Ground Zero (16 page)

“Well, the next one is definitely different, but I’m not telling you anything more about it. Trade secrets,” Leigh said with a smirk, which had Cam rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, because the competition is so fierce out there now. Industrial espionage is at an all-time high, right?” Cam’s sarcastic comment had them both laughing, and the ridiculous statements only got worse from there. By the time they decided to go inside the cabin to get something to eat, they were almost wheezing with laughter. Cam forgot about her problems with her dad until they had finished eating, but then she brought it up again.

“It sounds mean, but the two of them looked silly together. Not just because she’s tall and he’s short, but because he’s not at all someone who would normally attract a woman like her. She seems so polished, and dad is really rough around the edges. And no, I really don’t want to hear comments about his potential skills in certain areas. It’s not something I want in my head.”

Kirk and Leigh laughed, but decided not to pursue that particular topic.

“Yeah, it doesn’t seem likely someone like that would fall in love with your dad. Some immature women might go for bad boys, or whatever, but that’s not really your dad’s thing either. He’s more the cute and cuddly type,” Leigh put in.

“Ugh. Okay, forget I brought it up, because there isn’t any part of this that I’m really comfortable talking about or imagining,” Cam said, wrinkling her nose. “I’d better get back. I told Chuck I’d come back later to deal with the trailer, and it’s going to get dark soon.”

“Alright. You know where we are if you need backup,” Kirk said, making her smile. She didn’t know what the hell kind of backup she would need for a confrontation with her dad, but it was nice to have friends who were there for her anyway.

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“I don’t wanna be dumped off in the middle of nowhere,” Mike whined, as Chuck blindfolded him and they led him to the truck. The trailer had been hooked up to Chuck’s four-by-four, which was the only one that used gasoline. There were two other four-by-fours, but they used diesel, and Gilles’ truck was just a rear-wheel drive. Eventually, when they ran out of gas, it looked to Cam as though they were going to have a lot of scrap metal they could use. When she made that comment to Gilles, though, he corrected her misconception.

“Nah. Most of the cars have a lot of plastic on them. Not that we can’t find a use for that, too, but there isn’t as much sheet metal there as you might think. There’s some fibreglass, too. Very useful for certain applications, though.”

“Like what?” she wondered.

“We can use them as roof tile, for one thing. They’re waterproof, don’t rust, and don’t rot. All the cabins we’ve been building are going to start leaking eventually, because we haven’t been using proper roofing materials,” Gilles replied.

“Does my mom know this?”

“Of course. But we all needed places to live right away. We’ve got some of that thick plastic sheeting over the roofs, top and bottom, but even though that will keep the water out it will also trap moisture so the wood rots faster. For now, we’ll fix what needs to be fixed until we can come up with another solution.”

“But how the hell did people do roofs before they had roofing tile? I mean, there must be a way where they weren’t getting rained on or whatever.”

“There are lots of different ways to put on a roof, like those adobe roofs that were used on Spanish houses. It would take us a long time to start making our own bricks and tiles, though. And the fact is, roofs start to rot and leak eventually, and need to be replaced. Even the ones using regular roofing tiles. Roofing companies could give a warranty of a certain length, but it still meant replacing the roof in twenty years or so. Don’t worry. We’re all doing okay with what we’ve got for now,” he finished, patting her shoulder.

She didn’t take offense at the gesture, because it wasn’t meant patronizingly. He was just offering reassurance. Granted, she wasn’t the touchy-feely kind, but it didn’t bother her. At least nobody on the farm tried to hug her.

“You and Chuck going to be alright with this guy?” she asked, making Gilles laugh.

“I think we can handle this putz. We are cops, you know. It’s kind of what we do,” he reminded her. She grinned sheepishly.

“I think I’m starting to do the same thing my mother does. Jesus. She worries about every damn thing, and now I’m doing the same.”

“It’s called responsibility. Wait until you have kids. I don’t have any of my own, but I watched my friends go through it. I mean, look at Chuck. Not only does he have to worry about his own safety when someone like this Mike comes along, but he’s got a wife and three kids he wants to keep safe, and the fact is you can’t protect someone twenty-four-seven. It’s impossible. We just do the best we can.

“
You’re
worrying, because you know everyone’s safety and wellbeing has become your responsibility, and if you fuck up then other people suffer for it. It’s actually a good thing that you’re aware of it. Not everyone is able to understand that, and the fact is you’re holding up really well for what you’re having to deal with. I gotta say, I’m impressed. Then again, Mac wouldn’t have raised an idiot. A weirdo, maybe, but not an idiot,” he said with a smile.

