Seeking Redemption at the End of the World - Closed

[Light Ice]

The guard had said his name was Hank and Calvin believed him. There was no reason not to. Hank had come back from his home to let Calvin out. To give him a chance. But mostly, Calvin knew, to clear his conscience for the long and mysterious ride off the mortal coil. Hank certainly looked sick. His face was swollen and his eyes were clouded, snot ran in a steady stream from his wide nostrils and provoked his arm to lift and swipe it away on a dark sleeve. If Hank had been a picture of health he would have been a large and very fit black man. But he wasn't. He looked like a man on death's door and worse, Calvin saw, was the lack of fight left in his muddy eyes.

"I'm hungry." He said.

The guard nodded slowly, painfully. The Super Flu was not in its final stages. He had time. A couple days, maybe, before things turned ugly and his time ran out. Hank still carried his service pistol on his hip. Even now. But Calvin could imagine it was for a far different reason. The Beretta would eventually serve a purpose for Hank when things got so far along he could no longer deny the inevitable. The pain would make it a handsome option. A pull of the trigger and it was lights out. Bon Voyage. Goodnight and Good Luck.

It wouldn't be glamorous but it would be quick. And quick was a mercy that the Super Flu did not provide. Infact, when it came to life's habit of dishing out the minute mercies that make tragedy survivable, the Super Flu carried with it only one. You would not be the only one. That was your solace. Already, less than a month after the first outbreak on the West Coast, the United States was virtually dead.

News of the rest of the world had stopped coming in after outbreaks had cropped up in Europe and Asia. Journalism quickly became an expendable focus when the Super Flu rolled into town. Panic generally came after. Men and women flooding churches and hospitals, boarding themselves up at home or getting in the car and running. Not that any of it mattered. The flu killed anyone and everyone without discrimination. At first it gave them headaches and colds. Then there were aches, fever, and nausea. For a couple days it almost seemed like a regular flu. A bad case, sure, but nothing fatal.

It was only when it hit the third stage that the real horror show began. Calvin knew. He'd seen it.

The cell across from him had two inmates in it. The one was named Teddy Alters. Teddy was a short, scruffy-faced white man from the South Side. His accent was movie-thick and he was waiting for trial in several robberies up in Cambridge. It was ironic, really, because Calvin's family lived in Cambridge. There was a chance that Teddy had robbed his parents house.

Teddy died first. And Calvin knew that so long as he was alive he would suffer nightmares of Teddy Alters.

Stage Three hit like a ton of bricks. You had maybe two hours before it really got rolling. The first inclination that things were taking a quick tailspin were the tremors. They came on fast and furious. In Teddy they'd started in his hands and spread quickly throughout his entire body. The Central Nervous System, Calvin knew, was like an interstate highway. Everything important ran up and down it and nobody lived on it. The traffic came from the smaller nerves tracking through the body and jumped on the highway, up to the brain.

He imagined the virus was working much the same. Once it hit the nervous system it was bouncing through the entire body, attacking cells, killing things and multiplying at a freakish rate.

Teddy's shakes eventually subsided. Forty minutes later. Teddy had made a joke about never going through that again. Calvin hadn't smiled. Calvin knew that Teddy was more right than he knew. He would never go through that again. But it wasn't because it was something that had passed. It was because the damage was done. The nerves were dead. They couldn't fire off crazily like they had when they were under attack because that battle was over.

And so was the war. Really.

Inside Teddy Alters was a bomb.

The virus planted a bunch of bombs, really. It congregated heavily in a couple organs. The Liver. The lining of the stomach and intestines. The eyes, brain, and lungs. It collected there. Balls of viral cells. Attacking antibodies and multiplying. Breaking down red blood cells and multiplying. Over and over. It grew huge colonies of itself before finally the body was done, used and abused. Consumed.

And then you crashed out.

Teddy crashed out two hours after he had stopped shaking. He got nauseous and laid down, only to double up. He wrapped himself in his arms and started moaning, tossing and turning side to side. The pain was new. Extreme. Everywhere. Cal hadn't wished to watch but Teddy wasn't dying quietly. He was moaning. Groaning. Tossing and turning, whimpering. So he watched. He looked through the bars and across to Teddy's cell and watched.

Ten minutes after he started, Teddy began to retch. On his third attempt he vomited what easily could have been a gallon of blood onto the floor. It'd scared Calvin so badly he'd fallen off his cot and back-peddled to the wall of his cell. The cold brick had been a small comfort, something solid, some reminder that this was not a dream and he was actually watching a man puke geysers of blood onto the floor.

The blood upset him, too. Cal had never been one to get nauseous around body fluids or functions but this blood didn't look right. It had black clots in it, thick clots that looked like curds of sour milk only charcoal-black. Ink black. And it smelled like sulfur and death.

Teddy shared his cell with another white man from Southy named Sean McCreary. Sean was a very large man in his forties who had gotten drunk and beaten on his girlfriend. When Teddy started emptying his stomach and sloshing blood all over their cell Sean had panicked. He had started shrieking.

Normally, crying like that was a good way to get a prison hysterical. Not with fear, mind you, but with madness. Calvin had only been to jail twice. And both times it had been the county lock up here, not a real pen, but the same rules still applied. Cells and bars did things to men. It changed them. And most the time not for the better.

