Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2) (41 page)

Before the rope hit her, Lydia had lost hope and essentially given up. She knew death was imminent. As such, it took her a while to really accept that she was alive after the rescue.

The four of them walked several miles beyond the ravine before finally stopping to rest. They travelled as quietly as possible, with minimal talking and C.J. pushing the Rokon, in order to avoid attracting the attention of any infected that might be in the area. Thankfully, they encountered none.

When they were over a mile away from the ravine, Lydia broke the silence. “Thank you, C.J. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to those girls,” Lydia said, nodding toward, Annalee who walked behind them next to Ava.

“Glad I could help, ma’am,” C.J. replied

“What’s with all the ma’am stuff, anyway?” Lydia asked.

“Just a habit, I guess—the way I was raised,” C.J said.

“I’m not much older than you, you know,” she said.

He merely chuckled in reply.

“Back at the ravine, you said something like, ‘
those Packers are pretty well stuck
.’ What did you mean by
Packers
?” Lydia asked.

“The sick people? That’s just what I call them. I don’t really know what they are. Most folks say it’s some kind of infection. I figured I needed to call them something, so I started calling them Packers—after Alfred Packer, the cannibal, you know?” C.J. said.

Not having a clue what he was talking about, Lydia simply nodded her head, and said, “You are a strange guy, C.J.”

* * *

They happened upon a small cabin, and after ensuring it was free of the infected, they settled in for the night. Lydia knew just how depraved people could be, and accordingly, she remained wary of C.J. despite the fact he had saved her and Annalee. Even so, it was clear that Ava accepted him completely—almost as if she had known him her entire life. Lydia could not explain why, but that fact went a long way toward alleviating her own fears and concerns about the stranger.

As she prepared a spot for the girls to sleep, Lydia paused to watch C.J. as he sat talking with Ava. Despite being covered in mud and dirt, she thought his features seemed gentle, and she did not sense any malice. His sandy blonde hair curled out from under the baseball hat that he had not removed since they met earlier that day. He appeared to be in his late thirties, and his dirt mask cracked around the corners of his eyes and mouth when he smiled, which he did often. His arms looked strong where they protruded from his sleeveless flannel shirt, as though accustomed to hard work.

Lydia watched as he and Ava played a game that involved trying to slap the other’s hands before he or she could pull them away. The way the little girl smiled and even laughed made her want to cry. When she thought about it, she could not recall that last time she had heard real laughter. Having not been certain it still existed in the world, its discovery filled her heart with unimaginable warmth. There was still sadness behind her tears, but for the briefest of moments, Lydia felt as though it was almost eclipsed by a stronger, more foreign emotion—joy.

Lydia stepped into the room and walked over to them. She sat down, and with a genuine look of confusion, asked, “Who
are
you?”

“Me? I’m C.J. I already told you, ma’am.”

Shaking her head, she said, “No, I mean who are you really? Where did you come from? You seem so different than anyone else I’ve encountered since the outbreak, C.J.”

Blushing and clearly uncomfortable under her intense scrutiny, it was C.J.’s turn to look confused. “I came from just outside of Birmingham, but I live over in Georgia,” C.J. said, pointing in an eastward direction. “I went to find my brother but things were pretty bad there. The Packers were as thick as the hair on a dog’s back, and there was no way to get past them all. He lives on the south side of Birmingham, or at least he did, but every road I tried was chocked full of them—there had to be thousands. I managed to get close enough to see that they were all around his house. I assumed either he didn’t make it or he wasn’t there; either way, it was impossible to get to the house. Anyhow, I was heading back to Georgia when I saw little Ava here,” he said with a gentle glance toward the girl.

“We are on our way to Atlanta,” Lydia said. The words were out of her mouth before she considered the wisdom of sharing such information with the stranger. Not knowing what else to say, she added, “I never much liked Atlanta even before the world fell apart.”

C.J. nodded, and said, “I reckon I never thought much about the end of the world before all of this. I’se always too busy just doing what I needed to do to make it to the next day to worry too much about that day not coming. That seems kind of like when folk’s is scared of dying, you know? I never really understood that either. I mean, once you’re dead, you’re dead. Well, at least that’s how I’ve always thought of it. And dead folks got nothing left to worry about. It’s not like being dead is worse than what we got in this life. It probably ain’t no better either. It just is what it is, know what I mean?”

Lydia nodded, though she wondered if she truly understood what he was trying to say. She wondered if his simple logic was truly that simple, or if there was much more to it than meets the eye.

When she did not speak, C.J. continued as if glad to finally have someone to listen to everything he kept bottled up inside his head. “But once it did come around, I knew there was going to be a lot of folks that wouldn’t fare too well. Most people could barely handle even the slightest inconvenience before all this,” C.J. said, waving his hand around to indicate everything the world had become.

