Geoff North - How the World Ends

Fred was rising up.

He isn’t dead. He’s just sick… Really, really sick.

He was on the sergeant seconds later. Fartel was too stunned and horrified to fight back. Fred’s skin was grey and moving. Veins were bulging across his stomach, chest, throat, and face. He raked his finger nails down Jeffrey’s ribcage and the sergeant cried out. Fred went in and bit his tongue out.

Fartel stopped struggling moments later. A dozen puddles of grey swarmed over his body and began entering the inside of him. Fred took a hold of Fartel’s lower jaw and ripped it away from the rest of his face. He stuck his lips against the opening it left and sucked the gushing blood as it rushed out.

Fartel came back to life thirty seconds later. He pushed Fred away and stood back up. They were standing side by side once again, but the dying mushroom clouds at their backs no longer held their interest. They lurched westward.

Somewhere in the back of brains they no longer possessed were memories. The ticks clustered there and fed on the stored information. There was food that way. Fresh hosts.

Thousands of them.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t possibly be happening. Hayden considered slamming the steering wheel with both fists as Caitlan had done less than twelve hours earlier. He didn’t bother. Hayden didn’t swear at the old Buick either. It hadn’t done Caitlan any good with the Audi, and it certainly wouldn’t help him out of the jam he was in now.

He was half a mile from Brayburne, and the car he’d stolen from the two soldiers wouldn’t start. Hayden had physically assaulted both of those soldiers, an attack that may have even left one of them dead. He had then marched into Brayburne and picked a fight with one of the volunteer recruits—a cock-sucking horse murderer—and broken every bone in his face.

He hadn’t regretted his actions, and he would do it all over again given the chance. The only thing Hayden wished he’d planned better was his escape. But there had been no escape plan; Hayden had sent his son off with the others fully expecting to never see them again. The bombs going off for a second time had made escape possible—the same kind of bombs that had taken almost everything away from him weeks before, had saved his life. It was ironic as hell, but Hayden saw no humor in it. Another car had died in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of his life, and when night turned back to day in a few more short hours, Hayden would likely be discovered and taken into custody.

Half a dozen nuclear detonations had lit the evening sky. When the sixth one’s terrible flame had finally extinguished, evening gave way instantly to full night. The only light Hayden could see now was coming from the fires in Brayburne. They’ll be searching for me now. Surprised they haven’t found me yet. He grabbed the military binoculars he’d found in the glove box and trained it on the closest fire. He clicked a button on top and the unit made a faint electric whistling sound. Everything lit up green. Night vision. Non-obtrusive digital displays targeted objects and told him distances. He settled in on the iron barrel that he’d kicked over hours earlier. It had been set back up, and the fire burning inside was a shimmering white ball surrounded in green wisps. A few more whitish-green blobs surrounded it—people huddled around the flames, warming themselves in the cold night. Hayden moved the binoculars slowly left, and then slowly right. No one was approaching his way from town. If he set out now, if he started walking north, he could likely put five or six miles between him and Brayburne before it started getting light.

But then what? The gravel pit he’d instructed Caitlan to drive to was thirty miles away. It would take the better part of a full day to walk that distance, and even if he could make it without being picked up by the military first, what did he expect to find? Caitlan and Angela would no longer be at the gravel pit. Hayden had been very specific about that. If I’m not back with you guys by midnight, keep heading north. Find something… somewhere. Take care of the children. Hayden wasn’t sure of the exact time, but he knew midnight had already come and passed. They would’ve already started heading north by now.

Hayden wasn’t going to walk. He was either going to get the piece of shit Buick he was sitting in running again, or he was going to find another vehicle. And the only other working vehicles around were in Brayburne. Hayden would have to sneak back into town and steal one of the commandeered cars parked in the outdoor lot.

He threw the binoculars back on the seat and started to get out. He paused and picked them up again. Hayden would need every advantage at his disposable, and there were very few of those. The vehicle impound was further east. He tucked the binoculars into the back of his pants and set out.

Tommy had never known pain like this. His entire face was in agony. He touched a cheek with his fingers, and winced. That created even more pain. The old fucker did this. He got me down and beat the snot out of me. The old fucker was in his mid-thirties, but anyone over the age of twenty-five in Tommy Boyd’s eyes was ancient. That wasn’t right. It was a goddamned travesty that someone as fit and young as Tommy had had the shit kicked out of him by someone so fucking old. The beating had been bad enough, but having all the others witness it had hurt much more.

Tommy groaned and lifted his aching body up from the bed he’d been placed into.

“Easy, son. Go slow. Your face is a mess, but I’m more worried about those ribs.”

Tommy slowly swung his feet to the dirt floor and saw the white cloth wrapped around his chest and stomach. It was too tight. He tried a body stretch to the right and stopped. It felt like someone had planted a knife in his lung.

“What did I just tell you?”

Tommy looked at the man sitting on the end of a bed next to his. He was older than the asshole that had made mush of his face, a lot older. “Do I know you?”

The man pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose and rubbed a few strands of grey hair back over his mostly bald skull. “I’m Fred Gill. I was Brayburne’s only practicing physician up until about three weeks ago.”

“You’re… like a doctor?”

“Yes, I’m like a doctor.” He didn’t look at Tommy as he spoke. There was a woman sleeping in the bed he was sitting on. Most of her hair had fallen out, and it looked as though someone had taken a blowtorch to her face, neck, and upper chest. “I’ve worked in Brayburne for the last forty-two years. I’ve treated what seems like a million cases of flu in the very young and the very old, I’ve set thousands of broken bones straight, and I’ve delivered over five hundred babies.” He patted the woman’s leg gently and stood. “Never dreamed I would have to treat a thirty-year old kindergarten teacher for radiation sickness.”

“It looks… it looks painful.” Her skin had a shiny, stretched look. It reminded Tommy of wax.

“I’m sure it is. Thank heavens she’s too far gone to feel much of anything anymore.” He finally looked at Tommy with bloodshot old eyes under bushy white eyebrows. “I’m too old to be looking after people a third of my age. I’ve seen dozens like her in the last few days… folks wandering into town, suffering terribly. I’ve watched entire families slip away… fathers, mothers, sons and daughters… people supposedly blessed to have survived the attack. Some have recovered, sort of. Maybe they wandered off out of this tent and died somewhere else, I don’t have a clue. I tend to anyone that comes in here, no matter how much my old bones ache, and how tired my old brain gets. That’s my job, still, and I’ll do it until I drop dead. But you know what really pisses me off, son?”