Edge of Survival Box Set 1

by William Oday

  Mason appeared and shut the door behind him.

  “Holly’s parents are gone.”

  Theresa slumped to the floor. Tears cascaded down her cheeks and soaked into the cotton mask. She heard a low moaning and was only dimly aware that it was coming from her mouth.

  Her father pulled her up with ease and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry.” He held her in place as her numb legs supported no weight.

  Something inside Theresa broke free and the dam behind her eyes collapsed. A river of grief flowed from her soul and onto his chest. He held her tight until the torrent eased to a trickle. “I can’t believe she’s gone, Daddy.”

  “I know, honey. I know.”

  “I want my best friend back.”

  Another wellspring of anguish billowed up, but then sputtered when there was nothing below it to continue building the pressure.

  “Can I go to her room?”

  “I’ll go with you,” he said.

  “Can I do it alone?”

  Mason considered and then answered, “Yes. Just be careful. I’m going to look through the kitchen to see if anything useful might be left.”

  “Okay.”

  They walked together back to Holly’s room. Theresa clicked her headlamp on to the dim setting.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”

  She stepped into the bedroom that was once occupied by her best friend in the world. The place was a total mess, which wasn’t all that different from when Holly had lived here. She sat on the mattress on the floor and looked around. A torn Death Before Life movie poster hung from the wall above Holly’s bed. Holly used to say she loved waking up with Ryan’s hot body on top of her.

  A choked giggle escaped Theresa’s lips as she remembered Holly bragging about how she’d fall asleep gazing at the poster and then find Prince Charming in her dreams. Her very non-Disney, and shockingly explicit, dreams.

  That was Holly.

  And she was gone.

  Theresa shone her headlamp around the room, as much in the present as in the past that dwelt more deeply in her heart.

  A sparkle in the corner of the room caught her eye.

  She swept across the area and there it was again. Probably a shard of broken glass. She got up and shoved aside filthy sheets and clothes that might’ve once been Holly’s.

  There.

  Lodged in the corner where the carpet met the wall.

  A fine silver chain.

  She dug in with her fingernail and pulled it free.

  A silver locket in the shape of a heart. The letters BFF engraved on the surface.

  Her heart broke in two as she wedged a fingernail into the seam and popped it open. Each half contained a faded picture of each of them in third grade. Theresa remembered giving the locket to Holly for her ninth birthday like it was yesterday.

  She pinched it closed and pressed it to her chest over her heart. Holly was gone. But Theresa would never forget her.

  Never.

  A noise from outside the bedroom made Theresa jump. She turned around and saw nothing. It sounded like a door opening or closing.

  “Dad?” she said in a loud whisper.

  There was no reply.

  “Dad! Is that you?” she said a little louder.

  Still no reply.

  She stuffed the locket in her pocket and crept out of the room. A shuffling sound and then what was definitely a door shutting froze her in her tracks. Her hand went to the holstered Glock at her hip.

  It had to be her dad. He just didn’t hear her. That was all. No reason to freak out.

  Her hand stayed glued to the pistol.

  She quietly made her way into the kitchen and didn’t see Mason. He said this was where he’d be, didn’t he?

  A strange sound raised the hairs on her arms. Like someone talking, but not using words she’d ever heard. She pivoted toward the sound and saw that the door to the garage was ajar. It had been closed when they came through earlier, hadn’t it?

  Had Mason gone in to check for anything else worth taking?

  She listened for further movement. All she heard was the hurricane squall of her own breathing, like she had a stethoscope stuck to her nostrils.

  She tiptoed to the door and still heard nothing. Maybe it was noth—

  There it was again!

  Her dad must be out there, probably looking for gas or tools. Stuff you’d find in a garage. She pulled the door open and stepped inside. She edged around Mr. Pearson’s shiny black Land Rover and didn’t see or hear anything.

  Maybe she was imagining things.

  Maybe she’d gone crazy. Who knew? Maybe she was actually napping in first period American History class because Holly had kept her up too late on yet another Sunday night.

  She headed back for the kitchen feeling like an idiot and trying to forgive herself for acting crazy in an objectively insane situation.

  She took a few steps and then an odd whimpering sound dumped ice water down her back. She flicked her headlamp to the far wall. There, nestled in a corner behind a deep freezer, was a woman crouched on all fours. Two young boys peeked out from behind her with terrified looks in their eyes.

  The three looked like wild animals.

  14

  The woman wore a summer dress that had been torn to filthy rags. Twigs and other bits of debris poked out of a matted mess that once must’ve been beautiful dark hair. One full breast hung out where the cloth no longer covered. The ruined dress now revealed more than it hid. Scared but unyielding, she held the boys behind her. She blinked hard at the bright light in her face.

  “Sorry,” Theresa said as she angled the beam down a little. “We can help you. We have food and water, clothes for all of you. My mom’s a doctor. A vet actually, but she’s been doing fine working on people lately.”

