His son and daughter did as they were told, and together they crossed to the other side. Bishop’s big body and wide shoulders kept people from brushing up against the kids from behind, making it easy to keep an eye on them.
Once safely across, Bishop looked over his right shoulder, lifting his eyes eastward toward the towns of Ault and Severence. The wind had kicked up, and dark clouds loomed in the distance. It could have been a trick of the light, but the darkness looked more like a curtain than high-ranging storm clouds.
The crowds thickened as they approached Center Avenue where a FEMA worker stood on a plastic bin on the corner with a bullhorn in her hand. “The stadium is full, so please move past it and gather on the intramural fields!” She shouted the same thing once in every direction. “Pick a line to register, and someone will direct you to your tent assignments.”
Bishop didn’t like being herded. The press of bodies was making him sweat in hot flashes, and he constantly looked around to gauge the crowd. The growing throng was calm and amicable, displaying perfect order in the face of a potential catastrophe.
As they turned north on Center Avenue toward the football fields, Bishop gazed to the east once more. The dark curtain had encroached on the eastern edge of Fort Collins at an increasing and alarming rate. It looked like a swarm of hornets with strange movements of undulating air, rippling in the warm breeze.
It reminded him of the quiet minutes before a thunderstorm when the world became surreal and the smell of moisture drifted in the air. Bishop reached out and grabbed the kids’ backpacks. Their feet caught in mid stride as he pulled them to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk.
“Dad!” Riley yelped.
“Jeesh, Dad,” Trevor added, looking back with a disgruntled expression.
Bishop ignored their complaints, his eyes pinned on the encroaching curtain. No one else had noticed it yet, though Bishop swore there were distant screams where the darkness had already touched down.
“Kids, I think you should put on your masks,” Bishop said, already unfastening the straps on Riley and Trevor’s backpacks. Thankful he’d been smart enough to instruct the children to pack the air filtration masks on top, Bishop pulled the masks out and held them up for the kids to take. When they didn’t turn around fast enough, Bishop shook the masks. “Come on, kids. Take the damn masks!”
“Okay, Dad!” Trevor raised his voice. The boy grabbed his mask and fumbled to get it on his head.
Riley, taking her sweet time, looked over her left shoulder and spotted the darkness coming for them. Her eyes widened in terror, and her hands flew into motion to get her mask’s straps situated to slide it on.
Bishop removed his own backpack and set it on the ground, eyes narrowed at what looked like tendrils of smoky dust driven by the wind. The tendrils shot upward and drifted down only to be lifted once again. A pair of them intertwined like snakes and spiraled downward toward the ground, a devilish interplay making it seem evil and alive. If it hadn’t been for Kim explaining the toxic clouds were an aberration of nature, he might have believed that were true.
Others were starting to notice, too.
A young man and woman holding hands looked up at the descending cloud and stopped in their tracks. They immediately backed up, running into the family behind them. The father cursed the young couple before his eyes lifted to spy the dark tendrils. He grabbed his wife’s arm with one hand and threw his other arm out to stop one of their children who’d been walking next to them.
They all looked up, gaped, and backed away. It became infectious, with more people looking up and retreating. They tripped, stumbled, and fell. Others took off in a dead sprint down the street, heading due west.
Moving deliberately, Bishop found his mask and pulled it from his backpack. As he straightened out the straps, people screamed all around him. He lifted the mask over his head, glancing down to ensure the kids already had theirs on, and slid his mask down.
“Adjust the fit,” Bishop snapped over the screams, keeping his eyes on his spooked kids. “We’re heading back to the car, okay? Do you understand that?”
Riley’s eyes shifted left and right as she nodded, chest heaving in fear as people jostled and pushed her. Trevor was moving too fast and got his strap flipped around on the back of his head. Bishop pulled the straps of his own mask wide and settled it over his head, allowing the straps to slap tightly into place.
“We trained for this,” Bishop boomed as he turned Trevor around and fixed his strap. “Take a deep breath, keep your head clear, and hold on to me.”
