Last Pandemic (Book 3): Escape The Chaos

by Westfield, Ryan

With a quick check around the side of the house, he found that there was no car in the driveway of one of the houses. In the other, there was an SUV.

  Hopefully no one was home.

  He decided to knock first, just to check to see if someone was there. Although it would have been very strange if they had answered the door, given the virus situation.

  There he was, stark naked, hand knocking on the wooden door.

  No answer.

  No one around.

  But who knew what could happen. In an instant, everything could change. In an instant, he could be dead. From a bullet. Or a knife. Or anything, really.

  From not far away, he heard a scream. A human scream. Sounded male, but it was high-pitched. The scream rang out, as loud as any scream Cody had ever heard. It sent a shiver up his spine, his innate primal senses reacting instinctively to the sound of danger and pain.

  There wasn’t anything Cody could do to help anyone. Whoever was screaming was already gone.

  He needed to get into the house as soon as possible.

  Taking a rock from the garden, he went to the front window, and began hitting the glass pane as hard as he could.

  Because of his weakness, because of his nights in the woods shivering, he wasn’t strong, and it took several hits before the glass even began to crack.

  But, despite his weakness, he kept going. The window broke, and he fished in with his hand to try to get it all the way open. Clothing really would have helped. It would have protected his torso, legs, and genitals from the shattering glass, which had cut him.

  And, if he’d had a shirt, he could have wrapped it around his hand, wrist, and arm to protect himself as he reached through the window. Because it wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies. No matter how careful he tried to be, he still managed to cut his wrist badly.

  But a little bit of blood was the least of his worries. A little bit of glass stuck in his leg wasn’t even on his radar when it came to things to worry about.

  Unless of course, the cuts increased the transmissibility of the virus.

  But he had no way of knowing.

  Finally, he was through the window and inside the house.

  It was a small house filled with all sorts of knickknacks. There were ornaments and decorations hanging from the walls and the ceiling, and stacked in little piles on the floor.

  There was so much bric-a-brac that Cody had to tread carefully, weaving his way through all the stuff, his eyes not yet fully adjusted to the lower light levels inside the house.

  It was a one-story house. The living room was filled with all sorts of things. No TV in sight. No radio either. Just little trinkets. Some strange things, like two chess boards that hung on the wall next to one another, the way someone might hang up a painting.

  Most importantly, there was no one home. At least no one that Cody could find.

  He tried calling out, knowing full well that if there was someone there, they’d be hiding and wouldn’t answer.

  So he checked every room. There weren’t any closets, but he would have checked them. And he checked behind every piece of furniture.

  He didn’t want to be surprised by someone. He made his way to the front door and made sure it was locked. It was. Still, that was no guarantee, and he knew this as he made his way to the bathroom.

  There was a shower. A good one, and it still worked, the water hissing, spraying powerfully against the opposite wall when he turned it on.

  Of course, there was no power, and so there was no hot water.

  Cody paused for a moment to wonder how the water still worked. But he didn’t give it too much thought. After all, who cared? It worked.

  He stepped into the shower. The shock of the cold water sent a jolt of energy through his system. It woke him up and soon he was scrubbing intently with a washcloth that he found in the shower, using as much soap as he possibly could. He covered every inch of his body and even gargled water. When he got out of the shower, he used the mouthwash that he found in the medicine cupboard.

  There was a thick towel that he used to dry off.

  Cody had no idea whether the shower would have had any effect against the virus, but he resolved then and there to simply proceed through the rest of his day as if he wasn’t going to die, as if the virus wasn’t going to kill him.

  In the bedroom, he found clothes.

  They were women’s clothes. No men’s clothes available. But there was no time to feel silly or emasculated. He simply tried to find the most practical items he could, which happened to be the most masculine ones.

  The woman was actually quite a bit bigger than he was, given the size of her clothes. He had to use a belt to get the pants to stay up.

  In the end, he looked ridiculous, wearing flip flops, floppy black pants that were too short, and some type of floral button-down halter top. It looked crazy, but he didn’t care.

  Finding a stash of scarves, Cody stuffed as many as he could into his pockets. And, taking three of them together, he tied them around his face as tightly as he could. It wasn’t perfect, and for all he knew it wouldn’t do anything at all, but at least he was trying. If he found something better, like a painter’s mask, or an actual surgical mask, he’d gladly swap it out.

  Moving through the house quickly, Cody tried to gather things that might be useful. He took an NPR tote bag from where it hung in a little room off the kitchen and, rolling his eyes at the lettering, began to fill it with everything he could think of.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the kitchen. Nothing but some frozen food. He took the packages out of the freezer, looked briefly at them and realized that they were soy burgers.

  “Typical,” he muttered, shoving the frozen soy burgers into the tote bag.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter that much. It was food, after all. It still had calories.

  Cody checked everywhere he could think to check. Under the sink. On top of shelves. But there weren’t any weapons that he could find. Even the kitchen knife was short, stubby and completely unsharpened. It was so dull that Cody could press his hand against the blade’s edge without so much as drawing blood.

