by White, A. L.
It was in that moment that she had appeared; from out of the depths of Virginia’s soul, a place hidden deep from the world and safe. It was the real Virginia. From the times before her mom had gotten sick, before her dad had been dragged from the house by the emergency services people, and long before her brother had died so violently. There in the field between the house and barn she was running around and laughing like a kid again. Every now and then a scream would escape her, as she wrestled the ball away from the dogs and threw it again. She was having such a good time that she had lost track of time and everything else around her. Only when it looked like Zeus had laid down refusing to chase the ball did she take notice of the movement around them circling in closer. Zeus did not growl or move; he just laid there panting as if he could not catch his breath. Perseus moved in front of both and growled.
Virginia reached for her crossbow, but it was gone. She had laid it down on the ground about thirty feet away from her. Her head snapped from the bow to the zombies. They were closer, by far, but slower. In a mad dash, she ran towards the bow; a shadow came from her left closing within inches. It quickly went down as Perseus attacked the creature, knocking it off its feet, and to the ground.
Virginia put an arrow into the crossbow and spun towards Perseus, busy tearing the throat out of the zombie. She called him to her side and backed towards Zeus who was still lying on his side panting. There were too many for her to fight. Even more, Virginia thought, than there had been outside of the lab where they patched up Bob and Jack.
When she reached Zeus, she yelled at him to get up and move. Zeus lifted his head up and stared at her with pleading eyes. It looked to Virginia like he was hurt and afraid for the first time since she had met the dogs at Bob’s house. Then, from where he was laying, Zeus saw the zombies cross into his field of vision. Something inside him willed him to his feet, driving him to protect Virginia. Once up and moving forward, slowly, on unsteady legs, he pulled his lips back into a snarl bearing his massive teeth. Virginia patted him on the head and moved backwards towards the barn. It was the only path left to them, and it seemed the safest right now.
With each step backward the herd surged forward. Slowly, like a train on a track, toward them. Perseus stayed right by Virginia’s side with Zeus still blocking the path between her and the approaching zombies.
A hand reached from the side, grabbing a hold of Zeus, and he turned into it snapping his maw like crazy. Virginia shot an arrow into the head of one zombie as Zeus vanished from sight. As she reached the barn door Virginia could still hear him growling and fighting the herd off. Perseus moaned for his companion and right then, Zeus broke free of the herd, running to his companions. Virginia swung the door open enough for them to get through and slammed it closed behind her. On the door, there was a clumsy looking lock that she latched and then pulled an old box over in front of it.
Surprisingly, the barn was well lit by the light streaming through the random holes in the loft rafters. Virginia could hear the herd moving around the barn as they enveloped it. The door was probably the weakest point, she thought, and even that opened outward. The makeshift latch should hold unless they had grown smarter and knew to pull it outward. Zeus seemed to be doing a little better as he lay down on the hard dirt floor in front of her. She would check on him as soon as the rest of the barn had been checked out. In the back, just on the other side of a green tractor it looked like there was a staircase off to the right, in the shadows.
Raising her crossbow, Virginia moved toward it. When she noticed Perseus moving to her side she told him to stay. If anything did pop out, Zeus would need all the help he could get right now. On she went, towards the shadows, to see if that was what she had thought it was. It would make her a whole lot happier to stay up off the ground floor if she could. The murmur of the zombies outside made it harder to concentrate on the job at hand. Her eyes were looking forward trying to make out every shape, but her mind and ears were wandering towards the noise.
Just beyond the large tire on the tractor, Virginia could finally make out the stairs and a barrel of some sort. The stairs looked better than the stairs inside of the house. They creaked with every step she took. Funny how so much noise could surround her, but her senses could hone in on one single thing; so much so that the sounds it created were as loud as a gun going off. With each step she was growing more tense and ready to spring on something, anything; the anxiety building until she reached the top step.
For the most part, the loft was empty. A few bales of hay, but that was it. On the far end, above the door they had come in through, there was another large door. Virginia walked over to it and swung it open so that she could see. There before her were thousands of zombies. There were still quite a few in front of the barn and moving around the house, but the rest of the herd was moving off towards the road.
Returning to the dogs, Virginia petted Zeus on the head for a few minutes. Reassuring them both with the motion. Perseus, feeling like he was being slighted, pushed his head under her hand.
“OK, you too; let’s go upstairs and get some rest while they clear out of here.” She said as she helped Zeus get up and led them to the stairs. Perseus went up without a problem, but the older Zeus needed help up the stairs. It had crossed her mind, briefly halfway up, that maybe it would have been better to just leave him downstairs. The thought didn’t last long because she was closer to these two dogs than anyone alive. If he had stayed downstairs, they all would have had to stay downstairs.
Once at the top Zeus seemed to have caught his second wind and he followed Virginia on his own without help. They all settled down in front of the open door and watched the herd move away from the area. Zeus laid his head in Virginia’s lap and went to sleep. Perseus lay down on the other side, looking out the door too. It wasn’t too long before he and Virginia had joined Zeus in a deep sleep as their bodies tried to recover after the afternoon’s excitement. It was the first sound sleep that Virginia could remember having since her mom grew sick and was taken away.
