by Jim LaVigne
At present, there is order only in the better-armed and organized enclaves, stray gangs and violent psychotics roam at will, and the landscape, urban and rural, teems with both man-made and natural hazards. Anyone still alive faces a most uncertain future, and while a hopeful few harbor dreams of a better tomorrow, many believe that the human race, like a guttering candle, is on the brink of extinction.
Chapter One
Krillo-dogs are super neat!
Tastes just like some kind of meat!
Krillo-dogs, yeah Krillo-dogs!
The dog all kids just love to eat!
—jingle in ads for Titan Agrofoods product, circa 2052
Teresa first thought about leaving the Bloodclaws, the only family she’d ever known, when she was nearly gang-raped by three of her closest childhood friends. Up until then, things had been alright, but if good old Clanky hadn’t stepped in to help her fight when the three others tried to force themselves on her, they might have been very different. As it was, it had started her thinking.
At the moment, she sat atop a ruined, partially burned school bus in the midst of the Bloodclaw compound and stared out at the sunset. Around her, some forty individuals ranging in years from five to fifty, her clan mates, went about their lives. Some worked on vehicles, a handful were cooking a dog over a fire, a couple of groups simply sat and talked with friends. Some drank their stupidwater and started fights, and, over to one side, a few gun-toters were engaged in some noisy target practice. Later on, there’d probably be a pit fight. All in all, a pretty average, boring evening. Even the prospect of a new episode from Big Mike, their clan storyteller, didn’t hold much interest; his stories were always about Jesus and his crew and they were starting to all seem kind of the same.
Lazily, she scanned the compound and spotted their leader, Sharp, off to one side, having a can of drink. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth compressed into a down-turned line. Sharp.
The main problem, Teresa knew, was that she was beautiful. This wasn’t a conceited opinion of herself, it was simple fact; the way the boys looked at her only confirmed it. Whatever it was, whatever combination of facial and bodily features in whatever combination it was that attracted men, she had it. In a big way. At first, when her boobs had sprouted and her hips had begun to fill out, she’d taken great pains to conceal herself, but her face was not so easy to camouflage and her looks had soon become an issue. That had been a rough time.
But later, when she’d learned how to protect herself (mainly the hard way, through hard trial and painful error), she’d come to understand that her appearance was not only not a liability, it could be used to get things from men that most women only dreamed about. Food, burners, ammo, blankets, smoke, you name it. And if she usually enjoyed the sex, that was just a bonus.
Not always, though, and sometimes it bothered her that she did things like trading sex for material goods, but then she would reflect that she was actually lucky to have the opportunity; most women in the Bloodclaws didn’t have her physique. She should be glad she had something with which to trade.
“Hey, T!” came a voice from the ground and she looked down to see Hairy Steve looking up. She nodded to him.
“What up?” she asked disinterestedly.
“Y’all gleep Gene lately?” asked Steve, scratching himself.
“Which?” said Teresa. “Big Gene or Obscene Gene?”
“Big.”
“Over there,” waved Teresa, “yappin’ with Sharp.”
“Oh, hey, yeah,” said Steve, waving. “Thanks, T. Later.”
“Later.”
She watched as Hairy Steve ambled away. Eyeing Sharp across the compound, his big mohawk unmistakable, she frowned and shook her head as she realized that, again, it was her body that was in question. Sharp didn’t want her for her, so to speak, not even for her not inconsiderable fighting and banging skills. No, he wanted her body, her tits and ass and face. If he had been interested in her in some way more personal than as a status symbol, she might even have gone for the guy. But when all he wanted was sex and to have her, as in own her, well, that was where she rebelled, and as vociferously as she’d resisted her would-be rapists.
