Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland

by Michael J. Totten

  God didn’t care for his creations. A loving God wouldn’t let such an unspeakable virus ravage the world. A murderous God maybe, but not a loving God. If everything happened for a reason like Nadia believed, God was finishing everyone off with the modern equivalent of the great Biblical flood.

  Steele believed in the brutality of nature. Every Wyomingite had experienced it. They shared that landscape with grizzly bears and mountain lions. Winter killed everyone who wasn’t adequately sheltered. Beneath the state’s northwest corner lurked the Yellowstone super volcano that would kill every single human being in North America if it were to erupt, and Wyoming’s residents would be the first to be vaporized. They wouldn’t even hear the explosion. Everyone knew it and everyone tried not to think about it.

  Steele also believed in the ingenuity and actions of men. Men who had colonized the state and gave it order and shape for the first time in its history. Men like himself who managed to hold it all together in the face of an unspeakable onslaught.

  And men like Dr. Frank Nash who might be able to cure Steele’s infected boy Charles and maybe—just maybe—immunize everyone else.

  Steele crept down the stairs into his basement, ducking his head so he wouldn’t split his scalp on the low ceiling.

  Nash had said Steele shouldn’t expect any change for at least two or three days, and not even 24 hours had passed since Charles had gotten the blood serum injection, but the boy hadn’t made a sound for hours. Nash couldn’t know for sure that there’d be no change yet. It was possible that Charles might be okay now. Steele had to check. If he didn’t have a town to run—and if Nadia wouldn’t scream at him—he’d stay by his boy’s side for days.

  He opened the door. Charles lay on the foul mattress, asleep in his own filth and stench, the rope still around his neck. The scene broke Steele’s heart. This was no way to treat his son. What else could he do, though? He couldn’t bathe Charles, couldn’t change his clothes, couldn’t treat him with any kind of comfort or dignity without getting bit.

  Charles slept peacefully on his back. His chest rose and fell with his breath as Annie’s antibodies went to work in his bloodstream.

  Steele was tempted to go back upstairs and just leave his boy alone and let him rest and recover, but he had to know. Was Charles cured? Was he at least less symptomatic?

  “Charles?” he said. He heard the sound of fear in his own voice. “How are you feeling?”

  Charles’ eyes snapped open. He sat up and looked at his father with no expression on his face.

  “Are you feeling better?” Steele said.

  Charles squinted and growled like a predatory animal.

  “The doctor gave you some medicine yesterday. Do you remember?”

  Charles’ facial muscles twisted into a knot of aggression, but he didn’t rise from the mattress. He stayed put, not because he was getting better but because, even in his diseased state of mind, he’d learned long ago that the rope around his neck would stop him short if he lunged.

  Steele shut the door and watched his head as he made his way through the basement and back up the stairs.

  Nadia was curled up on the couch in the living room with a blanket over her legs and skepticism all over her face.

  Steele shook his head.

  “Nothing,” she said. “No change at all.”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  She scoffed. “Didn’t I tell you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Nash said it will take at least two or three days.”

  She looked out the window again. Away from him.

  “I’ll check on him again tonight,” he said.

  “And what will you do on the fourth day?” she said.

  Steele said nothing. He collapsed into the recliner on the opposite side of the living room. Nadia needed a certain amount of space when she was angry.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” he said.

  She nodded with sarcasm even in her body language.

  “What would you have me do?” he said.

  “You know,” she said.

  “And how would you want me to do it, exactly?”

  “I don’t expect you to do it. The doctor could do it.”

  “Nash wouldn’t do that.”

  “He would if you told him to.”

  “I don’t think so. Doctors take an oath.”

  “Everyone does what you tell them to do. Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “The whole point of what?”

  “For God’s sake, Joseph, you know what I’m talking about.”

  Of course he knew what she was talking about. And she’d just called him by his first name. Nadia called him honey, dear, sweetheart and a number of other terms of endearment, but he knew from long and hard experience that calling him Joseph was her way of warning him that she was ready to start throwing plates.

  “What would you do?” he said. “If you were me?”

  Charles wasn’t the only thing she was pissed about.

  “Let them go, apologize and resign,” she said.

  “The town will fall apart.”

  “It won’t.”

  “It will. Everywhere else has fallen apart.”

  “What, because you aren’t running everywhere else? Because the mayors of Cheyenne and Casper and Jackson didn’t throw half the town into prison?”

  “It’s not half the town. And we can’t fight each other and this—thing, whatever it is—at the same time.”

  “You’ve always had an arrogant streak in you, Joseph, but you’ve got a God complex now.”

  She was wrong about him. He did not have a God complex. He was a well-read man, and he knew about history, not only the history of America, but the history of Europe and the ancient world. Democracy was a historical aberration. It could only exist and thrive under ideal conditions, and the collapse of civilization was the least ideal condition imaginable. Not even ancient Rome managed to maintain its democratic system indefinitely. Its slow-moving and fractious system had to be swept aside once in a while. The Romans were perpetually plagued with barbarians at the gates. They appointed temporary dictators when decisive action had to be taken during emergencies, and the Roman Empire existed during a time of far better conditions than now.

