Last Pandemic (Book 3): Escape The Chaos Read online

  Escape the Chaos

  A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller - Last Pandemic book 3

  Ryan Westfield

  Copyright © 2020 by Ryan Westfield

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  Also by Ryan Westfield

  1

  Matt

  It had been the most intense period of his life. And, for those who were still alive, it had likely been the most intense period of their lives as well. What could be more intense than realizing your whole society is coming unraveled? What could be more intense than having to fight for your life?

  And it wasn’t just Matt’s city, Albuquerque. It was likely all over the country. Maybe even the world.

  Of course, there was no way to know for sure, because all communications systems had gone dead. The power plants had stopped producing power, or the grid had malfunctioned in some catastrophic way. Either way, the world had suddenly been plunged back into the Dark Ages, with only remnants of high technology left.

  It was amazing how quickly things had progressed, how quickly violence became the means of communication, the default and the norm.

  The way Matt saw it, he, Jamie, and Judy were actually lucky. Incredibly lucky. The virus that had sparked the current chaos had initially been reported to be something like 85 percent fatal, with roughly 15 percent of the population carrying natural immunity.

  Matt had no way of knowing if those initial numbers were correct, since all media had effectively died out.

  But it seemed that he, Jamie, and Judy were naturally immune.

  Of course, merely surviving the virus’s devastating effect on the human body by sheer luck wasn’t enough to stay alive.

  There were others who were either immune to the virus, or had managed to sequester themselves away from the contaminated so as to remain uninfected themselves. And they were dangerous. Ready to kill. Ready to do anything to survive. No matter what.

  It had been a hard road for Matt, Jamie, and Judy. They’d initially had another with them, Judy’s son, Damian, who’d been Matt’s friend at the office where they’d worked together with Jamie.

  To make a long story short, Damian was dead, and so were many others.

  Matt and the others had quickly realized that staying in Albuquerque would simply be too dangerous, and they’d likely last less than a week at best. They’d hatched the plan to escape to Judy’s cousin’s place located on Route 14, a small two-lane road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

  After barely making it out of Albuquerque, they’d found that Judy’s cousin was dead. He’d died from infection, hemorrhaging out.

  A group of unknown people had invaded his property and strung her cousin’s corpse up at the front gate, apparently as a warning.

  When Matt, Jamie, and Judy had made it to her cousin’s property, they’d found her cousin’s body, and they’d also found something bizarre and seemingly improbable, a homemade contraption that could only be described as a ‘tank’, Basically an armored little outpost attached to a Toyota truck chassis. A crazed drug addict in the homemade tank had slaughtered everyone on the property.

  And that’s when Matt and the others had shown up. By taking a huge personal risk, Matt had managed to kill the nutjob in the tank.

  And now, by default, the property that had once belonged to Judy’s cousin belonged to Matt, Judy, and Jamie.

  Judy had some legal claim to it potentially.

  But there was no legal system any more.

  There was just the rule of violence. The law of power. And nothing more.

  So, in a sense, the property had gone through many ‘owners’ in a very short time span.

  Matt had killed the man in the tank, and had quickly begun to realize just how exhausted he really was.

  And that’s where Judy came in. Seemingly out of nowhere, she began to take charge. She’d had some kind of unknown health condition earlier in the day, but now she seemed stronger than ever.

  And with a sharp, commanding, and strategic mind.

  Judy had suggested that they eat and rest in shifts, assigning Jamie the role of exploring and getting something to eat for herself, while she and Matt headed up to the road to try to disguise the gate.

  They’d need more defenses, but that would come later. Disguising the entrance was just the first, most basic step.

  “You know how to use that?” said Matt, gesturing with his head to the AK-47 that he’d just handed to Judy.

  “In theory, sure,” she said. “And in practice...well, let’s just say I can probably pull the trigger with success. That’s not that hard. But I’m going to need a little time with this, partially disassembling it, seeing what’s really going on...before I get familiar with it.”

  “Disassembling it? I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be. You should be doing the same thing.”

  “We’ll work on it when we have some downtime, I guess.”

  Judy let out a forced laugh.

  They’d been walking toward one of the vehicles that had been left there. There were several vehicles, but many of them were damaged from the gunfire from the crazy homemade tank.

  “Looks like the keys are in it,” said Matt.

  “You drive,” said Judy.

  “There’s someone still in it,” said Matt, eyeing the driver’s seat, where a corpse was sitting, with blood running all over it, having come out from every orifice possible.

