Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (11 page)

“Don’t see why not.
We got about thirty gallons of gas in the back of the truck and I think that
will get us both there.”

“Okay, I’ll take
the lead for the first leg and we can switch off. I got the PRC turned on and
in the Jeep. You do the same. Lead car calls the shots.”

“Okay.” They loaded
up the young women and pulled out of the driveway and onto the highway. Stryker
kicked the Jeep up to eighty miles an hour and said, “Anybody sees any movement
around us, please let me know.”

Haley rolled up her
window and set the M-4 barrel against her shoulder. They drove in silence for a
few minutes, the women watching Stryker’s eyes click from left to ahead to
right to rear view mirror every minute or so. Sarge kept the pace, staying
around 300 meters off the first car’s rear bumper. After another few minutes of
silence, Jenna decided to speak.

“What’s it like
living out here? We were locked in a dorm for close to two years and I don’t
have any idea what to think about the world now.”

“Well, there aren’t
a lot of people left. I was in Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego, when it
started. The last estimate we got was around ninety-seven percent dead after
the plague hit.” He stopped when he heard the gasps from the back seat. Silence
followed for a few minutes while they struggled to comprehend what that meant.
His eyes continued to click to the four points of the compass as he waited for
the next question.

“What do you do
with your time?” Elle asked.

“I’m a scavenger. I
find things that other people want, take them to the trading post I told you
about when I gave Mia a meeting place last night, and swap for what I need.” He
glanced in the mirror and saw that Jenna looked confused. “The only occupation now
is doing what you need to do to get by. There’s no job market or places of
employment. There’s no internet, TV, or radio. We effectively live in a world
that’s a 100 years in the past, maybe more.”

“We lost our
internet about a year ago. TV went out before that and we didn’t listen to the
radio. I guess we thought, when we came out of the dorm, things would get back
to normal.”

“Not anytime soon.”

“So what are we
going to do at the ranch?”

“I’m not really
sure,” Stryker replied. “I hope one of you is a gardener so we can have some
fresh food. My grandma was an avid gardener and the garden is still there. I
just haven’t planted it because I’ve been trading for fresh food.”

“My mother taught
me organic gardening,” Elle replied.

“Well, there you
go. Life is looking up,” he replied with a cheery note; but his eyes continued
clicking back and forth, watchful and focused.

“I don’t care about
any of that,” Haley said. “I’m just glad to have clothes on, be clean, and not
in a cage anymore. At least we’re going somewhere that has water and power. I
hate those men that took us. I’m glad they’re all dead and that Mary might be
safe now. We should all just be grateful to be alive.”

Stryker glanced
over at her, saw a grim determination on her face, and decided she would be
fine; she would be a valuable addition to their group. He was less sure about
Jenna, but she was going to San Antonio anyway and may or may not be back with
the group. Elle was the wild card. He had no idea what to make of her or what
she was thinking. Elle and Jenna started chatting in the back seat and Stryker
and Haley remained silent. The miles rolled by; after a few hours, they stopped
for water and a pee break at a rest stop just short of the bridge that crossed
the border with Texas.

Sarge and Stryker
got out of the vehicles and met between them. “Keep them inside the trucks
until I clear the buildings,” Stryker said.

“Got it.” Stryker
moved off toward the rest rooms and stopped at the door of the female bathroom,
knocked politely, then burst into the room with his weapon up. He opened every
door on every stall, then emerged from the building and flashed the thumbs-up
signal to Sarge.

The women tumbled
out of the vehicles and rushed to the bathrooms. Stryker got water bottles from
the rear of the Jeep and set them on the picnic tables on the side of the
building. He took a seat, opened one, handed it to Sarge, and opened another.
The two men examined the rest stop, sweeping their eyes over the buildings, and
neither observed a threat. Stryker looked across the interstate and saw an old
farmhouse, dilapidated and with a sagging roof. In front of the house a power
line swept across the terrain, and the wires also drooped down more than he
thought was usual. The sun was high and bright in the sky.

Erin stared at
Stryker’s back as the two men sat chatting. She thought about the way he
cleared buildings for the rest of the group, taking the risk by himself. She
remembered her grandfather once telling her that there were only three types of
people in the world: the sheep, the wolves, and the sheepdogs. Stryker was
definitely in the latter category. She felt safe with him, but also felt a mild
resentment at the idea that she needed to be protected. She felt that she had
proven herself repeatedly, and that bothered her. She pushed the thought away
and entered the rest room.

“What do you
suppose the ladies did in the dorm after the power went out?” Stryker asked.

