"They seem to move in packs. And tend to lose interest after a day," Scott said, approaching from behind Max.
"You've seen this many here already?"
"Not quite this many. But the morning I got here for work, it was still dark. I parked my car, came in like I do every day. When we started getting phone calls about the chaos I came here to look outside, to see what I could see, ya know?" Max nodded her understanding and motioned for him to continue.
"Well, it was hard to tell which were those sick ones and which weren't. But while I was up here a group of employees decided to make a run for it to get home to their families. The noise of their cars drew the attention of those that were already dead. Maybe half as many," Scott said motioning below them. "I watched them for most of that first day. By the next morning, most of them had wandered off. We could see the cars out on the main road and could tell there were attacks happening constantly. We decided if we stayed inside, we'd be safe until the police arrived."
"I don't know if the police are coming," Max said softly.
"Why do you say that?"
"My father, though a little crazy by popular standards I guess, always talked about a society breakdown like this. One of the things he always stressed was that the government would fall apart. There would be no immediate services and even after some time, nothing would be the same. This feels like that," Max said solemnly.
Mitch Duncan had a lot of predictions about the end of civilization. His favorite was to talk about the world coming to an end because of an EMP. He was disgusted by the way humans were becoming dependent on electronics. He used to say that one electromagnetic pulse would end life as they knew it. He assumed it would be a war that caused it, one superpower attacking another. Max felt like this was so much worse.
"I didn't see any cops or government presence while I was on the road the last few days," Max continued. She had been so concerned with their survival, she hadn't noticed the missing sounds of sirens.
"You would think they would all be out there, trying to stop this...whatever it is," Scott said sadly.
"My guess is no one was prepared or knew what to do when the plague broke out. The news was all panic when it started yesterday." It was hard for Max to imagine the government, federal or local, having a game plan for the end of the world.
Lunch consisted of salads, fruit, and sandwiches. Max held her tongue and fought her base instincts as she watched people throw away their unfinished foods. Jack knew to finish every bite. In a situation where normal life was falling apart, you could never count on where your next meal would come from. The group in the mall were living under the impression they would be saved before supplies ran out.
A full stomach gave Max the feeling of heaviness and she decided to walk the mall. She found paper and a pen at one of the food court restaurants. As she walked she took note of all the glass doors, which she considered soft points. Easily breached for anyone living that wanted to break in. She also noted all of the emergency exits, typically down hallways between stores, that would lead out as well.
While they walked, Max and Jack took note of the places people had decided to sleep. Some people were sleeping in a small store that sold large beanbag chairs. Chairs were pushed together, sheets and blankets used to create beds. There were also beds in a shoe store that had couches for people to sit and try on the merchandise.
At the end of the mall, they came to a sporting goods store. Max smiled at Jack when they quickly realized no one had come into that store yet. Though her first instinct was to keep moving, Max knew it was safer to wait out the horde inside the mall. For now, it was a secure location. From the lunch conversation, she believed the group would not let anyone else in. They didn't even want to let Max in, but they couldn't leave Jack to be killed.
The sporting goods store was the most useful in Max's mind, next to the food court. She found ammunition for her 9mm and additional magazines. She loaded them all and packed them into her bag. Jack got excited about pitching tents inside the store and camping inside a mall. Max had never really understood the saying "It's the little things," but she assumed that's what this meant. Her eight-year-old daughter was delighted to be mall camping.
Max picked a relatively clear spot between the emergency exit and glass entrance doors. It was near the back of the store, giving them privacy from the rest of the group. Also, the doors provided quick escape, should the need arise. Together they pitched a six man tent. It was larger than anything they took camping, but Max figured why not? It was the apocalypse after all.
Jack created comfortable beds inside, making beds for each of them with double self-inflating mattresses, sleeping bags and camp pillows. Assuming they would keep the lights off at night to not attract attention they also appropriated a couple of lanterns and flashlights. Jack also found a string of battery operated twinkle lights. She took great pleasure in hanging them outside of their tent.
The sporting goods store housed quite a bit of camping and hunting gear. This type of store was right up Max's alley and she would have been happy to just not leave it. She found additional meals, ready to eat, also called MRE's. She packed a few in both of their packs. The store also boasted a large amount of hunting clothing, so both of them were able to acquire additional sets of clean clothing to pack away.
As they were repacking their bags, Jules came into their camp area. She smiled warmly at them both as she approached.
"You have made yourself quite the camp."
"Jack was having fun," Max said with a shrug.
"Scott mentioned to me that you don't believe the police are coming," Jules stated, revealing her intentions for coming to find them.
"I didn't see any police response the last few days. I'm not sure where they are or if they are coming," Max replied.
"Have you been outside a lot since this started?"
"Just enough to drive from place to place. Well and to run here," Max said.
"Where were you headed?" Jules asked. Max felt like she sure had a lot of questions for someone she just met.
"Headed out of town. Until we were carjacked." Max looked up from her pack when she said it and almost laughed out loud at the shock on Jules' face. "Right? Carjacked. Like it was the last thing I would have worried about. But there we were, glass all over the truck from the dude breaking in my window. And two guns pointed at us."
