“I don’t know.... I don’t know what to say. What do you want?”
“The girl. Where is she? You said you saw something, Brian. If you’re lying...you know what’s going to happen. I don’t have to tell you.”
Matt was surprised at his own voice, surprised at how vicious he sounded, surprised at how terrifying he could actually sound. His voice sounded like a snarl, like a growl, like a constant threat.
“She...I saw her...the people in the suits...the space suits...they took her...”
“They took her?”
“Yeah. They took her.”
“Your story has holes,” said Matt. “You know, Joe, that’s about all I can trust from you. The rest might as well be bullshit. Space suits? Come on.”
“Must be because of the virus. I don’t know.... They’re the scientists.... I mean, I’m not sure. I think they’re from the lab. But how do I know?”
Matt was getting a different read on the guy now, and he was feeling a little more relaxed. He realized that the tightness in his chest and throat was starting to ease.
He figured that was a good sign and he shifted his weight, getting off of Brian. Of course, before he did that, he made sure to grab Brian’s gun, as well as pat him down, checking each of his pockets, checking as well for any holsters or hidden weapons of any sort. He knew very well that someone might hide a small handgun in a variety of places and that an automatic knife might not take up much space at all, hiding easily in the folds of clothing.
“Thanks,” muttered Brian, leaning over, his chest heaving up and down as he apparently tried to take in as much air as he possibly could.
“So you knew Joe?”
“Yeah,” said Brian, able to speak more easily now. “But to be honest with you, I never liked him. And he never liked me either.”
“Sort of a neighborly rivalry?
“Something like that.”
Matt felt better now. Not just relaxed. But he was fairly certain, with his gun trained on Brian, who had no weapons, that he himself didn’t face immediate danger. And he was on track to get Jamie back.
Matt felt his own breathing slowing down, as his body began to relax into rest and recuperation mode.
“He’s dead,” said Matt, watching to see Brian’s reaction.
“Joe? Dead?”
Matt nodded.
“Ah, shit,” said Brian, his expression falling even more. “That’s not...Shit.... What the hell happened? The virus?”
“So you know about the virus, but you’re not wearing any protective gear? You’re just walking into an area where anyone might be contaminated. Hell, how do you know I’m not infected?”
“I’m immune,” said Brian, but he didn’t seem happy about it.
“Naturally immune? You too?”
“Yeah,” said Brian, nodding his head, not reacting to Matt’s admission that he was immune.
“Maybe there are more of us than I thought,” said Matt, musing over the facts in his head. It seemed strange that he, Jamie, Judy, and Brian were all naturally immune. But then again, how many others had died? Maybe the numbers lined up with the percentages.
“Why don’t you look happy about being immune to a deadly virus?”
“My wife,” said Brian, speaking in a halting way. “She died. The virus got her.... I was there with her.... I thought I’d just die with her.... But no such luck.... She was the love of my life, and now she’s gone. I had to watch the whole thing. The whole thing. All the blood.... And our son...he’s missing. Probably dead. Probably met the same fate as his mother. I can try to trick myself, try to lie to myself, but the facts are the facts. It’s been days now...Didn’t so much as hear from him.”
“So you’d have been happier if you’d died along with your wife? What about your son? Don’t you want to be alive to help him? Just in case he’s still alive? In case there’s a chance?”
Matt realized as he spoke those words that the idea was making him somewhat angry again. Angry at the idea of a parent not doing everything they could for their children.
Maybe it had something to do with Matt’s own childhood. Or maybe not.
Not that it mattered. Not now. Not in these circumstances.
He needed to find Jamie. Shit. He needed to concentrate. He was letting his mind wander. He was letting himself be weak.
He needed to concentrate. He needed to find Jamie. He couldn’t let himself get hung up on other people’s lives.
“Tell me about what you saw. Tell me about the lab,” said Matt.
Brian said nothing. There was an expression of despair on his face, an expression of such intense sadness that it seemed that the emotions themselves were preventing him from even speaking, and definitely preventing him from helping Matt find Jamie.
“Look,” said Matt, taking a deep breath, preparing himself mentally for what he was about to say, for what he was about to admit to a stranger as well as himself. “I’m sorry about your wife. I’m sorry about your son. But don’t give up. Don’t give up on your son. He might be out there. You don’t know. Now look, she’s not my wife, this woman. Hell, she’s not even my girlfriend. We went on just a couple dates...it didn’t end well. Anyway, it’s a long story. Too long. But the thing is, I’m realizing that I have feelings for her.... I know we’re not supposed to talk about our feelings. Being men. You know? It’s just for women...but what are feelings? They’re just emotions. They’re just things that our body generates. Not unlike thoughts.”
Matt had been sort of looking at the ground. Now he glanced up at Brian, expecting to see some strange expression on his face as he made these admissions.
But instead, he saw nothing but rapt attention on Brian’s face.
It gave Matt the courage to continue.
