The Plague: Dead Solstice

by M. Scott Burgess

  “I hear you’re sleeping on the roof,” Jadon said as he strolled up to Kai and spit chew on the asphalt.

  Kai stopped and looked at the small camping tent positioned on top of the general store. “Seemed as good a spot as any,” Kai answered. “I think we should get a lookout set up on the top of the building near the freeway. Maybe tomorrow or the day after we can check out the cabins on the other side of the highway.”

  “So, you’re intent on staying then?” Jadon asked with caution.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Kai shot back.

  “You don’t have kids, Kai.”

  “And you do?”

  “I do. Two of the most adorable girls you could ever meet. Rachel has the kindest heart I have ever witnessed. She’s smart too- Much smarter than I ever was. She wants to a be a veterinarian when she grows up. My other daughter, Rebecca… Well, she just wants to be exactly like her older sister.” Jadon paused and looked away. He frowned to hold back tears. “I don’t talk about them too much, because… Well, it hurts. I have no idea where they are right now or whether they’re safe. I don’t even know if they are alive. The worry I have for them is overwhelming. And I’m coming to the realization that I may have that worry until the moment I meet my savior.

  “Kai, you have no idea the sins I would commit just to see them again- just to spend an hour with them. But even more than that, I’d just to know that they’re okay. Now, that’s how the Wills are feeling and that’s how Irene is feeling. I know you’re doing this because you want to help them. But as much as they’d want to see their children again, they’d rather know their children are safe.”

  Kai cut in. “And you think those men…”

  Jadon interrupted, “Don’t think that. Think about what if those men meant what they said. Think about that. Hell, those kids might end up having better lives at the end of all this. They might have a real chance at surviving this thing.” Kai looked at Jadon accusingly for a moment. Jadon continued, “I don’t expect you to change your mind now, Kai. Just sleep on it, okay?” Jadon turned to leave but stopped to say, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Kai breathed in deeply. The advice annoyed him. He felt as if everyone was acting like he had never lost anyone. That he didn’t understand what they were going through. He was doing this for them, for Christ’s sake! He got them this far, they just needed to continue to trust him.

  Kai yanked his remaining gear off the truck and tried to think of a better way to convey his ideas to them- Maybe a compromise. Maybe he should take them further down the hill to a more comfortable position. There had to be another safe place nearby.

  Kai’s eyes came across Dante and stopped. Dante was standing nearby, deathly silent. His eyes seemed to glow in what was left of the dying light.

  “You eavesdropping?” Kai asked as his eyes narrowed on Dante.

  “No,” Dante answered calmly. “Not on purpose.”

  Kai rolled his tongue against the inside of his cheek and tried to cool his temper. “Tell me,” Kai paused for a moment before asking. “What would you do if you were me?”

  “I’d leave.” Kai chuckled at the short answer. But Dante went on, “I’d abandon the others. I’d save myself. It’s easier to survive alone. No one to worry about keeping alive. No one to worry about killing me because I made a decision they didn’t like… And with the people among us, well…” Dante locked eyes with Kai for a moment before spreading his lips into a smile. “Of course, you and I both know better than to do all that. Right? There’s supposed to be safety in numbers.”

  Kai lightly nodded, unsure if Dante was making a joke. The only safe response he could think of was, “Yeah…”

  Dante gazed around at their surroundings and then leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Between us two. I’d keep an eye on Dean.”

  The warning was missed on Kai. “Why? He might get tired of sleeping and usurp me as the leader of these people? Well, he can have it. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Dante tried to clarify. “I don’t trust him anymore- since he was bitten. He’s not the same. There’s a darkness inside him now.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s the way he’s been looking at us. The way he acts now. There’s something inside him that he is trying to hold back. And I don’t intend on being around when he can’t hold it back any longer.”

