After Days (The After Days Trilogy) (5 page)

The danger presented by the looters had given me quite a wakeup call. So after a meal of tinned baked beans I did a Kung Fu workout, running through my old sparring drills and doing push-ups and sit ups. While I worked out I thought about my dwindling supplies and the prospect of them returning for revenge.

I seriously considered packing up what I could in the Fosters’ car and driving away right then, but two things stopped me – the first was a lack of a clear destination in mind, where would I go? I had some vague idea about going to Canada because at the time I didn't know whether or
not the infection had spread there. The second was that I didn't really know how to drive.

The power went out sometime before dawn the next morning and I felt that the decision had been taken out of my hands. Whether or not I could drive, or had any place to go, it was clear that I couldn't stay where I was.

I found the keys to Eleanor’s car in her purse on the kitchen counter and gathered some warm clothes, a couple of blankets and what food I had left and loaded it into the back seat of the Honda Accord. With the pistol and ammunition in my pockets I went out the front door without looking back. The remote control car, the last toy present that I ever received, was left sitting on the dresser in my bedroom.

3

Driving was not as difficult as I had thought it would be, although I am sure it helped that Eleanor's Accord had an automatic transmission. All I had to do was move the shifter to D to get it to go forward, and R to get it to go backward. Steering took a bit of time to get used to, but the fact that there was no traffic (and probably wouldn’t ever be again), helped me to get the hang of it. I still didn't have a clear idea of where I wanted to go, so I decided to head on over to Main Street.

Fort Carter is, or rather was, a small town be
tween Providence and Woonsocket. Main Street is the only place that could be considered a business district. There were the customary diners, antique stores, bakeries and boutiques, along with city hall, the police and fire stations, a law office, a town history museum and a supermarket.

At the far end of Main Street, where it ended at a T junction with state highway 102, was the newest addition to the town, a
Walmart. It had only opened up since I had been living with the Fosters. The United General Hospital, where Eleanor had tried to take Alan the day after Christmas, was located out of town, half way between Fort Carter and Mapleville, the neighboring town.

I decided to stop by the grocery store first, before heading to the
Walmart to see what supplies I could scavenge. The town was dusted in a light snowfall and seemed deserted as I drove through the streets. It was surreal. Most homes did not have cars in the drive ways and I wondered where they were because the streets were mostly empty as well. When I got to the parking lot of Dave's Marketplace I saw maybe a half dozen cars parked there, but it was still far fewer than I had expected. I noticed that the entire town seemed to have lost power, not just the neighborhood that the Fosters had lived in. None of the streetlights were working, and I was glad that there was no traffic to contend with.

Pulling up close to the doors of the marketplace, I got out of the car and walked over, only to be dismayed when the doors failed to hiss open like they normally did. For a moment I stood there perplexed, but then realized that without power the big sliding glass doors were nothing more than windows. I walked up and touched them, wondering if I could get my fingers between the panes and push it open by hand.

“Isaac... Isaac Race!”

The deep, strangely muffled voice ripping through the deathly silence caught me off guard and I jumped as I turned to locate the speaker, my hand plunging into the pocket of my sweatshirt to grasp the handle of my revolver. Standing at the corner of the building, a tall figure with a strange black face and huge eyes glared at me. It
took me a second to realize that it was a gas mask and I took two hurried steps back, frantically trying to pull my gun as the figure stepped towards me.

“Isaac, it’s me, Luke!”

The figure ripped off the mask to reveal the smiling freckled face and red curly hair of my classmate.

“Luke? Oh, hey Luke…” I said, regaining my composure and trying to hide the fact that he had scared the bejesus out of me.

I released the .38's grip. I was surprised and happy to see someone who I actually knew; it was like finding a gold coin in a pile of shit. A small miracle. Not really one for hugging and stuff, I pulled my hand out of my pocket and gave him a wave. 

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I know it’s a pretty lame question to ask someone you just found after the end of the world, but it was all I could come up with.

“Same thing as you, I imagine,” he replied grinning. “I came to do some shopping.”

“What’s with the gas mask? You know you’d already be dead if it was going to kill you, right?”

“Yeah, but I found it in the disposals store and it looked kind of cool…” he shrugged and threw it aside. I felt kind of mean for calling him out on it.

“Is there anything left in there, do you think?” I asked him as he approached and gave me a high five. “It's been over a week since the shit hit the fan.” I thought of Alan when I said it, and quickly suppressed the stab of pain it brought with it.

“I hope so, man,” he replied. “I ran out of food yesterday and I'm hungry as all get out.”

“Well let's do this then.”

