After Days (The After Days Trilogy) (9 page)

8

The bare, dead branches of the deciduous trees that were the most common in the area didn’t provide much cover, but we luckily found a copse of spruce trees to crouch under as we watched. Thankfully the helicopter didn’t land. We waited about five minutes for it to finish circling the area and depart. 

“Great idea to set the house alight Luke,” said Ben. “I think maybe it worked as a decoy. I’m pretty sure if we’d only left the chimney burning they would have landed and searched the area. We would have been toast.”

“Yeah, good thinking on your feet Luke,” I agreed, and patted his shoulder awkwardly.

“Well it wasn’t really about creating a decoy, I just didn’t want to leave Sarah like that,” he said.

Ben and I nodded somberly, but Brooke, still upset at the loss of the little girl, went to Luke and kissed him on the cheek and I heard her whisper “thank you.”

We had been forced to leave most of the supplies we had brought with us from the Walmart; basically all we now had was what we were wearing and what we had in our back packs. I had gathered what I could from the baskets that the dogs had scattered, but it amounted to no more than some canned food and two sleeping bags.

             
“We should keep moving,” I said, when the helicopter had flown off to the south.

             
“Should we go back and gather up more supplies?” Ben asked.

             
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “They’ve scanned the area from the air but we have to assume that they’ll send a truck with men to search around the house.”

             
“I’d bet that they are,” Luke said, glancing up from the atlas that he’d been studying while the helicopter was hovering over the house. “They’ll probably be here sooner rather than later.”

             
“Onward it is, then,” Brooke said, looking sadly back in the direction of the house.

             
“We should stay off the road for a while,” I said. “Luke, do you think you can guide us with the atlas and the compass you grabbed from Walmart?”

             
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

His mischievous smile faded as his funny reply fell flat, the death of Sarah was still too raw for all of us. 

              “Let’s go, maybe we can find someplace closer to Worcester to hole up,” I said quickly to cover the awkward silence.

             
After consulting his compass, Luke pointed us in a direction and we started our hike. The terrain rose slightly in the direction that Luke indicated, and the forest got thicker as we went on, although the bare trees provided less cover than we would have liked. The going was slow. Not just because of the forest.

Both Ben and I were somewhat hobbled by our recent injuries, he the dog bite to the butt, and me the pulled muscle in my groin from my slip in the slushy snow the afternoon before. It had been okay while I was warm, but this morning it was quite tender. The snow on the ground certainly didn’t help either. Or the unevenness of the forest floor; we were travelling much slower through the woods than we would have been along the road. We’d been walking about twenty minutes when Luke stopped and looked worriedly behind us.

              “What is it?” I asked.

             
“The snow,” he said. “If somebody finds our trail in it leading away from the house they can follow it right to us.”

             
“Crap,” I got a sinking feeling in my belly. “Well, let’s push on, perhaps we’ll find a way ahead that’ll confuse the trail. Besides we don’t know that they actually will send a ground team. We just couldn’t take the risk.”

             
“There should be a road on the top of this ridge, it runs the same direction as the one we were on,” Luke said. “Maybe we can walk on it for a while before heading off into the woods again; it might at least slow them down if they were searching for our trail.”

             
We walked on in silence for a good twenty more minutes before we came to the edge of the trees. We found ourselves looking into the backyard of a large house with a small barn like building off to one side. We stood for a couple of minutes watching, but detected no signs of movement.

             
“Should we risk a quick pop inside to check for supplies, do you think?” Ben asked.

             
“If they do find our trail, I think it’s too soon to stop, even for a short time,” Luke said.

             
“Luke’s right, we keep moving for now,” I said, massaging my inner thigh while I crouched in the snow. “There’ll be other houses to search for supplies, once we are further away from here.”

             
It started snowing again as we crossed the house’s backyard, aiming for the gap between it and the barn. The snow was heavier than it had been before and if we still had them, riding the bicycles would have been a nightmare, or impossible. On foot though, it wouldn’t slow us down much more than what was already on the ground. This time I was glad to see the snow falling. It was a light fall, but if it fell long and hard enough, it would cover our track.

