Jacob's Odyssey (The Berne Project Book 1) (4 page)

It was dark by the time I got home. My arms were so sore from lifting myself over fences, I could barely move them. My shin throbbed with pain and I was a mess. But I welcomed the soreness and the pain. I was even grateful for it. For they provided me with a distraction I desperately needed.

It was the glaring light that woke me. It filtered through the sheer drapes covering the balcony's sliding glass door and penetrated the tissue of my eyelids. Its unrelenting brightness nagged at me and caused me to stir slightly. And even though I stubbornly refused to open my eyes, my senses began to awaken.

The first thing I noticed was the rancid smell of vomit. I had a fleeting memory of hovering above the toilet, retching violently and hugging the bowl. I couldn't be sure if the smell was from the memory or from something I was smelling now. My confusion faded as I became aware of a throbbing in my head. I observed its rhythm and could feel it contract and release with each pulsing of blood through my brain. I stayed perfectly still, afraid the slightest movement might cause my head to split in two.

My mouth and throat were bone dry. I was severely dehydrated from the excess of alcohol from the previous night. I tried licking my lips but there was no moisture in my mouth. I wanted to fade back into the comfort of darkness, but my awareness continued to sharpen and there didn't seem to be anything I could do to slow it down. I suddenly became aware of a host of sensations throughout my body. There was a dull aching in my shoulders and upper arms along with a biting pain in my shin from where the glass shard had struck me.

I wondered how long I had slept, but I still didn't want to open my eyes to check the mantle clock. I nestled my eyes deep into the crook of my arm, seeking a safe haven from the light. But the smell and the aches and the pain wouldn't go away. Over the years I had rarely experienced a hangover. Three to four beers were usually the maximum I would allow myself to drink and I rarely exceeded my self-imposed limit. But last night I simply couldn't stop myself, nor did I want to. My usual cautiousness with alcohol stemmed from my mother's free-wheeling ways during our childhood. She was a happy drunk, laughing and stumbling about. But she never drank alone and never took into consideration how Alex and I might be impacted by her partying.

The moment I thought about my mother, thoughts and images of Alex and the events of the previous day began to proliferate through my mind. But none of it seemed real. Not Alex being infected and turning into whatever it was he turned into, not the Glock, not the mob of infected trying to get at me, not the pudgy man headbutting the window. None of it. It felt more like a bad dream than anything, but more often than not dreams fade away and this memory lingered vividly, was almost palpable. Then there were my injuries. They were certainly real. But real or not, I didn't want to think about what had happened yesterday. I knew I had to do something to get myself away from thinking about it. And that's when I finally decided to open my eyes.

It took me a few moments to orient myself. I had fallen asleep on the couch which was now much further away from the television than I remembered it being. It took me a few moments to remember what I'd done. After arriving home the previous evening, I had barricaded the door to my second floor apartment. The door was the only accessible point of entry, and despite the achiness I felt throughout my body, I moved half the furniture in my condo apartment, including the couch, between the front door and its opposite wall which was about ten feet away. It was a snug fit that made it virtually impossible to open the door without first moving some of the furniture out of the way. I remembered how constructing the barricade had made me feel somewhat secure and had eased my feelings of vulnerability. I was convinced then as well as now that there was no way the infected could get into my second floor condo apartment.

I knew I had to get up and get moving, so I coaxed myself into sitting up. I was careful not to move my head too fast. But moving my leg actually turned out to be the most painful part of sitting up. I wondered if the shard of glass had actually cracked my shin bone. The acrid smell of vomit still stung my nostrils and I noticed a large smear of dried up food particles on the thigh area of my jeans. I needed to clean myself up, get a shower and a change of clothes. I also needed to drink plenty of water and take some Ibuprofen, maybe 800 milligrams. I needed to get my head clear, but I also needed to take it slowly.

