Earth's Survivors: box set

by Wendell Sweet

  Before he pulled away, he glanced into the rear view, back at the truck. As he watched the flames leapt and flared into the rain filled skies. Mike shifted into first and drove quickly away.

  He pushed the truck hard until he arrived in Watertown; constantly checking the mirrors, expecting the truck to reappear at any moment. It didn't, and when he almost lost control of the truck sliding around a stalled car in the road, he finally slowed down, afraid that he would wreck the truck, and end up dead, or dying on the side of the road, finishing the job the kid had started.

  He turned right at a four corners, passing a small gas station that sat there, and headed into the city, still glancing nervously behind him. Just as he topped a small hill he glanced back once more. There was no one in sight, so he pulled off into the parking lot of a small store and turned off the motor.

  He sat for a moment, with the rain streaming in the opening where the door had once been, listening. He half expected to hear the truck's engine roaring towards him. He didn't, the air was silent, save the thrumming of the rain on the steel roof of the truck, as it fell and splashed its way to the ground.

  He slowly became aware of the pain in his left leg, as his heart slowed down and resumed a somewhat normal beat again. He stepped out of the truck to the ground, testing the leg. Dark blood covered a large area of the outside pant leg, just below his hip, and the blue denim fabric was shredded and burned. It now matched the lower leg.

  The skin was spit open for a few inches, he saw, but the bullet had only grazed the upper thigh. He breathed a sigh of relief, turned and walked towards the store. He took his rifle with him, and, glancing back at the road, listened carefully before he entered the store. Nothing.

  Inside he slipped off the jeans and clenched his teeth tightly together as he sprayed the wound first with a disinfectant, then poured a full bottle of peroxide over it. He wrapped the leg with clean white gauze, and taped the flap tightly. It stung a great deal, but he was afraid of infection, and it wasn't likely he would be seeing a doctor soon, he thought. The other wound had opened and was bleeding freely once more so he changed that too.

  He looked out the front glass doors when he had finished, still listening, then stepped outside. He had seen a small shopping center when he pulled in, to the left of the store, and set off towards it now, to replace the bloodied and torn jeans.

  He picked up two complete sets of clothes, leaving the others where he had removed them in the aisle of the store. The blood had nearly sealed the boot on his left leg to his foot, he discovered, so he pried them both off, washed his feet as well as he could with bottled water to make sure there were no wounds under all of the blood, and then pulled on fresh socks and a new pair of boots.

  He walked back over to the store, and then back to the rear coolers. He was surprised to find them still cold, and was even more surprised to hear a small fan kick on as he pulled a cold beer from within. He hesitated, then pulled out one more.

  He walked back towards the front counter, went behind it, and sat down on the stool that was there, staring out the wide glass windows at the parking lot as he sipped from the can. The rain dripped and drizzled, letting up somewhat.

  "Well, I made it this far," he said aloud. He shook his head, lowered his face into his hands and began to weep.

  SIX

  March 21st

  Arizona: Billy and Beth

  They awoke early to the chatter of squirrel-talk in the trees. Gray squirrels playfully leaping through the branches and running up and down the thick trunks, scolding as they went.

  Beth set the water to boil, once she had rekindled the fire from the still glowing coals, as Billy broke camp and quickly loaded the truck. They ate a small breakfast of the leftovers of the meal from the night before, and sipped at hot tea as the sun began to slowly peek over the tops of the trees across the lake. After they rinsed the utensils in the lake, and doused the fire, they climbed into the truck and drove slowly back to the main road. They both felt an urgency to be under way, and once they regained the main road Billy pointed the truck north.

  The going was slow, but the farther they traveled the less traffic there seemed to be, and, Billy discovered, if they stayed on the shoulder they could make pretty good time.

  Toward mid-morning they turned off onto state Route 260, and began to angle toward the New Mexico border. The going was much easier and they found that they could keep to the pavement, most of the time, which allowed them to make even better time.

  Late afternoon found them in the small city of Springerville just inside the Arizona border, and Billy drove the truck into the parking lot of a large shopping mall on the outskirts.

