Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) (12 page)

Head in his hands, Manny leaned against the wall. Leave his house. Impossible. There was nowhere to go. His relatives were dead or in other states, if they were even still alive. There was no car, no money for bus fare. There wasn’t even food beyond tonight. “We can’t—”

“We have to.” Wincing, she rocked slowly on the bed before pounding her fist against her head. “I was so stupid. Stupid.”

Manny grabbed her hand before she hit herself again. Bits of brown flaked off as he ran his thumb over the dried blood. “Where were you to go?”

“Anywhere but here.” She stared at him from her good eye. “Don’t you see? The Aspero find a family, kill all but one or two of them and then they follow the injured survivors to the next occupied house.”

His insides folded into a hard knot. And she had led them here, with a trail of Stash’s blood to mark the way. Hot and cold flashed through him in turn. Like he done at Adobe Mountain, he boxed up the rage and fear. “It’ll be okay. I was planning on leaving here anyway.”

He’d just thought he’d go alone and return with supplies.

“Basia thought you’d already gone. She’d seen you making maps after people refused to move closer together like you suggested. I know she said a rosary for you.”

“I wouldn’t have left without telling her.” But he hadn’t bothered to check on her, not even when she didn’t show for the food drops. Maybe if he had...

Irina set her hand over his and squeezed. “Seeing you in the alley was like a miracle.”

Some miracle. He resisted the urge to sink onto the carpet and will himself to disappear. Sighing, he untangled his fingers from hers. “Why don’t you get cleaned up? I don’t want you scaring the
niños
.”

She plucked at her tee shirt before skimming her hand along her swollen jaw. “Guess I look pretty scary, huh?”

“Nothing a bath wouldn’t help,” he lied. “There should be a clean towel in the bathroom. As for clothes...”

She was so thin; she could probably fit in Lucia’s things.

Irina shrugged. “I’ll find something.”

Trudging out of the bedroom, Manny dug the papers out of his hoodie’s pocket. He’d used the printouts from Google maps to track the Redaction in his neighborhood then to plan his scavenging runs. Pages of boxes on curving black top, each street numbered or named.

Now, he’d use them to find an empty house to live in.

The gated community seemed the safest bet. Those gringos had money and were white, so the soldiers would listen to them. And as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to travel that far to steal supplies. He ran his hand over the red exes and the blue boxes—red for redaction, blue for deserted.

Hopefully by the time, he got the
niños
out of the attic, fed them and prepared for the trip, he’d have thought of a way to get past the soldiers’ guns and their tanks.

Chapter Eleven

Sunnie hooked her finger around the side of the honeycomb blind and peered into the front yard. Her breath fogged the double-paned windows. On the street beyond the low branches of a swaying mesquite tree, the Humvee coasted forward. With its bank of lights off, it moved through the cul-de-sac like a shark in dark water.

One soldier hadn’t been too bad; he hadn’t shooed her to her room or said a word when he found her eavesdropping around the hall corner. But the other... Blindly, she reached for her drink, hoping that sugary soda would wet her dry mouth. Her knuckles hit the metal frame of her desk before her fingers skimmed the glass top. Moisture clung to her skin as she wrapped her hand around the cup.

The other had been a complete douche bag—bossing Aunt Mavis around and threatening her. Sunnie’s heart drummed inside her chest. But her aunt hadn’t backed down. Not one little bit. Go, Aunt Mavis! She’d even called the Surgeon General.

Her aunt knew the Surgeon General.

Sunnie smiled. Wait until she told the peeps on line. They wouldn’t discount what she posted. EVER!

The Humvee’s lights switched on, spotlighting first the Swartz’s house, and then the Lee’s, before bouncing off the Peterson’s onto the street. The owners were gone now. God only knew if the Petersons had survived the Redaction when they’d joined their family in Minnesota. The ‘for sale’ sign in their yard creaked as it swung back and forth. Sunnie caught the straw in her lips and sucked the soda into her mouth.

The Swartz’s and Lee’s houses had been emptied one body at a time—college-age children first, then the teenagers, and last were the parents. At least, Aunt Mavis had removed the orange biohazard tape and kept the yard clean. She maintained the landscaping for all six houses in the cul-de-sac. She claimed it deterred the thieves and looters by making the place looked lived in.

