Mass Extinction Event (Book 2): Days 9-16 (2 page)

Thomas

Missouri

"Joe!" I shout as I climb out of the truck and hurry around to the back. Having driven all night, barely able to even make out the road in the light of the moon, I've finally decided to stop now that the sun's coming up. I'm running on pure adrenalin as I lift the tarpaulin and see, to my horror, that Joe's a bloodied, motionless mess.

I stand in silence.

"Joe?" I say cautiously.

No response.

I'm not ready to give up just yet. Sure, it looks bad, but there has to be help somewhere around here. All during the night, I was convinced that we'd eventually find someone or something, but there's been nothing but mile after mile of empty road. About an hour ago, we passed a street sign that welcomed us to Missouri, but I just kept my foot down because I figured there was a chance that maybe, outside of Oklahoma, things might be better.

"Joe?" I say again. Reaching out, I place a hand on his shoulder. "Please don't be dead," I continue. "Please don't -"

Suddenly he moves. It's not much, but it's enough to let me know that he's alive. A faint groan comes from his lips, and although he's clearly still unconscious, I can't help but be overjoyed at the realization that he survived the night. I guess the tourniquets I tied around his wounds must have at least helped slightly. Climbing up onto the back of the truck, I reach down and place two fingers against his wrist, and I can just about make out a faint pulse. He's alive, but he's still in a bad way, and I still need to get us some help.

"Can you hear me?" I ask, looking down at his blood-stained face. "Joe, are you there?"

He groans again, which I guess is a good sign. After all, the groan seemed to be a response to what I said to him.

"Okay," I continue, "I don't know if you can understand what I'm saying, but we're in Missouri. We drove all night. I don't really know what happened back there, but something was totally wrong in Scottsville. There were these things, and they nearly... I pause as I realize how dumb the whole thing sounds. Then again, I know it's all true. I can still remember the look on Clyde's face when he thought he'd got us cornered. "I had to get us out of there," I continue, "and then there was this really loud boom, and then this guy with a feather."

I sit in silence for a moment.

"I meant to head west," I say eventually. "I don't know how we ended up going east. I guess I'm not very good at navigation, but I did my best. Anyway, east isn't so bad, is it? At least we're headed toward Washington. Maybe that's where they're gonna start putting things right and fixing this mess, huh? Do you think, Joe? Is that the best place to go?" I wait for him to reply, desperately hoping that somehow he might wake up and help me. Right now, I have no idea what to do. I've never been out of Oklahoma before, and I have no idea whether going to Washington would actually be useful. Maybe, instead, we should just hunker down somewhere and hope that the world gets sorted out.

I wait.

"Joe?" I ask.

Silence.

My biggest fear over the past day has been that he might just die suddenly, without any warning. The truth is, Joe's injuries are probably way worse than I've accepted, and I figure there's going to come a time when I'll have to make a decision. That time isn't here yet, though, and for now I have to focus on keeping him alive. I need to stay strong. If I allow myself to become weak, even for a moment, I might lose my brother forever.

He groans.

Leaning closer, I see that one entire side of his upper chest has been badly damaged, crushed by the car that collapsed directly on top of him. The heavy bleeding seems to have stopped, but it's clear that he's not going to simply heal up. The fact that he's even alive at all right now, in a way, seems like a miracle. The damage must have affected his lungs, maybe even his heart, and he's been steadily losing blood for twenty-four hours. It's getting to the point that I'm not even sure if a fully-equipped hospital would be able to do much for him.

"We're going to keep driving," I say eventually. "We have to get to some place eventually, right? Somewhere we can find help? All we have to do is just stay strong. Can you do that, Joe? Can you just hold on for a few more hours?"

I wait for a reply.

Silence.

"Shit!" I mutter, realizing that things are getting desperate. "You have to stay alive!" I shout eventually, even though I know it's not going to help. "You can't die! Everyone else died, Joe! You're the only one left! Do you hear me?" For a moment, I'm filled with anger as I contemplate the possibility that my brother might finally bail on me, just like the rest of my family. The thought of being left alone in the world is too much to bear. After all, the only person who might possibly still be alive is Martha, but she's back in California. For a moment, it occurs to me that maybe I should turn the truck around and head back west. If I can find Martha, she'd know what to do. She'd
have
to help.

Joe groans, but it's not even clear whether he's conscious.

