The Next Dawn

by Cooper, C. G.

  Fabian could only hope that Sandy didn’t know that there was no government, at least not here. He searched the old man’s face, and it didn’t take long to figure out that Sandy didn’t have a clue. And if he wanted to come along, he didn’t ask.

  “I can leave you with a case,” he said, “you know, of the baby formula? The rest, I’m sorry to say—I’ve got more babies to feed. Two of the women I’m meeting are pregnant.”

  You’re a big fat liar, Fabian Moon, he thought to himself. But once he started, it was impossible to stop.

  “Not sure whether we’re going to head to Miami or maybe the Keys. Figure the beaches on the Florida panhandle are beautiful.”

  Sandy nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off the baby. He wore an easy, contented smile and obviously cared deeply for the child. “Florida Keys are a long way. I wish you luck in getting there. And thank you for the baby food. I wish there was something I could give you in return.”

  Fabian was so relieved that he was quick to answer. “Happy to do a good deed.” And then much to his own surprise he added, “And whenever you get around to naming the kid, maybe think of Fabian. Or use my last name, Moon.”

  Sandy looked up at him. “Fabian Moon. I like that. I’ll think about it. Okay? I promise.”

  Fabian grinned, and he hoped that the smile didn’t look too fake. He felt like a plastic robot. A big, fat, lying plastic robot. You are a monster, Fabian Moon. You deserve the deepest pits of hell even though you gave a case of baby formula to this poor old guy. Only, the poor old guy didn’t really look like a poor old guy. He looked happy now, somehow resigned to his new place in the world. This strange vacant parking lot of a country was breeding all manner of strange sights, and to Fabian, whose thoughts predominantly drifted to the pessimist, seeing someone happy in this wrecked-out world was strange and out of place.

  For a second, and only for a second, he wondered how this man could be so happy. What was his secret? What had he done and experienced that had brought him to this point? But Fabian shook the thought away. He had to get on the road, had to get away to safety.

  There weren’t forty people waiting for him. There wasn’t even one. But there was a secure compound somewhere that he could hole up in until he figured things out. Somewhere he could squirrel away his supplies, count out his inventory and come to grips with what his place was in this strange, new world.

  He fetched the case of baby formula and felt so magnanimous that he even threw in a box of Snickers for the old man. “Last one I’ve got,” Fabian said, though that was a lie too.

  Sandy was effusive in his thanks. “I mean it, Fabian. If you ever need anything, keep going east. I’m sure if you look long and hard enough, you’ll be able to find me. You’ll always be welcome. And I’m thinking that I might name the child Moon. He does like to stare up at it.”

  The two men shook hands and Fabian climbed back into the cab. He waved the final goodbye to the old man and the baby. And he couldn’t help but smile at the fact that maybe, just maybe, that tiny miracle could be named after his own family.

  Moon. Not a bad name for a kid.

  Fabian drove off, once again mentally ticking off the items in his supply.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chuck Yarling

  They came to a house in the middle of a field that looked like it had been there for centuries. Dottie walked around the house, went to the back shed, and opened the door. There, on the ground, was what Chuck thought were the doors to a tornado shelter.

  Dottie pulled out some tools and picked the padlock—one of her many skills—and then pulled out a flashlight and stepped downstairs. The dank place was filled with farm equipment: rakes, shovels, old mower blades. Dottie walked past them all. She pushed past cobwebs and moved deeper into the gloom. Most times she was armed when she went into a new building. Now she left her firearm on her hip. She didn’t say a word as she walked through like she’d been here before. Chuck received confirmation moments later when Dottie peeled back a hinged corkboard, revealing a hidden door.

