"Hey, easy," urged Clementine.
"You fell into a river, again," said Sarah as she vigorously but thoroughly toweled Clem off. "Last time, you woke up sick."
"Barely," reasoned Clem as she felt Sarah scrubbing her back dry.
"And this time could be worse, so I'm not taking any chances." Sarah took off her jacket and wrapped it around Clem. Before Clem could even thread her arms into the sleeves, Sarah wrapped her own arms around her and pulled Clem in close.
"Um… what are you doing?" asked Clem as she felt herself being pressed up against Sarah's body.
"Warming you up," answered Sarah as she firmly cradled Clem.
"Oh…" Clem found herself instinctively moving her arms to hug Sarah, only to discover Sarah was squeezing so hard she couldn't move them.
"I read about hypothermia in that medical textbook, before the flood ruined it," explained Sarah. "It said you can use your body heat to warm people up slowly after they come in from the cold. You have to make sure you don't do it too fast, or warm up their arms and legs before their body or it could hurt their heart."
"Oh," said Clem.
"I did the same thing for Omid after we fell in that river. I should have told you and Patty about this, but I was worried about him and—"
"It's fine." Clem closed her eyes and rested her head against Sarah's chest. Wrapped tightly in her friend's jacket while being tenderly embraced in her strong arms felt incredibly relaxing and Clem wished it would never end.
"How do you feel?" asked Sarah.
"Good," said Clem with a smile. "Really good."
"I mean, are you still cold?"
"No, I'm pretty warm now."
"Good." Sarah suddenly released Clem and grasped her chin instead.
"Now what are you doing?"
"Seeing if there's anything wrong with you." Clem could feel Sarah's hand tilting her head and realized she was looking for injuries. "The skin on the right side of your face is kind of red."
"I think that's the side that hit the water first," explained Clem. "It really hurt."
"I don't see anything else, but I'm still worried. I mean… you fell off a bridge."
"I know," said Clem in a quiet voice, finding it hard to believe herself. "I just turned around and bumped into Anthony, and then I was falling."
"I heard him yelling your name and…" Sarah looked away suddenly, as if she didn't want Clem to see how upset she had become. "I couldn't believe it."
"Me neither." Clem let out a deep sigh as memories of all her previous brushes with death came flooding back into her mind. She suddenly found it hard to stand and started sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. "Walkers, bad people, starving, floods, and now I fall off a bridge. Even if there was nothing wrong, I might die anyway because I'm stupid."
"You're not stupid, it was just an accident," insisted Sarah. "And… you're sure you're okay? Does anything hurt?"
"Everything kinda hurts."
"But is there anything you can't move, anything broken?"
"I don't think so, everything just aches."
"Do you feel dizzy?" asked Sarah as she grabbed a flashlight.
"A little when I was in the water. But I feel okay now."
"And you can see okay? Things aren't blurry are they?"
"No, I can see fine." Sarah shined the light in Clem's eyes, forcing her to turn away. "Or I could."
"Sorry, I was just trying to see if you have a concussion, and one thing you're supposed to do is make sure the pupils constrict when you shine a light on them," explained Sarah as she turned off the light. "I think you're okay, or at least I hope you are. You're really lucky it wasn't worse."
"I know. If that… guy wasn't there, I'd probably be dead right now," realized a glum Clem. "Lee told me everything is dangerous, and you told me to be careful, and—"
"It's okay Clem. It's okay now," spoke Sarah, as if she was trying to convince herself. "You just get changed. We should be at this citadel place soon, and then maybe this person who saved you will tell us what happened to Tulsa."
Sarah left the bathroom and Clem quickly changed into some dry clothes. Picking up her hat, she was disappointed to find it was still wet. She had nearly lost it when she fell, it coming off when she hit the river. Only it getting caught in the hood of her raincoat prevented it from drifting away. As terrifying as her ordeal was, the near loss of her hat felt like the biggest reminder of how quickly Clem could lose everything, what little that was anymore.
Leaving her hat behind for now, Clementine headed out of the bathroom. She was about to give Sarah her jacket back, when she heard Omid giggling from the bedroom. Moving inside, she found the toddler standing on the bed, tapping his hands against the plastic that covered where the back window used to be.
"OJ no." Clem tossed the jacket aside and collected the toddler. "Don't do that."
"Buh-duh-ah-sah," insisted Omid as Clem pried him away from the window. Looking outside, Clem could see Omid was staring at the armored stranger clinging to the Brave's back ladder. Whoever they were, they agreed to ride out there until they reached the citadel. Anthony's truck was following right behind them, something he insisted upon so someone could watch this new person while they were in transit.
Even though he had saved Clem's life, she couldn't help but be suspicious of him anyway, and the girl found herself wishing they had something better than flimsy plastic to cover up their missing window. Not wanting to dwell on the various mysteries and possible dangers this new person presented, Clem carried Omid out of the bedroom. Heading up to the front, she spotted Sarah sitting next to Jet, who was in the driver's seat.
"You really don't mind driving?" asked Sarah.
"Yeah, I like it," said Jet. "After spending what felt like forever indoors at Houston and Port Arthur, it's fun to be able to just go somewhere. I was actually glad when Granddad taught me how to drive the Sunseeker."
"Sunseeker?" asked Clem as she sat down on the couch
"Our RV," said Jet. "Or it's what I'm calling it since it's what's written on the side of it. I heard you guys always call this one the Brave and figured I should name ours… I mean I didn't name it, but you know what I mean."
"There's another sign," said Sarah as they approached an intersection. "This one's actually telling us to turn."
"Can't be much further now," said Jet as he pulled the wheel to the right.
"Patty," said Sarah into her radio. "We'll be there in a minute."
"What about Clem?" asked Patty. "Is she okay?"
"I'm fine," assured Clem as she grabbed her own radio. "I'm a little sore, but I'm all right."
"Oh thank God," said Patty. "When you told me she fell off a bridge, I—"
"What about this person you found?" interrupted Sin. "The one who said he'd explain what happened here."
"He's with us, riding on the back of the Brave," said Sarah.
"All right, me and Sin already pushed the gate the rest of the way open," said Patty. "We didn't find jack inside, so just drive right in and we can all sit down and and talk with him."
"Got it." Putting down the radio, Clem saw the citadel looming in the distance. In addition to three golden towers, she also could see there was a large glass pyramid seated at the front of the largest tower, as well as what remained of a small park in front of that. Turning right and driving beside the park, Clem watched as the wall Patty mentioned earlier came into view.
It was a row of semi-trailers parked end to end to form a massive barricade curved around the edge of the parking lot. Large concrete barriers had been pushed up against the trailers, blocking the empty space beneath them, while razor wire ran on top of them. Driving alongside the wall, Clem could also see large chunks of metal crudely welded in place to cover gaps between the trailers. It was much cruder than the wall Shaffer's had made, but it filled Clem with a sense of dread just the same.
As they drove along it, Clem noticed the word 'CITADEL' painted on one of the trailers, this time in huge red letters with a single arrow pointing the way they were already going. Not long after that, she could see more words on another trailer: 'WAIT OUTSIDE GATE, SOMEONE WILL MEET YOU'. Just past that was a sizable gap in the barricade.
Jet turned the wheel and steered the Brave through the opening, giving them their first view of the area inside the wall. It was mostly an empty parking lot, with what Clem could only assume were remains of what used to be some kind of encampment. There were a few tipped over chairs to each side of the opening, a large mess of canvass that was probably a tent at some point, and several scraps of paper scattered across the pavement. The only vehicle parked inside was Sin's RV, the Sunseeker apparently, and standing in front of it was its owner and Patty.
