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America the Dead
Copyright Dell Sweet and A. L. Norton 2024 All rights reserved.
AMERICA
THE DEAD: BEGINS THE END
Earth’s
Survivors America the Dead: Begins the End is copyright © 2016 Dell Sweet. All
rights foreign and domestic reserved in their entirety.
Cover
Art © Copyright 2020 Wendell Sweet
Some
text copyright 2010, 2014, 2015 Wendell Sweet
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LEGAL
This
is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are
products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living person’s
places, situations or events is purely coincidental.
This
novel is Copyright © 2016 Wendell Sweet and his assignees. Dell Sweet and Geo
Dell are publishing constructs owned by Wendell Sweet. No part of this book may
be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and,
or distributed without the author’s permission.
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electronic print.
PROLOGUE
Route
81 rest-stop
Watertown
New York
April
20th
1:00
am
A
black truck pulled into the rest stop and two men climbed out; walking toward
the rest rooms that sat in from the road. Concrete bunker looking buildings
that had been built back in the early seventies. They had been closed for
several years now. In fact the Open soon sign was bolted to the front of the
building; rust streaked the sign surface. It seemed like some sort of joke to
Mike Bliss who used the rest stop as a place to do light duty drug deals.
Nothing big, but still that depended on your idea of big. Certainly nothing
over a few thousand dollars. That was his break off point. Any higher than
that, he often joked, you would have to talk to someone in Columbia… Or maybe
Mexico, he told himself now as he sat waiting in his Lexus, but it seemed that
since Rich Dean had got himself dead the deals just seemed to be getting larger
and larger. And who knew how much longer that might last. He watched the two
men make a bee line for the old rest rooms.
“Idiots,”
he muttered to himself. He pushed the button, waited for the window to come
down, leaned out the window and yelled. “What are you, stupid? They’re closed.”
He motioned with one hand. “You can’t read the fuckin’ sign or what?”
Both
men stopped and looked from him to the sign.
“Yeah,
closed. You can read right? Closed. That’s what it says. Been closed for years.
Go on into Watertown; buy a fuckin’ burger or something. Only way you’re
getting a bathroom at this time of the morning.” He had lowered his voice for
the last as he pulled his head back into the car, and turned the heater up a
notch. The electric motor whined as the window climbed in its track. He looked
down at his wrist for the time, 1:02 A.M., where the fuck was this dude. He was
late, granted a few minutes, but late was late.
A
sharp rap on the glass startled him. He had been about to dig out his own
supply, a little pick-me-up. He looked up to see the guys from the truck
standing outside his window. “Oh… Fucking lovely,” he muttered. He pushed the
button and the window lowered into the door, the motor whining loudly, the cold
air blew in.
“And
what can I do for you two gentlemen,” He asked in his best smart ass voice.
The
one in back stepped forward into the light. Military type, Mike told himself.
Older, maybe a noncom. A little gray at the edges of his buzz cut. With the
military base so close there were soldiers everywhere, after all Watertown was
a military town. It was why he was in the business he was in. It was also why
he succeeded at it.
“Did
you call me stupid,” The man asked in a polite tone.
“Who,
me? No. I didn’t call you stupid, I asked, what are you, stupid? Different
thing. The fuckin’ place is closed… Just doing my good deed for the day… Helping
you, really, so you don’t waste no time,” Mike told him.
“Really?”
The man asked.
Mike
chuckled. “Yeah really, tough guy. Really. Now, I did my good deed, why don’t
you get the fuck out of here ’cause you wore out your welcome.” He opened his
coat slightly so they could see the chrome 9 mm that sat in its holster.
“Really,”
the first guy repeated.
“Okay,
who are you guys, frick and frack? A couple of fucking wannabees? Well, I am the
real deal, don’t make me stick this gun in your fuckin’ face,” Mike told them.
He didn’t like being a dick, but sometimes you had to be.
“You
know what my mother always said about guns?” The second guy asked.
“Well,
since I don’t know your mama it’s hard to say,” Mike told him. He didn’t like
the way these two were acting. They weren’t cops, he knew all the locals. If it
had been someone, he had to worry about he would have handled this completely
differently. These guys were nobodies. At least nobodies to him, and that made
them nobodies to Watertown. If he had to put a bullet in… His thoughts broke
off abruptly as the barrel of what looked like a .45 was jammed into his nose.
It came from nowhere. He sucked in a deep breath. He could taste blood in his
mouth where the gun had smashed his upper lip against his teeth.
“She
said don’t threaten to pull a gun, never. Just pull it.”
“Mama
had a point,” Mike allowed. His voice was nasally due to the gun that was
jammed hallway up to his brain. “Smart lady.”
“Very,”
the man allowed. “Kind of a hard ass to grow up with, but she taught me well.”
He looked down at Mike. “So, listen, this is what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna
drive out of here right the fuck now. And that’s going to stop me from pulling
this trigger. Lucky day for you, I think. Like getting a Get Out Of Jail Free
card, right.”
“This
is my business spot… You don’t understand,” Mike told them. “I… I’m waiting
for someone.”
“Not
tonight, Michael.”
“Yeah,
but you don’t.” He stopped. “How do you know my name?” he asked. There was more
than a nasal quality to his voice, now there was real fear. Maybe they were
Feds. Maybe.
“Yeah,
we know you. And we know you use this spot as a place to do your business. And
I’m saying we couldn’t care less, but right now you gotta go, and I’m not going
to tell you the deal again. You can leave or stay, but you ain’t gonna like
staying,” The guy told him.
“Listen…
This is my town… If you guys are Feds, you can’t do shit like this… This is
my town. You guys are just…”
The
guy pulled the trigger and Mike jumped. He fell to the right, across the front
seat. Both men stepped away from the car, eyes scanning the lonely rest stop
from end to end, but there was no one anywhere. The silence returned with a
ringing in their ears from the blast as it had echoed back out of the closed
car interior. The shooter worked his jaw for a moment, swallowing until his
ears popped. He lifted his wrist to his mouth. “Guess you saw that,” he said
quietly.
“Got
a cleaner crew on the way up. You’ll pass them in the elevators. The boss is
waiting on you guys.” The voice came through the implant in his inner ear. No
one heard what was said except him.
He
nodded for the cameras that were picking him up. “In case you didn’t hear it,
someone is supposed to meet him here so your cleaner crew could have company.”
“Got
that too… We’ll handle it.” He nodded once more, and then walked off toward
the rest rooms as the other man followed.