It was strange, this whole situation. He’d chased this man down, tackled him. And now? Now he was making emotional confessions to him.
It was bizarre.
But so was life.
“So anyway,” said Matt. “These emotions.... I’m realizing that they’re what keep us alive. People talk about the will to survive. They talk about survival of the fittest. But what they don’t talk about is that that will to survive, that drive, that’s just an emotion. It’s a feeling you have. It’s something you feel deep in your bones. It’s not a thought. It’s not the logical conclusion to something...and some people have it and some people don’t.”
“It sounds weird,” said Brian. “But I get it. I get what you’re saying.”
“You do?”
“In a way, yeah,” said Brian, nodding vigorously.
“I thought I was going off the deep end there,” said Matt. “Anyway, this woman...she means a lot to me. Maybe it’s just my own drive to survive, you know? Maybe it’s just biology. The urge to reproduce. I don’t know. I’m not some kind of scientist.”
“But I get it. She’s important to you. Maybe in time, she could become someone who’s important to you, the way my wife was important to me.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I’ll try to help you. I’ll tell you what I can. Hell, I’ll even take you there. I’m not going in, though, because despite what I said, I’m trying to stay alive in case my son comes back and needs me.”
“That’s good,” said Matt. “How old is he?”
“College age. Didn’t go to college, though.”
Matt nodded. “Not everyone needs to.”
“He certainly didn’t need to. It wasn’t for him. He’s a good kid. Good head on his shoulders. Hell of a lot smarter than I was at that age.”
Matt nodded.
“Just for the memory of my wife, I’ll try to be here for him. Hell, I mean, maybe he’ll make it after all. I don’t know. If he is alive, though, I know he’ll do anything he can to come back home. Just for his mother.... He’ll be devastated...They were close.”
Matt nodded as he studied Brian’s face. Really looked at it for the first time. He was at least a decade older than Matt. Lanky, quite a bit tal
ler.
Brian had a beard of short stubble. There was gray in his hair, forming streaks, but not in his beard which had a reddish hue to its brown.
Brian’s skin had that sort of dried-out leathery look that Matt had seen in some men in New Mexico. He figured it was the dry air, or too much time out in the strong sun.
There was an intelligence in Brian’s eyes. And an intense sadness, too.
“Well,” said Brian. “If you’d be so kind as to point that gun somewhere else.... I’d be happy to take you near the lab.... On the way there I’ll tell you everything I know.... Just remember, it’s your risk.”
Matt realized he was still pointing the gun at Brian’s chest and he tucked it away in its holster.
It was funny the way things worked out. Ten minutes earlier, he’d been ready to shoot Brian in the neck. He’d been ready to slaughter him with a knife blade if necessary, or strangle him with his bare hands.
And for what?
To get Jamie back, that’s what.
It was something to think about. Something to ponder.
Was the desire to rescue Jamie...was it just biology, just part of the will to survive? Or was it something else?
And did it even matter?
9
Cody
Cody Macker had done all he could to get himself clean from whatever contaminants might cause him to become infected himself with the deadly virus.
On the day when the news of the outbreak was traveling across social media, the news, and social circles, beginning to break into the awareness of the general public, Cody had locked himself in the small cramped bathroom of the gallery of ‘found art’, doused himself with alcohol and water, and thrown his clothes in the corner.
He’d emerged from the bathroom completely naked, convinced that this apparent act of madness was the only way he could survive the potential contamination.
The gallery owner had screamed at him. The police had arrived, their sirens blaring.
Cody, buck naked, had made it out through a back window and sprinted away from the gallery, heading north toward the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. He left behind the sirens and the shouts of various onlookers who’d gotten a glimpse of his naked body sprinting away.
Convinced that the virus was reality, Cody was completely unconcerned about the possibility of social embarrassment. The only reason he didn’t want to be arrested was that he figured there was no way he wouldn’t be exposed to the virus in some local jail cell.
If Cody had one strength, it was that once he was convinced of something, he wasn’t afraid to strike out on his own. He wasn’t afraid to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing.
So he felt no qualms as he raced toward the high-elevation woods on the north side of Santa Fe, eventually finding himself darting between the tall pine trees and the underbrush, getting horrible scratches and cuts on his naked skin.
He’d rather have made it back to his parents’ property, but he figured that as of now, it was a complete impossibility. There seemed to be no way to get through the city without being infected.
And, what was more, if he was infected himself, then arriving at his parents’ home would surely expose them to the virus.
So Cody did the only thing he could think to do. He turned his phone off to conserve the battery and he hid out in the woods, away from everyone, for three long days and three long nights.
He had nothing to eat and only the water from the small local streams to drink. The water was likely full of some sort of bacteria, because not long after drinking the water, he began to have horrible diarrhea.
He squatted there in the woods, his guts rumbling horribly, pain shooting through his stomach, as his bowels did their best to empty their entire contents onto the pine forest floor.
