The China Pandemic (6 page)

“Okay, that sounds like a good plan. How far is it?” Marcy asked, scared.

Macy had thought about this before she jumped back into the car. “From our front door to Mr. Sanchez’s house,” she said. Explaining the distance in this way was an old habit, one that Marcy would accept and not be too afraid. Though Macy thought the distance was actually more like from their front door to the Christenson’s house, which was quite farther, but she did not want Marcy to know that or she might opt to stay in the car indefinitely.

Looking again to make sure there were no predators present, Macy opened her door and Marcy scooted over the center aisle controls to exit on that side. The area between the two cars was just barely enough for their petite frames to pass. Marcy closed the door with just a click.

Macy led them in a crouch as they scurried their way, armed with a metal ruler and a plastic ice scraper. With overnight bags flung over their left shoulders, they made their way through the tiny passages left open. They flitted their way up and over an Escort’s hood rammed against a 4Runner. Checking behind them for any threat, they stopped occasionally to just listen to the quiet before they began again in their escape to the manmade barrier.

Finally, within sight, Marcy pulled Macy’s short sleeve. “I thought you said to Mr. Sanchez’s,” she protested under her breath, “but this is way farther.”

“Come on, Marcy. It’s not much longer, look,” she said.

They both looked while squatted behind the rear bumper of a dirty white Impala. Standing up slightly, to get a better view, they were shocked to see several dead bodies. They looked like they’d been struck down in an attempt to confront the officers beyond. There were dark blood smears where animals must have fed on them. Their scattered remains were all over the highway surface.

“Oh God,” Marcy said, and covered her mouth before she bent to heave.

Macy just stared beyond the carnage, forcing herself to plan a route. Patting Marcy on the shoulder she said, “I know it’s bad but look over this way. We can make our way over to the edge where there’s a crack between the barrier and the railing. We can push back the barbed wire above it. I think we can squeeze through there to the other side.”

Marcy began to sob in fearful desperation. “It really smells bad with all these bodies. Let’s get out of here before the dogs come back.”

Macy realized this could be the beginning of one of Marcy’s famous breakdowns and pulled her behind her at a crouch through the exposed distance. “Come on, Marcy. We have to get through here,” she said.

Thankfully, Macy knew she and her twin were always on the too-thin side, which they were often teased about. This enabled them to make haste, squeezing in between and under the coiled barbed wire traversing the top. Holding their bags out to her side, Macy went through first. She pulled her bag and then reached for Marcy’s. She looked around at the scene before her on the police’s side. After Marcy had come through, they both stayed hunkered in their corner before coming up with the next plan of action.

At least the bodies were on the other side, though they could still smell their stench. Before them were four police cars, arrowed inward on each side with blue strobe lights working on one of them.

Waiting and listening, they remained in their spot to assess the situation. Finally, Macy said, “I don’t think there’s anyone here. We should go over there to the last car on our side and see if we can find the keys. Then we can back it up and take off from there.”

“You can’t steal a police car, Macy,” Marcy reminded her.

Ignoring her sister, Macy took off, scurrying to the end of the first car. Rather than be left behind, Marcy quickly followed.

Seeing no live souls nor roaming dogs in the vicinity, the twins inched their way past the first car. They squatted down next to the one behind it on the passenger side. Then, they slowly stood and noticed a decaying form, lying back on the reclined driver’s seat. Macy declared this guy ‘way’ dead. With the driver’s door left opened he looked like he must have passed right there, on duty, days before.

She bent low and headed to the rear of the car, where they came abruptly face to face with a panting German Shepherd, scaring the hell out of them both. Panicked, Macy jumped backwards into Marcy, causing the two of them to scream out and land in a heap.

The dog regarded the two and spotted them long before they’d crossed the barrier. He had not seen humans without the smell of sickness in a long time, so he went over to check them out and left his guard post just around the corner.

To Macy’s astonishment, the dog simply sat there, head cocked to one side, regarding them as if they were an oddity. Then, he stood slowly and padded to them, sniffing them, but somehow without seeming to threaten them. Still, she remembered her defense weapon in her right hand and thrust her ruler out at the dog. He sat again on his haunches, panting and tilting his head.

