by Barry Napier
“Before all that,” he said, quickly looking towards the fallen man, “I found a truck up near the end of this mess. It’s old and looks like junk, but the battery is working and there’s half a tank of gas. I already hauled the driver out…”
“Thanks,” Olivia said because, really, there was nothing else to be said.
They worked together to get the bikes out of the back. It was made more difficult by Joyce not wanting to leave Olivia’s side. She was holding Olivia’s hand and only showed the slightest bit of interest when they took the bikes and the little trailer out. They walked alongside the traffic jam together, pushing the bikes as Olivia tried to make sure Joyce did not pay attention to the man Paul had shot.
When they reached the truck—a much older and smaller Toyota that looked as if it had seen a worksite or two in its lifespan—Paul dutifully put the bikes and Joyce’s trailer into the back. He then got inside and started the engine, not saying a word or even looking at them the entire time.
Olivia wanted to ask if he was okay, but she kept quiet. She could tell that he was not okay. And if he started trying to describe what he was going through, she was quite sure she would not understand. In fact, as Paul shifted the manual gear shift into first gear and took the sidewalk around the few cars at the start of the line of traffic, Olivia didn’t think she wanted to know what was going through his mind at all.
Chapter 5
The town of Jenkins was on fire. Paul saw smoke rising into the air long before they reached the town limits, but had thought maybe only a building or two might have been burning—that or maybe a particularly nasty car accident. But the closer they got to the town, the clearer the picture became. Jenkins was a very small town, barely bigger than the town of Brownstone which was already starting to feel like another world. There was a collection of five buildings on the right side of the road within the town proper, and they were all burning. One of them seemed to be creating a fire that raged more than the others. The shape and layout of the burning frame made Paul assume it had been a gas station.
The fire was so bad that little tongues of fire had crawled across the parking lots and pavement in front of the buildings, licking out into the road. Paul passed by it all without comment, though he heard Olivia let out a shaky breath beside him. Joyce sat between them, staring ahead and not saying a single word. The map and the books she’d been using to pass the time were sitting between her and Olivia, no longer of use. Joyce had said nothing since they took the Toyota about an hour ago, leaving the dead man and his melted chocolate behind.
The flames from the buildings had engulfed much of the vacant space behind the properties. Paul could see a tree line in the distance, beyond a few vacant lots of three other buildings that looked to have been abandoned for a long time. He figured it might take another day or so for the fire to reach the forest. Hopefully the paved lots between the flames and the wooded area would halt the spread of the fire—but Paul had seen enough housefires during his years as a cop and knew that fire tended to find its own way around such obstacles if given enough time to burn.
He was so focused on trying to determine the distance between the forest and the fire that he did not see the grotesque sight to his left until the truck was rolling past it—and that was fine with him. Bodies, at least a dozen or so, had been thrown into a pile and set on fire. The fire that had consumed the bodies had been put out at some point, leaving the charred remains visible for all to see. Screams burned into place along blistered jaws, flesh burned away down to the bone, the startling white of teeth among the darkened remains. The cop-oriented side of Paul’s brain tried to put the scene together, assuming someone in town had gone a little overboard in making sure those infected were unable to spread the virus.
Given the dead nature of the tiny town of Jenkins, it seemed that such a horrific solution had not worked.
“My God,” he heard Olivia say.
“What?” he asked, looking over to her and hoping she’d somehow missed it.
But then he saw what she was looking at: two other piles of burned bodies on her side of the road, one much larger than the other two. Paul grimaced, felt his stomach roll a bit, and then increased his speed. He did not let up off of the gas until they were out of Jenkins.
The three of them drove on in silence, and Paul knew that he had to snap out of his little depressed trance if they were going to continue working as a cohesive unit. He’d shot at people before and had been prepared to do much worse on that first day when New York had gone to hell. But whenever he tried to convince himself that he’d had to kill the man with the chocolate back in Somerdale, his mind brought forward images of those melted candy bars. Yes, the man might have been unhinged in some drastic way, but he had only been reaching for a candy bar, presumably to give to Joyce.
And for that, he’d been shot.
This is the world I live in now, he told himself as they sped closer to the West Virginia/Ohio state line. Anyone we don’t know that approaches us in any way needs to be seen as a threat first.
It was a grim thought, but he was certain it was the only approach that was going to get them to Minnesota. But thinking of ruined cities, burned bodies, and fires that were slowly creeping out to the forests, he was beginning to doubt they’d even get to Minnesota at all.
***
Sticking to the back roads likely added about two hours to their total trip time, but it had kept them away from any sort of massive traffic jams so far. They were able to cross over into Ohio just shy of 3:00 in the afternoon. They pulled over at a small mini mart in Batesville to get gas and to take another look at the route Olivia had mapped out.
As Paul pulled up alongside the pump, he saw right away that his chances of filling up the tank were dashed. There were no digital numbers on the pump face, no digital ads for specials inside the empty store to their left. Apparently, the power going out was more widespread now and Batesville had been affected. From the looks of the roads and even the mini-mart parking lot, the virus had already come through here, too. If that was the case, it was moving incredibly fast now and he no longer saw it as a wave bearing down on the country, but as sort of wild-roaming fungus that was quickly devouring everything in its path.
