Wren dropped her head and closed her eyes. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. What about her mother? Was she dead in Vancouver, all alone in her sterile little condo, a cocktail still gripped in her hand? Had her father been struck by the disease all alone in his McMansion here in Rushton? She’d have to go to his house.
Were there people left in the larger cities? Had survivors been taken from Rushton to safety? Were there any survivors out there, maybe people like herself, who had somehow missed it?
Somebody fired those rifles out on the highway. Her imagined view of the killer wavered. Was it self-defense?
She pictured the silent farmhouses she’d passed coming into Rushton. Had the families inside all been dead, or had they watched her silently, fearfully as she drove by? This put a whole other spin on her trip into town for supplies.
She made herself return to the dailies. “Canadian Government Collapses”. “US. President Swift Declares Marshall Law”. Here she learned of rioting, killings in the streets, pharmacies being stormed by angry and frightened people. Those who didn’t die of the Boy Scout Flu died in the violence that followed. The first wave of loyal police officers who stayed on duty were murdered, prisons emptied. Policing ended and it was up to the military to maintain order. Mobs took to the streets, houses and businesses were looted and burned, grocery stores ransacked. The military efforts were short lived as their numbers were thinned with sickness and desertion. Within three weeks, it was down to every man and woman for themselves.
How had this happened without Wren knowing any of it? She’d gone from front-row seat inside every personal thought and experience in anyone’s head she cared to listen to, to missing the destruction of everyone around her. Everyone gone without a whisper?
Someone shot those people on the highway.
Counting back the timeline, she saw that around the time she was firing Jack Findlay for his disgusting thoughts, 10,000 boy scouts and their companions were returning home with a deadly gift for their families and communities; ten thousand people, traveling the world freely for three unknowing, unfettered days.
“Sick Must Stay Home”. Here were the stories of a death by virus that took a life in six to eight days, from first sneeze to final death rattle. Now doors were painted with black X’s if the Boy Scout Flu was there, later that same door would be painted with the number of dead inside. Very quickly, no one came to claim the bodies. They stacked up like cordwood. At first, they burned the houses. Later, there was no one to set the blaze.
“Virus from Outer Space”.
“What…?”
A woman related a story about her husband, long dead from the virus as having claimed to have found the virus. He’d worked at the controversial Seattle DRA on the Upload Team, jettisoning the last materials load of the day into space. Wren had never understood how this worked. Shouldn’t the planet be surrounded by millions of tons of drifting, weightless garbage by now? Patient Zero claimed once the load was gone he’d heard a strange noise. He opened the chute to investigate and found a small box. He opened the box and a gaseous fog burst out, which in his surprise, he inhaled immediately. Thinking it had been part of the materials load just jettisoned, he simply tossed the box and went on to attend the Jamboree with his son as planned, now nursing what he’d thought of as a sudden and annoying cough.
He was convinced that what became known as the BSV was in that fog. He believed the virus was a warning from another civilization in the universe to earth – “Stop pumping your garbage into our space”. While authorities discounted the woman’s story about his feverish deathbed confession, they did acknowledge never having encountered this virus before.
Wren couldn’t help a humorless giggle. Really? Outer Space? When we can grow all the deadly diseases we can handle right here on earth? Not likely. These were hallucinations.
Space aliens sending us a cease and desist message about the DRA garbage dumps? Also crazy. Protesting the Zhang Corporation’s DRA project seemed a lifetime ago to her now. Nothing was changed.
From the “Nation Mourns President” issue she learned that like Ottawa, London, Paris, Hong Kong … the list of major cities was endless—Washington was a ghost town, with the Vice President manning the helm—what was left of it—from some unknown location. Many nations around the globe were experiencing the same fate of a gutted governing body. With the disease having so many carriers able to travel so widely all at once, the entire globe participated through each stage, every country decimated.
“Riots in Streets” and “Death Rate 98.8 Percent” were a one-two punch to the middle of her chest. She sagged, forgetting to breathe. 98.8 percent!! What about Sam? Was she alive? Or had she died all alone in her apartment, sick and scared? Faces from Wren’s past tumbled in like an avalanche, faces she’d so carelessly left behind, wanting “to be alone”. She’d only thought of herself when she’d disappeared into the woods. She blinked back the first sting of tears at imagining them all suddenly gone from her life, realizing while she embraced her new solitude in the forest, she always counted on seeing them again—when she got around to it … Like picking up a book she’d laid down and was at last ready to finish reading. How was that being a friend?
She looked down at her hands, suddenly strangely designed objects at the ends of her arms. Her fingers were trembling. How many things had she touched since she’d returned to Rushton? Was she infected already? Her throat tickled alarmingly.
How was it transmitted? Did the virus remain virulent on objects, waiting to be picked up by the next passerby? Was she the next passerby? She coughed, then coughed again, but from nerves only—she was sure of it.