At the corner of the house we found a large paved driveway that stretched off between the trees. A snow covered SUV sat on the icy tarmac with its driver side door open. I approached it warily. It was abandoned and snow had begun to collect on the driver’s seat.

              “Follow the driveway,” Luke said. “It’ll be harder for somebody to follow our trail there because it’s more slush and ice than snow.”

             
The driveway was a couple hundred feet long, and we found ourselves emerging onto a road. Standing in the shadow of a large evergreen tree we cautiously looked up and down the street. We could see in both directions that driveways led back to houses on either side of the street, most of them closer to the road than the one we had negotiated.

             
“I say we hang a left,” Luke said. “It’ll confuse followers because it sort of cuts back against the direction we’ve been going, and if I remember the map right, there is a road we can take to put us back on course not too far along that way.”

             
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this road,” I said. It was true; I felt in my bones that there was something not quite right down there. Whether I was right or not, I had no intention of finding out. “I think we should head straight across it, through the back yard of the house across the way and back into the trees. It looks like there might be more evergreens over that way, so maybe that will make us harder to track if there is more snow in the branches and less on the ground.”

             
“I agree with Isaac,” Brooke said. “I don’t like the idea of
cutting back
, I know it sounds clever, but it might just be
too clever
if you take my meaning.”

             
“In any case let’s do something,” Ben said. “It’s colder just standing around than it is walking.”

             
“I see that I’m overruled,” Luke said, with a smile. “Across and back into the woods it is.”

             
Looking both ways again we jogged across the road as best we could and then up a driveway on the far side. The snow was really starting to come down in thick wet flakes, and we hurried past the house and through the back yard, veering slightly to put the house between us and the road. We came to a halt in front of a six foot high chain link fence that separated the back yard from the woods beyond.

             
“Up and over?” Luke asked.

             
“I’m not sure I can make it,” I replied with a wince as I thought of my aching inner thigh.

             
“Don’t be a wussy, man,” he said. “We’ll help you.”

             
Scrambling over the fence turned out to be far easier than I had feared it would be, no doubt because I had two other guys to help lift me, and we were soon back under the trees. There were more evergreens in this section of forest, which meant the ground was clearer and that less snow was falling on us from above. Luke used his compass to keep our course running north east, the direction he figured that we needed to go.

             
The going was still slow, but we were making steady progress and I was even beginning to lose my fear that we might be tracked. Twenty minutes later, we reached a road running roughly east to west. The bad feeling I’d been having since the helicopter that morning had begun to fade. We stopped beneath the trees just in sight of the road so that Luke could check his atlas. I checked my watch; it was a quarter after one, which meant that sunset would be in just over three hours.

             
“I know you wanted to avoid the roads,” Luke said. “But we’d really make better time by following them.”

             
“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “We can follow this road for a while if you want, but we have to keep a good watch so that a patrol doesn’t drive up on us.”

             
“Thank the Almighty,” Ben muttered.

In reality I was nearly as relieved as him, the uneven ground of the forest floor, not to mention scrambling to step over fallen logs and forcing my way through bushes and brambles, had really upped the pain level in the muscle I had pulled.

              “I think this road is this one here,” Luke said, pointing at his map, “It goes from Northbridge back to the Worcester-Providence Turnpike. If we follow it to the left a bit, we should come to a road that branches off north east. Following that is a straight shot, well straight
ish
at least, up to Millbury, which is just outside of Worcester, here,” his finger traced along a road on the map.

             
“How far are we from Millbury?” I asked.

             
“About two miles, as the crow flies, but probably closer to four following the roads with their twists and turns.”

             
“About two hours hard walking then,” said Brooke. “Assuming that you two gimps don’t poop out on us,” she tossed a glance at both her brother and me. I felt myself blushing slightly; I didn’t like the thought of holding the others back.

             
“I think I got another couple of hours in me,” Ben said, and I quickly nodded in agreement, perhaps a bit too quickly.

             
The snow was still falling, but at least there wasn’t much wind as we began our trek to Millbury. Following the roads we saw no signs of others, no adult survivors, no kids trying to survive on their own, no Chinese patrols looking for anybody, nothing. The world seemed so peaceful, with no planes in the sky, no cars on the roads, no sounds of construction or television. I could almost imagine what it must have been like for the pilgrims when they first landed on this vast new continent.