  A single stick is easily broken, but a bundle of sticks is virtually indestructible. He’d understand this even if he weren’t the mayor. He’d support a temporary dictator even if he were the town janitor. Yes, it was a political backslide, but it was also damage control. Nadia failed to see that there was no bottom. The choice wasn’t between authoritarianism and liberalism. The choice was between authoritarianism and anarchy and destruction.

  “I don’t have to run this town,” he said quietly. “Temple could run it for all I care. But we can’t have City Hall, the police department and the militia at each other’s throats when we’re under attack. United we stand, divided we fall.”

  “Don’t quote that patriotic crap at me.”

  “It’s true and you know it.”

  “Yes, Joseph, it is true, but don’t pretend that’s the reason you’re doing this. Don’t pretend you give a fuck about what this country stands for. Why even bother locking them up? Why don’t you just shoot them?”

  “I’m not going to shoot my neighbors,” he said.

  He wished he could get away for a while. Just a couple of days. He and Nadia owned a cabin in the desert east of Lander, though Nadia hardly ever went there. She didn’t care for it. It was effectively his long distance man cave. He liked to retreat there for a three-day weekend every couple of months and decompress, but he hadn’t gone out there even once since the outbreak started. He couldn’t leave Lander now, and he didn’t dare leave Nadia alone with their son in the basement.

  “You’re a lawyer,” Nadia said. “What would the Supreme Court say about what you’re doing?”

  “The Supreme Court doesn’t exist anymore. You think the Constitution was designed as a how-to guide for the end times? It’s temporary, N
adia. I’ll release them when everything stabilizes.”

  Nadia looked at him like he’d said he’ll let them out in 200 years. “Listen to yourself. When everything stabilizes. We’re going to run out of oil and gas. The electricity is going to fail. Half the town is going to starve to death, and the survivors will hang us from lampposts. You’ve turned our town into a banana republic, and you’re playing God with our son.”

  “His name is Charles.”

  “I know what his name is!” She stood up and stormed into the dining room, then back into the living room.

  Steele decided to say nothing for a while, to just grind his teeth and let Nadia vent, to let her get it out of her system. If she kept at it long enough, she’d eventually crash from emotional exhaustion.

  She was a long way from crashing. She stared at him as if he’d just slapped her. “If he’s not better in two days…”

  He knew what she wanted to say. And she knew, on some level, that it was wrong, so she found a way of saying the wrong thing in a way that made it sound like the right thing. “Just give him up to God.”

  She covered her eyes with her right thumb and forefinger. Though she made no sound, he could see the shuddering in her shoulders.

  He was breaking inside. He felt it like a laceration inside his breast. He could not cry in front of her. Not now. Not while she was crying. They could not both cry at the same time. Because if Charles didn’t get better, his marriage was finished. He knew it, she knew it, and if they cried together they’d be admitting it to each other.

  Few marriages survived the death of a child. Human beings seemed to be wired, on some deep evolutionary level, to break the bonds with their mates if their children didn’t make it, as if their genes were a mismatch, that the survival of their bloodline required a healthier pairing. Love did not conquer all. Nothing—not love, not friendship, not justice, not anything—trumped the survival of our own lineage and of our species.

  Nadia was already moving through the stages of grief, but Steele hadn’t even begun yet. He was not in denial. There was nothing to grieve. Their son was alive. He was sick, but he was alive, and the doctor had given him medicine.

  “He’ll be okay, sweetheart,” he said. She sobbed audibly this time. “We’ll be okay.”

  She left the room without looking back at him.

  17

  Parker groaned in pain and shock. He lay on his back in the rear of an SUV with his hands behind him and zip-ties cutting into his wrists. Two assholes rode up front, one behind the wheel, the other turned around in the passenger seat pointing a pistol down at Parker’s face.

  He had no idea what the fuck was going on. Did Kyle rat him out to the mayor?

  “Can I sit up?” he said.

  “Slowly,” the guy with the gun on him said.

  What, was he worried that Parker was going to head-butt him? Hardly. Parker imagined himself chewing off the guy’s fingers and retrieving the pistol with his teeth.

  He struggled with his hands behind his back and fumbled it a couple of times, but he managed to sit up in the end.

  “Where are we going?” Parker said. It looked like they were heading downtown.

  “Where do you think?” the guy with the gun said.

  “You’re not cops.”

  “What did we just do?”

  “You kidnapped me.”

  “We arrested you.”

  The driver chuckled. “You believe this guy?”

  The one with the gun shook his head.

  “Fucking guy,” the driver said.

  “We work for the mayor’s office,” the one with the gun said. “And you’re under arrest. Mayor says you’re trouble. And your friend back there seems to agree with him.”

  “What do you care?” Parker said.

  “We know what it’s like out there. So does the mayor. So does everyone else here. Which is why we have an army defending this town and why the army does what the mayor says. You think Lander is the last town standing because we put up with the kind of crap that goes on out there?”