"Good to see you guys again," she said over the radio. "Not sure what to think about this big guy in body armor riding on the back of the RV though."
"He pulled me out of the river," reported Clem. "But—"
"He seemed awfully calm about being taking captive," asserted Anthony. "He might have a whole crew in those buildings waiting to attack us."
"We didn't find jack shit inside," said Patty. "But—"
"We only checked the first few floors of the first building," stated Sin. "There's a lot we haven't searched."
"Exactly," said Anthony. "Keep your eyes open."
Jet turned the Brave's engine off and there was immediately a rustling sound from the back. Clem realized it must have been the stranger climbing off the back ladder, yet it worried her anyway.
"Ah-sah," said Omid as he tried to escape Clem's grip.
"No OJ, you can't go out right now," said Clem. "But I am." Clem handed Omid to Sarah. "Watch him, I'm—"
"Wait, I want to meet the person who saved you," said Sarah.
"Oh, well… could you—"
"I want to meet him too," said Jet as Clem turned to him.
"Ah-sah," repeated Omid.
"Well, we're not definitely taking him out with us," said Clem.
"I'll play with him for a bit and hopefully wear him out," said Sarah as she took Omid from Clem. "Then I'll get the baby monitor and meet you two outside."
"Thanks Sarah." Clem grabbed her gun and its still damp holster, clipping them both to her pants. Turning around, she noticed Jet picking up the strange rifle Clem had taken from the stranger. "Be careful with that."
"I will," said Jet as he adjusted his gripped on the weapon.
"And since your coat is still wet, I want you to wear this," said Sarah as she handed her own jacket back to Clem.
"Won't you be cold?" asked Clem.
"I'll be fine, you're the one who needs to stay warm," insisted Sarah as Clem slipped the jacket on.
"Ah-sah!" protested Omid as he emerged from the bedroom.
"Be careful," said Sarah as she grabbed the boy.
"I will… this time." Jet pushed opened the door and stepped outside while Clem paused to take a breath before following him. The girl felt a chill on her damp skin the moment she stepped out, causing her to fumble with Sarah's coat in a futile attempt to keep warm. A slight breeze blew through the vacant lot as she moved, creating an ominous whistle that sent a chill down Clem's spine.
"Hey!" Clem heard Anthony yell. "Where do you think you're going?"
Clem followed Jet to the back of the RV and then past Anthony's truck to discover its owner aiming at the armored stranger.
"I was gonna close the gate," said the stranger. "We don't want any infected wandering in while we talk."
"Or maybe you don't want any of us walking out," accused Anthony.
"It's a latch, not a lock," said the stranger. "You people could get out at anytime."
"Ease up Anthony," said Patty as she and Sin approached the young man.
"He's the only one who can tell us what happened here," added Sin, sounding anxious.
"Assuming he's the only one here," said Anthony. "You told us you hadn't checked most of the buildings."
"Then you should watch the buildings, not him," suggested Clem. "We all should; we know where he is, it's everything else we're not sure about."
Anthony seemed to briefly glance over his shoulder for a second before lowering his gun. "Make it quick man."
Clem watched as the stranger moved to the gap, grabbing a chainlink gate fixed on a wheel.
"Hey," said Anthony as he approached Clem. "You really okay?"
"Yeah, I'm all right," she assured.
"Damn, you fall off a bridge and just keep on ticking," noted Anthony, sounding impressed.
"Thanks to him." Clem rolled up the sleeve of Sarah's jacket so she could point to the stranger, who was moving the gate into place to cover the gap.
"Yeah, well don't let that fool you," warned Anthony. "Some people will go out of their way to be friendly to you if they already planned on stabbing you in the back later."
"Yeah," said Clem with a sigh. "I know."
"You do?" Clem chose not to answer Jet, finding the memories painful enough without talking about them.
"Hey." Clem turned to Anthony, concern suddenly appearing in his eyes. "I heard what you were saying to me on top of the RV earlier. Before all that craziness happened, I was gonna tell you that I appreciate it." Clem was pleasantly surprised and a little relieved to hear that, only for a familiar scowl to return to Anthony's face. "You really think that will keep those things out?" he asked as he moved towards the closed gate.
"We used to block it with dumpsters," answered the stranger. "But there hasn't been much need for that lately."
"What'd you say to him?" whispered Jet as Anthony moved away.
"Just that we appreciate him and want to be friends," answered Clem.
"Are you really alone?" Clem heard Anthony ask as she approached him. "You said 'our signs' back at the river, and 'we' just now. Who's we?"
"It used to be a lot of people," said the stranger with a sigh. "Now I'm all that's left."
"How did—"
"Do you mind if I take this gas mask off?" asked the stranger. "It's a pain to talk with it on."
"Sure," said Patty.
"Slowly," added Anthony.
Clem watched as the man moved his hands behind the back of his head. He removed his helmet first, then slowly peeled off his mask. "It might stop infected from biting my face off, but it never gets any more comfortable to wear." The armored stranger was a black man with very short hair and slightly shorter stubble covering his angular jaw. Clem thought he didn't appear much older than Patty, but it was hard to tell from first glance.
"You know, just because I'm wearing this vest, doesn't mean I'm bullet-proof," hearing him speak without his mask, Clem thought he sounded stern but not threatening. "I would really appreciate it if you'd quit pointing that thing at me."
"Anthony…" Patty stretched out her hand and placed it on his rifle, urging him to lower it. "Sorry, but we're all kind of nervous around new people."
"I imagine," said the man, sounding sympathetic. "God knows there's plenty to be nervous about these days."
Sarah stepped out of the Brave, then quietly gravitated towards Clem. She looked out at the stranger with a guarded curiosity while the man just looked back at all of them. He appeared almost bewildered as he studied every member of the group one at a time, as if he didn't believe they were really there. His gaze finally seemed to settle on Clementine, who he stared at in disbelief.
"What?" asked Clem, finding herself unnerved by the man's attention.
"I'm sorry, it's… it's just so strange finally seeing people again," admitted the man. "I… I truly thought I was going to die alone here."
"How long have you been alone?" asked Sarah.
"Over two months now, I think. I honestly thought I was hearing things again when your vehicles drove by the river. It wasn't until I saw her in the water that I realized I hadn't gone crazy. You don't know how good it is to see a living kid again." The man smiled a little as he looked at Clem, which just made her feel more nervous. "Although, I'm a little worried about the fact you gave her a gun."
"We—"
"I had a gun before I met any of these people," announced Clem loudly. "Because I needed a way to protect myself from anyone who'd try to hurt me, alive or dead."
"I… I didn't mean any offense," he said, sounding profusely apologetic. "But… Jesus, before you met these people? You mean you were left to fend for yourself?"
The tone of the man's voice was surprisingly sympathetic, as was the look on his face. Clem's found herself at a loss for words in response to the sudden swell of concern from a total stranger.
"Basically," answered Sarah as she placed her hands on Clem's shoulders. "There used to be people who took care of us."
"But they all died," spoke a saddened Clem as she gripped one of Sarah's hands. "And for a long time, it was just me, her, and OJ."
"Which one of you is OJ?" asked the man.
"None of them. He's a baby we've been taking care of."
"A baby? You two—"
"Yeah, we have," answered Clem with a sigh. "And it's as hard as you probably think it is."
"That's enough about us," interjected Anthony. "Who are you?"
"Petty Officer Devlin," the man answered dutifully. "And, as far as I know, I'm the last living person left here in Tulsa."
"So you were in the military?"
"Coast Guard."
"So the rumors are true," concluded Sin. "Or… were true."
