The Last Bastion (Book 1): The Last Bastion

by Callahan, K. W.

  “So what do I need to know about the cannibals roaming Chicago?” Wendell asked smugly as he went to refill his wine glass.

  “Well, I don’t really know at this point. I just heard that there were several attacks near downtown. A couple people were bit by this crazy guy on the street and now they’re being treated in an isolation unit for flu-like symptoms. And they found these two dudes, homeless guys I guess, partially eaten in an alleyway. They were saying that they think they were consumed mostly by animals, but there were human bite marks on them too. The reporter said the police weren’t sure if the incidents were related.”

  “I would hope they’re related. I mean, how many crazy people do we have roaming the city of Chicago trying to bite and eat on people?” Wendell shook his head in disgust. “Sheesh! What’s this world coming too?”

  “Always something crazy going on in this city,” Charla gave a little laugh and then sighed.

  “That’s for sure,” Wendell agreed. “Man, this wine is really good!” he said after taking a drink.

  “You like it?” Charla asked, pleased with her selection. “It’s a Pinot Noir from Australia that I hadn’t seen before at the store.”

  “Yeah…good choice,” Wendell nodded. He took a deep breath. “Well, I’d better go flip the burgers.”

  “And I need to check the fries,” Charla stood from the couch. “Nothing worse than overcooked fries,” she said as Wendell headed for the balcony.

  “Except for undercooked ones,” he called back. “That, and the man-eating zombies roaming Chicago,” he laughed.

  Chapter 9

  “Load me up!” Josh called. “Just pretend I’m a pack mule,” he laughed as Michael hung plastic bag after plastic grocery bag on Josh’s outstretched arms.

  “Thank god you’re here,” Michael breathed exhaustedly as he continued loading Michael. “I’m pooped after all this shopping. Usually I leave this type of stuff to Caroline, but she always turns the reigns over to me around the holidays. I don’t like it, but I take the responsibility so that we don’t forget anything. This year, with all the extras we’re buying, it’s even worse.”

  “It’s like we’re preparing to feed an army battalion,” Josh agreed.

  “Worse…we’re preparing to feed the Blenders Thanksgiving dinner,” Michael looked at him with raised eyebrows as he placed one last bag onto Josh’s arm.

  It was a chilly Saturday afternoon, the weekend before Thanksgiving. They were unloading most of the food at Ms. Mary’s house. Ms. Mary had more room in her freezer, and they could set bags of non-perishable items on the garage floor until they were needed at Thanksgiving. Ms. Mary was there to supervise and direct, ensuring that her garage stayed as orderly and organized as possible.

  “My goodness, you really loaded up!” she gasped in surprise when she saw Josh and Michael hauling their goodies inside.

  “Well, we got extra of anything that was on sale for our reserve stocks,” Michael explained. “We’ll put that stuff on the shelves since we won’t be using it for dinner.”

  There were cans of cranberry jelly, green beans, turkey gravy, and pumpkin pie filling to go on the shelves alongside containers of stuffing mix, dehydrated mashed potatoes, cream of mushroom soup, and similar holiday time sale items. There were containers of whipped cream, several pork roasts, two large hams, ten pounds of butter quarters, and six dozen eggs for the refrigerator. On the floor, the men set several cases of bottled water, in addition to the ten or so they already had, as well as four, 24-packs of soda that had been on sale.

  Michael put one case of the soda and one of water in a standing refrigerator that he and Josh had moved into Ms. Mary’s garage last weekend. It had been the Trove’s refrigerator before they got a new one several years back. They’d moved it into their own garage where it sat mostly unused until around Thanksgiving time when they put extra foodstuffs they’d need for preparing dinner in it. But now that Ms. Mary’s was serving as their communal food storage staging area, they’d decided it would be better put to use in her garage – plus, it freed up space in their own.

