Carmel gave John a deep look prior to leaving him behind. It was not a look of fear, or of sorrow, but a look of determination, and whilst he felt for her, something inside him told him this was not the end. “It will be Ok John. Keep going east. That is where our answers are. Don’t follow me, but please do seek me when you have some answers John.”
“Oh Carmel…”
“Quiet dear. Don’t show him anything, as it makes him worse. I know you will find some answers John. I can always trust you. We will meet again and please take care of my lovely steam engine. I do so want to make it whistle again.” Carmel left him and walked over to the Agent, who had disembarked the ship and was standing with a laser pulse rifle pointed directly at them.
“Now get in, we are going to Seattle. And you,” he turned to face John, “Go and get yourself lost and suffer. You are all alone and there is nobody out here to be with. I control this place and for hundreds of miles to the east. So, I am sorry, but there is nothing for you I’m afraid.” With that, he let out a maniacal laugh and then boarded the craft to immediately take off on a heading straight to Seattle.
“You have already helped me you fool,” John said as he stood alone beside Frieda. “I’ll find you.”
John had no other option than to continue east as Carmel had said, for the town behind him was an alias to the Agent and he could not expect to be welcome. The day had started with a clear blue sky, but as a wind gusted, throwing Frieda’s mane around, John could tell the fine weather was about to end. He was confronted with a choice as he stood on the road, yet he did not feel alone as Frieda was with him and Carmel’s steam engine was still in the cart. For a time, he looked at the engine pondering how it represented Carmel’s spirit to him now, and he too longed for the time when she could make it whistle again.
When he came around, Frieda was standing there staring at him as if she was waiting in expectation to get moving. With a skyward glance, he sat in the cart and steered her back towards the main transit route. By day’s end, they had covered over twenty-five miles, and as he sat looking at his old map, parked beside an old sign reading “Welcome to Nevada,” he mapped out a more direct route towards the east. “We’ll stay here tonight girl. You could use some rest.”
Over the following week, he met no other travellers on the road as he journeyed – there was nobody he knew in Tonopah where he wondered what might have happened to the others in the group he and Carmel had travelled with. When he took the left turn transit at Ely, for the trip directly east to the border with Utah, he thought he saw someone up ahead on the road, but by the time he reached them, it became obvious they had been there some time. ‘Must be the Agent’s doing, or his people,’ he thought when he ambled by the wreckage of an old vehicle and what appeared to be the decomposed remains of it’ occupants.
It was not until well into the second week of travelling as he approached Salt Lake City that people began to appear. At first there were some fringe dwellers to the city who looked to be very badly affected by viruses from the Agent. He found it hard to look at some of the faces that pleaded for food from him, as they were similar to those he and Carmel had come across earlier, where parts of them were being drawn into oblivion, whilst other parts of their bodies were covered in weeping open sores and lesions. He found what he thought was an abandoned farm closer to the city than he expected, but when he entered the barn looking to find a place for Frieda, all he saw was a mass of bodies where some people were still alive. In an horrific vision though, John could see all of them seemed to be disappearing into a large vortex or void, with their bodies joining in a tangled mass of ganglia at the edges. This site was far more disturbing than any others he had previously seen, and the smell, coupled with the sounds, made him vomit within a moment of the ghastly apparition.
When at last he arrived at the city, there was nothing there to appease what seemed to be a growing sense of dread. People were all about in survival mode – some feeding off the corpses of others, and yet some trying to feed off the living. What the Agent had done was to turn humanity inside out and unearth the darkest corners of fear, anxiety, and of behaviour that seemed to be even beyond the most savage found in the wild. People were losing their minds, they were losing themselves, and they were becoming a mess and a scourge unto their own existence. It was very evident to John that life nearer the cities was the worst examples of the Agent’s doing, and so he decided to find what he could to keep him and Frieda going, and then to leave as soon as possible.
The effort to find food was not as difficult as he had imagined, due to the loss of sensible mind amongst the population in general, and due to him being able to find a very few people in Salt Lake City who were not affected. They were glad to see him, and glad to meet someone who was of strong mind, alert, and not there to steal from them.
“You are best heading towards Denver if you are going to the eastern sector. Then, take a turn and head up to Nebraska. Keep well clear of the south before you get to the east, it is bad down there as no doubt others would have to you. You might think Salt Lake is bad, but you have seen nothing yet. People down there…well, there are so many of them, and they are eating pretty bad stuff. Each other, excrement, raw flesh. You name it, and they eat it. It is as if they have lost all sense of what it is to be human. Those holes are much bigger too because there are so many of them, and they are even worse than those twisted ones around here. You can hardly recognise them as human in fact, so disfigured they all are. And there are the ones with the real big holes that look like only half of a person, and then they suddenly erupt and their bodies explode into little pieces with mess everywhere. Apparently they are still conscious for a few seconds as it happens. Don’t ask me how, but it sounds bad.”
