by K. M. Fawkes
He hadn’t missed the looks of disgust when he hadn’t volunteered. Hopefully their opinion of him would rise just a bit when he came back with a backpack full of supplies. If he could.
He hadn’t wanted to say it when people were talking about looting grocery stores and going back to their homes for the supplies the army hadn’t let them take, but he wasn’t sure that was going to be as easy as the people who shared his new apartment building seemed to think. If everyone was in government-sanctioned housing and staying put like good little boys and girls, then there might be something left. But how likely was that, really?
Fear froze some people. It drove others. And it didn’t always drive them in directions that made sense morally or logically. Like a drug, fear affected everyone differently. Some people would be sitting in their safe houses waiting just as they were told; he didn’t doubt that—forty-nine other people he knew were doing exactly that right now.
But there were those scavengers on the streets to think about. Maybe the soldiers hadn’t found them and set them up somewhere. Maybe they had, and then abandoned them even faster than they’d left Brad’s group. Or, maybe the people on the roads had hidden from the army because they didn’t trust them. Brad knew that mindset well.
He remembered one of the last videos he’d seen. A soldier tied to a hastily made cross, coughing up blood in a small Louisianan town. Men speaking into a crappy cellphone camera, fear making their eyes glow with animal light in the flicker of flame. Of everything he’d seen on the news over the course of the year, that was the thing that had kept him awake at night most.
Would he do what they’d done? Would he let fear rule him to the point where he lost everything that he’d been before the nanotechnology had been discovered? Before that same technology had made him one of the few humans left standing?
He’d be within his rights; he knew that. Even before society had collapsed, people had used the defense of, “It was kill or be killed!” No one at the safe house would question him. They’d just be happy that he’d brought back a meal. And then they’d send him out for another one, and they’d continue to ask him again and again and again.
The thing was, it would only get harder every time he went out. It was too late in the year to try to plant anything and the city wasn’t exactly known for agriculture. He’d have to scavenge through an entire long winter and part of spring. There was no way he wouldn’t run into someone as desperate as he would grow to be, with fifty people counting on him to be fed.
The pistol in his waistband suddenly seemed very heavy. No. There was no way that he could use it.
If he was perfectly honest with himself, it was partly because it had been years since he’d handled a firearm. And he hadn’t been great at it back then, much to his teacher’s consternation. He hated the way the sound of a gunshot made his ears ring. He hated the idea of carrying the power to end a life. He hated how easy the gun made things.
He wasn’t going to let himself become one of those people. He wasn’t going to lose his humanity just because the world had changed, damn it. If he ran into anyone, he’d just have to find a way to talk to them. He’d have to find a way to make them see that they were all still human. They were all in this together. And they’d work something out peacefully, he was sure of it. He had worked hard to believe in people. He wasn’t going to let all that work go to waste, now.
Brad swung the bike to left, following the signs downtown. He hadn’t realized that a city could look so derelict in so short a time. The spring and summer had been beautiful—weather-wise, at least. He hadn’t exactly taken the time to notice it when the world he knew was collapsing around him, but now that he thought back, he remembered that the spring had been mild and warm and the summer was proving to be long and lazy.
If things had been normal, people would have been out at the municipal aquatic center, kids swimming and splashing while their parents chatted and worked on their tans. The healthy types would have been all over the hiking trails. Brad had spent a lot of time in Bangor City Forest himself.
Bear Trail had been one of his favorites, although he’d had a lot of narrow misses riding there. There was a birch branch that hung over the trail that seemed to have it out for him. He managed to duck it every time, but it was always a close one.
He would have expected a certain amount of wilderness there, but in the front yards of the homes that lined the sidewalks, not so much. Wildflowers and weeds sprang up in abandoned lawns, some waist-height to Brad, which was really saying something since he stood six feet, two inches tall.
Cars were neatly parked in driveways, coated with thick layers of pollen from the spring. There hadn’t been a whole lot of rain that summer. He slowed to a stop when he saw movement in the grass of a blue Cape-Cod-style house to his right.
His heart slammed against his ribs in relief as a fox jumped out, running hell for leather into the road in front of him. In the space it took Brad to blink, something heavier jumped out of the grass as well. It was a Rottweiler, its body much thinner than it should have been, but still muscular and powerful. It leapt, snarling as it snapped at the fox’s heels. The creature managed to evade the sudden lunge, and the pair disappeared among the cars that lined the evacuation route.
Brad leaned over on his handlebars, catching his breath. He hadn’t expected to bike right into a scene out of a nature documentary, but he probably should have. It made perfect sense. Dogs had wild ancestors and they would have no choice but to revert back to those instincts if they wanted to survive.
He could give away every bit of his food ration for a week and not feed any significant portion of the dogs that were now homeless, no matter how much he wished he could. But, God. The fox had looked so frightened and so weary. There was no question as to how that story would end.
