by Russ Melrose
Jacob's Odyssey
Apocalypse Journeys 1
Russ Melrose
Jacob's Odyssey, Copyright © 2014 Russ Melrose
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form whatsoever or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or any other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the support I received from my family. My daughter, Carson, who helped inspire me to write an intelligent post-apocalyptic zombie novel (let's hope this qualifies). To my nephew, Troy, who helped copyedit Jacob's Odyssey and who also encouraged me every step of the way. To Tony, Claire, and Jeanette, who each helped me in their own way. And to my mother who has supported me in every way imaginable. Thank you.
The dual nature of man is a mystery
Filled with endless possibilities
Ripe with good and evil
Author Unknown
Chapter 1
The Fourth Day
It was just past three in the afternoon when I headed down Vine Street in the direction of Alex's house. Vine Street was a meandering thoroughfare that threaded its way through the Murray City area of the Salt Lake Valley. A small group of infected spotted my car and began to run after it in their stumbling gait, arms outstretched as if they might be able to reach me. As I sped away, they faded quietly into the background. And even though they had no chance of catching me, their tenacious pursuit unsettled me long after they were out of sight. Their unrelenting persistence disturbed me in the same way a dark, lingering dream might in the middle of the night, giving me a bad feeling I just couldn't seem to shake.
I rolled down my window to catch a glimpse of the birds as they headed south. They'd begun leaving that morning in dense formations, their impromptu migration darkening the sky and casting drifting shadows against the valley floor. They'd come from as far north as Canada, and I couldn't help but wonder where they were headed since the virus seemed to be everywhere. They must have had an intuitive sense of the gravity of the situation we humans were lacking. Their shrill wailing caws cut into me like a cold winter wind. Glancing toward the southern end of the valley, I couldn't help but marvel at how the vacating birds had turned the southern horizon into a quivering black mass.
I forgot about the birds and the infected when I turned into Alex's cul-de-sac two blocks off Vine.
When I opened the front door, I froze in the entryway. Alex sat in a leather armchair he'd pushed up against the wall near the radiator in his living room. His left arm dangled down to where he'd handcuffed his wrist to the pipe that fed water into the radiator. On the other side of the chair, a half-empty bottle of Popov Vodka along with a thick whiskey glass and an opened bottle of Ibuprofen lay on an end table.
Across from his armchair, his 9mm Glock 17 lay on the coffee table along with the key to his handcuffs and a small stack of white surgical masks in a Ziploc bag. He smiled and winced at me at the same time. "What's up, Jake?"
I couldn't answer him. I was too distressed by his appearance. Alex's head kept nodding as if he were about to drift off to sleep. His large round face had lost its usual luster and had turned a pale mothy gray. His face was coated with a thin layer of perspiration and the ashen coloring of his face appeared to have bled into his sweat.
Finally, just to say something, I asked my brother a question to which I already knew the answer. "Headache and fever?"
Alex nodded his head slowly. "Yeah," he said, lifting a corner of his mouth sheepishly, forming a weak, tilted smile. "Headache's a real killer."
I remained motionless, mesmerized by my own fear. Alex dug the heel of his hand into his eye socket, massaging his eye slowly in a circular motion.
"When did the headaches start?" I asked.
Alex looked up at me and held his head steady a few moments, his forehead wrinkled in thought as if I'd asked him to solve some abstract math problem. He gazed past me and I wasn't sure whether or not he'd lost the thread of my question.
"Couple hours ago?" he said, as if he were guessing but wasn't sure he had the right answer. "I think it was a couple hours ago."
Alex had called me three hours earlier and was insistent I come over. He must have suspected then he was infected, but he didn't say anything. He'd sneezed during the call, but I didn't think anything of it. My brother was one of those people who never got sick.
We'd planned on meeting the following morning and heading up to our cabin in the Wasatch Mountains. The plan had been mine and I had to convince Alex to go along. Alex's resistance stemmed from a sense of civic mindedness he'd cultivated from his duties as a highway patrolman. But since I'd always been more of a surrogate parent than a brother to Alex, it wasn't too hard for me to convince him to go along. My plan was to ignore the chaos from the distance of our cabin and wait for the virus to run its course.
Alex lifted his free arm and pointed at the white surgical masks on the coffee table. "Better put one of those on, Jake," he said.
Even though I'd heard him clearly, I couldn't get my legs to move. As the seconds passed, I began to feel embarrassed by the level of fear I was feeling. More than anything, I didn't want Alex to know how frightened I was. But Alex wasn't in any kind of condition to notice much of anything. His head had settled onto his chest and he was struggling to keep his eyes open. After a few self-awkward moments, I closed the door behind me and made my way to the coffee table where I removed one of the surgical masks from the Ziploc bag.
I couldn't help but remember how just yesterday the media had been ranting about the importance of wearing surgical masks if people absolutely had to leave their homes. At the time it all seemed like overkill, and besides, where were people supposed to get surgical masks from? I assumed Alex had received a batch of them because he was a highway patrolman and was expected to help distribute them. After fitting the mask to my face, I sat down on the couch directly across from Alex, no more than ten feet away.