  “These shelves are starting to get full,” Ms. Mary looked on as the two men worked to rearrange several rows of supplies. They wanted to ensure that similar items were placed together and sorted with earlier “use by” dates set toward the front.

  “Good,” Michael said, out of breath. “The sooner they’re full, the sooner we can stop buying so much stuff.” He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. “I have to admit, it does feel good, though.”

  “What’s that?” asked Ms. Mary with a smirk. “The exercise?”

  “No,” Michael gave her a smug frown, sensing the implication. “And don’t remind me about exercise and dieting with the holidays coming up. What I meant was that it feels good seeing all these shelves getting full. Gives you a sort of, I don’t know…warm, almost safe feeling.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Ms. Mary agreed. “I always get that same sort of feeling when I stock up my shelves with canned goods from my garden. I’d watch the squirrels hurrying about as fall approached, nuts in their mouths, or burying them in the yard, and I’d think, that’s me, getting ready for winter, stocking up, preparing. There’s this natural sort of instinct that’s fulfilled when the cupboards are full and the shelves are loaded. I guess it’s silly now with grocery stores and an ever-ready food supply available. I think many people are losing that sense of preparation and self-preservation that our hardier ancestors had not so long ago. When you lose that, you lose a sort of pride that accompanies it…a sense of self-reliance that you can make it on your own without having to depend so much upon others.”

  “I know what you mean,” Michael nodded, using his chat with Ms. Mary to take a breather from hauling groceries while Josh kept on working. “We’re becoming a nation of users now. We used to be producers, but now all we do is consume. All we really produce is services for other people, people who consume those services. Otherwise, we use mostly foreign produced products. And where as the majority of people farmed before the industrial revolution, now most of our food comes from only about two percent of our population. And it seems that the longer we stay on this path, the fewer people there are who actually know where our food comes from and how to grow it.”

  “It’s going to become a lost art one of these days,” Ms. Mary nodded sadly.

  “Soon, there will only be a couple massive farms that produce all the food for the entire nation.”

  “I hope it never comes to that,” Ms. Mary shook her head. “Growing your own food provides such a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. It’s almost like the plants become your pets. Watching your produce grow from seeded infancy into productive plants makes you appreciate what they give so much more. It’s a feeling you won’t get buying food that you have no attachment to at the grocery store, that’s for sure.” She paused, pondering something for a moment. “Just think if people had to kill the animals they eat.”

  “Huh,” Michael chortled. “We’d probably have a lot more vegetarians out there. Hell, we have half a farm in your freezer over there.”

  “People don’t think about poor bouncy baby lamb chops when they’re having dinner or sweet pink piggy when they’re enjoying their breakfast. All they see is the delicious meat on their plate. Most probably don’t even think about the actual animal that gave their life for that meal. I often think about if an alien race came down and harvested unborn human embryos from our women and fried them up to eat.”

  “My God! What a horrible thought, Ms. Mary!” Michael cringed.

  “Isn’t it?” Ms. Mary nodded. “Yet we think nothing of eating fried eggs for breakfast. Can you imagine how that must seem to the poor chickens?”

  “True,” Michael considered. “Never thought about it that way. Thanks a lot, Ms. Mary. I’ll never enjoy breakfast again. Thankfully the poor chickens can’t comprehend what we’re doing.”

  “Maybe not on a conscious level, but I think the loss of a mother’s unb
orn babies must have some effect on a creature no matter what its level of intelligence.”

  “Okay, this is getting too deep for me,” Michael shook his head. “I feel like we’re going to have to start holding hands and singing Kumbaya here in a minute while we wait for the Dali Lama to come give us praise for our deep thoughts.”

  “Deep thoughts…by Jack Handy!” Josh called as he brought in another load of bags. “Remember those skits from Saturday Night Live?”

  “And back to reality,” Ms. Mary sighed with a sweet smile.

