Earth's Survivors: box set

by Wendell Sweet

  “There are maps out in the garage. I can't tell exactly where we are though. Somewhere to the southwest of Gold Canyon is my guess. I didn't see anything here with an address on it, letterhead, no signs on the trucks. Nice trucks though, so it made money, whatever it was.

  “I'm going by where I think we are. I know we crossed over water before we got here, a bridge across a viaduct, at least it looked that way in the dark, but we didn't cross a highway, and 60 is right there, couldn't have missed it. Of course we could be a little farther north or a little more south, but even so we have to hit I 60, it's right there, so I'm pretty sure the next thing up is going to be 60.”

  Beth said nothing, the food was like heaven, but the crackers were a little dry so Billy left and came back with a cup of water and a Coke. The Coke was also cold. She nearly drained it in one pull. It was like her body was bent on a mission of replenishing itself in one setting. She made herself stop. “Good, but I don't want to get sick.” She said to Billy's raised eyebrows.

  He nodded.

  “Any gangs... At night? Around when you got here?”

  “Nope. One dead dude... Took himself out in the back office.” He motioned through the glass. “Put him outside. Turned black in the sun in a day or so.” He stopped and cleared his throat, left and came back with a Coke for each of them. “No one else. Not one. Nights are quiet... Truck runs good. I gassed it up, swapped better tires onto it too from the rack in the garage. Pretty easy to do. Extra gas cans, oil, a shit load of those blankets.” He paused for a second.

  “What,” Beth asked.

  “The nights... Days... It's been a blur,” he looked up toward the ceiling, confused. “I don't know, it seemed like there was no day when there should have been... Like the night lasted a long time... Some earthquakes too, I think they were earthquakes at least. Sick... My stomach felt like it came unglued it was so bad.”He took a breath and smiled. “Rained like crazy and then I swear it snowed... It was like a blur,” He shrugged. “Like I said. A rough couple of days.”

  Beth just looked at him. “You were tired.”

  Billy smiled. “That's what I said... I said...” He looked at the ceiling again. “I said it was being tired... confused,” Billy agreed.

  “You look... Clean.” She had looked down a few seconds before at her gore stained bra and panties. She'd been in these clothes for far too long.

  “Shower in the back. Hot water too once I got the electric on.”

  “Christ, and I'm sitting here talking?” She stood from the chair, found her stomach did not intend to give her a hard time and turned to Billy. “Clothes?”

  “Sure... I... I don't know if...” He turned red.

  “Yeah,” Beth said. She laughed. “No bra? Panties?”

  “Right,” Billy agreed.

  “Well I don't care if it's boxers, a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Clean clothes, Billy!” She looked around her... “Soap... A towel... That's it. Where is it?”

  “Um.. Right here,” Billy said as he stepped to the door and pushed it open for her.

  Billy returned to the lunch room a few moments later and cleaned up the blankets and empty cups while he waited.

  THREE

  Park Avenue: Adam

  March 19th

  618 Park Avenue: Seventh floor 2B

  Adam paced before the glass slider that opened onto the balcony. The apartment had been getting on his nerves more and more every day. Closing him in, making him jumpy, paranoid. Tosh's notebook protruded from his shirt pocket. He had found it, read it through several times, but it had told him nothing that he hadn't already suspected. She had left to save him the task of burying her. He had known about her heart problem. He hadn't known that she was out of medication. He hadn't known or he would have scoured the city until he found what she needed. Anything. But she had not wanted it to be that way. It was all in the notebook. She had felt she would hold him back, slow him down. She could never have the baby without her medications, and even then it would probably kill her.

  She had written about the baby. Better to let it go than watch it begin to grow inside of her only to die. It would slow her down, and she couldn't see how either of them could survive, only slow him down enough to make him die with them. In the end she felt he would die for no good reason trying to save her, so she had made the decision to leave.

