“It’s beautiful, if a little chilly. You wouldn’t know that it’s....”
“The end of the world?”
“You just know how to charm a lady sir,” she chuckled. “How is it that I happened to get you all to myself?”
“That’s my point exactly. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of the world. Could it be that this is just our opportunity to start again...to fix what we got wrong the first time through? I mean all of us. Once this has all settled back down, maybe we’ll be able to come back together again and figure out that the petty differences that kept us at odds with one another were all for nothing.”
“Boy, aren’t you Mr. Positivity this morning? Have you been listening to those self-help tapes again?”
“Hardly. Can you fault me for being happy and a little optimistic this morning?”
Teasingly, she said, “It’s not like you got lucky or anything.”
“You call it what you want and I’ll call it what I want. That may have been the most romantically affectionate thing that’s happened to me since my divorce and all it took to happen was the end of the world.”
“I thought you said that it...?”
“Oh stop it for God’s sake. Just can’t let me be happy, can you?”
Neil knelt down from the van roof and kissed Meghan’s warm mouth. The previous night’s kiss, while arousing and nice, was somewhat surprising and, therefore, kind of awkward and sloppy. This one was more confident and much longer, involving more than just lips. When he pulled back, she suddenly leaned as far forward on her toes as possible and stole another playful peck.
She smirked. “I’m just razzin’ you a bit. I’m a pretty happy girl myself. In fact, I was hoping to wake up early enough to be able to catch the sunrise with you. How’s that for smitten?”
“You’re just a few minutes late.”
Still smiling, she said as she stretched, “I guess there’s always tomorrow.”
“Absolutely.”
Chapter 58
The Glenn Highway could very well have been the highway to Heaven or to Hell for all they knew. They started out early, hoping to make the most of the weak autumn sun. The going seemed much easier in the warm sunshine, despite the unsettling feelings of walking down the middle of the heretofore-bustling highway. There were no sounds to greet them. Mother Nature was as withholding with her voices as was the deserted world of man. Across the pavement, evidence of fall was able to collect itself without fear of the rush of traffic. Leaves, some damp and still somewhat green and others crisp and dry, splayed themselves on the warming ground.
The highway stretched out and disappeared into the distance in either direction. From the looks of it, the roadway could just as easily have been some lost relic cobbled together by a Roman Legion to service the vast reaches of the Empire. They walked along the forgotten highway heading north and away from the mayhem of the city behind them.
They walked for a time in silence. Jules wavered between skipping happily and dragging both her feet and her backpack sluggishly, the bipolar nature of childhood affecting her mood and her conduct.
On their right, they passed the charred and flattened remains of the highway weigh station. It appeared as if a pick-up truck had smashed uncontrollably into and through the small structure. The resulting fire had razed the building’s humble walls to the ground. An Alaska State Trooper vehicle stood amid the ruins, several rotting corpses scattered all around it.
As they neared the scene, Neil and Dr. Caldwell paused and looked at one another. Dr. Caldwell said for both of them, “It’s probably worth a look.”
Neil said to everyone else, “Let’s take a break while the Doc and I check things out.”
Regardless of the circumstances, the prospect of taking a break interested all of them. Their bodies were feeling as worn as their clothes were looking. Insufficient sleep and not enough calories were beginning to take their toll.
The two men walked slowly, carefully approaching the carnage. Despite lying face down and not moving presently, there was always that not so outside chance that one of the bodies on the pavement would rise up and attack them suddenly.
Sure enough, as they stepped into the immediate vicinity, one of the corpses stirred and, missing its legs, started to pull its emaciated and decaying frame toward them. With disgusted awe washed across his face, Dr. Caldwell looked over at Neil and said, “We can probably walk around it just as easily.”
“No one deserves to be like that though. It’s really just mercy and needs to be done.”
With a smile, Dr. Caldwell shot back, “I can think of a few people that wouldn’t cause me any heartburn to see like that, but I get your point.” From his backpack, the doctor removed his trusty and well-used aluminum baseball bat. With a single, forceful, silent swing, the abomination was dispatched.
Neil looked into the State Trooper Ford Explorer in search of, well, anything. He laid his hands on a twelve-gauge shotgun still in its rack. He grabbed as much as his two hands could carry and then leaned back out of the vehicle. He was still in mid-turn when he was suddenly struck with the gravity of his actions.
“Ya know, Doc, never in a thousand years would I have guessed that I’d be doing this.”
“What’re you talkin’ about, Neil? You’re a natural. You’ve got good instincts. You know exactly what to grab.”
Nodding but not necessarily agreeing with his companion’s simple assessment, Neil said for clarification, “No, what I mean is that I...I mean how is it that when I look at this hellish scene all I see is what’s useful? I’m a fucking scavenger, picking over and around corpses for the scraps that the dead were polite enough to leave me. And you say that I’m good at it.”
“Neil, things are different now.”
“Not so different that I should so casually disregard death. I barely even noticed these bodies and there are quite a few. These weren’t evil people who deserved the torment they got as the walking dead. And what about the poor Trooper who stood his ground here? What could have been going through his mind as he squeezed off round after round? Did he have a clue? Did he get a chance to say good-bye to the woman and child in the photo on his visor? What have we...sorry, what have I been reduced to?”
