Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

Thad had been making withdrawals from the ATM kiosk in the hospital's gift shop every day for the past week to make sure he had plenty of cash on hand. He wasn't sure if the CDC or any other agency would be looking for him, but he didn't want to leave a credit-card trail for them to follow just in case. Which was the purpose of a disposable phone as well.

  In the supermarket parking lot, Thad transferred important phone numbers to his disposable, then got back on the road. He thought about calling his ex-wife while he drove, but it was past 2 a.m. when he left Wal-Mart, and he knew everyone would be in bed. He tossed the phone on the passenger seat and drove on.

  Marie's car was a nice one—a Mercedes like Michael's, except black and brand new. Thinking about it made Thad cringe. Once he settled in with his family at his father's home, Thad wasn't leaving to return it, and he certainly wasn't going to call Michael and tell him where the car could be picked up. Thad was now nothing more than a common car thief.

  If Thad was wrong and the world wasn't ending, he'd have a lot of explaining to do.

  In more ways than one. Thad thought about Jennifer. Borrowing a friend's car with no intentions of giving it back was one thing. Desertion of duties in the face of an international disaster was something completely different. For that alone, he could never expect Jennifer to forgive him.

  But it was more than just the desertion. Once upon a time, he and Jennifer had something special. He'd be lying to himself if he said he didn't love her back then. His nose would grow even more if he tried to convince himself he didn't have feelings for her still. When he abandoned the hospital, he abandoned her as well, and any shot he might have had at getting her back.

  So why did you leave her? he thought.

  "Because she'd have never left," Thad said aloud.

  But you never even asked, did you? You never gave her an option.

  "She would have never left," he emphasized again. "It would have been just like the last time."

  The last time.

  When Thad asked her to marry him, just after he accepted the position at Levison Pharmaceuticals. When she chose to stay with the CDC rather than become Mrs. Thaddeus Palmer. When she refused to abandon her research, which could someday make a difference.

  He wanted to make millions of dollars. She wanted to save millions of lives.

  "She doesn't have family beyond her parents. I have Karen. I have to be there for her as this plays out. Jennifer wouldn't have understood that."

  If you want to help Karen, Jennifer would have said, then this is where you need to be. Finding a cure for whatever this is.

  "She would have never left," Thad said again, mumbling it this time. He hoped to God he was right, but he would never know for sure.

  * * * * *

  When he drove down the long driveway that led to the mountain road that would take him up and around the mountain and to his father's home, Thad glanced casually out the drivers-side window as he always did when he visited his father.

  Usually, it was during the day and the prison was a hive of activity. The prison's recreation area was on this side of the prison and inmates were usually out walking the track, playing basketball or handball, or bulking up in the covered weight pile. Sometimes games would be in full swing in the middle of the track—softball, flag football, soccer.

  Beyond the rec yard was the center of the compound, and for the first ten minutes at the top of every hour throughout the day, the compound would open up and inmates would walk from one part of the complex to another; ten-minute moves, as they were called. And, of course, during the lunch hours, usually 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., the inside of the compound was fully open and inmates had the run of the whole facility. If they weren't standing in the chow line or moving between buildings, they could be seen standing in groups, always conspicuously separated along racial lines, or lounging in the small gazebos that populated the central courtyard.

  But tonight the moon was still high and the prison was silent, save for the occasional correctional officer walking the complex on his rounds or security trucks rounding the perimeter. The prison was well-lit with more than a dozen light towers throughout the compound or spread around the surrounding field.

  Thad's view of the prison was completely unheeded as the grass in the field was trimmed short to limit a possible escapee's range of hiding places. Every week a fleet of inmates on riding mowers, inmates whose security levels were low enough that they could be outside the gate, would crisscross the field in no conceivable pattern until the grass was tamed once more.

