Innocence Ends

by Robinson, Nikolas P.

  With a powerful whoosh, the vapor ignites, sending a burst of flame into the sky in a massive ball that rocks them all back on their heels.

  They watch the fire burning, trying to stay upwind of the smoke until the stars appear above them in the sky. The fire still burning, but safely contained in the grave, the four of them climb into the truck and return to the mine.

  The haze of smoke from the still burning pit turns their stomachs the following morning and they complete their inventory with masks over their faces. Hewitt and Miles spend a while trying to decide which smell is worse, the victims before the grave or after the fire and neither of them can decide.

  Before twilight, Hewitt and Ben drop loads of dirt over the still smoldering bodies, covering the remnants of the massacre and leaving the tamped down soil as a new hill at the edge of the cemetery grounds.

  49

  Once the fighting is finally over it becomes a sort of relief that they are in a small town nestled into the Northwestern Rocky Mountains. Miles may have carried an arsenal of sorts with him wherever he went, but there are more guns in the town than they could conceivably use. Thankfully there is a complimentary surplus of ammunition along with several reloaders in various sheds and garages throughout the town.

  All told, they collect more than 100 separate firearms, a dozen or so compound bows, and a plethora of knives ranging from the tactical to the ludicrous fantasy blades of teenagers altogether too obsessed with fantasy worlds. Miles wouldn’t be able to load a fraction of the surplus into his SUV so he begins sorting through the supplies to set aside the best maintained and most useful. As efficient as he is, Hewitt can see how disappointed Miles is whenever something is set aside in the pile of excess they won’t be carrying with them. It almost makes him smile, how silly it is that Miles loves these guns so much, and so openly.

  One thing is certain, they are starting the apocalypse on the right sort of footing, with a militia’s worth of armaments at their fingertips.

  Life in the mountains could be rough and numerous homes had food and water stores that could potentially last for years. The four of them had their pick when it came to things like MREs, canned goods, and dehydrated or otherwise preserved items.

  It seemed like the whole population had been prepared for long, harsh winters or there was an exceedingly large proportion of doomsday preppers in the region. Hewitt wouldn’t have been surprised if it was an even split, but either way they could benefit from the preparations of the former residents.

  A quick inventory puts them at more than a year’s worth of supplies without any severe rationing involved, as long as it remains just the four of them. In dire straits, they could probably manage to stretch out what they have for nearer three years, and they haven’t scavenged every residence yet.

  Miles’ SUV is going to be the best available option for getting out of town and back to the real world. Combining the space and fuel economy, they weren’t finding anything else in town that would compare favorably, not that would pull the small trailer they planned to haul with them, at least.

  Based on the projections Gale had shared with them, they couldn’t count on being able to safely resupply once they are on the road.

  Between the cleanup and the scavenging, they had spent another exhausting week in this god-forsaken town.

  Hewitt hadn’t been sleeping much, not beyond the little bit of sleep he involuntarily received when he had nodded off in Gale’s laboratory while studying the tests and documentation Gale had left behind. Mariah had taken to sleeping in there as well, just to be close to him and to make sure he didn’t need anything. Mostly she stuck around to be sure that he hadn’t been getting too wrapped up in Gale’s insanity or just as wrapped up in his own head.

  Ben and Miles had become inseparable during the days following Abraham’s death. For his part, Miles was acting in a capacity somewhere between father-figure and big brother, and it seemed to be working. Having never even considered being a father himself, Miles seems to be a natural.

  In some sense, he was filling the void left by Kateb’s passing, but he was ultimately just doing what he felt was right in honoring Abraham’s memory. For Miles, it was a matter of doing the decent thing.

  Ben is coping with everything, from the violence and terror to the loss of his father, with more poise than any of them could have expected from a child his age. He is his father’s son.

  For all the necessary preparations they make and the work they have yet to do, they all feel like they are spinning their wheels and wasting time that they don’t know they have. None of them is willing to rush blindly and unprepared into the world beyond this mountain valley, but they feel quite acutely that they are losing valuable time.

  It was a fantasy, they all know it, ever believing they could get ahead of this thing, but it is a fantasy they still cling tightly to.

  50

  The smell of burning bodies from the mass grave is something Hewitt doesn’t believe he will ever forget. There was no other practical solution for disposing of the thousand plus corpses in anything approaching a timely manner and especially when attempting to avoid a swarm of vermin and insects being drawn to the town as temperatures rise with the approach of summer.

  He feels like he is in a concentration camp or Bosnia, participating in something so grotesque and terrible. It is no consolation that he had no choice.

  The only bodies not added to the pyre were Kateb, Abraham, Gale, and the deputy. Even Miles, as angry and betrayed as he felt, couldn’t bring himself to toss Gale into the pile. There was no doubt in any of their minds that it was precisely what he deserved, but he had still been their friend for almost their whole lives and none of them could be so cold.

  Gale’s actions had made them all complicit in monstrous actions, necessary ones, but no less horrifying for there having been no other choice. They had all seen war now, the worst parts of it, as Miles had informed them, unsolicited.

