Joe was already walking toward his beat-up rusty old pickup. It had more dents than he could count.
He stuck his arm in the open window and grabbed his shotgun.
The shotgun was old, but in much better condition than the truck.
And if someone had happened to open the hood of that pickup, they’d find a perfectly maintained engine. Not just the fluids, but the spark plugs, the hoses, the belts. Everything was perfectly up to snuff. A lot of the work Joe had done himself, slowly learning how over the years. And a lot of the work had been done by a guy named Pepe who lived a few miles down the road and worked out of his garage.
The SUV was still speeding toward them.
Joe moved so that he was standing in the middle of the worn dirt path, right in the path of the oncoming SUV.
“I’ll be right back,” muttered Sean, ducking back inside his tent for a moment and then emerging, still without a shirt, but with a pistol in hand. He came over and stood next to Joe, glancing over at him. “You sure it’s a good idea to stand right here? You know they might just decide to run us over.”
“They won’t,” said Joe. “If we don’t make a stand, they’ll do whatever they want on this land.”
“They must have seen all the signs,” said Sean, referencing the many no-trespassing signs that he and Joe had put up around the entire perimeter of the large property.
“Yup,” said Joe, not taking his eyes off the SUV.
It was close now. It was really coming at them. Not slowing down at all.
But Joe knew this game. It was a game, after all.
Whoever the people were in the SUV, they wanted something. They didn’t just want to kill Joe and Sean. If that’s what they wanted, if they were some type of gangsters, they could get it done in better ways than running them over, risking messing up the suspension of their shiny new truck.
No, what those people in the SUV wanted was something that they needed to get from Joe. From the landowner.
Now that didn’t mean they were going to be nice about it. It didn’t even mean they were going to talk.
But it probably meant that they wanted Joe alive.
At least for a couple of minutes.
Joe had spent so many years on the fringes of society that it wasn’t taking him long to get used to this new world. It wasn’t hard for him to accept the idea that the virus would quickly change everything, that it would make the land more lawless, the people more desperate and violent.
For many years, he’d already lived in a world like that, mentally at least. He’d just been waiting for the final blow to fall.
“Joe?” said Sean, glancing over at his employer and friend.
The SUV was close. Too close.
It looked like it wasn’t going to stop.
And then it did.
Slamming on the brakes.
Slamming to a violent stop, rocking on its suspension, dust kicking up high into the pale blue sky that seemed to stretch forever in all directions.
The bumper of the SUV was about fifteen feet from Joe and Sean.
“If that virus is airborne...”
“And it probably is...”
“Then what do you think the range is?”
“No idea,” said Sean.
“Let’s keep them at a distance then,” said Joe. “No closer than where they are.”
Joe raised his shotgun. Aimed it to where the driver might step out.
“We’re in this together,” said Joe, glancing over at Sean, who had his gun raised. “Remember. Don’t let them get close.”
4
Will
“Hello??” said Will, holding the walkie-talkie to his mouth.
All around him, there was death. Corpses. Blood. Copious amounts of blood, in varying states of dryness. Some of it had already hardened and changed color. Some of it was still fresh.
“Hello?” he said again, holding the button down.
No answer.
But he knew he’d heard something.
He’d heard life. Life on the other end. It made him feel different. Feel as if there was something out there. Something out there that wasn’t just death and nothingness.
“Are you real?” came the voice, suddenly.
“I’m real,” said Will. “I’m definitely real.” He said it as if he had to prove it to himself. “Who are you?”
“Sara,” said the voice. She sounded young. Maybe a teenager. Maybe older.
“Where are you, Sara?”
“In my house. Everyone’s dead...”
“Who’s everyone?”
“My family... My mom, my dad, my cousins, my uncles...”
Her sobs overtook her voice.
“It’s okay, Sara,” he said. It was a stupid thing to say. A horrible thing to say, really. Everything was not okay. And he knew that really well. Realizing this, he started talking. He didn’t know why he said what he did, or whether it would mean anything to her. But he started telling her about his wife and the life that they’d had together. He told her about the sorts of movies they’d liked to see and the sorts of restaurants they’d like to go to together. And then he told her about how she’d died, along with everyone else.
It only made her sobs stronger.
Why had he said that? Why had he told her how so many others had died? Had he thought that it would make her feel better about what had happened to her own family?
He felt like he owed her something. He felt like he needed to somehow make it better for her.
“It’s going to be okay, Sara,” he said. “You and I have been dealt a horrible fate. For some reason, the virus didn’t kill us. I don’t know if we’re immune or what. But we didn’t die and I don’t think we’re going to die, even if we want to...”
“I want to die,” she said and started crying again. Real sobbing. It was hard to hear. Hard to listen to. But he couldn’t tear himself away. And what’s more, what else was he going to do?
He was surrounded, after all, by nothing but the dead.
