Deadlocked 5 (11 page)

We parked beside the covered vehicles outside of the plant's entrance and I hopped out. Stubs barked and ran up and down the metal bed, hopping desperately as I left him. His hind leg had healed nicely over the past few days, and he was very nearly able to jump out of the back of the truck. "Don't worry, buddy. I'm not going to leave you here for the dogs to snatch you up." I reached down and picked him up as Harrison got out of the truck.

The old man looked ashen, devoid of the vigor he'd displayed in the back of the truck earlier. He seemed ready to go into the plant, but then stepped back and leaned against the truck as he scratched at his stubble. He looked at me with a furrowed brow as he asked, "Did you have anything to do with this?"

"With the town?" I asked, surprised that he was only now accusing me as opposed to when I'd first told him, when he still had his shotgun. "No, I promise." As if to prove it, I held his shotgun out for him to take back. He did, but with trepidation, as if untrusting of my motive.

"Ready?" I motioned toward the town's entrance, through the factory.

Harrison shook his head and appeared old and frail, as if the news of Juniper's demise had sickened him. "I don't think so."

I pointed up the hill toward the road where we'd first met. "The spike strip was right up there. It won't take the dogs long to find us here."

"You're right, but I just can't go in there."

"Why?"

He looked at me incredulously, as if I should've known. "I loved the people here. They were my family."

"Sorry to hear that. I just assumed you were a trader or a nomad like me. I didn't know this was your home."

"It's not," he said and then corrected himself. "It wasn't. I just came by here every few months to check in on them." He scratched at his head now, no doubt plagued by the lice that infected most survivors. "They were always good to me. Always took care of me and let me ramble on." Tears formed in his eyes as he spoke and he rubbed them clear after a long inhalation. "Had lots of little kids running around."

"Maybe we shouldn't go in."

He stood up straight and slapped me on the back. "No, we're going in. I'm the closest thing to a preacher they had here, and it's my job to see them off. Are you willing to help?"

"I guess," I said as we went into the plant. "Let me ask you a question first though."

"Shoot."

"Why didn't you kill me back there? Why do you trust me?"

He looked tired when he turned to me. We were standing amid the collapsed army of mannequins that the colony had used as an alarm system. It was dark, despite being before sundown, as the storm clouds continued to roll overhead. Water dripped from the rafters, collecting in pools that swamped the corners of the plant. "Should I not?"

"I'm just asking because I'm the one that popped your tires. Ten minutes ago you were standing in the back of your truck, convinced that I was going to rob you. Why the change of heart?"

"Son, I'm a preacher in a Godless world. If I let sin determine what I thought of folks, I'd be a damned lonely old coot. Besides, I was expecting the Devil to stand up in that field, and you can't be half as bad as that bastard." He smiled, resigned to the thought that this answer fulfilled my curiosity, but it didn't.

"I don't understand."

"The way I figure it, you were just trying to rob a trader. That's a sin, for sure, and you'll have to explain yourself to the big man upstairs one day, but it ain't the worst sin I've seen in just this past week alone. If you were an evil piece of shit, then you would've shot me dead and stole my beans. Seeing as I'm the proud owner of a belly full of beans, I figure you can't be all bad."

"Maybe I just don't like beans."

He looked at me as if preparing a rebuttal, but then broke into a wide grin and started to laugh. "That could be true, kid. That could be true. Now come help this God-fearing bean-lover pay his final respects to people who deserve better." He walked past the stack of pallets and headed for the iron gate that barred the entrance to the colony. Then he stopped and turned, as if intrigued by the stack of wooden cargo. He walked over to it and grimaced as he looked it up and down.

"What's the matter?"

"They got a smaller shipment than normal."

"Do you know who they were trading with?"

He nodded but didn't look back at me as he counted the pallets.

"Was one of them named Scott? Jerald Scott?"

Harrison shrugged and then finally turned back to me. "Not that I know of. The traders and I don't get along all that well, so I never dealt much with them. Why?"

"No reason. I'm just trying to find someone by that name and I heard he might be traveling with a group of traders out this way."

Harrison squinted as he eyed me. "No reason, huh? A nomad shows up in the middle of nowhere on a mission to find a man no matter what the cost, and it's for no reason? Sure thing, Chinaman. Sure thing. I didn't live this long by asking too many questions of people that didn't want to talk about it. Know what I mean?"

The old man had a habit of blathering on, so I merely nodded and pointed at the door to Juniper. "Ready?"

"Not at all, but I don't think I'd be ready for this if we stood here for ten more years. Let's get it over with."

I tried to warn Harrison what was waiting for us inside, but nothing I could've said would prepare him for what we found. The family that committed suicide was only the beginning of the tragedy. Many of the yurts hid similar scenes. We found several suicides, but we also discovered multiple people chained to posts, apparent victims of the virus. They were all dead, and I assumed the virus had enough time to burst their internal organs like it had the Popper in my kitchen.

The smell was overwhelming, and I pleaded with Harrison to leave. He'd hoped to give the townsfolk a proper burial, but the magnitude of the tragedy made that impossible. We stopped searching the yurts after the fourth time we found a dead family, and I expected us to head back to the entrance to get away from the stench and the buzzing flies.

Harrison continued forward and I grabbed the crook of his arm to stop him. "Let's go. There's nothing left here."

He pulled his arm away and continued walking.

"What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find out here?"

"How did this happen?" He turned to me and I could see pain in his tortured expression. "Who did this?"

