Fire: The Collapse

by William Esmont

  Fourteen

  Three Months Later

  Megan stretched and stifled a yawn. She scrubbed a stray bead of sweat from her forehead and wiped it on her pillow. Through the window, she could see the sun starting to sink behind the Tucson Mountains, far across the valley. The last rays of the day flooded her room with a toasty orange glow that reminded her of a dying campfire. Despite the hour, it was still hot. The heat was a dense blanket of misery crushing her spirit, draining every last bit of motivation from her soul. The best she could hope for was to lie still and wait for the relative coolness of evening. Even then, true relief would only arrive in the final hours before dawn, after the heat of the previous day had finally radiated into the night sky.

  Whoever invented the concept of hell must have lived in the desert, she mused. To make matters worse, there was the dust. No matter what she did, no matter how much she washed, she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling she was covered with a fine layer of the stuff. It got into everything, her bed, the food, even the water.

  She sighed and rolled onto her stomach. At least I’m not alone… She chuckled.

  For reasons she hadn’t yet been able to determine, the undead seemed to suffer from the heat as much, if not more, than the living. Not all of them, of course. There were always pockets of the bastards, the outliers, who didn’t obey the rules. They were the ones to watch out for. They would sneak up on you during a supply run and take a chunk out of your ass, putting an end to your miserable existence in a hurry.

  There was a knock at her door, a gentle, back-of–the-knuckles rapping. She tensed instinctively, forgetting for a moment where she was, thinking she was back in the brothel and a client was outside her door waiting for his session. She breathed out and forced herself to relax. Came back to the present. Those days are over. Never again. She rolled over and ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it back. “Come in!”

  The door creaked open a few inches, and a smiling brown face peered through the gap. “Megan?”

  She sat up. “Everyone’s here,” Cesar Aguilar announced. “Are you ready?”

  Something in his tone, the tentative nature of his question, took her back to the first time they had met. Megan’s car had died as the bombs fell on Las Vegas, the engine falling silent as the electromagnetic pulse scrambled the complex electronics embedded within. It was only blind luck that she had been stretched across the seat searching for the instruction manual in the glove box when the sky caught fire. Five seconds earlier and she would have lost her sight to the blast.

  With nowhere else to go, she had set out on foot, heading south to her sister Chloe’s place in Arizona. The trip was uneventful except for one night south of Flagstaff when she had encountered a group of three men heading in the opposite direction. Megan was sleeping in an abandoned minivan on the side of the highway when she was suddenly awakened by a beam of light stabbing into her eyes. A man’s face leered at her through the window. A live man.

  Fearing the worst, she had grabbed a tire iron and scrambled out the other side of the vehicle, only to land in the arms of a burly man with an iron grip. He snatched her weapon and tossed it to another man she couldn’t see, and then he had spun her around and slammed her against the side of the van. He grabbed her wrists, squeezing them together so hard she thought they would break.

  “Are you bitten?” he demanded, his voice dripping with malice and a hint of fear.

  Megan shook her head. “No.”

  “Check her,” another man said, a little too enthusiastically. Visions of rape and murder raced through her mind, paralyzing her. A few minutes later, it was all over. The man with the iron grip stepped away and turned his back as she began to dress.

  “We had to be sure,” he said apologetically. Megan fumed with anger, yet she understood. A bite was a death sentence.

  The men had turned out to be part of a small community of survivalists holed up a few miles down the road. Megan was the first live person they had seen in weeks, and they were desperate for news from the outside world.

  The next morning, Megan had set off with a pistol, a backpack full of food, two plastic milk jugs full of water, and assurances from the community that she was welcome to return if she didn’t find what she was looking for. It wasn’t until she had reached the outskirts of Tucson that she realized the error of her decision. The city was crawling with undead. They were everywhere she looked. The elements had taken their toll on many, reducing them to desiccated fragments of their former selves. Yet, they were still as hungry as ever, dragging themselves through the sand-swept streets in search of their next meal.

  Chloe lived in the northern foothills. Had lived. But by the time Megan arrived, the only thing left of her sister’s house was blackened hillside and a charred foundation; an out-of-control brushfire had taken everything. Chloe and her family were nowhere to be found.

  By that point, she was exhausted, and she had nowhere else to go. She had to make a choice. While the undead owned the core of the city, their numbers were sparse along the outskirts. Megan figured as long as she was careful, she could exist on the margins for a while, could continue to survive on scavenged supplies until she figured out her next steps.

  She set her sights on Scorpion Canyon, located on the far northeast side. According to the Welcome to Tucson guidebook she had liberated from an abandoned gas station, it had water year-round and was riddled with trails she could use in the event of a zombie attack.

  When she arrived at the low-slung ranger station on the edge of the canyon, she wasn’t surprised to find it locked and abandoned. A few minutes later, with the assistance of a large rock from the parking lot, she was inside, gorging herself on half-melted granola bars and bottled water.

  She had settled into her new home quickly. Being on her own, she needed little in the way of food. The worst part was the heat and the boredom. She solved the boredom with a cache of paperbacks liberated from a truck in the parking lot. The heat she would have to live with. Air conditioning was a distant memory.

  Cesar had come into her life during her first foray from the ranger station. It was early morning, and she was nearing an abandoned convenience store when three people burst from the desert and dashed across the road directly in front of her. As she watched in mute shock, they plunged into the brush on the opposite side and kept going without even acknowledging her. Megan had come to an abrupt stop, unable to believe what she had just seen. Then she set off in pursuit. “Hey!” she yelled. “Wait up!” By the time she caught up, she was panting like a dog and her thighs were chafed raw from her shorts.