  Theresa smiled awkwardly realizing her nerves were making her run at the mouth. She couldn’t imagine what these three had been through. She only knew she needed to help them.

  The woman stared with something between caution and curiosity in her eyes.

  “Sorry,” Theresa said, “I just didn’t expect anyone to be out here. Was a shock is all. I’m not normally this jumpy. Things out there have me a little on edge. Maybe a lot on edge. Anyway, we can help you.”

  She took a step toward them and the woman jerked like she’d been attacked. The muscles in her arms and legs coiled tight. She looked ready to spring.

  “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Theresa took another step and the woman tilted her head back and screamed. The primal desperation in the wail sent Theresa backpedaling. Another scream sent her sprawling back into the Land Rover. Her headlamp swung wildly across the wall and ceiling and back again as she tumbled back. The side of the Land Rover kept her upright and she realized with a start that she was looking at the boards that held up the sloped roof.

  More importantly, the woman was somewhere in the darkness below.

  She whipped her head down and zeroed it back in on the spot beside the freezer.

  It was empty.

  The oval of light lingered as Theresa’s brain tried to catch up to what her eyes were telling her.

  They were right there!

  That was the spot, right?

  Were they real?

  Theresa wheeled around the black void and the light found the trio again, now over beside a workbench. The woman held a hammer with the wrong end in her hand. She banged the wooden handle on the concrete floor. She drew her lips back to reveal a full set of teeth. She hissed a warning. They weren’t vampire teeth. Just regular human teeth. But she bared them like a rabid beast.

  Another cone of light appeared at the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Put the hammer down!” Her father’s gun fluidly tracked the woman as he bounded into the garage and landed in front of Theresa. “I said put it down!”

  The mother
howled at Mason but showed no signs of obeying. Of even understanding, really.

  “Are you okay?” Mason asked.

  “I’m fine. She hasn’t tried to hurt me. Just protecting her kids I think.”

  “Please put the hammer down. I don’t want to hurt you or your children.”

  The woman still showed no sign of understanding.

  “Theresa, stay behind me and back up into the kitchen.”

  Theresa did as she was told and they made it through the door without further incident.

  Mason slammed the door shut. He scanned the kitchen behind Theresa and then grabbed her hand. “Let’s go!”

  They jogged outside and jumped into the Bronco in record time. Mason fired up the throaty V8 and, unlike on their way in, gunned the engine and took off down the relatively clear street.

  Theresa held on to the dash as they bumped over the curb and tore through someone’s front lawn to avoid a snarl of cars at the end of the block. They turned right and broke clear onto Lincoln. The Rite-Aid pharmacy was a few blocks down, though not lit up at night like it usually was.

  Like it used to be was more accurate now. Their short trip had shown her a completely changed world. A world that was a distorted, nightmarish reflection of what it used to be.

  Mason slowed the Bronco and the roar of the engine subsided.

  “Dad, what was wrong with her?”

  “Stress can overwhelm the mind. Take away its reason. Make you do things you’d never normally do. I’ve seen it happen.”

  15

  MASON knew that pharmacies and other stores would already be looted, but the level of destruction still shocked him. The first stop at Rite Aid didn’t last long when they discovered that it was nothing more than a burned out husk. It, along with the grocery store Ralph’s next door, contained nothing but ash and melted amoebic structures that may have once been aisle shelves.

  The next stop at CVS wasn’t much better. There was no evidence of past fires, but the pharmacy had been stripped bare. They now sat in the Bronco considering what to do next. Clyde needed antibiotics and Mason didn’t relish the idea of returning empty-handed. Another tragedy might be too much for Beth to handle.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find a store that hasn’t been destroyed or picked over,” Mason said.

  Theresa chewed on her lower lip and then paused. “What about Fernando’s?”

  “You mean that little neighborhood corner mart on Rose and Main?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, it has a little pharmacy in the back.”

  Mason could’ve smacked himself. He didn’t remember because he never went there for anything other than a quick gallon of milk or bag of chips. “That’s my girl. Thinking outside the big box stores.”

  Mason fired up the Bronco and headed out, careful to avoid the tangles of overturned shopping carts and abandoned cars choking the parking lot.

  He drove slowly down the street now that night had fallen. The road ahead was darker than seemed possible. Los Angeles usually had so much ambient light bouncing around on the ground and up into the sky that there was almost no need for headlights. Tonight was different.

  Mason kept the headlights off because the high-powered lights in the sea of darkness would act like a lighthouse, a beacon to whoever and whatever lurked out there in the shadows.

  He waved the small beam of a handheld flashlight back and forth across the road, identifying obstructions and navigating up around them.

  “Dad, why did this happen? Is God punishing us?”

  Mason didn’t know if the us meant them in particular or mankind in general, but his answer would’ve been the same either way. “I’m probably not the best person to ask about God’s motives or actions. That said, I don’t think a creator would cause this much suffering.”

  “Well, then why did this happen?”

