The King of Clayfield - 01 (13 page)

"No," I said,
 
"On the news they were saying that a lot of the
 
southern states were without power.”

"How would they know?" she said. "Everybody
 
down here is sick, besides I don't think that will affect the internet."

I shrugged. I didn't know. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try. Except...

"That generator makes a lot of noise. How do we run it without everybody in Grace County showing up on our doorstep?"

CHAPTER 12

We had to figure out how to run the generator without attracting attention. The ideal situation would be to put it underground to deaden the noise, but Blaine and Betsy
 
didn't have a basement or root cellar. Even if they did, we would have to be in a different location because of the gas fumes and carbon monoxide.

We considered running it in the
 
workshop while we were in the house, but
 
even then it might
 
be heard
 
and alert everyone to our location.
 
Thus far, we'd been ignored, but I feared eventually we'd be detected by someone,
 
healthy or infected,
 
if
 
for no other reason, because
 
of the smoke from our
 
fires.

The generator's previous owners had left it outside like they were supposed to, but they wound up dead from something far worse than fumes.

"Why don't we forget the generator," Jen said, "If you have enough charge on your battery, we could drive around--maybe find a signal."

"Those modems and routers need electricity, though."

"I wonder how the cell towers are doing."

"Neither of us have phones, so--"

"There are lots of people out there not using their phones," she said. "We can just search
 
houses until we find one."

"That
 
might involve coming in contact with them, and I'd like to avoid that as much as we can."

"How about this," Jen said, "We put the generator in the back of the truck and run the cord into the house. One of us sits in the truck with it running while the other
 
is inside logged on and getting news. If they show up, the one in the truck just drives away, but slow enough to lead them away with them. Once they've been led far enough away, just
 
speed up, circle around and come back home."

"That's a
 
bad idea--"

"Kiss my ass. I'm the only one thinking here."

"No," I said raising my hand, "No, it really
 
is a bad idea, but I think you are on the right track with moving it.
 
We should just take it somewhere
 
else, away from here,
 
where
 
making noise wouldn't matter. All we want to do is get news. Eventually we might need to use it to pump some fresh water,
 
but if we can find bottled water--"

"So we just need a place that has an internet connection and a basement," she said.

"Yes or
 
an easy escape. I'm thinking the museum."

"Where you worked? But that's in town...."

"We were going to have to go
 
into
 
Clayfield for
 
water and other supplies
 
eventually anyway," I said.

"Why? The whole countryside is
 
full of unoccupied houses loaded with supplies. There must be houses out here
 
with internet connections and
 
basements or easy escapes."

"But
 
going to the museum would save us from running into situations like we did yesterday where we don't know if we'll find what we're looking for. There is no need to risk it for an uncertainty."

"It's all uncertain, now," she said. "I thought you wanted to avoid the sick people. This is going to put us in a larger population of them."

"There shouldn't be anyone at all in the museum. If we pull right up to the door, we can run in and lock up. The place is solid. Plus, the building is large enough and the doors are spaced far enough apart, that if we distract them on one side of the building, we can get out on the other side."

"This sounds like a pain in the ass," she said.
 
"I
 
went out by myself and got all this good stuff without
 
getting too close
 
to anyone. I say we stay in this area and
 
try to find a charged phone and access the internet that way."

"We're also out of drinking water," I said. "The city water system
 
might still be working, or
 
we might need to go into some of the stores and get bottled water.
 
We'll have to go into town for that anyway, at least until I figure out how to get water from that well out there without so much noise."

"So we're breaking into stores now?" she said.

"I know," I said. "I sound like a hypocrite, but we need water--"

"I'm just giving you a hard time. In fact, now that you mention it, we might need to go to the county line and stock up on
 
booze."
 

We got to work on our plan.

First, we removed the back seats from Betsy's minivan. The generator would go in
 
there.
 
Our thinking was that if we ran the generator from the van,
 
no one could get to it to tamper with it or damage it.

We filled the generator
 
from Blaine's lawnmower
 
gas can then plugged in the long orange extension cord. Once the generator was inside the van, I
 
cracked the back windows.
 
Then I
 
fed a little of the extension cord out of the one on the passenger side so we could access it quickly.