Sunnie slid her drink onto her desk. The yard work wouldn’t fool anyone. The houses reeked of emptiness and death.

The military vehicle turned the corner and the taillight’s red glow faded. Darkness prowled the neighborhood. Sunnie released the blind and it sprang back into place. Shuffling forward, she reached her desk and opened her laptop. The screen blinked, before it burped the Redaction In Action bulletin board.

Pixilated skeletons walked from crudely drawn houses to collapse in heaps on the curb. Every once in a while, one would turn to their former residence and beckon the other inhabitants to join him.

They usually did.

Sunnie scanned the topic headings and the last response. No surprise there. Everyone talked about their first day out and about. She would have too if the soldiers hadn’t told her aunt that the Redaction was back. She opened the file and scanned the subheadings before clicking on the thread titled: Did This Happen to Anyone?

chesshire8: I escaped my crib 2day. Met my ppl F2F, or wots left alive, at JDs. Sum1 sneezed, and the place cleared out.

MLKWIT: STBY! Did you leave 2

chesshire8: F* yeah. RDXON ain’t getting me. LOL.

catsin99: NYers are stronger. Guy coughed and no1 noticed.

MLKWIT: GAL catsin99. NYers ain’t braver, they’re TSTL.

TSTL. That’s harsh. No one wants to think they’re too stupid to live. Sunnie scrolled through the responses on the page. One in three people reported sneezing or coughing. One in three. Her legs shook and she collapsed onto her padded office chair. How many of them could already be infected? Metal creaked as it adjusted to her weight.

nymetsfan1K: FU MLKWIT

MLKWIT: JK. GAL. Mets suck!

“Nice job.” Sunnie shook her head. MLKWIT always flamed on the boards. “Say you’re just kidding, before telling everyone to get a life and insulting their team.”

Her cursor blinked next to her screen name sunEbrIt. Rubbing her hands together, she warmed up her fingers then backed out of the thread. After opening the one titled News, she lowered her hands on the keys and typed: RDXON back.

Her fingers stilled. Should she add more? No one had reported any deaths, just a few coughs and sneezing. Even old man Quartermain had coughed and she hadn’t automatically assumed it was the Redaction. She’d need something more.

Some proof Aunt Mavis could provide.

Otherwise they’d dismiss her as a meth-head. Rolling out from under her desk, Sunnie stood up. The oak floors creaked under her feet. Her socks glided over the polished wood as she made her way from the guest bedroom to the great room. “Aunt Mavis?”

Her aunt sat at the dining room table hunched over her silver laptop. One hand gathered her silver streaked hair into a ponytail when she slouched against the cane back chair.

Was she running the projections the Surgeon General wanted? Sunnie crept across the tile and craned her neck to see the computer screen. A map of the US ballooned up. Red dots started in New York, Louisiana, and Southern California. The second hand swept around a clock face in the bottom. When the hour hand hit two, the red dots had doubled in size and spread along blue lines identified as Interstates and train tracks.

By the time, the hour hand hit six, California and the Eastern Seaboard had been swallowed by red. The crimson rainbow in the Louisiana arched into parts of Texas and Mississippi while mushrooming into Oklahoma and Arkansas. The projections for water, sanitation, communication, transportation began to decline.

Green.

Yellow.

Red.

Then the functionality hit zero.

Sunnie clamped her hand over her mouth. The scarlet stain couldn’t be the infection. It just couldn’t. If someone infected had left California the moment the ban had been lifted, then the Redaction would already be within the Phoenix city limits.

At eight o’clock, black freckled the flowing red ink. Soon white numbers bloomed in the dark smudges-one, two, five, twenty-five. By the time the red blanketed the entire mainland, the black numbers had blinked at seventy-two percent on the coasts and the smudges kept spreading.

Sunnie gripped the back of the sofa to stay on her feet. “Aunt Mavis?”

This time, her aunt turned in her seat. Color fled her face as she half-rose out of her seat. “Sunnie? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m just worried.”

Her aunt didn’t try to dodge the issue of the Redaction like she had the movie premiere and war with North Korea. “How much did you hear?”

“That it’s back and stronger than ever.” Sunnie traced the grout line with her toe and jerked her head toward the laptop. “I saw the map.”

