Oliver rushed on as best he could to the corner of his front yard, picking his way through the field of debris. The rocker from the front room lay on its side. Beside it, he spotted a tennis shoe. He did not pause to find out if there was still a foot in it.
Oliver gasped for air and grabbed at his side. As he paused, he glimpsed someone in the street. It was the man who had sentenced him to death.
Lieutenant Francis Carron stood dumb in the street, his gaze locked on the flaming pile of brick and timber and possessions that had been the Spencer’s home. Oliver’s eyes weren’t so sharp, but he was sure the man held a pistol in his hand. However, the man in camouflage stared, mute and numb, at the destruction. The heat and light bathed him in a red glow of shock. The old man hoped the officer’s brains were scrambled by the concussion of the blast.
Every pane of glass at the front of Oliver’s house had shattered. Though it was at the edge of the blast radius, falling embers were already glowing on his roof. Soon, his home would be consumed, as well. Oliver pushed off the wall of his house and limped to the backyard.
Each step was a jolt from his ankle and he gritted his teeth against the pain seething through his burnt arms. If he allowed a scream, though, he was afraid the pain from his ribs might make him pass out.
Oliver lifted the gate latch. The hinge creaked as the heavy, wooden door to his backyard swung open. Oliver closed it carefully behind him.
His yard seemed doubly large now after the field of fiery debris he had traversed. Oliver hobbled toward the porch, headed for the rear door. A flashlight popped on. The beam blinded him. Oliver dodged to his right as best he could but the pain through his chest almost drove him to his knees.
He held up a hand to shade his eyes and peered. Jaimie Spencer stood behind the screen door. The old man’s tension loosened a fraction.
“It’s okay, Jaimie. It’s me. Superman.” The old man wanted to scream as he stepped on the bottom step. He had twisted his ankle badly in the blast, but that was a concern for later. When things settled down, he would have a lot more pain ahead of him. That was the price of immortality.
Oliver’s relief didn’t last long. He made it up the three short steps. As he reached for the handle, Jaimie locked the screen door.
“Boy?”
The old man tried the door. “Kid! Unlock the door!”
The boy stared back at him. The boy gazed into the old man’s eyes.
“Boy! Let me in! It’s me! This is my house! It’s Mr. Oliver. It’s me! It’s Superman! It’s — !”
A growl rumbled behind Oliver. He turned, seeing nothing at first. Then Jaimie shone his flashlight out, playing it over the yard.
Five dogs, eyes bright.
Oliver spotted the form of another dog coming in under the fence. It was the same passage his pet had dug. Then another dog came. Then another and another.
The pack leader bared its teeth and bent to spring. A white froth dripped from its jaws. The alpha dog had been his German Shepherd. Douglas Oliver’s dog had finally returned home, but he was sick.
“Steve?” Oliver said. “It’s okay, boy. You’re a good boy!”
The animal leapt, its mouth a deadly trap of teeth.
“Steve!”
The dog’s jaws clamped tight around the old man’s throat, bringing him down with a crunch.
Familiar, long fangs ripped and tore as the starving dog’s big head shook back and forth. The rest of the pack closed like a noose, eager for meat.
Jaimie closed the heavy back door behind him and locked it, too.
Anna had gone so pale she looked like a white ghost coming at her brother in a rush. “Ears! C’mon! We have to go! We have to go! Move! Move!” She pushed her brother before her like a storm wave carrying driftwood to the shore.
Bewildered but with no time to think, Anna pushed Jaimie toward the garage and the safety of the van.
Over her shoulder, Jaimie could see his father, white and weak, still swaying, but following them to escape.
“Jaimie?” Theo Spencer looked at him with a reassuring smile and grasped the boy’s hand. Jaimie no longer resisted his sister’s insistent pushing. He walked to the van willingly.
“You okay, Jaimie?” his father asked.
The boy look up into his father’s eyes, squeezed his hand and gave a tiny smile.
