Malcolm gestured for the radio and Kim quickly handed it over. “Alan, who the hell is that?”
“Just some guy,” he replied. “He’s armed and so are the guys backing him up. They’re dressed in fatigues. Might be military.”
“Should we get out?” Jackson’s voice sounded on the radio.
“No, stay in the cars,” Malcolm replied, angling his side view mirror. “If they were really military, they’d identify themselves.”
“This bridge here belongs to us,” the man called out. “You want to use the bridge, you’ve got to pay the toll. You pay it and we’ll let you go with no problems.”
“How do we know that?” Malcolm called back.
Kim spotted the man as he came around the side of the cube van to stand up on the concrete wall on the side of the bridge. He couldn’t be more than twenty five years old, a shock of red hair on his head and she’d bet his face was covered in freckles. Though he looked like an older Opie Taylor, the hand that hovered over the gun holstered on his hip made him incredibly threatening.
“What other choice do you have?” the man said. “We’ve got you blocked on both ends. Not because we want to hurt you. It’s just to ensure that you pay the toll. When you do, we’ll clear the way on the bridge and you can be on your way.”
“Damn it,” Malcolm cursed. “They’ve got people up on the buildings.”
Kim looked over at the roof of the building next to the bridge and it didn’t take her long to spot the man and his rifle propped on the edge of the roof.
“They’re going to try and take us,” Lorraine said, her voice trembling with fear. Kim knew that the woman had reason to fear. Back in Marysville, a group of men had attacked them, intent on taking their supplies and Lorraine, the only woman out with them.
“No they won’t,” Craig said, wincing as he moved closer to Lorraine. “We won’t let it happen.”
“Malcolm, ya got a plan here?” Jackson asked over the radio.
Kim looked over to him and saw genuine fear in his eyes. She reached across the seats and grabbed his hand. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”
He nodded and put the radio to his mouth. “I’ll handle it. If they were planning on killing us and taking what we have, they would have done it already. I think we can take them at their word.”
“But what do they want?” Trey wondered aloud.
“Let’s find out,” Malcolm said and put his hand out the window. “I’m gonna come out now!”
But before Malcolm could reach down to grab the door handle, the sound of hinges groaning echoed back to them and Kim saw the door to the cube van opening and Alan climbed out.
“What the fuck?” Malcolm said at the same time the radio beeped.
“We’ve got children with us,” Alan’s voice sounded on the radio and Kim reached out to stop Malcolm from climbing out of the SUV. Alan obviously wanted them to hear what he was doing, keeping the call button down as he talked to the man.
“Wait,” she said, “Listen.”
“We aren’t in the business of hurting children,” the man said to Alan. “All we want is your supplies. Food, weapons, medicine, extra gas, whatever you’ve got. We’ll let you go with your cars and your lives. That’s more than most people got now.”
“We need what we have. We’ve spilled blood for what we have,” Alan said.
“So have we,” the man replied, “And we don’t want to have to do it again. We all have to do what we can to survive. You care about those kids? Hand over what you have and they’ll be perfectly safe.”
“I can’t let you have our medicine,” Alan said. “We have someone injured and he needs it.”
Alan took a step towards the man and held out a hand.
“Whoa there, buddy!”
“I just want to introduce myself,” Alan said. “My name is Alan Wakefield. My wife, Jenny, she’s in the minivan there. She’s six months pregnant. She’s sitting there with Matthew and Mark Cahill. They’re ten year old twins and they have a five year old sister, Ruthie.”
“I don’t care what their names are,” the man said but Alan plowed ahead.
“That Yukon, Audrey and Hannah Cole are in there. They’re little girls who watched their parents die right in front of them. Their neighbour Jackson Webber saved them. And he saved Veronica Alpert when she was running from men who killed my brother Travis.”
“Shut up!”
She realized what Alan was doing. He was forcing these people to hear the names, to get to know the people they were threatening.
Malcolm was right. These people could have easily slaughtered all of them instead of cutting deals. They weren’t bad people like the ones in Marysville. They were trying to survive the best way they knew how. If Alan could get them to face the people they were taking advantage of, it could sway them to their side.
“The front car’s got Craig O’Neill in it. He’s the one who is injured. He got shot trying to protect his friend Lorraine when men tried to kidnap her so they could rape her.”
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Because all of them are good people. They are just trying to get somewhere safe and they need what they have to do it.”
“You think we don’t have kids? That we haven’t lost people? We need what you have,” the man said. “We can’t let you go without paying the toll.”
“I think we can make a deal,” Alan said.
Alan went to move towards the back of the van and the man jumped down from the barrier. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just going to open the back of the van,” Alan told him, moving slowly, the man following carefully, keeping Alan in his sights.
Kim couldn’t believe that the man who had run away yesterday was walking into the crosshairs of who knew how many weapons. The sound of the rear door opening drifted to them and Kim saw the man’s weapon lower as he looked at what was inside the van.
