Randy put his boot on the front of the wagon to stop it and looked where his sister indicated.
Kirk was wheeling a wheelbarrow packed with goods down the driveway. His arms strained as he tried to keep the thing balanced, and Stephanie stood out front with her hands on the front of the wheelbarrow to keep it from moving too fast.
They’d placed two gas cans inside along with an entire pantry worth of goods. Randy knew from working the farm that an overloaded wheelbarrow meant sure disaster, and he watched with curious wonder as Kirk wrestled with the weight.
“They’re going tip that thing,” Jenny said.
“Yes, they are.”
Sure enough, halfway down the driveway, Stephanie leaned forward as the wheelbarrow’s weight shoved her. Kirk tried to balance it but failed, so he set it down to keep the thing from tipping.
The wheelbarrow slid sideways in the other direction and tipped over with a tremendous crash that sent food and jugs of gasoline tumbling down the driveway. Stephanie and Kirk scrambled to retrieve their items before they rolled out into the street.
Randy looked over and saw his sister’s lips drawn tight and her eyes wide as a fit of laughter gripped her. Jenny’s laugh had always been contagious to him, so his own stomach began to quiver and hitch as his chuckling grew into a full belly laugh. His muscles started to cramp, and he bent over to clutch his middle while Kirk and Stephanie chased cans. They picked them up and stacked them in their arms, only to drop them again like a scene from the Three Stooges. By the time they were done, a dozen cans had rolled out into the road, and they chased them, too.
“Come on,” Randy said, eyes watering with tears. “Let’s drop this stuff off and get to the next house. I want to blow them away.”
The twins delivered their goods to the skid, and Tricia announced they’d taken the lead.
Chapter 21
Bishop Shields, Ft. Collins, Colorado
Bishop stood upstairs in the master bedroom with a cup of coffee in his hand as he looked out over the street. His first run in with Francis remained fresh in his mind, and he patrolled on alert, moving from room to room, looking out all the windows to try and catch the man sneaking around.
He and the kids had even set guard shifts through the night so one person could monitor things while the others slept. Both children seemed enthusiastic about doing whatever they could to help, and Bishop was proud of them. Their willingness to cooperate would bolster their chances of survival.
The fungus that had fallen two days ago still spread in streaks and clusters of moldy black and crimson in the yard. It crawled all over everything and spread at an incredible rate. As ominous as that was, all he thought of was Kim and how he could reunite their family.
His phone buzzed where it lay on the bed, and Bishop picked it up. He knew the notification wouldn’t be a phone call or text, because all communication was dead. However, he was still connected to his wi-fi and, in turn, his generator. And through an application on his phone, he monitored the generator’s output and status.
As he suspected, the application showed the generator at a low fuel level. Bishop sighed and tossed the phone down on his bed. He went to Trevor’s room where the boy lay on his bed watching DVDs.
Bishop gestured outside. “Hey, son. I’m going out to refill the generator. Can you watch out the windows and call me on the radio if you see anything suspicious?”
“Sure thing.” Trevor grabbed the 2-way radio lying next to him, hopped out of bed, and slid his feet into his slippers.
“Thanks, son. It won’t be long.”
Bishop descended the stairs and walked through the kitchen to check that the windows were still secure. He and the kids had nailed up boards over the insides of the downstairs windows, though they didn’t have enough plywood to cover them all. So, they’d improvised and used some drywall scraps from a project he’d finished last summer to cover the remaining kitchen windows.
Satisfied he’d secured the first floor, Bishop went down into the basement to find his exploring clothes. He removed an extra-large pair of coveralls and gloves from the dryer and put them on, then he walked into their first decontamination chamber where they’d put the cleaned masks on a shelf. He found his own mask, inspected it, and lowered it over his head, making sure the fit was tight before he walked to the back door and put on his boots.
A quick inspection showed no mold creeping in below the door or on the inside of the frame. However, when he opened the door, he spotted mold creeping around the outside.
“I just bleached that area last night." He shook his head. No matter how hard they scrubbed it with straight bleach or disinfectant, the mold always returned.
Bishop opened the back door and stepped outside. They’d stored several plastic jugs of gas beneath the back deck. If they needed more, he could always get it by taking it out of homes or siphoning it from cars. He figured they could stay months in the house, maybe years if they were careful.
Bishop grabbed a can and had a quick look around before he left the protection of the deck and skirted around to the side of the house. He’d wired the generator into their power junction after they’d first moved in, and the machine idled away, shaky and loud in his ears. The fungus hadn’t been able to spread across the sleek metal due to the vibrations, so Bishop removed the caps, lifted the gas can, and filled the generator up.
As he poured, the hairs on the back of Bishop’s neck stood up, and an eerie sensation touched his skin. He turned his upper body, half-expecting Francis to be right behind him. But there was no one, only the mold-covered decorative shrubbery of the house next door. He chuckled and continued pouring, though beads of nervous sweat formed on his brow.
He filled the generator tank halfway before he had to go back for another can. After topping things off, Bishop placed the empty cans back beneath the porch, then he returned to the back door, hesitating with his hand on the door handle.
