The Last Bastion Read online

  Based on the area’s prior arrivals for spring, Michael – the 66-year-old ad hoc leader of the Blenders, whose snow-white hair and goatee made him look a little like the singer, Michael McDonald – was betting on the first mild day not arriving until well into April. Instead, it hit during the first week of March. And with it came biters – tons of them. They roved the landscape in and around Lyons at will. There appeared to be no coordinated response from the government, the armed forces, or any sort of organized local militia or vigilante groups as the Blenders had hoped. The one positive was that as long as the Blenders kept quiet in their tower bastion, the biters seemed content to ignore them.

  But biters weren’t the only issue the survivors inside the tower were combating. Due to their duration of stay within the tower, a combination of dead biters and raw sewage littered the perimeter of the tower’s exterior grounds. This contaminated area was thawing quickly in the warmer weather, and the smells that came with it were fast becoming unbearable.

  “I thought we’d have more time,” Michael said from his position near another closed window. “It looks like our schedule for departing will have to be moved up. We need to get our remaining supplies packed soon.”

  “Well, at least we have our timeframe set. We were uncertain about that before,” Christine Franko said.

  “Yeah, but I was thinking we’d have more like two or three weeks, not just one,” Michael shook his head.

  “So now we have our timeframe and location to shoot for. But then what?” Christine asked. “How are we going to travel? The vehicles are all dead after sitting outside in the cold for two months. Plus, we’ve siphoned most of the fuel from them to run the generators.”

  Michael nodded. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

  “Not much else to think about in here,” Julia Justak conceded with an eye roll and a grimace.

  “Where have you never seen biters?” Michael said.

  “Who the hell knows? They’re everywhere!” Christine gestured toward the window and the wandering hoards of biters below.

  “No…they’re not,” Michael shook his head. “Think about it. Have you ever seen them sailing boats down the river or swimming? We’ve been here for months. Hell, I’ve never even seen them wading in the water. It’s almost as though they’re afraid of it.”

  “That’s true,” Julia nodded, considering. “I’ve seen a couple across the river, drinking at the shoreline, but I’ve never seen any of them actually in the water.”

  “Wait, are you thinking of using the river as our escape route?” Christine said almost disbelievingly.

  “Well, I was kind of pondering the idea,” Michael shrugged.

  “That’s freaking brilliant!” Christine burst out, wide-eyed with a smile. “The only problem is that we don’t have any boats.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Michael nodded.

  “Josh! You’ve got to hear this,” Julia called to her husband as he exited the stairway onto the tower’s fourth floor.

  “What’s up?” the thirty-something, whose beard now made him look more like a forty-something asked curiously as he sauntered over to where the others stood near the windows. “How’s the smell out there?” he asked as an afterthought.

  “Horrible,” his wife shook her head. “Absolutely horrible. Anyway,” she moved on, “Michael has a great idea. Tell him,” she prodded Michael with enthusiasm that made Michael feel suddenly more confident in an idea that he hadn’t been all that hot on until now.

  “Well,” Michael said somewhat abashedly, “in all honesty, the idea came partly from Josh.”

  “Really?” Josh said, looking surprised.

  “It was something you said a long time ago about being ‘up shit creek without a paddle’. It got me to thinking about our location here on the river and how it’s the one place you never really see biters.”

  “Yeah,” Josh agreed. “It’s not like you see them out taking a swim or a bath or anything. But if you’re thinking about using the river to get the hell outta Dodge, we don’t have any boats.”

  “That’s what Christine was saying just before you got here,” Michael explained. “But I’ve been thinking about that too. I figure that if we scavenge the area, we could probably come up with something. Maybe not large boats, but we might find kayaks, canoes, those sorts of things.”

  “But that means going out there…with those,” Julia Justak tilted her head toward the window and the biters lurking outside.

  “I know. But I’ll bet there are houses close by with boats of some sort. Maybe not in Lyons, but I’ll bet you there are some in Riverside. It’s not ideal by any stretch, but if we limit our scouting missions to nighttime or early morning hours, when the biters aren’t as prevalent, and we just take things slow, we might be okay.”

  “But those types of boats you mentioned, kayaks and canoes, they aren’t going to hold much in the way of supplies,” Josh pointed out.

  “We’ll have to pack extremely smart,” Michael agreed. “We may not be able to take things like the generators or larger, bulkier items. We’ll just have to deal with that when the time comes and after we see how many boats we can round up.”

  “If we can round up any at all,” Julia said.

  “Right. And if we do, we might have to use some of the larger ones as supply vessels and the smaller ones, like kayaks, for passengers,” Michael considered. “I don’t know. Like I said, it’s kind of an idea in the works. It all really hinges on what we can come up with around here in the way of water transportation. It won’t matter otherwise. But with our vehicle situation the way it is, and seeing no other options for long-range travel other than on foot, I’d say it’s probably our best bet at this point.”

  “I say we have a meeting on it now,” Josh offered. “If this is the route we decide to go, then the sooner we get rolling on it, the better.

