This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3

by Robert Chazz Chute

  *

  The Universe does not care about you. You have to do and be a lot to even begin to have that hope. That’s why so many of the faithful depend on grace. Our good works are far too thin and paltry. We squeeze more grace from hope because, really? “Good works”? You don’t even tip your waiter without a major debate and stingy calculations. We need grace because begrudging your server a few more nickels? That won’t cut it.

  ~ Notes from The Last Cafe

  Is our fate sealed? No mercy or appeal?

  Dayo, Desi, Dr. Sinjin-Smythe, Aastha and Aasa stood in a tight huddle on the deck of the Amundsen as the vessel passed a glistening, moonlit iceberg off Witless Bay, Newfoundland.

  “As big as it is, we only see ten percent of the iceberg,” Dayo told the Aasa and Aastha. “There’s much more stretching down below the surface.”

  “So an iceberg is like everything else,” Aasa said.

  Dayo peered down at the little girl and said nothing for a moment before giving her a slow nod.

  The adults shivered as they made jokes about the Titanic. They all went quiet at once as they heard the sound of waves breaking on the ice. They jumped when they heard a loud popping sound.

  One of the crew, an older man known only as Hillier, laughed at the European refugees jovially. “That’s the Bergie Seltzer, folks! It’s just trapped air, compressed through history, finally escaping the melting ice. The air that just got loosed mighta not been breathed since Christ was a carpenter.”

  The passengers laughed, but Aasa could tell the adults were nervous. The pale, mammoth ice sculpture loomed like a ghost mountain. The adults stayed quiet long after the iceberg was out of sight. To port, they could make out land’s dark outline.

  Aasa pulled on Dayo’s sleeve. “We’re going back into danger, aren’t we?”

  “Not you.”

  “Yes, me,” Aasa said. “Definitely me. All of us. Terrible things are going to happen at an airport. Then on a beach made of black rocks. There’s a lighthouse and…I’m not sure about the rest. We won’t have the blanket until all the threads come together.”

  Dayo frowned. “The boy talking to you again in your dreams, is he?”

  “Yes,” Aasa lied.

  “I know about the beach, but where is this scary airport, Aasa?”

  “We find out tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The next afternoon, Aasa’s legs wobbled as she stepped on the dock in Carbonear, Newfoundland. The town was quiet. The Amundsen bobbed gently at the dock.

  Desmond Walsh held Aastha in his arms and carried her down the plank. Aasa’s little sister hadn’t called the big Irish policeman “Daddy.” Not yet. Aasa suspected the girl was young enough that she’d do so soon.

  Aasa frowned but said nothing. She liked Desi well enough and he made Dayo laugh, but she’d never allow herself to call him her father. Aastha was already forgetting their dead mother. To let go of her father, too? Never. Aasa wasn’t sure about heaven's existence, so she was determined to keep her parents alive in her mind.

  The adults looked relieved to be off the Amundsen but worried about where to find shelter for the night. However, Aasa was already searching the dock. The Way of Things had given her instructions and the little girl had a mission to carry out. She told no one but Aastha about the people she had to find, and only after she made her little sister pinky swear that she’d keep it a secret until they reached Newfoundland.

  An elderly man sat in a lawn chair on the pier, working at mending a net. He did not look up until the girl cleared her throat.

  “I have to see the princess.”

  The old man’s hands didn’t stop worrying the net, but his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

  “On a quest, are you?”

  Dayo caught up with Aasa. “Don’t run ahead like that, kiddo.”

  “It’s alright,” the old man said. “She’s fulla business.”

  Aasa ignored Dayo’s hand on her shoulder. “Where is the princess, sir? I was told to go to the first person I saw on the dock.”

  The old man laughed and his eyes went back to fixing the web of rope. “No royalty around here, girl.”

  “Sorry to bother you, sir,” Dayo said as she tried to guide Aasa back to the group.

  Aasa pushed Dayo away and planted her feet. “Tell me where to find Princess Sheila!”

  “Aasa!” Dayo picked up the girl. “That’s enough! We’ve got prob — ”

  “No!” Aasa cried out. “Put me down!”