  10

  Dante’s drive home was short. He only hit one red light before passing under the 73 and entering what he called to himself “The Island.” It was a mile-wide gem shaped portion of Costa Mesa, California that was barricaded on all sides by the 405, 55 and 73 freeways. Dante always felt comfortable there; it was nice to have options if he needed to abandon his home in a hurry. He could hop on any one of the three freeways which offered him five escape routes. Five miles south was Newport Harbor. A mile east was John Wayne Airport. And even closer still was his storage unit. Dante liked that – to be so close to his storage unit. It was overtly comforting.

  Dante pulled up to his house, having to stop and wait for the pair neighborhood kids who were using the lip of his driveway as a ramp for their Remote-Control buggy to jump off. They were there every day and waiting for them to get out of the way had become a ritual Dante loathed. He wanted so much to smash that toy under the tire of his car.

  But now wasn’t the time.

  Dante needed to keep his emotions tethered.

  And so, when the kids and their toy vacated the driveway, Dante pulled up to his garage and calmly climbed out of his car. He looked at the kids and smiled. They stared back at him with wide, awkward eyes.

  They were a pair of creepy little idiots.

  Without wasting any more time on them, Dante abruptly pivoted and went to his front door. He unlocked the deadbolt and entered his small three-bedroom house.

  Dante’s home was hot and humid. Just how he liked it. He took a deep refreshing breath then passed through the dining room and into the kitchen. He jerked open his refrigerator and scanned inside. It was barren except for a slab of meat, a half carton of old eggs and a pitcher of filtered water; Dante wasn’t a picky drinker, but he always thought Orange County’s tap water tasted like shit. The filter did little to improve the taste but the little it did was one of the rare luxuries Dante dared to enjoy.

  Dante poured himself a tall glass of filtered water and gulped it down. He set the glass down and prepared to pour a second glass but then stopped himself. That would be too much for him given what he had to do. Dante set the pitcher back in the refrigerator and then turned the burners on his stove to high, allowing two circles of flame to rage upward.

  Next, Dante walked into his bedroom. This room, along with all the rooms in the house, was a perfectly matched collection of out of date furniture and colors. They were all mirrored images of an Ikea catalog Dante picked out more than two decades prior. They were bought as sets and never touched again with anything but a duster. The only exception to this was his closet, that he used occasionally to change clothes. But other than that, he preferred to not spend much time on the ground floor.

  Dante went to a bookshelf overflowing with worn-out paperbacks. They were all the “classics,” but he hadn’t read a single one. They were all stories for the dimwitted. Without wasting time, Dante grabbed a hold on one end of the bookshelf and tugged it open. The warm air coming from the hole in the drywall washed over his face. He entered the hole, climbing into a small space between walls and descended the narrow stairs that led to his basement. It felt strange, not closing the bookshelf behind him this time. It felt horrifically wrong- in many ways it was.

  Dante had lived for many years in this house. He dug his basement out and put in the false wall himself. He felt safe here. But now, he had to leave. He had to find a new place to hide- a new place to set up shop and start all over again.

  Dante stopped at the massive steel door at the foot of the stairs. He dialed in the com
bination and pushed the door open. It was dark and dirty in his room- stuffy and claustrophobic. It was his safe room. In one corner was a thin mattress that lay on the floor. It was little more than a glorified pillow covered with a heated blanket. In another corner was a freezer full of food and filtered water. Next to the freezer was a wall heater, continually pumping out hot air. In the other corner was a bucket – his toilet.

  He could stay down in his room for years. He paused for a moment and contemplated it but knew it was foolhardy. What would he do after? He would be alone and exposed- far too easy for them to find. If he was going to stay hidden, it couldn’t be here.

  After taking a moment to enjoy the comfort of his room once more, Dante went to the far wall, to where a safe sat. He dialed in a combination on a keypad. It was 24 characters long – the longest he could program into the lock. The lock pinged as a green light sparked on. Dante pulled the door open and found the lead sphere. His lead sphere. It was heavy and smooth. A flawless masterpiece.

  Dante pulled the lead sphere from the safe and examined it for a moment. He caressed it, feeling every part of its surface with his fingertips. Nothing in the world brought him more joy than holding that lead sphere in his hand. It was everything to him. Everything he had done, had been for the sphere.

