Plaguesville, USA

by Jim LaVigne

  He said nothing, reeling at this twist of events, and simply sat there in shock. He was wondering about a great many things—such as what would happen to Lampert and the others, what would happen to him, what would happen to humanity without a vaccine for the Plague, and so on—and all but oblivious when he felt her nimble hands on him, none too gently undoing his belt and pants. Surprised, shocked, and suddenly incredibly aroused despite it all, he looked up at her.

  “Time ‘nough for this, though,” she grinned, rubbing her bare breasts on his arm and chest. “Now c’mon. I gotta gets you in me while I can.”

  And then he didn’t think about much of anything but making love to the ravishing, nubile young woman in his arms.

  Chapter Ten

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  Two days later, stumping along on a very dusty road in the middle of the night, having spent the intervening time stewing and growing more angry and resentful as they went, it occurred to Justin that he might at least try to escape. He’d weighed the pros and cons of the idea carefully through the last 48 hours’ worth of walking, eating, and sleeping on the hard, rocky ground, and, all things considered, had finally decided that anything Teresa might do to him if he did try to escape couldn’t be a whole lot worse than a life in slavery, and so it was worth a shot. The only trouble was that he simply couldn’t work up the nerve to try it.

  They’d walked during the night and had slept most of the day. Teresa explained that this was because it avoided both the day’s heat and the attentions of other bangers and survies. She also had told him that Baron Zero’s place, whatever that was, was located on the outskirts of what had once been the city of Vinita, Oklahoma and that it would take them at least three night’s trekking to get there.

  “Gotta be wareful, hey?” she’d said. “Lots’a bangers’d wanna get they claws on you.”

  “Yes,” he’d said glumly. “You must protect your investment, I guess.”

  And now, after two long nights and restless days, he’d had about enough; they’d gone precious miles from Lampert and the others, he was tired, in deep-down way he’d never experienced, sore of muscle in his feet and legs, thirsty, hungry, and just plain bored. Yes, it was time to try to make a break for it.

  He’d been looking for the right place and time all night—or morning, if one wanted to be technical—trying not to seem obvious or nervous, and it was probably about three AM when he thought he had just the place. Cursing to himself, he was going to try it, just bolt off into the underbrush and hope for the best, when suddenly Teresa called a halt.

  “Hold up, hey,” she said.

  He did, and turned back to find her in what had become a fairly common stance during their trip, that of intense listening, with her head cocked at an angle. Try as he might when they stopped like this, Justin never heard anything other than ambient sounds of wildlife and nature, but he’d learned to trust her hearing; more than once they’d avoided unknown potential trouble by virtue of its acuity.

  “What is it?” he whispered. “What do you hear?”

  “Quiet!” she whispered back. “Jus’ shuddup, hey?”

  Justin shrugged and waited, scanning the landscape ahead of them for some sign of life, but to him there was just the barren ground and the sounds of wind and a far-off coyote. He waited for a good five minutes and then turned back to see what Teresa was up to, only to discover that she was gone. Without so much as a rustle of the underbrush, she’d vanished as completely as if she’d never been there at all.

  Mouth abruptly agape, utterly mystified at this amazing disappearing act, he cast about, here, there, and everywhere, but the girl was simply not there. Scratching his head, he turned in a full circle, peering into the bushes and dark spots, but she was nowhere to be seen. What the hell? Where had she gone? And why?

  “Teresa?” he hissed at the darkness. “Are you there? Teresa?”

  Nothing. Not so much as a peep. He tried again, louder this time, but still nothing. What in the world? He was still standing there, wondering whether he should go on or go back or maybe just wait, when he heard the sound of motorcycle engines. Coming up on their trail, they were approaching quickly, judging from the sound, and in no small number. In a matter of moments, the noise went from a faint whine to a loud, angry clamor like a swarm of vary large bees.

  Frantically, torn as to what to do, he looked around quickly and then, choosing a particularly large bush that looked like a good spot, began to run for cover. Maybe he could simply hide and whoever was coming would just pass by.

  He’d gone about ten steps, about a third of the way to the bush, when suddenly the night erupted in noise and light as the gang of cycles—at least a dozen, of various size and shape—burst over a nearby hill. For a split second, he froze in the harsh lights and then the dusty horde of shrieking machines was all around him, a blur of light and motion and noise, and he recognized that he was trapped and gave up, hands in the air in the universal symbol of surrender.

  Around him, the motorcycles slowed, wound down, and then, one by one, came to a halt, all facing into a circle with him at the center. Justin was tempted to shield his eyes in the glare of the headlights, but kept his hands up; no sense in provoking these people, whoever they were. And what had become of Teresa?

  At some signal, presumably, the bikers now all shut off their engines (but not the lights) and the ensuing relative silence, broken only by the pinging noises from the cooling machines, was, in its way, more imposing than the din. Then one of bikers detached himself from his mount and came forward from the shadows.

