Brian Steele - 4POCALYPSE - Four Tales of a Dark Future

“You sit there until my head clears—wouldn’t happen to have any coffee would you?”

The stranger didn’t reply but his eyes said it all, he had stumbled onto one insane woman.

“Damn it! I hate being woken up like that. And don’t say another fucking word until my head clears. You son of a bitch.”

She rolled and packed her sleeping bag and shrugged her arms into the straps of her pack and tugged until she had it up and buckled. She stepped out the door and looked over to her bikes. They were where she left them, apparently untouched.

She went back into the closet. Grabbed one of the power bars that had fallen out when she fed the coyotes and began eating it.

“You alone?” She asked between bites. The man nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Winston.”

“Well, Winston, what makes you roam the streets of Dallas alone. Keep in mind that if you lie to me, I will go ahead and kill you. So I’m going to ask again. Are you alone?”

“No. My family is out back.”

“Family?”

“Wife and kid.”

“Wife and kid. You have a wife and you’re fondling my tits.” He nodded. “You’re an asshole, Winston.” She balled up the wrapper from the power bar, tossed it at him and it ricocheted off of his forehead. “Ok, this is the way it’s going to be, Winston. I’m going to drag you up to your feet and then we’re going out back. If you really have a wife and kid, other than me telling your wife that you’re a sleaze, I’ll let you live. But let me tell you, Winston, if there is someone out there that isn’t a wife or a kid, I’ll shoot them through the back of your head. Tell me, Winston, who’s out there?”

Winston gulped.

“Just what I thought. To conserve my bullets, I’m going to kill you with your own gun.” She clicked the hammer back. “Last chance Winston…”

“It is his wife and kid,” a woman said. “And he is a sleaze… but he’s my sleaze, so please let him live.”

Jasmine turned to the voice and it was a young woman not much older than Jasmine, and she was carrying a baby strapped to her chest. Jasmine lowered the pistol and looked at her for a moment. She then looked at the baby, who looked as hungry as anyone she had ever seen.

“What in God’s name are you doing out here?” Jasmine asked. She then approached the woman. “I know you, you’re… you’re Shelly… You worked in the commissary.”

Cracking a slight but crooked smile, Shelly said, “Jasmine?”

Jasmine gave Shelly a brief hug. Then kissed the baby on the cheek. “Sammy, right? Hi, baby boy.” She then kissed him again. “What in the hell is going on, Shelly?”

“Like you, we’re looking for the Pharmacist,” Winston said from behind her. “You don’t think you’re the only person capable do you?”

“And you think you are,” Jasmine said, rolling her eyes. “I’m stunned you made it this far, and if you let a woman who is half your size take you down, what do you think a bunch of dopers will do to you—and how in the hell did you get this far?”

“We’ve been following you,” Shelly answered. “I knew you’d clear a path for us.”

Jasmine dropped her pack and took out another power bar and gave it to Sammy. She then took what looked to be an old soup or soda can and put a little water in it, shook it clean. She threw the water on Winston, and put a little more water in it and gave it to Shelly. “Sammy will need it when he’s done with the bar.”

Jasmine then went back to Winston and kicked him in the leg. “You stupid son of a bitch, that’s for bringing a child with you!” He yelled out and she kicked him a second time. “And that’s for groping me, you bastard.”

She then turned to Shelly, who looked incredibly frightened, and said, “You can’t come with me, Shelly, you can’t. The chances of me surviving are slim, and to make it worst, I don’t care if I live or not. You, on the other hand, have a baby.”

Jasmine then turned and kicked Winston. She then handed Shelly Winston’s pistol and left.

Downtown Dallas held no resemblance to the posters that Jasmine remembered and collected as a child. The ball atop Reunion Tower was gone. The building with the green lights that framed the outline, save for a few rusty beams at the top, had collapsed. The catastrophe of Dallas brought tears to her eyes. She remembered how much her mother loved living in Dallas and hated moving to Kansas. In fact it was one of the reasons she joined the Impact Analysis and Design team, the team that designed and constructed the underground cities throughout the world. Had they gone west to the City of Texas she might be alive today, maybe even her father, too, had things been different.

She lay on her stomach, hidden in the midst of several downed buildings on Junius St., looking through her binoculars at the remains of the Baylor Medical Center where the Last Pharmacist was supposed be hidden, where his drugs were supposedly produced. Also beneath the center was an abandoned railway track that at one time was used for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system. The tunnels had survived and Jasmine suspected so had the rails. She believed it was the main hub and distribution center. From the looks of the guards that surrounded the building, the facility was still intact and still in business.

She dropped her head in her hands wondering what she was going to do now. In her haste and hatred she hadn’t thought far enough nor even planned as to what would happen when she got Dallas. She really didn’t believe she would make it, let alone have a solid plan.

She backed out of the fallen building and hurried over to the dirt bike, mounted, it and sped off in the direction of Malcolm X Boulevard in the direction of an entrance that her Uncle Baul had given her. No one knew the condition of the entrance to the tunnel but it was a start. No one really knew if the drug were being produced here but as many had tried, this was where they failed.

She got as far as walking distance and stopped and then laid the bike on its side, hidden in the middle of weeds and brick.

The sun, what she could see of it, had set, turning the golden haze into a dusky brown. The air was thick with putrid odors left from the fallout. The scientists were unsure how long the odor would last or what potential damage was hidden behind the odor but predicted another year, maybe two before everything would dissipate. The cities were in the planning stages. The outposts that Angela would lead would play an important role in the protection of the construction of the new US. Jasmine hoped they’d be in Hawaii soon after.

Crouched, Jasmine darted across an open field and then dove into the dark entrance where she rolled down the steps and onto the entrance to the loading area.

She lay there for a moment, looking around, and then slowly got to her feet. She then went deeper into the tunnel toward the entrance to the medical center. She crept into the darkness as if she knew where she was going. As if she had a clue where to go.

And deeper into the bowels beneath the medical center sat the factory that formulated and manufactured all of the medication used within the US and, along with those legal medications, the synthetic Heroin was produced, boxed, and mailed to mail centers within the underground cities.

Jasmine managed to open a door that led even deeper into the facility to a stairwell that wound down as far as she could see. She couldn’t imagine a facility that could have been created without government knowledge, especially such a place beneath a medical center. Surely there had to be records. She stopped and pulled a schematic of the center and looked it over. Nowhere in the schematic was there a stairwell.