Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) (9 page)

Behind her, like a pair of needy ducklings, were the two children. The older of the two was a white boy who appeared to be about as old as Jules perhaps. The other child was barely more than a toddler. She had the skin tone and facial features of an Asian, maybe of Korean descent.

Neil couldn’t conceal his pleasure. He said warmly, hoping not to offend, “Well DB, you’ve got yourself quite a family here. Who would’ve thought?”

DB tried to hide his smile by spitting and looking away, though his body language betrayed his more austere veneer. There was little reason or attempt to do so though when he looked back at Neil.

“I ain’t never really had one really; a family that is. I wasn’t home enough when my ex-wife and boy lived with me. I was always workin’ on the Slope and then doin’ jobs around town when I was home. I mostly just paid the bills until I came home one day and they was gone. Duke was the closest thing I ever had to a family and he’s just a dog.”

Duke didn’t seem to be insulted by the comment as he made his way over to Neil. The dog sniffed and wagged and wagged and sniffed. Neil was all too eager to scratch the grateful dog behind his ears and pat his side with a friendly hand.

DB continued, “I don’t know if what I got now could be called a family or not, but I can say that I’m feelin’ more and more protective of them every day. Della there, she don’t need no protectin’ from nobody. She’s hard as nails but don’t let her kid you though. When it comes to those kids and even Ricky here, she’s all mama.

“Me, Ricky and Duke found the three of them back in Soldotna. She said she was working at a hotel...the Aspen I think. She found both of those kids at the hotel. Can you imagine? I always wondered what happened to their parents and Della ain’t never said. I guess I pretty much figured out what happened to their folks but I never got how them kids stayed alive. They’re just so little.”

Neil answered, “Without her and then you, they wouldn’t have. They couldn’t have. You’re what’s kept them alive.”

Emma asked, “How long have you been on the road? And where’s your truck?”

DB shrugged, doing little else to answer. Instead, he said to Della, “We got visitors,” as if he was coming home from work with company for dinner. Della was not as casual with introductions. She was as deliberate as a glacier in her movements, always careful to keep the children shielded behind her ample frame. She measured the newcomers, trying to divine their intentions. Her expression was guarded, her eyes filled to their bright yellow corners with questions and calculated assumptions.

Neil felt completely disarmed by her eyes. There was little to no discernible distinction between her irises and her pupils, which appeared be swirling, dark eddies in small but consuming seas of yellowish-white. Neil found it impossible to guess her age. She appeared neither overly young nor old and frail. Her face, though, bore the wisdom of experience arrived at only after several decades of hard decisions and toil.

She neither extended her hand nor shared her name. She merely watched and waited as she walked slowly across the pavement toward the van. Without so much as a look over her shoulder, she said, “We ain’t got much, but what we have we can share.”

“Likewise. I’m Neil. This is Emma.”

“Okay, Steve.”

“No, I said my name is Neil.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time, Steve.”

Neil looked at Emma and was all set to ask a question when DB said, “I’ve been with her for a few weeks now and she still calls me Steve. I don’t think it’s an accident and I don’t know why she does it, but I don’t see any point in fightin’ it.”

Neil knew that DB was right, but Della’s seeming disregard for his identity bothered him nonetheless. He watched Della walk away and wondered to himself if her attitude was a product of their current circumstances or if it originated sometime in the past. Had she been hurt by some man or a series of men who had melded into a single amalgam of personalities all with the common title of “Steve”? Who was “Steve”?

What a weird day it had become.

Reunited.

It took some convincing on Neil’s part and some trusting on DB’s and Della’s parts, but finally it was decided that they would all venture up the railroad track and join the others at Neil’s and Emma’s camp.

Neil offered to help with carrying supplies only to learn that there were no supplies to be carried. There was nothing. Well, not precisely nothing. There were five more mouths to feed...six if you counted Duke. What was the sense of adding more? More mouths? More children needing care and protection? More responsibility? Despite any misgivings or hesitation, he knew that it was the right thing to do. They would simply figure a way to make it all work. And by
they
, Neil always assumed it meant
he
would figure a way.

Figuring was just what he’d been forced to do these past several weeks and it didn’t appear to be slackening any. Dr. Caldwell had been right. Neil needed to accept his role, regardless of how uncomfortable it made him feel. He knew this to be true and yet he found himself, on occasion, trekking further and further from that reality.

The biggest challenge to Neil accepting his role as a leader was that he had always gone the direction of the Beta male; rarely first but never last in sports, academics, and with girls. He was usually good at most things but he was never the best at anything. He never considered himself leader material. Bureaucrat, middle manager, crew leader at the fry station, but never head manager and certainly never leader. It wasn’t hard to understand Neil’s present reluctance.

And yet, he’d just successfully rationalized himself into leading a larger tribe. Sometimes he was his own worst enemy.

Jerry spotted the approaching group and immediately recognized Neil at its head. He was relieved to see that both Emma and Neil were still armed and smiling. Without taking his eye from his hunting scope, Jerry said, “They’re baaacckkkk! And they’ve got friends with ‘em.”

Meghan leapt up and ran for her own rifle, fearing that Neil’s friends may not be friendly. “Does everything look...? Is he...?”

Jerry nodded and said with a smile, “Relax. It’s okay. Couple adults. Couple of kids. And a dog. Danny, it’s a Golden. D’ya think your dog followed you up here? What was his name again?”

Danny answered from somewhere out of Jerry’s limited vision, “Roman. Romie. Do they really have a dog with them?” Danny’s reaction to that piece of news was especially excited. There was just something uplifting to him to have a dog around.

Standing next to Jerry, Meghan could see all of them now without the aid of a scope. Claire was there too. She could see the emotion starting to color Meghan’s cheeks. She touched Meghan’s shoulder and rubbed it gently.

