The Last Bastion (Book 1): The Last Bastion

by Callahan, K. W.

  The one who went beneath the SUV lay motionless, facedown on the ground, an arm tucked awkwardly beneath its torso. The one who had gone airborne, having been tossed like a rag doll, now looked like a rag doll, limp and lifeless on the sidewalk where it’d landed.

  Another of the infected, who had been hit pretty hard as the SUV barreled down the street, was trying to pick itself up off the pavement with little success. It appeared that it had several severe injuries. From Michael’s vantage point, he could tell that one leg was bent askew, obviously badly broken. And one arm hung limply at the person’s side, apparently incapacitated by the vehicle’s impact.

  Another carrier who had been flung to the ground, had managed to stand, but it now stood staring at the pavement as if in a daze or in shock. Two others, one of whom had managed to miss being hit, and another who had just been clipped looked agitated by the scene around them and unsure of what to do. They moved to inspect the carrier struggling to stand, bending and looking at its injuries. Then they looked at the motionless form laying face down on the pavement before they backed away slowly. As they retreated, they looked up and down the street around them as if they were confused by what had happened and frightened that it might happen again. It was almost like watching apes or Neanderthals.

  Suddenly, the two carriers who were still able, bolted. They took off down the street, cutting through the front yard of the home at the end of the block and disappearing from view. The injured one who was up and could walk, straggled along as quickly as it could, eventually fading from view as well. This left the two motionless Carchar carriers on the street, and the one that was still working to right itself.

  “Should we go out there and do something?” Patrick asked.

  “Do what?” his father shut the portion of blinds through which he was watching and looked at his son aghast. “Help that injured thing out there and risk getting bitten in the process? Put it out of its misery and risk being hauled in by the cops for murder? What would you recommend?”

  Patrick just shrugged as he continued to watch outside. “I don’t know. Seems cruel to just leave him…her…it, whatever you want to call it, out there struggling.”

  “It might be,” Michael nodded, “but at the same time, I’m not going to have us risking ourselves for it. What if those other ones, the uninjured ones, come back when you’re out there screwing around with that one? Then you’ve got a whole other situation on your hands. Let the cops deal with it. They’ll be here…just be patient.”

  And the police did arrive, eventually, just as darkness was beginning to fall over the Blenders’ block in Brookfield. Michael, Josh, and Juan went out to talk to them. They provided statements about what they’d seen and why there were two dead Carchar carriers on their street and another one that was in bad shape.

  The carrier that was still alive was eventually restrained and loaded into a police transport vehicle. The police said the hospitals weren’t sending ambulances for those carrying the Carchar Syndrome since the liability for the unarmed EMTs and drivers was too great.

  About half an hour after the police had hauled off the injured carrier, a camouflage-painted Hummer and a two-and-a-half ton army truck rolled up. Several National Guard troops loaded the two dead Carchar carriers into body bags and hefted them into the back of the army truck. As it pulled away, the Blender men could see piles of similar bags stacked inside the rear of the truck.

  “We need to have a meeting,” Michael told the other men. “Will you two round up the others?”

  “Sure,” they nodded.

  Michael checked his watch. “It’s almost five. Let everyone have dinner and then we can meet at my house at seven. Sound good?”

  “Not the clubhouse?” Josh frowned.

  Michael shook his head. “I want a more secure, less visible location. We’ll meet in our basement. And that reminds me, I’d keep the lights inside your home to a minimum. If there are more of these things roaming nearby, lights could attract them. Be sure to tell the others that when you’re telling them about the meeting.”

  “Got it,” Josh nodded.

  “Will do,” Juan agreed.

  * * *

  Cheryl Kent had been an administrative assistant at a large financial firm in downtown Chicago for the past five years. She lived in a nice, two-bedroom, two-bath condo in the upscale suburb of Western Springs, Illinois just a couple blocks from the train station. She was young, single, attractive, and actively participated in the Chicago dating scene.

  She enjoyed frequenting the many restaurants and eateries in and around the Western Springs area. Most everything she needed was in walking distance of her condo – post office, drug store, train station, some boutique shops and restaurants.

  And work was only a half-hour train ride to Union Station followed by a brisk five-block walk to the high-rise in which her company’s offices were housed. She earned a decent income, had good benefits, and worked among good looking, intelligent co-workers who liked to go out after work.

  Life for Cheryl was good – at least until one day earlier that week when she’d been sitting on the train, fiddling with her phone on the ride in to work. It was the last day of work she’d have for the month of December. Her office was going to close early for the holidays due to the Carchar Syndrome currently sweeping the city and now the nation.

  Cheryl was looking forward to work that day. It was going to be a blow-off day. After work, they were going out for their office holiday party at some bar the company had rented out for the night. She’d never heard of the place, but she was confident it would be a good time. Her co-workers had good taste in selecting area hotspots at which to party. And lately, Jason, an analyst at the firm, had been laying a trail of hints that he had his eye on her. Cheryl hoped that the holiday party might offer the perfect opportunity to find out if those hints might lead to a little something more.

