by John L. Monk
“She’s fine,” Jack said, even though Eric hadn’t expressed concern.
They passed the now-open roadblock and parked in the street between the two houses. Going by the number of cars, it did look like there were a hundred people living there.
Jack and the others got out to look around. All had a gun ready except him.
“Dude—your gun,” Eric hissed, gripping his own and staring widely around in fear.
Everyone seemed afraid except Larry, who watched Jack with his head tilted a little to the side as if trying to figure something out.
Suddenly, from the house on the other side of the road, Cassie and a boy burst out. The boy was unarmed, but Cassie had something in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” she shouted angrily.
“Hey, that’s Cassie!” Eric said, and lifted his hand halfway in greeting.
In response, she raised a little orange can that issued a high-pitched blast, causing several in Jack’s group to flinch.
“Shit!” Eric said and raised his rifle, pointing it back and forth between the two houses.
The boy ran in the house while Cassie shouted for help, blaring her horn again and again. When nothing happened, she swore and threw it down and followed him inside.
“Now what?” Larry said, coming to stand next to Jack.
Jack looked around and tried to contain his sudden nervousness. Back at the cabins, his plan had seemed reasonable. Now it seemed cocky.
The others crowded around him, waiting for direction.
“Come on,” he said, and headed to the house with the generator.
“You heard the man!” Larry shouted when nobody moved to follow.
Reluctantly, the group from Big Timber traversed the overgrown lawn. Food cans, cigarette butts, and empty or half-full booze bottles littered the ground, mingling with bits of brightly-colored paper from the previous night’s fireworks display.
Rather than knock, Jack tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. He pushed into the dark house and winced at the mingled smell of excrement, vomit, and exhaust, which would have built up slowly enough not to trouble their slumber.
“What a mess,” Larry said, peering over his shoulder.
The walls were spray painted with strange graffiti tags Jack couldn’t read. Extension cords snaked through the loose trash in the foyer to rooms on the ground floor and upstairs.
“What’s that smell?” Eric said, holding his nose. He peered into the living room and the wall-to-wall mattresses like back at the cabins. “Why aren’t they moving? Hey, dummies—get up!”
Jack coughed and pulled his shirt over his nose, eyes watering as he took in the nightmare scene of death. All teenagers, no children. He thought he recognized two of them. They’d made a fuss about how the cabins sucked, then left after Lisa moved to the farm. With so much going on, he hadn’t thought much of it. Nobody was forced to stay, after all.
The dead shared a disturbing similarity. Their faces—all of them—were bright pink, as if sunburnt.
Trying to control the churning sourness rising within him, Jack stepped carefully around the mass of bodies to one of the windows. He drew back the curtains and opened it to let in some air.
“Jesus!” Eric said when he’d gotten a good look.
“I think they’re all dead,” Larry said. “Just like Boyd.” He nudged Eric with an elbow. “Remember Boyd? Everyone thought he got electrocuted. Turns out it was carbon monoxide. Jack figured it out.”
Eric dashed outside and threw up noisily.
Larry glanced at Jack, raised an eyebrow, and waited.
Jack shook his head tightly and climbed the stairs. Halfway up, he stopped and said, “Get more windows open, unless you want to end up the same way.”
There was a strangeness inside him—as if his mind had been squeezed from the world through a tiny hole, leaving his body behind to stumble around. Sort of like when he was nine and his parents bought him a remote control car. He’d played with it for about an hour because they’d wanted him to like it. But it was limited and slow, and he couldn’t figure out how to make it fun. He felt that way now: limited and slow, and as far from fun as life from death.
A kid lay stretched across the landing, about ten years old. The youngest so far. Jack stepped over him and into the master bedroom, where he found two girls and a boy in bed, about fifteen years old if he had to guess. That part of him in the hole whispered how the boy had probably been in charge here, and not Cassie, if he lived in the bigger house and had his own personal harem.
Another room had more mattresses on the floor surrounding a bed, and there were little kids lying on them—all of them under ten. Five in all.
Jack’s legs buckled and he hit the floor. He felt lightheaded and knew he had to get a window open quick. The poisonous air seemed heavier up here. Didn’t it? Sure it did.
Rough hands grabbed him from behind and lifted him to his feet.
“Dude, they’ll see you. Don’t ruin it,” Larry said, dragging him over next to the window.
Jack leaned against the wall, breathing heavily while Larry opened the window to let in the chill, morning air. Still peeking through his tiny hole, Jack watched his shotgun-toting friend and noted the boy’s concern.
For your reputation. Not you.
A kid named Todd came upstairs and shouted, “There’s a whole room with food in it!”
After a quick look at Jack, who nodded absently, Larry ran downstairs. A minute later, everyone there whooped in delight at whatever they’d found.
Jack stared out the window. Across the street, Cassie and her companion were led out of the house by two of Larry’s friends. The girl’s profanity-strewn protests carried loud and clear, and set her apart from the boy, who seemed to be doing everything in his power to fade into the surroundings.
Jack puzzled over what to do with them. It wasn’t like he had a prison to keep them in, or judges to say how long. Chaining them on the bus didn’t feel right. And exile meant keeping dangerous enemies around and free to cause trouble—something he swore he’d never do again.