  * * *

  The majority of the Blenders were gathered in the clubhouse for their Saturday evening happy hour. There were however a few members missing. Christine Franko and her boys, Jack and Andrew, were at a basketball game at the local high school, and Ms. Mary had gone to watch a play with a friend. Patrick Trove was also missing from the group, having gone out with several of his friends from college. And Monte Hines was expected back home from a sales trip any minute, his return flight having been delayed by bad weather in Colorado.

  Julia Justak and Suzana Mendoza had convinced the rest of the Blender children to organize a game of Monopoly at the clubhouse’s big card table to keep them occupied while the parents socialized. There was a large stock of other board games in the clubhouse. These games helped give the parents a reprieve from the kids and kept the video game playing to a minimum. While the Blender parents recognized the coordination benefits of video game playing, they also valued the social aspects that board games helped develop. Playing board games was also an activity that harkened back to simpler days and brought pleasant memories of the parents’ own childhoods flooding back.

  The rest of the Blender adults were chatting, sipping cocktails, nibbling on veggie sticks, chips and dip, and enjoying some pub cheese and crackers as their pre-dinner snacks.

  Manny Simpson was channel surfing on the clubhouse television, finally settling on a college basketball game, the score of which was tied going into halftime.

  “Why is it that whenever I find a close game, it’s going into halftime or a commercial break? Then I start channel surfing again or get sidetracked and forget it’s on and end up missing the end.”

  “Well, just leave it on this channel and watch the halftime report,” offered Juan Mendoza.

  “Huh…yeah, right,” Manny scoffed. “You ought to know my generation better than that. I don’t have an attention span that would have me suffering through an entire halftime show,” he started flicking through the channels again, then went to the channel guide and began scrolling through his options more efficiently. Finally, after finding those options fairly limited, being one of those early Saturday evening purgatories between when college hoops and football games ended, and new ones began, he sighed heavily and settled on the news to kill a few minutes.

  “Oh no,” Manny’s head tilted back in exasperation as he saw the news story. “Not more of this. Have you guys been paying attention to these biting attacks that have been happening around town?” he asked the others.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Yep!”

  “Crazy, isn’t it?!”

  Came the responses from around the clubhouse.

  “Zach Davis was wearing fake vampire fangs the other day at school!” Eight-year-old Jeremy Mendoza said as he moved his game piece from Boardwalk around to Baltic Avenue. “Baltic Avenue…I own it! Pass ‘Go’, collect two hundred dollars!” he held out his hand to his sister Natasha who was serving as the game’s banker. “Zach said he was one of the zombie biters, and he was going around the classroom pretending to bite other kids,” Jeremy explained as he accepted two, one-hundred-dollar bills from his sister. “Teacher sent him to the principal,” he put the play-money bills down in a nice-size pile of Monopoly money before him.

  “Did he bite you?” Juan gave his son a raised eyebrow.

  “I told him that if he bit me, I’d punch him,” Jeremy said.

  “Good boy,” his father chuckled, nodding.

  “Juan!” Suzana whacked her husband’s arm with the back of her hand. “Don’t encourage him.” Turning her attention back to her son, she said, “We don’t threaten violence when we encounter problems Jeremy. We use our words to resolve our differences. You can’t go around telling people you’re going to punch them when they do something you don’t like.”

  “But it worked,” Jeremy shrugged.

  “This time,” his mother said. “But next time, it might not. And next time, it could get you hurt or into trouble. If you had hit him, it might have been both of you going to the principal’s office. And then what would have happened?”

  “You and Dad would have been super upset,” Jeremy grumbled.

  “Darn straight,” Juan nodded. “Your mother and I never went to the principal’s office when we were in school. Your sister has never been either. And you’d better not be the first to break the family streak. Otherwise…” he tilted his head back, his teeth gritted and his eyes wide as he drew a finger knife-like across his throat. “Right?” he smiled at his son.

  “Right,” Jeremy nodded back and saluted.

  “Good,” his father nodded at his son who smiled at him.

