DD tried hard not to wake up. She succeeded for quite some time. She first became aware that someone had stuffed something in her mouth, a sock perhaps? She opened her eyes and the light hurt, so she shut them. The knifelike headache from the base of her skull to her eyes told her she must have majorly tied one on; she hadn’t been so hung-over since undergrad days. She shifted position slightly and realized she was lying on a hard surface, in a puddle of something. She’d only been plastered enough to piss herself once, in high school, her one and only encounter with chugging straight gin right out of the bottle. But her pants…she was wearing pants, good…were dry.
All at once, everything came back to her. The wells…the boat…Fleck…Isaac! She flailed upright on the metal bench, ignoring the screaming pain from her shoulders. She discovered that she was cuddling a yellow sticky lump which, on further inspection, seemed to be dissolving into the puddle she sat in: the foam mattress. The sock in her mouth was actually her tongue, swollen and dry as cotton. She slipped her hand into her pocket—Her shoulder really hurt! —and her baby Swiss Army knife was still there. They must have been so excited about finding the KelTec that they didn’t check any further. However, when she pulled it out, she saw that the red plastic face on each side was dissolved away like nail polish in acetone, leaving only a thin crescent shaped film around the edges. The knife blade, screwdriver, and corkscrew all still worked, so evidently there was no plastic in the pivot points. Just as well I don’t have the KelTec. It’s probably a useless wad of gunk now that the p davisii has gotten to it. Now what?
She rose, her legs still a little quivery under her, and staggered to the sink. She scooped handsful of water into her parched mouth and throat. Just as quickly, she turned and vomited water and sour bile into the toilet, gasped for a few minutes with her head down and her palms on her knees, and then forced herself to drink again, more slowly this time. Her headache pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She reached her hand out to steady herself against the wall and felt a rougher surface than expected. That was when she noticed: the plywood over the window. It’s separating. That’s why I can see in here; there’s light seeping in around the edges where it's warping. Plywood is thin sheets of wood, glued together. Looks like the glue is PLASTIC!!!
She worked her fingers under the first thin sheet of wood in the plywood, and it ripped away from the next layer. She pulled out her little knife and worked painstakingly on the next one, and the next. She hit a chunk which just fell apart in her hands, full-thickness, then an area where it was still so firm that she had to work her tedious way around it. It was slow going, but the de-lamination, helped by the moisture excreted by the bacteria eating the glue, weakened the wood and made it flimsy.
Finally, she had a pile of wet wood chips on the floor and a DD-sized hole in the plywood. But, the window was closed. Of course. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulder socket, she wormed her hand down between the plywood and the pane. She got her fingers around the metal grip on the window sash. The window was, fortunately, unlocked and easy to open, because her shoulder felt like burning-hot knives when she pulled on it. She gritted her teeth and pulled anyway, giving a guttural cry of pain as the window opened.
She glanced back at the door, and then slithered out the window into the humid Gulf Coast twilight. She drew a deep breath and rocked on the balls of her feet. She heard crickets. Only one place to go now. I haven’t seen Akisni and Snowbear in years. But if there’s anyplace to weather this crisis, it’s with them.
XXXIII.
Body at the Door
Jacob took the lead, pretending to be alone. The group of eight stuck to the middle of the sidewalks, kept the women in the center, and puffed themselves up to look as fierce as they could. They disregarded the smashing of windows and looting of shops they passed, and as long as they didn’t bother the looters, the looters took no notice of them. They made it five of the six blocks to the hospital and reached an intersection with a bonfire fed by furniture, pallets, and cardboard in the center. A line of burly young men stood blocking their way.
“How you cousin?” one asked Jacob.
“Not bad. Not bad. Taking girl, hurt bad, to hospital.” He nodded at the group behind him, and the Germans parted shoulders briefly to show Maya.
“Two women. Nice.”
“We be going on to the hospital now.”
“Nah.”
“Yah.”
“Who the white boys?”
“Germans. Foreigners.”
“They be staying here. And we take the white ho.”
“No, we all go.”