Jaimie allowed himself one word: “Kryptonite.”
The fruit of war, the wages of sin
The Spencer family did not talk. Jack slammed the accelerator to the mat. When the grill hit the garage door, it broke much easier than Jack anticipated. The van shot out of Oliver’s garage in an explosion of splintered wood.
They drove over the man in the Bermuda shorts with a sickening bump-thump. Anna screamed, but they were already over him and down the driveway.
Maybe not so much over him as through him, Jack thought.
Jack spun the wheel and touched the brakes just enough that they avoided overshooting the road and driving into the inferno that had been their home.
The van tipped sideways, threatening to roll as Jack fought the wheel. As the van rocked, light on two right wheels, everyone in the van involuntarily leaned right, as well. Jack swore and overcorrected so they almost hit the opposing curb and fishtailed through burning debris. Jack bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.
The lieutenant’s face flashed past the driver’s side window. Jack shouted for everyone to get their heads down. However, the fat man in fatigues, suddenly ridiculous, stood in the street behind them with his arms limp at his sides. He was too dazed to shoot.
When they were safely around the next bend in the drive, Jack realized one of the headlights, the one on Anna’s side, broke as they crashed through the garage door. Nothing compared to the loss of the Spencers’ home.
Anna and Jack did not speak. Mother and daughter could not look at each other.
My mother and sister and the man in the street are like me now, Jaimie thought. The appropriate Latin phrase was: Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent. It meant: minor losses can be talked away; profound ones strike us dumb.
They drove in circles at first, through the seemingly deserted streets and meandering crescents and empty courts of darkened urban sprawl. The sound of their engine was a lonely comfort. Anna turned on the air conditioning. Cool air chilled their wet cheeks.
It was Mrs. Bendham who broke the crystal silence. “Was Oliver in your house when it exploded?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I’m sure he was. Those men took him.”
“Should we go back to be sure?”
Jack shook her head. Jaimie looked to his father and Theo shook his head, too.
“Mr. Oliver was a good man,” Anna said.
“No, he wasn’t,” Mrs. Bendham said.
“But he wasn’t a bad man,” Anna said.
Mrs. Bendham shrugged and her chin sank to her chest. She sighed. “No, I suppose not. He just did what most of us do. He thought of himself first.”
Jack stood with both feet on the brake pedal. Tires screeched as they rocked forward. The van’s nose dipping toward the pavement. In their single headlight beam, just a few feet ahead, stood a deer.
Time stopped. The doe eyed them cautiously, standing her ground. Behind the animal, the forms of more deer moved across the street: wet-black eyes, brown fur, ghostly white tails. When the others had moved out of sight, the deer turned and made for the other side of the road. They just glimpsed its white hindquarters as it leaped, effortlessly, over a low chain-link fence.
Jack drove forward again, slower now. “Where are we going?”
Anna pointed ahead and to the left. “I know a safe place.”
“No place is safe,” Jack said.
“I know a place for now,” Anna said.
Jaimie looked at his father. Theo reached over and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” Theo said in a thin-as-paper voice. “We’ll get safe. We’re going to get
away.”
Anna directed her mother to Trent’s parents’ house. Jack drove into their empty driveway and then, to everyone’s surprise, wheeled around a narrow side yard, bumped through a rose bed and into the backyard.
Theo leaned close to his son. “Jaimie, I saw what you did to Mr. Oliver and I know why you did it. How do you feel about what you did, son?”
Jaimie bent his head and whispered so low only his father could hear. “Vincam aut moriar.”
Victory or death.
You don't yet know what it will take to win
Lieutenant Francis Carron awoke from his shocked trance when an ember from the explosion fell on his head. He brushed it away before it could light his hair on fire. The Spencers’ van had disappeared around a curve and his men were gone. So much for getting hold of that pretty girl he’d heard so much about from Bently. He’d been saving her as a reward for his men’s loyalty.