There was no point trying to deny her feelings. Meghan was always so excited when he returned from his excursions, of which there were entirely too many. Truth be told, she was always relieved and pleased to see everyone return from any jaunt whether long or short. But with Neil it was something different...something special.

She knew that she loved him but was surprised at her increasing dependence on him. She had loved Brian, her former fiancé, but was far more independent and self-reliant. Of course, to be fair, times were significantly different then. She had a job and an apartment then. She slept inside then and wasn’t a potential nightly special on the menu back then. She wondered how Brian would have done in Neil’s position. Would he have ever found himself in Neil’s position?

The thinking and remembering and wondering touched off a tinge, a lone peppercorn of guilt, that revealed itself unexpectedly in her misting eyes. She hadn’t gone looking, but the tears found her anyway. There were neither sobs nor sniffles. The tears were quiet and few. They filled the corners of her eyes and left semi-clean streaks on her cheeks as they went south.

Jerry looked at her and, thinking they were tears of relief, said out of the corner of his mouth, “Jeez. He wasn’t gone that long.”

To which Claire nudged him with her elbow. “Shut the hell up. Lady’s entitled.”

Meghan merely smiled and nodded, preferring the simple assumption over the complicated truth.

Just moments later and with much fanfare, the travelers were back within the warmth of their camp. Introductions and handshakes were shared, as were a few scraps of food. There were smiles all around when Jules looked up in disbelief and said, “Alec?”

The boy DB had taken to calling Ricky was, in fact, Jules’ older brother Alec. He hadn’t said a word since joining DB, leaving the other man to guess about the boy’s origins, his family, and even his name. Although, truth be told, DB wasn’t much of a guessing man, so the farthest he had gotten in solving those mysteries was bestowing upon the boy the random moniker Ricky.

In all actuality it wasn’t a random name at all, despite what he may have tried to tell himself. It was the name that he wanted to name his son, but his wife was having none of that. She’d said that Ricky wasn’t a name worthy of her son. It just wasn’t dignified enough. She named him after her father, Edward, and it was to him that she’d run while DB was on one of his two week stints working the oil fields of the North Slope.

She always appreciated the fine things that his large paychecks could buy, but she never seemed to appreciate the man who delivered those checks to her. Theirs was a fiery romance at best and an utter disaster at worst. She made him feel like an unwanted and over-stayed houseguest while he was home and completely ignored him when he was gone. And he wasn’t without blame. As often as he could, just to get under her skin, DB would refer to young Edward as Eddie.

When he came home to an empty house and divorce papers awaiting his signature, he wasn’t surprised but he was hurt all the same. Maybe he figured being unhappy was better than being alone and hoped that perhaps she was of the same mind. DB had spent the last couple of decades and then some mostly alone. Duke was his lone companion until recently.

When the mute boy came into his life by climbing in his truck that afternoon, it was only natural that the name Ricky was the first to surface. So the mute Alec had become the mute Ricky with no fuss and no filing of irritating documents at the courthouse.

That was all in the process of changing however. At first, Alec’s recognition of Jules was as absent as his voice. His eyes, as alert and coherent as a lobotomy patient, panned across the little girl. There was nothing at first but then he hesitated. Perhaps a hint of recall. Just enough to fire some neural engine that had been put into a hibernating state after he’d seen and shot the thing that bit Martin.

He was remembering more. The family had driven away in a rush to take Martin to the hospital, which left him at the cabin alone. He’d already seen the rifle on the dish cabinet earlier and thought that perhaps he would take a look around. The bite on Martin’s hand didn’t look that bad, so how dangerous could the animal be? He doubted he would see anything in the first place; the thing would have likely run off. He needed a distraction and this adventure sounded like it would do nicely to kill the time.

When he found the shallow glacial creek and cool air using the creek bed like a bobsled track, he was reminded of the last time his family had journeyed to Alaska. He and Martin had run up and down the creek bank every day. The creek in his memory was much more robust and full. It seemed like a raging torrent. Back then, the same crisp edge was on the air but now there was something more. A lively, rank foulness gave the air’s shallow coolness an unwelcome dimension that twisted his nose unpleasantly.

He was still on the bank when he saw something crawling, slithering like a lizard really, on the gravel of the creek bed. He knew that it couldn’t be, but it kind of looked like it was a human without legs. When it moved again, he replayed in his mind what Jules and Danny had said. They said that a caveman had bitten Martin. Alec was looking at their caveman. But to think about the abomination in terms of being a man was really stretching his imagination. He could see its head and its shoulders fairly clearly, but beyond that the thing was formless and largely colorless.

He wanted to throw something at it when he remembered the rifle in his hands. It looked and felt so much heavier before, like some ancient, powerful weapon. Would it be enough? He lifted it to his shoulder, looked down the barrel to the sight on the end, and squeezed off a quick round. To his astonishment, the bullet hit the creature on its back. And to his equal astonishment, it appeared to have had no effect at all. He shot it again, shouting curses at it. When it turned over, he shot it again and again, but nothing seemed to be able to stop it.

Confused and more than a little scared now, Alec sprinted back to the cabin. He locked the doors and hid in the loft for hours. It became dark and no word had arrived from his parents. He wasn’t sure how they would contact him because his cell phone wasn’t working and the cabin didn’t have a phone. He had no idea when they would be coming back and only hoped that it would be soon.

The next morning, he looked out the window and saw no sign of the thing from the creek. He couldn’t have known that the creek bank was too steep and the Ice Age zombie with only one hand was unable to pull himself out. His ignorance of this fact was causing him to turn the cabin into both a refuge and a prison.