The Beginning at the End of the World: A Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian Series (The Survivor Diaries Book 2) (10 page)

Maybe it’s a Thanksgiving Miracle, or maybe just an ode to science, but Aunt Laurie is getting much better.

And Jackson came back yesterday.

And those two facts are not coincidental.

Apparently, Jackson went after the cure; the antidote that the army had to the Sneaker Wave, or CNL2, as they called it.

It turns out that Jackson was vaccinated against this plague virus during his military career. I don’t actually believe that he knew that it was waiting in the debris for a freezing point, but I do blame him. When he was wiring his little spy network in the beginning, he could have gone to the base and sifted through the rubble, if that’s even the truth of where he found it. His story sounds suspicious to me. Now, everything about him is suspicious.

Right now, I am done with my portion of this record-keeping, diary business. Maybe I am not ready to write it all down yet, but I will be.

Signing Out,

Brianna Patton

“Laura,” I heard Doc Malcolm say. His voice boomed in my head.

I have been drifting in and out of consciousness for the last five days. At least, that’s what the nurse told me. I feel so weak still, but I believe I am going to make it. And after I wrote that touching good-bye. Well, it wasn’t the first good-bye I have written, and it might not be my last. It was strange to discover that if it were my time, I was ready. I am ready,
when
it’s my time.

I am very grateful to all of the medical people who fought to get me through the worst of it.

If it is meant to be, I will continue to work for the health, safety and wellbeing of the Village. Even if that means that I am no longer the leader. If it is not to be, I believe that my family will pick up my dropped torch.

I have to admit that I am curious about how things are going there. Here in my “hotel room,” I am isolated from everything. As I get better, I have fewer medical staff tending to me, and that is how it should be. I must admit, it’s getting lonely.

Apparently, Annie became belligerent and broke the home confinement rule to bring me some chicken soup for dinner. Of course, she didn’t get into the Hotel, but she has made sure that I have enough to eat now that I can keep food down.

The soup felt so good going down my raw throat. It warmed my stomach, too.

Jackson has sent a walkie and ordered that it only be used to connect me to my worried family. “No work,” I was told.

At exactly 5:00 P.M., I turned to the walkie’s private channel.

“Hello,” I said, barely recognizing my husky voice.

“Hello, Hello, Hello,” my family’s voices rang out.

“Baby, I miss you. How do you feel?” asked Mark.

I pushed myself up on my pillow to make it easier to speak. My lungs and throat were so tender. “I’m great now that I can hear your voices,” I said.

Mark’s voice sounded upbeat. “Honey, Amanda, Adam and Jake are on, too.”

Another round of happy hellos came through the holes in the walkie.

“Did you guys celebrate Thanksgiving?” I asked, not caring who answered, as long as I could hear another one of their beautiful voices.

“Laura,” said a small voice I recognized as Bailey’s. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I am, sweet girl. I just need to get a little stronger, and I can come home. But I can talk to you on the walkie now, whenever you need me,” I told her, hoping that she was not worrying too much.

I heard a cute little giggle, “Hershey says hello, and that he misses you,” she said, sounding better.

“Hey, sis,” said Jake, happily. “Now you’ve had the plague, too.”

I laughed. “I guess that makes us even.”

“It’s those strong genes I was telling you about,” said Mrs. Ingram. Everyone laughed.

“Annie, are you there?” I asked, wanting to hear my mother’s voice.

“I am here, Laura. I am always here,” she said.

Tears swelled in my eyes, and I was barely able to reply. “Mom, thank you for bringing me the soup. It was great, but stay inside. Okay? I want you all to be safe.”

“I won’t let her get loose again,” said Mark.

“Thank you, too, baby. I’m sorry,” I said before he could cut me off.

“I am going to give you a call before bed so we can have some time alone,” he said.

We said our good-byes, and I could no longer hear the background noise of my family chattering.

“Okay, Jackson. I am still here,” I simply said into the walkie.

There was no reply …

… for about a minute. I waited.

“Heh, yeah I am here, too,” said Jackson, knowing I had his act down.

“Tell me about the Village,” I said. I was getting tired from that short call with my family, but now that my health was on the upswing, I needed to know everything.

I braced myself for the death toll I knew was coming. “Seventy-eight,” was all he needed to say.

