The Survivors

West Virginia

January 28th

1

“Ah, hell.” Marc knew it was a bad idea as soon as the front tires of his muddy vehicle eased onto the clear suspension bridge. He’d watched it vibrate in the heavy wind as he approached, but the water had risen while he slept, leaving only this way out. The iron grates under the Blazer groaned as he rolled forward. The bridge supports were covered in slushy, menacing debris.

The wolf in the passenger seat growled.

Marc sighed, aware of danger flying toward him again. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

Crack! Rip!

The solidness under his wheels tilted. One of the two foundations slid, yanking the bars out of the other bank. It rocked the bridge like a plastic racetrack.

The Blazer lifted. Guardrails began ripping away with horrible grinding noises. A cable snapped...

Marc hit the gas, aiming for the end of the bridge now dropping toward the shallow end of the dammed-up Black River. “Semper Fi!”

The Blazer flew off the lowered end. It dropped into the foot of rushing water like a lead ball, crushing the front bumper and tossing up a spray that drenched the driver and passenger.

Marc lowered the windows as they were pulled along by the strong current, surprised the engine hadn’t stalled yet. Slinging his kit over one broad shoulder, Marc ignored the water rushing onto the floorboards as he steered toward the steep bank that he had no chance of climbing in this vehicle.

Marc winced at the cracking sounds of the bridge behind him. The furious yapping of the big animal in the passenger seat confirmed what he already knew. They were in trouble.

“Dog, out!”

Marc shoved his 6’, 225lb frame through the window an instant after the wolf. He plunged into the icy water as the bridge collapsed. A wall of liquid death lunged forward.

Marc scrambled along the slick, muddy bank as he took rope from his kit and worked an end into a lasso. He threw it right as the surging water hit the Blazer and rolled it like a White Castle box in the wind. Water and debris exploded into the air.

Marc hoped the street sign was anchored deep enough as he tied the rope around his waist. Then the water swallowed him.

Unable to breathe or protect himself from the debris in the icy liquid, Marc controlled his panic. He’d had hard tests during his career. This was another on that list.

The sign trembled from the pressure of the rushing Black River, vibrating against his hip. He used it to shield himself from the bigger chunks.

Marc drew his knife, ready to cut himself free if the sign came out of the ground. His lungs burned.

The sign shifted suddenly, tilting, and then he could breathe again as the first tall wave rolled by.

Marc cut the rope and climbed to safety, coughing and sliding in gelatinous slop. Yet another lesson had been reinforced in this harsh new world. Bridges are not safe.

Marc made it to higher ground, shivering as Dog danced in the mud around his ankles. He stumbled away from the crumbling bank as he dug out another jacket. It would flow downstream and spill over weakened banks before draining into the next town. That’s the way it had been in every other place he’d come through. Nature was reclaiming her property.

Marc glanced around as he got his breath back, deciding where to make camp while he waited for the water to recede. The Blue Ridge Mountains were eastern rolling peaks of foggy blue under a wide purple and yellow sunset that was marred by never-fading angry gray layers. South held dipping valleys and hills of tobacco fields and white pines. He’d just come from that direction. Those empty, snowbound towns hadn’t given him hope.

West was another community whose name he couldn’t recall. The released water was already overwhelming it, but he saw no one fleeing the filling streets. His mental grid also came back blank even though that sense was able to go farther now that he was relying on it more.

The Sitrep is bleak. Marc grunted. A situation report from the North, then. He rotated, shivering.

A full click above him, a small white building with a large silver cross beckoned in the dim distance. It was perched on a large, muddy hill and backdropped by cherry and crabapple trees. Again, the gritty sky spoiled a perfect picture of sanctuary in the wasteland.

Shrugging at the irony–Marc hadn’t been in a church since being robbed of his dreams–he strode that way while scanning for trouble. Seeming empty didn’t make it so.

Dog, who came to Marc’s hip, stayed close, occasionally snorting his dislike of the rumbling river.

Marc foraged in his kit for a pain pill as he swept the small town. The outskirts of Franklin, identified by a sign on a nearby street corner, were untainted. Surrounded by neat homes with picket fences, his gaze flicked from untouched manger scenes to the Christmas lights decorating most of the undamaged area. Are there people here?

