by Connor Mccoy
Tom sat cross-legged on the floor, his pants back on, but with a towel over his bare chest. Liam was seated close by, facing him, with Carla right next to Liam. Meanwhile, Conrad was seated on a folding chair, staring down at him. It was hard for Conrad to quell his annoyance, if not rising anger, at the fact that Sarah wasn’t with Tom. On the other hand, he hadn’t heard the man’s story yet. Perhaps Conrad simply couldn’t understand how Sarah had stuck with this man for so long. What had Tom offered her that Conrad could not? Money? A high roller lifestyle?
Tom began his story. “Sarah was me the morning the power went out. At first, we didn’t think anything of it. Power goes out sometimes. It happens. But then when our phones didn’t work, or anything with batteries, we got worried. It was the same story with the neighbors. One of them said something about an EMP pulse that blew up in the atmosphere. He said we probably had a nuclear war or something. We never could figure out what had happened. We tried getting word from the government, but it was the same story all around. The whole city was just shut down.”
Tom scratched his left arm. “We hunkered down. We thought the power would come back. But after a day had gone by, we heard through the neighbors that riots were starting. The police were beginning to buckle. Gunfights were happening in the worst parts of town. Rumors flew everywhere. We heard the mayor had fled the city. Grocery stores were looted.” He drew his legs closer to his body. “Then we knew that no help was coming. Nothing was going back to normal.”
“I remember when Carla and I realized that, too,” Liam said. “We were on the road, vacationing in Ever Pines, south of the city.”
“You two got damn lucky.” Tom chuckled. “I’d much rather have been in Ever Pines than Redmond. I’d have stayed there, that’s for sure.”
“I’m sure you’d have preferred Sarah with you, of course,” Conrad added.
Tom seemed confused for a moment, then nodded. “Right. Yeah, of course.” He sighed. “Anyway, Sarah’s an active woman, always has been, so we had a lot of bottled water in the pantry. We just had to watch how much we drank. We limited ourselves to a bottle a day, but we knew we couldn’t stay in town with everything going to Hell. We figured we’d make a break for one of the farms outside the city. Maybe we could get some work in exchange for whatever they’d feed us.”
A tremor ran through Tom’s body. “But we didn’t get more than a few blocks from the house. Some big guys showed up. They were armed. They wouldn’t let us go. I tried to talk us past, but they didn’t care. I ended up with a pistol smack to the head.” He bowed his head. “After I came to, Sarah was gone.”
Liam winced. Carla curled her arm around his arm and pulled him close. Conrad’s arm muscles tightened. A story like that very seldom had a happy ending. At best, the poor woman would be found alive. At worst, the woman would have been violated by her kidnappers. And worst of all, she’d have been murdered. Conrad realized it now might be hoping against hope that Sarah still was alive.
“That was two nights ago,” Tom said, “The guys who did it apparently have been looking around for women. That’s why they went after Sarah. I’ve been looking for food and water ever since. This morning, I made it to a small camp at a hardware store where some survivors had gathered. I found some soup there. Someone there told me about the women. They’re being kept alive.”
Liam clenched a fist and shook it. “Then Mom must still be alive!”
“I’m sure she is,” Tom said.
Conrad’s heart quickened a little. So, they had some hope after all. “Then we know what we have to do.” Conrad stood up. “In the morning, we’re going to head for this little camp of yours. Maybe we’ll find some more information on Sarah’s whereabouts.”
Tom swallowed. He seemed uneasy about pursuing this further. Or perhaps he simply was tired from the ordeal of the past few days. He pushed his worries aside. Tom was the first solid lead they had regarding Sarah’s fate since they had arrived. He was determined to see it through to the end.
Chapter Fourteen
Conrad pushed the door open, letting in the glow of the sun’s first light. He cast a wary look at their surroundings, looking for any signs they were being watched. But after a good minute he found no signs of activity from the nearby buildings.
“Well, boys and girls, looks like we’re ready to push off.” Conrad stepped out of the doorway, allowing Liam and Carla to each push a bicycle out into the open, followed by Tom.
