The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse (21 page)

“And you’re alone?”

Bill said nothing. I frowned. I had seen no movement above deck, but it was possible he was hiding other people out of sight. I decided not to push the issue. I changed the subject.

“Didn’t you wonder what was happening on shore?”

Bill shrugged his shoulders. “The boat has a VHF radio,” he said. “I stayed on the air long enough to know what was going down… but I didn’t head straight for the marina anyhow. I spent a week hiding in my home before I took to the road. I knew by then that this was the Apocalypse.”

I started writing notes. Bill wandered along the shoreline like he was on sentry duty and then turned on his heel and came back to where I stood. I glanced up at him.

“So you’re from Detroit originally?”

Bill nodded. “The north eastern suburbs.”

“And you said you wanted to get to the lake because the water was
what you knew best
,” I repeated Bill’s earlier comment and then shook my head and frowned. “I don’t understand that.”

Bill looked amused. “I worked in general construction as a carpenter before the ‘Affliction’,” he said. “But before that… another lifetime ago… I was a Gunner’s Mate in the Navy.”

I started to nod my head. Bill went on. “I lived close to this lake. It was the obvious choice. It’s always been part of my bug-out plan.”

“You had a plan for the ‘Affliction’?”

“I had a plan for that kind of disaster,” he qualified. “I wasn’t preparing for the ‘Affliction’, but I was preparing. It was only a matter of time. Plague, war… something had to give sooner or later. Three days before the infection reached Detroit I stopped going to work and started fortifying my home. I’d been following the news and paying special attention to the online conspiracy theories. There were people on websites talking about the ‘Affliction’ and claiming it had been part of a failed biological warfare weapon.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me with a pointed kind of expression, like maybe I knew something. I stared blankly back at him.

“Bill, I’ve heard every conspiracy theory,” I said. “And I still don’t know what is true – what really happened. Some people out west were saying the ‘Affliction’ was the result of an enemy biological attack…. Others I met – ”

“Enemy?” Bill interrupted, and his expression hardened. “The Russians?”

I shook my head. “The Chinese,” I said. “At least that was the claim.” I made a helpless expression with my hands. “But a guy I met south of here told me that we did it to ourselves. He said the plague was caused by our own fucking weapon that was leaked into the air after an explosion at a secret facility in Missouri. I really don’t know.”

Bill sniffed. His eyes were drawn to the knife he had left on the rock. The steel was glinting in the warm sun.

“But I do know the official story is bullshit,” I said with more anger and frustration than I had intended. “That line the government was pedaling about the infection being spread from Africa.”

Bill laughed hollowly. “They tried that with every other outbreak,” his tone matched my own cynicism. “Ebola, Zika… I never believed that shit either. They were trying to spread that bullshit when the ‘Affliction’ finally reached Detroit.” Bill paused for a moment and shook his head with a slow disbelief. “I still can’t believe so many people were caught unprepared. So many millions…” He walked across to the knife, tested the edge of the blade with his thumb, his expression distant. At last he looked up at me. “I had to kill some people along the way,” he said and his expression went suddenly dark. “A couple of them came to my home while I was bunkered down. They tore the boards off a window.”

“You defended yourself,” I said. Bill said nothing. There was an expression of profound regret on his face. “One of them was a neighbor’s kid,” his voice went soft. “The other was a young woman who I knew. She lived a few doors down. We had been friends…”

“That couldn’t have been easy for you…”

Bill seemed to shake himself alert and his gaze slammed into mine. He stiffened, drawing himself upright, almost like he was standing to attention. “I’ve killed twenty-three of the ‘Afflicted’ since the outbreak,” he said in a croak. “The first two were the intruders I just told you about. I killed them both with my K-Bar fighting knife. The rest I killed with my shotgun. None of them were easy. All of them were necessary.”

“The weapons, Bill,” I said gently. “Were they ones you had stored in your home for this kind of eventuality?”

“Yes,” he said. “I had two shotguns with a decent supply of shells, and a lot of quality edged weapons like the K-Bar… machete, SOG Tomahawk…” his voice trailed off as though the list was much longer but unnecessary to repeat. “And I had a pantry stocked full of food and water. Those supplies sustained me in the house until the worst of the ‘Affliction’ had passed. For the first seven days there was screaming and blood and horror and sirens. After that the world seemed to go quiet. It was like a forest fire had burned through the streets. I had camping gear stored in the attic. I’ve been camping all my life. I knew that if I couldn’t get to the marina, I could hide in the woods and survive… When I took to the road, the highways were blocked and there were still ‘Afflicted’ wandering the streets. I had to abandon the car when I was three miles from a marina and hike the rest of the way on foot, carrying what I could, abandoning the rest.”

“Was that journey to the marina… was it uneventful?”

Bill sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth. “Two of the ‘Afflicted’ were hiding in a burned out house,” he said. “I’d been careful, moving with caution,” he shrugged. “In the end, it was just bad luck.”

“Bad luck? What happened?”

I was just a mile from the marina,” Bill explained. “They came through the front door of the house. I think they had been two women before the plague but when they stepped out into the light, I couldn’t be sure. They were covered in blood and filth. They were wild, clawing at the air. One of them hunched over and howled like a fuckin’ wolf. They were insane,” Bill hissed.

“What happened?”