  He had spent the last few days scouring the streets on foot, but he had found nothing. He had learned a great deal though. The city did not belong to the people any longer. Yes, the people were there, gathered together, hiding, but they were quickly becoming the dead. Looking at it, it was inevitable. The gangs would kill whoever opposed them. They were banding together. Someday maybe the people would be... stronger, and they could take the city back, but that was a long way off. You couldn't fight if you were too busy hiding, being terrified. He had wondered if it were like that everywhere.

  He had come back to the building, killed more gang members that had taken over the lobby once more, broken the lock set and made his way back up to the apartment. He had fed himself from Amanda Bynes' cupboards. The water supply at the taps was gone, but he had carried cases of water and sports drinks up to the apartment early on, so it was well stocked.

  He had lost track of the days as he had sunk deeper into his depression. Tosh had not come back. Where did you search for someone who was missing? She could be ten feet away or ten thousand miles away. There was no way to know. He had spent more and more time on the balcony, looking out over the dying city.

  The gangs had been giving him more trouble too. He had put a new deadbolt in the stairwell door that opened onto the lobby. He kept that door locked, but they had figured out how to force the lock. Not surprising since he had forced it himself to get back into the apartment. He hadn't been able to repair all the damage that he had caused to the steel door frame.

  The really bad part about that had been that when he did return, he had found the key to the stairwell door - apparently all tenants had one - along with a key to the lobby front door, hanging on a peg above the kitchen counter.

  He had finally scoured all the other apartments, taken what he could carry and blocked off the stairwell with a jumble of couches, chairs stacked up against the doorway and in the stairwell to reinforce it.

  He had thought, at the time, that closing off the stairwell made perfect sense. What he had not thought out was the fact that he too would not be able to use the stairwell. Yes, it would keep the gangs out, but it would also keep him in; it had since he had closed it off, and that was not something he could take much longer.

  At night he could hear them working at the tangle of furniture in the stairwell. It was just a matter of time before they managed to fight their way through it and clear the stairwell. When that happened, it would be the end of him.

  They had been coming at dusk and assaulting the stairwell. The last two nights, they had stopped simply assaulting the pile of furniture and junk Adam had tossed into the stairwell. They had instead begun taking it apart, working at it, as though they had stood back and really looked at it, decided how to clear it, and then went about it. And this morning, they had nearly made it. Another couple of hours of work, and they would have been in.

  He had decided the time had come to leave. It had, and really, he should have left long before. He should have left and headed south like he and Tosh had planned. Instead, he had developed a suicidal side. He didn't care. How else could he explain barricading himself in the way he had? He couldn't.

  It took three hours of the morning to make his way through the pile of furnishings and junk, and he had awakened three that had been left behind to guard the stairwell, they had come out of the shadows in the bottom of the stairwell and stared up at him. Smiling. He had shot the first two dead and wounded the third one before she realized he wasn't simply going to give up. She collapsed and then dragged herself out into the lobby screaming.

  A fourth one had waited in the deep shadows, silent, as he finish
ed moving the tangle of furniture and started down into the shadows. He stopped just a few steps down. He had taken a flashlight from Amanda Bynes' kitchen. He flicked it on now, gun out before him, before he took another step.

  The fourth one was crouched six feet below, waiting for him, and even though he had been ready, he nearly blew it.

  He was a young boy, and that had made him hesitate. He was coiled like a snake, and he came out of the coil and launched himself into the light.

  Adam fired three times, his finger squeezing convulsively on the trigger. The boy landed in a heap before him, a wet splash on the steps. His mouth continued to work, biting at the steel step where his teeth now lay shattered, groaning deep in his throat. Adam leaned forward and shot the boy in the head once more, and he stopped moving. He made his way around him and down the stairs into the first floor stairwell, trying hard not to think about what he had just done.

  There were two more waiting in the lobby, the girl, all but dead now, and an older woman who sat holding her head in her lap, cradled in her hands. He froze and they stared at each other for a second.

