Apocalypse Atlanta

by Rogers, David

  After a full minute, or at least a count up to sixty, she heard nothing that made her think there was anyone, or anything, out there. Carefully she eased it open and peered around. The front office was dark, but she waited another thirty seconds, as if inviting anything that lurked beyond to try for her.

  Nothing attacked. Jessica thrust the door open fully so the moonlight from the windows could illuminate the room better. Pretty standard looking area, a combination secretary’s station and waiting room. Nothing special, and nothing that looked like it might be of use. There was another door next to hers, a short distance away. Jessica hobbled painfully over and listened at it for several moments, then knocked lightly and listened again.

  When she tried the knob, it turned easily. Beyond she found another office that was almost a twin of the one she and Candice had sheltered in. The only real difference were the decorations; the other one was professionally spartan, while this one had a lot of University of Georgia sports paraphernalia on the walls. Jessica was about to frown again when she spotted a large UGA banner hanging on the wall next to the door.

  She grabbed at it, ripping it from the wall with a light pinging of thumbtacks as they were forcibly dislodged. The fabric of the banner was silky, and it was plenty large enough. Jessica held it experimentally down in front of her legs to confirm, then nodded. Draping the banner over her shoulder, she went back out into the front office.

  As she dropped into the secretary’s chair, she first started going through the drawers. Secretaries always kept things squirreled away. Sure enough, in the back of the middle drawer on the right she found a ‘get me through the day’ package consisting of bottle of Tylenol, a box of fruit-and-granola bars, and half of a six pack of Cokes.

  The bottle of pills rattled when she took it out, and Jessica frowned. There was a box of tissues on the front corner of the desk. She had to stand up on her good leg to reach them, but she took three and layered them flat on the desk before opening the bottle. There were a lot of pills in it. She dumped out a good sized pile atop the tissues, separated out two, then folded the tissues up around the pills before putting the little package in her pocket.

  Jessica popped open one of the sodas and chased down the pair of Tylenols, then got to work on her leg. After folding the banner into a wide strip of cloth, she hitched her jeans up a little to create some slack on her thigh, then wrapped the makeshift bandage around her knee. Keeping it as tight as she could, trying to ignore the protestations her knee offered up, she got the banner tied off behind her knee in a double knot.

  When she stood again, the bandage helped. Her knee didn’t feel quite so much like it was going to buckle, and the tight pressure of the bandage helped to remind her not to bend it. Jessica hobbled around the office for a few more minutes, checking through the front office as well as the second one as thoroughly as she could, but turned up nothing better than the bat to use as a crutch.

  There was a potted plant in the front office, some sort of long bamboo tree or something, but it was far too thin to support her weight. She did briefly consider maybe trying to rig up some sort of brace for her knee with the bamboo, but after thinking about it for a minute realized she didn’t know how to go about trying it, and so abandoned the idea. The best thing she could do was take a rubber stress ball and cut it in half before using a lot of tape to affix the halves to the handle end of the bat.

  That gave her hand some cushioning. She wanted to use one of the halves on the far end of the bat, the end that would go on the ground. That would have probably given it better traction against the surfaces she leaned it upon, but she didn’t want to do that with nothing better than thin scotch tape to use as a fastener.

  As satisfied as she could be with the makeshift cane, Jessica rummaged around in the secretary’s desk again. On the back of a sheet from a pad of telephone message blanks, Jessica carefully drew out a line map of her best recollection of where they were and where Dennis’ house was. She took her time, making sure to label everything clearly. Then she wrote down Dennis’ full name and title, home address, and his cell and home phone numbers at the bottom of the page.

  Folding it into quarters, she hoped she was being overly paranoid. It made her feel morbid and terrified to think this piece of paper might be needed, but she couldn’t bear the thought of not having it ready if the worst happened. She tucked it into her pocket, carefully ensuring it was well down and not likely to work its way out.

  With that settled, Jessica hobbled back into the office where Candice was sleeping. Her daughter was still curled up in the chair. Jessica sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs and pulled her purse over to her. The lockbox was inside. She got it open, then removed the box of ammunition. It, the manual, and two extra magazines were the only things in the lock box. And the lockbox itself was heavier than she liked; not as heavy as the ammunition, but still a weight.

  Discarding the lockbox on the desk, she stuffed the ammunition back into her purse, the magazines into her back pockets, then opened the weapon’s manual. Skipping past all the patent and manufacturer identification stuff at the front, she read the manual slowly and carefully, ignoring the strain on her eyes doing so in the low light conditions caused. To her surprise, mostly since the manual didn’t seem all that thick and she expected anyone who’d buy a weapon probably already knew most of it anyway, it had comprehensive instructions for how to use the gun.

  It was actually a lot more complicated than she’d assumed; guns were just point and click, right? Wrong. There was a section on how to use the sights to aim properly, another on how to hold and fire it so as not to disrupt your aim, and a third on how to load and reload both the pistol and the magazines when they needed more bullets placed in them.