Tears stung Brad’s eyes for the first time since he’d been shuttled to the safe house as he remembered the blank fear in the fox’s golden eyes. He wiped the back of his hand across his face quickly. Nearly all of his fellow Americans had been wiped clean off the map in less than a year. And he was crying over a soon-to-be dead fox and a Rottweiler who’d probably had a loving family as little as two months ago? He tried to laugh at himself, but the sound that escaped his throat was much too rough to be recognized as amusement.
His throat tightened even as he tried to think of something else. The fact was, he’d always preferred animals to people. That was why he’d taken his childhood obsession with reading medical books and first-aid manuals and used that knowledge to become a vet and not a doctor. His mother had always been a little upset about that, but she’d been supportive.
“It’s just that…well…you could help so many people, Bradley.”
But he’d much preferred the tail-wagging thanks of a dog no longer in pain or the arrogant refusal to admit relief from the cats that were his clients. And the money was pretty good, too. He hadn’t cared about that, but it had made his mother slightly happier.
When she had gotten sick five years ago, he had started to care a little more about the amount of money he was able to bring in. He could help her pay the bills that piled up when she’d had to stop working. He could help with what insurance didn’t cover. But he couldn’t do a damn thing to extend her life, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d picked the wrong career path.
He didn’t have to wonder for long. The cancer had been quick and aggressive. Two years after her diagnosis, Brad had found himself sitting in the small apartment above his vet clinic with no mother, no savings, and no idea what to do next. Except work. So that was what he’d done.
He’d built an amazing reputation in the town for his care of the animals people brought to him. His standards had always been high, but the sixteen-hour days he put in were new. Only, he knew that they weren’t strictly because he loved his job. No, he did it because he needed to be tired enough when he finally went to bed to not think about the fact that the only people he spoke to were clients. How he hadn�
��t been on a date since college.
He’d actually interacted with more people since the apocalypse, for God’s sake.
Seeing that his shoelace had come loose, he knelt to tie it; a bike accident was one of the last things he needed if he was going to have to make a quick getaway today.
As he finished tying the shoe, double knotting it for security, he caught another movement from above him and jerked his head up, fearing that there was another dog headed his way. He didn’t think it had been long enough for them to go completely feral, but he’d been wrong before.
It wasn’t a feral dog, but it wasn’t a singing telegram either. There was a man on the porch of the Cape-Cod house. That would have been unsettling enough on its own, but the fact that the guy had a shotgun aimed right at Brad was really the icing on the cake. His breath caught in his throat as he slowly raised his hands and stood up, trying not to wobble.
“I’m not—” he began, his voice strained and shaky.
“Get outta here,” the man on the porch said. His voice wasn’t much steadier than Brad’s had been. “Don’t have anything for you to scavenge, anyway.”
“I’m not—” Brad began again, wanting to tell the man that he wasn’t a scavenger.
Which wasn’t exactly true, he realized belatedly. But still, he wasn’t planning on stealing from anyone who was still alive. Didn’t he get at least some credit for that? The man raised the gun a bit more, aiming at Brad’s head, now. Apparently not.
“I said get outta here!” the man barked, his voice hardening. Adrenaline was beginning to course through him now, which would make him braver and more reckless.
Brad mounted his bicycle again and pedaled away. His shoulders and back tingled until he was out of range, and he didn’t relax till he rounded the next curve in the road and put the blue house behind him. He’d have to either find another way back home or ride a whole hell of a lot faster on his way back.
He was just leveling out, putting the incident behind him and refocusing, when he heard a snarling growl. He looked over to see the Rottweiler near an abandoned car. Its muzzle was red with blood. Brad saw a few scraps of fur on the ground, but most of the fox was gone. He pedaled on, his heart heavy.
Chapter 3
“Here we go,” he muttered a few miles later as he passed Davenport Park and turned left from Cedar Street onto Main. “Main Street. I can just…” He trailed off, partly because he was pretty sure that talking to himself was one of the first signs of insanity, but mostly because he saw people milling around where Main crossed Middle Street.
He used to get burritos from a restaurant near there. The place had also served bagels. It was an odd combination in his opinion, but it had worked.
Why the hell are you thinking about bagels right now? he asked himself. The men down the street were wearing camo, meaning the army had come back! He leaned forward on the handlebars, trying to see if Metzger was in the crowd.
As he took a closer look at them, though, he realized what they were doing. They were in front of the museum. The colorful flags that had lined the building were badly faded now—the reds, blues, yellows, and greens looked washed-out and sad. Brad remembered that there had been quite a few people sheltering in the museum when things had taken a turn. There was safety in numbers and, with those numbers dwindling, people had wanted to gather together.
A client had dropped by his clinic for some anxiety medicine for their Yorkshire terrier just after martial law had been put in effect. She had told him that she was headed to the museum right away. She’d also told him that he should do the same, but he’d declined politely. Crowds weren’t his thing.
It looked like as if the strategy hadn’t helped those that had gone there, either; the soldiers were dragging out black body bags and tossing them into a big truck parked at the curb.
Brad was interested to see that some vehicles had survived the EMP. He hadn’t thought that was possible, but who knew what tricks the military had up its sleeve. He started to step forward, to speak to the soldiers, and maybe ask about Metzger. Or maybe he should ask them just how long they were planning to wait before they came back to the safe house. But something held him back.