  “Wait. I do know where your princess is.” The old man chuckled. “Up Water Street.” He pointed. “Can’t miss her.” He laughed again. “That way. Fill yer boots!”

  Dayo put Aasa down gently. “What have you not been telling me?”

  Desi, Aastha and Sinjin-Smythe arrived just in time to hear Aasa say, “When we find Princess Sheila NaGeira, we find the wizard. That’s what we have to do.”

  The virologist rolled his eyes and Aasa didn’t miss his quick dismissal. “This is why I didn’t tell you guys!” Aasa said.

  “I’m sorry, Aasa, but this does sound a bit silly,” Sinjin-Smythe said.

  “Everything new and different sounds silly until you know more about it. That’s what Dad said. He said that’s why dumb people stay dumb. They’re impatient and don’t give new things a chance.”

  “Princesses and wizards? Really?”

  “Just one of each, Craig,” Dayo said.

  “Princess who again?” Desi asked.

  “NaGeira.”

  The policeman smiled. “This’ll be grand. She’s Irish.”

  Sinjin-Smythe turned to face the ocean and held his head in both hands as if to contain a pressure that threatened to blow his skull apart. “Princess NaGeira of bloody Newfoundland! As if zombies and vampires weren’t enough? Christ!”

  “Easy, mate.” Desi patted the doctor’s shoulder. “We’ll work this out. More than meets the eye, you know? Like Aadi said.”

  “More than meets the eye. Yeah. You’re right. Aadi was a wise man. I’m sorry. I—I’ve been afraid to sleep in case the boy shows up to deliver more bad news. And…,” he sighed. “I’m just not used to following orders from people still short enough to believe in Father Christmas!”

  Aastha shrieked and Aasa’s head snapped around. “What about Father Christmas?”

  Desi’s shoulders sank. “Eejit. Sharp as a beach ball.”

  French girls and odd mysteries

  Jack assigned Anna to keep track of any clues to their journey’s progress, but they hadn’t seen any road signs in the last day of walking. The days grew hot, but the nights were still cold. They found shelter however they could, huddling close.

  Anna worried most about her mother. Jack slept so badly, she felt little energy for each day of wordless hiking. And still, the roads were blocked with bodies and empty cars drained of fuel. Many of the vehicles were burned up and all were useless.

  “Do you think someone burned the cars to burn the bodies?” Anna asked. “To stop the spread of Sutr?”

  Jack Spencer paused to look up and down the highway. “From the looks of the corpses…judging by decay…I’d guess these are the dead from the earliest migration. It was even colder at night then. Maybe surviving refugees blew up cars for the heat. Maybe they wanted all the tires to melt so no one would move the cars and follow them.”

  She pointed down the well-worn path beside the road. “It didn’t work. A lot of people are still alive and headed East.”

  “We haven’t seen anyone heading West since the roadblock,” Theo said.

  Jaimie knew why. He’d spoken to hundreds of travelers in the night. Some, he directed East. “Go to the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and wait. I will meet you there.” He chose those soldiers carefully. They were neither too young nor too old. The Way of Things instructed him to "spread the word."

  "What word?" Jaimie had asked.

  "Bellum domesticum." War among family members.

  That
answer never satisfied the new recruits. “What will we do there?” They always asked.

  “I don’t know that yet,” Jaimie replied. “But it’ll be important. You have my word.” And so The Army of the Word grew.

  Others, he instructed to flee North or to go to Montreal and no farther. Each morning, Jaimie awoke feeling as exhausted as when he’d fallen asleep. The Way of Things had lots to say and the boy was Its sole conduit, Its War Ministry.

  * * *

  Douglas Oliver had stuffed their packs with beef jerky that left them too thirsty. They ate less and walked as if the dead man had attached weights to their hiking boots. Their hike was a vigil for fresh water creeks. They strained to hear the sound of rushing water. At every opportunity, they stopped to drink and refill their canteens. Fast-moving water seemed safer and tasted better. Even when they were very thirsty, they bypassed water that looked too green, too muddy or too still and hoped the water ration in their canteens would hold out.

