Linda Andrews - Extinction Level Event

“We have to.” Wincing, she rocked slowly on the bed before pounding her fist against her head. “I was so stupid. Stupid.”

Manny grabbed her hand before she hit herself again. Bits of brown flaked off as he ran his thumb over the dried blood. “Where were you to go?”

“Anywhere but here.” She stared at him from her good eye. “Don’t you see? The Aspero find a family, kill all but one or two of them and then they follow the injured survivors to the next occupied house.”

His insides folded into a hard knot. And she had led them here, with a trail of Stash’s blood to mark the way. Hot and cold flashed through him in turn. Like he done at Adobe Mountain, he boxed up the rage and fear. “It’ll be okay. I was planning on leaving here anyway.”

He’d just thought he’d go alone and return with supplies.

“Basia thought you’d already gone. She’d seen you making maps after people refused to move closer together like you suggested. I know she said a rosary for you.”

“I wouldn’t have left without telling her.” But he hadn’t bothered to check on her, not even when she didn’t show for the food drops. Maybe if he had…

Irina set her hand over his and squeezed. “Seeing you in the alley was like a miracle.”

Some miracle. He resisted the urge to sink onto the carpet and will himself to disappear. Sighing, he untangled his fingers from hers. “Why don’t you get cleaned up? I don’t want you scaring the niños .”

She plucked at her tee shirt before skimming her hand along her swollen jaw. “Guess I look pretty scary, huh?”

“Nothing a bath wouldn’t help,” he lied. “There should be a clean towel in the bathroom. As for clothes…”

She was so thin; she could probably fit in Lucia’s things.

Irina shrugged. “I’ll find something.”

Trudging out of the bedroom, Manny dug the papers out of his hoodie’s pocket. He’d used the printouts from Google maps to track the Redaction in his neighborhood then to plan his scavenging runs. Pages of boxes on curving black top, each street numbered or named.

Now, he’d use them to find an empty house to live in.

The gated community seemed the safest bet. Those gringos had money and were white, so the soldiers would listen to them. And as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to travel that far to steal supplies. He ran his hand over the red exes and the blue boxes—red for redaction, blue for deserted.

Hopefully by the time, he got the niños out of the attic, fed them and prepared for the trip, he’d have thought of a way to get past the soldiers’ guns and their tanks.

Sunnie hooked her finger around the side of the honeycomb blind and peered into the front yard. Her breath fogged the double-paned windows. On the street beyond the low branches of a swaying mesquite tree, the Humvee coasted forward. With its bank of lights off, it moved through the cul-de-sac like a shark in dark water.

One soldier hadn’t been too bad; he hadn’t shooed her to her room or said a word when he found her eavesdropping around the hall corner. But the other… Blindly, she reached for her drink, hoping that sugary soda would wet her dry mouth. Her knuckles hit the metal frame of her desk before her fingers skimmed the glass top. Moisture clung to her skin as she wrapped her hand around the cup.

The other had been a complete douche bag—bossing Aunt Mavis around and threatening her. Sunnie’s heart drummed inside her chest. But her aunt hadn’t backed down. Not one little bit. Go, Aunt Mavis! She’d even called the Surgeon General.

Her aunt knew the Surgeon General.

Sunnie smiled. Wait until she told the peeps on line. They wouldn’t discount what she posted. EVER!

The Humvee’s lights switched on, spotlighting first the Swartz’s house, and then the Lee’s, before bouncing off the Peterson’s onto the street. The owners were gone now. God only knew if the Petersons had survived the Redaction when they’d joined their family in Minnesota. The ‘for sale’ sign in their yard creaked as it swung back and forth. Sunnie caught the straw in her lips and sucked the soda into her mouth.

The Swartz’s and Lee’s houses had been emptied one body at a time—college-age children first, then the teenagers, and last were the parents. At least, Aunt Mavis had removed the orange biohazard tape and kept the yard clean. She maintained the landscaping for all six houses in the cul-de-sac. She claimed it deterred the thieves and looters by making the place looked lived in.

Sunnie slid her drink onto her desk. The yard work wouldn’t fool anyone. The houses reeked of emptiness and death.

The military vehicle turned the corner and the taillight’s red glow faded. Darkness prowled the neighborhood. Sunnie released the blind and it sprang back into place. Shuffling forward, she reached her desk and opened her laptop. The screen blinked, before it burped the Redaction In Action bulletin board.

Pixilated skeletons walked from crudely drawn houses to collapse in heaps on the curb. Every once in a while, one would turn to their former residence and beckon the other inhabitants to join him.

They usually did.

Sunnie scanned the topic headings and the last response. No surprise there. Everyone talked about their first day out and about. She would have too if the soldiers hadn’t told her aunt that the Redaction was back. She opened the file and scanned the subheadings before clicking on the thread titled: Did This Happen to Anyone?

chesshire8: I escaped my crib 2day. Met my ppl F2F, or wots left alive, at JDs. Sum1 sneezed, and the place cleared out.

MLKWIT: STBY! Did you leave 2

chesshire8: F* yeah. RDXON ain’t getting me. LOL.

catsin99: NYers are stronger. Guy coughed and no1 noticed.

MLKWIT: GAL catsin99. NYers ain’t braver, they’re TSTL.

TSTL. That’s harsh. No one wants to think they’re too stupid to live. Sunnie scrolled through the responses on the page. One in three people reported sneezing or coughing. One in three. Her legs shook and she collapsed onto her padded office chair. How many of them could already be infected? Metal creaked as it adjusted to her weight.

nymetsfan1K: FU MLKWIT

MLKWIT: JK. GAL. Mets suck!

“Nice job.” Sunnie shook her head. MLKWIT always flamed on the boards. “Say you’re just kidding, before telling everyone to get a life and insulting their team.”

Her cursor blinked next to her screen name sunEbrIt. Rubbing her hands together, she warmed up her fingers then backed out of the thread. After opening the one titled News, she lowered her hands on the keys and typed: RDXON back.

Her fingers stilled. Should she add more? No one had reported any deaths, just a few coughs and sneezing. Even old man Quartermain had coughed and she hadn’t automatically assumed it was the Redaction. She’d need something more.

Some proof Aunt Mavis could provide.

Otherwise they’d dismiss her as a meth-head. Rolling out from under her desk, Sunnie stood up. The oak floors creaked under her feet. Her socks glided over the polished wood as she made her way from the guest bedroom to the great room. “Aunt Mavis?”

Her aunt sat at the dining room table hunched over her silver laptop. One hand gathered her silver streaked hair into a ponytail when she slouched against the cane back chair.

Was she running the projections the Surgeon General wanted? Sunnie crept across the tile and craned her neck to see the computer screen. A map of the US ballooned up. Red dots started in New York, Louisiana, and Southern California. The second hand swept around a clock face in the bottom. When the hour hand hit two, the red dots had doubled in size and spread along blue lines identified as Interstates and train tracks.