The empty roads in these smaller communities made him wonder if, with no place nearby to go for any sort of actual help or relief, they’d all elected to stay in their homes. He wondered how many were still alive in these rural homes, again bringing to mind the question of whether or not staying locked up in a building might keep someone safe from the virus. Based on the little evidence he’d seen in New York, he was leaning towards no, though he knew he could easily be wrong.
“No power,” he said dryly, looking through the window. “That means no gas. I can look around the place to see if there’s a backup generator that simply didn’t kick on but…it’s doubtful. Not a place like this.”
Olivia looked over to the dashboard behind the steering wheel. Together, they looked at the gas gauge, which showed them they had slightly over a quarter of a tank.
“What do we do when we run out?” Olivia asked. “Bikes again?”
“Not if we can help it. We’ll ride this until the emergency gas light comes on and then start hunting for another truck. It sounds morbid, but with the way this thing seems to be spreading, I don’t think finding available transportation is going to be an issue. The roads might be empty around here, but all these little houses…”
He let the comment hang in the air, not wanting to finish it. Instead, he did his best to derail their minds from the bad news of no power or gas. He opened his door and looked to Joyce with great intentionality.
“While we’ve stopped, why not get out and stretch our legs?” he asked, trying to sound cheerful but afraid it came out a little desperate.
Olivia opened the passenger side door and got out. Joyce watched her but it took a moment for her to move at all. She finally did, sliding over and hopping out on Olivia’s side. Paul did no
t know enough about kids to be certain, but he thought she was either very tired, or this entire ordeal was starting to catch up to her. He figured that even if such a young mind could filter out all of the hell she’d seen, trauma ended up presenting itself in some way. As far as Paul was concerned, it was a freaking miracle the kid hadn’t just shut down entirely yet.
The three of them stood between the truck and the mini mart, running through a very simple set of exercises led by Olivia. Paul felt rather silly doing lunges, jumping jacks, and running in place, but he noticed that Joyce was clearly not into it. He did his best to up his acting skills, acting as if the jumping jacks had winded him. He caught the slightest flicker of a smile on her face but it faded just as quickly as it had appeared.
When they were done, they had a quick snack of bottled waters, granola bars, and fruit cups. Paul was glad to have them but something about sucking down the last of the too-sweet peaches from his cup had him wondering just how much longer they’d get a fairly easy ride. They’d had an actual homecooked breakfast at Roosevelt’s cabin this morning, for goodness sake. So far, the dismal apocalyptic tropes he’d seen in so many movies had been avoided. No scrounging for food, no eating of rats. And while he knew those were extreme examples, he wondered just how long it would take the survivors within the country to get to that point. Weeks? Months?
He pushed it out of his mind as they got back into the truck and continued in a slightly northwestern direction. They’d made it about ten miles further down the mostly unobstructed road when Olivia asked him a question that caught him off guard. For a moment, he wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Did you lose anyone other than Roosevelt?” she asked. “Parents, friends, a wife?”
He felt himself wanting to weep because he had lost plenty of people if the virus was as effective as it seemed to be. On the other hand, his grandfather had been the biggest loss and what did that say about his family?
“Grandpa was the big one,” he said when he was confident he would not break down crying. “And I lost a lot of fellow cops. My partner, for starters. But in terms of family, my mom died when I was about twelve or thirteen and after that, I never really had much of a relationship with my father. I got married in my early twenties and got a divorce at thirty. My ex is living in California with a guy that I assume is giving her a much better life than I ever could.”
Saying it out loud hurt more than he thought and he had to actually fight to keep the tears from coming. Before he could focus on it all, he turned the direction of the conversation by saying: “How about you?”
“Friends, for sure,” she said right away. To Paul, it seemed as if she’d been waiting to talk about this, to get it all out and process through it. “But no parents…my mother left when I was young and my dad died early. My grandparents raised me, but they were both dead by the time I was twenty. No husband…just a long string of ex-boyfriends I somehow ran off one way or the other.” She let out a shaky sound that Paul thought was meant to be a laugh. “Sort of sad that I don’t have anyone to really grieve over, huh? There’s Jackie, the woman that helped me with Little Learners, but even she…”
Olivia stopped here and looked out of the window, turning her head away from Paul. Apparently, she wasn’t quite ready to go through all of that just yet. And Paul was absolutely fine with that. Still, the sorrowful silence that sat between them was too much for him to stand. And he could all but actually see it sinking into Joyce. It was the most prominent thing on his mind as he passed a sign telling them to take the next exit for Newark. It was an exit they had planned for, one that would take them around Columbus, which they both assumed would be gridlocked.
Just to stave off the silence, Paul tried the radio. The entire FM dial was either static or the blaring tones of an emergency broadcast. The AM dial was the same wave-like rolls of static and high squelching sounds. Paul was able to find two locations on the dial that came through somewhat clearly. One was clearly a man that had not slept in a while, reciting the names of people that had died. Paul quickly turned the dial and found the other clear station.