"Depends on what you heard," said Devlin. "A lot of people who ended up here were chasing rumors, and not always the same ones."
"I heard that the troops sent here were mostly Coast Guard and didn't fall in-line with the rest of the military, that you worked with the people instead of enforcing martial law, and you were collecting things to make Tulsa a self-sufficient community."
"Well, you heard right, that was all true, mostly," shrugged Devlin.
"Mostly?" repeated Sarah.
"There's a lot to unpack. Where do you want me to start?"
"How about at the beginning?" suggested Patty. "You're the first soldier we've met who's ever been willing to tell us anything."
"Guardsman," corrected Devlin. "And the beginning? You mean of us being here in Tulsa or—"
"Just, everything," said Patty. "Do you know what the military's plan was?"
"Or why'd the different branches of the military would be fighting each other?" asked Jet.
"Or anywhere we could go that's safe?" added Clem.
"Well, that's a lot more to unpack. Give me a minute to think about where to start." Devlin picked up one of the chairs lying on the asphalt and took a deep breath as he sat down. "Our initial orders were simple; we were told there had been a viral outbreak and the armed forces were being deployed in major cities to maintain order.
"The Navy set up in New Orleans and in some of the surrounding areas, along with a couple of key ports along the eastern and western seaboards; the Marines were sent in to keep order in high priority targets, the Army for secondary targets."
"You mean low priority," corrected Patty. "Like Miami."
"No, lowest priority is what the Coast and National Guard were left with. The latter would fly out to police smaller towns, the Coast Guard would do the same on the coasts and anywhere we could reach by river. That's how I ended up in Tulsa, it was the last city we could reach going up the Arkansas river."
"What about the Air Force?" asked Jet.
"Supposedly they were being held back for emergencies, but I never saw anyone from the Air Force during any of this," answered Devlin, a hint of derision in his voice. "We were supposed to keep people in their homes until we received instructions on how to test for the virus."
"A virus can't make a dead body get back up and kill the person who just shot it in the heart," stated Sin. "Whatever did all this wasn't a virus."
"Yeah, more like an act of God, but we didn't know that back then," said Devlin with a sigh. "We all thought we were dealing with sick people then, and you don't shoot people for being sick. I still remember what it was like on that first day back in New Orleans, seeing people get bitten trying to subdue those things, not realizing those bites had already killed them, then they'd turn and bite someone else and it'd start all over…
"Communications broke down quickly, and by the second day there were already a lot of places we couldn't reach by phone or radio. But we still got our orders; which were now to shoot anyone displaying 'symptoms'. By then most of us trying to keep the peace had already seen enough to know there was no cure for rabid cadavers but to kill them. But a lot of people hadn't realized it had come to that, so some of us were sent upriver to check as many cities as we could.
"Telling them to stay indoors ended up being a bad idea. All it would take is one person getting bitten to kill an entire household while they were asleep. Worst yet, a lot of people didn't want to believe there was no curing what was happening. They thought we were still just dealing with some kind of outbreak, and seeing their sick mother, or brother, or daughter gunned down right in front of them… they thought we were the real monsters."
"I know I thought that at first," admitted Patty. "I remember seeing troops break into the house down the street from mine and just fucking shooting everyone inside. Then they dragged their bodies out onto the lawn and buried them. I was terrified I was going to be next, and it wasn't until the first time I slipped out of the safe zone to look for food and saw walkers up close did I realize those weren't sick people they were gunning down."
"Not all the time at least," spoke Devlin in a hushed voice. "We still didn't know what we were dealing with, and the symptoms of being bitten were getting sick and dying, so suddenly everyone who was sick looked like they might be a bite victim. We made a lot of mistakes trying to figure this shit out.
"Even still, there were some people who pulled the trigger when they knew they shouldn't have, and every time that happened it made it harder to explain to people the times we did have to, until some of them got sick of our explanations and started finding triggers of their own to pull back on us…"
"There was constant conflict around Houston," said Sin. "The military would always call anything that happened an isolated incident, but the more incidents that occurred, the more the rumors grew. First it was gangs, then rumors of an organized cartel infiltrating the city, and by the time I left we were speculating that there may be a full-on war with Mexico."
"I don't know anything about a war; I've been here in Tulsa for most of this," said Devlin, sounding, a little unnerved by what he heard. "But even when we had the people's interests at heart, things could go wrong. We were still trying to figure out how the bites worked when one of us discovered that even people without bites came back. Learning that changed everything and suddenly we were afraid you could also get sick from scratches, body fluids, even something in the fucking air, but—"
"You come back as a walker no matter how you die," concluded Clem in a quiet voice. "It's just what happens now."
"Yeah, that was the conclusion we eventually came to, and too late for a lot of people. Then there was dealing with the damn things, which wasn't easy since you could offload an entire magazine into them and they'd just keep moving. Being trained to aim for center of mass really bit us in the ass fighting these things. It took us longer than I'd like to admit to realize that only head shots stop them."
"I remember at the end of the first day the lurkers showed up," said Sarah. "My dad yelled at a man to shoot someone in the head, because shooting him in the chest didn't kill him… I had never even seen someone get shot before that."
"You and a lot of other people," said Devlin. "And that's on top of all the other stuff none of us had ever seen before. Every city we stopped at, people were looking to us for answers on why the dead were killing the living, and we never had any beyond on how to kill them for good. There were fires, shootings, riots, and we had no idea what to do."
"What a surprise," said Anthony, sounding bored. "You didn't know what you were doing, nobody knew what they were doing, everybody freaked out, and eventually it all went to shit. Tulsa's no different from every other city in the damn country, that about the size of things?"
"That can't be," refuted Sin before turning back to Devlin. "You said the rumors I heard were true."
"Well they were, but the truth probably isn't as glorious as you might imagine," said Devlin as he scratched his head. "Like the troops here being mostly Coast Guard; that's true, but only six of us came to Tulsa, and of those six, five were Guardsmen."
"What?" asked Jet.
"You're telling me just six of you tried to keep control in a city this size?" asked Anthony in disbelief. "No wonder it didn't work out."
"It was the sixth person's idea, Master Chief Simmons. She was Navy, and had been assigned to us to make sure we follow orders, which was just to survey as much as we could on the Arkansas river and report back. We didn't reach Tulsa until the second day on the water. By then, the downtown area was already in chaos.
"Again, still thinking this was a viral outbreak, the mayor had quarantined whole office buildings where the 'infection' had been spotted. All those unexpecting people, locked inside, turned those places into factories to make more infected. Just one could bite dozens before someone would stop it, then those people turn and bite dozens more and… if we had arrived a day later, there probably would have been almost no one left by then. That's probably why the Chief did what she did."
"What did she do?" asked Clementine.
"Well there's one other reason the Navy assigned the Chief to us, she was a demolitions expert. Communication was spotty at best in those first days, and we had no idea what was happening upstream from New Orleans, so they assigned the Chief to us and gave her charges for clearing anything blocking the river. We were actually lucky to even get this far upriver with the way things were.
"By the time we reached Tulsa, the local police had fallen back over the river to the west side of town; less populated, less infected. The problem was there were several bridges clustered together that connected downtown to the other side of the river. Anyone fleeing downtown usually dragged more infected right behind them, the police would shoot them, and that drew even more out. It was obvious they'd be overwhelmed before long. So—"
"Simmons blew up the bridges," concluded Jet.
"I guess after seeing every other city on the river getting tore up, the Chief got fed up and decided to do something about this time. Although, that was just the start. Taking out the bridges kept infected from getting across the river; they'd just walk into the water and start floating downstream. But there were still tons of living people on the other side trying to get to safety. We had a small boat, so we started ferrying people across, but they were far too many coming too quickly."
