The Exodus Is Over

by C. Chase Harwood

  When Granny Washington suddenly came off that couch with the strength of a rabid jungle cat–

  Jon felt his chest constrict with the memory of it, a combination of intense remorse and subconscious terror. His face had grown flush, he could feel the heat of it, and he realized that he was holding his breath. He exhaled and told himself to pay attention. Losing focus was a fatal mistake. After… after her death… his safety had become less of a worry. Nevertheless, he still had a job to do. Though there was no news desk anymore to send updates to, for his own sanity, he remained a reporter. His work was what saved him from a deep depression, and it was another reason why he was one of the last ones heading out.

  He assumed he had been spared from the disease so far because of his near obsession with drinking only bottled water, a sip of which he took now as he walked through the woods. It had become unfashionable to drink bottled water in recent years (the attached carbon footprint having become unacceptable to a society fighting global warming) but Jon still kept the stuff squirreled away in his car for when he was alone. He’d occasionally get a honk and a finger wag from a scolding fellow driver, but most folks left him alone, others tipping their bottles in a toast, sharing a moment of sin.

  It was May now. The whole disaster had begun the previous September. Until January, it had remained contained in Florida. When it became clear that Cain’s had been released in the water supplies of ten of America’s biggest cities, the Federal government actually had a plan C. It involved a massive evacuation to Canada, as well as Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Mexico became a de-facto haven, but the newly finished border fence stopped most escaping American’s cold, and at the mercy of a rapidly growing army of Fiends at their backs. Mercy… mercy was a quick death. Mexico (the country now run by a massive drug cartel in all but name) handled its own small northern outbreak with brutal efficiency, quarantining the depth of its first twenty miles of its US border with ruthless death squads. Hawaii and Puerto Rico became victims of an air travel society when, early on, the sick and the healthy alike looked for refuge on those islands. Paradise was lost as the Pacific State and the Caribbean protectorate were sealed off and ultimately abandoned to chaos. As far as Jon knew, it was only the US that had been attacked. His shortwave radio merely told of the economic collapse occurring on the rest of the planet and the concurring bedlam that was its natural consequence. And now there was another twist: He hadn’t witnessed it himself, but a few soldiers talked about it. Some kind of mind control. Like the infected could reach out mentally, get in your head and mess with it. None of the men he talked to could really describe it other than to say that it scared the crap out of them worse than a whole charging mob of the marauding berserkers. Jon could only take their word for it. His own experience with infected people had been harrowing enough without the added element of mental telepathy.

  A branch snapped under his right foot and he stopped cold, listening for the consequences. He needed to concentrate. His city-boy gait must have sounded like a foraging bear without a care in the world. As he resumed walking, each crack of a stick had him wincing at his clumsiness, his unintended signal of approach. As he got closer to the water, he began to make out the lines of a small house. It had a pitched roof and clear-coated pine siding. It looked to be in good shape — at least from a distance. He stepped onto a dirt driveway that must have wound its way back to the road where his Jeep was parked and paused, looking through the trees. He had a small pair of binoculars on his hip and leaned his shotgun against a tree to allow for a steady view.

  There didn’t seem to be any movement. No generator, no lights, no smoke. The only sound continued to be the breeze; the woodpecker seemed to have moved on. He moved forward more slowly, really watching his footfalls. As the house became more visible, he could smell what he hoped wasn’t there. He’d done a story about slaughterhouses a few years back. The smell of fear and blood is its own unique aroma. He stopped and slid his riot helmet over his head, leaving the visor up so that he could see and hear better.

  The windows on the near side of the house looked to be broken in. A rotting, fly infested corpse lay on the ground outside. No way to tell if it was a Fiend or a victim of one, but the fact that the skeleton was mostly intact indicated that it was probably the former. Fiends didn’t go after each other; the disease had no reason for assaulting itself. Somehow, the infected recognized the un-infected and only attacked them. Nature nevertheless continued with its egalitarian ways - in this case a parade of insects was slowly reducing the corpse to its component parts.

  Jon slowly made his way around the perimeter. The evidence of a last stand was everywhere. The fools inside had watched too many zombie movies and had assumed that they could just board up their windows. The boards had been pried off - no point in trying to break a door down with so many windows to go for. The builder had wanted to take advantage of the view. The lakeside was almost all glass - broken glass now.

  After Atlantic City, Jon knew better than to walk inside what seemed like an empty house, at least not without knocking. Lowering the visor to his helmet, he lifted his police baton and whacked it a few times against a tree. If there was a Fiend inside, he could expect it to come charging out any second, howling for a kill… nothing. He waited a beat and then whacked the tree again, just in case it or they were asleep and needed waking… still nothing. He raised his visor and called out, “Hello? Anyone home? Anyone alive?” Lowering his visor, he stepped forward.

  Not all Fiends attacked like drug-addled lunatics. Some hid, biding their time. Some knew how to hunt. For some, a primal instinct stayed with them, an animal cunning. These were the truly dangerous ones. They were the alphas that could organize others into a pack of sorts. The Army called them troops, just like chimps. They even kept the understanding of rudimentary tools, mostly in the form of a club or a rock as a projectile, but blades or any sharp instrument could come into play.

