Immortality (30 page)

The sun was strong. The area soon wafted with the smell of decay. Insects arrived to claim their bounty. The air was abuzz with clouds of tiny flying things while, higher up, birds circled unwilling to land and take advantage of the easy meal.

~

Jennifer and Chris worked for the Parks Service as rangers. They’d met on the job and had decided to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary reliving how they’d met. At first light, they hiked out past the last ranger station to a cabin used by wildlife researchers. There was a fireplace, a potbelly stove on a screened in porch, and a view of untouched fields and mountains. The first snow of the season was late and not expected anytime soon.

The fireplace was crackling. The air was fragrant with dried leaves and wood. The sun was on its downward slope. Jennifer unpacked her clothing. She smiled thinking it would probably go unworn. Chris hugged her from behind. She turned into his arms. They held each other tightly. She loved him with all her soul and thought that if they created new life within all this warmth, it would be so perfect.

Chris got out of bed and went over to his pack. Jennifer watched him, her eyes glancing over the lines of his nude body. She felt her cheeks flush. He returned holding a bottle of champagne.

“I forgot about it,” he said. “It’s probably warm, but we have to toast us.”

“I love you,” said Jennifer.

Chris peeled off the wire clamp and started to inch out the cork. The bottle exploded. A warm gush of champagne spilled all over them and the bed. Chris was laughing. Jennifer started laughing. The entire bottle had emptied itself. Still giggling, they embraced with tiny bubbles tickling her skin.

The cabin’s porch had a bench and pair of chairs. They had dragged their warm sleeping bags outside at sunrise to use as blankets and lit the potbelly stove. On the knotted planks rested a large plate containing remnants of their breakfast of cheese, bread, and fruit. Jennifer was content reading a book she had brought. The morning sun was spilling down onto open pages. Chris was beside her on the bench daydreaming. His arms curled warmly around her. They were breathing together as if they had blended into a single life. She closed her eyes for a moment and was asleep.

Jennifer awoke with Chris nibbling on her neck. She smiled, pretending to remain asleep. The sun had grown warmer. In the distance was the sound of wind rustling the trees and farther off than that, the sound of a stream. She took a deep breath. There was a powerful odor of bad breath. Chris licked her sloppily across the side of her face. Her eyes grew wide. She didn’t feel his body pressed next her. The tongue was too big, the breathing too deep, almost a grumble. Her entire body froze. Her senses became acute. Something very big was next to her on the porch. Her mind ran through the mental list of what type of animal would act this bold. She knew the answer but refused to accept it. Afraid to move and draw aggression, her eyes stared helplessly out across the field. She saw Chris emerge from a crop of trees. He was carrying his fly fishing gear. From half a field away, she saw his expression turn to fear, then panic. He dropped his gear and began running toward her shouting and waving his arms. He was trying to drive off whatever it was.

A large paw shoved her over. Jennifer remained limp, trying to play dead, not even sure if it worked. She saw the animal’s muzzle and heavy fur. It was a grizzly bear. A cataract haze covered one of its eyes. The animal was old and huge, maybe six hundred pounds, and it looked insane. Its behavior was unnatural. The bear kept jerking its head as if inflicted with palsy. Jennifer involuntarily sobbed. The animal’s eyes narrowed in on her face. The monster had heard her. It knew she was alive.

Sarah opened her eyes. Through the smeared windshield of her car, the sunrise glowed orange and red. Greenwood Lake was over fifty miles away from this forest clearing where she’d parked for the night. The clearing was off a deserted mining road which was little more than a furrow of dirt and small rocks. No guardsmen or anyone else had driven by in the time she’d been here. She opened the car door and crawled out. Ralph watched her for a moment and then put his head down and returned to sleep.

The other day, it had taken her almost an hour to get the car unstuck while anxious that Beer-breath and Acne-face might show up at any moment. Wedging branches and stones under the tires had finally done the trick. She had driven aimlessly for hours, putting miles between herself and those punks before feeling comfortable enough to stop running. She had found detailed hiking maps in a small fish and tackle shop that catered to locals. Her search for supplies had been less successful. All the stores she had stopped at along her path had been emptied of food and water.

