Crisis Event: Gray Dawn (7 page)

“Total score!” Sadie said, though she wasn’t looking forward to using some dead stranger’s toothbrush.

Hygiene is hygiene.

In the last pocket she checked, Sadie found an unopened spool of 1/16 inch wire rope. She already had a thicker length of hemp rope in her own pack, but she couldn’t see leaving the steel line behind.

After taking what she wanted, she tossed aside the old pack. It had been a nice score—the old shotgun and the shells especially—but nothing she’d found was going to get her off the roof and away from the dogs.

Feeding them cookies wouldn’t tame them, though dumping the can of beef stew off the front of the store might distract them enough to let her climb down and get out the back.

Still, she’d have to run from them, and she didn’t like the odds that they’d be distracted long enough for her to get out of Youngstown.

Briefly Sadie thought about dropping a wire noose down over one of the dog’s necks and yanking it up and hanging it to death. If she got lucky the other dogs would go after the carcass, though she was dubious about that likelihood.

It was an option. Just not a good one.

If she couldn’t get the dogs to eat the carcass of the first victim she’d be there all day hanging dogs, and would be so tired by the time she finished she’d have to go back down and sleep in the cold case with a dozen dead dogs for company.

After tucking the shotgun into her pack—which was getting ridiculously full—she paced around the hole in the roof a few times, trying to keep calm and think of a way out of her predicament. An hour later not much had changed, except the long haired man had been gnawed and chewed and torn to pieces, the Rice Krispie treat was in her belly—which was now gurgling angrily—and almost every dog she’d seen outside the 7-Eleven was now inside the building below her.

“I’ll have the squirts for sure now,” she said, scolding herself for her lack of self-control, but quickly deciding that since she was facing death anyway, indulging herself with a treat might not matter much in the big picture.

The thought occurred to her that she’d always been facing death—like every other human being who’d ever lived—and had never realized it. She was struck by the realization that all the enjoyments she’d denied herself before the Crisis had been pointless denials.

Images of boys flashed through her mind.

Like Rex, her high school crush.

She’d wanted to straight up seduce Rex and drag him off to bed, but she never did.

And there was Steven, the dorky guy from her freshman year at MIT.

He’d wanted her to smoke weed and hang out and blow off studying to play League of Legends.

She’d denied herself so that she could study chemistry and psychology. Now it looked like just another missed opportunity, like the time her senior year roommate, Claire, had gotten her drunk and nearly succeeded in tempting Sadie into a three-way with her and her boyfriend.

After a few minutes, the litany of missed opportunities and denials of basic human desires running through her head was too much to bear.

“Screw this philosophy crap,” Sadie said abruptly, and stopped pacing. Thinking time was over. It was acting time.

A quick look down the roof access hole started all the dogs barking again.

Sadie considered opening up on them with her rifle, but that would be a waste of ammo. It would also be a stupid tactical maneuver, since it would use up all her ammo. These dogs likely wouldn’t retreat in the face of gunfire, no matter how many of them she put down. They’d found themselves a new kennel and they’d treed themselves some food, and now they were probably willing to die for it.

Then there was the small problem that the gunfire would tell the Tall Man and anyone who was with him exactly where she was.

No, she needed a way to drive them out or to kill them completely—and silently.

The answer came a few minutes later, and it came as answers often did for her—from some unconscious, intuitive part of her brain.

She dropped to her knees beside her pack and dug deep in the main compartment. From way down at the bottom she pulled a black nylon bag full of sealed zip lock bags and vials she’d gathered in her travels. Within seconds she’d located the one she wanted: a baggie of pool shock she’d been using to purify water after boiling it.

The other ingredient was a bigger problem.

Not that she didn’t have it. It was here, waiting for her to pick it up and use it. She just hadn’t realized she was going to need it when she saw it the day before.

Getting a hold of it now was going to be a problem.

Sadie dropped the pool shock into the top of her pack and looked over at the old mop. The handle was long enough, she thought, but the problem was going to be improvising a hook. An old nail might work, or some skinny piece of metal she could bend or shape. A coat hanger was ideal, but she didn’t have one.

