They were watchful. The animals were starting to make themselves known, and while most of the forest’s wildlife had steered clear, evidence that bears, cougars, and the less intimidating deer were thriving, not dying, became clear. It was the birds they noticed first. Right after the Release, it was hard to find birds in the sky—but now they were coming back, getting braver, picking at the rotting flesh of the bodies left behind.
It was unexplainable, but they hypothesized that animals in the city had fared worse than their wild counterparts. With that in mind, they kept to the main roads and remained vigilant.
Ainsley caught up to them after twenty minutes. She walked ten steps behind Darla, shuffling her feet, still in her torn jeans.
Behind them, the sun dipped lower in the sky. It was going to get dark soon and they had no place to camp that felt safe and secure, so they trudged onward, winding around the larch trees, the mile markers, the hiking paths.
Dean had acquired a long, weathered piece of wood and was using it as a walking stick; he stopped and pointed down a side road that hugged the river. “I think we venture off the highway.”
“How close were we to Montana when the tire blew?” Darla asked as she reached into her backpack to consult a map. She put her finger along Highway 12, assessing how it bifurcated the state and took them straight into Missoula. They’d find a car before that, though. Tiny towns dotted the landscape, and Darla estimated they had to be nearing one of them.
“Close in a car or close on foot?” Dean clarified and then he shrugged. “Neither, really.”
“Fine. Stick close to the Lochsa River.” She tucked the map back into her bag.
“Come on, just a little bit to go, then,” Dean encouraged.
They worked their way down off the highway, and a mile down a small road called Indian Grave Creek, they found what they were looking for: a tiny town, complete with a one-room storehouse and four or five houses situated along the river. A quick assessment of the store was shocking. The shelves had been cleared. There was not a stray grain of rice, a rotting apple or a crumpled candy-bar wrapper in sight. It had been picked clean. Even the gum stand next to the cash register was empty.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” Ainsley said as she wandered the aisles, and then she opened up one of the freezers. Poking her head inside, she inhaled and made a face. “I think this has been cleaned, too.”
“I’m done trying to figure out the basics of human behavior,” Darla replied, looking out the storefront window into the parking lot. No cars. “You can’t expect people to behave rationally or logically. As a matter of fact, expect chaos and crazies and you’ll never be disappointed.”
“Should we check out the houses?” Dean asked, pointing off toward the nice river homes sitting off in the distance. “Sleep in a bed tonight?”
Darla was quiet for a long time, and Ainsley and Dean watched her. Then she stepped out of the store and looked around. “No,” she called back inside. She walked back into the barren grocery and put her hand on an empty shelf. “I just can’t handle any discoveries...no gore, no bodies. I think we should get wood and make a fire in the parking lot, and sleep in the store if we get cold.”
“I don’t mind doing the search—” Dean said, but then he caught a glimpse of Darla’s exhaustion, the deep pockets forming under her eyes, her shoulders slumped as he suggested it. “Yeah, kid. Sure. Parking lot.”
“Get ready for some beans and barbeque-sauce,” Ainsley added in a dry, even voice. “It’s a party.”
The fire had died down to the coals, glowing red embers. Dean had popped the can of beans directly into the fire, perched on a bed of intricately placed sticks. They ate greedily, shoving dinner into their mouths with silent gusto. And when they were done, they spread themselves out on the wooden porch and sat with their backs against the wood paneled storefront. A wind blew in and it was cold; summer was still a few weeks off, so the late spring offered little respite from the elements once the sun dropped below the horizon.
Ainsley pulled out her Leaves of Grass book and thumbed through the pages. She tilted it upward so the words were visible by the firelight. After a moment, she held the book to her chest and watched the flames lick at their collected pile of sticks and shrubbery.
“This is taking too long,” Darla said to herself. She let her head collapse into her tucked-up knees. She mumbled, “First thing in the morning, a car. Then...no rest until Nebraska.”
“That was the original plan,” Dean reminded her. “We’re getting there.”
