by LeRoy Clary
Humanity’s Blight
LeRoy Clary
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Humanity’s Blight
1st Edition
Copyright © 11/06/2019 LeRoy Clary
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover Design Contributors: Bigstock.com
Editor: Karen Clary
Acknowledgments
Good books are written by several exceptional people, all of whom have my thanks. This group sets my limits and helps establish the foundations for my books, keeping me on track as they progress.
My beta readers, Lucy Jones-Nelson, Laurie Barcome, Paul Eslinger, Dave Nelson, Sherri Oliver, and Pat Wyrembelski, all find plenty of things for me to correct, and to improve. Thank you all. I want to publish the best books I can, and they are certainly better with your help.
My wife puts up with me and deserves extra credit for her help with the covers and her ideas—and she gives me the time to write.
And my dog, Molly. She sits at my feet and watches me write every day.
Books by LeRoy Clary
The 6th Ransom
Blade of Lies: The Mica Silverthorne Story
Here, There Be Dragons
The Last Dragon: Book One
The Last Dragon: Book Two
The Mage’s Daughter Series
The Mage’s Daughter: Discovery
The Mage’s Daughter: Enlightenment
The Mage’s Daughter: Retribution
Dragon! Series
Dragon! Book One: Stealing the Egg
Dragon! Book Two: Gareth’s Revenge
Dragon Clan Series
Dragon Clan: In the Beginning
Dragon Clan #1: Camilla’s Story
Dragon Clan #2: Raymer’s Story
Dragon Clan #3: Fleet’s Story
Dragon Clan #4: Gray’s Story
Dragon Clan #5: Tanner’s Story
Dragon Clan #6: Anna’s Story
Dragon Clan #7: Shill’s Story
Dragon Clan #8: Creed’s Story
TABLE OF CONTENT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Contact Information
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Map of Whidbey Island
CHAPTER ONE
“Tell me why I shouldn’t just shoot you right now,” the young woman said. She was holding a rifle pointed at my chest. Her tone was emotionless.
After a few seconds of self-recrimination for allowing myself to be ambushed so easily, I told her the truth. “The fact is, you should. If you want to survive, pull the trigger and hope no one nearby hears the shot and comes to investigate. That makes the most sense, but I suspect you already know that.”
I wouldn’t beg. I refused to. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good.
Two weeks earlier, when the mysterious new strain of a (H1-N1) mutated flu first struck and people started falling ill and swiftly dying by the hundreds, and then by the thousands, I was tucked safely away inside the basement of my parent’s home sitting in front of my computer and TV where I’d pretty much spent the last couple of years.
Home was located on the edge of Arlington, a sleepy little town at the foot of the Cascades in northwestern Washington State. On the first day, I had huddled down there in the dark basement, windows closed, even the furnace turned off to prevent it from taking in contaminated air from outside. Scared. Alone. My fingers had flown over the keyboard to glean any new information about the flu pandemic the media called a human blight, like a cancerous disease on stalks of wheat.
The news became increasingly worse as the flu spread by the hour. Animated maps on television initially showed contamination in small isolated pockets on the east coast, mostly in the major cities.
Later that same day, those “isolated pockets” had spread far larger areas, and there were colored blotches showing up in other parts of the country. By midnight, the first red pockets of new outbreaks appeared in the west. By then, the east coast was almost completely blanketed in that short time. The breakouts were also hitting the mid-west cities. All aircraft in America were grounded, and other travel was suspended to prevent further spread.
The dire news degenerated by the hour. The blight was everywhere and affected everything. Food riots broke out as grocery stores closed for lack of deliveries of new stock. Employees failed to show up to sell what little remained. It didn’t matter. People broke down the doors and emptied the shelves of the meager contents.
Within a few days, over a million deaths were estimated. There were no social services, police, schools, or ambulances to transport people to overcrowded hospitals. Bodies were left where they fell. There was nobody to collect and bury them. Runs on sporting goods stores with weapons had emptied the shelves there too.
Almost all businesses had closed in major cities by day three. Local travel was restricted. Martial law was declared for the nation on the evening of day three, but few of those in the military or national guard responded to enforce it because those still alive were either down with the flu or caring for family members or friends who were infected or dying.
Eastern cities had turned into warzones by day four, followed quickly by major cities in the west. The highways were empty except for a few abandoned cars and trucks that had attempted fleeing the cities. The president called for civil order and martial law a day before he died. The vice president died two days earlier. Nobody could seem to find a judge in authority who could swear in the Speaker of the House—and then she died, and I heard no more about other successors.
