DUSK 2
If much food or ammunition had been stored in the fortress, most of it had been taken in the convoy. A quick search revealed four boxes of canned rations, and a rack with two M-16’s and 60 rounds for each. Sal opted to stick with the hunting rifles and shotguns rather than lug along weapons the rest of his party was unfamiliar with. They’d packed the food in the truck closest to the doorway. Although they’d found food and ammunition, there were no medical supplies leftover.
We came for the truck, Sal reminded himself. Anything else is a bonus.
“I don’t want to stick around,” he said.
While Sal and his daughter searched for anything useful, Jasper had remained in the garage, siphoning the gas from a jeep to fuel their station wagon. He remembered the first time Jasper had done such a duty. Jasper had turned seventeen the week before and was outside of the compound for the first time since the dead began to walk. Sal had instructed him to gather fuel while more experienced soldiers stood point. Unfortunately, the boy had accidentally swallowed and spent the trip back with his head hanging out of the window. After the reprimanding Sal had received from Jasper’s mother, he’d decided to wait another year before taking the boy into the battle field.
He thought of Jasper’s mother. They’d found both his wife and sister raped, mutilated, and left undead, but they hadn’t found his mother who undoubtedly suffered a similar demise. He then thought about Jasper and how he was the only other soldier from their compound still alive to fight.
“The station wagon fueled?”
Jasper nodded.
“Sarah, you’re in the wagon with Jasper. If anything happens, you two can disappear a lot easier and I could ram something a lot easier without worrying about passengers.”
“Why don’t we all get in the truck?” Sarah asked.
“We might need both vehicles and if we’re spotted this truck will be easier to corner.”
“I don’t want to lose you too.”
“Get in the car. Jasper, follow the truck.”
As Jasper moved to his vehicle, Sal climbed into the truck.
Been a while, Sal thought. He’d stolen several trucks after the dead had started to walk and one before. When he was younger, he’d driven a few rigs to transport anything from illegal contraband to weapons to food for various groups. After feeling around the console and steering wheel, Sal brought the engine to life with a roar and rolled through the opened front gate.
*
Although he stopped by a stream, Ty Cooper resisted the urge to strip and bathe. He longed to submerge his body and clean the filth from his skin, but he would need to look as ragged as possible. Although he’d only been gone for a couple of days, Cooper wanted to look like he’d been crawling through the jungle for weeks.
Instead of bathing, he plunged his face into the cold water. The current gently pulled at his thinning hair, carrying away sweat, dirt, and fatigue from the previous night. Before pulling his head out, Ty opened his mouth and exhaled under water. He fell backwards onto the dry land, rubbing his eyes then spreading his arms out. With no signs of humanity, living or dead, Ty could have fallen asleep in that very spot. He closed his eyes as a breeze drifted over his body.
His eyes sprung open and his body shot up when he felt something in the water. He saw Lenux’s dark form walking over the spring. Though formless and untouched by the sunlight, the apparition’s face exuded impatience.
You need to move, it spoke.
Cooper raised to his feet and stooped to retrieve his backpack and a rifle. The apparition disappeared as he made his way back to his station wagon and rolled onto the road.
Twenty-five years before, Ty’s father took him on a road trip. He’d been eight years old and unlike most kids his age, wasn’t excited about seeing all of the new places and sites. Instead of bouncing with excitement, the boy had fixed his eyes on the back seat, expecting his mother’s corpse to thrash around in the trunk. As though his murdered mother riding in the trunk did was not enough to freak him out, his father had read from pamphlets, which claimed the dead would start walking any day and their only salvation was the wilderness, where they would wait with others until the time to take back the earth came.
Although it happened a quarter of a century ago and his father had been dead for ten years, Ty Cooper saw him in the passenger side seat, smiling. He’d been angry when he raped mom from behind and smashed her head against the tile floor. Ty recalled him shouting “stinking bitch, I never liked these tiles!” but his mood had changed as soon as his wife’s body was in the trunk. Through the drive to Canada, Ty’s father whistled Zippity Doo Da, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers.
Stinking bitch, I never liked these tiles!
Ty saw his mother’s wide eyed expression as her husband grabbed her long, brown hair and broke her nose on the floor. He heard her shrieks and grunts and saw her arms flailing less violently with every second until she could only whimper and cry. One of her fingernails had broken off as she attempted to claw her way across the floor, leaving a bloody and exposed finger tip. Sending his wife to the floor, Ty’s father had knocked one of her teeth across the room to young Cooper’s feet.