Luke had a small hunting knife in a leather case on his belt, and he used it to wedge between the doors and pry them slightly open so that we could get a grip. Working together we managed to get them open with some sweating and cussing. Luke grabbed a shopping cart and wedged it between the doors to keep them open while we were inside. We scrambled over and entered the dark supermarket.

“It’s a good idea to keep our lines of retreat clear,” he said. “Never know what you might run into.”

“The place looks deserted,” I replied.

“They always do,” he said with a derisive snort. “Dude, haven't you ever played Wasteland Four?” In point of fact I hadn't.

We stayed away from the produce and meat sections, the smell coming from those areas was pretty rank, but the rest of the store, particularly the canned soups and vegetables was surprisingly well stocked for a week after an apocalypse.

The poorly lit, messy supermarket was a little spooky, but Luke made it fun. If there was anybody in there with us, they would be in no doubt that we were there. We filled a shopping cart with cans of food, and Luke even had the presence of mind to fill another cart with as much bottled water as he could. I grabbed a 12 pack of cola, not caring what the brand was, thinking that I might need something to keep me awake for the trip ahead.

Of course being kids, we also hit the candy section…hard. We cleared entire shelves of M&M’s, Mars Bars and Snickers (my favorite).

“So what's your plan once we're stocked up?” Luke asked, as we pushed our carts toward the front doors.

“I'm not sure,” I replied. “Do you know if Canada was hit by the Pyongyang Flu?”

“Canada's gone, dude,” he said, shaking his head. “Last I heard everything north of the US-Mexico border had been hit. Doesn’t seem the Chinese are into deserts or tacos”

“Damn. So what, the United States is now made up of Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico?”

“I guess so, but I don’t think the U.S still exists at all,” he said with a shrug. “I think this is just the North American province of China or something now.”

“How could somebody, anybody, do something like this?”

“I don't know man,” he said. “It’s pretty messed up.”

That was the understatement of the year, maybe even all time.

“Hey, if you want to, you can hang with me for a while?” he offered.

“I don't know, I was hoping to get the hell out of town before the Chinese soldiers get here,” I didn't mention the looters in the red truck to him. “If they're rounding up kids in New York and Baltimore it's only a matter of time before they start looking in the smaller towns and cities too.”

“Well at least come over until you can decide what to do; besides it would make it a lot easier to get my stuff there if you help me out, what with you having a car and all.”

“All right then,” I replied. “Where's your house?”

“Not my house man, I've been living at Walt's Diner ever since my parents…” his voice hitched unexpectedly, and he took a second to gather himself. I could see the unshed tears in his eyes. “I’ve been living there the last few days,” he grinned at me, hiding his pain. “Best place in town to hang,” he continued. “It’s got a wood-fire grill that they used for cooking their burgers and steaks so you don't need electricity to cook.”

“Smart,” I nodded. “Sure I'll give you a lift, and maybe even stay a while.”

“Right on, man,” Luke said. “Now let's get this stuff loaded.”

4

The next five days passed in relative comfort, luxury even, compared to what was to follow. There had been no sign of the Chinese in our area. During that time, Luke and I became firm friends. He was a unique character, nerdy but knowledgeable in the ways of the world. While he was obviously a bit of a computer geek, his parents had clearly ensured he had spent plenty of time outdoors. He knew a lot about everything to do with guns and military. Even history. One time I asked him why he thought the Chinese had done what they had.

“Lebensraum, dude.”

“What?” I looked at him blankly.

“Lebensraum. It’s a German word. It means ‘living space’. Hitler used it as an excuse for his invasion of other countries in Europe. It was to provide room for the ‘superior’ races to live as they expanded and took over the world. ”

“Okay…?” I frowned, not completely understanding. History was never my strong point.

“Well think about it,” he said, taking on the tone of a teacher. “China has a population of over 1.3 billion people in an area roughly the size of the U.S. That’s one billion more than us…well…one billion more than we
had
. And everyone knows that the world’s population was getting bigger every day. It was going to get pretty grim over the next fifty years, with wars over food and oil and probably land.”

“Well why us? Why not somewhere like Australia, which is nearly empty anyway?”

Luke shook his head.

“Isn’t it obvious? As much as I hate what they have done, it was a pretty masterful plan. Defeat your only rival, take their land and resources and move in to the neighborhood with no one to stop you because everyone else is afraid the same thing will happen to them. And it’s all here for them once they clear away the dead. Homes, cities, transport. All they gotta do is move in…”

“Do you think they only meant to kill the adults?”

“That I’m not sure of,
but it does make sense if they wanted easy to manage, cost-free labor to help clean up the mess they made.”