  He stepped onto the porch, picked up a shard of wood planking and tossed it inside, listening to it rattle across the floor… nothing. He stepped through one of the smashed picture windows. The house was trashed. Overturned furniture and broken glass, books, board games and puzzles, family photos and fishing trophies; all of the trappings of a happy vacation home turned to refuse. The kitchen had a big granite-covered island, behind which the occupants had made their last stand. Their picked-clean bones told the tale of their grizzly end. They were scattered around the room, the evidence of a feeding frenzy.

  From a count of skulls, it appeared to be a group of five. At least one was a child. There had also been a dog, a pretty big one from the looks of it. A cautious search of the rest of the house confirmed that they had all died together in the great room. The Fiends had feasted and moved on. But for a few kitchen knives and a golf club, there were no weapons in the house. Someone had fashioned a mace from a bat and some nails, but that was it. They didn’t have a prayer.

  He inspected the cabinets and found them to be nearly empty of food. There was a myriad of other supplies - flashlights, extra batteries, radio, gas canisters - but not much more than would be expected in a cabin. These people had been caught pretty much flat-footed. The fact that there was no car outside told him that either someone had gotten away or more likely, decided to try their luck elsewhere before the onslaught occurred.

  He stepped back outside and walked down to the lake. The house had a small dock with an aluminum rowboat tied to it. As Jon scanned the shoreline, little wavelets made metallic sounds against the hull. About a hundred yards to his right was another house, or what was left of one. It appeared to have burned to the ground. In the middle of the lake was an island. It looked to be about a half mile out. With his binoculars he could make out a small empty dock. If there were any other structures, they were obscured by the trees. He decided to walk up the driveway to see if there might be a car between the house and the road, perhaps an unlucky would-be escapee or maybe the folks in the house parked closer to the road to throw an at
tacker off the scent. It sounded lame, but he didn’t have anything better to do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  INFECTED

  The driveway led back to the road. No car except his dead Jeep. In short order he found the driveway for the burned house. From a hundred yards away, he could smell the charcoal crusted timbers. It had been rained on at least once since it burned, and the black pile of timbers let off a wet acidic smell. As he walked, he heard the woodpecker again. It was a reassuring sound; a bird busy at work meant it felt secure. There was a separate garage that remained intact, but the main house’s chimney had collapsed onto the driveway, blocking the barn-style door. There was a side door standing ajar. He paused and then took a cautious step forward, peering inside. Eureka, an old mid-nineties Volvo was parked amongst a slew of recreational stuff, a canoe, a small sailboat, rafts, as well as bicycles and other garage items.

  He grabbed a small stone and tossed it inside, preparing himself for a charge. Nothing. He lifted his visor, tentatively stepped forward while sniffing the air - must and damp oily wood. He could see that the trusting owners had left the Volvo unlocked. The amount of dust layered on top wasn’t encouraging. When he opened the door the dome light didn’t come on and he squished up his face in mild frustration. The key was sitting in an ashtray between the seats so he inserted it and gave it a turn - not even a click. Perhaps they’d had taken the battery cables off in order to save it while they were away. A quick check under the hood told him otherwise. With a sigh, he realized that he’d have to hike up to the Jeep, take its battery out, and bring it down to the Volvo.

  He stepped back outside and looked at the chimney stones. Two big ones were piled right against the door. He’d need something to pry them with. He’d get a big branch from the many littering the forest floor. He took off his helmet and set it, along with the shotgun, against the wall. He walked around to the back of the garage and right there, not more than thirty yards away, two infected squatted over a carcass. He saw them first, but not by much. They were adolescent males, utterly filthy - blood streaked faces, tattered clothes and tangled, greasy hair. They were struggling with a dead porcupine and so engrossed in their meal that they hadn’t heard him walk up - but they saw him now.

  Jon found himself stunned, his muscles locked up as though he’d been delivered an electric jolt. His brain said run, but his feet glued themselves to the ground. The Fiend holding the dead animal had both arms sleeved with tattoos. It suddenly jumped up and without dropping its kill, charged at Jon full speed, the other charging right behind. Jon finally unfroze as the tattooed Fiend’s bloody maw opened with a horrific scream.

  Jon ran. He ran in a straight line right back up the driveway. Out loud he found himself yelling, “Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You!” over and over. He didn’t dare turn around for fear of stumbling. His police baton banged against his leg, but he wasn’t going to try pulling it out of its belt loop and risk a fall. He got to the main road before he realized that he had left his helmet and gun behind - not that he could have done anything about it. He could hear the two Fiends only paces behind him, one letting out another scream, kicking his adrenaline into overdrive. He could see his Jeep in the distance and he angled his way toward it. His mind was rushing to keep up with his fear. The Jeep would just be a death cage, but he had no place else to run. They were gaining on him.