Once
in back of the unit they used a key in the old, rusted handset. It only looked
old and rusty, it was actually an interface for a state-of-the-art digital
system that would read his body chemistry, heat, and more. The key had dozens
of micro pulse sensor implants that made sure the user was human, transmitted
heartbeat, body chemistry, it could even tell male from female and match chemical
profiles to known examples in its database. Above and to the sides of them
several scanners mapped their bodies to those same known profiles. Bone
composition, old fractures, density and more. All unique in every man or women.
The shooter removed the key and slipped it into his pocket. A few seconds later
a deep whining of machinery reached their ears, the door shuddered in its
frame, and then slipped down into a pocket below the doorway.
A
second later they stepped into the gutted restroom. Stainless steel doors took
up most of the room, the elevator to the base below. They waited for the
cleaner crew to come up, then took the elevator back down into the depths.
The
Bluechip facility stretched for more than five miles underground. Most of that
was not finished space, most of that was connector tunnels, and storage space
bored from the rock. The facility itself was about three thousand feet under
the city of Watertown in a section of old caves that had been enlarged,
concrete lined and reinforced. The rest area was one of several entrances that
led into the complex. An old farm on the other side of Watertown, an abandoned
factory in the industrial park west of the city and a few other places,
including direct connections from secure buildings on the nearby base.
John
Pauls and Sammy Black had Alpha clearance. Both were ex-military, but most
likely military clearance was no longer a real matter of concern this late in
the game, Sammy thought as they made their way down the wide hallway. The word
coming down from those in the know was that in the next twenty-four hours the
human race would come very close to ceasing to exist at all. No confirmation
from anyone official, but regular programming was off air, the news stations
were tracking a meteor that may or may not hit the Earth. The best opinions
said it didn’t matter if it hit or not, it would be a close enough pass that
there would be massive damage. Maybe the human race would be facing extinction.
The government was strangely silent on the subject. And that had made him worry
even more. The pass was estimated to be right over the tip of South America. So
maybe formalities like Alpha clearance weren’t all that important any longer.
If only Mike Bliss had given that some thought before he had pissed him off.
The
halls were silent, nearly empty. Gloss white panels eight feet high framed it.
It had always reminded Black of a maze with its twists and turns. Here and
there doors hung open. Empty now. Always closed any other time he had been down
here. So, it had come this far too, Black thought. He stopped at a door that
looked like any other door and a split second later the door rose into the
ceiling and Major Weston waved them in.
Alice,
he had never learned her last name, sat at her desk, her eyes on them as they
walked past her. One hand rested on the butt of a matte black .45 caliber
pistol in a webbed shoulder holster that was far from Army issue, and Sammy had
no doubt she would shoot them both before they could even react. Alice was
etched into one of those name pins that the Army seemed to like so well, but
oddly, just Alice, no last name, rank or anything else. She wore no uniform,
just a black coverall. The kind with the elastic ankle and wrist cuffs. No
insignia there either. He had noticed that months before. Her eyes remained
flat and expressionless as they passed her desk.
“Alice,”
Sammy said politely. She said nothing at all, but she never did.
“Sit
down, boys,” Major Weston told them. He spoke around the cigar in his mouth:
Dead, but they always were, and there was never the smell of tobacco in the
office. They took the two chairs that fronted the desk.
The
Major was looking over a large monitor on the opposite wall that showed the
north American continent. This map showed small areas of red, including the
northern section where they were. The rest of the map was covered with green.
“Where we are, and where we need to be,“ he said as he pushed a button on his
desk. The monitor went blank. He turned to face the two.
“So
here is where we are. You know, as does most of the world, that we are
expecting a near miss from DX2379R later on tonight.” He held their eyes.
John
shrugged. “I’ve been doing a little job, must have missed that. It’s not gonna
take us out, is it?”
“Saw
that on the news a few days back. Guess we dodged a bad one,” Sammy said.
“Right…
Right,” Weston said quietly. “But that cover was nothing but bullshit.”
“It’s
going to hit us?” John asked.
“Maybe…
The fact is that we don’t know. One group says this, another group says that,
but it doesn’t matter because it will probably kill us off anyway. Direct hit,
near miss, it is going to tip over an already bad situation with the
Yellowstone Caldera.” He raised his eyes, “Familiar with that?”
“Yellowstone
Park?” Sammy said.
John
nodded in agreement.
Weston
laughed. “Put simply, yes. Yellowstone has always been an anomaly to us. Back
in 1930 the Army did an exploratory survey of that area. What we came up with
was that there was a section of the Rocky Mountains missing. Looked at from the
top of Mount Washburn it was easy for the team to see that the largest crater
of an extinct volcano known to exist lay before them.”
“I
guess that’s about what I thought,” Sammy agreed.
“Yeah.
We all think that. Except it is not true at all because the Yellowstone caldera
is not extinct, it is active. Active and about to pop. There have been several
warnings, but we took the recording stations offline quite some time ago, so
there has been no mention of it in the news. Budget cuts,” he shrugged. “So, everyone is focused on this meteor that may or may not hit us and instead this
volcanic event is going to blow up and when that happens the rest won’t matter
at all.” He clicked the button on his desk and the monitor came to life. “All
the red areas are spots where the surface pressure has increased. There was, at
one time, many active volcanoes on the north American continent.” He clicked a
button and the map changed to a view of the European continent with many of the
same red shaded areas.
“All
over the Earth… Higher pressures. Up until a few days ago the brainiacs were
still arguing over whether this could even happen.” He laughed. “It is happening, and they are arguing over whether it can happen. Well, we had our
little debates and then we realized that history shows clearly that this has
happened before. Several times. Call it the Earth’s way of cleansing itself.”
“But
it’s not an absolute, right?” Sammy asked.
“Don’t
start sounding like the scientists.” He reached below his desk and came up with
six small silver cartridges. Each had a red button mounted on the top with a
protective cap over the button itself. He clicked a button on his desk, and a
picture of destruction appeared on the screens. It was obviously an aerial
shot, looking down at a chain of islands. Smoke hung over the chain, reaching
as high as the plane itself. As the plane dropped lower, rivers of red
appeared. “That picture is an hour old. That is… Was, the Hawaiian chain.”
Sammy
twisted further to the side, staring at the monitor. “How can that be… I mean
everyone would know about it.” He turned back to Weston.
Weston
nodded. “And that would be true except the satellites are out because of the
asteroid. Shut down to avoid damage. That is the official word.” He clicked the
button on his desk and the monitor went dead once more. “I started this out
saying that none of it matters and that is true. The Yellowstone caldera is
going to erupt sometime in the next few days. Not a maybe, not an educated
guess: If the satellites were up, you would know that the park is closed. It has
already started. We have had a few small quakes, but the big stuff is on the
way. He rolled the cartridges across the desktop; Sammy and John caught them.
