Aftermath

The Remaining:

AFTERMATH

BY

D.J. Molles

Copyright © 2012 D.J. Molles

This is an original work of fiction by D.J. Molles, who holds the sole right to all characters and concepts herein.

ver. 5.5.12

To my wonderful wife—the best person I know.

And to Chris Adkins—a true warrior-poet.

Thank you both for everything.

CHAPTER 1: CAMP RYDER

Who are the real victims in all of this?

The infected, or the survivors?

Gunshots perforated the darkness of Lee’s dreams, yanking him violently out of sleep.

He sat upright on a cot in almost complete darkness, his sleep-blind eyes struggling to focus and make sense of what was going on around him. Half in and half out of sleep, Lee’s mind conjured up the nearest memory of darkness and gunfire: the dim stairwell in the Petersons’ house, the haze of cordite hanging in the air, the stench of the infected.

His breath caught in his chest. Dread hammered at the back of his mind. Something horrible had happened in the Petersons’ house. Something terrible and irreversible...

Jack had just been bitten!

But no. That didn’t make sense.

Because wasn’t Jack already dead?

He had to shake his head to clear the images of the Petersons’ house, and Jack in the bedroom, covered in blood. He knew they were false. This wasn’t the Petersons’ house. It was…someplace else. Someplace safe, he thought. But maybe not so safe anymore, because there was screaming and gunfire coming from outside.

Another gunshot rang out, this time very close to him.

Adrenaline pumped like a piston in his guts. His heart rate quickened.

Slow down. Evaluate your situation. Try to remember.

Try to remember what the fuck you’re doing here.

He took a moment to look around and work through what he was seeing.

He was not in complete darkness, as he’d first thought: a single gas lantern glowed dimly against dull, corrugated steel walls. He was completely naked, save for a thin white bed sheet that had been spread over him from the waist down. He lay on a cot in what looked like a shipping container and his back was in excruciating pain, though he couldn’t remember why. His tongue felt thick and pasty. And he had no weapons.

Where’s my damn rifle?

From somewhere outside he heard Tango howl.

Tango!
he thought, almost jumping off of the cot, but stopping himself as the sound of it reverberated and echoed.
That’s not right. That doesn’t sound like Tango
. The howl tapered off into a throaty snarl that didn’t sound much like a dog anymore. It was human.

It couldn’t be Tango, anyway.

Because he was dead, too.

And with that thought, the rest came back with sudden and overpowering force. Tango was dead. Jack was dead. He’d lost his rifle at Timber Creek. Someone named Milo had ambushed them. He remembered crawling through a boarded window, nails carving through the flesh of his back. Red and Blue saving their asses with Molotov cocktails. Angela and Abby and Sam just barely making it to Camp Ryder...

The survivors. Camp Ryder. Wasn’t there a ten-foot-high fence around the compound? How the hell did the infected get inside? It was an infected he’d just heard, he was sure of it. But who was shooting at them? The questions all struck his brain in rapid succession.

I can’t just lie here,
he thought.
I’ve got to move.

He ripped the white sheets off of himself and stood, staggering through a flash of lightheadedness. The questions still rolled around in his head, but he couldn’t answer them now. Most of his thoughts were still muddled, but two things were coming through with piercing clarity: he needed a weapon—anything would do better than his bare hands—and he needed to get out of the shipping container. Running on instinct, these desires became a white-hot need, as real to him as his need to breathe.

That howl again, this time just outside the shipping container.

A shotgun boomed and the pellets struck the steel walls.

Flashlights from outside played across the wall, casting the wavering shadow of a man running straight for Lee. The movements were unmistakably wild and animalistic.

A short, sinewy form lurched around the corner of the shipping container just in time for another blast of buckshot to scoop its legs out from under it like a rug had been pulled. The infected hit the ground hard on its back and attempted to stand again without any regard to its injuries. Its wide eyes glistened feverishly in the lamplight as its shredded right leg twitched about, pulled in different directions by rearranged muscle fibers. It collapsed with a hissing sound and began to drag itself toward Lee, leaving a thick trail of blood behind.

Like a car with a faulty transmission, Lee’s mind finally dropped into gear. He lunged for the table with the medical equipment. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but if anything was to be a weapon, it would be something on the table. He swept his hands back and forth like a blind man feeling in the dark, knocking over a metal tray with a few scalpels and forceps soaking in alcohol. The tray clattered to the ground and sent the instruments skittering across the floor. He thought about diving for one of the scalpels, but it wouldn’t bite deep, and given infected people’s pension for not even registering flesh wounds, he decided he needed something with a little more stopping power.

Lee grabbed the heaviest looking object he could find—a big microscope that felt like it was solid metal. He spun towards the infected and found it nearly close enough to grasp his legs. Lee shouted in surprise and jumped back, grabbing the microscope by the eyepiece with one hand and smashing it down as hard as he could on the head of the infected. The heavy base of the microscope made a wet cracking noise as it dented the skull.

The crazed man on the floor thrashed and drew in a loud, gasping breath. Its eyes turned skyward and it began to convulse violently. The sight of it soured Lee’s stomach almost instantly. He stared, frozen, for several of his rapid heartbeats before swinging again. The bludgeon struck his attacker in the temple. Its eyeballs bulged and the top of the skull mashed into a strange, cone-like shape.

