"Come on!" Lance yelled, and turned to run towards Mike's cabin.
Her legs felt like rubber underneath her body and wouldn't respond. Looking over her shoulder at the advancing soldiers, she forced herself to move. She had to get Mike and let him know what was happening. He would know what to do.
Saturday, June 20th
Chapter 19
Sitting at his kitchen table, Mike busied himself whittling down a foot long section of a branch with his pocketknife, bored out of his mind. In the past week he'd managed to put together a reasonable amount of supplies and load them up on the trailer hitched to Bert's older Jeep Grand Cherokee. It wasn't much by his standards, but considering he had drawn the line at supplying the neighbors from his own stockpile, it was a respectable supply of goods. Enough canned food and shelf stable dried goods for three days, and bottled water for a week. Hopefully they wouldn't have to use it. He hoped he wouldn't have to use the ATV hidden in his shed even more.
Having shaved the stick he was whittling into a narrow smooth piece, he cut several small notches into the piece, making jagged little points on one side. Mike blew off the loose shavings clinging to the stick, and turned the stick over, examining his work. It wasn't pretty. He didn't have the knack for whittling like his father had, but it didn't need to be. It just needed to fulfill its purpose. He wasted no time and put the tool to work.
Mike shoved the stick underneath his cast and rooted around, far beyond where his fingers could reach. The sharp little points on the stick scratched his skin, and Mike moaned with relief as he scratched the itching deep inside his cast that he hadn't been able to reach for several weeks now.
His wrist was starting to feel better, but it itched like nobody's business under the cast. He didn't even want to think about what his unwashed skin looked like under there. Every once in a while moving his arm around he got a whiff of the sour smell coming from inside the cast. He couldn't wait to for his wrist to fully heal so he could cut the damned thing off. Mike was on cloud nine, barely conscious of his environment. Scratching away, he suddenly understood why dogs pounded a foot on the floor when someone scratched underneath their collar. Lost in his own world, he barely registered the banging at his front door.
The banging grew more insistent, rattling the doorframe. Mike grabbed his backup Glock from off the table, and pushed his chair out from the table. The banging began again, this time accompanied by yelling.
"Mike! Mike hurry! Open up!" a man called.
Somewhat suspicious, he moved to the window and peeked out through the curtain. Lance and Jen stood just outside the door, both visibly agitated. He let go of the curtain and opened the front door.
"What's going on? Why--"
"You have to come quick! They burned down my house and Jens! Now they're burning--"
"Whoa! What? Who is burning down houses?" Mike asked.
"The Army. I don't know, guys in suits with guns. Come quick, you have to stop them," Lance said, then turned and ran down the gravel road toward the neighborhood.
"Please Mike, you have to help us! Robin and Kelly got out of their house, but Rich and Eva are still inside of theirs. I don't know where Ted and his mother are."
"Why in the hell are they burning down the homes? There’s nobody sick here!"
"There's a mark spray painted on all of our homes. It's the infection symbol we saw on the news," she said.
"What the-- Who in the hell would do that, and why?" Mike said.
Running down the hill, a plume of smoke rose into the air from the neighborhood below. The smell of smoke was thick in the air. Jen ran just behind him, struggling to keep up.
When Mike reached the meeting circle, Robin stood clutching her daughter tightly to her chest, her gaze intent on the homes down the street. Mike followed her gaze, and his stomach rose into his throat.
Two homes were ablaze. Soldiers in hazmat suits armed with assault rifles and flamethrowers advanced up the hill, thirty yards away from the Preston home.
Lance had run down the hill toward Eva's house, far ahead on Mike and Jen.
"Eva! Get out of there!" Lance shouted. He waved his arms over his head, gesturing at the soldiers, shouting at them. "Wait! We aren't sick! You have to stop!"
A soldier fired a burst from an automatic weapon, and Lance stumbled mid-run, then fell to the ground. Bleeding from the chest, wide eyed, he held his hand up toward the soldiers, silently pleading.
