SecondWorld (8 page)

The CVS had been fairly well picked over, but people hadn’t been thinking when they looted the store. Electronics were missing. Junk food and soda had been pillaged. But the good stuff, the food that would keep him alive, was still there. He took five boxes of energy bars, four large containers of chocolate protein drink, a bottle of vitamins, and two three-gallon containers of water. He double-bagged everything and hung the bags on the bike’s handlebars, which made pedaling so unstable he had to climb off and walk the bike back.

Moving quickly, he returned to the store again, grabbing two more water containers and as many canned goods as he could hold. This trip went faster than the first and after returning everything to the sloop, Miller decided he had time for one last run.

As he moved through the aisles this third time around, he looked for anything he thought he might need. Batteries, flashlights, clothing, a raincoat, a knife set, and medical supplies. But one object that he required eluded him—a can opener. He hurried up and down the aisles three times, moving faster with each pass, until he saw a single can opener hanging above a display of nonstick pans on the endcap of the next aisle over. In his rush to reach the can opener, his clothing snagged on the corner of a sunglasses display. There was a hard tug from the display, but he yanked away, strode to the can opener, and picked it up.

He grinned at his success.

And then he
wheezed.

He breathed again, but found no air.

He looked at the pressure gauge.

The air that was left was draining quickly.

He spit the regulator from his mouth and inspected the hose. Air hissed from a torn hole. And then, it stopped. The tank ran empty.

He hadn’t snagged his clothing on the metal sunglasses display, he’d snagged the air hose.
Stupid!
Miller thought to himself.

There was a half mile between him and his air tanks. He cursed himself for not bringing a spare. His heart pounded with fear, realizing that death was two minutes away, three minutes at most. His last breath had not been deep and he already felt the need for another. Then he saw a sign on the back wall of the store.

PHARMACY
.

He ran for it and jumped the counter. Pills littered the floor, where they had dissolved into sludge by some now-evaporated liquid. He had no interest in drugs or pills right now. Air was his drug of choice. Then he saw what he was looking for—an oxygen tank. Just one. The kind with which you see old folks shuffling around, or those attached to the electric go-carts of the morbidly obese. He picked up the white tank and set it on the counter. A plastic face mask in a sterile bag went next.

He ignored the reflection of his beet-red face in the reading glasses display on the other side of the counter and quickly attached the face mask. He loosened the valve. When the hiss of escaping oxygen hit his ears, he placed the mask against his mouth—and breathed.

After taking a few deep breaths, he realized that the air tasted different. Unlike the compressed air in the scuba tank, this was straight oxygen, meant to be breathed along with normal air, not in place of it. The tank would keep him alive, but it wouldn’t be long before he started feeling loopy. He swiftly left the pharmacy, taking several pairs of sunglasses on the way, and transported his last shipment of goods to the
Montrose.
By the time he arrived and switched over to a new tank of air, he was feeling great. The weight of the air tank on his back felt heavy, but he was glad for it. The straight oxygen had worked wonders for his psyche, but too much would be deadly.

When the
Montrose
was loaded with enough food and water to last several weeks, and air to last for a little more than two days, Miller set sail for Miami.

11

T
WO
D
AYS
L
ATER

Only two hours of air remained when Miller caught his first glimpse of the Miami skyline. The doldrums had settled in over the ocean and left the
Montrose
’s sails limp. With no wind and no way to start the engines, the ship floated adrift for days in the now sludgy waters of the Bermuda Triangle. Surrounded by an otherworldly red ocean and pink sky, Miller had retreated to the cabin and tried not to think about his dwindling air supply. But that had been hard to do when eating meant holding your breath and sleep was interrupted every two hours by sudden asphyxiation.

When the winds returned, Miller had stumbled up on deck, unfurled the sails, and pointed the sloop west. With no idea how far out to sea he was, all he could do was pray for wind and stay the course. The wind blew gently—a breeze really—but it was enough to get him to Miami.

As the
Montrose
cut through the waters alongside Miami Beach’s now pink shore—white sand mixed with red flakes—he kept a constant lookout for someplace that might have scuba gear. But all he could see were nightclubs and hotels. Having never been to Miami, he wasn’t sure where to look. Rounding South Beach, he maneuvered the sloop into a channel. A buoyed sign read:
MIAMI HARBOR
—
NO WAKE ZONE
.

Miller looked at the harbor, dotted with large islands, and the mainland beyond. Off the starboard bow he spotted a marina filled to capacity with massive white yachts. He spun the wheel, directing the
Montrose
through the maze of barriers that protected the marina from the open ocean.

With thirty minutes of air remaining, he didn’t bother to find an actual slip. He simply pulled up alongside the end of a dock, hopped out, and tied the boat off. His footfalls on the dock echoed like gunshots in the still silence of the dead city. He could hear nothing else, save for the water lapping against the docks.

To his relief there was a sign at the end of the dock pointing toward Scuba Emporium. He followed it. One hundred feet later, he found a large shop, one of many, at the base of a sky-rise apartment building. The sign on the door read
CLOSED
.

He tried the door.

Locked.

Cupping his hands to the glass, he peered inside. The shop was expansive and well stocked—a scuba enthusiast’s paradise.

Miller looked around for something heavy that could break the window. He found nothing in the immediate area, but as he was searching, he noticed something unusual. The walkway in front of the store was free of red dust. While much of the dust on the surrounding surfaces had been blown out to sea or piled high against buildings, a fine layer still coated almost everything—except for the space in front of the Scuba Emporium.