  After a moment, Dante finally looked to his wristwatch. Then, hesitantly, he dropped the sphere into a large pocket that he sowed into his coat for this very item. His jacket sagged lopsided from the weight. He adjusted the jacket the best he could, but decided it was something he’d just have to get used to.

  Dante went to the wall heater and pulled open the access to the pilot light. He climbed down on his hands and knees and blew it out. Then he turned to his side and with the heel of his shoe kicked the pipe. He kicked at it again and again until the pipe broke loose and he could hear the natural gas pouring into his safe room.

  Very calmly, Dante climbed back up to his feet and climbed up out from the basement. He went straight to the front door.

  When the natural gas climbed its way up to his kitchen, it would vaporize the house. There wouldn’t be anything left of it. And more importantly, it would make every trace of him disappear. It was that simple. It was a plan Dante had kept in the back of his head for years, hoping he’d never have to enact. Doing so, gave him an unpleasant feeling.

  Dante exited the house and locked the deadbolt. He stopped and looked at the pair of neighborhood kids again as they jumped their remote-control buggy of his curb. He didn’t utter a word to them as he got back into his car and started the engine.

  11

  The morning light blasted through a window directly onto Blair’s face, waking her from a dream. She yawned and stretched her arms as she sat up, trying to remember her dream. But already its details were being lost, like leaf piles being scattered by the wind. A foot to her side, Ava rolled over as she too tried to hide her face from the sun or else fall also fall victim to waking.

  Ava and Blair had won the only bed in the small single bedroom cabin by daring Quaid and Hector to share the bed. It would be a waste to let a queen size bed go to only one person, Ava argued. And, being that the two men didn’t like each other much to begin with, they both resigned to a spot in the living room. Ava made manipulating men look effortless – Blair liked something about that, though she couldn’t exactly decide what.

  Blair yawned again and thought about going back to sleep, but after surveying the window again, she determined that its lack of curtains would make sleep an impossibility. Blair quietly pulled herself out of bed and grabbed her dirty pair of jeans off the ground. While she didn’t like the idea of fighting hordes of zombies in her underwear, she hated the idea of sleeping in her pants more. Somehow, they would always get hiked up and tangled around her legs if she slept in them. From the nightstand, Blair pulled her pair of binoculars over her head and then bunched up her Bowie knife and along with her bow and quiver of arrows in her arms before sneaking out into the living room.

  It was much darker in here. Blair smirked. It was a funny thing, she thought, no one ever takes curtains into consideration when choosing where to sleep. And it would seem Quaid and Hector got the better deal, if it wasn’t for Dean’s snoring, which sounded like a sinking motorboat.

  Dean had slung himself across an old, coffee-stained couch when the group arrived the evening before, and as far as Blair could tell, he hadn’t shifted from his original position. Hector slept peacefully in an antique recliner on the other side of the room. Quaid was still rolling to get comfortable on the remaining pocket of air still trapped inside a blowup mattress. Blair stepped over a corner of the blowup mattress as she crept across the room as quietly as she could. When she reached the door, she slowly pulled back the deadbolt and then exited out into the chilled morning air.

  A layer of glassy dew was painted across the mountainside and Blair could see a faint cloud of her own breath as it came out of her mouth. It made her wish she had a sweater to put on. But Blair knew the rising sun would warm her soon enough. Plus, it was nice to finally have an alternative to the inferno they passed through to get up here.

  “Coffee?” Jadon called out to her from a bench on the other side of the road.

  “Yeah. That sounds nice,” Blair answered. She walked over to him and dumped her weapons on the bench as he went through all the actions required to fill a Styrofoam cup and then present it to her. She smiled and took a sip. The coffee was watery and stale, but it was warm. “It’s good,” Blair said.

  “Now, you don’t have to start lying to me,” Jadon shot back with a grin.

