Tales of the Derry Plague | Book 1 | LAST

by Anselmo, Ray

  After a meal of dried meat, cheese, toast and fruit with plenty of water – she needed to bring more bottled water down from the store, come to think – she headed out the door with pad and pen, Mizuno, and backpack full of snacks and drinks. “Let’s see … where would someone put heavy equipment around here?”

  The answer, it soon developed, was “nowhere.” Sayler Beach was almost entirely residential. It didn’t have industry outside what people did at home for their Etsy pages. The only commercial interests were the store she worked in, the hippie farm (which only used smaller machines, nothing bigger than a pallet jack) and the auto repair place Wally Sandborn had run out of his backyard. Anything more involved, you went to the other side of the county or north up to Stinson Beach.

  But there had to be something nearer than that she could use. Didn’t there?

  For two-plus hours she walked up and down every street, drawing in houses and fences and looking for the largest piece of technology on wheels. The best she could do were a few midsize pickups and SUVs, and she wasn’t confident any of them would hold up to what she had planned. Now she kicked herself for setting fire to the delivery van – it wouldn’t have been great for the job, but it was better than anything else she was finding.

  Footsore and sweating, she walked back home to her car, figuring on driving to some outlying areas. If push came to shove, she’d walk back to Tam Valley Junction the next day – it might exhaust her, but if she could find a tow truck or something it would be worth it.

  Her first stop was the horse ranch up the coast. Surprisingly, the horses she’d let out of their barns were still hanging around rather than darting off to other pastures. It made sense, she supposed – they still had shelter and fodder here, so unless some big predator came around to menace them, why move? The biggest predator she’d seen was that Rottweiler mix, and if it tried to take on a horse it would be more likely to get its head kicked in than bring down its prey. Either way, maybe she could address “learn to ride” sooner rather than later.

  But for the moment, she didn’t think tying four of them up to the semi to drag it off the road would really be viable. She needed to keep looking.

  She was walking back up from the pastures to her Hyundai when she did a double-take. “What? Could that …?” Of course – it should’ve occurred to her before. Given all the hay and tack and things you had on a horse ranch, you needed something large to haul it all around in, and powerful enough to pull a trailer with a steed or two in it besides.

  And here it was – a recent-model Dodge Ram 3500 Heavy Duty Crew Cab, complete with a grille guard that looked like you could knock the Amtrak Coast Starlight off the rails with it. It was a monster, easily the biggest pickup truck she’d ever seen outside of Oklahoma. Could it shove a toppled eighteen-wheeler around? She’d be surprised if it couldn’t. “Now watch, it’ll be locked, and the key is in the guy’s pants somewhere in the cremation pi – oh.”

  Nope – the truck was unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition. Whoever had driven it last must have been too sick to remember them when they parked, or was just not in the habit of worrying about sneak thieves. She laughed at her own cynicism – to think that her sense of humor was actually darker than the end of the world!

  The other shoe – well, a baby shoe – dropped when she hopped in the Ram and started it up. The gas gauge was just a few ticks above E. Well, that could be worse – a truck this size probably had a gas tank you could house a small family in. Being that close to empty in her Hyundai would mean you had to fill up now, but here she surely had a couple of gallons to work with, granted that those gallons would get used up faster in this beast than in her subcompact.

  Still, there was no need to take risks. Kelly drove the Ram to the store, broke out the siphoning kit and a couple of big jugs and went to work on Ganj’s Ford F-150. It was a decent-sized vehicle – Ganj had often used it to pick up produce – but next to the Ram it almost looked tiny. Regardless, there would be plenty in its tank to swipe for the larger pickup.

  There was – twelve gallons – which moved the needle on the Dodge’s gauge to halfway. It took almost two hours to siphon it from one truck and pour it into the other, and by the time she was done she felt sticky and achy. And a little woozy from all the gasoline fumes. She took a break, went into the store and pulled lunch from the shelves – a can of chili, another can of fruit cocktail and a warm bottle of Sprite. The pause did refresh, and she got back in the Ram and headed for the obstacle.

  She got to the big rig, parked and had a look around. Immediately she saw an issue she hadn’t considered. The rig had been coming around a hill on its right, and the driver hadn’t pulled out of the turn. He must’ve driven right up the hill partway, then tipped sideways. As it twisted, the cab’s linkage ripped part of the trailer’s bottom away like peeling back the lid of a sardine can – not enough to break the connection, though, because the trailer also tipped. The result was that the rig was on its side, bent like a reversed checkmark, with the pointed bottom against the hill.

  The problem was, from her direction, you couldn’t push the cab, and you couldn’t push the trailer in any direction except into the hill it had been going around. Which meant it would still be blocking the road. Worse still, the tail end of the trailer hung past the highway, over the abyss on the other side, so you couldn’t get maximum leverage. To top it off, there was no turnout nearby to force it into.

  Suddenly a seemingly simple task (at least conceptually) had gotten very difficult.

