“Vargas said Jake was to stay in the infirmary for a good week and take another week before traveling,” Carolyn answered. “Vickie won’t go anywhere without him. I think we’re safe there.”
“Well, I guess that’s it then,” Pete announced. “We’ll start packing up tomorrow morning.”
Chapter 13: Fred Lane
“I don’t know why you gettin’ all upset, Grampa,” Marius said as the two vehicles crested a small hill to disappear from sight.
“Ain’t we got enough problems without invitin’ more?”
“It was just some girl, younger’n me, wavin’ all friendly like.”
“They’s all friendly at first, ain’t they? Last thing we need is strangers pokin’ around in our business.”
“What’s up, Pop?” Darnell asked as he joined them.
“Car and a big van went by just now,” Fred Lane answered his son. “Your damn fool son starts wavin’ at them like they was old friends. You need to teach this boy that things is different now.”
“What did they do? Did they look like trouble?”
“Everyone looks like trouble to Grampa,” Marius spoke up. There was some young girl waved at us and I waved back is all. They never stopped, never even slowed down. Now they’re gone.”
“You hadn’t been pokin’ your head up they’d never seen us at all! I told you to keep down out of sight,” Fred complained.
“It doesn’t sound like any harm was done,” Darnell said. “They’re gone now, right? Pop, we need to find other people eventually; we’ve been on our own too long.”
“We still alive, ain’t we? Ain’t I kept us all safe? Or don’t you remember them people by that school last year?”
“I remember, dad, but all people aren’t like them.”
“They was ready to rob us and kill us; might as well been wearin’ robes and hoods!”
“I remember! All I’m sayin’ is there’s good people left out there, too! We can’t go it alone forever!”
“I know,” Fred sighed. “It just ain’t that easy to trust people, especially now. You don’t know; you didn’t grow up the way your mom and I did. I was lucky enough to get a good job finally and move us into a better neighborhood while you was still young. You never seen the things I did when I was growin’ up.”
“Dad, I know you worked hard all your life, I know you sacrificed to send me off to school, to make a better life for me and momma and the girls, but things are different now. We’re still gonna run into those kind of people, yeah, but we can’t avoid everyone we see just because some of them might be like them. I want my boy to have a normal life, at least as normal as it can be the way the world is now. That’s never gonna happen if we never connect with any other survivors.”
“I’ll be damned if I know what the answer is,” Fred admitted. “I just want to keep us safe, you know? I’m just tryin’ to keep the family together.”
“I know you are, dad, but we can’t rebuild the world all by ourselves. If we’re ever going to live anything like decent, normal lives again, we need other people. Look, momma’s got lunch ready. Why don’t I spell you two while you get something to eat, okay?”
Fred looked at his son, not for the first time feeling proud of the man he’d grown up to be. Nodding, he turned to head back to the brick maintenance and switching building that had been their home for the last several weeks. He felt lucky and grateful that his son and two daughters had been home for their mother’s birthday when the infection struck his hometown; he couldn’t have borne the burden of not knowing whether they were alive and safe. The truth was, Fred and his wife probably wouldn’t have survived except for his son’s and sons-in-law’s help getting them out of town and away from the chaos and panic, the frenzied masses of infected who attacked and killed anyone and everyone they could catch. Neighbors, decades-long friends became wild beasts intent on devouring him and his family and he’d had to kill more than one to escape; nightmares of those first days continued to haunt him even now.
He couldn’t even remember how many places they’d tried to settle into, places that seemed safe at the time, only to be driven out by hordes of infected or marauding gangs. Last fall, on foot, his family came across a group of survivors who’d occupied a small-town school building, hoping to be able to join up with them. Instead, they found that this group had murdered the tiny band of survivors who originally occupied the building and intended to murder Fred and his family for the small amount of supplies and weapons they possessed. The gang brought up their weapons and ordered Fred’s group to drop their guns and surrender, but his sons-in-law, an ex-Marine and an Army Ranger home on leave, made short work of them and they moved into the school for a few weeks until the infected arrived in numbers too large to stand against.