“Look who’s talking … jerk,” she said with a grin, and a quick punch to the shoulder. She was starting to see why her mother was friends with Gilles, who hadn’t impressed her initially. The first time she had met him was after killing Gerry, and he’d been really nice to her then, but when he brought his family to the farm, she began to think he was an arrogant know-it-all.

He liked to mock women, too, which pissed Cam off at first. Her mother just gave as good as she got, however, which Gilles took no offense at. Maybe he really was just teasing, even though that hadn’t been Cam’s experience with men who made chauvinistic jokes. They quite often hid true misogyny behind the mockery. In the long run, Cam had decided she just had to trust her mother’s judgment. There was no way her mother would be friends with a guy who hated or disrespected women.

She didn’t ask Gilles any questions about where they were taking Mike, because she didn’t want Mike to overhear and figure out how to get back to the farm. Instead she just stood there and waved them off when they left, accompanied by the music of Mike swearing at her through the open window in the back seat. He wasn’t taking his situation very well at all, she noted with a smile.

A wave of relief went through her. They would continue to keep watch, and make sure the farm was safe, but no longer having a visible threat would be a major morale booster. No one had enjoyed seeing someone under guard, and it wasn’t as though they had a jail cell set up for that sort of thing. Chuck and Kayla had made sure their kids were kept from seeing it, and Jake was too small to understand anyway, but it had still been uncomfortable for everyone else.

Her dad wasn’t back, so there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about that. The only other problem she might encounter now, was Mitch, but he seemed to be doing okay. He couldn’t live in a tent for the rest of his life, however, so she went to the house to grab a copy of the building plans they’d used for the one-room cabins, and then tracked him down. When she found him he was leaning against one of the goat pens, watching them and smiling.

“Hey Mitch,” she said, causing his smile to disappear.

“Cam,” he acknowledged. His tone had been emotionless. He was still being careful, which was for the best. Cameron didn’t want to be friends with him. She just wanted him to do his part and not fuck things up for everyone else.

“We got some more supplies from the hardware store, so you can start building your own cabin if you want. Ask a couple people to help you with some of the awkward or heavier stuff. Everyone here is willing to help everyone else, just so you know. They’re not afraid of a little bit of work, and nobody wants to see anyone suffer or do without. You’re learning the ropes just fine according to Gilles, and there really isn’t that much work with so many to do it. Believe it or not, you could have your own cabin in a couple of days, if you ask enough people to help.

“We haven’t really been rushing with Lisa’s place, because she’s already got the room in the house. We also needed to get more wood and stuff. We’ve got the trees for the outer walls, but they’re not so great for the inside part unless they’re planed and dried. At least according to my mom. She’s always complaining that it would be so much better if we had a wood kiln, but I honestly don’t know what it’s all for.

“Anyway, here you go,” she said, and handed him the papers. “Make adjustments if you need to.” She was already walking away when he spoke.

“It’ll be nice to not have to sleep in a tent, so thanks.” She didn’t turn around, but just lifted her hand in a wave to acknowledge what he said. God, was she ever looking forward to having her mother back on the farm. This responsibility shit sucked.

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Cam was getting very worried. Gilles and Chuck still weren’t back, and a number of hours had passed. Since her mother didn’t know anything about the reasons for them leaving, Cam wouldn’t have been able to share her concerns with her, even if she had been on the radio to share them with. It was Ian who had answered when she called to check in, which freaked her out more than a little bit.

“What do you mean she’s not there? Where the hell would she go? Over.”

“I mean she’s taking a couple of kids home, and it might be two days before she gets back to the boat. Over.”

She signed off shortly after, having little to nothing to say to Ian. She didn’t know him at all. Only once had she answered the phone when he’d called, and she’d immediately handed the phone to her mom. She wasn’t even sure it was his voice she was hearing, so for all she knew there were pirates on the Great Lakes that were killing people and stealing their boats.

As if she didn’t have enough things to worry about, now she was stuck waiting a couple of days to find out whether or not the voice on the radio was really Ian’s, and if her mother was okay. Of course, the guy on the radio had known who she was, so most likely it was Ian she had talked to, but she worried all the same. She needed a vacation from all this stress, and the thought made her laugh.