  In all his years of military service and subsequent private contracting, he’d never experienced anything quite this terrible. Men, women, and children, all of them American citizens, each and every one. These people hadn’t been enemy combatants or terrorists, they were just sick people who had no more control over how they were behaving than a rabid animal would. And, just like rabid animals, there was no way to cure or save them. The sickness had gone too far. Gale had made it clear that there was no way to halt or reverse the damage done to the infected once it was in their systems. He may have been a mass-murdering asshole when it all came down to it, but he wouldn’t have lied about that.

  Gale had spent some time attempting to work out a vaccine of sorts, something preventative, but it was work he’d needed to perform all by himself since no one within the CDC would have approved of the nightmarish pet project he’d undertaken of his own initiative under their noses. He had made some progress, but not nearly enough, and now he was gone.

  “War makes monsters of us all,” Miles mutters to himself, echoing the similar thoughts in Hewitt’s mind.

  “How much worse is it going to be out there?” Mariah asks, gesturing in the general direction of the valley entrance.

  Hewitt shakes his head in silence and moments later Miles does the same.

  “No point in asking that question,” Miles replies. “We can try to prepare ourselves for what’s going on out there, but there ain’t any preparing for shit like this.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Hewitt says as he slumps to the ground with his back against the wall of the barn. From where she’s standing, Mariah can finally see the tears in Hewitt’s eyes.

  “This is a fucking nightmare,” Mariah whispers to herself, her voice lost in the sound of the flames nearby. Ash is picked up and deposited by the wind, coating each of them no matter how hard they attempt to remind up-wind of the fire.

  It’s near impossible to feel clean with the ash from thousands of burning corpses clinging to your skin and hair, finding its way into your nostrils
and mouth and clinging there, staining your face where tears attempt to clean the skin.

  As acclimated to horror as Miles has become over the years, he knows that he will never feel clean again, just like his friends.

  51

  We’re too late they all think simultaneously, the realization hitting each of them like a physical blow.

  Miles slams his foot down on the brakes, unable to concentrate on the road ahead of him.

  The voice of the radio host is professional but there is more than a hint at barely contained panic beneath the tranquil surface, eroding that veneer of professional detachment just slightly.

  It was happening everywhere.

  Gale’s project was as successful as he predicted it would be; as much as they’d all hoped it was hubris and that Gale had missed something, they had all known, somewhere deep down inside, that their friend would have considered everything before implementing something of this scale. Gale had been nothing if not meticulous.

  If Hewitt were to review the computer logs back in the lab he suspected he would find records of dozens of models run with projections that shored up Gale’s confidence. He’d never been the type to overlook even the tiniest detail, their friend’s intellect proportional to his apparent lack of empathy or humanity.

  The knowledge that society, as they knew it, was collapsing on a global scale weighs heavily on Hewitt’s shoulders even though he knows he wasn’t the cause of any of this. Regardless of how adamant Gale had been that this was his way to save Hewitt from a fate like Tristan’s, he knows that he played no part in bringing this tragedy about. Internalizing what he knows to be true intellectually has been proving to be more challenging. Nothing quite washes away the guilt he feels.

  Perhaps nothing ever will.

  What had transpired in this formerly quaint little town had been merely a microcosm, a test run to put his friends through a gauntlet. The rest of the world is now experiencing what Gale’s trial run had subjected them to, and it is not going well out there.

  It seems to be spreading so fast out there in the real world and the standard, ingrained responses to epidemic or pandemic conditions are only accelerating the spread. Attempting to quarantine the sick and requesting the public contact the authorities regarding anyone they believe to be ill is only serving to fuel the paranoia and in/out-group distrust by persons symptomatic of the first stages of illness.

  Similarly, quarantine only serves to cluster together large groups of the infected, which inevitably makes them more difficult to manage once they turn and become ravenous beasts.

  Listening to the reports being broadcast, they know it is going to take altogether too long before people begin reacting the only way that will put an end to this plague, putting down the infected before they transform into the inhuman threat they would ultimately become. There will be no treatment and no cure for this, but the authorities are going to let things get out of control before they come to accept the facts, assuming they ever do. They have been treating this like any other outbreak scenario and it is killing everyone.

  Some nations might arrive at the right solutions faster than others, but the damage will still be severe, especially considering that those in charge in the faraway places like that are usually the first to receive new vaccinations.

  “It will be a miracle if border conflicts or even outright war isn’t on the horizon,” Miles mutters, mostly to himself.

  Hewitt shakes his head as the same line of reasoning is triggered by Miles’ comment.

  “We’re fucked if we can’t get ahead of this thing and get a vaccine developed, a real vaccine,” Mariah says. “That is the only way we can hope to stop the spread of this madness.”

  Hewitt replies from the backseat, “Gale couldn’t work out a vaccine, and he was the genius who created this monster in the first place.”

