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Authors: D.L. Robinson

Tags: #Post Apocalyptic

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BOOK: Red Death: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller
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They finished filling containers and fit them all back into the cart. They worked efficiently and in silence, ears peeled for sound from the direction of the Kmart.

“Let’s pull this back up the hill and leave it, then come back down so we can get a closer look at the camp.”

The plateau where they stood ran along the river for quite a way, and much like levels of a steppe, a higher ridge ran along above and behind it. This feature would effectively hide them from any guards or other sentinels standing watch. Tara thought they could get close enough to the old Kmart to see, yet remain well hidden.

Mary agreed, and Tara pulled the now-heavy cart full of water inch by inch up the hill with Mary pushing hard behind. It was slow going. Her feet slid out from under her twice on the pebbles along the path, and if not for Mary, it would have been a disaster. Finally, after quite a struggle, they pulled and pushed the cart up to level ground.

A noise from the tree line above the river made them crouch low, ready to run. “I saw something moving over there,” Tara whispered. They heard a low whistle, and Tara’s heart almost stopped.
Who would be out after dark?
She feared it could be the camp workers, rounding people up, but this noise came from further down the ridge.

Tara put a hand on Mary’s arm to still her. Again, the low whistle and then dark shapes started moving toward them. Tara’s heart was in her throat, but she thought maybe these people were just coming to collect water like them.

“It’s okay,” someone called softly. Tara glanced at Mary. It was too late to run. She hoped these people were friendlies like Clyde. Tara rose slowly to her feet and Mary followed suit.  Two men and a woman in dark clothes warily approached, carrying rifles over their shoulders, but they were not military. Tara steadied Mary, her hand on her arm, but still ready to bolt if need be.

The younger man reached them first. “We saw you at the river.” Tara was stunned into silence for a moment.

The older man and woman came up alongside the younger.

“Hello.” They seemed to take in Tara’s fright. “Sorry to scare you, ladies, but we wanted to make contact. We saw you getting water, and we’re trying to grow our network.”

Tara relaxed a little. “We needed water too and came for some,” she told them. The older man nodded. He looked into Tara’s face, searching it for a moment.

“Aren’t you Tara from school? It’s me, Kevin Tobler. I was a year ahead of you in high school.”

Tara thought she recognized him. “Kevin! What are you doing out here? What’s going on?”

“We’re part of the Resistance, Tara. We’re learning all we can, trying to stop what’s going on.”

“This is my neighbor Mary,” Tara said. Kevin introduced the tall, dark-haired young man as his son Luke and the woman as his wife Jenny. Luke was the spitting image of his parents, a perfect cross between them both. Kevin told them there were about twenty in their group now, all living together, venturing out only for reconnaissance and foraging. Tara explained she and her husband had teamed up with Mary at their house. She told them they had only seen one old man in the neighborhood—Clyde. “What news do you guys have?” Tara finally asked.

Kevin shook his head. “It’s not good. The door-to-door fever check campaign by the CDC is ongoing. Now forced vaccinations have started. They’re on the east side of town working their way toward this end.”

Hope flared in Tara at this news—surely, vaccinations were a very good thing. Her gasp of excitement was quickly quelled.

“The vaccinations are killing people, Tara. Some say it’s a live virus, and they’re trying to give it to everyone. We have no idea why, really. Maybe using us as guinea pigs to test vaccines? We’re also not so sure the CDC is behind it. It may be the group from the camp.” He jerked his head over his shoulder toward the Kmart.

“Aren’t they both the same?” Mary asked.

“No, they’re not. This camp seems to have gone rogue, from what we can tell. The commander in charge is a local guy from our National Guard Armory, by the name of Colonel Brent “Brick” Myers. You might know him.”

Tara shook her head. The name was only vaguely familiar. Mary perked up slightly. “I think I’ve heard of him. Is he an asshole?” The younger guy, Kevin’s son Luke, laughed.

“That’s him.”

Kevin shook his head. “He most certainly is. We’re beginning to think the overall chaos everywhere has simply put him in a position of power and gone to his head. There’s no oversight at all. Sort of like the Nazi death camps.”