Cam had no idea if anyone would ever take a typical vacation again. The world was full of dangers that hadn’t been as blatant before, even though they might have already been there. It was just that now there were no controls in place. No authority figures were there to step in and put their lives on the line to protect the people. It was a problem that was too big for her to solve, so she let that one go. Instead she thought about what it would be like to be on a boat, having no one to bug her, and no responsibilities to deal with.

Boats had never really been her thing, so Cameron did something even better. She went to her room and played with the ferrets for a few hours. She still had the radio on her, in case someone needed to reach her, which sort of dented the illusion she was in her own private world, but it was better than nothing.

Squeaker licked her face as she snuggled him. He was extremely gentle until he got to her eyebrows, where he attempted to gnaw at them. She had to pull him away before his tiny front teeth really started to dig in.

“Those belong on my face, you know,” she told him. Not that it helped. So she flipped him on his back on her bed and refused to let him wiggle away for a few seconds. By the time she let him up he was already dooking and squeaking at her. In seconds he was bouncing across the bed, backwards of course, until his butt dropped off the edge and he was scooting onto the floor. Then he skittered backward until he was behind her dresser, expecting her to give chase and chattering away.

“You sound like a monkey sometimes. You know that?” At the sound of her voice he came leaping back out, unintentionally pouncing on Pickle, though it hardly mattered. Except to Pickle, of course, who’d been curled into his usual doughnut shape, sleeping. He grunted at the interruption of his nap, but joined in the fray by yipping at Squeaker and wrestling to regain his spot on their bed.

Cameron sat back and watched them play, which seemed to push everything else from her mind.
Ah,
ferrapy
, she thought. She was damn near asleep when her radio finally squawked.

“Cam? You there?”

“What’s up, Billy?”

“They’re back. Something must have happened, because they’re both a mess and mad as hell.”

“Okay. Let’s find out what happened. I’ll be down in a minute.”

15 ~ Bittersweet Returns

They had trudged through the quiet streets of Detroit for half the night. There were bodies everywhere, and despite the fact that Mac didn’t think it was something a couple of teenage boys should see, there was no way of avoiding it if they were going to get them home. The map she had taken from a convenience store didn’t cover the outlying areas, and there was no way she was adding several days of walking to their trip.

While they had considered the bicycles Ian had suggested multiple times, they never found any within the city that weren’t heavily chained or locked up somehow. What few belongings people had owned in the economically decimated city, they had done their best to protect. Since they didn’t have any bolt-cutters, and weren’t about to go wandering the streets to look for a hardware store, they just shrugged and kept walking.

Before even leaving the dinghy, Mac had cautioned both boys not to talk. If there was something really important, they could whisper it, but she reminded them what it had been like in Cleveland when people were rioting and looting.

“People are going to be even more desperate now, if there are any left alive. They will stop at nothing to take everything we have. We ran into cannibals in our home town, and that’s even more likely in a city like Detroit,” she had told them.

It didn’t look like the warning had been necessary, however. Both Vigo and Denny looked sick and terrified. Despite their natural caramel complexion, both were pale. They took their steps carefully. It shouldn’t have surprised her. They had survived Cleveland somehow, while people were killing one another over scraps of food. Most likely they had chosen to stay out of the way, hiding quietly until the threat passed. It was very possible they had resorted to eating things they couldn’t bear to think about, and she would never ask them.

They took Ford Road most of the way, but Vigo said he’d recognize things a bit better if they went down to Marquette Street, so they moved south the few blocks to Marquette. Then they continued west, constantly passing mostly-skeletal human remains, though some were more fresh. Some bodies appeared to have shattered, making Mac wonder if they had fallen out of buildings, been thrown, or maybe jumped of their own free will. Others were lying there, bones intact but picked clean. Either rotted away, or eaten by other animals, human or otherwise.

She seriously wished she had a far less graphic imagination at the moment. It had been a useful tool when designing and implementing her plans for the farm, but now she wanted so much to shut off the little movies that played in her head, showing her everything these people had been through. It must have been the same in Cleveland, though Ian hadn’t mentioned it, and neither had Vigo and Denny.

Before winter the stench would have been horrible, and there would have been no way she could have walked through it. The smell of anything rotting made her gag, and the images in her head would have added to it. Only a mild hint of decay remained, usually, and Mac still breathed through her mouth, even though she knew whatever particles remained in the air were going right down her throat. She was well aware of the mechanism of smell, and that actual pieces of what people smelled entered the olfactory senses. The knowledge was no longer an interesting piece of trivia she could bring out to disgust her friends, and it made the journey with the two teenagers almost unbearable. She was, in a small way, ingesting dead people.

