Genesis (2 page)

*Hope was lost.

She hated to admit it, but she was lost,
and worse yet, she was late. Hope knew she would never hear the end of it…

Assuming she even got to her destination.

She was running low on fuel.

She panicked just a bit, pressing her foot
down on the accelerator - and the huge V-8 engine roared to life.

‘Going faster won’t help.’

His voice was so real in her mind it almost
startled her. Almost. But she was used to hearing her Cooper in her head. It
was her brother Che’s voice that she was worried about hearing again. She had
to tell him before it was too late.

Cooper was calm, cool, collected. Just like
she should be. He was reminding her, even now, of what needed to be done.

She took her foot slightly of the
accelerator, but her mind continued to race. Racing through the events of the
past twenty-four hours. Even though she was prepared, it happened way faster than
she expected.

Population density and all.

When the old man was right, he was right.

And he was often right.

‘Going faster won’t help.’

She took her foot completely off the accelerator
and coasted. She was still going faster down the pavement than the vehicle’s
headlights could illuminate – a risk for sure - but no one else was on the
roads.

Not these roads.

Not outside the safe zone.

Not after dark.

Way out here, the only thing she could hit
was perhaps a small family of rabbits, or a coyote hunting by moonlight,
possibly even an antelope…or maybe a small child.

A small child!

Hope screamed at the top of her lungs as
she slammed on her brakes, the car lurching to a stop. She hit it for sure.

Was it alive or undead?

It?

Was she really using the pronoun it to
describe someone’s child?

Had it come to that?

Had she come to that?

And did it really matter if ‘it’ was alive
or undead?

More than anyone, Hope knew all too well
where the world was heading. She just did the kid a favor. The child was free
now.

But what if it wasn’t dead?

FUCK! Using ‘it’ again.

Tears of frustration began rolling down her
face. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was prepared. She was hardened.

‘Not hard enough!’

This time, instead of the comfort of her
Cooper, it was her brother Che’s voice.

Hope began to cry.

She cried first for her family. She was
privy to some things in the early days because of her position in Homeland
Security, and she knew enough to know how it must have ended for them. She
couldn’t be sure, no one really could, but they were in the city and not very
many people in the city made it out.

Mostly though, she cried for herself.

She cried for the child she was carrying
inside of her.

A child that was definitely not part of the
plan.

Hope let out a loud scream of frustration.

How could she be so stupid?

Another scream.

Life was so unfair!

‘If life was fair, there would be no
wheelchairs.’

Cooper’s voice brought her back. He hated
wheelchairs. Amelia ended up in one after the accident.

Hope found some old fast food napkins in
the glove box and wiped the tears from her face. It was getting dark, and she
needed to seek shelter. What was she going to do though, just knock at a
stranger’s door? Would that even work? These weren’t times to be letting
strangers into your house.

Most strangers these days had guns. Those
that didn’t have guns, wanted them. Perhaps if she was in uniform she could talk
her way into someone’s house. But she didn’t even have time to put on a jacket…

She was lucky she had time to grab the
gold…

Che would never let her hear the end of it
if she had forgotten the gold. Hope looked down and was reassured by the
presence of the small blue canvas bank bag in the cup-holder.

Hope took a deep breath and evaluated her
situation.

She was lost.

At night!

Hope closed her eyes and took another deep
breath.

‘In the dark they’re nice and slow…’

At least she had that going for her. They
were slower at night. If she did run out of fuel before she made it to the farm,
at least she stood a decent chance. During the day, well, that’s a different
story. They sped up during the day. And some of those things were fast. Really
fast.

Technically, they were not cold-blooded. She
had read that much in the daily briefings before they stopped coming. Cold-blooded
was the term that was used in some of the earlier television news reports to
explain it, and it just sort of stuck.

Was that really a train whistle? Of course
it was.

The Air Force.

Thank you Governor John Evans!

In 1867, Governor John Evans, together with
other local business leaders, incorporated the Denver Pacific Railway and
Telegraph Company to connect a struggling Denver economy to the booming city of
Cheyenne to the north. The line followed the South Platte River from lower
downtown Denver to Greeley, then north to Cheyenne. Cooper had told her that
story probably a million times when she was little. Every time they crossed the
tracks, he would ask he if she knew the story of Governor John Evans. The lines
were being used now by the Air Force to move fuel to F.E. Warren Air Force Base
from the National Guard fuel depots at Denver International Airports. Cheyenne
was still a safe zone.

More importantly, the farm was not far from
the tracks.

That, too, was part of plan.

How could she be so stupid?

Calm down.

Train tracks rarely move. Buildings,
streets, even entire towns rise and fall with the fortunes and with time. But
train tracks rarely move. And even when the physical tracks do move, the scars
left on the landscape by the track foundation is unmistakable. Even the
blindest of the blind could follow them home. Or anyone lost.

