Another Like Me
Albert Norton, Jr.
eLectio Publishing
Little Elm, TX
www.eLectioPublishing.com
Another Like Me
By Albert Norton, Jr.
Copyright 2015 by Albert Norton, Jr.
Cover Design by eLectio Publishing, LLC
ISBN-13: 978-1-63213-106-5
Published by eLectio Publishing, LLC
Little Elm, Texas
http://www.eLectioPublishing.com
5 4 3 2 1 eLP 20 19 18 17 16 15
The eLectio Publishing editorial team consists of Christine LePorte, Lori Draft, Jim Eccles, and Sheldon James.
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Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Table of Contents
Cover Page and Copyright Information
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
Another Like Me
Chapter 1
A map of unpeopled geography was spread out on the hood of the car. Jack stood in the middle of West 59th Street, looking south down the Avenue of the Americas. He picked up the map and walked around to the other side of his vehicle, this time with a view of Central Park in front of him. He spread the map out again, now properly oriented. It was a quiet morning. Birds twittered. A darkened traffic light suspended above the intersection creaked in the cool breeze. Jack zipped up his jacket, holding the map down with one elbow. Then he resumed his study of it.
He was ready to quit Manhattan but had paused to acquire a heavier winter coat to supplement the lighter one he now wore. The heavy coat was now carefully stowed in the car, along with other clothes, two spare tires, gas cans, food, water, rifles, and ammunition. He needed to go generally west, through New Jersey, and then south, but he opted against the Hudson tunnels. He could zip up either side of the park and be at the George Washington Bridge in no time. He folded the map and reached inside the passenger side of the vehicle to stow it in a worn leather notebook which was embossed on the front with his name, Jackson Pence, and his former employer’s logo, a stylized “RMS” for Royles, McLellan & Story. Attorneys at law. New York.
He drove fast, but only on the streets he was well familiar with. Once he approached the bridge, he slowed. The roads were not what they had once been. He’d found this out the hard way in his last brand-new SUV. Distracted by a fallen tree at one side of the road, he’d missed an upheaval of the road right in front of him. Going way too fast. There had been an accident. A solo accident, of course. And a solo recovery. It had taken an entire summer before he was close to feeling himself again, and then he had the brutal New York winter to contend with. And then the following spring, he had explored the northeast and his hometown on Long Island in earnest, all the while attempting to come to terms with a possible future of being alone. But whatever that future might be, he would not be detained here, in the empty capital of the former world.
Jack’s modest goal for the day was to cross into Virginia. Sticking to multi-lane highways, he made it without incident and then cruised the outskirts of Winchester, Virginia for a place to spend the night. This turned into a longer undertaking than he had guessed it would. There were plenty of commercial places he could bed down in, if he chose, but the ones he glanced over at as he passed by looked like they would be uncomfortable. No moveable windows, usually, and either cold or stuffy hot—never in keeping with the actual weather outside. Once, near Boston, he had tried staying in a furniture store. Plenty of soft beds, but no moving air. His ideal would be a house with furniture and a fireplace—one that was left uninhabited when it had been last closed up, many months before. Jack finally found a place that he thought would do. Then he went driving around, as was his habit in each town he encountered, looking for signs of life. And foraging for food. He lay down that night thinking of how, in former times while traveling, he would be restless and likely sleepless on his first night in a new place. On this night, however, he was asleep almost immediately.
Early the next day, Jack resumed his southwest travel, but this time off of the interstate. He started out with a view to gassing up and rechecking his provisions again. A likely-looking gas station sat at an intersection ahead, and Jack pulled in for a fill-up. Parking next to the ground-level fill caps, he could see that they were not locked. He released the hood and eased out of the vehicle, feeling some creakiness in his low back and scanning by habit in all directions for movement. In a moment, he had the storage tank cap off and set to one side. Taking a weathered milk crate from the storage area in the back of the vehicle, he carried it to the front and removed a 12-volt pump, hooking its power line to the car battery by means of alligator clips already positioned for this purpose. Unwinding a tightly-coiled one-inch gas hose from the milk crate, he attached it by a coupling—already attached to the hose—into the pump. The other end of the hose he connected to a rigid one-inch section of pipe, and then lowered the far end of the pipe with the suction stub into the tank, letting it gently touch bottom and then pulling it a foot or so back up before engaging the pump. In a few moments, he had gasoline, nice and clear, so he stopped the process, wedged the discharge into his car’s gas tank, and began his fill-up.
