Hell Week

by Scott Medbury

  “He’s right,” Luke said, after a quick flip back to the Massachusetts’ page. “That’s a hell of a walk, man.”

  “I’m hoping we don’t have to.”

  “To what?”

  “Walk,” I said with a smile. “Sonny’s shown us the way. We commandeer a Chinese patrol truck and drive it there; 150 miles shouldn’t take us longer than say, three or four hours? If we have any luck at all, we can do that well before it’s reported overdue.”

  “I’m not sure I’d count on our luck, dude,” Luke said, shaking his head. “It seems to be running both ways lately and there’s no telling when it’ll be good or bad.”

  20

  Later, when we were alone, Luke and I ran through our options.

  “We have a while to work on a plan,” I said. “A few days at least, until the uproar over the missing truck dies down.”

  “Stay here in the meantime?”

  “If Sonny will let us. He seems like a straight up guy,” I said.

  “I can deal with a few more nights sleeping on those mats,” Luke said, his face splitting into a smile. “After the beatings and rubber bullets, my body needs a recharge.”

  “Yep, me too,” I said.

  A couple of hours later, as night began to fall, Sonny asked if any of us wanted to ride with him to dump the rental truck in a parking garage about a few blocks away. Arthur, Karen and I put our hands up.

  Arthur and Karen were both about my age. She was a pretty redhead with, by all reports, a fiery temper. Arthur was tall and muscular, with a shock of brown hair and a nose like a knife blade. Despite their bickering over silly things like who would sit by the passenger side window, it was obvious to me they had a thing for each other.

  We took along two five-gallon gas cans and a single 20-pound portable propane tank.

  “Grab the propane and gas out of the back,” Sonny said to Arthur as he parked the truck in the underground parking garage. We had gone down two levels below the street and parked in an area well clear of other vehicles and structures.

  Arthur jumped to it and we soon had the propane canister sitting on the floor of the cab beneath the dashboard.

  “Spread the gas in that can around the cargo area of the truck,” Sonny instructed Karen, while Arthur dumped the contents of the other can in the cab, making sure to get a nice puddle around the propane canister.

  Sonny handed me a road flare.

  “Do you know how to use this?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen it done,” I replied.

  “Light it up and toss it in the back, all the way to the front so Arthur has time to pull the door shut. I’ll do the same up here. We’ll make sure that the Chinese never use this truck again, even if they do find it.”

  We did as we were instructed and then walked briskly to the stairs and began climbing back to street level. Karen pointed out a sprinkler system mounted on the rafters of each floor but, of course, with no power there was nothing to trigger them.

  Just as we exited onto the street, there was a muffled boom beneath us. The propane canister had blown.

  It was a clear night, a welcome respite from the snowy, overcast weather of the previous few days. There was a full, silvery moon, and it caught our attention, looking so big I felt I could reach out and touch it. With no cloud cover though, the night was extremely cold, and I was shivering despite my heavy parka as we walked the mile or so back to the academy.

  Along the way, Sonny mentioned that a local street gang had been moving out of their normal territory since the Flu and might be a problem. I have to admit, I wasn’t really paying too much attention. I should have, but I was more concerned about a Chinese military patrol happening upon us at any moment.

  We stayed four days at the academy and would have stayed more if fate hadn’t conspired to force our hand. Well – fate or dumb luck or God, or whatever you happen to believe in.

  Sonny had been right. The day after we dumped the truck, there was a lot of radio activity from the Chinese along with choppers buzzing above Worcester and the roads leading in and out.

  From what little Sonny and Brooke could understand from the radio chatter, a sweep through on Worcester by the military seemed imminent. We didn’t have much choice, laying low seemed like the only thing to do. Besides, Sonny and his group had not yet decided if they wanted to come with us or not.

  Giving them more time to decide seemed like the right thing to do.

  Beside the constant worry that the Chinese might discover us, it was a great few days. We were able to recharge and recover from our injuries. I finally let on about my Kung Fu experience and, for the first time in over a month, I was able to practice and spar.

  Sonny’s crew were good, especially Arthur, who I could tell was on par with my own skill, possibly better (although I wouldn’t admit it). I had a few sessions with Sonny, and he was way out of my league, on another level completely, in fact. By the fourth day, I was managing to hold my own against him, defensively at least.

  Luke took the opportunity to practice his crossbow. All that gaming appeared to have come in handy. He was a natural, and with practice shooting at the Kung Fu punching dummies in the academy’s long practice hall, he became absolutely lethal. He painted targets on them and was able to hit the bull’s-eye every shot after just two days.

  He even had time to craft his own arrows and apart from the painted finish and slightly more refined materials of the originals, I could barely tell the difference between his and the manufactured ones.

  To say the least, I was in awe of his many skills and wondered what other talents he might have hidden behind that slightly goofy exterior.

  The forced confinement had another benefit. Information. While foraging, two days before finding us, Sonny told us he and two of the others had met three survivors as they passed through Worcester. The three teenagers had also come up from Rhode Island, but from the city of Warwick. They were led by a headstrong girl who told Sonny that the Chinese were using children as slave labor to clear the city of its dead.