Mr. Dresden in American History had told us that just a short while before Europeans arrived there had been a large and thriving native culture, no
t only on the east coast of north America, but stretching nearly to the rocky mountains. The only reason that the continent had seemed so empty to the Europeans and that they’d encountered so few Native Americans was because a plague had swept through, killing off the majority. While nature had conspired to give the Europeans a continent ripe for conquering and colonization, it seemed that the Chinese had taken matters into their own hands.

             
“Where do you suppose all of the kids are?” asked Luke quietly. “I mean, we’ve seen hardly any…there is no way that the Chinese could have rounded up more than a fraction.”

I shrugged. I had been wondering myself, but hadn’t liked the answers that had sprung to mind.

“Well, its winter, there is no power or water, no adult supervision, no fresh food.” I lowered my voice so that Brooke wouldn’t hear. “I think a lot would be dead already. In this region at least. It might be different in some of the warmer states, but then there are probably more Chinese there for that reason. They had to know that the cold would kill a lot of us.”

“Maybe the dead ones are the lucky ones,” Luke muttered, kicking at the snow. 

9

The snow coupled with Ben’s injury and my own meant that we still hadn’t made it quite to Millbury when the sun started its descent beneath the horizon. Based on the increasing frequency of houses, it appeared we were coming up to a small town. As we walked past a cemetery with the name ‘St. Johns’ above the gate, Luke told us the town was called Wilkersonville. We were still about a mile from Millbury.

             
“We should find someplace for the night,” I said. “There is no way we’ll be able to make it to Millbury before it gets dark at this rate.”

             
“Quite so,” Ben said, his limp had grown more pronounced in the last half hour or so.

Just past the cemetery we came upon a house sitting well back from the road, on a half-acre of land. It was big and well kept, and I have to say, it looked inviting. We all agreed it would be a good place to bed down for the night
and we turned to trudge up the long driveway.

We were about thirty feet from the front porch when the door opened, revealing a warm yellow light within. Shocked, we all froze in place. My hand crept towards my pocket
, but I relaxed when I saw it was a blonde-haired boy. He appeared to be about thirteen and looked around quickly with wary eyes as he urgently gestured for us to come inside.

Whether it was the cold, the pain or the tiredness, or maybe a combination of all three, we rushed as one towards the door without a second thought.

The boy stepped back quickly to allow us to pile in. He slammed the door behind us and shot three large bolts home to secure the heavy door. We came to a standstill, all four of us panting and catching our breath as we took in our surroundings…and the three other teenagers that surrounded us.

Each
of them was holding a different weapon. They looked tense, and I thought briefly of pulling my pistol but thought better of it when I saw that one of them was holding a crossbow similar to Luke’s. The other two had a baseball bat and a machete respectively. I relaxed and prayed that Luke would do the same.

“Hey, sorry to rush you in like that, but we couldn’t take the chance of you drawing attention to us.”

The blonde boy circled us and gestured to the other three who lowered their weapons. He looked more sure of himself now, and I reevaluated my first impression of him. Close up I could see that he was probably my age, not only that, he appeared self-confident and was clearly the leader of their group. “I’m Will; this is Beau, Ryan and Rodney. Who’s in charge of your little group?”

  Luke gestured towards me, “Isaac is. I’m Luke, and this is Ben and Brooke.” The twins nodded, still looking wary. Will smiled at them almost dismissively and his gaze honed in on me. He appeared to be sizing me up. I stared back, not dropping my own gaze. I don’t quite know what it was about him, the blonde good looks or his crooked smile, but I felt an instant distrust towards him. Finally he nodded and held out his hand. I shook it and said, “Hey.”

Formalities over, he pointed to a corner of the room. “Please, relax. You can put your stuff in that corner if you want. You must be hungry? We were just about to eat.”

Everyone seemed to relax and we dumped our backpacks in the corner, including Luke’s with the shotgun in it. He took his crossbow from his shoulder and placed it with his pack. I kept my jacket on, comforted by the heavy weight of the handgun.