  This portal had a mounted lock. It took Dottie a solid ten minutes of finagling before it opened. When it did, a rush of cool air hit them both in the face. It reminded Chuck of the time he’d gone into the subterranean caves, just outside Chattanooga. The place smelled of prehistory, places where slithering dinosaurs had once roamed. They went down one, two, three, four sets of metal ladders, Chuck feeling more and more claustrophobic as they went. When they finally reached the bottom, Chuck shone his flashlight all around. Computers lined three of the four walls, though none had power. It looked like an underground palace for a Martian.

  The fourth wall had pegs with weapons placed neatly on them. Pistols, three to a hook. Rifles with barrels pointed skyward. Ammunition aplenty. Dottie ignored them all and tried certain switches. Chuck let her do whatever it is she had come here to do. If she wanted him to help, she would have asked. She didn’t. Switch after switch produced no results. Dottie instead tried the drawers. One after another, she opened and immediately closed them.

  Finally, when he could take it no longer, Chuck asked, “What are we looking for?”

  “I thought there’d be something here. Some clue.”

  “Clue of what?”

  It was the first time that Chuck had seen her even mildly unraveled. Like a treasure hunter who’d come to the end of the rainbow and not found the leprechaun’s pot of gold.

  “I thought they would have kept a record of what happened. Of where X-99 came from. They used to keep records like that in the past, but it’s been a long time. Now everything’s probably on these.”

  She kicked one of the computers. It answered her kick with a hollow whomp whomp.

  “Maybe we should head back. We’ve been at this a long time. What do you say I treat you to a Pompano fish fry? Maybe they’ve got some potatoes growing by now.”

  Dottie wasn’t listening. She was still rooting through cabinets. Chuck knew her well enough by now that the answer to the mysterious origin of X-99 wasn’t what she was looking for. It was something else, and it had everything to do with what this search was. She’d said she had to kill them before they came to kill the survivors. But was that what this was all about? Chuck was starting to think that there was more to the story but didn’t feel comfortable asking, not with where their relationship was headed. He didn’t want to sabotage that. Not now anyway and not here.

  “What can I do to help?” Chuck asked.

  “Nothing.” Dottie said, moving on to another set of drawers. “Why don’t you go back up top and I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Chuck was hurt that it sounded more like an order than a polite request.

  “Okay then, I’ll be topside.”

  Chuck listened to her rooting around as he climbed back up the ladders. He knew it was something she had to work through alone. He couldn’t hold her hand through all of it. Plus, she was a strong woman. She could take care of herself and oh, how wonderful that fresh air felt when it hit him. He did not want to climb back down that ladder. And he hoped that the end of their path did not mean climbing down into some subterranean complex to kill the bad guys. He had an unrealistic thought that maybe they’d fight it out in the open. Fields and prairies were fine for Chuck Yarling.

  He figured maybe a nice lunch would brighten her mood when she was finished, so he set about pulling the supplies from his pack, even laying out one of their sleeping bags as a makeshift picnic blanket. She’d like that. He went inside the ancient house to see if there was the odd supply he might use. The place had been stripped bare, so he went back out to his picnic, hoping that Dottie was finished. He was getting hungry himself, but right when he rounded the corner, he didn’t see Dottie.

  He saw four men in camouflage fatigues trained on the sleeping bag. He inhaled sharply. The weapons raised and pointed straight at him.

  And before he could say anything, one of them opened fire.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chu
ck Yarling

  At first, he felt nothing. Then, searing pain, like his insides were being turned out. And when he looked up, he realized he was looking up from the ground. He tried to rise and face his attackers before Dottie met the same fate, but his limbs didn’t seem to work. They flopped around, useless.

  “Are you alone?” one of them asked, nudging him with his rifle. Another searched him top to bottom. Chuck’s lips moved, but no sounds came out except for the wheezing.

  “You shot him in the lungs, you idiot,” the man was saying as he searched Chuck’s body.

  “Well then how are we supposed to know if he’s alone?”

  “Search the premises.”

  When they were sure that Chuck was no threat, they left one man while the other three searched. Chuck wanted to call out. He tried to. He had to save Dottie. He saw the darkness creeping in on both sides of his vision.