“Super
volcanoes… Earthquakes that modern civilization has never seen… The last
super eruption was responsible for killing off the human population some
seventy-four thousand years ago. Reduced it to a few thousand. And that is not
the biggest one we have evidence of.” He lifted his palms and spread them open,
sighing as he did. “So, it is a double whammy. If we survive the meteor the
volcanoes get us, or the earthquakes because of them, or we’ll die from
injuries. And I think those of us who die outright will be lucky. The rest of
us will have a hard time of it… Staying alive with nothing… We will
probably all starve to death.” He paused in the silence.
“Those
cartridges are a compound developed right here in this complex for the armed
forces. Project Super Soldier. SS for short. That kept people from looking too
deep, they assumed it was something to do with the Nazi youth movement here and
abroad. We let that misconception hold.” He waited a second for his words to
sink in. “SS is designed to prolong life past the normal point of termination.
It allows a soldier to survive longer without food and more importantly without
water. Does something to the cells of the host, I don’t pretend to know what.
What I do know is that the people above me made the decision to release
this…” He picked up a mug of coffee from the desk and sipped deeply. His eyes
were red road maps, Sammy noticed now. Like he hadn’t slept in a few days.
“So, this is it for us. I guess you realize that you probably won’t get paid for
this. No money is going to show up in your account. I will run it through before
I pull the plug, but I truly believe the machinery will be dead by the time
payday rolls around. So, this is something I’m asking you to do.” He pointed to
the cartridges that both men were looking over. Sammy held his as though it
might bite him.
“Those
babies are really all we have to hope with. Most people will die outright. They
will never make it past the quakes, eruptions, and the resulting ash clouds and
gases. Up here we should be okay as far as gases go, eruptions, but there are
fault lines that crisscross this area. This whole facility is bored from
limestone caverns. Probably won’t make it through the quakes, although it is a
good eighty miles from the closest line,” he shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. My
point is there should be a good chance for survivors here.”
“So
we do what with these? Can they harm us?” John asked.
“Harm
you, kill you? No, but you will be infected the minute you push that button. It
will protect you the same as anyone else. There is enough in a single cartridge
to infect about five hundred million people,” Weston said quietly.
“Whoa,”
Sammy whistled. “Why infect… Why not inoculate? And why six cartridges…
Three Billion people?”
“Minimum,
three billion. That is before those infected pass it along themselves: After a
while it won’t matter. As to the question of infected, this is a designer
virus. You catch it just like the flu. We infected whole platoons by releasing
it in the air over them. Eighty-Nine-point-seven percent infection rate, but
that doesn’t really matter because it infects people close to you and those
people will infect you… Sneezing, waste, sex, water, food, it gets into and
on everything. And once it is in you, either orally or via bloodstream you will
be infected. The human body has nothing to fight it, no reason to be alarmed or
believe it’s anything more than a virus. And that same response will help to
carry it to every area of the body as your own defenses manufacture white blood
cells to fight it. So you may as well say a one hundred percent infection rate.”
He paused and rubbed at his temples.
“Be
glad they decided on this. They have some others that will kill everybody in
the world in a matter of days.” Weston nodded at the raised eyebrows that
greeted his remarks. “I don’t doubt that the merits of which way to go were
hotly debated,” he finished gravely.
“The
virus is designed to live within the host, but it can live outside of the host.
It can stay alive in a dead body for days, even if the body is frozen. In fact, that just freezes the virus too, once the body is thawed it will infect any
living person that comes along. So those,” he pointed to the silver cartridges,
“are overkill. Same stuff is being released across the globe. Great Briton…
Germany… Australia… West coast just a few hours ago. Manhattan has already
been done, all the East Coast in fact. I want the two of you to head out from
here. One vial here, then one of you head west, the other south. Go for the
bigger cities… Water supplies… Reservoirs… Release it in the air or
water, it doesn’t matter. There are men heading out from the south, the west
coast. The Air Force will be dispersing the same stuff via cargo planes
tomorrow or the next day… As long as they can fly, if we can even make it
that long, and that isn’t looking really good right now…” He rose from the
desk. “I’ll see you out.” He turned to Alice. “Alice… Pack us up.” Alice
nodded as Sammy and John got to their feet, but her hand remained on the butt
of the pistol. Rubber grips, Sammy noticed as he passed her.
“Alice,”
he said.
“Um
hmm,” Alice murmured.
Sammy
nearly stopped in his tracks but managed to hide his surprise as he passed by
into the hallway. The Major fished two sets of keys from his pocket. “Parked in
the back lot. A couple of plain Jane Dodge four-bys. Drive ’em like you stole
’em. Leave ’em where you finish up. Hell, keep ’em if you want ’em. Nobody is
going to care.”
The
three stood in the hallway for a few seconds longer. Sammy’s eyes locked with
the Major’s own, and he nodded. The major walked back into his office, and the
door rose from its pocket behind him. Quiet, except the slight buzzing from the
fluorescent lights.
John
shrugged as his eyes met Sammy’s, waiting.
Sammy
sighed. “You heard the man… West or south?”
“Flip
for it?” John asked. His mouth seemed overly dry and he licked his lips
nervously.
Sammy
pulled a quarter from his pocket and flipped it into the air. “Call it,
Johnny.”
“Tails,”
John said just before the quarter hit the carpet.
Sammy
bent forward. “Tails it is. You got it, Johnny.”
John
looked down at the carpet. “West, I guess.” John said.
Sammy
nodded, looked down once more at the quarter and then both men turned and
walked away toward the elevator that would take them back to the surface.
Watertown
Center New York
Shop
and Save Convenience store:
Haley
Mae
1:30
AM
“Last
one,” Neil said.
Neil
was a detective for the sheriffs’ department. It was closing in on 2:00 AM and
he and his partner Don had just come back from six hours of sleep to get a jump
on the day. Yesterday one of the checkout girls had disappeared between the
Shop and Save, a small mini mart on the western outskirts of the city, and
home. Earlier this morning she had turned up dead in a ditch just a quarter
mile from the front door. The techs were still processing the scene, but it was
looking personal. Stabbed to death, multiple wounds, no defense wounds, at
least none that he or Don had been able to see, and fully clothed. Her purse
had been found nearby, wallet and cash inside. No ID, but her store ID had
still been clipped to her shirt. They would know more in a few days once the
coroner did her magic. It all pointed to someone she knew, and they had no
known boyfriend. The trailer park where she lived had turned up nothing, they
had questioned some people at the convenience store, but some had been off
shift, so here they were back at the store questioning the other employees.
They
had commandeered the night manager’s office which was barely larger than a
broom closet, but at least it was a place to sit with enough space left over to
call in the workers and ask their questions. Free coffee via the same night
manager, who had still not gone home, was taking a little of the six hours of
sleep sting off, but to Neil free coffee in a convenience store was like a whore
offering a free shot of penicillin to the first twenty-five customers.
