Last Man Standing (Book 2): Cordyceps (9 page)

Another pull, another wince. "Gah! That shit's awful." He hands it back again. "We bugged out after Vee's husband was killed last week, when we found out what was really going on at Camp One. Figured it was best to carry on solo after we realized who we were really fighting for." He falls silent and takes a long look out the window, scanning the street below. "What about you? What did you do before all this shit?"

I pull out my cigarettes. "Do you mind if I...?" Warren shakes his head, and I light up. "Well, before all this I guess I was a professional drifter, if we're being honest." I take another swig, and I'm surprised to realize I'm already getting pretty drunk. "I was a freelance journalist. I traveled around the world picking up work here and there. Mostly small stuff, you know, local papers, airline magazines, that kinda thing. I wasn't great, but I made enough cash that I could live pretty well in Asia and avoid growing up for as long as possible.

"I was in Thailand last year, just a couple of months after the first attack. You remember that guy Paul McQueen? The Aussie guy who survived it? I knew him. Just by chance he and I used to be drinking buddies in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and when he decided to tell his story he reached out to me. I guess I might have talked up my career a little after a few beers one time, and he thought I was some kind of serious newsman. You know, rather than a guy who wrote articles like
15 Budget Breaks in Sweden
for Scandinavian Airlines' in-flight magazine.

"That got me a feature in Time Magazine. My first big story, and it ended with an old friend killing himself." I take a long drag on the Marlboro, and watch the smoke curl away in the dim moonlight. "After that I guess I went a little off the rails for a while. Came home to New York and spent months obsessing about that warning. You remember it, that weird handwritten message from the Sons of the Father? That thing scared me. I got caught up in all kinds of conspiracy theories, trying to prove it was genuine, but I didn't know how. I guess I went a little too far down the rabbit hole. Started to lose track of what was real." I can tell I'm slurring my words a little now.

"Then one day I met a girl. Kate. Just a regular girl, nothing all that special about her. I wasn't in love with her. Didn't really have all that much in common with her, to be honest, but she was
safe
. I figured if I just acted liked I was in love I might magically end up leading some kind of normal life. You know, move in with her. Get a rescue dog. Argue about which IKEA bookcase best suits our personalities. I managed to fool myself for months." I take another long swig and pass the already half empty bottle up to Warren.

"Don't let me have any more of that." I stub out my cigarette on the carpet and continue. "When New York went to shit we got caught up right in the middle of it. We ended up at a park in Brooklyn, just... just
rammed
with people. Thousands of them, all terrified and confused. When we heard there were bombs on the way we tried to get out, and... well, the details aren't important, but it all went wrong. Kate died."

I look up at the weaving image of Warren at the window and take a deep breath. "You know the first thought that went through my head when I realized she'd been killed? I was
relieved
. I was fucking relieved that I didn't have to play at being a regular person any more.
Jesus
fucking Christ, I'm going to hell."

Warren takes a sip from the bottle and remains diplomatically silent.

"That's what's been rattling around my head for the last month. Stuck in that box, wondering why an asshole like me deserved to live while a sweet girl like Kate deserved to die. Where's the justice in that? She was too good for me. She loved me, and I couldn't even keep her safe." I reach for my pack of smokes, then remember I just put one out. "Anyway... I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I survived and she didn't, and I don't have the first fucking clue how I can ever redeem myself."

My mind finally clears long enough for me to realize I'm heaping my innermost worries on someone I've only known for a few hours. I look around in the darkness for my jacket and pull over my legs. "Umm... I think I need to rest my eyes a little."

"Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea, Tom. Don't worry, I'll hold the fort. You just get some sleep. You'll feel much better in the morning."

"Yeah. Yeah, it'll all be better in the morning. Thanks, Warren. You're a good guy." I roll to the side, tuck my legs up towards my chest and pull the jacket a little further up. "Better in the morning," I mutter to myself.

The darkness only takes a few moments to close in.

It had been three days since a car last went by, and he was growing impatient. He was hungry. He was tired. He hadn't been laid in more than a week. If he didn't find someone soon he'd die before they let him back in. Jesus, he might never get laid again.

The community was pretty simple. You get to sleep somewhere safe and warm, and maybe you get the chance to take a turn with one of the women every once in a while, but only if you deliver the goods. Bring in loot to share and you get to stay. Come home empty handed and you're on your own. Sounds like a perfect system. Fair work for fair pay. No damned welfare queens suckling at the teat of hard working folk like Roy. No scroungers taking what was rightfully his. No assholes to abuse the generosity of good, honest, decent people.

It was just what he'd been hoping for all these years. It was what he'd prayed for whenever someone shared yet another story on Facebook about some entitled asshole buying lobster with his food stamps, or a damned immigrant family being handed a free home bigger than his just because the mom couldn't stop firing out kids. Roy had been over the moon when he finally got his wish. Work hard and you're on easy street. Slack off and you're out on your ass. No free rides. That's the way it should be. We can't afford to support folk who don't pull their weight. You don't want to work? Tough shit.