“Sara,” he said. “I’m going to find you. You can’t be far.... This seems like a good walkie-talkie, but the range can’t be that far.... Tell me your address...”
Between sobs, she told him her address. He could picture it mentally. He knew where it was. It was right around the corner.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m coming for you. We’re going to...” He suddenly realized he had no plan whatsoever. So he made one up on the spot. “We’re going to get the hell out of this deathtrap of a city. I’m coming for you. Don’t worry. Just stay where you are. Don’t do anything. Can you promise me that?”
Just sobbing. It sounded like she might never stop.
And the more she cried, the more determined he became.
Just mere minutes before, he had wanted it all to end.
And now? He had something to do. He had a goal. He an objective.
He felt alive once again.
“Promise me!” he shouted into the walkie-talkie.
“Okay!” she said, between the sobs.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, shoving the walkie-talkie into his pocket.
Only then did he wonder why there was a walkie-talkie there at all.
But it didn’t matter.
He shrugged off the worry.
He had to get out of there. He wasn’t going to die among the disease-ridden bodies here, or the blood.
He was going to get out of there. He was going to escape these horrific scenes.
He was going to get out to the open air. Out to the country. A mental image of the mountains north of Santa Fe came to his mind. He’d been there several months back for a day hike, heading up to a peak called “Baldy,” at about 14,000 feet. It was cool and crisp up that high and there had been no one around.
He wanted to be up there again. Away from it all. In the cool, refreshing air, far away from the stench of death.
The doors were locked. No point in trying them again.
What about the b
athroom?
Quickly, he headed down the narrow hallway toward the washrooms. He hadn’t used them at all yet.
He didn’t visit his wife’s body again. He didn’t even glance in her direction. He wanted to remember her as she’d been alive. Not as a bloody corpse with a distorted, fluid-drained face.
Bodies lined the hallway. Bodies were piled up on top of one another. He almost slipped on the slick blood.
The men’s bathroom door was impossible to open. It felt like there were bodies piled against it. He pushed it as hard as he could. It wouldn’t budge.
The women’s restroom door opened. A couple bodies in there. Men and women. Tangled together. The floor slick with blood.
Someone had tried the window. But they hadn’t made it.
No bars on the glass. That was good.
It was small. A small window. Easy to open, though.
He got himself up, using an old radiator as a stepstool.
He had a small, slight frame, a result of working too much and not eating enough. Probably not good for survival overall. Not a lot of fat to draw on. But good for this situation.
The screen was easy to pop out. He just pressed his arm against it and that was that.
He got himself through. It was a tight fit. But he just had to suck his gut in a little and he was the other side.
His feet touched the ground. He’d already expected that. After all, the gym was in one of those partially buried basements, where the foundation of the building was built into a hillside.
He got himself free of the window. The walkie-talkie fell out of his waistband where he’d tucked it and clattered to the concrete beneath him.
When he reached down to retrieve the walkie-talkie, he found that it was broken. The plastic casing had split open. Will tried the buttons. Nothing. No sound. No reaction. He found the battery and pulled it out and put it back in. Then he tried the buttons again. Still nothing
It was wrecked.
It didn’t matter. He’d still find Sara. He’d find the one person that he knew for sure was alive.
The bathroom window hadn’t led outside. Instead, it led to a courtyard with a concrete floor that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. There was some rusty, unused furniture that was bolted into the concrete.
The courtyard seemed to be in the middle of the building. There were four walls. The only thing open was the roof, which looked up to the beautiful New Mexican sky.
He tried a door handle on the other side of the courtyard.
To his surprise, it opened.
There was a long hallway with a waxed floor.
Movement down at the end of it.
Two guards appeared. Not cops. Some kind of private security detail.
Did they have guns?
Will froze. He didn’t know what to do.
“Shit, is that one of them?” hissed one of the guards to the other. His voice carried clearly down the hallway.
“Yeah. He must have gotten out.”
“I thought none of them were alive.”
“They said some of them could survive. Natural immunity or something. I don’t know.”
“Yeah. But how the hell did he get out?”
“No idea.”
“Sir,” called out one of the guards in a loud voice. “Stay where you are. Hands above your head. I repeat, stay where you are.”
Will did as he was told, stopping dead in his tracks. He placed his hands on the top of his head, moving slowly and in a non-threatening way.
“You think he can infect us?” whispered one of the guards.
“No idea. They haven’t told us that yet.”
“When are they coming back, anyway?”
“No idea.”
“Because we haven’t gotten any new orders in, what, twelve hours?”
“Well, what are they supposed to do? It’s not like the cell phones are working.”
“I don’t know if they’re actually coming back.”
Will was studying the men carefully. They were trying to remain partially concealed behind the walls at the other end of the hallway. The hallway opened up into a little area with what looked like vending machines.
“Do you two really have guns?” said Will.