Taking his map in hand, he scanned alternate routes. The rustle of the map and the mild breeze were the only sounds around him until he heard the gushing of the liquid that could only come from an overfull gas tank next to him. Jack sprang to the nozzle, but there was no nozzle, only the end of his heavy plastic hose stuffed into the entry pipe for his gas tank. He pulled the hose out and dropped it down and away so that the gas continued to pour away from him, downhill. And then he stilled the pump, grousing at himself over the unaesthetic ending to the routine task. Jack made up for the sloppiness of the operation by cleaning his equipment fastidiously and putting everything away just so. When his vehicle was ship-shape, he replaced the fill cap on its brass threads, even though he knew it was unlikely that he would
ever come this way again.
His car was well-stocked for food, as it always was, but rather than break into that stash, he decided to breakfast on whatever he might find inside the adjoining store. Scanning his surroundings again, he went up to the door, pushing firmly on the door handle. Locked. A good sign. In a few seconds, he had the doors pried open and was inside. No sickening musty smell at all, but the air was a little stale with the expected funk of long-trapped mold. It was reasonably light inside, given the windows all along the front of the building. A quick survey of the food offerings, such as they were, told him they had escaped ravaging by rodents. Some long out-of-date granola bars might do, but just in case, he bagged a few cans of soup, the hearty-eater kind, with easy-open lids. He liberated a few cans of soda, too, and walked out of the store, for once forgetting to check his surroundings.
Halfway to his car, Jack heard the low growl and instantly knew that the dogs could get to him before he could get to his car where his rifles were. Two dogs stepped forward menacingly from around the corner of the gas station closest to the SUV. More followed. He couldn’t yet know how many there were in total, but one round, he thought, ought to suffice. He unholstered his .45 and discharged a round over the heads of the dogs, which caused the animals to shrink back. But the lead dog quickly recovered and moved forward again. Jack left it dead. The other dogs scampered, and moments later, all was still again but for the ringing in Jack’s ears. The intersection suddenly seemed claustrophobic, and he resumed his journey.
Driving again. How many miles, he wondered, since his town-hopping days around the Northeast, after the great flash epidemic and after the panic, but before his accident? The landscape now seemed to flow more smoothly past than it had then—not broken up by short city blocks as in New York nor by tiny towns every few miles as it had been when he ventured into the smaller states of the Northeast. The only governor of his speed now was his own care, watching the road itself for surviving livestock, fallen trees, and man-made debris of various kinds that had once been transported by truck. There were other dangers were out there, too. Jack watched now for deer that might come hurtling out of the forest and headlong into his vehicle. There had been close calls. Why would the deer choose to bound across the road just in front of him when there was no other moving car on the road? It seemed there were deer everywhere, and everywhere they were bony but still energetic. They had the overly-startled look of starvation brought on by overpopulation and migration.
The drive down Interstate 81 was reasonably fast, with very few of the uncleared traffic obstructions that were more common on narrower roads, sometimes necessitating a turn-around and an alternate route. But, on the other hand, the interstates seemed soulless, even in their overgrown state from years of lack of maintenance. Jack was ever drawn to the towns, the semblance of remembered civilization seeming to be somehow more real there. But in short order, the town would seem more lonely even than the empty, open highway. Unkempt greenswards, overgrown parks, signs of desultory looting, long ceased—these and a general cast of dust and disuse would soon repel him back toward the highways and the unsettled places. All those empty places of work. All those houses full of clothed skeletons.
Jack left I-81 and paralleled it for a bit on State Route 11 to take a more circuitous but less monotonous route through what had once been fairly affluent horse farms and somewhat less-developed but larger working farms with cross-fenced beef pasturage, all of it now grown over and spotted with young pines. He reminded himself to be on the lookout for large but stupid cattle that still survived and turned up in unexpected places. A beautiful sylvan drive seemed just the thing, though, before driving with the barest wisp of hope of contact into yet another town, this time Staunton, Virginia, what he would have regarded as a quaint but not-too-small town in earlier days. Out of habit, he turned on the radio and hit the “scan” button, listening to the barely perceptible electric hum for a half-minute before flicking the radio back off.
He was going forty miles an hour and had excellent sight distance. He could have zipped along much faster here. Jack was struck by the contrast between his former life and his life now. Then, he was impatient. One reason he liked New York City was that it was a walking city, and he found foot traffic less frustrating than automobile traffic. But no traffic of any kind was best. He’d always been in a hurry. He was in a hurry to leave his family on Long Island to go to school. He was in a hurry to get to law school—and then through it—and then to a fast-paced legal practice, in where else but New York. He was an up-and-comer, just hitting his full career stride when the world was turned upside down. He had thrived on the approbation of those around him, even as he regarded himself as tough-minded, independent, a self-sufficient man.