He kneeled down and looked at the walkway. Fine streaks of red stretched across the cement surface where a broom had passed over.

The rust had been
swept
away. With red flakes still falling from the sky, the sweeping must have been done recently.

Miller took a deep breath, removed the regulator from his mouth, and yelled, “Hello!”

His voice bounced off the city’s buildings as though he’d just shouted into the Grand Canyon.

“Is there anyone here?”

No response. And his air was running low.

He took one more deep breath, removed the regulator again, and slipped out of the air tank. Holding it like a shot-put, he took two fast steps toward the glass door and let it fly. The glass exploded. Much of it fell straight down while the rest burst into the shop.

Miller entered slowly, aware of the glass shards poking out from the door’s frame, and of the possibility of getting his head blown off by a justifiably paranoid survivor. The store, like the sidewalk in front of it, was immaculate—seemingly untouched and certainly not looted. He picked up his air tank, checked to make sure the regulator didn’t have glass in it, and placed it back in his mouth.

Squeezing through several racks of wet suits, he cautiously worked his way to the back of the store, where he hoped he would find full air tanks ready for renting. He pushed the last of the wet suits aside, glad to be free of them. That is, until he saw the body that waited on the other side.

The man’s death had been violent, and bloody, and the investigator in Miller wanted to look things over. The man had only recently died. But there was no time for that now. He needed air.

He tiptoed across the sticky swath of wet rug, stepped over the old man’s body, and made for the back of the store. He quickly found a full air tank and switched it out. He took stock of the other tanks. Only ten.

Why so few for such a big shop?
he wondered.
And with such wealthy patrons.

Closed cabinets lined the back wall above the rack of scuba tanks. Miller smiled as he realized the answer to his question.
Because the people who shopped here could afford better.

Miller flung open the cabinets.
Yes!
Inside were four black closed-circuit rebreather units, CCRs for short. A rebreather, as opposed to a standard scuba set, combines straight oxygen with exhaled air. The end result is smaller tanks, less weight to carry, and seventy-five percent more time per refill. Even better, he felt confident he could take any standard oxygen tank and adapt it for use with the rebreather. He would just need to make sure he had air or trimix on hand. Closed-circuit rebreathers required a diluting gas, in addition to oxygen, but the gas was recycled as he breathed and needed to be changed less frequently.

He knew it was odd to be smiling, but his life expectancy had just gone up. He also was no longer bound to staying on the ocean, or near the scuba shops that lined the shore.

He switched his air tank out for the rebreather, and was happily surprised to find a full-sized face mask. Not only could he breathe freely without a regulator in his mouth, he could also breathe through his nose.

Recharged by his small victory, Miller turned his attention back to the body he had stepped over. The one that hadn’t asphyxiated. The one that didn’t die in a pool of its own vomit, but in its own blood.

The man’s body was round, perhaps from overeating, perhaps from gas built up inside. Miller wasn’t sure which and didn’t want to find out. He focused on the single wound—a gunshot to the man’s head. The exit wound was a baseball-sized hole on the top of his skull. The gray eyes were wide and unblinking, looking up at the ceiling as though hoping for salvation. His mouth was frozen open, lips turned down in disgust at what he was about to do.

Miller reached out and touched the man’s arm. The skin wasn’t as warm as a living person’s, but it lacked the lifeless chill of a long-dead cadaver. The man had killed himself within the last few hours.

The gun, a 9mm Parabellum, commonly recommended for home defense, lay on the floor five feet away from the body, beyond the pool of blood. A half-used air tank lay next to it.

He’d seen enough dead bodies over the past few days, and in his lifetime, that the old man’s corpse didn’t bother him, even though it was fresh. But it did seem a shame the man hadn’t held on just a few hours longer. He could have escaped this mess with his life, as Miller intended to.

Miller stepped over the body and picked up the gun. He checked the clip, slapped it back in, chambered a round, and tucked it into his pocket. A city of dead people wouldn’t be much of a threat, but the weapon made him feel more prepared to handle whatever lay ahead, whether it be a paranoid survivor, a stubborn lock, or someone sporting a circled lightning bolt insignia.

12

After finding another bike and pilfering a map of Miami from the Scuba Emporium, Miller set off in search of the nearest hospital. According to the map, that was Mount Sinai Medical Center. If there were any survivors, he believed they would be there. Hospitals carried lots of oxygen, had backup power sources, and would be the natural place for other survivors to congregate. And if not, he had no doubt that there would be plenty of oxygen tanks that would work with his rebreather. He might find enough for months, though he hoped he wouldn’t be breathing bottled air that long.

Wind had cleared away and piled up the rust against buildings and in alleys, making pedaling easier than it had been in Key Largo. The bodies remained a problem, though. In some places he had to get off the bike and carry it over what had once been a mob. The other new challenge was that the rebreather’s mask had been made for underwater use and blocked his peripheral vision. He had to move his head fully from side to side to see what was around him and it made dodging the dead tricky business. He knew reducing the bodies’ status to that of simple obstacles was a cold thing to do, but to give them any more attention would distract him from his own survival.

There was no way to know how far he might have to go to escape the affected area, or if the attacks had already spread to the rest of the world.

He cut between neighborhoods composed mainly of tall, high-rent apartment buildings, some of which had caught fire. If not for the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere, those fires might still be burning.

Soon the right side of the road opened up into a massive parking lot. A line of palm trees swayed up ahead, and beyond them, something odd rose up from the ground, like a tree, but not.