Genesis Plague (30 page)

C
onny stood up next to Marco. Together, I hoped they could see
anything coming for us.

I drove slowly. Route
12 would join with Front Street through the heart of the small city, then veer
east. I was planning to take 287 out of town and farther south until we met
I-90. It was no relief when a painted rock on the side of the road again
welcomed us to the city.

I had been expecting a
roadblock or more Molotov cocktails. At the very
least
I thought we’d
get some people screaming at us as we drove by. But the town seemed empty. It
was only until Route 12 took a sharp turn east in the middle of Townsend that
we saw signs of life.

And talk about
signs
.

The main intersection
of the city was packed with people. I quickly stopped and cut the headlights
when we were a few blocks away.

There was a towering
pile of logs in the middle of the intersection. Dry hay stuck out from between
the logs. As I watched, a man approached the wood with a blazing torch in hand.
The crowd cheered as he threw the torch into the logs and the hay burst into
flame.

Drums pounded in the
distance as the bonfire grew. There must have been a hundred people packed
around the fire, cheering and laughing, dancing and singing.

Conny quickly slid open
the back window.

“What are we supposed
to do?!” she hissed.

“Try to find a way
around,” I said.

I shifted into reverse
and backed up, looking for a side street to take so we could cut around the
intersection. Hopefully the bonfire blinded the townsfolk enough so they couldn’t
see more than a street away.

I was about to turn the
wheel when a black Ford Bronco appeared out of nowhere, tires screeching as it
stopped right behind our truck. Before I could shift back into gear, a man was
out of the Bronco and at my window, aiming a double-barreled shotgun at my
face.

His eyes flicked up to
Marco in the back, who undoubtedly had as many guns as possible pointed in his
direction.

“If he pulls the
trigger, I pull mine,” said the man from the Bronco. “Everyone will hear it,
and you don’t want that, mister.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter who I
am. Tell your man to lower his guns. And the lady, too.”

I looked in the
driver-side mirror to see Conny gripping the .38 revolver.

The man whistled loudly,
and everyone near the bonfire turned and looked in our direction.

“Good,” he said,
holding the shotgun tightly and looking relieved. “Here she comes, and she’s
not gonna like that you stuck your guns in my face.”

A small crowd broke
from the bonfire, led by a stout woman. With the fire at her back, I couldn’t
make out any details until she was standing next to the man with the shotgun,
speaking with him in hushed tones. She had a freckled face and shoulder-length
copper hair. The rest of the group she brought with her was a mixture of
stone-faced men and women. Perhaps they represented the leading council of
Townsend.

“Do we shoot?” asked
Marco quietly.

“Nobody shoot,” I said.
“We’d never make it past all of them.”

Emma was still asleep
next to me. I nudged her awake and she looked up as I motioned for her to get
down to the floor. She rubbed her eyes and sank down in front of the seat.

“Well, now!” said the
woman loudly, standing at my window. Her face was red and sweaty, but jubilant
instead of angry. “Didn’t expect to have any guests tonight! I see you met
Howard.” She gestured to the man with the shotgun. “He volunteered to run
security for us tonight during the celebration, so please don’t hold it against
him for trying to do his job.”

“I probably could have
done without the shotgun aimed at my face,” I said.

“Well, probably,” said
the woman, nodding sympathetically. “But if you’ve seen what we’ve seen, you’d
agree it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Her full cheeks rose
when she smiled, and her eyes were almost squeezed shut by all the extra flesh
pushed in their direction.

“Where you folks
headed?” she asked.

The people she brought
with her remained impassive as I looked from face to face.

“Rapid City.”

She laughed. “What in
the hell for?”

“We’re hoping to find a
way to cure the virus.”

Her laughter cut off
abruptly.

“Is that right?” She
looked at each of us in the truck with fresh intensity. “Think you can do it?”

“Only if we get there
fast. We’re just trying to make it to I-90.”

She nodded quickly, as
if she had heard it a hundred times before. “Mm-hm, mm-hm. Yep. Well, you’re on
the right track, except the road is out about ten miles ahead.”

“The road is out?”

“Mm-hm, yep. Some
son-of-a-bitch blew it up and took himself with it. Good riddance to bad
rubbish, I say, but it still leaves you folks in a bit of a pinch.”

Damn right it did. Now
we could only stay on Route 12 as it headed northeast before cutting back down
to meet with 90, taking us hours out of the way.

The woman’s face scrunched
up in deep concentration as she watched me think.

