By Way of Autumn

by Jacqueline Druga

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I feel I need to and, not that I am a doctor or anything. But I’m gonna make sure these people don’t have the virus before I bring them back to town.”

  “How will you tell?”

  “Like I said, I’m not a doctor, but the doctor did say the radiation sickness wasn’t a pretty sight. Something like that I think I’ll be able to determine.”

  “Are you sure you want to go.”

  I nodded then said goodbye to the boys. I wanted to get outside and get moving before my motivation to perform an act of unselfishness left me. I suppose there would be those who wouldn’t consider me selfish, that I was doing what I could for my family. But in the end, it wasn’t for others to judge me it was for me to judge myself. Would I be able to look back and keep my head held high over things I did or didn’t do?

  The short trip through town was a heck of a lot different than it was a few days earlier. We only spotted a couple families making their way out of town on foot. Were they insane? Even though the temperature dropped, they wouldn’t get too far before dark.

  Everyone we passed looked at us driving by.

  Before the EMP hit, SUV’s rolling down the street were commonplace, now it was an anomaly.

  It seemed everyone that had a working car had already left.

  Storefronts were busted up. The streets were empty. And as we passed the church, it was the only place around with people. Reverend Ray had white canopy tents set up outside his church and people camped there.

  Oddly, the only place in town with an abundance of life was also a haven for those facing death.

  Josh told me the people weren’t too far off the highway and that Reverend Ray mentioned the lone road straggler told about passing a wreck.

  Liam’s family, I guessed.

  We had little conversation. My back ached and stomach twitched with nervousness. I informed Josh that if those on the highway looked as if they had the flu then we were turning back around. We couldn’t take that chance.

  He agreed.

  We made it up the first hillside and just as we rounded that sharp bend, the small group came into focus and I stopped the truck.

  There were duffle bags on the highway, a shopping cart that had suitcases in it. Four people lay on the road and one person, seemed to be a caretaker, a woman with a long ponytail. She was hunched down beside the person furthest from us.

  On the outside chance it was a virus, Dr. Stanley had given Josh masks and we placed them on before stepping out of the truck. I couldn’t see how the paper facemask would protect from any germs.

  Despite the mask there was a sour stench that carried in the air. The first sick victim wasn’t far from where we stopped. I caught one look at her and knew it wasn’t a virus.

  Dr. Stanley didn’t exaggerate when he said it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  The woman lay on her side, a blanket covered her, and she shivered. Her hair was gone, body covered in purple bruises and open sores, and she attempted to sit up so as not to choke as she fought the violent retching.

  Josh crouched down to her. “We’ll get you some help.”

  He was lying.

  There was no help to give. The best we could do was give her a ride to a more comfortable place to die.

  “Help her in the truck,” I said to Josh. “We have to figure out a way to get them all in. Maybe the caregiver is healthy enough to walk.”

  “I can walk with her, if there’s not enough room.”

  “We may need to do that.” I assessed those lying on the highway and focused on making my way to the caregiver.

  Two steps toward her, my heart dropped to my stomach.

  She turned around.

  As soon as she saw me, her knees buckled and she nearly fell. She extended out her hand to me, calling. “Marmie.”

  It was Nicole.

  Oh my God, Nicole. She made it all the way home.

  I wanted to cry, scream, I was so overjoyed. My heart raced uncontrollably and my breathing went hyper as I hurried to her.

  Nicole was alive.

  The second I reached her, I grabbed hold and brought her to me, wrapping my arms as tightly around her as they would go.

  “Oh my God,” I held her so tight, I nearly crushed her. “You made it. You’re alive.”

  “Oh, Marmie, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she cried. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad it’s you that came.”

  I pulled back and ran my hand down her face. She looked tired but she didn’t show any signs of sickness. “Me, too. And I’m so proud of you helping these people.”

  “Marmie, I had to,” she said emotionally. “I couldn’t leave him.”

