The Plague Runner

by Burgy, P. J.

  Crossing the bridge, she saw the guards at the front gate, and she knew that one of them was Hooper. He had been waiting there for her for a while, judging by the tired look on his face as the mask came off. They met on the grass with about twenty feet to go before she reached the fence.

  “I can’t let yah do this, Kara,” he said.

  “Are you going to stop me, Hoop?”

  He frowned. “Please don’t make me.”

  “I have to do this,” Kara told him. “I have to find him. Them. They’re alive, Hoop. I can’t just forget. I can’t.”

  “You know I can’t let yah out of this gate.”

  “Please.” Kara searched his face. “Hoop.”

  Renshen’s voice came from behind. “Let’r go, Hoop.”

  Kara turned to look at her father. He stood on the grass with his strong arms folded across his chest. The grim look on his face gave Kara a sick feeling in her stomach, but she managed to nod at him, taking a step toward him. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t,” Renshen said.

  “I can drive, if you-”

  “Y’ain’t takin’ the Bella,” Renshen stated. He looked away, toward the storage shed. When he brought his eyes back to Kara, he narrowed them and shook his head. “An’ yer goin’ alone. If y’wanna die that bad, this’ll be the time t’do it, but y’ain’t takin’ the Bella down with yah.”

  “Dad…” Kara said.

  “Y’wanna chase ghosts, Yusha Senshi?” Renshen’s jaw was tight, his gaze casting toward the lake as he turned his shoulder to her. “Y’go right ‘head. I won’t stop yah. I never did, did I? I asked, an’ y’said No. No-No-No. That’s what y’wanted, wasn’t it? You’n’I both know they’re all dead, but y’wanna go out and join ‘em, an’ I ain’t gonna stop you. Not this time.”

  She stared at him as the strings of red lights faded across the lake. The sky was beginning to lighten more and more, the colors vivid and warm. There was no warmth in her father’s eyes as she took another step toward him. When he turned away and began to walk back to the bridge, she called out to him. “I’m not going to die. I’m going to come back. I’m going to find them, and I’m going to come back.”

  Renshen stopped at the dock. He turned on his heel, slowly, and then walked back over to her. It was all Kara could do to keep from shaking as Renshen stepped up to her and looked down at her face. His gray eyes were cold, but his lips twitched ever so slightly. Then, he put his hand into his jacket pocket. He pulled out something metallic, a dark shade of yellow, and let it sit in his palm. “Gimme yer hand, Yusha.”

  She put her hand out, and Renshen clasped it between his. Something metal touched her palm and he drew his hands back toward himself. She looked at what he had given her, and wondered at the golden wings. There was odd, symmetrical shape holding the wings together, and when she flipped it over, she saw that it was a pin. She looked up at him. “What is this?”

  “Somethin’ of mine,” Renshen replied, “Fer you, fer you t’keep. T’keep yah safe.”

  “What is it?”

  “A guardian angel.”

  “This is a strange angel,” she said, looking over the shape.

  Renshen had a short laugh, cutting it off quickly to place his hand to his mouth. He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Y’could call it that. Yusha, I can’t stop yah. But I can’t let y’go neither. So, I jus’ gotta let y’do what y’do. I'm sorry I spoke t'yah like that, just now. I'm so damn sorry, Yusha.”

  “You could come with me. Help me,” she said.

  “I have’ta stay here. Blue Lagoon needs me.” Renshen opened his eyes, placed his hands on his sides and wetted his lips. Again, he shook his head. “An’ I won’t send anyone else out with yah. Yer goin’ alone, Yusha. I hope y’come back, I do. I really do.”

  “I will.” Kara put the pin into her pants pocket.

  “Yer brothers r’gonna kill me,” Renshen said, stepping away. “Go on. Go. Let’r go, Hoop.”

  “Wait,” Kara stated as Hooper ushered her over to the gate door, around the fence. As she followed him and saw that he was looking her way, she continued. “Trap. I want to take Trap with me. I’ll need him.”

