The Collapse Series (Book 1): Perfect Storm, page 15
part #1 of The Collapse Series Series
Stepping to the side, Alex threw a hopeful fist. It caught the man on the arm, just above the bicep. Nothing happened. He was strong. But slow.
Backtracking, steadying his feet, Alex tried to shake off the daze.
The man motioned to swing again, Alex stepped, and the man’s free hand caught him right in the gut. The attacker was enjoying himself.
Alex tried for his gun. First, he reached for his hip. Wasn’t there. Stupid. He should have known that. Nauseated, hands shaking, he was grasping around under his arm. The gun was there, but it was buckled into place. The man was circling around now, shrugging his shoulders and stretching his neck like he was in a batting cage.
The man started to run. There was about ten feet between them now. He wasn’t quick, but he was picking up speed. The bat was raising up above his head. Alex’s finger fumbled. A button. A catch. Holding the pistol in place. Could only reach it with one hand.
The man was closer, the bat higher. Five feet between them. Alex’s fingers were sweaty, slipping. The leather of the holster offered no purchase, Alex realized. There wasn’t enough ground between them. The man was almost here. Three steps away. Two now.
The bat was already curling round, aiming to hit him square in the chin. Should have got the helmet with the face protection. Should have done a lot of things. Should have called Sammy. Should have said all those things to Mom and Dad. Should have put the gun in a better place. Should have checked between the cars. Should have done plenty else.
There was a crack. Sounded like a whiplash at a rodeo. It came again.
The man was stumbling.
Rocking to the side.
Tripping.
Falling.
Alex looked around. Timmy was there. He had a shotgun in his hand. Staring. A cartridge rolled around beside his foot. Timmy closed his eyes. Alex too.
There was silence.
Chapter 23
Feeling the pain in his back, Alex had given up on his gun. Even reaching for it hurt. There was no need for it now. Timmy had already run across to the attacker, was checking his neck and feeling for a breath. The man was dead.
Alex struggled upright, the body armor–broken and bullet-holed as it was–had saved the spine from any real damage. But it still hurt like all hell.
“Thanks,” Alex began, staggering toward his friend, ribs burning with pain. “You saved me there. Really.”
The shotgun was still warm. Alex took it. Timmy didn’t resist. His eyes had glazed over, his mess of red hair standing almost upright.
“Timmy, listen. He was going to kill me. You saw him with that bat.”
The only sound was the autumn wind, blowing softly between the cars. They were standing in an open stretch of road. On one side, two trucks had been parked at angles, acting as a blockade. The line of cars stretched back half a mile but here, they’d been split open, creating an arena or sorts. A trap.
“I… I just saw you in trouble.” There was a quiver in his voice, a falter.
“Yeah, Timmy. I was. Real trouble. You saved me.”
The pain was still shooting up Alex’s spine. This body armor needed to come off. It was already broken inside, the bullet tearing through the Kevlar layers. It wouldn’t stop another bullet. A bat, maybe. But how many more bats would they be facing on the road to Virginia?
“Here, come and help me get this jacket off, would you?” Alex asked, attempting to distract his friend.
Still silent, Timmy obeyed. Holding the shoulder of the leather biking jacket, Alex squeezed himself out. Moving the arms too much in any direction hurt. A lot. Together, they unclipped the fastenings of the armor and inspected the damage.
“He really hit you, man.”
“Yeah, and you saved me. I gotta say, you did amazing.”
Inspecting the armor, examining the impact marks and the damage, Timmy didn’t talk. Then he dropped it all to the ground. Ran back to the man’s body. Jumped down next to him. Grabbed the edge of the vest and pulled up. The man was bleeding out, the pool of blood spreading and staining Timmy’s knees. He didn’t care.
“What the hell?” he screamed in the dead man’s face. “Why’d you do that? Why did you do that?”
Rushing over to his friend, Alex tried to wrestle Timmy away. With each movement, his back cried out in agony. Finally, he managed to pull his friend free, prying him off the body. Together, they fell backwards.
