01.5 Reaper's Run

by David VanDyke

  Sam had misplaced his keys years ago but knew there was a spare hidden inside a small stone rabbit in a planter near the door. He picked up the rabbit and took out the slightly tarnished key. He put it in the lock and had to work it back and forth for several minutes to get the lock to turn. It finally did, and Sam forced the door open with his shoulder and heard the weather stripping around the door come unsealed from the wood with a loud sucking sound. Stale pent up air rushed past him, and he left the door open. The dogs shot into the house and started sniffing around. They seemed fascinated by the smell of master everywhere.

  Memories flooded through him. The happiest times of his life had been in this house. He and Rachel had raised a girl here. They had comforted each other when they had lost little Jimmy at only one month old. Life here had been so wonderful that he was now ashamed he had taken it for granted. He had always assumed it would go on forever and even looked for better days ahead failing to appreciate what he had. Sam had violated one of his grandfather's favorite axioms, 'Boy, don't try to get happier than happy. Just happy is rare enough.'

  Sam spent some time looking at the pictures on the wall and the mantel. He smiled and even cried a little. They had loved each other and known they loved each other. They were dead now, but it wasn't his fault. It wasn't even his fault he hadn't been here at the end, just chance, one of the ways things worked. It might have even made dealing with the end worse if they were dying before his very eyes and he wasn't even getting sick. That sort of emotional guilt could destroy you. No, it was better this way he thought...at least he was going to believe that because it was the only option available.

  He finally summoned the courage to walk up the stairs to their bedroom. Somehow he already knew Rachel and Barbara would be together, and he was right. He found them in the master bedroom, huddled in bed. Time had taken away the pain and rigor their faces certainly showed at the end. Dead dry skin stretched over bones and their faces were no more horrific than thousands he had seen before. Sam understood that these two husks were not his wife and daughter, they were both long gone. These were just the tangible memories of their brief time in his life and on earth. He was grateful for it.

  Sam pulled the blankets up over the heads of both bodies. He then went out to the shed and selected a shovel off a hook on the wall. There was only one thought of where to bury them. The garden was Rachel's favorite place and Barbara would want to be close to her mother. He dug one deep grave for both of them, taking his time and resting frequently while drinking some instant tea he'd found in the kitchen cabinet.

  When the grave was finished he went upstairs and, wrapping the blanket around the bodies, brought first Barbara and then Rachel down, laying them carefully in the open grave. He picked up the shovel and thought to say something, but he had already said it and wherever they were, they certainly knew what was in his heart. He shoveled dirt over his family and patted it down flat.

  He had a morbid urge to stay the night in his house, then was afraid he wouldn't be able to leave, would stay there and die, calling up resting spirits to haunt him for his own need. No, he would let the dead rest and move on himself. There was nothing more to do or see in this place. It was no longer his home and never would be again.

  ***

  They camped out that night at Yorktown overlooking the river and the next morning crossed the giant bridge going north again. Summer was nearly upon them, and Sam paused in the middle of the bridge to look up and down the river. It was beautiful and peaceful.

  At the other end of the bridge, Sam was excited to find another jeep that worked. He rolled the plastic sides down, loaded up his gear and the dogs before he got going.

  They had only been driving an hour or so before Sam saw smoke far to the west. He stopped and pulled out his binoculars but couldn't really see anything. West was away from the ocean, he thought. Probably nothing more than another barn on fire, or a brushfire set off by lightning, or his wishful thinking.

  Sam deliberated for a moment and then smiled. He looked at the map and turned the jeep around to backtrack to a western road. It was probably nothing, but who knew, it might be someone else. It might be another person, and he might not be the last man after all.

  He put in a random CD from the jeep's visor case, turned the music up loud and headed off down the road singing and hopeful.

  The End of The Last Man

  Ryan King is a writer of post-apocalyptic stories like the novella No Kinda Life and the novel Glimmer of Hope. He also writes other genres of fiction. Find all of his work at his Amazon page.

  Read on for an excerpt from the next Plague Wars novel in the series, The Demon Plagues:

  “Prep the gas.”

  Doc turned a wheel on a steel tank. A faint hissing began as a valve released a colorless, odorless, tasteless soporific gas into the interior of their own submersible. Between their Plague and the filters, the team would be able to operate in the stuff for a while. If not, stims would keep them awake until it wore off.

  Spooky stared at the hatchway of the sub below for a full minute. “It’s opening,” he finally observed. The hatch below swung back and he shone a powerful flashlight downward to blind the crewmen below.

  An annoyed voice came from below. “Hey, they didn't say anyone would be coming down. Can you get that light out of my eyes?" His voice trailed off as the heavy gas drifted silently downward into the larger submarine. Two thuds came in quick succession.

  “Go.” Spooky led the team, dropping like a gymnast down through the tube, barely touching the rim to break his fall. Muzik handed down another heavy metal pressure tank and the colonel manhandled the container of compressed sleep gas down onto the deck next to a ventilation intake. He opened the stopcock, beginning its hissing release into the rest of the sub. The others followed rapidly, exactly as rehearsed.

