June 14
Shirewilt Estates
10:55AM
Carol smiled as Daryl eased the bike off the two-lane highway onto the sleepy suburban Virginia road. The Virginia summer humidity wasn't pleasant, but the warm breeze in her hair, and the feel of his muscles firm against her, was. The smells were all new here. Not the strong, sweet scent of magnolia she had so often inhaled in Georgia, but a more subtle silky dogwood mingled with flowering tobacco. Somewhere beneath it all was the stench of rotting walker flesh, but she had learned, somehow, to largely tune that out. It was the new scents that tickled her now, and the thrill of adventure that made her smile.
This trip marked the first time in her life she had ever been outside of the state of Georgia. It was Daryl's first time, too. This was one of the many things that, despite all their differences, they shared in common. She tightened her embrace around him, and he let one hand fall from the handlebars of his motorcycle to cover her arm. He gave her a squeeze and then returned his grip.
They hadn't had time to do any sightseeing along the way, but perhaps they would on a more leisurely drive back. They'd run into a small herd outside of Spartanburg, South Carolina, which had forced them to detour west. They'd ended up spending the night in the Western North Carolina Nature Center before heading on to Richmond. They were cutting it close. Daryl wanted to go straight to the Richmond Battlefield for their meeting with Gavin, but Noah first wanted to check on the family he'd left behind in the neighborhood of Shirewilt Estates when he'd gone off to college in Atlanta.
Dixon, his former jealousy over Beth now a thing of the past, had sided with Noah. ("I'd be eager, too if my mother might still be alive.") Zach had sided with Daryl, and Carol had been the tie breaker, saying, "We can at least check first. Gavin said he'd wait up to twenty-four hours before assuming we couldn't make our way up." There was no scheduling precise meeting times in this world.
Now, the motorcycle, following the rumbling military truck, eased past an abandoned car that had been spray painted with the words "Peace is Near."
In a few more minutes, Daryl eased off the throttle as the truck pulled to a stop before a black iron gate between two sections of a red brick wall. The words Shirewilt Estates were affixed in black letters, though the w had slid loose and hung by one arm, looking like an m.
"Guess his folks were rich," Daryl muttered.
"It looks perfectly middle class," Carol countered as she dismounted from behind him and the three teenage boys spilled out of the military truck, rifles in hand.
"With a gate?" Daryl asked doubtfully.
"We have a gate back home," she teased. "Does that make us rich?"
Daryl stood from the motorcycle and swept her to him with one arm. "I'm the richest damn man in the whole fuckin' world." He was bending to kiss her when a gunshot sounded from up high. The fire was coming from within a tree behind the gate. The bullet plinged off the front bumper of the military truck.
Zach shot back without really looking, opening fire in the direction of the tree, while everyone else took instant cover.
Noah shouted at Zach to "Stop! Stop shooting!"
Zach did, and took cover, too.
The gunfire from the tree ceased when everyone was obscured.
"It's Noah!" Noah shouted. "Noah Johnson!"
"Noah?" a voice called from the tree.
"Isaac?" Noah called back.
"Listen, y'all put down your guns!" the voice returned. "Put down your weapons, and then we'll see what's what!"
Noah lay down his rifle immediately, though the others were understandably more reluctant. "It's my brother, he called to Daryl and Carol, who were crouched behind Daryl's motorcycle. Only when Daryl set his crossbow on the asphalt did Dixon lower his rifle. Zach followed suit. Carol lay down her AR-15 but made sure her ankle holster with the little .22 was unclasped and that her throwing knife was within quick reach. Daryl had that handgun shoved in the back of his pants as well. Carol knew, because she'd felt it pressing against him as they rode.
Thus readied, Carol and Daryl stood slowly with their hands up. The boys did the same, Dixon and Noah creeping out from behind the military truck and Zach from behind the green dumpster behind which he'd taken cover.
There was a rustling in one of the trees, and a boy who could not be more than eleven dropped down from it, with a rifle dangling from his back. He ran toward the gate, his Nike sneakers pattering on the asphalt of the street, crying, "Noah! It's really you!"
[*]
Three other armed men met them at the gate, having run out of their houses in response to the gunfire. When they recognized Noah, hugs were exchanged instead of shots. One of the men scolded Isaac for opening fire without first assessing whether the group was peaceful. Noah learned that though his father was dead, his mother and both his brothers – eleven-year-old Isaac and ten-year-old Isiah – were still alive. So were ten other residents of Sherwilt Estates, along with eight other survivors who had settled here, forming a community of twenty-one people. "We had more at one time," one of the men, Mr. Harrison, told them. "Twenty-nine at our peak. But…you know how things happen now."
