I don't know how the New Americans found us, but it doesn't matter. We are not going to survive this. How we managed to last through the onslaught is still a mystery to me. I do my best to give the little comfort I can to the men and women around me who are hurt or suffering.
I had heard Carter is still okay from a few of the soldiers. Ryan took charge when the shots first began and quickly gathered a defensive force. By the time the New Americans approached the school, the riflemen were ready and easily repelled the attacks. Soon after the New American's must have retreated. They saw the damage was done. Why risk anymore men?
Ryan asked me to patrol and do a quick sweep and check for the injured. I step between two houses. One is simply ashes and still in embers. A small body lies in the middle. An arrow protrudes from her chest. I move close and as I see the face I drop to my knees.
No.
Sara.
My chest tightens and I gasp for a breath. No. How did this happen? I study the arrow. My eyes widen. There is no mistaking it. It is Caitlyn's arrow.
I look into the sky and feel tears build. What? What in God's name happened here?
The pieces of the night struggle to fit together. The radio. The gas sheds. Her disappearance when the gunshots began. I thought Sara wasn't the same. Now I knew. It was her that did all this. Her home wasn't with us anymore; it had become the capital. We took that from her.
My mind goes back to Caitlyn. If she did this...
I need to find her. I pick myself up and run off.
I hope I'm not too late.
* * *
“What do you mean she left?” I yell at Kevin.
“She said she was okay and left. She wasn't hurt or anything; what's the problem?” Kevin responds with frustration. He looks exhausted and doesn’t deserve my shortness, but I need to find Caitlyn. If she killed Sara, she is going to need someone.
“Never-mind.” I mumble and turn to leave the school. People are scattered all over the neighborhood. Some are helping to carry bodies, others are packing up cars. Where would she go? She really only has one place.
Her bedroom. I dash towards Carter's house, pushing people out of my way along the sidewalk.
I nearly jump up the front steps and push through the front door into the house.
“Caitlyn?” I yell. “Caitlyn.”
The house returns with silence. I make my way to Caitlyn's room and open the door. It is empty. Sara's room was next door, I grab the knob. It is locked.
“Caitlyn? Are you in there?” No one responds. I knock and continue moving the knob. “Caitlyn?”
I press my ear to the door. My ear makes out a click. The click of a hammer of a gun being pulled back.
No.
I take a few steps back from the door and charge at it with all my strength. It splinters at the lock and I stumble through and fall to my knees. I turn to the bed. Caitlyn is sitting on it. In her lap is that small revolver, and I feel like I went back in time.
“Caitlyn... don't.”
“What do you know?”
“More than you know. Please give me the gun.”
“She's been the only thing that I cared about the past five years of my life. What the hell else do I have?”
“This isn't...” While standing, I hold up my hand and take a step closer to her.
She pulls the gun from her lap and presses the barrel to the side of her head. I stop.
“Don't come any closer.” Her face is stained with tears and she looks at me the way Jon did so many years ago. She is going to kill herself.
“Caitlyn. Don't.”
“Not only is she gone, I'm the one who killed her. What the hell does that say about me? The one person in the world that made me human is dead. I killed her. I'm an animal. I'm finally a damn animal.”
“Caitlyn, Sara made her choice. She wasn't who she used to be. You're not an animal.”
“She was still my sister.” Her eyes turn to me. They plea to me. “Jo, just let me go.”
“I can't,” my eyes begin to water. “I was just as alone as you before you came. Don't do that to me again. I'm not ready to start losing everyone I love again. I can't lose you. Don't make me live without you. We are a family. And although I'm having trouble understanding it, Carter and Paige are our family. Family, that’s our humanity we hold on to. We cannot lose that.”
She looks at me as her eyes shimmer. Moments drag on as we both stare at each other. I don’t know what else to say. Her arm drops and the gun falls to the bed.