Sarah trampled down an overgrown path that ended at a nearby stream. She wore a sweatshirt and jeans. The Beretta was in her belt-pack that was looped over her shoulder. She had a pair of empty Arrowhead water containers – one in each hand. She could hear the sounds of the stream growing louder. The promise of freshness pulled her on.

Sarah ladled up a handful of water and splashed it over her face. The water was clear and cold. She was at the bottom of a trellis of flat stones. The spring cascading over the stones was like a natural fountain. She drew some water into one of the gallon plastic bottles by angling it sideways into the stream. She’d selected a location on the downstream side of the rock trellis where the water would be at its freshest. She dropped in a purification tablet, shook up the bottle until the tablet dissolved, and then tasted a small amount. The natural filtration of stones had left the water pure; the tablet gave it a bitter aftertaste. She drank some more and then began filling the bottles one at a time. She gazed at the broken reflections in the rippling water.

Behind her, the sun vanished within charcoal clouds. Without warning, a chill crawled up her arm and into her spine. It was almost as if a mild electrical current was flowing from the stream. Her fingers released the plastic bottle. River currents immediately snatched it beyond her reach. The world was spinning. She tried to catch her breath. The experience was like the night chills from days ago. Suddenly she understood. This water came from an underground stream. Inside her stomach, she could feel what she’d drunk. The liquid was settling there like a lump of dirty ice chilling her from the inside out. This water was a gift from something evil that lurked in subterranean rivers. She shivered uncontrollably. The spring’s purity was an illusion. It had bubbled up from a world without light. She thought of all the death left behind her. A question that was haunting her came again – why had she been spared when so many others had died?

A gust of wind stirred a huge elm tree mixing autumn leaves into the air. Sarah sat on the ground with her back against its trunk. In front of her was a field of tall grass turning winter brown. The clearing would have been a nice place to build a home. She’d been here for hours thinking and planning. The sun had warmed all the dampness from the fallen leaves and grass.

Sarah had reached a calculated decision. In her lap was a pad of paper. She was doodling on it. There was a childishly drawn house with smoke curling from a chimney and a forest leading off into the horizon. Below the drawing was her list of pros and cons. Both lists were long, but the pros had more entries than the cons.

Ralph was busy chasing imaginary rabbits through the field of stalks. He obviously had no idea that big decisions were being reached. Sarah had decided to leave the Nissan behind and hike out through the wilderness between New Jersey and New York State. After her run-in with those National Guard adolescents, she’d given up on the idea of finding a safe road. Just thinking of those creeps weakened her stomach. The only way out of New Jersey was through terrain too dense to patrol. On one of her maps, she’d marked out a ten mile trek through forests into a small town in New York State named Boarburg. She figured that if she and Ralph started out by eleven in the morning, they’d easily reach the town before nightfall.

“Hey Ralph,” she yelled.

A huge black face peered up out of the dried stalks.

“Do you think we should go it on foot?”

Ralph barked once then disappeared back into the sea of brown. Either he thought the plan was a great idea or he’d cornered another one of his imaginary rabbits.

~

Using a compass, Sarah had managed to keep off the marked trails and hold a steady northerly course. She was proud of her abilities. The ground was hilly and covered with a thick mat of pine needles. She’d been walking under the mantle of old growth evergreens for the past two hours. The air was heavy with the scent of pine. Some of the trunks were almost two feet thick and straight as telephone poles. The forest was a catacomb of wooden pillars. Without a compass, she might have wandered for days only to end up where she’d started. The evergreen canopy was low, beginning twelve feet above her head. Few scraps of blue sky were visible through it. Dim light had kept brush growth to a minimum, which made walking deceptively easy. Once already, she’d stepped into a hole concealed under a blanket of needles and pine tar. She was lucky her ankle had been spared.

Walking under the canopy gave her a feeling of passage. It was as if she was moving through a cavern that would end in an opening to a new life. There was a warm light at the end of this struggle. She could feel it as strongly as she felt an evil soaking into the ground of her old home.

The first two-thirds of her route would be uphill, no way to avoid it. Sarah’s legs were growing sore. The incline seemed mild and was deceptive in its ability to sap her strength. How much farther was it to the ridge? Sarah knew how to measure her progress. She started counting out her strides during ten minutes of walking. Each stride was about two and half feet. When the time was up, the count had reached three hundred and forty – and that meant her progress was far too slow.

