The Remaining: Refugees (44 page)

LaRouche scrunched his brow. “Well, why would anyone try to kill you?”

Lee shook his head. “I really don’t know.”

LaRouche shifted his weight, appearing uncomfortable. “Well…should you continue going on operations with us?”

Lee scratched the back of his head. “I’m not going to run an
d hide, if that’s what you mean
. Honestly, I do
n’t really give a shit about this guy’s
motivations at this point in time. I’m not sending you all out to do my dirty work for me and staying back behind the lines.”

The electronic sound of a voice being transmitted over the radio trickled from the Humvee a few yards from their fire, and cut off any further debate. Lee
looked
over at the
Humvee
, along with everyone else. The words were inaudible
, but they all knew what they were
.
And yet they hoped.

Jim was the first to stand up. “I’ll get it.”

The group watched silently as Jim stepped over to the Humvee and sat inside, retrieving the handset and speaking in hushed tones. Julia appeared, staring with her cold blue eye
s at Jim as he talked inside the vehicle. She was wiping her h
ands off with a small red cloth
, and then dabbed her face with it as she approached the fire. Her eyes retreated from Jim a
nd grew hypnotized with the writhing flames
.

The embers
crackled and popped in the absence of their voices.

The clack of the handset being set back into its cradle.

The Humvee’s door groaned, its hinges needing lubrication.

Jim stood with his hands folded in front of him.

They all knew without him speaking a word, so he said nothing at all. Instead, he walked back to his spot where he had arrang
ed a large pot next to the fire. It
trembled and stood ready to boil over. Inside was rice and split peas and he stirred them with a metal spoon that clanked on the sides of the pot. They all watched in the quiet of the deepening night as he took a small spoonful
and tested whether the
food was
done. His eyes glistened and shown red, but he did not make a sound.

Seeming satisfied with the texture
of the food
, he removed
the pot
from the fire and set to opening some canned meat. As he worked, his tears traced down his nose and he swiped at them with his sleeve.

They ate in silence, unable or unwilling to put into words yet another loss.

***

In the morning Harper
woke to what promised to be a dismal day. The clouds that stretched unending across the sky were a uniform, primer gray, and they spit out rain
slowly and steadily, an excruciating
pace common only to November and the beginning of December. Summer rainstorms were a panicked
rush
, as though the clouds were trying to empty themselves as fast as possible in order to cool the parched earth beneath it. But in these late months, the sky leaked like a loose-fitted pipe, as though the
clouds were
sullen and depressed and could not be bothered to work
harder.

Harper stared out from behind the door of his shanty and cursed the sky. He co
uld feel the ache in his joints.
The hard times and the grief were
like bitterness in his bones. He felt old. Out of shape.

Used up
.

Tired.

He sighed and closed his door.

“Too much work to be done for a pity party,” he mumbled to himself as he lit his camp stove—not the one he used to burn deer guts. He scrounged up a little treat that he hoped would brighten his morning. It was a pack of instant oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon flavored. He’d traded up three packs of AA-batteries for a box with five packs left in it and he saved them for when he needed a pick-me-up.

Diet food is what he would have called it four months ago.

Now it was an indulgence.

He boiled the water and poured the packet in and for a long time he stood there over his little tin mess pot with his eyes closed, just breathing in the aromas and imagining a different place. The rich, spicy punge
nce
of the cinnamon. The warm, robust sweetness of the brown sugar. There were so many things associated with those two smells, it was like running a dragnet across the riverbed of his mind, dredging up those memories of
family
and holidays
that had been drowned and buried so long in the silt of his subconscious.

Holidays.

When
the
cold was cozy, and it didn’t seep into your chest and make you worry about pneumonia. When
the
big
concern of the day was
what wine to bring to Thanksgiving, and whether his brother-in-law Frank would get tanked at Christmas dinner. When he spent hours on the couch with Annette, listening to Bing Crosby with only the glow of the tree lighting their living room. Colored lights only on odd years, because Annette thought they were tacky, but he loved them and she
conceded
once every other year. Her stupid ornamental nutcrackers displayed on the mantel, their jaws dropped in
perpetual
shock.

She loved those silly things.

T
he ridiculous cornucopia she put in the center of the dining room table every year for
T
hanksgiving, with
the fake mini-pumpkins and the plastic gourds and the velvet leaves in fall colors. The little things that were
absolutely necessary
in order for her to enjoy the holiday properly.

