Badlands Trilogy (Book 2): Beyond the Badlands (22 page)

Ed’s eyes widened. “Feeding on them like livestock?”

Dan finished his whiskey, smacking the cup on the table top. “Exactly.”

Jasper drained his cup, wincing as the liquid hit his stomach. “If they’re thinking now-”

“Not really thinking, per se,” Dan interrupted, “not like you and I do, but they’re definitely not as random and directionless as they were before.”

Ed sat forward in his chair. “If this is all true and those things out there are getting smart enough to hunt us...”

“We’ll be like gazelle to a pride of lions,” Dan said.

He poured another round and they drank it in silence.

“So what in the world would bring you two into my neck of the woods?” Dan said, changing the subject.

Ed conveyed the story of the bombing of St. Louis, hopping the train and the subsequent crash that separated him from the rest of his family. Jasper told of how he’d found Ed on the train, injured, and how they now were on their way to Kansas City in search of Ed’s family.

“Sounds like you two’ve been through a lot already. How far of a head start do Trish and the boys have on you?”

“Maybe a couple weeks or so. Hard to say for sure,” Ed replied.

“But your family knows you’re alive.”

Ed shrugged. “They left a message behind, but I suspect they think I’m dead.”

“Nah, they know. In their heart. Otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered with it at all.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Dan leaned back in his chair. “I go back and forth on this whole predestination thing, but I gotta think you’re still alive for a reason, my friend.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Ed said.

“And you too,” Dan said to Jasper. “Must be something special about you two to have kept going as long as you have.”

“I don’t know about everything happening for a reason,” Jasper replied, “but I do know you can’t be afraid to die. Once you figure out it’s when, not if, it’s easier to accept it. Knowing it’s coming sure lights a fire under your ass.”

Dan smiled. “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

“I suppose.”

“You sound like you do a lot of thinking.”

“When you’ve been alone as long as I have there’s plenty of time to think.”

Silence passed as the men sat.

Ed changed the subject this time. “That bike we left behind there, that’s our ticket to finding my family. We have to get back to it.”

Dan glanced at a watch wrapped around his wrist. “If the battery on this old thing isn’t dead then it looks to be near nightfall. Now, I’m perfectly willing and able to get you to back to that bike, but I’d advise against it after dark. Likely more than a few of the infected still stumbling around, looking for that venison I promised them.”

“Would you take us back to Jasper’s bike tomorrow then?”

“Absolutely,” Dan replied. “I can also send some more supplies with you, if you need them.”

“That’d be much appreciated.”

Dan grinned. “And I’d be happy to help.” He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured more into the plastic cups sitting on the table. “But tonight, my friends, we drink.”

* * *

They finished the bottle of whiskey between them, sharing stories of the road and of their lost loved ones. Stories of determination and survival, all told with slurred words prompted by liquid honestly.

Ed often wondered if alcohol was nothing more than a kind of truth serum, exposing and enhancing a person’s true nature.

Any initial wariness he’d had of Pastor Dan melted away during their conversation. The man’s kind soul bled through with no hint of insincerity.

Not as strong a proponent of moderation as his companions, Jasper put the whiskey down fast. The two older men sipped more slowly, but they caught up to him eventually. By the end of the evening the bottle sat empty and their tongues tired from talking.

As Ed lay on a fold out couch, straddling the line between consciousness and sleep, he considered that maybe he shouldn’t have drank so much. He knew he should probably ask Jasper to stay up for guard duty; that would be the safest thing to do.

Instead, he simply drifted off. As sleep took him, he dreamed of Zach and Jeremy, running and playing in the rain outside the RV they’d found along the way to St. Louis. Trish stood beside him, watching the boys play with a smile on her face.

And in the dream he thought to himself,
maybe all is not wrong with the world after all.

The following morning Ed awoke to a solid headache. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much to drink. He sat up and looked around the room, struck by how odd it looked devoid of teachers. A decrepit relic of a society that no longer existed.

“How’d you sleep?” Dan asked from an armchair across the room.