"Sounds like your plan backfired," commented Anthony.
"Which is why we came up with a new one. The Chief brought us ashore and told the cops to start grabbing every kayak, inflatable raft, and even innertube they could get from the local camping or sporting good stores, along with all the rope they could find. While they were doing that, we put the line launcher to good use fishing out whoever we could."
"Is that what this?" asked Jet as held up the odd rifle. "A line launcher? Like Batman uses?"
"Um… sorta, cept it just shoots ropes out to boats and people stuck in the water."
"Wish we had this a few days ago," commented Patty as she examined the line launcher. "We got trapped in a flood and had to do all kinds of shit just for him to get a rope out to us."
"You can keep it if you want, I used up my last round pulling her out of the water earlier."
"I'm sorry," said Clementine.
"Don't be, I've been carrying that thing out with me anytime I survey the area for the last two months now. You're lucky you came while I was out patrolling."
"Yeah, lucky…" Clem repeated to herself.
"You were saying," interrupted Sin. "About your commanding officer recruiting the local police."
"Yeah, we really couldn't declare martial law with just six people, but the Chief was a quick thinker and managed to enlist some of the cops to start playing Coast Guard just out necessity. She sent them out in pairs in some of bigger rafts to bring people across the river. The smaller stuff and inner tubes we tossed over the bridge at anyone who jumped into the water. The ropes were thrown out as lifelines to keep people from being pulled downstream, and we used the launcher to shoot some over the broken bridges. Once someone on the other side tied them off, anyone coming up behind them could climb across the gap."
"Wow," awed Jet. "You guys thought of everything."
"Hardly," dismissed Devlin. "Like I said, it's not nearly as glorious as it sounds. People were still getting eaten left and right, others drowned after falling into the river, some of the bigger rafts were getting swarmed when they'd reach the shore. Even on our own boat, one of the people we picked up immediately pulled a gun on us, demanded we take him as far from Tulsa as we could."
"He pulled a gun on a boat full of…" Anthony trailed off. "Actually, do you Coast Guard people get guns or not?"
"We do, and even if we didn't, we weren't going up uncharted waters for two days without some. We tried talking the poor bastard down, but…" Devlin took a breath as he lowered his head. "Wasn't even the last time someone pulled a gun on us that day. I'd say it was the longest day of my life, but there were plenty more that came after that would be contenders."
"I'm sorry," said Sarah.
"What about breaking from the military?" asked Sin. "Was that true?"
"It's true, although like everything else, it's probably not as dramatic as you may have envisioned. We were supposed to report back to New Orleans, but there were still tons of people trapped on the other side of the river, and all the ones who had made it across had nowhere to go now. People were looking for some kind of leader, and the Chief was the closest thing to."
"You said that she had recruited police officers," said Sin. "Does that mean sharing power with the populace was a matter of necessity?"
"Pretty much. Our dramatic arrival had helped to build some goodwill, and the Chief used it to shore up some volunteers, but we couldn't exactly order people around just the six of us. A lot of the police agreed to… keep being the police; helped keep people feel like things were under control. A lot of firefighters volunteered to work with us taking care of the infected and doing search and rescue.
"After we secured West Tulsa as much as we could, we went south for a while before heading back over the river. It didn't take us long to find this building. It was the tallest thing for miles, but was far enough away from downtown we could get to it without getting eaten, so we turned it into a forward operating base for reclaiming everything on this side of the river."
"How'd that work out for you?" asked a sarcastic Anthony.
"Better than you'd guess from looking around. After we started to figure out how the infected function, it got a lot easier to clear out areas of them. A little hockey gear in the right places goes a long way to keeping their teeth off you," said Devlin as he tapped the padding on his arm. "After a while, we had turned this place into a small fortress, thought it prudent to tell people in need how to get to it."
"And you named it the Citadel?" asked Jet.
"Sorta," said Devlin with a shrug. "When we first went to write the signs, we were just going to say 'Cityplex Towers'; that's the name of the building. But it was a pain in the ass to fit that on tiny road signs, then someone suggested we call it the Citadel, so we ran with it."
"What is this building for?" asked Clem as she gazed up at the ominous golden towers. "It looks so… weird."
"Yeah, we had people coming to it without the signs because of that," noted Devlin as he looked over his shoulder. "Supposedly it was an office building. Whatever it was, it was handy to us, at least for a while."
"What about being self-sufficient?" asked Sin. "I overheard a couple of high-ranking Marines claim Tulsa was hoarding things they need for farms."
"Oh, I guess word of that did get out after all, hardly surprising. At first, the military command didn't really care we were staying in Tulsa. One AWOL recon boat was hardly a priority in the hell that was breaking out all around, especially since we were keeping in touch with the Chief's CO's in New Orleans.
"The original plan was just to hunker down until reinforcements arrived, but the updates we were getting over the radio sounded worse every day, if we got any at all. When the power went out is when people really started panicking; things were scary enough without being plummeted into darkness. But we lucked up when someone told us they had worked at the Keystone Dam and said he thought he could fix it."
"Did he?" asked an intrigued Sin.
"Eventually. It wasn't nearly as simple as he thought it would be. The Chief ended up asking the population for anyone else who had any kind of expertise, and we did find some who worked with electricity. It turned into a month long project, with us having to repair lines and take down other ones for some reason. I don't know, one of our 'experts' told us where to go and what to do and we just did it, hoping they knew what they were doing."
"It sounds like they were converting what you had here into a microgrid," speculated Sin.
"Microgrid?"
"A grid independent from one of the major interconnections," explained Sin.
"What's an interconnection?" asked Patty.
"The power grid in the United States is primarily split into two massive networks called the Eastern and Western Interconnections, which are made up of all the smaller grids in those regions. Since they're interconnected, problems with one can affect many other grids hooked into it."
"Problems like dead people fucking up power plants?" asked Anthony.
"You wouldn't even need that much," said Sin as he shook his head. "A software bug in a single station in Ohio was responsible for the blackout in the northeast that left over fifty million people without power a while back."
"Jesus," said Patty. "Hearing that, I'm surprised the power stayed on even a week in Miami."
"I'm guessing you're some kind of expert yourself," noted Devlin.
"I was a production supervisor at an oil refinery; first in Houston, then in Port Arthur after the outbreak started. Electrical engineering is something that has always interested me though since we are, or were, so dependent on electricity. Speaking of which, you said you eventually got the hydroelectric plant working?"
"Felt like Christmas, seeing all those lights come on after a month with no power," said Devlin, a slight smile escaping his lips. "We still had a mess of work after that to keep it that way, but yeah, it worked."
"That's impressive, converting the infrastructure into a microgrid under these conditions," complimented Sin. "Even with its own interconnection, Houston was plagued by outages even in the early days. After a few months, they weren't even diverting electricity to the residential areas anymore."
"Wait a minute, Houston has its own interconnection?" asked Anthony.
"Of course not," said Sin. "The state of Texas does… or did."
"Why does it get one?"
"I think it was to avoid federal regulations or something," recalled Sin. "Whatever the reason, it's irrelevant now."
"If you had electricity, and could kill the walkers, what went wrong?" asked Clem. "Where did everyone go?"
"Well, with the power back on, we were able to reach New Orleans again on the radio. Despite us technically disobeying orders, they were happy to hear from the Chief again. We started getting updates on how some of the other cities were doing, which didn't sound good. Then we got new orders to come downriver and deliver some things to New Orleans."
"What kinds of things?" asked Sin.