"That's horrible," Jules replied.
"Everything is horrible right now," Jack chimed in.
"Scott also said something about your father. That he knew about times like this or something?" Jules asked.
"Yeah. My dad was a prepper. Once we can get out of town, we're heading to my childhood home. That home is now also a compound my father built for exactly this situation."
"Prepper. I've heard that before. Like those shows about people hoarding?"
Max had to force herself not to roll her eyes. She had often dealt with the misconception of what exactly her father did and why. As an adult, Max was aware her father wasn't completely sane when it came to his prepping. But he always provided for them as children, made sure they had educations and taught them all they needed to know about being prepared and surviving on their own. Even in the civilized world, Max had been able to apply survival techniques to make it from day to day.
"No, not a hoarder. Growing up we lived on a large piece of land. At the time it was largely unused. As I grew up, so did the compound my father built. There's now the large house that I grew up in, a bunker for living in, in case of attack, and other outdoor buildings. It's completely self-sustaining, which will be necessary with services like power going out," Max explained. Jules stood, raptly listening to everything Max said.
"The power is still on," she commented.
"For now," Max replied simply. There was no way of knowing when the power would fail. Without healthy humans to do the work to maintain the grids, it wouldn't take long. Phone service didn't last under the weight of usage during the beginning of the ou
tbreak.
"So, you're just going, alone?" Jules asked.
"Yes. We're meeting my family there."
"My Auntie Alex is coming too. And Uncle Rafe lives there now," Jack added. Jules smiled at the girl.
"What does Jack stand for?" Jules asked.
"Jacklyn," Jack answered.
"It was a thing my father started. He wanted boys when my sister Alex was born. So my mother made him a deal, she would choose a female name he could shorten into a boy nickname. Growing up we were never called by our full names, only the nickname he gave us," Max explained.
"So Max...for Maxine?" Jules filled in. Max nodded.
The story made Max think back to her childhood. There were prepper chores every day. Alex hated them but Max relished the knowledge her father would give her. In their teen years, even with Rafe being bigger and stronger, Mitch always picked Max for new projects. He would never have admitted having a favorite, he loved all three of them. However, Max was the one that wanted his lessons. Being a girl didn't mean anything to him then.
The mall was eerily quiet as Max and Jack wandered around the stores. The group had opened most of the rolling gates with the main keys they had. Jack spent a good amount of her time in the bookstore choosing which books she wanted to take with them to Montana. Max didn't understand wasting the space in her pack for them, but Jack always enjoyed having her nose in a book.
Besides the sporting goods store, Max didn't find much of interest in the mall. She wandered into the food court, looking at the food items that were left. These people had enough food to last them a month, maybe more, if they let no one else in. Looting was just a matter of time and Max tried to tell people that in conversation. But it seemed none were that worried about long-term.
As evening rolled around, so did dark storm clouds. South Carolina was notorious for random storms that no one saw coming. The lightning lit up the dark sky, creating weird shadows throughout the food court where everyone had gathered for dinner. A few of the mall group had worked together to fry up some chicken at an Asian restaurant and the meal was delicious. Max savored every bite, knowing this food tasted much better than MRE dinners.
The mood was a little more somber at dinner. Maybe it was all of the information Max was passing around. Or maybe a second night locked in the mall wasn't what this group was expecting. From their second story view, they could see infected all over the parking lot and street beyond. The storm didn't seem to deter them at all. It had Max wondering if they could tell the difference in human noise and weather-related noise. Lightning shed light on the crowd below often enough for her to tell that the group wasn't dissipating quickly.
As dinner ended, people began to take their leave. Jack begged Max for ice cream, so the two of them dug out some from the freezer of a dessert shop. They sat near their tent, the light of their lanterns brightening their area, and ate ice cream. If they weren't camping in the mall, the moment may have felt like a normal evening of bonding and eating ice cream. Jack smiled and talked constantly between bites, while Max sat contemplating their situation and halfway listening to Jack jabber along.
The quiet was all-enveloping, which made Max feel like she was lying in a black hole, not a tent. Jack had quickly fallen asleep on her camp pads, arms slung over her head in her typical fashion. Max laid there, watching her in the dim light of a lowered lantern. Her lips pursed as she dreamt, and her eyebrows creased together as if she were in deep thought. What did an eight-year-old dream about that caused such concentration?
In the dark, in a safe place, Max allowed herself to feel real fear for the first time in two days. When the carjacker pointed a gun at her face, she hadn't felt fear. The moment was only a bump in the road that needed to be handled. Somehow, she felt sure the man wasn't going to pull the trigger. Looking back, Max realized she was damn lucky to not have pushed any of his buttons.
Max hadn't felt fear when they were running for the mall either. She felt capable of protecting them as they made their way through the infected. When Jack's hand was ripped from her own though, panic had tried to push its way through. Seeing an infected with its claws in her pack was almost enough to send Max over some edge she didn't know she had.
