Let him get close.
The guy barked out commands. “Hold your arms out to the side. Drop to your knees. Lace your fingers together behind your head.”
Turk remained silent, refusing to comply. Why should he? Intimidation tactics weren’t going to work. If the man intended to shoot him, he’d have done so already. The guy was trying to set up a hierarchy with himself on top.
Fuck that.
“You hear me, man?” The guy’s shoes hit the pavement, sounding as though he was making a straight line for Turk.
One, two, three.
The guy stopped. How close, Turk had no idea.
“I heard you,” Turk said. “But without knowing who you are, I’m not really compelled to act on your commands.”
The guy said nothing, but must’ve motioned to the other two, because they began approaching from the side. Their movements were out of sync. The guy on the left looped out a few feet, putting him in Turk’s field of view. He was tall and wiry with stringy brown hair that hung to his shoulders. He clung to a hunting knife, which he held in a defensive position across his chest. Turk pivoted his head to the right an inch or so. The other guy was the opposite of the first. Shorter than Turk, he had a rotund belly and bald head. His left hand shook as it clenched a pistol.
Amateurs.
“Ready to get down on your knees, boy?” the guy behind him said.
“Fuck you.”
“What?” The guy moved forward until the rifle’s muzzle pressed into Turk’s lower back.
“That’s the wrong move,” Turk said.
“Yeah, well, fuck you,
bro
.”
At this point, Turk assumed there were only three men. If there were more, they’d have made their presence known in some way by now. Turk inched his head side to side. Skinny and Baldy were still more than six feet away.
Baldy looked particularly shaky with the pistol in hand, as though in the old world he’d have pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, carrying it like was a dead mouse’s tail. That was the reality of life now. Survivors who were better suited to sit behind a computer screen punching keys were pressed into playing the role of soldier and protector.
Turk figured Skinny and Baldy latched on to the dumbass behind him because the guy showed traces of leadership and signs of dominance. All three were scared of Turk.
It showed in their faces.
Their movements.
Their actions.
“Ready to bow to me, asshole?” the guy behind him said.
“Nah,” Turk said. “But I’ll blow you.”
“What the —”
Turk spun to the left, toward Skinny, who clutched his knife. The move created a few more feet of distance between him and Baldy. Something told Turk the guy had never fired the weapon, and as such, his first shot would go wide.
Turk’s left arm dipped behind his back and found the rifle barrel. He forced it down and away while searching for a grip on the weapon. Turk held his right arm up in a defensive position, ready to block a knife attack from Skinny. None was forthcoming as the blade-wielding man stood like his boots had melted into the asphalt.
Turk finally had a visual of the guy behind him. He looked about twenty years old. Country boy for sure, with buzzed hair, a wide jaw and nose, and close-set eyes. The man shifted one leg back, like he was getting ready to grab a bull’s horns and start swinging the beast. He yanked hard on the rifle. Turk supposed the move was to regain control. Why the guy didn’t pull the trigger was beyond Turk. He’d already prepared himself for the burns he’d get on his fingers and palms.
Using his left hand to pull the country boy closer, Turk abandoned his defensive position and struck with his right hand, catching the guy between his cheek and jaw. A trail of blood erupted from the man’s mouth as his head snapped left. He dropped to his knees. Let go of the rifle. Fell sideways.
Turk flipped the weapon around and took aim at the guy with the pistol, who still hadn’t squeezed off a single round.
“Drop it.”
Baldy looked down at the man on the ground, then over at Skinny. They both dropped their weapons at the same time.
“You shitting me?” Turk said. “I was ready to blow your buddy’s head off. Be doing you a favor if I did, especially in his current condition. Come on. Where’s the tough guys that were threatening me a few minutes ago?”
“We-we-we…” Skinny blinked hard and took a deep breath while holding one hand out as though it could stop a bullet. “We ain’t been with him long. He showed up here a couple days ago and just kinda took over. Ray had been the guy in charge, but Mike there slit Ray’s throat. The other four left after that, leaving us and Mike.”
Turk could have pressed for more details, but he didn’t. There was no point. He had to get what logistical information he could out of these guys, and then get moving.
“Any boats here?”
“Nah,” Baldy said. “They were all taken right away. People was real assholes about it, too. They’d get their family on, have plenty of room to spare, but take off anyway.”
Turk nodded out of habit while only half-listening to the guy. “What about rafts?”
“Rafts?” Skinny repeated. Turk noted how the man’s eyes bugged out like a deranged frog.
“Yeah, inflatable things made out of rubber. Seen any of them?”
“Shit,” Skinny said. “Never thought to look.”
“Christ,” Turk muttered, wondering how the men managed to survive for two weeks. Judging by the haggard look of the men, hiding had to have been options one, two, and three. “Step back, both of you.”
The men did as ordered. Turk picked up the knife and pistol and stashed each in his waistband. He glanced ahead at two rows of square buildings clad in aluminum and steel.
“Which of those buildings looked like it might’ve been used as a warehouse or a storeroom?”
The guys looked at each other for a few seconds, each waiting for the other to respond. They both shrugged. Not only where they morons, they paid little attention to their surroundings. Turk almost felt bad for them. He got over that feeling as quickly as it arrived. Nature would take its course. He hoped it happened after he left.
“Come with me,” Turk said.
“What about Mike?” Skinny said.
“Who?”
Skinny pointed at the man on the ground.
“Leave him for all I care.”
“They’ll come to get him.”
“Who will?”
The man retreated back a step as he looked past Turk, toward the city. “Those…things.”
“Fine by me,” Turk said. “That’ll keep them away from us. Now move.”
