DRYP Trilogy | Book 1 | DRYP [The Final Pandemic]

by Scheuring, R. A.

  Etta squinted at the girl, scrutinizing her for signs of plague, and then she cursed herself for being so fearful. The girl was the first live person she had seen in two days. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choice as to whom she could turn to for help.

  She looked around at the arts and crafts furniture in her parlor, deliberating. The wood-paneled room would make a good coffin if she didn’t get her diuretics.

  With a grunt, she pushed herself away from the window and shuffled to the door.

  She imagined she was a ghastly sight with her silver-gray hair loosed from its pins and her mouth hanging open, but that was what being a shut-in did to you. When you outlived everyone else, you didn’t give a damn what you looked like.

  She puffed wildly as she descended the front steps to the browning lawn.

  “Are you all right?” she called out. The girl didn’t stir. For an alarmed moment, Etta feared young woman really was dead, and that she had wasted her remaining life’s capital on a foolish venture into the front yard.

  She pushed a slippered toe into the young woman’s leg. “Wake up. Get off my lawn.”

  The girl moaned, turning her head so that Etta could see it clearly for the first time. With a start, Etta realized that the young woman was quite pretty. Or she guessed the girl was pretty. It was hard to tell with those dark circles and chapped and cracking lips.

  The young woman opened her eyes without raising her head. “Water,” she croaked, “Please.”

  Etta regarded her thoughtfully. For the last few years, she had always been the one who had needed help: help with shopping, help with cooking, help with cleaning. “Activities of daily living,” the woman at the senior center had called those things. When you needed too much help, it was off to the nursing home for you.

  “You’re going to have to walk.” Etta made a fleeting gesture at her housecoat and her own, wasted body. “Because there’s no way I can carry you.”

  The young woman nodded weakly. Etta wondered if the girl could even stand up. She realized, suddenly, that she wanted the girl to get up, because if this was the end of the world, then she wanted a companion for the end—even if it was a stranger, even if only for a few hours.

  The young woman pushed herself up as though her body weighed a ton, though Etta estimated she couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred and ten pounds. She rose, swaying a little, and looked around anxiously.

  She found her black bag, looped it over her shoulder, and turned to Etta. “Do you have anything to drink?”

  The question had been politely asked, although her voice had not been much more than a dry whisper. The girl seemed to be exerting a great deal of self-control to keep herself from toppling over. Etta wondered who was worse off, the girl or her, and decided it was a toss-up.

  “Come on.” Etta started shuffling back to the house. The young woman followed.

  Ezra let the boat idle at the mouth of the marina and peered at the fueling station to see if anyone was there. The sun was barely up, but he had been so anxious that he hadn’t slept a wink the previous night, just paced around on the Bayliner’s deck staring into the darkness, waiting for dawn.

  It had taken less than an hour to reach the marina.

  Now, he floated, indecisive. He hadn’t radioed ahead that he was coming because he wasn’t certain the harbor would accept him. No one wanted Americans anymore. He’d heard on the shortwave that Americans were banned worldwide, which meant getting fuel might prove trickier than he thought.

  A man appeared by the fueling station. Ezra squinted in the morning light, but the bright sunlight blinded him. He could only make out a black silhouette standing on the dock’s end.

  He heaved a resigned sigh and brought the big boat alongside the dock, watching as the worker tied the Bayliner to the metal moorings. Ezra noted that the worker wore no mask, which was somehow reassuring. Maybe they weren’t as crazy in Ensenada as they were in California. Maybe he might get what he needed, after all.

  But the dock worker made no move to greet Ezra or to fuel the boat. He stood slightly back, watching expressionlessly as Ezra approached the boat’s side.

  “I need some diesel,” Ezra shouted.

  The man didn’t move. He just looked at the boat, running his eyes from stem to stern before looking back at Ezra.

  “Necesito diésel para mi barco,” tried Ezra.

  “¿Es americano?”

