Last Pandemic (Book 2): Escape The City Read online

  “Hold still,” he said, as he dug the duct tape out and began wrapping it around her wrists. He wound it as tightly as he could.

  Sara winced in pain. “It’s too tight,” she squealed. “It’s cutting off my circulation.”

  “Good,” he said, almost savagely. It made him angry, this whole thing. It was as if she didn’t really want to live, as if she was going to give up just as she’d tried to before.

  If she gave up, then he’d give up. He knew that. He had to keep her alive.

  “Now don’t play with that,” he said, almost sneering the words. “You don’t have as much blood as you should. You can’t afford to lose any more.”

  “Isn’t there anything better we could do? I think I need stitches or something.”

  “Do I look like I know how to do stitches? Here I am wrapping duct tape around you. If I had any better ideas, then trust me, I’d be using them.”

  The duct tape was as good and tight as it was going to get.

  “Come on,” said Will. “We’ve got to keep going. If no blood is coming out, you’re fit enough to keep on.”

  “But we don’t even know what we’re doing. We don’t have a plan.”

  “Sure, we do. We’re going to find somewhere where we can survive and hunker down.”

  “Like where?”

  “Well, we have to find it.”

  “How are we going to find it if we don’t even try the houses?”

  “There might be people home.”

  “Do you see where this is going? It’s circular. Why don’t we try this this home here? There’s no car in the driveway. There’s probably no one here.”

  Before Will could do anything, she’d quickly made her way to the front door and started knocking loudly.

  He felt his muscles tightening, clenching in nervous anticipation.

  She looked back at him, grinning. “See?” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no one here.”

  It was almost an absurd sight, her with the duct tape on her wrists. It looked as if she’d partially dressed up in a budget robot Halloween costume and then decided completely against the outfit at the last minute.

  “Come on,” Will hissed. “There might be someone there.”

  “There’s no one here,” she said loudly. “If you come help me, I bet we can break a window around back and then we’ll have a nice place to hunker down.”

  Just then, before she could say another word, the front door opened. It opened incredibly quickly.

  There was nothing but darkness beyond the door.

  Two large hands jolted out of the darkness, grabbing Sara roughly by the shoulders.

  As fast as the hands had appeared, they disappeared again, into the darkness, dragging Sara with them.

  Sara let out a scream.

  The door slammed shut, abruptly cutting off her howl. Only a muffled version of it remained.

  It had all happened so fast that the startled Will had barely started toward the door before it was all over.

  He sprinted to the door, his hand grasping for the knob. Tried to turn it. But it was locked. It didn’t budge.

  The door was solid, appeared to be made of metal at first glance.

  Will was breathing heavily. His heart was pounding. His body was sending off alarm signals.

  Sara was gone.

  It was his fault.

  He’d let her do this.

  He could only blame himself.

  His mind was wild, scattering guilty thoughts this way and that, rapid-fire style.

  His hand formed a fist and slammed uselessly against the door.

  Sara’s muffled scream had disappeared now, as she’d presumably been dragged further inside the house.

  Will’s fist slammed against the door again. This time, he hit it hard enough to cause pain in his hand. Bad pain.

  It was useless. Pointless. Futile.

  He took a step back. Took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out slowly. Okay. He needed to figure out a different plan.

  Sara had mentioned breaking a window.

  That’s what he’d do.

  Making his way around the house through the side yard full of weeds and little stones, he realized that he hadn’t even considered abandoning her.

  It was strange, this devotion he felt toward her. Maybe it wasn’t really about her. After all, he barely knew her. Maybe it was actually selfish. Maybe it was just that he wanted something to live for.

  Maybe it was a selfish purpose.

  But it didn’t matter.

  He was going to save her.

  Around back, behind the house, there was a small yard. A rusted-out bicycle lay in pieces on the yard of small pebbles and dirt.

  A fence cordoned off the property, making the delineation between the houses crystal clear.

  There was a back door on the faux-adobe house. Will tried it, grasping desperately at the handle.

  It stayed fast, unmoving.

  Will had dumped what little gear and food they’d brought in the front yard. The only thing he carried with him now was the kitchen knife.

  He’d use it if he could. He just needed the chance.

  Will found a window. He looked through it. Couldn’t see anything.

  The glass appeared thick. But the window was locked. He’d have to break it.

  Without even wrapping anything around his hand for protection, he began slamming the butt of the kitchen knife against the window.

  The glass didn’t shatter all at once like he was expecting. But hairline cracks began to appear.

  No one stopped him, so he kept slamming it, hoping that it would break.

  And when it did, then what would he do?

  He’d figure it out.

  He’d have to.

  He had to get to her.

  20

  Joe

  Joe didn’t hit the brakes, but he took his foot off the accelerator. He put the truck into neutral and let it just coast to a stop. It didn’t take long, as the bumpy terrain slowed it down considerably.

  “What’s the plan, Joe?” said Sean.

  “Fight,” said Joe simply.

