Desolation (8 page)

Mitch slowly nodded and tried to light his cigarette. Realizing it
was backwards he turned it around with fumbling fingers and lit it. He
took a deep drag and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling.

“Yeah, yeah… good idea…” he muttered. “I’ll stay held up here
for a few days and see how things fall into place. If things get bad…
promise me you’ll go with me to the camps.”

Jerri nodded.

“I’ll take my folks with us if things start to go south,” she said.
“Both of them got vaccinated. I wish we didn’t wait so long… Maybe we
should’ve gotten the shot too before they ran out.”

“Yeah, I know but it’s too late for that now… I’ll give mom a call
tomorrow… I need to check on her,” Mitch said. His mom was in
Houston. He had no idea that she was already one of the infected.

Mitch and Jerri stared vacantly at the television for several hours
without speaking. The footage playing was surreal and horrifying. Some
broadcasts were shut off mid-air while others felt heavily scripted. The
cameras didn’t lie though and they didn’t hide the virus’s true nature.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t flu.

Eventually, around sunset, the broadcasts stopped and the
channels turned to static.

 

Mitch tuned the television off and looked over at Jerri with the
cigarette butt still between his lips.

 

Jerri met his gaze, frightened.

 

After sitting in stunned silence for several minutes, they
embraced.

 

There, on Mitch’s sofa, they made love for the last time.

Jerri shifted in her sleep, fidgeting. She nestled herself onto the
floor and curled up into a fetal position, hugging her knees against her
chest.

Her once beautiful neighborhood had become a chaotic
nightmare. People were loading their cars up with everything they could
handle. They shoved bags of clothes into the backseat and pushed their
half-dressed children into the front. Police cars and ambulances sped
down the narrow streets, narrowly dodging the screaming pedestrians and
haphazardly parked vehicles. Some of the houses were boarded up as if a
hurricane was approaching, others had their doors busted open by looters.
Quite a few houses had their front porch splattered with blood.

In the distance, downtown Phoenix burned and helicopters
circled overhead.

Mitch weaved his Taurus down the neighborhood streets, driving
Jerri to her parent’s house. He watched the chaos around him with
detached disbelief. Multiple houses burned out of control.

Jerri watched with horror as she listened to the grisly radio
reports.

“
-I am. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m reporting live in south Tempe. I-I can
speak freely. The soldiers who were escorting us and dictating our script have gone. I…
I don’t know how long we can stay on the air like this…

“Listen, don’t believe what the government is saying. Things are not under
control. This thing is airborne! It’s not just bites!
[COUGH]
We –we just fled from
the Arizona Mills Mall. It’s filled with… with… well, I don’t how else to describe
them except for calling them–”

Mitch reached over and switched stations.

 

“–for Disease Control and Prevention has recalled the marketed Acexa
vaccine and suspended all–”

 

He cycled through stations again until he found one that wasn’t
static.

 

“–the emergency broadcast system for central Arizona. This is not a test.
Please stay tuned for important information–”

 

Mitch turned off the radio.

 

“Maybe it would be best if we rode in silence, huh babe?” he tried
to sound casual, but she could tell he just as terrified as she was.
Jerri murmured and her hands trembled in her lap.

 

A man wearing a blood-stained shirt and dirty slacks ran out in
front of the car, holding his hands up. He was covered in ragged wounds.

Mitch slammed on the brakes, jolting Jerri and himself forward.
The car skidded to a stop a few feet away from the man.

“Help me!” the man cried, coughing, slamming his open fists on
the hood of the car. “Get me to a hospital!” His eyes grew wide with
terror as he looked to the side. “Oh fuck… oh fuck!”

A woman slammed against Mitch’s driver-side door, snarling like
a rabid animal. Her eyes were clouded, vacant, and her mouth was caked
with gore. She clawed at the glass, trying to get inside the car.

Mitch leaned away from the glass, hyperventilating.
“Go! GO!” Jerri screamed, pounding the dash.

Mitch floored the accelerator and the car threw the man in front
of them aside like a sack of potatoes.

The woman lost interest in the retreating car and focused her
attention on the fallen man. She started gnashing and clawing at him in a
feverish rage.

The man let out piercing screams.

 

“What the fuck is wrong with these people?!” Mitch screamed,
breathing frantically.

An air raid siren started wailing in the distance.
“Just drive!” Jerri shouted, closing her eyes and covering her ears.

Mitch swerved around an accident in the intersection and turned
the corner.

 

A fireman lurched out in front of the car, mouth smeared with
blood and matted with bits of hair.

 

Mitch didn’t slow down.

 

The vehicle struck the man and created a bloody splotch across
the hood and windshield.

 

The fireman’s corpse tumbled over the top of the car and landed
in a twisted heap.

 

“There! There Mitch!” Jerri shouted, pointing frantically at her
parent’s house.

 

Mitch nodded and erupted into a coughing spasm.
Mitch parked the car on her parent’s lawn and kept the engine
running.

 

“Go hurry up and get them! I may have to round the block if
anyone sees me but I'll be here! I promise!” Mitch shouted.

