Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland

by Michael J. Totten

  “I wonder what that is?” Annie said in an apparent bid to fill the quiet with some kind of chitchat. Kyle wished everyone would shut up.

  “Just some old thing that no longer exists,” he said and looked out the window at mountains that looked like snow-covered potatoes.

  “This entire planet,” Parker said, “will soon be a historical site.”

  They drove through Craters of the Moon National Monument, a field of jagged volcanic rocks that stretched to the horizon. Beyond the lava, more mountains, a towering massif with an evergreen forest on the lower slopes and exposed rocks at the higher elevations that looked like gnarled tree knots reaching toward the clouds. Then an empty wasteland bigger than anything Kyle had ever seen, vast enough to fit an entire nation including a sprawling capital city.

  And finally, at the far end of the state, Swan Valley, the most beautiful place Kyle had seen in all of Idaho. Two striking mountain ranges, each covered with thick forests of evergreens, framed a narrow verdant valley below. It looked and felt like the Pacific Northwest. Kyle felt like he’d been whisked through a hole in the dimension and deposited back home in Oregon.

  Jagged ice-covered peaks appeared on the left near the Idaho-Wyoming state line. The tops of the Grand Tetons, perhaps. Kyle thought the mountaintops looked like teeth.

  They entered Wyoming shortly before sunset after leaving Swan Valley. Just past the state line a road sign appeared. White paint on slat boards read, in all capital letters, “JACKSON IS DEAD. LANDER IS CIVILIZATION.”

  Kyle thought that sounded like a bit of an overstatement, but he might believe the word sanctuary.

  “Let’s go there,” Kyle said.

  He had to get out of that truck. Taking a piss break didn’t count. And civilization? Really?

  “Where is it?” Annie said.

  “Just past the Wind River Mountains,” Kyle said. “I checked the map. Four hours driving from here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hughes said.

  “You think it’s farther or closer?” Kyle said.

  “I don’t think we should go there,” Hughes said.

  “Why not?” Kyle said.

  “Not part of the mission,” Hughes said.

  Parker pounded the dash with both fists. “Goddamnit!” he said. “For once Kyle and I are in fucking agreement. We haven’t seen civilization since the infection turned half the human race into psychotic cannibals that ate the other half. I need to get out of this truck. I need to sleep in a bed. I need to talk to a human being who is not one of you three and who isn’t standing in the road with a gun. We need to stock up on food. If this Lander place really exists, they might even have a big hospital. We might not even need the CDC, assuming it’s still even there, which it probably isn’t.”

  “We go there,” Hughes said, “we’re not telling anyone that Annie’s immune. No way are they advanced enough to make a vaccine. Not in some hick town in Wyoming. We need a research hospital. Telling small town folks about Annie is the last thing we should do no matter how civilized they think they are.”

  “Fine,” Parker said. “But I need to sleep in a bed. I need to relax. You all need me to relax.”

  “Looks like they’re taking in visitors,” Annie said, “if they’re putting up signs on the road.”

  “We don’t know if anyone from town put up that sign,” Hughes said. “Or how long it’s been there.”

  “Sure,” Kyle said, “but the guy back in Fairfield told us Lander was doing okay. The sign doesn’t confirm it, but you have to admit it’s more evidence. If a town that size is still functioning, they might know what we can expect farther out. The guys in Fairfield sent us to Lander. Maybe Lander can send us to another safe haven. There has to be more than just one. We have no idea what else is out there and we’ll never know if we avoid other people. For all we know an actual city somewhere pulled through. Maybe even one with a research hospital. Denver. Calgary up in Canada. Who knows? Maybe Lander has an airport and someone can fly us.”

  “You want someone to fly us to Atlanta?” Hughes said. “What would we tell them?”

  “Depends on what kind of people they are,” Kyle said.

  “What kind of people,” Hughes said. “When 99 percent of the human race is gone, what kind of people do you think are left?”

  “The people we’ve seen so far are okay,” Kyle said.