Decontaminating himself would take a solid hour. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to go do some scavenging while he had all his protective clothes on? It made sense to him, so he pulled the 2-way radio out of his coverall pocket and hit the talk button.
“Trevor? Are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“I filled the generator with gas, so we’re all good there.” Bishop kept his voice loud and clear so his son heard him through his visor. “I think I’ll do some scavenging while I’m out here.”
“Okay. That’s the smart thing to do. Do you need me for anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Keep an eye on things, and I’ll try to be back as soon as I can.”
“Roger that.”
Bishop put the radio back in his coverall pocket and smiled fondly. While they weren’t happy about the situation, his son was doing his best to rise to the occasion and be a genuine leader.
Walking around to the front of the house, Bishop looked both ways. He wanted to check his neighbors’ houses to his left and right before he explored up the street. They could be holed up in their homes, or maybe they’d gone down to the football stadium and ended up like thousands of others he’d watched die.
“Be positive,” he told himself, then he walked over to the house on their immediate right.
While he and Kim had never gotten close with their neighbors, the Smiths were friendly to the Shields family, and it wasn’t uncommon to run into Steve Smith in the yard and strike up a conversation about some upcoming sporting event. Steve loved the fact that Bishop was a former college athlete, and he always had a kind word for Kim and the kids.
The first thing he noticed when he stepped into their yard was the Smith’s vehicle parked in the driveway with the hatchback still open. A peek inside showed Bishop three backpacks but no signs of the Smiths anywhere.
A hollow feeling settled in his chest, and he pursed his lips to ready himself for what he might find. He took the walkway to the front door. The door hung wide open to reveal a foyer filled with streaks of crimson and b
lack mold.
Bishop stepped inside, calling out to Steve and Jill or their adolescent daughter, Olivia. When no one replied, he went in. He found Steve and Jill dead on their kitchen floor covered in mold with canned goods and juice packs littering the floor. They must have been grabbing supplies when the spore cloud hit.
He leaned against the kitchen wall and closed his eyes to quell the sudden nausea in his stomach. After a few moments of his eyes watering and running down into his mask, Bishop turned and climbed the stairs to look for Olivia. He found her in the hallway, a doll clutched in one arm with her other hand grasping her throat.
Turning away with a sad expression, he lurched down the stairs to the kitchen and picked up the canned goods and juice packs off the floor.
“Sorry, Steve and Jill,” he said. “But we could use this stuff. I know you understand.”
Bishop kept himself talking about random things and tried not to look at his dead neighbors as he worked. He found some boxes in the garage, loaded up the canned goods, and took them back to his house and set them beneath the deck. Then he moved to the neighbors’ house to their left, the Andersons. They were an older couple whose children had moved out years ago, and Bishop considered them friendly neighbors.
He knocked on their front door, but no one answered. He tried the doorknob, but they’d locked their house up tight. Both vehicles were missing from the driveway, so Bishop left the house alone in case the Andersons returned. If they didn’t come home within a week, he would break in and make use of whatever he found.
Still disturbed about finding the dead Smiths, Bishop walked up his street like a zombie. Francis’s house stood two down from the Anderson’s, so he gave it a wide berth and walked in the middle of the street. Head on a swivel, he stared at the deadly scene all around. Some families had died trying to get supplies into their vehicles; mothers and fathers and children lay in their yards, covered in mold growths that looked like giant fungal cocoons. It was as if a horde of giant spiders had crawled through the neighborhood and covered everything in reddish silk.
Part of Bishop remembered seeing all of this on their way back home from the stadium, though he’d been so focused on driving through the spore cloud that he’d barely registered it. The impact built within him as he passed each house, and by the time he reached the end of the lane, he leaned over with his hands on his knees and sobbed into his air filtration mask.
He’d never drive up his street again, waving to random neighbors as they cut their grass or tossed a ball with their kids in the yard. Bishop would never again experience the suburban comfort he’d taken for granted. The assurance that even though he didn’t know all of his neighbors personally, they were on the same page as far as life goals and aspirations.
It was all gone, and the sheer loss crushed him. When Bishop checked the next street over, every house was the same. A few people had made it to their vehicles and pulled out of their driveways only to crash into a tree or parked car as the spores choked them.
After a few minutes of quiet grieving, Bishop started down the street toward home. He almost didn’t realize he walked in front of Francis’s house until he looked up and spotted the familiar gray siding with red shutters. He stopped and stared at the house. He didn’t like Francis, and he didn’t want to check up on him. But something about the front door hanging wide open drew Bishop up the empty driveway and along the stone path to the front porch.
“Francis!” he called out. The man had said his family was sleeping in their car, but maybe they’d moved inside. If so, he figured he would find Francis and his family like he had the Smiths. Their corpses would be somewhere in the house, twisted as they succumbed to the suffocating effects of the spores. Had Bishop made their situation worse by not letting them into his house?
“Francis!” He shouted again, repeating himself as he walked through the mold-infested living room and into the kitchen where the pantry door stood wide open. The cabinet drawers lay open, too, but the food remained. In fact, three empty cans of soup rested on the counter, and dirty dishes sat in the sink.