When he was eight, Ty had been paralyzed by horror, but now the memory aroused him. As he tried to process the significance of the development, a dear ran across the road. Ty slammed on the breaks, missing the creature by mere inches.
Watch the road, a formless Lenux said.
Had the task master sent a dear out into the road to stir his worker or was this a warning because Cooper had been watching the past? Deciding not to risk another encounter, Ty looked straight ahead and pushed his childhood to the back of his mind. Since Cooper was heading back home on an unfamiliar road he’d need to pay attention and take direction as he received it.
*
They’d traveled home on the road they’d left through, but Sal did not want to go all the way back yet. Instead, he wanted to inspect a possible safe location. Aside from Jasper and Sal, the survivors had little to no survival training and many of them were children. If the location wasn’t right, Sal might brig the others to doom instead of salvation.
Before passing their exit, Sal stuck his arm out of the window and wind milled, signaling Jasper to keep following. Shortly after the exit, the road became more urban. There were dead traffic signals, auto repair shops, and a junk yard. He turned off of the highway and onto a narrow one lane road which fed into the dump. Sal figured that few flesh eaters congregated in a graveyard for cars, appliances, and anything else deemed trash, so the place was an ideal pit stop and possible hideout. He leapt out of the truck and waved the station wagon down, beside his rig.
When the car stopped, Jasper rolled the window down and let the engine idle.
“What is it?”
After Sal slid his thumb over his throat, Jasper killed the engine.
“Get the map out, I want to take a look at it.”
Sarah reached behind her seat and passed an old road atlas to Jasper. With the map, Jasper opened his door and stepped in front of the station wagon. He handed the map over, and Sal opened it over the surface of the hood.
The pages were brittle with age, so Sal flipped through the book with care until he found the local map. He scanned through the space between their home and the dump, looking for channels of back roads with alternate routes and cover. If they were spotted, he wanted an escape route.
“There,” Sal said, pointing to a route with two roads running in close parallel with several smaller roads bridging them together like two ladders held side by side.
Jasper and Sarah leaned over, examining the line. His daughter wore a blank expression.
“Twilight is less than an hour away,” Sal said. “I want to wait until dark to move.”
“I’m going to piss on one of those old cars,” Jasper said.
After he walked off, Sal looked at his daughter.
“Looks like I’m starting to rub off on him.”
She said nothing, but continued looking at the map. He moved his hand to smother her hair, but she flinched away. Sal lowered his hand back to the station wagon.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
There was a long silence, but before Sal could ask her something else, Sarah said “I guess everyone’s been through it.”
“That’s the world for yah. Always ready to stab you in the back and spit in the wound.”
*
When night fell, Sal climbed back into the truck. Instead of having Jasper and Sarah follow him home, the two sat in the rig. Jasper was by the window with Sarah in the middle. They needed the truck for the mission and if they ran into trouble, it would be a lot easier if they were in one vehicle than two. The truck wasn’t as easy to hide or maneuver, but it could damn well plow his way through most roadblocks. He’d thought of scouting the area first, but decided against it. He had a feeling that there was a time limit.
Driving a large truck made the roads seem narrow and small. If there had been two-way traffic, Sal doubted that he could have rode through the residential streets without hitting something, but like everything else the roads were dead. With the headlights off, Sal kept his speed down to twenty-five miles an hour.
Through the blackness, Sal could not see any of the undead and the engines drowned out any noise, but he knew they were out there. Maybe they were staggering towards the truck. Maybe they were ignoring it, but Sal didn’t dare get out. Within the past few days, he’d had enough of running among those things.
When they brought the others back, maybe Sal would take them to the mountains, where there were no urban ruins. Maybe he’d run into some old friends, who’d been smart enough to get away from the cities when the whole mess had started. Before they’d need to move, maybe Sal would have enough time to teach the others how to survive out there.
The hell I will, Sal thought.
These survivors had no training or experience besides how to point, shoot, and reload a gun. They wouldn’t last a week in the wilderness, but they couldn’t stay in the dormitory forever either. What if the raiders came back? What if they decided to check the compound for more survivors or even supplies? They’d be lucky if it hadn’t happened already.
