The Remaining: Refugees (57 page)

Now, several months and a world-altering societal collapse later, after putting himself on the line, and ordering others to do the same, and losing so many of them, losing such a large part of himself, and fighting for every goddamned inch, for every meal, for every day of life, the idea of simply handing the reigns over to someone else seemed ridiculous.

Lee worked moisture into his mouth. “So Abe’s no longer calling the shots.”

“No.” Tomlin’s voice reflected disgust. “For the last month, he’s been handing down orders from the secretary of state,
who has completely hijacked Project Hometown. He’s
forcing the coordinators to ship the resources in their bunkers out to the interior states. After Mitchell was killed, they decided that everything east of the Appalachians and north of the gulf region was a total loss. And they’re close to making the same call with the west coast.”

Lee felt his heart rate rising. “So why send people in to kill me?”

Tomlin spoke with exasperation: “Because you’re just a waste of resources to them, Lee! Abe’s been keeping tabs on you. He knows you emptied out one of your bunkers, and you just started on another. But you’re out of contact for them, and you
’
r
e
serving a state that they’ve decided they don’t
want saved.” Tomlin
shook his head as though he couldn’t comprehend why Lee wasn’t following. “Don’t you get it? They want you gone so you’re not wasting what’s in the bunkers. If the infected ever die out along the east coast, they want to be able to come back in, and they want to be able to use your bunkers to resupply.”

“They can’t open the bunkers if I’m dead!”

Tomlin shook his head slowly, side to side. “Not true, Lee. Abe was issued a master code. He can hand it out to whoever he wants, and if they put it in their GPS instead of the individual code, they can access whatever bunker they want.” He paused for a long time, as though waiting for Lee to ask a question, but Lee only stood there, shell
-
shocked into silence
.

“Mitchell was one of the last northeastern states. The only ones that survived were Pennsylvania and New York, only because they were able to get onto the other side of the Appalachians. They took heavy losses when they did.”

“Chris and Lucas…” Lee said, picturing their faces.

“Yes. They had to abandon portions o
f their states. And the others—
Mark from Delaware, James from Maryland, Ian from New Jersey—we lost contact with all of them within the first month. So when Acting President Briggs began running things, and then Mitchell disappeared, Abe contacted me and ordered me to discontinue my operations in South Carolina, find you, kill you, and retreat across the Appalachians.”

In the strange midnight light of the room, Lee could see the tears in Tomlin’s eyes.
“I had people, Lee.
Women and children. Entire fucking families.” His face suddenly contorted. “And I left them behind. I left them with supplies running low and the weather getting cold. And I came up here, and I watched you, I watched you putting everything you had into this, I watched you taking the people and keeping them safe…doing what you were supposed to do.” He blinked to clear his eyes. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you.”

Overwhelmed, Lee slumped against the wall and buried his face into his hands, as though the barrier of them would block out any other unpleasant things trying to force their way into his mind. His dream
just prior to waking still
clung to h
im like strands of spider silk. T
he distinctness of the threat, the inevitability of demise. But also of the nearness of his father and the determination and the strength he drew from it.

Tomlin’s voice h
ijacked his train of thoughts. “It’s big
ger than my personal convictions
.”

Muffled by his palms, Lee said, “
How’s that?
”

“I told you about the master code, but there was something else. Apparently, our GPS devices can link to each other and be controlled remotely. With the proper codes, one can be slaved to another. When Abe briefed us before we left our bunkers,
he had us all link our devices.” Tomlin looked down at his hands. “When they made the decision to abandon the
east coast, he
remotely accessed my device and changed the security restrictions so that I couldn’t even access my bunkers if I wanted to.”

Lee removed his hands from his face.

Tomlin was staring at him with bald intensity.

“They couldn’t slave my device,” Lee said
, the voice of someone coming to a severe and unwelcome realization
. “Because I wasn’t there to link mine with everyone else. I’m the only one who can still freely access their bunkers.”

Tomlin nodded. “I need your help, Lee
.”

“Why should I
help you
?”

Tomlin’s voic
e rose. “Because it’s not right.
They can’t just decide who lives and dies, who gets rescued and who gets left behind! We were given a fucking job, and I’m not done doing mine, and you’re not done doing yours.” Tomlin pointed to the ground with his index finger. “We’re still here! North Carolina and South Carolina and Georgia are still here. We haven’t been overrun yet.
Why give up when we’ve got a plan to stop it
?”

Lee looked at him sharply. “You mean
I
have a plan to stop it.”

“We can help each other here, Lee.”

Lee looked at the other man for a long time. He drew his knees up and leaned his elbows on them. The question was whether he could trust Captain Tomlin or not. To that question, he had to ask himself,
has he done anything to hurt you?
And of course the answer would be ‘no’. Tomlin may have come here with the intention to harm him, under misinformation and a misguided sense of duty, but he hadn’t carried it out.

