“My name’s Caroline,” she said.
“Caroline, I’m sorry we’re meeting under these crappy circumstances.”
He examined the splint carefully, not wanting to jiggle the leg. There was a dull yellow bruise about the size of a silver dollar about midway between the kneecap and the ankle, and the flesh was slightly swollen.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
“About ten days ago.”
“How?”
“Fell down some stairs,” she said. “I guess I was lucky I didn’t fall on my stomach.”
“How’s the pain?” he asked.
“It comes and goes,” she said. “It seems to be getting better.”
“Well, given the circumstances, I think you’re doing pretty well. You let me know if he stops kicking.”
He gazed up at her companion, who’d been watching him like a hawk, and extended a hand. He was enormous, an amazing physical specimen. A purple and gold LSU t-shirt was drawn tight against his massive chest. His biceps were cut like diamonds.
“Adam Fisher.”
The man returned the shake, Adam’s hand virtually getting lost in his paw.
“Fred Briggs.”
Strangely, the name rang a bell for Adam, but he didn’t know why. Certainly, he’d remember having met a guy this big, this imposing.
“So there’s nothing here?” the man asked. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Sarah had joined them in the dugout; her M4 was still out, but much to Adam’s relief, she had lowered the muzzle.
Freddie looked over at her, wiped a hand over his scalp, which was shiny with sweat.
“No,” Adam replied. “Whatever was supposed to be here, it didn’t happen.”
A gunshot in the distance cracked the silence.
“We’re headed for California,” Adam said. “It’s safer out on the roads than in the big cities. At the very least, it doesn’t smell as bad.”
“Why there?” Freddie asked.
“My daughter might still be alive out there,” Adam said. “Had to give it a shot.”
“You think the immunity is hereditary?” Caroline asked, her voice spiced with hope.
Adam weighed his response carefully.
“I really don’t know,” he said. “If she’s still alive, it’s possible there’s a genetic component to it. I don’t know if there are any other cases where a parent and child both survived.”
“My kids weren’t immune,” Freddie said darkly. “They died just the same.”
“Oh, Freddie,” Caroline began, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”
He stomped up the dugout steps and toward the infield.
“What’s his story?” Adam asked when they were alone.
“God, I’ve been such a pain in the ass,” she said to Adam and Sarah. “I’ve been so worried about the baby and this damn leg that it never occurred to me to even ask about his family.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.” Sarah said. “I’ll talk to him.”
Adam watched her follow Freddie, who had drifted over toward the concourse.
“Is this guy OK?” Adam asked.
“I know he’s rough,” Caroline said. “But he saved my life. Twice. I can’t judge him.”
Adam didn’t know how to process that, so he let it slide for now.
“So what do you think about taking a little road trip?” he asked. “Free medical care the whole way. No co-pays.”
“That is pretty tempting,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. “I still can’t believe you’re a doctor.”
He held up an index finger.
“Hang on.”
He extracted his wallet from his back pocket.
“Still carrying your wallet?”
“Old habits die hard,” he replied as he thumbed through the Visa card, the driver’s license, the membership card from Sam’s Club. A wave of nostalgia, a strong one, swept through him, as he thought back to the last time he’d swiped his debit card for a Starbucks coffee, the last time he’d run into a grocery store to grab a few things.
“Here.”
He held out his Physician’s ID card issued to him by the Virginia Commonwealth University Hospital. She waved him off, but he kept the card out, pinched between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. Finally, she took it from him and gave it a once-over.
“So there it is,” she said.
“There it is.”
Caroline burst into tears; she held a hand over her mouth and took several deep breaths, but she couldn’t stop crying.
“It’ll be OK,” he said.
Even though he really didn’t know that.
Gunfire peppered the afternoon again, this burst closer than the first.
“We need to get on the road,” he said.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”
“You think your friend will join us?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think he will. He’s been so good to me. I don’t know why. I’ve been shitty to him. Like I said, he saved me.”