I tried to comprehend what I heard. At our top count, the Village had 141 souls. One hundred and thirty-one people had survived the Last War and had made the decision to work and continue to survive in the Monte Vista Village.

Now, only fifty-one people are left. Ninety souls total departed the earth on my watch.

“Stop,” Jackson’s voice broke into my world of horrible thoughts. “I was the person with the most military experience,” he said, as if deep in thought himself. “And even if I had been in charge, if I had accepted the leadership position, those people would have died. If Mark had been in charge, they still would have died. If Steve Rolette, that prick, had been in charge, they still would have died.”

I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at the “prick” remark. “Speaking of the prick, what have you heard from the “GWs?” I abbreviated God’s Warriors. Who were they to act for God, if there even was one?

“They were sanctimonious at first, saying things like ‘God has spared us to do his work, yada, yada, yada.’ That was until they started to die off. Cory Forsyth was the first of theirs to go. Only six of the forty-six of them survived. They were breaking home confinement and meeting, but those idiots were still conducting business on the walkies, so I knew the whole time.”

I tried to digest that. “You knew about them jeopardizing the health of everyone in the Village and did nothing?”

“I banked on Darwin, and I was right. He’s my man,” the idiot explained.

“We
will
talk about that later. Where do we stand with the Sneaker Wave now?”

“Including you, we have eight people still fighting it, but the medics said that you are all going to survive. You know, it’s your strong genes,” said Jackson, failing at his attempt to charm me out of my anger. “You know we need to get away from all of this debris. We have no idea what is sitting dormant in the rubble.”

“Jackson, I am barely keeping food down. It’s not the time to talk about it, okay?” I said, feeling worse by the minute. “Besides, no business, your orders.”

“Fine, but the time is coming. One last thing; Joseph died,” he said gently.

Tears grew in my eyes again, and I couldn’t speak.

“Get some sleep, Laura,” he said. His voice was softer than usual. “Laura,” he paused. “Never mind.”

∞

Luckily, I had one more call a little while later.

“Laura,” said the voice that I had been waiting to hear from for so many long and lonely days.

“Makrum,” I said. The word came from my throat with such a guttural roar that it made me wonder if there was any lining left in my esophagus. My guts felt like they were scraped out with a sharp tool; like a Jack-o-Lantern.

“Hi, baby,” he said in his smooth, caring voice. “Bailey wants to say good night; go ahead Bailey.”

“Good night, Laura. When you are feeling better, can I read a good night story to you?” asked my little girl.

“I would absolutely love that,” I told her. “Angel Kisses, sweet girl. Good night.”

“Good night,” she said, sleepily.

Mark must have left his thumb on the button, because I could hear him saying good night and closing the door. A few seconds later, he came back on. I knew he was in our room now.

“I’m here, honey. How are you feeling?” he said.

“I am okay,” I said. “I miss you.”

“Me, too. No one has told me how you’ve been doing. For some reason, they tell Jackson instead of me,” he said.

“Now that I can talk, I will tell Malcolm to discuss my health with my family only. I think that he will go along with my wishes,” I said. But I wasn’t even sure that we were even having a private conversation on what is supposed to be a private channel. Mark knew that also.

“You couldn’t talk until now?” he asked, alarmed.

“I was in and out of it. I remember waking up to a tube down my throat. I don’t remember too much more. I haven’t talked to anyone outside of the Hotel, that I remember, since the day they brought me in here,” I explained. “About that day …”

“It’s alright, honey,” he said. “You were only trying to keep me safe when you wouldn’t let me close that morning. I knew it then, too. Watching you so sick, it was just hard, ya know?”

“Yep, I do,” I said. “When I had no vital signs after the attacks, you brought me back. It’s what you do. But this time it might have killed you, but I knew you would try anyway. That’s why I left the house. I couldn’t risk infecting any of you.”

“And you didn’t,” he said. “Your carefulness saved us. Thank you.”

“Any time,” I said.

“Just seeing you in your white night clothes, soaked in red, made me think you weren’t going to make it. And the snow was so stained with your blood. I don’t know if I can do this post-apocalypse thing without you, baby,” he said.

“Me neither,” I replied.

When we were done talking, I lay there thinking about our past and our future. I knew then that I needed to forget about everything that had happened, every trespass, and move into the future with a clean slate.

