It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart

by Napier, Barry

  Paul made his way back downstairs, made a point to not look at poor Mrs. Florence, and stepped out into a sunny early summer afternoon where the dead greeted him silently.

  Chapter 10

  Private Dean Westerly had been on his feet, carrying his rifle for nearly three hours when he heard the sounds of puking somewhere behind him. He tried to ignore it and keep his attention on the highway ahead of him but it was difficult. Dean, along with about twenty other Private First and Second Class soldiers were lined across State Route 5, standing behind barricades of wooden sawhorses and sandbags.

  Dean knew that at least a dozen other soldiers further into New York had gotten sick on the way to the mission site and died on the way. And while Dean and the other soldiers (and, he suspected, even their supervising officers) knew very little about what had happened in New York City, they all knew one thing for certain: the sound of someone throwing up was now pretty much a death sentence.

  Currently, their makeshift troop was stationed at the state line between New York and Pennsylvania, straddling the place where State Route 5 connected the two states, right on the outskirts of the little town of Ripley. When they’d arrived on the scene, they’d been outfitted in MOPP gear—Mission Operative Protective Posture. Dean had never worn the get-up before and wasn’t sure which he hated more: the ridiculous protective gas mask or the overbearing JSLIST overgarments. With the garments over his traditional suit, standing in the hot summer sun, he was coated in sweat and, somehow, was starting to feel chills.

  In the three hours Dean had been there, about thirty cars had tried coming through. All thirty had stopped without a problem and so far, no one had caused a fuss. Dean supposed it had something to do with the spike strips across the road and the Humvees to the sides, along the ditches. The poor suckers assumed the presence of the military meant they were safe. But he knew that no one had any real answers.

  He also knew that anyone in the state of New York that thought safety waited for them beyond the state lines was shit-out-of-luck. As of about an hour ago, cases of the sickness had been reported in Vermont and Pennsylvania. That’s what they’d been told by their commanding officer, anyway. It made Dean feel like he was sitting on a bomb that might blow up at any moment.

  And with someone throwing up behind them, the timer on that bomb had started to tick down.

  “That’s got to be it, right?” a soldier somewhere to his right said. “If someone on this squad is sick, we’ll be dispersed, right?”

  “You wish,” someone else said nervously. “We were thrown together like a ragtag kickball team. You know how many military already died in New York? Our little road check set-up won’t mean anything to anyone.”

  “Man, shut up,” Dean hissed.

  Tension grew between them like poisonous vines. It was so thick that he could almost taste it, like bitter iron on his tongue.

  The retching sound continued behind them, this time followed by a groaning sort of scream. A few scant whispers followed and it all sounded urgent. A few of the soldiers along the barricade line turned to look and were immediately scolded.

  “Get your eyes back on that highway!” their commanding officer demanded. “Focus! The next person to turn around and look behind them is going to get a boot in the ass.”

  Dean had only barely turned around. His eyes made it no farther than the line of cars along the Pennsylvania side of State Route 5. These were the cars of the few brave souls that had tried to escape New York. On the other side of the road were three army trucks, open-camper style with a white shell tarp. These were what those same brave souls had been carried away in, hauled off to an outpost about ten miles further into Pennsylvania.

  Dean wasn’t sure what happened to those people when they arrived at the outpost, and he didn’t want to know.

  “Ah, hell,” someone further down the line said. “At the ready, guys.”

  Dean snapped his attention back to Highway 5, staring into New York. About a quarter of a mile ahead, coming around the slight bend that fed out of Ripley, a car came barreling toward them. Most of the other cars they’d encountered had also been speeding, so it didn’t alarm them at first.

  If anything, this car seemed to increase its speed when it came into view. Dean saw that it was a fairly new model, a champagne-colored Honda of some kind. He could hear the tiny hum of its engine in the quiet along the barricade. The only other sound was the heavy breathing and grunting of the sick member of their troop somewhere behind them.

  “This genius isn’t slowing down,” Dean said.

  The car was close enough to them now that Dean could see the shape of the driver through the windshield. There was also someone in the passenger seat. And still, as the car drew closer, it showed no signs of slowing.

  “Hey, Sarge?” one of the soldiers called out. “This one ain’t slowing down!”

  Sergeant Dupree, a mean and grizzled old man that Dean had only met for the first time today, came rushing to the line. He slapped Dean on the shoulder, a gesture Dean had not been expecting and nearly made him jump out of his skin.

  “You a good shot, son?” Dupree asked.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Take out the tires.”

  Dean hesitated for only a moment and then said, “But sir the spike strips—”

  “Do it now! That’s an order, Private!”

  Dean nodded and brought his rifle up, steadying it with his shoulder. The Honda was no less than seventy yards away from them now. As Dean took aim, several people muttered around him and he could once again feel the tension of it all seeping into him. Dean breathed in and then fired.

  The moment he fired the shot, he saw the third figure in the back seat—a small head, slightly leaning to the right. A kid…and a small one.

  Dean’s entire body went cold and as he exhaled the breath he had taken in to steady himself, he let out a prayer: “God, forgive me.”

