Fire Birds (24 page)

“I hope you like Sun Drop,” she said as she pushed the button. She handed me the green and yellow can.

“It’s cold,” I said.

“Yep. I’ve been trying to convince the others to stock it with beer, but Andrew says we might enjoy drinking it too much if we did.” She rolled her eyes.

“Maybe you should advertise that you’re doing broadcasts,” I said. “Put some signs up around town and outside of town too. If there are people out there, they’ll have to go out sometimes for supplies. Right now, they don’t know to tune in.”

“I thought of that,” she said, “but I didn’t mention it to them. The thing is, I don’t think doing these radio shows is a very good idea. It could attract undesirables. Danny and I had a little trouble with some looters, and I don’t want a repeat of that. It might be different if we were on a ham radio, but this is a station. Any idiot can look up the address in the phone book. I think we’ve been fortunate that we haven’t been discovered.”

“How do you feel about walling off the town?”

“I don’t see the point,” she said. “I’m a sentimental gal, but I think it’s a waste of time. I think we should shut the radio station down, use the terminal as a base, and just wait the things out. They’re falling apart anyway. This will all be over by Christmas. Once they’ve all rotted away, we can go in and restart the town then.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Definitely,” she countered. “The undead are a nuisance, but they aren’t our real threat anymore. The real problem now is the looters and gangs. I know for a fact that at least three groups from out-of-town have blown through Clayfield. They take what they want, and they make a mess. Some of them are heavily armed with military weapons. Hell, for all I know they could be military. There are good people too, and good people need to band together, but it’s just too risky to advertise. I wish Danny and the others would see that.”

“Nicholas Somerville was trying to get people together in the beginning,” I said. “He had me believing we could retake the town. I know now it wasn’t really possible. There weren’t enough of us…and there are less of us now...”

“We can do it,” she said. “We might not be able to keep up with it all, but we can start again. I think what Andrew has planned is a good idea, but I think we should make it smaller and wait a few months. We need to be smart about it.”

“Tell me about north of the river,” I said. “Andrew said you and Dan flew over.”

“It looks bad,” she said. “I don’t know what happened there, but it looks bad.”

“Mr. Somerville went west,” I said. “He went to Missouri by boat. He never came back. I’ve heard that different cities were nuked–Nashville and Jackson, Mississippi.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t fly south because we knew it had all gone to shit down there. I don’t know what it looks like when a nuke goes off except what I’ve seen on TV, but there were places in Illinois that might have qualified. It could be they torched it to burn them up. Maybe it was napalm or something. Danny and I have talked about using the crop duster to spray gasoline on the big crowds, then dropping a flare on them, but we knew the fire could get out-of-hand.”

The door opened and Dan came in the building. He was carrying a shotgun and a toolbox.

“We might wanna find another power source for the station,” he said. “That generator is actin’ up.”

“Everything is still working,” Cheryl said. “We just bought a cold pop.”

“It’s makin’ noises, Cheryl. It don’t sound right, so I figure it’s about to go out, and fixin’ it is above my pay grade. It’s been runnin’ solid for two weeks straight.”

“We don’t need it anyway,” she said. “Nobody’s listening out there.”

I sat, and then, through the speakers and interfering with Andrew’s broadcast, there was an irregular beeping noise. Before Canton B, I’d heard the noise many times through my home computer and stereo speakers. It was the sound of a cellphone signal cutting in. Dan, Cheryl, and I looked at each other in surprise. Then I pulled the little device Bruce had given me from my pant pocket. A tiny green LED was lit on the top.

“Are you getting a call?” Cheryl asked. “Or did you butt dial somebody?”

“It didn’t ring or vibrate,” I said. I tapped it and held it up to my ear. “Hello?”

I waited and listened, but there was nothing. Then the chirping in the station’s speakers stopped, and we could hear Andrew speaking again.

“Weird,” Dan said. “Let me have that. I’ll leave it here for Gail so she can take a look. She knows about gadgets. She’ll probably stop by and look over the equipment when she gets back from town. Maybe she can figure out how to answer it or use it to call out.”

“Don’t matter,” Cheryl said. “There ain’t nobody left to call.”

By dinnertime, the rest of the group had returned. We all sat at a long table in a boardroom at the airport and ate green bean casserole. Tim was in his early 20s, thin and tan with a patchy beard. Other than introductions he didn’t speak at all during the meal. Laney did enough talking for both of them. She was at least ten years older than Tim and the dominant personality in the relationship. She was tall, big-boned but not fat, and loud. Her breasts were so large she might have tipped over had it not been for her generous backside to keep her balanced. Gail was younger than the other two and just a wisp.

“Gail knows her stuff,” Andrew said. “She’s overseein’ the solar panel installation. She’s a real crackerjack.”

Gail blushed, “It’s just things I learned from my dad and–”

“Tim knows electrical,” Laney said. “He’s doing a lot of it. He was thinking about being a journeyman once.”

Tim cleared his throat, but didn’t look up from his plate.

“How’d it go today, Gail?” Andrew asked.

“We got one section of lights to work on the top floor, but all the–”

“She hooked them up wrong,” Laney interrupted. “It took Tim an hour to trace the problem.”

“I don’t think we can power the whole building with the panels we have right now,” Gail said, ignoring Laney’s interruption. “I think we should focus on setting up a living area in one section then add more as we really need it.”

“It might be a good idea,” Dan said. “We should go ahead and insulate the space too.”

“Tim says there is plenty of power,” Laney said. “Gail just had it hooked up wrong.”