“One step forward and we’ll shoot.”
Will had finally gotten a good look at their weapons. They didn’t look like real firearms. At most, they were stun guns. Or something similar.
The guards were obviously scared. Completely terrified.
Will decided to risk it.
He decided to just head down the corridor.
He was hoping they weren’t real guns. He was hoping that he could withstand the effects of whatever their weapons were.
He was hoping, above all else, that the men were so afraid of infection that they’d run away.
“I’m coming,” he said, loudly and clearly, announcing his intentions.
He put his hands down at his side and started running down the hallway, headed right toward the weapons that were aimed at him.
“Stop!” shouted both of the guards in unison.
5
Jamie
Jamie knew that she should have been happy to be alive. She should have been ecstatic.
But she wasn’t.
She was terrified.
And devastated by the loss of Mia.
And disgruntled, as if she was in a horrible mood. She was mad at Matt, most of all. He seemed not to care about the losses of Mia and Damian. He seemed not to care how many around them were dead and dying. He seemed, in fact, oblivious to it all.
And that made her mad.
But right now, there were bigger things to worry about than how she felt about Matt.
“Aren’t you going to slow down?” she said.
They were rapidly approaching the pickup truck, which was parked lengthways across the highway.
“I think we should be able to get around it. We’ll have just two tires on the shoulder there.”
“There isn’t much of a shoulder,” said Judy.
“I’ll be careful,” said Matt.
“Why don’t you slow down, though?” said Jamie, unable to hide the irritation in her voice.
Matt shot her yet another look that seemed to say, “What’s your problem with me?” before saying, “I don’t want to go too slow. We don’t know who’s waiting for us there.”
“Not to mention what they’re capable of,” added Judy.
Matt slowed down. But only slightly. He didn’t seem to apply his foot to the brake. Just took his foot off the gas momentarily.
He’d already jerked the wheel, swerving into the dusty shoulder that hardly seemed to exist at all.
“Can you see anyone in the truck?”
“No. No one.”
The shoulder was rough. At the high speed they were going, around 50 mph, the sedan bumped horribly.
Jamie bounced in her seat. She felt like her head might smash into the roof. The seatbelt snapped her back in place.
A loud sound outside the car startled her.
“A tire blew out,” said Judy, right as Jamie felt her side of the car suddenly sink down.
The view out the windshield now looked lopsided.
“Aren’t you going to stop?” said Jamie, hearing the panic in her own voice.
“Not a chance,” said Matt, speaking quickly and forcefully. His foot was on the gas now. The engine was roaring.
The sedan was speeding up.
There was a bad sound coming from the wheel.
“We’re riding on the rim already,” said Judy. “I can hear it. Metal on metal.”
“It was a trap,” said Matt, glancing in the rearview mirror.
Jamie spun around in her seat.
Two men were emerging from the pickup truck. They must have been hiding somewhere below the windows. Each wore something on his face.
At first, Jamie thought they wore simple masks; the way thieves wore ski masks during robberies to hide their iden
tity.
But then she saw that they were ventilators. Black protruding machines with sharp angles that were strapped to their mouths and noses. It made the men look like both machines and animals.
“They’ve got guns!” she said, spotting the long guns they had in their hands.
“Don’t stop!” said Judy.
“Not going to!” said Matt.
The engine was roaring. The men were quickly becoming smaller as they sped away.
“How long can we drive on the rim?” said Judy.
“As long as it’ll work,” said Matt. “We’re going fast... we’re going to bend the rim... How much farther is your cousin’s place?”
“We’re not going to make it there on a rim.”
“You’ve got a spare?”
“Yeah. In the trunk. Under the carpeting.”
“Good. We’ll go as far as we can on this one. Then we’ll change it.”
They drove for about two minutes in tense silence with only the sounds of the rushing air and the rim on the pavement. The tire had torn to shreds and flown away in strips.
Jamie, who was keeping an eye on the road behind them, spotted the pickup first, when it was barely more than a dot on the horizon.
“They’re following us,” she said, speaking tersely, as quickly as she could.
She felt nerves overtaking her. She felt anxiety coming up like a gulp in her throat, like a horrible sensation that she couldn’t get rid of.
Matt’s eyes flickered up to the rearview mirror. Judy spun around in her seat.
“Shit,” muttered Judy.
“You sure it’s them?”
“Definitely,” said Jamie.
The truck was coming at them fast. Much faster than they were driving themselves.
“Can’t you go any faster?” said Jamie.
“Not on this rim,” said Matt. “It’s not safe.”
The sedan already felt unstable, as if it might spin out at any moment, or tip just a little too far in one direction and flip all the way over. Realistically, it would take something more than driving in a straight line to do that kind of damage. But it felt like it could happen. The sedan, after all, was still tilted crazily in the direction of the busted tire.
Last Pandemic (Book 2): Escape The City Page 3