Soon enough, the Fun Kingdom group found themselves eating lunch around the table the Johnsons' home, where Noah's mother lived with her two sons, the eleven-year-old Isaac and the ten-year-old Isaiah. "And to think," Mrs. Johnson told them. "We'd just paid off the mortgage a month before it all went to heck." She shook her head.
"Told you they was rich," Daryl whispered to Carol as he stabbed a Vienna sausage on his plate.
Carol smiled slightly. The house was admittedly nicer than any she'd ever lived in pre-apocalypse, but it was far from luxurious. It was a two-story, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath abode with a screened-in back porch in a sleepy, gated community.
"Heck?" Zach asked with a smile.
"My dad was a pastor," Noah explained. "We don't swear in this house." He glanced at Isaac. "We didn't own guns either, but you sure learned fast, I guess?"
"Then said he unto them," Mrs. Johnson quoted to her son, "'But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.' Luke 22:36. To everything there is a season."
"And this is definitely the season for semiautomatics," Noah agreed.
Isaac smiled and nodded. "Just glad your friend there is a shit shot."
"Isaac!" Mrs. Johnson scolded.
"I'm an excellent shot," Zach insisted. "When I'm aiming. When I can see the target. And did you really have to open fire on us for no reason?"
"I saw a bunch of people at our gates with guns," Isaac replied defensively. "People…they'll try to kill you in this world."
"Tell me about it," said Zach, looking at him pointedly.
"This is a lovely camp you have here," Carol said to deflect the tension.
"There are fifty houses," Mrs. Johnson replied, "but only seven are occupied. We've all moved close together, here, in the center of the neighborhood, for safety. The toilets are flushing still, if you pour water in the tanks, but we don't know how long the sewage will keep floating away before it backs up. It's not being treated, obviously, and we have no running water anymore. But we have that big neighborhood pond for freshwater. We boil it. And we also collect rainwater now. We've got a system for that. We fish in the pond, but not too much. Mr. Williams says we need to give them space to breed or we won't have a steady supply. We've made one of the houses a storehouse, gathered everything from the pantries and cabinets of the houses where people died. And we already had the walls and gates. And Mr. Harrison had that gun collection of his. He taught the boys to shoot."
"But I'm a lot better than Isaiah," Isaac said.
"Well you're a year older!" Isaiah shot back.
"You would not believe how much ammunition Mr. Harrison had stored in his basement!" Mrs. Johnson exclaimed. "If I'd known I was living just three doors down from a crazed stockpiler…I might have been a little nervous."
"Why?" Isaac asked. "He was right. It all came in handy." Isaac looked at Noah. "And we collected ten more guns and a bunch more ammo from the other houses, too."
"Well, guns, government, and tobacco were the three main industries in Virginia," Noah observed.
"And I thought Georgia was redneck," Zach said.
Daryl glared at him, and Zach looked quickly down at his plate.
"Zach's from Illinois," Noah explained. "He was going to college in Atlanta."
"Northern Virginia's like a different world though than southern Virginia," Mrs. Johnson said. "Well…it was. I suppose the world is all pretty much the same wherever you go now. Bad people trying to plunder, and good people trying to defend." She nodded at the group from Fun Kingdom. "I'm glad y'all turned out to be good folk. I assume. If you saved my boy Noah."
Dixon glanced at Noah. "Well, ma'am, it was more like he saved us. Well, one of us. My girlfriend, Beth. If it weren't for him, I never would have gotten her back. I don't know if I ever really said thanks."
Noah smiled. "You helped me out, too. I wouldn't have lasted much longer on my own out there." He looked at his mother. "Have you really had enough food from the houses to live on this whole time?" Noah asked. "It's been…almost a year."
"We've done some looting and stockpiling," Mrs. Johnson replied, and then swallowed and took a shaky sip of her water.
"That's how we lost Dad," Isaac told his brother solemnly. "On a run last month. And now Mom won't let me join the looters."
"I wouldn't have let you anyway," Mrs. Johnson insisted. "You're far too young!"
"Walkers got him?" Noah asked.
Isaac shook his head. "They ran into this group of people in the woods when they were taking a shortcut."
"Our people use dirt bikes when they're looting," Mrs. Johnson explained. She glanced at Daryl. "I mean the kind with pedals. The gas spoiled. We stopped using cars and trucks three months ago. Mr. Lowry – he's an engineer – figured out how to put a little solar-powered electric assist on the bicycles, so our looters don't get tired as fast pedaling them. They bring back food in heavy backpacks and on the luggage racks of the bikes. The bikes are easy to take through dirt paths in the woods, and there's usually not as many walkers in there, so…" She sighed. "They thought they'd be safer cutting through to a strip mall. But instead they found trouble."
"Bandits?" Dixon asked.
"They didn't try to rob our people," Mrs. Johnson replied. "But there was a scuffle…because they wore the skins of the damned."