“Why, man?” Timmy was shouting at nothing now. “Why’d you make me do it? We just wanted to get past. Why?”
Timmy arched his back and shouted at the sky. Long, empty syllables. Not shouting anything, no words Alex could understand, anyway. Just raw, primal sounds screamed up at the heavens.
“Timmy,” Alex hissed, “we’ve got to keep the noise down!”
Looking around, Alex couldn’t see anyone else. The dead man was wearing gang colors. He might have back up. He might be a sentry, posted on the edge of the gang’s territory. Screaming would only bring others closer. But Timmy was struggling. Shouting.
Running back to the bike, Alex found a water container. Taking it back to the makeshift arena, he found his friend sitting in the same place, head tucked between his knees. Encouraging Timmy away from the body, leaning him up against the nearest car, Alex passed him the water.
“Drink. Just drink it up. Breathe. Don’t think about it for a moment. You did good, Timmy.”
Doing as he was told, Timmy drank. Knocking his head back against the crumpled door of the abandoned car, he let out a long, hard breath. Alex let him have a moment. The man’s body was still there, still with blood pooling around him.
He’d been shot in the back. The pellets were spread out in a crimson constellation. Alex wondered whether the strays could have caught him by accident. Don’t mention that, he thought, it won’t do any good.
Crouching down beside the body, Alex could get a look at the man. He wasn’t sick. Not like the others. Body peppered with shot, bleeding out. Dead already, really. But there was none of that gray skin which had marked out the others. Everybody so far had been marked by that skin and the eyes, the whites marked by that intricate web of bloodied lines.
But this man’s eyes were open. It was disconcerting, the way they just stared upward, as though they were watching the heavens for any sign of life. This was a different kind of illness. A man prepared to do anything. A sickness of the soul. Alex stretched out a hand. He’d seen it in the movies, where they closed the eyes with one motion. This was why.
No one wants to be watched by a dead man.
Just as his hand was above the forehead, Alex felt his attention twinge. There was something different. Something not right. Looking closely, he tried to figure out what it was. Not the beard. Not the short scar just to the side of his nose. Not any of the tattoos. Not the ring which sat in his eyebrow. It was the irises.
One green, one gray, like all the color had been drained out. Odd. Alex had seen people in magazines and on TV with a similar condition. Hell, there’d been one of the cats on the farm who’d had non-matching eyes. It was cool back then. A bit different. Something to stand out.
But here, in the middle of the road, with a pool of blood at his feet, his friend still struggling for breath just a few feet away, it was almost inhuman. His hand closed the eyes.
“Look at him,” Alex muttered. “He looks sick. Same as the others. This skin, the sweat. These eyes. It’s got to be the Eko virus.”
Timmy wasn’t listening. Leaving the man alone, Alex returned to his friend.
“Listen, Timmy. I don’t know about you, but I think this guy might not be alone. We should get moving. Not too far though. I need to rest my back; we need to eat. Can you help me get back on the bike and we’ll stop in the next town?”
There was a trickle of water running down Timmy’s chin where he’d glugged heavily. Too heavily.
“You want to stop?”
“There could be more people, you know. I’m worried about these gangs.” Alex grasped his shoulder. “And I need to rest. You’d be doing me a huge favor, man. We need to get out of this place. We need shelter”
“And what about the military patrols?”
“We’ll avoid them. Wait for somewhere deserted. They can’t be in every town. I think this guy’s a lookout.”
Wiping away the water, getting up on his feet, Timmy nodded.
“Makes sense. Which means we’re heading into gang land.”
“Got any better ideas?”
“No. We need to move quickly.” Timmy panted, sipping at the water, his thoughts returning. “We’ll be better moving quickly through this area. Try to remain unseen. Otherwise, we’d have to track miles around. It could take weeks. We’ve got fuel and food, but not that much.”
“What if we meet more people though?” Alex looked at the dead man. “We can’t take them all.”
