Barren Fields (5 page)

“I look forward to hearing my reprimand from the boss,” he says back and follows with a smile.

George walks in after everyone else is sitting around a table with their food.

“Looks like sleeping beauty finally joined us,” Maggie teases.

“Ha ha. I’ve been awake for a while. The wind has picked up, so I went up top to check that the boat is still moored to the buoy. We’ve been lucky that the water has been so flat.”

There are some plates on a second table with a bunch of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. The jovial mood shifts a bit for George when he sees there is also a bowl of broccoli and everyone is drinking red wine.

He makes himself a plate and sits down, exclaiming, “Red wine for breakfast. What a bunch of alcoholics we’re becoming.”

The group laughs.

The morning chatter goes on with ease. They even talk in a relaxed manner about their predicament and eventual escape. They speak about the property in Mexico and hope that there will be papayas and pineapples for breakfast while they are there. It is a morning that they all needed after the stress and turmoil of the last few days. After a few more laughs and a general relaxed sigh, the group falls silent and into their own thoughts.

“I love you,” Maggie says in a softer tone than she managed earlier while grasping Keith’s hand. “Thank you for always being there for me and trying to protect me.”

“I love you too,” he says in return.

“You don’t have to feel guilty when I’m gone, Keith, and not just because you feel you have done everything you can. It isn’t our choice when we die. It is the Lord’s choice when He wants to call us home.”

“Do you want me to take you back to your room?” Keith asks concerned as her grip on his hand is getting weaker.

“Now I know why I felt so good this morning, Keith. It’s time for us to say goodbye.”

The rapid change in Maggie’s condition is shocking to the other men. Keith has seen this several times before. The color drains from her face, and she starts to sink in her chair as she becomes too weak to hold herself up. Keith gently picks her up and begins to carry her out of the dining room.

“I’ll take her to bed.”

“Is she going to be all right?” George asks before he can stop the words.

“This happens from time to time,” Keith says back to him. “She just needs to rest again. She pushed herself too hard.”

He says the words but isn’t convinced she’ll come back this time.

The men sit back at the table and stare off in various directions. They don’t have jobs to do and each has a million things to consider about their pasts and possible futures. Jack breathes in and is about to say something when the lights start flashing and an alarm starts blaring. The three men look at each other with faces full of terror at getting caught in radioactive fallout, and then start to move.

“I’ll get the boat and get it ready,” George says and runs off.

“You get the crane started. I have to get Maggie and Keith,” Frank yells at Jack, and they each run in different directions.

Arriving at the medical room, Frank yells, “Keith, bring Maggie, we have to leave now. That’s the radiation alarm!”

“She’s too weak to move!” Keith yells back. “I know you set the alarm to ring. I heard her talking to you last night!”

“I set it for this afternoon like she asked. This alarm is real. We have to leave now.”

Keith looks hard at Frank and see’s the truth of what he is saying in the expression of fear in the return gaze. He looks at Maggie, and she says weakly,
“Let’s go.”

Keith scoops her back up in his arms and follows Frank. They weave their way to the crane amidst the blaring siren and blinking lights on the interior hallways. Stepping outside there is a slight smell of smoke in the wind that is blowing. Burning particles from all the fires in New Orleans have finally reach the oil rig with the increased wind.

When they arrive at the crane, George is still standing on the deck, and Jack is sitting at the controls and hitting them.

“It won’t start!” Jack yells and everyone looks at Frank for a solution.

“Let’s get in the emergency lifeboat.”

Lifeboats for oil rigs are large and orange. They are usually big enough to hold up to thirty people. This one has a capacity of twenty-eight. It looks like part boat and part submarine which it technically is in a way. It isn’t designed to operate underwater, but because of how lifeboats are launched from oil rigs, they need to be watertight.

The lifeboat is sitting on a ramp angled down to the water at forty-five degrees. There is a ninety foot drop for it once it is released, and it will become completely submerged before its buoyancy pops it back out of the water to float on the surface. It is quite like an amusement park ride designed to drop you and give you that instant stomach churning sensation of uncontrolled falling.

They climb aboard and all help to get Maggie secured before strapping into their own seats. Frank pulls the lever and the lifeboat begins its freefall into the water. Keith is across from Maggie and can see she is barely there. The feeling during the impact and the subsequent bouncing is as disturbing as the drop. Frank starts the engine and drives the lifeboat over to George’s moored fishing boat.

“George, get out and get your boat going. We have to head east and try to get ahead of this wind,” Frank calls out to him.

