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

  And it didn’t make much noise, if any at all.

  Then she realized what it was.

  A drone.

  She didn’t wait around to get a better look. Not knowing a lot about drones, but understanding that they had cameras on them, she dashed back into the little shed that she’d just come from.

  She didn’t shut the door, not wanting to give the drone anything more to ‘see’. But she moved all the way to the opposite wall, getting herself completely out of view of anything in the sky.

  If there was a drone out there, then it meant its remote pilots weren’t far away, right? Jamie didn’t know what the range on those things was. And, while she hadn’t gotten a great look at the drone, her overall impression was that it was a sophisticated one. It didn’t appear to be cheap in any way.

  But what did it mean if it was sophisticated? Did it mean it was used for some professional purpose? Or by some government agency?

  She shrugged to herself, muttering, “Who knows?” before reminding herself mentally that she wasn’t going to talk to herself any more.

  The drone was just another thing to worry about, along with the host of other stuff that threatened their survival.

  Jamie played it safe and stayed in the shed for another ten minutes. When she emerged, the drone was long gone, and she quickly forgot all about it when she found the door to an underground cellar.

  It seemed very old-fashioned, but was also practical. Apparently Judy’s cousin had dug a large rectangular hole fairly deep into the ground and covered it with a trap door made of wood and some type of wicker.

  Heading down the stone steps into the coolness of the cellar, Judy’s jaw dropped as she saw how much food there was.

  There was a lot of food. Certainly enough to keep the three of them well fed for several months.

  And what’s more, Jamie had a strong feeling that this wasn’t the only spot that Judy’s cousin had stashed food at. Someone who thought this far ahead, who stored this much food for the future, wasn’t the sort of person who put all their eggs in one basket.

  “This is good,” she said to herself, forgetting her promise not to continue the habit for the moment. “Very, very good. We’ll be able to live on this...”

  She felt relief washing over her. They’d be able to survive.

  They’d made it this far. And now she knew that they had food. And water from the well.

  She hadn’t found the well yet. But she was sure that she’d find it soon.

  How hard could a well be to find, anyway?

  “Good news,” she muttered. “Very, very good news.” She paused, then added. “Why am I talking so strangely?”

  She didn’t know the answer, but she managed to remind her scattered, exhausted self of her purported mission, which was to find food, eat it, and rest up. She was supposed to be regaining her strength.

  She wasn’t doing anything wrong then, by eating.

  A chocolate bar caught her eye. It was right out in the open, as if it were waiting to be eaten. She took it greedily and tore off the packaging. Shoved about half the bar into her mouth at once.

  It was delicious, and she felt a rush of calmness coming over her body, as if she’d just dropped down onto an incredibly comfortable mattress.

  About twenty minutes later, she’d eaten everything she could and she was so stuffed she couldn’t take another bite.

  She was feeling a lot better. A lot.

  But she was still talking to herself. Maybe it was the stress. Who knew.

  “I wonder where they are?” she muttered, wiping some chocolate off her lips. Her mouth was a mixture of so many different flavors that it was actually confusing. There was chocolate but also canned chicken and even fruit in jars. “I’d better head back and see if I can find them...”

  Jamie felt much better heading up the stairs than when she’d headed down.

  She emerged into the light, shielding her eyes as she looked up at the sky.

  “Wonder if that drone is going to come back.... Hope it didn’t spot me or anything...”

  There was no sign of the drone, and she breathed a little sigh of relief. There was nothing to see in the sky but that beautiful pale blue color and some puffy clouds.

  Behind her, she heard the sound of an engine whining.

  “Good,” she muttered. “They’re coming back right on time...Hope they’re hungry.... Seems a little silly talking to myself, but.... No point in trying to stop now.... I mean the world’s ended, and I’m not allowed to even talk to myself?”

  Jamie turned to look, thinking that she was about to see Matt’s serious face and Judy’s determined, possibly upset expression, as they returned from cutting down her cousin from the gate.

  But what she saw was something completely different.

  It wasn’t Matt and Judy.

  And it wasn’t a truck.

  It wasn’t even a normal vehicle.

  It looked like some kind of oversized golf cart. Or maybe a golf cart mixed with an ATV.

  It looked very strange. It was white, and had a large suspension system, apparently allowing the small vehicle to easily traverse the rough terrain.

  It wasn’t driving on the road at all. Just right across the open land, as if it had come from some direction entirely different than the road.

  Jamie’s mouth hung open. She was dazed. Completely in shock. It was an almost impossibly strange sight.

  There were two people in the small vehicle, sitting side by side.

  She didn’t know if they were men or women, because they were completely hidden by the white suits they wore. It really looked like something out of a movie.

  The white suits weren’t like the ones that she and Mia had seen outside their apartment building when it had been evacuated. No, these were different. More involved. More sophisticated.

  It appeared as if the people were wearing some sort of respirators that were built into the suits. There were all sorts of tubes running everywhere.