“Who’s
next?” Don asked.
The
last half hour they had been interviewing the people who worked the same shifts
as Amber Kneeland.
“Haley
Mae,” Neil said.
Don
looked up and stopped writing in his little notebook. “How do you,” spell her name, he had meant to
ask Neil, but she was right in front of him.
“EM.
A. E,” she said with a smile.
“Vietnamese?”
Don asked. She was obviously mixed race, African American and Asian, he
questioned himself.
“Japanese,”
she told him.
“Nice
name,” Neil said, “Haley.”
Beautiful
girl, Don thought. “Did you know Amber Kneeland? Sometimes works this shift?” he asked.
“Not
really,” she answered. “I mean, I met her, but only in passing… I just
started here myself.”
She
really is beautiful, Don thought. “You wouldn’t know if she had a boyfriend…
Other friends?” he asked.
Haley
shook her head. “Sorry,” she said… “What has she done?”
“Nothing,”
Neil supplied.
“She
went missing last night,” Don said. “Turned up dead this morning.”
Haley
shook her head. “Oh my God. That’s horrible. She was such a nice girl…
Quiet.”
Neil
nodded his head. “So maybe you did know her a little better than you thought?”
“I
just started here a few weeks back, and like I said, I don’t really know her…
But it might be a girlfriend not a boyfriend.”
Don
looked at her. “You wouldn’t know who?”
“No.
It’s just a rumor. Someone said it to me… I don’t even remember who… But
I’ve never seen her with a guy, and I have seen her with other girls… Maybe
also the way she looked at me a few times…”
“Go
out with her?” Don asked.
“No…
Never… I…”
“Don’t
swing that way?” Don added.
Haley
frowned slightly before she answered. “I work. I don’t swing any way. But if I
did she wasn’t my type. She never asked me out, I never asked her out.”
“Didn’t
mean to offend you,” Don said. He shrugged. “She’s dead.”
“She
would probably do the same for you,” Neil said.
Haley
nodded. “That really is all I know. I hope you find who did it though. She
seemed like a nice girl,” Haley said.
“You
don’t seem the type for this… Bagging groceries at 2:00 am,” Don said,
changing the subject. “You aren’t local, or I’d know you… This city really is
small despite the base.”
Haley
smiled. “Came here a year back with a boyfriend, Army. He left, forgot all
about me, I guess. I had this idea of modeling… Tough to get a foot in a door
though.”
“Wow,
if he left you behind, he must be a fucking idiot… Any good?” Neil asked.
Haley
laughed.
“Excuse
mister smooth there,” Don told her. Neil feigned a hurt look and Haley laughed
again. “He meant, have you done anything? I know somebody… Might be
interested.”
Haley
arched her eyebrows. “I can model. I did a You Jeans ad back in Georgia a few
years ago. I just need to prove it to the right person.”
“Escorting?
Maybe dancing. It’s strictly escorting or dancing, no funny stuff. Dance
clubs… Clothing modeling,” Neil said.
“Probably
start out escorting… Dance a little… Then if he likes you, he’ll put you
into the modeling end of things. He owns a lot of shit… Several car
dealerships across the state… Some of the biggest dance clubs, clothing
outlets, those bargain places, but still, modeling is modeling, right? Not the big-name stuff, but it is a foot in the door,” Don added.
“I
can do that,” she said slowly.
Neil
passed her a white business card with his own name scrawled across the back.
“Tell him I sent you… That’s my name on the back.”
“Jimmy
Vincioni,” Haley asked.
“Just
V… Jimmy V, good guy,” Neil said.
Haley
nodded and tucked the card into her front jean pocket. “I’ll call him…
Thanks. Look…” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “I’m pretty sure she had
a girlfriend here… I just don’t know who,” Haley added quietly.
Don
finished writing in his notebook, nodded once he met her eyes and then shook
the hand she offered. She walked away.
“Beautiful,”
Neil said.
“Absolutely,”
Don agreed. “You ain’t getting none of that though.”
“Yeah?
But if Jimmy V hires her? It’ll be the next best thing.”
Don
shook his head but smiled. His eyes rose and watched as Haley walked away.
“Guess I’ll have to have a few drinks at the club if that happens.”
Neil
chuckled low. “You and me both,” he agreed.
ONE
March
1st
Watertown
New York
Off
Factory Square: Joel Morrison
5:00
PM
Joel
sat at the bar and watched football on one of the big screen TV’s Mort had put
in. It was a slow game, he was tired, and his mind kept turning to other
things. He couldn’t concentrate. Part of the allure of the Rusty Nail was the
quiet. After a 12-hour shift at the mill with the constant noise from the huge
machinery, the quiet had been nice. But that had all changed once the bar had
become popular with the nearby base. He needed to go home. The crowd in the bar
was starting to build and the noise was giving him the beginnings of a
headache. He caught Mort’s eye and went back to his thoughts as he waited.
The
Rusty Nail had always been a local only bar up until a few years back when the
economy had taken a nosedive. The nail was wedged up a side street off Factory
square. Not exactly easy to find, and that had hurt business too as the old
people left and the new people came in.
Mort,
Mortimer to anybody that felt like being tossed out on their ass, had nearly
lost the small bar and the building above it to the bank. The building above it
had six small apartments that Mort had purposely left empty when he had bought
the building fresh out of the service thirty years back. Who wanted to deal
with tenants, he had said then. But times changed, and so he had sold his house,
moved himself into one of the apartments, and then sold the bank on
remortgaging the whole building as well as renovating the other five
apartments. The bank had come up with a loan that took all of that into account
and added a second income source from the apartments that could pay the monthly
mortgage and put a good chunk of change into his pocket too.
He
had signed on the x, taken their money, renovated the building, moved in the
tenants and then taken a hard look at the Rusty Nail. He had decided to
completely gut the bar and do it over. He had dumped far too much into the
renovations though, including being closed for nearly a full month, and then
opened it to find that the economy had taken an even deeper nosedive during
those nearly thirty days. The third month into the new mortgage and he had
found that he was maybe in a bad spot already.
Joel
remembered now that he had sat right at the end of the bar when Mort had talked
it over with some others, Moon Calloway, Johnny Barnes, Jim Tibbets, Joel had
been welcome to include his two cents which he had declined to do.
“Well,
what you do is put the word out to those cab drivers. Believe me, I’ve seen it.
They will have them soldiers down here in no time, even if you are off the
beaten path,” Jim had said. Jim was a school bus driver for the north side
district and less than a year away from a fatal car accident on the interstate.
