180 Days and Counting... Series Box Set books 4 - 6

by B. R. Paulson

  Off in the distance, the faint yip and high-pitched howling of coyotes confirmed the three or more days he’d been in bed.

  The coyotes traveled a monthly route which took them right through the neighborhood and they stuck to the area for a week or so before getting back on their trail. The smart dogs would return that way in another month.

  Hopefully, Scott was still alive to hear them again. If Ranger were with him, he’d be circling warily and watching for any dogs. With his hulking presence, Ranger always liked chasing the coyotes. He was significantly bigger and liked to show his dominance, even though he was just a large puppy.

  Scott wasn’t holding his breath that he’d see Ranger again or live long enough to hear the coyotes again.

  Taking the first step was going to be the hardest. He moved forward, placing one foot in front of the other, his arms outstretched as he sought for balance. If he was lucky, the virus wasn’t going to kill him. Falling face first into a puddle and drowning would.

  Chapter 14

  Margie

  Margie had frozen with her shoulders hunching at the sensation of the barrel on her skin.

  “Um, get up slowly.” The gun holder couldn’t be older than fifteen or sixteen judging by his voice. The gun shook in his hand against Margie’s skull. Hopefully he didn’t have his finger on the trigger as he shook, or Margie wouldn’t have a chance to figure out what was going on.

  She stood, slowly, leaving her duffel bag on her back where it bumped into her spine for the hundredth time.

  Fire burned into the night sky from the gas station and Margie didn’t have time to grieve her friend. Was that what Kelsey was? A friend? Or just someone Margie was passing in the night?

  Margie turned, holding her hands at chest level. The fire illuminated much more than the lights did.

  She’d been right, just a kid. Terror held his eyes wide as he looked at her and then blew out a breath. He tucked the gun back in his pants. “Thank goodness. You’re just a grandma.”

  Eyes wider than before, Margie gasped. “What? I’m just a grandma?” Wait, she was supposed to be intimidating and a threat. “There’s no reason to be rude.”

  “You know what I mean. You can’t hurt anyone. You’re old.” He moved to stand beside her and stared at the fire, his eyes forlorn. “I need to get into the store. I think I can save my sister… they should have the Cure in there, right?” He chewed his bottom lip, glancing at her as he rounded the car and headed toward the front of the store. “Those guys always watch the store, but this is a good distraction. I don’t even see any of them.”

  Margie whispered loudly, “Hey, come back here. Hey!” But the boy didn’t stop as he loped quickly out of sight toward the front of the store. She couldn’t let him go alone and she certainly couldn’t let him get that Cure, not when she’d heard such bad things about it from Cady’s messages. If Cady thought it was bad, it was probably worse.

  Ducking into her hunched over walk, Margie followed him as fast as she could. Maybe the fire was enough distraction that she wouldn’t have to go into the store all the way. She almost ran him over as she bumped into him. He stared at the front doors from the protection of a collection of carts lined up haphazardly along the front.

  Margie hunkered onto her knees beside him and tapped his shoulder to get his attention. “Hey, the Cure is only going to make it worse. Maybe I can help your sister. Show me where she is and I’ll take a look at her.” Anything to get him away from the store and plain view of whatever was going on.

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, his eyes dim with lost innocence. After a long handful of seconds, he nodded and turned, disappearing as fast as he’d come that way.

  Inhaling – like a backwards sigh – Margie took off after him, crouching low as she ran. Hopefully they hadn’t given their locations away. Even though they were in plain view, the rest of the parking lot and the other stores clear to Burger King and beyond to the hardware store were lit up as well.

  Margie glanced at the fire with it’s billowing cloud of heat before turning the corner and following the boy past the car and into the woods. If there hadn’t been anyone there before, the fire would bring them.

  The kid slowed, waiting for her and then their speed stabilized to a more manageable stride. They swung their arms to keep going fast, but Margie could have been with her speed-walking group for all she knew. His pace was hard as he took her toward the woods and she wondered if he would try to kill her at some point.

