Jared couldn’t have that—not today. Maybe tomorrow when he wanted to scratch himself to death after the rash took hold, he might feel differently, but, for now, he would keep a lid on his suspicions.
“Okay, so is it like ivy—the oil gets in your pores?” John asked, already starting to feel itchy.
“Yeah, if we had a cold shower and soap, it may help, but—” Barry shrugged.
“We don’t have enough fucking water to wash up.” John swore.
“I’m pretty sure you can get it from rubbing against gear that has the oil on it,” Jared added.
“Dirt,” John said as he grabbed his pack. “Rub the dirt into your clothes and gear. It may absorb some of the oil, like they do in auto shops with oil spills. They use sawdust, but this is basically the same concept.” The three men spent the next fifteen minutes dusting up their gear along with their clothing and exposed flesh. When they were finished, the men set to eating a meager meal and taking in some water.
“We’re gonna need water soon,” Jared said, holding up his water bottle, inspecting the waterline.
“Tomorrow we should start to head downhill into Portola Valley. We can find a pond or a swimming pool pretty easily there,” Barry reminded them.
The trio spent the next several hours speaking in hushed tones about how they planned on getting through the more populated area of Portola Valley and into Woodside. John used every ounce of discipline he’d acquired over his life not to start scratching every time he felt an irregularity on any area of his flesh. He knew it was mental at this point, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like there were a thousand ants trekking about his body.
Chapter 15
Jared drew the short stick during their evening ritual and was predictably relegated to stand the last watch. When the time came for Jared’s watch, he dragged himself out of the warm sleeping bag and pulled on his shoes. He didn’t walk around for fear of making noise and stumbling through more poison oak. Instead, he opted to sit, shiver in the cold night air, and listen for any sign of danger. As the sun crept up and over Mount Diablo and Mission Peak off in the distant East Bay, he rousted the other two sleeping men. When John sat up in the dim morning light, Jared nearly gasped. John’s face was swollen on the left side from the corner of his lip to his left eye. His left eye looked as though he had been punched and, for some reason, had only swelled and not turned black and blue.
As John extracted himself from the sleeping bag, he began tearing away at different body parts. Jared could see the reddish rash on his face and neck and could only assume it continued down to his nether regions by the way the poor soul was acting. John stopped and looked up at Jared just as Jared tried to change his expression.
“Bro, it’s on my balls,” John hissed. “Did you get it?”
Jared nodded his head as he rubbed his wrist where a two-inch reddened line ran towards his forearm. “Yeah, but not like you, man.” Jared cringed, a guilty look washing across his face.
Barry climbed out of his sleeping bag and stretched as he looked over at the two other men huddled close and whispering in hushed tones. His eyes stopped on John’s face, and his mouth dropped partially open. “Oh boy, you got it good, man.” Barry chortled.
John looked up at Barry with a look that meant he needed to leave it alone. “This don’t change a thing. How are your feet?”
Barry gathered himself, licking his dry lips. “I’ll change socks and redo the moleskin—should be good to go.”
John’s jaw jutted out, showing his determination as he moved his head in agreement. He was putting on a good show for the boys, but if he were honest with himself, he was about to lose control and scratch himself to death. He was inclined to take his pants off so he would have unfettered access to every part of his body that was begging to be scratched and torn at.
Instead, John remained internally frantic while maintaining an air of calm on the outside. The men finished breakfast, packed up the sleeping gear, and moved out of the poison-oak-infested brush into an open grassy area. At one point they passed a sign indicating they were transitioning through the Windy Hill Preserve. Barry knew exactly where they were and assured John they needed to continue moving north but needed to transition down towards the flatlands.
The three men picked their way through the hills, trying to stay away from the poison oak that was prevalent in the coastal range, but not so much back at the ranch house where they’d left Calvin, Shannon, and Essie. The coastal mountains were far wetter due to the constant presence of fog fed by the great Pacific Ocean. Out east where the ranch house was located, the environment was much drier, making it harder for poison oak to thrive like it did out west.
The distance between the two locations was no more than forty miles as the crow flies, which was par for the course in the Bay Area. The Bay Area was chock-full of microclimates ranging from dry arid climates to wet cold and foggy climates like the ones found in Pacifica or South San Francisco. The changes between areas today wasn’t as evident due to the reduced speeds in which people were able to travel. When all of the cars were working and a person could drive from Palo Alto to Pacifica in less than an hour, a person could experience the stark differences in climate. Palo Alto could be sunny T-shirt and shorts weather while Pacifica would require a jacket and long pants.
Today, Jared and his two friends didn’t have that problem; instead they carried with them a treasure trove of other issues, obstacles, and headaches that manifested in various troublesome forms. Jared rubbed his itching wrist as he walked, wondering how John wasn’t going crazy with the rash that seemingly covered most of his body. As Jared was mulling over in his head how much self-control it must be taking John not to show the true level of discomfort he was in, John suddenly broke into a sprint.