When Neil tried to touch her she shook her head, and he seemed to understand that she couldn’t take it. She didn’t want to associate any romantic or comforting gestures with this horrific scene, and the tiniest hint of softness or sympathy would have her shattering like china dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Vigo and Denny were stoic, despite their obvious fear. They trudged on, and Mac knew it was only hope that kept them moving. If they came to the end of their journey, and Vigo’s parents were gone, she had no idea what it would do to them. Maybe the only thing that had kept them going all those months was the hope that they still had a home and family to go to. Mac didn’t know what she would do if she were in their place. They had each other, at least, and that would have to be enough if there was no one else.

It took them seven hours to reach the small, pale green house with the wood siding just past Wayne Road. They hadn’t stopped to eat, because they had no appetite, but none of them were accustomed to walking such long distances either, so they hadn’t moved as fast as they might have hoped. Mac, knowing she would have to make the exact same trip back, through the countless dead, all she wanted was to sit down and cry when they arrived. They had a responsibility to protect Vigo and Denny, however, and they needed to be sure of the situation inside the house before they let them go rushing in.

“Vigo? Denny? Are you listening to me?” She waited until they both nodded in answer to her whispered question before continuing. “We’re going to make sure nobody bad is in your house, okay? Someone could have just stolen it, or taken it over because your family had food, even though it’s back behind these trees. Hopefully no one saw it, but we have to check. We’ll be right back. You stay hidden. What are your parents’ names Vigo? I want to be able to call out to them if they’re there.”

“Sharon and Lloyd Morris. My dad’s black, but my mom’s half-and-half, and she kin-uh looks white. You want to see a picture of them?”

“That’s a really good idea, yeah,” she said, and waited until he pulled the wallet out of his back pocket. He flipped it open to show her the worn image of a handsome, but tired-looking couple. She didn’t doubt that he had taken that picture out a lot over the last few months, just to remind himself what they looked like and take comfort in a loving face. She nearly broke down in tears, and had to push the thought aside.

“Thanks,” she said gruffly, and waited until Neil had also taken a good look. He gave her shoulder a quick, almost-stinging squeeze, which was exactly what she needed. Rough comfort worked for her.

They walked quietly through the trees, and across the dark yard. Without the half-moon shining its light on them, they wouldn’t have seen anything in the deep night. Even if the streetlights had still worked, their light would not have reach this small home. Mac stepped onto the very right edge of the bottom step, attempting to keep it from creaking, but the effort was in vain. The wood was so old it could barely hold its nails. The second and third steps were only slightly better, though the porch itself was sturdy.

She nodded to the sidelight, which was broken beside the knob. In all likelihood someone had broken into the house, and Mac wasn’t very hopeful about what they would find. Still, they had to be sure.

Neil tried the knob, which turned out to be locked. It was the first sign that someone might actually be in the house, though alive or dead they couldn’t know. He reached through the hole in the glass, slowly curving his wrist to avoid cutting himself, and unlocked the door. They both stepped through quietly, and pushed the door shut behind them.

“Should we call out for them, you think? If they’re still alive, we don’t want to end up shooting each other because one of us gets startled,” Neil whispered directly into her ear, his breath just barely moving the hair she had yet to trim.

“I’ll do it, and you conceal yourself,” she whispered back. He nodded, understanding what she had in mind. A female voice would be less threatening, so anyone who might be in the house would be less alarmed and more likely to show themselves, friend or foe. If Neil hung back, he could keep his gun aimed, and reduce their chances of getting killed.

“Sharon? Lloyd?” She called their names softly. She didn’t want to alert anyone outside, though it didn’t seem as though anyone was alive out there anyway. A sudden gasp echoed through the house.

“Sharon or Lloyd Morris, are you in the house? Please, I’m not here to hurt you. I need to know if you’re here. I’m armed, and I don’t want to shoot anyone accidentally. I’m here about your son and your nephew,” she called, hoping to diffuse any fear.

“That’s not possible! They’re dead. They’re all dead. You get outta my house. Ya got to the counta three, before I come down there to shoot ya,” the woman shouted.

