by K. M. Fawkes
The army had given them a first-aid kit, but he remembered thinking how pathetically basic it was. It was essentially just filled with Band-Aids and alcohol wipes. They had thrown in an EpiPen and a venom extractor for good measure, but since they were both single-use items, they weren’t going to do a group of fifty people very much good.
With what he had here, he could give IV fluids, stitch wounds shut, treat infections, and render semi-painless surgeries that he hoped he would never have to perform.
Brad grabbed one of the bags he’d had stashed under the counter, pulled out a selection of medical equipment, and stuffed it inside. He couldn’t take too much, because he needed to be able to carry both it and the food he was hoping to find without overbalancing his bike, while also being able to ride quickly in case he ran into more shotgun-wielding survivalists.
He made sure that he took enough to make himself feel much better about the possibility of a medical emergency, though. He knew himself well. Once the idea of something serious happening had entered his head, he’d worry himself sick about it if he didn’t feel like he could handle it.
That particular trait was probably one of the reasons he was single. Or, at least, that was what the last woman he’d dated had told him before she asked him not to call her again. He had no reason to think she was lying. It wasn’t exactly his favorite thing about himself, either.
Brad pulled himself out of the past and glanced at the back staircase. He hadn’t been back in his apartment for six weeks and he’d left with only what would fit in the backpack he’d brought because they hadn’t given him time for more. He didn’t have a lot of time now, actually, but there was enough. He only wanted one thing. He jogged up the stairs quickly and opened the door.
Everything was just as he’d left it, which wasn’t a surprise. If no one had been in the clinic, no one had been in the apartment. The stairs he’d just climbed were the only way in.
The food in his refrigerator had long since rotted and he knew that there was no point in checking the cabinets. The most he might have would be a bag of popcorn he hadn’t gotten around to microwaving yet. And without a microwave, that was pretty damn pointless.
He never bought more groceries than he needed.
“You’re stocked up like you’re waiting for the end of the world! Do you know how ridiculous this looks? Do you know what people say about you?”
“Do you know that those people will starve if there’s an event?”
“There’s never going to be an ‘event,’ Lee!”
Brad shook his parents’ voices out of his mind and opened the cabinets, mostly to take his mind off of the memory. He found an unopened bag of chips in one cabinet and a jar of salsa on the shelf below it. The chips had been there for a while because he’d bought the brand when it was on sale and then hadn’t liked them very much. The thought was absurd to him now.
Having shoved the chips into his backpack, he went through the living room without stopping and stepped into his bedroom. Mostly out of habit, he crossed the small room and flopped down onto his bed.
After six weeks of sleeping on a slowly deflating air mattress, his bed felt like heaven. He stretched out, resting one arm over his eyes to block out the sun that always smacked him right in the face in the morning.
The temptation arose slowly.
He could just stay right where he was. It wasn’t like he was legally in the wrong. Sure the soldiers had evacuated him, but that had been weeks ago. And this was his house, his clinic. He’d made every single payment on time for seven years.
When he got the feeling that his argument wouldn’t hold much water if it was challenged, he switched tactics, continuing the argument inside his head. If he was here, he could help people. They could come to the clinic if they were injured…
And what happens when your supplies run out?
Brad tried arguing with the voice in his head—the voice of his father. Maybe people would help him find more supplies. Maybe they could rebuild the community; everyone could come together and use their individual skills to survive.
Or, maybe when he ran out of something, panicked people would take the rest. He’d seen the destruction less than twenty minutes ago. And half an hour before that, an old man had aimed a gun at him. He’d lost the argument with his dad twenty years ago. Now, he couldn’t even win the argument in his own head.
Brad sat up. There was no point in staying here. There was also no point in pretending the life he had known last year would ever be possible again.
He knelt and pulled a box out from underneath the bed. It was the only thing he’d missed, the only thing he’d regretted leaving.
The box was pretty. It was baby pink—his mother’s favorite color—and there was a stylized drawing of the Eiffel tower on the front. French phrases swirled around the sides, proclaiming love. All of the odds and ends that his mother had thought were worth keeping were in that box. She hadn’t been much of a pack rat, so the whole thing wasn’t much bigger than a shoebox. Regardless, he couldn’t take all of it with him.
He stood and glanced out of the window. There was still no sign of anyone on the street. It should have made him feel relieved, but the sense of being alone was creepier than anything else. Maybe because he knew that those soldiers were only a few streets away.
He sifted through the papers quickly, finding old report cards, field day ribbons, and a few colorful drawings, signed in his terrible childhood penmanship. Then, he got to the pictures. It took some time to find the ones he wanted, but eventually, he settled on five.
He pulled out a photo of himself as a newborn in his mother's arms. Then, he grabbed the snapshot of the two of them together on his first day of kindergarten, his blue backpack slung over his shoulders and a worried smile on his face. He hadn’t noticed at the time, but tears were sparkling in his mother’s eyes despite her smile.