The Internet and television also died about then, too. And radio. My cell phone lasted two more days as I jumped into our family car and drove like a scared puppy running from a neighborhood bulldog—straight to the nearest snow-covered mountain. I avoided contact with everyone along the way. My route was entirely on obscure backroads and a trip of only about twenty miles. The only things I took with me were those few already in my basement. I didn’t trust anything else upstairs in our house to not be infected. There were few belongings that would benefit me besides my old twenty-two pistol, a good pair of hiking boots, my heaviest coat, and a few ch
anges of clothes.
Fleeing and surviving the next few days were simple choices based on nothing more than luck and common sense. With so many dying so fast, it seemed reasonable that a biological weapon had struck the world. According to reports, the CDC had barely managed to define it. There had been no time to develop a vaccine. The mutated strain struck humanity like no other. It only took two days to bring the entire country almost to a stop, and two more to a standstill.
I didn’t know what else to do but run and hide. My limited knowledge coupled with the hysterical posts on social media by people I’m certain wouldn’t lie or spread crazy rumors, suggested altitude and a cold climate limited the spread of biological diseases. Avoiding people does the same. Where I headed met all three goals . . . and it was an hour away. It was fairly high in altitude, very cold, and isolated.
That decision had been made over a week ago and all had been fine since then, if you consider the lack of current news and being scared all the time I would fall ill and die within two days, fine. I was lonely, sure. Terrified, yes. However, I faced a laundry list of unknowns, so the fear was mostly composed of vague boogeymen waiting to pounce. If one thing didn’t kill me, another would.
Speaking of killing me, the dirty-faced little female who only stood about five feet tall, her features hidden under a fur hat with felt ear-flaps like the loggers used to wear a century ago still faced me. The rifle trained on me was all that mattered.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Shut up.”
Only a portion of the girl’s face and eyes was uncovered, and around her neck and chin was one of those elastic scarf things people sometimes wear when they rob convenience stores or work in the garden. The image was an impossibly wide smile with teeth a half-inch tall on a white skull. It covered the nose and below. The felt flap on the hat covered her forehead and ears. The rest of the woman was dressed for the knee-deep snow we stood in. About all I could see were her dark smoldering eyes.
The barrel of the weapon hadn’t wavered while I stood and thought, but it had not been all that long. My thoughts were racing so despite the number, not a lot of time had passed. She should have listened to me and shot me a long time ago. It was the right thing to do under the circumstance. She should also have fired her military-style rifle at me back then when we had stood five steps apart because we now faced each other from a distance of only a few feet. I had edged closer and closer while talking gently to her. My limp hands hung loosely at my sides, never threatening. Yet, they could easily reach the end of the rifle barrel and slap it aside before she could fire. No problem. Little risk. Before she recovered, I’d be on her. It would happen soon.
Only one item held me back. She could have shot anytime in the last three minutes when we’d first encountered each other—and hadn’t. When my eyes lowered to the rifle again, an ugly black thing that screamed military, her trigger finger tightened in response. So, she was not as stupid as I had believed, and she was willing to shoot me if I flinched.
But she was still stupid.
“I asked you a question.” Her tone had grown a little sharper, more impatient. “Why not kill you right now?”
“I answered you.” The calmness in my voice surprised me. There was no trembling or fear despite my inward feelings. “Shoot me, if you want. I’m tired of living like this, anyhow.”
She was scared, it was easy to see. Almost as scared as me. And people don’t shoot others from a few steps away—at least, not in the world we’d occupied—until the last two weeks. It had come to an impasse. She looked at me. I looked at her. I waited for my chance.
Behind her, in the forest, another tree limb cracked from the cold. It sounded like a gunshot and the branch rattled down past others as it made its way to the ground, breaking other brittle and frozen branches along the way. At the first hint of the sound, she had spun and dropped to her knees, rifle raised to her shoulder, ready to fire at whatever danger came her way.
Good reactions. Bad timing. My fist struck the back of her head, her rifle fell from limp fingers to the snow. Then I had a new set of choices to make, the first included shooting her or not—in our reversed circumstances.
My little twenty-two semi-automatic pistol had found its way into my hand, the barrel pointed at the back of her motionless head. She didn’t move or attempt to fight. I hesitated. She’d been hit hard, and the soreness in my knuckles attested to that.
Like her, I should have pulled the trigger right then. It made sense to do so. She might be a carrier of the flu. She might wake up and kill me later when she had another chance. My finger never touched the trigger. Perhaps neither of us was as callous as the new world demanded.