  Hooper gave her an odd look, pausing at the door locks. “Untrained dog’ll be more trouble than good.”

  “I just feel like I need him. Please,” she said. “I'll need a dog, and I won't take one of yours.”

  “Sure. If that’s what you want.” Hooper nodded to her, and then went into the security shack.

  Kara waited by the door, looking out toward the lake and the little, overcrowded town built on the tiny island in the center. Renshen was still there on the other side of the fence, watching. The other two guards seemed apathetic to what was going on, not bothering to get involved save for one of them closing the fence behind her. In a few moments Hooper came back outside, and Trap came bounding out onto the grass. Hooper gave the dog a pat toward Kara and Trap went right to her.

  “What’ll you tell them, Dad?”

  “I’ll tell ‘em yer gone,” he replied, needing to raise his voice. “An’ that’s all I’ll say. I ain’t gonna lose three of my kids in one go, e’vn if I can’t save one.”

  “I’m going to find them. And I’m going to save them.”

  Renshen nodded at her and then turned to walk across the bridge. She could hear Hooper pulling open the locks, sliding metal against metal as one by one the latches were undone. She closed her eyes, turning back toward the gate door. Trap head butted her leg and whimpered at her, getting her attention. She leaned down to pat his side just as Hooper opened the door. Outside, the sun was up, and the day was starting. The cool air moved across her face.

  Hooper cleared his throat. “Yah got everythin’ yah need?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mask? Light? Batteries? Knife? Food? Water?”

  “Yeah to all.” Kara nodded.

  “Safe paths,” Hooper told her.

  “Thank you.” She walked out from the fort, out into the open world in the dawn of a new day, Trap at her side.

  Chapter Six

  The run to Fort Pleasant Tree took about the same amount of time that it normally would, though Kara was able to cut a few minutes off of the trip here and there by taking shortcuts she would normally have deemed more dangerous. It was morning, and while she certainly had to take precautions in the morning just like any other time, it was less likely for anyone else to be out and about within the first few hours of the day.

  As the morning turned into afternoon, the sun moving across the sky, she began to choose the safer routes and avoid the risky, open swaths of land. She stopped twice to eat, drink, and take a break. Trap eagerly snapped up some of the dried fish she’d brought along. There was a stream they could both drink from as well, to save her from using her bottled water too quickly.

  She had a few hours left in the day when she ran past the empty fort. The memorial pyres had burned out, leaving behind ashes and charred wood. Kara was tempted to stop and pay a tribute to Jim’s resting place, slowing down as she reached the wall, but she kept on going out into the field. Remembering the way from the previous day, she ran and ran with Trap at her side. To Trap, it seemed to be a great game of chase, and he was more than happy to play along. He didn’t need much coaxing to stay at her side, his tongue lolling out and his ears flopping as he ran.

  She reached the road with another couple hours to spare before she needed to find a place to bunker down for the night. She made it to the business district and crossed a parking lot toward one of the smaller, interconnected shops. There were five storefronts with broken windows, the doors missing or hanging off of the hinges. The sixth storefront, at the very end of the row, had cracked windows with one of the panes missing high off the ground. More importantly, the door was still attached.

  She went to the door and tried to open it, finding it locked. Not a bad sign, actually, considering that the Wailers wouldn’t know how to lock a door, though what was on the other side
might not necessarily have started as a Wailer. If it were another person, or more people, there was a chance that they weren’t that friendly either. The ones without forts didn’t survive long, but they were a desperate and violent breed that could rival the Red Brethren with their ferocity. Fortunately, there were few of them left anymore.

  Still, it was in her best interest to check the place out first. She pulled an overturned shopping cart along with her and used it to get up to the missing window pane. Shining her red light around the inside of the store, she saw downed shelves and tables. No movement. No sounds. The back of the store was close enough to investigate as well, the place being so small, and Kara saw nothing but a long, broken display case. The glass had been shattered, leaving the wares out in the open. No one had taken anything apparently.

