Crisis Event: Black Feast (5 page)

And the storm wasn’t anywhere close to over.

She’d taken a risk by riding out from under the overpass and heading south during a lull, and so far she’d been lucky. But luck might not last.

She had to get shelter.

Something indoors and solid and reasonably sealed off from the weather.

Her respirator was beginning to foul and she needed to change cartridges before silicosis became a certainty.

She also needed medicine.

She was going to be laid-up for several days if she couldn’t find some serious painkillers. Ethanol and Ibuprofin could only do so much. She needed something strong enough to let her ignore her pain and push south as fast as she could.

She couldn’t help thinking she was being watched or tracked or followed, and had been ever since she got on the motorcycle in Youngstown.

She was afraid of the people who’d fired at her in Youngstown, even if the fear was irrational. After all, it wasn’t likely anyone could have followed her without her knowing it. She’d travelled a hundred miles and seen no signs of anyone trailing her.

Still, the feeling of being pursued didn’t leave.

“Fear keeps us alive,” she muttered, mimicking the words of the professor who taught her first cognitive neuroscience class.

Sadie’s voice was lost in the boom of thunder from a nearby lightning strike, but the lecture echoed in her head.

“Manifestations of intuitive thoughts that bring about fear might be a result of the central nervous system acting to warn humans of dangers they cannot see,” the professor had said. “The difficulty is differentiating between valid or invalid fear warnings.”

Sadie couldn’t tell if she was being rational or not. All she knew was she hadn’t been this scared since she began this journey—not even when the coyotes or feral dogs were after her.

Right now she was pee-your-pants terrified.

The lightning and dust she was facing could kill her within the hour if she didn’t act immediately. But if she made a mistake and went into this town too fast she could be killed just as fast—with a heck of a lot of pain and terror involved. What she’d seen in the last five miles had convinced her of that.

Nearly every farmhouse and trailer house and barn she’d seen along the little state highway had been burned out or shot so full of holes they weren’t a viable place to stop and rest.

The only house that hadn’t been burned or blasted was six miles behind her, not far from where the cop had attacked her. The house sat far off the road and was surrounded by gray, dust-coated crops. A barn with a collapsed roof had sat off to the side of the house, but the roof of the house had been shoveled clean. A jeep and an old red tractor had also been free of dust.

When Sadie had stopped to sight on the house with her rifle, she’d seen gun barrels bristling from nearly every window—eight guns in all—pointed right back at her. She’d given a wave and flashed a two-fingered peace sign and climbed back onto the bike.

Not long after that she’d begun to see the bodies.

Dozens of them, scattered along the highway, usually surrounded by dark stains in the dust on which they were resting.

Some of the bodies were missing heads. Others were missing arms or legs. A few had been dismembered completely, leaving only a ribcage and scattered femur and humerus bones.

A word she didn’t want to think about had begun to force its way into her consciousness, ever since she’d killed the cop. She didn’t know if she was prepared to face that horror now. Not with the black wall of death right in front of her—full of roiling dust and ash and vicious lightning she could no longer outrun.

Yet everything in her told her to run from this little town—from the rising line of white smoke she was seeing on its far side, to the faint smell of decomposing bodies mixed with the sweet scent of cooking meat that was now wafting into her nostrils on the storm wind.

There had been another Farm to Market road two miles back—one that would allow her to skirt Shanksborough and head west into the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area—a place almost guaranteed to be free of people. But she didn’t think she’d survive out in the storm—not even if she could get under the trees in some low area less prone to lightning strikes. If the wind was blowing hard at all the tent she’d rigged up the night before would get carried away like a straw in a tornado. She’d be suffocated or electrocuted.

Sadie’s hair flapped across her respirator shield as she unslung her pack and untied the paracord securing her rifle. She’d made up her mind now, and there was nothing to do but go ahead with the plan she’d formed in the last few seconds.

Lightning flashed overhead, and the constant rumble of thunder was overwhelmed by a sudden boom that then faded slowly to leave the rumble in place behind it.  

According to the road signs she’d stopped and wiped clean in the past several miles, Shanksborough was the home of Blaine Technical College.

Sadie had never heard of Blaine Technical College—or Shanksborough. But she needed to stop there. And not just for shelter.

Big box stores and drugstores and convenience stores were probably all looted, and if they weren’t they were likely dangerous traps. But one place survivors might not have raided for useful supplies was a college science department.

She’d already played out the possibilities for how things might have gone differently if she’d gone to Youngstown State.

She might not have witnessed a murder, or become a murderer herself.

She might not have needed to gas a pack of dogs, or have discovered the Honda motorcycle.

She wasn’t going to miss out on another opportunity to get the supplies she needed.

Besides. She might find what she needed to make Tylenol, or at least find some iodine to purify water with. Maybe she’d find something to put into her laboratory when she got to Texas.

If she got to Texas.

Sadie pulled down her respirator and scanned the entire little town through her rifle scope, noting the heavily travelled sidewalks around some of the buildings at the center.

Like many American small towns, Shanksborough had been built around a public square with a courthouse and jail at its center.

But this public square looked different than most she’d seen on this journey. Several trailer homes had been parked across the roads leading into the square, effectively shutting down access to the square on all sides but one—the side opposite her.