Oh no, Mary’s daughter.
It was time to say something before Kevin made things even worse. “Mary’s daughter and grandson are in that camp. They had colds and slight fevers, and they were taken there. Mary hasn’t heard anything since.”

Kevin shook his head. “I’m so sorry.” His wife Jenny made comforting sounds toward Mary.

“Whatever you do, don’t take the vaccine, Tara. We think it’s killing around fifty percent of those who get it, maybe more.”

Tar’s heart leapt to her throat. As if it weren’t bad enough without something else added into the mix. “I honestly don’t know how we’d resist, Kevin. I don’t have enough ammo.”

“You can join us,” his wife said, “Strength in numbers.” Tara thought this might be a solution to discuss with Lee and Mary. “Thank you, this is definitely something to think about. How can we reach you? Do you make nightly rounds through here?”

Kevin told them they were holed up in the old factory a half mile away down the country road they were on. Tara knew right where it was.

“You can find us there or on our nightly reconnaissance. Just follow the tracks toward the factory after dark. We have teams out watching. Give that low whistle like I gave to you. That’s the sign to approach.”

Tara hugged each of them and so did Mary. They were just so relieved to see someone else, to have another option. Tara was especially glad to see an old high school classmate, and doubted she’d have trusted a total stranger as much. She and Mary stood watching the three melt back into the trees in the direction of the factory.

“At least now we have another choice, Mary, somewhere to go. I sure don’t want the vaccine. We’re going to have to watch for when they get close to our house.  Maybe we can move to the factory before they come. Holy crap, as if things weren’t bad enough.”

“It’s a lot to think about. All of it scares the crap outta me,” Mary sighed. “Let’s go down there and have a look.”

They left the cart full of water there at the top of the hill, hidden by the tall brown weeds on either side of the pathway. Neither said much, this new and disturbing news casting a pall over them both.

They made their way back down to the campsite, sliding in the soft gravel on the steep path. Tara wanted to see the camp even worse now.

“I think we can just keep going this direction and then pop up close to the Kmart.” Mary followed Tara as she wove among the trees, dodging and pushing back the tall weeds. The foliage was thick once they left the cleared campsite area.

Tara could hear noise coming from just above them behind the ridge, and knew they were very close to the bonfire and building. She picked a likely spot with a gradual incline, and she and Mary crawled up, almost the top of the ridge. With one last
here goes
look, they slowly raised their heads into the open.

Three hundred feet away across the gravel pit, a large bonfire smoldered, its gray smoke billowing upward. It was at least twenty feet across. Tara squinted intently, trying to see something, anything. She noticed glimpses of white that stood out against the black ash. “Mary, can you see? What is that white stuff?” Tara moved her eyes from one pale spot to the next, until finally, at the base of the bonfire’s edge nearest them, she fastened on the first clear validation of Lee’s earlier announcement.
They’re bones.

A scream welled up in Tara’s throat. It took all her willpower to suppress it. She ducked her head, pulling Mary back down by her coat. They slid to the bottom of the embankment together, and Tara scrambled to her feet.

“What is it?” hissed Mary, as Tara pulled her along in a fast shuffle back up the plateau onto the path. They reached the yard cart out of breath, and Tara crouched down in terror. Obviously, Mary hadn’t seen. Mary pulled her up from her knees, and Tara’s expression must have made an impression.

“Let’s go,” Mary said, pulling the cart at top speed with Tara stumbling along beside her in shock. They hurried back down the road toward the house and finally, Mary asked her again.

“What did you see?”

Tara swallowed hard. She didn’t want to tell her. Her daughter Julie and grandson Ben were there. But there was no way to keep it from her.

“Mary, those white patches, they were bones—skulls, femurs—I didn’t know what they were until I saw eye sockets.”

Mary slowed then stopped.

Tara took over. “Let’s go, let’s get home.” She grabbed Mary’s arm, trying to get her moving again. Tara glanced at her stunned expression. 

“Julie,” whispered Mary, the stricken look on her face slowly crumpling into full out tears. Tara rubbed her back, unable to think of anything to say that might comfort her.