  She had speculated that Warwick was their foothold in the state due to its sea access. It was useful information, and only confirmed our worst fears.

  “What happened to them?” Brooke asked.

  “Well, they seemed really decent kids and we invited them to stay but she wasn’t interested. They were heading north to Canada.”

  Our four new mouths taxed the food supplies at the academy. Luckily, with each day that passed, the Chinese aerial activity lessened and if they had sent in ground patrols, we hadn’t seen any. Sonny deemed it safe to head out and forage on day four.

  “Would you and Luke be interested in going out on an expedition to get more supplies?” Sonny asked.

  “Hell yeah!” Luke answered for both of us. “No offence but I would love to get out and get some fresh air.”

  “Okay, good. I thought you might. There are grocery stores a few blocks from the academy, and a couple carts of canned food would feed us all for a while longer. I’ll sketch you a map.”

  It was decided we would go out that night under the cover of darkness.

  “Remember not to cross Foster Street,” Sonny said, as Luke and I prepared to slip out through the side door of the academy. “It’s the turf of that gang I told you about, the Red Tigers.”

  “Okay.”

  Sonny handed me an assault rifle which had been taken from the Chinese soldiers who captured us. The rifle was heavy and designed in what I thought was a funny way, with the magazine and action located behind the grip and trigger. It was a style Luke called ‘bull-pup,’ and he said it was the new, big thing in assault weapons. It was supposed to offer better control or something.

  Luke rejected the rifle Sonny offered him and held up his crossbow.

  “Quieter,” he said simply at Sonny’s raised eyebrow and showed him the handful of crossbow arrows he had in the large pocket of his parka. Old fashioned it may have been, but it looked plenty deadly in the cold light of th
e open doorway.

  Sonny gave me a quick run through on how to operate the weapon. He showed me the selector switch, which was currently set on ‘1’; the other settings were ‘1’ and ‘2’. He told me on setting 1, the gun shot one bullet at a time; on 2, it shot a three-round burst; and on 3, it was probably fully automatic, meaning I’d burn through my ammo with one squeeze of the trigger … and that the gun would be a bitch to control.

  Sonny sounded so confident that he knew what he was talking about, I took it as gospel. In the end, he turned out to be almost right. I switched the selector over to ‘2’ before we left the alley; if there was trouble a three-round burst would be more than adequate.

  “It’s freaking cold out here tonight, dude,” Luke said, carefully stepping around a sheet of ice on the sidewalk. We were dressed in our normal clothing, although I had added a stocking cap under my parka’s hood because it was another clear and very cold night.

  “Yeah,” I said, watching my breath plume.

  I had one slip and only caught myself at the last moment. The black ice on the concrete was almost invisible.

  “I hope these stores aren’t completely looted,” I said, concentrating more carefully on the path ahead. “I’d hate to think we’re wasting our time.”

  “Sonny seemed confident,” Luke said. “I don’t think he’d send us out if he didn’t think there was a good chance of us getting something.”

  “He could be hoping,” I replied. “But that can be dumb sometimes.”

  “Man, everyone’s gotta have hope. It’s what keeps us going.”

  “Well, every time I find myself hopeful, everything turns to shit,” I said, not sure why my mood had darkened.

  “You’re hopeful of getting to the safe haven,” Luke pointed out, with a grin. “That tells me that you still have some hope.”

  “Well, I guess,” I said. “But I have my doubts we’ll ever get there. Between wild dogs, psycho traitor kids and the Chinese army, I don’t think our chances aren’t that great.”

  “Okay Debbie.”

  “Huh?”

  “Debbie Downer.”

  “Oh, yeah. Funny. Look do I want to get to the safe haven? Yes, of course I do. Do I expect that I will? Well, look what happened to Sarah. That sort of thing could happen to any of us at any time.”

  Luke was quiet for a moment.

  “Have you ever heard of Pandora?” he asked finally.

  “The internet radio thing?”

  “No, the legend,” Luke said. “A long time ago, there was this dumbass giant, Epimetheus, who wanted a wife, so the gods made him the perfect woman. Her name was Pandora. Now, this dumbass giant had been given a magical box, like a golden chest or something. The king of the gods told him that it must never, ever be opened. After Pandora became his wife, the first thing Epimetheus did was show her the box and tell her it must never be opened.

  “Well, telling someone not to do something only makes them want to do it, and all she could think about was what treasures might be in that box. So, one night while Epimetheus was fast asleep, Pandora crept down to the treasure room and decided to take the tiniest peek at what was inside the box. As can be expected, it didn’t turn out so well – when the gods decree that something shall not be opened, you damn well wanna keep it closed.”

  “Okay, you have my interest,” I said. “What was in the box?”

  “Pandora opened the box, just a crack so she could take a peek, but the box was flung open by the force of what it held inside ... all kinds of monsters, plagues, pestilence, and disease came flooding out of it. All of the evils of the world followed by old age and death, two things the world had never known to that point.

  “Imagine that ... living in a world where there was no sickness, no growing old, no death, and to suddenly have eternal, blessed life snatched from you!