  “You didn't have to kill her,” the woman said.

  “Fuck me,” Adam said. “So she could kill me? I should kill both of you right now.”

  “Might as well... They will,” The woman said. She turned her eyes back down, stroking the young woman's hair, crying softly. “Might as well... Doesn't matter now.”

  He stood for only a second longer and then walked away. Part of him felt like a coward, the other part a killer. He wasn't sure what part was really him, but he couldn't kill them even knowing that the gang probably would when they came back and found him gone.

  Adam made the street through the same shattered door frame he had come through with Tosh just a few short weeks before. The gangs had shattered the windows on all the vehicles that were close by. Many had been set on fire. He had hoped to find something and drive out, but there was nothing left. He looked around at the early morning quiet of the devastated city, up and down the deserted street, scuffed the sidewalk with his gore spattered boots and then walked off to the south.

  New York: Old Towne

  Conner and Katie

  With more warm bodies to help guard through the night, everyone slept better, or at least longer and with fewer interruptions, Conner thought.

  The night had been another long one, well over twenty hours of darkness, but once the sun did come up, it crept slowly upward on a straight arc across the sky, the wandering, drunken course of the day before gone.

  Conner stood in the early dawn light sipping coffee, back leaned against the brick of the factory entrance, watching light spill over the tops of the cliffs that cradled the opposite side of the river as the sun crept higher into the sky. He felt someone at his side and turned expecting Katie, instead it was the young boy, Dustin.

  “Dustin, right?” Conner asked.

  The young man nodded his head, seeming pleased that Conner had remembered his name. “Jake sent me. He said he’d like to walk out Arsenal Street today, or maybe Washington Street, and look for vehicles.”

  Conner nodded. “Good idea. Tell him I want to change into some boots and let Katie know I’m leaving, then I’ll be ready to go.” Dustin nodded, smiled, and darted back into the factory. Conner finished his coffee in a few quick gulps, poured out the dregs and walked back into the factory to find Katie.

  ~

  In the end they decided on Washington Street simply because of the sheer volume of car lots that had been in that area. The sun rose steadily into the sky, maybe not as quickly as they were used to, but faster than it had been, and in a straight line, rising from the South and looking, Conner thought, as though it would sink in the North or Northwest somewhere.

  Six of them had come. Conner, Jake, Katie, Amy, Dustin and Aaron. Katie had already wondered privately to Conner where Lilly might be. It hadn’t escaped the notice of anyone that she and Jake had spent the night together.

  Katie walked with Amy, keeping up a fairly constant flow of conversation as they walked along.

  “So they think the new stuff will start now then?” Amy asked.

  Katie nodded. “They think it would’ve started before if we had thought to try it again, but none of us did. It also may have had nothing to do with it at all. We may have just picked bad vehicles to try.”

  “Seems unlikely though,” Amy said. “After all you had no trouble with the other three, and what are the odds of finding three old vehicles that would be able to be started and driven?”

  “Yeah. We thought the same. We just don’t know what was causing them not to work.” They both fell silent for a moment.

  “So was Conner your guy before all of this happened?” Amy asked. She flipped her black hair away from her face and studied Katie seriously.

  “No,” Katie answered. “I met him when we came to this factory. I knew as soon as I saw him though. It shocked me. I’ve never been like that, but I knew. I decided, and I told him. He decided that fast too. You think that’s wrong… weird?”

  “No,” Amy answered. “It’s almost the same with Aaron and me. I knew him. I liked him. We lived in the same apartment building. When it happened, he came and got me and Dustin. I’m not the kind of woman that feels as though I have to have a man around for protection. Hey, for a while there I guess I was pretty much a feminist. He just helped, and he wasn’t an ass about it either,” she shrugged, “A couple of days later we were together, and I’m not sorry at all. He’s a good man. He’s quiet. Thinks the world of Dustin.” She paused again.