“Erin told me they
raided all the cafeterias and lived on bottled water and sodas. There was no
shortage of food as the campus had four eating facilities and they were all
filled with prepared foods. I guess they went to the library to get books. They
also played board games and used the gym. She said that after the first year,
they used the entire campus as a resource and they got water for bathing from
the indoor swimming pool. The cafeteria had gas stoves, so cooking was no
problem.”

“I don’t think I
could live like that for two years.”

“Me either. It was
hard enough to do it in my neighborhood in my own house. I thought about
leaving all the time, but had no idea where to go.”

“Why didn’t you
come to Pendleton?”

“I was pretty much
trying to avoid contact with other people. It occurred to me several times, but
I didn’t see what was to gain by going there.” The men sat in silence for a
moment.

“What the hell are
we going to do with the women?” Stryker asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’ve both
been alone for years, and now we have four women to look after, and absolutely
nothing for them to do.”

“I have thought
about that,” Sarge replied. Then he shrugged helplessly.

“Seriously, think
about it. They’re all in their early twenties. There are no men around their
age that I know of, there’s no internet, television, or cell phones. What the
hell are they going to do?”

“I have no idea.
Not a clue.”

“Maybe we should
talk to them about it. They might have something figured out already. They did
live on that campus by themselves with no power or water.”

“Let’s do that when
we get back to the ranch.”

The rest of the
drive was uneventful, and they changed drivers every two hours. Stryker took
the last shift and drove up to his house, told the ladies to stay in the
vehicle, went inside, and cleared the building. He waved for everyone to come
in, and they divided the five bedrooms. Stryker and Sarge each took a room on
opposite ends of the house, Haley and Erin each had their own room, and Jenna
and Elle shared the last bedroom. After eating a dinner of ramen with canned
chicken, they all went to bed.

Stryker woke up and
glanced around. It was still dark and he rose and looked out the window. The
moon was still ascendant and he wondered what woke him. He put on a pair of gym
shorts, grabbed the XD from its holster, and walked on tiptoes through the
living room. He opened the front door and stepped outside. He heard the yip of
a distant coyote, then the buzzing sound of crickets. He walked to both ends of
the porch and glanced around the corners, seeing nothing. He moved to a chair
and sat down, puzzled at why he woke up. His eyes wandered to the east, where
the highway passed his house around a mile away. A humming sound reached his
ears, first growing louder, then fading. The sound was familiar but he was
unable to identify it.

He thought about
his wife and child. Then he thought of Erin. He couldn’t deny he felt an
attraction, and knew they would have to have “the conversation” before long,
but had no idea what he intended to say. Sarge complicated things. His own
feelings did the same. Their age difference didn’t make things easier, and the
fact that they would all have to live together and get along made the
consequences of a failed relationship more daunting. It was not as if one of
them could move to a different town or not see each other day in and day out.

He remembered when
he was separated from his watchful grandparents as a child. He was around four
years old and walked out of the grocery store where they shopped and into an
unfamiliar town street. He wandered for what seemed like hours, fascinated by
the new sights and smells, but terrified at the idea of being lost and alone.
That was exactly how he felt sitting on the porch. He fell into a half sleep,
neither asleep nor fully awake.

DIE OFF MINUS THREE
DAYS

Stryker approached
the San Onofre Gate of Camp Pendleton on Highway 5. He had finished his
rehabilitation session at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego and was on the
way to pick up his wife, Jill. They would go to the day care facility and pick
up their two-year-old daughter, Emma, and then he would lie down and rest his
aching back before dinner. The staff at the rehab center drove him mercilessly
and he encouraged it. He had his first back surgery following his deployment to
Iraq. It had been a long road back but he had thought he was at full strength
when he reinjured it in a training accident two months prior. It was going
slower this time and his final evaluation was in two weeks. At the rate he was
going, he would not pass muster and be forced to make some impossible choices.
To a Recon Marine there were two types of men in the world: Recon Marines and
shoe salesmen. He was afraid he might be changing categories soon. He did his
best to hide it, but not much got past Jill.

After passing
through the gate, he turned east on Basilone Road, passed the base elementary
school, the car wash and YMCA, and parked at the medical center. Jill, as
usual, was running late. She worked as a physician’s assistant at the center
and her hours were somewhat unpredictable. They had a half hour before they had
to pick up Emma, so he got out of his Jeep, checked his phone, and walked
around the parking lot.

The base was a huge
facility covering 125,000 square miles and containing everything you would find
in a medium-sized town. There were swimming pools and gyms, dry cleaners and
fast food joints, and a theater. The base had been built in 1941 to provide
more training facilities as the nation prepared for war. It had been a
renovation project ever since. The hospital was one of the few new construction
projects in years. It was four stories tall, made of steel and glass, and was
the only contemporary-looking building on the base. The remainder of the base
was comprised of 1940s structures, well maintained but showing their age.
Stryker and Jill were lucky enough to get base housing after Emma was born and
while the three-bedroom, bungalow-style home was anything but deluxe, the
convenience of living near Jill’s work and Emma’s day care made up for the lack
of luxury.

