The Remaining: Refugees (6 page)

Jim
stood in the stre
et with his hands still raised.

The look on his face was one of complete confusion.

The breath came out of him in
a long blast
of steam.

Finally he let
his arms
drop to his sides.

"What the heck
?" he said, indignantly.

He turned back around and found
the rest of his squad looking
at him. From the
driver’s seat of the Humvee
, Harper
shook his head just slightly and then studiously avoided eye contact
.
Julia held his gaze a bit longer,
showing
a measure of concern. Lee looked at him severely and grabbed his shoulder again, this time more firmly.

“What the hell was that?” Lee demanded.

Jim looked over his shoulder towards the hill, but could see nothing. “I dunno…I just thought that…I thought…”

“Come on.” Lee’
s pulled him towards the Humvee again. “Let’s go.”

“I thought they needed help.”

“They probably did. But we’re an armed vehicle—would you have stopped?”

“No,” Jim mumbled.

LaRouche si
ghed and let the barrel of the fifty
rise up and point at the tops of the trees. He leaned over and spat. "Maybe I shoul
dn't have pointed the ma-deuce
at ‘
em."

Lee looked back into the woods. Faintly, he thought he could hear them crashing through the forest, just barely audible above the grumbling Humvee at idle.
He ushered Jim back into the Humvee
,
the ex-priest seeming deflated and limp. He closed the door and then got back into the front passenger
’
s seat and pointed on down the road.

“Let’s keep moving.”

There
was a moment of silence, thick and uncomfortable
.

Then
Harper put the vehicle
in gear and they continued on.

From the back seat, barely audible over the sound of the engine and the wind rushing by the open windows, Father Jim murmured, “I’m sorry. I thought we could help.”

***

They arrived at Camp Ryder before noon.

I
n the span of a few months
, Camp Ryder had undergone some extreme changes
.
Some
of the ramshackle huts were gone, and "The Square" had graduated from an empty area with a fire pit in the center, to a noisy open-air market.
Those that scavenged
would set up spots inside T
he
S
quare to barter items that they had found—anything from dental floss to
batteries and canned food
.
While everything Lee and his group gathered in their scavenging operations went into a pool to be distributed evenly through the group, scavenging had quickly become a livelihood for those with the impetus to go outside the gates.

The influx of Lee’s rifles and ammunition
had played a large role in making
scavenging
possible. Since accessing
Bunker #4
three months ago, Lee had
emptied it
in the course of several trips to and from.
The outposts they had set up at several key locations in the area ran patrols along the major roads, keeping them mostly clear of raiders
and their roadblocks.
He had distributed a rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition to every member of the community
that wanted one, provided they were
over the age of sixteen.
T
his was a defensive measure. If the community came under attack from infected hordes, or from a human threat, Lee wanted each and every adult man and woman to be able to join the fight.

While t
he area was safer now than it had been
after the initial collapse
, it was still dangerous and they’d taken
some
losses.
Infected were a constant threat, and the patrolling of the roads did very little to limit them.
The previous week
, two scavengers had been killed before they could make it back to their vehicles and flee. The infected had them almost completely surrounded by the time the scavengers
knew what was happening
.

Last month alone they’d lost five.

The month before that, seven.

But
even with the constant danger,
the scavengers had successfully created a thriving trade economy right there in the heart of Camp Ryder. They traded with themselves frequently, but people came in from the other
communities
that had been in
corporated into
the collection of towns and neighborhoods that was being called
the
“
Camp Ryder
H
ub
”
, and every so often they got visitors from the two groups of survivors that had decided to remain independent of Camp Ryder:
Newton Grove to the southeast and
Broadway to the west.

Speak of the devil...
Lee thought as he noticed the red Isuzu Rodeo pulled in just past the gate.

The driver would be Kip Greene, from Broadway. He came to Camp Ryder for two reasons: to talk with Bus and to trade with the scavengers. The Broadway survivors were almost all farming families, and they had continued to tend their crops as bes
t they could after the collapse. They used what they had to spare of their harvest to trade at The Square
.