  But Cheryl never had the chance to find out if her romantic inclinations were well founded. During her morning commute that day, one of the Carchar carriers she’d been hearing about on television and reading about in the newspaper got aboard the express train she was on. At first, no one riding in her car realized that the person was infected. He boarded the train with a mass of other people. It wasn’t until he was approached by the conductor and pressed to either show or purchase a ticket that he began to react violently. The Carchar carrier must have been in the early to middle stages of infection because his teeth had yet to reach the point where they were no longer easily concealable. But they were still razor sharp, and the confrontation with the conductor must have been enough to push this particular carrier over the edge. He attacked the conductor, going straight for the throat and ripping a sizeable chunk of flesh from the conductor’s neck.

  Cheryl had been so busy fiddling with her phone that she didn’t even notice the conductor’s plight, and the ensuing struggle between the carrier and several other riders, until it was literally in her lap. As several men worked to restrain the Carchar carrier, they pushed him back into Cheryl’s seat. The carrier was pinned against Cheryl, teeth biting, gnashing, snapping viciously at her face, her neck, her breasts, her arms, her hands, and any other body part that was within biting distance.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the other riders were able to restrain and finally incapacitate the infected man. They used several scarves to tie his hands and legs, and a knit hat to cover his still thrashing, gnashing head and face.

  It wasn’t until they got to Union Station and the train police had removed the Carchar carrier that Cheryl realized she’d been scratched during the fray – at least she thought it was a scratch. But as the injury had grown inflamed and painful, she feared the scratch might instead be a bite. She returned home after work that night, fearful for her future. And over the next several weeks, as her health diminished, her front teeth began to crack and crumble, and her appetite for normal food was replaced by a craving for uncooked meat, she knew that it was a bite.r />
  But Cheryl had seen what happened to people who had been bitten by a Carchar carrier. She’d heard the stories of hospitals overfilled with patients strapped to their beds. And she had seen the news footage of the National Guard’s Carchar carrier camps. Carriers in such camps were detained, restrained, and who knew what happened to them after that. There were far too many infected, and without a cure for the syndrome, Cheryl had a feeling she knew exactly what happened to them.

  Either way, no one could help her. It was too late. By the time she knew for sure that she was infected, her mental faculties were fading. When one day she went out to buy meat at the grocery store, she found that once there, she couldn’t remember where she lived. She’d wandered the streets of Western Springs, eventually ending up in Brookfield. But by that point, she could barely remember anything about her previous life, even her own name.

  A couple times, she’d tried to talk to people, to ask them for help. But when she attempted to speak, no words came out. And when the people she tried to speak to saw her open her mouth, they had pointed at her with looks of sheer terror. Some of them had screamed. Others had just run away. She’d even been shot at by one man. But the people she’d met recently, the group she’d wandered with and had taken shelter with for the past few days, they hadn’t treated her like that. Instead, they’d wordlessly accepted her, helped her, taught her, showed her how to hunt for the flesh that she so craved.

  But then that large beast on the street had roared out of nowhere and attacked her group. It had bitten her in the attack, and knocked her to the ground. There was pain in her arm, her leg, her side, her head. Now she was wandering, cold and alone. Her companions, those who weren’t dead or injured on the street, had run away, leaving her behind. Her injuries had kept her from staying with them. And once she’d lost them, she’d gone back to where they’d left the others. But when she’d returned, she’d seen the flashing red and blue lights. She didn’t know exactly what they were, but she knew that the others had been afraid of such lights, that they meant danger in some way. Therefore, she had hidden until they were gone.

  Now, her injuries, the cold, and the settling darkness instinctively told her that she needed to find shelter. She had unsuccessfully tried entering several of the large boxes around her. She didn’t know exactly what the boxes were or why they were everywhere she seemed to go, but she knew that they offered shelter and warmth. But several of the boxes that she had tried to enter had contained creatures – creatures like her but different. These creatures were afraid of her. She knew that they could provide her with food if she could catch one. But she also knew that the creatures could be dangerous. They could fight back, and they carried things that could harm her, sharp sticks of a shiny hard substance that could easily penetrate her skin, and heavy black things that they held in their hands and that exploded loudly and could hurt her. She’d seen several of her group killed with such objects already.

  But the large boxes that seemed to be sprinkled everywhere were often difficult to get inside. They had hard to use contraptions through which to enter them. The creatures that lived inside these boxes seemed to navigate the devices easily enough. But for those like Cheryl, these entry points proved almost impossible to access. And unless these entryways were already open or could easily be pushed open, it usually meant that Cheryl would have to move along to try another box.

  In the past, she’d watched one of her group use his hand to turn a shiny object on the entrance to one of the large boxes. It had made a clicking sound and then the entrance had magically opened. Cheryl still remembered this. It seemed to connect with something from her past, something that was lodged somewhere deep in her brain. She was going to try this same tactic on the box that she was currently hiding behind.

  She felt a combination of excitement and fear at the thought of entering the box. Oh, it would be warm, so warm. But with the thought of warmth came another desire, one that she found almost impossible to satisfy lately – hunger – an overwhelming, insatiable, instinctual craving for fresh flesh.

  * * *

  As darkness settled over Chicagoland, there was a knock at the Franko’s front door. Jack, the youngest Franko boy, answered the door with a giant grin.