After parking the truck in an alley, the trio followed a side street to a small, secluded section of chain-linked barrier. Though they hadn’t heard any moans or extra footsteps, nobody spoke and everyone moved quietly. When they reached the barrier, Jasper watched the rear, while Sarah peered through the wired fence. Sal removed a pair of bolt cutters, which he’d stolen along with the truck, from his backpack and cut a circular entrance close to the ground. When the circle was clipped loose, Sal grabbed it and lowered the severed bit of fencing to the outside ground.
With Jasper still covering their backs, Sal ducked through the fence and ran fifty yards to the nearest building, careful to stay low. He then waved at Sarah, signaling her to run to his side. Sarah stumbled as she moved through the entry hole. As her foot struck the side of the portal, a metal clanging sound became audible from Sal’s position. As if they could make themselves invisible, Jasper and Sarah both froze in pace. Sal waved his arms with urgency.
Get the fuck in here!
If the undead hadn’t been attracted by the engine of the truck, he doubted that Sarah’s stumble would draw them and he didn’t want any delays. Perhaps sensing her father’s impatience, Sarah hunched as low as she could and scurried to her father. She looked like an inept spy in one of those bad comedies her mother loved. By the time Sarah was halfway to her destination, Jasper charged through the fence.
Not worried about encountering too many zombies inside of the base, their plan was to stay in the shadows and hug the buildings. If there were any living predators lurking about, it would help the potential prey remain hidden.
The compound looked the same as they’d left it only a couple of days before. The buildings were still wrecked and nothing moved. If any flesh eaters were inside, they weren’t haunting the path between the hole in the barrier and the dormitory. There were blood splatters where they’d left the bodies of their attackers, but the corpses were gone. The blood trails leading in multiple directions suggested that the bodies had been devoured.
They could be anywhere, Sal thought.
Pushing the invisible pack of ghouls from his mind, Sal moved to the front door and found it locked. It was probably still blockaded from the inside. He wondered how they were going to get inside with the others huddling in the basement when a voice called from above.
“I was wondering when you’d return!” Adeline called.
“Get some rope,” Sal said, “and don’t yell.”
When the girl in the window disappeared Sarah fell against the wall, letting out a sigh. Sal moved his glance between the night behind him and the second story window.
When Adeline returned, Sal told Sarah to climb first. His daughter nodded and grabbed the dangling rope. Though Sal had tried to give the girl more strenuous training than the militia could have, she’d never mastered rope climbing so her entrance took several minutes. Jasper didn’t do much better.
I used to do this every day, Sal though, visualizing his youth when he’d climb anything that could hold his weight, then later to some of the training sessions he’d received from various militias or imposed on himself. Rope climbing had been almost as much of a cornerstone in his life as running a mile wide circle through the forest. Not only would he make it, but he was determined to make it under half the time Jasper did.
By the time he shimmied up to the top, Sal was winded.
Fucking old age, he thought though he figured he still made better time than his goal.
“Looks like we made it inside just in time to avoid a fight,” Jasper said.
Sal peered out of the window and counted six flesh eaters as they emerged from behind a building. More could be on their way. There was a chance that they could wait the ghouls out but Sal didn’t want to take the time. Besides, there was no telling what they would run into with a group of over thirty. Three could move with relative stealth, but thirty were impossible to hide in open spaces. Since many of the survivors were small children, quiet was out of the question. The situation would only get worse if the raiders returned. They needed an alternate way out.
“Let’s get down to the basement,” Sal said. “Adeline, get everyone ready to go. Tell them to pack all of the supplies they can easily carry. Sarah, go with her. Jasper, come with me.”
They rushed down the stairs and into the basement. When Sarah and Adeline disappeared into a doorway leading to the shelter, Jasper followed Sal into another chamber. As soon as they crossed the doorway, the ceiling ended, revealing a channel of pipes and wires above their heads. Some of the wires drooped, but Sal did not have to duck or stoop to avoid hitting them.
“There’s a service tunnel somewhere around here that leads to the sewers,” Sal said. “I’ve never been in there, so I didn’t know how to get in from the outside.”
Jasper hadn’t known about the tunnels before, but he gave no hint of surprise.
“How are we going to know where we’re going once we’re below?” he asked.
