Good Times in Rockland (Part 2)
Posted on Fri Jun 27th, 2025 @ 1:39am by Survior Hale MacLeod
2,035 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Please Sir...
Location: Rockland, Maine
Timeline: November 12, 2010 - 5:30 p.m.
"You're not lurchin' and you're not hissin', so that's two in your favor." There was a flicker of something in his face. The smallest hint of hope buried under two tons of mistrust. "You been bit? Either of you? Don't lie. I've got a slug loaded and nobody left to care about the bang."
A rustle, a hitch of breath as he reconsidered the tough guy approach. "Look, if you're clean, and if you're not desperate enough to make me regret bein' decent, then I've got shelter. Tools. Bit of water. Maybe a tin or two left in the cupboard if you don't mind dented labels and expiry dates older than you." He let go of the mic for a second, then clicked it back once more. "But if either of you twitch the wrong way, you won't get a second chance. Understand me?"
"It was champagne-colored," Hale said, "or at least it was in its hey-day and Dad would take a personal affront to anyone saying a bad word about 'Lucille'. Mom always swore he loved that old car more than her or me for that matter."
He took a few steps forward, moving slowing, "I'm not bit and neither is my friend here, Alonzo. Food's gone in Owl's Head and fishing can be problematic, what with the dead wandering around and all. Thought we'd try our luck in Rockland, is all. I'm not looking to sit at the end of your weapon for long so, if you don't feel you can trust me, we'll move along. Find somewhere more peaceable to be."
A few seconds stretched out into an eternity before getting shattered by the distinctive rustle of chains and a slide-bolt.
"Go on, then," Graham said from within the dark garage. "In or out but the door won't stay open long."
Shrugging lightly because cantankerous had been a word his Dad had often used about Lockridge, Hale, with Alonzo following him, made a cautious approach into the garage. "You had a lot of zombies around here," he asked as he dropped his backpack down beside the door and rolled his shoulders. "Or other sorts of trouble?"
Cody had paused when the voice cracked through the mist, every muscle tensing. In this world, even the sound of a living human was cause for both hope and caution. But something in the tone—a gravel-worn mix of weariness and vigilance—made him stop short of retreat. He turned slightly in the direction of the Lockridge garage and took a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Then he saw them.
Two figures, one already speaking—calm, deliberate, familiar in the way that told Cody this wasn’t their first ruined town. The one who called himself Hale sounded steady, someone used to leading or surviving, maybe both. The other, Alonzo, stayed quieter but followed in sync, an echo that carried more weight than words.
Cody didn’t move immediately. He watched. The garage. The voice. The movement. It was the first moment in weeks that felt like something other than retreat. He adjusted the strap of his pack across his shoulder and approached cautiously, staying low, his steps deliberate. He kept one hand loose by his side, not near his belt knife, but close enough to send a message: careful, not stupid. The closer he got, the more he could hear the voices clearly. Not just Hale's calm tones or Lockridge's gruff warnings—but something in the spaces between them. Recognition. Trust, hard-earned. It reminded him of what he’d lost.
Cody stopped a few yards back when the door clattered open. The older man’s silhouette framed in dim light, the garage behind him like a cave cut into the fog.
“I’m not with them,” Cody called, raising both hands slowly, palms out, voice even. “But I heard your voice. I heard the offer. Shelter. Water. A tin or two.” His voice wavered, but only slightly. “I’m not infected. No bites. No fever. Just cold. Hungry. Been walking since Glen Cove. I’m not armed—just a knife for utility. I can work. I don't want to take anything for free. I'm a doctor.”
Cody hesitated, then added quietly, “I had a mother who said people were still worth hoping for. Even now.”
Cody’s eyes flicked between the two men ahead of him and the shadow behind the garage door. “But if it’s safer for everyone, I’ll move on. Just… tell me now.”
Graham's shoulders tensed the moment the other voice cut through the fog. Too many variables. Too fast. His hand didn't leave the shotgun grip, even as he leaned closer to the slat in the barricade to catch a better look at the silhouette: thin, deliberate, no weapon drawn, no backup in sight.
"Bloody hell," he muttered under his breath. "Is it open season for strays tonight or what?" But this was what he was waiting for, wasn't it? "Hale, he yours?" He didn't wait for the answer. "Never mind. Doesn't matter."
Hale, who had been about to deny that he knew the stranger, turned so that he could get a better look. A combat pilot learned things, stuff he maybe didn't want to know, but he learned things. Nothing in the man's approach spoke trouble but then, it was easy to fool someone. He didn't see anything that looked like a concealed weapon but a pistol, well, that would be easy enough to keep out of sight.
A dry metallic groan echoed inside the shop as Graham unlatched a second chain and shifted the door's weight back with a grunt. The bay light was off. He'd left the shadows intact.
"Get in, all of you, and quickly." He waved them in and backed up to safe distance. "You're all talkin' like you forgot there's teeth out there."
Graham turned just enough to let the dim light from a shuttered desk lamp sketch the tired lines in his face. His gaze swept over Cody once. Thin, youngish, walked with tension but not panic. Smart enough to hold his hands high and speak soft. The bit about being a doctor didn't make Graham blink. Not yet.