"Food, fuel, certain medicines," listed Devlin. "Supplies basically. We had plenty at the time, so we loaded up a boat for them."
"Are you sure they were going to New Orleans?" asked Sin.
"The Chief and I took the boat back downriver ourselves."
"When?" asked Clem.
"It was around the end of the first summer into this nightmare," recalled Devlin. "God was it good seeing home again; shame about what happened next."
"What happened next?"
"After we delivered everything, the Chief was asked to report to her commanding officers. What she told me…"
"What did she say?" asked Sin.
"Nothing at first, she was dead quiet. It wasn't until we got a ways up the river did she finally start talking to me." Devlin took a deep breath. "She told me that the original plan had changed, and instead of keeping order on the mainland, they said our new priority was to move things they requested down to New Orleans."
"Why?" asked Clementine.
"The mainland?" repeated Sin. "You mean the entire country?"
"Who's they?" asked Anthony.
"The government, I assume. Someone was still giving out orders to anyone who could maintain radio contact, but nobody could tell us from who anymore."
"And you people were still following them?" growled Anthony. "They… they told you to abandon us and you actually did it!"
"The Chief didn't," stated Devlin proudly. "And according to her, they didn't say they were abandoning the people in so many words, but reading between the lines…" Devlin trailed off as he rubbed his forehead. "She told them about what we had been doing in Tulsa, and all they came back with was a list of things they said other cities needed that they wanted us to provide. She asked them which ones, they started listing off a bunch of smaller cities, one of which being Little Rock."
"So?"
"Little Rock is on the Arkansas River, we passed it on our way to and from Tulsa. When the Chief pointed this out to them, and that we could just deliver the things they needed right to Little Rock instead of dragging it all the way to New Orleans just for them to drag back upriver, they got very cross with her, told her to obey her orders and stop asking questions."
"Geez, the military telling you shut up and do what you're told," said Anthony. "Who could have ever predicted that?"
"Yeah, well, after spending over a month just trying to keep Tulsa together, the Chief didn't feel like blindly falling orders, so we actually went ashore when we reached Little Rock this time."
"And?" asked Clem.
"It was one big open graveyard, except a lot of the bodies were still moving," spoke Devlin in a hushed voice. "There probably hadn't been anyone left alive there for weeks. Or if there were, they sure as hell weren't using the riverfront anymore, which I don't know how else they were expecting to get supplies there."
"They lied," concluded Clementine. "They weren't sending supplies to other cities."
"We only shipped things out of the harbor in Port Arthur, nothing ever came into it," realized a very irate Sin. "Whatever they wanted from Tulsa, it wasn't coming to Houston or anywhere it was needed."
"Yeah, the Chief came to the same conclusion," said Devlin.
"I spent over a year producing fuel for shipments that I was told was being used for rescue operations," sneered Sin. "But when I met them, they said none of them had ever seen the military, except for her." Sin gestured to Patty. "And she said that Miami never once received supplies of any kind either; they never intended to rescue any of us."
"Maybe once upon a time they did. Like I said, plans changed quickly in those first few days," reminded Devlin. "But by the time we had returned to New Orleans, the only people the Chief's CO's were interested in was the ones on their list."
"List?" asked Clem.
"In addition to asking for supplies, they gave the Chief a list of people they were also looking for."
"What kind of people?" spoke Anthony, his statement sounding more like an accusation than a question.
"There were only three names on it. After we got back, we found out all three were the family of some Senator or something, but nobody had seen them since shit hit the fan, so it ended up being a bust."
"Why did they want those people?" asked Sarah.
"Ain't it obvious? Some jackass politician gave the order to get his family to safety," declared Anthony. "The rest of us were left to rot."
"Probably, unless you worked in a field they wanted," said Devlin.
"What does that mean?" asked Patty.
"Those were the only names on the list, but there were also instructions to look for people in a few particular professions. Doctors was a big one, but they said they were looking for people in a couple of certain scientific fields as well. The Chief told me her CO's were surprised we didn't already have a list of everyone and what their occupations were, but then they remembered we weren't actually one of the units sent to maintain order, so we never got those orders."
"They wanted a list of what people's jobs were?" Devlin nodded at Jet.
"Which people?" asked Clem.
"Everyone still alive in Tulsa, I think."
"Holy shit," swore Patty. "I remember about a week after the Army first came to Miami, they went door to door, asking everyone what people's names were and how many were in a house. I thought they were just doing it to keep track of everybody, but they also asked what I did for a living."
"They did the same thing in Houston for us," added Sin.
"When I told them I was a mechanic, they started asking me about how much experience I had. I just told them I only worked in my dad's shop for a few summers and they stopped asking me questions and left."
"They did that to me as well, except they asked me a lot of questions," said Sin. "Where I had gotten my degree, everywhere I had worked before, what I specifically did at each refinery I had been employed at. It was like they were interviewing me for a job."
"And they gave you a job a month later," realized Jet.
"So you could refine oil for them," concluded Anthony. "Which they shipped off to wherever they took anyone else they wanted or needed."
"They asked this stuff only a week in," reminded Patty. "They had already decided to ditch all of us by then?"
"I don't know; I hope not. I want to hope this wasn't planned out like this from the beginning, but I can't be sure of that," spoke a weary Devlin. "What we do know is the Chief started listening in on any military frequencies that were still broadcasting, and she spotted a disturbing pattern. Everyone was being asked to ship things to New Orleans, but nothing was ever going out from there, at least not on the channels we listened in on."
"They were siphoning off everything they could get from the mainland," realized an infuriated Sin. "Like a parasite slowly leeching its host to death."
"The Chief thought the same thing, and they were piling demands onto us, including bringing them things for farms like you had mentioned. So, she stopped answering the radio, and ordered us to do the same. She kind of figured they would eventually think she, and by extension, Tulsa, was dead, and they'd leave us alone."
"They were at least aware of your actions," said Sin. "Rumors of Tulsa disobeying the military started circulating in Houston a couple of months after martial law was established."
"Yeah, they must have heard about it in other cities as well, because we had people migrating here from all over the region, thinking Tulsa was some kind of haven, which it was far from, but the Chief liked a challenge, and boy did she get one." Devlin noticed Patty removing a cigarette from her pocket. "You mind if I have one of those?"
"Um, sure." Patty tossed Devlin the pack.
"Geez, is this your last one?" Patty nodded. "You sure?"
"Go ahead," shrugged Patty. "I was just gonna have to quit after that one unless I found some more anyway."
"I really appreciate it." Patty tossed Devlin her lighter, and the man lit the cigarette. He took a long, slow drag off it before blowing out a small cloud of smoke, which irritated Clem's nostrils. "Okay, anyway, expecting no help from the rest of the military, and with more people flooding in looking for help, we dug into Tulsa and tried to make it work, and for a while it did. Some of the people who migrated here treated us like heroes just for letting them go outside."
"The military never wanted us to go outside," recalled Jet. "They always said it was too dangerous."
"It was no different in Miami," added Patty. "I think it just made things easier for them if we stayed out of their way."
"Maybe, but we found teaching people how to kill the infected actually made things a little easier for us. Most people don't go near them if they can avoid it, which means they don't know much about them. Giving them a rundown on some basic tactics, as well as clearing up rumors about the infected did a lot to keep strays from wandering in and killing people. And again, some of them were treating us like heroes for teaching them.
"After a while, the infected became less of a problem and simple logistics was more of an issue. Rationing food fairly, finding enough space to house everyone, settling disputes, figuring out what to do with people causing problems; crime didn't go away just because the dead started coming back."
