Tales of the Derry Plague | Book 1 | LAST

by Anselmo, Ray

  Not that she found anyone on the mainland either. The places she drove through were as deserted as the Tam Valley had been, and the area around Point Reyes, and Sayler Beach except for her. She did go home early due to emotional exhaustion, saving Sausalito for another time. And she spent most of Sunday moping.

  Monday, though, she got back on the horse. She fired up the dehydrators and started processing the vegetables she’d already picked, then went out and harvested more. She might be starved for companionship after all this time, but she’d be darned if she was going to literally starve too. In one house, someone had all four Mad Max movies, and she watched them all, one a day from Monday to Thursday. Those made her feel better, if only from perspective – the apocalypse could be worse.

  It wasn’t until Friday, during Dog Day Evening, that she pondered again whether the trips were worth it. They used up much of the day and several gallons of gas, and the only other result seemed to be using up her lamotrigine supply a bit faster to make up for how sad the whole operation made her. Wouldn’t it be a better use of her time to pick and dehydrate more veggies, or better organize the food supply, or find leashes and see if she could persuade the dogs to go into the ocean for a bath and a splash?

  And yet … and yet that hope still sang in the distance, that faint one-in-a-very-large-number chance that someone was out there waiting for her to trip over them. The logical but so far unfulfilled scenario that she wasn’t the only one who’d come through the plague and lived to tell the tale. It hadn’t been satisfied, but it Wouldn’t. Leave. Her. Alone.

  So she didn’t leave it alone either. Back in the Ram on Saturday morning, wasting gas and time on a roll of the dice, this time to the southern end of the interior coast, Waldo and Marin City and Sausalito. The worst that would happen is that she found nothing and no one, she told herself, but even then she would just be in the same situation. “Nowhere to go but up,” she said aloud, then sang along to Alicia Keys as she headed east on the Shoreline Highway toward southbound 101.

  She found no people there either. What she did find was boats. The area was home to a few yacht harbors, and she gave some thought to commandeering a yacht to look farther afield. She only gave it thought, though – she didn’t know how to drive a boat, didn’t know how to fuel one up (or with what – she doubted they’d just take unleaded), and wasn’t sure where she’d go with it that she couldn’t just drive to. If she really wanted to check out the East Bay or South Bay or San Francisco once she finished with Marin, there was a perfectly good highway system …

  Sausalito was the worst for her emotional state. Probably because it was like Stinson Beach or Bodega Bay – a tourist town – without any weekend tourists. The restaurants and marinas sat empty, the only sounds the clang of ropes and cables on the yachts and the squawking of seagulls looking for hot dog buns that would never be dropped again. “They warn you that the end of the world will be dangerous,” she griped. “They never warn you that it’ll be a bummer. Ever think of that, George Miller?”

  The moment of sarcasm actually made Kelly smile. Well, at least she could keep her sense of humor. It was something positive, and in the middle of yet another empty town she treasured it.

  Despite the lack of success, her resolve had stiffened. She would keep looking. Next week, she’d start on the big fish, San Rafael. It and Novato to the north were the county’s main cities. She could either do San Rafael first or the towns surrounding it, or maybe both if she got an early start. The next Saturday, Novato. After that … hmmm. Around San Pablo Bay to Sears Point and Skaggs Island, see if the military was still holding on there? Or across the bay from San Rafael to Richmond and maybe Berkeley? Every option led to more options.

  “If there’s anyone to find, I’m gonna find them,” she declared to her steering wheel as she headed west and home. And if I say it enough times, I might start believing it.

  The next day, she rested. The day after that, she was back at the farm, digging out potatoes and dehydrating veggies and watching Krzysztof Kieslowski films. Work helped. Watching good movies helped. They didn’t solve the problem, but they blunted the loneliness and balanced her emotions. It wasn’t ideal, but she’d given up on ideal long before the world ended. No point in becoming a perfectionist now.

  The sun rose on another Saturday, and another feeling of reluctance. But she pushed it aside over breakfast – tortillas, salsa and cheese – and the journal. Day 62. Wow. Two whole months since she got sick. She’d managed to survive, and in most cases tame, everything that had been thrown at her for two months, with no support system, no counseling, no training. “Dang, Kel, you’re a superhero,” she told herself. Then she wrote that in the journal, just to reinforce it.

  And today, she’d go into San Rafael. No suburbs, no stalling, no pussyfooting around. Right into the biggest former population center in the area, right at the heart of her fears and despairs. Because that’s what flipping superheroes do … or would in these circumstances. She guessed.

  Gun – check. Mizuno – check. Binoculars – check. A big lunch – packed: four energy bars, a can of chili, some dry salami, dehydrated lettuce, an orange she picked off someone’s tree, a small jar of applesauce, a spoon. The Ram – gassed up, and the siphon kit and two empty jerricans in the back. AAA map – on board. Music – piled on the passenger seat. Courage – summoned. Meds – in the backpack for emergency use. Go – let’s.

  She didn’t feel any more optimistic as she hit the highway, just more determined. This was a Thing She Could Do, so she’d do it. Today probably wouldn’t be the day she got lucky, but she could, and on that basis alone she should put herself in luck’s way and try to get hit. There were worse ways to spend a Saturday.

