The Remaining: Refugees (18 page)

"How long have you been on the road?"

"About two weeks now." Eddie looked at his two kids. "It's been slow going with the little ones."

"I'm surprised you made it this far," Lee said, frankly.

"Me too."

Harper pulled the Humvee up to the front gate of Camp Ryder and the sentry took a moment to shine his flashlight inside the windshield and see who it was. Harper squinted against the light and waved his hand. The sentry pulled the gate open and they drove through, back in the same spot they had left from. A few people hung around the main drag, curious about the goings on, and a few more shacks glowed as people lit their lanterns and flashlights and poked their heads out to see what the
hubbub
was about.

Harper made a rude noise and flung his door open. "I'm going back to bed."

LaRouche opened up the back hatch and climbed out, his rifle clattering across the tailgate. "Yeah, Cap. If you don't have anything for me, I'll be catching some
Zs
."

Lee nodded as he got out of the car. "Yes. Thank you. You guys can all go grab some sleep. We'll talk in the morning."

Beside the Humvee, Eddie and his family huddled in a tight unit.

Julia nodded towards them. "I'll
try to
get them
a little
food and
some
water. Probably have to sleep in the medical trailer tonight. I don't know if we have room for them anywhere else."

Lee nodded. He could feel his body crashing underneath him. He felt worse now than he did when he'd turned in for the night. But he didn't want to leave Julia by herself to take care of the newcomers. "Yeah. I'll grab the water and food if you want to get them settled into some bunks."

Father Jim laid a hand on his shoulder. "Let me handle it, Captain. You look dead on your feet, and I'm not gonna be able to sleep anyways." He smiled. "Some people crash after a fight. I tend to lie awake."

"You sure?"

But Jim and Julia were already escorting the family towards the medical trailer. Lee was too tired to argue, and frankly lacked the concern. He needed to sleep. Maybe he would actually give a shit in the morning.

Harper and LaRouche both threw up their hands and yawned, one after the other.

Harper smacked his lips. "Guess that means we're good. Don't wake me up again."

Lee smiled and turned toward the Camp Ryder building where he could see the tall frame of Bus making his way towards him, looking half-asleep and very confused, holding onto his M4 by the carrying handle.

"What happened?" Bus looked at the family
being escorted
into the medical trailer.

Lee motioned towards them, but kept walking. "
N
ewcomers."

"Oh." Bus watched them for a second longer, but then turned and fell in with Lee. "Did you leave? I thought I heard the gate opening."

"Yeah. The guy was banging on the gate. We went out and grabbed his family from the back of an overturned tractor trailer. They were holed up in there, surrounded by a pack of infected."

"What? Damn." Bus rubbed his curly head. "I can't believe I missed all of that. I must've really been out of it."

"He's a mechanic," Lee added. "Diesel mechanic."

"Really?"

Lee stopped at the front steps to the Camp Ryder building and looked
back over his shoulder. "Yeah…
I dunno."

"Don't know what?"

"I don't know about him."

Bus followed Lee's gaze, but they could only see the glow of the lantern inside the medical trailer. A few people standing around outside, rubbernecking before they hurried back to their shacks, rubbing their arms in the cold.

"You get a bad vibe from him?" Bus asked.

"No." Lee shook his head. "I really haven't had a chance to think about it."

"We rescue people all the time," Bus pointed out. "What's different about him?"

Lee couldn't really put his finger on it. It wasn't Eddie so much that Lee had an issue with, but how he hadn't been able to control the situation. It had been such a rush to get out and bring them back in. With other refugees, Lee usually had a chance to speak with them at length and develop a good sense of whether they were decent people or not.

"Just indulge me," he concluded his thoughts. "Get the sentries on shift to keep an eye on them. They should be able to see the medical trailer from their post. I just don't want to give him free reign of the camp until I've had a chance to make up my mind about him."

"He's a diesel mechanic," Bus smiled.

Lee couldn't help but smile back. A mechanic was such a stroke of good luck that Eddie could have been a raging lunatic and they might have welcomed him anyway. "I'm sure everything will be fine. Just wanna be careful."

Bus stretched his neck. "I'll talk to the sentries."

They parted ways and Lee continued up to the foreman's office where he dropped his gear at the foot of his bedroll and collapsed into it.
Groggily he recalled his dead Aimpoint sight and he took a moment to scrounge a
spare
AA battery from his pack and replace the one in the sight. With his eyes drooping closed on him, he laid the rifle beside him, still loaded and ready.
He barely had time to
take off his boots and
pull the blankets over himself befor
e he was fast asleep once more.