  “No chance to sneak up on them, I guess?” said Sean, the sarcasm in his voice barely concealing his fear.

  “Nope.”

  They weren’t far from the vehicles.

  No one moved. But all eyes were on them.

  “Who makes the first move?”

  “Don’t get out until we have to,” said Joe.

  Seconds passed that felt like minutes. Then actual minutes passed.

  Joe’s hands were sweaty on his shotgun. And they just kept getting sweatier.

  “So this is going to be it, right, Joe?” said Sean, his voice barely above a whisper from the passenger seat.

  Joe didn’t answer.

  But he knew Sean was right. There were too many of them. This wasn’t a fight. This would be suicide. They’d be lucky if they took out one or two of the others. And even that wasn’t likely to happen.

  “We’re not doing this,” said Joe, suddenly changing his mind. “I’m turning around.”

  He cranked the engine, put the truck in gear, and spun the wheel sharply as he stepped on the gas.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re not going to give up this easy. Not going to give them the chance to just kill us like this.”

  “But...”

  “What’s your problem? You want to die?”

  Joe didn’t understand what Sean’s objection was about. A minute ago, it certainly hadn’t seemed like Sean was ready for a final stand.

  “They’re not going to let us get away.”

  It turned out that those were Sean’s final words.

  A gunshot echoed loudly, audible even over the truck’s rattling suspension bumping up and down, even over the roar of the old engine as it tried to comply with the demands of the gas pedal.

  For a moment, Joe wrongly thought that he had been hit himself. But nothing hurt. And he w
as still alive.

  Joe glanced to his right, a sinking feeling in his stomach even before he saw it.

  Sean’s head had been hit. It must have been a large caliber bullet, the skull exploding outward, a cavernous opening remaining. Bits of skull on the upholstery. Bits of blood and brain on Joe’s shirt.

  Somehow, Joe kept driving.

  The situation felt surreal. His friend of many years was dead.

  Fear overcame the rage, and he pressed the accelerator as far down as it would go.

  The tachometer was above the red line, pushing the limit. The engine was whining.

  Joe slammed in the clutch, pulled the gearshift down, wrenched it into second.

  Foot on the accelerator again, having barely taken it off. Not good for the clutch, but that certainly wasn’t important now.

  There wasn’t really anywhere to go. The enemy was blocking the road. No chance to turn around, at least not now that a shot had already been fired.

  So instead of swinging around, Joe hung onto the wheel and decided to head down into the arroyo. After all, there was nowhere else to go.

  It was a dry creek bed off to the left. It bordered his property and he knew its twists and turns well.

  Joe also knew that while his truck would probably make it down the steep embankment of the creek bed, it would be stopping there at the bottom. He’d be alive if he was lucky and the truck would be simply too wide to travel along the narrow creek bed. The embankment on the other side would be impossible to drive up.

  The truck had reached the edge of the embankment. It was a sharp drop-off down to the creek-bed bottom.

  Joe sucked in his breath involuntarily. But he didn’t take his foot off the accelerator.

  He might die on the way down. The truck might flip. He might get shot.

  But he had no choice. This was the only way out.

  The pickup plunged rapidly down the embankment.

  It happened much faster than Joe had anticipated. It was so fast that before he knew it, the truck had crashed, its engine whining and its wheels spinning uselessly.

  There wasn’t much time.

  Joe merely glanced once at Sean’s busted skull, grabbed his shotgun, and went to open the door.

  He knew they’d be after him. They’d probably head down on foot, after seeing the wreck of his pickup. That would give Joe a little bit of time. But not much. He needed enough of a head start so that he could get away from them and hide. If they saw where he was headed, his hiding would be useless. He’d have no advantage, and he’d die. That’d be it.

  “Shit,” he muttered to himself, as he pressed against the driver’s side door.

  The door was caught on something and only opened a few inches.

  Would he have to climb over Sean’s body and try his door?

  If he had to, he would. But he pushed harder against the door. He heard something snap and the door opened. It had been caught on some type of small plant.

  Joe staggered out of the truck, his shotgun held in one hand.

  He found himself still alive, with both feet on the dirt of the dry creek bed. The sky was above him, blue and cloudless. Because of how far down he was, the enemies above him were invisible.

  But not for long.

  It would be no mystery as to where he’d disappeared to. He had seconds, not minutes, until they came after him.

  Without even another glance at his dead friend’s body, Joe dashed off, sprinting away from his now-totaled truck.

  His old boots slammed into the dry ground. The creek bed was flat and the sand was smooth, as if it had been swept and maintained, rather than formed naturally. It was dotted with paw prints that were only occasionally visible, most likely from a coyote.

  Joe didn’t glance behind him. Not now. He just concentrated on running as fast as he could.

  His plan was to put some good distance between himself and his crashed pickup, about thirty seconds’ worth of it. Then he needed to dash off to the other side, up the embankment and hide himself behind something, most likely a juniper tree or an unusual formation of dirt and stone.