Jared shot a look over his shoulder at an equally bewildered Barry before starting after John. John raced through knee-high grass towards a clump of oak trees he passed under without slowing even an iota. Jared followed a bit, slowed down and, when he reached the trees, saw the reason for John’s sprint. Ahead was a small pond, probably no larger than an acre in size. John reached the shore and shed his pack. By the time Jared reached John, the man had already removed half his clothing. John never stopped undressing as he turned to Jared.
“Set up security,” was all John said as he stripped off the last of his clothes.
Once John was fully naked, Jared’s mouth dropped at the sight of all the blisters covering his body. Keeping his clothes in hand, John nearly ran into the muddy pond. Once he was in deeper water, he disappeared beneath the surface for what felt like forever to Jared. When John resurfaced, he was covered in the mud he was pulling from the silty pond bottom. He rubbed the smooth pond silt all over his tortured body before disappearing beneath the pond’s surface again.
John broke the water’s surface, covered in silt again, only this time he was rubbing the mud throughout all his clothing. Muddy water ran from John’s beard, leaving streaks down his chest, where it washed away the mud and exposed blistered flesh. No one spoke as John worked at decontaminating his clothing. When John concluded the mud-scrubbing disinfection of his outer garments, he stepped gingerly with his bare feet out of the pond, where he laid the soaking wet clothes next to his gear. Without hesitation, John wheeled, seeking asylum from the raging urge to tear at his own flesh, and fled back into the silt of the little pond. The cold water wasn’t exactly what he thought it would be in regard to relieving the wildly aggravating rash’s symptoms, but John felt a psychological relief in knowing he was purging his body and clothing of the poison oak’s unwelcome oils.
John remained in the mud bath for thirty minutes before stepping out and getting dressed. Walking in wet clothing, not to mention wet shoes, was not what he would have picked as his favorite thing to do, but there were worse scenarios he could imagine. In the past, John had been covered in sand and forced to march during several oceanic training evolutions. This always caused chafing, which, if left u
nchecked, could result in some real medical problems.
There was always a fine line between seeking medical attention and being called weak. If an operator sought medical attention for an ailment, he ran the risk of being taken out of the battle rotation, and no one in the Special Missions Unit wanted that. John almost laughed to himself considering his current predicament. He didn’t have the option of checking into a medical clinic, so making the tough choice to refuse medical help was made for him.
The three men hadn’t gone more than two hundred yards when John held up a closed fist—signaling Jared and Barry to stop—and dropped to a knee. Ahead, they could see the roofline of a rather large home.
“Here we go,” Barry murmured with an air of apprehension.
John turned to him, twitching his shoulders questioningly.
Barry leaned closer. “We are now in the land of billionaires—ah, sorry, the land of former billionaires. You’re about to see what these idiots did with their wealth.”
John shot Jared a disdainful look. “Let’s see if these idiots have a pool so we can fill our water bottles.”
John led the men to the property, which was “extra” in every sense of the modern use of the term. The front yard was easily two acres of crushed granite formed in a large circular driveway. John was sure a semitruck could have made a U-turn without coming close to jackknifing. The front of the residence was eighty percent covered in wisteria, and the front entrance was made of two massive carved-wood double doors. There were no cars in the driveway, and the two front doors were closed. From what John could tell, it didn’t appear anyone was occupying the modern mansion.
The men slowly moved around the enormous home, trying to access the rear yard, but came up against a ten-foot stone wall with an even taller gate constructed of heavy lumber that surrounded a tennis court. Jared and company skirted the tennis court, finally gaining access to the backyard where the stone wall ended and a deer fence took over. Much to everyone’s relief, there was a large rectangular pool filled nearly to the top with greenish water. Jared shimmied out of his pack and retrieved his water-purification pump. One by one, each man filled their water containers, using Jared’s purification pump, while the other two men watched the house and surrounding area for any sign of maleficence.
Once their water bottles were topped off with filtered pool water, the three moved off the mansion’s property and continued north. Barry’s feet were doing much better, so John decided to avoid the roadways. They cut across roads, but never followed them as they forged their way straight through the town of Portola Valley. Many times, they either passed straight through residential properties or moved around them, but always headed north. Barry told the two other men that, at some point, they would hit a road called Alpine Road, and as soon as they did, they needed to follow it east till Barry recognized a cross street.
Barry told them that once he found a street he recognized, he would be oriented, and they could go straight to Dwight’s house. Barry estimated they would be there before day’s end. A little after 1300 hours, the trio found Alpine Road, and fifteen minutes after that, Barry directed them onto Portola Road heading north. Portola Road ran directly through a highly populated area, forcing Jared and his friends to walk in various front yards in order to stay off the road.
This style of movement proved to be a royal pain in the neck, but was a better alternative than walking down the middle of the road and getting ambushed by someone who could see them coming from a mile away. There were enough trees, bushes, and vehicles to mask much of the group’s movements, helping ease John’s anxiety about being in a heavily (or formerly heavily) populated area. The trio hadn’t seen a soul but could smell death everywhere and figured most of it was emanating from the houses along Portola Road.
