900 Miles (Book 2): 900 Minutes Read online

  The chef did make good eggs.

  My eyes caught a movement across the room. There was a banging at the cylindrical door, followed by a squelch as a circular switch began to turn to the right. I glanced back at Kyle, who shook his head. Mr. Rodgers lifted his eyes to meet mine. It couldn’t be the creatures.

  The door clanged open and slowly swung wide as we watched our fearless leader enter the room.

  Jarvis, the man who had been elected leader of Avalon shortly after Kyle and I had returned, stepped through the frame and into a pile of gore covering the floor. Glancing down, he shook his boot, splashing small chunks of brain across the dead body of a woman wearing a scarf.

  When we initially encountered Jarvis, in those first weeks of the apocalypse, he was well-kept. Suit and a tie, short silver hair, and a friendly smile that you couldn’t help but trust. His status was somewhere in between the Elites that ran Avalon and the Commoners that were tasked with taking care of it.

  It’s funny to think of him like that. Over the past months, his polished demeanor was quickly replaced with black Army fatigues and long, pushed-back hair. He now sported a small scar running down his neck, a wound he’d picked up during the fight after the Arena battle, and a constant two days’worth of gray stubble. The harder, more toughened looking Jarvis was still just as poised as ever. He was someone we all knew we could trust.

  Jarvis had fought hard to transform Avalon into a place where people were equal. He taught us to scavenge without stealing, and to live without needless killing. While we had our share of issues in this little compound, his leadership helped maintain a level of trust inside the walls. We all knew what we were following him toward…a society that adapted to the new reality, but held on to its humanity. Ultimately, he’d created a positive place in a world of evil. I would have followed Jarvis to hell and back. We all would.

  Richard, his number two in command, sidestepped the reddish-black puddle and entered just behind him. They both looked around at the mess, assessing the damage to the Med Center.

  “You boys got here a bit late on this one, didn’t you?”Jarvis finally asked.

  None of us responded. He didn’t expect us to.

  As they walked toward the middle of the room, their eyes finally fell on the small girl resting in my arms.

  “One survivor,”I managed to get out.

  No response from their end. I didn’t expect one.

  We all looked around in silence. The writing was on the wall, in blood. At this pace, we weren’t going to make it. There was no stopping the fact that as hard as we tried, this existence would eventually end us all. We were simply holding our thumb on the slow motion button until we hit the inevitable.

  Glancing up from the little girl, I looked over at Jarvis and asked,“Have we received any more communication from our friends on the West Coast?”

  I must have looked desperate.

  Jarvis shifted his shoulders toward mine, but didn’t make eye contact as he continued to look around the room“No, we haven't heard from them in six weeks.”

  “It’s looking more and more like we’re on our own out here,”Richard added in a low, solemn voice.

  There was one distant star of hope out there just weeks after the world fell apart. Avalon’s communication array was fairly advanced, and we were able to connect with a group that called themselves the New America. According to the radio broadcasts, they were on the West Coast, living in the Rockies. Evidently, what was left of the government had set up shop there while they figured out what to do about Occupied America’s little infestation. Occupied America being everything to the east of the Mississippi River, according to the broadcasts.

  “Never thought those guys were real anyway,”Rodgers finally spoke up from the background.“All seemed a bit too convenient…Safety in the mountain, new government. Blah blah blah.”

  He said this as he kneeled over and smeared the blood splatter from his faceplate against the blood-soaked smock of the fallen chef.“You know, I liked this guy. He made the dried eggs seem almost passable. Shame really. I need to figure out how he did that.”

  He was right. Earl did make good eggs.

  “If you ask me, this so-called‘New America’is just a bunch of guys holed up in a bunker somewhere with nothing else to do but give people false hope,”he continued.

  We sat there in silence. Who could argue? The thought had crossed all our minds. It was heavily debated in the first weeks after their broadcasts began. After all, we never saw them. It was all just a bunch of radio chatter. The so-called New America could have been one or two guys getting their kicks out of messing with anybody still keeping the ol’radio dial on.

