The Remaining: Fractured (17 page)

Eddie Ramirez…

Stay awake…

He fell asleep.

CHAPTER 11: VISITORS

Julia and Gray made the first fire that they’d had since leaving Camp Ryder. Harper had looked at them like a longsuffering parent when they’d cleared it with him. Generally fire was a bad idea. It could be seen and smelled from a long way off. But they’d selected a little spot in the corner of an overpass just behind where they’d parked the convoy. The overpass distributed the smoke from it, and overgrown brush along the edges hid it from view.

Julia and Gray crouched beside the small flame. Gray smiled wistfully and Julia remained focused, piling on small twigs and feeding it until it could take a few larger branches. They didn’t intend to keep the fire going very long, but it had been a few days since anyone had eaten a hot meal, and Angela thought they could use the morale boost.

Gray held his hands out to the warmth. “You start a fire like a pro, Jules.”

Julia glanced up at him. “When we were growing up, our dad used to take me and Marie camping. Never had a boy, so it was on us to do all the camping and fishing and shooting.” She smiled slightly. “It was fun though. I enjoyed it.”

Gray watched her. “That where you learned to shoot like that?”

“Deer hunting,” Julia said. “Every November, just after Thanksgiving.”

They were quiet for a bit and Julia just sat there, letting the fire grow on its own, no longer having to tease it to life. To the west, the red sky began to darken to purple, all the light dipping down below the horizon.

Gray watched the fire. “You worry about her?”

Julia settled down into the dirt, sitting cross-legged. “Marie?”

Gray nodded.

“Yeah. Of course I do.”

“She’ll be okay,” Gray said. “Both of you are strong-minded. You don’t give up easily. That’s good.” He sighed, seemed about to say something else, but held back.

Julia eyed the older man. “What about you, Gray? When are you going to reveal the mystery that is you?”

He laughed, coldly. “No. No mystery.”

“Then talk,” she prodded, reaching over to retrieve the open can of baked beans she intended to heat up. “Tell me something new about the man we know as Gray Beard. Where’d you come from? How’d you get here?”

He stroked his longish goatee, then folded his hands in front of his face. “Well…I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you ask me one question—any question you want—and I’ll answer it honestly.” He held up a finger. “But you only get that one question, so make it a good one. I don’t like to talk about myself.”

Julia set her can next to the fire. “Why don’t you like to talk about yourself?”

“Is that your question?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s make that my question. And I expect a completely honest answer from you Gray.” She looked at him very seriously, all the playfulness suddenly drained out of the moment. “Why don’t you like to talk about yourself?”

He sat there for a while, considering the question. Julia didn’t press. She waited patiently. Gray’s eyes remained fixed on the fire, and when she looked up at him, she could see a small, white glimmer hovering around the bottom of his eyes, which he quickly blinked away.

“You know, I had a daughter,” he said quietly. “About the same age as you. But she wasn’t like you, or Marie. She wasn’t…strong enough. I’m afraid that she got that from me. I was never much of a fighter. Might even consider me a bit of a pushover. Her mother did, anyways.”

“Seems like you’ve changed,” Julia pointed out.

“Yeah,” he said with a note of bitterness. “I’ve changed.”

“Sometimes that’s a good thing.”

He met her gaze. “Depends on how you’ve changed. The person I was seems like a past life. Like I did something horrendous in that past life and this is a new life that I’ve been punished with. Isn’t that how reincarnation works? You do something wrong in the past life, and your next life gets worse?” He shook his head. “That’s why I don’t talk about myself. Because I don’t know the man I was, and I’m not sure who I’m turning into.”

“You’re not turning into anything bad,” Julia said.

“Am I not?” he raised his eyebrows. “You know, Jules, of all the things in this world to be afraid of, the thing that I fear the most is what I see myself becoming. It’s not a good thing to fear yourself. But I guess that’s all part of the punishment, huh?”

Julia poked at the fire, silent.

Gray stood, his knees popping loudly. He smiled forlornly. “I told you I’d be honest.” He turned away from her. “I’ll let the others know the fire’s ready.”