Ainsley sniffed. “I bet they have real food. Pizza. Donuts.”
Dean shifted his attention, “Where? In Nebraska?”
“Yeah,” Ainsley breathed airily. “Nebraska.” She smiled. “I’m going to dream of pizza.” She stretched her arms and stood up, yawning deeply, with a little squeal at the end, and then she wrapped her arms around her body she shivered. “Was there a bathroom inside?”
“Nope,” Darla replied. “Twenty feet to the shrubs over there...”
Ainsley turned and pivoted and bounced down the steps, she lowered her head and began to wander away from the fire and the moonlight. Watching her disappear into the brush, Darla took her own cue and stood up.
“I’m turning in, Dean,” she said. When Dean didn’t reply she looked over and found him nodding off, his head bobbing like a cork in the water.
From beyond the parking lot, Darla heard the snapping of twigs and the rustle of the brush. She was about to call out to Ainsley and tell her not to wander too far, but she paused. The sounds of a scuffle grew louder. And then she heard the scream.
Darla jumped, the hairs on her arm stood on end, and her heart began to race. Ainsley was screaming—loud and shrill, a solid cry for help. Then her shriek turned muffled, and slid further away, and the forest went quiet. It all happened so fast that Darla hadn’t even made her way off the porch. Dean heard it too and was up on his feet, reaching for his gun.
But before either of them could react, Darla felt her body seize. Every muscle tensed and went into shock, and Darla fell straight over, hitting her head against the railing. A splitting pain traveled from her temple to her jaw.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dean fall as well, his body vibrating against the wood, his mouth tight and rigid. His eyes rolled back in his head and she tried to scream, but her lungs wouldn’t take in or expel air.
When she was able to finally focus, Darla saw the black mask, and the green cylindrical filter. The eyes behind the filmy lenses were bright blue and wild: full of raw fear. Hands, covered in elbow-high gloves, reached out and patted her body. They discovered the gun and flung it out into the dirt. Her body started to correct itself and find its way back to normalcy, and she gasped for a breath, the pins and needles floated down her extremities. Darla took her wobbly arm and reached up at the face, but the masked person grabbed her arm and hoisted her upward and began to drag her down toward the fire. She thudded down the steps, her whole body hitting the wooden boards in turn.
Then Darla’s body drifted over Ainsley’s book, and she tried to reach for it, but her hands wouldn’t obey her brain’s commands. Stopping, the figure noticed Darla’s failed attempt and bent down and picked up the Walt Whitman. The person examined the outside cover briefly, and then tossed the book on to their fire where the small flames licked greedily at the thin pages, black tendrils of smoke filtered upward as the pages singed.
“No,” Darla breathed, but it sounded like a wheeze. “No.”
Without reply, the figure took a free hand and leaned down; something cold and metal jabbed into her neck and she thrashed wildly against it.
The stun gun incapacitated her again.
CHAPTER TEN
Darla’s limbs were shaking, and her heart beat rapidly inside her chest. She tried to process her surroundings in quick bursts as the Hazmat-suited kidnappers edged around her vision in their bright yellow and protruding gas masks. On the
floor beside her, Ainsley curled up into a ball, unmoving, and behind them was Dean, his breathing ragged. The Taser-wielding people, one man and one woman from the looks of it, hovered above them, inspecting their victims with noiseless curiosity. Dean, Darla, and Ainsley were cornered, and an escape was out of the question.
The room was lit with candles, glowing and flickering against the wall, casting long shadows that crawled up to the ceiling. Upstairs a floorboard creaked; they were not alone.
“Who are you?” Darla asked. “What did we do to you?”
The two faces turned to each other in slow motion, their gas masks almost touching.
“We have no interest in your supplies,” Dean said. “We didn’t come to rob you. We are in a hurry...we are on a journey...this has nothing to do with you.”
The masks turned back to them. Like robots: turn, watch, turn again. The still quality of their voiceless command created an eerie discomfort. Like Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas future, they condemned them wordlessly.
