Shifting

Nineteen

“Thanks for coming,” I told the Captain. My voice was hoarse, the air was full of smoke and I almost choked on my words.

“Better late than never,” agreed the Captain.

“What brought you now?” I asked.

He eyed me and said, “I wasn’t going to come. But I got curious, so after the storm, I went scouting. Somehow, I was in the neighborhood when you guys went for this tree. I saw the flames and came running from a few blocks off.”

“Good thing.”

He nodded appreciatively at the tree’s death throes and whistled. “I don’t think even my place would stand up to that thing.”

“What did you see on the way over here? Anything new?” We both knew what kind of new things I was talking about.

“No other trees gone bad, not like this one. But stay away from vines. If you see some big bushy vine growing up someone’s abandoned house on a trellis, just keep away.”

I nodded, and tried to digest the news. It was very good that every tree in town hadn’t awakened, but then again, why had this particular one come to life? It suggested something other than randomness, and I did not like the sound of that.

Monika came over to me and gave me a water bottle. The rest of the group were tending to the wounded and beating down the last of the flames. Once the gasoline had burned off, the fire had died down in intensity. I saw Vance prying open a window to get into the lobby. We’d have to build a new entrance.

The Captain was looking over Monika. “Maybe you were right about us banding up together.”

“There are advantages,” I said.

The Captain’s demeanor changed and he went down on one knee next to where I was sitting on a bumper. I still had that dirty rag pressed against my neck. The bleeding had stopped.

“I’ve decided I’m going to have to get involved,” he said to me quietly.

I just looked at him.

“Before,” he said, and it sounded like he was a bit apologetic, an impression I’ve never gotten from him about anything. “Before, I thought I could just ride this out. Life often takes wrong turns, Gannon. There are bad spots in many people’s lives. Genocides, plagues, famines. People in this country have no knowledge of things like that, but I’ve seen chaos and destruction many times.

“Usually, I just ride these things out. I go to ground, wait until the storm passes, and then come out when it’s safe. But now, after these last weeks, and after seeing this thing here…” he trailed off for a moment, staring at the tree. “What I’m saying is that I don’t think this particular bout with chaos is going to get better by itself. I think it’s getting worse, not better. I think we are going to have to fix it, before it fixes us.”

“What do you have in mind?”

He leaned forward, but before he could tell me, Monika showed up again and put her hand on my back.

“He’s done enough. He’s done today,” she told the Captain coldly.

He raised his eyebrows at her and smiled. “Indeed. I see how it is. Well, we’ll talk again later, Gannon.”

He walked off to help the others with the wreckage.

“I don’t like that one,” said Monika.

“He’s okay,” I told her. But quietly, to myself, I wondered if she was right. And I wondered what he had in mind.

We had a long day of digging out the entrance. At the bottom of the mess Brigman waited with the infinite patience of the dead. The strange thing was that the day turned out to be beautiful, in a cold, blustery way. The sun burned off the last of the haze and there was nothing like those red bolts of alien lightning in the sky. The air off the lake was crisp and fresh, this was especially welcome as it blew the stink of the smoldering tree away to the south as we worked.

Eventually, we got Brigman out of there and got the body onto a tarp for easy transportation. Holly Nelson was with us when we pulled him out, watching closely. Her brow was deeply furrowed, but she didn’t cry, unlike a lot of the adults. I wondered again how she was going to grow up, if we got that far with life.

We dug two parallel graves for Brigman and Erik Foti. We dug the graves in the atrium that was in the center of the dentist rooms. It had always been there, a small, enclosed area surrounded with windows for the patients to gaze out into. It had been meant to look peaceful and to take one’s mind off the sound of the drill and the scratching of steel on your teeth. It doubled well as a cemetery. In Erik’s grave, all we had to drop in was some strips of bloody cloth and a set of broken headphones.

Doc Wilton mumbled a few words and then Mrs. H. told us a story or two she knew about the victims. She finished up with an ominous note.

“We lost two citizens to a single bedeviled tree, yet we are surrounded by countless thousands of trees. We must be stronger of spirit and wiser of mind to survive this trial as our ancestors survived such dark times before us. May they both rest in peace.”

We mumbled Amen, and filled in the shallow holes.

The Captain slid into a chair next to me in the cafeteria. It had been more of a break station, but we’d set up some propane stoves and a store of supplies and tables, making it the eatery we all shared. Monika was gone, and I immediately suspected that he’d waited until I was alone to come talk to me.

I sighed for a moment and nodded to him over my cup of coffee. It was all the greeting I could muster.

“Nothing takes it out of you like burying a friend,” he said in the tone of someone quoting a proverb.

I nodded again.

“Burned out?” he asked.

“It’s been a long day.”

“Going to spend another night in these walls?”

I looked at him. He seemed tense, which was normal for him. “What’d you have in mind?”

He leaned forward, close, a bit too close. I tolerated it with difficulty.

“I can’t stay here.”

“Why not?” I demanded, annoyed with him. I had almost said, “Well, go then.”

“You’ve got a traitor in your midst.”

I sucked in a heavy breath and let it out. I blinked, almost rolled my eyes. Imagine that, the Captain had a conspiracy theory. Suddenly, I found I couldn’t take this guy anymore. Today had been too much, I was beyond humoring this nut. I leaned up to his ear. “I know,” I said, “I know that little girl Holly is really one of them.”

He pulled back from me and gave me a strange look. I enjoyed it. For just a second, I was the nut with the crazy theory upsetting him. It didn’t last.

He jumped up angrily and stomped out.

“Ah, come on,” I called after him. “You’ve got to hang on to a sense of humor, man.” Even as I said it, I realized I wasn’t sure that the Captain even had a sense of humor. There had never been any evidence of it.

I watched him go and sat there a few seconds, sipping my coffee. Screw him, I thought. But after a few more moments, a sense of urgency came over me. What if he really did know something? Muttering curses, I followed him.

I found him outside, standing beside the fallen tree. I realized he had been waiting for me. He’d known I would follow. The sun had already dropped down low in the horizon, it must have been late afternoon. He poked at the tree gingerly with his M4. Wisps of smoke still rose from the trunk.

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me.”

He cocked his head and stared at me for a moment. “Gannon, you and your little tribe here are doomed.”

I just stared at him, waiting for more.

“All you are doing is reacting, playing defense. It is a losing strategy in the long run. Normally, I wouldn’t care, but I don’t think I can make it through this alone.”

“So we are marginally useful to you. That’s nice. So what else should we be doing?”

He ignored my barb. “You can’t win a war without an offense. And you can’t mount an offense without intel. I’m suggesting we need to go scouting. You and me.”

I nodded. “The Preacher had the same thing in mind. We’ve been a bit busy these last few days, however. What about the other thing?”

“The traitor?” he said, nodding. “Yes…”

He walked around the tree to the midsection. He tapped the tree with the muzzle of his rifle. “I talked to a few people about what happened here, and about what else has been happening. You had three riflemen on the flyers, right? Two shots hit, one missed. They fired again, and all three shots hit, but one of them hit the tree right in the face, essentially.”

I examined the spot he was tapping at. There was a grooved streak across the blackened trunk. I suppose it could have been the spot the bullet that had awakened the creature had hit.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” I demanded. “You are suggesting it was done on purpose? Look, someone just panicked or just plain screwed the pooch and shot the tree. We aren’t pros here.”

He nodded. “I thought about that. It’s a plausible cover. But there’s something much more damning.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Have you checked out the good Doctor Wilton’s foot, lately?”

My face fell. I knew right then and there that he had me. I knew too, that no matter how this played out, it could not be good for anyone.