“So, two bikes.” Tom chuckled. “How are we going to manage this?”
“Carla rides with Liam.” Conrad patted his backpack. “I’ve got two more pegs in here. I’ll just stick them on my bike. You can climb on them and ride with me. And if you’re too heavy, well, you can always run behind us.”
Conrad couldn’t hide a smile. Tom, however, grimaced. His shoe then sank into the wet grass. The whole area was sopping wet from last night’s rain. “We probably shouldn’t ride for a while,” Tom said as he pulled his shoe out.
The party approached the property’s fence. “Yeah, this area’s a little crowded with construction equipment. We’ll get clear and then hit the bikes,” Conrad said.
It was a short hike to a street clear of any construction vehicles. However, before they could cross onto the sidewalk, Conrad raised his arm. “Stop!” he called. “Up against the fence!”
The group quickly obeyed. They pressed up against a wooden fence while Conrad pointed up ahead.
Two men were shuffling across an intersection pushing wheelbarrows. Carla gasped. There were two bodies each per wheelbarrow. The men pushing them were hunched over, their movements slow.
“I thought the daytime was supposed to be quiet,” Liam said.
“This is the cleanup crew,” Tom replied. “They collect the corpses and wheel them to the end of the city.”
“And how do you know that?” Liam asked, “Who told you?”
Tom hesitated. “It’s something I heard at the camp,” he said, a bit unconvincingly.
Before Liam could say anything more, the second man suddenly collapsed and rolled onto his side. He lay still, not moving an inch.
“Shit,” Liam said.
“My God, what happened to him?” Carla asked.
“The fellow looked like he was on his last legs,” Conrad said.
“It happens,” Tom said. “These people can get worked to death.”
Liam turned to Tom. “Who is working these people to death? We’ve seen a group outside the city burning the bodies. You know who’s leading that?”
“Look, argue about this later.” Conrad started walking down the street. “We got to see if we can help this man.”
“Conrad, what are you doing?” Tom caught up with him. “You don’t know who could be out there. Weren’t you worried about us being spotted earlier?”
“There’s a man who’s probably dying out there. And if anyone tries to stop me from helping him, I’ll make sure he’s in worse shape than that man is by the time I’m through.” Conrad thought of the horrid aftermath of the clinic shooting. Back there, he had been too late to help anyone. Now that he had a chance to save a life, he vowed to do so.
Tom opened his mouth to object again, but Liam approached and then stood eye to eye with him. “You sure know a lot about what’s going on here. I think you should fill us in a little more, and soon.”
Conrad bent over the man. Looking at the poor soul was like a punch to the gut. His white hair dangled down to his shoulders. His face was marred by ugly sores, with a big one on his right cheek. He smelled terrible, not just because he had been outdoors. He reeked of body waste and illness.
Fortunately, Tom was wrong about anyone else being nearby. They hadn’t been approached at all in the past couple of minutes since they had approached the fallen individual. No one attacked them. This man was simply left behind.
Liam got close, but Conrad raised his hand. “Don’t touch him.” He looked up at a broken storefront window. A curtain hung loose. “Get
that for him. Drape that over up. You don’t want skin to skin contact if you can help it.”
Conrad then turned his attention to the man. “No offense, my friend, but you look like you’ve seen better days. We’ll get you off the street.”
Liam and Carla fetched the curtain and dragged it over to the man. Conrad helped pull it around the man’s shoulders. “Now, what’s your name?” Conrad asked.
“Phil…” The man coughed. It took great effort to get out his full name. “Phil Elliot.”
“I’m Conrad. This is…” He glanced at Liam and Carla and found himself unexpectedly saying, instead of ‘my son,’ “my family. Liam, my boy, and Carla, his lady.” He quickly nodded to Tom and said, “And this is Tom Richards. We’re all traveling together.”
Tom, Liam and Conrad hoisted Phil off the street and into a nearby pharmacy. Phil felt lighter than he seemed. Obviously, in a harsh world like this, big meals were now scarce. Perhaps it was a miracle that he had had enough to eat to survive for this long, but judging from his frail state he probably wouldn’t even last another day.