As if coming to the same conclusion, one of Larry’s friends raised his pistol to the back of Cassie’s head and fired a single round. The boy screamed and tried to run, but quickly fell under a barrage of gunfire. Afterward, the two kids high-fived each other and continued along like nothing important had happened. One of them saw Jack in the window and waved.
Jack didn’t wave back. He stood there and watched while the awfulness of his new world kept happening.
25
Not long after stealing the guns, Dylan made his daily visit to the upper level where the adults stayed and discovered his father was dead. He’d lasted longer than the sergeant, who’d shot himself a few days before.
It was now the middle of summer. There were only a few adults still living—all in the early stages of the Sickness—and he knew deep down that some critical threshold had passed. He didn’t feel like a grown-up, but the little kids depended on him, and he depended on himself.
Staring at his dad, shrunken and staring on his death cot, Dylan felt more anger than sadness. He’d always been closer to his mother. When not in D.C., his dad had been campaigning for someone, or visiting some country, or cutting a ribbon somewhere. When they were together, it always felt rushed and packed with too many things to do. Sporting events, usually, where his dad spent half his time on the phone and the rest asking about grades, friends, hobbies, and other father-and-son topics. Then re-election, then the Sickness, and now Dylan didn’t even have canned conversation anymore.
Aimee and some of the older kids helped carry his dad beyond the tarmac, where the army men had dug a huge ditch for the dead. The smell was simply awful, the flies a terrifying black cloud they had to shout over to be heard.
After sliding the senator down the earthy incline, they each took turns shoveling dirt over his blanket-wrapped body. When his dad was completely covered, they crowded around Dylan and hugged hi
m, forcing him to cry not only for his father, but for all who’d lost loved ones.
“What do we do with the guns?” Aimee asked on the way back.
Grateful for something else to think about, Dylan said, “We don’t tell Aaron. He’s a freak.”
“So, you heard?” she said.
“Yeah.”
Word had it that Aaron was recovering from the Sickness.
“Now his friends are acting even more obnoxious,” she said.
“You think they know about the guns?”
Aimee shrugged. “Nobody told them, but … I think they figured it out somehow. Just a feeling.”
He nodded. “They can’t have them. Not ever. We need to protect ourselves. Carry some around. We’ll keep the rest hidden.”
“Are you sure? Why don’t we throw them in the river? Then nobody can have them.”
As tempting as that sounded, Dylan shook his head. “No. We may need them someday. To protect our stuff. Our food. Everything.”
“From who?
Dylan shrugged. “Anyone.”
“If someone comes, we could share. There’s more than enough.”
She wasn’t wrong. There were hundreds of boxes of FEMA bars spread across several shipping containers. But there were also a lot of mouths to feed, and it was their duty to protect the little kids. Hard to do that with the guns in the river.
Aimee protested the evils of guns and how violence never solved anything. She didn’t seem ready to change her mind, so he didn’t argue with her.
The next day, he gathered Aimee and about fifteen of the older survivors who’d never hung around with Aaron or his cronies. He put it to them bluntly:
“I’m taking the little kids with me to Terminal A, as well as most of the food. Enough to last a long time, and you’re all welcome to join me.”
“What’s wrong with here?” one said.
“Aaron,” Dylan said, “that’s what. I’m not kicking him or his friends out, but I won’t stay here and watch him abuse little kids.”
Word had gotten out by now about Aaron and the child he’d lured away. If the news bothered Aaron’s friends, they didn’t show it. They’d stick with him forever, no matter what he did. Dylan was reminded of his dad and a scandal his mom refused to talk about involving some waitress. For weeks, everyone said his dad was toast—would never get re-elected—but he’d sailed through with an easy majority. People wanted their guy to win, no matter what they’d done, and Aaron was their guy.
“What if he won’t let us go?” another said. “He has that gun, remember?”
“Sticks it in everyone’s face,” someone else said.
In response, Dylan pulled out a scary-looking pistol of his own and showed it to them.
Gasps of astonishment all around.
“You’re gonna shoot him?” a kid named Bobby said. “That’s awesome!”
Dylan shook his head. “Not unless they try something.” He scratched his head. “I’ll fire warning shots—so they know I mean business.” He regarded them one by one. “Some of you guys need to carry one too.”
Several of them—the boys—brightened considerably at the prospect of having their very own guns. The girls, like Aimee, ranged between looks of disapproval to downright horror. But Dylan had made up his mind. He gave them a choice: stay with Aaron and his goons or come with him and the children to Terminal A, guns and all.
In the end, most chose him.
“Great,” he said. “Now let’s go get our food.”
Because they were taking in all the little kids—several hundred of them—they needed most of the food. One of the fifteen-year-olds knew how to drive and taught Dylan the basics. Then, using two military trucks, they pulled up to the row of shipping containers and spent the day looting them. They transferred the boxes of FEMA bars into Terminal A using luggage carts and stored them out in the open next to the baggage carousels. They moved the guns and ammunition to the police room, which had several jail cells that could be opened with a key they found in the office area. Only he and Aimee and two others knew where the police room was, and they removed the sign in the long, connecting hallway between the terminals.