That particular conversation left me a little depressed. It made a horrible kind of sense. Help was not coming. None of our allies would risk their own people for what was left of America. We were on our own.

We spent much of those few days in the diner's kitchen, where the wood burning grill provided not only a place to cook, but also heat to stave off the cold Rhode Island winter. Although the temperature had climbed above freezing, allowing what remained of the snow to melt away, it had not cracked forty degrees Fahrenheit and was dropping well below freezing at night. Luckily for us, old Walt had kept a good supply of firewood on hand. It was stacked beneath a tarp against the wall in the alley behind the restaurant. Not wanting to advertise our presence, I'd parked the car in that same alley, so on those few occasions that we did leave the diner we always came and went by the back door.

Although I had intended to move on fairly quickly, the warm comfort and safety that Walt’s Diner offered meant that we became a little complacent and there seemed no urgency to move on. I’m sure I would have stayed longer had events not conspired to push us out of there.

On the morning of the fifth day at the diner, I was out in the main dining room raiding the supply of peppermint candies that sat next to the register, when I saw a familiar red pickup truck cruise down Main Street. Creeping to the window, I saw it pull to a stop in front of the hardware store just down the block.

There was no sign of the older man, the one that I'd shot in the leg, and I assumed that the sickness (or the bullet wound) had claimed him. The older teen was still there, along with the kid from before. They both carried the same guns that I had seen them with in front of the Fosters’. Based on the pellets that had peppered the window and blinds at the Foster house I knew that they were shotg
uns.

They were not alone.
In the back of the truck were another half-dozen kids, mostly younger, with the oldest looking maybe twelve, while the youngest looked closer to seven. These kids were unarmed, and from their body language seemed to be scared of the other two.

“Hey man, what’s up?”
Luke called from behind me. I quickly waved him to silence and beckoned him to come over to the window. We crouched there to watch.

“Those guys came through looting the neighborhood before I left my foster parents’ house,” I spoke quietly.

“No kidding, what happened?”

“I shot at them and they drove off after shooting back.”

“Wait, you have a gun?”

“Yeah, it's in the big pocket on the front of my sweatshirt,” I replied, a bit embarrassed when I realized that I'd been staying with him for nearly a week and had failed to mention it.

“Should we go get it?” he asked.

We watched as the young man herded three of the kids from the back of the truck toward the hardware store. He was waving the shotgun at them and shouting. They appeared to be using the kids to collect more supplies faster. The younger looter stayed with the truck, keeping a wary eye – and his gun – on the rest of the kids in the back of the pickup.

“We might want to, in case they try to get in here,” I replied. “You keep an eye on them, and I'll go get it.” He nodded and I crossed the dining room at a crouch, heading to the kitchen door.

My stuff was piled in the corner by the door to the alley and as I went I realized how foolish I had been to leave the revolver there. What if the looters had come here first, what if they had come through the back door while we were out front? The idea was frightening to me. I didn't want to end up as a slave to anybody, not the Chinese, and certainly not to a couple of goons with shotguns.

Pulling the revolver from the pocket of my hoodie, I heard the first muffled pop of a gun going off down the block. With my .38 in hand I rushed back to the door to the dining area where I saw Luke flattened to the floor beneath the window. He waved for me to keep back. The younger of the shotgun-wielding looters sprinted by the diner’s front window and seconds later I heard another shot. This one was louder because it was closer, sounding like it came from the side of the restaurant. Luke crawled across the dining room floor to join me just inside the kitchen.

“The three kids that the younger guy was watching made a break for it as soon as the bigger one got the others inside the hardware store,” Luke said. “They ran this way up the street.”

“Come on,” I replied, pulling him back into the kitchen. “Grab a knife or something and we'll watch the back door of this place in case he looks for them in here.” Luke grabbed a wicked foot long chef's knife from the block at the prep counter and hurried over to the corner where my stuff lay scattered. From there he'd be hidden behind the door as it opened. I moved to squat behind the end of the grill, where I had a clear view of both the back door and the door to the dining room. The revolver seemed heavy and didn't want to stay steady in my sweaty hand.

A full minute passed, then another, and I was just starting to think that the danger had passed when the back door handle began to rattle. Taking a deep breath I pointed the revolver at the door and tried to determine whether I should just shoot through it or not. Luke raised a hand to stop me and quietly placed the knife on the linoleum floor. He then stepped to the door and without warning yanked it open and pulled somebody through. It was a girl. He shut and relocked the door with one hand while covering her mouth with the other.

I didn't recognize her; she was a few years younger than Luke and I, probably ten or eleven years old. She was whimpering and trying to escape Luke’s grip. I lowered the gun and stepped forward to try to calm her down. I raised my hands in what I hoped was a non-threatening manner and moved a few steps toward her.

