by Sean Little
I tried to ignore the bodies, shutting the sliding door behind me. I went into the garage and found a typical garage: a single car on one side, and bikes, lawn mower, and a kayak on the other. All the tires on the vehicles were flat. I poked around looking for a pump. No dice. I had to move on to the next house.
I moved to the next house, and then the house after that one. At the fourth house, I stopped. The house had a full array of solar panels on the roof. They looked like they were in good condition. This house could actually have power. That was worth investigating on its own.
I moved to the garage door and tried it. Locked. The front door, also locked. I moved around to the rear of the house. Like most of the houses in the neighborhood, there was a large rear yard with an elevated wooden deck. I could see the sliding patio door, but this house had a balcony-style deck with no staircase. There was a basement door in the corner of the house next to a small, brick patio on the ground. I moved to that door and tried it. Locked. When the doors thwarted my efforts, my only option was to use tools to force the door. I was practiced in this by now. Over the last two years, I had defeated hundreds of locks, some by finesse, and some by force. I used a screwdriver from my ruck to force the lock, twisting it until I felt it slip past the tumblers. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and it would break the lock more often than not, but it worked. I heard the metal crunch, and I felt the door pop open. I slipped into the house and flipped on the flashlight.
Immediately, I froze. The entire basement of the house looked like a doomsday prepper’s how-to guide. There were nothing but floor-to-ceiling plastic shelves loaded with supplies: canned goods, bottled water, soft drinks, vacuum-sealed bags of dried meat and vegetables, toilet paper, Wet Wipes, boxes of cereal and other dry goods. It was a storehouse. I had run into these before, people who prepared for war or a chemical attack or something similar, only to succumb to a virus, something they could not even see or fight. I made a mental note to remember the address of this house and come back to it, when I could.
I slipped around the racks and moved toward the staircase. I trotted up the stairs, preparing to find just another abandoned house. When I got to the top of the stairs and turned to enter a kitchen, three things happened at once: I saw a shadow, I heard an explosion, and I felt like a hive of wasps decided to attack my left hip.
I realized that I was flat on my back in the little landing at the top of the stairs. I was stunned. I saw stars. How? Where? Why? I couldn’t breathe. There was stinging, nasty pain everywhere. My left side was on fire. I clapped my hand to my hip and felt warm wetness. I was bleeding.
“Oh…oh! Jeez. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pull the trigger! That was an accident!” A man’s voice? A boy’s voice? Someone was apologizing to me. My vision got blurry, hazy. I was shot. Someone shot me. Who would shoot me? I heard movement. The next thing I knew, I felt pressure on my hip. I could feel the rough texture of paper towels. Someone was trying to stop the bleeding.
Getting shot was not like it was in the movies. In the movies, the hero gets shot, he grimaces in a manly fashion, and he continues on as if a bullet was a minor annoyance like stepping on a Lego or getting stung by a bee. I could feel blood seeping down my thigh, and down my side to pool at the small of my back. Was it a lot of blood? I couldn’t tell. I felt a cold shudder ripple through my body. Shock. I was definitely shocked. I had not been expecting anything to happen when I turned that corner.
“Dude, I’m sorry,” the man was saying again. His voice was higher-pitched, squeaky, almost. He sounded panicked. That could account for the squeak. “I just meant to point the gun and tell you not to move, but…I don’t know what happened. I screwed up. Aw, geez. Don’t die, okay. Just don’t die.”
“Die?” I heard myself say. I wasn’t going to die. I had to get back to the farm. I had a baby coming, and he would need a father. “I’m not going to die.” My voice came out odd and wispy. I was losing consciousness. A light blazed on overhead, a real light. A ceiling lamp in a kitchen. It blinded me. I blinked to try to make my eyes dilate. After a long moment, I could see a shadow above me.
“I’m gonna fix you up real good. Just stay with me.”
