My mind kept turning back to Tara. I missed her terribly. I would have done anything to have her back or be able to talk to anyone now. I was so lonely.
As I walked into town, a sign told me that the city of George was where the Grant County Sheriff’s Office was. By now my feet were so tired. Reading the sign put a little more speed into my step.
There would be guns.
Ammo. More protection than the tire iron I carried.
It turned out to be a false hope. The Sheriff’s office – as well as the entire town of George –had burned to the ground. It looked like a raging grass fire had simply consumed the town. The grass under my feet was blackened.
Luckily there were no deads. All of the people who had lived in the town were now gone or lying dead on the ground, burned.
Where a
re all of the people? Would a small town like this have a disaster shelter?
I began to second-guess myself. I wondered why I left the comfort of the yacht.
Why did I leave its safety? The conversation I had with the people at the military base had not been very clear. They said they were safe, they said they had shelter, they said they had food, weapons;
and
they told me exactly where they were.
It wasn’t the base that Tara and I had planned to go to originally. This one was closer. I wouldn’t have to go all the way to Spokane.
Maybe all of the people were at the military base! It would make sense. It would be safe for them there. There would be food. There would be weapons.
Yeah but on the yacht, I didn’t
need
any weapons. I
was
safe! Deads couldn’t swim. I didn’t need to share the food - I had a hot shower! And now here I was, walking on this deserted highway with no shelter, no food, no shower, and no nothing. I was in the open, a target for any hungry dead that might be just around the next bend in the highway.
El
even miles back to the yacht. Thirty or more miles to the military base.
“Ok,” I said to the burned out town around me. “I’ll go to the next overpass. If there’s nothing worth looking at past it, I’m going back to the yacht.”
I didn’t get far. Next to the highway a wooden bridge over an irrigation ditch had burned. I could have easily continued down the highway, but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept on thinking of the yacht and the soft bed and the warm shower and the safety of it.
“Fuck it” I sai
d. I turned back to the yacht.
THE ROAD TO RICHLAND
Three miles later on my trek back to the yacht, I heard an approaching engine. I turned to see a jeep coming my way. There was a guy with a NYC baseball cap driving and a girl in a bikini top in the passenger seat. There was another girl in the back seat wearing jeans and a yellow top. They all looked to be in their mid to late twenties.
“Yo!” the guy yelled at me. “You aren’t a zombie!”
I raised my hand to them as they drove up beside me. “Nope,” I smiled. “I’m just a regular guy out on a walk.”
They all laughed a little at that. The guy stepped out of the jeep, stretching out his hand. “I’m Mike Markowski, but you can call me Ski if ya want. These two ladies are Cindy and Mindy Thompson. They’re sisters, not twins. Cindy is my girlfriend.”
“Nice to meet you guys,” I said noticing how strikingly attractive Mindy was. “I’m Dan Kinglsey…are you guys from the military base?
Ski looked confused. “No? We’re from Spokane. We were gonna try to make it to Seattle.”
“Seattle is trashed,” I said, “mostly flooded. I’ve been traveling east away from there. A lot of the highway is destroyed as well.”
“Shit,” Ski muttered. “I was from there. I was gonna see if my folks were ok.”
“Yeah our parents were from there, too,” Cindy added. Mindy nodded.
“Sorry guys, but Seattle is pretty much gone.”
They all looked at each other, saddened.
I asked, “How is Spokane?”
“Pretty well fucked, too,” Ski said. “Well girls, I guess Seattle is pretty much out of the question.”
“We don’t know that,” Cindy said. She had long dark hair, not at all like her sister’s blonde hair. I wondered if maybe Cindy dyed hers.
“That’s what this gentleman just told us, hon,” Ski said.
“No offense,” she said, addressing me,
“but we just met him. How do we know he’s not just making it up? He could be lying.”
“You can check if you want,” I said, smiling.
“And no offense taken. Feel free the check for yourselves.”
“Is the road pretty bad all the way to Seattle?” Ski asked.
“Not all the way. There are some spots where you can drive without any troubles, but some places it’s all washed out so you’ll have to change vehicles because there’s no way you’ll be able to get through, not even in a jeep.”
“Dunno,” Ski laughed, “
Roper’s
pretty tough” he said as he thumped his open palm down on the hood of his Roper Jeep.
