Affliction Z: Abandoned Hope (Post Apocalyptic Thriller) (10 page)

Cold rain gathered in the middle of the street and formed
shimmering puddles. Addison stepped through, careful not to splash any on her
pants. The boots her father had sent her kept her feet warm and dry. She’d
never thanked him, and now she doubted she’d ever be able to. Nevertheless,
they’d been lifesavers.

After her ordeal with Carla, she had run from her apartment
to the parking lot, leaving everything but the messenger bag and its contents
behind. She had planned on taking her roommate’s car. The woman had no more
need for it, after all. However, looters and rioters had come across the
vehicle and slashed the tires, broke the windows, and ripped off the hood.
Every car in the lot looked damaged beyond simple repair.

The acts of vandalism threw a wrench into her plans.
Originally, she had planned to drive to Charlottesville where her grandparents
had a four hundred acre farm north of the city. While nothing was guaranteed,
she figured they might have been able to avoid and ride out the virus, being so
far away from others. She would be happy to sleep in the barn with the horses,
so long as she could get there. The chances of that happening looked slim now.

She contemplated going back to the apartment and perhaps
waiting out the next few days there. There wasn’t much inside, save for Carla’s
corpse, but she could monitor the other apartments from within hers and look
for supplies early in the morning when things were normally be quiet.

She laughed at the word, “Normal.” Nothing would be normal
ever again.

Casting a glance over her shoulder, she surveyed the scene
leading back to her complex. The mess of vandalism encouraged her to keep
pushing forward.

A block further, she spotted a mountain bike lying in the
middle of the road. She increased her pace while scanning the street ahead,
keeping tight to the building beside her. The shadows it afforded kept her
hidden.

The air looked hazy. She smelled smoke. The burning in her
nose confirmed that it lingered in the air. The area looked deserted up to and
around the bicycle. Beyond that, though, she spotted a group of people hanging
out in front of a drug store. There were four of them, maybe five, and they
looked young. Addison wouldn’t take any chances with them. She reached into the
messenger bag slung over her shoulder and pressed tight to her side, and she
withdrew one of the pistols. She held the gun in her left hand, pressed against
her thigh.

Crossing an alley, she glanced to her left. Plumes of dark
smoke rose from a building a few hundred feet away. She saw someone cross the
street between her position and the burning building. She had no idea what
waited for her down those roads. If the group of people ahead made a move
toward her, she’d have to retreat back to her apartment.

At least she knew what to expect there.

The closer Addison got to the bike, the closer she walked to
the concrete building. Her bare elbow scraped against the gritty wall. So far,
the group had not noticed her. That could change the moment she stepped out
from the shadows and onto the street.

She stopped when the bike was about twenty feet away
diagonally. It looked to be in good shape. The rims did not appear to be bent
and the tires weren’t flat. She couldn’t tell if the chain was on or not. As
long as she could get back to the alley unnoticed, she could fix any minor
issues.

Taking a deep breath, she shuffled the pistol from her left
hand to her right and then stepped off the sidewalk. Her head spun side to side
like it was on a swivel. No one seemed to notice her presence. Halfway to the
bike, she started to jog. She reached the bike, squatted down and grabbed it by
the handlebars. While the chain looked fine, the brake lines had been disconnected.
She started forward while lifting the bike up by its handlebars.

“Hey!”

The voice that called out was high-pitched, but not
feminine. She glanced over her shoulder. The group of youngsters she had
spotted a few minutes earlier had spread out. They all faced her now. She
hesitated. They started running. As they got closer, Addison realized they were
kids, none of them older than twelve or thirteen. She froze at the sight of
them waving baseball bats as they ran. Children or not, they had anything but
friendly intentions.

She held the bike in front of her like a shield as she
lifted the pistol into the air. The group of kids slowed down, coming to a stop
fifteen feet or so away.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice shaking.

They all stared at her, some looking between her and the
weapon. The one in the middle spoke up.

