by Dell Sweet
~
“Be careful, Honey. Be careful.” Conner's voice came through the radio in her hand. She nodded, and then keyed the mic. button, “I will. We’re coming back.” She looked around her.
Jake sat cradling Lydia in his arms. Bright, thick blood covered the ground under her chest and the side of Jake's pants leg. The three other bodies lay close by. James stood, ashen faced, his gun still held tightly in one hand.
The pickup truck idled noisily about a hundred yards away from where Katie stood. The doors hung open. The Suburban and the state truck rumbled from behind her. Maybe, she thought, five minutes had passed since they had spotted the truck and stopped behind them. The kids had come out shooting. Just like in the movies, Katie thought. Exactly that. Hell! They had acted like it was a movie. Five minutes and four people dead. She shook her head slowly.
Jake looked up from the ground and met Katie’s eyes.
“Let’s get her in the truck... Okay, Jake,” She said softly.
Jake's head slowly nodded.
“What… what about these… these others?” James asked.
“Fuck them,” Jake rasped. “Fuck them! They can rot right there. They’re not going in the truck!” He looked at Katie defiantly.
“Okay,” Katie agreed. “Okay… James?” She waited until James's eyes left Lydia’s body. “Help Jake with Lydia?”
James nodded and started towards Jake.
“No,” Jake said quietly. “Don’t need help.” He swiped a blood covered hand across his eyes, leaving a bright smear of scarlet across his forehead as he did. “I’ll do it. I’ll take care of her.” His voice shook at the last, but he got to his feet, carefully holding Lydia in his arms, and headed for the pickup truck.
“James,” Katie said, motioning to the bodies.
James looked at her questioningly.
“In the river. We can’t just leave them here.”
James nodded, and together they bent to pick up the first body.
A few minutes later Katie let the last body slip from her hands and plunge over the cliffs and into the river far below. She turned her palms upright and stared at them for a second.
“Katie,” James said. She nodded, and followed James back to the truck.
Jake sat behind the wheel, Lydia slumped on the passenger seat, her head resting against Jake's shoulder. “You okay to drive?” she asked.
Jake nodded. His eyes met her own. They were red, and tears perched on the bottom lids waiting to spill down his cheeks. He cleared his throat, started to speak and then cleared his throat once more. “I’m going to take her to the park. I can't think of another place to go..” He trailed off, and Katie saw the tears that had been perched on his lower lid begin to course their way down his cheeks. He started to speak again, shook his head and gave up momentarily. Katie turned her eyes up to the clear blue morning sky and waited. Jake’s voice came to her quietly a few minutes later as she watched the empty sky.
“There’s the Sheep Meadow. There's a building there. I saw it open once... Shovels, uh, other stuff,” His voice caught and he stopped, closed his eyes and stayed silent for a few moments. He opened his eyes slowly once more. “… It's big. It's isn't all torn up… I thought.” His voice choked up again.
“Yeah. Yeah. I know that place,” Katie said softly. “You go. We’ll stop and get Jan and Conner. They’ll want to be there.”
Jake nodded. His hand fell to the shift lever on the steering column. His eyes, tear-filled and overflowing, swept up to her once more.
“You’ll be okay to get there?” Katie asked.
Jake nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. He turned his eyes back to the road.
Katie nodded. “We’ll meet you there.” She stepped away from the truck and watched as Jake pulled slowly away.
FOURTEEN
East of Phoenix
Billy and Beth
The moon was fully up. The desert seemed almost as if it were lit with streetlights to Billy. He had found a dirt road and followed it to a concrete building that was part of a complex of buildings. The place didn't look like it had much going for it. A collection of buildings in the desert. A few trucks sitting around. Company trucks of some sort, painted the same colors, but no name on them. He passed through the complex slowly on the dirt road that fed it. Nothing. He turned and drove through it more slowly. Nothing again.
Billy stared out into the night. The moon was moving past the halfway point, there wouldn't be much of the night left. He looked over at Beth where she sat, head back, breathing slowly. At some time the bleeding had stopped. He looked back around at the buildings. Maybe ten, unless he had miscounted. A dozen trucks and cars sat around buildings. A large building that was probably a garage, or at least appeared to be. Doors down. A side door, closed. He drove slowly, circling the building. A back door, also closed. Maybe, he thought, if it had been closed from the start nothing had been in there.
