No Direction Home (Book 1): No Direction Home

by Mike Sheridan

  Jonah made a face. “Ah, no love. Not the blogs. Not one of these post…ah…ah…apocrofrictical talks. I’m not in the mood tonight. We’re on our holliers. I was thinking more along the lines of a kiss and a cuddle, followed up by a little hootchie cootchie.”

  “Jonah…”

  Recently, Colleen had gotten big into the blogs too, soaking up all this weirdo conspiracy stuff. A bunch of bleedin’ nutters, in his opinion. Even worse than the books. Lunatics spouting out all these letters that supposedly meant something. SHITFIT. TEOWACKOFF. BUG, BOL and BOB, whoever those clowns were.

  Since then, she’d gotten into the habit of asking him kooky questions about how didn’t he think it weird that the government did this thing or that thing, and how come mainstream media supported this person or that person, but never this other person.

  “Because this other person is someone no one’s ever heard of, that’s why. Nobody cares what he thinks,” he’d tell her. To which Colleen would nod her head vigorously. “Exactly. Because MSM won’t give him any coverage, that’s why. He’s being censored.”

  I mean, how could you win an argument like that? He’d never even heard of the Evening Herald or the Independent ever being termed MSM before, although the Indo had a great sports section, he’d say that for them.

  Truth be told, though he would never admit it to her, Jonah always enjoyed their talks. A prepocalypse natter, he liked to call them. After appeasing Colleen with his thoughts on various doomsday matters, she in turn would appease his more base desires. It was a strange form of foreplay, he often thought to himself. Still, it worked, and Jonah was a practical man. Especially when it came to his nookie.

  “Ah, go on then,” he sighed. “What’s on yer mind this time?”

  Colleen took a deep breath and collected her thoughts. She was good at that. She worked as a cashier at the Irish Life insurance company on Abbey Street, and was great with figures. Had a hell of a figure herself, he liked to joke.

  “First thing…remember the Ebola scare a while back?”

  Jonah nodded. “Yeah, I remember them Ebola mutant zombie books you started reading right about then. Next question?”

  “Remember how you couldn’t put on the telly without hearing all about it?”

  “Yep. That’s how come I remember, baby.”

  “Well then, how come no one is talking this time about the virus that’s going around? I mean, they’re talking about it, but they’re being real vague, and always reassuring everyone that everything is just fine. They didn’t do that with Ebola. It was like they were trying to scare everyone to death. Don’t you think it’s a little strange?”

  Jonah shook his head. “No, I don’t. Because this is only a flu. Nobody is dying of it. That’s why.”

  Colleen stared at him. “How do you know?”

  “Because if they were dying, it would be on the news,” Jonah explained patiently. “They wouldn’t bleedin’ stop talking about it. Just like the last time.”

  “Em, yeah…unless, of course, it was so serious a disease, they’ve been ordered not to talk about it. Maybe the government wants to keep this thing under cover as long as they can. The last thing they need is panic on the streets while they’re making their plans.”

  Jonah frowned, putting the best I’m intrigued expression on his face he could muster. He knew where Colleen was going with this. “You think so? Or maybe it’s them New World Order geezers looking to depopulate the world. Could even be the Council for Foreign Relationships.” He knew how hot this topic always got her.

  “Relations,” Colleen corrected him. “The CFR.”

  Jonah took another sip from his whiskey. “Yeah, them lot. Shower of feckers.”

  “On the blogs, they say that the hospitals are full around the country,” Colleen continued. “People are dying like flies, but no one is talking about it.”

  “And you believe them…the blogs?” Jonah couldn’t help but let a skeptical tone enter his voice.

  “Yes, I do. Remember at the park today? The queue out the door of the infirmary?”

  Jonah nodded uneasily. Colleen was onto something there. Something he’d put out of his mind. Because right at the very back of it flashed a big red warning sign that read: Sorry headerball, your fishing trip’s been canceled.

  He wasn’t having that.

  “Another thing. How are you feeling?”