Craig and Lorraine had found the van abandoned mid-delivery when they were fleeing their town. It had been stocked full of non-perishable foods destined for some super market somewhere and it had been a lifesaver for them.
“You can have all of this,” Alan said. “Take this van and everything it in and let us go with what we have in the other cars.”
There was a long pause and Kim wished she could see the two men as she stared intently at the radio in Malcolm’s hand, waiting for a response.
“Alright, deal,” the man said, “But you don’t stop on the other side of the bridge. You keep going. You come back here and I don’t care what your names are, we’ll kill every last one of you.”
“Not a problem,” Alan said. “We won’t ever be back here.”
They watched as Alan walked away from the cube van and came up to the SUV’s back door. He climbed inside next to Trey and did up his seatbelt as the rest of them stared at him agog.
“We better go,” Alan said. “I wouldn’t count on their good nature lasting too long.”
Malcolm nodded and handed the radio back to Kim, giving her a look of disbelief before he got the SUV going again. Kim watched as the other vehicles followed them and they drove across the rest of the bridge.
By the time they had reached the other side, the blockade had been moved and they all cautiously watched the group of men who were brandishing rifles on the side of the road. They continued down the road, leaving the men and their bridge in the rear-view mirror.
The radio beeped and Jackson’s voice came out of the speaker. “Gotta admit, ya did a good job, Alan.”
“Yeah, you stepped up, Alan,” Quinton radioed to them.
Alan shrugged, looking out the window. “I figured we can find more food eventually. Weapons and the vehicles are more important. We’d be dead in the water without them.”
“You did good, Alan,” Malcolm said, glancing at him in the rear view mirror.
“Gotta earn the trust back, right?” Alan replied and Malcolm nodded, something unspoken passing between the two men.
As she set the radio back in her lap, she realized her hands were trembling. It had all happened so fast and it was only now that they were out of it, she realized how close they had come to being hurt.
She rubbed her hands together, trying to calm the shaking and she looked over at the steering wheel. Malcolm had finally eased up his tight grip and she could see his hands were shaking as well.
She reached over and put her hand on his own. He looked at her and gave her a tight lipped smile. She could see the stress lines around his mouth and she had the sudden urge to lean over and kiss them away.
She didn’t, knowing that he needed to focus on the road as he got them far away from Fairview but she did pull his hand off the wheel so she could thread her fingers through his. She drew strength from their joined hands, letting his solid strength soothe her, steadying her trembling.
They may be down food and a van but they were all still here and alive. That would be enough for now.
PART 2
Subject File # 744
Administrator: What event frightened you the most?
Subject: I want to say it was one of the times we were attacked but really, it was after we had our supplies taken in Fairview. Malcolm was so lost and it terrified me.
Administrator: Why?
Subject: Because Malcolm is my rock. Without him I’d be lost too.
“This is the last of the jerky.”
Janet pushed to her feet, flipping the cooler lid closed as she stood and handed over the day’s rations to Kim. “We have enough for everyone this morning but that’s it.”
Kim let out a huff of frustration as she closed the back door of the Yukon. “We’ve got a can of wax beans and half a box of pasta left from that house up the road. We can skip lunch and do an early dinner with them but after that, it’s all gone.”
“Well, let’s hope Trey and Claudia’s traps got something.”
The two teenagers had set out just after dawn to check the traps they had set the night before, though Claudia hadn’t been hopeful. They had made camp at a truck stop motel just off the highway. It was surrounded by empty fields that had been meant for a fall planting that would never come. There was a small line of trees and shrubs that ran as a windbreak for the fields but Claudia had indicated that it was unlikely to be home to anything more substantial than mice.
Though the location wasn’t great for hunting or trapping, it offered them a clear view so they would see anyone or thing that might try to approach. The single storey U-shaped building was a relic from the 1970s, all the doors facing out into the parking lot that they had blocked off with the vehicles, giving them extra protection.
With their proximity to Columbus, Malcolm had wanted the extra protection, though they hadn’t seen any others since they had crossed the bridge in Fairview three days ago.
Three days since they had crossed the Ohio River and lost their supplies and royally screwed themselves.
They’d tried to find gas along the highway, even stopping at noon that first day and sending out groups on foot in either direction, but they had come up empty. Any gas stations they came across were either tapped dry or had their supply sealed up tight in the underground tanks. They had found a few abandoned cars but their tanks were low and they had siphoned barely enough to fill half a jerry can.
It had gotten them into Ohio and to the motel that night but after that, their tanks had been dry. They were effectively stranded here and until they found more gas, this was their home.
They had been able to find some food at a few abandoned homes they had come across on the road but nothing like the store they had been hauling in the cube van. What they were able to take from the homes were just stop gaps. People just didn’t keep enough food in their homes to feed seventeen people three meals a day.
There had been two vending machines at the motel, which they had raided when they arrived, but the sugary sweets and sodium stuffed snacks hadn’t been much and gave little in the way of nutrition. Stranded here at the motel, their supplies had quickly dwindled until they were down to the pitiful handful they had now.
