by Barry Napier
Katherine tried the door and found it unlocked. She was expecting the putrid smell of death to come rolling out to greet her, but instead there was only the light vanilla scent coming from one of those little air conditioning vent clip-on air fresheners. When she stepped up into the driver’s side area, she saw what she was hoping for right away—a cell phone, sitting right there in the center console. It was an iPhone and when she touched it, she was presented with a lock screen bearing the smiling face of the dead woman in the passenger seat. Something about this stung Katherine’s heart deeply and she had to suppress tears.
She wasn’t too upset that she was locked out of the phone. From the lock screen, she was able to see more than enough. The little icons at the top right of the screen told her that cell service and data were all dead. She thought of trying to crank the car; the battery was still good, according to the panel lights and the overhead dome flickering on when she’d opened the door. She really just wanted to see if she could find a radio station that might still be working, maybe an AM station somewhere farther south that would tell her what was going on in the world.
But to do that, she’d have to move the man in the passenger seat. The idea of moving a dead body did not bother her, not really, but there was something about the idea that seemed disrespectful to her. With one final look back to the useless cellphone, she shrugged and tried her last resort. She slid her finger across the screen and when she got the keypad, she instead pressed the little red button at the bottom that asked if she wanted to make an emergency call. She answered in the affirmative and listened for about ten seconds before she realized that was not going to be an option, either. All that came out of the phone was silence. The line was simply not connecting.
Katherine stepped down out of the SUV and closed the door like she was closing the lid of a coffin. She then instantly looked ahead, her eyes again finding those breaks in the line of traffic further ahead. She started walking, feeling how surreal the entire moment was but not allowing it to get into her head too much. She did not like how this entire mess had brought on memories of her mother. She hadn’t spent more than ten seconds thinking of her mother in several months because she knew it only caused her undue stress and regret. But as Katherine walked along the side of the road, feeling like she might very well be the last person on the planet, that’s exactly where her mind went—to her mother.
Her mother, Emma Fowler, had died in a hospital bed at the age of fifty-one. Before that, Emma had spent four years in what had been called a Therapy Center but, in Katherine’s rather blunt opinion, had really been nothing more than a glamorized psych ward. For no reason whatsoever, Emma Fowler had one day started telling Katherine and her father about the tall men living in the closets of their house. She also told them about how sometimes those tall men went out lurking about the neighborhood, dressed in gray suits. She referred to them as vampires and demons and said they were older than the earth itself. Later, MRIs showed nothing wrong. The doctors prescribed medicines that had worked for a while but after about six months, there was further talk about the demonic vampires living in their closet. She had names for them at that point—names Katherine had blissfully forgotten over the course of her life. More MRIs and tests revealed nothing, and as her condition worsened, she was put into the therapy center. She died three years later of a brain aneurysm and an autopsy did in fact reveal a tumor that had been well hidden. It had been very small but was to blame for the hallucinations and deteriorating mental state of her mother.
Selfishly, Katherine’s fear was that it might be genetic. And whenever she felt panic slipping into something else, she always worried about it. She thought of words like schizophrenia and visual hallucinations. Given all of that and the state of absolute panic and fear she was currently facing, yes…she supposed it was natural that her thoughts kept venturing back to her mother.
The upside of this, she supposed, was that it seemed to make her trek go by faster than she realized. Somehow, she had come to the portion of road she had seen with sporadic breaks in traffic. She was currently standing on the right-hand side of the road. A car had gone spinning off of the pavement, its tire marks on the road making it clear that it had at least tried to stop. It had struck two other vehicles in its course off of the road—a small-bodied pickup truck and a sports bike. The bike was the sort of brightly colored motorcycle that Luis had almost always referred to as a crotch rocket. It was a bright red Kawasaki that had been downed and pushed across the pavement. She noted that the driver seemed to be about fifteen feet farther up the road, collapsed beside another car. The driver’s helmet had been cracked and his arm was pinned beneath him in a way that indicated it had been badly broken.
Katherine looked from the bike, then further up the road. There were still cars here and there, but it was not nearly as congested as she had seen so far. She figured that if she could manage to get the bike back up and if it wasn’t too badly damaged, she’d be able to reach Kettle’s address in about three or four hours. That was assuming she’d be able to stay on the primary roads.
“Sorry about this,” Katherine said to the dead driver sprawled on the road ahead of her. She went to the bike and pulled it up off the road. It didn’t appear to be too bad off. The back end was slightly dented from where the car had hit it, the seat ripped along that side, and the headlight had been busted.
It had been forever since Katherine had ridden a motorcycle, so there was a small bit of dread that wormed its way through her as she threw her leg over the seat. She was relieved to find that it started up without a problem. With the engine running, purring powerfully beneath her, she checked the gas gauge and found that there was a little less than half a tank.
