Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead (7 page)

“Listen, listen,” the man said, he had a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. You can’t stop. You have to keep doing this.”

“I broke her ribs,” she said.

“That happens,” he said.

“Anna!”

The man pulled Grace off her daughter.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

He dropped his cell phone, pushed up the sleeves on his jacket, and set his hands on Anna’s chest. He didn’t hesitate. He started compressions and counted them off out loud. His own breathing matched each thrust. Short, quick breaths.

Grace watched, but couldn’t stand seeing her little girl’s body cave inward with each compression. She looked lifeless, fake. He was going to kill her.

She didn’t stop him. She didn’t help him. She couldn’t help him. Grace felt paralyzed.

Someone draped an arm around her shoulder. An elderly woman sat next to her. She looked frail, deflated. Her skin was marked with brown spots. The woman did not say a word, but continued to pat her on the back softly.

The first responders on scene was the city fire department. An engine pulled up, lights flashing, sirens off; five men climbed out of the red machine. They wore helmets with turnout gear boots and pants, but no jackets, while the suspenders were fit over firehouse tee-shirts. Two firefighters rushed up and took over CPR. One did compressions and the other placed a mask over Anna’s mouth and gave breaths through it when it was time.

When the ambulance arrived a few moments later, they loaded Anna into the back of the ambulance. The paramedics did not interfere. The firemen had a routine going that could not be interrupted. The four of them rode in the ambulance with Anna.

A police officer gave Grace a ride, following lights and sirens behind the ambulance.

Chapter 7

“One of the worst things was that I never got to thank that man for helping me. He was the only one that helped me, and I never thanked him. I don’t know his name and can’t even remember what he looked like,” Grace said. “I just wish I had a chance to thank him.”

Char and Grace sat silently inside the rig. Char was not sure what to say, what she could say. “We should see if the guys need anything. I think we’re going to camp down here for the night,” is what she said, finally.

Grace nodded, lips pressed tightly together, her hands folded in her lap. “Looks like the day’s just starting.”

“Been a long night,” Char said. “I’ll come around and help you down.”

“I’m okay.” Grace did not look up. “Char?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry I laid all of that on you. I had no right.”

Char knew the images would stay inside her head forever. She could only imagine what happened to Anna after being bitten. “We’re family, Grace. I’m here any time you need to talk. Any time.”

“I know you are. I love you for it. We all have sad stories. We just know better than to live in that horrid past. We don’t talk about it. That’s our group’s little unwritten rule, and I just violated it.”

“That’s Tony’s thing. He’s a guy. Guys suck at sharing feelings. We can talk. You and me. Okay?” Char was not sure she’d ever open up. The horrors that made up her past were her own. The weakness of sharing could cripple her strength. She did not want to risk that. People depended on her.

“You mean that?”

“I do.”

Grace nodded again and sniffled. “Look at me all crying and slobbering like an infant.”

“Stay there. I’ll come around and get you, okay?”

Char climbed out of the rig.

“How she doing?” Sam said. He wrung his hands together. “She going to be all right?”

“She’s going to be fine.”

“What were you guys talking about in there?” Sam said.

“None of your business,” Char said. She knew she sounded curt. Sam should know better than to ask. “Give me a hand getting her out of the rig. She might not be ready to walk. Her head needs to be bandaged up. She wasn’t bleeding, but she has a gash across the temple.”

“Tony was digging through the back of the truck for medical supplies. I think he found some peroxide and gauze.”

“Good. We can clean it, keep it from getting infected. It’s a start.”

They walked around to the passenger side and opened the door.

Grace smiled. “I’m really high up here, aren’t I?”

Sam held out his arms. “I’ll get you down. Nice and slow.”

“Nice and slow,” Grace said.

“You got this?” Char said. “I want to check on Tony.”

“We’re good. I have her,” Sam said. Char heard the love in his tone of voice. His time with Grace was about the only time she could tolerate him. He was more mature and responsible when around her. Their relationship was good for him.

