“Before we go back to the lab, what do you think of heading to Gale’s house for some lunch that isn’t canned or dehydrated?” Hewitt asks.
“That sounds great to me,” Ben replies without hesitation, smiling.
Gale’s kitchen is fully stocked and the important things, refrigeration, and electronics, never lost power thanks to what must have been an enormous back-up generator. Over the last few days, the four survivors had been altogether too busy to spend any time digging through Gale’s kitchen, which works out well for Hewitt and Ben.
The two of them will be able to enjoy at least one good meal every day for the next week or two until expiration dates start to tick past.
Under the current circumstances, it’s the little things that can make the unbearable almost tolerable and the two of them have a lot of little things to be thankful for.
53
Miles and Mariah both keep an eye on Hewitt and Ben in the rearview mirror until they finally pass the curve that takes them out of sight. They each exhale a sigh almost as if it’s been choreographed.
The road stretches out ahead of them, a path leading directly into an unfolding apocalypse that there was never any chance of avoiding. They drive with the radio on, panic in the voices of reporters as they document the decline of civilization, the virus spreading like a conflagration through cities and suburbs and spilling out into more rural locations.
The sun is high, almost directly above the car as Miles speeds them along Southwest, desperately hoping to reach Ben’s mother before she too is consumed by this new pandemic. They had made a promise to the boy and his late father, and both Miles and Mariah intended to keep that promise no matter how much of a risk there might be in doing so.
The bright, warm spring day does nothing to ease the sensation that they are driving into a darkness that might consume them along with the rest of the world.
In the passenger seat, Mariah field strips a 9mm and continues from there to loading extra magazines for the three handguns they are carrying with them. The shotgun and rifle are loaded and sitting on the back seat.
Wrapped in a blanket in the trunk is the MP5 that Miles carries with him at all times along with numerous other supplies including a great deal of the surplus ammunition they collected from the town.
They both know that they aren’t adequately equipped for what they are rushing towards at close to 90MPH, but neither of them cares to consider their odds consciously.
With Hewitt and Ben remaining behind in a town devoid of life, sealed in the same laboratory where the virus was developed, there was at least some small chance of a cure being discovered.
Mariah knows that she has something to return to, even if they fail in the mission that they are on. Whether Hewitt fails or succeeds in finding a cure, she wants to be there with him, especially if this is the end of the world.
It’s a matter of faith at this point, nothing more concrete than that, faith that they will see those two again and that they won’t all just end up dead very soon.
Miles, always the soldier, can focus on an objective and narrow that focus until nothing will distract him from that one thing. Mariah, on the other hand, having spent her adult life fixated on various concepts of the end times, has already been battling a nihilistic voice in the back of her mind, a voice that tells her to go back to Hewitt and live out the rest of whatever life they might have in the relative safety of the now-empty town.
It is difficult not to interpret the empty roads as a bad sign, but these same mountain roads had been virtually empty on the way there as well. There are signs of activity, finally, as they begin crossing through high elevation valleys and meadows that have been converted into farms and ranches.
As they pass a field with workers laboring under the late morning sun, they decide they will stop and check things out. Neither the laborers nor the family who owns the plot appears to be suffering any ill effects and they’ve been remaining isolated here while they wait for the news from the rest of the country to change perspective to something more positive. They recommend establishing contact with Hewitt and keeping their eyes open for either more survivors or people displaying symptoms of infection.
They determine they will stop at any of these homes that appear to be safe and occupied since these nearby locations could be the surest option for resources needed by survivors as they gather in the town.
Many of the ranchers had heard the same radio broadcasts and already knew that the world outside of their isolated little pocket had gone to shit. Some of them met Miles and Mariah with skepticism, having not heard the news for themselves, but they are convinced once they tune into those stations.
Leaving out the fact that they’d been friends with the mad genius behind this whole catastrophe, the condensed version of their story they told leads locals to believe that they had been here on some official, government-sanctioned investigation. Miles reinforces this by introducing himself with his former rank and Mariah as a doctor, never mind that her Ph.D. was a liberal arts degree.
The locals all agree to be alert, all of them owning firearms of their own and being comfortable with using them as necessary. More importantly, they agree to reach out to other neighbors further off the beaten path and to remain vigilant for survivors being sent their way. Arguably, as far as Mariah is concerned, the most important part is that they will establish contact with Hewitt and Ben at the lab and offer any assistance they can provide for those two.
Distracted, Hewitt certainly still manages to sound relieved to hear the good news when Mariah radios back to him to let him know that there are healthy survivors outside in the rest of the world, even if they’re likely to be found only in isolated agrarian communities. This will be the final radio broadcast she’s able to share with Hewitt as they are quickly testing the range limit of the late deputy’s equipment.
Miles reassures everyone they encounter that there are bound to be plenty of uninfected survivors in the cities and small towns all over the country as well as in these outlying communities. Not everyone received their shots and certainly, there would be a good many folks who had the skills or blind luck required to make it unscathed through paranoid mobs and apparent zombies.
What Miles neglects to mention is his concern that military personnel, government employees, first responders, and hospital staff were traditionally the first to receive new vaccinations when there was some new illness on the rise. His worry, exacerbated by things he was listening for and wasn’t hearing in the radio broadcasts, is that there could be no organized or well-equipped relief effort underway anywhere.
This unspoken fear dovetails with his other major concern, that those most well trained and armed will have been the first to turn against others. He tries to push these thoughts aside because the prospect makes the whole situation more horrifying than it already was.
A little bit of hope and positivity here, in the beginning might count for something and it does seem to help a bit for the people they speak with.
With all of the stops along the way, it takes them until the following morning before they can see signs that they are approaching Spokane in the distance. They’d taken turns sleeping for a couple of hours each, Miles finally waking Mariah just before dawn so that they could begin their journey again.
They choose not to stop at any further homes since they started back on the road at sunrise. The seeds had been sewn with the neighboring farmers and they would do their part in building lines of communication and establishing contact with others who are safe.
It’s time to see how badly more urban population centers had fared.
They finally join up with Interstate 90 between Coeur d’Alene and Spokane, just past the Washington side of the border.
Things already look ugly.
Wrecks line patches of the roadway and there is a smoke haze in the air from fires either still burning or only recently extinguished and left to shoulder.
There is occasional furtive movement i
n the peripheral of what they can see, but no aggression right away.
Mariah may have never so much as entertained the thought of enlisting with the military, but she and Miles are in sync. Both of them have firearms locked and loaded and their heads on a swivel. Things are going to get worse before they get better, both of them are well aware of this; neither of them even attempts to speculate just how much worse things will be getting and they choose not to breathe life into the suspicion that things might never get back to being better.
“If you’ve got a third eye, open that mother fucker,” Miles mutters. “If you have eyes in the back of your head, keep ‘em wide.”
“What’s that you’re saying?” Mariah asks.
“Just some bullshit one of my superiors used to say when we were heading into the shit back in Afghanistan, something to do with calling on any resources in preparation for the difficulty of keeping yourself alive,” Miles replies, chuckling a little. “If ever anyone has dived right into the shit, it’s us, right fucking now. It just seemed appropriate.”
“Definitely.”
Miles nods solemnly, “Let’s get into that shit then.”
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nikolas lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota with his girlfriend, his 15-year old daughter, three dogs, a cat, and a rabbit. When he isn’t spending his time writing, he likes to consider himself a fairly adept photography, focusing primarily on nature and wildlife photography.
He can be found on multiple social media platforms as @MeltdownMessiah.
Innocence Ends Page 21