But Calvin knew that one of the things he would remember most about Teddy Alter's last few hours on Earth would be the silence. The entire prison was mostly silent.

He had heard a few men sobbing openly as things progressed. But that was all.

At first he hadn't really noticed. Teddy's purging had stolen his attention. It'd made the little details otherwise impossible to pay attention to. But as things went on he'd wondered why things were so quiet.

Teddy's pain got so bad that he stopped moaning and started sobbing. Deep. Hitching sobs that provoked him to puke more black-clotted blood onto the floor. It went on for an hour like that. It seemed impossible that Teddy could have that much blood inside him. Calvin had wondered if a man could bleed to death like that. It certainly seemed possible watching Teddy.

But then Teddy had gone ram-rod straight in his bunk and began going through more convulsions. This time, though, they were powerful shakes that reminded Calvin of a Grand Mal seizure. The main and terrible difference was that in a Grand Mal seizure the sufferer generally blacked out. Teddy did not blacked out.

Teddy screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

In the very end, nearly six hours after it started, Sean McCreary was sobbing like a broken child in the corner of the cell. He had sat on the toilet and drawn his legs up indian style and sobbed, and talked to himself, and wept.

Teddy had a few more big shakes but mostly he just laid there and suffered, suffered horribly.

In the very last stage the body gives way. Tissues break down and the virus basically melts anything and everything it touches. Teddy bled out his nose, ears, eyes, mouth, and the pores on his face. He bled from his fingernails and his crotch and ass soaked through with blood, hinting horrible things that Cal was glad he had never seen. But finally, when he gave the last ragged gasp of his life, Teddy's body had shrunken up almost entirely around his skeleton.

It as though, after the bombs had went off, they had released something to consume all the mess they had created.

Sean McCreary was dead two days later. Except after he'd started slipping into Stage Three he hung himself from the bars of his cell.

Hank had the look of a man who had seen what Cal had seen. And he didn't want to go out that way. Calvin didn't blame him. Not at all. Nobody who had seen what the Super Flu could do to a man would have thought less of someone for taking things into their own hands.

"I'm Cal. Cal Winters." He said. "I'm from Cambridge."

Hank turned and thrust a hand out for Cal to take. The shake was brief but enough to provoke a weary smile from the guard that had saved Cal's life.

"I'm Hank. I'm from Jamaica Plains."

"You saved my life." Cal said.

"Probably not." Hank was looking through the garage. The words he offered were flat.

Cal hadn't even noticed they had walked into a garage. He was hungry. He'd never been so hungry. It'd been almost a week since he'd had something to eat. He'd been smart. After the first day had gone by without seeing any guards he'd cleaned his toilet like a mad man, drawing some laughs from Teddy and Sean before their time had run out. He'd cleaned with his toothbrush and toothpaste until the stainless steal bowl was absolutely pristine. And then he'd taken to pissing out into the aisle.

He'd crapped in a coffee can with a plastic lid and kept it near his window until things had gotten real quiet. Then he'd tossed it down the aisle. On the list of things he’d never seen himself doing this had definitely found a place pretty high up.

But the point was to keep his source of water clean. And he'd probably kept himself alive by doing that.

"But you aren't sick. Are you?" Hank asked him suddenly, turning on him with the beam of a very large MagLight.

Where the hell had he gotten that MagLight from?

"No." Cal answered.

"Not yet." Hank corrected him, suddenly scrutinizing him.

"Not yet." Cal echoed. It seemed the safest thing. He felt light-headed. Things didn't look right. And if Hank felt threatened or taken by the urge to beat his frustrations and fears away, Cal was the only living target. A living target that -wasn't- sick and couldn't reasonably defend himself.

And Cal did not want to die just yet.

Hank shook his head suddenly, and sighed. "Man, I hope you don't get sick. I hope there are at least a few people in this world who aren't going to get sick."

The guard's words provoked Cal to relax and he put on a weak smile. It was the only smile he could manage right now.

"Hank. I haven't eaten in a week. I'm not feeling so hot."

Hank nodded and began to walk more briskly through the garage. The beam of his flashlight chased off the dark and cut over the sleeping shapes of a few cruisers.

"I have a car." He said as he selected a four-door SUV. "But this one is for you. Cambridge isn't too fucked up. Everyone's dead but they died in their houses mostly. It's not like downtown. There's a shotgun on the dash and some shells in there if you g-" He paused.

Cal could swore he saw Hank's eyes drift to the Beretta on his hip.

"Well," The guard said finally. "Just in-case."

Cal didn't know if he could drive. But Hank dropped a keyring into his hand and offered him a weary smile after he'd wiped his nose on his sleeve again.

"What were you in for?" He asked.

"I stole a car."

Hank nodded, seemingly relieved. "Why?"

Why. Why, indeed? The truth was that Cal had given up. He had been unable to maintain his grades in school and forced his family to suffer the shame of their youngest flunking out of MIT. The parents were not working class. Proud. Educated. High Society. And they had never really had time to develop a personal relationship with the son they had otherwise raised. So, instead of coming home, he'd moved out. Eight years in the Army to try and find what normal life looked like. MIT after that, credit cards and student loans.