  Just as I was about to ask, “Who?” I felt the touch to my ankle.

  Someone had grabbed me.

  I looked down. Fingers clutched tightly to me. The skin was burned some, but more so, open and blackened wounds covered the swollen hand.

  My eyes followed the hand to the arm, and then I saw the face.

  I saw the person lying on the ground. The one who grabbed hold of me.

  It was the ‘him’ that Nicole couldn’t leave.

  It was her father, my husband…Jeff.

  TWENTY-THREE - STALLED

  There was a pain in my chest like no other I had ever felt. It was a physical pain, yet it wasn’t. There was nothing physically wrong with me. A pain brought on by nothing more than sheer heartache.

  I didn’t know what was worse. Believing Jeff to be dead, or seeing him like this on the side of the road.

  I was grateful, beyond happy that Nicole was alive. She was in a woman’s prison outside of San Bernardino; he was further south. How they came to be together I didn’t know. I was certain I would find out. But my first mission was to get Jeff in the car.

  “Oh, God, Tess, I’m a mess,” he said but not with pity. Almost as if he were trying to make light of a dire situation. His tried to speak strongly, but I could hear it in his voice. The weakness. Something I never saw in my husband.

  “Yeah, you are,” I replied in the same manner. “But I’ve seen you worse.”

  “Oh, yeah, when?”

  “Your brother’s bachelor party.”

  He squinted his already swollen eyes. “I was pretty bad after that.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  Did Jeff know how bad he was? How horrible he looked? His thick mane was reduced to thin strands of baby fine hair. His scalp could be seen and it was covered with purple marks, black wounds. His lips were dry and cracked, the same sores were all over his body, along with blisters sporadically about his body.

  He wore clothes, but seepage caused them to stick to him in spots.

  When I tried to help him up, he lifted his hand, shook his head and turned from me to gag.

  Nothing emerged. His body twisted and contracted as he fought to remove emptiness from his stomach.

  When he was composed enough, he let me help him. But not much. I don’t believe it was pride, I believe it was more pain when he was touched. Were they burns, or just the effects of the heat and radiation?

  Upon our arrival back at Falcon, Dr. Stanley would have the answers. At least I hoped.

  While I tended to Jeff, I had Josh move the others to the car. One of them, a woman, had died before he could move her.

  It was a strange situation. We didn’t know what to do with her? Like with Liam’s parents and siblings there was a sense of guilt just leaving her there. But there wasn’t much we could do.

  We were all able to get into my SUV. Jeff and the other two that were ill, sat in the back, barely able to sit up straight, leaning on each other. I had to put down the windows, the stench in the car was unbearable. It was sour and it was mixed with the odor of vomit and feces.

  I held Nicole’s hand the entire short trip back into town.

  Once we arrived at the church, I instructed Josh to run back to my house, get Julie mentally prepared, as w
ell as sort out a place for Jeff to rest. I wasn’t leaving him at the church.

  Reverend Ray was probably exhausted and looked it when we arrived back with a couple more people.

  “This was a good thing you did, Tess,” he said. “The Lord…”

  Then he saw Nicole. She was situating one of the new ill. Through his exasperation he smiled. “She was the caretaker on the highway?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Jeff is in the car. He’s pretty bad. Can you send Dr. Stanley to my house when he returns?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I will stop by as well.”

  “Thank you.” Though I wanted to stay and talk to Ray, find out what all I was to expect and needed to do for Jeff, I really had to go.

  Had it not been for the woman’s scream, more than likely from seeing Jeff in the back seat, I would never had known I was about to lose my car.

  I turned around at the scream. My vehicle was parked maybe only ten feet away. But far enough that had it not been for Jeff in the car, Ben Collins would have been long gone with my only means out of town.

  Back door open, he hurriedly tried to grab Jeff from the back seat and I rushed as fast as I could.