  The mall served as an anchor for several large department stores, and a large grocery chain. There were several other specialty shops scattered throughout the mall. They stocked up on canned goods, as well as several packages of freeze dried meats from a sporting goods store in the mall. Beth wandered across the empty mall to a clothing store, and Billy walked off towards a small gun shop he had spotted as she picked out some clothing for both of them. By the time they had finished it was late in the afternoon. They left the small city behind, and continued into New Mexico on I60. Just before nightfall they reached the Cibola National Forest and Billy pulled the truck off onto one of the dirt roads of the park and found a place to park among the trees. He unloaded the truck and set up camp, as Beth made dinner. She experimented with canned meat along with some freeze dried food, and the result was a tasty stew-like dish.

  “Where did you learn to cook, Beth?” he asked, “this is really good.”

  “Oh it's just a little something I threw together,” she joked, as she blew lightly on her finger-tips.

  “All I ever ate when I was by myself was fast food,” Billy said, “and it all sort of tasted like cardboard after a while. I can't believe you made this out of that stuff we picked up today.”

  “Well,” she said, “I did throw in some canned meat. If you think this is good, just wait until I have some decent stuff to cook with.” Billy bugged his eyes out comically at her, and said, “You mean this isn't the good stuff?”

  “Not even,” she joked back. They were at the edge of the San Mateo Mountain range, and it was somewhat cooler at the higher elevation. They had both remarked though, on how much warmer it was than it should have been. Beth more so than Billy. They sipped at cups of hot tea as the fire crackled invitingly in front of them.

  Manhattan: Adam

  The taxi was in the middle of the street.

  Adam toted a heavy shotgun and wore two 45 Automatics he had liberated from a pawn shop. He had used them more than once. A heavy pack on his back held extra rounds for the shotgun and the pistols as well as food stuffs and other essentials he had picked up.

  He had wandered through most of Manhattan before finding his way out and across to Jersey. He had remembered watching huge sections of it burn from Amanda Bynes' apartment with Tosh. It seemed then that there could not possibly be any part of it left untouched, yet here was a whole area that appeared to be just that, untouched.

  The taxi sat in the middle of the street. All four tires were up, Adam noticed as he walked closer to it. The balance of the street was littered with garbage, other debris from the surrounding buildings and little else. There were four other vehicles, all of which were parked sedately at the curb. He pulled one of the pistols as he approached the side of the taxi.

  The windows were up, the partition between the seats blocking his view until he was nearly even with the driver's window.

  The driver sat behind the wheel, a browned and shriveled mummy behind the glass. Adam staggered back against his will, shocked for a moment. The driver grinned back at him with his permanent, yawning smile. He was leaning against the door. Adam stepped forward, levered the door handle, and the driver spilled out with a dry rattle, shattering on the asphalt. Adam jumped back again, glancing up nervously at the surrounding buildings. A few pigeons, disturbed by the noise,
took flight... nothing else. A few seconds later, the silence came back, and the street was once again as it had been.

  Adam shoved what was left of the driver aside with one booted foot, and leaned closer to the inside of the car. He pulled his head back out quickly and backed away, his face pale. He had thought that since the body had seemed dried out, shriveled, that maybe there would be no smell. He had been wrong. He pushed the smell out of his head so he could hang onto the meal of stale peanut butter crackers he'd had for lunch. He walked off down the street, sucking the cool air into his lungs as he went. His eyes drifted across the crumbling remains of an old school, a few desks had been dragged out onto the lawn. A grade school, he thought, from the size of the desks.

  A leaning sign, probably the school name, had been graffiti sprayed... Gang signs. Tags, he told himself. He had seen enough of it to know what it was. The sign proclaimed that this area now belonged to some gang. He didn't know the signs well enough to know what gang, but the message was clear enough. Get out. You don't belong here. He almost missed the three people watching him from the doorway.