“Let us go.” She had not held out hope that they would suddenly shrug and point to the door, but Darla couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Let us go get our stuff,” Ainsley muttered, still curled up into a ball. She stretched her legs and grimaced. “Please?” Her voice cracked and she put her hands together to plead. “My book.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Darla moaned.
“No,” came the swift reply. “No—”
“I doubt these guys care much about Whitman,” Darla said. “Or decency. Kindness.”
“No!” Ainsley continue to scream, her voice rattling in the back of her throat.
“Damn,” Dean whispered. He turned to Darla, “Who are we supposed to be afraid of?”
When Ainsley looked up, her face was streaked with tears, and her chest heaved as she began to get more worked up, fury flashing across her features. She stood in a quick blur of limbs, her hands in fists at her side, and she launched herself at the suits, landing soft blows into their chests and arms.
“You burned my book?” Ainsley cried. “You burned my book!” Her lips curled into a snarl. “Do you know what that book meant to me?”
The bigger person lifted a hand and drew up the stun gun, but Darla scrambled upward and grabbed the person’s wrists, diverting the attack. With his free hand, the man knocked Ainsley to the floor, and she hit her head on the carpet with a hollow thunk.
Still in a battle for the man’s stun gun, Darla felt her body seize again and fall to the floor, but this time the buzz was short-lived. She screamed in frustration and pounded an angry fist against the floor.
“Who are you?” Darla yelled. “We don’t care about you or your life here. You’ve caused more hurt to us than we have to you. We are peaceful people...”
“Is that so?” said a voice from beyond the shadows. From the floor, Darla couldn’t place where the sound was coming from. It was muffled: deep and breathy. “You attacked my children? And yet you say you mean us no harm?”
“Your children attacked us first,” Darla replied, scanning the room in an attempt to place the disembodied voice.
“You were armed.”
“Yeah, and with good reason apparently,” she continued. “My right to carry a gun does not mean I plan to shoot innocent people.”
“Ah,” the man replied from the shadows with a shade of impertinence. “You don’t intend to shoot people with your gun? Wasn’t that always the argument? Moot now, though, I think.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t for people. I said it wasn’t for you,” Darla replied. Her whole body ached. Ainsley had pushed herself against the wall, and drawn her knees up to her chest; she rested her chin and let her arms dangle. Her nose was bleeding, but she didn’t make a move to stop the slow roll of blood, and it dripped on to her pants, creating a polka-dot pattern against the denim.
Dean scooted himself forward and put his hands up in surrender. “We don’t care what you’re doing here. We don’t care, okay? We are on our way somewhere and time is of the essence.”
“We hear you,” the voice replied. “You’re not prisoners here. We have no ill will toward you, honest, but we’re not going to let you go until we have some answers. There aren’t many people left, you see. So it’s important to ascertain what kind of people you are. Where did you come from? Why are you alive? You wanted us to trust you, bring you into our home with open arms? And yet you’re sitting out there with guns. Where did you come from, and who do you work for? These are the things we must find out...are you aware of what the world looks like out there?”
“They’re cannibals,” Ainsley whispered from the corner. “They’re going to eat us.”
“We have no interest in eating you,” the man answered and he laughed. It was a shallow, swallowed laugh. “No, sweet girl,” Ainsley made a face at him, “until we know if you’re safe, we plan to stay very afraid of you.”
“Afraid of us?” Darla tried to peer forward, but she couldn’t see anything. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re alive because we’ve used precautions and we’ve stayed safe. Maybe you’re here to kill us. Maybe you just will kill us...there is so much we don’t know about the virus.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Darla couldn’t help but laugh. “You think we’re contagious? Is that the get-up?”
“Maybe you had poison gas with you,” the voice said. “We now know you don’t, so we’ll shed the protective layer, but what if you had? We don’t know who you are...who you work for...what you could do to us.”
