by Ralph Gibbs
Once in the forest, the runner pulled out a pistol and blindly fired at Franklin, but whenever he did, Franklin cut an angle and used the trees as cover, in case the gunman got lucky, but never slowed down. When almost within arm’s reach, the assailant turned to fire but tripped. He flew one way, his weapon another. Franklin pinned him to the ground with a knee to his back. As Franklin grabbed the man by the hair and lifted him, he barely avoided a knife to the stomach. Franklin threw the man against a tree and pulled his pistol.
“Drop the fucking knife, or I will drop you, right here and now!” Franklin yelled.
“Look, mister,” the man said, throwing away the knife and dropping to his knees. “Let me go. I won’t say anything. I swear.”
“Just shut up and start walking,” Franklin said, still angry at being shot at. Halfway back they ran into Travis. “What are you doing? I told you to guard the girls.”
“I came to help,” Travis said, defensively.
“How’s Rebecca?”
“Unconscious. Gunilla removed the bullet and stopped the bleeding, for now, but she’s lost a lot of blood. If she doesn’t get a transfusion, Gunilla’s not sure she’ll make it.”
“We have medical supplies at the camp,” the man said. “We can take her there, and they’ll patch her up.”
“Yeah, and soon as she’s healed, she’ll be claimed by someone as their wife,” Travis said, grabbing the man by the throat.
“That didn’t seem to bother you before,” the man said, smiling. “What? Mad because Phillip claimed her before you.”
“It always bothered me, asshole,” Travis said. “I just wasn’t able to do anything about it.”
“Leave off,” Franklin said.
“As Franklin shoved the prisoner through the door, Paris asked, “Was it just the two?”
“So far,” Franklin said. “Travis, move their car out of sight.” Franklin waited for Travis to leave. “How much can you trust Travis?”
“Do you think he’s some elaborate setup to capture more women?” Paris asked.
“Frankly, I don’t think much of anything because I don’t know shit about what’s happening. The first chance we get, you will need to clear that up.”
“I trust him,” Paris said.
“That boy has nowhere to run,” the prisoner said. “His father’s going to kill him.”
“Shut up, or I will shoot your dick off,” Paris said.
“His father?” Franklin asked.
“His father is in charge of the slavers,” Paris supplied.
“Slavers?” Franklin said incredulously. “What the hell? The world’s only just gone to crap. Where did slavers come from so fast?”
“We aren’t—”
Paris kicked him in the balls.
“Technically, they’re not slavers, in the old sense,” Paris said. “But they’re out capturing women, killing any men with them and taking them back to their compound to give out as sex slaves to their followers.”
“Wives,” the man protested through clenched teeth.
Paris kicked him again and pulled out her gun. “One more word, and it’s off with your head,” she said, pointing the gun between his legs. He curled up into a ball and whimpered.
“We need to get this girl some blood,” Gunilla said, cutting in.
“What blood type are you?” Franklin asked the prisoner.
“What?” the man said.
“I said what blood type are you?” Franklin said.
“I don’t know,” the prisoner answered meekly. Franklin checked his wallet and found his driver’s license. It said he was O positive.
“There you go doc, another blood donor,” Franklin said. “Feel free to drain him dry.”
“I said I would do it,” Travis said coming back in.
“I need you standing up,” Franklin said. “Since he’s compatible, I’d rather go with him in case anyone else shows up.”
“Great, now I just need the equipment,” Gunilla said.
“What do you need?” Franklin asked.
“Ideally, a hospital, but I can make do with a needle and some tubing.”
“We could just cut his arm off and drain his blood into a bucket,” Paris suggested, trying to be helpful.
“Hey,” the man said, trying to get up. Paris kicked him over and then stepped on his chest to hold him down.
“That still leaves the problem of getting the blood into her system,” Gunilla said, unsure if Paris was serious, hoping she wasn’t, but finding it hard to care if she was.
An idea occurred to Franklin. “I’ll be right back,” he said, “I think I may have a solution.” Franklin ran to the storage unit housing the sports equipment. Opening a basketball box, he found the needle used to pump up flat basketballs. He grabbed a second. Finding the unit with the aquarium, he pulled the clear tubing from the oxygen generator. As he walked by the slavers’ car, he peered in and noticed several cans of red paint in the back seat and brought one back with him.
“Will this work?” Franklin asked, showing her his find.
“I should think so, but I’ll have a hard time jabbing this into someone’s vein.” Taking a pair of wire cutters out of the toolbox, Franklin cut a point into the air needles.
“That’ll work,” Gunilla said. She poured rubbing alcohol on the needle and hose and then looked over at the prisoner. “Come here, young man. I wish I could sterilize this better.”
“Make do,” Paris said.
Gunilla poked a hole in the bottom of an empty water bottle, shoved the tubing up through the hole, used super glue to seal the edges and duct-taped the needle to the other end of the tubing.
“Get up here, young man,” Gunilla said, pointing to another counter. None too gently, she shoved the needle into the man’s arm. Blood began to fill the tube and then the bottle.
