The hallway outside of the bathrooms was empty but she could see people in the adjoining rooms and hallways running, screaming, in a sheer panic. Taking the stairs at the other end of the hallway away from the living areas, she made her way into the basement and the room that housed the gardening tools. Putting all of her weight behind her she moved the shelving unit away from the hidden door behind. She wouldn’t be able to pull the shelves back once she went into the hidden pathway so she would have to move quickly and put as much distance between her and the facility before she was missed and her escape route discovered.
She reached the end of the hallway and what looked like a very heavy, iron door. It had a long lever for a handle as well as a deadbolt that made a formidable clunk when she disengaged it. Grabbing the handle, she yanked it down and the door made a whoosh as the air tight seal was broken and door swung inward.
The rush of fresh air that came in to meet her was intoxicating. The scent of autumn was heavy and she breathed in deeply, relishing her first breath of fresh air in three years.
Shutting the door behind her, Maya began to stealthily make her way through the untended bushes and trees away from the building before she was detected outside the glass walls. Winding her way through a grove of aspen trees, the crunch of the leaves beneath her feet was the best sound she had heard in so very long. When she finally made it to the driveway to the facility, she began to run as fast as her legs would carry her towards the main road, and her freedom.
When Maya made it to the main road, she only stopped running long enough to look both ways and to make a quick decision of which way to go. Both ways looked the same, an unending stretch of pavement and trees blocking all else. Her gut told her to go right, so that’s the way she went, running until her lungs screamed and her legs ached. She finally came to a stop some 15 minutes later, her endurance wasn’t quite what it used to be but she estimated she had made it at least a mile away from the facility. Taking deep gulping breaths, she stood bent over for a few catching her breath before finally looking up and taking in her surroundings. The first thing that struck her once her breathing had slowed was how quiet it was. There were no birds singing, bugs buzzing, distant calls from livestock, Nothing! She had expected the lack of “human” noise, but was shocked to realize that not only had the virus killed off most of humanity, it had evidently taken all living entities.
She walked down the road, looking around her in all directions for any sign of life. Mother earth had taken back her planet and the trees and plants were thick, hanging over the road, across it, coming up through cracks in the concrete. The leaves were mostly on the ground now and she caught glimpses of over-run farm fields beyond the road, the growing weeds easily above her head.
She walked for at least an hour before coming to what appeared to be a subdivision in the middle of nowhere. This area was very strange indeed!
Her first priority was to find a vehicle that she could get running. Something older without all of the new, fancy electronics running the engine and something hardy that wouldn’t have easily rusted out and gunked up while sitting all this time.
She went to the first house and walked around the garage to the back until she found the door in. The window was broken in the garage door so she was able to reach inside and unlock the handle to get inside. The house had been taken over by the plant life. Vines crawled up its side and had broken in most of the windows. The bushes were thick around the door and she had to pull them out with her hands to get the door open. Inside the garage sat two fairly new vehicles, a sports car and a minivan. She moved onto the next house.
It took several houses before she found what she was looking for. A jeep cherokee! It was maybe a 2000 and looked to be in good condition with little rust. No keys inside and she was not trained in the art of hotwiring a car so she found an ax and chopped her way into the door leading into the house.
She felt like she was in a movie when she stepped inside. Time had stopped and she was moving through it while everything around her stayed still. Dishes sat on the counter with half-eaten meals now covered in dead mold, piles of dusty laundry sat in a heap on the floor off the kitchen area forgotten. Kids toys lay in the middle of the living room looking like a child had just left them for a moment and would be back to play with them any minute. A laptop sat open on the dining room table with paperwork sitting next to it, a chair pushed out in front of it. When she peeked further around the corner into the dining area she let out a surprised yelp when she saw the skeleton lying on the floor. A skeleton with clothes on and some tendrils of leathery flesh hanging off its face. She had never considered what she would find out here but with so many deaths caused by the virus, she would have to expect to find many more bodies like this one. Of course the bodies would still be here. There were no more people to clean up the carnage left by the virus and with animals and insects also perishing, there was nothing to eat or scavenge what was left of these poor people.
She walked slowly over to the corpse and it took her several minutes of meditative breathing before she could bring herself to kneel down and search through the pockets for keys to the jeep. She found the keys to the other vehicle that was sitting in the driveway, a mercedes convertible, which she would have preferred for her transportation but she knew that the car would never run again after sitting for as long as it had with its delicate components.
The persons other pocket had a wallet. She rifled through it quickly seeing the usual credit cards and cash, obviously no use to anyone anymore. The driver’s license said his name was David Lingard and a security card she found in his shirt pocket told her that he had worked for the pharmaceutical company that owned the building she had lived in for the past 3 years.