“Yeah thanks. I am pretty well headed in the direction as you said. It has been my intention all along. Is there anything I can do for you? You gave me this food and some hay for the horse. You must have something I can do.”
“Only if you know electronics. I have some machines here that would sure help my pals and I stay alive and keep those others at bay.”
“Yeah I do know electronics. Show me and I’ll see if I can fix them.”
“That should work without a problem,” John said as he finished work on the motor. “What are you going to use it for anyway?”
“Oh, we have a little transport machine we can hitch it up to. That we can get about a little faster than all the others on foot. You are lucky to have a horse – not many of those left around Salt Lake. Keep an eye on her when you leave though. Out to the east of the city, there are some who will do what they can to steal anything, and a horse would sure be a prize possession. And those Geiga clothes you wear, well they’ll even try to steal those. Trade you see. Anything they can trade for food or fuel, they’ll take.”
“Thanks for the advice, and again, thanks for the food. I guess I will have to leave tonight…”
“Yeah, best you travel at night. Without any lights or much fuel to burn, they are not party to night raids. That is one thing on your side.”
John had stayed two days with the people he had met in Salt Lake City, and after he had done what he could to repair their machines, they gave him a little more food when he departed.
“A little bonus for you in there as well. Have a touch of whisky for the cold nights.”
“Thanks mate. If I ever come back through Salt Lake, I’ll be sure to come and visit.”
“You are welcome any time my friend. Good luck on your travels, and keep a watch out too at the transit way. I heard there are a few nasty folk up east somewhere along the line.”
John was on a heading northeast towards Nebraska almost one thousand miles distant, making for the divide between the western and eastern sectors. By the time he reached near Denver, he had seen far too many people for his liking. Most of them were affected one way or the other by the viruses from the Agent, and others had looks in their eyes that could only mean trouble. Twenty miles out from th
e city, he decided to skirt around its northern side and take a path through the ranges, then to re-join the transit line forty miles to the east.
It was hard going alone through the mountains with Frieda, as the snows were deep and at times he was only able to cover a few miles each day. Without Carmel for company, he was left to long winter nights where he would talk to Frieda now and then as he sipped a little of the whisky the others at Salt Lake had given him. When at last he descended to the lower altitudes and joined a roadway coming from the north, the travel became a little easier with the thinner snow. It was a beautiful place, with great stands of Aspen trees, frozen creeks and waterfalls, and a feeling of purity with the virgin snow. At times it became a little eerie to him, with barely any sound, no signs of other humans, and almost no sign of wildlife, other than rabbits, which he caught a few of to keep as food. He saw a couple of eagles circling high above one morning, but there was no evidence of any other life aside from the rabbits.
Nine days after taking the route to avoid Denver, he could see the main transit heading east, in the distance. He had covered half the distance to Omaha since leaving Salt Lake City, and as he studied the old map, he calculated there would still be another two weeks ahead of him.
“Well at least the snow will give way soon girl,” he said to Frieda as they had re-joined the transit way after having skirted around the town of Sterling. “Then it will be a lot easier for you.”
He had thought of Carmel every single day since the Agent had taken her, and whilst he felt she was quite a capable person, he was stricken with worry about what he might be doing to her at times. John had travelled alone quite a few times in recent years, partly as he sought out anyone he knew, and partly because circumstances and troubles had forced him to keep moving. He had not encountered many of those badly affected people when he had stayed in the north, as he had remained mostly out of sight and secretive, but ever since venturing south into California and since, the sights of the degenerating virus affected people began to instil a sense of foreboding as he realised just how bad the effects were.
Fortune had always seemed to be with him in recent years. And now, since leaving Salt Lake City, he had found enough resources to feed himself and Frieda, and so far, he had not encountered any real trouble or threat. But as he approached the junction of the easterly transit way with one running north south, he felt something strange. It was if some inner sense Carmel may have passed onto him, was speaking, and it was telling him to be wary. He knew there was only about two hundred miles before he reached Omaha where he was aiming to get through to the eastern sector. This could likely spell danger as he knew there would be many people gathered just inside the western sector edge, trying to go back to the east. Whilst the authorities were still in control and their restrictive measures still in place, life there was much better than in the western sector, with many less instances of grossly virus-affected people, or the complete absence of machines the Agent enforced.
The last snows were now a few miles behind as he drove Frieda on towards the intersection underneath the transit way tube. John approached with caution, as his senses almost seemed to be going into overload, and they proved correct.
At first he was unsure what it was inside the tube twenty meters above him, but then it soon became apparent as more and more faces appeared. The transparent tube was mostly opaque now, as it had not been cleaned or serviced for years, and so their faces were very much obscured. John immediately responded by urging Frieda to go faster towards the intersection. They had speed on their side as those inside could only run, whereas, Frieda was now at a full gallop, towing John on a wild ride.
He kept her at full pace as they neared the intersection, but to his dismay, he could see there were people lingering where the off ramps from the transit tube, descended to the ground.
