Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending

by Brian Stewart

“That almost blew up in our face, because none of the three people who had elevated temperatures had their own vehicle here—they had all hitched a ride with the caravan,” Dave added.

  Walter stood and tapped his watch again. “In the interest of brevity, I’m going to move this along. The people that we knew, or kind of knew, like Doc, Mike, Amy, Brenda, Dave’s family, and a few others that I can’t think of right now, stayed up here at the house. Everybody else that wasn’t wounded or sick was moved down to the store. By the time supper rolled around, we had a basic understanding. They were temporary guests. Don’t get me wrong, I done ‘bout everything I could to make ‘em comfortable – blankets, pillows—that sort of thing, but there was a whole lot more of them than I had blankets for. I even gave ‘em two shotguns in case . . . well, just in case. We also set ‘em up with a battery powered CB radio. We had its twin up here at the house. Now fast forward to about midnight.”

  “Rebecca and I were taking turns checking on the patients, and we were watching their temperatures slowly, but steadily rise. Right about then a call came over the radio. It was hard to make out with all the screaming in the background, but they were saying something about a dead body.”

  Mike chewed another piece of candy as he spoke, “I’d already had a cat nap, so I volunteered to drive Doc down to the store.”

  Dave broke in, “I sent Scott with them, and I stayed awake and kept my wife company. Brenda said she was feeling better, so we used her as a guard in the sickroom.”

  “I drove Scott and Doc down to the store. When we got there, it looked like just about everybody was standing outside. One of the ladies—I can’t remember who, but she was about the only one I saw that wasn’t flipping out—she comes up to us and says that a guy had died inside. And apparently, the guy’s wife was still with him . . . hugging and crying on him . . . wouldn’t let anybody touch him. Nobody wanted to go in, especially with what had just happened earlier at the campground. Well, we pushed our way through the crowd—did I mention the power had gone off again?”

  “No.”

  Mike nodded as he continued, “It had gone off about 3:00 that afternoon—hasn’t been back on since, either. Anyhow, it was dark inside the store, so I shined a flashlight through the glass and just about dropped a load in my pants. There were two pairs of red eyes starin’ right back at me.

  As you can imagine, the crowd responded to that in a dignified and mature manner. Not. We ended up locking the doors and moving everybody down to the warehouse, and then Scott, Alton, and a guy name Ross went back to the store with me. Doc stayed in the warehouse with the crowd. OK, long, and might I add, ‘heroic’ story made short, we didn’t want to just open the door and blast away. If we did that there’d be blood everywhere, so we angled the headlights of the truck we drove toward the door. Then we copied your plan for opening the door with a rope. Only I was in your position. And I had a shotgun—12 gauge I think.”

  “It was,” Walter confirmed.

  “How many shotguns do you have?” Eric asked with a raise of his eyebrows.

  “Not enough.”

  “So we unlocked the door and pulled it open. Of course nothing came out. We waited. Nothing. I really wasn’t too fond of going in after them, but it was looking like we we’re going to have to do just that. And then Ross—he had a long metal pipe—starts whooping and hollerin’ like he was on fire. That brought ‘em out. They were walking kind of slow, though, and I let them get about halfway to me before I plugged them. One shot each . . . in the head. I ‘bout puked too—ain’t never shot no one before. Anyhow, we were standing around, just making sure they were really dead when Ross apparently decided to head into the store.” Mike looked up and frowned, “He got tagged. Real good, too.”

  “There were three of them inside?”

  “Four actually. Ross got his foot chewed up by a little ankle biter. We found another one—a kid also—squirming in a miniature sleeping bag. We also found the dead guy . . . the one that started all of this adventure, only he was dead . . . dead. Next to him was his wife . . . empty bottle of pills in her hand. She was still breathing when we got there, but she didn’t make it much longer. Ross skewered the one that bit him with the pipe, and Alton and me dragged the other one—sleeping bag and all—out the door and over by the dumpster. It was brutal. I still see that sleeping bag squiggling around when I close my eyes.” Mike took a deep breath before finishing, “It took us another couple hours to move the bodies into the dumpster and get everybody else back to the store. A lot of people were talking about leaving, but wanted to wait until daylight. I can’t say as if I blame them. Oh, and Ross . . . he just chugs along like nothing happened until everybody is back in the store, and then he hops in his car and just drives away.”

  “Where would he go? Or for that matter, where did the other people go who left the campground and didn’t come here? Eric asked. Turning to look at Michelle, he said, “Didn’t you say that the roads were blocked both east and west of here?”

  Michelle shook her head, “No, what I said was that because of the lack of traffic on highway 704, Andy, Sam, Thompson, and I figured that the roads have to be blocked somewhere else. Somewhere that’s preventing people from getting on to 704.”

  “So, as far as we know, highway 704 out there,” Eric pointed in the general direction of the store, “might be totally open and clear all the way east to Richland where it hits route 281, and all the way west to highway 403?”