  Expecting someone like one of the Bloodclaws, festooned in tattoos and leather and weapons, he was surprised to see a man in a uniform, a brown suit of clothes not unlike those once worn by State Patrolmen, with a matching brown helmet coated in fine pale dust, a thick black leather belt and smart knee-high jackboots. Justin couldn’t see a badge anywhere, but other than that, the man was the very image of latter-day civil authority. In short, a cop.

  But how? There were no functioning police forces these days, were there? He’d never heard of any survie cult that went for that sort of thing. So who—and, more importantly, what—was this man? He was going to do something inane like wave or hold out his hand to shake, but instead simply stood and waited as the man approached.

  He walked up to Justin, stopped a few feet away, and tipped up the plasteel facemask on his helmet. A pale, mustached, Caucasian, non-descript sort of face that seemed to be not so much expressionless as incapable of expression looked out.

  “Hello, brother,” said the man, his voice bland, unaccented, and as emotionless as his face.

  “Er… hello,” said Justin tentatively, lowering his hands a bit and trying out a thin smile. “Brother?”

  “May I ask your business here, brother?” asked the man sternly.

  “My what?” said Justin, blinking. “My business? As in, why am I here?”

  “I’ll ask the questions, brother,” said the man, blandly but not un-menacingly. “Please state your business.”

  “Well, to be honest,” said Justin, confused and not a little intimidated, “I don’t even know where “here” is. Somewhere in Oklahoma, I think, but then…” he shrugged. “And as to why I’m here, well, that’s something of a long story, I’m afraid.”

  “Is that so?” the man said. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to explain it.”

  With that, the man turned on his heel, barked “take him” to his companions, and the next thing Justin knew, he was handcuffed to the back of a motorcycle, riding precariously behind another, similarly brown-clad police-type man as they sped through the dusty, bone-jarring darkness.

  So bewildered by this time that he almost couldn’t grasp what was going on, he simply tried to keep his place on the bike, his eyes clamped sh
ut against the dirt and bugs, and not think about it. The only thing that kept going through his head was the old cliché about out of the frying pan and into the fire. Only with him it was more like out of the frying pan and into another frying pan. And then into a bonfire.

  When, after what seemed like hours, the group of bikes finally came to a halt, it was full daylight, maybe an hour after sunrise, and Justin cracked open his dust-crusted eyes to blearily survey his new surroundings. Having no idea where he’d ended up and therefore with no preconceptions, the scene he now beheld was nonetheless far from encouraging.

  Before him was what Justin could only think of as an armed compound; tall chain-link fencing, topped with barbed wire and other sharp-looking things, surrounded a group of maybe two dozen squat buildings. Armed men, all dressed like his captors, stood and strolled around the perimeter and others kept watch from twenty-foot tall wooden towers at each corner. A gate of sorts, mounted on a rolling base, was surmounted by a large, hand-lettered sign which read:

  St. Alferd’s Church of the Holy Redeemer. Faithful Only, Others Shot On Sight.

  Still rubbing dust from his eyes, Justin read the sign twice, to make sure of what he was seeing (Saint Alferd? Probably a misspelling of Alfred. But shot on sight?!), before the gate opened and one of his captors gave him a fairly good shove in the back and propelled him rudely into the compound.

  Here, he soon saw, the paramilitary feel of the place only increased. Every man he saw wore some variation of the same drab uniform, was armed in one way or another—some quite heavily—and all around the buildings and fence were sandbags, firing ports, and various defensive constructions that gave the place the overall feel of an Army base. Over on one side he saw a group of children playing on a set of playground toys, supervised by a pair of gaunt-looking young women, but other than these few, the camp seemed populated exclusively by men.

  He had no time to mull any of this over, though, as his captor and escort guided him, none too gently, towards the largest of the compound’s buildings, a two-story affair that was, given the huge cross hung up over the main entrance, obviously some kind of church. Again, he was prodded forward before having a chance to really look at it and soon he was in the cool, dark spaces of the building’s interior. His captor shoved him along through a big open area filled with folding chairs that was obviously the main worship area to a sort of side office, where he was told to sit on a hard metal chair before an empty metal desk. He did and the man left, closing the door behind him and leaving Justin alone.

  Clean and all but devoid of decoration, the small office had only the door, no windows, the desk, two chairs, and, behind the desk on the wall, a big cloth banner, dark red with embroidered white lettering, which read: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said: Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying: Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

  It wasn’t long, only a few minutes, before the office door opened again and another man came in and took the chair behind the desk. Like most of the men he’d met here, this fellow was largish and obviously well-fed, if not actually overweight. Unlike the others, this man seemed to have undergone some sort of terrible accident, as his face was horribly scarred, from crown to chin, in a way that bespoke crude, amateur, possibly improvised surgery. One eye seemed almost scarred-over, the lips didn’t meet correctly, showing broken teeth, and one ear was conspicuous in its absence. All in all, he wasn’t much to look at, but Justin had seen some pretty horrific things in the last few years; this didn’t particularly phase him. Then again, it was hard not to stare.

  “Greetingsh, brother,” said the man, his voice deep and resonant but also saliva-riddled and gargled. The “s” sound in particular seemed to give him a lot of trouble. “My name ish Brother David. I am the Schief of Shecurity.”