Then there was the photo of the two of them at his middle school science fair, his experiment on common phobias visible behind them. After that, the timeline skipped to a photo of her with her arms around him on his high school graduation. His robe was too short and his graduation cap fit crookedly. She was crying openly in that one. And, finally, the two of them at his college graduation. She was holding his degree and smiling widely. She hadn’t loved his major, but she’d been proud of him, anyway.
They hadn’t taken a lot of pictures in his life, but they’d hit the high notes.
He slid the photos into the back pocket of his jeans and closed the box, pushing it back under the bed before standing up again. He had gotten more and more tense while he’d been sitting there. His shoulders and back muscles ached from it.
Brad glanced out the window. It was still clear, but the tension didn’t go away. He had to go. While he still could.
Chapter 4
Brad grabbed his bike and went out the back door of the clinic this time. There was a neighborhood several streets over that he knew fairly well. He’d cycled through it on some of his morning rides and a few of his clients had lived there as well. He’d start his supply hunt there.
An easy ride later, he found himself looking down the street. It looked very different to how he remembered it. Like the downtown area, several houses here had broken windows and empty doorways. Clothing and paperwork were strewn over some of the lawns. The soldiers had been ruthless in their one-bag-per-person rule.
One house was only a burnt-out skeleton of what it had been, but it didn’t look like the fire had spread. He wondered what had happened as he rode past and the old frustration of not knowing and knowing that he never would welled up again.
For the week or so after the EMP, the lack of information had nearly driven him crazy. He’d never really been a social media junkie, but he’d read the news every morning and kept up with a few of his college acquaintances through his messaging app.
One of them had gotten the nanobot injection about a year after the technology had appeared, after the price dropped to a point
where professionals could just about afford it. Brad hadn’t heard from him since the news had announced that MRI scans could rid users of the bots. He hoped the guy had managed to get one. If he had, he could have gotten lucky enough to be one of the ten percent of America’s population that was still alive.
As Brad’s thoughts had wandered, so had his feet. He found himself standing in front of the house at the end of the street. All the windows were intact and the sturdy-looking wooden door was closed. He watched the house for a few moments, but no curtains moved. No shadows appeared in the windows. He walked around the house, but it looked completely deserted. Which didn’t mean that it actually was.
Then again, he wasn’t going to learn anything by standing around in the yard. There was no food back at the safe house and there might be food here. He had to try it.
Taking a deep breath and drawing his shoulders back, Brad walked up the front steps. He scanned the front windows more closely, but the curtains were too thick for him to see anything. For all he knew, there was a whole army contingent behind those doors waiting to fill him full of lead.
He brought his fist up and banged on the door sharply and quickly, listening intently. Sometimes, a sudden noise could startle someone into giving themselves away. He didn’t hear a thing. Either the house was empty or the occupants had nerves of steel. He reminded himself that standing around thinking about it wasn’t going to help. It was now or never.
Brad took several steps back, walking almost to the edge of the porch steps. Then, he rushed at the door, lowering his shoulder a split second before coming in contact with the wood. The door, which had apparently not been locked, burst open and he went down flat on the floor.
He grabbed his ribs on his right side and caught his breath with a series of gasps. After a few moments, it occurred to him to look around. No one was watching, which was a huge relief. If they had been, he probably would have heard them laugh by now, anyway.
Brad sat up slowly, still rubbing his ribs with one hand. They hurt like hell, but he hadn’t broken anything. He had scraped his palms and his knees hurt, too.
“Okay,” he said to himself, getting to his feet slowly and turning back to the door. He hadn’t even broken it. He had a new, fleeting sense of respect for the looters. They must have shoulders of steel. “I haven’t turned into an action hero in the past few weeks.”
He stepped back onto the porch and grabbed his bike, not wanting to leave any sign that he was currently inside.
Leaning the bike against the living room wall, he pushed the door closed behind him. Immediately, the house became a whole lot darker. He didn’t want to open any of the curtains, so he blinked a few times, letting his eyes adjust before he headed down the hall.
He passed the living room on his right and his suspicions that this place had escaped the looters was confirmed when he saw that it was still relatively neat. He stepped into the room to be sure that it was unoccupied and glanced around.
Whoever had lived here had been a well-read person. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined one wall. The leather chair that sat nearest to the white-painted brick fireplace had a stack of books beside it as well. One of the last newspapers Brad had received was sitting on the small table on the other side of the chair.
The headline had informed readers that the number of working MRI machines was diminishing rapidly. Since he didn’t care to revisit that headline or article, he turned to the shelves. A quick look through them showed everything from history books to children’s stories. So, there had been more than one reader in the house. Looking at the neat rows of children's books made his throat tighten up, so he left the room and headed toward the kitchen.
As the door swung closed behind him, the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat filled his nose. He put his hand over his face until he got used to the scent. If there was this much food that had already spoiled, maybe this place wouldn’t be any better than his own apartment had been. His heart sank, but he pulled a cabinet open anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to check.