And now here he was, plodding along at forty miles an hour just because he had no reason to hurry. He might as well be observant of what was around him. More from habit than genuine hope, he put his efforts more into looking for signs of life—human life—than in getting from point A to B. For most of his life, people had been in his way, obstacles to get around. But in recent days, he had been preoccupied with the question of whether anyone was left, reluctantly concluding from what he’d seen in the last three years that the answer was most likely “no.”
It was developing into a fine day. Ahead of him, the road swung up a rise and curved to the left and then descended. At the peak of the curve, on the uphill side, was an old farmhouse, in excellent shape but for the undergrowth all around it. It must have been beautiful when the grass was mown and fallen debris cleared. The house was interesting and well-situated, but not ostentatious. For some reason, Jack imagined that a large, happy family must have lived there. He slowed and turned the SUV into a level, graveled place beside the house, still quite suitable as a parking area despite not having been continuously tamped down in recent years. He walked up a few concrete steps built into the rise from the car park, then across a beaten path where, even now, the weeds stopped short of the packed soil. Mounting the steps, Jack paused and turned away from the house, looking south, taking in a panorama of hills rolling into the Shenandoah distance, the sun to the left of him still casting moderately long shadows, the light easing in transition from the orange of morning to the yellow of midday. The road he had driven in on was before him, but at an elevation well below the porch so that it was inconspicuous, and across the road he was treated to a vista of park-like pastures, if somewhat overgrown, dotted with majestic oaks here and there but then congregated more congenially together where the land folded downward to sweep water from the open fields. Jack plopped down into one of the oversized rocking chairs arranged on the porch.
The truth was that he was in a sort of existential funk. Something had clicked in him when he’d looked down at that speedometer and realized for once that he wasn’t running the car out at the fastest speed he dared to go. His concern for avoiding another solo accident was no longer the limiting factor in his driving, and his change in attitude seemed to have happened all at once. He realized that in all this time of scurrying from one place to another, he’d been driven more by the habits of a lifetime thus far than by the exigencies of his now radically changed circumstances. At first, in a sweat and in urgency, he’d confirmed the deaths of everyone in his family and all of his closest friends. But that was then. What was the hurry now? He’d not asked himself that before. Among the daily thinning number of survivors, he’d watched first the panic and then the slide into the malaise of inevitability, and yet in all of that had not pondered his own end. Instead, he’d managed. He’d held his emotions in check, in a survival mode, for so, so long. And then the accident—broken ribs, he surmised, and untreated internal injuries that he could only wait out. And a few gashes that thankfully remained uninfected. In his time of convalescence, with all of his energies employed in surviving a New York winter, he had come to grips with his new vulnerability.
And perhaps now, he thought, he was coming to grips with something even more a
larming—his very reason for being here. “Here” meaning on Earth. Why did he continue to breathe? If millions were dead all around him, why not him, too? Maybe his latent misanthropy had caught up with him—in some way ordained by the cosmos—and now he was being punished with life without people. Then he smiled at his own foolishness. How was life without people worse than death with them?
While still in New York, when he was starting to be able to get around and the tasks of food-getting and heat-generating no longer consumed him, Jack had worked out a few “what next” scenarios. He’d worked it out that there were around seven billion people on Earth, until recently. The landmass of the earth, he read, was around fifty-seven million square miles. Much of that landmass was uninhabitable in the best of times, of course. Nearly all of Antarctica and most of the Sahara and significant parts north of the Arctic Circle. The Himalayas, he supposed. Forbidding terrain in many another area, too. Maybe half the surface of the earth was really inhabitable? That would mean about five acres per person. Enough to survive even if they were to be more independent, with no one choosing to live in cities or within complex economies that allowed for more dense population but yet comfortable, or at least adequate, living. Jack imagined the livable earth cut up into nice little five-acre segments. Five acres wasn’t all that much, all things considered. In that imaginary world, you wouldn’t go far without encountering another human being. Now the ratio was, in all likelihood, just one person to the whole fifty-seven million square miles, and that one person was Jack.
But so what? Hadn’t he always been independent anyway? How many times had he ground his teeth over stupid, slow people who seemed to be placed on the earth only in order to get in his way? And wasn’t he fully alone already anyway? His one try at marriage hadn’t ended well, not because of unfaithfulness or addiction or anger, but, he had finally admitted to himself, because she was just always there. He hadn’t seen his sullen ex in years. No children. And though he grieved at the loss of his parents and siblings, there now seemed an order and a symmetry to their loss along with, apparently, the rest of the world but him. His life had long been no longer daily entwined with his family’s, as it had been when he was growing up.
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