Lee swallowed hard against gorge in the back of his throat. He dropped the microscope and took a faltering step back, trying to catch his breath while his pulse ran away from him. The pain in his back, all but forgotten for those brief few seconds, suddenly spread over his body like he was soaked in kerosene and playing with matches.

He staggered towards his cot, but didn’t make it. He lost his feet and planted his hands and knees on the floor as he felt his stomach suddenly reject whatever was inside of it. He felt the splatter on his arms and then hung his head, breathing hard and spitting.

Pounding footsteps behind him.

Still keyed up, Lee turned towards the sound and lashed out with both fists.

“
Hey! Whoa!”

Lee focused on the face, kneeling down next to him.

A broad face with a wild-man’s beard. A Colt 1911 in one hand, the other gripping Lee by the shoulder and shaking him gently. “Can you stand up?”

Lee wiped vomit from his lips, and searched his mind for this man’s name. “Uh…Bus?”

“
Yeah.”

Lee became suddenly aware that he still had no clothes on. He stood up shakily, with Bus supporting him. “Can I get some pants?”

The big man pointed towards the foot of the cot where a pile of clothing was folded neatly beside Lee’s old Bates M6 boots. “It was all we could rustle up for now.”

Lee nodded and stepped to the cot, straddling his puddle of vomit—rice and beans, he remembered. It was a pair of athletic shorts and a green t-shirt with a yellow smiley face on the chest. It was a far cry from his trusted multicam pants and combat shirt, but at least he had his boots back. The harsh reality of his last four days had only strengthened his opinion that these were the best boots ever made.

Inside one of the boots, he noticed someone had stashed his GPS device. Before Doc and Jenny had begun to operate they had tried to take it from his hands, and Lee had refused to give it up. It appeared they had either succeeded in removing it when he’d fallen asleep, or perhaps that Lee had dropped it and they had been kind enough to put it back for him. Either way, finding it snug in his boot immediately increased his trust for these strangers. He’d made clear one simple wish and they’d abided by it.

At the entrance to the cargo container, a younger man appeared holding a big hunting shotgun. He was skinny, but he had a round childlike face, and a patch of blond hair that stood off of his head like a halo. Despite his cherubic features, Lee guessed him to be about twenty years old. As he entered, he looked first at Lee, then to Bus, then to the mess of what once was a human being on the floor.

“
Holy shit…”

Lee pulled on the athletic shorts and spoke to Bus. “How’d they get in?”

“
I guess they found a hole in the fence. Or made one somehow, that’s the only thing I can think of.” Turning to the young man, Bus said, “Josh, give Captain Harden your pistol.”

Josh pulled a Ruger LCP out of his back pocket and held it out towards Lee. It was a tiny pocket pistol that could fit in the palm of your hand, and essentially worthless on a moving target past a range of about twenty feet. Just as Lee was about to take it, Josh jerked his hand back and looked at him suspiciously, an expression that didn’t quite fit on his face. “I’m gonna get this back, right?”

Lee honestly didn’t know, so he just looked to Bus for clarification.

Bus shrugged back at him. “I’ll get you something better when we have time.”

“
Then I guess you’ll get this back,” Lee said to Josh and accepted the gun. He pulled the magazine out of the well. It was a .380 caliber with only four rounds left in the magazine, plus one in the chamber. He would have to get in close to use the thing effectively. Still, it was better than a microscope. He shoved the magazine back into the gun and stomped his feet into his boots. The GPS device he slipped into the pocket of his athletic shorts.

Josh pointed out to the darkness of Camp Ryder. "I think we got most of 'em."

Bus just shook his head. "We don't know that. Get everyone in the square."

"Aight." Josh spun on his heel and ran off into the night.

Bus looked Lee over. "You okay? Didn't get bit?"

Lee gave himself a quick once-over before answering. "Think I'm good."

"Let's get moving."

Lee followed the big man out of the cargo container at a jog. "What's 'the square' and why is everyone going there?"

"This ain't the first time we’ve been attacked," Bus said, cryptically.

Lee found himself just rolling with it, the way you roll with the nonsensical facts in a strange dream, simply accepting the unacceptable because there are no other options. Lee felt like he was about to understand, anyway. He was about to get a crash course in how Camp Ryder dealt with attacks.

In a way, Lee felt strangely at ease being the follower. Over the course of the four days, it wasn't just about his own survival, but the survival of everyone in his little group. Angela, Abby, Sam, and until recently, Jack and Tango, had all depended on him to survive. Now it appeared that Bus was the head honcho, the man with a plan, and the absence of responsibility was like dropping an eighty-pound rucksack off his shoulders. And Lee had to admit, while he didn’t know Bus well enough to say he trusted him completely, the man had a rock-steady attitude about him. There was something hard and unbreakable inside of him, and Lee could respect that.

Outside of the shipping container, he could see the stretch of gravel and dirt that made up the center of Camp Ryder, like some Main Street in an old western movie, but much narrower. To either side of the gravel stretch, the survivors had used anything and everything they could find to construct small shelters for themselves and their families. It reminded Lee of the shantytowns he’d seen in third world countries.