“Dan, do you think you could go out there with me tomorrow and look it over?” Gail asked. When she said it, she blushed. I knew it was more than just an invitation to check her work.

“What’s he going to do?” Laney said. “He never thought about being a journeyman. He was just a grease monkey that dusted crops.”

“All she wants is another pair of eyes,” Dan said. “Ain’t that right, Gail?”

“Another pair would be nice,” Gail said.

“Do you know what it takes to be a journeyman?” Laney said. “A whole lot more than a pair of eyes.”

“I’d love to hear the qualifications of a journeyman, Laney,” Cheryl said. “In fact, I’d love to hear what one is.”

“Don’t sweat it, Cheryl,” Dan said. “It’s just Laney being Laney.”

“She doesn’t even know what it is,” Cheryl said, “but she keeps saying that word like it’s the damn end-all be-all.”

Laney looked at Tim, “Are you going to let them get away with this?”

“No need to bicker,” Pastor Andrew said and took a sip of wine. “We’re all disciples of Christ.”

The room got quiet, and everyone ate for a while.

“Tell us about Sara,” Laney said to me. “Do you love her?”

I stopped mid-chew and looked around. Everyone was looking at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, yeah…you know, there have been some complications…stuff happening…yeah…”

“You sound like you don’t know,” Laney said. “Tim knew the moment he saw me.”

Tim cleared his throat again.

“I’m…I’m happy for you,” I said.

“What did you do before all this?” Laney asked.

“I was a museum director,” I said.

Laney laughed, “Well, like they say: those that can, do, and those that can’t…” she ended the sentence with a shrug and eye roll.

“How about you?” I asked. “What did you do?”

“My late husband’s father owned the biggest car dealership in western Kentucky,” Laney replied.

“Oh,” I said.

“One of us will go out with you to your farm tomorrow,” Andrew said to me.

“No,” I said. “It won’t be necessary.”

“I think it would be safer,” Andrew said. “I insist. I can go with you or maybe Tim.”

“I am grateful,” I said, feeling annoyed, “but I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing fine this whole time.”

“I would feel better if–”

“It’s okay, Andrew,” Cheryl said. “I’ll drive out there with him. Why don’t you go with the others and see how the solar panels are coming along.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” I said.

“I’m going anyway,” she said. “I’m curious about your cistern setup. We’ll have to set something up like that in town if we can’t get city water working again.”

I sighed and went back to my meal, “Sure…I don’t care.”

“Do you think your farm is a total loss?” Cheryl said as we drove out to the Lassiter place early the next morning.

“No,” I said. “It could be cleaned and repaired, but why would I want to? I could just move in some other place. I’ll wait and see what Sara wants to do.”

“Do you have a lot of supplies? You’d have to move all that, build a new fence…you’d have to start completely over somewhere else.”

“The house is nasty now,” I said. “They got in. They’ve bled all over the furniture and the floor. There’s splatter on the walls. It’s going to stink in there today. Plus, Grant and Christine shot a lot of them around the sides of the property. I was counting on Grant to clean it up. It’s going to stink like rot.”

“It stinks everywhere,” she said.

“But it’ll stink there worse,” I said.

“The furniture can be burned. I’m sure we could take care of the floors and walls with some bleach.”

“Why are you so interested?” I said. “When Sara and Grant come back, we’ll be helping you and your group. I probably won’t have time to do much of anything at the farm.”

“Are you going to live in town with Andrew?”

“No,” I said. “I like the company, but I don’t like to be told what to do anymore. I don’t think I could stand to be around Laney very long either.”

“Then all the more reason not to start completely over,” she said. “Even if we set up a community in town, we’re going to have to plant crops, keep livestock, and hunt for our food somewhere. You might just have the only farm in all of Grace County that’s been kept up.”

“It wasn’t a real farm,” I said, “not in the sense that it produced a lot of food. It had horses on it when I moved in. Besides, it’s getting a little late to be planting crops now. I don’t have a lot of seed left. There’s another place not far from there where I can move. Sara’s teacher was holed up there a few weeks back. It’s fenced and secure. It’ll do…or I could just take over the airport.”

“We’ve collected some seeds. I just think it would be foolish to let the farm go.”

I chuckled, “Why don’t you hold your opinions until we get out there. You might change your mind then. Hell, I might change my mind after seeing it with a clear head.”

There were still five creatures walking around on the property. Cheryl and I killed them and left them where they fell. Once that work was finished, we inspected the house, barns, garden, and cistern.

“You’ve kept most of the property clean considering you didn’t have a mower,” she said as we both leaned against the fence by the front pasture.

“Sling blade,” I said. “I whacked on it some every day.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “This place is cleaner than any other. It’ll be easier to get it into shape than somewhere else.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve collected a lot of stuff here. You’ve got more guns and food here than Danny had back when he was prepping.”

“So what happened there?” I said. “How did looters manage to take your stuff? You said he was so ready.”

“Danny’s my brother, and I love him, but he’s a blabbermouth. He was always bragging to everybody about what he had. He had a website, and he’d post videos of his stuff. He got too cocky about it. One of the big prepper rules is you don’t talk about it.”

“We made the mistake of helping the wrong person,” I said.

“That’s one thing you can’t control,” she said, “unless you just refuse to help everybody.”

She looked around, then wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

“This is no big deal,” she said. “I’ll talk to Andrew. With all of us working on it, we could knock it out in about a week. If we could get some power equipment out here, we could do it in less time…maybe even slap some paint over the splatter on the walls. We have more solar panels, too. Maybe we could get that water well working again.”

“Do you think he would go for that?”