Marc heard only the wind and water. The silence pressed in as if something was wrong, but other than the river trying to kill him, it was the same here as it had been in every small town he’d passed through since the war–empty, over.

He scouted the next intersection, attention caught by a charred metro bus of rotting corpses. He was thrown back to what he’d encountered when he rolled out from under the bus.

Crunchhh!

The sound of the water destroying the debris it had collected pulled Marc from the flashback. He wished the images would go away. He had stayed on the road after that, trekking to the family home to discover no one there, despite the funeral being set for that day. The house had held no signs of a hasty retreat, and no letter of explanation. What happened?

Marc swept the city limits of Franklin, drawn to the hills. He lingered on the cemetery. Its iron gates were surrounded by decaying bodies, few of them wrapped. No one had known what to do with their dead.

Neither had Marc. He almost hadn’t come home at all.

Crack!

Marc spun, .45 in hand.

The wolf bristled.

The reeking water was destroying debris. Marc sighed at his jumpiness. He walked toward the church. “Come on, Dog.”

He had taken leave to attend his mother’s funeral, and instead found himself alone in a place that had never been his home. The only living thing he’d encountered was the wolf on the front porch.

As if he knew I was coming. Marc had shipped Dog ahead, knowing the animal wouldn’t do well on a bus. The torn-up basement and single broken window was the only damage he’d found in the house. Not even the door had been kicked in; he didn’t believe his family had been taken in the draft. The fact that they had put Dog in the basement suggested something darker.

Marc pushed the thoughts away. He wasn’t going to search for them. They hadn’t been true family in a long time. If they’d found safety but hadn’t wanted him there too, so be it. They were the last group he wanted to survive with.

Loneliness reared up, reminding him it hadn’t gone away. Marc forced himself to lock down on those thoughts, as he had taught others to do. For them, it was to keep from blowing their mission by being distracted. Marc did it now to keep himself from drowning in a tide of remorse.

He’d wandered after discovering nothing at the family home, but it hadn’t taken long for him to become restless and start hunting for his own kind. He had been sworn to his country. He still wore his dog tag under his fatigue shirt and black leather coat, but the America he had served was busy dying. It was crushing that he couldn’t stop it. Now that the future was so grim, he wasn’t going back to his base. The entire world was FUBAR. Everything and everyone he had ever known was gone.

The frigid wind pushed against him as they took the last quarter mile of steep hill at a quick pace. He looked down at the big wolf. “Hell of a start to the day.”

The animal peered up at Marc, then resumed sniffing the bare, damp ground. The wolf didn’t follow any of the scents he caught, heeling as if he were a trained pet, though anyone could tell he wasn’t.

Where to go next was the most pressing choice. Marc wasn’t worried about losing his supplies and transportation, though he would miss the thick Marine sleeping system tonight. The rest of his preferred loadout was in the kit slung over his shoulder. Physically, he would do fine alone. He always had. Mentally, things were complicated. He didn’t like people. He didn’t need them most of the time, but he did need a goal. The desire to serve his country was still there, and he couldn’t do that by himself.

Most survivors had gone to ground. The heartbreaking notes were everywhere. After the first dozen, Marc had forced himself not to read anymore, knowing if he kept going, he would spend the rest of his life trying to reunite those broken families.

Caves and sewer shelters were mentioned most, but those were bad choices. Even if the flooding missed them, and the cold didn’t freeze or starve them, the poisons circling the globe were as big a threat below the surface as above it. How long would a contaminated planet allow them to survive, no matter where they were?

Marc had traveled northwest last, checking White Sulphur Springs, and then the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He still hoped to find signs of normal life restarting, but he no longer expected it. The world even sounded empty. There were no noises other than the wind. There also wasn’t any sign of the bastards who had let it all happen. The government was absent, but the brass Marc had served all those years would never let survivors have control of topside, poisoned or not.

There should have been emergency broadcasts, flyers, and scientists in shiny suits. There should have been soldiers with itchy trigger fingers and bullhorns, giving orders but not helping. There should have been aid stations and Red Cross units overloaded with patients to be examined, tested, recorded, and left to die. The healthier ones would be kept close enough to force them to beg for handouts so the scientists could keep studying the effects. Marc wouldn’t ever do that. Not that it mattered. The government that had killed so many had likely died with them.

