Thirty-four
Caitlin got an unexpected chance to fulfill her
promise to guard Brighton Hollow. On an early October morning, she sat on
an outcropping of rock several miles from Brighton Hollow and watched a
caravan crawl along Troll Valley Road. Scouts preceded the strange
collection of vehicles. They reached Brighton Hollow and hurried back to
report a town just ahead. The entire assembly stopped directly below her
position.
She counted ten trucks, pickups and vans. Each towed
a shell of a van or station wagon stripped of excess weight, its engine,
hood, and fenders and piled high with plastic-wrapped baggage, trunks,
crates, and ordinary luggage. Tanks of gasoline and water had been lashed
to the sides of many vehicles.
She saw plenty of guns. Armed men poured into the
surrounding trees to guard against ambush. A small machine gun on a
tripod was put up at the rear of the procession.
"Wow," Caitlin murmured.
By nightfall, the trucks and their trailers had
pulled off the road. Campfires threw an orange glow among the trees.
People milled about the fires, laughing and yelling at one another
cheerfully. They cooked their meals, fed their babies, and retired to the
trailers a couple hours after dark.
It rained for part of the night. Caitlin pulled a
blue plastic tarp salvaged from a barn over her head to protect her
elegant evening gown from the elements. Only the guards moved about at
the base of the hill once the rain began to fall in earnest. Shifts
changed once every three hours. Occasionally, one of the men would rise
from the smaller campfires and go into the trees to pee.
They spelled trouble for Brighton Hollow, and Caitlin
ventured closer to the vehicles to investigate just after midnight. She
saw New York plates. It occurred to her that they had passed through
Orange City not too long ago. Maybe a quick visit would give her some
idea of how they would treat Brighton Hollow. She calculated the time it
would take to reach Orange City on foot and return. She guessed they'd
stay put until dawn, and she'd be back before then.
The rain had diminished to a drizzle. Caitlin hiked
her black evening gown up about her waist and ran barefooted through the
trees and then down the middle of the highway. She reached Orange City in
an hour and a half, stopping occasionally to catch her breath and enjoy a
crescent moon that broke through the silver-rimmed clouds. The
caterpillar trilled with irritation now and then, protesting the bumpy
ride through the night.
She saw the flames two miles outside town. Outlying
buildings were on fire. Most of the people left in town had moved further
back into the residential areas. Kerosene lights filtered through the
trees and guards called to one another in the darkness.
She stumbled across a man who had fallen into the
underbrush with a bullet in his chest. Richard Jenkins would have put up
a better fight protecting Orange City, she suspected. Again, it was hard
to tell if she could justify the victims she had taken, if she had
protected the innocent by killing him, or had instead hastened their doom.
Dawn brightened the horizon by the time she got
back. People stirred to life in the camp. Men with guns came marching
down the road from Brighton Hollow, having reconnoitered during the hours
of darkness, although the camp embarked upon no immediate, large-scale
mobilization. Instead, the men rebuilt the fires. The aroma of cooking
food soon wafted through the trees.
The smell made Caitlin sick. She moved upwind of the
caravan to avoid the stench, a reminder of the widening gulf between
herself and ordinary people.
A young man with a rifle started up the hill toward
her. She rose to her feet to retreat further into the woods, then paused
out of curiosity to see what he would do. When he finally spotted her, he
froze in his tracks, but he lowered his rifle and let it dangle from one
hand rather than try to shoot at her. Caitlin smiled, knowing she had
become a beautiful and physically imposing woman since the night of the
green meteors.
She let him approach closely enough to carry on a
conversation. "Hello," he said mildly. "My name is Ted. Who are you?"
"I'm Caitlin," she said, feeling bubbly with
excitement.
"Do you live around here?"
She let him come closer still, until they could talk
softly enough to avoid being heard in the camp below. It didn't seem
likely that he knew much about the caterpillars, or he would not have come
so close.
"I live in Brighton Hollow just down the way."
He held his rifle to view. "I just thought I'd come
up this way and bag a squirrel or two."
"You'll have to go a bit further back into the
hills," Caitlin said. "I wouldn't recommend going alone."
Ted glanced back down at the camp. "I guess you're
right. I was told to stay in sight."
"You're from New York," Caitlin said. "Where are you
headed?"
"Texas," he said. "We figure it'll be easier to
protect ourselves from the bugs in the open country and cut ourselves a
piece of the action when it comes time to clean up the infestations. It's
been a real slaughterhouse in New York. Can I see yours, do you suppose?"
The question caught her off guard. "What?"
"I thought maybe you'd let me see your bug."
Caitlin reached down and picked up the caterpillar
curled at her feet. She held it to view, puzzled by the young man's
nonchalance. "You've seen these before?"
"Sure. We figure their aren't so many bugs and
zombies per square mile out here in the hills where the population density
is low, and probably fewer still in open country. I wouldn't get any
closer to camp, if I were you. You don't want them to catch you."
"You're not afraid of me," Caitlin said, perplexed by
the observation.
Ted smiled. "No, and I'm not usually stupid enough
to get close enough to get myself bit, but I'd sure hate to miss the
opportunity to meet a real live zombie for myself."
"I'm not a zombie," Caitlin said with indignation.
"It's just a word, probably because you look so
spaced out when you're out wandering around. Hell, it's not your fault.
We're all in this together."
Ted shook his head and chuckled in amazement.
"You've got to be flat-out the most incredibly beautiful woman I've ever
seen in my life, and I've seen some godawful zombies since we left the Big
Apple. I ran across this one dude, eight and a half fucking feet tall,
the meanest, nastiest, scariest bastard Satan himself ever put on the face
of the Earth."
