Fire Birds (25 page)

“He’d better,” she said. “If he wants to eat, then he’d sure as hell better. He knows as well as anyone that the Chef Boyardee and Rice-A-Roni ain’t going to last forever.”

“I’ve been saying the same thing all this time.”

“Glad we’re on the same page,” she said. “Of course, you should clear it all with your little girlfriend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean run it all by Sara, and if she doesn’t try to shoot you or if she’s not too busy with another dude…”

“Ah,” I said. “Yeah, you’re funny.”

She smiled and looked around, “Well, we might as well make ourselves useful until they show up. Do you have rubber gloves?”

We dragged all the dead zombies out of the house and piled them in the driveway. Then we moved the living room furniture out and piled it on top of them. I went to the barn and came back with a jug of kerosene. We soaked the pile then set it on fire. Once it was blazing, we went out to collect the rest of the dead. We fed the fire with bodies until noon, then we took a break and went inside to eat.

“They should have been here by now,” I said as I ate some peanut butter out of the jar.

“Maybe they didn’t hear the broadcast,” Cheryl said. “Pass me a beer.”

I handed her a bottle then went to the window and looked toward the road.

“Maybe something has happened,” I said. “Maybe they’re in trouble.”

“It could be they just didn’t want to come,” she said. “She did run off and leave you. She did try to shoot you.”

“I told you–”

“I know, I know, but at least consider that as a possibility.”

“I won’t believe that.”

“How long do you want to wait for them?” she asked. “We can keep working here for a while, but we told Andrew we’d be back before the broadcast.”

“We have plenty of time,” I said.

We dumped the last corpse into the fire after two o’clock. Sara and Grant had not arrived.

“You can try talking to them on the radio again,” Cheryl said. “They probably weren’t listening yesterday.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going to visit Bruce. I’ll bet he knows where they are.”

Cheryl looked at her watch, “Okay. We have time, but do you really think he’ll still be there at that house? I would think he’d move to another place.”

“No, he likes that house way too much.”

“No,” she said. “I’m going.”

“It might take a while,” I said. “Do me a favor. Go upstairs and get me a couple of changes of clothes from my closet and take it over to the airport while I’m at Bruce’s house. You can take a couple of guns and some food too.”

“Enough chatter,” she said. “Let’s get your things now and get on the road.”

“Shit. Fine. I’m going out to the barn to get some extra guns and ammo. You go up and grab me some clothes. I’m not particular; just get two of everything.”

When I came back from the barn with the guns, Cheryl was waiting for me on the front porch. She was holding a cardboard box and my clothes were piled in it.

“There should have been a duffle bag up there,” I said. “Didn’t you see it?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” she said, “but I put some canned goods in here…and a couple of these.” She reached in the box and fished out a Playboy magazine. “I wouldn’t want you to do without.”

“That’s none of your business,” I said.

“And have you been washing your underwear and socks in the pond? They look awful.”

“The wash water is a little muddy sometimes,” I said. “I should have gone up there myself.”

“Yep, but you didn’t. I noticed the Raquel Welch issue was especially worn…dog-eared pages…Oh, and you have quite the condom selection up there.”

“You realize I could shoot you right now, and no one would ever know what really happened.”

She gave me a grin, “You would know.” Then she pulled out the issue with Raquel in her red swimsuit on the cover. “Ms. Welch would know.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Bruce Lee wasn’t home, but neither was the missus, so I knew he had been back since I left. The Leia slave girl costume was soaking in the bathroom sink. The bedroom was clean and smelled strongly of bleach. The toys that had been set up on the dining table were gone as was the gray, plastic tote. However, two of the cellphones were on the floor. I grabbed them, and we went outside.

Behind the house, I found my truck had been vandalized. The tires had been slashed, and there were several zombie heads in the front seat including Leia’s. In the door, with a key, he had scratched the phrase, “I like to suck big dicks.” My guns, bug out supplies, and helmet were gone.

“What an asshole,” I said.

“Nothing to do here now,” Cheryl said. “Let’s go on home.”

“Not yet,” I said. I walked past the truck to the garage and went inside. I went straight to the Romulan Warbird and removed the plexiglass cube that was over it. I took the spaceship model from its display stand and went back outside.

“What’s that?” Cheryl said. “Some kind of toy?”

“It’s a piece of television history, and I’m taking it.”

“The damn thing probably won’t fit in the car,” she said. “That don’t matter no more anyway.”

“It matters to me,” I said. “It matters to Bruce too. This is going to annoy the hell out of him.”

We were running a little late, but we thought we could make it before Andrew finished his broadcast. I wanted to put out another message to Sara and Grant.

That would never happen. We saw the smoke long before we got there. The radio station and the grounds surrounding it were in flames. Two of the walls had collapsed outward. Pastor Andrew, Gail, Tim, and Laney were standing away from the remains of the building watching it burn.

“What happened?” Cheryl said when we got out.

“Don’t know,” Andrew said. “Dan thinks maybe the generator got too hot.”

“Where is he?” Cheryl said.

“He ran over to the airport to get the fire truck. I told him not to worry about it. The damage is already done. We won’t be making broadcasts from here anymore.”

“The fire could spread though,” I said. “I’ll go help him.”

Andrew nodded.

