CHAPTER 3

When he was a little boy, Daniel watched an old classic show about zombies. They shuffled around mindlessly, walking corpses that ate any living thing they found. The survivors, the ones who were not zombies, fought a constant war to stay alive. They also fought other human beings who were evil and wanted to be in charge.

In the old series, a virus made the zombies too. The reality was quite a different thing. Daniel Montero looked at the distant horizon and the desolation that stood before him. He almost wished for the sight of just one pitiful zombie.

When the virus first broke out, people were shocked and angry at the inability of the government to protect and help them. Too scared, too confused, and too overwhelmed, no one rose to loot and pillage. The worst thing you could do in times of an epidemic was to be out in the streets among others who might have the disease.

People hid in their homes and held their dying loved ones. They buried the dead in backyards or wrapped them tightly and sealed them in closed rooms to keep the stench confined. They, in turn, died alone in their beds. The cities became quieter and quieter until only the distant roll of thunder, the lonesome wail of a cat, or the mournful baying of a dog was the only thing heard.

Silence. Such deep, deafening silence all around. He’d never thought about the noises of civilization before the pandemic: the rattle of the morning news, the hiss of the coffee fountain, the hum of the refrigerator, the ping of the microwave, the gentle music in an elevator, the Saturday morning electric lawnmowers, the roar of an airplane overhead, the ringing of your iPhone 300. All the little noises that signaled the company of humanity, the comfort of home, and the strength of a nation.  Now he ached for those. How comforting they were!

The noise faded until silence became the new noise. Now, the sound of a human voice was like the unnatural screech of fingernails on a metal surface, stark, shrill, painful. He and Johnny tended to whisper to each other even when they knew there was no need. The dead would surely feel comforted by the sound of the living.

He longed for the rush of summer, dragging its black storms like a mother holding her children’s hands as she rushed home. He looked forward to the roar of thunder, a dark lullaby to sing him to sleep in the comfort of the planet’s noise, angry as it may be, but sound, none-the-less.

But the cities were silent forever. Any survivor would be crazy to stay in a dead city. There was no electricity in them, and the water was undrinkable. They were all concrete and tar, full of the rotted corpses no one buried, and the rodents and scavenger animals that fed upon such.

Untended in the presence of rain, snow, floods, hot summers, and cold winters, the structures were starting to crumble, the metal rusting, the tar cracking, the weeds growing. Cities which depended on the great electric pumps to keep out ocean water, were turning into murky lakes. They were becoming death traps.

Daniel gazed one last time at the town where his beloved family lied buried and left behind forever. The sense of loss was a crushing, heavy boulder sitting in the center of his chest, threatening to choke the life out of him.

“Pops, we need to keep moving. The sun is warming, and we can make some real headway if we get going now.”

Daniel turned to his son. He was the oldest of four, two boys and two girls. The others, their mother, grandparents, uncles, and aunts were all swept away on the tide of the pandemic. Two survivors out of a family that numbered close to fifty.

Doing the math, if the numbers were the same everywhere, it meant that less than one in twenty people may have survived. The planet had lost around 95 percent of its population, possibly more. Yet he believed that he and his son were a rare exception. If five percent of the people survived, then where were the 40,000 people that should be alive in the Detroit area? He was afraid the survival rate may have been a small fraction of one percent. That crate sitting on his chest got unbearably heavy.

If only one percent survived, then three and a half million people were out there, spread across the entire continent. It was just a matter of finding them. They were most likely scared and hiding.

“Pops, are you okay? You’re not so young anymore. Maybe you need to rest?” His son looked at him with worried eyes, fear of losing his last family member etched on his handsome face.

“No, Johnny, no problem. At sixteen, you might think my forty-two years make me ancient, but I’m strong and still young. I’m just having a little trouble contemplating my losses. But it’s all good. We’ll keep moving but not too fast, stopping every hour for short rests. There’s no need to hurry. Let the wind blow us where it will. We’ll ride the wind.”

