by White, A. L.
Looking around the house he decided that he would do the laundry. On more than one occasion Annie had tried to teach him to do it the way she liked. Charlie just couldn’t make sense of most of her method in his own mind. That made it harder to do it that way, so he didn’t. Deep down, the whole hot water, cold water part was a bunch of hoo-ha. All that mattered to Charlie was that there was soap in the machine. He chuckled as he loaded the wash machine; Annie would have a fit if she saw how full it was. Oh well, Charlie thought, she is asleep and what she doesn’t know will not hurt her--or get him in trouble.
Later on, Charlie cooked them soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. That was what he preferred when he did not feel well growing up, and he figured you never know what could possibly help.
Annie ate a little of the soup and a few bites of grilled cheese. Soon after that they lay in bed where Annie fell back asleep while Charlie watched a move.
On Sunday morning when Charlie woke up, Annie wasn’t in bed. He looked around and then found her in the family room, sitting in the dark. Charlie was so used to trying to not wake Annie up most mornings that he had grown used to not turning any lights on. Having grown up in the house, he knew it like the back of his own hand and lights weren’t necessary.
“Charlie, is that you?” Annie asked in a raspy voice.
“Unless you snuck some other guy in that I didn’t see,” he replied jokingly. “Why are you sitting in the dark honey? Are you ok?”
“Turn the light on,” Annie replied.
Charlie reached over to where he knew the light switch was and flipped it first up, and then down, and back up again.
“I promise you, honey, I paid the bill. We are one month behind, but they have never turned it off as long as I paid the past due amount,” Charlie pleaded his case.
Annie’s voice softened a little but was still raspy, “I know you did, Charlie. I think the whole neighborhood is out.”
Charlie went to the front room window and looked out at the pitch-black street. Looking first towards the right he noticed no lights on at any of the houses. To the left brought more of the same, just black.
As he walked back into the family room, Charlie became aware of how chilly the house had become. “Honey, would you like me to see how much firewood we have left? Maybe there is enough to make a fire.”
“Could you, baby? It is so cold in here,” Annie replied.
Charlie went into the kitchen and dragged a chair over to the refrigerator. He was a decent height at five feet-nine inches, but that didn’t help when it came to get the emergency candles and flashlight from the cupboard above the fridge.
“Damn,” He stated under his breath as he felt something fall from the top of the fridge. He had a good idea that it was the basket Annie had used to put fake colored Easter eggs in last Easter. The one he had promised to put up since, well, since Easter ended. The cupboard door opened, and he began to feel around for the candles or the flashlight. The first thing he found was a decorative candle in a jar. Bringing that out, he climbed down and felt around for his smokes on the counter. Finding the half empty pack, he also found the lighter he was looking for. In an instant they were no longer sitting in the dark. Charlie placed the candle on the cut-through between the kitchen and the family room.
“Things are looking brighter all ready,” Annie joked.
“Well if you like that you’re going to love this,” Charlie joked back as he pulled the flashlight out and pointed it at her. With the flick of the switch Annie was bathed in light. Charlie paused for a minute thinking just how beautiful his wife was, even with her allergies at their worst.
Climbing down, Charlie headed towards the back door, “Ok, now for some firewood,” he stated as he went outside.
The night was still with a cold north wind blowing. Charlie had never seen a night this dark in his whole life. It made him feel like Annie and he were the last people left on Earth and it scared him a little. There wasn’t a lot of firewood left to burn because they had put off buying a face cord for this year. Annie said there really wasn’t money in the budget with the way their job situations had left them. Charlie was sorry now that he had listened to her. He grabbed as many of the logs as he could while holding the flashlight and returned to the house.
Charlie lit a nice sized fire then headed out to the garage to find his camping supplies. He would bring in the coffee pot that they used over an open fire and the sleeping bags. That should hold them until the power came back on.
Chapter 2
After Virginia left, Bob went back into the bunker to rest a little. These days he found himself feeling worn out often. Little catnaps seem to help most days; enough for him to get by. Other days he felt like, if not for a little knowledge on survival and forethought to prepare for the unseen calamity, he would have been useless to the group. Sitting in his favorite chair, Bob could feel the vice tightening around his chest again. Bob reached for the meds that Julie had given him. A glass of water would have been nice, but the lecture he would have gotten with it wouldn’t be. Looking toward the kitchen he could see Julie in there reorganizing something. She did that a lot, and Bob knew, for her, it was a way of coping with the situation. The good thing about this group he knew was that each had found a way to deal with the end of life as they knew it. Everyone except for Virginia; she had shut the past out completely. For now, that was her strength to get through each day. Bob felt himself nodding off into a deep slumber.
In his dream Bob was back in his back yard with the lads. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and a slight breeze from the west was making the eighty-five-degree day bearable. Perseus was doing his best to get Zeus to play with him. Zeus, at eleven years old, was more content to sit in the shade provided by the table’s umbrella while he waited for Bob to drop something from the grill. Bob reached down and patted his old friend’s head and Zeus responded by licking his hand.