Jeff Brown, who had been a local football star, was doing ten years up at
Clinton Correctional for hitting Jim’s car head on drunk and killing him. But
that night Jim had still been alive and had wanted to be a part of the New
Rusty Nail that Mort had in mind. Something a little more modern. Modern bought
the soldiers, but more importantly it also bought women.
“I’m
not paying a cab driver to bring me G.I.’s,” Mort had said. “And I know your
game. You’re just hoping to get laid out of it.”
They
had all laughed at that, except Jim who had turned red. But after a few seconds
he had laughed too, and the conversation had plodded forward the way bar
conversations do.
“Well,
you ain’t got to pay them exactly, give them a couple beers,” Moon threw in.
“Jesus
Christ,” Mort exclaimed. “That’s why you boys ain’t in business. You think the
beer is free.”
“I
know it ain’t free, Mort,” Jim said. “But it doesn’t cost you that much. You get
it wholesale.”
“Wholesale?
I drive right out to that wholesale club and buy it by the case most of the
time just like everybody else. Cheaper than them beer guys, except draft, of
course. That ain’t free. You got to pay the yearly club fee. You got to pay
them taxes to the feds. You got a lot you got to pay for. Some fuck crushes
your can you’re fucked for that Nickle. Jesus… wholesale my ass. It ain’t no
bargain.”
“Yeah?
… Let’s see,” Moon starting writing in the air with his finger. You get it
for let’s say six bucks a case, I know that cause that’s what I pay out there
too. So, six bucks divided by 24 is,” he drew in the air for a few moments,
erased it, and then started over. “How the fuck do you do that, Joey… The six
goes into the twenty-four. Or times the twenty-four?” Moon asked.
“Uh,
it’s a quarter a can,” I had supplied.
The
argument had raged on from there. Once Moon found out he was paying a buck
fifty for a can of beer that only cost a quarter he was pissed off.
In
the end Mort had talked to a couple of cab drivers. Free draft beer one night a
week if they bought soldiers by all week long and told as many others as
possible about the place. Within two weeks Joel hadn’t recognized the place
when he had come by after shift to have a couple of beers. The soldiers drank a
lot of beer, the bank mortgage got paid, and life was fine. Except for the
fights, Joel thought, but you can’t load young guys up on alcohol and not
expect trouble. Especially when those young men were just waiting on the word
to go and maybe die in another battle that remained undeclared as a war. High
stress levels meant heavy duty unloading. The M.P.’s got to know the place as
well as the soldiers did.
“Joel,
you ready?” Mort asked now.
Joel
smiled. “I was thinking back…” He had to shout to be heard. Tomorrow his
voice would be hoarse. “This place was empty! … Yeah… One more then I gotta
go,” Joel agreed.
Mort
leaned closer. “Gov’ment tit. I know it but screw it. It’s all the Gov’ment
tit. Road and Bridge projects. Job centers. One way or the other it comes out
the same. Even them subsidies so the paper mills can still run. It’s all the
Gov’ment tit, ain’t it, Joel?”
“It
is,” Joel shouted. He nodded. It was. This town would have dried up years ago
without it. Mort left and then came back a few moments later with a fresh beer.
“Vacation?”
Mort yelled.
Joel
nodded. “Two weeks of silence,” He shook his head at the irony and Mort’s
laughing agreement was drowned out by the noise.
“If
I don’t see you, have a good one,” Mort said leaning close.
Joel
nodded. “I will.” He raised his glass and then tossed off half of it. A few
moments later he was outside on the relatively quiet sidewalk punching numbers
into his phone, calling for a cab. The night was cold, but the cold sobered him
up. It seemed nearly capable of washing away the smoke and noise from inside
the bar. He stood in the shadows beside the door waiting for the phone to ring
on the other end. The door bumped open and Johnny Barnes stepped out.
“You
ain’t calling for a cab, are you?” Johnny asked when he spotted him.
Joel
laughed and ended the still ringing call. “Not if I can get a free ride from
you.” Joel told him.
“Yeah,
you were always a cheap prick,” Johnny agreed. “Hey, I heard you’re heading
into the southern tier tomorrow?”
“Two
weeks,” Joel agreed as he levered the door handle on Johnny’s truck and climbed
inside. His breath came in clouds of steam. “Get some heat in here, Johnny.”
“Coming,”
Johnny agreed. “Man, I wish I was you.”
“Me
too,” Joel agreed.
Johnny
laughed. “Asshole, but seriously, man. Have a good time. You gonna hunt?”
“Nothing
in season… Maybe snare some rabbits. Not gonna be a lot this time of year.”
Joel said.
“Maybe
deer,” Johnny offered. He dropped the truck in drive just as the heat began to
come from the vents.
“Probably,
but they’ll be out of season. Rabbit, and I got freeze dried stuff. Trucks
packed, which is why I didn’t drive it down here.”
The
truck drove slowly through the darkening streets as the streetlights began to
pop on around the small city: The two men laughing and exchanging small talk.
Public
Square
Pearl
(Pearly) Bloodworth
6:20
PM
The
streets were clogged with snow, but the sidewalks were impassable, so she had
no choice but to walk in the street.
She
made her way carefully, slipping and sliding as she went. It was just before
6:30 P.M. and she might make it to work on time if she could make the next two
blocks without incident.
She
had been working at the downtown mission for the last several months: The night
shift for the last two months. The mission night shift was an easy shift.
Everything was closed down. Those who had made the curfew were locked in for
the night. Occasionally there would be a little trouble between residents, but
that was rare. Watertown was small, as a consequence the homeless population
was small. And trouble, when it came, was usually settled long before her
shift. Her shift amounted to catching up on paperwork, dispensing an aspirin or
two, and being there if there was an emergency of any kind. At 4:00 A.M. The
kitchen staff would be there to start their day. Shortly after that the rest of
the dayshift would be in. At 6:00 A.M. The mission doors would open and the
homeless would take to the streets. She would have an hour of quiet at the end
of her shift, sitting and listening to the bustle from the kitchen as they
cleaned up after breakfast and began to prepare for lunch.
She
heard the approaching vehicle as she was stepping around a mound of melting
snow and ice. It was late and there had been no traffic on this side street
when she had stepped into the street at the cross walk three blocks down. The
alternative was the foot deep snow and ice thrown onto the sidewalk from the
plows. She would never get through that and make it to the mission on time.
The
Mission was on upper Franklin Street, a short walk in a straight line, or even
if you had to walk around the square and start up, as she usually did, but
tonight the square was packed with traffic and so she had chosen the shortcut
instead. Unfortunately, it was not well lit: A four block wasteland of parking
lots and alleyways.