Conrad was not surprised to see the pharmacy mostly cleared out. There was no sign of food at all. Much of the medicine also had been grabbed. Only office supplies and a few tabloids remained. Conrad almost chuckled as they took Phil past the cashier’s desk. God knew what all these famous celebrities were doing right now in their darkened million-dollar mansions with no hope of regaining the electricity that powered their expensive lifestyles.
The past few weeks certainly have reordered our priorities, Conrad thought.
They seated Phil in a chair next to the pharmacist counter. The man’s eyes moved about more quickly. He was now more alert. “Thank you,” he said in a haggard whisper.
Carla found some paper cups in a plastic bag. Liam poured Phil some of their water. The man swallowed it while Conrad sat close to him. “We saw you clearing some of those bodies and getting left out there. What’s the story? We spotted some people burning bodies outside of town. Is there somebody directing all this?”
Tom twitched. Clearly somebody was a bit jittery at Conrad’s question.
“I don’t know who the top dog is,” Phil said. “I worked at a clothing store in the Lakeview Mall. Jack, he’s the owner. Gave me work when I needed it. Then the lights went out. He came to me, said he had food, but I had to join the work force. We’d do jobs for the top dog, the guy Jack answers to.” Phil turned to look directly at Conrad. “He runs this city.”
Tom looked away. Conrad registered it, then kept on talking. “He’s the guy doing body cleanup?”
“The government isn’t coming to help. The boss knows it. He wanted us to get the bodies out, get rid of the disease, so they can rule.” Phil coughed, loudly, long and sickingly. Conrad imagined the pain Phil’s insides were in.
Finally, Phil mustered the strength to talk again. “They don’t give a shit. They rounded up anybody who can walk, put them to work, and then when we keel over, we get dumped on the garbage pile.” Phil’s eyes grew heavy. “I-I’m at the end of my rope. I’’ve lasted for as long as I could, but I can’t go on much longer.”
“Don’t say that,” Carla said, “You’ve got hope now. We’re here.”
“I can barely feel my legs,” Phil said, “Can’t walk. You can’t do anything for me.”
“You let us decide that,” Conrad said, although in his gut he knew he had almost no options for Phil. The man didn’t seem to have the strength to ride on the back of Conrad’s bike, and Conrad wasn’t sure there was anyplace nearby that could treat him.
Phil looked up at Liam. “This lady, she your wife?”
Liam glanced at Carla, who smiled back with a bit of blush in her cheeks. “In my heart, she is,” he replied.
For the first time, Phil smiled, showing off his distressed, yellowish teeth. “I like that. Yeah, that was good.” He sat back, his eyes nearly closed. “Can’t tell you much else. You all, you should go.”
“There’s no food or water in here,” Conrad said, “and if you can’t move, it’s dooming you to death.”
Phil let out a slow breath. “It’s comfortable here. Dying here and not on the street, yeah, that’s good.”
Conrad’s further attempts got nowhere. Phil seemed half-asleep now. Conrad guessed that whatever illness that plagued his system already was carrying him to the grave. Either that, or Phil acknowledged to himself that he wasn’t going to die any more peacefully than this.
Finally, Conrad allowed his party to depart the pharmacy. Phil stopped acknowledging them altogether.
Conrad, Carla and Tom approached the front door in silence. Liam, however, stopped at a barren shelf. He gave it a mighty shove, tipping it over and onto the carpet, an action that voiced the feelings Conrad possessed, but didn’t show.
As they emerged into the open, Liam grumbled, “Okay, what now?”
Conrad turned to Tom. “We head to that camp of yours.” Then he took off his pack. “And you, sir, are riding with me.” He dug out another pair of bicycle pegs.
Conrad groaned. This wasn’t working out as well as he had hoped.