  “Where are we going?”

  The two men said nothing.

  They passed through the center of downtown and kept going.

  Parker wouldn’t be too concerned if these guys were cops, but they weren’t cops. Were they taking him out into the desert to shoot him? If so, then to hell with it. Life after the plague was nasty and short, and Parker had lasted longer than most people. At least a bullet in the back of his head would quiet his mind.

  For years he’d liked to console himself, in his darker moments, that nothing would make a rat’s ass bit of difference in a hundred years because everyone alive would be dead. Short of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet, nothing mattered long term because the entire world would be replaced with new people with new problems.

  It was different now. A giant asteroid might as well have slammed into the planet. Everyone’s problems were being rubbed away like rain under the windshield wipers. Soon enough there would be no people at all. The earth would go quiet and peaceful.

  He imagined himself lunging forward and biting the men in front of the truck and it didn’t bother him. Not anymore. He wouldn’t actually do it, and soon enough he wouldn’t even be thinking about it.

  “Are you going to bury me or just leave me out there?” he said before realizing he didn’t care what the answer was.

  The guy in the passenger seat, the one with the gun, looked offended.

  “You listen to a word either one of us said?”

  Parker said nothing.

  “You think we’re going to murder you? For real?”

  Parker said nothing.

  The guy with the gun looked at the driver and shook his head.

  Okay, so they weren’t going to kill him. He wasn’t sure what to make of that yet.

  The driver made a left off Main onto 1st Street, passed a lumberyard and the Chamber of Commerce, then made a right into a parking lot in front of a soulless two-story brick building. A large sign out front read, “Fremont County Sheriff’s Office and Detention Center.”

  The two men up front opened their doors at the same time and stepped onto the pavement.

  “Out,” the driver said and opened the back door on his side.

  Parker stepped out. It was a little difficult with his wrists zip-tied.

  The second guy came around the back of the SUV and got behind Parker. “In,” he said.

  They marched him into the building.

  It was cold inside and the walls and floor were a sterile gray. A uniformed militiaman set behind a metal desk wearing a winter hat and a coat. Parker caught glimpses of jail cells behind him through a double set of heavy-looking doors with windows made of thick glass.

  The militiaman—or prison guard, or whatever the hell he was—looked up and away from the computer monitor in front of him. “Who’s the new guy?”

  “Murderer,” the driver said.

  “Who’d you kill?” the guard said.

  Parker sighed. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Yeah, yeah, everybody’s innocent,” the guard said.

  The guard used a key to open the first door leading into the cellblock. It was made of gray metal. “After you.”

  Parker had never been in a prison before, but he knew how this worked. The second door wouldn’t open until the first door was locked and secured. He stepped inside and the door shut behind him.

  He could see into the cellblock now and it looked less awful than he expected. It wasn’t like the prisons he’d seen on TV. This one was modern and clean.

  It began with a cavernous common area. Two rows of long metal tables with fixed metal seats, four on each side, were bolted into the floor. Along the far wall was a row of cells. All the doors were open. A metal staircase led to a second floor of cells on a mezzanine that looked down onto the tables and seats below.

  Everything except the floor was metallic, and it looked like it has been polished with stainless steel
cleaner and a soft cloth. The place looked strangely futuristic.

  It was packed to overflowing with hundreds of people jammed in there.

  The guard opened the second door. Dozens of faces in the common area turned to gawk at the newcomer.

  “After you,” the guard said.

  Parker swallowed. He did not want to go in there.

  The guard shoved him. Hard. Parker took three awkward steps and nearly fell on his face as the guard slammed the door shut behind him.

  The common area smelled like a zoo. With hundreds of sweating people crammed into one space, the cellblock was at least 30 degrees warmer than the hallway and the front desk. Most of the prisoners were men, but there were women in the crowd too. Everyone stared.

  A tall whippy man in his fifties gestured with his head toward the far end of the common area. Parker followed him into one of the cells. Another man and a woman were already in there. The volunteer welcoming committee.

  The cell looked and felt Spartan. It had two narrow bunk beds with inch-thin mattresses. A metal slab that passed for a desk bolted into the wall. A metal stool bolted into the floor. A sink. A mirror. A toilet without walls for privacy. A tiny smudged window that looked out onto nothing. That was it.

  “Nobody here knows you,” the man who summoned him said.

  “I’m from far away,” Parker said.

  The man nodded.

  Parker felt a surge of adrenaline when he imagined himself lunging forward and sinking his teeth into the man’s throat.

  The man looked resigned. Like he’d given up. So did the other man and woman in the cell. No one had introduced themselves yet. Curious onlookers crowded the common area outside so they could see inside.

  These people did not look like criminals. They looked like regular folks. Parker was prepared to believe that even criminals didn’t look like criminals, but there were women in there too. This was no regular prison.

  “Who are you?” Parker said. “What is this place?”

  The man who invited him into the room looked at Parker hard. “I’m Sam Beckett. Lander’s chief of police.”

  Hughes shoved Kyle into his motel room and slammed the door. “What did you do!”