“It’s eight o’clock,” Mary said absentmindedly, looking at her watch. She dug in her pocket for her cell phone and turned it on. They began walking again, Mary numbly, and Tara staring grimly ahead as they approached the edge of town. All at once, several streetlights and front porches lit up brightly.
The electric’s back!

Then Mary’s cell phone rang.

 

Chapter 10

 

Mary jumped to attention, answering the cell on the second ring. Tara could just barely hear Mary’s daughter through the phone. She watched Mary’s face collapse at the sound of Julie’s voice. 

Mary started sobbing immediately, and Tara quickly took the phone from her, knowing the electric and cell towers would switch off at any moment.

“Julie, it’s Tara, your mom’s neighbor! Are you okay?”

“Yes, we’re okay. My God, I can’t believe the phone worked. It’s a miracle.”

“Julie, it will go out any minute, I’ll be quick. We know now the camp is burning bodies. What can you tell us?”

“There’s an exercise pen beside the river, just past the bonfire. We stay out there as much as we can. One of the nurses tries to help us survivors—yes, both Ben and I caught Ebola from the patients. Many have died, but she nursed us so carefully, somehow we survived. No one knows what’s really going on here—only one or two nurses, maybe one of the doctors—and recently, those people have disappeared. We think they were killed.”

Tara nearly dropped the phone in shock. “No, surely not.” Then she remembered Kevin saying the camp commander was a rogue Nazi type. She stared into Mary’s face. Mary had calmed somewhat and wanted to talk to her daughter. First, Tara needed more info.

“Can you stay in the exercise yard at night? How many guards are around? What time can you be out there? Maybe we can bring help to get you out.”

“Oh God, please, please try,” Julie whispered. Tara heard the sound of a child whimpering. “Yes, we can be out here at night. My nurse friend will help us. I will stay out here each evening now, but it’s safest around ten o’clock. That’s when the shift changes and they stand around bullshitting with each other up front. The fence is chain link, so bring something to cut it. Bolt cutters would work.”

“Okay, Julie, we just met some others who might help. We’ll try to come as soon as we can. I don’t know when, but soon.” Tara handed the phone to Mary.

“Is Ben okay?” Mary asked, and then started crying again. Tara watched her face relax at her daughter Julie’s answer. “Yes, alright, I love you so much Julie, be brave. Give Ben my love. We will see you soon. Hello? Hello?” Tara noticed the lights ahead had gone dark. Mary burst into sobs of relief and sat down at the side of the road.

“Mary, they’re okay! C’mon, let’s get home. We are going to save them somehow. We’re going to ask the resistance to help break them out.” Tara’s mind was whirling with plans.
We can do this. I know they’ll help.


My God, Tara, they caught Ebola and lived!”

Tara shook her head, amazed. What hell they must have been through there. And what a debt was owed to that nurse who cared for them. That alone would’ve restored Tara’s faith in humanity if they hadn’t already known about the resistance. This trip was proving very fruitful.
There are still good people left.

Tara pulled the cart full of water home in silence, trying to figure out how to rescue Mary’s daughter and grandson.

~

They carried all the water up onto the porch and began loading it inside. Lee was sitting at the kitchen bar. When Tara closed the door behind them, one glance at the strange expression on his face told her something was off. And she already knew she had bad news to add to whatever it was.

“What is it, Lee?”

He had an old crumpled pack of cigarettes lying in front of him at the breakfast bar. Tara stared at them, puzzled. Lee had quit smoking years before, and so had she.

“You go first,” he told her.  “I’m not sure if my news is so good, but I had to lie and that’s probably bad.”

Tara told the story of meeting the resistance and what they’d told her about the camp, the commander, and the vaccinations. She finished with what she’d seen at the bonfire, and the freak cell phone signal allowing Julie to call, confirming what the resistance told them.

Mary didn’t say much, her face was paler than Tara had ever seen it. Her daughter’s dilemma was obviously affecting her deeply.

Tara finished relaying the news.  It was a lot of info to take in, and Lee sat absorbing it for a minute.

