Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1)

by R. R. Roberts

  She came aware slowly, the sunlight and pretty sounds of birds trilling and darting from branch to branch in the stately poplars overhead raising her from darkness. She was still in the Beast. Before her lay a huge tree—its trunk had to be four feet thick—down across the highway. Piled against the other side, a tangle of metal and rubber littered the curve of the highway.

  She released her seatbelt, shaky with gratitude to still be in one piece, then hurried to help. She was halfway over the tree when she realized it had been carefully limbed. This tree hadn’t fallen by accident; this tree had been placed here.

  Moving cautiously, she touched her foot down on the other side of the pavement and watched for signs of life. She could see now there were only fifteen, maybe twenty vehicles and not all of them had been part of the initial collision. The cars and trucks farther down the line looked as if they had rolled up to the site then the passengers had gotten out to investigate, just as she was doing. She shivered. She should get back in the Beast and leave this place.

  She crept forward, compelled to search for survivors, knowing already there were none. She heard no thoughts, though she stretched her sensors wide. She made her way down the centerline. Cars and trucks filled both lanes, the first nine or ten crushed together at unnatural angles with their contents spilling out in a colorful display - plastic bags, a bright array of blankets and clothes caught on a jagged tear of metal or fluttering from a birch branch nearby. She saw a green and yellow diaper bag, fat with baby supplies that squeezed at her heart.

  Where were the people?

  It couldn’t be, but there was a rocking chair, swaying on the center yellow line as if someone had just recently got up and left it still rocking in the breeze.

  A breeze that brought with it a smell… She jolted back.

  A huge, glossy black raven hopped across the highway, worrying at a vacuum-sealed foil pouch. Something lay across the asphalt, reaching out to her... As she stared, her brain suddenly allowed her to see what it had been refusing to acknowledge.

  “Oh God!!”

  Once she saw the body, she could not un-see it. And it wasn’t alone. There were bodies everywhere back here—bodies lay all around her, some across the pavement, most still inside their vehicles. Some were shrunken, sunbaked to brittle, the darkened skin of their faces stretched back into grotesque grins. Others were grossly bloated into caricatures of what they must have once been, their limbs splayed, their skin split, rotten flesh oozing, creeping, stinking … She stumbled backward, almost falling until she was safely in the bush, clinging to a tree trunk, her breathing rushing in and out of her lungs, her eyes glued to the carnage before her.

  There were so many! Men, women, children. She could see those who had not died of vehicle-inflicted injuries had died of gunshot wounds. It was as if the murderer had at first moved the bodies, tried to hide them, but after a while, the sheer numbers had forced him to leave them where they lay. She shuddered to think someone had so systematically murdered the survivors of this horrific accident. These people had traveled south, desperate to escape something, and that something had caught up with them and killed them all. It hadn’t all happened at once. These bodies told of a horrific timeline, where people were murdered as they arrived at this place, this trap. Some had to have died weeks ago, others maybe only days? She was no expert, but knew she was right.

  Someone on the other side of that tree had killed them. Someone who didn’t want them to come south and had stopped them here.

  Where were the police, the first responders? Did they even know there had been some sort of feud out here on the highway? She immediately tossed away that notion. This was way bigger than a feud. Road kill was treated better than these people had been treated. At least we pick up road kill.

  She remembered the silent farmhouses, the empty fields. Except for Mona’s chickens and the one mule, she hadn’t seen another living thing since she’d come out. Starting with a prickling of her scalp, dread shuddered through her, leaving her shaking with cold. Something horrible had occurred out in the world.

  She felt very small. “Where is everyone?” she whispered. Hearing the quiver in her own voice frightened her even more. She truly was alone.

  The dead continued to stare at her, silent. No, not staring, they had no eyes left with which to stare. Their eyes had been pecked clean from their skulls. And all were accompanied by a veritable sea of ravens, who, now that they were accustomed to her being here, had returned to their gruesome task. She was surrounded by dozens and dozens of sleek, glossy-black ravens, the scrambling sound their curved claws made skating across the hot pavement, grated up and down her spine as they pecked … and tore …

  Here before her were her missing tap-tap-tappers.

  Tuna heaved from Wren’s stomach in an arcing projectile.

  3

  RELIABLE SOURCE

  It was not courage that spurred her on - it was fear. Fear of what had happened, of not knowing what was to come. She needed to know, to prepare herself. Naturally, her first move had been to bolt over the fallen tree and throw herself into the Beast. Starting it up she’d jammed the accelerator to the floor and the Beast darted off the boulevard, landing awkwardly back on pavement. She raced south toward Drop Out Acres.

  This had been a trap, a trap set up by some murderous maniac. Probably more than one. No police had come and none were coming. She was on her own. Go Home. Go Home.

  And eat what? And live how? She pulled the Beast abruptly off the highway into the bush behind a huge stump and cut the motor. She had to get control of herself; running around like a frightened chicken was just stupid and she didn’t have the luxury of stupidity. Think, Wren. Think.