“Same as the military patrols.” Timmy’s breath was slowing down. His voice became more measured. “They won’t have the manpower to cover everything. We just need to find somewhere nice and quiet. Deserted.”
Alex nodded. Timmy’s plan seemed sensible. Almost.
Mounting the bikes, they squeezed through the blockade and found an empty freeway on the other side. Alex let his friend ride in front. There would be somewhere up ahead but he had no idea where.
There were nothing towns all along these roads. They just had to find an empty one. Any port in a storm, he muttered, somewhere safe to rest.
A nothing town with no one in it. That would be ideal. They passed a road sign but didn’t catch the name. It didn’t matter.
Chapter 24
Three days ago, they had left Detroit behind. What should have been a ten-hour trip had been stretched and twisted beyond all recognition. Thundering through the third afternoon, the setting sun not quite ready to quit the sky, Alex Early and Timmy Ratz rode into a town.
It was barely a town. A street cutting through the middle, a tectonic crack between two uninhabited planes. On either side of the street were stores, a bar, a diner, and the other kinds of public spaces found in dead end settlements. Unessential essentials. Nothing of consequence.
The bikes purred. Rolling over pot holes along empty streets, these machines found it all too easy. Alex parked at one end of the main street, Timmy rode to the other. It took all of two minutes, even at a leisurely pace. No face poked through a door, no windows cracked open. They were alone.
At least, they were alone for now.
By the side of the road was the smoldering wreck of a vehicle. One of the military units. The same as those which had patrolled the streets of La Salle. Half on fire and forgotten. Left behind.
They stopped to look. Dead bodies littered the ground. Old corpses, the skin starting to tighten around the eyes.
Looking up and down the street, worried about an ambush, Alex asked Timmy to keep watch while he inspected what was left.
There were no guns there. No bullets or ammo. The soldiers had been searched. Any weapons had been taken. Even the body armor had been peeled off the bodies.
Inside the vehicle, in the part which wasn’t burning, there was at least something of value. A collection of MRE packs, enough for a week or two, at least. Alex shoveled them out of the wreckage and onto the road. That was all that had been left behind.
“Who the hell did this?” Alex asked, filling up any empty space in his bags with the food packages.
“Look,” Timmy said in his quiet voice, gesturing to the street.
Alex looked down. There, all across the asphalt, was writing. Spray paint. The sign of a cartel, scrawled ten feet wide. And words:
WELCOME TO ROCKTON
“Well,” Alex responded. “At least we know where we are.”
A week ago, this would have been a small community. Just last Sunday, Alex could see in his mind’s eye, people might be walking up to the ramshackle chapel that stood at the north end of the street. Wearing their best. He’d seen folks in Virginia do exactly that. Might be rags all week, but there were no creases come Sunday.
The entire town was too similar to Virginia. Every main street in small town America was the same and each one was different in its own unhappy way. Smiles and suits for Sunday and when there were other folks around. But behind the closed doors? There was always something else.
It happened in circles. The smallest circle, the family units, had their own little secrets. But they made sure that those on the outside saw nothing but niceties. Then there was the next circle, perhaps a community or a workplace. Bickering on the inside, but showing a good face.
Then it went up to the town itself. People inside were happy in their misery but there was no way they’d let people from the outside know. Whether they were arguing over property lines or someone’s drunk son had got himself into an accident and was up in the courts, they’d be telling everyone from outside the same old stories.
We’re all happy here. Picture perfect, pretty lives.
Alex remembered the tiny town near his old farm. Athena. Much of nothing but, when he was a kid, it was the center of civilization. School. The store. Where Sammy lived. It had been one of the easiest things to leave behind. In comparison, Detroit had felt overwhelming. A more than capable distraction.
Now, this new place was the same town as every other and Alex was a stranger. The engine cut out at the turn of a key. It was good enough.
A ghost town haunted by other people’s pasts.