In the end, he'd simply given up. Anything to stop the debt collectors and their phone calls. Anything to feel like he had some kind of control on where his life was going. His father had tempted him over and over with internships and the keys to his trust. But Cal had turned it all away.

But he hadn't stolen a car. It seemed lying was still a part of the new world.

"I needed the money." He shrugged. "Made some bad choices."

"Well, Cal," Hank smiled. "You can drive whatever you want now. Good luck."

"Thank you."

But Hank was walking away. The light of his Mag Light was bobbing in the dark, further and further away, until it hit the lit hallway they'd come from. There was a click and suddenly one of the doors began to open and light poured in from outside. It was beautiful out.

And Cal actually found the silence reassuring.


He did not remember driving to Cambridge. He only remembered fighting to stay alert behind the wheel of the Urban Assault Vehicle that Hank had chosen for him. The massive Suburban seemed too powerful, too foreign, to appreciate. The massive V-8 rumbled with a predatory eagerness as he navigated down the Three and onto Cambridge Street, past abandoned and wrecked cars that dotted the roadside here and there. Calvin was functioning in a strange place where his instincts for survival overwhelmed his senses, pushing him to make a turn into the luxury neighborhood of Bella Castle and towards the million dollar properties up the hill from Harvard University.

The choice had been a simple one. Somewhere, even as his brain swam with thick confusion, he had equated opulence with satisfaction. If he was to find food and clothes, a shower and a means to shave, it'd be in a place where people grew up wanting for nothing.

His parents had been hard-working, but definitively white-collared parents. His dad’s dad had worked two jobs for forty years to support the family and help put his kids through college. Cal had finally graduated with a degree in Environmental Science and found that he lacked the motivation necessary to secure a decent job with it. His sister, Bonnie, had graduated head of her class at Northeastern with her marks in Finance.

The long story short was that Bonnie had been on her way to a house like the one Calvin was breaking into. He was too hungry to pick up on the irony.

He parked infront of the largest house he could find. A massive, gorgeous colonial with columns framing the front porch and a long, brick driveway curling down to the street. It's door was painted a mulberry red and crested with a massive brass knocker. There were no cars in the driveway. And, like everything, it was quiet.

The shotgun was the logical choice. It took him a couple minutes of yanking on the Remington before he could force himself to slow down. Looking at the under-dashboard mount, Cal recognized two small latches trapping the shotgun in-place. The release was invisible to him. It took every ounce of patience he had left to run his fingers along the side and feel for the trigger. It was a small, rectangular depression that released the shotgun into his hand the moment he pressed it.

Firearms were not unfamiliar to him. It was a small mercy now that the shotgun wasn't as foreign as the truck or the house. Holding it gave him a very real sense of hope that things would be alright. The solution to his hunger and his garish jumpsuit were beyond the massive, oak-cut door of this home. He could not imagine how much better he would feel to be full and clean but he tried, tried to take satisfaction in the fantasy as he ascended the walkway and worked the grip of the shotgun's barrel.

It opened the weapon's breach and he looked in, saw the tinkle of a brass slug down in the magazine.

He pumped the shotgun once and heard the distinct "click clack!" of the round being chambered before tucking the neoprene stock tight to his shoulder.

He aimed for the door's handle. It was an ornate and sweeping grip detailed in bronze with a small trigger of its own. It occurred to Cal that he hadn't even tried to see if it was locked. He didn't want to. There was something exciting about blowing the lock off a door like they did in the movies. There was something terribly thrilling about taking the castle by storm, even now, when the world slept behind him and there were no police to stop him. He was excited. Nervous.

The shotgun bucked hard against his shoulder when he squeezed the trigger and the lock exploded, splintering wood everywhere. The ornate door handle was a twisted, smoking mess of itself and fell from its place inside the door to clatter loudly to the ground inside as the door swung open. For a moment, Cal held his breath, half-expecting someone to come to the top of the stairs directly infront of him with a phone in hand.

But nobody came. Nobody stirred.

The house's interior was a picture of quaint wealth. Martha Stewart run wild. Everything had been designed to go together, to create this seamlessly styled feel that gave him flashes of Martha's Vineyard and Eddie Bauer. It was a magazine home. It didn't feel real. And he went right for the kitchen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cal woke on the third day and felt mostly himself again. He'd known he was better when he sat up from the couch and his head didn't swim and his stomach didn't demand that he go to the kitchen. Instead, he'd noticed that he was still wearing the garish orange jumpsuit branded with his designated number and the ugly, block letters of "Suffolk County Prisoner" on the back and that he still had not washed himself.

He hadn't even wandered upstairs.

Three days in this home and he had still felt like an intruder. The people that had lived where he was standing were most likely dead. They certainly hadn't come back while he had been there. But regardless, every single time he passed the pictures scattered here and there, he couldn't help but feel shameful for being there. He had left the shotgun under the couch after the first day, disliking how he felt carrying it around someone else's home.