Aunt Mavis frowned at the computer. Mainland US was a black blot on the screen. “My predictions are only as good as the Intel I have to base them on.”

She stopped and curled her toes inside her sock. “So it could be wrong?”

“Maybe.” Her aunt raked her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. I should get an update later.”

A number flashed across the blackened continent. Sunnie counted the zeroes, blinked then counted them again. Seven zeroes before the decimal point and two numbers before that.

One hundred sixty million casualties.

Did America even have that many citizens left?

“Is that the first time you’ve run it?”

Aunt Mavis sank back into her seat, stabbed the enter button on her keyboard and the screen blanked. She quickly pulled up a spreadsheet, linked it to the simulation program then hit the enter key again. “Unfortunately, no.”

On legs as sturdy as wet noodles, Sunnie stumbled to the table and collapsed into the chair. “But the numbers are getting better each time, right?”

Her aunt turned the computer so Sunnie could see the map bleed red then blister with black.

“Worse with each parameter I enter.” Aunt Mavis squeezed her skull between her hands. “And I haven’t even accounted for the coolant rod meltdown at the nuclear power plants, human predation, or toxic events from chemical transports.”

“Human predation?”

“Raping, hoarding, killing each other for food or water or the sadistic pleasure of it.” Shadows danced in Aunt Mavis’s eyes. “The indelible stamp of our lowly origins. Except, animals behave better.”

Her eyes burned as she stared at the screen. “God!”

“Mother Nature is one pissed off bitch.” Mavis poked the enter button and the black map disappeared.

“Will anyone survive?” Sunnie sat on her trembling hands. Her heart thudded sluggishly in her chest, like it pumped molasses through her veins instead of blood.

Aunt Mavis cupped Sunnie’s cheek. “We will survive; so will others.”

She latched onto her aunt’s warm hand. Not on her own. She’d just lie down and die. “Because you’re so smart. You’ll know what to do.”

“It’s not the strongest or the smartest that survives, but the one most able to adapt.” Her aunt’s lips twisted into a grimace as she stared at her computer. “We’re going to prove Charles Darwin right. We will make it. You’ll see.”

Sunnie squeezed her eyes closed and melted against the wooden chair. Tidal waves of fear, uncertainty and helplessness rolled through her. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know that a positive attitude is the foundation of survival.” Aunt Mavis squeezed Sunnie’s hand.

Sunnie felt the play of muscle and the strength of bone. She inhaled a shaky breath and pried her fingers free. Positive attitude. She could do that. “Okay. What else?”

“Rest.” Aunt Mavis closed the laptop and pushed out of her seat. “Right now nothing has really changed for us. We have electricity, running water, and food. So don’t worry about what could happen.”

She nodded. Positive attitude. Stop worrying. Worrying stresses the immune system. She could do it. She would do it. Her stomach cramped. Most of the time. “Anything else?”

“That’s a lot for now.” Her aunt shuffled into the open kitchen and reached for the cordless phone. It rang under her hand.

Sunnie jumped at the loud ringing and pressed her hand to her chest. Good God, she really need to chil-lax. Maybe she’d try those yoga DVDs she’d purchased for her birthday.

Her aunt looked at the phone before hitting the send button and raising it to her ear. “Miles, I expected you to call me two minutes ago.”

The muffled sound of speaking slipped into the silent room, but the words were as comprehensible as the adults on her aunt’s Charlie Brown movies.

“Yes, I’ve run the sims.” Aunt Mavis rubbed at a stain on the linoleum countertop. “Worse. I’ve gotten a ninety-one mortality rate with all factors combined. And I was being optimistic.”

Ninety-one? Stars danced in the fringes of Sunnie’s vision. Heat blossomed in her chest and blood pulsed in her skull. How are we to survive that?

“No, they wouldn’t be safe. Alaska is gone, Miles.” Aunt Mavis tucked her hand under her armpit and shivered. “You and I both know containment is about as real as the seven cities of gold.”

Sunnie twisted in her seat, turning her body toward the hallway. Maybe she should leave. Listening to her aunt talk was not helping. Not one little bit.

“Birds for one. They’re immune, you know that.” The older woman paced from counter to counter. “Besides, if just one phage survived the fires in China, it will jump on the backs of the ash, merge in the jet stream. For all we know, it could already be here.”