Thanks Cooper.

Hope watched the train roll by in the
distance. It was reassuring for her to see another living being this far out. She
reached down and put her finger on the switch.

What could it hurt? And the conductor of
the train might like some reassurance that on his journey into the darkness
that he too was not alone.

Hope flipped the switch.

The light-bar on top of the Tahoe erupted a
pool of red and blue light, punctuated by brilliant white strobes that seemed
random in their application, but actually were pulsing to a very calculated
beat that traffic lights could detect in order to adjust their signals
accordingly to help speed the vehicle’s response through traffic.

Hope flipped another switch, and a loud,
wailing siren filled the night air.

The lights in the cab of the train engine
came on, and the conductor opened his window, waving his arm in greeting. The
train’s whistle let out a massive blast. Then another.

It would have been a surreal sight on a
normal night, a United States Marshal Service transport vehicle and a fuel
train, each blaring their respective greetings into the night, but on a night
like this, somehow it just seemed normal to both of them.

She used to find the sound of train whistles
annoying. Always waking her up from her sleep at the farm; now though, it was a
comfort that she allowed herself to fully soak in. She could feel the sound
waves in the crisp spring air.

Movement!

Hope pulled her arm inside quickly and
rolled up the window, hitting both the light and siren switches and dousing the
Tahoe, herself, and whatever just moved out there back into darkness and
silence.

The train rumbled by…

Hope squeezed her eyes shut and slowly
counted.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three
Mississippi, four Mississippi.

Her eyes needed time to adjust back to the
darkness.

How could she be so stupid?

Hope opened her eyes, but she could still
see nothing. Nothing but darkness, nothing but the stars, nothing at all…

Wait!

Hope adjusted her rear view mirror.

The kid she hit was nowhere to be seen. The
smear on the road was there, but it wasn’t.

Calling the kid ‘it’ didn’t bother her
anymore.

Hope turned her headlights on and put the
Tahoe in gear. As she made a wide turn on the road, her lights illuminated the
now-turned thing. The small boy, skin peeled back from his face from his
encounter with the pavement, was slowly wobbling back and forth while trying to
take his first steps. It reminded Hope of a baby deer she had once come across
on a hike.

No it didn’t, it reminded her of her cousin
Tommy.

Looked exactly like him, but Tommy was
seventeen now; this kid was maybe ten. Hope turned the wheel to avoid hitting
him. She could have hit him, but somehow she didn’t think that was really fair.
Besides, what damage could one more of those things do anyway?

‘Don’t play in the road!’ This time it
wasn’t Coopers voice she heard, it was her mother’s.

She started to laugh as she remembered the
countless times her mother warned her against playing in the street. Her mother
was right after all.

She wondered what a kid was doing out here
all alone. This wasn’t exactly the middle of nowhere, but it certainly was the
road to it.

The low fuel light came on and brought her
back into focus.

Not a problem.

The river was just ahead, and she now knew
exactly where she was.

Hope still had plenty of fuel when she
turned into the long driveway that led up to the farm. The lights were on. No
surprise there. Most of the grid had been down for a few days, but Cooper had the
farm on solar before solar was cool. She could not remember a time that they
had ever been without power.

A large, partial-spherical plastic
greenhouse came into view as she pulled the Tahoe into her ‘designated spot’ in
front of the orchard. She parked in plain sight, but out of the way, because
the bus was gone, so that meant someone was out and about. She also knew that
Che would complain about where she parked, out in the open and all, but secrecy
was for before all of this, certainly not now.

And then it dawned on her.

It was only Tuesday.

She wasn’t late at all.

She was one day early.

Not part of the plan, but better to be
early than late. Now Che won’t ever know she got lost because she will be here
waiting for him when he arrives. Hope began walking to the farmhouse then froze
in her tracks.

Movement by the barn! It was not supposed
to be like this. Hope quickened her pace and almost ran up the stairs, tossing
open the screen door and quickly reaching for the doorknob.

The front door was locked. Strange.

“Cooper!”

Hope began to knock with some enthusiasm as
her mind started racing.

One day early, what difference could it make?

What difference could it make?

“Cooper!”

Something was behind her in the darkness.

Hope turned to check her back just as the
front door swung open.

A rush of warm air from inside the house
and an onslaught of memories from childhood, high school, college, the police
academy, the war…it was almost as if her entire life was flashing before her
eyes.

Last thought.

The baby, what about the baby?

Whiteness; then nothing.

Hope was dead.

Two
hundred years ago…

Thursday

It was a dark, thunderous night in April,
and the clock was striking thirteen. The hands of the clock were stuck at 11:55
by some unseen warp in the clock face, but time, unable to stand still,
continued ticking endlessly away as the bells cried out into the spring night
that something was overdue.