“But you know what?”
she said. “If you all want to join us for an hour or so, I can send some boys
down the road and try to clear a path for you. Haven’t had much reason to until
now! Only thing is…nobody with you is infected, right?”

“No one,” I said before
anyone else could answer. Conny at least
looked
like she wasn’t
infected, and I didn’t want to know what could happen if this woman found out
one of us was a host.

“Now,
that’s
a
miracle!” said the woman. “And if I can be honest, it looks like you all could
use a hot meal.”

My mouth watered
instantly at the thought.

“Mm-hm,” said the
woman. “I can tell that’s music to your ears. You give me thirty minutes, one
hour tops, and I’ll have a path cleared, I guarantee it. Nothing my boys can’t
do with a bit of elbow grease and a big-ass tractor.”

She laughed hard and
slapped the side of the truck. Emma jumped and the woman’s eyes sparkled with
joy.

“Well, my, my! What
have we here? What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Emma realized she had
been spotted and she slowly crawled back into the passenger seat and buckled
up.

“She’s real quiet these
days,” I said.

The woman’s face
darkened and she shook her head sadly. “Oh, yes. I know about that. What kind
of world are we living in, anyway, that a child can’t even keep her eyes open
all the time?” She sighed heavily, then the shadow on her face passed and she
smiled. “So, what do you say? Want to join us for the celebration? Only caveat
is you gotta leave your weapons here. Howard is the only one in town allowed to
carry a gun, and that’s only because he’s on security detail.”

I gripped the steering
wheel, hesitant to say yes. “Could we have a moment to talk it over?”

“Course you can!” she
said. “I’ll just be right over here when you’re ready.”

She walked back to her
group for a hushed conversation.

“What do you guys
think?” I asked, turning around in my seat.

“I’m starving, Paul,”
said Conny through the back window. “Those tin foil meals aren’t cutting it.”

“Me, too,” said Marco.

I looked at Emma, but
she didn’t acknowledge me.

“The Mayor back in
Helena specifically warned us to stay away from here,” I said. “You know him,
Marco. Was he right about Townsend?”

“I only know what he
told me,” said Marco. “We had to defend our city from raiders, but there is no
way to know if they were from Townsend or anywhere else. But these people have
no guns, and I am not afraid. I am too hungry to be afraid, and there are
several women dancing by the fire I would like to meet.”

“And you need some
rest, Paul,” said Conny. “We all just need a little break, or what will we do
when we get to Rapid City? Pass out?”

“You’re okay with
waiting for an hour while they clear a path?” I asked.

“Better than driving
the extra distance, most of it in the wrong direction,” said Marco.

“Fine,” I said. “But no
more than an hour.”

I looked at the woman,
who immediately stopped talking to the group and turned to me. She raised her
eyebrows.

“Well?”

“We’d be delighted to
join you,” I said.

“Wonderful!” she said,
genuinely happy. “There’s plenty of burgers for everyone!”

T
he woman’s name was Donna, and she recently found herself
thrust into a leadership position after the mayor of Townsend skipped out. She
told me the story as we sat on two barstools near the bonfire.

I was on my second
cheeseburger, watching Emma play with a toy truck on the ground by my feet.
Maybe ‘play’ was too strong a word. She just rolled it back and forth mechanically
while she stared unblinking into the fire.

Conny had her own stool
a few feet away. She had just finished a burger in a few bites and was now
chowing down on a plate full of baked beans and potato chips. If either of us
had been vegetarians before tonight, we weren’t any longer.

Marco was talking and
laughing with a beautiful woman by the fire, his hunger for food seemingly
replaced for the moment with another kind.

In the distance, Howard
parked our Tacoma in an empty driveway. He set the keys on the seat and picked
up his shotgun, then got back into his Bronco and continued his patrol.

Donna crumpled up her
paper plate and threw it at the fire. It landed a few feet short. A dancing
woman bent down to pick it up and tossed it into the flames without missing a
beat. She smiled at Donna, who winked.

“Seems like you’re stretched
a little thin, only having one person on security detail,” I said after I
finished my burger.

“Used to have more,”
said Donna. “Don’t need them so much after we routed most of the bad element
from the area.”

“How did you do that so
quickly?”

“To be honest?” she
said, looking right at me. “Intimidation and fear tactics, and making sure
people knew there were consequences for their actions. Anyone that came to
Townsend looking for trouble found it, and then some. Word gets around quick.
Wasn’t like that when we first heard about the infection. Our mayor wanted to
open our hospital to anyone who was sick. I said let the other cities do that
if they all want to die. I guess I made a big enough impression on my neighbors
that when the mayor took off, they just slipped me right into the vacant seat.”

