The Last Mile Trilogy

by Jacqueline Druga

  “I see that.”

  “Check this out.” David showed him the table in the hall. “Keys. And . . .” He lifted the briefcase. He opened it on the table. “Papers but they aren’t really anything. Newspaper though.” He handed it to Reese.

  Immediately, a sub headline ‘Lottery winners due home this evening,’ blared at him. “August 16th. So whatever occurred happened the day we were to return,” said Reese.

  “Yep. Follow me, this isn’t pretty. Let me paint the picture.” David took him to the living room, clutching that briefcase.

  “Ah, man.” Reese tilted his head and turned away.

  “Yeah.” David, too, didn’t want to look again. On the couch was a body, the skin like leather. It looked to be a teenager. He held a book, ear phone still connected. On the floor was an even smaller body, more than likely he had been watching television.

  “Why are there not bones? They should be bones.”

  “It was like they freeze dried. Or rather dehydrated, and at a quick pace, at least by the third day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll show you on another body. Not these two.”

  “There are more?”

  “Oh, yeah.” David led him into the dining room, where the table was set, and in the corner, by a computer was another body, slumped over. It, too, was a child.

  In the kitchen, evidence of a meal preparation lay on the island counter, everything shriveled and black.

  “Body four.” David pointed to the female body on the floor, set down the briefcase, the lowered himself to the body. “Come here.”

  Reese joined him and crouched down.

  “There are several stages of decomposition a body goes through. The first stage your body starts breaking down, you can’t see this, ok, but it prepares for the two putrefaction stages. Where the gases in the body make the body bigger, expand, seep out like an acid. It is a serious acidy material and by the black putrefaction stage, you should see evidence of it. Like on the carpet, the couch, but they were still intact.”

  “Did the body not go through that stage?”

  “It did, but the dryness of the air . . .”

  “Created a mummy,” Reese said, rubbing his chin. “That’s why they look like this. Did it get that hot?”

  “Dry, too. This happened in what? June. Temps had to hit desert temps, air blasted them. Within, mind you, probably about 10 days of death.”

  Reese stood up. “Is this the last one?”

  “No. There’s a body in the bedroom, my guess the father. It looks like he just dropped dead, while he was changing clothes.

  “So they died instantly.”

  “Looks that way.” David stood.

  “Could it have been a blast of heat, not hot enough to cause structural damage, but hot enough to kill these people instantly?”

  “Yes. But . . .” David popped open that briefcase. “Let me paint you a picture. This is the Walters family. Les Walter worked on Wall Street. Drove a Lexus, lived in the city and drove, so he had money. He went to work, but he didn’t come straight home, he stopped at the money machine that last night.” David put a receipt on the table. “Next stop, the Market.” He laid down another receipt. “And his final stop was for a latte at 7:45 PM. So he came home around 8. Said hello, went back to change his clothes, took time to make a drink. Then bam, he, his wife, and three kids all dropped dead. So whatever hit, hit in the evening, and fast. The heat thing is thrown off by the time of day. Could have happened, but they would have felt it coming. They wouldn’t have kept doing what they were. My guess is was a plague, a biological weapon, something like that. I’m just trying to find a correlation between all this and the missing ocean.”

  “The plague or weapon makes sense as to why I looked in three apartments and didn’t find anything or any bodies.”

  “The whole thing is fucked. I mean, all we know right now is that these people all dropped dead. But how many in the city did? And in the course of five years, why did the ocean disappear?”

  “Maybe once we get further out of the city and the sand starts diminishing, we might find some answers.”

  “Hopefully so. Would be cool, wouldn’t it if we found Kip’s Omega Man?”

  Reese shook his head with a chuckle. “Christ him and his science fiction.” Another chuckle. “Omega Man.”

  “Reese!” Ken’s voice carried from the apartment hall.

  Reese hurried with David right behind. “Everything OK?” he asked Ken.

