The Weak Shall Die: Complete Collection (Four Volume Set)

by Taylor Michaels

  "Turn on the TV, John. The bad news might take my mind off my stomach." George rubbed his stomach, trying to relieve the burning pain for want of more food.

  "I thought you liked my dinners, George."

  "I do Marceau, I like them so much I could have eaten three of them. But we don't have that much food. We have to conserve. I understand that. I'm so hungry these days. I've lost six pounds since the panic. If the panic had only been a week later..."

  Fred spoke up, "What's that saying you used to say, George? If frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their butts."

  George looked back at him with sad eyes. "That never was funny. I wonder why I said it."

  "You are looking nice and trim, George," Elspeth said, with an upturned corner of her mouth.

  "Thanks, Elspeth. You're looking trim yourself."

  "Six pounds, too."

  "I never noticed that you had an extra six pounds."

  "Me either."

  Their personal comments went unnoticed by the rest of the group as all ears intently listened to the news.

  "Channel Ten News with the news that's important to you. Starting off, we have more news from the Surgeon General. Research has so far failed to find any effective method to counteract the virus. Tamiflu, developed several years ago, is powerless. Other antivirals are no better. It normally takes several months to a year to develop a vaccine. So far, no progress has been made and the CDC says it is unlikely to develop any countermeasures before the virus has decimated the nation. As usual in such cases, they advise frequent hand washing and avoiding contact with the stricken."

  "Bug City people know about Tamiflu. They make sure it not work. They not stupid."

  "Whose side are you on, Cho?" said George. "Sounds like you're proud of what your countrymen have done."

  "John always say, 'Give credit where credit due.' Bug City people do good job. Cho give credit. No problem."

  "True. Sadly."

  "Shhh! I want to hear this," Fred said.

  "Over thirty million people have now died in the United States and another hundred million are sick. Most states have been heavily affected. If scientists are correct, the population will drop to fifteen million within a month. The virus first began in the Northeast with New York City becoming unlivable within a week. Most other big cities in the Northeast are the same. A few days after New York shutdown, Chicago did the same. Then, it hit the West. Most of California was out of touch two days after Chicago. We here in the Deep South were in the last region to be hard hit. Only a few amateur radio hams have continued broadcasting in most of the country. The crawl across the bottom of the screen lists frequencies where we have found amateur radio news. The government continues telling people to stay in their homes and wash their hands. However, water service to most homes has been shut down for several days. For a personal point of view, here is our news analyst, Hunt Chetly."

  "Fred, are you getting all that?"

  Fred spoke as he jotted down the numbers in his small notebook. "I'll check each one."

  "Thanks, Amanda. As you say, authorities are still telling everyone to stay home and remain calm, but it hasn't helped. Half the people I know are scared to death and the other half are partying like there will be no tomorrow."

  "They may be right about that Hunt."

  "Yes. Where they are buying their alcohol and drugs, I don't know. But they are probably right. Go out in a flash, not a whimper. From a personal point of view, Channel Ten will stop broadcasting at midnight tonight. We have only two announcers left. The whole weather department, traffic department and all but one of our reporters are gone. They just didn't come to work today. Most didn't come in yesterday. We don't know if they died, left town or they joined the parties. We have only one engineer left and two producers. We just can't keep going. We were the last television station in the viewing area to continue broadcasting and one of the last in the country. We lost our network feed, as you remember, six days ago. Since then, we have been airing videos. Some from our personal collections."

  "You had an interesting personal collection, Hunt."

  "They weren't supposed to show those -- uh, educational videos -- until the early morning hours."

  "I enjoyed watching them."

  "Me too," said Fred.

  "Yeah, I may have learned a few things," said George. "The plague hasn't been all bad."

  "We understand that several radio stations in the city will continue as long as possible. We've enjoyed serving you all these years and wish we could continue."

  "Thanks, Hunt. Let me also say that I've enjoyed serving all of you, particularly you Hunt. We did have some good times in the supply room over the last few days. Especially after some of your videos aired. I think I have the virus. You probably have it too. I decided I wouldn't wait until the end."

  The blonde lady on the screen pulled out a pistol and put it to her temple as John switched off the TV. "I never cared for that channel anyway."

  Cho and Masako stared dismally at each other, tears glistening in their eyes.

  "It's time for us to spend more time at home, folks," said John. "The garden needs work, and we should increase our guards and patrols."

  Chapter 30 - The Dark Demon

  "Cho, have you seen George and Fred."

  "In living room. Watch video, maybe."

  John walked down the stairs to the living room where George and Fred were playing cards. He needed to keep everybody busy to avoid depression. And he needed projects that would be useful and not just busy work. Everybody would see through that immediately.

  "What's up, boss?"

  "I'm not the boss, but I have a worry and an idea."

  "That means he has another tough job for us, George."

  "Yeah. I knew life was too easy. Sixteen hours of work each day, choppin' wood and diggin' holes in the ground, with two meals and all the water I can drink. I thought we were goin' to stay at home from now on. Take it easy."

