Survivor (The Ashes Book 36) Read online

  “I don’t know. Heinz 57. He sort of adopted me a couple of weeks ago. I’ll show you.”

  Beverly and Jim went out of the woods and around the house to the HumVee and opened the driver’s-side door. Reb was looking up at them, his eyes glistening.

  “Good dog, “Jim said, mussing the hair on the top of his head. “Good dog.”

  Jim turned to Bev.

  “One bark today could have meant disaster. I wonder what he’s got in him.”

  “Malumute, German shepherd, and some wolf.” She smiled. “I used to work in a vet’s office part-time. I was studying to be vet at Cornell Veterinary College but I had to drop out. Whatever, he’s a cutie pie.”

  “The war?”

  “No. Money. But I was saving to go back to school.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “No coffee?”

  “Later,” Jim said.

  Bev got in and sat on the passenger side and Jim climbed up onto the driver’s side. Before settling in behind the wheel he put the Thompson back under the seat, but kept the Glock and AK-47 out. Then he fired up the HumVee. They pulled out onto the road and soon were in a nonpopulated area, miles of flanking forest.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Not a problem,” Jim said.

  He could feel Bev’s look linger on him.

  THREE

  Ten miles from the spot where Jim almost had the confrontation with the Rejects, he and Bev stopped for coffee, turning off on a road that the HumVee, again, was barely able, because of its width, to fit through. Jim had the coffee already made. Last time he had stopped when alone he made two thermoses full.

  They stepped outside. Jim took the thermoses from the bed of the vehicle.

  “I hope you like it black,” he said. “No latte available.”

  “I do. Black and strong. I don’t even use sugar.”

  Jim poured the coffee, which was hot enough so it steamed, into two foam cups.

  They both sipped it.

  “Delicious,” Bev said.

  “You made fun of me wanting coffee,” Jim said, “but maybe you don’t know the power of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I remember about ten years ago when meat prices really started to go up, and women were up in arms. So they stopped buying meat and brought the vendors to their knees. The prices went back down.”

  Bev nodded.

  “And then the stores did the same thing with coffee.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Nothing! They paid the price. Coffee is as addictive as heroin.”

  “Well, I love coffee too. It just seemed you weren’t worried enough at the moment.”

  “I’m worried,” Jim said. “But I try not to let it get the better of me.”

  “I think you succeed,” Bev said. “While you waited for them it seemed to me that you were so calm that I expected to see flies swirling around your head.”

  “I was calm,” Jim said. “It’s later that I shake.” And he stuck out his free hand and shook it in mock fear.

  Beverly smiled.

  “So, which way are we going?”

  “Like I said, I was heading east, but I was thinking of going north. I want to stay off main roads. I figure when I get far enough north in Wyoming I’ll head east. Maybe. These Rejects can’t be everywhere.”

  She paused, and coughed.

  “Do you have any water?”

  “Help yourself. There’s a whole case of bottled water behind the passenger seat.”

  Beverly took a bottle, opened it, and drained it empty.

  “You were thirsty.”

  “Yeah, that’s something even coffee can’t solve.”

  They finished their coffee, then got back in the vehicle, as did Reb.

  Back in his seat, Jim knew her eyes were on him again. He smiled.

  “Thinking you might have made a mistake coming with me?”

  “No. You have a good face, nice eyes, and you like dogs. You can’t be all bad. Plus, I’d like to live.”

  They laughed.

  “Don’t forget I’m a fellow coffee lover too.”

  Jim paused.

  “So, what do you think about continuing north?”

  “Good. I think you’ll have a better chance of going without meeting more Rejects than if you continue east. I don’t know how far up the Rejects are. But I haven’t seen any Believers in this area.”

  “I guess for the time being they own it.”

  Bev shook her head in wonderment.

  “They’ve had many, many battles with the Rejects. And towns and positions are regularly fought for and won and lost. The Believers can retake a town and hold it for several days, then the Rejects will counterattack and drive them out—or vice versa.”

  “Who’s winning overall?”

  “I don’t know. No one.”

  Jim shook his head in disbelief. “I guess I’m not really surprised about the Rejects and Believers.”

  “My dad told me this has been building for a long time,” Bev said. “He said he remembered back before the Great War certain factions in America were trying to remove religion from all aspects of American life. And when the plague came and knocked everything askew, that was the signal for bad people to do their thing.”

  “I remember my grandpa saying something about that too.”

  “Did you come from a religious family, Jim?”

  “Well . . . when I was a little boy we said grace before our meals and sometimes on Sundays we would go to Mass. That’s about it.”

  “Catholic, huh? Do you go to Mass now?”

  “Not in years.”

  “But you believe in God?”

  “Oh, sure. What’s not to believe?”

  “That’s a relief. I thought there for a moment you might be a Reject in disguise.”

  Jim smiled. Then: “Bev, how much do you know about what is happening outside this area?”

  “May I ask you a question before I answer that?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t seem to know much about what is going on, so where have you been?”