Maybe it was how rough the soldiers were being with the bodies. They were throwing them into the truck so casually. Or maybe it was the snatches of laughter he caught from the men as they worked. Maybe it was plain old animal survival instinct. He’d been taught that humans had it, too. He’d been taught to listen to it, even as a child.
Whatever it was, rather than going forward, he stepped back and went down one of the side streets. He could still hear the hollow clang and thud as the bodies hit the bed of the truck. It seemed to follow him until he rounded the corner.
The rest of the city was more like what he’d expected to see. The streets were quiet and dusty. The big glass windows of the stores and offices he’d frequented in the past were streaky with grime.
At least, those buildings that were lucky enough to have windows remaining. Many had been smashed out, and glass sparkled like diamonds on the sidewalk in front of him. In others, doors hung off of their hinges.
As he rode down the street, he noticed that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to what had been broken into and what had been left alone. The bank, the pet store, the place he’d paid his water bill, and the grocery store had all been ransacked.
He could understand wanting to get inside the grocery store, but he scoffed under his breath at the idea of robbing the bank, now. What the hell did people think they were going to do with the money? Unless they planned to use it as toilet paper or stuff a mattress with it, he didn’t think they’d be using it anytime soon. Someone could hand him a million dollars right now and he wouldn’t trade them so much as a can of soup.
Brad also wasn’t sure why the door to the pet store had been broken down. Was there a sudden demand for dog toys in the apocalypse that he just hadn’t anticipated? He glanced in and saw that the stock had been turned upside down, but most of it was still there.
Maybe it was simply mob mentality. He hadn’t seen it happen, but everything he knew about people told him that it could have. People would have seen others breaking in and they would have joined in for no other reason than fear of missing out.
There was a rustling sound inside the store and he stepped back slightly, ready to run before he saw what had caused it: a few skinny dogs were rummaging around in the back of the store.
Brad was suddenly glad that someone had broken the door down. It wouldn’t save all the abandoned pets in Maine, but the amount of food in there would keep some of them going.
He allowed his mind to wander into hopefulness. Maybe he could swing back by and grab a bag of food or two on the way back to the apartment. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a pet. Maybe he could work with that Rottweiler if he saw it again. He couldn’t imagine any scavengers that would want to challenge him plus a big dog.
He lifted his bike carefully, carrying it so that he didn’t puncture a tire on the broken glass strewn over the sidewalks. His vet clinic was down the sidewalk to his left, and he was almost afraid to look. He’d worked so hard to buy that place. It had cost him so much money to open the clinic that he’d been forced to live above it, even though that hadn’t been his original plan for the small set of rooms on the second floor. He glanced almost shyly to his left side and his breath rushed out in relief. It hadn’t been vandalized. Or, at least, not that he could tell.
Don’t get too optimistic, he cautioned himself. Just because the door and windows were intact didn’t mean that there weren’t people living in there. Or that people hadn’t taken everything he had and simply closed the door behind them.
Brad stepped up and glanced in the windows. There was his reception area, with the black-and-white tile and the chairs everyone complained about. He’d tested one after the tenth comment and discovered that his clients were right; those chairs were uncomfortable as hell. But the fabric was covered in bla
ck and white illustrations of cats, dogs, birds, and reptiles, and he’d thought they were cute. And hey, it wasn’t like people had to sit there all day.
He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out the door key that he still carried with him, a sentimental habit he questioned at times. He pushed the key in and twisted firmly. The door had always been a little tricky.
Unfamiliar silence surrounded him as he stepped into the clinic and locked the door. He stood there, just taking in the feeling of being home again. Usually, he heard a squawk or bark of greeting, in addition to his receptionist calling out a cheerful hello.
Of course, he hadn’t had any animals for a while before he was taken away. Veterinary care wasn’t at the top of most people’s lists during an end-of-the-world situation.
And his receptionist, a sweet woman named Dani who had been content with his tendency to be quiet, had vanished six months ago. He hoped that she’d found a safe place, but he remembered her mentioning that her father had gotten a nanobot when they’d first come out.
He remembered that she’d rolled her eyes affectionately as she said, “I told him to let someone else be the guinea pig, but he always has to have the new stuff first.”
Six months ago would have been around the time that the virus would have gotten to him. Dani had left Brad a message on his voicemail before she’d left, but it hadn’t said much. Just that there was a family issue.
She might not have wanted to say what was happening to her father. For a while, people had been so paranoid about those who had the nanobots that there had actually been some murders. Which, of course, was exactly the wrong thing to do. The virus spread through bodily fluid. And it was actually pretty damn hard to kill someone without coming into contact with a fluid or two.
Brad walked into the office, wanting to get away from the windows in case anyone happened to be walking by. Everything on his desk was just how he’d left it, and the supply cabinets looked untouched as well. Maybe he could take some of that with him in case of some kind of medical emergency. He realized suddenly and jarringly that he was the person with the most medical expertise in his apartment building.
