The Remaining: Refugees (21 page)

Bus put the pen to his lips, thoughtfully. "Keith
Jenkins did that welding for the dozer attachment, didn’t he?
If we can scrounge up some
more
welding supplies for him, and plug him into the power at the hospital, he might be ab
le to weld us some fuel tanks.
"

Lee had to admit, that was a good idea. "Definitely. But how big those tanks need to be depends on how many vehicles will be in each group. Which depends on how many people and how much crap we have to carry with us."

"So essentially planning is on hold until you guys clear Sanford."

"Correct." Lee rubbed his palms together
. "Now, Harper, why don't you go talk to Nate Malone and plan for what you're putting them through this week?"

Harper looked at him blankly. "What do you want me to teach them?"

"Just drill the basics," Lee said. "Marksmanship and squad tactics."

"Right." Harper sounded despondent. "Just the basics."

***

After Harper left, Lee and Bus turned their attention to matters inside the camp.

"Have you heard from Jerry at all today?" Lee asked.

"No." Bus splayed his hands out across the desktop. "He's made himself a bit scarce after yesterday's performance."

"I'm worried about Jerry and Professor White," Lee stated.

"In what way?"

"They make me nervous. Professor White is just angry enough to do something stupid. And Jerry seems like he and his supporters are on the verge of leaving." Lee chewed at the inside of his lip for a moment. "You think they might do that?"

"Leave the group?" Bus's eyebrows quirked up. "I don't know. That's a big risk for them to take, wandering out there by themselves. We've built something safe here, or at least safer than it is in the rest of the world. I don't know if people will want to leave it."

"What if they don't leave it?" Lee found a small tear at the corner of the map and worried at it with his finger.

Bus rubbed his eyes. "I don't know, Lee."

"It's something we need to think about."

"What do you want me to do? Have sentries follow them around all day?" Bus snorted. "There has to be some level of trust."

"I agree." Lee stepped towards the desk. "But I want you to keep your eyes open."

"For what?"

"You have two groups of people that don't really want anything to do with how we've been running things, but I'm also sure they don't want to leave all this behind. We're no different than every other third-world country out there now. When there are dissenters, they don't picket congress. That's the old world. If you have dissenters now, they come after you." Lee lowered his voice. "I just want you to watch your back."

Bus gave him a pointed stare. "I could say the same to you."

Lee nodded. "I already do."

Their conversation continued
and eventually fell to trivialities. Jeriah Wilson and his team arrived around noon and Lee left to debrief them. They reported that everything was quiet in Lillington when they left, and that the Fuquay-Varina and Dunn survivors were still settling in, but should be mounting scavenging operations inside Lillington in the next few days.
They’d successfully set up a radio base station, and Outpost L
illington was currently on line
.

Lee
made an exhaustive list of everything he would need for their operations in Sanford and began to gather these items. Most of them were readily available from the stores that he had taken from Bunker #4. Such things as ammunition and ordnance were locked away in one of the ubiquitous
shipping
containers around the camp.

Some of the other items like food stores and medical supplies he had to scrounge from others like Marie and Jenny, who were in charge of the food and medicine, respectively. Luckily, most of the food and medicine they had, originally came from Lee, so they had no issue with giving it back to him. Several times throughout the day, Julia or LaRouche or Jim would pass by and ask if he needed help, but he would only smile and wave them off.

In truth, he just needed something to keep him busy.

And it was pleasant, in a way, to be busy with something besides keeping himself or others alive. The monotonous physical labor of hauling the heavy packages of supplies back and forth set his mind at ease and allowed him to work off some of his nervous energy. Because he had all day, he worked slowly and meticulously, and checked his list often. Sometimes he would sit on the tailgate of the Humvee for a long period of time and simply enjoy the quiet and the relative solitude of being left alone.

He loaded the supplies they would need into the back of the Humvees and checked the fuel level in both. They were each at about the halfway mark. Plenty to get them in and out of Sanford, but they would ne
ed to refuel immediately after.

As dusk threw giant splashes of amber across the sky, he finished loading the last of the supplies
. A steady stream of people were now making their way towards the Camp Ryder building for dinner. Lee wanted to avoid the crowd and
he
quickly cut across
M
ain
S
treet between two groups of survivors, all talking loudly amongst themselves and not noticing Lee
pass by
.

He found his group nestled in an open area between several shanties, close to the fence. A fire pit had been dug into the ground and ringed with cinder blocks and loose stone, identical to the dozens of other fire pits that had popped up around Camp Ryder when the weather began to chill. In the center of the fire pit, a large stack of wood was burning hotter and brighter than was usual.

Around the fire were gathered most of Lee's team members, including Jeriah Wilson and his group. They sat atop crates and overturned buckets, and others stood around holding tin cans for drinking cups. LaRouche was laughing loud
ly, his mouth stained by the cha
w that bulged on the inside of his mouth, and he held a bottle of whiskey in one hand. The bottle was already nearly half gone.