Jerri quickly got out of the car and ran towards the front door.
Her house was a typical house for Arizona, a single-story with swamp
coolers on the roof.

She ran inside and started shouting.
“Mom! Dad!”
Nobody answered.

Jerri noticed the bottles of cold medicine that covered the coffee
table and the used tissues that littered the floor. The emergency broadcast
message played on the television. A trail of bloody droplets led down the
hall to the bedroom.

Her parents received the Acexa vaccination just two days before
from the nearby CVS pharmacy.

 

“Hello…?” Jerri called out. She made her way down the narrow
hall on her tiptoes.

 

The bedroom door was cracked open and it was dark inside. She
heard a wet slurping sound coming out of the room.

 

Slowly, Jerri creaked open the door and peered inside.
Her father was lying on his back in the middle of the bedroom
floor, his arms sprawled out at his side.

Her mother was hunched over him and had dug a hole into his
abdomen with her bare hands. She scooped up fistfuls of his intestinal
tract and shoved them into her gullet, chewing slowly and methodically.
She looked up at Jerri with clouded eyes.

Jerri gasped and stumbled back into the hall against the wall,
knocking framed family pictures onto the floor.

Her mother slowly stood up and started to lurch towards her with
an expressionless face. She extended a boney hand towards her daughter
as she lurched, pieces of her late husband still falling from her maw.

Anguished sobs stole Jerri's voice. She backed away into the
living room as her ghoulish Acexa reanimated mother lurched farther into
the hallway, both arms extended.

Her mother stepped onto one of the fallen framed pictures. The
picture was one they all took together at a family reunion in Tucson. The
glass frame shattered and sliced deep into her foot, but she never so much
as flinched.

Jerri’s reanimated father started crawling out of the bedroom
after Jerri as well.

In the sight of such irrational, abject horror, Jerri felt her bladder
let go. The warmth running down her thighs somehow awakened her
instincts. She turned and ran out of the house, screaming all the way.

Jerri tossed and flopped around on the carpet, soaked with sweat.
She screamed herself awake and bolted up, heart thumping madly in her
chest.

The memory was all too vivid. She remembered riding with him
to the evacuation center and remembered him coughing most of the way.
The gods can be cruel. Mitch never made it to the camp; Jerri was
immune, he was not.

She sat against the dresser, shaking, and did not sleep for the rest
of the night.
12

R
ight before dawn, two FEMA officers sluggishly walked the
catwalk at the top of the massive wall that surrounded the camp’s
perimeter.

“What about you?” one of the men asked the other one.
“Well, unlike your high-brow ass, Bret, I’d take White Castle and
thus win the game,” Hemingway said.

 

Bret looked over at him and thwacked the back of Hemingway’s
helmet with his gloved hand.

“No fucking fair, bro! They didn’t have White Castles anywhere
near here,” Bret argued. “You’re lucky I let you have Taco Bell, since it
sucked so goddamn much.”

“I never said it had to be regional, dumb ass!” Hemingway said,
laughing.

“You always do that shit!” Bret said, throwing his arms in the air.
“Do what shit?”

“Change the rules in the middle of the game! You can’t do that!”
Bret said with an aggravated sigh.

 

Hemingway waved his hand dismissively.

“Okay, okay, fine. Let’s do another topic. Supermodels. Who
would you bring back? No age limit. No generation limit. If you pick an
ugly bitch, then you lose. Go,” Hemingway said.

“It’s hard to think about bitches when I smell that food coming
from the mess hall, though…” Bret said, looking at the smoke churning
out of the nearby chimneys.

Hungry citizens were camped outside its doors, eagerly awaiting
the morning meal.

 

Hemingway looked over at Bret and narrowed his eyes.
“I didn’t see any shipment come in today… That sign is bullshit.
I bet it was sitting in storage, rotten. You’re going to eat it?” he asked.
Bret shrugged.

“It’s been so long since I had pork I don’t care if I get food
poisoning. It has to be better than that rat concoction they’ve been
using.”

Suddenly, guards manning the nearby watchtowers started
shouting and the searchlights powered on.

 

“Ah shit!” Hemingway shouted as he unslung his rifle.
Bret fumbled with his weapon and did the same, aiming blindly
out into the desert.

 

Six searchlight beams scanned the distance, and two shadowy
figures emerged from behind a large rock formation.

When the searchlights focused on the two figures, the light
revealed a man and a woman both hauling backpacks loaded with
supplies. They were both armed with crossbows.

“Marauders,” Bret muttered with distaste. He sighted his weapon
in on the couple. Marauders hadn’t come around the camp for months.
Apparently, the smell of freshly cooked meat was attracting
unwanted attention.

“
Attention, this is official United States government property. Do not come
any closer! You are trespassing!”
a voice boomed from the watchtower’s
speaker system.

The soldiers watched in horror as over two dozen shadowy
human shapes scurried from cover to cover in the distance behind the
man and woman. The soldiers aimed towards the group, unsure who to
focus their fire on if the group suddenly tried to advance. The gun’s lasersights danced across the desert, trying and failing to draw a bead on them.

