Extinction of Us (Book 2): As Civilization Dies

by North, Geoff

  He craned his head up and saw the dull grey light again. No more than a smudge, but it was there. It wasn’t his imagination. There was light ahead. Weak and small, the world was waiting for him up there. I’m going to find Fiona there, and Louie. Maybe after I’ve done what needs doing, I’ll toss their bodies down into this endless fucking hole.

  The last hundred yards were the hardest. There was no feeling left in Louie’s hands. They were numb, meaty hooks, clawing at the metal. He could see all of the rungs left remaining on their ascent in the growing light. Roy dragged himself up, counting them. It took his mind off the searing pain in his shoulders and back. What’s it going to be like up there? He asked himself after losing count. After I’m done with Fiona and Louie, what will I see and do next? Would they even still be alive? Had that disease wiped out everything? He had a sudden fear there would be no one left to murder with his bare hands. No one to show off his new mask to.

  No. Fiona’s still up there. She just sent her best bitch friend down a few hours ago. And Louie will still be kicking around somewhere. Guys like him always manage to survive.

  Roy gripped the next rung with his numb fingers and started the count again. One… Two… Three… Four. The light grew stronger.

  He ran out of rungs at one hundred and five. He had made it. The elevator cage he’d travelled down in ages ago was next to him, and the pale grey light that had guided him back up was now a slice of blinding horizontal white in front of it. All Roy had to do was reach a foot and a half over, climb the outer wall of the elevator cage, drop inside, and open the door leading into the Odessa facility. No more crawling like a rat and slithering like a worm.

  Grace called up to him. “Why have you stopped? Get into the cage.”

  “Can’t do it… exhausted.”

  She tried climbing up further, pushing past his leg, and forcing him to the right. “Move over, I can do it. I’ll help you once I’m inside.”

  Grace was squeezing by Roy’s left shoulder when he became aware of what she had planned. He placed a hand on top of her head and pushed her back down. “Nice try. You’d just leave me here, wouldn’t you? You’d leave me clinging to this fucking ladder and seal up that door for good.”

  Roy positioned his aching body sideways and reached for the cage. He fell face first into it, but both hands grabbed on. He moaned and groaned and dragged himself up another six feet, finally flopping his big body over the top and thumping down to the elevator floor. The quarter inch sliver of light streaming in along the bottom edge of exterior door called to him.

  Grace landed on his legs half a minute later. She was back on her feet first, swinging the elevator cage door back and reaching for the outer door. Roy rolled onto his stomach and clutched at her ankle. “Don’t lock me in here… don’t leave me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Grace answered. “Fiona’s locked it from the other side.”

  Roy wanted to weep. He wanted to curl up into a big ball and cry his heart out. He rose up to his feet instead, and charged at the door. This second padlock was no match for his rage. The clasp snapped open, and the big man fell through.

  Grace moved out slowly from the elevator after Roy, like an animal suddenly released from its cage. She feared Fiona would appear at any moment and lock her back inside. There was no one else in the spacious area with them. There was the first aid station directly ahead, and three industrial fire extinguishers set into the wall next to them. The big bulletin board miners had once used to sign in and out of underground shifts was still nailed up beside the extinguishers.

  She crept along the wall, and peered down the next hallway towards the washrooms and showers. One of the doors further down was propped open at an odd angle. Pieces of wood were scattered on the floor. It was where Grace had unsuccessfully tried to reverse roles with her keeper.

  Roy was grunting behind her. “Think I broke something in my shoulder.”

  His voice sounded distant. Grace turned and saw the hideous gasmask had been pulled back over his face. She raised a single finger to her lips. “No talking,” she whispered. “Not a word.” She could picture him sneering beneath the mask, but he kept quiet.

  Roy followed her down the hallway. He stopped at the splintered remains of the two-by-six and picked up an especially sharp eighteen inch piece. He might end up killing me with that, Grace thought, watching him over shoulder. Worry about that later. Concentrate on Fiona. They moved on.

  Grace went to the garage workshop. The ATV she had been forced to push back from the road at gunpoint was right where she’d left it, sitting in a puddle of melted snow on concrete stained black with oil. “She knows we’re back top-side.”