  “Was Gale ever really trying to develop a cure, though?” Mariah asks, voicing the question they all carried in the back of their minds ever since Gale’s startling revelations.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know if I believe he was,” Hewitt acknowledges, after a short pause to consider his most sincere thoughts on the matter.

  “I spent a great deal of time poring through his research these last few days,” he continues, “and I couldn’t find any recent work on a vaccine, and nothing at all that would lead me to believe he was actively trying to counteract the illness or mitigate the effects. This was his fucking baby and he was so proud of it that I don’t think he could bear to kill it.”

  No one has a response.

  There is nothing else to say.

  Miles silently resumes driving and they continue down the road, somber, staring out the windows at the peaceful and beautiful landscape that belies the horrible realities they will be confronting soon enough.

  Another five minutes pass before Hewitt speaks again, “Miles, I need you to stop the car.”

  “Are you feeling alright?” Mariah asks, concern in her voice.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Miles replies, seeing the expression on his friend’s face in the rearview mirror and knowing it has nothing to do with feeling ill.

  “I need to go back,” he says in response.

  “What do you mean, you need to go back?”

  Hewitt takes a deep breath, “I need to get back into Gale’s research and get back to work where he left off when he was working on the vaccine.”

  Mariah speaks up from the passenger seat, “You’re no virologist and you certainly aren’t a world-class molecular biologist like Gale was.”

  “No, I’m not. But I do have enough education to know what Gale was working on and he fastidiously documented everything.”

  “Do you honestly believe you can figure something out?” Miles finally asks, his tone not mocking or derisive but hopeful.

  “I do.”

  “We are not letting you go back there, Hewitt,” Mariah insists, tears welling up in her eyes as she stares at him from the passenger seat, her neck craned awkwardly to look at him. “This conversation is over.”

  52

  They continue driving in silence for another couple of minutes.

  “I can’t go with you,” Hewitt speaks up loudly from the back seat, surprising everyone with the certainty of his tone. His eyes never waver from Mariah’s.

  “What in the fuck are you talking about?” Miles asks, his tone exasperated and unbelieving. “Where the hell else are you planning on going, because you are not going back that way? That place is dead, brother, it’s a graveyard”

  Hewitt thinks for a moment, trying to put his thoughts into a coherent enough state to express them before answering, “I think that I should go back to Gale’s lab. There’s something there, something in his notes or research, something that can be used to stop what he started.”

  “You pored over all of it, you said so yourself,” Mariah pleads, tears running down her cheeks. “There was nothing there.”

  “We have to stick together asshole. You know that” Miles replies.

  Catching a glimpse of Hewitt’s expression in the rearview mirror, Miles slows the car to a stop, shaking his head the whole time.

  Miles offers to turn around and get Hewitt back to the lab but Hewitt insists he can walk from where they are. He argues that they’d already lost too much time. He doesn’t want to delay them any further than he already has.

  Mariah, finally stopping the flow of tears from her eyes embraces him, wondering if she will ever see Hewitt again after this. He is plagued by similar thoughts but refuses to give voice to them, thinking that doing so will only make that outcome more likely than it surely is.

  “You should probably keep the kid here with you,” Miles suggests as Hewitt shakes his hand. “It’s going to be safer here with you, plus Mariah and I will make better time if we just have to watch each other’s backs.”

  Hewitt turns to look at Ben and the boy silently nods his head.

  “That works for me,” he says. �
��I might need some assistance anyhow and we have plenty of supplies left in town to hold out for a long god damn time, just the two of us.”

  “If we come across any clean survivors on the road, we’ll send them back your way with any additional things they can haul with them,” Mariah suggests.

  “That’s an excellent plan,” Hewitt responds, his eyes lighting up as he considers the possibilities. “There are plenty of smaller communities where they wouldn’t have been getting the vaccines Gale had tampered with.”

  He pauses for a moment, his eyes glazed as he loses himself in thought.

  “They more than likely would have been listening to the same kind of broadcasts we’ve heard though,” he continues. “Maybe convincing them that holing up somewhere more defensible wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  Ben and Hewitt remain standing in the middle of the road watching the SUV with its trailer until it passes out of sight around the bend. Just like that, the two of them are the only living people left in the region and Hewitt’s last two surviving friends have just disappeared from sight. Hopeful as he tries to be, he can’t contain the shiver that runs from head to toes.

  Hewitt pats the boy on the back and says, “Well, young man, we’ve got a bit of a hike ahead of us. Let’s get going.”

  Together they walk back down the road toward the town they’d only just escaped. Neither of them knows whether they will ever see another living human being again after this, but they both understand that they need to have faith in Miles and Mariah to successfully make it out there with the information they have.

  Maybe they can get some experts, perhaps even some former colleagues of Gale’s, who could make use of the plethora of research data in the lab. Hewitt knows that he will welcome any extra sets of eyes because he is going to be out of his depth; as smart as he might be, he only has so much education that will benefit him in this.

  He still intends to dig through the records and files as if it all depends on him to find a solution because it could very well still come down to that.