  Dean’s first two shots missed, pinging from the pavement. But the aim on his third shot was true; the front right tire was blown out and the car instantly went skidding hard to the right. The driver instinctually turned to the left to straighten it out and when he did, Dean could see what was going to happen next. The idiot had simply been driving too fast.

  The car skidded into an almost complete circle before the trajectory of it cause it to tilt and then flip over. Seeing it, Dean then understood why Dupree had asked him to take the tire out. Hitting a spike strip at that speed could have sent the car careening and tumbling directly toward them. What happened to the car was nothing acrobatic or dramatic like in the movies. It flipped lazily a single time, landing on its left side and then, very slowly onto its hood. The sound of screeching metal was like thunder, and the breaking glass was almost musical. The wheels continued to spin as the underside of the car showed itself to them.

  Sargent Dupree had ventured elsewhere down the barricade line. This time, he slapped another soldier on the shoulder, then another. “Go assess the situation!”

  Dean watched as two soldiers broke from the line and marched toward the car. He knew them both: a tall lanky kid named Hall and a problematic adrenaline junkie named Bryant. Dean didn’t understand why they had their rifles held to their shoulders, taking on an almost defensive posture.

  Hall and Bryant made it only five or six steps before the driver’s side came open. A middle-aged man fell out into the road and immediately started scrambling to his feet. Dean cringed when he saw the man. His face was roughly the shade of a lobster and his blue tee shirt was stained with things Dean did not want to think about.

  Hall instantly halted and turned his head back toward the barricade. “He’s sick, Sarge!”

  Sargent Dupree seemed stumped by this, trying to figure out the best approach. As he took those handful of seconds to think, the man from the car stumbled forward towards Bryant. From where he stood, Dean could hear the strangled words leaking from the man’s throat.

  “Please help. Please…I’m as goo
d as dead, but my kid…”

  The man extended his hand, his grasp no more than a foot away from Bryant. A string of anxious curses were muttered from the barricade. Somewhere close by, one of the soldiers was muttering a Catholic prayer. Dean heard Dupree yell something back to someone else behind the line, but only a single word came out before he was interrupted.

  Up near the overturned Honda, Bryant screamed and popped off two rounds. The first tore away the right side of the sick man’s neck. The other removed his jaw and sent him spinning around in a bloody tumble that ended with him face down on the road.

  A kid, Dean thought. Ah, God forgive me, there’s a kid in there…

  Bryant turned to face the soldiers along the barricade, his lips trembling. “He was going to touch me Sarge. He was going to infect me!”

  It sounded utterly ridiculous but it also terrified Dean. Slowly but surely, the barricade line started to break apart, realizing what they had just done. Dean stayed exactly where he was, mainly because he was frozen in fear but partly because he had no idea what else to do.

  In front of him, Bryant dropped his rifle and then went to his knee, uttering out a cry of disgust. Dean felt sorry for him, but only for a moment. Not too far away from him, he heard Sargent Dupree curse loudly. Dean turned just in time to see Dupree stumbling back in the direction of the big trucks. He nearly made it completely behind one, trying to hide himself before he started throwing up.

  Dean barely had time to register what this meant and how bad it might be. Before it could completely sink in, Hall was screaming for their attention, having to shout at the top of his lungs to be heard over Bryant’s wailing.

  “Car!”

  Dean looked and, sure enough, another car was coming around the same bend the Honda had come around less than three minutes ago. This time, it was followed closely by a mini-van. Dean could only watch and helplessly follow suit as all along the barricade separating New York and Pennsylvania, more than twenty soldiers gripped their rifles, took a shooter’s stance, and prepared to open fire.

  Chapter 11

  Olivia was starting to wonder how long it would take Joyce to start asking about her mother. There were some days where it was not unusual for Maggie Bates to be as late as 6:30 in picking up her daughter. There was another forty minutes before they reached that point but it did not keep Olivia from imagining how to explain to a four year-old that her mother was dead and her father could not come to get her.

  She supposed Joyce might not complain about her mother’s tardiness too much. Given the state of things outside and the absolute nightmare they had been thrust into, Olivia was being a very lackluster daycare worker. For the past hour and a half or so, she’d allowed Joyce to watch more shows and to snack whenever she wanted. These distractions allowed Olivia to attempt to get a better understanding of what was taking place past the locked lobby door and out in the streets.

  She’d already learned that the phone lines were inoperable. She’d tried calling the police on her cell and the landline several more times, but neither had worked. From what she could tell, there was still cell service, it was just impossible to get a call through. And while the internet seemed to be down, she had full cell service and was able to use her data plan to stay somewhat up to date on Facebook. But even that was spotty at best and the load times were infuriating.

  What she saw turned her stomach and made her mind ache in a way that made her wonder if the human brain simply reached a certain point where it refused to accept something. What she’d seen from the footage at the Lincoln Tunnel earlier was one thing. But what she saw outside of the Coast Guard Station in Staten Island was a totally different scene altogether.