  Jonah shrugged. “Not a bother. I’m right as rain.” He reached over and picked up his glass of whiskey. “This here’s been keeping the bugs away.”

  Colleen looked at him exasperatedly. “Jonah, seriously, Dr. Arthur Bradley says that even with a laboratory-created killer viral agent, there is always a certain percentage of the population that is immune to it. Think about it. Since we’ve been here, we’ve already been exposed to several people who’ve come down with this thing.”

  “True enough. Even Donald Duck.”

  Colleen giggled. “Yes, including Donald Duck. Yet here we are, both right as rain, as you say.”

  Jonah frowned. “So you and me, we’re immune to this thing. That what you’re saying?”

  “Maybe. From what I’ve read, the incubation period is short. After three days, people generally start to show signs of infection.”

  “Then how come neither of us have it? I mean, you’d think that one of us would have caught it by now.”

  Colleen shrugged. “A statistical anomaly, that’s all. It really depends on what percentage of people are immune to it.”

  From her tone, Jonah guessed his wife wasn’t entirely serious about all this. It was merely a bit of nonsense to keep them amused. The world wasn’t really about to end. At least, not until after his fishing trip.

  “Statistical anomaly, huh?” he said, a gleam in his eye. Between the whiskey and the pink negligee his wife wore, he was starting to feel aroused. Though barely five feet tall, Colleen had serious curves, and with slender legs and ash blonde hair, she turned heads most days of the week. Just then, he remembered that he’d persuaded her to bring a pair of matching high heels for the negligee. He wondered what it would take to get her into them tonight.

  “Fascinating, Dr. Murphy. Pray, continue,” he said in his most authoritative voice. “I must warn you though, I’ll need to conduct a physical examination of you later. Orders from the CDC. There’s a couple of ‘statistical anomalies’ I have to investigate. To be honest, I can barely keep me eyes off them.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Two days later, Cody went into Joe’s room to discover he’d passed away. The previous day he’d checked up on him regularly. All that time, he’d remained asleep, although Cody suspected it was a coma, as it had been impossible to wake him. He guessed Joe had died during the night, because at 9 a.m. his body was already stiff.

  Chrissie followed soon after and died that afternoon. By the time of their deaths, both were unrecognizable. Festering sores covered their entire faces to the point their features were almost indistinguishable. Falling into comas had been a mercy for them.

  What occurred on Inskip Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee, was merely a snapshot of what was happening across the country, perhaps the entire world. When Cody had called his mother the previous day, she was running a high fever, as was his younger brother Simon. That morning they’d stopped answering their phones. Seeing the ravaged bodies of his two roommates, Cody knew with certainty they were dead or dying. When his mother first told him they were sick, he’d offered to drive down to Phoenix, but she’d insisted he stayed where he was. It was a long way from Knoxville to Phoenix. Still, Cody felt guilty as hell.

  There was no longer any official denial about the virus, and panic had set in. From what he’d learned from TV and social media, vPox, as it became universally known, acted incredibly swiftly. The incubation period was around three days before symptoms appeared. A few days later, the person was dead. A small percentage of the population was immune to the disease, however, for reasons no one had figured out. Staring at his face in the bat
hroom mirror, not a blemish to be seen, Cody knew he must be one of them.

  Since Chrissie died, other than for state and FEMA sponsored posts, there wasn’t much else going on his FB newsfeed. Earlier that day he’d been in contact with some friends at UTK, many of whom weren’t sure if they were immune to the disease or not, and had barricaded themselves in their homes. Now, no one responded to his messages or answered their cell phones, and he suspected neither were functional any more.

  It felt creepy in the house with two dead bodies lying in their beds. Cody knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night unless he gave them a proper burial, so that afternoon he started the job.

  The house had a scruffy garden at the front and a tiny paved yard out the back, where there was a small shed containing a few gardening tools. Unlocking the padlock to the shed door, Cody grabbed a spade and got to work.

