MY DEAD WORLD 2
By
Jacqueline Druga
My Dead World 2
By Jacqueline Druga
Copyright 2016 by Jacqueline Druga
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Thank you so much to Paula Gibson, Kira R., and Shona M for all your help. A lot of time and effort went into this from you guys and I appreciate it.
Cover Art by Christian Bentulan
www.coversbychristian.com
ONE – GREEN, BROWN, DEAD
July 28
The flesh rotted before the mind as the soul succumbed to death. Dying was the easy part, and even then it wasn’t over.
It was a horrible thing to watch someone you love suffer from the virus that ravaged the earth. It was far worse for the person who had it. A simple scratch, bite, or whatever way the virus entered the system caused an immediate reaction. The body quickly deteriorated breaking down physically, while fever raged and the sickness became more than any one person could bare. Cries of pain, agony and tears of despair while the skin blackened and swelled, until finally a madness took over their mind, transforming the person into some sort of enraged lunatic set on destroying and tearing apart whoever was in their path. Even when the heart stopped beating, when their lungs ceased to take in air, the body still kept going. A mindless soulless body, destined to keep attacking.
But were they truly mindless? Did they have a soul?
I often wondered. They were physically dead, their body quickly decomposing as they moved. Yet, there was something in their eyes, something that showed recognition, even desperation. It was as if when they opened their mouths, that noise they made was actually a cry for help.
‘Help me, please, do something. Save me.’
Maybe they knew what they were doing, but just couldn’t stop it.
We’d never know, unless we became one of them.
I was fighting like hell not to let that happen.
So had my father.
His last words to me were, “Come sit with me, Nila, I don’t have much time left.”
He didn’t. Those words were spoken just before he took his own life. My father had the virus. He was bitten. A bite he received not only from an infected, but from his own flesh and blood … my brother.
It was ironic, my brother, the brilliant doctor battling the virus, the one that saved my father’s life in a sense, was the one who ended it.
We were fortunate to be given any information about the virus, a heads up. Bobby, my brother, who worked for the CDC, told us to start stockpiling.
We did.
We had everything we needed to survive and at my brother’s suggestion we retreated to my father’s cabin.
All we had to do was wait it out.
The cabin was away from the city, secluded, and surrounded by a fence we doubly reinforced. It was impenetrable by any physical being.
However, a virus is not physical. It can seep through a single drop of blood, or unsuspectingly in a small child.
Our camp bordered that of the public campsite, Big Bear. One owned by lifelong friends. Many had the same idea as us, run to the hills, get away from civilization, and wait.
Like good neighbors we worked together, doing our best to survive.
It wasn’t enough.
The virus had already invaded, we just didn’t know.
There were hundreds in the beginning, between the two campsites.
Then one by one everyone died … and many came back.
I lost so much. My husband, daughter, father and brother, even my stepmother and friend.
Those were only the people around me. Outside our fences, outside our mountain, I didn’t want to think about how many people I knew that had died.
Everyone on that mountain was gone. Only four of us remained.
There was me and my four year old daughter, Katie.
Edi Reis, an eighty year old woman who came to Big Bear with her husband Manny every year. Edi and her husband eventually moved to our property. He passed away from natural causes.
Last, but definitely not least was Lev Boswick.
Oh my God, I don’t know what I would have done without Lev.
I had known Lev my entire life. We had been friends since he came to America from Serbia at ten years old when he was adopted by the Boswick family. He didn’t speak a word of English at first, but that didn’t stop us from being best friends. We had our ups and downs later in life, but all that was put in the past when the virus hit.
Lev was there for everyone and kept going strong even when his own father died of the virus.
Strong as an ox with a heart as big as his body, Lev was our rock.
We stayed at my father’s cabin for months. We weren’t the only ones alive, we couldn’t be.
The military had initiated places called Green Areas. Camps placed in towns that were still alive, with low levels of infection.
There were many Green Areas. We just didn’t know, after all the weeks, if they were still operational.
There was also radio contact with other survivor camps, one in Kansas, another in Kentucky, but those contacts dwindled to nothing. I believed their radios just died, they didn’t have a solar generator like we did.
They were out there still alive.
Like the Green Zones, we just had to find them.
That was my goal. To find life.
Bobby knew the virus well, he had worked on it for months. Eventually it would burn out, all those infected would cease to exist. We only had to wait it out.
I thought we waited long enough.
It was time to go. Time to leave our sanctuary on that mountain and our safe haven cabin to find others. I believed that was what we needed to do.
The cabin was left stocked in case we had to retreat there again. We took what we could in the truck and left to find others.
