Lee tried to keep his voice lighthearted, tried to disguise the severity of the situation. “We’re all thirsty, but the girls need the water more than we do, alright?”
Sam hung his head.
Lee felt guilty and exasperated at the same time. He was doing his best with this kid, but having no parental experience, he didn’t know what was appropriate to say to kids and what was not. Sam would just have to deal with it for now. He hoped that when things calmed down a bit, Jack and Angela could take over being the parents. He sure as hell didn’t feel ready for it.
Lee pulled out a few chairs from around the dining table. “Angela, Abby, go ahead and sit down. I’m going to try to find you guys some water.”
Leaving them in the dining room, he went into the kitchen. The bloody mess lef
t behind by Marla’s butchered body had crusted over, but it still managed to stick to his boots. The whole house was starting to stink. He riffled through the cupboards and cabinets and came up with a plastic pitcher and a coffee mug. Taking these, he went to the sink and put the coffee mug under the faucet. He hoped there was enough pressure in the pipes to give a little bit of water.
Turning on the faucet yielded a pathetic groan from the pipes and a tiny squirt of water that filled the coffee mug about halfway. Without humor, Lee thought that this was definitely a case of the glass being half empty.
Nevertheless, he deposited the bit he had into the pitcher and headed for the downstairs bathroom, which was near to the front door. The smell from the bathroom was obvious and not a good sign. He went to the toilet and removed the top to the reservoir tank. Again, he was disappointed with a bone-dry tank. It was obvious the toilet was filled with feces and the Petersons had apparently continued attempting to flush until all the water was gone from their pipes. With no water from pipes, it was impossible for the reservoir to refill itself.
Swearing, Lee left the bathroom and ran up the stairs to the second-floor bathroom only to find the same situation in this one. This presented another, less pressing issue. Latrines where feces and urine had collected and not been flushed were horrible for accumulating bacteria and disease. If they were forced to stay in the Petersons’ house for any length of time, they would have to set up latrines somewhere else. As it was, he didn’t want anyone going into either of the bathrooms.
His last-ditch effort was in the garage. He went down to the first floor and exited into the garage via the door in the kitchen. He was greeted with a positive among all the negatives: The Petersons’ Ford F-150 was still sitting in the garage. Lee hoped that he could find the keys, and that the Petersons had left him a little fuel. The roads weren’t the safest routes to travel in these circumstances—in fact, they were decidedly deadly—but Lee was trying to count the little things. If they needed emergency transportation, they had it… maybe.