  “Uh, hello,” said Justin awkwardly. “My name is Dr. Justin Kaes.”

  “Yesh, I know,” said the man, approximating a smile.

  Justin goggled. “You know who I am? But how?”

  “Unimportant,” said Brother David simply. “And not why I wanted thish meeting.”

  Seeing that this man was going to direct the conversation, one way or the other, and that he wasn’t about to let on any more than he wanted, Justin waited as he paused and stared with his one good and one questionable eye. Trying to look something like tough, Justin stared right back until the general air of discomfort reached an intolerable level and he finally had to look away. Evidently this pleased—or a least placated—Brother David and he resumed speaking.

  “Here is the shituation, Dr. Kaesh,” he said phlegm-ily. “You have treshpasshed on the shovereign territory of the Church. Ash a reshult, you have been taken into cushtody and will, pending judgment by the counshil, be held here. In time, you will probably learn more of thish plashe and the Church, but that ish not my concern. And now, I bid you God Blessh.”

  And with that, he got up to leave.

  “But wait!” said Justin urgently.

  The disfigured man paused and stared at him again as he reeled in astonishment and struggled to form words. Then, seeing something in Brother David’s glare that didn’t invite questions, he gave it up and shrugged.

  “Very well,” he said. “At this point, I’m frankly too tired and hungry to discuss it. Is there at least somewhere where I can lie down? Perhaps get some water?”

  “Of coursh,” nodded David. “Brother Shteven will show you to your temporary quartersh.”

  As nonplussed as he’d ever been, utterly lost for words and equally devoid of thought, struck numb, as it were, Justin just nodded and waited for whatever came next.

  The first man he’d met, evidently Brother Steven, replaced Ugly David and led Justin out of the office, through the big, church-like building and then across the dusty, sun-seared compound. As they went, Justin could feel the eyes of this place’s denizens on him but was past caring why they should be so curious; probably just normal xenophobia, he thought.

  They finally came to a low cinderblock building much like all of the others in the compound. Brother Steven unlocked the door, using a key from a ring on his belt, and then shoved him through the darkened portal, where he stumbled hard and fell heavily and painfully to the floor. Behind him, the thick metal door clanged shut, plunging him into cool semi-darkness.

  Groaning, he rolled onto his side, all but spent, and lay there for a moment, wondering if there might be some water in this place, before it dawned on him that he was not alone. Frightened all over again, in a very shrill and immediate way, he scrambled awkwardly to a crouch and backed up against a wall.

  And then, rolling out of the shadows in an old-fashioned wheelchair, appeared the one person in the whole world whom Justin would have bet he wouldn’t find in a prison cell inside some kind of armed religious survie compound, Mr. Howard P. Lampert.

  “Hiya, Doc!” said the Old Man, grinning. “Welcome to the fuckin’ party!”

  That did it for Justin. His jaw dropped, his eyes bulged, his brain gave a disbelieving shriek and tried to run away and hide somewhere. And then the world spun around 360 degrees, everything went black, and he fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  Chapter Eleven

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  When he woke up some indeterminate time later, the first thing Justin thought of was Teresa. Having slept next to her for the last few nights, he’d become accustomed to waking up with her as well, so that now, rousing from a troubled, painful slumber, he would have liked nothing better than to snuggle against her warm, soft skin and go back to sleep. Unfortuna
tely, this was not at all to be. Treacherous memory reared its ugly head and, in a rush of fearsome, overly-vivid flashes of recall, he remembered where he was.

  Suddenly alert, despite the fog in his brain and the pain in what felt like every muscle, he sat up and looked around. He was still in the cinderblock building, a dungeonesque space with only two small, slit-like windows, a metal door, a row of six old army cots, a toilet, a free-standing sink, a cheap table and three flimsy chairs, and not much else. That is, if one didn’t count the people.

  Sitting in his wheelchair, maybe ten feet away, was Lampert, grinning like a gargoyle and staring at Justin with what might be called a twinkle in his eye. Behind the Old Man, sitting on the cots, were three of the CDC crew, namely Erin Swails, Nurse Cass, and Orderly Greg, in addition to another raggedy, long-haired younger man whom he’d never seen before. Of these, only the young stranger and the Old Man seemed anything less than depressed; his compatriots were as glum as could be.

  “Mornin’ Doc,” said Lampert, nodding. “Feel better now? We saved ya some breakfast.”

  “Mr. Lampert,” said Justin, just to make it seem more real to himself. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

  “These screwheads grabbed us,” said Lampert, jerking a thumb. “Two nights ago. Just rolled up on their bikes and shoved guns in everyone’s faces and, well, there ya go. They brought us here.”

  “But who are they?” asked Justin, creakily gaining his feet. “I saw the sign out front. Something about Saint somebody and being shot on sight, but other than that…”

  “Some kinda paramilitary outfit, looks like,” said Lampert, with a slight shrug. “Who knows? They sure as shit ain’t tellin’. Least not so far. Shit, the only guy we’ve even really talked to is the fat guy who brings us food, and he’s about as friendly as a dog turd, so,” he shrugged again, “like I said, who knows?”