"What you'd do?" asked Clem, fearful of what the answer would be.
"We usually let the police handle skirmishes and other incidents, but the Chief insisted we deal with the punishment aspect of crime and punishment. She tapped a few people who used to work as lawyers and one who was a judge to set up a basic court of law, and one of the cops who used to work homicide agreed to be our chief investigator. It was crude, and some people didn't like our decisions, but it was the best we could do."
"How did you punish people?" asked a nervous Clem.
"Depends on the crime. If someone was too much trouble, we would sentence them to leave, force them if we have to. But there were a few people, not many, that we didn't feel right just letting loose on whoever was still out there."
"You killed them," stated Anthony, sounding sure of himself.
"Like I said, some people didn't like our decisions, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances," said Devlin, regret hanging in his voice.
"What about stealing?" asked Clem. "What did you do to people who stole something?"
"Take back what they stole and lock them in jail for a month or so if they stole a lot," listed Devlin. "If we thought we could trust them, sometimes we'd let them knock down their sentence a bit by putting them to work."
"Doing what?" asked an anxious Sarah.
"Tedious crap that needed doing; sorting, stacking, taking inventory. If they kept getting caught stealing we'd eventually kick them out."
"Did you ever whip them?"
"What?" asked a confused Devlin as he turned to Clementine.
"Whip them," she repeated. "You know, those rope things you beat people with…"
"No, why the hell would we…" Devlin's eye widened as Clem slumped over in place. She turned away from the man, only to notice Jet staring at her in disbelief. "Jesus Christ… no wonder some people told us this was a haven."
"But what happened to it?" asked an impatient Sin. "Why is it in ruins now?"
"Well, we got by for a while, but after the first winter food became a lot harder to find and weren't getting nearly as much mileage out of our gas anymore."
"It goes bad," informed Clem.
"Yeah, we eventually figured that out. Despite our trip to New Orleans, we held out hope that we were wrong and eventually there would be some kind of operation to help restore order, at least in some areas. But everything we heard over the radio, what little there was anymore, just kept reinforcing our original belief that no one was coming, and everybody left here were just winding down what they had left."
"So you just ran out food," said Patty with a sigh. "Like everywhere."
"No, not then at least. We still had a good supply saved up, but working through that second summer really made us all realize it wasn't going to last in the long run. More people kept showing up in Tulsa, and they all had to eat, and every day. That's when we approached the Osage."
"What's that?" asked Sarah.
"There's an Indian Reservation just north of here, called the Osage Nation. We'd made contact with them not long after this started, and they mostly just wanted us to keep away. They were already used to kinda being on their own before this happened and we had our hands full, so we just kept our distance. Sometimes a few of them would come into town, swap information, trade for stuff.
"After over a year though, they had their own share of problems piling up, but food wasn't one of them since they had some farms they managed to keep going. Our Chief met with one of theirs and we worked out a deal; trading tools, medicine, and the like for food in the short term, and fixing the lines to restore electricity to their nearest town in exchange for them letting us use an area to farm on in the long term.
"It was too late into the season to get proper farms going for us, but we had enough food to last one more winter, so we started lining up volunteers and collecting everything they would need. We would work out the details during the winter, then start growing a reliable food supply come next spring. We even started figuring out how we could preserve things to keep during the winter after."
"You mean, like making jams and jellies?" asked Sarah.
"Yeah, amongst other things. I know the Chief talked to someone who said we'd need pressure—"
"Pressure cookers," finished Sarah.
"We also talked to some of the Osage about it, and they had their own contributions to the plan. It really felt like it was going to work."
"So what went wrong?" asked an anxious Clem.
"Oklahoma City went wrong," Devlin's voice dropped into a much less friendly growl upon saying that. "The troop deployment there had used up their own food and left town behind to find a new source."
"And you were that new source," realized Anthony.
"They ran into us in the early fall, around the beginning of September."
"When we left Spokeston," Clem whispered to herself.
"At first, we managed to keep things civil, even reworked our rationing to include feeding them," said Devlin. "The radio was almost dead by then, so it was helpful getting some news about the rest of the country again. They told us all about how Oklahoma City got a huge influx of people from Dallas when the troops there left."
"They came to Houston, or at least some of them did," informed Sin.
"Yeah, they sent some people of their own down that way to try and recruit help with Oklahoma City, they apparently didn't get any."
"It sounds like most of the troops were left to rot with the rest of us," noted Anthony. "Guess they're just as expendable."
"That was what most of us had come to believe by then," confirmed Devlin, sorrow hanging in the words he spoke.
"So that's why the military has been fighting each other," concluded Patty. "They're as fucked as we are."
"Some of them," corrected Devlin. "Like I said, I don't know what happened to the Air Force, and the Navy were clearly coordinating with whoever was still giving us orders. But most of the people they sent out to keep a grip on the cities?" Devlin took another drag off his cigarette. "In a way, I understand why they did it, even if I still fucking hate them for going through with it."
"What'd they do?" asked Clementine.
"The commanding officer of the Oklahoma City troops demanded more food for his people, accused us of feeding him just scraps. The Chief tried explaining to him what we had would have to last all winter, he refused to accept that, tried to pull rank on her, she said she didn't answer to him."
"And then what?"
"He stood down from the Chief… then that night they attacked," recalled Devlin with a scowl. "A coordinated strike, starting with the dam to kill our lights, then quickly spreading out in two directions, one unit north into Osage territory, and the other into West Tulsa." Devlin wiped his eyes and took a long drag off his cigarette. "It was a fucking slaughter; platoons of heavily armed soldiers rolling into neighborhoods and shooting everyone in sight."
"They went into neighborhoods and… just started killing everyone?" asked a horrified Jet.
"The Chief played up our troop level, a lot, when she talked to their CO, hoping it would dissuade them from attacking us. Maybe that led them to think all the houses leading up to our M.O.B were full of soldiers, or maybe they didn't give a shit."
"It doesn't matter," stated Sarah. "Even if you had more soldiers, that wouldn't make them attacking you right."
"No, but maybe they would have at least thought twice about pulling the trigger on everyone in sight," said Devlin, his voice cracking as he spoke. "There were a lot of long days, but that was the longest night of my life…"
"So that's it," concluded a devastated Sin. "Everything you built… it was destroyed in a single attack."
"Not quite," mumbled Devlin. "It wasn't easy, but we fought them off, down to the last man. I still remember the look on the fucker's face when he surrendered, and what it looked like when we put a bullet through it."
"You killed him?" asked Jet. "Even though he surrendered?"
"Like I said, there were some people we didn't feel right just letting loose on the rest of the world," Devlin told Jet without a trace of regret. "He was one of them, trust me."
"If the attack didn't wipe out Tulsa, what did?"
"The fucking rest of Oklahoma City," said Devlin. "They briefly let it slip it had been overrun by the dead, what they didn't tell us was that most of them had followed them out of town."
"A herd," realized Clementine.
"Yeah, in retrospect, it may have been one of the reasons they attacked us, knowing that it was probably close behind them. The fuckers may have even created those infected by slaughtering all the people who came out of Dallas for all we know.
"Either way, all the gunfire and explosions, it drew them right towards us. We used up most of our ammo in the fighting, and we hadn't seen that many infected in one place since arriving at Tulsa over a year ago. The Chief made the call, and we retreated back over the river while we still could, back here to the Citadel.
"By sunrise, we could see what we were dealing with, and realized there wasn't any way we could retake West Tulsa. We tried going north to meet with the Osage, only to find they had been hit even harder by the OKC troops than Tulsa, probably because they weren't as well armed as us. If there were any survivors, we don't know where they went.
