My Dead World (21 page)

The immediate days following Addy’s death were the hardest. It was tough to get out of bed, to smile. I wanted badly to just see her face. Thankfully, I had my phone and I looked at pictures constantly. I kept it charged but always had it in the back of my mind that it could die.

The more the days passed and the more we didn’t see illness, the easier it was.

I still missed my daughter and knew I forever would.

We started to finally ease into a routine. Every day: draw on the mural, plan the meals, work the garden, chase the chickens, talk on the radio, kill a straggler. Not always in that order.

Stragglers were a daily occurrence. Sometimes one or a few. Never more than three. I envisioned that one day a huge horde would encircle us, just like in the movies, and in books. That was unrealistic considering the more a straggler moved the more they fell apart.

We always got an extra straggler on days my father or Lev went fishing. Like they hung out at the lake or something.

They had become such the norm that they didn’t faze Katie. If she was out in the yard and saw one, annoyed, she’d find Lev or Cade, and say, “Take care of them, will you. It smells.”

It had been since the day Addy got sick that I talked to my brother. I tried. Lev and I went to Landings Peek often, but not only was there no answer, after ten days it never even rang.

The last we knew Bobby was in quarantine and I had resolved myself to the fact that he was probably sick.

We were not without knowledge, though. The radio check ins became common place and my trust grew in those I spoke with.

We learned a lot from each other such as infected could rage for up to four days before they died and were less of a threat, but more of a nuisance. Places the military were still active and what areas were completely dead.

Of course, there was a lot of playful banter, which truly helped my mood. The big joke was my lack of cooking ability and mad gardening skills.

I was alright with that.

We were fortunate. Not that the other camps weren’t isolated, location wise they were vulnerable. Some got hit with those hordes I worried about.

We held the record for length of time without anyone getting sick.

A week after Addy died, Cade decided he needed to find his family. He promised he’d be back and he was, pretty fast. He got to the city limits of Erie and turned around.

He said, “it’s a sea of whatever you want to call them.”

I was pretty excited to deliver the news to the radio groups. I finally had something to contribute. My enthusiasm was short lived when Hal, one of the radio buddies laughed.

“Well, hell, any of us could have told you that. Populated areas are overrun. Problem is you got people hunkering in the cities, they go out for food, get bit, start the whole waiting business over again. Didn’t need numb nuts to go into the thick of it to know that.”

Hal was right. Not about Cade being numb nuts, but the wait.

If when the news of infection broke, people just locked up and stayed inside for two weeks, it would be done. After all, weren’t we supposed to have two weeks’ worth of food in our house at all times? I did. Not on purpose. It wasn’t food I liked, but it was food we could eat.

We were human. Eventually people would leave their safe haven, if not for food, for other reasons. We’re driven.

However, we had planned to stay put. Despite that we dabbled in thoughts of going out to ‘check on things’, Cade’s adventure, which was two weeks exactly after we arrived at camp, told us the outbreak was still in full force.

For the time being we were good. No one was sick or infected. We were healing our emotional wounds, starting a new life behind a fence.

After all the death, life at any cost was a welcome relief. I just prayed it wasn’t short lived.

“What the hell is that?” my father asked, as he watched me place a circle over the day X’d out on the calendar.

“Yesterday. We didn’t see a straggler,” I said. “I figured I’d mark it down when we had clear days. Keep track. The more clear days, the more likely this thing is almost over.”

“Well that’s dumb.”

“Can you please be a little supportive of my ideas?”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s that for?” Cade asked when he walked in.

I explained it to him and he was even less impressed than my father. He just went to the jar to grab some granola, then walked to the wall to see the mural.

“Katie is really getting good at this,” Cade pointed. “Look she has Edi tending to the garden.”

“I thought that was me.”

“No, it’s Edi. She draws you as a bald woman.”

“Speaking of Edi …” I walked over to him. “Have you checked on Manny?”

“No, why would I?”

“He’s not feeling well. I thought she was going to tell you.”

My father spoke up. “If you want my opinion, I think they have resolved themselves to just letting him pass.”

Cade spun around in a bit of shock, his mouth open.

“That’s ridiculous,” I snapped, then stormed out the back door to the Reis’ trailer.

Edi was out front watering her flowers.

“Hi, Mrs. Reis. Where’s Manny?” I asked.

“He’s taking a nap.”

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“He was up early.”

“You said yesterday he wasn’t well. How is he today?”

“He’s the same.”

Cade approached us. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He doesn’t have that virus,” She nodded assuredly. “That’s for sure. It’s age and it’s nothing that can be helped.”