During working
hours, the base ballooned to a population of 70,000. At night, 38,000 remained
on base in government-provided housing. It was a bustling beehive of activity
in daylight. At night, it was more like a quiet, sleepy suburb. It was totally
self-sufficient, with its own system of wells and pumps, power generation and
distribution systems, as well as sewage plants and a water recycling facility.
Stryker always presumed it was designed that way so that the camp could
continue to function no matter what occurred outside its gates.

When he looked up
from checking his watch, Jill was walking toward him with that “I’m in a hurry”
stride. Like many large men, he had married a tiny woman. She was just under
five feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. As she approached him, she
wore her usual expression, smiling broadly with merriment dancing in her deep
blue eyes. She stopped, held her arms like a child that wants to be picked up,
and Stryker plucked her from her feet, hugged and kissed her, and gently set her
back on the concrete.

“How’s your day
been?” she asked.

“About the usual,”
he said, shrugging once. “How about yours?”

“Outstanding!” she
boomed in a falsely deep voice. Then she giggled and added, “Let’s go get
Emma.” They got in the car and drove to the day care center where they both
hugged their daughter. On the drive across the base to their house, Stryker
thought of how they met. He was in the first rehab program and she was given
his case to manage. To say it was love at first sight would only be partially
true. It was for him, but she approached a relationship with a Recon Marine
with yellow warning lights going off in her head. She was close enough to the
Corps to know that the constant deployments and training cycles were usually
hell on marriages. But Stryker hung on like a bulldog with a chew toy; in the
end, as usually is the case, the heart trumps the mind. Stryker promised her he
would return to normal duty after four years. At the end of three, it was
staring him in face.

When they arrived
home, Jill bustled around the house cleaning and getting dinner ready. She
reminded Stryker of Speedy Gonzales. Jill was a bundle of energy. She went to
yoga classes, dragged Stryker to free lectures at the community center, and was
constantly talking with friends on the phone. Weekends consisted of
marathon-like shopping trips to consignment stores with friends, movies, and
free outdoor concerts. Though it all, Emma was always with her, usually
dangling from a baby pouch, always facing away from Jill so she could see
things.

They sat at the
small dinner table wolfing down Jill’s chicken Marsala and chatting idly.

“Anything
interesting happen today?” Emma asked, code for “do you want to talk about it
now.”

“Not really. How
about you?”

“Well, we had two
Marines come in today with the worst vomiting and diarrhea I’ve ever seen. They
were both running fevers and are from the same unit. So we could have a virus
breaking out.”

“Geeze. Really? At
the dinner table?”

“Don’t be so
squeamish,” she laughed. “Seriously, how is the rehab going?”

“Not well.”

“I’m sorry. You
seem to function pretty well.”

“Not well enough to
stay in Recon. The ax is going to fall in a few weeks.”

“Are you in any
pain?”

“Only from the
rehab.”

“Well, it was only
going to last another year and I understand you want to go out on your own
terms. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.” She came around the table and hugged
him from behind, then sat down again.

After putting Emma
to bed, they sat on the ragged old couch they purchased at a consignment shop
and watched a romcom on TV, one of the few things that would keep Jill in one
place for more than a few minutes. They snuggled together under a blanket,
fooling around like a couple of teenagers in the back seat of a car. Finally,
she squealed and jumped off the couch. Stryker chased her into the bedroom and
closed the door.

While driving to
his rehab in San Diego, Stryker noted there were an unusual number of ambulance
and police sirens sounding in the distance, but figured it was probably one of
the frequent pile-ups that occur on clogged Southern California freeways. He
pulled over on the shoulder of the freeway, along with other drivers, and let
two ambulances and a fire truck pass by, then continued. As he was about to park,
he noticed two police officers blocking the entrance to the hospital, standing
behind a strip of yellow tape that extended across the entrance. As he
approached, one of the officers held up one hand, palm facing Stryker, and
said, “The hospital is quarantined. If you need medical assistance, you’ll have
to go to a different hospital.”

“What’s going on?
Is it the flu?”

“I have no idea.
We’ve just been told to not let anybody in.” Stryker shrugged, headed back to
his car, and made his way back to the base, where he called Jill and left a
message. An hour later, he called again. No answer. Finally, he texted her and,
10 minutes later she replied that she would call him as soon as she could. His
phone rang an hour later.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi. Look I only
have a minute. One of the Marines that came in yesterday has died. The other is
not going to make it, either. The hospital is quarantined so I can’t leave.
We’re getting calls from hospitals all over the city. We have some kind of
epidemic on our hands and nobody has been diagnosed yet. Can you get Emma out
of day care and make sure she doesn’t leave the house?”

