Just Us

by Stark, Collin

  "No, we haven't. As far as being shady, I like to think we've managed better than most to keep our humanity. We're dirty and famished for that very reason."

  "I'll take you at your word, then," Quinton shrugged. "After what Jacob told me about how you took care of him, I don't see any reason to doubt it. And you're headed West?"

  "Canton, like I said. We heard on the radio that the military has set up there."

  "You, too, huh? You aren't the first person who has passed through here on their way to Canton. Seems legit, but the recording hasn't changed in a while. You're not too far off, but you'll have to head West then follow the river North. The bridges were blown to try and contain what they were, at the time, calling an infection."

  "So they did it here, too," Dad said, thinking about how they blew the bridge heading back to their side of town after escaping the school.

  "Yeah. Just shows how little they think of human life."

  "What do you mean? That was the only way they could stop the infection, at least it's the only idea they had."

  "Do you really think that was their only means of stopping it from spreading? By leaving people to die on the other side a river or a pass? No, my friend, they thought it was more economical. Fewer refugees, fewer mouths to feed. Less medical supplies to administer. Fewer resources 'wasted'. They tried like hell to save the major cities. Those battles went on for weeks, man. Sometimes months. But it only took them a couple of weeks to start blowing the bridges and stringing the fences."

  "Stringing the fences?" Dad tried to remember everything he had seen on the news when everything first started. Before that fateful day he left work early to pick Kern up, trapping them both in the school, all he could remember were relief efforts and quarantines. "I guess we didn't get to see the news as long as you did."

  "It was terrible," Quinton said with a grimace, then took a long swallow of his beer and closed his eyes while shaking his head. "I did a stint in the army. My G.I. Bill money landed me in nursing school. RN, buddy. I worked down in Sparta, at the hospital. Not too many folks here, but there were enough getting bitten or coming back. Then there was the stream of motorists heading South down the interstate. Lots of wrecks and muggings. It got so bad we had to set up beds and triage in the lobby.

  "At first, we managed pretty good. We found out pretty quick that the only way to kill the infected was massive trauma to the brain. That was easy enough. When they flat lined, we used a drill or something else. The police and then the local militia began putting them down before they ever made it to the hospital. We were holding our own great. Few casualties. Then the government wrote us off like they wrote off so many other communities around the country. First, they blew the bridges to the East and even went so far as to dynamite the mountain roads in some places. That seemed alright at first, because we were still getting supplies in from the west and the closest cities were on the other side of the blown bridges.

  "I guess that wasn't enough, though. From the best I can tell, a lot of the dead simply fell into the river and washed up on this side, though farther South. We never got the full battalions of troops. We got a small detachment of National Guard, a Reserve unit, and some volunteers. They pretty much kept falling back, until one night I was sitting on the porch and could see flames off in the distance, lighting it up like the Fourth of July. They bombed everything, retreated across the bridge, and blew it. After that, no more supplies.

  "That's when the people started turning on each other. You would be amazed how quickly people went from fed and content to starving and murderous. Three days. That's all it took. Without the supplies we needed at the hospital, we were doing amputations and surgeries without anesthesia, and those with diabetes and other illnesses began dying because we simply didn't have the meds to give them. We got by a few weeks on military and humanitarian drops, but that didn't last long. Then the dope heads and thieves came.

  "We only had a handful of guards, and those people were mostly family members of those getting medical care or seeking shelter. Eventually the druggies ran out of whatever junk they had or what they could steal and decided to hit the hospital. We had two attempted hold-ups and a raid. None of them worked. Addicts aren't known for their tactical abilities, but we still lost two nurses and three guards. We only had seven patients when I decided to come back home, and four of those were on death's door and the rest couldn't survive without medication."

  "What happened to them?" Dad asked, relishing his beer. "And why didn't you just come home in the beginning?"