  A young, dark haired man had been at the front. He held what turned out to be a fully automatic machine pistol in one hand loosely, pointing at the ground. Adam had brought up his own hands, and they seemed to be indecisive, hovering over the pistols on either side. He forced them to drop.

  The young man nodded. “No harm, no foul,” he said aloud.

  Adam's eyes lifted to the two women behind the man. He nodded, and they nodded back.

  “Got a place close by,” Adam told them. Safe... A factory... It's like someone saw this coming and set it up... Food, canned shit, but lots of it. Fire,” He shrugged.

  “We're going a little further out,” the young man said. “Couple of car dealers out there,” he motioned vaguely toward the east. “Get some wheels. Try to get the fuck out of here.”

  Adam nodded.

  “Why don't we all throw in together then?” one of the women asked. She had short black hair, she had a habit of flipping it away from her face where it seemed to have a habit of falling. “We could go and get a truck and then come back to your safe place and figure out what to do.” She stepped forward and then down off the walk, and walked over to Adam. “Damn, you're a big guy,” Madison said as she offered one hand. The other held her own machine pistol down to her side.

  Adam chuckled. “Adam,” he said.

  She nodded. “John... Cammy,” she said pointing. They both nodded and then stepped down off the pavement and walked over.

  A few minutes later, they had been walking through what was left of Union City, talking as they went.

  Old Towne: Conner and Katie

  “…it’s not the same every day,” Jake was saying as Katie came out of the factory entrance. She looked a question at Conner and Aaron where they sat listening.

  “Length of the day,” Conner explained.

  “Yeah,” Jake agreed. He nodded at Katie. “Yesterday, twenty-six hours and a couple of minutes. Day before, twenty five and forty-two.”

  “Pretty close though,” Aaron said. “Starting to become uniform. Beats the days when it was closer to forty hours or more.”

  Jake nodded.

  “We don’t know what it means anyway,” Katie said. “Even a scientist would probably give us about ten hours of song and dance and then hand us the same old bullshit theory based on some other theory, based on, well, you know.”

  “It’s colder again,” Conner said. “But it doesn’t feel cold enough to snow.” He looked up to see if anyone held a different view.

  Janna Adams and Sandy walked out of the factory with the young girl, Allison, and the two little ones trailing her. A few seconds later Dustin came out of the factory too, looking around until his eyes fell on Allison. Katie smiled and glanced over at Janna Adams who was also smiling. “Good morning, Janna,” Katie said. “I see you’ve got lots of help this morning.” Everyone carried boxes filled with odds and ends. They set them down, and Allison and Dustin began going through them.

  “I do at that, Kate,” Janna said. “We’re sorting through the stuff we brought back, to see what we’ll take with us, what else we need.” Katie smiled and nodded back.

  “Kate?” Conner mouthed when she looked his way. She rolled her eyes.

  James walked over. “I thought we should make specific lists. Janna’s going to make lists of what we’ll really need and what we have, so when we go out looking, we’re not out a long time. We’re going for exactly what we need,” James said.

  Everyone nodded agreement. “I guess we should all be thinking like that,” Conner said.

  “Yeah,” Aaron agreed. “What we take, or have to have, we may end up carrying. There’s no guarantee that there will be roads in good shape, or roads at all.”

  The conversation bounced back and forth for nearly an hour, everyone contributing ideas that they thought should be on the lists: food stuffs that were high in protein: Clean, bottled water, back packs, the big ones hikers used, tents. Katie produced a pen and Amy, who had joined them, wrote it all down. “That way we’re all on the same page,” Katie said.

  “I think we should dig in with Janna,” Conner said. “See what we need, what we got, what we need to get.”

  Route 40: The Southwestern Desert

  Sammy Black

  The truck began to rattle deep in the engine block and a second later a loud wheeze rent the air, bringing the smell of hot motor and burned oil with it.

  Sammy Black's eyes shot up to the mirror and he saw the dark spray of oil behind him on the highway, the trail coming away from that, following the now coasting truck. His eyes came down and the rear tires on the truck suddenly locked up and he had to fight for control as the pickup skated across the wreck dotted interstate and plowed into the side of a burned out SUV. The airbag was in his face before he could even react, and a second later the truck slammed back down to the ground from the bounce the rear end had taken at impact, and the quiet began to creep back in to the roar in his ears.