  She couldn’t just sit here, next to the murder scene. Plus, the sun was now glinting on the horizon, beginning to sink in a show of vivid pinks and purples. It would be dark soon, bringing with it cover and anonymity. Whoever had shot these people could reappear at any moment. She had to keep moving. But to where?

  She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a water bottle, rinsed her mouth and spat, then drank. It was almost twilight, and she was getting spooked. She stopped. No. That was the wrong way to look at this. Twilight wasn’t spooky; twilight was her best friend.

  She started up the Beast, traversed the fallen tree by climbing up and over the side ditch and back again beyond the pileup, then drove north again hugging the edge of the grassy boulevard, keeping parallel to the highway and safely tucked into the deepening darkness of the fringe of trees until she reached the industrial park at the edge of Rushton. This way she could slip in unnoticed, and learn what had happened while she had been dropping out in the woods painting trees. She would have enough darkness to shield her approach and enough light to see without using her headlights. Knowledge was power, and right now, she had none. She stripped back her mind shield and probed ahead for any cerebral activity. Hearing none, she was both devastated and relieved.

  No one to run to; no one to kill her.

  So far, all she could see were abandoned and burnt out car shells along the highway and grassy median and lots of drifting garbage. All that was missing was the overhead vultures and tumbling tumbleweed and she’d be driving through the set straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie. Only she knew this was no backlot movie set …

  Unlike further south, there were no bodies here, but it was clear something catastrophic had happened. She was down to trembling in spurts now, random little electric currents of fear shooting through her, driven by her need to know. She guided the silent Beast further into town past the big box stores, all of which looked to have been looted. Some overhead signs were beginning to blink on as scheduled, a glaring come-on-down invitation to the shadowy, gutted buildings.

  At the bottom of 100th Street she turned right and stopped, her skin goosed-bumped, her teeth beginning to chatter. She clenched her jaw to still the chattering and strained her eyes up the rising length of 100th Street, toward the center of town.
The brightly painted store fronts were illuminated by automatic street lights, but were empty of life. The businesses were either boarded up with haphazardly nailed planks or had been abandoned to looters. Broken glass, abandoned cars, odd pieces of furniture and household items and endless mountains of garbage and debris lay across the sidewalks and into the street or drifted along with the swiftly cooling wind. The hairs on the back of her neck rose at the unnatural quality of the stillness, as if everyone were hiding just out of sight, holding their breath, waiting for her to drive into their trap. Before she could stop herself, she was imagining creepy apocalyptic-like creatures marching haltingly toward her.

  Gripping the steering wheel, she tamped down her off-the-charts freak. This had to stop right now, or she’d be running in the other direction. Reality was bad enough, why was she dressing it up in more horror? There would be a logical explanation. There had to be.

  She started up the street slowly, scanning each doorway, each alleyway for movement or sign of life. Where had everyone gone? Rushton had a population of 37,000 people—she knew this; it was the very subject of the last article she’d written not six months ago. Where could 37,000 people go?

  They had to have been evacuated for some reason. It was the only explanation that made sense. People would have boarded up their businesses before leaving, followed by the usual opportunists who figured they'd steal some stuff before they left. Emergencies always seemed to bring out both the best and worst in people. She hoped it had been mostly the best. At least they hadn’t been killing one another here in town. She shook away the images from the highway pileup.

  Something had happened while she was gone, something dangerous enough to haul every citizen out to safety. Her mind wandered back through news articles printed while she worked at the Rushton News, stopping first at the dam controversy. There had been lots of complaining about the soundness of the newest dam on the Peace River—Site E—with the usual protests over it being built in the first place. They were the same protests as for Site C and then again for Site D. The dam had been built anyway; they needed the clean power. Was the dam’s structure compromised somehow? Had Green Terrorists followed through with their threats to blow it up? Were there explosives inside the new dam ready to send a wall of water slamming down the Peace at any moment?

  She pulled the tranny into the deep shadows between the visitor center and newly rebuilt museum, got out and stretched her mind into the twilight. Still nothing.

  Maybe the town had been downwind from a huge plume of poisonous H2S gas that had escaped a pipeline… No, H2S killed within seconds. There would have been no boarding up and no looting. There would have been running for your life, and not very far.

  This was unbelievable. None of these theories were close to good enough to explain the disappearance of thousands of people. They’d never evacuate Rushton for any reason she could think of, but obviously, they had. She needed a reliable source.

  Buttoning her coat against the chill, she pocketed a flashlight, a second bottle of water and pocket knife from the dash compartment, and began the ten block hike up to the news office. She remembered her charged but seldom-used cell phone, sitting on top of a stack of disks by the woodstove and shook her head at the stupidity of leaving it behind. A simple phone call would surely clear this up.

  Except she didn’t believe that for a New York minute. She shoved her hand into her pocket and gripped the knife. Drawing deeper into the city, she saw dumpsters stuffed to overflowing, which brooding ravens, cheeky magpies and furtive small animals had been scavenging through, judging by the tearing and scattering, for weeks.

  As if she’d called them out, two rats appeared, one behind the other, weaving between lumps of garbage. Whatever had happened here wasn’t recent; the rats were too comfortable out here in the open. Rushton had been a ghost town for some time. She fought the almost overwhelming urge to sprint back to the tranny for a crazy, high-speed dash, back to her haven in the forest.