Char planted her palm on the hilt of her sword and walked toward the back of the trailer. Her boots crushed on dirt and loose gravel. As she neared the end, she could hear Tony inside the trailer grunting and moving things around. She reached the back of the trailer and held onto the open door. “You need a hand or anything?”

Tony had two boxes in his arms. He tried looking over them to see his path as he walked toward the back of the trailer. “Take these. They have medical supplies in them.”

“You think we put enough distance between us and them?” Char took the boxes, expecting them to be heavy, but they weren’t. She set them down and pulled open the cardboard flaps. She dug through the contents, finding bottles of aspirin, gauze, scissors, medical tape, splints, peroxide, allergy pills, Percocet, and penicillin. “Penicillin. This is good for Grace, right?”

Tony jumped out of the back of the trailer. “We’ll see how bad the cut on her head is, but yeah. We’ll start her on that. Just in case. It will help fight any infection. You guys alright? You were in there a while.”

Char wasn’t sure why when Tony asked the same question Sam had, she wasn’t as annoyed. “She was telling me about her daughter. What had happened to her.”

Tony nodded, leaving it at that. He didn’t like background stories, saying they didn’t help people move forward. “She okay?”

“I really don’t know. She seems broken.”

Tony planted fists on his hips and sighed. “We have to hide this truck.”

The conversation about Grace was over. Char left it alone. “We really only drove along the road. If Broadhurst is coming after us, he’s not going to have to look very hard.”

“No. No, he’s not. There just weren’t places to make turns onto any other roads. This is kind of it for now. Think we should keep going?”

“I think Grace needs some medical attention and a chance to catch her breath.”

“I agree. Let’s get situated back here; keep the rig running. We’ll have something to eat. Hell, we have enough food in this thing to have a feast.”

“I could head down the road a ways, keep an eye out for raiders.”

He shook his head. “No. Not this time. We’re staying close,
together
. We’ll let Grace rest some, but by this evening, before the sun sets, I want to be back on the road. We’re going to have to find some other roads, get some real distance between us. It’s the only way.”

“There’s another way,” she said.

“And that would be?”

“We load up supplies. Between the four of us, and with the horses, we can take quite a bit and we leave the truck.”

She saw Tony’s expression. The thought of leaving the truck didn’t sit well with him.

“This thing is going to run out of fuel sooner or later. We don’t have any diesel. What good will it be to us then? We would have to leave it anyway. Whether we do it now or later really makes no difference, the end result is the same. We pack supplies and leave the truck. The benefit is that once Broadhurst finds it, he might be happy enough to have his things back that he just forgets all about us.”

“Wishful thinking.”

“Naturally,” she said.

“Let’s go have a look at Grace,” he said.

#  #  #

They set Grace up inside a sleeping bag, using a rolled up one as a pillow. It did feel good to rest for a while. Char had her own wounds to lick. The last several hours had been brutal. She rubbed her shoulders and tried to massage away some of the knotting and pain.

Char hated the sound of the rig’s chugging engine. She worried it would eventually attract unwanted attention. They were parked in a small clearing just off the main road.

Tony knelt beside Grace. “I came across a needle and thread. I’d like to sew up that gash. It’s pretty deep. The bleeding has stopped, but I’d feel better knowing we can keep it clean. The only thing is, I don’t have any anesthesia for the pain, and it’s bound to hurt. A lot.”

“We’ve got this,” Sam said. He sat on the back of the trailer, legs dangling. He held up a bottle of whiskey. “She takes a couple good swigs, she won’t feel a thing.”

Tony regarded Grace with a look.

“Give me the bottle,” she said.

The first gulp, she gasped. Her mouth fell open and she drooled. After wiping her face with her forearm, she smiled. “Smooth.”

They all laughed.

Tony was eventually successful in threading the eye, and then used a lighter to sterilize the needle.

“You ever done this kind of thing before?” Grace said.

“Only when I was operating in the O.R.,” he said.

Char looked at Tony, confused. “You were a doctor?”

