The Swamp (8 page)

             
They ate in silence until the stew was finished. “Thank you Carol that was fabulous! It sure beats the pants of cans of cold green beans.” Paul said happily.

             
“Thank you Paul, I am glad to have someone around who appreciates my cooking,” responded Mom.

             
“Hey now,” Sam interjected, “I have always appreciated your cooking!”

             
“I know dear, but you have to.” Mom changed the subject, “What do you have left to do before you leave?”

             
“Not much actually, I have some stuff in the shed out back I want to load up. Mainly ammo and some first aid supplies.” Sam answered.

             
“Good, you get the stuff ready and we will ferry it out to the land yacht, I want you to get some rest.”

             
“The way you keep saying ‘you’ and not ‘we’ is making me happy, have you decided I am right about you staying here?” Sam asked hopefully. They had had this discussion several times, but she had always insisted on going along. He had argued that she stay, He didn’t doubt that was she was tough enough, especially after he had heard her tale about getting here, but he would feel a lot better if she stayed here.

             
“I want to, I feel the need to be there, I just have a feeling bad things will happen if I am not.” She lowered her head as she continued, “But I guess you are right, Ken will need watching after, I can already tell he is one of those patients who won’t follow doctors’ orders.” She turned to him and smiled, let him know she didn’t mean anything by the comment.

             
“It’s better that she stays here anyway,” Ken piped in, speaking for the first time, “It’s no place for a lady. The things we saw on that road…”

             
Sam got the impression that Ken was a shy man, but he wasn’t real happy about the way he looked at Mom. He was even less happy that mom had returned the flirtatious look. Sam had only heard him speak twice now. He had a halting way of speaking that made you think he didn’t spend a lot of time socializing.

             
“Ken,” Sam asked, “You were a ranger?”

             
“Yes, a forest ranger for almost thirty years. I collected data on tree growth.” Ken explained. “I had a nice little cabin way back off the beaten path, even the work crews and occasional maintenance truck couldn’t find me, and it was very quiet.”

             
“I see.” Sam replied “When you get better, you will have to take a trip to the top of the tower, great view from up there. I slept there until Mom found me. It’s actually cooler up there if it weren’t for the fans.”

             
“I’d like to check it out. I miss my little cabin,that might be the next best thing.” Ken said.

             
“No Ken,” scolded Paul, “You have hid away from people all your life, I finally got you out of the woods and back around people, you aren’t going to go hide in a tower.

             
This confirmed Sam’s thoughts, Ken was a hermit. This actually made him feel better about leaving his mother here with him. All in all he had a good feeling about Ken. He seemed to be a likeable guy.

             
They spent the rest of the day finalizing preparations and plans. There was more than enough daylight left to get ready and it was decided tomorrow was the day Sam would leave. Sam was relieved that mom admitted that she would have to stay with Ken until he had recovered more. And they agreed that they couldn’t ask Paul to go, it just wasn’t his fight.

             
Shortly after Mom had left to take a load in the van to the RV, He and Paul were separating supplies into duffels and back packs when they heard a gunshot. Panic ripped through Sam as he jumped on the ATV and peeled out down the road. Less than a mile away, he saw the van parked across the road, the driver’s door open. He pulled up and leapt from the ATV and drew his gun. He heard nothing and saw no sign of mom. He yelled her name and s was answered by her voice yelling “over here.” He crashed into the bush in the direction it came from. Fifty feet from the road he found her, on the ground at her feet laid the body of a four point deer. She looked up at him and smiled. Tonight would be a good dinner. He drew his knife and set about dressing the deer.

             
“It’s a big deer, should I just take a ham?” He asked her, “I'm not sure how much we will be able to eat before it spoils in this heat.”

             
“I wonder if Ken knows how to smoke it, isn’t that the kind of things mountain men know?” she said thoughtfully.

             
“Sorry mom, no mountains in Florida, best you can hope for is to call him a ‘Hill Man’.”

             
In the end, they decided to take the whole animal back after it was field dressed. Ken did indeed know how to dry it. He was going to be quiet useful to have around.

             
That night, they cooked venison back strap over a fire and ate under the stars. The meal was wonderful, and Sam was happy to finally have people around to talk to. Around nine he reluctantly turned in, and left the others sitting around the around fire. He fell asleep to their muffled laughs and conversation.

             
His nightmares that night all included failures in his attempts to rescue those poor people. In every dream he came close, but something always fell apart at the last minute. Countless times he watched as Mark was shot, or eaten, or killed in some other way.

             
He awoke again, this time able to do it quietly. He sat and listened, but couldn’t hear anyone else awake. He considered getting up for another glass of vodka, but decided he didn’t want it to become a habit. He was able to fall asleep again.

Chapter 8

             
He rose and dressed early, long before daylight. He wanted to get out without anyone waking up. He wanted to avoid any tearful goodbyes. His mother was sitting on the couch waiting for him.

