Wilson nodded, and began to respond, but LaRouche turned the corner of the Humvee.
The silence that suddenly fell on them was brief, but obvious and painful.
LaRouche glanced between them, seeming to know everything.
"What"s up, Sarge?" Wilson broke the silence, then cleared his throat.
LaRouche tossed a thumb over his shoulder. "Get everyone loaded." He gave Jim a sharp look. "Time to hit the road again."
CHAPTER 19: HAUNTED.
It was an old shopping center along Highway 61. A failing economy had crippled the strip mall long before the collapse came along and wiped it out. Most of the suites in the brownstone building were empty. The ones with windows still intact had signs advertising that the leases were available. A few stubborn businesses had remained open until the bitter end. A New York-style pizza place. A liquor store. A small grocery store.
Harper directed Julia to pull in. They were getting close to the section of I-85 that ran between Burlington and Greensboro, and he didn"t want to stop. If any place was going to be bad, it was going to be the interstate between those two cities, and he wanted to hit it with a running start and not stop until sundown.
They rumbled into the parking lot, jostling over the remnants of a speed b.u.mp, the black and yellow-painted stripes barely visible anymore. The convoy rolled in behind them, and Julia brought their Humvee in a slow, wide turn, around the empty parking lot, and finally stopped, facing an exit.
Now the dark interiors of the suites were on Julia"s side, and she and Harper gazed out the driver"s side window at them, no one daring to open their doors or even take the vehicle out of gear before they gave it a long minute to see if the racket of the incoming vehicles had stirred anything that might be lurking in the shadows.
In the turret, Gray shifted his position. The hinges of the M2 creaked a bit. They were in need of some grease.
After a while, Julia"s shoulders relaxed a bit. She turned to Harper. "Clear?"
Harper nodded once, then grabbed the radio set. "Takin" twenty minutes for food and fuel," he said into the mic, then set it back on the cradle. He glanced at Julia, then pointed to the little strip of shops. "You gonna help me clear these things?"
Julia sighed, pushed her door open. "Yeah, why not."
Gray grumbled wordlessly as he extracted himself from the turret. When he was in the cab of the truck and working his way towards a door, he said, "Holler if you need me. I gotta take a p.i.s.s."
Harper stepped out, slinging into his rifle and adjusting the collar of his jacket so it covered his neck. He sniffed the air, detected only the smell of human civilization long abandoned-a sort of non-smell, like frozen concrete. An absence of exhaust fumes, the smell of restaurants, and smoke from factories. But also the absence of anything natural, like trees or dirt. Just a plain, dead, grittiness in the air.
"Doesn"t feel as cold," Julia remarked as she started towards the shopping center.
Behind them, doors opened and closed, and conversation bubbled.
"Yeah," Harper nodded. "Doesn"t feel too bad."
Julia held her pace for a moment, allowing Harper to step in line with her. She looked up at the first business that Harper seemed to be guiding towards-the pizza place. "Think we"ll find anything?"
Harper let his hand fall to the grip of his rifle. "Well...we can always hope."
The pizza place had three sections of windows. Two of them were shattered into a sea of dirty blue diamonds that crunched under foot as Julia and Harper approached. In the last window hung an unlit OPEN sign, and a graphic of Italy, in green, white and red.
Harper stopped in the doorway and peered in. The shattered gla.s.s littered an industrial rug just inside the door. Chairs and tables had been overturned. Mounted high in a corner, an ancient television sat blank on a frame. Black and white pictures of New York in the "30s and "40s hung askew on the walls.
To the left, a counter blocked the dining area from the kitchen. Beyond it, the stainless steel of the commercial appliances glimmered darkly in the shadows. The counter stopped before it touched the wall, leaving an open section for people to walk. Sticking out of this, Harper could see a single leg, on its foot a black tennis shoe. The way the pants draped, Harper could see that there wasn"t much left to the leg. Time and rot had withered it away, so the pants seemed to be clothing a stick figure.