  Taking the gun out, carefully keeping it pointed sideways at the wall so it wasn’t aimed at herself or at Candice across the desk, Jessica studied the weapon while referring to the book. There were several controls on the pistol, but the two she spent the most time on were the safety and the magazine release. When she held the gun they were within easy reach even though her hands were maybe a bit smaller than the gun’s design assumed.

  When she pulled back on the slide, which the manual said was necessary to load the first bullet from the magazine, it took a lot more effort than she’d expected. Her fingers slipped several times until she figured out how to get a grip and tug with one hand while pushing with the other. There was a metallic clacking sound as she got the slide back, then a louder one as it snapped back forward. She wasn’t sure if she’d done it right, but a sentence in the manual described how the ‘shooter’ could pull the slide back just a little and look in the chamber. When she did that, she saw a bullet there.

  There was another lever that lowered the hammer without firing the bullet, which she used. Jessica flinched as the hammer snapped down, but, as promised, the gun didn’t go off. She triple checked the safety, then spent a minute on the magazine; making sure she knew how to drop it out and insert it back in.

  When she was done she wasn’t sure she was ‘ready’ to use the gun, but at least she now knew how. She checked the safety several more times, then when she managed to assure herself the gun was ‘safe’, hesitantly holstered it again. She tucked the manual into her purse next to the box of extra bullets, then stood once more.

  The Tylenol had kicked in, sort of, and the bandage was working some. Her knee still hurt, and it was still swollen, but the edge was coming off the pain. She knew just enough about sprains to know wrapping them too tightly was likely to only ‘move’ the swelling to other locations, in this case probably into her lower leg, but Jessica figured that would be okay as a temporary thing. At least, she hoped it was.

  Sighing, she took the bat in her left hand and hobbled around the desk to where Candice still lay sleeping. She hated to wake her up, but there was no way Jessica could carry her, and she didn’t want to stay here. In fact, her nerves were crawling unpleasantly over how long she’d already stayed.
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  “Candice.” Jessica said, gently shaking the girl on the shoulder. Candice stirred a little, but remained sleeping. “Candy Bear, time to get up.” Jessica said slightly louder. “Come on, wake up.”

  On the third shake her daughter’s eyes opened. Candice looked around quickly, seeming to come fully awake in an instant. She was tense, and her voice wavered on the edge of fear as she spoke.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Jessica said. “Well, nothing new.” she added. “I want to see if we can’t get out of here.”

  Candice sat up in the chair. “Did someone come to rescue us?”

  Jessica shook her head slowly. “I don’t know if anyone is coming, and I think sitting around here hoping for it would be bad.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  The question seemed simple and logical, but the combination of fear and expectation in her daughter’s tone seemed to tear at Jessica’s heart. Candice was afraid, but she also trusted Jessica would figure out whatever needed to be done in order to make it all better. Jessica just hoped she could deliver on that trust.

  “Sweetie, Doctor Morris said we would be safe at his house. I don’t have a map, but I know where we are, and where he lives. We should be able to walk there in an hour or two.”

  “Walk?” Candice asked, her voice rising with the first stirrings of serious panic. “Outside?”

  “Yes, outside.” Jessica said patiently.

  “But . . . what about the sick people?”

  “We’re going to have to just stay away from them.” Jessica said gently.

  “Can’t someone just come and get us?”

  Jessica made her voice calmer, and purposefully lowered it to try and trick Candice into assuming things weren’t so bad. After all, if they were, wouldn’t mom being yelling and screaming? But here was mom, talking normally. Mom wasn’t worried, so neither should you be.

  “Candy Bear, things are different now. I don’t know when they’ll get better, but for the time being we have to be ready to do whatever we can ourselves. To do whatever is necessary to keep ourselves safe.”

  “Then we should stay in here.” Candice said immediately.

  “We’ll get hungry pretty soon. And there’s no showers or bathtubs. And we’ll need clean clothes at some point.” Jessica pointed out.

  “I don’t want to go outside.”

  “I know.” Jessica said. “I don’t either. But we can’t stay here.”

  Candice was silent, and Jessica waited patiently. She could see her daughter was thinking, could see the fear still dancing on the edge of panic in her eyes. The girl turned in the chair a little, looking out the window. Jessica continued waiting. Finally Candice stood up. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  Candice nodded. “Okay, let’s go to Doctor Morris’ house.”

  “That’s my brave girl.” Jessica said, holding her free arm out expectantly. Candice stepped into the embrace and hugged her, obviously being careful not to jostle against Jessica’s left leg, or to make her mother over balance.

  “I’m not brave.” Candice said quietly. “I’m scared mommy. I want all the bad stuff to go away.”

  “Listen to me.” Jessica said firmly, even though she agreed with everything Candice said. “It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared too. But being brave means you do what you have to even when you’re scared.”

  Candice was silent for several seconds. “Can you walk very far?”

  “I think so, but I’m going to use the bat here as a cane. And we don’t have to go fast. We only have to go fast enough to make sure no sick people catch us.”

  “Zombies.”

  “Right.” Jessica said, perversely wishing Candice wasn’t so ready to accept all this horribleness so easily. She wasn’t sure why she wanted a tantrum or hysterics; that wouldn’t be better, but it seemed like maybe it would be a more normal reaction. She settled for hugging the girl once more, then turned. “Okay, so are we ready to go?”