He went upstairs and showered. The towels were big and soft and he wrapped one around his waist and draped another across his shoulders. In the mirror, through the mist, he saw his unshaven face and the unkept mess of his shaggy blond hair. His body had suffered only a bit from the week without food. Less than he would have expected. His chest was still broad and his shoulders still looked strong, squared and tapering down to a waist that was a bit more trim than he was used to. The muscles there, once tight and forged into the elusive and fabled eight pack, were now only six strong and defined more predominately than before.

Cal had always kept himself fit. It wasn't cosmetic. He enjoyed rock-climbing and hiking, trail running and mountain biking. While his sister took her degree and threw herself into the professional landscape the big city provided; he had taken his and used it as an excuse to abscond from the working-class life. His job as a forest ranger had paid under thirty-thousand dollars a year but it kept him away from people who asked about that kind of thing. He cut down and hauled out trees, cleared trails, and took the occasional tour through to find certain campgrounds or spots. He climbed.

And he'd enjoyed using his body more than his mind to make a living, even if it was modest. Even if he had begun to slip steadily into a serious amount of debt, and even if he had become increasingly estranged from his parents.

The end of the world had, in a way, given him the welcomed reprieve of explaining his arrest to his parents and employers. Two entities who cared -very- much about how he lived his life and the nature of his responsibilities. He was glad for it in a small way and quietly horrified at himself for feeling so.

In the bedroom he learned that the man of the house had been much too small for him to salvage any clothes from him. Cal had never been a giant, or a linebacker, but he was 6'2" tall and a healthy 190 lbs (probably 185 after the last week) or so and the man of the house had been a short, frail-looking man. He wore a size seven and that, also, was useless to Cal.

So, instead of stealing clothes, Cal laundered his own. It was an incredibly normal thing to do in otherwise abnormal circumstances. But the orange jumpsuit was a little less offensive when it was clean.

There was little question that before he head west he would make a couple supply stops. A grocery store. A Gander Mountain. A Hardware StoreHe would stop at a pharmacy. Cal made a list on a little pad of paper he found in the kitchen and pocketed it in his only pocket, on the left breast of his jumpsuit.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

He appreciated the car more now. It was a powerful looking unmarked police vehicle, modified with all the little technical advances that government units were able to carry and civilian vehicles could not. The V8 engine was large and imposing, capable and reliable. The struts were undoubtedly better than anything the average Soccer Mom had driven. But the true worth of the vehicle was its great size, the ability to carry any number of things comfortably, and the radio and laptop inside.

Cal wasn't certain how long the GPS or Internet would be active. Without men and women left to operate them the power and connections would eventually have to fail. There was no telling when that would happen. But until it did, he'd enjoy those comforts for what he planned. The locker in the back of the Suburban revealed gear that he otherwise had no present use for. Bullet proof vests. Road Flares. A semi-automatic AR-15 that he would most likely never care to use. The riot gear was equally useless.

But the locker itself would serve well for whatever he decided to bring with him. He'd leave the rest when he had more suitable things to replace it with.

The vehicle would be comfortable and capable for whatever lay in store and Calvin found himself thanking Hank the Guard once again, wondering if the man had already found a need for his Beretta.

He wanted to cry but couldn't. Men were ill-equipped for it. He'd been taught since he was small that his outlets were work and recreation, not tears. Like most men threatened with waves of emotion he shrank inward, like a cripple, unwilling to ride out the forces running through him as he stood infront of the empty house and thought of the man who saved his life.

Instead, Cal simply felt like driving.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The Mass Pike ran south through Boston and towards New York where it turned into I-90. He imagined once he escaped the city limits that the congestion would end, that he'd be able to flex the Suburban's muscle and make time. But for now it was tediously slow goings, less than thirty miles per hour in places as he navigated the massive truck through the maze of scattered and abandoned vehicles.

There were bodies in most. Slumped over seats and wheels. A few had managed to open their doors and die on the pike itself. All of them were bloated in the sun, ugly and festering. In college he had been taught to have an appreciation for decay. There was a science involved, a careful breaking down of tissues and materials for reuse. It'd never been pretty in his eyes. But it'd seemed practical.

This just seemed wasteful and horrific.

He hadn't gotten out of Cambridge and into Boston, yet. He hadn't stopped at any of the stores on his list and gathered supplies, yet. Instead, he'd eaten one of the Turkey Sandwiches he'd made before leaving and drank a bottle of water from the cooler on the floor of the passenger seat. The shotgun lay locked under the dash again.

When he first saw her, Cal didn't think she was real. He'd begun to think that he was the only survivor in the Boston area, spared inexplicably from the disease that killed everyone and saved by a Guard that couldn't leave him locked in a prison.

She was beautiful. He saw that right away as most men do when it comes to women. Tall, long, and strikingly beautiful.

And she was watching him drive toward her, avoiding a badly wrecked Sonata that had struck the median between outbound and inbound lanes and flipped. He could hear the glass of the shattered windows crunching beneath the Suburban's big tires and see her waving at him.

He didn't get out right away after he stopped a few feet from her. The police car would have been a big friendly surprise to the girl but once he got out, that would change. The prisoner's jumpsuit was trademark and she was armed. A girl that looked like that -should- be.

But all the same, he was cautious, even as she began to make her way towards the driver's side door.