The heat from the
bonfire warmed me to my core, and I found myself relaxing despite myself.

“That’s a lot of
pressure,” I said.

“It can be, mm-hm. But
I got a good bunch of folks around me, and we’re gonna get through this thing,
even if the rest of the world spirals down the toilet.”

A young woman in a long
green dress walked past carrying a tray of drinks. She handed me one without
asking, then gave one to Donna, who chugged the contents in two gulps. I looked
at the dark liquid in my cup.

“What’s this?”

“Red wine. It’s shit,
but we got about six hundred cases of it. Was supposed to pass through on a
delivery but the driver decided to stick around. That’s him over there.”

She pointed to an
overweight man with a bushy gray beard on the other side of the intersection.
He stood alone, mumbling to himself between sips.

Donna shrugged. “Good
fella, for the most part. Gets a little too deep in his cups from time to time,
but who doesn’t?”

I looked at the
townsfolk. Some danced around the blazing fire. Some necked at the edge of the
firelight. Some were engaged in obnoxious conversation with others.

Every last one of them
looked happy.

“What are you
celebrating?” I asked.

“Life!” said Donna,
holding her arms wide to indicate all that was around. “I want every new day in
this God-forsaken world to be a good one. We would have a party every night,
but we’d run out of trees for the fire!” She laughed hard, her rosy cheeks
shining.

I took a sip of the
wine. It was shit, just like Donna said.

“Someone in Helena told
us Townsend was to be avoided at all costs.”

“I bet it was that
mayor,” she said, chuckling.

“He’s
the
Mayor
now,” I said. “I never even learned his real name. Learned his sons’ names, and
his granddaughter’s name.” I nodded toward Emma, who still stared into the
fire.

“That’s his
granddaughter?” asked Donna, leaning forward with interest. “Poor thing. It’s
not easy having a crazy person in the family. I know that first-hand.”

I took a gulp of wine.
It added to the warmth from the fire, and sleep threatened to overtake me.

“How much longer do you
think it will take your boys to clear a path on the highway?” I asked.

Donna smiled. “They
work pretty quick.”

“Maybe we should head
down there, so we can get through as shoon as…” I swallowed, trying to clear my
slurred voice. “We can get through ash shoon ash…”

I blinked hard as my
vision blurred. Conny was a blob nearby, lifting a blurry cup to her blurry
mouth. Marco was still standing by the fire, his hand resting casually on the
shoulder of the beautiful woman.

“Marco!” I blurted out,
feeling drunk. “Winesh poishon.”

The woman tried to
restrain Marco as he walked away. He shoved her backward and ran over. Then he
slapped me across the face, and it felt like he hit me with a chair. My vision
cleared and I could think straight again.

“Get Emma and get the
truck,” I said.

Donna stood quickly and
drew a small pistol from the back of her belt. Marco scooped up Emma and pulled
out a 9mm from his own belt. He kept it aimed at Donna’s head as he backed
away.

The party died
instantly. I stumbled forward and grabbed Conny’s elbow. She giggled and tried
to push me away, but I managed to get her to her feet and pull her away from
the fire. The townsfolk crowd toward the four of us as we hurried toward the
truck.

“Easy, everyone,” said
Donna loudly. She lowered her pistol as we crossed the intersection. “Let ‘em
go.”

“Keysh are in the
sheat,” I said as I rolled over the side of the truck and fell into the bed,
pulling Conny in after me. She laughed loudly as she rolled on top of me.

The front door closed
and the engine started. Marco backed out of the driveway quickly, then shifted
into gear and peeled out, heading away from the bonfire.

The dark sky spun
overhead as I tried to get myself under control. There was never any road crew
clearing a path. There was probably never even a problem with the road to begin
with.

“Hang on!” Marco
shouted.

I sat up quickly and
looked ahead as he pushed Emma down to the floor on the passenger’s side. My
vision blurred again, but I could make out enough detail to know that it was
Howard who darted across the road in front of us, dragging a long chain of
spikes behind him.

Marco tried to swerve
out of the way but there wasn’t enough time. The tires exploded when they hit
the chain, and the steering wheel wrenched to the side.

The truck veered off
the road, hit an embankment, and went airborne. Conny and I were thrown into
the air as the truck barreled into a house just off the road.

Glass shattered,
cutting my skin. My legs smacked the top of the truck as I tumbled over it. For
a moment, I was inside the house, soaring through a bedroom, then I crashed
through a thin wall and I was outside again.

The last thing I saw
before everything went dark was the ground rushing up to meet me.