The community had been pretty great in the beginning, back when the quarantine zone was first established. The place was set up pretty quickly after people started evacuating, and with only thirty or so residents its needs were simple. Guns, food, and clean water. Maybe a little medicine, just in case. With millions of fugees fleeing to the west and no cops on the streets the pickings were easy. Roy worked just a couple hours a day. He'd get up, head out, raid an abandoned Walmart, and he'd be back home before lunch with a trunk full of canned soup and a few crates of vodka. 

Then it all began to change. The community grew, and it started taking in people who had real skills. The doc arrived, and he was exempt from looting. A couple of plumbers came in, and they got the same treatment 'cause they knew how to keep the showers working with some fancy pumps. An electrician showed up - a damned wetback, at that - and he was given a pass 'cause he knew how to set up solar power up on the roof so they didn't have to run the generators day and night. And the women, of course. They were let in for free so long as they were willing to give it up every so often.

It was only a few weeks before there were ten times as many mouths to feed. More than four hundred people behind the walls, and suddenly they decided old Roy wasn't doing his part. "You only got a hundred tins today, Roy?" they'd say, looking down their noses like the fancy assholes sitting at the top of the pile always did to good, honest people like him. "We got hundreds of mouths to feed in here, man. We need at least a thousand tins every day just to keep folks fed. You're gonna have to go out again."

He tried to keep it up for a while. Worked four, five hours a day collecting loot. Tried to find new stores that hadn't already been picked clean. Tried to lug enough crap home that he'd get a pat on the head and the satisfaction of a job well done, but it was never enough for those bastards. They always wanted more. They always wanted to exploit his hard work just a little too much.

So... yeah. Suddenly good old Roy found himself surplus to requirements, just like he had in every damned job for the last ten years. There were fifty folk out looting for the community, and they said he was the laziest. They said he drank more'n he brought back, and he was taking more'n his share of food and smokes. They said he took too much time with the women, and if he wanted more he'd have to work harder to earn it.

Of course it was bullshit. Roy pulled his weight just like everyone else. He broke his back to provide for his new family, but like always folks like Roy just weren't appreciated. There was always some asshole up at the top who'd try to take advantage of simple hard working folk like him.

The last straw came one day when he'd just finished up with one of the girls, sometime around lunchtime. He was just about to wash up and go on a looting run when the top guy - some jumped up prick who called himself the Chief - stormed in and grabbed hold of his collar. He dragged Roy down to the front door, threw his bag out into the street and tossed Roy after it. Kept going on about how they needed the beds for people who worked hard for them. Wouldn't even listen when Roy said he was just heading out the door to go to work.

He still wanted back in, though. Even after just a week he was already tired of sleeping with one eye open. He was tired of washing with cold bottled water. He was tired of having to find somewhere to rest each night where he knew they couldn't get at him. Everything was better at the community, even if it was run by silver spoon pricks who wouldn't know a day of hard work if it married their sister.

Then he figured out what he could bring to the table. He figured out how he could get back through the door.

There were a little more than four hundred people in the community when he left, but only around forty women. When everyone ran away to the west it was mostly the guys who stayed behind. People with families were long gone. You're not gonna keep your wife and kids in Pennsylvania when there are crazy infected fuckers running around the place, so of course they were the first to go, tearing away in their sensible SUVs with SpongeBob playing on the screens in the back of the seats.

The guys who stuck around were mostly young, ambitious types. Guys with vision and balls. Guys who could see the opportunities presented by the quarantine zone. They were mostly single, and of course they all liked to get laid.

Now, some of those forty women in the community were a little too old, or a lot too young. The law didn't hold much weight any more but the Chief had made it pretty damned clear from day one that nobody was to touch the kids and grandmas. That only left one woman for every twenty or so men, and by the time they kicked Roy out the girls were already whining about being worked too hard for their keep.

So... yeah. There was Roy's way back in. They'd have to open the doors for him if he brought back a fresh, tasty piece of pussy to share around. They'd slap him on the back and call him a hero. Maybe he'd earn himself a couple weeks grace. A couple weeks to sit back and relax in safety before they started asking more from him. A couple weeks to try out the rest of the girls. Hell, maybe they'd be so grateful he took some work off their plate they'd throw him a little extra.

But there was a problem. He didn't know where to find any fucking women.

He'd been out on the road for a week, and he'd yet to see a single chick. He'd looked high and low, scouring houses out in the sticks, visiting all the old FEMA camps to see if there were any stragglers left behind. He found plenty of guys and plenty more infected, but no pussy.

Then he had a brainwave. The highway.