Alex was still in his uniform, his short-sleeve shirt, still stiff from the starching it took at the dry cleaners, was unbuttoned and partially hanging out on one side of his pants. Alex had always been so meticulous when it came to his uniform, it was strange to see him and his uniform in a disheveled state. The inside of his shirt collar was darkened with sweat and his undershirt was drenched with perspiration.
I suddenly realized the dense, sour odor I'd noticed when I first arrived was coming from my brother. I had difficulty grasping the reality of what was happening. In just four days, the world had become this surreal, incomprehensible place. There was a part of me that didn't want to acknowledge that my brother was infected and what might happen to him a few hours from now. Since yesterday, grisly videos of the infected attacking and eating their victims had begun to surface over the internet. Not to be outdone, the local and national news outlets began showing similar videos on their broadcasts. The world had gone insane, and like the flocks of birds heading south in search of a safe haven, I just wanted to get away.
The swamp cooler switched on and shook me from my melancholy reverie. A light breeze channeled through the room. The moist cool air lifted my spirits if only for a short while.
I was fidgeting with the bag of surgical masks when I realized why Alex had called me. He wanted me with him in his time of need, but it was more than that. Since we were kids, I'd helped extricate Alex from one case of mischief after another. It was part of our sibling dynamic. Besides being his surrogate parent, I was the fixer. Alex would get into some kind of mischief and I would find a way to hel
p him out of whatever mess he'd managed to get himself into. That's why I was here now, to fix things like I'd always fixed them. But then my gaze drifted to the Glock 17 lying on the coffee table, and it dawned on me that Alex had already come up with a solution.
But I wasn't going to think about the gun or whatever it was Alex might have dreamed up in his feverish mind. I needed to get Alex talking and keep him talking for as long as possible.
I couldn't help but wonder how my brother had become infected, not that it mattered at this point, but it would be something to talk about. And whether I was being morbidly curious or not, I couldn't seem to let go of the need to know what had happened to my brother. The virus had been released in airports on July Fourth, and since the symptoms began manifesting virtually everywhere a day and a half later, that put the incubation period at thirty-six hours. That meant Alex must have been infected sometime late Wednesday night.
"Alex, do you remember what you were doing Wednesday night?"
He didn't respond, and for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was awake or not. His chin was still pinned to his chest and he made no effort to move it. Alex's mouth was drooped open and his eyelids were fluttering wildly. He raised his eyes to look at me, but my question didn't seem to have registered. He looked at me quizzically, then looked around the room. "Mom home yet?" he asked.
Alex was stuck somewhere in the past. "She's not home yet," I told him.
Our mother was long gone. She'd left seven years ago with a silver-haired businessman from Argentina. We hadn't seen hide nor hair of her since. The Argentinian was a tall, beefy man with a coppery tan, large white teeth and lots of money. Alex was a freshman in college and I was a junior. She told us we were fine and left us with the home we'd grown up in along with the mortgage. Truth was she'd been absent most of our lives. For the first few years she sent us Christmas cards, then nothing. Which didn't surprise me, but Alex worried himself sick. He still sent her cards on her birthday and Christmas every year and since they didn't come back, he reasoned she must be okay. I had no doubt she was fine. If I were to worry about anyone, it would have been the Argentinian gentleman.
"Just hanging at the station with the guys after my shift," Alex said suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, speaking more clearly than at any time since I'd arrived. "Drinking some java."
Alex had found enough energy to lift his head and return my gaze. His new-found lucidity caught me off guard. Could he be getting better? Was that even possible? Then I realized his symptoms might be nothing more than the flu, and we'd simply gotten caught up in the paranoia.
"Are you feeling better?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said. "The headache's a lot better."
"So, you were just at the station Wednesday night, drinking coffee after your shift?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Nothing. Just wondering."
Alex's face was a stone-hued gray, but his energy was up and he was lucid. He looked better than at any time since I'd arrived.
"We should still head up to the cabin in the morning, don't you think?" I asked him.
"Sure, I'll be feeling better tomorrow," he said. "Maybe we'll get some fishing in."
Alex was the outdoorsman in the family. The cabin, the fishing, the hunting, the guns—they were Alex's passions. I went along to spend time with my brother. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the outdoors. I'd always found the fishing relaxing and loved being at the cabin, but I was there because of Alex. My personal preference leaned more toward the bookish side of life. I spent my time reading a mix of fiction and non-fiction and browsing the internet, harvesting information on whatever current subject piqued my interest.
Truth is Alex and I didn't share a lot of common interests and bore little resemblance to one another. Same mother, different fathers. Alex took after his Canadian father, a Bunyanesque lumberjack and outdoorsman. Alex was wide shouldered, bull-chested and measured in at just over six foot two. He'd been a football player in high school and up at the U, and when he attended Murray High, he'd also set a number of weight lifting records. Since he graduated, Alex had developed a beer-related paunch women seemed to find adorable. They also loved his jovial, carefree demeanor.
