by David Spell
McCain led his wife into the sanctuary and they sat alone in the big, open room. Chuck leaned over and kissed Elizabeth, holding her face in his hands.
“I’m so proud of you,” he said, as they came up for breath.
“Why? I thought you were going to be mad at me for making us stop to rescue Diya. That was a scary situation.”
“No, I’m not mad at you,” he said, his arm draped over her shoulder. “You did good. I mean, it’s been a day. You took out one of the bad guys who tried to ambush us this morning. And your instincts were spot-on about rescuing Diya. It was the right thing to do. When I get mission-focused, I don’t let anything knock me off track. I’m glad we did it, now we just have to figure out what to do with her.
“Plus, you showed a lot of courage during that rescue. That was probably one of the biggest groups I’d ever taken on by myself, but we did it. And then when we stopped at that convenience store, you were like Annie Oakley or something taking out those two Zs.”
Beth chuckled. “I didn’t even think about it. You said to cover you and when they came out from behind the building, I just reacted. More of the benefits of your good training.”
After a few more minutes of kissing, they simply held each other. “You told me one time that God speaks to you in different ways,” Elizabeth said, softly. “You said sometimes he would speak to you as you read the Bible or sometimes it was like a quiet voice deep inside of you.”
“That’s right,” Chuck replied.
“That’s why I wanted to rescue whoever was trapped in that store. It wasn’t an audible voice, but I just knew that we were supposed to help them. Is that crazy?”
“No, not all. You told me a while back that you were trying to find your way back to God. I’ve always believed that we don’t really have to find our way back to him. No matter how far away we might have fled, as soon as we turn around, he’s standing there waiting on us with a big smile on his face. It sounds to me like you’re back.”
“That’s really beautiful,” Beth observed quietly. “I’ve never thought of it like that before.”
McCain sat against the wall just inside the classroom, his rifle beside him. Elizabeth and Diya were both sound asleep on the comfortable chairs. He was dozing but couldn’t give himself completely to sleep for fear that predators would sneak up on them. The two years that he had spent with the Green Berets in Afghanistan had, among other things, taught him the importance of being a light sleeper.
After the SF soldiers had accepted him as part of their team, the police liaison officer had pulled his share of sentry duty on those ops that required spending the night in the field. One of the Special Forces sergeants told Chuck that he was the first law enforcement contractor that they’d had who had volunteered to take a shift keeping watch over the team as they slept.
Movement in the classroom brought him fully awake. He activated the small flashlight he wore on his belt. A red filter diffused the light but still allowed him to see Diya sitting up on her bed of chairs, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“You alright?” Chuck asked quietly, not wanting to disturb Beth.
“I need to use the bathroom,” the young girl answered shyly.
McCain stood. “Come on, I’ll walk you over there and let you use my light.”
Meena got unsteadily to her feet, still weak from her ordeal. “Here, hold my arm for support,” Chuck offered.
He slowly guided Diya to the restroom, just two doors down from their temporary base. McCain handed her the flashlight and said, “I’ll be waiting for you right here.”
A few minutes later, the police officer led the girl back to her resting place and seated himself on the floor, the room again almost pitch black, the luminous dial on his watch showing 0225 hours.
“Thank you, Mr. Chuck.”
“No problem.”
“Really, thank you for everything. You saved my life. Miss Elizabeth told me you’re trying to find your daughter but you stopped to help me.”
“It’s OK, Diya. I’m glad we were there for you. Plus, I have something for you in the truck. A present.”
“A present? What kind of present, Mr. Chuck?”
“I found a black bag in the store, like a small suitcase.”
“Oh, that was my father’s jeweler bag.”
“Well, I cleaned out all of the counters and put the jewelry in the bag. I figured you might need it when things get back to normal. You’re going to need some money and that’s a lot of beautiful jewelry that you can sell.”
There was no response from Diya for several minutes. McCain realized that it was because she was sobbing quietly. She finally said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Chuck. That was very nice of you to do that for me. Thank you very, very much.”
After another few moments of silence, Meena asked, “What will happen to me, Mr. Chuck?”
“We’re going to visit some people tomorrow, if we can find them. They’re the parents of Elizabeth’s best friend. From what I’ve heard, they live in a really nice, safe place, on a small farm. We’ll talk and see if you can stay with them.”
“I…I think I’d rather be with you and Miss Elizabeth.”
“I understand but after we leave there, we still have a tough journey ahead of us. It’s going to take you a while to get your strength back. But, whether you stay with the Fosters or come with Beth and I, we’ll do everything we can to protect you.”
“Yes, Mr. Chuck,” she answered, resignation in her voice.
North of Pendleton, South Carolina, Thursday, 0800 hours
Diya had more cold soup and Gatorade for breakfast, while Chuck and Beth ate MREs from their backpacks. The Meals Ready to Eat contains a chemical warming pouch that allow the user to heat their food. McCain showed his wife how to use it and they both enjoyed a hot cup of instant coffee.
After eating, Chuck walked through the worship center, peering out all of the windows, making sure that there were no surprises waiting on them outside. After satisfying himself that it was safe, he led the two ladies to their vehicle. Meena reclined in the front passenger seat while Elizabeth drove. McCain took his backseat perch to better protect them as they traveled.