I smiled. “I bet it is. But, I don’t think it’ll be able to get across the river at Vantage.”
“Son of a bitch, that’s right! Bridge is down, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“
Fuck.”
He thought about it for a minute. “How did
you
get across?”
“A yacht.”
“No shit?” He scratched his chin. “Yours?”
I laughed. “No. But I needed to get across so…”
“What are you looking for over on this side?” Cindy asked.
“Just trying to survive.
West of the river is not very nice.”
“Neither is east of it,” Ski added.
I asked “You seen many deads?”
“
Deads?”
Ski asked. “Oh, you mean zombies?”
“Yeah.”
“For a while there were a lot of them,” Ski said, getting back into the jeep. “Now, it seems like they’ve all vanished. Dunno where they could’ve gone.”
Military base
, I thought.
“Hey, why don’t you sit in back with Mindy?” he said.
“Might be more comfortable for ya.”
“Thanks I appreciate it,” I said as I got in. Mindy gave me a polite smile.
Mike “Ski” Markowski, his girlfriend Cindy Thompson, and her sister Mindy were sitting at the top of some weathered hard-wood bleachers watching Ski’s nephew, Sam play pee-wee softball.
It was the bottom of the fourth inning. Sam’s team was in the outfield. They were losing 12-6.
“Guys, I gotta go the bathroom,” Mindy said as she stood, brushing dirt off her jeans. She was 23, blonde and beautiful. When she stood, several men sitting around her on the bleachers turned to look at her. They moved to give her a path.
Ski a
nd Cindy didn’t pay attention. They were more attuned to the game at hand. This was the fourth game of the pee-wee season. Sam’s team had done very well, winning three out of four games.
Sam waved at them as he stood i
n the outfield. He was seven.
He loved pee-wee softball.
He loved his uncle Ski, too. He thought the world of him. Ski would hang out with him at his games – plus he was his PhysEd teacher in grade school; and Cindy was really neat, too! She was Miss Thompson! She was another one of his teachers at school! She was always nice to him. It was so neat to have them here watching him play! He was nervous around Mindy, Miss Thompson’s sister though. She was so pretty! He got so shy around her! He couldn’t even talk – and uncle Ski would give him so much trouble about it! Ski called Mindy Sam’s girlfriend. Mindy would smile. She said ‘of course’ she was.
It was a cool late afternoon in Spokane, Washington.
“Hey batter, hey batter, hey batter,” the outfield players began to chant as one of the opposing team stepped up to the plate.
The ball was pitched.
The batter swung, and missed.
As the umpire yelled “Strike one!” the horizon of the earth rose. People were thrown off balance. Cars crashed out on the passing street. Trees bent, some snapped in two. The fence behind the umpire crashed down onto him.
As this was going on, the earth shifted, hard, like a yank. The ground split. There were loud cracks as building foundations were lost. Water mains broke. Electrical wires snapped. Glass shattered.
A large crack formed in the playing field of the softball game. Large chunks of the earth titled into the crack. Fire bellowed from the cracks. Thick smoke rose. Players on the team fell into the crack.
Ski watched in horror as his nephew disappeared down into the smoke.
“No!” he and Cindy yelled.
The crack grew larger. It started splitting toward the bleachers. Cindy was awestruck. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Ski grabbed her hand. “We gotta get out of here!”
He jumped off the back of the bleachers as they started teetering down into the crack. Luckily, Cindy didn’t go down with them.
They ran over to his jeep. His hands shaking, he started it up.
“Wait! Where’s Mindy?” Cindy cried.
“Oh, Jesus, she’s in the john,” Ski said.
“We got to get her!”
He threw the jeep into gear and tore through the lawn. There were port-a-potties behind the bleachers. The bleachers were now gone down into the cracks.
A telephone pole had broken and was now lying against one of the port-a-potties. Sparks were flying. Ski drove his jeep right to the edge of the cracking earth. His eyes wild, he watched as it crumbled away next to the tires of the jeep.
“MINDY! GET OUT HERE NOW!” He screamed.
The port-a-potty door was shoved open. Mindy jumped into the back of the jeep.
Ski sped away from the field.
Destruction was all around them.
“What’s happening?” Mindy cried.
“I don’t know,” Ski yelled as he swerved around a fallen tree. “But we need to get somewhere safe!”