There was a field between the station and the airport. I ran down the path that had been made by the group’s daily treks back and forth. Then I passed through the opening in the chain link fence that surrounded the airport grounds–a space big enough to drive a golf cart through. After that, I crossed another field, then the airport’s taxiway, then a median, then the runway…

It seemed to take forever. I was impressed with what a strategic place it was. Anyone–zombie or human–attempting to sneak up on the terminal would be seen long before they got close. There was nowhere for them to take cover, especially if someone was on the roof or in the airport’s modest tower. A shooter with a rifle and scope in the terminal could take down any intruder before they were a real threat. Dan and Cheryl had been smart to choose this place. Whether they had been smart in choosing their living companions remained to be seen.

I had not been given a complete tour of the whole complex, only the terminal. I didn’t really know where I was going, but I presumed the airport’s emergency vehicles must have been parked in a garage or hangar. There were several large buildings away from the terminal so I made for them. I crossed a wide patch of tall grass then ran onto another paved area. The first large building was ahead to my left.

Before I could get there, I could see Dan on his way in a big, bright green tanker truck. He slowed enough for me to hop onto the running board on the passenger side. Once I was on, he sped up again. The access hole in the fence wasn’t large enough for the truck, so we had to take the road. Even though the radio station was only a couple hundred yards from the runway, we had to drive more than a mile around to get over to it.

Dan let down the window so he could talk to me.

“The place is liable to burn to the ground before we get there,” he yelled.

I nodded.

“It was probably that generator,” he continued. “I shoulda shut ’er down yesterday and tried to do the maintenance, but the pastor wanted the recordin’ to stay on.”

His assessment seemed about right. I answered him with another nod.

“Can you put it out?” I yelled back.

“Ain’t never used a fire truck,” he said, patting the dashboard. “We’ll see.”

“The building is a loss anyway,” I said. “Let’s just see if we can keep it from getting to the airport.”

“Ain’t no wind,” he replied. “At least there’s that.”

We pulled up close to the station, but not too close. I hopped down and ran around the truck to assist Dan. The heat from the fire was almost unbearable.

“There’s one of them water cannons on the top of the truck,” he yelled as we ran toward the rear. “I’m going to climb up there and see if I can get ‘er to work. Check and see if there’s a hose.” He stopped, turned, and grabbed my shoulder to make sure I was paying attention. “I gotta tell ya, though,” he said. “I got no idea what I’m doin’.”

“Are you sure there’s water in it?”

“The gauge says there is,” he said as he began to scale the side of the truck.

He did eventually get the water cannon to work, but not before the fire had caught in the field. Once it was evident the fire would spread toward the airport terminal, Dan made the decision to stop fighting the fire at the station and move the truck to protect the airport. Of course, the taxiway and runway formed an effective barrier for the fire and made our job a lot easier. We pulled directly onto the runway and soaked the brush on either end. The fire just burned itself out.

An hour and a half later, Dan and I sat on top of the now empty tanker truck looking out at the blackened field and still-smoking remains of the radio station. The sun was low in the sky, and the rest of the group had returned to the airport terminal to get cleaned up and prepare the evening meal.

“I hate to lose the station,” Dan said. “But hell, we should have burned all these weeds down weeks ago. It’s clean now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And open. Nothing can hide.”

Then I had a thought.

“Why don’t you…we…why don’t we just stay here? Why bother with town?”

He shrugged, “That’s what the pastor wants.”

“Cheryl was saying that we should repair the damage over at the Lassiter place,” I said. “You know, so we could plant crops. I could live there and do that, I suppose, but why couldn’t I plant here? There’s all this open land. There’s electricity and clean water. Why move into town at all? Why worry about the Lassiter place? I say we make a home here.”

“Ain’t my decision,” he said. “The pastor hears from the Lord on these things.”

“Come on,” I said. “You’re a smart guy, Dan. I wouldn’t be alive right now if your sister hadn’t told me about the things you had done to prepare. I owe you my life–”

“Aw, hell,” he said and blushed.

“What do you think, Dan?” I said. “What do you think is the best thing to do?”

“Who am I?” he said, looking down at his feet. “I don’t hear from the Lord like that. I ain’t nobody that God should talk to me.”

“You’re as likely to hear from God as Andrew,” I said. “You’re a survivor. There aren’t too many people left for God to talk to anymore. There were lots of people that claimed to hear from God before, and now they’re dead or worse. You hear from God by listening to yourself. That’s how God talks. What does your gut tell you?”

He took a deep breath and looked around.

“This place is pretty sweet,” he said. “It ain’t heaven, mind you, but it’s pretty damn sweet considerin’. I could see plantin’ some corn over there–a lot of it. We could put a sniper in the tower. We could still go into town and kill the dead. Humanely, of course.”

“Sure. Humanely.”

He paused. I could see the idea working in his head. It was already there. I knew it was there, because I knew he had chosen the airport for all these reasons before Pastor Andrew entered the picture. Then he looked at me,

“Don’t matter though,” he said. “The pastor has done heard from God on this, and he wants to move into town. You like Clayfield, don’t ya?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I love Clayfield.”

“Well, there you go.”

Out on the highway there were a few zombies stumbling around. They’d been attracted to the smoke and fire. We watched them a moment.

“Cheryl told me that first day you were ready for this.”

He chuckled, “I had a lot of guns and food, but I wasn’t ready for this.”

“You were as ready as a man could be,” I said. “Whole armies fell, Dan. Nations fell. You were ready. In my book, that makes you more fit to lead than any man I know.”

He gave me a hard look. “What do you have against the pastor? I ain’t gonna have none of this. You ain’t gonna turn me on him.”

“I’m not trying to turn you on him; I’m just trying to–”

“Hush!” he said, his eyes flashing anger. “I ain’t gonna have it.”