“You see, not too many folks know the first thing about how to take care of themselves these days—how to get food and water, how to protect themselves—those sorts of things. They knew how to get to the grocery, how to order McDonald’s, and how to whine about how hard and unfair life was. As soon as the support they had become dependent on collapsed, they didn’t stand a chance. Mama used to call them kind of folks
titty babies
—spoiled, lazy people that couldn’t take care of themselves if their lives depended on it…and it sure as hell does now.”

C.J. blushed and a look of distress washed over his face. “Please, excuse my language. I didn’t mean to swear in front of you ladies,” he added sheepishly.

With a laugh, Lydia placed a reassuring hand on his knee, and said, “We’ll forgive you this time, C.J.—since it’s the apocalypse and all.” 

As the girls settled in for the night, Lydia and C.J. agreed to alternate watch shifts. Despite her initial reluctance, Lydia decided to trust him after seeing Ava wrap him in a huge hug before she lay down next to Annalee, who was already fast asleep. Once Ava was asleep as well, Lydia said, “Ava’s really taken to you, C.J.”

Although it was dark, she could see the man fidget somewhat, as though uncomfortable, before he said:

“Yeah, I imagine she’s just grateful I happened along when I did.”

She could tell he did not want to make anything more of it despite the fact he seemed to have taken to the little girl as well. While Lydia was unsure what, if anything, that meant, she truly hoped he was the person he seemed to be. “I don’t know if you realize how special something like that is these days. Ava’s been through so much, please be careful with her.”

After a long pause, C.J. nodded thoughtfully, and Lydia thought he understood what she meant. He asked, “How did you three end up together, if you don’t mind me asking?”

As painful as it was, Lydia gave him a brief rundown of how she and Annalee came to be together. She found it far too difficult to put all of the events of that night at Enoch Hill into words, so she merely gave him the highlights. “It was actually Annalee that saved Ava. She had gone off by herself, which I warned her about a thousand times, and she heard someone in trouble. She crawled through a drainage pipe and saw Ava being pursued by a horde of the infected. Thankfully, she got her attention, and the two escaped through the pipe. As furious as I was with her for wandering off alone, I couldn’t stay too mad once I saw the beautiful little girl she rescued. Now I guess we’re even,” Lydia said, looking down at her hands as she thought about how close she and Annalee had come to death earlier that day.

Changing the subject, Lydia asked, “So, C.J., what’s your story? Why were you out here in the woods alone? Are you part of a group?” She recognized the all-too-familiar far away look that filled his eyes as he opened his mouth to tell her his version of the apocalypse.

29

October 2, 2015

Lumpkin County, GA

C.J. Bowden lived in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in north Georgia. It was assumed that the first cases of LNV spread to his hometown from Atlanta, located about seventy miles south. As was the case everywhere, one infected person quickly became two, and from there the number increased exponentially until the infected were almost all that remained.

He was at work in a local machine shop when the plague finally reached his small town. His older sister, who lived with their mother fifteen miles away, called in a panic to tell him about a bloody fight occurring in the street just outside their house. C.J. knew something was horribly wrong by the tone in her voice, and he pleaded with her to lock the house and wait for him to get there. He could be there in twenty minutes if he hurried. Just as he was about to hang up, he heard his mother screaming angrily in the background, “You hooligans better get the hell out of here! I won’t have you riffraff sullying up my neighborhood!”

Having seen her in action on numerous occasions previously, C.J. pictured his mother, who was in her sixties, storming out the front door of her small house with broom in hand. She had always been fearless and tough as nails. When he heard his sister’s sharp gasp, his mental image began to shift. In the background, his mother’s screams of agony painted a far different picture—one he could not bring himself to accept until the addition of his sister’s screams made it impossible to deny. Knowing he was too far away to do anything, he closed his eyes and listened to the horror unfolding on the other end of the line. The last thing he heard was his sister screaming, “C.J.! Get the hell out of here!” The vicious snarls and growls made his blood run cold.

Despite her adamant plea for him to get as far away as possible, C.J. needed to know what had become of his sister and mother. He was in his car and racing toward her house a second later. As he drove, he saw many other instances of violence not unlike the fight his sister had described. By the time he reached the small town in which they lived, it was in complete chaos. Violence and death filled the streets. He saw fighting, killing, looting…and even cannibalism. It seemed that the hostilities outside of his mother’s house were merely the tip of the iceberg. He made the trip in record time, but despite knowing what he was going to find, there was no way he could have prepared himself for what he saw.

