Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (33 page)

“How did you and my uncle afford this?”

Walter smiled and shook his head. “Eric, your uncle
retired as a full colonel from the Air Force. He was also a very shrewd man
when it came to investing. I’ve got the marina, and although it may not look
like it, I do pretty well for myself . . . at least now. When you put us both
together, well, as Andy always said, ‘copper wire was invented when he and I
found the same penny.’”

Eric turned back to look at the matte black,
parkerized finish on the shotgun. “Why did you give this to me now?”

“Andy showed me some of the videos of you competing.
We noticed that most of the guys who beat you are running this type of
platform. Now of course, you’ll have to get used to the feel, but we’d both
want you to have every advantage possible if you ever compete again, and of
course, at Ravenwood. Now go get some sleep.” Walter eased up off the couch and
headed towards the stairs.

“Wait a minute. I want to ask you something.”

Walter stopped with one foot on the bottom stair, but
didn’t turn around.

“Yeah?”

“The first night when we all got together and played
cards in your office . . .”

“Uh-huh.”

“After we were done, Michelle and I walked out to the
parking lot.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“When I was out there, through the window it look like
my uncle handed you some money. Was it for this gun?”

Still facing the stairs, Walter gave an amused snort
before answering. “Eric, your uncle was many things in his life, and even
though he was a ‘hard as nails, career military, north country redneck,’ there
was something else that made up a large part of his soul.” He turned just
enough to point a gnarled finger at the M2. “Andy was generous to a fault. When
I fell on hard times with the marina about fifteen years ago, your uncle loaned
me the money when none of the banks would. No interest, no fees, not even a
timetable of when to pay it back. Just a handshake and a blank check. Through
the years I’ve watched him give money to everything from homeless people to dog
shelters. About the only thing he was ever uncompromising on was you. He didn’t
want you to grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth. With you, he invested
something much more important . . . his time.” Walter turned back upstairs and
took another creaky step.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The footsteps stopped, and Walter’s voice, softer this
time, drifted out of the stairway. “Your uncle handed me almost $5,000.00 in
cash. It wasn’t for the gun—that had already been paid for. Andy just wanted to
make sure that anybody who didn’t have money wouldn’t be turned away.”

Eric listened as the footsteps receded up the
stairwell.

The door to the basement opened and Michelle walked
through. The look on her face was unreadable as she slid over and perched on
the edge of the coffee table, facing Eric. She said nothing for a moment as her
eyes searched deep into his. Finally, with a slight nod toward the garage, she
said, “Emily is sleeping.”

“That’s good.”

“We talked a little bit.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Eric gave a guarded, noncommittal reply.

“Would you like some company when you go visit Max?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“OK, let’s go.”

They walked silently up the slope and past the chicken
house, finally ending at the undersized cement pad that butted up against the
side entrance. Eric fumbled momentarily as he tried to locate the correct key,
but at last managed to open the lock. Max stood about ten feet away, off to the
left of their improvised hay bale circle. He looked fine so far, and they
entered the tractor shed, locking the door behind them.

Several moments of chest thumping and tummy rubbing
with Max followed, and then Eric re-stacked the bales into a tight fitting
rectangle slightly larger than a piece of plywood.

“Are you good with a queen sized bed, or do I need to
add more hay and make it a king?”

Michelle’s face gave the first indication of a smile
since she had visited with Emily. “Queen is fine.”

He returned her smile before opening a door that led
into a small room. Formally used for tack when Walters’s daughters had kept
horses, it now held shelves of clear plastic tubs filled with infrequently used
items. The contents of each box were labeled in Walter’s neat script, and Eric
pulled down one filled with blankets. He removed several old, military issue wool
blankets, shook them out and laid them across the hay bed. A return trip
thickened that layer. His third venture into the tack room brought out a final
wool blanket for Max, and an oversized quilt that still smelled faintly like a
horse.

Eric stood—arms crossed—and admired his handiwork. A
look of dissatisfaction showed on his face almost immediately. “Something’s
missing.”

Michelle turned her eyes toward the makeshift bed.
“Us?”

“Yeah, but something else, also.” He studied the scene
momentarily before nodding his head and giving a theatrical, “a-ha.”

Gesturing toward Michelle, he attempted a ridiculous
French accent. “Ah, zis fine bed-a-room suite, she comes complete with ze
lux-your-ious feather a-mattress, and . . .” Eric moved two additional hay
bales to each side of the bed, “a set of Louie ze fourteenth nightstands.”

Michelle giggled at his dramatic display before
adding, “I’ll take it.”