             
“Be safe, and come back to me” was all she said and hugged him. She walked down the hallway and turned into her room, closing the door behind her. Next to his gun and duffle by the door was a thermos, that when opened, proved to be full of coffee. She always thought of the little things. He looked up at her closed door, smiled and walked outside.

             
His second surprise of the day was standing outside by the van waiting for him. Paul was decked out in full camouflage and holding the assault rifle.

             
“It’s about time you woke up, we’ve got forty miles to travel today, and you young people just want to sleep all day!” Paul said sarcastically

             
“You can’t go, this isn’t your fight, I don’t know what we are going to encounter out there.”

             
“It is my fight. You already saved me and my brother, now it’s time for me to help save yours.”

             
I could see by his demeanor that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so Sam just shook his hand and we loaded up. Together they headed off into the night.

             
They had decided on a route that would take them almost all the way there by roads through unpopulated areas. They managed to make it almost twenty miles before they saw any of the dead.

             
“There seem to be less and less of them.” Sam commented as he watched the woman who had been about thirty and dressed in a sweat suit recede in the side mirror.

             
“We noticed that on the way,” Paul said, “they seem to have all gravitated to the population centers, well the ones that didn’t start out there. Following cars was Ken’s guess. He had a theory that when a car passed, they would follow it until something else caught there attention. He figured that since all roads lead to towns, they would walk until all the buildings and possibly survivors who may be held up there made them forget about what they were doing, so they just kind of stay there.”

             
“Mom said she had heard that they would follow vehicles out of town. She said she saw it happen back when she was held captive.” Sam added.

             
“If that is true, we figured out that if you drove through a city or town, the Sam was not to stop until you got out of the area. We would do this thing were we would slow up and let them stay right behind us, then swing around a few blocks at the edge of town and exit a different direction. They appeared to keep going in whatever direction they last saw you going.”

             
“Makes the swamp all the better, it’s so far away from people, it shouldn’t attract them, and its maze of roads would help them get lost and give you more time to run away or get ready.” Sam said thoughtfully.

             
“Basically, if we stay out of populated areas and don’t draw attention to ourselves, we should do just fine. Ken and I actually felt so secure we slept under the stars a few nights. Cities are hell, country is quiet.” Paul explained.

             
“I just wonder how long they will last, I mean, will they starve, or rot away?” Sam asked the question he had been wondering since it had all started.

             
“Back in Inverness, where I was hold up at the beginning, they had a few scientists looking into those very questions. I talked to an
epidemiologist
from some government agency at dinner one night. He was very full of himself talking about how I shouldn’t worry because they almost had this thing beat. He went on and on about some vaccine they were days away from that never happened. He says they whatever they have, virus or whatever, slowed down the bacteria that caused rot, but didn’t stop it. He said they decay, but it will take them a lot longer, maybe a couple of years, which is forever in this heat. He talked about how they hadn’t figured out why they eat, because they would keep going even after they had eaten so much they popped. He used a lot of two dollar words and was very proud of himself, but he seemed to know what he was talking about.” Paul recalled “Of course it was his damn test subjects that got loose and took the whole place down. Sad as hell, we had good walls, lots of food and everything we needed for a very long time.”

             
“That sucks,” Sam remarked, “Many of you get out?”

             
“Well lets see,” Paul thought back, “There were about three thousand of us one day, and the next… well, I know of about ten that got out, There may have been more, but I doubt it. We all traveled together until we hit I-10, and then they went east towards Jacksonville and I went west towards Ken.” Paul paused for a moment and then seemed shaken. “I guess they are all dead now if Jacksonville is as bad as you say, we would be too had you not found us in the church yard and stopped us.”

             
“You never know, maybe they also had someone warn them.” Sam said to comfort Paul, but deep down he knew it was true. It was funny the way fate saved some and screwed others.

             
They drove until they started seeing signs for a larger town, which they decided to skirt. Mom had taken a county map they had found, and added noted showing the location of the farm as well as notes about the surrounding area. The town they had decided to skirt was the one the ill-fated raiding party had gone to. They selected a small road several miles away and pulled into the lot of an abandoned dairy plant they judged to be only a few miles from the farm. They would be able to hike cross country and come up beside the farm.

             
By late afternoon, they were in the tree line watching the compound. It was exactly as Mom had described it. They could see the towers in the corners, but they appeared to be unmanned.  In the south fields, they could see groups of men guarded by two other figures dressed in dirty fatigues. The thirteen prisoners had definitely seen better days. They showed signs of weakness and appeared thin even at these distances. One of the workers was very unsteady on his feet, the heat and heavy labor obviously getting the better of him. Twice he fell to his knees before other nearby men rushed over to help him up. The third time he went down, one of the soldiers came over and pointed at the fallen man. At five hundred yards, they could not hear what was being said, but they watched as two of the other men walked over and carried the now unconscious man and put him into onto the flatbed trailer connected to the tractor that sat nearby. The other soldier climbed into the cab and drove the man off towards a stand of trees at the far end of the farm and was quickly lost from view, but returned with an empty trailer a few minutes later.