* * *

C.J. had heard the rumblings about a particularly virulent strain of influenza and the erratic, violent behavior it precipitated. Even so, it was hard to fathom just how much truth those early rumors held. Having experienced the reality of the situation firsthand, he believed the safest place to be was away from people. Considering the carnage he witnessed in his small town, he could only imagine how bad things were in the larger cities.

C.J. recalled a remote tract of land owned by an old friend who lived out of state. Used primarily for hunting, the small farmhouse on the property served as a hunting lodge. C.J. had been there on several occasions in the past, and knew it would be well insulated from the chaos engulfing the majority of the country. With the closest neighbor several miles away, he imagined it would be as safe as anywhere to weather the storm. At least for the time being, he decided it held his best chance of survival.

In addition to the food and supplies C.J. brought with him, the retreat was partially stocked with canned food and other non-perishable items when he arrived. He found some success with hunting and thus managed to stay well fed. Perhaps most importantly, the house had drinkable water supplied by a well operated by a hand pump. Considering the circumstances, he thought that he was getting along as well as could be expected.

C.J. had not encountered a single person since arriving at the farm, and with radio and television off the air, he had no idea about the state of the rest of the world. The last reports he heard before everything went dark were not promising. By all accounts, the entire globe was slowly drowning under the steadily advancing tidal wave of the mysterious infection. With the reported rate of transmission after contact with contaminated bodily fluid nearly 100% and the infected population skyrocketing, C.J. planned to remain at the lodge for the foreseeable future. Having been without human interaction for nearly two weeks, C.J. quickly found the isolation to be the hardest part of his new life. That changed when a family of three showed up looking for help at the beginning of his third week at the farm.

Joseph and Natalie Turner, along with their seventeen-year old son, Max, were driving back to Atlanta when the situation in the U.S. began to deteriorate. When their old car broke down halfway through their trip, they found themselves stranded in a small town less than fifteen miles from the house C.J. occupied. With nowhere else to go, they were given temporary refuge in a local church while they waited for their car to be fixed. During that time, they watched the outbreak’s diseased tentacles snake through the quaint little town, planting the seeds that would ultimately cause it to devour itself. In a matter of days, nearly everyone in the town, including the local mechanic, succumbed to the infection. In retrospect, their car trouble was likely the only reason the Turners survived beyond the first days of the outbreak.  Had they made it back to Atlanta, they would have certainly succumbed to the disease given its magnitude in the city.

When no one returned to the church after the little town was snuffed out by the epidemic, Joseph kept his family hidden safely inside, surviving on what was found in the church’s pantries. There was enough food and water to last the three of them over a week, and the supplies were eventually depleted. As much as he dreaded the thought of leaving his family to venture out into the nightmarish world that had replaced the idyllic scene of Middle America, Joseph knew his family’s survival depended on him being able to scavenge for more food and water. Unfortunately, his lack of skill in such matters led him to alert a nearby group of infected to their presence, thus forcing him and his family to flee for their lives with little more than the clothes on their backs. Eventually, they evaded the pursuing horde through no other means than simply outpacing them.

After walking for what seemed like days, Natalie noticed faint wisps of gray smoke rising above the trees in the distance. In light of his bumbling failure at the church and the overall desperation of their situation, Joseph hoped whoever was responsible for the smoke would have pity on him and his family. As was the case for a great many survivors of the outbreak, the Turners had been carried through by a series of chance occurrences and sheer dumb luck rather than any real strength of their own.

With his fuel supply getting dangerously low, C.J. was preparing to head out on a scavenging mission when the bedraggled family staggered up the gravel drive. At first glance, he thought the three disheveled survivors were infected because of the way their limp arms swayed and heads lolled. He grabbed his hunting rifle and eased into a stable firing position, intent on putting an end to their advance before he was ever endangered. When he sighted in on the adult male, however, he watched him turn and give the younger man a gentle pat on the back. The warm smile accompanying the gesture erased any question of the man being one of the infected. “Holy shit. They’re not sick,” C.J. muttered with disbelief.

Realizing that any people, even apparently uninfected ones, might mean exposure to a disease he knew almost nothing about, C.J. remained fearful of the unexpected company. He kept his rifle trained on the pedestrians a while longer, watching them cautiously as they approached. He thought they appeared to be healthy, albeit dirty and malnourished. Their behavior was neither erratic nor violent, and they each exhibited mannerisms not typically seen once a person becomes infected. His thoughts a mixture of fear and excitement, C.J. let out a deep sigh, and said, “Well, what to do now?”

While three additional people would be a substantial drain on his already limited resources, he knew what he had to do. His mother had not raised him to turn away someone in need if he was in a position to help, especially a woman and a child. Finding enough food would be a great deal of work, but he was willing to do it provided they agreed to do their part to help keep the larders full. Deep down, he knew there were other reasons he needed to help the people walking up his drive. He had begun to notice the significant toll isolation was taking on his mental state, and the thought of people to interact with was too much to pass up.