As she tried to figure out what to use for the hook she unscrewed the yellow plastic nut that held the mop attachment to the stick.

Then it hit her, and she scrambled over to where she’d dumped the skeletal suicide off his lawn chair. She stomped down on the flannel shirt and snapped several rib bones free of the the sternum. Then she dug out the best candidate and carried it back to the access hole.

After pulling a roll of duct tape out of her pack she lashed the rib bone to the end of the mop handle. It wasn’t a perfect hook, but it would do.

Next came the scary part, and before she could let herself chicken out of it, she stepped over the edge of the roof access hole and put her foot on the top rung of the ladder.

The dogs went insane.

They howled and barked and snapped and growled and several of the more athletic ones—the Border Collie and boxer—began leaping up to within two feet of her combat boot. She quickly retreated back onto the roof.

    She was blocked.

    The dogs weren’t going to let her get what she needed.

    She had to distract them

    Again, the answer came in a sudden flash. Sadie went back to the body and grabbed one of its hands. She pulled at it and the entire arm snapped free of the shoulder.

“Great,” Sadie said, and tossed it toward the access hole. Then she got a hold of the collar of the faded flannel shirt and tried to drag the remnants through the dust. She got halfway to the hole when the hips separated from the spinal column.

It took her several trips to transport the remains to the access hole, but finally she was ready to proceed.

    She scooped the remains up into one pile, then lifted them and tossed them down through the hole.

As soon as the skeleton hit the floor, the dogs went berserk, snapping at it, grabbing it in their jaws and pulling it apart, fighting with each other over who was going to get the most soft tissue and choicest bones—and the marrow still inside them.

While the dogs were distracted, Sadie stepped onto the top rung of the ladder, grabbed her mop handle hook, and descended a few steps.

At first none of the dogs came at her, so she reached down with the rib bone hook and used it to roll the Black Swan bottle toward her, bringing it right up against the bottom of the ladder. That was when a little mixed breed mutt saw her and came charging, snapping and growling at the rib bone.

“Git!” she said, and stabbed the curved bone at the mutt.

The dog jumped back and growled, standing with his teeth bared and his ears flat, ready to charge.

There must have been thirty dogs in the 7-Eleven by then, and they were quickly dividing up the skeleton. Sadie was running out of time. She took one more step lower, even though earlier she’d seen one of the dogs easily leap that high. If that dog came at her now, he’d get his teeth into her, which would be bad. There was no emergency clinic to go to—if she didn’t get dragged off the ladder and devoured alive.

Sadie regretted not securing a rope to her waist for safety, but decided it was too late to worry about it. She gripped the top rung of the ladder in her fist as hard as she could, then lowered the rib bone down to the Black Swan bottle and slipped it into the handle hole at the top of the bottle.

The rib bent away from the mop handle as soon as the full weight of the bottle was on it, but the duct tape didn’t break or come loose and the bottle tilted up to stand on its bottom.

When Sadie angled the handle upward the bottle lifted into the air.  

Sadie took a step up the ladder and the bottle came with her.

“Oh yeah,” she said, and took two more quick steps up the ladder. One more step up let her climb out onto the roof of the building and pull the bottle up with her. Now, if everything went right, she’d be off the top of the 7-Eleven in less than a half hour, and she wouldn’t have to wage a gun battle to do it.

Sadie pulled three big tabs of the pool shock out of her baggy. This left her two tabs, which she sealed up and tucked back into the nylon bag.

Next she opened the bottle of Black Swan and got ready. The tabs were too big to fit through the mouth of the bottle, so she broke all three in half and pushed the bottle neck, hoping that whoever had put the bottle in the 7-Eleven hadn’t replaced the original contents with something else. If they had, her risks would be for nothing.

“No turning back now,” she said, and capped the bottle.

She shook the bottle as hard as she could, counting slowly to twenty as she did it.

Then she took the last step of her little plan, which was the easiest: unscrewing the lid, holding the bottle over the open roof access hole, and dropping it.  