  It took less than a minute to reach the mountain road, and another five to reach the flattened, grassy peak above his father's house. Thad didn't turn down the drive that led down to the house, but parked on the peak and killed the engine. His plan was to set up camp here, more than a hundred feet above his family, so as not to expose anyone to the infection if they hadn't been already. Thad was immune to the infection, which might mean his daughter would have inherited his immunity, but he couldn't take the chance of exposing her without knowing for sure. Allison, his ex-wife, might not be immune, and Karen could have just as easily inherited his mother's genes.

  Thad wasn't sure how long he would have to live within sighting distance of his little girl. If she was never exposed to the infection and Thad had no way of measuring her vulnerability to it, then the answer was indefinitely. If that proved to be the case, he might need to eventually inhabit one of the nearby summer cottages that dotted the other side of the mountain. Driving to any of them was quite a trip, but he could hike to many of them within half an hour if he needed to. And at some point, he likely would. Thad was far from being an outdoorsman, and he knew living in a tent would likely get old quick.

  Thad got out of the car and walked to the edge of the cliff to look down at his father's home, but it was invisible in the shadow of the mountain. He might have seen a glimpse of Allison's Lexus's windshield reflected in the moonlight, which confirmed what he already knew. She texted him earlier that day to let him know she and Karen had arrived safely.

  On the way back to the car, he nearly fell over when he stepped down into an ankle-deep groove carved in the ground—a rut left by one of the many delivery vehicles that had visited over the last week or so. Thad found a company online that specialized in stocking storm shelters with supplies should a family find itself trapped for days or weeks.

  Many of their customers were probably Mormons, whose Latter-day scriptures required them to stock their pantries with a year supply of food at all times. But undoubtedly their primary customer base would be anti-government fringe groups or fanatics who wanted to live off the grid and be prepared when Uncle Sam came for their guns and/or attempted to enslave its citizens.

  The company, Sustained Sustenance, Inc., sold scores of freeze-dried foods—from beef stew, chicken-a-la-king, scrambled eggs and ham, and spaghetti and meatballs to strawberries, bananas, corn, peas, and even ice-cream sandwiches—in either five-and-a-half-pound cans or six-gallon buckets. Each can or bucket boasted a shelf life of thirty years or more. There were also lots of various legumes to be had, as well as rice, oats, grains, flours, baking powders, cooking oils, and drink mixes; not to mention supplies that weren't edible: multitudes of first aid reserves, tools for every use, emergency power equipment, toiletries and portable toilets, water collection and purification systems, and kitchenware.

  Thaddeus, Sr. had always been frugal with money and had tried to impart his money-saving philosophies on his son, with limited success. So when his father put together what he thought was a substantial supply list from Sustained Sustenance and Thad told him to quadruple the order, Thaddeus, Sr. was naturally taken aback by how much all of this was going to cost.

  When he couldn't appeal to his son's financial senses, he complained about the problem of storage. "Just where am I supposed to put all this stuff, Thad? We're talking about pallets of supplies. Truckloads, perhaps."

  Thad knew there was no perhaps about it. It would be truckloads.
"Put it anywhere. The basement, the attic, the barn. The damn living room, for all I care."

  Then his father complained about the costs of having everything rush-delivered, in days rather than weeks, then called frantic when the delivery drivers couldn't maneuver the trucks down the drive that led to the house from the mountain peak. Thaddeus, Sr. said that the trucks would have to be unloaded above and then his father would have to pay laborers to carry all of it down in smaller vehicles, loading the truck beds down carton-by-carton and going back and forth trip-after-trip. It was an unexpected expense his father wasn't prepared to spend, but which Thad approved without so much as a hesitation.

  It had to be done, he'd told his father. No matter what the costs.

  Thad took his new tent out of the trunk, but never got beyond the first page of the instruction manual before he left it on the ground and climbed into the backseat of the pilfered Mercedes.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Thad called down to let everyone know he'd made it and intended to camp out above them for awhile. He talked to Karen, then brought her to tears when she said she wanted to come see his tent and he told her she couldn't. First, she cried, then she screamed as only four-year-olds can when they don't get their way. Eventually, Allison took the phone from her.