“I still had some of the camping gear with me. The two ‘Afflicted’ came snarling down the driveway. I was on the opposite side of the road. There were woods behind me and I thought about going to ground. But I wanted to reach the marina before dark, and I didn’t know if the ‘Afflicted’ had a sense of smell – how they hunted. In the end, I dropped the camping gear and stood my ground.”

“You had no other choice?”

“I couldn’t outrun them,” Bill admitted. “I wouldn’t abandon the water and weapons. They would have run me down.”

“So…?”

“I shot the first one when it was at the end of the driveway,” Bill said. His voice had become calm, almost detached. “The other one kept coming. I waited until she was on the road and then blew her head off her shoulders.”

“Were you frightened?”

“Not of dying. But those things… what the ‘Affliction’ did… it was hideous. I decided I would rather be dead than become ‘Afflicted’.”

“What happened after you shot the second victim?” I was writing everything down which meant I was unable to stay focused on Bill’s facial expressions or the tone of his voice, and it was several seconds before I realized he was speaking faster, with a harsh edge of admonishment to everything he was now saying.

“I should have realized the sound would bring others,” he said regretfully. “Four more came from nearby houses. I guess the sound of shooting attracted them.”

“Did you consider the woods then, or making a run for the marina?”

Bill was shaking his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “They came from houses at the
far
end of the road. They were between me and the marina. I couldn’t turn and run if I wanted to reach a boat. I knew my only real chance was to reach the marina and get on the water. I had to go through the ‘Afflicted’. Killing them all was the only way to stay alive.”

I lowered my voice a little. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Bill propped his hands on his hips and then hung his head as if the memories of that afternoon still weighed heavily on his conscience. He kicked the heel of his shoe into the soft gravel and then looked up at last, his face lifted to the sun so that he had to shield his eyes.

His voice seemed to come from far away. “I’ll tell you what happened,” Bill said in a whisper. “But first you’ve got to understand something…”

I waited.

Bill cleared his throat. “I never forgot that the ‘Afflicted’ were people,” he said suddenly. “If they had been soldiers from an enemy army, it would have been easier. If we had been at war…” he went quiet for a moment, and then his voice came back, thicker but firmer. “The ‘Afflicted’ were
victims
. Do you get that? Do you understand how that goes against everything we Americans had ever been brought up to believe? We support victims. We go out of our way to help our neighbors…” there was a long, significant silence. “But those who were ‘Afflicted’ were something new – something the likes of which the world has never seen before.” He shook his head with a profound kind of regret as though he was still struggling personally to come to terms with the complexities of balancing a moral code of honor against the instinct for survival.

I looked away for a moment. A gentle breeze rustled through the treetops, and the long grass bowed before the wind like a field of wheat. Behind me I heard Bill sigh.

“The first of the ‘Afflicted’ I shot had been a man,” Bill spoke, his voice hollow. “He came from behind a car that had crashed and burst into flames by the side of the road. He charged at me. He was snarling. He had something in one of his hands – it might have been a body part. It could have been anything. I didn’t wait to find out. I shot him in the face from close range and his… his whole head disappeared in a pink mist. I didn’t get time to reload before another one rushed from out of a house near the corner of the street. It was a woman, drenched in fresh blood. She came running along the sidewalk. There was something wrong with her legs. I had the machete hanging on a leather loop from my belt. I threw down the shotgun and went for her.”

“You didn’t try to reload the gun?”

“No.”

“I used the machete. The woman was clawing at the air and snarling. I swung the machete to drive her away, but she didn’t flinch. Her eyes were wild. I saw no reason, no understanding. All I saw was rage. She ran onto the blade, and it sliced her chest wide open. She staggered from the impact. It swung her around in a kind of circle, but she stayed on her feet. Blood gushed from the wound. No one should have survived that,” Bill shook his head, remembering. “But she just howled at me. She snarled like I had made her mad.”

“You swung again?” I prodded gently.

“Yes,” Bill’s features seemed to sag just a little with something like regret. “I had no choice. I had to defend myself. I hit her in the neck. The sound was like the noise it makes when you chop at a tree. It was sickening.”

“And she went down, Bill?”

“Yes,” he said. And then said no more.

Bill had told me that four of the ‘Afflicted’ had attacked him during the last desperate hour when he had been making for the marina and the safety of a boat. I was reluctant to ask him about his encounter with the remaining two attackers. I wavered, teetering between being a thorough journalist and being a compassionate man. Clearly, Bill had retained his humanity in a world that seemed to have lost its soul. He’d endured enough.

In the end, I decided that the solace of one good man was more important than any story I would write. I put down my notebook and thrust out my hand. “Thank you,” I said.

Bill looked a little bewildered. “You’ve got enough for your story?”

“Yes,” I said. He seemed relieved.
Some nightmares come during the darkness. Other nightmares never go away.

We shook hands on the banks of Lake St. Clair, and then I turned on my heel to walk back towards my car. Bill called me back, his voice clear.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he looked suddenly younger, as though the weight of his sadness had been lifted with hope. “Something you need to know so you can understand why I did what I did… and why I desperately needed to reach the marina.”

I arched an eyebrow inquisitively. Bill pointed out to where the long sleek yacht was anchored, and then he signaled with a wave of his arm.

From below the deck, several pale and frightened faces suddenly appeared. They stood at the yacht’s rail, watching me in silence.

“I did it for them,” Bill explained solemnly. “My wife, daughter and my grandchildren.”

America’s future.