The Remaining: Refugees (7 page)

Lee and Harper
stopped there in front of the medical trailer, and the passersby
watched
as though
they believed
there would be some great reunion between
Lee
and the stranger.
Inside the trailer, a
nearly shapeless form of skin and bones
lay crumpled like a discarded piece of paper upon one of the cots, a white bed sheet draped over it like a body in a morgue
.

Lee could smell the man from outside the trailer. Most of the people managed to bathe regularly now, but they all still smelled of hard work and body odor, Lee probably being the most offending of them since he'd been in the field for the past few days. That Lee could smell the stranger over his own stink was a feat in and of itself.

"You recognize him?" Harper asked.

Lee shook his head. "Don't know him."

They
didn’t linger. The man was clearly passed out from exhaustion, and they could not expect to have a lucid conversation with him until he was rested.

They
continued on to the Camp Ryder building.

A short series of cement steps led up to a pair of steel double-doors kept closed to block out the cold air. Pushing them open, the pair was immediately inundated with the overwhelming smell of the place, and the noisy clamor from inside. The building had once been a service bay for Ryder trucks, and the smell of oils and car parts was forever steeped into the concrete floors and walls, however it was no
w home to several families and
Marie’s kitchen. There was always a slight haze of smoke in the place, and it bore with it the heavy scents of people and cooking food.

Immediately upon entering the building, a metal staircase to their right rose up to a second level that overlooked the
floor below with a series of metal catwalks that led to a roof access point, a few utility closets, and what used to serve as a foreman’s office—a twelve by twenty foot room that housed a desk, a filing cabinet, a few folding chairs, and a large corkboard with a map of North Carolina pinned to it.

In the office they found Bus and Kip Greene standing in front of the map
. Bus wore the same OD green
jacket
as Lee and Harper
—actually
a Gore-Tex parka
—
and
a
pair of jeans with the beginnings of holes in the knees, twice patched and twice ripped. Stress had drawn some of his size from him, but he was still an imposing figure, especially next to Kip Greene, who stood all of 5'8", with wiry arms and a thin neck.

"Captain…Harper…
" Bus greeted them as they walked in.

Lee clasped hands with him. "Good to see you, Bus."

"How was Lillington?" Bus ventured cautiously.

Lee dropped his pack to the floor. "Nothing worse than usual."

"Glad everyone came out alright." Bus nodded.

Lee turned his attention
to the man from Broadway. "Kip…
how are ya?"

"Decent. You?" Kip nodded, his hands planted deep in the pockets of his tattered old Dickies coveralls.

"Good.
B
ut we could still use
some help
."
Lee looked pointedly at
him
.

Kip smiled grimly. "Funny enough, that's what I came to talk about."

“Oh?”
Lee perked up
a bit
.
He
took
a seat at the edge of the desk.
"I sense there's a caveat."

Kip nodded.

Bus folded his arms across his chest. "I've been trying to explain to Kip that we need to use Broadway as a launch point for Sanford..."

"My people aren't interested in being a base for you guys," Kip
said, steadily
.

"It's not just about us, you know." Lee pointed to the map. "You guys have been catching all the shit leaking out of Sanford since this started. You're doing an admirable job, but if you let us go in and clean house, you'll be able to focus
more on your farming, and less on watching your back
."

Kip shook his head. "Not an option at this point."

Lee let his hands drop to his lap. "Okay. Why don't you explain what you want with us, then?"

Kip looked up at Lee from underneath his eyebrows. "We've been taking a lot of heat from Sanford. More and more lately, in fact. I'm not sure why, but they're coming out of that place in droves. I don't know, maybe they're running out of food in there. They all look pretty lean." He adjusted the brim of his cap. "Anyway, we've been getting them as they try to go down 421, but..."

Lee waited.

Kip seemed a little abashed. "But we're running out of ammunition."

Lee folded his hands. "Ah."

"That's why I'm here. To set up a trade."

"And what are we trading?"

"Food for ammunition. We've got corn, wheat, peanuts and tobacco. We'll trade any of them, in any combination, as long as the deal is fair."

Silence blanketed the room.

