The Remaining: Refugees (27 page)

There was a brief moment of laughter and the tension eased, slightly.

“I’m going to try to impart to you a little bit of what I’ve experienced,” he said, feeling a little more comfortable as the people surrounding him began to relax. “
When I put in my two cents, s
ome of you may already know what I have to say
. T
hat’s fine. Hear me out anyways. I’m not going to act like I’ve been through more shit than you, because we’ve all been through enough in our own separate ways.
At the end of this, there’s no promotions, no honors, no awards. You’ll just hopefully be a little more prepared for what
’s coming
. And that little bit might be the difference, right?”

The trainees rumbled in agreement.

“On that note,” Harper rubbed his beard. “Does anyone have any questions?”

The small crowd looked side to side at each other, assessing how open their companions were to asking questions. It didn’t seem like anybody was
in an inquisitive mood
,
but then
a younger guy stepped forward and raised his hand. He was a mousy looking kid, with red-flushed cheeks and shifty, nervous eyes.

“Yeah,” Harper gestured to him. “What’s up?”

The kid looked unsure of himself. “Do you think we’ll have to shoot other people
? Like…
real people?”

“Non-infected?” Harper
ventured.

“Yes.” The kid glanced around at his peers. “You’ve done it before, right?”

Harper considered this. “What are you getting at?”

“Well, I think most of us have had to kill crazies before.” He shifted his weight. “But I don’t think many of us have had to shoot at real people. Do you think we’ll have to do that?”

The rest of the trainees were looking at the kid uncomfortably, as though they weren’t sure whether
to tell him to shut up or not, but t
here was
also
the sense that mos
t of them had the same question: were
they capable of kil
ling a non-infected human being?

“There’s no difference.” Harper said steadily. As the words left his mouth, he wondered whether they were true or not. He remembered the young man at the roadblock when he’d gone with Lee to his first bunker. Back when Doc and Josh and Miller were alive. He remembered putting that rusted, p
itted bayonet blade through the
kid’s stomach and firing
the rifle. He remembered the screams, remembered the feeling of absolute revulsion. Could he tell others about that? Could he tell these volunteers, when he hadn’t spoken of it since?

The kid looked confused. “Sure there’s a difference…”

“No difference,” Harper said sternly. “The only difference is in your perception. Those people infected with FU
RY, they aren’t another species.
T
hey’re not animals. They’re human beings. And I don’t care whether a human being is in their right mind or their brain looks like Swiss cheese, if they’re trying to kill me, I’m gonna rip their goddamn heart out if I have to.

“The fact is, you may come into contact with normal human beings that want to hurt you, want to kill you, and want to kill your teammates. You need to decide
right now
whether you can pull the trigger on one of those people. Because in the middle of a shootout is not the time to discover that you can’t do it.” Harper looked at them all. “And there ain’t no shame in it. What’s a shame is lying to yourself and then making your team pay for
it
.

“You want me to tell you what to expect?” He shook his head. “I can’t do that. It’s different for every person. Some people feel guilt, some people feel elated, some people feel nothing at all. Just depends on the person. If you decide that you can kill a person, and if that opportunity presents itself and you take someone out, my advice would be to not make a big deal about it. Don’t dwell on it. People have been killing people for thousands of years, and only recently has our society decided that killing another person
mentally destroys you
. You hear that crap enough times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He pointed at the kid. “You gotta kill a man, maybe you gotta kill a girl…you do it and you get it over with. Ain’t no need to mourn ‘em or think about them afterwards.
And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”

That seemed to end it.

N
o one left.

Apparently they had all decided they were capable of killing a sane human being. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. It wasn’t for Harper to determine. He just wanted them to shut up, shoot straight, and learn how to cooperate with each other.

When he’d cycled all twenty through the warm-up, he had them take a quick sweep of the complex again to make sure nothing had been drawn in by the sound of gunfire. While they cleared the area, he re-taped the targets again. The brick siding was looking ragged and pockmarked. Holes were punched through completely in places.

When they returned, Harper was holding his own rifle.

“What we’re gonna do next is some ‘point-shooting’ or ‘snap-shooting’.” He turned so the trainees were on his right. “
Having a good sight picture and sight alignment is great, but in all likelihood, when you are in a combat situation, either a shootout with non-infected, or being overrun by a pack, you won’t have the time or the presence of mind to look through those tiny little sights and squeeze off a perfectly aimed shot. Instead, you’ll shoot instinctively.”

He motioned for the mousy kid to step forward. “It’s Devon, right?” Harper recalled.

A hesitant smile. “Yeah.”