"We only had a few supplies left at the Citadel, and we had cleaned out the whole city over the last year, so the only option left was to take who was left, and hope for the best downriver." Devlin dropped what remained of his cigarette on the pavement, then stamped out the butt. "And now you know what happened."
"But why are you still here?" asked Clem.
"We knew Tulsa had a reputation by then, so the Chief wanted a few of us to stay back, intercept anyone thinking there was still safety here, then help them get out of here. Each time a new group of people arrived, one of us would go with them downriver, try to get them somewhere safe."
"And you volunteered to stay the longest?" asked Patty.
"Actually, I drew the short straw… three times in a row," said Devlin with a trace of irritation. "The last group of people before you arrived over two months ago, and a friend of mine took them on a boat downriver. After that, it was just me. Like I said, I was really starting to think I was going to die here before you people showed up. I guess now at least I'm going to see home again."
"What do you mean?" asked Clem.
"There's no safety here, and I'm guessing you don't know of anywhere else to go either, so our best bet is to go to New Orleans. I've got a boat anchored south of here and—"
"Wait, New Orleans?" asked Patty. "We can't go there."
"It's a gamble if they'll even let us in, but the Chief said she'd send someone back if they turned her and the others away, and no one ever came back, so—"
"New Orleans is gone."
Anthony's blunt interruption stunned Devlin. The man's jaw dropped and his eyes widened in shock as he processed what he just heard. "What do you mean… gone?" he asked in a quiet voice.
"Gone," repeated Anthony. "It's just one big ghost town now."
"We went there a little over two weeks ago," reported Patty. "It was abandoned."
"Everyone… everyone in New Orleans is dead?" asked Devlin disbelief.
"We don't know, the whole city was… empty," said Clem.
"There were no bodies, or lurkers, just… nothing," added Sarah.
"The whole city though?" asked Devlin. "I mean, how much of it did you check?"
"We mostly stuck to the highway and viewed things from afar," said Patty.
"So you don't know then," challenged Devlin. "There could have—"
"But we did meet two soldiers who said they had come from Saint Louis," interrupted Patty. "They were asking us where the troops were, saying they had checked everywhere in town they could think for over a month, and came back with nothing."
"You're kidding." Devlin looked around. "Where are these troops now?"
"They're dead," bluntly announced Anthony.
"God damn it, I'm sorry. But why would New Orleans just be…" Devlin stopped suddenly. "Oh hell, Waterford Three."
"What's that?" asked Clem.
"The nuclear power plant just outside of New Orleans," said Devlin. "They said it had enough of whatever those use for fuel to last them for over a year… that was over a year ago."
"So they ran out of power and just left?" suggested Jet.
"Or perhaps something went wrong with the plant, or it was sabotaged," everyone turned to Sin suddenly. "The refinery I worked at was destroyed, either through sabotage or because of neglect. Do you think something similar could have happened to Waterford Three?"
"What, you mean like a meltdown?" asked a confused Devlin.
"Something like that I suppose," shrugged Sin.
"Devlin, just where is this nuclear plant?" asked Patty, sounding nervous. "I mean, you said it was outside New Orleans, right?"
"I'm pretty sure it was just off the highway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge," recalled Devlin.
"Are you fucking serious?" asked Patty.
"Yeah, but I doubt you could have gotten to it, they had taken out the bridges along the river to keep people from reaching it."
"Holy shit, we must have driven right by it," realized Patty.
"If a nuclear plant melts down, doesn't that spread radiation everywhere?" asked Jet.
"I think it depends on the nature of the meltdown," answered Sin.
"Well assume it was the worst kind," Patty told Sin. "What would happen to the people who drove by it?"
"Or were living in the city thirty miles away from it?" added Devlin.
"What does radiation do to babies?" asked an anxious Clem. "Is it like mercury poisoning?"
"I… I don't know," answered Sin bluntly.
"Which one?" asked Sarah.
"All of them," he said. "Why do you assume I would know?"
"Because you're like a scientist or something," reasoned Anthony.
"I worked in petroleum, and as a production supervisor," reminded Sin. "I'm not a nuclear physicist."
"But you gotta know something, right?" pleaded Anthony. "Like, how would we even know if we drove through radiation?"
"I… I assume you would need to use a Geiger counter," reasoned Sin.
"And where do we get one of those?" asked Clementine.
"I have no idea," stated Sin in frustration. "I don't even know if a Geiger counter could detect trace radiation absorbed by a person passing by a plant that melted down."
"But you know what radiation does to people right?" asked Anthony. "I mean, fuck, don't you like, lose your hair and get sick and die?"
"Is that true?" asked a horrified Clementine.
"Look, forget I said anything about the nuclear plant. We're focusing on the wrong thing here," stated Sin as he turned to Devlin, who looked lost in thought. "The people in New Orleans had to have gone somewhere. If it had been an attack as you described in Tulsa, there had been signs of that, bodies to find. So, where did they go?"
Devlin didn't say anything. "At Port Arthur, we were shipping out barrels of fuel after New Orleans was abandoned, and the soldiers they encountered in New Orleans also said they saw planes fly over a few days before our people got there. So, there must be somewhere in the Gulf, somewhere that supplies were being funneled to and where they could launch planes from."
Still no answer from Devlin, who just seemed content to stare down at his feet. "Look, I know this must be hard for you too," said Patty as she approached the man. "But surely you heard something that could help. I mean, when I was in Miami, we saw all these planes going south a couple of weeks into this, and then there were all these rumors about the government taking over Cuba. Did you ever hear anything about that, or anything about the Navy setting up some—"
"I didn't hear shit," swore Devlin in a quiet voice. "I know what you're asking me, but I've got nothing to tell you that I didn't already tell you."
"Great, glad we came all the fucking way up to Oklahoma to hear there are no answers," said Anthony as he threw up his arms.
"There has to be something," growled Sin through his teeth. "Wherever these supplies were going, it had to be somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico. You said you had a boat and—"
"And there ain't no way it could survive out in the Gulf," retorted Devlin. "It'd be lucky to make it downriver to New Orleans, which you've told me there was no point in going to."
"There are tons of big boats still in New Orleans," recalled Sarah. "Maybe if we went back there and got one of them to work, we—"
"I'd still have no fucking clue what to do," declared Devlin.
"I thought you were in the Coast Guard," said Anthony. "Shouldn't you know how to sail or whatever?"
"Yeah, and I know taking a bunch of people into a boat and then sailing into the Gulf, with no working navigation, is a fucking death sentence."
"Can't you, navigate by stars or something?" asked a desperate Jet.
"No, I can't."
"But we could learn," suggested Sarah. "And then—"
"And then what!" Everyone flinched as Devlin shot to his feet in an instant. "You want to go Cuba? How about Puerto Rico? Or Haiti? Or one of any of a hundred damn islands we'd have to cross a thousand miles of water to reach!"
"I… I'm…"
"Don't talk to her like that," ordered Clem through clenched teeth. "She's just trying to help. It's not her fault things are so fucked up!"
Devlin angrily stared at Clementine, but only for a moment, then the anger disappeared in a flash and was replaced with a deep look regret. "I'm sorry…" he said in a choked voice as he turned away from her. "I don't know what to tell you folks, other than I think just setting sail and hoping for the best is a bad idea."
"I remember the one time I was on Rhonda's boat," spoke Patty. "I asked her if she ever thought about just heading south into the Caribbean and hoping for the best on one of the islands out there. Both her and Howard said they rather take their chances on land then try their luck on open water without their GPS."
"Doesn't GPS use satellites?" asked Jet. "Wouldn't it still work?"