I could make out a wild mop of blond, curly hair. I saw a hunched figure, slightly chubby. He had a thick, wild beard and he was wearing glasses with heavy black frames. He was also wearing a Command Gold uniform jersey from the original Star Trek TV show.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Panthera Leo
The sound of screaming woke me from a nightmare. Was the screaming in my nightmare, or was it coming from outside? I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t even remember the nightmare, but I knew it was a nightmare. I felt attacked. I felt punchy, almost drunk in a way. Something was wrong. I was wrong. The baby? My hand went to my stomach instinctively. The baby couldn’t be screaming. I heard the sound again. It was coming from outside. The pigs. One pig? More pigs? I couldn’t tell.
A pregnant woman does not just “spring” out of bed, no matter how badly she wants to. Getting out of bed was a multi-stage process. I had to get my feet under me, make sure they could support my weight and balance, and then move to standing, using the headboard to help me propel myself to my feet. From there, I grabbed my gun, my flashlight, slipped my feet into my sneakers, and waddled down the stairs and out of the house as fast as I could, which was not very fast at all. The whole time, I could hear the sound of animals in distress. It was chilling.
When I threw open the door to the yard, it was morning. The rain had stopped, but the whole world was misty with thin fog and dawn light. I could see the barn, seventy yards across the lawn. The boards I nailed across the opening were still there. I could see the shadows of moving animals beyond them in the dark of the arena. The pigs were still okay. Thing 1 was still okay. I heard more screaming. It was coming from the other side of the barn.
One of the missing pigs had come home and was trying to get into shelter, I thought. That was hardly something to fuss over. I moved around the corner of the barn to the field behind it and saw Keira Knightley squealing and sprinting like a crazed rabbit, a large, tawny lion trying to chase her down. Keira’s little legs were churning like cartoon animal’s and she was shifting direction often, keeping the heavier, less shifty lion guessing. The lion was gaining. She would get a little distance and rush back to the barn door, where she knew there was safety. When she got to the door that did not open, the lion would charge her again, and she would start over from the beginning.
I hate to say it, but I froze. I know what I should have done, shooting at the lion, or at least shooting into the air to try to scare it away, but I didn’t, not at first. I froze and froze hard. To see a fully-grown lion less than fifty yards from me, with no fences or walls between us, it was terrifying. A cold sweat burst out over my body. The gun in my hand became ten times heavier. I felt a tremble rip through my body. I almost peed my pants (my bladder control was already questionable thanks to the pregnancy). I felt my heart race. I was not prepared for an animal of that size and strength to be this close to me.
And then I felt the baby kick me. Hard. It was almost as if the little pisher was telling me to get my act in gear. I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say it was that mythical “Mama Bear” instinct kicking in. That pig was my pig. I had been feeding her, petting her, and making sure she was healthy for months. I felt a weird, protective instinct descend over me. That pig. My baby. At that moment, there was no difference between the two. That pig was my baby, and to hell with any lion that thinks he was going to eat my baby.
A strange force possessed my arm. I went full Dirty Harry on this lion. I yanked the gun up to a firing position, widened my stance, sighted down the barrel with my right eye, and started calmly squeezing off rounds. I had practiced with this pistol, and I liked to think I was a decent shot. I saw two puffs of red as my bullets found their target, burying into the left side of the lion’s rump. The big cat snarled and deviated from its pursuit course. I hit
it again on the right side as it turned. The cat, annoyed and confused, decided to cut its losses and run. Angry, I continued to fire at it, but I don’t think I hit it again. I squeezed off rounds until the hammer clicked on empty air.
Keira Knightley was scared and trembling, a quartet of large, bloody slashes across her backside. She was huddled by the door, desperate to find safety with her friends. I let her into the barn and got the first aid kit to treat her wounds. I was halfway back to the barn when I realized I wasn’t breathing. I had to stop and suck in a deep lungful of air. The baby twitched hard, and the sudden, sharp pain doubled me over. I put my hands on my knees and bore the pain until it passed. For a fleeting second, I worried that I was having a contraction, but it was still too early for that.