"What happened to him?" Caitlin said.
"We shot his bug. The feds, what's left of them, pay
in gold and silver for bugs. You can't eat gold or silver, but anyone who
figures we'll beat the bugs someday stashes it away for posterity.
Anyhow, the dude did a swan dive through a tenth-story window rather than
let the hunger get him. Things sure seem a lot more peaceful out here in
the boonies."
Caitlin didn't know what to say. Ted stared at her,
grinning, sighing. "God, I'd love to fuck you, lady. I think I'll pass,
though. I'll have this shit-eating grin when I get back as it is, so I'll
have to tell Derek I saw you. Better clear out and let your people know
they've got visitors."
"Is that good or bad?"
Ted shrugged, but his smile faded away, and he
wouldn't look her in the eye. "Not so good. We need gas, water, some
food, and we haven't got much to trade."
"I'll tell my boyfriend in Brighton Hollow," Caitlin
said, increasingly distrustful of the rifle in Ted's hand. "He's a
deputy sheriff."
Maybe it hadn't been wise to let him get so close.
The caterpillar could move fast, but a bullet could move even faster.
Ted took notice of her growing unrest. He turned the
gun upside down and slung it over his shoulder. "Don't get nervous on me,
lady. I've seen how fast the bugs can move. Hell, I've seen how fast you
zombies can move. I don't mean you no harm."
It seemed incredible that anyone would treat her with
so much respect. Ted was like herself in a fashion, a survivor with no
hard feelings toward those who might try to kill him. "Maybe some other
time," Caitlin said softly as he backed away. Ted paused, reluctant to
allow the opportunity to pass. He shook his head finally, exasperated by
his conflict of emotion.
“Maybe in some other life,” he murmured.
Caitlin watched him move off along the face of the
hill in search of his squirrels.
She decided to heed his advice and warn Brighton
Hollow. She went up the hill and circled back through the trees to town.
Rex Hogan had put up a barricade of cars almost all the way around town.
Caitlin had only to show herself to a guard to summon him. No one had
ever tried to shoot her when she made her reports of vagrants and
caterpillars about town.
Voices called out, relayed through town and echoing
against the surrounding hills. Rex came running down the road within ten
minutes. He leaped a car hood and came out to meet her a few hundred
yards and out of rifle range of the barricade.
"There's a bunch of trucks and cars a half mile up
the road," Caitlin said. "They've got guns and they made a mess of
Orange City."
Rex looked pained. "How many?"
"Fifty people, maybe. About twenty men with guns."
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Are you mediating,
Caitlin?"
Caitlin shook her head frantically. "No! I only
spoke to one boy! I'm just trying to warn you!"
Rex scowled, but gave her a nod of apology. "The
help is sincerely appreciated." He sidestepped and sat down on a fallen
tree trunk. "Can we hold them off, do you think?"
Caitlin shook their head. Even the boy had been
fearless. They had been on the road a long time, stealing and fighting
along the way. "They look pretty mean." She sat a short distance away.
She held the caterpillar firmly in her lap and scooted closer to him when
he smiled at her.
"Don't you ever sleep?" he said.
"No."
"Aren't you cold? Do you want a jacket?"
"I'm okay."
"Did they run or fight in Orange City?"
"It looked like they ran mostly.”
"Nobody's going to run here."
"The boy I talked to knew about me," Caitlin said.
"He knew about zombies and bugs. That's what he called me and my
caterpillar. He says we looked spaced out when we wander around. I guess
I do get sort of spaced out. He wasn't afraid of me. He said the Feds
pay in gold and silver for bugs."
"I suppose I should talk to them."
"Don't go yourself," she said with a surge of
anxiety. "Send someone else."
"Caitlin, I can't risk a misunderstanding. If they
want to barter, I'll don't think they'll shoot me on sight. Thanks for
helping. If you need anything..."
"I need you, Rex," Caitlin said with more passion
than she had intended. She wiped away her tears before they froze on her
face.
"I'm so lonely and scared," she said in a softer tone
of voice. "I feel like a ghost. I don't have to do anything, not even
eat or sleep. I don't even have to go to the bathroom most of the time.
I just walk all over the woods… like a zombie. I follow my own footprints
around in circles sometimes."
Rex looked at the ground at his feet. "I don't know
what I can do to help."
"I wish you loved me like I love you. You're all I
think about. I could put my caterpillar in a box. We could lock it up.
You could make Connie go away for just a little while. Please, Rex? Just
for once?"
Rex shot to his feet and stood with his fists
clenched at his sides. "I don't think I could get away with it. They'd
all think I betrayed them. You have to understand how they feel,
Caitlin. The caterpillars have killed their friends and families."
Connie stared at the ground in despair. Agitated, he
backed away a safe distance. When she stood to face him, she discovered
that they stood nose to nose. He had been taller than her at one time by
at least six inches.
Caitlin knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn't
trust how she might react to his refusal. "I've got to get back," he
said, his voice lame with insincerity. But she saw the hurt in his
expression, and it helped to know that it pained him to leave her alone in
the cold and the emptiness.
The situation wasn't at all hopeless, though. Now
was her chance to be useful to Brighton Hollow, her only chance of walking
the streets of the town ever again. If she helped to defend the town
against violent outsiders, she would become a heroine. Rex would not have
to fear what they would think of him for loving her. If she saved even
one life, they would let him reach out and touch her for the first time in
his life, and even once would be enough to last forever.
