The Final Day (After, #3)(102)

A hundred yards or more down Main Street, a small crowd had gathered.

“How many are here now?” Bob asked, looking back at Pelligrino.

“Who?”

“Civilians, damn it.”

Again a hesitation. “About fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand. Some leave at times, and others are brought in.” A brief pause, and with Bentley glaring at him, he finally added, “Sir.”

The man’s features had gone to nearly purple, his knees were shaking, and with a moan, he slowly sank to the ground. The medic ran up to him, knelt down, felt for his pulse, and then looked up at the general.

“Might be his heart, sir.”

“Given what I think is here,” Bob said softly, “I have to ask: What heart?” He then announced, “Shoulder all weapons. These are civilians here. Unless he dies on us, drag him along.”

He gazed down coldly at Pelligrino. “Which way to the command center?” he snapped, and the ailing man pointed straight down Main Street.

He set off with a purposeful stride, right up the middle of the main street, troopers—with weapons shouldered as ordered—flanking to either side. John trailed along behind him; his friends Reverend Black, Maury, Forrest, Kevin, and Grace, who had disobeyed John’s orders to stay behind and had caught up with the group and was still obviously in shock over Lee’s death, followed behind Bob.

They passed several of the wooden barracks, relics of what seemed another age. The paint was peeling from the wooden sides, but other than that, they seemed well tended. There were even nameplates tacked to doors.

John slowed as he passed a Quonset hut on his left. There was a single name tag tacked to the door. He recognized the name. The same as on the personal e-mails that Linda had snatched out of the ether and which had finally led them to this place. Surely it couldn’t be?

As he stared at the nameplate, similar to the types of nameplates set in front of an officer’s home on a military base, the door cracked open, an anxious young face looking out, a girl in her early teens at most, still gangly like a young colt.

He smiled at her, and a flicker of a smile creased her slender face as she nervously brushed back an errant wisp of reddish hair. John stopped, his friends staying with him.

“Are you here to arrest us or something?” she asked.

He shook his head and gestured toward the front porch as if requesting permission to approach. She hesitated, nodded, and opened the door wider.

He caught a glimpse of inside the barrack. Though the exterior was of World War II vintage, the interior looked something like a typical living room—a sofa, several chairs, and what appeared to be the back of an old-style television from thirty or more years ago.

“Don’t worry, young lady. There was a misunderstanding, but it’s been settled. You’re perfectly safe.”

He spared a quick glance back down Main Street. Bob had gone far ahead of him, surrounded by the troopers who had entered with him. John looked over his shoulder. His friends, however, had lingered behind, waiting for him out on the street.

Grace was still with him, and it was she who broke the tension.

“Hi. My name is Grace,” she announced in a warm, friendly voice, and she simply stepped past John, advanced up a step onto the porch, and extended her hand.

The nervous smile on the young girl’s face within the hut broadened slightly. She opened the door wider and took a step out, reached forward, and politely shook Grace’s hand.

“You sure everything is okay?” the girl asked. “We heard gunshots.”

“We?” John asked.

“I live here with my mother and two kid brothers. The emergency siren went off. Our teacher told us to go to the shelter, but I ran home to get Buster before going to the shelter area, because sometimes we’re in there for a day or two and I can’t sleep without Buster, and then I heard shooting.”

“Who is Buster?” John asked.

She hesitated, a bit embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” Grace said softly.

The girl reached behind her and then produced a stuffed bear, obviously well worn from constant loving attention, and her features turning red with embarrassment.

The gesture, the sight of her holding the stuffed bear, struck John like an electric shock, and he lowered his voice. “It’s okay, young lady. My daughter had a friend like him named Rabs.” He could barely get the words out.

Among his friends, there was no one who did not know about Rabs, his daughter’s beloved stuffed companion who sat on the windowsill in the sunroom and watched over her grave, and which John had gone back into his burning home to retrieve, more cherished to him than any other memory of the past.

Maury came up to John’s side.

“You’re about the same age as my son, who is eleven,” he said. “He won’t admit it, but he has a friend like yours—a panda named Pandi—that sits on his nightstand. It’s okay, young lady.”

“I’m twelve. My name is Laura.”

“We’re pleased to meet you, Laura,” John interjected. “Don’t be anxious; everything is okay now. Just a misunderstanding, and no one was hurt. We’re just visiting here.”

“That’s good,” Laura replied, still obviously a bit rattled. “When I heard the shooting and I wasn’t in the shelter area, I went to the far corner of the room and curled up behind the sofa with Buster as we were drilled to do and waited for the all clear. But I haven’t heard the all clear.”