The Remaining: Refugees (33 page)

“But they’ve always hunted,” Bus stood up. “These packs aren’t anything new…”

“It’s not about the packs.”
Harper turned to face him. “You heard what Jacob said about them. They might be fucking crazy, but their bodies haven’t changed. Their bodies can’t process all the crap they eat, he said.” Harper hung his hands on the back of his neck and shook his head. “That’s why he said they were skinny and always hungry. But if you’ve got these ones, these hunters, the ones that look ‘well-fed’, that means that they
are
changing. They
are
processing what they eat, and they
are
getting stronger.”

Bus seemed to realize that his friend was taking this news harder than he was, albeit for different reasons. His face softened and his head hung.

“There’s something else he mentioned. Something that bothers me.”

It just keeps getting better,
Harper thought.

With a measure of exhaustion, he sighed. “What’s that, Bus?”

“He said that when the hunters attacked the horde, they ran back to the den, but stopped short of running inside. He said they just stood out
side
and turned back towards the hunters like they were ready to fight, but the hunters took their kills and disappeared.”

Harper
forced himself to think
about it at length.

He gave up after a moment
. “
Okay. Beats me what the hell they’re doing.
”

“I think we should talk to Jacob.”

Harper
nodded
. “I think that’s a good idea.”

**
*

Jerry stood in the dinner line with the rest of the people. In his own mind this was a chance to rub elbows with the common man, a demonstration that he was just like everyone else. For him, being amongst everyone else was an act of good will on his part, despite the fact that he wouldn’t be fed if he wasn’t there.

W
hile he smiled and laughed—or looked gravely concerned, depending on the conversation topic—he
saw
Harper and Bus slip out of the upstairs office and tread swiftly down the stairs. They glanced out at the people in line for dinner, but if they noticed Jerry there, they gave no indication.

Jerry had spent a lot of
his life
time being underhanded, and he was able to recognize it when he saw it. Old Bus and his lap dog Harper were up to something, sure as shit.
Those were the expressions of men who
were
trying to keep a very wily cat inside its bag. And if they wanted it in, it stood to reason that it could benefit Jerry by letting it out.

“What do you think?”

Jerry refocused on the tall lady in front of him, and her rather short and stubby spouse. Interesting combination. Had they been married before the collapse or was this an arrangement of
circumstance
? More importantly, what the hell
had
they
been
talking about?

He took his cue from the couple’s intensely serious faces and affixed a somber look of contemplation to his features. “Hm,” he said, as though interested. “I think it’s something that bares consideration.”

They nodded, knowingly.

The man spoke quietly, leaning in so that Jerry could smell his breath
, sharp and sour. “We appreciate that you actually take the time to think, and don’t just shout out whatever answers you think people want to hear. You know we’re behind you, Jerry. Anything you need.”

Jerry smiled. “Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.”

He reached the folding table where Marie was dishing out some thick reddish st
ew or chili
,
made with some unknown meat, a bit of
corn,
a bit of beans
.

“This looks delightful, Marie.” Jerry smiled as the woman dished him a bowl of the stuff.

In truth, he resented how Marie couldn’t make shit except stews, soups, and chilis. He understood that there were
nearly
a hundred mouths to feed, but it certainly wasn’t the five thousand, and even that had come with a fish option.
H
e looked down into the p
ot of ruddy mush and tried hard not to sneer.

Marie pushed the bowl into his hands and smiled, syrupy sweet to the point of being a little sarcastic. “Anything for you, Jerry. I’m just glad I could please you.”

His smile became wooden. “Yes. That’s very nice of you. Thanks again.”

He stuck his spoon into the chili/stew/mush and turned toward the open area inside the building, all the tents and huts thrown up on top of the grease-stained floor where trucks used to park and mechanics would tune them up. Still, underneath all the smells of the food and the stink of the people and the little bit of smoke from the cookfires and candles, he could still smell that little tinge of
eau de grease monkey
. His father had been a mechanic, and the smell still gave him a hollow feeling in his gut.

On the other side of the little indoor shantytown, there were a number of folding tables and chairs, as well as crates and buckets and anything else you could sit your ass on. This was where the community came together and shared their evening meal
s in the company of their peers, and a q
uiet conversation off to the side
could go
unnoticed amongst the rabble.