Beth turned left out of Faith Fellowship Church as the three continued their journey. The sky was overcast and it looked like rain was in the forecast. The temperatures had been unusually warm over the last few days. Today, however, felt like a cold front was moving through, especially as they drove north towards the higher elevations of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It didn’t help that the police officer rode with his two side windows and rear window down to enable him to respond quickly in the case of an attack.
The road was empty and the rolling hills were beautiful. Twenty minutes after starting out, he heard his wife’s voice calling him.
“Chuck! Turn around!”
McCain’s head snapped up and he realized that he’d been dozing, the lack of sleep from the previous night catching up with him. His head snapped around, quickly seeing what Beth had seen: a red SUV was following them, several hundred yards to their rear.
“How long have they been behind us?”
“I don’t know. I just saw them.”
The optics on McCain’s rifle confirmed that it was indeed the same Ford Expedition he’d seen drive by the church the previous day. He could make out four figures inside the vehicle. For the moment at least, they were maintaining a respectful distance.
“You’ll gonna turn left in about a half mile onto Highway 178,” he told Elizabeth. “It’s a few miles longer this way but it’ll keep us from having to drive through a couple of these little towns. We’ll see if our friends follow us.”
The Expedition made the left turn also, continuing to follow, but making no move to overtake the Tundra. Less than a mile down on Highway 178 they passed through the small community of Shady Grove. The Red SUV stayed behind them, continuing to keep plenty of room between the two vehicles.
“What do you think they’re doing?�
� Beth asked over her shoulder.
“They might be doing the same thing we are, trying to get some place safe. As long as they keep their distance, everything’s fine.”
In his heart, though, Chuck didn’t believe that. He had seen the armed males in the Ford the previous day as they had driven by the church and it had looked to him like they were out hunting. The only question was, what kind of prey were they going after?
Shady Grove appeared to have had an encounter with the zombie virus. The telltale signs of smashed out windows, abandoned vehicles, and the remains of partially consumed bodies were scattered around a grocery store parking lot and a convenience store. In three minutes, however, Elizabeth had driven through the small town without seeing any Zs. The big SUV was still behind them, but now appeared to be slowly inching up and getting closer.
“Is everything alright, Miss Beth?” Diya asked, seeing the anxious look on Elizabeth’s face as she kept glancing at the rear view mirror. “Is someone following us?”
Meena had her seat back, resting as they drove. Elizabeth glanced over and forced a smile.
“We’re fine, Diya, Mr. Chuck will take care of us. How are you feeling? You’re looking a lot better this morning.”
“I’m feeling much better, but I’m so hungry! I’m ready to eat again.”
Beth watched Chuck in the mirror watching the Expedition behind them. He definitely looks concerned, she thought. She had supreme confidence, however, that her husband would do whatever needed to be done to keep them safe.
The two-lane blacktop in front of them was now straight and empty. Suddenly, the Ford SUV accelerated, rapidly closing the distance between the two vehicles. McCain flipped the selector on the side of his M4 to “Auto” and braced it on the open rear window. The occupants of the Expedition were all white males in their twenties. With his right hand he waved the big vehicle off through the open window, hoping that they would take the hint.
Chuck had learned this tactic from the American Green Berets in Afghanistan. No soldier wanted to shoot an innocent civilian whose only crime was being too stupid to know that you shouldn’t approach a military convoy. In most cases, the civilian quickly realized that having a rifle, machine gun, or grenade launcher pointed at you wasn’t a good thing and would back off.
Here, though, the response of the front passenger was to lean out his window, pointing an AK-47 towards the Toyota pickup. McCain was already aiming and fired a short burst, one 5.56mm bullet catching the gunman in the side, a second slamming into the side of his head. The rifle clattered to the roadway at seventy miles an hour, the shooter collapsing, hanging halfway out of the vehicle. Blood and gore from the gunman’s skull splattered the side of the Ford and into the open rear window, coating the two backseat passengers.
Chuck saw the bloody men trying to raise rifles of their own as he swung the muzzle of his Colt towards the driver. He fired two bursts into the windshield at the driver’s head. Through his EOTech optics, McCain saw the man’s head snap back as a hole appeared in his forehead. Another bullet caught the driver in the throat, sending a red spray into the air.
The SUV swerved violently to the left, now driverless. Chuck fired the remaining eighteen rounds of his thirty round magazine into the passenger compartment as the big vehicle careened across the center line into the oncoming lane. It continued onto the opposite shoulder, slamming into a utility pole in a cloud of smoke and dust.
“Problem solved,” McCain said, inserting a fresh magazine into his rifle.
He glanced up front and saw Beth reach over, placing a comforting arm on Diya. The young girl was curled up in a ball, her hands over her ears. The suppressed rifle was still loud, especially in an enclosed environment, but Chuck had long since gotten used to it.
“How’s it going, Diya?” he asked.
“Oh, Mr. Chuck, that was so loud and I was so scared,” she answered, her voice trembling. “Are we OK?”
“We are now. There were some bad men in a truck that wanted to rob us. One of them was about to shoot at us but I got him first.”