  "Jesus, Thad. What did you say to her?"

  Thad could hear Karen yelling defiantly in the background, informing everyone that she would go see Daddy's tent. He could almost see her stomping feet and her pouty, bottom lip.

  "Keep an eye on her, Ally. Don't let her come up here."

  "Do you have it? Whatever is spreading around New York? Thad, the news said people were attacking each other. That they were eating each other."

  "I'm a carrier, yes, but I can't get sick. But we also can't take a chance of exposing Karen."

  Next, he spoke to his father and together they engineered a way to get supplies to Thad from below. In the barn's upper level, Thad's father found an industrial-strength pulley and a healthy supply of rope. The problem, of course, was how to get it up to Thad. He vehemently disallowed his father to simply walk up the drive and give it to him. But there was no way to deliver the goods without at least some risk of infection.

  Thad found a set of jumper cables in the Mercedes trunk below the hidden spare tire. The cables were neatly packed in a triangular roadside emergency bag along with unfoldable reflectors and road flares. The cables were stiff and flawless, never used.

  Thad used his multi-tool to rip the cords apart, then strip the wires completely of their rubber coatings. He pulled them apart into smaller wires, then spliced them all together. The result was one long piece of flimsy copper that Thad hoped was long enough to reach the ground below.

  He found some hand sanitizer in the glove compartment and did his best to decontaminate the last ten feet or so his father would have to handle, but Thad honestly had no idea if it did any good. As an added precaution, he called down and told his father to wear his thick, elbow-length safety gloves, then to scrub and sanitize the gloves when he was done with them. And Thad reiterated the last point several times: under no circumstances should Allison or Karen handle the gloves.

  Once as many precautions were in place as could be, Thad lowered the copper wire. His father caught the end of it and tied one end of the rope to it. Thad pulled the wire back up slowly, expecting it to break apart at any time at any one of the dozen or so splices he'd weaved. The higher he pulled the rope, the heavier the rope got. But miraculously the wire held, and soon Thad was pulling up the rope, to which his father had already affixed the pulley.

  At the top of the pulley was a large hook, and after finding a sturdy tree limb that overhung the cliff, he hung the pulley, then threaded the rope through it. He had to climb out onto the limb on his belly, his fear of heights making it so every creak of the tree, every breeze, and every accidental glance down nearly induced a panic attack.

  But he got it done, and once back on the ground, he used his copper concoction to make a ring of wire through which the rope would pass as it moved up and down the cliff. Once his father had lifted up whatever he was sending Thad, Thad could pull the copper line so that he could reach the rope and the supplies.

  His father added a bucket to one end of the rope in which to place supplies, then he would pull down on the other end of the rope to raise the bucket up to Thad. Which meant the bucket would need to be sanitized as well, if possible.

  It was a simple and rudimentary solution that the human race had mastered thousands of years before. Still, the chore took the better part of the day to complete and Thad was exhausted and hungry when it was over.

  The inaugural supply-raising was a brown paper bag with a pair of tuna sandwiches, a bag of chips, and a bottled water, along with a phone charger his father had purchased from Sustained Sustenance, Inc. It attached to Thad's disposable phone and had a hand crank that would charge his phone's battery for thirty minutes after turning it for only one.

  Also in the bucket was a thin children's book, Frog and Toad Together…one of Karen's favorites. Thad attached the phone to the crank, gave it a charge, then, as the sun stowed away behind the distant mountains, used those minutes wisely—he read his daughter a bedtime story.

  * * * * *

  Page seven of O'Leary's Wilderness Survival Guide, in the first chapter entitled "Being Prepared," discussed weatherproof and insulated clothing. As Thad discovered, there's a reason wilderness attire was featured so early and prominently in O'Leary's book.

  It's very goddamn important.