  Our apocalyptic version of the greatest hits.

  It gave us something to listen to at first. Always someone on there. Sounded like the same one or two guys, but you couldn’t really tell through the static.

  They kept broadcasting that food and medical supply drops would be coming. Kept telling us that we needed to hunker down until they could get us out. Support would be coming to areas that were fortified and held people. They encouraged us to be their eyes and ears in the occupied zone and to report back anything that we saw. Our outbound radio broadcasts were met with static. We were always careful not to be specific about our location, but hoped we’d at least get some sort of response. Maybe we didn’t have the range. Or maybe it really all was just bullshit.

  Most important…they asked everybody in the occupied zone for patience, something that was running in short supply.

  Avalon had means. Hell, we had an armada of planes and helicopters sitting outside our walls. Gas was always an issue, but shortly after we learned about New America, we decided to use what we had to fuel up one of our long-distance planes. Kyle called it a Gulfstream. Three men had left on that plane setting out to head west. With no specific destination or address, they were simply heading toward where the sun set.

  One of them was the Asian that had fought side by side with Kyle and me in the Arena. I’d still never heard the guy say a word. Not even when he looked back at us as he stepped into the cockpit. However, there was a determination in his eyes that made me feel like he’d make it.

  Hope was high at that point. A good opportunity to escape the madness. We were assuming that there was a part of the world that still existed without these creatures running rampant. Hell, it was the only thing that could really keep us going. In the end, we were just hoping that the broadcasts were not full of shit.

  Sometimes you need a little hope.

  After three weeks without a response from the team, things started to feel a little darker. Hope had an easy way of drying up really quick.

  Richard was pacing around the room inspecting the damage. Not a word slipped through his thick cracked lips, but I could see his mind working out all the options as his eyes darted from the charred cabinet to the bent sprinkler head resting sideways on the slick wet floor. He’d worked on the Hill in Washington prior to the outbreak, and showed up knocking at the doors of Avalon shortly after Kyle and I had returned.

  The guy was smart, that much was clear. He always seemed to know which way the wind was blowing, quickly finding himself inside of Jarvis’s inner circle. In some ways, he was a natural leader. He had the kind of smile that made you trust every word he said. I’ve heard people call it charisma.

  Over the course of history, it is generally believed that the leaders who have done the most damage, as well as the most good, in our world have possessed that magical gift. The rare trait of magnetic charm, often no more than a veneer used to persuade others. Humans are hard-wired to dislike uncertainty, so there’s a high tendency to gravitate toward someone who shows none. The right type of person, preaching the right thing, with the right kind of“I know what I’m talking about charm”can and have had a profound effect on the world. Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK were reportedly charismatic people. On the flip side of that coin, so were Hitler and Charles Manson.

 
; Now I’m not saying Richards was any sort of monster, but I couldn’t quite place what I didn’t trust about him in the beginning. Maybe it’s because I didn’t like politics, and by default I didn’t like politicians. However, for some reason, my gut would turn ever so slightly anytime he was around. His demeanor reminded me of any number of charismatic blowhards flowing in and out of Corporate America, playing to executive interests more than solving any of the real problems.

  I’ve often believed that sometimes organizations succeed despite their leadership…not because of it.

  Breaking the silence, the sound of footsteps running down the hallway drew our attention. They were soft steps, even as they came closer. An unfamiliar woman, panic-stricken, flew through the doorway, her eyes falling directly on the child in my arms. Wearing jeans and a black jacket, her short blond hair bounced with every step she took toward me.

  Teary-eyed, the woman burst out,“Is my baby OK?”as she leapt toward me with her arms drawn out to grab the child. She didn’t make eye contact with me at first, keeping her gaze glued to her daughter, as she rubbed one hand up her back and through her golden blond hair.