She loved her daughter, there was no question in that. Growing up without a real mother had caused Max to miss out on what a mother-daughter relationship should be. She found herself raising Jack the same way she was raised. In a very utilitarian style. Emotions didn't enter many decisions. Choices and plans were made in a practical fashion.
Looking at Jack now, in the middle of a plague, Max allowed herself to evaluate the feelings she was experiencing. Her heart swelled with love and affection for her little girl. It had always been the two of them against the world. Max wouldn't have had it any other way. She leaned over slightly and kissed her daughter on the forehead, right where her eyebrows seemed to gather. Jack let out a small sigh and sunk into an undisturbed sleep.
The next morning, they woke to a torrential downpour. Max cursed silently to herself, knowing this would keep them from leaving again. Visibility in a vehicle would be near nothing, a risk she wasn't willing to take. Adding to the need of stealing a vehicle, which would be much harder in the rain. Beyond all of those concerns, she also wasn't comfortable with the number of infected still gathered around the entrances to the mall.
Jack was thrilled to be staying at the mall for another day. After the breakfast meal of pancakes from McDonald's, she convinced Max to hang out in the bookstore with her. While Jack curled up in one of the chairs the store boasted, Max perused the maps and atlases the store had. Finding a large atlas with maps of all major freeways across the country, Max settled by Jack's feet and started reviewing some sort of plan of action for them.
As she studied the map of South Carolina, tracing where they should leave the state, she stopped and stared at North Carolina. Griffin was supposed to be there. Was he alive? Did he need her help? After all these years she wasn't sure how to handle the situation of him. If he was alive, she wasn't sure how they would even find him.
Max looked over at Jack. Her daughter had her dark hair, but her eyes were all her father's. When she stared into them, Max could get lost in memories. Now Max felt an obligation to her daughter. Her daughter who had never known who her father really was. And Griffin, who never knew he had a daughter in this world.
CHAPTER SIX
At seventeen, no daughter wants to admit to her father that she's pregnant. The day after Griffin left for boot camp, Alex had convinced Max to get a pregnancy test. Alex had already left for college a few years before, but over the phone, Max had told her how she had been feeling ill. Alex was the only one that knew Max and Griffin had slept together. She immediately worried about pregnancy.
When the little blue line showed up on the test, Max thought she would pass out. Griffin was gone, at Army boot camp where he would be unreachable at first. He had told Max he would write as soon as he was allowed. He had kissed her hard, telling her he wouldn't forget her, that they were going to make it for the long run. He swore that once he was done with boot camp and stationed somewhere, he would send for her. Max had promised to write him as soon as he sent her his address. And she had promised to wait.
Being pregnant was scary by itself. Once Max realized she was alone with her father, she was even more terrified. She knew Mitch Duncan would be severely disappointed in her lack of judgment. Not to mention just not being prepared for the worst outcome. He expected more from his children when it came to the mere basic things like hormones or making the right decisions about sex.
The conversation had been a fast one. Max had expected screaming and anger from Mitch. Instead, he sat in his favorite chair and stared at her. Minutes passed with Max standing in front of her father and him staring directly into her eyes.
"Who's is it?" He had finally asked.
"Griffin. I haven't had any other boyfriends, Dad, you know that," she had replied. He went silent again, this time l
ooking down at his hands. Max wondered if he was picturing strangling Griffin with his bare hands at that moment.
"The boy left for the Army, right?"
"Yes. He's going to write as soon as he can," Max had said.
Days passed. Then weeks. Those weeks turned into months. In the beginning, Max would run out to the mailbox daily to check for letters. Nothing ever came. After a few months, she finally resigned herself to the fact that he wasn't going to write. He had said all the right things before he left and she had believed him. But now, with her heart broken, she realized he just said what he needed to so he could go.
Max's body began to change. She rarely left the compound, in fear of seeing someone she knew. She didn't want anyone in the nearby cities to know she was pregnant. Griffin had no idea he had a baby on the way and she didn't intend for him to find out from someone he was in contact with. Part of Max was empty and bitter. That part wanted Griffin to suffer and never know he had fathered a child.
Mitch would drive her two towns away to a doctor for her prenatal care. His initial shock and disappointment faded and he was a different man. The concept of a grandchild was one he embraced wholeheartedly. Max had never seen him do that with anything beyond his prepping. She had only seen him baby a garden or even their livestock. His demeanor just seemed to soften when they would hear her baby's heartbeat on a monitor.
Alex came home to Montana for the birth of Jack. Mitch paced the halls outside the delivery room according to the nurses that attended Max. Alex would leave only to reassure Mitch that she was fine, and the baby was doing fine. As far as Max had been concerned she was dying. The pain would never end and the baby she carried for so long hated her and wanted to cause her death.
When the cry of Jack echoed in the delivery room, Max's world shifted on its axis. Suddenly life had a different meaning beyond her father's crazy all-consuming conspiracies. There was a small human she was responsible for. The doctor laid the little purple baby on Max's chest, giving them instant skin to skin contact. When Max looked up at Alex she wasn't surprised to see the tears rolling down her face. But when she looked back down at the baby, she was shocked by the wetness on her own face.
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