The television was still on, though I had muted it at some point during the night. There was a helicopter camera shot of a massive traffic jam on the freeway. At the back end, a few cars were peeling off, making u-turns and headed in the wrong direction on the freeway. A number of people scurried about between the rows of cars. It didn't make any sense. Why would there be a traffic jam on a Saturday morning. For a moment I questioned whether it really was Saturday but dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come up. The helicopter's camera panned up the rows of cars to the source of the jam. Just past a freeway exit, a large group of police cars and military vehicles had barricaded the freeway. Apparently, the barricade had been placed just past the exit to allow the cars to funnel off the freeway via the exit. But the freeway exit was bottled up, littered with wrecked cars, and there were people climbing all over the cars trying to get in. It was difficult to see exactly what was going on as the helicopter camera wasn't very steady and the helicopter seemed to be some distance away. Then I realized the people vandalizing and ransacking the cars weren't really people at all. They were the infected and they were everywhere. I grabbed the remote off the coffee table and got up from the couch and limped cautiously over to the television, doing my best not to put any pressure on my injured left leg.

The camera was now focused on the exit and the helicopter was moving quickly toward it. The scene came into better focus and it was horrific. The infected were battering the windows with their fists and heads. They had broken the windows and windshields of several cars and had dragged a number of people out of their cars and were violently ripping them apart. Some people struggled to get away, but there were too many infected. The camera panned to the streets adjacent to the exit and showed scattered groups of infected still coming, staggering up the exit ramp.

The camera suddenly focused on a woman exiting her car with a small child in tow. She was maybe in her late twenties and wore a colorful summer dress. The little girl must have been about five. The woman gathered her daughter up in her arms and hugged her to her chest and headed toward the embankment. One of the infected who was hammering away at a car window with his head spotted her and moved to head her off. He was tall with an elongated gray face, wearing a cowboy shirt and jeans and boots. The helicopter moved in closer and the downdraft from the rotor blades whipped the woman's dress tightly against her legs and wildly tousled her hair. The infected cowboy stumbled about in the downdraft which allowed the woman to reach the embankment first. She half slid and half ran down the sharply angled embankment, holding her daughter tightly against her. When the gray cowboy reached the embankment, he took a single step over the embankment and tumbled head first down the slope, rolling over again and again.

When the woman reached the bottom of the embankment, she began running parallel to the freeway and well away from the nearest street. The young girl cleaved firmly to her mother's chest with her arms and legs tightly wrapped around her mother's slender torso. The infected cowboy slowly gathered himself up, one of his arms now permanently twisted at an awkward angle and continued his pursuit. The chopper veered around and headed back to the exit ramp and focused on the chaos there, but I'd had enough.

I turned the television off and hobbled to the bathroom to take a shower, and I did everything I could to nurse my hangover. Before my shower, I took plenty of Ibuprofen and downed it with a large glass of water. I sat in the shower so I wouldn't put too much pressure on my leg and doused it generously with warm water. The evening before I'd iced it while drinking my first couple of beers. It was a nasty looking welt and the dark purple bruising was easily the diameter of a baseball. My shoulders and upper arms still ached, but it wasn't too bad. My headache had dissipated, but I felt tired and foggy headed. As I sat in the tub with the warm water cascading over me, I thought about Alex, and couldn't get away from the sight and sound of the shots I'd fired at my brother. The scene lingered in my mind like a bad dream that wouldn't go away. And though I clenched my jaw and did my best to fight against it, I began to sob in fits and starts.

*****

I spent much of the afternoon picking up and cleaning the apartment. I needed to keep busy. I washed the dishes by hand for a change and meticulously cleaned the kitchen and dining room. I picked up the empty beer cans off the dining room table—I counted nine of them—and remembered how I had poured the last three beers in the fridge down the kitchen sink. I could recall feeling woozy and a bit nauseous at the time and didn't trust myself to stay away from the last few Bud Lights.

In the evening, with the help of the internet, I managed to piece together exactly what had happened on the freeways that day. Road blocks had been set up overnight by what was left of the police, the highway patrol, and the military. The idea to quarantine larger cities and try to contain the virus within their boundaries had come from Homeland Security. It quickly turned into a disaster. Here in Salt Lake City, they blocked freeway entrances all throughout the valley with road-closed signs, and they set up blockades made up of police and highway patrol cars and military vehicles on the freeways. Any road that provided a way out of the valley had been blockaded, canyons included. But that didn't stop people from trying to leave.

