"Oh my God," I rushed to her. "You're alright."
"I'm fine. I was hiding until you got here."
Reaching out for Faye, I just wanted to embrace her in gratefulness but she gave me the brush off. A quick 'acquaintance' style hug that made me step back. When I did, I noticed the smile on her face.
"What's going on?" I asked. "Where's this guy?"
"Not just any guy, Dodge. Look who I ran into on my way to the convoy." Faye side stepped and the bushes parted.
They had been practicing, it was obvious, providing a heart stopping reveal that knocked me off balance. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move. My eyes widened and I exhaled what air I had left in my lungs.
I did not expect to see my oldest son standing before me.
He cried out a heart wrenching, "Dad!" and ran to me, slamming his chest against mine. I wrapped my arms so tight around him, lifting him from his feet and planting my lips to his cheek. "You're alive. You're alive."
In my embrace with Tyler, I opened my eyes making contact with Faye.
From what I had known of her, she was withdrawn. She showed a cold exterior and often emotionless. Drowning her emotions in a bottle of whiskey. To keep them in check. To not let anyone know she felt or that she could feel.
But the Faye that stood on the side of the road, showed me her human side. Even if for a brief moment, I saw the twinkle in her tear filled eyes. She was happy for me, she was overwrought with emotions.
I broke the embrace with Tyler for a second, placing my hands on his cheeks and staring deeply into his eyes. "I am so grateful to God that you are alive. So grateful. How ... how did this happen?" I asked.
Tyler turned and pointed to Faye.
"I didn't know," Faye said, lifting her hands. "Remember the boy I spoke to on the radio and told to go to Kentucky?"
"You?" I asked Tyler.
"Yeah, me. But I got there too late. So did she."
"This is fate." I shook my head in disbelief. "It has to be fate. If you hadn't stayed behind Faye, I wouldn't have my son."
"Yeah, well," she shrugged. "If you hadn't taken everything from my house to piss me off..."
"Whatever the reason," I said. "We're all together. It's the way it should be."
"What about going south?" Faye asked. "The boys ..."
"The boys will deal. I can't go there without you Faye. You saved my life ... twice now." I glanced to Tyler. "We stick together on this thing and figure it out."
"What's the plan?" Faye questioned. "You always have a plan."
"We stop. We regroup. We think," I told her. "That's what we do first. Figure out our obstacles and go from there."
My son asked. "Where're we gonna stop?"
With a chuckle I looked at the sign. "Rooster seems as good a place as any."
After unloading everything from Faye's car, we all got in Fastball, with intentions set on a temporary halt in Rooster. Who knew what the small town held. At least I knew it was remote enough to hide out until I came up with a viable plan.
The Voice of Unreason - Dr. Barry Chatham
It is completely irresponsible, not to mention detrimental to the human race, to possibly be the only remaining sex of a species, then run and hide. A move not charged by the need for safety but rather one that is selfishly motivated.
The ERDS virus took a lot from this world and no doubt, it would take the remaining civility. A person, left to their own resources is a victim waiting to happen.
A woman is a prize waiting to be collected.
Out in the world she is a target. In a facility she is a preserved treasure.
We know this.
While the virus wasn't prejudice against anyone, it did aggressively seek the female population. As a geneticist I was called in early during the ERDS epidemic to find an answer on why women were struck first. I never did. Even though the virus took months to reach the point where it rippled out of control, there just wasn't enough time.
There was a slim immunity factor, one not found in a single woman. There was also a revival factor of twenty percent.
Twenty percent. However, that rival or recovery happened days after the body was mistakenly pronounced dead. Overcrowded medical facilities, families rushing to remove the deceased from the homes. Whatever the reason, bodies were buried and burned before they awoke from the ERDS coma.
Complicating matters was the fact that we lived in a 'dead rising' obsessed world. They were shooting the survivors in fear of being eaten. What stupidity.
How many of those who rose were women?
We'll never know.
I have not seen one, alive that is, in over a month.
By the time the two remaining doctors found a cure for ERDS, it was too late.
It was over.
The world fell apart. But preparations were made in advance for the continuity of the human race. A nice little sector set up and stocked, rapidly erected in the panhandle of Florida.
What a joke.
To have continuity of the human race you have to have the means to reproduce.
To tell someone who could be the last woman on earth to run, is inconceivable to me. A woman, by the sound of her voice on the radio that was probably younger than forty, still well within the range of child bearing years. And unless medically altered, could produce a single ovum that could change the current course of mankind.
Who needs the ovum, we have the DNA.
Yet for some reason, she vanishes over the airwaves and is currently somewhere in a country so big she would be like finding a needle in the haystack.
Whoever this 'Dodge' man was, we know he was coming out of Kentucky and the female counterpart was on her way from the same location as he.
He informed her to 'head back home'.
Where home was, we didn't know. It could have been anywhere. Although my experts insist it wouldn't be more than seven hundred miles from Central City Kentucky. Just not feasible with the radio signal to be any farther.