  The ground in the front garden was hard, and it took him the best part of three hours to dig a trench long enough to lay both bodies head to toe. It was a blue-skied summer’s day, and by the time the grave was ready, his entire t-shirt was soaked with sweat.

  Going back into the house, he wrapped Joe up in a thick blanket and brought him out over his shoulder. It was the first time in his life Cody had ever touched a dead body. Rigor mortis had fully set in and it felt like he was carrying a bag of cement, not a friend he’d grown close to these past three years.

  He wrapped Chrissie up in another blanket. Her body was still soft, and he carried her out in his arms like she was a sleeping child and laid her down beside Joe. Picking up the spade, he shoveled the earth over them until he’d refilled the trench.

  After that, he tore down some of the wooden siding from the porch, made two simple crosses, and stuck them into the dirt to either end of the trench. Stooping his head, he placed his hands together and mumbled a few words. He barely knew what he was saying, though he was conscious of using the word God several times. It was the best he could do.

  Once he was done, Cody sat down on the sofa and buried his head in his hands. A feeling of total loneliness overwhelmed him. He struggled to make sense of things, and had to fight hard to stop panic from setting in. Everything had happened so fast, his mind could barely take it all in.

  It was then that the lights went out.

  It was summertime, 6 p.m. The curtains were pushed back, and he could still see from the natural light outside. Nonetheless, it gave him a start. He picked up the TV’s remote and tried switching it on. Nothing. He stood up and hit every light switch on the wall, then went over to the refrigerator in the kitchen, hitting the switch on the way too. Everything was dead.

  Then it dawned on him. Something he’d given no consideration to until now. The nation’s power grid wasn’t something that ran in the background without human attendance, or at least, not for very long. Without anyone to feed the systems, they would eventually shut down. It appeared that moment had arrived.

  Another thought occurred to him. He ran into the bathroom and turned on the faucet. Clear water ran out of it. Relieved, he filled up the sink and every other empty container he could find, including the green recycling cart outside. Who knew when the water would run out.

  When he was done, he went into his room. Reaching under the bed, he pulled out a shoebox where he stored the few personal possessions he owned. Inside were some photos of Cody and his father dating back to when he was a teenager. They were from around the time his parents had split up.

  Also inside was the Kimber 1911 .45 pistol his father had willed to him when he died. He took it out, grabbed his denim jacket, and headed out of the house. Having been cooped up for the last few days with two dying persons, Cody needed to get out and search for other survivors. Healthy people. Just like him.

  CHAPTER 4

  Dusk was approaching as Cody headed east on Inskip to pick up the I-75. Looking down at the Subaru’s fuel gauge, he saw it was less than a quarter full. He hadn’t refilled it on his way back from the hospital the other day, and it had already been low then. That was when his second day late and dollar short revelation hit him. Would the stations pump gas without electricity? It was something he hadn’t thought of until now. Something told him they wouldn’t.

  He decided to go to the Chevron Quick Mart on Magnolia Avenue. It was three miles east of downtown, close to his old house before his mother and Simon moved out to Phoenix. Normally, it was a busy station and he thought it might be the kind of place where he’d find people looking to either leave or enter the city.

  On the way, other than the occasional abandoned car, he didn’t see anyone else on the road, though once off the freeway, he spotted lights behind the curtains of some of the houses. They weren’t the normal brightness you’d see from a sixty watt bulb, and he guessed the illumination came from kerosene lamps or candles.

  Arriving at the station, his eyes lit up when he saw two cars parked in the forecourt; a red Ford F-150 pickup and a cream colored sedan. He drove by slowly and spotted a heavyset black man and a skinny white guy. They leaned against the pickup drinking beers. Next to the black guy, an assault rifle rested against the hood.

  The man waved to Cody as he passed by. A friendly wave. Slowing down, Cody made a U-turn, drove back to the station, and pulled up ten feet away from where the two vehicles were parked. He got out of the Subaru and walked over to the men.