  Fight, stay alive...

  The pain and the pull of darkness was winning.

  But Chuck hadn’t gone this far to quit now. And somehow, impossibly, he flipped himself over onto his stomach and crawled toward the man with the gun.

  “Don’t move, you old geezer,” the man said. “I swear, I’ll shoot you in the head.”

  Chuck froze, having heard a sound coming from deep under the shed. Did he hear the vibrations with his ear pressed to the ground? Or was this some wish-fulfilling fantasy brought on by the closeness of death?

  But then he saw that his guard had heard it too. The man took a step closer to the shed, more curious than scared. Someone came running out of the shed, screaming for his companion to move.

  “They’re dead! We need to get the hell out of here.” The man standing above Chuck froze, completely undecided. Something flew out of the darkness. A shovel. Chuck watched it flip end over end, knocking the running man to the ground.

  His weapon came up and he fired blindly into the shed. If he pumped enough rounds in there, whatever had thrown the shovel would be dead. The man on the ground groaned as a thick line of blood ran from the back of his head. The firing stopped and the mercenary was quick about changing his magazine. Quick, but not quick enough. Three shots from the shed, and the weapon being reloading was dropped, its owner falling a second later.

  Dottie carefully walked out weapon raised.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Chuck.

  He couldn’t answer. He mouthed the words: “I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.”

  Dottie confirmed that the man was dead. She quickly hog-tied the hands and feet of the one she’d hit with the shovel, and then went to Chuck.

  “It’s okay, you’re going to be fine,” she said.

  But he knew he wasn’t fine. Not physically anyway. But Dottie was there with him. And as he succumbed to the darkness, he was glad that he had been the one who’d stepped out first.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Dottie Roth

  She did the best she could. Three rounds had hit Chuck, two in the lungs and one in the shoulder. Dottie had plenty of medical training, but this was extensive. There was bleeding she couldn’t get to, bleeding she couldn’t stop. She extracted rounds, sanitizing every opening.

  She applied pressure where she could and wrapped him in bandages, but he was still bleeding, and he was still unconscious. There was nothing she could do for him now. Hopefully, whatever had happened to all their bodies was now working in Chuck, mending him in a way that they might not ever understand.

  So she went to the one who was moaning six feet away and went to business. He was tough, tougher than some, but not as tough as others, and it took Dottie exactly thirteen and a half minutes to find out from where the four attackers had come.

  “Was there a man with you? Bald? Long, white beard...?”

  She could tell the man didn’t want to answer. So she applied a little more pressure and that did the trick.

  “Yeah. Yeah. He took over a few months ago.”

  “And what’s his name?”

  “Mr. Smith. We call him Mr. Smith.”

  “His real name, please?”

  “Geez. I don’t know lady. Who are you anyway?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The man’s name. What is the man’s name?”

  He shook his head as if that would help his situation.

  He had to know that he would probably die, but he’d probably signed on the dotted line knowing that anyway, so there was nothing to lose.

  “I think his name is Fran. I heard someone say that his name was Fran. I don’t know. What does it matter what his name is?”

  Dottie wasn’t going to tell this waste of space why she needed to know his name. The truth was she wanted to look into the bearded man’s eyes and whisper his name before she killed him.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  The blood-spitting man’s eyes went hard. “Doe, John Doe. Serial number 1234567...”

  Before he could get to eight, Dottie put a bullet in his head.

  Then she gathered what equipment she thought they needed, including the off-road SUV the four had come in on. She loaded Chuck in the back, strapped him in with the seatbelt and made sure he was as comfortable as he could get. Dottie didn’t like his color. There was nothing she could do.

  Or maybe there was. She could put off her search for this Fran—if that was his real name at all.