When he saw Lee, he raised
it up,
"Captain! We didn't think you were gonna make it."

Lee smiled and waved a small greeting. "What happened to the barbecue? Thought you were gonna have a whole hog spitted over that fire."

LaRouche threw a disdainful glance at Julia, who was seated a few places down from him. "Well,
someone
was supposed to talk to their sister..."

"I never agreed to that," she stated,
blandly
.

"But..." LaRouche held up the bottle of whiskey. "We did receive a charitable donation from one James Tinsley, scavenger extraordinaire. Along with his best wishes, of course."

LaRouche put the bottle to his lips and turned it up.

Julia crossed the distance in a flash and
deftly
snatched the bottle from him. She stared at the mouth of the bottle in horror. "You're gonna get tobacco juice in it, you nasty bastard!"

LaRouche's eyes tracked her drunkenly. "Tobacco and whiskey is an excellent flavor combination. I was only trying to share."

Lee stepped in closer, feeling the warmth of the fire on his face and hands. Julia passed the bottle to him with a sneer of disgust and he accepted. A quick label inspection revealed that this was not the cheap, bottom-shelf
liquor
like Bus had squirreled away in his desk. Lee was very surprised that someone had given it to them as a gift.

He swiped a quick hand across the mouth of the bottle and took a swig. It tingled on his tongue and burned going down his throat, nearly making his eyes tear up. After drinking nothing but water for months, the flavor of the whiskey was like a bomb going off in his mouth.

"You see?" LaRouche said with a tone of respect. "Now there's a man who appreciates my flavor combinations. You're welcome."

Lee laughed and took another, deeper gulp, then passed the bottle back. He took a seat on a
n
overturned bucket and warmed his hands at the fire. Across from him, Jim spoke with Wilson and occasionally tossed another log into the fire, causing a dazzling cloud of sparks to rise up into the air. Lee's eyes kept falling
to
Julia and then they would track unconsciously over to the dark woods that appeared as simply an uneven black smudge beyond the cross-hatch pattern of the chain-linkage. He would scan the darkness, not even thinking about what he was doing. He took two more hits from the bottle and decided that was enough. He hadn't had alcohol in his bloodstream for a long time now, and he was already feeling light and fuzzy upstairs.

The conversation took meandering turns, like a drunk man wandering through empty and deserted streets. For the most part, Lee listened and kept his own council, unless he was pressed by someone else for his thoughts on the matter.

Jake, the bright-eyed kid from Wilson’s crew,
brought up the old conversation topic of "what do you miss?" and was immediately booed down by nearly everyone around the fire. No one wanted to play that game. No one wanted to think about everything they had lost. It was a melancholy game that tried hard to disguise itself as p
leasant memories, but was only
teasing ghost
s
of things that would never return.

Jake took the jeers well enough,
hanging his head and raising
his hands in surrender. “
You got me! You got me!” he smiled, bashfully. “No more suggestions.”

They laughed and told stories and made light of horrific things, as people doomed to repeat such things often do. Their raucous voices peaked and then began to subside as the emotions, stripped b
are by the whiskey, fell into a
calm. The group conversation split into several small conversations between two or three, and eventually many of them began to drift off as the night grew later and colder. The moon was high and bone-white above them as most of the group headed for their shanties and their own beds, which would embrace them in the numbness of their whiskey-sweetened minds.

Only Lee, Julia, and LaRouche remained around the fire. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, staring into the dwindling fire, hypnotized by the undulating tones of the embers. It was the silence born of knowing those most important and visceral aspects of the people you were with. That silence when nothing needed to be said, because the silence was never awkward, and never needed to be filled.

Of course, LaRouche had a habit of verbalizing his thoughts as they came to him.

In the quiet glow of the dying fire, he leaned forward on his crate and cleared his throat. "You know," he murmured. "I don't think I'm gonna make it."

Lee looked at him, and then across the fire pit where Julia was watching
them
guardedly, as though she sensed an impending conflict, and wasn't sure how Lee was going to react. Looking back to the sergeant, Lee watched him
as he eyed
the last dregs of amber liquid swirling at the bottom of the bottle,
the flames dancing in it
as though it had caught fire itself. He stared at this for a long while and then nodded once, as though confirming something within himself.

"What do you mean?" Lee asked, hesitantly.

LaRouche grinned into the fire, and his teeth glistened bright and wet. "You know what I mean."

"No."

"I mean..." LaRouche looked lazily skyward and seemed suddenly enamored by the sky above him. The smile faded from his lips and he seemed in awe. When he spoke again, his voice was eerie, like he was speaking in his sleep. "I only wanted a place in the sun. Like a big, open back yard where I could sit on a lawn chair with a cold beer in my hand. And maybe a wife, maybe some kids. We'd have the neighbors over for barbecues, and they'd ask us what type of beer to bring. And we'd talk about restoring classic cars, and how best to keep your lawn green."