The one road that did lead to the square was a long straight descent sloping downward from a hill slightly lower than the one she was spotting from. Anyone coming down that road would be wide open to gunfire from the people in the courthouse or on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.

These people, whoever they were, had turned their town square into a fortress. Only a narrow opening at the bottom of the hill allowed for access, and there were cars parked in a staggered offset pattern—to force any vehicle short of a tank to slow down and zig-zag in.

Who are they trying to keep out?

For a moment Sadie reconsidered her plan. But then she scanned the back “wall” of the square again, moving her scope to study the street and the buildings outside the fortress.

She saw the sniper—someone in a gray camo uniform concealed beneath the trailer, lying on their belly right in the middle of the road. Several sandbags had been stacked in front of the sniper, and their rifle was resting on one of them.

Sadie was too shocked to move at first, especially when it registered that the sniper had a rifle pointing right at her and was watching her through its scope.

With a sick feeling in her guts, Sadie lifted a hand and waved. Then a dozen or more narrow lightning bolts struck the trees along the road leading into the town square, and a massive bolt as big around as a jumbo jet body hit the top of the courthouse. It lit up the entire area as bright as a sunny day.

When the lightning went out Sadie’s retinas were singed. Purple spots danced before her, and took at least a full minute to go away completely. Then another bolt shot down and hit the courthouse.

When no fire resulted from the strikes, Sadie assumed the building had been well grounded.

The same could not be said of some of the businesses and houses in the neighborhoods off the square. Several homes had caught fire and were beginning to burn with smoldering flames, despite the heavy cloud of dust and the falling mud.

As she continued scanning the town through her scope she saw a dust-covered sign on a street next to a long canopy covering several gas pumps. The rectangular building set back from the canopy was the unmistakable size and shape of a 7-Eleven.

Half a mile or more beyond the 7-Eleven was the white smoke she’d seen rising on the far side of the town. It was coming from behind a three-story brick building that stood among a collection of other big brick and buildings.

The buildings were separated from the rest of the town by what had once been soccer fields and wide roads.

The smoke worried her, but she shoved aside her worry, telling herself she was going to have to take risks.

She cursed the cop who’d attacked her, then reminded herself that wishing to change the past couldn’t change the past, but could fatally delay you.

She would likely be able to travel without anyone hearing the Honda over the constant thunder, and if she had any kind of luck at all, she could be holed up safe and secure inside an empty college building within five minutes.

She’d be ready to ride out the storm.

Of course, it was also possible that by the time the trip was over the motorcycle’s air filter would be too clogged for her to run the engine.

Or worse—the dust would have gotten into the engine and turned to glass.

Then she’d be stuck here in this town, facing whatever horror her unconscious mind had been warning her to avoid.

Once again the Honda started up with no complaints.

If only my body was as durable.

After re-slinging her rifle and backpack Sadie descended the rise slowly, weaving among the short line of stalled and abandoned cars that choked the highway. She’d already covered a quarter of a mile when she realized what was bothering her: the tire tracks.

In all the miles she’d traveled since she left Youngstown, the only motorcycle tracks on the roads had been the cop’s. Those had disappeared down some side road, and if there had been others she hadn’t noticed.

She was noticing them now, though.

They were fresh.

Or fresh enough to worry her.

She slowed and studied the tracks in front of her. A dozen narrow grooves had been cut in the dust recently, as if several motorcycles had come up the hill one after another, or one motorcycle had come up and gone down again, or gone down and come up again. The possibilities were finite, but the implications were widely varied.

Sadie allowed the Honda to roll forward again. A gas station on her right was dust-covered and dark. The roof had collapsed, and the canopy over the pumps was sagging, ready to let go as soon as a strong enough wind blew in.

Across the street, a mechanic shop sat abandoned and looted, its garage doors wide open, its corrugated roof collapsed.

Inside were mounds of dust—so much dust that the garage’s walls were bulging outward from the weight. Seams in the corrugated aluminum had opened and spilled dust outside.

Straight ahead, the road curved around toward the courthouse square. To her right was a residential street lined with old simple houses of modest size.

“Old people houses,” her boyfriend would have called them.

They were simple wood-frame structures built atop pier and beam foundations back in the forties, and if this neighborhood was like the one she’d lived in on the outskirts of Boston, the houses had mostly been inhabited by elderly residents on fixed incomes.

Or college kids.

Sadie pulled her compass out and studied the needle. Then she turned and proceeded slowly along the road.

There was no traffic jam.

Cars sat in driveways or parked next to curbs. If they hadn’t been covered in dust, you could almost imagine someone lived here.

If you could also ignored the collapsed roofs, smashed windows, and open, dark doorways.

Sadie was relieved to see no motorcycle tracks. She did see footprints criss-crossing the street, but they didn’t look recent. Dust had filled them in and softened their edges.

She rolled forward slowly, watching the middle distance.

When the street came to another four-way intersection, Sadie stopped. She wasn’t sure of the best way to go, so she looked at her compass and turned west, away from the courthouse and jail.

Rain began to fall.

If you could call blobs of black mud rain.

The mud splattered the road and coated her respirator shield and slapped into her arms and shoulders and head. She slowed, rolling forward at only a little more than a walking pace.

She scanned the road and the yards on both sides of it as best she could, despite the low visibility and constant flickering bolts of lightning striking to her left.