As for me, I also took after my father—slender and bookish—though without the glasses. I'd also inherited his thin lips and narrow nose, which when I was lost in thought could give me a cold, austere look. My father was a CPA who lived in the Sandy City area of the valley. After his brief marriage to my mother, he remarried and fathered five children. I rarely saw my father throughout the years and felt little kinship toward him or his family.
Our mother never married Alex's father, though she seemed to prefer him to my father, the same way she preferred Alex to me. Her relationship with Alex's father was short-lived. He was even more of a free spirit than our mother.
People were always surprised to find out Alex and I were brothers. They'd look puzzled and incredulous, and from time to time there would be the "You're kidding me, right?" query. But Alex and I couldn't have been any closer.
Alex gave me an uncomfortable glance. "Doesn't seem right we're leaving with everything that's going on, Jake," he said. "People are going to need help."
"Look Alex," I said softly, "There's nothing we can do for the people who are infected. And we can't prevent other people from getting infected. This thing will run its course no matter what we do. For now, we have to take care of ourselves. Later on, when things settle down and return to normal, we can help out." But even as I spoke the words, I could feel my face redden from what I knew was a self-serving rationalization.
"Maybe you're right," he said, going along with me like he always did.
"Let's stick to the plan," I said, my spirits rising with his sudden lucidness.
Since Alex was getting better, I decided to find out what he'd had in mind with the Glock. "What's up with the Glock, Alex?"
He shrugged and looked down at his pant leg and scratched away at an imaginary stain. "I don't know," he said, quietly.
I kept my eyes on him and waited.
After a few moments, he looked up at me. He grinned awkwardly and finally came out with it, "I didn't want to turn into one of those things, Jake."
"I understand," I told him, and I waited for him to finish his thought.
"I thought if it came to that, you could do something," he said, still fiddling with his pant leg. "You know, just in case," he said timidly. "I already chambered a round."
The tenor of his voice had become childlike.
"Not going to happen," I told him firmly. "You're not turning into one of them. You've got the flu. That's all."
Despite my insistence, a part of me still worried Alex might be infected. But even if he turned, I wouldn't be able to use the Glock. It wasn't because I didn't know how to use it. I was more proficient at shooting than Alex which irritated him to no end since he was the gun aficionado and I was indifferent at best. My meticulous nature and my obsessive need for precision brought out the marksman in me.
But Alex got his due whenever we went hunting. Despite the countless times Alex had taken me deer hunting with him over the years, I never came close to hitting a thing. It wasn't buck fever or nervousness. I either wouldn't take the shot or would miss on purpose. Alex knew it, but since he was the one bringing home the antlered bucks, he didn't care. I could never shoot a beautiful animal like a deer, and there was no way I could ever shoot my brother.
Alex had begun vigorously rubbing his left upper arm with his free hand. "Cold as hell in here," he said, his voice trembling as he spoke.
But even with the swamp cooler on, it had to be at least seventy-five degrees in the house. Alex canted his head to the side and looked at me oddly. Then his head and shoulders began to shiver noticeably. He pulled his legs up from the floor and curled himself into a ball. "Jake, aw 'bout turn cooler off?" he asked, slurring and truncating his words. The left side of his face slackened and sagged. "Is freezin' 'n here."
I got up from
the couch and went into the hallway and turned the cooler off. By the time I'd come back to the couch, Alex's eyes were closed and he was mumbling incoherently. After a while, the mumbling turned into a soft, plaintive moan. It was strange to see my brother so physically weak and vulnerable. Alex had always been so strong and vibrant. If my brother suffered from any vulnerability, it was emotional, stemming from our fractured childhood. But I'd never seen him like this before.
Chapter 2
Alex
The heat was absolutely stifling. The temperature outside had to be well into the 90s. A moist filming of sweat covered my face and arms, and the pungent odor from Alex's body pervaded the room. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic from the odor. I looked at Alex and realized it had been a while since I'd seen him move. He lay sideways in the chair, head resting comfortably on the biceps of his handcuffed arm and the armrest. His knees were pinned to his chest and his free arm cradled his legs. He seemed so peaceful, so still, I couldn't help but wonder if Alex was dead.
I wasn't sure what I should do. Reports over the last day had been so sketchy, I couldn't remember any mention of the infected dying. Did some of them die? For a moment, I thought dying might be the best outcome for Alex. He didn't want to turn into some kind of monster and this way he wouldn't. I didn't want to think about shooting my brother if he turned, even if that's what he wanted.
I decided to watch him as closely and see if I could detect even the slightest hint of breath entering or leaving his body. But I saw no sign of movement.
I needed to slow down my thoughts. My mind was rambling in a dozen different directions. The only thing I was clear on was that I had to know with absolute certainty whether Alex was still alive or not. I could check his pulse, but his wrists weren't accessible. The right side of his neck was exposed, so I could check his carotid artery, but I was wary of touching him. I didn't know if I might get infected by simply touching him.
