Slow Apocalypse (66 page)

They came last to the one still living. He was able to raise his head as they approached, and he held his hands out to his sides to show he was not armed.

“You fuckers,” he said, weakly. “You shot me.”

“Where are you hit, son?” Bob asked him.

“I’m gut-shot, you bastard. My boys will get you for that.”

“I don’t think you’re in a very good position for making threats,” Bob said. “How many of you are there?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Do you want to live?”

The man looked up at them uncertainly, then he was hit by a spasm of sharp pain. He turned onto his side and curled into a fetal position. Dave trained the flashlight down at him and looked closer.

“He’s got a real big wound there. I don’t think he’ll make it.”

“Damn you,” the man moaned. “there’s a hospital down there at the lake. You got to get me to it.”

“We can’t,” Mark said. “We won’t move at night. We’re worried there are more of your boys down that road.”

“Listen, it looks like most of us are dead. There was only three women stayed behind, at a clubhouse a mile down the road. I don’t know how many you killed…”

“Nine,” Bob said. Not counting you.”

“Nine?
Fuck!
How did you—”

“Because you are stupid,” Dave said, suddenly angry at this pathetic specimen. “Come on, guys, we’ve got to get him back to Lisa. What’s your name?”

“None of your business.”

“Well, sorry, but we don’t have a stretcher and we can’t spend any more time out here in case your friends come back. So we’ll have to pick you up.”

Dave took his feet and Bob and Mark each lifted him under an arm. The man howled, then lapsed into rapid panting. It looked like he had lost consciousness.

Lisa examined him quickly, and shook her head.

“There’s very little I can do for him.”

“He said there was a hospital down there.”

“Yeah? Well, if we move him tonight—”

“He also said they had a clubhouse down the road,” Mark said. “There’s no way we’re going to drive past that tonight.”

Lisa was obviously frustrated, but had grown used to that, to some extent. As a doctor she was only interested in saving lives, it didn’t matter whose life it was. But she couldn’t argue that they should risk all of their lives to save this man, who had tried to kill them.

In the morning they got an early start, since no one had slept. They fired up their burners, and as they were warming up Mark set out on one of the scooters to scout ahead. He reported back that the clubhouse the injured man had spoken of appeared to be a tavern, a small building perched on the edge of the cliff overlooking the lake. The views from inside must be spectacular, he said, but he had not approached it closely.

“I didn’t see any activity. No motorcycles parked outside. No cars, no people, no nothing. I think they’ve split.”

“We’ll be careful anyway,” Bob said.

“Naturally.”

They set out, the bus in the lead, the truck following with Lisa and the wounded man in the back, Addison bringing up the rear on her horse.

There was no sign on the place. It was an uninteresting little concrete-block building with few windows on the street side. There was a large gravel parking lot, with nothing in it but an overflowing Dumpster.

“What do you think?” Bob asked Dave. “Drive on by? It doesn’t look like they have any way to chase us.”

“They could get a Harley through those doors. I think we need to check it out. I don’t want anybody coming up on us from behind.” Dave was uneasy about Addison’s riding behind them. Now that they had cleared the way, others could make it across the mountains in cars.

“You’re right. Let’s you and me do it.”

They approached from the side that had no windows. Gordon, on the roof of the bus, had his sights trained the front door. They kicked the door open. Bob peered into a single big room that had been trashed as thoroughly as if a frat party had been going on for a year. Open cans had been kicked into corners. Liquor bottles had been smashed. Filthy sleeping bags were crumpled on the floor and on the bar.

There was someone lying on his back on one of the tables. Dave aimed the shotgun at him as he walked up, but there was no need. The table and the floor around him were covered in dried blood.

“He hasn’t been dead long,” Bob suggested.

“Wounded last night, I’ll bet. Bled out.”

A rat poked his nose out of a clutter of empty cans and sniffed the air. Dave looked away. And in the corner behind him he saw a large stack of wooden cargo flats in shrink wrap, with cans of food visible. There were hundreds of cans, maybe a thousand, things like corned beef hash, Spaghetti-Os, and fruit cocktail.

“They didn’t attack us because they were hungry,” Dave said. “They’ve been eating well.”

“You think they stocked up before the stores ran out, or robbed?”

“My guess would be robbery. It would be their style.”

“You want to take any of this?”

“I’m tempted, but I’m still worried about them coming back. And, come to think of it, wouldn’t it be looting?”

Bob looked away, then back, with a sheepish expression.

“I’m ashamed of myself. I guess it’s easy to get into the attitude of ‘If it ain’t nailed down, it’s mine.’ ”

“If it makes you feel any better, I thought if it, too. Looting the looters, that doesn’t sound all that bad to me.”

“Little doubt of that.”

“And furthermore, if we were out of food, I’d take every can.”