The visor of his mask muffled Bishop’s words, but he could project his voice at a tremendous volume like a foghorn in the night. It was a skill he’d learned while calling out defensive plays to his football team in noisy stadiums with sixty thousand people screaming at the top of their lungs to drown him out.
Riley and Trevor were both scared stiff, and they nodded vigorously, eyes glued to their father.
“Good. Let’s go. Back to the car.” Bishop turned and held out his hands. Riley took his right hand, and Trevor took his left.
He pulled them through the crowd as order disintegrated. People pushed and shoved as they reversed direction against the flow marching blindly north. Those behind were slower to pick up on the danger, and people slammed together on the sidewalk and in the street.
Bishop charged ahead, using his bulk to make room. He avoided running anyone over, though many ran into him and bounced to the pavement. The tendrils fell all around them, bursting into clouds as people ran through them and breathed them in.
A man running away stopped ten yards in front of Bishop and grasped at his throat. Then he wrenched his body around, gasping and tearing at his skin as he choked. Bishop took one look at the man’s bulging, panic-filled eyes and knew his life and the lives of his children hung on the thinnest of threads.
Riley’s hand jerked out of his. Bishop cried out, reeling in search of his daughter. He saw Riley windmilling her fists at a woman trying to wrench the girl’s mask off. The woman’s hands were tangled in Riley’s thick hair, tugging at the straps even as she choked on the toxic cloud.
A man stumbled into Bishop, and Bishop swept him aside with his meaty arm. Then he grabbed the woman assaulting Riley by her hair, wrenched her head back, and shoved her to the pavement where a crowd of people trampled her.
Bishop snatched his daughter by her backpack just as Trevor was wrenched away in the other direction. He half turned to see two older teenagers fighting to get his son’s mask off. Trevor kicked and punched at the older boys, his screams of panic muffled behind his visor.
Letting go of Riley for the moment, Bishop spun and rushed toward the melee. He cocked his right fist and punched one teen, dropping him on the spot. The other boy kept fighting, his face red and bulging, neck straining.
Bishop wrapped his left arm around Trevor’s head to hold his mask on and used his right forearm to shove the choking teen to the ground. Then he turned and searched for his daughter again.
Riley was a dozen yards away, spinning and bouncing around as people slammed into her. The air was full of dark dust, and hundreds of people were choking on it.
Growling into his visor, Bishop grabbed Trevor’s upper arm in a vice grip, not caring if he hurt the boy. Then he took three big strides and snatched up his daughter the same way. Turning into the chaos, Bishop charged ahead, half dragging, half shoving his children ahead of him.
Bishop had spent most of his young life fighting through offensive lines to get to the quarterback. He’d wrestled, fought, and clawed at men who stood six-feet, five-inches tall, and weighed in excess of three hundred pounds. He’d learned every technique for getting leverage on an opponent and busting through a line.
In the crowded, panic-filled streets of Ft. Collins, Bishop was like a bull in a china shop. He kicked and kneed people aside, sometimes using his shoulders to bowl them over as he dragged the kids behind him.
A tall young man, probably a co
llege student judging by the Colorado State hoodie he wore, tried for Bishop’s mask. Bishop slammed his visor into the man’s face, and then brought up his knee as the man went down, feeling the satisfactory crunch of cartilage and bone.
“Come on! Let’s go!” Bishop screamed into his visor, plowing ahead. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Bring it on! Come on!”
His grip on his children was unbreakable, his rage, unquenchable. Chills ran through his shoulders as he released the warrior that had not shown its face in over a decade.
The tendrils dropped people like flies, though the smarter ones ran inside of the nearest buildings to escape the danger. By the time they turned on South College Avenue, they’d broken free of the crowds. Bishop shoved the kids ahead of him, shouting, “Run!”
They sprinted all the way back to their SUV with tendrils falling all around them in soft waves. Where the tendrils struck the ground, they clung and spread in an eerie red fuzz. Bishop had them on his neck and arms, and they streaked his visor like burns.