“I’ve no time to chat with you, homie.” The leader jerked his head. A series of cracks rang out, rifle shots, and the Germans, Maya, and Susan fell to the ground.
“You got ten seconds, homie. Run.”
Jacob didn’t need to be told twice.
XXXIV.
Fancy Meeting You Here!
DD’s feet hit the ground. She felt concrete and gravel under the sole of her right foot, but her left foot slid out from under her. She almost fell as her left running shoe fell to pieces. The cotton sock was still intact, though. A quick probe revealed that the right sneaker wasn’t in much better shape, so she peeled it off her foot in pieces, stripping off her tattered nylon windbreaker as well, and stood in her stocking feet, jeans, and t-shirt, absorbing the sounds of the night. She was on a huge lot of storage silos, stretching off in all four directions in orderly rows, lit dimly by yellow lights over the door of each cylindrical structure. She looked up. The mercury-vapor lights overhead are dark. Those must be emergency lights on solar batteries. No power.
She could hear the soothing sough of the ocean from only one direction. Best guess is, that’s East. Unless I’m on an island. As her eyes adjusted to the starlight and the light of the waxing crescent moon overhead, she saw the dark, mounded mass of a stand of trees outlined against the sky in the other direction. She held out her outstretched fists, stacking them, and observed that her top fist just touched the moon, two fists, or two hours, since moonrise. Moving slowly, picking her way over the cracked pavement to avoid rocks and broken glass, she walked around the silo she’d been held in. She came upon the car she’d been kidnapped in, sitting abandoned, doors open, dark. She slipped into the driver’s seat; the keys were in the ignition! But she could tell before she even tried that it was useless; the key was in the “run” position and the car was dark, dead, inert. She tried anyway, turning the key all the way back, and then forward to “start,” with the expected lack of response. The glove compartment and console were empty. So was the trunk, except for a jack and spare tire. As she circled the car one last time, she realized the spare was the only tire that was intact; the other four were flat. Infected.
She decided to head away from the coast. She slid her way through the silent, fence-framed field, past silo after silo. A stray cat scurried by; a bird, startled from its roost, burst into the sky. A lone tree-frog chirruped from an elevated haven.
As she approached the woods, the song of more tree frogs trilled in her ears. Even with the beginning of the last warehouse, she saw the chain-link fence up close. She walked up to it and found it was at least eight feet tall, topped by a single strand of barbed wire. Once a city kid, always a city kid…but I’m getting too old for this! She gripped the wire of the chain link with her fingers and stockinged toes, ascending to the top fairly easily, ignoring the protests of her abused shoulders. Once there, she put her hand around the strand of barbed wire. The barbs were about ten inches apart, plain wire, not razor wire, thank God. Time to turn into a sloth. Moving with excruciating slowness, she brought one leg over the barbed wire between two barbs, holding the top of the fence with one hand and grasping the wire in between two other barbs with her other hand. The transfer of weight from one side of the fence to the other was delicate…slow…easy…until she was pigeon-toed, one toe in a link on each side of the fence, bow-legged to avoid the barbs she straddled, and her torso was parallel
to the wire and the top of the fence. First, the inside hand came over, her weight slowly shifted to the outside foot Ow ow ow I will not think about my toes the pain does not exist. This hurts a lot more than it did when I was 15. The trickiest part. Am I still fit enough to do this? She lifted her inside leg straight out from the hip, slowly moved it into an arabesque, and slowly swung over towards the other leg…then she was clinging to the outside of the fence!
She climbed down, springing to the ground, flush with self-congratulation, but her jubilation was cut short by the agony of a thousand needles. Sand spurs! The curse of the Gulf Coast! She picked the sharp burrs out of her abused socks. The right sock already had a hole in it, right over the ball of her foot. She got every one of the miniscule barbed pods out of her socks, not once cursing out loud when they punctured her fingertips, and rose to continue.