“Jo, I'm so sorry.” She stands and runs to me putting her arms around me. She sobs for what feels like hours. When she collects herself, she explains to me what Sara said. That she didn't care about us anymore.
That she was having President Matthews' child.
I hold her close on the floor.
We are home. I am home. We will always be together. We both need each other. We both need Carter. He needs Paige. This is our family.
And I love them all.
Yes, Yes I do.
Chapter 31: Carter
I walk through the boulevard of our shattered neighborhood.
It's been two days since the New Americans crumbled our compound. Those still alive retreated deeper into the countryside and very few of us remain. There may be barely a dozen of us among the ruins. The Resistance is dead, and once again we are just a group of people trying to survive in the wreckage of a place we once called home. We are forced to stay here as people heal and hope that the New Americans leave us alone. Considering how pitiful we look right now, I figure they will. What threat do we pose to them anymore? Matthews didn't seem to care too much about getting back his mistress. He just wanted us. Still, sometimes I just stare into the sky and expect to hear their helicopters again.
Luckily, I haven't heard them. Not yet anyway.
We are broken and they knew it when they retreated two mornings ago. They are going to watch us bleed.
After I stopped the one fire, I went to help with the other inferno. Before I reached it, the gunshots began. The New Americans had completely surrounded our home and moved slowly inward killing everyone. I started to help people flee toward the school. From there, we were able to get the weapons from the armory and fight back. However, the New Americans never pushed close enough to the school where our men were already armed. Considering the entire neighborhood was in flames, they must have thought their mission was a success and left us in the ashes. They probably left us to tell others the consequences of crossing them. It was then that I able to leave the school and discover the extent of our damage.
We haven't stop picking up the pieces since.
Jo and Caitlyn have become inseparable. They say few words to anyone besides me. David, by all luck survived the shot to his chest. That bullet somehow missed every vital organ. Now he won't shut up that he took three bullets and keeps on kicking. At the moment he's still pretty bed ridden but his mouth definitely works.
Paige...
Paige suffered massive blood loss from the gunshot. Stitching up the severed artery was nearly impossible. With how many towels I threw onto the floor, I thought there couldn’t be any left. My clothes were stained bright red from all of the loss. I didn't know if I should be the one working on her, but I am the best we have. Sweat poured from my forehead when I tried to find the flowing artery inside of her. A few times I had it in my forceps and then I would lose it. The clock ticked. And ticked. And ticked.
But I finally managed to close it.
The bleeding stopped, and she stabilized soon after.
The next day her eyes finally opened. It took hours before I would leave her side. Paige is my everything and that was too close. She eventually convinced me that others needed me more than she did at that moment.
She was right. Most were not so lucky after the that morning. We buried over fifty bodies in graves. Ryan spent the entire first day just digging in silence. He really blamed himself for all of the deaths. Most were shot several tim
es – many execution style.
I am really starting to hate guns.
I reach Ryan's house; he retreated there when most of the bodies were beneath the earth. He wants daily reports about those hurt, although there weren’t many who remained. I push the front door aside and walk slowly through his living room and into his kitchen. He sits staring blankly ahead at the yellow wallpaper. David leans against the counter-tops behind him. His shirt is unbuttoned and thick layers of gauze cover his chest. Looks like he took it upon himself to check out of the hospital bed. We rarely met in Ryan's home. He's fallen apart since the ambush. Aside from his constant inquiries of us, he sits around and blames himself for the massacre.
“Everyone in the medical wing is fine. We shouldn't be losing anyone else. We should be ready to depart and find somewhere else to live within the next few days,” I reply. We all determined that staying here is no longer an option. We would go to the west and try to find a new home. We hoped Michael would have come back, but the bus is nowhere to be seen. We are on our own. Ryan continues to stare forward.
“Good. Thank you,” he responds. I wait a few moments for him to say something else, but he turns back to stone. Just as I cross the threshold of the kitchen, I hear him pull air into his lungs.