“Head south instead,” George says while climbing out of the lifeboat hatch to get onto his boat. We’ll leave the radioactive winds quicker and can turn east when we need to. As soon as we don’t smell smoke we should be out of it.”

Frank doesn’t wait for George to get his boat started. He guns the engine and heads south trying to get clear of the invisible death in the air. Keith has unstrapped Maggie from her seat and is sitting on the floor and cradling her in his arms.

Jack climbs out of the cabin and sits outside with a rag wrapped around his head, covering his mouth and nose. He is smelling the air to tell when they clear the smoke coming from the city. He also wants to stay out of the smoky air remaining in the cabin out of a justified fear that it is radioactive and he doesn’t want to filter it with his lungs.

The smell of smoke disappears ten minutes south of the rig, and Frank keeps going another ten minutes just to be sure. George’s boat is much faster. He caught up with the others before they cleared the affected area and bounced alongside them as they sped along the small waves.

Jack lashes the two boats together once the engines are cut, and George climbs back onto the bobbing orange escape craft.

“I don’t think she made it,” Frank says quietly to the others as he steps down to the bow.

“I’ll go check on Keith,” George says. “You two need to start cleaning up. Take off your clothes and dump them overboard. Grab a bucket and the deck scrubber, and scrub each other down with lots of water, keep dumping the water over yourselves and scrub hard. If it doesn’t hurt you are leaving something on you. Keith and I will do the same when I bring him out.”

“I need to get a drink first.”

“No! Don’t drink or eat anything until you get yourselves cleaned off. You don’t want to ingest any more particles than you already have. We have to scrub the boat as well, both of them if we’re taking this orange beast with us.”

Frank and Jack begin to strip down while George climbs back into the cabin with Keith and Maggie.

“She’s gone,” Keith says as George kneels next to him.

“Keith, we have to go outside and scrub the radioactive dust off of us.”

“Help me carry Maggie out of here. Before we went to breakfast, she asked me to bury her at sea if she didn’t make it to your house.”

George nods and lifts her body up to Keith, who raises her out of the hatch hole, and places her gently onto the deck.

“Keith, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but we need to hurry. We need to get out of these clothes and scrub each other down to remove any radioactive particles. There isn’t time for a long goodbye, and we shouldn’t handle her body after we have scrubbed down.”

Keith nods at George and kneels at Maggie’s side. “I love you, Maggie. You were my best friend, and I will miss you until the day we meet again.”

He kisses her forehead, and then he and George lower her into the water, where she sinks into its depths.

With every second counting, George climbs over to his boat and begins stripping out of his clothes to begin the decontamination process. Keith lingers for a second, staring blankly into the deep blue before he finally turns and joins the others.

Chapter 4

Finding Our Way

Grants Pass, Oregon.

Wal-Mart—Present Day.

“What do we do now?” one of Isaac’s men asks him.

I turn to Arthur, and say, “Tell everyone to stand down.”

My group had instructions to casually shadow the members of Isaac’s and Jeremiah’s group while our story was checked out. Isaac did his interviews, and my people followed him and his men or
hung out
with them. Our youngest members and women stayed closest to those who looked like the most competent and alert members of the opposing team, and were accepted as non-threats until Arthur’s stand down order rings out over the radios.

Surprised looks appear on the faces of Isaac and his men when my people, whom they were having casual conversations with of some sort or other, put their guns back on safety and holster or sling them in less accessible positions.

Jeremiah looks from my twelve-year-old daughter Hannah, who is standing next to him, back to me, after she re-holsters her handgun. She had been so relaxed in her behavior and handling of the weapon that he didn’t realize she wasn’t actually wiping it down for the last thirty minutes. She looked directly at him when she put it away to let him know she was ready to use it if she needed to.

Both Jeremiah and Isaac look at each other, and then at me and those of my group gathering near me. We have already lost three hours of the day to this encounter with them, and by the looks on all of their faces, I can see they want something more than explanations of what just happened.

“Can we join your group?” Isaac asks.

That question catches me by surprise and apparently his brother as well. Jeremiah walks over to Isaac and gives him a fierce look that has only one meaning.

Giving back a look just as intense as he received, Isaac says, “We need this!” appearing to settle the matter for now. At least this lets me know which one of them is really in charge. I’m glad it is the more
level headed
Isaac, but regardless of who is running their group, they have been holding us up, literally, for three hours.

