The Remaining: Fractured Part 36

"Hey!" a voice hollered.

Heads turned towards Lee.

Adrenaline surged through Lee. He twisted rapidly towards the sound of the shout, which had come from directly behind him. It was a face he recognized. A thirty-something man with dark hair and a stern face. He was smiling broadly at Lee, and that confused Lee more than anything else.

"Captain Harden!" the man said, then raised his voice louder. "Hey! Captain Harden's awake! Get Captain Tomlin!"

Lee stared at the man, still not convinced that he was friendly. "Nate?" he breathed. He was almost positive that it was Nate. Nate Malone. The first guy to come forward and volunteer when Lee had come up with his plan to blow all the bridges along the Roanoke River. But Nate had gone with Harper, right? He'd gone with Harper's group, north towards the town of Eden. What was he doing here? For that matter, where the f.u.c.k was "here" and what was Lee doing there?

And where was his rifle?

He wanted his rifle badly.

"Lee!" a voice called out. Familiar.

He turned and found Captain Tomlin walking briskly towards him. He was flanked by two other familiar faces-Old Man Hughes and Jacob-and Lee was suddenly certain that this was just another dream. This was just some, less-damaging reality that his warped brain had conjured up to avoid facing the fact that he was in an infected den, waiting to be eaten alive. It had to be, because he couldn't figure out why those three men would be together in this mysterious place.

Old Man Hughes hung back a bit, his skinny old arms folded across his chest, the beaten up trucker's cap still perched on a head with barely any hair left on it. Jacob and Tomlin continued forward and they both knelt down next to Lee, Tomlin on Lee's right and Jacob on the left. Lee still did not trust his mind to tell him the truth and he found his eyes wandering to Tomlin's rifle, which was strapped to him and dangling at his side. He wondered if he could get it away from Tomlin.

Jacob s.h.i.+ned a light in his eyes. He spoke very clearly and deliberately. "Can you tell me your name?"

Lee stared at Jacob, not sure whether he should go along with this or not. Still utterly confused.

Jacob and Tomlin exchanged a concerned glance.

"Lee Harden," Lee said, cautiously, and his voice came out like the rattling of a jar of rocks.

The two men looked relieved.

Jacob: "Do you know where you are right now?"

Lee looked irritated. "I have no f.u.c.king idea where I am! What the f.u.c.k is going on right now?"

Tomlin put a hand on Lee's shoulder and smiled. "Easy, Buddy. We just need to see how bad your head injury is."

"It's fine."

Jacob spoke again. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Lee had to think about that one. "Uh...driving, I think. A van." His eyes suddenly juked between the two men kneeling next to him. "Where's my dog? Where's Deuce?"

Tomlin nodded, his voice relaxed. Soothing. "We got him, Lee. He's got a busted leg, but we got him and he'll be fine."

"So you remember driving?" Jacob asked. "Do you remember the accident?"

Lee blinked rapidly. "Uh...I don't...yes. There was a car in the road."

"Do you remember what happened then?"

Lee s.h.i.+fted, growing frustrated. "Enough of the f.u.c.king questions! Can one of you tell me what the f.u.c.k is going on right now? Where the h.e.l.l am I and how'd I get here?"

"You're just outside of Lillington," Jacob said. "That's where you had the accident."

"I know that."

"Good," Jacob smiled. "Your brain isn't as jangled as we thought. Although you did punch Nate in the face when he was trying to pull you out of the wrecked van." Jacob and Tomlin both looked slightly amused.

Tomlin nodded. "And you tried to stab him."

"So we were a little concerned about your mental state," Jacob said plainly.

Lee looked back over his shoulder at Nate. The man pointed to his cheek, which Lee could see was just slightly swollen. Lee shook his head. "I, uh...I don't remember that."

Nate shrugged. "It's okay. You were barely there, Captain. I'm just glad I got the knife out of your hand before you gutted me."

Lee closed his eyes. "I still...I'm not..."

"Like Jacob said, we're just outside of Lillington right now," Tomlin took up the reins of explanation in a slow, even tone. "Not a whole lot is going to make sense to you right now. No one knows where you've been, or how much you've missed, but I'm going to start from the beginning, okay? And I'm gonna tell you some s.h.i.+t you probably don't want to hear. But you're gonna hear it anyway."

Lee swallowed. "Okay."

"When you were gone, Jerry took over Camp Ryder. He did it with the help of Professor White from Fuquay-Varina, who we believe to be dead right now. When Bus realized what was going on, he told me to get out of Camp Ryder and try to hook up with the other outposts, to let them know what happened, because Jerry severed the radio communications."

Lee's eyes opened wider, his lips compressing tighter. But he said nothing.

Tomlin continued. "Old Man Hughes had a good idea what was going on when Professor White and his crew, who had typically refused any guns and ammunition from you, suddenly wanted all they could get, and left OP Lillington loaded down for a firefight."

Lee put his head in his hands. He could feel that they had wrapped his head wound with fresh bandages. He closed his eyes, grit his teeth. "I gave them those f.u.c.king guns."