  “No she doesn’t. We would’ve seen her by now.”

  “She knows.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Grace was starting to think this was a bad idea. Perhaps having a mile of rock between her and Fiona wasn’t such a bad thing. Roy was a monster, but he was slow and not all that smart. She could handle him for the time being. Fiona was a completely different kind of crazy—with guns. She wouldn’t give Grace a second chance. “Grab a weapon,” she whispered.

  Roy tossed the wood splinter aside and jogged to one of the automotive work tables at the far end of the garage. He rooted around for a bit and settled for a pipe wrench from the bottom of a red tool box. It was longer than his forearm with a heavy hook jaw end. If he got in close enough, Grace was certain Roy could take someone’s head off with a single swing. He smacked the end into his meaty palm. “Show me where she’s hiding… I’ll take it from there.”

  The Odessa mining facility was gigantic. Grace didn’t know to where to even begin searching. “We won’t have to find her. She knows where we are. I say we wait right here and let her come to us.” She snatched a box cutter from the work table and pushed two inches of blade up through the end.

  Roy’s gas mask-covered head tilted to one side. “That’ll just piss her off.”

  Grace saw for the first time the mask’s filter had broken off. “You know that mask doesn’t work anymore, right?”

  “It works fine for me.”

  He looked like a nightmare from the furthest reaches of hell, and that’s exactly where he’d come from. The leather head-covering was coated in dust and spots of dried blood. One of the eye pieces was cracked, spider-webbing out from the center. His tattered clothes were colorless grey. There were sections along his chest and stomach where the cloth had worn away altogether and it was now just rough, brown scabs. Looking at him like this in the full light had brought the nightmare to life. Grace shuddered, and prayed it would have the same effect on Fiona.

  They stood on either side of the door they’d come through and waited. After five minutes, Roy started pacing about the garage. “Get back here,” Grace urged. “Fiona will shoot you dead as soon as she comes through the door.”

  “No she won’t. She’s a fucking chicken… too scared to take me on again face to face now that I’m ready for her.”

  “She wasn’t scared of you the first time.”

  Roy went to Grace and smacked her hard across the face. “Fuck this. Fuck waiting. I’m hungry. Where do you keep the food?”

  Grace wiped blood away from her lip. She touched one of her teeth with the tip of her tongue. It wobbled back and forth. “Staff kitchen and break room are on the second floor.”

  He grabbed on to the back of her neck and shoved her into the hallway. “Show me.”

  Grace turned right, away from the showers and locker rooms, toward a set of stairs. “There isn’t much left… even with the rationing.”

  “Is there more than canned oysters and artichokes?” He followed her up the steps, the heavy end of his wrench pressed between her shoulder blades.

  “There’s a six-foot freezer with some meat left inside. Wieners mostly.”

  Roy’s mouth watered. “Pig clits and eyelids… Any buns? We could have hotdogs.”

  “No buns, no bread. Just the wien
ers. Everything else is in a can.”

  She pushed a door open and they stepped into an area with long rectangular tables and cheap, plastic chairs. It could have seated thirty or forty employees at one time, Roy guessed. Only three chairs looked like they had been sat in recently. The others were all covered with dust.

  Roy jogged into the adjoining kitchen and found the freezer. He lifted the lid and discovered it empty. “Where are the fucking wieners?”

  “There were only a few packages left. Maybe Fiona ate them all.”

  Roy slammed the lid back down. “Or maybe your cock-sucking little boyfriend took them on his way out.” He started rifling through the cupboards. There were dozens of tins stacked neatly within the shelves. “Sardines… flaked fucking tuna… lima beans… chick peas… fuck me.” He took the pipe wrench and started swinging. Cupboard doors exploded, cans tore open, spraying their contents throughout the room. Roy continued to smash until the entire space had been emptied out and thoroughly destroyed. He finally dropped the wrench to the floor and staggered back against a sink, straining for breath through his mask. “I’ll never eat food from a goddamn can again. Why would a mining facility stock so much crap?”

  “None of that came from here. Fiona and I found it all on a farm outside of Rokerton. The guy that lived there was a survivalist, he stockpiled all kinds of awful crap. It’s where Fiona got all her guns.”