People arrived daily here in the Panhandle. Since we opened the camp and sent out the call for survivors many have shown up. We will be able to eventually rebuild a part of civilization, produce food and live. Despite our growing numbers, it will never get really any bigger than the remaining survivors that come to us.
Without hope of growth, with the possibility of extinction, I fear what will become of those who survive. Will they care enough to be human when they are all that's left of the human race?
In reality, as long as there is a woman, there is hope the race will not end.
We know of at least one.
I am not giving up on that hope.
We have the manpower and resources to send out search parties and actively look for women. We will do that. We have to. In addition, once the Kentucky convoy arrives, we'll find out about this Dodge and where he originated from, and then we will locate the needle in the haystack. It is a must, and we will do it at any cost. Our lives, our world, our existence, depends on it.
SEVEN - FAYE
When I first saw the sign, 'Welcome to Rooster. Population 672', visions of the Andy Griffith show danced in my head. I foresaw a quaint town square with a few shops, where park benches decorated the sidewalks. The same benches that old men would sit on, read the paper and talk. Bud mentioned that the rural areas may have been spared.
But none of that was the case. None of our fantasy scenarios held true. Rooster was nothing more than a highway strip town, with some frame houses, a gas station and a Wendy's fast food restaurant.
It wasn't optimal to stop and park, nor even to hide out.
There wasn't a person to be seen and unlike everywhere else, we only spotted a couple bodies placed by the trash.
Dodge pulled over the RV and did so directly in front of Wendy's. It was tough explaining to Darie why we weren't getting chicken nuggets and fries.
Dodge tried to pacify the young boy by telling him, 'We'll make them for you."
That didn't go over too well for G
eorge, who countered. "How? How you gonna make them? They're all processed meat. It went all bad. You can't recreate processed meat, can you?"
Dodge looked over his shoulder with complete aggravation. "Why do you have to be like this?"
"Why are you misleading my brother? He loves chicken nuggets."
The back and forth between the grown man and the child made me smile. Tyler on the other hand laughed. Telling us it was quite an accomplishment to get under his father's skin, since his father was rarely ruffled.
It was unanimously decided that we'd keep moving for a little while. We topped off the tank and canisters from the Rooster gas station but veered from course.
On the map Bud spotted another small town. It was off the main road and highway, and we set our sights on that.
"At the very least," Bud said. "It has lots of green around it. We can camp out there until morning. Make it home then."
Was that the plan? To just make it home? Or are we running? Hiding? All of the above? Nothing really was said and no plans set in stone. Which was unusual because Dodge was always thinking ahead.
Maybe he wasn't saying anything.
For certain he didn't bring up the subject of me being the only woman. That got buried somewhere. He didn't mention it and neither did I. The subject would have to eventually be broached. I would wager on that.
Until then, I was content just moving forward.
EIGHT - DODGE
There was something about having my son, Tyler that made me a big old sap. I couldn't walk by him without touching or kissing him. I think I kissed him more in four hours than I did in four years.
It was pure, unadulterated gratefulness. My kid was alive. I was blessed. Yes, I lost, but I didn't lose it all.
My heart was still aching for the two children I lost, but yet I rejoiced in what I kept.
Not to mention he was pretty good with George and Darie.
Hanover was a perfect stop for the day and evening. We drove for a while down a two lane, tree lined road that was barely wide enough for the RV. Then all of a sudden there was Hanover.
A town six blocks long and six blocks wide. It looked like an old mining town or something like that. Simple houses and a few modern trailers. There was a small store and a few other localized businesses.
There were no people.
I admit, I held out hope that this buried little gem would have some folks.
It didn't.
We parked the RV next to the fire station which, of course was located by the smallest community park I had ever seen. The RV fit nicely right by a set of four picnic benches.
Tyler offered to stay behind while Faye and I went out for supplies. I wanted to scavenge that fire department for some first aid stuff, and then hit the small store.
Seeing how much remained would tell us or give us an idea what happened in that town. Did they all die in their homes? Or did they move on?
It was a ghost town.
Plus, I wanted to talk to Faye. We hadn't had a chance to talk. Last I saw her, I was begging her to come to Kentucky and she was adamant about staying behind to die. Curl up in her daughter's bed and down a bottle of pills.
She said my taking everything was inspiration to find me. I accepted that. But wanted to know where she was emotionally and mentally.
Was it a passing phase or was she really on her way to healing emotionally?
She was months ahead of us all in her stages of grief.
We raided what we could from the fire station and headed to Gluck's General Store. It was funny, because the town was so empty, so silent, we heard the laughter from the boys even though they were blocks away.
Somewhere in our entrance into the grocer, I asked her. "What made you change your mind and come?"
"Oh look, across the street, a liquor store."
"Why doesn't that surprise me that you spotted that?" I asked her.
Faye smiled.
She smiled?
It wasn't a big smile. More of a closed mouth look to me then she reached for a can of Spam.
"We don't need Spam."
"It's turkey Spam." She held it up.
"Faye, come on."
"Why is it important?"
"I need to know what made you come to Kentucky. I need to know if I'm gonna be finding myself trying to convince you to stay with us."