Billy pulled back out front of the building, shifted the SUV into park and left it running. The door was fifteen feet away. He reached over, pushed the button on the glove box and let it fall open. He pawed through insurance papers, candy bars, those would come in handy later, maybe, and a half bottle of water. There was a small flashlight on a key chain. No keys on the chain. Probably no battery in the flashlight either, Billy thought, but when he pushed the click button on top of the small aluminum flashlight it shot a bright beam that lit up the inside of the truck and nearly made him blind to the night before he clicked it back off. He waited a second and then leaned across to Beth.
“Beth... Beth I got to go... Beth?” Nothing. Her breathing didn't change and it scared Billy more than the attack by the wolves had. He sighed, fingered the safety on the rifle to make sure it was off, and then stepped from the truck.
The door chuffed closed behind him. Nearly silently. Silence, or at least it seemed silent for a moment. The desert wind reached his ears, just a soft rising and falling of sound as it slipped around the buildings. Nothing else. He made himself search the entire area once more with his eyes and then he walked to the door, took one more look back at the SUV; turned the knob and stepped inside the building.
Billy stood in the darkness, and listened to the wind slip around the metal building. His hand skittered along the wall and found the light switch. He flicked it before he had thought about it. Old habits died hard, he told himself. The click was overly loud in the darkness and made him jump. He forced his heart to slow down and then breathed deep. There was death here. He breathed in deeply once more to be sure.
The building was much more than a garage. There was a garage area to pull trucks into. One sat inside now, two large rolls of fencing in the back and dozens of long steel fence posts. He had seen them before. About seven or eight feet long with a sharp steel triangle piece at the bottom to drive into the ground. A sledge hammer to the top to drive it down into the earth and you had a fence post. He stepped forward toward a glassed in room just past the truck. A lunchroom or sorts, he guessed, or a break room. Vending machines lined the walls and three tables sat in the middle of the room with plastic chairs scattered about them. Empty.
Off to the left a steel door separated another area. He was beginning to panic about Beth. He had been gone a long time, but he forced himself to twist the knob on the door. It led to a hallway. A small office, bathrooms, and the door that lead outside. He walked to the door that led outside and locked it. There was a glass wall that looked into the office and his eye caught something he had missed as he walked past. There was a chair that had been pulled over to a window that looked out on the desert. A man sat in that chair.
Billy's heart leapt into his throat, but only for a second. The man was dead. He had been dead for some time. A gun rested in his lap, his head cocked at an odd angle. Billy backtracked to the door, opened it and stepped inside.
The smell was not that bad, but it was what he had smelled. Billy reached the chair and stared down at the man.
He h
ad dried out in the heat of the desert. Billy grabbed the armrest closest to him and dragged the chair from the office and out into the garage. He rolled it up to the doors and looked them over. Electric, but they could be manually raised and closed. Probably a nod toward electricity that might not always be available in the desert. Billy pulled on the chains that dropped from the ceiling and the door went up, squeaking as it went. He pushed the chair out across the cracked pavement and left it close to one of the other buildings. The SUV rumbled close by, the motor turning over smoothly. He could see Beth, head back against the seat back. A minute later he drove the truck into the garage and then worked the chains, lowering the door down once more.
Park Avenue: Adam
Adam had made his way back into the building using a fire ax he had found in the lobby of a building a few doors down. The same ax, shoved handle first through the door handle on the opposite side of the door was all that was keeping anyone who wanted in out. Whatever had gone wrong with the world had gotten worse. Then everything had changed again.
It had started yesterday with wind that was like a hurricane. It had blown into the city, and the rain had not been far behind it. Heavy rain, torrential rain. He had been in Mobile Alabama one year, waiting on a train to go back to New York. A hurricane was closing in. It had hit the city a glancing blow, and it had seemed the same as this. Heavy rain, the wind so hard it seemed to roar.
After the heavy rain and wind the lightening had come, and then the thunder. Huge bolts. Deafening. Then there was a bad earthquake. The entire building shook, and he was convinced it would go down, believed it had to. How could it stand through that? He had asked himself, but it had.