Wasn’t it?
No. I would not allow this baby to be born until Twist returned. We had at least two months before it was due. It was just a reaction to the gunfire and my own nerves. When the pain passed, I felt fine. It was just a fetal temper-tantrum. I had a pig to treat, and chores to do. No time for pain or worry. The storm was past, the sun was rising, and I needed to busy myself lest I dwell on why Twist hasn’t returned.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chet
The man in the gold Trek costume helped drag me to my feet. I could not put weight on my left leg. My hip was burning. It felt wrecked, as if all the bones on the left side of my pelvis had been turned into Play-doh. I had fleeting visions of a wheelchair. How could I help Ren around the farm if I couldn’t walk? The panic started my heart racing.
“Keep cool, man. Keep cool. You’ll be fine.” The chubby guy swept a bunch of papers and garbage from a large table in the dining room. I rolled onto the table. “It’s just a flesh wound!” he mimicked a bad British accent. The guy turned on the light over the table, and I had to close my eyes. It was bright, too bright.
“I’m gonna get some stuff to fix you up. Man, I apologize. I didn’t mean to shoot, honest to God, I didn’t. It was dark, and I got twitchy. I’m not a violent guy, honest.”
“S’ok.” My mouth felt cottony. I felt him cutting down the leg of my pants from the hip. I felt the fiery brush of gauze on the wound. It helped to keep me alert.
“Well, that’s not too bad.” The man in the Star Trek uniform smiled at me. “Thankfully, I’m a lousy shot on the best of days. You’ll live, Slippery. Looks like a really nasty road rash, is all.” He packed a wad of gauze onto my side and told me to hold it in place. He rooted around in a large tackle box loaded with bandages, creams, salves, and suture kits. He took out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured it on my side. I screamed. He sympathized with me. “I bet that burns like hell, don’t it?” He had a very distinct east-Texas drawl.
“Who are you?” I had to speak through gritted teeth. The PSI I was using to wrench my jaw shut threatened to pop my teeth like bubble wrap.
“Name’s Charles. People call me Chet, though. My old man was Charles, and my mom didn’t like the name Charlie or Junior, so I became Chet. Pleased to meet you.”
“I’m Twist.”
“Twist? Like the verb?”
“Short for Twister.”
“Did your parents not like you?”
“Nickname from wrestling in high school.”
“And you just call yourself that? Cool, I guess.” Chet scrubbed at the wound with more gauze. I was becoming numb to the pain. “It looks like the slug took a nice chunk of meat off your side, but you’ll be fine. You’ll be limpin’ for a while, but you’ll recover.”
“Good to know.”
“This is gonna bleed like a mother for a while, though. Sorry about that.” Chet rinsed the wound with alcohol again. Then, he smeared a salve over it. It must have had lidocaine in it, because the pain reduced considerably. For the first time in minutes, I took an easy breath. Chet packed on a large bandage, the kind they used in the military to stop bleeding. He taped it down with white medical tape and stood back to survey his work. “You’ll live,” he repeated.
“I have to get home.”
“It’s dark out, man. You ain’t goin’ nowhere for a while.”
“I have to get home—”
Chet cut me off. “It ain’t safe after dark. There’s dogs, ‘yotes, and crazy fools with guns. I swear I’ve heard wolves, too. Must have escaped from a zoo or something. You can stay here with me, though. Be glad for the company, really. It’s all good. I’ve got power, water, and food. We can make a cheeseless pizza, if you want. Ain’t had real cheese around here in months. I got some frozen stuff, but not much. Want to watch some ‘X-Files’ or maybe some ‘Firefly?’ How long has it been since you can say you watched TV?”
