Aftermath (6 page)

“
Okay. We’ll figure something out.” Then Bus turned. “Miller! Harper!”

The two men appeared suddenly out of the crowd, appearing red faced and uncomfortable. They walked awkwardly into the medical trailer, flanking Bus. Miller on the right, Harper on the left.

Lee tensed. He eyeballed the two men, finding himself evaluating them as he would an enemy combatant. He did not want to harm these people, but if it came down to violence, he intended to be the one walking away. Harper looked mean but Lee was confident in his earlier assessment of the man. As hard-assed as Harper had become, he’d still led a cushy life prior to the collapse of society. Lee could probably overpower him easily. Miller posed a bit more of a problem. He looked like he enjoyed a fight and had the look of someone that got into his fair share of them. While he might not have any formal training, experience was more important. Lee hedged his bets that Miller was a stand-up fighter. He would need to take his legs out.

Bus looked at Lee, but spoke to his men. “Watch the captain while Doc tends to him.” Bus swiped a quick hand across his brow. “I’m sorry, Captain. But I don’t think you should leave the trailer for right now.”

Lee’s shoulders pinched up slightly. “Am I being arrested?”

His eyes traveled back and forth between Bus, Harper and Miller. None of them had an answer for him, because it was the truth, but they didn’t want to admit it. He was being arrested. He had come to Camp Ryder and promised them supplies and assistance, and rather than accept his help, they were holding him in a trailer against his will.

Looking the gift-horse in the mouth.

Lee had the urge to tell them to go fuck themselves. He could make a break for it, still in possession of the GPS. He could continue his mission with another group, one less paranoid and less hostile. But the nagging thought occurred to him:
what if there’s no one else?

And what about Angela and Abby and Sam?

And what about the mission?

He had to focus on the mission.

In this surreal situation, the concept of the mission was, for once, a comfort. It grounded him and gave him a sense of the big picture. This was not personal, it was business, and his business was the completion of his mission. This was a community that he could render aid to, a community that eventually could not only provide stability in the region, but a waypoint for him to base further operations out of. This was the first step.

But he had to earn their trust.

It would not be given.

The only alternative was to abandon them. If he abandoned them they would conclude that they had been right about him all along. Their group of survivors would either whither and die, or eventually Lee would have to deal with them again. And they would be much harder to convince the next time around.

If Camp Ryder was going to be an asset to him, it was now or never.

Lee stood up and very slowly raised his right hand. With his left, he pulled up the smiley-face t-shirt, exposing the small pocket pistol he’d stuck in his waistband. He watched them all stare at the pistol, even some of the people outside. The implication Lee made was obvious. A guilty man, someone spying for Milo, would have kept the weapon so he could later escape with it. Instead he was choosing to cooperate.

Lee nodded to Harper. “Go ahead.”

Harper glanced up at Lee’s face, his eyes sharp as arrowheads.

Lee thought that maybe Harper would get some sort of satisfaction from this, considering he had not been a fan of Lee’s to begin with, but he did not appear to be enjoying himself. In fact, he looked even more miserable than usual.

“
Miller,” Harper spoke quietly. “Take the gun from Captain Harden, please.”

Miller stepped forward cautiously. Lee could see that Miller was at odds with himself. Part of him wanted to believe in his friends and family, that Lee was the enemy, that the untrustworthy outsider had been the cause of all this great misfortune. The other part of him knew that this was wrong, that Lee was there to help.

A third part was just scared that Lee was going to snap his neck if he got to close.

But Lee remained as frozen as though he were sculpted of marble. Miller stepped forward slowly, his eyes meeting Lee’s, and in them Lee could see a silent apology. He plucked the gun from Lee’s midsection.

Someone from the crowd yelled, “What about that thing in his pocket?”

And another, “Yeah, take it away from him!”

Miller and Lee both glanced down at his right front pocket and the handheld GPS unit bulging awkwardly from the athletic shorts.

Miller didn’t move for it. He looked at Lee as though asking permission.

Lee shook his head slightly and said, “Don’t.”

The younger man nodded and retreated.

There was a disapproving grumble from the crowd and Bus spun on them. “That is his personal property and we won’t be taking it from him. He’s been detained based on your accusations but we’re not treating him like some common criminal.”

The gathering remained silent this time.

Bus turned to Doc. “See to him, Doc.” Then to Lee, “I am truly sorry, Captain. But the situation being what it is, you may have very limited time to recover. I think you may have to produce what you promised sooner than either of us expected.”

CHAPTER 4: COMMITTEE

Doc gave both Harper and Miller a grim look and then stepped over to where Lee still stood, mulling things over. “Come on. Have a seat. Let me make sure none of your stitches popped.”

Lee allowed himself to be led back to the cot. Doc stripped the bloodstained plastic sheet off and threw it to the side with a snap of the wrist. Then Lee sat down on the edge of the cot, elbows to his knees, feeling the skin stretching and tugging against the stitches. It was an odd sensation, but not quite painful.

Hunched on his cot, with his chin resting on his folded hands, he looked at the open entrance of the medical trailer. Outside, the world was painted in the slate-gray tones of predawn. Gray like a corpse. Like putrefied meat. And in that dead half-light Lee could see the last of the crowd scattering to tend to their morning duties.

The cot shifted behind him as Doc settled his weight on it and rolled the back of Lee’s shirt up. He pulled at the old bandages. Parts of them had stuck to the wound and stung viciously when he tugged them off.

“
Not too bad,” Doc murmured. He continued replacing the dressings.

