Behind Our Walls (9 page)

Sophie bent down and kissed her on the forehead. Corrine reached up and hugged her neck fiercely, pulling the two of them together.

"We need each other," Sophie said and could feel Corrine nodding against her neck.

It was the closest that she ever remembered feeling to her sister. Even before the end of the world, she could still identify an undercurrent of resentment that she directed at Corrine. Their parents both worked in demanding fields and had not been expecting another child. Sophie had given up so much in order to help with Corrine that she never really got to have a life of her own.

All of that was different now. She needed to leave all of it behind and it was the moment of forgiveness between them that finally gave her the strength to do that. Corrine smiled and nodded, as if she had shared the unspoken thought as well.

From outside the tent, she began to hear the noise of people running, yelling at each other in panicked voices, calling out with indistinct commands and questions.

"Hold on, I'll check," Sophie said as she stood and retreated to the entrance to the tent. Rowen stood there, looking concerned but Lot was gone. She thought she spotted him off by one of the RVs.

"What's going on?" Sophie asked but as soon as she voiced the question, she heard it. The noise rolled down at them from the hills above, from the town where the group had just been ambushed. It was a sound that sent a chill all the way down to her toes as she tried to take in a breath and steady herself.

The sound of all terrain vehicles.

-21-

Sophie was again amazed at the sheer speed at which everyone could move if the need arose. She had turned her back for less than a minute, but the tent had already been broken down and two people were helping Corrine to her feet and guiding her towards the RV.

"Go!" Rowen called out. "We'll take care of everything else. You need to stay with your sister."

Sophie wanted to argue, but she had to admit that it was where she wanted to be. She nodded her thanks and chased after Corrine, taking over for her helpers and walked her up the stairs.

"It's going to be all right," she said as she pulled a light blanket over Corrine. Her sister nodded, with a sleepy expression on her face and already halfway to passing out. Sophie stroked a hand along her cheek and smoothed out Corrine's hair until she was breathing deeply, oblivious to anything going on around them.

It was probably for the best. Sophie reached over and pulled open the blind on the nearby window. She could see two ATV's break out from the tree-line, just as they started to roll out. One of the bikes had two men on it and the other sported just the one driver. Sophie swiveled around in her seat and looked out the over-sized rear window to see them pulling out onto the road and speeding up to take pursuit.

Rowen and Lot walked along the center aisle, Lot pointing at something underneath one of the bench seats. Lot pulled out a long lock box and reached in for a rifle with an elaborate scope, hefting it against his shoulder. She was about to protest when she heard popping sounds coming from the outside. There were dull impacts against the body of the RV from the gunfire.

"Let's go!" Lot yelled, and Sophie saw that Clive had appeared, now holding a stool. He braced himself against the seats, as the RV jostled from side to side. Whoever was driving sped up even more, and Sophie fell over on top of Corrine who thankfully had not woken, other than to slap lightly at Sophie and mutter something unintelligible. Clive placed the stool on the floor, and knelt down to keep it stable. Lot climbed it and reached up to slide open the canopy above them.

As he was doing this, Rowen dropped his pack to the floor and reached in for his pistol before running to the back window. He pulled it open to take aim and one of the men on the ATV pointed and raised their gun up.

Sophie heard more gunfire, this time from above, and looked up to see Lot, reeling back slightly from the force of his shots. She turned back to the ATV's in time to see one of the driver's heads snap back and go limp. The vehicle swerved to the side and rolled, throwing both passengers violently to the ground.

Rowen ducked as several shots hit the back of the RV, then raised back up again to return fire. He hit the other driver in the shoulder, causing the ATV to slow and turn slightly. She heard Lot fire from above and saw an explosion of blood and matter from the back of the driver's head before his bike turned sharply and flipped, rolling and crashing to a halt.

Sophie detected no movement from the rovers as the wreckage grew smaller in the window.

"All right, stop!" Lot called ahead to the driver, who reached down to honk and flash their lights at the other vehicle before slowing to a stop. Lot jumped out of the RV and everyone stood up gradually, to follow. Sophie bent down to kiss Corrine's forehead and saw that she was awake. She smiled at Sophie and nodded.

"I'll be all right. Go ahead."

Sophie walked out to survey the damage. Lot paced slowly around the RV, taking it in for himself. He did several laps around the vehicle before making his pronouncement.

"I think it's okay. Just body damage."

"So what now?" Clive asked.

Lot looked back at the wrecked ATV's. "Well, they aren't going to be a problem. But I'm sure there are going to be more of those assholes back there, and before long they're going to come looking to see what happened. We can't have more of these guys on our tail like this. I hate wasting the gas and I don't think we can get very far, but I think we need to use what we have."

There seemed to be general agreement as they turned back, eager to put some distance between themselves and the carnage they had left. But before anyone could move, they all heard the sound coming from up the road, the direction where they had just been headed. It was the sound of several large vehicles coming from around the bend. They were just about to make the turn and come into sight. Sophie noticed how dry her mouth had suddenly become and saw her fear reflected in the faces of the others around her.

There was no time to get away.

-22-

Sophie expected to see a small squad of tanks coming around the bend, psychotic idiots hanging off of it and waving their guns around at anyone they could get the chance to shoot at. What she saw instead took her breath away.

Two school busses.

Lot and Rowen seemed equally taken aback as the vehicles rumbled to a stop about a hundred feet away. The two of them raised their guns as the doors opened and a woman who looked to be in her early fifties stepped out.

"Whoa there," she yelled, hands raised as she slowly approached. "Take it easy fellas, you've got no trouble from us."

