Barren Waters - The Complete Novel: (A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival) (25 page)

Together they moved toward the women and crouched low to inspect the child. Her mother was running her hands over her body, but thankfully there seemed little damage. Small scrapes, one long burn of road rash peppered with pebbles, and a bruised ego was the worst of it. Her father swept her into his arms and cradled her against his chest, and the intimacy of the moment incited a pressing need in Liam to return to his own child. He set his hands to his knees, pushed himself to his feet, and turned to Tom.

“Like I said, you can come with us. We’re right over there and we’ll take you wherever it is—“

The offer left unfinished, a loud popping sound caught their attention. Liam immediately recognized it as gunfire. He and the Raptor’s owner hit the ground and peered into the distance at a group of men who’d circled the back of the truck. Liam had to admit he was impressed. Against all odds, the thieves had actually made it onto the bridge. Though a path of devastation marked their passage, they’d crossed the entrance and were now wedged between smaller vehicles. Liam could hear shouting in the distance.

“We need to get to my truck and get out of here,” he cautioned. “Fast.”

The little company didn’t wait. They turned from the scene and proceeded in a crouching run to Liam’s Jeep. Beyond the glare on the windshield, Liam could see Jeremy on his knees, hands resting against the front seats, eyes wide as he observed the chaos around him. Mouth agape and eyes puffy from sleep, he held his father’s gaze a single moment before the world exploded. A great ball of orange-and-yellow light filled the sky and Liam was tossed bodily to the ground as if he weighed little more than a bag of soggy leaves. The sharp acrid odors of gasoline and smoke burned his nostrils, and a sudden dry blast of heat closed his throat. Suddenly he found that he couldn’t draw a breath. A coppery taste flooded his mouth and he pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek. He’d hit the ground hard. An eruption of stars glittered behind his eyes and he was quite certain his left bicuspid was knocked loose. The sound of small feet scampering across the pavement drew his attention and he lifted his head in panic.

“No Jeremy! Lay down, son! Down!” he screamed.

As if on a battlefield, perched on elbows and knees, he crawled toward his son and fell atop him just as the next explosion rang out. Together they huddled and waited till the blasts subsided. Liam wasn’t sure how many there were in total. He’d lost count somewhere around six or seven, but he could hear Jeremy’s soft weeping, and curled him tight against the protective curve of his body.

Olivia
, he thought suddenly.

Around him the scene was chaos. People had abandoned their cars and were running away from the bridge as fast as they could. The fallen were being trampled and left behind, the elderly pushed and cast roughly aside. About fifteen feet from Liam, crumpled and covered with debris, Olivia lay silent and curled in a fetal position.

Liam’s heart seized. He needed to get to her.

“Jeremy,” he spoke softly as he lifted his son’s chin. “Are you all right?” Jeremy nodded gravely and Liam found his small hand. “Up on your knees then,” he prodded. “Close to me. Let’s go get Mom.”

The two of them scuttled closer to Olivia and Liam knew a moment of intense relief when she stretched and flexed her muscles.

“I’m fine,” she offered and she stretched her arms toward her child.

Jeremy ran to her, and Liam turned to Tom and his family. On hands and knees, Tom was straining to see what had happened. Eyes wide, he turned and met Liam’s gaze.

“The bridge,” he muttered in amazement. “It’s cracked apart. The entire front section has fallen in. If we had made it across the entrance we’d be dead right now.”

Liam crouched beside the man and set his hands to the car that had sheltered them from the worst of the blast. Over its paneled side, he could see billowing clouds of smoke and debris.

“Those explosions were cars,” he suggested. “Damn things caused a collapse.”

Tom nodded and rubbed a smear of blood across his cheek. “Someone must have hit the gas tank of the Raptor and set off a chain of explosions. Those cars were packed too closely together.”

“All those people,” Olivia gasped from his right. Startled, he turned to her. She had crept closer to him and risen to her knees. But where was Jeremy? Seeking his son, he spun wildly then grasped his wife’s arm and pointed.

“Look at him, Liv.”

Liam had thought his son would stay locked in his mother’s embrace, but he hadn’t. He had crawled to the little girl and her mother and was smiling and brushing dust from her skirts. Pride swelled in Liam’s chest. He crawled toward the three, Tom close behind at his heels.

“Let’s abandon the cars,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re thirty miles or so from my cabin. We can just walk. It’ll take us all night and some of the morning too, but we’ll make it. I’ve got water and food in the truck. Another gun too.”

