Dead Last (Vol. 1): Dead Last

by Quaranta, Marc

  "I'm doing alright. I wanted to ask you something."

  I waited for her question, but she never asked. I felt like a psychiatrist that was beginning with a new patient. She was very hesitant to tell me how I felt and I just sat there waiting. Listening. Drinking out of my cup of very bland coffee.

  "Okay...what's on your mind?"

  "Do you think my dad is dying? Do you think it's because of what's out there?"

  She seemed to be doing okay until she looked outside. Once her eyes met the window, a tear started to fall down her cheek. Followed by another one. Just like that, she was crying. She looked at me and tried to force a smile out of herself and wipe away the tears, but they just kept falling.

  "Oh, sweetie. I'm sure your dad is going to be okay. Your mom is out there right now doing everything she can to make your dad feel better."

  "Yea, but, now she's out there, too. If that is what made dad sick, she's an idiot for going out there."

  "She's trying to help, Elyse."

  "She should be here," she blurted.

  I could tell that Elyse wasn't as scared or sad as I first originally thought. Instead, she was angry. She was really angry with Emily for leaving the family when Sam was so sick. I think she doubted Emily. Elyse didn't think that her mom was going to come through for her and her dad.

  "Elyse..." I paused. I tried to remember what it was like when I was that young. A girl in high school. Drama was always blown out of proportion. Whether it was sports, girls, boys, school work, dances, it didn't matter. High school had a way of magnifying any problem.

  "Elyse, your mom is doing her best to save your dad. There was nothing in here that was going to help him. Water was only going to do so much. He needs medicine."

  "And what if she doesn't find what he needs? What if she can't bring anything back? What if she doesn't come back?"

  "She's with Kurt. Kurt will bring her back."

  "It's already starting to get dark, Haylea. They should have been back yet! My dad is cramped up in that office like he's some sort of stray dog. This isn't right."

  I looked outside and the sun was already beginning to set. The bright blue sky was beginning to turn orange. In a matter of minutes, it would be dark, then black. I looked down at my watch and counted the time of when Kurt and the others left. Time didn't really matter anymore. We judged our days and meal times by the sun. There was no difference between one in the afternoon and two in the afternoon. There was morning, afternoon, and night. That was all.

  But I checked the hours and counted the difference. They had been gone over two hours. The hospital was no more than a half hour away. It would be about a one hour round trip, but with no police, with no streets signs, or speed limit, it should have taken them sooner.

  I have no idea what Emily wanted at the hospital. Maybe when they got there they saw more equipment and medicine that needed to be brought back. They were probably trying to take as much back with them as they could. But, still, they should be back.

  I quickly made my way over to the window and stared at the street, Network Way, leading into the station parking lot. There was a building blocking my view of 465, the highway that lead to the Network Way exit. I tried to look around it, but my slight back and forth movement wasn't going to get me around the building.

  I watched the street hoping that their white van would come out from around the corner and they'd be back. That they'd have all the equipment, more importantly than that nobody would be missing. There wouldn't be a mistake made like that last time Travis, Jack, and Nick went out. Nobody else would die.

  But there was no van. Nobody was coming. They were still out there. I waited and waited, but couldn't watch anymore. I turned away and came to see Elyse was standing a few steps behind me...with Heather.

  "Are they back?" Heather asked.

  "No, they're not," I didn't look her in the eyes. I lowered my head and walked right by her, but they followed.

  "Do you think we should be worried? They've been gone a long time, Haylea."

  "No, Heather, we shouldn't. They've got a lot of stuff to pack up and it's a half hour ride. They're fine."

  "I'm just saying," I didn't let Heather finish.

  "Shut up!" I yelled at her. "They are fine. If something happened, it's only delaying them. They will be back. You're going to worry everyone, Heather. So, if you don't mind, keep your worries to yourself and just shut the fuck up."

  Heather looked to Elyse for some words of encouragement, but didn't get any. She smiled at me like someone does when they've realized they are out matched. She turned away slowly and walked down the hallway. I couldn't tell if any tears were coming down her face as she walked away, I don't think there were any, but I hoped there were. I hoped that I broke her spirit and that she would go sit in a corner for a few hours...even a few days. I didn't want to see her. I was already stressed out and seeing her pretty face put me in a worse mood.

  "Elyse," I began. I could see that she was about to walk away from me, but I didn't want to leave our conversation in such a dark place. She just wanted some sort of reassurance that people could come through for her. That not everyone was as hopeless as she thought. "I tell you what. You were right about your dad. He deserves better treatment than what we've given him."

  "Yea?" she said with a smile.

  "There's a big office around the corner of that wall. It's the production manager's office. We'll get some blankets and pillows together and build a bed on top of his desk. We'll clear out the rest of the stuff and leave enough room for the equipment your mom brings back. Does that sound okay?"

  "Yes. Thank you."

  "Okay. Go get Travis and Joe and ask them to start doing that. I'm gonna finish my coffee and I'll be over to help."

  "Thank you so much, Haylea," she turned, but then came back, "Can I tell dad?"

  "No, I'll let him know. Nobody should be going in that room anyways. But I'll let him know."

