The Remaining: Refugees (12 page)

Moving again, but slowly, he pulled a pair of trousers from his pack. They were identical to the ones he was wearing, but not quite as filthy. Before
dressing himself
, Lee looked at his dim reflection in the office window. His body showed the signs of long days of hard work, and not quite enough calories to fuel it. His torso looked etched, and he'd lost what little body fat he'd had, and along with it, a lot of his musculature.

When he
had relatively clean clothes on
, he leaned his rifle against the desk, opened the door to the office, and then went to the map on the wall. He crossed his arms over his chest and sat on the edge of the desk.

The map was large and displayed the entire state of North Carolina. With a black marker, Lee had split the state into three zones: East Zone, Central Zone, and West Zone. Camp Ryder was positioned in Central Zone. Inside this zone, Lee had used a red marker to shade in the urban areas of the larger cities to designate them as "non-viable", meaning that he could not safely clear them with his current resources. These "non-viable" areas included the Fayetteville and Fort Bragg area, and the Raleigh-Durham area.

For a long time Lee stared at the map. His eyes tracked across distances and terrain features, roads and rivers and lakes. He visualized the endless hordes,
vast and wretched and stretching from horizon to horizon
.

How do you defeat a superior force?
Lee rubbed his forehead.
You minimize their numbers. You force them to bottleneck.

He looked at the map and shook his head. The state of North Carolina was a very wide state, its northern border working in from the coast all the way to the Appalachians. It would be nearly impossible to force a bottleneck in such a huge area.

Use the terrain to your advantage.

Lee leaned in and looked closer.

Every elevation, every rise, every valley, every riverbed.

The wheels turning, feeling slow and rusted with
fatigue.

H
e planted the tip of his index finger on the North Carolina coast, directly on top of the words
Swan Bay
, and then traced a meandering course northwest, then west, all the way across the top of the map, and ended on a little town called Eden.

Lee tapped it. "Eden."

"Do what?"

Lee turned to find LaRouche entering through the door, Julia, Harper, and Jim close behind. Still halfway lost in thought, Lee repeated himself: "Eden. It's a little town northwest of here. Near the border."

"Sounds like a nice place," LaRouche sighed and sat in one of the folding chairs. "We should go there sometime."

Julia remained standing and leaned against the back wall. "
What’s going on, Cap
?"

Lee realized he was still holding his finger to the map. God, he was tired. His arm dropped down to his side. "I'm assuming you all heard?"

There was a round of grim nods, hesitant, as though if they simply
didn't admit to knowing it, they
c
ould make it u
ntrue. Just a bad dream that could
be dispelled by hiding
their
head
s
under the covers.

Lee
planted his hands on the desk and leaned on it. He looked at each of them in turn. "You guys are my team," he said with quiet resolve. "You know that I would never ask you to do something I didn't think we could accomplish."

LaRouche hung his head. "This is gonna be bad, isn't it?"

Harper
nodded solemnly
. "What do you need us to do?"

Lee took a deep breath. "LaRouche is right. It's gonna be bad."

CHAPTER 5:
DISSENTION

The
“committee”
lasted about five minutes into Jacob's methodical retelling of events before it began to fall apart.

As always, everyone met in the middle of The Square
, with the fire pit glowing with hot coals that mimicked the color of the setting sun.
At first, the
crowd
was attentive, interested, even excited to hear what this knowledgeable newcomer from Virginia had to tell them. But then, as he began to tell them of the deaths of the captains from Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, his words
became
like an electrical current, causing the hair on everyone's necks to stand up, and the still and somber crowd began to stir uncomfortably and to murmur back and forth. As he continued to speak, the murmur grew louder, until Jacob was sweating profusely again, and holding his stomach as he stammered out a few words at a time.

Lee stood quietly beside and slightly behind Bus, with his team flanking him
to his right
. He rested his weight casually on
his good
leg and his hands were folded and resting on the butt stock of his slung rifle. As the crowd became louder, Lee cast a sideways glance that was caught by Julia. She blew out a breath and shook her head very slightly, communicating what Lee already knew: this was not going to be easy.

The dam
broke when Jacob began speaking about the infected.

Jerry was the first to shout over the rest of the crowd, forcing his voice to be heard above everyone else. "How many are there? Surely you have some sort of estimates!"

Jacob glanced back at Bus, who gave him a reassuring nod. "Yes. We did actually run some numbers when we were initially determining the probabilities of
a widespread outbreak
. But you have to keep in mind those numbers are outdated at this point in time. You also have to factor in such things as infected attrition due to starvation and
a myriad of o
ther factors."