  She headed east on 1, then north on 101, blasting the Dave Matthews Band as an attractor – everyone seemed to either love or hate the Dave Matthews Band, so if anyone was there it would hopefully draw them in to either appreciate or complain about it. Past the signs for Tiburon and Corte Madera and Greenbrae, past the merge with 580 that led to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, past all the pricey auto dealerships, finally getting off the highway at Second Street.

  There was one place she wanted to stop, aside from any people-searching – the Walgreen’s on Third Street, to snag whatever supplies of her meds happened to be around. But unlike the one in Tam Valley, somebody had the wherewithal to lock this store up before abandoning it. And she’d gotten so used to places being wide open, either by accident or panicked human action, that she hadn’t brought the crowbar. “Well, that’s just great!” she groused.

  But the Mizuno could open a lot of doors, especially the sliding glass ones at the front of a drugstore. Ten minutes of beating the daylights out of them gave her a nice workout, a healthy way of relieving weeks of frustration, and finally a way in. She raided the pharmacy for lithium, olanzapine and lamotrigine – LOL! – then grabbed some deep heating rub (her muscles could use it after all that farm work at Holy Green), cat food, dog food and human snacks on the way out.

  Until the end of it, that was the highlight of the trip. She didn’t find any signs of occupation downtown or east down the creek, none up Point San Pedro Road or around the Dominican University, none inland toward San Anselmo or down Andersen. North, south, east or west, it was all the same – quiet as the one big grave it had been turned into.

  “Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t anticipate it,” she said as she headed toward the tip of the sub-peninsula – San Quentin, home of the famed prison. She shuddered at the thought of the inmates trapped there, dying in that fatal week with no hope of escape or cure. That was the sort of thing that made origin stories for horror films, and she’d never been partial to horror films anyway. Reality had always been scary enough for her.

  Still, she was about to get off 580 and go look – someone might’ve perceived the penitentiary as a good fortress to hole up in – when something caught her eye. “Wha …?” She stopped at the top of the offramp and got out with the
binoculars to get a better look.

  Up ahead on the highway, there was a big piece of plywood painted white … no, three big pieces of plywood, attached to each other and deployed vertically. There was writing on it – spray paint, to be more precise – and she could just make out what it said …

  She hopped back into the Ram, reversed off the offramp and drove down the highway to the sign. “It probably went up during the plague, and it’s too late now,” she cautioned herself. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up …”

  But when she got there, she found that whoever had put it up must have been anticipating her doubts. There was a date painted at the bottom right corner – Sept 24. This was put up recently, less than two weeks ago?! That meant that if that date hadn’t been someone’s idea of a cruel trick, somebody else was still around, or had been less than a week ago!

  She walked over, reached up and touched the paint. It was dry, but that only meant it had been done more than a day before. Spray paint, she knew from experience, dried fairly quickly.

  She thought back to a few weeks ago, coming home from that depressing trip up the coast and praying to God for a sign. “Well, I didn’t mean a literal one, but I’m not complaining. Please, though, God, let it be true. Let it be true …”

  Kelly began tearing up as she leaned against the fender of the Dodge and looked up at the sign, thinking that maybe, just maybe, there was hope. Over and over she read the words sprayed onto the wood in overlapping Day-Glo green and orange:

  COME TO

  SANTA

  CRUZ

  21

  PLAN

  Two months of being tossed, turned and tumble-dried by reality (really, thirty-three years of it, but the last two months were the most severe) had taught Kelly to be wary of blindly embracing good fortune. If there was someone alive down in Santa Cruz, someone with the resources to be putting big signs up about a hundred miles north in San Quentin, that was the best possible fortune indeed. Which only made her more cautious – big hopes could lead to big disappointments.

  But despite her concern, she headed home that Saturday with an irrepressible song in her heart. The one-in-a-million chance’s odds had just been reduced to … four-to-one? Three-to-one? Not quite a lead-pipe cinch, but something reasonable. Something she needed to drive down and check out at the very least, right? Right.

  And the possibility of it going sideways, of finding no one there or finding someone there who’d lured her into a trap for some reason scared her senseless. Also right. Once again, it was the not knowing that was the real trouble. And there was no way of knowing without going down to Santa Cruz and finding out. At the end of that limb was an answer – but she didn’t know if it would hold her weight.

  So she stalled. Sunday, she rested except for a couple of dehydrator runs – she didn’t want all those recently harvested vegetables going bad or being found by animals. Monday was back to her regular schedule – breakfast, journal, empty dehydrators, harvest, lunch and movie, harvest more, dinner, bath, set up and turn on dehydrators, lithium, bed. Tuesday, the same plus washing dishes. She made sure she ate right, got enough rest, wore sunscreen and bug-b-gone, took good care of herself.

