CyberStorm Part 46

After checking all the fishing lines and traps and not finding anything, we filled up the water bottles in our backpacks and then sat by the river, by the short stretch of rapids. We had to rest a little while before starting the long hike back up the mountain, empty-handed.

"How are you feeling?" asked Chuck after a long silence. The white noise of the rapids was soothing.

"Good," I lied.

I felt ill, but at least my head was back in the world.

"You hungry?"

"Not really," I lied again.

"Do you remember that day, just before this all started, when I showed up at your place with lunch?"

Looking out over the river, staring at the bare trees, my mind rewound. Thinking about New York had the feeling of remembering a movie, like some fictional place I'd once spent time imagining myself within. The real world was here, this world of pain and hunger, of fear and doubt.

"When I was sleeping with Luke?"

"Yeah."

"When you brought French fries with foie gras?"

"Exactly."

We sat silently, remembering the glistening chunks of liver fat, reliving the taste.

"Oh, that's good," groaned Chuck, imagining the same thing as me, and we both laughed.

Clenching my jaw, I felt pain shoot through my teeth. I opened my mouth and rubbed them. They were loose in their sockets, and my finger came away b.l.o.o.d.y.

"You know what?"

"What?"

"I think I have scurvy."

Chuck laughed. "Me too. I didn't want to say anything. When spring comes we should be able to find some fruits."

"Always the man with a plan, huh?"

"Yeah."

We sat silently again.

"I think I have worms," said Chuck with a sigh.

Worms, creatures living inside of us-long, wriggling, and eyeless. I shivered.

"How do you know?" I asked, already afraid of the answer.

"I went to the bathroom in the woods yesterday..." He paused and looked into the gra.s.s. "You don't want to know. It must be from eating the rodents."

Again we sat in silence.

"I'm sorry you stayed for us, Chuck. You could have been here faster. All that preparation, I messed it all up for you."

"Don't say that. You're our family. We're together."

"You could have gotten away, further west. I'm sure there's still an America out there."

A groan of pain from Chuck interrupted me, and I looked toward him. He was holding his arm.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

Smiling sadly, he winced as he pulled his arm out of his sling. He'd been keeping it covered. Glancing at his hand, I could see it was swollen. More than swollen, the hand was black, and at first I thought it was just dirty- "It's infected. I think something from the buckshot got into my skin, infected the broken bones in my hand."

His hand had never really healed. He lifted his arm painfully. His hand was three times bigger than it should have been, and there were dark streaks beneath his translucent skin that tracked ominously up his arm.

"It started like this a few days ago, but it's getting real bad."

"Maybe we can find a honeybee nest in the woods?"

I'd read in the survival app that honey was a strong antibiotic. Chuck didn't reply, and we sat silently again, this time for longer. An eagle circled the treetops in the distance. White clouds studded the blue sky.

"You're going to need to amputate my hand, my whole arm above the elbow."

I watched the eagle.

"I can't do that, Chuck. My G.o.d, I have no idea-"

He grabbed me.

"You have to, Mike. The infection is spreading. If it gets to my heart it'll kill me."

Tears were streaming down his face.

"How?"

"The hacksaw in the cellar, it'll get through the bone-"

"That rusty thing? It'll make the infection worse. It would kill you."

"I'm going to die anyway," he cried, laughing, turning his head away from me.

The eagle circled and circled in the distance.

"Take care of Ellarose for me, and Susie. Try to take care of them. You promise?"

"You're not going to die, Chuck."

"Promise me you'll take care of them."

The eagle blurred through my tears.

"I promise."

Taking a deep breath, he put his arm back in its sling.

"Enough of that," he said, getting up. The river gurgled and splashed. "Let's get back."

Wiping my eyes, I got up, and we silently began back up the trail.

The sun was going down.

Day 64 February 24.

I WAS OUTSIDE with Susie when I heard the trucks.