“Get back!” Macy yelled.

Looking confused, the dog lowered his head down to the pavement, as if to show he meant no harm. Then he huffed and lay still, though he never took his gaze from them.

“Stay!” Macy yelled. She’d heard other people order their dogs to do that, and when she’d told the animal to stay back, he’d done so. She pushed herself up and off her sister as she stood. Her ruler shook with the adrenaline rush.

The dog rolled over to his side.

Totally bewildered by this reaction, Macy reached behind her to help Marcy up to her feet.

“I think it’s okay, Marcy,” she said, “He’s not trying to eat us.”

“Don’t trust him, Macy. He could just be playing and then turn on us,” Marcy warned.

As if she just remembered her ice scraper, she looked around where they’d fallen to find it. Seeing it several feet away, she watched the dog cautiously while she reached for it. He did not move a muscle, only watched her movements with his eyes.

Macy, seeing this, decided to take a chance and reached over with her left hand to let him smell her. Her dad taught her to do it this way, when approaching animals you did not know.

All the while, Marcy’s warnings, continued, “Don’t do it, Mace,” she said.

The German Shepherd merely studied her hand. He sniffed her, and then licked her. Macy began to pet his head and found that he had a black collar around his neck with a sheriff’s badge hanging down to his chest.

“Look, he’s a police dog,” she said, holding up a badge for Marcy to see, then continued to pet the dog.

“Maybe that’s why he has not turned mean,” Marcy said.

Macy noticed he had bite marks on his haunches and as she ran her hand over chest, his ribs stood out. “No wonder he’s panting a lot, he’s thirsty. Let’s see if we can find him some water,” Macy said.

“Come on, Sheriff, do you have water in the car?” she asked him as she got up. He rose from the pavement, trotted over to the open doorway of the car, and whined a little before the dead officer.

“Oh, sorry, Sheriff, is he your owner?” Macy asked.

The dog just sat down on his haunches as if hoping the girls could help his owner. Catching on first, Marcy said, “He wants us to help him.”

“Oh, so sorry, Sheriff, he’s gone. We can’t help him now,” Macy said. She looked into the back seat window and noticed a gray blanket on the seat. Slowly reaching in, she pulled it out, unfolded it and showed Sheriff as she draped the blanket over the decomposing body of his former owner. Then Sheriff lay down on the pavement in front of the doorway and rested his head on his paws again. Macy stroked his fur, because she knew his sadness and felt sorry for the dog.

Turning to Marcy, she said, “I think we should try to see if that car is available instead. If not, we’ll have to move this guy and I don’t think Sheriff would like that very much. What do you think?”

Macy agreed with a nod. It was stupid to take a chance of aggravating the dog. They walked over to the other car across the road. There were no occupants alive or otherwise. Quickly, they searched for the keys and found them on the passenger seat. Macy offered the keys to Marcy, who said, “Your turn. You’ll find out it’s not so easy.”

By this time, the sun began to go down. Marcy noticed it first and said, “It’s going to be dark soon, so we really need to hurry up.”

They opened the doors and the trunk to see if the owners left any water. Luckily, in the trunk they discovered a half empty flat of Kirkland brand water bottles. Macy took two out and walked over to the dog once more, opened one of them and offered it to him using the palm of her hand. It tickled her hand terribly with his rough tongue as he slurped it down easily, so she opened the next one to make sure he had enough before they left.

Shaking off her hand, she wiped it dry on her jeans. Macy walked back to the opened car to close it up, when Sheriff jumped into the backseat, surprising both of them. “Um, he wants to go with us?” Marcy asked.

“Well, it’s up to him I guess. I’m not going to tell a police dog what he can and cannot do, are you?”

Shutting the trunk and doors and seeing no protest from Sheriff, Macy started the ignition. Having had the benefit of watching her twin, she smoothly guided the car into reverse. She then applied the brakes carefully and stopped to adjust the seat in the closest position possible so that she would not compromise her vision. She began again and swung it around, heading towards Mountain View. Now that the road was wide open, they should be there in no time.