“I’m hoping The Man kept a map hidden around here.”
Not designed for office or storage use, the room was sparsely furnished and only a few crates cluttered the bare floor. The space was illuminated by a single, dangling light bulb. A map wouldn’t be hidden in a cabinet or under a table though. Sal moved to the wall, where a ventilation grill almost touched the ground. Sal reached into his bag and snatched a flathead screw driver.
Jasper turned towards the doorway with his rifle aimed at the floor, perhaps wondering why he’d been pulled into this room with nothing to do.
When the screws were all free, Sal pulled the grill off, and leaned it against the wall. He felt around the edges for something and stopped when his hand crossed a paper surface, bordered by duct tape. He drew his knife and cut the find free, then pulled away an eight inch by twelve inch envelope.
“Looks like we have a winner,” Sal said after further inspecting the vent. He tossed the find to Jasper, and said “see what’s inside.”
He then punched the grill back against the vent and returned the screws.
“It’s a map of the sewer system alright,” Jasper said.
Without responding to his comrade, Sal moved to the adjacent wall, where a solid, grey panel was screwed in place. As he moved the screw driver into position, Sal said “Give me some cover. If there’s something on the other side, I don’t want it grabbing me.”
Jasper set the map and his back pack on the floor and raised his rifle.
Sal opened the door, revealing a crawl space.
“Does it go anywhere?” Jasper asked.
“I see a back wall and one to the left, but nothing to the right. It’s pitch black though.”
“It’s going to be a tight fit,” Jasper said.
“Let’s grab some flashlights fresh batteries.”
*
Sal and Jasper returned with the flashlights and the other survivors. In the previous visit, Sal had only seen his daughter and Adeline, leaving the rest of the group to his imagination. The youngest was an infant, held in the arms of a fifteen year old girl. Between the baby and Sarah, the group ranged from four year olds to teens. Ten of the members were boys and none of them looked older than twelve. They’d been instructed to take all of the leftover supplies and ammunition they could carry.
Since he’d never been good with children, Sal entered the tunnel first, leaving himself well ahead of any strays. The plan was for Jasper and Sarah to take the rear while Adeline was in the middle, but far enough forward to keep the children away from Sal. Before climbing in, he shined the light through to make sure there were no undead claws or bottomless pits waiting to swallow hapless explorers. When he determined it was safe, he climbed through. He didn’t wait for the others before trudging ahead.
When he heard Adeline’s shoes slap the pavement Sal swiveled towards the sound. She kept her rifle slung over her shoulder as Sal had instructed. Though he wanted her to be able to shoot if there was trouble, he did not want her accidentally killing someone in the group. He’d ordered her not to aim at anything unless he told her to.
“If something’s lurking down here I want to hear it. Keep their mouths shut.”
Without waiting for a response, Sal continued walking. Two flashlight beams swept through Sal’s view as the group behind took a look at the space around them. They were inside of a crawlspace with brick walls. Had the entry to the other room been more accessible, the space could have been used for storage. Instead it was a gateway to a subterranean network.
Their exit was a gray painted metal doorway with a foot by foot window at average face level. Because the door swung outwards, Sal didn’t bother to check to see if anything was on the other side. Instead he turned the handle and shoved the door open, taking a quick step back and raising his shotgun.
When no moaning figure greeted him, Sal stepped through the doorway. So he could see and keep his shotgun aimed, Sal had taped a flashlight to the firearm. As he cleared the doorway, Sal swept light through the corridor, looking for any side passageways. There were none in the range of his beam, so Sal quickened his pace.
He heard shallow splashes as his feet slapped occasional puddles. The water might deepen as they progressed, but he didn’t worry about it. Rats squeaked and squealed on the ground, but he didn’t look down, only forward.
After he moved fifteen yards, Sal slowed when he saw an intersecting passage. They still had to travel some distance before switching passageways, but Sal worried about what might be lurking to their sides.
He stopped in the middle of the intersection and shined the barrel of his shotgun to the left, then to the right. He motioned to Adeline.
“Keep everyone together and watch the side channels.”
Sal hadn’t spotted anything lurking, but something could appear. The undead always seemed to pop out of nowhere. They could be trapped in any dumpster or haunt any room, like snakes coiling under a rock. They could even be clawing their way along the floor in the next passageway.