“Where to?” He ran a hand over soaked black hair. Where would normal citizens gather to start rebuilding? In police stations or city halls…? Marc tensed, registering a note to the wind that hadn’t been there before. Almost as if someone was calling for him, hunting.

Marcus!

Marc swung around, drawing drenched leather as he searched for whoever he’d let sneak up on him. He saw dogwood flowers and the decaying bodies of two songbirds lying in the frozen grass, but no people.

Marc’s heart skipped a beat, then clenched in old longing. That voice had been banished to his dreams years ago, but time clearly hadn’t healed the wound.

The wolf whined at his master’s pain.

“Shhh.” Marc pushed away the hope and dread. It’s just loneliness torturing me again.

Marc fell into Marine mode as he squared away the small church and attached shed.

Once he was satisfied that they were alone, he put down alarms. His training would make this new world easier for him than for most people. He’d been playing this lethal game for years.

Marc exchanged fresh fatigues for his soaked, torn clothes, then retied his holsters over his thighs. The river was already several feet deep around distant maple trees and column-supported buildings. Changed and warming, he evaluated the situation. His breathing was normal. His heart was back in his chest where it belonged. Other than a few scratches, he was unharmed. He hadn’t swallowed any of the nasty liquid. He also still had his hat. The string around his neck had kept it from being washed away. Had he reacted a little slower on the bridge, he would be dead now. It was a harsh, new world where some days were harder than others.

He had come one hundred thirty miles in the weeks since rolling under the bus to avoid the draft. The corpses on the streets bothered him more than the constant reek of rot. They were in every place he’d been. Stores, stations, malls, cars, homes. Men, women, kids, elderly–all shocking to see in even one American city, let alone in all of them. Marc had fought the urge to give them the funerals they deserved. Like with the letters, if he buried even one, he would spend the rest of his life doing it.

The realist inside knew that gradually, terribly, nature would run her course. The cadavers would all disappear into nests, dens, and burrows, and then into hungry stomachs, but it would always be obvious that a violent struggle for survival had swept this country. Death was now a constant, even in places that had no actual bomb damage.

Fires were the most common cause of devastation. Town after town had been reduced to darkened, shadowy frames–the victims of arson. This new world is a bed pisser’s wet dream. Marc hated the helpless feeling it gave him to roll through those places. They reminded him of his nightmares of the walking dead, and of the soldier who’d killed himself. In his dreams, the corpses followed him relentlessly with their not so funny, stumbling walk. They pushed and pushed until the cold ocean waves lapped at his feet; the water was the only place left to go.

Marc lit a Winston with hands that stank of fish rot. Where am I supposed to go?

Marcus…

He didn’t draw his drenched gun this time. No one else was here. Marc waved a finger at the growling wolf to quiet him.

A hint of vanilla, sweet and never forgotten, floated by on the wind.

“Angie?”

Silence.

Marc grinned. I’ve been alone too long. He was the last person she would call after so long.

Marcus! I need you!

The words went right by his ear this time, making his breath catch.

You owe me!

Marc winced at the accusation and stopped denying. The time he had feared, and longed for, was here. Angie was finally calling in his marker, but that debt could never be repaid.

Not letting his practical side get in the way, Marc concentrated like she’d taught him when they were kids, but he was unable to keep from wondering if the water had won. Maybe this is the afterlife with an angel leading me to hell.

You can’t go yet. Not until you help me.

The voice in his mind was clear, as if they were on a phone. He found it helped to pretend they were as his headache increased. Was I injured? It would explain this. “What do you need?”

My life back.

Marc jerked as if slapped, thrown into the past.

I need you. Will you come?

Her desperation pulled at his heart. “As quickly as I can.” This would be the fastest swoop he’d ever made. In addition, this fast journey over a short amount of time would be done alone, without the support of his team. “Tell me where.”

Ohio. Cincinnati.

Marc’s heart pounded faster. He’d been there, once. “Two weeks, Angie, maybe less.”

A relieved blast of energy exploded from her end.

Marc swayed on his feet as her power sank into him, stopping the headache. It had been fifteen years since he’d felt that.

You have to hurry…

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

The line went dead.

Marc rubbed Dog’s ears, seeing eagerness in the animal’s golden orbs. Clearly, Dog felt her pull too.

Angie called for me! Marc struggled to control the heart that suddenly felt younger, lighter. It only took the end of the world to force her into it.