  “Well,” said Judy. “I guess we’ll finally know for sure if we’re naturally immune or not.”

  “There’s absolutely no way we’re not,” said Matt. “I’ve run all the scenarios over in my head a thousand times...we’ve simply been in such close contact with the virus...”

  “Then why are you hesitating?”

  “It just seems so improbable that the three of us would all be naturally immune.”

  Judy shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “It does. But life is improbable. This whole virus thing is improbable.”

  “How so?” said Matt, opening the driver’s-side door. The corpse shifted a little, but it didn’t slide out of the truck. It was held in place by a seat belt. There was blood everywhere.

  “When the probability of something is low, we think it’s not going to happen. But it doesn’t really say anything about an individual’s experience. It’s more about the population as a whole. So of all the groups of three people out there, there aren’t many where all of them are naturally immune to the virus. But that’s only significant on that whole group-wide level.”

  “You’re saying it doesn’t mean anything about us?”

  “Exactly.”

  Matt jammed the seat belt button down, but it wouldn’t come undone. It was stuck. Who knew how or why?
r />   Matt pulled out his folding knife, flicked it open, and cut the seat belt. Then, grabbing the corpse under its arms, he managed to drag it out of the truck. He stepped aside as it fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

  There wasn’t any way not to look at the corpse, lying now with its limbs at improbable angles. Its face was disgusting, full of blood that streamed out and stained everything.

  Matt slid into the driver’s seat, trying to ignore the blood that was everywhere. The key was in the ignition. He turned it, and the engine roared to life, beginning to chug along.

  Judy got in on the other side. Matt put the truck in reverse, let the clutch out, hit the accelerator, and soon they were on their way.

  The terrain was bumpy, even once they got on the ‘driveway’, which was really nothing more than a bumpy narrow dirt road.

  They didn’t talk much as they drove toward the gate. Matt started speaking a couple of times, but he found that his mind felt adrift, as if he couldn’t string words together for some reason.

  He knew there wasn’t anything physically wrong with him, that he was just suffering from the effects of cumulative and acute stress. He had just gone through a hell of an ordeal and he’d barely rested from it. He made a mental note to have a discussion with Jamie and Judy about sleeping shifts.

  Of course, it would be a long time before he could rest.

  The way Matt saw it, the population numbers in the area were going through a sharp decline. Each day since the collapse meant there’d be fewer people left. More would have died. In a way, that meant that they were still in the ‘red zone’, where there were still enough people alive to cause a serious threat.

  “There it is,” said Judy.

  Matt hit the brakes and the pickup bumped to a stop. They’d reached the gate, which was a simple affair of rusted metal.

  Two bloodied bodies had been tied to the highest point of the gate, meaning that their feet hung about chest level with Matt.

  They got out of the pickup together, and found themselves standing there for a moment, gazing up at the corpses. Somehow, it was a much more horrific sight than the bodies they’d seen on the property so far. Maybe it was because one was Judy’s cousin. Or maybe it was just difficult to see people hung up like that.

  “They must have died from the virus,” said Matt, repeating the obvious.

  A steely expression had come over Judy’s face. “Here, you’ve got to move the truck so that the bed is underneath them...I can’t reach them from here.”

  “Why don’t you just let me cut them down?” said Matt.

  Judy just shook her head and said nothing except, “He’s my cousin.”

  Matt knew that there was no arguing, so he got back in the truck, put it in gear again, and got it located so that the bed was underneath the gate.

  By the time he got out again, Judy had already climbed up into the bed of the truck. She had a folding knife between her teeth, as she used her hands to reposition some of the cords that bound one of the corpses to the gate.

  Matt stood nearby, hoping that she’d let him help. He also tried to keep his ears perked, attentive to any sounds coming from the road.

  Route 14 wasn’t the main road from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Most people, back before society had fallen apart, at least, would have taken 25, which was a major multi-lane highway, compared to the curvy two-lane road that was 14.

  But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be quite a bit of traffic on it. For all Matt knew, 25 was backed up or blocked off. And he wasn’t aware of that many other routes one could take if they were heading north.

  Matt didn’t know how many people would be coming north. After all, if they hadn’t landed on a property with a well, he would have wanted to continue north to the higher elevation areas just barely north of Santa Fe, like Tesuque or possibly head higher up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Because, up there, the climate was different. There were streams and creeks to drink from, and pine trees to hide among.