"We're going east," I say finally. "There's no argument. We'll go east until we find someone who can help, and maybe we'll eventually end up in Washington, but at some point we have to run into someone. Maybe the army's already helping out. They're gonna help Washington and New York first, aren't they? Then they'll start heading this way. If we head toward them, we'll find them sooner." I take a deep breath as I realize that this plan, although it's somewhat insane, is better than just sitting around doing nothing. It's our only chance.

Climbing down from the back of the truck, I hurry to the driver's cab and get back inside. By the time I've got the engine running again, I've managed to put aside my doubts. This plan is going to work. We
are
going to get help, and Joe
is
going to survive. Any other outcome is just too terrifying to even think about right now. The world might be in a mess, but it's not going to end.

Elizabeth

New York

The back of the plane is all burned out, so it's hard to make out the name of the airline company, but the front end is relatively unscathed. The problem is, it's right across the road, and taking a route around the edge is going to be difficult since the gaps between the roads out here are getting increasingly overgrown. It's as if someone intentionally dropped the thing right in the middle of the road, with the specific aim of stopping people from getting past. Sighing, I stand and stare at the downed plane, and finally I turn to look back at Dawn, who has stopped about ten meters behind me.

"What do you think?" I ask.

She stares at me.

"No thoughts, huh?" I reply, before turning to look at the plane. I've seen other planes in the distance since I left Manhattan, but they all seem to have burned after they hit the ground. I don't know why this one is mostly intact, but since we're quite close to the airport, I figure that maybe it had barely left the ground when the trouble hit. With the main fuselage tilted to one side, I can see that the landing gear is sticking out, but although I'm not too keen on going any closer, I figure that if the fuel tanks were going to explode, it would have happened by now. The fire seems to be out, at least, and now the plane is just a vast monument to the world that existed before all this craziness happened. It's only been just over a week, but already it seems hard to believe that humans were ever able to get such huge machines into the air. I wonder if there's anyone left alive who knows how to fly one of these things.

"We're gonna go around the front," I say, hoping that Dawn can hear me. It's weird to be taking charge like this, but it's not as if Dawn seems to have much of an opinion on anything. "We're just gonna get past this thing, and keep going, okay?" I turn to her, but of course she's still just staring blankly at me. "All you have to do is follow," I continue. "Think you can do that?"

No reply.

"Of course you can," I mutter, turning back to the plane and finally starting to walk over to the side of the road.

Climbing over the barrier isn't the difficult part. The difficult part is getting down the grass verge that leads to the trench that runs between the roads. The last thing I can afford is to get any kind of injury, so I make my way very carefully down the side of the embankment until, finally, I'm in the shoulder-high grass that runs along the bottom. Looking up, I see the nose of the plane looming above me, and I'm careful not to look too closely at the cockpit windows, just in case I might spot something I'd rather not see. After all, there are probably a hundred or more dead bodies in there, and they've had eight full days to fester.

Looking back, I see that Dawn is slowly making her way down after me.

"Good girl," I say, figuring that she's basically following me like a dog.

Although the grass is long, it's not too hard to walk through, and soon we're both past the plane. Figuring that I'd rather be up on the road, I start climbing back up the side and eventually I haul myself over the barrier.

"Jesus!" I shout, almost falling straight back down as I see that there's a dead body just a few meters away. I steady myself, but I can't take my eyes off the corpse. It looks like a guy, face down on the tarmac, with a whole load of flies buzzing in the air above him, and what appears to be a piece of shrapnel in his back, as if he was felled by some flying debris. I can't see his face, but one of his arms is stretched out, the skin looking discolored and with something crawling through the flesh. I guess the flies and maggots have well and truly got to him, but at least he's not like the guy back in the city, who seemed to be alive despite the fact that his body was dead. Taking a deep breath, I force myself to remember that this is unlikely to be the last dead body I encounter during this journey. Still, it brings back memories of the scene back at the apartment building when I was kneeling next to Henry.

Turning, I see that Dawn has reached the barrier. As she climbs over to join me, she seems totally unfazed by the dead body, and instead she simply stands next to me, as if she's waiting for me to lead the way again. Damn it, I wish she'd actually talk to me. It'd be good to have someone I could talk to about these things, but she just seems totally blank, as if there's barely a thought in her head. I guess this is her way of dealing with what's happened, and hopefully she'll emerge from her sense of shock eventually.

"It's okay," I say, stepping past the corpse. "Let's just keep going."

