Desolation

by Mark Campbell

  “–the emergency broadcast system for central Arizona. This is not a test. Please stay tuned for important information–”

  Mitch turned off the radio.

  “Maybe it would be best if we rode in silence, huh babe?” he tried to sound casual, but she could tell he just as terrified as she was. Jerri murmured and her hands trembled in her lap.

  A man wearing a blood-stained shirt and dirty slacks ran out in front of the car, holding his hands up. He was covered in ragged wounds. Mitch slammed on the brakes, jolting Jerri and himself forward. The car skidded to a stop a few feet away from the man.

  “Help me!” the man cried, coughing, slamming his open fists on the hood of the car. “Get me to a hospital!” His eyes grew wide with terror as he looked to the side. “Oh fuck… oh fuck!”

  A woman slammed against Mitch’s driver-side door, snarling like a rabid animal. Her eyes were clouded, vacant, and her mouth was caked with gore. She clawed at the glass, trying to get inside the car.

  Mitch leaned away from the glass, hyperventilating. “Go! GO!” Jerri screamed, pounding the dash.

  Mitch floored the accelerator and the car threw the man in front of them aside like a sack of potatoes. The woman lost interest in the retreating car and focused her attention on the fallen man. She started gnashing and clawing at him in a feverish rage.

  The man let out piercing screams.

  “What the fuck is wrong with these people?!” Mitch screamed, breathing frantically. An air raid siren started wailing in the distance.

  “Just drive!” Jerri shouted, closing her eyes and covering her ears.

  Mitch swerved around an accident in the intersection and turned the corner.

  A fireman lurched out in front of the car, mouth smeared with blood and matted with bits of hair.

  Mitch didn’t slow down.

  The vehicle struck the man and created a bloody splotch across the hood and windshield.

  The fireman’s corpse tumbled over the top of the car and landed in a twisted heap.

  “There! There Mitch!” Jerri shouted, pointing frantically at her parent’s house.

  Mitch nodded and erupted into a coughing spasm. Mitch parked the car on her parent’s lawn and kept the engine running.

  “Go hurry up and get them! I may have to round the block if anyone sees me but I'll be here! I promise!” Mitch shouted. Jerri quickly got out of the car and ran towards the front door. Her house was a typical house for Arizona, a single-story with swamp coolers on the roof.

  She ran inside and started shouting.

  “Mom! Dad!”

  Nobody answered.

  Jerri noticed the bottles of cold medicine that covered the coffee table and the used tissues that littered the floor. The emergency broadcast message played on the television. A trail of bloody droplets led down the hall to the bedroom.

  Her parents received the Acexa vaccination just two days before from the nearby CVS pharmacy.

  “Hello…?” Jerri called out. She made her way down the narrow hall on her tiptoes.

  The bedroom door was cracked open and it was dark inside. She heard a wet slurping sound coming out of the room.

  Slowly, Jerri creaked open the door and peered inside. Her father was lying on his back in the middle of the bedroom floor, his arms sprawled out at his side. Her mother was hunched over him and had dug a hole into his abdomen with her bare hands. She scooped up fistfuls of his intestinal tract and shoved them into her gullet, chewing slowly and methodically. She looked up at Jerri with clouded eyes.

  Jerri gasped and stumbled back into the hall against the wall, knocking framed family pictures onto the floor. Her mother slowly stood up and started to lurch towards her with an expressionless face. She extended a boney hand towards her daughter as she lurched, pieces of her late husband still falling from her maw.

  Anguished sobs stole Jerri's voice. She backed away into the living room as her ghoulish Acexa reanimated mother lurched farther into the hallway, both arms extended.

  Her mother stepped onto one of the fallen framed pictures. The picture was one they all took together at a family reunion in Tucson. The glass frame shattered and sliced deep into her foot, but she never so much as flinched.

  Jerri’s reanimated father started crawling out of the bedroom after Jerri as well. In the sight of such irrational, abject horror, Jerri felt her bladder let go. The warmth running down her thighs somehow awakened her instincts. She turned and ran out of the house, screaming all the way.