Franklin showed the man the can of paint. “What are you supposed to do with this?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the man answered.
“You realize you have a very big needle in your arm?” Franklin said. “So, don’t be cute.” The man hesitated, but when Franklin reached for the needle, he relented.
“TC,” the man said. “It lets them know that Tad and Charlie checked the building and its clear.”
Franklin tossed the can to Travis and said, “Go out and tag the building and then get back here and stand guard.” Franklin turned to Paris. “I’m going to search more storage units. Addison, you up for more exploring?”
“Sure,” she said, smiling. “I still want to know what’s in the coffin.”
“Coffin? What coffin?” Tempest asked as she followed them out.
CHAPTER 23
As the garage door opened, Danica felt a sense of déjà vu. Just like her last trip to the hospital, Danica was in her father’s police cruiser and dressed in his trooper shirt. The only difference this time was that instead of her brother in the back seat dealing with the onset of the plague, it was Matthew coping with the aftereffects. Just as the door started to rise, she half expected to see two the sets of shoes she was now sure were Wade and Donavan’s.
Over two weeks had passed since the incident with Wade. Though she wanted to leave sooner, Matthew wasn’t completely recovered from the plague and had also developed a secondary infection from rolling around in his waste. Danica couldn’t leave him alone. Thankfully, her mother had stockpiled enough antibiotics to see him through. In truth, she wasn’t completely recovered either, as the scabs were still healing and occasionally broke open and bled. When she wasn’t feeding Matthew chicken soup or penicillin, she was dealing with the aftermath of super-shit-storm Wade.
After Wade’s escape into the night, she barricaded the entrances and stood guard until daybreak, sipping thick, bitter coffee brewed with camping equipment brought up from the basement. Her father’s service shotgun lay nearby, and where she went, it went. If Wade returned, she would be ready, and this time he would not be leaving. Just after Wade ran off,
Danica wanted to rush next door and look for Erica but fumbling around in the dark with a blind child behind her and a murdering lunatic on the loose would have been suicidal. For all she knew, Wade was next door waiting for her or in a nearby house watching them. More shamefully, though, and despite all her father taught her, she was terrified of what the darkness might hold in store for her, and, by extension Matthew. She tried to excuse her cowardice by telling herself that if something happened to her, Matthew was as good as dead. Wade wouldn’t have to touch the boy. Without her, Matthew would slowly die of starvation. A scenario played out all over the world. Small children, whose parents succumbed to the plague, unable to care for themselves would cry out for their mothers, loudly at first, but ever weaker as they slowly succumbed to the ravages of thirst or starvation.
As the two waited on daylight, Matthew related everything he had heard or witnessed. As his story progressed, Danica concluded Erica was likely dead. A hunch confirmed when shortly after sunrise she discovered Erica on the curb leaning up against Donavan, a boy she barely knew, his body riddled with bullets. It was an odd fact, considering Wade didn’t have a gun. Did he lie, or did he run out of bullets after killing the kid?
Danica added the contents of her breakfast to the waste already in the bedroom when she found Wade’s wife butchered in her bed and realized Wade had been insane long before the plague had spread its terror across the globe. Danica waited until Matthew recovered before telling him about his mother. That was two nights ago, and now it was time to see if she could determine what happened to her own family. She didn’t hold out hope. If her parents lived, a sudden ice age in hell couldn’t have stopped either from coming home. Despite the certainty, she needed closure. She could not plan her next move, whatever it was going to be until she at least tried to find out.
“What will happen now?” Matthew asked as Danica backed out onto the empty street.
Danica shifted into drive. “What do you mean?”
“Before they locked me in my room, the news said almost ninety percent of the population would die. My geography teacher told my class once that according to the last census, the population in the United States was over three hundred and fifty million people, which means only thirty-five million people survived.”
She stared at Matthew in the rearview mirror. Even if she knew the population figures, she couldn’t have done percentage calculations like that in her head.
“How did you figure that out?” Danica asked.
“I’m good with numbers,” he answered.
“That will come in handy.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You’re smart. The world will need smart people.”
“I’m blind.”
“The world is . . . or was full of blind people that made a difference,” Danica said, trying to reassure him.
“Name one,” Matthew challenged.
“Tommy,” Danica said, not up to the challenge.
“Who’s Tommy?”
“Tommy was a deaf, dumb, and blind kid that played a mean pinball. He was a pinball wizard.”
“Oh, come on, he wasn’t even real,” Matthew said, sounding disgusted.
“Helen Keller and Stevie Wonder,” Danica said, finally remembering someone.
“Who’s Helen Keller?”
Danica turned around to face him. “You know who Tommy is, but you don’t know Helen Keller?” When he said nothing, she continued. “She was a famous writer. She was also deaf. Oh, and I think I heard of this blind lawyer, Shelley something or other.”
“I don’t think we’ll need many writers or lawyers; pinball players either,” Matthew said.
“We are going to need all sorts of people. You asked me what will happen now. Well, people will start coming together. It’ll be small groups at first, like tribes. But these tribes will grow into towns and eventually cities. When they do, they’ll need smart people. They’re going to need you.”
