by Kate Morris
She angled her rearview mirror so she could see her father. He was still just lying there unconscious.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she assured him. “We’ll be there soon. You can see Mom. Mom’s there, remember? Just hang on, Dad.”
He mumbled.
Avery turned on some classical music since her father loved it so much. A light rain had started, so Avery slowed her speed just slightly. The roads out here were twisty-turny and hilly.
Twenty minutes into her ride, he started vomiting on the floor. No time to stop and clean it now. She’d have to do it once she got him checked in at the hospital.
“Oh, Dad,” she said and tried to hand him a box of tissues she kept on the front passenger seat. He only swatted at it, which caused it to fall to the floor. “Dang it.”
She couldn’t keep driving and reach it, so Avery just kept going, which seemed more important.
“Sorry about that,” she said and got more garbled fever words. Sometimes he spoke in Swedish when he was being funny, but he wasn’t doing that now. He was too sick. He was just mumbling nonsense. “Hang on, Dad.”
Avery felt tears sting at her eyes. How was this happening to her family? They were falling apart. And so quickly. She felt helpless and incompetent. Mostly, she felt weak.
“We’ll be to the freeway soon,” she babbled, trying to comfort him. “Then it’s only another twenty minutes to the hospital, okay? Mom’s there. She’ll take care of you. Just rest. I’m sorry I have to go so fast. I know that’s probably making you more nauseous. I just want to get us there quickly.”
Then she felt her father’s breath near her ear.
“Dad, just sit back and rest. We’ll be there…”
Avery’s words were cut off as her father’s forearm slipped around her neck, and he began pulling back as hard as he could. She screamed. Was he trying to leverage up?
“Dad! Stop! Please, don’t…” she tried to shout more, but the words died in her throat as he choked her from behind.
She pried at his arms as the car slid left of center from her swerving too hard on the wet pavement.
“Stop!” she did scream this time because she had his arm just slightly pulled away.
It didn’t last. He tried again to choke her from behind with renewed strength. He wasn’t trying to sit up. He wasn’t trying to leverage himself. He was sick. He was doing this because of the sickness. He had the violent kind. She’d told her sister wrong.
Avery started panicking, kicking her left foot hard and clawing at his sweater-covered arm to get him off her. She choked and felt her vision blurring. Then she lost control of the car coming down a steep hill. It hit a puddle at the base, skidded, spun out and went off the road where it rolled three times. Then everything went black as her head slammed into something.
Chapter Twenty-four
Tristan talked to the LT. He wasn’t happy about the news. Not because the sheriff hadn’t sent over a report, but that two of the men under his care were murdered by a civilian. The military had to conduct their own investigation into the crime scene, and now it was all ruined. The bodies were gone, the evidence tampered with and trampled on. He still took a report from Tristan and said he was going to call it in.
Then he had to tell his lieutenant that Spencer was in the hospital, too.
“Goddammit,” he swore. “I’ve got six other men out.”
Tristan asked him if he knew about this flu and if so, what he knew exactly.
“So, you know about it?” Tristan confirmed after his LT told him that he was familiar.
“Not because I’m in on this conspiracy theory idea of yours, Sergeant,” he mocked in his usual authoritative tone. “I’ve got a sick cousin in Texas. His wife called me a few days ago. Guess he’s in a coma now. This shit’s just getting better and better. Now two of my men are dead. Seven are in the hospital. Anything else?”
“Have you heard if we’ll be called in to keep the peace? Like in a martial law situation or anything?”
“No, haven’t heard of that. I doubt our base would be called up anyway. They can call the Youngstown branch or Akron. If it gets that bad, they’ll call the bigger bases. Why? Where are you getting that?”
Tristan explained the conversation with the young hospital worker.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t heard about it yet. National Guard would probably go in before us. Let me call around. I’ve still got a few friends at headquarters who might know something. In the meantime, report to duty. I may have to have you work a little OT this week.”
“Yes, sir,” Tristan said, saluted, and left his commanding officer’s small office. Shit. He didn’t really want overtime. He wanted to be there for Avery Andersson and make sure she was safe. He could always text her and also make her house a tiny stop-off on his usual route.
Tristan showered and dressed in his uniform. He took the Jeep on the route, checked in with the refinery and his buddy there, Jonah. Nothing new to report. They stood there talking about the virus and all the crazy shit they’ve seen in the last few weeks.
“My brother found this video,” Jonah said. “I’ll send you a link. Guess this shit is worse in Russia. Damn Ruskies.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“They’re the assholes that spread this shit.”
He shook his head, pulled his cap lower to shield his head from the drizzle coming down. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“That’s why I’ll send you the video. This shit’s crazy, man,” Jonah commented. “They’re droppin’ in the tens of thousands over there.”
“In Russia?”
“Yeah, man,” he said. “Watch the video.”
“Got it,” Tristan returned. “Have a good one, man.”
“Yeah, you too,” Jonah said and sent him a wave as he went back into the guard shack.
Tristan drove a few miles away to his next stop, which was just a sub-station with a lot of pipework coming up out of the ground. It was usually where he stopped and ate his lunch. Tonight, he was just stopping to watch the video Jonah sent him.