  “Anyway, all the evils of the world escaped the box, leaving only one thing behind. Looking into the now emptied box, Pandora spied ‘hope’, lying at the bottom. Before then, without the adversity of the things that had been trapped in the box, there had been no need for ‘hope’. So, I guess the moral of the story is that there’s only a real need for hope when things are at their darkest.”

  “I’m impressed, you actually managed to turn your story into a metaphor appropriate for our situation,” I said.

  “Well, of course, was that not my intention?” he said in a deep, theatrical voice.

  “That’s some heavy-duty mythology there, Luke. Did your parents read you a lot of books when you were little?”

  “Nope, it was actually the background story for Goddess of Vengeance 2,” he said with an impish smile and shrugged. “It seemed appropriate.”

  “I should have spent more time playing video games. I didn’t know they were educational.”

  “Well, it’s not like all I ever did was play games,” he said, somewhat defensively.

  “Sorry,” I laughed. “I wasn’t totally taking the piss. Games seem to have taught you a lot about coping with situations like this.”

  “I guess,” he shrugged. “Most of it doesn’t transfer that well to real life. The old ‘real life’ anyway. It’s a pity that part of my life is over.”

  “Yeah, a pity for all of us ... hey there’s a Honey Farms store! Want to try that first?” I asked, pointing at the convenience store sign. “It’s not actually a grocery store, but I guess we don’t have to worry about paying higher prices.”

  “Sounds good to me, Chief,” Luke said, adjusting his course.

  Honey Farms was about halfway down the block, past a line of silent cars. The frozen snow and ice on the windows of the cars kept us from seeing inside of them, so we watched them warily as we trooped on past.

  A similar line of cars was parked on the far side of the street. I wondered, much like I had back in Fort Carter, if any of these cars might have frozen corpses in them. Just sitting where they succumbed to the Flu. I thought about knocking the snow off some windows and looking in, but decided against it.

  No reason to disturb the dead, if they’re there, I thought. Besides, I had creeped myself out enough.

  The glass of the door to Honey Farms had been busted out, so it was not difficult for us to get inside. There were no shopping carts, but we found a rack of cloth grocery bags and each grabbed two.

  It looked like a bunch of kids had ransacked the place. The chip and candy aisles had been demolished, but the limited range of canned soups and vegetables had hardly been touched.

  Luke kept a lookout while I loaded my bags first. I packed cans of chicken noodle soup and peas. I had almost filled the two bags when I spotted some cans of creamed corn on a higher shelf. I took out some of the peas to make room and replaced them with the corn. I’ve always had a thing for creamed corn. I realize it is a funny quirk to have, but I love the stuff.

  While Luke was loading his bag, I wandered up toward the front door to keep watch. A big, half-moon was out in the clear sky, illuminating the road nearly as well as streetlights would have, if they’d been working.

  I hadn’t been standing there long when movement caught my eye. I ducked down, peering over the sill and watched in surprise as a girl pulled herself out from under a car across the street and scampered down an alley.

  I didn’t get a great look at her, but she looked to be about the same age as Luke and me. She was wearing a yellow rain slicker, not good for stealth at all.

  “Should we go after her?” I asked, without taking my eye off the opening to the alley across the street.

  “Go after who?” Luke responded, looking up from his half-full grocery bag.

  “There’s a girl across the street. She just went down that alley,” I said.

  “A girl? Did it look like she needed help?”

  “Well ... we are in the deserted remains of a city, and she just crawled out from under a car in the freezing cold,” I said. “I’m guessing she might need help.”

  “If she needs it, I’m all for helping her
, man,” he said, leaving the half-packed bag and walking up to the door where I stood.

  “Okay, we’ll go ask if she wants help,” I said, setting my own grocery bags down. “Maybe bring her some of that hope you’ve been talking so much about. We can grab the bags on our way back.”

  We left the store and ran across the street to the mouth of the alleyway. The buildings crowded close together above it, dimming the moonlight.

  “You sure she went in here?” Luke whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Luke took the lead, entering the alley with me close behind him. We hadn’t gotten very far when we heard a scream from behind a dumpster about halfway down the alley.

  “I guess she does need help,” said Luke, cocking his crossbow and taking off. I unslung the automatic weapon Sonny had given me and we rushed down the alley doing all we could to avoid slipping on the thin sheen of frost that seemed to cover everything.

  As we approached the dumpster, we slowed and heard the sounds of a struggle and loud laughter. We had almost reached it when my foot struck an old soda can I hadn’t seen. Luke and I froze in place as first one, then another figure stepped out to confront us.

  21

  They were both Asian, wearing black leather jackets emblazoned with red tigers in the act of springing. Gangbangers. The guy on the right held a baseball bat with several long nails through it, and the other one was holding a knife.

  Seeing our weapons, the one with the knife quickly reached inside his jacket.

  “You kids better get lost!” snapped the guy with the bat, who appeared to be the older of the two as he put his hand on the other one’s wrist, preventing him from pulling out whatever he had reached for. “This is Red Tiger turf.”

  “Help!” came a desperate cry from behind the dumpster followed by what sounded like a slap.

  I took a step forward and the one with his hand in his pocket pulled out the gun he had reached for.