Death would probably have been too easy an out.

But I’m getting better and stronger now. I was released from the Hotel, and I am home. The Doc said that I am no longer contagious. He also thinks that now that I have had the Sneaker Wave I am immune to reinfection. I guess that is a silver lining.

My family is looking a bit the worse for wear after their days of home confinement, too. They are excited that it’s over now. All of the infected who made it out alive are either healing or better now. But the fear remains. More Sneaker Wave-like viruses may have been planted, and there is no way to know where they are or when they may rise up and crest before slapping our shores again.

I know it is time to go. The perils in the city are all too real now. They might come in the form of an army, waiting to take what we have created in the Village, but they are more likely invisible to the naked eye, waiting to be stirred by Mother Nature again.

I am no longer naïve, either. With so many lost to the fire and the Sneaker Wave, we are weak. There is no rebuilding what we had here, at least not now.

Leaving our homes will be very difficult for most of us. I grew up in mine. The walls hold the textures, smells, and visions of a lifetime; my lifetime. Giving it up means becoming someone new, and I am not sure that I am ready to do that.

It won’t be an immediate move, there is too much to plan. And this needs to be perfectly planned and executed. I can’t, and won’t, risk one more life.

Since July 4, I have learned one thing well: death is dirty; filthy in fact.

We haven’t had a new layer of snow for days and what is blanketing the area is brown and mucky now. I don’t know how or why it has turned this color, only that it has. And that’s enough for me.

Tomorrow, the fifty-one of us who remain will come together. It’s time to discuss leaving here. We need to leave this manmade destruction and retreat into nature.

Jackson, Jake, Bri and Mark have been preparing the ballroom for the meeting, but instead of putting out more chairs, they were folding them up and storing them away in the dressing room. It’s an agonizing reality, and I could read it on their faces.

For the first time in weeks, I sat at my desk on the ballroom stage. The curtains were open, like my eyes, and I watched as the remaining Villagers came in and took a seat. They moved as if someone had drained them of their life’s blood.

Seeing the small group made it all the more real. I saw Jill look at me and gasp. I know how thin I have become, how ashen my skin is now. My red hair has lost all of its shine and just sits, lifeless, on my head; an appropriate post-apocalyptic crown.

As I looked around, I noticed that almost everyone had long, unkempt hair, dirty and ripped clothes, and pale complexions. This is no way to live. I want more for my people.

Jackson supplied me with a list of the dead. As I watched those who remained, I did a mental tally of their lost loved ones. Some of them were people I considered more than friends:

Reverend John: Cynthia Summerlyn

Jill: Joseph

Matt and Jessica: Shelby and Camella

Holly: Colton

Pranav, Chandra and Gita: Veda and Padma

Tiffany: Robert, Jayden, Tommy

On the stage, Mark, Malcolm, Jackson, Adam, Reverend John and I sat, facing the survivors of this wave of death.

“Hello, Villagers,” I said in a throaty voice. I held the podium for balance. “I am still having difficulties, so this panel will be speaking today.”

Mark stood and helped me back to my seat. Jackson walked to the podium and for the first time since I have known him, spoke to the group like a true leader, a real Colonel.

“Thank you for coming today,” he read from the notecards he brought to the podium with him. “This is a somber occasion. There has been much death and sickness in the Village over the last weeks. It is more devastation coming on the heels of the world’s greatest massacre. But we must celebrate those who overcame the plague and are healthy once more.” There was a polite applause. “Now, Doctor Graham will tell us where we stand with the Sneaker Wave. Doctor,” Jackson said, inviting Malcolm to the front of the stage.

“Thank you, Colonel Jackson,” said Malcolm. “The Colonel is right; it has been a difficult, uphill battle for my medical team. As you know, we lost two of them. We have gone through almost our entire supply of antibiotics and many of the drugs we had in our medical arsenal. The problem is that we can no longer go out to pillage through the ruins for more supplies. If we are hit by another virus, as we stand now, it will wipe out every one of us.”

There were gasps from the Villagers, and myself. I wasn’t prepared for the doctor to deliver such a dire window into our future, for him to be so brutal with our fragile emotional states. I was starting to see Jackson’s heavy hand behind this.

I had a feeling I knew what was coming from the rest of the speakers, too. It was a finely crafted brain fuck, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Colonel.