By the time they reached the SUV, the streets had grown eerily quiet. Bishop popped the back hatch, and they tossed their packs inside. Then they scrambled into the car and sat there, panting in disbelief.
“Do not take those masks off,” Bishop yelled back at the kids. “You hear me? Do not dare take them off.”
The kids nodded, their eyes wet and teary behind their visors. Riley’s hair stuck up on a tangle of curls, and Bishop imagined he’d have to cut some off to get the mask off her head.
“What is that stuff, Dad?” Riley’s chest heaved as she sobbed.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” Bishop replied. “But we can’t breathe it in. Ever. Do you understand me?”
The kids nodded, and Bishop straightened in his seat with both hands resting on the wheel. He got his breathing under control and then started the Lincoln.
He pulled out of the Starbucks parking lot and drove slowly south along South College Avenue, weaving around the dozens of bodies lying motionless in the street. It was clear the authorities hadn’t been prepared. Not even close.
They were on their own in an empty and deadly world.
Chapter 48
Moe Tsosie, Chinle, Arizona
Moe drove his rig up State Route 191 from Burnside to his hometown of Chinle, Arizona in the early evening. Red dirt stretched flat in every direction, broken only by fields of rough grass or an occasional mobile home or ramshackle structure. Broken fences caught clusters of garbage or dead scrubs, and random poles pierced the dirt.
Low mountains lay distant to the east and west, hugging the land in a loose embrace. Then Moe reached a place where the land gave way to deep canyons and valleys that stretched away on his right. He couldn’t see them from his position on the road, though he’d explored them on horseback when he was a child.
Moe followed the endless stretch of power lines as State Route 191 banked east, cut off by a lengthy rise. He crossed Cottonmouth Wash and approached the outskirts of Chinle. It was a small Navajo town of around forty-five hundred people, with over seventy percent speaking their native language at home.
He’d been away three weeks, and old feelings of home washed over him mixed with the anticipation of what he might find. As he drove past Jumbo’s Automotive Service and the local high school on his right, Moe got a sense everything was fine. Traffic was light and non-rushed, and folks carried on like a toxic fungus wasn’t consuming the world.
Moe took a right on Route 7 and trundled past the Best Western and a Subway, slowing only when he approached the Denny’s on his left. He pulled into the lot, noticing several of his old friends’ cars parked there.
Moe found a spot at the far end, locked up his rig, and entered the diner. He walked with tenderness, his legs and back still stiff from last evening’s fight. His head throbbed with raw emotion, though a quietness settled on his spirit. Perhaps it was the act of coming home and finding it still there.
Moe waved to some friends in greeting and took a seat at the counter. He turned his head, seeing Casey Harvey waiting on a couple down at the end. She was a young lady of eighteen and had been a girl when Moe started driving a rig almost ten years ago. Casey had grown into a long-limbed young woman with dark, silken hair falling past her shoulders. She was far too young for Moe, though she’d make someone else very happy one day.
She finished taking the couple’s order and turned to the register to ring it in. A smile lit her face from ear to ear when she caught sight of Moe, and she grabbed a coffee pot off the burner and brought it over to him.
“Hey, Moe!” Her voice was chipper, although her eyes held a deep, underlying tension. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine.” He nodded and presented a wan smile. “How about you? How’s business?”
“Best it’s been all year.” She flipped a clean coffee cup onto the counter in front of him and filled it up with the steaming, sloshing brew. “Hungry, Moe?”
“Not too much. Coffee’s fine.”
“You need to get in on some of this apple pie.” She winked at him. “It’s great. We’ve got a case of it, but I don’t think it will last too long. Especially since...you know.” She cocked her head to the side. “You’re aware of what’s been happening, right?”
Moe scoffed. “Oh, yeah. I almost died a few times escaping California.”
“I’m glad you made it.” Casey reached out and touched his forearm. “I was worried about you. Everyone’s been glued to the television for the past three days.” Her expression took on a stricken look. “They say millions of people are dead and thousands of others are sick. Everyone’s worried it will hit us soon.”