  “Sí.”

  “No tengo diésel .”

  The words were said so abruptly and with such finality that Ezra was stunned. No diesel? In a country that was one of the top petroleum exporters in the world? Impossible!

  Panic began a hummingbird flutter in Ezra’s chest. He wondered if the guy wanted money.

  “Tengo dinero,” Ezra tried to keep his voice even, to martial the growing alarm in his chest. “Tengo dólares.” He held up a wad of bills and waved them over the side of the boat at the man below. “Para diésel, un poquito diésel.” He looked at the man meaningfully. “Para usted. Dinero para usted, también.”

  Ezra wondered if the man understood, because he didn’t react, just stood there with his impassive eyes and sun-darkened face.

  “Para usted,” Ezra said again, his voice rising a pitch.

  Abruptly, the man turned and receded up the dock. The silence of the marina terrified Ezra. Boats quietly bobbed in their slots, their riggings snapping and clinking in the soft breeze. For a crazed moment, Ezra thought of jumping from the boat to refuel it himself. He peered down the length of the dock and then looked down at the ropes that held the Bayliner to the dock.

  Maybe he could climb over the ladder to free the Bayliner from its moorings and still have enough time to get back up the ladder onto the boat before it floated away. Maybe…

  A loud creaking sounded. Ezra stared blankly as three figures approached. Ezra recognized the one in front as the marina worker, but it was the other two that froze the blood in his veins.

  Two federales in sweat-stained uniforms and dusty respirators marched toward the boat with their hands on their holstered pistols.

  Forty-Three

  Two hundred miles to the north, Alan Wheeler woke to larks singing. He lay there in confusion for a moment, trying to put the oddly peaceful birdsong, the plush area rug, and the body next to him together in his brain.

  Brooke.

  Her back was turned to him, mottled blue blotches visible where her shirt lifted up from the waistband of her pants. He couldn’t see her face, which was just as well. He didn’t think he could bear to see its lines and contours distorted by the rigid finality of rigor mortis.

  The room stunk. He guessed her body was decomposing, but he knew he probably smelled just as bad, his body odor mixing with the stink of old blood.

  My god, why wasn’t he dead? He wanted to die!

  He tried to lick his lips, but there was no saliva, just two dry surfaces rubbing against each other. His chest expanded and retracted, painful, but no longer agonizing.

  Brooke and Jason were gone. No act of God or man would bring them back. Ever.

  He lay on the carpet for a long time, dry air moving in and out of his parched mouth, watching the shadows shift across the walls.

  And then, because lying there changed nothing, he at last pushed himself up, staggering for a dizzy moment as he came clumsily to his feet. He knew he needed something, and the realization propelled him down the hallway, momentarily away from the abyss.

  He needed something, yes. A single, fixed thought.

  He needed a drink.

  Susan Barry sat in the living room and listened to tick-tick of the square-cornered grandfather clock. It was nine o’clock.

  “It still works,” she said.

  The old lady across from her smiled faintly. “It’s a wind-up clock.”

  Susan cracked her first smile in days. “I see.” She looked down into the glass she held in her hand, an ancient cut-crystal glass that she had found in the house’s old-style kit
chen. She took a sip, savoring the water that had been poured from a partially-filled two-and-a-half-gallon plastic bottle. It was her second glass.

  “Are you a nurse?” the old lady asked.

  “No, a doctor.”

  “A doctor?” Etta took a wheezy breath. “I need a doctor.”

  That much is obvious, thought Susan, but she wasn’t certain there was anything she could do for the old lady. Her bluish skin was stretched tight around thick, swollen ankles. Pulsating neck veins ran like ropes down the side of her neck. She wheezed through an open mouth. Susan recognized all the signs of untreated heart failure.

  “You need to go to a hospital,” said Susan.

  The woman regarded her silently, and Susan instantly regretted her words. What hospital? There were no functioning hospitals. There weren’t even functioning medical clinics.

