by Anselmo, Ray
(Followed by telling them where Sayler Beach was. She always had to do that. It was a small town on the underpopulated side of a small county, in the shadow of the nearby big cities. The only people who knew of it where those who’d been through it – and not all of those.)
Never mind that, though. She’d decided, even before really asking herself the question, that she wasn’t going there tonight. She’d rest, here or somewhere nearby, get some sleep, take time to develop scenarios, hit the morning daisy-fresh and what would be would be. She opened the day’s food bag and her journal and recounted the events of day 69 (tee-hee) for posterity while she ate. The bottle of Mug Root Beer was an adequate dessert.
She filled up the gas tank, emptying one jerrican and most of another. She checked the Ram over carefully for any damage she’d missed and found none. The sun went down, and she locked the car doors and eased the driver’s seat back so she could recline. She stared up at the roof of the cab. She looked out the windows at the road and the stars and the dairy farm or whatever it had been. She closed her eyes. She opened her eyes. She closed them again.
She wasn’t finding sleep an easy thing. Too tense. Too many thoughts in her head. Too aware of being one broken window away from getting grabbed by something or someone. After two months alone in Sayler Beach, she knew nothing was coming for her unless she was out in the open. No people around meant no robbers, no rapists, no motorcycle gangs. She’d only seen the mountain lion once, and after two tries she’d frightened the local canines into submission. The whole town was a safe zone for her.
Here, she was not only alone, but out of her element. She had no familiar surroundings to reassure her. She didn’t know the roads except from a map, didn’t know the places to hide or find food or borrow some tool or book or piece of clothing – not that she’d borrowed a lot of stuff, but if she’d needed to she knew where to look. If she ran out of or broke anything here, and the theoretically friendly theoretical citizens of Santa Cruz couldn’t replace it, she was back to square one.
She recalled she hadn’t taken her lithium yet and did, along with an olanzapine to hopefully curb her anxiety. It didn’t seem to help much.
She’d been unsure or confused so many times over the last two-plus months, over the last three-plus decades. But except for the dealings with angry animals, and a car accident she was a passenger in about ten years ago, there had not been any moments that she would truly consider life or death. She had, in all honesty, lived a somewhat sheltered life. Death had touched her – heck, for much of a week in August, death had occupied every waking hour – but it had rarely threatened her.
Five miles down Highway 1, though, whatever was there was guaranteed to change her life, if not end it. Things would never be the same no matter what she found. She knew that. It might kill her. It might hurt her. It might exalt her. It might dishearten her. But one way or another, part of her world would be forever affected by going around that bend in the coast, from the Pacific Ocean to Monterey Bay. That die had been cast the second she saw that white sign with the spray paint near San Quentin on 580.
She shivered, and not from the cold of the deepening night. Though she’d noticed the evenings were getting brisk – it was well into autumn now, the days now shorter than the nights. Hadn’t she walked through the first puddles of fall that very morning? But she had food and fuel to last her through it easily, and plenty of warm clothes to choose from, and she could gather wood for fireplaces if it got too cold.
All of it about a hundred miles up the coast. All she had here was six days of food, a few changes of clothes, tampons for one period and a few other items. If things went badly, there was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to get out of it.
Kelly rested her hands on the steering wheel and her forehead on her knuckles. “God, I am so scared, and it doesn’t seem like there’s anything I can do about it. I don’t know what will happen when I get there, and I’m afraid of what might happen, and I’m afraid nothing will happen because there won’t be anyone there, and I’m afraid it’ll be great but I’ll screw it up by being a spaz because You know I can be a spaz, and there’s no one to guard all the stuff I left up north, and what am I supposed to do?!”
The peace that passeth all understanding pointedly failed to show up. She had nothing more to say, and no answer came from Heaven. “Just me and my nerves,” she concluded. They’d have to get through the night together. She double-checked the door locks, laid back, closed her eyes again and waited.
And waited.
It was like she could hear every boar and bird and basilisk within a mile, and they all sounded like they’d consider a nice plate of Kelly sushi an ideal snack. Every hiss through the grass by the roadside was some rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching towards her truck. Every creak was a tree branch ready to fall on her, even though the nearest tree was fifty feet away. Every breeze shifting the Ram was a clawed paw rocking the frame.
She opened her eyes. Her imagination was doing her no favors. Her anxiety was going omnidirectional. “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” she recited, recalling proof-verses and one-liners from church youth group. “Nothing can separate us from the love of God … He has put a hedge around me … He is my sword and shield?” Darn, if only she’d thought to bring a Bible. Not that the attempt at “sword drills” was doing a lot of good. She closed her eyes again, hard.
What seemed like hours later, she drifted off, and it got worse. She dreamed of the fires from San Francisco following her down the highway, which woke her up. She went back to sleep and this time it was a pack of mountain lions. Wake up again, fall asleep again, a freak storm hurling a flood across Highway 1, tossing her and the truck into the ocean. Wake up again.
