by Jim LaVigne
But it was nothing so dire; instead, when he entered the clean area, he found that it was just the Old Man. Again. This time he’d apparently shown his displeasure with dinner, in that he’d thrown the tray of food against a wall. Bellnick, another of the nurses’ assistants, was wearily cleaning up the mess. Justin heaved a sigh and went over to the bed.
“What is it now, Mr. Lampert?” he asked. “Is the food not to your liking?”
“Food?” scowled Lampert. “You call that food? It’s fucking cat food!”
“I’m afraid that’s the best we have, sir,” Justin explained, as he had several times before. “At least for the time being… and let me assure you, it’s far better fare than we enjoy.”
“Oh yeah?” grimaced the Old Man, adjusting himself in the bed. “So whatta you guys eat? Dirt?”
“Close,” smiled Justin. “We are currently subsisting on soy paste. Would you like to try some?”
“Fuck no,” he snorted. For a long moment, the Old Man sat and seemed to think, then he shook his mottled old head and peered at Justin archly. “Soy paste, huh? No shit? So where’d you get that? Or was that something you could just buy, down at the Piggly-Wiggly?”
“We raised soy beans,” Justin said, “at the Center. They’re very nutritious.”
“Huh…”
Justin waited silently, hoping that the Old Man was through being a pain in the ass for the time being, but apparently it was not to be; Lampert waved him over and gestured to a chair. With an inward groan, knowing what this meant—another of the Old Man’s labored, meandering diatribes—Justin walked over, sat down, and crossed his legs.
“So,” started Lampert, without preamble, as always, “when the shit hit the fan and this plague broke out, didn’t you guys have trouble, there at the CDC? I mean, I figure you musta been fucking overrun with sick folks.”
“Oh, we were,” nodded Justin, suppressing a shudder at the memory. “Hundreds of thousands of patients. We treated all we could, of course, but in the end, well, it wasn’t enough, I suppose.”
“So what? They all died? Every last one?”
“Oh, no,” said Justin. “Not every one. But this is a very virulent strain. The survival rate is something like one tenth of one percent.”
“So the other ninety-nine point nine percent croaked, huh? Man, that is harsh. You musta been up to your eyeballs in corpses.”
“Yes,” said Justin evenly, waiting. The Old Man closed his eyes and lay back on his spotless white sheets (changed three times a day whether necessary or not) and Justin hoped that he was dozing off, but then he stirred and shook his head.
“Jesus…” he said quietly. “I never thought I’d see this, you know? I mean, I always knew that this country would fall apart some day, that some kinda plague or natural catastrophe would happen and things would go bad. Just in the cards, far as I could see. But I thought I’d be long dead by then, you know? I mean, it’s not like I took good care of myself. I smoked, I drank, I ate whatever they hell I wanted. Pretty surprising, ain’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Justin warily. “You are very long-lived.”
“Phugh!” snorted Lampert. “Cursed is more like it. I mean, you’re a doctor, right? Can you tell me why I don’t just fucking die?”
Maybe you’re just too damned mean to die, thought Justin. To Lampert’s face, though, he smiled and shook his head.
“No one knows that, sir,” he said. “Genetics, environment, the vagaries of the individual immune system, all contribute to longevity. But aging is hardly my specialty.”
“Yeah, yeah,” waved the Old Man, “I know. You’re an epidemiologist, like all the other brainiacs on this little trip. Shit, even the orderlies are some kinda eggheads, right?”
“Students. Most of them, anyway.”
“Yeah,” scowled Lampert. “That explains a lot.”
“About?”
“About how dumb you all are!” Lampert wheezed. “Oh, I don’t mean book dumb. You guys are probably real whiz kids when it comes to diseases and doctor shit, but just look at what happened to Garcia! I mean, shit!”
“That,” said Justin softly, “was an accident.”
“Well, yeah, but changing a tire? That’s pretty basic, Doc. I mean, back in my day, not a whole lotta people died every year from not knowing how to use a fucking car jack, OK? And what about that other dude, Chong or whatever?”