******

Their packs were heavy with their precious cargo. They worked the previous winter months scavenging the city for the things they wanted. They also spent long hours discussing what they needed to take on their trip. They planned to start moving with the first stirrings of Spring. They would head south, then west, until they reached land with mild winters and good soil for growing things.

The snows finally stopped for good. Mountains of snow and ice covered the highways. It took weeks of above-freezing temperatures for them to melt. Harsh winters without electric power were deadly for the soft, pale children of technology.

They headed south on I-75, three lone figures riding on bicycles, heavy camping packs strapped to their backs. It was two years since the start of the pandemic. Already, the roads showed cracks and ruts where the melting snows had left their mark. Wind-blown debris littered the never-ending strand of highway. They often skirted around those obstacles.

There were spots where mounds of melting ice and snow still lingered. Incredibly enough, vehicles on the sides of the road were rare, and no dead bodies littered the shoulder. It was not an atomic bomb, a tsunami, or a meteor from heaven that ended humanity.

There was plenty of time for people to get home, to secure their vehicles, to stock their shelves. There were no military planes eager to blow away quarantined towns. There was no pillaging or rioting.

The virus showed up in South America first. It spread fast, its progress so rapid that in weeks, every household in Mexico had dead members. The United States, so vulnerable in its southern border, was quickly overwhelmed. Countries rushed to close their airports and points of entry, but the physical borders proved impossible to protect.

There was no time to develop a vaccine. Healthcare workers tending the sick were always the first to die because they were the most exposed to contagion. The people stayed away from the hospitals and tended their sick at home. Soon, it became clear that no one survived. If you fell ill, you were dead within five to ten days.

Daniel and Johnny nursed their own loved ones. They held the dying family members, wiped the fever sweat, dabbed the bleeding noses and eyes. They breathed the tainted air exhaled by them and buried their dead in the backyard.

They waited for signs of their own illness. Daniel hoped to be the last, so he could bury his son and not leave the corpse to rot or be scavenged by animals. Miraculously, they never sickened. Somehow, they were immune.

Dr. Salvo believed something in their genetic and chemical makeup kept them from getting sick. He said such was always the case in epidemics. During the plagues of the Middle Ages, there were people who never got sick. When the HIV virus began to spread in the 1980s, there were some who carried the virus but never got the disease. Daniel himself seldom got the flu. He didn’t feel lucky. If he felt anything other than pain, it was guilt. He tried not to feel at all.

They passed structures along the way such as electric towers, warehouses, and trucking stations. There were few shopping centers. Most shopping took place at home through the holographic virtual catalogues of online stores.

The exception were businesses such as beauty salons, childcare, medical care, and restaurants. These were physical services. One of the biggest industries was over-ground shipping. The storage, shipping, and delivery of all merchandise bought online was big business. The men didn’t bother stopping at those since they needed nothing. The sight of those places only made them sad, and they pedaled faster to get away from them.

Spring was beginning and already buds and leaves were sprouting, uncaring that humanity was gone. The birds had not returned; there was not a single bird visible. The only sound was the sound of the wind coming in from the west and bringing with it the damp smell of lake water.

They made it a habit to get off the road and spend time cruising the eerie and desolate residential areas bordering the highway. They cruised through those neighborhoods, calling out to attract the attention of survivors, blowing on security whistles they scrounged back in Detroit.

No one came. Anyone still alive was afraid to show. They might fear being attacked or having to share whatever supplies they had. Females would fear rape or worse. It was possible there was no one.

They lunched at McDonald’s. The parking lot was full of leaves and windblown debris. The building was desolate and damp, its windows cracked and filthy. It smelled of mildew, mice, and melted snow water. The booths were still there, and they used an old rag to wipe one clean. They sat down to a meal of canned ravioli, green beans, and peaches.

After they finished, they took a quick look inside in case there was something worth taking, but there wasn’t. The place was open to scavenging animals and the elements. They took one last wistful look at the painfully familiar arches and moved on.