It was most definitely not something she took lightly. These people were the only family she’d ever known. She had some very few, very vague recollections of her mother, fading snapshots in her mind of a thin, distraught woman with black hair and a thin, worried face, but other than that, nothing remained of her biological family; even her last name had been lost in the Fall. But now, to stay with her clan would mean one of three things: she could submit to Sharp, become his woman and do what he said for the rest of her life, she could fight him and, if she wasn’t killed, take over the clan, or she could just plain leave, slink off in the night and try to find a new life somewhere else. To tell the truth, the second option, a fight to the death, seemed more attractive than the other two, but even that wasn’t all that appealing, since she had absolutely no desire to be in charge. Which, since she wasn’t about to submit, left her back at the idea of leaving. After all, she had her own place out in the wasteland that no one knew about. She could go there for starters and then see how it went. Yeah, maybe.
It was strange, too, that even the exciting aspects of being a Bloodclaw—what they called banging—were starting to become less than thrilling. Oh, she still loved the exhilaration of the chase, the speed and the danger of running some poor sucker into the ditch or a wall, but the end result, the suffering of those who they caught, usually just sorry chumps who happened to be on the road, well, that wasn’t so fun. Lately, the pain in their faces and the way they begged for their lives was starting to get to her. She didn’t know why, exactly, but somehow the whole idea of preying on anybody who happened along, the very basis of Bloodclaw philosophy, was starting to look sort of childish and unproductive and mean. Another reason to leave.
She was still turning it over in her mind when someone started to ring the big metal triangle that served as their alarm bell. Something was up! The triangle was only used when the presence of the whole fighting arm of the clan, those old and young enough to fight, was required. And that meant her. Putting her thoughts on hold for now, she climbed down from the bus and, the old excitement bubbling up in her system, hoping for a good road chase or gunfight, went to see what was happening.
Chapter Two
Tonight on the Dick van Fusco Show, Dick’s guests will be: Actor Milton Ferretly, fresh from his latest wacky brain surgery, singer/songwriter Suzie Granola plugs her new disc, plus comedian Dinkie Drainpipe, combat ball star Deadline Jonson, and the ultra-punk sounds of hot new band Pox Populi! You’ll hate yourself if you miss this one! Forever!
—ad for popular TV talk show, UZS network, 2055
Dr. Justin Kaes of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sighed, kicked an empty food can across the dusty road, and wished, for maybe the fiftieth time, that he’d never volunteered for this mission. It was hopeless, for one thing, an utter fool’s errand, and besides, he was hardly the adventurous type; out of shape and soft from easy living and long hours of sedentary lab work, he simply wasn’t fit for all of this chasing around and danger. And now Poole and Gonzalez were gone, off on another fool’s errand, and he was in charge.
All he was supposed to do was to stay put, make sure nothing happened to their vehicles or the Old Man, and wait, but he still felt very nervous. After all, here they were, stuck out in the middle of the wasteland once known as Oklahoma, totally lost, with no fuel and little food or water, surrounded by who knew how many potentially violent survies, and charged with keeping safe the meanest, crankiest and oldest man that he or any of the others had ever met. Yes, he thought, and sighed again, I should have just stayed in New Atlanta.
Suddenly the noise of yelling from the big MedCenter truck cut through the hiss of the wind, and Justin swore under his breath. Another bust-up with the Old Man. For a moment he considered ignoring the noise and letting Cass and
the others deal with it, but then he reminded himself that he was in charge and shuffled over to the truck.
Within the converted RV, it was much cooler and more humid, but nothing like what it should be; running on backup power would do that. Back in the clean room Cass, the head nurse, and one of her three assistants, a large, handsome man named Greg, were busy arguing with their charge, the reason for this whole adventure and all of their high-tech medical gear, the old man named Howard Lampert. From the sound of it, it seemed as if the Old Man was giving as good as he was getting. As usual. Cass gave him an exasperated look as he came up.
“You worm-headed jerks!” the Old Man was yelling, in that reedy, thin voice that cut through Justin like a power drill. “You’re all gonna starve to death out here! You think Dr. Poole and what’s-his-face are comin’ back? Ha! It’s been a week already, you stupid bastards! And he probably got jumped by some of the locals the first god-damn day!”