Harper wrinkled his nose, but the odor of decay was faint. The body had been there for quite a while. He stepped through the shattered gla.s.s door, dodging a little bell that hung from the door frame, the copper turned pitted and green from exposure. The pebbles of gla.s.s crunched mutely under their feet, the soggy rug squishing. Julia chose to go through one of the windows that no longer existed, stepped lightly around a broken table and a few shotgun sh.e.l.ls that littered the floor.
Harper looked at the sh.e.l.ls, then at the wall behind them, where little black holes stood out. Then he looked at the counter, where the body lay hidden, and could see the wadding from the spent shotgun sh.e.l.ls, and the cl.u.s.ters of holes where the lead shot had ripped into the counter.
Harper rounded the corner, then stared down at the remains of what appeared to be a middle-aged man, though it was difficult to tell at this level of desiccation. He lay flat on his back, face shriveled and eaten away. He wore a t-shirt bearing the name of the pizza place, and a big, ragged wound in the upper right portion of the chest, with the shotgun wadding still stuck in the dried, grizzled meat.
The dead man held a small, black pistol in his right hand.
A single, one-dollar bill fluttered in the s.p.a.ce between his neck and his upheld right arm.
Harper glanced to the left, saw that the cash register was open and empty.
"Geez," Julia mumbled as she came within sight of the body.
"f.u.c.ker got robbed," Harper said wistfully. "Must"ve been during the collapse. They never even picked up the body."
"Pretty s.h.i.tty. Get killed over a pizza place that"d be out of business in a day or two, over money that isn"t worth anything." Julia clucked her tongue. "Amazing, amazing, stupid people."
Harper knelt down, then furrowed his brow and looked up at his companion.
Julia stared neutrally down at the body, then realized Harper was looking at her. "What?"
Harper shook his head. "I liked you more when you were less gloomy."
Julia sniffed. "Yeah...well..."
Harper waved it off. "I"m just f.u.c.kin" with you," he said, but knew that a part of him wasn"t. A part of him missed the Julia that had first joined the team, before all the bodies started piling up. When she was a little kinder, a little softer. Still stubborn as a mule-that was just Julia-but a bit more pleasant to be around. Just slightly different from the rest of them. Like she was one or two steps removed from the cruelty that had become their lives.
Nowadays, though...nowadays her smile was rare, and her thoughts were dark and cold.
Just like the rest of them.
Harper grumbled under his breath, a nonsensical sound of dissatisfaction. Then he leaned forward and patted the pockets of the corpse, feeling for anything that might be of value. He felt something in the right pants pocket, reached in gingerly, trying to avoid touching the nearly-mummified flesh through the cloth. He pinched the object between two fingers and slipped it out.
A little white square, with a pair of ear buds trailing after it.
Harper held it in his hand for a long moment, smiled down at it.
"Not what you thought it would be?" Julia asked.
Harper shook his head once. "Nope." He held the device up. "Now, what kind of music you think the purveyor of this fine establishment listened to?"
Julia put a hand on the counter, tilted her head as though to get a better perspective of the dead body. "Tough call. Still work?"
Harper looked the small square over, found a little silver switch and flipped it. A small green light came on. "Well, what do you know? s.h.i.t"s still got a charge."
He took the two buds, set them in his ears, and pressed play. The ear buds popped. Recorded silence hissed at him. He cringed, his eyes squinting and looking up and to the left as he antic.i.p.ated an a.s.sault of something horrid to come banging through the tiny speakers that sat against his ear ca.n.a.l.
What he heard instead was the thrum of a cla.s.sical stringed instrument-a cello, he thought. Once upon a time he had considered it to be one of the most beautiful sounding instruments in the world, and for a moment it seemed like the music had been left there just for him. The notes resonated in his chest, and he loved them and hated them all at once, and for the same reason. For daring to barge into his drab, fearful life and reminding him of wonderful things that he preferred were left forgotten. This dichotomy of appreciation and resentment became a physical pain in his chest and it forced him, unwillingly, to think of Annette.