He could sense Olivia’s surprised that he’d offered the cabin as sanctuary to this family of strangers. And maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, he mused. It was never a good idea to let anyone know the location of their home, but this was somehow different. Jeremy needed this. Liam could see that. He peered through the swirling clouds of dust that scratched at the back of his throat and watered his eyes. Jeremy didn’t have any friends, hadn’t met anyone his age in several years. He hadn’t yet started school. Hell, after all Liam had seen in the past few weeks, he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to let him go at all. But he’d clearly made a connection now, and it was one that Liam realized he wanted to nurture. With pride he watched as his son lifted his small hand to the side of the girl’s temple and wiped away blood that had seeped from her scalp. He could hear their exchange clearly despite the maelstrom around them.

“You okay?” his son asked the little girl tentatively. She nodded and dropped her gaze, her bottom lip trembling. “You cut your head when the bad man threw you,” Jeremy added softly. Again she nodded and raised her eyes to his. He touched her hand. “You can come home with us. I have toys and hot chocolate. There’s a squirrel that plays behind our house. You ever seen a squirrel?”

She shook her head and jumped as her mother moved behind her.

“We don’t have any squirrels where we live, do we?” her mother urged. “Might be fun to see one. And we love hot chocolate.” The mother found her daughter’s hand and squeezed, and Liam immediately warmed to her smile. “It’ll be like an adventure,” she added. “What do you say Susan? Ready to go on an adventure with Jeremy?”

“Susan,” Jeremy repeated with a whisper.

With a small thumb he smeared the blood from her temple and smiled.

“Your moles,” he pointed out. “They’re like a star on the side of your face.”

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”

―
Paulo Coelho
,
Veronika Decides to Die

It had been a week. A long, painful, and unproductive week. Given the limited resources at hand, they’d nursed Seth back to health as best they could, were thankfully able to keep the fever somewhat at bay. At times he would stir enough to drink tiny sips of the water they’d mixed with crushed aspirin and antibiotics, but Jeremy still worried about the threat of dehydration. All in all, they were lucky, he knew, that Seth had regained consciousness at all. And now that he had, he drifted somewhere between a groggy semi-wakefulness and a deep restless sleep.

As if the fear of dehydration weren’t enough, Jeremy was also worried that the antibiotics were too weak to be effective at all. They were old, and though he really didn’t know how these things worked, he hoped their potency only decreased small increments with age. But what concerned him most was the fact that after Seth consumed this last dozen or so, they would be out of medicine altogether. The antibiotics would be gone, and nearly all of the aspirin too, and though both had been effective in managing his fever, Jeremy felt the intense knife of anxiety twist in his gut at the thought of exhausting the last of their supplies.

Seth had suffered his fever in aspirin-laced waves. His clothing was stiff with sweat, his hair now matted, salty, and stuck to the sides of his face. They’d freshened his arms, legs, and chest with pieces of cloth soaked in water they’d warmed over a fire, but it wasn’t enough. He needed a real bath. He needed food. A soft bed to rest in. Hell, he needed a lot of things, but Jeremy refused to move him till he regained a bit of strength. He’d lost quite a bit of weight as well, Jeremy thought as his eyes traveled over the sharp planes of his body. Already slender before, he was now rather emaciated. When awake, they would force him to consume small amounts of brothy chicken soup from a can, islands of mushed crackers floating atop its surface, but what he needed most was quality protein, starchy carbohydrates, and something with vitamins. Jeremy sighed. A balance bar and a cup of lentils weren’t going to help this situation.

Jeremy and Sam had tried to make good use of the times he was asleep. Those first few days they’d scoured the neighborhood and were lucky enough to find several items of use. The 7-Eleven proved mostly barren, but the U-Storage facility across the street had been fruitful enough. Jeremy had taken his crowbar to the small locks at the bottom of the metal doors, pried them open, and shouldered up the heavy doors amid creaking protests of rust. Methodically he and Sam moved from unit to unit, rifling though the long-abandoned possessions of the dead. There were no foodstuffs of course, but there was ample clothing and socks, and even a few knives and other tools.

Further along Sorento Drive they found a neighborhood of low, ranch-style homes, and even a small motel where they found a forgotten cache of water bottles and a vending machine with a few packets of stale—yet edible—snacks. At this point Jeremy worried little about food and more about water. He had decided that as long as they were stuck here, he might as well erect a few rain catchers. Easily enough, he and Sam found supplies to make the devices and constructed several different kinds to see which would work best. Some they hung from the corners of buildings, the bowls stacked vertically on sturdy lengths of wire. Others were simpler, pieces of flat plastic suspended over a pot, edges tied to tree branches or thick shrubbery with a stone set carefully to add weight to the center. Jeremy had inspected the architecture of the 7-Eleven building itself and noticed rain gutters that ran the length of its roof. He and Sam had set bowls and pots at the mouths of these, and though the water would run dirty, it could be boiled, strained, and eventually made potable.

