The Remaining: Refugees (17 page)

Far off to the left, a few more ghostly shapes had a
ppeared out of nowhere. About thirty
yards ahead of him, the first infected was heading straight for Eddie, who was trying desperately to juke right. The infected was quick, and if Lee waited too long, he would be on top of Eddie, and Lee would not be able to take the shot without his sights.

He snapped the rifle up and fired off three rounds. He couldn't tell if they connected, but the infected hesitated in its run and turned its head toward Lee for a split second, and Lee pulled the trigger
again
. He didn't count the rounds
—
it
could have been two
, it could have been ten. He just fired until he saw the infected jerk back, and then crumple to the ground where it began twitching and pawing at the concrete.

"Eddie!" Lee yelled, but the man was off
and
running again.

Behind him, the fifty
-cal
thundered into action, each shot illuminating the night around them like a lightning flash. The long burst of automatic fire ripped chunk
s
of concrete into the air and then tracked up the shoulder of the road to the other three or four shapes that Lee had seen.

Lee sprinted
towards Eddie, but looked to his left and watched the huge bullets find two of the four
infected
. Entire limbs and great
pieces
of anatomy flew off of them, like
they were delicate and poorly-
assembled mannequins.

Eddie reached the back end of the trailer and Lee watched him stutter-step as though he couldn't decide which direction to go from there. Then he began to backpedal quickly.

Swearing, Lee reached down and
engaged
the backup
iron sights on his rifle.

"Get back!" Lee yelled and squared himself toward the trailer.

Eddie kept backing away, but he wouldn't turn and run.

From around the corner came two more figures. Lee began firing immediately. He could hardly see the iron sights in the darkness, but he approximated his aim and kept pulling that trigger. One of them went down, but the other was going for Eddie and was in too close for Lee to take the shot. Eddie tried to rear back and kick the thing in the chest as it closed in, but it
deftly
swatted his
leg out of the way and leaped o
nto the man.

The two figures tumbled to the ground. At first, the infected was on top, biting viciously at Eddie, but only catching great mouthfuls of dirty clothing. It fixated upon a thick lapel and began rending at it, shaking its head back and forth with the piece of cloth in its teeth and snarling like a dog. Eddie clamped both hands around the thing's throat and pushed it away from him with a cry of terror. Then he
rolled the thing
and managed to gain
the top
position.

Underneath
him now
, the creature scrambled and gnashed its teeth, strangely silent as Eddie bore all his weight down on the thing's throat so that it couldn't make a sound.

"Shoot it!" he screamed at Lee.

Lee extended his rifle out, holding it with one hand as though it were a giant pistol and pushed the muzzle against the infected's eye. Both men cringed and turned their faces
away
. The head seemed to explode as the gasses from the barrel entered through the ocular cavity and exited out the nose and ears. One spastic hand flailed out, sightless and aimless, and slapped against Eddie's face a few times before it lay still.

Lee brought the muzzle of his rifle up and scanned for other threats, the blood steaming off the hot barrel.

Julia and Harper ran up to them.

"What the fuck was that, asshole?" Julia yelled
at Eddie
.

"Is that all of them?" Harper looked around.

Without giving heed to either of them, Eddie scrambled up from the dead body he was seated on and stumbled like he was drunk towards the trailer once more. "It's okay
…they’re in there…they’re in there…
"

Lee jogged after him. "Watch my back," he called over his shoulder.

Motherfucker!
Lee wanted to break this guy's ankles so he couldn't run away anymore. In the two seconds it took to reach the back of the trailer, Lee thought of a dozen scathing remarks he wanted to give the mechanic.

But when Lee reached him, the man was frantically opening the locks and levers that held the trailer doors closed, and Lee knew that whatever he said now would be wasted breathe. This man's brain was on a single track, and it was the welfare of his family. For that, Lee could not fault him, though it did nothing to ease his anger, and he still wanted to break his ankles.

Eddie flung t
he door open and pulled two
squirming bundles of
clothing and blankets out, followed by a woman in similar dress who stared at him with something that was a mixture of rage and relief. Tears glistened at the bottom of her eyes
and her mouth worked as though she were trying to find the right words.

"You left us
!" she cried, and smacked him hard across the face. "Don't you ever fucking do that again!" She hit him again and again and finally seemed to dissolve as he grabbed a hold of her and pulled her in tight so she couldn't move. Her strained voice was muffled into the shoulder of his coat. "Don't you ever! Don't you ever!"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Beneath the two adults
, the kids, a girl and a boy, wailed and clung desperately to
each other and their mother
.

