He shakes his head.
The two men begin moving toward him.
Tattered clothes. Worn shoes. Oily skin and hair. Ashen faces. Everything dusted with a patina of white powder.
He eases out of the woods, down into the ditch and back in their direction to meet them near a child’s overturned red wagon in the middle of the highway.
—You military? the young guy asks.
He shakes his head.
—Police?
He shakes his head again.
He’d just robbed a store that those types frequent, but he isn’t going to tell the young man that.
—I can see you’re suspicious of us, the old man says. We mean you no harm. We’re the good guys. Are you?
—I am.
—Not many of us left. Keep gettin’ picked off. No world for the good. It’s a pleasure to meet a fellow pilgrim, the old man says, extending his hand.
He eases his hand off the weapon in his bag and brings it out to shake.
The old man must be in his seventies, but his weathered face contains a youthful countenance and his blue eyes have a distinct sparkle.
––I’m Augustus Milton McAndrews, Sr., the old man says. Most people call me Gus but I prefer Augustus. My quiet companion here is Chandler Jackson. Goes by CJ.
The old man’s mouth is dry, his parched throat tight from thirst.
The two men may not be as emaciated as the others he’s encountered, but they are dehydrated.
—Nice to make your acquaintance, Augustus, CJ.
He extends his hand to shake CJ’s, but receives only a knuckle bump from the early twenties-looking young man.
—Don’t want to give us your name, partner? Augustus says.
—Doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. Name’s Michael. He then smiles and adds, Most people call me Mike, but I prefer Michael.
—Well, Michael, where you been? Whatcha seen? What can you tell us about the new world?
—Was in Atlanta when it got bad. Got injured. Took me a while to get out. Been making my way back to Florida ever since. What I’ve seen is death, destruction, a new Dark Ages. Not much else.
He had survived the riots of Atlanta, but it had taken time for him to heal from his injuries. He had eventually gotten out of the city, but the cost had been enormous. What he had done, what he had been willing to do. Who he had become, who he’s still willing to become. To survive. To save his family. To be with them again. Will they recognize him? Will there be anything left of who he used to be, of who they used to know?
—I come up out of Florida, Augustus says. Little town called Cottondale. Met this young man near Marianna not too long ago. Been traveling together today.
—That’s where I’m headed.
—Need to change your course, friend, Augustus says. Further south you go, the worse it gets. A lot worse. And that’s the parts that aren’t underwater. Why you think we’re headed north?
—Can’t.
—How bad’s Atlanta? CJ asks.
—Bad.
—How bad?
The city was war torn, dead littered, decimated. Those remaining dividing along the usual lines, fighting for resources.
—Real bad, he says. Avoid it if you can.
—Can’t.
—I understand that.
—Whatever’s there can’t compare to what’s waiting in the direction you’re headed, Augustus says. All manner of malevolence floats in from the ocean—in the water and on the air. Comes ashore. Kills. And worse.
—Can’t be helped. Have to go.
—It’s suicide.
—My family’s there, he says.
—Not anymore.
—Have to see for myself.
—Even if it means dying to do it? Augustus says.
—No desire to live without them, he says. Not in any world, but especially not in this one.
Scattered.
Unusual for them, when the end came and the beginning was born, they were not in relative proximity to one another, but dispersed about like random, unrelated countrymen during an unintended diaspora.
Flung far from his North Florida home, he had been in Atlanta when the end began. His wife, Dawn, unaware of his whereabouts because of an ill-conceived surprise he had been working on for her, had been at work in their small-town home of Wewahitchka.
Wewahitchka is a tiny town between Panama City and Tallahassee along the Apalachicola River and the Dead Lakes, about twenty-five miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
The town reminds him of his wife, for the two are forever linked in his mind. Dawn is a beautiful country girl, strong and resilient and capable, and he has little doubt that if she was not killed by the initial cataclysms, she will have found a way to survive.
His grown daughter, Meleah, had been in Marianna for training, his grown son, Micah, in Panama City for school. His youngest son, Travis, in Port St. Joe with his mother. His wife’s son had been at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.
He assumes his retired parents had been at or near their home in Wewa, but he has no idea.
He intends to find them and as many of his friends as he can and do what he can for them.
He’s not heroic. But he’s here. And he’s got to do something. He’ll start with family and close friends and move out from there. He’ll do all he can for as long as he can, no matter how little and how limited that may be.
When the balloon went up, he was some three hundred miles from those who meant the most to him—miles that before the end would have taken hours to travel and were now taking more than a month. Which with the month he was detained before even beginning the journey means he is beyond late for the mask of the red death ball, every passing moment greatly decreasing the odds of finding any of his friends and family alive.
