United States Of Apocalypse Page 21

  “Can you talk, Terri?” Herbert asked. “I’m an old man, and all this standing is going to bother my knees. I didn’t get two knee operations like your dad did.”

  Terri seemed to relax slightly when Herbert mentioned her dad, which Darlene knew was a good move. Herbert was a friend and neighbor, not the enemy.

  Terri turned the shotgun on Darlene. “I don’t know her. She isn’t Susie.”

  Herbert shook his head. “This is my friend Darlene. She was visiting from Maine when this started. She’s also one of us. On the right side, Terri.”

  “She looks like Susie,” Terri said.

  Herbert didn’t look at Darlene but he frowned. “Yes, she does. Can we go to the porch and sit? We can talk.”

  Terri nodded. “I’m not putting the gun down just yet.”

  “Not a problem,” Herbert said. He walked slowly up the back steps to the wooden furniture, sitting down and placing his hands on the table. “Joe and I made this table and these chairs about ten years ago. They’re still holding up. You remember that, Terri?”

  Terri walked backward and leaned against the house, still holding the shotgun, but it had dipped a few inches down. “Why are you talking to me like I’m retarded?”

  Herbert laughed and looked at Darlene. “Now that’s the Terri I remember. She went to school with my Susie and, sure enough, Terri taught her how to really use sarcasm.”

  Terri smiled and the gun dipped another couple of inches. “But she’s the one who taught me all about the farm boys around here and how to ignore them. I wish I’d listened.”

  “Where are your parents, Terri?” Herbert asked suddenly, changing the subject.

  “The last time I talked to them, they were stranded in Florida, and I told them not to come back. It wasn’t safe.” She sat down across from Herbert and leaned the shotgun against the bench with her hand holding it.

  “Good move. I don’t think they would’ve gotten a flight, and driving doesn’t seem safe right now,” Herbert said.

  Terri turned to Darlene. “Are you retarded?”

  Darlene laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “We came by a couple of weeks ago and fed the last goldfish,” Herbert said.

  “They’re all dead now. Dad hated them anyway. They were mom’s pets, the only ones she was allowed to have. Can you imagine? Living on a farm without a dog and at least a dozen cats in the barns? Un-American.” Terri shrugged her shoulders. “But that was my dad.”

  “What are your plans?” Herbert asked.

  “I don’t have any. I can’t go back to my apartment,” Terri said, looking away.

  “We went looking for you,” Darlene said quietly.

  Terri looked like she was going to cry again. “She was my best friend, and those men...it all happened so fast. I was just going up the stairs when they attacked me. I fought them off and managed to run away, but Casey was still inside. I chickened out and hid for days until I saw what the town had become. Then it took me three days to get back here because I was so paranoid they were following me.”

  “You’re welcome to join us down the road,” Herbert said.

  Terri shook her head. “I’m staying here. Nothing personal, but I need some time to myself. I also know my dad was even crazier than you when it came to prepping for something disastrous to happen. The root cellar is packed with supplies. If you run into trouble or need something, you come see me.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I-70

  Three days later, Darlene saw the ragtag line of people walking down the road. She was glad they’d chopped down all the trees and eventually cut them into a massive pile of firewood for future use.

  Now she could see this line of people before they could see her, and she knew Tee would be leading them. She yelled for Herbert, who was inside taking a nap. Since all this started, their sleeping patterns were all off. Darlene was getting used to taking two interrupted naps a day instead of getting a solid eight hours, and sleeping on the couch while everyone was awake wasn’t always easy.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Herbert said and smiled. He poked his head back inside. “Pheebz, you better get the rest of the silverware cleaned. It looks like we got fifty people coming for lunch.”

  “I just hope John doesn’t shoot anyone,” Darlene said.

  “Actually...could you drive out to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid?”

  Darlene nodded. Better to be safe than sorry. John had cooled down over the last few days, but he was still being too quiet and moody. He always had a weapon on him despite the fact he’d never even shot a gun before all this happened.

  By the time she drove down to the trees and warned John, Tee had gathered everyone off the side of the driveway where the trees had been staged for firewood.

  Several tents were going up, and already a cooking fire was being started.

  Tee came over to Darlene and hugged her as she got off the three-wheeler. It was unexpected but not bad, and Darlene realized Tee had cleaned up and was wearing what looked like a new shirt, shorts, and sneakers. He had a ridiculously large hat on his head and Darlene thought it might even be a ladies hat, but she didn’t comment. She was sure it had helped him stay out of the California sun.

  “Where have you been?” Darlene asked, looking at all the people.

  Tee waved a hand. “With some friends. We have to hide during daylight hours so we could only move such a large mass of people right before dusk. At night, they search with their trucks, but by first light, they’re gone. It never varies, so when it got dark we continued moving towards you until we found somewhere else to hide until night again.”

  “That sounds horrible.”

  “Oh, it was. But along the way we found a few more recruits and got lucky with people having supplies as well as finding a sundries supplier off of a dirt road that they hadn’t spotted yet. The warehouse was intact and filled with more things than we could carry. They sent shipments to prisons on the coast, and we have enough razors and candy to kill someone now,” Tee said, laughing.

