No Easy Hope - 01 (9 page)

Gabe answered on the first ring, “Took you long enough. I was getting ready to call you.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I actually printed your email out about an hour and a half ago. I got to moving things from the house into the shelter and forgot about calling. ”

“How much longer before you take to the shelter?” he asked.

“I’m waiting on Vanessa to get here. She said she would be here in an hour, about an hour and a half ago.”

Gabe snorted, “Reminds me of my ex-wife. Women have a distorted sense of time.”

I hadn’t known that Gabe had ever been married.

“Yeah, I’m not too worried about it. Vanessa will probably be late to her own funeral.” Just as I said that, I heard the sound of a car coming up the driveway.

“Speak of the devil, looks like she just rolled up. I’m going to go talk to her. You doing okay, man?” I asked.

“No, Eric, I’m pretty far from okay. I’ve got to finish some things up, let me know how things go with Vanessa.”

“Will do. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you, okay?” I replied.

“I’ll be fine, worry about yourself. Talk to you in a little bit.” Gabe hung up.

I went to the front door and opened it just as Vanessa was getting out of her car. She had changed out of her work clothes and was wearing a pink tank top with a pair of jeans and flip-flops. On most girls, an outfit like that would look casual, but on her it looked stunning. The tank top showed off her bronze skin as well as the heavy swell of her breasts, and contrasted wonderfully with raven black hair that hung well past her shoulders. As fantastic as her body was, her eyes were her best feature. They were an iridescent shade of green, like the color of a forest on a cloudy day.

Gabriel had once pointed out that he suspected Vanessa was only with me because I had money, and bought her lots of nice things. I told him that I didn’t really care, and that I would put up with her for as long as she was willing to put up with me. Maybe that made me a chump, but I doubt that any man who laid eyes on Vanessa would have blamed me. Other than Gabriel.

I waited for her on my front porch as she got her purse out of the back seat. She came to the door and I put my arms around her, breathing in the scent of her perfume.

“You doing okay, babe?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m just kind of freaked out about what I saw on the news earlier.” She said as she hugged me back. “I watched TV while I was getting ready to come over. It looks like Atlanta is getting worse.”

“Come on inside, I’ll put on some tea.”

I held the door open and went inside after her. Vanessa went into the living room and stopped in front of the large puddle of coagulated vomit behind the sofa.

“Oh my god, that is so gross. Did you do that?” She said, pointing one manicured fingertip at the puddle.

“Uh, yeah...I kind of have a bad reaction to the sight of blood. I saw something on the news earlier that hit my puke button. Just go sit down, I’ll clean it up.”

“Why didn’t you clean it up before now? God, it stinks.” She put a dainty hand over her nose as she sidestepped the vomit and sat down on the couch.

“Sorry, I got distracted.”

Preparing for what could possibly be the end of the world made a little puke on the hardwood floor seem like a trivial matter. I went into the kitchen and got a dustpan, some spray cleaner, a cleaning bucket, and a roll of paper towels. While I was cleaning half-digested tortilla chips from my living room floor, Vanessa began flipping through channels on the TV. It looked like every network had stopped their regular programming to show footage of the chaos in Atlanta.

The rioting had spread far beyond downtown at that point. There were multiple news helicopters in the air showing bird’s-eye view footage. It looked like nearly half of the city was on fire. Huge clouds of black smoke obscured the streets. Panic-stricken people ran away from the suffocating smoke and burning buildings. Reports from the ground showed police and emergency workers being overwhelmed. Everywhere in the city, there were reports of people attacking one another. One of the news networks had to cut away when two men covered in blood and gore dragged a field reporter to the ground. One of them began tearing at the reporter’s throat as the other took a bite out of one of his cheeks. He tried to scream, but only an agonized gurgle and a dark spray of blood came out of from his mouth as the infected tore his throat out.

The broadcast cut to the Atlanta Chief of Police telling people to get off the streets, stay in their homes, and lock their doors. The governor of Georgia declared a state of emergency and requested aid from the Federal Government. National Guard units mobilized, while police and emergency responders from other jurisdictions sent personnel to Atlanta to help contain the growing disaster. A spokesperson for FEMA came on the air and stated that they were sending aid to Atlanta as soon as possible.

By that point, I had finished cleaning up the vomit from behind the couch. I washed my hands and put some water on the stove to boil, then went back into the living room and sat down beside Vanessa. I gently took the remote out of her hand and turned off the television. She had gone very pale, and she had the same wide-eyed look of shock that I had seen on my own face earlier in the day. I took her hand in mine and gently pulled her up from the sofa.

“Come on babe, let’s go in the kitchen and talk about this.” I wanted to get her away from the television and try to calm her down.

I led her out of the living room and into the kitchen. She followed along like some kind of catatonic mental patient, staring off into space with one hand pressed over her mouth. I began to worry that she was in shock, and I needed her to snap out of it. I sat her down at the small table beside a window that overlooks the back yard. She took her hand off her mouth and looked up at me.

“You said earlier that you know what’s happening in Georgia. What the hell is going on down there?” she asked.

I turned away from her and walked back over to the stove. I took two cups down from a cabinet and put a bag of Earl Gray in each one. I took a small container of sugar down and spooned a little into each cup. The kettle began to whistle, and I took it off the stove and poured hot water over the tea and sugar. I stared at the water as it swirled around in the pearl white teacups and began to turn brown. I couldn’t think of a good way to start. Vanessa stared at me expectantly.

“What I’m about to tell you is going to sound pretty unbelievable.” I said.