She finally moaned.
As she rolled over, I reached for her rifle, finding it both lightweight and hefty at the same time. Rugged is maybe a better description. The magazine ejected at the touch of my gloved thumb. I tossed it aside. A single shell flew off into the snow when I pulled back the cocking lever, or whatever the official name of the lever was. The rifle posed no more danger unless she retrieved it from the snow and used it as a club. I asked in a voice ruder than intended, although to be honest, she had aimed a loaded rifle at me, and I had a right to speak in any tone I wanted. “Any more guns?”
She shook her head and her eyes rolled to the back of her head from the action. Probably dizzy from the blow by my fist to her head. Another man, in an earlier time, might have accepted her answer. I patted her heavy coat, felt around the waist of her snow-pants, and generally searched her from head to foot in ways that would have sent me to prison for touching a woman I didn’t know in that fashion a few weeks ago. But under her heavy winter clothing, there are a dozen places to hide another weapon and I didn’t want to take a chance.
I knew that people hid them for a fact. I had hideout weapons on me; a belt buckle with a razor-sharp edge when exposed, a tiny flat jackknife blade inside the toe of my left boot under the sole insert, and a wire-saw coiled within a “secret” pocket inside my coat. And at the bottom of the square outside pocket of my coat was a nail, a big one, old, rusty, and sharpened to a needle point on a stone only a day ago. One jab would cause a lot of pain, and it might be overlooked as a weapon in a brief search.
She didn’t object to my intensive search. It wouldn’t have done any good and both of us knew it. I said as I wagged the barrel of my pistol to indicate my desire, “Up.”
The girl struggled to get a wobbly knee under herself.
She looked at me as if silently asking for help. It was the same helpless expression that a girl would wear if trying to draw me closer before attacking. I stepped back out of her grasp and waited. No hurry.
Once on her feet, her eyes went to the rifle in the snow as if promising herself she would have the opportunity to use it on me.
“Leave it,” I told her.
The frown was instantaneous. Her voice was soft, “Hey, the army uses those.”
I shrugged and didn’t ask how she’d come to be in possession of it.
“Are you going to just leave it there? That gun will shoot three-shot bursts at a time, or fully automatic. Or one shot. The scope is amazingly accurate.” Her eyes went to my little twenty-two with the six-inch-long PVC pipe duct-taped to the barrel. Her expression was one of serious disdain. It looked like a broken toy. She didn’t even try to conceal her feelings or her contempt for me.
My finger wagged for her attention and finally pointed off to our side in the direction I wanted her to move. She walked ahead. I followed, always ten steps behind, close enough to shoot her if she ran, but far enough behind, that I wouldn’t be surprised by a quick move. More snow was falling; small brittle flakes that felt like they had sharp edges when they touched my cheeks, more ice than snow.
We trudged a step at a time. The depth of the snow sapped our energy. Each step took ten times the effort of a normal one. As we moved laterally around the side of the mountain, my mind reviewed how she had probably watched me with
the scope on her rifle and positioned herself in front of me and behind that log then waited for me to approach. Let me walk right into her trap. But she hadn’t shot when she could have. Should have. That meant something.
Until she had stood up from behind a log and pointed her rifle at me, I had no direct knowledge of anyone else on the mountain. The simple fact was that she’d outsmarted me. If she had wished to kill me, she could have done so a dozen times over.
Somewhere in the depths of my mind, that fact bothered me on several levels. I’d believed myself to be smarter than almost everyone. My flight to the mountains, avoiding the outbreak of the blight and locating an old mining tunnel to live in substantiated that idea. Hadn’t I survived when almost all others died? How had the small woman I faced managed to do the same and to trick me so easily?
The rifle. It might be a clue. She could be a soldier and have specialized training. I rejected that idea because while I hadn’t yet seen her full face, she had seemed too young. Again, I rejected my own conclusions.
It was another mistake on my part, another assumption without facts to support it. That sort of thing will get you killed. The woman might be thirty and have ten years of military combat training since all I had seen were her eyes. I let her get a few more steps ahead of me for safety and reconsidered shooting her.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
The voice sounded young and scared. An act? A trick? I was wary. “Keep walking. At that stand of evergreens, turn left and go up the side of the hill.”
A lone man trying to keep a prisoner is worse than stupid. I’d have to feed her. Provide her shelter, and the first time I made a mistake, she would kill me. A knife left in her reach, a rock with a rough edge to saw through the ropes binding her hands, a hundred other mistakes on my part, could be my last. Sleeping would be impossible.