  “Yeah,” Sam answered, “but I can tell you from personal experience that 403 north heading into Carson is a parking lot for miles before you get to the border, and it’s a four lane highway. Route 281 is primarily a two lane road for most of its length, and I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be gridlocked just as bad, if not worse.” Sam turned toward Walter, “You’ve got a straight shot from the road out there directly into Richland. It’s about what, fifty miles or so?”

  “A little less than forty before it ‘T bones’ into route 281 at Richland,” Walter replied.

  “And route 281 heads straight north out of Richland towards the border.”

  “Yep.”

  “So we’re looking at three possibilities. The first is that route 281 heads north from Jamestown . . . passes by Devils Lake recreation area where about a billion people have fishing cabins and vacation condos . . . and then proceeds further north through Richland on its way to the Canadian border—all without any traffic jams. In that case we would also have to assume that the border is open and traffic is flowing in both directions.”

  Walter looked over at Sam and replied, “That’s one option, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t believe it,” Sam answered. “From what I saw on 403, the highway both into and out of Richland could be a parking lot, which is the second possibility.”

  When no one said anything, Sam continued, “Having worked a ton of traffic accidents, there is a third—and in my opinion, most likely—possibility. A single accident at any point can shut down traffic. With people rushing around in panic after the president’s speech, there were probably wrecks everywhere. If you have a wreck up around the border in the southbound lanes, and another one—say at Devils Lake—in the northbound lanes, then all of a sudden you have a long stretch of highway that’s empty. Sure, a short time after the initial crashes other people probably tried to switch lanes and go around. Maybe a dozen, maybe a couple hundred made it before somebody wrecked or got stuck crossing the median. The point is, we really don’t know what’s happening traffic wise, and we really won’t know unless we get over there and take a look.”

  “There’s a lot of little side roads all over the place up here, most of them aren’t even on a map.”

  “They’re on my map, well, on my laptop anyhow,” Eric said.

  “Sam,” Michelle asked, “that guy we ran in to—in the little silver or white car—Daniel I think, didn’t he say that wherever he was on 281 was backed up?”

  Sam nodded, “Yes, but remember he also
said that they had abandoned their car and walked ‘cross country’ until they found another abandoned car. For all we know, they could have driven that car 300 miles on back roads before we saw them.”

  “Alright, the roads are something we need to consider.” Walter turned back to Doc, “Can you give Eric and Michelle an abbreviated version of the rest of what happened that first night?”

  Doc looked across the circle. “We found some bleach and a mop, and cleaned up the area where the dead guy and his wife were. Did I mention that he was the color of a lead sinker? So were the two that Mike shot . . . and the two kids. The lady was a normal color, though. Anyhow, it was probably close to 3:30 AM when everybody was back and settled. Somewhere in there, Amy and Dave volunteered to stay with the people at the store, so when we went back to the house, they drove down—I think in Walter’s truck. I was tired, Rebecca was tired, everybody was tired. I guess that’s why we missed it.”

  “Missed what?”

  “When we got back to the sickroom, Rebecca went to bed and I took over observation duties. Mike was with me, and Brenda was still awake as well. I checked on the three pyrexia cases . . .”

  “What?”

  “Pyrexia . . . fever. All of them were pushing past 102 degrees and fading in and out of delirium. We were using towels soaked in cold water, but to be honest, I don’t think it was working much. That’s when Mike taps me on the shoulder and whispers about Brenda.”

  Mike stood again, “I had pulled up a chair next to Brenda, just to chit chat, but right away I knew that something wasn’t kosher. She had this little tremor, and she was really pale. When I said her name she looked at me, but it was like she didn’t recognize me at first. And then she handed me her little shotgun and said something like, ‘Tell Doc to tie me up.’”

  “That’s what we did,” Doc continued. “We secured Brenda to one of the cots and did a quick vitals check. Her pulse was rapid, her temperature was 105. Her whole body was quivering and tensing against the restraints.” Doc rubbed his eyes and continued with a tired yawn, “Within the next hour, two of the three fever cases passed away. The third one . . . changed. The other patients who hadn’t shown any temperature spike were moved to a large RV out in the driveway.”

  “Right after we finished moving them, Brenda broke loose.”

  Doc nodded at Mike, “She just tore apart the aluminum frame of the cot. Pieces of it were still strapped to her wrist when Mike put her down.”

  “It took four shots—even then she was still trying to drag herself towards me. Walter had come running down when he heard the gunshots, and we used his pistol to finish her off.” Mike trailed his voice away for a moment before adding, “I also had to shoot the one that was still tied down. He . . . ‘it’ . . . was almost free when I pulled the trigger.”

  “And, just so you know, the six people that we moved to the RV, they’re still around . . . still OK,” Doc added.

  Walter cleared his throat and stood. “We don’t have a lot of time left. It’s almost 7:30 PM, and we need to come up with some type of . . . plan I guess . . . before we go down and talk to the people at the store. Before we do that, there’s a couple other things that need to be said.” Walter turned toward Michelle and Eric, and then scanned all the way around the circle as he spoke, “The next day, a few more of the people from the campground showed up. I don’t know where they came from, or where they went after they left Ravenwood, but they caused a bit of trouble—demanding food and gasoline. A few shots got fired as well. Nobody was hurt, but that’s when we decided to put a gate across my driveway. It’s also when we started having somebody on watch both there, and up on the roof of the store.”