Lauren had found some old seed packets, carrots and cuc.u.mber and tomato, in a corner of the cellar. The packets were ancient and yellowed, but perhaps the seeds were still good. So we'd gone out and dug up a patch of ground, one that would get the most light, and started carefully planting them.

Chuck was inside, resting, and Lauren was making a fire to prepare some bark tea. Ellarose was lying in the gra.s.s on her back, staring up at the clouds in the sky and chewing on a twig Susie had given her. She looked like a hundred-year-old baby, shrunken and wrinkled, with red, peeling skin. She'd developed a fever and had been crying all night. Susie kept her close, always, never more than a few feet away. It was heartbreaking.

We'd given Luke his own small shovel, a rusty trowel, and he was industriously digging up bits of earth, smiling at me with every shovelful, when an alien growl floated up through the trees. A slight breeze ruffled the leaves, and I stopped digging, going completely still, and listened hard.

"What is it?" asked Susie, looking at me.

The wind died down, and there it was again-a low rumble, a mechanical rumble.

"Get the kids downstairs. Now!"

She heard the rumbling too, and she got up from her knees, grabbing Ellarose and then Luke by the arm. I ran to the house, jumping up onto the smashed back deck.

"Lauren, get downstairs!" I yelled as I entered through the porch door. "Someone is coming! Get that fire out!"

She looked at me, shocked, and I grabbed one of the bottles of water from the counter and quickly crossed over to her. I dumped the water on the twigs she had lit and then kicked them apart, stamping on the cinders.

"Who is it?" she asked. "What's happening?"

"I don't know," I yelled back as I ran up the stairs to get Chuck. "Just get in the cellar with the kids and Susie."

Upstairs, Chuck was awake and already staring out the window.

"Looks like army trucks," he said as I entered his room. "I could just see them for a moment on the ridge lower down. They'll be here in a minute."

I helped him down the hallway and stairs, grabbing the rifle as we pa.s.sed onto the front porch. Standing still for a second, we couldn't see them, but we could hear them, and the sound was getting louder.

"Leave me here," said Chuck. "I'll talk to them, see what they want."

I shook my head.

"No, let's get in the cellar. They can't know we're here. We'll hide, try and see who they are."

Chuck nodded and, with his good arm around me, limped down with me to the cellar doors. Susie had done a good job of rebuilding the doors from some plywood. As we reached the stairs down, the girls were staring up at us. Susie was holding a .38, and so was Lauren.

Hopping down the stairs, we closed the doors behind us just as we heard the trucks crunching on the gravel on the driveway. Quietly, I mounted the stairs, trying to get a view of what was happening outside through a crack.

"There are two trucks," I whispered. We could hear the sound of feet hitting the gravel as the truck doors thudded shut. It sounded like there were a lot of them.

"Is it our guys?" whispered Chuck urgently.

"What do they want?" said Susie quietly, holding Ellarose in her arms, trying to keep her quiet.

Through the tiny crack I angled to get a view. They were wearing khaki-colored uniforms, but that didn't mean anything. And then I saw a face, an Asian face, and he looked my way. I ducked down.

"It's the Chinese," I hissed, backing down the stairs.

I picked up my rifle and kneeled on the hard-packed earth floor. Above our heads we could hear m.u.f.fled voices and their boots walking around the house.

Chuck squinted in the dim light, listening. "Is that Chinese?"

It sounds Chinese.

The boots stopped, and then we heard someone going up the stairs and then back down and out onto the porch.

"Maybe they're just having a look around?" said Lauren quietly, hopefully.

And then- "Mike!" someone outside yelled.

Are they yelling my name?

I looked at Chuck, frowning, and he shrugged back. The voice was very familiar.

"Mike! Chuck! Are you guys here?" yelled the voice again.

I looked around the cellar at everyone.

Is that Vince's voice?

"We're down here," called out Susie.

"Shhhh," I said angrily, but it was too late.

Footsteps thumped across the gra.s.s, and then one of the cellar doors opened. Leaning back, squinting into the light, I pointed my gun at the door, just as Vince's head appeared.