These things had occupied much of their time, and for the most part Jeremy had welcomed the distraction and the general feelings of productiveness. But now a week had passed and he was beginning to succumb to familiar fears. These were the fears that crouched in the darker parts of his mind, the fears that forced him to make difficult decisions, the fears that often threatened to make of him a lesser man. He sat still, legs gathered to his chest, Sam silent at his side. Together they watched the gentle rain deepen puddles that dotted the road. It sluiced down the glass in thin rivulets, sent a cascade of worm-like smudges wriggling down the Exxon windows. It permeated the interior of the store with a pleasant earthy smell. Under any other circumstance, Jeremy would have described the afternoon as pleasant. Pleasant were it not for the words that had recently threatened to bubble from his lips more and more with the passing of each day. He felt them struggling on the tip of his tongue, afraid now that he’d bitten them back as many times as he was able.

“What is it Carp?” Sam asked him pointedly. She leaned into him, playfully bumped her shoulder against his, posed the question he dreaded above all others. “Come on. You get a funny little line across your forehead when you think to hard. You’re gonna hurt yourself. What are you thinking?”

He swallowed and clenched his fists to keep them from shaking.

“Sam, I’m concerned.”

“Concerned,” she said slowly. “Why? He hasn’t had a fever since last night. He’s finally broken it, and it hasn’t come back. He’s getting better, Carp.”

“True,” Jeremy conceded, “He’s getting
better
perhaps, but he hasn’t sat up yet. Or spoken. Or eaten much of anything solid.”

She turned her face back out toward the rain. “He’ll get better, Dad. Every day he’s getting better. You said so yourself last night. The red streaks beside the wound are disappearing. You said you couldn’t see them as much—that they were fainter. His body’s beating the infection. That’s what you said right?”

He hugged his knees and leaned against her. “I did. But it doesn’t mean I’m not still concerned. Sam, I’m not worried that he won’t beat the infection. Not anymore. I think by the grace of God, he’s actually gotten through the worst of it. I’m more concerned now with how much time it’ll take him to come around. It’s been a
week
. I expected us to be back on the road by now. I’d even be satisfied with a small bit of progress. Even if he were strong enough to ride short distances. Even that would be better than standing still. Sam, we haven’t made any progress at all.”

“We will,” she assured him gently. “It won’t be long now. You’ll see.”

He shook his head slowly. “I thought so too at first, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Not so sure about what?”

She’d gone stiff against him. Awkwardly he twisted toward her, pulled the hemming of her shirt just above her belly, and pointed. The green numbers were nothing if not ominous.

“Forty-nine percent, Sam. This disk is already down to forty-nine percent and we haven’t made any progress. I’m concerned that we’re wasting valuable time sitting here.”

She frowned. “We’re not wasting time if I’m alive, Carp.”

“I know that,” he answered irritably. “You’re being deliberately obtuse. You know what I mean.”

Swiftly she turned to him, her eyes ablaze. “Actually I don’t know what you mean, Dad, because you’ve never told me the truth—not in full anyway. What is this invisible clock you seem to be holding us to? Why are we in such a hurry to reach the ocean? You said it yourself. There’s nothing there but spoiled water and rotting beaches. Wouldn’t it be better if we take our time and fully investigate the cities as we go? Think about it! Think about how many valuable supplies we’ve passed along the way. We’re flying through these cities as fast as we can and taking no time to forage them. Grandpa Liam would think we were idiots if he knew. So no, Dad. I’m not being deliberately
obtuse
. How could I when I have no idea what’s going on? Why don’t you tell me? You say you’re ‘not so sure’. Not so sure about
what
? I’m not so sure about this crazy plan of yours.”

He shifted uncomfortably, not yet sure of just how much he wanted to divulge. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her. It was more that he didn’t want to get her hopes up. Or was it the fact that the whole thing seemed like an increasingly shittier plan each day? Maybe he wasn’t yet confident enough to hear it spoken aloud.

Evasively he answered, “I’m not so sure that we can afford to wait much longer. That’s all I’m saying.”

She was aghast as she stared at him. “Are you suggesting we leave him behind?”