  “People like Lane and Roland and Bobby?” Hughes said.

  Kyle had forgotten about Lane and Roland and Bobby, the thugs who’d held them all captive at the grocery store back in Washington. That episode felt like years ago rather than months ago.

  “We’re still here,” Kyle said. Then he remembered that one of the people still here was Parker.

  “You all want to go?” Hughes said.

  Everybody said yes.

  “Fine,” Hughes said. “We’ll check it out. Carefully. But we’re not staying more than a couple of days or we won’t make the Missouri River before we get snowbound. We’ll have a hard enough time as it is.”

  Darkness would fall soon. It was time to pull off the road and make camp. Kyle dreaded sleeping in the truck again, but they might spend the next night in beds.

  “If Lander really is civilization,” Kyle said, “maybe we can find Parker a therapist.”

  “Jackson is dead. Lander is civilization.”

  That was the third sign Annie had seen, this one also with white paint on slat boards, and this time on the way down toward Pinedale. The craggy Wind River Mountains filled the skyline to the east like a gigantic ice-capped saw blade.

  Annie realized she hadn’t seen a single vehicle on the road anywhere since they picked up the Suburban in Winthrop, Washington, as if—aside from two random towns—she and her companions had the entire continent to themselves. Maybe they’d have seen some other survivors if they took the Interstate, but not on the back roads.

  So far she liked Wyoming a lot more than Idaho. The violently sculpted ice and rock mountains towering above the desert looked both primordial and Olympian, forever beyond the reach of humans and infected alike. Enormous elk and buffalo herds wandered the earth like it was the American Serengeti. Wyoming’s survivors should have no difficulty finding something to eat. Unless, of course, they were vegetarians. Plenty of buffalo burgers to go around, but fruits and vegetables? No. Vegetarians were out of luck. The vast majority of the land in Wyoming she’d seen so far was dry scrubland. Farming anything at all would be almost impossible.

  Yet scraps of forest appeared here and there in apparently random locations. At one point, near the Snake River, a desert spread out from the left side of the road while trees appeared on the right. Back home in South Carolina she’d have to fly thousands of miles to get to a desert. In some parts of Wyoming, all you had to do was cross the street.

  Half the houses she’d seen looked like vacation cabins. Some had gates over their driveways made out of elk horns. This was the true West, cowboy country, well into the 21st century. And now it was emptier than the Old West.

  Still, she had no trouble believing the town of Lander had survived. What she had a hard time believing was that more towns hadn’t pulled through. How the virus even got to such remote places, let alone spread, she had no idea.

  It certainly couldn’t spread anymore, at least not on foot. Not across that forsaken landscape. Snow covered the ground only in patches, but the wind felt like a polar blast. It howled and shook the truck and penetrated the vehicle’s tiniest openings and rattled everyone’s nerves, especially Parker’s. Ice crystals blew across the road like fog in a hurricane. The infected couldn’t survive out there for even an afternoon let alone a long night.

  She wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, and she felt a little bit guilty about it, but she was enjoying their road trip. She had hardly ever seen anything of the middle of America. All she really knew was the coastal South Carolina of her childhood and the Puget Sound region of her young adulthood on America’s opposite coast and in the
opposite corner. No American cities were farther from Charleston than Seattle except Honolulu and Anchorage. She’d always thought Alaska and Hawaii were distant outposts that did not really count. Aside from a plane ride to Dallas, Texas, to visit her aunt Sara when she was a kid, the vast interior of the continent was a mystery to her until now.

  Idaho and Wyoming looked absolutely nothing like South Carolina or Washington, and she knew that Utah and Arizona were even more strikingly different. A small part of her wanted to detour to the Southwest and spend a couple of days driving and walking around. It was an absurd fantasy. She knew that. But what about several years in the future?