  The smile was contagious. “Okay, it’s pretty bad,” Blair conceded, “but it’s the best I’ve had since- you know.” Blair looked away and took another sip- her eyes were attracted to an unimpressive stack of food stores sitting at the mouth of the dump truck. “That’s not everything, is it?”

  “Yeah, I swear it looked a bit larger when we were all crammed in with it. You ask me, we’re gonna have to find our food somewhere else if we actually end up staying here.”

  After a short silence, Blair said, “I was thinking of taking the dirt bike out to scout out the other hill. It looks like there’s a lot of cabins on that side of the highway.”

  “My bet is they’ve already been looted by the Mammoth boys.”

  “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look.”

  “I don’t disagree, but you sure you want to go do that by yourself?”

  Blair took a big chug to finish the coffee and then went to work strapping her Bowie knife to her leg. “I just want to scout it out first.”

  Jadon raised his eyebrows and shot Blair a look of concern. “Don’t bullshit me.”

  “I’m not going to go inside, I’m just going to have a look to see if there’s anything promising. Plus, I’ll have the speed of the dirt bike, those things don’t move fast enough to catch me.”

  “Bullets do.”

  Blair frowned, realizing that somehow this conversation had turned into asking for permission. “I won’t get shot- I’m going.”

  “No stopping ya, huh?” Jadon took a sip of his coffee and then swirled what was left around in his cup. “Fine, but just make me this deal: if you see anything, don’t fool around. Just head back, okay?”

  “Deal,” Blair said as she put the bow and quiver over her shoulder.

  “I’m talking anything,” Jadon reiterated. “People, trouble, one single damn walking corpse. Come back here, okay?”

  “Stop worrying so much. I’ll be fine,” Blair shot back with a cocky smile. And with that, not wanting to hear another word of protest, Blair grabbed her bow, spun around on her heels and marched off toward the dirt bike. When she got there, she found Dante hovering nearby, looking it over as though he didn’t quite understand what to do with it. He was pale; his skin had the faintest hint of a bluish aura. “You looking for a way out of Dodge?” Blair asked in a booming voice.

  Dante’s head spun to look at her, his eyes wide. �
��No,” he answered slowly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You sure about that?” Blair prodded. Dante gave a solemn nod, then silently turned and walked toward Jadon. Blair couldn’t help but smirk. What a weirdo, she thought.

  Blair kicked the bike off its kickstand then guided it down the road to the edge of the highway. She hoped this would be far enough away to avoid waking everyone up with the motor. Blair jumped on the starter a few times until the bike roared to life and then slowly rode it across the highway toward the houses on the other side. When she reached the hill, she put more gas into it to give her a boost upward. There were a dozen cabins and absolutely no sign of movement. Blair would have considered it untapped resources if it weren’t for the fact that every door was ajar- a clear message that there had been looting. Still, these houses were removed from the road and could be lived in. Hell, with a little organization, Blair thought they might be able to fortify the hill.

  As Blair continued up the hill, the houses grew bigger and bigger until she came to a single mansion overlooking the valley. It was a beautiful brown and green Adirondack, with a wrap-around deck on the second level. Strung from the deck was a large banner with the words “SAFE HOUSE. FOOD. WATER.” painted on it, ignoring all regard for calligraphy.

  Blair stopped and looked at the Adirondack for a while. This was the only house with a closed door. She stared at every window, searching for any sign of movement. But there was nothing. Blair choked the dirt bike’s motor and sat there in silence, listening. But other than the light mountain breeze blowing through the trees and the occasional birdsong, there was nothing. Ten minutes went by. Then twenty. After half an hour, Blair booted the kickstand down and got off the bike.

  She pulled the bow off of her shoulder and took an arrow out. But after stringing it and looking at the interior of the house, she instead hung the bow from the handlebars of her bike, next to the quiver. In close quarters, she thought a bow might not be the best choice. Instead, she pulled out her Bowie knife and held it blade down at her side. Jadon’s request that she stay out of trouble quickly passed through her thoughts, but her curiosity muffled it to silence.