Aiming for the empty patches of vegetation-free sand, she headed for the salt scrub in the dim light. Once she was hidden by the palmettos and tall grasses of the scrub, she had to pick out thorn- and sand-spur-free paths, but she headed more or less straight, keeping the moon behind her. After half an hour or so, she turned to look at the moon. She once again extended her fists, but now the moon was only one and a half fists above the horizon. So, I’m headed East, not West. That means I must be on an island.
She kept going until she reached a two-lane road. The hard asphalt surface felt like luxury carpeting on her poor feet, now completely bare, and probably bleeding, but she’d check them for injuries later, and deal with that when she could. Right now, the decrease in pain felt almost comfortable by contrast. Turn right or left? Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. She turned right and walked down the road until she reached an intersection. Road signs, barely visible in the light of the setting moon, told her she was at corner of Seawolf Parkway (Some parkway!) and Coastwide Road. Coastwide Road ran back in the general direction she’d come from. There was a sign, just a plywood panel on two fence posts, further back off the road. She had to walk right up to the signboard and almost put her face up to it to make it out. Martin Midstream, Inc. They had an oil barge anchored next to the drilling rig. But that still doesn’t tell me where I am now.
She continued along Seawolf Parkway. It was eerie how there was no traffic. At the next intersection, she came across a truck parked on the sandy shoulder. A dump truck. It looked like…but no. All dump trucks look pretty much alike. She opened the pitiful little knife in her pocket and clutched it by her side as she padded up to the truck. She slowly circled it, twenty feet away. No sign of movement. She hesitated, unsure what to do next, then finally approached the cab. She put her foot on the passenger-side running board and hauled herself up on the grab bar (The shoulder!) to look in the open window. The cab was empty. She was about to try the door handle when the truck rocked slightly and a face popped up outside the open driver’s side window. A familiar face.
“Jeremy?” She asked, incredulous. Of course, he didn’t hear her with the truck between them. She dropped off the side of the cab, forgetting about the condition of her feet, and almost crumpled at the burning pain that spiraled up her legs and wound up behind her eyes. She gasped and straightened as Jeremy (It can’t be!) came around the front of the truck.
“DD? DD?” Jeremy was plainly just as shocked as she. “What are you doing on Pelican Island?”
DD felt a gush of relief at the sound of his voice, familiar and friendly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” Jeremy smiled.
“Can we sit in your truck? My feet…”
“You have no shoes! How did you even get here? Here, I’ll help you up.”
He opened the door and boosted her, totally unnecessarily, but DD’s shoulder was nevertheless glad of the assistance. She sank into the cloth passenger seat gratefully. Jeremy climbed in on the other side. He held out a steel canteen of water. She took it eagerly.
“Okay, so how did you happen to be here?” Jeremy asked.
DD sipped the water and told her story. It was a long telling, since she had to start with telling him what she did for a living. Their initial encounter had been focused on other, more enjoyable things. She wound up giving the Cliff’s-Notes version of her OHCB presentation. Jeremy, despite his blue-collar occupation, was intelligent; he picked up on it better than she'd expected. She went on to describe the oil-well visit, the sinking boat, the kidnapping, and the interrogation. He began to look confused.
“So, who is this guy Fleck again?” Jeremy asked.
“I’m not sure. He’s not who he said he was, I know that much. I’m not sure who any of those guys were. I just know they were government somehow. I know I’m glad to be away from them.
“Speaking of which, can I hitch a ride with you… as far away from here as possible?”
Jeremy’s eyebrows raised a little. He set a hand on her thigh. “I’d love to give you a ride anywhere you want, DD.” She smiled at that. “But this truck isn’t going anywhere. It’s got the machine sickness.”
“Machine sickness. Is that what people are calling it?”
“Yep. And you’re the only person I’ve talked to who actually understands what happened to cause it. I was leaving Martin Midstream after dumping a load of gravel, when my motor seized up. Water in the gas, was what it looked like to me. Then, while I was trying to get my phone to work, the cowling and the boots and hoses started dissolving to pieces right in front of me.” He shook his head. “My cell phone lost signal. People kept driving by and I tried to flag someone down, but no one would stop. I spent yesterday walking over to Martin Midstream to see if I could use a landline or something, but it’s like a ghost town. Deserted. Not even a guard at the security gate. I had some battery left in the truck and I listened to the news on the radio until it died. This is everywhere. One of the talk shows said it spread from an oil rig in China, and the whole world has it now! I had some snacks in the cab here, but they’re gone now. This is my second night sleeping in the truck bed. I was planning to start walking to the bridge in the morning. You’re welcome to come with me.”