Our first destination was a Green Area located at a mall in Lancaster, Ohio. It was the closest one. After driving through a half a dozen desolate towns, we remained hopeful. After all, we hadn’t seen a single infected.
That was a good thing.
However, we didn’t see a single uninfected either.
There had been a Green Area at the mall, but when we got there it was deserted.
There wasn’t a sound.
Nothing.
Fingers in the chain link of the fence, Lev stared out. “Did you really believe we’d find anything here?”
“Yes.” I walked up to him.
“We drove for four hours and saw no one.” Lev faced me.
“We can’t be the only ones left. We can’t.”
“Does it matter?” Lev asked.
I huffed out a breath of disbelief. “Yes. It does.”
“Why? Why are we doing this? Why do we need this?”
“Katie needs more than just us.”
“No she doesn’t,” Lev said. “Not now. Maybe in the future, but not now. She doesn’t need to see this …” He held out his hand. “A dead world.”
“That’s right, she needs to see life. We need to find life.”
“Don’t you get it?” Lev stepped closer to me. “We … are life. You, me, Katie and Edi. We have life, we don’t need to find it.”
“If we wait too long, we may never find anyone,” I said, shifting my eyes to the camp.
“You think these people moved?” Lev asked. “The longer we’re out here, the more chance we have of never finding a soul. What if those who lived are doing what we are doing? Searching? Then we become nothing but wanderers an
d targets for the desperate.”
“What are you saying, Lev?”
“I’m saying I will do whatever it is you want to do. If you want to go to the next place, we will. Kentucky? We’ll go there. However, I believe if you are looking for life, we already left it.”
“The cabin?”
Lev nodded. “It’s the best example of ‘Green’ you can get. Trees, plants, deer that drive us nuts.”
“Graves. That’s not life.”
“You don’t think? Those aren’t graves, those are people we love. A reminder of our lives.” He inched closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Truth is, I am scared. I am scared that we drove away from our best chance at living.”
“You’ll do what I want to do?”
Lev nodded.
Before I said anything, I wrapped my arms around his waist and embraced him. Closing my eyes I felt a single tear roll down my face and I stepped back. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. Let’s go back.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked at the dead camp then to the truck full of supplies, supplies that were just a portion of what we still had back at the cabin. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Lev gave me a forced, closed mouth smile, kissed me on the forehead, and we returned to the truck.
“Are we staying, Mommy?” Katie asked when we got back in.
“No, honey,” I said. “We’re choosing life.”
Lev backed up the truck and we drove away heading back to our cabin, our home. We would drive back through every single deserted town, and I would wonder the whole way if I made the right decision.
It would take another four hours to return, we’d get there before evening, with maybe some time left to unpack.
There was something off with Lev after we left The Green Area. I didn’t bring it up, but I would later when Edi and Katie were asleep. I needed to ask him what he saw. I believe he saw something because the whole way back to the cabin he kept checking the rearview mirror. He wouldn’t do so in a dead world, unless he was afraid something could possibly follow us.
FROM LEV’S SIDE
The human race had always been monsters to me, long before the virus physically transformed them. When I was eight years old, I watched my biological parents and grandmother killed. Right in the main room of our small house, in front of my eyes. I didn’t know how to comprehend the horror of what happened. Maybe it was a blessing that I was so young. My mother, I can still see her looking down to me as I sat on the floor playing with the Legos that the church had given us. She smiled at me, mending my father’s work pants. My father worked on something, while my grandmother complained that I was making a mess on the floor.
Then just like that the door flew open, my mother looked up, but no one had time to react.
They shot my father, then shot my mother and slit my grandmother’s throat.
I screamed and ran to my mother’s body. My arms clung to her and I could feel the blood from her chest soak my shirt. I held her, waiting for my turn. It didn’t come. These militant men, or whatever they were, spared me for some reason. After our home they hit the others in our small town, killing even the children.
I didn’t know why. Senseless acts of violence, of war, whatever the reason, I was not included, I was chosen. They ripped me from my mother. I wanted to be brave, not show them that they frightened me. I took a deep breath, kept a locked stare on my mother and held back the tears.
I would not cry again in my life. At least not when anyone would see it.
The men kept talking about how big I was and would end up getting. I was a big child, heavy too. The other kids would poke fun, because how could I be so thick when my family was so poor and without food.
“Koliko si star, dečko?” they kept asking. “How old are you, boy?”
I kept my word and answered, “Osam’, my age of eight, it was the only thing I ever said in my short time with them.
They raided only a few more times, killing, bringing me along and leaving me in the back of the truck to listen to the screams and cries of fear. Then these same men were brutalized by another band of men, and I was left in a dead town. Bodies everywhere, insects and bugs, animals chewing on the dead and a stench that I never forgot. I wish I was old enough to know why it all happened and could understand it. I didn’t even think about where I would go, or how I would live. See, when you are eight, dying isn’t part of the equation.