Ed sat up, placing his hand on his forehead. “Great.”

“Right. Bouncing back ain’t what it used to be, eh?”

“You could say that.”
 

“Your buddy’s still out.”

Ed glanced at Jasper. “So it appears.”

“He seems like a good guy.”

Ed nodded. “Yeah. He is.”

“They’re still out there, you know? The good ones. I know how easy it is to get jaded.”

“There are bad people out there too, though. Lots of them.”

“True. But you gotta know when to trust.”

“Sometimes that’s easier said than done.”

“I trusted you two. One might even say I saved your lives.”

Ed nodded. “You did, on both accounts. And we’re grateful. But how did you know you could trust us? How did you know we wouldn’t just kill you in your sleep?”

“How did you know I wouldn’t do the same to you?”

“Good question.”

“Well, Ed, once you figure that out, you’ll understand how I knew I could trust you.”

Ed smiled. “Jasper’s right. You’re an unusual preacher.”

“These are unusual times.”

Jasper stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Holy shit, my head...”

Dan chuckled. “A word from the wise, my young friend: slow and steady wins the race.”

“Now you tell me.”

“I’ll get you two some aspirin. How’s breakfast sound?”

“Like the best idea you’ve had all day,” Jasper replied, grinning.

* * *

Breakfast consisted of canned fruits and vegetables, accentuated by Spam and some reconstituted powdered eggs. Ed found the eggs to be surprisingly delicious. Upon Dan’s insistence Ed and Jasper both had seconds, keenly aware that once they took to the road again they’d be rationing like usual.

By the time breakfast ended the aspirin had done its work, knocking out the worst of their headaches. After tossing the dirty paper plates, the three men sat around the table puffing on cigars made by people long since infected and dead.

As promised, Dan filled a pillowcase half-full of Vienna sausages, Spam and dried banana chips. “It’s not much, but it should keep you going for a while.”

“It’s plenty,” Ed said. “We appreciate it.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jasper added. “We owe you one.”

“Nah, you don’t owe me. We’re all in this together.”

“I wish more people thought like you,” Ed said.

Dan smiled. “Me too.”

The men exited the building. Moaning and shrieking drifted through the air, punctuated by the odor of rot and death.

“How do you stand this smell?” Jasper asked.

“You’d be surprised what you can get used to.”

They hopped inside the truck. Dan shoved the key in the ignition. “Ready to go?”

“Let’s do this thing,” Jasper said.

Dan closed his eyes, pausing for a moment before turning the key. The engine shuddered to life. “I always say a little prayer before I turn the key. So far it’s always worked.”

“The engine or the prayer?” Jasper asked.

Dan smiled. “I suppose I’ll never really know.” He slammed the truck into gear and headed off.

* * *

Dan maneuvered the truck down decrepit streets, dodging stalled cars and other trash blown into the street by four years of no one cleaning it up. They passed gutted, small town store fronts, brick charred and blackened.

“The world went to hell after the virus took hold,” Dan said, looking around. “People really went bonkers. I suppose it’s hard to blame them, but they turned bad quick. My old man taught that morality came from the Bible, but I had a hard time seeing it. Lot offering up his daughters for gang rape to protect a couple of strangers, killing folks who worked on Sunday…didn’t seem like good lessons to me.

“You know, I don’t think we get our morality from a book. I think it’s in us when we’re born. But I also think we’re conditionally moral. Only when our needs are met are we then really able to love thy neighbor.

“But you take that security away and we revert to animals, stealing and killing and all sorts of terrible things. That’s when I think we need the book, or sections of it, to remind us of our God-given morality.”

Dark stains spotted the street, remnants of the millions of rotting bodies left after the virus. Warm wind whistled through the truck’s open windows. Dark stoplights swung from dead power lines.

“When the buildings filled up I watched folks, good people under normal circumstances, as they tossed their neighbors to the infected. They tossed them outside and locked the doors. I wonder sometimes, those folks on the inside, did they cover their ears so they couldn’t hear the screams? Or did they face up to what they did and listen until the sound just fell away?”