  "Three of them are here, two died. The others I have no idea about. As far as coming home, it wasn't that simple. Some of the people in the hospital were from right here in this county. Even if they weren't, I was still obligated to help them. That's just what decent people do. I had a responsibility to them, and I held out for as long as I could. I took what I could from the hospital and brought it here."

  "That was pretty cool of you. I bolted to get Kern as soon as we got word that everything was getting bad."

  "You had your own responsibility to your family. I knew mine was safe here. We had already started networking with some of our neighbors, so I felt good about it. A lot of people evacuated, to where I don't know. It was spastic in those two months. Those of us who stayed took care of our own, and then some."

  "It was a lot different in the cities," Dad said. "It seemed like for every decent group we came in contact with, there were three or four just waiting for a chance to take advantage of us, or worse."

  "Sure, we had our share of trash and addicts out here in the country, but in the cities it's always worse. We're small and close-knit. In the cities, you could meet ten new people a day and not know everyone. That's how Sparta was. So many bad people that the desperate ones didn't stand a chance."

  Dad sipped on his beer, then chugged the rest down. Quinton chuckled and offered him another, which Dad graciously accepted.

  "What happened around the country? Around the world?"

  "I don't really know about the last year or so. All the TV and most of the radio stations are off the air. We still have a gospel station coming out of Helen, and a few people rambling on the AM band. Before that? After they started isolating parts of the country, most of the big cities either fell or contact was lost. The urban centers they tried so hard to save became cesspools. Only Fox and BBC News were still up at the end, along with NPR for a short time when they commandeered a channel.

  "New York had food shortages so bad that people were eating rats and a few high profile cases depicted cannibalism before all the social services shut down, including the police and the judicial system. I remember one aerial broadcast where the military was fighting a massive group of the dead and a mile away people were rioting in the streets and killing each other. Seattle, L.A., and a lot of others fell quick and hard. From what I could tell before everything went black, the country was focusing on rebuilding in the middle, trying to hold them off. Baton Rouge and Chicago were deemed too far gone and blown back to the stone age, but most of the middle U.S. was saved.

  "Asia had quite a time of it. Japan and the Philippines were able to maintain control. China tried, but wound up with like us, trying to hold the rural center of the nation. North Korea fell in a couple of months, as did South Korea. The rest of Asia was in heated battle. As far as Europe went, it was a toss-up. The U.K., Germany, and Austria seemed to be doing well, along with the Scandinavian countries. Everywhere else was total chaos. Africa went black soon after everything started, as did most of South America."

  "Wow," Dad said, finishing his second beer and well into his third. "I can't believe that. I hoped it was just something that was happening here. Just an infection that could be contained, something that started here."

  "Well, believe it. And it is an infection, at least when a person is exposed to the saliva of the dead, or comes in contact with bodily fluids some other way, like some did. It kills you, and then the body come back. No pulse, brain function
ceases. But the body still rises. And you know what? You could die from a heart attack and the body still comes back. That's why it was so hard to contain in the cities. It wasn't a static enemy that you could push back, it always found a way to come in from behind. And every time we lost someone, the dead gained one."

  This was all grating on Dad. None of this was stuff he wanted to hear. For going on two years, he had held to the idea that dead bodies weren't coming back, that they were just infected. He had seen the rotting corpses shambling along, but he held out hope that it might be something like leprosy. Still, there was one more question he had to ask as he sipped his beer.

  "How do you know this?" Quinton laughed and cupped his forehead in his hand, exhausted himself.

  "You don't think every hospital and college in the country were trying to figure out what those things were long before the government stepped in? Granted, our little podunk, hundred bed facility was a little slow coming around, but we tried. No one wanted to believe that such a thing was possible. I was involved with three of the experiments. They called them autopsies, but it's hard to autopsy something that's trying to bite you. We severed the spine from the skull and the head still operated, including the teeth. We cut out the stomach, all the major organs, everything. Sure, losing the organs made it weaker and awkward somehow, but the brain is the only organ that makes it go, and the brain function is almost non existent."

