The Last Bastion [Book 2]

by K. W. Callahan

  It was cold in the condo. Without electricity, the furnace hadn’t come on. It felt like the temperature in their bedroom was at least a good ten degrees colder than when they’d gone to sleep.

  Wendell looked at his watch. It was almost eight. Six hours of sleep. Not bad, but not good either. Wendell threw the covers back and climbed carefully from bed.

  He stood for a moment, sniffled, and shivered in the chill. Clad in pajama bottoms, he’d slept without a shirt due to his injury.

  He donned slippers set on the floor beside the bed and then managed to work a robe around his shoulders, draping it like a cape to avoid further distress to his injury.

  Finally, adorned and warm enough to continue his morning routine, Wendell sauntered out to the kitchen.

  It was bright in the condo. A cloudless, late-December sky made for what should have been a cheery morning had it not been for the fact that the apocalypse was occurring outside.

  In the kitchen, Wendell filled the coffee maker, found his favorite mug, and hit the coffee maker’s “on” switch.

  Nothing happened.

  He flipped it off, and then back on.

  Again nothing happened. “Ugh…no power,” he remembered, feeling foolish for the mistake and glad no one was around to see it.

  “Forget there’s no electricity?” came a voice from behind him.

  Wendell took a deep breath, let it out, and turned around to find a smiling Chris behind him.

  “So are you planning to stay indefinitely?” Wendell ignored the question.

  “Wasn’t planning to…but the situation dictates; not me.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Wendell wanted to say.

  “I’d rather be back in my condo sleeping in my own bed than your sofa, believe me,” Chris explained. “But those biters are still out in the hallway. I heard them bumping around all night, and I checked earlier this morning. I watched at least four of them through the peephole as they passed the front door,” he moved by Wendell and over to the kitchen stove.

  Wendell stood watching – actually, it was more like glaring – as Chris rummaged in a drawer and came out with a pot. He opened the coffee maker, dumped the grounds inside into the pot, and filled the pot with water.

  “What are you doing?” Wendell watched, a disgusted look smeared across his face.

  “Making coffee,” Chris shrugged as if it should be obvious. He turned the stove on beneath the pot and adjusted the flame.

  “You’re going to boil the grounds with the water?” Wendell frowned.

  “Sure. Why not?” Chris nodded. “Then you just strain them out when you pour your cup. All you have to do is put a filter over your cup held in place with a rubber band. Of course, I usually don’t. Once the pot stops boiling, most of the grounds settle to the bottom. The only person who really has to be careful is the one who takes the last cup. Winding up with a few grounds in your drink is no big deal, but a mouthful of them isn’t too fun,” he grinned at Wendell who didn’t return Chris’ apparent merriment at the thought.

  Charla padded into the kitchen. “Morning,” she nodded at the two men.

  “Morning,” they nodded back.

  “Thought the power was off, but I smell coffee,” she frowned curiously.

  “It’s MacGyver over here,” Wendell nodded toward the pot warming on the stove. “He’s brewing us up a pot of camp java or something.”

  “Just making due,” Chris explained. “Still got water and natural gas, so I’m taking advantage. Speaking of which, we should probably fill up some containers with extra water while we can.” He moved back to the stove and flipped the other burners on. “Help warm this joint up a little,” he said.

  “Good idea,” Charla agreed, hugging herself tightly against the cold. She was adorned in flannel pajamas and slippers, but she had a blanket wrapped around her too.

  “Mind if I take a shower?” Chris asked. “Should help get the motor running, plus, who knows how long we’ll still have access to hot running water.”

  Wendell glanced at Charla, giving her a, “Really?” sort of look.

  Charla just shrugged, as if to say, “Why not?” Then she looked at Chris and actually said, “Why not? Probably be a good idea for us to follow suit.”

  She turned and walked out of the kitchen. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  “Want to join him?” Wendell thought about saying, but refrained. He didn’t dare. Charla might just call him on his sarcasm.

  A few minutes later, Chris was humming away in his hot shower while Charla and Wendell sipped their steaming hot cups of coffee on the living room sofa.

  “This is actually really good,” Charla nodded to her mug.

  “Humph,” Wendell snorted.

  “What is your problem?” Charla glared at him.

  “My problem is, I didn’t exactly sign up for having a roommate.”

  “Neither did I,” Charla countered coolly. “But we appear to have one at the moment. And in all frankness, he seems to be coming in handy. Speaking of which, he’s right. We should probably start filling up some extra containers of water. We lose water service and we’ll be kicking ourselves later.”

  “This doesn’t bother you?” Wendell shook his head.

  “Are you freakin’ insane, Wendell? Of course it bothers me. All of this bothers me. No,” she paused, preparing her own dose of sarcasm. “You know what? It doesn’t bother me. In fact, I like it. I enjoy having the zombie apocalypse thrust upon me. I enjoy sitting in a freezing cold condo with an almost complete stranger living with us. I had a great time sending you out last night to risk your life and see Paul be eaten by biters. And I had a blast watching Diana hurl herself from our balcony. Yep, you got it dead fucking right, Wendell,” Charla nodded, tight lipped. “I’m having the time of my life here and it doesn’t bother me in the least.”