Tens of thousands of people attempted to leave the valley that morning, and they weren't about to let a few signs stop them. They quickly took down the road-closed signs and headed out onto the freeway, and everyone quickly followed their lead, desperate to get away from the growing hordes of infected. That's when the chaos really began. The authorities had anticipated the possibility and had set their roadblocks up just past the last freeway exits out of the valley. The idea was to channel the traffic onto the last freeway exits and force people to stay in the valley and head back to their homes over surface streets. But not everyone wanted to get off on the exits. A number of them approached the blockades and challenged the officers and servicemen. A few warning shots were fired. Then traffic at the exits quickly became congested and frustrated motorists began honking their horns. It was only a matter of minutes before the first groups of infected showed up, drawn by the noise and the commotion. They climbed onto the cars that were trying to exit the freeway, causing several accidents. Everyone panicked and the infected just kept coming. The military and police fired on the infected, but before long they too were overwhelmed.

Just five days into the crisis, a number of media outlets were still operating and several helicopters were filming the disaster across the valley as it happened. Not long after they'd arrived at the exits, the infected spilled onto the freeway and began going after people in their cars. There were thousands of cars backed up from the blockades with nowhere to go. At first, most people stayed in their cars thinking they'd be safe while a few left their vehicles and made a run for it. But as it became obvious that the infected could eventually find a way to get into the cars, more and more people chose to run. While a few people managed to get away unscathed, most who ran were bitten or mauled or eaten, and those that fled that day with their wounds spawned a new generation of infected. The feeding frenzy had gone on all day, but I stayed away from the television.

As I read various accounts of what had happened that day, I couldn't help but wonder about my fifth grade students from the past year. I wondered how many of them might have been caught out on the freeways that day. School had been out for a little over a month and some of their faces were still fresh in my mind. The thought of them being infected plagued my mind, and I did everything I could to let those thoughts fade away.

After turning off my laptop, another disturbing thought crossed my mind. What would have happened if Alex hadn't gotten infected and we'd followed through on my plan to head to the cabin? We would have been trapped out on the freeway like all the others, battling for our lives. And since it had been my idea to essentially cut and run, it would have been my fault if we'd gotten trapped out there with little chance of survival. But it didn't matter. Alex was already dead, and you can't kill someone twice.

It was a perfect day for it, and the storm was just beginning in earnest. The wind had been blowing all afternoon—wild, chaotic gusts that whipped the slender birch trees in every which direction. The silver birch trees grew out of the banks of the Cottonwood Creek that separated the condos, and the close-knit density of their leaves obscured the view of the buildings across the creek. I was watching the storm through the angled slats of the wooden blinds in my darkened living room. The rain had just begun to fall, heavy drops that fell at odd angles, blown wildly by the wind that blew in erratic gusts out of the south. Several drops had already slapped against the window pane, and as I watched the blustery rain, I couldn't help but wonder if the storm frightened them. I was hoping it did. I would need every advantage I could get.

Every now and then a flash of sheet lightning would light up the sky, and I knew it wouldn't be long before the driving rain started. The storm hadn't actually been a part of my plan. Call it what you will—luck, providence, serendipity, a good break. But the storm was giving me the impetus I needed to get my rear end out the door. I knew the chaos and noise from the storm would give me some cover, and I knew there would be no better time than now to get out of the apartment. I just needed to get myself to move. And then I told myself that as soon as the rain began in earnest, I'd leave. I was just waiting for the right moment.

Even though it was just mid-evening, it was already getting dark outside from the gathering storm clouds. Thick roiling clouds rolled across the sky. They grew darker as the minutes passed, ranging from dark pewter to gunmetal black. I knew I'd have to leave any minute. Over the past several days, I'd been torn over the prospect of leaving the safety of my condo apartment. I'd felt relatively safe ever since the evening I barricaded my door. But my kitchen cupboards and the refrigerator were all but empty.

Before it went off the air, the last local television station still broadcasting had encouraged people to shutter up their homes so the infected couldn't see them or be aware that anyone might be home. I followed their advice and kept the lights turned off, and I draped blankets over the windows in the living room and the sliding glass door to the balcony, creating a blackout effect. The infected would do anything to get into the homes of people who still had a pulse. If they caught a glimpse of anyone or heard any kind of non-ambient sound, they'd frantically start headbutting windows and occasionally ramming themselves into doors. Once they knew you were there, it was only a matter of time before they would get inside. So people shuttered up their homes, closing all their windows, shutters, drapes, curtains, and shades. If a home was shuttered up, you knew someone was almost certainly there. And it was that little tidbit of logic that served as an inspiration for my plan, because the opposite also had to be true. If a home had lights on or the curtains or drapes or shades weren't closed, that meant it was unlikely anyone was still there. And I could see a few examples across the creek. Even though I couldn't clearly see the apartments themselves, when it got dark, I could make out a faint amber glow filtering through the trees. I counted six apartments with lights. Lights that never went out.