  “Do you have weapons?” Darlene asked.

  Tee lifted his t-shirt, showing the pistol he was carrying. “Everyone has something, even if it’s only a broken leg from a chair.”

  Herbert was walking among the people, shaking hands and chatting. He looked relaxed for the first time in a while. He started helping a family put up their tent.

  Darlene was worried, though. All of these new people would need food, and setting them up near the driveway meant anyone could see them from the street. They’d need to start patrols and watch the fires at night.

  Tee wandered off, and Darlene went to Herbert.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” she asked.

  “Sure. What’s up? Isn’t this great?”

  “Yes, it is. But...” Darlene looked at Herbert and frowned. “We need to protect these people. Putting them in front of the house only exposes them to the Sawyers and the group holding the town prisoner and anything else happening down the road, or some other potential enemy seeing the smoke during the day or the glow of the fire at night.”

  Herbert shook his head. “You’re right. I got so excited they were survivors; I didn’t think.”

  “Let’s make the rounds and get them moving before they get too comfortable,” Darlene said.

  “We can move them between the red barn and the back of the house.” Herbert looked around. “With so many hands, we should be able to clean out the barns in no time, too. Maybe set up some temporary housing in case it rains.”

  “Good idea.” Darlene saw Tee and went back over to him. “We need to move everyone to the back for safety.”

  Tee nodded and turned to the people he was helping. “Change of plans. Everyone needs to grab their gear and follow this pretty lady to a more permanent spot.”

  Within an hour, most of the camp was set up, and Darlene set to task organizing it. They needed to block it off from a casual observer coming up the road.
She collected half a dozen men, and they gathered the extra sections of fence and wooden slats and began the task of building a secondary wall from the house to the barn.

  A neighbor from down the road had spotted the long line of people and joined them, packing his wife, kids, and the few scraps of food they had left. But when he handed Darlene two infrared rifle scopes and four rechargeable walkie-talkies with a recharging station, she thanked him profusely.

  Herbert stood on the back porch with Pheebz and smiled, greeting people and shaking hands.

  Darlene, after she’d gotten the fence posts dug and the fence itself was going up, took a break and joined Herbert and Pheebz on the porch.

  She Pheebz looked around at the influx of people, but she wasn’t as positive and calm as Herbert was. All she saw was another fifty or so mouths to feed.

  “You’ve got your own little nation here, dear.” Pheebz said, hugging her husband.

  “Herbert, let me ask you a serious question...do you know many of these people?” Darlene asked.

  “I recognize a few faces.”

  “Do you see anyone who might have a tie to the Sawyer family?”

  Herbert frowned and pulled away from his wife. “Not off the top of my head, but I’ve been so busy figuring out how these people could help out.”

  “What’s wrong?” Pheebz asked.

  “Anyone who wanted to get up close and personal to us to see our defenses, what we have as far as supplies and weapons are concerned, and anything else, could have easily joined this group at some point and is right now spying,” Darlene said. She knew she sounded paranoid, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I’ll take a walkthrough once everyone is settled and figure out who I know and don’t know. Then get Tee and see which people were in his original group and which joined them,” Herbert said.

  “I have infrared scopes and walkie-talkies too. I need to charge them but then it will be nice to have one in the tree and up front at night,” Darlene said.

  Darlene knew with all the noise out back, her power naps on the couch would come to an end, but it was still better than sleeping on the ground. How in the world she’d ever get enough privacy or bathroom time now was a mystery. She decided to keep her diva thoughts to herself.

  By the time she’d gone inside, plugged the charger to the wall, and gone through the kitchen to the backyard, someone had set up two blowup pools and was filling one with water.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, running over to the guy holding his shirt in one hand and the water hose in the other.

  “Filling up the pools. It’s hot out,” he said.

  Darlene shook her head. “No. We can’t waste the water. The power could go out anytime, and we need to conserve everything possible.”

  “The water has nothing to do with the power,” he said. He grinned, the look on his face simple: He thought Darlene was an idiot. “And without everyone using their water because they’re dead, we got plenty of it now.”

  Darlene turned away and went in search of Herbert. She found him near the red barn talking to Tee and another man.

  “They’re filling up swimming pools,” Darlene said.

  Herbert smiled. “I saw that. We were just discussing going over to the Mackenzie farm and maybe getting their water tower over to us.”

  “An entire tower?” Darlene asked.

  “It’s empty. They haven’t used it in ages. It’s more for show than anything, but I figure it is still solid and can hold a lot of water. I got three hoses, and we can fill the tank over a day or two. No telling when the power and water is going to disappear,” Herbert said.

  Darlene shrugged. Maybe she was thinking too hard about all of this, but this goodwill and endless supplies wasn’t going to last forever, and she didn’t want to see what would happen when things began to run out. She knew from watching the news what happened then: People became even more selfish and violent when they thought they weren’t going to get the last scrap of food.

  Tee nodded. “Tell me where it is, and I’ll run over with a couple of men and bring it here. It’ll take a while to fill, so the sooner the better, right? I’ll see if they have extra hoses as well.”

