by Jack Hunt
“My mother, bless her heart, is a music and vocal teacher at a local high school.”
“Really? So did she teach you any lessons?”
“I can drop a tune or two on a piano.”
“I’d like to hear that sometime.”
Just as he smiled they heard movement outside. The footsteps were getting closer.
“They are in the shed.”
Those five words sent a cold shot of fear through Ella.
CHAPTER 25
Gabriel had a pitchfork in his hand when the shed door swung open. He was about to lunge forward when Ella caught sight of an old man, and what looked like a young kid. They recoiled out of fear, and then turned to run.
“Wait!” Ella yelled but they didn’t stick around to find out if Gabriel was a threat or not. Ella figured it was the owner of the house and perhaps the kid had seen them dart inside.
Gabriel shrugged and dropped the pitchfork.
“Hold up,” Ella called out. While the old man continued into the back of the house, the kid stopped and looked back.
“We’re not going to hurt you. We just needed a place to hide for a few minutes.”
Skeptical but perhaps curious, the young boy stood there edging back ever so slightly. He couldn’t have been more than nine years of age. Ginger hair, freckles, white T-shirt and torn jeans.
“Billy, get in,” yelled the old man.
“Look, we need to use a phone.”
The old man stood in the doorway and seeing the boy wasn’t listening he stepped out, grabbed a hold of him and yanked him into the house. Ella tried to reason with them but the old man was having none of it. Through the window, she saw him pick up a phone and assumed he was calling the cops.
“Ella, let’s go.”
She balled her fist, and raced out of the yard heading towards the golf course at the far end of the road. Both of them scanned the area looking for the three soldiers but fortunately they didn’t see them. Seventeenth Avenue ended at 202nd Street. They sprinted across, through a thicket of trees and climbed up over a chain-link fence. There was no one playing golf. The green was empty. Both of them were panting hard and looking around nervously, fully expecting to find themselves coming face-to-face with military or cops.
“Where the hell are they?”
The 18-hole course was massive; it had to be 170 acres. They could have been absolutely anywhere. The only advantage they had was the green was surrounded by dense trees, which would keep them from being seen. They stayed close to the trees and crouched down for a while. They wanted to call out to the others but they didn’t know if the soldiers were nearby.
Gabriel scoffed. “You see the look on that old man’s face? He nearly had a heart attack.”
Right then as they were talking, they saw Tyrell burst out of the tree line zigzagging his way across the green. He stumbled and landed headfirst inside a sand pit. When he got up he started kicking the sand furiously as if trying to get a ball out. Gabriel chuckled. “What a guy. Hey! Numbnuts. Over here.”
Tyrell squinted and looked around and then pinpointed where the noise was coming from. He came rushing over, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. When he made it into the shadows of the trees he was gasping for air.
“Did you see Hayley and Zach?”
“No, I was too busy running from one of those lunatics. Like, dear god, you would think these folks would have something better to do with their time than chase after us.”
Gabriel shook his head and looked out across the green. There was no movement. No one playing golf and no sign of the other two. Then, they heard gunfire a short distance away. Once, twice and then it went silent. All three of them looked at each other and then took off in the direction of where the sound came from, while making sure to stay close to the tree line.
As they came over a rise that brought them up to the ninth hole, they stopped. In the middle of the green standing over a soldier that wasn’t moving were Zach and Hayley. The look of horror on their faces spoke volumes. Gabriel called out to them and Hayley looked over. She tugged at Zach who was holding a rifle. His hands were shaking and he didn’t appear to be responding to any attempt by Hayley to get him to move. Eventually he dropped the rifle and they sprinted over to where Ella and the others were.
Ella stared back at the soldier lying on the ground motionless.
“Is he?”
Zach appeared to be in shock.
“He tried to… Well I…”
The situation couldn’t have got any worse. Not only were they being pursued by the military but also Zach had got into a struggle with one of them and shot and killed him accidentally. Ella’s mind was rushing like vehicles on a highway. A part of her wanted to run, get away from them as the faint fragments of what remained of a life blew away like dust in the wind. But there was no going back from this now.
“If we heard that gunfire, so would his buddies. We need to get out of here now,” Gabriel said turning and breaking into a jog through the trees, heading in the direction of Interstate 295. All of them dashed in between the heavy brush and climbed a fence that brought them to a clogged-up highway. Now under any other conditions, the roads would be filled with cops, the air would have had helicopters looking for them, but this wasn’t any ordinary day. No one would come looking for them, at least not immediately. Police, military and government personnel were already being pushed to the limit and overwhelmed by the outbreak, and by the look of the traffic on the interstate, panic had just reached new heights.
All of them stared out at the vast bumper-to-bumper convoy of vehicles trying to escape the city across the Throgs Neck Bridge that stretched over the East River. Vehicle owners honked their horns, people were outside leaning against their vehicles because nothing was moving, others had decided to abandon their cars and hike instead. Ella had never seen anything like it.