“So, I want to go to the resistance and beg them to try to help break her out of there, ASAP,” she added.

Lee still sat staring straight ahead.

“Lee, what’s wrong?”

He wiped at a sheen of sweat, which had broken out on his forehead, then stared at it on his fingers, rubbing them together. “I lied. I told them you two were dead.”

“What? Who?” Tara thought maybe he’d gone insane in the two hours since they’d left.

“They came while you were gone, the epidemiologists. They gave me the vaccination.” Mary’s sharp intake of breath punctuated Tara’s shock. “They wanted to know where you both were, and I told them you died of Ebola, and that I buried you in the backyard.”

“Oh no.”  A stab of fear hit Tara square in the chest, choking her.
Dear God, no
.

Lee nodded. “Go to the basement, Tara. Get the extra masks and suits you ordered. Bring up every bucket you can find. Put the buckets in one of the rooms upstairs. I’m going into quarantine.”

Her heart sank, and Mary came alive then. “It’s okay, Lee. They said that maybe fifty percent were dying from it. You’re strong. We’ll get you through this. It usually takes two to ten days to develop, so we’ll soon know.”

Lee shook his head. “No, I already know. I started feeling strange right after they gave me the shot. I always did react to things like that quickly.”

“We’re with you all the way, Lee,” Mary reassured him. Tara still stood staring at her husband, almost uncomprehending. She didn’t want to go get the items he requested, because that might make it real. Finally, she took a step toward him, and Lee held up his hands.

“No, no more contact than necessary. I don’t want to spread it to you if I’ve got it.”  The reality as well as the enormity of the situation suddenly hit Tara full-force. She collapsed back against the counter.

“Please, God.” She put a hand up to cover her eyes. She didn’t want to scare Lee, but she didn’t want him to see her cry either.

“C’mon, Tara, let’s get the stuff.” Mary led her by the arm to the basement door. Tara stumbled down the stairs, trying not to think at all. She lifted down the suits, gloves and masks from the shelf. “We may not need any of this, but we’ll be ready just in case we do,” Mary told her reassuringly. “If they’re testing it on us, maybe Lee got one of the good batches of vaccine.”

A small flame of hope started somewhere inside Tara as she carried everything up the stairs. Mary grabbed the buckets. Tara went into the attic and brought down her mom’s old potty chair, which was much better than a bucket. She’d just returned it after Lee’s leg had healed a little better. Maybe at first he could use that, before he got too sick—
if
he got sick, she forced herself to add.

Lee was no longer in the kitchen, and Tara heard him moving around upstairs in the guest bedroom. The women took the supplies up, and Mary began setting up a sanitizing station on the small hallway table outside Lee’s door. She laid out disinfectant, gloves, suits, and masks and carried in the buckets, placing them beside Lee’s bed. He was already lying across the twin mattress in the small room. Tara stood there beside him, longing to hold him.

“Lee, I can’t imagine it can get much worse. Maybe that fact alone will keep you safe.”

“Don’t count on it,” he answered dryly. Tara laughed a little then, and pulled out the chair from the tiny desk against the wall. 

They had been through so much in their years together. Tara glanced around the small room. There were still glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling from when this had been their son’s bedroom. She’d never had the heart to change it much. He had been killed crossing the street out front when he was ten. Tara and Lee had somehow survived this tragedy, growing even closer. Somehow, it was fitting Lee chose this room.

  Lee noticed her perusal of the walls and ceiling. “If I’m going out, I want to go out here.”

“Don’t even think it, Lee.” But she totally understood.

The sudden sound of heavy traffic coming from out front startled them, and Tara looked out the window. “What is it?” asked Lee.

Row after row of trucks were passing, heading toward the Kmart. Tara squinted to see in the moonlight. She could just make out faces and hands sticking through the slats enclosing the truck beds, eyes peering out between them. “My God, there are people inside! They’re being transported somewhere.” A realization hit her immediately. “There are new buildings going up down there at the camp, Lee, lots of them. For some reason, they’re bringing tons of people in.”

