The System #2 (4 page)

“Dwindling.” They had each packed enough of her father’s water pouches to last a week; in smaller towns, where the virus took lives in a surge, leaving no time for looters to rise up, it was easy to find bottled water and soda cans. But in the larger cities, where people killed for clean water, there was nothing.

The bioterrorists contaminated the water supply first. Their airborne attack was secondary. Either way, despite her inoculations and Grant’s apparent inherent immunity, they were hesitant to drink tap water. And that was even if they could. In some places, like the cabins, running water ceased entirely—leaving dried up pipes and restricted access. In a pinch, the lake water would suffice, but Lucy hadn’t become thirsty enough to try it. They’d managed well on stolen goods, water pouches, and MREs. It wasn’t luxury living, but they’d encountered limited hardships.

Finding a corkscrew, Lucy spun the screw down into the softness of the cork and then yanked upward, the stopper slipping outward with a pop. Then Lucy poured a glass. She took a sip and felt the bitter liquid on her tongue. In her mind, she predicted wine was just an alcoholic version of grape juice, but she was wrong. Lucy dribbled the wine back into the glass and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A tiny river of purple dripped down her chin.
 

“It was that delicious, huh?” Grant asked. He raised his eyebrows. “If you offer me any of that, I don’t want the same cup.”

“It’s gross.”

“It’s sophisticated. An acquired taste.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t just insult me because I don’t like wine.”

“Here,” Grant stood up and walked behind the bar. He took the bottle and raised it to his lips and then took a small swallow. “It’s not so bad,” he said, setting the bottle back down in front of them.

They stood in silence; then Lucy moved past Grant to the fire. She sat down on the hearth and rubbed her hands in front of the flame.

When she looked up, Grant was looking at her. He rested his elbows on the bar and scratched the top of his head.

“Have you been thinking about how many other people are like me?” He asked her.

“Catholic, piano-playing, hot-air balloon
geniuses
?”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Incorrigible.”

“Come on,” Lucy tucked her hands into her lap. “You know I don’t know how to answer that.”

They had been having the same conversations since they left Oregon. It was always variations on a theme: speculative musings, worries about the future, addressing the unanswerable. Sometimes they would know the topic was a repeat and they’d discuss it again out of interest—and out of a human need to say, “I’m still thinking about this. It’s still on my mind.” And other times, it was like they had forgotten they’d traversed that road before, delving deeply into a conversation before realizing that it felt familiar.
 

Out of their more common topics, they often wondered about Nebraska. What was in Brixton? Would her family be in plain sight? What if they got there and no one was there? Or they pondered life as they knew it: Would they ever eat ice cream again? How long would it take before buildings crumbled? Were there groups of indigenous people in the rain forest somewhere totally protected from the virus and living life like normal? Could there be more people immune and carving out a life in the ruins?

They never talked about Lucy’s dad.
 

They never speculated about his role in the bioterrorism.

Lucy let those questions stay unasked. Both of them seemed to understand that to admit Scott King was somehow involved meant they were walking straight into the lion’s den. It was a scenario that was too painful to contemplate fully.

“I know, I know,” Grant replied and he joined Lucy by the fire. “I just keep thinking how cool it would be if we just met up with a whole group of people…immune…and then we’d realize that we can start over, you know? Start a little city. Do things right.”

Grant had said that before too.
“A little village, where people are kind to each other, and you pay for things with your talents, and no one is in charge, and everyone is valued,
” he had mentioned once. He waxed on about taking chicken eggs over to his neighbor’s house to exchange for fresh cow’s milk. A place where everyone was a giant family with no hidden agendas. Lucy thought it sounded like the kind of city in a science-fiction movie where everyone turned out to be robots. His brand of post-apocalyptic socialism sounded nice in theory, but even Lucy knew it wouldn’t take long for people to fight for power.
 

She had taken AP Government, after all.
 

“I’m sure you aren’t the only one who survived the virus after exposure. You can’t be.” She said it once and she said it again, for his sake.
 

