Fire Birds (23 page)

“Huh?”

“You don’t recognize me.”

I looked at her more closely, but I couldn’t place her.

“You worked in the museum, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I was there when it all went down. I took those awful shoes from that Red Cross display. They hurt my feet like hell.”

“You’re the woman in the mask,” I said almost in a whisper.

“Woman in the mask?”

“I never knew your name, so that’s what I always called you.”

She grinned again, “That sounds so mysterious. I could be a Bond girl or something.”

I never saw her face that day, and even if I had, I don’t know if I would have remembered what she looked like. I had a lot to process that day.

“I wondered what happened to you,” she said.

“You stole my phone.”

“It got shitty reception anyway. I did you a favor.” She reached over and patted my hand.

The car slowed. I looked out the window. We were headed north on the bypass and about to connect with East Broadway.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Back to our place,” Pastor Andrew said. “Cheryl, can he be trusted?”

“Yeah, he’s a good guy, I guess. He’s dressed like Batman, ain’t he?”

“You okay with that?” Andrew said to me.

“Well, I don’t want you to drop me here,” I said. “But I would like to find Sara.”

“I’ll let you talk to her on the radio broadcast if you want to,” he said. “Maybe you could tell her to stop shootin’.”

They lived in the airport. It was equipped with solar power and a backup diesel generator. The terminal was small when compared to other airports, but there was only one runway and the traffic before Canton B consisted of day-trippers in single engine craft, small courier flights, and crop dusters. Short-range commuter and cargo flights took off from Riverton.

The group had installed a chest freezer, clothes washer and dryer, and a full-sized refrigerator freezer. There was also air conditioning, a microwave, hot water, and a huge TV with a stack of movies and television program season box sets.

“The living quarters ain’t ideal, but there ain’t many of us, and we’re outside as much as we can be,” Cheryl said as she gave me a tour. “After the ice storm, the airport got an overhaul so to be better prepared for emergencies and power outages. It was government funds, but don’t mention that to Danny, because he’ll give you an earful about FEMA and liberals in the government and handouts. He still does it, even though they’ve all been gone for months. Anyway, they installed the solar and diesel. There were some cots and emergency rations. There is a locker room and a shower. It worked out well for us. There was another generator on a truck, and we use that to power the equipment at the radio station.”

We walked past a couple of closed doors, and she stopped by an open door.

“The bathroom is right in there. You can take a shower if you want. I’ll go find you some new clothes, and an ice pack for your face.”

“Thanks,” I said.

She lingered there then said, “You saved my ass that morning. I appreciate that.”

“No,” I replied. “You saved mine. If you hadn’t been there to fill me in on everything and tell me what to do, I would have never made it.”

“You can thank Danny for that,” she nodded. “I just told you to do what he did. He’s going to outlive all of us.”

I looked past her into the main lounge/reception area to make sure no one was around.

“You seem like an honest person,” I said. “Is everything good here? We’ve had problems with other groups.”

“We want to start over,” she said. “You won’t have problems with us. But it looks like we might have problems if we get involved with you. It looks like you come with problems.”

“What happened today...” I was going to explain, but I found that I couldn’t.

“Talk to Andrew about it,” she said.

“You don’t call him Pastor Andrew?”

“I don’t go to church,” she said. “I answer to me, and I answer to God. I don’t need a middleman.”

“So is Andrew in charge here?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t do that. He talks on the radio, and he reads the Bible. Danny and the others like the devotionals.”

“Then what about–”

“Get a shower,” she interrupted. “You can talk to Andrew when you’re done. I have some chores to do.”

After a hot shower, I sat on a couch in the lounge area enjoying the air conditioning. I was in a new pair of Levis, a new t-shirt, and a slightly used pair of Nikes. They assured me they had found the shoes in a house and had not taken them off the feet of a zombie. The shoes smelled fine, so I believed them. Cheryl provided me with an icepack for my face and an additional special treat. It was a green Pop-ice, one of those popsicles in the long tubes. I hadn’t had one of those since I was a kid.

All three sat in the room with me. I had not met the others in the group, and I didn’t see them around. Pastor Andrew was thin and in his 60s with white, thinning hair. He kind of reminded me of Fred Rogers from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Danny was broad with a thick neck. He had a crew cut and rosy cheeks. He looked like he could have been a football player in a Norman Rockwell painting. I had an urge to call him Bubba. Cheryl was quiet, but I could tell she was a firecracker. She had a confidence about her that made me think that she knew she was the smartest person in the room, and I suspected she probably was.

“When you didn’t talk with us on the two-way, we were concerned that you hadn’t found the package we dropped,” Pastor Andrew said.

“We found it,” I said, “but we had problems.”

I tried to explain everything that had happened over the past few days and fill in enough back story that they could understand. I don’t know if I was successful or if they just didn’t care to understand.

“So we need to be worried over Bruce Lee,” Andrew said flatly.

“Maybe,” I said. “He seems to be fixated on Sara, and he showed me some military stuff he’d found, like a powerful gun and some cellphones.” I took the cellphone out of my pocket and held it up so they could see. “He told me he had access to more military weapons.”

“He sounds dangerous.”

“He’s unpredictable,” I said. “But look, he’s not a zombie so–”

“So what?” Andrew said. “You said he was forcin’ himself on ’em.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t want to kill healthy men.” I didn’t mention the healthy men I’d killed before.

“He ain’t healthy, son,” Andrew said. “He’s sick. He has a mental sickness. It ain’t no different than if he was rapin’ animals. We wouldn’t let that stand neither, would we?”

