The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) (10 page)

The boy had stood at the edge of the window, using the scope to pe
er out onto the street. Left and right. Up and down. Above and below. “Cool!” he’d told them.

It was finally safe to emerge from the tight quarters that had given them refuge. When they came out onto the street, their weapons slung and holstered, their packs cinched securely on their backs, the city was silent
, except for the sounds of hundreds of birds and the buzzing of tens of thousands of insects. Spider webs glittered in the rising sunlight, touched with dew. A dog barked and Ron even saw it darting off in the distance, running from building to building, calling to other dogs who answered from somewhere far away.

At the horizon
, the sky was reddish with the edges of distant clouds, but otherwise the sky was clear.

“Red sky in morning, sailor take warning,” Jean said as she peered toward the horizon
, visible as a tiny line down at the far end of the avenue.

“What’s that mean?” Oliver asked her.

“It’s an old sailor’s poem,” she informed the boy. “It goes like this:

‘Red sky in morning,
sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.’”

“But what does that mean?” the boy pleaded.

Ron laughed, and cut in. “It meant to sailors out on ships far at sea that if they saw the sky turn red early in the morning, there was soon be a storm. And if they saw the sky turn red in the evening before sunset, then there would not be a storm.”

“Oh.” Oliver handed the little periscope to Jean who took it from him then ordered him to turn around while she
unzipped his pack and tucked it safely inside.

“It’s yours now,” she told him. The boy smiled.
A big smile.

“But is it true?”

Ron shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s only an old poem my mom used to recite.” He shrugged again. “Maybe.”

“There is some truth to it,” Jean finally told them both. “It denotes the approaches of weather patterns that dictate one type or another. It’s not foolproof, of course, but sailing men did really take stock in it.”

“Well, we’re not sailors,” Ron informed them both. “Today we are scavengers and explorers. Things we need are running low and we have to go shopping. Also, I have a secret that I want to show both of you.”

“A secret?”
Jean’s face lit up like Oliver’s; in a most child-like way. Ron liked that. It was something he’d never seen out of her. He’d like to see that on her features more often. “What is it? What can it be?” She tucked her pleading hands under her chin and fluttered her eyelids at him.

Ron laughed. “No, I won’t tell you. But I’ll show you, if you’ll just follow me.” He strode off,
walking point, suddenly becoming more serious than before. This was life, these days. Life was serious. But he did turn back to speak. “We’ll look for supplies while we move, and soon enough, I’ll show you both what I mean.”

The
y moved off, watching the buildings for anything that might mean danger. And they squinted at every window and door and structure, thinking of what may lie inside that could do them the most good, and trying to judge each. But that was always a risky matter, and you could very well pass up a real treasure hiding in a ruin, while the preserved remains of a fine mansion might hold only garbage. It was all a roll of the dice.

“Watch out for that big pile of elephant shit.” Oliver pointed. There were more of them.
Huge piles that appeared to have been dropped from a great height. And technically so: the height of an elephant’s asshole.

“Hard to miss those,” Ron judged.

“Pee yew,” came the commentary from the beautiful Jean. And so things passed, as they trotted quickly like curious cats through the shattered remains of what had once been the biggest city between Washington, DC and Atlanta, Georgia.

They were lucky as they journeyed along. They found canned foods in a padlocked container made of thin and rusted metal. It had been Oliver who’d noticed the old lock on it, and realized that someone must have wanted to protect something inside of it.

“That’s good thinking,” Ron had told the boy. “And a good eye, too. I didn’t give that thing a second glance.” When he’d bent down to look at the roughly casket-sized container sitting in the middle of an old office that had gone to mucky ruin, the first thing he’d noticed was that the lock, too, was rusted. No one had been around to open it in ages, and so it would be nothing like stealing if they jimmied it open and took at least some of what was inside.

One blow of his faithful ball peen hammer was all it took, and he pulled the door open. Revealed
, were cans of corned beef, lima beans, crushed pineapple, minced tomatoes, and grapefruit juice. They each took what they could carry and left the rest of it inside, putting the lock back on the door and hanging it so that it appeared to still be locked.

“Maybe someone will need it like we do,” Jean said.

Afterwards, they pushed out of that room and back onto the street, looking here and there for things that might be useful to them. Ron thought of their home. He’d all but abandoned most of his other safe houses. The penthouse had become something more than a place to find refuge when he needed it, and had turned into a house with hearth and family intact. He didn’t want to lose that. From time to time, he kept looking back at Jean and Oliver, stealing glances at them, soaking in their faces, their movements, and their voices. They were his and he was theirs. There was no going back.

At the end of the street
, Ron looked at his wristwatch. “We’ll have to turn back soon. If we’re to get back home in time to cook supper and watch the sunset,” he added. “But first…” he smiled mischievously, “that surprise I was telling you about.”

“Oh, boy!”
Oliver yelled it and actually jumped into the air, despite his heavy load of canned goods.

Pointing at a wide alley across f
rom where they were standing, he led the way. Listening for danger and looking always for any movement that could hint at an attack, he pushed on before stopping before a big, pale rolling door. It looked to be something like a garage bay; a trio of them. Two of the bays were partially opened and oily water oozed out from beneath the broken metal doors.

“Pistols out,” Ron said. “I’ll need you guys to do the work because I have to lift the door.” He knelt and gripped a solid handle of the front of the sliding door, twisted it first to the left, then the right, and
finally in the middle position, the grip standing vertically to the concrete. With a sound of clanking chains and old rust, the door went up.

Jean and Oliver had their guns at half mast, ready to aim and start firing if the need came.

Ron released the door and it floated up to a stop.

Light flooded into the garage bay.