They spent a very chilly winter in an old office building, heating a few rooms with kerosene heaters and standing guard on the rooftop dressed in any warm pieces of clothing they could find. Once spring truly arrived, they happily left the stench of kerosene behind them and traveled until they came upon the substation, which was already inhabited by the Torres family. Diego and Sophia Torres, with their children Matias, Valeria and Martina at first thought the Lanes were another gang out to rob and perhaps murder them, but Jayla and Tiana, Fred’s daughters, upon seeing the three pre-teen children approached to assure them they were in no danger. It took some convincing before Fred grudgingly agreed to join forces with them but even he had to admit they made a valuable addition to the group.
The Torres family, as it turned out, had quite a stockpile of food and bottled water in the maintenance building, which they happily shared with the Lanes. Fred, having only two grandsons who were already seventeen and nearing nineteen, felt drawn to the Torres children and he became a surrogate grandfather to them. Diego and Darnell became fast friends and worked side by side to try to make the place as comfortable and secure as possible, setting up plywood and canvas lean-tos to for storing the bulk of their food and water supplies behind the building, out of sight from the road, and reinforcing the chain link fence surrounding the substation. Joseph, the Marine and Deshaun, the Army Ranger took charge of making supply runs and managed to bring back enough provisions to last all of them for many weeks.
“It’s not a terrible life, is it Fred?” his wife, Lorene, asked him while he ate his lunch.
“It ain’t nothin’ like I wanted for you and the kids, but we’re all together, ‘ceptin’ Darnell’s wife.”
“Shame; she was a good woman. Broke my heart to see her turn like that. I don’t think Jayden ever will get over it.”
“I don’t think he’s ever goin’ to forget I’m the one who put her down.”
“Fred, he knows it had to be done; we all know that.”
“Don’t make it no easier,” Fred sighed, pushing his plate away.
“We’ll get through this. We made it this far, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, I guess compared to most of the rest of the world, we are the lucky ones after all.”
Chapter 14: The Bandits’ Discovery
“What in the hell happened here?” Gabe demanded as he surveyed the charred ruins of the house and the remnants of human and infected bodies remaining on the grounds. “How do you suppose they managed to burn their house down around themselves?”
“It puzzles me,” Frank answered, glancing at Dan for a moment. “Looks like about thirty or so infected and maybe six or seven people are scattered around. But I’ll tell you the strangest thing. We found three rifles that someone smashed against that big rock over there.”
“Somebody smashed the rifles?” Gabe whipped his head around.
“They wrecked ‘em bad enough I can’t even salvage any parts from them,” Dan put in.
“That ain’t all, either,” Frank continued. “There’s five pistols somebody beat on with rocks and destroyed them, too. People who died here sure as hell didn’t do that!”
“You saying the infected did it?”
“J
ust about had to be them. We’re still sorting through the bodies, but we salvaged four rifle and three pistol magazines and about a hundred loose rounds so far, but every gun we found is wrecked.”
“Shit! That means them damned infected figured out that guns can kill ‘em and didn’t want to leave any behind. Makes me wonder if they took any with them.”
“Oh, hell no!” Chuck was horrified. “If they figure out how to use guns, we’re in deep shit!”
“It ain’t possible, is it?” Dan’s voice quivered with dread. “They can’t be smart enough to use guns, can they?”
“Don’t know,” Gabe growled. “Maybe them alpha things can figure it out. They seemed to be getting smarter before winter set in and drove them off.”
“What are we gonna do if they start shooting back at us?” Dan pleaded.
“There can’t be more than a few alphas,” Frank insisted. “We always avoided the infected when we could before, so we’ll just keep on doing that. Just ‘cause they maybe figure out how to pull a trigger doesn’t mean they actually know how to aim a gun or use them in an attack or even how to reload once they’re empty.”