Miles. Months. Odds. None of it matters. He’ll travel any distance, across the span of any time, to find them, to get them to safety if such a thing still exists, to see if he might have with them some semblance of a life, if such a thing is still possible. In the absence of any of this, of safety or even life, he will find out their fate. He will hold them in his arms if they are among the few remaining with something like life left in them. He will bury and mourn for them if not. Unless, of course, he loses the little life left inside him before he is able to close the miles and months between them—an outcome that seems more likely if not actually inevitable every moment of his post-end existence.
—How bad is Dothan? the old man asks.
—Nothing like Atlanta, but it’s bad. Yet to find a place that’s not.
—Dangerous? the old man asks.
He nods.
—What’s more dangerous, the old man asks, the cities or the roads leading to them?
—Both are deadly, he said. Just in different ways.
—Never seen nothin’ as bad as Marianna, the old man says. And only got a glimpse.
—Got any food in those bags? CJ asks. Or clean water?
He hesitates.
In addition to all that he has stuffed into the pockets of his pants and shirts and jacket, he has a backpack strapped to his back and a duffel bag dangling from each shoulder—all filled with the supplies and equipment he estimates he needs to complete his mission, which, of course, includes food and water.
—A little, he says, finally. Not enough to kill or die for.
—We ain’t like that, CJ says.
—Then you are truly unique among the men I’ve encountered out here.
—Did you kill for it? Augustus asks.
—I didn’t, but don’t think I won’t.
—You look like a pack mule, Augustus says.
—Homeless man more like, CJ says.
—We’re all homeless now, he says.
—You be willing to share a few drops of water and a few morsels of food? Augustus asks.
He thinks about it for a moment, then nods his head.
He actually keeps a small portion separate to share.
—Y’all have a seat and p
ut your hands palms down on the asphalt. Keep ’em where I can see ’em.
—That ain’t necessary, CJ says.
—Yes it is. And it’s nonnegotiable.
—I ain’t doin’ it.
—Suit yourself.
—I’ll do it, Augustus says.
—Has to be both of you. And it has to be now. Got no more time to waste on this.
—Come on, CJ, Augustus says. We can’t afford to be—
Screams.
Shrieks.
Struggle.
All three men spin around in search of the source.
The moment after he realizes it’s coming from the back of the overturned FedEx truck, its bottom door bursts open and a small, naked young girl wearing a dog collar around her neck runs out.
The collar is connected to a chain, which trails loudly behind her as it scrapes across the asphalt.
The grimy girl is pale and gaunt with biggish breasts for her size and a dark patch of pubic hair roughly the same color as the matted mess atop her head.
He guesses she’s seventeen or so, but it’s hard to tell in her current condition.
She’s screaming and flailing as she runs toward them.
—HELP ME. PLEASE. HELP ME.
CJ is already moving toward her.
Suddenly the chain is jerked taut and she is yanked back, her feet coming out from underneath her as she crashes onto the pavement.
A fat, redheaded, hairy man in an open kimono appears at the back of the truck, the other end of the chain in his gloved right hand.
Beneath his enormous hairy belly, his flaccid phallus is barely visible in the wiry thatch of red pubic hair.
—Where d’ you think you’re goin’, little kitten, he says. Ain’t done with you yet. Not by a far sight.
Writhing on the ground, one hand on the collar, one on the chain, the girl is still trying to get away.
That’s when Michael can see the trickles of blood on her bottom and inner thighs.
When CJ reaches her, he kneels down to help her up, but the feral creature kicks and hisses at him.
—Thought you wanted help, he says. I’m help.
—Away from her, nigger, the fat red-headed man says. She’s mine.
—The fuck d’ you call me? CJ says, standing. You fat, little-dick motherfucker.
The fat man brings up a .45 semiautomatic with his non-gloved hand and begins firing, the first rounds ricocheting on the pavement.
The girl screams.
CJ dances around attempting to avoid the bullets, reaching into his coat and coming out with a pocket knife as he does.
Augustus ducks and runs for the ditch.
Michael brings the 9mm out of his bag, lowers both duffels to the ground, then starts toward the man.
If he fires from back here, he’ll be no more accurate than the fat man.
Making a wide swing, he runs up the right-hand shoulder of the road, clicking off the safety and sliding a round in the chamber.
One of the fat man’s rounds clips CJ in the leg and he goes down.
Now with CJ and the girl on the ground, the fat man begins firing down in their direction, grouping his shots, greatly increasing the odds of—
CJ takes a round in the shoulder, then the neck, then the chest.
The traumatized girl gets even louder.
Screaming for help, cursing the fat man, something else he can’t make out.
Then a round hits the pavement beside her and ricochets into her head.
Full stop. Instantly. No sound. No movement. A short, unhappy life over.
The fat man now turns his attention to Michael moving up toward him and begins to fire.
Stopping abruptly, Michael kneels on one knee as if about to propose, extends his arms, sights his large target, takes a quick breath as bullets buzz around him, then begins squeezing off rounds.
Aiming at the center of the fat man’s enormous mass, he quickly finds his mark.