She paused, and her eyes welled with tears.
“It’s been hard out there,” she said softly.
“I’m glad you’re coming with us,” he said. “I think there’s strength in numbers. Look, I don’t know if my daughter is still alive. Maybe it’s a pipe dream. But it gives me something to work towards.”
Freddie resisted at first, but when he saw there would be no changing Caroline’s mind, he dropped his objection to the two groups joining forces as a quintet. Adam still wasn’t sure about him. He was wound tight, like old nitroglycerin. But despite his own personal loss, he’d been looking out for this woman he hadn’t ever met before a month ago, putting aside any wishes or thoughts or wants or even needs for her benefit. That had to be worth something.
Freddie went to retrieve their vehicle while Sarah and Adam scoured the FEMA tents for supplies. It proved to be a bonanza. They found several cases of bottled water and dozens of MREs. Toilet paper. After loading the new supplies, they were off, winding their way back toward Interstate 64. By late afternoon, the city was behind them, the pickup truck chewing up highway as they headed west. In a couple of spots where the traffic was too snarled to negotiate, they had to double back and detour off the interstate, but there was a well-maintained access road paralleling the main highway.
Adam didn’t know what to think, what to feel. He rolled down the window and propped his elbow on the door as Freddie slalomed around the dead traffic. Finding Caroline and Freddie, that had to mean something, right? What were the odds this pregnant woman, a few weeks from delivery, stumbles across likely one of the few surviving obstetricians in the country?
He was glad they found her, as much for him as for her.
He was a good doctor, as his boss Joe McCann had said that day, the morning he’d suspended him. The Baby Wall had been a testament to that. He could see their faces, their beautiful, innocent faces and he couldn’t help but wonder if a single child from that wall was still alive. A flashback to the office, Joe mentioning offhand that he hadn’t been feeling well that morning. Jesus, he thought, his skin crawling. Had Joe already been sick with Medusa? He’d probably seen a dozen patients in the office, countless more at the hospital, before he’d become too sick to continue.
This made Adam’s insides clench with sadness, but at the same time, he was glad to be alive. He wasn’t ready to die. How glad he was that there was a good chance that Rachel was still alive. That Caroline and her baby wouldn’t have to do it alone.
He glanced back at Max, who had fallen asleep on Sarah’s shoulder. For the first time since they’d met, his young face looked its actual age. It was smooth and unlined, as though all the stress and panic bunched up on his face had drained away like heavy rains into a storm drain. Caroline napped too.
The sun was warm on his elbow as the St. Louis metro area shrank rapidly in the mirrors, the urban terrain morphing into the western suburbs and far western exurbs.
Ahead, the road was wide and open and clear, the air fragrant with the smell of rain. Dark clouds to the west portended afternoon thunderstorms.
They were in a hell of a pickle, he knew that. Each and every safety net all of them had depended on for decades was gone forever. Things could get bad in a hurry, as the thunderheads up the road well proved. The lightning flashed and the thunder rumbled gutturally in the distance, and he hoped it wasn’t an omen of things to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was slow going west of St. Louis. Even when the roads had been clear, it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Caroline to travel, necessitating frequent breaks along the way. They used these breaks to scout for supplies, which required constant replenishment. Sarah took these opportunities to restock her chewing gum and Max’s supply of Cheetos, which he ate nonstop. They probably couldn’t let that go on forever, but for now, it seemed like it was OK. Caroline got in on the act as well, requesting ready-to-eat pepperoni. Adam loaded up on chocolate bars. Nothing for Freddie, though, which irritated Sarah to no end.
“Are you sure?” Sarah had asked, as she’d headed out on a supply run one afternoon. “Anything you want. My treat.”
“Nothing for me,” he’d said.
Jerk.