Annette when they were both young on the bench seat of his 1972 Chevy shortbed, parked on the lookout. The tops of the trees green with full crowns of leaves, and beyond those you could see nothing of the small town that hid amongst them, save for the white steeples of two churches that rose above the treetops, one on each side of the town. Looking out over the hill, he could see the rain coming towards them, a sheet of it, like a bank of fog rolling towards them, and it swallowed one church steeple, and then the other.
The notes rose and fell.
Rose and fell.
And abruptly the memory became an image of Annette when she was older. Worn down. Dirty. Bedraggled. Trying to appear brave for him as she clutched a bag containing everything she owned in the world and was shuffled through a FEMA camp by National Guard soldiers with worried looks on their faces. Then there were bright searchlights and the downdrafts of helicopters all taking off at once, and the screeches of the infected, and Annette running in one direction while the panicked crowd pushed him in the other. He reached out for her, screamed, tried to kick and thrash through the wall of people bearing him away, but she didn"t hear him and she disappeared into a crowd, looking scared and lost, and that was his last memory of Annette.
Harper ripped the ear buds out.
He looked at them as though they"d told him a dreadful secret, and then he dropped them back onto the dead body and stood up.
"You okay?" Julia asked.
"Yeah, fine."
"What kind of music was it?"
Harper shook his head. "It was nothing."
He put his hands on both sides of the counter and began to step over the body into the back of the pizza shop, when a voice drew his attention outside. Gray came crunching onto the gla.s.sy sidewalk just outside the door of the shop, pointing northward. "Got three of "em comin" up the road."
Harper turned and looked at Julia. "You"re up."
She looked heavily at the body on the ground, then nodded, pulling the rifle from where it was slung over her shoulder. "Alright. I"ll check it out."
Harper gave a distasteful glance into the back of the pizza parlor, saw a mess of ransacked shelving, piles of excrement in the corners of the kitchen where people had relieved themselves while using the place as a shelter. He turned away from the wreckage. "Yeah, I"m comin" out, too."
Julia was already out the door, followed closely by Gray, and then Harper.
Outside the parking lot sprawled out in grays and blacks. All the vehicles lined up, one after the other, pointing towards the exit and ready for flight. The parking lot rose at the exits, meeting the road at a slight incline, and on this small crest, Harper could see Mike Reagan standing there in the center of the street, staring northward while the others crowded around in the bottom of the parking lot.
Julia quickened her pace to a jog as she hit the incline. On the street, Mike seemed to regard whatever he saw in the distance with a blank look, his rifle simply hanging from his fingers, not tucked into his shoulder. Nothing in his body language saying that he was alarmed or on edge. He seemed apathetic.
"Mike," Julia called as she neared him.
He twitched slightly, as though someone had touched him, but still he didn"t look around. Julia glanced back at Harper, then at the faces of the others. Harper turned, looking for Torri"s face and hoping that she could provide some explanation into Mike"s odd behavior.
Julia raised her voice this time: "Hey! Mike!"
He snapped his head in her direction, eyes narrowed. The rifle jerked in his grip-a small movement, but enough for Harper to slow his roll and for Julia to put a hand up.
"You okay?" she said, a little edge to her voice, as though she really meant to say snap out of it!
"Huh?" Mike shook his head, reconnecting to reality. "Yeah. Fine." He looked back down the roadway, clearing his throat and blinking rapidly. "Uh...three of them, I think. Just crested that last rise in the road." He squinted. "I can see two of them now. Don"t know where the third went."
Julia raised the rifle up, not aiming, but just using the scope to gla.s.s the farthest rise in the road. "I got three," she said quietly.