  "How about stay away from other people? That's almost the same. I worry about our security. We have amassed food and equipment that other people will want. We have to be able to defend our base. Part of that has to do with barriers. A solid barrier would give us more security. I worry that someone will decide to take what we have because they didn't prepare, like we did, and because we look like an easy target. We've done everything we could imagine so far to insure our survival. This would be a bad mistake to make." John eased into one of the chairs at the game table, picking up all the cards and starting a game of solitaire.

  Fred looked at George with a look that said, "Now what's he doing?"

  George shrugged and watched John laying down cards onto the table.

  Five minutes passed and Fred finally said, "A concrete wall with a proper foundation would take us a year to build, if we could find the concrete, which I don't think is going to happen."

  John kept playing solitaire and said, "What if the blocks weighed a ton and a half and had wheels?"

  "Cars?" George asked with a quizzical look on his face.

  "Yep. Take the tractor with a blade or the backhoe we borrowed from the State and cut a trench in a circle four hundred feet from the buildings, near the existing fence. Grab a bunch of cars and pull or push them into the trench tipped over with two wheels in the trench to form a barrier. Push the dirt back onto them to hold them in place. How about it?" John said, putting a few cards onto the table and continuing with his game.

  Fred perked up. "That might work. We could tow the cars here with the tractor, if we had to. We could even use the flatbed."

  "But ol' buddy, if we see a car on the street, how do we decide if somebody wants to keep their car or not? Might get mighty ticked off if we grabbed it without permission. Bullets could be flyin'."

  John dealt himself a few more cards, then stopped and thought for a second. "That's true. Look for overgrown lawns. Make sure the steering wheel is pointed straight, pick up the rear with the tractor and drive away. Keep your guns handy,
and if you can, be nice."

  "Sure, we'll do it," said George. "I was thinkin' about sittin' around and gettin' bored sometime next week. I can put that off now."

  John kept rifling through the cards and after a few minutes said, "Take some of the others with you. Also, we need to do something about the driveway."

  "What's wrong with it?" Fred asked.

  John laid down a seven of hearts onto an eight of hearts and flipped over a few more cards. "As it is now, someone could crash through that little farm gate and drive straight up here, fill us all with holes and take what they want. In and out in two minutes. Probably less. We need a driveway lined with rocks or dirt or more cars. It should have a right angle or two to slow people down and it needs a serious gate, maybe two. We need barriers to slow anybody down so we have a chance to defend ourselves before it's too late. Right now, if they crashed the gate at two in the morning, they'd be on top of us before we'd wake up. Even with some kind of driveway alarm, most of us would still just be out of bed by the time they hit the front door."

  "All that would look butt ugly, John. You know that. The women would hate it." Fred half-laughed.

  "Yeah," he said, looking up from his cards. "Now that you mention it, that may not be a bad thing. If it looks badass enough, people will decide they should go somewhere else, anywhere else before they attack us. I thought about going the other way and putting a bunch of burned timbers from burned out houses all around. That would make it look like nothing worth anything was here. Like we'd already had the big battle and we lost."

  "That's a thought," George said, quickly agreeing as John laid down a six of hearts.

  "But, it doesn't work because of the garden. As long as the garden looks good, people will know we're here. It's a dead giveaway. So, the best option is to make ourselves look so badass that they will not stop and will just pass us by."

  "You want George and me to work on it? Who's going to do foraging?"

  "Tom and Elspeth and Cho and I. You can have Charles and Harry to help you, too. Take Isaac with you -- and keep him working. If you can," John said, putting down the last card.

  "Sure, we'll take care of it," said Fred. "Don't know about Isaac. They stay pretty much to themselves."

  George looked at Fred and said, "It's about time he started pullin' his own weight."

  * * *

  The barrier fence took five days and, as predicted, it was butt ugly, even with female participation. Elspeth wanted to arrange all the cars by color. Masako wanted to put the large cars in the front and the smaller ones in the back, arranging them like pearls on a necklace. They argued about which scheme was better. Fred and George gave up and just began dumping cars on the front lawn and left Charles to arrange them suitably. Charles had a talent for doing what women told him without arguing. Finally, Elspeth gave him a map of what to put where. He quipped that he knew what went where, but she didn't laugh.

  * * *

  A few days later, after the barrier was finished, they were sitting on the front porch one night after dinner.

  "John, I've been wantin' to show you somethin'," said George. "I already showed Fred. He helped me with some parts of it."

  "The car?" said Fred.

  "Oh yeah. Iris said she was helping you restore a car."

  "Not actually restore," said Fred. "George has taken the automobile to a whole new level. At least as far as survival is concerned. Everybody will want one. They'll be selling like hotcakes," he said with a smile. "If we could find anybody with some hotcakes."

  "Well, you said we should stay at home. Over the past few weeks, Iris has been helpin' me to modify a car. We spent most of our spare time restorin' and improvin' it. Mainly the last two weeks. One of those projects we talked about a few weeks ago. Follow me and I'll show you," George said, leading John to the basement and through the tunnel to the barn.

  "I thought you were spending your spare time in your cabin with Iris or chopping wood. Now you say you two were in the barn all the time."