  Wendell was silent for a minute, taking a couple sips of his coffee. Then he stood up and walked over to the balcony’s sliding glass door. “Sorry,” he said softly as he looked outside.

  It wasn’t much of an apology, but Charla recognized he didn’t have much to apologize for. They were both under an immense amount of pressure in a situation that neither of them would have imagined possible just a few days ago.

  Charla stood from her seat on the sofa and headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to fill up some pots full of water. You can help if you like…or you can just enjoy your coffee.”

  * * *

  Cheryl followed the dark-skinned male from the path of steel and stone and along another path of just flat stone. There were many paths similar to it around the strange land in which she found herself. The roaring beasts that rolled on round feet traversed them.

  She followed this new male as he led her along one of these paths, and toward some large boxes. They were the boxes in which their prey lived, the prey who could furnish her with the nourishment she so craved.

  But the male passed the boxes, leading her to a grassy spot overlooking a large flowing body of water. Something in Cheryl instinctively told her that water was necessary to her survival but that it could prove dangerous as well. A long pathway hung stretched across the water. Cheryl hoped that the hanging pathway was not where they were going. It frightened her. She couldn’t imagine how such a pathway could float in the air as it did. If they stepped on it, it might dump them into the cold, swiftly flowing waters below. And while Cheryl had a sense that she might once have known how to survive in such waters, she had no idea what she would do now. She would probably just go under and never resurface.

  But this new companion of hers seemed confident in what he was doing. And Cheryl followed him obediently as he led her across the grass and over to a paved walkway that led to the hanging path. Ahead of them, Cheryl could see a group of people approaching. It was the creatures that could feed them! Her dark-skinned companion had led her to food! Cheryl couldn’t control her lust for the fresh flesh she saw on the bridge. It overwhelmed the fear she felt about setti
ng foot on the hanging path itself. But there were several creatures like her approaching from the other side of the hanging path, threatening to reach the prey first.

  Cheryl briefly wondered how her companion was so knowledgeable about this new world. She didn’t know that Victor was the very first person to carry the Carchar Syndrome since apartment building owner Paul Scruggs had attempted to rid the world of its presence decades prior. Heck, Victor didn’t even know it himself. But over the past few months that Victor had wandered the streets of Chicagoland – hunting, hiding, killing, surviving – he had learned a great many things.

  Victor led Cheryl along the suspension bridge. It swayed under their feet as they walked. The movement petrified Cheryl. She stopped, not wanting to continue, fearing that if she took another step, she’d tumble into the icy waters below. Her new companion stopped as well, but not out of fear. He turned, reached out, and wordlessly touched her hand reassuringly. His fang-like front teeth were chattering, not from the cold, but in anticipation of the approaching meal, now near the center of the bridge. He turned back around and began walking again. Cheryl followed.

  Suddenly there was an explosion of sound on the bridge ahead of them and one of the biters on the other side of the bridge collapsed. Cheryl realized that the largest of their prey had one of those shiny objects that exploded with fire and sound, often killing or severely injuring those like Cheryl and her companion.

  Her companion stopped short, waiting. There was the sound of clicking, but it wasn’t coming from the razor-sharp teeth of Victor and Cheryl’s mouths, it was coming from the shiny device the creature was holding in his hand. It appeared that the device was malfunctioning in some way.

  Victor started forward again, faster now. Cheryl followed, assured by his confidence. But seconds later, she slowed. She could see that the group of creatures they had trapped near the center of the bridge was comprised of a male, a female, and a group of their young, mostly females. The biters on the other side of the bridge made Cheryl nervous. They would want to take their share of the kill, but it looked like there would be plenty to go around. Even if Cheryl got one of the younger, smaller creatures, it would be more than enough for her. She’d tasted the flesh of a younger such creature once before. It was delicious. Soft, largely free from fat, and mostly hairless. She’d be extremely satisfied with one of the young. But they had to debilitate the older ones first. They were most dangerous.

  The largest in their group of prey, a light-skinned male was now approaching Cheryl’s companion. The smaller male of the group of prey, one of the young, was following the larger adult. Their approach frightened Cheryl. If the creature killed her dark-skinned companion, what would she do? She would be on her own again and likely without food. She wouldn’t be able to incapacitate the large male prey on her own. Maybe the others like her would take her into their group. Cheryl had quickly realized that being alone in this new world was not a situation she wanted, at least not yet. There were too many things still to learn.

  She stood, watching the two males close the distance between one another. The adult male they were stalking still had the shiny device held in his hand. He continued to click it ineffectively. A second later, he threw it at Cheryl’s companion. The device hit the dark-skinned male in the shoulder and bounced off. It clattered to the bridge floor before sliding off the side and into the water with a soft splash.

  The two males were now maybe 10 feet apart. The biters on the other side of the bridge had closed the gap as well, now only 20 feet from the group of prey that was huddled together at the bridge’s center.

  Cheryl’s companion suddenly bolted forward with amazing speed. He hit the adult male creature in the mid-section, taking him down to the bridge floor. The tiny male creature behind them screamed and began to retreat toward the female and the other young.