We stood in a richly furnished parlor, the yellow light was coming from gas lanterns located at various points around the room and the toasty warmth that was immediately evident when we had come in was coming from a gas radiator. The windows were blacked out by black plastic that hung behind the white lace curtains, giving no clue outside to the light from the lanterns. Ben and Brooke followed Will out of the room and Luke looked at me. I half expected he had hung back to tell me he was also wary of the occupants of the house but instead he clapped me on the shoulder.

“Come on Isaac! It smells like hot food!”

He was smiling ear to ear as he propelled me towards the door through which the others had gone. I didn’t like the way the other three boys had waited for us to go through. I especially didn’t like that they hadn’t put their weapons down.

The stockiest of the boys, the one carrying the crossbow,
Beau I think, stayed behind and settled into a chair by the window. He pulled the dark plastic that was over the window to the side and peered out into the rapidly darkening afternoon.

The short hallway opened up into a large kitchen and dining area that was also well-lit and invitingly warm. My mouth dropped open. All the available floor and bench space in the kitchen was taken up by tinned and packaged food and against one wall stood a stack of gallon containers of freshwater. On the gas stove, a large, probably industrial kitchen size stock pot steamed happily.

I knew instantly that it was the source of the wonderful meaty smell that made my stomach rumble. Will informed us it was beef stew and invited us to sit at the huge table that dominated the space. It fit my group and Will, Ryan and Rodney, who had finally put down their weapons, with three places left over. I thought of Sarah, of how she should have been sitting with us, enjoying the warmth and food too.

I watched as the big sullen boy called
Ryan dished out the stew. Will clapped his hands suddenly and we all jumped. “I almost forgot!” He quickly stood and went around the bench to the oven. He returned carrying a wooden board with two huge loaves of freshly baked bread and was greeted with shouts of pleasure from the twins and Luke.

I stayed silent, but my mouth watered in anticipation. After surviving so long on tinned, mostly cold food
, the feast laid before us seemed Heaven sent. In the back of my mind though, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something odd about how willing these boys were to invite us into their hideout and share their food with us.

Our hosts seemed content to allow us to make pigs of ourselves, there was plenty to go around and they clearly weren’t wanting. We broke the bread off in chunks and dipped it into the generous bowls of the delicious stew. I slowly relaxed as we ate. The hearty food and the buoyant mood of my group slowly breaking down my disquiet. Will was quite the host, and I didn’t fail to notice that Brooke seemed to be quite smitten with him, laughing enthusiastically at his jokes and stories.

It turned out that Will’s group had made several raids into Millbury, one time managing to start an old truck and load it with all the supplies they could fit. I told them the story of the pickup and the dreadful aerial response from the Chinese. Will shrugged. “Luckily it was only a short journey for us.”

I began to feel a slight unease again, I couldn’t help but sense that there was something he
was not telling us, and it creeped me out how rarely the other boys spoke.

After dinner Will showed us where we could toilet, a small bathroom down the hall from the kitchen, and then invited us back into the parlor. We fell to the carpet around the radiator, our full belly’s bulging. Beau still sat at the window, barely acknowledging the rest of us as we came in. He clearly took his job as a sentry very seriously.

“Have you had much trouble?” I asked, gesturing towards the stocky lad. The third boy, Rodney, who was so pale he could almost have passed for an albino, gave Will a strange look that none of the others saw.

“Honestly, we have been really lucky,” said Will, “like you, we’ve had some looters come through, but each time we have been able to scare them off. There was also a group of about twelve kids; we put them up for a couple of nights before they moved on.” This last comment piqued my interest.  

“Where did they move on to?”

“Um… they were heading to the city,” he said, after hesitating for a second. My sense of unease came back, gnawing at the edges of the comfort that having a full belly and warmth had brought.

“Worcester?” Luke asked.

“Yes. What about you lot? What are your plans?”

Before I could say anything Brooke had blurted our destination of New Hampshire and told of the Morse code signal. I felt a flash of anger but held my tongue. The other group’s leader was silent for a moment, digesting this information and I almost choked when she followed up with, “You should come with us!”

“Thanks for the offer, but we’re happy here. Well for the winter at least. You’re welcome to stay tonight though…or as long as you want,” he replied, graciously. I breathed an inward sigh of relief, both at his refusal and the offer of a night’s accommodation.