Scrubbing her palms along the legs of her denims, she raised her eyes back to the screen reluctantly, afraid of what she would read next. The issues were only four pages long now, with news of the “Boy Scout Virus” the only subject. These issues were written exclusively by Bill Higgins, a maverick with a wicked sweet tooth, always funny and supportive when she had interned here. Had Bill put these last issues together alone? Where were slutty Greta, jokester Josh, the terminally intense Vicky, and the lazy lout, Eric, God’s gift to women, or so he thought? She felt terrible listing their categories along with their names. Yes, she’d had opinions about each one of them, but she’d loved them anyway. Hearing their inner dialogue had shown her they were good people, despite their outer trappings. No one deserves what happened to her former colleagues, this motley crew who’d welcomed her into their midst and managed to put out a daily edition with a minuscule budget and practically no support from the owner, Richard Hume.
She looked at Bill’s name on the byline once again. Had he stopped because the illness overtook him? Or because everyone had been evacuated from Rushton? Or was it because there was no one left alive to read it? She knew where Bill lived, or…where Bill used to live. He and his wife Suzanne had hosted a barbecue for the news staff last summer. He and Suzanne had been an awesome couple. Then Suzanne had succumbed to cancer after a long, brave battle in the new year. Bill had changed then …
Guilt at not being here for the few friends she had allowed herself seized her now. She had to find out what happened to them. Was she brave enough to go to Sam’s apartment, Bill’s house, her father’s McMansion in the hills, to see if they were … Swallowing against emotions that hurried forward, she made herself continue with the headlines.
“Some Immune!!” Her heart leapt with hope that her friends, her mother, and even her father, could still be alive. Some were immune to BSV? Had these people been the lucky evacuees? Was there a safe haven?
Was that what the slaughter out on the highway had been all about? Immune people protecting themselves from the infected?
“CDC Works Frantically to Develop Serum”. She knew the CDC would be working with the immune subjects to pinpoint what was different about them, hoping that difference would be a jumping off point for a vaccine for everyone else. Civil Liberties would have been tossed right out the window. It would
be a frantic search, one in which the test subjects were involved strictly on a ‘drafted’ basis. Guinea pigs for the rest of us.
She flipped through more issues, but only skimmed the articles now. Her brain was on over-load; she simply couldn’t absorb any more information. “Virus Mutates”. “Food Shortages Spawn Riots”. “5 Day President Rawlins Dies”. “Just-In-Time Supply Chain Fails”. “Hoarders Shot!” “Worldwide Anarchy”. Then the last issue – “Reports of Cannibalism”. Wren moaned, pushed away from the desk and closed her eyes.
Were the dead on the highway victims of some crazy, lawless group with guns, now that there were no laws, no police, no checks and balances anymore?
Screw Denny!
She jerked upright.
He promises me the leg, then, as soon as I’m not lookin’, he eats it. This is crap!
Someone was here? There were people still alive in Rushton!
She rose from the chair and took a tentative step toward the door, then stopped. What if she was lucky enough not to come into contact with the virus yet? What if Denny and whoever he was complaining about carried the virus? But no, it had mutated, hadn’t it? Her warring thoughts had her pinned to the floor, unable to call out to Denny. Was it better he didn’t know she was only a few steps away from him? Would he come find her anyway? Would he find her tranny and know she was here?
No. She was wrong. This wasn’t a voice. These were thoughts.
He’s awake. Shoulda’ offed him when I had the chance. This was a second person.
She stood rigid, blinking rapidly at Denny’s friend's—no, that was wrong, these two were not friends - Denny’s murderous companion’s plan. This is what the survivors were doing to one another? They’d somehow survived, were one of the lucky 1.2 percent of the population who was immune, and they were killing one another? A warning to stay silent prickled her skin. Oh yes, these were thoughts. The old familiar tap-tap-tap was back and these two men definitely were not friendly toward one another. They were what she would judge to be companions of convenience. Safety in numbers—for now—until someone or something better came along.
In her mind’s eye—she’d call them Denny One and Denny Two—through Denny One’s eyes she saw the leg they were fighting over. Plump and juicy was their assessment, worth the fight. A woman’s leg. A young woman, the muscle not too tough or chewy, like that last guy they’d found—.
She slammed up her shield with a violent shudder. They were surviving on … Revulsion rocked her in place and she swayed, fighting sudden light-headedness. What had she returned to? Then the terrifying question—were they close by?
Oh, yes, they were. She vaulted across the room, slipping on fallen papers, landed awkwardly against the door and locked it, knowing there was no escape.
4
PRISONER
Nicola Zamora stumbled, her bare feet tangled in the chains that dragged along the ground, tethering her to three of the four women Topher Cowell and his gang had captured. Catherine, a stout brunette of indeterminate years reached out from behind in time to keep Nicola from bringing the row of women to their knees, grabbing her by the load she had strapped across her back. This was easy for Catherine, who walked free, and who was not favored with as many visits as Nicola, Annie and Dora-lee were subjected to and was therefore stronger.
At the lead today, Dora-lee was obviously struggling. Yesterday had been brutal. The Cowell “family” had been confronted by two men wanting possession of their women. A scrubby, bloody battle had ensued, with the one named Matt being clubbed to death by one of the challengers before Topher and his followers successfully killed the pair. Poor Dora-lee had taken the punishment of Quinton’s lusty night time celebration and looked to be steps away from sinking under her load onto the ground in surrender. Nicola knew Quinton to be a violent man having been selected as his bedmate herself.