  Darlene didn’t want to go on this mission. She wanted to relax now that they had so many extra eyes and hands. She looked at Herbert. “There are a ton of people now. Having two bathrooms inside isn’t going to help.”

  Herbert snapped his fingers. “Of course.” He turned to two men standing nearby. “In the barn, you’ll find a few shovels. Take them and a couple more men and walk out about a hundred yards...” Herbert pointed his finger at an invisible spot down the field. “We need to dig a trench for waste. A long one, and have someone get you the last of the fencing so you can get some privacy as well.”

  Darlene spent some time wandering around, introducing herself to a few of the other women and being friendly to the many children. She felt helpless, though, because there was nothing she could really do to help any of them. Most had suffered much more than she had. While she had never lost electricity or gone without food, some of these people had gone without both for weeks.

  She stood and watched as people settled in and wondered if she’d be able to do it if it came to being outside without any choice to be comfortable.

  Darlene didn’t think she could handle it. She went inside and smiled at Pheebz, who was peeling potatoes. Rosemary was next to her, washing and handing them over.

  “Who are you cooking for?” Darlene asked.

  Pheebz frowned. “For us. I know this is a wonderful thing to have all these people safe, but I can’t imagine the logistics of feeding half a hundred mouths three times a day. I figure Herbert will have to put together a plan and see what supplies and food we even have at this point.”

  “My big brother wants to save the world,” Rosemary said.

  “It isn’t a bad trait to have,” Darlene said. “What do you want me to do to help?”

  Pheebz shook her head. “Nothing. We’re taking our time with it. Go relax on your couch-bed until dinner. You look exhausted. Take a nap while it’s still quiet in the house. The boys are playing in the bedroom, but they’ll be out soon enough when they smell good cooking.”

  Darlene was going to protest and tell the women she wanted to help, but she didn’t. She wanted to plop on the couch and watch mindless television until she fell asleep. Hopefully a nice power nap was in her future before the room got loud.

  She kicked her shoes off and fixed the pillows on the couch, snuggling up with the blanket she used at night. The remote control was at her fingertips and her goal was to steer clear of the news.

  When the TV came on, she couldn’t turn the channel. She knew it would be on every channel. Dear God, not again, she thought. “Pheebz, can you quietly tell Herbert to come in the living room?” she yelled.

  “What is it?”

  “He needs to see this, but I don’t want everyone to panic,” Darlene said and sat up. She turned the volume down so it wasn’t too loud but she could still hear it.

  By the time Pheebz found Herbert and got him inside, Darlene had watched an endless loop of the destruction. She’d been staying away from the newscasts because she didn’t want to know anymore. It was bad enough; she lied to herself. It couldn’t get any worse.

  “What’s the matter?” Herbert asked, but his eyes were already on the screen.

  “I had no idea Los Angeles had been nuked,” Darlene said quietly as footage began to roll.

  “Neither did I, but looking at the date, it happened around the time Boston was attacked,” Herbert said.

  “I didn’t want to tell you. I figured you’d both find out eventually. I only saw it a couple of days ago, me and Rosemary, but we thought you were so busy and in such good spirits....” Pheebz put her head down.

  “It’s alright, dear. Perfectly understand why you wouldn’t want to burden us all with this too” Herbert said.

  “That’s not all.” Darlene surfed the ch
annels until she came upon a live shot from a news chopper. She wiped a tear away. “Chicago was nuked about an hour ago.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Day 28 - Manhattan

  The neighborhood stayed on an alert vigil, everyone, that is, but Mike. He wholeheartedly believed in Pembroke’s words. He rested a fair majority of that night and the next day.

  “It would have been nice to have your help out there,” Tynes said, coming in just as the sun was going down.

  “You mean scraping the blood off the street? I left when I heard one of the idiots say that he wondered how much it was going to hurt the resale value in the neighborhood.”

  Tynes opened up some Pop-Tart foil packets, and the two ate in silence, both lost in thoughts of what was going to happen in just a few short hours.

  “I wonder if that was the best last meal I could have hoped for.”

  “Last meal?” Tynes asked.

  “I have a bad feeling. I’m not too thrilled about heading into the Guard stronghold. People get squirrelly when you mess with their food. And another thing that has me concerned is what Pembroke has in mind.” Mike reflected.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re going in with a small force, right? Even if we somehow get a pallet jack and maneuver it around in the tunnels, how much food are we really going to get away with? Pembroke isn’t going to pull this job for a lousy couple of cases; I know the man. He’s in for it all. If he’s strong enough to stop the Demons, then he has an army, and if he has an army…”

  “He needs to feed them.” Tynes answered.

  “Exactly.”

  “So what are we, then?”

  “I’m thinking the vanguard.” Mike tipped his Pop-Tart packet to get the last crumbs.

  “You think we’re leading an invasion force?” Tynes was concerned.

  “I do. We’re going to open up the gates, and he’s going to pour his men in. And I don’t know what’s going to be worse, a pissed-off Guard or a victorious Pembroke.”