  Joe counted in his head as he ran. He was breathing hard. His arms were pumping awkwardly due to the shotgun he clutched.

  Ten seconds...twenty...twenty-five...

  The creek bed twisted and turned. At a large bend, a juniper tree grew up alongside, large and healthy just from the occasional water that came by. Joe ducked under its branches as he ran, the tree scratching and banging into his head and back.

  He chickened out before reaching thirty. For some reason, it felt like too much time. Like an eternity. Surely they’d be down in the arroyo by now. Surely they’d be able to see him.

  His eyes found the steep embankment running. He took a sharp turn to the left and started dashing and scrambling up the steep drop-off. Dirt scattered into the air and he gasped for breath, his arms reaching down. It was so steep that he was practically on all fours.

  A gunshot echoed somewhere off behind him.

  But no pain came.

  He wasn’t shot.

  He was still alive. Still breathing. For another few seconds at the very least.

  Somehow, from somewhere, the idea came to him that he was lucky to be alive. Maybe it was the complex natural beauty that was all around him. Maybe it was the intense blueness of the spring New Mexican sky. It was a sky that was special, maybe because of the elevation, or maybe because of just mere random luck. But either way, it was a sky that people came from all over to attempt to paint, spending a season out in the country imitating their favorite painters.

  Maybe it had all been just good fortune to have been alive at all in such a beautiful place. Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad.

  The idea was absurd. If there’d been time, he would have laughed.

  The survival instinct wouldn’t surrender that easily. At least not in Joe.

  It felt like there was no air in his lungs. He was gasping for breath. His muscles burned with exertion as he kept climbing up the steep embankment. He was almost at the top. There was a large and full juniper tree up there that would give him some cover.

  21

  Matt

  They’d been walking for hours. The few vehicles that had passed hadn’t done anything but drive on by. Most of the time, they hadn’t even slowed down.

  “Why do you think there are so few cars out here?” said Jamie. She was walking side by side with him, which was rare, since normally they followed a narrow trail between the various prickly high-desert plants that forced them to walk single file.

  “Everyone else is dead,” said Matt.

  He didn’t have a lot of energy to waste on talking. He was, at this point, carrying most of the gear and it was tiring him out quite a bit.

  “How are you doing, Judy?” said Jamie.

  “Hanging in there,” panted Judy.

  “Should we take a break?”

  Judy just shook her head.

  “What do you think, Matt?”

  Matt shook his head. There was no point in trying to convince Judy to do something that she didn’t want to. They’d learned over the last few hours just how stubborn she could be. She wanted to keep marching on. She wanted to get to her cousin Joe’s place as soon as possible. Nothing could deter her. Not even the possibility of a heart attack.

  The sun was still fairly high in the sky. Matt glanced at his watch. By his estimation, they had about two hours left before the sun started to set.

  The moon, a waxing gibbous, was easily visible between some clouds. Its pock-marked white surface made it look almost like another cloud, albeit more strangely shaped.

  They weren’t far from the road. If another vehicle came by, they’d spot them easily.

  “Hey,” said Jamie, all of a sudden. “What’s that?”

  Matt sighed. He was frustrated with Jamie’s constant talking. It seemed that the more exhausted she became, the more she talked. For Matt and Judy, it seemed to work the other way and more talking jus
t exhausted them further.

  “Jamie,” said Matt. “You’ve got to stop it.”

  “Stop what? Don’t you see that?”

  Then, suddenly, Matt did see it.

  Up ahead, along the path, between the juniper trees, there was movement on the narrow path.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s someone,” said Matt, squinting, trying to see better.

  “Looks like they’re running.”

  The person up ahead was coming around a big curve. The path and the road, running parallel, bordered a large piece of property to the left. The property seemed to be nothing but small shrubby plants, with the ground almost unnaturally flat until it hit a range of small mountains many miles away.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” said Matt. “Come on. Everyone stop.”

  Matt threw down the stuff he was carrying and reached for his gun. Jamie and Judy did the same, and the three of them stepped several feet off the path, more toward the mountains than the road.

  Several tense seconds passed. Soon enough, someone’s heavy footsteps could be heard up ahead.

  Whoever was coming down the path was running.

  Now their heavy breathing could be heard as well.

  “Come on,” said Matt, motioning with his free hand. “Farther back.”

  Matt remembered quite clearly that while it seemed as if the three of them were immune from the virus’s effects, they weren’t completely sure that that was the case. It could be that their earlier avoidance of infection was a mere aberration, some coincidence or effect from an unknown, unnoticed source.

  It was still prudent to stay as far away from strangers as possible.

  The runner was now completely visible, not far away.

  It was a man. About thirty years old. Short and stocky. He looked strong. He wore a simple worn-out t-shirt and jeans.

  There was a look of terror on his face. His eyes were wide with a sort of singular focus that he wore as his expression.

  All of a sudden, the running man spotted Matt. Their eyes locked.

  The man’s reaction was surprising.

  He started waving his hands frantically.

  His mouth opened. It seemed like it was happening in slow motion.