“Well, you still need to eat. When was the last time you ate?”
“Dunno,” muttered Brian.
“Come on, you’ll feel better.”
Just then, the sound of a siren could be heard. And not that far away.
“Shit,” said Matt, stopping dead in his tracks, looking around.
A look of terror came over Brian’s face.
Judy looked at Matt, as if looking to him for an answer.
The only problem? He didn’t know what to do.
“Maybe it’ll just go by again.” he said, but for some reason he knew deep in his gut that it wasn’t true. The fact that they were hearing the siren again meant something. It meant that the vehicle was staying in the area. Maybe looking for something. Or someone.
And the chances that it was really law enforcement?
Well, it didn’t seem that likely.
12
Cody
Cody was running down a side street, headed away from the dead bodies that were on the tourist street with the galleries.
He’d gotten closer to those bodies. Close enough to see the blood, to see their horrible faces. Close enough to get a sense of how many dead there were.
There were a lot.
Apparently Cody had been right to run to the woods. Apparently more people had died than he’d even thought possible.
There were bodies all over the place. Bodies in cars. Bodies in trucks. Bodies slumped against second-story windows.
Cody sprinted, naked, barefoot, through the streets. The pavement was hard on his feet. Not that it mattered.
He was acutely aware that he was just inches away from death. If he so much as stepped on one of the infected corpses, he was as good as dead.
Or was he?
Maybe there was some way to decontaminate. Maybe there was some way to be contaminated but not get infected.
Maybe.
He didn’t want to take his chances. Not if he could avoid it.
Cody’s mind was as tired as his body, and more confused.
There was no way for him to get home to his parents without going through Santa Fe. Not unless he wanted his journey to take weeks and weeks, hitting rough terrain that he wasn’t accustomed to.
He might be able to avoid going through the entire city proper. But there was no way to avoid going through part of it.
Fortunately, Santa Fe wasn’t anything like Albuquerque in terms of population or density. There were many parts of the city that didn’t feel like a city at all. In fact, many might argue that no part of the city felt like a city.
As Cody made his way down the streets, taking turns here and there, judging the directions by gut, instinct and the sun, he passed more and more people. He was heading into a dense, more populated part of the city, right where the tourists usually stopped first, before hitting up the art galleries. There were old churches, an old city square and an artisanal market. All big tourist attractions. Cody was almost there. Probably just a few blocks away.
If he got to the central square and made it through, he knew a way that would allow him to cut through plenty of the city. Maybe he’d be able to make it through alive. Maybe he’d be able to make it to Route 14 and get to his parents’ property.
Maybe.
There were too many maybes.
But what choice did he have?
Everything seemed to be in chaos. Cars had jumped curbs, crashing into buildings. Drivers lay dead at the wheels. Passengers convulsed and vomited blood in the passenger seats. The engines of the cars still ran and the radios blared loud static.
TVs in buildings were tuned to dead static, nothing playing.
People staggered through the streets, blood streaming down from their ears, mouths, and noses. Blood on their clothes. Blood on their hands.
Some of the people who staggered had weapons. All sorts of weapons. Guns. Knives, both folders and kitchen knives. Bicycle chains. Tire irons. Rocks. Large sticks. Metal poles. Curtain rods.
Many of the weapons had blood on them. Evidence of their use.
No one gave Cody a second glance, despite the fact that he was naked, sprinting through the streets, dodging through the crowds, trying to stay as far away from everyone as he could.
It seemed that some of the people were infected and some were not. Some bled and some didn’t. Cody didn’t bother trying to sort them all out.
An SUV was parked in the middle of the road. The doors were all mysteriously removed on one side. Cody was running around the SUV, trying to give it as wide a berth as he could.
But at the last moment, someone who’d been staggering along suddenly seemed to wake up. He was a big man, dragging a large metal pole along, making a horrible scraping noise on the pavement. His eyes locked onto the naked Cody and he shouted something completely unintelligible. Without much effort at all, the man suddenly jerked the heavy metal pole into the air, swinging it right toward Cody.
Like some sort of track athlete, Cody kept on running, dodging the pole, veering closer to the SUV.
He was running right toward the vehicle, running right toward the doors that were inexplicably removed.
Inside, huddled together, was a family. A multi-generational family, apparently. A grandfather, a dad, a mom, and two toddler-aged kids.
The grandfather was closest to the removed doors, then the dad. He held a gun, which he menacingly pointed at Cody. He had a round face and huge bushy eyebrows that made his face appear angular, full of anger, full of intensity.
Cody could do nothing except pray that he didn’t need to be shot. He tried to communicate silently, with only his facial expression at his disposal, that he wasn’t anything of a threat to the family. His arms were pumping at his sides. There was no time to use them. No time to speak. And he was too out of breath anyway.
They were tense seconds. The longest seconds that Cody had ever experienced. The older man’s intense eyes locked onto his.