She began her search of the other rooms in the house and found nothing until she came to what appeared to be a teenager’s room. The walls were a cheery pink with faded posters and pictures of famous actors, actresses and bands from a few years ago plastered all over. A pink mac laptop sat open on a white desk with a matching pink ipod sitting next to it.
On the bed laid the teenager, now a skeleton wearing a jean miniskirt and pink tank top.
When the virus hit, the world at the time was a place where people didn’t stop for anything, even illness. This girl had probably gone to school that day even with her hacking cough, high fever and chest pains and then had come home and perished in her own bed while still wearing her day clothes. What had happened to the days where if you had even so much as a sniffle, your parents would keep you home from school, wrapping you up with blankets and bringing you soup and juice while you watched cartoons? Those were her memories of childhood and she cherished whatever small snippets of her life she now remembered. She could no longer picture her parents’ faces, or her grandmother’s voice. There was only one person that she could remember in vivid detail and he would for sure be gone by now along with everyone else she cared about. Her thoughts stopped her short when an image of Derek flashed before her eyes. He had been such a kind, thoughtful partner. They had shared so many laughs, memories and tears over the years until he began to change. She missed the person that he once was, even if he could never compare to the one person she regretted losing in her life.
She shook the cobwebs of memories from her mind and returned to the task at hand, searching the girl’s pockets until she found what she was looking for, A jeep key!
It was tedious work and she worked well into the night on the jeep bringing it back to live. Maya drained what little gas and oil the jeep had left in it and searched the surrounding houses for gas and oil sitting in cans that had been less likely to congeal over the years. She had to find a hand air pump to refresh the tires, a portable generator that still ran and a battery charger to get the battery charged again.
She slept for a few hours in the backseat of the jeep, the only place that had been protected from the years of dust and decay that had taken over the homes in the neighborhood.
At first light, s
he began her search through every house in the neighborhood for any useable items. Filling the trunk and backseat with canned goods, bottled water, tools, extra gas, gas cans, clothing that wasn’t deteriorated that would fit her. She even found a few music cds of artists that she recognized.
In each house, she searched the pockets and purses of any skeletons she found if they looked to be an adult and always found the same thing, a badge from the pharmaceutical company. It was like this was a secret neighborhood only for the employees and they were kept away from all other society. That would have to mean that there was a town nearby for the employees to get their basic supplies!
By midday she was on the road and heading down the main road again, putting miles between herself and the facility.
Chapter 3 – Time to blow this popsicle stand! – Present Day
Standing outside the lab walls, Derek watched as the few lab assistants that were locked inside quickly succumbed to the lethal virus that their fellow workers had created. He heard the screaming begin as others witnessed their deaths and could see people began to scatter like cockroaches in an attempt to escape what to them seemed to be an accidental virus leak in the labs.
He felt someone walk up beside him and turned only after the last lab assistant fell to the floor, his eyes lifeless and milky white.
John stood next to him watching the scene as well and turned to look at him at the same time. Derek nodded and John quickly turned and walked towards the stairs that headed to the basement. John had been chosen to release the virus into the air vents of the building. The main air filtration machinery was housed on the top floor so if the virus was released down at the bottom level of the vents, it would have a lot of time to make it all the way to the top of the structure before it was sucked out of the building.
Derek waited until he saw Maya disappear into the stairwell before walking down the hall and into the buildings security room. Here lay the heart of the building. All security camera feeds could be viewed from here as well as the status of all of the different life supports of the building. Here he would be able to see when the virus hit the top of the building and the air filtration system set off the alarm noting its presence and signaling the end of all of the weak individuals in their facility.
Derek picked up the handset for the PA system and began his announcement.
“People of station 5, please return to your living quarters and remain until further notice. There has been an accident in the lab and possible contamination on level 2. Please do not panic. I will make another announcement when the threat has been contained.”
He could see through the walls as the people he had lived with for the past few years scrambled down the halls and up the stairs. Most of the people had been on other levels and hadn’t seen the events in the lab but the news of the quick and horrific deaths would soon spread, creating panic among the others. He would have to be careful in how he handled the aftermath. Only those very close to him knew the plan and he couldn’t risk any others discovering that he was the cause of their loved ones deaths. Maya had been fiercely against his plan and had never understood the logic despite his tireless explanations and arguments. He had not yet decided how to handle her when all was said and done. He had hoped that she would continue to be his partner and that they could rebuild some sort of life together outside of these walls, but now he wasn’t sure if she would ever speak to him again.
He sat in the chair facing the screens that noted the status of the air filtration system and waited for it all to be over.