"I asked her about that and she said it started giving them wrong information a few weeks in."
"The ground monitoring stations went dark," said Devlin.
"Huh?"
"Those satellites need constant updates from the ground for GPS to work, and there all handled by five monitoring stations," explained Devlin. "We heard it over the radio that those stations went dark not long in, and we wouldn't be able to navigate by GPS anymore."
"How did people get across the ocean before that?" asked Clem.
"Stars I guess, and some other stuff I don't know how to do," shrugged Devlin. "Even if we learned, and had a seaworthy ship, I don't think it would help. Odds are, the Navy shipped everything that came into New Orleans through the Panama Canal and onto Hawaii."
"Hawaii?" repeated Clem.
"Where did you hear that rumor?" asked Sin.
"No rumor, just a guess," shrugged Devlin. "The Pacific Fleet is already headquartered in Hawaii, it's already American territory, temperature is the same all year around, lots of fertile land perfect for farming, and its isolated in the middle of the biggest ocean, where almost no one could get to it."
"Even if we could get to it, they'd probably wouldn't let us in," concluded a dismayed Patty with a shrug.
"And we can't get to it," reminded Sin. "So it's a moot point anyway."
"So now what?" asked Anthony. "Where the hell is there left to go?"
"I heard a rumor that the Marines may have been retaking the West Coast while I was in Miami. But I also heard New Orleans was important, and clearly that was out of date info."
"We could go back to Houston," suggested Jet meekly. "I mean it wasn't good, but—"
"He just told us they wouldn't help troops from another city," reminded Sin. "I doubt we'd be treated any better, and even if we were, I'm sure the city is being left to rot like all the others. From what we've gathered, it sounds like they're barely even bothering to siphon off supplies from the mainland anymore. I doubt Houston will be a priority for evacuation, especially now that the refinery is gone."
"Miami sure as hell wasn't a priority. All the troops there left by trucks and went west. If there was any plan to pull them out to Hawaii or whatever, they surely could have gotten a boat out to fucking Miami. I guess if there really was safety in Cuba or somewhere else nearby, they probably wouldn't have let the city closest to it fall apart," realized Patty.
"That might explain that battle in Mobile, where it looked the Army and Navy were fighting each other. Maybe the Army guys figured out they were being ditched, and fought back against the Navy."
"Or maybe they just wanted whatever they could get out Mobile," suggested Devlin. "Like the fuckers who attacked us."
"But what about the planes?" asked Sarah. "They couldn't have come from Hawaii. Doesn't that mean there's at least one place closer to us?"
"These planes you saw could have been from a couple of aircraft carriers anchored somewhere in the Gulf," dismissed Devlin. "Maybe left behind to monitor the mainland."
"Or protect what they considered valuable resources," said Sin. "They likely bombed Houston to prevent whoever was attacking from ever getting close to the refinery or oil fields."
"Houston was bombed?" asked Devlin in disbelief.
"Probably," said Sin.
"Definitely," corrected Jet.
"Jesus…"
"So… we're fucked," concluded Anthony, sounding uncharacteristically concerned. "I mean, we like literally missed the boat and are stuck here now. The military was only looking out for whoever was giving them orders, and it sounds like a lot of them didn't even know it, which led to them turning on each other, and by now anywhere important left we could conceivably reach is either abandoned or being torn apart. In short—"
"We're fucked," concluded Clementine, those bitter words making her frown as they passed her lips. It must have sounded as bad to the others as it did to Clem, because everyone just stood there in silence, exchanging looks of desperation and defeat until they were distracted by a new voice.
"Sounds like Omid is up," concluded Sarah as she removed the baby monitor from her belt, the toddler's crying growing louder as she did. "I'll go check on him." Sarah headed back into the Brave, leaving everyone else to ponder their fate.
"So now what?" asked Jet.
"I guess we just… what, pick a direction?" suggested Patty.
"Is that really our plan at this point?" asked Anthony.
"We don't have a plan anymore," concluded Clem.
"We'll need to make one then, and soon," insisted Sin. "We've got probably only a week's worth of food left now, maybe less, and there's none here in Tulsa."
"None we can get to." Everyone turned to Devlin.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Sin.
"Exactly that, there's no food we can get to left here in Tulsa," repeated Devlin.
"But there is food here?" asked Anthony.
"You're missing the important part, we—"
"Why can't we get to it?" asked Clementine.
"Because it's in an area overflowing with infected," said Devlin.
"We can handle walkers," boasted Patty. "Just tell us—"
"Hey, you're not hearing me; you're not getting to it, trust me," insisted Devlin.
"Why not?" challenged Clem.
"Why not? Because…" Devlin looked over his shoulder. "You know what, I can show you." Devlin started marching towards the Citadel.
"He can't just tell us?"
Clementine ignored Anthony's question and started following Devlin. Patty filed in right behind her, then Sin and Jet, then finally Anthony as well. They walked around the strange glass pyramid stationed at the front of the building, which they could see now wasn't technically a pyramid but some odd diamond shape whose bottom half disappeared from view beneath the sidewalk.
Following Tulsa's last resident through the citadel's lavish yet tacky golden lobby, up a dark stairwell, and out onto a floor that appeared halfway up the structure, the group found themselves facing a long a series of windows overlooking the river. Devlin maneuvered over to a pair of chairs and removed a set of binoculars from a small table placed between them.
"All right, see for yourselves," said Devlin as he handed the binoculars to Sin. "Across the river is a shopping center."
"I see it." Sin briefly studied something in the distance before handing the binoculars over to Jet.
"We used that area as our M.O.B."
"M.O.B?" asked Jet as he looked out the window before handing the binoculars to Anthony.
"Main operating base," explained Devlin. "We used the Sam's Club over there as our main food storehouse."
"And there was food left there when you were attacked?" asked Anthony as he passed the binoculars to Patty.
"Yeah, like I said we were saving for winter again."
"So there must be a lot," said Patty as she looked through the binoculars. "I mean, you were feeding a whole town. Just seven—I mean eight of us, it'd probably last—"
"But like I said, there ain't no getting to it." Patty passed the binoculars to Clementine. Looking out over the river, she spotted the back of a series of buildings she presumed was the shopping center. "Trust me, I've had a lot of time to think about this."
Searching just past the edge of the building, Clem spotted walkers, tons of walkers. The entire parking lot was filled with the clueless corpses ambling about aimlessly, often into each other. She hadn't seen so many of them in one place since leaving Savannah, and as she continued to scan the area she just kept finding more in every place she looked.
"How many are they?" asked Clem.
"Hundreds, maybe even thousands," said Devlin. "I've kind of hoped that I'd get lucky and something loud enough would just draw them all off, like a thunderstorm or a tornado. The one time I'm wishing for shit weather would be the one time I don't get it."
"What about gunfire?" asked Clem.
"We tried luring them off one of the broken bridges with gunshots after we got out of West Tulsa, but I think when you get that many that close together, the ones in the middle have a harder time hearing over all the damn moaning or whatever because only a few handfuls near the edge would follow the noise," explained Devlin. "They were a lot more spread out when they first filed into Tulsa after the fighting."
"I swear the fuckers just like grouping up with each other to spite us," said Anthony. "As if they know there's strength in numbers."
"Well whatever the reason, they're here now," said Devlin as Clem lowered the binoculars. "Now do you believe me when I say we can't get to the damn food?" Everyone looked at Devlin, but none of them answered him. "Well? You don't actually plan to go over there do you? I mean… how the hell would you get past all those things?"
"Give us a minute," said Clementine. "We're thinking."