The Agora Virus (Book 2): Anxiety

by Jack Hunt

Jameson grabbed his arm. “No, you don’t understand. You have to press the button twice to get it to lock in place. If it doesn’t, the moment someone steps on the outer perimeter, it will go back down. It has a sensor built into the panels around the floor.”

  “Who cares, let them have it,” Frank said turning back towards the cars.

  Jameson wouldn’t let up. “Listen, we are going to need more than what we have here. You want all that firepower to end up in their hands?”

  Frank exhaled hard. He gave another look around the corner and then started moving back. “Alright, stay here, I’ll go back in.”

  Frank moved around him and darted back inside. Though he knew Abner was dead he couldn’t help feel as if his ghost was lurking over his shoulder and telling him to stay away from his property. Stupid old coot. If he hadn’t held on to that Guthrie, they would have left. Frank darted into the room and rushed over to the table.

  When Jameson had created it, he’d been smart enough to make the buttons look like just another section of the table. Frank fumbled around underneath until his fingers found the buttons. His finger touched the one on the left and he wondered what it did. Maybe it was curiosity, the leftovers of a child’s need to rebel, but he couldn’t resist. He pressed the left button for just a few seconds and flames shot out the sides. Holy crap! After releasing, he pressed the right one to lock the table in place and was about to leave the room when he heard voices inside.

  They had made their way in.

  “He’s over here, Joey,” one of the others in the group said.

  Frank backed up from the corridor.

  “Oh, God. Fuck!” Joey hollered. Frank’s immediate thought was they had found Clarence.

  Frank pressed his shoulder into the wall and peered around, looking down the corridor. One way he saw Joey and several others, the other way he saw Jameson. He briefly poked his head around the door, no doubt coming to warn him. A little late for that now. Frank motioned to Jameson to get the hell out.

  “Go check the rooms. Clarence believed this asshole had weapons.”

  “Where?” Dusty said.

  “How the hell should I know? Clarence was the only one who knew about it. Take Palmer and Jackson.” They turned and started heading down the hall. There were four rooms in that corridor. The room Frank was inside was the last one on the right. One against three, he didn’t like those odds. He turned and looked around for a place to hide. Besides the pool table and the bar, there was nowhere else, except…

  He looked up and saw panels that could be pushed up. “Ah fuck this,” Frank said. He brought up his rifle, and stood beside the door waiting for one of them to enter. His body trembled.

  Seconds felt like minutes as he heard boots getting closer. He pressed himself hard against the wall with the rifle raised. The very second the guy stepped foot inside the room, Frank jammed the butt of his gun hard into his temple. He was out cold before he even hit the floor. Not wasting another second, he rushed out holding his weapon high expecting to run into one of them but they had gone into individual rooms. The only one that spotted him was Joey, who was still in the kitchen.

  Frank unloaded several rounds, purposely making sure to miss but scare him enough that he would dive for cover. All the while he rushed backwards towards the exit. As soon as he broke out into the warm summer air, he double-timed around the building heading for the fence.

  Jameson was already over and had started the truck. He could hear yelling behind him as Joey and his men scrambled to come after him. Frank vaulted over that fence with all the finesse of an Olympic gymnast. As gunfire erupted behind him, he landed hard on the other side. He certainly wasn’t scoring a gold for that landing. He tripped and nearly fell on his face as he rushed to get up and scoop up his pile of clothes. But they were already gone. He figured Jameson had taken them. Jameson was already backing up as he sprinted towards the truck. He lunged for the back and threw himself over into the bed as Jameson sped away under a hail of bullets.

  Slamming around in the back of the truck, he tried to get up but Jameson wasn’t easing off the gas. He was only going faster. Every bump and hole in the road made him slam against the side, or gain air. Several times he thought he was going to come out of the back of that truck. How he managed to stay inside was beyond him.

  The truck burst out of Cottage Road and took a sharp right, slamming him into the side again. This time he felt a shot of pain go through his shoulder. The exhaust pipe let out a guttural cry as the 4 x 4 Ford truck accelerated forward leaving behind a plume of dust.

  When Frank managed to get to the window he noticed that Jameson was still not back in his clothes. The bag with the firearms was on the seat.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  “How the hell should I know? I didn’t see them on the ground, I figured they must have grabbed them up.”

  “You want to slow down before I end up as roadkill?”

  Jameson’s eyes swept the mirrors like a psychotic mental patient. Frank was just about to tell him to ease off the gas again because no one was following when the passenger side mirror exploded and several rounds hit the back of the truck. He twisted to see a black truck bursting through a dusty landscape.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  He slipped down, trying to stay low while at the same time lifting his rifle and returning fire. He didn’t dare lift his head up and he had no idea if any of the rounds were hitting the vehicle behind them.

  Bullets snapped over his head, one struck the back window on the truck and in the next second he found himself covered in tiny shards of glass.

  “Motherfuckers!” Jameson yelled.

  They were on NY-12 heading west towards Clayton. The road was desolate, the landscape flat and there were minimal homes along the way. It was pretty much farmland. They shot past a sign on the right-hand side for some beauty shop.