  “You’re telling us,” Christine Franko said. “You didn’t smell it out there. If it starts stinking inside like it does out there, well,” she shrugged, shaking her head, “getting out of here asap will start to become a priority for everyone.”

  * * *

  “Now that you’ve all heard Michael’s idea, what do you think?” Josh looked around at the rest of the Blenders. They were all seated in chairs formed into a circle in the center of the tower’s third-floor. This floor had been converted to the Blender’s main living space.

  “With our supplies dwindling by the day, and the biter situation outside growing worse, not to mention the smell out there, I’m in favor of it,” said Ms. Mary, the second oldest in the group after Michael. “I’m no river rat, but I’ll take my chances on a raft or canoe or some contraption as opposed to hoofing it among the biters. Michael’s right. I’ve never seen biters out in the water, so we might have a fighting chance at getting to St. Louis that way.”

  “I second that,” Charla nodded. “What other option do we really have?”

  “Stay and wait for help,” her husband Wendell grumbled.

  “I don’t think there’s any help coming,” Charla shook her head. “If there was, it would have been here by now, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” Wendell said. “Maybe not. Maybe they’re like us…sitting around waiting for winter to break or something. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m in no hurry to get out among those biters again.”

  “Well, winter has broken,” Christine Franko waved her arms wide around her expressively. “So where are they? Where is this ‘help’ you’re referencing.”

  Wendell remained silent. Charla knew the problem. Wendell had never learned how to swim well, and he was terrified of drowning. It had been a childhood fear that had developed after watching one of his friends drown at a lake when he was ten. The fear hadn’t diminished as he’d grown older. In fact, in Charla’s opinion, it had grown worse.

  “We’ll find you a life jacket,” she leaned over and whispered into his ear so that none of the others overheard
.

  Wendell just sat in silence.

  “So what’s the word?” Michael asked. “I don’t want to feel like I’m playing God here. I don’t want to feel like I did after we got to the tower without the Mendoza and Hines family. With the exception of the loss of our first child, and the loss of Manny and Margaret, that was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through. I want everyone to be comfortable and on board with this decision. It needs to be a group consensus. Having people only half agreeing with the situation isn’t going to cut it, and could lead to bigger problems down the road. When we come up against a wall, I don’t want people breaking and running at the first sign of trouble because they didn’t agree with the decision to begin with.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find that to be the case, no matter what,” his wife reached over from where she sat beside him and took his hand in hers.

  “Where does the Des Plaines River even go?” Julia Justak spoke up.

  “Good question,” Michael nodded. “And it’s one that I have to admit I don’t have an exact answer to. As I recall from my Illinois geography, which is somewhat rusty to say the least, at some point it flows into the Illinois River. Where exactly that occurs, I’m not sure. And whether there are any dams or other obstacles, manmade or otherwise, along the way, I can’t say either.”

  “Okay, so where does the Illinois River go?” Julia pressed.

  “Well, and again, don’t quote me on this, but I think it tends to take a southwesterly course through Illinois and link up with the Mississippi River somewhere around St. Louis. If I had a computer or cell phone with internet access, we could pull up a map and I’d have a definite answer for you in under a minute. But those days are long gone. I can’t even find a generic map of Illinois around here to get a better idea of the river’s course.”

  “I know where one is!” young Justin Justak piped up excitedly.

  “Really? Where?” his Dad asked in surprise. “Michael and I have scoured this place top to bottom and haven’t found a darn thing.”

  “In the old post office display,” Justin said. “There was a framed map of Illinois in one of the drawers. It looked really old, but I wouldn’t think the rivers have changed course much.”

  “Good boy!” Michael grinned at the proud youngster.

  “Hang on! I’ll go get it!” Justin popped up from his seat and tore his way over to the stairs.

  The boy was back a minute later, huffing, puffing, out of breath, and carrying a glass-framed map of Illinois with him.

  He brought the map over to Michael and his father as the rest of the group gathered around to see.

  “Yep,” Josh said as he traced the river courses with a finger. “Pretty much like Michael said. But Justin is right. This map is from the early nineteen hundreds. We have no idea what sort of obstacles might have been built on the rivers that could make trying to traverse them by small water craft more treacherous. If we decide to go this route, we’ll have to be careful and take our time. We don’t want to go over a dam or get sucked into rough waters because we don’t know the exact geography of the river channels.”

  Charla glanced over at Wendell. He looked petrified purely by the mention of such a possibility, but he didn’t say a thing.

  After a moment of silence where the group seemed to be absorbing what had been said and weighing the risks that might face them, Michael asked, “So shall we vote on this?”

  There were nods and murmurs to the affirmative from around the group.

  “All those in favor of scavenging the surrounding area to look for boats to make the trip to St. Louis, raise your hand,” Michael said.

  The vote was unanimous.

  “A vote for boats!” young Jack Franko laughed. “Good! I’m ready to get out of this stink hole!”

  * * *

  After the meeting, Charla and Wendell went downstairs to replace Patrick who had been the sole member of the group on watch duty.