“Just tell me,” Cade said.

“He ran out of his heart medicine a few days ago and another one of them. I …”

Edi stopped speaking when Cade went into the trailer. A few seconds later, he came to the door and asked me to get his bag. I retrieved it and Cade went back in to examine Manny.

I thought I had seen everything in Cade’s red bag, but I never noticed the thick paperback. He searched through it as we sat at the kitchen table. He seemed in his own world, Edi to his left, me to his right, and Lev standing as if on guard behind him.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Medicine. Manny is in congestive heart failure,” Cade said as he searched and wrote down something. “Aside from his normal meds, there are other things we need to get to help him.”

Edi lifted her hands. “Like I said. Nothing to be done. He is out of medication and the things in that book, I’m certain you can’t substitute at the animal clinic.”

“I can’t, you’re right,” Cade said. He lifted his notepad. “These medicines are very specific.”

Lev snapped his finger. “There’s a Rite Drug Pharmacy in Evans City. Plus if I’m not mistaken, some mom and pop drug store as well.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Cade replied. “We can go there and get supplies. The stores may be cleared, but I bet these pills aren’t.”

“No.” I shook my head. “We tried that, remember. Evans City is locked up tighter than this camp.”

“But it’s been nearly a month,” Cade said. “Maybe if we go and explain … take Manny’s empty pill bottles, maybe they’ll let us in for that. Even if they don’t, they may get them for us.”

“I can’t ask that,” Edi shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. Manny and I are not young people. We are fine with this.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not. It doesn’t matter how old you are. You’re life in this camp and I am not losing that without a fight.” I stood up. “I’ll grab my gun. Lev … can you watch Katie while we go?”

“No.” Lev said strongly. “You can’t go out there. No.”

“What are you going to do, go figure out the meds yourself?”

“I’ll go with Cade,” Lev told me.

“Then what?” I questioned. “Leave the camp vulnerable. No offense to my dad, but you and Cade are our strong ones. Both of you can’t be gone. I’ll go. We’ll grab some stuff, take one of the radios from Big Bear and we’ll be back in a few hours.”

Lev folded his arms and looked down to me. “You just want a reason to go out there.”

“Maybe I do,” I said. “Maybe Evans City has information. We won’t know if we don’t try.”

“What if there are too many infected out there?” Lev asked.

“Then we’ll think of something else. I’m not worried about stragglers, we can out run them.”

The look on Lev’s face told me he was against it. I wanted to tell him he wasn’t in charge of me, but I didn’t. He was only trying to be that protector. Lev stopped arguing his case when my father was fine with it.

As my father put it, he trusted me with my own safety. But Lev only trusted one person with my safety and that was himself.

Edi came up with a good idea. Things had been out of commission for a while, if Evans City was locked down tight, they very well could be in need. She made a list of items that included water, a jar of beans, a few eggs, a pint of bourbon from Lisa’s stash and a few other things. She put them in a box, even tucked one of her knish in there and called it our bartering tool.

Bringing a gift or peace offering, was a sign of good will.

It was fast becoming a new kind of world and she had a valid point.

We took my father’s SUV, put the box in the back seat, and pulled to the gate where Lev waited to let us out. He signaled me to step out of the SUV before he opened the gate.

I stepped from the passenger’s side and walked around.

“You be careful,” he said.

“I will.”

“Radio check, please.”

“It works.”

“I’ll feel better if I hear that it works.”

After a heavy exhale, I reached behind me for the radio that was clipped on my belt.

“Why do you have your phone?” Lev asked. “You could break it.”

Cade answered for me. “She takes a ton of pictures, or did you forget about the photo op with pool house man.”

I lifted my shoulders. “I like to take pictures. I want to capture everything. You never know. You just never know.” I turned on the radio, it hissed.

“Can you do me a favor and radio me when you get there?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I know you don’t.

“If I don’t hear from you. I’ll come looking for you.”

“Somehow I believe that. I’ll be fine. Watch our camp. We won’t be gone long.” I ran my hand down his arm as my way of reassuring him and walked back round to my side. Before I got in, I gave a nod to Lev.

He unlocked the gate.

“We’re not going on vacation,” Cade said as he pulled out, waving to Lev as we passed. “We’re going twenty-two miles away. I mean, what could go wrong?”

“I hate when people say that. Something always does.”

“Not in this case,” Cade said. “I’m certain.”