  Beer was the last thing Dad wished he had drank now, and it wasn't only the graphic discussion turning his stomach. Now one of his hopes, albeit a minor one, was dashed. Still, he hammered down the rest of his beer in silence as Quinton nursed his, staring at the wall. A few minutes later, Kern stepped out of the hallway. Kiera had apparently given him a pair of flannel sleep pants and clean, yellow t-shirt. Dad hadn't seen him that clean in a long time. Even better was the calm look on his face.

  "That shower was amazing," Kern said. "You wouldn't believe how much dirt and stuff I scrubbed off."

  "Oh," Dad said, looking at his arm and suddenly self conscious of even sitting at a proper table in his state, "I think I can believe it."

  "Aaron," Quinton said, "Why don't you go get one? I'm sure it would do you some good. Afterwards, I'll run both of you down to a little shack we just finished building. It isn't much, but it has electricity and air conditioning. We built it for any new comers, but I guess it will do just as well as a guest house."

  xxxxxxxxxx

  Sun light cascaded past the part in the blinds as Dad opened his eyes. He could tell that it was close to noon, and he was mad at himself for sleeping so late, but that soon subsided. Kern had passed out in the truck on the way down to the little shack Quinton was letting them stay in. It was a lot more quaint than what Dad would have figured for a little house built in the post apocalypse. Someone in the community must have been a master carpenter. It was made of logs, much like the others, and had electricity and running water.

  The night was dark when Quinton drove them down, so Dad couldn't check the exterior ( he was far too tired for that anyway, after a cool shower ), but Quinton assured him that it had solar panels on the top. It was a smaller model that they were experimenting with, so there wasn't enough power generated to power an air conditioner all the time, but Dad was happy with the two large fans that were set up in the room. The interior consisted of a kitchen/living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It was furnished with various things that had no doubt been scavenged from the local retail stores.

  Grumbling, Dad stretched his stiff body and got out of bed. The entirety of his body ached, and it seemed like one good night's sleep was all it took for it to all come to a head. Still, it was a good ache, the one that lets you know that muscles are rebuilding; that the body is acting as it should. Slowly, he pushed himself out of bed and went over to the fridge. Quinton had brought a bag and stocked it, and he was now ravenously hungry and thirsty. Inside, Dad found two apples, some cuts of salted beef, a jar of peach jam, two beers, and to his surprise, two sodas.

  The first thing Dad took was the soda in it's iconic red can and opened it, taking a long sip. Caffeine, he knew, would soon be working it's way through his being. He was already done with his portion of the meat and halfway through his apple when he noticed the small microwave sitting on it's wicker stand in the corner. Chances were he would pay dearly for the apple later on in the day, but he didn't care. He didn't have any plans on leaving just yet. If Quinton's hospitality held up, he hoped for four or five days to gather their strength.

  When he opened the bedroom door, Kern was snoring peacefully. It was nice to see him sleeping in a cozy bed,not hunched up beside a tree listening to every little sound, surrounded by their perimeter. A nice puddle of drool had collected on his pillow as he slept, and Dad knew he would be thirsty as soon as he woke up. Dad was still thirsty, and instead of risking the well water on a glass of water from the tap fed by the underground water table, he took one of the beers out and cracked it open.

  He sat at the little wooden table in the middle of the main room while he drank it. Over in the corner was an old TV wired up to a VCR, directly opposing an old leather couch. Dad smiled and went over and went through the stack of VHS tapes. Mostly movies from the 90s and 00s, with a few older TV shows like The Three Stooges. Probably hold overs left unmolested in a thrift shop somewhere. Even the dollar stores had stopped carrying VHS tapes years ago, even in the dollar bins.