* * *
Together, Alex and Timmy inspected the buildings. Every door was open along the main street. The bar was there, the stools knocked to the floor. The local store had its shelves cleared out and the ‘open’ placard still twisted in the window.
Only one store, with its thick frosted windows and heavy lock, was sealed shut. There was no sign outside, just the place where a sign used to be. Someone must have taken it down, Alex thought. Or stolen it.
But there was no one around to stop them entering anywhere else. No sign of the gangs or the guards or the military. No locals. People had left in a hurry. At least, it seemed that way.
No one actually lived on the main street, Alex knew that. If people lived in this town, they’d have bigger plots, anything up to a few miles away. Names would hang around the area for a hundred years, passed about like a trade. People would apprentice in their families’ reputation,
learning how they fitted into the community as a whole. But most would live in the middle of fields and along secluded streets. Everything in the center of town was a bit loud. A bit too obvious. Better to have some privacy. Behind the main street, a twisted tumble of alleys, shortcuts, and dirt roads connected everything together.
There was no need to check every building. It was clear that there was no one around. Besides, Alex was feeling his back and Timmy still had a tremble about his fingers when he had to do anything with a delicate touch. It was better to get some rest.
In the bar, they’d found an unopened crate of beers. These people really must have left in a hurry. Packing the crate onto one of the racks, they pushed the bikes out along the street at the opposite end of the chapel. There was nothing at this end. Just a slow river, ambling around an oxbow island.
It wasn’t a proper island. There was water on three sides, roughly twenty feet from bank to bank. But the other side was a grassy stretch of ground. It sunk slightly, in the middle, a concave impression in the earth which must have dropped some ten feet at the center with trees lined up all above. There was a picnic area in the middle with a barbeque pit.
They had to hold tight as they rolled the bikes down the hill into the belly of the island. Down in here, they’d be invisible from up above. The halo of trees up above stretched together and almost touched, a canopy above them. There was a hole left in the middle for escaping smoke or demons. It was perfectly secluded.
Setting up the tent had become a ritual. It was easy enough. Designed to hold three people, it slept the two of them more than comfortably. Timmy had invested in a fold-out model, which meant it could be erected with little more than a flick of the wrist. Pulling it down and putting it back in the bag was more difficult, as was fixing the guidelines and pegs in place. After a few days on the road, however, they had the method down to a fine art.
Each time Alex hammered a peg into place, he felt his back protest. That bat had done some damage, even through the Kevlar. But he didn’t want to complain, didn’t want to leave too much to Timmy. The one-time Lord of Castle Ratz, who rarely had trouble finding any words, had gone quiet. Even the discovery of the beer crate hadn’t been enough to shake him into a smile.
For the first time on the journey, they started a fire. It wasn’t big. Barely larger than a manhole cover. It wasn’t warm. It was hardly enough to heat up the meals they pulled off the bikes. But it was welcome nonetheless. Starting a fire made this seem like a road trip. Something from the movies. A different kind of escape.
There was no power in this town, whatever it was called. No lights came on in the dark. No gentle hum of an electronic device droning in the distance. Occasionally, one of the men climbed the incline to the top of the island and looked out. There was never anyone there.
So they sat and drank beer. The conversation was stilted. Alex had hung his leather jacket from the handlebars of his bike, the bullet hole flashing the chrome piping through the black leather. Occasionally, he’d reach up and rub his finger on the metal, hearing the slight squeak.
The body armor hung next to it. The material inside was self-healing, said Timmy. It repaired itself. Feeling the bruise on his back, Alex hoped the armor healed faster than he did. He looked at the bullet hole in the jacket again, obsessing.
“That was close.”
“Uh-huh.” Timmy was on his third beer already. “Pretty close.”
They had checked the bruising on Alex’s back. There was one blooming purple rose, the size of on apple, right where the bullet would have hit. Almost exactly on top of that, there was a thick line of darkened flesh, right where the bat had caught him. It had been up to Timmy to describe the injuries to his friend.