The front door of the Preston home opened, and Eva appeared in the open doorway. "Lance! Oh my--"
A stream of orange and red fire erupted from the flamethrower, incinerating Lance where he lay on the street. The flamethrower roared for several seconds, and the flames subsided. A charred smoking mass was all that was left behind of Lance. The blackened figure curled into a ball barely retained a human semblance.
Eva screamed, and she ran out of her house toward his body. Near the end of her driveway a burst of gunfire rang out. Eva dropped to the ground and lay unmoving.
The flamethrower ignited again, roaring like a dragon as it incinerated her body and then set fire to the house. The other soldiers resumed their march up the street, scanning for targets through their rifle sights as they moved in unison.
A cold shiver ran down Mike's spine despite the heat. He felt sick to his stomach. To think that his own government would stoop to such tactics to stop the spread of the virus. He could believe it of China or some other totalitarian regime, but this was the United States of America! How could they do this? He could hardly believe it was true. When Jen showed him the video of soldiers killing people infected with Shanxi, Mike dismissed it as a propaganda anti-government piece. They never actually showed the soldiers shooting anyone on the video. But here it was right in front of his face. He'd just watched them cut down Lance and then Eva, both uninfected and perfectly healthy.
Something inside of him woke to the situation, shook to the core, moving him past the shock of what he'd seen. Heat burned in his neck and cheeks. He had to get the hell out of here.
"Jen!" Mike said urgently. "Get Robin and Kelly out of here. What happened to Ted and his mother?"
Jen stood silent, frozen with shock.
"Robin, have you seen Ted and his mother? Has anybody seen them?"
"Ted took his mother for a walk in the woods this morning," Robin said, holding her ankle.
"Do you know which trail they were on?"
"I think they were on the green loop," Robin said.
"Damn. That will drop them right out in the open. The soldiers are fanned out throughout the neighborhood making their way up the hill. They'll see Ted and his mother as soon as they come out of the woods."
Mike grabbed Jen by the arm, shaking her out of her trance. "Get everybody out of here. Take them to my cabin and get the Jeep ready. If we don't make it back within ten minutes, take the Jeep and go. The key is hidden under the driver's side floor mat. My cabin is hidden from the neighborhood by tree and the soldiers might not realize it's there for a while. I'll try to find Ted and his mother and meet you there."
Jen finally seemed to shake off her fear and come around, and she helped Robin get up and started Kelly moving up the road towards his cabin.
Mike took off running towards the small gravel parking lot where the trailheads met up a short distance from the meeting circle. Two minutes of flat out running had put him in the parking lot and he kept going, continuing on to the trailhead. A mental map formed in his mind of the trail system that wound through the forest. He wondered which of the several trails would they have used. Ted was no athlete, and neither was his mother, so he eliminated the most difficult treks, but that still meant there were three trails either would have no problem hiking.
Settling on the most scenic of the three trails, he chose the green trail. The path led a half-mile through the woods before it opened up into grasslands. From there the trail looped around small ponds until it reached a fast moving stream another mile ahead. After the stream the trail
was an easy downhill walk that led back to the parking lot and trailhead. That was where most hikers from other areas went. There was, however, an unofficial branch that let out directly into the back of the subdivision.
Mike ran down the narrow trail through the woods, flying past trees and undergrowth, his feet noiselessly pounding the compacted soil of the trail. He kept looking for some sign of the pair, slowing down at cross trails to see if they'd taken another path or had gone off the trail altogether.
In minutes he'd cleared the woods and ran through the open grassland. A breeze caressed tall grasses in the field, blowing them about. The landscape was beautiful and serene. It was surreal compared to the scene of carnage and death in the neighborhood. Halfway through the trail now, he started to panic, worried that he'd come to late. If the soldiers had spotted them, they were doomed. Mike picked up his pace, pushing his body as hard as he could, running faster than before, desperate to find them. Ted had saved his life, trying to warn him of the danger was the least he owed him.