  That second night on top of the mountain, even though it was still summer, a cold front swept through from the northeast and, even in the backseat of the Mercedes and using the new sleeping bag as a blanket, Thad's teeth chattered all night. He had nothing else to put on save for the doctor's coat the hospital had provided him. He thought back to all of those racks of warm clothes in Wal-Mart's sporting goods section and wished he'd spent a little more time planning for his adventures in the Great Outdoors.

  Maybe if he'd actually cracked open the survival guide before he got to his camping location, he'd have been a little more prepared. He certainly wasn't going to unfold a pair of Pertex© fiber pile mittens; waterproof, single-layer Ventile® trousers with ankle drawcords; or a Merino-wool headcover ("that could be worn as a scarf or balaclava") from his multi-tool—all of which O'Leary mentioned early on in his book.

  Thad considered turning the heater on in the Mercedes, but decided not to waste the gas. He warmed himself by thoughts of walks on a warm beach and thanked the plague gods that the plague had come in the summertime and that he wasn't so unprepared in the harsh chill of full-blown winter. He knew he would have to make another trip to the clothing store, maybe during the day when more than just a Wal-Mart was open (a Bass Pro Shops, maybe), and stock up on cold-weather gear.

  He would tell Allison to make a list of anything they would need as well, as he doubted she'd been thinking about winter weather when she rushed Karen and herself out of New York. But until he could go to the store, he would have his father send up a couple of blankets via the bucket to get him by.

  By morning, most of the crispness of the cold front had blown through. Thad woke up that morning, gave the still-unopened tent a disparaging glare, then decided to make tackling the propane situation the first order of business. Thad knew his father had already filled both propane tanks behind the barn—usually enough to last his father two winters living by himself—but Thad needed to think of keeping a full family warm for potentially longer than that.

  So while he ate his breakfast, a bacon and egg sandwich on rye toast and a Thermos of coffee, he called AAA Propane and ordered two more tanks, each twice the size of the ones before. He paid extra—far extra—for same-day delivery. Then when the trucks arrived with the tanks and it was discovered the trucks couldn't navigate the narrow drive down to the house, he paid still more to have the installers anchor the new tanks atop the cliff and ru
n the propane lines down the cliff, then underground to the house.

  It all cost a small fortune, but Thad had made a fortune in his career and, he reasoned, if he didn't spend it now, he might never get the chance. Once the deed was complete, there was enough propane to warm the house and cook meals through four or five harsh winters.

  That evening, Thad looked down from his perch over the house, watching his daughter pick dandelions in the backyard, and made a list of other projects he would like to see accomplished while the world was still the world; oblivious and greedy and willing to do his every bidding for a sizable percentage over retail price. They were good on propane, but they would need gas for the mower and tractor. Thad wondered if a gas-station attendant would deliver five-gallon jugs of gas up to the house. For the right price, surely it was possible.

  He also thought about home repairs and about having Miller Lumber bring a truckload of supplies—2x4s and 2x6s, plywood, electrical wire, PVC piping, an extra water heater or two in case the one in the house went out.

  He could have them dump the entire load up on the peak and cover it with a tarp. Thad and his father could bring it down as it was needed. With that in mind, Thad added tarps to the list.

  Thad also knew he'd like to put a gate across the driveway near the house and keep it locked as an extra layer of security against visitors.

  And speaking of unwelcome guests, he should also talk to his father and make sure he bought the ammunition for the rifles as Thad had requested.

  He looked down at the barn. His father kept a chicken coop in there with a few chickens. Thad considered buying more, along with a rooster or two and some chicken feed. He could put Karen in charge of feeding them and collecting eggs every morning. She'd like that.

  There was a well way down at prison level near the edge of the cliff, and a large pipe climbed the side of the cliff and fed into the house. There was a pump near the barn that brought the water up. So they were good for now as far as water for bathing. The pump ran on electricity, and they had a generator if they needed it to run the pump. But what if the generator went out. Should he buy another generator? Maybe a few more? And generators meant more gas.