Dr. Caldwell was quiet for a second or two. He was looking toward Neil, but really he was looking through Neil. He was seeing all that Neil had seen and that he had obviously missed.
Lying near and even atop the carcasses were dozens of large black ravens who were as stiff as boards. As the carrion birds had torn at the toxic flesh, aggression motivated each successive peck more than did hunger. And with each new chunk of tainted tissue, the poison thickened in their veins until one by one they’d tilted over on their sides and died. They literally ate themselves to death.
“Neil, what would you have us do? And what do you expect from yourself? If we stopped for a eulogy every time we came across a dead body, where would we be? This is about survival. You can’t forget that.”
“Survival at what cost, Doc? Do you remember the old Planet of the Apes movie? The one with Charlton Heston?”
“Yeah.”
“Those people that Heston and the other astronauts encountered before the apes showed up and started shooting...they were just animals, with the most basic of instincts. They didn’t speak; they had no art and no culture. They had completely surrendered their humanity to their pursuit of their base needs, the most obvious of which was sheer survival. Is that where we are headed? Is that what we want?”
“I get your point, Neil, but maybe that’s a concern for later.”
“What happens if that was what those people’s ancestors thought and said and did? Maybe they were just trying to survive and forgot what it was that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.”
“So what do we do then?”
“We just can’t forget. We have to see all this and remember that these were people, same as us, at one time. We can’t let ourselves, or especia
lly Danny and Jules, become numb to the tragedy. We can do better and still not compromise our survival. I’ve gotta believe that.”
Dr. Caldwell nodded and looked again at the grisly scene. Perhaps it was his military training or his medical background that had steeled his nerves to death and dying. He oftentimes didn’t see a dead person, he’d only see a dead body, and he realized that there was a big difference between the two.
“Neil, you’re right. We can do both. We can gather supplies as we find ‘em and still show respect to the souls whose loss provided for our continued survival. It’s going to be a challenge, especially for me, so we are going to need your help in remembering.”
Neil finally allowed a sense of satisfaction to creep onto his face. “Thanks, Doc. If not to ourselves, we owe it to Danny and Jules and any other kids that are still out there. If this isn’t the end of humanity, then I think it’s important that we keep a tight grasp on it.”
“Neil, what exactly was it that you did before the crash of civilization again? Because I don’t think that I’m buying that you were some low-level nobody peddling mortgages.”
Neil couldn’t help but smile and said simply, “I think I got everything that mattered from the Trooper’s SUV. Maybe we should get back on the move.”
Dr. Caldwell looked over Neil’s shoulder one last time. He counted thirteen bodies on the slowly warming pavement. He saw the vehicles and the destroyed building that had once served to protect the roadway and felt the sorrow and the loss that all of it meant. He saw what Neil saw and, though the loss of life pained his soul, he was relieved that he was able to acknowledge for himself that it was a loss for all of them and not just the handful of people whose lives had been prematurely snuffed out those many days ago.
Chapter 59
They walked until well past noon before they came to the site of what appeared to be a significant battle between a military unit and the zekes. It looked as if both the north and southbound sides of the Glenn Highway had been straddled with concrete traffic barricades in an attempt by the military to do what the civilian forces in Anchorage had tried and failed to do: contain the mayhem. From a distance, the ground shimmered as if it had been paved in gold. In reality, they found as they got closer that there were thousands of spent shell casings carpeting the pavement.
As they drew closer to the battlefield, the air grew heavy with the reeking pungence of the hundreds of decaying bodies on the road leading up to and over the temporary and ineffective concrete wall. The presence of death, as undeniable and palpable as the sun, was all around. The bodies, the smells, the vehicles, like rotting relics themselves, all smacked of death.
Emma pinched her nose in an attempt to stifle the nausea that was starting to tickle the back of her throat. “Is there any way around?”
There wasn’t, unless they were interested in doubling back and finding a way up onto the ridges that enveloped the road on either side. With the sun already reaching for its cap, the press of time was as distracting as the hell through which they were walking.
Luckily, there were few of the mangled corpses along the far shoulder of the highway. They were able to use this channel to pick their way forward and avoid most of the staggering gore. Neil and Dr. Caldwell paused at one point as they caught sight of more assault rifles lying on the ground. They looked at one another for a few moments while they contemplated wading into the morass. Deciding that the field would be treacherous to navigate, they opted to avoid the possibility of receiving a bite on their lower legs by an immobile but still very dangerous zombie caught in the tangle of bodies.
Breathing through their mouths instead of their noses to try and avoid the stench, they all found that the putrescence was prominent enough in the air as to have formed a taste that lay on their tongues like a pair of too tight pants that refused to be peeled away. The foulness, like a thick green cloud, threatened to impede their every step.
It was as if all the elements were conspiring against them. The sun, too, so warm and inspiring, had retreated behind the mountains and out of view, seeking its afternoon hammock as it awaited the arrival of its evening relief. The shade brought cooler air, which harbored a subtle threat completely foreign to the nature of the sun.