  The way Matt figured it, if he thought heading north wasn’t a half-bad idea, compared to staying in the high desert, where there wasn’t water and everything was out in the open, other people would have the same idea. Matt was at least smart enough to not overestimate his intelligence and believe his ideas were completely unique.

  And if others had the same idea, that meant there’d be plenty of people coming along this very road, Route 14. The one that he was standing on.

  And, most importantly, people meant danger.

  The fewer people they interacted with, the better.

  “There we go,” muttered Judy, right before there was a tremendous thud.

  One of the corpses had fallen heavily into the bed of the pickup.

  “You want me to get the next one?”

  “I’ve got it down to a science now,” said Judy.

  And, not long after that, there was a second thud, and the second corpse fell into the pickup.

  “All right,” said Judy, wiping her knife of the blood that had somehow gotten on it, before stashing it back into a pocket. There had been so much blood on the corpses that some of it was now on her. “That’s done with. Now we just need to figure out how to disguise this gate from people passing by.”

  Matt was opening his mouth to answer, when he heard the noise.

  It was an engine. As clear as day.

  And, judging by how loud it was, it wasn’t that far down the road. Maybe a couple miles. Not much more.

  Judy and Matt exchanged a look.

  The best they’d be able to do was get in the truck and get out of sight.

  But before Matt could get into the truck, he heard something else. Another sound. A completely unexpected one.

  “Is that a siren?” said Judy.

  It was. Matt could hear it as clear as day. It was a police siren.

  2

  Jamie

  Jamie was dead tired. Somehow, when Matt and Judy had left her alone, it was as if her body had decided it was time to relax, and the tiredness had really hit her like a sledgehammer.

  “Just got to keep going,” she muttered to herself. “Can’t fall asleep. Can’t sit down. Got to keep going.”

  Talking to herself like that was a habit that she first remembered developing back when she’d been a freshman in college, pulling her first all-nighters, talking to herself to try to keep herself awake.

  “Just got to find...what was I supposed to find? Oh, yeah, something to eat. Eat and rest. But I can’t go to sleep. Got to stay awake. At least until they get back.”

  She’d left the area with the many dead bodies, heading toward a collection of what looked like sheds.

  When she got there, she saw that only two of them were actually sheds, in the sense that they were the small basic buildings you could buy at big-box stores for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. The other squat little buildings seemed to be homemade structures, strange little contraptions with improvised roofs of corrugated metal.

  “Okay. Something to eat. Something to eat. Which one of you has food in it? And where is that well we’re supposed to have?”

  She stopped at the first homemade building, which had only three walls and one completely open. There was all manner of junk in there, but none of it looked edible or drinkable, so she moved on.

  The next building she came to was an actual shed, just like the kind she remembered her parents storing their lawn mower and gardening tools in.

  “Nothing to eat in here,” she muttered to herself, opening the door and sticking her head in. “Come on. Keep going. Keep a move on it. Well, just give it a minute. Let your eyes adjust. You’re getting ahead of yourself. You don’t yet know if there’s anything...edible...anything edible...that sounds like a band name.”

  She was inside the shed now, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The door was open but it didn’t let in much light.

  “Here we go,” she said after several minutes, finding that her eyesight was returning.

  But it turn
ed out that it was more of a bedroom shed than anything else.

  It wasn’t particularly clean, but it was tidy, as if someone had gone to great lengths to keep things organized.

  There were quite a few things in there, along with a makeshift bed. All manner of things. From guns to knives to hammers and saws. There were clothes, old wool sweaters, rain boots, and umbrellas. There were old books, and the walls were covered in old maps.

  The closest thing to food was a big jug of water, about ten gallons by the looks of it.

  Since Jamie was thirsty, she went over to it, but she found that she was too weak and tired at that moment to actually pick it up and pour any water into the rustic little tin cup that sat near it.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “More tired than I thought...I could normally pick that up. Need to get something to eat. There has to be something to eat in here. I always keep some snacks at hand in the bedroom.”

  But apparently Judy’s cousin didn’t like to keep food at hand in his sleeping quarters, because no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t turn up a single crumb of anything.

  “On to the next room, then,” she said, heading back out into the strong sun. “One more shed to go. Hey, what’s that up there? Shit, it’s really something. Okay, I really need to stop talking to myself.”

  It was getting absurd, this habit of talking to herself. And she needed to stop it right now, because up in the sky she’d spotted something.

  At first, Jamie couldn’t tell what it was. The sun was bright, and she put her hand up to shield her eyes.

  At first, she thought it was a helicopter.

  But it was too small.