Approaching Kansas City on the morning of September 13, they’d encountered the worst traffic jam they’d seen since leaving St. Louis. Salina, about 180 miles to the west, had been their target that day, but the gridlock in Kansas City had forced them to abandon Freddie’s truck, which, in turn, had created the problem of transporting a still-immobile Caroline. They’d spent much of the day looking for a wheelchair for her, and by the time they’d found one in a small hospital on the north side of town, the day was shot. On the plus side, Adam had assembled a bag of medical supplies he’d need on hand for Caroline’s delivery.
So at dusk on the thirteenth, they’d set up shop near a heavy truck dealership just west of Kansas City. Beyond the dealership was a grassy plain stretching north to the horizon. Sarah and Adam checked the building, made sure it was clear. It was, and as an added bonus, it had running water and showers. The water was cold, ice cold, but that was fine with them. Sarah had stood under the water until she was shivering, until she’d scrubbed days of grime and grit from her body. She scrubbed until her skin was pink, until the smell of the soap seemed entwined with her DNA.
Freddie and Adam got to work making dinner while Sarah and Max conducted a sweep of the camp.
“How come we never stay in houses?” Max asked as they walked the perimeter.
“Well, Adam said it would be best if we stayed away from the cities and towns,” she said. “Things aren’t exactly very clean.”
“Because of all the bodies, right?”
“Yeah. Because of the bodies.”
“Can I tell you something?” Max asked.
“Sure, sweetie,” she said as her eyes swept the desolate plains before them.
“I used to think the apocalypse would be cool,” he said.
She smiled.
“It’s not what you thought, huh?”
“I always thought it would be zombies,” he said. Then, his voice softening: “Thought I’d be really good at killing zombies. I used to play this game called Dead Men Walking all the time. I feel so stupid. No, it hasn’t been what I thought. It’s been horrible.”
“Know what?” Sarah said, softly.
“What?”
“You weren’t the only person who thought like that,” she said. “I knew some grownups who thought it would be cool for the world to end. Even some soldiers.”
“Are any of them still alive?”
She smiled at him.
“No.”
“Why do people think like that? Did they think it would be fun to watch everyone they know die? Did they think it would be fun to not know if you’d have enough food and water?”
“I don’t know, sweetie,” she said. “I think some people who weren’t happy about-”
“Sarah!” he hissed, pointing toward something. “Look!”
Sarah followed the point of his finger toward a figure lying on the ground. The man was as dead as he could be, lying in a thick pool of rust-colored blood. Most of his head was missing, the result of its encounter with a large-caliber bullet. He was young, late teens, twenty at the most. He wore cargo shorts and a long-sleeve t-shirt, both were dark with blood stains.
Max screamed, the howl piercing the late-afternoon stillness, high-pitched, thin, a throwback to the pre-pubescent boy he’d been not too long ago. Sarah pulled Max close to her and clapped her left hand against his mouth. Then she unslung her M4 from her shoulder.
“Shhh.”
The scream died in his throat, and he pressed up against her. Sarah scanned the area, keeping her finger tight on the trigger, but she detected no movement. Her head continued rotating in the silence. The tendons in her neck strained and popped as she did so. She could feel Max’s hot tears plopping on her arm, his whole body quivering with fear.
The second body was about fifty feet distant, the clothes soaked in blood. And beyond that, a third body. And a fourth. All butchered.
#
“They’re all men,” Sarah said after she’d conducted a quick search of the camp.
The wind had kicked up, the polyester skins of the tents flapping in the afternoon breeze. The tents had been arranged in a half-moon shape at the base of a hill, in the shade of a line of pines.
“So?” Freddie said.
“But there were at least two women with them.”
“How do you figure?” Adam asked.
She waved him over with her right hand and led him from tent to tent.
“Four bodies, but there are six sleeping bags.”
“How do you know there were women here?”
She cocked her head at him. Jesus, men could be so dense.
“Come here,” she said. “Poke your head in this tent and take a whiff.”
Adam complied with her request.
“You smell that?”
“What am I smelling for?”
“Jesus. Perfume.”
“Oh yeah, now I smell it.”