She
had almost turned completely around to make sure the car had seen her when the
horn blared and startled her. A second later she finished the turn, hand
clasped to her throat, and watched as the car skidded to a stop and three men
piled out of the back seat slipping and sliding in the slush, laughing.
“What’s
up, bitch,” one asked as he found his feet and stood staring her down. The laughter
died away.
“Nice
ass,” another said as he moved toward her.
She
turned to the second man, the one who had just spoken, as she shrugged her
purse from her shoulder, caught the bottom of it in one hand, and slipped her
other hand inside. The third man, really just a boy, looked frightened as his
eyes slipped from his two companions and then flitted to her. The driver leaned
out the window,
“What
the fuck! Get the bitch!” He was looking over the roofline, sitting on the
windowsill of the driver’s door, a smirk on his too-white face.
“Yeah…
How about a ride, baby,” the nearest one said. The other had finally found his
feet, stopped slipping, and was skidding his feet across the slush heading in
her direction. She pulled her hand from her pocket and aimed the mace canister
at them. They both skidded to a stop.
The
closer one, the one that had made the remark about her ass, cocked his head
sideways, shrugged his shoulders and then pulled a gun from his waist band.
“Yeah… Kind of changes the whole situation, don’t it?” He asked.
“Roux!
Don’t shoot the bitch. She’s no good to us dead!” This from the man-boy leaning
out the window of the car.
The
boy, Roux, turned to the driver and nodded. He looked back at Pearl. His gun
was aimed at the ground, close to her feet. She had only a split second to
decide. He was less than five feet away, the gun rising from the ground, when
she pushed the trigger and watched the stream leap at him. His face went from a
sarcastic smirk to alarm just before the stream of mace hit his nose and
splattered across his face and into his eyes. A second later he was screaming.
She had just turned to aim at the second guy when the world turned upside down.
She
found herself tumbling sideways. Somewhere, close by, a roar began and rose in
pitch as the ground below her feet began to jump and shake. She found her knees
after she fell and skidded across the roadway as she tried to hold herself, but
the shaking was just too hard. She collapsed back to the roadway and the
relative softness of the slush and snow, her body jumping and shaking as she
seemed almost to bounce across the short expanse and into the snowbank on the
opposite side of the road.
The
roar went on for what seemed like minutes as she tried to catch her breath and
steady herself at the same time. Both seemed impossible to do, but almost as
soon as she had the thought the trembling of the earth became less and a split
second after that the roaring stopped. There was no silence. The sound of
breaking glass, tumbling brick, blaring horns and screams in the dark night
replaced the roar. Sounds that had probably been there, she decided, she had
just been unable to hear them.
Pearl
made her feet and stared back down the street where the car had been. The car
was still there, the nose tilted upward, the back seemingly buried in the
street itself. She blinked, but nothing changed. She noted the broken asphalt
and churned up dirt and realized the car had broken through the street. There
was no sign of the men, including the driver that had been hanging halfway out
of the window.
She
drew a breath, another, and suddenly the noise and smells of the world rushed
back in completely. The screams became louder. Horns blared. The ground
trembled under her feet as if restless. She could smell sewage on the air.
Broken lines below the pavement her mind reasoned. She swayed on her feet as
the earth trembled once more, lurching as it did. She waited, but the tremble
was not repeated. She sucked in another deep breath and then began to walk,
slipping on the broken pavement and slush as she did.
Franklin
Street appeared untouched as she lurched from the side street, slipping over
the broken pavement, and retching from the overpowering smell of sewer gas. She
collapsed to the icy pavement, skidding on her knees and was surprised to hear
herself crying as she struggled to get back on her feet.
She
nearly made it to her feet before the next tremor hit, this one much harder
than the last one. She bounced sideways, knees slamming into the ground, crying
out as they did, but unaware of her own cries. Just as the trembling stopped, she made her feet again and stood, hand clasped to her knees to steady herself,
breathing hard, holding herself rigidly, wondering what was coming next. When
the shaking stopped, and silence flooded in she was shocked.
She
finally opened her eyes, she had no idea when she had closed them, and
straightened from the bent posture she had found herself in, quieted her
sobbing and looked around.
Forty
feet away, the gray stone of the mission that had rose just past the sidewalk
was no more: Churned earth had replaced it. The sidewalk was still intact, as
though some weird sort of urban renewal had occurred in a matter of seconds.
Her eyes swept the street and now they took in the sections where the sidewalk
was missing. The entire side of the street was gone for blocks. What was in
evidence was an old house several hundred feet away, perched on the edge of a
ravine. Beyond that, houses and streets continued. She was on the opposite side
of complete destruction, and there appeared no way to reach that side.
She
turned and looked back at the side street she had come from. Churned earth,
tilted pavement, the car was now gone. Farther down the short hillside that had
appeared the public square seemed completely destroyed. Water had formed in the
middle of the square and ran away to the north, probably toward the Black River, Pearl thought. To the west everything appeared to be intact, to the
east, Franklin Street stretched away untouched toward the park in the distance.
Close by someone began to scream, calling for help. She took a few more calming
breaths and then began to walk toward the screams: The west, angling toward the
opposite end of the square.
The
screams cut off all at once, and a second after that the sound of a motor
straining came to her. Cycling up and then dropping. She paused in the middle
of the road, listening, wondering where the sound came from. As she stood
something ran into her eye, stinging, clouding her vision, she reached one hand
up and swiped at it and the back of her hand came back stained with a smear of
blood.
She
stared at it for a second. The ground seemed to lurch, shift suddenly, and she
reached her hands to her knees to brace herself once more, expecting the shaking
to start again, but her hands slipped past her knees and she found herself
falling, her legs buckling under her. The ground seemed to rise to meet her and
she found herself staring down the length of the roadway, her face flush with
the asphalt. The coldness of the ice and slush felt good against her skin: As
if she were overheated; ice wrapped inside of a dishrag at the base of her neck
on a hot day. She blinked, blinked again, and then her world went dark.
She
floated, or seemed to, thinking of London. A hot day. She was a child again:
Standing in the second-floor window and looking down at the street far below.
The dishrag dripped, but it felt so good against her skin. The memory seemed to
float away. She was rushing headlong through a never-ending stream of memories.
All suddenly real again. Urgent, flying by so fast, but sharp in every detail.
Pearl had grown up on a council estate in
London: When her mother had died, she had come to the United States only to find
herself in the Maywood projects on the north side of Watertown. From one pit to
another. Just different names, she liked to tell herself. Up until a few weeks
ago she had still made the trip back and forth every day, but she had found a
place, a small walk-up, not far from the mission on the other side of the
public square. It seemed extravagant to have her own space, but living in the
downtown area suited her.