  Kara crawled in, heard Trap whimper, and assured him it was going to be okay. She nearly fell to the floor but was able to catch herself. She unlocked the door from the inside and let the dog in. He padded around the inside of the shop as Kara locked the door once more.

  Inside, with her flashlight on bright white, she was able to get a better look around. It had been a jewelry store once, and Kara saw silver sparkling chains and lockets, gold necklaces and rings, and pretty, dainty watches scattered all over the blue carpet. Dust and paint covered most of the floor and surfaces of the downed shelves; tiny display tables on their sides. Glass crunched under her sneakers as she walked around the small shop, the broken shelves on the walls still sparkling with gems hanging from slender chains. Kara was startled by a white, faceless mannequin bust wearing an ornate silver and gold necklace, and she scowled at the thing as she walked past it.

  Kara’s light reflected back at her whenever she pointed it at a bit of broken mirror. When she found a round mirror on the far left corner of the wall, she looked at it and checked her own reflection. She saw the dog behind her. Trap panted, sitting still.

  There was a back room, a break room. She found the bathroom, the toilet long dried out, the ceiling breaking down and covering the floor with plaster. Kara knew better than to open the refrigerator, but the cabinets were fair game. Packets of napkins and paper towels, long decomposed and dried out. Cans of coffee, the insides hard as a rock. Salt. She took that. Pepper. Dried out and useless. She found actual plastic plates and cups, and took a few of each. What she recognized as something called a cell phone had been left on the counter by the sink. The table in the break room was covered in plaster from above, the chairs pulled out. In the far right corner, Kara was elated to see there was a couch, dirty and dusty as it was, and she brushed it off just as Trap came trotting in.

  “Found a good spot, huh, boy?” Kara asked him.

  He panted at her, tail wagging.

  Kara called him over, waiting until he sat down to go over to the break room door and close it. It opened in, so she used a chair to fortify the room, leaning it into the doorknob. The room was sealed from the rest of the shop when the door was closed, which meant that she could light a little candle and place it on top of the table. She turned off her flashlight and slid it back into her belt.

  She knelt down on the carpet after taking her backpack off. She took out the blankets and laid them on the couch. When her makeshift bed was ready, she lied down and folded her hands on her stomach, looking up at the cracked ceiling. Of course, she was exhausted, but her mind was racing.

  After a few minutes, she drifted off. She was woken briefly when Trap decided to climb up onto the couch and lie on her legs. He was like a blanket himself, overheating her, and she had to shoo him away. It took her awhile to fall asleep again, perhaps a couple hours this time, she wasn’t sure how long it was. The night was silent outside of the shop, out in the darkness.

  Kara woke up naturally, opening her eyes to the darkness of the room. She sat up and then stood, nearly kicking her backpack. Once she had gotten her flashlight out, she saw that Trap was up and attentive, whining at her as soon as she saw him. She went to the door, unhooked the chair from under the doorknob, and carefully opened it up. Trap was trying to get through the crack in the door, so she used her leg to give him a push back. The shop was just as empty as the day before, and the sun was rising outside, daylight filtering in through the glass.

  She let Trap out and he ran to the front door, whining and wagging his tail. Kara slid her backpack on and exited the shop with him after looking around at the parking lot. As soon as he was out, Trap ran over to some grass and made his business. Kara smirked.

  “Untrained, huh?” She mused.

  They continued on their way.

  Kara made sure to keep close to the stores and traveled through the parking lots, avoiding the main road this time around. She walked past cars, shopping carts, piles of trash, and toppled light fixtures. She jogged around sinkholes, made her way through shrubs and grasses that were growing up through the asphalt. The sky was clear and blue, the sun bright and hot. Luckily, it wasn’t humid, and there was a nice breeze.

  She stopped a few times again, choosing spots that seemed safe and out of the way. Trap kept pace, wandering off a few times to sniff at the grass. The business district seemed to go on forever. She felt that she would spend the rest of the day traveling adjacent to the road, passing hollowed out business complexes and broken down stores.