  Down a slight incline and then suddenly, an entire residential area spread out before them. Cul de sacs and cookie cutter homes claimed the moonlight. Street lamps glowed with a semblance of normalcy but the homes had black windows and many didn’t have their porchlights on. The moon reached out to the neighborhood with soft fingers, bouncing off rooftops and highlighting the lighter colored porch railings, driveways, and window frames.

  The boy led her to a house not far from the path in the woods. He turned to her before opening the door. “I’m Ryker. I figure you should know who I am before I introduce you to my mom.” His smile was sad as he tried to crack a joke.

  Margie reached out and shook the hand he offered her with a solemn nod. “I’m Margie. Yes, I’m a grandma, but you don’t need to know that.” She winked and smiled.

  The street lights on the far end of the street flickered, went out, then flickered back on again.

  Ryker stared toward the lights, worry wrinkling his brow. “They’ve been doing that for a little bit. My house lights, too.” He turned toward the door and pushed it open.

  The smell of rotting bodies and spoiled food brought tears to Margie’s eyes. She stepped back, unable to go inside. “Ryker, are you sure your mom isn’t dead?” She hated being the one to point out realistic issues, but that smell was undisputable.

  He looked at her, shaking his head. “No, that’s my brother and my dad. My mom and sister are still alive.” He kicked at the welcome mat on the wooden porch. “At least they were an hour ago. I needed a break so I went for a walk and then decided to get the Cure when I saw you.” He held open the door and Margie covered her nose.

  He didn’t seem affected by the stench that had permeated the furniture and the walls.

  “I’m going to open some windows, okay?” Margie held one arm to her nose and didn’t wait for his permission as she wended around furniture and slid open three windows in the modest front room and propped the door open by folding the rug.

  As the smell lessened in strength, she cleared her throat. “Okay, show me where your mom and sister are.” She hoped they weren’t with the dead bodies that he’d spoken so matter-of-factly about. She wasn’t sure if she could handle that right then.

  She’d seen plenty of death as a nurse, but usually in a controlled environment. Plus, she had never seen victims of the virus and what they looked like. She had no idea what stages were at the end and what wasn’t.

  Swallowing her anxiety, she followed Ryker deeper into the house, bypassing the hovel-like feel of the furniture shoved against the walls and the dim lighting coming from night lights set up in lower electric outlets.

  Besides the smell there was a general morose feeling to the house, like the occupants had waited as long as they could.

  Ryker coughed and shoved open a door. Margie cautiously followed him, looking around while clutching the strap to her bag with both hands.

  The smell was more concentrated in the bedroom and Margie didn’t hesitate to rush to the window and slide it up. Then she looked around, glancing at Ryker who stared at the two females in the large bed. He lifted a hand, pointing at the forms as he spoke. “My mom and my sister.”

  Margie’s lips turned down of their own accord. Sadness moved her forward slowly as she took in the shapes of the dead women – or rather one woman and the other was just a young girl, maybe eight or nine.

  Both had a dark substance streaked from their ears, eyes, and nose. They had been tucked in and obviously taken care of, b
ut they had to have been dead more than an hour. Their bloated faces and the presence of flies suggested much longer, but Margie wasn’t a coroner. She had no idea how long they’d been gone.

  She moved to stand beside Ryker, wrapping an arm around his seemingly frail shoulders. Turning him, she walked alongside him and spoke softly. “Ryker, I’m sorry. It looks like they didn’t make it.”

  He nodded, but continued walking. He headed toward the front door and Margie followed, more grateful to escape the smell than to comfort him, although comforting him was high on the list.

  He flopped onto a bench that had been set on the small patio, surrounded by hydrangea plants and an aloe plant that had been placed outside. The new start was only five inches or so tall and in a small pot. Aloe. Margie swore by it, so did Cady. The windows were open to the left of them, letting out the rancid smell and Margie was grateful for the sweet, cloying scent from the flowers as they tried to overwhelm the odor of decay.