“I’m on my way.
I’ll call you when I get back home.”

“Love you.” She
hung up before he could reply. Stryker hurried out the door, and drove to the
day care center and entered the room where Emma usually played with the other
kids. The room was empty and there were no teachers present. He felt the panic
well up, fought it down, and thought about the situation. Wherever they went,
they went as a group. Obviously, not every parent would get here ahead of him.
They were too young for field trips. He puzzled at it for a long moment, then
decided to go looking for a school bus or some other appropriate vehicle. He
called Jill again and left a message. As he was crisscrossing the base, slowing
the vehicle at every corner and looking around, his phone rang.

“She was at the
clinic,” Jill said. “I just got a call. Some of the kids were exhibiting fevers
and vomiting. They took them there to see who needed to be moved here.” She was
sobbing softly and was clearly trying not to be overheard. “They’re moving Emma
here now.” The sobbing increased in volume.

“Is she going to be
okay?”

“I don’t know. We
have another dead. The other Marine. Hospitals all over town are starting to
perform autopsies to try to figure out what the illness is. Until we know that,
we really can only try to keep patients alive.”

“What should I do?”
he asked. “How can I help?”

“Go home and stay
away from other people. I’ll call you later.”

“Can’t I come
there?”

“Absolutely not.
The last thing we need is for you to get infected as well.”

“But I want to be
with you and Emma,” he protested.

“Listen to me. This
killed two perfectly healthy Marines in their twenties within twenty-four hours
of presenting symptoms. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible that
Emma is not ill with the virus and will be fine. I’ve been exposed to both
fatalities and am at risk. That leaves you as a possible single parent in the
future.” Stryker realized he was no longer speaking to his wife, but a
professional health care worker who was coldly assessing the situation.

“You really want me
to go home and sit around while the two of you might be dying?”

“That’s exactly
it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have to. There
is no other choice that makes sense, and they won’t let you in anyway. There
are close to 100 armed Marines out there guarding the hospital and every other
one is facing out. Nobody is coming in, unless it’s by ambulance, and nobody is
leaving. That’s the hard, cold fact. Now, I need you to deal with that and
accept the fact that exposing yourself to this does not help me and it could
hurt Emma. Go home. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Stryker. You’ve
been a good husband and father. I’m not asking you to do this for your own
good. You understand that, right?”

“I guess,” Stryker
replied, feeling as though he were a helpless four-year-old. “Do you think you
and Emma are going to die?” There was a long pause.

“I think Emma has a
better chance than I do. But, there’s no way to know. That’s why you have to
try to stay alive. Please do this for Emma. I can’t even function if you don’t
take this off my back.”

“Okay,” he replied,
angry with himself for his inability to help them. “I’ll go home; but please
call me whenever you can.”

“Will do. I gotta
go.”

“I love you,” he
repeated to the phone.

He spent the rest
of the day in his own special brand of hell. He was furious about the situation
and fought the temptation to call Jill again, to hear her voice for what might
be the last time. The TV was on CNN and the news was not good anywhere. The
journalists checked in from all over the globe, but the video was virtually the
same: scenes from outside hospitals where extra ERs were set up. The number of
dead reported in each location was in the thousands. He switched to a San Diego
station and saw the same thing being reported from virtually every hospital in
the city. He watched TV all night. Finally, the following morning, he gave in
and left messages every hour. He sent a text every hour as well. Nothing came
back at him. Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening, he listened to
traffic leaving the base.

The following
morning, he again heard multiple vehicles. He set an extension ladder against
his house and climbed to the rooftop. There was a traffic jam of pickups and
cars leaving the base in all directions, most fully loaded. By afternoon, it
was totally silent.

He left more
messages and sent more texts. Still nothing. Throwing his phone against the
wall in frustration, he screamed curse words and jogged through the house,
punching his fists through the drywall in several places and roaring in
frustration. He continued until exhausted, then slumped onto his couch and
cried for an hour. Every time the sobbing would subside, he looked up and
stared at the TV through sightless eyes. He finally stopped and went to bed,
where he thrashed around, trying to hope his wife and child were alive, but
knowing in his heart they were not.

The next morning,
he turned on the TV and sat down to drink his coffee. He flipped through the
station and found nothing but static. The world really seemed to have ended. He
walked to the back patio, glanced around the back yard, and started weeping as
his eyes swept over Emma’s toys and Jill’s garden. It was one of her many
passions. His weeping grew increasingly loud and soon he was sobbing again. He
didn’t remember the last time he ate, and didn’t really care. Stryker
considered his situation and realized that everything he was had been ripped
away from him.