I chuckled. “I miss pizza, too.”
We both quickly sobered. It was no fun dwelling on things that we could never have again. We all had a trigger that brought everything we’d lost to mind. Shaking off memories of loved ones I’d never see again, I scanned the distance in silence, looking for any zeds that might have heard the airplane and come to investigate. The bridge and rural highway had no cars for as far as my eyes could see. This area was rural enough that it didn’t have the telltale scars of wreckage and bodies that populated areas had.
The sun glistened off the blade a trader had given Tyler in exchange for penicillin. It was a nice weapon but it’d be far too heavy for me. I preferred my lighter weapons: the spear I’d made from an old broom handle, a machete from our first looting run in Chow Town, and a large tanto knife Clutch had given me right after the outbreak.
I checked my M24 rifle. We’d been through plenty together, and it bore as many scars as I did. Tiny scratches marred the black metal from a grenade blast that I’d never expected to survive.
“You look sad,” Tyler said. “What’s wrong?”
“My poor rifle has seen its share of abuse,” I answered.
“We all have,” he said softly.
I pointed to a gouge on the barrel that had shown up sometime between the time I was imprisoned at Camp Fox and when I got the rifle back. “This one wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t thrown me behind bars.”
He raised his brows. “Seriously? You’re still beating me up over that?”
“Always,” I replied. “After all, no one forced you to arrest me.”
“I did it to save you from the Dogs,” he said, referring to the Iowa militia. “Besides, you did break the law. No matter how you look at it, killing someone is still breaking the law.”
“Hmph. You and I both know that scumbag Dog had it coming for what he’d done to that poor girl.”
He nodded. “Maybe. But that wasn’t for you to decide. You took away his right to a fair trial. I’m not saying he wasn’t guilty and didn’t deserve what he got. I’m just saying it wasn’t the right way to go about it.”
I could’ve brought up the young girl the accused had raped and beaten, but Tyler had heard it all before, and he still refused to budge from his stance on traditional justice. After the outbreak, I’d reverted to an “eye for an eye” brand of justice because mistakes and crimes committed now nearly always caused someone’s death. We didn’t have the time or resources for a full court system anymore.
“At least it was one fewer Dog to attack Camp Fox,” I said instead. “But that’s all water under the bridge now,” I said, watching a sizable tree limb float down the river.
“I agree. I’m glad things worked out and that you decided to stay with Camp Fox.” Tyler shaded his eyes as he looked down the river. “No sign of the riverboat yet.”
Tyler had reached this guy Sorenson on the radio a month or so ago by sheer luck. He spent twenty minutes every day scanning all the AM, marine, and aeronautical frequencies. One day, they had both been scanning and reporting across the same marine frequencies at the same time. It was through Tyler’s diligence that we’d connected with the folks in Marshall as well as several tiny groups scattered across the area. Sadly, for every settlement he reached, he seemed to lose contact with another.
Of all Tyler’s contacts, Sorenson was best equipped to survive the herd migration. He was a riverboat captain and, since zeds couldn’t swim, anyone who could navigate the rivers had done pretty well since the outbreak.
Tyler believed Camp Fox had found an ally in Sorenson.