  "I've been in all those places and done all those things. I heard you spent some time in the barn with Carla."

  "I wasn't complaining, old friend. Just observing." John stood aside as George pulled a tarp off a strange looking car.

  "We found the car abandoned a few miles away. It was out of juice. I figure the owner tried to make a getaway on an empty battery. It was one of the first ones we found for the barrier fence. I put it aside -- and a few others like it. I've been thinking about this for a long time. Even before I came here."

  "Glad to see you're making good on your lifetime ambitions. A little career development on the side. Can't complain about that. Do we need a car? No insignia. What is it? A Toyota."

  "A Nissan Leaf."

  "Ah, electric, so it runs without gas. We don't have much gas and won't be able to get much more. So that's good. Is that it?"

  "That's the first part, but not the best part. Notice anything different about it?"

  John walked around the car, carefully inspecting it. "Obviously. One big thing. Your color sense has gone all to hell since the panic. Distinctly dark. You've painted it flat black, all over, including the headlights and all the other lights and all the chrome, if it had any," he said continuing to walk around the vehicle. "And the windows. You painted the windows. You can't see out. So you and Iris liked making out in cars and you painted the windows black so nobody would see. I can handle that. If you want me to get in, you'd better have washed the seats."

  "A good guess, but nope."

  "Looks like a black lump. How are you going to see to drive? Through that little square in the windshield?" His hand swept over the glass.

  "Not really. All the windows have a small peephole. I put Velcro on a piece of black sheet metal on the inside. We'll keep it closed most of the time. Hop in. I'll take you for a ride."

  John squeezed into the passenger's seat, making sure not to harm his shoulder, which was still sore. George eased into the driver's seat.

  "It's weird sitting in front of a painted black windshield and beside a painted black side window. I can't see anything outside. I'm sure the car feels smaller inside than it did when the windows were clear. Definitely claustrophobic."

  "You don't have any problem with that, do you John?"

  "No, but I'm definitely curious about what happens next. If you're interested in making out, you should know I don't lean that way."

  George began flipping switches. Three screens in front of the driver and one in front of the passenger came on. The driver's screens were mounted in a semicircular pattern with the left and right screens angled and somewhat smaller. The left screen showed the barn to the left, the center was larger and showed the barn door in front and the right screen, also smaller, showed the barn to the right of the car. The screen in front of John showed a view of the barn behind. George pushed a button and his center screen showed the light going out, the garage door opening and then the gravel driveway in front in an eerie white light.

  "Where'd you find the door opener?"

  "You picked it up at the tractor store. That day you grabbed everything you could. We went back once that night for another pass at them. I'm sorry I didn't spend more time there."

  "Nice." John placed a hand on the screen in front of him and peered at the picture.

  "Infrared cameras and infrared illuminators. Good for three hundred feet. Not good for driving ninety miles per hour, but OK for thirty. Or more. Got 'em on the internet. Let's go."

  George drove down the driveway. The view from the passenger's seat was weird as John could only see where he had been.

  "How about another screen on this side to show what's ahead. It's weird to be looking backwards all the time. Unless you expect me to be the tail gunner."

  "Sure, I have a couple spares. Picked those up at Radio Shack on Panic Day, too. You know, I'm beginning to understand what you were sayin' when you first called me. You said this would be a great adventure and it is. It's a challenge to ou
r wits and our creativity. I really enjoyed modifyin' this car. I saw somethin' like this in a movie, years ago. Gumball Rally. I always thought it would be so great to have a stealth car. I've taken it out for a few test drives. And it is great. You'll see. Just wish there was still some police cruisers I could go whizzin' by in the dark."

  "At thirty miles per hour, you're not going to do a lot of whizzing."

  "Dang it! You're right. Those lawmen put a ball and chain on me and I never noticed."

  "It's still a great car. Even at thirty miles per hour. I'm sure it'll be a big help. No gasoline. Stealthy, at night anyway. No rocket launchers, I assume." John smiled to himself.

  "I knew I forgot somethin'," George said, putting his hand on the shift lever. "I did remember the ejection seat -- for smartasses like you."

  When they arrived at the gate, George pushed a button and the gate opened. John was expecting the roof to fly off and him after it. After they drove through, George pushed the button again and the gate closed. He drove down the highway at thirty miles per hour.

  "George, if this thing went faster, I'd think we were Batman and Robin leaving the Bat Cave."

  "I'm drivin' so that makes me Batman. But, that's pretty close. The remote gate and door keep people from seeing us. We don't have to use a flashlight to see while we open the gate. It keeps anybody noticin' when we are comin' and goin'. All the lights in the garage go out before the doors are opened. I put steel plates in the doors for protection against snipers."

  As John listened to George's explanation, he could hear the pride in George's voice. When he looked over at George, he could also see the pride on George's face. George had produced something which could help their foraging by not needing gasoline. And it would be far safer by being stealthy. It might be the difference between living and dying. John couldn't help smiling and even felt a tear running down his cheek. John was proud too. Not just proud of the car, but proud of George.

  "Sounds like you've thought it out, except for the rocket launchers."