  Jerri tossed and flopped around on the carpet, soaked with sweat. She screamed herself awake and bolted up, heart thumping madly in her chest.

  The memory was all too vivid. She remembered riding with him to the evacuation center and remembered him coughing most of the way. The gods can be cruel. Mitch never made it to the camp; Jerri was immune, he was not.

  She sat against the dresser, shaking, and did not sleep for the rest of the night.

  12

  Right before dawn, two FEMA officers sluggishly walked the catwalk at the top of the massive wall that surrounded the camp’s perimeter.

  “What about you?” one of the men asked the other one. “Well, unlike your high-brow ass, Bret, I’d take White Castle and thus win the game,” Hemingway said.

  Bret looked over at him and thwacked the back of Hemingway’s helmet with his gloved hand. “No fucking fair, bro! They didn’t have White Castles anywhere near here,” Bret argued. “You’re lucky I let you have Taco Bell, since it sucked so goddamn much.”

  “I never said it had to be regional, dumb ass!” Hemingway said, laughing. “You always do that shit!” Bret said, throwing his arms in the air. “Do what shit?”

  “Change the rules in the middle of the game! You can’t do that!” Bret said with an aggravated sigh.

  Hemingway waved his hand dismissively. “Okay, okay, fine. Let’s do another topic. Supermodels. Who would you bring back? No age limit. No generation limit. If you pick an ugly bitch, then you lose. Go,” Hemingway said.

  “It’s hard to think about bitches when I smell that food coming from the mess hall, though…” Bret said, looking at the smoke churning out of the nearby chimneys.

  Hungry citizens were camped outside its doors, eagerly awaiting the morning meal.

  Hemingway looked over at Bret and narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t see any shipment come in today… That sign is bullshit. I bet it was sitting in storage, rotten. You’re going to eat it?” he asked. Bret shrugged. “It’s been so long since I had pork I don’t care if I get food poisoning. It has to be better than that rat concoction they’ve been using.”

  Suddenly, guards manning the nearby watchtowers started shouting and the searchlights powered on.

  “Ah shit!” Hemingway shouted as he unslung his rifle. Bret fumbled with his weapon and did the same, aiming blindly out into the desert.

  Six searchlight beams scanned the distance, and two shadowy figures emerged from behind a large rock formation. When the searchlights focused on the two figures, the light revealed a man and a woman both hauling backpacks loaded with supplies. They were both armed with crossbows.

  “Marauders,” Bret muttered with distaste. He sighted his weapon in on the couple. Marauders hadn’t come around the camp for months. Apparently, the smell of freshly cooked meat was attracting unwanted attention. “ Attention, this is official United States government property. Do not come any closer! You are trespassing!” a voice boomed from the watchtower’s speaker system.

  The soldiers watched in horror as over two dozen shadowy human shapes scurried from cover to cover in the distance behind the man and woman. The soldiers aimed towards the group, unsure who to focus their fire on if the group suddenly tried to advance. The gun’s lasersights danced across the desert, trying and failing to draw a bead on them.

  “By order of the United States of America, turn around and leave immediately! All of you!” The group fully emerged from cover, and across the expanse of the desert now numbered i
n at least fifty. They didn’t move and called the government’s bluff; shooting a target in the dark at that distance would do little more than waste ammunition. The group was intelligent enough to stand far enough to avoid the threat of fire, but close enough for the men on the wall to see them and make their presence known.

  Bret slowly lowered the rifle, hands shaking.

  “They aren’t moving,” Bret said. “What do they want?” Hemingway grunted.

  “Does it matter? We outnumber them and outgun them. They know that if they tried to step towards us we’d mow them down,” Hemingway said. “They can try to stand there and intimidate us all night long but in the end we’re the ones with the superior firepower.”

  The officers on the wall watched the group in the desert all night long, weapons ready.

  The marauders stared back, waiting.

  13

  Jerri woke up in the morning with a crick in her neck and multiple knots in her back. Groaning, she stood and popped her back.