  The people were filthy, layered in grime from head to toe. Tattered clothes and frayed backpacks told the story of a life on the run. Most telling of all were their faces. Every one of them shared a look of sheer terror, a manic fight-or-flight stare that set her nerves jangling.

  She bent over, hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath. “Who...” she gulped, trying to recover, “are you?”

  A short Hispanic man had gestured past her shoulder, in the direction from which they had just come. “We have to move. There are many undead behind us.”

  It took a second for Megan to digest what he was saying. “How many?” she finally asked.

  He shifted his gaze between her and his traveling companions. “Too many.” They ran.

  That day now felt like ancient history. Since then, their numbers had grown by leaps and bounds as word spread amongst the survivors remaining in the city. A hundred and three people now called the Scorpion canyon ranger station home. Most importantly, they were no longer running.

  “Megan?”

  “Yeah. I’m coming.” She collected her notebook from beside the bed and climbed to her feet. She followed Cesar down the hall, making her way to the front of the house. Unscented candles flickered in the main room, casting dancing shadows on the walls.

  “Hey, guys,” Megan said sheepishly.

  Seated in front of her on a collection of p
lush leather couches were most of the other members of the Scorpion Canyon Leadership Council. Fellow survivors and refugees, they were her most trusted friends and confidantes, people with whom she routinely entrusted not only her life, but the lives of the myriad other people living in the compound.

  “She rises!” exclaimed a shaggy-haired man of about fifty.

  Megan gave him an annoyed grin. “Very funny, Pringle.”

  Mike Pringle, or ‘Pringle’ as he liked to be called, threw back his head and guffawed. “I’m just busting your balls, Megan.” Megan bit her tongue, resisting the urge to snap at him. Pringle was always busting someone’s balls.

  Six weeks earlier, she and Cesar had found Pringle on the side of I-10, just north of town. Her first impression had been that he was hanging on by a thread, that he was a drifter who would move on in a few days. She was wrong. Within a week, Pringle began to relax, to become part of the community. He was staying. Megan still didn’t know his whole story, only that he had been an airline pilot before, and that he had been flying the day the dead rose. Every time she pressed him on how he had survived, he changed the subject. What she did know was that he had a good head on his shoulders despite his acidic tongue and his initial clumsy attempts to get into her pants. She trusted him. For the most part.

  Cesar positioned himself on the arm of an easy chair, an almost imperceptible groan escaping as he eased himself down. His back. Megan’s fingers found a three-inch scar on her left arm and rubbed it. Like everyone else, she had her own battle marks from the war for survival.

  She took Cesar’s cue, found a spot on an opposing couch, and tucked her feet beneath her. The air in the room felt charged, as if everyone was holding their breath, waiting.

  Cesar coughed into his hand. “I’d like to start by thanking you all for coming over tonight,” he began. “I know we have a lot to do for tomorrow, but this is important.”

  Megan knew what was coming. Cesar had briefed her on his plans, using her as a sounding board. “I’m going to cut straight to the point,” he continued.

  Pringle shifted in his seat, straightened up and leaned forward. “Well, let’s get on with it, amigo.”

  A slight frown, gone before it could gain purchase, flitted across Cesar’s lips. Megan knew he hated it when Pringle called him that, knew how much he bristled at being stereotyped because of the color of his skin.

  “We’re staying the course,” Cesar announced. No build-up. No preamble.

  Pringle reclined and flicked a non-existent piece of dirt from his knee. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea Cesar.”

  Megan’s face grew warm. She shared a sidelong glance with Cesar. “What do you mean?”

  Pringle let out an exasperated sigh. “We’ve gone over this a million times.” He stood and walked to the window. “We’ve grown too fast. We’ve got too many people for the supplies on hand. We can’t keep this up.” He turned back to face them.

  Megan opened her mouth, but Pringle cut her off. “Plus, there’s been an increase in undead traffic over the past few weeks. Hell, just yesterday we found two of them just down the road, heading toward the gate.”

  “And we stopped them,” Cesar interjected, “As we always do.”

  Pringle pointed at him. “If you had balls, Cesar, you would have said no to all of these additional people. We were fine at twenty, maybe even thirty. But now we’ve got a crisis on our hands. We’ve got people here who can’t fight their way out of a paper bag, and we’re somehow responsible for them. I’m sick and tired of it!” He took a menacing step toward Cesar.

  “So that’s what this is all about?” Cesar replied. “You want to turn people away? Tell them to fend for themselves?” Cesar’s temper flared. “We will not turn anyone away!” Cesar said in slow, even words. “Not as long as I have any say in the matter.”

  Pringle’s left eye twitched. Megan thought he was about to explode.

  “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it Cesar? So we all have a say in the matter?” He puffed his chest out, towering over Cesar.

  Megan leaped to her feet. “Guys! Back off,” she demanded. “This is crazy!” She wedged herself between the men, and faced Pringle. “I hear what you’re saying, Mike. You feel like we’ve taken on too many people, that we can’t protect or defend them anymore.” Pringle nodded slowly, his eyes full of suspicion.

  She turned to Cesar. “And you believe we have a responsibility to protect anyone who wants to join us.” She straightened to her full five-and-a-half feet. “I think I have an idea.”

  Cesar raised an eyebrow, and Mike looked skeptical.

  She started to lay out her plan.

  Fifteen