  “What medicines do you take?” Susan asked.

  The old woman laboriously listed the pharmacy of medications she was taking. “I ran out of my diuretic two days ago—”

  Susan regarded Etta grimly. Without her medications, the old lady was a goner. But where in that mess out there could Susan find diuretics now? Or any of the old woman’s medications for that matter?

  Susan tried to recall if there was a pharmacy nearby, but she wasn’t exactly sure where she was. Somewhere in South Pasadena, she thought. She couldn’t have staggered far last night.

  She wasn’t sure she could stagger very far today, either. She looked at the empty glass in her hand. Only two glasses, she thought. Not enough to fix the deficit. Not enough to save her kidneys. But how long would the old lady last? Long enough for Susan to find a pharmacy and then somehow miraculously stagger back? And what if the pharmacy had no diuretics? What then?

  Impossible.

  “You can take my car,” said the old lady.

  Susan stared at her. “You have a car? With gas?”

  “Yes,” wheezed the old woman. “But there’s a condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to take me with you.”

  Ezra felt like howling. It was gone, all gone! The money. The boat. Everything!

  And now, he was going to die, because he didn’t have any money, and he certainly didn’t have any rights. He didn’t even have his respirator! The federales had searched the boat in front of him, stopping at the box on the table and looking at each other when they saw its contents, until the big one gestured for the smaller one to take it away. Ezra was forced to watch as his final protection was taken from him by the hands of some nameless Mexican official who would likely sell the respirators for a quick profit.

  Ezra winced as the SUV jolted over a pothole. The federales sat in front, ignoring him as they took dizzying turns through the dusty lanes of Ensenada. Ezra tried to remember the different streets from previous trips to the seaside town, but all he could remember was the harbor. The streets further inland were unfamiliar, the buildings thinning, the pavement giving way to gravel.

  The federales were taking him out of town. Ezra’s heart sank.

  In front, the two federales talked in soft Spanish to one another. Ezra strained to decipher some of the words, but the respirators muffled their voices so that he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  “Where are you taking me?” he asked, tapping on the Plexiglas window that separated the front seat from the back.

  The federales ignored him, which fed Ezra’s panic more than anything else. They couldn’t just ignore him. He was American! He had rights!

  Ezra tapped harder on the window. “Hey!¿A dónde vamos?” He didn’t know the Spanish for what he was trying to say. The scope of his vocabulary was limited to medical words. He didn’t know anything else.

  He bet those fuckers spoke some English. They all spoke English. He pounded on the window harder. “Hey! Hey!”

  Finally, the short one in the passenger seat turned to look at him, his face unreadable above his mask.

  “Where are you taking me?” Ezra said again, his voice raised to penetrate the Plexiglas.

  “La estación de cuarentena.”

  The quarantine station? What quarantine station? Sudden terror erupted in Ezra. No way was he going to a quarantine station! Not in Mexico! Not without a mask! Were they out of their fucking minds?

  “¡No estación de cuarentena!” Ezra banged on the Plexiglas. “I want to go back to my boat!” He didn’t give a shit if he had no gas and had no money. The empty boat was far safer than going to a Mexican quarantine station. “I want my money back!”

  The federale regarded him with the same, unreadable expression. He said something in Spanish, but Ezra was too panicked to understand.

  “I want a lawyer. Someone who speaks some fucking English!”

  What a moron he was! Of all the stupid ideas, to go to Mexico and—fuck! —he hadn’t gotten any further than Ensenada, and now he was going to a quarantine station!

  Hot tears stung his eyes. “Soy un doctor. No necesita la estación de cuarentena. Soy un doctor muy importante.” But he knew he hardly looked important in his sweat-stained clothes. He looked like any other American, tacky and vulnerable, easy pickings in a lawless time.

  A flicker of annoyance flashed in the federale’s eyes. He said coldly, in English. “You come to Mexico. You go to quarantine station.”

