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Red Death: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

Page 8

by Robinson, D. L.


  “Wow, will it work?” Tara barely thought about the cruelty of killing squirrels now. They were starving.

  Lee shrugged, grinning. “I think so.” He took the trap materials out back to set up.

  Tara found Mary upstairs in the library, looking at all her old reading material.

  “I found your knitting books! And you’ve got a ton of yarn in the closet, Tara. I’m thinking of making you both hats and scarves for Christmas.”

  “That would be fabulous!” Tara told her the supplies had been from her “learn to knit” phase. She explained that Lee was setting up a squirrel trap out back. They walked to the window and looked out over the balcony. Tara could see several squirrels watching Lee from the trees.

  “I feel bad killing them, Mary, but we have to eat. I’ve fed them for so many years—now they can feed us. My new mindset is accepting each gift with gratitude, so I’m grateful for them. I just hope the trap works. I also hope they don’t carry Ebola.”

  “I’ve been thinking about our trip to the river, how best to carry wood and water. I think we should go at dusk, remain out of sight as much as possible,” Mary said. “But today, we could go search for the walnuts and other edibles while it’s still daylight. If we see anyone, we just run.”

  Tara thought about this. Yes, it made sense to go for the water after dark. Water and wood were so important they each needed their own separate trip to get as much as possible between the two of them. The thought of looking for tonight’s supper intrigued her, sort of a man against nature thing. If they didn’t find food today, they would go hungry. It was a great motivator.

  “Mary, let’s go and look for stuff now. Are you ready? First, let’s study the book. Maybe what one of us can’t remember, the other will.”

  They walked to the kitchen and Tara went to the window. Lee was still out back setting up the squirrel trap. She didn’t want to know how he dispatched the animals. As long as he presented the meat to her, cleaned and ready, Tara was okay with it. She sighed. It’s a matter of survival. They perused the pictures in the book for a few minutes, and then decided to go.

  “You can eat crabapples too,” Tara told her as they pulled their coats on. “And I know where a tree is nearby.” Tara stuck the gun in her pocket and stuffed several plastic bags into a carryall type tote bag she slung over one shoulder. Mary had a bag too, and took one of Tara’s kitchen knives from the wooden block. The women exited the back door and Tara grabbed a small hand trowel on the porch and stuck it in her bag too. They stopped to see Lee as he was finishing the trap.

  “Maybe when you get back, we’ll have some meat,” Lee told them. Tara laughed, and Lee hugged her. He held her away a moment, a serious expression on his face.

  “Please be careful.” Tara nodded.

  “We’re staying close around the neighborhood to forage. Tonight, we’ll go to the river.”

  As she and Mary started toward her parked car, Lee called to her, asking if she was going to take the vehicle. Tara was torn. She didn’t want to draw the wrong attention, and so few cars were on the streets now that she thought it would be safer to walk. Just as Tara passed the low fence around Marla’s backyard, she noticed the pile of firewood for their pit stacked against it.

  “Look!” she cried. Lee crossed slowly over to them, swinging his bad leg and the crutch. He immediately began tossing the wood onto their side of the fence.

  “Thanks, Frank,” he said softly.

  “Yes,” Tara agreed. “We’ll be back soon, honey,” she told Lee.

  The weather was brisk, but not freezing, about thirty-five degrees as they set off down the alley. “Let’s go get some nuts first. The chestnut and walnut trees are almost directly across from each other.”

  Mary stayed beside her as they walked. “Let’s hope the squirrels didn’t get them all first.”

  Tara couldn’t help but remember her walks not so long ago in her old life. This was her route, and she’d grown to know where dogs were located, which families had kids or were elderly, and who had fire pits. This might help with firewood collection later on.

  Tara kept her eyes peeled for signs of life, but saw very few. She half-hoped if she ran into anyone they would recognize her and share some news, since she’d always spoken as she passed through the neighborhood. Every house they went by had a dead quality to it, deserted.

  “My God, Mary, did they all die?”

  Mary released her breath in a frozen cloud. “Died or taken to the camp.”