They stepped out of the building and gave the all clear. Lisa had been watching. She got down from the back of the truck and walked toward them.

“He just died,” she told them.

They didn’t spend a lot of time mourning the dead biker, but Dave wished he had at least told them his name.

“Do we want to leave him here, or take him to the bottom of the hill?” she asked.

“I’d say here. There’s another body inside.”

The three of them wrestled the body through the doors and, kicking aside the layers of trash, arranged him on a table next to what they presumed was one of his buddies. Lisa looked around at the boxes of food, and they could see her struggling with the same problem they had talked about. In the end she faced her father.

“Did you come across any medical supplies? Any liquor?”

“We didn’t think to look.”

So they rummaged around. They didn’t find any bandages, not even a Band-Aid, but they did find a stash of prescription pills, many of which Lisa could use, and a box of military syringes full of morphine. Lisa almost jumped
up and down in delight. She insisted they take all of it, and no one had the slightest objection. She was almost as happy to find an unopened case of half-gallon bottles of vodka, and another of Scotch.

“Absolut and Glenfiddich,” Bob said, admiringly holding up a bottle.

“Is that good?”

“They stole only the very best, my darling daughter.”

“Well, you won’t get to drink any of it unless I come across a whole lot of regular alcohol. Vodka should sterilize a wound nicely.”

“All I ask is that you pass the Scotch under my nose once a day,” Bob said. “And to be allowed to gaze at the bottles.”

They started out again, steadily down the winding road. This time Dave and Karen were in the lead, on their scooters. Addison was allowed to follow on Ranger as long as she kept around five hundred yards between herself and her parents. They took it slowly, particularly through the cuts that had been blasted through the hills, where the road narrowed considerably into perfect spots for an ambush. There were a few driveways off to the right. All of them were blocked with chains or cars, but they saw no people. Then, for a mile or more, there was nothing but the road and the drop-off.

They came to a turn that was not a hairpin, but a long circle that took them through 180 degrees. They were getting down to the level of the lake. There were trees on each side of them, and then a walled community with just the tops of the roofs visible on the other side.

Ahead of them, a roadblock.

Concrete road dividers had been placed across the road so that it was possible to drive through them in a zigzag pattern, but only at about five miles per hour. While you did that police would be firing on you from concrete-and-sandbag bunkers on each side of the road. A large sign warned that remote control mines were embedded in the roadway. There were two police cars behind the barrier, and a large tent.

“I think we’ll wait right here until the others catch up with us,” Dave said.

“Good idea.” They shut off their motors and rested the scooters on the kickstands. Karen removed her helmet and stood looking at the barrier ahead.

“That’s what we have to get through,” she said.

“Doesn’t look exactly like a rolled-out red carpet, does it?”

“They have to take us, David. We have nowhere else to go.”

“Then we better make ourselves irresistible.”

Two police and three civilians were behind the concrete barriers, holding their weapons. Addison had caught up with her parents, dismounted, and led Ranger to a patch of grass, where she hobbled him. No one behind the barrier made any move to come forward and contact them. Addison looked anxiously at her parents, but said nothing. Dave thought she was still a little shell-shocked from the battle last night.

Fifteen minutes later Bob in the bus and Mark in the truck arrived, pulled up close behind them. The drivers got out.

“Should we walk over there, or drive?” Mark wondered.

“I’d say drive, but as soon as they show any nervousness, we stop and get out.”

“Unarmed,” Dave said.

“I think that would be wisest.”

Dave and Karen handed their weapons to Mark, who stowed them in the back of the truck, then they boarded their scooters and Addison mounted Ranger, and the whole ragtag party moved slowly forward to meet the cops until one held up his hand.

“You folks will have to turn around and go back to where you came from.”

Bob and Mark were standing with Dave, Karen, and Addison. Bob looked down at the ground for a while, then turned toward the vehicles.

“Everybody out,” he called. “Turn off the engines. Don’t bring any weapons.”

Lisa was first with her two teenage children, then Rachel, who joined Mark with their twins, and little Solomon, who looked around with the same wonder he brought to any new situation. Marian and Gordon came next, Gordon holding four-year-old Taylor. Last was Teddy, helping Jenna, who was getting around better but still needed crutches. Emily was too sick to get out of bed.

The officer was a young man in his late twenties. His black hair was cut short under his broad-brimmed hat. His eyes were tired and showed a lot of strain. He regarded them and handed his shotgun to a female officer standing just behind him. She took it, and looked at them with a face that was devoid of expression. The officer in charge folded his arms in front of him. A clear posture of rejection, if Dave was any judge.

Bob had been elected to do the talking. He looked the officer in the eye.

“My name is Bob Winston. This is Dave Marshall and his wife, Karen, and daughter, Addison.” He went on to introduce Jenna and all the members of his
biological family. “You’re not wearing a name badge, Officer. Could we know your name?”