“How many of those people do you think are infected?” she muttered.
They were hemmed in with no other option than to join the mass of people making their way across the river. If the risk of getting infected was high back at the campus, double, even triple that and it wouldn’t come close to what they were going to have to do now.
“Let’s go.”
They slipped in among the crowd, doing their best to stay six feet away from others, though it was hard because there were so many people. Every cough, every sniffle that Ella heard in the crowd made her grimace. All of them covered the lower half of their faces with pieces of fabric torn from Zach’s shirt. It was no way as effective as an N95 mask but it was all they had right now. Perhaps the idea was insane but at least it gave them all some peace of mind as they trudged across the great bridge.
Zach remained quiet all the way across. Gabriel had tried to speak to him but he was still in a state of shock. It wasn’t just the ever-present question of whether or not he would be picked up for murder and tossed in jail that besieged his mind, it was that he was only twenty years of age and he had taken a life. Accident or not, he would wrestle with that for the rest of his life, however long or short that would be.
GLORIA HUDSON DROPPED the keys on the counter as she returned from her second visit to the town. She had seen several store owners closing up shop long before they were supposed to be shut. Many had already brought down their shutters and attached locks. Earlier that day she had noticed there was an edge to the bank teller’s voice and all the staff were wearing masks.
As she stood in line, she had noticed they had added hand sanitizer at the door and posted a sign saying it was mandatory to clean your hands before approaching the desk. Also, everyone was instructed to stay several feet back.
She could see the look of fear in people’s eyes as they kept their distance. It didn’t help that a flat-screen TV was broadcasting updates on the latest outbreak. They had already had two incidents in the town of Clayton and precautions were being taken to ensure the safety of residents.
As someone who had spent her entire li
fe working for a local bookstore in town, she had gotten to know a lot of people and never before had she heard people sound so worried.
After returning to the island and getting the kids settled and making them some food, she went about unpacking the little they had and then browsing through the home. She hadn’t really had a chance to become good friends with Kate, though she had seen her around town before she left for Atlanta.
Gloria told her son Adrian to keep an eye on his little sister Bailey while she headed into the back of the house. Though she knew Frank didn’t want them in the main section of the house, he wasn’t there to get on her case so she went against his wishes. Sal had talked a lot about Frank and though she tried to not get involved in his work, Frank was a different case entirely. Frank was Sal’s longest client and one that she felt was beyond help.
She thought back to her conversations with him before all of this. Her mind drifted as she ventured down into the basement to see what was in storage.
“Sal, you have been working with him for years. Don’t you think it’s time to let this one go? I mean if he was going to change he would have by now.”
“It’s not as easy as that, Gloria. In fact, you would be surprised at how much he has changed. At first he wouldn’t even let me in the house.”
“You told me the other day that he did that again.”
“Oh, you need to understand Frank. I know what’s his OCD and what’s just him being a pain in the ass.”
“But this one is consuming your time.”
“I visit him once a week, how is that consuming?”
“And the visits on the weekend? The visits when he calls you about his panic attacks?”
“Oh come on, Gloria. It’s not like I’m doing it for free. He pays.”
“So do we. How much time have you spent with Adrian or Bailey over the past year?”
“You know my work is demanding.”
“So demanding that you can’t make time for your kids?”
Sal groaned. “There you go again, riding me about what I don’t do.”
“They’ll be eighteen and leaving home before you know it and you’ll wish you had spent time with them.”
“I’ll make some time this weekend.”
“You said that last weekend, and the one before that.”
“God. Gloria, get off my case.”
She scoffed. “I’m sick of how you are letting Frank dominate our life.”
She shifted back to the present moment and noticed how spotless his basement was. There wasn’t a bit of dust in sight. He’d set up small stations attached to the wall with sanitization wipes and bottles of liquid everywhere she turned. Now she could understand why Kate left him. Gloria was all for keeping a house clutter-free and clean but this was taking things to the extreme. How did they live under these conditions?
She stepped into the storage area and noticed that he had ten large shelves stacked with more food than he would have ever been able to get through. After coming out she went over to the wooden workbench that contained the Glock and ammo they’d left for her. She was nervous and rightly so, but at least here on the island she was away from society and anyone who might have knocked on her door.
She could hear the kids moving upstairs. Bailey was eight years of age, Adrian ten and she couldn’t have asked for better kids. She just wished Sal could have been around more to watch them grow. By the time he got done with his day, he would come in, eat his dinner and drift off to sleep in his chair. He repeated this day in and day out until the weekends when he would take some time with the kids. Any time she tried to bring up the issue of them needing their father around more, he would always say that the reason they were able to live in the house they were in and drive the cars they had was because of his job. The bookstore didn’t provide enough money. It was minimum wage but it allowed her time to be with her kids and that was all she ever wanted. She often wondered if she was being too hard on Sal, perhaps projecting her ideals on to him. She stared down at the Glock, and took it in her hands and stretched out her arms.
