by Adams, Lucia
“In the basement feeding our chickens,” she said. “You don’t have to do this now; take more time to recover.” She was probably right, but I’ve always been a stubborn bastard.
“I want… need to do this,” I answered. Funny enough, the more I moved, the less stiff and sore I felt.
I devoured the pancakes. I was starving, and they were really good.
“Do you carry a gun everywhere?” I asked. I had noticed the pistol in a holster on her hip earlier, but said nothing. It was an unusual and unsettling sight for me to see—my new landlady armed to the teeth.
“Yeah of course, these are turbulent times. Don’t you?” She replied, brushing some stray strands of red hair from her face.
“Well, no, I…” Suddenly I felt defensive.
“You’re a lucky man to have avoided contact with the infected.”
“Eh…” I thought of my rampage through the apartment block with Robbie’s axe, the panic on the plane, and watching Boland transform into a zombie as I clung to him while we fell through the air. “I’ve had some contact,” I answered sheepishly.
“How have you defended yourself?” she asked.
“With an axe.” For some reason, I started to feel guilty.
“An axe! Holy Hell! Are you insane? Do you know how the virus is transmitted? One drop of blood in your eye, an open cut… Mister, you need to keep the infected a lot farther away from you than the length of an axe.”
“Oh.”
“Have you ever fired a weapon before?” She looked exasperated.
“Sure.” I sat up straighter. “Yesterday.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes skyward. She left the room, leaving me wondering if I was in trouble. She returned a few minutes later and held up a gun. She clicked in a clip and placed it in front of me.
“Here, this is for you. It’s a Glock 22 and your new best friend. Finish up there and I’ll give you your first lesson.”
Slowly, I reached for the gun. I’m sure I grinned like a moron.
Stepping out into the fresh open air of Canada felt surreal. The previous day I had been cooped up in an apartment block in the middle of Dublin City Centre; now I was in a national park on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a bright, clear day with blue skies and sunshine and the bite of autumn in the air. Snow had fallen that night, leaving a light dusting of white on the tips of the towering evergreen trees and the soft earth beneath our feet.
“The weapon that you have is the full size version of what I have. Mine is a 27; yours is a 22. They are both .40 caliber and take the same ammunition. The difference is not only in the size, but in the clip.” She popped the clip to show me. “This one will hold nine rounds; yours will hold fifteen. You will want to make sure you keep track of how many rounds you have fired. Okay?”
I nodded, indicating I understood. I wasn’t sure if I should be impressed or scared to death of this woman—maybe a bit of both.
“Okay, hold it firmly, but not tight.” She placed her hand over mine.
“We’re talking about the gun, right?” I joked. She just rolled her eyes and ignored me.
“Anyway, a Glock doesn’t have a thumb safety. Instead, the safety is built into the trigger. If you fire it, it’s because you meant to. My dad told me that the first rule of weapon safety is: ‘Never place your finger on the trigger unless the thing you are aiming at you mean to destroy.’ Okay?”
I nodded again, testing the weight of the weapon in my hand. Survival was becoming a serious business, and I was getting a new education on how to live.
“I have a shoulder holster for this. It was too big for me, but it should fit you. You need to get used to having it with you at all times.”
I searched for something clever to say, but nothing came. I was being taught how to fire a weapon in order to kill, by a beautiful redhead who smelled of oranges and jasmine, in the middle of miles and miles of Canadian woodland. What was there to say?
“The second thing he told me was, ‘Always treat a weapon like it’s loaded.’ ” She clicked the magazine back into my gun. She called it a weapon, I called it a gun.
“When I was taught to shoot, I was told to aim at the centre mass as that would disable any attacker. But with zombies, that won’t work. Sometimes that won’t even slow them down. The virus that animates them lives in the brain, and that is what you have to hit if you want to stop them, which means a head shot, every time.” She took aim, fired, and hit a tree, sending down a dusting of snow.
“See if you can hit that tree, the one with the carving in it.”
I spotted the one she meant. Somebody had carved their initials into the trunk: ‘LT hearts JC.’ LT had probably eaten JC by now, I thought grimly. I took aim and fired. It sent a jolt back up my arm and sounded like an explosion had gone off right by my ear. I missed.
“Good job,” Sharon encouraged.
After I had emptied several clips, even hitting the tree once or twice, Sharon suggested we take a break.
“Don’t forget the empty clips; we’ll need to reload them,” she said as I started to walk away. I turned back and gathered the discarded magazines.
“Come on, I’ll show you how to take it apart and clean it. There are some cleaning kits up in the lodge. You wait here; I’ll go get them.”
There was a picnic bench looking over the lake. I gingerly swung one leg over the seat while Sharon sauntered back towards the lodge. I watched her all the way until she disappeared inside, wondering all the while what to make of this American girl who made pancakes and fired guns with a deadly accuracy.
The water looked so calm. At one time it would probably have teemed with life. Now an occasional bird swooped down—a rare enough sight to pause and watch.
“So what’s your story, Irishman? Why were you on a plane weeks after all air traffic has been grounded?” she asked when she came back.
