Redaction: The Meltdown Part II

by Andrews, Linda

  Redaction

  Part II

  The Meltdown

  By Linda Andrews

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Linda Andrews

  Published by Linda Andrews at Smashwords

  Cover Design by Linda Andrews

  Photos by Marijus Auruskevicius, Svetlana Romanova

  Edited by Serena Tatti, story-editor.com

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  To my husband, my critique partners and beta readers

  Thanks so much for sticking by me

  through the books many edits.

  A special thanks to:

  Kimberly Adams—wife, mom of three and US Air Force vet—for your insight.

  Dan Shaw, US Navy (retired), for being a voice at the other end of cyberspace!

  Evvere Anthony, Arizona National Guard vet, your encouragement means so much!

  Dian Napier for the perfect title suggestion.

  My editor, Serena Tatti, for doing the impossible—understanding grammar!

  Chapter One

  Day 7

  After Anthrax Exposure

  “Is that where we’re going, Missus S?”

  Audra Silvestre checked the rearview mirror of the bus. Snores and raspy breathing came from many of the survivors traveling with her. A pair of wide brown eyes in a chalky, half-covered face stared back at her. Oscar Renault. She’d had the pudgy, pimply-faced twelve-year-old in her class last year. Between his ADHD and his mother’s insistence that he was the perfect child, she’d decided to give up teaching. They had been the last straw in a baleful.

  The notion seemed pathetically pitiful now. Thankfully, she hadn’t told anyone.

  “You sick, too, Missus S?” Oscar slid off the seat behind her and scooted forward on his knees, seemingly unaware that he’d asked another question without having an answer for the first one. Snot left dark trails down the thighs of his worn, dirty jeans sticking in the aisle. His hand shook and he wrapped it around the pole on her right.

  “No, Oscar. I’m fine.” Her words puffed against the bandanna covering the lower half of her face and whispered hot, moist breath back at her. Clammy sweat beaded her forehead and her stomach cramped from the overwhelming odor of excrement. Hopefully it was from the slops bucket in the back and not…anything else. Unfortunately rolling down the window to blow away the stench wasn’t an option.

  “You sure?” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand before scraping it off on his jeans.

  “I’m sure,” she reiterated for the fourth time in the last five minutes. But God knew how long she’d be healthy. How long anyone of them would be.

  She was going to die.

  And one of these kids, probably Oscar who now hovered closer than her shadow, would infect her. The steering wheel jerked under her hands and she clamped down. Nails dug into her palms and her fingers cramped as she guided the big yellow bus half on the shoulder and half off the interstate.

  “You think you won’t not get sick again?” Oscar perched on the edge of his seat, scabby knees poked through the holes in his pants as he hung practically in the aisle.

  Her skull throbbed from the double negative. Proper English didn’t really seem so important at the end of the world. Still… “I’m sure I will get sick this time. Especially since so many are sick again.”

  But it hadn’t happened that way the first time. She’d stayed in the school nursing the sick, cooking meals, forcing folks to eat, then recording the dead and handing them over to the military for mass burial. For six months, she never caught the Redaction—the influenza pandemic that had killed thirty-five percent of everyone worldwide. She’d never come down with a sniffle, sneeze or cough.

  Surely, she wouldn’t be so lucky this wave.

  “Why don’t you rest a bit? We’re still a long way from the soldiers.”

  Oscar opened his mouth but no words came out.

  Movement in the mirror caught her attention. Faye Eichmann prowled the aisle, heading straight for the front. White hibiscus petals painted the hot pink fabric of her designer dress. The long skirt fluttered around her toothpick legs. Pink and red plastic bangles clinked on her bony wrists while chunks of diamonds winked from her ears, throat and fingers.

  The fortune in jewels was meant to ensure she could buy food and shelter. Audra was pretty sure it would get her killed. The influenza wasn’t the only thing out there murdering innocents.

  Oscar folded himself into the seat and shrank away from the diamond-encrusted harpy.

  Too bad she couldn’t do the same. Audra stared at the dozens of cars abandoned on the blacktop. Maybe she could pretend dodging the vehicles took up all her attention and ignore the middle-aged woman.

  In a puff of sour sweat and faded perfume, Faye stopped next to Audra. With her feet apart, she braced her hand on the metal rail. “Why couldn’t people have pulled off to the side of the road when they’d broken down?”

  Because they were sick, dying or dead. Audra winced as the stench of the woman’s smelly pits momentarily overrode the odor of the slops bucket. Bad enough she had to wallow in her own stink, why did the woman feel the need to share hers when she asked rhetorical questions? “It certainly has slowed us down.”

  Up ahead a black Ford pick-up truck tilted in the dip between the North and Southbound lanes of Interstate Ten. Its driver hung halfway out the open door. The stillness of his body didn’t relate his death as did his hands, swollen like black oven mitts, dangling an inch above the weeds. Of their own volition, her eyes checked the passenger side when she passed. Two dead children lay on their backs in a mat of weeds, their bodies bloated in the weak sun. Flies swarmed around them, laying larvae that would devour the soft tissue with surgical precision.

  “We’re up to seventeen.”