Three quick rounds in the fat man’s midsection, but he neither goes down nor stops shooting.
Bullets still buzzing about him like angry bees, Michael raises his weapon and aims for the fat man’s fat head, and squeezes off two quick rounds.
Both miss.
But the fat man’s enormous red head explodes anyway in a crimson spray of blood and brain matter that splatters onto the white body of the truck.
Michael turns to see Augustus holding one of the rifles from his duffel bag in the middle of the road.
He hesitates a moment, waiting to see if the old man intends to turn the weapon on him, but stands when Augustus drops it on top of the open duffel.
Silence.
As the last of the echoing gunfire fades and dies, the forest surrounding them grows as still and silent as death.
—Nice shot, Michael says as he reaches Augustus.
Augustus doesn’t respond and doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.
—Can’t imagine the hell that poor girl has been living in, Michael says. Glad it’s over. Wish we could’ve saved her.
—You and CJ did all you could. That’s all you can do. Now all we can do is bury them and—
Michael shakes his head.
—Can’t bury them, he says. Wouldn’t bury the fat bastard anyway, but can’t do any of them. Take too much time and energy. No way someone didn’t hear all the gunfire and is on their way to check it out. It’ll be dark soon. We’ve got to move. Now.
—All that poor girl’s been through and you gonna leave her little naked body out here on the road for any and everyone to see and buzzards to pick her bones clean? Not to mention the young man who tried to save her.
—No, I’m going to drag their bodies into the truck and close it up. It’s all I can do for them. Wish I could do more, but it’s not something this world allows.
Before Augustus can respond, a medium-sized cur bounds out of the back of the truck. Lab and Catahoula mix, he has a blue-silver coat with a plethora of big black spots and bright blue eyes that radiate intelligence.
It’s one of a very few animals he’s seen since the end.
Dragging a leash behind him, he runs directly to the girl. Nuzzling. Sniffing. Licking. Then mourning.
It’s obvious the dog has been better cared for than the other poor creature also in collar and leash.
—Well, hey there sweet boy, Augustus says. Aren’t you a handsome fella.
The end of his leash is frayed and covered in slobber—something the animal has most likely just done in order to get to the girl.
—Guess we better check the back of the truck before we do anything else, Michael says.
They do.
Finding no other living beings, they take what little useful items they can easily find, place CJ and the girl inside, and close the doors.
—Mind if I say a few quick words? Augustus asks.
—Not at all.
Augustus removes his hat and holds it over his heart.
—Father accept these poor souls into thy keeping . . . Let them hurt and hunger no more. Amen.
—Amen.
Michael then hands Augustus some water and food, the two men shake hands, and they part company heading in opposite directions, the old man holding the leash of his new travel companion. There is neither time nor call for anything else.
4
Nocturnal noises.
Inhuman.
Insufferable.
Full dark beneath a starless sky. Zero light. Absolute black.
He travels mostly at night.
During the day he naps and scavenges and, when any sunlight at all penetrates the caustic ash and cloud coverage, charges his solar battery packs.
All his movements during the day are along the edge of the woods, but at night he runs the road.
Light in one hand. Weapon in the other.
He’s developed a certain rhythm, an approach to maximize progress and minimize detection.
Light on. Beam bouncing across road and shoulder and f
ringe of forest, the tiniest of beacons in a sea of tyrannical and brutal blackness.
After sweeping the entire area around him from differing heights and a variety of angles, he moves from one side of the road to the other, then sprints some fifty feet and repeats the process from a different location.
Nothing can be seen in the darkness. Absolutely nothing.
Night is now about what can be heard.
He is most vulnerable when scanning his surroundings with the beam, so he limits the light and moves constantly.
Once the light is off and he’s running headlong into the darkness on a trajectory other than the one the placement of his lamp would have predicted, there is only the chance—or is it eventual certitude?—of collision.
Racing down the road.
Night-blind.
Winded.
A single earbud dangling down around his chest, the other in his left ear playing a literary mashup he made while recuperating in Atlanta.
Literature had saved him—before and after the end. Since this long, dark night had befallen the earth and its inhabitants. During his many long dark nights of the soul before any of this ever began.
His bags are heavier than they have to be because of the books they contain, and he burns most of the little solar power the wan sun provides on the little listening devices that put the words in his ear and mind and soul.
King Lear and the King James Bible. Poets Rumi and Hafiz. Literary audio juxtaposition.
This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.
And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?
Nothing can come of nothing.
He wills himself to focus on the ancient words being whispered in his ear. Not the night. Not the grisly, gut-wrenching noises coming from the wicked woods. Not the darkness darker than night and the horrors it conceals.
But it’s no good. He can’t concentrate for more than a line or two at a time before his attention is ripped away by the appalling din in the short distance.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
CATACLYSMOS Book 1 Part 1: This is the Way the World Ends: A Post-Apocolyptic Serial Thriller Page 2