Realizing he still had his rifle trained on the man, C.J. looked up from the scope and let the rifle’s barrel dip toward the ground. He stood and walked out the front door, ready to greet the weary travellers. After discussing the specifics of their respective situations, C.J. agreed to let the Turners stay provided they were willing to pull their own weight.

After the family settled in, C.J. informed Joseph that he had been preparing to head out in search of fuel when he and his family had arrived. The cabin had a meager supply of kerosene for use in cooking and heating when but he was quickly burning through that reserve. With the winter months approaching, he knew they would need more soon. In addition, he thought it would be wise to have a small surplus of gasoline for the motorcycle he found parked in the shed behind the house. An old Rokon Trail-Breaker, its wide, knobby tires and high ground clearance allowed it to go places no other vehicle could.

The following morning C.J. and Joseph left as soon as the sun came up. With the rifle being C.J.’s only firearm, he offered Joseph a hatchet for protection. C.J. knew of a gas station a few miles away and thought some of the local farms might have fuel storage tanks of their own. “We should check out the farms on the way. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find what we need there,” C.J. said. After Joseph informed him of what he had witnessed in the nearby town, C.J. had serious reservations about getting close to a population of any size.

The first farm they came to was a ruined mess. Several of the farmhouse’s windows were shattered and an old pickup truck was crashed into its side. C.J. glanced around behind the house hoping to find a large, above ground fuel tank near the sizable barn; he did not.

Cautiously, Joseph crept up behind the smashed truck, intent on getting a look inside the old house. Standing on his tiptoes, he peered through the broken window into the gloom within. He did not notice the nearly severed body of the matronly woman pinned between the truck and the house—her torso buried under a layer of debris atop the crumpled hood. Joseph was about to tell C.J. they should head inside when a faint whiff of gut-churning rot stole his breath.

Before he could react to the repugnant stench, a soft groan followed by the sound of rock clattering against metal arose from the truck. Joseph spun in alarm with his hatchet raised. What he saw made him backpedal, his entangled feet sending him clumsily to the ground. Like
Thing
from
The Addams Family
, a hand walked toward him on gnarled fingers. When the arm attached to the hand rose out of the rubble, the sound of more brick banging against the hood caused C.J. to glance in Joseph’s direction. In a flash, C.J. was hauling the panicked man to his feet. All the commotion had garnered the attention of several more infected that had been out of view on the opposite side of the house. By the time they closed on the source of the noise, C.J. was already dragging Joseph into the woods.

The second farm they passed was no better with respect to fuel, and while they found no infected there either, their search was far from uneventful. No sooner than they stepped onto the premises, Joseph found himself face down on the ground with a pistol pressed against the back of his head. Kicking Joseph’s hatchet away, the man said, “That’s it. Nice and easy. Don’t make me put a hole in your head, brother.”

“I wouldn’t do that unless you want one to match,” C.J. said from somewhere behind him. He quickly worked the rifle’s bolt to emphasize his point. The way he stiffened told C.J. the man was not a psychopath and there was likely no one coming to his aid. “Go ahead and put that thing away before you help my friend back to his feet. We don’t intend to harm or rob you. We were just looking for fuel and figured this place was abandoned and might have some,” he added, hoping that telling him to stow his gun instead of dropping it would be taken as a sign of their intentions.

The man did as C.J. instructed before turning toward him with hands raised. “We don’t have any fuel so if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re wasting your time,” the man said.

C.J. picked up on the fact the man said
we
instead of
I
, and immediately wanted to search all around him to ensure no one was about to get the drop on him. Instead he kept his rifle on the man, and said, “Joseph, come on. Let’s get out of here. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone else.”

When they had moved far enough that the man’s revolver posed little threat, C.J. nodded before turning and slipping into the woods. “Wait!” the man called. Something about the tone in his voice made C.J. stop and turn back. The man walked toward them slowly with his hands still high above his head. When he could see them again, he asked, “Do either of you know where I can find a doctor? My friend is hurt and…”

C.J. was about to tell him they did not know the whereabouts of a doctor when Joseph said, “My wife is a nurse. What’s wrong with your friend?”

Logan Campbell, the farm’s owner, sustained a broken foot the week prior to the outbreak. He was put in a walking cast and told he would need to stay in it for up to six weeks. Kevin, the younger of the two, worked on the farm with Logan and had been there at the start of the outbreak. As he had no family of his own, Kevin stayed there helping to take care of the older man whom he thought of like a father. Even though he still had nearly three weeks in the cast, Logan insisted that his foot was healed. After warning him of the consequences should the foot fail to heal properly, Kevin finally persuaded Logan to leave the cast on.