"'S that mean?" Daryl asked.
"Those things?" Isaac said. "You call them walkers. These people, they skinned them like animals, and then dried out their skins to wear them."
"The fuck?" Daryl looked directly at Mrs. Johnson. "'Scuse m'French."
"To be able to blend in with them," Mrs. Johnson said. "To walk through them and among them. Their last camp was completely destroyed by walkers two months ago. After that, this woman in their group convinced them it's better to walk among them than to live behind walls to try to protect yourself. So, about a month before we ran into them, they had started camping in the woods and wearing the skins of the damned."
"That's idiotic," Dixon said. "How would other people know not to kill them? You see a walker, you kill it!"
"That was the problem," Isaac said. "Dad didn't know. He killed one, thinking it was one of the damned. And then the next one drew a knife and killed him."
"Then everyone was killing," Mrs. Johnson said. "Gunfire and knives all around. We lost three of the six people in the looting team – including my husband - before we killed most of theirs."
"Most?" Daryl asked. "Those crazy fuckers are still out there? S'cuse m'French."
Carol smiled. Mrs. Johnson had made an impression on Daryl, apparently.
"No, in here," Mrs. Johnsons replied. "The survivors are in here, the four of them our people didn't end up killing. We took them in, made them our own. And I think they're happy to return to a more normal life. That woman had them scared into thinking they had to live her way."
"I don't know how happy Lydia was," Isaac said. "I mean, her mother died."
"I'm sure she's mourning her mother," Mrs. Johnson agreed, "but I'm not sure that woman was the best mother a girl ever had. Frankly, it may be for the best." She looked at Carol. "Lydia's ten. Eleven maybe. She was a little shook up. Couldn't tell us her exact age. She's been adopted by the Jones family."
1:30 PM
Richmond National Battlefield Park
Jerry twirled the stick in the stone circle.
"Just use matches," said Gavin, extending him a box.
"I need the practice," Jerry insisted. "We won't have matches forever."
Tina, who sat on a log in the mock soldier's campsite, smiled at him. Dianne was busy ripping the skin off a snake. Once that was done, and Jerry had the fire going, they were roasting chunks of the snake over it on twigs and passing a bottle of whip cream vodka around.
Dianne winced we she had her swig of it. "My God. Who drinks this stuff?"
"Anyone in an apocalypse," Gavin told her.
"I bet it was great in chocolate-whip-cream vodka martinis," Tina said as she took the bottle.
"Hey, hey!" Jerry said. "You're nineteen."
"There's no drinking law," Tina replied. "And I need to raise my blood sugar. I can feel it dipping." She took a swig and passed the bottle onto Gavin.
"When we're done eating, lets go find some shade," Dianne said. "In the museum or that historic house. It's oppressive out here. And then we can watch for them from a window. Make sure they're not trouble."
"They're bringing me insulin," Tina said. "I doubt they're trouble."
"You never know," Dianne told her. "Caution is always advisable."
They'd approached the park with caution. They'd found a lonely, solitary walker in the field, which Dianne had dispensed with an arrow.
"Think they'll make it today?" Tina asked.
"Depends what they ran into on the road out there," Gavin said. He glanced at Tina. "But we'll wait at least a day. Camp out here overnight if we need to. They'll be here. I get the impression these people don't die easy."
1:40 PM
Shirewilt Estates
After lunch, the Fun Kingdom group got to see the community and meet the rest of the people in it. Noah told his family he'd be returning to stay with them at Shirewilt Estates, but only after he left with Dixon and the others to help make the trade with Gavin. "We're trading with this group from somewhere in Virginia," Noah explained to his mother. "I don't where they live exactly. But I'll try to make friends, so maybe we can keep the trade going with Shirewilt. Maybe that way we'll even have a back-up camp to run to if anything ever goes wrong here. They have three or four communities up there. And they seem like decent people."
As Carol and Daryl mounted Daryl's motorcycle again and the boys prepared to climb into the military truck, Dixon clamped a hand down on Noah's shoulder. "Beth's really going to miss you."
"Just Beth, huh?" Noah asked.
Dixon shrugged. "Maybe me, too. I mean, we could use more guards." He smiled and climbed up into the driver's seat, and the small caravan was off to meet their friends from the north.
Chapter End Notes:
A/N: As some of you know, I publish original novels and novellas under the penname of Molly Taggart. I'm trying out Amazon's Vella platform for serialization of my latest coming-of-age / family drama / romance novella, "Grasping Hot Coals." The first three episodes are free. I hope you will give the story a try. Currently, Amazon is also giving new Vella readers 200 free tokens to "unlock" episodes of stories, which would make my entire novella free. If you enjoy any of the episodes, please be sure to click "like" on them. Thanks!
Add this after the amazon URL to locate:
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