“Oh, marvelous! Thank you Will, you’re very kind,” said Brooke. She turned
to me. “Can’t we? Please Isaac.”

“Yes, it sounds like a great idea to get our strength back. I vote for staying a few days,” said Ben.

“Me too Boss,” said Luke.

Outnumbered but resolute, I said “Thanks for the offer; we will take you up on tonight, but one night only. We leave in the morning.”

“It makes sense to stay at least another night Isaac,” Will said, almost too quickly. “To gather your strength…and we really could do with the company.”

A chorus of yes’s came from Ben, Brooke and Luke and I wasn’t able to come up with a valid reason why we shouldn’t stay at least one more night.

“All right, one more night after this, but we leave before daybreak the next day.”

“All right!” said Luke, offering me a knuckle bump which I returned with little enthusiasm.

We didn’t chat much longer; we were all bushed after our flight from the last refuge. Will ordered Ryan to bring mattresses and pillows to the parlor. It seemed odd, the smaller boy Will ordering the bigger one about like that, but he took it with no complaint. Will bid us goodnight and went to his own bedroom, apparently one of the perks of being in charge. Ten minutes later the twins were asleep on a double mattress and Luke had taken a comfortable looking sofa and was snoring softly.

I was on a single mattress, watching the comings and goings of Will’s group and attempting to ward off sleep. Rodney had relieved
Beau at the window, and Beau was also now quietly snoring in an armchair. Ryan had disappeared with Will.

Tiredness lapped at the beach of my consciousness like a rising tide and I closed my eyes, telling myself it would just be for a second. My sleep was fitful at first and I remember jumping a few times. One of those times I found Rodney turned away from the window, cradling the crossbow as he regarded me with his expressionless, pale face. He looked away immediately and I slowly relaxed. I didn’t last much longer before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I awoke late the next morning alone in the room except for
Ryan, who now guarded the window. I chastised myself. Again I had slept in after everyone, not even stirring when they had gotten up. I had read about soldiers being able to sleep at any time and being able to wake up at the slightest noise, and I wondered how long I had to live in this new world of almost constant danger before I was able to do that.

“Where are the others?” I said, to the turned back of
Ryan.

“Out the back,” he said, without looking at me.

I stood up and stretched before putting my jacket back on, I had curled it into a ball the night before and slept with it under my arm. The pistol was still in it. I walked into the kitchen and up to the blackened sliding door. Before opening it, I peeked through a crack and was surprised to see Ben, Brooke, Luke and the rest of our hosts running around like lunatics throwing snowballs at each other. They were in a private courtyard bordered by a tall, thick hedge.

As I watched, Luke failed to duck a fastball from Will and fell on his butt, his face covered in ice. I couldn’t help but smile and slid open the door before stepping out and closing it behind me.

“Hello sleepyhead!” yelled Brooke, running up to me and giving me a hug. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes watery and she look just about the happiest I had ever seen her.

Whether my presence was a dampener or the game had come to a natural conclusion, I don’t know, but we headed back inside almost straight away and Will made us mugs of hot chocolates using powdered milk and cocoa.

I excused myself; I needed to wizz badly and walked down the hall to the bathroom. I had my hand on the door handle when I decided to have a quick peek in one of the other doors. This was the first time I had been alone, without one of Will’s group within sight.

The door swung open on silent hinges and I found myself looking into what used to be a child’s bedroom. I whistled softly. The room’s
pink walls were stacked high with cardboard boxes of food. Powdered milk, flour, dehydrated eggs, tinned vegetables and more water.

Suddenly Will’s explanation of raids on the local supermarket didn’t ring true; this stuff looked like it had been taken from a warehouse. Fair enough, they had found a goldmine and didn’t want to share, but I didn’t like being lied to. I closed the
door. As I relieved myself I was even more convinced that we should leave first thing in the morning.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully and after another hearty meal we discussed our plans for the morning. Rodney, who would be on watch that night, was to awaken us just before daybreak so we could resume our journey. Will didn’t try talking us int
o staying longer this time…looking back now, it’s obvious why.