***

Lee slept for three more hours, and could have slept longer but Camp Ryder was waking up below him and the smells of something on the cookfires made him realize that he was painfully hungry
again
. He could hear the clamor and talking of the people on the main level, everyone getting ready for their day and whatever it held. Some would go off and scavenge a bit, some would set up their little trading posts. Everyone had a job to do, and it took a lot of work to keep everything running smoothly.

With the
scavengers
finding their own sources of food to barter with, some of the people in the camp were able to provide for themselves, though it was usually only one meal out of the day. Generally speaking, most that could feed themselves, did s
o for their midday meals, while
breakfast and dinner remained largely communal.

Lee sat up in his bedroll and looked to his left. Nothing of Julia's was in the room. She had not come back after last night's excursion. She had probably spent the last few hours caring for the Ramirez
family
.

He twisted a few times to get the kinks out of his back and began drawing circles in the air with his foot, working some blood into the joint and loosening up the tendons. When he felt it was ready for him to stand on, he got up and pulled on his boots. He shuffled over to the radio unit, taking a look out the office window to see the world bathed in bright sunlight. The solar panels would get a good charge.

He checked to make sure he was on the right channel as he took the handset and keyed it. "Captain Harden to Wilson, or anyone at Outpost Lillington."

Wilson must have been in the truck, because his answer was almost immediate. "Yeah, this is Wilson. Go ahead."

"Everything go alright last night?"

"Yeah. I don't know what the meeting was about, but the professor came back fucking pissed about something. No one would even speak to us. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," Lee rolled his eyes. "Everything will be fine. Do a check and make sure they have everything set up before you leave, okay? Come straight back here and do nothing."

"Do nothing?"

"Yeah.
R&R
."

"Oh." Strangely, it was only until Lee heard the surprise in Wilson's voice that he realized how much they ran themselves ragged. Every day they were running to this place or that, putting out fires, making contact with and escorting bands of survivors, debriefing people, scavenging, and fighting. They were all beyond exhaustion now. They had entered that rut where they were so used to running themselves into the ground that they didn't even think twice about it anymore.

Lee keyed his mike. "We'll see you when you get here. Be safe."

"Thanks. We will."

Lee set the handset back on the cradle.

They needed a day to get everything in order
.

Sanford might be a tough nut to crack.

CHAPTER 8:
A DELICATE MATTER

Lee went downstairs and discovered that the line for breakfast was almost gone. People stood around and talked, holding the battered plastic plates that had once been considered "disposable," but were now rinsed and reused for as long as they would hold together. A quick glance at a few of the plates revealed that breakfast today was some sort of scramble consisting of dehydrated eggs, some bits of dehydrated vegetables, and little chunks of meat, most likel
y what was left of the venison.

Marie was leaning against the wall,
having a small plate to herself
. She smiled and waved her plastic fork at him as he approached.

"Well, hey there, Captain!" she set her plate down. "How've you been?"

Lee smiled and nodded. "Got some sleep, so I'm feeling pretty good."

Marie
looked about as tired as he felt, though her demeanor was cheery. She worked hard to feed a lot of mouths, and though things weren’t as tight as they had been when she’d been forced to
give
everyone only a half-scoop of rice and beans
at dinner, it was a daily battle for her to scrape up enough to feed seventy-some-odd people. The worries of an inevitable lean winter tugged at the corners of her mouth and gave her smile a downward slant.

She took a plate and gave him
a wink
as she began piling on
a larger-than-normal portion
for him. "I heard about last night," she said quietly. "Everything go okay?"

"Yeah." Lee put his hands on the table and leaned on it to take the weight off his ankle for a moment. "No one got hurt, and I think the family is all going to be okay. Julia checked them out last night, and I haven't heard any bad news, so I'm assuming they're all okay."

Marie
nodded
. "Where you think I get all my intel from? Yes, the family is okay."

Lee
chuckled
. "Of course. Did she tell you he was a diesel mechanic?"

"I heard." She handed the plate to Lee. "That's great news."

Lee regarded his portions. "Wow. That's a lot of food."

She gave him a critical look up and down and waved the serving ladle at him. "Yeah, I'm putting you on double portions, mister. You're looking a bit thin."

Lee
patted his stomach
.
“
I'm solid as a rock."

"A very skinny rock."

"Is it really that noticeable?"

"Look at your pants
."

Lee looked down. His
jacket
was open so he could see the front belt-line of his pants. The belt was tightened down so that the loose-fitting waist was bunched up.
He shook his head.
"No, the pants have just stretched out a little."

"Go eat your food before your pants fall off."