  “Good morning,” Krystal said, smiling over at Jerri. “Jacob.” She was holding the baby against her chest and he wiggled in her arms, making gurgling noises. He kicked and grabbed his mother’s hair.

  Jerri rubbed her temples and shook her head.

  “What…?” Jerri murmured, trying to ease the tension in her neck by turning her head side-to-side.

  “The baby’s name is Jacob,” Krystal beamed. “I’m naming him after his father.”

  Jerri nodded and offered a polite half-smile.

  “That’s nice…” was all she could manage.

  “So what’s for breakfast? I was thinking about going out but I can’t find my good clothes… This room is a mess!” Krystal looked around the dorm and shook her head.

  “Hun… do you even know where you are?” Jerri asked carefully.

  “Well, yeah,” Krystal said, rolling her eyes. She looked down at Jacob and cooed softly at him, tickling his stomach with her finger. She never specified where she was and, in fact, acted like she forgot that Jerri was standing just a few feet away from her.

  Jerri frowned.

  “I’m going to go see if the mess hall opened, would you like me to try to bring you back something?” Jerri asked.

  Krystal kept her vacant eyes fixated on Jacob and cooed. She didn’t answer.

  Jerri was worried. She would have to tell Andrew about her odd behavior when he stopped by later.

  She paused and felt a chill run down her spine.

  …when he stopped by later.

  Did she actually just think that?!

  Why did that notion resonate so strangely with her? Most of all, why did she even think such a stupid thought!? He was one of them. He was one of the Orwellian masters.

  The sickening part was that he truly was a devil in sheep’s clothing. He actually seemed like a really nice guy… Ha!

  He tricked her into letting her guard down with his charm and charisma. He was trying to chisel his way into her head.

  She decided she wouldn’t allow it to happen again.

  After breakfast, she intended to move Krystal to another dorm, somewhere Andrew couldn’t find her. Teddy would know a good place to lay low.

  Andrew was trouble. He was the enemy. He wasn’t to be trusted.

  She felt stupid for being so naive.

  “Stay in here hun, and don’t open the door for anybody except me,” Jerri said. She didn’t have to get dressed; she was still wearing the same outfit from yesterday. Cursing herself, she left the dorm and stormed out into the hallway.

  The dorm seemed utterly vacant. Most of the rooms were open and she didn’t hear or see a single soul. It was actually quite eerie.

  She walked past the bathroom but didn’t go in; the prospect of a warm breakfast outweighed the prospect of brushing her teeth.

  She hit the button at the end of the hallway and the sally port door opened.

  The sally port speaker crackled, but no message played.

  She stepped inside and the door shut.

  It smelled like burning plastic inside. The shower head spat out a few sparks and the speaker crackled with inaudible static.

  The outer door opened and Jerri hurried out into the Arizonan heat.

  She looked in Teddy’s tent but saw that it was empty.

  His books were gone.

  “He's probably already pigging out,” she said to herself, smirking.

  As she hurried down the alleyway, she saw that all of the tents were empty. It was as if a mass exodus happened in the middle of the night.

  When she came to the corner and stepped out into the common area, she froze and found where everyone was at.

  Haggard residents were lined up, waiting to enter the dining hall. The massive line wrapped around the plaza multiple times like a neverending snake. It encircled the empty gallows and ended near the control tower.

  Jerri groaned, knowing that she was going to be in the line for a very long time. She made her way to the end of the line and got cut off by a few people who ran ahead. She would have run, but she didn’t have the energy.

  She stood behind a man who smelled like he took a bath in dirt and used bricks of shit for deodorant.

  The woman standing behind her had oily hair and was covered with stale sweat - the kind of sweat that had a very pungent pubescent odor.

  Needless to say, it was not very enjoyable. It was six in the morning and she had a very long wait ahead of her.

  Jerri tried to focus her attention on the wonderful smell coming out of the kitchen. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what savory food awaited her. Unfortunately for her, the line moved abysmally slow.