Quinton’s attention was the one each woman most dreaded.
Since Nicola had been captured, three of the original seven women had taken their own lives in order to escape their fate at the hands of the Cowell family. Nicola had no such luxury. When Topher had discovered her hiding in the Swan Lake cottage six weeks ago, he’d also captured her eight-year-old brother David. Now he kept the boy by his side along with Catherine’s son, Malcolm, knowing that neither Nicola or Catherine would ever leave them. Poor Annie was now pregnant - by whom no one could guess, though each of their captors in turn had claimed the deed as his own.
Ahead, Topher raised his walking stick, a sign for everyone to stop. He was so impressed with his damned stick, waving it around as if it were a scepter and he was king of the world. He disappeared into the bush, then reappeared, with twigs and bits of lichen tugging at his scruffy reddish beard and tangle of hair. “We stop here for the night.” With a wave of his stick, he guided them into the bush to a large clearing below a massive cedar tree growing at the edge of a high bluff above the Pine River.
Jonah knelt, unlocked the chains and directed Annie and Dora-lee to build the shelters, then stood up and stared meaningfully at Nicola, his eyes startlingly white in contrast to the sweaty grime on his face. “Bedding.” Then he laughed, grabbing his crotch. “You and me tonight, woman.”
Woman? The guy was an idiot. Nicola stifled a shudder of revulsion of what was to come, tempered with relief. In what universe did a pimply-faced seventeen-year-old high school dropout keep a full-ride scholarship twenty-one-year old university student as a sex slave? Railing against the injustice of it, she let that go. The truth was, a night with Jonah was a blessedly brief encounter, quickly initiated and just as quickly over. She’d welcome anyone to avoid Quinton. Jonah was the easiest of the lot.
Topher jerked his head at Annie, claiming her for the night. Nicola was surprised to see a flash of pleasure on Annie’s sharp-chinned face. When had Annie become attached to Topher? What was this, Love Amongst the Savages?
Nicola turned away and dropped her pack to the ground with a groan of relief. This left Dora-lee to Quinton once again. Dora-lee whimpered as she stumbled after Annie to build the tents. Nicola’s heart broke for her, helpless to change her fate, then hurried further into the wooded area, looking for fallen evergreen boughs to make up the bases for beds before Topher took exception to her speed and used his beloved stick on her. If it weren’t for David, she would just keep on walking.
She was not allowed a knife, so had to either find the boughs already loose on the ground, or close-up on a tree trunk and small enough for her to snap and twist off. It seemed that Topher had chosen well, the boughs were plentiful here. She hauled armloads into camp quickly, arranging them inside each tent as it was erected by Dora-lee and Annie.
On her third return from the forest, she saw Topher and the two boys, looking filthy and exhausted, sitting before a bright fire. The poor boys were never given the chance to clean themselves; there were no clean clothes, no loving touch. She fought against the overwhelming wave of hopelessness that crashed over her, here, mere steps from her brother and unable to touch him, comfort him. At least Catherine could be near her boy as she fed chunks of the elk meat she’d been packing on her back into the cook pot.
Matt—the now dead Matt—had killed the elk four days ago and they had been eating well ever since. Nicola knew they were lucky Topher didn’t believe in eating the meat of humans. When she escaped—and make no mistake, she would one day escape, with her brother—at least they would not be saddled with the knowledge they had survived by eating another human being.
As she passed the fire, she sought to catch David’s attention. When he looked up at her, she sent him a smile, a look of hope she prayed he would take as her message that she loved him, and was with him in spirit. Today, David’s expression did not change, there was not even a flicker of recognition in his dark eyes.
Cold wrapped around her heart and squeezed. When she saw their chance to escape, would it be too late for her brother? She thought of the broken blade she had strapped under her right arm, secre
ted there after yesterday’s battle. She’d seen it on the ground, fallen from one of the challenger’s hands and snatched it up. When did she dare bring it out and use it? With Matt gone, that meant there were only three men left to kill. Jonah, Topher and Quinton. Could she kill three men in cold blood? Looking at David’s lost face in the flickering firelight before returning to the now darkened forest, she knew she could.
Tonight’s full moon afforded her enough light she was able to quickly assemble another pile of soft needled boughs, this one her last. She bent to gather them together, sad to realize the once welcome scent of fresh pine needles was forever ruined.
Before she could rise, she was knocked to her knees onto the boughs, a heavy weight upon her. Not satisfied to wait, Quinton had found her. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back while grunting and fumbling with her skirt, positioning himself, then stopped and said no more.
His grip on her hair was gone. He slid to the side, and onto the soft needled ground with a thud. She saw his eyes were open, staring. There was a dagger in the middle of his back. She clawed across the uneven forest floor, scrambling away. Twisting around, she looked up at a tall, broad-shouldered man, dressed in strange, body-fitted clothes. He carried a huge pack on his back. His head was bald and shone in the moonlight, and had strange markings on it. He looked down at her, then silently offered her his hand. She shrank away; knowing this was merely a change of captors. “My name is Coru,” he said, his voice low. “I am here to help you.”
Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1) Page 4