Time seemed to slow down. Cody heard nothing over the pounding of his own bare feet on the pavement (the pain not apparent now, but sure to show up later, if he survived), and his heavy breathing.
The older man’s hands were shaking.
Would he shoot?
Cody had no choice but to run right at the man. It’d seem from the older man’s perspective that Cody was charging him, intent perhaps on diving right into the van.
Cody prayed silently that he wouldn’t die.
That was all he could do.
Then, in a flash, time seemed to speed up again as Cody veered off around the SUV.
The huge metal pole missed Cody by at least a foot, smashing instead into the vehicle.
Everything seemed to happen fast. Too fast.
Cody kept running. Kept pumping his arms. His bare feet kept slamming into the pavement.
The pole made a tremendous sound as it smashed into the SUV.
The next thing Cody heard was a gunshot. Loud.
His ears were ringing. He turned his head back, just enough to catch a glimpse of the aftermath of the shot. The big man with the metal pole had been struck in the chest by a bullet. There was blood all over him and a stunned expression on his face, as his body began to collapse to the ground.
The older man looked stunned as well. He held the gun in his hand as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done, as if he couldn’t believe what the metal instrument that his hands held was capable of.
Cody didn’t stop. He just kept running.
There was nothing he could do for that family. Nothing at all.
And there was nothing he could do for anyone, really.
All he could do was try to stay alive. Maybe he could help his parents. If he made it home.
What he’d just witnessed was just the beginning of the chaos.
He knew it’d only get worse.
And what was more, the really terrifying fact was that he might already be dead. Who knew if he’d already caught a whiff of the virus, just from going near that family, or from
going near that man, or the countless others that he’d had to dodge as he ran through the streets.
Come nightfall, Cody might find that he wasn’t feeling well. He might find himself exhibiting symptoms of the virus. And after that? It was only a matter of time before he was dying rapidly.
What would he do in that situation?
There was nothing to do. Maybe if he had the guts, he’d manage to off himself. Not that there was anything dignified about suicide. But it was an option. A coward’s or hero’s option, depending on the circumstances. Given the context of the virus, suicide might be the honorable choice, if it meant that he didn’t infect someone else.
If he could save one innocent person, and if he were going to die anyway, then how could it be considered a sin, something wrong? Sure, there were religious people who would beg to differ and they were certainly entitled to their opinions. But Cody hadn’t been brought up in a religious way and didn’t know anything about any of that.
But would it really come down to that? Would it really make a difference? Surely if someone was going to get infected, then they were going to get infected. It seemed as if nothing Cody would or could do about it would make any difference at all.
These horrible thoughts were swirling through his head as he continued to run, twisting his way through the crowds, wondering when another gun would be shoved in his face. Or when he’d get too close to someone and unknowingly contract the virus.
The crowds were getting thicker as Cody neared the center square that housed most of the tourism offerings of Santa Fe.
It was the worst place to be. But he didn’t know another way back.
The buildings here were real adobe and very old. Cody knew that Santa Fe was the longest continuously inhabited city in North America. It predated countless other cities and towns that were considered old. Many of the buildings were hundreds of years old. Their adobe construction, which allowed for heat retention when necessary and coolness when required, enabled them to survive the centuries relatively unscathed.
Up ahead there was a church spire. An ancient church. Cody had been there before on a school field trip. People visited from all over, because the church was purported to be the site of an ancient miracle. Back in the day, the church had been the home of nuns and, not having constructed the church themselves, for one reason or another they found themselves without a staircase leading up to the second story. So the nuns, as the story went, prayed for a staircase. Several days later, a man arrived named Joseph, who built the staircase by hand with just simple tools and common sense. The staircase really was something to behold, a perfectly constructed spiral that seemed as if it couldn’t possibly stand up on its own, unsupported by wires or other devices of support.
Cody kept running. Right up until the point when he reached the center square, where normally there were many people seated on the sidewalk, selling their handmade wares to the tourists and locals alike.
Cody stopped dead in his tracks.
He stood there, gazing out at the square.
It was incredible. Breathtaking, in the most horrible way possible.
Cody couldn’t believe his eyes. He was stunned. Stunned into standing there, swaying back and forth. Buck naked, of course, eyes widening at the devastation and horror of the scene before him.
The sellers of wares were all gone. Vanished.
They’d been replaced by bodies. Bodies soaked in blood. Someone, or some group of people, had been stacking bodies against the wall where the sellers had sat in the past.
The bodies didn’t look human. They looked more like rag dolls, like props for some movie. It looked almost fake, as if someone had dumped gallons of pretend movie blood on the corpses.
It probably looked fake because Cody simply couldn’t process what was happening. It was his mind’s way of coping with the tension, with the intense stress of realizing that quite soon he could be joining the bodies himself.
Cody was exhausted. His mind was barely taking it all in. He was just staring at the huge, elongated pile of bodies.
“Hey! You!”
Shit. Someone was calling to him. Pointing to him.
“Yeah, you. The naked guy! What the hell are you doing?