“Sam, I just think—“

“No.” Angrily she pushed herself to her feet and peered down her nose. “Absolutely not. I
know
how you think and I won’t allow you to do this again.” She pointed an accusing finger. “You did this same thing to Peter. I know what you did. You don’t think so but I do.”

“We couldn’t stay there anymore, Sam. We were running out of disks and we’d foraged the area and found nothing but a meager supply of crappy insulin pills. We’d completely exhausted that area and we never found a single disk the entire time. It was time to move on. Beyond time in fact. I was an idiot for letting us stay there as long as we did. Maybe if I’d forced us to move sooner, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”

“Right,” she spat. “So we just left him there. We slunk off into the night and left him there to die, but I know the truth. I know what you did.”

He felt his anger rising. “You
know
what I did? I hatched a plan to keep you alive.
That’s
what I did. That’s what I
always
do. What do you think would have eventually happened, Sam? Two kids living under the same roof, suffering from diabetes, and fighting for treatments in a world with a limited supply. That’s madness! Meghan and I would have killed each other, Sam. Sooner or later things would have gotten out of hand. In the end each would have fought to save his child. It was a recipe for disaster.”

“I know all of that,” she sneered. “I didn’t say it was a bad decision. I’m just saying you didn’t have to do what you did. Peter is likely dead now because of you. We could have just left them, Dad. You didn’t have to leave as a thief.” He offered her no response and so she continued brazenly. “I won’t let you do it again. Not this time. Look around you, Dad. Here we are at a familiar crossroads. Same situation, different boy.”

“You don’t understand, Sam” he murmured, suddenly weary. “It’s
not
the same situation.”

“It is,” she pressed. Crouching down in front of him she caught his wandering gaze. “Dad, I don’t want to live if I can only do so at the expense of others we meet. I know you’re scared for me, but we have one more disk left. Give Seth a chance.” She straightened and crossed her arms defiantly. “Or don’t give him a chance and leave us
both
behind. Decide what you want, but I’m not leaving without him. You can’t make me leave.”

“Sam. You’re being unreasonable. Don’t you understand? What if Seth dies and all we did was sit here and watch your meter run lower and lower? What if we do that and he dies anyway?”

“So you’re saying the level of risk isn’t acceptable to you? His life means so little that you’re not even willing to give him a chance?”

Jeremy pressed his palms to his eyes. “No Sam. It’s not that his life means so little to me. It’s that your life means so much. I care about Seth. I’ve even grown to love him. But if he dies and then you…”

His voice trailed off, the thought left unfinished. That was a particular vision he wouldn’t give voice to.

“Die?” she finished brazenly. “If he dies and then I die too. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

Jeremy blew out a breath. “Yes. If I lose you both then all of this waiting would have been for nothing. Sam, sometimes as an adult you have to make difficult choices. You have to weigh the consequences and decide the best course of action given the facts. Sometimes there’s no neat answer to a difficult problem. One decision can be as bad as the next, but you still have to make one. Right or wrong, you have to make a move. Wrong or right, you have to choose a path and follow it. Sam, one day I won’t be around anymore and you’ll have to make life and death decisions on our own. It’s what being an adult is.”

“Maybe so. But I’d like to think that being an adult is also about doing what’s right and kind and compassionate.”

He rose to his feet, took her hands in his, and held them despite her efforts to pull away. “Sam, you’re becoming a much better adult than I’ll ever be. Of that I’m certain. And I never said my decisions were the right ones. Or the best ones. Or if they were even sane. They’re just decisions. Decision made by a man who’s afraid.” He peered over at Seth’s prone form, indecision clawing at him from the inside out. The boy’s breathing was less shallow than it had been before and a brighter hue had begun to pink his cheeks these past few days. She was right about that. Turning back to her he sighed. “Okay. We’ll give him a few more days. We’ll see how it goes.”

Her chin was firm. “Yes. We will. But you need to understand something. Dad, I don’t want to be the kind of adult that does things like that to another person. I can’t live with myself when we do things like that. Don’t misunderstand. I appreciate the sacrifices you’ve made for me, but I think you should take some time to consider some of the things you’ve done.” She broke their contact, pulled the teddy bear key chain from her belt loop, and pushed it into his palm. She turned toward Seth, moved to his side, then stopped and called out over her shoulder. “I think you should spend a little time thinking about Peter. That’s all I’m saying. We could have just left him, Dad. Why couldn’t we have just left him and stopped it at that? You didn’t have to take it as far as you did. You didn’t have to kill him.”