  For the first five minutes or so after Patrick had departed, they sat in utter silence. It was uncomfortable to say the least. Charla could feel the tension between them like the force of a magnet that wasn’t quite strong enough to pull the communication out of them.

  Charla was surprised when Wendell spoke first.

  “We never talked about what I saw,” he said tersely.

  “What do you mean, ‘what you saw’?”

  “You know,” Wendell gave an uncomfortable sort of shrug.

  “No, I don’t know,” Charla turned to gaze at him. “We’ve all seen a hell of a lot lately.”

  Her mind was still focused on the scene in the basement where the biters had killed Chris. She kept replaying it over again in her mind, wondering if there was something she could have done differently, if there was something that Wendell could have done differently. It had all gone wrong so quickly. She felt some level of responsibility for Chris’ death. But a part of her also blamed Wendell. And she had quietly been wondering if there was more Wendell could have done to help but hadn’t because of his feelings toward Chris.

  “It’s not everyday you find your wife massaging another man,” Wendell said.

  Charla tilted her head back and sighed in exasperation. “Uh, really Wendell? You really think that was something more than just a kind gesture?”

  “Huh, yeah,” he made wide eyes at her. “Let’s see. You two got along like two peas in a pod. You spent hours together upstairs fishing and doing who knows what else when I wasn’t around. You chose to have watch duty together half the time. And then I find you giving each other massages down here to pass the time when no one’s around. Gosh, yeah, I must be crazy. How could I possibly think anything was going on?”

  Charla was somewhat caught off guard by the case that Wendell had just presented. It appeared that he had been building it for some time. And now that she was faced with all the evidence, she had to admit, it did look bad. But she wasn’t going to mount her defense just yet. She wanted to use Wendell’s anger at how he saw the situation to find something out, something that had been eating at her since Chris’ death.

  “So what, just because another man enjoys spending time with your wife, you don’t help him when his life literally hangs in the balance?”

  Wendell looked at her, surprised by the accusation. “You really think I would let someone die because of that? You think that I’m so shallow, so hateful toward the human race, so insecure that I would allow a man to die even if he was sleeping with my wife?”

  Charla was suddenly uncertain of herself. She had thought so. But now, the way Wendell phrased his own defense, she wasn’t so sure.

  But she kept on, un-swayed. “But you had a clear shot, and you didn’t take it down there in the basement,” she gestured a hand toward the floor and the basement below.

  “How do you know?” Wendell shot back. “Just because it looked like a clear shot to you from your position, didn’t mean it looked like a clear shot to me. And you were going nuts with that flashlight, jerking it all over the place while you were yelling at me. One minute, I could see Chris and the biter, and the next they were gone, and then they were back, and then gone. It was like some sort of demented funhouse where you didn’t know what in the hell was going on and couldn’t get your bearings. And why were you two down there to begin with? Looking for a new place to screw?”

  Charla huffed, deflated not just by her husband’s bitingly bitter accusation but by the way he said it. It was so cold, so hate-filled. She couldn’t detect one ounce of love left in his tone. She had wanted to tell him long ago. But the way Wendell had acted toward her since she’d met Chris had made her wait. She wanted to see just how Wendell reacted when faced with a challenge for his love. And the hate and spite with which he had responded was something she hadn’t seen from him before. That was not the man she had married. Wendell had been a kind, caring soul; maybe a bit self-centered, but she could forgive that fault in him just as he forgave many of her own. But this hate was something new, something she wa
sn’t sure she could forgive or at least forget. And even though he said he had done all he could to help Chris, there was still doubt left lingering in her mind.

  Charla looked down at the floor. Softly, almost in a whisper, she said, “He was gay.”

  “What?!” Wendell cried incredulously. “What did you say?!”

  “Chris…he was gay,” she looked up at Wendell, a tear trickling down each cheek.

  Charla knew that the revelation explained so much. Now Wendell would finally understand why it had been so easy for Charla to get comfortable with Chris so quickly. It had taken her a couple weeks from their initial meeting to figure it out. Why Chris, the handsome stud with the Cheshire smile and winning personality, was still a bachelor. But it soon became apparent to Charla, especially when he touched her or looked at her. His interaction was missing something that she had detected in most heterosexual men, a sort of lustful tension. Chris’ looks reminded her of those of childhood friends, sweet, kind, and with no ulterior motives behind them.

  Yet, she hadn’t pressed Chris on the subject until he made the revelation to her one day when fishing up on the tower’s fourth floor. Then she had urged him at least to tell Wendell if not the entire group. She felt they would be accepting. But Chris was hesitant, and he had asked Charla to remain quiet on the subject, fearing the group might not take it as well as she had. He was afraid that the others would become wary of him or not want him to be around young Justin, Jack, and Andrew. That suddenly he would become ostracized from the group, maybe even cast out from the tower.

  Charla had assured him that wouldn’t be the case, but even in her own mind, she wasn’t completely sure of her assertions. Maybe some people in the group would have a problem with it. Maybe it would cause them to view Chris differently. She couldn’t be positive, and so, she had followed Chris’ wishes and remained silent on the subject until he was ready to tell the group himself.