“Chang,” muttered Justin darkly. “His name was Jerry Chang.”
“Uh huh. And what happened to him?”
“You know full well what happened. And that was also an accident. In a way.”
“Oh sure,” snorted the Old Man. “He accidentally chased after that Freaker girl in St Louis. He accidentally let himself get led around by his dick, the poor, stupid dope.”
“I’d really rather not talk about it,” said Justin, shifting uncomfortably in the hard plastic, bolted-to-the-bulkhead chair. “To be honest, if it was not an accident, well, then it was perhaps a lack of experience. How could Jerry have known that the girl was luring him into a trap?”
“How?” Lampert rolled his eyes. “By not being a brainless pussy-hound, that’s how. I mean, damn, that’s one of the oldest tricks in the book! And that’s my point. You poor bastards are all left-brainers. Eggheads. You got no fucking common sense.”
Justin didn’t know what to say to that and tried to sit quietly and wait.
“Yeah, it’s been one helluva trip,” wheezed the Old Man. “Garcia, Chang, those two sorry fuckers outside of Chicago… Shit, how many of you were there when you first started out from Atlanta, anyway?”
Justin swallowed a hard knot in his throat and blinked.
“New Atlanta,” he said, “and there were twenty-six of us in all.”
“And we’re down to what, now that Poole and what’s-his-face and the others are gone?”
“Counting Dr. Poole and Dr. Gonzalez,” said Justin pointedly, “and the others, there are fifteen of us. Plus you, of course.”
“Yeah, lucky me. Your little guinea pig. And you really thought you’d somehow get all the way across the country? To San Francisco? Man oh man. What about self-defense? Didn’t ya think about protecting yourselves from all the gangs and cults and shit? Jesus H. Christ, do ya even have guns?”
“A few,” said Justin. “And yes, we were prepared to defend ourselves, at least against animals and the occasional MUP sufferer. Not whole gangs, of course. We had hoped to avoid those.”
“MUP? What’s that?”
“Massive Upheaval Psychosis,” explained Justin. “A common enough mental illness after the Fall, involving terrible despair, psychotic reactions to—”
“Yeah, whatever,” interrupted Lampert rudely. “Loony is loony. Spare me. The point is, you smart guys obviously didn’t think ahead too much, and now you’re payin’ for it. But you’re gonna keep goin’ huh?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Uh huh,” Lampert eyed Justin fishily. “So, you plan on givin’ me the world-record longest piggy-back ride?”
“If necessary,” said Justin, trying to sound resolute. “The fate of many lives is at stake.”
“So you keep sayin’. But answer me this: won’t this plague eventually burn itself out, so to speak? Like the Black Death did, back in the Middle Ages?”
“No,” said Justin firmly. “it will mutate and return. Sir, this virus is unprecedented. It’s virulence is beyond… well, let’s just say that if we can develop a vaccine, we can, with some luck, preserve those who remain.”
The Old Man nodded skeptically and stared at Justin until the younger man fidgeted uncomfortably under the penetrating gaze. What was it about Lampert’s eyes that made him feel so nervous? Superficially they were no different than anyone’s and, if their tests were correct, even a bit astigmatic. So why should they be so sharp, so piercing? Sometimes it felt like Lampert was staring right through him, through the walls of the MedCenter, maybe even through the Earth itself. It was unne
rving.
After a few minutes, though, as Justin was thinking of excusing himself, the Old Man let off staring and slumped back again. Justin waited for a time and then something he’d been meaning to ask the Old Man occurred to him and he cleared his throat.
“Mr. Lampert?” he said, making sure the Old Man was still awake. “What did you do for a living? Back in your day? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”
“I, sir,” said Lampert grandly, sitting up a bit, “was a salesman. And damned proud of it.”
“What did you sell?”