As I walk away, I find it hard to believe that I'm able to deal with all of this. I should be breaking down in tears, but instead I'm managing to keep everything under control. I guess the tears and the sobbing will come later, when I can
afford
to relax, but for now -

Suddenly I stop dead in my tracks as I hear a dull banging sound nearby. Turning, I see that Dawn has also stopped, but the banging sound is continuing and after a moment I realize that it's coming from inside the downed plane. I stare up at the windows along the side of the fuselage, but there's no doubt: someone's in there, banging on the metal and trying to get our attention. It's a chilling though to imagine someone in the plane, staring out through one of the little windows and looking straight at us.

"Leave it," I say to Dawn. "We can't rescue them. We..." I pause as I spot movement in one of the dark little windows. It's impossible to make out the person's features, but they've clearly seen us, and now the banging is becoming increasingly furious, almost manic.

I take a deep breath. What if this was the plane my parents were on? As a cold shiver passes through my body, I remember that my mother called from the airport, which means that she and my father were already off the plane. Allowing myself to relax, I try to remind myself that there's no point torturing myself unnecessarily by trying to imagine everything that could possibly have happened to them. They're gone. I accept that now, and it's time to move on. I just have to keep going.

"There can't be a survivor," I continue eventually. "It's been more than a week. Even if they had enough food, the disease from the other bodies." I pause to imagine what it would be like to end up trapped in a long metal tube with scores of corpses. Finally, I realize that although it might technically be possible that someone survived for this long, the more likely explanation is that it's another of the creatures that Henry and I saw in the car. After all, a survivor would probably have been able to open the door or find some other way out of the plane, whereas the creature seemed unable to even open the car door. Whatever they are, they don't seem too smart, so I guess this is just another of them, banging on the inside of the plane in a vain attempt to get out. I'd like to think that I won't encounter any more of them, but I know that's a forlorn hope. At some point, I'm going to have to work out what to do, but right now I just need to focus on getting to Lake Ontario. Maybe Mallory and the others have some ideas.

"Come on," I say to Dawn, before I turn and walk away. "We can't stop." I glance over my shoulder and see that she's still staring up at the plane. "Dawn!" I shout. "Come on!" I keep walking, and finally I hear her footsteps behind me.

Thomas

Missouri

The house looks deserted, but as I park the truck a few hundred meters away, I realize I can't afford to take any risks. Those creatures could be anywhere, and with Joe out of action, I can't be certain of keeping us safe. Then again, we need some fresh supplies, so I figure I might as well take a look.

"It's okay," I say as I hurry around to the back of the truck. Joe looks bad, maybe even worse than before, and it looks like there's some fresh blood coming from his wounds. The roads around here are pretty rough, and I'm pretty sure that the constant travel isn't much good for Joe's injuries, but I barely even have time to think at the moment. As I grab our only remaining rifle, I tell myself that we have to keep moving. If we stop, we're going to die, both of us.

"I'm just gonna take a look inside," I say as I double check that the rifle is loaded. "They might have some medicine."

Turning to the house, I pause for a moment, waiting for any sign that there's someone inside. It's a fairly small wooden house, but although it's out here in the middle of nowhere, it looks to have been fairly well maintained. There are some piles of wood over by the door, and a nearby fence looks as if it was painted quite recently. In a way, it reminds me of my family's house back home, although this place is quite a bit smaller. Still, what really matters is that we seem to be miles from anywhere, which means there's a good chance that this house and all the land is completely cut off from everything that's been happening in the world.

"Hello?" I call out, walking cautiously toward the door. "Is anyone home?"

No reply.

Deciding that it might be too dangerous to try the door, I head to one of the windows. It's dark inside, but I can just about make out a kitchen. The place looks clean and tidy, although I'm remaining cautious for now. Walking over to the door, I give it a gentle push but find that it's locked. I look back over at the truck and see Joe's blooded form on the back shelf, and I realize that even though I hate the idea of breaking into this place, I've got no choice. Besides, no-one's answering me, so I figure the occupants of this place must have either died or left. Taking a step back, I pick up a large rock from the ground, and then I throw it at the window before I have a chance to think twice.

The glass shatters, and I hurry over to get a better look inside. The first thing I notice, to my relief, is that the place doesn't smell bad. I'm not expert, but I'd have thought that after a week of rotting, a dead body would stink pretty bad, so hopefully this means there's no-one inside. I guess the occupants must have been out of the house when disaster struck, or maybe they set off to get help. After all, there's no car anywhere around. Using the butt of the rifle, I clear away the rest of the glass and then I slowly, cautiously climb inside.