Under most circumstances, Sal would have avoided the sewers. There was no telling what had been lurking in the dark tunnels before the dead walked. Though most people laughed at the suggestion, Sal still believed the old wise tales of alligators crawling around the deeper tunnels. He’d also heard of vagrants living down there. If they could do it then, why not continue to do so? They hadn’t had much luck with people outside of their own colony, so why wouldn’t the sewer dwellers be crazed cannibals? On top of the potential threats, they were outside of their element, in unfamiliar territory, and revealed by flashlight beams. Had there been some force stalking them, the enemy would have been accustomed to the catacombs.
Despite the potential threats, Sal chose the sewers to move below problems that were very real. They had no way of knowing weather the raiders who had attacked their colony would be back. There had already been a small returning party. When they failed to report back, more troops might be sent to investigate. Sal was also aware that he led a large group of mostly children. Getting three people inside of the walls had been easy, but thirty would make noise and attract the undead. With thirty people, most of whom were not trained, they would have easily run into a corner. At least if they got attacked in the tunnels, their enemy would have been drawn into a bottleneck.
Sal did not expect to be attacked by ravenous underground dwellers, though. If thy lived below the colony, wouldn’t they have tried to get in? Wouldn’t they have at least grabbed some of the citizens above? That left alligators, which Sal figured a shotgun could neutralize just as easily as it would the undead.
After fifteen minutes, Sal figured they were halfway across the compound. He shined a flashlight on his compass to make sure they were still moving in the right direction. Though there were muffled voices behind, nobody in the group spoke to Sal.
Their tunnel ended in a T.
He shined the flashlight in both directions, revealing nothing. The left tunnel led them in the right direction. A quick look at the map informed Sal that the tunnel did not dead end, so he move without making a motion to the others. As he moved through the new passageway, water sloshed around his boots, but he could no longer hear the rats.
*
Ty’s mother stumbled through the front door and immediately ordered her son to go to his room. Her voice was slurred and her command was followed by a deep belch and giggles. Behind her, Mrs. Cooper towed a scraggly man perhaps thirty-five years old with a pony tail and the longest nose Ty had ever seen. He recognized his mother’s date as a gas station attendant named Earl. Earl twirled a toothpick between his teeth.
As he stepped into the house, Earl shot Ty a glare which said “shut the fuck up and stay out of my way, runt.” He spat the toothpick at Ty’s feet. Mom grabbed Earl by both hands and pulled him towards the stairs, pulling her date’s attention away from the runt. Although none of them were missing, Earl’s teeth were almost as yellow as a school bus.
Now grown up and driving a station wagon through a world infested by the undead, Ty Cooper thought of the noises he’d heard that night. The moaning. The bed spring. He momentarily imagined that he was Earl, cupping his hands over his mother’s breasts, nibbling at her, and sucking sensuously. Then he became his father. He turned her over and slammed her head against the wall until the drywall gave way.
The farmland surrounding the road looked the same as what he’d drove through an hour before. As he kept moving, Ty wondered if the road was just taking him in a circle instead of leading to his destiny.
Not twenty minutes after his mother and Earl disappeared into the stairwell, Ty’s father stepped through the door and tossed a handful of pamphlets on the living room sofa. Mom and Earl either didn’t hear Dad come in or the just didn’t care enough to stop fucking. Either way, the noise attracted Mr. Cooper’s attention. After Dad climbed the stairs, Ty could hear his mother shouting, followed by glass breaking.
Mr. Cooper walked down the stairs and moved to his son. When he stooped down, Ty noticed his father’s bloody lip and nose to match.
“I met these wonderful people in town,” he said. “They said we can get away from all this.”
Mr. Cooper waved his hand around the room and stepped back to the sofa to retrieve the pamphlets.
“I’d like to take you with me sport. It’ll be just like camp!”
He took Ty’s hand and led him to the door.
“I don’t think mommy wants us here right now,” Dad said.
After rolling out of the driveway, they hadn’t stopped in either a hotel or a magical camp like dad has suggested. Instead, they parked behind a grimy service station. For the next hour they talked about sports, cartoons, fishing, and other important things a father might talk to his son about on a camping trip.
Their chatter died when a pair of headlights swept across the front parking lot. They were attached to Earl’s rusty Ford pickup truck. Though he wasn’t sure, Ty had later assumed that Earl lived in the room above the service station.