Fearful of jinxing anything, I refrained from expressing my agreement. I was sure we wouldn’t run into problems getting and returning from our short jaunt. My only uncertainty was whether or not Evans City would accept out bartering gift and give us the medication, or just send us on our way.

We would know soon enough.

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With relative ease, we made it to the highway. It was the first time in a month I had been off, what we called, camping mountain. Not that it was a mountain, but it was a series of hills where not only my father’s property was, but Big Bear and a couple other camps.

The road that took us to Interstate 79 was scattered with stragglers, infected and bodies of the dead. Those who decayed before they made it very far were merely broken bodies.

It made me laugh how the infected and even a few stragglers reached out to us as we drove by. As if somehow they would be able to catch the SUV.

Interstate 79 was different though. There were abandoned cars here and there until we neared the Evans City exit. There wasn’t a car on the road. It was odd. We had discussed that if that was a bust, we could always try the town of Harmony or Zelienople.

We believed, at one month after the outbreak, we had more options than we did in the immediate panic and chaos phase.

Before we turned off, Cade noticed in the distance, the reason for the lack of cars on the one long section of road. A huge barricade spanned the entire section of highway. Considering that portion sat pretty high, there was no way for cars to go around it.

Of course, Cade suggested we go look.

I was leery, considering I still worried about his ‘what could go wrong?’ comment.

“Why do you suppose it was set this far from the city?” Cade asked.

“It’s still close to Cranberry. A lot of people live out this way.”

He shrugged as if my answer would have to do, and we pulled as close as we could to the barricade.

It was created out of concrete slabs and trucks. As soon as we stepped out of the car it was easy to see that many people tried to leave and were stopped in their tracks on the northbound highway.

“Where were they going?” I asked softly, staring out into the sea of vehicles. Many looked like they tried to turn around and failed. Tarps were spread between cars as people tried to make camp.

“Canada,” Cade said. “I had heard Canada was infection free.”

“Do you think it still is?”

“If there are barricades put up, there’s a good chance. You should ask your radio buddies if they heard anything.”

I will.

I couldn’t stop looking out. There had to be thousands of cars. Most with doors or hatches open. From the corner of my eye, I watched Cade lift binoculars. “Do you see anything?”

“There was a massacre here. At least in the middle. Look at the blood.” He handed me the binoculars.

“I’d rather not.” I shook my head and reached in my pocket, lifting my phone.

“You won’t look but you’ll take a picture?”

“It’s a pictorial history.” I took a few pictures. “We have the solar generator, I can charge a laptop and print these up. Do you see any bodies?”

“What? You want to get some close ups?”

I shook my head at his sarcasm. “I’m just thinking. All these cars, where are all the people? Where did they go?”

“A few. Not a lot. I’m gonna venture a guess where some of them went.” Cade pointed to the barricade.

On the edges were bloody handprints.

“They were probably infected when they escaped,” Cade said, “and somewhere in the process they became our stragglers.”

I stared out, taking one more picture, this one of a military vehicle. Then I headed to the SUV. “Let’s get to Evans City. So far, so good and I don’t want to further test your what can go wrong comment.”

“Yeah, me either.”

We got in the SUV, backed up and turned around. The exit was just a mile away.

To me, Evans City was always an anomaly and entity of its own. I knew there was a pharmacy in town, I doubted it was a chain store like Lev suggested. No big business or corporations set up in Evans City.

It was a small community, centered around a main street with old fashioned wooden frame buildings that housed locally owned stores.

The homes were all in walking distance, with a police department in the center of the town.

There weren’t many main roads in and out of Evans City, I suspected the police had them all blocked off.

As we drove down Route 68, the same route we took a month earlier, we could see up ahead, almost the same scene.

Two police cars parked head to head at the town limits.

Only this time there weren’t any flashing lights. And the closer we drove the more we realized there weren’t any police officers either.

Cade pulled directly to the police cars and hugged the steering wheel as if that would give him a better look beyond.

I didn’t need to peer closer. There was no movement beyond the police cars.

Nothing. Even the stoplights were out.

I saw Cade reach for the door. “Wait,” I said. “Just drive around. Go slow. Don’t get out.”

Cade backed up, cut the wheel and went off the road into the grass. I bounced in my seat.

“You could have gone through the gas station.”

“Sorry,” he said.

I lifted the radio and depressed the button. “Lev. Lev you there?” Cade got back on the road after the roadblock. I pointed for him to make a right to get to Main Street.

Static. “Yeah. I’m here. Did you arrive?”

“We did. Hey, Lev. Evans City is empty.”

“What do you mean empty?”