***

Harper drew the short straw for watch. No one wanted the last shift, because the last three hour shift took you to dawn, and there was no sleep after that. If Harper wanted to be a dick about it, he could have removed himself from the watch rotation—the man in charge needs his rest and all that—but he had never seriously entertained the idea.

Four o’clock in the morning found him standing atop the LMTV, hunched against a sharply cold night, and thinking about, of all things, a Bavarian crème donut. He thought about the way the chocolate icing on top would dry, so it would have a layer of crisp, and then soft chocolate underneath. The way the glaze would flake off on his fingers when he grabbed it. And of course, he couldn’t avoid thinking about the fact that they were made and sold fresh. Which meant he would never have one again. At least not until someone opened a donut shop, and he didn’t think that was in the plans just yet.

He sighed, attempted to turn his mind from useless things. He looked skyward, stared at the moon, its haunted face in full, stark view, staring down at the world with an undeniable expression of sadness. It always struck him that the face in the moon seemed to be partially turned away, as though for the last few thousand years, it had slowly, and with monumental effort, been trying to turn its back on humanity.

He faced the other way.

Don’t want to think about food. Don’t want to stare at the moon.

His breath fogged the air as he sighed.

Don’t want to think about Annette.

Don’t want to think about anything sad.

But there wasn’t much else.

With his back to the cab of the lead LMTV, he looked down the column of vehicles parked in the middle of the highway, edged onto the right shoulder of the northbound lanes of Highway 421, heading into Greensboro. Progress had been especially slow that day. They’d had to clear almost a dozen wrecks and seemed to be interrupted every half-hour by infected in the woodline that probed and howled and made them abandon their work, but never left the safety of the forest and attacked them.

“Packs during the day?” Julia had mused.

Harper didn’t want to say it, but did anyway: “Could be the hunters.”

They were now just a few miles from the I-85 spur that Harper intended to use to circumvent Greensboro. The overall plan was to thread the needle, so to speak, between Greensboro and Durham, carving out their supply and escape route so that it sat between the two major population centers, and hopefully avoided both.

Or became smashed between them.

He grew bored of his view, staring at the tops of the trucks, and he turned to face northward again, where the road sloped down. Long and straight, and then back up again on the other side. In the depression, a cluster of cars had gathered like water pooling at a low point. Their windshields glowed brightly with the reflection of the moonlight. They appeared to twinkle.

At first, he didn’t think much of it. Kept looking around, bored out of his mind. But then, the third or fourth time he scanned over those cars, the twinkling windshields struck him as odd. He leaned forward as far as he could over the cab of the LMTV, his eyebrows cinching. All through the center of the crowd of vehicles, windshields winked at him, the moonlit reflection being blotted out by something for such a brief moment that it was almost unnoticeable, but it just kept on happening, like the same object was passing in front of the windshield, repeatedly.

He brought the rifle up. It was not his usual M4—that leaned on the cab of the LMTV at his feet—but a scoped hunter’s rifle that stayed with whoever was on watch. He settled himself against the cab, feeling the cold roof through his jacket. He pulled the rifle in, sighted through the scope, the telescopic image swishing and swashing back and forth until he found what he was looking for.

“Son of a bitch…” Harper slapped the top of the LMTV. “Wake up! Everybody wake up!” He ran to the back of the cargo bed and shouted at the vehicle directly behind him. “Hey! Wake the fuck up! Get everyone up!”

Flashlights started blazing, filling the cabs of the vehicles with startled and confused faces.

Harper turned to the front again, found Mike and Torri Reagan stumbling out of the LMTV, their rifles in hand, their shoulder bags dangling.

“What?” Mike said blearily. “What’s going on?”

“Mike, fire the truck up.” Harper looked at the woman who held her rifle between her knees and used both hands to pull her brown hair out of her face and into a rubber band. “Torri, get on the radio and let ‘em know we got incoming. Keep your door open so I can feed you information as I get it.” The previous day they had come to the same conclusion as LaRouche and had switched their radios to a subchannel. “Make sure you’re on the right channel.”