  She was only able to watch twenty-two seconds of the two minute video posted to Facebook before the connection lagged out, but that was fine with her. Those twenty-two seconds were more than enough. There were body bags lining the streets, zipped and filled. Beyond the bags, further back towards what she assumed was the headquarters or a station of some kind, were bodies that had not yet been given bags. There were men in full-bodied Hazmat suits trying to move the bodies on carts and hand trucks. The fallen bodies were lying on top of one another. In some cases, too many to count.

  Just before the footage froze from the overwhelmed connection, Olivia watched as one of the figures in a Hazmat suit stumbled and fell. Those around him jumped away from him as if he might explode.

  She knew she should put the phone down, to give her mind and heart a break, but she was unable to do so. She almost felt guilty for having been in the safety and shelter of Little Learners all day, avoiding the absolute madness outside. So she looked at the images and fractions of video, taking it all in. She read articles that told her that whatever this sickness was, it had also showed up in Pennsylvania and maybe Connecticut. She also read that the entire state of New York was under lockdown, that as of 3:10 p.m., there was simply no way to get an accurate count of those that had died but a safe estimate was about seventy-five percent of the city.

  It was an unimaginable figure, one of those bits of information that felt like it was stretching her mind. She finally set the phone down, making sure to plug her charger in. If the internet was out and the phone lines were jammed beyond hope, she could only assume the power might be the next thing to go.

  Seventy-five percent of the city, she thought. That’s what? About six million people? Seven?

  She could only stare at her phone, now charging, and try to make her head accept it. She had stepped through the back door of Little Learners roughly twelve hours ago and somehow, the world was now a completely different place.

  “’Livia?”

  She looked down to Joyce, munching on a cracker and looking up to her with far too much intuition. “You okay, ‘Livia?”

  “Yeah, sweetie, I’m fine.” And as soon as she said it, a clearing thought crossed her mind like a bullet: Please don’t ask me anything about your mother…

  “I gotta go potty,” Joyce said.

  “That’s fine. Do you need me to help you?”

  Joyce put her little hands on her hips and looked to Olivia as if she had lost her mind. “No! I can do it myself.” She then flashed a smile and headed for the hallway.

  Olivia waited for Joyce to get out of sight before rushing to the corner of the playroom and the hallway. She felt like she could not let the girl out of her sight, not even for a moment. Joyce’s father had put Joyce in her care—not just for the day, as she was paid to do—but for an undetermined amount of time. She watched Joyce go into the bathroom just down the hall, flip the light switch and close the door slowly behind her.

  Olivia took the moment to allow herself another miniature breakdown. She almost collapsed, leaning back against the wall and letting her knees give out. She clasped her hands together and squeezed. She let out just a few whimpers even thought she could feel more and more of them piling up and ready to come erupting out at some point. But now…now she had to think of Joyce. She had to think of how to make sure Joyce was reunited with her father and—

  A soft rapping sound broke her concentration. At first, she thought it was Joyce, knocking on the inside of the bathroom door. The older kids sometimes accidentally locked themselves in and then had to knock when they couldn’t figure out how to work the lock. But this was a different sound. This sounded more solid and a little more distant.

  It came again, from farther beyond the bathroom. She then realized it was the sound of someone knocking on the back door. Her heart leaped up into her throat and she quickly stood to her feet. The door was sturdy and there was an alarm on it, but she could not help but wonder what might happen if someone tried to break in. She didn’t have a gun; the closest thing she had to a weapon was the little cannister of mace she kept in her purse.

  The knocking came again, causing her to cringe. But this time, a voice followed it. It was a vaguely familiar voice, speaking her name.

  “Ms. Foster?” A man’s voice, soft and reas
suring.

  She walked down the hallway and made it to the bathroom Joyce was currently in when the man continued speaking. “Ms. Foster, it’s Officer Paul Gault. I came by earlier to check in on you…”

  A little sigh of relief escaped her as she walked to the back door. She didn’t even think of opening it, not wanting to run the risk of letting the sickness inside. Even as she approached the door, she felt foolish for picturing the illness as some sort of black mist that would seep through the doorway and wrap itself around her.

  “I’m here,” Olivia said.

  “Everything still okay?” he asked through the door.

  “In here, yeah. But what I’m seeing online about what happened out there…I’m finding it hard to accept.”

  “I thought the internet was out.”

  “I think it is. I’m using my data. And it’s…is it really as bad out there as it looks?”

  There was silence from the other side of the door. After a few seconds, he finally said: “I don’t know what you’re seeing, but I’m inclined to say yes. Things are pretty grim out here.”

  “Do you know what caused it?” Olivia asked. “I mean, it’s some sort of virus, right?”

  “Seems that way. Some are suggesting it had something to do with an explosion off the coast this morning.”

  “I saw a report that said people are estimating that about seventy-five percent of the population is dead. That can’t be right, can it?”

  Paul hesitated again and when he answered this time, his voice sounded fragile. She wondered if, like her, he’d been fighting to keep an absolute mental breakdown at bay all day long.

  “Honestly, I’d say it’s worse than that. Much worse. But if there are people that were spared, I’d assume they’re still inside and never came out. One of my neighbors…he was still alive about an hour and a half ago, but wouldn’t open his door. Based on what I’m seeing on the streets and things I heard on the police band radio today…yeah, it’s probably worse.”