Aimee was useless with guns, but some of the boys had been big-time gamers and thought they could handle themselves if it came to it. They even fired a few rounds outside into the air to prove it. By the time Dylan came down with the Sickness, everything was in place to properly defend their new home.
“If I don’t make it,” Dylan told them weakly from his cot, “it was cool knowing you all.”
“Oh, shut up,” Aimee said, adjusting the loose clothes around him for warmth. One of the things about the Sickness was how cold the victim got. “You’ll live. You’re way stronger than that bully, and he’s walking around now.”
“He is? When? How did you …?”
“I went over to check on the adults. There’s only like two alive, and nobody’s taking out the dead ones. It’s starting to stink real bad. I yelled over the side for someone to come help me and that’s when I saw him.”
“Did they help you? With the dead?”
“Nope,” she said. Then she pulled out a handgun.
Dylan blinked in surprise. “Since when do you have a gun?”
“You know that girl, Sadie?”
He nodded. “She stayed over there. Think she had a crush on Aaron.”
“Yeah, well, they were raping her,” she said. “About twenty of them, all lined up. Right on the floor next to that place that sold sunglasses.”
The Sickness dragged a victim’s temperature very low, forcing a caregiver to pack him or her with blankets and keep the room almost hot in order to counter it. Walking became difficult almost immediately due to acute weakness. Periods of unconsciousness followed after the first week or two. When awake, eating and drinking were physically challenging. Lack of appetite virtually guaranteed most children would starve to death. For kids around thirteen, the odds were longer. For those Dylan’s age—fifteen, as of a few weeks ago—the odds were very long, though not hopeless.
Dylan’s fight was somewhat atypical in that he knew all this, having seen it with his father and countless other kids—most of whom had died—and so he forced himself to eat and drink during those occasional moments of lucidity. In the end, this is what saved him.
A month later, when he could finally stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time, he knew something big had happened. The power was out, and there were other cots nearby, each with a small form packed in salvaged clothing. None were moving. But then, if they were sick, they wouldn’t.
He struggled to rise but fell back panting. Too hard. After a five-minute break, he gathered his strength and reached for the water bottle Aimee kept on the floor next to him. He drank greedily at first, then made a face.
Yuck …
He held it to the light coming through the windows. The water wasn’t dirty, exactly. But definitely not as clear as he remembered it. A little on the amber side. He took another sip. Sort of bitter, almost burnt.
A while later, he woke again to see Aimee hovering over him with a concerned, yet hopeful, expression.
“Dylan?” she said.
He tried to reply, to say hi, but it came out in a raspy croak.
“You were the worst I ever saw,” she said, brushing the hair out of his eyes, even though it hadn’t been. “We lost like ten kids while you were out. You’re a lot skinnier now. Sorry.”
“… ’s okay … how many left? Big kids …”
She seemed momentarily confused by the question, then said, “Oh … yeah … um, about thirty of us left, not counting the children. Aaron’s got about forty. We lost some …”
Now it was his turn to be puzzled. “Lost …?”
“Couple of kids joined them. They were afraid. Aaron found guns of his own, and these trucks with machine guns on the top.” She shook her head and wiped her suddenly brimming eyes. “They shot some of the little kids who were outside playing.” She
bit her lip and wiped her brimming eyes. “Just for fun! After that, we killed two of them when they were going to the food things. Now we keep someone up every night and sleep near our guns.”
Dylan couldn’t believe it. He’d known Aaron was bad. Terrible, really. But a murderer? And Aimee … before he got sick, she seemed like one of those people who marched with signs outside his dad’s campaign headquarters.
“I didn’t shoot anyone,” she added quickly. “It was one of the boys.”
Dylan winced and massaged his temples. His head hurt. And how weird was it, to have a headache and not know right away? But that was how things were now. Weird.
He struggled to rise but fell back, exhausted.
“What else?” he said.
She had a lot to say. The power had gone out, which he could see for himself. The water went out at the same time. Now they had to get it from the river. It made everyone’s stomach hurt until someone suggested boiling it. They had plenty of pots—scrounged from an airport restaurant—but very little wood, except for some construction framing over a broken section of sidewalk.
He stopped her there. “Where do you go to the bathroom? The river?”
She shook her head. “We pee in the drains, and uh … you know … in the trashcans. We change the bags if they get too full, then throw them in the pit. Well, normally. It’s too dangerous to go right now, because of Aaron. But there’s lots of bags, so we won’t run out for a long time.”
He looked at the cots with the motionless kids. Each cot had a full water bottle next to it on the floor.
“How many others are sick?” he said.
Aimee said half the little kids were either getting sick or coming out of it. They’d lost almost three hundred already, leaving about two hundred.
“If you can’t go to the pit, where do you put them?”
“In the cars,” she said. “Over in the parking garage. We bust out a window and open the trunk.” She shrugged. “Gotta do something with them.”
He nodded, then winced as pain like lightning shot through his head. “You got any aspirin?”