  "Thank you."

  She walked away in much better spirits than when she first started the conversation. Putting her dad in a different room just to make him more comfortable wasn't going to solve any problem. It wasn't going to all of a sudden inject more health into his body and have him back on his feet by the end of the day. I realized how little a gesture has to be in our new lives to make someone feel better.

  XXX

  Kurt Elkins

  I awoke in a chair that I didn’t remember seating myself in. My eyes felt like the weight of the world was keeping them closed. It took all my energy to spread them open, and only one opened…slightly. I probably looked like a fighter that lasted 12 rounds with Mike Tyson. I had one eye closed and the other partially open. They felt swollen. My vision was blurry like I had spent a whole night drinking. I couldn’t make out faces. I couldn’t count the amount of people in the room, but I could see that it was dark. There was very little light in the room, but still my eyes burned.

  I finally got my eyes open to see that there were three guys standing in the room. They huddled over by the door chatting like a couple schoolboys hiding a secret. One of them looked at me and I could tell by his antsy posture that he probably wanted to knock me out again. When I saw his eyes move over to the other side of the room, I followed his gaze.

  On the other side of the room, sitting up against the wall, were Jack and Emily. Their hands appeared to be tied behind their back but they didn’t seem to be hurt. They seemed to be quite coherent and aware of what was going on. Jack looked comfortable. Like he was at home. Emily looked scared. She looked at me like I had spent the last few minutes dead. But they looked better than I felt.

  I opened my eyes wider so that they could adjust to the dark room, but it hurt my head to hold them open for so long. I went to reach up to rub them, but I couldn’t lift my arm. I looked down to see that my wrists were tied to the legs of the chair. Each rope was so tight that my wrist was beginning to turn red and purple. I struggled in the chair. Flexing my arms and trying to push o
ff with my legs, but I couldn’t move.

  “Sit still!” one of the guys shouted to me. He took a dramatic step forward but turned away when I stopped moving.

  “Are you guys okay?” I asked my friends.

  “We’re fine,” Jack responded calmly.

  “Are you okay?” Emily asked with a loud voice.

  “Shut up!” the same guy yelled to us.

  I could see out of the corner of my eye that Emily cracked. She looked away from us all and her shoulders began bouncing up and down like boiling water. She was crying silently and there was nothing I could do about it. Jack, on the other hand, was acting no different. He was calm. He looked at the guy yelling at us with a strange smile on his face. Like someone that was being abused but actually liked the way the pain felt. I couldn’t tell if he was losing it or if he was trying to play some sort of mind games.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said to the guy.

  “It’s no use,” Jack said to me.

  “Listen, man. We’ve got very sick people that need our help. They need this medicine.”

  “You’ve got more people? Where? Do they know you’re here?” the man asked as he walked up to me slowly. The other two guys stormed out of the room quickly and left us with him.

  This guy was tall and thin. He wore a white t-shirt that was turning an off yellow. He jeans were stained and ripped at the left shin. He was cleanly shaven. I couldn’t tell, from my blurry vision or from the dark room, but I didn’t think he was white. I think he was more…Mexican, but he didn’t have an accent so I didn’t know.

  “Yes,” I answered, “They know we’re here.”

  “Where are they? Where did you people come from?”

  “Down at- “

  “Kurt!” Jack screamed at me.

  “You shut up or I’ll shut you up!” the man pointed at Jack.

  “It’s okay, Jack. Really. We can trust them.”

  I tried to comfort him, but he wasn’t buying it. He stared at me with rage filled eyes and shook his head. He looked over at Emily, who was still broken up, and then looked away. He felt I was condemning everyone to death by giving up this information. He didn’t understand what I was doing, though.

  “We’ve all made a shelter down at the City Bank.”

  “The bank? Why?”

  “A few of us were working when all of this happened. Others were customers and some just made it in before the attack. We didn’t want to leave. There was one way in and one way out. It felt safe.”

  “You said someone in your camp is sick…are they sick from the air?”

  Before I could answer, another man interrupted us. He cleared his throat as he stepped into the room. He was a black guy that looked like an offensive lineman. He wasn’t too heavy, but was probably approaching 275 lbs. He had big shoulders and a mustache. When the guy questioning me turned around to the bigger guy, he nodded his head and left the room.

  The black guy walked over to me and kneeled down in front of me. He looked into my eyes like he could get my entire life story from them. Once he figured it out, he looked over to Emily and then looked down to the floor like he actually felt bad for putting her through that. When he looked at Jack, though, he smiled. He didn’t care about Jack…hell, I didn’t care about Jack.

  “Where did you guys come from?”

  “I told him,” I said to him.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well that’s the truth,” I looked at him without blinking.

  “Is it?” he asked. I nodded to him and it caused him to stand up. He shook his head in what looked like disappointment. He stepped outside of the room and then came back carrying a bag. It was one of the bags that we brought with us to pack up the equipment. He tossed it at my feet and allowed the moment to sink in.

  “Banks giving their customers WTIX bags now?” he asked pointing to the bag. “Yea, I didn’t think so. Not the best first impression, my friend. Now. How many of you are there at the television station?”