  She could take Chuck back to their new home on the Atlantic. Maybe the other survivors had found more medical equipment, but that was days away even with the SUV. Dottie tried to imagine what Chuck would tell her, what he would want her to do. He’d probably say something selfless like, “Leave me here. Do what you need to do.” But Dottie wasn’t about to leave him behind.

  After a moment to think, she went back to the shed, threw the two bodies from outside down the stairs, found some gasoline, and lit the whole place on fire. Who knew if X-99 was still shedding? No sense letting these four become viral bombs for unsuspecting passersby. She’d gotten lucky because they’d been careless. They thought Chuck was alone, but Dottie had still been downstairs searching for any clue about the whereabouts of the headquarters for the mercenary organization, or who was in charge, when she heard the footsteps on the ladder. Again, lucky for her, unlucky for them.

  Dottie checked Chuck one last time, made sure the belts were secure, consulted her collection of maps, and made a choice.

  She felt bad for lying to him about the nature of this mission. But if he found out she was looking for the mercenary HQ, he would no doubt want to be a part of the mission to take them out. She couldn’t allow that. This mission today was supposed to be without pitfalls and look what happened to him.

  It occurred to her then that she cared more about him than ever before. The vulnerability nearly choked her with fear. She quelled it in favor of this new mission: Save Chuck and save their group.

  Another day and another record stretch of road behind them, Chuck woke, and for thirty minutes he talked to her in a hoarse whisper, even took a few sips of water. She told him what her plan was as she kept driving, and he agreed. He always agreed, except when she tried to run off alone.

  Soon after his lucid moment, he went quiet. And when Dottie looked back, she saw there was fresh blood on his chest, and his breathing was even more ragged than before. If only she knew the limits of what X-99 had done to Chuck’s body, if only she had the ability to cut him open and see what was inside.

  If only...

  She drove on hoping beyond hope that Chuck’s body would do the work that she could not. She tried to channel her unease by driving as fast as she could, sometimes taking turns on two wheels. The miles flew by, but each minute ticked with the fleeting beat of Chuck’s heart.

  When they finally made it to the coast on the third day, Dottie got out of the car. After making sure the area was secure, she found a hiding spot for the SUV and quiet shade for she and Chuck to lie down. Her body and mind were well above what it had been in her prime, but three straight days of driving, stopping on
ly for more gas, was taking its toll. Besides, she could barely feel a pulse on Chuck’s neck.

  She no longer had the mental clarity to make the right decision, but her training made her do what she had to do: rest. And her faith in something bigger made her do what she knew she must: wait for Chuck to die, or wait for him to heal, and then deal with the consequences.

  She’d taken a huge gamble not going back to the rest of the survivors, only hoped that the location she’d chosen on the Outer Banks was secure. That maybe she could cut this Fran and his mercenaries off before they hit the island, and that’s what she prayed for as she fell asleep.

  Her mind still planning, images of the bearded man etched into her subconscious.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Fabian Moon

  He’d gone a little further south, just in case. Every time he looked at the map, he seemed to be pulled to Nags Head. He knew why: Iggy liked to brag about the summer he’d spent in Nags Head, swimming every day, partying all night, hooking up with girls next to fires under starlight. Thoughts of Iggy and his miracle summer pulled him east sooner than he’d planned, across the bridges of Croatan and Roanoke Sound, then a hard left on the old U.S. Route 158. Luckily, Nags Head seemed to have been untouched, like everybody had left on the same day. Fabian was careful to keep his weapon on hand as he scoured the streets for any survivors, but other than a stray dog and a few wild horses, there was no one.

  He found a quaint home tucked into a cul-de-sac, nothing ostentatious, nothing that would attract curious eyes. Fabian guessed correctly that if he chose the biggest place on the beach, that would have been the obvious choice. He didn’t go to the beach those first couple of days, taking his time to make sure he camouflaged his truck and trailer. There was plenty of fallen debris, whether from neglect or a passing storm. When he was done, there was no way anyone would know he was even there unless they somehow walked right into the house.