  “Hey there, fellah!” the black guy greeted him in a local Tennessee drawl. “Sure is nice to see another survivor.” Broad shouldered, showing signs of a paunch under his white T-shirt, he had short-cropped hair flecked with gray and a trimmed goatee that had a little gray in it too. Cody took him to be in his late-forties. The white man, small and wiry, looked about the same age. Smoking a cigarette, he appeared less confident, a little more wary than his companion.

  Reaching them, Cody let out a big sigh. “Do you guys have any idea how happy I am to see you?” He shook his head. “Man, I just spent the last two days caring for my two roommates. I buried them both this afternoon.”

  “How you coping, son?” the black guy asked. Cody could hear real emotion in his voice.

  “Haven’t really thought about it. Guess I’ve been too busy doing what I had to do.”

  “That’s a sign right there you’re doing good.” Tears welled up in the man’s eyes. “I put my wife and sixteen-year-old daughter in the ground this morning. Hardest thing I’ve had to do my entire life.”

  The white guy grimaced. “That’s tough. To be honest, this whole thing hasn’t been as hard on me. I hadn’t seen my family in over ten years. As for friends, can’t say I had too many of them either. Maybe one or two to talk to in a bar every once in a while, that’s about it.”

  “Never thought you’d see the day you’d be thankful for that, did you?” The black guy stuck his hand out toward Cody. “I’m Walter, by the way. This here is Pete.”

  “Cody.” He shook both men’s hands, then pointed over to the pumps. “Are they working?” he asked. “I’m running low on fuel. I got about enough to get me home tonight, that’s all.”

  Pete shook his head. “‘Fraid not, kid. No power, no pump. No pump, no gas. Simple as that.”

  “Damn, I should have thought about that sooner. Guess I don’t know much about disaster preparedness. At least I remembered to fill up with as much water as I could back at the house, though it took the power cutting off to remind me.”

  Walter nodded. “It’s good you did that right away. The water treatment plants use huge pumps to filter and pressurize the water mains. Once water pressure decreases, you risk contamination from backflow, so don’t drink it even if it looks clear—it’ll make you sick as a dog. Don’t worry about gas though. Tomorrow I’m planning on rigging up a pump system here.”

  He pointed over to one side of the forecourt. “I’ve found the refueling ports where the tankers fill up. I’ll just drop a hose and pump it right out. In the meantime, you can get gas out of the cars in your neighborhood.”

  Cody bri
ghtened up at that. “Good idea. I never thought about siphoning gas. Of course, I can use my roommates’ cars too,” he added, suddenly thinking of that.

  “Just remember, a lot of cars these days have anti-siphon blocks, but you can drain the fuel from underneath. A plastic pan and screwdriver is all you need for most.” Walter shook his head. “Who’d of thought the world would go to hell so fast that stealing gas from your neighbor would be the right thing to do?”

  “How come you know so much about all this, Walter?” Pete asked curiously. “Me, I can barely find the fuel cap on my lawn mower. Guess that’s what comes of being a bookkeeper your whole life.”

  It was at that point Cody realized that Walter and Pete had only just met. There had been a certain familiarity in the way the two leaned side by side against the pickup when he’d arrived that had made him think otherwise. Obviously, that was just down to circumstances.

  “Seventeen years as a US Army combat engineer learned me stuff,” Walter replied with a grin. “Did my fair share of fighting too. Fallujah. Now that was one sonofabitch.”

  “Really? There were army engineers at Fallujah?” Cody asked. “My father fought there too. He never mentioned anything about that.”

  Walter looked at him. “Who do you think disabled the power at the substations when the Army and Marines went in that first night? And that was just the start.”

  “Of course, never thought about that. My father said it was hell. Worse thing he went through his entire time there.”

  Walter nodded. “It was bad. Still, nothing compared to this.”

  “I hear you,” Pete said, shaking his head. “I still wake up every morning hoping this is just a bad dream.”

  “Deal with it,” Walter advised. “Things ain’t going to get better anytime soon. Most likely, they’ll get a damned sight worse.”