  She’d majored in business, not engineering, but she had no choice except to try and conceptualize how she could make this work. If she pushed here, that would go this way … if she tried there, would it go this way or that? What if she tried pulling this part that way … she could go back to the ranch, find some rope …

  “Arrrgh.” She really didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe trying to find a tow truck or a ‘dozer in the Tam Valley or Mill Valley or San Rafael was the best idea. But she wasn’t going to give up on Plan A (or was it B?) yet. She got back into the pickup, choosing as she did to try and push the trailer toward the hill behind it and see what happened.

  As she moved into position, she realized anew what a terrible position it was. The farthest she could get on the trailer and still keep all her tires on pavement was barely over halfway along its length. To use the analogy of a lever, she couldn’t reach its end, where the effort would have the most result – she was “gripping” it in the middle. But she didn’t have much choice.

  She made contact with the grille guard against the side – top – of the trailer. “Here goes,” she muttered, and slowly pressed the accelerator down.

  She was worried the outside of the trailer might cave in under the pressure, but either it was made of sterner stuff or the grille guard distributed the force enough to prevent it. Slowly, with a tooth-scraping screech of metal against asphalt, the trailer began to move. She gave it more gas. The trailer kept going. “Good, good …” A little more pressure. More movement.

  The sound of scattering gravel caused her to pull her foot from the gas. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction, and the opposite in this case was to cause the Ram to slide to the right – toward the drop on the other side of the road. The clatter was her right rear tires leaving the pavement for the narrow shoulder – there were four tires on the back end, two on each side.

  She shifted the pickup into park, put on the emergency brake, got out and – “Yikes!” The outside right rear tire was maybe an inch from where the roadbed fell away into at least a hundred-foot drop.

  Well, time to pick a new spot. But she’d moved the trailer enough that at its new angle, she could pick one a little farther toward the back. She returned to the driver’s seat, moved back, forward, back, forward, back, forward until she could reverse away from the Mickey D’s truck without careening off a cliff. Back into drive, she decided to approach at an angle, hoping she wouldn’t get shoved rightwar
d off the highway in the process.

  She didn’t, and she did move the trailer quite a bit farther. She backed up again, chose a spot farther down, did it again and made more progress. Once more, and all but the last few feet of the top was back on the highway, or at least the shoulder. She hadn’t cleared the road, but she’d done something that would hopefully lead to that.

  Then she looked back and burst out laughing. She hadn’t realized it, but the hill had somewhat acted as a fulcrum – while she was pushing one end of the trailer around, at the same time she’d started pulling the other end, and the cab, toward the middle of the road behind her. Mercifully she could still get past the front of the big rig and home again, but she’d cut it kind of close …

  “Wait a minute …” If the cab was moved away from the hill, and she could get around to the front of it (in this position, the underside of the cab) and push from there …

  She threw the Ram into reverse, carefully maneuvered past the cab to where she’d started, shifted to drive, moved the grille guard up against the cab’s rear tires, got settled in and began giving it gas. Now she was pitting the Dodge against the entire tonnage of a semi loaded with spoiled fries and burger meat and whatever they put in the shakes to fake ice-cream thickness, but she had the power against pure dead weight.

  She pushed. It shifted. She pushed harder. It began to scrape along the highway. She pushed harder. One of the semi’s tires popped against her grille guard, making the Ram lurch. She upshifted and pushed harder. It kept moving. She upshifted again. Soon she was in top gear with the pedal to the floor, giving it all she could, and slowly, slowly the big rig gave ground. The sound of it grinding against the asphalt was deafening, nerve-wracking, and she set her jaw and gripped the steering wheel white-knuckled.

  Through the wheel and her seat, she felt something give and instinctively yanked her foot off the gas. The McDonald’s truck moved without her, sliding backwards as its center of gravity passed the edge of the roadbed. It picked up speed, the cab bumping along the road as it lost traction, then with a final rush it disappeared over the edge and plummeted into the ravine. Ten seconds later, there was a crash of rending metal as it hit bottom.

  Kelly put the Ram into park, turned off the engine and went to inspect the damage. A couple of the grille guard’s pipes were bent inward, but not seriously. Looking over the road’s edge, she didn’t see anything burst into flame, but the thick stench of the rotted food remained. That would take at least a few days to dissipate. But it was out of the way. The highway was clear all the way to the Tam Valley.

  She patted the top of the Ram’s cab. “Well done, old bean.” For a moment she was tempted to start using it as her regular vehicle, but thought better of it. Her Hyundai was more suitable to conserving gasoline and going around the town’s twisty roads. But she would definitely keep this one around for its carrying capacity – she could move a lot more stuff with it than with her car. Another tool in her arsenal.

  With a tired smile, she headed back to the ranch parking lot. She could find some rope, put her car in neutral and tow it home so she’d have it and the truck whenever she needed them.