His men dead, Carron faced the plague apocalypse alone. The stolen police cruiser and the trailer full of food were still intact, but they wouldn’t be for long unless he moved them. The explosion had lit secondary fires and the wind rose to feed them.
Through the smoke, he heard crying from across the street. Carron ran, drawing his pistol.
He found Bob Lockhart, also known as Wolfman, in front of the shattered garage door. He coughed up blood and his pelvis was turned to a startling angle, almost 90 degrees. He’d been wearing Bermuda shorts, but all Carron could see was blood and torn flesh.
“Bob?”
The weight of the Spencer’s van had burst organs through his abdomen and destroyed his groin.
“I’m sorry, Bob. There are no medics and no hospitals. There’s nothing I can do for you.”
The man managed to shake his head and raised one finger.
“Yeah,” the lieutenant said. “You’re right. There is one thing. I’m sorry, Wolfman.”
Carron raised his Parabellum and fired once. What was left of Bob the Wolfman Lockhart’s body shuddered and he was released from torment. Carron began to cry.
Then the lieutenant heard the dogs. They snarled and snapped, fighting with each other. When he ran to Oliver’s backyard hoping to find another of his men, he found the dogs feeding on Douglas Oliver. Carron shot three dogs dead and wasted five more bullets chasing the barking pack away.
There was no use checking Oliver’s pulse. The man looked like he’d been torn apart by the steel jaws of deranged robots.
Carron felt no power. Douglas Oliver was beyond pain, so that left Carron only the sliver of satisfaction spite yields. The lieutenant put one bullet through the old man’s forehead. It wasn’t enough. The only joy left for him would be tracking down the Spencers and making them beg and scream before he killed them.
As Carron wandered back, he noticed Oliver’s roof was on fire. The wind picked up even more, fanning the flames. The Bendham house was burning well, too. Carron hurried to close the trailer full of supplies and pull it out of harm’s way.
He was about to leave when he heard splashing. He drew his weapon again and, wary for a return of the pack of wild dogs, slipped through the garage to Mrs. Bendham’s backyard.
Amid the light and shadow of the flames, he found a crying man in the shallow end of the pool. Carron stepped closer for a better look and instantly regretted it. The man’s face was burned horribly.
Lieutenant Carron raised his pistol. “Identify yourself!”
The crying man looked up. “Bently!”
“How?”
“I was blasted out a window. The gas…I threw myself in the old lady’s pool!”
“Bently. I’m sorry this happened to you. You were a loyal soldier.”
“S-s-sir?”
Carron did feel power now. He could give the man the gift he so desperately needed. He raised the Parabellum. It clicked empty.
“Sir!”
“That’s a sign from God, right there.” Carron shoved the gun home in its holster. “C’mon, Bently. We’ve got to get out of here before the whole neighborhood goes up. C’mere!”
Bently waded forward slowly, racked with pain. His clothes had been burned off. Carron squatted with a grunt and reached to grasp Bently by his upper arm.
As Carron pulled to help the man out of the pool, Bently shrieked. The skin of his arm sloughed off as one long glove, all the way to his fingertips. Carron fell back, one grisly evening glove in his hands.
The lieutenant turned on his belly and puked on the cement, the ragged model of an arm still stuck to his hands. Bently managed to stumble up the pool’s steps and fell on top of him.
They screamed together.
Or even half of the trouble we're in
After driving over the Howler’s lawn to hide the van behind the house, it seemed silly to knock on the back door. However, Anna did knock. “In case Trent’s brother made it back from downtown and he’s freaking out in there,” she explained. “We don’t want to freak him out.”
“Would he have a rifle or something?” Jack asked, afraid but also hoping for a weapon.
“No, but he smokes a lot of weed. I can just imagine him in there all paranoid. With his parents and Trent disappeared and maybe leaving him behind...”
“You never told me Trent’s brother did drugs.”
“Not drugs, Mom. Marijuana.”
Mrs. Bendham cleared her throat. “I wish I had some right now.”