“You’re right,” Gabe backed him up. “From now on we double the watch, though. The last thing we need is for them to surprise us. Hurry up and search the rest of those bodies and let’s get the hell out of here!”
While the rest of the gang picked through what was left of the victims of the attack, Frank took Gabe aside to talk privately with him.
“I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news, Gabe,” he told him quietly, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. “I found an empty gallon gas can by some chewed up corpses not far from the house. There’s broken glass near where the porch stood, too. Looks like at least one bottle.”
Gabe stared at him, mouth hanging open and eyes wide in alarm.
“Are you saying they fire-bombed the house?”
“I ain’t sayin’ anything for sure,” Frank said quickly while motioning for Gabe to keep his voice down. “That’s how it looks to me, though.”
“Get rid of that can and don’t say anything about this to the rest of the men, you hear?”
“I already ditched it; no one else knows anything about it.”
“Good! Those idiots would only panic if they even suspected it. Damn! Just one more fuckin’ thing to worry about!
“Okay, right now we’ve got to make plans” Gabe went on. “I want to hit that big farmhouse with the army trucks parked around back. I bet they got plenty of ammunition there, and plenty of guns.”
“Even with what we found here,” Frank shook his head, “we still don’t have near enough ammo to take on that house the way they have it set up.”
“If these damned fools didn’t spray bullets all over like there was no tomorrow, we’d have plenty of ammo left! Where the hell’s Dan?”
Frank looked around until he spotted him, then called for him to join them.
“What’s up, Gabe?”
“Can you fix these guns so none of them can fire on full auto anymore?”
“Sure. There’s only the one AK, the three M-16s and the M-4 Frank found the other day and your Uzi. Take me a little while, but I can do it.”
“Any way you can fix it so none of the magazines holds more than ten shots so these dumb bastards have to stop and reload before running through a ton of ammo?”
“Ah, it could be done, but I don’t guarantee they won’t jam up if I tamper with them.”
“All right, just rig them so they can’t fire full auto. Get started now! Fix every one of them except mine and Frank’s.” He turned back to Frank as Dan went off. “We need to find more ammo, now! Any ideas?”
“Let me have a couple boys and I’ll hit some of these small towns. We might come across a police station or some small gun stores that haven’t been looted yet.”
“All right! You pick out your own men and take whatever you need in the way of cars. I’m gonna look over that house and see for myself if there’s a way to approach it without being spotted. If we can pick off that sniper and maybe take out a couple others while they’re outside, it’ll make it a lot easier.”
“I’ll grab my boys and get started then.”
Gabe called Chuck, Alan and Nate to accompany him on his scouting mission and the four of them piled into an extended cab pickup truck. Using the map and the diagram Frank made, Gabe stopped well out of sight of the house and, leaving Chuck behind to watch the truck, he, Alan and Nate cautiously worked their way closer. Reaching a point where he could just make out the house, Gabe took his binoculars and the first thing he looked for was the sniper. He spotted Tom where he perched on a small platform built up on the roof, looking off in another direction just then. Gabe panned over the grounds and counted three people outside, Hannah, Liz and Kim. He smiled at the thought of having at least three women under his thumb, promising himself that he’d have first crack at the little Asian and, if there was anything left of her after he was through, the rest of his men could pass her around with the others. The defenses were much as Frank had described and he knew that outside of Hollington, this place would be the toughest challenge they’d faced so far, but had the potential to be the most rewarding also. At that, he handed the binoculars to Alan.
“Three women,” Alan said excitedly. “One of them’s a gook! I always wanted to fuck a gook!”
“Yeah, well if there’s anything left after I’m through with her, you can have sloppy seconds,” Gabe barked, yanking the binoculars out of his hands.