Horacio Campos had just finished pounding the last sign into the persistently damp earth surrounding his domain. It read, NO TRESPASSING in big letters above
Violators Will Be Shot
, followed by,
See Mayor Campos for Supplies
.

Now that he’d posted it, everyone would know he owned this town, complete with all the homes and buildings, including their contents. No excuses would be accepted from any trespassers who ignored the rules, and failed to pay the toll he established. “No more, free rides, like those two bozos who thought they could just walk right through here without as much as paying a fee,” he grumbled aloud. There’d been rules even then before he’d posted the signs. There must always be rules.

Just because most folks were dead, didn’t mean the few that lived could run off with everything else. After all, he kept the wild animals out, including the wild dog packs. He also kept the electricity on and the water running. If they paid, he’d even sell them gasoline. He had homes ready; complete with cars, for those few he thought would be good citizens. They just had to pay in either work or trade. If they wanted supplies or a way through his town, they needed to prove they could pay.

Campos, having grown up here where his daddy was the town’s electrician, knew people often took advantage of you if you let them. He didn’t let them. Before Daddy’s time, his granddaddy owned this land, including a gas station where he worked.

The government stole it from their family after Granddaddy refused their first offer. Back in the seventies, they claimed the tract of land they held was required for ‘urban renewal’ or some such nonsense. What really happened, after they offered only half of the land value and Granddaddy refused, they stole it through Eminent Domain. That caused Granddaddy to get so upset after spending his entire life farming here that he up and died of a heart attack from the stress of it all. That had left his own daddy fatherless at the age of fifteen.

With bitter resentment, his daddy had told of holding his father, dying in his arms, and watching his momma cry her eyes out but not for long. Soon after, she went whoring around and she left his daddy alone to fend for himself. Campos remembered his daddy swearing that he’d get the land back someday.

After living well through most of his childhood, Daddy had to go into the navy. He learned to become an electrician and then came back to his childhood home. He resented providing service for those men that had once worked for his own daddy on the dairy farm.

So, when this virus struck and everyone began dying off, including his own father, Campos decided the time had come for payback. This land belonged to his family once again, and he wasn’t going to let anyone take it away. Daddy would be so proud of him now, if only he’d survived the virus to see what his son had done for him. He wouldn’t get mad at him anymore.

Night and day, he cleaned the place up. It took several days to round up all the dead bodies and burn them. He also killed all the family pets to keep them from becoming feral like the rest. He burned their bodies right along with their owners. Since he owned this place now, he wanted it to look nice. He wanted it to look like it was back in the old days, just as his daddy remembered it.

From sun-up to sundown, he worked to put things back in order. He’d even gone through all the homes and stripped the beds, washing sheets and blankets, vacuuming mattresses and flipping them before making them up again. In the same manner, he went from room to room tossing belongings, cleaning and renewing each home, so they could accommodate citizens once he approved of them.

His daddy hadn’t been one for charity so Campos wasn’t either, especially those last two who’d roamed into town. He offered them work, but no lazy asses were ever allowed in his town. He knew his daddy would not approve of them.

The one thing that troubled Campos since the virus struck and the groceries began to run out, so too did his medicine. He broke into the pharmacy lockup, but couldn’t find any of the bottles labeled
Trilafon
under T, like on his bottle. The good thing about not having the meds meant that his face didn’t twitch so much. So maybe he didn’t need them after all.

It was when things were real quiet and when he wasn’t so busy, he could hear the voices coming for him again. That’s why he kept really busy all the time, from morning to night. Mowing the lawns, cleaning the houses, power spraying the old blood off the sidewalks, the endless amount of work meant he could keep the voices away.

His daddy would be real mad that he wasn’t taking his medicine but if he could see how nice the town was now, he might not mind. Just in case Daddy was keeping an eye on him from the beyond, he’d stay busy as hell. Campos really hoped his daddy wasn’t one of the voices talking in there. That scared the hell out of him more than anything else. “Please no,” he whimpered, because even the very idea made him shake. He’d have to search some more to find them pills, he thought. He’d checked all the houses already because surely someone else took the same drugs.