Barry directed John down an adjacent street, which wound up into the foothills leading to the West. “Not too much farther,” Barry wheezed, the exertion from the last few days obviously taxing his body, which was not conditioned for this level of physical activity.
Barry’s feet didn’t seem to be bothering him much, but still, John harped on him every hour to get into dry socks and evaluate whether the moleskin was holding strong. If a piece was peeling even in the slightest, John would have Barry tear the entire piece off and reapply new material.
“This is it,” Barry croaked as the trio came upon the grand driveway complete with opulent wrought-iron gates and a stone wall that stood easily eight feet tall. The wall was a double stack wall, which Dwight had spared no expense on having built. A Galloway-dyke-style wall would have served the same purpose and been much cheaper, but Dwight insisted on the very best.
“Does the guy have guns, and is he the type to shoot first and ask questions later?” John wondered out loud as he squinted in the bright afternoon sun.
“I should probably go in and talk to him. Before all this, he didn’t like people coming to the house, so I’m guessing now he’s really not into taking guests—and yes, he has guns,” Barry informed them.
John looked at Jared for any input, but Jared only shrugged indifferently, telling John this was Barry’s guy, so Barry probably new best how to make contact.
“Okay, you go in there and talk him out. If there is any shooting, Jared and I are coming in, so make sure you let us know where you are. Holler and we’ll do the same. Don’t want any of us shooting each other,” John instructed, a look of seriousness etched across his bearded face.
Jared and John assisted Barry over the stone wall and then followed after him.
Barry turned as the two men dropped to the ground inside the estate, a look of concern on his face. “You guys can’t come with me.”
“We aren’t,” John said. “But we will be closer in case this Dwight cat isn’t as friendly as you remember—you remember Lando, don’t you?” John said with a sly smirk.
Barry immediately got the movie reference and smiled broadly. For a moment, the competitive tension between John and Barry disappeared as they bonded over this movie reference. Jared, not being the type to watch many movies before the solar flare, was the odd man out and did not understand the reference.
Barry’s smile faded as he thought about his friend not being so friendly. Slowly he turned and started up the driveway. A few moments later, John and Jared heard Barry calling out in the distance.
“Dwight! Hey, Dwight, it’s me, Barry!” the man bleated in the distance.
Jared waited for gunfire, but none came. Barry gave a few more calls, and then there was silence on the property. Jared sat next to John, listening intently, trying to discern whether he could hear voices coming from the direction of the house. He heard only the breeze passing across the leaves in the surrounding trees. Jared saw John look at his watch several times as they waited, and could tell he was getting either impatient or worried. If Barry went up to this friend of his and got himself killed, this entire trip would have been for nothing. Jared thought about Devon and the two girls and reconsidered this thought. Maybe it wasn’t for naught. People were fast becoming extinct, so the more useful bodies they could bring into their growing community, the better.
Jared shifted his weight to the opposite butt cheek and reflected on how the world had operated just a few months ago. No one planned communities by determining how many men and women would be part of the population. Now, Jared felt he had to consider this factor since humans were dying at a far greater rate than they were being born. Sure, babies would be born at a fairly normal rate for eight months or so after the event, but many of those births would result in the death of the parents, the child, or some combination of the two.
Even after the solar flare, Jared couldn’t see people in America forcing men and women into marriages in order to sustain or elevate the population, and pondered whether this was why families in less civilized countries still practice this tradition. Maybe it wasn’t so barbaric; possibly it was for the survival of their race. A practice to ensure people were producing the most precio
us commodity of all—more people. John kicked Jared in the thigh, breaking his thought process.
“What the fuck are you doing?” John hissed.
Jared shook his head as he returned to the here and now. “Thinking, man.”
John eased his attitude and laughed softly at Jared’s candid response. “’Bout what?”
Jared just stared back at John, not wishing to answer truthfully. John raised his eyebrows to draw the answer out of his partner.
“About babies and arranged marriages,” Jared answered sheepishly.
John hadn’t the slightest clue how to respond to that. He’d been running through scenarios ranging from Barry being shot to a peaceful walk up to the house, not babies and arranged marriages. It would be a high-end miracle, like a walking-on-water-type of miracle, if they all made it back to the ranch house with everyone. This kept John’s mind focused on tactical affairs and not thinking about babies and arranged marriages. John’s failed attempt to fathom how Jared could be thinking of such off-the-wall topics was interrupted by Barry’s voice.
“Hey, guys, come on up the driveway.”
“’Bout fucking time,” John said as he climbed to his feet and walked out onto the driveway. “Watch yourself though. Don’t know if he was forced to say that,” John said, wishing they had set up a password or at least a distress signal of some sort.
Jared stepped gingerly out on the pavement and peered up the narrow roadway towards the house and what he hoped would be a friendly welcome from a man smart enough to help them with their great many problems.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 11