“I’m telling you, your son and your nephew are here with me. We found them in Cleveland and brought them back.” Dead silence met her statement at first, but then there was a heart-wrenching sob. Apparently mentioning Cleveland had made an impact.

“Vigo? You got my Vigo? And Denny, too?”

“Yes, ma’am. I made them wait outside, because I didn’t know who would be in the house. If you give me about ten seconds, I can get them in here. Okay?”

“Oh my God. Please! Yes. Bring them inside!”

Mac slipped out the front door and called softly for Vigo and Denny. They sprinted across the yard toward her.

“Your mother is inside. At least I think it’s your mother. She hasn’t shown her face, but she knew your names before I said them. She only started to believe me because I said I found you in Cleveland. We still need to be careful, until you at least hear her voice and you’re sure it’s your mother, okay? Or we see her face. One of the two. I don’t want to take any chances.”

The moment Vigo called out for his mother, though, the woman came clattering down the stairs.

“Vigo, izzat you baby?” A second later she was nearly smothering him, her arms wrapped tightly around her son. Mac holstered her Glock.

“Denny? Where you at?” Denny shuffled over, as though he’d been worried about his welcome at first, but now that she had called for him he was reassured that she wanted him there. He was pulled into her embrace, despite the fact that she refused to release Vigo, and the three of them were an indistinguishable mass in the shadows. Mac heard the sobs as they poured from the woman, and she had to try to block the sound from her heart. Otherwise she’d be bawling until she dissolved into her own puddle of tears.

It was a good fifteen minutes before Vigo’s mother remembered that anyone else was in the house.

“There was a lady here wit’yu. I need to thank her for my babies, but then you can tell me everything. Where you at, miss?”

“I’m right here. My name is Mac, or rather Mackenzie. My husband, Neil, is also here with me. We took a boat down to Cleveland to help a friend of mine, and your boys found us at a park there. Detroit was on our way back, so we were just going to bring them to the city, but it didn’t feel right letting them walk all that way by themselves,” Mac said, trying to keep the explanation short. She was exhausted, and the emotional scene had worn her out even further. She could have fallen asleep where she was standing.

Neil moved over to stand beside her, and he put his arm around her. Since he had managed to sleep while she’d been at the helm, he was nowhere near as sleepy as she was, though the long walk had likely tired him out, too.

“Hello, Mrs. Morris,” he said politely.

“Please, call me Sharon. Hang on a minute. I got a candle here to light, so we can see a bit. I want to see my boys anyway.” Mac heard the rasping flick of a butane lighter, and a sudden flame flared in front of her eyes, blinding her. Then the softer flame of a candle stub let them all look at one another.

Sharon had tear tracks down her face, and so did both Vigo and Denny. They were too happy to even try to hide them or wipe them away, until Vigo asked the question Mac had been dreading.

“Mom, where’s dad?”

“He’s gone, son,” she said, and tears of a different sort gathered in her eyes.

“What do you mean gone? Where did he go?” Mac could see that he already knew he hadn’t gone anywhere in particular. He was just buying time for himself, wanting to believe there was nothing wrong with his dad.

“He was … he was … well, they hurt him real bad when he tried to stop them from stealing our food, and when they saw what they had done, they ran for it, but it was too late for him. I tried to help him, best I could, but I couldn’t stop the bleeding,” she said softly, sounding almost beyond the pain. Of course, it had probably been months, and living on her own with no hope that anyone she loved was still alive, she probably
had
gone beyond the pain. It might be a while before she even believed her son and nephew were truly alive and with her again, and she would probably reach out to touch them almost constantly, or hold them, just to reassure herself she wasn’t crazy and that they were really there.

“Sharon, we can’t stay here much longer. We need to get back to the boat, but I don’t want to leave you here if you don’t have a way to survive. Do you have food to live on? What about water?” Sharon looked up at her as she spoke.

“Oh, yes. We’re fine that way. I still have quite a few toms and hens, and more than enough jakes and jennies to breed once they’re older. The neighbours took what vegetables I had left in the garden, but seeing the way the wind blew I had taken out anything that was edible. I walked to the garden centre to get some organic seeds for this year, so I could still get seeds from them when I picked them, and just keep on going, even though a part of me didn’t want to. I guess there was a reason I hung on,” she said quietly, looking lovingly at the two teenagers.

“What about water then? I don’t think city water would be safe, even if it’s gravity-fed and still running. The sewage treatment plants wouldn’t be working anymore,” Neil added.