by North, Geoff
“Why so glum?” Angela was sitting beside him now.
“I’m beginning to think Caitlan’s right. We should go to Cuba... we should go any place where it’s warm.”
She smiled at him. “We’ll get there in time.”
Angela had switched vehicles with Amanda. Hayden suspected the two were working together—making sure he couldn’t be left alone with his thoughts long enough to change his mind again. He returned the smile. “Don’t worry, I know you guys are right. We can’t leave anyone behind like that.”
The truck ahead of them slowed, pulled off to the right a bit and finally stopped. Hayden brought the Buick to a halt next to them. “What’s wrong?” Angela asked.
Caitlan pointed straight down the highway towards Tarantan. “Were there any fires burning when we left?”
Black smoke was billowing up from the town. Angela leaned closer to the windshield. “Is that a house going up?”
“More than one,” Fred called back from the truck. “Looks like the whole damned town is ablaze.”
Hayden put the Buick into reverse and parked behind the truck, well off the highway. He went into the glove box in front of Angela and brought out one of the two handguns. “We’ll check it out in one vehicle. Quicker that way if we if have to make a fast exit.”
“Tarantan’s on fire. A pail of water will be handier than a gun.”
He prodded Nicholas awake in the backseat before answering her. “The town didn’t start itself on fire.” He remembered the night he watched Rokerton burn from the middle of a field. The flames that had enveloped that town had been borne from violence—man-made and monster-driven. “I still thinks it’s a bad idea to go back, but we’re going prepared.”
Hayden got into the front of the truck with Caitlan and Fred. Angela squeezed into the back with the three children. “There might not even be a school to go back to now,” she told the ten year old girl. “I want you to be ready for that. We have to accept it quickly and get out of there.”
Amanda nodded. “I’ll accept it, no matter what. As long as we try and save the baby.”
Caitlan crept the big truck ahead another quarter mile. The smoke become a roiling wall of black before them, blocking out the sun’s dull light overhead. Fred Gill tapped Caitlan’s thigh. A jet of orange and yellow fire erupted out from the bottom, less than a hundred yards ahead, sending more smoke up like a billowing, cancerous wave. “This is far enough. Stop.”
Amanda kicked at the back of Caitlan’s seat. “You can’t stop! We have to find the baby!”
“I would if I could, sweetie... the smoke’s just too thick. It’s too dangerous.” She put the truck into reverse.
“No! You can’t leave yet! You can’t!” She popped the door lock up with her thumb, grabbed the handle and pulled. Amanda was squished tightly between Michael and the door. It flew open, and the girl spilled out sideways. The wide running board saved her life, deflecting her fall away from the front tire. Amanda landed on wet pavement, and rolled into a steaming puddle of melted snow.
Angela screamed at Caitlan to stop. The truck screeched to a halt. Michael slid across the bit of open back seat and hurled himself out the open door after his sister. Three things happened in the next five seconds that would change the rest of their lives. Angela panicked, and tried crawling over Nicholas to follow the twins through the open door instead of exiting from the door to her immediate right. Fred Gill had buckled up his seat belt in the front, and struggled to release it. Hayden pushed at him from the middle, slowing the old doctor up even further. Caitlan had stopped the truck without putting it into park. She struggled with the driver’s door that remained stubbornly locked.
Five seconds, three mistakes. By the time they were all stumbling outside, Amanda and Michael were nowhere to be seen. They had disappeared into the choking fog of grey. Caitlan spun around in a circle. “Which way did they go? Where’s that goddamn school?”
Hayden’s eyes were already beginning to sting. He wiped tears away and saw the big brick outline of the building through smoke. He grabbed Caitlan by the arm. “There, straight ahead.”
Fred was down on his knees, coughing and struggling for breath. “I’ll get him back in the truck,” Angela said, helping the doctor to his feet. “Find those children.” She watched them disappear into the smoke. “Come on, Doc, you’re no good to anyone out here like this.”
Fred wheezed. “Damn stupid of us to come charging into a town on fire. We should’ve kept driving.” He reached for the handle and Angela helped him pull the back passenger door open. There they discovered a fourth, terrible mistake. They had assumed Nicholas would stay put. The five year old was nowhere in sight.
Caitlan pulled Hayden along through the smoke towards the school. They crossed the front playground, hunched over and breathing the cleaner air nearer the ground, heading for the double doors of the main building. The roar of Tarantan burning around them shook the ground.
Caitlan finally slowed at the bottom of the steps. “Give me the gun, Hayden,” she whispered. “I’m a better shot than you.”
He handed it to her. “What’s wrong?”
She pointed the barrel of the weapon halfway up the steps. A smoldering pile of black sat there. Hayden prayed it wasn’t what he suspected it was. They moved closer, the wind shifted, bringing more smoke into their faces and a stink of freshly burned flesh. Hayden had suspected it might be a human corpse, but it was much more grisly than that. They stared down at the remains of four human bodies, burned to a crisp. The arms were locked about one another, in a permanent grip of fear and protectiveness. Four blackened skulls stared up into the smoke-choked sky, the bottom jaws of all stretched open in eternal, silent screams of agony.