“
By order of the United States of America, turn around and leave
immediately! All of you!”

The group fully emerged from cover, and across the expanse of
the desert now numbered in at least fifty. They didn’t move and called the
government’s bluff; shooting a target in the dark at that distance would do
little more than waste ammunition. The group was intelligent enough to
stand far enough to avoid the threat of fire, but close enough for the men
on the wall to see them and make their presence known.

Bret slowly lowered the rifle, hands shaking.
“They aren’t moving,” Bret said. “What do they want?”
Hemingway grunted.

“Does it matter? We outnumber them and outgun them. They
know that if they tried to step towards us we’d mow them down,”
Hemingway said. “They can try to stand there and intimidate us all night
long but in the end we’re the ones with the superior firepower.”

The officers on the wall watched the group in the desert all night
long, weapons ready.

 

The marauders stared back, waiting.
13

J
erri woke up in the morning with a crick in her neck and
multiple knots in her back. Groaning, she stood and popped her back.
“Good morning,” Krystal said, smiling over at Jerri. “Jacob.” She
was holding the baby against her chest and he wiggled in her arms,
making gurgling noises. He kicked and grabbed his mother’s hair.
Jerri rubbed her temples and shook her head.
“What…?” Jerri murmured, trying to ease the tension in her neck
by turning her head side-to-side.
“The baby’s name is Jacob,” Krystal beamed. “I’m naming him
after his father.”
Jerri nodded and offered a polite half-smile.
“That’s nice…” was all she could manage.
“So what’s for breakfast? I was thinking about going out but I
can’t find my good clothes… This room is a mess!” Krystal looked
around the dorm and shook her head.
“Hun… do you even know where you are?” Jerri asked carefully.
“Well,
yeah
,” Krystal said, rolling her eyes. She looked down at
Jacob and cooed softly at him, tickling his stomach with her finger. She
never specified where she was and, in fact, acted like she forgot that Jerri
was standing just a few feet away from her.
Jerri frowned.
“I’m going to go see if the mess hall opened, would you like me
to try to bring you back something?” Jerri asked.
Krystal kept her vacant eyes fixated on Jacob and cooed. She
didn’t answer.
Jerri was worried. She would have to tell Andrew about her odd
behavior when he stopped by later.
She paused and felt a chill run down her spine.
…when he stopped by later.
Did she actually just think that?!
Why did that notion resonate so strangely with her? Most of all,
why did she even think such a stupid thought!? He was one of
them
. He
was one of the Orwellian masters.
The sickening part was that he truly was a devil in sheep’s
clothing. He actually seemed like a really nice guy… Ha!
He tricked her into letting her guard down with his charm and
charisma. He was trying to chisel his way into her head.
She decided she wouldn’t allow it to happen again.
After breakfast, she intended to move Krystal to another dorm,
somewhere Andrew couldn’t find her. Teddy would know a good place to
lay low.
Andrew was trouble. He was the enemy. He wasn’t to be trusted.
She felt stupid for being so naive.
“Stay in here hun, and don’t open the door for anybody except
me,” Jerri said. She didn’t have to get dressed; she was still wearing the
same outfit from yesterday. Cursing herself, she left the dorm and
stormed out into the hallway.
The dorm seemed utterly vacant. Most of the rooms were open
and she didn’t hear or see a single soul. It was actually quite eerie.
She walked past the bathroom but didn’t go in; the prospect of a
warm breakfast outweighed the prospect of brushing her teeth.
She hit the button at the end of the hallway and the sally port
door opened.
The sally port speaker crackled, but no message played.
She stepped inside and the door shut.
It smelled like burning plastic inside. The shower head spat out a
few sparks and the speaker crackled with inaudible static.
The outer door opened and Jerri hurried out into the Arizonan
heat.
She looked in Teddy’s tent but saw that it was empty.
His books were gone.
“He's probably already pigging out,” she said to herself, smirking.
As she hurried down the alleyway, she saw that all of the tents
were empty. It was as if a mass exodus happened in the middle of the
night.
When she came to the corner and stepped out into the common
area, she froze and found where everyone was at.
Haggard residents were lined up, waiting to enter the dining hall.
The massive line wrapped around the plaza multiple times like a neverending snake. It encircled the empty gallows and ended near the control
tower.
Jerri groaned, knowing that she was going to be in the line for a
very
long time. She made her way to the end of the line and got cut off by
a few people who ran ahead. She would have run, but she didn’t have the
energy.
She stood behind a man who smelled like he took a bath in dirt
and used bricks of shit for deodorant.
The woman standing behind her had oily hair and was covered
with stale sweat - the kind of sweat that had a very pungent pubescent
odor.
Needless to say, it was not very enjoyable. It was six in the
morning and she had a very long wait ahead of her.
Jerri tried to focus her attention on the wonderful smell coming
out of the kitchen. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what savory
food awaited her. Unfortunately for her, the line moved abysmally slow.