The Remaining: Refugees (4 page)

Jim waved him off. "To call
Professor
White anything but an asshole would be to lie. And lying lips are an abomination to the Lord."

LaRouche joined them in the middle of the street, his cheek still bulging from tobacco.

Lee nodded to him. "How long you keep that shit in your mouth?"

LaRouche spat. "
Gotta conserve
."

Both Jim and Lee shrugged and nodded
. It was a valid point
.

From the north end of Main Street they could hear the rumble of a bus downshifting, muted by distance. Main Street dipped down into a slight grade and leveled out as it crossed over the Cape Fear River. Lee could see clearly in the winter air, and from the other side of the bridge, he watched the big white bus come into view, led by a blue, sixteen passenger van. Those two vehicles would contain all that was left of Dunn and Fuquay-Varina, along with all the worldly possessions that they had managed to carry out with them. Which wasn't much.

Lee remained standing in the intersection as the vehicles approached, his hands folded and resting on the buttstock of his slung rifle. The gray skies washed the windshields out to a pale reflection of nothing, and he could not see who was driving either vehicle. He supposed the Fuquay-Varina group would be in the van, as there
were
only twelve of them compared to Dunn's twenty.

LaRouche appeared, heralded by a ruddy stream of spit. He smiled at Lee. "Can't wait to hear what the great Professor White has to say to you this time."

Lee smiled wanly, but didn't feel much humor in it.

The van crested the hill and began to slow, the brakes on it squealing as it pulled to a stop in the middle of the intersection with the driver's side window rolled down. Sitting in the driver's seat was a
n aging
man with longish
salt-and-pepper
hair, pulled back into a pony tail. He looked over the rims of thick glasses as though Lee were one of his pupils that had spoken out of turn in class.

Lee met his gaze and fought to keep his face neutral. "Mr. White."

Professor Tommy White of the once prestigious Chapel Hill University pursed his lips. The rumbling of the engines at idle filled the silence between the two men. Lee watched as the professor's eyes flicked to the burning pile of bodies. They stayed there and the man's face seemed to wilt. Then he just looked straight ahead again. Someone in the van began to weep loudly.

Lee sniffed and smelled charred flesh.

He pointed down Front Street. "Take your first left onto 8th Street. Entrance is on the left."

A teary-eyed girl of perhaps twenty years old appeared in the front of the van
. She
stared accusingly at Lee and bawled at him. "Why? Why'd you do it?"

"So you can be safe," Lee responded with thinly veiled annoyance.

The girl began to
speak
but
Professor
White held up his hand and shook his head. "It's pointless, Natalie. You won't convince him." White looked at Lee again. "We'll be going now."

Lee nodded. "Please do."

The van lurched forward quickly and made the right-hand turn onto Front Street, followed by the quick left turn onto 8th Street. Lee watched them go with a small shake of his head and kept telling himself
you don't get to choose who you rescue. You don't get to choose...

The bus lumbered after the van. From the driver's window, Lee could see Old Man Hughes standing in the center
a
isle while a younger survivor from Dunn piloted the bus. The old man tossed Lee a salute and a nod of thanks.

"Hey," LaRouche put a hand on his shoulder. "At least someone appreciates us."

Lee made a chuckling sound that was born of frustration and anger. "It just never ends with these fuckers, does it?"

LaRouche flicked his hand dismissively. "Those fuckers have been living off of
guys
like me and you for centuries. They love their safety and security, but they'll never stop bitching about how we accomplish it." The sergeant shrugged. "
Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it
."

Lee nodded. Without further words, they began to walk towards the newly created Outpost Lillington. They had nearly reached the door to the pharmacy when Jeriah Wilson burst through. His eyes found Lee and he raised his hand to flag him down.

"What's up, Wilson?"

"Hey, Captain." Wilson looked confused, maybe a little curious. "Just got a call from Camp Ryder. Outpost Benson made contact with a guy, some survivor, and they're bringing him into Camp Ryder right now."

Lee's eyes narrowed. "Okay. And why are they calling for us?"

"Well, they're calling for you," Wilson corrected.

"Did they say why?"

"The guy says he's from Virginia." Wilson met Lee's gaze. "And he asked for you by name."

CHAPTER 2:
THE HUB

Lee stalked to the Humvee as quickly as he could without showing his limp, ignoring the young college kids from Fuquay-Varina that sided with their old professor and
grumbled about him
as he passed. A few
of the
middle-aged survivors from Fuquay-Varina
murmured
their appreciation to Lee, and he
nodded
to them
politely
, but
distractedly. Not everyone from Fuquay-Varina was opposed to him, but as a whole they went along with whatever Professor White said. Jeriah Wilson had been the one
major
exception.