Those that had been infected in the first few days had likely gone to the hospitals for help and they wouldn't have known to shutter up their homes. The recommendation for shuttering up people's homes didn't come until about the sixth or seventh day. I knew there had to be several uninhabited homes on virtually every block in the valley, identifiable by open curtains, drapes, shutters, and shades. Some of those homes would have lights on too. And they'd likely have food, something I was currently running short of in my apartment.

I already knew from experience that I could travel through fenced backyards relatively safely. And I no longer had to worry about dogs as a possible backyard hindrance. Most dog owners had either let their dogs loose to fend for themselves or had found a way to put them down. A barking dog made you and your family vulnerable. When it came to making my way across the valley, the only real danger would come from having to cross streets. But I knew if I was careful, I'd be okay. The more I thought about the plan, the more confident I became that I could pull it off. And besides, I didn't have any other options. My food supply was nearly gone.

The gist of my plan was to cross the Salt Lake Valley to the base of the Wasatch Mountains and travel through the mountains to the cabin. I doubted there would be any infected hanging out in the mountains since their food supply was concentrated in the valley. And there would be a plentiful supply of food for me at the cabin. Alex and I had always kept a good supply of canned goods in our underground storage bunker near the cabin. A nearby stream was amply stocked with trout and provided an endless supply of clean drinking water. The cabin would make for a perfect sanctuary from the infected. And then there was always the possibility that the infected would die off.

Twelve days had passed since the virus struck, and according to internet reports, the first generation of infected were slowing down. They no longer moved as fast as when they'd first turned, and they could no longer run. These days only the recently infected could run; they'd run in a spasmodic gait as if their muscles were palsied. But there were relatively few of them around. Most people who were attacked these days were eaten, few escaped.

The first generation of infected were withering away. Their skin, especially their faces, had begun to dry up and harden and had turned a dull shade of moldy gray, obscuring the veins and arteries that had been so prominent when they first turned. Their gums were receding, exposing the roots of their teeth, and their eyes had shrunk deep into their sockets. They looked like ghouls from an Edvard Munch painting. But despite their lumbering movements and desiccated bodies, they were still dangerous. They seemed to hold an incredible reserve of energy for whenever a possible meal would show up. They would suddenly move with a quickness and tenacity that belied their corpselike appearance. And these days they almost always hunted in large groups, overwhelming any possible resistance.

I still thought of them as the infected, but other names were becoming more prominent. Because of their skin color, most referred to them as grays. A few even called them zombies or zeds. The newly infected were called runners.

Once the moniker grays was firmly established on internet blogs, some of which were still thriving, the name grays became more or less official, though to me, naming them grays dehumanized them. I'm sure my reluctance had to do with Alex, but I wasn't ready to dehumanize them or at least the memory of them.

Whether the infected would eventually die off or not, I still had to get out of the condo. But my plan wasn't without a few possible hitches. There would be a few occasions where I would be out in the open and vulnerable to attack. When I left my condo apartment, there would be no fence to provide me cover, and I'd have to make my way around the building to cross the bridge that spanned the creek. Then I'd have to cross the parking lot in front of the streetside condos along with the adjacent street before I could get to the relative safety of a fenced backyard. I'd likely be out in the open for a couple minutes, maybe longer. But if I could make it across the street and over the fence, I'd be on my way.

Once I made it across the valley, I'd have to cross the I-215 freeway that bordered the Wasatch Mountains to the east. There was no way I could cross the freeway with their ten-foot high walls on the west side of the interstate, but I could make it through an underpass. And I'd already determined the 39th South underpass to be the best option. The underpass was less than two blocks from Millcreek Canyon Road which lead right into Millcreek Canyon. The only drawback was that I'd be without any cover whatsoever for three or four blocks.