He had begun to get sick shortly after that, vomiting until there was nothing left, and still his stomach had not been satisfied. He dry heaved for hours it seemed.
The night went on and on, seemed to last forever. It was like the sun just decided not to rise the next day. Or the next day never came. He didn't know which, anymore than he knew what day it really was now.
There was sunlight. Sparse, barely there, but he could see through the sliding glass doors to the balcony. It seemed to be covered with dirty snow. Mounds of it. He closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly, and rolled up into a sitting position. His stomach threatened again, but he waited it out. Once he felt he could walk, he got to his feet, walked to the glass doors and slid them open.
The entire world was gray. Ash was falling, blocking out the sunlight. The sun was like a silver disc, barely seen, riding the horizon. As he watched, the ash began to drift in onto the carpet. He closed the door and stood staring.
His stomach had calmed down. Whatever had been the cause of that, he was grateful it was easing. He didn't feel like putting anything in it, in fact the thought alone brought back the queasiness, but left alone it seemed as though it would be fine.
The day went on. The sun seemed to slide across the horizon rather than actually rise. The rains came back hard and the winds with them. In no time the ash was washed away and the city was back, clean, fresh looking, no dead to be seen in the driving rain. He imagined the rivers were full of bodies, washing out to sea. He had never seen the streets look so clean. Although he was positive he could not sleep, he drifted into sleep later on that day, lying on Amanda Bynes' carpet, watching the rain fall in sheets and wash across the glass.
Rochester NY: Mike
Late Morning
Mike came awake with sunlight streaming in through the windshield of the small car. He looked around at the road. Stalled cars for as far as he could see in any direction He was somewhere outside of Rochester, but where, he wondered. He thought back to Rochester.
The drive into the city in the early morning had seemed uneventful right up until the attack had come. Afterward he had berated himself, cursed himself for not taking the events of the night before more seriously, but he knew that the truth was that none of them had. None of them had, and now he was the only one left. The only one left, and he was alone because of that decision.
They had just passed a large mansion, or what had once been a large mansion on East avenue: Nearly into downtown when the attack had come. The last Jeep, Ed... Terry, Gina? He couldn't remember for sure, but it didn't matter, they were only the first to go. The Jeep had blown up behind them. One second it was morning silent; birds whistling from the tree lined street, and the next a roaring fireball had erupted from the Jeep. The Jeep had lifted into the air engulfed with flame, and had come back down a split second later a twisted, shattered wreck. The roof ripped open crudely as if a giant can opener had done the job: Glass gone, body twisted. Blackened shapes, still moving, clearly seen through the flames.
They had all panicked. Mike had hit the brakes, somehow convinced they had driven over something in the road. Landmines. The word leapt into his mind and kept repeating. The second Jeep had rammed into them, Ronnie, Lilly, Jan, and that had distracted him further. As he had lifted his eyes he had seen the men squatting beside the once elegant mansion. A rocket launcher on one man's shoulder, and he had known the truth.
His foot had seemed to leap forward of its own accord and slam into the gas pedal, but it was too late. His eyes swiveled back and he saw the rocket leap from the launcher. A second later a black curtain had descended.
He had come to hours later. The vehicles' nothing but twisted husks, still burning in the black night. He could feel the heat from the fires. He had lain for what seemed like a long time trying to orient himself, make sense of what he last remembered, and what he now saw. Time did nothing to sort it out. It still made no sense some time later when he had first tried to sit up. Pain had flared everywhere and the black curtain had descended once more.
The second time the fires had been out. Heat still came from the blackened shells, but the fires were dead. The moon was high in the sky, bloated, bright silver.
He had moved slower, and while it had been close he had managed to fight past the first pain when he had moved.
His left leg was bad. Not broken, but cut badly, maybe sprung, after all he had lain with it twisted to one side for what he assumed was a very long time. He used part of his shirt to wrap his leg as he let his head clear.
His head was worse. Pain inside every time he tried to move too fast. It felt like liquid sloshing around inside his head, his brain shifting with it, slamming into the bone cage of his skull, and he wondered if it were true, or just something his mind provided in explanation of the pain. As he sat the pain eased enough for him to stand. Standing helped to ease it even more and he began to search.
