Linda Andrews - Extinction Level Event

Now or never.

Keeping his eye on the balcony, he dragged the wagon down the meandering path. One step. Two. Three. The man didn’t return. Five. The pink sky appeared overhead. Shit. Manny ran until the branches concealed him again.

Step by step, he inched down the path. Sweat stung his eyes and he blotted at it with his bare arm. Finally, he couldn’t see the balcony anymore. Safe!

He started to turn when he heard it. The soft thump on concrete.

“I thought I heard someone out here.”

Sitting in the glow of the laptop’s screen, Mavis rubbed her eyes. God, what a day. It had started out so full of promise and now this. Sighing, she stared at the computer. The map of North America was completely black.

Humanity’s extinction.

She stretched on the dining room chair, felt the pop travel up her spine—vertebrae by vertebrae. Should she have told Sunnie that they’d survive? Knowledge did not always insure survival. Sometimes it was just dumb luck. She fingered the ninety-nine-point-nine percent under Phoenix. And with odds like that, she’d have a better shot picking all six numbers in Wednesday’s Powerball.

Of course, defeatists rarely survived a hangnail. Mavis closed the laptop.

Night slipped through the windowpanes and congealed in the corners of her house. Crickets droned, the only noise now that the power was out.

Pushing out of the seat, she padded across the tiles to the hallway and paused. Sunnie’s soft snores drifted down the hall. Mavis covered her yawn before leaning against the hallway wall. Fatigue had turned her blood to catsup slogging through her veins.

Maybe she should go to bed, catch a few Z’s, before the sergeant major showed up with that data. The soldier’s blue eyes twinkled at her from her not so distant memory. Her heart hiccoughed. Yeah, he was good-looking in a rugged kind of way. But still. The end of the world as we know it was hardly the time to be looking for a lover.

Except Mother Nature had designed humans to do exactly that—when face to face with mortality, people were hard wired to want sex—lots of sex to insure the species survived. And Jack had always been around to release the urges.

But now he was dead.

Unfortunately, the urges weren’t.

Get a grip, girl. Lust she could control. Sort of. Mavis straightened away from the wall. But the other… The end of the world as she knew it.

But not the end of life.

Or humanity.

Just a population bottleneck. The third since Homo sapiens first walked onto the African plain.

So how could she survive it? Her brain chugged through the fatigue like a steam engine up a steep grade. The answer tangled with the edges of her consciousness. The answer—

Her cell phone rang, sending a burst of light throughout the kitchen. Sweet Jesus! She set her hand on her chest to make certain her heart still remained snuggly inside. A midnight call.

Had the new strain hit the West coast?

Mavis trotted to the counter, snatched up the phone and silenced it. Her fingers fumbled to open the cell before she raised it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Spanner.” The man’s gravelly voice jangled through the airwaves.

Mavis blinked. Not the CDC, US AMRIID or other alphabet soup agency. “Mr. Quartermain?”

The old man coughed, the watery kind thick with phlegm. “Thought you’d want to know that the sergeant major came through the gate.” He wheezed. “Right handy with picking a lock, that young man. Might be nice to have that sort around.”

Mavis set her hand against her warm cheeks. Was her attraction to the man so obvious? Good gravy, she’d need to control it better. She had to work with the soldier. “He’s my liaison with the military, Mr. Quartermain.”

Yeah, that was convincing. She cleared the huskiness from her throat.

The old man’s chuckle chuffed through the connection. “I’m not so old that I don’t about liaisons, Mrs. Spanner. Your husband died, not you. Life goes on, ain’t no disrespect to the one to find comfort with another.”

Like she needed love advice from a man who’d been a widower for the last twenty-one years. Mavis traced a coffee stain on the laminate countertop. Time to change the subject. “Mr. Quartermain, how are you set with your emphysema and COPD meds?”

“I’ll get by, especially now that the stores are reopening.” He squeezed off the last word before spiraling into another coughing jag.

Mavis winced. The stores would shut down as soon as the influenza hit again, leaving the older man without access to his medicines. “Give me a list of your meds, and I’ll see that you get at least a six month’s supply.”

A click sounded in dead air. She’d wondered how long it would be until the government tapped her phone. Not that she had any intention of getting caught betraying governmental secrets for the public welfare.

“Is it back already?” Mr. Quartermain’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.

She crossed her fingers. “Not yet, but you know I’ve been predicting there’d be cases this spring.” That was true. Heck it had even been mentioned in the press release announcing the lifting of the public gathering ban. “And with the weather being crazy back East and the heating being unreliable, I don’t think we should take any chances.”

The sound of scratching drifted through the line. “Hear tell, some jokers have been driving off with truckloads of meds.”

“Yeah. Right off the factory lot.” At least that was common knowledge. No telling state secrets. She wiped her hand on her pants and walked toward the front. The sergeant major should be here soon. “Bring the list when you come by later this morning.”

“Will do. Take care, Mrs. Spanner and tell the sergeant major that I saw him enter.” Mr. Quartermain hung up.

Mavis pulled aside the picture window curtains and peered outside. He wasn’t here yet. Stuffing the phone into her pocket, she opened the front door. The stillness sank into her bones. The predawn hours used to be her favorite time of the day. Curled up next to Jack, listening to him breathe, while the neighborhood slowly awakened. The bark of dogs as someone took theirs for a walk.

Dogs.

Shutting the door behind her, Mavis stepped further onto the front porch and rubbed her arms through her sleeves. She missed the dogs the most. Their casualties had been twice humanities. Entire breeds had perished in those first few weeks.

How long had it been since she’d seen one? Months? Maybe they were all gone. God only knew how many had been locked inside to starve next to their dead master’s body.

Others had been eaten.

Not exactly a fitting end to man’s best friend. She leaned against the post. In the distance, an engine rumbled. The sound grew louder until finally headlights cut into the cul-de-sac. She pushed away from the porch as the Humvee drew to a stop alongside the curb. Her pulse drummed in her veins and heat chased away the early morning chill.

Seconds after killing the engine, the shadow behind the wheel exited the vehicle and a flashlight beam sliced through the darkness. It bounced over the street, up the driveway and across the porch before climbing her legs to her chest. “Been waiting long?”

Mavis resisted the urge to cover herself. Such foolishness. He’d stopped the light on her torso to see her face without blinding her. “Not long. Mr. Quartermain called to let me know you were on your way.”

David’s chuckles preceded him. “Didn’t think I’d sneak past the old man. How is he set for meds?”

“I’m taking care of it.” Mavis clasped her hands behind her back. Of course, the soldier knew of the natural attrition of the sick and dependent. He’d probably picked up the bodies as the cancer patients, diabetics and others had run out of their medicines and nature had taken its course. That death tally hadn’t been included in the thirty-five percent mortality rate of the Rattling Death. She peered into the light. “Did you bring me the jump drive?”