  She noticed a change as she traveled further, the buildings were growing closer together and taller as she went. She was forced back to the road again by a fence, a sharp decline on the other side. As she walked along back to the road, she could see it and smell it. Water. A large river with a bridge, long and wide with a rusty old guard rail in the center, the road continuing out to what Kara could only assume was midtown.

  The bridge was littered with abandoned cars, some scrapped and torn apart, most left to turn to orange dust. She crossed the bridge with Trap, running for most of the way and coming to a slow jog as she neared the city. Parts of the bridge were crumbling and falling away on the other side, and Kara could see a way down to the river front.

  It wasn’t a hard climb down, and it was a good place to get some more water while she could, using the filter this time before drinking from one of the plastic cups she had taken from the shop. It was also a good place to wash her face. She found a spot in the shade from the bridge above to strip down and rinse herself off before getting dressed again, as quickly as she could. Usually she’d have had a shower by now, but this would have to do.

  Along with Trap, Kara climbed back up the slope to the street above and then took a good, hard look at the scene before her. There were big crumbling structures, some in ruins while others still stood, with broken windows and crackling exteriors. The paint had worn off, or been blasted away, bricks of cement shattered on what was left of the pavement below. The road came out across the bridge, the guardrail ending there, and it met a row of broken traffic lights, the worn asphalt splitting off to the left, right and straight ahead.

  It was hard to comprehend what she saw, so Kara kept on going forward, straight down the road. Hoop had said that the road went right to the city, hadn’t he? She thought it wise to look around every now and again as she followed the road, stopping to look at the buildings to her left and right. There were little stores, their hanging signs somehow still swaying in the breeze but their names unreadable. She saw a cartoon painting of a fat chef with a black mustache serving something round with spots on it to a couple at a table and she grimaced. Did people used to eat round, moldy wheels of food?

  There were businesses, and she could read the signs out front, but just barely. She strained to read the words on a plaque attached to the side of a crumbling brick building. The Law Offices of Butler, Wells, and Garland. Kara kept on going.

  Big, black birds flew up above her. She caught a glimpse of one now and then, but other than those creatures saw no other animals for the longest time. Then, she was taken aback at sudden movement, and sighed in relief to see a fox run across the street ahead of her, racing left at the
intersection. Trap went to give chase and she called him back over. He joined her again, staring down the way the fox had run as they went through the intersection.

  The dog seemed content at her side, which was comforting to her. He’d growled when the Infected had attacked at the old woman’s house, which meant that he could smell them. And, since he’d remained calm for the journey so far, it meant that there’d been no Wailers nearby. That was what she wanted to believe, of course. She had some lingering doubts in her heart when it came to the spunky pup, and she glanced over to see him padding along merrily, tongue hanging out and ears flopping.

  She believed that she was still in midtown when the sun began to sink lower in the sky and dusk threatened. This time around, she was genuinely nervous. Finding a safe, secure place here wasn’t going to be as easy. Relying on Trap took a lot of faith, but she led him over to what appeared to be a small business crunched up between two bigger buildings. The door was still attached, which was a plus. The other two buildings were falling apart, missing huge chunks of their roofs, cement spilled out onto the already ruined sidewalk.

  The grasses and flowers were taking over, ivy running up the storefronts. The little place she’d found required her to walk up a few cement steps. The windows were smashed but barred up. She read the word ‘PAWN’ on the door, the letters faded but legible. The door opened, which might have been a bad sign if Trap hadn’t slipped past her and run right in.

  “Trap!” She called out, and then shined her flashlight all over the interior of the shop, choosing the red bulb first. Glass everywhere, broken on the floor, sparkled back at her. Racks were toppled. More display cases with no fronts, but entirely emptied out. There wasn’t much at all inside the store. The walls were bare, the shelves were dusty but vacant. She shut the door behind herself and locked it while Trap padded around and avoided the glass. He was headed to the back and Kara went after him. “You stupid dog.”