“You have always been here for me, haven’t you, old friend?” Bob said to Zeus as Perseus nudged his head in between Bob’s hand and Zeus’s head. “We can’t forget our oversized puppy, can we?” Bob said as he brought his other hand over to push Perseus off Zeus and then scratched the side of his head just below the ear.
Bob didn’t know what he was cooking on the grill, but it smelled great for a moment, but only a moment. Suddenly it smelled putrid, like the meat had rotted while cooking. Then there was a scream that only Bob heard; the lads paid no attention to it at all. The smell wafting from the grill was so rancid Bob could barely take it; then, another scream.
Bob would never know what exactly woke him up. It could have been the stench, or it could have been the scream. The last thing he saw was a grotesquely deteriorated head with maggots spilling out of the scalp as it closed its mouth over his neck.
***
By Thursday it had become apparent the power wasn’t going to come back on and Charlie was starting to worry. Even more clear was that Annie wasn’t having her normal allergy issues. Sometime during the night her fever had dropped, which Charlie took as a good sign. This morning however her body temperature didn’t even register on the bargain-priced electronic thermometer they owned. In the sunlight her beautiful pale skin looked grayish in hue with veins in her arm and face prominently showing. Charlie threw the last of the logs on the fire when a knock came at the front door. He walked in a half daze filled with worry over Annie, to the door, and opened it.
“Charlie! I was wondering how you and Annie were doing,” Doc’s forced yet still pleasant smile greeted him.
“Come on in, Doc. Do you think you could have a look at Annie while you’re here?” Charlie asked.
Doc nodded his head yes and followed Charlie into the family room. It only took one look from across the room and Doc knew what it was and where it was heading quickly.
“How long has she been like this?” Doc asked as he moved closer to Annie.
Charlie shook his head slowly because he still couldn’t believe the changeover
night. “She looked like that this morning, when I woke up.”
Doc backed across the room and took Charlie by the arm, “Charlie, you need to come with me and see something now, while there is still time.”
“I don’t think I should leave her right now, Doc. She may wake up and wonder where I am off to.”
“Charlie, do me just this one favor and come for a ride with me, ok? I promise you Annie will be lying right where she is when you get back.”
Reluctantly Charlie agreed to go for the ride if it would be a short one. Doc led him out to the car and motioned him to get in. They drove downtown on deserted streets, past deserted shops until they pulled into the small Sheriff substation. Doc parked in the parking lot and again motioned for Charlie to follow him without saying a word as to why.
Once inside Charlie froze at the sight of Red Harken, slumped over on a desk, drenched in blood. Doc saw what he was looking at, “Red couldn’t take it anymore…so he took the easy way out of this mess. Pay no attention to him for now and come with me.” Doc then led Charlie back to the small holding cell area, where there were four cells. Charlie had never been back there, but had heard there were four cells in a town that barely ever needed one.
“Ok, Charlie, I am going to open this door. You need to prepare yourself for what you’re going to see.”
Charlie nodded his head ok, still not understanding what was going on and still shocked from the sight of Red. Doc pulled the door open. One of the first things that hit Charlie was the stench of decaying meat. That was followed by the odd breathing sounds, like Annie was making at home. They walked slowly into the holding area and Doc pulled Charlie to the exact center of the aisle.
“Do they look familiar, Charlie?” Doc asked. “These are your friends and neighbors. Pay close attention to the color of their skin, will you? Looks about the same as Annie’s doesn’t it?”
Charlie started to turn to leave when he noticed a corpse in the back of the first cell. A body that wasn’t moving around or discolored like the rest.
“Oh, you seem to have found Deputy Martins. He wouldn’t believe what we told him about these folks. He paid for that in a gruesome way; I can tell you. Red went in the other room, and well… you have seen the outcome of that.”
Charlie folded over and started vomiting as he unconsciously moved closer to the cell bars. The growling and hissing became deafening as Doc shoved him out of the holding area. Charlie regained his composure and stormed out of the station heading back to his house.
“Charlie! Hold on a minute, will you?” Doc yelled after him.
“Why, Doc? Why did you bring me down here?”
“Because… after I saw Annie, I knew that you would need to see this to believe me,” Doc replied.
Charlie stopped and turned on Doc. “Believe what? I don’t know what I just saw, or what it has to do with Annie and me!”
“Charlie, just settle down for a minute will you, please? And let’s talk,” Doc pleaded.
“Why? So you can tell me that my Annie is that!” Charlie shouted, pointing to the station.
“Listen son, the hardest thing I have ever had to do was to give a person and their families what amounted to a death sentence. Bad news like this is never easy to receive, no matter how prepared you are. You can deny it and live what is left of Annie’s life, and yours, in denial or you can come to terms with it right now.”
Charlie knew deep down that something was wrong with Annie; and it wasn’t a little thing. Deep down he didn’t know if there was a life after Annie that he wanted to be a part of. Some men say that about their significant others and probably only mean it at face value. Charlie loved Annie with every part of his being. Annie made living through all the bad times worthwhile. She made getting up in the morning and trying to find a job where there were no jobs to find so much less of a burden than it should have been.