The shadows, growing as the sun waned, made watching the piles of corpses more challenging and raising everyone’s anxiety. They watched the bodies so as to detect any sign of movement that could signal the rise of a threat.
Slightly skittish as they traversed what felt like the lion’s den, they each in turn scanned the heaps of fouled corpses that would have certainly pleased the likes of Pol Pot. No incinerators or furnaces; no efficient gas chambers; just rotting piles of bodies and miscellaneous body parts bearing the violent trauma and torn flesh that only a battle could produce.
Jerry was the first to spy movement. At first he thought that it was just an optical illusion perhaps created by his taxed nerves partnering with the darkening and stretching shadows. When Claire saw it too, though, he knew what he was seeing.
“Neil, we got...”
His voice sounding defeated, Neil dryly finished for him, “A problem?”
“That too. But I was gonna say that we got movement over there.”
With everyone else gasping and facing about, Neil, remaining calm despite the alarm bells that were echoing in his skull, said, “Yeah and that’s a bit of a problem.”
Claire was starting to repeat over and over, “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh...”
Dr. Caldwell tried to settle everyone with, “They may be moving but they’re not getting up. So long as they’re on the road and we aren’t, there’s no threat. Just keep moving and watch the ones over close to us.”
They moved in a single file line, careful not to get too close to anything along their path. At one point, they passed a soldier whose forehead was adorned with a dime-sized hole. His left arm had been partially gnawed and the right side of his neck was a brown and rust colored mess of torn folds of flesh. To Meghan though, all that caught her attention was that his nametag read: Taylor. That was her last name.
Surnames, such important concepts for so many people for so long, were now taking on completely different meaning. There was also the very real possibility that last names no longer had any meaning at all. Really, if there was only one Meghan, what difference was it whether her last name was Taylor or Burton or…she wasn’t sure what Neil’s last name was but that was certainly another possibility.
All at once, two things that stood out to her from her thoughts took her. The first was that she so readily and easily included Neil on the same list as her maiden name and the name of her fiancé, which was eventually going to be hers, had they married. The fact that she did it without hesitation was what struck her as so surprising because she was not typically so impulsive as to fall for a guy so completely and so quickly. And this despite the fact that she was had no idea of his last name. It started with a ‘J’, she thought.
The second surprise was the flood of memories that surged from behind the Taylor nametag. When Meghan was still a little girl, she became enamored with Elizabeth Taylor’s life and career. She was amazed with the glamour and the sense of uber-celebrity, and Elizabeth Taylor was a shining and graceful member of the American aristocracy. Meghan watched all the movies she was able to, catching them on cable channels, from video stores, and bought the occasional movie online for harder to find titles. As she grew, the obsession subsided, though her passion for Taylor’s films never dulled. When she moved to Anchorage, she decided that she was setting out on her own adventure like Taylor had done in countless Hollywood fantasies. And then she met Brian, who was so nice and handsome. She knew she had found her place when she learned that his last name was Burton. It just seemed like fate had happily smiled on her life. Taylor and Burton: one of Hollywood’s great romances. He was definitely the one.
That was more years ago than she cared to remember. She had accepted her fate to be denied matrimony and had even gotten c
ozy with the idea. She was alright with staying a Taylor. And seeing it on the uniform of a dead soldier gave her pause, like coming upon your own name on a random headstone in a cemetery. It was unsettling and sent an unpleasant chill up her spine that uncomfortably tickled the base of her skull and her buttocks at the same time. She visibly trembled, catching everyone’s attention.
Neil asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I just...I guess I kind of...Hey, what’s your last name?”
“What? I mean, Jordan. Can we do this somewhere else?”
She smiled. “No. All better now. Thanks.” She blew him a kiss and winked playfully. She walked on by, allowing Dr. Caldwell to move forward again.
Neil asked the doctor, “Doc, have you ever figured women out?”
Shaking his head, he answered, “Women to me are a lot like golf.”
“Huh?”
“Meant to be played and not won, or, in a woman’s case, not understood...just played.”
“Thanks, Doc. You weren’t, like, a specialist in advising patients or anything were you?”
“You’ll see one day. It’s not that far off.”
“Yeah. I get ya. Did you happen to spend any time with my Dad?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
They moved around the pocket of death as quickly as possible. Just beyond, the rock walls to either side of the highway gave way to open land leading to the Knik Delta flood plain. To their right, on the south side, the mountains were still there, but several hundred yards off. On their left, there was nothing for miles.
Neil said confidently, “The Knik crossing is just ahead. From there...well, we can see where we can go from there. Maybe the military will still be there.”
Dr. Caldwell had his doubts, but he refused to give them voice. If the Army was there at the bridge, or even anywhere in the Mat-Su, they would have seen or heard helicopters. The Army would have birds in the sky all the time to keep an eye on any movement in the vicinity. Of course there was always that possibility that the circumstances of the military’s situation precluded that, but if that was the case then he wasn’t sure if heading toward them was the best idea. The reality was that it was the best idea any of them had and they were on the brink of seeing whether or not the idea was going to pan out.
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