  Walter sat back down and clasped his hands together. “Don’t get me wrong, my heart goes out to everybody down there, and I have no doubt that a lot of ‘em are good people, but we’ve got a few rotten apples as well. Now, Bernice and me, well, we’ve been puttin’ back food and supplies for quite awhile, just as a way of life I suppose. And for the past several days, we’ve been using those to help out. It’s a very finite resource though, and feeding the whole crowd we have is going to burn through it in no time at all. Gasoline is another problem. So are guns. Hell, everything is a problem. However, what I perceive to be our main problem, at least in the immediate future, is whether or not we’re going to make a run at Ravenwood. There’s a lot of folks who are hoping that some of their loved ones are still alive over there. Myself included.”

  Eric looked through Walter’s tough façade and saw the pain lurking underneath. A rapid fire flashback to his conversation with Bernice completed the puzzle. “Marty and Francis?” he asked.

  Walter nodded.

  “Don’t forget about the radio,” Dave added.

  “What radio?” Michelle asked.

  Walter said, “Bernice has a little radio room assembled upstairs. Nothing fancy really, just a corner in her sewing room that has a few different ways for her to get ahold of me when I’m down at the marina or out on the lake. Marine band, GMRS, CB, that sort of thing. Anyway, several times now we’ve picked up a faint . . . I guess ‘call for help’ would be correct . . . that we think is coming from the campground. It’s on the FRS band, and it sounds like a kid. Twice now we think he’s said that he’s ‘on a boat on the inside,’ although Amy thinks he said that he’s ‘on a boat that’s on its side.’ Problem is, he’s never answered when we’ve replied.”

  “He might have the radio turned on, but not turned up. You could hear him, but he’d never hear you because the volume was all the way down,” Callie chipped in.

  “In any event, we ain’t heard from him yesterday or today.”

  Several moments of deep silence followed before Eric spoke. “Where are my uncle and Emily?”

  “We completely hosed out the sickroom—bleached everything—and burnt all the blankets, cots, pillows, and everything else that had been in contact with any of the patients. Basically we stripped the room down to the concrete, and then bleached the fire out of it. Walter found a few single bed frames out behind the warehouse—the old metal angle iron and spring variety—and we brought them up to the house. We’ve got a couple of comforters folded in half to serve as mattresses,” Doc said.

  “None of that tells me where they are.”

  “Sorry, they’re in the sickroom—the garage. Rebecca even set up a little privacy sheet between them.”

  Eric stood, trailing his hand off of Michelle’s shoulder at the last moment. “Here’s the way I see this. And keep in mind, this is just my opinion, but I think we should go down and talk to the people at the store. Find out who in their family is missing, and presumably, still at Ravenwood. But I’ll be honest, at this point right now, I don’t want to promise them anything. I’m not saying ‘no’ to the idea of jumping back into the lion’s den, but we need to give some serious thought to the price that we’ve already paid.”

  “Agreed.” Walter said, “So here’s what I’d suggest. Let’s head down there and talk to the crowd. I don’t want to make any commitments at this point, other than to keep an open mind. Later tonight, if some of you are willing, we can talk again and decide what we’re going to do, OK?”

  Several nods bobbed around the headlight campfire.

  Callie shouldered her backpack and stood. Turning to Walter she asked, “Do you mind if I connect my tablet to your printer and run off some copies of the medical forms that Doc wants everybody to fill out?”

  “Do you need some type of cable?”

  “No, I can do it wirelessly, but I will need power for the printer, and I’d also like to charge my tablet.”

  “That won’t be a problem. For those of you that don’t know, my house has been running on generator power since the grid went down. The way it’s set up is pretty simple. Any white outlet covers are currently nonfunctional. Anywhere you see a black outlet cover, that’s tied into the generator. Most of those black covers are downstairs, although there’s a few upstairs as well. You may also
see a red cover here and there. Those are connected to a separate circuit that is fed by an inverter generator. It doesn’t put out anywhere near the watts of my diesel unit, so try not to plug anything into a red outlet that’s going to suck a lot of juice. It’s mostly for sensitive electronics like the radios and computers. Any other questions?”

  “It’s not really a question,” Lenny said, “more of an affirmation. I just want you to know again how much Glenda and I appreciate your hospitality.” He stood and patted his ample belly as he continued, “I’m probably not the best person to choose if you’re going to be sprinting either into, or out of, the campground. But I’m not going to—as my old coach put it—‘crutch out’ just because I’m carrying a few extra pounds. If you want me, or even Glenda, on a line somewhere with a gun, or even a tennis racket, we’ll be there. If you’d rather us fill a different position or have a different responsibility, all you have to do is say the word. In the meantime, I’m going to head back to Glenda and give her a very well deserved hug and kiss. She promised me that she’d try and cook another batch of peanut butter brownies on the wood stove downstairs. So gentlemen, and ladies, have your meetings and make your plans, and let us know how we can help.”