Chet helped me to sit up. My hip did not want to work properly. Remind me to never get shot again. With Chet acting like a human crutch, he helped me off the table and to a book and paper-cluttered couch. He swept the papers away to clear a space for me. For the first time, I was able to see where I was. It was a very nice, if nondescript house, but every square inch of the place seemed packed with books, papers, sci-fi memorabilia, and electronic parts. In between the hoarder-like mess was survival gear like water and stacks of canned food. It was a lot to take in, at first. The house was busy. In every direction, there was something to see.
“Sorry about shooting you, brother.” Chet handed me a bottle of cold water he retrieved from the working refrigerator in the kitchen. It was such a treat to have cold, clean water, I drained the bottle in a single breath. Chet got me another. “No hard feelings, right?” He stuck out his hand.
“No hard feelings.” We shook.
“Honestly, man—I just meant to point the gun at you to hold you until I could determine if you were gonna be cool or not. You seem like a good guy, though.”
“Thanks. I like to think I am.”
“You’re not all gonna be shooting me, or taking my stuff, are you?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Well, all right then. Cool.” He smiled. Then he squinted at me. “Wait, are you just saying you won’t so I drop my guard, but you’re planning to shoot me later?”
I shook my head. I pointed toward where I dropped my shotgun in the stairwell. “I had a gun. I could have used it to shoot you after you shot me.”
“Fair enough.” Chet ran a hand through his shaggy mane. “It’s just hard to know who to trust, you know what I mean?”
“I get that.”
“You want to be nice and neighborly, help everyone, you know? But, you never know who’s going to be in that alpha-dog survival mode and want to shoot it out rather than shaking hands, eh?”
I nodded at the stacks of survival supplies in the corners. “You look like you’re doing okay.”
Chet shrugged. “I guess I am. I’m luckier than most, I suppose. Not that there’s all that many of us left. I had time to prepare, though.”
“You had time to prepare for the Flu?”
Chet shrugged again, like it was no big deal. Like he wasn’t just changing my understanding of the global-killer virus that decimated humanity. “Yeah. More than most, I guess.”
“What? How? By the time people were realizing the Flu had hit, there was like four or five weeks, and everyone was dead. I had to start from scratch. I had to start with almost nothing.”
“That’s what I mean. Most people, they only knew when the bodies started dropping.” Chet pointed at a computer in the corner. “I was a big nerd, if you couldn’t tell from looking around. I was a computer programmer and a minor hacker of little renown. I was on the Dark Web a long time ago when I started reading rumors about some sort of super virus. I could never lock down the definite, hard truth about it, but I knew enough to know that there was something out there. It was never a question of if it would be released, but when it would be released. Something bad was coming, that much was evident for those of us who knew to look for it.”
What? What was this guy trying to say? “Are you saying the Flu was manufactured? That man killed itself with some
sort of genetically altered virus?”
Chet nodded. “Best I can figure, yeah. From what I gathered, I’d say that’s about right. I will never know for certain, of course, but I’d be willing to bet a pretty high amount on it.”
I felt my jaw hanging open. I was floored. “Tell me more. What do you know?”
“Not that much, honestly. And, I can’t truly verify anything I think I know, so I might be full of it. Who knows? But anyway, the Flu hit hard in early May two years and a few months ago, right? Say, two-and-a-half years.” Chet cleared some books off a wooden dining room chair and sat on it, facing me. “About a year before that, I was on a pretty secretive conspiracy chat room, way down the rabbit hole, right? I was totally looking for Morpheus’ red pill. Most of the time, the chatter in those sorts of chatrooms is pretty dumb: aliens, exorcisms, politics, lizard people—useless idiocy, for the most part. Well, one night, I’m on there and a guy gets on and starts typing stuff out in bad, broken English. Says he was a Chinese soldier guarding some sort of top-secret, hidden genetics lab somewhere in some remote part of China. He starts talking about how their scientists made some sort of wicked chemical weapon. At first, I think it’s B.S. because how could he get past the Great Firewall of China, right?”