Calvin got out to meet her, lifting a hand.

"Hi." He said. And after a moment, aware that his shaggy face would hide the hazel of his eyes and the jumpsuit would make most of his first impression a bad one. "I'm Cal."

(This Thread is Closed.)

 

[DarkWarrioress]

“Hi. I’m Cal.”

The man got out of the vehicle while lifting a hand. Seemed friendly enough. She wasn’t that trusting. At least, not any longer. It was something she had learned through this experience. Since her world had crumbled. How long had it been? It was hard to calculate. The days had seemingly melted into each other. Time and dates didn’t seem to matter anymore. Now it was about surviving and brother, she had learned a bit about that. Just a bit.

“Hello, Cal.”

Her dark brown eyes stared into his hazel ones. Nothing to read there except cautious friendliness. Maybe. Given the circumstances, she could and did understand that. Still. The shotgun at her side came up and the barrel pointed directly at him. Her lips tweaked into the semblance of a smile. Not necessarily friendly but definitely cautious.

“Raise both your hands, Cal."

She walked toward the car. The open door stood between them.

“Come around that door. Easy now. No sudden moves.”

The consequences of not doing so were left unsaid but implied by the slight shift in the shotgun. She stopped just shy of the hood of the police car he was driving. She didn’t trust him. Why would she? The world had gone crazy. If she allowed herself to stop and think about how everything had unfolded, she would have gone crazy. Nighttime was the worst. Her body had to shut down. Get some sleep. Her brain seldom did. If she was lucky, she actually slept a couple of hours. If one could call it sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she could sleep deeply.

~~ ~~​

Vivian Prentis. All of five feet, six inches tall. Brown hair that glinted red in the sunlight. Her father had always told her that her eyes reminded him of his favorite aged whiskey. She took his word for it. Before the insanity had struck, she found time to work out every day so her body was in good shape, at least she thought so. Slim calves, trim thighs, rounded hips that sloped up to a tiny waist and were only overshadowed by pert, firm medium sized breasts. Her face made her nose wrinkle. It wasn’t anything special. She would never have considered herself beautiful by any means. For one thing, her nose was faintly sprinkled by a dusting of freckles. She blamed it on being out in the sun so much. She loved being outdoors. Her nose was too small and the end of it tipped up slightly. Her eyes were too almond shaped for her liking. She blamed her genetics for that.

Viv came from a very comfortable background. It wasn’t old money however. Her father had worked for every single penny that he put into his family. He had started as a beat cop, worked his way up to detective and finally had become Commissioner. With some sound and wise investments, her family had been well off. Better than just comfortable. Money had made her life easy in some aspects. Her parents, however, had taught her the value of money and the need to earn it.


They called it the Super Flu. Yeah. Good name there. It wasn’t like any kind of flu Viv had known. Her mother had come unglued when her father had been taken to the hospital. Those hours in the hospital, surrounded by death and those on their way there, had seeped into her mother’s soul. Whatever had gotten its grip on her father, Viv tried to reassure her mother but the sinking feeling that swelled in the pit of her stomach was rising to choke her. Her mother said all the right things. Tried to be reassuring herself. Her daughter loved her father. They had this exclusive bond that sometimes made everyone else feel left out. Viv could see her mother’s eyes said something different.

This Super Flu was everywhere and it had spread so quickly. Disease Control couldn’t contain it. It was helpless. No matter what they tried to do, it continued to spread. Like lightning. It struck and moved on. Uncaring of the destruction it left in its wake. Cures? They couldn’t find any. Oh, they tried to reassure the public. Had to head off a mass panic by any means possible. That hadn’t worked. This thing killed faster than scientists could work and everything they had tried, hadn’t worked. Was this God’s way of cleansing the earth before he started over?

Cal was the first other living soul she had seen since---. Yeah. Him. Viv didn’t go out at night. All she had ever met with was silence. There had been a time when she enjoyed silence. The absence of sound. It had been soothing. Now it only served to remind her of the destruction and death she had run into.

Her mother had died just a week after her father. Viv wished she could say it had been from a broken heart, but she couldn’t. She had witnessed her darling mother dying and it had been horrific. Viv had wanted to run yet she couldn’t. There was no amount of comfort she could give the woman who had given birth to her. Viv could only hope that her father’s soul had been close by. Viv could only hope that thing, this flu, was quick acting. It was but Vivian wasn’t prepared for the ugliness of the end or the violence or the pain.

Vivian got through the following days. Somehow. Her parents had been cremated. There hadn’t been much choice to it. The doctors weren’t even sure burning the corpses would stop this thing. It never seemed like it. Vivian was ill prepared for living the way she was now faced with. She learned. Quickly. She had spent days teaching herself to shoot accurately. She had learned what was useful and what to stockpile. She had left her family home. It was where her father was when this flu had hit him. She couldn’t be sure if this thing had germinated there.

One night, not long after her mother had died so horribly, Viv was curled up on the couch reading a book by candlelight. The flame had cast a shadow on the far wall and it flickered and wobbled while she read. She hadn’t seen or heard the man who had snuck up on her from behind until her lunged over the couch, trapping her under him. Without thought, she started to fight back. Fingernails scratched and gouged. Her feet kicked every chance she got. In the luck of a moment she broke free and dashed for her firearm, turning and discharging it into the intruder’s chest several times. His body crumpled and fell to the floor as his blood seeped out onto the carpet.