  He does speak English, Ezra thought viciously. He does! The SUV bounced again as the federales pulled onto a pockmarked driveway. In the distance, Ezra could make out several adobe buildings clustered around a central church. He looked around quickly, trying to figure out where he was. Some sort of mission? A religious center?

  On either side of the road, vineyards stretched in orderly green rows, terminating in the gently rolling hills that surrounded the compound. How many miles was it from town? Five? Seven?

  Ezra contemplated jumping out of the car and running, but he looked down at his bulging belly and rejected the idea. The federales would catch him in a minute.

  But no way was he going to some Mexican quarantine station without a mask! For god’s sake, that was the least they could do for him. They had basically stolen his box of masks. He pounded on the window again. “Hey, I want a mask! You’ve got to give me a mask!”

  The federales ignored him entirely. They pulled the car into the deserted courtyard, a cloud of dust rising from the tires. An enormous, life-sized cross stood in the middle of a small cemetery nearby. Ezra thought he saw freshly turned graves.

  A woman in a black and white habit emerged from one of the buildings and crossed the courtyard to peer into the car. The federale in front rolled down his window and muttered something in Spanish to her. The nun nodded gravely and then turned to look at Ezra, her brown eyes set back in wrinkle-bracketed orbits. She said something to the federale, but Ezra couldn’t hear it. He could only see the inward and outward movement of the mask she wore and the wizened skin around her eyes.

  No, no! he thought. Not like this! He wasn’t going to some third world quarantine center to rot away with the locals!

  The nun said something else to the federale and then reached a leathery hand to the car’s door handle. She seemed to be saying something to Ezra now, but Ezra was too panicked to listen. He merely stared at her, his body quivering, his nerves jangling.

  And then Ezra exploded into movement. He shoved the door open and saw the surprised look on the nun’s face as she toppled over. Distantly, he heard the federale’s bark of surprise from the front seat, but Ezra barely registered it. He was moving faster than he ever had in his entire life, his legs pumping, his arms flying, breath exploding from his out-of-shape lungs, as he dove across the courtyard and ran for his life.

  Forty-Four

  The pharmacy was trashed, which shouldn’t have surprised Susan, but somehow it did.

  She understood looting for antibiotics or items of value, but to topple over all the shelving units, to knock bandages and vitamins and other useless bric-a-brac off the shelves so that
the floor was littered with junk? It seemed gratuitous to Susan, destruction without purpose, a world gone to anarchy.

  She picked her way through the debris to the pharmacy and hopped over the small gate that separated it from the rest of the store, wincing at the residual pain in her head. She’d drunk four glasses of water before she and Etta had liberated the Oldsmobile from the locked garage, but Susan knew that she needed to drink more to restore the fragile homeostasis of her body.

  There simply wasn’t time. Etta needed meds, and the hot Los Angeles sun was beginning to rise in the sky.

  Susan peered through the mess. Someone had already searched the pharmacy for medicine and thrown half of the pill containers on the floor. Susan ran her finger down the alphabetical list of medications on the shelves, searching for the three she wanted. She found two of them and shoved the containers in her bag. The diuretic bottle, however, had been knocked to the floor, its contents spilled. Susan bent over, picked up the pills in her hands, and looked for contaminants. The pills looked clean. She hoped they really were. A gastrointestinal infection could kill Etta.

  But so would Etta’s heart, if she didn’t get her diuretics. Susan dumped the white pills into one of the pharmacy’s paper bags and shoved it in her black bag. She scanned the pharmacy one last time for antibiotics or any other useful medicine before hustling for the door.

  “Take two of these.” Susan said, when she reached the car. She shoved the white paper bag at the old woman and reached behind the seat for the thermos bottle. She poured out a tiny measure of water.

  Susan watched the old woman slowly take out two pills, her fingers fumbling with the bag. She looks so infirm, thought Susan. She’ll never survive this. With her heart, there was no way she could withstand the sun and the heat and the smoke.