  Two crewmen sprawled awkwardly near one of the open pressure doors, empty cardboard boxes dumped on the deck. It looked like they had planned to receive some fresh food from the real rescue module. Doc put a portable tranquilizer gun against each of their necks and pulled the trigger. Compressed air shot Eden Plague and sleep drugs into their bloodstreams. In eight hours they would wake up new men.

  “Let’s go, we’re on the clock.” They split up, each team with a separate mission.

  Jill darted through her chosen hatch, Doc Fitzhugh right behind her. They passed two more unconscious crewmen, and Doc doped them too. Down two narrow ladders and past a dozen more crew members in various states of unconsciousness. One had tumbled through a floor hatch and broken his neck. Jill grabbed her companion’s webbing, hauling him away from the fallen man despite his hoarse whispered protests.

  “No time for heroic measures, Doc.”

  “If I could EP him, then do CPR for long enough, he could live!”

  “Sorry, this is too important and you know it. No time. Just dope him, maybe he’ll get lucky.”

  Doc shot the fallen man with his trank gun and Jill dragged her comrade forcibly down the corridor.

  Thirty seconds later they ran up against a closed pressure door. Jill put her eye to the tiny vision port and swore under her breath. “I see two guys up and around. The gas hasn’t got here yet. They don’t look concerned but that could end any moment. Help me get this thing open.”

  She twisted the dogging handles and they both seized the lockdown ring. Like the perfectly-maintained machine it was, the wheel spun on its axis several turns until it slammed to a stop. Jill was already pushing the heavy door open.

  Aiming low, she fired a short burst at each of their feet from her PW10, a FreeCom submachine gun specially designed for the Needleshock ammo. Sounds like ripping paper accompanied the groups of ten or a dozen needles that stitched across their calves. Some bounced off the deck and ricocheted around the room, discharging their capacitors as they struck anything conductive. One fragment stung her cheek. The two crewmen convulsed as they fell, out cold.

  “Damn, I told them we should ha
ve developed a lower-velocity round for these soft missions. Put on your ballistic glasses. We can’t afford to lose eyes, even for a little while.”

  “Right.” Doc popped a dose in each of the fallen, then began rooting around in his waist pack. “Not something I thought I’d need right away…ah, here it is.” They slipped on the clear eye protectors.

  “Come on, come on, where’s the air system? Is that it?” This comment was just to get Doc moving on his next task; he tended to start woolgathering if he was allowed to think too much. Jill slapped the tall metallic cylinder for emphasis and then moved to the other hatch to peer out the thick glass vision port.

  “Whah…”

  Jill turned around to see Fitzhugh swaying on his feet. “Dammit, Doc, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Here…” She grabbed his aid bag and located a stim. Removing the cap she slammed the big exposed needle into Doc’s thigh, pouring a maximum dose into his system to counter the gas.

  “Ow, okay, I’m good now, I’m good.” He took the needle back from her, replacing the cap and sliding it back into his aid bag. “Damn, my heart’s beating like a jackhammer.”

  “Doc, shut up, pay attention and do your job. Get that stuff into the air system.” How she wished they had been able to find a special operations medic of some kind, but Doc had a ridiculously long list of technical skills, and that overrode purely operational concerns, given the eight-person limitation.

  “Right.” He popped the enormous housing, feeling the air rushing past now that the seals weren’t dogged down. Opening a lockblade, he cut a hole in the material of the man-sized cylindrical filter. It took him several minutes, as the material was over a foot thick. When he finally broke through, the suction almost took the knife out of his hand.

  Jill was ready with the tank. A pressurized plastic canister the size of a small fire extinguisher, instead of carbon dioxide it held Eden Plague suspended in a tranquilizer that would aerosolize and spread throughout the sub. Doc stuck the nozzle into the hole, opened the stopcock to start the fine spray, and let the suction pull it into place like a cork in a bottle.

  Jill keyed her UWB mike. “EP-sleepy deployed, no problems.”

  Clicks of acknowledgment echoed in her earpiece.

  ***

  End of The Demon Plagues excerpt.

  ***

  BOOKS BY DAVID VANDYKE

  Plague Wars series:

  The Eden Plague Book 1

  Reaper's Run: A Plague Wars Novel

  The Demon Plagues Book 2

  The Reaper Plague Book 3

  The Orion Plague Book 4

  Cyborg Strike Book 5

  Comes The Destroyer Book 6

  Stellar Conquest series:

  First Conquest: Book 1 - Contained within the anthology Planetary Assault

  Desolator: Book 2

  Tactics of Conquest: Book 3

  Look for them at your favorite book provider or visit www.davidvandykeauthor.com

  If you enjoyed what you've just read, please consider leaving a review at http://www.amazon.com/David-VanDyke/e/B008EZHPC4/