Lee thought for a moment. “Maybe more Ebola victims or more test subjects.” Tara stared at the line, counting. At least a thousand human beings passed by, transported like cattle— like Auschwitz. She didn’t want to see anymore. She closed her eyes, despairing of the new developments.

“Are you okay for the moment? I’m going down to stow away the water and set some to boiling to sanitize it. Think positive, Honey, we just can’t have this happen to you.”

He nodded. “I’m going to take a nap.” He glanced back at Tara. “And don’t come in here again without a mask and gloves, you hear?” He smiled, but it was the saddest smile she’d ever seen.

“I love you,” Tara told him, and he repeated it back. She quietly closed the door behind her.

Mary’s sanitation station looked efficient, but Tara wasn’t ready to entertain the idea that Lee might actually get sick. The thought of losing him was simply unthinkable. She pushed it out of her head.

Downstairs, Mary was pouring river water into a bucket on the back porch. Tara told her what she’d seen out front. Fear flashed quickly across Mary’s features, and then she went back to her work. Tara decided to walk down the driveway toward the street out front to see if the convoy had stopped. She kept to the shadows alongside the house, but saw no traffic going by. She stood quietly for a moment, and then walked up the steps onto her porch, full of sad memories of the good old days when they’d sat there with family or friends.

Tara glanced toward the front door. A streak of red glistened there. She walked closer, squinting to see. Alongside the door casing was a wide swath of blood or paint, she couldn’t tell.
What in God’s name!
Drips from the liquid had run down the white paint of the house. Afraid of tainted blood, Tara leaned in and realized it was too shiny. She touched it with one finger. It was paint, still wet in the cold night air. She wiped her finger on her pants, and hurried around back.

Mary had already spread papers out beside the bucket of water. She had taken the walnuts onto the sidewalk and stomped the outer husks off, and was tossing them back up onto the porch.

“Mary, the house has been marked with a big red swatch of paint on the door!”

Mary frowned. “Maybe Lee’s vaccination,” she offered, “maybe they’re keeping track how far they’ve come in the neighborhood?”

Tara’s chest felt like a block of ice. She nodded hurriedly, trying not to think. She got to work helping Mary drop the walnuts into the bucket, picking out the floaters and throwing them out to the backyard squirrels. She laid the good walnuts on the newspaper. When they finished, she lifted the whole batch up onto the table to keep the squirrels away. They’d be ready in three weeks or so of drying.

She and Mary worked quietly and efficiently by the light of the moon, neither one wanting to imagine the worst with Lee, or for that matter, the sorry multitude of people being transported like cattle to the slaughter.

Tara missed Lee being with them already.

  ~

 

Tara spent an uneasy night and woke early to find Mary at the potbellied stove, reheating the celebration stew for their lunch. She thanked her, and carried a bowl up to Lee on a tray, stopping outside his closed door to put on a mask. She walked into her library and pulled out some books and magazines she thought he might like and added them to the tray. Lastly, she pulled on latex gloves and entered.

“Hi, stranger.”

Lee sat up in bed, looking tired and rumpled. He gave her a slight smile.

“Time for your wench to serve the celebration stew and collect your chamber pot,” Tara joked. “How do you feel?”

Lee nodded his head in lieu of an answer. Tara knew it would be another day at least before they knew anything, possibly up to ten days. She thought that maybe she should dig out the Oral Rehydration Solution salts she had mixed up early on, just in case. Since water was so hard to come by, she really hoped they didn’t need the ORS.

“I feel ridiculous in this get-up,” Tara told him, holding out her gloved hands.

“Don’t. With your immune system, I can’t even think about you getting it.”  She nodded. Stress caused her Crohns Disease to flare up, and although she had stockpiled her meds early on, she had cut doses in half to stretch them. Lately, she’d had a lot of gut pain and a touch of fever, a sure sign of a flare. And she knew how dangerous having a fever was.

Tara unloaded the reading material and the stew beside Lee’s bed. She slid out the removable chamber pot in her mom’s potty chair, covering it with the lid. She tried not to grimace. She didn’t want him feeling any worse than he already did.

BOOK: Red Death: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller
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