  After a moment, I realized I had no choice but to tell the truth, “There’s about 15 of us. Four kids.”

  “Yea…we’ve got some kids too,” he leaned over and picked the bag up off the ground.

  They must have looked into it while I was unconscious because it was unzipped. He looked inside and then zipped it back up and placed it to my side. The first thing I thought was that he was giving us the supplies. That meant he was going to let us go. But I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

  “Look, I’m sorry I lied about where we were staying. We just can’t have any more surprises. No more company.”

  “We’ve had our share, too,” he said to me.

  “I’m sure. We had three stragglers show up last night. Things got ugly real quick,” I confessed.

  “Stragglers. That what you call them?” he asked me.

  “Yea, I guess that is the word we settled on.”

  “Haha…stragglers…we’ve got a lot of stragglers upstairs. All over the place really. I’m surprised you even made it in here and I’m a hell of a lot surprised you made it back from the fourth floor.”

  “Well…we didn’t see anybody. We’re survivors, I guess.”

  “Yea…I guess I can see that.”

  He reached over to me, which startled me at first thinking he was going to hit me, but he was actually just checking my wrists from the tight rope. He yanked at the rope to give my wrists a little bit more breathing room, but that was it.

  “I have to ask you something. I can’t make you tell me the truth, but I would appreciate it if you did. Think of it as your ticket out of here.”

  “With our stuff,” Jack jumped in.

  “Most of it,” he said.

  “What do you need to know?” I asked. He waited a few precious moments to ask.

  “You said you’ve got someone sick back at the station, that you were bringing all of this stuff to help him…who’s going to help him? Who knows all this stuff?”

  I didn’t know if I should tell him the truth. If they knew that Emily was the mastermind behind all the medical stuff, they might try to snatch her up or worse kill her for the stuff that she knew. For all we knew, these could have been the guys that set fire to all the neighborhoods. These could have been bad guys.

  “Well,” but I didn’t feel that this guy was a bad guy. He seemed genuine and sincere. He seemed good. Honestly, he seemed like me.

  “It’s her,” I said pointing to Emily.

  “Her? You?” he looked at her. She was still crying, but she looked at our questioner and nodded to him. “What’s your name?”

  Again, after a moment of hesitation, she answered, “Emily Clark.”

  “Emily Clark…are you a doctor?”

  “Yes, I am…I was.”

  “You are. I’ve learned that being a doctor is the only profession that carried over to this world. You are a doctor.”

  “I am a doctor,” I could hear the terror in her voice. I think she was thinking the same thing I thought. Now that they know she’s a doctor, they may never let her leave.

  “My son is sick…he’s just an eight-year-old boy,” he began to tear up. He was just a father who was trying to protect his son in a world with no rules. “He’s just a boy, Emily. I’m all he’s got and I can’t help him. Please…”

  “Of course, I will,” she answered.

  “Oh, come the fuck on!” Jack exhaled in displeasure. “Look what they did to us!”

  “You came storming into our place with guns! We did what we had to do to survive!”

  “Then finish it! Use our guns and finish it! Put a bullet in each one of us!” Jack shouted.

  “No,” he said calmly. “We aren’t monsters. You want our supplies? We just want your help in return. There are a couple people that could use your help, Emily. After that you be on your way.”

  “Deal,” Emily said.

  “No deal,” I interrupted.

  “What? Kurt—”

  I didn’t let her finish, “No
, Jack is right.”

  “No. He is not,” Emily argued.

  “Yes, he is. Look what they did to us.”

  “We were just playing it smart. We had to prepare for anything,” he said.

  “And so do we,” I said. “She’s going to help out the people that need help. She’ll make sure they’re okay…but if you want your son to feel better…you bring him to WTIX. She’ll check him out there. Once he gets the medicine and the checkup that he needs, you leave the station and we pretend we never met.”

  The guy studied me like it was a poker game. He wanted to see what draw of cards I had. He tried to read me. Was I bluffing or playing hardball? Did I know what I was doing?

  “You’re in no position to make demands, friend. I’ll shoot you were you sit.”

  “And then your people die. And your kid dies. I’m in no position to make demands, but I’m making one. That should prove to you one thing and one thing only; I’m damn serious. If you don’t take us back to our station with our people, your son probably won’t make it to the end of the week. Do you really want to play those odds? You’ve asked for my trust, now I’m going to need yours too. How important is your son?”

  I think he was definitely threatened by that question. Of course, his son was important to him. Probably the most important person in the world, and I knew that. I just wanted to see how trustworthy he was. He took a long step toward me and got into my face. I could feel the heat coming from his face. He reached forward to me and I was waiting for him to hit me across the face or to plug a gun into my ribs…something.

  He cut the rope on my wrists with a pocketknife to free my hands.

  “He’s the most important thing in the world to me…don’t forget it. You help a couple of my people here, we go back to the station, and then you help my son. Deal?”

  He reached his hand out to me but before I could shake it I had to make another stipulation, “Our guns.”

  “What?”

  “You took the guns that we had. I want those back before we leave this room.”

  “My guys have plenty of guns, too.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if we took ours back,” now it was me reaching out my hand waiting for him to shake it.