“It’s them,” Caitlan finally said. “The family living in the library.”
Hayden knelt down and inspected the carnage closely. The smell made him gag, but he had to be sure. “The baby... it’s not here.”
Angela’s search for Nicholas led her away from the school. She thought she had seen his small little form darting in and out of the billowing walls of smoke further down the street. She called out to him, but the little form continued scurrying away from her.
Let him go, girl. Let the little bastard choke on smoke. Let him die. It will be one less for you to worry about later on.
Angela went a dozen more steps, peering into the smoke and trying to ignore the homicidal pleadings of her dead stepfather. Her eyes were hurting. It was becoming harder to breathe. the voice in her head was getting louder. He’s off to the left! The fucker snuck back the way you came. He tippy-toed right past you. Take that gun and blow his adorable little head off his shoulders!
The smoke was thick, but it wasn’t the only thing obscuring her view. The raging fires had melted most of the snow and ice. An immense damp mist had risen and mixed with the smoke. Angela could taste soot in her mouth. It coated the back of her tongue like paste. She spat a wad of black saliva to her left and saw something from the corner of her eye. “Nicholas!”
Don’t hesitate, Angie! This is a perfect opportunity. Shoot him dead... tell the others you thought he was one of those bug-crawling monstrosities. They’ll believe you.
Angela raised the gun.
Shoot him!
The small shape began to take form. She took aim.
Do it!
They heard a baby cry out. Two people dressed in white haz-mat suits were moving quickly towards a black van in the school parking lot. Caitlan could see the infant struggling in the arms of one of them. She staggered down the school steps, away from the smoking remains of the baby’s parents and grandparents, and pointed the gun. “Bring that child back here!”
Hayden grabbed onto the hand holding the gun and pulled it up. “Be careful, you could shoot the baby.”
One of the white-garbed strangers pulled a gun and fired at them. Caitlan made a pained squawk and fell back into the stairs. Hayden tried to hold her up, but the woman was too heavy. Her head l
olled from side to side, and finally came to rest in the burned bodies. Blood was bubbling up from a hole in the side of her stomach. Hayden placed a palm tightly over the wound, but the blood oozed between his fingers
The gun fired again. Hayden heard the bullet ricochet off the brick building behind him. He pulled the weapon out of Caitlan’s hand and shot back. Even fearing for his life and Caitlan’s, Hayden aimed higher up at their helmeted heads, cutting down the risk of hitting the infant. It offered him less of a targeting space, and every bullet fired, missed.
The van door slid open and the baby was handed off to someone inside. Hayden thought he could hear another child screaming over the baby’s wails as the door slammed back shut into place.
Amanda—that was Amanda!
The two white haz-mat suits were now moving towards Hayden and Caitlan. They both had guns trained on Hayden now, and he knew they wouldn’t miss once they started shooting. He looked down into Caitlan’s eyes and whispered. “I’m sorry... I don’t have any other choice.” The woman’s unfocused gaze was up in the smoky clouds. Hayden threw the empty gun down the steps and held his hands over his head. “Alright, you win! You don’t have to kill us!”
They shot him anyway.
Chapter 11
Louie parked the van in the center of what once was the thriving little town of Rokerton. Most of it had been burned to the ground. He exited the vehicle and wondered if a bomb had levelled the place a year before. He walked up the steps to the front of one of the only buildings still standing, Rokerton’s Town Office, and surveyed more of the destruction around him. Not a bomb, he decided. There were too many corpses lying about in the streets. They were covered in dirt and snow, and many of their limbs had been torn from their bodies. Smaller bombs could accomplish this kind of devastation, perhaps, but definitely not the nuclear variety that had pummelled the city of Winnipeg some two hundred and fifty miles east.
Louie kicked at one of the stiff corpses resting on the steps until it tore free from the concrete it was frozen to. The tattered clothing covering the skeletal remains was riddled with holes. He went to another corpse resting face down in front of the open Town Office doors and discovered more of the same. The green pants and jacket were strewn with holes. “Bullet holes,” he whispered. “These poor fuckers were shot to death.” There was a blackened helmet sitting a few feet away from the second body filled with snow. This guy was Army.
Louie turned the body over onto its back and saw the gaping crater where its chest and stomach used to be. He backed away quickly, almost falling down the stairs. LDV-3. The ticks got to this one. He wiped his hands instinctively down the sides of his pants, realizing the action was futile. If the ticks were still here, Louie would already be infected. They would be crawling up under his finger nails, burrowing into his flesh, and swimming through his veins.
Louie went back to the emptied shell of the corpse and bent down onto one knee. There was a hand gun still nestled in its holster at the dead soldier’s side. Louie removed it and inspected the weapon. He pointed it up at the sky, turned his face away, and pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang, and his hand jumped back.
Too bad I didn’t have this little baby back in Odessa.
He held the weapon in front of him with both hands—like they used to do in all the cop shows—and entered the building. “I have a gun now,” he called out to the shadows. “If anyone’s hiding in here with plans of jumping me, I’d think twice about that.”