  “She's shaken up, but alive. I think she’ll be OK with rest,”I finally managed to get out as I finished delicately rolling the little girl into her mother’s arms.

  “Oh baby, I don’t know what I would have done if you…”her words tapered off, while she squeezed her eyes shut.

  Watching a tear roll down her soft, round cheek, I put my hand on the woman's shoulder.“It’s going to be OK. She’s going to be OK.”

  I’m not sure I believed my own words, but it must have come across genuinely enough because she pulled herself deep into my chest. Complete strangers to one another, I still inadvertently found myself wrapping both arms around her and the small child. I guess sometimes people just need to be held.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much for saving my baby,”she whispered through a cracked voice as she looked up from my chest with those eyes.

  They were soft; an almost transparent blue. The kind you’d see staring back at you from a magazine cover on one of those old celebrity magazines. I was taken aback by them at first. In the underground light, most people’s eyes looked hazel green. Not hers.

  That is how I met Claire.

  I’d later learn that Claire grew up just outside of Philadelphia. While her exterior was soft, you could tell she was a survivor. She’d have to be. After all, making the trek down to Avalon with a small child in tow must have been one hell of a journey. The kind of journey that only the most fierce, or lucky, of us would ever make - and she didn’t seem like the lucky type. A mother would do anything to protect her baby. I’m sure she had been pushed to her limits. We all had.

  Maybe it was because I hadn’t held anyone in so long, or perhaps it was simply because I didn’t know what else to do, but I didn’t let go. There was a silence in that moment. The kind of calm that blocks out every noise around you. Neither of us budged, as if locked in time, using every second to replace so many others that had been missed. Sometimes a connection can be made without words, without text, without anything more than a touch. I felt it, and I want to say she did too. Perhaps we were both just replacing one another with the loved ones we’d lost. Perhaps not.

  Jarvis spoke up.“Let’s get this place cleaned up. Richard, would you escort Claire and her daughter to their living quarters and get the child looked at?”

  Unclenching my hands, as if they’d been pried open by the sudden request, I slowly lowered my arms while twisting my wedding ring between my fingers, as Claire turned toward Richard’s extended hand.“Let’s make sure this little sweetheart is right as rain,”he smiled. Standing there, watching them slowly walk away, I found myself blurting out,“Hey!”

  Claire turned to look back. I hesitated with a flash of uncertainty, as my mind stuttered.

  “What’s her name? Your little girl?”I managed to force out.

  “Olivia,”she said, trying to pull off a smile, and then turned back toward Richard and kept walking.

  “Olivia,”I whispered to myself.“We saved little Olivia.”

  As they passed through the doorway, I noticed a number of people in the hallway. Each of them peering in with the hope that they had not lost any loved ones or friends.

  Claire was lucky. There would be many others that were not.

  Jarvis finally broke the silence.“That may be an issue,”he said while running a finger through the layer of ash atop the medicine cabinet.

  This caught our attention, snapping Kyle away from watching Rodgers continue to thoughtfully clean his helmet visor on the dead man’s smock.

  We’d all lost a little humanity.

  “Can’t we replace it with what we have in storage?”I asked in a way that almost implied it wasn’t possible for this to be that big a problem.

  “This was it, John. We’ve burned through the backup…we have nearly seventy people to take care of down here,”Jarvis said, remaining composed.

  My mouth went dry, and my shoulders tensed, almost as if my body realized what this meant before my brain did. Not so much as a word slipped through my lips as my mind shot directly to the little boy back in my room that needed a daily dose of that liquid mist from the nebulizer.

  Less than thirty minutes earlier, I’d administered the final dose that I had tucked away in our living quarters. When he was first diagnosed, the doc had instructed that Tyler was at risk of an attack at any time. Regular doses of the meds would mostly keep it at bay. Regular being every twenty-four hours or so…

  However, again, that was‘mostly,’and mostly didn’t cut it. We needed the medication, and we needed it now.

  It must have been obvious in my face. Kyle didn’t have to ask the question.