Harper peered over her shoulder, saw them only as small dark shapes-two of them walking on the road, while the third seemed to dance spastically in and out of the tree line on the far edge of the roadway. Harper watched the strange movements for a second, wondering silently what the h.e.l.l the creature was doing. Which crisscrossed neurons were firing erratically in its brain, perhaps making it see things in the trees? Or maybe it was simply like a dog, running in circles because it was excited.
"The f.u.c.k is that thing doing?" he mumbled.
Julia lowered the rifle, still squinting. "No idea."
Mike rubbed his eyes. "You, uh, want me to hit the horn a few times?"
Julia extended the rifle"s bipod. Her lips pursed for a moment. She looked down at the rifle, the chamber. Made sure the bolt was snug and the breech loaded. A bit of hair that had escaped her tie-back flitted about restlessly in the wind and nagged at her nose and eyes. She worked some spit onto her tongue, then licked her fingers and pasted the hair back behind her ears.
"No." She looked back up. "Don"t worry about it."
She started to lean down, but Harper stopped her with a gentle touch of the shoulder. She turned to face him and he masked the concern on his face as best he could, but knew that some of it bled through. "You sure about that?" he said, quietly. "I mean, it ain"t no thing to hit the horn. If it"s gonna make you feel better about..."
"Honestly..." she trailed off as she took a knee, then settled into a p.r.o.ne position. She looked back up at him with a sad, tired smile that he"d grown familiar with. "I don"t think it makes a d.a.m.n bit of difference anymore."
She didn"t wait for an answer, and Harper wasn"t sure he really had one. But it hurt to see that little bit of her simply float away on the breeze. That stubborn part of her that insisted she give these deranged people the benefit of the doubt. It hurt him to watch it because he knew it was a piece of herself that she would never get back.
But he just laid his hand on the pistol grip of his rifle and thought, welcome to the real world.
Welcome to cold, hard truth.
Welcome to a world with no room for delusion.
The rifle boomed. Harper flinched. Dust and cordite mixed in a swirl of gray in front of the muzzle and was gone. She racked the bolt action, seated another round in the chamber, settled over the rifle with the comfort of old friends embracing. She breathed in, exhaled slowly, fired again.
Harper put his eyes downrange, saw only one figure left, racing towards them. Whether it had seen them, or just heard the sound of the gunshot and was drawn, Harper didn"t know. Didn"t really care. He shifted uncomfortably as he watched the thing run towards them, still a long way off, but there was something disconcerting about seeing the way they moved-some b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of human and animal alike.
The third shot brought it down.
Harper nodded and Julia rose up to her elbows. "Three shots...d.a.m.n."
Julia didn"t respond. She heaved herself up onto her knees, then her feet, then picked the rifle up from the ground and collapsed the bipod.
Harper looked behind him, thought to call out to Mike, ask him to help them go check the bodies. But when his eyes fell on the man, he was half sitting, half standing against the front b.u.mper of one of the LMTVs, shoulders slumped, eyes staring off into the woods behind them. His rifle wasn"t even slung or in his hands. Now it simply stood against the b.u.mper, an arm"s length from Mike. Like it wasn"t even his. Like he didn"t want anything to do with it.
Harper whispered under his breath. "What the f.u.c.k?"
He scanned around again, and this time he did find Torri. She walked towards them in the road, her own rifle ported against her chest, her oval face seeming to have been interrupted by a few harsh angles around her eyes and mouth, her lips downturned at the corners. She looked right at Harper and she shook her head.
For a moment, Harper thought that she might have been angry with him, but then she looked back at her husband, leaning up against the LMTV, lackadaisical, in his own little world, and when she looked back her eyes showed worry instead of anger.
Harper gave her a questioning look, but her only response was to look away from him.
Julia stood by his side, rifle propped against her hip. She leaned in to him, her words a murmur. "What"s wrong with Mike?"
Harper flapped his lips. "h.e.l.l, I have no idea. Ask his wife."