  “Hi Patrick,” he waved. “Want to come in?” he asked the Trove’s man-child.

  “No, thanks,” Patrick smiled goofily. “I gotta get back quick. But Dad wanted me to tell your mom something. Is she home?”

  “She’s in the shower,” Jack explained matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, okay,” Patrick looked unsure of how to proceed.

  “Want me to give her a message?” Jack stepped up with a solution.

  “Oh…yeah, okay, sure. That’d be great,” Patrick smiled and nodded eagerly. “Uh, can you tell her that we’re having a meeting tonight at seven, at our house?”

  “Okay,” Jack nodded. “A meeting at your house at seven. Anything else?”

  Patrick scanned the air with his eyes, thinking, and then said, “Oh yeah, it’d be a good idea to keep the lights inside your house off too.”

  “Really? Why?” Jack frowned.

  Patrick shrugged. “I uh, I don’t know…something about the creepers around here.”

  “The creepers?” Jack frowned.

  “Yeah, the creepers, biters, these infected people…whatever you want to call them. I guess Dad thinks the light attracts them or something. I don’t really know.”

  “Whatever,” young Jack shrugged.

  “Okay, so you got all that?” Patrick asked.

  “Meeting at your house at seven, keep the lights off,” Jack saluted importantly.

  “All right, see ya later,” Patrick saluted back. “Oh, and keep your door locked,” he called behind him, but Jack had already closed the front door.

  “Who was that?” Andrew asked from where he sat on the sofa as Jack came back into the living room.

  “Just Patrick.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Message for Mom,” Jack walked over to the stairs and mounted the first few steps. Then he cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Mom! Meeting at the Trove’s house at seven!”

  “Okay!” he heard her yell back.

  Jack went back into the living room and plopped down beside his brother who was playing a racing video game.

  Suddenly the phone rang.

  Jack huffed and stood, walking over to an end table beside the couch, flipping on the lamp, and picking up the phone. “Hello?” he answered and waited. “Yeah, sure,” he answered after a moment. “Okay. We’ll be right over,” he hung up.

  “Who was that?” Andrew asked, never taking his eyes off his video game.

  “It was Patrick.”

  “He was just here!” Andrew frowned. “What’d he forget?”

  No, nothing, he just wanted to see if we wanted to come over and play video games at his house until the meeting.”

  “Cool,” Andrew nodded. “He has better games than we do…and a better television. Go tell Mom.”

  Jack went back over to the stairs and climbed halfway up this time before starting a shouted conversation with his mother.

  “Mom! We’re going to the Trove’s house to play video games with Patrick!”

  “What?! I can’t hear you!” his mother yelled from the shower in frustration. “I wish you’d come up here when you want to talk to me! You know better! I hate when you just yell things at me. Like I’m supposed to be able to hear you over the sound of the shower!”

  Jack sighed heavily and continued to the top of the stairs where he stood on the landing just outside the bathroom.

  He started talking again, but his mother cut him short.

  “I STILL can’t hear you!” she called angrily. “Will you just come in here and talk to me!”

  “Aww,” Jack moaned. “I don’t want to see naked Mom butt!”

  “I’m in the shower! You won’t see anything!

  Jack frowned and then cracked the door, peeking
his head inside. “We’re going to the Trove’s house. We’re going to play games there until the meeting at seven.”

  “Meeting at seven?” his mother stuck her wet and dripping head from around the shower curtain. “What meeting?”

  “The meeting I just told you about a minute ago,” Jack threw his hands up in despair.

  “You didn’t tell me about any meeting,” his mother shook her head, frowning.

  “I just did! I yelled it up the stairs!”

  “Exactly,” his mother eyed him.

  “Fine,” Jack huffed, shaking his head and sighing. “There’s a meeting. It’s at the Trove’s house. It’s at seven o’clock. We’re going there now to play with Patrick. Got all that?”

  “Don’t get an attitude with me, mister,” his mother gave him a look. “It’s not my fault you’re too lazy to walk up the stairs to relay messages. And I don’t want you walking over there by yourself with these Carchar carriers out and about.”

  “Patrick said he’d come over and get us,” Jack explained.

  “JACK!” Andrew’s voice was barely audible from downstairs. “PATRICK’S HERE!”

  “See?” Christine eyed Jack. “You barely heard that, didn’t you?” his mother pulled her head back inside the shower.

  “But I heard it,” he mumbled back. “Maybe you’re just going deaf in your old age.”

  “I heard that!” his mother’s head darted back around the curtain menacingly.

  “Oh, now you can hear!” Jack tore his way out of the bathroom laughing.

  His mother got back to enjoying her shower, smiling to herself.

  Downstairs, Patrick and Andrew were waiting for Jack.

  “You ready?” Patrick asked.

  “Yep,” Jack nodded, grabbing his coat from a hook beside the front door. “Let’s go.”

  “Let’s go out the back,” Patrick said.

  “Why?” Jack frowned.

  “Dad just told me to a minute ago. He said we should try to use the back doors since it’s safer…less visible. Did you see those things out there today…the infected or whatever?”