She rubbed her eyes and sat up. Was there a way to tire herself out enough that her subconscious would take a hike? She decided to try, took the flashlight from the bag, got out and locked the Dodge. Perhaps a nice walk in nature would shift things around.
There wasn’t much nature to see, though – the road and the grassy hills beside it, the dairy or whatever farm. She strolled along the asphalt the way she’d come for a few minutes, shaking her arms and rotating her neck, trying to loosen up.
A howl in the distance. Without thinking, she sprinted back to the truck, took three attempts to unlock it, piled in and locked it again. “Nope, nope, nope, nope,” she repeated until she clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself. No more of that. She turned off the flashlight, put it away, lay down, squeezed her eyes shut and stayed that way. Nightmares were bad. Nightmares were no fun at all. But you woke up from them. Their teeth didn’t draw blood and their claws didn’t rip flesh. She’d risk them until morning.
Her R.E.M. cycle seemed to take that as a challenge. Wolves worked their way into her dreams, and vigilantes and gangs. George Willard was there with the AK-47, asking what she was doing with his pistol – “think ya can rob me, little girl?” – and Mrs. Cavendish calling her a dirty Mick. She found herself cornered and retreated to the truck, but she was on the passenger side and couldn’t open the door.
She heard someone behind her and saw a masked man with a chainsaw. She ran around the front of the truck, got in on the driver’s side and closed the door just ahead of a meaty hand reaching for her.
Lock the doors. Pull out the gun. Safety off. Hammer cocked. But it wasn’t scaring off the big brute outside, rapping on the window. Tap-tap-tap-tap …
“No. You can’t come in. Leave me be.”
Tap-tap-tap-tap …
“NO! Stop! I just want to live! Is that too much to ask?”
Tap-tap-tap-tap …
“Aaah!” Her eyes opened, then shut in pain. It was getting light out. She’d gotten through the night after all, even if her soul felt scraped up by all the grit her sleeping mind had thrown at her. They were just dreams. They couldn’t hurt her –
Tap-tap-tap!
She looked left, saw something big and dark out her side wi
ndow, and almost jumped out of her skin. She started to scream and couldn’t stop.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you okay?”
Her scream wound down like an old phonograph that had just been turned off. She blinked rapidly, trying to decode what she was seeing and hearing.
“Ma’am?” Tap-tap-tap.
“Rufus, are you scaring strangers again?”
“Not trying to, but I think I did anyway. Ma’am, are you all right in there? We, uh, we come in peace …”
Laughter. “‘We come in peace’? What, you think she’s an alien? At least show her your face – all she can see is your big gut.”
“Oh. Right.” Suddenly she was face to face with a big black guy in a black shirt and slacks, who appeared to be cringing. And had the voice of a stereotype interior decorator. “Sorry to frighten you, ma’am. Just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
It’s okay, I was frightened before you got here, she thought. “I’m all right,” she squeaked.
“Good.” The other voice was attached to a redheaded woman about her size and age, wearing the same black as the big man. “If it’s okay with you, could you roll down the window? Don’t worry – like Rufus said, we really do come in peace.”
Instinctively, Kelly complied. She opened her mouth to reply – and couldn’t. She swallowed, tried again – was still speechless. She blinked, shook her head, coughed.
“Ma’am, do you need some help with som-”
“You. Are the first. People. I’ve seen. Alive. In over. Two. Months.” She had to force every word out at first, until her voice went to the opposite extreme. “I’vebeenalone allthistime everyoneelsewhereIcamefromisdead IthoughtImightbethelastpersonintheworld IlookedalloverandIcouldn’tfindanybody thenIsawthesignsaying CometoSantaCruz Icamedownhere Iwassoscared Ididn’tknowwhatI’dfind AndnowI’mfreakingout sorryforactinglikesuchanidiot …”
She suddenly found her head trapped between the man’s huge hands. His moon face was inches from hers. “Ma’am? It’s gonna be okay. You’re safe here. Whatever you’ve been through, that’s done. You’re here now. It’s gonna be fine.”
“Rufus …”
Kelly could hear the woman rolling her eyes, but she didn’t look over. She was locked on the big man’s eyes like they were lifelines. “Thanks. I think I needed that.”
“I know I did when I first got here last month. A lot of us did. Hope I was okay invading your personal space and all.”
“That helped too.” Kelly pulled back a bit, and Rufus let her go. “M-my name’s Kelly Sweeney. I’m from Sayler Beach.”
“Hi, Kelly,” the man said. “Where’s Sayler Beach?”
It never failed. “Marin County. About halfway up the coast from the Golden Gate to Stinson Beach, if that helps.”
“Way up there? Sarge, have they sent anyone up there?”
“Marin County, yeah, but not on the ocean side. Did you say you’ve been alone there all this time since the plague hit?”
“Yes, I did. Yes, I have. You’re the first people – well, the first live people – I’ve met since I got sick. I thought it was just the flu but after a week I got up and everyone else in town sorry I’m babbling again …” Kelly giggled nervously.