  Curiosity almost got the best of him, but he had to get moving and see what was going on around the community. He changed from the sleep clothes he had been given ( apparently there was quite a surplus of cheap sleep clothes ) into his travel-worn jeans and black t-shirt. Surely the other people would be dressed much more normally, at least for better times, than he was, but he wanted to stand out, to show his difference. Countless miles he had traveled on a whim from Kern and a promise from a radio broadcast he wasn't even sure was accurate anymore. They hadn't come this far to settle down and weather the storm. Hope was still there, a hope he had kept secret from Kern.

  Kings Mill was breath-taking in the daylight. As he made his way up to Quinton's home, he couldn't help but look at all the vegetables and fruits the community was growing. Tomatoes, corn, squash, cucumbers, and dozens of other edible flora. They even had bananas grown from some technique using elephant grass to cover the plant. He was settled near the more erratic rows, and it amused him to think about what kind of non-farming person was tasked with plowing and sowing the fields. From the basic science he had taken in college, he knew eventually the land would be devoid of nutrients. In a place like this, though, there would be fields to rotate while they alternated crops in some of these.

  No one really looked at him as he ascended the hill. There were a few people sitting out on their porches, enjoying lunch or conversation over a cold glass of tea. Two old women caught his eye. They were dressed in white dress pants and the colored tanks most every old woman dressed in, but they were out of place anywhere but here. To their left, a young man was eating a bowl of what seemed to be grits or oatmeal. He was covered in grass, and a weed eater was sitting next to him. In one of the fields, the one with the tomato plants and squash, people were passing by with canvas sacks and picking the ripe ones.

  "Aaron! Hey!" It was Pete, flagging him down from what Dad assumed was his front porch. It was a nice cabin, much larger than the one Kern and Dad were staying in. The porch had two old style rocking chairs flanked with ferns and tomato plants.

  "Good morning, Pete," Dad said. It felt almost foreign to him to be making casual conversation. He hadn't done it in so long.

  "So whaddaya think of the Mill, eh? Not to shabby for a bunch of country bumpkins."

  "Definitely not. Those in the cities are faring far worse, as you know. It's not just the lack of resources there, but they never bothered to learn a lot of the skills that you guys use every day. I know I couldn't do most of this."

  "A lot of it is luck, boy. We just happened to have the friendly p
eople close enough to teach each other. One man might have been the lead on building these cabins, but he had no clue about digging wells or pumping water up from the creek, let alone setting up solar panels and wiring them in. Most e'rybody could grow a plant, but not too many knew the actual science behind growing enough to sustain a population and then can them." Pete's face gave a sudden melancholy smile as he nodded solemnly. "I never did thank ye' proper for bringing Jacob back to us. I know Quinton and Kiera did. I just wanted you to know a lot of us appreciate it, too. That family's been kind to all of us."

  "You're welcome," was all Dad could manage to get out. It was awkward.

  "You run along, Aaron. I'm sure Quinton will be glad to see you."

  After bidding the old man farewell, Dad made his way to the porch where Quinton was sitting, sipping on a glass of iced tea. When he saw Dad, Quinton smiled and motioned to the chair next to him. Dad refused a glass of tea and sat down. After everything Quinton had been through, the last thing he needed to worry about was simple hospitality.

  "How's Jacob?"

  "Still asleep. His mother hasn't left his side since he passed out. We've all been through so much these last few days. I'd still like to be asleep myself, but I have too much on my mind. If they got attacked by a pack that had a few runners in it, that means there might still be more out there. Our fences are pretty good at stopping the slow ones, but the runners could just leap or climb."

  "Do you really think they have enough sense to actually climb a fence? Most of the time they don't even have the sense to not fall in the water or off the ledge."

  "That's the older, slower ones. The younger, for lack of a better term, they are, the more basic motor and reasoning skills they retain. That's one of the main reasons I think they were able to defeat the military in so many places. Instead of hitting from the front like the slow ones, the runners would hit from the side. I only witnessed it myself a handful of times, but I think it was pretty standard fare. They are more erratic when they are on the hunt. You know, when they hear, smell, or see someone. Once they have honed in on whatever it is that peaked their interest, they seem to display some primitive skills."