Family Reunion "J" (24 page)

“You just have to be smart enough not to let them see you.”

No matter what she said, he had a well-reasoned response that stumped her. His final words on the subject were telling.

“If it comes down to it, and someone wants to kill me, my having a gun isn’t going to stop them.” She shook her head, not able to understand his logic.

They discussed everything that happened, the flu, the vaccine, and everyone going crazy. Auddy knew Jimmy came from a rough background. His dad traveled a lot when he was young so he rarely ever saw him. Then his sister committed suicide, which he believed lead to his dad’s passing. Jimmy became an alcoholic shortly after that and wound up in jail. Eventually his mother committed suicide on his birthday. It was then that he turned his life around and began trying to help people who found themselves addicted to alcohol or anything else for that matter. He told Auddy once that if he hadn’t started trying to love people and forgive God for his losses, he too would have died by his own hand. What it came down to was that Jimmy believed that God spared him so he could help others. So, if God decided his ticket was due to be punched, then that was okay.

“Jimmy, I know that, but these things and the people left now don’t care about you being nice. The night screamers want to eat you, and other people just want your stuff.”

He just shrugged. Auddy realized the point was moot, and that no matter how she tried to convince him, he wasn’t going to change his mind.

So, she changed the subject to her plans to go home to West Virginia.

“You should wait here. If your parents are alive they’ll come looking for you.”

“Yeah, but what if they can’t? Maybe they need my help.”

“Trust me on this one, Auddy. Just wait here.”

She threw up her hands in frustration. “I am not going to wait around to die, Jimmy.”

Jimmy was never one to overthink things. “Okay, I’ll go with you then. Me and the boys will keep you company.”

He had a camp stove sitting on the counter between the kitchen and the living room. They had three cans of beef stew for lunch. Then they spent the rest of the day packing the truck and going over maps, deciding on a route to get them all the way to Charleston, West Virginia.

She was carrying a case of water to the truck when she heard a vehicle approaching. She dropped the water, ran to the truck, and grabbed the shotgun. She whirled around ready to go down fighting.

Her mom stepped from the SUV fifty feet from her. At first, she refused to believe it. The shock of everything that happened to her over the last week flooded her mind and she forgot about the shotgun. It fell to the ground and she bolted to Jay, who had started running toward her. They nearly toppled each other as they embraced.

Jay just kept repeating her name,
Auddy, Auddy, Auddy,
and the tears she had tried to deny and control burst the dam. Both cried and hugged while Jimmy leaned against his convertible, tilted his black cowboy hat back with a single finger, and smiled.

Jay saw no reason to change their planned departure time. However, Jimmy threw a wrench in the system. He informed Auddy that, now that her mother had arrived, he would stay behind. “Somebody’s got to watch the condos. That’s my job, that and trying to help lost souls as they drift by.”

Auddy scoffed, “Jimmy, you’re so full of it.” That got them both laughing.

Auddy tried to talk him out of staying. She tried everything she could think of. She thought she had him when she appealed to his protective nature. “Come on Jimmy, we need you to protect us.”

They had to give Jimmy his due; he held it for a full five count before he laughed so hard he almost popped a vessel.

That ended the discussion.
For now,
Auddy thought. She planned another assault first thing in the morning.

Jay parked the SUV crosswise next to the back porch. Auddy didn’t say anything but there were several major holes in that defense. The zombies, or “crazies” as her mom called them, could penetrate it with ease. She managed to keep her mouth shut until her mom dragged a bag from the SUV and made it clear she intended to spend the night in their ground-floor condo.

“Mom, I’m not feeling real good about staying down here. Face it, your defenses suck.”

That got a chuckle out of Jay. “The SUV has been modified by some friends of mine.” She held out the remote and clicked it once. Floodlight shined around the entire roof. Another click of the remote lit up the undercarriage from stem to stern.

“I’m really impressed and all, but I’ve shined bright lights at these things before, mom. Didn’t work.” Auddy shivered at the memory of the pile of them coming to life under her flashlight beam.

“These lights are wide-spectrum UV lights. The spots produce a thirty-three-degree arc of UVA and UVB spectrum light. Ben, the guy that fixed this up, located these and had a bunch of them. Believe me, they do a number on the crazies.”

“We did figure out that they only come out at night,” Auddy said, a little defensively.

“Exactly, so these lights do the same thing the sun does to them. They either run or, if they’re exposed to it for any length of time, they die.”

“Why is the bottom lit up too?” Auddy asked.

“If they fall down,” Jay said, acting it out with her hands, “you have to drive over them.”

“Ewwww.”
Auddy visibly shivered again.