Louie heard the squeal of a door opening or closing somewhere below. He found the staircase at the end of a short hallway and started down. Garbage was strewn all over the steps. He had to watch where he was placing his feet in the dim light. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.” He came to a landing halfway down. A body was sitting up against the wall. Its head was missing. Louie leaned down for a closer look. Most of the muscle and spine inside were gone. What remained was shredded, dry pulp.
More fucking ticks, working their way out... looking for someone else to suck dry.
He went down the remaining set of stairs into a basement filled with garbage and smelling like open sewer. Louie counted four more bodies strewn throughout the clutter. They were more like dried out husks sitting in dusty clothes—tangles of hair and bits of bone wrapped over in paper-thin skin. They had either been shot to death because they were infected, or they’d been torn apart by others carrying LDV-3. It didn’t much matter which, Louie supposed, they had died violently, horribly. The annoying old song by Baha Men played in his head with a new single-word change—Who Let the Ticks Out? He began to giggle.
The creaking noise sounded again. Louie looked up, still grinning stupidly, and pointed the gun at a figure dressed in a bulky suit of grey standing in the open doorway of a small office set into the far wall.
“Take it easy, guy,” The man said. He held his hands out to show Louie he was unarmed. Louie approached slowly until they were standing four feet apart. The stranger’s fingers were dirty, and the palms of his hands were covered with what looked like old burn scars. His bald head was covered with more pink burn splotches and faded freckles. A blazing ring of red beard covered the lower half of his face. Inches above that was a tiny button nose and two pale blue eyes, rimmed with a frenzy of broken blood vessels. “I’ve seen plenty of crazy assholes like you over the last few months. As soon as they start laughing at nothing, you know you’re in trouble.”
“I’m not a crazy asshole,” Louie countered. What is that awful smell? “I just remembered a song from when I was a kid.”
The man nodded. “I love music. I used to play epic instrumental pieces on my headphones when I was a Dragon. You know the kind of music I’m talking about, don’t you? Those big, orchestrated themes from the block-buster movies. I mean, if you’re going to fry people alive, you may as well make the most of it, right?” He turned and started back into the office, motioning for Louie to follow.
“Did you just say you’re a dragon?”
“I was a dragon,” the man corrected. “Then I became a white knight. Now I’m just me again.”
The suit he was wearing wasn’t grey, Louie realized. It had been white originally. Heavy, bulky stuff... fire proof, and probably resistant to most other hazardous materials. He had seen hundreds like it working in the DSC. Louie looked down as the man moved ahead of him and saw the seat of the haz-mat suit was stained almost black. That accounts for the stink. You’d have to shit yourself a hundred times before it could work its way through like that. And he thinks I’m crazy?
“Come on in, guy, don’t be shy.” The man weaved around stacks of paper and piles of garbage to a small desk and chair. He sat—making a wet squishing sound that turned Louie’s stomach—and turned on a computer monitor. “Let me show you what I’ve been working on.”
Louie could hear a small generator chugging away somewhere beneath all the junk. It felt warmer inside the office than the other areas of the building. “How long have you been down here...” Eddie paused and raised his eyebrows, waiting for the man to tell him his name.
“Oh! Sorry about that. My name’s Dwayne. I used to work for the Tenth as a dragon, but I discovered my love for children was much stronger than my passion for burning people alive. I gave that all up after getting hit in the ol’ noggin.” He turned his head and showed Louie a three-inch long rectangular dent in the back of his skull. Louie thought it resembled the butt end of a rifle, or some other kind of big gun. “They kept me on as a white knight for a little while after that, but eventually they gave up on me altogether. Said I was too damaged. Said I had become too unstable to contribute to the cause. They would’ve put me down like a rabid dog, but I still had enough sense to hide. ”
Louie nodded slowly. All he got out of that was the name Dwayne.
Dwayne patted the corner of the desk. “Sit here and I’ll show you everything.”
Louie could see the arm of a second office chair sticking out from a pile of garbage
. He tossed some bags away and made enough space to sit. The further away he was from the excrement-soaked dragon-knight, the better.
Dwayne shrugged and tilted the monitor over so Louie could see the screen. “Before all this happened—before the bombs fell—I wasn’t a white knight or a dragon. I was just plain old Dwayne Chubey, data analyst for a company that never really existed. I kept track of all kinds of statistics and trends.”
Louie fought the urge to plug his nostrils with his fingers. “What kind of statistics?”
“Population densities, disease outbreak threats, economic upswings and recessions. You name it, I studied it.”
“For what purpose?”
“Isn’t that obvious now? The world was about to end. I was one of thousands accumulating the information needed to survive.”
Louie shook his head. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Look here. I’ll take you back to the beginning.” He clicked a folder on the desktop and a sub-folder appeared with dozens of image files. “This is the history of the Tenth—or at least that part of its history a little grunt like me could access. I know a lot, but there’s a lot more stored on a million computers across the globe in the most secretive and securest of locations.” The first image appeared. It was a graph, showing a red line spiking diagonally through a set of horizontal lines. Dwayne placed one dirty finger nail at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. “It starts here, in the year 1804. The numbers along top indicate world population totals.”