He reached the stream, a common stopping point for tourists and hikers, and looked around for any sign of them. Unable to find any indication that they'd come through the area, he followed the trail as it wrapped around the side of a hill, gently descending to the neighborhood below. Just as Mike ran past a clearing that had a clear view of the neighborhood, he caught sight of a soldier with a flamethrower spraying a burst of fire, igniting something just out of his field of view.
Saturday, June 20th
Chapter 20
The roar of the flamethrower chased her up the hill as she ran, fleeing the destruction caused by the soldiers. Robin stumbled and fell, grabbing her injured ankle, and Jen took her hand and pulled her back onto her feet. Kelly paused, waiting for her mother, and Jen yelled at the girl to run. The soldiers were not far behind. Having incinerated the few remaining homes in Oak Park, Jen feared they would soon look for more targets.
Running flat out, they were almost there. Mike's cabin was a short distance ahead, and she gave a sigh of relief when she saw that the Jeep was still parked in the driveway, it's trailer nearly packed to overflowing with supplies. She wanted so badly to be in the passenger seat right now, flying down the trails as fast as the Jeep would go. Never in her life had she been so terrified as she had been just now, paralyzed with fear as the soldiers had shot and burned Lance and Eva.
Jen forged ahead, taking Kelly's hand as she ran by, urging her to run faster. The girl was scared, confused, and crying. Jen empathized with her, but right now she needed the girl to move faster, for her own good. "Go faster Kelly! Move your butt!"
Her beat wildly, and her legs were starting to feel like rubber as they made the final stretch of their run. She grunted with effort, struggling to keep putting one foot in front of the other as she hit the limit of her physical endurance.
"Get the truck started!" Robin yelled. "I'll see who's inside and get their asses in gear."
Robin, frantic, took Kelly's hand from Jen and pushed her daughter into the cabin and slammed the door shut.
Jen rounded the corner of the cabin and hopped into the driver's side of the Jeep. Her hands shook as she lifted up the floor mat and felt for the hidden key.
The key! It wasn't there!
Frantic, Jen got out of the cab and felt around, searching for it. Mike said it would be under the floor mat! She reached her hand underneath the bucket seat, wondering if the key had been accidentally kicked underneath.
"Get up," a man said behind her.
Jen flinched, surprised at finding someone so close behind her.
She turned around slowly, expecting to see a soldier with a rifle or flamethrower pointed at her. Instead it was only Rich. His face still heavily bruised from the beating Lance had delivered. A cigar in his hand, drinking a pint of whiskey. An asshole, but not the life-threatening encounter she had feared. "Oh, it's you. I'm trying to find--"
"You knew, didn't you. You had to have known," Rich slurred. His words carried the stink of hard alcohol with them. "You live right next door. How could you not have known?"
"Know what?" Jen asked. "I don't have time for this right now Rich. I have to find the key for the truck. There are soldiers coming. I don't know how to tell you this, but Eva, they--"
"I know," he blurted out. "I saw."
"You saw?"
"I thought I didn't want to see it. I thought it would be too much for me. But it wasn't. I'm glad I did."
"Rich, you're drunk. You're not making sense," Jen said. "You don't know what you're saying. I'm trying to tell you that Eva is dead. The soldiers shot her!"
"Oh I'm drunk all right, but I know what I'm talking about. Things are clearer now than they ever have been. I should have done this years ago."
"Done what?"
"Killed her. I was never good enough for her. She pushed me and pushed me and wouldn't stop," Rich said, pulling off his pint of whiskey.
"Rich, you didn't kill--"
"Oh yes I did. I didn't pull the trigger, but I killed her all right." Rich switched his cigar to his off hand.
Jen followed the maneuver, and her heart began to pound loudly in her chest as something registered that she'd missed during their conversation. A gun. In his hand. Pointed at her.
"I'm the one that sprayed painted your houses. I called the hotline and told them you were all infected. It was me," Rich said, swaying on his feet.
"What? You did what?"
"Get inside the house. Everybody else is in there. You all knew about the pool boy this whole time, and not one of you had the guts to tell me about it. You laughed behind my back while my wife stepped out with a man half her age. You're not laughing now, are you?" Rich asked.