  Shouting, “Leave him alone,” I reached for his arm and he not only easily pulled his arm from my grip, he backhanded me hard across the face. The force of the hit sent me back and to the pavement but not before I saw Nicole rage forward.

  Shoulder first she rammed into Ben, a man of average height. He bounced off the interior of the back door so hard I thought the door would fly off. Then Nicole plunged her fist into his gut with all she had. He reached out, grabbed her hair, and prepared to hit her when she ended it.

  From the back waistband of her shorts, she grabbed a revolver and fired one single shot, barrel against flesh, into his gut.

  Ben’s wife, Monica screamed as Ben slid down and to the ground.

  Emotional, face stinging, and still on the ground, trying hard to get up, I saw that Nicole didn’t bat an eye nor did she flinch in the aftermath of what she did.

  She merely turned, flung open the driver’s door and aimed inside. “You have three seconds to get out or I shoot. One … two …”

  Monica screamed shrill.

  “I will say three and I will shoot.”

  “Nicole!” Ray shouted. “Stop. Don’t do this!”

  She didn’t look at Ray. “Three.”

  The passenger door flew open and I can only assume Monica jumped or fell out. I couldn’t see.

  Ray helped me to my feet. “You alright?” he asked me.

  I nodded.

  Nicole made her way over. “Let’s go, Marmie. Let’s go home.” She grabbed hold of my arm.

  “Nicole. Dear God,” Ray had a scold to his voice. “Do you not care? You just shot Ben Collins. He was scared. You …”

  “Did what I needed to do,” Nicole said. “My father is dying because someone like Ben was scared, took his car and my father had to walk in the radiation. Ben was not taking the only means to get my family to safety. Come on, Marmie.”

  Nicole moved fast to lead me to the car. I looked back at Ray. He was shocked and silent. Ben Collins wasn’t dead, he was dying though...a huge pool of blood grew bigger by the second around him. His arms twitched, eyes stared blankly up as if searching the sky. Monica knelt in the river of blood, crying hysterically, looking at us as we pretty much stepped over them.

  I glanced back once more at Ray and mustered up my best apologetic look. Truth was, I wasn’t sorry. Not at all. I was glad that Nicole took control of the situation, or else, like many others, we would have been walking out of Falcon’s Way.

  TWENTY-FOUR - HOME

  Hearing Julie cry out a heart wrenching “Daddy,” when she saw her father was spirit crushing. Not that I had much spirit left. The only thing that lifted it was seeing Tag race to his mother and seeing Nicole’s expression when she held her son.

  She agonized in getting home, she fought and she made it. Nicole wouldn’t let him go. Their reunion was emotional and tear-filled, however it was almost overshadowed by the fact that Jeff was dying.

  I had never seen a human being so sick in all my life. He had nothing physically left. My handsome husband was transformed into a shell of a being, a horror relic from some sort of movie. It wasn’t real, I thought.

  But it was.

  He was the only one not suffering from the heat. I suppose that was a good thing. He shivered with fever and we had to keep him covered. He stayed downstairs in the family room. Even though it was only a few feet from the bathroom, there was no way Jeff could walk there.

  Nicole told me he stopped eating, stopped taking water, because he couldn’t keep anything in or down.

  Tag didn’t understand, nor would he ever, why his ‘Pop-pop’ looked so sick.

  “Will he get better?” he asked.

  I lied.

  “Yes.”

  Julie, like me, was a seesaw of emotions. Joyful over having Nicole return and heartbroken over her father. Sam came over, took one look, shook his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

  He asked if we needed anything. I wanted him to take Tag from the house, just to get him away, but Nicole wouldn’t let her son go.

  I didn’t blame her.

  Jeff surprisingly kept fighting. To speak with him and hear him talk, I wouldn’t know he was so sick. But looking at him, there was no way he wasn’t knocking on death’s door.

  I prayed for a miracle.

  But had I already received one? I had written both him and Nicole on the death list yet there they were … home.

  How?