Turning his attention back to the house, he paled and swallowed hard as he found that Kate had replaced Tom and was aiming her rifle right at him, a smile forming on her face. He ducked and rolled a half second before a bullet kicked up the dirt where he’d been lying. All three men ran clumsily back toward the truck, bullets swatting against tree trunks and clipping branches just to either side of them as Kate encouraged them to move faster. Alan got his foot tangled in some exposed roots and went down, the snap as his leg broke just above the ankle audible. He yelled out in pain and the others turned toward him, Nate firing off a half dozen rounds toward the house. Kate responded with a bullet through his left calf, causing him to stumble and fall. Gabe sized up the situation, seeing Alan was still entangled in the roots, and made his decision immediately. He pulled Nate to his feet, swung his arm over his shoulder and half carried him the rest of the way, leaving Alan to his fate.
“I heard shooting!” Chuck yelled out as they emerged from the brush. “What happened to Nate?”
“Sniper on the roof,” Gabe explained, out of breath, as he got Nate on the ground and ripped his pant leg open. “Damned bitch was toying with us! She peppered the trees all around us and, just for the hell of it, decided to pop Nate in the leg! I got to admire her shooting, but God help her when I get my hands on her!”
“What about Alan?”
“Damn fool went and broke his leg! I couldn’t carry both of them and I ain’t goin’ back after him!”
“Oh, Jesus it hurts!” Nate moaned. “Gimme something for the pain!”
“We didn’t bring anything with us. You’ll just have to wait until we get back to the camp. Henry’ll fix you up then,” Chuck reassured him as he fashioned a tourniquet above the wound.
“Not damn likely,” Gabe growled. “That bullet took a chunk of meat out of your leg the size of a baseball. It ain’t never gonna be much use to you again even if you don’t bleed to death before we get you back.”
“What do you want to say something like that for?” Chuck complained. “Don’t you worry, Nate; It ain’t near as bad as he’s makin’ out! Old Henry was a pretty good doc before all this shit happened. He’ll fix you up good as new. Look! I got the bleeding mostly stopped already! You’re gonna be fine!”
“Let’s get him in the back of the truck and get the hell out of here,” Gabe ordered, his voice filled with contempt.
. . .
“What’s happening out th
ere? I can’t see anything,” Pete called up to Kate from the balcony.
“Three men were watching us with binoculars. I tried to scare them off but one of them started shooting at the house so I clipped his leg.”
“Are they all gone now?”
“No. One of them fell and I think he’s hurt. The third guy helped the one I shot get away. I don’t think they’re coming back for their buddy.”
“Is Kim up there with you? I don’t see her down here anywhere”
“Kim? Oh, no! That poor bastard!”
. . .
Alan lay on the ground, cursing Gabe, Nate, Chuck and the entire world. He was trying to free his leg from the tangle of roots, not having much success, only further aggravating the already intense pain. A rustling noise caused him to stop and listen, praying that his comrades were coming back to rescue him, but, if that were so, then why were they trying to be so quiet about it?
“Gabe? Gabe? Is that you?” He stopped to listen again, hearing no reply. “Damn it, Gabe, where the hell are you?” Still no reply.
Alan tried to sit up but the pain shooting through his broken leg convinced him the effort was futile and he looked around in panic, gripping his .45 tightly.
“Chuck? Are you there? Answer me, damn it!” he shouted, wincing at the pain the effort entailed. “Oh, God, it hurts!” There was still no answer. “Damn it, Chuck, Gabe! Shit, Gabe, I know you want that little chink! I’ll steer clear of her! You can have first crack at the damned gook! I’ll wait ‘til after you’re done fucking her!”
An arrow through his forearm pinned it to the ground and he lost the grip on his pistol. He tried to twist around to grab the gun with his other hand but a boot kicked the weapon away. Alan looked at the boot and lifted his head to stare into Kim’s cold, merciless eyes.
“I am not a ‘chink’ or a ‘gook’,” she told him, eyes filled with loathing and voice dripping with utter hatred, “I am Vietnamese.”
The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 37