"Who the hell are you?" Lot asked.

"The name's Meredith. I'd shake your hand but I'm guessing you wouldn't want me to get close enough for that."

She stopped, about thirty feet from them, but Lot kept his rifle trained on her. Sophie looked past Meredith, at the busses and saw the people looking out at them, pressed up against the windows. It was hard to see them clearly through the dirt and grime, but what she could see made her heart ache. It looked like desperation, brought to life. She had a hard time imagining any kind of a threat coming from a group like this, but obviously they had to be careful. Lot didn't look like he was about to give in.

"Where are you coming from? We just got ambushed back there, so it seems like a pretty big coincidence that you would just show up like this."

"Yeah it is, but I don't know anything about what happened. I don't really expect your trust, but I'm just trying to keep all these people safe."

Lot kept the hard expression on his face, but he lowered the rifle. Rowen did the same and relaxed his stance somewhat. Meredith took it as an invitation to come a little closer.

"Are your people all right" she asked. "Anyone hurt? We've got a few ER docs in our group."

Lot shook his head. "We're fine. Mostly it was the RV that got it." He nodded back at the vehicle, and Meredith looked over their shoulders, taking in the bullet holes and nodded.

"That's good. You got lucky."

"Yeah."

"So can I ask what your names are?" Meredith asked.

Lot paused before answering, still not looking ready to be hospitable. "I'm Lot. This is Rowen, Sophie and Clive."

Rowen reached out and Meredith came forward to shake his hand. "Look," she said, "we're all strangers here, but I'm willing to bet that my people are just as shit-scared of you all as you are of us. Truth is, we're gettin' pretty close to the end of our rope and I don't think we have that many choices left. So I'm just going to take a leap here. You seem like people who look out for each other, and not the other kind, so we'll take the first step and see if maybe everyone can feel better about things."

She turned to the busses and waved them out. Slowly, her people came down, lining up for them all to see. Sophie marveled at how many of them there were. She had thought Lot's group was large, but there were at least twice as many people here. And they really did look to be on their last legs. Most seemed to sway, as if a stiff breeze could have knocked them down. It didn't look like they had been eating very well. In truth, they looked like they would have a hard time working up the energy to walk, let alone fight.

Sophie immediately saw the look of stricken pity on Lot's face at the sight of so many people. After a few moments, he shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't mean to treat you so badly. We just have to be careful."

Meredith nodded. "Understood. So where were you all headed?"

Lot shrugged. "We were just trying to get a little more distance, in case those idiots from back there have friends around."

"Would you have any objections to us tagging along?"

Lot considered this for a few moments before a tiny smile formed on his lips. "Sure. Why don't you get those busses turned around, and we can head out of here."

-23-

They drove for an hour and turned off onto a side road, down the gravel for a few miles before pulling off. Everyone unloaded and started introducing each other, getting acquainted in a group that had just gone from large to massive. Before too long, it sounded like a high school cafeteria. The din of combined conversations filled Sophie's head, and she reveled in the brief moment of normalcy. She looked back and saw that Corrine was being helped over to her.

Meredith, Lot and Rowen came together again to resume their conversation. Sophie happened to be standing nearby and shifted slightly closer, so as to listen in. Lot noticed her moving towards them and showed no sign of caring.

"So how's your gas doing?" Meredith asked.

"Pretty low. We just lost a few people scouting around for more."

She nodded, and Sophie could hear the regret in her voice. "Sorry to hear that. We've been pretty lucky ourselves, but it's definitely getting harder to keep these busses moving."

"I know," Lot said. "The problem is that we've never really found anywhere we can stay put for longer than a few days. We're going to run out of fuel eventually, I just wish I had a better idea of what we should do before that happens. There has to be somewhere we can go, but I've got no idea where."

"Well, there might be a place." Meredith had a slight twinkle to her eye as she said it, as if sharing an inside joke. "One of my people had the idea a few weeks ago and at first, I thought she was crazy. But the worse things get, I'm pretty much ready to try anything. And if it means we can find somewhere permanent and knock off this bouncing around shit, I'm all for it. The only reason I haven't suggested it is that our people here are so wasted. I just don't think they'd be up to it, but with your group to help, it might actually work."

"What exactly are you talking about?" Lot asked.

"A place we could go where we would all be safe and hidden away from everything."

"Sounds great," Rowen said. "Hard to believe something like that actually exists though. Rovers and scavengers are all over the place, and that's always going to be a threat. As much as people are picking things over for themselves, it's hard to imagine that there's much left for the rest of us."

"I know. I didn't think it was worth trying either." Meredith pulled a map out of her pocket and unfolded it, nodding at the two of them to lean in close so she could point out where they were. With Lot and Rowen's backs turned to her, Sophie could no longer hear what was being said, but she could see their reaction clearly enough.

"Really?" Lot asked. "You really think that would work?"

"I've got an engineer in my group," Meredith said as she nodded towards the mass of intermingling people. "Daniel is his name. He thinks we'd be able to seal the place off without too much trouble, so long as we had a few weeks without anyone bothering us."

"And what are the odds of that?" Lot asked.

"It's a long shot, I won't deny that, but if it pans out this could potentially be pretty great for us."

"Us?" Rowen asked.

Meredith looked up at him and smiled. "You know Rowen, after all this time hacking our way through some of the worst shit I could have imagined, I'm pretty tired of losing people. I'm tired of constantly busting our asses to make it work in a particular place and then all of a sudden, we got to move somewhere else. So what do you say about all of us trying to work it out together? The more strong backs we have, the more likely this whole plan is going to work."