  He could hear the roar of the truck’s engine behind as it was gaining on them.

  “You want to keep firing at them?” Jameson yelled. It was a surreal moment for sure. Frank felt like he was having an out-of-body experience in which he was looking down on himself, wearing nothing but a pair of underpants, a face mask, goggles, and boots. He lifted the rifle again and unleashed another flurry of bullets, this time he moved in a sweeping motion.

  “Beauty!” Jameson screamed out loud. His cry was followed by a crunch of metal and a thud. Frank raised himself up on his elbows and looked over the rim of the truck bed. In a cloud of dust and dirt was the truck that had been pursuing them. It had come off the road into a farmer’s field. Smoke was pouring out of the engine, the windscreen was cracked and the occupants were pushing their way out.

  Frank gazed back down the road behind them and breathed a sigh of relief. There were no more vehicles chasing after them. Jameson was hooting and hollering about what an adrenaline rush that was. Adrenaline? Frank could have done without being shot at.

  As they bumped their way down to Jameson’s house, Frank cleared glass off his chest. In a few areas he was cut but it wasn’t too bad. When Jameson killed the engine, he hopped out and looked at the sorry state Frank was in.

  “What a ride, eh?”

  He groaned, reaching for his lower back. “I’m gonna feel this tomorrow.”

  “Need a hand?”

  Frank grabbed hold of his and clambered over the side onto the ground. Jameson burst out laughing. “Ah man, you should get a load of us. What has this world come to?”

  That’s when Frank noticed that Jameson was bleeding.

  “Your shoulder.”

  “Ah,” he shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a graze.”

  As they made their way down to the dock and back into the boat, Frank glanced around at the neighbors’ homes. A week ago, neighbors might have called police, and had them locked up for indecent exposure, or men in white coats might have taken them away and tossed them in a padded cell.

  One thing was for sure. They weren’t in Kan
sas anymore. No police were coming to protect or arrest them. No one was coming to give Clarence or the psychotic Abner Rooney a proper burial. They would go the way that others would in this new world. They would be left to rot and their carcasses would eventually be eaten away by insects and small animals that would make their way inside.

  Once they tossed the bag of guns in the boat, Jameson took Frank inside his home and gave him a shirt, and a pair of his old pants. They were tight as Jameson had a small frame but at least it would save him the ridicule he would have got had he returned without any pants.

  Inside the home as Jameson got ready, Frank walked around the quiet living room. There were a few pieces of furniture, a cabinet full of crystal, and several photos of Jameson, Meg, and his stepdaughter. An upright piano was off to his right. He lifted the lid and ran his hand across the keys. It let out an out-of-tune sound and he lowered it. On a side table he saw a bottle of bourbon. He scooped it up, unscrewed the top, and gave it a sniff. He wasn’t a big drinker but that smelled damn good. Frank opted to not have any and instead picked up the photo. He heard the floorboards creak behind him and he looked around to find Jameson doing up the buttons on his shirt.

  “That’s Meg, and Kiera in better days.”

  “Where is she now? I mean, did you bury her?”

  “No. Doctors wouldn’t let me in to see her. They told me she had passed and because of how infectious the virus was, I wasn’t able to see her.”

  “That sucks. Probably for the best though,” Frank said placing the frame back down. “We should probably get going.”

  “Do you think this is it?”

  Frank frowned. “What?”

  “The end?”

  He shrugged. “My wife was pretty certain that they aren’t going to be able to reel this one in.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Atlanta. She works for the CDC.” He ran a hand around the back of his neck to work out some of the tension.

  “Alive?”

  “As far as I know. I haven’t heard from her in several days so I’m not sure if she will try to make her way here. She was about to get married to someone else. He’s dead now.”

  Jameson leaned against the frame of the French doors that separated the living room from the kitchen. “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die. You know, I guess it’s one of those things you tend to put off thinking about until you’re faced with some health crisis. Now it feels like I’m staring down the barrel of a gun. One part of me just wants to join Meg and the other keeps telling me to stick around for Kiera’s sake.”

  Frank nodded. “That’s a good reason.”

  “You ever thought of… you know…”

  Frank chuckled. “Trust me. I’ve been there countless times and it didn’t take a pandemic to get me there. It’s not a good place to be in,” Frank said before heading towards the back door.

  Jameson asked one last question, “So how did you overcome that?”

  Frank placed his hand on the knob of the door and opened it. He didn’t look at him when he answered. “I didn’t. I just take it one day at a time.”

  ELEVEN

  Back on the island, Ella was in the middle of planting potatoes in a small plot out the back of the cottage. She had taken several of the potatoes that Jameson had brought over prior to leaving and had sliced them into several parts. They key was not to plant the entire potato but to locate the eyes of the potato and cut it in half or in three pieces depending on where the growing points were. She was just about to bury them when someone blocked out the sun.

  “Aren’t you supposed to leave them in a pantry for a day or two to heal over before you plant them?”

  She snorted. “Gardener, are we?” she said, looking up and seeing Gabriel there.