  Stepping to the middle of the room, Kyle boldly stated,“John and I are heading out to find meds for his son. We’ll need to sort out where and how, but there’s no scenario where we don’t head out.”He said this while looking directly in my eyes. Something about how he said it made me feel like we’d actually be able to pull it off. After all, we had to, or my son would die.

  “We’ll need to suit up and meet topside,”Kyle said, shifting his head toward where he thought the field was.“We’re heading outside the gates in an hour. We’ll need to get everything prepped right away.”

  Looking around the room, Kyle then asked,“Who’s with us?”

  Chapter 5

  You’re not turning all hippie on me, are you?

  After saying my final goodbyes to Tyler and Deanna, I found myself climbing a set of stairs that led up to a part of the field above the bunker which was fortified and surrounded by a series of large cement walls. I stepped toward my good friend. The one man I could trust.

  Wearing a pair of sunglasses that hid his eyes, Kyle had his head tilted toward the sun. His equipment was piled up nearby, and he was using the moment of peace to enjoy the outside, taking deep breaths and pulling the fresh air into his lungs. I didn’t think he noticed me walking up beside him.

  “Nothing like the outdoors,”he said as he exhaled.

  Glancing up at the sky, I watched as a set of rolling white clouds lazily drifted through a magnificent blue sky. There were moments where one could almost forget about where we were and what had happened. The clouds didn’t give a shit whether humans or Zs roamed the landscape. They moved along just the same. It was the same sky the dinosaurs had looked at, and it would be the same one long after man was extinct. I took comfort in the fact that not everything had changed in the seven months since the dead began to…well, not stay dead.

  “Getting a little cabin fever, are we?”I said as I glanced at Kyle.

  “I would be perfectly happy setting up a tent out here and never going back down into that catacomb,”he replied, emphasizing catacomb as he looked at his own black, soot-covered hands.

  “You’re not turning all hippie on me, are you?”

  Glancing to me, with a straight face, he sa
id,“Don’t know. You’re not turning all Wookie on me, are you?”

  Reaching my hand up to the patchy beard I had failed to shave off for weeks, I cracked a smile and replied,“Touché …”

  Slowly panning my gaze across the Yard, I noticed people scurrying around, getting ready. It was a big deal every time we entered and exited Avalon, and it took time to get everything in order. Still, I found myself tapping my foot. I couldn’t help but feel like we weren’t moving fast enough.

  Prodding him a bit, I asked about the time, knowing full well what the answer was.

  Without moving his face away from the sun, Kyle lifted his wrist to my face, placing a rusted gold-plated watch with a scratched faceplate to my eyes. Barely glancing at the hand slowly ticking around, I muttered“Shit”under my breath.“We’re already losing daylight.”

  Kyle remained calm, trying not to get worked up. I knew him well enough to understand that he needed time to get mentally ready before heading out beyond the wall.

  This was just his way of doing it, and didn’t in any way mean he wasn't fully aware of the sense of urgency at hand.

  The Yard, as we called the land we had sealed off from the outside world, was our small patch of safety outside. We had some gardens where we grew seasonal vegetables on the far side, a garage where we did most of the vehicle repairs, and a parking lot filled with four-wheel drive trucks and pickups which the group used for recon work and scavenging outside the walls. We even had a solid supply of fuel-filled drums stockpiled near the garage, which we’d collected from nearby gas stations.

  Sticking out like a sore thumb was the bright yellow Hummer, now repaired, that Kyle and I had picked up in New York and traveled to Avalon in so many months ago. There was a special place in my heart for that vehicle. We’d been through a lot together. Just like my hammer.

  Looking up at the sky, I couldn’t help but notice the two guard towers erected on each side of the Yard. They had spotlights and a few heavily armed men, men who were responsible for monitoring the area around us. They were protecting what we’d created, keeping a steady eye on the hardworking people, all of us rallying behind a vision for a safe society amongst a world of the dead.