  “I lived in a very remote area of Idaho, way up in the northwest. All the network newscasts had gone off the air before this stuff started, and the only news I could get was on radio, which was intermittent. And that wasn’t much.”

  “And your family?”

  “All passed on. What I know about this plague thing and what it’s done to the world I learned from speaking to Ben Raines.”

  Bev’s eyes widened. “General Ben Raines?”

  “Yes. I was with him for the last few days of his life—when he died. I buried him.”

  Abruptly, a darkness swept across Bev’s face. Jim picked up on it.

  “That’s it then,” Bev said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ben Raines was the one man who might have been able to build something out of this godawful mess. With him gone, it’s . . .” She paused, shrugged her shoulders. “Over.”

  “You’re giving up, just like that?”

  Bev paused before she spoke. Then she held up her hand and waved it, as if waving away what she had just said.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think so. I was just feeling sort of melancholy for a moment.”

  “I’ve felt that way several times myself recently. That, and angry at God.”

  “I’ve experienced that too.”

  “Things have a way of righting themselves though. At least I hope so. But you do need people like Ben Raines. I also know that history’s quirky, and individuals matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just a little change here or there can shape the course of humanity. I remember reading a book that spoke about how important individuals were in history. Just a little change in an event might have eliminated one person and made all the difference.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, for example,” Jim said, “there was this British diplomat wh
o was in New York City in 1931 and was crossing a street and got hit by a car. He survived. Good thing.”

  “Why?”

  “His name was Winston Churchill.”

  “Interesting.”

  “And during World II a guy seated next to Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost but not quite assassinated, but Roosevelt survived. Lenin got typhoid but didn’t die, and Hitler was in a war in 1923 in Germany and unfortunately for humanity he didn’t get killed. Just think about where the world night have been without Hitler having come on the scene. No one was that nuts or zealous.”

  “I agree.”

  “Yeah, that’s one of the pleasures of life in northwest Idaho.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No TV. You’re forced to read—and think. Nothing like a cup of coffee and a book.”

  Bev laughed.

  “Tell you what let’s do, Bev. Let’s find us a house that has heat and take a shower or bath. I could sure use one.”

  Her face brightened. “Yeah! That sounds great to me. But I don’t have any clean clothes.”

  “So when we stop at houses we’ll look for some. We’re sure to find something that will fit you. First, we have to find some houses.”

  They got back in the HumVee and on the road. Over the next twenty miles or so, they found three houses, none directly on the road—which of course Jim liked—and all reachable by roads that were just wide enough to accommodate the HumVee.

  All of the homes had been ransacked and pillaged. Only one of them was powered by propane, and there was no chance of taking a bath there: all the propane had been depleted. But Bev found some clean clothes around her size and took them. They also found some blankets and loaded these into the HumVee, as well as a winter coat for Bev, which they took, since they would be traveling into the mountains, and Jim knew that it could be eighty-five degrees during the day, as it was now, and drop down to thirty-five or forty at night.

  At another of the homes they found a new pair of lace-up boots that fit her and a half dozen pairs of socks.

  “You should put those boots on,” Jim said.

  “Why?”

  “If we stay off the main roads and camp out you never know what’s in the ground cover.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wyoming has its share of rattlesnakes. Sometimes they give a warning by rattling, but sometimes they’re just in the bushes or under a rock. You got to be careful.”

  Jim had gotten Bev’s attention.

  “What will we do if one of us gets bitten?”

  “Die,” Jim said with a straight face, then smiled. Bev laughed. “Actually, “Jim said, “the prairie rattlers aren’t that dangerous. You won’t die from their bites but you can get sick. The one that’s really dangerous is the smaller midget rattlesnake. They’re found just about where we are within the lower Green River valley. They’re ten to thirty times more poisonous than the prairie variety. Fortunately, they’re very timid and pose little or no threat to us.”

  “Okay,” Bev said, smiling, “no problem wearing the boots.”

  In one of the houses Jim also found a pistol that the Rejects had overlooked, a Soviet TT-33 automatic pistol, which Ray had once shown to Jim in a book and said it was very widely used by guerillas. He also found several hundred rounds of 7.62-by-39mm cartridges for it. It was a simple, well-made gun and seemed ideal for Bev.

  “My brother Ray told me that this gun was one of the most commonly made guns of all time. It used to be used by the Soviet army front-line forces, but no more. But reserves and militia still use it.”

  Jim paused.

  “I think it’s a good weapon for you. You shouldn’t be without a weapon, even though you know empty-hand combat.”

  “You’re right,” Bev said.

  Jim showed her how to use the gun, then loaded it and put the safety on and handed it to her. It looked large in her small hand.

  “Lord,” she said, “I’m a long way from Sunday services and listening to my father give a homily.”

  “You ever shoot a gun?”

  “No.”

  “All you have to do is point it at the person like you’re pointing your finger and squeeze the trigger.”

  “How come you know so much about guns?”

