Last Pandemic (Book 2): Escape The City

by Westfield, Ryan

  “If they’re all armed, we’re screwed,” said Sean.

  “Yeah,” said Joe, nodding. “But it’s at least worth trying, right?”

  Joe put the truck in gear and put his foot on the gas, easing it along the bumpy terrain toward the group of cars that were parked on his property.

  7

  Sara

  Sara was home from college to visit her father, whose heart had been acting up again.

  They were supposed to take him to the hospital, but the news of the virus had hit.

  The whole family had been there, ready to sit by his hospital bed and tell him jokes to try to cheer him up.

  The medical prognosis, they all knew, wasn’t likely to be good. It wasn’t like they were ready for him to die, but they were ready to get some bad news. They were ready to support him and each other.

  Sara came from a big family and they did everything together. When she’d moved to college, many aunts and uncles had shown up unannounced at the dorm room. Ostensibly they were there to help her move in, but they’d ended up partying with her dorm mates until the early hours of the morning.

  Sara had arrived home in her beat-up little Honda, loaded down with textbooks. She had a term paper due the following week and she knew that she wouldn’t get it done, not with her father in the condition he was in.

  The house had been packed with relatives. Since family was so important, they’d all taken the day off work, expecting to spend it at the hospital. They’d watched the news of the virus on the TV together and realized that the hospital would be a bad place to be in such times. It’d be overrun, not to mention simply dangerous in terms of the risk of infection.

  Her father had gotten worse throughout the afternoon and eventually it became clear that he was either going to die at home or stand a chance of living at the hospital.

  So the various uncles and aunts gathered together and took him to the hospital. They insisted that Sara, her mother, and a few other assorted younger relatives stay at home. They said that it would be safer there.

  The cell phones had gone offline at that point. So someone had found a good walkie-talkie. Who knew why they had it, but it was one of the good ones, with a long range. One had gone to the hospital and one had stayed at her parents’ home.

  It didn’t take long to realize that her father, her aunts, and her uncles weren’t going to make it to the hospital.

  They’d held the button down on the walkie-talkie when the cops pulled them over. They’d held the button down through the whole conversation. They hadn’t been more than a few blocks from the house.

  Sara had listened to the whole conversation. She’d listened as the cop told them they needed to head to the quarantine area. She’d listened as they’d argued and pleaded with the cop, explaining the severity of her father’s heart condition.

  The cop wasn’t having any of it. He’d detained them all with zip ties and held them there until the small van came by and gathered them all up, taking them to some old gym.

  Sara had kept up a conversation with her favorite aunt, who reported to her what was happening.

  And then, slowly, the symptoms had started to appear.

  Sara knew what was happening. It was impossible not to. She heard the screams and cries of desperation in the people around them.

  She spoke with her father one last time. He died from heart failure before the virus got him.

  And then, one by one, the virus claimed her aunts and uncles. How could it not? They were exposed to hundreds of people there and someone was obviously carrying the virus.

  Sara hadn’t been able to put the walkie-talkie away. Her own mother had begged her to. Her sister had begged her to. But Sara, horror-struck, had wanted to listen all the way until the end.

  It wasn’t morbid curiosity. It was love. It was loneliness. It was imagining a future in which her huge family, the one that had always been present for her, was suddenly gone.

  She’d never speak to them again.

  Ever.

  They were dead.

  They’d bled out from every orifice.

  She’d heard it all.

  Her aunt had described it until she’d started vomiting blood.

  It had been beyond horrible.

  But at least she and her mother and her sister were safe. Safe at home. They could stay there, holed up, until all this madness was over.

  And then the unthinkable had happened. Her mother had started to get sick. Then her sister.

  Soon enough, everyone in the house was obviously infected with the virus. Their veins were huge. Then they started bleeding. And dying.

  Everyone was dying except for Sara.

  She stayed with them, despite how horrible it was.

  What she’d seen happen to her family was burned in her mind. She’d never be able to forget it. And it felt as if she’d never be able to wash the blood off her clothes. She was soaked in it. In the blood of her family.

  She waited to die. She prayed to die. She begged to die.

  And yet somehow she was still alive.

  That’s when, just as she was beyond hope, she’d heard a voice on the walkie-talkie.

  He’d promised to come for her.

  But it had been a long time now and he hadn’t come. No one had come.

  She was alone. Alone with the bloody bodies of her immediate family. They weren’t going anywhere. They were staying right here.

  And so was she.

  She’d die with them.

  Even if, for some strange reason, she didn’t succumb to the virus, then she’d just wait until she starved to death.

  She wanted to go with them. Wherever her family had gone, she wanted to be there too. She didn’t want to be alone. She hated seeing the blank stares of her once-alive mother. She hated seeing the dead dumb stare from her sister and she hated the way her hands, when she clutched them, were cold to the touch.