Boxes and boxes and cans and cans of nonperishables met his eyes. Canned soup, broth, and bouillon cubes filled one cupboard. Another was jam-packed with dried pasta and unopened jars of sauce. Popcorn—not even the microwave kind, but actual kernels—chips, and a few six packs of soda had been stocked into what was clearly the junk food cabinet. It also included a few boxed cake mixes that made his mouth water for a huge slice of chocolate cake with fudge icing. There was no way to make that happen, though, so he left the boxes where they were.
He bent down to see what was in the lower cabinets and a movement caught his eye. He jerked himself upright and stared into the dining room, which was next to the kitchen in an open plan.
Brad froze where he stood as he watched the hanging bodies slowly sway back and forth. The smell hadn’t been rotting food after all.
He now knew exactly how many people had lived in this house.
There were five. Dad, mom, and three kids. The smallest body was wearing sparkly pink shoes. Those shoes had been the light-up kind. He’d seen them before, at the clinic.
“Those are some pretty fancy kicks.”
The little girl grinned. “Mommy got them for me at the mall! They cost a lot of money, so I have to stop growing for a while.”
“At least until Michelangelo understands that he can’t eat chocolate,” Tina said with a sigh as she handed Brad a check. “Thanks for taking care of him.” She picked up the big orange cat and gave him several kisses that he clearly only tolerated. “We love the big doof.”
There were two chairs on their sides underneath the parents’ bodies, but none for the children. The implications sank in slowly and his stomach clenched as the floor seemed to tilt under his feet. Tina and her husband had hanged their children and then themselves in their neat dining room.
A buzzing filled his ears as he turned toward the back door he’d only vaguely noticed and shoved it open. He bolted out onto the back deck and leaned over the porch railing, gagging. Since he hadn’t had anything to eat since noon the day before, nothing came up, but still the retching went on and on, eventually sending him to his knees.
A few minutes later, he finally managed to catch his breath and lean his forehead against the railing, but the questions wouldn’t stop running in circles in his mind. Had the family been infected? Or had they simply lost hope? Either way, those parents—people that he had known and liked—had killed their children and then themselves, and there wasn’t a damn thing Brad could do about it.
He glanced over his shoulder at the open door. The last thing he wanted to do was go back into that house. But the food was still in there. If he didn’t bring any of it back, he’d come all this way for nothing. He’d have that image in his head for no reason.
Brad pushed himself to his feet and walked back into the house. That same sickly sweet smell hit his nostrils again and now that he knew what it was, it was harder to deal with. He shoved a random assortment of canned soup and vegetables into his bag, along with the boxes of pasta and jars of sauce. It would be enough for a week or so. He left the rest. If they wanted it, someone else could come back for it. He was done with this house.
Back on the road, Brad shrugged into his backpack and got onto his bike. This wasn’t getting better. Nothing was getting better.
The thought hammered into him like a physical blow and he leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bike handlebars. Why was he shaking so hard? He’d known that there would be bodies. And, obviously, he would have known some of them.
He wasn’t the most social guy, but he’d been the best vet in Bangor. People had been in and out of his clinic all the time. He hadn’t been particularly close with this family, although he had seen Michelangelo at least once a year. The cat had been about six. The little girl in the pink shoes had just been a baby when they’d brought Michelangelo in for the first time.
And he was avoiding the real cause of his lightheadedness: so far, all of the bodies he’d see
n close up had been neatly bagged, which meant that he hadn’t had to see their faces. Or, he’d had the benefit of seeing the bodies through a screen. There had been plenty of footage on the news, especially in the early days of the people who’d died from the virus. He hadn’t realized the distancing effect that had until he’d encountered them, face to lifeless face.
Brad straightened up slowly. He needed to go back to the soldiers and let them know that there were bodies in the house. But what would they do about it? Cut them down, bag them up, and toss them into the truck? Just more bodies to add to the pile they’d already made? Probably.
So why did it feel so wrong to let that happen? Maybe because he’d known them. Or maybe because they’d been so well prepared and organized. Or maybe it was because life should mean much more than a hollow clang as your body hit the metal bed of a truck that was going to dump you God-knew where.
He swallowed the bitterness and stood up on the pedals, heading back to Main Street. He had to tell the soldiers, no matter how he felt about it. It was the responsible thing to do. He squared his shoulders and rounded the corner, gearing himself up for a possible confrontation.
The soldiers weren’t there. He came to a stop, letting his breath out. Where in the hell had they gone?
A glance at the sun told him that he’d been out a whole lot longer than he’d thought he would be. It was well into the afternoon, so it was possible that they were already done. They’d certainly been working efficiently.
Still, Brad hadn’t wanted to be out this late. He wasn’t worried about having to ride back to the apartments in the dark; with the long August days, there would be plenty of daylight. At the same time, there was also plenty of heat and he wasn’t looking forward to a five-mile bike ride in it. Especially with the massive, overstuffed backpack hanging from his shoulders and the bag of medical supplies that was dangling from the handlebars. He swung the backpack down and pulled a bottle of water from it, twisting the cap off quickly. Then, he swigged the whole bottle down greedily.