Lee was the first one to speak. "Kip, you mind if I talk with Bus and Harper for a moment?"

Kip shook his head. He stepped out and closed the door behind him as the three men from Camp Ryder gathered in close so they could speak in hushed tones.

Lee spoke first. “I think this is a good opportunity to
build up some goodwill by making a generous trade with them. Keep in mind, they'll probably need rifles as well, since
most of what we can give them is 5.56mm and I doubt they have many rifles that are chambered for that
."

“We could play hardball,” Bus suggested. “If they need the ammo bad enough we might be able to break him down and let us use Broadway to get into Sanford.”

Harper made an ugly face. "I
don't know if playing hardball is a good idea. That might just piss them off, and then Broadway is out as a source of food
and
as a base."

Bus rubbed his eyebrows. "I
just want to avoid a
repeat of Smithfield. I sure as hell don't want you guys camping in the woods outside of Sanford while you clear it. We need them."

Lee
spread his palms
. "Ammunition is a finite resource. We can have the best of both worlds. Let's make a small but generous deal with him now so he's forced to come back soon. Then we can play hardball. If we have some goodwill built up with him and his group, we're less likely to scare
him
off
when we do
. Plus we'll get a little fresh food out of it."

"We need the wheat,"
Harper
nodded. "Cornmeal would be good, too."

"Any value to tobacco?" Bus questioned.

Harper and Lee both shrugged.

"As a trade item, yes," Lee said. "But I wouldn't worry about it for now."

Harper grinned. "
Don’t tell LaRouche
."

Lee
stretched his arms
. "So what
’
s the offer?"

"You're in charge of guns and ammo," Bus pointed out. "You tell us what we can afford."

Lee considered it for
a short moment. "How about we trade five rifles and
600 rounds total. That'll
be six mags per rifle
. Depending on their level of contact, that could last them one or two weeks."

"That's a g
ood time-frame
for us
," Harper noted.

"Alright. Everyone agree?"

"Agree
d
."

"Yup."

Lee headed
for the door
.

He was about to reach for the handle
when
he
heard shouting
and
t
he sound of
footsteps pounding rapidly
up the me
tal staircase. Someone
cried out in alarm. The steps thundered as they drew closer.
He didn’t recall grabbing it, but
Lee
’s
rifle was suddenly in his hands and addressed towards the door.

The door burst open and a madman with sunken eyes and sallow skin tumbled
in
. The strange creature's eyes landed on Lee and the captain's fin
ger went to the trigger. The thing
reached forward and sunk down to
its
knees and seemed about to scramble at Lee on all fours.

Lee was about to pull the trigger when
it
spoke.

"You're Captain Harden!" the man said a
nd clasped a hand over his face.
"I found
you
…
I finally found
you
!
"

CHAPTER 3: BAD NEWS

LaRouche
hit the top of the stairs, breathing hard
,
with
his old Beretta M9 thrust out before him, aiming it at the back of the stranger’s head.
H
is eyes worked quickly between
the man kneeling
on the ground and
Lee
, who stood looking shocked
.
"You okay, Captain?"

Lee
’s
eyes were wide as he stared dow
n at the man
. "Ye
ah, I'm
fine." He lowered his rifle so the barrel was not pointing at the man's chest
. Gaunt, sickly, emaciated—the dirty look of someone
who
has been on the road for a long time
. "You must be Jacob."

The man clasped his hands together. The fingers were long, almost spider-like. Black dirt encrusted the underside of the ragged fingernails. The skin appeared browned, like leather.
Deep-set eyes and a hawkish nose. Wiry, dark hair.
The man nodded, clearly expending much effort on maintaining
a handle on
his emotions and
just as clearly
on the verge of failing.

"Ye
s. I'm Jacob. I'm from Virginia
."
His eyelids closed tight
as he fought for control of himself
. "You have no idea what I've had to do
to get here. I thought…for a while there…
I thought I just wasn't going to find you. I thought maybe you were dead.
” He opened his eyes and they glistened with tears.
“
Then I found this place and I fell asleep and I thought maybe I'd dreamed the whole thing up, and you weren't reall
y here at all. But here you are
!"