“Damn it to hell.”

Viv didn’t stick around. It didn’t matter that it was night. She couldn’t stay there any longer. Going upstairs she loaded an empty pillowcase with items she thought she’d need. Taking as much as she could carry, Viv returned downstairs to strap on the 8mm Glock to her hip, one of the weapons she had taken from Brent’s. The shotgun was leaning against the wall where she had left it. Viv trudged into the kitchen and loaded another pillowcase up with other supplies. Grabbing the shotgun, she left the house she had been living in and slipped into the night. Further down the block was another house, someone else she knew well. They were gone too. Viv slipped past turned over cars that still smoldered. She dodged broken glass and easily let herself into the two story house she knew well. Lily and Tom had lived there with their daughter, Viv’s best friend. All three of them were now dead as well. Instead of settling in the upper part of the house, she slipped downstairs to the finished basement. Carefully closing the door. Tom had made the door to the basement look like a panel on the wall. Brook had thought it was great fun. Hopefully now, it would be Viv's saving grace. Down here was everything she could use. A small bathroom and kitchen. There was a livingroom space as well as a couple of bedrooms. Viv set her filled pillowcases down and surveyed her living space. Memories of happier times swamped her mind and she had to choke them back. She would not break down. Not now. Not ever. If she allowed herself to break down, she feared she’d never come back. With a resolute manner, she set about putting her supplies in spaces she felt they belonged and she could easily find them. The gun on her hip stayed there and the shotgun was within her reach at all times. The heat still worked. Thank goodness. Still, she conserved it and took a blanket out of one of the bedrooms. Curling up on the couch and snuggled down into the blanket she silently thought about how much human nature changed in the face of adversity.

That man. The intruder. He had been the first person she had ever killed. It wasn’t a good feeling. As she adjusted her head on the arm of the couch, a silent tear escaped the corner of her eye.

Tomorrow she would hunt supplies. She would take from the dead what she needed to survive. No more. No less. Viv started to make a mental list. Anything to forget what she had done just a little while ago. She brushed her hair out of her face with shaky fingers. There was no one to talk to. No one to turn to for warmth. For a hug. That was a pity because she was cold. So cold. Her eyes closed and her mind drifted from her mental list, escaping the reality that was now hers.

As morning dawned, chasing the shadows back into the deep well they had sprung from, it found Viv drinking coffee with fingers drumming absentmindedly on the countertop where she sat. She was going to have to get out of her comfort zone if she had any hopes of finding others like her and she didn’t mean the dregs of society that survived like cockroaches during an apocalypse. Who was she kidding really? This was the fallout of an apocalypse. Strange. She had always envisioned that if the world had suffered an apocalypse, it would have been from nuclear weapons or some such. Funny how things happened sometimes. Who knew exactly what had happened here? Germ warfare? Possible. Enemies of the United States had been trying to annihilate citizens of the U.S. for years now and failed. They were bound to be successful at something at some point. That was the odds. Viv hoped this wasn’t the case. Finishing her coffee, Viv secured her new home, taking up the shotgun and left with her pillowcases to procure supplies. Her first stop was going to be a sports shop to get some more shells for her guns. She was going to need them.

Viv had just finished her “shopping” in town and was tired. All she wanted was a shower and put her feet up but she needed to get back to her home base. Maybe one of these cars left abandoned on the side of the road, and God knows there were plenty of those, would still have keys in them somewhere. She had been bent over searching the interior of a car for keys when she heard the faint sound of….an engine? Could it be? Everything within her went absolutely still as she listened harder. It was an engine and from the sounds of it, it was coming closer. Viv set her bags in the open front seat of the car and picked up her rifle. Her eyes were riveted to the road behind her as she slipped a live round into the barrel of the shotgun and closed it quietly before releasing the safety as the vehicle drew closer. With her free hand she waved. Might as well get this over with now, she thought. The vehicle stopped just a little back from her. Maybe the driver was also being cautious? Not a bad idea really. As she drew closer, the door opened and a man who could seriously use a haircut and a shave, got out.

“Hi. I’m Cal.”

Orange jumpsuit.

Oh great. An ex-con. Or maybe an escapee.

It was just her luck.

Seriously.

 

[Light Ice]

The world wasn’t quite as dead as it seemed. Here, picking at the bones of what had been, he’d stumbled on the jackals that had survived into the new. In a short instant he’d learned a very hard lesson. His shotgun might well have been a million miles away. It was bolted under the passenger seat. There was a good chance, especially with her walking, that she’d miss him with the first shot if he went down under the door. Slugs might punch through it but it was a puncher’s chance and if she couldn’t rack that thing and get a bead before he got to his then he knew he wouldn’t miss.

The thought went through his mind. He was a fighter and the instinct was there. But with that thought came another and it was more pressing. He yielded to it. His eyes drank in the auburn-haired car-jacker and his mind finally made sense of what he saw. Fear was a potent thing. The fear of being a victim and the hard decision, the intent not to be, all lived in her dark eyes. He laid his hands atop the door and bought himself a half-second of indecision more.