  How long would it take for her to die of starvation?

  Too long. At least thirty days. A full month of waiting among the bodies.

  Would she die of dehydration sooner? She’d never heard of someone actually doing that intentionally. Maybe it wasn’t possible. Maybe the instincts would just kick in too hard and she’d head to the faucet in the kitchen.

  She didn’t want to wait.

  She just wanted to get it over with.

  She didn’t want to be there with the full knowledge of what had happened. It was too horrible.

  And it would only get worse.

  Without really thinking about what she was doing, she found herself in the kitchen, with the cupboard doors under the sink wide open.

  She was rummaging through the chemicals beneath the sink, half her attention on what she was doing; half focused on the sweet relief that dying would give her.

  Wasn’t there anything more poisonous under the sink?

  Her nerves had started to unwind. Was it her survival instinct kicking in? Her body was responding to the threat of suicide, starting to up the heart rate, starting to make her sweat, starting to give her second thoughts and a thousand doubts.

  Some of the doubts revolved around pain.

  What if she drank something that only caused her pain and injury? What if it didn’t kill her?

  There was a bottle of something. She didn’t understand what it was, not in her severely altered state of anxiety. She stared at the bright, enticing labels, meant to attract customers in the grocery-store aisles, but she couldn’t make any sense of the brand name.

  It was a big jug. White plastic. Big handle.

  She spun it around, looking for the minuscule text that listed the ingredients.

  She found it, but no matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t make any sense of the long chemical names.

  Why couldn’t it just list, “poison: causes death,” or something equally simple?

  Whatever. She had to try something. She couldn’t exist here one more moment.

  She glanced over once at the walkie
-talkie, which she’d dumped unceremoniously on the counter. Maybe it was a last ditch effort of part of her brain, looking for a way out of the pact that she’d made with herself.

  No luck. The walkie-talkie remained silent. No noise. No voices. No static. No promises.

  He wasn’t coming.

  He probably didn’t even exist. Maybe he was just a figment of her overstressed mind, her imagination having run down demented paths and become something else entirely.

  Or if he did exist, he was just as delusional as anyone else now. He had no hope of helping her.

  What had she been thinking, even talking to someone on that little radio?

  He wasn’t a relative. They were all dead. He was just a stranger.

  Strangers couldn’t be trusted. They were to be feared.

  She shuddered as some memories came flooding back to her. Memories of her assault, not so long ago. When had it been? Her first weekend at college, when she’d been out on the town with her new friends.

  It had been horrible. She didn’t like to think of the details.

  Her friends had abandoned her, running off into the night.

  They hadn’t really been her friends. Only in the loosest sense of the word, which was apparently how the word was used on modern American campuses.

  Shit.

  She didn’t want to think about this.

  She was stuck either in the present, which was horrible and bloody, or the past. Which wasn’t so great either.

  She hadn’t gotten over that assault.

  She’d never talked to anyone about it.

  She’d just kept quiet. She’d just been a good little girl.

  Time to end it all.

  She popped the lid violently off the jug. Held it up to her face.

  Held the opening up to her mouth.

  Caught a big whiff of the smell.

  The smell was revolting. Like liquid plastic, like burnt plastic, like the worst-smelling nail salon on the planet.

  She’d always hated getting her nails done. Couldn’t stand that smell.

  She turned her head away, feeling like she was about to vomit.

  But she didn’t.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  She couldn’t even drink it down.

  She was weak.

  She was just nothing but a victim. A victim of this horrible life.

  She stood up violently, wheeling around, her arms flailing through the kitchen. Things went flying.

  There it was. The knife.

  The long sharp knife that her father had used for over a decade to slice open fish and vegetables. He kept it good and sharp.

  The handle felt good in her hand.

  She knew how to do it.

  She knew which way to run the blade along her wrists.

  It hurt. But the pain felt good.

  It felt comforting.

  Rich hot blood soaked her arms and she smiled slightly as she sank to the floor.

  It was going to be all over.

  Soon enough.

  But the pain came bursting back through her.

  No.

  She didn’t want to die.

  She didn’t want this.

  She’d ruined it all.

  Her last-second regrets were just that. They were too late. Far too late.

  She’d soon join her family. She’d soon be covered in blood, just like they were.

  The linoleum tiles on the kitchen floor felt cool against her cheek. Her hair was somehow soaked in blood.

  It’d be over soon enough anyway.

  Her panic and will to live would soon fade away.

  Along with everything else.

  8

  Will

  “Stop where you are, sir!”

  “Why are you calling me sir?” shouted Will.

  No answer. The question made no sense.

  He knew they were terrified of him. He knew they were petrified of the virus.

  This terror that they felt was going to be Will’s weapon. His only weapon, really.

  He didn’t have to think about it.

  Something had come over him. A will to live. A will to push on.

  He gritted his teeth.