Harper pulled the Humvee up to the gate, where a group of three scavengers were preparing to leave and receiving white armbands from the sentries posted there
. Every day had a randomly assigned color. An appropriately-
colored strip of cloth
would be given to the scavengers as they left so they could quickly identify themselves as friends when they approached the gate later.

The three scavengers hustled out of the way as the sentry pulled the gate open for
the
Humvee as they rolled into camp. Harper
pulled
their Humvee to the right and parked it
out of the way. Behind them, Lee could hear the
chain link fence rolling shut.
R
ecently
reinforced with scrap metal
and
hanging
heavy on
its hinges, it rattled and clanked noisily as it closed
.

Lee
eased his way out of his seat
and took a moment to work some blood back into his stiff ankle
.
Feeling a little more limber, he walked
to the
rear of the vehicle and hauled
his heavy pack onto one shoulder.
Standing up, the hollow feeling of hunger seeped into his midsection and his stomach growled noisily.
He glanced acro
ss the dusty parking area and
could see Angela standing there with Sam by her side. They both waved
to him when he
look
ed
in their direction.

Inwardly, he could not shake how strange this made him feel, still the imposter living another man’s life. But outwardly he smiled, waved back,
and
made his way
over
to them.

Angela
looked at him brightly, her pale skin flushed at the nose and cheeks against the chilling wind. She
pulled her jacket closer around her. "Good to see you back, Lee."

She reached one hand out, and Lee took it. Not a handshake, but a quick and heartfelt squeeze. What there was between them was a mystery to Lee, but he had
long ago
decided to go with it
, because despite his reservations, it was something real
. It was something he could come b
ack to. Something to ground him so that his entire existence was not an unending slough of death and conflict.

"Where's Abby?" Lee asked.

"She's learning how to sew with some of the other kids."

Abby hadn't warmed up to him, and didn't seem like she was going to.

"Did you hear about the guy that's asking for you?" Sam broke in, peering up at Lee with one eye squinted against
the sun
.

"Yeah
,
I heard," Lee said and glanced at Angela, who
returned
a quizzical look.
To Sam again, Lee said,
"Did you learn anything new the last few days?"

"Mr. Keith taught me how to shoot his .22 rifle," Sam nodded with a smile. "We went out and got a couple rabbits. He said I was a natural. Showed me how to skin them and cook them
and everything
."

"Wo
w." Lee's eyes went up. "He took
you outside the fence?"

"Is that okay? We didn't go very far."

"Yeah."
He pictured
the old man and Sam running through a field with wild-eyed and shit-covered crazies sprinting after them, screeching and howling. Then he saw blood and entrails smeared across the grassy earth. He swallowed. "I'm sure Mr. Keith was smart about it."

Angela spoke up. "
Where’re you off to now
?"

Lee pointed a thumb
towards the Camp Ryder building
. "I gotta get up with Bus and figure out what's going on with this guy from Virginia. You hear anything about it?"

She shook her head.
"Last I heard he was in the medical trailer, passed out.
He was in pretty bad shape."

"How so?"

"Jenny mentioned dehydration, dysentery, malnutrition.
.
."

"He must've been on the road for weeks."

“Yeah.” Angela nodded.

Lee craned his neck towards the medical trailer. “I should probably see what’s going on with him.”

“Of course. See you at dinner?”

“Yeah,” Lee said, slightly distracted. “I’ll be there.”

Harper met with him as he made his way towards the Camp Ryder building.

Ahead of them, people gathered at the entrance
to the medical trailer
to peer in
curiously
at the man from Virginia
.
While t
he novelty of
newcomers
had faded somewhat as contact was made with more and more survivors, this particular newcomer had caused a stir.
A man that showed up out of the blue and asked for Captain Harden by name was an immediate subject of interest, if not downright suspicion
.