"There's no way you could have known, Lee." Tomlin looked at the ground. "But when the radios went down over the Camp Ryder Hub, Old Man Hughes saw the writing on the wall and decided to get the h.e.l.l out of Lillington. He packed everybody up within the hour and moved them across the river into this warehouse. But he kept an eye on Lillington, to see who would show up looking for them. Put a scout on a dirt bike in the woods right outside of OP Lillington. I was the first one that came looking for them, and they brought me in. And that's essentially how the rest got here, too."

Lee stared at the people all around them. "Who all is here?"

"Old Man Hughes' group from Dunn," Tomlin listed. "Couple families that got out of Camp Ryder right when Jerry took over. Jacob and a group of survivors he met over at Smithfield. And Nate and Devon, as of yesterday."

Lee looked behind him at Nate. "But aren't you supposed to be with Harper?"

Nate nodded. "When the radios went down, Harper sent me and Devon back to see what was going on at Camp Ryder. The scout recognized us when we made our way through OP Lillington."

From behind Nate, Devon came jogging up. He smiled excitedly, held a hand up in greeting. "Good to see you awake, Captain."

Lee nodded at him, seeming a bit overwhelmed. Then he turned back to Tomlin. "So, what the f.u.c.k's been going on at Camp Ryder?" Lee asked. "Has anybody been able to get in? Has anyone made contact with them? Do we know what the h.e.l.l Jerry's doing?"

Tomlin raised a placating hand. "Relax, Buddy, I got you covered. I've been watching the place on a nightly basis, and in fact last night I was able to make contact with Marie."

"You talked to Marie?"

Tomlin shook his head. "No, we exchanged notes. But it's the first communications we've been able to make with anyone inside Camp Ryder. We're trying to determine how many friendly people we have inside the fence."

"What about Angela?" Lee asked, and then almost seemed embarra.s.sed by his own question. "And Bus? And the other people that didn't support Jerry?"

Tomlin looked unsure. "Most everybody that supported you guys went with either Harper or LaRouche. There's not a whole lot of people left in Camp Ryder that aren't supporting Jerry. But I've been able to put eyes on Angela. She seems okay. Both of the kids, too." Tomlin rubbed his knuckles. "Bus I don't know about. I haven't been able to get eyes on him. I don't know if he's even still in Camp Ryder or..." he glanced up at Lee. "...or if he's even still alive."

Lee's mind was pulled in a million different directions. He pulled his knees up, felt the pain and stiffness in his muscles and joints and the nearly overwhelming hunger overtaking him, but he tried to focus, tried to apply himself to the problem at hand. "Okay. We've got to make contact with Marie again. Get an idea of how many people she can have armed and ready to go..."

"Lee." Tomlin looked at him, hesitantly.

Lee looked at his friend and comrade, watched the other man's eyes track up to Lee's head, to his injuries. Unconsciously, Lee raised a hand and touched the bandaging again.

"It was Eddie Ramirez, wasn't it?" he said quietly.

Lee nodded slowly.

Tomlin rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry, brother. I tried to tell you on the radio, but Jerry had already disconnected it. I don't know if I would've been too late or not. But...I'm sorry."

"It's not..." Lee trailed off.

Tomlin found some dirt on the knee of his pants and rubbed at it with his palm. "Lee, I know this is a lot to process for you, but I have to ask you something else."

Lee waited.

"When we found you, we looked all through your pockets and we couldn't find the GPS. We were taking some contact from infected, so we didn't stick around to check the van." Tomlin looked cautiously hopeful. "Could you have dropped the GPS in the van? Do we need to go back for it?"

In all of the running and shooting and escaping that had happened since Shumate had captured him, Lee had not thought about the GPS. His only thought had been about how he was going to get back to friendly territory, and the problem of how he was going to recover that little piece of technology that meant everything to him had simply slipped into the background.

Suddenly, jarringly, it was there again. Right there in the middle of everything.

Lee stared at Tomlin, and Tomlin stared back. And they knew each other well enough that Lee did not need to speak the actual words to Tomlin-he already knew the truth. He could see it written in the dread that lurked behind Lee's eyes.

"f.u.c.k..." Tomlin suddenly stood up.

Lee clasped his hands together, knuckles white. "Eddie took it after he shot me."

Tomlin tilted his head to the ceiling, swore again, loudly.

"There's gotta be something we can do to get it back," Lee said. "I mean, you were working with Darabie to take me down, right? Didn't he give you guys a rendezvous point or something? Don't you know what route he'll be travelling, or some way to catch up with him and get it back?"

"Lee." Tomlin faced him. "He's got a three day head start on us. He could be f.u.c.king anywhere. I was never given any special rendezvous points or any s.h.i.+t like that. I know that his a.s.s is probably heading to Tennessee, but you already know that much. And there are dozens of roads that cross the Appalachians-and that's a.s.suming he's in a vehicle. If he's on foot...then f.u.c.k me," he muttered. "This is bad."