  Tara stared at her, speechless. She could barely comprehend the enormity of such a loss. They walked on in silence for a few more minutes.

  Tara caught movement in one of the yards up ahead. She silently grasped Mary’s forearm, warning her. Tara was on high alert and ready to run until she remembered. “I think an old man lives there,” she hissed. They approached stealthily, and Tara’s memory was immediately confirmed. The elderly man was hunched over, staring down into his winter-blasted garden, pushing smashed, withered tomatoes around on the ground with the tip of his cane.

  “Hello, sir,” Tara called, just loud enough for him to hear. She didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention from any possible threats nearby. The old gentleman glanced up at them, seeming to assess the level of danger, then gave them a one hundred megawatt smile. Tara was so grateful to see another friendly human being, she rushed over to him, tripping on a frozen clump of grass and almost landing at his ancient feet. She caught herself, but almost knocked him down.

  “Whoa there, girlie,” he chuckled. Mary came up behind her, laughing.

  “I’m so sorry. I almost bowled you over! I’m just so glad to see someone else!”

  “It’s okay, my dear. I’m glad to see both of you too. There’s nothing but gangs of hoodlums going past lately.”

  Tara looked over her shoulder, suddenly cognizant of her surroundings and the gravity of the situation. She hadn’t seen the gangs for a few days, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  “This is my neighbor, Mary, and I’m Tara Green. We live over on Main Street.” She pointed back the direction they had come. Mary shook the man’s hand and Tara followed suit.

  “My name is Clyde, Clyde Randall. I been here seventy odd years in this old house. I’m ninety-five and never thought I’d see the day we’d be in such a fix.”

  “Oh, Mr. Randall, I totally agree,” Mary said.

  “Are you getting along okay, Mr. Randall? We’ve come out to forage for some food. I found a book that tells about all the wild things you can eat around your yard and neighborhood. We’ve run out of cans at home now.” Tara didn’t know why she was confessing all to this old man, but he reminded her of her grandpa.

  “It’s Clyde, and I’m doing tolerable. I always kept a garden and put up the vegetables—learned to do that as a lad by Mother’s side. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, especially when living through the Great Depression. Them was some hard times, let me tell you, but it weren’t never nothing like this.”

  Tara and Mary both nodded, and Tara decided to share her newfound information. “I learned you can eat a lot of things I never knew, like daylilies and acorns.

  “Oh, my land, yes, the good Lord provides; that he does. You wouldn’t believe the things a body can eat if they’re hungry enough. I’ve seen men eat shoe leather.” He looked back down

  at his garden again, pushing on a tomato husk with his cane. Nothing much was left of it but the dried skin.

  “I was thinking of making a broth with this leftover stuff.” He pointed with his cane at a sprig or two of broccoli still sticking up. “There’s some good stock to be had here yet.”

  Clyde turned to them again, a smile lighting up his seamed face. “What news do you girls have?”

  “We were hoping you might have some. I don’t know anything, except my husband says those bonfires back there are them burning bodies at the old Kmart. We looked over the embankment at the gravel pit and saw it’s a camp now. So we n
eed to hide from them too, not just the gangs.”

  “I’ve got my old Gibson Girl radio from WW2. There’s a group of us across the country that collect ‘em. They’re hand cranked, so they don’t need no ‘lectricity. I’m still getting news from a few, those that haven’t died, that is.” The old man looked wistful, staring out past the alley with his faded blue eyes.

  Tara could feel Mary’s sudden tension at this information.

  “What are your friends saying?”

  “There’s one man in Seattle, one in Arizona, another in Minnesota and me. That’s all that’s left of us, the Gibson Girl Radio Club. They’re saying everyone’s dead. The power grid is down. No surprise there,” he chuckled. “And the only ones who survived are those who holed up against the virus and stored food and supplies. They’re saying its martial law in their towns. We have to wait it out, ‘til the virus burns itself out in the population.” He shook his head, and Tara couldn’t help but notice the blue veins through the frail paper-like skin of his neck.