She
seemed to be in both places at once. Back in her childhood, staring at the
street below the window, yet hovering over her body, looking down at herself
where she lay sprawled on the winter street. She wondered briefly which was
real, but nearly as soon as she had the thought, she found herself struggling to
rise to her knees from the cold roadway, her eyes slatted, head throbbing.
In
front of her a shadowed figure had appeared staggering through the ice and
snow, angling toward her. She blinked, blinked again and her eyes found their
focus. The man from the car, suddenly back from wherever he had been. One hand
clutched his side where a bright red flood of blood seeped sluggishly over his
clasping fingers. Her eyes swept down to his other hand which was rising to
meet her. A gun was clasped there. Probably, her mind told her, the same gun he
had been going to shoot her with before. The gun swept upward as if by magic.
She blinked, and realized then that the sound of the motor straining was
louder. Closer. Almost roaring in its intensity. The gun was rising, but her
eyes swiveled away and watched as a truck from the nearby base skidded to a
stop blocking the road from side to side no more than ten feet from her. She
blinked, and the doors were opening, men yelling, rushing toward her.
Bright
light flashed before her eyes, and a deafening roar accompanied it. An
explosion, loud, everything in the world. A second explosion came, then a
third, and she realized the explosions were gunshots. She felt herself falling
even as she made the discovery. The pavement once again rising to meet her. Her
eyes closed, she never felt the ground as she collapsed onto it, falling back
into the dark.
She
was back standing in the window, looking out over the street. The heat was
oppressive, but the ice wrapped in the rag was mothers’ wonderful cure. She
tried to raise it to her neck once more, to feel the coldness of it, but her
arm would not come. She tried harder and the window suddenly slipped away. A
man was bent toward her face. A helmet strap buckled under his chin. Her hands
were somehow held at her side. The motor screamed loudly as this world once
more leapt into her head. She was on the floor of the truck, vibrations pulsing
through her body as the truck sped along… In the back of the truck, her mind
corrected as her eyes focused momentarily. Other men squatted nearby, including
one who was partially over her holding her arms as the other man was tapping
the bubbles from a syringe with one gloved finger. The man’s face angled down
toward her own and he aimed something in a silver canister into her face from
his other hand. The hand opened and the canister fell to the ground.
“Itzawight,”
his voice said in a faraway drone. “Awightzzz.” She felt the prick of the
needle, the light dimmed, his voice spat static: The light dimmed a little
further, and then she found herself falling back into the darkness.
Watertown
New York
Project
Bluechip
11:00
P.M.
The
first quake had been minor, the last few had not. The big one was coming, and
Major Richard Weston didn’t need to have a satellite link up to know that. He
touched one hand to his head. The fingertips came away bloody. He would have to
get his head wound taken care of, but the big thing was that he had made it
through the complex above and down into the facility before it had been locked
down.
He
laughed to himself, before it was supposed to have been locked down. It had not
been locked down at all. He had, had to lock it down once he had made his way
in or else it would still be open to the world.
He
had spent the last several years here commanding the base. He had spent the
last two weeks working up to this event from his subterranean command post
several levels above. All wreckage now. He had sent operatives out from there
to do what they could, but it had all been a stop gap operation. The United
States, hell, every government in the known world was finished.
The
public had known that there was a meteor on a near collision course with the
Earth. The spin doctors had assured the public it would miss by several
thousands of miles. Paid off the best scientists in some cases, but in other
cases they had found that even the scientists were willing to look past facts
if their own personal spin put a better story in the mix. A survivable story.
They had spun their own stories without prodding.
The
truth was that the meteor might miss, it might hit, it might come close, a near
miss, but it wouldn’t matter because a natural chain of events was taking place
that would make a meteor impact look like small change.
The
big deal, the bigger than a meteor deal, was the earthquakes that had already
started and would probably continue until most of the civilized world was dead
or dying. Crumbled into ruin from super earthquakes and volcanic activity that
had never been seen by modern civilization. And it had been predicted several
times over by more than one group and hushed up quickly when it was uncovered.
The governments had known. The conspiracy theorists had known. The public
should have known, but they were too caught up in world events that seemed to
be dragging them ever closer to a third world war to pay attention to a few
voices crying in the wilderness. The public was happier watching television
series about conspiracies rather than looking at the day-to-day truths about
real conspiracies. The fact was that this was a natural course of events. It
had happened before, and it would happen again in some distant future.
So,
in the end it had not mattered. In the end the factual side of the event had
begun to happen. The reality, Major Weston liked to think of it. And fact was
fact. You couldn’t dispute fact. You could spin it, and that was the way of the
old world, spinning it, but the bare facts were just that: Bare facts.
The
bare facts were that the Yellowstone Caldera had erupted just a few hours
before. The bare facts were that the earthquakes had begun, and although they
were not so bad here in northern New York, in other areas of the country, in
foreign countries, third world countries, the bare facts of what was occurring
were devastating: Millions of dead, and millions more would die before it was
over. And this was nothing new. The government had evidence that this same
event had happened many times in Earth’s history. This was nothing new at all,
not even new to the human race. A similar event had killed off most of the
human race some seventy-five thousand years before.
There
was an answer, help, a solution, but Richard Weston was unsure how well their
solution would work. He had put it in motion anyway. Teams were, even now,
deploying the SS-V2765 compound. It was, like everything else, a stop gap
measure, and probably too little too late. It was also flawed, but he pushed
that knowledge away in his mind.
While
most of America had tracked the meteorite that was supposed to miss earth from
their living rooms and had been sidetracked by all the trouble with the former
Soviet Union, he had kept track of the real event that had even then been
building beneath the Yellowstone caldera. And the end had come quickly.
Satellites offline. Phone networks down. Power grids failed. Governments
incommunicado or just gone. The Internet down. The Meteorite had not missed
Earth by much after all. And the gravitational pull from the large mass had
simply accelerated an already bad situation.
Dams
burst. River flows reversed. Waters rising or dropping in many places. Huge
tidal waves. Fires out of control. Whole cities suddenly gone. A river of lava
flowing from Yellowstone. Civilization was not dead; not wiped out, but her
back was broken.
In
the small city of Watertown, that had rested above Bluechip, near the shore of
the former Lake Ontario, the river waters had begun to rise: Bluechip, several
levels below the city in the limestone cave structures that honeycombed the
entire area, had survived mostly intact, but unless sealed, it would surely
succumb to the rising river waters. By the time the last military groups had
splashed through the tunnels and into the underground facility, they had been
walking through better than two feet of cold and muddy river-water. The
pressure from the water had begun to collapse small sections of caves and
tunnels below the city, and that damage had been helped along by after-shocks.