Lee grit his teeth. "There's gotta be some way we can get it back."

Tomlin shook his head. "Ain't gonna f.u.c.kin' happen. We're not gonna catch Eddie, and chances are that Darabie's already taken that s.h.i.+t and turned it over to President Briggs, if they didn't just destroy it outright. And we're not getting in those bunkers without it, Lee. That's the whole point of 'em."

All this time Lee had thought that somehow, Tomlin would know how to get the GPS back. He wasn't sure why he'd latched onto that idea, maybe just the stress of his situation. Or maybe it was just the destructive reality of the alternative. Maybe it was that he just couldn't bring himself to accept what amounted to complete and utter failure. Rock bottom. Falling down a cliff with sheer sides-no way to get back up. No way to make up the ground lost.

Permanent.

Irrevocable.

A supreme f.u.c.k-up.

Almost every problem a human being encounters through their life has a remedy. Perhaps that remedy is unpleasant, or perhaps it is difficult. Maybe that problem is not remedied simply because that person sees the remedy as worse than the problem. But there is always the hope. Always the possibility. Always a chance, however slight, to make things right.

But this?

You couldn't remedy this. You couldn't work your way around it, you couldn't overpower it or overcome it. It was a sudden, jolting paradigm s.h.i.+ft, a jarring ninety-degree turn in reality that made him question those deep parts of himself that he'd taken for granted for so long. Because if he wasn't Captain Harden, coordinator for North Carolina, there to reestablish civilization, then what the h.e.l.l was he? Just another guy with a gun?

Lee looked around him, saw the faces of the people as they quietly watched this exchange, this quiet crumbling of men and their ideals. The faces of these people that looked at him and Tomlin like they were some sort of saviors. That somehow everything would be okay in the end, just because they were there.

Lee lowered his gaze to the ground. He kept trying to think his way out of it, but all those thoughts just led down dead-end roads. What was left? Not much. Just some desperate people, searching for another day. Trying to get through with their lives, and the lives of their loved ones. And Lee was no different from them.

"What are you gonna do?" Lee asked, rhetorically.

Tomlin just stood silently.

"Not much you can do," Lee answered his own question. There were other things he could have said in that moment, perhaps something edifying to the others. Perhaps a grand speech about never giving up, never giving in. But it would all be a lie at that moment, because that was not what Lee was feeling. He wasn't exactly sure what he was feeling. He'd just been given a giant load of Bad f.u.c.king News and he was still picking his way through it, processing it a little bit at a time.

Instead he just looked around with a frown. "I need some food. And my weapons."

Tomlin eyed him, his jaw muscles bunching. He seemed perplexed. Maybe he felt Lee should react stronger. And maybe Lee should have. Maybe all of that would come later, and Lee even suspected that it would. Nothing this damaging could ever be fully felt so soon after learning about it. The human brain did not like to be shocked, and it would only allow you to process it in small increments. The bigger the shock, the smaller increments it was sliced into.

Finally, Tomlin nodded. "Yeah. I'll get them for you."

"Are you going out to Camp Ryder tonight?"

"Yes."

"I'm going with you."

Tomlin gave him a sidelong glance. "I think it'd be best if you rested."

Lee shook his head. "I'll get a couple more hours in." He stopped and Tomlin looked at him, saw how dead serious he was about it. Lee took a long, slow breath. "We've got nothing else now, Brian. All we've got is Camp Ryder. It's our best chance right now, and I think if we can get it back, we might be okay. And I'm not gonna sleep through that."

Tomlin nodded once. "Alright then."

When Tomlin left to get his weapons and some food and water, Jacob stayed there next to Lee and set right back into checking Lee's wounds, as though there had never been any interruption to his work. Jacob took his pulse, s.h.i.+ned lights in his eyes. Took off his bandages, replaced them. Frowned the whole time in general concentration. He sniffed the bandage from Lee's head and didn't make too bad of a face, so Lee took some comfort in that-maybe the infection was on the retreat.

"You're a f.u.c.king wreck, Captain," Jacob said as he pulled a bottle of saline solution out of a little blue satchel at his side. He took a large, plastic syringe and drew out a quant.i.ty of the saline solution, bending Lee's head down and beginning to squirt the solution in high-pressure streams along the wound to irrigate it. "You show a magnificent propensity for hurting yourself."

Lee winced, the irrigation feeling less like gentle saline and more like lemon juice. "Oh, trust me. I try to avoid it."

"Here," Jacob handed him a small cloth to dab at the fluid running down his face. He continued on in silence for a moment, then leaned back with a heavy sigh. "No, you don't. Men like you..." He looked sad. "Men like Captain Mitch.e.l.l. You just keep pus.h.i.+ng until you're dead."

It sounded like a simple observation, but felt more like an admonishment.

Lee said nothing.

Jacob continued irrigating the wound a bit, then inspected it closely. He pulled out some fresh bandages, began wrapping Lee's head. Lee watched the expressions on Jacob's face cycle through concentration, into sadness, into something like anger. Like he was stuck in the middle of all three.