Tears began to trickle down his cheeks and Charlie looked into Doc’s eyes looking for a reprieve or a way out. This time his old friend had no such trick up his sleeves. “Would you put Bess in a place like that, Doc?” Charlie asked.
Doc looked down to the ground, “I had to shoot Bess, Charlie. She was one of the first that turned that way. She tore the neck out of a National Guard who was helping in the gym.”
The pair stood there, quiet, for a long time, listening to the silence when Charlie spoke up, “Can I lock her up at home, Doc?”
Doc nodded his head yes. “Let me drive you back home, Charlie, and I will help you make her as comfortable as we can in a secure room,”
Charlie nodded his head yes and started walking back to the car.
Chapter 3
Perseus heard it first, responding with an excited moan, and the pounding of his tail against the floor of the loft. Zeus followed suit, dragging Virginia from her slumber.
The unmistakable sound of an engine grinding gears filled the air outside.
Virginia pushed on the latch, causing the door to make a popping sound as it swung open. The truck was swerving all over the road, moving at a slow but steady pace. Watching it near the intersection began to raise Virginia’s spirits for a few minutes until the two yellow busses came into view on course to ram the truck. They watched helplessly as the truck barely missed the lead bus, crashing into a stalled car on the far side of the highway. The resulting crash was so loud that Virginia looked all around for the return of the herd, until she was satisfied that there was no sign of them.
***
Before his wife got sick and was taken away along with three of his children, Albert Herman was a faceless voice on an international helpdesk. It wasn’t his dream job, by any stretch of the word; in fact, he had pretty much stayed there for the insurance and to have a paycheck. He had worked the early shift which allowed him to spend more time with the younger kids than he had ever spent with his oldest boy, Joe. That was something he figured was the cause of Joe constantly getting into some trouble or another. That was a mistake he wasn’t going to make with the other three. Every knee scrape or school function they would see their father was there to lend a helping hand. Not that he thought he was completely to blame for Joe’s actions; just that he was hedging his bet with the others. Life wasn’t perfect, they didn’t have a lot of extra money to do the things his coworkers did or take long expensive trips to exotic locations. He had lost his job to outsourcing back in two thousand ten, right after the wife’s company closed its doors for good; but they had survived.
It was a Sunday afternoon when the local emergency management group had shown up on his doorstep. The euphoric feeling of being saved passed when the men explained that they had an order to remove anyone with the infection for the good of those that where healthy in the area. That was Albert’s first clue that all wasn’t right in the world. Looking back now, there were so many signs that were just overlooked. Maybe he wanted to see the world like it was or had been. That was a mistake that Al promised himself he would never make again. They took his wife and small children outside, toward a large, gray prison bus, or at least what Al thought looked like a prison bus. It could have been military; he didn’t know for sure. What he did know was that a man wearing a gas mask came out of the bus, stopping his wife and children from getting on. Four shots to the head later, they were no more. That was what he saw every night when he tried to sleep. It haunted him during the hours he was awake sometimes; always there just under the surface waiting to erupt. After that Joe didn’t talk to him and the two lived in the house, barricaded away from the world. Time stopped in Al’s mind so he couldn’t remember how long it had been that they stayed that way. Food was running out, the power had gone off, and there wasn’t a lot of water. Joe would sometimes mutter things under his breath, then sneer at him, but that was it. One day there was a knock on the door again. They both turned three shades of pale as they looked into each other’s eyes. There was no mistaking the fear that petrified them until a familiar voice called out; a voice that Al knew well and thought he
would never hear again. They both raced to the door, throwing it open, to find old Aunt Zoe standing there smiling at them. That was how they ended up there on the road, in two school busses that they stole from the local school yard. Aunt Zoe had informed Al and Joe that it was their Christian duty to find others who had survived and take them to a place she had heard about on the emergency radio at the retirement home. The buses would be needed so that they wouldn’t have to turn anyone away, she had said. So far that wasn’t much of a problem; they rescued three children. There were not many living people to be found. If there were, they were hidden well, and Al was not about to go on a door to door search in every town they drove through. Even though, he figured, if he gave Zoe the chance to think about it that would be just what he would be doing. Looking back now, Al had to laugh about it. There wasn’t ever a chance to tell Zoe she was wrong or that any of her ideas were crazy. Even if he did tell her he would have been put in his place pretty darn quickly. He remembered telling her once, when he was a kid, that he felt his sock drawer was neat enough for her. He then spent the rest of the afternoon putting all of his clothes back into the drawers, neat enough to pass her inspection. That was Aunt Zoe in a nutshell, and he loved her for it. That attention to detail, and wanting to please her, helped him through a lot of things in life, including his job. So that was how he ended up where he was now, on a deserted back road someplace in Illinois heading south toward Florida.
They couldn’t try taking the highway because Zoe said there wasn’t much chance of finding survivors there. Joe had tried to argue with her, having not been around Zoe as much as Al had been; he didn’t know he had lost before he had ever started.