I didn’t wander from that small village, in a few days authorities came and found me. They took me to a church and I was placed in three different facilities until finally, and fortunately, I ended up in one just outside of Belgrade.
The workers there were nice, I was quiet, still in shock I suppose over what happened to my family and all that I had been through. This orphanage was more volunteer run. I remember one older woman, the ‘Baba’ of the place, took a special interest in me, constantly giving me extra food and trying to fix my hair which was always wild and rejected every comb.
“Tako je tužno momak. Jedi. Budi srećan,” she’d say and hand me cakes. ‘Such a sad boy. Eat. Be happy.”
She made me happy and through her I met Barry Boswick, the man who would become my father. I don’t, never have, or ever will use the phrase ‘adopted father’, because he was more than just someone who adopted me.
From the time my family was murdered until the adoption was finalized was two years. Although they tried to teach me English before I left, I was linguistically ill prepared. I had a basic understanding of the English language, but hadn’t a clue how to speak it.
There I was, ten years old, going to a new country and not knowing the language.
My American parents were wonderful and patient. I knew I would love being with them. Finally, since the loss of my own mother, I saw love and caring when they looked at me.
They embraced me often and told me how they felt.
I needed that, I did. I was just a child.
When we arrived home, I was excited to see the city. Even more so the street where I was to live. It was filled with people when we arrived and I found out they were there to greet me.
My father was a well liked, good man.
One of his first teachings was educating me on nodding and shaking my head.
“When in doubt, Lev,” he said. “Read the person and nod your head. In this world of hate and rushing around, it’s better to be a yes man. Because no one else will be.”
My first introduction to Nila came at that party. She was sitting on the porch steps of the house next door. I would learn that Nila loved to sit on a porch. My father sent me over to talk to her.
She held a plate of food on her lap and immediately offered me half of her sandwich.
“My dad said to be your friend,” she said. “He said I don’t have any and I can’t scare you away because you won’t understand what I am saying.”
I nodded.
“So you don’t understand me?” She reached beside her. “I thought ahead.” She lifted a notebook. “We can draw pictures if we need to talk. It will be fun.”
She wrote down her name. “Nila. My name is Nila.”
“Lev.”
“See? We won’t even need this. Besides, we’ll be playing together. Who needs to talk?”
Obviously, I did, because nothing I tried to draw or communicate that first summer worked. She misunderstood everything. That was fine, because she was my friend. My one and only friend and over the course of time, before I was fluent in English, we started to not need to draw. We understood.
I hated when a simple misunderstanding put such a wedge between us, I never gave my all to anyone after that. Yet, I truly believed the entire time, our friendship separation was not meant to be forever.
It wasn’t.
It took a global catastrophe for both of us to see the fences should have mended years earlier, not just when we needed to physically work on fences to survive.
To me it was a repair j
ob that would last, and like the fences around the property that we fortified, I was letting nothing bring it down.
We only had each other in the world, we had to survive. The world wasn’t safe, I knew that and unlike what we had believed when we left the cabin in search of others, the threat to bring mankind to extinction wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
TWO – RETREAT
July 28
The heat was unbearable and the first thing Edi did, as soon as Lev unloaded the solar generator, was turn on the back room air conditioner, grab Katie and claim that small bedroom.
She reminded me that the elderly and young were especially susceptible to heat stroke. I was fine with her doing that. It gave me and Lev a chance to unload the truck.
He was acting strange. Well, strange for Lev. My big friend of few words not only wasn’t talking, but out of character for him, he wasn’t listening either.
I kept doing that annoying, “Are you okay?” questioning him every few minutes. He’d look at me, nod, then stay on task.
He wanted to unload the truck. I wanted to help.
“Put it away as I bring it in,” Lev said.
He brought the boxes in, and then he lifted the floorboard hatches. My father had built three large storage spaces under the floorboard sections: one in the sitting room, the other in the large bedroom and the third in the kitchen.
Lev opened them all.
“Keep three days’ supply out. No more,” he said. “Put as much as you can in the floor storage. Once that is full, we’ll secure the shed.”
“That’s odd. We had a lot stacked against the walls,” I replied. “Is there a reason we’re hiding it now?”
“Not hiding. Storing. We had a lot more people then. We also weren’t going to be here long term. Now we are. I don’t want clutter.”
I kind of sung out a confused, “Okay.” Then asked, “Do we have to do it all right now? I mean maybe we can …”
“Yes.” He cut me off.
“Wow. Okay.” I lifted my hands. Despite what he told me I knew something was wrong.
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