  If they made it to Atlanta, and if the CDC still existed and could save what’s left of the human race, the world might not be so dangerous anymore. She wouldn’t be obligated to save anybody. She’d have already done it. Then she could travel. She could see the Grand Canyon and Zion. She could go all the way to China if she could figure out how to get there, and she could definitely turn south at Mexico and drive through Central America all the way down to Argentina and Chile. She wouldn’t have to worry about borders and passports and money. An entire empty and free world would open at her feet like a dream.

  When they reached the small town of Pinedale, the last on the map before Lander, Annie saw dead bodies, some of them clothed, some of them nothing but bones picked entirely clean, littering the streets. For a moment she wondered if Lander was really okay. She doubted it until another sign appeared with white paint on slat boards, this one facing the other direction for cars in the oncoming lane. “Pinedale is Dead. Lander is Civilization.”

  Okay, then. Annie believed it. Partly because of the signs. Pinedale really was dead. She could see that. At some point, at least, Lander was doing okay after Pinedale had already died.

  A sign ten miles or so outside the city announced tourist information on AM station 1610.

  “Should we tune in?” Kyle said.

  “Probably just static,” Hughes said. “Or an outdated weather report or some shit.” He flicked on the radio anyway and turned to the station.

  First nothing, then a click followed by a recorded message. “Attention all survivors.”

  Annie gasped.

  “This is Jack Temple, head of security and advisor to Joseph Steele, mayor of Lander, Wyoming. The date is December 4th.”

  “That was just a few weeks ago!” Kyle said.

  “While other areas have succumbed to the infection and warlordism,” the message continued, “our small city of 8,000 souls is intact. We have food, water, limited electricity, medical facilities, and a robust security force. We also have shelter for refugees. All are welcome. You will be met at a checkpoint outside the city.” After a ten-second delay, the message repeated.

  “Amazing,” Kyle said.

  “We were bound to come across a lot more survivors somewhere out here,” Hughes said.

  “I’m not sleeping in a tent,” Parker said.

  “Why would you even say that?” Kyle said.

  “Guy on the radio said refugees,” Parker said. “If they have a camp somewhere, great, but I’m not sleeping outside in this weather. It’d be worse than the truck.”

  Around the next corner a checkpoint appeared a few hundred feet ahead. Half a dozen armed men stood watch on the road, along with several others who did not appear to be armed. All wore desert camo army fatigues underneath heavy coats.

  “Is that the army?” Kyle said.

  “Nobody says a word about Annie,” Hughes said.

  “Obviously,” Kyle said like a smart-alecky teenager back to his father.

  The army guys waved as the Suburban approached. None pointed their weapons. Annie burst with relief. Not until the last second did two men step in front of the Suburban and force Hughes to stop, and even then they were all smiles.

  “Afternoon!” the lead man said as he approached the driver’s side door. Hughes powered down the window.

  “A very pleasant afternoon indeed,” Hughes said. “You guys army?”

  “Officially, no,” the man said. “A lot of us are ex-military, but we answer to City Hall.”

  Annie could barely contain her joy at the words City Hall.

  “I’m Jack Temple,” the man said and shook Hughes’ hand. He looked about fifty. Stocky, but fit. Strong as a horse, probably. Losing a bit of hair, but only a bit. Hughes introduced himself and the others.

  “I’ll escort you to the welcoming center,” Temple said. “You folks staying or continuing on? Can’t say I recommend continuing on.”

  “We’re only staying a couple of days,” Hughes said.

  “Suit yourself,” Temple said. “We still have some guest rooms available.”

  Guest rooms. No tent city for refugees. Annie could sleep in a bed for the first time since she got off the boat in Puget Sound.

  Temple hopped into a Jeep with another man and beckoned Hughes to follow them into town. None of the men searched the Suburban or even asked about weapons. They didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

  “That was easy,” Kyle said as Hughes pulled behind Temple’s Jeep.

  “They feel secure,” Hughes said. “Got this place wired tight.”

  “A welcoming center,” Annie said. “Guess they’re used to getting visitors.”

  “A lot of people must have come here,” Kyle said.

  “But they still have guest rooms available,” Hughes said. “And we haven’t seen a single car on the road except ours.”

