Fortunes & Failures - 03 (16 page)

“God will choose the time of my passing,” he’d managed through the mask on his face that provided him with oxygen, “not man. When He calls, I’m prepared to answer, son.”

Charlton Shaw stepped out into the hallway. A man in the room across from his father’s was tumbling out of his bed. All of his alarms were going off too. Nobody else was there to help; it seemed as if a majority of the staff had rushed in to witness his father’s death. Not one single medical staff member could be found. Charlton decided it was up to him to try and help this poor bastard.

He remembered that smell when he’d walked into the man’s room. The man was on the floor, struggling to his feet. His hands gripped the rails on the side of the bed. Charlton rushed over and froze when the man’s head turned and he saw those eyes. He’d never forget that moment as long as he lived. The milky glaze shot with black tracers was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. They looked like they’d been filled with pus. Then his mouth opened and this hollow sound sort of oozed forth; it was ghastly. When he stood, his hospital gown fell to the floor revealing a slightly soiled bandage on one arm.

The man lunged awkwardly, pulling his IV stand over sending clattering to the floor. The needle ripped from the back of his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice. He tripped over the jumble at his feet and hit the deck with a meaty slap. That didn’t faze him at all. He resumed trying to climb to his feet, his head jerking towards Shaw.

When the man began crawling, Charlton backed up, retreating into the hallway. That’s where he ran into the nurse with her throat ripped out. Only, instead of being dead like she ought, she was clawing at Shaw’s arm. One hand brushed his face, and that is when he felt the coldness. It was as if, in that instant, somebody had switched on the volume. Screams and beeping monitors came from everywhere at once. Maybe they’d already been happening and this was the first his mind registered them. He didn’t know, nor did he care.

Raised to be a Marine by a Marine, Charlton heard the voice in his head that demanded he fight. He was fully prepared to do so until he rounded the corner to discover three people bent over a fourth, ripping her guts out and feeding on them. She couldn’t have been any older than two years of age. Just past that horrific scene was another even worse. Two doctors were pulling a baby-shaped blob from the splayed open belly of another woman. It was still connected by a thick, purple cord. One of the doctors was rasing the fetus to its mouth.

That had been too much. Charlton ran. He didn’t look back and he didn’t stop to answer the cries for help that echoed down the halls from every direction. He bounded down the stairs and out the emergency exit. The chilly spring day greeted him…that and the mundane goings on of the every day world. Cars cruised past and electric signs turned and flashed in attempt to lure the hundreds of passing consumers. That would be one of the last precious moments before the world knew. That was the last day anybody had called him by his first name. Now, he was simply Shaw.

He realized that his shadow was stretching out from his feet. Glancing over his shoulder, the glow on the horizon signalled the start of a new day. Much like that afternoon when he had stepped out from the hospital into the last normal day of human-ity, Shaw walked with a purpose. The silhouette of a large facil-ity—the recycling center—loomed ahead. There would be plenty of places to hide there.

A pair of slow moving figures tottered through the grass off to his right. Shaw would settle in, but first he would reduce the number of hellspawn by two. It might not seem like much, but it was a start. Also, beating their heads in made him feel better.



Reginald stood in the sally-port, the face mask he wore to protect him from the chemicals used to ensure he was free of contamination fogged over slightly. Not that he cared. His eyes were full of tears which were doing a fine enough job of obstructing his vision.

There was a ‘click’ as the mist stopped. Punching the numbers in the keypad, he waited for the indicator light to change to green, then he opened the door. As usual, he was greeted by Morris. The cat leapt up onto the workbench and waited. It had learned long ago that it didn’t like rubbing up against a wet Hazmat suit.

Reginald paid no attention to the feline and went through the rote process of flipping on the banks of lights and starting all the lab equipment. He made his way to the observation area and made a perfunctory scribble of “no change” on each chart.

He paused, then went to the infirmary. Flipping on a monitor, he watched the screen grow brighter until the picture came in to view. A sea of bodies remained smashed in tightly against one another. The fence had fallen long ago and now the bodies were pressed up against the concrete bunker that sat over the hatch allowing entry or exit to this godforsaken place.

He switched off the monitor. The truth had to be faced… he…they were never getting out of this place. It was their home and their tomb. He sighed, running his fingers through his thinning hair. He rolled his head in an exaggerated circle, going from having his left ear practically resting on his shoulder, to the right. He rolled forward, tucking in his ever-decreasing-in-definition double chin to his chest.

He rolled back and caught his reflection in the dead eye of the blank television monitor. He could see the smudge of darkness under each eye. He reached up and touched the knobby lump on the bridge of his newly mishapened nose. He’d done his best to set it after Lucy had punched him in the face, breaking it. She hadn’t been receptive to his last batch of wine.

Once again she’d insisted that nothing could go wrong and no harm done if he’d just make her a batch of meth. He’d already made the foolish mistake of admitting that he had all the incrediants necessary to synthesize the product.

“You’ll make alcohol, a poison that destroys the brain,” Lucy had raged, “but you draw the line at meth? What are you afraid of? The world is over! You even said so. Nobody is coming. What’s the big deal if I do a little meth? You could even keep it in your little mad scientists’ lab and dole it out in controlled amounts.”

“Meth is a highly addictive substance that is—” he had tried to reason with Lucy. That was when her fist smashed into his face, breaking his nose.

“Get out!” Lucy had screamed as her fists rained down on him.