Their radios, flashlights, and handguns were arranged
for easy access on the improvised nightstands, and a moment later they were
lying side by side under the quilt. Stillness drifted down as they settled in,
broken only momentarily by the faint scrabbling of a mouse somewhere beyond the
tractor.

Michelle was the first to whisper. “She’s beautiful.”

“Who?”

“You know who I’m talking about. Any girl that can
spend twenty-four hours in a hospital bed and still look cute is the enemy to
women everywhere.”

“She has nothing on you. As a matter of fact, I told
her the same thing.”

Michelle stared at the ceiling. “I know. We talked a
little more. I want to hate her, Eric . . . or at least, I want to not like
her, but I can’t, especially since she saved my life.” She shifted under the
quilt and rolled on her side to look at Eric. “I need to know something. For
real.”

Even in the dim light that drifted through the small
windows, Eric could see a flash of green from Michelle’s eyes. “What?”

Her hand slid underneath the quilt and unzipped his
jacket. A scant moment later, her fingers had moved underneath his shirt and
rested on his chest. “I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me, Eric.”

“I haven’t . . . ever.”

“Then don’t lie to me now. What you said back in
Walter’s office . . . do you mean that for real,” her hand pressed in to his
chest, “in here.”

Surprisingly, the long anticipated butterflies in his
stomach had disappeared. In their place was stillness; as if every fiber of his
being, every individual molecule, was holding its breath. His hand clasped over
top of hers, and he held it there as he turned to face her.

“Michelle, for as long as I can remember, I’ve thought
about this moment. About what I’d say and how I’d say it if I ever got the
chance, or nerve. I had speeches planned, and fantasies about romantic dinners
or sunsets on the beach.”

“Answer my question.”

“You’ve always been my friend . . . my only real
friend. I’ve spent my life jumping from one empty relationship to another, or
throwing myself into so much work that I didn’t have time to think about
anything else. And yet you’ve always been there for me, and I’ve always been
afraid that one day I’d wake up and you’d be gone. That our friendship would be
over. And I don’t think I could take that.”

“Answer my question, please,” she whispered.

His other hand slid across the blankets and tangled in
her hair, drawing her close as he gazed into her eyes. “I have never loved
anybody else. It’s always been you.”

Her body, held rigid under tension as she awaited his
answer, uncoiled and flowed around his. Her arms encircled and squeezed tight,
locking herself against him as they each breathed the air of a new realization
. . . a new hope.

Off in the distance, the muted
crack
of a rifle
shot sounded. It was quickly followed by a radio announcement from the crow’s
nest that they had taken down another ghoul.

Underneath the quilt, Michelle wrapped herself against
Eric and closed her eyes, drifting off into a deep, contented slumber. Eric’s
eyes closed and he followed her down.

Boom. Boom-boom-boom-boom
. The last target shredded into confetti and Eric
spun, dropped his hand to the shell caddy and pulled up four more 12 gauge
rounds. Two seconds later, they had been inserted into the Benelli’s feed gate
and his hand dropped to grab another quadruple reload. With fingers blurring,
they soon followed into the M2’s extended magazine tube. Twisting to the left
as he marched forward, the gun thundered again eight times in a row. Each
explosion corresponded with a number 10 tin can blasting off an arrangement of
unsplit logs destined for the woodshed. To his right, Eric could clearly hear
Michelle calling out targets as she fired her AR-15. To his left and slightly
behind, the rumble of Sam’s pump shotgun changed into a rapid fire series of
bangs
as he switched to his SIG 45.

“Clear,” Sam yelled.

“Reloading,” Eric and Michelle echoed each other as
they fed more ammunition into their weapons. As soon as they finished, the
muzzles of both Eric’s M2 and Michelle’s AR searched for new targets.

“Clear,” Michelle shouted.

“Clear,” Eric echoed a millisecond later.

An audible beep sounded, and Walter called out,
“Time.”

They lowered their weapons after engaging the
safeties, and the four of them gathered next to the weathered shooting bench
behind Walters’s house.

Eric removed a pair of dark green, electronic ear
protectors, unplugged the microphone jack, and set them on the bench. Sam and
Michelle copied.

“Much better. I can still hear and my head isn’t
rocking.”

“The
throat
microphones worked pretty well also. I heard everything you said with no
problem,” Michelle added.

Sam grunted in agreement. “I like the fact that you
can adjust these earmuffs to also pick up normal sounds, and you still won’t
get deafened if you get into a firefight.”