The rest only lasted for a little while even though to Virginia it felt as though it could have been hours. The gun shots rang through the silent air, echoing off the barn walls. Then the horrible screams reached her. Immediately she knew that someone at the bunker had been caught by the herd, maybe everyone. Jumping to her feet, startling the dogs, Virginia started to head down the stairs and then it was silent again. Moving back to the loft door she listened as hard as she could for any signs of life. Just a single sound of a voice was all she wanted, or a gun shot. Nothing came. It was then that the realization that she was truly alone came washing over her. In her mind she went over and over how this could have happened. Then it struck her, like being hit in the face with a brick. In the morning, when they had left, Perseus was running around playing. She had run up to where he was to see what he had found, leaving the gate wide open. No one at the bunker would have stood a chance if they were not keeping watch. The only ones who seemed to ever keep watch was her, Lori, Jonas and the dogs. With them all gone she knew that Jack probably never raised his nose from the laptop. Even if he had looked up, once his mind went to work he barely noticed anything else around him.
Reaching out in front of her she pulled the large door to her and heard it latch. There was no way of knowing if anyone survived at the bunker for now. The herd would need to move on just as it had moved into the area before she or the dogs could try to get back there. She wondered if Lori had made it back ok. There was no way of knowing if they had driven past her while she was playing with the dogs. Sometime later, overwhelmed and uncertain, Virginia fell into a deep sleep.
***
Some folks called it the unofficial neighborhood association; others called it the Briar subdivision men’s gossip session. It didn’t really matter what it was called because it happened every Saturday around nine am until it was too cold for anyone to take sitting on Doc Stewarts’ patio. There were a few that even kept it up once winter had firmly set i
n by moving inside to Doc’s kitchen table. Charlie Harris was one of the die-hards that rarely, if ever, missed it.
Charlie Harris was born and raised right in Rivers Crossing. Most of his younger years were spent dreaming about living anywhere but there. The plan had always been to attend one of the state universities, and then, move as far away as he could. Sometime in High School that plan began to fade. When his father took ill, Charlie went to work full time in the family-owned diner. His grades suffered and the university dream died a little more with each table he’d clean. Sometime in the fall of ninety-nine, with medical bills adding up and business steadily declining, his father closed the diner and declared bankruptcy. It wasn’t very long after that when his dad passed away.
Charlie worked odd jobs on local farms to make ends meet for him and his mother. Not wanting her son to turn into another sad story about a young man who stayed in Rivers Crossing living a life of regret, Babe Harrison encouraged her son to move north and find a good job. After a lot of debate back and forth on the subject, Charlie set out for a better job. Loading up his beat up seventy-two Malibu, he set off with a full tank of gas and little else. Settling in Leesville, about an hour and a half away from Rivers Crossing, he found work as a laborer in a small machine shop. The work was hard, and the hours were long, but it was a good living. It was there that he met Annie Lincoln, a receptionist. A year later they were married.
In the beginning, Charlie returned home every Sunday to have dinner with his mother. After meeting Annie, that fell to twice a month, then to every other holiday. It just seemed that there was never enough time to make the trip to Rivers Crossing. He worked long hours all week, and Annie was going to school online to get her degree. Having only Sunday off, Charlie liked to vegetate and watch whatever sporting event was on the television. Annie seemed to have an ever-growing amount of homework that she spent the weekend completing.
In two thousand eight Charlie’s mothers was diagnosed with cancer. She refused to move to where she could get better treatment. Charlie and Annie, at Annie’s insistence, moved in with her to help as much as they could. Luckily, Rivers Crossing was in the beginning of a short-lived boom. A canning company had moved into the old bottle plant just outside of town. Main Street saw shuttered buildings like Walt’s Diner and the Movie Palace reopened and repurposed. They even had a MacDonald’s open on the grounds where Kermit’s filling station had been.
Babe Harris passed away a year after they settled in with her. Charlie inherited the paid off house, so they stayed. They couldn’t complain much; Charlie worked at the canning plant for a decent wage, and Annie did web and logo design from home. They were not rich, by any means, but they were happy and decided it was time to start a family. That was when the housing bubble burst and the economy tanked. The canning plant closed, putting Charlie out of work, and Annie found it harder to find freelance design work. The idea of the family was put off until a future date when they both had steady employment.
Charlie tried to talk Annie into moving back to the big city, closer to her family. Annie wouldn’t even consider it. She considered Rivers Crossing her home now, and Charlie thought she had settled in too well to the small-town way of life. Her argument always ended with the fact that they owned the house outright and the rest of the country didn’t seem like they were faring very well either. It seemed too risky to Annie to just pack up and leave. Charlie collected unemployment for as long as it lasted then returned to looking towards the local farms for odd jobs.
It was around that time that Jerimiah “Doc” Stone moved in next door. Doc had retired from a successful private practice in Chicago. He would tell Charlie that he grew up in a small town like Rivers Crossing and had always longed to return to the simpler way of life. What started out as a few short talks at their property lines quickly morphed into Saturday morning Coffee. Before they knew it more of the neighborhood early birds were joining in and it officially moved to Doc’s patio. Charlie liked it over there because unlike his yard, Doc worked hard at creating his version of an English garden. Called it his ‘little slice of heaven on Earth,’ and Charlie tended to agree with him.