He’d retreated from his room, scurrying across the hall into the empty living quarters of one of his former colleagues. He’d gone to the mirror with a dirty tee shirt, intent solely on cleaning up the blood when he saw that his nose was obscenely crooked. Setting it as best he could, Reginald fell asleep weeping.

When he awoke, he’d considered confronting Lucy, going so far as to stand outside the door with his hand on the knob for several seconds. Eventually, he chickened out, and here he was in his lab. Alone. He wandered around unable to decide exactly what task to undertake. He kept returning to the observation cells, staring at the specimens inside.

Eventually he made his way to the grow room and checked on his rows of plants. He kept telling himself that he needed to get Lucy in there to see how things worked.Also, he needed to give her the keypad codes. While he was always careful, it was impossible to discount the possibility that an accident may occur. Of course, after last night, he had no doubt that she would put him down if he turned. Hell…she might do it even if he didn’t.

Checking the storerooms, he did a mental calculation of the vast quantities of dried and packaged meals. There should be enough to sustain four people for five years without supplements from the garden. Food was not an issue. The combination wind and solar power setup that supplied them with electricity should be okay for a while. Also, their generators were ready just in case. For all intents and purposes, they should be able to live comfortable for a few years without worries.

Of course, if that mob topside ever dispersed… Reginald looked down on the long table. When had he done all this? Beakers, burners, and pans were laid out along with all the ingredients for a rather impressive batch of meth. Could it really be no worse than the wine and brandy that he’d cobbled together? And once he did this one thing Lucy would be his. His mind flashed to that first night he’d surprised her with the wine. She’d actually been…pleasant.

Reginald pulled out the folded up piece of paper from his pocket. Like he would anything else, he double and triple checked his list. Going over to the lockers, he donned all his protective gear. Then, with a shrug, Reginald Cox went to work on his first—and only, he promised himself—batch of crystal meth.



“Down this way.” JoJo jogged ahead of Juan, Thad, and Mackenzie.

Everybody walked single file down the path leading to one of the island’s larger beaches. JoJo signaled for everyone to be quiet, and moved into the trees and vines so the others could come up alongside.

A trio of aluminum canoes had been pulled up onto the sand. A half dozen backpacks had been set in a row on a dune, and a man and woman sat beside them, passing back and forth a canteen. Both were wearing handguns holstered under one arm and had pistol-gripped shotguns propped beside.

“Is there such a thing as a militant hippie?” Thad quipped barely above a whisper. Mackenzie put her hands over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

Juan glared at everybody, then tapped JoJo on the arm, “I’ll go out, you cover me.”

“Not by yourself!” Mackenzie grabbed him. “If we go together, it might seem less threatening to have a woman with you.”

“Good point,” Thad agreed.

If it were at all possible, Juan scowled even deeper. He stared down at Mackenzie who returned his look with wide eyes and a hint of a smile.
She knows she’s pushing my buttons
, Juan thought. There was no way she wasn’t coming with him. That was clear in her expression.

“Fine,” Juan said, his shoulders dropping just a bit. “But you stay back a few steps once we get close. If I gotta box, I don’t want you in the way.”

“Yes, my big, brave man,” Mackenzie cooed.

With a huff, Juan turned and stalked out onto the beach. He was halfway across the wide open space before the couple actually noticed. The guy fumbled for his gun, but the girl beat him.

“Don’t let that thing come out of the holster,” Juan warned, holding his empty hands out in front of him.

The girl ignored the warning and drew, bringing her shaky hands up and aiming at Juan’s chest. Juan stopped, making a point to wiggle the fingers on both hands. The man had his partially drawn, but slid it back. He did however rest a hand on the nearby shotgun. Juan’s eyes flicked angrily between the two.

“You realize that if we meant to hurt you, we’d of already shot you.” Mackenzie stepped forward, hands planted on her hips.

“We ain’t lookin’ for any problems.” The man reached over and eased the gun down that the girl beside him still held with a frighteningly visible tremor.

Mackenzie looked them both over. The guy had shaggy brown hair, and very dark eyes. His skin was coffee-with-extra-crème-brown, and he had a brace on his left leg. That was a concern if he was bitten. The woman was much darker and younger. She placed the man in his thirties or forties. The woman was barely twenty…if that. She had a bandana tied to her head, but a fluffy, black ball of hair stuck out the back.

“Where are the rest of your group?” Juan growled.

The couple looked at each other as if trying to send signals with their eyes on how to answer. Mackenzie decided to play her first card. “Look, my mother is at the house and all I want to know is if I should be worried about your little group stumbling across her and doing something.”

“Your mom?” the woman asked hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Juan reasserted himself in the conversation. “We got a few people here, been tryin’ to get this place set up for a while now.”

“That was you guys who blew up the bridge?” the man said.

“Yep,” Juan nodded. “Figure them
deaders
don’t care much for water, so we took out their only way across. Now all we gotta worry ‘bout is the living.”

“Had some bad experiences?” the man asked, sounding sincerely sympathetic.

“And given a couple back in return,” Juan said with as much ice in his voice as he could muster. He was done playing. Either these two were gonna chill, or it was time to thrown down. If only Mackenzie would’ve stayed out of the way, he didn’t like her out in the open. “So if the girl wants to keep her gun drawn, I’m fixin’ to even the odds.”

“Sandra, put it away,” the man said, not taking his eyes off of Juan. “We can go if you like. Soon as our friends get back, but…”

“You’d rather stay,” Mackenzie finished.

“That’s sorta up to y’all,” the man nodded. “But, yes, it’d be great.”

“What’s up with the leg?” Juan pointed to the wrapped up limb with the makeshift brace.