Kim pushed back the negative thoughts, knowing that dwelling on their losses was not going to put food in anybody’s belly.
“What if they don’t find anything in their traps?” Janet asked. Her dark skin was ashen against the bright coloured scarf she wore over her hair. Her big brown eyes were sunken and exhausted, the light in them faded. Kim knew she looked the same, world wearied and scared.
“Then we’ll go find more food,” Kim said. “We’ve got to search for more gas anyway. We’ll just look for food too. There are still plenty of places that’ll have food.”
“But that means going into a town and every time we’ve done that, something bad has happened,” Janet said. “We lost three people in Marysville. Half our group almost died at that dealership. We lost all our food in Fairview…”
Janet’s voice caught as she tried to choke back her tears.
Kim went to Janet and hugged her tight. “Hey now, don’t think like that. Sure we’ve had some setbacks but we haven’t lost anyone since Marysville. That’s something, isn’t it? We’re almost there. We’ve got a day’s drive left then we’re at the lake.”
“But if we don’t have the gas to get there, what does it matter?”
“We’ll find it,” Kim said, rubbing her hand up and down the other woman’s back, trying to reassure her. “We will figure it all out.”
“You don’t know that.”
Kim pulled back from Janet so she could look her in the eyes when she spoke.
“I do know. I know because the only other option is to lay down and die and I’m not going to do that and I’m not gonna let you or anybody else in this group do that so I know we’re going to figure this out.”
Tears still filled Janet’s dark eyes and she turned away, shaking her head, not wanting to listen but Kim wouldn’t let her pull away.
“Janet, you’re stronger than this. When your husband died, you didn’t give up. You and me, our people, we don’t give up. No matter how much shit comes at us we do not give up. We fight, we persevere. Us, our kids, we survive because that’s what we do.”
Janet nodded, swallowing back her tears and taking a breath. “You’re right. You’re right.”
“Damn straight I’m right,” Kim said, getting her to laugh.
“Thanks for talking me off the ledge.”
“No thanks needed. I’m sure you’ll do the same for me eventually.”
One of the motel room doors opened and Quinton emerged, rubbing a hand over his eyes to get rid of the last of the sleep there. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Janet greeted him with a shy smile. Quinton grinned back at her with his puppy dog eyes and Kim turned around so they wouldn’t see her smiling. If Quinton gave Janet a reason to smile, she wasn’t going to ruin that by embarrassing them with her gawking. Watching the two of them making eyes at each other brought a light moment to the morning.
She looked up at the roof of the motel where she knew Malcolm was standing his watch shift. She wished she would get the same reception from him this morning as Janet got from Quinton but she knew it wouldn’t happen.
Since they had left Fairview, any lightness in Malcolm had dissolved as each hour passed with no success at finding supplies. He had hoped that there would be something within a few miles of the motel but the groups that had gone out on their first day here had come up empty handed. They’d found a junkyard and several farm fields that hadn’t been planted before the outbreak began.
It had been disheartening but she wasn’t going to let that be what broke him. They weren’t even close to giving up and she wasn’t going to let him even consider the possibility.
“Mind if I go up?” she asked Ja
net.
Janet waved her away. “It’s not like I need help with handing out jerky. Go.”
Kim headed over to where the Suburban was parked by the front corner of the U shaped building. A chair was next to the back wheel and Kim used it to climb up to the roof of the SUV and onto the step ladder that was propped against the side of the building leading to the motel roof.
She waved to Veronica who was sitting in a lawn chair, rifle across her lap. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Kim said and held out one of the pieces of jerky.
Veronica looked at the food but hesitated. “How much do we have left?”
“This is it, so you might want to make it last.”
“Did the kids get enough?”
Kim nodded. “We doubled their share. Jenny’s too.”
“Good.”
Kim glanced over to the other side of the roof where she could see Malcolm’s silhouette highlighted by the sun that was slowly peeking above the horizon.
“He’s been pretty quiet,” Veronica said. “I can usually count on him for some good shit shooting on watch. I think he’s got a lot on his mind.”
She was right. Malcolm had carried the full weight of the group’s future on his shoulders and it had become heavier with the loss of their supplies.
Kim walked over to join him, greeting her with a nod of his chin before he was back to looking out over the motel lot. She sat down beside him and let her legs dangle over the edge.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” she asked him.
“A million things and nothing, all at once.”
She made a sound of agreement, having learned in their short time together that if she didn’t ask any questions, he’d eventually come out with what was bothering him. She stared out at the surrounding farmland, the flat land giving them a surprisingly vast view of the area.
Dawn had come over the area, pushing back the darkness and burning off the dew that had settled during the night. Birdsong filled the air as they flitted above the field, searching for any insects or worms that had come up out of the earth. Kim wondered if the birds knew that something was different now. Did they notice that trucks and cars no longer sped by them on the roads? Did the absence of the humming of live power lines help them or had they adapted to all the noises humans made?
Sanctuary Page 17