“We didn’t strike first.” Darla scratched the top of her head. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes.
The man moved from the shadow to the light. He was in his late fifties with dark hair and male pattern baldness that left a halo of hair outlining his head and nothing more. His goatee was fully gray, and he wore a pair of thin wire-framed glasses. There was nothing scary or monstrous about his appearance.
“Wait, wait. You think we are part of the group responsible for the virus?” Dean asked.
“Why are you alive?” The man turned to Darla. His question wasn’t accusatory, only prodding. The suited attackers stayed quietly in front of them. Darla could smell their fear and exhaustion.
“Because I got lucky,” she said in a quiet voice. “Because I was in the right place at the right time.”
“And you?” He looked at Ainsley.
“Because I got unlucky,” she said. And she wiped her nose, the blood smearing across her cheek.
“And you...” he looked to Dean.
“By the grace of God,” Dean answered.
“I see,” the man answered. Then he added, “Well, I’m alive because I’ve been preparing for this day for a long time. And I’m cautious, protective, and resilient. I’m alive because I don’t extend a gracious welcome to everyone who camps out on my property, or says that they can be trusted blindly. I’m alive because this house is my sanctuary.” He paused. “Perhaps you want a tour?” When Darla didn’t answer, the man made a small hum. He turned to his kids and cleared his throat. “Shed the suits. Then tie them up and bring them along. We’ll show them the house, and then we’ll have dinner.”
Lou Hales, his twin son and daughter Lyle and Lindsey, and his wife Cricket led their prisoners throughout their barricaded home with swollen pride. Candles burned and flickered on the inside, but to anyone on the outside, the house would remain dark and vacant. Every window and door and crawlspace was outfitted with an alarm and a booby-trap. Every room had been turned into an apocalypse prepper’s dream: the house had water, food, clothes, weapons, backpacks equipped with battery-operated lights, an indoor garden, and a laundry room.
Before the virus was unleashed upon the unsuspecting world, Lou had anticipated a global collapse. His obsession alienated him from his colleagues and peers, and slowly began to grate on his neighbors as well. He had a bomb shelter in the backyard, a locked shed full of supplies, and a
library of books that covered home remedies, botany, and alternate power. It was all he could talk about, all he thought about. And soon those closest to him discounted him as crazy, openly mocking his hidden shipping containers filled with canned goods. Until everyone realized Lou had been right all along. By then, it was too late.
“Our plan was Vegas,” he said, his voice still muffled. “Hoover Dam can run for years without humans. Did you know that?”
Darla couldn’t muster genuine excitement.
“Who would imagine that Sin City would become a Mecca for travelers in a post-apocalyptic world? Of course, the stench. All those people dead in the casinos, it would be a prime breeding ground for disease. A cesspool right now is what I’m imagining. Of course, away from the Vegas Strip might be enticing, but I don’t know. Isolation is the key. And if you stay isolated, they won’t get you.” Lou talked fast and quick, eager to share his knowledge.
“Oh yeah?” Dean questioned, shuffling along. “Who wouldn’t get you?”
“I’ve called them the Sweepers. Don’t know who they are or where they are coming from, but they’ve been hitting cities, suburbs.”
“How do you know?” Darla asked. She slid through the hallway lined with framed pictures of her attackers unmasked. Lou and Cricket’s wedding day: he wore a powder blue tuxedo and the lace on her dress stopped just below her chin and fell shapelessly around her body. They grinned widely. Cricket’s bouquet was mostly baby’s breath with a few red roses. Darla hesitated for a moment before feeling a push against her back, the hand of Lyle prodding her forward.
“There was an AM radio channel some man was broadcasting on a couple of weeks ago,” Lou said. He stopped and turned back to the group, put his hand against the wall and leaned his weight against it. “Figured it was some East Coast locale from the sound of him. He was out and about a bit during the day and the night, then just reading his events out there into the ether like a diary.”
The Variables (Virulent Book 3) Page 13