  Up on the perimeter wall, triple the normal number of FEMA officers patrolled the scaffolding, keeping their eyes on the marauders in the distance.

  The marauders had established a small tent encampment some distance away, covering it with camouflaged military netting to protect from a sniper’s scope. It wasn’t clear how many were inside the encampment. Only a few fires could be seen throughout the night, and barely a sound was heard at all. It had been an eerily quiet stalemate.

  Nobody from the marauder’s encampment attempted to contact the FEMA camp, and nobody from FEMA ventured to check on the marauders.

  Noon came and went. The temperatures rose and the people lined in front of the dining hall grew impatient. They argued with each other and multiple brawls had broken out. The police had a hard time keeping the isolated situations contained while monitoring the group of marauders in the horizon.

  Soon, it was two in the afternoon and the sunlight was blistering hot. Countless people collapsed where they stood. Officers wielding riot batons walked along the line, shouting at people to stay in line and be quiet. Others patrolled with wheelbarrows. When they come across somebody who had fainted, they scooped the person up, dumped them in the wheelbarrow, and carted them away.

  A couple of expressionless Eyes stood on the empty gallows. Andrew was not one of them. The Eyes stood with their hands behind their backs and would casually point someone out in the line from time to time. The poor souls who got pointed out quickly got black bagged by the police and hauled away, screaming.

  People in the line didn’t seem to care; one less person in the line meant that they all got to move up one.

  As Jerri got closer to the mess hall, the smell was intoxicating, euphoric even. Police officers stood by the mess hall sally port and let twenty souls in at a time. They then waited for twenty to exit. The people who left looked absolutely stuffed and satisfied.

  After hours of waiting, Jerri was next. She felt giddy with excitement and couldn’t stop salivating. Deep in her stomach, she felt something she couldn’t quite describe. It felt ominous yet distant. It was like being chased by a lion that was thousands of miles away.

  “Next! Step up!” one of the officers standing next to the sally port shouted. “Step in, girl, hurry up.”

  The officer motioned for Jerri to enter the sally port. Jerri
hurried inside, delighted. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong; like Teddy did in prison, she chose to ignore the gut feeling.

  It was a chaotic mess inside the dining hall. Every table was filled to capacity. Not a single word was spoken amongst the malnourished crowd as they feasted on the food piled on their plates. The sound of teeth gnashing, lips smacking and meat being torn apart filled the mess hall with a primitive, macabre ambiance. Discarded bones, and mounds of trash covered the floor faster than the orderlies could clean it up. Police officers walked between the tables, watching the group gorge themselves.

  At the back of the mess hall, warming trays were turned on and piled high with generous portions of pork. Cooks handed out plates in a hurried frenzy to those gathered around the warming racks. Some held their hands out for a plate while others simply grabbed handfuls of meat and ate it where they stood, pulling the fat apart with their teeth.

  Jerri ignored the odd feeling in her stomach and sniffed the air. Aside from the scent of body odor and sweat, she could smell the roasted pork and it was amazing.

  She pushed her way through the crowd and held a hand out to one of the cooks manning the serving line.

  The cook handed her a plate piled high with poorly smoked pork. Jerri took her bounty and hurried to her usual table. She sat beside a man who had his elbows on the table as he stuffed his face, protecting his plate with his forearms. A woman sat on Jerri’s other side and was sticking her tongue into a broken bone, lapping out the marrow.

  Jerri’s premonition of dread heightened and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on edge. She picked up the meaty slab off of her plate and savored the aroma. It was an undercooked rack of ribs, a premium cut. She tore a rib off; it was tender and tore away easily. As she was about to take a bite, she noticed that the meat was stained with a purple mark.

  Frowning, she picked at the stain with her fingertips. The stain was deep in the flesh.

  Great, she thought, the first real meat I get in months and it’s tainted.

  She thought about eating it anyway, but then she remembered the medical situation. Eating undercooked pork was bad enough but why should she make it even more risky by eating tainted meat? If she got food poisoning in the camp, she would most likely die.