  Margie unhooked her bag from her shoulder and let it fall to the wooden deck with a thud. She leaned back and watched Ryker for a long time before speaking softly. “My husband died the other night. He… I stopped for gas, you know? I went inside and when I turned around…” She shrugged, disbelieving her own words. The facts were never easy to swallow, never easy to accept. At least she only had to talk about the one. Ryker had four and maybe even more. “What was your dad like?” She leaned forward, rubbing around her eye socket and down her cheek.

  Ryker sniffed, wiping his nose and sitting with his legs sprawled in a V-shape. “He liked to call us crazy. Everything we did made us crazy. But he loved us. I’m the middle kid and he’d say all the time that I was like the peanut butter of the family – holding us all together.” He laughed and stared at his shoes. “My brother was perfect.” The way he spoke of his brother didn’t sound bitter or even envious, but like he was in awe of the young man. “He was so tall and he could dunk basketballs! He was so funny, too.”

  And like a dam had broken, Ryker talked about his family while Margie sat there and listened.

  She’d rather listen to him talk about his family than think about the still-flickering lights all along the street and what they meant.

  Chapter 15

  Cady

  The pain was already starting. Cady hadn’t needed her mom in years, but the itching burn had worked its way under her skin, reminding her she wasn’t invincible and bringing out the weak little girl she’d always hated.

  Sitting on the edge of her bed, she took a deep breath, staring out the window at the moon as it peered down on the ravaged world. The landscape was unhindered, as if nothing had happened, as if there wasn’t mass death littering the houses and buildings. The man in the moon was the same that Margie would be seeing, that Jackson would be seeing.

  Cady hadn’t thought of Jackson in a while. She’d just wanted to get from one day to the next without facing the virus. But now, as her mortality reared its ugly head, she was forced to face what Jackson was, and what the virus represented.

  Had she followed through with the things she’d planned in college, she’d be a rich scientist with a cure for cancer. Not that microbiologists came up with cures but Cady would have liked the chance. Instead, she’d traded everything she wanted to be on a man she’d come to not like very much and for a daughter who hadn’t cared much for her mother until the end had come.

  While Cady hated the sickness and what it was doing, she couldn’t hate it completely. With the presence of the virus in their lives, Bailey liked her mom again. Cady needed that small connection with her daughter before she died and she’d gotten it. Bailey listened to her, talked to her, had been concerned for her. There was nothing more precious than that.

  A small part of her was grateful to Jackson for that. In a twisted way, she appreciated that he was all in with his principles, all in with his level of commitment to doing what he believed needed to be done. Unfortunately, that was as far as the admiration went. Jackson had killed more people than Cady could comprehend. His goal had been mass annihilation and he’d succeeded.

  He’d said he would be coming up that way and that he would start the world over with either Cady or Bailey. Since Cady was going to die, that left Bailey. She hadn’t really thought about what that meant before that moment. Did that mean Bailey would be raped to produce children? What about Jessica or Jason? Jackson would probably kill them or anyone else who had the audacity to survive his apocalypse.

  “The man is egotistical and more than a little insane.” Cady chuckled. Look at her. She was talking to herself like she didn’t know that already.

  Cady pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose and leaned forward to think. What was she going to do? To make things as easy on Bailey as possible, Cady needed to be proactive on how to take care of herself. If she wanted to help Bailey, then she needed to live and protect her from the psychosis of Jackson.

  But where did she start? Thinking about how to care for Scott had been easy since it had been about someone else. She’d focused on relieving his pain and his torture. That was really all she could do. Curing him wasn’t an option and she’d accepted that.

  How did she do the same for herself? If she could relieve herself as much as possible, she wouldn’t be as much of a burden to Bailey toward the end. If she could look at it with that same pragmatism, then she wouldn’t be trying to cure herself, she would just try to make herself more comfortable.

