Geoff North - How the World Ends

Angela laughed. “Everyone’s been heading for the obvious choices… looting grocery stores, malls, restaurants and houses. No one’s even thought of checking inside places like this.”

“Trucking weigh stations,” Hayden said.

Caitlan poured another shot. “Dentist’s offices, tire shops, roofing supply outlets and police stations. There’s hundreds of other businesses and institutions out there to hit that most people haven’t even thought of exploring yet. Funny thing is—all those folks that used to work in these places had daily needs. They needed water and food, and weigh stations like this have more than enough to keep us going.”

“For now,” Hayden added. “They’ll empty out soon enough.”

Caitlan took the vodka bottle and leaned her big arms down onto the counter of the window. She slid it open and smelled the air. “It’s going to rain again soon. Them clouds south of the city look like shit.” She swigged from the bottle. “We should get moving, keep heading east.”

“You’re not driving,” Angela said.

“Yeah, yeah… I’ve been drinking. You gonna take the wheel instead?”

“Not me,” she answered. Angela looked to Hayden. “Will you come with us?”

“We were headed for the city… I was going to find a home for Nicholas.”

Angela shook her head grimly. Caitlan replied for all of them. “You won’t find a home there. The city’s still burning, and what’s left is being run by fucking lunatics.”

“Hayden,” Nicholas called out softly. “I don’t wanna go there no more.”

“Where?” Hayden looked at all of them in turn. “Where are you going?”

Caitlan screwed the cap back onto her bottle. She pointed the end of it towards the dull mustard glow off on the eastern horizon. “Away from that. Away from the worst of the fallout and the sick-minded fuckers.”

“We came from the northwest. One of the bombs fell not that far from my farm. You won’t find anything there, either.”

“Then we’ll continue headed west, maybe even swing down south into the States.”

“More people in the States,” Caitlin said. “More people, more lunatics, more guns.”

Amanda pushed Nicholas away gently. “We have to go somewhere. We barely have room to all stand in here. I want to find some place with a bed.”

“Amen to that, girl.” Caitlan handed the Audi key to Hayden. “Treat her good, pretty boy. Not one more scratch, or I’ll blacken both those eyes to match your fat nose.”

Roy and Louie ate their late supper in silence. It consisted of eight pounds of stewing beef they’d found in a basement freezer that no longer worked. Roy had started a fire in the ditch next to the highway, and Louie had roasted the meat over the flames until it was black.

“It will make us sick,” Louie muttered between bites. He looked over his shoulder back towards the city. “We’ll probably be puking our guts out all night long.”

“It still felt cool. It won’t kill us. Better than not eating at all.”

Louie drank the rest of his warm beer down to wash the burned taste from his mouth. They had discovered two 15-packs of Rainier Mountain Fresh next to the freezer. It didn’t taste all that fresh, but it was doing a good enough job of dulling Louie’s senses. Roy had finished one of the boxes already. Louie cracked the tab open on another and sipped. “If we’re sleeping outdoors, I suggest you find some more wood to burn. We’re going to need a bigger fire.”

“I was cooped up in a shopping mall for days. I like it outside. If you want wood, go get it yourself.” He caught Louie glancing over his shoulder at the city east of them. “What the hell do you keep looking back that way for? You miss that shit-hole I found you climbing out of?”

“Miss it? No.”

“Maybe you want to go back to that fucking hotel?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then what’s got you spooked?”

Louie took a long swallow and belched. “I’m worried about the people I left behind. I don’t think it went well for them in the end.”

“I thought you said they were all dead.”

“They are.” Louie hadn’t told him about the microscopic ticks he’d unleashed on level 10 of the DSC. He hadn’t shared the story with Roy of how he’d watched his old boss come back to life with a billion of the tiny arachnids controlling his every move. “I’m just concerned with some of the stuff they were working on when everything ended. It was some pretty freaky shit.”

“No sense worrying about it now. That freaky shit is behind us now.” Roy hadn’t told Louie he’d murdered a hundred and twelve people in cold blood. Some secrets were better kept to yourself. “Let’s have some more beers and forget about everything for the next ten hours or so. Eustache is only a couple miles away. Maybe we’ll find something to eat for breakfast there.”

Louie passed him another beer and the two drank in silence. Roy watched the flames. Louie kept an eye on the darkened city behind them.

The thing once called Tom Braden lurched along the destroyed sidewalk. The man that once held an important research position at the Winnipeg DSC was no longer human. He had died days earlier when the Tick LDV3 swarm had entered his body and clogged every artery and vein inside him. The ticks—feeding and growing on his cooling blood—had brought Tom back. He could no longer think. His brain was controlled by the swarm. They controlled his movements, they dictated where he went, and what he needed to do.

And the ticks needed Tom to find others to feed on. They needed new hosts to multiply their numbers. Tom stumbled along on swollen feet the color of mold. His fat toes burst open further with each step, releasing fat ticks onto the ground. The ticks scrambled away into the shadows, giving birth to thousands and millions more. These babies joined the growing swarm in search of fresh blood.

Behind Tom, thirty-seven previous employees of the DSC followed. Their arms and legs, their fingers and toes, all swollen and ready to burst.

They marched awkwardly through the smoldering destruction of what was, spreading what would be.

“Where was it you used to work?” Roy asked as Louie vomited for the third time into the remains of their fire. “I know we were both pretty tanked last night, but I remember you saying something about them working on freaky shit. What was it exactly?”

Louie Finkbiner wiped his chin and rolled over onto the dead grass. “I knew we shouldn’t have eaten that spoiled meat. Christ… I’ve never been so sick in my life.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have washed it down with a dozen warm beers.”

Louie pictured the beer in his mind. He could hear the tabs cracking open, and he could see the foam spilling up over the lids. The thought made his stomach rumble again. “Quit talking about it… please.”

“Then tell me about your workplace. Tell me about the freaky shit.”

“I worked at the DSC—that stands for Disease Study Center.”

“I’m not a fucking rube, I know what it stands for.”

Louie continued. “There was containment breach the day the bomb hit. A box holding some ticks broke open, released a swarm of the microscopic things… we evacuated the lower levels, but the damn things found a way out. I—that is we, spent the following days moving up level by level, attempting to secure the outbreak… a lot of good people were lost. I tried saving the last few, but the swarm moved too quickly. I was lucky to get out with my life.”

Roy was standing behind him, urinating. “Microscopic ticks… big deal. What’s so dangerous about that?” He turned, spraying yellow into the smouldering remains of the fire, dribbling across one of Louie’s feet along the way. “I had a dog once that used to get covered with wood ticks.”