“My first inclination is to say
no
,” I reply to him. “I’m not really in the mood to add even more people than the ones we saved to our ranch roster. There is only so much space, you understand. We’ve already been delayed by your showing up here, and now you say you want to join us after threatening us several times. I could go on about your brother’s attitude and what to me is your group’s excessive religious fervor, but right now all I want to do is get this group of survivors on their way.”

“Look, Eddie, I know we have been holding your group up and threatening you, but with everything that we’ve seen here, we had to know you weren’t really the bad guys. You’ve got to admit your group looked guilty. Imagine if you were the new arrivals to find us with a pile of recently killed people.”

“I would have trusted your word after a quick check with those people on who you were,” I say and point to the group of starved former captives off to the side. “Why should I take you in, and why do you want to join us? It looks like you already have a strong group to me.”

With what I consider an unnecessarily pleading look, Isaac asks, “Let me lay out our position so you can decide.”

I hesitate a second, nod to Isaac, and then turn to Arthur, “Get everyone on top of the trucks now.” Turning back to Isaac, I say, “Walk with us to the trucks, and we can discuss it while everyone else prepares to leave. We should have at least thirty minutes to speak while my people get everyone safely situated.”

A make-shift railing barrier of posts and chains was secured around the top of the truck trailers. With the trailers full of food and other supplies we had to figure out a way to get all of our people and the thirty people we rescued back to the ranch without finding other working vehicles. Most of the survivors are too ill or weak to make the journey on foot or bicycle. The railing allows the people to ride up top away from any infected and prevents us from having to leave any of them behind for a second trip.

Taking a few steps, I start the brief inquiry, “So why do you want to join us?”

“Our group isn’t doing that well,” Isaac replies. “We made it through the winter all right, but we aren’t set up for this situation. We were somewhat organized and had supplies, but lost a lot of our stuff in a fire after we were attacked by a large group of the infected people.”

Our own overwhelming attack jumps into my head at that comment, and my skin crawls uncomfortably. I get a small comfort from hearing him say
infected
and not
possessed people
.

“We had our own run in with a large group of the infected,” I reply “How many did your group get attacked by?”

Jeremiah, who is following, answers me, “We lost seventeen people during the attack and ended up killing two hundred and eighty-seven of the possessed.”

Ignoring his continued belief in possessions, Simone and I all look at each other when he says 297 infected people killed seventeen of his group.

“Did they overrun your fences all at the same spot?” Simone asks.

He shakes his head. “We don’t have our property fenced off. They came at us in the middle of the night on Christmas. Our place is out in the woods like yours, and we got lazy. We hadn’t seen any of the possessed come our way until that night. I think the singing brought them to us.”

“Singing? Did someone send the infected after you too?”

“Send them after us?” Isaac asks with a curious expression on his face. “No. We were singing Christmas carols throughout the day, and were just trying to celebrate, especially for the children. Off and on throughout the day someone would start a new carol, and it made us all feel...more than happy, we felt blessed to be alive. The infected showed up about an hour after dark. They just appeared there among us, all around us, they were everywhere.”

A sadness creeps across Jeremiah’s features as Isaac is telling us about their attack.

“We had seventeen souls taken that night,” Isaac continues. “Jeremiah lost his wife and daughter. We lost friends and family, both to these creatures and unfortunately to our own stray bullets in the darkness. We aren’t set up the way your people are on your ranch, Eddie. Like I said, we weren’t expecting the end of the world. Half of the food we had burnt with our house the night we were attacked after a fire started. We barely have anything left now and were hoping to gather the remaining supplies here at the store after we freed Darren’s mother.”

“Is Darren one of your men?” I ask.

“The wounded boy we found four days ago when we made our first trip from our property. That’s right. I didn’t get to finish telling you about him.”

I nod wanting him to get on with his story.

“We found Darren, and he had been shot. He told us that three men grabbed his mother and shot him when he tried to stop them. They laughed and said they were leaving him as a snack for the possess... for the infected, and he could visit his mom later at Wal-Mart.”

“So you decided to gather up twenty-five of your men and announce to the group of fifty armed criminals here that you are what,
the Army of God
, and they should lay down their arms?” I say with enough incredulous sarcasm that several of Isaac’s men hang their heads slightly with embarrassment.

“We didn’t know how many people were here,” Isaac replies in his defense. “We knew there were the three that grabbed Darren’s mother and expected maybe five to seven more people.”

“We didn’t think Satan would build his army so quickly,” Jeremiah adds trying to defend his brother.