“No.”

“Does that phone work?” Cheryl asked.

I handed it over to her. “You can turn it on, but that’s about it.”

She looked it over and passed it to Dan.

“Well, let’s just pray that I can reason with the young man,” Andrew said. “Maybe I can lead him to the Lord.”

I shrugged and mumbled, “Lord Vader, maybe.”

“That’s disrespectful,” Dan said.

“Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Andrew said. “I think what Dan is tryin’ to say is that now more than ever we should turn our focus and affection toward the Lord. He’s the only one that can pull us out of this, and it can’t do nothin’ but hurt to be sacrilegious. Jokin’ is fine, but like The Word says, ‘There is a time to laugh, and a time to mourn.’ Right now, it is important that we humble ourselves and mourn the sins that brought this calamity on us.”

I looked over at Cheryl, and she gave me an almost imperceptible shake of her head to let me know not to continue the conversation.

“Okay,” I said. “In your broadcast you said you wanted help here. What is your plan?”

“Clayfield is a lovely town,” Andrew said. “I grew up here. It’s a lovely little town. We’d all love to preserve it if we could. What we’d like to do is clear the downtown area. Right now, it is more comfortable for us to live here at the airport, but we can make one of the buildings on the court square suit us with some work. We’ll still use the airport as long as we need to.”

“Yeah, but how do you plan to clear the town?”

“Kind of what we did at the cinema when we circled the wagons but on a larger scale. We’ll block the streets with cars. That will serve as our temporary wall. There was a group in Riverton that was tryin’ somethin’ similar, but they didn’t make it. God help them.” He sighed, then continued, “We’ll clear an area and expand. I would think in a few weeks we could close off several blocks in downtown. Then we’ll work on doing something more permanent with a wall or fence. There are many places where the buildings themselves will serve as sections of the wall, so it won’t be as difficult as it might sound.”

“We’ll need to get started soon,” Dan said to me. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but some of the fuel is goin’ bad. I have some stabilizer that will extend the life, but eventually, in a few months, it’s gonna be bicycles and horses around here. We might find fuel that will still work, but it’ll be chancy.”

“Why haven’t you already started?” I said. “You’ve all been together here for a while, right?”

“No.” Andrew said. “Gail, Laney, and I have been together almost since the beginnin’. We had some others with us too. We met Tim back in April. We were livin’ out near Belfast for a while. Things got bad for us, and we lost the others. Dan and Cheryl found us about two weeks ago and were kind enough to invite us to live with them here and share their electricity and runnin’ water. As far as gettin’ started…we have started. A few days ago, we secured a buildin’ on the west side of the court square. Tim, Laney, and Gail are there right now tryin’ to install solar panels on the roof. Really, we feel like it was a sign from the Lord that we heard your gunfire. We knew it was the Lord bringin’ us help the way he brought the animals to Noah.”

“I’m happy to help,” I said. “I want to preserve Clayfield too. I don’t want to be negative, but it sounds like we’re building a prison for ourselves.”

“No,” he replied. “Think of it as a haven. It will be like one of the walled cities of old or maybe a fort. First Baptist will be a beacon of hope and safety. Dan told us your farm had a fence around it. It’s the same thing. It will be a place of safety away from the dead where we can move around unharmed.”

“I know the dead have been hanging on, but I can’t see that continuing much longer.”

Pastor Andrew smiled. It seemed forced and fake. “Then it will protect us from the gangs. We’ve had the misfortune of seeing what they do.”

“Well, I’m not sure any of this will do any good, but I’ll help you.”

“Wonderful news. Do you think we can count on your friends?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll need to talk to them first. Sara was upset the last time I saw her.”

“Losin’ a friend can do that,” Andrew said. “We’ve all been through that too much.”

At five o’clock, Pastor Andrew pointed at me. That was my signal to talk. I cleared my throat and leaned in close to the big, foam-covered microphone.

“Sara and Grant,” I said, feeling self-conscious. I thought my voice sounded different, sort of like Bruce Lee’s tough guy voice. “I hope you’re listening.”

I looked up at Andrew. He gave me an encouraging nod.

“I…well, that was me in the Batman costume. I hope you thought I was someone else and that you weren’t trying to shoot me.”

I looked at Andrew again. He motioned for me to keep talking.

“Even if you did think I was someone else, don’t do that again. Your…um…intended target was probably watching and knows what you have planned. I have to go back out to the house tomorrow morning. You meet me there. That is all. I’m going to turn it back over to Andrew now.”

Andrew smiled at me and pushed a button on the console in front of him.

“Good afternoon, everyone. Pastor Andrew here. That was a good friend gettin’ a message out to some more friends. I thought we could return to our usual broadcasts today. I’ll give you a word from the Lord, then I’ll play a couple of songs. As always, if you want to meet with us, you can do so on Tuesdays and Fridays at ten in the a.m. out at the old shopping center on Burger Road.”

He opened his Bible and leafed through the pages.

“We’ll pick up where we left off in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, chapter one.”

There was a knock on the studio window. I looked up and Cheryl was motioning me out. I gave Andrew a little wave and left the room. When I went out into the lobby, I could still hear Andrew talking through speakers mounted on the outside of the sound studio, but the volume was low and easily ignored.

“You don’t want to sit in there,” she said. “It’s kind of dull.”

“Is anyone out there listening?” I said.

“Probably not,” she said. “Here, I’ll buy you a drink.”

She walked over to an RC Cola machine near the front door. There was a bucket of quarters in the floor. She got some out of the bucket and fed them in.