“…a useless exercise,” a woman’s voice was saying. “Everything we’re being told is that New York is nothing. A total loss. So why would you drop National Guardsmen right down into that wasteland?”
“Well, Robin,” said an elderly-sounding male voice, “I think being that it’s one of the largest cities in the country—one of the most important cities in the world—people just need to be sure. And while I also think it’s a suicide mission, I think we have to be as accurate as possible when presenting this news to the rest of the country. If we’re going to keep saying New York is a dead zone with such confidence, we damn well better mean it.”
“Well yes,” Robin replied. “But when you think about news we got just this morning out of Richmond, Virginia, it’s clear that New York is looking backwards. Whatever is happening to our country is still going on and this bomb in Richmond is proof. Maybe we start looking there and—”
“That’s all fine and good, but you can’t just give up on—”
Paul cut the radio off. He felt rather stupid. What the hell had he been expecting? Good news?
“Richmond?” Olivia asked. “Why Richmond? My God, this is…this is everywhere.”
Paul nodded grimly. He was hung up on the wording of what the woman named Robin had said. “…this bomb in Richmond.” She’d only mentioned a bomb…nothing about the sickness. Of course, that might be because the Blood Fire Virus was so prominent in the minds’ of the country that it was just assumed it was part of whatever had happened in Richmond. Still, Paul couldn’t help but wonder.
“Paul…”
Olivia was sitting up in her seat, looking forward. Her eyes grew wide as she pointed ahead. Paul, of course, had seen it, too. He’d noticed it at about the same time Olivia had, but his thoughts had taken his mind a bit longer to register it.
Up ahead, there was a line of vehicles stretched out across the road. Paul saw them first mainly because the bumpers and windshields were catching the early evening sunlight. They all looked to be trucks and jeeps, though he did see two sedans parked further back. Then he saw what was set up in front of the vehicles. There were iron sawhorses and water barrels positioned intricately in front of the vehicles.
Standing in front of all of this were eight figures dressed in what looked to Paul like Hazmat suits. All of them were standing statue-still, with semi-automatic rifles held out in front of them.
“You think it’s the army?” Olivia said.
Paul slowed the truck, not wanting to appear aggressive to those eight men and their weapons. The sad fact of the matter was that if he wanted to avoid them, it was too late. He could stop, back up and cut a U-turn in the road, but if these men wanted him to stop, they’d have no issue blowing out a tire or just killing all three of them outright. But as he looked closer, he noted that all of the trucks and jeeps were either beige colored or a very dark green. One of the trucks had a tent-like canopy on the back. And as if he needed any further proof, he could indeed see a US Army emblem on the lower edge of one of the truck’s backends.
“Yeah, I think it’s Army,” he said.
“That’s good, right? They could help us. They could make sure Joyce gets to her Dad.”
“I would think so,” Paul said. He did feel a sense of relief, but there was caution there, too. The Hazmat-style suits and the automatic rifles already out and at the ready did not help to ease his mind.
But as he drew closer to the group of men flanked across the road in front of the barricades, he watched as a ninth man came walking up from behind the barricade. He was also dressed in one of the protective suits, but he did not carry a weapon. This man stopped by one of the armed men and said something to him. By this time, Paul was forced to stop, the Toyota now no more than ten feet away from the barricade.
The ninth man gently clapped his peer on the shoulder and then strode cautiously towards the truck. Paul sl
owly rolled the window down and it felt almost like an invitation for danger. The man came to the open window and looked in, making sure to keep a safe distance despite the Hazmat suit.
“You sick?” the man asked. Through the protective shield of the suit’s headpiece, his eyes looked very suspicious. He was a middle-aged man and even through that screen, Paul could tell he was the sort of man that didn’t take anything lightly, much less a nation-wide killer virus.
“No, we’re not sick.”
“None of you?” the man asked skeptically.
“No. We’re all healthy.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“New York,” Paul said.
The man’s reaction was immediate. He took a step away from the truck and looked to the men in front of the barricade.
“You telling me the truth?” the man asked.
“Yes. We left New York four days ago. We’re trying our best to get to Minnesota to get this little girl to her father. Now, please…if you’re blocking the road, at least tell us who you are. I see that truck up there says Army.”
“That’s right. We’ve got a group here that was thrown together sort of last minute. Some Army, some Coast Guard, some National Guard. This is a checkpoint of sorts, making sure none of the infected get through. I’m Lieutenant Bryant, the lead on the whole thing.”
“Well, we aren’t sick,” Paul said. “So can we get through? Or, better yet, can you help us?”
The man seemed to consider this for a moment before stepping closer to the truck once again. “Forgive me,” the man said, “but we’ve been here for nearly an entire day and we’ve only seen five other healthy people come through. Lots of sick trying to make it through, but…”
“Where are the healthy people now?” Olivia asked, leaning towards him with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