“It’s sarcasm,” he said. “I promise I’ll do my best to keep you from looking like Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein’s monster,” Sam said.

“What?” Tony said.

“Frankenstein was the doctor. Not the creature. People do that all the time. Confuse the two, but what you meant to say was, ‘I promise I’ll do my best to keep you from looking like Frankenstein’s monster,” Sam said, placing heavy emphasis on the last word.

“You done?” Tony said.

“Yeah. Done.”

“Then come down here and hold her hand,” Tony said.

“I’m not going to fight you,” Grace said to Tony.

“It’s for support,” Tony said. “I know you can handle it. There’s just no reason to do this without someone holding your hand, not when we’ve got people here to hold it.”

Char smiled at the thoughtful gesture. “Maybe while you guys do that I can scrounge around and see what we might want to have for dinner.”

“Burgers and fries sound good,” Sam said, sliding out of the trailer and taking a knee beside Grace.

“Yeah. I’ll see what I can dig up. If I find any hamburger meat inside that hot trailer, you are welcome to it.”

Chapter 8

After a hearty lunch of canned beans, canned spinach and canned fruit cocktail, the group slept in shifts. Grace, who should have been out cold the entire time, stayed awake all day.

Large white clouds moved fast across a blue sky. The sun peeked in and out. Looking over the ridge Char watched the shadows race over tree tops toward them, over them, and then away from them. She loved the mountains. There was a serenity to the inspirational views that sort of balanced the shit of a world they lived in. She wished her father and brother were alive to see what she saw, knowing they would appreciate the beauty, too.

“You good?” Tony stood next to her, his hands stuffed into his front pockets.

“I am,” she said. She wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t. None of them were good. They existed, worked to stay alive. They kept moving. There was no chance to settle down and grow roots. It wasn’t an option.

“We’re going to start packing it in. Figure out what supplies we want to pack. Give us a hand?” he said. She wasn’t sure if Tony actually wanted help, or knew that keeping her busy would preoccupy her mind. Either way she felt thankful for the distraction.

“Can’t believe Grace didn’t sleep.”

“Might be a good thing. If she has a concussion, we want her awake. Not sure why, exactly. It’s just what I’ve always heard. Might have something to do with the brain swelling or something. Not sure how staying awake prevents that. I do know one thing, she’s going to be tired as all get out later.” He laughed. “Come on. Let’s get packed.”

Once back behind the rig, Sam and Grace sorted through boxes pulling items they fit into backpacks.

“Know what I found?” Grace said.

Char shrugged. “Hamburger meat?”

“Better.” Grace held products up in the air. “Toothpaste, shampoo, soap, anti-perspirant, and body lotion. Yes, you heard me, body lotion!”

Char could not have hidden her smile if she tried. “I would love to wash my hair. I mean, really clean it good.”

“You and me both. Know what else? With all the squirrel meat Davy Crocket has us eating, I found a dozen boxes of toothpicks. Nothing worse than trying to set free sinew stuck between your teeth with nothin’ but your tongue!”

“I don’t want to jinx anything,” Sam said.

“Then don’t,” Grace said.

“But, how long’s it been since we’ve seen an infected? Hours? I must say, I’m liking it up here in the mountains.”

Sam was right. “It is kind of odd.”

“Not really,” Tony said. “Not when you think about it. Not much population up in the mountains before everything went to hell. What civilians were here probably ambled down the mountain toward the . . . food. It’s kind of why I wanted to come this way. I mean, it was more of a hunch. Seems to have paid off though.”

“I have a question,” Grace said. “I see two horses. We doubling up on them?”

Char eyed Dispatch, but didn’t say anything. It was a horse, but she didn’t want to see him strain to carry two people and supplies. It didn’t seem fair.

“I think I have an answer to that,” Sam said. He set down two cans of food and stood up. Everyone watched him as he climbed into the back of the trailer and disappeared inside.

There was something of a ruckus from inside the trailer. Some curse words were said. The sound of boxes tumbling. More curse words. Char smiled at Sam’s antic, they always surprised her. “What is he doing?”