  “You . . . you guys gotta see this.” Ken waved them on and left, running down the hall fast.

  A quick glance to one another and both David and Reese took off, too.

  <><><><>

  The gang blocked it when Reese and David arrived to the top floor penthouse.

  “Thaddeus found it,” Ken said, joining the others.

  “What the hell were you doing up here?” Reese asked, approaching the door that they all blocked. “I said spread out, but not that . . .”

  Immediately, Reese froze when they parted like the Red Sea to expose the penthouse door. His eyes went to Kip first, then back to the door.

  The double set of doors seemed burned around the edges.

  “Soldered,” Thaddeus explained, his hand smoothing. “Sealed shut. On this side. The other door looks barricaded and sealed.”

  It wasn’t even the sealed door that got Reese, it was the spray painted lettering on it stating ‘I am Omega, Stay out.’

  David joined him at the door. “This is proof it wasn’t a burst of heat, it had to be a virus or something, a weapon that some people survived.”

  Reese shook his head. “We can assume all we want, but for all we know this crackpot lived like this before the world went to shit.”

  David nodded at the door and said, “Only one way to find out.”

  Thaddeus said, “Reese you gonna break down the door, it’s gonna be difficult.”

  “Did you try getting in?” Reese asked.

  “Not yet.”

  A nod and Reese walked to the door and turned the handle on the one side. The door opened. He looked back at everyone, pushed the door open just a tad wider, pulled the flashlight and stepped inside.

  Sandbags greeted them in the huge open air living room, black curtains covered the windows.

  “Hello!” Reese called out. “Anyone here? I am Colonel Reese Gray, United States Marine Corps, anyone home?”

  Lucy staying close to Reese, more so for safety’s sake, whispered. “I don’t think anyone is here.”

  “Everyone, let’s pull down these curtains. Brighten this place.”

  Moving through the darkened apartment, one by one, the curtains came down, and the room brightened.

  David knew instantly that whoever had barricaded himself inside the apartment wasn’t there any longer. And they wouldn’t find a body either.

  Not this person.

  The Omega man obviously took only what was light enough to carry, because he left a lot of supplies.

  Boxes of water and food were lined up behind the sandbag barricade.

  Canned goods made a wall across the room and behind it . . .

  “Oh, yeah,” Reese grinned standing at the row of cans. “Bingo. Check out the lottery behind this wall.”

  David could only guess by the look on Reese’s face what it was. It had to be weapons. And by listening to the gleeful comments, that’s exactly what it was. Omega guy had an arsenal.

  That wasn’t David’s concern. He moved around the huge apartment. Omega guy stopped using the other rooms. What was he afraid of? If he was safe and alive, why did he leave?

  Did someone take him?

  There was more evidence to support that.

  Omega guy had turned the spacious living room into a one room survivor room. Make shift walls were made of supplies and David moved into the make shift kitchen.

  He searched and searched.

  “Hawk,” Reese’s voice snapped him from his search. “Come p
ick a weapon . . . what are you looking for?”

  “A can opener.”

  Reese gave a quizzical look. “You’re hungry?”

  “Um, no. I’m looking for evidence that this guy willingly left. If he packed up supplies, he took a can opener.” David moved to a drawer. “Evidence that someone didn’t take him, no can opener. His body . . .whoa.” His hand smoothed. “Bingo.”

  “More weapons?” Reese asked.

  “Better.” David lifted a composition notebook. “Answers.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s in it?”

  “Looks like Omega guy . . .” David said as he flipped through pages, “at least started a journal. First entry . . . August 16th.”

  “The day we were supposed to arrive home.”

  “No,” David corrected. “The day the earth went to shit.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was obvious that Omega Guy wanted to be a song writer, or a poet, because the composition notebook had one partial poem written on the first page. The previous pages were torn out. Did Omega guy keep them, take them with him?