“Carter. What…? What are we going to do?”
David shifts in place and looks at me. He shakes his head slightly from behind Ryan. Ryan has been asking this question non-stop. A question he would never have asked three days ago. This needs to end.
I pull the briefcase from the floor. It is the one Kevin found at the president's house. It has sat idle since we found it. Maybe this will snap him back to his senses, or at least distract him. I pop open the locks and grab the documents inside. I place the documents in front of Ryan.
“We haven't really had a chance to check out that intel completely,” I say. He takes it from me and pretends to look at it.
“I don't even know if this all matters anyway. It's over. They won.”
Enough. I slam my fist into the table and round my shoulders towards Ryan. I catch him off guard.
“No Ryan, it's not over. As long as we breathe, we can try to stop them. This was painful, I know. People here still look to you. I still look to you. People out there still need you. And we may not have a whole hell of a lot going for us, but that doesn’t matter one bit. Do something other than sitting here and feeling sorry for yourself. We still have to survive not only the New Americans, but the rest of the world. We need you.” I pause to reel in my frustration. “The Ryan who saved my life, who saved most of our lives, is still here. We are still ready to follow you. Go through that briefcase, find something. Anything. Find a purpose, a cause in here. And we will keep fighting. Not because you want to, but because we have to. One day they will pay for this.”
Ryan's old look returns briefly to his face and he nods slightly. I walk out of the kitchen, and charge out the door. Hopefully, that was what he needed.
I was wrong. The Resistance is not dead, yet.
* * *
I set down the box on the counter in front of the rusting cash register. Vines curl up along the counter and a hefty layer of dust and filth cover everything. Darrel and Tori carry a generator into the main room. They both said they spent enough time by themselves and were not about to leave us. Darrel took a shot to the leg when we were attacked, but it went through clean. He manages with a slight limp.
A few days after I talked sense into Ryan, the roughly dozen of us who decided to stick with the Resistance moved farther west, farther away from Washington. We needed to gather strength. I was familiar with the area and thought of a few places we could stay. The third place on my list was an isolated family farm market in a valley. We decided it could have enough resources to get us through the winter. The sign was splintered, but what remained read, “ax Farm.” Their crops had grown uncontrolled for years and we found seemingly endless vegetables growing among the tall weeds and grass. With some farming, they would be even more bountiful in the next season. The farm was a small miracle that we needed to survive.
This farm will be our new home, where we can lick our wounds and prepare for the day we can retaliate. Considering there are eleven of us, I have no idea what we can do, but we will come up with something.
After prying open the broken automatic doors, we stepped inside the farm's market building. Weeds have grown through the building and some windows are shattered. The roof is still intact, and most of the walls are thick concrete like the floor. With some modest repairs, this place could be quite a home for the few of us.
I head back to the SUV and bring in a few more boxes. The SUV's gas tank gauge pin is nearly on empty. The other two vehicles are about as spent. We are running out of gasoline, and most of our other supplies for that matter. Luckily, two of the geniuses chose to stick with us: Nate and Laura. They were essentially strangers to us, but they said their loyalties were with Ryan. They assured me that they could get the SUV's fuel, however they suggested that maybe we should drive more fuel efficient cars. We all agreed.
Including David.
“What are we going to do for winter?” Paige asks as she wheels in a suitcase slowly. She is still recovering from the shot. I want her to sit while we do this, but she is stubborn. I love her for it.
“Oh, we have great plans for this place,” Nate says with a smile as he pushes up his thick framed glasses. Laura stands right behind him and nods as her eyes examine the ceiling. She looks young for her age and always wears her dirty blonde hair tied back in a tight bun. I've tried to have conversations with them in the past, but they are both pretty awkward to say the least. Yet, they will be the ones who can save our lives.
“Yea, the Ax has a lot of potential.” she states.
“Is that… what we are calling it?” I say with an “oomph” as I set down a box of jarred food- the last from our harvests we could salvage.