  15

  SKED

  Kelly thought she’d be tired when she got the vehicles home, and she was, a little. But she’d rested the previous two days, so all in all she felt pretty good. Add the satisfaction of a job well done (or done, anyway) and her spirits were moderately high. She boiled some rice on the barbecue for dinner, adding chopped cheese and vegetables, and after eating she went down to the ocean to wash up.

  She watched the sun setting as she air-dried and though about how good she had it. She had plenty of everything and no real responsibilities – by surviving the plague, she’d turned into a rich woman purely from lack of competition. Even her mental health was improving – less stress from not having to deal with people, less depression with plenty of work to do, less mania due to tiring herself out with all that work.

  This wasn’t how the end of the world was supposed to go. But it hadn’t ended for her. In any circumstance, no matter how horrid, someone was bound to benefit, and this time it happened to be her. She could feel guilty about that, but it wouldn’t help her or anyone else.

  She went back uphill to home, getting there before it got too dark to navigate. She locked her door as the chorus of the night started up: dogs (thankfully not in her driveway), cats, insects, frogs, unidentified animals in the forest. “Children of the night, vhat music they make, ha ha ha ha,” she said, quoting Dracula or the Count from Sesame Street or maybe both. As long as those creatures stayed outside and she was inside, it was fine.

  Another point in favor of this end of the world: no undead. No vampires, no zombies fast or slow, no strange beast-people, no aliens looking to serve man – as an appetizer. Not even ghosts, of which this town should have plenty if they existed. Loneliness seemed like a small price to pay to avoid all that horror-movie mess.

  Despite the growing darkness, she wasn’t ready to go to sleep just yet. She got out a candle and lit it, changed into her pajamas and flipped through the pages she’d printed on survival techniques. She felt like she was forgetting something, but couldn’t remember what it was before her eyelids started drooping and she took her lithium and headed for bed.

  But she recalled it the next morning. “Schedule,” she mumbled into her pillow. “I was gon’ make a schedule.” It wasn’t a necessity, but it was a Thing She Could Do, and she’d feel more comfortable with one. Not a bad idea for day 23 …

  … darn, she’d forgotten to do a journal entry yesterday. Already she was slipping on that? Well … now she knew one thing to add to the schedule, didn’t she? Daily journal entry. Morning or evening? Or did it matter? She could …

  A while later, she woke up again and giggled. At least she wasn’t on a tight schedule. And she probably shouldn’t put herself on one – there was no need. The watch was handy for gauging hours until sunset, but she no longer lived in a world ruled by clocks and timesheets and just-in-time shipping. “Loosen up a little, Kel,” she chided herself as she untangled from the sheets. Another surprise from the apocalypse: no more Industrial Revolution push for efficiency, at least not after the first couple of weeks. She could take her time.

  She took her time deciding what to wear – shorts would be better for the heat, but pants would be better for avoiding sunburn. She compromised on jeans and one of her favorite T-shirts, featuring Sadness from the movie Inside Out and the words ONE OF THOSE DAYS. Depressive humor. She liked that a film existed where depression turned out to be the hero. “I miss watching movies,” she sighed. Well, there was always the generator at the farm. Maybe a weekly film night could be part of the schedule?

  Breakfast was bacon and cheese and a bear claw that was hard as a rock (intentionally), apple slices, two bottles of water and the legal pad. Ideas kept popping into her head, and she wanted to get them on paper before she lost track of them. Same thing she used to do with her phone over breakfast, so she was adjusting. Get more water, canned milk from store … look for bird eggs? … what are the dog pack eating? …

  Meal finished and a half-page of random ideas jotted, she flipped that sheet over and started thinking about daily activities. Meals, obvs. Baths. Taking her meds – that was pretty much ingrained in her mind, but it couldn’t hurt to write down. A journal entry each day – she’d do one as soon as she finished this list, cover what happened yesterday. Maybe that was how she should do it: detail the previous day over breakfast before starting the new day in earnest. Better than doing it in the evening, when she was likelier to be tired and put it off.

  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, bath, meds, journal – what else? She looked around, and realized she hadn’t washed dishes since the power went out. She needed to do that today before the stuff caked on them became new lifeforms. She started another column, for weekly activities, and put dishwashing, laundry and “movie night?” on it. She could haul the dishes down to the ocean today,
and maybe make each subsequent Tuesday “dish day” or something.

  But what could she add to the daily list? Hmmm … she pulled out the Possible long-term activities sheet and looked it over. A lot of it was one-time projects (like the outhouse) or stuff it was too early for (like harvesting the farm’s crops), but she could begin to chip away at the rest. The house-to-house search was one to work on, especially since she’d drawn that map yesterday – that would make it easier to check each place off as she went.

  She added Search min. 2 residences to the daily list. Counting each apartment separately and leaving aside the horse ranch and Holy Green, there were about a hundred dwellings in Sayler Beach. Two a day meant she’d have the whole town canvassed by the middle of October, before the rainy season began in earnest. That should do – at that point, she’d have a rough idea of where she could find anything she needed. If it was in town.