Family Reunion "J" (22 page)

It may have once been a store as well, abandoned years ago and left for the mice and other small animals. She tried the door; locked. But Jay saw an air conditioner hanging out of the wall on the side of the building. It didn’t take much to pull the unit out, leaving a two-foot-square hole for Jay to wiggle through. Once inside she found a dead cooler, and with painful effort, she pushed it in front of the hole. An old desk sat in the corner with a high-back swivel chair behind it. Jay didn’t even bother to wipe off the years of dust. She just sat down, kicked her feet up, and was asleep before her head hit the dirty headrest.

At some point during the night she heard the automatic rifle fire and got up to investigate. Tearing the newspaper that covered the windows, just enough to peek out, she saw nothing but the deserted highway. She was about to turn away when there was a loud
whump,
and the night sky was awash in beautiful colors. Someone was setting off fireworks.
Why would they be setting off fireworks in the middle of the night? They would attract attention from miles around.
The thought hadn’t even finished in her head when there was another
whump
of a mortared firework. This time it was a beautiful golden one with tendrils of sparkling trailers that made it look like a willow tree in the sky. Then she saw a large pack of crazies coming down the road. This was about to get very interesting.
What if they are signaling someone, and what if it’s to get rid of me?
Whatever the reason, it was too late now—the crazies were showing up from every direction, headed directly for Sparky’s.

The leading edge of the first pack was almost to the store when the entire area became awash in a brilliant light. The perimeter of the property, which covered over an acre of land, lit up. She could see that hundreds of the crazies had converged on the store’s parking lot. Now they turned as one to flee, but only a few at the very back of the pack were far enough away to avoid being caught in the light. The majority of the crazies fell to the ground, writhing in apparent misery. Their shrieks chilled her blood; the sound was overwhelming. Jay clamped her hands over her ears, ducked down, and looked away from the scene unfolding before her. White spots floated in her vision as she closed her eyes.
What the hell?
she thought.

After a minute or two, she could tell the shrieking had stopped. She opened her eyes and tentatively removed her hands from her ears. She stood back up and looked through the peephole in the newspaper. About half the bright lights continued to shine. Two people walked among the bodies of the crazies, poking at them with long sticks of some kind. Then the one closest to her hideout looked directly at her. The man strode across all four lanes of 501 and stood in front of her SUV. “We saw you come in last night. If you are friendly, come across the street tomorrow with no weapons and your hands visible. Any other approach will end with a bullet in your head. Our defenses are as strong against people as they are against those vaccinated and turned. If you don’t want to come over, we understand; you can go on your way unharmed.” With that, he turned and went back to the other person. They appeared to talk while looking in her direction, then went back inside Sparky’s.

Her night vision ruined, she cupped the flashlight in her hand and looked around her retreat for something more comfortable to sleep on than the chair. She hurt in places she hadn’t even known could hurt. She found a bag of some kind of seeds and carried it to the desk. Throwing it down at one end for a pillow, she climbed on top of the desk, stretched out, and was back to sleep in no time.

The glow of the sun coming up lit the room dimly, and as she slowly woke, she had that feeling. The feeling that someone is watching you. She rolled her head to the side to see a mouse standing a few inches away on its hind legs, eating a seed and looking at her. Its head nodded once. “Mornin’ Jay,” she imagined it saying. Back before all this crap happened she probably would have jumped up and grabbed something to smack the little bugger with. Today she just smiled and said, “Morning, mouse.” About this time, one of his many relatives chose the inviting darkness of her high-water baggy pants as the perfect place to explore and ran up her leg. She let out a shriek that would have done one of the crazies proud as she leaped from the desk, beating on her leg with the cast on her right arm. She danced around, cussing like a sailor, frantic to dislodge the unwelcome adventurer. She wasn’t sure how long it was before she succeeded, but she quit beating on herself and pulled the pants down while still dancing a jig. Her pants leg caught on one of her boots and she tripped, falling headlong onto the floor. One pant leg halfway off, the other around her ankle, she continued to swear at the offending rodent. Her swearing abated and she lay on the floor. She wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying, but she finally got past the shock of the incident.

She sat up and her body ached in protest. Every muscle sore, every joint rusty, the chair and the desk had not proven to be the best sleeping arrangement she could have found. Now, besides being extremely sore, she was filthy from rolling around on the dirty floor.
Oh well, waddaya gonna do?
She managed to gain her feet and pull her pants back on. She looked over and Mr. Mouse was still contentedly chewing on a seed. “Prick!” she shouted, and immediately felt bad as the little fella scurried away.

She went to the window and looked out of her spy hole. The bodies of the crazies were all still lying where they fell last night. There was no sign of movement at Sparky’s. She decided they must have been waiting to see what she would do, having given her choices. Jay gathered up her rifle and went to the door. She unlocked the deadbolt and doorknob and pushed. The door caught on something and refused to open. She looked through the crack and saw that, in her exhausted state of mind last night, she had completely missed the hasp with lock on the door.
Crap, now I have to crawl out that damn hole in the wall.
She pulled the door shut and relocked it, why she had no idea, then went and moved the cooler away from her exit hole. When she flopped to the ground in a heap on the other side of the wall, she rolled over to see a pair of boots. She reached for the rifle, but the boot shifted and held the AR where it lay.

“You said I could be on my way,” she stated in an even voice.

“Well, that offer stands, but my dad also said to leave your weapons.”

“You can’t expect me to leave my only means of protection behind.”

“Very carefully, reach down and remove your sidearm with two fingers.” He said this while pointing the business end of a shotgun at her head.

He wasn’t a large man. In fact, she thought she might be able to take him in a fair fight. He was skinny, with chicken legs and the scraggliest beard she’d ever seen. This wasn’t a fair fight though and there was no way she would be able to get clear of that shotgun before he shot her dead.

