The Remaining: Refugees (5 page)

"Alright." Lee rubbed some warmth back into his bearded face. "Jim, go get LaRouche and let him know we're leaving in five.
Jake
can stay. Harper, relay to Wilson and his team that we'll be leaving. I want them to stay here and help for the time being. I'll radio them if I need them back over at Camp Ryder. I'm going to, uh..." Lee trailed off. "
I’ll be ready in a minute
."

Harper and Jim nodded
discreetly
.

Lee turned away from them and headed into the crowd.

He found Julia
making her way down the line of refugees, checking
everyone
for illness before they let them cram together in tight spaces and get the whole outpost sick. Cold
,
flu, and the ensuing pneumonia, promised to be a problem for them this year.
P
eople simply couldn't sanitize like they used to. There was now a full generation of people who had been addicted to sanitizing gels and wipes, whose immune systems were not quite as robust as they should be for this type of lifestyle.

Julia was easy to spot by her
tawny hair, pulled back into some practical arrangement Lee didn’t know the name of.
It was
darkened
now
with sweat and oil and smoke from
three
days in the field, and it was plastered back to her skull because she constantly wor
ried at it with her dirty hands
.

He fell in step behind her as she wo
rked her way through the thirty
or
so refugees.

"How are you?" she asked
one of them, an older woman
.

"I'm fine, just tired."

"Any persistent cough, runny nose, or soreness in your throat?"

"No."

"Any aches or chills?"

"No."

"Can you breathe through your nose?"

The woman demonstrated.

Julia held up a penlight. "Open your mouth and say 'ah.'"

"Aaahhh."

Julia shined her light around, decided everything was good exce
pt for a case of bad breath—
not
so uncommon nowadays—
and smiled. "Thank you."

Lee nodded to the older woman as they passed to the next person. "We're heading out in five. Wilson and his team are staying. You staying here or coming with us?"

She looked at him and Lee didn't see any
of the
reproach
from earlier
.

She nodded quickly. "I'll be ready to go in just a few. I'm finishing up now."

"Okay." Lee turned partially away, but felt the need to reiterate the time-frame. "Five minutes."

Her eyebrows went up slightly. "Yup. I'll be ready, Captain."

He decided not to say anything else.

In four minutes they were rolling
.
A thin layer of clouds ranged across the horizon, showing sterling in the thickest parts, shot through with ribbons of bright sunlight like gold and silver smelted together.

The Humvee with the dozer attachment growled out of the parking lot, bristling with weapons as it exited the outpost and left the town and its new residents behind them.
Harper
drove, with Lee in the passenger seat.
Jim and Julia
sat
in the back, and LaRouche
was
crammed in the middle
on the .50 cal
iber M2 machine gun mounted on top
.

Lee turned to look out the driver’s side of the vehicle and found LaRouche’s dirty boots once again resting atop the radio console—a natural footrest for whoever was sitting in the turret. Lee elbowed them off.

“Keep your fucking feet off the radio, LaRouche,” Lee griped for the umpteenth time.

“My bad,” LaRouche mumbled from up top.

All the windows were down, letting the cold wind blow through the vehicle so that they could all rest their weapons in the window frames, pointing out into a world that had grown dangerous and alien
.

"Well, I'm very pleased with Outpost Lillington," Father Jim offered up brightly. "It seems like a very secure location."

Lee
looked out the passenger
side window at the passing terrain. He nodded slowly, and remained introspective.

"Should lock down this section of highway," Jim continued.
“Extend the patrols out a bit…make movement a little safer…”
He seemed to realize that no one else was in the mood for conversation and let his words trail off. He turned back to his own window.

Lee’s mind poked cautiously at the questions that nagged him, like you might poke a stick into a
dark hole in the forest floor, unsure of what lay inside
. Who was the man from Virginia, and what did he want? What news did he bring? Lee wanted to believe that it could be good news, but felt in his gut that it was not. Good news didn’t come with a single man, sick and ex
hausted from miles on the road.

U
nderneath
all of that
,
a
question
remained
that seemed so inconspicuous in its simplicity but Lee felt was just the tip of something vast and unseen, and it whispered foul omens
:

Where had all the females gone?