“It’s okay, ma’am – you’ve probably earned the right to feel a little crazy.” Sarge extended her hand. “Sandra Galbraith. And my partner here who grabs people’s heads to calm them down is Rufus Coty.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
Kelly shook both their hands. “So who are you? The Santa Cruz welcoming committee?”
“Sort of,” Sandra replied. “Mainly we’re the cops. Well, Professor Bayo came up with the name ‘Protective Service,’ since people don’t react as negatively to it as ‘police.’ But we keep the peace, break up fights, cope with criminal activity, bring lost kids home. Calm down folks who freak out after being alone for months. Protect and serve. Thus the name.”
“We do our best to be non-confrontational,” Rufus added.
“You won’t hurt me?” It was a dumb question. It was also a question she needed the answer to. “No Mad Max stuff?”
“None of that,” Sandra assured her. “The Professor’s goal is to keep the apocalypse as peaceful as he can. We’ve signed on to that.”
“Um … would you mind stepping out of the vehicle, Ms. Sweeney?”
Kelly was stunned by Rufus’ request, but saw no reason not to comply. She unlocked the door and got out. “Do you, uh, need to check me for weapons? I have a pistol, but it’s in the bag there …” She pointed at the passenger seat.
Sandra was making an effort to hold in laughter.
“Nothing like that,” Rufus replied. “Just after all that time by your lonesome, I thought you might need a hug.” He opened his arms.
Kelly stared open-mouthed at the huge black gun with a rifle slung on his back. As a matter of face, she could use one. She fell into his arms and wept in relief.
25
THOUSANDS
Kelly got an actual police escort into Santa Cruz. Sergeant Sandra and Rufus had a motorcycle they usually rode tandem – the chainsaw sound she’d heard in her dream – but Sandra asked if he could ride in the truck back to the city. “Being on there with Rufus is a tight squeeze,” she explained.
On the way, the “Protective Servant” gave her a little background. They were both from elsewhere – Sandra had been a Monterey County sheriff’s deputy, while Rufus had been working on his Master’s in social work at Stanford. When everything went down, they both didn’t. She’d stayed on the job until there was almost no one left to protect or arrest, then noticed the lights across Monterey Bay one night and realized someone still had power and seemed to be getting organized. She came to Santa Cruz the next day with several other survivors.
Rufus had been one of a handful of people left alive at the big university, and being the largest, he’d been one of the ones tasked with scouting the surrounding area for other survivors. He was rolling through Saratoga in, of all things, an ice cream truck (because it had speakers) when he ran into another group of scouts coming up from Santa Cruz. He reported back, and a few days later was one of over a hundred people who joined the new community.
“And because he’s one of the largest, he ended up on the police force,” Kelly said, to say something. Her brain was whirring at top speed as they reached the city itself. There were so many people – people plowing up ground for planting things, people moving stuff around, people driving cars and trucks and riding bicycles and even horses. There was a hot dog vendor, for crying out loud! There were children playing. There were …
“Partly, but more because he was studying to be a social worker. The Professor’s idea was to have a security system that de-escalates problems. I was trained in the old school, so it took a little getting used to, but I’m liking it. Haven’t had to use a gun but once since I got here, and that was just to fire in the air and shut up a few drunks … hey, are you okay?”
Kelly wasn’t okay. She pulled to the side of the road, her hands shaking, and turned off the ignition out of habit. “Pass me that bag, would you?” She took it as Sandra handed it over, rummaged through it and found her olanzapine and a half-finished water bottle. She took a pill, washed it down with the water, then rested her head on the steering wheel, panting. She could only imagine what she must look like to the cop.
She glanced up and saw Sandra staring back warily. “Um …”
“I’m bipolar. The olanzapine is to deal with manic episodes. Sorry, I’m finding all this a bit much. Like I said …”
“You haven’t seen another person in over two months – I remember. Sheesh, I can’t even imagine. You …” Sandra reached over and awkwardly patted her on the back. “You take the time you need to take, all right? I do have to get back to patrolling, but right now you’re my top priority. Get yourself together, and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Kelly shut her mo
uth. Mentally, she’d been so scared of disaster that she hadn’t prepared for success, certainly not at this level. This was a thriving city! Not a burning wasteland like San Francisco, not a ghost town like San Rafael or Sausalito, and certainly not a one-person show like she’d been all this time. “How … how many people are here, do you know?”
“Well, I don’t have an exact count – you’d want to go to the Council’s office for the most recent numbers. But last I heard we were getting close to nine thousand –“
“Nine thaaaaaah …” Crud, her voice had seized up again. She couldn’t blame it. After all this time …
“You need another pill?”
Kelly shook her head and chuckled.”No, no. Can’t take more than one at a time. Just need for it to kick in. Just … need …” She leaned back, letting the tears trickle from her eyes. “It’s been a long time. A hard time. Could’ve been a lot worse, but … gaahh.”