He cut the engine, pulled out his lunch anyway, and ate his apple while he watched it. The video was grainy and taken at night, so it was hard to see what was going on. The person filming was speaking in Russian, but someone had added subtitles in English. Tristan strained to see what the man was showing the audience. Once it focused in slightly, he could tell better what he was looking at. There was a long wall of chain-link fencing, probably ten feet high with razor wire around the top.
The video jumped as the person did the same when an explosion boomed somewhere beyond a long warehouse inside the perimeter of the fencing about a hundred yards in. The camera zoomed as a fire rose into the night sky.
“They are burning them,” the man in the video said in broken English this time.
Tristan was confused and wished he could peer closer.
The man spoke again, this time in Russian with the subtitles, “The night crawlers. They are burning them.”
He began walking fast to the far end of the fence, still trying to keep the camera focused more on the building, which seemed to be what he wanted people to see. He turned the corner of the fence and kept going. Then he must’ve squatted as the angle went lower to the ground. He zoomed again, and Tristan could see what he meant. They had a large group of the violent kind, or what appeared to be the violent ones or night crawlers, chained together at their hands and feet like a chain gang of prisoners about to be forced into hard labor. Someone shouted an order, and another man with a flame thrower torched them alive. Their screams were horrific. They were people. Or were once people. This went against everything in every peace treaty and crimes against humanity act ever passed by the U.N. or any modern country in the world. This was a war crime he was witnessing.
The man kept walking and talking, but Tristan couldn’t watch the video and read the text at the same time. Peeling his eyes from the camera’s view was too difficult. He couldn’t believe what
he was seeing. He’d been in a lot of shit in his time, but this was hard to watch.
The videographer crouched behind a car and shot more footage. A truck, military grade like a deuce and a half or similar pulled up, and the tailgate dropped. Soldiers used cattle prods to shock people standing in the bed so they’d drop to the ground. Some fell. They were also chained together. This reminded him of the treatment so many millions of Jews suffered during WWII. He watched as they pushed them with electric cattle prods towards an empty field of grass still within the confines of the fencing. The man with the flame thrower lit them on fire, as well. Tristan felt like he might puke. He’d seen a lot of atrocities out there in the world, but this was maybe the worst. Others were being shot firing-squad style against the wall of the old warehouse. Then there was shouting. The man filming took off. Tristan wasn’t sure if they spotted him or not, but the guy wasn’t sticking around to find out.
He made it to an even darker alley where he began monologuing in broken English again, “This virus created by our Motherland is killing millions. They intend much to destroy America with the virus. All Americans would die. This is their idea. They test and try virus in Africa months ago. They kill thousands. The victims, many of them women and children. Now they cannot control it. The virus is make show to them that mother nature is all-powerful, not Mother Russia. We will all be killed. We will all be dead from this. I was worker for research lab trying to find cure. It will not be found. The virus is too smart, engineered by the same people who will also die by it. It is only matter of time. Fate is sealed. This is the end. We all die. Apokalypsis.”
The screen went fuzzy as the camera was set down on the ground of the alley where Tristan could see better. Then what followed was a gunshot. The man’s body dropped onto its side, and a pistol skidded away. Had the man committed suicide? There were so many questions buzzing through his brain. If this man did work for the lab that created the virus, which was the gist that he got from his speech, then the man believed everyone would be wiped out by this. Tristan certainly didn’t speak a whole lot of Russian, but it didn’t take a genius to realize that the scientist had finished his speech with the word, ‘apocalypse.’
Jonah had sent three more videos after that one. Tristan unpacked his whole lunch and started eating. This was going to take a while.
One video was from Africa where a reporter was showing a mass grave for the dead being dug with bulldozers. He’d seen similar during an Ebola outbreak years ago. This one just went on for as long as a few football fields. He hadn’t been watching much news lately between work, spending time with his buddies and Avery Andersson, but Tristan sure as hell didn’t remember seeing any news coverage of mass graves being dug.
Another video was from Denmark. There weren’t subtitles, but the need wasn’t there, either. He could tell what was going on very easily. It was being filmed from a balcony at night in a relatively large city by the scope and street lamps. Mostly, it was just silent audio for a while. Then the recorded sounds sent a chill through him. They were making the same screaming calls as the night Royce was killed in the woods. It was more than one, though. Tristan felt crazy for thinking it, but he was starting to wonder if they were beginning to form packs like wild dogs or wolves. And why nocturnal? Something really messed up their brains with this flu.
Then he had a visual to go along with the audio. The videographer spotted them and panicked in a flurry of words in another language. She filmed the night crawlers sneaking around in the dark streets below. If her phone camera’s time was right, it was two-twenty in the morning. All told, she filmed probably ten or twelve of them running around in the quiet city down her street, hiding behind cars, moving faster than he would’ve thought, and trying to get into cars and houses. They were human but not totally. They didn’t seem to hold the same motor skills anymore, but they sure as hell moved faster than most humans. He remembered that from his own experience the night of the bonfire bloodbath. That man thing was fast, moved with a speed he almost couldn’t match, and Tristan worked out on a regular basis. Her video finally cut with her crying. He recognized the words ‘momma’ and ‘papa.’ He felt bad for her and hoped she had someone to take care of her or help her get to her family. She sounded young, maybe in her twenties.