Then, of course, the next question was,
has he done anything to earn your trust?

Well, he didn’t kill me when he had the chance.

Lee cleared his throat. “What do you know about my plan?”

***

They spoke for a long time. Lee explained his plan in detail, because, in his mind, he didn’t have much of a choice. Sometimes when the stakes were high, you had to make a bet that you wouldn’t normally make. In this situation, Lee just had to bet that Tomlin was on their side. He also told Tomlin what Jacob had briefed them on when he’d first come to Camp Ryder, and the threat that they faced in the coming months.

As they talked, Lee found that they were slipping easily back into sync with each other, the familiar rhythms of an old friendship that fit you like a well-worn pair of boots. The coordinators were a family, and they all knew each other well. Lee had been closest to Abe Darabie, but he’d naturally founded friendships with Tomlin and Mitchell, simply because they were both within a couple hours of him.

Then, with everything that had happened the previous day, with the uniformed soldiers trying to kill him, and Tomlin suddenly surfacing, Lee had struggled to reconcile what he was witnessing with what he knew about these men. Particularly Tomlin. Now, in the dim glow of a lantern, standing shoulder-to-shoulder and addressing the map that hung on the wall of the office, Lee felt an immense relief, like hot wat
er
relaxing his muscles and releasing the tension in him.

Tomlin was still a friend.

Which left the question of Abe Darabie, who was clearly having his hand forced by the acting president…

Tomlin turned and looked a
t
Lee, very serious. “Lee, you need to decide right now whether or not you recognize the authority of Secretary of State
Briggs
as Acting President of the United States. It’s a tough question to resolve, but don’t wait until you’re backed into a corner to figure it out.”

He seemed to have read
Lee’s mind. “What have you decided?”

“I decided that I do
n’t
recognize the authority of the secretary of s
tate, because I have no proof that the presidential successors preceding him are indeed dead. All we have is his word, which is worth zilch to me right now. Until it’s proven otherwise, in m
y mind, the president is still commander-in-c
hief, and I will abide by the last orders that I know came from him—rescue and rebuild. Not leave the eastern seaboard for the infected.”

Lee smiled. “I second that.”

From inside the Camp Ryder building, Lee heard a door slam—what sounded like the front double doors. Then came the pounding of footsteps on metal risers.

“What time is it?” Lee asked, glancing over to the small w
indow in the office. The window
was clouded with condensation, but Lee could see
it was still dark outside
.

Tomlin cringed. “This is probably going to be about me.”

The door to the office burst open and there was a man there, one of the sentries, standing there with his rifle at the ready. He took a moment to process what he was seeing, and his body went rigid. He swung his rifle in the general direction of Tomlin, but didn’t aim.

“Uh, Captain?”

“Lower that rifle for me.
” Lee gestured with his hand.

The man lowered his rifle, but pointed with his free hand. “He escaped! He got away!”

Lee felt a smile on his lips. “Clearly.”

The sentry seemed to realize that Lee and Tomlin were in no life and death struggle, and that there was a little bit of amusement in their eyes as they looked at him. His face flushed and his eyes searched the ground. “I’m sorry, Captain…I fell asleep.”

Lee shrugged. “Well, luckily, this time no one got hurt. In the future, if you feel like you’re too exhausted to perform your duties, try and find someone to replace you. It’s almost freezing temperatures out there. If you’re dozing off when it’s that cold, you probably need to get more sleep.”

The sentry relaxed a bit. “I’m sorry.”

Lee waved him off, and the man disappeared through the door, his shoulders slumped slightly. Looking to Tomlin, Lee raised an eyebrow. “How
did
you get out of a locked shipping container?”

Tomlin smiled sheepishly. “One of the back corners is almost completely rusted through. A little prying with a metal pipe and I was able to squeeze out.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “He must really have been asleep not to hear that shit.”

“Guess we won’t be using that container for a holding cell anymore.” Lee turned his attention back to the map. “Listen…Brian…I’m sorry for all of that.”

Tomlin considered that for a long time. “We’re in desperate times, Lee. I’d’ve done the same damn thing if I were in your position. There’s no need to apologize for taking precautions.”

Lee’s lips tightened. “It’s good to have you.”

Tomlin looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to go back?”

“To South Carolina?”

“Yeah.”

“I dunno. Probably not to the same people. I left them without explanation. There one day, and gone the next.” Tomlin smiled grimly. “No, all I can do for them now is help you stem the tide. Maybe once all this is over, and I can explain why I left…” He trailed off.

“Once all of this is over?” Lee said with a chuckle.

“Yeah. Why? You don’t think it’s going to be over?”

“I’m sure it will one day. But it’s going to be a long damn time.”