“Where do you think you are going?” one of them yelled at him as he slowed a little whilst looking for any means to avoid the group. “We want your horse to eat.” John could see those who had been travelling in parallel to him, were gradually catching up, which meant there would be too many people for him to physically take on, and none of them gave him the impression of being open to negotiation. He calculated at least twenty in all, with eight ahead of him standing at the bottom of the access ramp and around a dozen in the tube. With only fifty yards between them, he had to devise a plan, so he pulled hard on the reigns bringing Frieda and the cart to a stop.
“Don’t try and escape or it just means a bad outcome for you. We are hungry and we hurt, so let us have your horse.”
John did not reply, but went to the rear of the cart where his bag had slid to after the fast ride up to this point. Whilst keeping an eye on the people ahead and those who were rapidly approaching the exit to the transit way, he carefully rummaged through his bag until he found the only incendiary device he was carrying. “It’s all or nothing girl,” he said to Frieda as he moved back into the driver seat concealing the device in his hand.
The others had now begun to emerge from the tube and it only took one brief glance to know they appeared even more desperate than those already outside. Their faces and bodies were massively disfigured with gaping holes to nowhere and large oozing lesions, and a look in their eyes that John thought was of pure carnal deposition unaligned from normal human integrity. He was convinced they would not hesitate to kill and eat Frieda, and he was quite sure they would do the same to him the moment they discovered he was not afflicted as they were. As he prepared to make a charge, he could see there was a wide enough area of clear ground for him to drive the cart around or through the group should they disperse in an attempt to form a barrier.
“Give us your horse! We are hungry and so are they.” When the person said this to John, he indicated to the tube where there were at least another fifty people rushing to the scene from the opposite direction.
“Oh shit. Frieda this is it!” He lashed the reigns and immediately they set off at a slight angle away from the tube. When the timing was right, he activated the fuse on the small bomb he had, then when barely twenty yards away he threw it at the main group. Instantly they were thrown into chaos as the explosion killed a few and sent others flying. At the same time, John corrected the angle and headed through the gap in their defences created by the bomb.
“Come back! Come back!” he could hear some of them yell as he drove Frieda as fast as he could.
‘No bloody way,’ John thought, and as he cast a glance behind him to see how close they were, he could see they had resigned to his escape. Some of them lost their wits at losing a potential feed and set upon each other. With flashing glances forward and to the rear, John could see they had begun to tear at each other. It was as if the loss had sent them into frenzy that to John, appeared as so very shocking to him, he was sure not even wild life would engage in such crazed behaviour. People lost their senses smashing each other with whatever weapon they were carrying, then gorging upon the ruined mess of flesh, and upon screaming people as they ate them alive. He could not understand how human beings could behave in such a way, as they had crossed a line into chaos that could only be a product of the Agent’s doing.
Half an hour later, when at last he felt he was far enough away to stop and give the panting Frieda a break, he studied his old map. With around two hundred miles to go, he decided to head for Fremont, where he would find somewhere to stop and plan a way to cross into the eastern sector.
“Well girl, we have almost made it. But we still have five days ahead if we can keep our pace up.” Frieda was a strong horse and so covering nearly forty miles per day was no trouble for her, but by the time they reached the outskirts of Fremont, they had both run out of food, and Frieda had begun to weaken.
John had her hidden in a deserted barn when he went out to look for something they could both eat. Most of the town was deserted, except for a few people here and there, and luckily, they appeared to be unaffected by the Agent’s viruses. “Do you know anywhere
I could get some food,” he asked a woman who herself was out looking for the same thing.
“Not sure honey. I need some too, but it is not easy to find in these parts.”
“In any parts,” John replied. “How long have you been here?”
“All my life. I like the country air, the cities are not my thing, but there is nothing much out here these days. As soon as you try to grow something, those other people come along and steal it.”
“Other people?”
“Yeah, the bad ones with disease, but there are others too. They just steal because they are too lazy and so unwilling to work to survive. You’re not one of them are you?”
“No. I have travelled all the way here from California. I want to go to the eastern sector, and I don’t have any of those viruses.”
“You best try and survive here. Getting through the fence is nigh on impossible. Anyone who tries, they laser them dead.”
“Have you thought about it…trying to get through? It is bad west of here, and I reckon on it getting worse and worse.”
“I have thought about it, but I am all alone you see, and such things just seem too difficult for me.”
“Maybe we can try together?”
“Maybe. You seem all right, and not like any of the others at all. What’s your name? Mine is Kerry Ann.”
“I’m John, nice to meet you Kerry Ann. Where do you live?”
“In an old house…well, it looks old, but it is not so old. I have always lived there, but I keep very quiet you see. I don’t want any attention, so I stay in my basement mostly.”
“Perhaps we can look for food together. I have a horse to…”
“You have a horse! Lucky you. There is not much stock left anymore, as they have eaten it all. You had better keep a good eye on your horse, or you will lose it. What’s its name?”
Höllenbadt: Book two of the Torus Saga Page 14