He’d have to check out the apartment building across the way soon. He hadn’t made his way over there yet, and contemplated burning the whole thing down to the ground, because of what happened there once.

One day, he’d found a live one there. He heard her screaming as she ran from a feral dog. He’d run over there and shot the damn thing, and then she invited him into her apartment to thank him. He thought at first, she would make a nice citizen but as he got to know her, he soon realized she wouldn’t. Daddy would call her sort the whoring kind, just like his own momma. She wore those short skirts and tank tops, not nice lady dresses like Mrs. Walker, who had lived next door. Too bad she passed away.

He tried to tell her she could not stay for free, but she called him names and no one could do that anymore. He told her she had to leave at once, but that only made her turn ugly. Then she called him a “psycho” and “crazy ass bastard.” After that, he remembered grabbing her by the arm, intent on walking her out of there like a gentleman, but she started screaming and hitting him on the chest. Then she took him by surprise and grabbed his manhood through his denim jeans, squeezing, instantly hardening him. He pushed her against the wall but then he remembered Daddy said never to let anyone touch him there. So, he grabbed her around the throat, and then he blacked out a little.

The next thing he knew, she sat, leaning against the blood-splattered wall, with her head off, nearly hacked from her neck. Then he found his bloody hatchet in his own left hand with her blood dripping from his clasped knuckles, staining the white carpet below.

He cried then, not for the girl but for himself. Now he knew for sure the voices were back. He hadn’t planned to kill her. In fact, he didn’t even remember doing it. He’d never murdered anyone before. He tossed her body in the burning dumpster, like all the others. He went back to his own little house, still with the effects of her touch on him, to wash off the dried blood clinging to his skin. His daddy would be furious at him for that. He really wanted to pull her to him but his daddy’s voice grew stronger and he knew he watched him then. It scared him still.

Today, Campos would work on pulling all the spoiled produce, meat and dairy products out of the little grocery store down the street. He wished he’d gotten to it earlier, knowing by now how rank it’d become in there. The maggots were gaining ground as the flies grew in population. He hated maggots. That’s why he made quick work of burning bodies, because burying them all would be impossible. Burning became his method of choice to stunt the maggot infiltration.

“Whew,” he said, and began to gag involuntarily after he’d open the door. He pulled his bandana up over his nose and mouth to help him deal with it. Having donned his work gloves, he grabbed a cart from the line, and with squeaking wheels, he pushed it past the magazine racks and started with the produce. He would work his way around to the meat department in the back and then the dairy aisle.

He’d already taken the time to stoke the fire in the city’s dumpster that he’d made into a portable incinerator by attaching a hitch and tow line to his father’s small backhoe. Day to day, he towed it slowly to where he worked. This made things more efficient so he didn’t have to go far to dump the things he didn’t want to keep.

The one loud mouth guy who’d called him, “nut job,” he threw in there still alive after he shot him in the stomach. The screams lasted for longer than Campos had thought they would, but it served the vagrant right to try to pull one over on Campos. “Free gas is not allowed here,” he’d told him.

Work gloves made the slimy effort go easier. Without them, he had a difficult time touching anything with his bare hands. However, with long work gloves on, he fearlessly pushed into maggot-covered territory, so long as they didn’t have time to crawl up his arms. After he had dropped them into the cart, he strolled out the door and onto the asphalt parking lot holding the blazing fire. From there, he tossed the swarming bundles into the fire, letting sparks fly upward towards the darkening sky; a sight that brought him pleasure. Retracing his steps back into the little market, he went back for another load.

The store, being so low on supplies since the crisis hit, luckily still held enough for him and maybe five more people through the winter. Then, come spring, he planned a large garden and would need workers to help him keep it going. There was more than enough work for more than one man to do here. He hoped a few decent folks showed up soon so that he could get his plans underway.