“Now, Mr. Lampert,” said Greg, clinging to what was left of his bedside manner, “don’t you worry about that. You’ll be just fine.”
Cocooned in his railed hospital bed, surrounded by blinking, beeping machines connected to his frail, wizened body, the Old Man scowled and slapped his forehead with one hand. Justin winced a little at the violence of the gesture; at 102, the Old Man shouldn’t be getting slapped on the head like that.
“Jesus H. Chrysler!” Lampert spat. “It’s like talking to a fuckin’ bag of hammers!” Shaking his head, he noticed Justin’s entrance and waved the younger man over. “Doc, come here a minute. Talk some sense into these blithering morons, wouldya?”
“What’s the trouble, sir?” asked Justin. “Do you lack for anything?”
“Well, no, no,” said Lampert, slumping back. “Not at the moment, no, other than the obvious. But here’s the deal, Doc: I know that you have to be low on water and food. These trucks aren’t big enough for that. Plus, you’re out of gas and, from what I’ve heard, this whole part of the country is just crawling with survies. So, unless you do something, and pretty damned soon, you’re either gonna get slaughtered—or worse—or you’re gonna starve to death. Shit, maybe both! Who knows?”
“But Mr. Lampert,” said Justin mildly, “what do you care about that? No offense, but you’ve been telling us from the first day that all you want to do is to die. Wouldn’t this… scenario furnish just that result?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” said the Old Man wryly. “It’d work just fine. But why did you have to drag me out into the middle of fucking nowhere to do it?! I could have starved to death back in Minneapolis just as easily, you know!”
“Well, of course,” Justin smiled, “but then you wouldn’t have the chance to save a great many lives. Don’t forget what this is all about.”
“Yeah, yeah. You and your god-damn plague. I’ve told you a hundred times already, I don’t give a flying fuck about that. As far as I’m concerned, humanity can just as well—”
“Go fuck itself,” finished Justin, “as you so colorfully put it. Yes, I know, but I’m afraid that is as may be. Our mission is clear and, unfortunately, as we explained, it does not necessarily require your cooperation.”
“OK, so why don’t you just keep me doped-up or in a coma or something? All you really want is my blood, right? So take it! Be done with it already!”
“Now, we’ve been through this,” said Justin, a headache beginning in his temples. “We need you alive and healthy. The amount of serum would be insufficient otherwise. Remember?”
“Remember?” mimicked the Old Man nastily. “Of course I remember, ya dumb jerk. You’ve told me over and over about saving humanity and all that bullshit. Whatever. But that’s my freakin’ point, what I was tryin’ to tell these dipshits: you ain’t gonna get the chance! Any minute now some god-awful bunch of crazed bikers are gonna sweep down outta the desert and turn your fancy RVs into Swiss cheese and microchips!”
“Well, you just let me worry about that,” said Justin, much more confidently than he felt. “You just relax and try not to exert yourself, alright?”
“Fuck off,” said the Old Man.
“Yes, well…” said Justin. “I’ll check in on you a little later.”
After checking the Old Man’s vitals and a recent scan of the withered old heart beating away in the withered old chest, Justin gave Cass some unneeded instructions and took himself off to his tiny lab at the front of the vehicle. Closing the airtight hatch, he slumped at his desk, held his head in one hand, and thought back to the events that had brought him to this place.
In New Atlanta, Justin’s home town, things had been pretty bad; gangs of hungry, often crazy people roamed the streets and it was thanks only to their loyal security staff that the great hospitals and labs had been able to keep running. But every day, every week, every year, some new sign of the Fall had descended. Packs of wild dogs appeared in the winter of 2062. Roving gangs took and held the downtown area the next year, and by 2064, Justin and everyone else in New Atlanta had become accustomed to seeing bodies—sometimes great mounds of bodies—in the streets. And when the corpses began to cause even more health problems, like cholera and typhus, they were witness to great grills made of railroad tracks that were set up to burn the remains.