  He grabbed the door handle and yanked, only to be stopped by having locked the door earlier. He fumbled for the keys while cursing himself and glancing at the charging monsters. He pressed the unlock button, threw open the door, and dove in while hitting lock again as they slammed up against the truck. They bellowed and punched, spider webbing the driver’s glass, one of them using the porcupine carcass for a bloody cudgel. He found himself involuntarily screaming as he tried to get his mind to formulate a plan. He had perhaps seconds and they’d be through.

  The Jeep was on a down slope. If he could… He stomped on the clutch, dropped the stick shift into neutral and released the parking brake. The truck started to creep forward. A look outside nearly stopped his heart as he watched one of the bastards pick up a rock and heave. The thing bounced off the driver door just as the truck started to build some momentum. “Come on Come on Come Come on!”

  The wheel without power steering was like a turning an old tractor. Another rock, bigger this time, went skipping off the windshield. He was going maybe five miles an hour now, then ten, the Fiends running along side. Steering with all his might, he avoided a tree, kept the thing on track with the road, then the driveway to the burned out house, and now he was outpacing them and he cheered. “Yeah, motherfuckers!”

  Then he could see the lake, and the plan was for not. With a sudden sense of defeat, he took his hands off the wheel and watched as the Jeep rolled past the ruined house over a tidy lawn and out onto a dock, ultimately launching itself into the lake. It then promptly began to sink.

  The impact buried Jon under a mountain of food, assorted blankets, tents, a camp stove and bottled water. From what he could see, he was submerged under cloudy green water. Despite the spider webbing, the windows were holding. Then the seals started to leak as the water pressure increased. He had maybe a few minutes and then he’d drown. After all he’d been through this would be a stupid way to die. Still, a part of him wanted to stay in the truck. As he struggled to get out from under the weight of his gear, he really thought about it. It was an absolute horror show up there and from what he could tell, Cain’s was winning the war. It was exhausting trying to survive an apocalypse. And who, besides himself, was he surviving for? He had no living relations, no girlfriend, no ex-wife. He’d always lived the life of a loner, happy to go on assignment to other states, other countries, a girl in every port. His primary reason for existence was to pass on information. What was there really to go on for?

  On the other hand, he’d made it this far. If he gave up now, what was the point of the hard slog up through the South all the way into New England? He was almost to Canada. He’d be an asshole to throw in the towel now.

  Strangely, as cold water came up over his calves, he found himself flashing on the defense plan for Canada. It meant giving up the West but they had drawn the line at Lake Winnipeg. Running north and south from that famous body of water was a system of rivers and smaller waterways that more or less connected the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River with Hudson Bay way up north. For the most part, the infected had lost the skill that is swimming. US and Canadian engineers were working around the clock, digging connections between these waterways in an effort to create a massive moat around Eastern Canada. There were gaps, but those would be plugged with minefields and constant patrols.

  In the winter, when much of that water froze, it was going to be a challenge, but maybe not. It was suggested that the infected would be forced to stay in the warmer southern climate or risk freezing to death.

  When the water reached his thighs, Jon snapped out of his reverie and considered once more the supposedly easy out that was drowning. Then he laughed at the thought. He’d fight until he was either home free or dead. It sure as hell wasn’t going to be by his own hand.

  The water pressure would make it impossible for him to open the doors until the cab was full. He managed to get his hand on his police baton and struggled to slip it out of its belt loop. After a few awkward yanks, he got it free, gripped the side handle hard, and rammed the short bottom end into the compromised windshield. A small hole appeared and water shot at him with the pressure of a focused garden hose. He rammed the baton again. The water rushed in with a wallop. Jon found himself swirling in a cloud of gear and glass. Though the surface was only ten feet away, he was completely disoriented. Using the steering wheel, he thrust himself up and out of the truck.

  When his face broke the water, the first thing his eyes focused on was the two Fiends, standing at the end of the dock. They screamed with excitement, yet hesitated to jump into the water. Jon looked to his right and saw the dock for the hous
e next door and the rowboat tied to it. With the weight of his leathers pulling him down, he started swimming. The damn infected followed his progress from the shore. Maybe he’d confuse them if he swam under water. When he was twenty feet from the dock, he took three deep breaths and dove.

  He still held the police baton along his forearm. It made swimming a bit of a struggle, but he’d be damned if he was going to let it go. He swam under the dock and slowly let himself rise so that he popped up between it and the boat. His lungs were searing, but he forced himself to take the quietest breath he could as he broke the surface. He pulled his knife from the sheath that was tied to his leg, cut the ropes and began to gently push the boat away from the dock. Suddenly, he could hear their feet running across the planking. He kicked away with all his might. They splashed into the water, reaching out and screaming, not really swimming, but achieving a sort of doggie-paddle cum spaz-splash. The tattooed one hurled the porcupine at him, the carcass sailing just past his face. The other got a grip on his leg. Jon kicked the creature in the chest, twisted free and plunged the knife into its shoulder. It howled in anger and pain, giving Jon a couple of yards of distance. The rodent chucker was still sloppily swimming toward him, and Jon used the baton, stunning it with a blow to the head.