“Okay, I am doing as you ask. Don’t shoot.”

Once he had control of her weapons, he stepped back a few paces and allowed her to get up. When she stood, she noticed she was also taller than he was.

“Don’t be getting any stupid ideas, lady. I may not be a hulk, but this shotgun is a nice equalizer.”

Jay could tell he was in his early twenties, if that. She was about to try flirting with him to get herself out of her current predicament, but as she opened her mouth, another voice came from the corner of the building.

“What the hell, Gerald? I told you to clean up this mess.” Then seeing both Gerald and Jay as she came around the corner, the speaker frowned. “Dammit Gerald, put down that scattergun. I’m sorry miss, this boy doesn’t have much sense.”

“Mom, she was going to sneak up on us and kill us,” Gerald whined.

“Oh, horseshit son, if you’d been doing what I told you to do you would have been under my watchful eye. When you wandered off around the building, you made me risk coming out in the open to find you. If she would have wanted, she could have stayed in her hidey-hole and shot us both.”

Jay risked speaking at this point. “Look, I wasn’t going to shoot anyone. I planned on leaving without bothering you.”

“I believe you ma’am,” the gray-haired woman answered, “but now that we have disarmed you, I think it would be best if you came over to the store and spoke with my husband. He will want to find out what you’re up to.” She added, “My name is Tami.”

“Really Tami, I have to get down to Surfside Beach. My daughter is there and I need to get to her.”

“Another half an hour isn’t going to make a difference one way or the other, besides… What is your name?”

“Jay, like the letter J.”

“Not like the bird, huh?”

“No, like the letter.”

“Okay Jay, I think my husband can give you some good intel on the area, and he will probably want to know what you have seen coming south.”

Jay gave in, mostly because she wasn’t going to win this argument and she wanted to get her weapons back. She bent to pick up the AR from where it lay in front of her. Gerald raised the shotgun again.

“Gerald, I am going to whoop your ass if you point that thing at her one more time. Now, start dragging these bodies to the burn pit.”

Gerald hesitated, and Tami stomped her foot. He jumped a few inches off the ground, then turned and fled back around the building. Jay once again started bending to retrieve her AR and Glock.

“Jay, no offense, but why don’t you let me put those back in your vehicle for safekeeping while we talk. As stupid as that boy is I can’t have you walking around here armed. He might do something, then you’d have to shoot him, then I’d have to shoot you… you see what I mean?”

Jay didn’t like it, but she acquiesced. Tami picked up her rifle and Glock and they walked back to Jay’s SUV. Several other people came out of Sparky’s and began helping Gerald carry off the crazies.

“How many of you here?” Jay asked as they walked.

“There are about forty-five here, and several families in the vicinity. There’s one couple from West Virginia that got stuck here when all this started.”

They climbed the three steps in front of the restaurant portion of the complex. Tami opened the door and waved Jay in.

Five people sat at one of the tables eating. They all looked up as Jay entered the room.

“Jay?”

Jay stopped in her tracks. Of the five sitting at the table, Jay knew two of them on sight.

Jon and Gwenn Dunwell sat there looking as shocked as Jay did. Jon was one of her husband’s closest friends. They had worked together for seventeen years.

Jay began to cry. She waived her hand in front of her face as if fanning herself, trying to regain her composure. Jon, Gwenn, and Jay were not really close, but just seeing a recognizable face at this point was shocking.

“What in the hell are you doing down here, girl?” was all Jon could manage as he stood up. He stood six foot four with gray hair. The gray wasn’t due to his age; he’d had it since his early forties. He was skinnier than Jay remembered, but she really didn’t see him that often. Occasionally he would stop to pick up Ryan for a golf outing, and they’d all been to parties together, but other than that they were in two separate spheres of Ryan’s world.

“Sorry, it’s just sort of a shock to see someone I know,” Jay said, grabbing a napkin from a nearby table.

“No, I agree, Gwenn and I left the beach the day before the shit hit the fan, been stuck here ever since. Well, stuck isn’t exactly the truth of it. Ben and Tami have been gracious enough to let us stay here until things settle down.” He nodded to one of the other men seated at the table.

“Ben, this is Jay Brant. Her husband and I have been close friends for years. Speaking of that,” he said, turning back to Jay, “where is he? Is he all right? I know he was supposed to go out to the west coast.”

“Hi Ben, good to meet you, and I don’t know if he’s all right, Jon. I haven’t been able to reach him since this all began. He flew out of Charleston the day this all started.”

“Oh crap, I’m sorry,” Jon said, motioning her to have a seat at the table.

Jay sat down and Tami got her a cup of coffee. The hot liquid was the best thing Jay had ever tasted. They even had cream. Jay sipped the coffee and listened to Jon and Gwenn recount their experiences. She in turn answered their questions about the way north. Ben paid close attention when she described the troubles she faced coming south. He asked several questions about the gang in Winston-Salem, and about her encounter with the crazies in the tunnel.

There was a lull in the conversation. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts when Gerald came through the front doors. “Mom, the pump is broken again.”

Tami shook her head and stood. “If it’s not one thing it’s another. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Ben stood and went with her to the front door. They huddled there for a minute before she left. Jay sensed they were talking about her. He returned to the table, sat down, and looked directly at her.

“Jay, there is no good way to tell you this, so I’ll just say it. Things south of here are about as bad as what you have described happening up north. The ‘crazies’ as you call them are more abundant in populated areas at this point in time. However, I do have some things that can help you where they are concerned. In addition, there are several gangs roaming around the countryside looking for targets of opportunity. Now, I am not a male chauvinist, not even close, but anyone, male or female, traveling alone is ripe for these opportunists and what they do to women is unspeakable. I would highly recommend that you stay put here until things cool off.”