Though most of the dogs were still fighting over the dead guy’s bones, several of the smaller dogs heard the bottle thump against the concrete and flip over.

“Bullseye,” Sadie said.

Several dogs ran to the bottle, which was rolling slowly, the black swan on the white label rotating over and over.

Almost immediately, the dogs began howling. Their paws clicked and scratched against the dusty concrete floor as they tried to turn and run away from the green gas now bubbling out of the bottle’s mouth.

Sadie had seen enough by then, and knew her plan was going to work. She lifted the access panel and dropped it back into place over the hole. Then she ran to the front of the building.

Already, pandemonium ruled inside the store. Dogs slammed against the glass doors as they tried to get out. Others leaped through the hole behind the cashier counter, streaking away from the building as fast as they could run, howling and coughing as they went.

But soon all the dogs were trying to get out. Several snouts appeared, but quickly disappeared as their owners snapped and snarled at each other to see who would get through the choke point first.

Another dog hit the front door again, and this time the glass shattered. The new hole allowed the lab and the Border Collie to get out, and they both ran at full speed, coughing, yelping, and slinging long ropes of drool everywhere as they shook their heads. They disappeared behind the dust-covered dry cleaners across the street.

Then the casualties appeared. A Rottweiler she’d seen earlier stumbled out and ran straight into the side of a car with a loud “smack.” It yelped and went down, only to get back up and stumble away.

Another dog appeared—the little mixed breed mutt that had snarled at the rib bone. Now the dog was shaking and stumbling, slinging its head from side to side and wheezing, all while giving little whines. It coughed. Blood sprayed out of its nose and mouth. Then it fell over and quivered, its chest rising and falling as it struggled to breathe through its burning lungs.

Sadie turned away.

Someone had once loved that dog, she was sure, and now they were probably dead—just as the dog would soon be dead.

She felt sick and sad and couldn’t watch the carnage any longer.

She knew she hadn’t had a choice, that it was the dogs or her—just like it had been the male coyote or her. But the knowledge didn’t make her feel any better.

She wondered what kind of world she was going to be living in now, or if she even wanted to live in it. She’d been ready to kill the Tall Man, but was she really prepared to become the kind of monster she would need to become to survive the Crisis. The dead kid in the car trunk had shaken her. But that was only because it was the first time she’d seen something so terrible.

What happened if every step of her journey introduced her to things even more terrible?

What sorts of terrible things would she be willing to get used to?

Even worse, if nothing mattered—like she’d been telling herself the last nine months—then what was the point, really?

After five minutes, it was quiet below. Sadie pulled the roof access hole open. Down on the floor below, three dogs lay dead, their muzzles bloody, their lips fixed into frozen snarls.

Before she went any further Sadie pulled her MIT t-shirt off her face and laid it on the roof. Then she loosened her belt, pulled down her pants, and squatted over the dusty gray fabric. Her skin prickled in the chilly air, and the scrape on her thigh ached dully.

She worried vaguely about whether or not someone was watching her from the buildings, zooming in on what was left of her goose-fleshed bottom, but as soon as her pee began to flow she forgot about it. She leaned left and right and thrust her hips forward to saturate as much of the shirt as she could.

When no more pee would come, Sadie pulled her pants up. Then she picked up the shirt and wadded it, squeezing it to get the entire shirt saturated.  

Reminding herself that urine really was sterile—if gross—she wrapped the pee-soaked shirt around her head, covering her mouth and nose. It had been only eight minutes since she dropped the chlorine bomb, so not much of the gas would have dispersed. This would be the dangerous part. Still, she was committed, so she grabbed her pack, shouldered her rifle, and tucked her pistol into her waistband.

She had to go fast because there was a limited amount of ammonia in her urine. If she didn’t get out quickly enough, the chlorine would overwhelm the ammonia, and she’d get a lung full of green death, just like the dogs had gotten.