Lee grit his teeth and felt the rising of something in the back of his throat, but it wasn't from disgust. It was that clenched, acidic feeling of sympathy, and it threatened to eat away at the hard edge Lee had honed over the last few months, like a fine blade drawn ceaselessly across a strop. He looked away.

Speaking into the darkness, Lee said, "Alright, come on. You guys can do this in the Humvee. We gotta move."

With Julia, Harper, and Lee surrounding them like the points of a triangle, the family of four quieted
down
and began moving towards the Humvee.

"Thank God," the woman kept whispering. "Thank God."

***

Harper drove fast
for
Camp Ryder. In the back, everyone bumped around and jostled as he dodged or simply ran over debris in the road. Most of it was tree branches from the past
storm
season
that had ripped through the Carolinas
. Some of it was debris from
traffic accidents,
and some of it was
abandoned cars
that forced Harper to take the shoulder.

While they drove, Julia knelt in the back cargo area, crammed in next to Jim and LaRouche and dealt with the family of four that now
took
up the two backseats and the floor space where LaRouche would normally stand and man the gun.

Lee was turned in his seat and he watched her work quickly and calmly. She looked natural in this element. Crouched in the back of the Humvee, tending to pa
tients
. She pulled the dirty clothes off the
whimpering
children, calming them with a smile and a
friendly
question while she checked arms and legs for bite marks. The girl's name was Elise and the boy's name was Anton. Julia shined her little penlight in their eyes and looked into their mouths. She asked them their age, and if they knew how to sing certain songs, and gradually they stopped crying.

As she worked, Lee fiddled with the sight on his rifle and discovered that it had been turned on, but that the batteries had finally run out. He thought that he had scavenged some double-A batteries, but he would have to check. Batteries of any kind tended to be a luxury to find nowadays. They were one of those staple items that disappeared
quickly
along with canned food, bottled water, and ammunition.

He felt someone touch his arm and
looked back to find
Eddie looking at him and rubbing his red nose with the sleeve of his jacket, leaving glistening
snot
trails behind. "Thank you. I...I don't even know who you people are. Thank you."

Lee nodded and extended his hand. "Captain Harden."

Eddie shook his hand and looked bewildered. "Where...I mean...how did you get all this stuff? Are you with the military?"

"Yes and no." Lee decided to skip the lengthy explanations. Eddie would work that out on his own. "We're part of a larger group. You mentioned you were going east."

Eddie nodded. "Yeah. We heard it wasn't as bad out by the coast."

"Hm."

"Where'd you hear that from?" Harper looked back momentarily.

"Just..." Eddie shrugged. "From other people."

"Look," Lee pulled his nearly empty magazine out and replaced it with a fresh one. "I'm not trying to deter you from chasing your dreams. I'm just telling you how I believe it is. I haven't heard anything to suggest that thing
s are any better
in other regions
.”

“In fact,” Harper said, “We’ve heard the opposite. According to people coming out of the coastal region, there’s a group called The Followers…”

Julia threw him a sharp look. “Don’t fill their heads with that
crap
, Harper.” Looking back to the family, she shook her head. “It’s nothing but unsubstantiated rumors. Boogeyman stories.”

Lee cleared his throat and continued. “Regardless,
if you're determined to continue looking
out east, we won't hold you back. I’
d like for you and your family to at least stay a few days in the camp before you head out." Lee looked at him. "I was also hoping you might look at some things for us. We have several diesel machines. It'd be great if you could make sure they're in good working order before you go. I don't know when I'm gonna come across another diesel mechanic."

Eddie nodded emphatically. "Right. Yes. Of course."

Julia interjected. "Excuse me.
I need to check you too, sir
."

Eddie showed her his arms. "I haven't been bitten. I swear."

Julia smiled, but Lee could see it was
strained
. "We just have to check. Look straight ahead please." She flashed the light in both eyes, watching the pupil dilation. "Open your mouth and say 'Ah'."

He complied. Julia shot Lee a little look, but nodded that he was good to go.

"You say you guys came from the Winston-Salem area?" Lee started again.

"Yeah."

"How are things there?"

"Bad. Winston-Salem and Greensboro...man, there's just not much left."

"How about the infected? Are the groups large?"

"It's the surrounding countryside. Man, those little groups of 'em, the
wolf packs
, they're all over the place outside the city. Inside the city, its mostly regular people that do the most damage. More like gangs. They're not really friendly towards anyone." Eddie reached across and took his wife's hand. "They pretty much looted and burned our neighborhood to the ground. We barely made it out."