“That’s what they’re made for. By the way,” Walter
replied, “your time was much better. Any issues with the guns? Failure to fire
. . . Failure to eject or extract?”

“Nope.”

“OK, do you want to run through it again?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost 7:30 AM. Breakfast is at 8:00 AM.”

Eric sighed, “We don’t have time. We’ve got to meet
with Ray and convince him to stay for a few more hours.” He looked at Sam and
Michelle, “I want to see Mike and Callie run the boat again, and then we’ve got
to go. Speaking of time, does anybody have a watch I can borrow?”

It was almost 9:00 AM when breakfast was finally
served. Bernice had decided to distribute the food and supplies first. As each
person came to the front of the makeshift line, Rebecca checked them off a
list, and then wrote their name in permanent marker on the outside of each zip
lock bag. Buckets were summarily filled with water, and also labeled with the
owner’s name.

The last bite of a rice, egg, and salsa mixture—mostly
rice though—left Eric’s plate on the plastic spoon. A huge glob of salsa—obviously
following a secret commandment issued by the laundry detergent illuminati—had
totally missed the dark burgundy fabric that covered the majority of his Dr.
Pepper tee-shirt. Instead, through some arcane process known only to a select
few mystics living in caves in the Himalayas, the chunky red and green slush
had headed directly for the white lettering. Of course.

Amy approached with her plate extended. “Want some
more?”

The hollow spot in his stomach voted ‘yes’ at the same
time as he shook his head. “No, thank you.” Glancing down at the mess on his
shirt, he added, “I don’t think we have enough napkins left for me to be around
food.”

She offered a tired smile, and then her face turned
somber. “I meant what I said last night, so please don’t put yourself in any
danger trying to find my parents.”

He gave a slow nod. “I understand. What’s the word
from down here?”

Amy snorted as she answered, “I wouldn’t have thought
it, but Diane seems to have really lit a fire under the people who are heading
to the shelter. She’s got the fuel distributed, the vehicles lined up, and
apparently, a direct line to Ray.”

Eric’s questioning look prodded for more. “I don’t
know,” she continued, “it just seems like they’re hitting it off pretty well.
Or maybe they’re just using each other. I can’t really tell. In any event,
Diane has somehow ended up with a radio. And the interesting thing,” Amy leaned
closer, “is that it’s not one of ours, it’s not one of the firemen’s . . . it’s
apparently a separate system. Guess who has the other one.”

“Ray.”

“Yep.” Her eyes dodged away for a split second. “And
speaking of . . .”

Eric turned to meet the approaching paramedic. “Mr.
Ingram.”

“Mr. Coleman.”

The look on Ray’s face was still unreadable. “Thank
you for breakfast. Are you about ready to go?”

“Yeah, and thank you for agreeing to wait even longer
then you had planned.”

“We’ll hold out here until 1:00 PM. After that,
whether we hear from you or not, we’re heading to Richland.”

Eric glanced at his watch. Actually, it was his
uncle’s watch. Walter had given him a choice between this one and a pink,
plastic banded model with a fluffy cat’s face and tiny white gloves on the ends
of the sweep hands. He’d gone with his uncle’s dive watch.

“That’ll work. If we don’t know something by then,
that means something has gone wrong.”

Eric turned away from Ray and yelled for the crowd’s
attention. Most of them had already been waiting, and the rest settled almost
immediately.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting ready to head to
the campground. I don’t know what we’ll find there, but I promise that we’ll do
our best. Please remember what we talked about this morning. First and
foremost, stay inside this building. We don’t know what we may flush out from
the campground, and our guards here can’t afford the time to ask for ID. Don’t
put them in that position. Don’t put yourself in that position.” He let that
sink in for a second.

“Secondly, Mr. Ingram is departing for shelter Yellow
at 1:00 PM. Those of you that are leaving, we wish you good luck and safety.
Please remember what we said about this not being a revolving door.”

The glass door to the parking lot opened and Michelle
stepped through, tapped her watch, and tilted her head toward the outside.

“Finally,” Eric finished, “some of you have asked if
you’ll be able to follow us on the radio while we’re in Ravenwood. The answer
is ‘no,’ you won’t be able to directly monitor our progress due to the lack of
radios available that work with our hands free microphones. However, Dave
Fischer . . . the preacher,” he added for clarity, “will have a GMRS radio down
here, and Mr. Sheldon will provide whatever updates he can relay.” Eric looked
around the room and tried to meet as many eyes as possible. “Wish us luck—and
we’ll take as many prayers as we can get.”