  “Daddy came for me,” Nicole said. “He came for me.”

  Hearing this not only shocked me but made me cry. Jeff disowned her, he made no bones about it. Hardcore about disowning Nicole …but he went for her.

  “When I got to the school, it was only a few minutes before the first EMP hit,” Jeff said. “The word was out on campus. It was just an EMP. My car was off. I took out the battery. We were pretty sure it would run. But I couldn’t leave. I stayed below until the next one hit.”

  “You were a hundred miles from Nicole.”

  “I was a fool,” Jeff said. “I should never have let it go on.” his voice cracked. “She is my child. And when that second one hit, I thought of her. I knew you guys would be okay, but she was there, at that prison. If it was the last thing I did, I would get to her. I couldn’t live my life without letting her know I loved her. Too much time was lost.”

  Nicole had returned into the room in the middle of Jeff telling me. But he grew weak and went to sleep. She told me when the burst hit, the locks released, but they were still on the prison grounds.

  “My first thought was to get home, to get to Tag,” she said. “But we didn’t know what was going on. So we waited, thinking we’d hear something. Then the birds started dropping from the sky and people started getting sick. Real sick, real fast. Anyone out in the yard when the birds fell got sick. I felt bad leaving. Then two days ago, Daddy showed up. He had walked.”

  “Your father walked a hundred miles?”

  “He got a ride the last bit. But someone stole his car and he started walking. He didn’t know that his area was full of radiation. He was so sick when he arrived, Marmie.”

  “How did you get this far?”

  “We packed in cars, then about thirty miles ago we had to walk. He was too weak to continue. So I stayed and sent someone into town. He came for me,” she lowered her head. “I thought my father hated me but he came for me. I could never leave him.”

  It was emotional. Jeff, who swore up and down he didn’t have a daughter named Nicole, who wrote off his very own flesh and blood, had put his life on the line to see her one more time.

  Nicole stated over and over she couldn’t leave him.

  How was I to tell her, we had to move again? That we had to leave and wherever we were going Jeff could only go so far.

  Then again, I didn’t think Jeff would survive
much longer.

  He was bad. He was really bad.

  He did however ask for his stash. I gladly helped him enjoy some of that weed he had hidden in the basement. I knew it would give him some relief from what he was experiencing.

  Dr. Stanley stopped by and told us he was in the late stages. A day or two and Jeff would leave us.

  While I was grateful Nicole was fine and with us, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Jeff. Despite the fact that I accepted it beforehand, it wasn’t a reality. Now it was and I had to face it.

  Once the day had calmed, and a quiet set in, I started feeling poorly again. Perhaps it was the heat, maybe I needed to pop in at Sam’s, even just for a few minutes.

  Even though it was nightfall, there was a strong buzz of flies. I could hear them even in the house.

  I told the girls I would return, and I stepped out on the porch. It was dark, the moon was buried beneath the haze, but out front was a light.

  The night before that same lantern was there as Bill buried his dog.

  Now Bill was out there again, digging another hole.

  My throat swelled up and my face felt tense. I hated to ask because I knew. I just knew.

  “Bill?” I spoke softly.

  “Hey, Tess.” He sniffed and wiped the back of his hand under his nose. “Sorry about Jeff. I saw you guys pull up.”

  “Thank you.” I nodded. “What’s ... what’s going on?”

  “I lost my Millie. She passed away a couple hours ago.”

  “Oh, Bill, I am so sorry.”

  “Yeah,” He said, shoved the shovel in the ground and coughed. “Keep your distance, Tess, I think I may have it too.”

  “Not everyone gets it. Nicole was around it and she’s fine. Maybe it’s just the smoke.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m really sorry, Bill, I am.”

  “So am I.”

  Not really knowing what else to say to him, I was glad to see Sam standing out on his porch. I wished Bill well then made my way over to Sam’s.

  “Tess, you look paler.”

  “I’m worn out,” I said.

  “You’re sick.’