When she popped it into first gear, there was a lurch before it nearly stalled out. She fought for balance, damn near spilled the thing, but then managed to right it. She had to turn sharply to keep from hitting the very same car the driver’s body had struck but when she passed the car and had a good deal of open space in front of her, she managed to straighten it out. She drove slowly for a bit, weaving around the cars she came to, but she slowly got the hang of it.
After about a quarter of a mile, she began to realize that maybe the bike had been damaged worse than she thought. The steering was a bit stubborn; the bike wanted to pull hard to the right, meaning that she had to overcompensate for it to keep it on a straight path. But even then, after about three or four miles, she’d gotten used to this as well. And the farther she got away from Richmond, the fewer cars she came to. Before long, she was comfortable opening the bike up to forty miles per hour. With the wind blowing in her hair and the devastation of Richmond behind her, it almost felt like she was passing through the membrane of a very bad dream. She supposed it may have actually helped to lift her spirits if it weren’t for the smell of death on that otherwise fragrant summer breeze.
***
Katherine was amazed at just how smooth and seamless her drive across the virus-ravaged stretch of US 360 had been. Once, just outside of the little city of Farmville, she’d been forced to take the bike to the shoulder of the road to get around a rather large accident involving an eighteen-wheeler, but other than that it had been mostly smooth sailing.
And then she came to Appomattox. It was a town she knew the name of only because she’d lived in Virginia all of her life and Appomattox had played a very large role in bringing the Civil War to an end. As she passed through the outskirts of the little town by way of US 360, she saw where there had been some sort of attempted stand-off. She assumed she was missing the worst of it being that she was only along the edges of the city, but what she saw was bad enough.
The four lane was completely blocked by what looked like a miniature war zone. In the midst of it all, she saw two military trucks. One had been turned over on its side and they’d both been set on fire. One of them was still burning, dark grey smoke drifting up into the sky. The battle scene also included four other vehicles, all civilian-owned
from the looks of it. One of them was a large pickup truck, its back wheels now completely missing. Another was an old white van that looked to have been nearly blown in half. It, too, continued to burn from whatever had destroyed it. Seeing the smoke from it all reminded Katherine of just how recently the virus had likely come through. It made her think of literally seeing a man apparently coming down with it just outside of Richmond as she had worked to help his family and subsequently run away from them.
And then, of course, there were the bodies. She saw at least twenty in the mess around the wrecked vehicles. A few were in military attire, but most were civilians. There was a scattering of guns here and there as well. She saw at least three civilians armed with military-style rifles. Among the bodies, she also spotted one male that looked to be no older than sixteen. He had a run-of-the-mill handgun clutched in his dead right hand and the lower part of his body had been burned to a crisp.
Seeing an opportunity, Katherine pulled the Kawasaki into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant to the right of the destruction. She knew it was likely an overreaction to the scene itself, but she drew her Glock from its holster as soon as her feet were on the ground. She slowly made her way over to the wreckage, angling over toward the military truck that was in better shape. As she stepped on the road, she saw right away that she had likely underestimated the body count. She saw three additional bodies huddled close to the badly damaged military truck. One of them had been so badly burned that it looked like nothing more than a heap of cinder.
Letting out a little shudder of disgust, Katherine stepped around the burned bodies and made her way to the truck. The passenger side was partially opened already and she was relieved to see that there were no bodies inside. The seat was partially charred and there were six bullet holes in the windshield. She smelled something burning from the other truck, the scent of burning oil and spilled radiator fluid along with something that was almost electric in nature. She was suddenly very uneasy about having stepped into the center of this massacre site so she moved quickly. She knew very little about military procedures and wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for; she just figured she’d know it if she saw it.
There was very little clutter in the front of the truck. She saw something in the back that gave her a brief surge of hope, but it was quickly dashed. There was an older-looking gas mask, the sort she’d seen in countless war-time movies, but it had been broken and partially shattered. With a grunt of frustration, she nearly exited the truck but then spotted a black shape on the floorboards, kicked almost all the way to the front of the truck. It looked like nothing more than a standard walkie talkie at first but when she grabbed it, she saw that it was much more complex and, as it turned out, exactly what she’d been hoping to find. The earpiece connected to it by a thin cord erased any doubt.
Having never seen a satellite phone of this kind, it took her a moment to understand that what she originally thought was a strange handle was in fact, the antennae. She raised it up and extended it. There were four color-coded buttons near the top, below a small digital screen. One was red, two were black, and one was green. She tried green first and got nothing. She then tried red and the phone buzzed slightly in her hand. A little red flicker in the top of the digital screen appeared, followed by the words: Searching for Satellite.
Her heart thrummed with excitement, a feeling that intensified when the wording changed to Registering with network. She stood there for thirty seconds, staring at those three words on the screen. She impatiently got out of the truck and hurried out of the wreckage, going back to her bike. She looked ahead, farther up US 360. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have another forty-five minutes or so before she arrived in Hoop Spring. And even when she got there, she wasn’t sure where to even start looking for George Kettle’s address.