“You know how to point at something?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know how to point-shoot.” Harper smiled. “I could go into a whole lot of technical mumbo-jumbo about why that is, but suffice it to say you don’t have to aim your rifle to hit the target. You just point and fire. You want the long explanation, you can talk to Captain Harden about it.

“Here,” Harper shouldered the rifle and faced the targets. “How I’m going to practice my point shooting is by linking my body’s muscle memory between instinctive shooting and static shooting. So I’m going to take my time, get a good sight picture, aim,
and
fire one round. Then I’m going to drop my muzzle to a low-ready and immediately snap it back up and fire a second round without aiming.”

Harper demonstrated and impressed himself by putting both holes within an inch of each other. “When you start out, your two shots are probably going to be a little wide of each other. That’s okay. As you practice, the distance between your aimed shot and your snap shot will begin to decrease until you can more or less put them in the same spot.” He gestured for the line to step up. “Go ahead and do it.”

They picked up quick. It helped that most of them had probably done this type of shooting before, though they may not have known what it was called. Harper walked behind them and saw the shots striking the target in rapid succession. He had everyone empty their mags and then switched groups. The next group completed the exercise just as well.

Everyone reloaded, and he took them through some other basic move-and-shoot drills. Lee had explained to him once that
he had
always
been
t
aught to “aggress on the threat,
”
which
meant that when a threat presented itself, you moved toward it while you were shooting. The action of aggressing on the target was affective because it forced your target into a fear response, where they essentially froze up, torn between the decision to stand and fight or cut and run.

The only problem
was that it was completely ineffective against the infected. You could not intimidate them, could not force them to think a certain way. They were there to attack you, and moving towards them only made their job easier. Lee had quickly learned this, and nixed the “aggress on the threat” portion of training. Now they trained to move laterally, and to back up.
Any sort of shooting while moving was difficult, but the group picked up on it as fast as they had picked up on everything else.

It was a good group.

After several hours of drills, interspersed around sporadic sweeps of the Timber Creek Condominiums, they took a break for some food and water. It was late morning, nearing midday by now. Harper took an old two-liter bottle full of water and a
can of sliced peaches
to the tailgate of his truck and hoisted himself onto it.

He was joined shortly by the mousy kid, Devon.

“What’s up?” Harper asked him
as he finagled with the pull-tab on the can
.

He expected the kid to have more questions about shooting and killing and frankly, Harper wasn’t really in the mood to talk any more about it. Not because it was a sensitive subject, but because he had already imparted what minimal wisdom he could on the topic. He’d already said the conversation was over. What else did Devon want?

But instead, the kid furrowed his brow. “Sir, have you ever seen Jerry go outside the gate?”

Harper stared at Devon for a moment. “First, just call me Harper. Second…Yes. I’ve seen Jerry go outside t
he gate. Once. To get that fuck
ing mattress he loves so much. Why?”

“Oh.” Devon shook his head. “It’s probably nothing, then.”

Harper
was in the process of lifting the open can of peaches to his lips for a sip of the juice, but stopped
. “What?”

T
he kid waved a dismissive hand. “It’s just that I saw Jerry leaving really early this morning. Thought it was weird, because I’ve never seen him leave the compound. But, I mean, if he’s done it before, then I guess it’s not a big deal.” Devon shrugged and smiled. “After that big argument the other night, I just thought
…well, never mind
.”

Harper kept his eyes on the kid. “Yeah.
I’m sure it’s nothing
.”

***

It was turning into a busy day at the medical trailer, which meant it would be a busy day for Angela. She didn’t know much about medicine, not like Jenny did, but she was competent and willing to help, and she’d proven that she was cool under pressure, so when Jenny was swamped, Angela stepped in to help out. With Sam off learning to hu
nt with Keith Jenkins, and Abby with the other children her age, she either helped out with the sewing and mending of garments, or she helped out
in
the
medical
trailer.

Frankly, she despised sewing. She did it without complaint when that was where she was needed, because she’d volunteered for it before she realized how much it sucked
. She knew how to sew and she did it well, but having to do it for hours on end was miserable
. In retrospect, she would have much preferred to learn
hide-
tanning
, or even log-splitting, but those were occupations largely held by men.

Sexist?

Maybe.

She hadn’t put much thought into it. There were a few women that hunted, and a few men that knew how to sew. Perhaps
it
would have offended her four or five months ago, but there wasn’t the sense that she was being squeezed out by a Good Old Boy network. It was more that everyone was just doing what they could do well.

Those that knew how to hunt, hunted.

Those that knew how to sew, sewed.

Of course, that didn’t stop her from learning. When sewing and nurse-assisting were not needed, she hung around Dave, the guy that worked with all the animal skins the hunters brought in and tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible. It was messy work, but for some reason she
enjoyed it
.