“Damn it...” she muttered.

Ralph walking ahead of her disappeared into a clutter of small brush. She’d been hiking for three hours. Multiplying it out was depressing. She’d guessed the distance she’d covered was on the low side, but not this low. She’d gone only about three miles. She was averaging a puny one mile per hour. Her little hike was going to last far longer than she’d planned. At this rate, she and Ralph would be camping in the woods tonight.

Perspiration dripped from her forehead. Sarah had picked up her pace and turned the hike into a forced march. She had to stop, just for a few minutes. She wedged her pack against a tree and leaned back on it. She guzzled water then poured some into a cup for Ralph. He lapped it up then sat down by her feet. She pulled out a granola bar and slowly munched on it. The treetops were filled with birds. Their songs were almost hypnotic. She drifted into a nap of exhaustion.

Sarah awoke startled and disoriented. The light had changed to a stone gray. Her cheeks were damp with tears. Words were still whispering from her lips.

“All dead... everyone dead…”

For several long seconds, she had no idea where she was sitting. She only knew she was scared and that an entire city had been wiped out. Slowly, she gathered up the torn fabric of her dream. In it she’d been a little girl in her daddy’s hardware store; but instead of Mount Freedom, the store was in the heart of a huge city. There were rows after rows of buildings that seemed like tombstones. The air was acrid looking with a brownish tint of pollution. Streets were wide and filled with millions of abandoned cars; while the sidewalks had stars embedded in them. Sarah looked down at pine needles stuck to her palms. The needles fell one by one onto her jeans. She recognized the place as Los Angeles. Could the plague have reached there already?

“Stop it...” she whispered.

Another city couldn’t have been hit by the plague. She had to stop thinking like this. A chill wandered through her body leaving her weak. Could it be worse than just Los Angeles? Maybe the entire world was gone? The end could happen and she would never know about it in this forest.

Ralph barked. He was a dozen feet away and staring up into a thicket of branches. His posture was tense with aggression. His eyes were locked onto something. A growl came from deep in his chest. His gums pulled back to expose teeth. This was not an imaginary rabbit.

Sarah grew alarmed. She thought about the M16 lashed to her backpack and unreachable. Her hand slipped inside her jacket. Her fingers curled reassuringly around the stock of her Beretta. The weapon should have calmed her, but she was confronting the unknown. She pulled the gun and stood up. Her senses were sharpened to the point of aching. Her chest pounded. Fear was feeding upon itself and growing. Looking up, she scanned the lattice of branches and deep shadows. What was up there? She called Ralph to her side. He glanced at her scornfully and then turned back and continued his aggressive stance.

“Ralph, get over here now!” she snapped.

He hesitated and then came to her side while glancing back every few steps. He circled her legs and turned to face where he’d been looking. She patted him. He jumped from her touch.

She heard a loud rustling as if something had leapt from the treetop. Dried pine needles fell to the floor of the woods. The sounds of the forest returned. Sarah hadn’t realized they’d been missing until now; or had they? She looked at Ralph. The tension was melting from him. Whatever had been there was gone. What kind of animal was big enough to scare a hundred and twenty pounds of Rottweiler? Sarah remembered television images of people that had been driven violently insane by the plague. The medical explanation was that the cause was psychological, but what if that was wrong? What if the madness was directly caused by the plague? Could the same thing happen to animals? Her stomach tightened as she thought of that bird in Morristown repeatedly flying into the side of a building as if it had gone mad.

She looked around her. The woods were filled with creatures nature had armed far better than her. She wondered which animal would be the worst to face. The eastern wolf was again being spotted in these hills. An animal like that could hunt anything… and what about black bears? Her nine-millimeter didn’t have that kind of stopping power. Even solid hits might only enrage a bear. Blood loss would eventually kill it, but she’d be dead by then. She holstered her Beretta and unlashed the M16. The thought of sleeping in these woods filled her with anxiety. Ralph laid his muzzle against her open hand. Sarah kneeled down to stare into his face. She scratched him behind both his ears.