Liam pedaled with Carla on his back a short distance ahead. As much as Conrad tried to keep up, it was hard with Tom on his back. The manufacturer of this bike probably didn’t envision two grown men on it. Conrad was even beginning to get nervous. What if one of the bike tires sprung a leak? He had no air to pump his tire back up. As much as he had tried preparing for this journey, he couldn’t bring tools and parts for every problem he might encounter.
Fortunately, Tom spoke up just as Conrad’s apprehension hit a peak. “There!” He pointed to a small computer repair shop nestled between an office building and a pharmacy. “There’s the camp.”
“Thank God.” Conrad brought the bike to a stop. Liam parked his near a street lamp. All four of them met at the sidewalk near the shop’s front door.
“Kind of a funny place to pick as a refuge,” Conrad said as he eyed the awning. So far, he hadn’t spotted any signs of activity inside, not even through the big glass window. “It’s not like anybody has a working computer in this city to bring here.”
“Maybe they were playing it smart,” Carla said, “Who’d go looting a computer repair place?”
Wary, Conrad approached the front door. “Maybe, but this place seems a bit quiet.” Then he gave the door a good knock. “Hello! Don’t worry, we’re friendlies. If you like, send someone out to chat with us.”
But the shop remained quiet. Conrad glanced over to Tom. “Do they sleep in the morning? What’s the story?”
“No, they’d have somebody on watch.” Tom put his hand on the door handle and pulled. It opened easily. “And they usually lock the door.”
“Wait a sec.” Conrad quickly took the door from Tom. “You should step back. Carla, Liam, stay here.”
Conrad yanked the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside, his right hand close to the gun on his belt. His nostrils were immediately assaulted with a pungent odor that smelled like a mix of rotten food and bad body odor. If people had been holed up here, they must not have had a chance to bathe.
“Hello!” Conrad called out, “Is anyone here?”
He crept deeper into the shop, finding the interior not very big. It was likely stocked with used computer towers and monitors, but all of that had been shoved to the left wall, leaving the floor open. Blankets and mats covered the floor, but there was no one in them.
The door to the back storeroom was yawning open. Conrad slowly approached. If anyone was in there, they surely must have heard Conrad’s voice. They might be too scared to respond…or it could be an ambush.
Finally, he decided to duck down and approach the door close enough to look in. He discovered why nobody was responding to him. The camp’s residents were on the floor, lying still.
Conrad quickly examined the two victims, both grown men, one young, and one middle-aged. A shelf lay in disarray, as if someone had slammed into it. There
was likely a fight in here, but it didn’t last long. Both men were slumped over with dark red holes in their chests.
Chapter Fifteen
Tom looked at the two bodies with an ashen expression. “Jimmy Riggs.” He gestured to the middle-aged man. “He-he gave me something to eat just before I left. A bowl of chili beans. It wasn’t much but…” He winced.
Liam poked his head into the storeroom from inside the main shop. “It doesn’t make any sense. What did they do, rob them?”
Conrad felt like pushing down one of the shelves inside the storeroom, just as Liam had done in the pharmacy. Once again, he had encountered dead human beings who died for stupid and empty reasons. And just like the clinic where they had found the dead policemen, Conrad had happened upon a fresh shooting.
“How many people were here when you left?” Conrad asked Tom through clenched teeth.
“Five. Three women and these two men, but anybody could have left since then,” Tom replied, “People would come and go. Sometimes they’d get word of a bigger refugee gathering and go there.”
“Hey!” Carla called from the far end of the shop. She was holding the backdoor wide open. She was pointing to the knob on the door’s exterior. It was hanging loose, and part of the lock was dented. “Looks like this place was broken into from here.”
Conrad joined Carla and gazed out the door. The back of the computer shop opened into a small path alongside a metal chain-link fence, where a parking lot for more businesses lay on the other side. But none of that caught Conrad’s attention. It was the trail of red drops stretching along the concrete walkway.
Liam grasped his father’s arm. “Damn. Looks like the robbers didn’t get away without getting a taste of their own medicine.”
“Maybe.” Carla looked at Liam. “But what if it was someone who was trying to escape?”