Baldy wagged both hands in front of his expansive stomach. “It don’t work like that, man. They’ll come in for him, but he’ll be like an appetizer. After they finish, they’ll know we’re here and it’ll be like a buffet line.”
It made sense for the guy to relate everything to food. After all, Turk was starving. He couldn’t imagine how the larger man felt.
“Then carry him inside,” Turk said.
For all Turk knew about the afflicted, he understood very little about how they acted in the open. They’d been fortunate to not encounter any groups on the trek from his burned-out bunker to the cabin. Even after entering Charleston, he’d seen no sign of them. He had begun to consider the possibility that the virus was done, and that not-so-much life after death wasn’t as permanent as he feared.
Skinny and Baldy grunted as they lifted the unconscious man off the ground and slipped his arms across their shoulders. They dragged him toward the buildings, with Turk following behind. He kept glancing back, wondering if the afflicted had already caught the scent of wounded prey. Had their instincts evolved as such, that they’d notice from a distance? Or were they just that good at hiding in plain sight that Turk had missed them?
“Tell me about these buildings,” Turk said.
The two guys looked at each other, perhaps trying to find assurance that it was okay to speak.
“Christ,” Turk said. “Either one of you.”
“Offices on the left,” Baldy said. “To the right is just a bunch of paper. Files and folders, you know?”
“What about gear?”
Skinny said, “Most things were looted in the first couple days. It was crazy here. The Coast Guard, they couldn’t do anything to stop it. There were only a few of them left anyway. They bolted as soon as they realized there was no point trying to keep people from the boats. So they slipped behind the gate in the middle of the night. We all ran out there and watched as they took the biggest ship. Three of them and all that extra room. By the time people got over the top, and we got the lock cut, it was too late. Then we were overrun by folks getting the rest of the boats. It was crazy. Man versus man, woman versus woman, even kids getting in on the action. More people died than got on a ship.”
“With no one to lead, the masses turn on one another. Foundation of history, boys.”
“We’ve been staying in there.” Skinny gestured toward the building on the right. “I can guarantee nothing like what you’re looking for there, but maybe the building across the way.”
The smell of human waste was stronger here. Turk wondered if it was something more. Decay, perhaps. What had they done with the bodies? Looking ahead to the waterfront, he didn’t see any corpses. Had they stored them inside? The guys had an issue with leaving Mike behind. They must’ve seen what happens when you leave flesh for the taking. In which case, burning the bodies was the only solution.
“Corpses,” Turk said. “What’d you do with them?”
The men paled as they stared at each other. Presumably, they felt uncomfortable speaking of the atrocities they had committed.
“Burned?”
Baldy nodded once. Skinny looked away.
“Where?”
Baldy pointed a smaller building set off to the right. His voice a whisper, he said, “The smoke shack.”
“All right.” Turk offered the pistol back to the bigger man. “You take Mike into the building you’ve been sleeping in. Then you watch over him. If you got rope, use it. Either way, stay twenty feet back and don’t let him get off the floor. If he does, shoot him.”
“What about me?” Skinny asked.
“You’re coming with me. I need a lookout while I’m sorting through what’s in that building.”
The men split up. Turk looked back and watched Baldy drag Mike into the structure. The big guy reappeared a few moments later and took position at the door. He stood with one foot inside and out.
Skinny and Turk continued around the corner. A rusty chain ran snaked through two eyebolts, one on the door, the other secured to the building. A lock connected the ends, but remained open. Turk had Skinny free it, and then open the metal door.
The air inside the building was stagnant. Sunlight penetrated through holes and cracks and then died amid the trash and boxes.
He pulled a flashlight and scanned the racks spread throughout the open room. Boxes of supplies labeled with pictures were stacked high along the walls. In between there were racks of varying heights with barren shelves. People had been in the room and taken most of what was there. Turk moved through the room, shuffling his feet, kicking debris out of the way.
Trash was stacked high in the back corner of the room. But it looked as though there were a few boxes behind it.
Last chance.
Turk began pulling at the base of the heap of debris until a mini-avalanche occurred, sending smaller boxes, paper, and cans sliding along the floor.
And revealing what they’d been hiding.
A deflated survival life raft. He couldn’t estimate the length, but it was much smaller than anything he’d used as a SEAL. It looked large enough for his small group, though. Why had it been discarded? Was it damaged? Had someone hid it for later use? One of the men stationed on base could have done it early in the outbreak, while they were still ordered to remain on base.
Turk reached for the deflated vessel, but froze in place when he heard a bloodcurdling scream from outside.
Chapter 6
“Keep quiet.” The hushed voice was indiscernible.
Phil took his eyes off the shadowy woods and looked to his left. Ralph stood behind him, pressed against the same tree, pulling Phil’s back into sharp bark.
“Ease up, okay?” Ralph said.
Phil nodded tersely, and then let his body relax. Ralph released his grip.
“Wait back here.” Ralph hunched and dashed tree to tree, stopped, then rushed toward Derrick, who remained fixed in the same spot. He covered Derrick’s mouth and dragged him behind a thick oak. A moment later, Ralph emerged from the cover of the tree and made his way back to Phil.
“The hell is going on?” Phil’s anger had welled while Ralph was off helping Derrick. What was the man thinking assaulting him like that? What if Phil had suffered an injury? What if he’d turned and shot Ralph?
It was then that Phil realized he dropped his rifle. He scanned the ground and spotted it five feet away, half covered in leaves. The forest floor had already attempted to claim the weapon.
“Don’t go for it yet,” Ralph said.
“You gonna tell me what’s buried itself up your ass, or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?”