Reverend John went next. “The bodies are ready for funerals and burial first thing tomorrow morning. We have decided to create a Village cemetery where the Town Hall once stood. It seemed fitting. We hope that you will all be well enough to make it.”

That was another decision made while I was sick, but it actually made sense and showed a level of respect that made me proud.

“I would also like to thank the doctors and nurses for all that they did for my wife. I know that it all meant so much to my Cyndi.” Sadly, Reverend John returned to his seat.

Mark stood and began speaking. “First, I would also like to personally thank the medical staff for their extreme dedication during such a horrible time. I know what they went through, and I will forever be in their debt for saving my wife’s life. If they could please stand,” he said, motioning for the medical team to stand.

The Villagers began to applaud. It turned into a standing ovation in recognition of the doctors, nurses and medics who worked so hard to save their patients. I was honored to stand for them. These people no longer did their jobs for a pay check. They did it for the love of their neighbors.

I got a little wobbly, and I reached for the person standing the closest to me, Jackson. He grabbed me, as if he had been waiting for it. “Are you okay, darlin’?” he asked me in my ear. I nodded and was glad when everyone stopped clapping and took their seats.

Mark came over and took his place by my side, and like a well-rehearsed play, Jackson took his place at the podium.

“Now, Adam would like to discuss the state of Monterey
outside
the Village walls.”

Adam stood stiffly and uncomfortably moved to the podium.

“As everyone knows, we now have a problem with obtaining supplies from what is left in the city’s debris.” Adam headed straight to his obviously scheduled topic. “We can no longer go out-bounding without risking all of our lives. Since I have been going out, studying the outlying areas while foraging for supplies, I can tell you that there is not much left that we can reach under the layers of snow, even if the Sneaker Wave were no longer in our way.”

I was scrutinizing the faces of the Villagers, and they were concerned. Since I have known him, Adam has been a straightforward person. It was his style, and it worked for me, but I wasn’t sure how everyone else was going to take it.

He continued, now with growing urgency, not waiting for the group to digest what he had just said. “We need to leave here if we are going to survive. We need to find a place where it is safe to plant food, raise farm animals and drink uncontaminated water. That place is no longer in Monterey. The Monterey you all knew is gone. What is left is deadly.”

Jackson rose and brought Adam a folder. “For those of you who haven’t been out of the Village, I have photos for you. And I warn you, they will not be easy to look at.”

For the next twenty minutes, we passed around the photographs of what had been historic Monterey and the beautiful cities that had once surrounded it. During that time, Adam explained how he had been collecting soil and water samples, as well as photographing and studying different areas that would work as a resettlement site for the Village.

My gut started to ache like it always did when things were about to go wrong. In this case, everything was about to go horribly wrong. I wanted to jump up and stop the entire meeting, stop Adam as he acted as Jackson’s unwitting pawn, but it was too late.

When Rolette rose, I knew that there was no stopping it. It started as a snowball, and was going to end in an avalanche, if I may take a note from our current weather conditions.

Rolette began speaking, voice deep, like rich velvet. “Today, I represent God’s Warriors. We have lost too many of our members due to your leadership.” He pointed at me, and allowed his ridge finger to run across the rest of the speakers sitting in chairs on the stage, ending on Adam. “You have brought in a plague from the outside. If you had not gone out there, into
Sodom and Gomorrah, we would not be suffering from God’s wrath,” he said.

I couldn’t read the Villagers anymore. I felt a distance from them that I had never felt before. I didn’t know how important my connection with them was until that very moment.

I wished that Jackson would handle this scene, find a way to make it better, but my gut told me he couldn’t. He had never built a
rapport
with these people.

I stood and went to the podium, mostly because I needed something to lean against. I grasped it and took a breath to slow my pulse and gather my thoughts. The proverbial pin could have dropped with a resounding boom; it was absolutely silent in the ballroom.

“As you all know, I have been out of the loop. However, like most of you, I have seen the writing on the wall,” I stopped talking to see if I was getting through to them. Nope, not a thing. “No, not the graffiti on the Village wall.” There was a polite chuckle in response, and a few of the faces started to relax.

“Mr. Rolette, I
do not
believe that a good and caring God would bring this on us,” I said, slamming head first into my point. There were a few gasps, all from the GW’s, but I didn’t care. This needed to be decided on, in one way or another.

