Jim LaVigne - Plaguesville, USA

Besides these visitors, Teresa and the kids had the Hunter. He didn’t exactly live there, but he might as well. Every day, whether she needed him or not, he made sure she was alright, with plenty of food and good water and the best place to live that he could find. It wasn’t a romantic thing, at least not yet, and it went beyond simple pity, although she certainly deserved pity, but he somehow just liked being around her and the kids. It made him feel like he was part of something, anything, for once in his life, and not just roaming around looking for dirt-bags and claim jumpers. And if maybe, some day in the misty future, Teresa saw fit to think of him in that way, at all? Well, that was almost too much to hope for. And if she never did? That was perfectly fine, too. He was more than willing to devote himself to her happiness either way. He owed her that much.

Turning onto Bay Street, he walked another few blocks as the sun started to burn off the morning fog and the sea began to glitter, out past the sagging remains of the Golden Gate. Like a perfect symbol of the Fall, the once-mighty span now lay half-collapsed in the bay. Huge rusted cables trailed in the water and only nesting birds had any use for it. It had fallen.

But it sounded, from the first reports anyway, like the human race would not suffer the same fate. The doctors and scientists were already testing a new vaccine for the Sick that they said would stop it once and for all. Maybe not plague itself, and not everything else that people died of, either, not disease or old age or violence, but at least now the main threat, the shape-shifting, evil strain they’d all come to call the Sick, would be tamed and humanity would at least have a fighting chance. Oh, humanity might still flicker out, but if it did, now it would be its own fault.

And all thanks to Dr. Justin Kaes. To be fair though, the Hunter reminded himself, there had been plenty of others without whom they would never have succeeded. Teresa, the Reform Council of New America, Santiago and CJ and Stiletto and that whole group. Justin’s colleagues, Dr. Poole and the others who’d died so terribly and needlessly along the way. The Kid, little Santiago Junior, who’d saved them all, not to mention crusty old Mr. Lampert himself. Even Bowler, the poor dumb bastard, had played a part. So many, and so few survivors.

As for his own role, he tried to think that, once he’d come around (regrettably late, of course, but still in time), he’d done all he could to help. He still felt bad about his past, the terrible things he’d done, especially Cornell, but he was working hard to make up for it, in any way he could find, and had no intention of going back. Maybe, with a little luck, he would rack up enough good karma to even the scales, a least a little.

Walking up the path to Teresa’s building, he heard laughter and then a kid’s shriek of pure joy. Probably little Justin. Already, the little boy was a handful; bright, inquisitive, expressive, he was into everything and afraid of nothing. Much like his parents.

Teresa was sitting at the dining room table when the Hunter walked in. Strikingly beautiful as always, she had let her hair grow out and now wore it in a thick pony tail. She’d stopped wearing her banger leathers of late and today was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a pale gray sweater that offset her dark eyes.

In the distance, down a hallway, he could hear Barb Cass happily chasing the kids, but Teresa was absorbed with something on the table. As he walked up, he saw that it was a lined pad of paper and some pencils and that she was slowly, carefully writing something. She looked up at him and smiled, a pretty decent grin for once, and put down the pencil.

“Jack!” she said. He was still getting used to being called that, but it was getting easier. Teresa looked at the bag in his hands. “That what I think it is?” she asked, arching one brow.

“You know it,” he nodded, handing it over.

Eagerly, she took the bag, opened it, and took a good sniff. Then she sat back down and started wolfing them like there was no tomorrow. Reading and writing and the niceties of etiquette and proper civilization, all things she’d been trying very hard with, all that was fine, but these were her favorite! Happily, he waited and then nodded at the pad and pencil.

“What ya got there?” he asked. “More school work?”

“Nope,” she said between healthy bites, smiling brightly. “I’m gonna write a book! All about the adventures of Dr. Kaes an’ Mr. Lampert an’ how they saved the world. You know, the whole story, like, so everybody’ll remember. So they don’ forget why they still here. So whattaya think? Sound like a good story?”

Jack Shipman smiled and nodded. “I think it sounds like a great story,” he said. “But then, who knows? Maybe it’s not over yet.”

“What you mean?” she asked, cocking her head adorably, a hint of whipped cream on her lower lip. “What ain’t over?”

“Us,” said Shipman. “You, me, Barb and Erin and Doug and the kids, the whole city. Did you know that there’s a story goin’ around of a link-up with Baron Zero? Some plan to get the old phone lines workin’? Guess that’s kinda what I meant. We ain’t done yet, you know? Humanity.”

Teresa nodded, her attention straying back to her writing, and finished off the cakes. Shipman smiled indulgently, glad at her disinterest. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, he’d tell her about the plans for the Dr. Justin Kaes Memorial or how they wanted to rename Haight Street Howard Lampert Boulevard. But there would be time enough for that. For now, he went to look for the Kid; he’d promised to take him to the movies, and Santiago Junior never, ever forgot a promise. And besides, the movie, The Wizard of Oz , was a sort of sentimental favorite.

Plaguesville, USA

Jim LaVigne

Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

Copyright 2011, 2012 Jim LaVigne

www.PermutedPress.com