“Stay in the car, okay sport.”
His father left the car and strode into the front parking lot to meet Earl. He carried a tire iron and returned twenty minutes later with dark splatters on his clothes.
“I talked to Earl,” dad said. “He agreed to not see mommy any more.”
*
“This should be it,” Sal called back.
Sal guessed they had been in the sewer for nearly a half an hour. He’d kept the pace slow to reduce the chance of getting ambushed or lost. Now he saw a ladder leading up to the street. With any luck, Sal would slide away the man hole cover and see the truck twenty feet away. With their luck, Sal figured the undead were shambling right over their heads.
“Stay back,” Sal said. “Don’t come up unless I tell you to and if I don’t make it… Jasper’s in charge.”
Without waiting for a response, Sal moved towards the ladder and climbed. When he slid the manhole cover out of the way nothing reached down to grab him and no gunshots sounded. He pivoted his head to the right until the truck was in sight.
He poked his head back into the sewer and called back, “Jasper, I need you up here now. These people are going to need all the cover they can get. Sarah, Follow Jasper up here and get into the cab. Be ready to drive off if there’s trouble.”
“I’ve never driven one of those rigs before,” she protested.
“You can figure it out,” he said. “If we just stand here talking, we’ll be swarmed by dead bodies before we can get out of here.”
Without further protest, Sarah followed Jasper to the street. Jasper opened the trailer doors while Sarah opened the driver’s side door and climbed in. She didn’t start the engine.
Good, Sal thought. He wanted to get out quickly if something happened, but leaving the truck engine on would attract the dead before they were able to drive off. If anyone was getting left behind it would be him and Jasper because the two of them could make it out of the city alone.
Three teens moved to the street. One reached down and grabbed a cardboard box. When he retrieved it, he tossed it in the back of the truck and moved back to the manhole. The others did the same. When the younger children made it to the street, they ran right into the back of the truck, while the older ones stayed outside. Adeline was the last to leave the sewers and when she did, she told the other children to get into the trailer.
When the children and Adeline were safely inside, Sal said: “These doors are rigged to lock from the inside. We’re going to leave the outside locks undone so you can get out if there’s trouble.”
He didn’t mention that the inside locks would also make it harder for someone else to get in, but he was sure it was on Adeline’s mind. Without saying another word, the two soldiers shut the doors.
After he heard the lock engage, Jasper and Sal let go of their doors and walked towards the cab, Jasper on the passenger side and Sal on the driver’s.
“Scoot over,” Sal told Sarah.
“Looks like the hard part’s over,” Sarah said.
“The hard part’s never over,” said Sal. “None of these people know how to survive and we’re not going to be able to live in the junk yard forever.”
*
Ty Cooper drove the station wagon, but instead of rolling past the long deserted farmland he should have spotted, he saw a populated suburban neighborhood like the one where he’d lived as a child. Cars pulled in and out of driveways, but disappeared in a mist as soon as they hit the street. The ghostly forms of men in suits climbed into cars. Wraiths mowed their lawns.
To his left, Ty spotted the blond girl from his dreams walking through the front door of one of the houses. As she stopped at the edge of the porch to grab a news paper, Ty cranked the steering wheel to move towards her, but he was too late. Three figures tackled her from a run and tore away her clothes as she kicked, flailed her arms, and lashed out with her teeth.
If those fucks were going to take away his prize, then he would take them for a consolation. Ty stepped on the gas pedal.
As the engine roared and he cleared the curb, the station wagon fell instead of bouncing upwards. The sound of gunfire and a blasting car horn drowned out the distant lawn mowers.
His head hit the steering wheel as the station wagon buried itself in a shallow ditch. When he looked up, the suburbs had been replaced by farmland and the wraiths had disappeared with it as though they lived in the vanishing town of Brigadoon. Instead, he saw maybe five lepers in the distance, stumbling towards the commotion Ty had caused. He couldn’t make out too many details from his distance, but he did see that one zombie was missing an arm.
Ty reached for the gear shift to switch to reverse, but the barrel of a Russian made automatic rifle poked through his open window.
“Step out slowly…” the gunman’s eyes narrowed as he examined Cooper. “He’s one of ours.”
After a moment, Ty recognized the gunman’s face, but did not know his name.
“I’ve found something important,” Ty said.