  “He just let you take his stuff? Doesn’t sound like much of a survivalist to me.”

  “The bugs had gotten to him before us. Nothing left of him or his family but rotting shells.”

  Roy took a dented can of mussels that had landed in the sink basin and hurled it at Grace’s face. She ducked, and it lodged halfway into the plaster wall behind her. “Is this all the asshole ate?”

  “There was more… we ate all the canned fruit first. Peaches were Louie’s favorite.”

  “Peaches were Louie’s favorite,” he imitated her voice. “You say really stupid things, don’t you? You have no idea in that stupid head of yours how much you piss me off.” He started towards her, kicking tins out of his path. “Why the fuck would you tell me Louie ate all the peaches knowing I was starving to death a mile underground?”

  Grace backed into the wall and threatened him with her box-cutter. Louie smacked it out of her hand. “He was eating peaches and hotdogs while I was chewing on my own scabs.” His hand was at her throat. “Louie was fucking you and probably screwing Fiona, too. Do you know what I was doing while you guys were having threesomes?” He had lifted Grace from the floor. “I was crawling like a worm and crying into the dirt.” He began shaking her back and forth, thumping her skull into the wall.

  Fiona stepped into the kitchen quietly with a handgun aimed at his back. Grace tried to choke out a warning, but the hand was crushing her throat. She couldn’t even breathe. Fiona lowered the gun a little and shot Roy in the leg. He toppled down, screaming, into a greasy layer of canned water and fish juice. Fiona stepped through the mess and pointed the gun down into his face. “Nice mask. You know it’s broken, right?”

  “I’m…. going to… kill you,” Roy rasped.

  “No, Piggy, you’re not.” She went down onto one knee and placed the hand gun’s barrel end up into his throat. “No more games. I should’ve done this when we first found you, squirming and pissing in your underwear. What was it like down below, Piggy? Did you enjoy your months in total blackness?”

  “I’m going to beat you into pulp… Gonna break every bone in your body.”

  Fiona went to squeeze the trigger, but a searing pain shot through her calf. She looked down and saw Grace slicing into her leg with a box cutter. “You bitch!”

  Roy batted the barrel away and punched Fiona in the face. The woman fell to the slippery floor on her side. The gun slid six feet from her hand. She crawled for it with stars dancing before her eyes. Even at such close range and with little room to manoeuver, Roy’s strength was deadly. He had broken her jaw and taken out most of the teeth on the right side of her face. Fiona’s ears were buzzing, distorting sounds around her. She could hear the awful gasps of Roy sucking air in through the broken gasmask. He was getting closer, climbing up on top of her. Piggy’s moving for the gun, too. He got one lucky hit in, it will be his last.

  Grace was still stabbing into her calf. Fiona kicked her in the forehead and shot forward. Her fingers were inches from the handle of the gun.

  Something red and grey streaked down, crushing her hand into the floor. He wasn’t going for the gun, she thought dully as the big wrench end lifted and came back down. It flattened three of her still wiggling fingers. Roy hit her so hard the third time in the back of the wrist, three quarters of her hand separated away from her arm. Industrial-strength tile cracked beneath her with every vicious blow. He worked his way up the arm, smashing and crushing. Fiona’s shattered face was resting on the floor. She couldn’t make her brain move her body anymore. She watched as her arm was transformed into jelly. Grace had at least stopped stabbing her leg. She could hear the woman screaming from far away.

  “Stop it! Stop it! She’s suffered enough already!”

  “Barely… started.” Roy heaved for breath through the mask and brought the bloodied wrench end down again in the middle of Fiona’s bicep. Bone snapped, tile cracked. He lifted the pipe wrench over his head in both hands, preparing to bring it down into her shoulder. “I’m gonna… chop her… arm off… in one swing.”

  Grace went at Fiona with the box cutter and sliced her throat open. Blood gushed out, and the life faded from her dark brown eyes.

  “No!” Roy lowered the tool and pulled the mask down over his chest. He was crying. “You had no right to do that. Her life was mine.”

  Grace started backing away on her rear end. Her hand found the gun and she pointed it at his chest. The barrel end was shaking back and forth. “Keep back. I’ll shoot.”