Annette
.

He opened his eyes and stared down at the thickening oatmeal. All around him were dirt floors, plywood walls, blue tarp to seal him from the rain, and cold emptiness with nothing to fill the void. The memory of her was like a dying tree that he tried time and time again to pull up from the soil of his mind, but her roots were dug in too deep, inextricably intertwined with every thought, every recollection of his old life. There was not a place, not a feeling, not a scent or a taste or a sound that did not carry with it some tiny bit of Annette. She haunted him ceaselessly.

He missed her so hard that it became a very real, very physical pain in his chest. It was a tightness, and a melancholy, but there was also a note of
frustration
that he felt each time he thought of her, some distant realization that no matter what he did, not matter how hard he tried, or how long he waited, he could not have her back.

In life, you are often set apart from the things that you desire
only by your willingness to work tirelessly to gain them. So many things are unlikely to be achieved, but still within the realm of possibility. But death is not conquerable. It cannot be overcome, or outmatched. You cannot outthink it. You cannot outmuscle it, or even wait for it to be over, because it is truly, perfectly, infinite. And this realization caused in him each time a new uproar from a small, petulant child in the back of his mind that threw a tantrum because it could not get what it wanted.

Because what it wanted was impossible.

Not impossible, the way the word is used to describe a daunting task that the lazy person simply does not want to take on. But
impossible
, in the coldest, most pragmatic sense of the word. T
here was no way to fix it. It was simply unattainable. And goals that are unattainable are best left alone, for they destroy men’s minds and weaken
the
resolve to live.

He ate his oatmeal slowly, wishing to relish it, but failing miserably.

The
se
memories were not worth their weight in grief.

He looked at the box
of oatmeal
, swallowing against a lump in his throat. “Fucking waste of good batteries.”

He finished his breakfast and strapped on his gear, checking to make sure his magazines were all topped off
,
and
then
slinging into his M4. Looking down at himse
lf in his BDUs and
army-green parka
, with
all of his gear and his rifle hanging off of him, he almost laughed.
If you could see me now, Annette…you’d get a kick out of it.

He left his shanty and threw the
Gore-Tex
hood of the
parka
up over his head to keep
the rain off of him
.
I
t was misting steadily and he watched clouds of it billow down out of the sky, falling not at the speed of rain, but more like the steady drifting of snow on a windless day.

He
met Jacob, Nate, and his three volunteers at the front of his pickup truck near the gate. Nate had chosen Devon, and a middle-aged man and woman that
Harper knew to be a couple, though he
couldn’t remember their names for the life of him. He nodded to them all as he walked up
.

“Morning,
everyone.” He extended his hand to the middle-aged man. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

“Mike,” the guy said, taking Harper’s hand. “This is my wife, Torri.”

“Glad to have you guys.” Harper motioned for the pickup truck. “I think we can fit everyone in. We need to hit the road, and I’ll tell you guys what’s going on while we’re on the way.
”

They all managed to squeeze in
the bench seats
. Harper drove
with Nate and
Jacob
up front with him
.
Devon
, Mike, and Torri
sat
in the back. As they left the gate, Harper kicked it into four-wheel-drive, as the dirt road had turned into a boggy mess overnight. The old Nissan crawled steadily through the muck and found its way eventually out to Highway 55. Dirt and gravel clinging to the tires pelted the wheel wells noisily as he brought the truck up to speed.

When the worst of the noise had subsided, he told
them
what the situation was. He warned them to not talk about this with anyone else, that they should consider it confidential until further notice. Then he explained Captain Harden’s belief that there would be a den in Lillington and in that den there would be some live infected hiding out. He paused here for a long time, considering the ramifications of telling them the part about the infected being females, and being pregnant. But he figured it was best to get the arguments out of the way now, rather than when they had the damn things cornered in whatever hovel they were hiding in.

The reaction to the news was not quite shock, but more just a general disbelief. Without being able to explain to them why Captain Harden thought this, most everyone with the exception of Jacob, who already knew, screwed up their face and asked why the hell the captain thought there would be pregnant females in the den? That’s ridiculous.

“These people are crazy violent,”
Devon was shaking his head. “No way they’re out there…making babies. Secondly, I just don’t see them having protective instincts.”