The last video was one from France, the countryside, a town named Amiens. The person filming was a teenage boy by the sound of his voice, too. He was filming his home by the looks of the cottage’s stone walls. He began whispering. Then he went outside. It was dark out again, and Tristan could hear one of them. He wanted to scream at the kid to get back in the damn house. But the kid kept creeping forward. He’d say things in French, and Tristan caught the word ‘nuit’ which he knew meant night. He went to a barn behind their house with a thatch roof. Something off camera was making a ruckus, a banging and clanging noise as if a whole construction crew was tossing down plywood sheeting onto roof trusses to be nailed down. The closer the kid got to the barn, he realized it was coming from inside there. Then he heard the weird muttering of non-words, the verbalization of the violent ones as the kid rounded the side of the barn and aimed his phone against a closed window. Tristan could see it. His family must’ve been attacked by one or found one on their property and tied it up in the barn to a heavy support post. Then he said, “Oncle Stephan.”
Tristan reeled back. It was the kid’s uncle. Damn, that was a bad break. He felt truly sorry for him. Then the camera became too shaky to focus as the boy ran back to his house and slammed the door. The video cut. It had nearly three million views.
He got out and stretched his legs and back. It was still drizzling and promised to keep up probably until morning. Tristan took out a cigarette and lit up. Not smoking was not an option right now. He was stressed out and disturbed by what he saw. What he’d seen from the videos was all true. The evidence was there. They were amateur videos. Nobody smalltime could’ve taken video and doctored it like that. Their primal screams alone weren’t something that would be easily mimicked. He wanted to text her and make sure she was all right, but Avery Andersson wasn’t his to check in on.
He stamped out the cigarette halfway down, figuring it was better than smoking the whole thing and got back in to fire up the Jeep. Then he drove the rest of his route. He stopped again, this time in town and bought a Coke, some beef jerky, and some chips from a gas station and filled up the Jeep again. They had a pump on their small base but were also allowed to fill up in town when they ran low.
His phone rang on the dash, and he frowned at the time of nearly one a.m. before answering. The screen name popped up as Abraham Andersson.
“Tristan!” Abraham said. “Thank God, I reached you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Calm down,” he said, his own heart beginning to accelerate at the panic he heard in the kid’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Avery,” he said, making Tristan’s heart pound hard against his chest wall. “I can’t reach her.”
“What do you mean? You mean you can’t reach her from the hospital?”
He pulled out of the gas station and was already driving toward her family’s house. Funny how he didn’t really know much about the area other than his route, how to get to the nearest small town, how to get to the city of Canton, and how to get to her house.
“No, no. I came home. It’s a long story,” he said.
“Tell me anyway. Slow down. I’m on my way to you. Just take a breath and tell me what’s wrong. You’ve got time. Just explain it slowly.”
“Okay. Sorry,” he said, paused to take a breath. “Avery wanted to go back up to the hospital to relieve our mom. She was planning on staying with Dad. She went up to get him up from his nap and found him sick. He’s really sick, maybe sicker than the kids. I don’t know. She called me at the hospital to come home and help get him to the car ‘cuz the ambulance was gonna take too long, like six hours or something. She couldn’t get him carried out without me.”
He ins
tantly grew angry she hadn’t called him.
“So, when I got there, I helped Ephraim carry him to her car. We loaded him in. I just got a call from Mom like a half hour ago. She’d fallen asleep in the waiting room and didn’t realize they still weren’t there and it was so late. She realized they never showed up, too. She even checked the Emergency Room. Our dad was never checked in.”
“Would Avery have taken him to another hospital?”
“No, that’s the one where the girls and Cyrus are. My mom’s there. She was going there. She told me so.”
“Wait, when did they leave?”
“At eight-forty-five, nine o’clock at the latest,” he said.
Shit. That was three hours ago.
“I’ve been calling and calling. Something’s wrong with her phone. I can’t get a call through. I just know…I know something’s wrong, Tristan. I called the cops. They can’t send anyone. Kaia told me what’s been going on. We can’t find her. I can’t leave the house. The kids…”
“No, do not leave that house. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Stay there. You can tell me which way she would’ve gone, and I’ll go look for her.”
“Ye-yes, sir,” he stuttered, sounding like he wanted to cry.
“Hang tight, man. Hold it together.”
Tristan sped. He didn’t care if he was defying orders to stay on duty. Screw it. If she was hurt somewhere or broke down and out of cell range, he’d be right back to work in an hour. Nobody would even know. If it was something worse, he didn’t care if his L.T. hammered him.
He hit the back road going sixty-five, heedless of speed because the cops were too busy to help Abraham find his sister anyway or send an ambulance to take their sick dad to the damn hospital.
Stomping the brakes, he zipped down their drive and slammed it into neutral before setting the parking brake. Abraham ran out of the house to greet him.
“Where’s the rest of the kids?”
“In bed. Nobody else knows yet.”