She took a deep breath, held it, then stepped onto the top rung of the ladder. Her heart quickly made her aware of itself, beating hard and fast in her chest the way it would have if she were doing a difficult hot yoga workout. But she ignored the sensation and concentrated on hitting the rungs with her feet.

A fall would likely be the end of her, and despite her moment of existentialist anxiety on the roof, she didn’t want there to be an end of her yet.

When she was three rungs off the floor she jumped for the door, scrabbling at the lock and turning it, and stumbling out into the parking lot behind the store.

Her vision was blurry and her eyes were burning, but she knew she’d made it. She shoved the door closed again, exhaled, then fought against the urge to gasp in a deep breath before she could yank the t-shirt off and wipe it over her eyes and forehead.

The air, still tainted with smoke from the fire, felt amazingly awesome going into her lungs as she mopped at her hair and clothes and hoped there was enough ammonia left in the shirt to get rid of any leftover chlorine.

A cough shook her chest, nearly knocked her to her knees, and she felt her lungs burn a little, but she was fairly sure it was only because she’d been holding her breath a few seconds before.

Silicosis might get her, but chlorine gas wouldn’t.

Not only would Professor Willis fail me, she thought, he’d have Homeland Security talking to me.

If there was still such a thing as Homeland Security.

Chapter 6

Pistol in her hand, Sadie scanned the skyline. The city had returned to silence. Even the smoldering building seemed taciturn and inclined to mourn the death of the city’s final inhabitants.

Sadie didn’t think she could find a human alive who was still living in Youngstown. The dogs had likely made living there impossible for the past few months, and she didn’t believe for a second that the Tall Man and his two children were residents.

She also didn’t believe they’d stuck around once they’d gotten free of the feral dogs.

People didn’t feel inclined to help strangers these days—especially strangers that had pointed guns at them.

It appeared that the dogs that got away weren’t interested in coming back, so she walked the fifty yards up the block to where the long haired guy lay. The dogs had really done a number on him. His face was gone, along with his guts and throat and right arm, though he’d managed to hang on to his matted, blood-soaked hair.

The rest of him was a horror show. His left arm was chewed down to the bone and his fingers were missing. His pants were in tatters and his calves and most of his thighs had been torn away. The only parts of him still intact and undamaged were his feet, which were laced up inside black leather boots.

Sadie’s stomach turned over. She’d seen a lot of dead bodies, but she’d never seen this kind of disfiguration. Most of the bodies she’d seen had been long dead like the guy on the roof, and most of the evidence of feasting animals had been effaced by weathering and insects.

Sadie swallowed a few times and let her stomach settle before she turned back and focused on searching the dead man. The Tall Man had turned all his pockets out and dug into his jacket, but the barking dogs had gotten him into a hurry. He forgot to check the knife holster on the dead man’s hip.

Sadie unsnapped the leather flap and pulled out short red Swiss Army knife with a ring that held a small set of keys. She pocketed the keys and knife and moved on to the pack, which the Tall Man had left beside the curb.

The pack was small. A day-hike pack at best. Not the kind of rig you’d expect if he was carrying all his worldly possessions on him and walking around what was left of America.

The first thing she found in the pasty damp dust was a black, zippered pouch. The pouch was brand new, unlike anything else she’d seen for a long time in this hellhole the long haired man had called “America.” When she unzipped it she saw what she thought was a cell phone. But then she pulled it out of the pouch and saw the gray electronic readout and three buttons.

Then came the fear.

“No,” Sadie said. “No no no no no!” She couldn’t stop staring at the word above the gray readout. It was a word she knew, and it was probably the last word she would ever want to see in her life, under the current circumstances: RADEX.

She pushed the biggest of the three buttons and the readout came on. Numbers appeared and the device began chirping at her.

“Oh no,” she said, recognizing the sound of a Geiger counter. Her grandfather had taught her all about them once, when they’d traveled to New Mexico for her tenth birthday. They’d searched for Uraninite around old mines shafts. Every so often they’d find a hot one and the counter would go wild.

“Score!” she would yell, and her grandfather would stride over to see.