Next, we loaded the guns. The shotgun and
 
shells Jen brought back from the Kaler house
 
were 12 gauge. Her
 
gun was a 20 gauge, so we were
 
still out of
 
ammunition for that weapon. The other one she brought back fired
 
.22 long rifle--not a powerful gun, but it was better than the sticks I had been using. I really didn't want to use the guns
 
at all, but we
 
needed to keep the infected at
 
a distance.

I
 
took the .22, and one of the partial bottles of alcohol--about
 
three fingers worth of Captain Morgan. Jen
 
took my laptop, the shotgun,
 
all of our empty water containers in a garbage bag, a box of ammunition for each of us,
 
and the Southern Comfort--still 3/4 full.

I drove the minivan, and Jen followed behind me in the
 
pickup. I kept glancing back
 
at her in the mirror. She had a red bandana tied around her nose and mouth and she looked like a gangsta or maybe
 
a bandit from one of those old westerns. I could see the shotgun propped up in the seat beside her.
 
I was so relieved to have her back. I
 
couldn't say
 
if it was her
 
that I was happy to have around or if I was just glad I wasn't alone.

I adjusted my own mask. I
 
still didn't know if the masks worked, but we could
 
find out about that when we got online at the museum. It would be good if we could find out about the necessary amount of alcohol. Hopefully we wouldn't need to get drunk every time we had an interaction with the infected.

Even though it was a longer route to the museum, I took Bragusberg Road again. Gala Road would have taken us to Clayfield, too, but I didn't know if we'd encounter any wrecked or abandoned cars that way that would block our path. Our last drive down Bragusberg Road had been clear, and I didn't want to stop until we got to the museum.

I took it slow. I wanted to check out the houses on our way into town. The infected were out, and there were a lot of them.
 
I made a mental note of every house where I saw them.
 
It didn't mean those houses were abandoned, but it was a good (bad) sign.

The disease seemed to affect them in different ways. Some of the people were quite spry but others
 
were almost catatonic. I noticed a few with bad injuries, but they didn't act bothered by them.

I would see them in yards and fields. Some would run out to the road as we passed and chase us. At one point, we had a small crowd behind us, like we were the press
 
vehicles in a televised marathon. Jen was getting nervous about it. A couple of times it looked like one of our pursuers almost caught up to her, but I don't think there was any real danger of that. We were going slowly, but fast enough to stay ahead of them.

When we got on an open, straight stretch of road, she
 
sped up and pulled alongside me on my left. She couldn't roll her passenger side window down because it was the manual kind of window, so instead of yelling at me, she gave me a dirty look, flipped me the bird and motioned for me to get a move on. I grinned as she dropped back behind me. After that, we drove
 
60 mph until we got in the city limits and left the crowd of infected in the road between two cornfields.

CHAPTER 13

There was a lot of smoke
 
over
 
Clayfield. It looked like
 
fires were still burning
 
on the west side of town. My house was out that way, and I was curious whether it was still standing. I would check on it later, but at that time, we needed to get into the museum without attracting too much attention. It didn't look like that was
 
going to be possible.

As Bragusberg Road enters the city limits, it is
 
lined with large trees and old, but
 
restored,
 
Victorian and Shingle Style houses.
 
I could see people out on the front lawns of some of the homes. They were interested in us, but only a few followed. One particular blue house was surrounded on all sides by at least
 
a hundred people.
 
Most stood, staring up at the second floor, but there were some that were trying, and failing,
 
to climb up the side.

Bragusberg Road ended, and I took a right onto 6th street, headed north. As I approached the court square, my stomach knotted up.

They were everywhere. The only other time of year
 
I saw so many people in the streets was in
 
October
 
during the town's Pumpkin Festival.

The south side of the square was so thick with people, it would
 
be impassable. I looked in the mirror at Jen to make sure she was doing okay. I didn't see anyone near us at the moment, so I slowed and stopped when I got
 
within a half a block from the
 
intersection with Water Street; that put me a block and a half
 
from the crowd.
 
I wanted to watch them a little first, before we took a detour around them.

Just like at the blue house, there were some that just stood and stared. Their interest was directed
 
to one of the buildings
 
on the back side of the courthouse. There were others that were very active.
 
They behaved
 
much like wild animals--chasing, clawing and biting each other. A dark-haired
 
woman ran out of the crowd,
 
dressed only in a pink sweater and one gray sock. Her left knee was bloody. A man ran out after her, tackled her and pushed her face to the pavement. He
 
forced her legs
 
open.