  Jaimie held his father’s hand as they walked and Theo matched his son’s pace. Whenever the boy glanced toward his father, he found him stronger, smiling and encouraging.

  “We’re going to make it just fine, Jaimie. We have to make it to the Corners and we will. Your grandfather will be waiting for you. You’ll pet Papa Spence’s goats and you’ll meet your uncle Cliff. He looks exactly like me, except very slightly older and a lot uglier. I know you’re miserable now, but we’re going to get away.”

  Happily ever after is elusive, Dad.

  * * *

  Jack kept her eyes on the horizon, scanning as much of the path as the wood’s edge would allow. Her eyes darted as squirrels chattered territorial alarms as they passed. Whenever she stopped to adjust the straps on her pack, she looked back, expecting Lieutenant Carron to emerge from the forest with a gun pointed at her children.

  “I feel like a small animal afraid of being carried off by a hawk,” she muttered so only Theo could hear.

  “The price of constant vigilance is exhaustion, sweetie,” Theo said brightly.

  Jack led the way and called back for her family to be wary of every reaching, treacherous root. “Watch your footing!” Soft sand at the road’s shoulder or fragile shale were simple traps that would hamper their escape. A fall into the ditch, twisted ankle or even a simple infected scratch? Little things could kill and danger felt as close as the ground beneath their feet.

  Carron was gaining on them. Jack knew that. She didn’t know how, but Theo was sure the monster was coming so Jack knew it had to be true. Theo badgered her to keep the family moving long after her body demanded rest.

  “The Alphas are out there, too. They could be just out of sight, catching up,” Theo hissed in Jack’s ear. “Stop taking so many breaks through the day and hide deeper in the woods at night. Keep moving as fast as you can. Moving targets are harder to hit.”

  Jack missed the familiar safety of warm beds, offices filled with ringing phones and the smells of fresh coffee. She yearned for living rooms filled with the comforting blare of a television. She missed the van’s air conditioning and her heated seat and vowed that as soon as they could make it past the jam, she’d steal a really nice car with a full gas tank. The old conveniences felt remote now, but they didn’t feel trivial anymore.

  How alien and easy these historic oddities. Jack thought again of someday grandchildren pestering her about what she’d lost and what they'd never known.

  Grandma! Grandma! How did people live in the old, modern times?

  There was a lot of sitting around and talk and coffee. We did a lot of planning. It was the Age of Wants. We thought the leisure would never end.

  And tell us again how the pioneers lived?

  Just like you, she would say. Much less talk. Much more hunting and gathering and farming. Now is the Age of Need.

  * * *

  The Spencers stopped walking only when they had to. No matter how tired they were, they chose to rest along a stretch of highway where they could see no bodies. They took off their boots, massaged each other’s feet and switched socks. They dried their feet with powder and bandaged the blisters at their heels with moleskin.

  Douglas Oliver had explained how to cover hot spots, before tender feet turned to pain. “Keep your feet dry. Don’t use duct tape. I bartered a diamond for the self-adhesive moleskin. If we run out of that, maybe we can loot a pharmacy for tincture of Benzoin.”

  “What’s that?” Anna had asked.

  “Let’s hope nobody else knows what it’s for, either. It goes on tacky so you can tape your feet and walk longer. Hopefully it won’t come to that. I’m an old man. I’m not up to a long hike.”

  Fortunately for their old black marketeering neighbor, he never had to face the challenges of the road. At least Douglas Oliver had been spared a long, arduous journey.

  Jack said a prayer for him every time they stopped to bandage their feet. If not for his foresight, they probably would not have made it this far.

  “She doesn’t know what you did to Mr. Oliver, Jaimie,” Theo said. “I’m glad she doesn’t know. Right or wrong, it’s easier on her not to know. With luck, she’ll never know.”

  “Tempus rerun imperator,” Jaimie whispered.

  “Time may command all things, son, yes, but killing Douglas wasn’t an order you carried out. That wasn’t the Way of Things. You chose that. I do understand why you did it. Thank you.”