This morning when he arrived, the usual crowd was missing, and only Pete Wilson was there. Pete lived on the other side of Doc and had the distinction of being one of the few people that could get a rise out of Doc on occasion.
Pete nodded his head as he sat down, and Doc handed over a fresh cup of coffee. In the background the Bixby local a.m. news station was playing.
“There! Did you hear that?” Pete was asking Doc, “The mainstream media has jumped on board with this whole pandemic story.”
“I hardly think a small a.m. station in Bixby counts as mainstream media, Peter!”
“Why wouldn’t it? They could easily be owned by some media conglomerate and that is what they want us common folk to think!”
Doc shook his head no, almost violently, “If that was true Peter, how would you explain the simple fact that Rivers Crossing has so many cases of it?”
“Cases of what?” Charlie asked, causing Pete to spit out his coffee and Doc to sigh loudly.
Pete then gave Charlie a disappointing look and said, “Charlie do you even watch the news or pay any attention to what we talk about on Sundays?”
Had he not felt as if he had been rebuked, he would have laughed at that. In fact, he rarely paid attention to most of their conversations. Mostly they were Pete ranting about the liberals trying to take everything he had worked hard for away from him. Following that was Doc stating that no one wanted what Pete had.
“Charlie, there has been a national curfew put into place because of the flu outbreak.” Doc stated, as if he were talking to a young kid, “They say this one could be a life altering event it is so bad.”
“Annie doesn’t like watching the news much, says it is all just too depressing for her.”
“How do you find out what the weather is going to be like?” Pete asked.
Charlie smiled at him, “Either I hear it here from you two, or I just see what it is like when I walk out the door. If it is raining, it’s raining. If it is sunny, it’s sunny.” Letting that sink in, he continued, “Besides, if there is a national curfew then what are we doing here now?”
“Who in the hell are you expecting to enforce it in Rivers Crossing?” Pete asked. “Sheriff
Hernandez? We have known Joel since we were all kids; even he will tell you that he is more of a glorified security guard than he is law enforcement. Whatever happens in Rivers Crossing? Nothing!”
“Is it really that bad Doc?” Charlie asked.
Doc looked up at the clouds for a minute like he was searching for an answer then said, “Charlie, this is a bug like none I have ever seen. It strikes fast and kills even faster. Hospitals in Bixby and Long Tree are at full capacity from what I hear. I can’t even get a straight answer from my old friends in Chicago as to what it is.”
The phone rang twice and Doc’s wife, Bess, came to the sliding glass door and motioned for him. “Will you guys excuse me for a minute while I see what this is about?” Doc asked.
“I have to run, Doc,” Pete said as he climbed out of the chair and nodded his head at Charlie. A few minutes later Doc returned and asked if they could shut this week short and make up for it next week.
“What’s wrong Doc?” Charlie asked.
“The mayor wants to set up a makeshift hospital of sorts in town,” Doc replied.
“Where? There is no place that could be used for a hospital.”
“I believe they are deciding between using the new school or the behemoth next to the church,” Doc replied.
Charlie laughed at that. The behemoth was what the town’s people called the ‘old school’ that was built during the Great Depression. The actual name of the school was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt School. It was far too large for Rivers Crossings’ needs from the moment the design was presented. Most people figured it was a way to put people to work from the surroundin
g area. As far as Charlie knew, he was one of the last classes to go there, and that was second or third grade. It was decided that for so few students the cost didn’t justify using the old building anymore. “I think they would be better off with the new school,” Charlie replied.
“I agree. That is exactly what I told the Mayor last night,” Doc said, “I guess Bess and I will find out which building it is in about an hour or so. We’re going down to help set up a triage area.”
“You need any help Doc; you know where I am at.”
“I know Charlie. For right now I think it’s best for you and Annie to stay inside. No reason to take chances,” Doc stated.
Charlie nodded his head that he understood what Doc was saying. “Speaking of Annie, I should be getting back home about now.”
When he got home, Annie was sleeping on the couch with one of her true crime dramas playing on the television. Charlie walked over to get a closer look at her and noticed how puffy her face seemed to be. Her allergies seem to be getting the best of her this time, Charlie thought to himself. Then he noticed how unbelievably hot the house was. Annie was not above cranking up the heat when she wasn’t feeling well, and this was one of those times. Charlie quickly decided that it would be best just to let her sleep so that he could get a few things done around the house. They generally shared all the work around the house so doing a little extra, while Annie battled what he hoped was the last of the allergy problems, didn’t bother him at all. Besides, not having a job to go to had taught Charlie to find busy work around the house just to keep his sanity. If he ever let any sign of depression show it would hit Annie twice as hard. She had always had issues with depression. Teetering on a thin line between being deeply depressed and as she called it, ‘feeling good.’ It never made a difference to him, he prayed for her to feel good, but loved her just as much when she was depressed. Sometimes they would go for walks along the river just taking in the scenery. It cheered Annie up and that was all that mattered to Charlie.