Lee glanced up and found Harper staring at him. He seemed to be considering Lee in great mental detail. Lee waited for a long moment in silence, but Harper’s eyes never left him.

Lee decided to break the silence. “What do you think, Harper?”

The man’s jaw clenched, tensing up muscles high on his balding temples. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“
It does,” Lee stated. “It matters to Bus.”

Harper deflected: “I don’t think Bus blames you.”

Lee smiled without humor. “But what do
you
think?”

“
I think you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Lee laughed suddenly and earnestly. “Yeah. You got that one right.”

Everything he’d done for the past four days had seemed to be an uphill battle. Nothing on the outside of his bunker had been what he’d thought it would be. At every turn it seemed that something went wrong and it began to instill in him a deep sense of impending doom, as though no matter what his future decisions were, he would never be able to avert disaster. It seemed Murphy had a hard on for him.

Footsteps crunched on the fine gravel outside. Four faces appeared from around the corner, three that Lee recognized, and one that he did not.

“
Lee,” Angela quickened her step, ushering Sam and Abby into the medical trailer. Behind them, some guy Lee didn’t know stood with his hand on the butt of what looked like a small caliber pistol. “What happened? What’s going on?”

Lee didn’t answer her question immediately. He caught the eye of the man that had brought Angela and the kids into the trailer. This one was not like Harper and Miller. This one had the look of distrust and resentment that he’d seen in Kara’s family.

Lee gestured to the woman and two kids. “Really?”

The man with the pistol shrugged coldly and turned out of sight. It was becoming clear to Lee that
, like any other group,
Camp Ryder had its divisions. Different people formed different alliances. Some groups sided with Lee, others sided with Kara’s family. Lee could only hope that the majority of the camp still wanted to work with him instead of crucify him.

Sam stood at the edge of the cot now, his eyes wandering the room, his jaw set, and his arms crossed. “They think we’re the bad guys. Because of what happened. They think we caused it.”

“
What?” Angela’s mouth hung open. “No...”

“
Yes,” Lee confirmed. “From what I can tell, some of the people in camp think I’m working for Milo. And I guess they’re just lumping you and the kids in with me.”

Angela looked lost. “Who’s Milo?”

Behind Lee, Doc chuckled bitterly and patted his shoulder. “You’re good, Captain.” The young man with the shaggy hair pushed his scuffed up glasses further onto his nose and began to gather up the discarded dressings
along with the plastic sheet soaked in Kara’s blood.
Then he tossed the whole bloodstained mess into a 55-gallon drum in the corner. Lee noticed the blackened edges along the mouth of the drum. They regularly burned the contents.

What was left of a young girl was now just a biohazard.

Doc fingered his hair behind his ears and stood in front of the small group: Lee, Angela, and the two lost-looking kids. His mouth was open as though he wanted to say something but was waiting for the right words to land on his tongue. He eventually snapped his mouth shut and turned quickly away from them, mumbling as he left the trailer, “I’ll see about some breakfast.”

Lee turned his attention to Angela and the kids. Sam was sitting dejectedly on the opposite side of the cot, slouched with his hands working between his knees and scowling at the wall. Abby was standing with Angela, her little arm wrapped tightly around her mother’s leg. Her eyes looked distant and indifferent.

Lee reached out and tentatively touched her arm. “How you doin’, sweetie?”

For a moment so brief, Lee thought he might have imagined it, Abby’s eyes became ice-cold and focused points, like icicle tips. Then they melted into that same absent look.

“
Okay.” She nodded and looked up at her mother. “What are we doing, mom?”

Angela brushed her daughter’s hair and guided her to the cot in between Lee and Sam. “We’re just going to sit with Captain Harden for a little bit.”

“
We’re in trouble.” The words seemed odd coming from Abby’s mouth because her face showed so little concern. “The people here don’t like us.”

Lee cast a glance toward Harper, who avoided the eye contact now. “No, they’re just confused about some stuff. Once they understand the situation, then everything will be okay.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Lee leaned back and squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “What about you, buddy?”

Sam turned towards him, angry. “Why don’t we just go?”

“
Because they need our help,” Lee stated simply. “And because this is my job.”

“
You come here to help them and they treat you like a prisoner. And what about us? What if we don’t want to be here? There must be somewhere else we can go.”

Lee shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if there is anywhere else right now, or how hard it will be to get there. We all nearly died out there. You should remember that.”

Sam huffed and turned back to staring at the wall.

Angela took a seat on the cot with Lee, and Abby slid into her lap, looking tired. Lee could feel Angela next to him, a warm presence. If he had known Angela better, he would have found comfort in her nearness. As it was, he found it awkward. She seemed to place some importance on him that he didn’t understand. Perhaps it was the trauma of the last few days, or the shock of losing her husband. Did she think that she was going to hold onto Lee, just because he rescued them from the roof top? Like he was some knight in shining armor, and she, the damsel in distress?

There’s nothing personal here,
he thought.
For Christ’s sake, I shot your fucking husband.

She just wasn’t thinking clearly right now. She hadn’t had time to decompress.

Maybe it was Lee’s problem. Maybe he’d been alone so long he didn’t know how to operate any other way. On the other hand, maybe he just understood that a relationship based on trying to survive together for four days wasn’t a relationship at all.

When he turned to take a furtive glance at her, he found Angela looking at him. Her eyes were very sad, and it seemed as though she pitied him. He felt a bit of relief along with the indignation at being pitied.
She knows there’s no relationship. She just thinks she can help me. She’s that type of person—always looking for someone to help.

“
You’re not bothered by any of this?” she asked him.