She tried to keep herself calm, since the counter wasn’t showing the presence of anything more than background radiation. But he had the thing for a reason.

Had she just walked through a hot zone and gotten a big dose of death without even knowing it?

She turned off the Geiger counter and put it into its pouch. Then she dropped it into her own pack.

She wondered who the hell this guy was, talking about “saving America.” But nothing from his pack told her a thing. The package of 9-Volt batteries laying in the dust didn’t help her figure out the question, though they were strange—all silver, with Chinese characters on the sides. She put them into her pack with the Geiger counter and kept searching.

Scattered around the day-pack she found a full box of 9mm ammo, a small plastic bag with five face masks inside it, half a dozen replacement breathing cartridges for a full face respirator—the expensive kind—a dozen energy bars, six gray-pouches containing MREs, a collapsible bottle half-filled with water, a black-bladed combat knife.

“Who the hell would leave all this?” Sadie asked, and didn’t like the answer.

Someone who didn’t need any of it because they had it all already.

The cartridges got Sadie thinking that the dead man must have had a face shield respirator somewhere. So where was it?

She walked a circle around the scene of the confrontation between the two men. It didn’t take her long to find the respirator. It had tumbled end over end and landed in the gap between a pair of abandoned cars—a Toyota and a Kia.

“Awesome,” she said as she dusted it off.

She returned to the day pack, tucked the respirator and cartridges down into her own pack, and finished her search.

In the day-pack’s side pouch she found a compass and a small notebook and a map. The map had been folded so that Youngstown was in the middle, and a penciled note next to the town read, “5:00 PM, corner of Matilda and Burk Place, Find the 7-Eleven. Meet at the McDonalds.”

Instantly, her stomach clenched and a chill raced up her back to raise the fine black hair on the back of her neck. She looked at her watch. It read, 12:52.

“Jesus,” she muttered, and walked around the long haired guy’s remains. She kept her eyes roving, scanning the closest buildings, looking for movement in the darkened holes behind the smashed in windows and doors. She didn’t know what was going on here, but she was beginning to have suspicions—suspicions that made her not want to be here at 5:00 o’clock. But she was frozen in place, trapped by fear and confusion about what to do next.

Should she hide?

Should she run?

Should she climb to the top of a nearby building and sight down with her rifle?

Whoever was coming here at 5:00 would likely be coming in a vehicle of some kind. Otherwise, how would they know they could get here on time? Walking presented too many hazardous variables. You couldn’t get in a hurry just to keep to a schedule. That would get you killed.

Ten minutes later she was still beside the body, and she didn’t know any more than she had, except that she was out of time.

“Think,” she told herself, and once more went through the dead guy’s stuff. This time she flipped through his little notebook and found a few entries on the center pages of the book, all of them in a complicated code she didn’t recognize and couldn’t read.  

The fear she’d felt came back.

She tossed the notebook down beside the body, along with the compass and the combat knife. She already had those items, and she wanted the people who found the body to think whoever killed him had only been after his food and water and respirator.

She was about to toss his Swiss Army knife and keys on the ground when she saw the stylized wing logo on the black plastic tab end of one key.

It was a Honda logo.

The long haired man had driven a bike here.

Sadie hadn’t heard an engine coming or going, and the Tall Man, with his two kids, wouldn’t be interested in a motorcycle.

She looked around, but saw no sign of a bike. Everything had been covered in dust for a long time, and the only things that had disturbed it were animal tracks and human footprints.

Sadie slipped her pack over her shoulders and grabbed her rifle. She jogged a straight line to the east for a few hundred yards, and when she saw no signs of fresh tire tracks, she returned to the body and jogged another few hundred yards to the west.

Nothing.

Since she would have noticed fresh tracks the way she’d come into town, she turned south and began to jog again. Sure, jogging was breaking the rules, but if she didn’t get the hell out of Youngstown fast, she’d be breaking an even bigger rule: don’t get caught out in the open with nowhere to hide, not enough provisions to wait out an adversary, and not enough firepower to hold that adversary off.