I had no secrets to keep. We refilled the clips with bullets as I told her all. She was easy to talk to and listened to my story. It felt therapeutic sharing the ordeals I’d been through with someone else who understood. I told her about the doomed expedition to the pharmacy, about Mrs. Watson’s dive from the balcony. Sharon made all the right sympathetic noises, and she put her hand on my arm when I told her about Mrs. Watson’s boy. But when I spoke about boarding the plane with the scientists, she suddenly became animated.
“Wait, you’re sure they said they were researching the virus? You’re certain?”
“I suppose, yeah, they were taking their research to a facility in Canada. One of them had a briefcase cuffed to his wrist. They were loading equipment onto the plane as well.”
“Holy Hell, Paul! I didn’t realise they were co-operating with European governments, but it makes sense. They would need all the help they could get now. I’m a zoologist, Paul. A few months ago, I was contracted by the US government to research the virus at my zoo in Nebraska. They said it was affecting the animals, so it made sense they would contact me. Of course, after I read the research I learned that it had spread to humans and killed off most of the population of Greenland. They still thought they could control it then. In fact, I was the one that wrote the PSA about the virus being a new strain of rabies.” She paused as if to catch her breath. She met my eyes and looked away, but not before I saw tears glisten there. I remembered then, what seemed like a whole lifetime away, but was only a couple of months. People said it was only rabies. No one worried. It was the bird flu all over again, just another scare blown out of proportion.
Christ,I thought,is she harbouring guilt because of this? I wanted to say something, but what… I didn’t know. She’d made me pancakes, picked me up after I fell out of a plane, and taught me how to shoot. Damn it, she was fucking hot! I didn’t want her shouldering the blame for the death of humanity. But I didn’t know what to say; always first in the line with a smart arse quip, but when something really needed to be said, there was nothing but a big empty space of silence.
Sh
e cleared her throat and carried on. “The case I have was cuffed to a lieutenant’s wrist. This case that you saw, what did it look like?”
“It was just like an old school teacher’s leather satchel, nothing special. At least I think so.” To be honest I wasn’t that clear on events since I boarded that plane.
“Do you remember what the guy looked like?”
“I remember him getting a bullet in the head as he took a chunk out of the Taoiseach’s arm.”
“Tea-shock?” She raised one eyebrow.
“Sorry, it’s an Irish title for the Prime Minister.”
“Whatever is on that plane, I want it. There are some basic tests that I can’t do. I doubt any of the equipment survived the crash, but it is possible that they are further along than me in their tests. We have to get to that plane.”
With that, she leapt up and went running, calling out the names of the others. I stood there scratching my head.
CHAPTER 42
Sharon
I was halfway to the lodge before I realized what I had done. Then I stopped, hung my head in shame, and cursed under my breath. With a deep sigh, I turned around and walked back to the table.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I can get a little lost in my own head sometimes.”
“It’s okay,” Paul said. He was standing there with a look on his face that seemed to be part confusion, part amusement.
“No. It’s not okay, actually,” I said gathering up the cleaning kit. “I got so excited about the prospect of furthering my research, I forgot myself. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that I ran off and left you here like zombie bait.”
His smile wilted a bit as he cast a nervous glance about. And truth be told, the noise we had made shooting would bring them.
“Left or right?” I asked, picking up the holster.
“What?”
“Are you left handed or right-handed?” He had fired the Glock with his right hand, but I wanted to make sure as I adjusted the holster.
“Oh, right-handed,” he said.
I nodded and slipped the nylon straps over his arm, settling it on his left side so that he could draw it comfortably. I leaned in, reached behind him, and velcroed it in place. As I did so, I felt his hand brush my hair. I glanced up and paused at the look in his blue eyes. An eagle screamed overhead and then dove skillfully, snatching a silver scaled fish from the gleaming waters of the lake. I blinked, and the moment passed.
“You’re left-handed?”
“No,” I said, looking down at the Glock that I had strapped to my left thigh. “I write with my right hand, but I am left-eye dominate, so I shoot with my left hand. Otherwise, I’d have to cross my arm over my chest to sight it.” I pointed my right hand like a gun and aimed to demonstrate what I meant. “It’s just easier to shoot with my left.” I shrugged.
We gathered up the kits and the rest of the cartridges. He rolled his shoulders. “I suppose I had better get used to it,” he said. I nodded, and together we walked back to the lodge in companionable silence. He seemed like a good man, and I enjoyed listing to the way he spoke.
The door to the lodge was always locked. No matter what happened, when someone went out, another locked it behind them. That was the rule, and one we adhered to diligently. I knocked on the door and was greeted by Gerry chewing on a piece of jerky. I had taken it from the store out of necessity.
“I have no idea how you can eat that stuff,” I said, shaking my head as I walked past him.
“What?” he asked. “Something wrong with jerky?” I just grinned and shut the door behind Paul when he entered.
“So how’d you do?” Gerry asked Paul, clapping him on the shoulder. Paul grimaced in pain.
“Not bad for a first time,” I said, locking the door.
“Oh, that means you suck,” Gerry said with a grin.