  5

  Lander began with scattered houses on bare hills, the gentle rise of the Wind River Mountains above and beyond them. Hundreds of elk, clouds of vapor surrounding their faces as they exhaled, grazed on high altitude scrubland below an even higher white forest capped by wispy ice and rock.

  The Suburban crested a hill, still following Temple’s Jeep, and the town appeared in earnest below, a modest-sized sprawl with a clearly defined Main Street lined with two-story 19th century brick structures. Annie saw cars on the street—two SUVs and a passenger vehicle—and what appeared to be a married couple with two small children in tow on the sidewalk.

  “Wow,” Kyle said.

  Annie clapped.

  “Looks like this place is for real,” Hughes said.

  Parker just gaped in astonishment, his anxiety apparently on hold at least for the moment.

  A green and white sign read, “Lander, Wyoming. Elevation 5,357.”

  They passed an RV dealership and a boarded-up diner. Ahead were a Pizza Hut and a McDonald’s, both closed but not boarded-up or damaged in any way. A used car lot sold mostly trucks. A family restaurant appeared on the right—and it was open for business!

  “Mother of God,” Hughes said. “They have a restaurant.”

  Then the Main Street. Annie had thought Lander would look like an Old West town, but aside from some blank forgettable filler from the 1970s, Lander’s downtown was elegant, almost European, its buildings made of brick, their windows tall and vertical and crenellated with moldings.

  As they drove past the family of four on the sidewalk, one of the kids—he could not have been older than four—turned and waved.

  “Unbelievable,” Parker said.

  “I want to stay,” Annie said.

  Hughes glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “But look at this place.”

  She saw a Thai restaurant and another advertising burgers, billiards, and beer, though neither appeared to be open. An electronic cigarette store was open, though. It had a sign in the window that read, “October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.” Parker twitched as they drove past. Annie wasn’t sure why. She saw a bookstore on the left with the lights on and people milling around inside, and promised herself that she’d go there.

  Temple’s Jeep turned, presumably toward what he’d said was the welcoming center. Hughes followed in the Suburban down the same non-descript side street and into the parking lot of Lander Regional Hospital
.

  Annie frowned. “This is the welcoming center?”

  The two uniformed men stepped out of the Jeep and into the cold. Temple grinned and clapped his gloved hands together.

  “Hey, folks,” he said. “Come on in.”

  Hughes turned off the engine and hesitated a moment.

  “Why would they bring us to the hospital?” Parker said. Something in his voice. There was always something in his voice now.

  “It’s not a jail, guys,” Kyle said. “They’re probably used to sick and wounded people showing up here.”

  Annie supposed Kyle was right, but for a brief moment she wondered if somehow Temple knew she was immune. No. He couldn’t possibly know.

  Temple and the second man stood in the cold, still smiling. “Come on in,” he said. “We’ve got food and water in here.”

  The second man said nothing.

  “Maybe they’re going to put us up here,” Kyle said. “If there aren’t any hotel rooms, where else would they put people like us? It would have to be a school or a hospital or something.”

  Annie didn’t like it. They couldn’t read her mind. They couldn’t possibly know she had a human-sized bite mark just below her shoulder. She just didn’t like it. Not for any particular reason she could identify. It just wasn’t what she expected.

  Hughes hesitated another moment, nodded, then stepped out of the vehicle and into the parking lot. He went slow. He was looking around, checking things out, getting a feel for the place and the people. Annie and the others followed.

  “This is a state-of-the-art facility,” Temple said. “We have 89 beds, and only twelve are currently occupied. It used to serve the whole region, but the region is…well, it’s a bit …less populated now than it used to be.”

  The automatic doors whooshed open and revealed the hospital’s waiting area. It looked pretty standard. No one with guns waited to snatch her. A check-in desk straight ahead was surrounded on three sides by a horseshoe of plastic chairs. A pale brunette in her thirties sat behind the desk. She wasn’t wearing doctor or nurse clothing. A receptionist then.