"I don't know. They caught the disease somehow."

"I haven't seen anything like this in over a decade."

"No one's building towns anymore. They all end up like this." I pointed my Glock at the various yurts surrounding us.

"Not like this, though. This is different. These people weren't attacked by Greys, they were infected and they knew it. They tied themselves up or shot themselves once they knew they were infected. This happened quickly. They all got infected at the same time. How did that happen? It don't seem right."

The odor of the rotting corpses and the din of buzzing flies made this a terrible place to argue. "I know, but there's no point in looking through all of these tents. Let's grab what we need and get out of here."

He glared at me. "Grab what we need? We're not taking anything from here. Have some fucking decency."

"Then what are we doing? We can't bury them, and if we burn them we'll attract every damn Grey
within ten miles. Why are we wasting time here?"

He couldn't answer, and his inability to come up with a reason caused his posture to weaken. Harrison looked utterly defeated, a shabby old man with a heart filled with pain, and he started to cry. "I knew these people. I held their babies, and helped them build these homes. I ate with them, and sang at their festivals. I stood over here," he walked toward one of the nearby yurts, "and waited with little Billy Marks while his mother gave birth to his little sister in this house." He pointed at the cloth door of the yurt. His voice was low and fractured by sobs. "These were my friends."

"I'm sorry, Harrison. I really am, but this is why no one tries to build towns anymore. If the Greys don't get them, something else will. This is the first town I've seen in years. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did."

Harrison suddenly stared at me, as if he had come to a realization that he wasn't sharing.

"What is it?" I asked.

"How did you know Juniper was here?"

"I didn't. I was waiting for the trade caravan to come through. Stubs came out of here, and I haven't seen a breed of dog like him since the virus got out. That's how I figured out this place was here."

Harrison blinked rapidly and then rubbed the tears out of his eyes as he looked around. "They did everything right. They avoided electricity and rarely lit fires. They had the place set up to keep the Greys out."

"They were taken out by the virus," I said. "I've seen the same thing all across the country."

He seemed suddenly panicked. His eyes widened and he rushed back toward the front of Juniper.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Where are you going?"

"The traders."

"What?"

He ignored my question and continued to run toward Juniper's entrance. He didn't notice the sack of supplies I'd set beside the moat, and I was relieved to not have to explain myself for that. We crossed the bridge and entered the industrial plant that contained the fallen mannequins. "Here," he said as he reached the
pallets. "The traders poisoned them."

"What?"

"I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the traders sold them tainted food. It's the only thing that could’ve caused this. That's how the virus got into the town."

It made sense. The man I was chasing, who was last seen traveling with traders in this area, was one of the people responsible for the spread of the disease twenty years ago. I hadn't given much thought to why he was traveling with a group of traders, but perhaps it was so he could deliver a strain of the virus to an unsuspecting population.

"Okay." I nodded as I thought about what happened. "The guy I'm chasing had something to do with the spread of the virus back in the beginning." I glanced back out at Juniper as I started to piece things together. "Maybe he's finishing the job."

"We've got to go." Harrison rushed to the parking lot with me following behind.

"Where are we going?"

"There's another town, a little ways south of here. It's on the same trade route. We need to get there before it's too late."

"Harrison, wait," I called out to him as he got to one of the parked, covered cars. "This place has been dead for a week or two. If you're right, and these traders are selling poisoned food, then they've probably already delivered it to the next town."

Harrison flipped up the plastic tarp over one of the cars and then turned to me. "The traders stop at each town for several days at a time. I had a friend here in Juniper that used to hop up into the trucks and steal stuff while the traders were in the town. She used to hide the stuff in the trunks of the cars in the parking lot until they left, which could sometimes take up to a week.
She used to complain all the time about how long they would stay in town, because the stuff she stole would sit and rot when they stayed longer than usual. I bet if we hurry up, we can get on down to the next town before they leave."

"I just want to be careful. I don't want to walk into a trap."

"I thought you wanted to find that caravan. Are you saying you don't want to come with me?" asked Harrison.

"It's not that. I just want to make sure you know what we're getting ourselves into."

"What're you talking about?"

"If they delivered the poison already, then we might be walking into a place that's full of Poppers. And if they're still there, they might not take too kindly to us showing up and accusing them of poisoning this town."

"I've been to hell and back, kid," said Harrison with a wink. His expression might've been one of courage and bravado, but it came off as crazy to me. "I doubt the world's got anything left in it that's worse than that. Let's go."

Harrison retrieved a backpack and a guitar case from his truck and set them down beside the car he'd uncovered. He pulled out a hammer, a multi-purpose screwdriver, and a wire cutter, the classic tools of a car thief. Knowing how to hotwire a car was one of several necessary abilities for a survivor, and Harrison looked like he knew what he was doing.

"Want me to break the window?"

He shook his head as he pulled out a long, thin metal rod. "No, there're too many damn bugs out here to go driving around with the windows busted out. I've got one of these." He got up and slipped the thin rod down between the car door and the window until, surprisingly fast, he popped the lock.

Harrison wasted no time getting the car started. It was an early century sedan, which meant it was impossible to get started by simply jamming a screwdriver into the keyhole and turning it, unlike many of the cars built before the early 1990's. This car required Harrison to break open the steering column and work on the wires. He cut and stripped the power wires first, then tied them together to get the power to turn on. The lights on the dash sprung to life and he looked back at me with a wide, goofy grin. "When was the last time you met a preacher that knew how to do this?"