  Mason could come up with a few theories. From the overuse of antibiotics that for decades had been creating more and more resistant superbugs. To the accelerating deforestation of the Amazon and other wild places which put mankind into direct contact with various viruses and bacteria that had been out of the evolutionary loop for millennia. The same dynamic decimated the Native Americans when Europeans arrived.

  From there, he could go even more conspiratorial (and yet no less likely to be true) and consider how governments around the world secretly developed weapons of biological warfare. Genetically engineered microscopic strains that had the potential to wipe out all life on the planet.

  “I hope someday we find out so we can make sure it never happens again.”

  They slowed to a stop at the corner next to Fernando’s. They geared up and Mason led the way to the front door. In the light of his headlamp, he tested the wood panels that had replaced the busted out glass door. Nothing so much as creaked. Without making a whole lot of unwanted noise, they weren’t going to get in that way.

  “Let’s check around the sides and back and hopefully find an easier way in.”

  They skirted around the corner to the right and saw the familiar mural of waves crashing on a beach that covered the brick wall. They kept moving towards the back of the building with Mason scanning his light back and forth and his Glock in the low ready position. Nothing drew his attention nor the front sight of the pistol.

  Around the back they discovered a door partially ripped away from the frame and hanging on by the lower hinges. Through the open doorway, the interior was pitch black.

  What he wouldn’t give for some night vision goggles right now. He considered telling Theresa to turn on her headlamp but then decided against it. If they encountered anything, he wanted all the attention focused on him.

  He whispered over his shoulder, “Stay close.”

  They crept into the silent tomb with nothing but Mason’s narrow cone of light guiding the way. He did a quick sweep as they entered and saw no one. Aside from the crazed mother and her children, they’d seen no other living being all night. They entered what must’ve been a small stockroom. Ripped sheets of cardboard and torn apart boxes intermingled with overturned wire shelves. The air reeked of rotten food.

  He hoped it was food.

  They moved slowly, stepping over and picking their way through debris. Making sure to test each foot placement before committing weight to it.

  He rifled through a mound of black trash bags piled against the wall. He accidentally tore one open and gagged when a wave of rot billowed out. He reached in again to sweep more of the bags aside and his hand hit something firm. He pushed another bag aside and found an unopened cardboard box.

  Could it be food?

  Could they be that lucky?

  He tore the flap open. No food. The box was mostly empty. But not completely. There were two bottles of vinegar and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  Pay dirt!

  Neither had a smell he was fond of, but both were miracles in their own right. Vinegar especially was a miracle solution. You could clean almost anything with it. It was crazy how successful Procter & Gamble and other mega corporations were in brainwashing people into believing they needed a thousand different cleaning products when they really just needed one. The all powerful and totally unpatentable vinegar. The latter aspect being why said corporations had no interest in selling it.

  He grabbed the three bottles and secured them in his backpack.

  “Score,” Theresa whispered from behind him.

  What a testament to how much the world had changed and his daughter along with it that their find excited her. Eight days ago, she wouldn’t have cared if their entire house was stacked floor to ceiling with bottles of vinegar. Or maybe she would’ve cared only in so far as they blocked her from getting to her room.

  Seeing her adapt so quickly made him proud.

  Knowing that she had to broke his heart.

  They approached another open doorway and Mason cleared them through into the front part of the store. The low shelves that used to hold a tempting assortment of snacks and hou
sehold basics were kicked over and covered with a stirred rainbow of plastic wrappers, crushed aluminum cans, and broken bottles. Mason ground his teeth in frustration. He should’ve gotten out days ago, when supplies like these might’ve still been available. He blamed himself but the remaining tenderness in his left calf reminded him that it hadn’t been a choice.

  Besides, they were alive now because they’d been unable to get out in those first days. The highly contagious virus had apparently wiped out most of the world’s population. Ironically, their injuries had probably saved their lives.

  He slid the circle of light to the right along the floor and landed on the pharmacy section of the store. A wall of thick bulletproof glass stretched from chest high to the ceiling securing the area. The glass still stood, though it had acquired a large number of scrapes since the last time Mason had visited.

  Nothing.

  Struck out again. Where was he going to get ahold of some antibiotics now?

  Through the glass, Mason saw the shelves were swept clean. Sporadic piles of printer paper and glinting shards of glass were all that remained. He scanned further right and saw that the door to the area behind the pharmacy counter was open. The lock had clearly been pried apart.

  Maybe they’d still find something useful. Never knew until you checked. He headed for the open door.

  CREAK.

  He froze and Theresa did the same behind him.

  16

  There was no way the sound came from either of them. What was it?

  Metal on metal. Hinges maybe.

  Mason swung his head around with the Glock raised and ready. The elevated beating of his heart thumped in his ears. He exhaled slow and deep to suppress the flood of chemicals in his system. Dangerous situations required a clarity of focus that a body soaked in adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine made difficult to achieve. He blew out another calming breath and the racing tension in his chest slowed. Slowed but not stopped.

  That was good.

  The edge kept you sharp, helped you survive.