A pause. Dan pointed ahead. “There it is.”

Ed spied the bike ahead, lying where they left it. The backpacks had been kicked around, but remained closed, lying a few feet away from the bike.

Dan pulled up next to the motorcycle and killed the engine. “Keep your eyes peeled. I don’t have to tell you that just because the infected aren’t here it doesn’t mean nobody else is.”

The men exited the truck. Jasper picked up the gas can and swirled the fuel around. “We lost most of it.”

“Can we make it on what’s left?” Ed asked.

“Hell if I know. I guess we’ll see.”

Ed picked up the backpacks while Jasper lifted the bike and emptied the rest of the fuel into the tank.

“I’ll go siphon some gas from a couple of these cars,” Jasper said.

“You got a hose?” Dan asked.

Jasper held up a length thin hose and smiled.

“Where’d that come from?” Ed asked.

“I don’t leave home without it.”

Ed laughed as Jasper headed off with the gas can and the hose.

 
Dan packed all the supplies he’d given them into Ed’s backpack. A few minutes later Jasper returned. “Hope this shit’s still good,” he said, holding up a full gas can. “I managed to siphon out a full can.”

Jasper placed the gas can in the bike’s basket.

Ed slung the backpack on his shoulder. A sharp pain pinched. He ignored it. “So this is it. Time to part ways?”

“Looks to be,” Dan said.

Ed shook Dan’s hand. “Thanks again for everything.”

Dan waved a hand dismissively in the air. “No biggie. Doing my part, is all.”

“Good luck with your deadheads,” Jasper said. “I think you’re doing a good thing.”

“Thanks,” Dan said. “If I can lessen the suffering and protect the innocent then I’ve done my duty.”

Silence, awkward and strong, followed.

“You two better get moving,” Dan said. “It was a pleasure meeting you two.” He turned to Ed. “I hope you find your family soon.”

Ed nodded. Behind him, Jasper fired up the motorcycle. “Purrs like a kitten,” he yelled over the engine.

Dan smiled, giving them a wave that looked like a reverse salute before hopping back into the truck and starting the engine. He made a u-turn in the street and headed off, waving once out the window.

Ed climbed on the bike and grabbed Jasper around the waist.

“Hang on!” Jasper yelled as he cranked the throttle, spraying gravel behind them. Moments later they were back on track, headed toward Kansas City. As much as Ed longed to find his family, he wished he and Jasper had had just a little more time with Dan.

They could probably learn a lot from somebody like him.

Dave plunged a shovel into the ground, scooped and tossed the dirt into a pile.

Across from him, Johnny shoveled more dirt into a second, slightly larger pile. Despite the age his salt-and-pepper gray hair suggested, the muscles of his chest bulged beneath his leathery, brown skin.

Beside them, Gary plunged a shovel into the earth, his curly, black hair stringy with sweat. Despite the lack of food after the virus, he’d managed to retain much of his pre-virus chubbiness. He tossed a half-filled shovel of reddish-brown dirt into a third pile.

Two days had passed since Dave found himself locked in an old dorm room turned prison cell. After unloading several truckloads of wooden crates the prior day, on this day Whipple had them digging holes in the corner of the school’s courtyard. Whipple sat in an old wicker chair several dozen yards away from them, beneath a small tree and out of the worst of the sun.

Dave sunk the shovel into the ground again. “What’s up with the guard by the door over there?”

Johnny glanced across the courtyard. “Good question. That’s where they put those crates we unloaded yesterday.”

“Must be something important inside those things. Why else post a guard?”

“Could be alcohol, or maybe cigarettes,” Gary suggested as he tossed another shovelful of dirt onto the pile.

“Maybe,” Dave said.

“One thing I do know is that ain’t where they store the food and the other supplies. And it sure as hell ain’t where Glenn and his cronies bunk.” Johnny motioned with a nod. “Those assholes are on the opposite end of the building, over there.”