  Roy stood there for a few more moments trying to contain his rage and disappointment. His breathing came back under control and he placed the mask back over his head. It was now smeared with fresh, dripping blood. “Go right ahead. Fill me with fucking bullets. I’ll still get one good hit in… right down the middle of your backstabbing head.”

  He lunged at her, and Grace fired. The bullet missed, ricocheted off a stainless steel refrigerator. Roy fell to his knees anyway, the bullet Fiona had put into his leg was slowing him down. Grace turned and scrambled away on her hands and knees. She was up on her feet seconds later, running through the staff dining room towards the stairs.

  “Come back here! I’m not finished with you!” Roy’s yells echoed through the stair well. Grace tripped on the final two steps and spilled out onto the ground floor. She could see his monstrous shadow dancing on the wall above her. His wrench clunked down the concrete steps. He was using it as a cane to support his leg. “Stay where you are, Amazing Grace.” Clank. “I won’t be as hard on you as I was with Fiona.” Clank. “I’ll be quick about it.” Clank. “I won’t even do anything to you after you’re dead.” Clank.

  Grace ran into the garage and started instinctively for the ATV. It won’t work. She went to the big overhead door and started pulling down on the chain. The door started to rise slowly. Roy limped into the garage and spotted her. “Don’t leave me,” he pleaded. “We’re a team.”

  Grace released the chain after the bottom of the door had risen twelve inches from the floor. She tucked the gun down the front of her pants, scooped up the parka and ski pants Fiona had left by the dead ATV, and rolled out through the opening.

  She could hear Roy screaming as she ran through the snow-covered parking lot towards the main road. Grace went across it, through the ditch and out into the field where Louie had fled. She stopped running after a quarter of a mile, and dressed into the warm clothes.

  Grace sat there for another ten minutes attempting to absorb all she’d been through in the last twelve hours. The man she thought she’d fallen in love with had left her. Roy had tried to kil
l her more than once. Fiona would’ve done the same given the chance. She looked back at the black hulking form of Odessa in the settling fog of late afternoon.

  I got away from all of them… me, the weakest one. I was trapped a mile underground and left to die, but I made it back out.

  Me.

  Grace stood again and turned her back on the mining facility for the last time. She could feel the gun handle jabbing into her belly as she trudged out into the snow. She was armed, and she was warm. All the terrible things the world would throw at her on the outside weren’t important at the moment.

  Grace was free.

  She found Louie’s partially blown-in tracks a few minutes later.

  Chapter 10

  “I want to go back,” Amanda said for the third time. She was travelling in the Dodge, sitting in the backseat with Nicholas. Her arms were crossed defiantly over her chest, and her bottom lip was stuck out. “That baby’s gonna die if we don’t go back.”

  Hayden leaned on the horn to alert the vehicle fifty yards ahead he was pulling over. He put the car into park and turned to face the girl. “We’re twenty miles from our next stop. Tarantan is more than forty miles behind us. We’re not going back there.”

  The girl returned his disapproving look with as much defiance as she could muster. “Then why have you stopped?”

  The truck had pulled up next to them. Hayden began to lower the window. “If you can’t keep quiet in here, then you’ll have to deal with Caitlan again.”

  “What’s the problem?” The woman called out from behind the truck’s steering wheel.

  Hayden hiked a thumb behind him. “Amanda. Babies. She wants to go back.”

  Caitlan rolled her eyes. “You too, hey?”

  The window behind her slid down and Angela’s pale face appeared. “Amanda’s right. We can’t leave that family back there. They’re living in a school library.”

  A minute later both vehicles were headed back the way they’d come.

  It was late afternoon, and the day was as bright and warm as it was going to get. Seven below zero, Hayden thought. That wouldn’t be bad if it was January or February, but it was May, or at least he thought it was. He still kept track of the days in each week, but beyond that, what was the point? The seasons no longer behaved like they once did. Hiding up north for the last eleven months in the frigid cold had served its purpose. They had survived, but now Hayden wanted to find warmth once again. He wanted to go south, and backtracking to dead towns wouldn’t get them there any faster.