  He crouched down and assessed her handiwork. “My grandfather was. When I was little he would take us out back and get us involved in planting different seeds and helping out around the garden. He loved that plot.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Oh no, he passed away a good seven years ago, not long after my grandmother.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  He shrugged. It didn’t seem to bother him much. Time had a way of doing that.

  “I’ll give you a hand.”

  “Aren’t you meant to be keeping a watch out for the Guthries?”

  He nodded. “That’s right but I don’t think we are going to come under attack, do you?”

  She pushed a piece of potato down into the earth. Each one would be around twelve inches apart and three inches below soil. They had to be placed in an area that got at least six hours of sun a day.

  “You’ve always lived in the big city, haven’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a guess. Am I right?”

  His lip curled up. “You are. And?”

  “City folk tend to spend so much time looking up at the skyscrapers and avoiding eye contact, they can overlook the ones in front of them.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it can be a good and a bad thing.”

  He scoffed and handed her another potato to plant. “Ella Talbot, you don’t make much sense.”

  “Hey! Where’s my water?” Tyrell’s voice carried on the wind from across the tiny island.

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s coming.” He rose up and looked down at her. “I’ll speak to you later.”

  She nodded but didn’t reply. As he walked away she cupped a hand over her eyes and watched him hurry into the house. After she had filled the trench, and covered it over, she went into the shed and retrieved the binoculars. She came out and wandered down to the water’s edge to see if she could see her father returning. She focused in on an area of water between their island and the mainland and it took her a few minutes before she saw the boat returning, and her father inside. She turned and let her gaze drift across the water to the other islands. There was another one close by called Watch Island. It was partially attached by way of a small series of rocks. She couldn’t see any movement over there. It was privately owned and the last thing she had heard was that the current owners were trying to sell it for close to two million dollars.

  She continued looking around until she noticed a group of people standing on the dock of Club Island, which was a section of Grindstone Island. She zoomed in to get a better look and that’s when she realized one of them was looking back at her through a set of binoculars. It was Butch Guthrie.

  Moving fast up the embankment, she disappeared into the thick tree line that surrounded the property and made a dash for the house. When she burst into the kitchen through the rear door, she startled Gloria and Sal who were in the middle of what appeared to be a heated conversation.

  “He knows we’re here,” she said out of breath while steadying herself against the kitchen counter.

  “What?” Sal replied.

  “Butch Guthrie. I just saw them looking this way.”

  Sal looked as if he was about to have a coronary, he raced outside the house with Gloria not far behind him.

  “Sal. Wait up.”

  “That bastard is going to pay.”

  Gabriel had been getting a couple of bottles of water from the basement when Ella headed out after Sal.

  “Sal, my father is on his way back. There’s nothing you can do without a ride.”

  The only boat they had belonged to Jameson and it was on its way back.

  “I’ll swim.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Gloria hollered.

  “What’s going on?” Gabriel yelled as he joined the rest of them. Ella brought him up to speed but Sal was already down by the water taking off his clothes.

  “Sal, you’re not thinking straight,” Ella said rushing down to where he was while trying to divert her eyes away from the sight of his piss-stained briefs. “Just wait until my father gets back. Heck, you were the one telling him not to be hasty.”

  “That was then, this is now.” />
  She shook her head in desperation.

  Seeing that he wasn’t listening to her, she looked to Gabriel and Tyrell who were just watching with a look of amusement. What on earth they found funny about this situation was unknown but then again seeing a psychiatrist testing the water with his toes to see how cold it was before he made a brave attempt to cross was kind of funny.

  “Well, are you two just going to stand there?” she said.

  They rushed down the embankment and grabbed a hold of him and began hauling him back.

  “Get off.”

  “Sorry, no can do.”

  Ella knew full well he wasn’t going to get in that water the moment he touched it. Even though it was the middle of summer it was freezing cold. And the distance between the two islands was too far for someone to swim. He was just putting on a front for Gloria who was eating it up. This was probably the first time she had ever seen him standing up for her.

  Eventually they managed to talk him down from the ledge so to speak. Gloria had run in to get him a towel, even though he didn’t need one. Ella rolled her eyes and made her way back to the house. By the time they had got him inside, her father came through the front door. He stood there for a second gazing at them all gathered around Sal who was sitting on a chair in his underwear.

  “Let me guess, you took a trip to see Abner as well,” he muttered with a grin.

  “What?”

  No one had a clue about what he was on about until later that evening when he filled them in on what had happened. It was strange to see people go from roaring with laughter to deadpan serious in a matter of seconds when he and Jameson told them about the attack.

  One thing was clear, they had just opened a can of worms and all hell was going to break loose.

  “I’m telling you, we have to do this tonight. He knows we’re here,” Frank said.

  “Okay, let’s say you succeed. You now have the food back, then what? You think he is going to stand by and do nothing?” Zach said.

  “No. But do you want to starve?”

  “We can rotate shifts. The fact that we are on an island and there is some distance between us and them means we don’t need a fence to keep them out, the water is our fence,” Ella said. “The island’s not big so if three or four us stay awake at night and then sleep in the day, we should be able to keep them away.”