What was left was hard to understand at first. Pieces. An arm here, a leg there, bones blackened in the wreckage. A pool of blood where his head had lain. No other blood anywhere, and more than enough pieces and bones to make him sick.
Vomiting had pulled the pain back full force and he had found himself exiting into the black curtain once again. It was dawn when he had found his way back and a sense of urgency to be moving had set in.
His head was better, but his leg seemed worse. He had set out limping, staggering, but had managed a fairly reasonable walk after a few hundred feet. A shattered convenience store a few blocks down provided bottled sports drinks he rounded up from the aisles. He drank two straight down and his head began to clear. He watched the sun began to rise, the street lights wink out, and then taking more bottles with him he began to walk back out of the city. Keeping to the back yards and alleyways of homes and businesses. He had no idea how long he had walked. He had no idea where he was right now.
He looked down at the cars interior. Key's hung from the switch. He didn't have a lot of hope, but he twisted the key and the starter began to turn over: Slow, barely there, but then it picked up speed in a rush and the car stuttered to life, coughed, nearly quit, and then smoothed out and began to warm up.
The muffler was loud, one side of the windshield was a stared mess, but the gas gauge stood at three quarters of a tank. Mike shifted the car into first
and pulled from the side of the road bumping over the cracked and tilted pavement as he went.
The driving was slow going, but an hour later he reached the outskirts of the city of Oswego. Had he really walked so far in the last days and nights? How much time had slipped by him, he wondered, but he had no answers. For the last twenty minutes he had been following deep tire tracks that cut around the stalled traffic, and the closer he had gotten to the city the more he had found himself having to slow down and cut around the stalled traffic, following the muddy tracks.
He had no idea who had made the tracks, and it made him more than a little concerned. He wound slowly through the stalled traffic, going around where he had to, and he was almost into the downtown section when the car became hopelessly mired as he tried to get around several vehicles blocking the road. It had been close before, but the front wheel drive had pulled the small car through despite the churned up ground. This time it was buried up to the undercarriage, and there was no hope of getting the little car out.
Mike shut it off, and leaving the keys in the switch where he had found them, walked off into the downtown district.
When he came to the first bridge, he scrambled over the cars, and walked to the second bridge. He saw the same scene that he had seen a few days before: The bridge collapsed into the river. A large steel service walk that had run beside the bridge, however, was still intact, and he carefully walked across it to the other side.
He walked slowly down the crowded roadway, and eventually out of the downtown section. It had been eerie to say the least.
When he reached the other side of the city, he stopped at a used car lot by the side of the road. An older Chevy pickup sat among the line of cars and trucks that fronted the road, and Mike walked over to examine it.
The four wheel drive truck looked to have been used fairly well. It was dented and rusty, but Mike liked the look of it. He walked around it and looked it over. The tires appeared to be in good shape, wider than most, as well as being tall and aggressively tread. He looked in the corner of the windshield, noted the stock number, and headed in the direction of a small trailer at the back of the gravel lot. The trailer served as an office, and he knew that if the keys were to be found, that was where he would find them.
He hoped the keys would be there and that the truck would start. If not, he supposed, he could cross the street to a new car lot that he had noticed. He would prefer the old Chevy, but if there was no choice he would cross the street and take one of the shiny new pickups that sat on the lot.
He supposed he would even be better off taking one of the newer vehicles, but he didn't want to. Even the old Chevy was newer than any truck he had ever owned, and all the newer trucks he had seen, seemed more like cars than real trucks. Even the Jeeps had been more luxury vehicle than an actual off road vehicle. The old Chevy looked like it had already seen its share of rough roads and would have no problem with them.
He had marveled while walking through the downtown district at how many things had changed in just a few days. The grass was growing. The temperatures were higher, vegetation seemed to be making a fast grab at every inch of real estate. Like it had only been waiting all these years to take back its own.
He found the keys on a small board in the cluttered office, and headed back to the old Chevy. He had to pump it several times before it would start, but it had eventually caught and started, with a large cloud of black smoke pouring out of the rusty tail-pipe when it did. Almost flooded it, he thought. The smoke cleared as the truck warmed up, and he sat and waited for the idle to fall off before he pulled out onto the roadway once more and headed north out of the city of Oswego.