  But the thought of Santa Cruz never stopped pinging around her brain for more than a few minutes. Not even when she was asleep – she had dreams of being chased by zombies down the boardwalk, of getting trapped on the Ferris wheel (which she knew had been torn down years ago, but dream logic) by men with automatic weapons, of finding herself stuck on the beach between roaring sea lions and roaring humans seeking to rape or kill her, of finding the sand unpopulated only to have it open up and swallow her …

  Wednesday morning, she woke up out of one of those just as the sky was starting to lighten. “Ughhhh … subconscious, you need to chill out,” she groaned. But it had her too wired to go back to sleep, so she gave up after a few minutes of trying. It was days like this she wished she could be a “coffee achiever,” but caffeine tended to mess with her meds. She settled for downing a bottle of 7-Up with breakfast and hoping the sugar would get her through.

  It did, but another issue presented itself – there wasn’t much left to harvest. She’d finish it the next day, barring her dislocating something or getting eaten by wolves. Which meant she couldn’t put off the question with work. The houses had all been checked, the dogs were settled, and she’d hit everything else on her long-term list except learning to ride a horse and building an outhouse in her backyard. She was prepared for the winter, and having found the farm’s (and some other people’s) store of seeds, she was ready for the spring as well.

  She could put it off. But at this point it would be more difficult and take more planning than just doing it. She needed to go to Santa Cruz and see for herself. There was no other solution. She’d go. She’d go. She’d go.

  On Saturday she’d go. Take some time to plot it out first. Finish the harvest and the drying and a few other things. Lock up well behind her. And go. One way or another, she was going to see what the sign meant. On Saturday or shortly thereafter.

  None of that made the anxiety go away, or the nightmares lessen. Olanzapine took some of the edge off, but she knew the only cure was discovering the truth. She set her mind toward that goal as she finished harvesting the Holy Green’s crops on Thursday and put them into the dehydrators. Tomorrow she’d scrub the machines out. Tonight she’d plan her trip, and what else she needed to do beforehand. Time for another list – no, two lists:

  To do before leaving town:

  Check / secure ALL houses except 41 Admiral

  Dog Day – drop off extra food?

  Organize & lock up store

  Lock up Holy Green, gas storage

  Wash dishes, other items as needed

  To pack for trip:

  Full tank of gas in Ram

  3 extra 5g cans / jugs gasoline

  Food for 7 days

  Clothing for 4 days

  Tampons (just in case)

  Meds for 14 days

  Pistol & ammo

  Mizuno

  Flashlight

  Map

  Journal

  Ledger of houses / notes on Marin

  She wasn’t sure why she’d bother with the ledger and notes, except maybe to show whoever she met in Santa Cruz that she’d gotten things organized. She’d keep it to herself if she sensed even a whiff of hostility or greed – she wasn’t going to give everything away to some warlord or gang. On second thought … she crossed out the last line. She’d leave those up here – if the person or persons running things down there proved trustworthy, she could always come back up and get them. Safety first.

  That gave her another idea. If she found herself facing a well-armed and malicious militia, she’d need something with more stopping power than the Colt. Maybe she should go back to George Willard’s cabinet and take out that AK-47 or a sniper rifle or …

  … do something else really stupid. Carrying something like that which couldn’t be concealed was asking for a fight, and she’d be shafted against any group of soldiers (real or self-imagined) that numbered more than two. If there was a concerted attack against her, her best bet was to run, her second-best to beg for mercy. Shoot her way out? Please. That only worked in movies when the protagonist was an ex-Special Forces op with millions in plot armor. A petite grocery store manager in real life? No. She’d keep the Colt for wild animals, and hope that nobody she encountered qualified as one.

  If there was anyone to encounter. She didn’t know there would be. Despite the evidence that someone had put that sign up on 580 on September 24, she wouldn’t be totally confident in it until she actually met a live human being. Two months and more without doing so had left her a little raw and less hopeful than she was at the start of this mess. She’d have to see, hear and touch to believe. In God we trust, all others need to show proof – that’s what she told people at the store trying to buy cigarettes or alcohol without ID. It held here too.

&nb
sp; Friday morning, she stayed in bed late to make up for all the times she’d woken up in the middle of the night. Bad dreams – dreams involving guns firing and her ducking into underbrush while heavy footfalls thundered behind her and mountain lions with too much courage and too many teeth and dog packs that numbered in the thousands. Eventually she got all the sleep she was going to get and her subconscious got bored with torturing her. She got up, staggered to the backyard in her PJs –

  – “Crud on the half-shell with a side order of hush puppies.” She’d needed to get up to the farm early to turn off the generator before it ran out of gas! But she’d gotten too distracted by her nightmares and her tiredness. Crud, crud, triple caramel macchiato crud. She didn’t even bother dressing, just yanked on shoes, jumped in the Hyundai and went.

  As it turned out, her concern was legit – the generator had run dry. At least the last veggies – slices of pumpkin and squash – were done to a turn, and she packed them up. But would the generator be usable again? She hadn’t been doing regular maintenance, just filling it up and running it, so who knew what could’ve gone wrong while she was valiantly attempting to be unconscious? And she didn’t even have any gasoline with her, or the siphoning stuff.

  Load the bags of dried veg into the back seat. Drive to the beach parking lot. Fetch five gallons and the tools to get more. Drive back up the hill. Mentally kick herself the whole trip. Pour the gas into the machine. Pull the rope and hope to heck …