She looked down to the Spam and then to me. "I had a choice. I chose to live. Can we leave it at that?"
"Noted."
She placed the can back on the shelf and turned to walk away. When she did, I took it back. Figuring she grabbed it for a reason and not just as a means to change the subject.
We had that Spam with other food, it wasn't bad. When evening set in I built a small fire as the night was chilled. Bud went to bed early claiming he was tired. I accepted that. It was a long day.
Faye stayed outside while I did a quick inventory of what we had. The continuous 'popping' carried to me even though I was in the RV. The boys were playing the game 'Trouble', they laughed. It was late and I debated on telling them it was time for bed.
The inventory surprised me. We didn't have as much as I thought or hoped. For short term it was fine, but it wouldn't last. Without a doubt, we needed a long term plan all the way around.
I grabbed a pack of the honey flavored flat breakfast biscuits and stepped outside. It was the less eaten food. The boys seemed to cringe about those but I liked them. They reminded me of the oat cookies we had when I was in the service.
Stepping outside the trailer, the boys played their game. Tyler was trying to teach Darie to count spaces and they were laughing. To look at them, it didn't seemed as if they faced the end of existence. It didn't seem that civilization caught a bug and vanished. They were three young males blocking out the world and playing a board game.
Life was a camping trip for the moment.
I suppose with all they went through, shutting out the tragedy was a good thing.
Faye was seated in a lawn chair at the edge of the RV. A small distance from the kids, but she was watching them. She wore some sort of pink cardigan sweater that looked as if it were hand knitted and belonged to someone thirty years older.
A bottle of red wine was on the ground next to her and it was mostly full. To my surprise she sipped what she had in her hand, not downing the hard stuff.
An empty chair was next to her, almost as if she were expecting me to sit and I did.
"Hey," I said as I made myself comfortable.
"Hey." She bent forward, lifted one of those plastic cocktail glasses and handed it to me. "The wine is made locally. It's awesome." She poured some in the glass.
"Local wine from West Virginia?" I asked.
"Yeah, I think it's made in a man named Bob's basement. But it's still good."
"Thanks." I showed her one of the honey biscuits. "Cookie?"
"Nah."
"Nice sweater. Did you bring it?"
"No, it was in the lost and found box at the fire station," she said with seriousness. "I keep wondering what fireman lost it. Bet he looked real cute."
Something about Faye at that moment struck me. "Did you just make a joke?" I asked.
"I did." She nodded. "Sorry if it was bad."
"It was the greatest joke I heard in a while. You ... Faye, made a joke. You're smiling."
At first she lowered her head and sipped her wine, then as she bit her bottom lip, cupping that glass, she stared out to the boys. "I woke up so angry with you. I mean ... I went to make coffee and I couldn't. Everywhere I turned, you took something that was mine."
I tried not to laugh and a huff of air escaped me.
"All I did was curse you. Anger ... and I grew angrier when I thought you did it on purpose because you were thinking 'oh she's gonna die and won't need it'."
"That wasn't why I took the stuff. I took it to make you mad."
"Mad enough to want to find you and yell?" she asked. "Let me tell you something, Dodge. In the middle of that ang
er, I realized ... I was feeling. For the first time in almost four months since my family was killed, I felt something other than self pity or numb. That anger, no matter how intense reminded me that I was alive. And the toy that Darie left. I was missing the signs and then I just took off before I missed you guys completely."
"I'm glad you did and glad you were late because I wouldn't have found my son."
Faye tucked her hair behind her ear. "He's a good kid and I am so happy for you. Seeing him. Seeing George and Darie. Not all lives were ripped apart."
"We're gonna do this, Faye, you know that right?"
"Do what?"
"Survive. Live." I finally tasted that homemade wine. "This is pretty good."
"See? I told you." She paused. "And I hope you're right. We just need a plan."
"Well, I kind of have a plan." I winked.
"I knew it."
"I just thought of it though. I think, we head back home. We're all from the same area. Go home. Adjust. Absorb and heal. We scavenge what we can. The farms will be growing soon so we can raid those. Get enough ready for the winter and then head out."
"Where?"
"South or west. We'll figure it out. A place we can eventually plant our own food which has access to fresh water. Wells maybe. Somewhere we can be secluded and safe."
"Secluded and safe, huh?" She breathed out. "To keep me hidden."
"Not hidden. Just safe. I don't ever want you to feel like you're hiding."
"I can't be the last, Dodge, I can't," she said with desperation.
"I don't think you are," I said. "But I can't take that chance."
"I don't expect you to take on that responsibility. I don't want you to have to feel that kind of pressure."
"We're in this together, Faye. All of us. Fate brought us together for a reason. I'm not taking on anything I can't handle. Except ..." I finished the glass of wine. "This stuff. It's a little potent."
"Yeah, hence why I said sip." She refreshed my glass.
"It's getting late, should I get the kids down?"
"No." Faye shook her head, still watching them. "They look so happy. Look at them."
I did. The kids laughed and set up for another game.
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