“I
do
believe that we need to leave here. This has been my home for most of my life, and for me to say this is extremely hard. But I don’t want to die, and I don’t want any of you to die, either. That includes you, Mr. Rolette.”

And then I dropped a bombshell. “I also don’t believe that we should leave this to a vote. It isn’t a case of all of us needing to agree unanimously. We each need to make this decision for ourselves based on everything we have heard. Just to let you know, I am leaving.”

I went back to my seat and Rolette stood in the front of the crowd and burst into a rant that was “sent to him by God.” It went on for about ten minutes, and it was so ridiculous that I don’t feel the need to write it into this record.

Deciding that it was time to stop this madman, Mark stood and went directly in front of where the man exuding the ire stood. He rose above him on the stage, and stared down at him. I didn’t even know what he was going to do next.

“Muslim, you are not going to block the word of God. You can stand there as long as you like. The Holy Spirit needs for His flock to hear Him,” said the red-faced man.

“If anyone else feels this way, come and stand with your leader,” Mark said. It was simple and to the point. It worked.

No one came to stand beside Rolette. He waited, though. After several uncomfortable moments, he walked out of the building, slamming the door behind him.

∞

Completely drained, we headed home. I glared angrily at Jackson as everyone exited, but he just made his signature “heh” and headed toward the security at the wall.

I took the photos that Adam and his team had collected as proof. When I got home, I went into my bedroom alone and got under the covers. I spent the next hour staring at every detail in every one of the photos.

The pictures of Cannery Row, a popular tourist attraction thanks to the classic books of John Steinbeck, were the hardest to look at. So many of my memories took place on that street.

I remember when many of the historic buildings that had housed the sardine factories and even the Monterey Jack Cheese building on the strip were “mysteriously” burned to the ground. Developers swooped in and bought up the beach front properties to build restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops.

The Brothel that stood at the end of the street, a protected historic landmark, was home to many businesses over the years, but none more notorious than what Steinbeck wrote of. When I was in high school, it was a small restaurant that had almost no food on the menu. People would come in to listen to live music and watch belly dancers while they drank wine. It was where I met my first boyfriend and where I had my first kiss. I loved to shock people over the years by telling them I met my boyfriend in a brothel.

I closed my eyes, and I could see the image of the building as it appeared during Steinbeck’s time. A leg adorned with a fishnet stocking swung from the window. The face of the leg’s owner peered out over the ocean view, wistfully, as the woman with bright red rouge took a swig from a bottle of booze. She whistled at one of the sardine canners who passed by.

I fast forwarded to before the Last War, when the aquarium, built in the 1980’s, stood in all of its glory. The photograph of the famed attraction showed fractured buildings that now floated beneath the ocean’s surface, like the Lost City of Atlantis. I guess that’s appropriate.

My mind continued down the street to another of Steinbeck’s haunts, Doc Ricketts’ Lab. Steinbeck used the real life Marine Biologist, Ed Ricketts, as a model for one of his greatest characters. Doc Ricketts’ Lab was made a historic landmark, and the building stood until the Last War. I looked at the splinters that now were the only traces of the old Lab. I wondered if the ghosts of Mr. Steinbeck and Dr. Ricketts were there now, heartbroken over the loss of their beloved dwelling. I know I was, and that I always will be.

The iconic, above-street walkways that announced your arrival to Cannery Row had been shattered in the middle, now heading straight into the heavily damaged streets below rather than the building on the other side. It didn’t matter though, because that building was smashed beyond recognition.

One of the photos wasn’t taken on Cannery Row. It was of an adobe boarding house that had stood in the heart of downtown Monterey, where Robert Louis Stevenson wrote novels and became inspired to pen
Treasure Island
. Only a corner of the building now stood, and I could rewind again, to blurry black and white images of Stevenson at a desk in that very corner, pen in hand. It was strange that Adam took this particular picture, because it wasn’t a very well-known site to out-of-towners. I was not sure how he was able to find it, especially in the chaos of the destruction.

I continued to look at the photos for hours, allowing them, almost willing them, to crush my soul. A part of me is Monterey. I needed to see it destroyed in order to really let go of it. I guess that was the purpose of the photos in the first place.