  Katie nodded. She understood perfectly. It did seem as though Amy had some distance in her words, like something wasn't quite true, but it may be the same way it was with her own situation. It was brand new. Sometimes it was hard to believe that it was the truth. They walked in silence looking at what the latest quakes and torrential downpours had done to the small suburb.

  ~

  The ground that had been torn up had been leveled out. The roads had vanished in places under a layer of earth. The vague outline of the street itself could be seen under that layer of rubble, and here and there a building or part of a building still stood, but in other places it was like there had never been anything there at all. Or there were strange sights. The nose of a car sticking out of the ground as though it had been planted there. A large square slab of concrete balanced on what looked like a sandy bank. Pipes, wires, and the top treads of a wooden set of stairs rising out of the sand to meet it.

  Cars, trucks, a few stalled city buses, an occasional glimpse of asphalt where the road rose higher than the water had flowed. Jake, Aaron, Conner, and Dustin had stopped ahead. They were close to where the old high school had been. All that remained on the left side of the road now were a few walls and, strangely, a large oval running track that seemed untouched. The parking lot, most of it anyway, still remained and was full of cars.

  On the right was a small strip mall, also with a parking lot full of cars. The men were off the road in the strip mall parking lot standing next to what looked to be a nearly new four wheel drive sport utility vehicle. As Katie and Amy caught up, Aaron turned and smiled.

  “Keys are in the ignition,” Aaron said grinning. Dustin tapped the horn, a hard metallic blast sounded.

  “Battery’s up,” Conner said, his grin as big as Aaron’s.

  Jake slid into the driver’s seat through the open door. “Well,” he said. He turned the key.

  The motor spun and caught immediately. The truck kicked up to a high idle. The stink of burning gasoline filled the warm air.

  “I forgot what that smelled like,” Amy said. Everyone was smiling and laughing at once.

  “Let’s say we ride the rest of the way,” Jake suggested. No one needed a second invitation. Doors were opened and everyone piled in. Jake shifted into four wheel low, eased the truck down off the slight rise that lead from the road to the parking lot, bouncing the truck on its springs as it trundled down the rise,
over the sidewalk curb, and onto the dirt and asphalt road below.

  A small cheer went up inside the truck as Jake made the road, turned right, and headed slowly up the big hill towards outer Washington Street and its miles of car lots.

  ~

  By the time the sun stood straight overhead, eight hours of the day had passed by, and a small caravan of six vehicles were snaking through the debris and devastation, making their way back to the factory.

  A wide section of the old asphalt roadway had toppled into the river, but a large area still remained. They parked the vehicles in under the small overhang of cliffs above the factory opening. The cliffs extended a little more than thirty feet above the factory and then dropped down to the ground above and on the back side of the factory, leveled out and disappeared into a small wooded area populated with scraggly, undernourished trees, several of which hung over the cliff edge far above the factory. On the back side of that wooded area was a huge parking lot that ran up and behind the town square. It had once provided parking for the downtown area of Old Towne.

  Everyone who had stayed behind wandered over from some project they had been working on in front of the factory to admire the vehicles. Three new Chevy Suburbans and three new pickup trucks. The pickups were mismatched, one Ford and two Chevrolets. The Chevrolets were different models, one a full size pickup, the other a smaller one. All the trucks were four wheel drive. James wore a heavy apron stained with blood and was carrying a large butcher’s knife as he walked over.

  “Deer,” he explained, as everyone gaped at the blood stained apron. “Wandered right down the road. Had to be about ten of them. I got one and Sandy got one. Fresh steaks tonight, and that isn’t all.” He pointed towards Lilly and Nell where they stood over what looked to be a make shift fireplace of some sort.

  It was built up from the asphalt with three layers of thick stone that formed a base. From there the back and sides rose to support a huge wire rack that had been appropriated from somewhere. A good bed of coals glowed under the rack and several ears of corn roasted above them on the rack