The last couple of years had seen trees buckling the pavers in Margaret Mitchell Square, more—and more violent—gangs, killing each other and anyone else weaker than themselves they could find, and the CDC cafeteria featuring dog and cat food on the lunch menu.
Unlike many of the CDC staff, he thankfully had no wife, kids, or other close relatives in town, but, like most of them, his house had burned to the ground in the Big Fire of 2068. After that he and much of the staff and their families, what was left of them, had simply moved into their offices and made do as best they could.
Out of either desperation or because they didn’t know what else to do, those few remaining had kept at it, plugging away at a cure, despite having virtually no clue as to how to proceed. The problem was that they had no starting point; with all viruses, there were anti-bodies, small samples of the virus itself which formed the basis of a vaccine. But in this case, as they soon discovered, the customary methods were simply not going to work.
The trouble was that the disease was highly mutative; when it encountered an organism it could not infect, it subtly and swiftly altered its DNA to adjust. This meant that, unlike most outbreaks of this sort, it would not run its course and be done. Instead, it would mutate, returning over and over, in ever-changing strains, until it had run out of host organisms. In other words, it would quite likely wipe out every last human being on the planet.
What was needed was a sample of the original strain of the virus, the unaltered DNA of the plague, with which the mutations could be stopped and the virus thus contained. Unfortunately, the only sample of this sort would have to come from a living host, someone who had survived the original strain and had the virus (and thus the anti-bodies) in their blood. But where to find such a host? Their own records recorded an outbreak of the original strain, but they were incomplete, partially lost in the Fall, and the idea of simply going out and looking for someone with the strain was sheer suicide. It had seemed hopeless.
Then, one day last year, in the fall of 2075, they’d received a most interesting visitor. All the way from San Francisco, Dr. Stanley Bahrara represented a consortium of doctors and researchers who believed that they had found the starting point, at least in theory, and had traveled all the way to New Atlanta to enlist their aid.
Lucky (or resourceful) enough to still have a full set of records and research facilities, the folks in California had managed to locate their Golden Hosts, a very few people who had survived the original strain. The problem was that if any of them were even still alive, they would be very old, probably quiet frail, and, given the general societal breakdown, very hard to locate. In other words, it was a terrible long shot. In the end, Dr. Poole, the latest CDC Director, had decided that it was worth the effort,
and five separate missions, one for each host, were readied. By necessity, since the loss of their fleet of planes in the Big Fire and the last of the pilots to the Plague, they would travel by land.
The preparation and planning for the trip and the first parts of the trek itself were not terribly memorable, aside from the varying scenes of death and chaos they’d encountered along the way. Justin tried very hard not to remember those. No, the real trouble had begun in Mr. Lampert’s home town of Minneapolis, where simply finding the right street had taken nearly a week. And when they had finally found the Old Man, alive beyond all expectation, just getting him out of his apartment had been an ordeal. Justin smiled as he recalled the exchange between Lampert and Dr. Poole, just after they’d roused the Old Man enough to speak:
“Who the fuck are you?” the Old Man had rasped belligerently. “And what are you doin’ in my fucking apartment?”
“Are you Howard P. Lampert?” Poole had asked, looking and sounding like a robot in his haz-mat suit.
“Who the fuck wants to know?” the Old Man had demanded.
Poole had tried to explain about the possibility of a cure and Lampert’s part in it, but the Old Man would have none of it. In the end they’d just bundled him up, yelling and thrashing as best he could, and hauled him out of the filthy apartment, down the stairs, and into the waiting MedCenter. And off they’d gone.
Suddenly a crash, loud even through the thick walls of the vehicle, interrupted Justin’s thoughts and, glad of the distraction but fearing the worst, he jumped up and hustled out to see what the problem was. Had the Outlaws finally found them? Were they under attack? Was the vehicle malfunctioning? Some natural disaster?