“Oh, you name it! Food, of all kinds, from meat to vegetables to ice dream. Cars, for a quite a while, until the bottom fell out in the early 2000’s. Fucking Detroit. Appliances, that was a good one, and then there was a whole raft of gadgets and gizmos and shit. Hell, I don’t even remember ‘em all. But always sales. Shit, I coulda sold fridges to Eskimos, Doc. You name it, I could sell it.”
“I see,” nodded Justin.
“See what?” demanded the Old Man. “You don’t think sales is a worthwhile career, or what? ‘Cause it provided me and my family with—”
“No, no,” said Justin hastily, gently cutting him off. “That was not what I meant, sir. Not at all.”
“Then what?”
“Oh, it’s just that,” said Justin, selecting his words with care, “I’d been wondering what your former career was, mainly because you seem to be a very perceptive person, especially when it comes to other people.”
“A benefit of age, Doc,” said Lampert. “And one o’ the very few, at that. And yeah, I suppose sales made me a bit better judge of character, but mostly? Just plain old age.”
“And you had a family?”
“Yeah,” Lampert said sourly. “Wife and a kid.”
“Oh, I see. And they are?”
“Dead,” replied Lampert. “Just like everybody else. Anyway, I don’t wanna talk about that.”
“Of course. Forgive me,” said Justin, wondering. Was that a softening in the piercing glare? Was this some kind of chink in the Old Man’s pessimistic armor? A soft spot? He let it go for the moment but filed it away for future reference. “Is there anything else? Something more you wanted to talk about?”
“Aw, I guess not,” said the Old Man, shaking his head. “You don’t get me anyway, Doc. I need to talk to somebody my own age, you know? But then, at a hundred and two, that don’t seem too fuckin’ likely, does it?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Justin waited a while, thinking that maybe Lampert still had something to add, but the Old Man just slumped down into himself and turned his face to the wall. After another five minutes had passed, snores came from the desiccated body and Justin rose and quietly left the chamber.
What a terrible pessimist! he thought. What a mean old crank of a sorehead! And how utterly heartless and callous, talking about Garcia and Chang that way. Well, there was one thing the Old Man was right about: Age had made him bitter and cynical. Other than that? Well, the whole discussion fell more into the realm of philosophy than was comfortable for Justin and he’d never been terribly keen on philosophy. Too vague, too subjective. Now give him some test tubes and a microscope, something you could actually see and qualify… He sighed and shook his head, putting Lampert from his mind for the time being. He walked to the front of the vehicle and rapped on the metal door to the ComCenter.
“Yo!” came a voice from within.
“It’s me, Erin,” called Justin irritably, “Dr. Kaes. Open up.”
There was a rattle, the door slid open, and Erin Swails, their technical expert, stared out. Behind her the small chamber was very dark, lit only by computer displays. Miss Swails looked tired, undoubtedly from constantly monitoring bandwidths, and a bit haggard from their meager diet, like everyone, but otherwise alert and able.
“Hiya, Doc,” she said, brushing long black hair from her angular face. “What’s up?”
“Any luck?” Justin asked, knowing the answer.
“Naw, nothin’,” Erin said. “Some background stuff, probably nearby locals, but other than that? As in, did I raise Dr. Poole and the others? Napes.”
“Hrmm,” Justin murmured. “Well, keep monitoring, I suppose.”
“Will do,” said the other. She paused and then looked him in the eye. “What’re we gonna do, Doc? If they don’t come back, I mean?”
Justin dragged out a smile from somewhere and tried to sound confident. “Let me worry about that. You just watch the bandwidths.”
“OK,” she nodded. “So, uh, how’s the Old Man? Still alive?”
“Oh, very much so,” said Justin wryly. “Let’s just hope we can keep him that way.”
Chapter Three
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—TV ad for Titan Agrofoods product, circa 2057
The Hunter was angry. He didn’t like his employer, he didn’t like the job he’d been hired to do, and he didn’t like the things he’d had to do in the course of its fulfillment. He would complete the job, of course, because that was how he did things: if you paid for his services, you got your money’s worth. Right now, though, he was considering abandoning the whole thing and maybe even seeking a new line of work, because these poor CDC saps did not, as far as he could tell, stand a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to their destination. And somehow, that made him angry, too.