His plan had not been a hasty venture. As soon as they had first become prisoners inside these walls, he had begun thinking about how they could get back out. Logically he knew that anyone that wasn’t immune to the virus would quickly perish and that thought had kept him from leaving the building. When Maya told him that they had created a test for immunity to the virus, he knew he had his answer. He wasn’t a mean, callous man by any stretch but there was no room for weakness in this new world. Being immune to the virus was the first step to survival. He had to admit, it was nerve-wracking to take the test himself and wait to find out if his worst fear was true. Deep down he knew he was immune, but the human brain is incredible at planting doubt and fear even in the strongest individuals.
In his “past life”, he had been a mercenary. In the armed forces and a part of a special team that was sent in on top secret missions that were considered next to impossible. He never thought he would survive as long as he did and witness the demise of the human race. When the virus spread to crucial contamination levels, he and his team were requested as one of the squads to search out surviving individuals and place them in these special facilities that were being sought out and outfitted for long-term human survival.
He very clearly remembered the day that he came across Maya. But with her he hadn’t felt like he was rescuing her, more like kidnapping. She had put up a hell of a fight and it took 3 of them to get her in the helicopter in time to make it past the bombs blast radius. They had been given a deadline to leave the city or face death in the destruction of the city. Their last stop had been that grocery store and he couldn’t get that woman out of his head after dragging her out, kicking and screaming. She kept yelling over and over that she had a safe place in the mountains and she promised to go straight there if they let her go.
He was pleasantly surprised when they crossed paths again a few days later and he made sure that he was placed in the same facility as her. He knew that she wouldn’t recognize him as one of the men from the helicopter since they had been in their full gear at the time so he pursued a friendship with her and it had turned into so much more. Intelligent, quick-witted and beautiful, he fell hard for her and the others began to look to them for guidance and leadership.
Over the years he had developed a deep respect for her determination and genuine compassion towards others. She helped where ever she could in the compound and worked tirelessly in the labs looking for an answer to save those that she had grown close to. It had been an exhausting undertaking to get their facility to where it was now and he had no doubts that together, the survivors could build an incredible town of their own outside these walls.
He would admit that he had become slightly hardened over the years. With each death of another friend inside the compound, his heart pulled away a little more. With each miscarriage that a woman suffered, his mind would slightly change. His belief was that the virus was released by some governmental entity in an attempt to control the swelling populations and overwhelming amount of individuals that had created an unsafe and unsanitary world for others. Their prisons had been overflowing and the funds that should have been funneled to the school systems were instead sent to build more prisons to house criminals. His faith in humanity had seemed completely lost and the only thing that kept him from going completely mad were his missions and being able to kill off at least some of the scum bags of the earth.
When the virus epidemic hit, he had to admit that he was thrilled about the world after the smoke had cleared. He never thought that it would kill as many individuals that it did but it truly had left such promise for those that had survived. They could rebuild a world free of human disease, corruption and crime. No more harmful poisons in their food, soils and air. No more nuclear power plants pumping toxic smoke into the atmosphere to run their ipods and cellphones. Their world could now be as pure as it had always been meant to be and he felt that he had survived in order to guide these people to that ultimate eden of life.
Maya had agreed with the majority of his thoughts. But her agreement ended at the idea of purposefully killing those not immune to the virus. She had felt that it was best for everyone to be given the choice to leave the compound or to stay. Then there could be no blame passed when a person succumbed to the virus. At first he had agreed but then everything changed when he had a clear idea of who would survive and who wouldn’t. He wanted the process to be smoother. Not having to stop every time someone got sick and
then spending weeks consoling the loved ones left behind. He felt it best to begin separating those that would die from those that would survive in an attempt to lessen developing emotions and relationships. He had begun placing the immune into more important positions within the compound, giving them more responsibilities and teaching them important skills that could be used to rebuild their society.
He encouraged the individuals that he knew to be immune to try and conceive but so far the results had been disastrous. Maya had been against him requesting others to try and conceive and had turned him down over and over to try for themselves. She had even gone so far as to find some old pharmaceutical supplies of birth control and had been taking it religiously. He had been sabotaging her pills for some time but had not yet seen any evidence that it had made a difference. Maybe she was unable to have children and that had been why she was so fiercely opposed to the idea.
Either way, when they left this facility and began building their own society, he would need a woman at his side and if she denied him then he would find someone else. He knew that Lisa fancied him a great deal but she didn’t come close to Mayas intelligence and strength and he couldn’t bring himself to picture her at his side.
All was quiet on the second level of the compound when the air filtration unit finally sounded its alarm and noted that a possible contaminate had been detected exiting the air vents.
After Days Page 2