The Remaining: Refugees (62 page)

Arnie’s gaze broke off from the square and he looked through the wide dirt space that cut through the shantytown. At the end of it, in the northeastern corner, he could see the shipping containers that had stood there in the same position since
he’d arrived at Camp Ryder
. The doors of a single container faced him, and one of them hung slightly open, the darkness inside created a black
frame
around the door. A tiny half-moon face peered out at him
, pale and stark in the space
.

His mouth dry and gritty
, Arnie shifted his feet and sidled his belt around his midsection aga
in. Then he stared right at the
face and he nodded, just once.

A hundred yards away, in the quiet darkness of the shipping container, Jerry saw the signal.

He turned to Greg. “That’s us. We’re on.”

H
e reached inside his jacket and felt the sawed-off shotgun slung at his side, felt the rough wood grip of it and took confidence from it. Moving with as much restraint as they could muster, trying desperately to look casual, Greg and Jerry slipped out of the shipping container and began making their way towards the Camp Ryder building.

***

Angela made her way across The Square, towards the last row of shanties. She moved with purpose and carried a satchel slung onto her arm, and two blankets over her shoulder. As she made her way towards the last row, Jerry and one of his friends passed by. They both looked very serious and intently busy, but when they saw her, t
hey smiled
.

Snake
s
in the grass,
she thought to herself, but nodded and smiled politely to them. She did not like Jerry, and it wasn’t at all because he had opposed Lee on so many occasions.
There were some people that disagreed regularly with how Lee did things and she’d found them to be great people.
She prided herself in being a pretty good judge of character, and Jerry
had always
struck her as…conniving.

She didn’
t trust him one bit.

She hung a left at the last row of shanties and walked down to the end,
to
the brand new shanty that had been erected for the Ramirez family.
Vicky
Ramirez
was standing outside, banging dust and dirt out of a large quilt. She smiled widely when she saw Angela approaching.

“Hey, Vicky.”

“Angela, how are you?” She gestured to the blanket. “Just doing a little cleaning.”

“Where’s Elise and Anton?”

“The
y’
re on the other side of the complex, playing with the other kids.” Vicky balled the quilt up in her arms and stepped through the doorway to her shanty. “Come on in.”

The two women ducked through the low entrance. The roof was just a tarp draped over a simple A-frame to allow rain to slide off, rather than gathering in the middle and eventually collapsing on the family while they slept. Vicky had pulled the tarp back so that the daylight illuminated their little living area.

Angela laid the blankets and satchel down on the floor. “How are you guys acclimating?”

“Oh, you know.” Vicky’s smile had a sadness to it. “Doin’ the best we can.”

Angela touched her arm, comfortingly. “I understand. I felt the same way when I first got here. I know it’s tough starting out, but these are all great people.”

Vicky nodded.
“Yes, we appreciate everything.”

Angela clapped her hands. “Hey, I brought you the extra blankets you asked for.” She bent down and picked the two blankets up, passing them over to Vicky.

Vicky took the blankets, looking truly grateful. “
Thank you so much for that.”

“Well, it’
s been cold.” Angela smiled. “And I know how it is to take care of little ones.” She opened up the satchel on the floor, revealing a collection of canned goods and a bag of beans. “Me and a few of the others put together a little care package. I know it’s not much, but it’ll hopefully give you guys a third meal between breakfast and dinner, at least until you guys can get on your feet.”

Vicky gazed down at the goods before her, clutching the two blankets tight to her chest. Her f
ace tightened and her lower lip
trembled just slightly. She looked as though she were on the verge of an outbreak of emotions, but she took a breath and nodded. “Thank you. You didn’t have to be so generous.”

Angela s
miled welcomingly
and waved her off. “It’s the least we could do. I mean, your husband is out helping Captain Harden right now. We should at least take care of his family.”

When she said this, Vicky’s face did something different. The eyes averted down and to the right, blinking rapidly as her hand came up and touched her lips. It seemed as though she realized that her strange reaction was apparent, and she turned herself away from Angela, as if to hide. She busied herself with straightening the folds of the blanket and placing them on the bed.

Angela studied the other woman for a moment, then clasped her hands in front of her. “Listen, Vicky…is everything okay?”

“Yes.” Vicky faced her quickly and Angela could see
shame etched on her features, and the beginnings of tears glistening in her eyes. “Yes, everything’s fine.”

Angela took a step forward and raised her eyebrows, an expression that clearly communicated that she was not buying it. “Vicky…”

The other woman’s shoulders slumped and she turned, looking at the ground, still covering her face with her hand. When she spoke her voice shook and cracked. “It’s just that you and the others have been so kind…and I…we’ve all…” Her eyes raised up to Angela’s and she seemed to draw herself up. “I have to tell you something…before
something bad happens
.”