  Wincing, Audra forced her eyes on the road and jerked on the wheel. Faye wasn’t callous; she just coped differently. Lots of folks didn’t want to get chummy with anyone, especially the sick, because of the risk of loss. It was understandable. It pissed her off.

  “Nice driving.”

  She shrugged off the sarcasm. Parents weren’t much different than their teenagers—rude, difficult and unwilling to learn. God, she hated being a teacher almost as much as she hated this new world. “I’ve learned a thing or three in the last nine hours.”

  Nine hours from Tucson to Phoenix when it used to take only two and a half. Her stomach cramped. And what did it gain her? This place looked no safer than where she’d come from, than where she’d passed through. Add in the intermittent belch of the air-raid sirens plus the lack of people and the creep factor spiked off the charts.

  “You’re a cool one, Audrey.”

  Taking a deep breath, she let the name slight pass and focused on what was important—surviving until she could dump her
busload of sick onto the soldiers and get on with her life. She maneuvered into a lane completely free of vehicles. Maybe she’d be rid of them faster than she thought. Her foot stomped on the gas pedal and the bus picked up speed. “Seventeen sick isn’t that bad. We have nearly forty people on the bus.”

  And if this flu worked like the last one, most of those seventeen would survive. She sucked on her bottom lip. But this infection didn’t seem to be playing by the same rules. They’d left quite a few corpses behind in the school cafeteria. Much more than a third.

  Faye leaned forward. Her floral bodice gaped open and a strand of pearls dribbled out. They swayed from side to side. “That’s the number of dead on the bus. Not that you care. You’re immune.”

  Audra released her bottom lip with a pop. But there’d only been fifteen sick when they’d left last night. She would know. They all crowded around her like she was their personal lucky rabbit’s foot. Ask the rabbit how lucky he felt. No wait, you couldn’t, the rabbit was dead.

  “I care, and there’s no telling if I’m immune this go round.”

  Faye snorted. Light and shadow played across her face, highlighting her crow’s feet and the frown lines around her mouth. “Doesn’t look like heading for Phoenix was such a good idea from where I stand.”

  In the distance, pillars of black smoke dwarfed the skyscrapers wicking scarlet flames ever closer to the sky. The sunrise had painted a fuzzy, jaundiced ball over the jagged Superstition Mountains to the East. Ebony storm clouds spread like spilled ink on the western horizon and were cleaved apart by cracks of lightning.

  Her nightmares were far more pleasant than this new world. They also contained fewer people, less rats and no out-of-control fires that were supposed to contain them. Soon she could walk away from it all. She just had to find the soldiers.

  “That’s Phoenix. We’re going to Mesa.” Lifting her hand, she pointed out the right side of the bus.

  The vehicle tilted as many passengers shuffled closer to the windows and pressed their noses against the glass. Seventeen may be dead but the rest were awake and, aside from a few snuffles, she hadn’t heard a single cough. How could that be?

  Oscar ducked under Faye’s arm, crawled over the yellow line and sat on the top step. He swayed from side to side as he looked out the folding door’s spotted panes of glass.

  “At least the fires seem to be out.” Faye tucked her pearls back into her dress.

  Not with that much smoke still billowing. Great belches of gray rose from the ground, obscuring any buildings except those along the freeway.

  “There’s nothing on the freeway that would burn.” But the bridges and overpasses could collapse. Tucson had taught her that. Yawning, Audra shook her head to try to clear it. Tears raced to her eyes blurring her vision. She blinked them away. It had been a long night.

  Oscar twisted at the waist to look at her. “What if all the soldiers are dead?”

  “Then we salvage what we can and push on.” She slapped on the turn signal. Weaving through a handful of abandoned vehicles, she worked her way to the right hand lane. Someone had cleared enough space for her vehicle to merge onto the 202. She hoped it was the military and not some parasite laying a trap for travelers.

  “To where?” Faye shot back.

  Audra sighed. Like I have all the answers. Most of you didn’t listen to me when I was trying to teach your little ingrates English, yet now I’m supposed to know everything. “Not everyone in the military can be dead. Someone flew those Army choppers and Air Force planes. We saw them just this morning and they were heading north.”

  A lucky guess on her part since they’d set out last night. Of course, not everyone had gone with them. Most had stayed behind at the school. They weren’t her problem now. Neither were the two buses who hadn’t made it beyond Casa Grande. And, if they reached the soldiers, this lot wouldn’t be either.

  She wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving them.

  “North could be Flagstaff for all we know.”

  A muffled sob rose from the back. Either someone new was sick or they’d discovered the person next to them was dead.

  I can’t deal with this anymore. I can’t… She clamped down the thought. The opposite of can’t was death. She refused to die. “Then we will go to Flag and find them.”

  “And how are we going to get there if we can’t go through Phoenix?”

  “I’ll find a way.” Audra clamped her jaw closed. She’d go to Timbuktu to get rid of the woman. The engine grumbled as she climbed the onramp onto the Santan freeway. Merging, she blinked. The freeway was deserted. Four empty lanes as far as her eye could see. True, blowing smoke reduced that to a mile or so, but she’d take it.