“I guess,” Matthew said, not convinced.
“You’ll see,” she said and immediately regretted her word choice. “I mean, just wait, it’ll happen.”
Erica had always told Danica that Matthew was a smart kid, but she never realized how smart. She held a brief internal discussion and then talked to him like an adult. “Your calculations are off though,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure they’re not.”
“That’s not what I mean. You have just one part of the equation. Take it a step further. How many are too young to survive on their own?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How many are blind?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“How many are going to die of secondary infections?” she added. “So, the question really is, how many of those thirty-five million will be alive by this time next year? My guess is half that number. Still, that’s a lot of people. More than what came to the New World over two hundred years ago. However, when the settlers came, they had the skills to survive. Do you know how to farm?”
Matthew shook his head. “There is a lot of food still around,” he said.
“For now, starvation won’t be a factor. Eventually, though, it will become a problem.”
“There are going to be environmental factors,” Matthew said after a few moments.
“How so?” she asked.
“Floods, storms, hurricanes, tornados, winter.” He lowered his voice. “And people like Wade.”
He was thinking beyond the numbers. Just like her dad taught her to do. “True,” she said, wondering how much smarter he would become. “By this time next year, millions more will have died. I can only imagine how many around the world are going to die over the next several years of ordinary illnesses we can no longer cure or diagnose. It’ll be survival of the fittest, again.” She looked back at Matthew. “And the smartest.” She slammed on the brakes.
“What is it?” Matthew asked as he bounced forward in his seat. Danica looked at the store.
“Someplace familiar,” she whispered, more to herself. It was the grocery store where Danica had stopped the men from assaulting the women when she was taking Bailey to the hospital. She suddenly realized she didn’t have a clue how long ago that was. She cocked her head as she tried to calculate the time in her head. What was it, four, five, six weeks ago? Longer?
There were no armed guards at the entrance now, and people had taken advantage of their absence. The store looked like the set of the next survivalist movie. There were nearly a dozen empty cars in the parking lot. With the rainstorm overnight, they gleamed in the mid-morning sunlight looking as if their owners would emerge from the store any moment. Many of the cars had one or more broken windows and trash captured under their tires telling the real story. There was a slight breeze that pushed empty cans across the parking lot, first one way, then another. The doors to the store were open and bent into the building as if someone had beat them open with a sledgehammer. All but one of the store’s eight giant front windows were shattered. Inside, trash from package wrappings and cardboard cases littered the floor, and several of the shelves had collapsed or were knocked over, which was in sharp contrast to the empty Allen Soup superhero display that greeted customers as they entered the front of the store. From her vantage point inside the car, the store looked empty of items. Certainly, something was left. In the initial panic, people would have taken as much food and drinks as they could cart away, but other stuff like toothbrushes, toilet paper, and feminine hygiene products would have been forgotten and only remembered when they were needed. Eventually, those would disappear, and she imagined the only thing left inside would be pet toys and spices. What would be the last item taken? As she thought about that she laughed at herself.
“What’s funny?” Matthew asked.
“Mostly me,” Danica said as she spotted a familiar white cage that was miraculously still locked. Now she had to adjust her thinking, as apparently, propane canisters were among the last items anyone wanted. She pulled
into the parking lot.
“What are you doing?” Matthew asked.
“This store still has propane. I’m going to put as many as I can in the trunk. Maybe a few in the back seat.”
“Can I help?”
“Not this time. Stay in the car.”
“You should just shoot me,” he said, starting to cry.
“What the hell!” she said, getting into the back seat with him. “What brought that on?”
“I’m helpless. I couldn’t help my mom, and I can’t help you if you get in trouble. I can’t even help you get supplies. You should shoot me or leave me here.”
“Didn’t we just have this conversation? Okay, look. First of all, get it out of your head that I’m going to shoot you or leave you somewhere. That won’t happen, ever. Secondly, you couldn’t have helped your mom against two grown men, even if you could see. They would have still killed your mom and you. Lastly, you should be forgiving of me.”
“Why?” he asked, wiping away tears.
“I don’t have any experience dealing with blind people. So, I don’t know what you can or can’t do. It’ll have to be trial and error with the both of us.” She looked around before continuing. “It won’t be easy. Before the plague, there were programs in place to help the blind fit in and survive. Now, in a world where survival of the fittest is making a comeback, some are going to look on you as a burden, until we’ll remind them of their humanity.”
“How are we going to do that?”
Danica shrugged and then realized he couldn’t see her shrug. “Beats the hell out of me. I guess I could start by shooting them. If that doesn’t work, I can try something less drastic.” Matthew smiled. “Come on. If we’re going to find out what your limitations are, we might as well start now.” Danica started to get out of the car.
“Well, isn’t that cute,” a male voice said as something hard hit her on the side of her head. Danica crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
“Dany?” Matthew called out panicked as he reached for the door.
“Now, now,” the voice said as he shoved Matthew back in the car.
“Wade?” Matthew said, terrified.