Moe’s eyes lifted to the television screen where the news played. A reporter out of Albuquerque stood on the outskirts of the city, wind whipping her hair around as she gestured behind her toward the east. While Moe couldn’t hear the woman, he read the news ticker along the bottom of the screen. It said a lot about FEMA camps, military support, and the government’s efforts to protect citizens from the contagion.
“I will have that piece of apple pie, Casey,” Moe said, stirring cream into his coffee. He gave the waitress a faint smile. “Could be my last one, right?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Casey tried to sound reassuring. “The tribal elders are preparing for food and water shortages, and there will be clean places to sleep. They say the Wildcat Den will be ready in another day or two.”
The Wildcat Den was the home of the local high school basketball team, the Chinle Wildcats. They were the pride of the town, and their sports complex was a beautiful, sprawling building that would hold the entire population of Chinle with room to spare. Moe had adopted the mascot as his CB handle: Wildcat.
Moe nodded and lowered his gaze to the young woman. “I’m sure everyone will be safe there.” His tone remained confident, though he wasn’t so sure on the inside. His time as a truck driver had taken him all across the United States, and he knew the vastness of the country. If they couldn’t stop the contagion in Indiana, Missouri, or Kansas, they would have no chance of stopping it here.
“Okay, let me grab you that pie.” Casey left to go around the counter to the pie case.
“Thanks, Casey,” Moe whispered as the news report held his attention.
The broadcast switched to a Denver station. This time it was the view from a helicopter looking toward what Moe presumed was the east. The digital frame on the bottom of the screen showed the location as Aurora, Colorado, though the volume was too low to hear the report, and the captions were off.
“Can you turn it up?” someone gave a quick shout.
“Yeah, yeah, hang on!” Casey shouted back. She delivered Moe’s pie with a smile and looked around for the remote control. She found it over by the cash register and pointed it up at the TV, turning the volume up to seventy.
“This is the CBS4 live chopper reporting out of Aurora, Colorado. We have been told by CDC sources and weather authorities that a massive cloud of wha
t they say are spores—that’s right, mold spores—are being blown westward by high winds and rain. And as you can see from the chopper view, there appears to be a hazy curtain in the distance which is the actual cloud itself. Initially, Denver authorities dismissed the reports and continued sending resources eastward until early yesterday when power and communication died out for most of the eastern and central United States.”
Moe dug into his pie, picking off the corner and placing it in his mouth. He followed with a sip of coffee, reveling in the mix of bittersweet taste.
“Are you saying they lost contact with their eastbound teams?” That was a clear female voice Moe assumed was the anchor woman back in the main newsroom.
“That’s what we think,” the reporter replied. “Authorities are being tight lipped, although that could be because of the amount of preparation being done in the surrounding area. In Fort Collins, they’ve encouraged residents to gather at the Colorado State University football stadium where FEMA has safe camps set up and US military protection on hand to keep everyone safe.”
“That’s good to know,” the female anchor replied. “Can the authorities predict when the cloud will hit?”
“The spore clouds were supposed to hit tomorrow evening, but high winds have pushed that date up to as early as a few hours from now.”
“And these aren’t spores you might find in routine spring allergies, are they, Rick?”
“No, Jan. These spores are deadly. We still don’t know the exact fatality rate out of the Eastern United States, although the last reports showed the death toll to be in the millions. Power and most communications are down”
Moe took another bite of his pie and tuned the TV out. It didn’t take a genius to realize they only pretended to tell the news—a farewell broadcast just as Moe ate his farewell piece of pie.
Turning his plate sideways, Moe worked his fork into the pie crust. It was his favorite part, that bit of crust mixed with some juicy apple pie filling. He washed that down with a sip of coffee before finishing his last bite. Then he pushed the plate away, sat back, and watched the spore cloud consume Denver and Fort Collins.
Spore Series (Book 1): Spore Page 27