Jerry took a bite of the food
as he made his way over. The same
mystery-meat
-and-beans taste as every other dish Marie made. Would it kill her to make a fucking steak every now and then? Couldn’t you make steaks with deer meat? He had to admit, prior to surviving the collapse, he’d never eaten venison, but it was just a meat like every other four-legged animal. He was sure you could make steaks out of it. Or, Christ, at the very least some hamburgers.

A man with a dirty old Yankees hat was waiting for him in the corner.

“Jerry.” He nodded and spooned up a mouthful of chili.

“Greg. How’s the kid?”

“He’s doin’ alright.”
Greg
glanced under the bill of his cap at the people closest to them, but they were all lost in loud conversations. “You talk to White today?”

“This morning.” Jerry pushed his food around. “He’s in.”

“He’s worthless.”

“He gives us a majority.”

Greg smirked. “Who’s gonna train them how to use those weapons?”

Jerry shook his head. “Won’t be necessary. We
have
enough of his students to stand around holding them and it should be enough to discourage a firefight.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

Greg regarded him for a brief moment, and in that time Jerry felt that the other man was scanning him up and down to determine whether he should throat-punch him or not. In the end he took another monstrous bite of food. He chewed, swallowed, and sucked at something in his teeth before speaking again. “
H
ow many will there be?”

“Five.” Jerry set his bowl on the ground, no longer interested. “You’ll take four. You’re gonna need to rough one of ‘em up before you let him go. Make it believable
—it’s gotta convince Old Man Hughes that something happened
. He’s my weak link in this whole thing. If he thinks something is suspicious, or doesn’t add up, he’ll say so to Captain Harden
.
”

“How believable do you want it?”

“D
on’t break any bones or anything. Little black eye, cut lip. That should be enough.”

“I can do that. Where you want me to take the other four?”

“Hole ‘em up in the university somewhere.”

“Okay.” Greg scraped up the last of his meal. At least he seemed to be enjoying the stuff. “When?”

“
The morning after tomorrow
. They’ll meet you across the Cape Fear bridge, right outside of town.”

“Alright.” Greg smiled unpleasantly. “We’ll be there.”

CHAPTER 15:
DIVERSION

Jacob stood, looking out over a fire at the thickening darkness in the woods beyond their protective fence. He
posed a
peculiar figure
,
skeletal, long-limbed
, pale skinned. He wore
boots and a pair of the olive dr
ab pants he’d received from Lee, a
tan pullover
, and a
matching watch-cap.
They’d given him back Captain Mitchell’s M4, and he wore it in a single-point sling, hanging across his s
h
allow chest.

If
he didn’t look so damn weird
, Harper thought he might look like a soldier.

“That is very strange,” Jacob
said quietly and looked down into the fire.

No, he wasn’
t a soldier, Harper decided. H
is eyes showed no
hardness
in them. Not like he’d seen in Lee. But there was something there, something that Harper couldn’t put a finger on
,
but he felt
it
was the reason why Jacob had been able to survive the trip from Virginia to North Carolina by himself.

Probingly, Bus
said, “T
houghts?”

Jacob flexed his spidery fingers and began cracking each knuckle. “My thoughts are that it creates yet another disadvantage for us. Well…” he eyed the two men. “Primarily for Captain Harden. Besides the obvious issue of them appearing to be faster and stronger, there’s the added issue of their sleep cycle. Up until this point, I’ve seen packs work at night in the rural areas, and the hordes during the day in the urban areas. This seems to be a pack, preying on the hordes, and working in an urban area during the day.”

He grabbed a long stick and jabbed at the fire, his free hand cradling his rifle against his chest to keep it from swinging in
to the fire as he bent over.
His train of thought became silent and drifted off into the night with the fog of his breath in the air.

Harper shuffled a little closer to the fire and held his hands out to warm them. “What about the adaptation? I mean, this is the first time we’ve seen this…”

Jacob held up a finger. “Not the first time.”

They waited for him to elaborate.

He held the stick in the fire until the edge be
came blackened. “And I wouldn’t call it ‘adaptation’ necessarily. Not in the sense that I think you mean it, as though they are evolving.” He held the tip of the stick up and stared at the smoking point. “No. Evolution can’t happen that fast. Not in the period of three months. Not even in three years. It takes generations for changes to occur. So to see what makes them different than the other infected, we have to look at normal, ever
y
day dif
ferences.