At the big green truck, Lee ripped open the passenger door and snatched the handset from the cradle, keying it up before he even had it to his ear. "Captain Harden to Camp Ryder."

A click. Someone who
s
e
voice he didn't recognize came on. "This is Camp Ryder. Go ahead, Captain."

"Is there someone there asking for me?"

"Uh..." Shuffling, and then the radio clicked off for a brief moment. "Yeah, let me get Bus."

Lee waited quietly, leaning his elbow on the frame of the Humvee and chewing at the inside of his lip.

"Bus here."

Lee looked at the radio as though he might see Bus through it. "Is there some guy looking for me?"

"Yeah, two of our guys from Outpost Benson are bringing him to Camp Ryder." Bus sounded bewildered. "From what they described, the guy's on death's door. Dehydrated, starving, but they say he's wearing a vest,
like a military one
. Says his name is Jacob."

Lee racked his brain. "I don't know a Jacob."

"Well, he knows you."

"Was he armed?"  Lee pinched the bridge of his nose and
squeezed
his eyes
shut
.

"When they first found
him
, yes," Bus said. "But they said he wasn't hostile. Surrendered immediately and laid down his weapon. They said it was an M4, but they're also saying this guy doesn't seem
like
military at all."

Lee could think of plenty of people he knew in the military that didn't look the part. Not everyone was a lean, mean
,
fighting machine. Many of them worked behind the lines, and would never see a day of combat in their entire career.

Lee opened his eyes again. "Did he say why he's looking for me?"

"Um...damn, Lee." Bus huffed
into the microphone
. "I haven't talked to the guy yet. I just have second-hand information. I think they said he claimed to have information for you or something. Something about Virginia."

“Virginia?” Lee said incredulously. “What the hell do I need to know about Virginia?”

Bus keyed up again. "Look, I have no idea what this guy is about. We'll get him cleaned up and
tended
to. You just get back here so you can talk to him and figure out what's going on."

Lee licked his lips and felt them getting chapped in the cold, dry air. "Okay. We'll be enroute here shortly."

He hung up the handset and grabbed a bottle of water from the floor board and drank from it.
The cold water
ached as it filtered through
the empty slot in his gums where he’d lost his tooth to a flying cafeteria chair. If the memory of it didn’t make him cringe, it might
have
be
en
humorous.

He turned outwards and regarded the parking lot, encircled by brick buildings. It was now crowded, the two Humvees, the van and the bus taking up much of the space, but also with over thirty survivors carrying their personal items from the vehicles and placing them to the sides of the building. Everything they owned, wrapped up in a tattered old blanket, or stuffed in a ragged pack of some sort.

Looking out into all these people, he caught their sidelong glances at him and the expressions behind those brief moments of eye contact
varied greatly
. The survivors from Dunn
revered him as some sort of war hero
.
He and his team had rescued them after a hard-fought battle, and their appreciation showed. Then there were those from Fuquay-Varina, who Lee had simply stumbled across, and their perceptions of him were much less generous.

He
resented them, though he tried hard not to let it bother him.

He resented their looks and their whispers.

He resented their simplistic worldview.

But most of all, he resented being judged. He resented that every action was worthy of intense scrutiny, and that some Monday-morning quarterback would always have an astounding hindsight solution for him, that somehow, he should have already known. "Weren't you trained for this?" they would ask him. And he would bite his tongue and try not to think about
kicking
their teeth
in
.

This was the war he was destined to fight.

A war where victory would be measured in how many he could save, regardless of their opinions. And though he may be weak in patience and politics, he was gifted in fighting and winning. And if winning meant putting up with some assholes who thought they knew how shit should be run, then so be it. That was just a pill he would have to swallow.

He finished what was left in the water bottle and dropped it in the front seat so he could refill it later. His thoughts turned back to the stranger from Virginia that somehow knew him. From across the parking lot he saw Harper and Jim standing together near the pharmacy entrance and ey
e
ing him with open curiosity. He waved them over.

"What's going on?" Harper asked as he approached.

Lee adjusted his rifle sling so it was more comfortable across his shoulders. "I don't know. Some guy from Virginia is asking for me
. B
y name
, apparently
. I don't know the guy, though." He craned his neck to survey all around him. "Where's LaRouche?"

Jim threw a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Front Street. "
He
and
Jake
are helping secure the doors and windows on the outside."