  “Missus S?”

  “What is it, Oscar?”

  “I’m glad we came with you.” His heel tapped out a beat on the floorboards. “You’re smarter than anyone I ever knowed. You can get us through this.”

  Well, crap. Why did he have to go say something like that? Now, she couldn’t throw him off the bus, let alone correct his improper English. Most of the half-covered faces in the rearview mirror nodded. “Thank you, Oscar. I hope you’re right.”

  For all our sakes.

  “I am, Missus S.” He leaned against the dash and drummed on his leg. “I am.”

  She cleared her throat and blinked rapidly to clear away the tears. Stupid smoke must be getting in her eyes.

  “Breaker. Breaker. Two. Eight. This is seven-niner. Come back.”

  Audra rolled her eyes at the gibberish crackling through the child’s walkie-talkie strapped to the dashboard in an old blue jean’s pocket. Mrs. Rodriquez had certainly thrown herself into bus driving with enthusiasm. Her passengers quieted and expectation hummed in the air. After seven hours of near silence someone outside their bus spoke, too bad it wasn’t a radio broadcast with an update.

  “Can I answer, Missus S?” Oscar jumped to his feet. Steadying himself, he clutched the bar near her head, snagging a lock of her hair in the process.

  Heat burned along her scalp at the pull. Leaning toward his hand, she eased the burn a little bit. “Sure.”

  Faye snorted and plopped down on the seat behind Audra. “An adult should answer it. That toy is the only thing keeping us together.”

  She was the only thing keeping them together. For some strange reason, people listened to her, followed her. Good Lord, when would it end?

  Duct tape protested when Oscar pulled the walkie free. A corner of the empty pocket folded over. He squeezed the black button on the side and held the toy against his mouth. “This is bus twenty-eight, er, I mean two-eight coming back to you seven-niner.”

  “Good morning two-eight,” Mrs. Rodriquez chirped.

  Audra twisted her hands on the wheel. How could someone be so happy so early in the morning and without coffee, especially when they’d been up all night driving?

  “We’re running low on gasoline.”

  Audra bit her lip. The happy pronouncement was battery acid in a wound. No gas. No go. No soldiers. No safety. No rest. She eyed her own gas gauge. The red needle flirted with the bar just a hair above empty. The tank had been full since the schools were prepping to return to action when the Redaction had returned. She eyed the roadsign, mentally tallied the distance between them and the targeted campus. “How low are you? We’ve got twelve miles to go.”

  “I’m near to coasting.” The chirp dulled in her voice. “And we have no idea how long the last twelve miles will take.”

  Three other voices echoed Mrs. Rodriquez’s concerns. That made every driver in the convoy. Audra tapped her brakes as the smoke thickened.

  “We can’t stop here!” Lurching to her feet, Faye swayed while standing on the yellow safety line. “I hear rats.”

  Gray clouds pressed against the windshield and the sound of squeaks penetrated the bus. Rats. Audra’s toes curled in her cowboy boots. The flames herded them. She leaned forward until the steering wheel cut into her belly.

  �
�Do you see the fire?”

  Bending, Faye braced one hand on the dash. Her head turned from side to side. “It’s everywhere.”

  Which meant they couldn’t stop or even slow down.

  Oscar clicked the on/off button, punctuating the rat serenade with static. “What do you want me to say, Missus S?”

  “Ask if anyone sees flames.” Her eyes strained to detect the red tongues of fire high above the sloping concrete walls. Rats streamed down the pink surface but didn’t swarm in a panic. Still, if they pulled off too soon, they’d be overrun and eaten by the fleeing vermin. Cold snaked down her spine. She’d seen it before. Please God, don’t let me ever see it again.

  “Missus S wants to know if anyone can see where the fire is.”

  “In the smoke breaks, I can see some intermittent meatball in marinara sauce,” Mrs. Rodriquez answered.

  Oscar giggled.

  Audra swallowed the bile in her throat. Whoever referred to the rat roadkill as food should be shot. Spaghetti and meatballs had been her favorite dish until they’d coined the reference. She doubted she’d want to eat it ever again. And her problem still wasn’t solved. They needed to know where the fire was.

  “I think I see flames in my rearview mirror.” Jacqueline Silvestre’s voice drifted through the walkie. “Would someone please verify?”

  Audra inhaled a slow breath. Despite everything they’d been through, her mother wouldn’t simply make a statement lest she offend a stranger. Not that she minced words with her daughter. Oh, no, Audra was issued commands every time they met or spoke. She should have stopped listening to her mother years ago. Heck, even ten hours ago would have been smart. Then she wouldn’t be in charge of this group. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and eased into the center lane. But as soon as she found the soldiers all that would be in the past.

  “Good call, Jackie O,” Mrs. Rodriquez confirmed. “We’ve passed the fires.”

  Audra smiled at the nickname. No one would have dared abbreviate Jacqueline Silvestre’s name back in Washington D.C. or compared her to a Democratic First Lady. The Silvestre lineage dated to the Founding Fathers and so did the family fortune. They bled Republican. Welcome to the new world, Mother.