  David and Reese gathered everyone around. There wasn’t much to read. Actually, David was going to skip the poem all together, until he saw the scribble in big letters. ‘To whom it may concern’ and ‘Read’ with an arrow.

  “Omega guy’s name is Bill Kowalski,” David explained. “And he left this here for whoever came to his apartment and found it. I believe he left it here. I didn’t read this. I thought we could read it together.”

  The faces were observant and listening intently.

  “August 16th,” David said. “That was the date we were to return home. Here is what he says.”

  . . . I am a mess. I don’t know how much sense this will make. At this point in my mental state, I am going to try to make sense of what occurred. But really, there isn’t any sense to make. It is almost midnight. There are no news stations, no internet, I can get a signal on my phone, but can’t reach a soul. I know people are out there. I hear them, I see them. I have to stop now. I will write more when I can comprehend and make sense.

  David flipped a page.

  August 17th. I have made the determination that I would journal as long as I can, and leave it behind. If the world is indeed coming to an end, someone, either from the future or from now, will want answers. Because to the best of my knowledge, with all media communications down, there is no documentation, let me tell my story of that day.

  The day before last, on August 15th, there was news of an impending solar flare that was to occur on the 16th. They classified it as an ‘X’; flare. From my research, ‘x’ flares comes in different classifications. The largest recorded was a 6. They were guessing this to be a 6 as well. They predicted massive power outages. But they also said, prior to the flare we would see some phenomenal light shows in the sky. I was researching the flare thing on the net. The sun activity had increased and many believed it to be the mythical planet x making its way around the sun, mainly, because the activity seemed to be occurring on the far side of the sun. I know. It doesn’t make sense. 805 pm was when the light show was to begin, the flare within three hours.

  Like thousands of others, I made my way to Times Square to watch the television and hope to check out the sky.

  It was indeed beginning to look like a spectacular show. Whiteness occurred behind the sun. The religious fell to their knees. I laughed.

  Then there was a flash as if something came from the sun. It disappeared fast, and like a fireworks display, people did their oohs and ahhs.

  It only lasted for a moment. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I thought, ‘wow, that’s it?’ and just as I thought that, it grew warm. Not especially hot, just a weird warm, like someone hit me with a blow dryer, then this stench. It was vinegar smelling and before I knew it, people were dropping.

  To the left of me, the right, everywhere, they fell like dominoes. No coughing, no choking, no screaming; only dying. Dead.

  I wasn’t the only one standing. There were a lot of us. It was if the hand of God came down and with a finger and said, ‘you, you, you. Dead’ ‘You, you, you, live.”

  I grabbed some guy who was just as panicked, but he didn’t know what was going on. The televisions in Times Square were static, and people were taking off saying, ‘I have to find my family.’

  There were too many dead to count. Maybe 80 percent of those standing there dropped. The rest, like me, they ran.

  I am in my apartment now, looking out. I don’t see any activity.

  All I can think of it was a virus or weapon, and I was somehow immune. I’m going to leave today to get supplies. I’m safe here for now.

  David read another passage. It talked about Bill’s journey out and how he had run into several others that were scavenging for food. Many were planning on leaving the city. Not Bill. He was waiting.

  Four days of entries were basically the same until . . .

  August 22nd – I woke up this morning, looked out the window and saw that the New York Harbor was gone.

  Gone.

  I spent so much of my time raiding the apartments in this building and taking over the penthouse, that I didn’t notice. There is no way in hell that the harbor receded that much over night.

  I saw nothing fall from the sky. Heard nothing in a silent city.

  But the harbor is dry. A weird sand storm has begun like a light dusting of snow. I can still see the water; it’s just far beyond the statue of liberty.

  Where is it going?

  Addition – I just returned from going outside. The best means to speak to anyone is to wait by the tunnels. You can always find someone there leaving the city.

  No one seems to know why the ocean is receding. Everything remains unsure.

  The journal entries continued. Some short, some long.