  “I’m from Idaho, remember?”

  “Yes, but this looks like a military weapon.”

  “I learned about guns from my brother Ray, who was in the Great War.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He got killed.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you. We were very proud of him,” Jim said, lost for a moment in the memory. “Just an ordinary mountain man, like me, like so many other guys who were very ordinary, but when war came he changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He just . . . became great. A warrior. I remember how the Blackfeet Indians in the area used to admire him. To us, that was great praise.”

  “Were you ever in any war?”

  “No. I was too young. And I’m glad.”

  Bev was going to ask him why. But the appearance of two homes in the wood distracted her. They investigated. Both were devoid of people, but in one of them they found the skeletal remains of a couple and a small child, all huddled together on the master bed upstairs. It was a very, very sad sight. They left that home immediately after the discovery.

  They continued on, and within a couple of miles they came to a tiny town with a few stores that looked like a holdover from the 1800s, the Wild West days. Jim stopped and parked the HumVee behind the buildings, as they did when they investigated homes. Then, Jim toting the AK-47 and Bev the TT-33, safety off, they entered the stores, all of which were open. There was no one inside. No one alive. Just skeletal remains.

  They had some luck. At a ladies’ fine apparel store she found some panties in their original packages on a shelf, and at a drugstore both she and Jim were able to load up with toiletry articles.

  The other store they entered was a tiny gift shop. Bev picked up a small Bible and put it in her knapsack. She was conscious of Jim watching her and smiled.

  “I noticed you didn’t have a Bible in your gear.”

  He returned the smile.

  “We do now. Good thinking. Get another one for me, will you?”

  She looked surprised.

  “You read the Bible, Jim?”

  “Occasionally. I read anything that contains wisdom. You ready to go?”

  “I’m ready.”

  They pulled out from behind the stores and were soon on the main road. There was no sign of life.

  “It’s hard to believe there’s no one in the town,” Bev said.

  “They either all died, or fled, or were off to look for others who had escaped,” Jim said.

  “Left?” Bev said. “To go where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Or maybe,” Bev said, “they were rounded up by the Rejects and shot.”

  Jim nodded. Mass executions wouldn’t surprise him at all.

  “We should find a junction heading north about twenty miles from here,” he said.

  “Good.”

  They would both be glad to get away from the Zone.

  FOUR

  “Look at that home over there,” Bev said, pointing to a house set back maybe thirty yards from the road. Jim had stopped the HumVee because the house was, in fact, beautiful—and unusual. They had traveled a long way down the road, and the houses, when they appeared, were either small ranches or Colonials or trailers, very much unlike this one.

  The house looked as if it had come out of the pages of an architectural magazine whose intent was to show beautiful homes, as if it had sort of arisen out of the earth. It was set on a little hill, and the walls were made with individual stones that had obviously been created by nature rather than man. The roof was a dull orange concrete tile and the windows and door were made of dark wood that looked like it had been coated with some sort of dark, clear material. The ho
use was fringed with all kinds of greenery and flowers at one end of a large pond that reflected it all perfectly. There was no fence, but the entire property was surrounded by evergreen bushes. It was quite obvious that the people who lived in the house loved nature.

  “A beauty,” Jim said.

  ‘You want to check it out?” Bev asked.

  Jim did not answer immediately. He had noticed something else odd about the house. Almost all of the other places they had seen or entered showed some exterior sign that they had been pillaged, such as a broken window or stuff strewn in the yard. And in one case, the siding and roofing had been ripped off. From the outside, at least, this one looked like it was in perfect condition, as if it were oblivious of the chaos in the world swirling around it.

  It occurred to him that, as beautiful as it was, perhaps someone was living in it. Perhaps some Rejects, and that would mean trouble with a capital T.

  He finally nodded, then reached down and picked up the AK-47. Bev noticed him, but seemed oblivious of its implication.

  “Good,” Bev said. “Maybe they have propane and everything is still working. Then I can take a shower and wash my hair. I’m getting a little gamy.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Jim said with a smile, but keeping his eyes trained on the house. “Got your gun off safety?” he asked.

  “You think this is dangerous?”

  “I doubt it, but like my grandmother used to say, ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Jim scanned to his left. There was a natural opening in the forest, as if vehicles had parked there regularly. Jim liked it. He could go deep enough into the woods so that the HumVee would be concealed.

  “We’ll park over here,” he said.

  He moved the HumVee into the gap, then stopped it but did not get out. Bev looked at him.

  “Aren’t we going in?” she said after fifteen or twenty seconds of sitting there.

  “I just want to listen to things a bit,” he said. “Where I come from, what you hear is as important as what you see. Sometimes more important.

  “Okay,” he said, after another ten seconds or so, “let’s go.”

  As he got out, he looked at Bev. He liked what he saw. She did not seem that afraid, just alert, as he was. He didn’t need someone with a loaded gun who was nervous going in with him. They left Reb in the truck. Again, he was silent.