“It's okay,” I said in a loud whisper. “We aren't going to hurt you. But you have got to try to be quiet or the boy that was chasing you might hear and then we'll all be in trouble.”

“I’m going to take my hand away now,” said Luke calmly, “please don’t scream or he’ll find us.” He removed his hand.

“Who are...” she started to say, but was cut off by Luke again clapping his free hand over her mouth. He put a finger over her lips and shook his head before taking his hand away again.

“I can hear him in the alley,” Luke whispered as he leaned in close over us. “It sounds like he's searching the car.”

I heard it first, or at least I reacted to it first, looking up toward the ceiling. The rumble of a helicopter closing overhead
grew louder until it filled the kitchen.
Oh crap, a chopper, it’s the Chinese
. There was a shout from the alleyway.

“Sounds like he’s running back to his truck,” Luke said, releasing the girl's mouth. “I'm Luke and this is Isaac,” he said, answering the question that his hand had silenced.

“Come on, and stay down,” I said and headed toward the dining room. I entered just in time to see the armed kid running past the plate glass window at the front of the diner. If he saw us he didn't show it. We cautiously made our way to the window and watched as the kid sprinted for the truck. The older teen had apparently heard the helicopter too, and was herding the kids into the back of the pickup. He motioned for the shotgun toting kid to join them and jumped into the cab.

We watched as the truck started up and tore off down the street. The captive children in the back were huddling in fear while the armed kid leaned defiantly on the back of the cab. We could not see the helicopter from our vantage, but from its sound it seemed to be following the truck. Then the kid made a very bad mistake. His last mistake. He aimed his shotgun skyward and pulled the trigger. In immediate response, a whining roar sounded someplace over us, and I silently willed the pickup to go faster.

Do you know how, in the movies, a line of machine gun fire will leave little pockmarks in the road as it creeps toward a target? That didn't happen. A section of road about two and half feet wide and fifty feet long was pulverized to powder by the rapid fire heavy ammunition. At the end of the trail of destruction, the Toyota pickup was sawed in half by the withering fire.

“No!” I screamed helplessly, thinking of the blameless kids in the back of the truck. I had lost sight of them in the flying debris and dust, and that is something I am thankful for.

My heartbeat thudded in my ears as we waited under the window. Would the chopper land and its occupants search the area? If so, we were toast. From the look that Luke gave me I could tell he was thinking the same thing. Finally after what seemed like an hour, but was in fact probably only five minutes, the chopper flew off. It was then I noticed the gentle sobbing between Luke and me. I looked down at the girl, but left it to Luke to comfort her. I was too angry at the murder I had just witnessed to do anything else.

I knew that the time had come to leave and after seeing the fate of the truck, I was not sure that driving was the best idea. I still had no idea where to go, but it was the girl who helped us find our direction.

Her name was Sarah. While Luke was comforting her, sh
e revealed that she and her friends had come from Providence, an older girl had been driving them north toward some sort of refuge when the looters in the red truck had waylaid them a couple of miles outside of Fort Carter.

Poor Sarah was obviously frightened and traumatized by her recent experiences, so getting information out of her was like pulling teeth, but over the course of the next couple of hours, we managed to learn the important parts of her story. Sarah and her friends had been at a bible school Christmas retreat that was supposed to last from the day after Christmas until New Year’s Eve.

The last time she had ever seen her parents was when they had put her on the bus to be taken to the retreat. Speaking of them brought a fresh bout of tears but she persevered with her story after some coaxing. When the adult counselors started getting sick that night, there had been a panic. The adults, every last one of them struck by the illness within a few hours, had left to seek medical attention, leaving the children in the care of Barbara, a sixteen year old high-school student who was counseling at the camp for the first time.

             
When New Year’s Day had arrived and no adults had shown up to help them, the children had confronted Barbara. They knew that she had been hiding the worst of what had happened from them. She had been watching the television as their whole world was swept away by the biological strike. Now that the airwaves were silent and it was clear that no-one was coming, she had told the children everything. She had comforted them, letting them know that God was still watching over them
.
I felt a bitter stab at that, but kept silent, not wanting to upset Sarah.

It was Barbara who had found the message while cycling through the static of silent radio waves looking for news, or anything to say that they weren’t alone.

On one particular frequency the static would be interrupted by a series of beeps every hour and the beeping would last no more than three minutes at a time. Some of the kids said it sounded like Morse code when they listened to it with Barbara, but when Sarah's ten year old brother Johnny, who had recently studied Morse code in the scouts, wrote out the message it didn't seem to make any sense. At least not until Barbara realized that it was written backwards.