“Look, Jeremiah, you’re really not winning me over with all of your religious crap. You need to tone it down a bit, okay?” I say trying to fathom how they could make such a stupid mistake by driving up to the doors and announcing themselves without scouting the place first.

“We don’t need them, Isaac,” Jeremiah says to his brother, clearly angry and not just at my rude remarks. Turning and pointing to me, he loudly says, “These men you killed were doing the work of Satan. And even if you don’t believe it, you were doing the work of God.”

Isaac turns to his brother, and forcefully says, “We will all die without help, Jeremiah. If they can take in all the people they saved from this torture pit after such a brutal winter, then they are the ones that can teach us how to survive!”

Jeremiah looks at me with angry and fearful eyes, shaking his head, and says, “We can’t trust him, Isaac. He has no morals without God!”

Angrily I get in his face, and say, “My supposed lack of morality brought me here to risk almost certain death to try and free these people, Jeremiah. Unlike you, we knew the numbers of people we would be facing and we still came. I didn’t do it to get my name in the paper or drum up customers for my business. I did it because it’s the right thing to do. I doubt you would have even bothered to show up if you knew how many men Stockton had, so who’s morally superior now?”

Turning back to Isaac, I say, “This isn’t going to work. There is no way he and I will get along at our ranch. And if more of your people are like him it will be even worse.”

“Eddie, I know Jeremiah can be abrasive at times,” he says while pushing his brother back and giving him another stern look, “but I don’t understand why talking about God bothers you.”

“It’s not just talking about
God
. It’s how he does it. Try to look at this conversation from my point of view. I’ve heard what Jeremiah is spouting my whole life from different religious people.
Atheists don’t believe in anything.
Morals only come from God.
Blah blah blah. I’ve heard it ad nauseam all while I lived a law-abiding life and been a decent person like any regular family man does. I know exactly what he thinks of me, but let me tell you what I think when I’m told I’m doing
God’s
work. To me anyone who preaches about God with every breath sounds like they are literally crazy. I know you believe you are honoring the higher power you believe in, but it makes you sound unstable to me, and I don’t want unstable people at the ranch.”

“So no one at your ranch believes in God?” Isaac asks with clear concern in his voice.

“Actually, me and my family are the only Atheists at the ranch—at least I think we are. The others at the ranch do some sort of church services on Sundays, but God and religion never really gets brought up to us or thrown in every sentence like it does with your brother.” Looking at Arthur, I say, “I don’t even know what sect of Christianity all of you are?” But not having my gaze linger for an answer, I turn back to Isaac. “I know I am a jerk about religion at times, but it usually comes out when it is being thrown around constantly the way Jeremiah is doing. No one at the ranch shouts out to the world about
the glories of God
with every breath like your brother does, and I like it that way. Even before the collapse he would seem extreme. You see that, don’t you?”

“I am just giving the Lord credit where He deserves it,” Jeremiah cuts in trying to defend himself.

“Fine, Jeremiah, but just so you know, when you say
God
, that’s not what I hear. I hear Santa Clause. When you say
Satan
, I hear
Tooth Fairy
. To me you are thanking one of the many make believe creatures that humans invented, and you sound like you’re fucking nuts spouting off like that. How would I sound if I told you,
you are doing Allah’s work
or
Zenu
, the Scientology God? You’d think I was crazy and rightfully so.”

“Eddie, please!” Isaac says. “My people aren’t set up to handle life without society. We were barely prepared for this situation before the winter came. And after the attack wiped out so much of what we had, we won’t make it long without some serious help and training.”

“We are a better group of people for you to take to your ranch than the scarecrows you rescued from this place,” one of Isaac’s men says from behind him.

I nod a bit while looking side to side to my wife and the other de facto leaders of our group. “You aren’t starving and are probably better trained than those people you’re calling scarecrows, but they are at least grateful to us for saving their lives. We saved your lives, and for gratitude, we’ve had to endure the threat of your gun barrels since you first arrived.”

“When did you save our lives?” Jeremiah demands.

“You came in here with a chip on your shoulders thinking you are doing
The Lord’s
work and He would protect you from all harm,” I say accusingly. “If Stockton was still in charge when you made your announcement about atoning for sins this morning, his men would have opened fire on your group and killed most of you before you could scratch your ass and wonder what went wrong. Then he would have had his people head out to gather up the women and children you left behind. Your arrogance nearly got you all killed and only the actions of my people saved your lives today.”

“That is one of the reasons why we need your help,” Isaac replies and turns to his brother. “You know we need help. Even if we had the supplies that were here, we don’t have the skills to make it.”