She wanted to run, but he had a wild gleam in his eye. He might shoot her in the back without thinking twice about it. He had just admitted to killing his wife and damning everyone in the neighborhood. Jen knew he would have issues difficulty killing her. She walked around to the front of the cabin and was almost at the door, wondering if she was fast enough to jump inside, slam the door behind her, and lock him out. The cabin's thick log walls would protect her from his gun.
"Stop!" he barked.
Jen froze with her hand on the door handle. She was afraid to look at him, but more afraid of dying without seeing it coming.
Rich giggled impishly as he took a can of spray paint and sprayed the Shanxi infection mark on the front of the cabin. Stepping back to admire his artwork, he sneered at her. "Now you can go in."
Jen twisted the door handle and opened the door. Her heart felt as if it would beat its way free of her chest.
Aaron sat on the couch, smoking a cigarette. He gave her a curious look as she walked into the middle of the room. The old man seemed to sense something was wrong, and he stubbed his cigarette out in the small glass ashtray on the coffee table. "What's wrong dear?"
"Nothing's wrong with her. What's wrong with you? Lung cancer and you're still smoking?" Rich erupted in maniacal laughter, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He stopped just behind her, the gun stuck firmly in the square of her back, hidden from Aaron's view.
"You know what? You can go fu--
"Aaron! Does Mike let you smoke in here?" she asked. Jen rolled her eyes back toward Rich direction and arched her eyebrows expressively.
Aaron nodded slowly, and he pulled another cigarette from his pack and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he blew a large cloud of smoke in Rich's direction, putting on an amused face. "Yeah he does. And why not? How is he going to stop me? What's he going to do, shoot me?"
Rich chuckled, and Jen heard the pop of the whiskey bottle cork and then smelled the sickly sweet smell of whiskey on the air. "Where is everybody?"
Aaron gave a deep cough and stubbed the cigarette out, mostly unsmoked. "I don't know Rich. Where are they? Where's your wife? Eva?"
Rich took the gun away from her back and put his arm over her shoulder, pointing it square at Aaron. "What do you mean by that? What are you saying old man
?"
"I'm saying," Aaron's eyes closed to slits, "you should check on your wife to make sure she's not out schtupping that hunk of a pool boy right now."
His face right next to hers, Rich's nostrils flared, and Jen shrank from him. "You're ready to die, aren't you old goat? You'd rather have somebody blow your brains out than waste away slowly, wouldn't you?"
"Rich, come on. I've known people like you before. You're a chicken shit. You don't have the balls to kill anybody yourself, or else you would have already done it. Maybe if you'd been more of a man your wife wouldn't have started--"
Rich bellowed with laughter. "You've got some balls old man. I bet you would have told me."
The bedroom door opened, and Robin glanced between Jen, Aaron, and Rich, then her eyes settled on the gun Rich held. She slammed the bedroom door shut.
Rich pushed Jen onto the couch, strode across the living room, and kicked down the bedroom door. The doorframe splintered, sending the door flying open. Inside the bedroom, Jen stood in front of an open window, guarding her daughter as she crawled out of the open window. She gave a shrill scream as Rich approached. Robin shoved her daughter out of the window and backed up against the window, protecting her daughter's retreat.
"Run Kelly! Run! Into the woods!" Robin screamed.
"Stop! Get back in here," Rich yelled, and barged into the room. He moved to push Robin aside, but she picked up a lamp and threw it at him.
"Get in the living room before I shoot you," Rich said, gesturing with his gun. "I don't care about your daughter. Go sit on the couch with the other losers." He backed into the living room, keeping the gun trained on her. Robin hesitated, glancing over her shoulder out the window. She stared for a moment, then put the lamp down and complied, sitting on the couch next to Aaron.
"I should kill you all right now, but I'd rather watch you burn," Rich said. "Nobody move."
The Shanxi Virus: An epidemic survival story Page 12