  “Clyde, some have made it. I don’t know how many, but some. So I pray we make it too. All of us.” She gazed at him sadly and the old guy nodded.

  “Will you be out here for a little bit? I’d like to drop you off some of whatever we can find.” He was skin and bones, and Tara was afraid he would starve to death. She couldn’t have that.

  “God bless you,” Clyde said, taking her hand.

  His news was devastating, but she hated to leave him. Tara already knew things were bad, but had hoped it was just their area, since it was the site of an initial outbreak.

  As she and Mary walked away down the alley, she turned back once to see Clyde still standing there picking through the leftovers in his dead garden. It made her heart hurt.

  “The trees are right up here.”

  As they approached, two squirrels scampered away. First, the walnut tree was on their left, and it was a huge one. There were so many nuts in a crop this large, the squirrels couldn’t get them all. Tara and Mary looked toward the rear of the house whose backyard faced the alley. Technically, they were stealing their walnuts, but they saw no sign that anyone had gathered any. First, Tara picked up all the ones in the alley. Usually each year there was a mess in this spot when she walked past; smashed walnuts and skins everywhere. Not this time. No cars are coming through anymore to squash them.

  They gathered at least a hundred walnuts. Tara knew she would have to stomp the green outer skins off, and “float” them, a trick she’d learned from her grandma. If she could get some river water, you dropped the nuts into it and not only did the bugs come out, but the nuts that floated were bad. Then the nuts would have to be laid out to dry for two or three weeks. Since water was scarce, they might have to skip the floating step.

  A few houses down, the chestnut tree spread its branches out over the alley. Again, there were no signs of life from any of the houses around it. Tara wondered if people were hiding in their homes. Surely, some of them had prepared at least a little, as she, Mary and Clyde had. Tara mentioned this to Mary, and she shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know, Tara, I’d say most didn’t. And if they had kids, they probably spread the virus to them. Only those of us who stayed home at just the right time during the outbreak survived.” She was quiet for a moment. “I haven’t heard from my neighbor Anna, either. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.” Tara absorbed this info, knowing Mary was probably right.

  “Mary, look! What did the book say about mushrooms that grew on trees? That looks like the one in the picture!”

  Just a couple trees down from the chestnut was a small grove of old oaks, and a large orange fungus grew from the base of one. “That’s a Hen of the Woods mushroom! It’s huge!”

  Tara was excited by their bounty on the first trip out. Mary first helped her find the spiny, partially open chestnuts that were still left on the ground. She put those in one of Tara’s plastic bags. All in all, there were maybe twenty-five chestnuts in the harvest.

  Next, they moved to the oak trees, and Mary took out the sharp kitchen knife and sliced a large chunk of the fungus off the tree. She had to divide it up between both their bags it was so big, nearly two and a half feet long.

  “I can’t wait to cook this!” Mary giggled. She finished distributing the mushroom and crouched to gather acorns next. “I can give some of this to Clyde on the way back,” Tara told her.

  “We’re like a couple kids at Christmas, Mary!” That was okay, Tara thought. They’d been through so much, it was nice to have fun. She wasn’t even worried about the white vans, things were so quiet here in the neighborhood. She figured they must be off about their own business.

  Tara led the way to the crabapple tree she remembered on the next street over. There was still no sign of life anywhere. They carefully picked some of the remaining small fruit from the tree and salvaged what they could on the ground. There was more left for later. They looped around, heading back, and Tara spotted a couple gardens on the way. She helped herself to a few green tomatoes still on the vines of one, and two small pumpkins at another. A rusted yard cart, the wheels intact, sat abandoned near the second one. Tara decided to take it, promising herself when things got back to normal, she would return it to its rightful owners. If they were still alive, that is. It was sturdy and ruggedly built, a bonus find.

  The women’s sacks were bulging now, and they set them in the cart and made their way home. Tara was exhilarated yet sad that they had not seen one single person besides Clyde. Maybe they were hiding, but Tara didn’t get a sense of that. The houses stared back at them, blank and expressionless, as though their lifeblood had drained away. I wonder what canned food is in there. This thought occupied Tara all the way home.