It takes me a few minutes to check all the rooms, but finally I realize that there's definitely not a body here. I don't know where the people went, but right now I don't care: all that matters is finding some more supplies, and hopefully getting hold of some medical equipment that might help Joe. I hurry through to the bathroom and go through the cabinet, but I don't find much more than some pain-killers and a few prescription tablets that I've never heard of before. I pocket them anyway, while reminding myself that at times of emergency, this isn't so much stealing as sharing things around. I hated it when Joe robbed that gas station last week, but this is different: this is a life or death situation. Joe might have some moral gray areas, but I'm certain that I've made the right decision here.

Once I'm certain that there's no more medicine left, I head through to the kitchen and start going through the fridge. There's no electricity, of course, but I find a few old tins of beans, which I figure could be useful. To my surprise, I also find what appears to be some kind of animal, arranged on a plate with its fur still on; I look closer and realize it seems to be a skunk. Taking a step back, I tell myself that while things are bad, I'm not quite at the point yet where I'm going to eat skunk meat. Closing the fridge, I walk over to the sink and try the taps, but of course there's no water. That's my biggest concern, I guess. We've only got enough water to last a couple more days, and that's before you factor in the need to keep Joe's wounds clean.

Hearing a noise outside, I duck down for a moment. I wait, but the whole place is silent again. Still, I know I heard something, like a brief shuffling, scratching sound. I take a deep breath and tell myself that there's no option other than to go and take a look. I doubt the occupants of the house have come back, and hopefully none of those creatures have got this far, so I guess the most likely thing is that there's just some animal out there.

I walk over to the window and take a look outside. There's no sign of anything, so I quickly climb out and then, keeping the gun pointing straight ahead, I hurry over to the truck.

"Fuck!" Joe says, reaching up and trying to grab something from the other side of the flat-bed shelf.

"Hey!" I call out, as I realize that Joe must have been the cause of the noise I heard. "Are you awake?"

"Give me that!" he mutters, trying to get hold of a small wood ax that's resting in the back of the truck. "Are you fucking deaf? Give it to me!"

Climbing onto the back of the truck, I reach out to grab the ax, before turning to Joe. "What do you want it for?" I ask.

"What do you think?" he replies breathlessly.

"I don't know," I say.

"Just fucking give it to me," he splutters, "and then drag me out a bit into the woods."

"Why?" I ask.

"Do I have to fucking spell it out to you?" he shouts, before coughing up a small amount of blood. "Look at me," he continues. "I'm dying. There's no fucking point trying to pretend I'm not."

"You're not gonna kill yourself," I tell him, feeling a cold chill pass through my body.

"Fuck you," he says, trying but failing to grab the ax from my hand.

"No way," I say, moving away from him. "You're gonna get better."

"It hurts!" he shouts, his bloodshot eyes filled with anger and fear. Reaching his shoulder, he pulls away the sheets that have been covering him, revealing the full extent of his injuries. One entire side of his upper chest has been badly crushed, with fresh blood seeping from wounds that have started to turn a kind of yellowy-black color. "Look at it!" he continues. "This is so fucking far beyond anything, Thomas! It's infected and shit!"

"I'm gonna get you to a hospital," I tell him.

"There's no fucking hospital," he continues. "There's no fucking anything." He tries to get up, but the pain is clearly too much and he lets out an agonized scream as he falls back to the floor.

"You can't give up," I say, terrified of the thought that I might lose him.

"Please," he whispers, with tears in his eyes. "Do you have any fucking idea how much it hurts to die like this?"

I shake my head.

"You know it's gonna happen," he continues. "You're not a fucking doctor, you fucking dip-shit. Even if you try to keep me alive, it's just gonna be one, two days max of fucking agony. Fuck, I'm sweating already. And what if..." He pauses. "What if I've got whatever turned those other people into..." His voice trails off for a moment. "You need to save yourself," he adds eventually. "I've never given a damn about anyone else, but right now, I want you to save yourself. You're the only one of us left, so just leave me here and get going. If you haven't got the guts to kill me, just leave me behind with an ax and drive off, and I'll sort myself out. But I don't want you dying just 'cause you think you can save me. You can't."

"I'm not leaving you," I tell him.

"Are you really that fucking stupid?" he asks.

"I'm not leaving you," I say again, tossing some food at him before I grab one of our last bottles of water and roll it toward him; he pushes it all back to me.

"Don't waste that shit on me," he says firmly. "Come on, Thomas. You're
not
this dumb. I know it."

I stare at him for a moment, trying to decide what to do, and then finally I make a decision. Shuffling off the back of the truck, I start walking toward the house.

"Thomas!" Joe calls after me. "Get back here! Thomas!"