  The white suits looked more like space suits than the cheap flimsy things that the police and authorities had been wearing on the first day the news of the virus had hit in Albuquerque.

  “Get it together,” she muttered to herself, finally realizing that she was just standing there with her mouth actually hanging open.

  The first thing she did was stop talking to herself.

  That was just going to waste time.

  And she needed to act quickly.

  There was no one around to help her. Matt and Judy may as well have been on another planet. They weren’t going to answer her cries for help. There was no way to communicate with them, and no way for them to respond.

  It was up to Jamie.

  The little go-kart type thing was coming right at her.

  It seemed bad. Really bad.

  Just the sight of those suits somehow caused her to panic more than usual. It was like something out of a horror movie. Not real life.

  They looked alien, in a sense. And it struck terror into her heart.

  But then she took a breath. Logic started to return to her.

  She could do this.

  It seemed terrifying, but the terror was only inhibiting her rational mind.

  There were two of them and one of her. And they were in a vehicle. And probably had weapons.

  It seemed as if they had the upper hand.

  But did they really?

  Why were they wearing those suits? Because they were afraid of contamination. Afraid of the virus.

  Well, she could use that to her advantage. She wasn’t afraid of the virus. She was apparently naturally immune, after all. She didn’t need a suit.

  And, what’s more, all she needed to do was somehow threaten the integrity of their suits and they’d be scared to death.

  She could do something about this.

  She wasn’t going to run or hide. That wouldn’t have worked.

  She was going to fight.

  Her hand was already on her gun.
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  3

  Cody

  Cody had never been a lot like the other kids at school. Maybe it had something to do with how and where he was raised.

  He’d grown up on a large property south of Santa Fe, off of Route 14. His parents had been sort of amateur off-and-on-again homesteaders. They’d both worked regular jobs, but would occasionally decide to quit them and make a go of it on the land. They’d spend a few years like that until they’d decide to go back to work.

  Cody had grown up around his parents’ obsession with self-reliance.

  Of course, being a bit rebellious, he’d thought that they hadn’t taken it far enough.

  He thought he could do better.

  So with high school completed, when he’d turned eighteen he’d decided to strike out on his own.

  He’d known college wasn’t for him. At least not yet. So he’d left home, taking the money he’d saved from after-school jobs and heading north, hearing that there was an opportunity for hard-working young men like himself up on the ranches in Wyoming.

  His parents had warned him that he wasn’t likely to land such a job. He himself knew that it was a long shot and that the “opportunity,” was really not much more than hearsay.

  But he’d liked that aspect of it. He’d liked the uncertainty, since it made it all sound more adventurous.

  To make a long story short, he spent some time up in Wyoming, but things hadn’t exactly worked out the way he expected. His money had quickly run out and only a few months after having set out, he found himself headed back to his parents’ property with the intention of starting a new adventure.

  He made it as far south as Santa Fe, hitching rides with friends of friends and people he ‘sort of’ knew from his stay at a youth hostel in northern Wyoming.

  When the virus had hit, he’d been waiting in Santa Fe for a friend of a friend of a friend to give him a ride.

  The guy, who supposedly had a car and was supposedly heading south toward his parents’ property, had texted and said he’d be a few hours late.

  So Cody had found himself wandering down a tourist road in Santa Fe. He was dressed in working man’s clothes from a big-box store. He was unshaven, with a few days’ worth of scruff. He hadn’t managed to shower on the trip down from Wyoming and he was conscious that the tourists were avoiding him.

  He really hadn’t fit in with the tourists. They were people who came from all over, often to spend big money on important works of art in the galleries that lined this famous road.

  But Cody had nothing else to do, so he’d stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered up the road, heading north.

  He’d heard about the virus from a retired couple who were blocking his way on the sidewalk. They were just standing there, staring at their phones, with their mouths agape.

  Cody was going to ignore them, just walk into the road a little bit to get around them. Not really any skin off his back if they wanted to stand there like that.

  But they’d stopped him. The man, who was about sixty, had actually grabbed Cody by the arms and held him there, staring into his eyes with an expression of complete terror on his face.

  “Don’t you know what this means?” the man had said.

  “What?” said Cody, not sure if the man had gone crazy or what.

  The older man’s grip was surprisingly strong and firm.

  “It’s happening,” said the man, before launching into a long explanation of the virus. “I worked at the CDC for thirty years,” he explained. “As a biologist. This was what we worked on. This was what we feared all along.... I can’t believe it’s happening.”

  “Come on, honey,” his wife said. “I’m sure they’ll figure something out. They’ve come a long way since you retired.... Let that kid go. I think you’re scaring him.”

  “Sorry,” muttered the man, letting go of Cody.

  Cody didn’t know what to do. He just stood there. “There’s a virus?” he said. “And it’s going to spread...very quickly?”

  “It’s already spread,” said the man. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” He turned to face his wife, then Cody, and then his wife again.

  Cody was freaked out, as he would have put it. This man didn’t seem like some lunatic. He was nicely dressed. It wasn’t hard to believe that he’d spent his career working at the CDC, and had now retired. His wife seemed to be corroborating it as well.