The diarrhea only made him more dehydrated, so he kept drinking the local water, figuring that at some point he might get immune to it.
The nights were long and cold. Cody did his best to insulate himself with pine needles and leaves from the deciduous bushes. But it didn’t do a lot of good and he found himself barely surviving the nights, despite the springtime. It was cold when you didn’t have a shred of clothing and your stomach was completely empty.
He wasn’t scared of hunger. He knew that while it was uncomfortable, it wouldn’t kill him. Not for another thirty days or so. Maybe more, depending on the breaks. But he did know that extreme hunger would make him more vulnerable to other causes of death. Like hypothermia, for example. While the body could use its own fat stores, as well as break down its own muscle for protein and glucose (via the process known as gluconeogenesis), this process of auto-consumption wouldn’t generate as much internal body heat as eating regular food would, making him more likely to succumb to a particularly cold night.
For the entire three days, Cody heard and saw no one. No one but himself. He was left alone with his thoughts.
Almost any other member of his generation would have found the social isolation intolerable. Almost anyone else his age wouldn’t have been able to fight the temptation to turn on their phone. But Cody didn’t do that, knowing that the only way the battery would last through the fluctuating temperatures of night and day was if he didn’t turn it on until he absolutely needed it.
After three days, Cody figured it was time to emerge. Time to see what had happened with the world.
He didn’t quite know what to do. If the virus had taken over, and thousands had become infected, Cody didn’t see how society could survive. And he also didn’t know how he’d be able to get to his parents’ house south of the city without becoming infected himself.
The least of Cody’s concerns was social embarrassment. His mind was fixed on survival.
If he emerged from the woods naked, his stomach rumbling, his hair wild, and the virus had been a bust and society was running as smoothly as ever, Cody would look like a fool. He’d look like some crazy man.
But that was okay with him.
After all, he’d vastly prefer that possibility to the one he’d been imagining, in which the city of Santa Fe was in ruins from the virus, with huge swaths of its population dead or dying.
When Cody walked, completely naked, back to the tourist road with the many art galleries, his worst fears were confirmed.
Instead of the bustling activity of tourists, there was nothing but complete silence.
Not one person walked the street. Not a vehicle drove by.
Cody stood there in the middle of it, stark naked, staring out at the scene. His blood felt like ice water, and cold sweat poured down from his forehead.
Down at the end of the street, he could just barely make out several dead bodies lying in the middle of the road. Pools of something all around them. Most likely blood and vomit.
He’d managed not to get infected. He hadn’t died from the virus in the woods.
But that didn’t mean that his protocol of ‘decontamination’ had actually done anything. Maybe he’d just gotten lucky. Maybe it was just a fluke.
Cody had a very clear understanding of the danger from those corpses down the street. He knew that just going near them might cause him to become infected.
Cody knew his goals. He knew his needs. He needed to get home. And he needed to not die.
Now he just needed a plan.
In his hand was his phone, which hopefully still had a working battery. And hopefully it still worked despite the alcohol wipe-down he’d given it, fearful of it having been contaminated.
Cody flipped open the phone and held down the power button, waiting as it powered up.
No one came along and there was no movement on the street as the phone came to life.
“It works,” he muttered to himself, eyeing the rudimentary screen with its simple graphics. His voice was hoarse from not speaking at all.
The phone did work, but there was no service.
There were no bars at all.
“What the hell?” he said, his voice low despite the fact t
hat there was no one around. Possibly no one alive around him for miles and miles. Who knew how many had already died?
It wasn’t normal for there to be no service. Sure, maybe when Cody had been up in Wyoming. Maybe when he was way out in the boonies. But in Santa Fe? No way. It wasn’t normal. In fact, he could see a cell tower off in the distance, perched on a small peak that led up to a large mountain range.
But it didn’t matter whether Cody thought it made sense or not.
The reality was that there was no signal.
“Shit,” he said to himself, beginning to repeat the word over and over again. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
He was still sweating. His stomach and guts still hurt. His rectum was raw from the continuous diarrhea.
He was alive. But that didn’t necessarily make him feel any better.
For all he knew, the man from the CDC was right. For all he knew, his parents were dead, along with everyone else he knew.
There was only one thing to do.
And that was to try to get home.
Cody knew that there was no way he could make it south through the city while completely avoiding the virus. And there was no way that he could make it far enough around the city, with a wide enough berth to avoid the possibility of contamination.
No. It just wouldn’t work. He was going to have to encounter, at the very least, people who had died from the virus.
And that meant that he was going to have to head right through the heart of the city, encountering who knew how many dead and infected.
Instead of avoiding the virus, he was going to have to find some way to protect himself against it.
His first thought was of a surgical mask.
Of course, he wouldn’t be able to get one of those.
But maybe he could improvise?
He’d have to think of something. If he didn’t, he’d die.
That was one thing he was sure of.
10
Jamie
Last Pandemic (Book 3): Escape The Chaos Page 7