My biggest problem though had to do with gaining entry to the homes where I'd spend my nights. Breaking a window or forcing a back door open would make too much noise, and the last thing I wanted to do was attract the attention of the infected. I thought about searching for hidden keys that would provide me access to back doors, but how would I know if a key to a back door even existed. Thinking about the possibility of a hidden key gave me the idea I needed. You didn't need a key if you knew how to pick a lock. Burglars did it all the time. I googled "how to pick a lock to a back door" and came up with over six million results. And there were plenty of articles and video tutorials on how to pick locks. There were two back door types of locks that were most prevalent: a push button or turn-style knob lock which would be fairly easy to open and a master lock with a deadbolt which would be a little tougher. Some back doors would have both. Having watched the video tutorials, it didn't look too complicated. All I needed were the right tools. There were ways to make homemade picks and tension wrenches, but I've never exactly been the handyman type. What I really needed was a lock pick set.

Besides the scarcity of food in my cupboards and fridge, drinking water had become contaminated after the first weekend. I boiled as much tap water as I could and put the purified water in every container I could find. I didn't have to worry about the tap water running out because the tap water in the Salt Lake Valley came from a gravitational water system where water flowed down from the mountains. But if the electricity went out, there would be no way to boil the water unless I wanted to start a fire in my apartment.

And that's what I was really concerned about—the  possibility of the electricity shutting down. After the outbreak, FEMA activated its emergency teams to help keep the energy grid up and running. They cobbled together energy experts who hadn't been infected along with military reservists who would help supply the needed manpower to keep things running. The emergency energy program was in place because of the devastating hurricanes over the years that had left millions without electricity. And while they were well prepared, the program was only a partial success. Large parts of the Midwest were without energy along with some of the Dust Bowl states and scattered areas in the South. The West seemed to be doing fairly well. The main problem had to do with the interconnected nature of the energy grids. When power plants in one area went down, it created an overload that could shut down the whole grid in that region—a  kind of chain reaction blackout.

My concerns centered around the coal-fired plants that served as the source of energy for the Salt Lake Valley. I read up on them on the internet. The plants required manpower to operate. The coal had to be transferred via truck or conveyor to energy conversion factories which were located in rural areas. Governor Richardson had acted quickly and sent what was left of the Utah National Guard to the rural areas to protect the plants and conversion factories and make sure the workers had all the supplies they needed. Since the plants and factories were located in rural areas, it wasn't likely there'd be many infected in those areas. It all sounded good, but I was still leery. What  if the guardsmen decided to go home to find their loved ones? And if just one or two of the guardsmen were infected, it could spread like wildfire. And what would happen if they started to run out of food? Where would they get food from? Too many things could go wrong. If just one of the plants stopped operating, there could be an overload and the entire grid for the valley could shut down.

Once the electricity was gone, there would be no air conditioning with two of the hottest months of the summer still left. And then there would be the silence. Without the hum of the air conditioning to mask sounds you might normally make, the infected would almost certainly hear you. And if they heard you, they'd come after you, and they wouldn't stop. I became obsessive about the possibilities of the plants shutting down. In my mind it was only a matter of time before electrical service in the valley would be gone.

According to estimates, two-thirds of the people in the Salt Lake Valley were infected. And there were similar estimates all around the world in urban areas. But how could they really know? And who was doing the estimating? Everything was in a state of chaos. The only government agency with any kind of presence seemed to be Homeland Security, but they were nothing more than a government mouthpiece now. And what was left of the various police departments in the valley had effectively been shut down after Black Saturday. The military had been as hard hit as anyone with so many servicemen gone on leave during the holiday. And since the Fourth had fallen on a Tuesday, a lot of servicemen had taken Monday off for a four-day weekend. And when they returned, they brought the virus back with them to their bases, spreading the infection throughout every branch of the military and debilitating any possible assistance from the armed services. The virus was virtually everywhere. It had spread across the world like a suffocating vine, its tendrils taking root in every country. And with no organized local or federal force left to fight the infected, at this point, everyone was on their own.

The rain was coming down hard now, rifling through the trees, and I realized I needed to waterproof the contents of my backpack. I had plenty of gallon-sized freezer bags which would keep my electronics and the rest of my stuff dry. I had thought long and hard about the essentials I would need for my cross-valley trek and had come up with what I felt was a good list. I packed some basic toiletries and a half roll of toilet paper for any emergencies. I included some utilitarian items, my Swiss Army Knife, matches, a can opener, and two small screw drivers. I packed my iPad, my iPod, earbuds, and my iPhone along with their respective chargers. I added my GPS Navigator which would be critical once I got to the mountains. I also included the small binoculars I used to use to watch my brother's football games with up at the U.