If it was a joke, no one laughed.
Jack and Anna told the others to stay still while they poked through the house. Anna knew the layout and Jack had the big Maglite, their heaviest and longest flashlight. No one was home.
“Trent’s brother’s dead, too, isn’t he?” Anna said when they’d finished searching the house.
Jack didn’t answer. Silence was answer enough.
Mrs. Bendham went straight for the kitchen and rifled cupboards for food. In a small pantry downstairs, she found three cans of peaches. She took the cans upstairs and, after failing to find a can opener, banged the tin against the inside of the sink.
Jaimie and his father watched her curiously. Mrs. Bendham handed Jaimie her flashlight and told him to keep the beam steady as she worked.
“I was on a camping trip when I was a young woman. Me and a gentleman. This was before me and my late husband were an item. This boy was in my choir and had a lovely bass voice. If he’d had lovely brains to go with it, who knows where I’d be now?”
Bang! Bang! Bang! Mrs. Bendham turned the can and hit it against the steel sink, chopping with a downward motion.
Bang! Bang!
“There we were, two kids in a tent miles from the road and he’d forgotten the can opener. I was angry that night and by the next night we were famished. We had water from a stream of course — you could drink from a stream back then. We had cans of beans and no way to get into them. I thought we’d starve,” she said, “though, of course, I know what starvation is really like now.”
She rotated the can and when she hit it this time, the top of the can lifted away. Mrs. Bendham smiled, peeled the circle of tin back and, without spilling any of the peach juice, she drank. She gobbled a peach half, then another. She pulled up the collar of her dress and wiped her mouth on the cloth. She handed the tin to Jaimie.
“You’re a good listener,” she said, watching Jaimie eat. “Anyway, I came back from this horrible weekend. I was so thin then it’s a wonder I didn’t die. I remember the hunger pangs curled me right up when I got home. My father said it served me right and then he showed me how to open a can without a can opener. He’d been in the army. People knew useful things in his generation.”
She took the can from Jaimie and ate another peach half. “I never went out with that fool who forgot the can opener again.”
Mrs. Bendham slipped the remaining two cans of peaches into her purse. “Try to get some sleep, dear. There’s been too much tragedy to talk. Maybe we’ll talk tomorrow. Maybe not. Up to you.” The old woman reached out
a hand and patted Jaimie’s cheek. The old woman climbed the stairs, found the master bedroom and claimed it.
The boy turned to his father.
“It will be okay, Jaimie. We’re going to do this together and I’ll hold your hand all the way to Papa’s farm. We’ll be together, every step.”
* * *
Anna closed Trent’s bedroom door behind her, got into his bed and pulled the blankets tight to her chest. Then she pulled them over her head. Anna still wore her shoes, but left them on in case she had to run again. She wondered if she would ever get to go to sleep again without wearing shoes.
She put her face to her boyfriend’s pillow, and inhaled deeply through her nose, taking in his scent. After a moment’s silence, she began to gulp and sob. Anna pressed into the pillow until she thought she might smother. Anna Spencer screamed and screamed.
* * *
Jack wept for a long time until, just before dawn, she fell asleep on the couch in the family room. Jaimie found a blanket and slept on the floor by his mother with a throw pillow under his head. He hugged his big dictionary to his chest.
He woke several times through the night, unsure each time where he was. Jaimie shifted around on his side to accommodate the comforting bulk of his dictionary. Each time the boy opened his eyes, he found his father in a chair by the front window, peering out into the darkness.
* * *
The next day was an arid expanse of tears and silence. In the afternoon, Jack jumped in the van on her own and disappeared for several hours.
Anna eventually emerged from Trent’s room. “I’m officially terrified. What if Mom doesn’t come back?”
“She’ll be back,” Theo said, never moving from the window. “She’s just going back to see what’s left. Scouting to find what she can salvage. She’ll find only ashes, but she’ll have to look for herself.”
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 32