  “Look, honey,” said his wife. “Why don’t we head back downtown to the bar and get a drink? Calm us down?”

  “Downtown?” said the man, sounding scared, a look of terror taking over his face.

  “Wait,” said Cody, interrupting. “What do you mean the virus has already spread?”

  The man, while his wife had been talking, had handed Cody his smartphone with the browser window open to a story about the virus.

  The man definitely wasn’t making it up.

  But that didn’t mean he was right, either. The article, as far as Cody could see, didn’t say anything about the virus having already spread.

  “It’s spread silently,” said the man, as if he was saying the most important thing in the world. “There was a whole 747 infected...do you know how many people that is? Do you know how fast that’ll spread? This is a major tourist site...someone here has had contact with someone on that plane... I’m sure of it.... I’ve run the numbers myself.... I’ve seen the models that they drew up.... They were never prepared for something like this.”

  “Burt,” said the woman, tugging on her husband’s sleeve. “Calm down. Come here. Do you want a Xanax?”

  Burt pulled his arm free of her and shook his head violently. “I don’t need to calm down!” he said.

  “But wait,” said Cody, still holding the stranger’s phone, looking again at the article. “It says here that it takes, what, forty-eight hours for the symptoms to show up, and they’re saying that it won’t be fully contagious until the symptoms appear, so the risk of infection is low...They don’t say anything about how it’s spreading...”

  “Don’t you see?” said the man, his voice getting loud enough that other well-to-do art tourists were stopping to see what was going on. “They’re making that stuff up...”

  “Burt, they’re not making anything up. They’re reporters. They probably got the information from your old boss at the CDC.”

  “From Larry? That crackpot doesn’t know anything! That’s why they forced me into early retirement. They never want to admit just how little they know.” Suddenly he grabbed Cody’s arm again. Harder this time. “Do you know how little we really know about viruses? How pathetically little we understand about how they work and why they do what they do?”

  “All right, Burt, you’re scaring this young man here.”

  “He should be scared.”

  Cody didn’t think he’d ever forget the look on Burt’s face. A resolute look of complete determination.

  It sure seemed like Burt was telling the truth. Or that he thought he was telling the truth.

  Cody didn’t know what to think. Eventually, Burt’s wife dragged him into the back of an Uber, after finally managing to feed him two Xanax.

  Cody just stood there watching as the Uber drove away.

  “Well, that was interesting,” said a woman who appeared to be just a few years older than Cody.

  She looked like she might go to the local college or something, and Cody happened to think she was cute. “Yeah,” he said, immediately struggling for something else to say. As often happened when he spoke to pretty women, it was as if his mind went blank and his mouth stopped working.

  She looked at him expectantly, understandably thinking that he might say more than just “Yeah.”

  “I saw the whole thing,” said the young woman, her eyes traveling over Cody’s body briefly before looking right into his eyes. “He just kept on talking to you. I felt sorry for you.”

  “Oh,” said Cody, having to fight to keep himself from looking away from her eyes, which was a sort of nerv
ous tic that he’d had since hitting puberty. He was always trying to keep himself in line, since he knew it appeared ridiculous.

  “Yeah,” said the young woman, appearing somehow confused at Cody’s complete lack of coherent dialogue. “He was just talking and talking...going on and on...” She waited, looking at Cody expertly, clearly thinking that it was now his turn to say something.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Cody, the words followed by a long pause.

  He was starting to sweat now. Why was it that talking to a pretty woman got him so nervous? Come on, Cody, he told himself. This is ridiculous. This is insane. You were hanging out in rural Wyoming with no help...if you can do that, you can talk to someone...

  The little pep talk he gave himself worked, and he finally was able to blurt out some sentences. “He was telling me about this virus,” he said, speaking quickly, and—finally—confidently. “Have you heard about it?”

  “A virus?” she said, looking a little puzzled. This was obviously sort of strange territory to jump into. It wasn’t exactly a good topic to base some flirtations around.

  “Yeah,” said Cody. “Apparently there’s a virus...something about a passenger plane from Hong Kong or Beijing or somewhere...”

  The woman gave a nervous little laugh. “That sounds really weird.”

  “Tell me about it. He was telling me the crazier stuff...”

  Cody continued talking, telling this pretty young woman what the retired tourist had been telling him. He even managed to crack a couple jokes. He found that as the conversation continued, he became more comfortable, but also the intense tension and fear he’d felt after hearing the retired CDC worker’s words began to dissipate. , Soon it was as if Cody had never even heard of the virus.

  The two of them were in the middle of making plans to meet up in a week or so for coffee, laughing and exchanging flirtatious looks all the while, when all of a sudden the woman clutched her stomach with both hands, dropping the phone she’d been carrying.

  “What’s wrong?” said Cody, concerned, bending down to pick up her phone. “Shit. Sorry, the screen’s cracked...”

  “I don’t feel well,” she muttered.