“Yeah, but you should see me with an axe,” Paul said. I left them to work through their testosterone issues and headed towards the kitchen. I found Kitty and Parker sitting at the table playing checkers. Parker was winning, though I expect it was because Kitty was letting him.
“Where’s Lucia?” I asked, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. I enjoyed the smell of coffee, but not the taste.
“She’s downstairs looking for stuff,” Kitty said.
“Stuff?” I asked. “What kind of stuff?” We kept the chickens in the cellar so that they wouldn’t become zombie food, and they didn’t seem to mind. It was a rough-hewn basement, uneven in most places, with a dirt floor. I figured it had been carved out after the lodge was built. For what, I couldn’t guess. Over the years the owners had crammed it full of boxes.
“Dunno, she just said ‘stuff’,” Kitty said with a shrug. I closed the refrigerator and leaned against it to watch the two of them. My mind was running in circles with what Paul had said. The notion of more research and possibly finding out what really had started the pandemic would not leave me be. I had given up trying to find a cure. The virus was so aggressive that it would be almost impossible to administer any cure in those few seconds before the virus began to spread and replicate.
The idea of an immunization was one that I had been thinking about a lot lately, especially in that week when it was just Parker and I at the lodge. I had meant to do it before I left Omaha, but with the ensuing chaos, I hadn’t had much time to actually work on it.
Immunizations are either active or passive. The active ones involved injecting the body with a low dose of the virus and then letting the body build up an immunity towards it. But the Haukkson virus was so aggressive that there really wasn’t such a thing as a low dose. Even the slightest contact with the virus would eventually end with full onset and then death, so that idea was out.
However, the idea of a passive immunization was possible. It would involve synthesized elements, generally in the way of antibodies. I knew how to do it, but I didn’t have any of the things that I needed to start that process.
“It sounded like a war-zone out there,” Lucia said, as she walked into the kitchen carrying a box brimming with ‘stuff’. She set it down on the counter with aclink, the kitchen door swinging shut behind her. “Did he actually hit anything?”
“He did a few times,” I laughed. “But he held it right, and has a good stance. Plus he’s pretty banged up. I think he will be fine once he gets some practice. And the Lord knows, he will have ample opportunity for that,” I said before taking a deep drink of the cool water.
We had blown through a lot of rounds, but Rob had boxes and boxes of bullets. I had hundreds of rounds in the trunk of the Mustang. Even sharing that with Paul, we had enough to last a while, and if that ran out, I had the rifle. With most of the population dead, supplies weren’t the issue. Like the farm where we picked up Kitty, we were free to take what we came across. The issue was just finding such caches. Things were pretty far flung up here.
I watched Lucia tinker around with some glass jars and bottles for a minute. When she pulled the tubing out of her back pocket, curiosity got the better of me. “What are you doing?” I asked, bemused.
“I’m a chemist,” she said, and turned on the water to wash the grime off the bottles.
“Yes?” I said, drawing the one word out into a question.
“I’m going to make a distillation set.”
“What are you going to distill?” I asked.
“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” she answered with a grin. I smiled and shook my head. Whatever she came up with, I was sure it would be interesting.
Paul and Gerry wandered into the kitchen. I stood there leaning against the freezer, looking at this group. None of us had seen another living human for days, and for all we knew, we were the last in all of Canada. These people were now my family, and for better or worse, I owed it to them to tell the truth.
“So, there is something I want to talk to everyone about,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” Gerry asked, reaching past me to grab his coffee mug. I watched him ref
ill his cup, enjoying the scent that wafted through the room. The homey smell lulled me and served to strengthen my resolve.
I took a deep breath to tell them, then stopped. “C’mon,” I said, nodding my head towards the door. “Kitty, can you keep Parker in here for a moment?” I asked. She gave me a squinty eyed look that clearly said she didn’t like being left out. I gave her a small smile, and she relented. I’d talk to her later.
I walked into the dining hall and found the iPad, then walked back to the fireplace where they had gathered. Paul had settled himself on the sofa where he had slept. Once he could manage the stairs, we’d move him to one of the rooms. Gerry was leaning on the fireplace, coffee in hand.
Lucia sat in one of the overstuffed chairs. I sat down on the end of the sofa by Paul, so that I was effectively between him and Lucia. It would be easier to show them what was on the tablet that way.
“You all know that I’m a zoologist, and I’m sure you’ve noticed my lab in the dining hall.” They nodded. “But there is a lot that you don’t know. So much that I’m not even sure where to start.”
“Start at the beginning,” Lucia said, offering me a kindly smile in encouragement, and so I did.
I pulled up the files on the Hauksson virus. “Patient zero was Malik Hauksson.” I didn’t worry about privacy or top secret files. The time for that had passed. I told them about the bite he took from the seal and what happened when he returned home.
“Greenland was quarantined less than a week later, but by then it was too late. People had flown to other countries. Norway was the next spot that the virus presented itself.” It had become really quiet, and they listened with wide eyes. It occurred to me as I looked at them that I had taken my knowledge for granted. I had known for a while what was going on. How scary must it have been for them to know absolutely nothing?
I had the pictures of the carnage in Greenland. This group knew what death looked like. So, I concentrated on what they didn’t know.