  He rushed forward. Down the hallway.

  “Stop!”

  “Sir!”

  They screamed out.

  They shot him with their security weapons. They weren’t real guns.

  But they still hurt like hell.

  Little tin-foil like contraptions shot out at him, propelled by the strange gun-like instruments that the guards held in their hands. The rigs were like little anchors that stuck to his skin. They were attached by cords or something similar.

  He’d seen these devices before, but only on TV. He knew they caused pain.

  And he felt pain.

  It was like electricity. Hell, it probably was electricity.

  It shot through him.

  He screamed out.

  He grabbed one of the little devices that was stuck through his pants. He grabbed it, felt the pain in his hand. Yanked it. Threw it to the floor.

  One was still stuck to him.

  “It’s not affecting him!”

  “What the hell?”

  Will didn’t know why he had such determination.

  But he did.

  The walkie-talkie conversation had awakened something inside him.

  The will to survive.

  And it was strong.

  He ran forward down the hall. Battling through the pain. Screaming out. His teeth clamped down so hard that it hurt.

  “Do something!”

  “It’s not affecting him! What should I do?”

  “Hit him with something!”

  “Shit. I wish they’d given us real guns.”

  Of course it was affecting him. He didn’t know if he could continue. But he somehow managed to do it.

  He’d reached the guards.

  There were beads of sweat running down his face.

  He was in agony. He’d never been in so much pain. He’d never even imagined that so much pain was possible.

  A sleek black nightstick shot out from somewhere. Smashed into his shoulder. Pain flared. But it was nothing compared to the electricity that was shooting through him.

  Suddenly, the electricity turned off.

  The pain didn’t vanish. But it was turned down.

  The nightstick shot out again at him. A big arc high in the air.

  Will reach up, trying to grab the nightstick. But it was too forceful. It just smashed right through his open hand and hit him, this time in the clavicle. Pain flared through him once again.

  “Tackle him or something! He’s a maniac!”

  “He could be infected!”

  They were scared of him. Terrified, even. He saw it on their faces. They thought that they were going to die. And for all he knew, they were. How would he know whether or not he could infect people, even though he was apparently immune? He didn’t. He wasn’t an immunologist. He wasn’t an expert in viruses.

  “Shoot him with the thing again!”

  He did. The little gizmo shot out again and attached to Will. This time it stuck on his neck.

  Pain flared through him. The electricity shot through him.

  His body started seizing. He was moving uncontrollably, as if he were obliged to participate in some kind of demented, devilish dance.

  He was flopping around now, having fallen to the floor. He was feeling sick. Horribly nauseous. A churning in his stomach.

  Vomiting. He couldn’t control it. It just started coming up. He’d been zapped by the stun gun contraption for too long.

  “Shit!”

  “Get away from him. He’s going to infect us.”

  “But we can’t let him get out.”

  “Screw it. Come on.”

  The two male security guards fled down the hallway.

  Will lay there in horrible pain, vomit all over him, but the electricity had stopped. The stun gun appartus was no lo
nger activated.

  Slowly, the minutes passed, and he began to feel a little better.

  He got up slowly. Tried to brush some of the vomit off himself. But it was too liquid. It was just adding to the stains. Blood and vomit. He peeled the little device off his skin.

  He didn’t think to take the stun guns with him, but he did grab the black shiny police baton that lay on the floor. He held it up and swung it gingerly through the air, testing it out. It felt good. Solid. He hadn’t known that they were still being made. He’d thought that everything had gone the way of the ultra-high-tech devices, the collapsible or foldable batons that zapped you.

  He was on his feet. He was still alive. There was residual pain. But it wasn’t going to kill him.

  He made his way through the hallways, along the corridors. He took random turns, not knowing where he was going except that he was getting out of the building.

  He saw no one.

  No more security guards.

  No more survivors.

  No more dead. He’d left them behind in the gymnasium.

  He felt like a rat in a maze.

  It seemed to take him forever to get out.

  But he did get out.

  He pushed through the double doors that were, thankfully, unlocked, and found himself standing in an empty street.

  Will was disoriented. Confused.

  He walked into the middle of the street. Hands on his head. Looking around. Gasping for breath.

  Starting to panic.

  Then he remembered. Remembered Sara on the walkie-talkie. He could get to her. She wasn’t that far away.

  Somehow, he wound his way through the streets until he was standing in front of her house.

  She’d described the house to him. He knew this was the one. It stood on its own. A small thingbuilt of that faux-adobe material. Beige in color.

  It stood apart from the other nearby buildings. The yard was crowded with all sorts of things. An old truck sat there, the kind of little pickup that had been popular in the early ’90s. It was all rusted out, which was unusual in this area. With the low humidity, not a lot of vehicles had rust on them.

  This was the house.

  He strode forward purposefully.

  Stood on the front stoop in front of the door.