They passed over the Cape Fear River. The water looked cold and dark, the same color as the woods that surrounded it. The weather had only been
this cold for the past week, and
a few trees along the banks still clung stubbornly to their brown and wilted leaves, but for the most part the forests were bare. Just a tangle of emp
ty limbs and gray bark, splashes of emerald
here and there
where
a lonesome evergreen
stood
.

Clattering over the four-lane bridge, Lee wondered when the last time it was
that the bridge had been
refurbished. Infrastructure was just another one of the many concerns constantly vying for attention in the back of his mind
.
Survivors were integral to the success of his mission. He had to rely on them to assist in rebuilding.

But there were so few.

Far fewer than he had ever imagined.

Engineers were at the top of his list: civil engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers...the list went on. At this point, he'd take any kind of engineer he could get his hands on.
But it seemed that they were lucky to find survivors at all, let alone someone with a specific skill-set.

"Heads up," Jim
said suddenly from behind him.
 

Lee’s eyes snapped into focus and he looked out the passenger side of the vehicle. The grade of the earth coming off the road sloped down into a deep ravine that cut towards the Cape Fear River and ran parallel to the roadway. On the other side of that ravine, the ground rose up in a steep incline and it was there, about midway up the face of that hill that Lee could see what had drawn Jim’s attention.

“Movement! Right side!” Lee called.

"I don't think..." Jim pushed his glasses up on his face and squinted to see farther.

There were four of them in all. Two large ones and two small. They were strange and bulky in their appearance, and it took a moment for Lee to realize that all of them were heaped with heavy coats and blankets to keep them warm.

LaRouche swiveled in the turret, bringing the fifty about.

Jim slapped at LaRouche's legs
. "Don't shoot!
I don’t think they’re infected!
"

"Relax
!” LaRouche
dodged his legs about
.
“
I'm not gonna waste 'em
..
."

“Stop here!” Jim spoke with urgency.

Harper
looked back incredulously. “I’m not stopping here…”

The sound of Jim’s door unlatching.

“Close your fucking door!” Harper barked
at him
.

"Hey!" Jim leaned out the window, his door still hanging partially open. “Hello!”

Lee reached across and s
lapped Harper’s shoulder. “Stop before he falls out…
”

The Humvee screeched to a halt, causing everyone inside to lurch forward and LaRouche to slap the top of the roof, trying to gain his balance again.

“It’s okay!” Jim yelled again.

The figures were now almost
to the top of the hill
. One turned and Lee could see the
face
peering at
them
with
dark, suspicious eyes
, its jawline shadowed by the scraggly beginnings of a beard
.
It was a
younger man with
a
tan complexion, possibly Hispanic, but difficult to tell from this distance
.
The unknown man
turned back around and pushed the others ahead of him,
what appeared to be a dark-haired
woman and two small children.

“What are
you doing, Jim
?” Lee said with a note of caution.

From behind him, Lee heard the loud creak of the dry, rusted door hinges as the ex-priest flung his door open. Lee twisted in his seat and tried to reach through to the back and grab a fistful of his jacket, but Jim was already out the door.

“
Hey!” Lee growled. “Get the fuck back in here!”

Father Jim completely ignored Lee, even left his rifle in his seat and stood outside the Humvee with both arms raised above his head. “It’s okay! We’re here to help! You don’t have to be afraid!
We won’t hurt you!
”

They continued to clamber up the
steep embankment.

Lee kicked his door open with force and slid out of his seat, bringing his rifle to his shoulder. He resisted the urge to simply grab the other man and stuff him back in the Humvee. Warning
klaxons were blaring
in his head and he could feel heat
rising up the back of his neck. He reached out and put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “
What are you doing?
Leave
it…
”

Jim shrugged the hand off and continued waving his arms. His voice took on a desperate quality. “We’re here to help you! It’s okay! You don’t have to be afraid!”

The
four strangers reached the top of the hillock and dipped over to the other side, the man pushing the woman and the two children over before disappearing himself. Just before vanishing onto the other side, he turned and looked at them again, and this time his eyes locked onto Lee. He appeared to hesitate for the briefest of moments, but then ducked down
over
the top of the hill.