It was hard not to fight. It stung to be car-jacked in his first few steps into the reality of the New World. He’d missed some things sitting in that cell as the Old World died. What was left, out here, was unfamiliar to him. He abandoned the car and began to step left of the door. Left, and back, putting distance between them.

“Alright, easy. Car is yours.” There was no point in being frustrated now. No point in making the moment worse. He jerked his squared jawline back towards the Suburban. It occurred to him watching the soft-featured woman with the shotgun levied at him that he’d been lucky in that house. Someone could have just as easily come along then.

The road stretched out beyond in both directions. He knew the way. Finding things in the ruins of the world would not be particularly hard. He’d be fortunate enough along the way. What mattered, what truly mattered, was learning from it. She held the shotgun with capable hands. At this distance, with the door out of the way, he saw her feet spread to keep her balanced. She might not have missed. And she’d have been ready if he’d made a go of it. Sometimes, whether you liked to admit it or not, you were just not in the place to make a go of it.

A few houses had bodies infront of them. They were wrapped in sheets or rugs, duck-taped and set out with as much respect as could be managed. He imagined in that moment the grim certainty of those final days. They were ready to be picked up – he imagined. Trucks that would never come.

 

[DarkWarrioress]

He didn’t like this and she was playing it safe. Cal had given her his car. Her lips turned up slightly. It was his assumption. Could she blame him? In times like these…. How was she going to play this? Viv could shoot him. Take his car and what she figured was his stash in the vehicle. Survival of the strongest. The wisest. The most cunning. The problem was, where did she fit into this crazy mix. The world had gone haywire. If the disease didn’t get you, some desperate person, of those that were left, if any, would.

She hadn’t expected him. This Cal person. In the last few days, she hadn’t run into anyone, well, except for that crazed person who had jumped her and he was now, just another number to add to the body count. Cal, on the surface of things so far, seemed easygoing. Something made the back of her neck tingle. Something made her wary. She just couldn't pin it down. Yet.

How many of them were left? Cal. Herself. Who else? Suddenly, she felt weary. A wave of loneliness washed over her. She never realized how much appreciation she had for the human race until now. People were something she had taken for granted. Now, examples of her race were lying about. There was no mistaking the forms. Laid out rolled in rugs or sheets, duct taped closed. For dignity sake? Or sensibility? And what were they waiting for, a burial? There was no one left to see to that. It didn’t matter. Dead was dead and the deceased were hopefully in a better place, unlike Cal and herself. Two people who were left alive. Chosen to live and for what?

To trust or not to. What was true human nature? The man obviously had served time. For what? For how long? What was his nature? Time ticked slowly. She could feel it. Decide, Viv. Now. The barrel of the shotgun lowered decisively. She took the couple of steps necessary to reach the abandoned car and reach for her own supplies, snagging them both up in own hand. There was a soft grunt as the weight of those supplies tested the endurance of her wrist as she transported them to the passenger side of his car. Oh yes, she was going to take it. Viv opened the far door, her eyes never leaving Cal as she did so. She hefted her bags into the back seat. Brown eyes moved from the stationary man to cut toward the interior of the car. The look was quick and then her eyes found him again. The backdoor was closed firmly before she moved around the front of the car to confront him. This time, he wasn’t looking up the barrel of her gun.

“Look,” she lifted a hand, fingers slid into the hair that had fallen slightly across her face and pushed it back, “the world has gone crazy. I have no idea how many of us survived this disease. We can either fight each other or we can work together.” Her eyes skimmed down the length of his body encased in that god awful orange jumpsuit, “I don’t know what you did time for. I don’t care how or why you’re out. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. I just know that survival will be easier with two of us.” Her head canted slightly to one side as she regarded him, “So what do you say?”

Now, one of three things was going to happen but of those three, two seemed like a real possibility. The look she had read in his eyes earlier belied one of those possibilities. She was almost sure of that. As for his having been in a correctional institution, well….whatever had happened out here? Must have happened in there as well. Why he was out and still in prison orange, she had no idea but the only thing that mattered now was survival. No man, or woman for that matter, was an island unto themselves. Maybe under different circumstances it was possible but not under these.

Now, she just waited to see what he was going to do. She might even have to use her shotgun. If she had to, she would.

 

[Light Ice]

There was something in her measure, in the way she moved, that spoke of a hardship he did not know. In the prison the world had ended grimly - but in many ways everything of his world had stayed the same. He had not witnessed neighbors turning on one another. There was no chance for the criminals within the pen's concrete walls to cannibalize one another. There had only been the slow and miserable death of everyone inside. It was a horror. It was grotesque. But it was not the loss of spirit that had transpired beyond those walls.

In a way being locked up had ended up a mercy. It was in her eyes that he saw it all, shadows of monsters and men, that afforded him some quiet understanding. She preached, which he'd never cared much for, but she wasn't wrong. And in the moment, surrounded by the dead wrapped in rugs and blankets and left by the roadside like garbage, he appreciated the fact she hadn't killed him outright.