She nodded. “I got it.”

Harper raised his rifle again. “Everyone sits tight,” he said to Torri. “No one starts bugging until I say so.”

Torri clambered back into the LMTV just as it rumbled to life, shuddering beneath Harper’s feet. He huddled over the rifle and scope again and tried to get a better picture of what was going on in the depression a mile ahead of them.

Not one object passing over the windshields repeatedly, but a line of bodies moving in single file. He sniffed the air, couldn’t yet smell the stench of the infected. Through the scope he could see the individual bodies, but not faces or other descriptive factors. Just their silhouettes against the moon-reflection of the windshields.

Someone climbed into the truck bed behind him.

He took his eyes off and found Julia joining him.

“What’s happening?” She asked, picking crust from the corners of her eyes. “Infected?”

Harper refocused and made a noncommittal noise. “They’re not running, but they’re certainly not taking their time either. Hard to tell in the dark but…I’d say…twenty or so?”

The click-snick sound of Julia checking the chamber of her rifle. “That’s a large pack…or maybe a really small horde out past their bedtime.”

“I’d have to go with a pack. Still…” he sniffed and wiped his nose. “Odd to see ‘em walking down a road like that. More horde behavior than pack behavior.”

“They never cease to surprise.”

Harper bit his lip. “You think they might pass us by?”

“We’re in the middle of the road.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re gonna follow the path of least resistance.”

“Right to us.”

Julia pointed down the hill. “Let ‘em clear that snarl of vehicles and get about halfway up the hill. Then light ‘em up with the fifty and we’ll clean up the rest.”

Harper looked at her. “Sounds good to me. You’re okay with it?”

She seemed unwilling to look at him. “Yeah, well…” She shook her head and turned away. “I’m not gonna put others in danger to save my own conscience.”

“We can give them a warning shot.”

She stopped at the tailgate, appeared to consider it.

Harper pressed. “It won’t make any difference. Let the fifty fire a burst over their heads. If they charge, we’ll take ‘em out as planned.”

She nodded, then hopped down to deliver the message.

Behind him the convoy grumbled to life. A few quiet voices could be heard over the engines, people asking where items were that they had somehow lost while they slept, and now urgently needed. In anticipation of having to move quickly, several of the men stood on the overgrown grassy shoulder, great gouts of steam pouring from the ground as they all pissed and looked around with wide eyes as though afraid of getting caught.

All the flashlights had since been extinguished. None of the vehicles turned on their headlights. They were still just under a mile away, and the sound of the engines could probably not be heard from that distance. Even if it were to be heard, Harper didn’t think the noise alone would cause the infected to start making that horrible screech and sprinting for them. It might make them curious, though.

He scoped them again.

They were like coal black smudges, the distinction between their head and their bodies coming from the moonlight on their pale faces.

All fully clothed?

From behind him and to his right, one of the Humvees with the M2 mounted on top rolled up to their position and stopped adjacent to Harper’s LMTV. Julia stood up out of the driver’s seat. Gray poked his head up through the turret, rubbing the sleep out of his face.

Julia waved for Harper’s attention. “Where are they now?”

Harper looked through the scope again. “About to start comin’ up the hill.” He paused for a long moment, emitting a long, uncertain noise. “Ummmmm…Hold off for a minute.”

“What’s wrong?” Julia’s voice strained as she stretched to see down the road. “What’re you seeing? Talk to me, Harper.”

“Eh…” Harper looked out over the scope, then at Gray, then at Julia. “I don’t know if they’re infected.”

“What makes you think that?” Julia asked.

Harper’s eyes went back down the road. “Well, I think they spotted you moving up. Now they’re just standing there. Watching us.”

Julia followed his gaze back down the road as though she might make eye contact with one of them and know for sure.

Harper was already moving. He laid the scoped rifle down and picked up his old M4, a little scratched, the matte finish worn down in a few places. He slung it on his shoulder, then jogged to the back of the LMTV and swung down out of the cargo bed.

He rounded the Humvee. “Get in,” he motioned Julia into the truck.