  Okay, making herself the patient, she would first take vitamin C and the oils she applied to Scott’s rash. She could put on the oil palliatively and try to prevent the rash from growing too large, or she could wait until the rash completely presented itself. While there was raised and red skin, there were no identifiable heads or pox as of yet.

  What else would she do for a skin ailment? She’d been studying for a while on how to treat illnesses and wounds without easy access to a doctor or hospital. Skin problems could usually be treated with oatmeal baths – at least initial stages – as long as the goal wasn’t to cure but to treat the symptoms of itching, irritation, and burning. She’d start there.

  Wandering into the master bathroom, Cady leaned heavily against the wall to remove her undergarments and pajamas. Sitting on the edge of the tub, she ran water, wincing as it heated up. Every nerve seemed to shrink from the hot steam.

  Okay, so heat wouldn’t feel good. Immersing herself in cold water didn’t sound appealing either. She found a tepid lukewarm temperature and searched for her package of oatmeal under the sink. Dumping that in, she lowered herself into the water, unsure if it was cold or warm.

  Fevers had a funny way of confusing the system and while Cady understood that, it didn’t make it easier to figure out how it was affecting her.

  Leaning back, Cady tried absorbing the calming effects of the water, but couldn’t relax. After a few minutes – okay, more like thirty seconds – she realized she just wanted to climb into bed and sleep. Rest. That’s what she’d helped Scott get. She would do the same for herself.

  Climbing from the tub was more painful than she’d thought it would be. Oatmeal might not have been the best idea. Would pain pills work? At the rate she was going none of it mattered. She wouldn’t sleep, she would be stuck in a painful loop and she’d never find relief. If nothing else, she could take some ibuprofen. Too bad she’d dumped out the codeine with Tylenol she’d had from a previous sickness.

  Cady wrapped a towel around her and dug through her top drawer in the vanity.

  Where was… a bottle of Ambien caught her eye. She could sleep. If she took a sleeping pill, she’d be able to actually sleep. That’s what she needed – rest.

  Popping an entire pill because she wasn’t leaving anything to chance, Cady cupped her hand under the faucet and sipped some water to swallow the pill. She pulled on her underwear and a t-shirt and made her way to bed.

  There was too much thinking involved in trying to take care of herself. She would do more in the morning. Sh
e flopped onto the mattress, her fingers curling softly inward toward her palm as she relaxed on the comforter and sank into the folds of her bed. The back didn’t hurt like she knew it would. Just the dull ache was like a friend for the moment, a really annoying friend she wanted to punch.

  A haze took hold and pushed weights on her eyelids. A disturbance broke through the fuzziness the pill was already bringing on. Something outside of her room.

  Bailey’s voice was raised in alarm. Then Jason said something and stomped down the stairs. None of their words made sense and came in clipped pieces.

  She could capture their meaning as a cloud of fatigue dragged at her. Cady’s eyelids pulled down and she tried to sit upright on the bed. She had to wake up so she could find out what was going on. She didn’t get there, and ended up in a half fetal position on her side.

  Cady struggled not to fall asleep, she did, but the dose was too much for her. Almost as suddenly as the medicine worked on her, the power went out. No flickering, no warnings. The house just went silent and all the lights went out. The nightlights blacked out and Cady could hear the harshness of her breath in the silence. She hadn’t realized how loud the fundamentals working of a home were until they all disappeared.

  She was too tired to even pull her blanket on or to situate her head on her pillow. She closed her eyes and listened. Bailey’s quiet crying worked its way through the door and the drag of the sleep aid. Cady opened her eyes, blinking as she worked through the reality of what she was hearing.

  If Bailey was crying, something must have happened. Wait, when she thought it like that, she just felt stupid. Of course, something had happened.

  But what? That’s what she meant to wonder. Cady couldn’t focus. What had happened?

  Then the unthinkable occurred to her. Had Scott died? Was that why Bailey was so upset and Jason had run? Scott had died. The end of the sickness was faster than Cady had assumed. She only had three days left to live, if Scott’s death was any indication.