“Is it more unbelievable than people eating each other? ‘Cause I’ve seen some of that today.” she replied.

Good point
, I thought. “Everything I know about this, I learned from Gabriel, and I don’t think he would lie to me about something so serious.”

“What did he tell you?” she asked.

I laid it out for her. Everything Gabriel had told me a year ago, and everything he told me that day. I left out the part about the two hidden shelters, not to mention all the illegal weapons I bought. When I finished, she nodded slowly and didn’t say anything for a while. She turned her head and stared out the kitchen window.

“You know, if I hadn’t spent most of today watching what’s going on in Atlanta, I would have told you that Gabriel is a fucking lunatic. I would have told you that you should stop talking to that guy, and ask him to stay away from you. After what I’ve seen today...I don’t know. Maybe he’s on to something. It would certainly explain why he went up into the mountains to live by himself.”

She drummed her fingernails on the tabletop and stared thoughtfully out the window, her delicate chin resting on one hand. She stood up from the chair, walked over to me, and gave me a peck on the cheek.

“I’m going to go home and call my parents. I’ll tell them what you told me, and see if I can get them to believe it. Give me a call tomorrow, okay?” she said.

“Vanessa, I think it would be better if you stayed here with me. If Gabe is right, then this thing is going to spread fast. It could reach Charlotte in a couple of days. You’d be a lot safer here with me.”

Vanessa looked down for a moment. When she turned her face back up to me, her beautiful green eyes were sad. She laid one cool hand against the side of my face.

“Eric, you are a really, really nice guy, and I like you a lot. If this thing is everything that you and Gabriel seem to think it is, then I should probably go and be with my family right now.”

She took her hand from my face and walked back to the living room. I followed her until she stopped by the foyer table to pick up her purse. She opened the door turned around to me.

“Don’t forget to call me tomorrow, okay?” she said.

“I won’t.” I replied.

She walked out the door and got into her car. If I had known then that it was the last time I would ever see her alive, I might have tried to come up with something more thoughtful to say. Instead, I just stood there and watched her back out of the driveway. I shut the door behind me as I went inside.

Chapter 4

Watching, Waiting, and Worrying

After Vanessa left, I went back in the house and sat down on the living room couch. The room smelled like vomit and all-purpose cleaner. I picked up the phone and called Gabriel.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Shitty.” I replied. “She left a few seconds ago. Said she needed to be with her family.”

“How much did you tell her?”

“All of it, pretty much. Except the part about the shelter.”

“Good. I don’t think it would be a good idea to tell her about that.”

“You know, I’m starting to think you might have been right about her. The way she reacted to what I told her, and the way she said goodbye...It was weird. It was like she became a different person, like flipping a switch or something.”

“She doesn’t care about you, Eric, not like you deserve. I know she’s a looker, but looks ain’t everything, friend. Besides, we got more important things to worry about right now. What do you plan on doing next?”

“I’m going to take a few laps around the house and see if there is anything that I missed. I haven’t decided if I’m staying in the house or the shelter tonight.”

“My vote is for the shelter,” Gabe said, “better safe than sorry. That’s what I’ll be doing.”

“Yeah, not a bad idea.” I replied. “I’m going to watch the news and try to keep track of what’s going on down in Georgia. Hopefully the authorities can get a handle on this thing before it gets out of control.”

“It’s already out of control. There are too many infected to contain as it is, and I have a feeling that what we’re seeing now is only the beginning. If you get the chance tonight, read that email I sent you. It should answer a lot of questions for you.”

“About what?” I asked.

“About me, about my life, about the things I’ve seen, and about what lies ahead for all of us. About why I helped you buy all those nice toys of yours, and why I let you know about the bunker I built here on my property. By the way I’m glad you decided to get a couple of your own.”

“Do you think I should go ahead and drive up to Morganton? My shelter there is just as good as the one here.” I asked.

“I would stay in Charlotte for now. If things get bad, people will quite literally head for the hills. Your place up here is too close to town, people might get funny ideas. You’re better off where you are for the time being, assuming you stay in your damn shelter like I told you to.”

“Will do. I’m gonna let you go so I can finish up around the house. I’ll give you a call in the morning.  Try to get some rest tonight.”

“I’ll do my best. Talk to you tomorrow.” He hung up.

I put my cell phone back down on the coffee table and considered what to do next. It was only a little after three forty-five in the afternoon. I had plenty of daylight left, and I needed to make the most of it. I made a few passes through my house trying to find anything else I should take down into the shelter with me, and decided I had everything I needed for the time being.

When I had the house in Charlotte built, I purchased a sophisticated security and closed circuit camera system for it. There were contact alarms on the windows and doors, as well as motion sensors and hidden cameras in every part of the house, both inside and out. The windows and doors were set into reinforced steel frames. The doors looked ordinary, but were actually made of steel and were extremely difficult to break down. Instead of glass, the windows panes were thick plates of a clear polymer that was strong enough to stop a pistol bullet.

I lived alone, and owned many valuable possessions. Being that I had little else to do with my money, I figured it would be a good investment to make my home as secure as possible. After the house was finished, Gabe inspected the security company’s work and pronounced it ‘serviceable’. For Gabe, that was high praise.

I armed the security system from my computer, and then went to the kitchen to get something to eat. I had taken most of the food in the house down to the shelter, but there were still cold cuts in the fridge and some bread in the cupboard. I made myself a sandwich and ate it standing by the kitchen counter, too hungry to bother taking it into the living room. After I finished, I turned the TV back on and watched with growing concern as the situation in Atlanta continued to deteriorate.