  He pushed himself slowly away from the steering wheel, flexed his jaw experimentally and felt blood go trickling away, running across his chin and then down his throat as he laid his head back against the headrest and waited for his blood pressure to drop and the roaring in his ears to taper off.

  The silence of the desert came back a few moments later. How long he didn't know, but he had flexed his left leg and the pain had made him scream. The next thing he knew his eyes were opening to the late afternoon sun and the desert quiet.

  His fingers scrambled across the seat top and he found the bottle of water he had been working on. The whole back of the pickup was full of water and packaged food. Camping stuff, the things that hikers ate. Freeze dried this and that. Jerky. Protein cakes. It was the first thing he had done after he had set off the last canister in Houston. He had driven south and then began southwest. He found the bottle, lifted it to his lips and drained it. He had not realized how thirsty he had been.

  He had started in North Carolina, worked his way into Georgia, then Alabama before the shit had really hit the fan, and he had barely managed to keep the truck on the road when the first quake had hit.

  He had just left the tunnel that passed under the Mobile Bay when the quake had hit with such force that he had bounced off the road, skipped over the concrete rail and found himself rolling slowly down a grassy median toward the highway below. He had managed to get the brakes on and get turned around back up toward I10 above, but he couldn't get the truck back over the concrete rail, so he had left the truck to see if there was some other way to get back up onto I10. When he stepped through a break in the concrete rail, and back up onto the highway a few seconds later, he turned his eyes back to the Tunnel he had just come through. Water lapped at the roadway. The tunnels swept down into that water. The whole bay had seemed to be boiling, agitated, but as he had watched the water had suddenly dropped, receding, leaving the Bay a muddied mess. All around him the
re were screams of panic, calls for help, and he was torn. If the water went out that fast it was a… He couldn't make it come, but it was bad. A hurricane could suck the water out like that, he had seen it once, but so could a tidal wave, a tsunami... His breath caught in his throat as he realized it could very well be a tsunami. He ran back down to the truck and got it moving. A few miles down the road he had managed to work his way through a field and back onto I10, running in the night for the Louisiana border.

  The trip had been harder from there on. He had had one vial left and he had decided on Houston as the best possible place to use it. Getting there had been tough, but he had made it late noon four days back. Far too late to do much good in his opinion. The city was devastated. Gunfire sounded everywhere, fires burned out of control. He had triggered the canister and dropped it into Galveston Bay a few hours later.

  From there he had headed north west. Interstates when he could find them, desert when he could not. He had found route 40 and he was now somewhere in between New Mexico and Arizona. He looked down at his leg after a few moments. He looked quickly away.

  The leg was a mess, and he was not going to be able to get it out from under the dash, and even if he did he would probably bleed out once the pressure came off the leg. He sighed. His hand searched along the top of the passenger seat, not finding what he wanted. Movement was painful, but the sun was sinking, albeit slowly, and he did not want to be in this truck flinching at every movement or sound in the night. He did his best to lean forward and keep his leg from moving. His gun was wedged between the very edge of the seat top and the pushed in dash. He closed one hand around the grip and pulled. It was wedged tight, but it did pull back a few inches. Something on the gun was catching on something under or on the edge of the metal lip of the dash. He pushed the gun forward and then pulled back again. Almost, but a grating sound reached his ears, and he could feel the vibration in the weapon as it ground to a halt, once again hung up.

  He pushed it back and forth lightly, realizing it was the seat cushion that was forcing the gun up into the dashboard. If he could get his fingers wedged in there, over the gun, push it downward, then pull back, maybe... He jammed his fingers into the tight space, ignoring the skin that scraped off on the sharp edge of the dash. A second later he was forcing them past the edge of the barrel and taking a deep breath. In his hurry to pull the gun free he forgot about his leg and pressed down on it as he suddenly yanked back.