  He wrote about the water receding a mile or so more each day. About 20 days into his hole up in that penthouse he made some radio communications. Still it was unknown to Bill what had happened. It was unknown to anyone what had happened. But Bill didn’t write anything else about that radio contact.

  He wrote of his insanity in being alone. How each day grew hard and became more difficult to be alone.

  He wrote of his sadness.

  Then after twenty days, the journal entries just stopped. David deducted he was there much longer, and wrote much more, because there were pages torn out after the last entry.

  The crew read that journal into the wee hours of the morning.

  It gave them some answers but not enough. Even those who remained on earth, those who survived and endured were just as lost as they were.

  But David had another idea on where to find some answers. He presented it to Reese, and as obscure as it was, they decided it was worth a try.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  His first thought was, ‘what are you, fucking nuts?’ but after thinking about what Hawk had told him, Reese did see some remote validity to Hawk’s thinking.

  He had just finishing, rearranging the Hall Mobile so they could take extra supplies, and then assigned tasks to keep everyone busy, while he did what he had to do.

  The tasks didn’t need to take them far, just out of ear shot. At the very least, Reese didn’t want the others to think he was crazy.

  “Dudes, like what did I do?” Kip questioned, after being led into the hallway just off the living room.

  “You didn’t do anything,” Reese kept his voice low. “We just need to talk to you.” He pointed to the floor. “Have a seat.”

  Kip did. He shaded his eyes as he tried to look up to Reese and Hawk. “Can I sit somewhere else? The sun’s in my eyes.”

  “No,” Reese said.

  “Oh, dudes, this is an interrogation, then, huh?”

  Grunting, Reese squatted on the floor in front of him. “We need to talk to you.” He motioned his head to David.

  David sniffed, probably out of nervousness. “Kip, uh, do you read a lot?”

&
nbsp; “You mean like magazines?” Kip asked.

  David bobbed his head. “Yeah. Or books like science fiction.”

  “No. I hate reading. I watch movies.”

  “Ah,” David nodded. “Do you watch a lot of science fiction movies?”

  “Average. Why?”

  David looked at Reese, and then drew up a slight cringe. “Anyone say anything to you about having a gift?”

  “Like a birthday gift. Dudes, I always get gifts for my birthday, well, sort of, once I turned eighteen, it lost its impact and . . .”

  “No.” Reese interrupted. “Cut the shit. Listen up. I thought Hawk here was a fucking loon when he first said something, but then it dawned on me. Nah, something is up with you.”

  “I’m not high.”

  Reese closed his eyes briefly. “Not that, Kip. You made these comments that we all scoffed at. I made fun of. Actually being in the future, being in New York. Finding the Statue of Liberty buried. The tremors comment, the tentacle, Omega man, a plague, weapons in his apartments. No one hits the mark that much, unless they are so in tune with science fiction or they have some sort of fucking sight about them. Which is it?” Reese expected the typical sarcastic comment, maybe a snicker, but he didn’t expect the pucker that swept across Kip’s face.

  His lips moved and his eyes shifted down. “Why you think I get high so much, dude?”

  Reese shook his head. “You like it?”

  “Yeah, but, no. I mean, I . . . never mind.”

  Beckoning, David leaned closer. “You what? Tell me?”

  “I make comments as jokes, because it’s my way of hoping it isn’t true.”

  David looked lost. “What? Do you see things?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Kip said solemnly.

  Reese huffed out. “This isn’t a Kip joke, is it? You aren’t fucking with us?”

  “No, captain, dude, I’m not. I don’t get them constantly, if I think, I can see it, but mostly they come to me. And some times they aren’t clear. Like . . . like . . . with the Omega Man vision, I was packing up the mobile, right, and guess who I see standing there in his blue Neville outfit. Yep. Chuck Heston. He said, ‘Hey, Kip. See ya’ soon.’, and showed me his rifle. So that’s where I guessed Omega man, weapons, you know.”