“Maybe if we get to Nebraska and we don’t—” Grant stopped and looked at Lucy; he lowered his eyes.

“It’s okay. Don’t stop yourself on my account.”

“If we can’t find anything…maybe we can really work on hunting for other survivors.”

Lucy shook her head. “That never works in the movies,” she replied. “They’d be nice and accommodating at first and then we’d wake up right at the moment where they were about to eat us. Survivors of the apocalypse are always cannibals. We should just go home.”

Home. Oregon was still her home.

“Sure,” he conceded. He leaned in to the fire and grabbed a stick from nearby and poked at a log; tiny sparks flew up into the flue. “Sure.”

They slept in the lodge that night, moving their feathered comforters down in front of the fire and sleeping side by side. Grant polished off half the bottle of wine before curling up into a ball and snoring into the wee hours of the morning. Lucy used pillows from the lounge couches as a mattress, but by the time the sun crept into the mountainous skyline, Lucy found herself flat on the floor—her cheek cool against the wooden boards.
 

Drool-stained and sweaty, Lucy sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her body was thick and sluggish from exhaustion and dehydration. She poked Grant with her toe, jostling his body and moving him back and forth until he peeked out of one eye and then clamped it shut with a groan.

“Morning already?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy replied.
 

He rolled into a sitting position and lifted his arms above his head. Then he stretched with a loud yawn and plopped his hands back down; his front cowlick stuck straight up, the rest of his shaggy hair falling in clumps around his face.

“Breakfast?” he asked.
 

“We have our ready-meals. Let’s eat on the road.”

“Oh, look who’s eager now?” Grant smiled.

She shrugged. It was true she woke up with more resolve to leave their secluded hideaway, but she still felt covered in general unease. There was no more procrastination, no more conjecture. It was like she had been standing on the edge of a diving board, waiting for the motivation to fly forward into the water, and finally she realized that if she didn’t just jump someone would have to push her.

She hated being pushed.
 

“Let’s load up.”

“Okay.” Grant eyed her suspiciously. “No ceremonious goodbye? No morning walk around the lake? That’s so unlike you. I’d thought that you’d have written a eulogy to the mountain already.”

She shook her head, ignoring his playful dig. “I’m ready to see my family. I’m ready to know the truth.”

They walked back to their shared cabin and shoveled their few pieces of clothing, discarded toiletries, and remaining food containers into their backpacks and then trudged in silence back to their waiting car. Lucy did pause to take in the majestic Tetons and the glistening lake one last time; she wanted to write a note in the dust on the cabin’s kitchen counter:
We were here
. But at the last second she walked away, leaving the dust intact.
 

Grant backed out of the parking spot and traveled up through the winding roads back to the highway. While the highways were still littered with abandoned cars, this area of the country wasn’t inundated with blockage. There was just enough destruction to remind them that they weren’t just leaving their Yellowstone vacation and heading back to the real world.

“Keep an eye out for an exchange car,” Grant said to Lucy as he picked up speed. “We’ve got about half a tank left which won’t get us very far.”

“How far to our destination? Eight hours?”

“About.”

She drew in a shaky breath. Her hand went to Salem’s crucifix, a habit that had formed the past week.

“We’ve got this,” Grant said and he took his right hand off the steering wheel and reached over to give Lucy a comforting pat. She leaned in to his touch and let his hand linger on her shoulder. “Seriously, Lula…at the risk of sounding insensitive…what’s the worst that could happen?”

CHAPTER TWO

Portland, Oregon

Doctor Gloria Krause knelt over Ethan King—supine on the floor of the den—and ran her hand across his forehead. She clicked her tongue and adjusted her purple-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose and peered down at her patient, squinting in the dim light. A stethoscope around her neck dangled and swayed like a pendulum as she leaned forward. Krause slipped the ear tips into her ears and then placed the chest piece flat against Ethan’s exposed flesh. Her eyes focused on a point across the room, her mouth tight; then she sighed and removed the ear tips, and snapped the metal tubing back around her neck.