  “Canis canem edit,” Jaimie whispered to Theo. Dog eat dog.

  Jaimie stared at his father a long time before adding, “Or God eats us.”

  Fire, smoke and secret histories

  Misericordia's teeth dripped gore. He grinned through Private Tristan Kennefic’s blood. “No matter how much I eat, I’m always hungry twenty minutes later. It's like humans are all Chinese food.”

  The Alpha leader lifted his shirt to show off six-pack abs. “My metabolism runs much higher these days. I used to have to watch my weight. Your bodyguard was a tasty little snack.”

  Dr. Daniel Merritt groaned.

  “How are you feeling, mate? You look a bit peaked. Does that wheelchair make your ass sore? I bet it does.”

  The CDC virologist was so high on painkillers, there was little nerve firing left in his broken body to allow physical torture. The vampire did manage to reach him with mental torture, however.

  “Back at the Brickyard, I let you live. Did you ever wonder why? It was for this moment. You locked me up alone with my hunger. I pissed and soiled myself on the long helicopter ride. You tied me to a table, just another of your lab rats. You didn’t care.”

  Merritt stared at the floor. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you as a person. I was trying to save the world.”

  “‘Trying to save the world.’ I’m sure that’s what Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler and Jesus told their disciples. They should have asked themselves if humans are worth the trouble.”

  The doctor raised his head, searching for Misericordia’s eyes through a chemical fog. “We’re worth it. We need to be saved.”

  “From the new evolution? From the next improvement in the species?”

  “From you.”

  “Careful, doctor. I’m the best medical science has to offer, but I can be testy.”

  “The Sutr-Z infected have Europe and are rampaging through Africa now. You’re an Alpha… You could let me try to stop Sutr-Z.”

  Misericordia laughed. “We both know you don’t want to stop there. If I let you stop the zombies, you’ll be coming up with a cure for us next.”

  Merritt shook his head. “Your name was Adam.”

  “Once.”

  “You were a human soldier.”

  “I was a slave. Now I’m a king. From that wheelchair, trust me, you have no idea how fantastic I feel. Better than any drug there ever was. Hungry all the time, but so good. So strong!”

  “You have reason to let me live.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes.
Yes, you do. You should help me.”

  “Is this where you beg me? ‘Help me, help you! Help me, help you’? You’re no Tom Cruise and I’m no Cuba Gooding Jr.”

  “If you let me live, I can cure the Sutr-X virus. Maybe I can even cure the Sutr-Z strain.”

  The female Alpha who had impersonated a colonel stepped forward, looking at the virologist curiously. “How does that help us?”

  “Shut up, Occubo! He’s a human, but he’s not stupid. He’s just trying to save his useless life.”

  The female bristled. “If he’s not stupid, we should hear what he has to say.”

  Misericordia slapped her across the face so hard Occubo fell to the floor. The Alpha leader was on Merritt in a flash, his hand wrapped around the helpless man’s throat.

  “Food supply,” Merritt squeaked.

  Misericordia loosened his grip a fraction.

  “Let me cure Sutr-X and you have humans to eat. Let me cure Sutr-Z and you’ll have no competition for…us. You’ll dominate the food chain forever.”

  Occubo wiped blood from her broken lip as she pulled herself from the floor. “Interesting. You’re prepared to become part of a herd to feed us?”

  Merritt took a heavy breath. “It’s simple math. The species we try to protect in the wild die out. There’s a handful of pandas left. But agriculture? At the peak of factory farming, we had so many cows turning into hamburgers that their farts threatened to destroy the planet. Animals that are domesticated and farmed are perpetuated. Their line lives on. All others face extinction.”

  Misericordia smiled. “He’s a cold calculator, isn’t he?”

  Merritt’s chin sank to his chest. “Survival always has a price.”

  “I don’t believe you are that cold, Dr. Merritt. You are miserable, but you’re really hoping that if I let you live, some bright, shiny day you’ll figure out how to kill us, too. I’m going to eat you with a nice garlic dressing, just to see if there’s any truth to the legend vampires are allergic.”