  They detoured to Clyde’s house and he was waiting for them on a bench beside his garden. Tara dug out a large chunk of mushroom from her bag, and Mary gave him some chestnuts and walnuts, as well as a few crabapples. He thanked them graciously, and asked them to come back. Tara promised they would.

  On the final leg of the trip home, the gray plume of smoke rose ominously in the distance, and Tara kept her eyes fastened to it. That’s where we’re headed tonight.

  ~

  Commander Brent “Brick” Meyers stood gazing out the large picture window overlooking the Kmart parking lot. His headquarters in the second floor of the huge building kept him far enough away from the infected to be safe, but close enough to be at the heart of the action, as he liked. A soft knock at the door jerked him out of his angry reverie. It was time to rip somebody a new one, and this pansy-ass doctor, Clemons, was it.

  “Come in, Doctor.” Meyers stood ramrod straight, his angled jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. He took in the doe-eyed, heavy-set doctor before him in one dismissive glance. A fat slug. Meyers regretted putting him in charge of the camp hospital, but doctors were at a premium. Luckily, he had another idea now.

  “I understand you want to slow the donation process?”

  The doctor seemed to cringe slightly under his verbal onslaught. He cleared his throat softly, apologetically almost, and Meyers wanted to punch him in the Adam’s apple and watch him choke to death.

  “My recommendations were no more than twice a week, Commander. Our patients are suffering from dehydration after surviving the virus. Donating more than twice a week causes platelet depletion, weakness and even more dehydration. They’re dizzy, they fall, and they bleed a lot from minor injuries without the ability to clot. It can’t go on, we’re losing too many.”

  Meyers felt his face redden and the vein in the middle of his forehead swell up. Fists clenched, he struggled to control his rage as the doctor watched him in growing alarm.

  “That doesn’t concern you. What should concern you are my orders. Period.”

  “I took an oath, the Hippocratic Oath, to never do harm. And your orders are harming—no, they’re killing them.”

  “That will be all, Dr. Clemons, thank you.” The icy cold tone of Meyers’ voice dismis
sed the doctor. He turned and left the room. Another knock sounded directly after. A large man with a shaved head and rolls on his thick neck stuck his face in the door, eyebrows raised in question.

  “Take care of that,” Meyers announced. The head retreated with a quick nod. Meyers turned back toward the window, planning the next stage in his operation. We’re going to need a lot more people.

  Chapter 9

  Lee was nowhere in sight when they got back to the yard. As Tara walked past the fifty-five gallon drum, she peeked in, noticing the stick and peanut-butter-slathered toilet paper roll were now inside it. Maybe he caught something!

  The women lifted their heavy sacks out of the cart and carried them into the house. Lee was at the sink, and Tara caught a glimpse of a bloody pile of fur in the plastic garbage bag on the counter. There was a plate sitting there too, and on it was a neatly stacked pile of meat. There were also several containers of water. Lee turned with a smile. “We’re going to eat tonight!”

  “We sure are. Great job, honey. Where’d the water come from?”

  “I suddenly realized I could drain the pipes, duh.” Lee laughed at himself. “You open the highest faucet in the house just enough to take the suction off the line, then turn on the lowermost faucet and collect the water.”

  Tara was thrilled, a little more water to work with. Lee had already emptied their toilet tank and water heater early on to collect what was there.

  “Look at all this stuff we got.” She and Mary emptied their sacks on the counter, and Tara began sorting nuts into plastic bags. “We found tomatoes, pumpkins, nuts, mushrooms, acorns, and crabapples. It’s another feast! Plus we still have Celebration Stew left.”

  “Too bad we drank all the wine,” Mary chimed in. They all laughed. Mary’s comment was punctuated with the overhead lights flashing back on. Mary echoed Tara’s quick gasp. Lee held up one hand patiently, waiting to see how long it would last this time. It was almost a full minute while they stood quietly staring at each other. Finally, the kitchen fixture flickered a couple times, and faded out. They all exhaled, and Mary, almost always optimistic said, “One of these times it will stay!”

 

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