“Eternity,” she said. “Calvin Klein. I used to wear it.”
There were two backpacks in this tent, one containing women’s clothing and other female personal effects. A wallet, black, leather and worn good, was tucked inside the pack. The driver’s license inside had belonged to Patricia Williams, a resident of Indianapolis. The photograph hadn’t done her much justice, if there was any to be done. Her hair was stringy, and a leathery face made her look ten years older than she was. But she seemed like a nice enough woman, certainly better than those who had unleashed the carnage in her camp.
“What happened?” Max asked, still rattled by the gruesomeness of the scene.
Sarah chewed on her lip as she thought about how to respond. On the one hand, Max was still a boy, still negotiating that shaky rope bridge between adolescence and manhood. On the other hand, circumstances now dictated he was going to have to grow up a lot faster than he might have otherwise. Sugarcoating things might backfire, make him feel like the world was safer than it really was. And it could seem safe now, what with going a day or two without even sniffing another human being. The sooner he understood the way the world worked, the better.
“I think the women in this camp were taken,” she said.
“Taken?” Caroline repeated. “Taken where?”
Sarah shook her head, not wanting to give a voice to her darkest thoughts, about where these two women were right now, what they were enduring.
“Hey, look at this,” Caroline called out.
Sarah followed Caroline’s gaze, which was fixed on the side of a tent. A strange bit of graffiti had been spray-painted in black across the side of the tent. A silhouette of a large bird against an unidentifiable backdrop. Max thought the image looked like a set of sharp, pointy teeth, whereas Adam posited a roaring fire.
&nbs
p; “Like a phoenix?” Freddie offered.
“Possibly.”
Sarah felt a chill ripple through her. Bad enough they were traipsing through a human wasteland, eating canned goods, no idea what the future held for any of them. The dirt on the grave of the world still fresh, and already they’re dealing with some kind of roaming death squad? This kind of thing was for shitty cable movies on Saturday afternoons.
She glanced at Adam, his arms crossed against his chest, his middle finger tapping against his bicep like a metronome. It was a pose she’d noticed him assume when he was deep in thought. The others had begun looking to him as the leader, even if Freddie had done so reluctantly. Guilt coursed through her, but that didn’t mean she was sorry to transfer the weight of leadership to someone else’s shoulders. It was the logical choice. Freddie was fixated on Caroline, who herself was busy with the business of healing and being pregnant. And she was a foot soldier. She took orders. Besides, who wanted to take orders from someone with a death wish? She glanced at Adam again.
Her conversation with Max replayed in her head. She hadn’t been entirely honest with the boy. Yes, she had known soldiers who’d wished for an apocalypse. But she’d left out the part that she’d been one of them. It was so goddamn unfair, to know you were already dying at the age of thirty. To hear others talk about the future, about families, about careers, about this or that, when she was staring a death sentence in the face, it was enough to make anyone a little cuckoo. But the universe had seemed hell-bent on making her face her destiny, even as it had wiped the world clean of all those she’d once envied, the ones who had justifiably thought they had decades ahead of them, long, fruitful, more-or-less happy lives, those that now lay dead like abandoned toys.
#
They camped six miles up the road. Adam had hoped to get farther, but the group was exhausted, and Caroline had been complaining of severe back pain. It was an undeveloped parcel of land, clear-cut, easy to patrol. A pair of bulldozers sat at the edge of the property, waiting for drivers who would never be coming back to work. A large billboard reading 8 Acres Available NOW – Call Agent Bernice Sim! stood at the edge of the tract.
Dinner was eaten in silence. No one wanted to cook, so they settled on protein bars and Gatorade. The discovery of the bodies had drained away what little life their merry little band had. Caroline was asleep within minutes of dinner’s end, and Max joined her moments later. After dinner, Adam administered the last of the series of rabies shots. Well, he thought, as he depressed the plunger into his arm. That was that. The vaccine would either work or it wouldn’t.
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