  Cheryl watched in stunned amazement as her dark-skinned companion ripped into the flesh of the creature’s neck he’d taken down. It was all over in seconds.

  The biters across from them, urged on by the sight of Victor taking down the adult male, advanced more confidently now. Victor was up and had the smaller male of their prey in his clutches in just seconds. Victor not only wanted to feed, he wanted to use this as a teaching session for the others like him. He knew that they were watching him, using him as an example. He wanted to show them that they needed to incapacitate the greatest threats among their prey first. Take them down, and then take down as much of the remaining prey as quickly as possible before it could escape. The creatures they hunted were crafty, intelligent, and dangerous. Even the little ones could be deadly. Too many times before, Victor had watched those like him start to feast before the danger was completely eliminated, only to be killed for their mistake.

  While there was nothing more Victor wanted than to feast on the flesh laid out on the bridge behind him, he had learned not to succumb to his ravenous desires too soon.

  The small male creature proved no match for Victor, and it was incapacitated in mere seconds. The herd of creature females was screaming now, a terrible sound that grated on Cheryl’s nerves. The smaller female creatures were the worst. Their high-pitched squeals and screams made Cheryl’s eardrums feel as though they might burst. And oddly, the creatures produced a liquid from their eyes in this sort of situation. Cheryl didn’t understand it, and frankly, she didn’t care. But she found it mildly interesting nonetheless. She thought that maybe it was a defense mechanism of sorts, but she wasn’t sure. In some vague memory, she seemed to recall having once done something similar herself. It was after a male had left her, a male who had been special to her, but she couldn’t remember for sure. Maybe it was all just a dream. It didn’t matter now.

  Victor was now ripping his way into one of the small females, sinking his teeth into her tiny neck and ripping a gaping hole in it. The adult female was hitting Victor with her fists, but he seemed impervious to her blows, energized instead by the feast he was busy preparing on the bridge.

  Victor tore his way into another of the small females, the smallest in the herd. It put up no sort of fight whatsoever.

  It was then that Cheryl noticed the adult female creature and her only surviving young climbing up and over the side rail of the bridge.

  Cheryl couldn’t understand what they were doing. Were they going to jump off?

  A second later, her question was answered. The adult female, clinging to the hand of her sole remaining offspring, jumped from the side of the bridge.

  Cheryl watched them fall, hit the water, and then disappear below its murky depths.

  Then she turned and joined the others who were already feeding on the creatures her dark-skinned companion had killed.

  * * *

  Victoria lost her grip on Patricia when they hit the water. But for as much as she loved her daughter, all thoughts of her disappeared the moment Victoria slipped below the river’s frigid waters. All she could think about was regaining her breath, which had instantly fled as the water’s icy grip had squeezed it from her lungs. And as she shot herself to the surface, her focus was solely on escaping the water as quickly as possible.

  As her head broke above the waves, she found herself well downstream from the bridge, the current carrying her toward a bend in the river. Patricia was about 20 feet behind her, and Victoria knew she had to reach her daughter before either of them succumbed to the cold. But Victoria was still fighting to regain her breath, struggling against the pain the ice-cold water was inflicting on every inch of her body. It was as though all of her body was cramping up at the same time, and as she tried to move her arms to swim, they felt heavy, like lead weights were attached to them. The sight of her sweet nine-year-old; however, now the only child left in her life, struggling behind her, pushed her to action. And as every instinct in her being told her to start heading toward shore, to save herself, her brain told her that she must get to Patricia. Her daughter was small, frail, and while she knew how to swim, Victoria realized that in thes
e conditions, it wouldn’t take long for her to give up the fight.

  Victoria began swimming back up the river, trying to fight the current. But the water was moving far too swiftly in this part of the river. There was no way for her to overcome its force.

  “Swim to me!” she finally managed to call to her daughter whose pained and terrified eyes divulged everything that the poor young thing was feeling. The experience of watching her father and siblings be torn apart in front of her by biters would have been horrific enough. But pairing it with the physical pain she was experiencing in the river was more than any child should have to endure.

  Somehow, Patricia obeyed, reaching her mother just as they came to a bend in the river. As they did so, clutching one another, Victoria felt her feet bump against something. She straightened her legs and felt river bottom. She tried to plant her feet but then the bottom was gone and she and Patricia were free floating again.

  Just ahead and toward the right side of the bank, Patricia saw their best, maybe their only hope. A fallen tree stretched almost 20 feet from the bank out into the river. If they could just get close enough, Patricia could use it to stop their progress. They were in the middle of the river, though, and the tree was coming up quick. If they missed it, she wasn’t sure they’d have another opportunity. The riverbank past that point was high and she didn’t see much to grab onto.

  Her arms and legs were stiff and not working as they should, and Victoria rapidly felt the energy being sapped from her body.

  “Come on…we have to swim…to that log ahead,” she managed to gasp her instructions Patricia. Victoria could barely talk now. She had to speak through clenched jaw and gritted teeth that refused to open. “Hold…onto…me,” she said to her daughter. “Tight!”

  Patricia wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck as instructed, almost choking off Victoria’s airway. It didn’t matter. Victoria could hardly breathe anyway she was so damn cold.