Jay deactivated the lights. “We still need to have a lookout set though. Can’t leave them on long or they’ll drain the two car batteries Ben used setting them up. He hooked them into the SUV’s electrical system, and the batteries are a backup.”

Jimmy came over and brought his turtle soup. He said it took a couple of tries to get it right, but that the longer you cooked it, the tenderer the turtles got. Auddy complained that she couldn’t eat the poor turtles; she had fed them at the abandoned golf course ponds frequently. Jimmy agreed that it was sad, but that the turtles wouldn’t mind. Jay would have normally passed on eating the local reptiles, but after tasting the soup, she dug in. Auddy finally tried it after her mom encouraged her.

“Hmmm, danged if those little suckers aren’t pretty tasty,” she said after finishing a bowl.

After dinner, they looked over the maps again, and Jay showed them the roads she took coming down from Sparky’s in Marion. “The traffic coming out of Myrtle didn’t start backing up until I got to Marion. I had to go out 22 all the way to 90 up north to get across the river. Both bridges in Conway are blocked.”

They discussed several different routes, but Jay felt like they needed to head back to Sparky’s. “I told them I would come back that way, and Jon and Gwenn may be waiting on us.” She also wanted to go through Mt. Airy to see if she could find Andy, Martha, and the deputies. When they’d settled on the route, they argued with Jimmy about setting up a watch schedule.

“Look, I’m staying here and you all are traveling. I’ll set up my watch in the condo above yours. I can sleep tomorrow after you’re gone.” They put up a fuss about it, but in the end Jimmy’s argument held. As soon as it got dark, Jay and Auddy turned in while Jimmy sang an old Elvis tune on the deck above them.

“He used to be a pretty big deal,” Auddy informed Jay. “He won some talent contest back in the sixties; it was like the American Idol of the time. It happened about the time his dad died, and he couldn’t go to New York for the semifinals and Wayne Newton took his spot as an alternate.”

“Wow, who knew?” Jay shook her head. “He could have been a big star, and then we never would have met him.”

“Yeah, he said he was bitter about it for years, became an alcoholic, was a real asshole, and ended up in jail. It’s strange how life goes.”

“Well, I’m glad that he was here for you. Whatever his past was, he has been a good friend. Your dad is going to be pissed that we let him stay behind.”

They talked back and forth until falling asleep. It was the first time since it all began that either of them felt safe.

Julian kissed Simon on the top of the head as he held him. “You will stay over at Austin’s place for the next few days. I have to go help the scientists with a project.”

“Daddy, take me with you. I will be good, I promise.” The look on the boy’s face was one of complete misery.

“Simon, I cannot take you with me. It is out of the question. I love you and I will be back in a few days. Please be a good boy.”

“I will daddy, I promise,” Simon said, unable to hide the tears as they rolled from the corners of his eyes.

Susan hustled the child out of the room before things got worse.

Julian knew that not only must he submit to these tests, he would also have to survive them, because if he died, there would be no one to protect Simon. They could do with him whatever they wanted. All things were fair game in fulfilling the mission.

He turned to Brian. “Let us get this going. The sooner we begin, the sooner we are done.”

They made their way to the elevator and it opened as they arrived. Julian and Brian stepped on board; the two scientists with them remained standing in the hallway. The doors slid closed, and Julian said in a normal voice, “You run these tests on me, and when they are done, my son and I are leaving.”

Brian turned to him. “You know I can’t let that happen, Julian.”

“Well, at least it is out in the open now. We are your prisoners.”

“Come on Julian, don’t be like that. You know that the fate of the entire human race may rest on our ability to find a way to fix this.”

“You will never survive, not because of the turned, but because of your own hubris. And if you touch my son, I will kill you.”

The elevator reached the lowest floor, the doors slid open, and Julian stepped into a sterile-looking corridor. Brian led him to a room. “Please get undressed and put on that gown.”

Julian stared at him until he turned and left, closing the door behind him. Julian then began unbuttoning his shirt. After donning the hospital gown, he climbed onto the gurney. Its presence in the room was an indication that he would be wheeled from here to another room.

Two orderlies came in a short time later. One pulled a hair net over Julian’s head, the other pulled up the safety rails on the gurney. “Sit tight, Dr. Ruegg, we’re going to take good care of you.”

It was the last thing he said before sticking Julian with a hypodermic. His world fuzzed into a place without shapes or depth perception as he floated off.

Brian supervised the test from a surgical theater above a suite of rooms used for the testing.

“Make sure he is completely out,” he called down over the intercom. “When he’s prepped, we will start with a full body scan for a baseline.”

As soon as Brian released the lever of the intercom, the team of doctors went to work. When they finished prepping Julian, they began taking DNA samples, blood, and a tiny patch of skin, which they put onto a slide.