  “Uh . . . I have to go to the bathroom.” Candice said after a moment.

  Jessica hesitated. The building’s power was out and she’d seen only the exit signs mandated by the fire code. There was no emergency lighting, which meant the bathrooms were going to be pitch black. She glanced around, hoping for some sort of light source to just materialize, but no flashlight or candle appeared.

  “Okay.” she finally said. “But the bathroom’s going to be very dark.” Probably best to let Candice start getting herself ready for what was coming now.

  “I know.” Candice said somberly. “There’s no power.”

  “That’s right.” Jessica nodded. “Let’s go over some rules though, okay?”

  “Rules?”

  “Right.” Jessica nodded. “These are important. They’re the most important rules I’ve ever set for you, so listen good.” Candice’s eyes were big and round, but they remained fixed on her mother’s face, and the girl’s expression was attentive.

  “Never let one of the sick people touch you, for any reason.” Jessica said. “You run, you jump, you climb; you do whatever you have to, but never get near them, and never let them get near you. Never. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Second rule, you have to listen to me and do everything I say, when I say it. You can’t stop to think about it, or to ask questions. If I tell you to do something, you need to do it, immediately. That’s very important. Clear?”

  “Yes” Candice said again.

  “Good. Now, next. Don’t assume anyone we meet isn’t sick. They could be and just not showing yet. Or you could make a mistake, and think they’re not sick when they already are.”

  Candice frowned. “I’m not sure . . . what does that mean.”

  Jessica smiled. “It means, until you’re absolutely, positively, completely, one hundred percent and nosy kisses to seal the deal sure, you assume anyone else we meet is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous, like how?”

  Jessica thought quickly, running through what she’d seen on the news and read on the internet. It wasn’t quite accurate to say nothing else was being discussed on the internet since Friday; she’d seen boards and comment threads where people were throwing around ideas for survival techniques and how to secure an area against incursion. However, it was all but true.

  “If they’re talking, they’re not sick.” Jessica said finally. “If they can answer questions you ask them, they might not be sick . . . yet. That doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous, it just means they’re not a zombie yet.”

  Candice nodded. Jessica hesitated, not sure how to fully articulate this subject to a ten-year-old. “Now, this is important. Candy Bear, a few hours ago you mentioned the dog rule, remember?” Another nod. “Well, that’s in effect for everyone we meet, everyone we see, okay?

  “There are still good people, but with everything that’s going on, there are more bad people around now. And for the same reasons we have to be ready to do whatever we can for ourselves, to keep each other safe, those same reasons are why most of the bad people are now able to be bad without getting caught.”

  “Because there’s no one to catch them now.”

  “Right. A lot of the bad people can be as bad and as mean as they want, and there’s no police or anyone to stop them from doing it. So . . . I know it may not make a lot of sense, but you have to be careful of people now. Very careful. You have to be ready for anyone to be a bad person. And even for some people who act good to suddenly start acting bad. That’s especially important.”

  Jessica studied her daughter’s face, searching for any sign of confusion or wonder, but she still saw only abject attention and utter focus. It was a look she really wished she wasn’t so relieved to see there; Candice was only ten-years old for Heaven’s sake. She should be worrying about her turn on the video game, fighting with her brother and sister, and starting to think about things like makeup and boys. Anything but this.

  Candice waited. Jessica sh
ook herself mentally and smiled. “Now, one final rule.” She hated herself for having to even bring this up, but she had to do it now. While there was time. If something happened, she couldn’t depend on it being like the movies. There might not be time for a heart felt speech just before the end came. But she hated it.

  Bracing herself, she spoke slowly, and calmly, with all the love she could muster in her tone. “Sweetie, if something happens to me . . .”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you!” Candice said immediately, her voice rising toward panic again.

  “Candy Bear–”

  “No!” Candice said loudly, and she actually stomped her foot, like this was a discussion about whether or not she had to go to bed. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “I–”

  “You have to be.”

  “Candice!” Jessica said sharply. “Listen to me.”

  The girl looked up at Jessica, fresh tears spilling out of her eyes. “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to work out.”

  It took almost everything Jessica had to keep from breaking down at that point. Her voice was much huskier, throatier, with unspoken sobs when she continued. “I’m not planning on going anywhere. But I wasn’t planning on zombies or bad people either. I love you more than anything in the whole world. You have no idea how much I love you.”

  Now her voice did break, just a little, and Jessica drew a deep breath. “Because I love you so much, I have to try to keep you safe in case I’m not able to be there to do it.”

  “Mommy, I don’t want you to go away.”

  “I don’t want to. But I can’t know, not nosy kisses sure, something might not happen to me. I mean, look at my knee. So, listen to me. If something happens to me, you remember the rules, okay?”

  “Okay.” Candice whispered, her voice barely audible.

  Jessica reached into her pocket and took out the paper she’d prepared. “I wrote down Doctor Morris’ address here, and drew a map as best I could. See?” She unfolded it, holding it down where Candice could see it in the scattering of moonlight that came in through the windows.