Cody jerked his head around, suddenly seeing the man who was addressing him.
The scene was bizarre. Impossibly bizarre. Even stranger than what he’d seen already.
Instead of chaos in the main square, there was a group of men and women sitting in a circle. In the center of the circle, there was a man with his arms spread and his head raised to the sky. He wore long white robes. His head was shaved and he sported a large, bushy red beard.
What in the world had Cody stumbled on? And why hadn’t the chaos of the nearby streets penetrated this central area of Santa Fe?
Before Cody could even begin to make sense of the scene around him, he heard the sound of feet slamming the pavement.
Someone was rushing him.
He turned.
But he was too late.
He saw the woman right before she slammed into him, tackling him to the ground.
Cody fell hard, his head smashing into the pavement.
He heard a sound like a horse whip, and everything went black.
13
Rory
If Rory was anything, he was an intellectual.
He had a tendency to overthink things. To the point of exhaustion, mental and physical.
Rory had had his doubts about McGregor for a while now. He knew well and good that McGregor wasn’t taking his medication. But what could he do about it? Given the state of collapse of the nation, there was no one to call, no one to report the incident to.
McGregor was Rory’s superior. That meant he outranked him and technically, Rory had to follow all his orders.
Now, if there was good reason to question McGregor’s sanity or ability, then normally, there were channels that Rory could make appeals through. Given the sensitivity of their work, such matters were taken very seriously, and likely within a few days McGregor would be called in for questioning and analysis. If those in charge deemed McGregor unfit, then he’d be given the treatment he needed, or summarily dismissed.
But now?
Maybe the superiors were out there. Maybe the people higher up in the chain of command were still alive, not infected by the virus, and not dead from physical violence. But there was no guarantee. And Rory had no way to contact them.
Even the emergency means of communication had failed them.
Carrier pigeons would have been more reliable than what was left to them, which were really just dead phone lines and computers that turned on but couldn’t access the internet.
Rory silently cursed the intense reliance on normal commercial technology.
There had been a time when the government facilities used their own protocols, their own networks and their own computers, specifically made for their own use. But with the proliferation of the internet and computers in general, the government had essentially gotten lazy. Now they used the same systems and devices that civilians used, with only some exceptions.
Hell, Rory had even seen that on the space missions, astronauts used laptop computers that were readily available to the general public. Mainly Lenovo Thinkpads, made in China.
In Rory’s opinion, if the government had kept up their own ‘internet’ networks, maybe they’d still be running. If the proper precautions had been taken, of course.
McGregor had gone mad.
But Rory had hoped he hadn’t gone truly mad. Truly crazy.
He’d held out hope that McGregor had basically just turned into an asshole and nothing more.
Not someone who would actually attack his co-worker.
But Rory had turned out to be wrong. The hope had turned out to be wrong, because McGregor was there now, on top of Lily with his hands around her neck.
She was getting a bluish hue to her face.
Rory cursed as he ran down the stairs, as fast as hi
s suit would allow.
Now, Rory was a skinny guy. Not built in the least bit. More of a glasses-wearing nerd than a physical military sort of guy.
McGregor was big. And muscular. Built like he’d been in the marines or something and hit the weights pretty hard, although for some reason, he’d never been forthcoming with his co-workers about his actual background.
“Hey!” shouted Rory, the words not coming out as loud as he would have liked.
He shouted because he knew he couldn’t get down the stairs fast enough. This damn suit hindered his movements too much and it took a huge amount of strength just to move in it.
By the time he got down the stairs, Lily would already be dead. He needed to distract his boss, who’d apparently gone violently insane.
“Huh?” shouted McGregor, weirdly spinning his head, apparently relaxing his grip somewhat on Lily, because she suddenly gained the ability to communicate vocally.
“Get...off...” Lily struggled to say, the words coming out bizarrely from her respirator, with a strangled quality to them.
“You!” shouted McGregor, standing up suddenly. “What’s your problem? You little pissant piece of garbage. What are you doing?”
“You’re killing her,” said Rory, each step down the stairs a huge muscular struggle. Maybe it was because he’d been spending too much time in the suit, which his muscles weren’t in any way accustomed to.
He already felt exhausted. Not a good way to go into a fight. Especially not against someone bigger and more muscular than he was.
But Rory knew in his bones that it was going to be a fight. There was no other way.
“You’re questioning my authority?” shouted McGregor, striding toward Rory, who had almost reached the bottom of the staircase.
“Yeah,” said Rory. “I am, you asshole. I’ve had enough of your shit. You can’t go attacking people just because they’re your subordinates. You were a piece of garbage before, but now without the meds, I guess you’ve just totally lost it.”
Rory, unconsciously, had the idea that if he made McGregor angry enough by insulting him, it would give Rory some kind of tactical advantage. Sure, anger sometimes meant power. But it also meant being sloppy. It also meant carelessness.
Last Pandemic (Book 3): Escape The Chaos Page 9