“You’re taking our trap.”

“What?” she said.

“The bike,” the kid said. “We left it out there so we could
catch someone.”

“Who?” She realized that they had spotted her, but had
ignored her so she would continue approaching.

The kid said nothing.

She jutted her arm forward like she was going to shoot him.
“Who?”

“Anyone,” he said.

“Why?” She looked at each of them. They didn’t look like
problem children. There was nothing tough about them if you took their bats
away. They appeared to be scared. Like most people, she figured, including
herself.

“All our parents are sick,” he said. “Or dead.”

She lowered the weapon an inch. Her gaze traveled from one
kid to the next. None of them looked like her roommate had. That didn’t mean
they weren’t sick, though. She had no idea what all the signs and symptoms were
even though she’d watched that news report at least three dozen times.

“Can we come with you?” another kid asked.

How quickly things changed. A moment earlier, they were
prepared to lynch her. Now, they wanted to hitch along. They saw strength and
power in her handgun, she presumed. For a moment, she considered giving the
second pistol to them, but changed her mind. And she couldn’t take them along.
Any one of them could be sick. At the very least, traveling with a group of
pre-teens would slow her down. She envisioned pointless bickering and one or
two wandering off, halting the group’s progress.

Every kid stared in her direction, hanging on her answer.
She adjusted the bike’s handlebars and wheeled it back a few steps.

“No,” she said.

The kids appeared to grow angry. They gripped their weapons
tighter and lifted them. Addison responded in kind.

“I’ll pull the trigger,” she said. “So help me God.”

“You can’t just leave us here,” one of them said.

Addison continued her retreat. “I’m sorry.” She said the
words repeatedly as tears fell across her cheeks.

The kids eventually shrugged and left in the other
direction. She figured they had found an empty store or apartment to stay in.
Perhaps some place that was close to where they had been standing when she
first saw them. Once they were out of sight, she ducked into a narrow alley and
repaired the bicycle’s brake lines. The bike had a tool pouch attacked to the
seat stem. She used a wrench she found inside it to adjust the chain.

As she steadied the bike and kicked her left leg over it,
she thought about where to go next. Her inner voice kept telling her that she
should head in the opposite direction of civilization. While she knew plenty of
people throughout the populated neighborhoods of the city, she only knew one
person outside the city. Her general manager had a place on five acres about
ten miles to the southeast, off U.S. 501. That’d do until she could figure out
how to get to Charlotte.

She pulled out her cell phone and turned it on. She had
figured that leaving it on all the time would drain the battery faster as the
device searched for a signal. The GPS pinpointed her location, and she used the
map application to help her determine the fastest route out of the city.

U.S. 501 was only a half mile from where she stood. She’d
have to pass the kids, then turn left on Kemper Street, which would merge with
the highway she needed. Another mile and she’d be clear of the city.

Addison set off, sticking to the middle of the road. She
reached the spot where the kids had been and veered toward the opposite side of
the street. Without slowing down, she passed through the intersection, looking
right and then left. The group of children was nowhere to be seen. She felt a
weight lift from her body. It might have been too much to see them again after
having sentenced them to a possible death at the hands of the thugs who roamed
the street. Or worse, at the hands of someone like Carly, scared and sick.

She slowed down as she came up to Kemper. The chaotic scene
beyond the intersection gave her pause. There must have been fifty people in
the street fighting. Some held weapons such as baseball bats, pipe irons, and
rifles. Others held nothing at all. And those people appeared to be winning.
One or two of them fell, but for the most part, they absorbed the blows and
proceeded to pounce on their attackers. Scattered around the warring groups
were bodies on the ground.

Addison picked up her pace the final twenty yards and took
the corner without slowing down. The bike’s tires almost lost their grip on the
pavement. She adjusted and righted the bicycle. She saw flames from a fire
rising up on her left. She presumed that if she had waited ten more minutes,
the road might have become impassable. For now, the only thing in between her
and the countryside was a wall of smoke. She raced toward it, determined to
pass through no matter what she encountered.