Giving the satellite phone a disapproving glance, she spotted a Stop-N-Gas two lots over from the fast food restaurant. She walked over to it, eyeing the sat phone and silently praying that the Registering with network message would switch over to Ready or something similar. When she reached the Stop-N-Gas, she had brief flashbacks to her stop by the gas station back in Brandermill. Had that really happened yesterday?
It was dizzying to accept it, but it was true. It clung to her mind like paint as she stepped into the gas station. As she hurried to the little area in front of the store with impulse buy items like magazines, candy bars, and chips, she spotted what she needed behind the counter; it seemed like an odd place to keep maps, but then again…who really even used maps these days? She stepped around the counter, finding it just as empty as the rest of the store. Somehow, no one had bothered coming into the gas station for cover during the battle that had been waged less than fifty yards away.
She searched the maps, found one for the immediate area that even made a point to feature a special highlighted addition for the Blue Ridge Parkway, and took it. She opened it on the counter and scanned for Hoop Spring. It was in very small print, almost an afterthought. Apparently it was buried somewhere in the forests and foothills of the mountains about ten miles before the Blue Ridge Parkway entrance. Katherine tore off the section she needed and walked back out into the store. Before making her exit she reached out and grabbed a small bag of Doritos, as if on instinct. She carried it in the same hand she held the satellite phone. She glanced to the display and saw that it had gone blank again.
Once more, she tried powering it up. Within a few seconds, she got the Searching for Satellite message, quickly followed by Registering with network. Just like last time, the phone seemed to be thinking very hard about this. She sat on her bike for several minutes, only to have the phone stall out on her, again. She wondered what would happen if she did manage to actually get it to operate. She wasn’t sure how it worked and, honestly, had no idea who she’d call. She figured there must be some sort of Emergency feature on it and, to be honest, she felt better having a satellite phone that she did not know how to operate than not having one at all.
After the phone failed to connect to the network the third time, Katherine gave up. After one more handful of Doritos, she drank some water from the rations she’d taken from Brandermill. She then packed it all up in her borrowed bag and slung it over her shoulders once again. She cranked the bike to life and gave one last wary glance over to the ruined trucks and dead bodies.
She started forward again, going around the little warzone and headed toward the mountains. She figured that within another hour or so, she’d be at George Kettle’s place. He’d either be there or he wouldn’t be and as Katherine guided the bike down the highway, she was starting to realize she almost hoped he wouldn’t be there. If he was there, that opened a whole other field of questions—questions she would not be able to answer or do anything about, given the state of things.
Of course, if she got there and Kettle was nowhere to be found, that presented its own sort of problem. With no Kettle and no further instructions, she came to a dead end. She’d be left with nothing more than the mystery of what had happened to America over the past few days and only empty highways and dead bodies to offer answers. Still, she drove on because in her estimation, terrible and hopeless answers were better than having none at all.
Chapter 24
The blonde woman with blood on her face and in her hair had fallen partially on a dead man in a polo shirt and khaki pants. The rest of her—from the shoulders up—had landed on a well-used suitcase. When Ray reached her, he feared that she was dead at first but then saw the natural rise and fall of her chest. He guessed her to be in her mid-thirties. She was quite pretty, even passed out and with her forehead and cheek streaked with blood.
“Hello?” Ray asked. “Hello, ma’am? You okay?”
“Mmm…nmm.”
Her eyes were opened but fluttering as if she had just woken up and desperately wanted to go back to sleep.
“Do you need to just stay there for a minute?” Ray asked.
“Mmm..no. Just…hol
d on.”
She took in a deep breath and then let out a single, desperate-sounding sob. A little shiver seemed to pass through her and then she slowly sat up. When she saw that her legs had fallen on top of the dead man in the polo and khakis, she scooted back on the floor only to collide with yet another dead body. This one was an overweight woman that had fallen awkwardly on a luggage trolly. The woman let out a little scream and then used the trolly to finally get to her feet.
It seemed a bit too much for Ray. He wondered if the woman had lost her mind in the wake of everything that had happened. It would be his luck, he supposed, that the only other person to survive this horror had lost her mind in the process.
“You’re alive, right?” the woman asked. Her voice was soft and made it sound like she was very close to tears. “I’m not just having a delusion?”
“I’m real. And alive, yes.” Then, though it seemed like a silly formality in the face of so many dead bodies, he added: “I’m Ray Rutger.” He almost extended his hand for a shake but figured that might be a little over the top.
“Courtney Payne,” she said. “Have you seen anyone else? Anyone else alive, I mean?”
“No. How did you…I mean…are you sick?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “When things got really bad…when the shooting and screaming started…I went into one of the restrooms. I locked myself in one of the stalls and I heard so many women come in. All of them sick, all of them throwing up. It was…all over the floor. To get out, I nearly…” She stopped and shook her head. “No. I’m not sick. I did throw up because of some of the stuff I saw, but I am not sick. You?”