  It was dark now, and the sense of urgency to get to a safe place was growing.

  “Come on Wren,” she muttered, intimidated by the yawning quiet around her. “Learn what you can, then decide what’s next.” She jumped at the sound of more scratching behind her and whirled, flashlight raised above her head.

  Not a rat. With her heart in her throat, she watched a ghostly plastic bag drag across the rough cement sidewalk. It came to a stop, waved in place for a moment then collapsed to the ground, empty. Her lungs emptied noisily along with it.

  She broke into a light jog and continued up 100 Street to the news office. She tried to keep a steady pace, but couldn’t hold back, sprinting faster and faster as she drew close, as if she were being chased up the street by some invisible malevolent being. They had guns; she had a pocketknife. “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight”, kept echoing in her head.

  She arrived at Rushton News breathless, more from fright than exertion, and tugged frantically at the door. It swung open freely, almost setting her on her backside. Recovering her balance, she fled inside, grateful for the familiar space and shelter from the eerie city. Automatic low-volt security lights flicked on, allowing enough light to find her way. At least there was still power. She hurried across the lobby to the front desk to check the phones. The fact they were dead was not surprising, but crushing, nevertheless.

  Ignoring the elevator, she took the stairs to the third floor where she knew they kept proofs of the dailies. The daily news would have an explanation for all this. Passing the first two floors, she saw they’d been trashed. Pop and snack machines were on their sides, empty, the glass fronts broken, furniture was up-ended, glass workstation partitions, computer terminals, electronic equipment, all were smashed, fury stamped on every destructive heap. Dark, hulking shadows cast unfamiliar shapes across the rooms. But—no bodies. This was a good thing.

  The third floor was similarly trashed, but, she found the archive room was only lightly abused, as if the perpetrators had run out of steam. The archive room was as it had always been, though it had no security lighting. The spring-loaded door shut behind her, leaving her in a dark windowless room. Flashlight on, she hurried to the phone. Despite no success downstairs, and knowing it was ridiculous to even try, she lifted it to her ear. Dead.

  She moved to recent digital files, hoping there would be power to the machine. When it hummed to life, she almost sobbed with relief. Thank God, no more silence. She barked a laugh at the thought. Wren Wood? Longing for noise? She turned on a lamp, and flicked off her flashlight, and began to search back through the dailies. “Please, please explain. Tell me someone’s coming back, that there is a plan…”

  Bold black print leapt off the first page and seized her heart. “Pandemic”.

  With shaking hands, she scrolled back, skimming story after story, words and phrases slamming into her like the flailing blows from a boxer. “Virus Grips Planet”. “Millions Dead”. “Patient Zero Found”.

  Here she stopped and zipped the digital file back to the start of April, and systematically scanned each day until Patient Zero appeared for the first time. Now she combed each issue for details learning what had happened out here in the real world while she was busy painting “Winter Birches on the Peace” at Drop Out Acres. Each headline and information-packed day seemed more shocking than the last.

  “Thousands of Scouts Return to Home Country, Infected”.

  Five thousand boys and their adult traveling companions had attended a three-day Scout Jamboree in Seattle. Then there were the six hundred and counting people who worked at the facilities hosting the event. That meant nearly eleven thousand people then went on to infect everyone they came into contact with while traveling home. The Boy Scout Virus - BSV - traveled by taxicab, on buses, in cars, planes, trains. It attached itself to servers at restaurants, who shared it with the cooks and other patrons, who shared it when pumping gas for their car or at the airport, with airline personnel, baggage handlers and other travelers. Hotel workers
picked up the BSV with a tip, and passed it along to their families at home, who likely took it with them to school to share with fellow students, or to work to share with fellow employees. Some shared at the bank or down at the mall or grocery store. Those who grew sick went into their doctor’s office and shared it with the other patients in the waiting room and with the nurse who settled them into the exam room and then with the doctor who helped them and the pharmacist who handed out useless medications. The newly infected doctor was likely run off her feet seeing dozens of patients, and passed the deadly gift along with the medical care she dispensed. The scope of the virus’s reach was literally worldwide within hours or at the most a couple of days.

  Wren was back to the Pandemic headline she’d first seen. It was as the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) had warned them for decades; the pandemic they all knew would happen one day had finally arrived. Here she found the gruesome details of how a person died of the new virus. It was swift and painful. No one had lived beyond eight days, many dying within six, depending on their age, health and access to health care.

  It started with a nudging tickle in the throat that refused to go away. The bad news was it gave the carrier three days of “a common cold” to travel to, and within, many communities, infecting many others. Within three days, the infected patient developed high fever and painfully swollen joints. By day four, lymph nodes at the neck swelled and reddened, then blackened, spreading to those under the arms. Day five saw the disease annex the entire body. Extreme fever with delusions followed on day six. This was when many people succumbed, their bodies unable to fight any longer. If they were one of the unlucky ones who did live past day six, day seven often brought violence and madness, just before the body shut down.