"You say you're a doctor, but right now that only tells me one of two things. You’re valuable..." A beat. "Or you're lyin' through your teeth to buy time.” The pause was purposeful. Then he nodded once, curtly, as he backed up just enough to make space between him and the bench where the wanderers could take a load off. His shotgun didn't lower, but it didn't rise either. "We'll find out soon enough. In or out, lad. But you're not standin' there like a flag in a storm."
Cody didn’t flinch at the suspicion—he’d expected it. These days, kindness got you killed, and trust was earned only at gunpoint. He stepped forward slowly, the weight of Graham’s eyes and shotgun settling across his shoulders like a physical thing.
“In,” Cody said quietly, stepping through the narrow opening and into the darkened garage. The air inside was warmer, but stale—old oil, dust, metal, and something faintly human. “And no, I’m not with them. Just lucky enough to hear your voice before I froze to death.”
Cody moved past the threshold carefully, keeping his posture low and non-threatening. He wasn’t here to provoke. He wasn’t here to lie. He was just tired. When Graham leveled the accusation—valuable or a liar—Cody met the man’s eyes, tired blue on tired blue.
“I’m not a surgeon, not a miracle worker,” he said, voice even but edged with something honest and brittle. “But I was finishing my trauma rotation when everything went to hell. I know how to treat wounds, infections. I’ve set bones, stopped bleeds, lost people… saved a few.”
A breath. Not defiant, just real.
“I don’t know if that makes me valuable anymore. But I didn’t come here to con you. I came here because I’m still breathing, and I didn’t want to be the only one left who is.” Cody looked around briefly, noting the careful barricades, the functional disrepair that spoke of someone who knew how to survive. “You don’t need to trust me. I get that. I wouldn’t either. But I don’t plan to stand still, and I don’t want your charity. You give me a broom or a wrench or a wound to stitch, and I’ll earn my square of floor.”
Graham let out a short, rasping huff that might have been a laugh.
"Talks too damn much, this one," he muttered, lowering the shotgun until the muzzle pointed at the floor. "Guess that proves you're still among the living."
"And words," Hale said as he dropped his backpack and found a spot to sit, "they didn't give the whole still alive thing away for you?"
Graham clicked on a dim work-light hung from an overhead beam. It cast a jaundiced pool across the garage: benches stacked with axle parts, a half-dismantled generator, and three mismatched camp chairs scrounged from somewhere better days ago.
"Have a seat, Doc-Nearly-Was. And the rest of you, close that door proper. Light discipline."
Hale moved quickly, closing the front up tight, and stood for a moment watching the darkening sky ... and the road. It was quiet but that could always change. Even in a town like Owl's Head, things could change between heart beats.
With the barricade clanged shut, Graham slid the bolt home limped over to the chairs, resting his weight on the good leg. "Right, cards on the table." He gave the newcomers a level stare. "Two five-gallon water cans, half a tub in the back, maybe eight tins left if you don’t mind mystery labels. After that, it's the road or the rocks."
He gestured at the dark windows. "Stores up the coast have been stripped like gull carcasses. Marina's torched. I kept this place for... someone who never showed, not a trio of long-striders with hollow guts." A grimace of uncomfortable honesty flickered across his face. "Which means I just told three strangers exactly how thin my cupboard is." He snorted. "Trust, innit? Ugly business. Sticking around here means we need a run plan: fuel, food, meds... anything that keeps us upright."
Graham rested the shotgun against the bench and folded his arms. "You, Cody, can start earning that floor space by looking at my leg." He tapped the prosthesis where the socket met his stump. "Pressure sore's flaring. Don't fancy losing more real estate."
"Fuel's breaking down," Hale muttered from his self-appointed watch at the main overhead door. "Even when you find some, more often than not, it's nearly useless." He turned toward Graham. "You remember Euell's Place? Dad's idea of a snack when we came here so's Mom could shop was a bag of trail mix. Not as good as a home-cooked meal but I had the notion that it might have been overlooked."
Cody moved toward one of the mismatched chairs slowly, dropping his pack beside it with the kind of care reserved for things that held both tools and last chances. He sat without complaint, nodding faintly at Graham’s jab about talking too much. It was fair. Truth was, silence scared him more than guns did.
At Graham’s mention of the sore, Cody’s posture changed—shoulders square, focus sharpening like a lens being adjusted. A doctor now. Maybe not licensed, but needed.
"Let me take a look," he said, already reaching into his pack.
He didn’t have much—just a compact roll of gauze, some butterfly strips, half a tube of antibiotic ointment, a squeeze bottle of alcohol, and a single packet of painkillers he’d been hoarding for weeks. He didn’t hesitate. This was what they were for. This—not hoarding, not waiting for some perfect emergency—this was the emergency.
He glanced at Graham. "Gonna need you to sit still and probably grit your teeth. I’ve got disinfectant, not morphine."
Hale MacLeod
Alonzo Blazevic
Cody Mercer
Graham Lockridge
Jacob de Vile
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