The gleaming body of a Hummer stood in that bay, its surfaced painted a bright and glaring yellow, the metal waxed to a high shine, only a thin skein of dust hiding the fine lines of the machine.

“Does it work?” Oliver yelled
, and it was all he could do not to go running into the bay. But he knew what could happen if you did stupid things like that. He’d seen too many people—some of whom he had loved—caught by surprise by things that could stand still in the shadows, in small spaces where you would not think they could fit, where they could wait, not having to so much as take a single breath.

“Last time I checked, it worked,” Ron said.

“What are you going to do with it?” Jean asked. She turned 180 degrees, surveying the area and saying with her body language what she did not have to say aloud.

“Yeah, I know,” Ron told them. “The streets are so full of
crap, I couldn’t drive it fifty yards without getting stuck or wrecking it.” Then he shrugged. “But you never know. Someone could come along and clear these streets. And if they ever do, I want to have a running vehicle that I can drive on those streets!”

And with that
, he walked into the bay, opened the doors of the Hummer, checking inside and all around to make sure no deader was hiding and waiting to pounce. His family followed him and sat down inside. Oliver in front and Jean in back, to watch over them both. The key was in the ignition. Ron reached for it and turned it, and gave it the gas. The engine roared immediately to life.

“Oh, my God,” Jean said.
“Music to my ears.” She was grinning from ear to ear. “I swear I hated these things before. They suck gas. They pollute the air. They hog the road.” Meeting Ron’s gaze in the rear-view mirror, he could see the love in her eyes and for the first time, he was not worried that she would move on and leave them alone.

Ron’s laughter pattered out into the afternoon light as he pushed the pedal to the metal and let the almost extinct machine roar in celebration of happy days to come.

**

After Ron had hidden the keys once again, and they had closed up the garage bay and made it look once more as if no one had touched the place in two years, they headed off. They had found enough for the day to have made the trip out into the world worth the effort. But it was troubling that it was growing more and more difficult with each passing week to find the basic things that were needed to survive. They could revert to hunting, he knew. The deer population had held steady despite the growing dog and coyote packs. But deer had been so plentiful before the end, so that was no surprise. But when everyone who was left had to fall back on killing game, Ron wondered how well the herds would sustain the hit. Especially if, as the Colonel had informed him, the city was home to far more people than he had ever suspected were living there.

Also, he didn’t like the idea of having to live mainly on meat. He knew that you could do that—many peoples had lived on an almost all-meat diet. But it made him think that he would be too much like the hated zombies to do something like survive on nothing but flesh. As they walked along, he pointed at the explosion of greenery that was sprouting out of every crevice in the asphalt and from every space you could imagine. Limbs and leaves were poking out of doors and windows, gutter
s and roofs.

“I wonder if we could eat any of that
stuff.” Ron stated.

Jean stopped in her tracks, and his first thought was that she’d spotted danger. His breath caught in his chest and his fingers were already reaching for one of his .45s
, and he checked to make sure Oliver was near enough to pull in close.

“That stuff is poke
berry plant, she said. You’ve heard of poke salad,” Jean said. And before he could say or do anything, she jogged over to a wild patch of green plants and began to strip the leaves from the stems and stuff them into the blue nylon bag hanging from her belt. In a moment, she had filled the bag with the leaves. “I’ll show you guys how to cook it when we get back.”

“Is it any good?” Oliver asked.

“Haven’t you guys ever had poke salad?”

Both of her boys shook their heads. Jean laughed as they pushed on. “I can see I’m going to have to educate you both. My dad taught me all of the things that grow here in the state that you can eat.” As they walked along, watching everything around them, ready for anything that might come, she went on and they listened to her listing some of the wild plants that one could eat.

As the few miles vanished beneath their boots, they soon found themselves standing at the base of the tower where they all now lived. Their conversation about wild plants was still on as Ron inserted the key into the lock and opened the door.

“You mean to tell me that you can eat kudzu?” he asked.

“Sure can,” Jean informed them. “Not just the leaves, but the stems and the roots, too. I’ll show you how to cook that stuff. If you guys want fresh veggies, I know everything that can grow around here that we can eat. But we’ll start with the poke salad tonight,” she finished.

As they walked into the stairwell, Oliver stopped them and pointed toward the sky.

“That sailor take warning stuff was no lie,” he said. “Look at the clouds.”

Ron and Jean looked north, and sure enough a vast bank of very dark clouds was sailing in from the northwest. The front was moving so quickly that they could see it tracking along, bringing darkness with it as it sped toward them.

Closing the door and sending the bolt home, Ron slammed the metal bars across the door to reinforce it. “We lucked out, I reckon,” he said. “If we’d been out there much longer, the storm would have caught us. We’d better hurry up to the roof.”

The staircase was alive then with the echoes of their footsteps as they climbed up, halting from time to time to catch
their breath. “Twelfth floor walk-up,” Jean said. “Charming bungalow roofside.”

Ron would have laughed, but he was too winded. All he could do was smile and push on. And soon they were at the top, unlocking that last door and peering out to make sure the coast was clear. Then the door was shut and locked behind them and the gravel was crunch-crunching under their feet as they headed to home and hearth, such as it was.

“Ron, look.” Jean had her hand on his shoulder and he drew up, turned, and looked where she was pointing.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he said. Ron didn’t like cursing in front of Oliver, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself.
His eyes were on one of the buildings across the street from his makeshift penthouse. It had been a nondescript office building in years gone by, and was two floors taller than the structure on which his blockhouse was planted. The place was as broken and open as any other in town, and he was never surprised occasionally to spot a few zombies in the windows or even having made their way to the top to wander aimlessly before going back into that gutted place.