She still clutched the handgun in her right hand. It made it
difficult to steer, but she managed. Beyond the city, the roads would become a
bit trickier as they wound through the mountains. She knew she’d feel a little
safer and could tuck the gun away at that point.

The smoke wall grew darker as she approached. Visibility
became reduced. A thought passed through her that caused panic to rise. What if
the fire blocked the street past her view?

Nonsense, she thought.

She had been at the other end of the road and saw that it
hadn’t. Her vantage point back there had been higher. She had to push forward.
There was no other choice.

Addison shifted gears and pumped the pedals harder, guessing
she’d topped twenty-five miles per hour. If something waited on the other side
for her, the accident it caused would probably be enough to end her life. Given
the circumstances she faced in this new world, that might not be such a bad
thing. She shook those thoughts from her head and focused, preparing herself to
move fast enough to avoid anything that blocked her path.

The wall approached, black and dense. It moved like a living
thing. In, out, side to side. She took a deep breath. The air was already thick
with smoke. It burned her throat and lungs. Still, it had to be better than
what she was about to encounter. Addison resisted the urge to clamp her eyelids
shut. She held them wide open, for a moment. The smoke stung her eyes. She
closed them in response. The air inside the smoke wall felt hotter. She feared
that she was pedaling into the heart of a fire. She heard it roar in her ears.
Sweat coated her body. Her skin felt like it was going to combust at any
second. Wood was popping and snapping to her left. She opened her eyes. The
smoke was thinning, and beyond it there was no fire.

She pedaled harder, pushing forward through the final wisps
of smoke and city. She took in her surroundings. After determining that she was
not in any immediate danger, she stopped the bike and looked behind her. The
blaze rose high and had enveloped a sizable section of the city. It was out of
control and would only continue to grow without a fire department to put it
out. She glanced toward the sky. Over the city, the smoke blocked the view. But
toward the countryside she saw a clear night, stars already out in force. There
would be no relief for the burning city on this evening. Perhaps not ever.

Addison tucked the pistol in the back of her waistband, as
she’d seen done in the movies at least a hundred times. Then she began pedaling
again. Nine more miles to go, she figured. In the dark, on twisting and winding
roads. She considered pulling over and camping for the night. There were
streetlights for at least two miles that she remembered. She decided to ride on
until she ran out of light.

She passed through a dark stretch of road under a canopy of
trees. She couldn’t see three feet in front of her. Through the twisted maze of
trunks and limbs, she thought she saw burning eyes of those like Carly. They
waited in the woods, perhaps for prey. Perhaps for her. She pedaled harder,
shifting her gaze and focusing on the small oval of light at the end of the
tunnel of tormented trees. When she reached it, she took a deep breath and let
the bike coast downhill for ten seconds or so.

Though there were plenty of dark spots, the lights along the
road provided just enough illumination for her to make out where the road went
next. She wondered when they would stop turning on. She was doubtful they’d be
around in a couple days’ time.

Coming out of a bend, she noticed the sky brighten behind
the next streetlight on her right. She continued toward the source of the light
cautiously.

The source of the brightened sky became apparent a few
minutes later. A neighborhood had been set on fire. She wondered who had done
it. The residents? Or was this someone’s way of controlling the outbreak? On a
twisted level it made sense.

Eradicate through the cleansing power of fire.

There was no way around the section of road that butted up
to the infernal neighborhood, so she stuck to the opposite side of the road and
pushed forward. She made it another quarter-mile before being forced to stop.
The streetlights continued on for at least another mile, but she was unable to
follow them. Coming out of a turn, she saw five pickup trucks blocking the road
and the grassy shoulder to the left and right of it. There was no room to pass
on the sides. The trucks butted up to fences topped with barb wire.