  And, to top it off, there wasn’t even a sharpener in the kitchen.

  Cody took the knife anyway, thinking that he could either find some way to sharpen it, or at least use it to threaten someone.

  He thought that there must be some kind of blunt object somewhere in the house, something like a baseball bat or tire iron but there wasn’t.

  Nothing except the dull knife.

  Cody surveyed the house one last time, making sure there was nothing he was forgetting. He caught a glimpse of himself in the strange clothing in the mirror, with the scarves tied around his face as a rudimentary prophylactic measure against the virus. If he’d been in better spirits, he would have laughed. Maybe a couple of chuckles.

  But nothing came out. His stomach was empty and there wasn’t anything else to eat. There hadn’t been anything that wasn’t frozen. Nothing in the fridge. Nothing on the shelves. Not even some old crackers or cereal. Maybe it was the case that whoever had lived here had fled, taking all the food. But somehow Cody doubted it. The house struck him more as a home that someone had not arrived home from work to, rather than a home from which someone had fled. Nothing was more out of order than it probably was on an ordinary day.

  As Cody surveyed the house one last time, looking for anything useful, he felt a pang of regret. Regret that he couldn’t just stay here at this comfortable little home.

  Sure, maybe it wasn’t decorated to his style. Maybe there wasn’t any good food there.

  But there was some food. And so what if he didn’t like the style? In this day and age, style wasn’t at all important. It couldn’t be.

  This was a house with a door that locked. There was glass in most of the windows and there was a roof overhead.

  Cody could be quite comfortable here, holed up, hiding away from the world, waiting for things to die down or get worse. Maybe he’d
be able to sneak out somewhere, get some more food.

  Hell, there was even a bed here. A real bed with sheets and blankets. It definitely beat the woods and cold ground.

  It was tempting.

  But he knew it wasn’t an answer. He knew he had to push on. He knew his parents would need him. He knew that staying here was as good as climbing down into the grave and just waiting to die.

  17

  Jamie

  It was the most terrifying experience of her life, being strapped down, being completely immobilized, being completely unable to do anything to save herself, while all around her there was violence and chaos.

  When she’d understood her role as captive, understood her place, she’d figured she’d be in for a certain type of terror. But she’d never gambled on anything like this.

  It was like being an abductee or something. That was what she’d figured she was in for. Being strapped down. Being experimented on. Having no agency.

  But she didn’t know that the people who had captured her were going to be fighting it out to the death.

  She heard the noises. She heard the swearing, the grunts of pain, the sound of someone choking out. Probably dying.

  She couldn’t see what was going on. There were just sporadic sounds now. Hard, impossible really, to make out what was going on.

  She was just staring at the ceiling, trying to think of something, anything that she could do.

  Suddenly, a voice was at her side, apparently addressing her. A female voice. She thought the right name was Lily, but she wasn’t sure. “Don’t panic,” came the voice, sounding very hoarse. “But I’ve got to get you out of here. I’m trying to help you, okay?”

  “Why are you...what are you…” Jamie started to ask the questions, but as she got halfway through the sentences, she realized that she didn’t actually care. The reasons didn’t matter.

  Jamie suddenly felt the straps loosen in places where she hadn’t known they’d been tight.

  Suddenly, there was blood rushing to parts of her that had been receiving diminished blood flow for some time. Her arms and her legs, and parts of her torso, were suddenly overcome with the most intense pins and needles sensations she’d ever felt. It was so powerful that it was actually extremely painful, the sort of pain that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  “No time for questions,” said the woman, who grabbed her swiftly under the arms and hauled her up and off the table. “My boss has gone crazy. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I said no time for questions.”

  The woman was trying to support Jamie’s weight, but she wasn’t doing a very good job. She didn’t seem to be very strong, and Jamie’s body felt completely limp.

  Soon, the woman had lost her balance completely and had simply crumbled, sliding down to the hard floor, her head knocking against it.

  But it wasn’t a hard enough hit to knock her out.

  “Shit,” said the woman, leaning down hurriedly and trying to grab her again.

  But Jamie was really just dead weight and it was hard to pick her up from the floor.

  Jamie saw the man first. He was huge, looming up behind the woman in the suit. He was wearing a suit too, but based on his frame and the glint in his eye, just barely visible from behind the mask, she recognized him as one of the men who’d captured her.

  “Behind you!” cried Jamie.

  The man was already headed right toward the woman, already bearing down on her like some rabid wild animal that had been threatened.

  Jamie didn’t think there was a solution. She didn’t think the woman would be able to fight off this massive bull of a man charging right at her.

  But the woman took the man and Jamie by surprise. She spun around, her hand suddenly unzipping her white suit. Underneath her suit, she wore normal clothing. Nothing fancy. Just a thin tank top with spaghetti straps. Her pants weren’t visible.

  The woman dug down with her hand and when she brought it back up, there was a short snub-nosed pistol in her grasp.

  The man didn’t react to it, except that the anger on his face intensified. He was mere feet away from her when she pulled the trigger.