Darla, the thirty-three year-old mother and self-proclaimed Raider—those who helped steal from the dead and redistribute to the living—rubbed her hands over her eyes and looked at Ethan’s body. He had deteriorated rapidly in the last few days and it pained her to watch him so close to death. They were few now, just a small group: to lose one of their own at this point would be beyond a travesty; it simply wasn’t fair. Darla’s ventures into looting and trading took a hit after the Day Sixers, those who had survived the initial viral attack, passed away. The population in Portland and the surrounding areas had declined to just a handful of people: Most of them now congregating at the King home, and all of them the recipients of a lifesaving vaccine.

There was no other life.

No one else left.

“Is it time, Mom?” asked a young woman in the corner. She was tall, with frizzy auburn hair which she wore tucked behind her unpierced ears.
 

Doctor Krause nodded to her daughter and to the audience spread throughout the room. “Is it about noon? Yes. It’s time.”

Darla tied her sleek black hair up into a bun and took a step forward. She looked down at Ethan, his chest rising and falling, his hair matted to the side of his head. Then she turned to the doctor. “The light is best now. Joey and I already set up the house yesterday. If we need to move, we move now.”

Darla had spent the better part of her day yesterday hunting through the Whispering Waters subdivision looking for an empty, open, full of light, house that would convert into an operating room for Doctor Krause.

Doctor Krause, her daughter Ainsley, and a bumbling thirty-something Raider named Joey came into the picture through Principal Spencer. The principal was the black market mastermind, who emerged with a vengeance after the world was attacked by bioterrorists, and who had been given precious vaccines and one task: find a doctor for the ailing Ethan. When Darla had handed over the vials of the lifesaving medicines to the borderline sociopath, she had no way of knowing if Spencer would be able to fulfill his end of the bargain.

The day Lucy and Grant floated away over the Portland landscape, Darla left her five year-old son Teddy with the ailing Ethan and marched her way back to Pacific Lake High School, where she found the three recently vaccinated people waiting for her to explain their roles in this bizarre stage-play.
 

Spencer had used Joey to locate Doctor Krause and her surviving family—but the details after that were murky, told to Darla in snippets over the past week; little pieces of the puzzle slipping together to form a dark and depressing tale. All Darla knew was that Spencer had dumped them all unceremoniously out in front of the school to wait for her—like children waiting for the bus on the first day of school.

Darla met the unlikely trio in a mess of tangled expectations and doubts. Doctor Krause had been firm with Darla—they did not just want to be a pawn in someone else’s chess game. But Spencer gave them no choice; he had vaccinated them against their will, dragged them down to his school, kept them captive until Darla arrived, and then released them without a thought for their future well-being. In the most basic and drastic terms, the vaccinated strangers arrived like slaves. You will live, but you will help, was the spoken decree.

In the time since Darla brought the resentful newcomers back to Whispering Waters, Ethan took a turn for the worst. His legs, crushed after a truck driven by a dead-man ran into him on his way home, showed signs of infection.

He needed amputation. Without it he would die.

Since that news came to light, Ethan’s surgery trumped everything. Darla was certain she had forgotten to eat yesterday, and she’d barely spent time with her own child.
 

She found a home only a few doors down that would work as an operating theater. Into the afternoon, the sun flooded a former dining room with enough light to aid the doctor in her surgical task. With the equipment gathered, the stage set, and the patient slowly slipping away, they knew the time had come.

“The tissue damage is too extensive,” Doctor Krause told them. “The blood vessels are crushed and his fever is spiking. I thought we could avoid it, I really did.”

“We knew it would come to this,” Darla said. “We’ve prepared for it. Let’s go. The longer we sit and talk about it, the better chance we have of realizing how stupid we are for trying.” She made a move toward Ethan, but Doctor Krause put out her hand.

“There is no way to prepare for this, Darla,” she said sternly. “Finding supplies and covering a room in sheets isn’t quite the medical miracle you’re hoping for. This is a dangerous procedure. And, even then, Ethan may still...” the doctor looked to everyone and weighed her words. “Amputation is not guaranteed safety for him. And before we move him, I need everyone to acknowledge that risk.”