  “Good,” Suzana nodded at her husband who realized that the family chain of command had been maintained to enforce discipline and proper parenting. ‘Trickle down’ parenting as Suzana referred to it – trickling from Suzana down.

  Manny turned the volume up on the television. “Let’s see what they have to say. This thing is freaking out of control!”

  A newscaster in the newsroom was talking, a headline in a caption box beside her head read: “Mystery Syndrome Linked to Bite Attacks”.

  The group listened as the newscaster spoke:

  “According to a source at the hospital, the still unnamed patient under observation at Rush University Medical Center has taken a turn for the worse. The source stated, and I quote: ‘In the last forty-eight hours, Patient X has been exhibiting odd and extremely erratic behavior that appears linked to the symptoms of a recent bite attack’.

  Patient X joins Todd Wilson, the first such case associated with this new disease, and a slew of other victims from a rash of similar attacks that have recently broken out across the Chicagoland area. Patient X’s symptoms appear to be associated with all the bite victims currently being treated. And these victims exhibit a proclivity to attempt similar bite attacks.

  Doctors have so far been reluctant to divulge the exact specifications of this new syndrome as they are still working to isolate the causes behind it as well as identify its symptoms. All victims are currently being held in isolation. Doctors are urging anyone who may have suffered a similar bite attack or have even come in contact with someone who has to seek immediate medical attention.”

  The newscaster sitting next to the one who had just finished speaking turned to her and asked:

  “Sandra, it seems like doctors are being very hush-hush about all this. Can you tell us why this is?”

  The other newscaster shook her head.

  “No…sorry, not right now, Trish. All we really know is that if someone arrives to an area hospital reporting that they’ve been involved in a bite attack, they are rushed into the hospital’s isolation unit where treatment to stabilize their condition is started immediately. As a side note however, I have had reports that the Center for Disease Control is now involved.

  And as a channel nine exclusive, we have someone who claims he may be able to shed some light on the origins of this disease. And no, he’s not a doctor. We’ll have him with us up next right after these messages.”

  “Wow, this looks kind of bad,” Manny Simpson breathed. “What in the heck do you think this thing is?”

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t appear to be going away,” Michael interjected. “And it doesn’t look like the medical professionals have any sort of handle on it. Otherwise, they’d be touting their latest and greatest fix.”

  “It’s k
ind of scary,” Margaret Simpson shook her head from where she sat swiveled in a bar stool. “It’s like the start of one of those movies, you know, like World War Z or Outbreak or something where the doctors and health officials are scrambling to figure out what the disease is and where it came from…except this time it’s real.”

  “Ahh,” Juan Mendoza waved a hand disgustedly at the television that was currently airing a commercial for a local furniture store. “How many times do we have to see this type of stuff? It’s the same thing every year. They come up with something to keep the masses occupied and interested so they aren’t paying attention to the corporate big wigs stealing money or the politicians they’re paying off to let them steal that money. One year it’s Bird Flu. Then it’s Swine Flu. Then it’s SARS. Then it’s Ebola or West Nile or Zika or some other virus to keep us all chasing our tails worrying about what’s going to kill us. And what happens? Did we meet our demise with Bird Flu? No. Did we meet it with Swine Flu or SARS? No. Did Ebola spread like wildfire across America? No. What about West Nile? Did the country collapse under the weight of that one? No. It’s always something, something with a catchy name or acronym that the media can toss around in their hype. But nothing ever happens.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” Suzana eyed her husband. “It’s just that America has the ability to deal with such things. Much of the world doesn’t. Diseases like Ebola or AIDS have a much greater effect in places like Africa where they’re lesser equipped to deal with them. Here, we have the early detection systems in place and the resources to throw at such diseases to stop them before they’re able to get much more than a toehold. Without advanced hospitals, the CDC, and coordinated efforts among a multitude of local, state, and federal agencies, one of those diseases you mentioned might have had far greater effects on our populace.”