CHAPTER 29
:
BAD THINGS

LaRouche stood at the hood of the Humvee, feeling the engine hot underneath the paper map laid out across the hood, the steady rumbling of it vibrating the pen in his hand. He turned and, keeping one hand on the map to pin it to the hood, shielded his eyes from the sun with his other hand and looked up at the water tower perhaps a hundred yards off to his left.

The convoy sat idling along a straight and barren stretch of road known as Memorial Church Road. Ahead of them, the intersection of Highway 581 cut across their path, surrounded by wilted and brown remnants of crops: corn on the right, and what appeared to be beets on the left.

At the base of the water tower, Jim and Wilson stood with their rifles to their shoulders, carefully scanning the surrounding fields and woods for any sign of danger. Halfway up the ladder that rose along one of the tower’s legs, Lucky climbed, trailing a pack that contained another repeater set. They were slightly less than thirt
y miles east of Smithfield.

As he watched, Lucky reached the top and scrambled onto the catwalk to post the digital repeater. LaRouche looked back to his map and used his pen to mark the intersection with a big black dot. If they ever needed to do repairs, they would know where the repeaters were posted. After making the dot, he traced his fingers along the line of the road they were on, heading east. They were a short distance from the town of Fremont, and LaRouche immediately began to look for th
e best route to skirt around it
.

A whistle drew his attention to the water tower.

Lucky was clattering down the ladder at an unusually fast pace. On the ground, Jim and Wilson had their rifles at the ready and were scanning out to the east.

“Shit.”
LaRouche
banged on the hood and hurriedly folded the map. “
H
ead’s up, everyone,” he
yelled out to the other vehicles
. “Cover the road to the east. I think we got company.”

LaRouche shoved the crumpled map into his jacket and shuffled around the Humvee to the passenger’s side. Jim, Wilson, and Lucky were sprinting across the gravel lot between the road and the water tower
. Lucky was waving his hands wildly while his rifle jittered about on his chest.

“Two pickup trucks comin’ down the road!” he yelled as he drew close.

“How far out?”

“
Less than
a mile…”

“Eyes on!” Jim yelled, turning his body east and bringing his rifle up.

Down the road about a half a
mile,
the lead pickup truck came into a view, a late model, small-sized pickup, burgundy in color. Following close behind it was another pickup, this one larger and newer. LaRouche could immediately see that there were people in the beds of the pickup trucks, but he couldn’t tell if they were armed or not.

“Wilson, get on the fifty.” LaRouche turned and faced the rest of the convoy, stepping out from the column so that everyone could see and hear him. He held up his hand. “Everyone hold your fire!”

“They saw us,” Lucky called out.

When LaRouche turned, the vehicles were halted
in the road like two deer caught in a spotlight. They sat abreast of each other as though their drivers were conferring about whether or not to proceed. LaRouche made himself small up against the side of the Humvee, rifle addressed towards the two unknown vehicles.

“Should we signal that it’s okay?” Jim asked.

“No, fuck ‘em,” LaRouche snapped. “We’re not here to make fr
iends. That’s the captain’s job
. The sooner they move on, the better.”

Jim shrugged. “Your call.”

“My call is ‘fuck ‘em’.” LaRouche repeated.

The better part of a very long minute passed them in silence.
For some inexplicable reason,
the two pickup trucks then began to roll slowly toward them
, creeping on
as though
their
speed had something to do with
their
visibility. Perhaps it was a lack of common sense that told them to keep rolling towar
ds the convoy of vehicles with
guns pointed at them.

Or perhaps it was the exact opposite. Maybe the fact that they had not immediately fired upon them when they clearly had more than enough firepower to do so had convinced this
mysterious
third
party that it was safe to proceed.

“Here they come,” Wilson called out from the turret.

“Keep your gun on them,” LaRouche bit his lip. “I’m gonna step out there. They do anything fishy whatsoever, please—
please
—light them the fuck up for me.”

“Roger’at.” Wilson tracked the two pickups with the M2.

LaRouche swore and stood up, still holding his rifle in tight, but taking his left hand off the foregrip and raising it high over his head, palm out.
The vehicles were a hundred yards out and closing steadily, probably going less than ten miles an hour. He could see that the windows were rolled
down and he called out to them
: “Hold up! Yeah, stop right there
!”

The lead pickup obediently lurched to a stop in the roadway.

LaRouche lowered his rifle, but only slightly. As quickly as his eyes could work
,
he traced them over everything that he could see, in the windows, in the beds of the trucks, but the only thing he could see were weary faces, all of them fearful, grimy, and smudged with what appeared to be soot. Many of them were young, kids maybe ten or twelve years of age. Even the adults were young, with the exception of the driver of the lead vehicle that
looked to be in his mid-forties, and an elderly woman in the bed of one of the pickups that stared
blankly
on at LaRouche.