  The noise was deafening. The gun kicked, and the woman seemed to move along with it, absorbing its recoil poorly.

  The charging man let out a grunt. And at first, it didn’t seem as if he would drop. But it did stop him in his tracks and he sort of stood there, wavering back and forth, as if trying to decide whether to fall or not, as a spot of blood appeared on his crisp white suit.

  Finally, he fell heavily to the floor, where he lay in a crumpled pile of limbs, the white suit slowly staining with blood.

  “Shit,” said the woman. “Shit. Shit. Shit. I can’t believe...I just shot my boss.”

  She seemed frozen. Petrified.

  “What about the other worker? The guy? Is he dead?”

  “Yeah. McGregor killed him. And I killed McGregor. Shit. Shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. And now, oh, shit, now I’m exposed...”

  “Exposed to what?”

  The woman had her gun still in her gloved hand, still pointing it at the man on the floor, who was groaning. With her other hand, she clumsily began trying to zip up her suit again, covering up her tank top.

  “To the virus,” she said, answering only after she had gotten her suit back on. “The thing is, judging from how contagious this virus is, that was plenty of time for me to be exposed. That is, if...”

  “If what?”

  “We don’t yet know whether those who are immune spread it or not.”

  “Aren’t you a scientist? Shouldn’t you know that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah, but all viruses work differently. There’s no standard...”

  The man on the floor was groaning and grunting in both pain and anger.

  Suddenly, he got up, as if possessed suddenly with superhuman strength.

  He only managed to take a single, staggering step, however, before the gun went off again.

  Jamie’s ears rang terribly. It was loud. Painfully loud.

  The man collapsed, his face instantly falling completely still as he fell once again to the floor. This time, there was no mistaking that he was dead. As dead as he could be.

  “Not a good career move,” the woman was saying, the words hard to understand over the ringing in Jamie’s ears.

  The woman was reaching down now, her gloved hand held out for Jamie to grasp.

  Jamie took it and found herself being pulled slowly to her feet. She was unsteady, but she was standing, wavering back and forth, the feeling slowly returning to her limbs as the blood rushed back in.

  “Why are you doing this? Why free me?”

  “I don’t agree with what they’re doing.... Tying you up like that.... I guess I just couldn’t bear to see you like that...About to get killed by my apparently psychotic boss.... At least I don’t have to worry about doing a write-up on the incident...” She laughed, the chuckle sounding mechanical and strange through her respirator.

  Jamie didn’t know what to make of it. So she said nothing. And, anyway, it was about all the effort she could muster just to remain standing. She wondered briefly if they had put something in her that was making her feel worse in some way, some sort of drug? She definitely had been knocked out by some substance. Maybe she was still feeling the effects.

  Her heart was pounding. Adrenaline was pouring through her. She’d just seen someone shot, after all. And heard another man killed. It seemed that no matter how much of this she went through, she’d never truly get used to it. Maybe, over time, her body’s response would be diminished. But she doubted whether it would ever totally go away. Her body sensed danger, and it wanted to do everything it could to keep her on the ready, to keep her on edge.

  “Shit, I can’t get this suit...Shit...”

  Suddenly, she was unzipping the suit, her tank top appearing again, covered in sweat.

  “What
are you doing?”

  “I can’t stand this suit...And if I’ve been exposed, then I’ve been exposed...It’s not going to do me any good.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise. I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”

  “It’s not that likely that you can transfer the virus. Our preliminary tests seemed to indicate that wasn’t the case.”

  “You’re willing to bet your life on that?”

  She shrugged, and finally stepped out of the white suit, which she left crumpled on the floor. She kept the gun in her hand. Now, she bent down to examine her boss, putting a finger against his neck, nodding slowly.

  “Well,” she said. “He’s definitely dead...Crazy. I’ve never shot anyone before, and the first person I shoot is my boss.”

  “He had it coming.”

  “I don’t think he was in control of himself. I’ve got to check on Rory.”

  Jamie followed her through the lab until they reached the second body.

  It was a horrible sight and there was no way that he wasn’t dead.

  “Well, there go both my colleagues,” said the woman, standing there in her tight yoga pants and tank top. She had a good, slim figure and she looked as if she might have been coming back from a class, were it not for the gun in her hand.

  “Well,” she said. “Come on. Might as well get back to work.”

  “Back to work?” said Jamie, confused. Her mind felt weary after all she’d been through and she still felt foggy. She must not have understood the woman correctly. There wasn’t any work to get back to. All Jamie wanted to do was to rest. To sleep. First of all, of course, she wanted to get out of here. Out of this hellish sterile laboratory with the dead bodies. Back to Matt and Judy. Back to their new home.

  “I’m not going to be the only one who’s an experiment,” said the woman.

  “What’s your name?” said Jamie, swaying back and forth again on her feet, her words coming out a little slurred again, maybe because of fatigue, or maybe the drugs still hadn’t worn off.

  “Lily,” said the woman. “Now come on, we’ve got to draw more blood. We’re already late. It’s supposed to be on the hour every hour.”