“I like it.” Caitlyn responds. She hasn't said much since she killed...
It was nice to hear her voice.
“The Ax it is,” Ryan says. “This all starts today. “ Ryan begins to empty the boxes on the counter. He's become our leader again. We continue to help him unload the car just as the sun begins to set over the nearby hills. This farm is a new start for us, and we will need some pleasant surprises if we expect to survive. We need to find these surprises quickly, but I am optimistic.
A month ago there were nearly two hundred of us. Now there are eleven: Paige, Caitlyn, Jo, Ryan, David, Kevin, Nate, Laura, Darry, Tori, and me.
* * *
The next day arrives and by mid afternoon I am working with Jo and Caitlyn to take down some piping that is hidden by the tall grass. I have plans to reinforce our security with the steel pipes. Paige sits in the grass beside us and watches. She is still too weak. Nate and Laura left early in the morning to find some new cars and some parts they needed. They took guns, but they swore they would be very careful. Laura said not to worry; they once managed two years before us. They plan to be back by night fall. Ryan and David are inside trying to set up the radio equipment and generators. Everyone else is already in the fields trying to salvage the usable remains of crops. Kevin hopes that we may even be able to get a harvest of beans before it becomes too cold.
“I remember coming to this place a long time ago when we first moved to the city,” Jo says while undoing the lashing on the pipe above her head and placing the steel to the ground. “We picked out pumpkins around Halloween.”
“Yea, we did that every year here,” I respond. I remember my mother and father bringing me here, even when I was getting older. Pumpkin carving was a tradition. Regrettably when I went off to college, the tradition died.
“Maybe we can try to do Halloween this year.” Caitlyn replies in a monotone. “Maybe some pumpkins are growing wild. Then next year, we can make sure we plant some that will be ready.”
It's relieving to hear her talk long term.
“Will this Ha
lloween involve costumes too,” Paige asks with a grin.
“Of course,” Caitlyn answers back with a weak smile. Despite everything, we were here. I finally did it Jon. I did the best I could. As long as my lungs have air, I will keep them safe.
“Caitlyn that sounds like a plan, I think maybe I'll be-”
“Everyone get in here, now!” Ryan yells outside the door to those of us within earshot. I share a glance with Paige, who then looks to Jo and Caitlyn. We all drop the pipes and run into The Ax. Ryan has never sounded so urgent before. As we enter the building. He sits at a table and a radio sits on the table. The generator whirls outside and through the headset I can make out some crackling noise, but there is more order to it than mere static. The briefcase from the president's house is now open and the documents are shuffled in front of him.
“While we were still at the Resistance, I went through the case and on one of the papers was a list of radio frequencies used by New America. We were setting up the equipment here and thought I'd test them. Most channels are static or random military chatter. However, about ten minutes ago this message began and has been repeated several times. I can't,” he stumbles with the words. “I can't believe it.”
“What the hell is it?” Jo asks.
“It's a Washington radio bulletin.” Ryan says. His hand grabs the headset's chord and pulls it from the radio. Static emits from the speaker on the radio. The Ax is silent except for the muffled droning of the coal generator outside. The static changes into a voice. The voice sounds urgent. It sounds scared.
“New update from Paris Island City. Six hundred people have fallen ill. They have terrible rashes and they have fevers near 105 degrees. The victims are of all ages. I repeat all ages. The plague is back, and it's worse.”
End of Book II
Thanks Again
Whether you are one of my few students who actually reads, a longtime friend or family member, or perhaps a complete stranger, I want to thank you again for your support. When I published After the Plague, the kind words that followed meant much and they were encouragement for me to begin Book II promptly. Despite having a basic outline of the novel, it has changed and warped each time I sat down at my computer. After many long hours, it finally became the product you hold in your hands: the story of a family managing to find each other.
Humanity Gone: Facade of Order Page 17