Tony and Grace shrugged.

A moment later, Sam re-emerged from the back of the trailer. He held up a mountain bike. “This is one. There’s two more in here.”

Tony took the bike from Sam, and Sam went back into the trailer for a second bike.

“That could work,” Grace said, as she waved a dismissive hand through the air, “because there was no way I was getting up onto a horse. I’m just saying.”

Tony clapped his hands together. “Let’s pack everything back into the trailer. We can’t really lock it up, but we can secure it as best we can and try to camouflage it. Never know if we may stumble back this way sometime. It’s wishful thinking, I know,” he said.

With the saddlebags on the horses packed, and backpacks stuffed full, and the trailer as camouflaged as possible, the four of them bid a silent farewell to the trailer, each knowing that at some point they were going to wish they had kept the truck forever.

Sam and Grace pedaled side by side. They talked, laughing, enjoying the last bit of sunlight as they led the way along the main road.

“Are they too cute together, or is it just me?” Tony sat on his horse, the reins in his hands. The horse stepped back, to the side and then settled in with a shake of his head and a snort. Its breath plumed from large black nostrils.

Char laughed. “We better follow closely behind. No telling what more trouble those two can get into.” She made a few clicking sounds with her tongue and guided Dispatch forward. Her scabbard clapped softly against the side of the horse, which she found a comforting sound.

It was far easier making lefts and rights, getting off and away from the main road. Broadhurst would need a bloodhound to track them now. The few times the horses made a mess they’d stop and clean the shit off the road. It would be pointless trying to get lost, if they left proverbial bread crumb along the way.

Up ahead Sam and Grace had stopped. They stood beside their bikes. They were at the top of a hill. What lay beyond could be anything. It had to be something for them to have stopped. Char and Tony caught up, and pulled on the reins to stop the horses.

“Took you guys long enough,” Sam said.

“What’s up?” Char said, and sat leaning forward, her arm draped over the saddle horn.

“I mean, I could be seeing things, but are those lights? Like, electric lights?” Sam pointed straight ahead.

The road went down the side of the mountain. It was a steep decline that lead to a wide stretching valley. In the distance, toward the center of the valley, was what looked like a town. The town was lit with lights.

“What the hell?” Tony said.

“I see smoke coming from chimneys,” Grace said. “Smell that?”

Char took a whiff of the air. The aroma must have been there all along, but combined with seeing the billowing smoke below she now could smell burning wood. It reminded her of being at Grandma Patty and Papa Phil’s house. They’d light the downstairs fireplace and keep it going most of the winter. She and Cash used to sit close to the bricks and roast marshmallows. He always pulled his out when the marshmallow was blackened and had caught fire. He’d watch the flame dance for a few moments before blowing it out and popping the marshmallow into his mouth. She liked hers toasty brown.

She wanted a marshmallow badly now, and wondered if any had been left behind in the trailer.

“Let’s get off the road. See if we can get a closer look,” Tony said.

“Aren’t they worried about attracting infected, or raiders?” Grace said.

“Could be where Broadhurst is from. We could be walking right to them,” Char said. “I don’t like it. I think we should just get out of here.”

Sam shook his head. “It’s a town, Char. For some odd reason they have power. I mean, look at the lights. Look at all of those lights. I don’t hear gunshots, or screaming. It looks like something out of a picture, or a … ah, what do you call those things you mail?”

There were not that many lights, but what few there were lit the darkness like a beacon.

“Letter?” Grace said.

“No. The stamp goes right on it.”

“It’s called a letter,” Grace said.

“They were cheaper to mail than letters. It was two sided. A picture on one side and you write a short message on the other side. Stamp went on that same side with your message.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Tony said. “Forget it. I say we watch the place for a little while. See if we can tell what’s going on. If it doesn’t look safe, we’re out of here, like Char suggested.”

“I think we should just get out of here now. We don’t know anything about what’s down there.”

“Which is why we watch it. Just over night. In the morning we’ll decide what to do next,” Tony said.