*William was watching out the landing
window with great interest. His binoculars focused on the scene unfolding only
a short distance before him. He had expected dumping the body outside to
attract a few of the creatures, but not this many, not this fast, and
especially not so many children. Not all the way out here. Where were all the
children coming from?

William watched with more than mild
interest at their behavior. It wasn’t his job to analyze them, but it was his
part of his job to stay alive, and the more he knew, the easier that might be. They
were all feeding side by side right now; the adults and the children, the males
and females, but it was still early. There was still plenty of food. He knew
from past experiences that once they stripped all the meat off the bones, well,
then things could get a bit nasty.

Contrary to the popular films of the time,
the creatures did not go for the brains; at least not at first. The guts and
lower intestines were where they liked to start.

William privately liked to call them
‘shit-eaters’; but that was easy for an orphan like him.

'Shit-eaters' never really caught on with the
general populace. With Joe Public, there were ‘walkers’ and ‘runners.’

He had used the phrase once at work, and he
could tell by the reaction from his co-workers that it was still a bit too
early in the timeline. For someone not battle-hardened to the world, he
supposed it would be easier to call recently deceased Grandma a ‘walker’ even
if she was a shit-eater.

At any rate, whatever you called them, at
least the walkers were easy to deal with. Nice and slow, just lop their heads
off. Headshots didn’t seem to work at all, another thing the movies always got
wrong, but taking the head off a walker completely ended it plain and simple. The
runners, however, were a little more complicated.

The runners were fast. Not superhuman fast,
but fast. Faster than you want something chasing you, that’s for sure. Those you
could take down with a headshot, and they would stay down…but not for long. In
hours, or in some cases minutes, they would rise again as walkers. But a
headshot would usually buy you enough time to get away.

Quite frankly, no one understood why there
was a difference between walkers and runners, but there were multiple un-official
theories. William had his own, too.

William turned from the window. He had had
enough watching them. It didn't take the kids long to strip the meat off that
girl. He wondered for a moment what she tasted like.

William was spotless and well groomed. His
morning shower and shaving ritual was something he had grown to look forward to
over the years, and his appearance was something that he took much pride in. Even
now. Even with everything going on, William still strived to be professional.

Professional.

But that had not always been the case. When
William was younger, he often let his emotions interfere with his better
judgment. But as William was fond of saying, that was then, and this is now. People
grow, people change. At least some people do.

Rarely did he let his personal emotions
come into play anymore. It was just a job, and he had resolved to try and not
get involved on a personal level. Which was sometimes a lot harder than it
sounds when every day you made decisions on who got to live, and who had to
die.

Today was one of those days.

It already had been, several times already,
and the night was still young.

William checked his pocket watch and then
picked up his radio.

“Echo Three to Echo Seven, do you copy?”

Nothing but static.

“Echo Three to Echo Seven, do you copy?”

William knew he would get no response. He
didn’t even have a partner out there in the dark anyway. But talking to one,
even fictional, made him feel just a bit better and helped pass the time.

He set the radio down and picked up another
apple from the bowl. At least the house was well stocked with food. If he had
to, he could hole up here for quite some time and be ok. But that would not be
necessary. This was a simple assignment, and he wouldn’t be here long. Not long
at all. He expected Dr. Cooper to return home within the hour. Then they could
leave.

There was just enough time for one last
security sweep of the house. Dr. Cooper had done a decent job securing the
house for someone who was not trained to do so. Every door and window except the
front door was boarded up, and the front door was thick oak, and a hammer and
nails lie nearby. Obviously Dr. Cooper planned to secure that entrance as soon
as he returned. That would not be needed now. Altogether, it was not a bad job
for an old man. Still, another check of the perimeter would not hurt anything.

William was taking a large bite out of his
apple and heading down the foyer stairs when he stopped mid-stride. Peripheral
vision is a funny thing sometimes. Walk by something a hundred times and never
notice. Walk by one more time and, well…

There he was.

Son of a bitch.

William froze in his tracks and simply
stared at the photo for a few moments. It was a face he hadn’t seen for some
time. Could it really be him? Could he really be sure? William reached out and
took the photo off the wall to examine it closer. It wasn’t long before his
eyes confirmed what his gut already knew to be true.

The nausea started to build up in his stomach.
He could fight it back.

The memories were another story. The
memories, he could do nothing about. The memories, which had haunted him off
and on over the years on countless sleepless nights, began to flood back inside
his head, building pressure until he felt like his head was going to explode.

The distinctive sound of helicopter rotors
approaching from the south, and for a moment he hoped it was real, but he knew
it was happening in his head, and there was nothing he could do.

He was going back to Vietnam that night,
whether he liked it or not.