“So, there’s no cell phone service at all? None?”
“Wouldn’t do us any good if there was.” He reached across her to the glove box, his sweat acrid and masculine, and took out a full-sized steel mag light. He turned it on, blinding her briefly in the darkness, and pointed the beam at the floor, where a melted glob which was just barely recognizable as something which had once been a cell phone lay by her feet.
“Oh, my God! Look at your feet!” Jeremy exclaimed.
DD looked, and they were admittedly frightening. The remnants of her socks hung around her ankles. They were studded with sand spurs and dyed brown with dried blood. Her toes were swollen like sausages. Streaks of dried blood showed between them. She cradled her right foot on top of her thigh to look. The sole was an indistinguishable dark mass of dirt, blood, and shredded skin. “I have a first-aid kit in the back and a full cooler of drinking water that the machine sickness hasn’t gotten to yet. Let’s see what we can do about that!” He jumped out of the cab and came around to help her down. In the darkness, she felt a tear trickle down her cheek. Someone’s taking care of me. She was suddenly exhausted and felt all at once every blow and kick she’d taken, and every sand spur and piece of broken glass she’d stepped on. Her arms felt like lead weights where they hung from her injured shoulders. Not trusting her voice to stay steady, she silently accepted Jeremy’s help up into the bed of the truck.
XXXV.
Improv
The next day, DD awoke shortly after sunrise. She was lying on her back, on a rough wool blanket, atop the folded-up canvas cover for the dump truck bed. She was embarrassed to discover she’d reached out for Jeremy’s hand sometime during the night and was still holding it. She tried to slip it away and he squeezed lightly, trapping her fingers and raising his head to look at her before letting her draw it back. She smiled. It hurt to smile, hurt at the temple where her head had been hit. She re
membered the night before. He’d swabbed the blood carefully off her feet (she looked down and they were wrapped in stretch-gauze first-aid bandages) and then her face and her hair before pronouncing the head wound “not that bad. They weren’t trying to really hurt you.”
“Could have fooled me!” she’d said. “But then, I’ve never played that rough in my life, even in karate class.”
The canvas cover for the truck bed was evidently mixed natural and synthetic fiber; it was weakening in places, to where you could pop a finger through it. The blanket, though, appeared to be pure wool, an olive drab that was probably old Army-surplus. DD felt badly about destroying it, but with Jeremy's encouragement she used her little knife to cut four big circles and two wide strips out of the blanket. This allowed her to rig up bi-layered, primitive moccasins. They both drank as much water as they could, leaving less than a gallon in Jeremy's big drum thermos cooler, and they set off down Seawolf Boulevard, Jeremy swinging the cooler by the handle and DD carrying the flashlight, staying on the soft sand and trying to walk as normally as possible despite the pain in her gauze-wrapped feet.
It was an unseasonably warm Gulf-Coast winter day. By noon, every step was agony, and bloodstains were beginning to soak through the outer layer of her moccasins. She’d shrugged her T-shirt over her head for partial protection from the sun, giving her the look of a headless dummy, but her arms would definitely be burned. Jeremy was better prepared for the conditions, with a baseball cap and long-sleeved cotton shirt. They passed signs for a copper distributor, a truck distributor, and a road called Halliburton Way. Oil silos and derricks were visible in the distance in both directions, and soon they saw colorful houses way ahead of them, more than a mile away.
As they walked, DD told him more about p davisii, her capture, and Tim’s double treachery, “I’ve been thinking: I figure he was embezzling, and swapping out the cultures for cheaper, unstandardized ones. Who knows what the actual bacteria are, that the last hybridization was made from?
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 12