“Postcard,” Sam said.

“What about a postcard?” Char said.

“That’s the word I was trying to remember. The town down there, it reminds me of something you’d see on a postcard.” Sam smiled, and nodded, as if pleased with himself. Grace patted him on the back. It was done mockingly. Sam couldn’t tell the difference.

Char dismounted and led Dispatch to the nearest tree and tied him to a low hanging branch. “I’m going down there. We’re not going to be able to observe anything from this far away. And if you have any plans of going into that town, then I want to know firsthand what’s what. Because, like it or not, Tony, I know what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You want to go into town and check things out.”

He shook his head. “They have electricity. I won’t lie. I’m intrigued.”

“We do fine without it.”

“You’re not going down there alone. If you want to scout things out, take Sam with you,” he said.

Sam held both hands and shook his head. “I didn’t say
I
wanted a closer look.”

The sun had set fast. It was autumn. Dusk came earlier and earlier each day. Walking through the dense forest at night would be dangerous, whether they’d seen a lot of infected recently or not. “Sam, follow me,” she said, and then pointed at Tony. “You and Grace stay hidden. Don’t wander far. I don’t want to have to come looking for you guys when we get back.”

“Don’t be gone long, okay?” Tony said. “Take a look around, get a feel for the place and report back.”

He worried about her. She knew that. “We’ll be careful. But I’m not going to return until we have something worthwhile to report.”

“I still don’t have a weapon.” Sam looked left and right, like something lethal would magically appear for him to use.

“Take one of the assault rifles,” Tony said, referring to the rifles they’d taken off Broadhurst's men.

“Do we want something that loud?” Char said. She handed over the machete. “Here, use this.”

#  #  #

They were already on more of a hiking trail than a road. It snaked down through the forest toward the town. It would be the most direct approach if they just stayed on it and the most obvious if there were posted guards or lookouts. They’d be spotted for sure. For the moment, Char decided to follow the trail until she felt it was no longer safe.

“What? You don’t like the idea of finding a town? They have lights, Char. Lights,” Sam said. They walked side by side. He kept bumping his shoulder into hers. It didn’t seem like it was on purpose. He just appeared preoccupied with straining to see everything around him, and it, for some reason, affected his balance.

“No,” she said, “I don’t.”

“And is there a reason?” Sam said.

“There’s always a reason.” Char and her family had fled Rochester, New York when the apocalypse started. There had been a military rescue. The Coast Guard boated a group of survivors across Lake Ontario up to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. There was an internment camp being utilized like a FEMA and medical research facility. When they docked, they quickly learned the camp had been overrun with infected. It was also where Cash was shot. Brothers with a cabin in the woods helped them, but turned out to be freaks. Things got crazy. She remembered the fire. She’d never forget the flames.

“And the reason?”

“Stop talking,” she said. His chatter started the moment they left Tony and Grace. He did not stop talking. If he wasn’t telling a story, he was asking question. She wasn’t in the mood for answering. The sound of his voice distracted her. The key was to stay focused, alert.

“Think what you want. I don’t see how finding a town could be a bad thing. Wouldn’t it be nice to get back to normal?”

“Normal is over, Sam. The past is gone. If things ever change for the best, it’s decades away. It’s not going to be because we found some small town with power in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. It has to start somewhere, with a town someplace. Why can’t it be a town here, like the one down there?”

Char didn’t have an answer, and hated that Sam’s argument actually made sense. “Can you, please, do me a favor and give it a rest? It’s not asking—”

A tree branch snapped to the right.

Char stopped walking, and threw an arm in front of Sam to hold him still. It was a move not unlike what her father used to do when driving and had to stop the car fast. He’d throw an arm across her when she was in the passenger seat. She’d have a seat belt on, and his arm would not prevent a single injury, but he did it every time.

Sam bent a little lower, arms out in front of him, head swiveling slowly to the left, and around to the right. He looked ridiculous. If the situation weren’t so dangerous, she might have laughed at him.