A final glance around the inside of the room brought a
smile to Eric’s face. In the corner next to the divider curtain stood BB. His
right hand was cocked in a classic army salute, and his left hand flashed a
blatant ‘thumbs up’ good luck sign. Eric returned a quick salute and headed out
the door.

His truck was already warmed up and running, so he
hopped in the driver’s seat and shut the door. Michelle sat on the passenger
side rubbing her hands in front of the heater vent.

“A bit chilly this morning.”

“Just a bit.”

He dropped the truck into gear and pulled across the
lot, crunching the gravel under the tires momentarily before transitioning to
the cement incline of the boat ramp. Walter’s Kubota tractor was down there, as
well as Michelle’s Explorer. Both were running. A hard cut of the wheel took
him into the mixture of gravel, river rock, and broken chunks of concrete that
lined the edges of the ramp. He shifted the pickup into park, turned it off, and
stepped outside. Michelle followed.

“You’re late,” Sam commented, as he leaned against the
fender of a five by ten foot utility trailer that was attached to the tow hitch
of the Explorer.

“I went back for seconds. After the rice was gone,
they fired up the griddle and made a pile of French toast, bacon, sausage, and
biscuits. There was so much I hardly had room for the lobster tails they cooked
for dessert.”

Sam showed his gap toothed grin. “You eat lobster?
That’s like shoving a big ol’ spider into your mouth.”

“I love lobster,” Callie chipped in as she approached
with Crowbar Mike. A moment later, Walter and Scott joined their circle.

“Ready?” Eric announced to no one in particular.

Heads nodded, and Walter spoke first. “I believe we’re
about as ready as we can be. Thompson is up in the crow’s nest as our primary
shooter, and he’s got Rebecca up there with him as a spotter. Bernice, Doc, Bucky,
Leonard, and Glenda are up at the house resting, but they’ll be on call if we
need ‘em. Preacher Dave is up at the store. I think Amy is up there with him.”

“She is,” Michelle offered with a flip of her hair,
tucking the loose waves under her Fish and Wildlife hat.

Walter turned around and thumped Scott between the
shoulder blades. “I’ve got my personal bodyguard here, just in case the bad
guys show up.”

Scott hefted the Remington shotgun, but said nothing.

Turning his nose towards the lake, he continued, “Both
of the boats are full of gas.”

Eric looked past the orange tractor to the surface of
Ghost Echo Lake. Bobbing in the slightly choppy water was a sixteen foot, semi-V
bass boat. On its stern sat a twenty-five horsepower outboard motor—currently
tilted up and locked in a transport position. A thick yellow line draped from
the front of the craft before snaking across the water toward the ramp. The
other end of the floating rope was attached to the hard point of a twenty-two
foot, metallic charcoal ski boat that nosed up in the soft mud and reeds.

“Remember,” Eric said as he looked at Callie and Mike,
“that ski boat is fast. If you run flat out across the lake, you’ll be at the
campground long before we will. Take your time and stay in radio contact. When
you get there, stay at least a hundred feet offshore. I’d also start the motor
on the bass boat once you’re at the other side. Just let it run. We may not
need it to ferry passengers, but if we do, I’d rather not have to worry about
the motor not running.”

“It’ll run,” Walter interjected.

“I hope so. Speaking of running, I took Max for a
little jog early this morning. He’s down in your office—the room with the
picnic table. He’s got food and water, but he’s acting a little pissed off.”

Walters’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Don’t worry, he’s not sick. He’s just tired of being
cooped up all the time.” He took a moment to scan around the parking lot. “Be
on your guard.” His eyes shifted toward the fire truck and rescue vehicle, both
of which sat in front of the line of RVs and cars. “I’ve already told Thompson
not to pull any punches.”

“Everybody powered up and on the same frequency?” Sam
asked as he clicked on his radio.

“Freshly charged batteries all around,” Walter
replied, “anything else?”

“Not that I can think of right now.”

“You’ll probably remember something once you get to
the campground.”

Michelle turned to Walter, “Don’t jinx us.”

Another few seconds of hushed introspection settled
over them, but no one spoke.

“Alright, let’s do this.” Eric smiled as he tossed his
truck keys to Walter, “Try to keep it dry.”

Walter scowled deeply as he looked past the raised
bucket on the Kubota. Still visible was the top six inches of his submerged
pickup.

Sam hopped in behind the wheel of the Explorer, and
Michelle and Eric took their positions in the second seat. Thirty seconds
later, they had maneuvered out of the marina and turned east on highway 704,
accelerating toward Ravenwood campground.