"I'll drive." He said simply.

Underneath the dashboard on her side his shotgun remained. There was no attempt to reach for it. No attempt to tell her it was there. She'd see it. And that he hadn't brought it with him out of the car. At this point he wasn't certain what that would mean to her. Instead, he closed the door behind him and waited for her to settle. The cut of his eyes ran briefly along the lean line of her as she sat beside him. Then, setting his jaw, he shifted the massive Suburban into drive and began to ease it through the streets. Cars, abandoned at the roadside, were sentinels to their passing. He didn't like the Suburban's size or the weight of it.

There was no attempt to get her name. Not now. If he was going to be honest with himself Cal didn't care for the way she'd stung his pride. It didn't seem to matter much. She didn't speak, either, even as they crossed from Cambridge and slipped further on. He skirted the heart of the city. She didn't seem to argue, and it was only as he began to slow that she seemed to take any interest in where they were going. The city began to fade behind them and he chugged on.

"I need to get some things. And I want to change cars." He said simply. The plan wasn't moot now that she'd decided to tag along. It was his force of will, quiet and even, that he planned to address. "This looks like a target. It eats gas and it's too heavy to be good offroad. Too big to get in small spots. I-we- can do better."

He pulled off the highway a short time later and let the car roll to curbside infront of an Cabala's. As he put the car in park, and pulled the parking brake, he turned off the ignition and pocket the keys. For a moment they sat before he eventually turned to consider her. "I'm going to want that with me." He said then, gesturing with a tick of his chin to the shotgun mounted under the dash infront of her.

 

[DarkWarrioress]

"I'll drive."

Simple. She liked it. Turing on her heel, she headed back to the passenger side of the car, pausing only briefly to click the safety into place on the shotgun. Her eyes found him. Studied him for a brief moment before she opened her own door and got in. It was her way to give basic trust until a person deserved less or none. It was the same for this man. Considering the world they now found themselves in, how could she be anything else?

As she settled in, she noted the shotgun mounted under the dash on her side. A slight shifting of her leg and her own gun settled in the thin space between her and the door, the barrel resting on the floorboard. Her hips shifted marginally in the seat as she adjusted the Glock strapped to her side. He put the car in motion. Her eyes gazed out the window at the scenery outside. The interior of the car seemed smaller with both of them in it. He seemed to take up a great deal of that space. Perhaps it was just her imagination. Viv didn’t look at him but she felt him there. She idly wondered if he resented her for hitching a ride or even for attaching herself to him, so to speak. There wasn’t much she could tell about his physique from that jumpsuit he wore. He was somewhere in the vicinity of six foot. Lean. She wondered briefly if he worked out. Who was she kidding? He looked like the type that worked out. It, if nothing else, would have given him something to do while locked up. It was all speculation of course. His voice interrupted her thoughts.

"I need to get some things. And I want to change cars. This looks like a target. It eats gas and it's too heavy to be good offroad. Too big to get in small spots. I-we- can do better."

There was a slow slight turning of her head as he spoke. Viv’s dark eyes simply watched him as he pulled over into a parking lot, turned off the car, pocketing the keys.

"I'm going to want that with me."

His chin gestured toward the dash on her side. She knew what he meant. Now was a time of reckoning. Probably the first of many if they stayed together. Her answer was simply to open her own car door, giving her the much needed space to raise up her gun in a moment if she needed to. It wouldn’t come to that. How she knew that was instinctual. Even so, trust wasn’t easily won with her. Viv got out of the car and started to walk away. Then stopped, looking over her shoulder at him.

“Anything you want me to do?”

Viv’s voice was soft, yet easily heard. Her head turned again, not waiting for him to speak. Her eyes scanning the parking lot they were in. There was a slight, thoughtful look in her eyes as she contemplated the store. Her mind was already making a mental list of stuff she wanted to retrieve from it IF there was even anything worthwhile still in there. What a damn nightmare and how had she survived so far? It wasn’t as if she had done anything special. She ate, she drank, she worked out at least three times a week. She overindulged now and then. Viv couldn’t say it was genetics because she had lost her parents to this damn flu epidemic. Her eyes watered. She missed them so much and what about Chase? Her brother lived in California. The last she knew, he was building himself some sort of home that was built into the ground. He was the hermit and Vivian was the social butterfly. She loved being around people or had but not anymore. She was scared. She could admit it. Silently and to herself. In a million years she would never have thought she would be toting around a shotgun and a handgun or that she could use both of them with proficiency. The things she had witnessed and managed to hide from, were things she would rather block from her mind. Her sanity depended upon it. Human nature at its worse.

Cal didn’t talk much apparently. A man of few words. All the better. There was an air about him, calm, quiet and something else she couldn’t quite put a finger on. She suddenly wondered what he had been in for. Her lips formed a slight rueful grin. Hopefully, she didn’t have to sleep with one eye open in the future. Viv made a quarter turn, back toward the car they had both just vacated. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes as they pinpointed him in the lot and she waited to see if he would answer her. It was a strange feeling to be working as a team with a stranger when up until this point she had fended only for herself. Viv had a feeling he knew how to survive a great deal and maybe, just maybe, she could learn a thing or two from him.