Even more curious, Bishop checked the garage to find only one vehicle. It wasn’t the usual big Ford F150 Francis drove, but his wife’s sedan. He returned to the foyer and looked upstairs.
At that point, Bishop had no idea what he might find. The family might be upstairs dead from the spores, or they might be gone. But how would that explain the open cans of food on the counter as if someone had been living in the house?
“Maybe they went to the park for family day,” he said with dark humor, then he started up the stairs.
The house was easily thirty years old, and the carpeted steps creaked under Bishop’s considerable weight. At the top, he checked the kids’ rooms to find them all empty, so he went to the master bedroom where the door was cracked open just a hair. He didn’t know why that creeped him out, but it did. He knocked on the door and waited for someone to reply. When they didn’t, he pushed it open and stepped inside.
Three people lay side-by-side on the bed with their arms folded over their chests. Bishop knew two things immediately. One, all three were dead. Two, they were Francis’s wife, Gene, and their two kids.
He swallowed down a lump in his throat and edged closer, expecting to see self-strangulation marks and fungus growth around their noses and mouths. Leaning in, Bishop identified no such signs aside from patches of mold on their arms and hands from what had drifted in through the open door.
Blood bathed their pillows, and a pinky-sized hole penetrated each of their temples.
“He shot them.” He drew back in sudden horror. “The bastard shot them.”
Something creaked on the stairs, and Bishop quickly retreated to the wall behind the half open door. Then he balled up his fist in preparation to attack Francis when he entered. The man had a gun, so he had to be quick and decisive—not too difficult for a man who’d broken a single season sack record in the Southeastern Conference prior to getting hurt. Though it had been a long time since he’d gotten physical with another man.
Bishop waited as the seconds ticked by like years. His breathing came quick and hot inside his mask, and his fist shook from clenching it so tightly. But, despite that he was sure he’d heard a creaking on the stairs, no one ever came in.
He leaned forward and peeked into the hallway. There was no one. He stepped into the hall and looked down toward the stairwell. That was empty, too. Bishop must have imagined the entire thing. With an audible sigh, he turned, shut the master bedroom door, and left the house and those inside it to their eternal peace.
Chapter 22
Jessie Talby, Zanesville, Ohio
Jessie woke to the loft’s gentle shaking, and she opened her eyes to see Bryant sleeping a few feet away.
“Bryant,” she hissed, not having to speak up loud due to their direct radio connection. “Someone’s in the barn.”
Her throat felt like someone had given it a coat of lacquer. Her lungs still burned from the Asphyxia, though the respirator kept her suit’s air cool. She’d probably be dead without it.
Jessie used her foot to nudge the soldier hard in the chest. “Someone’s coming up!”
Bryant’s eyes shot open and slid to the loft ladder. At the same time, he felt around for his gun, though it was somewhere behind him.
She had been spooning Fiona, and the girl lay nestled against her chest. Heart racing, Jessie clutched the little girl as the barrel of a rifle and someone’s head and shoulders rose above the edge of the loft. All she could see was wide, surprised eyes behind the visor before Bryant snatched the barrel of the rifle and grabbed the person by the jacket to drag him up into the loft.
“Ow, Jessie,” Fiona said, half turning. “You’re hurting—”
Jessie spun away from the grappling men, dropping Fiona on her other side before rising to her knees. The man was in a seated position with Bryant behind him going for a choke hold, but the intruder’s mask kept Bryant from getting his arms beneath the
man’s chin.
The man kept his head down as he twisted to dislodge Bryant. The lieutenant colonel drew back and repositioned himself, pressing his visor to the man’s shoulder to keep it sealed against his skin.
The intruder squirmed to his left and threw his right elbow back into Bryant’s ribs once, and then again. The lieutenant colonel grunted and absorbed the blows. His one visible eye turned up to Jessie and slid to his backpack as he twisted the man down to the loft floor to hold him stationary.
The blood drained from her face as she followed Bryant’s eyes to the hilt of a long knife sticking out of his backpack. There was no question what he wanted her to do. A few weeks ago, Jessie would never have considered crawling over to the pack, grabbing the knife from its sheath, and stabbing it into another man’s stomach, but that’s what she did.
The intruder screamed inside his visor as she plunged the knife in again and again, but Jessie kept going because she wanted it to be over with. It wasn’t until Bryant grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her stabbing hand up high that she realized she’d been screaming right along with the dying man.
“Give me the knife,” Bryant said. She stopped screaming and dropped the bloody blade into the hay. The soldier snatched up the knife, turned on the squirming man, and slashed his throat, putting a quick end to his life.
Jessie held out her hands and stared at the blood dripping from her gloves. Red stained the hay, making everything shiny and surreal. She shifted her eyes to Fiona, and the little girl sat cross-legged in the hay, watching Jessie with a worried expression. She wanted to hold the girl and say something to explain away what she’d seen, but the damage was done.
Fiona’s eyes lifted in a look of childlike compassion. And to Jessie’s surprise, the little girl stood up, took an old rag out of the hay, and started wiping the blood off her rubber gloves.
“Fiona, you don’t have to—”
Spore Series | Book 2 | Choke Page 13