When
the last group of five men had reached the air shaft, carrying the inert form
of a woman between them, they had immediately pitched in with a group Weston
had sent to brick the passageway off. The remaining bricks and concrete blocks
were stacked and cemented into place in the four-foot-thick wall they had
started. The materials, along with sandbags initially used to hold back the
rising waters, had been taken from huge stockpiles within the city, and from
the stalled trucks within the wide tunnel that had once fed traffic into the
base. There was no way in, and no way out of the city. With one small
exception.
The
exception was that air ducting. The ducts led away from the city towards a
small mountain-peak about a mile from the city. There the ducts merged
together, inside a huge natural rock tunnel that had been part of the original
network of caves and passageways. That tunnel culminated deep within the
mountain at an air treatment facility. There were also several access points
where the ducting came close to the surface via tunnels and passageways that
ran though the huge complex of caves. And it would be possible to walk through
one of the many air shafts to the tunnel, break through the ducting, follow it
to the treatment facility or outside to the surface and freedom. It would be
difficult, but it would be possible. The end of the trip would bring them to
the surface, from there they could go anywhere.
Watertown
New York
Project
Bluechip
Pearl
She
came awake with a start. In her dreaming she had been leaning, leaning, holding
the windowsill and staring down at the street below. The heat, the cold
dishrag freezing her tiny fingers. She had leaned back, shifted hands, placed
the rag against the base of her neck once more, leaned forward and braced
herself against the window frame and her fingers, slicked and unfeeling from
the ice had slipped. She had plunged suddenly forward, falling, faster,
panicked, and she had awakened as she had slammed into the surface of the bed,
a scream right on the edge of her tongue waiting to leap.
“Here.”
A woman’s voice. A soft hand at the base of her neck, holding her, easing her
back down to the bed. “It’s okay now.” She held Pearl’s head up and bought a
water glass to her lips. Cold, ice clinked together in the glass, she took the
straw between her lips and drank deeply. She collapsed back against the bed.
“Where?”
She managed at last. “Where is this place?” The ceiling was florescent lights
in a panel ceiling. Dropped ceiling, her mind supplied. An Americanism.
“Blue,”
the woman told her as Pearl’s eyes focused on her. She was short, slim, dressed in fatigues, a
pistol in a holster at her side.
“Blue?”
Pearl sounded as doubtful as she felt. She must have misheard. “Drum?” She
asked. It was the closest military base.
“Blue,”
the young woman shook her head. “The new base… Blue.” She smiled, but it was
a tired smile. “You remember anything at all?”
Pearl
shook her head, but then spoke. “A car… A boy with a gun… An earthquake?”
“English?”
The woman asked.
Pearl
nodded. “Was it then? An earthquake?”
“More
than one,” The young woman sighed. “It’s bad up there. You’re lucky they found
you, Jeffers and the others. Lucky.”
Pearl
nodded and then moved her legs and nearly fainted. She looked down, both were
bandaged. She recalled the gun. “Shot?” She asked.
“No…
No, just scraped up, banged up maybe” The woman told her.
“Badly
scraped up?” Pearl asked.
“No…
A few cuts, but they are swollen. A day or two and you’ll be fine.”
Pearl
didn’t hear the rest as she sagged back against the bed and fell away back into
the dream once more…
Watertown
Franklin
Street
Roux
The
roadway was tilted crazily, the snow was gone. Cold persisted, but it didn’t
bother him in the slightest. A small, silver canister lay just a few feet away.
Inhaler, his mind supplied. Maybe his other-self agreed, but something inside
him didn’t seem to want to agree. He ignored the canister and the line of
thought for the briefest of seconds and it was gone completely. Slipped away
from him to wherever thought ended up.
He
had been lying half in, half out of the gutter for the last several hours that
he knew of. He had no idea how long before that. Days? Weeks? Weeks seemed wrong.
Days, he decided. He turned his attention back to the roadway before him. Was
it a roadway? When he thought roadway, he thought highway, something like that.
From what he could see this was more like a city street.
It
had never occurred to him in the passing hours to move his head, but the
thought of it being a street in a city had caused him to move his head slightly
so he could look around to be sure. Slightly, but enough to know he could move
it. And he had moved it enough to know it was a city street. And if he could
move it that much…
His
face came away from the asphalt with a wet sucking noise and he nearly stopped.
Expecting pain to come. Expecting the sky to fall. Expecting something, but
nothing happened. The sucking sound stopped when his face finally pulled free, and he pushed off with his hands and found himself in a sitting position. He
flexed his jaw, it worked, tended to click when he moved it quickly, but
perhaps it was just residual of… Of?
He
didn’t know what it might be residual of. There was something he had had in
mind when the thought had popped into his head, but he couldn’t get it back now.
His mind seemed slow. Not slow as in stupid though. He considered. It was slowed like a computer he had once owned. The damn thing took forever to boot. That
was what this felt like. A slow boot. He laughed at the thought, but all that
came from his throat was a low buzzing sound that frightened him back into
silence. He nearly laid back down on the cold road right then but caught
himself. Whatever this was it seemed real. Not a dream and if he could just get
his mind to work right, he could probably roll with it. Roll right with it.
Whatever that might mean. He lost himself for a time again. Sitting at the side
of the road, starring into the dim, gray afternoon sunlight.
He
heard the noise before he saw the little boy. The noise was more persistent:
Crying, weeping, something like that. Something he understood, had known, did
know… He wasn’t sure. His head came around and he watched the little boy
walking along the opposite side of the road, his face was dirty, tear streaked,
one arm swollen, infection, he knew, he understood infection. He had seen it
somewhere. Infection was… Bad, he decided.
The
hand was mangled. It looked chewed, a finger missing, maybe an accident with a
dog, his mind supplied. Accidents with dogs happened. He watched the little boy
stumble along. The arm a grotesque parody of a real arm, swinging freely from
its shoulder socket. Their eyes met a moment later, but it was already too late
for the little boy. Roux had used his hands to prop his knees so he could
stand. A second of standing had told him he could walk, and a single limping
step had told him he could walk well enough. It had probably been the standing,
his mind supplied now. His feet scraping on the loose gravel at the side of the
street. His one ruined leg dragging
He
held the boys’ eyes with his own. Large, frightened, transfixed by the odd glow
in his own eyes. He had closed the gap quickly, limp or no. Long before the boy
had ever thought to call out. A second of standing and looking down into those,
large, sad eyes and he had reached forward quickly and pulled the boy into the
air with both hands wrapped around his neck, cutting off his startled squawk. A
second later and he had dashed him onto the street surface and fallen once more
to the asphalt himself. He pulled the still warm body to him…
Get the Series:
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https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/52291
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https://readersdepot.org/product/america-the-dead/
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