“But why would they want to hurt us?”
“I don’t know,” McCain answered, now wide-awake as he continued to scan the area, looking for additional threats. “There are some evil people in the world and they’re taking advantage of the breakdown in society to do bad things.”
Meena nodded. “My father said that people would use the zombie virus as an excuse to rob and steal.”
“Your father was a smart man.”
Travelers Rest, South Carolina, Thursday, 1025 hours
The Fosters lived on Callahan Mountain Road, near the North Saluda Reservoir. Karen had given Chuck a Google map showing her parent’s home, along with the address and directions. McCain had been impressed with what he saw from the aerial photos. There were no other homes within at least a one-mile radius and their house was almost six hundred feet off of the road, on a ridge surrounded by dense forest. The other attraction to the security-minded man was a reservoir only a few hundred yards away, providing them with a water source.
Chuck’s biggest concern was how to safely make contact with the couple. Karen had told him that her dad, Jack, had served in the Army in Vietnam and was a prepper. McCain didn’t care to think about coming this far out of his way to do a good deed just to get shot!
After dispatching the red Expedition, the three travelers had not seen any other living people. They did see zombies, including one large group congregating around the scene of a vehicle accident that appeared to have happened weeks earlier. Both of the northbound lanes of Highway 25 were completely blocked with multiple crashed cars, the area seething with hungry infected people. The grassy median looked passable and Chuck directed Beth to carefully cross it and then accelerate north in the southbound lanes.
A few miles later they turned off the highway onto another winding two-lane road. The houses were all situated hundreds of feet off the roadway, with plenty of land between them. They were now in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the terrain rising all around. The temperatures had continued to drop and the dark gray clouds threatened rain, or worse.
As they turned onto the Foster’s street, Chuck noticed that they were in a small valley, hills rising on both sides of Callahan Mountain Road. After two miles, they found the address, the street numbers hanging from a metal gate that blocked the gravel driveway with a chain link fence surrounding the property. The Fosters really had picked a great spot, McCain thought, even more impressed now that they were here in person. He couldn’t see the house, the driveway climbing through the woods, disappearing around a curve. A small creek ran under the driveway providing another water source, while having the house hidden from view of the street was a brilliant tactical move.
“What do you think?” Beth wondered. “Honk the horn?”
“Let me check the gate,” he answered, exiting the pickup.
Heavy chains secured the entrance, locked with the biggest padlock that McCain had ever seen. He climbed back into the Tundra.
“Let’s pass on honking the horn. We don’t know who or what else might be lurking in the area. Why don’t you drive down the road a little further? Maybe we’ll be able to see the house. They might even have another entrance.”
Elizabeth drove slowly, all eyes peering up the wooded hill trying to catch a glimpse of the Foster’s home. After a mile, however, they hadn’t seen anything, the house concealed well behind the trees.
“Let’s go back to the gate. I’ll climb it and sneak in.”
“Do you think that’s safe?” his wife asked him.
“Not really, but I can’t think of anything else. I can be pretty sneaky when I need to be. I’ll slip in, make contact, and get Mr. Foster to come let us in.”
McCain checked all of his equipment and was about to start climbing the metal barrier.
“You can just stop right there, fella!” a voice rang out from nearby, followed by the unmistakable sound of a round being chambere
d in a weapon. “You get your ass off of my property right now or I’m gonna start shooting.”
“Mr. Foster?” Chuck asked, taking a step backwards and keeping his hands away from his rifle.
He still hadn’t seen the man behind the voice. There were a couple of big hardwoods on the other side of the gate, next to the driveway. That’s where it sounded like the voice was coming from.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a federal police officer. I’ve got my ID if you want to see it.”
“I don’t have much use for cops, especially federal ones.”
In spite of himself, Chuck laughed out loud. “I hear you. I don’t like most of ‘em either. We’re also friends of Karen’s. My wife, Elizabeth, is in the truck and she and your daughter are close friends. Karen asked us to stop by.”
There was a hesitation on the other side of the fence. After a moment, the voice spoke again, with much less hostility this time. “Karen sent you?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got a letter for you from her that she asked us to deliver. She told me to ask you if you’ve been taking care of Tommy’s grave.”
Before he and Beth had left the Northeast Georgia Technical College, McCain had asked the nurse for something that he could tell her parents that no one else but their family would know. Karen had explained to them that her first pet was a big tomcat named ‘Tommy.’ He’d been bitten by a rattlesnake and had died when Karen was just nine, breaking the little girl’s heart. Her father had no idea how to comfort the distraught child but he had created a beautiful grave marker and always kept the area around it clean. Mr. Foster had even organized a special memorial service for the kitty and had worn his Army dress uniform as he conducted the ceremony for Karen and a couple of her friends.
“I’m coming out,” the voice said, quietly.
Chuck observed a wiry, gray-haired man in his late sixties, clad in camouflage clothing, step out from behind a large oak tree, and walk slowly towards the entrance. He was carrying a full-size Springfield Armory M1A rifle, the muzzle pointing towards the ground. The older man cautiously regarded the big, heavily-armed figure, clad in tactical clothing, standing on the other side of his gate.