Jerry raised both eyebrows. "So? What are the numbers?"

Someone else shouted, "Would you just tell us a fucking number?"

Jacob wiped a bead of sw
eat from his eye and blinked a few
times. "Uh...millions? Several
.
M
illion."

There was a collective gasp of shock and disbelief
as everyone wrapped
their
heads around such a large number. Lee could see people doing the math, comparing "millions" to what they had seen already. In Smithfield,
some of them had
seen
a few
thousand
. They were visualizing what a thousand times as many infected looked like.

"The numbers var
y," Jacob said, defensively
. "I think we can safely say there are at least two to three million of them. It's possible that there are more."

"How many is more?" Another faceless voice.

Jacob coughed into his hand. Then: "Some estimated as high as ten."

"Ten million?"

"Are you fucking kidding?"

"We can't survive that!"

Bus held up a hand and spoke calmly. "Folks, that's why we're here. We're here to talk about our options. Right now, this is just the news. There's no reason to panic right now."

"Bullshit!" A man from Camp Ryder pointed at Bus. "That's what they said when this whole thing started!"

Jerry seized the moment to wrest control away from Bus. "There's a reason everyone is scared right now, Bus. I think this is a major problem." He turned to the crowd. "But we need to clear some things up, and we can't ask questions if we're all yelling at the same time."

Lee could almost feel Bus tensing. The anger rolled off of him like a burning fever.

This time it was Professor White who stepped forward. "Excuse me, Jerry."

Jerry yielded, graciously. The two men were as thick as thieves. Nauseating, like a pack of Washington politicians. Lee wondered absently how many of those politicians were now running wild and naked through the small towns and forests of Virginia, eating unspeakable things and growling to each other.

"I'm Professor White,” he introduced himself grandly.
“
Now, you've established that there are somewhere between two and ten million plague victims that are north of us," White said, with one hand in his pocket, and the other gesticulating mildly at his side, as though this were another lecture. "My first question is how big of a group have you actually seen with your own eyes?"

Jacob looked uncomfortable. "Maybe a thousand? I don't know. I was running."

Professor White smiled, but it was unpleasant. "So it's safe to say you haven't seen the...what does our friend Captain Harden call them?" White put up a pair of very sarcastic air quotations. "Hordes? At least not in
the numbers that you postulate, correct?
"

Someone growled, "Speak English you stuffy fuck."

A few people cleared their throats to disguise a chuckle. Lee restrained a smirk.

White looked at the crowd with
a sneer
, then turned back to Jacob. "So you haven't seen a million plague victims all in one spot? Not even close to that number, correct?"

"Yes, but..."

White held up a hand. "Isn't it possible that they are breaking off into smaller, and I would say more manageable and less threatening groups? Once again, I think our revered captain calls them 'packs'?"

Jacob spoke loudly, a little irritation showing in his voice. "First
,
I should remind you that I'm not one of your students, professor, and I've probably written more textbooks on the subject matter of my expertise than you have taught from in your entire career." Jacob swallowed
, glared, let the moment hang
. "Secondly, the
grouping
together of infected subjects, at least as it pertains to establishing a
pack mentality
, appears to be a primarily rural anomaly. The vast majority of infected subjects originating from
large
urban areas tend to stay cohesive in large crowds. There are packs up north, just as there are here, but since the majority of the infected are coming from those urban areas, the majority will be in hordes."

Somewhat miffed, White hesitated to speak again and was overtaken by Old Man Hughes.

The grizzled, white-haired man from Dunn spoke in a low, growling voice that spoke of a lifetime addiction to tobacco, only recently and unwillingly overcome. "These big groups, or herds, or hordes, or whatever...will one join up with another?"

Jacob shrugged. "I don't know, to be honest.
But
it's a definite possibility."

Hughes nodded once. "Any idea how long it'll take them to get down this way?"

Lee had not thought it possible, but Jacob's face grew even more drawn. "
By my best estimate, they’ll be crossing into North Carolina before the year is out
."

The crowd buzzed like a live wire.

"That's not enough time!"

"Where are we gonna go?"

Jerry stepped forward again. He fixed Lee with a weasel-eyed look and Lee knew exactly what was coming. He raised one hand for quiet and pointed the other right at Lee. "I want to know what Captain Harden has planned for this. Surely you have some...contingency in place?"

Professor White snorted loudly. "Or are you just going to wade in with your guns blazing and hope for the best? Kill everything in sight, right? It's simpler that way."