“The gym!” Cindy screamed “The gym at school! Go there!”
Ski made a hard left, passing a fire hydrant as it blew into the air. The school wasn’t that far. The sky had turned a dark red. Smoke was rising everywhere. There were loud booms, low rumbles, and screams as the jeep’s tires screeched around cor
ners. Was it the end of the world?
The earth was still shaking as they made it to the school. Ski drove right up to the front door. He led the girls through the shaking hallways to the gym. There were other people huddled inside as dust sifted down from the ceiling.
It stopped.
It was quiet.
No one said a word. They all looked around, expecting the worst.
Twenty minutes later, one of the men in the gym - Ski’s assistant coach and friend Kent Lonng - went for help. No one’s cell phone worked. He was going to go outside to see if he could flag down some help.
Thirty minutes passed. Kent didn’t return.
“I’m gonna go check on him,” Ski said.
“No, Ski, no! Wait here!” Cindy cried.
“I’ll be fine.
Won’t be a sec.”
He walked out into the hallway. As he looked toward the exit, he saw several people walking around outside the doors. It looked like someone was hurt because some other people were leaning down trying to help them.
As he got closer, he saw that they weren’t trying to help someone.
He saw that they were actually feeding on him.
Quickly, he ran back into the gym. He ran over to a set of bleachers. “Help me move this shit over there in front of the doors!” he yelled.
Other men came over. They moved a heavy set of bleachers, blocking the doorway. It was the only way in or out.
“We’ll be safe here now,” Ski said. “Let’s just wait this out. Shouldn’t be long til help arrives.”
However, it was two days later when they finally were able to sneak away from the gym.
I told them I survived a plane crash. This added to Cindy’s disbelief of my story. I also told them about Norm, going to Seattle, meeting Tara. I told them how Tara was killed on the highway. I told Ski about the yacht – how I had to figure out how to maneuver it.
Mindy and Cindy were talking amongst themselves. Mindy turned to us and a
sked “Hey what about Richland? We could go there, right?”
“Richland?” Ski said, “That’s more than 150 miles from here. What’s in Richland that makes it worth going there?”
Mindy said “Paranoia.”
“Para…what the fuck…” Ski took off his baseball ca
t scratching his shaved head. I heard him scratch it.
Mindy said “That’s where he said he lives. I had planned to meet him one day.”
“Ok hold on. Who or
what
is Paranoia?”
Mindy
blushed a little. “He was a guy I talked to on
Go4
chat. His real name is Ben Hanscomb.”
“Ok wait a minute. You want to drive 150 miles through a zombie-infested countryside just to go meet some dude you met on
Go4?”
“They had a real relationship going, Mike,” Cindy said. “They were talking about getting together before all this happened.”
“How do you know if this fucker is even
alive
? When was the last time you were talking…or excuse me,
chatting
with him?”
Mindy said “During Sam’s softball game.”
He looked at me. “What do you think Dan?”
I said “I have no plans either way. I’m just trying to survive here.” I didn’t want to say anything about the voices I heard on the radio
– at least, not yet. I had only come this way just to get away from tsunami threats – but now that I’d met these new people, I basically put the military base out of my mind. Something about the voices on the radio really didn’t fare well with me, anyway.
“Well I think going after this Paranoia dude will be nothing but a wild goose chase. I mean Mindy; do you even know this fucker’s address?”
Mindy said “I have it on my cell.”
“K what is it?
She thumbed her cell phone on. “5285 Mockingbird Court. It’s in West Richland.”
I kind of laughed a little. “Your cell still has power?”
“Yeah Ski lets me charge it in the cigarette lighter.”
Damn I wish I had thought of that
!
“No service though?” I asked.
“Not since all this happened.”
I wondered why the pole shift caused cell phones to stop working, but then figured that if indeed the world had flipped, we would now be under the satellites of Australia…if the world had flipped north to south, that is.
And if we did flip north to south, I would think that instead of summer, we would be in winter now….but it wasn’t cold outside. It wasn’t making much sense at all.
Needless to say, I really didn’t care where we went as long as we survived, had shelter, and had food. Was it luck that brought me to this group or just a rando
m push in the right direction? I didn’t know, but our trip to Richland was unforgiving, as usual.
I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t be.