She had to admit she had enjoyed firing off a few rounds with Frank the other day. Up to that point she had never held a gun. The very notion of going near one had made her scared but not now.
“Always treat it as though it’s loaded,” he’d said.
She pressed the magazine release button and then loaded the magazine with bullets the way he’d shown her. She pulled back the slide and engaged the slide catch, then she slapped the magazine back into the gun and pulled the slide back so the gun was loaded. She gazed at it for a while and realized her fear of it was only because she was ignorant of how to properly use one.
Releasing the magazine, she unloaded the one in the chamber and went about putting it all back safely. As she was doing it, she noticed that it had gone very quiet upstairs. She paused for a second.
“Adrian,” she called out.
There was no answer. At first, she thought that perhaps they had gone outside to play but then she felt panic rise in her chest. Whether it was her mother instincts kicking in or just the fear that had been roiling around inside of her ever since they had arrived, she walked over to the stairs and called out to Adrian again. When she didn’t get a reply, she was going to take the gun up but then decided to tuck it away. Her kids had been through enough upheaval and stress as it was, they didn’t need to see their mother holding a loaded gun. She returned it to where she found it and then went upstairs fully expecting them to jump out on her.
“Bailey. You guys better not be messing with me or you are going to be in big trouble.”
Slowly but surely she made her way into the back room. Just as she rounded the corner, the blood ran out of her face.
“Hello, Gloria.”
Standing behind Adrian with his hand wrapped around his mouth was Butch Guthrie. To the right of him were his cousin and two other men. All of them had rifles and her kids.
CHAPTER 26
The closer they got to Manhattan the more traffic they were seeing going the other way. They must have looked like salmon swimming upstream, navigating their way around abandoned vehicles. Frank had Sal phoning Kate every fifteen minutes. When the receptionist finally got tired of them phoning, he was put through to Kate.
Sal put her on the speaker so Frank could talk while he drove.
“Kate, why isn’t Ella answering her phone?”
“Because she doesn’t have it on her.”
“Strange because someone answered it and hung up on me.”
“Probably a FEMA employee. Frank, things have got worse.”
“Really? I would never have guessed,” he said looking out at the mass of people filling up the roads like blood inside veins. Since Albany the reports coming across the radio had gone from warnings and suggestions to reports about looting, riots in stores and widespread panic taking hold of people as the infection took one life after the next.
“No, I mean with Ella.”
His blood ran cold.
“Is she…?”
Kate immediately knew what he was about to ask.
“No. No, she’s fine but things got out of control on the campus. Look, there’s too much to explain. Do you have a pen and paper on you?”
“Yeah just let me get that out.” He paused a second. “Of course I don’t,” Frank yelled.
“Go ahead, Kate, I’ll remember it,” Sal said trying to be helpful.
“She’s at the Ice House Café near the Throgs Necks Bridge. It’s on Reynolds Avenue in the Bronx.”
“Got it,” Sal replied.
“Where are you?” Kate asked.
“Um, somewhere near Fairview.”
He could hear her tapping away on her keyboard.
“So about twenty-five minutes away.”
“More like an hour,” he said taking in the sight of the vehicles ahead.
“Frank, the government is moving ahead with martial law across the states that have been hit the hardest. They are evac
uating people from areas of business and homes, confiscating firearms and suspending the sales of firearms and ammunition. Over the next forty-eight hours it’s going to be brutal out there. Hurry. Just get there soon and get her to safety. Ella’s well, but she’ll explain what’s happened.” Frank heard someone calling out to Kate. “Frank, I got to go.”
“Kate!” Frank quickly tried to stop her before she hung up.
“Yeah?”
“Do you have somewhere to go?”
She snorted. “I wish. I feel like I’m in hell.” She paused for a second, and muttered as if she was thinking of saying something. “Tom is dead. The virus. It, well…”
There was silence. Though he’d never met the guy, he couldn’t feel pleased about someone who had lost his life.
“Kate, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the danger of the work we do.”
She put on a brave voice but he knew her best.
“Look, Kate I know things haven’t been good between us but I want you to know that if you need somewhere to stay… Come to the cottage, okay?”
A heavy rain was falling, and the windshield wipers were on full speed. Frank could barely see out. Dark objects came into view and he would swerve around them. He saw people outside soaking wet, trudging along. Where were they going?
“I have too much work to do here.”
“Kate.”
“Just take care of Ella.”
“K—”
Before he could say any more she had hung up. Frank squeezed the wheel tight until his knuckles went white and then he pounded it a few times with his fist. Sal glanced over at him but didn’t say anything. There was nothing that could be said.
ELLA SAT NERVOUSLY LOOKING out the window, clutching a hot cup of coffee. Besides themselves, there were only two other people in the café and by the looks of it, they were in there to find shelter from the trouble brewing in the streets. The owner, sporting a thick beard and lots of tattoos, had already told those inside the café that he was going to be closing early because looters had broken into the Locust Point Yacht Club and stolen one of his boats.