He was named Jack Shipman, but no one called him that anymore. They just called him the Hunter, and he was hired to do just that, to hunt down anyone, anywhere, and for any reason, as long as the pay was enough to make it worth his time. It was the same kind of work he’d done Before, as an elite bounty hunter; the difference now was that he was one of very few people left who knew how the job was done or had the balls to do it The Fall had really cut down on the competition.
At 5’7, compact and wiry to the point of emaciation, he didn’t look like much on the surface, just another raggedy survivor with a shaven head and face, a perpetually cruel expression on his sharp features, and an assortment of mismatched clothes, but he rarely had any trouble with the more aggressive survies; the look in his eyes told them all they needed to know, and an array of lethal weaponry convinced anyone stupid enough to want to know more.
All in all, for the Hunter there’d been more plusses than minuses to the coming of the Plague, since when the Fall had come, he’d been in prison, serving a five-year bid for manslaughter. It had been a valid conviction, for shooting an unarmed fugitive, and he hadn’t rankled over it, but then again, he hadn’t much enjoyed prison, either. When the Sick first hit, afflicting guards and prisoners alike, the authorities had tried their best to keep things under control, but when more and more screws reported in sick and more and more cons caught it and choked to death on their own blood, things had gotten pretty ugly. Even now, he didn’t like to think about it. Finally, though, one of the guards, with the basic human sense that no one was left to care, had opened all of the cells and gates and sally ports and he and about fifteen other guys (out of a prison population of around 5,000) had walked out the door to freedom.
He’d drifted for a couple of years, getting a feel for this new, degraded, depopulated world and learning to avoid things like chemical spills, zones of death from old nuclear plants, and a dozen other similar perils, not to mention all of those engendered by the starving, crazy survivors. At the same time, he enjoyed the freedom that the post-Fall world offered. With no laws or law enforcement, he could go where he wanted and do what he wanted, and the only person who could say ‘boo’ about it was someone meaner and better-armed than himself. And so far, he hadn’t met anyone who fit that description.
It was an ugly world, by and large, he found in his
travels, full of pain and destruction and rust, but it could also be wondrous and beautiful. He’d seen whole cities aflame in the night, like miles-wide bonfires, and new lakes and rivers where cities had once been, their clear blue surfaces filled with innumerable water birds whose flight could block the sun. There was death, yes, and lots of it, but there was new life as well, and things he would never have had the chance to see and do in the world Before.
Recently, he’d been hired by the Governor of New America, a large survie enclave on the site of Lawrence, Kansas (or what was left of it), to find these hapless doctors and bring them in. In other words, he was to make sure that they—and their potential cure for the Sick—ended up in New America, where they could be traded or vended to the highest bidder.
The Governor had learned of the CDC mission through a man who’d been intercepted on his way east from Cali, a scout of some kind sent to meet and assist the CDC group, who, under interrogation, had divulged the whole unlikely plan. But unlikely or not, the Gov had been intrigued enough to hire the Hunter, and, after a very long trip and through a great deal of strife and misery, here he was, closing in on the people he was supposed to find and getting more and more angry.
The Governor himself, a fat, pompous, overbearing sort of prick, had nearly made the Hunter’s skin crawl, sitting there in his little pleasure palace like a bloated spider, but he was very rich, commanded almost 2,000 subjects, and, despite the totalitarian nature of the whole setup, seemed to have the best-organized and most “civilized” enclave around. In short, a good man to work for. Or so he’d thought; lately he wasn’t so sure.
He’d picked up the CDC trail in Minneapolis, where he’d spoken to a gang leader named Kookoo who’d seen the entourage driving out of town in their big, anonymously-colored vehicles. Kookoo hadn’t known or cared what was in the vehicles; like most of the younger survivors, he was shit scared of anyone or anything that represented Authority. But he’d had sharp eyes and a good memory, and that had been enough to send the Hunter south, down the remains of I-95.