The 78 was pretty much the only east-west highway still clear. Most of the other routes got snarled up with breakdowns and pile ups the first few days when all the fugees fled west, but the 78 wasn't so bad. It came from the direction of New York, and... well, most of the folks from New York were already dead.

So Roy decided to camp out. He stocked up on food and water, found himself a pair of binoculars and set himself up on a hill close to a curve in the highway where cars would have to slow down to pass a pile of wrecks. He figured eventually he'd get lucky. Eventually a couple of stragglers would decide the east was too risky, and they'd try to make it out west by the highway. There had to be a few women left, and when they came by he'd pounce. It was a solid plan, and he was pretty damned proud of himself for dreaming it up.

Then three days went by.

Three days without a single car. Three days staring down at an empty road, sleeping up a tree with a branch sticking into his spine just in case any infected came by at night. Three days without a wash, and a day since his cigarettes had run out. He was about ready to call it quits, drive back to the community and just beg them to open the doors. He'd clean toilets. He'd scrub dishes. He'd go out looting ten, twelve hours a day. He'd do just about anything if it meant he could sleep in safety again.

He'd decided to make a move as soon as the sun came up after his fourth night in the tree. He'd stop in at a Target he'd seen close to the highway and return with a car stocked to the roof with goodies. Candy, cigarettes, booze and enough tinned food to feed an army. He'd camp outside for a week if necessary, pleading with them to open the doors. It was all set.

It was sometime around one in the morning when he heard the engine. For a moment he thought he was imagining it. The only sounds he'd heard in days were the wind, the groans of the infected and the report from his own pistol as he burned through his dwindling supply of ammo. He rolled down the window, cocked his ear and held his breath as he listened for it.

There it was, right on the edge of his hearing, drifting in and out as the wind carried it. He scrambled quickly from his car and climbed to the roof, grabbing his binoculars as he went. It took him a moment to find it but there it was, an old, beat up Toyota puttering slowly through the wrecks.

And there was a woman driving.

He could barely believe his luck. He hadn't seen a woman out in the wild for about three weeks, and to be honest it was really weird to see one just sitting in a car, driving around like she wasn't an endangered species.

Not only was it a woman but she looked pretty hot, far as he could tell. Slim, nice lips, decent set of tits. It wasn't so easy to see in the darkness but she looked like she might be a Spic. Roy didn't really go for Mexican chicks, but he knew a lot of people went crazy for the exotic types. She'd go down a storm back at the community. They didn't get all that many of them in rural Pennsylvania, and most of the women back at the community were white as snow apart from one light-skinned black chick with a smart mouth and a fat ass. The folks back home'd just eat up that sweet Latina pussy, so long as she was one of the clean ones.

He scanned the rest of the car through his binoculars, and he was a little put off by the fact that there were a few guys in the car. The big guy in the back looked like he could be trouble. No telling with the other two. They both looked smaller than Roy, but who knows? Sometimes those wiry guys could throw a solid punch. Might be a good idea to take all three of them out if the chance came up.

He jumped back in the car and gunned the engine, fishtailing it with the lights off until he finally skidded his way down onto a dusty track that ran alongside the highway a while. He tried to keep his speed under control. He was getting a little too excited, and he knew the Toyota would easily outpace him once it worked its way through the wrecks. If he could just get to the next on ramp before it vanished he might be able to trail them until they took a break.

His heart leaped to his throat when he saw the car peel off the highway at the next exit. It was coming right towards him, so he cut off the engine and sat in wait while it rolled slowly into the next town. He followed carefully, making sure he didn't get too close, until they parked up in front of an old office block and started unpacking their car.

Mm hmm
, she was hot. He got a much better view once she stepped out of the car, and he definitely wasn't disappointed. She was one of those cute, spunky Michelle Rodriguez types. All tough on the surface with her heavy, shapeless army gear, but he could tell she'd be sweet and warm as apple pie underneath. There was definitely a cute little ass hiding beneath those fatigues, and even though he wasn't a big fan of the wetbacks he'd love to hold her down and spend a little time getting to know her. Hell, it was a long drive back to the community. Maybe he'd be able to find somewhere safe and quiet along the way to break her in for a while before he shared her with the rest of the guys.

He gave it a couple hours before making his move. He was eager to go earlier, but the sound of the Toyota had attracted a few infected to the street and he had to wait for them to wander away. Couldn't fire off the weapon without letting the girl know he was coming, so he had to be patient.

Finally the last of them drifted off down the street, and Roy made his move. He left the car where it was parked - it was a busted up old wreck anyhow - and skirted the buildings until he reached the car, grinning when he saw they'd left the keys in the ignition. Perfect.

Roy pulled out his pistol and checked the magazine. Only two shots left. Not enough to take out all three of the guys, but if could be enough to get the upper hand if it came to it. He slipped quietly through the open front door of the building, careful to stick to the silence of the carpet, and slowly began to make his way up the stairs.